1
25
39
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/473/8356/ABowkerD151117.2.mp3
9057f5e6582c49eede1f793d70248410
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
Bowker, David
D G Bowker
D Bowker
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bowker, DG
Description
An account of the resource
15 Items. An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant David Bowker (142854 Royal Air Force) and 14 propaganda leaflets. David Bowker flew operations as a pilot with 103 and 150 Squadrons.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by David Bowker and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DB: I’m David Bowker giving this interview and, and these are my, my thoughts. When I was, when I was eighteen in 1940. I went to the recruiting office in Southsea and volunteered for air sea rescue in the RAF because we lived at Alverstoke and we watched the practice, the air force practice dropping torpedoes and they were launching, rescuing the torpedoes. Air sea rescue. But anyway the recruiting office wrote to me and said that it was all full but presumably with elder yachtsmen but I could join, I could still join the navy or the air force or the army just as I wished but I had no, I had no thought, no thought of flying at the time and so I was offered, in the RAF, general duties. Well, of course I had no idea what general duties meant but in actual fact it turned out that if you were fit you were going to fly and the disaster was I was sent to, sent to Cardington and then I had an interview at Cardington and I think he was a sergeant and he said, ‘How do you know you’re eighteen?’ And I said, ‘Well I’m eighteen.’ And he said, ‘Well you don’t look it to me.’ But anyway, I had to, I had to produce my birth certificate to prove that I was eighteen. Anyway, I ended up in the RAF general duties and was sent to, was sent to Blackpool and I found that I was streamed into wireless operator/air gunner. Well, that was the very last thing I wanted to do and so myself and another and a friend at the time we went and saw the officer in charge to ask whether we could re-muster to pilot instead of air gunner and of course we had to, we had to be tested with Morse, Morse code, eighteen words a minute, which was quite fast actually. And anyway, fortunately I passed it and we, and then we started all over again and we were sent to, sent to Stratford on Avon on a pilot’s course and from the receiving wing at Stratford on Avon it was, we were billeted in a disused old hotel which, which was completely derelict and we had to even tear up newspapers to, to use in the lavatory. I can’t, I can’t imagine how primitive it was at the time. But anyway we went from there and we had our meals in the Shakespeare Hotel. Airforce food of course. And from there we had lectures in the Shakespeare Theatre given by, given by a corporal on gas and all sorts of things and from there we, I was posted to Scarborough at the Cambridge Hotel and there again it was, it was very primitive. Still with straw palliases for our, on our beds and we kitted out with flying gear in the Grand Hotel, Scarborough and then, what happened then? I remember we went to a, to a, ah yes we went from Scarborough to Burnaston near, near in Derbyshire which, which was a small, a small aerodrome flying, flying Miles Magisters and we were billeted in, in an old house at Repton School in Repton village and again, again our beds consisted of straw palliases which was very uncomfortable. I was wondering when I was going to get a decent bed. Anyway, we learnt to fly in Miles Magisters and from there, from there we, I was posted to Shawbury flying Airspeed Oxfords and there was an entire, day flying and when we were posted to, for night flying we were, we were posted to Cranwell and in the college complete with batman and then feeding in the college and some night flying and that was very satisfactory. But I remember my first solo night flying. I remember it very well because it was pitch dark and then when I took my eyes off the, off the flying panel I felt the plane immediately started tilting to the left and when I corrected myself with the flying in looking at the instruments although I was straight and level it appeared to be flying to the right. But anyway I soon learned, soon learned to look at the flying panel but I must say I do, I do remember having quite a scary, scary time but we returned to, to, and after having the chief flying instructor’s test I remember we were given some sergeant’s stripes to sew on together with the pilot’s wings which we had to sew on ourselves of course. From there I was posted to an Operational Training Unit flying Wellingtons at Pershore and that took us to -
JB: [whisper] Stop it.
[machine pause]
DB: Ok.
JB: It’s interesting to me David that you’d just qualified as a pilot and was there not some hesitation that you, at your young age, was taking charge of a big aeroplane and a crew who might have been older than you?
DB: Yes. Well, basically they were a year or two older than me.
JB: Yes. Presumably they had to be. So how did you feel about that?
DB: Well, I didn’t have any feelings at the time because it was just how things were.
JB: Well now you’re qualified -
DB: In fact some of the older people, when it came to the exams, the meteorology etcetera, one or two of the older people, because I was younger and only recently left school they asked me as if I, as if I knew better than them.
JB: So, now you had got a crew together who were mixed nationalities?
DB: Well yes. Basically all English. The rear gunner was a New Zealander.
JB: What was your navigator then?
DB: He was an Englishman.
JB: Because on him you rely a lot presumably.
DB: Hmmn?
JB: You rely a lot on a navigator presumably.
DB: Yes one does.
JB: Just turn it off.
[pause]
MJ: Alright.
DB: In, in retrospect, thinking about it, when I was on the squadron we, we, the pilots we never had any discussion about tactics or anything. We would, before an operation we were briefed about, about where they had anti-aircraft guns and that sort of thing but as, as a pilot we never had any meetings of pilots to discuss, to personally discuss any tactics that we might have. It struck me as being very extraordinary.
MJ: What about crew decisions? Did you, was it, was there decisions between the crew, between yourself and your crew more than the hierarchy?
DB: Well I don’t, it’s extraordinary ‘cause I don’t think we did. Never had any discussion about it.
[Machine pause]
And it was just left, left to ourselves to do what we, we were very rarely told when to bomb or what height to bomb or anything. It was entirely left to us. In 1942 anyway. Maybe, it was a bit different later but it struck me that we, that the flight commander, you know, never had any, any guidance on, on what to do or anything. It really does, it does amaze me. We were just told where the target was and where the, where the flak was on the way out and that sort of thing. We could go our own direction. We hadn’t, we’d know. We weren’t told any fixed thing. We were entirely left to ourselves to get to the target. I mean, in retrospect to me it’s amazing that we had no, no guidance about this but, but on the, when I was on the squadron at 103 we converted to the original Halifaxes and we were sent to Rufforth near York where, where Leonard Cheshire was the squadron leader at the time and the original Halifaxes were absolutely death traps because if the, if the two engines failed on one side and you had to correct it with the rudder normally with an aeroplane you could correct it if the engines failed but with the original Halifaxes the rudder could lock over and there was nothing you could do about it if the thing went into a spin and, and so they were absolutely death traps and the funny thing was although I completed the course and Squadron Leader Cheshire, he demonstrated to me how the rudders locked over by instantly correcting, you know. You expected it. And when I was flying with him he demonstrated how the rudder locked over but I mean, if, if you didn’t know about it and you didn’t correct it instantly I mean, it got fixed. But very soon afterwards the original Halifaxes had an enlarged rudder, a large rudder and I think it was quite, they were quite satisfactory after that but in actual fact, funnily enough, there was myself and another youngster and when we finished the course the Squadron Leader Cheshire suggested that we would be happier if we went back on to Wellingtons and the fact, of course one was disappointed at the time and I was posted to 150 squadron but I think the whole, the whole of 103 with the Halifaxes because one time after one, after one raid I was diverted back to Elsham and when I was in the, we, I was diverted back to Elsham because Snaith where 150 squadron was was fogbound and so we and, and when I went into the mess I didn’t recognise anybody on 103 and they’d practically all, had so many fatal crashes with the, with the original Halifaxes that the squadrons were converted to, in late ‘42 the squadron converted to Lancasters instead of the Halifaxes.
JB: Coffee?
[machine pause]
MJ: It’s all yours.
JB: I was thirteen when the war began and came from a very privileged background and I do remember that my own experience of world affairs was nil. It was Children’s, Children’s radio. Uncle Mac, or some very silly, childish things and The Children’s Newspaper which now doesn’t exist and that was all I knew about what went on in the world apart from my cosy life and I remember standing in the room with my parents, listening to the radio and Chamberlain giving this dreadful speech, ‘We are now at war.’ And I do remember clearly and now, in retrospect, you actually wonder about it, saying to my parents, ‘Will it be fun? War.’ Now, I do you know it was not fun. And I went straight from there to school where we were bombed heavily because it was right beside Handley Page but nobody in the school told us that what we were hearing was mostly anti-aircraft fire. It was not bombing and we lived a life in air raid shelters frightened to bits simply because of the lack of communication of what was going on. We were not allowed to have radios or anything, in case, this was a very strict Methodist school, in case somebody found out a brother or somebody had been on a boat that had been, you know, sunk or whatever. So we had no contact with the outside world whatsoever. However, it was such that by sixteen I went up to university. London University but transferred to Leicester to study economics. Now, wartime study was different because they altered up the curriculum and I was only allowed to do two years. Well, it’s three years for a degree and I did two years and went in to some ridiculous war work in London and I can remember, we discussed the other day, David and I, what we both did on D-Day and I walked from Hammersmith to where I was living in Marble Arch through crowds of people, all jubilation, and then I could not go back to university and the reason I could not go back was because the men had all come back from the war and, quite rightly, after their war service they took all the places and women lost out because of the generation we happened to be. The luck was that we did this two years, finish. No degree. Frankly, it doesn’t actually matter in the world because people, not many people ask you whether you’ve got a degree or not so that’s really what my war was like.
[Machine pause]
MJ: Thank you David for your wife’s int, before she had to go in a hurry so we’ll carry on with what we were saying.
DB: Right. Yes, I always, in retrospect, was very thankful for, very thankful for being sent to another squadron on Wellingtons because a Wellington could take an awful lot of damage and still fly which, which, of course, happened to me on a, on a raid on Frankfurt. We were very badly damaged and after gaining control at about, at about a thousand feet we managed to, to stay, to stay airborne, to fly home and crossing the French coast at about five hundred feet I remember very well a lot of tracer bullets flying over, following me overhead. We weren’t hit because obviously it appeared that they couldn’t elevate their guns low enough to, because we were so low all the, all the bullets were going overhead but anyway, I mean, because we were halfway across the channel the um -
[Machine pause?]
MJ: It’s on.
DB: Yes. Halfway across the channel the petrol gauge read nothing and my wireless operator told base that we were going to ditch in the channel but we were persuaded to carry on to, and follow the searchlights, to follow the searchlights on to Manston aerodrome. And whether, and I was following the searchlights towards Manston when of course we ran out of petrol and crashed near Lympne and, but of course it’s, I mean it’s a long, it’s a long story but we –
[Machine pause]
MJ: [?] it’s on.
DB: The, when we, when we crashed just north of Folkestone, the second pilot, I don’t believe was strapped in ‘cause I’m not sure that the second pilot’s position had straps but anyway he was killed together with the bomb aimer who was aft who was aft by the main, main boom because the plane caught fire and the, although the second pilot got out he more or less died after getting out the, and the bomb aimer was stuck in and I believe got burnt to death. But anyway after, after this episode we were, the survivors were flown back to, to Snaith and after, after flying on one training trip I was posted to a target towing unit flying, flying Lysanders towing a target for, for, for other squadrons along the coast from Grimsby down to Skegness.
[machine pause]
MJ: It’s on.
DB: But maybe after, after being a survivor, I don’t know why, I don’t know. I can’t think of any particular reason but except that maybe when someone has had a shaky do like that perhaps, perhaps it was normal to be posted to a non-operational -
MJ: Role.
DB: Type of thing.
MJ: Mind you, I don’t think being shot at by [laughs] by trainees is a safer occupation is it?
DB: No. But er I was on the target towing unit for about six months and then was posted as an instructor to an OTU. I mean, I mean at the time one just went along with what happened. I mean, one didn’t, one, I personally didn’t have any say myself on what, on what happened. And if one got posted I didn’t argue with it. No.
MJ: Did you prefer the coastal work or the training?
DB: Hmmn?
MJ: Did you prefer the coastal work or the training work?
DB: Did I?
MJ: You did the drone bit. Did you prefer training the troops or did you prefer being the target if you see what I, ‘cause when you flew -
DB: Well one, one towed the target, it’s a sleeve. You had the operator, you know. I was the pilot but the person at the back there trailed, trailed the, the drogue on long wire. I mean, he had control over how long a wire he put it because we, I don’t know whether you know Spurn Head off the Humber but we towed the target on a very long, a very long wire for the army ‘cause we didn’t really trust the army [laughs] but anyway for the, for the anti-aircraft practice. But there, it was all, it was all quite a, quite a job because we did two or three trips a day. You know, we did work quite hard but after that I was posted to an Operational Training Unit as an instructor.
[Machine pause]
MJ: [pause] It’s on now.
JB: David, in which stage in this saga did you take on the job of testing aircraft that had been in the repair shop to see if they were good enough to fly again?
DB: That was, that was some time after I was -
JB: Shot down?
DB: It er, no, it was after and I was, I was seconded to a maintenance unit.
JB: Yes, but does that come between the target towing, the shooting down and the target towing or does it come after the target towing?
DB: After the target towing. Yes.
JB: After the target towing.
DB: Yes.
JB: So you were just handed this book of instructions for an aeroplane and said -
DB: Well it was –
JB: Take it up and see if it will go. Well obviously it did otherwise you wouldn’t still be here, would you?
DB: No. Well I was very, very, yes, with the Hurricane for instance one had to be ‘cause you couldn’t have any two -
JB: No. There was -
DB: Two.
JB: Nobody else in it.
DB: No.
JB: You couldn’t, it was a one seater.
DB: There was –
JB: But then do you, do you enter in to a thing like this with an excitement of something, that this is something new or with great fear that have they done a good enough job that this is my last moment?
DB: Oh you mean on the maintenance unit?
JB: Yes. I mean did you actually think every time you got in to a different aeroplane they wanted you to test that this is an excitement or did you think oh my God I may be dead by tomorrow?
DB: No. No [laughs] I never thought. I just thought –
JB: Eternal optimist are you?
DB: Well yes.
JB: I see. Your glass is always half full obviously. Yes I see.
DB: Well, until, until the time came when the life raft flew out.
JB: Oh yes. Yes. And this is when you were testing what? A Halifax?
DB: No. A Wellington.
JB: A Wellington. And tell me what happened.
DB: Well the, when I -
JB: The life raft inflated did you tell me?
DB: Well it feathered, you know, when I had to take, I went, took these aeroplanes on test so when I took off I had to feather the propellers and check everything worked and I remember feathering the starboard propeller. There was a tremendous bang and I didn’t know what it was.
JB: Quite unnerving.
DB: There was this huge bang and the inflatable dinghy, the rubber inflatable dinghy had flown out of its case behind the engine and wrapped itself around the tail plane and then as soon as this huge bang and I thought, ‘Christ what’s that?’
JB: Well you would.
DB: Because I lost control. The elevators were locked because this thing was, if you can imagine, the thing had collapsed and prevented the elevators from working.
JB: So how did you get the aeroplane down then?
DB: By the televator well of course it’s a long story.
JB: Well just tell me quickly ‘cause I haven’t got all night. Yes.
DB: Well the controls were rigid rods.
JB: Yes.
DB: And so of course the whole of the tail plane was skewed. The rigid rods didn’t -
JB: Yeah.
DB: Work because -
JB: So how do you correct that to get it down?
DB: Well the fin tabs.
JB: Yes.
DB: Were on a separate thing. That’s the elevator and the fin tabs is another -
JB: David this is -
DB: Another little tab.
JB: This is not visual darling.
DB: Yes.
JB: There’s no good telling me like that.
DB: No. Quite.
JB: No. Just tell me. So you’ve got the plane down by being rather clever.
DB: By using, use of the twin tabs.
JB: Is that when you got your green endorsement in the -
DB: Yes.
JB: For being clever.
DB: Yeah.
JB: And am I correct in thinking that that is when they found out what happened with a lot of the Halifaxes? Is that anything to do -
DB: No. Nothing to do with the Halifaxes. No.
JB: The Halifaxes just had a fault on them to start with.
DB: No. The Halifaxes, the original, the original -
JB: The original Halifaxes, yes, had a fault in them.
DB: The later ones had a bigger
JB: Yes.
DB: Tailfin.
JB: Yes. So it was the tailfin on the early ones that -
DB: Yes.
JB: Caused all the problems.
DB: Or lack of it.
JB: Lack of it. That everybody was killed.
DB: Yes.
JB: Now, I want to go back to when you were shot down.
DB: Yes.
JB: And you managed to get over the channel.
DB: Yes.
JB: Have we all done all this?
MJ: Yeah. We -
JB: But have you also pointed out that the young man who was killed whose name I remember because I write a cross for him every year.
DB: Yes.
JB: Have you, have you remembered to say that he had gone to the CO the day before?
DB: No. That was the bomb aimer. Young Lapping.
JB: Well, it was the bomb aimer.
DB: Yes.
JB: Young Lapping. Yes. His name was Lapping.
DB: No. I didn’t mention it.
JB: Well he’d gone to the CO the day before. This is what you told me.
DB: Yeah. This was the bomb aimer.
MJ: Yeah.
DB: Who was killed? He’d actually, the day before he’d actually been to the CO which I think he was quite a, quite a -
JB: Quite brave.
DB: Brave thing to do.
JB: A brave thing to do. Yes.
DB: To, to tell the CO that he’d had enough. He couldn’t -
JB: He’d lost his nerve. Couldn’t go any more.
DB: And the CO called me in.
JB: As the pilot.
DB: As the pilot. To tell young [Lapping] to pull himself together and then he was killed that night. So -
MJ: Yeah.
DB: But I mean he had, he had -
JB: And as a consequence you see -
DB: A brave thing to do to go to your CO -
JB: Yes. Because -
DB: To say you’d had enough.
JB: There were people weren’t there who were labelled LMF.
DB: Yes.
JB: That’s lack of moral fibre.
DB: LMF.
JB: Who just disappeared off the screen, off the section.
DB: Yes. I had a rear gunner who just didn’t -
JB: Yes. Just didn’t appear -
DB: Who didn’t, who didn’t turn up one evening.
JB: But they weren’t staying on the station.
DB: And the next, the next, by the next morning he’d gone.
JB: LMF. That was the label.
DB: Lack of moral fibre.
JB: Moral fibre.
MJ: What made them give you the job of testing the planes because I don’t know how they decided?
JB: Because, because he was a good pilot. [can’t be plainer than that can we?]
DB: Well I was -
JB: Steady. Steady chap.
DB: Seconded. Well someone, someone had to do it.
MJ: Yeah it’s just -
DB: Well, it’s after an engine change or after a crash. If any plane had been repaired.
JB: Well after this crash -
DB: Or major service.
JB: After you had got the plane back and was told to ditch in the channel. Yes? And you got it back into this wood in Kent and ended up in a tree.
DB: Yes.
JB: And they were killed. The two of them.
DB: Yes.
JB: And you were injured. What, you went off to hospital, all of you, presumably, that were still alive but now we know where the plane is, don’t we?
DB: Yes.
JB: ‘Cause we found it.
DB: Yes.
JB: We know it’s in the wood just –
DB: Yes.
JB: North of Folkestone. We know exactly where it is if we look at a map.
DB: Exactly.
JB: We went to look for it. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get into the wood ‘cause it’s wired off but we could actually, we could point out where it is but -
DB: Yes.
JB: He has actually got the engine number plate. I suppose it’s a number plate.
DB: Yes.
JB: I don’t know. From, from the plane. But we know -
DB: Yes.
JB: It’s still there, what’s left of it, but of course as a Wellington is wooden it’s probably only bits of an engine there now. So when you’d done all this testing and being shot at by the army eventually they let you not fly anymore did they? Or you trained people. You were training pilots. I know that on D-Day you were doing familiarisations. That’s a difficult word.
DB: Yes.
JB: On, for pilots, training pilots and you took four flights ‘cause we looked into the question of D-Day when the celebrations came up for D-Day and you made four flights that day with different people to familiarise them with -
DB: Yes I’d forgotten. Funny you should remember.
JB: Well -
DB: I’d forgotten.
JB: I only remember because on the celebration of D-Day.
DB: Yes.
JB: I was able to tell you where I was.
DB: Yes.
JB: And you, so, I said to you, ‘Well, where were you?’ and you couldn’t remember so we looked in your logbooks which are still here.
DB: Yes.
JB: As is your, as is your uniform, your Irvin jacket.
DB: Yeah.
JB: Your goggles. Everything. Still here. Got it all.
MJ: [? to take one]
JB: It’s all stashed away in the cupboard here. I don’t think you’d be able to get in to it now though. I think the ravages of time made us all rather fatter.
MJ: Fine.
JB: You should turn it off.
MJ: Off.
[Machine pause]
JB: Now, David. My theory about the logbooks. You’ve still got three logbooks. Yes.
DB: I think it must be right. Yes.
JB: And I think my theory because I have a very nasty mind I think is that the first one is thick.
DB: Yes.
JB: And as -
DB: Yes.
JB: You get further on the logbooks get thinner. Now do you think, my theory is because they don’t expect you to last very long?
DB: No. I would say, I would think so.
JB: You think that’s the answer.
DB: Yes.
JB: So the longer you are active in the RAF during the war
DB: You got -
JB: You got a thinner logbook because there would be no point giving you a thick one if they didn’t expect you to last more than five goes would there?
DB: No.
JB: Do you think that’s true?
DB: The original one is thick.
JB: And the next two get thinner and thinner. Has anyone any theory as to why that is apart from my theory?
DB: Could be economy.
MJ: No. You’re right.
JB: I’m right. Aren’t I right about it? Yes. David, you know young Lapping, who we put a memorial cross for -
DB: Yes
JB: Every year. Am I right in thinking that after he was killed, and he must have been a very young man.
DB: Right.
JB: His father joined up in the RAF.
DB: Yes.
JB: In memory of his son and was also killed.
DB: Yes.
JB: He was killed at a later stage wasn’t he?
DB: Well -
JB: The father.
DB: What? The father was?
JB: Yes. Yes, and I know they come from Yorkshire and I keep meaning to try and get hold of some archivist in Yorkshire and look up that name and see if we can’t sort it. [whisper] Turn it off.
[Machine pause]
JB: Family, we know that
DB: Yes.
JB: And the other chap is dead as well. We know that. David, after you came out of the RAF and every time we drive past Stoney Cross you tell me that was where your last posting was.
DB: Yes.
JB: And it was handing out money to returning crews.
DB: Yes.
JB: You bought a Tiger Moth did you not?
DB: Yes.
JB: And how much did that cost?
DB: The Tiger Moth cost two hundred pounds
JB: And you kept it at Portsmouth Airport as it -
DB: Yes.
JB: Then was. And why did you want it?
DB: Why did I want it?
JB: Yes.
DB: Well, I may have just -
JB: What use did you make of it? You flew to Cowes to go sailing, yes?
DB: Yes.
JB: Because you’d always been a keen sailor.
DB: Yes.
JB: And you flew to Cowes.
DB: Yes.
JB: And you sailed against the Duke of Edinburgh.
DB: Yes.
JB: In [f for fox?].
DB: Yes.
JB: In a dragon boat that you had -
DB: Yes.
JB: Built yourself when you bought a boatyard in Bosworth building wooden boats.
DB: Yes.
JB: And eventually built a boat that went to the Olympics in 1956 where got your silver medal for sailing.
DB: Yes.
JB: Enough.
MJ: [is it?]
JB: Enough said. When you left the RAF -
DB: Yes.
JB: Was it 1946?
DB: Yes.
JB: What did they give you by way of remuneration for all your efforts for six years or whatever?
DB: A hundred and twenty pounds.
JB: A hundred and twenty pounds.
DB: Yes.
JB: Well, that was your total pay off was it?
DB: Yes.
JB: But no pension of course.
DB: No.
JB: But did you get, you got a clothing did you not?
DB: A coupon, I believe we did. I can’t honestly remember.
JB: Well you can remember because we still have the trilby hat and the raincoat here.
DB: Yes. I can’t remember about the coup -
JB: We don’t have the sports jacket anymore and I think that was all.
DB: I can’t -
JB: Did they give you any trousers? They must have given you some trousers.
DB: Yes.
JB: A pair of flannels I suppose.
DB: I expect so.
JB: Yes. But the trilby hat -
DB: Well they didn’t give you -
JB: They gave you coupons.
DB: It was in Ruislip.
JB: Yes.
DB: And we just wandered around on this, you know, and picked the clothes ourselves.
JB: Oh I see. And that was your choice?
DB: You were allowed to -
JB: You didn’t, you didn’t -
DB: To take a jacket and trousers.
JB: You didn’t think of getting a city suit then? You preferred to have a sports jacket.
DB: Yes.
JB: And a pair of flannels.
DB: Yes. Yes.
JB: And a raincoat and a trilby hat.
DB: Yes.
JB: We still have the trilby hat and the raincoat somewhere.
DB: Yes I think we -
JB: They were frequently used by some amateur dramatics who wish to -
DB: I think the raincoats gone hasn’t it?
JB: Yes.
DB: Yeah.
JB: But the trilby hat and the raincoat, I think they’re still in the workshop.
DB: Yeah.
JB: And I think you still, we still give them out for amateur dramatics. Dressing up a tramp. Since they were given to you in 1946 they’re pretty -
DB: Yeah.
JB: Pretty, only fit for that now.
DB: Yes.
JB: So a hundred and twenty pounds was the maximum. Was the total -
DB: Yes.
JB: And that was for being a flight lieutenant.
DB: But I think we got some clothing coupons.
JB: Yes, well that’s what you bought with the clothing coupons but then if you got a hundred and twenty pounds and you were by then a flight lieutenant which means -
DB: Yes.
JB: You’ve gone through five ranks.
DB: Well, where, where have my logbooks gone?
JB: It seems pretty poor pay to me but that’s all you got and no pension of course.
DB: Yes.
MJ: Right, well -
JB: Off.
MJ: Yeah. On behalf of the International Bomber Command I’d like to thank David and Jackie Bowker at their home in Southampton for their -
DB: No, it’s Emsworth. We’re in Emsworth now darling.
MJ: Yeah. On the 17th of -
DB: November.
MJ: November 2015.
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 David Bowker
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-17
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABowkerD151117
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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
Description
An account of the resource
David Bowker joined the Air Force and was originally training to be a wireless operator / air gunner but remustered as a pilot. He discusses rudder lock on early versions of Halifax. Jacqueline Bowker his wife, discusses her life during the war and being bombed. Returning from an operation to Frankfurt his aircraft crashed and some of his crew were killed. After this he was posted to a target towing flight and later became an instructor at an Operational Training Unit and a test pilot at at Maintenance Unit. He also discusses a time when an aircraft's dingy deployed in flight jamming his controls.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
England--Bedfordshire
England--Derbyshire
England--Kent
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Shropshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Folkestone
England--Spurn Head
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:48:45 audio recording
103 Squadron
150 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
briefing
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
crash
demobilisation
Halifax
Halifax Mk 1
Hurricane
lack of moral fibre
Lysander
Magister
military living conditions
military service conditions
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Cardington
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF Pershore
RAF Rufforth
RAF Shawbury
RAF Snaith
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/655/8927/PWilliamsAE1510.2.jpg
5fecc6c36af87c08eaf51d8ffb4c958e
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/655/8927/AWilliamsAE150608.1.mp3
3fd201d6d7120aef974015fe29db8acb
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
Williams, Arthur Emlyn
A E Williams
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Williams, AE
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. Two oral history interviews with Flight Sergeant Arthur Emlyn Williams (b. 1923, 1836914 Royal Air Force) and a squadron photograph. He flew operations as an air gunner with 50 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AEW: My name is Arthur Emlyn Williams. I am recording this for Bomber Command and I have pleasure in doing so. I volunteered for aircrew prior to my twentieth birthday. Nineteen I was in nineteen forty, late ’42, ’43. I was employed in the mines but because a lot of friends of mine were going away I thought I wasn’t going to be left to them and let them do all what was necessary and the only reason I could leave the mines was either by volunteering for submarines or aircrew. Well, I didn’t, I didn’t fancy volunteering for submarines because in my opinion it was a highly dangerous job and in my opinion they were men. So I volunteered for aircrew and I was accepted to train as an air gunner. Ok?
MJ: Yeah, that’s fine.
AEW: My first thought of training was to Penarth for an after station bard to find out whether you were suitable to train as air crew. I was accepted then. Then a letter came requiring me to go to Air Crew Receiving Centre in Lords, London. We were there for about three weeks. Nothing very intensive but I quarrelled with my instructor Corporal MacDonald and he was a nasty old fella. Anyhow, from there we were posted to Bridlington up in the East Riding of Yorkshire where we did six weeks square bashing and quite intensive and we did a lot of training on a beach in Bridlington. Three weeks there. We were then transferred to um Bridgenorth for air gunnery training course, elementary air gunnery training course. We were there for quite a while and thoroughly enjoyable where we learned about turrets and pyrotechnics and what have you. Ok that went by, the EAGS the Elementary Air Gunnery School. Then from there we did, I was asked where I would like to go for air gunnery training so I thought there was one in, there were two in Wales. One, Stormy Down was one and then the other one was down in West Wales that was Number 1 Air Gunnery School. I applied, no I applied for, it was near home Stormy Down and lo and behold I wasn’t lucky. They posted me to Inverness right in the very north of Scotland where we did about six months on training as an air gunner and where we did our first spot of flying and where the, these fighters then were dragging what we called drawing in where we oh drogues they were pulling drogues and we had to fire at these drogues towed by these martinets and we all had coloured bullets, different coloured bullets so they could see well these were fired by Emlyn Williams or somebody else. And I mean during that period several bullets went quite the other’s martinets that was pulling the drogues. Right, after six months and we passed out as air gunner. I enjoyed my training up there. I was quite, quite young at the time. And that then after, given a week’s leave and then we were posted to Market Harborough where we did training on Wellingtons at an Operational Training Unit and this is where we had our first experience of a crash. We crash landed because, in my opinion, the skipper wasn’t quite knowledgeable enough with the angle of glide indicators which indicated when you were coming in to land. If they were two reds you were too high. Red and an amber you were still too high. Two ambers still too high until we had two greens. And of course we crossed when the, when the indicators showed we were too high. He wasn’t knowledgeable enough with what went on. None of us were hurt. Ok. We soon flew off. From there we went to Swinderby where we first enjoyed experiencing a four engine heavy bomber and they were quite, I enjoyed the Stirlings and they were quite heavy. And there we did our first more or less operational diversionary units. We went to targets to more or less make the enemy think we were going either, this indicated to easily where were we going oh dear, oh dear anyhow diversionary targets. Making the enemy think we were going there and drawing the main force from Germany. We were there for about three weeks and then of course until the skipper and all the crew were quite intimate with whatever or not with the Stirling we were transferred then to Syerston. Number, number, number 4 I think, Lancaster Finishing School. We were there for about ten days before they thought ok they’re quite conversant with the Lancaster then they transferred us to 50 squadron in Skellingthorpe, Lincoln. That was where we started our first operational [team] operations. Right.
MJ: [Bit more]
We were, we were crewed up in Market Harborough, Number 14 Operational Training Unit. Len [Farrow?] from Southport was the pilot. The navigator Vince from Essex. The wireless op was from Devon, Senior, Arthur Senior. The bomb aimer was from Canada but lived in Dundee for a few years, Jock Barr, we called him Jock. The engineer, his nickname was Boost, he was from, Alexander his name was from Scotland. The rear gunner was Taffy Thorne from Cwmbran in South Wales and myself Emlyn Williams from Swansea Valley. We all crewed up then and we were quite a happy crew and had, and we trusted each other implicitly. There were a several instances I would like to record. On each operation, however small or large, you know, each one had something else to say about each other. One instance was we flew to Trondheim in Norway and the weather was atrocious and I was sad to say that we, because of the weather we couldn’t drop the bombs and the bomb aimer didn’t want to drop the bombs anywhere in case it would injure a lot of civilians [in any other area?]. So we came back and we dropped the bombs on the sea and flew back to Wick in the very north of Scotland. I’ve got a letter somewhere in the house. The bomb aimer paying tribute to the magnificent navigator we had, Tom Vince. And the, the weather going back we were more or less, we were compelled to fly about twenty or thirty feet above the North Sea and we were so young then and wouldn’t say afraid but we couldn’t think of any danger at all. We flew back and when we arrived at Wick we had about five minutes flying time left. Course that was told to us after wasn’t it? Not to cause us any worry and we landed there because the weather was so bad. We stayed three nights there and we were like heroes. You can imagine us walking about Wick in our flying clothes because we didn’t have our own suits at all did we? And we were, we were the toast of the area. Eventually, time had come for us to depart for Lincoln. We were very disappointed because we enjoyed walking about the streets in Wick in our flying clothes. Still young weren’t we? Twenty, twenty one and Len now he was a bit of a daredevil so he flew back over Blackpool and I can see it myself now he flew, imagine over the tower of Blackpool we flew the main road and the beach was quite well, well below the level of the promenade in Blackpool and I can see him now he flew now right above the beach in Blackpool and this man walking the beach went like that.
Other: The thumbs up.
AEW: Thumbs up. I can see him now. By then the fog had cleared over Lincoln and we managed to land and that was one of the main reasons why we flew the North Sea because Lincoln was always shrouded in fog and we were often diverted. Yorkshire or down on the south coast and spent a day there, spent a night in Yorkshire, York and a couple of other places. And as I said fog was the main cause of us being diverted. On the 19th of September 1944 we were briefed to go on operation to a place called [Ratydt R A T Y D T] at ten thousand feet. Our, our master leader for that trip was Guy Gibson.
MJ: Yes.
AEW: With Dambusters but he was on a Mosquito and over the intercom we heard his message, ‘Hello main force. Hello main force. This is your master leader calling.’ We knew it was Guy Gibson. ‘I am down at two thousand feet and I can see everything bang on.’ And we were at about ten thousand. So he was marking the target for us at two thousand feet. After the operation we bombed and we left back for base and when we got back news had come to us that Guy Gibson failed to return. So, he must have been, I don’t know exactly what happened, there were so many rumours that he may have been shot down by a Mosquito in mistake for a Junkers 88. So, there many rumours about him not returning.
MJ: What do you think yours is?
AEW: Pardon?
MJ: What would you think? Your personal thoughts.
AEW: Well he could have been shot down by the ackack over the target or maybe shot down or wondering, might have been shot down by his own, his crews you know but I don’t like to, I don’t like to say anything, you know. He was there to mark a target and he did a good job in marking the target. Being red or green I don’t know but anyway the main thing was he didn’t return, so.
Other: Here.
AEW: Ok. I can’t remember the operation we went on but the weather was quite atrocious again and we flew through many an electrical storm and icing was also a danger to us, was beginning to form now on the wings you know. So clouds were ten tenths. So to fly out of the cloud and we had to fly as high as we could and ten tenths cloud means ten tenth. Thick cloud isn’t it? Eventually, this was the most amazing thing, we flew as far as twenty six thousand feet and I can see it now. As we emerged from the cloud, had it been a second earlier, we would have collided with a Liberator. We were going home and they were going out to bomb a target. A second earlier and we were just emerging from a, I said, ‘Christ, skipper, that was close.’ Well, I thought I could have touched it like you know. It was, oh dear, I don’t know it was twenty six thousand feet, just emerging and there he was and we flew at twenty six thousand feet for a very, very long time and slowly the cloud began to, cloud situation easing up and it was still intense and the skipper thought, ‘Well, look here boys if things don’t improve we’ll have to bail out.’ So, most of the crew went as far as the main door. We opened the door getting ready to bail out now and anyhow we were over a place called Rouen. Is it Rouen? Rouen? Over France. And the clouds just disappeared and we could see land. So we come down from twenty six thousand feet down to eight hundred feet. Even that was low to bailout but anyhow we were amazed at that and we were all thrilled and we shouted for joy, ‘Oh thank goodness for that.’ And then we flew back over the coast all the way to Lincoln. There was another instance when we did the three trips to Munich really. One was when I celebrated my twenty first birthday over Munich.
MJ: Yeah.
AEW: And that was quite, quite an exciting night really and it was such a beautiful night for bombing and our target was um we had to open city. That meant we had to bomb the city itself and I can see looking down on Munich and where we were now when I had my twenty first birthday eighteen thousand feet and we were looking down and the streets were quite plain. Ideal. It did affect me a little bit because we were asked to just to bomb the streets. You know, no specific target in mind but just the streets and I think we were, you couldn’t refuse. We were briefed for it and if you refused you were more or less branded LMF weren’t you? Lack of moral fibre. And you just had to carry on but I had my twenty first birthday. Still young weren’t we? Three time over Munich and back from one trip then I forget whether daylight it was and where I was as mid upper gunner I could see everywhere three hundred and sixty degrees isn’t it, you know and on the way back I happened to look out and there over the sea I spotted an aircraft had ditched so I gave the information to Tommy Vince, navigator, and the wireless op to take a fix so they could send a message back and say exactly where it was. So that’s where I had my nickname as Catseyes Williams. [Laughs]. That’s it. Yeah. Ok. There was one instance I had finished flying and I was making my way over to the mess to have tea and of course there were two squadrons on Skellingthorpe, 50 and 61. Well 61 squadron were taking off and Squadron Leader Horsley was leading the squadron so I watched him. He was taking off first and as I, and in fact as I was walking across the runway [nearly finished taking off first] and then he took off and I heard it quite plainly. His engine cut. It had a full bomb load. So I watched him. His idea was to come in again so in actual fact he flew around the cathedral and came back in again to land but as he came in to land his other engine cut and he just ploughed in to the ground and blew up. And I can see myself now flat on the floor trying to mind all the debris from the aircraft and I remember quite well after that the rear gunner was the only one alive and he was buried in his turret into the ground about ten feet. Squadron Leader Horsley was one in front. Anyway, we were briefed then for another one to Stettin. And funny thing I never had any mixed feeling about any, any trip we flew like you knew but Stettin, I had mixed feelings about Stettin. We already, we hadn’t, we hadn’t quite entered the aircraft. We were in dispersal we were and anyway, word had come through that it was cancelled and we all just kissed the ground isn’t it because of the mixed feelings I had that we would never come back. Right, as a youngster people say weren’t you ever afraid? Being nineteen, twenty, I didn’t know what danger was. Whether you believe me or not but we’d seen many a night fighter ME110 mainly at night. But at daylight we’d usually normally meet the ME109s or Fokker Wolf 190s but the only thing I can honestly say that the only thing I was afraid at night were collisions and I’d seen many. And one night of course we were flying and this Lancaster came across. I thought he was going to hit us so I said, ‘For Christ’s sake skipper, dive.’ And down he went and this Lancaster flew over us. Why the crew didn’t see us at all but if I hadn’t seen him he would have hit us and from then on I was really scared about collisions. Ok. I am the last surviving crew member of a Lancaster bomber, Emlyn Williams of Pontardawe near Swansea. It all began back in 1941 when I was the son of an unemployed father. We were more or less requested to go into the mines rather than be called up for the armed forces so that I could support the family with an extra income. The job I was given was quite a safe job really looking after the main turbine pump in a mine responsible for keeping the water level safe. I could have remained in a comfortable job for the rest of the war but I was rather uneasy most of the time, most of my friends were either volunteering or were called up for the army, RAF or the navy. I knew that my only chance of leaving the colliery was to volunteer for the submarines or aircrew. These two services were the only alternative available. I did not fancy the subs as I considered this to be too dangerous and so unknown to my parents I volunteered for aircrew. This process took a while and it was [summer or sometime?] 1942 when I came across this letter by accident. My parents had hidden it from me. This letter asked me to present myself at an address in Penarth to attend an [?] Board. This was a three day event. A pass or fail effort. Sometime later I got the result I wanted that said I had satisfied the examiner and would notify me in due course of the next involvement. At this stage I spilled the beans to my mother and father who were both upset at the news. All this took time of course. I was still nineteen in September 1943 when I received confirmation from the RAF that I’d been accepted for training for aircrew as an air gunner. The training was in stages of course. First of all at the Aircrew Receiving Centre in London. That was my first taste of what it was like for the first time away from home. It was quite an ordeal as the instructor there was for one purpose, for breaking you in slowly. This lasted three weeks and in that time I wished I was back in my soft job looking after the pump. Living in London was quite expensive and my seven shillings a week did not go very far. By the end of the three weeks I had become quite hardened to the punishment I’d received and was ready for the next posting to Bridlington in the East Riding of Yorkshire. This was all square bashing but a lot easier, healthier, good body building and enjoyable. I was in fact sorry to leave for [the next?]. The, the next part of the course was to Bridgenorth, Wales where I had to go six week at a Preliminary Air Gunnery School. This was familiarisation with turrets Frazer Nash and Boulton Paul and of course machine guns and pyrotechnics. This took six weeks in all and was excellent basic training. From there I was given several options regarding going to air gunnery school. I knew there were one or two in Wales and so I asked to go to Stormy Down near Bridgend, a half hour journey from Pontardawe. But my hopes were soon dashed when they announced my next posting was to Dalcross near Inverness. The Jocks in my company were delighted of course for they were going home and to my disappointment there was to be no appeal and to Scotland I went. This was for a period of six months training and the experience of flying for the first time in an Anson aircraft. This involved firing Brownings 303 guns at an aircraft towing a drogue. I felt sorry for this pilot as many a burst from our guns went astray. Each trainee were given coloured bullets. Different colour for each. I was given [? issued with rockets?] this went on for six months. Weather permitting of course. [? ] Bombings were indoor training, use of parachutes, dinghy training, theory and practical work all to do with preparing for the big day. Operations. At the end of the six months those who had successfully completed the course were promoted to sergeant and were given a few days leave. This soon expired and was called back for further training at an Operational Training Unit at Market Harborough where I experienced flying in a twin engine Wellington bomber. This was where I met the rest of the crew and good boys they were. Pilot from Southport, navigator from Essex, bomb aimer from Dundee, engineer from Scotland, wireless op from Hastings, rear gunner South Wales, Cwmbran and myself, mid upper gunner. We were a happy crew and enjoyed our stay at the OTU. One exciting part of it was when we crash landed at night. This was admitted by the pilot it was a case of not fully understanding the angle of glide indicators. The aircraft was a right-off but we were all ok. The next part of course was to a Conversion Unit at Swinderby where we would experience flying in a four engine bomber. This again [?] a much bigger aircraft. Our stay was four weeks. We were involved in diversionary tactics diverting fighter attacks and flak from the main bomber force. This would prove fateful for some crews but we came through unscathed at Swinderby. We were posted to Syerston in Lancaster Finishing School where we did enjoy more familiarisation in a Lancaster for ten days. This was a lovely experience as she was an outstanding aircraft. We were again given leave prior to joining a bomber squadron at Skellingthorpe in Lincoln, 50 squadron. Following our leave we were first to join other crews at Skellingthorpe. Lancaster VNC Charlie. This was to be the beginning of a nerve racking tour. I was now twenty, about twenty going on twenty one. This aircraft was to survive thirty five operations. Daylight ops but mainly night ops which took us to France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Norway and close to the Russian border. Night collisions were many. I saw many going down even prior to the bombing run and on one occasion I had to shout to the skipper over the intercom, ‘Dive, dive,’ and this Lancaster was about five feet above us with its bomb doors open. The other danger was to try and avoid other Lancasters below. What I said was excellent and as you know I was Catseyes Williams. I could see well at night. Guy Gibson so fed up of ground duties after being told to take things easy persuaded the higher ups to give him one more chance and so he was given a Mosquito to fly ahead from the main force to mark a target with a particular colour for the bombers to aim for. It’s possible that I am the only remaining crew member to hear his voice over the intercom. These are his words of course, ‘Hello main force. This is your master leader calling. I am down at two thousand feet. I can see everything bang on.’ We were at a height of eleven thousand feet. He did not survive that operation and there are several rumours as to his death. Weather does play an active part to us flying. We were flying the following night on an operation when the weather turned nasty and we were in ten tenths cloud and no sign of it abating. Ice was forming everywhere and we were forced to climb to twenty six thousand feet. As we were emerging from the crowd this liberator skimmed just above us. Had we emerged a second earlier there is no doubt we would have collided. This incident stands out in my mind. We continued on our homeward journey. With no sign of things improving the navigator told the pilot to start descending as the icing was giving us more problems. This continued for nearly an hour with no sign of an improvement. Petrol was a problem. But all of the sudden the pilot gave us the order to stand by to bail out and to our relief we broke cloud at eight hundred feet not far from the French coast. We continued over the English Channel [moving papers] Oh that one. We -
MJ: It’s alright.
AEW: Alright? We landed at an airfield on the south coast at Tangmere where we stayed until the fog was cleared in Lincoln. That’s it.
[Metre 3346 until 5441 the interview has stopped but the tape is still recording. Transcription discontinued]
MJ: On behalf of the Bomber Command Project I’d like to thank Emlyn Williams at his home on the 8th of June. June yeah. Yeah, June 2015, on the 8th thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Arthur Emlyn Williams
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-08
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWilliamsAE150608, PWilliamsAE1510
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:54:59 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Arowen Armstrong
Description
An account of the resource
Arthur Emlyn Williams talks about his life before volunteering and what lead him up to volunteering. His parents were upset about his decision to join the RAF. In September 1943, he was accepted for training as an air-gunner. He started his first operational tour from RAF Skellingthorpe. He recalls an occasion where they flew to Trondheim in Norway, flew over the North Sea to get back to Wick in Scotland. He tells of the weather during this trip and how, when they landed back at Wick, the craft only had 5 minutes of flying time left. On September 1944, the crew was briefed to go on an operation to Ratydt. During this operation, the crew had a close call where they almost collided with a Liberator. The crew prepared themselves to bail out over Rouen because of the weather, however they managed to fly back to Lincolnshire. On his 21st birthday, he had an operation to Munich. On the return trip, Arthur noticed a ditched aircraft and he gained the nickname Catseye Williams. At Skellingthorpe, Arthur recalls watching 61 Squadron leader Horsley’s craft blow up after both of his engines cut. Arthur notes his ambivalence and anxiety towards his next operation in Stettin after this. The crew came across a Lancaster that almost collided with them, only being avoided by their pilot diving the craft to not collide with the Lancaster.
14 OTU
50 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
crash
fear
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Master Bomber
Operational Training Unit
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Swinderby
RAF Syerston
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/655/8928/PWilliamsAE1510.1.jpg
5fecc6c36af87c08eaf51d8ffb4c958e
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/655/8928/AWilliamsAE150617.2.mp3
9335f5418f0e026f69f5ee64a2872b46
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
Williams, Arthur Emlyn
A E Williams
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Williams, AE
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. Two oral history interviews with Flight Sergeant Arthur Emlyn Williams (b. 1923, 1836914 Royal Air Force) and a squadron photograph. He flew operations as an air gunner with 50 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
EM: My name is Emlyn Williams, born in 1923 in the Swansea valley. That makes me nearly, nearly ninety two next birthday. I volunteered for the RAF and accepted to be trained for an air gunner. Now, when I volunteered I was in the mines. I had a good job and I could have stayed there for the rest of my life but I was, I trained to be a pump operator which involved maintaining the water level so that it didn’t flood the mine. So, I applied and the only reason I could join was by, to leave the mines was to volunteer for either air crew or submarines but I didn’t fancy submarines because I thought it was a dangerous job. Right, um first of all we went as far as Penarth to, to find out whether I was suitable to be trained. We were there for three days. Anyway, for a while time went on and I had a letter saying that you are suitable to be trained so that was fair enough. Shortly after that I got a letter which my mother hid from me because she didn’t want me to go because my father was unemployed and I wanted, she wanted me to stay where I was to bring in extra money to the, to the house. Well, I had a letter from the Air Ministry asking why I hadn’t replied so they sent me another letter which I made sure I found and I had a letter and I wrote back to state that I was willing to be trained and consequently I had another letter then to say that I was expected and I would be sent another letter with further details on what to do. Right, the other letter came to say that I was accepted and I was to proceed to Lord’s, near Lord’s Cricket Ground where we were trained, well, you know, Corporal MacDonald was our instructor and he was a nasty one and I was sorry then I had volunteered but anyway it was ACRC Air Crew Receiving Centre. We were there for about three weeks. From there, of course, we went to, first stop from there is, was Bridlington, square bashing we were for quite a while. Six weeks a think. Where we were trained on the beach and it was quite enjoyable. Can we stop now?
[Pause]
Six weeks from Bridlington we were, I was posted then to Elementary Air Gunnery School, Bridgenorth. We were there for a while training on turrets, pyrotechnics, various turrets you know and it was quite enjoyable but there was no flying then at all. So, that was Bridgenorth and from there, Elementary Air Gunnery School we were asked then where we would like to go for Air Gunnery School where flying was involved. Well, of course, being a Welshman I said well I wouldn’t mind going to either Stormy Down near, near Cardiff or Pembrey, Number 1 Air Gunnery School. And I was hoping that would be the case. Either of those. But lo and behold the next thing I had a letter saying I was to be transferred to Inverness [laughs] at a place called Dalcross, Number 2 Air Gunnery School. Well, I couldn’t do nothing about it. Couldn’t argue. So we were posted there and we were there for six months where we were trained in Ansons. Well, that involved flying where martinets kept towing a drogue and we were involved now in shooting at this drogue and each one had different coloured bullets to prove now if mine was red and I had more red markings it meant that I had better success than the others but anyway there was red bullets, green bullets, brown bullets. You name it that was it. Six months there I think we were transferred then we were passed then and then we had our stripes. Sergeant. That made us more proud than ever like. And of course we had a brevvy. We were sent from there down to Market Harborough, 14 Operational Training Unit and we had to familiarise with Wellington bombers and there of course we crewed up. Len Farrow, the skipper and so forth. Tommy Vince, navigator from Essex. Jock Barr, bomb aimer, Dundee. Engineer, Boost his nickname was, from Alloa in Scotland. The wireless operator he was from Hastings. Taffy, the rear gunner was from Cwmbran in Wales and myself. The rear gunner opted to go now to be the rear gunner because [he was short, short ass we called him] so he went and it suited him quite well to go into the rear gunner position. I kept to the upper gunner position my eyes were perfect. I had good vision, better vision at night than it was during the day and that’s where I gained my nickname was Catseye Williams because I was good with eyesight. Right. That was when we experienced our first crash landing in Market Harborough. I think was because the skipper wasn’t quite acquainted with the angle of glide indicators which indicated either two reds you were too high, red and amber you were still too high, two ambers questionable, then you had to wait to get two greens which meant you were ok to land. He couldn’t have been acquainted with the situation because we landed what four or five fields back and fortunately the area was so flat and it was a right off, the old Wellington but we suffered no injuries. We were ok. Ok, after a while there we had some leave and we were transferred to Swinderby where we had to acquaint ourselves with four engine bombers and she was a big one, the old Stirling. Huge. And when we did first started landing we must have bounced about fifty feet away because skipper wasn’t quite acquainted with the controls and that was, that was the Stirling. I think it was [1660] high conversion unit and we were there about six weeks. Ok, that was enough for us. We were transferred then to Syerston. I think it was number, I think Number 4 Lancaster Finishing School. I’m not quite sure of the number. We were there for about ten days to again familiarise ourselves with the aircraft which we did and then of course the big moment came where we were told we were now going to transfer you to a squadron and the squadron was 50 squadron where there were two squadrons on the station 50 and 61. And we enjoyed it there and of course each operation we were a bit apprehensive of all operation big, long or short you know. Ok. Brest was my first operation. It was only about three hours. Three or four hours but even then we thought it was an easy one but several aircraft were shot down over Brest and we had to more or less follow the armed forces the army. Brest and we went as far as Le Havre, Boulogne, these were pretty good you know and we had no difficulty, you know. Nothing frightening about the operations. Then of course they must have thought they’ve had enough of these short operations and start doing the big ones. Where are we? A Flight, C for Charlie we were and we flew the same aircraft right throughout thirty five ops. Incidentally, there was an aircraft next to us D for Dog they were called then. Now they’re called Delta aren’t they? That aircraft went missing on every trip and because of that I think they changed the call sign D for Dog to [double dix?] I’m not quite sure but we were very sorry. We knew the boys well and every trip they went missing. This was very sad you know isn’t it? Now, we were lucky. Thirty five ops and no problems at all. Right. This was mentioned that Lincoln was always immersed in fog with the result of course that we were diverted many a time because of this. Just to mention Tangmere down in the south. There was Ludford Magna in Yorkshire. There was Pocklington in Yorkshire and Dishforth up in Yorkshire. It wasn’t very far was it? Not very far from Lincoln was it? Next, next county I think. And it was quite a novelty for us meeting other aircraft. Mostly Halifax crews you know. And of course one, Wick was one in the very north of Scotland. Wick. We were briefed to fly to a place in Norway, Trondheim. And we were quite a long trip Trondheim but there again that caused problems because the weather was so bad we couldn’t see the target and the bomb aimer didn’t want to drop the bombs on anything other than the target so we dropped the bombs in the sea. Right, this meant then after that we were informed that Lincoln again was shrouded in fog so we flew over the North Sea and the weather was atrocious and the bomb aimer warned the skipper many a time, ‘Skip,’ he says. ‘You are flying too low. If you keep at this all the time we’ll be hitting the sea.’ So he rose for a little while and after a while we landed in Wick. The very north of Scotland and he did, when we landed the engineer said, ‘Well we’ve been very lucky.’ He says, ‘We’ve only got about seven or eight minutes fuel left,’ when we landed and we were lucky. And we stayed there for three or four days in Wick and, dressed in flying clothing we felt like heroes you know walking the streets of Wick. Teamed up with the girls and all that. And we were sorry really to leave Wick to fly back to Lincoln but the time came of course and we had to fly back and Len, the skipper did enjoy doing a bit of daredevil flying like you know. We flew over Blackpool on the way back and I can see us now we practically, the promenade in Blackpool is quite high and we flew now almost parallel with the promenade over the beach. And I can see this man now with his thumbs up as if to say, ‘Well done boys,’ and eventually we landed in Lincoln. That was quite an enjoyable trip and especially low flying over Lincoln. Some exciting moments did occur during our career in flying. One was of course was when Guy Gibson, VC, was marking a target for us. For a long time the air ministry officials thought well he’s done enough flying so they pleaded with him to give up flying and give him a desk job. He didn’t like that at all and he pleaded and pleaded. In the end they allowed him to fly a Mosquito and of course on that night there was a target called Ratydt R A T Y D T. I can’t remember what, what was involved but Guy Gibson was marking the target for us. We were up in eleven thousand feet and his voice came over the radio to say, ‘Hello main force. Hello main force. I am down at two thousand feet and I can see the target bang on.’ Those were his words. We were up at eleven thousand feet. I’ll always remember that. In fact I wrote to [?] to ask if any other crew members who were on the same trip heard his voice and I had a letter back stating that he, this particular man, did hear his voice so that was a little proof that Guy Gibson was marking the target. Whatever the colour was I don’t know but anyway Guy Gibson, he never made it back and there were so many rumours of what happened so I wouldn’t like to say. [?] He didn’t come back anyway so that was that. That was one incident. Ok. I can’t say, I was so young then, I can’t say I was really scared about operations. We were attacked many times by night fighters, mainly ME110s but my main fright was night collisions and there were many. There were many. On one occasion I had good vision all around and the next thing this Lancaster came towards us and I thought, ‘Is he going to hit us?’ So I said, ‘For Christ’s sake skipper, dive.’ Down he went. And this Lancaster had its bomb doors open. I’m sure that if he’d continued and we hadn’t dived he would have hit us with his bomb load and all so that was that. Many a Lanc went down through colliding with others and of course being, I was an asset really because my night vision was one hundred percent. Fantastic. But as I said collisions were my main concern. It was the only thing I was frightened about. Ok. Yeah. Ok, another incident was following our attack on some target I can’t remember we were we left the target and the weather was absolutely atrocious. Ten tenths cloud, ice was forming on the wings, electrical storms we went through and they were nasty so the skipper said, ‘Well to get out of this we’ve got to fly higher, twenty six thousand feet to get out of the clouds.’ Twenty six thousand feet. That was quite high for a Lancaster then but we made it but as we emerged from the cloud had we been a second or so earlier we would have hit this Liberator. We were going home and he was flying out to a target I expect. Well, I was amazed. I absolutely swore. I won’t say what I did, what I said but as we made it he flipped above us. Two seconds earlier we’d have hit him and that would have been a catastrophe wouldn’t it? But anyway we were lucky. He was flying to a target and we were going home. We were flying back now and there was no sign of the ten tenths clouds abating. He was so worried, the skipper, and the navigator. He knew where we were. So, the skipper said, ‘Well, if this is going to happen, is going to get worse,’ he says. ‘We’ll have to think about baling out.’ So he told us all to stand by the back door, get the back door open ready for baling out because he was concerned now about our petrol situation but we flew and we flew and we flew and all of a sudden we broke cloud somewhere over France and we were down to eight hundred feet. It was still a bit low to, to consider baling out but anyhow at eight hundred feet we saw no more cloud and we were lucky. So we flew back to Lincoln but because Lincoln was again shrouded in fog we were told to divert to Tangmere, down in the south, and that’s what we did. We there for a day or two before considering flying back to Lincoln. One funny side of life was, the crew, now I’m not sure whether we had finished operations but we were going out to Lincoln for a night out, seven of us and there we were at the top of the road now, waiting for a bus and what, what went by was a hearse and all very old fashioned they were old fashioned then 1940 ’44 [or so]. He pulled up and said, ‘Boys would you like a lift?’ [laughs] So we all trooped in the hearse and took us all to Lincoln. [laughs] It was a funny one wasn’t it? Whether that would have been a bad omen or something I don’t know but anyway life went on as usual and we thanked him and then we went for a couple of pints. Then of course when we finished flying the air crew situation was well there were so many surplus. Some of course had to fly to France or whatever to, Manna was it? When they were dropping food to these towns that were deprived of food and what have you. And of course we then we weren’t involved anymore we were advised then to to think what we would like to do so the Airfield Construction Unit was the main job we had and then transferred to Aberdeen and Dyce airport. Airfield control assistant my job was. To man a caravan on the end of the runway and take part in controlling aircraft that wanted to take off or land. On top of that I was so young and so full of energy that I joined the mountain rescue and I thoroughly enjoyed that and we were involved in many a rescue and life then was great between the two jobs and that was it until I was more or less considered for demobilisation. One other thing that caused the problems was the fact that when we were ready to take off we didn’t mind that at all but there was one instance a target called Stettin. I think I had mixed feelings about that. I thought if we went on that well I didn’t fancy my chances at all. That feeling you had like, you know. But anyhow the wireless op had a message, ops cancelled. We said, ‘Thank God for that.’ So we all kissed the ground. And of course prior to that of course well then we had to take wakey wakey tablets didn’t we because we’d already taken tablets to keep us awake for the whole trip and then we had other tablets then to correct that and then for us to allow us to go to sleep. All [your?] problems isn’t it? But Stettin was, well the only one I had mixed feelings about but fortunately it was cancelled. Ok.
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command Oral History Project my name is Michael Jeffery. I’d like to thank Emlyn Williams on the 17th of the 6th 2015 for his recording. Thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Arthur Emlyn Williams
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-17
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWilliamsAE150617, PWilliamsAE1510
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:27:09 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Arthur Emlyn Williams was working as a pump operator at the mines, before he volunteered for the RAF. His mother hid his first recruitment letter. He trained at Lord’s Cricket Ground, and Number 2 Air-Gunnery school at Inverness, on Ansons. He discusses a crash at Market Harborough while at 14 Operational Training Unit. He flew operations with 50 squadron from RAF Skellingthorpe. Arthur gained his nickname Catseye William because his eyesight was better at night than the day. Arthur’s first operation was in Brest, and it lasted 3 hours. In Trondheim, Norway, the bomb aimer wanted to drop bombs on the target, but because of the weather they couldn’t see the target, so they dropped bombs over the North Sea instead. Arthur was afraid of collisions, noting an occasion where they almost crashed into a Lancaster that had its bomb doors open and another near miss with a Liberator. After Arthur finished his tour, he went on to other jobs as an Airfield control assistant and in mountain rescue.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Arowen Armstrong
14 OTU
50 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
crash
fear
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Master Bomber
Operational Training Unit
RAF Dalcross
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Swinderby
RAF Syerston
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1050/11428/ANicholsonA150922.2.mp3
41b5887b8283872933d2ab6dd5c15c94
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
Nicholson, Arthur
A Nicholson
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Arthur Nicholson (Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer with 51 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
2015-09-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Nicholson, A
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AN: My name is Arthur Nicholson. Ex-flight engineer, Bomber Command. 51 Squadron. I’ll start this story from leaving school, starting work and then going into the forces. I left school in 1939. August. Just before the war began. And finding work was not easy at that time but I went into an engineering factory manufacturing printing machinery. I went as an apprentice engineer. Well, as you know the war started in September ‘39 and that was the week I started work. Well, for the first year we carried on manufacturing printing machinery but then changed over to manufacturing various armaments such as breech blocks for anti-aircraft guns and bullet making machinery and predictors for anti-aircraft. For the flak department. After that, well that created the fact that I was then in what was classed as a reserved occupation. So my life in the wartime would have been working as an engineer in that factory. And nobody could get me out of there. I learned later on that the only way to get out of there and to become in the military was to be, to join aircrew. Well, I was working with a team of four older fellas. And was very disappointed in the amount of money I was receiving and the amount of work that I was doing which was more than these other four were doing all together. So on my eighteenth birthday I decided I would leave this job and go and volunteer for the RAF. So I went down to Leeds. Put my name down to join aircrew as a flight, as an engineer. It didn’t matter at that time whether it was ground staff or aircrew but they said being in a reserved occupation you can only go into air crew. So I said, ‘Well fair enough. That’s me joined.’ So they said, ‘Oh yes, you’re alright.’ So it was a quick interview and a medical and they said yes you’re fit enough to go at the time. To start with. I said, ‘Well, how long will it be before I’m called up?’ He said, ‘Well, six to eight weeks.’ So I said, ‘Oh well fair enough.’ So I went home and told my parents that I was joining the Air Force which they weren’t very happy about because my elder brother had already been in the Air Force for a year and was flying as a navigator. And he was flying some of the heavy bombers but he never got to go on operations before he was killed in an accident. But so, but that’s later on. It took nearly nine months after me volunteering in January. It was September before the authorities were able to get my release from that reserved occupation. And suddenly in September I received a letter to say I’d been accepted and to report to St John’s Wood such and such a day. And from that day on that was the RAF. The usual thing — you went down to St John’s Wood. Completely strange place. You know, met at Lord’s Cricket Ground and that was my first day in the Air Force. Which was quite an interesting day. You just went from one to room to another being interviewed, being examined and being tested for various things. And halfway through the day somebody brought you a mug of tea and a teacake and that was your sustenance for the day. Eventually we walked away from there. There was hundreds of other lads coming in. Just the same. Little suitcases or bags on their back with just personal belongings. And some corporal or sergeant mustered possibly two hundred of us and said, ‘Right. Follow me.’ And we set off and we walked down the roads of St John’s Wood and we finished up in the swimming baths. The bloke there said, ‘Right. We need to know whether you can swim or not.’ He said, ‘Right. All them who think they can swim get in at this, stand at this end. We’ll give you a pair of trunks.’ They all give us a pair of trunks. ‘The ones who can’t swim stand over there on the right. And the ones who think they might be able to get down to the shallow end.’ So I thought well damn it all. I wasn’t a good swimmer but I didn’t know what was the results of not of being able to swim so I said, ‘Right. That’s it.’ So when it came to me turn I dropped in at the shallow end and had to swim to the deep end. You had to do a full length of the pool at St John’s Wood to be classed as a swimmer. So I struggled and I managed a length [laughs] without drowning and that was that. So, right that’s it. You’re a swimmer. Passed A1. From there on we were taken away and to some ex, I don’t know if it was an ex-block of flats or an ex-hotel or what it was. He said, ‘Right. Find yourself a room in there and go to,’ such and such a place down the road here, ‘For some food. And then, and then you’ll be called in the morning at probably half past six or 7 o’clock to register and muster with the people who you’ve made up friends with.’ Well, I walked into this room and there was one other bloke in there. Then two more came in. And they were three Geordies. They were all from Tyneside. And I could hardly understand a word they said. They were all quite strong Geordies but we got on reasonably well together. Decided which bed we were going to sleep in and where to put the little bit of stuff that we had with us. From there on I went, we went and had food and then came back. We went together. We all had to have a haircut the next day and everything else like they usually do. And I I have always been used to doing a fair amount of walking in the area I used to live in. But two of these lads had always gone on the bus everywhere and they didn’t like walking [laughs] But I made friends with these three people and I stayed with those three people through the basic training at Bridlington and Usworth up in Durham somewhere. And then when we transferred from there it would be possibly eight to ten weeks after basic training which was the usual physical training. Rifle drill, marching, saluting. Everything else. From there then we got the time to go down for the engineering course at St Athan’s in South Wales. And I was still with these three same people all the way through that course which was, I think, then a six month course. And it was very intensive, and the things that we learned was, it was very good. There was always the same discipline. The church parades. Marching in. Waiting for food there. One thing and another. But it was exciting. And it was all new. And I was basically a mechanical engineer but what was taught there was all kinds of the details of hydraulics and electrics and various other bits and pieces. And you had to learn a little bit about, a little bit about navigation. The stars. A bit about oh [pause] yeah the weather. The clouds and everything else. You had to learn about, be able to write the weather forecast damn here. Be as good as Paul Hudson on the telly. But that went on for, for six months until two weeks before I should have — oh in one period in that we were supposed to be selected to what kind of aircraft we would be flying. And you had to put your name down. Well, I fancied at that time to keep away from Germany so I volunteered for Coastal Command and I wanted to fly on Sunderlands. Well, that didn’t come off. So eventually I found that, I’d been told I was going to be flying in Handley Page Halifaxes and was sent on a course to Liverpool. To the manufacturers. We spent a week, or more than a week in the manufacturers learning as much as you could about the individual bits of an Halifax. Well then, two weeks before the end of the engineering course I got a sudden, a telegram while I was in a class. And I was dragged out of the class to the orderly office and told that my brother had been killed [pause] I had to go home.
[recording paused]
AN: Well, the process there was I had to hand in all my equipment at RAF St Athan’s and I was given a train ticket to get back to Otley in Yorkshire the best way I could. So obviously it was a bit of a round about route. To go into London first. And then from London up to Yorkshire and then a local train in Otley. It took eleven hours did that. And at that time more or less all the trains were fully occupied so half the time on that journey I was sat in the corridor on my kit bag and just wondering what my mum and dad would think. Well, the bit I’ve left out of here is after starting work and me coming in to the Air Force I was in the Air Training Corps. And my brother was in it as well. He was a bit brighter than I was and he went off as an navigator and I, I finished up as an engineer. But I thought well I’ve got to go back to the Air Force after this leave. I was only on leave for the funeral of my brother. So I went to this funeral. It was in town. Which was a bit of a ceremony because all the Air Training Corps was there. They had a pipe band at the time and so we had to follow this pipe band to the cemetery. And it was a bit traumatic. Course then we had to go home. Mum and dad weren’t particularly talkative at the time but they didn’t want me to go back. Not at that time. They didn’t want me to go flying. So I had to toss up one way or another when the time came for me to go back. I decided well I don’t want to become ground crew. I’ve learned all this now. My chances is as good as anybody else’s. So, so I went back to St Athan’s to finish my course which was only supposed to be another week. Well, when I got back there all my friends who I’d made in that course had been posted and left to go somewhere else. So I had to start and find a billet on my own with some other intake that was come a lot later than I had. And nobody was interested who I was or anything. And that’s how I finished at the engineering course in St Athan’s. Well after that you were sent home on leave and then you were sent to join an Heavy Conversion Unit. And that was over at Riccall in Yorkshire. So I went to an Heavy Conversion Unit and we learned all about the actual aircraft. The Halifax. They were Halifax 2s and 3s. Mostly 2s at that time. But at the end of that period. Near, well part way through that period we was, we were told to gather at this hangar. And when we got there, there was a lot of other airmen there of all the different categories. Air gunners, pilots, navigators and said, ‘Right, well you’ve got to find a crew.’ So I thought well I’m surprised at this because they’d pushed you into this hangar and there were these different crews all gathered together and you had to go and find one to join because the, the other people had all six, there were six aircrew there that had been flying twin engined-aircraft and they were converting to four engined-aircraft. Whereas they didn’t need an engineer before that. So now they needed an engineer for a four-engined aircraft because there were more complications and assistance with the fuel handling and things like that. And I’d have thought that a pilot — a pilot and his mates would have decided on which engineer they would like. But it worked the other way round and you had to go and pick your own crew. It amazed me and I’ll never understand that. I don’t really. Because they’d already been together for probably six or seven months and for a stranger to come in and pick them rather than them pick the stranger surprised me. Anyhow, I looked around and I saw these different lads. Some of them were a similar age to myself. The pilot, who was an officer and a bit older, well that gave me a bit of confidence. So I asked them if they would like me as their engineer. It seemed to work alright and I was accepted. So that was a full crew of seven people merged together. And we stayed together then for the rest of the time in the Air Force. Well, the time when we were still in Bomber Command. We carried on there until when we learned to fly together and do night flying, cross-country flying, all sorts of flying at the Heavy Conversion Unit. At the end of that we were posted to a squadron. And we got all the kit together and we piled onto the back of an old Bedford wagon and we were driven away to 51 Squadron. We didn’t know where we were going but it turned out to be 51 Squadron at Snaith in South Yorkshire. And so, and we were dumped in a small field off, off the squadron really with little Nissen huts. No facilities and God knows what. The washing facilities were probably a mile, a mile and a half away. And the canteen and the mess. And so we used to have to walk up from there and go in through the main gates of the camp and go to the, you know the general facilities. Because the rest of the billets on the camp were all, had all been taken but eventually we moved up into the camp and, but we were all at a fair dispersal in different, we were still in Nissen huts. And all the crew, our crew was all together apart from the pilot who was in the officer’s mess. Unfortunately, during the trip from Heavy Conversion Unit to the squadron the pilot got some, some foreign body in his eye. And so when he reported to the squadron MO he was told he couldn’t fly until his eye got better. So, there were, we didn’t know how long this would be. I mean the next time we saw him he had this great big cotton wool patch on his eye. And so we were, I was introduced to the engineering leader at that time and several other of the flight engineers. We used to meet on a morning and go for different lessons and things like that. Unfortunately we couldn’t fly so we did all sorts of silly things like flipping learning to jump off a table to land as from a parachute and silly things like that. But this carried on, carried on but I knew we were going to be, and all the rest of the crews on that squadron were going out on operations at that time. So we began to wonder how much longer it would be before we went on ops. Eventually I were in bed one evening, one night about 9 o’clock and some silly bugger came shaking my head and said, ‘Hey get up. Get up.’ ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘You’re on ops tonight.’ I said, ‘Don’t be so silly,’ [laughs] He says, ‘Oh yes you are. You’re on ops.’ He says, ‘There’s an engineer gone sick,’ he says, ‘You’re flying tonight,’ he says, ‘But you’re a bit late. You’ve missed the briefings and you’ve missed the aircraft inspection period. You’ll have to get cracking up there.’ And so he took me in a small little Morris van up on to the squadron to this aircraft. And they were just ready and the engineering leader give me the inspection sheet. He said he’d done the inspection, ‘Get in and find your place and you’re off,’ and I thought well I’d no idea who I was flying with or what the crew was like or how much experience they had and this was my first operation. Well, it turned around after being to it most of the time when you’re in an aircraft on a job like that it’s no speaking. Only speaking for a particular technical reason or some, or you’ve seen something that’s unusual. So I’d probably been flying two hours before I spoke to anybody. Eventually giving instructions on what fuel conditions were like and one thing and another. Carried on, on that operation and it wasn’t until we were nearly at the site for bombing that I was told where we were going. It turned out to be, of all places, Essen. Well, as everybody knows Essen was well protected. There were black smoke and shells bursting all around us, and it didn’t, it didn’t seem to bother me then because I didn’t understand what half of it was. But nothing happened. We turned around and dropped bombs, turned around, came back home and landed quite normally. And when we were in the truck being taken back into the headquarters for de-briefing the pilot then said to me, ‘Well, that’s it. You’re lucky.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘Well, that’s your last operation.’ I says. ‘What makes you think that?’ He says, ‘Well that’s what we were told.’ I said, ‘Well, you’ve been told a lie because that were me first.’ ‘Oh God,’ he says [laughs] He said, ‘I would have talked to you a bit more if I’d have known that. I just thought you knew as much as we did and carried on.’ It were their, I think it was about their twenty eighth out of the thirty but anyhow that was the first operation, because our skipper was still unable to fly. And this went on for eight weeks. And my next operation was a similar, only about the one beforehand and I went to briefing same as everybody else. But then after that we flew as a crew. I can’t remember which destinations we were and what we were bombing. But all our flights were night flights over Germany. Mostly four and a half to five and a half hour flights at that time. And things happened on these flights. One time we had a bit of a fire in the navigator’s place where the H2S set on fire and I had to go down with the extinguisher and put that out. There was another time when we should have set off and I wouldn’t accept the aircraft because it had a big slit in one tyre. Which, that wasn’t looked on very well by the ground crew and everybody else but we’d been instructed that a tyre with a slit in the side wasn’t acceptable. So I refused to fly. So that put the whole crew couldn’t fly. But unfortunately there was a spare aircraft kicking about so they kicked us on to a spare aircraft and we still had to fly. But in one or two of these ops there were things happened. I mean one time and thank God I were only a little fella. My position used to be stood under the astro hatch which is a plastic hatch on top of the aircraft just behind the pilot. And a piece of shrapnel flew through this hatch straight out through one side and out the other. Well, if I’d been five foot six instead of five feet four that would probably have been the end of me. There was another time when we had a few holes in the aircraft from anti-aircraft fire but we always got back. There was one memorable time when we got back to the, we’d been out, I don’t know how long for. Probably five hours. And we got back and when we got back up into Yorkshire it seemed to be pretty bad weather. And we thought oh we, we’ll have to land somewhere. We came to land at Snaith and it was covered in fog. But by that time it was too late for us to go anywhere else. We were about out of fuel sort of thing. So we decided, well the skipper decided we’d have to land. And we were in contact with ground personnel there. And there was no lights on the runway or anything like that at that time so we had to circle two or three times around 51 Squadron at Snaith until they put these goose neck flares all down the side of the runway. We just managed to get in and give a big cheer. Thought we were the first back but it happened we were the only one back because everybody else had listened to the radio broadcast except our radio operator who loved to listen American Forces Network quite a lot for dance music. And he’d missed an instruction to divert. We’d been diverted somewhere down south. I don’t know where it were. And so we cheered, we thought we were the first ones back. So we got a little bit of a lecture on what we should have listened to and things like that. There was another time when, when they wouldn’t, there weren’t two times, I think twice when we went off to bomb certain places. This was getting towards the end of the war and our job then was sort of backing up the advance of the troops after D-Day. And unfortunately they must have given us some wrong information when we set off but we got nearly to where we should have been and the troops had advanced in to the place where we were told to bomb. So we had to turn around and come back. Well, this is one of the things which I thought were bloody silly because we’d gone all that way, bomb load, flown over quite a bit of defensive Germany and yet we were just turned back and fly back just the same. Why we couldn’t have had another target, another fifty miles further on I don’t understand. But this happened twice. Well on the second time back, well also then there was, you could only land your aircraft with a certain maximum weight. Well, the amount of bombs we had on made as we were over that weight. So, you used to have to drop so many in, in The Wash or in the North Sea. And I used to have to calculate the fuel contents. The weight of the fuel, the weight of the bombs and decide on what the all up weight would be on landing. And to tell the bomb aimer how many bombs he had to get rid of, you see. Drop two five hundred pounders or two, and things like that you see. So this I did and the bomb aimer decided he’d be a bit extravagant. Instead of dropping two five hundred pounders he decided he’d drop four just to make sure [laughs] that we were underweight. Well, then we, we got back and the usual debriefing, and, ‘What did you do then?’ ‘How many bombs did you drop?’ When he told him he’d dropped four and the bloke did the calculations that I had done said, ‘You should only have dropped two.’ He said, ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘But it made it safe.’ He said, ‘Yes but —’ then we got a lecture about how much bombs cost to manufacture. and the number of hours people spent making bombs. And there was another, well, twice when two different flights went. We landed away from base because we showed, the instruments showed a shortage of fuel. According to my calculations there should have been sufficient fuel for us to get back to base. But to play safe we landed away. We landed at Carnaby. And landed at Hethel, another place and it turned out to be an American place. But landing at Hethel was a mistake. We should have been landing at another RAF place which was about two miles further on. And when we were on the runway on the run in to the landing we got challenged by some American fellas to identify ourselves or we’d be shot at. So I had to shoot a blinking verey cartridge out to the colours of the day. And the wireless op was on the radio trying to tell them who we were. So anyway, we landed alright there and we were looked after. All these Yanks with B49s. And they thought we were marvellous flying in the dark which they didn’t do. They used to do all daylights. More of their flights. But twice as high as we were. And so we, we were looked after there until the next morning we went out to the aircraft. We should have been flying back to Snaith. And I pretended to be a bit dumb and all their aircraft were twelve volt aircraft and ours, ours was twenty four. So, their starting equipment wasn’t suitable for starting our aircraft engines up. So, and I thought well it’s simple enough to get two or three batteries in series to make twenty four volts but I said nothing. So we were there for three days [laughs] We were there for three days. Going to the pictures in Norwich and being fed like lords. Never seen as much food in all my life as what there was on this American base. You could have anything you wanted. Fruit and meat and goodness knows what. To finish they had to send somebody down from 51 Squadron to do some battery alterations and some [unclear] to start our engines. We were three days there [laughs] and it were like a holiday. Anyhow, then I got called into the squadron leader’s office and the engineering leader was there and I got a bit of a lecture on fuel management and one thing and another. And they said that if I didn’t improve at the next flight I would be sent back to St Athan’s for further instruction. That worried me a bit because I thought well everything I’ve done was according to book and log looked alright. It’s just that the instruments didn’t seem right. Anyhow, we were grounded for two days. The next night the officer commanding the squadron took the same aircraft — MHL. I’ll never forget that. Personnel were waiting next night. MHL didn’t come back. Landed away from base short of fuel. Bloody thing were leaking like mad from where one of engines were running, were losing fuel. So I got an apology from [unclear] and that was it. Anyhow, things went on as normal until getting on we thought the war was about finished and Germany would have had it but then we were told we were going to go on a daylight raid. And we went to, we were going to Koln. We went in briefing at early morning. Probably be 6 o’clockish. Something like that. Well we went to Koln. Well, this was our first daylight raid. So we set off as usual. Happy as anything. Nice to do a daylight raid. You can see where you’re going and what’s around you and things like that. But there were a bit of a flak about and an odd fighter was about but when we got on to the bombing run which was the usual straight and level and things and controlled from the bomb aimer the matter, and we were in the second wave. There were four minute intervals between three waves of an eight hundred bombing raid. Eight hundred bombers. Three waves of, and we were second wave. Well, the bomb aimer, we were listening to the master bombers talking at that time and suddenly the master bomber says, ‘Stop bombing reds. Bomb greens from —’ such and such a course. You see. Well, really what we should have done was carried on and bombed reds because we were all half way through the damned bombing run then. But the skipper and the navigator decided and the bomb aimer had a little chat and decided well that must be for us we’d better change course. So I said, ‘Well, this is a bit of a dangerous thing to do. We’re flying half in to the wave. Carry on and bomb as had been instructed beforehand.’ And for us to turn across that everybody else were flying, we were flying at ninety degrees to the rest of them. So they were missing us by inches and one thing and another. And we went out, further out and turned to come in on a different direction. And course we were out on our own at that time. Daylight raid at 10 o’clock in the morning. Flipping flying towards Cologne to drop bombs on it on bloody green targets. And bomb aimer says, kept us on a straight and level course and we did our best and he dropped our bombs. And as soon as our bombs had gone the mid-upper gunner shouts, ‘We’ve just been hit on the right hand side. Starboard engines,’ he says. It’s bunch blazing like mad.’ I looked out and saw the instruments. Skipper switched the engine off. I operated the fire, internal fire extinguishers and I operated the propeller to feather the propellers so they didn’t go around because that made difficulty for flying and also helped to keep the fire going. But nothing was too any avail and you could see this fire getting worse and worse. Of course half the wing’s full of petrol and aviation fuel. And that was it. So the skipper gave us the order to bail out. So, the mid-upper gunner was shouting and telling us what, how this, bad this fire was getting and bits were melting off the wing. The rear gunner turned his turret around and he was hauling back with his head up and telling us about bits flying off. The bomb aimer should have been the first out of the escape hatch which was down in the front. On the floor. What to do with the escape hatch? And him and the navigator were arguing about what to do with it. I said, ‘For God’s sake pull it out and throw it down the front in the bomb aimer’s place.’ So they did that. And the bomb aimer must have had a bit of a dizzy on because he wouldn’t, he was supposed to be the first out and he hesitated so the navigator went out. The wireless op went out. And then the bomb aimer went out. Curly, the rear gunner went out and dropped off the back end. The mid-upper gunner came, scuttled past me and to go down the hatch. I set my parachute and clipped it on and I was stood at the side of the skipper who was still hanging on to the controls trying to keep it straight. I clipped his parachute on to him. And then I said to him, ‘Cheerio Stan. Good luck.’ And I disappeared and that was it. Well, none of us had any parachuting experience or anything like that. It was a cold morning. Snowing at odd times. And we were at about twenty thousand feet. So, and I pulled the rip cord and the little chute came out and then it pulled the other one out. And all of a sudden you slowed down. And there’s me hanging on a few bits of string going around and around and one way or another and swinging backwards and forwards. I thought well the one thing you used to worry about was whether any of the back end of the aircraft might hit you as you dropped out because you just dropped underneath it. And sometimes people had been hit by tail fins and stuff like that. Anyhow, I thought well, that’s it. It’s alright. Here we are in the middle of Germany. You don’t know what sort of a reception you’re going to get. Anything like that. So, and there was an eighty mile an hour wind blowing. If it hadn’t have been we would have probably landed in occupied territory. But as it was this eighty hour wind blowing it was blowing the Germany way so we landed just the other side of the Rhine. Unfortunately I landed in what you might call a copse. A field of small trees. Probably twenty, twenty five foot high. And my parachute, my canopy was over one tree and I was in another. But come to release myself and all of a sudden there’s three blokes with rifles pointing at me. I’d landed in the blasted searchlight squadron or battalion or whatever they called them. And so no chance to run or get anywhere. I wouldn’t have known what to do in any case. So, I was caught straight away as you might say. Had only scratches here and there from twigs breaking and things. But, and that was it. And hence the others who had bailed out, I’d seen the aircraft gunning around and but I never saw another parachute get out so I wasn’t sure whether Stan had got out, the pilot, or not. But evidently he didn’t because he was killed. He went down with the aircraft. And I saw it when the wing dropped off and then it suddenly went down in a spiral. And I’m still floating down. It took nearly twenty minutes to come down. So, but as I say landed in anti- aircraft field where there was a searchlight field and was picked up immediately. I was taken into a police station in a little village. And another RAF bloke was brought in at the same time and people were shouting at us and one thing and another. Didn’t know what were going to happen but the day, the day dragged on and then we were taken out of there and set off to march for somewhere, we walked behind these two policemen. And we crossed the River Rhine at Bonn. We walked across the Rhine at the bridge at Bonn. And then we were taken by a truck to [pause] I think it would be Hamburg. No. No. Frankfurt. Frankfurt. We were put in solitary confinement at Frankfurt and we were kept in solitary confinement for about ten days. And in that confinement you’re in a little cell. Be six foot by eight foot with a stone flag bed. No blankets. No facilities. No nothing. Just a little catch at the side of the door. If you wanted to go to the loo you’d to drop this and the flap dropped outside and some German guard came and rousted you out. But he wouldn’t allow anybody to go out and down that corridor if there was anybody else coming in that corridor because you weren’t allowed to speak to anybody. Used to go to the loo. Get your hands and face washed and that was it. And they used to keep altering the temperature in this cell so in the night time one minute you were cold and the next minute you was too hot and things. But this went on for eight to ten days. Then one day we were, we were taken into a fancy office with a big German. I don’t know what rank he was but his fancy uniform on, sat at a great big desk. And he decided to interrogate us and the usual thing. Rank, name and number and that’s all I’d give him. ‘Now, don’t be silly. No more. The war’s finished for you.’ I said, ‘Well, it might have been but that’s it. Rank, name and number.’ And so he says, ‘Well who’s just your squadron leader. Who’s your flight commander?’ Who’s this and who’s that? I says, ‘I’ve no idea really. I haven’t been on the squadron long enough to find out.’ He says, ‘Well, I’ll tell you.’ And he could tell me more about 51 Squadron than I’d ever known in my life. Commanding officer. Who were flipping different flight officers. How many raids they’d done. And all sorts of things. So he says, ‘Well that’s it for you. Your war’s over. You’ll be sent to a prisoner of war camp somewhere.’ Back to the doings, your cell until they come and collected us. Took us down to the station and they pushed us, there was about forty of us, into a cattle truck. You couldn’t, there weren’t room to sit down or lay down or anything. There was about forty of us. All in a cattle truck. We set off from there. We didn’t know where we were going. On the journey in this cattle truck lots of people had been, they must have been POWs on the run for days. Some of them were poorly. Some of them had diarrhoea and one thing and another. And they used to stop just at the beginning of the evening time at some, out in the country and let us off but all these guards around with big dogs. So you hadn’t the chance to run away. We were, the next day we were going along and we stopped outside a little station and there was a bridge just in front of us. And all of a sudden you could hear these aircraft coming. And, what’s going on? And these bloody aircraft started dropping bombs on us. Well, none of them hit us at the time and so, but we couldn’t get out of these trucks. They were all locked up but we, we [pause] it quietened down a bit so the Germans opened the trucks and said, ‘Out.’ And they sent us round and they’d scattered themselves about around the field next to where we were. And I can remember jumping down over a wall and across a stream and getting my head down. And there were these American twin-engined aircraft that were bombing us. Well, the next three that came in we saw them come in and the blow the engine off the track and they blew the next coach which was full of Germans. The officers, the guards and one thing and another. And then several bullet holes through all the rest of the cattle trucks as we’d class them as. But then they gathered us back up and took us back up to the station. But from then on it were walking. We couldn’t do because the train couldn’t go. We walked for another day then. Then we were picked up again and eventually taken to Nuremberg which we were put in a POW camp. And a massive Nuremberg POW, the camp there. I don’t know how many different compounds there were. And you were just dumped in a doings. Finding, well in each compound there would probably be two to three hundred men. In our compound they were mostly RAF men but there were some army people. And the ones who had been there a bit had formed an organisation. There was always somebody in command in different rank and various things. But all you could do there was walk the perimeter as you might say. And go down and get a wash. The toilet was a big log across a big pit. That was all we had for a toilet there and we were frightened to death of falling into it. Rations were very scarce because the Germans by that time were short of food themselves. They were very short of food. We got to eventually the rations was a sixteenth of a loaf which was one of these black loaves. And one potato. That were your day’s ration. Well, at that time when I first went over there I think I weighed, well my standard weight was nine stone six. But when I came out from there I was just under seven stone. So that teaches you to, it isn’t the kind of food you eat it’s the amount of food that makes, makes you fat [laughs] So anyhow that went on for quite a while. It must have been March, April. Must have been end of April when Americans were in Nuremberg which was south of Germany and Patton’s army were coming through then. Two Gun Patton. Well, we could hear a lot of shelling and bombing and things around us but nothing happened in the camp until one day we was told we were being released. ‘What do you mean we’re being being released?’ ‘Well, the Germans have gone. Patton’s been here and he says we’ll get you some food there and there’s no point — but don’t leave this camp because we want to organise your repatriation,’ you see. ‘So, don’t leave the camp.’ Well, that went on for two days, three days. The food that they sent were typical modern American bread which had no nourishment in it whatsoever. Fluffy stuff. And very little else. So, and I mated up with two Americans and do you know I’m disgusted that I can’t remember their names. Lofty and Shorty. And I met up with them and we decided we’d go for a walk out of the camp. We went out of the camp gates and down and we were following this stream through the farm and I heard a lot of noise going on. Squealing and shouting. Got a bit further on and there were these chaps. There were obviously been a bit of a pig farm and there were these chaps chasing these little pigs and big pigs with big sticks and the iron bars and they were trying to catch and kill these pigs. And I found out they were ex-Russian prisoners and they were starving. And oh they killed these pigs and they just hung them up on the trees. And I met one bloke coming back with a big lump of fatty pig in his hand. Nibbling away at it. It hadn’t been cooked or anything. I thought oh God. Anyhow, we went on a bit further and I got two hens. And we grilled these two hens and then went back to camp again because there were nowhere else to go. You were always frightened and being told be careful. If you’re, if there’s any SS about or anything like that there are certain German troops who wouldn’t hesitate to shoot you if they see you see wondering about on your own. So we went back to camp. Well, eventually they came and they took us from there and took us too a little airstrip called Ingoldstadt. And we just spread out in this place and we were supposed to take our turns as to when we would be lifted off. And we were lifted off by Dakotas. American’s flying Dakotas. And they used to get, I think about twenty four of us into a Dakota. And they flew us from there to Reims. Reims Airfield in, in France. So, we were dropped off there. Well, then we were, we were fed reasonably well. Well, too well for most of them because they couldn’t eat because they hadn’t eaten for — some of them had been four and five years as POWs then. But we, I mean us, we’d only been there two or three months. And after, after that the Lancasters came to Reims. Just Bomber Command Lancasters just as they were. No, no seats in. No nothing. Just as they were as bombers. And we used to get about twenty four or twenty six of us all laid down on the deck. And they flew us over to England and we landed at Tangmere. In one of the RAF fighter bases in the south of England. And well, the thing there, it was, I don’t know who’d arranged it but you got out of this aircraft and, ‘Follow me.’ We goes up this there’s these blokes with blooming back packs and pumps on spraying you. Covering you with delousing powder. This is a fine reception. So you were covered in delousing powder. Then you went up, taken in another hut. Half your clothes were taken off you. And you went to a shower. Then they give you a coat to put on and we went in to this big, well I presume a mess room at Tangmere. And the food that were laid on there. It was amazing. Well, and all the attendants there were some of the best looking WAAFs you’d ever seen. So we went. People had as much to eat as they wanted and you were shuffled off to go into camp to go to bed. The next morning you were taken to a kitting out place and given a uniform to fit you out as best you could. And then you were given a telegram form to fill in to send home to your parents. And that were the first thing they knew about me being alive. And then you were given a railway ticket to get off home on indefinite leave. That was it, so your job as Bomber Command were finished. You didn’t know what was going to happen after that. Well, after about six weeks leave you got called back again. I got called to Cosford near Wolverhampton. I went to Cosford and that, that was a shock for such as us. I mean I were then a WO but it was one of those what I shouldn’t call it but a bullshit place. Stones were painted white. And all guards were there with white webbing on and all that sort of thing. It was a big RAF training camp. And also it was a big sports camp there at Cosford with a swimming pool and a track and all that sort of thing. They used to teach the RAF sportsmen all what they had to do. It were just a gathering place for us. And I think we were there for two weeks. And then we were sent off. There would be, probably fifty of us at that time, to Hereford. Went to Hereford which was now the what do they call these special forces? It’s their, it was their, it’s their camp now. The army special forces. But that was another one. It had been a flight, a flight mechanics training place and an officer’s training place. Well, that was another one that was a bit what I class as bullshitty style. And we were arriving in old usual battledress on and a bit scruffy really because we’d got out of discipline altogether. Well not out of discipline but out of being in your first grade uniform. You were just as you used to fly with your battledress top and your trousers and that was it. And we got there and they were just emptying the place as an officer’s training place. And there were a few, a contingent of Dutch airmen there. Young lads training to be flight mechanics. And when we arrived and there must have been two hundred of us eventually, we were in different billets. And we found our own billets and, and I came across one of the blokes who, one of my Geordies I’d first joined up with there. So we were together again. Macpherson. And we carried on there. What they did with us, they used to gather us together and chop us into groups of about twenty and send you out learning how to throw hand grenades, how to strip a rifle, how to put a machine gun back together. Why the hell do we need this lot for now this war’s finished? War’s finished. And that’s what we were doing all day long. But we used to go down to the mess and there were no food. So we went down parade one morning. About two hundred of us all lined up and all, all ex-Bomber Command, all ex-people who had been on tours and from sergeants to warrant officers. And word went around that when they come to dismiss us stand still. So we all stood there when it came to be dismissed — and what’s? We’ll get so and so to come and read the riot act. The squadron commander. The site commander. Whatever he was. I think he was still one of these officer training people, ‘Well, we’ve no food, you’ve no bread. There’s no meat. There’s no cereals. No nothing. Just these poor Dutch lads doing a few slices of toast and an egg now and then and trying to keep you going on that.’ Well, it wasn’t suitable to us lot after that. So we were stood firm and the commander sent another, a waggon over to Credenhill to, which was a RAF wireless operator’s training place, to fetch a load of food. And they had to fetch this in a blinking waggon and they organised a bit better kitchen staff. And it took them a few weeks to do that. Well, we used to be getting up on a morning, ‘You’re going on a route march today.’ Oh no. No. And half of us would drop out. We’d finish up in picture house in, in Hereford. And one day lights went on in this picture house and there were three big MPs stood up on the stage. ‘We’re looking for — ’ so and so and so and so, ‘That’s missing from camp.’ They had a look around at the cinema half full of flipping ex-Bomber Command lads. So they backed off and went. And that were it. Well, then from there I got posted to 51 Maintenance Unit at Fradley, which is near Lichfield. And it were a bit different to me then because the bloke I got in there, I got sent to Motor Transport Section and I were doing repairs to tractors and fire engines and things. And this, he were a little full time warrant officer. He’d been in for twenty or thirty years. Permanent staff. Warrant officer there and lived in the village next door. They he like us aircrew because we were the same rank as him. Like we were warrant officers and we’d only been for a year. And he took me down to this garage. It was a separate place. And there was this Fordson fire engine there. He says, ‘Do you think you could change this engine?’ I said, ‘What do you mean change the engine? He said, ‘Well take that one out and put a new one in.’ So, I said, ‘Well I can have a try. Who’s going to be showing me and helping me?’ ‘You’re a flight engineer. Have a go.’ So I thought, right and he went off. I looked at this damned thing. Looked in the engine. The bits to take off it, carburettors and things like that to take it out and found a set of blocks. Took engine out. Put the other one back. Put all the bits on. Carburettor, magnetos and various other things, and that were finished. So I finished it off two days later on. He says, ‘Right. You’d better go home then. See you in the morning.’ So I saw him the next morning. He says, ‘Does it work?’ I said, ‘I don’t know if it works. I don’t think there’s any petrol in it.’ He said, ‘Well, there’s some in that tank there. Fill it up. Fill this petrol, this fire engine up and press the starter button.’ And off we went. It were, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘That’s not so bad,’ he says, ‘Right,’ he says, ‘You’d better take it off for a test drive.’ I said, ‘I haven’t got a driving licence.’ He says, ‘That doesn’t matter. You’re on an Air Force camp.’ He says, ‘Take it around the perimeter and just see if it’s alright.’ So there’s me with a bloody, I don’t know what it would be, a four or five tonne flipping fire engine [laughs] changing gears and one thing and another. He got it back and that was it. So I was a bit better friends with him after that. And I used to be on tractors and oh, Coles crane. I learned quite a lot there. But then the government were running out so they shifted me then into an office. And an office was where we used to do this long term storage. There used to be these aircraft flying in. Some of them had just flown in from America. Seven hours flying and things like that and they were putting in, inhibiting them with various materials. All engines were coated and things. And then they were taken away and put on storage. But then at the other end of the camp where they were bringing these aircraft back out of storage and dismantling them for scrap. And they used to bring them down and they used to get axe, fireman’s axe out of the aircraft and just chop into the petrol tanks and let it run out. Put a big, a canopy or something like that onto it and let it run and divert it into a big tank. And then there were a bowser at the side sucking it all out and doing things like that. Well, it used to be all over the blooming place, the fuel. And there were these people riding around in bikes smoking and God knows what. I used to think this is not the place for me. And I used to have to record all these. How many hours it had flown. What inhibitor they’d had put on and all that sort of thing. Well, office work weren’t my cup of tea. But I kept on doing that till one, one day somebody must have ridden down with a bike and thrown a tab end down and aircraft and bowser and the whole lot went up. Three blokes got killed. I thought well this, all excitement. But by this time then I’d met my wife Sheila in the next village. Because we used to go into Lichfield to the dances and we used to, as usual picking the girls up where you could. And I met Sheila and we’ve kept together ever since. That’s what? Sixty eight years now. So, but I carried on. I moved from that job then into — what did I do next? Oh into the tools stores and cycle. Cycle stores and tool stores. So I were in my element with all the different tradespeople. They used to come in and want, and there was a list of tools that each, a plumber had to have or a rigger or a flipping, all that. And I used to be making the tool boxes up. Then when I got demobbed I used to have to count them all and make sure everything were there and send them back to headquarters if they weren’t there. And they got charged for them and things like that. And I was there until I got demobbed. And I got demobbed. Came back home. Went back to my job in printing engineering. They started making printing machines again. And carried on like that with oh — and then I had to go back down to the village to get married. We got married down there. My wife and her sister. We had a double wedding. Had a double wedding. The only one there had ever been in the village. And the village was Alrewas. Do you know where the Arboretum is where all the war memorial things. Well it’s there. That’s where, where my wife comes from. So, and then we came back up here. Finding out, we lived with my mother and father for a year before we could find a house anywhere. And eventually got the house. Started a family. I started making printing machines again. I started going backwards and forwards in England and Ireland repairing them or fitting them and making new ones. And then that developed into going further afield. And I used to be going off on my own to various parts of the world fitting printing machinery up. And then I had three, three sons. And after that I was at home one evening about 11 o’clock there was a bang on the door and some works manager looking for me. He’d been told that I might make a decent works engineer. So I had to go and I said, ‘Well I’m not looking for a job. I’ve just, I’ve got one,’ But I says it would, if I went this was at a factory in town. Employed about two hundred and fifty people. And he says, ‘You wouldn’t have to be going abroad anymore and you could, you know,’ So I went there. A bit of a strange, a lot of strange machinery and things like that but put up with it and did quite well there. I got to the stage where if there were new machinery to be bought the managing director and the works manager used to go. It was mostly to Germany. And they used to take me with them over to Germany to inspect these machines and see whether they were properly suitable for British safety regulations and one thing and another. And different, the different attitude to when I first went to Germany as a POW and this attitude when I was going as a big customer buying a million pound machine. Out to dinner. Out to this. And out. Oh God. Lovely. And that’s how it’s gone until I retired. I didn’t want to retire at sixty five because the job was interesting. I could cope with it fairly well. But it was the policy of the company or the insurance company that ran the pension scheme I don’t know. So I finished at sixty five and that’s it. I think that’ll do for now. Don’t you?
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command I’d like to thank Flight Engineer A Nicholson for his recording at his home on the 22nd of September 2015. Once again, I thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Arthur Nicholson
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ANicholsonA150922
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:10:40 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Arthur was released from his reserved occupation as an apprentice engineer to join the Royal Air Force. After St John’s Wood, he underwent some basic training at RAF Bridlington and RAF Usworth before going on an engineering course at RAF St Athan for six months. He also attended a course in Liverpool at Handley Page, the manufacturer of Halifaxes. His brother, a navigator, was killed whilst he was at RAF St Athan. Arthur joined the Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Riccall and describes crewing up. He was posted to 51 Squadron at RAF Snaith. His pilot had an injury, so his first two operations were with a different crew. His remaining operations were mainly night flights over Germany.
Arthur describes some of the incidents he encountered. The most notable was a daylight operation to Cologne towards the end of the war. The starboard engines caught on fire and they had to bail out. He was taken as a prisoner of war and, after interrogation in Frankfurt, was taken to a camp in Nuremberg. En route their train was bombed by American aircraft. They had very little food but were liberated by the Americans. Arthur was flown in a C-47 to Reims and on to RAF Tangmere in a Lancaster. He went to RAF Cosford, then RAF Hereford and was posted to the 51 Maintenance Unit at RAF Fradley. He eventually was sent to the Motor Transport Section before being demobilised.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Sally Coulter
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Nuremberg
Great Britain
England--Sunderland (Tyne and Wear)
England--Yorkshire
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
51 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bombing
C-47
crewing up
Dulag Luft
flight engineer
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Heavy Conversion Unit
military service conditions
Operation Exodus (1945)
prisoner of war
RAF Bridlington
RAF Riccall
RAF Snaith
RAF St Athan
RAF Usworth
sanitation
shot down
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/629/8899/APooreA151020.1.mp3
6ee88aba2e23d68c594be301c1c8b80d
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/629/8899/PPooreA1501.2.jpg
de9335da75f878d8d7843c869ab47a8c
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
Poore, Arthur
A Poore
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Poore, A
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Arthur Poore DFC (1920 - 2016, Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 617 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-20
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
AP: Hello, I’m Arthur Poore, I was born in 1920, so that when war started in 19, whenever it was, I was nineteen years of age. I was, of course, extraordinary lucky in surviving everything. To survive the war is, of course, a matter of luck, I had, I had luck in spades. I volunteered for the Air Force because I didn’t want to go into the Army and er, went on a, in those days, the pre-war bombers, the second pilot did a navigation, so I had to go on a navigation course up in Cheshire, didn’t know there was a war on. And as the Air Force was expanding, I, having finished my six weeks course in the middle of Cheshire, they were expanding this School of Navigation, and I was one of the staff pilots. So, for the next two years, I was flying from mid Cheshire across to Llandudno and up to the Isle of Man and back, didn’t know there was a war on, so it was all a question of luck. Then I, I volunteered actually, I, I joined one of the main force bomber squadrons when it was 6 Squadron, and the Dambuster Squadron, 617 Squadron. Guy Gibson was killed, and they had a fairly disastrous raid on Germany, on the Dortmund-Ems Canal, lost a lot of crews, and I, of course, was a much more experienced in flying hours than my contempories, so I joined 617 Squadron. Managed to, managed to survive that, I did forty-five trips altogether, so that was just a question of luck. After Guy Gibson was flight command, was squadron commander, we had Wing Commander Cheshire as Squadron Commander. He was a very charismatic character, he had a good dog called Simon, I always remember. We, if we weren’t flying on ops, we’d be, we’d all be down in the officers mess drinking beer, and he’d be upstairs writing letters of consolation to the lost ones, and he had a dog called Simon, and one day we were down in the mess, drinking, and he came down, to our surprise, and had a drink with us. And he said, ‘Now, Simon’s a very clever dog’. And we said, ‘Oh, why is that?’ And he said, ‘I’ll show you’. And Wing Commander Cheshire said to Simon the dog, ‘Simon, what will you do if we lose the war?’ And Simon laid down on his side and closed his eyes and pretended to be dead. And he said, ‘Simon, what would you do when we win the war?’ and Simon got up and danced on his hind legs. So that, that was his little trick. Wing Commander Cheshire was a remarkable man.
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command, I’d like to thank Arthur Poore, Squadron Leader, 617 Squadron, for his recording on the date of 20th October, 2015, at 12 o’clock. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Arthur Poore
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-20
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
APooreA151020, PPooreA1501
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
00:05:06 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Arthur joined the Royal Air Force at the age of nineteen when war started in 1939. Arthur completed a navigation course, which lasted six weeks. When the School of Navigation in Cheshire was expanded, Arthur became staff pilot, flying from mid Cheshire across to Llandudno and then up to the Isle of Man. Arthur joined 6 Squadron and then 617 Squadron after the death of Guy Gibson and the operation to the Dortmund-Ems Canal. He completed forty-five operations. Arthur tells the story of Wing Commander Leonard Cheshire and his dog called Simon.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cheshire
Germany
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Vivienne Tincombe
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
617 Squadron
aircrew
animal
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
navigator
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/472/8355/PBlandC1501.2.jpg
47607dc4beca689cae653908ef391be8
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/472/8355/ABlandC150817.2.mp3
7d011bdc0c7786974101ce4ef3b8516e
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
Bland, Charles
C Bland
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bland, C
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Charles Bland (538762 Royal Air Force). He served as an engine fitter.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Charles Bland and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Charles Bland and this is my story of what, the Air Force I suppose. I started off in grammar school, Boston and then I did my school certificate and my school certificate results were sufficient that I was able to become, join the Air Force as an aircraft apprentice in February 1942. February 1942. It was the first time you’d left home and we all had to arrive at Marylebone Station and it was February the 18th, I think it was, February the 18th, and so I left Boston, got down to London and, and found on Marylebone Station a great number of boys, all the same age as me. Most of them the first time they’d ever left home and so I consequently got on this train and I happened to, it was a non-corridor train and you had the compartments and I got in the compartment and they were all Geordies. You sort of, I mean, I’d never met Geordies before or anything and the, the chap who -
[machine pause]
Yep ok, we got in the carriage and that was the first time I’d sort of been away, more or less, and mixed with a lot of other boys from different parts of the country. Eventually we got there and we got to Halton and we, the first time we’d ever been in a room, we got to a room and there was twenty two of us in the barrack room and all of us were exactly the same. Most of us had never left home before and the most, I got, my chap in the next bed to me was a Scotsman, a chap named Jock Blythe and, but anyway that’s how we, we eventually got in and then we, then they, we all had to go off and go in the mess and we all sort of got together and then, of course, became the thing of joining the Air Force and the first thing we had was a medical, and the medical I failed. I failed because in this, for some reason or other, the Air Force had decided that you had to have bite, what were known as biting points and I had one biting point short so therefore I was not fit to be in the Air Force and for some reason or other, I was discharged. So I never joined, so they sent me back to Wendover Station and there was another chap who finished up, an armourer and myself who had failed our medicals and we stood on the platform station and waited for the train. Both, well, dispirited I suppose, and the next thing was, the warrant officer who was known as Beefy Paley eventually came on and called out our names. What was his name? Damn, I can’t remember. Anyway, he became an armourer. So he said, Charles Bland, so we all went back, the two of us went back to Halton and for some miraculous reason they found us a biting point, so I was in the, I eventually got in the service. So I -
MJ: What was your favourite biting point?
CB: The biting. I have no idea. This biting point was how your teeth clamped together I think, I don’t know, I never did find out, but I was in the Air Force. I didn’t care much then. And so we, I came, went back and but then of course, because I’d dropped behind, I was at, my number is a hundred behind where I, where the chaps were originally, but anyway that all came, it all came about but so on February the 19th, February the 19th, I joined the Royal Air Force and got sworn in and got this number, 578762, but er, but you see where the people that I was with, I should have been 662 not 762 but anyway, I went back to visit the beginning. All the initial because there were several methods of getting in as an apprentice. There was service candidate in which was all based on the fact that you had a father or something in the Air Force. By examination which was then you went on, did the exam and various, how you finished up on the exam, or what was known as a direct entry. I was a direct entry because I had sufficient, I had [unclear], what they were called? Credit standards. I think credit standards in my school certificate in maths, physics and chemistry and that allowed me to go as a direct entry. I was a direct entry with others but all of us, a direct entry were in the beginning, direct entry and service candidate had the first choice and then the others who did the examination, depended on where you came in the examination, what you got, how you got treated, but anyway that was it. We all got uniforms and we all won and we all got our classes, all got our classes, but then you had to be, oh I remember this, in this, my barrack room where these, these, all these people joined in and you all had trades. Now, the trades all, you had the one, was the radio trades, ‘cause they went to Cranwell, they didn’t do at Halton but then the others that were all picked out. You all got selected, if you like to put it, what you were going to be. You’d put down on your exam, on your joining what you’d like to be but it didn’t, yeah, it didn’t necessarily mean you did, because, we, in this barrack room where we were, ‘cause we had all those, I wanted to be an engine fitter. Some wanted to be riggers, armourers and instrument makers. Those were the Halton trades and we, we came back and I always remember, oh God, I can’t even remember his name now. Damn, damn but anyway, anyway this we all went this way selected and we got selected and said, you know, I was going to be an engine fitter. That was all. Then there was Jock Blythe, he fancied airframes so he was, and he was alright, but then we had one chap come back and he come back to the barrack room after being selected, and he was in tears and we didn’t quite understand why he was crying, and we thought maybe something had happened, but he came back and said, you know, I mean we were boys and I mean, we’d only met each other but you know you’d think well, why, you know, some sympathy for why he was crying. And why he was crying was that they’d made him an air frame fitter, and he wanted to be an engine fitter, so that was why he was crying. I met him years afterwards and he always, he always used to say, you know he always used to, he was a crew chief same, crew chief with me [unclear] for years on, but it was this business that he cried when he was at Halton, went years on. Years on ‘cause he knew that he, he wanted a different trade. Oh that was something, yes, he cried because he was made an airframe fitter and not an engine fitter, and there we are, but then we did all the, we did all the training that was necessary. Well boys, when you get boys, boys together, all sixteen year olds and you see you, they, you sort of went, you, I think that you went there, you became a disciplined hooligan I suppose really. It was nothing. Because you all went there like choirboys but after you’d been with all this lot, you became as, you know, apprentices. I don’t know how you sort of became, I don’t know, you’ve got, because funny enough how, because you treated NCOs and everything as they were but you’d, I suppose you’d got a cheekiness and whatnot, I don’t know, but you survived. Well survived. I can’t say that but, but a chap, an ex-apprentice I met years and years later and he had been, he had been a Japanese prisoner of war, and for some reason he didn’t talk much about it, but he, his, he reckoned that his survival as a Japanese prisoner of war because he, he treated the Japanese the same way we treated NCOs and whatnot as apprentices, and he put his survival as a Japanese prisoner of war to the fact that he’d been apprentice, and that was his attitude towards authority. So that was it. But that was a digression from that. Anyway, I left Halton after I managed to get an AC1, oh, and I got thrown out of a class once through laughing, but then of course the, but then days as apprentice were something that, incidents, I’ll mention a couple of incidents. One which, because I mean you all swore, you did all sorts of things and the one was that I always remember we were doing, we had, of course, you had engineering drawing. We did all this business there and engineering drawing. Our instructor was, oh, very studious squadron leader I think. Obviously, he was just like a parson and of course, we all lot we had a, because you had, I mean as boys we buggered about, I mean it was, you know. It was one of the things and I always remember my, one of my colleagues, well I’ll say classmate [unclear], Rickards his name was, and he, he was on there and the he said, oh, and of course there that the thing was we always buggered about and of course, we were doing engineering drawing and his, his statement was, ‘Who’s the thieving sod who’s pinched my rubber?’ And this was part of everyone talked about, but the instructor was a bit like a parson he was, and he stopped the class and he said that, he said that it was getting beyond when one boy called another boy a thieving sod. Well, I mean that was of course, that all went and that, that was being an apprentice and then all sorts of things. You were hooligans really, because you did, you did, you know, filing and all the, all the rest of it. You learned how to file, you learned how to rivet, you learned how to do all sorts of things and the, another thing when you did welding or, welding was one and of course, we had, you always got somebody there who was, would get rather picked on. Picked on in a class and one who was a, who was trouble was a bloke named Bryce, he came from Devon and Trevor Boone was another, he was, Trevor Boone was a, he was a bit of a softie. He was rather, he had a tendency I suppose to be bullied a bit. Yeah, because Bryce was a bugger you see, he was, he, we’d do soldering abrasion, welding, welding and of course all doing, we’re doing, we’re doing that. Not arc welding, it was oxyacetylene and of course, then of course, a pair of pliers that you use and Bryce, of course, played his flame on Boone’s pliers, so that when poor old Boone picked his pliers up, he got his hands burned. Devilish things sort of like that. Oh, and then of course, you, ‘cause we had, there again, McDonald beds. Now, McDonald beds were solid iron beds but they had casters on because you had to, you had to make your bed up in the morning. You had this bed. One, the bottom half slid into the top half and your blankets had to be your biscuits which were the three biscuits. Mattresses, or whatever you like to call them, had to be stacked on one another. Your blankets had to be folded with, we had sheets, so the sheets had to be put between the blankets, and then one blanket wrapped around the whole lot that so it sort of made like a sandwich, if you like and it, that was it. Beds have to made up as laid down. That was the one of the comments that you had to do, yeah. But then we, when we managed and the time came then and of course, we had our drill and had to be marched up and down and of course, we had the pipes and the drums and we were all, and it was, it was you carried your books, you carried your overalls and you had these horrible ground sheets which were meant to be capes, and the trouble was when it rained, and you were marching and whatnot, your legs got soaking wet because the damned ground sheet came to your, it was only came just below your knees, you know, the edge of it, but there we are. What else did we do? We used to march back and forth and, oh aye, that was another thing. We had, because we had various engine, as engine fitters of course, we started off on basics, which was an old Gipsy engine, a four cylinder Gipsy engine we had and then of course, you, you moved off, but then of course, we were in, at Halton we were in, started off in what was known as the old workshops, and then they decided, because we had airmen and wartime fitters there, they decided that they’d move the apprentices to the new workshops which was, if anyone knows Halton, I don’t know if they’re all like that now, but the old workshops, the new workshops were newer buildings and across the other side of the road. I can’t remember our position now but anyway it was across the other side of the road and we all moved. There was er to, going down into the new workshops was a downhill run, if you like to put it, and of course, we happened to be when we, when they changed to the new workshops, we happened to be on the radial engines, which were mercury engines, Bristol Mercury’s, and we were on radials and then we had to move the whole class and our engines from the old workshops to the new workshops, and we had an instructor named Mr Petty. He was the instructor. And so as a class, we moved our engines, but the thing is, when you get a bunch of boys and all of us, they decided to move these engines and of course, these engines were in stands, on castors so we pushed them up to the top of the hill, but then there was a downhill run to the new workshops, so of course they decided then, of course, being boys and whatnot, we decided that the only way to get these down there was to run them down and stand on the stand so that it went down like a trolley. Well of course, this was all, this did very well until we came and there was a curb by the side and of course the next thing was, one of the engines of course, hit the curb and thank goodness there was a bank there. It went into the bank and tipped over but it was not completely over, but of course, it had hit this bank and of course, we came down. We had to heave this engine back on its trolleys and push it back into the workshops, and then of course the thing was, we all got there, and the comment, Mr Petty said that he could not understand why one of his engines had got soil amongst the cooling fins, but nobody enlightened him that it had fell, it had fallen over. But then you had, and I always remember, you know, all, you know, you remember these sorts of things. I remember we had another instructor was a Mr Palmer and Mr Palmer was quite a, he said, ‘If you’re using a hammer, use it’. Don’t, you know, don’t dilly dally with it. Use it. And there was a boy called Hind in our class and, Mr Palmer, I don’t know what happened there, whether it was a hard face or whatnot, but he hit something. The hammer head came off and it finished up in Hind’s stomach so it, it was quite funny really because all it was, was Mr Palmer just extricated this hammer head out of Hind’s stomach and carried on. Hind was a bit breathless but never mind. But there was the other thing we used to do oh, and that was again Butch Hind, was, we did magnetos of course, but then of course, using magnetos of course, you can charge, you know, the thing is, you get a spark and whatnot but they were doing magnetos, and it was found that Hind, by judicious of winding these hand starter magnetos up, that Hind could be charged up and I don’t know if it was, he wore rubber boots or, so he was, you had to gently sort of, Hind would hold the leads and get himself charged up and then someone would go up, put a finger near his ears and he’d get a crick across the ears, you know. It was, oh we did all sorts of things like this, I mean, it was ridiculous really. And we had, we had a lot of civvy instructors and we had one for basic was a Mr Tatum, and Tatum could do anything with a piece of metal that I know, but then you had, he used to be doing because you had to have your, some on the file and some on top. You had to hold the files correctly and if you weren’t holding the files correctly and you were doing something, you suddenly find you had a whack on the finger, because you weren’t correct and he used to come around and give you a whack on the finger. But it was, you know, I suppose, brutal really. I mean you wouldn’t have it now, ‘cause they was being mistreated or something. I don’t know but I mean, you just accepted it. You accepted it. Well he was, but I’m ok. There we are. Then of course, you had your various exams, and that was another one. Petty, another one. He got killed. He went aircrew and he became a pilot, he got killed in a Canberra. Colin Petty. And we had, during exams, there was various means of making bolts and one was what was known as a cold headed bolt, which had all these had different markings in, ‘cause this was all part of the thing of knowing what your markings of all these various equipment and steel and everything were, and one was, a bolt was known as a cold headed bolt and it was a bolt where the head had been pressed in cold. Not, not been turned. It was pressed and this had a ring around the top, but in the exam, it was, ‘How do you recognise a cold headed bolt?’ And of course, Petty didn’t know, and so Petty wrote, ‘Wears a balaclava helmet’. He got seven days for that, seven days jankers for that, for being frivolous on an examination paper. That was how, that’s how things were, you know, you got done for everything. You couldn’t smoke. Oh you got a smoking pass at eighteen, but you weren’t allowed to smoke everywhere and the toilets down in workshops of course. Toilets, yeah, and you could hear because you could have puffs, I mean, you could make a cigarette end last with a pin till the last puff. Oh dear, it was all sorts of things like that. As an apprentice, you did everything, always pushed to the limit, and it, and all your instructors. Oh, and there was another incident, I always remember that we had a named, chap named in our class, Dicky Burke, and Dicky Burke was, he was a oh, he was the same as anyone else, but one time we had a, we had er notes. A corporal, I can’t even remember his name, a corporal was giving, he was an instructor and of course he said we had to, I can’t remember what it was. Anyway, he said take, get your notebook and take these notes, and Dicky Burke said, ‘We’ve already got these notes’, and the corporal said, ‘It doesn’t matter, you’ll still do it’, you know. And under his breath, Dicky Burke said F you, and the corporal heard him and so he was wheeled up to the squadron leader, and in less than two hours, Dicky Burke was, was doing a stretch of twenty eight days in the guardroom, but he still had to come to, well he was doing a stretch but he, he, he was doing his spell in the guardroom but he still had to come to school. He still had to do his doings, so one of the corporal apprentices, a bloke named Ted Atkinson who was a friend of mine, had to go to the guardroom and march him down to school and then march him back up to the guardroom for his, his lunchtime and any off duty, so he did his twenty eight days on off duty, more or less, so he was one of these, one of these incidents that er, but he did the twenty eight days and was shovelling coal from one side to the other and all the rest of it, but as I say, they used to make you do anything. I don’t know, but that was Dicky Burke and his twenty eight days. I’m trying to remember humorous incidents of things and very, it was, of course we were apprentices anyway but then, of course, the other thing was they had Air Training Corps, ‘cause they were the civilian side. I mean, most of them were the same age as us but of course, we were apprentices as opposed to theirs was, well Air Training Corps wasn’t it? People that you join and they had the air training corps come and did a spell well in the camp near Halton, which of course upset those, a bit of an upset, and of course the apprentices raided them as normal, it was normal sort of business. Used to, oh dear oh dear. Apprentices. The other one was, all daft things really. And of course, you had not money, you used to get, we used to get paid a fortnight of three [unclear], nearly new two shilling pieces. That was our pay. Three, three every fortnight, which I mean you had, you could buy chips in the NAAFI and the old rock cakes and whatnot, but, but then of course, there was, generally you used to run out of money or something and they used to do odd, and there was one time, oh, what was his name? He was short of money, and then the thing was that we had, because there was twenty two of us in a room, twenty two of us including a corporal or a snag which was a LAA, a leading aircraft apprentice. He had one stripe on his arm and then you had a corporal apprentice, a corporal he had was probably in the bunk at the end of the room, was the corporal apprentice, but then of course, then they’d get someone short of money and one of the, one of the, one I remember is, I can’t remember his name now, never mind, short of money and then it said was halfpenny around the room. That would give him ten P. A halfpenny around the room and he’d run around the barrack block stark naked which was a, oh God that was brass and of course, he said he’d do it and that so everybody, but then of course, you had to, then had to, everybody, this was immediately transmitted all around the rooms that he was going to run around the block stark naked, and so that meant that everybody was, when he set off, everybody was at the barrack block windows, shouting and cheering him on as he went around. And that was another incident, anything to make money. And then there was, you had jankers, ‘cause that was another one. Your jankers, seven penneth for doing anything. No I managed to avoid that, I wasn’t caught smoking or missing church parade. Anything to scrounge. You get seven penneth and then, but then you were allowed, they decided that you, that the jankers would be separated from the other boys. For what reason I don’t know. And there was a Corporal Croft. He was a corporal in the DI we had and they put him in charge of, ‘cause we had the barrack blocks but then we had wooden huts, and they decided to put the, the jankers in the, or a wooden hut with this corporal in charge which was then, ‘cause he was Corporal Croft, and that was known as Croft’s Cottage, but I think, I think they abandoned that because you got all the ne’er-do-wells who wanted to pinch anything all at, do and that was not, they weren’t distributed cause they used to supposed to do jankers in the cookhouse and they were the ones that always got fed the best, ‘cause they always managed to purloin something. Food or something. It was, it was all part of the game. Part of the game. I mean the best of it was of course, some of the worst offenders became commissioned officers. That was the best of it wasn’t it? I mean years, years on. There was one there, Hammer Mallet, Tom Mallet. He was, he was one but he became a squadron leader engineer. Just shows you ,doesn’t it? How to become commissioned? Become jankers, you know. But then, that was the years. Went through that lot and of course came, I mean we were doing our drill with our rifles and bayonets and all the rest of it as well, and then came the day of passing out and then you had to do, but then you had your exams but then your exams depended on where you were doing, whether if you got, if you got called that you would do your oral exams and boarded, as they used to say, and you’d go for your board to these, you know, either senior NCOs or officers and you were questioned on your trade. I mean, as well as written exams, you had written exams as well which was, you know, like school and whatnot, but your boards were you were all against mostly to gain your trade. They asked you, you know, how you would identify some stainless steel or some question how would you do this or do the other, various things so, but then you, you’d do your board and then if you were you didn’t know how you were doing, you sort of go back again and then, and sit down and go back where you came from and then someone would say, ‘They want to speak to you again’. And you’d think, now that meant either one of two things. That A) you hadn’t got enough marks to pass out or B) you got sufficient marks that they were doing, that they were doing you that instead of AC2 pass out or AC1, you got an LAC. That, that was the thing but I mean, you had to know whether you’d done well enough or poorly or not because if they asked you back again and you’d done very poorly and you were only getting to re-boarded, you again to become an AC2 and I got, I had to go back again because I didn’t get an LAC. Anyway, I did, I finished up AC1, that was how I passed out. I passed out then from Halton, that was then and they said, right then, we are posted. Where were your choices to be posted? Well I come from Lincolnshire so I suppose you put Lincolnshire. I mean, ten to one you never got what you put down for. I put Lincolnshire and I finished up, posted to Kirton Lindsey. That was, and of course the thing was, in those days, and you used to get trains and you didn’t know where you were and blackouts, and you get on a train. There was several of us posted to Kirton Lindsey, I think about four, four of us posted to Kirton Lindsey, and of course, on these trains, you didn’t know where the hell you were going. You got a train, you had to get a train to so and so, and then of course, the only time you ever knew where you were, was if some porter called out, you know, the name of the platform or stop where it was, and we got out at Kirton Lindsey. There was four of us and some airmen as well, and so we got out there and some of the airmen were worldly, more worldly wise, get transport, and they eventually came, got transport and of course, it’s a blackout, you didn’t know where the hell you were. Got to, went to this, got to the station and eventually the guardroom and we were then sent to transit block. Transit block. And the transit room, you went in there and you, you were, I can’t even remember now whether you had, whether there was bedding in there or you had to go to the bedding store and get your blankets, I think. Anyway, doesn’t matter. Got there and eventually we got dished out to the general office, and then we were given wherever we were going, so it’s, you were sent down to the tech side and then they decided where you were going, ‘cause I mean, they were riggers or fitters. I finished up in R&I. R&I. We were doing majors on Spitfires there. Got R&I, some of them got others. And there was another place called Hibaldstow, which was a satellite of Kirton Lindsey. Two of them got sent to Hibaldstow. As I say I was sent to, to R&I. I don’t know, I think I was the only one out of our group who went to R&I, which is Repair and Inspection, which was the major. We were doing majors, majors on Spitfires but, so we used to have the flights when the flights board there, I mean, I mean, oh, and the other thing was, I must have mentioned this, the other thing they had now, so that we, we had, ‘cause we had WAAF fitters as wel,l and we had, I was put into, put into a gang with Corporal, Corporal Shear was in charge and I was put in this gang and of course, I was an, I was an AC1 apprentice fitter. Apprentice, ‘cause the others in the gang were all wartime blokes. One was a bank clerk, one had been, one was, one had been a waiter, I think, but they were a good lot anyway.
[pause for phone]
So we, now, we got to Kirton Lindsey now so that we got to the WAAF fitters, and I was put in a gang, and I can remember Corporal Shear was the corporal in charge, and all the others were wartime. Well one was a fitter, two mechanics I think, we were doing majors on Spitfires and Sadie was the WAAF, and Sadie was, I mean I was only, what, eighteen and whatnot, but I didn’t fancy her really, but I think she rather well she, I don’t think she fancied me. All she did was bugger me about really, ‘cause she would, if you were doing on the engine and whatnot on there and she was sitting on the main plane she’d, and you were doing something, she’d suddenly put her legs out and wrap them around you, you know. But she wasn’t really my type at all, so I didn’t really fancy her and she, the trouble with WAAFs. they either overtightened things or didn’t tighten things up enough. Couldn’t, plugs. they never put the plugs in tight enough and they’d bloody shear off a bloody two by eight or something like that. but anyway that was, that was the WAAFs. But incidents. Incidents, oh the other thing of course, they were Mark II Spitfires and they had Merlin 12s, and they had Coffman starters and cartridge so that you had a cartridge, and one of the things was the flight sergeants, ‘cause we had, oh all part and parcel, you had to, you had your sort of annual booze up and whatnot, and of course, then money had to be put in and the flight sergeant used to fine you for A) for being late if you were late for work or whatnot you’d, he’d fine you sixpence or something, which all went into the fund, and they used to do cartridge starters. I mean, you had to be starting a Merlin on, with a cartridge. You could do it with one cartridge or two but if you had more than two, he used to fine you sixpence a cartridge. So, so the thing was, you had to make sure it was primed and everything before you could, he’d be there, but he’d listen to you, and you would fire up on one and you’re all right. Fire up on two and if it didn’t fire you think, God there’s another sixpence gone you know. So that was the fine, I mean that was a fine for using too many cartridges, but that that was one of the things. Another incident here I always remember, we changed over from Mark II’s to Mark Vs and the Mark Vs were coming in, and this was during the summer of 1944. The warm weather. And we came, we were in, we were in R&I and of course, we were duty crew, if you like, and of course we were at, they were bringing in these Mark Vs and we were, all of us nice summer evening it was, sitting outside and we were all thinking of going down the boozer, and he said, ‘Righto we’ve got, we’ve got four, four spitfires coming in.’ And they were all sitting there in the sun, at the wall of the hangar and the first one came in and of course, then you were all sitting there. Who was going to see the first one in, and I said, ‘Oh bugger it, I’ll see the first one in’, and off I went in to see the first one in. Taxied in and, lo and behold, it was when, when the pilot of course, took her helmet off, it was an ATA pilot. A blonde. She had blonde hair, and who she was I don’t know, and of course, I saw this one in and of course immediately the others saw this girl taxiing this one in, they all rushed out to see the others in, but anyway I don’t know who she was, I’ve no idea. But I often think of the ATA pilots because, oh she was older than me but, and she had blonde hair and I often wonder, having seen ATA pilots, you know, years gone on and wondered who it was. But that was, we got Mark Vs then instead of, but then of course, the time came and then the incident I mentioned of the only time we got involved in Bomber Command In those days was, we had a Spitfire lab down at North Creake, which had Stirlings on and we had to do an engine change, and doing this engine change underneath the belly of a Stirling. That was quite interesting but then that was, then I’ve, then of course, my posting overseas came so then I went up to Blackpool and met all, a lot of the chaps who were at Halton with me. So that was, so we were at Blackpool there, getting kitted out. Marks and Spencers of Blackpool, well then because they had all the, which was Marks and Spencer, had all the kit in there so you, and when the tower, well anyway, that was September ‘44. We went, went to Gourock. Gourock and then we boarded this, I can’t remember even, can’t remember what my, my draft number was. Anyway, but anyway we were boarded on the Orion and the thing was, was this a battleship, no, it was a cattle ship, because there were five thousand, troops, troops in it. That was an incident. There was Army at the bottom, Air Force in the middle and the Navy at the top ‘cause they were the best. Anyway, so we, we went out on that, through the Suez ‘cause then, I think they’d cleared the Med of subs. We went to India via, via the Suez Canal and not around, around the end of South Africa. That was it, no incidents. We had some ex Australian prisoners of war on board and they were well fed, and they used to give us a bit of grub now and again, but and then eventually we got, got to India, but of course, the other thing of course, I’d better mention it that was the, the beginning of my marriage I suppose, ‘cause this friend of mine, who had had the, this corporal apprentice, had to go back to my brother in law who was, he was also at Halton but he was two entries after me, and my friend was a corporal apprentice, was in charge of his room and my brother in law, Bill, he, he gave my, he had a twin sister who became my wife, but he’s, this corporal apprentice started writing to Margaret, but then, I don’t know, it all petered out or something, and then of course, we came on, came on the boat going to India and of course, was one of the things, anyone got any girls to write to? And he gave me Margaret’s address and said, ‘Don’t tell her I gave it to you’. So I came out of the top of my head was a load of rubbish that I found her address floating on the deck of a bloody troop ship’ you know’ but anyway that was that. I wrote to her and of course that was, we got out to India and I was then posted from [unclear], I went to a place, I was posted down to Ceylon to a repair and salvage unit ,121 RS, oh R&SU I suppose. We just used to call it just RSU. So we went down by seven days on the rail, down to India, down all the way down in from Bombay, down all the way down India. Took us a week. Then to Ceylon and we eventually ended, finished up in a place called Vavuniya in Ceylon, and we formed, well I think we formed this R&SU there, We serviced Beaufighters. We had two Beaufighter squadrons and a Spitfire squadron. I can’t remember the Spitfires, but the Beaufighter squadrons were 22 and 217, and we did engine changes and then I got, I got detached to 22 Squadron because they were short of fitters, and I got detached there for a, for a spell. So, I was doing, working with 22 Squadron but then of course, everything changed and they decided that we were going on a, we got, we got sent, we got notification we had to pack up, what was it? Operation Marbrisca I think it was, and get everything, gear and of course it never came about and we then, we moved the whole lot, the unit moved up into India. And Marbris, that was an interesting thing because it was years, years later after I came back home and the I went to, went to school and there was a master at school who had also been out there, but he was in, in SEAF or SEAC operations and I mentioned about this, oh years about this Operation Marbrisc, and he told me what it was. It was in actual fact, they were going to take the island of Phuket. I mean we called it something else as you can imagine which is, I mean, is a holiday island now, and the idea was, they were going to build an airfield on Phuket and operate from there against the Japanese, but then he said that the casualty situation would be, was exorbitant and they cancelled it. So that was where we were going. This Marbrisc. Anyway, that was cancelled and we moved up into South India, basically to, I think it was preparation for the Malayan invasion, ‘cause we moved about. God, as an RSU, we sort of did anything. We did some servicing on Thunderbolts of all things. Then, then we sort of petered out and did nothing really. We sort of, all we did was, oh and then of course the next thing was, they said, oh we got issued with jungle green, so we all got issued with jungle green and we had, then we got to have equipment to do this invasion or whatnot, back up so we got a lot of new waggons and cranes and all sorts of things, all ready to do this repair and salvage, because we were supposed to, I think, we were supposed to service two Beaufighter squadrons and a Spitfire squadron. I don’t know whether they were the same ones that we had before but, but then of course, they dropped the atom bomb and that was, that was the end, that was the end of our sortie to Malaya, but, but then of course, the whole thing wound up. What was the next troubles? ‘Cause it became, the whole thing then, the war had ended and all the blokes that were in the war in Europe were getting demobbed, and people with the, on the unit with the same demob number were not being demobbed, because they were in the Far East, and then of course, we came, these problems what do they call them? What do they call them? Riots I suppose. I think they termed them as riots when they were bloody you know, I don’t know, you were nearly court martialled but anyway, but then of course that all, this came, the whole of India was like that but of course, we were regulars so we, we weren’t involved. They, we, we just didn’t get involved in all that, any of these struggles at all, but then of course, our lot folded up and we were posted to, and then they said, oh we’re going on occupation force Japan. {Unclear] and we went to a place in India called Tamberam, to get to move out but then they cancelled the whole lot so we were less than with all this gear and whatnot, in this Tamberam, and then they decided that we were going to be disbanded, we were. So all the equipment had to go back. All these new lorries and cranes and whatnot, so they were all moved and taken to a place called Visakhapatnam, I think it was. Viso we called it, and they took all this and there were hundreds and hundreds of vehicles. All just, all lease lend stuff. And that was, and they shifted us to a place called Redhills Lake, which had been a flying boat station, to disband. Well, and of course the thing was, and it had a lake there so we did a bit of swimming. That was for a while and apart from that, we did nothing, just sort out equipment, half of it got dumped in the lake and then the day came when I was posted. We were posted, we were distributed and I was posted to 353 Squadron at Palam, and that was Delhi, and that was right up north, and so the next thing was of course, to get the train from, was it Madras, I suppose. I think, I can’t remember where, so, to Delhi and oh, it was a troop train. It was marvellous, marvellous train because it had been a casualty train for, for carrying wounded, not a trooper and oh, it was most comfortable. Had a real good trip ‘cause against all the others we had a, ‘cause normally the trains in there you had same as the doings. You had the hard wooden benches and the ones that slap down on chains for sleeping on, but anyway that was, but anyway we got to Palam and that was 353 Squadron was a Dakota squadron, but then of course, they’d centralised servicing really so that it didn’t matter what squadron you were on, you were, you were put in workshops. I was in engine repair and in engine repair was you did anything really. A Pratt and Whitneys, it didn’t matter what came in and you said, because Palam was a, was a main, well it’s now Delhi airport isn’t it? I think, yeah, and Dakotas, but we used to get all the mail stuff come through. That was the Yorks. And we had also the, was it British Air? No, BOAC was it? BOAC in those days. And it had BOAC Yorks came because the airport was at, was at Palam. Well it was Delhi Airport, but part of Palam, but just around the peritrack and so I did, I did a spell with Dakotas and Yorks. I had engine changes on Yorks. We actually did minor a inspection on Lancasters that flew in. Oh, I did a couple of jobs on BOAC Yorks, but they had landing trouble and they had no fitters, and they used to get sort of co-opted on the engineer, BOAC engineers. They had no, no people at all, so I did a couple of jobs on BOAC Yorks while I was there and then of course, came a time that I didn’t get mid tour leave although I’d put my name down, I wasn’t lucky enough to get any. And then of course in April, oh, then of course the Partition was on. India was, and things were not, things were not very good then. You, you didn’t, if you wanted to go out you made sure that at least there was two or three of you together, ‘cause things, I don’t know why, they didn’t like us really. And then in April, I got a raise and I came home in April. I came home. I went out on the Orion and came back on the Chetril and then we arrived back. It was quite, they say about you know seeing England when you come back, it was, go on, anyway we landed at Southampton and we had to be shipped up to Burtonwood near, oh where is it near? Oh God, Burtonwood. Warrington isn’t it? I think it’s at Warrington. Anyway, when it comes to the point there, we got back to there and everybody was, of course all they wanted to do was get home, and they would have flown us and said this, that and the other, until everyone was chuntering and whatnot the bloke at Burtonwood said, ‘Right’, he said, ‘Get on the lorries and you can go to the bloody station’, you know, it’s up to you where, you know, you go. We’d got our warrants and I think there was, I think a train going south and a train going north and it cleared the station. Didn’t care, you really didn’t care where you went as long as you left there and on the way home. So, I sort of, I got from Warrington to Manchester, and Manchester and of course, while I’d been, while I’d been overseas, my parents had moved from Lincolnshire. They’d moved to Yorkshire, and so I didn’t know where I was going home so the er, got to, I got to Manchester and got to Leeds, and I thought what and I got my parent’s telephone number so I thought, oh I’d better, I’d better ring them and let them know, and so I phoned up and my mother answered and of course she said, ‘Oh your father’s in, in the Isle of Man at the moment’, ‘cause I said, ‘well can you, can you pick me up at the station?’ And so anyway the incidents, isn’t it? So, so I said, ‘Well I’ll go to Harrogate’. I had to go to Harrogate, from Leeds to Harrogate and the, get in the train and the, ‘cause I had two kit bags and your webbing and everything and you know you were sort of carrying these down, and of course I’d asked where the train, the -
[phone ringing]
Train was there and of course I’d got my kit bag on, and you know you’ve got a kit on, a kit bag on your arm, your webbing and a kit bag on the top, and of course there was an airman in a carriage doorway, and I says, I said, oh you know , ‘Open the door’, and I bend over and let the kit bag drop on the floor, and my father was on the, on the train and he picked it up, so and that’s how I met my dad. He came and then my sister, mother at the station. So, incidents, you know, that, ‘cause I came back and of course my father was on the train with the gear, and so my mother and sister at the station. The incident I’m trying to think of. Not that is, ‘cause I didn’t, oh dear, I didn’t stop by. OK now then, we’ve got to, we’ve got to Knaresborough, that was where my parents lived, so and the next thing I had to do, as I’d been writing to Margaret for, oh, since, when was it? 1945. I wanted to get down to Hereford, so I went down to, went down to, go down to Hereford but it’s quite strange really that I’d been writing to her there, but it was, I’d got down to, got down from Manchester, get down to Hereford and the, the last stop before Hereford is Shrewsbury, and I debated whether to get off the train. Why I don’t know but there we are, but anyway it all worked out. We met on Hereford station and that was, that was it, so the beginning of our relationship. Yeah. Anyway, then that all finished and the next thing was of course, we got posted and then, oh God, that was it. Posted, posted to Wheaton, Wheaton, what the hell was at Wheaton? I thought what on earth’s there? Blackpool, near Blackpool. So off I goes to, to Blackpool. Get back on the train, get off at Wheaton and what’s Wheaton? Trainings. Bloody training station, nothing to do with aeroplanes. Bloody drivers, fitters, blacksmiths, welders, everything bar anything to do with aeroplanes, and I thought, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ So, anyway, of course, I arrived on the station and this is in, and I thought, you know, and I went and they said, you’re going to, you’ll be on one wing, I think it was. MTMs, Motor Transport Mechanics. So what the hell am I doing here? And anyway of course, I went in to the general office, off I went, report to squadron leader so and so, so I went to him and immediately I went in there and of course, there was a few, there was an MT fitter and whatnot, and me. So, anyway, I immediately said, complained, ‘What am I doing here?’ you know, and MT and all the rest of it, and this officer, whoever he was, said I was posted as an instructor. I said, ‘I don’t know anything about MT at all’. And this, I remember this officer, who he was, he said, ‘You’re an ex apprentice, aren’t you?’ I said, ‘Yes sir’. ‘Well’, he says, ‘In that case’, he said, ‘You can do any bloody thing’. So that was that. That was me teaching motor mechanics, MT mechanics, and I knew nothing about bloody brakes or anything like that. Well, I think, anyway so I went down to this, where was it? Where I was supposed to be? The phase office, that was it, the phase, the phase office, and there was a sergeant MT fitter there, and I said, ‘Well I know bugger all about motor transport’. He said, ‘Well I’ll tell you what’, he said, ‘I’ll put’, he said, ‘you’ll be on’, I’ve forgotten what it was, but he said, ‘I’ll put you with, there’s a civilian instructor’, he says. ‘You can have a spell with him’, he said, ‘you’ll pick it up from there’. Oh God love us all. So, anyway, I was with this, oh I can’t remember his name, and he was an ancient civvy and so I was picking up brakes and steering, and I never knew there was a blinking theory on brakes and how line up and all this business at all, and of course I was doing this and that, was the, I was on the first week. There was a fortnightly course for this MT mechanics. A fortnight course so I was in there for a fortnight. I’d done one week and there was a fracas in there, and one of the corporal instructors had clobbered a, or hurled a coupling at one of the trainees, and he was then immediately taken off instructing, and the only person to take, put on, was me, and he was on the second week and I’d only done the first week, and the second week was completely, was ridiculous. But anyway, so I had to do it. Have you ever taught, taught people about something you know nothing about? Well, that was what it was with me, instructing people. I had to try to gain a, oh dear, it was ridiculous, but anyway. Then, of course, funnily enough, then they started to er, a phase on diesel engines. Well funnily enough I’d been very interested in diesels, even in India, and I had had my father send me books on diesels, high speed compression ignition engines and whatnot, and so therefore I knew quite a bit, and when they started this phase on diesels, I said well I, you know, I’d done diesels. Oh, they were quite, and shoved me on diesels straightaway, so that was, that was the way it went. I finished up doing diesels and did various other things and then of course I, I, I, I wanted to get away from Wheaton. I’d liked to get down south somewhere ‘cause I mean I was courting then, I mean, and it’s a long way from, from Wheaton, Blackpool down to Hereford, which I used to do on a blinking short weekend. It was bloody fast because I used to have to, I’d travel all night back and have, get my breakfast and kit bag and sort of virtually go straight to the classroom, you know, and get straight, but anyway, but then of course I, I got, I got a what was it a payform 36 posting, because for some reason, I don’t know how I managed it, but anyway down to Hereford. At Hereford. And I was still instructing but when I got down there, I found out there was nothing there, it was equipment assistant. Stores bashers. I thought what the hell am I doing here? But then of course, I got there and the next thing that I’d got there was another, in fact an apprentice, ex-apprentice was a bloke named Don Rigby, and he was posted there as an instructor. He was, he’d managed to get fitter one scores in his career and so the two of us there. What the hell were we doing here? But then of course, we went down to the general office who sent us to this. He said, ‘Yes, you’re definitely posted here’. I thought someone had made a mistake, you know, but then we went to, the pair of us went down to see this squadron leader, and I said, ‘Well what are we doing here?’ I mean. ‘Well you’ve got to tell them all about’, you know, ‘it’s yours to sort of give them an interest in the mechanical things of aeroplanes and engines’. And I thought what am I doing, and we had no syllabus, we had nothing, so we had to, between the pair of us, we sort of worked it out, but God what a, talk about a working week. I think we, our working week was about two or three hours, all week, working week was two or three hours, so we were there so I mean, but we got on ‘cause all the equipment, all the store bashers, instructors, were senior NCOs. We were the only corporals there in the doing but er, we got on very well with them because if they wanted to go off shopping, we’d take their class on, you know. It was, it was or if, you know, something they were getting short of time and they’d, they’d use our time and it was doing but anyway, that all went on and then that collapsed but then of course, at that period of time, I’d been courting. This was 1949 I get, I got married, we get married. So, I got married in 1949, got back off the honeymoon, to the bunk was a piece of paper slipped under the door and it says, ‘Go to the general office ‘cause you’re posted to MCOS’. MCOS. What the hell was that? MCOS. Never heard of it. Nobody doing and this was at Wythall, which is just outside Birmingham. So, Wythall. Wythall. I’d never heard of a Wythall. No airfield that I knew of at Wythall, but anyway MCOS. We’d no idea. So anyway gets to MC, gets to, my, my colleague who was the other corporal there, he got posted, he got posted to, he got his posting to Suez Canal, so he was, he was gone anyway and there was MCOS, so got down to Wythall and doing I found out that this was what was known as the Mobile Classroom Operating Section. So I was back on instructing only in a mobile classroom. I was, as I’d done diesels and they put me on wheels and tyres for starters because I’d been, I’d been steering and whatnot, but then that, that, I can’t remember but I think the instructor on diesels, he was posted and they knew I’d had, done diesels instructing experience and they put me on to the diesels.
So that was that, but that was out on the road for six weeks and back at Wythall for a fortnight, so we roamed the countryside teaching. You went to any station that wanted you and you’d instruct on whatever’s going there, but there’s that was the biggest lot of rogues. The drivers, mostly the drivers, ‘cause you had a driver and instructor with each wagon and the drivers, I think they were the biggest bunch of rogues I’ve ever come across. Pinch anything. And oh, and then the other thing of course we, we were at Wythall which was, had been a balloon base, but Austin’s had taken half of it over to store, you know, their manufactured equipment and whatnot. Gearboxes and whatever you could think of and of course, it was, this was all partitioned by wire netting from the mobile classrooms and of course, knowing the drivers and whatnot and the people that were in Austin’s store place and whatnot, people got, stuff got passed over the wire which as the drivers were traversing the country, you’d get to a transport café and you could sell anything so, you know, parts of cars got sold but then they got wise with it, because the police, Air Force police and whatnot, got wise to it and you got, they, they stopped the wagons at the guard room and got searched and so you couldn’t have any, any Austin components in there, but they used to be fiddling the thing. They used to, somebody, one bloke even moved a whole family because, I mean, the classrooms were big and so they use it as a pantechnic and one chap moved somebody there. I mean they used to, these corporals would do, do anything really. That, but of course the thing was, you see, once you got to the station where you were instructing course they had nothing to do. You were doing the instructing. So they sort of you know did anything really. It was quite. They were a bunch, a really, especially one -
[Pause]
Right. So having, Wythall finished these mobile classrooms and then I got posted to the Middle East. The canal zone so, and the canal zone, went on a, oh what was it, oh I can’t remember the boat, but that was another one, anyway we got to, got to Abihad and Abihad was 109 Maintenance Unit, and that was the repair of Merlin engines, and they were set up, sort of posted on, to start up a repair service on Hercules but that never came about, and I finished up on the overhaul of the propellers. That was, that was a standard sort of a job but it was er, the mid, then of course we had the problems, in fact when my wife came out, the problems of the riots and all the rest of it which that we were, we lived in Ismailia, we had a flat in Ismailia but then all the problems came and we got, if you got enough points, my wife, we got a hiring on the Canal Road, which is not far off the Great Bitter Lakes, you know, where the canal goes through and we, we got this hiring which was a bungalow, it was sort of quite a complex of bungalows. It was typical Egyptian, oh, and of course, I must have mentioned that our bungalow was the only one with a bath, all the rest had showers. We had a bath and this bath must have been built by the Egyptian who made the tombs and whatnot, ‘cause it was like a big concrete but we were the only one with a bath, but then we had no hot running water so the only way we had a, the only way you could have a bath, in fact the ladies, my wife’s friends and whatnot, well, service people that lived there, they had a bath, you could have a bath and by having two primer stoves and put the zinc bath on top of the two primer stoves, get the water heated up enough, tipped in to this massive bath and put some cold with it and then you could have a decent bath. But the ladies, all the wives, there were quite a number of us there and of course my wife would ask the ladies if they wanted to have a bath, so they come and we’d heat, well my wife organised it and they’d have a bath then. Anyway, that was so that was it, but at that point in time was, was the, my wife was pregnant with our first child, and the point was then, then there was this big expansion programme of, I suppose with the V bomber pilots and whatnot and they wanted fitters and riggers back, back home and I was premature re-patted, but then there was a major problem of my wife was pregnant and of course, she had to come back and they, they, it depended on if they couldn’t come back, I’d have to go out, but then it depended whether the aircrew on the aircraft would bring her back. Would they have her and that and it was a Hastings flight and they said yes. So my wife who was, oh was she near, I wonder if, ‘cause that was, oh she’d be at least eight months. She must have been eight months so it was really, you know, it was touch and go, but anyway she came. They decided to take her so we, she came back in this Hastings or we came back in this Hastings and of course, the bloody thing went u/s in Malta, so we all had to get off and of course, she was the only woman on board the aeroplane. The rest was all, all men. She was the only woman and of course, then, of course in those days, there was no family accommodation. There was only women’s and men and so my wife finished up in this nissen hut all by herself and me in the, with the, ‘cause I was a corporal, with the rest of the men and because I was doing and then I remember in a morning, some chap out there says, ‘Is there a Corporal Bland in the hut?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I am’. He said, ‘Your wife wants you’. I thought, Oh God, you know, we’re not going to have the happening in Malta, you know, but no well when I went out she said, ‘When are you getting up?’ So that was it but eventually we, they got the aeroplane serviceable and we came back, and then of course, they wanted to put us in transit, and my wife said no I’m not going in transit, I want to go home and I’d bought a camera out there and then I had trouble with the customs. I said, ‘You can keep the bloody camera’. But they didn’t like that much, but anyway, we finished up at, where was it? Swindon Station. God knows what. Coming back in the milk train ‘cause we were going back to South Wales to her home in Newport or [unclear] and so we had there. So we, we finished up on this, and oh, Swindon I’ll always remember that. She was wanting to lay down and I said, ‘Alright’. and then of course, it was a bit chilly or something. Was it? I don’t know, but I know a porter came in and lit a fire in this waiting room, ‘cause there was only the two of us, and so eventually we, she kipped down on me, but anyway we got the milk train, we got back to, got to Newport and got a taxi from there and of course, the thing, because she was pregnant, my wife wouldn’t, wouldn’t tell her parents that she was on her way home. So, so we arrived completely unannounced, caused consternation as you can well imagine, but anyway that was it. I got posted to Worksop and she had the baby in Pontypool, and I think she’d have been better off in a military hospital then she was in a national health. I didn’t, she didn’t get treated very well there at all, anyway, that’s by the by, so we got to Worksop and I was on Meteors. So, posted to Worksop. Worksop which was an old wartime airfield which had been renovated, and we got Meteors there. So of course, I was, I was then a corporal still and then I got, I passed my senior technician’s exams, so I was a corporal, but I wasn’t really due for my senior, ‘cause at the time, wasn’t due for my senior and then I got my third. My sergeant came through, so I was a sergeant senior tech qualified. So that was the way it went on for the time being. I hadn’t, the time was it, wasn’t to go for the chief so that was the way it was. So I was on Meteors there in R&I, in Meteors so that was, that was my spell there. Then that went on till was it 19, I think it went on until 1955, and then a friend of mine who was also at Worksop, and he was a great reader of AMOs and he said, he said there’s an AMO about this new V bombers and their looking for aircraft servicing chiefs. ‘Oh’, I said, ‘that’s a good idea’. ‘Oh’, but he says, ‘they’ve got to be aircraft fitters’. Well I‘m only an engine fitter, I wasn’t an aircraft fitter. He was an aircraft fitter. Anyway, he volunteered for it and because he was an aircraft fitter, he finished up with it. Anyway, he was waiting and then, then they changed it and he came to me. He said, ‘Ay’, he said, ‘They’ve done, they’ve done a change on the AMO’. He said, ‘They’re taking on airframe and engine fitters’. ‘Oh’, I said, ‘Right’. So I went straight into the office and volunteered, and saying that was in 1955 and, yes and that was at the beginning of ’55. Must have been because then I had to go and they said alright, and I got this and I had to go to Brampton for an interview for this aircraft servicing chief. So I went there for this interview and a panel of officers, wing commanders and educators and electrical officers and so I had to, you know. What the hell for I don’t know. They ask you all sorts of questions. So that was it. You didn’t know anything about it at all until, when was it? It would have been, when would this be? July, August something like that, and it came through and told me that I’d got to, now I’d got to, where did I have to go first. I had to go Wheaton first, to get, to go on an airframe course. So I went on this airframe course, which was quite a small one. I don’t think I learned much more than I knew in the first place, but anyway I went on this airframe course and then from then on, I sort of moved on to, we had to then, had to go down to Melksham to go on the instrument and electrical course, so having done that, we went to Melksham, and then they allocated you from Melksham. It depended on how well you did, what you, what aircraft you went on, ‘cause the Valiant was in progress ‘cause there were Valiant crew chiefs, had been trained and I can’t remember how many crew chiefs there was. Twenty of us on the course? Was it? I can’t remember now how many, but anyway, then it worked out the Victor came in and the Vulcan and, and the Valiant but some Vulcan crew chiefs had been trained before, but out of my course there was four Victors that went on the Victor. There was eight, eight, was it eight? Yeah, eight Vulcans and the rest were Valiants. So that’s how I was, and they did you, on the, you were allowed to volunteer which aircraft you want, went, went on but it depended on your position in the final exam which aircraft you got. Unfortunately, I came top so I was able, I had my pick of Vulcan, I didn’t want the Victor. All the others were interested in was the Victor, I wasn’t interested in the Victor at all so I went and got on the Vulcan. So then from Melksham, we went on to Avro’s. Was it Avro’s? No Avro’s weren’t first. Where did we go? Boulton Pauls power fliers I think. Boulton Paul. Was there Avro’s then? I don’t know. A V Roe’s. And then you had to, Bristols was the engines you had to do that so that was the end of, I mean, this was taking you up from, so that was, what are we saying? Was it May? May or June? I don’t know, ’55? So this was 1956 and we were all posted to Waddington, all of us, and all the crew chiefs, the Vulcan crew chiefs, were at Waddington. Half of us had nothing to do. In fact, what did we do, because I’d been in, here it is you see, you come back, you’ve been MT, so you’ve been working on MT and you’ve got an MT driving licence and whatnot, so I finished up driving a bloody lorry, making a car park. That just shows you. Crew chiefs. We were doing sweated labour if you like. And then the first Vulcan arrived in, was it June? July? Anyway, whatever it was and that was it and of course, the only one that was Geordie Colley, who was the number one, and so it did a while and then he had to go down to Boscombe Down on intensified flying trials. And then during this space of time, they’d allocated crew chiefs for the OCU. The first squadron which was 83, which became 44, and then the second squadron was 101, which was going to be at Coningsby and of course, we’d all been buggering about this long, so four of us, we decided we’d try to jack up the system a bit and we get posted to Coningsby. We were all ready for the Vulcan when it came, what a doing that do? Anyway, I got nominated by the engineering officer to go as number two to Geordie Colley, so I finished up going down to Boscombe Down on the intensified flying trials with this XA 895. That was the first Vulcan. The other one of course, the one that crashed, was Broadhurst was 897 and I was 89, with 895, so I went down there with Geordie Colley and then Geordie Colley’s wife had a baby, so I was left on number 1 with this bloody aeroplane that I knew, well I say you knew nothing about. You were one of the one’s that knew anything and everybody, before they did a bloody job, came and asked you was it right, and you had no bloody idea either so it was, and that was the way it went. So I did my spell at Boscombe Down, fell out with the engineering officer, and so he sent me back, which was very nice. So I came back to Coningsby. I get back to Coningsby. No aeroplanes at Coningsby so what, what do we do? You’ve got a crew chief here with no aeroplanes in the wrong airfield because they’d decided the Vulcan wasn’t going to Coningsby, it was going to Finningley, so we got four, four crew chiefs all trained up in the wrong place, wrong time, wrong everything, you know. So I went in to the squadron leader, Coningsby was on C&M I think at the time, ‘cause they were, they were, they got some Canberras there I think, but then I went in to see, ‘cause I went there, went in to see the engineering officer, was a squadron leader OCUEng, and so anyway ‘cause then he says, oh, do airframe and whatnot. ‘What have you done, Chief?’ I said, ‘Oh, just instructing MT’. ‘Just the man’, he says. ‘You’re in charge of MTSS’. So here am I, a fully trained Vulcan crew chief, in charge of MT servicing, so that was, that was it and I thought, well crikey I’m a, you know, I’ve got sergeants here, MT fitters. I’m not, you know, qualified but anyway it didn’t matter, and then there was another chief tech there doing, so anyway and then the flight sergeant came so I was able to hand over to him without any trouble at all. And they put me then, the MTO said, ‘Oh you’d better come on the MT operating section’’ and that was, I went on the MT operating section and that was when, I suppose, I achieved an ambition as a small boy. As a very small boy, all I wanted to do was drive a big lorry, and so anyway, ‘cause I had the MT operating section and whatnot, the MT, I had a 658 to cover me on everything and I managed to drive one of these damned great snow ploughs. So I thought I’d achieved a very ambition of long ago when I was a little boy, so that was it, but then, then of course things all changed and then the next thing that happened they, where was I? Was I still at Coningsby? Yeah. Or was I oh, no we got posted to, did we get posted to Finningley? Got posted to Finn, oh the, we managed to get ourselves, four of us, back to Finningley, and of course at Finningley, of course there were new quarters. No equipment barrack equipment in them. We were posted, so the barrack warden, you know, he said, ‘I can’t’, you know, ‘I haven’t got the men. I haven’t got transport’, I haven’t got do this, that and the other to furnish these quarters, which need doing, so what we did, I got the 658 and I could drive the truck, so we furnished the quarters. The four of us furnished our own quarters out of the stores and all the rest of it, so we furnished our quarters so we could move the families in. So that was, that was Finningley, and then of course all this was done, and then the next thing, they despatched me back to Waddington, ‘cause they, they were taking the Vulcan to America on a bombing competition. So they detached me back to Waddington so that I could go on this, the SAC bombing competition with these, with the Vulcans and because you weren’t allowed to, you were only allowed, you weren’t allowed to have two crew chiefs per aeroplane, the thing was you’d got to have, in your crew, you’d got to have a crew chief standby in case the original crew chief went sick, so I was, this was the best of it was, I was an engine fitter and basically an engine fitter, so I went as an airframe, an airframe mechanic. I went as an airframe mechanic to Florida on the bombing comp, so that was it, but then of course that all went. Came back home and then of course the second squadron, ‘cause the first squadron, the ones that were at Waddington had all got, been crew chiefs and got their aeroplanes, and my friend who got killed, Taf Everson, he got 908, XA908 but, and anyway they, they, he went and everyone got their aeroplane and because I’d been in America, course I was way down the list, so I eventually, eventually when was it? Would have been ’57, would it, then? Yeah, ’57 aye, yeah. Came up and I went to, I had to go to Woodford and I picked up XH475 that was, that was my aeroplane, so anyway I went up there and got that and became part of the squadron, you know. That was the crew chief. Didn’t matter what you were. And of course, got this aeroplane and took it all over the place. Got stuck all over the place. Lost an engine in Goose. Pump failure. So that was on. Got hydraulic failure, the hydraulic system in, where was that? Oh God. It was, oh dear. Where was that? And that was in America. I can’t remember. That was somewhere and then of course we got, come back and you did the ranges. Then they had the, what was it, oh I can’t remember. The exercises you had to go to. Butterworth. Was it profiteer? I don’t know what it was, I can’t remember now. So I took 475 there. I was flying, I was flying with the wing commander’s squadron. Flew out there and got out there flying and whatnot. I had a day off and of course they wanted to do something, and they, my aeroplane, I had a day off and I came, went back and found that some daft bugger had closed the bomb doors on the safety razor and broken one of the bomb door links. Oh God. And that was, I said, ‘That’s a brilliant one isn’t it?’ So, anyway, only had to be, how am I, there we were, how were we going to get back and there’s all the gear we got there and of course, you opened the bomb doors and we could open them and put all the stuff in and then you had to, we’d close the bomb doors. The only way then was we had, got local blacksmiths to make a turn buckle, and with turn buckle, so you could close the bomb doors and once you’d closed them, we wound them up so that you couldn’t open them. Anyway, took the fuses out and everything, so I had a bomb door, bomb bay full of US equipment, all my tyres had been burnt and worn, so I said to the wing commander, I said, I said, ‘I’ve got no I’ve got no gear in as I can use’. I said, ‘If we get left behind, we’re stuck’. He said, ‘We won’t get left behind’. But then of course, the next thing that happened was, I don’t know how, CRACK. My bomb aimer’s window was cracked. Oh dear. So I said to the wing commander, I said, ‘We’ve got a cracked bomb aimers window’. I said, I said, I said ‘I don’t know, we’ll have to fly back with it’. I said ‘I’ll do a pressurization and see’, you know, ‘if it’s alright’. He said ‘we’ll do the pressurisation on the way home’. That was it. So I flew home with a bomb bay full of rubbish, a bomb er, cracked bomb aimer’s window and came home that way. Landed and that was it. We managed without any trouble. I can’t remember, did we have any troubles? I normally get all sorts of troubles and that but, but I didn’t. I think we got back home without, and then of course, that was it. And then of course the next one was the CnC and whatnot, wanted to go on a lecture tour of America or something but he, he didn’t go in mine. He went on, I forget, was it 909? I think it was, with his own crew chief, Bill Neane I think, but then that got, flew via the Azores to Bermuda. Got to Bermuda and the inverter failed and his brakes, the brakes failed. The CnC wanted another aeroplane to go in so that was it. God knows what time of night I got knocked up in my night quarter, and they said, ‘Chief, we’re going, we’ve got to take, get an aeroplane to Bermuda. His inverter’s gone, brake units so we’ve got to take all the spares’. So there’s me, middle of the night with a pannier, getting bits and pieces and loading it all up, and then off we get to go to Bermuda via the Azores. The Azores. Always remember the, the, was he, is it Portuguese? I think he was, this officer looked as though he’d come out of what’s the name? I can’t think of the place. He had tassels on his uniform and all sorts of things, and did I want compression. I said, ‘Did I want compression?’ I couldn’t figure out what he was on about. Eventually I worked out that he, ‘did I want compressed air?’ Oh yeah, I wanted compressed air, yeah, so, but anyway that was left there without any trouble at all. Got to Bermuda and then of course met the crew chief and the crew of this 909. Landed there, got off the aeroplane and I got, got met by two Canadian Navy petty officers with a big bottle of whisky. ‘Come and have a drink mate’, you know. We’ve got, you know. I said, ‘I can’t drink and do’ and anyway my other crew chief there I said, ‘Alright we’ll have a drink’. So managed to have a couple of whiskies, but we got to change everything on these two aeroplanes because of all the gear from his aeroplane had to be transferred from mine to his and all the rest of it, so we did a pannier change and wheel change with the only support we had, ‘cause it should take four men to winch a pannier down off a Vulcan, was two crew chiefs and two drunken Canadian naval petty officers. So, but we managed and that, that was that. We had a bit of a problem. They had an electrical problem on start-up. It was robbed of, robbed a component off the aeroplane and that was my aeroplane cause I’d been, I’d changed, I’d made, well I’d thought I was going to go through with, with 476 but then, I don’t know whether the CnC wanted Bill Neane. I don’t know what it was but I finished up with this heap of rubbish in Bermuda instead of going onwards. And then, oh dear that, where did we get to? Yeah. Two drunken petty officers winching the pannier. It was amazing we got it down but anyway, we got it down. We got the gear changed over and everything, and Bill Neane wouldn’t drink anymore so as I was stopping, I was stuck. These two petty officers and whatnot decided we should finish this bottle of whisky. Oh God. What a thing isn’t it? So that was it. Then they changed over, then of course, they all got in. The bloody aeroplane went u/s again. That was the one I’d brought in so the CnC had to go, he had a date in America, the CN not the CnC was he? Not the CnC. Whatever he was. Whoever he was he had to go on by, by American transport and how humiliating really. So then of course, I had to rob, I robbed the aeroplane, robbed the u/s aeroplane to get this one serviceable. Then of course, had to get to America, and of course the CnC was acting as co-pilot, so of course there was one pilot missing, so the only way was the co-pilot that came up, came over with me, had to go on to America with this, with this, this other aeroplane. I don’t know how they finished up but anyway the co-pilot came back, but then, then of course the problem came, of course, I had this, left with this aeroplane in Bermuda with brakes troubles and inverter troubles. They’d sent an inverter, they’d sent an electrician out via BOAC to give me assistance on this electrical stuff, but then of course, he came out and I said, righto we’ll, we’ve changed the inverter. We’re alright. We’ll change, do the brake change. We can do the brake change and of course he was an electrician, and of course all he had to do to help me was to jack up and whatnot, and of course then, there was, then came a sorry tale. I got the jack underneath to, to change the brake units on this and I found that the bogie beam had a crack in it, a crack right along the end. Oh, at the end. I thought, what the devil do we, so anyway, all I got, I said to the captain, I said, ‘We’re in trouble here’. I said, ‘We’ve got a cracked bogie beam’. ‘Oh dear’, he said. So anyway, I’ve signals going back and forth, this cracked bogie beam. I said ‘well could drill a hole at the termination of the crack, but then the bogie beam takes all the stress of landing’. So I thought, oh well, but anyways I left it up to the UK air to decide, so they sent out a Doughty draughtsman, techno, oh, stress man or something, to see whether there was any possibility of doing this and he came out, and of course, no. Obviously he wouldn’t say it was even, if it probably was, because if it had cracked and the aircraft had crashed, it would have been him, so that was, that was it, so I was left there with this bloody aeroplane, with the rain pouring down, wind blowing, with this, with this aeroplane. Salt air was making things go a bit rusty but anyway they decided, well they had to change the bogie beam, the bogie beam. I don’t know [unclear]. The bogie beam carries the whole aeroplane of four wheels on one side, you know so, and the weight of the aeroplane so that had to be jacked up. The thing was, was all the equipment, was getting the equipment out to me in Bermuda and of course, the Air Force in those days, hadn’t got any bloody transport aeroplanes at all I don’t think, so they had, they had to hire, hire a DC6 to carry this. So I’d got four jacks, one hydraulic rig ‘cause retractions had to be done, so I had four jacks and a hydraulic rig, and of course they sent it out in this DC6, but fortunately they sent two, a chief tech out of their hydraulic bay and another rigger who was, he was, he was ex Halton boy, the same as me. So we had a chief tech, me a crew chief, a chief tech rigger, a sergeant rigger and a sergeant electrician and the aircrew, and these jacks all had to be built up ‘cause they couldn’t fly them in the aircraft whole so they were all in bits, so I had to build all these jacks up, fill them with hydraulic oil and do everything there to get these jacks up before we could jack the aeroplane up. And the other thing was a negotiation with the, the master sergeant of the hangar, ‘cause there was only one hangar on Bermuda and that was, had the doors welded open so that the wind could blow through it ‘cause otherwise it would have blown off and this, as I say, this master sergeant looked like Geronimo. I’m sure he was Indian anyway and we got on but he was not, he was a hard looking man and of course then he said, I said, well you know trying to negotiate use of this hangar for jacking up. He said, ‘Yes’. He said, ‘You can have the hangar but’, he said, ‘for twelve hours only and that’s all’. Twelve hours. I thought, bloody hell and all that, you know we’ve got to change and do hydraulic tests and everything on this, but anyway we managed it. And then a dry, to drive these axles out of the, of the bogie beam was, was the only way we could use - the Americans had solid chocs like sleepers and the way we drove these axles out of there was by one of these chocs and heaving it like a battering ram, but anyway we got the axles out. We got it all done anyway, and all the rest of it and retractions and the wind was blowing through the hangar, but we managed it. We did, we did it all. Much to, well we had to do it in the time, we hadn’t got much option and anyway, we got it out and on the, then of course all trouble started ‘cause then of course, I got water in the pitot system. That was ‘cause of all this terrible rain and the pitothead covers were bloody ridiculous so that was another job I had to do. Clean out, get all the water out of the pitot system. So that was it. ‘Righto’, he says. ‘That’s it. We’ve still got to do an air test’. So we got down to do, I forgot to mention that the only power, the only power source ‘cause the Vulcan bombers was a hundred and twelve volt DC and the only power source they’d got, ‘cause the Americans don’t use it, they use twenty eight volt but the, and only one we could do was borrow. They had a hundred and twelve volt for the, was it the Britannia on the, BOAC, BOAC side or British, yeah, British Airways side of Bermuda, so I had to borrow their diesel generator when they weren’t using it, so that was another thing. So I had to borrow this and then I had to tow it across the airfield to me. So anyway, that was, that was that was another thing, borrowing it and negotiating and all the rest of it. So we got that, got that done and eventually got it, got it started and, ‘Righto, we’re off’, you know and, oh that’s right. When I found that it goes boring off again and, that’s right and of course, they shut down and came back. I said, ‘What’s, what’s the trouble?’ ‘We’ve got no ASI’, no Air Speed Reading. This was when I found out that these pitothead covers were no good ‘cause I got water in the pitot system, so that all had to be drained, all that drained, done, everything else. ‘Have another go’. So we had another go, air test. Off they went and they flew around. I thought, ‘Oh we’re in business here’, they landed and I said, ‘Any?’ ‘Yes. Compass’. Oh dear God. Compass. I said, ‘What’s the matter?’ They said, ‘Our readings are wrong’, you know, somewhere along. I said well you know, so after much investigating, I thought, well it’s near impossible, the two pilot’s repeaters were duff. I thought it’s either that or the master indicator. The master. And I thought, if it’s the master, we’re in trouble ‘cause we’d got to do a compass sweep and all the rest of it for that. So anyway, back goes signals and the next thing comes out an instrument maker who happened to be an instrument maker off my entry of course, so I knew him personally. A chief tech. Instrument came back BOAC. I mean his, his, his excess weight baggage was off because he’d bought a compass, a master indicator, the blinkin’ whole bloody bag of shoots with him, and what state to do a compass sweep if he had to. Anyway, it turned out it was the two, as I thought it was, the two pilot’s repeaters were both u/s. Most unusual. So, anyway, that was, that was changed. I mean, mind you in this, [unclear] I know all this stuff had to be packed up and whatnot and landed on this DC6, to be flown back home and so that was another job. And where had we got to? Oh aye, the compass, that was it. Oh, that was it. Then the other things was, the thing that was before the compass, I can’t remember. Number 3 tank on the portside had developed a bloody leak and the Mark I tanks were not what I’d call brilliant. Anyway, the only way I could do it was, I thought, well I don’t know what I can do with this leak, and the Americans had some, had some peculiar sealant that they had, ‘cause they used a similar sort of thing that I used, and after much, as I say, I got to know this, my master sergeant quite well and I had a long chat with him, and I said, ‘Well have you got some stuff I can maybe cure this leak?’ ‘Cause I knew where it was. The tank where the pump housing and everything was, prone to split. The bolt holes tend to split so I, after much talk with this man I dropped the, I dropped the pump on number 3 tank and lathered this sealant in place, hoping it would do it because I mean, the tank change was beyond and so I had a go. It wasn’t, it wasn’t much good at all but then of course, we’d had the air test. We’d had everything done. We were all ready to go home, but with this tank and I said ‘well’, I said, ‘we’ve got the pilot who was’, Beavis, his name was. Who was he? He finished up a, was he master of the Royal Air Force or something? Mike Beavis, and I said to, and John Ward was the co-pilot, I said, ‘Well look. I can, I can put fuel it for you to go home’, because by this time, we were, we were, this was the only thing that was stopping us. I said, ‘To go home’, I said, ‘Look, we either if you can work it out with number 3 tank empty, we can make it’. I said, ‘Otherwise’, I said, ‘I’ll fill number 3 tank’, and this was number 3 tank port, I said, ‘And then you use all that fuel off that tank for everything to empty it’. And then I said, ‘What’s left we’ll just have to let it leak out’. And so John Ward did his calculations, that we could fly back with that number 3 tank empty, so I then sort of took all the fuses out, took the pump off it and everything. Well, the pump was there but I took the fuses out and everything so that the pump couldn’t overheat or anything, and that was, so we flew back from Bermuda to the Azores. So we land back to the Azores and so I said we were alright from the Azores back home with still number 3 tank empty, and then, of course, oh damn. The Azores, we started off on my pack that I’d got, with the battery pack that I’d got in the bomb, in the pannier, started up and was doing and then they said, Number 3 inverted, was the one that I’d changed, we’d changed in Bermuda. Number 3 inverter had gone down. I said, ‘Oh God’, you know, I said, I said, ‘Well we’re sunk’. I said, ‘I’ve no spare inverters that I can change’. I said we, we, I said, ‘Look. It’s, it’s number 3. We can go on’. Number 3 was the sort of standby. I said, ‘We can either’, to the captain, I said, ‘Look. We either wait here and I get an inverter to change it or we fly home on everything we’ve got with no spare’. So, after a bit of a discussion they said, ‘We’ll, we’ll, go home’. So we started up and flew home. Got, ‘cause we came from Finningley really. Course we landed at Waddington and of course, we had to there for customs clearance of all things. So we landed at Waddington and the wing commander was there to greet us, and my captain who was not the, not the first pilot, he was the navigator, ‘Oh’, he said, we could, he said ‘If you put a brake chute in, we could fly home couldn’t we?’ I said, ‘Look’, I said, ‘I’ll put you a brake chute in but’, I said, I said, ‘I’ll walk home’. I said, ‘That’s a bloody heap of rubbish this is’. A heap of rubbish. So anyway, the wing commander was there and so I said, ‘Well that’s it’. And, and that aeroplane at Waddington, took them a fortnight to get it serviced to fly it to Finningley. So that was, that was me. I came home after months in Bermuda and the wing commander said, ‘You’d better have a couple of days off’. But that was a bloody aeroplane. Bloody aeroplane. 909. XA909. It wasn’t mine, it was Fred Harrison’s. It wasn’t one I fetched, and then oh, after that, we went to, we went on a, to Butterworth. Went to Butterworth and then we, because this was when they shut my damned, did I tell you about that. I haven’t put that on there have I? No. I can’t remember, I’ve told that much. They shook my, they shook my aircraft [unclear], broken the bomb doors. I had to take 9, I had to take, the aircrew wanted to go, were minded to take an aircraft to Manila in the Philippines from Butterworth, and mine was u/s with the bomb doors, and the only one I could take was 909. The engineer said, ‘Do you mind taking 909?’ ‘Cause that was the one that was stuck in Bermuda, Bermuda with. I said, ‘I’ll take anything as long as its serviceable’, so, and that was the only, the only range I ever did where I had a serviceable aircraft from start to finish. I flew there no troubles. No troubles there and flew back and that was the only, only trip I ever did in a Vulcan where I didn’t have any problems.
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command Archive I’d like to thank Warrant Officer Charles Bland at his home in Lincolnshire on the 17th of August 2015. Thank you for the recording.
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 Charles Bland
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-17
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABlandC150817, PBlandC1501
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
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Vivienne Tincombe
Description
An account of the resource
Charles Bland joined the Royal Air Force in February 1942 and went to RAF Halton as an Aircraft Apprentice.
He tells of his training at Halton, and describes the different trades and his exams to become an Leading Aircraftsman 1st Class, where he was then transferred to a Repair and Inspection Unit (R&I) working on Spitfire engines.
Charles then went to India via the Suez Canal and then on to Ceylon to 121 Repair and Salvage Unit, looking after 2 squadrons of Beaufighters and 1 squadron of Spitfires, but he says that because he was an apprentice, he could turn his hand to anything.
He was posted to instruct at a Motor Transport Unit, and spent time learning about the maintenance of other equipment including diesel engines.
Charles was posted to 109 Maintenance Unit, repairing Merlin engines, however at this time the V Bombers were coming into service. He trained as a Crew Chief and after passing these exams he was assigned to the Avro Vulcan XA908, at RAF Waddington.
Charles related the stories of the work he did when the Vulcan had hydraulic failure at Goose Green, the bombing competition in Florida where the aircraft suffered broken bomb bay doors and a cracked bomb aimers window, and the trip home from Bermuda with no fuel in one tank and a broken bogie beam.
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
02:21:37 audio recording
Beaufighter
C-47
fitter airframe
fitter engine
ground crew
ground personnel
Meteor
military discipline
military service conditions
RAF Boscombe Down
RAF Coningsby
RAF Finningley
RAF Halton
RAF Kirton in Lindsey
RAF Waddington
RAF Worksop
service vehicle
Spitfire
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/229/9017/PClarkeC1501.1.jpg
189d5ce3a7812235bcae6ebba1a974d7
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
Clarke, Charles Henry
Charles Henry Clarke
Charles H Clarke
Charles Clarke
Charles Henry Clarke
Charles H Clarke
C H Clarke
C Clarke
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. Three oral history interviews with Air Commodore Charles Henry Clarke OBE (1923 - 2019) and one photograph. Charles Clarke volunteered for the RAF when he was seventeen and flew operations as a bomb aimer with 619 Squadron from RAF Woodhall Spa. His aircraft was shot down on his 18th operation and he became a prisoner of war. He was held at Stalag Luft 3 and took part in the long march. After the war, he was posted to the Air Ministry for Aircraft Production, and then to the Middle East. He left the RAF as an Air Commodore in 1978. He later became the chairman of the Bomber Command Association.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-06
2016-06-02
2017-03-04
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Clarke, CH
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 Charles Henry Clarke. One
Description
An account of the resource
Charles volunteered for the RAF when he was 17 and trained as a bomb aimer at RAF North Luffenham. After qualifying, he was posted to 619 Squadron at RAF Woodhall Spa. He was shot down on his 18th operation and he became a prisoner of war. He talks about the conditions in the camp and on the Long March. He discusses his post war RAF career working in Palestine, Aden and Cyprus, his marriage and his work with the Bomber Command memorial.
In accordance with the conditions stipulated by the donor, this item is available only at the University of Lincoln.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-06
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Cathie Hewitt
Julie Williams
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AClarkeC150806
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
England--Rutland
Poland--Żagań
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:42:57 audio recording
619 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
bale out
bomb aimer
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
memorial
prisoner of war
RAF Dumfries
RAF North Luffenham
RAF Woodhall Spa
shot down
Stalag Luft 3
the long march
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/527/8761/PParkerWC1505.1.jpg
c3505c05e9a355683dcca5b157840db9
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/527/8761/AParkerC150717.2.mp3
d97fcfc78e20daf5ccec6adcaced305a
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
Parker, Charles
W Charles Parker
W C Parker
C Parker
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Parker, C
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flying Officer Charles Parker (195483 Royal Air Force). He flew operations with 128 and 163 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CP: W Charles Parker, Fast Night Striking Force of number 8 Group Pathfinders, Bomber Command. Ready?
Er, this paragraph is called “Crewing Up”. We, pilots and navigators, were interred in a rather large drill hall and told we had two hours to crew up. Now with Mosquitos, the crewing up, there’s only two of us and it’d be easier one would think than it is for a Lancaster with seven or maybe eight people. Er, at this particular time, it was in September ’43, and I was a very green twenty-one year old, not really knowing what was going to happen next, because I didn’t feel I could approach ‒, some of the pilots who were way over a thousand hours flying, complete with gongs, and I felt I had to wait for them to approach me. Some had already crewed up in their minds and were ready to say ‘yes.’ As far as I was concerned, I was a bit shy but I was quite surprised when somebody came up behind me and said, ‘I wonder whether you would risk your life with me, Sergeant?’ I turned round and it was Flight Lieutenant Patrick Duncan who, in fact, had an Air Force Cross already. I looked at his medal ribbon and thought, ‘this is the man for me’, and I never regretted that.
Er, I call this “De-Oxyenisation”. It happened on my twenty-first birthday and I spent the best part of that day, all morning and into the afternoon, trying to let the powers that be decide whether I could be fit to fly at high level in a Mosquito. The unfortunate part about it was that I knocked the oxygen tap off, and whether promptly or shortly, I passed out and they had to deoxyenise me, decompression chamber, to allow it to get down to normal level, and then we had to go through the whole episode again because of my stupidity. I think, for the uninitiated, I should say that whilst we were in the decompression chamber that the oxygen was withdrawn, and we were asked to write our full names and address. The point is that one never got to the last line of the address without looking as though you were drunk. Then comes my first episode with 1409 flight, which was the Met flight that went ahead of the main force and relayed the weather over the target. We happened to take off one evening, and when we were airborne which, and we always in a Mosquito, climbed on track, unlike the American Flying Fortress, which spent the best part of an hour and a half to get up to height before setting course. Anyway, there we were, listening, as we were getting near the coast, near Cromer, to the 6 o’clock news and suddenly, I saw another Mosquito heading straight for me, at the same level, and all I had time was to bang Pat on the shoulder and point, and this Mosquito of 1409 Met flight was within ten foot of colliding with us. Fortunately, we went down and the Met flight went up, but we found out afterwards which aircraft of 1409 it was, and we had a few words to say. My first operational flight would have been one of the German Ruhr targets, but because of weather being bad, we were cancelled for that night, and on our second night in the squadron, we were targeted for the big city, Berlin. Naturally, as you can understand, that as it was our first operational flight it was somewhat difficult to class our experience, and although there was quite a bit of flak around, we didn’t see any night fighters at all and we got back quite reasonably, and on the immediate briefing with the intelligence officer on the ground, we were de-briefed reasonably well with the exception of his query. ‘What was the flak like?’ Being completely honest fighters, we told him that it was the first flight and that therefore we didn’t know what we had to expect, and he said, ‘I see your point. I’ll tell you now that most of the crews have said the flak was medium’. So I said, ‘well, we’ll take their word for it. The flak was medium and we’ll know what to expect next time’.
The next episode is our thirteenth trip. I think all aircrew are somewhat superstitious and we weren’t really looking forward to flight number thirteen, which was also to the big city, Berlin, and whilst we were waiting for the aircraft to be bombed up with a four thousand pound cookie, it has to be wound up, as it were, on cables into the bomb bay of the Mosquito, and it was just about to bomb bay height when there was a clunk, and the four thousand pounder plonked down, nose first, on the ground. I stopped running after a hundred yards before I realised that it wasn’t any good running, because the cookie wasn’t actually armed at that particular moment. That comes after it’s fully loaded in the bomb bay. When I got back to the aircraft, it was decided that we would use the spare kite for the night, which was in the hangar. We got there and the officer IC night flights told me take a table in the shed and work out a new flight plan. At that particular moment, I didn’t think I was going to be asked to fly that night, but they were quite serious so away into the shed I had to go to work out a new flight plan, and the crux of the matter was, that even if I increased our cruising speed by five miles an hour, I still wouldn’t arrive over Berlin until at least ten minutes after all the others had left. This didn’t appeal to me at all, but within another five minutes the aircraft was ready. Pat turned round to me and said, ‘come on Charles, we’ll go’. I said, ‘not me’, so he said, ‘what do you mean?’ I said, ‘I don’t fancy being over the big city by myself for ten minutes’, so he said, ‘no, come on, we’ll go’. So I said, ‘not if I can help it’ [laugh]. ‘This is our thirteenth trip’. So I turned round to the night flying IC and said, ‘does this make sense? All by ourselves and the others all coming back. We’re just going out’. So he says, ‘no, I think we’d better scrub it for tonight’, so I said, ‘thank you, Sir’. Pat said to me, ‘come on Charles, we’re going’. I said, ‘no we’re not, the officer IC night flying said we don’t have to’, so I didn’t go that night. Whilst we talk about being over the big city, I think I might just as well say here and now that the flak over Berlin was heavier than most of the targets, mainly because it was bigger, but it was particularly brought to my notice that the way the searchlights operated over Berlin and, in this particular case, we noticed that parallel to us was a bright bluish white searchlight, which was tracking us about a mile away, and then all of a sudden, with a, like a swish, that one searchlight came over and it had us, radar controlled, as it were. And with that, all the other searchlights anywhere near landed on us as well, just following the this whitish searchlight. It was a good three to four minutes before we were able to escape.
The next episode is one I call “Our May Day or SOS Flight”. We were returning from one of the German targets, I can’t remember which one it was now, but we’d had quite a bit of engine trouble and it meant using one of the engines and closing down, feathering the other one, and when the first engine got a bit overheated we swapped them over. And this went on for quite a time, by which time we’d crossed over the Dutch coast, and I seemed to have the idea that we were over Grimsby Docks. God knows why, all I could see was what I thought was fisherwomen gutting the fish, which made me think of Grimsby, but I think I was suffering from lack of oxygen as well because it turned out that we were nowhere near Grimsby, we were a hundred miles south of track, over France. Having discovered approximately where we were, Pat then decided that we just didn’t have enough petrol, and he said, ‘I’m going to have to send out a May Day call, Charles, and you want to get ready, because I think you’ll be bailing out within the next five minutes’. Within that next five minutes, he called out, ‘May Day, May Day, May Day’ and we got an answer back, saying ‘we are putting searchlights up showing you where to head’, and with that, searchlights came up to the north and seemed to indicate the direction we should go, but by that time we were almost out of petrol and Pat called out, said, ‘we need immediate landing instructions because gravy is low, gravy is low’. This means, of course, that our petrol was spread out over all the tanks with very little left in any of them. These searchlights then meant that we were able to go straight in without doing an audit or anything, and it was just over Beachy Head and the aerodrome was no further than a mile to the north. It was a grass aerodrome we landed in, thank God. It turned out afterwards that there was about twelve gallons of petrol, spread over fifteen tanks, which meant there was, as far as aircraft are concerned, there was nothing in any of them. We went into flight control to see the chaps, give them details in there, and he said, ‘Oh well, if it’s just a question of loading up, we’ll give you sufficient to get back to, to Wyton and you’ll be able to go back there tonight’. So I said to Pat, ‘not if I know it, now I’ve got my feet on terra firma and that’s where they’re going to stay’, and it was a naval air station at the time and he was the equivalent of an Air Force squadron leader in charge, and he looked at me completely aghast, to think that a mere sergeant was arguing with a flight lieutenant, but we didn’t go back to ‒, even though Pat said that we had the day off tomorrow. I said, ‘Well I can’t help it, by the time we get back there in the morning, we’ll have the half a day off anyway’. He still couldn’t believe it, this naval officer [laugh]. This covered a light drinking session in the mess, er, having a few beers with fellow squadron people, and also with Tommy Broom, who was our navigation officer, Tommy Broom DFC and two bars, and we were just talking about things in general and Tommy said to me, ‘I suppose you think it’s about time you had a gong?’ To which I said, ‘well, no, I don’t think I’m due for a gong but I think Pat is.’ I said, ‘If it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t be here now.’ So he said, ‘so you think he should get a decoration?’ So I said, ‘Yes, I think so.’ To which he said, ‘well, I have to tell you that he has already been recommended for the DFC, but you’re not to tell him that yet. It’s just that I was taken unawares by your decoration’. So I said, ‘yeah’, and he said, ‘I suppose you don’t think you haven’t earned one either’. So I said, ‘well no, I’m only worried about Pat at the moment’. So he said, ‘well so long as you don’t tell anyone but’, he said, ‘you’ve also been recommended for the DFM and it will be possibly a couple of months before it actually is gazetted’. So I said, ‘well, thanks very much, I won’t say a word’.
This is a story which I never thought would happen but it refers to the time when we were orbiting Wyton Aerodrome before being called to land, and I noticed that Pat was having quite a struggle with the controls and things weren’t exactly smooth. He asked me if I could see anything untoward at the tail of the aircraft, and I noticed then what I thought was the tail ident light had come somewhat loose, and was whirling around as though it was a firework display. With that, Pat was struggling with the controls but he was determined to get the thing down in one piece, and when we hit the runway, the next thing I knew was we were off the concrete and onto the grass, and heading straight for the flying control tower. With that, we finally stopped no more than ten foot from the flying control building, and with that, all hell broke loose on the ground. There were people outside trying to undo the Mosquito to let us out, and as I was the first one to drop to the ground. I was grabbed by one of the ground control people, who seemed to think that I was panicking, but anyway I didn’t go any further. The inquest afterwards of course, was Ivor Broom saying that the episode was the second that he knew of and the first one, the crew didn’t survive. It turned out in the end that, sorry, it turned out in the end that it was the dinghy which was kept in the top aircraft, immediately behind the cabin had broken loose and blown up and wrapped itself round the tail plane, er, and it was wedged between that and the rudder horn. Nevertheless we were on the ground and it was safe.
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command Archives, I’d like to thank Charles Parker at his home at Willow Hill in Hoveton, for his recording on the 17th of the 7th 2015. Thank you very much.
CP: It was on another trip to the big city that the following occurred. We were just turned on to the final leg to the target, which was Berlin, when I realised that I could no longer hear Pat talking to me, and the realisation that I was no longer getting any oxygen through my mask, and then Pat came to the conclusion that the oxygen meter was reading “Nil”. I must have caught the oxygen meter tap with my Mae West as I struggled through to the nose. I then crawled out of the nose, gulping great mouthfuls of oxygen, and when Pat said, ‘are you going down there again?’ I answered, ‘that’s what we came here for’, and then we successfully completed the bombing run, with the cookie leaving the aircraft with an almighty clunk. One more escapade we were involved in was after we left Munich one night, I was rebuilding my folding navigation table to find my flight plan suddenly sucked off, and before I realised it, it had disappeared down the window chute into the wide blue yonder, complete with details of the various stages back to base. The only direction I could give Pat was to fly two hundred and ninety degrees until we hit the English coast, and in the meantime, I could only wonder what I should tell Tommy Broom, the squadron navigation officer, to explain the lack of my flight plan. I could only tell him the truth. The strange thing was that he fortunately believed me.
MJ: [unclear]
CP: It’s on now, is it?
MJ: Yeah, so what did you do?
CP: Well, first of all, I think it’s best to explain, the meaning of the word, “Window” was a code name for bundles of aluminium strips er, approximately a foot long by three or four inches in diameter, and they were covered with brown manila paper with a piece of string through the centre of the bundle back. on the outside of the brown paper and, when they were thrown out through the window chute in the floor of the aircraft, the brown paper was torn by the string and the thing fluttered down with a whole load of strips of aluminium, which were done ‒. The whole idea was to confuse the enemy radar. The Mosquito bomber was completely unarmed.
MJ: Yeah?
CP: In fact, I always used to joke, saying that the only method of armament was the pen knife that I had in the flying boots, which we intended to be used to split the top of the flying boot from the bottom to really facilitate the fact that they could be looking like a pair of shoes if one had to try and escape on the ground.
MJ: Yeah.
CP: We would be told to make feint attacks on various cities within Germany, just to wake them up and cause an hour’s bomber alarm. And then also there were occasions as well, with this window chute, you could carry a small empty beer bottle and drop that through, and it made a whistling sound like an extra bomb but it’s only a bottle.
MJ: Yeah, that’s clever.
CP: Yeah, it took a bit of time before I tried that because I was always frightened it might damage the Mosquito as it was going out, but that never happened. But plenty of empty beer bottles used to be slung out as well.
MJ: Recycling?
CP: Yeah. Well I was only a twenty-one year old, you know, so I mean, anything like that was appreciated. There was another occasion, you just reminded me on that. The Mosquito always used to carry a signal pistol in the roof of the plane and part of the ‒, when we did a night flying test, was to check the Very pistol was empty, and one particular occasion, in order make certain it was empty I found that the thing was actually armed, and rather than going through the task of finding out it was empty or not, and I stress that this was on the ground at dispersal, I pulled the trigger of the Very pistol and it went off with a bang and there was in fact a cartridge in there and er ‒. I was more worried because it pooped out, up in the air, did an arc, came down to the ground and landed on the wing of another Mosquito in a dispersal and luckily it sort of hit the wing and bounced off and petered out on the ground, but if it hadn’t been for the fact that my pilot was in fact the flight commander, I think I would have had a few more stories about pistols going off, so I got away with that one easily enough. Yes.
MJ: This is the end of the second part of the recording with Charles Parker. Thank you very much.
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 Charles Parker
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-17
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AParkerC150717
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
00:34:50 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Charles Parker was part of the Fast Night Striking Force of Number 8 Group, Pathfinder Squadron in Bomber Command, flying in Mosquitos.
He tells of ‘crewing up’ in September 1943 as a 21 year old, his near miss with a Mosquito from 1409 Met Flight, and an emergency landing near Beachy Head when his Mosquito nearly ran out of fuel when returning from Germany. Charles flew several operations to Berlin from RAF Wyton in Mosquitos and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Vivienne Tincombe
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
8 Group
anti-aircraft fire
bombing up
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Flying Medal
Mosquito
RAF Wyton
searchlight
superstition
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1072/11530/APetersC150428.1.mp3
4b4db26db9a98983d38ba4614e6d0b76
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
Peters, Cyril
Cyril Ebenezer Peters
C E Peters
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Cyril Peters DFC (1331907 Royal Air Force). He served as a flying instructor at the Advanced Flying Training School, RAF South Cerney and flew operations as a pilot with 77 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-04-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Peters, C
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MJ: This is an interview for the International Bomber Command Centre with —
CP: Flight lieutenant.
MJ: Flight Lieutenant Cyril Peters DFC.
CP: Air Force at Cambridge in 1940 when I was nineteen. I was attested, sworn in and given a number 1331907 and sent to Uxbridge for three days assessment training. At the end of my three days at Uxbridge I was informed that I was accepted as U/T aircrew and should wear a white flash in my forage cap. Initial training was done at Scarborough at Number 10 Initial Training Wing, living in the Grand Hotel which the RAF had requisitioned. Fifty two of us on the course for two months. At Scarborough we battled with navigation, instruments, air frames, engines, Morse code — sending and receiving eight or nine words per minute. Guns. I learned to take a machine gun apart to bits and put it back together again. Never ever fired on in anger but I could take one to bits. Air Force law. You name it we studied it as well as running up and down the hills at Scarborough with a full pack and rifle. Ostensibly to instil discipline into us. At the end of the course we were on parade outside the Grand Hotel in three ranks with our kit bags when were marched around to stores. We broke off in single file and walked to the stores and inside we were each given some extra kit which we stuffed in the top of our kit bags and kept our mouths shut. We had long since learned that if you opened your mouth to ask the simplest and most sensible of questions it was deemed you were challenging authority. You were charged with the offence and you would either get seven or fourteen days jankers. So we kept our mouth shut. We were trained from Scarborough.
[Telephone ringing.]
CP: Excuse me.
[Recording paused]
CP: We were trained from Scarborough and after a brief stop in Manchester we arrived at Gourock where we boarded the French liner the Louis Pasteur. In the very early ‘30s the Louis Pasteur had held the Blue Ribband for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic. She was a twenty five knot liner but how many hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of U/T aircrew were on the Louis Pasteur I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess. There were thousands on board. She was bursting at the seams. We steamed off into the North Sea with a cruiser ahead, a destroyer either side as escort and we belted across the North Sea like a dose of salts. In a matter of two and a half, three days we were berthed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, had been trained down to Toronto and after two weeks in Toronto were informed our flying training was to be done in America. In Arizona. At number 4 British Flying Training School. BFTS. A flight sergeant was put in charge and we were put on the train at Toronto for Chicago. When we reached Port Huron which, I think was the last station on the Canadian side the flight sergeant shouted out, ‘Get your civvies out and put them on and put your cap badge in your lapel so I shall know who you,’ so and so’s, ‘are.’ Being a flight sergeant in ‘41 I can assure you he wasn’t interested in so and so’s. His language was far more colourful. So I opened my kit bag and there on the top were civvies which we took out and put on and we put our cap badge in our lapel as chiefy had told us so knew who we so and so’s were. We had to enter America as civilians. The American government weren’t sticking their necks out by entertaining foreign troops in their country at all. We were civilians. When we arrived in Chicago, at the terminal in Chicago from Toronto the [pause] Chicago is like London. Once you go into one terminal and you need to go out in another direction you had to change terminals. The taxis that had been employed to transport us to the other terminal drove on the platform, up to within a foot of the carriage in which we were travelling. And I reckon, with luck I stepped one foot on the platform and with my kitbag I was in the taxi. And lined up in two rows just outside the taxis, the whole length of the platform, motorcycle police wheel to wheel. And as soon as we were all on board the taxis we drove through Chicago with a police escort either side. And when we reached the other terminal the same applied. The taxis drove on the platform to within a yard of the carriage in which we were to travel and again I reckon, with luck, I stepped one foot on the platform with my kit bag — I was in the carriage. And lined up, in two rows just outside of the taxis, the whole length of the platform, motorcycle police wheel to wheel. And as soon as we were all on board the train moved off. Very slickly organised. The train journey across America was three or four days. The train stopped every night at 6 o’clock for thirty minutes so we got out and wandered around. One of the drivers blew his hooter at twenty five past so you ran like a stag and made the train to clamber on because when he started at half past six you knew he wouldn’t stop until the next night at 6 o’clock. You had to be on board. We got off in Arizona at a town called Mesa. Mesa is situated about fifty miles due south of the capital, Phoenix and we were bussed ten to twelve miles out into the desert to 4 BFTS. We were classified as Number 4 course at 4 BFTS. Numbers 1, 2 and 3 had done their previous six, twelve and eighteen week training under the American Air Force at Thunderbird Field and they came in to 4 BFTS just before we arrived. When we arrived there was a hut for the sheriff, for his rifle and twin revolvers. There were four corner accommodation blocks over an area of desert. No paths. No tarmac. No nothing. Anywhere. There was a mess hut because they’d got to feed us and a control tower. That was it. Twelve rows of aeroplanes. Four rows of Harvards — the 86s, the advanced trainer. Four rows of Vultee — the intermediate trainer. And four rows of Stearmans — the primary trainer. And that’s it. This 4 BFTS was a private venture by Southwest Airways Incorporated. And boy oh boy did they ever get their fingers out. In a matter of three or four weeks the area inside the four corner accommodation blocks was grass. On it had been built a cadet lounge with easy chairs and magazines from England which we could enjoy if we had time from our studies. All the paths were laid. A parade ground had been put down. One hangar was completely built and the second was half way up. Considering that was a private venture they really got their fingers out. We started flying September 1941. Fifty two of us. On March the 13th 1942 — thirty two of us. Twenty had been scrubbed for lack of aptitude. We were on parade outside our accommodation block in three ranks. We were marched around to stores. We broke off in single file and walked to stores and inside we were each given a handful of sergeant’s stripes, a pair of wings, made to sign for them and told to bog off and sew them on. A most intriguing and surprising Wings Parade. And the next day we left Mesa for Chicago, Canada and home. Pearl Harbour had occurred early December ’41. From this time America were in an emergency and we were allowed to wear uniform the whole time. In camp, out of camp, anytime. So we were coming back to Chicago in uniform. And boy oh boy what a difference that kick up the backside had made to the Chicagoans. A more friendly, likeable, pleasurable people it would have been difficult to meet. Had I accepted all the two hundred packets of Camels and Lucky Strikes I’d been offered I should have needed a trailer to have towed them in. Very generous. Very warm. Very friendly. We enjoyed, we walked, we enjoyed our walk through to the other terminal. We were, we left Chicago and we were trained in to Canada. To Moncton. And at Moncton we boarded the steamship Banfora. SS Banfora. A pre-war cattle ship. And I say this quite simply because a contingent of the Canadian army marched on the Banfora to come with us to the UK and join their compatriots and with fifteen minutes they walked off. You could stuff it. They certainly weren’t going to travel on such rubbish accommodation, not on your nelly. It didn’t matter to the powers that be. They merely filled it with aircrew. They knew we daren’t mutiny. If we did we would either be shot or clapped in jail. And so we came home in convoy, on the Banfora, a pre-war cattle ship. The American instructors had recommended me for single engine day fighters. Spits and Hurris which is what I wanted. When I got back to the UK the lords at the Air Ministry decided my single engine aeroplanes should be a Tiger Moth and a Magister. I was sent to Number 6 Flying Instructor’s School operating at Scone near Perth in Scotland and within two months I was a qualified flying instructor to teach basic exercises to solo standard. Not to wing standard. Just to solo standard. So we taught straight and level flying, medium turns left and right, gliding turns left and right, climbing turns left and right, take offs and landings and taxiing control on the ground. That was all. And I had eight students. Four in the morning. Four in the afternoon. And detailed to fly five hours every day. The locals at Scone had convinced us that the only way to enjoy their honey was to drink it neat and chase it with a half pint of beer, a whisky beer chaser. And I could buy a whisky beer chaser in Scone mess for eight old pence. That’s just over tuppence in modern parlance. And I was sure, when it came time to my posting from the flying school there was nowhere in England where I could buy a whisky beer chaser for eight old pence so I elected to stay at Scone. I did my first year or so at Scone. It was July the 13th ’43 when I received the King’s pleasure — was appointed to a King’s Commission and posted to 11 EFTS – to 9 EFTS operating at Ansty near Coventry. I arrived at Ansty, reported to my boss, the wing commander flying. He didn’t want me at Ansty. His four flights were full but his two flights at his satellite at Southam needed instructors so I was sent to Southam. I got to Southam and I reported to the CO. The flight lieutenant. He said to me, ‘Here at Southam we’ve got twenty Tiger Moths. Bowsers to feed them. If you want a bed tonight to lay your head on you’d better get in to Southam and find one. If not – hard luck.’ So I pulled into Southam and I got digs with an elderly widow, Mrs Paxton who had living with her her nephew Ted. Ted was a very highly skilled motor mechanic who for years had been servicing all the police vehicles in the area and the police were determined not to lose him. So they made him a war reserve copper which kept him there all the war to do their servicing. To get from Ansty, from Southam dead across country to the village where I was born, Gamlingay which was between Biggleswade and St Neots on the A1, a little bit east of that, if it was a short leave I barely got to Gamlingay in time to turn around and come back. And I said to Ted, ‘I’d better buy myself a vehicle.’ So he said, ‘Well if you go along to the local garage they’ve got two.’ So I went along and they had a 1929 Austin 7 with a part fabric body, reconditioned engine – ten pounds. They had a 1931 Austin 7 with a non-reconditioned engine – five pounds. I knew that my, that the fuel on my vehicle would have would always be at least fifty percent paraffin so I opted for the non-reconditioned engine. Five pounds. Registration number HX 4819. She smoked well but by God she went well. I kept her and a year later when I’d been posted to Yorkshire I sold her for a tenner. So she did me proud did old HX 4819. The Rolls Royce works at Ansty had been completing the building of the Mosquito aircraft before flight testing them and delivering them to squadrons for operational use. And it was quite obvious in very early spring of ’44 that Mosquitoes were far more urgently required than pilots because snap you fingers over night the EFTS was shut down. There wasn’t a Tiger Moth in the vicinity and twenty of us pilots had been posted to an Advanced Flying Unit at South Cerney near Cirencester in Gloucester flying the twin-engined Airspeed Oxford for eighty hours. So we got out but on the bomber trail not the fighter. After AFU the next stage was OTU. Kinloss, the satellite at Forres. Forres, the satellite of Kinloss had just emptied its crews out to the next stage of training so a whole batch of us were posted in to fill it up again. Here we were to fly the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley, the old flying coffin. Flat out, nose down, one twenty indicated if you were lucky. A pre-war bomber. Ye Gods. The second day at Forres we were detailed to report to a large briefing room. Inside were every aircrew trade. Pilots, navs, bombs, wops, gunners. No engineers. We didn’t need engineers on the Whitley. And here we crewed up and I started picking my crew. I saw a pilot officer bomb aimer, six foot three, built like a tank. And I thought Ye Gods what a great asset he’d be if later on you were at a local pub and got in a fix. So I went over to him and I said, ‘You’ve got yourself a skipper. I’m Pete.’ He said, ‘I’m Cliff. Cliff Lamb. And I know a navigator.’ I said, ‘Dig him out.’ So we dived in the motley throng and he dug out a five foot, a pilot officer navigator. Five foot nothing. Slim as a bean pole. Pilot Officer J E E Viella. John Viella. Black hair, black eyes. I said, ‘Ok John. You’ve got yourself a skipper. I’m Pete. What cooks?’ ‘Father ran from Mussolini in the early ‘30s to London. I’ve done all my schooling in London. I’m in my second year of accountancy and I’ve joined the air force. How long have you been flying?’ Which rather took me aback. I said, ‘Since 1941.’ ‘How many hours have you done?’ ‘I don’t know. Twelve, thirteen hundred.’ ‘Well we’d better get ourselves a couple of gunners and a W/op.’ He thought I’d just transferred trades and I would have what anyone normally through the trade would be. About two hundred and fifty hours. I’d been kicking around a bit longer. The three of us saw a gunner on his own by the side of the room holding a bottle and we three agreed anybody holding a bottle, irrespective of what was in it, was recommending himself. So we went over to him and said, ‘You’ve got yourself a crew. I’m Pete. The skipper.’ He said ‘I’m Sergeant GWC Jack from Grantown on Spey. I’m nineteen and I’m a rear gunner.’ We said, ‘Smashing job, you’re in.’ He said, ‘I know a mid-upper and a W/op.’ We said, ‘Go and dig him out.’ So he went and dug out Sergeant Haines, a mid-upper. Sergeant Will the W/op. We had a full crew. Our work on the Whitley was eighty hours. Usually in six, roughly six hour cross country’s day or night. On each cross country there’d be some bombing practice for the bomb aimer and some gunnery practice for the gunners. We had trouble with our wireless op. On every trip after an hour, after two hours he pronounced his radio unserviceable. Took it to bits and spread all the bits over [coughs] sorry.
[recording paused]
CP: And he took his radio to bits and spread it over the floor of the Whitley which meant that from that time the navigator never ever received any help from the radio for his navigation. Thank the lord he was an ace. Give John a minute with his sextant on the sun, moon, any star. He knew all the constellations. Betelgeuse. Cassiopeia. I got an exact fix. Never ever on any operation day or night was I ever off course. Which is why I’m alive today and talking to you in my nineties. He was brilliant without a shadow of a doubt. This culminated in the last trip. We’d landed. We were in dispersal doing our rundown checks and switching off. And I called to Will, ‘Get your things together, pack your bags and bog off. You’re out.’ And his great chum, the mid-upper, Haines said, ‘I’ll go with him.’ Now, when you get rid of two bits of dead wood from your crew at the drop of a hat there’s only one reason. Old Lady Luck is firmly on your shoulders, and she’s been there ever since. We were posted to an Advanced Flying Unit – Marston Moor, where they were flying the four-engined Halifax Mark 2 and Mark 5. Fifty hours. We picked up our engineer, Sergeant Ted Millington. We had, at the end of our six we were posted to 77 Squadron operating at full Sutton on the Halifax. Full Sutton is near Elvington. We arrived at Full Sutton and when you get [pause] — ages, I was twenty three. The navigator John and the engineer Ted were twenty two. Jock in the tail was nineteen. We managed to pick ourselves up a spare wireless op, Ross, Ross Tinian. A flight sergeant. Ross and Cliff, the bomb aimer they were both old men. They were twenty eight. They were old geezers. So we had a crew without a mid-upper gunner but when we got to a squadron every time I operated I had either Flying Officer Harris as my mid-upper or Flying Officer Davis. Davis was an Aussie. And I was lucky. Everytime they either flew with me. On the two occasions when I didn’t have Harris then I had Davis. So I was very lucky. Once you get to a squadron you’re converted to their aircraft and they were flying the Halifax Mark 3 with radials. And the difference between the Mark 2 and 5 and a Mark 3 was phenomenal. I could get a Mark 3 with a full bomb and fuel load up to twenty thousand plus without any trouble at all. I would have been poorly placed to have got a Mark 2 or a 5 up beyond twelve, fourteen thousand feet, without a shadow of doubt. The difference was quite remarkable. After you’re converted you’re detailed to fly second pilot with an experienced crew and I flew with Flight Lieutenant Taylor and his crew. A night operation to the Ruhr, to Essen — six and a half hours. It was Flight Lieutenant Taylor’s twenty ninth trip so he’d got one more to do before he got a fresh job. Then I was detailed to fly with Flying Officer Charlesworth. Again to the Ruhr. A night trip. Six and a half hours to Duisburg. It was Charlesworth’s fifteenth trip so he’d got fifteen more to do before he got a fresh job. And then I was as free as the air to operate with my own crew. And the first target we bombed was Bingen. Bingen was a town way, way south on the Rhine. Its claim to notoriety was the fact it had fairly extensive marshalling yards. And through those marshalling yards regularly, numerous times weekly, came troop trains loaded with reinforcements from Austria and from Munich for the German front line. And a hundred and five of us were sent out this night cock up the contract. Pick off the marshalling yards and apparently intelligence found out for us afterwards we’d done a good job because no more [laughs] no more troop trains ever came through Bingen from then on. At the end of that trip we were in dispersal doing rundown checks and switching it off and I said to myself, ‘Pete if that was an indication of what you’re tour is going to be like. You’ve got it made. You’re going to make this.’ I’d seen little, no flak on the way in to the target, over the target, out from the target. On the way home we hadn’t been molested or searched for or shot at. It had been a piece of doddle. You get stupid thoughts when you’re twenty three and in charge of a bomber don’t you? I’d like now to give you this map. And this was an actual map of a trip that I did on my eighth trip on my tour to an oil refinery in between Bohlen and Dresden and Leipzig. In the Dresden area between Leipzig and Chemnitz. Our boss, Bomber Harris insisted concentrated bombing was vital. He insisted concentrated bombing often swamped defences and once you got defences swamped then the middle and end of an attack could be as accurate as the opening. If you’re going to swamp, if you are going, and four hundred of us were detailed to bomb Bohlen this night. The four hundred of us would go through. The first hundred at seventeen thousand feet. Five minutes. The second hundred, eighteen thousand feet. Five minutes. The third hundred, nineteen thousand feet five minutes. And the rest twenty thousand five minutes. Twenty minutes — the job’s done. Two thousand tonnes of bombs on the ground. When you think that the Germans, the most weight of bombing they dropped on us was three or four hundred tons, you can understand two thousand just swamps them. They had nothing to fight against it at all. And we thought this was smashing. We thought Bomber Harris deserved a pat on the back for that. We thought that was smashing. If you’re going to control your area you’ve got to, if you’re going to concentrate them you’ve got to control them and so Bomber Command laid down the route we were to fly and I must admit considerable thought had been given to these routes that they gave us. We were detailed this night to leave base at nine thousand feet and we left there at nine thousand feet. Flying due south to Reading at one seven five. When we were going to this part of Germany we always turned over Reading. It gave the locals a morale booster if they heard four or five hundred bombers going out. They’d think, ‘By crikey somebody’s getting their backside kicked tonight. We hope the boys come back.’ We hoped we all came back too. From Reading we turned south easterly and we flew over the English coast at C, the French coast at D, to position E. From E we flew due, roughly due easterly to F. Still at 175. Now if you can continue that line from E to F straight on with your fingers it’s making for Frankfurt, Mannheim, Mainz. So if you’re defending Germany and you’ve picked up the stream you think that’s the target and you can get your night fighters up around. Once we get the night fighters up they could only be up two hours and then they had to go home for a drink. We’re going to be four hours to the target and four hours back again. So it’s good if we can get them up. But long before we get anywhere near Frankfurt, Mannheim, Mainz we turn north easterly to G. Now, on this leg we change from 160 [pause] from 175 to 160 so we’re climbing. We’re climbing to bombing height and so you can say I’m at seventeen thousand feet before I get to G. And G is actually just about, if you move it with your finger is going for Kassel. Fresh target. Before we get anywhere near Kassel at G we turn a little bit more to the east to H. Still at 160. But if you follow a route from G to H with your fingers it’s making for Leipzig. Fresh target. And this was how it was done. To fool up the German defences. We’re changing. We’re going to — because after H we turn north easterly and we’re actually making for Berlin. And he were always dodgy about Berlin. But long before we got anywhere near Berlin at I we turned just below due east and to J. And here we’re just north of Leipzig so that there’s no danger and then we turn on our bombing run to K. At 160, Cliff, the bomb aimer sat in the seat on my right all the trip until we got to the target area when he slid down, went to the nose of the aeroplane. Got his bomb sight ready. And his job now — he had, two jobs, two things. First to identify the target. He’d seen stacks of photographs and pictures of the target at main briefing and the wing commander had given tremendous insight into it. He now had to select it on the ground and pick it out. Once he’d got it picked out then he had to make sure it crossed his bomb sight on the centre line to the aiming point when he pressed the button. Bombs gone. As the skipper, once you heard, ‘Bombs gone,’ your natural inclination was to shove on full power and belt the hell out of there. But that wasn’t possible because when he, when he pressed the button, bombs gone he activated the camera and the camera took five pictures one after the other across the target in thirty seconds. During those thirty seconds you were allowed to increase your speed by ten. That was a big morale booster I can assure you. Once you got an indication from your dash that the camera had finished then it was full power up to two hundred and belt the hell out of there. Once we left the target our speed is now two ten and after five minutes from the target we’d lower height to seven thousand feet. And we fly back over Germany at seven thousand feet until we come to Frankfurt, Mannheim, Mainz where there’s light flak to twelve so we climb up to fourteen. Keep at fourteen until we’re well clear and then we let down to eight thousand feet. And we fly at eight thousand feet via Reading back to the Humber. At the Humber we let down to two thousand feet and join Full Sutton and land. My trip was a little bit different. We set course at nine thousand feet for Reading. We turned across the English coast at C, the French coast at D, to position E. From E we flew to F at one seven five. From F we got our climbing one sixty. And at seventeen thousand feet we level. And after G the starboard inner engine decided to pack up. There was no flak. No night fighters. It was a pure mechanical failure. So it was switch off, fuel off, feather the prop. Speed now back to one forty and I needed left rudder to keep straight. I now had the option of coming back. Dropping down four thousand feet, turning one eighty degrees and coming home on my tod with a full bomb load. I hadn’t got a full petrol load. Of the just under two thousand gallons I started with I’d probably used up three fifty, four hundred but I’d still got sixteen hundred gallons left which was a lot of fuel. If they couldn’t pick me up to predict me they’d alerted a couple of fighters to come up and shoot me down. So I said to the crew, ‘I suggest we stay with the stream, using them for cover.’ When there are four hundred of you every radar screen is covered on the ground. Swamped. And instead of bombing at H plus 4 which was my time on target we’d bomb at H plus twenty at the end of the attack. And instead of bombing at seventeen thousand feet we’d bomb at fourteen thousand feet. And the crew said, ‘Ok skip. Press on.’ Whenever I’d done practice flying at Full Sutton at two and three engines it had been in the Halifax with a couple of hours of fuel on board. The boys don’t fully bomb up and fully tank up an aeroplane for you to go and play with obviously. So I’d never flown one under this configuration at this height and I boobed. Instead of getting there at H plus twenty we were twenty minutes late. We got there nearer H plus forty. But our boss’s theory was right. Defences had been swamped. If there were a half a dozen gunners firing at us that was all. And that was in scare mongering. Cliff picked to go on the ground and bombed it. We took our five pictures. No question of changing speed. I was stuck at one forty and so we turned away and when we came to let down to seven thousand feet we were still at one forty. I remembered that when we were bombing the North German ports Wilhelmshaven, who were Hamburg. We had crossed the North Sea at five hundred feet above the water. When you’ve got three or four hundred bombers, each with four fans whipping around flying at five hundred feet the prop wash is a bit disturbing. So you thanked the lord when you got near the Frisian Islands and you climbed up to bombing height and stayed there. So I thought if we stayed under bombing height like that it might be an idea to go down lower than seven thousand feet. And I went down to four thousand feet. And I must admit the whole way back even through Frankfurt, Mannheim, Mainz nobody fired a gun at us. We were completely clear the whole time. We stayed on the course that they’d laid, command had laid down for us and we were probably in the Frankfurt, Mannheim, Mainz area when the starboard outer, I presume it had been keeping watch on the starboard inner all night thinking Ye Gods he has had a night off. I’ve worked my socks off for this driver. I’m fed up. I’m going to pack up but to let him know I’m going to pack up I’ll make sure there’s a slight explosion and a sheet of flame from the starboard outer which there was. And the driver recognised it was going to pack up so it was switch off, fuel off, feather the prop and I pressed the graviner button. I’d got four graviner buttons. One for each engine. And it flooded the engine with foam which I hoped would douse all flames and it did. Speed was now back to one thirty and I’d got on full left rudder. My left knee locked. That was one improbable out of the way and I controlled the attitude of the aeroplane with power. If I put on too much power the strength of the engines rolled me and turned me to the right. If I took off too much power I rolled and turned to the left. So it was a case of juggling. We ran into cloud. Clouds are very handy. You can hide in it. We knew night fighters were around but this cloud contained icing to the extent that I was rather concerned if we stayed in it indefinitely the build up might be awkward. So we had to get out of it. To go below it might be a problem because it could be on the ground. So it was a case of climbing out of it. To climb I needed power. So it was a case increasing power very slightly so that I could still keep the wings level and keep straight and wait. Wait for my slight increase of power to give me a slight increase of speed, five and whip that five into height ten feet and wait for my five. Another ten feet. There was no panic. We were three seventy, three hundred and seventy five four hundred miles to England, it would take me a good two and a half hours at least to get there so there so was no hurry. And we uched, jigged, gripped our way up to six thousand five hundred feet. We were clear of cloud and I reckoned six five would be ok to cross the drink to UK. So we levelled at six five. I now checked with the nav, with Johnny. I was a bit concerned at the time we’d taken to uch up to six. And he confirmed what I thought, we were nearing the front line. This thought was under the auspices of the trigger happy American gunners and our own gunners, neither of whom liked aero engines. They shot, the American gunners shot them out of the sky irrespective of whose they were. Our own gunners were a bit more selective. So I called the W/op and said, ‘Break the seal on the IFF and switch it to distress.’ In his compartment he had a six inch square back box. The IFF. Identification Friend or Foe. It had a switch that was off, that was wired off and on the wire was a seal. And the wireless ops were warned by the signals leaders back at Full Sutton that if on any trip they interfered with that seal on the strip they’d be court martialled. But this was an emergency. Ross broke the seal, switched it on and immediately, way on the port horizon came three airfield sandra lights. The searchlights at the corner of the airfield intertwining. And on the starboard horizon three more. These were two emergency airfields. That was Woodbridge in Suffolk and that was Manston in Kent. They had picked up our emergency drill and lit themselves up. I made for Manston. When I reached Manston I did the circuit. When I was nicely placed on base leg I throttle back, did a glide approach and landing on the amber runway. Once we were on the ground I used my inner engine to get me through the red runway on to the peri track when I stopped and switched off. Waited for a tractor to come and hook on and tow us in, which they did. They picked us up, took us, debriefed, fed us, bedded. Sleeping in full flying kit that night I think we kept warm. They got us up in the morning. Fed us. Gave us a warrant to London, across to Kings Cross and up to York. And when we walked on the platform at Kings Cross station of the York train we had a bit of a snozzle. The very first compartment we came to, there was no corridor, had a great big notice filling one window completely — “Reserved for crashed aircrew.” And this got the billy goat of our rear gunner. He snatched the door open, ripped it off the window and tore it to shreds and threw it down. ‘What the hell are they talking about? We haven’t had a crash landing. We made a normal landing. Get their facts right.’ ‘It doesn’t matter Jock. We’ve got a compartment. Let’s get in.’ We were all carrying our parachutes. When you’d signed for your parachute you didn’t leave it out of your sight. If you didn’t hand it back in it could cost you sixty or seventy quid to replace and that was a lot of money then. We were carrying — we were in full flying kit. We got in, dumped our stuff, got to York and we were picked up. Taken to Full Sutton. When we reached full Sutton my immediate boss, the wing commander flying, wanted a full report of our sortie which I gave him. And three weeks later I was in the mess and I picked up the Daily Mail, and on the, on the front page were headlines, “Two engines failed but he went on.” And when I saw it I thought well goodness me some other geezer’s having a bash at this. But reading the article it was talking of Flight Lieutenant Peters and his trip over Germany. And some three weeks later I was called in to the CO’s office of group captains. Inside was our AOC, the group captain and my immediate boss Wing Commander Forbes. And the AOC pinned a bit of this ribbon under my wings, congratulated me and wished me a safe and satisfactory tour as did the group captain and Wing Commander Forbes. And that was it. Many many many many many many many months later my Distinguished Flying Cross arrived by post with an apologetic letter from the king. He was sorry he couldn’t hand it to me personally. He was far too busy. Probably handing out awards to sportsmen. Anyway, he sent it by post and he wished me a long and happy life. And considering I’m now in my ninety fourth year and still pressing on he was right.
[recording paused]
After leaving the air force I went into teaching. I taught until 1952 when I returned to flying with air work at Royal Air Force Digby flying the Tiger Moth. After a year flying Tiger Moths I returned to the air force in which I served for fifteen years. Finishing at Royal Air Force College, Cranwell. I then returned to education in Sleaford and finished up my education in ’86 when I retired and I’ve been retired ever since.
MJ: This is the end of the interview with Flight Lieutenant Cyril Peters DFC on the 29th at 12:30.
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 Cyril Peters
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-04-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
APetersC150428
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Pending OH summary
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:44:32 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Cyril Peters joined the Royal Air Force at Cambridge in 1940 and trained as a pilot in Canada and the United States. On his return to Great Britain he served as an instructor before flying operations as a pilot with 77 Squadron. He became a teacher after the war.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Great Britain
Germany
United States
England--Kent
England--Yorkshire
Arizona--Phoenix
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bingen (Rhineland-Palatinate)
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Essen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
New Brunswick--Moncton
Nova Scotia--Halifax
Arizona
New Brunswick
Nova Scotia
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
4 BFTS
77 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
British Flying Training School Program
Distinguished Flying Cross
Flying Training School
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Halifax Mk 3
Halifax Mk 5
Harvard
Initial Training Wing
military service conditions
Oxford
pilot
RAF Ansty
RAF Elvington
RAF Full Sutton
RAF Manston
RAF Marston Moor
Tiger Moth
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/476/8358/PBrettDT1501.2.jpg
118e663bc5324bf07e5a67487e6467b1
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/476/8358/ABrettD150522.2.mp3
81384cf913618625f74e822cf9a8f9c1
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
Brett, Dennis
Dennis T Brett
D T Brett
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Brett, DT
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. An oral history interview with Dennis Brett (b. 1924) and four photographs. He served as an air frame mechanic at RAF Carnaby.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Dennis Brett and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-22
2015-07-20
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
MJ: It’s on.
DTB: Dennis T Brett. Born 4 9 24. RAF service 12 11 42 to 5 3 47. Tested and found to have mechanical ability and so trained as a flight mechanic airframe at RAF Locking. Served mainly in Yorkshire at Driffield on Martinets. Leconfield, Lissett, Holme on Spalding Moor and Carnaby. Carnaby -
[machine pause]
MJ: Go on.
DTB: Carnaby was used for emergency landings along with two others, Woodbridge and Manston. They were known colloquially as crash ‘dromes. A wide variety of English and American aircraft was seen at Carnaby and on very foggy nights FIDO was in operation. Soon after the war ended I was taken on a low level flight in a Halifax to see the extent of damage inflicted on German cities by aircraft of Bomber Command. My last six months of service was spent in Italy, Egypt and Palestine with a Dakota squadron of Transport Command. Right. In wartime Britain there were three emergency landing grounds a little inland from the east coast. They were Manson, Woodbridge and, in the north, Carnaby, about three miles from Bridlington in Yorkshire. Their purpose was to allow damaged aircraft, sometimes with injured crew, to land if necessary without warning. To facilitate this the runways were large. Carnaby’s being three miles long and three runways wide. The soft bituminous surface was to minimise friction caused by a rough landing. When I arrived [pause] we saw and serviced a variety of aircraft. English and American. Can you put that off?
[machine pause]
We saw and serviced a variety of aircraft. English and American. The US crews were not noted for their navigational skills. I recall seeing the three twin-engined Whirlwinds the crew of which seemed to be lost. One pilot remarked, ‘We thought we were in North Devon.’ When a damaged aircraft landed our fire crews rushed to extinguish any flames. The armourers checked for bombs and guns. And the riggers took, looked for any physical damage to the aircraft and then towed the aircraft away to dispersal. We were puzzled one night when after landing safely the crew got out of the aircraft and ran. They soon told us that there was a long delay fused bomb on board likely to explode at any moment. It was the armourers of course who had to be there to defuse the bomb before other workers were allowed near the aircraft. Can we?
[machine paused]
Sometimes I was on special night duty all alone in a small hut at one end of the runway. This was more than a mile away from the control tower. My bed was two or three feet away from an electrical installation which bore the warning, “Danger 11000 volts.” We were always ready to receive aircraft but on bombing nights we were especially alert. I’m sorry.
[machine paused]
My job was then to operate the lighting system. On receiving an order from the control tower I would pull a switch to turn on the sodium funnel lights. These were spaced in a narrowing V shape embedded near the foot of the runway and were a guide for aircraft approaching to land. The lights were arranged in the shape of a funnel. In bad weather and when many aircraft were expected the order would be given to ‘strike arc’ and I then had to pull a switch to activate the searchlight system. Searchlights were positioned, one each side of the runway, at its entrance. They were angled towards each other to form a cross so that incoming aircraft could enter through the triangular shape below the cross. Bad weather was a great danger to airmen returning tired and cold from a raid lasting eight or more hours. Fog was a major problem. As a counter measure a system of pipework called FIDO, Fog Instantaneous Dispersal Operation had been installed along each side of the runway. In operation, petrol was pumped through the holes in the pipework, then ignited to produce flames several feet high. This was meant to clear the fog and it probably did so but at the time I thought its great value was that the flames could be seen by pilots trying to land. In such circumstances a successful landing was a tremendous relief for the aircrew. This might seem far-fetched but I was a personal witness to a memorable incident when a Lancaster had come in to a halt the crew got out and some of them actually kissed the ground. Reminders of the darker side of war were frequent. Crash landings were a common sight. A faulty undercarriage was usually the cause and the result was what we called a belly landing. Some aircraft burst into flames when landing. Others were already on fire as they approached. The sight of a red gun turret is one that I cannot forget. Even our medical officer was seen to turn pale sometimes. But there was also a lighter side to life at Carnaby. Sometimes a bad landing would cause an aircraft to bounce not just once but in a continuing series from which the pilot could not escape until the laws of physics allowed. We called this a kangaroo landing. The Yorkshire winter was harsh. One night the wind caused my eyes to water and the intense cold froze my tears so that I could not open my eyes. This was only momentary and a good rub was all that was needed to solve the problem. The snow lay thick everywhere and this emboldened the local rats to come rather too close to our hut. We shot at them with our sten guns but I doubt whether we hit any.
[machine paused]
Our commanding officer was a very experienced pilot who was known to have seen much action in the war. His free and easy manner was in direct contrast to the usual strictly authoritarian attitude of the administrators. He would sometimes sit outside the control tower with his legs dangling through the railings swinging them to and fro. In this way he was exhibiting his persona for all to see. I happened to be on duty when he decided to take a Sunday afternoon trip with his young son. After I’d pulled away the chocks and motioned him out he asked me if I would like to come too and I gladly agreed. One fine day I noticed a large number of, to me, unidentified aircraft all flying eastwards. They were not in any kind of formation. They were towing gliders. These gliders were at a certain angle to my vision so that only one wing was visible. A strange sight. It soon became obvious to us that the invasion of Normandy had begun. The gliders were, I believe, Horsas and the planes were DC3, better known as Dakotas. I was soon to become much more familiar with them when I was transferred to a Dakota squadron. At the end of the war I was invited to go up in a Halifax to retrace some of the routes our bombers had taken and to witness the devastation. We flew low over a number of cities including Rotterdam which had been bombed by the Germans and battle areas such as Arnhem and Aachen. Our pilot was on a high, in high spirits after the ending of hostilities. He would approach a city from a certain height and dive bomb it at an angle of about forty five degrees. Then over the city he would pull up sharply out of the dive. This continuing sensation was too much for me and I was physically sick for most of the flight home and my muscles ached for a week afterwards. I still have a reluctance to fly though I had to do so in 1981 when I was seconded to the City University of New York. To my regret the airline did not provide a parachute. Large four-engined, large four-engined aircraft such as the Stirling, Halifax, Lancaster and Fortress were designed for level flight not aerobatics and for a Halifax to be flown in such a vigorous way says much for the strength and construction of this, this aircraft. My experience at Carnaby remained long in my memory. Forty years later I would sometimes wake up in the night. In my dream a large four-engined bomber coming in towards me to crash land.
[machine paused]
Well my elder brother was in Coastal Command and used to fly as the wireless operator rear gunner in a Beaufort and I think it was in 1942 when the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau German battleships made a dash through the channel. He was engaged in torpedoing the Scharnhorst but in the process he was badly wounded and received shrapnel in various parts of the body and face and managed to survive. The gun turret was badly damaged and for this service he was awarded the mention in dispatches. I think that’s all that can be said there.
MJ: What was your actual job in the RAF?
DTB: Well I was what was known as a flight mechanic airframe otherwise known as a rigger and we were responsible for the whole of the aircraft physically other than the engine and the guns. And we had daily inspections for which we had to sign from the safety point of view. We had to check brakes, hydraulics, the movement of the flaps, rudder, elevators and of course petrol filling and so on and we had to make body work repairs where necessary.
MJ: How did you do that?
DTB: Whether it, well on early aircraft it would be on [pause] covered in, the early aircraft, I think the wimpy as well was covered in cloth. Muslin or, not muslin, no. Irish linen and we learned how to make a repair for that. On most of the aircraft they were metal and we had to make a hole and rivet all around it and patch them in that way but that was it. The whole of the aircraft had to be inspected and many points inspected and then signed for for the safety of the pilot. The Lancaster which was the best. It was the fastest and could carry the heaviest bomb load. The Halifax was next and then the other one. I can’t remember the name of it you know.
MJ: Yeah. I can’t remember exactly what one it is but I know which one you mean so, yeah.
DTB: But of course, you know there are other aircraft as well. The Mosquito was the fastest aircraft in that war and it was a bomber and it was a fighter bomber.
MJ: Yeah. Didn’t they take off from the airports with the flame?
DTB: No. It wasn’t a biplane. No.
MJ: No. No. They used to take off in the fog didn’t they?
DTB: There were Swordfish in the early days, I think the Swordfish was in that battle with the Scharnhorst as well as the Beauforts.
MJ: Yeah.
DTB: Well there we are.
MJ: Here’s the end of the interview with Dennis Brett at Ruskington. The International Bomber Command would like to thank him for his recording on the date of the 22nd of May 2015. Thank you very much.
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 Dennis Brett
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-22
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABrettD150522, PBrettDT1501
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
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Description
An account of the resource
Dennis was born in 1924 and joined the Royal Air Force in November 1942. He trained as a flight mechanic airframe at RAF Locking and was responsible for the whole of the aircraft, apart from the engines and the guns. Dennis explained the emergency landing grounds at RAF Manston, RAF Woodbridge and RAF Carnaby, which were wider to allow damaged aircraft to land safely. His last six months of service were spent in Italy, Egypt and Palestine with a C-47 squadron of Transport Command.
Sometimes Dennis was on special night duty alone in a hut a mile away from the control tower. His job was to operate the lighting system on receiving an order from the control tower. He referred to a memorable incident when a Lancaster landed safely and some of the crew kissed the ground.
When the invasion of Normandy began Dennis was transferred to a C-47 squadron. At the end of the war he went up in a Halifax to retrace some of the routes the bombers had taken and to witness the devastation. He left the RAF in 1947. In 1981 Dennis was seconded to the City University of New York.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
United States
Egypt
Italy
Middle East
England--Kent
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
England--Somerset
New York (State)--New York
New York (State)
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:18:19 audio recording
bombing
C-47
control tower
Cook’s tour
FIDO
fitter airframe
flight mechanic
ground crew
Halifax
Lancaster
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
RAF Carnaby
RAF Locking
RAF Manston
RAF Woodbridge
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/594/8863/PLarardFN1502.2.jpg
e95a36a7c631065f2b5836292bde8c1f
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/594/8863/ALarardFN150717.1.mp3
11a9ba24d46253d20de78474d04f6b7b
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
Larard, F N
Larry Larard
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Larard, FN
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant F N Larard DFM (183900 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a rear gunner with 625 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MJ: Now. It’s on. It’s ok.
LFNL: When I was on the reserve I was called to London and took a mathematics exam. Having passed the mathematics exam I had a medical examination and I was assessed as PNB, pilot, navigator, bomb aimer. From there I was eventually called up and I went to Air Crew Reception Centre, St John’s Wood, London. Warrant Officer Apse was the only man that mattered there. He was a very very great man and he was a hard disciplinarian but a fair man and he used to say, ‘If ballet dancers can be in step why can’t you lot who are supposed to have brains?’ From there I went to Initial Training Wing in Scarborough and when I was at Scarborough I realised that it was going to take me a long time to qualify as a pilot so I elected to be a rear gunner and so from Scarborough I went to Dalcross in Scotland and did my gunnery training at Dalcross in Scotland which is now Inverness Airport. From there, when I passed out I went to Peplow in Shropshire Operational Training Unit. It was on Wellingtons. John Marks was my skipper. Eventually we all teamed up in the hangar as, as was always done there and I joined, joined the Operational Training Unit at Peplow in Shropshire. When we passed out of Peplow, which might interest you, it must be civil servants that made Peplow’s runway because it sunk in to the ground halfway around and the air traffic control lost sight of you when you went down into the hole before you became airborne. From there we went to Lindholme. We were on Wellingtons then and then we went to Lindholme for heavy bomber conversion unit on to Halifaxes and it was the first time I realised about Canadian politics. At that time we’d got three Canadians in our crew and three Englishmen and our skipper decided when he wanted a flight engineer to select a Canadian. He did but when the rest of the crew knew he came from Quebec they said, ‘We’re not flying with him.’ So we had to change the flight engineer and the flight engineer eventually came from, where did he come from, Nottingham. He came from Nottingham and he joined us then and at Lindholme after the heavy bomber conversion unit we went on to the Lancaster finishing unit which was at the same time at, at Lindholme. From there when we passed out on Lancasters we went to 625 squadron at Kelstern near Louth. Eventually, when we’d been there a bit we were asked to volunteer for special duties at number 1 Group Special Duty Flight at Binbrook which we duly did and we moved over to Binbrook on the special duties flight. Group Captain Edwards VC was the commanding officer at Binbrook but he wasn’t our commanding officer. Our commanding officer was Air Commodore [Hoppie Raye] from number 1 Group headquarters at Bawtry. And from Binbrook, when we were training we went to St Tudwall’s Island off Wales every night to bomb a light in a, in a monastery. We didn’t know why. [We always had this light] we used to go and that was the special duty flight and we were trained to do that. And we’d already finished a tour actually of Binbrook on 625 but now we were being trained, we didn’t know it to bomb in Europe on marshalling yards and things like that, small marshalling yards and that’s what we did. On VE day we’d got a railway bridge to blow up that’s leading troops into into up to the British troops and so we realised what we were doing then but our crew stayed together even after the war. As I say we were three Canadians and four English. We stayed, we stayed friends and the only one apart from me that’s alive now is my skipper’s wife Pat who I’m still in touch with.
[machine pause]
MJ: You were saying.
LFNL: We were one of the few crews where every member of the crew got decorated.
MJ: That’s quite good.
LFNL: On 625 before we went to Binbrook and we were being trained then, and we didn’t know it to bomb specific targets for the battle, for the invasion of Europe so that’s what the special duties flight was about was accurate bombing. Saintes marshalling yard near Bordeaux we had to go on a bombing run where the prison was the first thing on the roadside, then the hospital and then the marshalling yard. We’d got to hit the marshalling yard. Unfortunately, we didn’t hit the hospital but we knocked the wall down of the prison. Our skipper, John Marks, felt very badly about having knocked the wall down of the prison at Saintes and when he was on holiday in France he went over to Saintes and he saw the mayor at Saintes and spoke to him and the mayor turned around and said, ‘Look. Yes, you killed a few Frenchman but I’ve got news for you. The Germans would have killed more the following day if you hadn’t so don’t feel too badly about it.’ And that happened at Saintes marshalling yard near Bordeaux.
MJ: Exactly what I mean.
LFNL: But the skipper, he wasn’t happy that he’d, that we’d killed some of the French prisoners in that camp but there you are. But as a crew we stuck together all the weathers, all the time. After the war all our families did, we stayed together. As I say we were an Anglo-Canadian crew and we had no fall outs. We went on leave together. The mid upper gunner came with me, the bomb aimer went with the skipper and that was that so the Canadians were the bomb aimer with the skipper yes oh and Gerry was with me and Tommy the navigator he, he always went to stay with friends down in the Worcester area.
[machine pause]
MJ: You’re on.
LFNL: Our drinking hole at the time was The Lifeboat at Cleethorpes and I’ll guarantee you that the man who ran The Lifeboat at Cleethorpes could tell you how many aircraft had gone missing the previous night by the lack of customers the next day but he looked after us very well, the landlord of The Lifeboat at Cleethorpes and then we used to go across the road from The Lifeboat to The Gaiety Dance Hall and have a dance before we went back to our units.
[machine pause]
LFNL: Bomber Harris’s eightieth birthday was celebrated at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London. There must have been about six or seven hundred of us there. We presented him with a walking stick with a silver handle and it, everybody got up and cheered him. He was supposed to be the person that we weren’t supposed to know. Well we all did and we all stood up and cheered him and he said, ‘Y’know my lads. I made some errors and I cost you lives.’ And he meant that from the heart but anybody in that position of Lord Harris, of Sir Arthur Harris had to make decisions and some of them didn’t work out but he felt it very very much. He did care about his people. He cared a lot about his men but as he said, ‘In my position I made mistakes and cost you lives,’ and I know by the way he spoke he really meant that and it hit him so he hadn’t got the easiest job in the world either.
MJ: No. Right.
LFNL: What, some of the people I remember were the sergeant WAAF in charge of the air crew mess. She was fantastic. She used to see us off then be still there when we got it back. How she managed to get, do it I don’t know. It must have hurt her when some of the tables that were vacant when we got back. The other thing that I remember, two other lots of ladies I remember. Lady air traffic controllers basically were better than the men. And also I always felt for the ladies who transported us out to the aircraft. How they must have felt when they took crews out and then at night when we came back to find that their aircraft hadn’t come back. It must have hurt them a heck of a lot. But I’m sure the lady who was in charge of the, particularly at Kelstern, in charge of the mess there I’m sure she got a lot of food in from the local farmers fed in because the way she fed us we could never say we were hungry at Kelstern.
MJ: No. What made you think that the traffic controllers were better?
LFNL: They never panicked. The ladies never raised their voices at all. If you were coming in in fog and we have come in in some pretty bad fog that you wouldn’t include it as such now but when we came in their voice never changed. You might be having problems getting in because it’s ground control approach. Forget what you’ve got now for goodness sake. Then, all we’d got ground control approach which meant that the lady in the control tower was actually telling you what, where to turn, what speed to do and what height you were. She was guiding you in. She was guiding you in. You had no other. You hadn’t got anything inside the aircraft that was going to help you. She was doing it from radar.
MJ: Oh right. Yeah. [pause] Yeah.
[pause]
LFNL: I agree to what I’ve been saying. My name is Larry Larard. L A R A R D. Retired flight lieutenant Royal Air Force 183900 DFM. Message ends.
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command Archive I’d like to thank Larry, oh sorry, Flight Lieutenant Larry Larard DFM for his recording in Thetford on the 17th of July 2015. Thank you very much.
LFNL: Thank you very much.
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 F N Larard
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-17
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ALarardFN150717
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:14:10 audio recordings
Description
An account of the resource
After being called up, Larry was assessed as pilot, navigator, bomb aimer but changed to rear gunner to avoid the delay in pilot training. He was trained at RAF Dalcross on Wellingtons before moving to RAF Lindholme to convert to the Halifax and then Lancaster
Asked to volunteer for Number 1 Group Special Duties Flight based at RAF Binbrook he completed a full tour of operations specialising in precision bombing. On one operation they attacked a marshalling yard in Saintes but demolished a wall of an adjacent prison.
After the war Larry visited the French mayor who placated his concern at killing French civilians. His crew were one of the very few who were all decorated. He retired from the RAF as a flight lieutenant with a DFC.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Shropshire
France--Bordeaux (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
France--Saintes
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Terry Holmes
1 Group
625 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
control tower
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
ground personnel
Halifax
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
mess
perception of bombing war
RAF Binbrook
RAF Dalcross
RAF Kelstern
RAF Lindholme
RAF Peplow
training
Wellington
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/870/11111/AHextellGJE160104.2.mp3
37d80c475d2be9fba2485ea100ad6789
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
Hextell, George
George Joseph Edwin Hextell
G J E Hextell
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Warrant Officer George Hextell (1141319 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer with 51 Squadron and became a prisoner of war.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-01-04
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Hextell, GJE
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GH: Yes well, I’m [unclear] Hextell, Hextell, I was a WO, my number 1141319.
MJ: So, how did you manage to get into the RAF then?
GH: How did I manage to get into this? Well, as I say, I was conscription, in 1940, all called up, all the people, the young people, and then I was [unclear] going to be dragged into the army, I thought when I got into the RAF I couldn’t be a pilot, cause I thought, I haven’t got the education for that, I going underground staff cause I worked in a factory, Morris motors, in Birmingham and I went into Birmingham and signed up one Saturday lunchtime, I hadn’t finished my job, and I wanted to know what happened to me cause I was called up after two or three days and posted to Warrington Padgate RAF training station where I did my square bashing and all that stuff and as I say, I hadn’t packed my job and eventually my mother had to get into the factory and tell the bastards I had joined, what did he do that for? They said, you know, there was a job here for him, if he wants it, I thought, no, so I trained as a flight mechanic, cause I was interested in wheels [unclear] and cars and engines and I went to after about three or four months at Padgate I was posted to number 5 school of technical training at Locking in Somerset and I went on a course on engines and aircraft there, you know, and I was there till end of 1941 and I passed out after that was posted to Scotland, Castletown, right up in the north of Scotland, you could almost see Norway, from where we were but we were only there about two or three weeks and [unclear] library, not doing much, any odd jobs and then we were eventually posted, as I say, to number 5 school of technical training Somerset, big long train ride down from up in Scotland and, I was there till the end of 1941 as I say when I got posted to Scotland and all I did, I worked and see all these different engines and aircraft, you know, worked on the Merlin engine, you know, and when I’d finished that they sent me to a maintenance echelon in Kent, [unclear] End, I worked on the maintenance echelon, squadrons came and went but I, we’re always permanent there like, you know, and Spitfires and all I could remember during there the Battle of Dieppe, when they landed in Dieppe in 1942, that was in September, that was disastrous, I remember that morning and I got up early, about five o’clock as something was on but nobody, oh, the second front started but that’s what it was, it turned out to be, Dieppe and they after the German [unclear] headquarters at Lorient and of course a lot of casualties, a lot of Canadian soldiers took part, a lot got killed, lot got captured and [unclear] after that we went to, so Dieppe, we just servicing the Spitfires that’s all, I was an engineman and we just served the Merlin engine up you know and it was good but, stop there for [unclear]. Well it was [unclear] at Gravesend but one day the engineer officer called us all in and wanted to know who wanted volunteer as flight engineers on the four engine aircraft that were coming into service, the Lanc, Halifax and the Stirling and of course there was three of us there, I put me name down for it, and I said, oh I can’t do any [unclear] but I was the only one who passed the medical, we had to go up to Euston House in London, aircrew candidate selection board and they explained to us all about how to fly, you know, [unclear] up and dark nights and flying over the oceans and that, you know and [unclear] and all this kind of thing you know but I went through with it and I was sent to St Athans in South Wales near [unclear], Cardiff and I did a course there and these four engine bombers would come in and they what they wanted to know was, there was a great big crowd of us volunteered and all the chaps going in for the Lancaster, you know, cause it got a famous name but and the squadron leader, I remember, he got us all lined up in the hangar, a big long queue of us and he said to stop any argument about who wants to go on, which was the best aircraft. He divided us up into three and he said that’s it, Stirlings, Halifaxes, Lancasters. Well, I got the Halifax, I went into the Halifax, and that’s how I came to be trained, trained at St Athans. And that’s a while I was posted to Marston Moor into Yorkshire and that was a conversion unit, number ten conversion unit and where pilots and aircrew met up and cause you see the crew I got in eventually had been flying on Whitleys then at St Eval in Cornwall on Coastal Command but they all stuck together and of course I was coming up [unclear] a conversion unit so it was there I turned up with them and became the flight engineer and of course there was seven of us in the crew, pilot, navigator, bomb aimer, rear gunner, mid upper gunner and all like that and that’s how I came to be with 51 Squadron. But it was only [unclear] I don’t know what they’d done before but, quite a bit before we went on our operations but the first operation we went on was mine laying off the Dutch coast, dropping mines in the sea and we used to have a naval officer explaining how important it was just [unclear] dropping it in the right place and the right height and all this kind of thing, that was the first flight I flew but of course I did many, we did many hours [unclear] circuit and bombs training, I mean the pilot was, all the crew was getting trained and I was getting trained as well in [unclear] that’s how I came to be with them but as I say the 51 squadron was only like just four men, and there was not many before, you see, you know a lot of names but I didn’t know many because I wasn’t there that long and I went there in the end of January ’43 and we went on, I went on two bombing raids with a crew, with our crew to Lorient in France and one night I went with my own crew and another time I stood in for somebody who was absent for another crew, they’re all officers, pilots, navigators, they was all officers, and I flew with them and I remember the first night we went on, we got back at about three o’clock in the morning and we couldn’t get back to our [unclear] I was stationed at Snaith in Yorkshire, East Yorkshire and couldn’t get back on our own drome so we had to land at Stowe-in-the-Wold in Gloucestershire and everybody, I think it was the first time I’ve seen these giant four engine bombers, you know, and all the people came out and looked at it, they were a big aircraft it was and after that I came to be [unclear] but as I say we did two operations in Lorient but that’s all I did and I just saw the operation mine laying, two to Lorient and on the fourth operation we did on Dusseldorf on the 27th of January ‘43 and I thought, oh, blimey, that’s done it, cause the briefing officer told us it was a heavily defended area, well we knew that because of all the Ruhr and all the places around there, Essen and all those places, I mean, it’s taken a heavy toll of our aircraft but of course it, well, it didn’t bother me and you know, but I thought we’ll get through it alright. But we were shot down over Holland, got over the North Sea alright into Holland, never heard a word, everything quiet and then next thing, I was sitting, I was standing in the middle of the fuselage, putting a flare in a flare shoot for taking photos with the cameras, you know, when the bombs dropped and whilst I stood there all of a sudden on the starboard side, right that at [unclear] machine gun bullets you know [mimics machine gun fire] couldn’t believe it, you know, couldn’t understand it, [unclear] one side or the other, he caught the port engine which controls all the hydraulics and pumps and that and the aircraft and I thought, oh, that was, looking into the astrodome it caught fire, the wing caught fire and I was horrified and the pilot was trying to save it but the aircraft you know dodged about and that but we were going down and we were all rushing, putting our parachutes on and the next thing I knew was I was flying through the air and the second pilot was a New Zealander, he explained it he could he’s written a little book about from where he came from in New Zealand who landed off, and as we were blown out, I was blown out, there was three of us out of the seven and three escaped, the New Zealander, our wireless operator and myself, the other four chaps got killed, pilot, navigator, the bomb aimer and rear gunner. I’ve never heard a word from them at all. And it was in Mill in Holland, place called Mill and it was five past six took off and from up in Yorkshire, ten past eight I was in a prison cell in Holland. Germans wanted to know, you know, why come bombing our women and children, and all I said, well, for the simple reason that you are coming and bombing our women and children and then of course they [unclear] interrogated me and I was there about a week I think and we went to the Dulag Luft interrogation centre and were there a while. Then they sent us to Amsterdam in a big prison, a big prison or whatever it was, big [unclear] and we were locked up in solitary confinement and had a lot of questions asked, you know, and were there about a week and one Sunday they transferred us from Amsterdam onto a train to take us to in [unclear] was Stalag VIII-B but they renamed it later Stalag 344 because Sagan, the Stalag Luft 3 where the air, the air people, where the aircrew prisoners went, they were full, the two, to many, so I had to go to a Stalag but this was at Lamsdorf in Upper Silesia near the Polish border, what’s the name? [unclear] I think or something like that and that was where I ended up but I know the night we flew, we had a brand new aircraft, it had only come from the manufacturers the day before but it hadn’t got a mid-upper turret [unclear] you got [unclear] hadn’t got a mid-upper turret on this particular one, the wing commander said it will give you more speed and all the rest of it you know and [unclear] he didn’t need a mid-upper gunner, so Taffy Jones, our mid-upper gunner he didn’t fly with us that night, he got away with it but as I say, I mentioned a second pilot, but I forgot to mention that before we took off at six o’clock at night from Snaith and staff come up and the group captain came up with this chap and he was a New Zealander, Jack Cardey and he said, I want this chap to fly with you tonight, he said, it’ll give him a bit of experience and that was the first time we met him and he got on board and that was his experience, he became a POW, and I’ve heard from him once or twice but not lately but yes, that’s how I came to be in Poland. Yes, capacity of the Halifax I think it was eleven hundred and ninty gallons but the first flight engineer, the idea was to run the engines as quickly as possible, to have the throttles open all the time, you know, to give, put [unclear] and get the engines to performing properly and another thing before take-off you were testing your engines before one by one and ramp them up to about three thousand ribs [unclear] a minute and then switch one of the magnetos off, there’d be a drop of one of the rears, I think, what was it so many percent, five percent was it, you were allowed if you that went below that [unclear] was faulty, yes, all the four engines [unclear] two magneto on each side of the Merlin was a marvellous engine [unclear] this is a backdrop somewhere ok, ok for take-off. Yes, it was quite an experience but we got through it alright and as I say with Jack Cardey, second pilot who flew with us, he didn’t act as a pilot, as I say, he was only a passenger, he was more than a passenger than I was. But he was in the Royal New Zealand Air Force and I think he’d come from Wellingtons and flown Wellingtons before. And of course at Snaith where I was stationed, 51 Squadron, they’d done all our operations from there and we hadn’t been there for long, as I say, there was only like just four men squadron up and I didn’t know any of the people that went before, you know, I mean, you just mentioned I knew a lot of people who [unclear], well I wouldn’t know, I think I knew about two, a Canadian, [unclear] Stewart or somebody like that and I know I went to Berlin one night and back or something, Slim Stewart, he was a Canadian, but no, as I say, I didn’t have enough time there to get to know anybody, I knew the group captain Grey, he was a station commander, I was in b flights squadron leader Moore, [unclear] Moore, h flights was name Russell, squadron leader Russell, and quite alright, yes I was, but as I say, we didn’t do many operations but [unclear] good the Germans were, night fighters, defences and that and as I say, we didn’t know this fighter was creeping up on us, never heard a word, never heard a word from the rear gunnery and I was horrified as I stood there and saw the tracer coming through the fuselage, you know, it caught fire, but as I say, we were blown out, that how [unclear] Netherland the cottage to walk up to the door and by [unclear] you do see these [unclear] but I was found myself floating through the air, and I saw lights going out in front of me going round and round a big roulette wheel, always remember it, and I was [unclear] I better pull this, the ripcord and I landed as I thought was a field but it was a bit of a built up area than that and I laid there for a bit I thought [unclear] a fine death or [unclear] something like that you know people come running up the Dutch farmer and he came up to me and I said, where am I? Where am I? And he said, Nederland, Nederland, I thought, where the hell is that, suddenly dropped the Netherlands, you know, and up to his house, he’s got two young daughters, they’re all clever [unclear] they brought [unclear] and money and souvenirs and [unclear] but they said that there was a couple of priests there who [unclear] quickly, they said, we’ll hide this, you know, that [unclear] a parachute and I said, we’ll have to notify the Dutch police, I presume they had to do it with any prisoners, there was a Lancaster shot down in the same area at the same time cause they picked the crew up with us and we were in this Dutch policeman’s house, he’s a Dutch police and I said notify them and he said, well, we’ll have to notify the Germans and they sent a minibus and when they opened up the doors, there was George Farmer, our wireless operator, he was a member of our crew and he’s a New Zealander and also a Lancaster crew as well, I think they were all intact, they picked them up in the same area and next thing I say I was being interrogated at a local station wanted to know where I’d come from, what the squadron was, bomb load was carrying, what [unclear] was and everything else, where you’re stationed, you know, and all that kind of business and yeah and as I say, I spent the night [unclear] and fetched up in front of this chap of the Luftwaffe, he wanted to know every day where we come from and what we were doing and all the rest of it, next thing we went to Dulag Luft [unclear] interrogation the treating of all the and then Dulag Luft, went to Amsterdam and I saw the big army place there, our second pilot, he’s been since the end of the war [unclear] travel I don’t know but I mean [unclear] we’ve been to Holland and we’ve sorted the place out with the war graves commission, we’ve been to the scene where our four chaps were buried because we had to identify them, cause the Germans said, you have to come and identify your crew and that got to [unclear] a church or somewhere and they took us down and there was four wooden coffins and there were the bodies lying in there and I said early, most of identify to let the people know, you know, but I couldn’t look at them because it upset me but [unclear] Farmer, our wireless op, he was thirteen years older than me, a bit more mature and he identified them, apparently they are buried in an air force base but after a while we in Holland that they buried them in this place where we went on a weekend in May and May is a big [unclear] first two or three days in May there were all flags flying out in Holland and, you know, as I know you come from England they will treat you well and really good. [unclear] Well, what I would like to do is to, you mentioned one chap [unclear] where he went to, I want to know how many miles we did from when we came after the camp in 1945 on that march, I mean, the names of the first, we went to Lamsdorf on the 22nd of January 1945, we could hear the Russian gunfire on the Eastern Front [unclear] and an Anson came over the Channel to evacuate the camp and we got ready to move out, we got nothing, bits of food stored up, which we took with us and out to the dark then they found us a barn, they herded us all in this barn, that’s where we slept and that’s we did, [unclear] months and months and as I say, it was the 22nd of January and [unclear] about April time before we never knew where we were like you know, I didn’t know then, I should have loved to know, I know the name of some of the important towns as Gorlitz, went from Lamsdorf to Gorlitz, oh, that was a terrible place, [unclear] Russian prisoners there, they treated them like, well, dogs, [unclear], never forget, filthy place [unclear] about a week and then moved us on the road, we never went to another camp, we went to, I can remember Jena, you know where, there are the famous optical lense [unclear] and what is the other place, where they did the porcelain? In German, Meissen [unclear], Meissen, heard about Meissen ceramic wares, marvellous, innit? [unclear] To plot the route we took and what we covered many miles [unclear] I said, end of January in April ’45 and the Germans got to be [unclear] you know and they used to catch you every morning, every night but I was with three of the [unclear] family wireless operator and we met up with another chap who was a [unclear] bloke some kind of destroyer in the Mediterranean and he decided to leave the company [unclear] like you know and we stayed, they put us in a barn one night and we stayed up there all the next day until it got dark, then we headed across the fields cause one got a compass, we could hear the Russian gunfire on our right in the East we could hear the Allied gunfire, the Americans and British on the left and we headed towards them and I know it was a terrible cold [unclear] in the [unclear] it was one of the coldest winters that I experienced.
MJ: Did you have a coat this time?
GH: Pardon?
MJ: Were you lucky enough to have a coat?
GH: A coat?
MJ: Yeah.
GH: Yes, I had a grey coat, yes, had a grey coat and one of us got a [unclear], a little [unclear] or a little saucepan. And I remember, the next morning when we woke, we [unclear] in this forest, we woke up, decided to have a cup of tea, [unclear] now we had a cup of tea, we lit a fire, made this tea and after a bit we sent a German, young German officer coming across, we thought, [unclear], this is the end, you know, [unclear] come around and put you hands up but all he said, he knew we were British and all he said was, don’t forget to put the fire out when you’re finished cause the smoke will attract aircraft in [unclear] always remembered saying that and we thought, oh, we got away with it, he got his Luger on the side, you know, he could have shot us easy, there’s four of us and the next day we saw a bloke, we were near a village, we saw a bloke with a big loaf of bread, a big cart with a loaf of bread, and we wondered where this bread had come from and we stopped him and asked him and he says, American tanks and troops so many kilometres down there, is the Third American army, the sixth army division, the Third American Army, General Patton and it was they who took care of us, they wanted us to go with them, they got a spearhead going through towards [unclear], come with us, they said, I said, no, we want to go home, we want to get back to England and they took us day by day, with these big six wheeler transport used to bring the supplies in, they took us back a few miles each day towards Paris and that, that’s where we finished up in Paris, one [unclear] did the time, that flew us from Paris to, forget the place now, I remember we had lunch [unclear] fish our fish is the best of all the Sunday lunch I’ve ever known, interrogated as quarter [unclear] as regards the performance of the aircraft, any spies, any stool pigeons, anybody like that, it was a bloke, forget his name, dammit, he was notorious but then I knew all about him and I don’t know what happened to him. But yes that was Lamsdorf for [unclear] yes. As I say, German officers sent for us, sent for me one day and in the main office and there was a German guard behind me walking with his rifle always walking behind you [unclear] shoot me but he wanted to know what my attitude was to the Russians, what my attitude was to the Russians, now they were dead scared of the Russians, yes, dead scared of the Russians, what do you think? I said, [unclear] if they attacked England, you know, I joined up and attacked them like to defend the country [unclear] saying that you know, wanted to know what my attitude was [unclear], I don’t know If I was the only one but they sent me two or three times and I, he was American cause he said to me, he said I’m a goddam American in the German, the German army, you know, and I could say, what are you doing in the German army [unclear] and things like that [unclear] I don’t know but that did happen, yes, want to know what your attitude was, what the British attitude to the Russians were, was alright, the Russians were alright, yes [coughs]. [unclear] to the camp, the barb wire, look out through the barb wire, see the typical German trees and the greenery enough in the spring and summer was nice, in the winter was bloody awful, I mean, there’s a [unclear] and you could hear the dogs patrolling the outside of the guard [unclear] you know, and there are all lights [unclear] and you went in the door of the hut, was a great big bulk kind of thing that they used in the night in case you had to [unclear] you know you couldn’t [unclear] the compound the [unclear] conditions were bloody helpless, just a [unclear] shed with a lot of wooden seats with [unclear], no cover, it’s not awful in the summer, terrible at [unclear] you know and it was whilst speaking earlier about the Dieppe prisoners, the Canadians, a lot of French Canadians killed and I reckoned, the Germans reckoned that our people took the German prisoners and chained them up with the result that we finished up in chains, you could just get under your pocket, handcuff [unclear] and you walk about like that, you sat, you sat [unclear] every morning, detail two or three blokes [unclear] big [unclear] all the chain across and bring them up from the office and then put them on you know, you walk about like that all day and if you wanted to tend to the nightshift, you get somebody of the German to unlock them, [unclear], we did all that, did all that and the parcels, [unclear] they were coming through but of course had always blame the RAF for bombing the railways or the Russians, was always blaming them, [unclear] the parcels, what you expect, we can’t get the transport, you’re bombing the railways and all that business but when we did get them, I mean, used to go down and I mean, I forget what country [unclear] parcel [unclear] us but perhaps put a pair of socks inside, just a pair of socks and [unclear] chocolate and cigarettes and of course the Germans all that when they used to go in the office and collect the parcels, this is a private parcel [unclear] that I [unclear] and cigarettes had stuck in [unclear] any messages inside and things like that you know and yeah and oh there’s a lot of chocolate, well of course that was the currency, soap and chocolate, you could get away with it, if you could bribe the Germans with that definitely and one of the blokes did and then another thing, you could go out on a working party if you wanted, if you felt that way inclined, go out on a working party, you’d pick somebody who looked you like [unclear] same way [unclear] and all this stuff and [unclear] identity, I’d go and [unclear] you [unclear] on a German farm, you know, work on a farm, get food and all that, get as much food as I wanted, you know, [unclear] like that, yeah, but we had the chance to do all that but [unclear] what you do to your [unclear] and I [unclear] by going, you know, to work you’re helping them, if you’re not, you’re not helping them and that was the idea but the parcels obviously they [unclear] parcel pretty good and milk and all that kind of stuff and there used to be one [unclear] every week was the M & V meat and veg bourse, they decided the cook house, the British blokes working in the cook house [unclear] German, they take a tin of meat and vegetable out to you parcel every week and cook it up for you kind of business that used to be great but of course there was a lot of racket going down there with blokes pinching more than one tin and all that, you say lot of that going on meat and veg always [unclear] and but we still lived alright work in twos parcel you get a parcel two a week [unclear] Tuesday or Thursday I think he does and collect the parcel and two of us living on the one parcel for two or three days and they try and get another one [unclear] part of our beds, there’s a little, have a little cupboard and a shelf and tins of this and tins of that and tins the other and cause I remember when [laughs] we had, came over the tannoy that we got load the camp at two o’clock in the afternoon the German commandant came over and he said that, you know, you gotta be ready for two o’clock, it was all queuing [unclear] all blankets and all that, you know, and we got tins of condense milk and all that kind of stuff [unclear] you know I remember I was sick of the bloody[unclear] wouldn’t let it fall under the Germans or under the Russians and, yeah, we took all this food and when they threw us, the first night when they threw us into this barn, great big barn, with straw on the floor and no lights and anything, no [unclear] and nothing like that and I felt sick and I wanted to be sick and I remember I got some new handkerchiefs had been more than seven days before and I was sitting all these handkerchiefs and that, you know, I’ll always remember that, sick as an [unclear], get up the next morning, you don’t know where you are going, what you were doing, I asked for a drink of water, no one would give you one, someone would give you drink of water, others wouldn’t, had promised you some [unclear] potatoes, cooked potatoes in big wicker baskets at the end of the day but you never got at the end of the day, you never got them, cause I [unclear] one or two of the German officers I reported it [unclear] one of them books down there I mentioned his name [unclear] what his name was but what happened I don’t know but they weren’t very, as I say, they never treated us, they never treated us too bad, anybody getting beat up or anything, cause lots of people, as you say, [unclear] to us, French Canadians captured at Dieppe, there were Sikhs and Indians and all kinds of, Palestinians [unclear] a year, the interrogator, he was a Palestinian, [unclear] Zelba, I don’t remember his name, and he used to do all our deals for [unclear], he used to get us a bit more coal to put [unclear] brickets to put on the stove, in the [unclear], you know to keep warm and we used to give him cigarettes and [unclear] and he used to bribe the German guard, he could speak German, he was born in Hamburg, as I say, he joined, he was with the RAF in Cyprus, and when Cyprus fell of course he was captured [unclear] Germany [unclear] collect cigarettes and all that, that’s how we used to get our stuff, listen to the radio every night [unclear] the bulletin come round, anybody caught with radios [unclear] every so often they would come and have a search they turn you all outside on a day like this, they turn outside early in the morning and they’d be out there all the bloody day, turning all your bed was ripped out, all that, you know [unclear] and put in detention, you know, and he ran away and the Jerry guard on a, it was on a Sunday and we was all lined up outside we saw all this going on and he ran away the chap did and the German guard got down on his knees and shot this bloke you know, he told him to halt and all that but he wouldn’t and that was going out on working party, yeah, but of course we gotta a senior British medical officer in the camp and he used to look after and he complained [unclear] and the leader of the camp was a regimental sergeant major [unclear] during some [unclear] and he had the badge at the back of the camp because [unclear] artillery [unclear] once and they always wore the at the back [unclear] he’s a camp leader but, you see, he outer perimeter [unclear] look at the people strolling and on a Sunday afternoon in the summer, I was looking and also he was looking [unclear] and former [unclear] and they had a dance round there and you could study, got to night school and [unclear] did a bit of that but [unclear] a bit smoking and could have a bit of walk now and again, you know, yeah, waiting for the news every night how far the Russians had got, how far, yeah, it was an experience, but as I say, really [unclear] one thing trying to get [unclear] more to do a book on the great escape or something but it was written by the one of them Tornado pilots or navigator who got shot down and of course [unclear] the forty’s war was lighter and he [unclear] but [unclear] I can’t read properly although I do a lot of reading. I met a German air force officer and he stopped and talked to us, spoke perfectly English and he said he was sorry for what we’ve been treated and he got us for that night, he got us in his barracks kind of place, like a German naffy, we [unclear], we could eat a German eat [unclear] in their naffy and he got us some brickets to put on the stove and there was straw on the floor, pallet on the floor, and pack of ten or twenty Polish cigarettes [unclear] concession [unclear] for what we’ve been through and we’ve be going through cause that was a [unclear] German, I remember I loved to know where we went and how many miles w covered, I never got to know that [unclear] laughing but I was a bit more serious on that and of course I combed me hair and do myself up but when our working party went out that was the main gates past the office where all the girls worked, checking identities and that cause look at your photo and, you know, oh that’s not you, you’re somebody else and used to be play the band and then march out and I knew a couple of guards, officers, forget what I was in, was in the cavalry, I was six foot, very look smart when I went out and that was to intimidate the Germans cause I looked a real scruffy lad. I think it was on the route to, perhaps on the route to Lamsdorf and they put us in a waiting room and there was all German soldiers in their uniform sitting, all [unclear] drinking and eating but we had to head up the corner, was about half a dozen or more of us and I remember the pipes was on, was warm in there, I mentioned it was warm and this one German, he says, we’ll make you sweat before long, you know, make it hot for you, always remember that, we were there cornered up in the corner, no sitting at the tables, long long waiting [unclear] the station in the waiting room, no, they wouldn’t let us sit at the table, on the chairs [unclear] on the floor and when they took us to one Sunday lunch on they took us to get on the train to go to across to this camp, all the Dutch people was crowding round us cause we stood there in a circle, was guards there with the rifles just waiting for the train to come and the Dutch people would inquisitive, you know, and I was given just a [unclear] and laughing at the Germans backs, you know, [unclear] that them kind of things, you could see [unclear] definitely.
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command I’d like to thank George Hextell, Warrant Officer, from Squadron 51 for his recording on the 4th of January 2016 at one thirty. Once again, thank you again.
GH: Right.
MJ: And that was one hour and
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 George Hextell
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
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
2016-01-04
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AHextellGJE160104
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:55:04 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
George Hextell joined the RAF as a flight engineer and flew operations with 51 Squadron on Halifaxes. After being shot down over Holland, he became a prisoner of war. Gives a detailed account of how his capture, imprisonment and liberation. Describes various episodes from the POW camp Stalag VIIIB: living conditions; food barter; witnessing an attempted escape.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Great Britain
Poland
Netherlands
France--Dieppe
Poland--Łambinowice
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1945
51 Squadron
aircrew
Dulag Luft
final resting place
flight engineer
flight mechanic
ground crew
Halifax
mechanics engine
mine laying
prisoner of war
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Padgate
RAF Snaith
RAF St Athan
recruitment
shot down
Spitfire
Stalag 8B
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/881/11122/AHooperH151117.1.mp3
5e7a6420f296f4085886ac13cf4b3e54
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
Hooper, Harry
H Hooper
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Harry Hooper (Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 115, 178, 70, and 38 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Hooper, H
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HH: My name is Harry Hooper and I’m saying these few words as I have been asked to about my life in the, probably in the Royal Air Force. But the reason I joined the Royal Air Force was that I’ve always been interested, since a very young person, in aviation. I was born on the north side of Heston Airfield. We had an old farm on the north side of the airfield and so I grew up watching planes, private planes, come in and land. Heston was the airfield that in 1938 Mr Attlee, I think it was Attlee, then prime minister, came back from meeting Hitler in Germany with a piece of paper which he proudly showed. And which proved to be useless because in the next year the Germans went to war. I was seventeen and one month when I actually joined the air force which was November 1941. I wasn’t actually called up. I was attested, by the way at Oxford University. I wasn’t called up ‘til the beginning of the following year. I flew Tiger Moths in what they called grading school which graded applicants for pilot positions in to, well, pilots. And the others went on to become, as it was then, observers or bomb aimers later. Wireless operators or air gunners. I was fortunate. I went to Canada. I flew the Fleet Finch. No one’s ever heard of it but I flew the Fleet Finch biplane. And then went on to the Harvard. And I gradulated, graduated. I came back to England. I was sent to Harrogate which was a holding depot for aircrew returning from abroad awaiting posting. But I was there for quite a while because at the time Fighter Command were losing so few pilots, relatively that is, whereas Bomber Command were losing very many. So it was decided that myself and others like me would convert onto multi-engine aircraft. And I went to Babdown Farm in the West Country and converted on to the Airspeed Oxford. After that I went on to OTU just outside Banbury and I flew the Wellington from there, which was where I picked up most of my crew. And then I went to a Heavy Conversion Unit where I converted from Wellingtons to Lancaster. Which is where I picked up the last member of my crew — the engineer. By this time, because of the long waits I’d had early on it was getting near the end of the war and I joined 115 Squadron, or we joined 115 Squadron when they were operating daylight raids over Northern France and Germany. Mainly the Ruhr area and they were using a very new system then which was called GH bombing. It was a GH system which was a form of navigation. It was further developed in to a system of bombing where the navigator guided the pilot along a certain line. And provided you kept at the exact height, at the time sixteen thousand six hundred feet and the correct airspeed of a hundred and sixty five miles per hour when he got a further indication or blip on his radar set he would just tell me to press the button. Which I did, having previously opened the bomb doors and the bomb load would fall away. Hopefully on to its target. We flew then, as they were daylights, in formation and it was mainly flying from south to north in the Ruhr Valley. And because of the accuracy of this system of bombing we were charged with taking out the very small refineries that the Germans had built as their main refineries had been bombed to pieces by both the RAF but mainly the US Air Force. And, but there were these very small units dotted along the Ruhr Valley utilising coal and turn it into Benzene and fuel which could be used. Either high octane fuel for aircraft or the lower octane for trans, motor transport. It was a great job. They usually tasked us at this job when there was cloud cover so that as we dropped our Window which was strips of foil we were above cloud and heading north. The westerly breeze would float the Window away from under us but we could see as we went along that the German gunners, radar directed gunners were picking up the chaff as we called it or the Window and directing their fire. So as we went north, sitting up there quietly at sixteen thousand five hundred feet about two or three miles to the east of us there were a line of ack-ack bursts as the German ack-ack, radar directed ack-ack followed our course but at about two miles away. However, if the cloud dispersed the Germans then went over to optical sighting and they were through the gap and on top of us within seconds. And very accurate they were. Fortunately, we didn’t get hit or sent down. And that was basically it. That was my war coming to an end. I enjoyed every minute of it. I shouldn’t say that I know. Not politically correct. But it was a gorgeous time. I made so many friends. My crew and I were then scheduled to go out to the Middle East. Take Lancasters out and convert the Middle East squadrons in 205 Group onto Lancasters from Liberators which were being returned to the US as they were under lease lend. We did that and I enjoyed another year in the Canal Zone. Basically then we were converted into trooping and we had small metal seats fixed either side of the fuselage above, on the top of the bomb bay. And we could carry up to sixteen passengers and freight in panniers. And we flew all across North Africa. Dropping off at all the old names — Tobruk, Benghazi, El Adem for Tobruk, Benghazi, Castel Benito and on to Algiers. We also flew up to Greece to, into Italy. All carrying passenger, mail, freight and various things until I was then posted to Palestine during the troubles in 1947 there. The troubles were that the then Israelis didn’t want the British there so they were actively engaged in guerilla warfare against the British. Which was quite interesting. That basically is it. That was my life. I had intended to sign on and carry on in the Royal Air Force but owing to the odd misdemeanours like stealing a, well not stealing but borrowing an army radar truck to get home one night from the Malcolm Club which was an officer’s club on the Bitter Lake. Along the Suez Canal. The Military Police thought otherwise and managed to stop us and I spent the night in a military jail. The next morning the wing commander came and got me out but that finished any thoughts I had of applying for a permanent commission. So that was about it and I left the Royal Air Force. And that’s me. Will that do you?
[recording paused]
MJ: Yeah.
HH: After further chat with Mr Jeffery I thought there were a few items I ought to add on to the previous dialogue which mainly concerned things that I got up to. Or my crew and I got up to. Whilst I was on the squadron at 115 Squadron flying out of Witchford near Ely I bought a car. A Singer le Mans sports car which was up for sale because its previous owner had, well, got the chop as it were and his parents decided they didn’t want it. And I bought it for seventy pounds. I had sixty five in the bank and I borrowed five pounds from a chum and I bought this ivory and green Singer le Mans. Basically, a two seat in the front and a small seat at the back. And with that car I would go into Ely from Witchford with six of us in this two seater, four seater car which was a bit of fun. And the amazing thing was that there were so many in the back that the front wheels hardly touched the ground. So that when we came to a bend I used to have to ask them all to lean forward to get the front tyres to grip so that we could turn which was great fun. Then I volunteered to go to the Middle East because the war was coming to an end. Tiger Force, to which I’d been posted was disbanded because the Americans had dropped the atomic bomb and we didn’t have to go out to the Far East. That being so I eventually ended up at Dunkeswell flying Lancasters out to the Middle East. I flew one out to Egypt. This was to enable the Liberators operated by 205 Group at the time to be returned to the US because they were lease lend aircraft and replaced by Lancasters. Far Eastern as they were then known. FEs. Having done the one trip and came back I thought, well this, that looked a good place to go. So I volunteered to go out with some of my crew. Some were old enough, one was old enough to leave the air force fairly early. He had, my bomber aimer had a wife and two children and was thirty four. But the rest of us were young so off we went to the Middle East where we enjoyed a most fantastic time. We were originally based near the Great Bitter Lakes. And that was great fun because one of the fields I was based at, Kabrit, was right on the south, or south western tip of the Great Bitter Lake. My billet opened, well I opened the door of the billet and could step straight into the lake, have a swim, come back and go to breakfast. But I chummed up with a chap there who was a bit of a lad as it were and we got up to the odd tactics. One of which was we would go down to Suez and have some fun there and then try and get back by hitching rides. And we hitched so far and then we were walking. And as we still had a few miles to go we saw an army camp, or an army spot with, which I believe probably was Army Signals or something. But they had fifteen tonners in there and so we got in and funnily enough it didn’t have keys. You just pressed the starter and it went. So my colleague and I jumped into the back of this fifteen tonner and roared off down the Treaty Road to get home. But within a minute or two we were stopped by the Military Police who put us in what we called the clanger overnight until my wing commander came and released me. Prior to that episode I had hopes of staying in the RAF. I had applied for a permanent commission. But of course this put the kibosh as it were on my hopes of a permanent commission as the group captain tactfully said, ‘I don’t think it wise for you to carry on, Hooper.’ And I said, ‘No sir. I think you’re right.’ So, that was it and I eventually ended up in Palestine during the troubles in ’47. I joined 38 Squadron who were Coastal Reconnaissance. And our work was mainly involved in patrolling off the coast of Palestine. They divided the section between Southern Turkey and Egypt into three. And so three aircraft would go out and we would fly north south, gradually turning, creeping away from the Palestinian coast until we found some of the illegal immigrant ships or a illegal immigrant ship. In which case we would then wireless Jerusalem and they would send out a destroyer to apprehend it and take these poor chaps and put them in a camp in Cyprus. And then they were fed back under the quota into Palestine. And I ended my days in Palestine enjoying the climate. We didn’t have much freedom owing to the troubles. You know, sleeping with a revolver under our pillow and that sort of thing. Eventually I was posted home and I managed to convince all and sundry that I should go back by boat and I had a beautiful trip back home. We went to Liverpool. From there I collected my gear, or tried to but it hadn’t arrived because it went on a different track or something. So I went home for two days to see my mother and father who I hadn’t seen for a very long time. And my sister by, who was younger than me, at the time was eighteen went out with her boyfriend to the pictures. And at around about 10 o’clock in the evening my neighbour, our neighbour came in and said, ‘I think you’d better go to the top of the road.’ We lived off, in a little cul de sac off the Harlington High Street. And whereupon I did and found that my sister, who had just got off the bus with her boyfriend had been knocked down by a motorbike and sidecar and killed. Which was a great homecoming. But one got over it eventually and that was the end of my sort of story at the time. I then worked for the Quaker Oats Company. An American company. They had a large plant. Factory. Mill. In Southall. And I spent about twenty odd years with them. I started there in the materials handling department unloading trucks and I finished up as the UK managing director for them. So, I had a fairly pleasant life there. I retired early because my son, who had just come down from Cambridge was very very ill in Paris and I had to go over and see him. And my wife developed cancer at the time. So I had a pretty rough time, or my son and my wife did. I had to try and look after them so I retired at fifty seven and did manage to look after them and we’re all around now. Of my crew only Charlie Flint, my wireless operator is still alive. The rest gradually died away. And we still remain, the two of us, the last of the [pause] what were we? KO was our squadron number. We were KO Roger. I had a model Lancaster made for me. I was at the Harvard Business School for some time and whilst over there they, some of the chaps found out I’d been in Bomber Command and got some information from somewhere. Somewhere. And they bought a kit which they made into a model Lancaster and labelled it KO Roger. And actually they sent it home by surface mail whilst I came back on one of the, either, I think it was the Queen Mary with some thirty thousand I think it was [laughs] American soldiers going to the UK for the war in Europe. And that’s about it. I enjoyed every second of my time as I still do. So there ends my tale. That’ll do won’t it?
[recording paused]
HH: I’m just showing Michael Jeffery the sort of captain’s map as we called them from a particular daylight raid I did with 115 Squadron. What we’re looking at here is the small captain’s map. It’s on a Mercator, Mercator projection and on it I have drawn the outward and the inward routes we took to the, to and fro from the target. The target in this case happened to be Dortmund. We flew out on what is apparently the red route and we flew back on what is shown here as the green or greeny blue route. We also put, on that same map one would have the height at which we would be flying, the speeds we would be flying at. And this was a sort of aide memoire to the pilot of the trip whilst the navigator did the whole of the actual navigating using the Gee system. The pilot had this so that he could keep that on his lap or in his pocket and occasionally look at it so he would know that, well we’ve got about five or ten minutes and then we turn to port and on to that. So it was just an aide memoire, a visual aide memoire to the pilot on, for the whole of the trip and it had data such as height to fly, speed at which we flew and so forth on it.
MJ: Thank you for that.
HH: That should do it I should think.
MJ: Okay. Right. On behalf of the International Bomber Command I’d like to thank Harry Hooper, Flight Lieutenant for his recording on the 17th of November 2015 at his home near Hook. Thank you very much.
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 Harry Hooper
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AHooperH151117
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:21:31 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Description
An account of the resource
Harry Hooper enjoyed watching the planes at Heston Airfield as a child. He volunteered for the RAF in 1939 and began training to be a pilot. He flew with 115 Squadron and undertook operations over Northern France and Germany using Gee, including precision targets in the Ruhr Valley, also dropping Window and encountering anti aircraft fire. After his tour was completed he volunteered to serve in the Middle East. One evening he and a friend were hitch hiking back to camp when they decided to ‘borrow’ an army vehicle. They were caught by the military police and this effectively put an end to his hopes of staying in the RAF.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Libya
Middle East
Libya--Tobruk
Middle East--Palestine
England--Cambridgeshire
North Africa
Egypt
Egypt--Suez Canal
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1947
115 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
Gee
Lancaster
military discipline
pilot
RAF Witchford
training
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/633/8903/ARobertsonIU150824.2.mp3
df6d4e73bf583517219125c6e5d9e282
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/633/8903/PRobertsonIUA1501.1.jpg
cdc7de004a3cd39382e7e562f5d48dd0
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
Robertson, Iain Urquhart
I U Robertson
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Robertson, IUA
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Iain Urquhart Robertson (2503864 Royal Air Force). He flew as an air gunner with 214 Squadron in the 1950s.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-24
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
IR: My name is Iain Robertson. I’m doing this interview for Bomber Command. I was an air gunner. National Service air gunner in the early 1950s and I was fortunate enough to be selected for aircrew and became an air gunner with 214 Squadron at Upwood in Huntingdonshire. It all started really — I was working in Tunbridge wells in Kent and after my 18th birthday I was called up to Chatham to be interviewed to go and, to do my National Service. At the recruitment office — Chatham being a naval place it was sort of orientated towards the navy but after chatting to the interviewer there I was asked whether I would like to go into the army or the RAF and I said, ‘If possible I would like to be an RAF.’ So, we had a medical. Then we had a test which I guess was mainly an IQ test and then we were interviewed afterwards. I was interviewed by a flight sergeant in the RAF who said, ‘I’m not supposed to tell anyone but you got a hundred percent in the written test that you have just done and there is a limited requirement for aircrew and I would suggest that you ask to be an aircrew of some sort.’ So later, after Christmas, in January when I was called forward I went to the RAF Centre at Padgate in Lancashire which I realised subsequently was where everyone went but during the period that we were there some of us were taken down to Hornchurch in Essex and we spent a week there doing various things to be selected for aircrew. At the end of which I guess some people were not suitable and the majority of us appeared to be suitable and I was offered, if I was prepared to sign on for eight years they said I could go on to be a pilot or a navigator but as I had a good career in the Civil Service I decided that I would be an air gunner. And subsequently I was very pleased because I really enjoyed my two years training to be an air gunner and being an air gunner on 214 Squadron. After the aircrew selection there was an obligatory six weeks which they called square bashing but fortunately for me and a couple of the other people who were on the selection at Hornchurch there was a gunnery course starting at Leconfield several days after we returned from aircrew selection and we were put straight on to that so we missed the six weeks square bashing. Looking back, it was probably a good thing to miss. So, we got straight into the school. The gunnery school at Leconfield and we flew under instruction as air gunners with Wellingtons and we did fighter affiliation with Spitfires and occasionally a jet which was probably a Meteor or a Vampire. And after a three months course at Leconfield I passed out as a qualified air gunner and the squadron leader there signed a little certificate saying that I was a good average air gunner but I was very pleased to be given a medal as the best all around cadet of Number 13 Course. Which didn’t serve me in good stead, didn’t make me superior but it made me feel good. From there we went to Scampton in Lincolnshire for conversion on to the aircraft that we were going to be allocated and this, these were Lincoln bombers. And again, it was a three, a three month course after which we were allocated a squadron. During the course at Lincoln we put in probably about forty hours flying doing various exercises with pilots, navigators, bombs and gunnery. And we were crewed up and we went to 214 Squadron in Upwood at the end of that as a crew. And, you know, for the rest of my National Service which ended in 1953 I was with the same crew. Flying in Lincoln bombers. Doing various things in peacetime. Mostly pretty routine stuff but keeping our hands in as gunners, navigators, pilots, W/Ops, bomb aimers. All the exercises and during that time there were a lot of NATO exercises which were mostly night exercises. One of the NATO exercises I think which stands out in my memory was when we were the enemy force and we were laying mines and we laid mines in the Firth of Forth. And at the briefing we were told that we would be flying in very low but that we could not follow in line because when we dropped the mines the splash from the mine could actually interfere with the aircraft. So, we had to fly in like a gaggle of geese and drop these mines in the Firth of Forth. I think another one which stands out in my memory was the ditching of a Canadian Sabre pilot in the North Sea, just off The Wash, when we were flying on a cross country at that time and we got a fix to go and be part of the air sea search for this pilot. And we were fortunate to spot this pilot in his little dinghy floating around in The Wash and we dropped two smoke markers to identify his position and he was picked up by a Grumman Flying Boat which was, I think, an American from one of the American bases. Life on the squadron I guess was pretty routine but we were a good team. I think the beauty of the RAF was that when you were in the crew room the officers, NCOs were just crews and we got on very very well. I had a good rapport with the flight commander, Flight Lieutenant Burden, mainly because both he and I played football for the squadron football team and I was fortunate enough actually to play football with the squadron. We got to the finals of a squadron, inter-squadron command. Let me think. 3 Group Bomber Command finals and I was selected to play for Bomber Command in a representative game against a naval command. I think it was Portsmouth Command. Just as a representative of the RAF. And I think, I think the score was 3-2 for them so I’m not really too proud of that [laughs] but there you are. Our crew was one of the, of two crews which were all NCO crews. All the rest of the crews in the squadron had officers as pilots and navigators but our crews were all, we were all NCOs. Our skipper, Flight Sergeant Flight would you believe had flown Wellingtons during the Italian campaign and had been actually shot down and captured and he was the daddy. Actually, he looked after us well. Norman Flight was a Brummy but when he got airborne he was PO Prune because he had an RAF voice. The bomb aimer was Alan Cartwright, Sergeant Cartwright who was a Londoner. The navigator was Trevor Campbell who came from somewhere in Home Counties. Wireless operator was Bill Cartwright sorry – Bill Rycroft who was a Yorkie. A Yorkshire man. The flight engineer came from Norfolk. From Swaffham. And was what we used to call him Mangel Worzel because he had a, he was a farmer’s son. Mid-upper gunner Buster Unstead came from Brighton. And as you may have guessed I, as a rear gunner, came from Scotland. From Glasgow. So, we were a pretty mixed bag but being a crew, flying together, we were one unit. It was great. The crew room — officers and NCOs were mixed. We were all part of the squadron and that also was pretty good. When we got free at the weekends we used to go down to Cambridge. Once or twice we took a punt out on the river and we punted along with the skipper sitting back at the stern telling us what to do and as always telling us where we’d gone wrong. But it was all good fun. And the dances in Cambridge were pretty good as well because the nurses from Addenbrookes Hospital always put on a good show for us and if we were lucky we might get to see one of them home. I sort of got a friend who was the daughter of a farmer and had a car and she used to pick me up at the sergeant’s mess and we’d to go out for a drink and that was it. Actually, lost touch with her when we, when my National Service finished but there you are. It was just one of those things. Having described the crew actually all but the gunners were regulars. And the two gunners, Buster and myself were just National Service. But, you know, there was no distinction, except perhaps now and again in the mess when they referred to us as the Coca Cola kids. But, you know, on a squadron do we were prepared to drink our share of what was going so we, we all mixed in and it was great. It was like being part of one great family. Now and again things came along which broke up the monotony. I mean, clearly doing National Service in a period where the Cold War was the main part of our situation and because of that we actually did what they called escape and evasion exercises. We were taken in a sealed vehicle. Probably dropped off about forty to sixty miles away from the base and given sixpence for a telephone if we got into real trouble and were told to make our way back to the base over three or four days. Just living off the country and not getting caught. And to my credit, I think, although we were not necessarily the first to get back to base whoever I was with and I managed to evade all capture and eventually get ourselves back to the base by hook or by crook really. The fens were a big obstacle because clearly the best way back to base was a straight line but it wasn’t always very practical because these ditches were in the way. And now and again we had an incident with a local farmer where we had borrowed his boat or punt or whatever it was, necessary to cross over. And we took it and of course left it on the side that we were leaving and the farmer wanted it back on the other side. But we managed by travelling at night, diving into ditches and hiding out in woods during the day to get back to the base during these escape and evasion exercises. There was also one, one event actually which they called, I think, passive defence where we had to defend the airfield against a marauding army. And in our case, on this occasion the marauding army were the glorious Glosters who had been covered, covering themselves with glory in the Korean war and they took prisoners but they didn’t take kindly to being told that we had shot them. On one occasion, being a gunner, I was part of a machine gun post at the edge of the airfield and we saw this, these army blokes hiding down at the foot of a field and coming up behind a hedge for cover towards the edge of the airfield. As they came out they had to come across a field and we, with our range of fire, I think were able to shoot them all but of course there was inevitably a dispute and the umpires had to come and agree that we had actually disposed of that little group of soldiers. I think we took quite a few prisoners. Put them in the station tennis courts as a temporary measure but found that they had wire cutters and were actually cutting themselves out and escaping again. I don’t know what the real thing would have been like but this was probably as near the real thing as we could handle. Clearly, during that period as one of the, a Lincoln from another squadron had been shot down in the corridor during the Berlin Airlift. We felt that we as were near the front line as we could possibly be. But obviously as a member of 214 Squadron we had to do what we had to do and it was mostly exercises with NATO from time to time that created excitement and competition for us. As an air gunner and hearing that the squadron had latterly converted on to the V bombers and were flying Victors I realised that that was the end of gunners and that, you know, looking back at it, you know, it was a good time perhaps for us to be in with the last of the aircraft which flew needing gunners. Some of the other ones who had been selected for aircrew at the same time as me went on to B29s, Washingtons, and others went to Coastal Command and were flying Shackletons. I think these were the three operational aircraft in Bomber Command and Coastal Command at that time. Looking back, I guess I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. It was great to be part of an outfit serving our country.
MJ: Right. On behalf of the International Bomber Command I’d like to thank Iain Robertson at his home in East Sussex for his recording on the date of the 24th of August 2015. I thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Iain Urquhart Robertson
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-24
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ARobertsonIU150824, PRobertsonIUA1501
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:18:52 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Iain was a National Service air gunner in the 1950s and served with 214 Squadron at RAF Upwood in Huntingdonshire after being called up at the age of 18. Upon completion of training, he flew on Wellingtons and fighter affiliation with Spitfires. He was then posted to RAF Scampton for conversation onto Lincolns. After completing about 40 hours, he was posted to 214 Squadron.
He tells of his time doing NATO exercises, including laying mines in the Firth of Forth. Iain also talks about how his crew was all non commissioned officers, one of only two on the base; and of playing for the Squadron football team. He also talks about his escape and evasion exercises during the Cold War, and how he had to get back to base in three or four days. Iain speaks of his pride in serving in the Royal Air Force, and the time he ended his National Service in 1953.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Vivienne Tincombe
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Cambridgeshire
Scotland--Firth of Forth
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1953
214 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
escaping
evading
Lincoln
military ethos
mine laying
RAF Scampton
RAF Upwood
Spitfire
sport
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/580/8849/PHawkinsIFV1501.2.jpg
782ab0bbc92c323c50838bd64ea7a1e8
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/580/8849/AHawkinsIFV151103.1.mp3
8d893fa98e4005bc85e1fb6e25a049a1
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
Hawkins, Ian
I F V Hawkins
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Hawkins, IFV
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Ian Hawkins (- 2022, Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 214 and 299 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-03
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
MJ: It’s on.
IH: Hello, my name is Ian Hawkins. I served in the RAF as a pilot with 214 and 299 Squadrons. In 1939, in common with other members of my family, I was destined to become a teacher, and after my first year at Winchester the college was commandeered by the army. We were told to report to Culham [?] College for our second year but some of us didn’t like it. So, come the end of 1940, some fourteen of us volunteered for the RAF. I was actually called up early in 1941, did the usual reception centre and ITW at Scarborough and then was destined to join a group sailing to the United States under the Arnold Training Scheme. Arnold because of General Arnold, who had helped to introduce this scheme of training as civilians [emphasis] in the United States before they were in the war. Having embarked on a ship, Duchess of Atholl, at Glasgow and sailed down the river and parked, or moored [emphasis], for two weeks we then went back to Glasgow again because the, the survival of life on the convoys was not very high. We transferred subsequently to a late, later vessel and sailed across the Atlantic to Canada and from Canada we landed, landed and went to Toronto and we had the most marvellous food which we hadn’t seen for a couple of years, and then we went down to the south-eastern part of the United States to start our flying training. I was lucky. I passed after two hundred years, two hundred hours [emphasis] flying to get my pilot’s wings. Several of us were not so lucky because we were being trained under American peacetime standards and the standard was higher. [pause] Those who failed the course often went on to become navigators, or bomb aimers, or wireless operators. A member of, er, my course, who unfortunately I never actually met, was Michael Beetham, who went on to become Marshal of the Royal Air Force, Sir Michael Beetham, Chief of Staff. He volunteered to stay in America for a further six months to become an instructor. I was too keen to come back. He got his commission. I came back as a sergeant. Back in England I did my usual advanced flying course on Oxfords, twins, and then on to OTU on Wellingtons where I was crewed up. Then on to a conversion unit on to four-engined Stirlings, adding two members of the crew to make a crew of seven, and finally on to 214 Squadron. I did my first three trips as second pilot to get the experience I could pass on to my crew. The first bit of luck I had was that my first two trips as a second pilot was as, with a Sergeant Baldock [?]. I was due to go with him on my, on a third trip but didn’t. He went missing. The whole crew killed. My third trip as a second pilot was with Flight Lieutenant Youseman, who became better known later in the war, and I knew the difference immediately on how he organised his crew to how Sergeant Baldock had organised his. So I carried on after that as first pilot with my own crew. After I’d completed sixteen operations my crew was called before the commanding officer and we were told, ‘You are going to be instructors.’ We objected to this because we wanted to finish our tour but, as subsequently dis– we discovered, hardly anybody finished thirty trips on a Stirling at that time. This was in 1943 and the OTUs were desperately in need of instructors to bring on the next generation. So I went off to become an instructor at an OTU at Chipping Warden. I spent about eighteen months there instructing, instructing crews, ending up as a course shepherd [?]. It was during this time that my, one of my friends got killed. He was my bomb aimer who had transferred to the, er, Dambusters’ Squadron and he was killed on a subsequent trip to Kembs, K-E-M-B-S, after the original Dambusters’ route, raids. At the end of my period as an instructor I was reintroduced to the Stirling and I obtained a new crew, of seven, had a refresher course and joined 299 Squadron. 299 Squadron was glider towing and we were being trained and practiced towing gliders. This was just after the invasion and the Rhine crossing. So I missed out on that but we were being prepared for the invasion of Japan [emphasis], if you please, glider towing in a Stirling with a large glider with forty soldiers in the back. Not something we were looking forward to but fortunately for us the atomic bombs came and Japan capitulated. Staying on in 299 Squadron I changed over, eventually, to Transport Command and was flying a variety of different aircraft, never a Spitfire, never a Lancaster, anything from a Tiger Moth to a Stirling, carrying air– aircraft abroad, bringing troops back. Eventually, I was due for de-mob. One sad occasion was that my second navigator, by the name of Jim Holborough [?], who was due for de-mob, decided to make one last trip with a strange pilot in a Mosquito and he was unfortunately killed. Very sad. The day before he was due to be de-mobbed. One further sad occasion was that my cousin, Leo Hawkins, who was on 218 Squadron Stirlings as a navigator was, er, struck by lightning, the aircraft was struck by lightning, soon after take-off and he was killed. I was de-mobbed, went back to train and become a teacher, decided to join the RAFVR to do my fortnight’s flying training with the occasional weekend and in 1951, when there was trouble in the Middle East and we were expanding the RAF, I was asked if I would care to go back into the RAF as a qualified flying instructor. I was very pleased about this and in 1951 did my refresher course, went to the CFS, got my qualification as a flying instructor, and for the next eighteen months I was instructing on Harvards. At the end of the time the trouble in the Middle East blew over and for the second time I was de-mobbed. I must admit I tried to stay in the RAF but this time I was considered to be too old in my 30s and although I stayed in the RAFVR as long as it, er, persisted it was not long before that was also disbanded, disbanded, so I became a teacher for the rest of my working life. I think that’s all I can say.
MJ: Why is it called brown jewels [?]
IH: Soldiers.
MJ: Yeah.
IH: Flying expression. Is it recording again now? Oh.
MJ: It’s alright.
IH: I don’t think really I have anything more to say. I know that the soldiers were very happy when we, when we brought them back to, er, this, this country after the war was over. The Stirlings were converted into troop char– troop carriers, as well as, er, glider towers.
MJ: So you got everything.
IH: Yes.
MJ: I’ll turn it off. On behalf of the International Bomber Command I’d like to thank Ian Hawkins at his home in Lee-on-Solent on the date of the 3rd of December 2015. For this recording once again we thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Ian Hawkins
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-03
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AHawkinsIFV151103
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:12:39 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Ian Hawkins was training to be a teacher when he decided to volunteer for the RAF, joining in 1941. He commenced training under the Arnold Scheme in Canada and the United States and passed the course as a pilot. He returned to England as a sergeant and eventually joined 214 Squadron flying Stirlings. After sixteen operations he became an instructor at an Operational Training Unit at RAF Chipping Warden. He later returned to flying, this time with 299 Squadron, towing gliders in Stirlings. He describes how, at the end of the war he was flying a variety of aircraft with Transport Command before being de-mobbed. He returned to teaching but joined the RAFVR to fly at weekends and in 1951 was pleased to be invited back to the RAF as a flying instructor. He was later de-mobbed again and returned to teaching for the rest of his working life.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Christine Kavanagh
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. Transport Command
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Great Britain
England--Northamptonshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
1943
214 Squadron
299 Squadron
aircrew
Harvard
Oxford
pilot
Stirling
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/499/8389/PCranstonJ1501.1.jpg
689cbf838a7b29eeead356840b413cdf
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/499/8389/ACranstonJ151019.1.mp3
44dac10d3900334cb13d19833ed7e6c5
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
Cranston, Jack
J Cranston
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cranston, J
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-19
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.
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flying Officer Jack Cranston (185331, 1457551 Royal Air Force). He flew operations with 207 Squadron.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Marion Cranston and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
My name is Jack Edward Cranston, and I worked, nah, I don't want to say I worked, and I joined the Air Force in Leeds. I was sent to, oh dear, I've forgotten where it was. (Noises off) I joined the Air Force in Leeds, and was sent to Southern Rhodesia to train, We first trained on Tiger Moths, and having passed out after training, we were then sent to train on Oxfords. Having passed out on Oxfords and received my Pilot's wings we were then put on ships and sent back to England. When we got to England we had a few weeks back on Oxfords, and then we went, I'll leave the name open, 'cause I'm not sure now, (muffled noises). Following a few weeks on Tiger Moths, we then went on to Oxfords, Airspeed Oxfords, and did training on – what do you call it when you go on a-? We were posted on to a Wellingtons RAF station and did more training.
Woman's voice: Do you want a cup of tea?
JC: From the Wellington we then went on to four engined Stirlings to do a bit more training (pause) Stirlings, on Stirlings, we were then posted to a squadron of Lancasters, which we did one or two flights, and then went on to operations, and the first operation that I did was (pause) Canal, and that was-
Woman's voice: It doesn't really matter.
(recorder noises)
JC: (unclear) I served in the Royal Air Force, and finished as a flying officer. I trained in Southern Rhodesia, and became a pilot on twin engined Oxfords. On returning to England (pause) (recorder noises) (unclear) although I was in a reserved occupation in York, if you went to Leeds it didn't matter, and so my brother first, and then me, we went to Leeds and joined the Air Force, and that was in nineteen forty two. Having joined the Air Force you were sent home to wait to be called up, which in my instance was about six or seven weeks, and then I had a railway warrant to go to St John's Wood in London, and that was the Air Force recruiting place. And I went down to St John's Wood and joined the Air Force. From there I was sent by boat to South Africa, and then up to Southern Rhodesia, where I did all my training on Tiger Moths, and then on Oxfords. Having passed out as a pilot on multi engines we came, came home via South America, I don't know why, but, we went from Durban to Uruguay, Montevideo. When we got to Montevideo, oh crikes it was marvellous, welcomed with open arms. In fact they provided coaches so we could have a trip all round Uruguay. And so we had a trip, couple of days, travelling all round Uruguay, stopping in little villages and towns, and then back, back to Montevideo, and we waited for a boat home. Well, the boat, when it came, was similar to the one we went out in, but where we had hung hammocks on hooks, this time it was full of meat, so we were lucky, we were in cabins. Just, not many of us really, but anyway we got on the boat and sailed, sailed home, and docked at Bristol. And from there we were given rail warrants to get back to Lincoln. And so on the train we were all, (unclear) there wasn't that many of then, like, there was about a dozen, so we all went to Lincoln, and from Lincoln it was more or less, you did more or less what you wanted. I thought, 'well, I've come to Lincoln, I might as well go home'. And so I got the train to York and went home, and had a couple of weeks at home, and I thought, 'well I better go and find out what's happening', being in the Air Force. So I went back, and I was sent to the squadron, 249 Squadron, and they were stationed at a little place, near Skegness, actually, the aerodrome, and it was ideal for travelling across the North Sea into Germany. I had a nice time there, but eventually you had to go on to a squadron, a proper squadron, and I joined the 207 Squadron, and they were stationed in Lincolnshire nearer the coast, so that it was easy for us to take off, and the coast was just about twenty miles away, and we just see- sailed over the coast and across the North Sea and ready for Germany. And this we did mostly at night, I think there was only a couple of daylight raids we went on, but most were at night, and I got, I done twenty two, but the tour was thirty, so on my twenty second I got shot down, and baled out. And I was captured and taken to an interrogation centre where I met up with my navigator. But he was just ready, he'd been there a few days, and he was just ready to go out, so I had a word with the German officer in charge and asked whether I could go with him, but the answer was,'no'. So they wouldn't let me go with him. So I stayed for another, about a week actually, before we started to move out. I must say by this time, like, it was getting on into nineteen forty five. And we marched out, a hundred, and there was this American private which I'd met, and he was limping a bit so he was hanging on to me, and we dropped to the end of the column, and as we were ten miles away from the coast, we had a German guard with a fixed bayonet with us, so it weren't easy to get away, you know? And that went on most of the day, and I suppose it must have been around four o clock when this American I was with, he started limping very badly, and we dropped back and back with one German guard. And the column was four or five hundred yards ahead, and then suddenly there was a shell whistled, whistled over the top of us, and this German guard we had, he went, he disappeared, so there was just the two of us. So this American private says, 'come on, full field off the road, otherwise we'll get shot'. So I went with him, as he was the more experienced at this sort of-. And after the column had gone I came out and he says, 'well, the only thing that we can do really is to follow them', but to keep a good distance so as they didn't know we were there. And so we followed the column which was going to a prison camp, but we dropped away from them before we got there, and set off on our own, heading West. That was all we knew, we wanted West. And so it was only by watching the sun go down that we knew where West was. (chuckles) Anyway, we started heading off, and we, we'd gone a fair way when a shell whistled over the top, top of us. The column was in front, they'd gone about, oh, fifty yards in front of us, and this shell came across, and this German guard that we had with us, he disappeared straight away. And this American, he says, 'come on', he says, 'off the road at full field, and get your head down'. And so I thought, 'well, he knows what he's doing', so that's what we did, we ran across the field, and get your head down. Wait. And then of course shells started flying all over, and the American column, tanks in the front of it, started firing all around, and once they got past there was a bit of a lull, and he shouted out, 'Ah mates!' And this burly American, 'come out with your hands up'. (in American accent) So we went out with our hands up, and him being a yank, we were immediately taken on board one of the tanks. And we told them about the column, and so the tank commander that we were with got on to the scout tank in the front and told him that there was a column of a hundred prisoners being guarded by guards either side, and we were on the tank. So obviously, the scout tanks in front released all the prisoners. They were stood at the side of the road, and I thought, 'well here we are then'. But it wasn't here we are because they just went straight past them, with us still on the tank. And there were all our mates, like, stood at the side of the road. And so we went with the tank, firing and firing. And then we stopped for the night, and the tank commander went to a house, and he gave the people in it ten minutes to pack up and leave, and took the house over for the night. Just chucked them out, you know. They could take a few clothes with them, obviously, but we slept the night there, and in the morning we had breakfast there, and then we joined the column again, and went off. And at the end, the following night, he says, 'well, you're alright because tomorrow there'll be lorries coming up with supplies for us, and you can join them when they go back.' And so this is what happened. (Unclear) They dumped off all the supplies. We gone on the back of the tank, two of us, then set off back. And they got back to where it was all in our hands, at least, American hands, and we got off the tank and we had a real lovely meal, somewhere, like, with the yanks. They didn't do anything that was half-hearted, you know, there was everything, you know, if you wanted a meal you got a meal. And then, we stayed with them on the back of a tank for a full day, and then that night the tank commander said, 'well, you can stay here tonight, because in the morning we'll be having supplies coming up, and when they've dropped them off, they can take you back.' And that's just what happened. These lorries came up, dumped all the supplies and the yank and me got on one of the lorries, and they took us to Paris. And that's where he dropped us off, in the middle of Paris, which was a bit awkward because neither of us had any money. So I says, ' oh come on then, we'll - '. 'No', he says, 'come to our place, the yanks, we have more than you have', So I said, 'aye, that's right', so we went to the American consulate in Paris. And he, he got a taxi for us, paid for it, and took us to the American camp, in Paris. When I say camp, it weren't a camp, it was buildings, cos they liked their comfort, did the yanks. Anyway, he took us there and dropped us off, and I says, 'what now?' He says, 'well, I'm alright', he says, cos these are all Americans. He says 'I'll, wait a minute', he says, 'I'll go and see what I can do for you'. Any way, the upshot was he got a car. He says, 'there you are, you've got a driver. He'll take you where you want'. I says, 'Right', I says, 'where's the nearest British camp?' And he took me there. It took about a couple of hours, but when I got off there it was all English, English speaking people, you know, not yanks. And I was welcomed there, I had to tell the CO where'd I'd been, what I'd done, and how I'd come to be where I was. And then, 'well', he says, 'you're with us today and tomorrow, but probably on the next day-', I can't remember the days they were, they were just days, you know, I couldn't say whether it was Wednesday, Thursday, or what. But he says, ' the next day we'll be sending our trucks back to pick up supplies, you can go back with them'. Which was what happened. I was dumped in Paris. they went off, the American went off, I went to the British consulate, like, they gave me some money to get food. They said, 'well, there's nothing much we can do to you until we get some planes coming from England, so one could take you back, so I was stuck in Paris for a couple of days with nothing to do, just hang around really because I had no money, no French money. I had some English money, but no French money, so, but all meals were provided anyway in British service, and then the lorry (unclear), so I got a lift back. And it dumped me in London. And so I thought, 'right'. So the WAAF came over, she says, 'What's the nearest railway station to your aerodrome?' So I lived in York, so I said, 'York'. (chuckles) And so they gave me a railway warrant to York. So I went to York , and I went home. Well, you know, my mother didn't know I was back even, so it was a bit of a tearful reunion (chuckles). Because my father had been killed, oh a while before that, years before. He was a conductor on a tram, and he was pulling the trolley down, and another tram came along and crushed him between the two trams. In fact, I never saw him, but my mother said they hadn't even removed his clothes. He was still in his old, well uniform, with blood all over it because he'd been crushed between two trams. And she got nothing. Not a thing did she get from the council. So it was hard work, I know, I mean she went out cleaning in a morning, she went out cleaning offices at night, and we, well I got into the Air Force, like, and was told to report to Lincoln, and join the squadron again. And that's how it happened. Me brother, he went to Canada, and we had relations in Canada, so he was alright, he did very well. Well, just as well, like, cos he was eventually killed in the war, The plane he was on was shot down and they were all killed. Because he was a navigator, and, but I was still in France, was it France, or had I got to the-, no it was France because I was sat in Paris, looking miserable, and this fellow came up, he says, 'what the hell's the matter with you?,' he says, 'you like as if you've lost a couple of hundred pounds and found a penny'. I said, 'well, it's not quite as bad as that, but it's pretty bad. I'm stuck in Paris, and I want back to England. I say,' I said, 'what do you do?'. 'Oh', he said, 'I fly supplies from Paris to England.' 'Oo', I says, 'you're just the man I want to see. You can take me back'. He says, 'well yes I can', he says, 'but you'll have to be up at half past five in the morning. I'll pick you up at a quarter to six.' And he says, 'if you're not there, I'll just go'. I was there. I made sure of it. He took me, and he was flying supplies from Paris to Croydon, so I landed up in Croydon. And I, I can remember Croydon. And I went to the local Air Force place, and they said, 'well, what can we do for you?. And I said, 'well, first off, ' I said, 'I want some money to buy a new uniform', and told them who I was, I was a Flying Officer by then, Flying Officer Cranston. I says, 'I've got to get a uniform', I says, 'all this rubbish that I'm wearing'. 'Yeah okay'. So, she didn't give me money, she gave me a token, think it was about ten pound, something like that anyway, so I could go and buy a new uniform. So I bought a new uniform, and I went back, and I said, 'well, now what?' And she says, 'well, what's the nearest railway station to your aerodrome?' So I said, 'York'. It wasn't, York was where I lived, now I wasn't going to go back to the Air Force just yet. (chuckles) So she gave me a rail warrant to York. I went to York, and got a tram, trams were running then, got a tram up to Brighouses, where we lived. And I'm walking down the hill towards the railway, the bridge over the railway, then we were further on, and there's me mother walking up, so we had a sort of tearful reunion. And then she turned round and I went back home with her, had a meal, and made a cup of tea, no tea in it, just hot water and milk (chuckles). But then she says, 'well, what you going to do?' I says, 'I staying here for a while. If they want me they can come and find me'. So I had a week, and then I thought, 'oh, I'd better go and do something, like'. So I went to the RAF office and told them who I was, and what squadron, and they said, 'oh, right, then you want a rail warrant to Lincoln.' And he gave me one, and I got the train to Lincoln, well, actually, it was to a little, a little railway station near where we were, near Skegness it was. And I got the train there, walked up the road to the aerodrome, and everybody asked, 'where the hell have you been?' They didn't know I'd been shot down, they just knew I was missing. And when I got to the railway, to the aerodrome I went to see the CO, and I had to tell him the whole story of what had happened. 'Ah well, ' he says, ' everything's for the best'.(chuckles) 'Go back to your billet'. And that was it. So that was me finished. So that was it, I just went back and I was in the Air Force again. Yes it was alright. I never felt wholly at home in the Air Force, but I enjoyed me time there. Definite. Mind you, I was an officer, so I was better off than some ordinary airmen. I was a Flying Officer at the time. So I went back and stayed where I am. Can't remember what happened then.
MJ: Did you fly again?
JC: No, I didn't. Our crew, see, all of us had baled out, well I hope they had. I know the bomb aimer, engineer, navigator all went out the front, then I went out. The wireless operator and the mid upper gunner and the rear gunner went out the back door. So I don't know, really, what happened to them. They'd all baled out, I mean, they had time to bale out. They all has parachutes, but once you bale out of an aircraft you're at the mercy of the winds, You don't know where you're going to land up. So that was it then. I was back home. So when I saw the WAAF, like, she said, 'where's your nearest railway station?' Well, it was Lincoln, but I said York, because I lived in York. And I went home to York, and had a week, well, ten days actually, but anyway I thought I'd better be getting back or I'll be being arrested by military police. So I went back, and went walking up the road to the aerodrome, and the lads that I knew said, 'where the hell have you been?' I says, 'oh, I've been in Germany'. And they gave me a funny look, 'what’s up with him?' Anyway when I got back I went to see the CO, and had to tell him my story, and then he says, 'I would like you, tomorrow, around about eleven 'o' clock, to tell this story to the aircrews. We'll get them all together in one of the hangers, and you can tell them exactly what happened'. So I had to hurriedly write a few notes down, amd bits and pieces, and then the following day I gave my talk, and everybody gave me a big clap at the end of it, so I thought, 'well, that's alright, I haven't done too bad'. (chuckles) And then I just went back to the squadron. It was very good, I enjoyed it. (noises off)(unclear) back on leave from Paris. It was good really because, I mean there was nothing for English troops in Paris. They all wanted to get home, and I was on Lancasters and we took about ten in a Lancaster. Because I had to have the engineer and the wireless operator of me own crew. Where the two gunners had been, and the bomb aimer, they were taken up by troops coming home on leave, all their places, and a few down the corridor, the corridor down the middle of the Lancaster, Used to take about eight, eight troops back to Croyden, from Paris, on leave, going on leave, they were. It was quite fun, I enjoyed it , because there was no danger. We just took off from Croyden, sailed over to Paris, dropped them off, then came back again. Brought some back if they'd finished their leave.
MJ: What was the atmosphere in Paris then?
JC: It was quite alright, by then it was, yeah. The Germans had all been moved out, and it was, it was the end of the war, you see, because although I was still flying, in the Air Force, there was no bombing missions, or anything like that, it was all just taking troops home on leave and then bringing them back again. Quite pleasant, I mean, I didn't mind (chuckles) it was very good. Was to go back to my squadron, and I thought oh, when the WAAF said, 'what's your nearest railway station?' I said York, where I lived. I lived near York, so I went back to York, to my mother. She was , I met her on the railway bridge, on the way home, she was come over to go into York, so I went home with her, like. She was pleased as punch, you know, to see I was alright, and she made a cup of tea, but when she poured it out it was just hot water, she hadn't put any tea leaves in (laughs) I'll always remember that. She was alright.
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command I'd like to thank Flight Officer Jack Cranston for his interview at his home in Southampton on the date of nineteenth of October two thousand and fifteen. Once again, I thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Jack Cranston
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-19
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ACranstonJ151019, PCranstonJ1501
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:30:50 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Jack joined the Royal Air Force in Leeds. After going to St. John’s Wood in London, he trained in Rhodesia where he passed out as a pilot. His training was on Tiger Moths and Oxfords before he was posted to a Wellington RAF station. Jack went on to fly Stirlings and was posted to a squadron of Lancasters. After 249 Squadron, he joined 207 Squadron.
Jack carried out 22 operations before his plane was shot down towards the end of the war. They baled out and Jack was captured. He escaped with an American private. They were rescued by some Americans and taken to Paris. He eventually returned to his squadron. Jack flew some troops to and from Paris from Croydon but carried out no further operations.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
England--London
France
France--Paris
Zimbabwe
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
207 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
escaping
Lancaster
Oxford
pilot
shot down
Stirling
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/555/8822/PPennyJ1501.1.jpg
fff42be023f2039d6a047d63b00ab006
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/555/8822/APennyJ150816.1.mp3
6ebaa9907dda395c064c30ee9492e7f8
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
Penny, Jim
James Alfred Penny
J A Penny
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Penny, J
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. Two oral history interviews with Flight Lieutenant Jim Penny (b. 1922, 1345892 Royal Air Force) and his log book.
He joined the RAF in 1940 and flew operations as a pilot with 97 Squadron from RAF Bourn. Targets included Nuremberg, München Gladbach, Berlin, Montlucon Dunlop rubber factory in France, and the Modane Tower Tunnel. His aircraft was shot down over Berlin 24 November 1943 and he became a prisoner of war. He was liberated on 3 May 1945 and retired from the RAF on 19 July 1971.
The collection was catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-16
Requires
A related resource that is required by the described resource to support its function, delivery, or coherence.
Jim joined the RAF in July 1940 on his 18th birthday. His ‘Flight’ was sent to the US to train under the ‘Arnold scheme’. He went to a variety of bases to learn to fly (detained in 1st interview), flying the PT17 Stearman biplane, BT-13A, AT-6A Harvard, Vultee-13, and then the Armstrong Siddeley, before returning on the Queen Elizabeth as a newly commissioned pilot with the rank of Sergeant.
On returning to the UK, he was posted to RAF Shawbury (Shropshire) Advance Flying Unit. Jim’s next posting was to RAF Tilstock Heath where he ‘crewed up’. Complete with crew he arrived at RAF Sleap (an auxiliary station for RAF Tilstock Heath). On being asking if they would be willing to join the Pathfinder Force all agreed to accept the offer – PFF was elite after all. After HCU training at RAF Blyton je stated, ‘The Lancaster was the finest plane I’ve ever flown’. On 26th July 1943 Jim was promoted to Flight Sergeant.
He remembered the RAF casualties and how their work affected their mental state, particularly the Squadron Casualties. However, the awareness that they were regularly striking at the heart to Nazi Germany left the with an enduring pride in being a ‘Armada’.
Jim and his crew transferred to RAF Upwood – Pathfinder Navigation Training Unit then to RAF Bourne 97.
Jim flew to bomb Nuremberg, München Gladbach, Berlin itself many times, Montlucon Dunlop rubber factory in France, and the Modane Tower Tunnel in France. He was involved in 2 flights that were ‘Boomerang flights’. One of the October operations was to be part of the decoy flight that was to draw fighters away from Kessel onto themselves, and bomb Frankfurt.
In November 1943 they were judged to be a competent part of the PFF and were tasked to be a back-up marker crew – the ones with the GREEN flares.
They flew to Dusseldorf, Manheim and Berlin. On 24 November 1943 they were hit by flak, managed to survive, became a POW until he was liberated on 3rd May 1945.
On 6th October 1945 he reported to No 34 Maintenance Unit at RAF Montford Bridge. A year later he had refresher course at Moreton-in-the-Marsh, as a Warrant Officer.
In 1948 Jim joined the City of Lincoln, Lincoln Squadron Bomber Command at RAF Waddington. He left Waddington to join the RAF Central Flying School as a flying instructor which he found very rewarding when he sent a pupil solo. Jim tried for a permanent commission while posted to RAF Ternhill but failed because he was tone deaf. Jim was offered a branch commission at the age of 37.
He left RAF as Flight Lieutenant on 19th July 71. He had no regrets about serving in the RAF and was a part of the Shrewsbury RAFA and the Shropshire Aircrew.
Claire CampbellClaire Campbell
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JP: Right, I’m James Alfred Penny. I’m ninety-three. I was born in Glasgow and during the war I ended up as a Bomber Commander Pathfinder Pilot with 97 Squadron at RAF Borne in Cambridgeshire, where we flew Lancasters. I was seventeen and a half when the war was declared. I still remember Neville Chamberlin broadcast. I thought then that he had done his best to prevent another war was almost in tears with those that were in war with Germany. I joined the RAF in July forty when I was eighteen. I’d wanted to be a pilot since I was about ten probably from reading all the exciting stories of the First World War pilots. There was a long waiting list before finally getting an aircrew medical. I finally became RAF VR at the voluntary reserve on 20th March 1941. I finally called for service on 4th July forty-one, sixteen days before my nineteenth birthday. On the train to London I met John Thomas and Alec McGarvey both policemen. Police had been reserved from East twenty-five and recently those between fifty-five and thirty were given permission to volunteer for aircrew. In my flight of sixty ITW, Initial Training Wing, forty were ex police. I remained convinced that every policeman in the United Kingdom between twenty-five and thirty promptly volunteered. Our flight was sent to America. General [unclear] Arnold commanded the South East Army Air Core. What became known as the Arnold Scheme trained RAF airman to be pilots. It began in June 1941 while America was still neutral and we entered the United States in civilian clothes. Our six hundred airmen became 42E, the fifth entry to be trained as pilots. When the Japs attacked Pearl Harbour on 7th December forty-one we went into RAF uniform. As the US declared war in Germany in Japan we were now allies. The Arnold Scheme ended in March 1943 presumably as the US required their training facilities and the build up of their own airforce. As well as the Arnold Scheme RAF were trained in Texas and produced navel airman by the US Navy. One hundred of us went to Souther Field, Americus, Georgia for primary training by the civilian, Graham Civilian Aviation Company on the PT17, the Stearman biplane. My civilian instructor, G M Marston was a quiet, patient man who inspired confidence. Being sent solo was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me. From basic training we went to the US AirCore Cochran Field, Macon in Georgia manned by AirCore ground crew and officer flying instructors. We flew the BT-13A, an all metal monoplane with fixed undercarriage and a standard instrument panel suitable for night flying. The propeller had a fine and coarse pitch. Compared to the Stearman it was very heavy on the controls. I was slowly adjusted to these heavy controls. My aircrew lieutenant with a none stop [unclear] style had no patience had put me up for check ride by a senior instructor. This went off well and I was given a new instructor a Lieutenant Stanell, another quiet patient man with whom I progressed well and passed onto advanced. Advanced training at Napier Field, Dothan, Alabama was an AT-6A named by a Harvard by the RAF. Light on the controls I was again slow to adjust. On approachment to landing I let the speed drop dangerously low, near to a stall, which from approach height would have been fatal. I had two check rides and was washed out and sent back to Canada. In Canada the personal dispatch centre at Trenton Ontario was unhappy place. Airman who had failed their courses were processed for some other form of service. Interviewed by a Flight Lieutenant he asked why I had been washed out. I said it was my own fault. I’d been too slow to adjust the voltage much heavier controls and the Harvard had the same trouble in reverse, for it was light on the controls and I was heavy handed now. I said I thought it would’ve been better if I had gone from the Stearmans straight to Harvards. The Lieutenant smiled and said we had been worried about the number of washouts at advanced and sent a team of experienced pilots to investigate. They’ve just come back and had recommended exactly what you have suggested. I’m going to recommend you go back and fly. In 1950 training by a flying instructor at central, RAF Central Flying School I was trained to rest my hand lightly on the Harvards trim to ensure it was not used incorrectly whilst you’re a pilot. I recall the Vultee VT-13 required the elevated trim to be wound fully back on the approach to landing. Wind the trim fully back on the Harvard resulted in a near up attitude and dangerous loss of speed on the approach. Now that my instructor and two check ride pilots had recognised what I was doing with the trim which was creating the danger, and recently reading about the Arnold Scheme on the internet I learnt that some fifty percent failed and were sent back to Canada. I wonder now how many of the large number of washouts from advanced that Trent Flight Lieutenant had mentioned had been caught out by the same simple trap. In a flight interview the Flight Lieutenant apologised for me going back to flying on the twin engine Lockwood for he rightly assumed, like most, I wanted to be a pilot, fighter pilot. We went to 35 SFTS North Battleford, Saskatchewan. After the war when I visited Canada I realised that someone in the Canadian Government had been very far seeing. These airfields built all over Canada became civil airfields serving the far flung areas of Canada which might otherwise might not have afforded this vital facility in such remote areas. The Airspeed Oxford was a low wing twin engine aircraft with a single fin and rudder pared with the Armstrong Siddeley 350 horsepower Cheetah radial engine. A sturdy plane, for me it had no vices. My instructor Pilot Officer, Flight Officer Henry Shackleton was another quiet patient man whose pleasant friendly manner put one at ease. On the 12th of September 1942 we were awarded our coveted wings and promoted to Sergeant. I had flown a total of two hundred and eighty-one hours by then and as was usual only six on our course were commissioned. We came home on the Queen Elizabeth. More than ten thousand of all three services were aboard. She sailed unescorted because she was too fast for any sub to catch her. The Queen and Queens must have carried nearly two million men to and fro across the Atlantic. [pause] RAF Shawbury in Shropshire was the first airfield I flew from in England on 15th January 1943 and was to be the last stationed I served at on retirement on 19th of July 1971. It was a special place in my memories, all happy for it was a happy station and always blessed by good station commanders. In January forty-three number 11 Advanced Flying Unit was equipped for the Airspeed Oxford. They checked our competency as pilots, accustomed us to night flying over the blacked out, over the blacked out UK. There was a bat fight a team approach training flight which trained pilots on the system where on approach to landing the pilot had a constant hum in his earphones if he was correctly in line with the runway. If he strayed off course the hum became a Morse Code dot dash or dash dot depending on whether he was port or starboard of the correct line of approach. There was an outer beacon, sorry an outer and an inner beacon which gave a cone of silence as the plane passed overhead. I think one had — stop this is then —I think one had to be four hundred feet at the outer beacon and two hundred feet at the inner. On my last bat fight, under the hood flying solely only on instruments, I was guided by the beacon approach. After the near marker I expected the instructed to take over but he told me to keep going and finally said “round out”. This I did and instantly with touchdown on the runway. I had a shock when I lifted the hood off. We were in thick fog. The instructor, also on the beam, had absolute faith in it keeping me on the controls lets him concentrate on seeing the runway at the last minute. Thick fog had arrived suddenly and with insufficient flow to divert to another airfield clear of fog. The experience only gave me even more confidence in the BE system. I left Shawbury with a total of three hundred and seventy hours and much more confident of my abilities as a pilot. [pause] Can we start again? For operation training we went to RAF Tilstock Heath in Shropshire where we crewed up. This is a strange RAF custom. Pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, wireless operators and rear gunners were assembled in a large hanger. We were told to sort ourselves out into crews and left to get on with it. With no warning of this affair most looked at stunned as I felt. How did one start? I thought I might as well get a Scottish crew and went over to a work of bomb aimers and asked if any of them were Scots. Sergeant Ali Campbell, a bomb aimer, said “I'm from Glasgow will I do”? I liked the look of them man. “Certainly” “I know a navigator from Glasgow shall I get him?” “Yes please.” He fetched a dark [unclear] individual older man and introduced him as Jimmy Graham also from Glasgow. With Jimmy was a red headed, freckled fresh face gunner and Jimmy said “Red here is an American. He'd like to be in the same crew as me.” Red was Sergeant P D Rise from New York. I liked, I liked the look of the man. I was delighted. All I needed now as a wireless op. A little chap asked if I could take somebody from Grimsby. I liked the look of him too. Sergeant J R Cowan made my crew complete. Seems strange I never knew their ages until I started to write my memoirs in the year 2000 and I learnt them from a kind and most competent lady from the Air Historical Branch. Jimmy Graham was the oldest man in the crew at twenty-eight. Bob Campbell was twenty-two. Bob Cowan twenty-three. Red was Royal Canadian Air Force and I only learnt he was twenty-nine when my book was published and I was contacted by his relatives. It seems now a strange way to select a crew to put us all together and let us sort ourselves out. Somehow it worked and the crew thus formed seem to be successful. RAF Sleap was a nearby satellite airfield for Tilstock Heath. C flight from err, C flight was detached to operate from there. We flew the Whitley Mark 4, powered by two Rolls Royce Merlins. When we practiced single engine landing I thought the Whitley was difficult in holding height on one engine. In fact, one night heading back to Sleap from a cross-country exercise, we lost power in the starboard engine and started to lose height. We approached the Pennines with only high ground to come, a black night and a possibility of air, air, alternator error I told the crew to put on their parachutes and standby to bail out if we got below three thousand feet. Fortunately our old Whitley held height above three thousand feet and we made it safely back to base. That was when I found out that Bob Cowan was petrified of having to bail out but it didn't stop him flying, that is courage. I liked the aircraft. It handled well and seemed sturdy. We practiced bombing at both high and low level, air to sea gunnery and many cross-country flights. We flew slightly more night than day hours. By the end of the course I had four hundred and thirty hours in my log and for the first and only time passed out with an above average assessment in my logbook. As a crew we were above average and we had major successes in navigation and bombing exercises. We were pleased to be one of the two crews on the course to be chosen to fly on an operational leaflet dropping over France and even more pleased when the operation was cancelled. For we were only too well aware that the Whitley was no longer a suitable operational aircraft. I was asked if we would volunteer for Pathfinder Force, warning that this would mean a tour of forty ops instead of thirty which was the main post tour. I consulted with the crew and they all agreed they wanted to accept the offer for the Pathfinders were considered an elite force. We went to a heavy conversion unit at RAF Blyton in June and we were there until July and we first flew the Halifax Mark 2 and 4, 2 and 5, sorry. For the Halifax was reckoned to have a sturdier undercarriage, better able to stand a heavy landing pilots new to the type might make and often did. After about fifteen hours in a Halifax we flew forty-eight hours in the Lancaster's Mark 1 and 3. I loved the Lancaster from the first flight. It was a pilot’s aeroplane. It was very responsive. Sergeant Father's, aged 21, who came from London, became our flight engineer. On the 26th of July I was promoted to acting up flight sergeant and we left Blyton for RAF Upwood which housed a Pathfinder Navigation Training Unit. For the staff instructor observing how we performed we flew one bombing and six country flight exercises. The last was the north, up the Irish Sea between the western isle, round the top of Scotland down over central Scotland and the Pennines. At ten thousand feet on a clear summer day it was the most pleasant flight I have ever made. The weather was glorious and the Highlands and Islands were beautiful. [pause] Next we joined 97 Pathfinders Squadron at RAF Bourn in Cambridgeshire. Bourn was [unclear] airfield with dispersed accommodation. We were allocated a mid upper gunner, pilot officer G T, G J Bates. He had already completed one tour and we were delighted to have a man of his experience join the crew. He was relaxed and at ease with us and we all liked him. I remember the casualties and how they affected our attitude and emotions at the time, especially squadron casualties. We were aware that regularly [unclear] strike at the heart of Nazi Germany. We were proud to be part of the Armada, I still am. [pause] Alright. Over the years I’ve often been asked if I was ashamed of bombing Germany. Those that asked that question are the ones who should be ashamed. More than fifty-five young men in Bomber Command who died were exactly the same type of men as the fighter pilots from the Battle of Britain and like them were fighting for their country. Err, and Hitler — don't, don’t, yeah, right. The bombing campaign was indeed terrible but in the context of the time it was essential. The moment war ended political experience combined with moral cordis made those who had approved the campaign back off because of primarily Hamburg and Dresden. Both had military targets and ethers of time I deeply regret the necessity but not the actions. For the first I was not yet an operational squadron. For the second I was a POW. Had I been on a squadron at those times I would have taken part. This part of my story is primarily to the memory of five brave young men who died to keep the country free from an evil tyranny and a brave young American who came to help. Right. At Bourn we were allocated a mid — new pilots went as a second pilot for an experienced crew in their first two operations. I was crewed with Pilot Officer Ken Farely, an Australian. Operation pilots in Lancaster were not fitted with dual control. Second pilots stood behind the engineers position keeping out of the way. Milan was a seven hour forty-five minutes round trip of about twelve thousand miles, twelve hundred miles sorry. A long time to be standing. All I did look out and listen to the crew on the intercom. They were very professional. There was no chatter and it was all related to the task. There was cloud cover all the way over France but over the Alps the sky cleared and in the bright moonlight the Alps were awesome. Brilliant white snow on the mountains did not hide the bleakness and the threat of the black rock. I remember thinking this was no place to have an engine failure. A forced landing was out of the question, even parachuting would have been fraught with danger. The sky cleared over Italy and the target was visible from the fires already started. The searchlights and the flying to my inexperienced eye seemed to waiver about rather aimlessly in the fact of the light below us even though we were only about fifteen thousand feet. We were carrying target indicator bombs, the usual cookie, the four thousand pound blast bomb and three five hundred pound high explosive bombs. Looking at the bomb dispersal I thought how impressive that bomb load looked. It was particularly interesting listening to the bombers controls as he lined up to drop are green TI’s on the [unclear]. The Pathfinders task, the most experienced crews identified the aiming point and dropped red TI markers and follow-up Pathfinders dropped backup greens on the reds. Target indicators drifted, usually backwards. Instructed by the master bomber, Pathfinders would re-centre. Main force aircraft bombed on these markers. One hundred and forty Lancasters went to Milan and one failed to return. The flight home was anticlimax. The Alps were awesome but the flight over France was dull, even boring. Later on of course I realised that was just what was most wanted. A nice safe, incident free, boring journey home. On the 16th it was a relief to be at the controls again with my own crew and we made a short daylight flight. On the 17th I was flown — no hang on, cut that. On the 23rd of August to Leverkusen. Again I was crewed as a second pilot to Pilot Officer Farely. Four hundred and seventy Lancs and Halifax’s went to Leverkusen and five failed to return. Flight time was four hours forty-five for a five hundred mile round trip. With a lighter fuel load we carried a heavier bomb load. TI’s, the cookie and six thousand pound high explosives. This time the targets seemed to be heavily defended by flak. There was virtually complete cloud cover lit up by the searchlights, good for the night fighters to see the bombers against the relatively bright cloud. Although our gunners didn't see, other reports said there was a lot of fighter activity. We bombed the red glows. I thought a bit dodgy though I had just enough sense to make no comment. Leverkusen is not far from Cologne and I heard later the Germans had reported that Cologne had been attacked. We bombed from thirty thousand feet which I thought a bit dodgy in heavy flak. Sergeant Farely was making sure his bomb aimers had the best possible view. There was a lot of flak on the way to and from the target. We were in a major industrial area and the flak was from other towns. I was dying to ask questions but knew that would not be welcomed. The shorter flight time with so much going, on despite tiring, this trip was not too tiring. [pause] Was on the 23rd and 24th of August to Berlin. It was decided it would not be fair to send me to Berlin on my first operation with my crew. Ok. We had been reminded at briefing to be alert for intruders on return and this lesson was rubbed in when we learnt that a crew had been shot down over England when nearly home. Our first operation as a crew was on 27th, 28th of August to Nuremberg my flight engineer was Sergeant Richard Fathers, twenty-one. I was twenty-one at that time. My navigator Sergeant James Graham was twenty-eight. My bomb aimer was Sergeant Campbell, twenty-two. My wireless operator Sergeant Cowan was twenty-three. My mid upper gunner, I never did find out his name, his age and my rear gunner Sergeant Rees eventually I found out was ninety-seven, no twenty-seven. On the ground it was Christian names except that I was always Skipper and there I used the crew positions eg bomb aimer. On that first flight with a task as main force for the bomb force, loaded with the cookie a blast bomb and high explosives Jimmy’s navigation was spot on and we reached the target on time. The Nuremberg, the Nuremberg target was clear. Bob bombed the TIs which were clearly seen. I was impressed with his calm control on the bombing run and his rising crescendo tone as he gave steady, steady, steady just before he reached our bombs which emphasised the need for just that. Although the flight was heavy and there was many searchlights we saw no night fighters but learnt there weren't many at the target on the route home. Of six hundred and seventy-four aircraft thirty-three were lost two night fighters. Two were 97 Squadron crews which put a damper on our euphoria at completing a successful mission. Right. Stop. On the 31st of August we went to Mönchengladbach. Fifteen of the squadron took off after midnight, a round trip of six hundred and sixty miles took three and a half hours. Jimmy’s navigation was spot on and we arrived at the target on ETA. We carried a cookie again and high explosives even with that load we had notably reached ninety thousand feet. Despite the cloud cover Bob could see the glow of the red and green concentration markers and bombed in the centre of these.
Again I found it easy to follow his clear guiding voice as he kept us on line for his target. With his bombs gone the light seemed to leap up, if it could have sighed with relief I’m sure it would have. I did. We still had a further thirty seconds of straight and level waiting for the flash to go off on our camera. I hated that extra wave and ones instinct was to turn away with the flak bursting near us. No fighters but twenty-five aircraft were lost to [unclear] many over the target area. Right. The 30th August to the 1st September 1943 we went to Berlin. The flight time was six hundred and fifty hours over a thousand miles. Our bomb load was a cookie plus eight five hundred pound heavy explosives. We reached Berlin on estimated time of arrival. At eighteen thousand feet Bob bombed on a red marker despite the cloud. The flight seemed more concentrated to me. The searchlights lit up the cloud. We saw no fighters but many of our own aircraft was seen over the target. Forty-seven were missing mostly to fighters and mainly in the Berlin target area. Wing Commander Burns, A Flight Commander was reported missing which was a shock for he was a legendary character on the squadron. It was also disconcerting that someone so experienced could fail to return. We were gaining in confidence. The crew had performed so well and Berlin was considered one of the dodgiest targets. Overall losses proved that. We flew three more successful missions [pause] each time arriving on our ETA and err, our ETA — alright. Start that again. 3rd of September 1943 was Berlin again and the 5th and 6th of September we went to Mannheim which was the boomerang. The Boomerang is failing to complete a mission [pause] oh dear. It’s incomplete a mission. Returning airway a very opposite name for such events. A boomerang does not count as an operation. Less than an hour out the starboard outer engine caught fire. We ejected our bombs in the sea. On our way back the station engineering officer told me the oil pipe, the propeller control had sheared and the loss of oil would have been so rapid, too much to allow for the feathering. He congratulated me on getting back and landing safely with a wind milling prop. I was pleased for I was a bit miffed that not one of the pilots, not even my flight commander, made any well done comment. When I thought about it, it was small beer compared to having been to Mahnomen and back. On the 15th of September we went to Montlucon in France again, no not again, take that out, rubber factory some four hundred and thirty miles from base. [pause] It took five hundred and twenty hours, five hundred and twenty hours. Three hundred and seventy-four Halifax and Stirling bombers were assigned. Of the forty Lancaster twenty-eight were Pathfinders. I suspect the others were new crews like us from Pathfinder squadrons with main force bomb loads of cookies and heavy explosives. We went in at four thousand six hundred feet. On the approach Sam Ogleby, our new gunner called out from mid upper turret “Christ skipper look up”. I saw what seemed to be hundreds of bombs falling just a few feet in front of us. Most seem to be coming from heavy bombing directly over head. At briefing we had been told of the aircraft brief to bomb from six thousand, eight thousand and ten thousand feet. On return it was surprising to hear that incendiary bombs had hit only five aircraft. What had been looked on as a relatively safe operation had turned out to be quite hairy. Three aircraft were lost, one to flak near the coast and two to fighters. The raid was completely successful in destroying the entire Dunlop works. On the 16th and 17th of September we went to Modane Tower in France. Again our mid upper gunner was again Sam Ogleby. The target was the entrance to the Modane Tunnel. Three hundred identical loads. Unlike my feelings on my last return from Milan, this time I welcomed an uneventful return home. I was not tired by flight time of seven hours ten minutes but piloting kept me busy and strangely happy. Also I was not standing all the way. Two aircraft had lost to flak over the French coast one going and one on the way home. A third fell to a fighter somewhere on the route back. We then had a new mid upper gunner Flight Sergeant R S Mortham, aged 23, who had completed a tour in the Middle East. [pause] [sigh] In September we flew three more successful missions each time arriving on our ETA. We also flew one boomerang. The 3rd of September 1943 we went to Berlin. On the 5th, 6th of September we went to Mannheim, that was the boomerang. The boomerang is failing to complete a mission returning early. A boomerang does not count as an operation. Less than an hour out the Starboard outer caught fire, we ejected our bombs in the sea our way back to the base. On our way back the station engineering officer told me the oil pipe, the propeller control had sheared and the loss of oil would have been so rapid, too much to allow for the feathering. He congratulated me on getting back and landing safely with a wind milling prop. I was pleased for I was a bit miffed that not one of the pilots, not even my flight commander, made any well done comment. When I thought about it, it was small beer compared to having been to Mahnomen and back. 15th of September was Montlucon in France. The target was the Dunlop rubber factory four hundred and thirty miles from base. The round trip took five hours. Three hundred and seventy-four Halifax and Stirling bombers were assigned. Of the forty Lancs twenty-eight were Pathfinders. I suspect the others were new crews like us. Squadrons with main force bomb loads of cookies and HE. We went in at four thousand six hundred feet. On the approach Sam Ogleby, our new gunner called out from the mid upper turret “Christ skipper look up”. I saw what seemed to be hundreds of bombs falling just a few feet in front of us. Most seem to be coming from a heavy bomber directly over head. At briefing we’d been told there would be aircraft brief to bomb from six thousand, eight thousand and ten thousand feet. On return it was surprising to hear that incendiary bombs had only hit five aircraft. What had been looked on as a relatively safe operation had turned out to be quite hairy. Three aircraft were lost. The raid was completely successful in destroying the entire Dunlop works. September 16th, 17th we went to Modane in France and again our mid upper gunner was again Sam Ogleby. The target was the entrance to the Modane Tunnel. Unlike my feelings on my last return from Milan, this time I welcomed an uneventful return home. Two aircraft were lost to flak over the French coast one going one on the way home, a third fell to a fighter somewhere on the route back. We then had a new mid upper gunner, Flight Sergeant R S Mortham aged 23, who had completed a tour in the Middle East. In October we made five successful operations. On the 2nd and 3rd of October, 3rd of October to Munich. On 4th and 5th to Frankfurt. At Frankfurt ten aircraft were missing and one was from 97 Squadron. Strange that even heavy losses overall seem to have little effect yet the loss of one squadron crew cast a gloom. Not that we knew the lost crew, we were all friendly enough but did not mix with other crews. It was as if each crew was sufficient unto itself. It was certainly not a conscious decision but as if we were aware at all time that someone might be the next to go. With indestructibility of youth it was never going to be you, always some other chaps. 7th, 8th of October Stuttgart. 8th and 9th Hammerberg. That was another boomerang. 18th and 19th Hanover. 22nd, Frankfurt, Kassel. Three hundred and forty three Lancs went to Kassel, the main target, only four were lost. This time there were two important [unclear] raids. Lancs to [unclear] and Mosquitoes to Munich. These spoof [unclear] particularly Mosi’s in Munich drew off the German fighters. For us there was various flak to fly through, much as usual. Of the eighteen aircraft of 97 Squadron which went to Hanover one was — a number of experience crews went missing. 18th, 19th of October was Hannover. Three hundred and sixty Lancs went out. Seventeen were lost. Another experienced crew from 97 Squadron again put a dampener on satisfactorily completing another op. 22nd of October Kassel and Frankfurt. Sixteen crews attacked Kassel and two were part of the spoof raid on Frankfurt to draw the German Fighters from the main force. We were one of those crews though the other boomerang. Frankfurt, eight mosquitoes and twenty-eight Lancs set off for Frankfurt and thirty-one of us got there. A bomb load with cookies and one hundred and fifty-six incendiaries. The only time we carried incendiaries for we were a spoof simulating the beginning of a full raid. On the crew buster aircraft I remember Red “Hey skip were to draw off the fighters we’ll be drawing off the buggers onto us”. Kassel, Frankfurt was 90 mile to the south and slightly west to Kassel. The route had made it appear that Frankfurt was the main target but as we opened attack there the main force turned north east to Kassel. We headed there to after dropping our bombs and the raid was fully developed as we approached. The sky was clear and visibility good. We could see Kassel was a solid [unclear] of fire. I thought it must be completely destroyed. All my commander reports confirmed that. My thoughts had been accurate to all intents and purposes it was. There were many fighters at Kassel and of the four hundred and forty-four Lancasters and Halifax which attacked Kassel, forty-two were lost. A heavy price to pay even for an incredibly successful operation. I was sad that our spoof had not been very successful. Kassel was a horror on the scale of Hamburg and Dresden and the efficiency of the operation. It was a smaller place. I have no idea of the casualties or reports concerned to the Germans. War did not comment on German casualties. For once I felt sorry for the folk in that city. Would I do it again? Yes. We were at war, all war is evil but more evil is to submit to evil. For me it's a simple as that. Bomber Command in forty and forty-one to forty-three was the only force with air striking directly at Germany. Part of the direct damage done to the German war. If all those German fighter planes, guns, searchlights and the men who manned them had been available for the Russian front, it could reasonably be argued that Russia might have been defeated before the aid of the west reached it. November forty-three [pause] 3rd and 4th November 43 we went to Dusseldorf. This was our first operation as back up markers. I have since discovered that crews from main force Squadron with a good record would be asked to volunteer for Pathfinder Force after fifteen main force operations. We’d been picked up early and done [unclear] trips for the Pathfinder Squadron. It gave us a boost to think we had proved ourselves. We were now considered competent to be a back up marker crew. This was due to Jimmy’s consistently accurate navigation and Bob's excellent bomb aiming. Bob certainly is part too passing information obtained on his steady radio watch. Although we had not been attacked by night fighters we had great confident in our gunners ability which was comforting. We now carried four TIs, that’s target indicator bombs, as well as the cookie and high explosives. Dusseldorf was a round trip taking four hours thirty minutes. Bob's report as recorded in Jimmy's log stated green TI markers and bomb sites at time of release of bombs. Markers later were concentrated. A typical clear report from Bob. He always had a relevant aiming point in his bomb sight. Cut. 7th and 8th of November we went to Mannheim which had twin towers separated by the Rhine. Then on the 18th and 19th of November we were back to Berlin. Stop there. 18th and 19th of November was Berlin again. Again we got there on ETA and Bob released our HE on a concentration of various backed up by greens. We saw flak all around us, Berlin was getting quite dodgy. Nine of the four hundred and forty Lancaster's failed to return. 22nd and 23rd of November Berlin, six hundred and fifty heavies plus eleven mosquitoes attacked Berlin. Wait a minute. The, the — what's that? The Bomber Command report stated that German Fighters were grounded by bad weather and only twenty-five aircraft were lost. It only shows clearly that although every airport was made to keep losses down these raids were made before learners and acceptance of the best of all those young men. It was appropriate to record the great regard bomber crews had for Butch Harris.
Back within the ethers of time with us and we were proud to be one of the Butch’s men. Butch was a term of affection. I recorded it but I don't expect those not there to understand it. Cut. 24th November 1943, Berlin. We were again carrying TIs. We arrived on ETA to find about eight tenths cloud. The searchlights again lit up the sky and the cloud. The flak seemed heavier than ever as we arrived up to our aiming point. At the end of our terminal run and just as his voice had risen to the central tone of steady, steady, steady he quietly said “we’ve re-centred, carry on straight and level Skipper it's going to be about two more minutes”. So we did a further two minutes straight and level. This time just as Bob's tone had [coughs] again risen to the steady, steady, steady indicating imminent bomb release we were hit by flak in the bomb bay. [pauses]The BST report of that night's raid seems to fully support my belief, as it was predictive flak, given that extra time to latch on to us one of our green TIs exploded in the bomb bay and we were surrounded by green fire. All the electrics fused so there was no intercom. I distinctively released my catch to my harness which strapped me in my seat and I broke open the harness to lean forward and wave to Dicky who was in the nose by Bob throwing out window. Window is metallic strips for deceiving radar. I pointed to behind my seat where his parachute was. As he came back I started counting one and two, two and three until I reached eighteen seconds. I knew my crew could be allowed thirty to sixty seconds for we practiced often enough. Now I had no intercom to give them the order I still believe that, that when I lent, lent forward I saw Bob with his hand on the bomb release panel trying to eject our bombs. I know the forward escape hatch was not open. I also knew it would all be a matter of seconds before the burning TI set off the four thousand pound blast bomb from the cookie, and hoped it would be long enough to get some of them out. I still had full control and all I had to do was keep my plane straight and level to give my crew the best aid to bailing out. I knew I was going to die but my responsibility for my crew, was my crew. I did throw up two thoughts my first was Mum’s not going to like this and very strangely for I had never considered this before nor even as the polite saying is knowing a woman the second was I wish I’d left a son behind. There was now flames between me and my instrument panel and Dicky was just bending down for a parachute when the cookie blew up. I found myself still in the sitting position in cold air with a flashing thought “where's my bloody plane gone”. The mind works incredibly fast in such situations and I recall waving the choices between doing a delayed drop to avoid the flak or opening my chute at once to drift clear of the bombing. As we were exactly over the aiming point when we blew up and at the midpoint of the raid I knew what was to come. I pulled my rip cord. When my chute opened I saw what could only be a piece of fuselage falling past me like a falling leaf. Then I remembered that the Home Guard had been told if a shell exploded within fifty feet of a parachute it would cause it to candle, which means to fold up. With that in mind, hanging there in the middle of the Berlin flak where it seemed to be every gun was pointed at me, I have never been so frightened in all my life. Courage is a strange thing, in the plane I had the responsibility of my crew I knew I was done but I was scared. Hanging from a parachute I had nothing to think about but myself, I was petrified. The German gunners missed me and I did land safely but that begins a different part of my story. [pause]. It's completely irrational for I could have done no more than I did but I still carry a deep sense, not of guilt but of something closely approximating to it, in that I lived and my crew died. I wrote to all the kin on my liberation with varying responses. I’d known my crew for such a short, time indeed knew little about them except professionally they were so very good at their respective jobs yet we became a close knit crew and formed an inexplicable bond, dependant on each other skills and loyalty. Red could have joined his countrymen, he would certainly have had better pay probably better promotion, yet he chose to stay with his skipper and his crew. Like the rest of us he knew the risks. Few crews from Pathfinder completed the forty-five operations. Now after over seventy years it’s absurd but I can still see them as they were and I miss them still. Their loss has conditioned my response in life to include indeed I am lucky Jim because I have a life that they were all denied. That's it. I landed in a back garden, a suburban back garden in Berlin and was very rapidly picked up. I was a prisoner of war from the 24th of November 1943 to the 4th of May 1945. After the war I stayed in the air force and was commissioned and retired in 1971.
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command I'd like to thank Jim Penny for his recording on the 23rd of August 2015 at his home in Shrewsbury. Thank you very much.
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 Jim Penny. One
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-16
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
APennyJ150816, PPennyJ1501
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
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.
Description
An account of the resource
Jim Penny joined the Air Force in July 1940 when he was eighteen. He recounts the training which he undertook before he became a Bomber Command Pathfinder pilot for 97 Squadron at RAF Bourn. He explains the crewing up process and details those who were in his crew. He gives accounts of his operations until his aircraft was shot down over Berlin 24 November 1943. His Lancaster was hit in the bomb bay by anti-aircraft fire which caused a green target indicator to explode. All his crew were killed but he became a prisoner of war. After the war he stayed in the RAF until he retired in 1971.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tracy Johnson
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
France
Germany
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
France--Modane
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Mannheim
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1943-11-24
1944
1945
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:43:13 audio recording
97 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bale out
bombing
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
crewing up
fear
grief
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Halifax Mk 5
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
military ethos
Oxford
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Blyton
RAF Bourn
RAF Shawbury
RAF Sleap
RAF Tilstock
RAF Upwood
searchlight
shot down
Stearman
target indicator
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/189/2343/PCaseyJ1501.2.jpg
98c327338ec53022f6b428c29b917fb8
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/189/2343/PCaseyJ1502.2.jpg
790374717a8c299d0e524dc5ba1a49f4
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/189/2343/ACaseyJ-CaseyV150610.2.mp3
5624ad1aba7a4c0d31952163a10a8cc7
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
Casey, John
J Casey
John Casey
Description
An account of the resource
14 items. Collection contains an oral history interview with Sergeant John Casey (- 2016, 2217470, Royal Air Force), an escape map, logbook, service documentation, a wallet and photographs. John Casey served as an air gunner on 61 Squadron in 1944-45.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Casey and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-10
2015-11-19
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Casey, J
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JC: Right I’m John Casey. Member of 61 Squadron Bomber Command and my number is 2219470. I met my wife at RAF Coningsby, a farmer’s daughter and we still live on the camp outskirts and that’s about it I think.
I originally worked for Vickers Armstrong’s in civvy street in 1943, of course I was a bit fed up with the job. It was a reserved occupation and one day we had half a day off my friend who worked in the pits and me we went down to Durham City had a day off and had a few drinks and decided we wanted to join the Air Force – air crew. So we went to the recruiting office and as it happened one of the chaps in there was a station warrant officer what I met years later in the RAF. A warrant officer [Holliday]. And we signed on. Of course my friend he had a shift off he worked in the pits. He was refused. He wasn’t accepted but I was accepted and I did my training at Padgate near Manchester and I originally ended up at RAF Coningsby where I met my wife, a farmer’s daughter, at the sergeant’s mess, at a dance one night. And from RAF Coningsby I went on operations, Skellingthorpe near Lincoln and that was where I finished the war. And I was posted to Coningsby.
VC: Wittering.
JC: Wittering yeah. I used to write to my wife from Wittering. I eventually was posted to Coningsby here where I met my wife, a farmer’s daughter, at a sergeants mess ball one night.
VC: But you went lots of other.
JC: Hmmn?
VC: You went to lots of other aerodromes before.
JC: Yes.
VC: You came to Coningsby.
JC: Yes I went to Wittering.
VC: And where you did your flight from
JC: Wittering and where else?
VC: Where you went on your raids. Where you went on your raids. You weren’t at Coningsby then.
JC: No I was Skellingthorpe.
[Inaudible]
JC: On bombing raids. I didn’t quite quite finish a tour. I did two thirds of a tour when the war finished. And from there I was posted to Coningsby where I met my wife in a sergeant’s mess dance one night. She was a farmer’s daughter. And I ended up there at the end of the war. That was about it I think.
[unclear]
JC: Well I was posted to Wigsley on Stirlings, training on Stirlings and then on one of the trips we caught fire, crashed and I bailed out and four members of the crew was killed in it. And then when I got back I was posted to Skellingthorpe on Lancasters. And on one raid there we got shot up over a place called Giesen [?] and we had a navigator killed. We managed to get back with a bit of effort from the bomb aimer. His knowledge wasn’t too good about navigating but he managed to get us back and we landed at Woodbridge at Suffolk. We were there two or three weeks till they got the aircraft repaired. It had got damaged in the attack and we got back to Coningsby and later on I met my wife at a sergeants mess dance. Did I
VC: You did lots more raids before then.
JC: Oh I did a few raids before that.
MJ: Where did you do your training?
JC: Bruntingthorpe on Wellingtons. And I was on Ansons in Wales.
MJ: That’s where you did gunnery training?
JC: Yeah gunnery training in Wales and the OTU at Bruntingthorpe in Leicestershire. From there, from Bruntingthorpe I went to Wigsley on Stirlings. I crashed in one of the Stirlings and I can remember the Caterpillar Club. I have a caterpillar.
Other: What is the Caterpillar Club?
JC: It’s a club for people who bailed out. Saved their lives when the bailed out
Other: Well people don’t know what the Caterpillar Club is so
JC: No.
Other: So that is?
JC: Yeah I’ll explain it.
Other: Yeah that would be good.
JC: It was for members that had bailed out of an aircraft and saved their lives.
MJ: You jumped out with – there was how many people were in the plane at the time?
JC: It was my memory fades. It was a full crew and the screen pilot, screen navigator and they were both killed and we -
MJ: Not all of you got out did you?
JC: Not all of us got out.
MJ: ‘Cause you were actually quite low weren’t you?
VC: You crashed near the Trent.
JC: Yeah.
VC: River Trent.
JC: River Trent. My memory fades.
Other : John you told me, told your grandson some stories. If you can remember some of them that’s great if you can’t don’t worry about it we’ll see what happens just say whatever you fancy.
JC: Well that raid we got shot up it was over Giesen [?] and we were attacked by a Messerschmitt 109 and he killed the navigator outright. We was corkscrewing but the shells coming in the side of the aircraft killed the navigator and from then on we had to rely on the bomb aimer navigating to get us back to this country.
Other : Did you manage to get the 109 or did you have to run out?
JC: We shot at the 109 but we claimed him as a probable, he never come back and we was crippled. We only had three engines. That’s why he attacked us in the first place.
Other: How did you lose the first engine?
JC: We lost an engine going out. We only had three engines. I suppose he thought we were a sitting duck. Anyway he attacked us and his aircraft shells came the side of the aircraft when we were corkscrewing and caught the navigator. Killed him outright. Missed me and the rigger turret which was very fortunate. And then from then onwards we managed to escape and we had to rely on the bomb aimer navigating us back home which he only had a minimum amount of navigation, the bomb aimer. But over the North Sea we were met by a Spitfire and he directed us in to Woodbridge in Suffolk where we landed straightaway and they well washed the aircraft out and repaired it and got back to Coningsby about ten days later.
MJ: The ground crew were amazed it was still flying weren’t they?
JC: Yeah cause the machine gun went through the main spar wing spar and we were lucky to get back and we was down there oh I don’t know ten days to a fortnight.
Other: And did you get any time off in that those ten days? Or did you have to do other things?
JC: Able to go to Ipswich. Used to go into Ipswich, walked there a lot. Hitchhiked. There was a lot of Americans around there and then they got the aircraft mended and washed out. The fire brigade I remember washing it out cause it was all blood. And then sent another crew down to pick it up to go back to
Other: So you didn’t fly your own plane back?
JC: No.
MJ: So how did you get back to base?
JC: We had a crew.
Other: Oh you.
JC: Flown down from Coningsby
Other: So the, I don’t know which plane flew you home?
VC: Wittering
JC: Where
VC: Wittering or
JC: No.
VC: Skellingthorpe.
JC: Skellingthorpe. Just outside Lincoln. That’s where we were stationed. That’s where the bombers were.
Other: So you had a separate crew bring you back.
JC: Yes. Had a crew Skellingthorpe come down to bring us back.
Other: So how long was it before you got back on operations again?
JC: Skellingthorpe. [pause] I don’t think we went
MJ: From when you landed at Woodbridge how long before you went on ops again?
JC: I was at Woodbridge about ten days I think and then this group come down from Skellingthorpe and flew us back.
MJ: And then you were you went back on ops again.
JC: Trying to remember?
VC: Yes you did because you had a new crew.
JC: Yes I went back on ops and I got a different crew. Different navigator. And then from there I was posted to Coningsby when the war finished, to train for the Japanese war. Tiger force they called it.
Other: So what is Tiger Force then?
JC: Tiger force. The RAF that was going out to Japan. Converting over to Lincolns, a bigger bomber than Lancasters. Converting to Lincolns
MJ: So did you actually go on Tiger Force?
JC: We didn’t actually go to Japan but we trained on the Lincolns at Coningsby here. It was Coningsby weren’t it? Lincolns.
VC: They did have Lincolns yeah.
JC: My memory fades I’m afraid.
Other: That’s quite all right when you got your Lancaster back. Or a new Lancaster
JC: Yeah
Other: With a separate crew obviously it takes time to get used to your crew is are there any ops you can remember that that you would like to recite or are you not ready for that yet?
JC: Yes we did. We did some more trips after Harry was killed ‘cause we had a new navigator.
MJ: You always enjoyed talking about Operation Exodus. In Italy.
JC: Oh to Italy.
Other: What is Operation Exodus?
JC: Bring the troops back from Italy for demob.
Other: Could you explain to me how you did that please?
JC: Well the whole of Bomber Command used to go out over to Italy after the war, when the war finished and the whole of Bomber Command would go out to to Maggliano airfield just outside of Naples and we’d stop there for maybe, well the second time we were there for about three weeks and then they brought all the army back in lorry loads. A lorry load to one aircraft and flew, flew them back to England for demob.
MJ: You had a good time in Italy didn’t you?
JC: Yes we had a good time in Italy. And I finished up meeting my wife in Coningsby and I was there the rest of the war wasn’t I?
VC: Yes, yes you were you were demobbed from Coningsby. No you weren’t
JC: Ahum
Other : Were you at Operation Manna?
JC: No
Other: You weren’t
JC: No dropping food to the Dutch. No. Our aircraft wasn’t on that one but the squadron was. You see after we were attacked I was a bit slow in doing the evasive action and that’s why the bullets went in the side of the aircraft and killed the navigator.
Other: Do you, I don’t think you should worry about how fast your actions are.
JC: Ahum
Other: I feel that you might think it was your reactions that took the navigator out. I wouldn’t worry about that.
JC: Yeah.
Other: It wasn’t your fault. It was the situation you were in. You, you rescued the rest of the crew.
JC: Yeah.
Other: So
JC: We managed, managed to get back to this country. Woodbridge.
Other: Yeah I I mean so I can say can don’t worry about that bit just put that to the back of your mind because you did far more than you realise and a lot of other people do so we’re not we’re not looking for you to worry about what you say.
JC: No.
Other: Ok. So you flew out in to Holland. Yes?
JC: Yes for my first operation just [unclear] island off the Dutch coast which was holding up the advance of the army.
Other: So what did that involve? Did you have to -
JC: We had to bomb the emplacements on the island itself. Yeah we lost one or two aircraft on that raid cause I could see them going down.
MJ: Was there a lot of enemy fighters or was there a lot of flak.
JC: A lot of flak.
Other: There was a lot of flak.
JC: There were no fighters at [unclear] just plenty of flack.
Other: How many aircraft went with you? Do you remember?
JC: It was just a 5 Group effort you know. Just one group. Two hundred aircraft that was all but we lost quite a few bombers.
MJ: Was it daytime or night time?
JC: Daytime. It was daylight.
MJ: Yeah. High level? Low level?
JC: No, high level, well medium. Yeah. Yeah I could see the shells exploding outside the turrets cause I had a clear vision. You know the panel was missing. And I could see the shells anti-aircraft bursting on the road. And the aircraft. I could see them going down either side.
MJ: Did you manage to get your bombs dropped on that mission or did you -?
JC: Yes we got our bombs dropped. Whether we hit the breakwater or not I don’t know ahum in fact it was my first operation. Was. Yeah.
[pause]
VC: Well I am John’s wife and I’ve lived around the aerodrome ever since it was built in 1939 and the first aircraft were Beaufort and it was a very short runway in those days going back to ’39. And then we had Mosquitos and then the Lancasters came well we had others in between then but I honestly can’t remember. The Lancasters came and then we had the American Flying Fortresses and they had to extend the runway then because they weren’t long enough so they took quite a bit of my father’s land to build, to do the runway longer and the Fortresses stayed and then we had Manchesters and then we had Lancasters and we finished up the war with the Lancasters still here and while they were here we unfortunately had one or two taking off and crashing. One crashed into one of our fields. Unfortunately all of the crew were killed which was very upsetting. And then later, just later and that on a Lancaster and didn’t gain height and crashed into the gasworks on the River Bain and unfortunately all the crew there were killed and it was most upsetting, and we lost quite a few of the Lincolns, Lancasters on bombing raids. We used to count them coming back cause they flew quite near to our house and we could lie there during the night. They would wake us when they started coming back but they didn’t all come back but well we just used to live the life and we had quite a lot of friendly airmen on the camp. They used to come down to the farm and.
JC: Work.
VC: They used to work on the potatoes and the harvest.
Other: So the airmen actually helped you with the farming as well?
VC: Yes they did Yes they were very good. That was usually the lads that worked in the flying control. They quite, you know, different lads came on different days when they weren’t on duty and yes they were very helpful, very helpful and well we got to know quite a few of the air force, the lads on the, they used to come down to the farm and well some were interested, very interested yes.
JC: Pay them with cigarettes.
VC: Sorry.
JC: Pay them with cigarettes and that, and money.
VC: No. No, my father wouldn’t have encouraged them to smoke.
JC: Well he did.
VC: No.
JC: He did. When I was there. Gave them cigarettes.
VC: Well I didn’t know that. He didn’t let me know that. [laughs] ‘cause we weren’t allowed to smoke [laughs] but no they used to usually get well as far as I know they got paid as they finished because they didn’t come every day. They came probably two or three days and then.
Other: Yeah did you manage to get out of the farm yourself or were you doing so much of the farm work on the land.
VC: Oh I was working alongside them that’s what I spent my life doing yeah.
Other: So you worked and you played hard as well.
VC: No well there wasn’t a lot to do really.
JC: One of our Nissen huts was on the land wasn’t it?
VC: Sorry
JC: A lot of the Nissen huts was next to the farm.
VC: Oh yes we had the aircrew billeted in Nissen huts on part of our field, you know, part of our land.
JC: [unclear]
VC: Yes we used to.
Other: So you never got rid of them?
VC: [laughs] No.
JC: They used to mess about at night when they come home drunk tipping all the crates over and
VC: Oh no they weren’t too bad. Just mischievous
Other: Were you mischievous?
VC: No [laughs] I guess I was yeah. It was a hard life but that was the life. You worked manually. There weren’t the machines. We had horses. We did eventually we did get our first tractor in 1963 but
Other: Did the aerodrome itself affect your farming in any way? Scare your horses or
VC: No not really no no
MJ: Just the fact that they concreted a lot of it.
VC: True yes.
JC: Had a mosquito taking off one day on the runway.
VC: Yes that’s right.
JC: Went Right through the tatie garden didn’t it? Old Mr North, old chap who used to lived with us could have put his hand out and touched it as it went past.
VC: Yes that was a little bit -
JC: We had mosquitos at the time.
Other: Mosquitos used to leave from this airfield as well?
VC: Yes they did. Oh yes.
JC: This was a little while after the war like.
VC: Oh yes we’ve had all kinds
JC: We had Washingtons here those big American ones here. We had them here. Washington aircraft
VC: We even had some Lysanders. Well two Lysanders once.
JC: Ahum
VC: This was at the beginning of the war, you know.
Other: So what happened there then?
VC: No they just used to fly around. I think they used to go over taking photos you know. Used to fly over Germany well not Germany but Holland and the coast there.
Other: So you never knew when they were going to drop in on you?
VC: [laughs] No, that’s quite right. No it was, well it had it’s good times and its bad times.
JC: The aircraft were super forts.
VC: Yeah.
VC: [unclear] weren’t they.
JC: Yes they were.
Other: Did they ever have parties or anything in the billets or did your dad not let them?
VC: Party in the village?
Other: No you said they were billeted on your farm. I wondered if they ever -
VC: Oh, yes – no, no. I mean well you lived that kind of life then.
MJ: What?
VC: I mean you knew they were going on a raid and didn’t know if they would come back so you just accepted that they had to live as
Other: Live fast.
VC: Yes
Other: Did you manage [unclear] with them as well?
VC: No we didn’t see them very much. They were night raiding. They would be sleeping during the day and they used to spend a lot of the time on the airfield because you know they’d got the NAAFI and the
Other: Sergeant’s Mess?
VC: The Sergeant’s mess and what have you was on the airfield and they would go there for their food and what have you and spend their time on the field, on the airfield when they weren’t, weren’t flying. Yeah. Yes I’d forgotten about the Nissan huts
Other: Are they still there or
VC: No no they were taken down years ago. No. Well after the war finished they took them down and worked the land again. It’s back into production. They used to use our land a lot because of the bomb dump was, they had a bomb dump.
Other: Oh what is a bomb dump then?
VC: They used to store bombs.
Other: That was on your land as well?
VC: No just on the edge of our land. Our land went up to it and they used to travel. Put a concrete road through our farm so that it was not mud tracks but they used to go into the airfield. When they’d lengthened the runways they made an exit and you know, into the airfield itself instead of, you know, coming through ours all the time. It was, it’s still there. Course they don’t use it any more.
Other: It’s still there?
VC: It is still there.
JC: Yeah. Bomb dump.
VC: I don’t think, I can’t think of anything else.
MJ: No. How did you meet grandad?
VC: At the sergeants mess dance. Us village girls used to go to the
MJ: So you’d go on the base?
VC: Yes.
JC: Yes she was with her sister and another young girl. A hairdresser. Weren’t you?
VC: Yes.
JC: Three of them.
VC: Yes a group of us used to go.
MJ: How often?
VC: I don’t know. About once a month. Something like that.
JC: Something like that.
MJ: Good parties?
VC: Sorry?
MJ: Good parties?
VC: It was just a dance.
JC: Sometimes they had a buffet didn’t they?
VC: If it was a special one?
JC: Aye. A special one
VC: Yeah but not very often. Not during the war anyway.
MJ: Much to drink?
VC: No. I don’t think there was a bar. I don’t know Tim ‘cause I never drank.
MJ: I bet Grandad did
JC: Aye grandad did.
VC: I wouldn’t have dared. Oh it’s still on.
MJ: Right let me on the behalf of The International Bomber Command Oral History Project thank Warrant Officer Casey and Vera Casey for their stories on the 10th June 2015. The project thanks you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with John and Vera Casey
Interview with John Casey
Description
An account of the resource
Before the war, John Casey worked for Vickers Armstrong. He joined the Royal Air Force and completed his training as a warrant officer at RAF Padgate. He learned how to fly Stirling aircraft at RAF Wigsley, Wellington aircraft at RAF Bruntingthorpe and Anson aircraft in Wales. He served at RAF Coningsby where he was trained to fly Lincoln aircraft and was at RAF Skellingthorpe as a member of 61 Squadron. At RAF Skellingthorpe he flew Lancaster aircraft. He survived one air crash by bailing out. On a later occasion, the navigator on an operation was killed and they managed to land in Woodbridge, in a badly-damaged aircraft. He participated in Operation Dodge. John met Vera, a farmer’s daughter, at RAF Coningsby. She recalls life on the farm adjoining the station during the war years, how some of their land was used to extend the runway and how the aircrew used to help with the harvest.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-10
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Heather Hughes
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:35:17 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ACaseyJ-CaseyV150610
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Cheshire
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
61 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
bale out
bomb dump
bombing
Caterpillar Club
home front
killed in action
Lancaster
Lincoln
Operation Dodge (1945)
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Coningsby
RAF Padgate
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Wigsley
RAF Woodbridge
runway
Stirling
Tiger force
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/506/8404/PDeHoopJ1501.1.jpg
7554a5af35cc60a59605d3f6fb8ca278
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/506/8404/ADeHoopJ150827.1.mp3
b8d933b29451ca93ba218e0792f2fbe4
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
De Hoop, John
J De Hoop
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
DeHoop, J
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-27
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flying Officer John de Hoop. He flew operations with 75 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JD: I’m John De Hoop and I’m doing this recording for the archives of Bomber Command. I, war started when I was at school and I was evacuated down to Sussex, and I came back to London in early 1940.
We had a period of what was called a phoney war, nothing very much happened, so many other children came back, and I came back to London and then I hadn’t been here long and the Blitz had started, and so I joined the Home Guard to start with and then when I decided, after I’d passed the age of 17 and had to think what I was going to do in the Forces, I decided I’d like to go into aircrew. And so I joined the Air Training Corps and in due course, I went to St John’s Wood, which was the centre where one was received for aircrew, and I had decided I would go for a wireless operator, primarily because at that time, and we’re talking about beginning of 1943, I thought that if I went as a pilot, the course would take so long the war might be over and I wouldn’t have the chance of seeing any action, the sort of thing a youngster thinks about and so I joined at St John’s Wood and was very well received.
We had our food we, in the London Zoo which seemed to be a very appropriate place, and then in due course, when kitted out, I went to ITW, which was the first port of call for aircrew and did the usual square bashing, and when that was finished, we all went our separate ways. Pilots, navigators and bomb aimers went mostly to North America and the rest of us, in other words air gunners and wireless operators, we were being trained in the UK, and I went to radio school, Yatesbury in Wiltshire, where I had my first experience of flying in a, a Dominie, which was a twin engine biplane, and a crew consisted of five of us trainees and one instructor and we had six months training, operating a wireless and learning the Morse code, which was very difficult for many people.
Usually most of us got brain washed and found ourselves sitting down in the underground looking at adverts and converting them into Morse code, because we’d got so drilled into doing it. So that completed the wireless op, and from then on, we went for an air gunnery course which I went to in the North of Scotland, which was very interesting and a complete change from radio. Had one or two interesting experiences; one I remember was hearing about the Fleet Air Arm which was nearby, which also did training, and they used to have an aircraft pulling a target, and on the Moray Firth was a ship which took shots at the target, and on one occasion, apparently the first two shots from the ship burst in front of the aircraft, much to the perturbation of the pilot, who signalled back, ‘will you kindly note that I am pulling this target, not pushing it’.
Anyway, after that little reminiscence, finished the gunnery course and after the gunnery course, we then got our flying brevet, which was an air gunners brevet we had on our sleeves, a wireless badge so that was our, that was our title, wireless operator/air gunner, so from there I went to an advanced flying unit which was in Northern Ireland, where we flew in Ansons; just the pilot and myself training, practising, sending messages to various ground stations. After completing that we, we then all had to go to operational training unit, which was where all the crews met up together, as in other words, you had your pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, air gunners and wireless operators and we were given some time to crew ourselves up, but if you were not completely crewed up then, that was made up for you by the powers that be and I finished up in a crew with three New Zealanders, pilot, navigator and bomb aimer, who were all commissioned and the two gunners and myself were Sergeants.
We were aged coming up to 19, the New Zealanders were a bit older, so we started our training there on Wellington Bombers which was, had been the first line bomber at the beginning of the war but now was relegated to just for training. They were quite ancient but we managed to survive in flying them, and from there we then moved on to a Heavy Conversion Unit, which was Stirling bombers. They were the British first four engined aircraft produced during the war. They were not a success and soon got relegated to training, but they were quite a big aircraft and, having four engines, we then had to have a flight engineer, who joined us making up our compliment of seven. So we then did training on the Stirling, and when that was completed, we went on to Lancaster Finishing School, so that was our first experience of the Lancaster, which of course was a number one operational bomber, and we did our period of training on that, and then it was a question of what squadron you went to.
As we had three New Zealanders and there was a New Zealand squadron in the group, which was stationed in East Anglia, we went to 75 New Zealand Squadron ,which had quite a reputation, some of it perhaps not happily, like for example having bigger number of casualties than practically any squadron, but we also did the biggest number of operations, and there we operated primarily on German targets. We did two or three mine laying trips. Mine laying was considered particularly frightening I suppose, if that’s the right word, because you went to two or three of you at a time and you went long distances, the Baltic for example, and of course you were entirely open to German radar and could easily be picked up, and it was not uncommon to lose one out of three, which happened to us.
We went out to Oslo Fjord the, the detail there was that you flew very low over the sea, only a few hundred feet to keep below the enemy radar, until you got near to where you had to drop the mine, and then you had to rise to 9000 feet in order that when you dropped the mine, it could activate itself by the time it hit the water, and of course, at that point in time, you could be picked up by enemy radar. Apart from those three, those three mine laying trips, the rest of them were day trips and night trips on German targets. Primarily the day trips were becoming more popular when I was on the squadron, because we had invaded Normandy, we had occupied most of France and we had the use of the airfields close up to the German border, which meant that a lot more fighter aircraft were available that could cover the distances required, and so we had large escorts which meant that we could do daylight raids, where prior to D-Day, we only did night trips, and these we accomplished.
The RAF were not the best at formation flying. The Americans were very good because they did primarily all daylight trips but we had not done, so we tended to be a bit scattered in our bomber stream, but at least we could see each other when we did night trips of course, and when you had three of four hundred aircraft or more going to a target, there were quite often collisions. There was no way of avoiding them. You hoped you would feel the slip stream of aircraft around you so that you would be aware that there were other aircraft around, and it was very important that you arrived at your target at the appropriate time so that you were spread out. The danger bit more than anything else I suppose, was coming in over the target, obviously anti-aircraft fire could be extremely heavy and you, you had to, when getting flying to your target, you had to go straight and level running up to the actual targets, which meant that however heavy the anti-aircraft fire was, you just had to keep straight and level so that the target was hit and you had the opportunity of the target flash, the target flashing from the aircraft which took a picture of where your target had been hit or not.
So that was target life, and at 25 operations, our skipper, who had been, had done an operation tour before, he finished at 25, the rest of us had to go on to 30 which was the normal full first, so we were then left without a pilot, but our flight commander took us over and so we did three with him and then he finished, that was his lot, and they decided to let us go after 28 rather than 30 so we were allowed off too. I didn’t complain and from then it was a question of going on to training other folk, going as an instructor and that’s when I started to get a bit tired and bored with instructing wherever I was at the time, and so I volunteered to go back for my second tour, but then the war came to an end so I and thousands of other aircrew were drifting about, what could be, what could be found for us to do, so in the end, I had to go on an admin course as, so when I came back from that, I was then posted as an adjutant to an RAF station, in the meantime, of course, we’d had a general election but I didn’t have a vote because I was considered too young. I was under 21 when the election came so I didn’t get a vote then but, however, I finished up as an adjutant and in which I chased around lots of erks and made them do various jobs and things, and I found it quite an interesting occupation we had.
Towards the end of 1946, we were allowed to wear civilian clothes off duty, and we were given clothing coupons, so I went into Plymouth, the local town, to buy some civilian clothes and there were very few shops there, they had all been bombed, but there was a big Victorian house that had a ground floor turned into a store, so I went in there and all I could buy was a pair of corduroy trousers and a rather shaggy jacket. So that’s what I bought and the first evening I was free, I went into the forces club in Plymouth and went into the bar, and there were all these chaps there wearing corduroy trousers and hairy jackets, so that was rather a waste of time. I merely exchanged one uniform for another and in fact, because so many of us were dressed like this, when the bar opened at 6 30 in the evening, it became known as the rush of the gabardine swine, which bible readers will see the, see the joke, and so from then on it was waiting for my de-mob, and when it came out, I’d got married towards the end of the war.
So I came out and I had to find myself somewhere to live and somewhere to work, and I found the first few years after the war in many ways, much more trying than being in the Air Force, and that was the story of my experience.
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command, I would like to thank John De Hoop in Sussex for his recording on the 27th August 2015, once again thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with John De Hoop
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-27
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ADeHoopJ150827, PDeHoopJ1501
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
00:16:30 audio recording
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
England--London
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
Description
An account of the resource
John De Hoop was evacuated to Sussex at the start of the war but returned to London in early 1940. He joined the Home Guard before joining the Air Training Corps and went to radio school in Yatesbury in Wiltshire where he experienced flying in a Dominie. When he was nineteen, he was trained on Wellington Bombers before moving on to a Heavy Conversion Unit flying Stirlings. He went to Lancaster Finishing School, before doing minelaying trips. Later on, he was posted to an RAF station as an adjutant.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Steph Jackson
Vivienne Tincombe
75 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
Dominie
Lancaster
mine laying
RAF Yatesbury
Stirling
training
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/546/8786/PJohnsonKA1507.2.jpg
a4899a68c46a58711c699203c30b2867
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/546/8786/AJohnsonK150603.1.mp3
599f1a032c78b646d3f49ba1ee7a8e7b
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
Johnson, Ken
K A Johnson
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Johnson, KA
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. Two oral history interviews with Ken Johnson (b. 1924, 1595311 Royal Air Force) and one photograph. He flew operations as an air gunner with 61 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-03
2017-04-03
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
KJ: My name’s Kenneth Alfred Johnson. I joined the RAF at nineteen, I had a trouble getting into the RAF because I was on making barrage balloon cables, so they classed that as – to keep you back. Anyway, I finally joined in 1943, I did my air gunner training which was the, what I was going for, at Dalcross in Scotland. I finally got to OTU, where we crewed up. Mostly, all the different pe – er, people joined together and sorted themselves out, but I didn’t have that opportunity because there was at – further ahead than myself, they was short of air gunners, so they gave us an exam on aircraft recognition and the top six were sent and the crews was picked out for them, they, we had no choice. Anyway, I was very lucky, I got a wonderful crew, an amazing pilot, he’d fought for the Finns against the Russians, an incredible fellow, he was. Anyway, we finally got to operationals. We’d gone through all OTU, which was on Wellingtons, we had a short spell on Stirlings, and then finally, onto Lancasters.
We was sent to Skellingthorpe, which is outskirts of Lincoln, on 61 Squadron. The air, the airfield was joined by, was made up of two squadrons, there were Number 51 – 50 Squadron, and Number 61, and I was on 61. We did – our first raid was a bit of a – well, it was all wrong, really. We were told when we set off that we were gonna bomb very close to our lines, and this was seven, seven days after D-Day, so consequently, we were given a call sign to not to bomb. I remember that after all these years, it were “Billy Bunter”, and we’d got even to the point of opening the bomb doors and this call came over - ‘Billy Bunter, Billy Bunter’, so we closed our bomb doors and set off back for home. Even a long, long way back, we were still hearing the master bomber calling out ‘Billy Bunter, Billy Bunter’ ‘til he finally rush, lost his temper and used a bit stronger language [laughs].
Anyway, that was number one, we finished bombing the North Sea. We did a few operations then, and then it came to the tenth operation, and this was to be a daylight one near Versailles at the V1 bomb installations, so as we got near the target at – I was a mid upper gunner, and I saw this Lancaster above me open his bomb doors and all I could see was two rusty rows, rows of rusty bombs glaring at me. I warned the skipper, but he said ‘Nothing I can do about it, we’re hemmed in, he’ll probably not drop ‘em’. That were wishful thinking, as our bomb aimer said ‘Bombs gone’, so this lot came down on top of us, three bombs hit us - [clears throat] ‘scuse me - one hit the starboard fin and rudder and sliced that off, one hit the starboard wing, knocked about four – it, well, originally it was dangling like, like a bird with a broken wing, about four foot of our wing, and the third one, unfortunately, hit the rear turret and took the rear gunner away with it.
Well, at this point, the intercom went dead, we bounced about the sky for a while ‘til he got it steadied again, but I didn’t know what was happening, they might have been jumping out as far as I knew, but I thought ‘Well, stick to it’, and I sat there, still looking ‘round in case any fighters were around, and it, a little while afterwards, I thought ‘Oh, I haven’t seen the rear turret moving’, that’s when the mid upper turret had no back to it, so by going for’ard, I could see between me legs, where the turret should have been, just a gaping hole. And, anyway, the skipper took us home, and when we got to, into the Skellingthorpe outer circuit, they wouldn’t let us land - [coughs] ‘scuse me, - because a plane had already crashed on one of the runways and they didn’t want to have to close the station down, so we were sent to another place, which happened to be an OTU.
Now, normally, you never carried the ladder that you got into the aircraft with, because o’ it altering the compass. Now, normally, we’d have just jumped out, but that day, I could not have jumped out, I should have landed flat on me face [laughs], so I had to wait ‘til one of the ground crew came and just got hold of me shoulder and helped me out. And the CO, this OTU, came flying out and we were all to – well, he was talking to my skipper that – giving him his condolences, and he said ‘Well, not much I can do for you, but I will give you a slap-up meal in the officers’ mess’. He’d hardly got the words out when a, a rider came out to say we’ve got to go back to Skellingthorpe immediately for the debriefing, so we never did get our slap-up meal. Anyway, the very next night, we were on ops again, and it was down to Bordeaux, South of France. We got over France and ran into an electrical storm, I’d never seen anything like that in me life before - St Elmo’s Fire. Each of the props had two foot of orange flame round them, the, all the aerials, there were little blue, well, it were like fairy lights running up and down the cable. The – oh, by the way, we’d got a new gunner on, of course, and he suddenly started screaming, and it were that bad, the skipper had told the engineer to go and pull his intercom out so we wouldn’t hear it. And, on top of all this fire, there were flashes going off the guns, as though you were firing but you weren’t, and every so often, you’d just drop about five hundred feet as though someone were chopping your legs under you. Anyway, this went on all the way to the target. When we got to the target, amazingly, there was a big gap in the clouds so we could see the target. Only thing is, we couldn’t see each other, so the bomber, the master bomber, said ‘Put all your lights on, and then you’re not, you’ll not gonna collide with each other’, only time we ever bombed with all the, all the lights in the aircraft on.
Anyway, we got to, we came back through the same, with the same carry on, and, as we got near to home, well, first of all, as we got near the Channel, the skipper had asked for a crash dome, there was two big crash domes near Ramsgate - [clears throat] ‘scuse me - and they – anyway, as we passed over the white cliffs, he said ‘Change to that, give me a route for home, I’m taking her home, I’ve brought her this far and I’m taking her home,’ and when we got home, we couldn’t land ‘cause of somebody else crashing, so we finished up at this other place. The very next night, no, I’ve already said that, they did a perfect landing, and that was the end of that one, that was the tenth raid. We had, at, as we got near the thirtieth, they, they altered the number of ops you’d got to do for a tour, so instead of thirty, we were supposed to gonna do thirty-six, but we did another three and the skipper said, the toad had been altered from thirty to thirty-six, so the skip, skipper suggested we do three and go on a ten-day holiday sort of thing, and then come back and do another three and we get another ten days, but it didn’t work out, they’d dropped it back to thirty when we came back [laughs]. So, we were Tour Expired. Well, four of us, the skipper said he were gonna go on with another tour straight away, you could have a rest but we didn’t, so four of us (that was the skipper, flight engineer, wireless operator and myself) said we’d go on this next tour, and the skipper had got a choice of where he wanted to go. One was on Pathfinders, one was on to 617 and the other one was Number 9 Squadron, which at that time was joining 617 on all special raids, carrying the twelve thousand pound Tallboy bomb, so really there was no argument about it because he was rather sweet on a, a WAAF officer at Bardney, which was 9 Squadron, so it was 9 Squadron.
And, as I say, we were only allowed to go on special ops and [pause] the first one, I unfortunately didn’t go on, because they, they took the mid upper turrets out to go and bomb the Tirpitz, and they put a Llewellyn 10 wind tank inside the fuselage, so to make room for that, they had to take the mid upper turret out. Well they, you might be interested in this, they bombed the Tirpitz and sank it and, a couple o’ days later, all those that were on the raid had to go into the briefing room, and ‘cause I would not been on it, I didn’t go in, I can only say what I was told. This, the CO came in with a bucketful of medals, now he, there weren’t no names on them because it was a – Churchill had said ‘The squadron must have these medals’, so first of all, they chose all those that had been on three raids for the Tirpitz, they all got a medal, then they found there were enough for those that had been on two, but there wasn’t enough for those that been on the last raid, so when it came to the last raid, they pulled names out of the hat - [coughs] ‘scuse me - rather annoyed my skipper because he thought it were demeaning, the, the idea of the medal. He’d already got DFC for bringing that damaged aircraft back. Anyway, that’s the way that was done.
After that, we did such targets as viaducts, we went to Bergen for the submarine pens, and they were all them sort of chosen targets. On the Bergen one, we were always Number One Wind Finder, because I had in my crew, I’d got the squadron bomb aimer and the squadron navigator, so we were always Number One Wind Finder. There were six aircraft, two had to be wind finders, and what we did, you had to go over a chosen, chosen point, set this machine going, fly around for so long, then come back over the same heading and then stop the machine, and then all the, the other five radioed in their – what they’d got, and it was up to our navigator, then, to sort out the wind from the chat. And on this Bergen raid, we, bomb aimer had chosen to go over a, a supposedly deserted airfield, and it chose the, where the runways crossed to do. Anyway, as we’re coming back for the second time, he were counting fighters coming up against us [slight laugh], and he got to forty-one when we, we’d got out of range then, so we knew they were gonna be in trouble, and we bombed the – I could never understand why the fighters didn’t attack ‘em before they bombed, they waited while we bombed, and we came out over a strip of land and then to the sea again. There was five fighters to one bomber, and there was one behind us, it -crew from our squadron, they got [unclear] got onto him, he put up a good fight, he shot one of them down, but they finally forced him into t’sea and it just disintegrated.
Now, I can’t think for a minute there’d be any of the crew alive, but one came to us and I thought ‘Oh, it’s our turn now’, but he suddenly realised he was alone. The other three were strafing the wreckage in the sea, and so he went and joined ‘em, lucky for us, and gave us chance to get away. But, after the war, and we went to these different reunions and that, there was very often a German fighter pilot come to these. I’m afraid I could never be friendly to ‘em, what I saw that day were – I was absolutely disgusted. Anyway, we, we finally finished up doing forty-four ops, so I consider myself a lucky person. I always felt there was guardian angel on me shoulder, but after the VE Day, they asked for volunteers for the Tiger Force, but I was getting married in three weeks’ time, so I thought ‘Well, I’ve done me share, I’m not gonna volunteer for it’. So, first of all, we went to a, another squadron that, that they’d formed, calling them North West Strike Force; the idea was, they thought the hardened Nazis would go up into the mountains and start a guerrilla warfare, but it never came to that, so after about three months, that was finished. And then I was put on ground staff and I was sent out to Egypt, I’d only been married three weeks [slight laugh], they sent me out to Egypt, driving. Well, I was in charge of a [unclear], a, not them, what d’you call it? A number of lorries, I’d got thirty lorries, it was on Alexandria docks, and I’d thirty lorries taking stuff down to the canal zone ‘cause the Brits then were starting to pull out of it, ah, Egypt altogether. But, apart from those lorries, at weekends I could have as many as a hundred lorries come from Cairo all wanting a load to take back.
Well, I were closing down, not only RAF but Navy and Army places, and at first, I made the mistake of ringing up and saying ‘What size lorries do you want for your…?’ and they’d all said ‘Ten tonners’. When the lorry came back, he’d have little crate on the back, so I thought ‘That’s no good’, so I had a little thirteen-hundredweight Dodge, and I used to go out to these places and estimate how many lorries I wanted and what size lorries and so on, and that worked wonderfully well. It were, one day, I got a phone call from a matron of a big hospital in Alex, the nurses want, some of the nurses wanted to go to Cairo for a week’s leave, would I, could I get some o’ t’lorry drivers to take ‘em? Well, they’re a lot better to go hundred and sixty-five mile wi’ a female companion than be on your own, so there plenty of volunteers for that, and that was still running when I left, that shuttle service [laughs]. Everybody seemed happy about it, so yeah, wonderful. And had ten mon – ten months in [pause] in Egypt, and, just before I came home, they dropped us all down from, well, myself were a warrant officer, dropped us down to sergeants, I thought ‘That’s a nice thank-you [slight laugh] for what you’ve done!’ And anyway, that were it, I came, I came home and immediately joined the, a Observer corps, we had quite some nice times, go out to this spot and we were spotting aircraft, but eventually, they, all they were interested in was nuclear, and the, the idea was that if there was a nuclear war and you’ve got to go to this station (mine was out at, near Finningley Airport, where we were), but you had to stay there ‘til the all clear. I thought, ‘No, that’s not for me, if I, if my family’s out there, then I’m gonna be out there as well, I’m not leaving t’family’. Anyway, thank God, it never materialised. So, oh, on one thing on this, while we were on the obs – air observers, the, our CO for the whole northern area was Pegler, that had the Flying Scotsman, and he arranged it for us to go to air show at – the big air show, anyway, and he took us down in his, in the Scotsman, and the, he’d got the observation car in, and each carriage got half an hour in ‘t observation car [laughs], but it was quite a, quite nice, yeah. Then, well, finally, we got back to civvies and got back to working again, and you’d be amazed how hard that was, settling down in civvy street again, even though I’d only been in the RAF four and a half year.
MJ: Battery change on Ken Johnson. On behalf of the International Bomber Command Archive Unit, I’d like to thank Ken Johnson for his recording on the date was the 3rd of June, June? Yeah, June 2015 at his home. Thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Ken Johnson. One
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-03
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AJohnsonK150603
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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
00:25:22 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Kenneth Alfred Johnson joined the Royal Air Force at the age of 19, after being in a reserved occupation making barrage balloon cables. He trained as an air gunner, serving as a mid-upper gunner.
He had a spell at the Operational Training Unit, flying Short Stirlings and Avro Lancasters before joining 61 Squadron at Skellingthorpe.
He tells of an incident on his 10th operation, when he was on a daylight trip near Versailles at the V1 bomb installations when his aircraft was directly below a Lancaster which opened it’s bomb doors. The Lancaster above dropped its bombs, which damaged Kenneth’s aircraft, including carrying away the rear gunner.
Kenneth completed 34 operations on his first tour, and then went straight onto another tour, being posted to 9 Squadron at Bardney.
After VE Day, Kenneth was posted to Egypt in charge of lorries returning from Cairo.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Vivienne Tincombe
61 Squadron
9 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bomb struck
Lancaster
RAF Bardney
RAF Dalcross
RAF Skellingthorpe
service vehicle
strafing
Tirpitz
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/519/8751/PLockeBrownK1505.2.jpg
371e73c856271f2648200e3f62e57423
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/519/8751/ALockeBrownKL150706.1.mp3
9c4fb6df19644d66f71d27e692bf46c2
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
Locke Brown, Kenneth
Kenneth Locke Brown MBE
K Locke Brown
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LockeBrown
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Kenneth Locke Brown (1699916 Royal Air Force). He served with 97 and 635 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
KB: [Unclear]
MJ: It's all right
KB: My name is Kenneth Locke Brown, I had been involved with the RAF since I was a child, a long, long, way back, because my father was a pilot in the First World War, and so when I was born in 1923, which is only a few years after the First World War, he was still full of stories about the First World War and his flying experiences. He was a fighter pilot, er and, er, served only as a fighter pilot towards the back end of the First World War, prior to that he was in the trenches, and was promoted out the trenches. But my earliest recollections of the RAF is him trying on his helmet on me, his leather helmet, his gauntlet gloves with a funny mitt to them, and that sort of thing, and so I was enthused with the knowledge about the RAF very early on in my life, and I think he would very much have liked me to have gone straight into the RAF as soon as I left school, but I'm afraid my standard of education, and my intelligence level was not good enough to get me into somewhere like Cranwell or so on, and so I, I didn't get a chance. I had an opportunity to fly, er, at Barton airport in Manchester, which was arranged by my father, but that was my earliest experience, but I always wanted to go in the RAF, and of course you weren't able to volunteer for the services until you were eighteen years of age, so I had a spell between leaving school and going in the RAF when I was a bank clerk. But then I joined up. Now the story about me joining up is interesting in the sense that I wanted to fly, I desperately wanted to fly, and so I volunteered at the age of eighteen for aircrew, and I went and I had all the examinations, medically, intelligence wise, and so on, and I passed them all, er, perfectly okay, and, and I was told that I was accepted as a candidate for aircrew, er, but unfortunately I wouldn't be able to go on a pilots side of it because they were absolutely chock a block with volunteers and so on, 'cause the Battle of Britain had just finished and there was lots of enthusiasm for the RAF and so on. So I went into the RAF just as an ordinary erk, with the, er, knowledge that I was accepted as aircrew, and I wore a white flash in my hat, and I went and did all my basic square bashing and such like, which incidentally, at that particular time of the war, was quite amusing because we all got dragged into the services, and there wasn't the equipment for us. We, we hadn't got necessarily, we hadn't all got trousers, we hadn't all got jackets, we hadn't all got hats, we, looked a right rag bag altogether, but we went out to Redcar and we did our square bashing there, and then we went from there to 3S of TT at Blackpool to do ground, er, engineering. And we were, at that stage, divided into two categories, and I didn't realise at the time, I was, incidentally, all this time, you must realise I was very young, and, erm, hadn't been away from home very much, and so on, so quite innocent, but I was desperate to get to fly and they, we went onto this engineers course, which was divided just by saying those on the left move over that way, and those on the right go over that side, those on the left will go into engineering side, the others will go airframe side. I didn't realise at the time, but those on the left who went into engine side, had the opportunity to become flight engineers, the ones who went on the airframe side didn't have much opportunity to do that, but there was, I was still sporting the fact that I had been accepted for aircrew, so very disappointed, and quite honestly, I was extremely lucky, because those people that went on the engineering side then eventually became flight engineers, and not many of them survived the war. They went straight from there into Bomber Command into, er, warfare over Germany, and so on, because at that age group, and not many survived, quite honestly. So I was incredibly lucky in getting an airframe side. So, although bitterly disappointed as a young person, who didn't really realise what the hell was going on, it is, it is very important to impress upon people just how young people were in those days. There were an awful lot of people were controlled by their family, my mother basically controlled me, I had a, as you know, a mother and father, as I've told you about my father, I was an only son, incidentally, but my mother controlled me, and when I went in the forces, she arranged for me to have half of my pay deducted and given to her, and I mean the pay was negligible, and so I, er, we were managing on seventeen and sixpence a fortnight I think it was, that was all as we had. Anyway, that's another story, er, so I went to 3S of TT, Blackpool and I trained as a airframe mechanic, but the training that they put us through was quite ridiculous, because it was all based on the First World War. We learned how to put patches on aircraft, and sew up the holes that had been done in the fabric of the body, and how to trim the planes, and how to trim the aerials, and oh, all sorts of fancy ailerons and all that sort of jazz, which were all totally useless when eventually I got to go onto a proper fighting unit. Before I went onto the fighting unit, though, I, from this rigger thing which I qualified at, I was sent to Morecombe on an overseas draft, and we were dished out with all the equipment, snake boots, and fancy hats, and all the rest of the things, and we were parading there, hearing about when we were going to go on the boat, was going to go in a matter of a couple of days, and so on, and lo and behold, suddenly my name was called out and I was drawn out of the ranks and said, 'you're not going abroad, because you are aircrew chosen', and I [chuckles] said I hadn't got the qualifications, but that's what they decided, I shouldn't be going to do that. So there I was, still with this white flash in my hat, all I was, was a L, er, I got to be a rank of LAC by this time, stage, er, rigger, or whatever we want to call them, you know, ground crew, ground crew airframes. So, I was dragged off that, I hung around in Morecombe for a little while and it was the summer and it was wonderful, and I am a great swimmer, I was quite a good swimmer, I swam for the RAF at one stage in my career, but that's another story, but, er, I had a lovely time, I had I think four or five weeks, best part of the war really that I ever had, when I spent my time in Morecombe baths. What happened was, we paraded every morning, and they detailed everybody off to go to various duties, and they detailed you off to go to the cookhouse, or so on, you see, and I soon learned that they'd no idea where you were, really. They detailed you to go to the cookhouse, but nobody at the cookhouse was expecting you anyway, so I used to go on parade, as soon as they dismissed us, I used to beetle off to the baths, and had a lovely time. But eventually they caught up with me and 'where were you?' I said, 'ooh, I was here on parade yesterday morning'. 'Well, we've been looking for you, you've been posted, and you've been posted to 97 Squadron, Bourn, on Lancasters.' Well, I thought, that's bloody funny because I haven't learnt anything about, don't know a thing about Lancasters or anything, I, all I know is how to, how to repair a patch in a bi-plane like my father was flying in the First World War. Anyway, subsequently I arrived at 97 Squadron, Bourn, and that would be in the year 1943, and I served as ground crew there, and that was my initial, er, involvement with Bomber Command and the Pathfinders, 'cause that was a Pathfinder squadron. We had many interesting things, but the most important and most dramatic day we had whilst I was there, was Black Thursday. I was on duty in Black Thursday as ground crew and we had a terrible time. We lost so many aircraft, I mean, there's even whole books have been written about the episode and so on, it was horrendous, and the thing that was so horrendous is that they'd been all the way out to Berlin, they'd bombed in Berlin, they'd fought their way back again, and of course, the weather came in on them, and you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, and the only aerodrome around with FIDO, which is the one that they illuminated the runways, erm, was at Downham Market. [unclear] I didn't know about Downham Market at the time, I was at Bourn, but that was the only one where they could get down, so what was happening was these poor buggers had been out there, they were getting short of petrol, and they were crashing all the way round, and two of them crashed within half a mile of the 'drome, one just across the road, we were aware of it, and another one just a field or so away, and some were baling out, some went as high as they could and jumped out, and all those that jumped out survived. The a whole lot of those, but it was a dreadful night, and one that, you know, sticks in the memory. The other thing, on a brighter side about Bourn was that there was a concert party, and I was always a bit of a show-off, and so I joined the concert party, and the historian for 97 Squadron is absolutely fascinated with this, 'cause he's never heard of it, and he's promised me that when he writes his review of his next book, he'll include it. But we had a concert party which used to perform to the aircrew and to the ground people and so on, and it was very, very loose, they used to boo us and jeer at us and tell us to get off, and all sorts of things, but it was great fun, and we, we went round to other aerodromes around, performing and so on. I, I wasn't a professional performer, and I wasn't able to sing very well, but there were professionals in the concert party, and I used to do Stanley Holloway monologues, which everybody knows “Albert the Lion”, and, you know, “Sam Pick Up Your Musket”, but there were some really good ones that not very many people know. I used to do those in my natural Lancashire accent, and I also appeared as a female impersonator, there was a woman called Carmen Miranda at the time who, er, used to perform with a lot of fruit on her head and sing 'I,I,I,I', and I used to do that as well with a backup from a lot of other people. So we had, there were both sides of the thing, but it's a, we all, the thing about the ground crew there that I remember distinctly, is that you never ever heard the ground crew complain about anything. We had appalling bloody conditions to live in, Nissan huts with a stove pipe in the middle, and if your bed happened to be by the stove pipe, well god help you, because everybody sat on your bed to get as near to the fire as they could. It was a long way from the accommodation to get to the dispersal points, which is where the aircraft were kept, all the way round the 'drome, and of course most of us had got our bikes sent from home, and we used to pedal out there day and night, and, er, quite a long distance, I suppose, from where you were billeted to the, well my, my aircraft was billeted on the far side, it'd be two miles, something like that, and of course there were no lights, the, er, 'drome was completely in darkness, and so we, we pedalled around there, and, but nobody ever moaned about it. I think the only thing they moaned was, a bit about the RAF itself not giving us decent equipment to wear, because it was very cold, and particularly if you were sat up on the wing of a Lancaster filling it with petrol, which takes three hours, and not just one person doing, but a number of you. It's bloody cold. It's cold to sit on it, you're elevated, and the weather in that particular year, 1943, ‘44, the winter was very severe indeed, and so it wasn't very good, so there was a lot of moaning about, you know, that all we had was a leather jerkin and a naval type roll neck sweater, big [unclear] sweater. Other than that, just overalls over our ordinary uniform, so it wasn't very good, and gum boots were the order of the day. Anyway, towards the back end of 1943, they were forming a new squadron called 635 Squadron, which was going to be the elite, er, squadron of Bomber Command, it was going to be the elite Pathfinder squadron. Leonard Cheshire had been there at one time, Bennett had been there as well, and don't forget, some of the things I'm telling you are what I've learned afterwards. At the time I was a young lad more interested in trying to get down to Cambridge to go to the dance, or, you know, we, well, it was a very peculiar attitude we adopted, it wasn't very serious I'm afraid, even though we were surrounded by people who were not returning, we'd be servicing an aircraft, and it wouldn't return, and we'd lose the crew, but we [slight pause], the crews were very rarely on the same aircraft. I don't know how many times you've been told this, but very often, they moved from one aircraft to another, sometimes they did four or five flights on their aircraft and so on, and if they got attached to it, I suppose perhaps they got allocated, but in the early days they were flipped around, so you didn't really get to know your crew very well. You know, er, to speak to the officer, you know, and salute him and all that sort of business, but you didn't know them very well, and you didn't relate, you didn't relate to what they were doing. Honestly it sounds terrible, a terrible admission. Anyway, what happened, when they decided to start 635 Squadron, in March 1944, erm, was that they took, I think it was, eleven Lancasters and their crews [background noise], switch it off. Well as I was saying, we were part of the squadron, 97 Squadron, was taken, the leading pilots and so on, were taken to form this elite squadron, 635, at a place called Downham Market in Norfolk, er, and I was fortunate I suppose, I didn't realise, but I was fortunate to be one of the ground crew that had perhaps got a little bit of service in, 'cause service in those days, a matter of months, and you became a, you know, a seasoned person because there were people coming into the services all the time. Anyway, so we were shifted over to Downham Market, and of course, as far as I'm concerned, it's the best thing that ever happened to me. For two reasons, one is that I enjoyed Downham Market in a sense that the airfield and 'drome had all been built especially for Bomber Command in this remote little Norfolk town, er, where my present wife lived, and the town was within walking distance from the 'drome, so we had a communal thing with the town, we went down to the pictures, we went down to the local dance on a Saturday night, and we went down town to the pubs and so on. Not every night by any manner of means, because many a night we were on duty and we were on duty all night, but we were closely associated with, with the town and that [slight pause]. My wife's, now, her, her friend was, er, married to a navigator who got the DFC and that sort of thing, you know they, we, we were integrated with, with the town. So that was the period when we were building up to the D-Day landings, we were doing bombing out as far as [slight pause], well, Berlin was the one that kept on being, coming up, and Nuremburg, Munich, well you, you name them, we did them, and again, we didn't really get attached to any particular crew. We did know one or two, but you couldn't say 'that was my crew and I knew all of them', that wasn't the case. These were the, the aerodromes were again, very far flung, and we would be at Downham Market from where the accommodation was and the catering and so on, it would all of four miles to some of the dispersal points, it really was a long way [pause]. Big event there? Well of course, all the main bombing that went on, the thousand bomber raid that went on, we were part of, the losses were staggering because we were right, sorry I shouldn't say 'we', they [emphasis] were right up front, er, one night we were all watching them go off because, you know, the ground crew would prepare the aircraft and then we would always [emphasis] be there to see them off, and make sure everything was okay, and of course you got the signed certificate from the pilot to say that he was satisfied with the state of the aircraft, and so on. But this particular night they went off, on line past you, and you see them go to the end of the runway, and then they’d rev up and off they'd go, and so on, and this particular night one of them didn't make it, he, he didn't get enough revs, didn't get the height, and he hit the top of one of the hangars, and there was an almighty explosion. It was tremendous, and, it's the first time I really had experienced an explosion, and the hangars, which were pretty big buildings because they had to house sometimes as many as six aircraft, having engine repairs and so on, they, for, for engine work we always went in the hangars and so on, er, it hit the hangar, I mustn't do that [aside], it just collapsed like a pack of cards, the sides came in, the ends went in, the top, and, dreadful, and next day people were detailed to go out and salvage what they could. I'm afraid I didn't go, I, I wasn’t, didn't have the guts to do that, but it was a very nasty experience, and that again brought it home a little bit more to us, and I suppose by this time, I was getting a little bit more mature, you know, I wasn't quite the, er, the child that I was when I first went in. But anyway, I was still sporting this white flash in my hat, and people would say to me, 'what the hell's that for?' and I'd say, 'well I'm, I'm been chosen to be aircrew, I'm still waiting for the bloody call!' Anyway, it came. It came and I was told to report to London, and to report to the Home Off-, not the Home Office, the RAF office in London, and I went through the examinations again, intelligence examinations and the physical examinations, and they said, 'there's a new service being opened up called the Meteorological Air Observers, and we're trying to recruit a small number, and train them, to enable them to go out over the Atlantic and bring in the weather.' This was all, I think, pushed ahead because of D-Day, er, if you recall the situation on D-Day, the weather played an enormous part, in fact D-Day wasn't supposed to be on the sixth, it was supposed to be on the fifth and they had to postpone it a day. And [slight pause] they realised that they were not getting any weather in from the, the Atlantic. When the war first started of course, the Germans seized upon the opportunity on the weather ships, they were just sitting targets, and they saw those off within the first week or two, 'cause what they were, weather ships sat out in the Atlantic, manned by weather men who did recordings of the weather conditions, passed them back by wireless to the mainland and so you had an idea what the weather was that was coming in, but that was, that stopped, and so somebody had this bright idea, 'what we'll do is we'll train a number of airmen to go out over the Atlantic, and there'll be a format of coding, and they'll take readings at, er, two thousand feet and then climb to twenty thousand feet and do readings, and then come back, on an eight hour trip’. And we were eventually, after a lot of training, we, we, I was part of that and went to [cough] Aldergrove in [cough], sorry, in, er [cough] okay, okay, it's alright, Aldergrove in Northern Ireland, and I flew from there, and I, that's what I did for the remaining part of the war. I was promoted to flight sergeant within weeks of the end of the war, not the end of the war, the end of my service. Oh, what I didn't tell you in this association with Downham Market of course, that I met this girl at the dance, and we got off together, and we liked each other, so we decided to get married, and that is sixty nine years ago, and I'm still putting up with her now. So, at that point, I think I've run out of stories about Bomber Command. [Microphone noises]. Well, what I was saying to you is that they wanted to get the weather from the Atlantic, and prior to the war, they'd had weather ships out in the Atlantic, but when D-Day came along, they suddenly realised what a small amount of weather information they had, and they were managing with, managing without definite information, working on guess work. So somebody had the bright idea that they'd train a number of people who would go out, in Halifaxes, we went out in, incidentally, a met observer, a trained met observer of which I was going to be one, would sit up in the nose and take readings all the way through these trips, which were long trips, very long trips indeed, and a bit cold because we went out at two thousand feet, went up to twenty thousand feet, did a leg at twenty thousand feet, came down to sea level, did a reading at sea level and then came back at two thousand feet, and got lost half the time 'cause we were half way across the Atlantic! Anyway, we [slight pause], during this period, I got awarded a brevet, and to this day a lot of people don't believe what it says on my brevet, it says it's an 'M' brevet, not an 'N', but an 'M', and I've had to save this one because lots of people have never heard of it.
MJ: I think we're there. Brilliant. So, you didn't have protection?
KB: We had, we had no protection, we were a crew of [slight pause] six, I think, er, pilot, flight engineer, wireless operator, navigator, meteorological air observer - how many's that?
MJ: Six.
KB: Six. Yeah. We had no gunners on board at all.
MJ: Sounds as though it was a bit more risky than you say really, 'cause -
KB: Well no, the biggest risk, if you want to start talking that way, which I keep on trying to impress upon you, I was very young, very innocent, and totally unaware of the danger, I'm just excited to be going flying, never thought for one minute we might have any problems, er, and the only aircraft we lost from Aldergrove was ones that we believed came down in the sea. We had to do this – we went out two thousand feet, we went up to twenty thousand feet, we went on a leg like that, and then we had to come down to do sea level reading, and we had to come from twenty odd, and we had to set the altimeter, the met observer had to give the pilot the altimeter reading at base for him to come down, and we were, I mean it's at night and all sorts of things, pitch bloody black, you couldn't see a thing. We'd come down with our landing lights on, that would, you know, give us some indication, and we did lose, er, well one we believe went that way, and another one crashed in, in Northern Ireland on the, on the return. Our navigators were a little raw, and of course they were in a very difficult navigating situation, because they'd got no landmarks, I mean, they're going out over Atlantic, there was nothing, you know, they were just over sea, they went out with sea, sea, sea, all the way back. So, er, one notable occasion when I was doing it, was when we came back one time, we missed Ireland altogether [laughs]. Completely. We were looking out for, you know, weather, and the first thing we knew was, hit Scotland [chuckles], and when we hit Scotland, there wasn't an, there wasn't an air, there was an aerodrome at Wigtown, but it wouldn't take us, a Halifax, it was only Ansons and things like that, and we had to go right the way across to the other side and land at Lossiemouth, and landed with sort of, hardly any petrol at all left. We had a similar incident when we were, we were operating from Chivenor in Devon one time, we came back there and our navigator made a cock up and we were coming up the er, the Channel, and, er, not the Channel, the estuary and we missed land again, and we were going on, and on, and looking at estimated time of arrival, there was no sign of any land, and looking at the petrol consumption, and everything else like that, and he, he'd missed his bight [?] and we were going straight on for Bristol [laughs]. I'm going to go and have a quick loo, um [microphone noises].
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command Archives, I'd like to thank Kenneth Locke Brown MBE for his interview on the 6th July 2015, at his home in Monmouth. Thank you very much.
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 Kenneth Locke Brown
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-06
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ALockeBrownKL150706
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
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:32:23 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Kenneth Locke was born in 1923 and wanted to join the Royal Air Force, following in the footsteps of his father, who was a First World War Pilot.
Between leaving school and joining the Royal Air Force, Kenneth worked as a bank clerk, before signing up as aircrew when he was 18 years of age.
Kenneth tells of his time as a Leading Aircraftsman in Morecambe, training as an aircraft mechanic, before being posted to 97 Squadron in Bourn in 1943, and his first involvement with the Lancasters of the Pathfinder Squadron.
He tells of Black Thursday, a day of heavy losses for Bomber Command and how it affected him and his fellow ground crew.
Kenneth was then posted to 635 Squadron in March 1944, which was based at Downham Market in Norfolk where they conducted operations to assist the D-Day landings, and then was interviewed to become part of a Meteorological Air Corp team, to gather information about the weather over the Atlantic.
Kenneth was promoted to Flight Sergeant at the end of his service with the Royal Air Force
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Vivienne Tincombe
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Norfolk
635 Squadron
97 Squadron
dispersal
entertainment
fitter airframe
fuelling
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Lancaster
meteorological officer
military living conditions
military service conditions
Nissen hut
RAF Bourn
RAF Downham Market
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/353/3524/AWoodsL150428.1.mp3
0442bb8095618fa67e2185dba5c8075c
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
Woods, Laurie
L Woods
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Laurie Woods DFC. He flew operations as a navigator with 460 Squadron.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-01
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Woods, L
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
LW: This is a recording of my time in Bomber Command and my name is Flying Officer Laurie Woods, I hold an AEM an Australian medal, which has recently been awarded to me for significant research and writing of five books on my time in Bomber Command. I also hold an immediate award of the Distinguished Flying Cross, having flown home to England on my last trip in a Lancaster, and thus saving crew of seven and a Lancaster. I was born in Deloraine Tasmania, in December 1922, I grew up in Tasmania, and at the age of sixteen I made an attempt, or I asked my parents to sign for me to join the Royal Australian Navy as a cadet bandsman. They refused and so I carried on in my civilian life in working in the Tasmanian railways. Then at the age of eighteen, there was talk of conscription being introduced in Australia, and I talked with my parents and said if I volunteer in the air force I will not be conscripted other wise, I’m afraid I told them a lie, because I was in a reserved occupation, but I thought that I should serve, and it could, if I survived be possibly beneficial in my later life. So I persuaded them to join the air force, and when my mother found out that it was aircrew, she kept on telling, writing to me and saying please fail in your exams, and I wrote back and said ‘if I fail I would end up in the cookhouse, and I don’t want to be a bloody cook’ so when I was just, approximately one month before the Japanese entered the war I volunteered for aircrew in the RAAF, The Royal Australian Air Force that is. Then I was placed on, successfully accepted, and was placed on the reserved force for six months and I had three nights a week educational [hesitation] assistance to bring me up to the level that was required. Several times I said to my instructor I don’t think I can make it, but I carried on and finally I was taken into the air force on the 19th of June 1942. First it was to an initial training school in Victoria, it was the first time I had been out of Tasmania, and I was horribly seasick because it was the Bass Straight, it was one of the roughest sections of water in the world, and it took me about three days to get over that, and then we settled into a place called Somers for initial training school, which lasted for three months and unfortunately I got eighty seven percent in my final maths exam, so the aircrew allocation board decided I should be a navigator, or an observer as it was then, despite the fact that I had asked, or when it was offered to me, [inaudible background] I was asked what I would like to be, of course everybody wants to be a pilot, so I said I wanted to fly as a fighter pilot, and then rather a silly question I thought, ‘what sort of planes would you want to fly?’ And I said ‘well the fastest you’ve got’ and they said ‘well would you mind being a navigator, bomb aimer, gunner?’ and I said ‘no if I’m selected that way that’s the way I’ve got to go’ So because I had the eighty seven percent in maths I was made an observer. We spent three months at the initial training school, three months then on navigation, during the navigation exercise we did some cross country flights, and the Japanese were reported in Spencers Gulf which was off Adelaide, and we spent three days searching in Anson planes for these Japanese submarines, unfortunately we pointed it out that if the wind was blowing quite hard as it does in that area, we could end up going backwards. We didn’t have any guns if we spotted a submarine, what do we do with it? So they sent a squadron of Beau fighters to be fairly close so that if we did report, these Beau fighters would come in and deal with the submarines. Then following on I was, I received my wing a half wing, the observers wing and I was promoted to Sergeant. Then I was selected to go to England and we left the training section in Victoria, travelled to Sydney we were five days in Sydney and then we travelled north to Brisbane, and we sailed from Brisbane in an American cargo ship, and we were four hours passed the hospital ship Centaur when it was torpedoed and sunk with the loss of two hundred and forty seven lives, just off the coast of Brisbane. We crossed to America, crossed America by train and we were then two months in camp Myles Standish waiting for shipping to come to England, and on the 5th of July 1943 we left New York [hesitation], yes we left New York in the Queen Elizabeth, twenty two thousand troops on board, a lot of Negro soldiers from the American army were sleeping in the enclosed upper deck, and then there were probably about 240 Australian airmen, and some sailors who were coming over to England to return home on the HMS Shropshire, which had been granted to the Australian Navy.
Halfway across the Atlantic we were almost tipped out of our bunks at midnight, by the ship taking a ninety degree port turn, and then clapping on all speed, the ship was shaking from stem to stern, and for twelve hours, we found out we had been doing approximately forty three knots in the Queen Elizabeth, which was pretty fast for a big ship. But they thought we had run into either a pack of whales [?] or a pack of submarines. Anyway we finally got to England we landed at Grenoch, and overnight we travelled to Brighton by train, we were passing through London just as the sun was coming up, and the amount of damage that we saw made us pretty determined that the sooner we got over Germany and dealt out some of this to them, the more satisfied we would be. Anyway we settled in at Brighton, and the first night there Lord Haw Haw had announced that he knew that the Australians had moved from Bournemouth to Brighton, and they could be expecting a visit from Goring’s fighters. Anyway the attack came, and it was quite exciting we were hanging out of the Hotel Grand’s windows watching, and got very excited when we saw some tracer bullets out over the, the water, not very far out, and suddenly saw this explosion and presumed that it was a German fighter or bomber that had gone down. Anyway during the course of our time, we went to Whitley bay where we did a commando course, and then from there we went to West Freugh flying in Ansons, then to operational training unit flying in Wellingtons, there we did a leaflet raid on Paris, and after we left the target area, we were attacked and these tracer bullets seemed to follow us along explode, and then follow along a bit further, explode follow along a bit further, explode, and we came back and reported to intelligence that we thought they must have been magnetic or something because they seemed to be chasing us, and he told us we were perhaps a little bit stupid, that there was nothing like that, we found out many years later that it was the, probably the beginning of the heat seeking missiles that the Germans had developed. From Lichfield we carried on and we converted to Halifax, we did two diversionary raids out to round about two degrees east and then we finally arrived on 460 squadron the senior Australian Lancaster squadron, flying in Lancasters. Lancasters to us were just like going from a T Model Ford into a Rolls Royce, they were a marvellous plane, very responsive to controls, and of course they carried a terrific load of bombs. So we started off on our first raid approximately a fortnight after D day, and it was to a village in northern France, and things were going ok it seemed, well we were a little bit excited because we had been assigned to K2 ‘The Killer’ and it had a swastika on the nose, and it also had about thirty four trips up at that stage, and we hoped that it might last and keep us safe for quite a few more trips. Anyway we were sailing along and suddenly the rear gunner reports enemy fighter, dive left, so down went the nose, and being as I had volunteered to do my tour as bomb aimer, because they were a bit short of bomb aimers at that time, and I found very quickly that I was spread eagled on the roof of the plane because the nose had gone down so quickly, and so we did our first corkscrew, we were attacked by three fighters on that particular trip and it was quite exciting, but we got home safely. So from, that was the first raid we had been briefed for 21 raids in the first 7 days we were on the squadron, but we only flew three of them, and we went on raid here, raid there, raid somewhere else, and there were seven crews arrived on 460 and replacement crews for the raid on Mailly le Camp in France, where it was one of the heaviest percentage raid losses during the second world war, and we were one of the replacement crews. Now of those forty nine fellows five months later on the 9th of November on the last trip, there were only 6 in our crew left, and two other people, so it gives you an idea on how severe the losses were at the time, because we were flying in support of the British army after D Day and many of the raids were on troop concentrations, railway, railway stations or railway yards and then oil installations in the Ruhr Valley which was known as death valley by the crews because of the number of people who had been lost there. On our seventh trip we were assigned in, to fly the trip to Gelsenkirchen, and everything was going ok coming up on the target ahead it was just like a hailstorm of flak, and it got me a little bit worried I started to shake and shiver all over, I was that frightened that I didn’t think that I would be able to do my job, and this carried on for probably a minute or more and then suddenly there was this terrific explosion, and a Lancaster, we found out afterwards had blown out, blown up just above us and took half the pilots canopy out, and from the moment of that explosion I was as cool as a cucumber, you could say, carried on and did the necessary job, and we got through without too many holes, I think we had about thirty four individual holes from that trip, and I found out afterwards the navigator of Group Captain Edwards plane was Burt Uren [?] and he said that Group Captain Edwards, the first man to win the Victoria Cross, Distinguished Service Order, Distinguished Flying Cross, in the RAF he was seconded to, [hesitation] yes he had been seconded pre-war to the RAF, and he said that Edwards just flew straight on through all the debris that was coming down and had not tried to dodge anything at all, as an experienced flyer I suppose he thought that in flying straight through he had just as much chance of getting through as what he would if he tried to dodge -, that, that was group captain Edwards, he was a pretty reasonable sort of a man and he was very much admired by the people operating on the squadron, he was their hero as a matter of fact. Excepting on one occasion, he always took rookie crews and he would fly around the target after the bombing. On one occasion on one target he went down to about fifteen thousand feet circling the target he was about forty five minutes late getting back to the squadron, everybody thought he had gone in, but he was [hesitation] he was, credited with probably about eighty to ninety raids, but he did probably another tour, with these rookies and although there were nine squadron commanders under him who were ordered a DSO, he did not get another decoration during his term, later he was of course a commander in chief of the, in the Suez crisis, and then he became governor of Western Australia and died about 1985. But, we carried on and everything was going ok, some raids you had trouble other raids were comparatively quiet, but in each case over the target it was just a little bit of bedlam, in Gelsenkirchen for instance they estimated there were five hundred ack ack guns and approximately three hundred searchlights, over each of the Ruhr targets that is Cologne, Essen, Stuttgart, we did nineteen trips altogether into the Ruhr, so we were fairly familiar with what to expect and what it was like over the Ruhr. But, we, on one occasion we were to fly to West Brunswick and drop a load there that's getting over towards the Russian side, and on the approach as soon as I opened the bomb doors our four thousand pound cookie dropped off and of course it was photographed, when we came back we reported that and they, the squadron people thought we might have dropped it in the North sea, as that had happened in several cases where crews had dropped their cookie over the north sea, because that was the most dangerous bomb we carried, and after several investigations during which time they were going to court martial me for doing that, or for dropping the bomb illegally before we got to the target, and finally I demanded a review on the plane and the bombing leader came with me and we had the engineer leader underneath the plane and I went through the procedure of dropping the bombs, and suddenly as the wiper wound round over the bombing station the engineer officer yelled out quite loudly, we checked with him and he had put his hand up on the the release station for the four thousand pounder and in doing so he received quite a bad shock. So they checked and they found that the wiring through he floor had frayed a little bit, and when the release was activated, or when the bomb bay was opened, power went through and fired the cookie station and dropped it away, they checked the planes on the squadron and there were about twelve Lancasters were in the same condition, and they had to renew the wiring, so they didn’t even say sorry about that but anyway we carried on. The last trip we had was to Wanne-Eickel in the middle of the Ruhr once again a oil, [hesitation] oil plant, and being the senior, one of the senior crews and the last operation for us, the, we were given the right flank and A flight commander was in the middle, and C flight commander was on the left flank, and we led Bomber Command through the target. We were flying at eighteen and a half thousand feet and had just dropped the bombs, when there was a terrific, quite a sharp explosion and then ‘Laurie Laurie quick’ and of course I shot back, I knew it had come from the pilot and I found him slumped over the controls and we were going into a dive, and he had a shell splinter had gone in just under the left eye, and it would be about two and a half to three inches long, and almost the size of an ordinary finger, and anyway I pulled the stick back so that we weren’t diving, and then the engineer and the navigation leader who was our navigator on that particular trip, lifted him from his seat, and laid him on the floor just beside the pilots seat and I took over. He had given me a ten minute [hesitation] shall we say a go at the controls, ten minute flying to see if I was able to fly a Lancaster, and from that he designated me as the, if he was in trouble that I was to be the one to take over. So on this particular occasion, so I took over with ten minutes flying experience, the one compass had been damaged, one had been toppled, and having been a boy scout I knew how to get a bearing from my watch, and fortunately we were still above cloud, and by lining the watch six and twelve in line with the sun I was able then to work out from my watch a course to fly back to Manston in, on the heel of England, so on the way back it was necessary to get the plane down below oxygen height so that [coughs] the engineering leader could, and the [hesitation] flight engineer, [corrects self] the navigation leader and the flight engineer could patch up the skipper, and so they stopped the bleeding as much as they could, he was bleeding out through the wound, through the mouth and through the nose, and I suppose because the shell splinter had been white hot when it went in, it seemed to seal off the bleeding because the bleeding stopped almost instantly, and so despite very rough flying conditions, and thoughts of whether I would be home or not and then telling myself to knuckle down I had a job to do, we carried on and the, to get down below height I had to select a break in the clouds, and so when one came up I put the nose down and we went down through a little bit of cloud, and then it thickened up and we were icing up very badly and the mid upper gunner was telling me, were icing badly we’d better get out of it, so I pulled back on the stick and we came out of the cloud, instead of flying straight and level we were practically over on one side, so I wasn’t going to circle or anything like that to try and get down through the cloud to a lower height, so I waited for the next break and then I put the nose down before we got to the break, sort of estimating that I would come into clear air about half way down, which did happen but once again the engineer [corrects self] the mid upper gunner got very excited because we were icing up badly and of course with a whole lot of ice on the plane you just crash, there is no way of keeping the plane flying, but we broke into clear air fortunately and then getting down towards the bottom, I had to go into cloud again and once again heavy icing but it was, in my opinion I just kept going and we broke through the cloud, and we were very close to the French coast flying under the cloud at fifteen hundred feet and I asked the navigator to take a fix half way across the channel, and that was the first, first input from the navigation on how we should be flying or what course we should be flying and I changed, or he gave the position, change course five degrees to starboard, which I did do and then as we crossed the coast the runway at Manston was directly underneath us, or directly ahead of us, so I had been thinking about it, worrying about the crew and so I spoke to them and said I am going to try and save Ted try and land and if you want to bail out I’ll take the plane up to minimum bailing out height of three thousand feet, firstly the rear gunner came on and said he volunteered to stay, and then the others one by one volunteered to stay. So with the aid of the engineer coming into land we got down to about a hundred feet with the fifteen degrees of flap, and everything all set and then he lowered the under cart, and as it went down of course the plane shakes and the pilot got the idea that he wanted to, by that time he was conscious, he had been unconscious most of the way because the navigator had given him on my command a hmm [hesitates] an injection of morphine, and many years later he said he couldn’t do that [slight laughter] and I remember quite distinctly saying when he said he couldn’t do it, I said ‘you bloody well do it because I’ve got to try and fly this plane and I can’t get down to do this injection too’ anyway we lifted him back into the seat and he made a perfect landing and then, but then halfway down along the runway in the landing, he collapsed over the controls so the engineer and I closed the motors down and turned everything off, we ran to a standstill and the ambulance people came and took him out to the hospital , where two eye specialists and a bone specialist operated on him next day and removed the, the [hesitation] shell splinter and for the next six months he slept with his, his left eye open and he recovered ok. We were flown back to Binbrook, by a Flying Officer Woods who was a new pilot on the squadron, and then I was sent down to London to be measured for my uniform, and after I came back I had two days leave and was recalled to do an air sea officers rescue course at Blackpool, and there it was when I was there a few days, when word came through that I had been awarded an immediate Distinguished Flying Cross, and of course the station there was commanded by a lieutenant commander from the Royal Navy so he spliced the main brace and great celebrations and they had sent a ribbon of the DFC for me and I took it home and, put it away in my bag and next day I went back to school, and he was waiting at the front door and he said ‘where’s your decoration ribbon?’ and I said ‘its home in the bag’ and he said ‘ well, from here on that’s part of your uniform, and if you don’t wear it next time you come here I will put you on a charge’ hmmmm, so I thought, didn’t think much of Royal Navy fellas you know, but I didn’t realise a decoration had to be worn as part of your uniform once you were, [hesitation] once you knew or had been advised of it. Then after the course was finished Runstead, General Runstead, had made the breakthrough almost to the coast and been turned back, so it was decided that the squadrons would not be having an air sea rescue officer because at that stage of the war, they, the powers that be decided that it wasn’t really necessary. So then I was sent to the aircrew allocation at Brackla, where we did a six weeks, sort of investigation whether, how we were placed and how we were, and all that sort of thing and they offered me a six weeks, [hesitation] sorry, they offered me a six year navigation course at Cranwell, and, or repatriation to Australia and as the Japanese war was still going on I said ok repatriation to Australia. So I returned to Australia, we did not get very much of a reception there were no brass bands to meet us and we found that it was a little bit of resentment against those returning from the European theatre, and we were very conscious of the fact that during our time on the squadron there had been a lot of fellows who had received white feathers signifying cowardice because we had not been fighting for the Japanese, and there was one case in particular a fella by the name of Ren Stobo who was a bomb aimer and the bombing leader had asked me to mentor him on the squadron and for maybe about six weeks he and I were together all the time we took his skipper on his first familiarisation trip over Germany and then on a trip, we came, when we came back just after this, we came back and the fog had closed in so we were diverted to another drome and then we were diverted to Water beach, a Liberator drome there they had wonderful food compared with us, the food that we were having, and the problem was they didn’t have any beds so we slept on the floor in the mess, some of the fellas who were lucky enough to get an armchair they were a bit lucky, we, the rest of us slept on the floor, the next morning when we came out, after breakfast to fly back home, the yanks could not find where to put the fuel in the Lancasters and of course we had the bomb bay doors open to check that everything was ok there, and the yanks were quite amazed they were saying, oh the Liberator carried eighty, eighty, one hundred pound of bombs how much was there? and only a hundred and seventy five thousand pound of bombs, which was a bit more than double the Liberator, anyway when we were taking off I’ve never seen so many cameras in all my life there were probably two or three hundred of them all lined up round the, [hesitation] the approach to the runway taking photographs of these battle scarred Lancasters. Anyway we got back and this Ren Stobo and his crew was reported missing, and they got down too low and they crashed into a hill very close to the drome and the mid upper gunner who had been injured over the target and was unconscious was blown in his turret a half a mile, and landed in a tree, and when he came to, he thought he was still over Germany and had to be careful, so he didn’t realise he was up the tree and he got out of his turret and of course dropped to the ground, hurt both his ankles, and it was daylight and he saw a two story house over a little way and there was an old fella digging some potatoes in the field, and down inside our boot we had a razor sharp knife that was used to cut the top off our boot to make it look like we had peasant boots, and so he cut the top off his boots and then he hobbled over and he grabbed this old fella put his arm round his, put his arm round the old fellas neck, held the knife to his throat, and because we had a little card that had German and French written on it, he asked in German ‘where am I?’ and the old fella didn’t answer, and then he asked him in French ‘where am I?’ and the old fella still didn’t answer so, Jack Cannon, was the mid upper gunners name, he was a sports writer on the Age in Melbourne, and when he hadn’t received an answer he said ‘ I wish these old bastards could speak English’ and the old fella sais ‘thee be in Norfolk lad, over yonder is Kings Lynn’ so they got the police and others and they thought he might have been a German spy dropped into the place but they, after interrogating him they cleared him ok, now Jack Cannon returned to Australia and about 1985 he went back and there was a young lady who had been there and knew all about him from his original landing there, she showed him where the parachute was buried, and looked after him and that’s how they discovered that he had blown half a mile in his, in his turret. Anyway I left Tasmania in 1956 and I went to Northern New South Wales and I was there till 1980 then I moved to Brisbane, in 19, 1990 the, they were having a reunion in Brisbane and I had joined up with 460 squadron, and Christmas morning of 1989 I suppose it would be, I got a phone call and a fella says ‘is that Laurie Woods?’ yes, ‘were you on 460 squadron? Did you fly in K2 the Lancaster K2 the killer? Yes ‘Ah was Peter O’Dell your engineer?’ yes ‘ well I’m Clive Eaton his son in law’ and I said ‘oh, where’s Peter O’Dell then?’ he said ‘oh he’s right here’ so for the first time in hmmm, 45 years I spoke with Peter O’Dell our engineer, and I during the course of the conversation, I said to Peter ‘why don’t you and your wife come to Brisbane in a couple of months time to the reunion’ so Peter said he would think about it, a couple of days later I got a phone call to say yes he and his wife Lorna, were coming to Brisbane, so they came for six weeks attended this reunion and we renewed our mateship I suppose you could call it, as we had been flying together for around about 8 months, and back home they came, just after that they had a, our annual meeting of 460 squadron for Queensland and the president said would someone else like to take over he said ‘I’ve had this reunion over and I feel someone else might like to take over’ so I put my hand up, and I was appointed as the 460 squadron president for Queensland, the Queensland branch, and so up to that date I hadn’t talked about, I couldn’t talk about my war experiences and I, because I was asked to go to schools and talk to school children and various other places, I gradually got that I could talk about it, and several times I got asked questions that I couldn’t possibly answer, it was, it just seemed to upset my whole system and so. G for George the Lancaster in the Australian war memorial in Canberra had been re-furbished and was being, going to be put back into the war memorial in 2003, December 2003, December the 6th 2003, so I had helped in organising a reunion in Sydney and I said to these fellows ‘What about a reunion in Canberra for the re-introduction of G for George?’ So they thought it would be a good idea but they couldn’t do it, and Western Australia couldn’t do it, South Australia couldn’t do it, and I said ‘ well I will’ and the reunion at that stage was about 330 people, members of 460 squadron and wives, and I approached this the cheapest way, and the most satisfactory way was to approach the Dutch ambassador because of the Manna drop of food to the starving Dutch people in, [hesitation] in the end of March 1945, when a thousand Dutch people were dying every day because of lack of food, and so the Dutch ambassador said ok, luncheon engagement, and of course we had to talk, and the minister for veteran affairs who organised a dinner and a visit to the memorial hall in parliament house in Canberra, and then we had a welcome dinner which was attended by the minister for veteran affairs, and I had a phone call from Group Captain at that stage Group Captain Angus Houston, and he was the commander of the Australian air force at that stage. He came and he enjoyed it so much, but he couldn’t leave until the minister for veteran affairs left, so I asked her when she would like to leave and she said ‘oh it depends on Angus’ so it depended on both of them, and they stayed till after 10 o’clock, which was quite a feather in our hat, but Angus during the course of the evening told me that his father had been taken prisoner, he was in the British army and had been flown back to England by a Lancaster, but he wasn’t sure and he never ever came up with an answer what squadron, anyway Angus was going off to the middle east the following day and they left a bit after 10 o’clock. The Lancaster of course, we had a preview of it, we were the first persons to go in there and see the Lancaster and it was pretty terrific to catch up with the Lancaster once again, its something that the, I think all the aircrew of bomber command who flew in Lancasters think that the Lancaster was such a wonderful plane, and its very moving to go and see, and just stare, well as a case in point we, my wife and I came to England, and we stayed with the engineer and his wife and we went to one of the museums where there was a Lancaster, and we were standing there, we walked all round it and we’re standing there looking and I don’t know for how long and then our wives came along and said ‘when are you two fellas going to move we’ve been here long enough’ but it was just [hesitation] well, I don’t know what you would say, but it was such a moving experience to see another Lancaster, Wonderful! However after writing that book, and I kept on getting questions I had a website 460 squadron RAAF.com, after getting all these questions on the website, and whenever I gave a talk I thought well there’s a lot of, a lot of interesting stories, wonderful stories really, and so I decided I should sit down and I wrote a further three books on the bomber command, and this is one reason I suppose the government have awarded me Australia medal which is the equivalent of an OBE, and I return to Australia because one week from today on the 8th of May 2015, I go to government house in Queensland to be presented with my award. But I find that it is very much a closure for a lot of people, I have been kissed, cuddled, squeezed by the women, fortunately not by the men, but the men have shaken my hand that many times and I’ve had my photo taken, I don’t object I think that people, if they want to take my photo, ok, I always wear my medals for the book signing but, I was at a book signing shopping centre, and a person came along and they said ‘ah, do you know Joe Harman?’ no I don’t ‘well he’s got an interesting story you should look him up’ so I [inaudible] pulled out this one book at opened it up, I said ‘is this the fella you’re talking about? Joe Harman’ ah yes, he got a DFC but he was one of the smart [laughter] smart pilots, they’re all smart [laughter]pilots, and he had given the order, they were on fire over a target and he’d given the order to bail out and after the last fella had gone he reached for his parachute just as the plane blew up and he was blown out without his parachute into clear air, and he’s coming down and he felt something so he immediately grabbed and it turned out to be his mid upper gunners legs, and they both come down on the one parachute together, almost unbelievable that anyone would risk their life. And then I was at a reunion, at this reunion in Sydney, and a fella Harold Joplin who was there his, were talking and of a particular target and he said ‘we were over there’ I think he said first over or second over and I said ‘ I don’t think, I think we were in front of you’ so we had a bit of an argument and I said to him ‘well what do you, what was your most memorable experience in the air force?’ he said ‘ well on that target we were shot down’ I said ‘what happened?’ and he said ‘well they, we were hit and we were on fire so I gave the order to bail out’ and he said ‘everybody had bailed out’ and then the mid upper gunner tapped him on the shoulder, and said ok skipper its time to go, and the mid upper gunner Don Annett turned round and he walked back through the, the plane on fire to the door where we entered the Lancaster, and picked up the pilots parachute went back hooked it on him and he said ‘ ok now skipper we can go’ so they jumped and on the way down of course the plane was circling on fire and crashed, and Harold Joplin the pilot landed in the middle of a street, just as a German patrol came through looking for him or looking for any of them, so he had dumped his parachute and he joined in on the back end of this German patrol looking for himself, one of the German soldiers said something to him and he said ‘ya ya’ and that sort of satisfied the German fella, came to a little side street and Harold shot down this side street and there was a field of corn at the end of it, he hid, he hid in there for 3 days and the resistance people found him, and he joined them then on a couple of the raids, and a couple of them said to him ‘if we had a gun carriage or tank or something like that we could probably do a lot more damage’ so next morning Harold disappeared, a couple of days later he turned up again, riding a tank down the middle of the main street, and so he joined them in another couple of raids and then they, he said he wanted to get back to England because once you’ve been flying you want to keep on flying, and you had six weeks on and then six days off in that six weeks on of course it was all on, six days off no matter where you were you would see bomber command going out and the first 3 days I personally found, I thought oh, good luck fellas, the next 3 days I’d see them going out and think I should be there with them helping them, I should be still flying, anyway, Harold decided he wanted to get back to the squadron back to flying, and so three Belgian girls went to the check point where there were German guards and they flirted with the German guards while Harold went through behind them, and he got back to England and he reported to the squadron and they said, he said he wanted a decoration for Don Annett for what he had done, he thought it was absolutely fantastic that a man should go back through a plane that’s on fire, all the others had bailed out and get his parachute and bring it forward and save his life, and they said well were there witnesses? And he said ‘well I told you everybody had bailed out and Don came forward to bail out, he and myself were the only two left in the plane’ well, sorry about that we can’t do anything without a witness, and we cannot accept your word that he was there as a witness. So that was that, but that is, a couple of the stories that stand out in my mind there is of course many many stories like that and well in writing five books you can imagine there’s a lot of stories like that I came across that I could not believe that these fellas had survived, and yet they had done so, and I found that it was very much a closure for a lot of people to be able to come along and just talk to me or buy a book and, or have their photo taken with me, and so it has been a dedication of my life for the past [pause] hmmm 25 years on preserving the name of 460 squadron, Bomber command association might not agree with me, but on the records 460 squadron Australian Lancasters was the top squadron in bomber command, unfortunately we were the second highest in casualties but, we were commanded by Group Captain Edwards the VC man and out motto was, ‘press on regardless’ and I suppose his actions on that Gelsenkirchen trip would be enough to pass on to anyone, as Burt Uren [?]said he flew round afterwards and he was saying ‘come up here you bastards, come up here you bastards, let me get at you come on, come up here and have a go’ but that I think was the attitude of a lot of Australians, when we lost fifty percent like everyone else, but the survivors were very very happy that they had done, what they had done, and I think it was pretty universal that the majority of them would not talk anything of their actual fighting experiences, but anything like any fun that was top of the bill, we had a pilot who decided he wanted to go and use the toilet or as it was called the Elson down the back end of the Lancaster, so he put one of his crew into the seat to fly straight and level while he went back, he got back there and don’t know whether it was a little bit of roughness or a bit of movement by the non skilled pilot, he sat down on the seat and at forty degrees centigrade, [corrects self] minus forty degrees, if you touch metal with bare skin you stick to it so he stuck to the seat and he had to get three of his crew to haul him off and left a ring of skin of course, on the toilet seat, so for one month he was eating and drinking or whatever off a shelf high enough, like a mantle shelf or whatever, and he was continually asked how is the decoration going [slight background laughter] I’ve just forgotten what it was called but everybody knew this pilot could not sit down, and that he had lost a ring of skin off his bottom. All part of the game lot of fun, flying in bomber command was fantastic, the Lancaster was fantastic, it was a part of a job that we had to do we had volunteered to do it, and I think most of us afterwards appreciated the fact that we had survived, and that we had done something worthwhile in our life, I think, that after the war I had a pretty good time up until the, I turned about [hesitation] ooh about 1968, 46, I had a breakdown, and I was taken into hospital and they gave me shock treatment, and then fed me I class them as suicide pills, I felt like I wanted to end it all, but I had a wife and daughter that I needed to look after and a friend came by and he said ‘ why don’t you throw those medications they gave you into the river?’ I thought about it for a couple of days and I threw them away and for about one month I suffered withdrawal system [corrects self] symptoms, and I think that in many cases the medications that are given to fellas who are suffering from, oh what do they - PSD, or whatever they call it today, medications are the wrong type of medications and my advice to many of the fellows has been, write it down on a piece of paper and then, even if you throw the paper in the bin afterwards at least you’ve told someone and it does relieve a lot, because I found writing these books has taken a lot of that out of my mind and I have survived quite ok. And in doing the work I have it is only this Australian medal like an OBE, has been very satisfying and has helped me a lot in my life, I had just recently, a fella came up to me at Carandale and he was carrying his little girl on his shoulder, and I said ‘ when I came back from the war, my daughter was two years old and I carried her on my shoulder just like that’ and he said ‘I don’t like shopping centres’ and I thought that’s a strange thing to say and I said ‘ why don’t you like the shopping centres?’ and he said ‘well I’m just back from Afghanistan and everyone is coming toward me, or most of them, I think I wonder if they’ve got a knife or I wonder if they’ve got a gun’ and he said ‘ I just want to get her away out of the shopping centre, it just sends me completely’. Well I dunno I think I’ve said enough and so my name Laurie Woods of Australia of ex 460 squadron RAAF bomber command thank you for the opportunity of speaking with you.
MJ: This is Michael Jeffery at the interview with Laurie Woods on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre I would like to thank him for his recording on the date of the 1st of May 2015 on the time of 12.30, thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWoodsL150428
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Laurie Woods
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:06:17 audio recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-01
Description
An account of the resource
Flying Officer Laurie Woods DFC was born in Deloraine, Tasmania, in 1922. He grew up in Tasmania, and at the age of eighteen, despite being in a reserved occupation, he volunteered for Air Crew in the Royal Australian Air Force. Initially training in Victoria, then Somers, he achieved high scores in his maths exams and was put forward for Navigator or Observer. During training flights over Spencers Gulf in Anson aircraft, they were tasked with spotting Japanese submarines. He received his Observers wing and was promoted to Sergeant, then selected to go to England. He travelled from Victoria on an American cargo ship, via Sydney and Brisbane to Myles Standish, America, awaiting transportation to England. He eventually arrived at Brighton via Grenoch, just as Lord Haw Haw announced an operation on Brighton. He was then posted to West Freugh flying Ansons, then to operational training units flying Wellingtons. His crew were allocated the Lancaster K2 in 460 Squadron. The operations included, leaflet drops over Paris, Mailly le Camp, railway and oil installations in the Ruhr Valley, Gelsenkirchen, West Brunswick, and his last operation Wanne-Eickel. On his last operation he took over from the pilot who had been injured and flew the aircraft home. The pilot recovered sufficiently to land the aircraft and Laurie was subsequently awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. He also talks about being afraid going on operations, and how, many years later he suffered a breakdown because of his experiences. Laurie is President of Queensland 460 Squadron Association and has written a number of books about his experiences. In Australia he has been awarded the Order of Australia.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Great Britain
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Linda Saunders
460 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Bombing of Mailly-le-Camp (3/4 May 1944)
Distinguished Flying Cross
fear
Lancaster
memorial
navigator
observer
propaganda
sanitation
submarine
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/532/8767/AStuartM150509.2.mp3
1263c6038661d544975b918330f7d561
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
Stuart, Mary
M Stuart
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Stuart, M
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Mary Stuart. She was born in Malta and witnessed the bombing of the island.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Mary Stuart and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MS: My name is Mary Stuart, nee Atkins, and I've got this pleasure today to say a little bit of my story. Thanks to [pause] recording for me, this is from the International Bomber Command Centre. What's the date?
Mick Jeffery: The date is the ninth.
MS: Ninth of, er
MJ: Hang on [inaudible] . Now.
MS: I am at the moment living in Grimsby, Grimsby Town. [background noise]. As a little girl in Malta, I remember it very, very, as if I'm thinking of it today, I've got such lovely memories. Little girls think the war was like a party sometimes, so when the air raid used to start, as a little girl, I used to run on the roof, and I lived next door to the church in Luqa, Luqa village, where obviously all the planes land, and it's very, very interesting. So the air shelter was just outside our doorway, and the bells used to go like mad from the church, [chuckles] as we're living next door to it, and of course I used to run to the top of the roof, lay down, and every, every Spitfire going over my head, I could nearly touch 'em, one after the other, and it was such a pleasure, I used to love it, and to me it was just a holiday really. And it was at times that I went down after the air raids, and I was covered in oil, some kind of spray off maybe one of the planes, a Spitfire, that maybe showered a little bit of oil over me, but that was a pleasure, and there's such a lot of little stories I could tell. My sister also lived in across the harbour, and that was Rickarsley, it was an army barracks. [background noise] and well she, she was married and she was living in quarters there, and their shelters in Rickarsley was also-, at the top of the shelter was the searchlights, so of course me being so into planes and everything, I just wanted to see the planes with the searchlight, I used to sneak up and have a look. But going across to my sister was a little dicer, they're called a dicer, a little tiny boat, and as we got in the middle of the harbour we could see this big German bomber coming in, and of course, as you maybe heard before, that they couldn't fire it, at it, because they used to come low over the harbour, and by doing so they would have been damaging our, their own place. And all I could hear was such a ‘flop, flop, flop’ all the bullets going around this little boat [chuckles] and I can't, I can't imagine how we got away with it. There was hundreds of bullets, all you could hear was ‘flop, flop, flop’, you know, and the water coming up. We was soaking wet. Anyway we made it through, we got to Rickarsley. And was on the way, you had to go back home, getting dark and everything, we was terrified in case there was another German bomber, but as there was a lot of planes coming in, back in from where they'd been, and we used to be terrified to get over and done with and get over the other side. So, that's one, isn't it? [background noise]. Now then, back home to Luqa, I'm just looking at the picture now, actually, where I said we lived, near the church. All the back of the church was a long street, it was a garden, and it was all our garden. My mother was lucky because she had about forty orange trees alone, and potatoes galore, because as she took one out she put another one in, so we was alright, and on one occasion there used to be some soldiers walking round and sat on doorsteps, and me mum was making chips and calling me to go and give them some chips, in a, you know, and they was so shocked when I gave them a paper full of chips, and then she said [inaudible] how many more is there, and she was frying these chips all the time [chuckles], and then there was me running in and out, in and out with chips, bag of chips down this little street where we lived, so that was another one. But on one occasion in Luqa, this is another story which terrified me as well, but I'm so happy doing this because it's taking me back, looking at my planes again, which I love, and it was one occasion I followed my brother, he went to a lady called Mananee and she used to make these cheesecakes, and dried tomatoes outside on a hut, and of course my brother used to go and she used to give us some, and half way getting there, there was a little bird watching place where they was watching birds, and this big German bomber came down, and I remember the name of the fellow that called us in quickly to get in that hut and his name was Patacco, from Luqa, and he took us in and he said 'what you doing here, your father will go mental?', you see, so he took us in and by then the bomber came right over us, bullets hitting this little hut, which was made of stone, and luckily we got away with it. But then, he told us to get home, and when we got home that bomber has bombed in front of our house, which was a club, and the house was upstairs, they used to have a gun, they had some gunnery going on there, and of course it got bombed, and killing a family of nine, one of them that used to be on our house all the time, Giovanna, twelve years old, was one of nine children, and even a little baby. The father died with them as well, and he was to be, he was a policeman with my dad in the police there, at that square, as well, and of course it was very, very hurtful, and it was devastating, losing friends like that, but oh, when we got from that er, as we got in the square from what had just happened to us [background microphone noise] which wasn't far [inaudible] it was, I could see the gunnery, a soldier, jumped off the roof, left the gun and what he was shooting, he just jumped off, I could just see him falling over, and down into the square, and this was behind the Maltese club there, you know, St Andrew's Club called, and it was dead opposite the church, that was. The bomb had gone down, and it, it hit a well, and the shelter got full of water, and they’ve all drowned, the whole nine of them in the family, they was all drowned, even the baby. That was terrible. That's another story. But you do m-, I was only young myself, but she was twelve years old, that one, she was a friend of my sister, of course I'm youngest of nine of us, and it's, it's very, very, you know, confusing, but, back to my house again, I still used to go on the roof many times, but my dad found out, 'Where is she, where is she?' and should have been down the shelter and couldn't find me, and he got to know that I was laying on the roof waiting for the Spitfires coming in [chuckles], and anyway, he, he nailed the door, to the roof, he nailed it so hard I couldn't get out on to the roof any more [laughs] so, anyway, the, our roof, when the Spitfire used to come through they used to go sideways to get, to get out to the other side, so what they have done they have put our house, down, by about fifteen foot. Easy fifteen foot, I should say, and you can see it in this picture, if you ever see it sometime, they, about thirty foot wide, and they took, and then they used to come in straight across, instead of going, you know, instead of going sideways, they used to come straight [emphasised] over, ‘vroom’. One after the other, and the feeling, it was so -
MJ: And so what was the reason for them taking the wall away?
MS: Yeah. That was the reason our wall came down, just for the Spitfires to come down, and as I speak I feel such a thrill because I love it, I loved every minute of it [laughs], war or no war [chuckles]. And er, shall we stop for a bit? [microphone noises] Right, still living in the house near the church, but not for long, I'm afraid, because my father thought, 'it's time to move, it's getting a bit dangerous', you know, with all the planes coming right over us, so near the house. He said it'd be time, 'it's time to move, we'll just go somewhere, not very far'. So we went to live in another street, Valletta Street, er there, a narrow street, but we managed it, and there was a lady in front of us there, she had a shelter, just in her house, in the cellar. She had all these enforcements to hold this roof up, all big [chuckling] wooden, everywhere, but we managed down there in the war, and my other friend, Wizz, was who I went to, we used to wash for the RAF. RAF uniforms used to come in, and the socks still standing up [chuckles], and she used to give me a little pinny, and Auntie, Agniesa, Agniesa, her name was, and my Nanny, the one, she used to do all the washing. There used to be bags and bags of washing arriving in Rovers, and there she used to say 'come and help me', she used to be doing something, and then I'd be, she gives me the socks to do, so I was scrubbing these socks with her, and that was very interesting, she was very nice lady, she kept me happy with some whatever she got, and every time she'd say, 'can I come tomorrow and do some more washing?'. 'Yes you can, there'll be another load coming', another RAF uniforms coming in. So there you are, that's the RAF, how many socks I'd washed, maybe could have been one of yours. [laughs] That would be very nice if you had the name on, you know, in them. But life is so, so short, and yet there’s so many things you do in your life, and that was something I enjoyed. So, now we've moved in this other house and it wasn't the same because I missed it, I missed me other one, but there you are. So, we didn't stay there too long [clock chimes in background] and we moved to [slight pause] we went to Hamrun. We moved away from Hamrun, and my sister just met a soldier, she married a soldier, and he was at Lackrewood, and there they had, they had a big family as well, and she couldn't stand, this comes afterwards, though, this has come after the war [background voice]. Is it alright? Well just after the war she couldn't stand when I was with her in the quarters. They got St Andrew's quarters in Tas-Sleima, so I was with her there, and she had a little window and she could hear her husband shouting at these men, and she couldn't stand it, she said, 'what you doing, leave them alone, what are you shouting at them for?', but you see [chuckles] they had, it's er, you've got to learn them, don't you, young soldiers, it's for safety reasons, innit, that he was shouting telling them what not to do and what to do right, because it could cost them their lives if you don't, if they don't listen to them, and of course we, she couldn't see that, my sister could not, couldn't stand it, she couldn't, he was an RSM you see, and of course, being an RSM he's got to do his safety jobs to do, and his order was to train these soldiers the right way, but she will not have it. She would open that window, of the quarters, in a square [interviewer chuckling in background], and these poor soldiers, lined up, and was 'grrrr' shouting, and she said, 'I don't like him any more mum, I don't like my husband any more, he's so cruel, you should hear him shouting at these poor soldiers'. She said, 'I'm not having it', she said, 'when he comes home there's no tea for him, he can make his own tea. That is it', she said, ' I'm not having it'. And she went for days and days not speaking to him. Anyway, he had to move her out. He moved her somewhere else, got another place, he got another place, down Msida, [inaudible] Msida, and that one was alright, and er, this is, I was growing up then, I was nearly fifteen, when I'm talking about this. I was growing up then [chuckles], and of course there used to be these soldiers, I couldn't get out the door, as I got on my bike, and they were whistling at me. I had a few dates for dancing [chuckles], that was nice, but yes, she just, she wouldn't have it, shouting at him all the time, so, me mum used to tell her, 'but they've got to do it', 'no, he can't, no, he's not got to do it, he's not having, I'm not having that'. [Laughs] We [inaudible] stop here a bit. Oh, this time we was at Hamrun, 203 Victoria Avenue, and erm, I remember this one night my, my father was having a bath, and me mum shouted at me, she heard this siren going, and she said to me, 'go downstairs and go to the shelter with next door, get next door, go to the shelter now!', and she said, er, 'and I'll see you down there', because you only had to cross the street and there was the shelter there, you see, and I didn't. I stayed downstairs waiting for my mum to come down, so [chuckles] I was there waiting for her near the door, she came down and she said, 'my goodness me', she said, 'there's your dad upstairs don't want to go to the shelter because he's not ready', she said, 'come on', she said, 'we'll, I'll take you down, come down with me quick'. We got open the door to get out, we looked up, and there was the bomber, big bomber, German bomber, and she said, 'oh look', she said, 'he's let the bombs-', when you see the lights, the lights under the ship it means-
MJ: Yeah, under the plane [interrupts]
MS: and there was these big bombs, two of them, chained together, clinging together, make a noise, I could hear the chains, you know, like a [inaudible] coming down, and it was just on top of our heads, so what me mum did, she said, 'we can't go now', she threw me down on the floor between the two doors, and she jumped on me, and I don't know how that bomb didn't come direct, straight down. It must have gone like that, because half of the street was bombed, leaving our half alright. But there was still wires everywhere, and dust, and glass, they was taking glass out my hair, because it still got in. And she said, 'I told you to go down, why didn't you go down with them?' I said, 'no, I wanted to wait for you'. But when I, we, looked up, the light when they opened the doors, I said' ooh, he's letting the bombs out', and you could hear the chains, you know, ‘clink, clink’, chained to them, making a noise, coming down, but I couldn't believe it, it was just like looking at the chandelier there, look, that blooming thing, and it's direct, down on top of you, so what I can't understand is why did it go, sort of, that way? Because from that distance, most probably it wasn't straight on top of you, but I always thought, 'how did I, we get away with that?' It was direct on top of us, and yet the other half of the street was hit.
MJ: What happened to the shelter?
MS: Well, there's, you see, and then me mum got me out, she said, 'come on lets, lets go upstairs and see Dad is alright’ and everything. My sister, she was there, she was a nurse, my sister was a nurse in Mtarfa, English nursing place, and of course she was at home at that time, she came home to see all the, every, people hurt. She was, they was fetching doors to her, just ordinary doors from the bombing, putting bodies on it and fetching them on a house, anybody's houses, taking them in to see to them while they, you know, while they took them away. Yeah, she done a good job, Amy. Erm, she was a good nurse. And of course that was one thing, a near miss, that was another near miss, because I, I keep talking about it, don't I? But when you look up, and you think something on the top of your head, you think you've had it. You don't expect [slight pause] to just swish down, you know what I mean, it was like, like a rock and roll skirt that goes over and over somewhere else, you know what I mean? I can't believe it. Just see that big light on top of you, she said, 'come here', pushed me down on that floor and threw herself on top of me, and ooh, you get all the noise, and whistling, and everything. Terrible, it was terrible that night. But half of the street, there was Aldo, Aldo his name, he was on, he had his, a lot of [pause] cuts on him. He was all bleeding, yep. And then another time, this was another little story, this one, we used to go to school, and you used to get a German bomber, and on a hot day in Malta the sun is so bright, and the shadow of the plane is so big [chuckles], you get the shadow because it's so bright, so he used to come over, low, and wave to us, used to wave, and carry on. Right? So one day he comes over, everybody, all the children rushes out, coming from school, looking up, looking for this pilot to give him a wave, and he started firing, machine gunning, machine gunning. This was in our street, the school street, and he's fired the machine gun, well everybody opened their doors, all the houses, opened the doors so the children could go in, you know, so we managed to get in somebody's door. She says, 'I told you not to, don't wave to him any more'. Because obviously it must have been a different pilot, but we thought it was that same nice one, which it wasn't. [laughs]. And er, I've seen a mess in the street, [inaudible] never leaves you alone now, er, it stays with you, you know, and, er, it was horrible, some friends and er-. Another day, this is another story, my father was a police sergeant. In the police. He followed his father's footsteps 'cause my grandfather went to Malta with the Irish Rifles, he was in the Irish Rifles. I'll mention him now, I'm glad to mention my grandad, and he went to Malta, and of course he met my, my grandma there, and he said to-, he was with Lord Baden Powell, they, they joined up together, Lord Baden Powell and him, knew that, in London, my grandfather was a Londoner, born in Middlesex, of course his best mate was Lord Baden Powell. And he said to Lord Baden Powell after they'd been there a few months, he says, 'oo’, he says', 'I, er, I don't want to leave Margaret, I don't want to leave Margarita’, he says, 'well all we can do if you want to stop here', he said, 'make a transfer with the police'. So there and then, within days, he was a policeman [laughs]. So he went to see his platoon, the rest of them, they was still in Gozo at that time, Gozo's a little island from Malta, and they was all laughing at him because he had a policeman's uniform on, they was all making fun of him. And of course then he stayed in Malta, and they went off somewhere. But he stayed in Malta, married my grandma, had two boys, and they got to the age of seven and eight, the platoon came back. Well he couldn't wait to go and see them, he missed them, he was missing them. So Lord Baden Powell, he said, ' we've missed you as well', he said. 'But I want to get back, please. I want to get back with you. Wherever you're going next time'. I think they was going to Zulu war, wasn't it, the Zulu war, Boer War, Boer War. And he said,'I want to get back,' he said, ' Margarita'll be alright, she'll follow me wherever we stop', and everything. So within days, Lord Baden Powell, it's good to be somebody, isn't it, in this world [chuckles], and, changed over again, transferred, [interviewer interrupts, inaudible ] 'cause it's still under the Queen, you see, that's what it is.
MJ: So your mother and your father stayed on Malta?
MS: Yes. And of course, you see, he went back with them, to the Zulu war, but they was, they got ambushed. They was ambushed. I've got his story there, there's a story I've got there. He’s in the library book about Sergeant George James Atkins that was killed there, with the others, of course. But he-, that was it. I remember my grandma, she was telling me that er-, 'I just, I pray to God', because they're Catholics out there, you know, in Malta, 'and I pray to all the saints and Virgin Mary and everybody, to look after him for me', she said, 'and they didn't!'. And she didn't want to know, she had the pictures, and she, she just knifed them all, she just knifed them all, you know, and the people saying, 'oh, you mustn't', she said, 'but I’ve told them to look after him, and they haven't. I don't know, I'm not a believer any more'. She went a bit funny, you know. Anyway, one of the boys, might have been my dad, he was, um, he inherited the place, and it's called the [inaudible] Bettina, [inaudible] Bettina is like a palace. It's like that one street, the whole street, but in the middle of it is big doors, gates, steps going up. It's just like the palace in London, the Queen's palace, right? He inherited that, but because he was only young they gave it to somebody, her name was Bettina, and she was engaged. And they gave it, let her stay in it, while he grew up. But because this happening, my grandma was a bit, she went a bit, she didn't want to know, she let it go, she didn't fight for it, and it's still, should really by right belong to my dad. And she lived, Bettina, it's called Bettina, in Malta, because that girl's name was Bettina. She just, she just, as soon as he got killed, she got the answer, as soon as he got killed, she went dilly, she couldn't live without him. Yeah. And that's how me father grew up. And then Lord Baden-Powell went out there, with his belongings, he took everything himself, to her, to my grandma, and she gave everything to the er, to the St Andrew's Club in Luqa. She gave them the flags, I don't know what, all the whole thing, regiment things, everything, and medals and everything they've got there. And of course it's, she just couldn't get over that, but-. Lord Baden-Powell, he said to the two boys, he said, 'I'm coming back to Malta', he said, 'and I'm going to put, start a Scouts here. I'm going to come here', he said, 'and I promised your father if ever anything happened to me, I gave him my wish to keep for me', he says, 'so therefore, I'm keeping his wishes that I come back to Malta, and see that you join the scouts'. But they didn't, they did not join the scouts, the two boys, they went in the police [laughs]. [Interviewer interrupts in background]. They wanted to be in the police. Yeah. And that's er, it's a funny old world isn't it? Really, how things go, it's very interesting, very, very interesting, and of course my father grew up, and he met my mum, he met my mum, and I would go with-, they’ve had nine children, I was the youngest of nine. The eldest one was Kitty, that's the one that married the RSM [chuckles], my brother was in the RAF.
MJ: What did he do?
MS: My brother was in the RAF, and before they joined the RAF, he was a painter, he does all the sculptures in the churches in Malta, he's done a big Virgin Mary statue, he just chisels everything, you know, from a big stone, [aside] didn't he Gary? He made that big sculpture, didn't he?
Gary: Sculpture
MS: Yeah. He was very clever. And his friend, his friend, they used to come down in our, in our hall, downstairs, and they used to paint together, two of them. One day the police came for his friend. He was the spy on Malta. He lived at the back of our street, but he was a spy with the Italians.
MJ: What was his name?
MS: He used to erm, Bassani was his name, Joseph Bassani. That was the name. And of course his sister, Maria, I knew very well. We knew them, very well, the mother. But when my brother got to know that he was a spy, he got his painting, because it was still in our house, his painting what he did, [inaudible] he just damaged it, he was so mad with him [chuckles] because he was a spy, he didn't want to know about the picture, and he scrabbled on it, took his name, got the name off it, he was so furious, my brother. And then of course he went in the RAF, my brother, he was in the RAF. Yeah. He too went to Italy, but RAF is our top priority in my life. The RAF.
MJ: What, what was he in the RAF?
MS: He was in the RAF, yes.
MJ: What did he do?
MS: He was er, he was sent to Italy. He went different places like that. I don't know much, how much he did, but he was a sculpturist, and he did everything when he was, privately, at home. And the church used to come, 'can you do this for us? And do that?' Never used to charge anything, he just used to do it from his heart, you know. Like me, I'm doing things at the minute, all the time. And, erm, but that upset him because it was his best friend, you see, and to realise that he was a spy but he was, he was hung, wasn't he Gary? [aside], he was hung, they hanged him. He had a cry over it because he liked him, but he was so upset, he was annoyed with him, with him going, you know, sort of lighting torches here and there to let the Italian bombers where to bomb, know what I mean? Yeah, And there was a film, it's very strange because I went on holiday in Malta, and I met the actual fellow that did the Malta story. Jack Volks his name was. Jack Volks. And I spoke to him on the internet, but there's no answer much now, like he was about ninety-five. And he said to me, 'Mary', he said, 'I wish it was you in that film, making that film, instead of', the girl he took to be Maria, you know. 'Cause they made the film, the Malta film- have you seen it at all? - yeah, Malta film, and the girl Maria they picked up for the film, she said, we took her from London, she said, 'My God, my dear God', she said, every time, she said, 'cut, cut', she kept coming with this London accent [laughs]. She said, 'you should, they way you talk', she said, ' it would have been lovely'. She said, 'the trouble we've had with that girl'. She kept pulling out this [laughs] 'Parpa' and things like that, 'she said, ' we couldn't have this London accent'. But, I don't know what happened to him. I'd love to know, but-, yeah he's made it, he's actually filmed it. Yeah, Jack Volks, Gary, wasn't it, his name? Yeah. Of course, my brother, had other friends. One of them he used to come on our roof, to film, he used to take films of different, of planes coming over, and he was a lovely man. His name was Geoffrey Johnson, Johnsons, and I think he was from Yorkshire somewhere [unclear interruption from interviewer]. Geoffrey Johnson. Well my brother had some contact with him after the war. Yeah, he had a disabled boy, but I think he must have died now. But that would have been nice. But that was Geoffrey Johnson, yeah. That was my brother's nice friends as well, so he was alright with him. He used to always come in our house. Our house, being sort of more English, you see, I mean to have a name like Atkins, Tommy Atkins they used to call my grandad [chuckles] Tommy Atkins, you can't get a British name more than that, can you? [Laughs] Not mad dogs or anything, you see he's a Londoner, and er [slight pause] different thing. That’s another story I can tell as well, about being an English name. Do you want it now? [background noise] [Chuckles] Now then, this is what happened with my brother. When you're kind, sometimes, it's very cruel. Erm, I remember the Victory Kitchen came to Malta, and those hungry people, you know, queuing up and everything, and for days, one week, they didn't open for some reason, and there was all these starving people, you know, trying to get food from the gate, and being my father, a police sergeant, [chuckles] of all the police he was the sergeant, he should show respect, your sergeant should show respect and you shouldn't do anything out of order, but me and my brother, I used to go to help him, because it was down our street, high gates, as high as I couldn't get over them, anyway, so I had to stay on that side of the gate, and he used to get a catapult stick and go over with the catapult, this was my brother, and it’s a, it's a disgrace really, what he did to my father, because he was a policeman, you know what I mean? So anyway, he didn't care whether his father was police sergeant or what. He went over with his catapult, broke into the Victory Kitchen, Victory Kitchen it was called, and he was handing me these tins of corned beef, I was getting them from the side of the thing, the gate, I was handing them, and everybody running home with tins of this and the other, taking it all, and of course, they all knew my brother, and who his dad was. My, for some reason, my father got to know, and he said, 'right', he got hold of him, shaved his hair off, my father shaved his hair off. He said, you knew that he was particular about his wavy hair, and so he took his hair off, and what did he do? He went in me dad's wardrobe, got his best suit, he didn't think it was his best suit, he got a suit out, he cut the bottoms off, sewed it, stitched it as anything, and he had a hat, and he kept doing the same thing. He said, 'come on, Mary, come on, come down with me'. Get his big long stick, the gate must have been about eight foot, easy, six, eight foot, really high. I can't tell you because I was young, I knew that for me it would have looked big at that age, but there's only three years between me and my brother, so he was fourteen, probably I was ten, something like that, so anyway, he went over, more tins, you see they had food in there but they never opened. They never opened. And my brother said, 'well, sorry dad', he said, 'sorry dad', he said, 'you should go in there yourself and get that food out for these people, hungry babies, all these lovely people here, all starving'. Right? So he said, 'here you are, here you are, Mary. Come on, let's go'. So, the people knew, because as soon as they seen us two go in there, they used to follow us, [chuckles] the whole street used to follow us. So, so he did it again, and my father found out again, and he says, 'oh', me brother says to me, 'oh, there's a big one'. He couldn't lift it up, a big, giant corned beef one, there, you know. 'He said, 'here you are', and I remember he gave it to me and I couldn't lift it up, hardly [laughs]. So, anyway, he got to the [inaudible], and he said, 'right then', he said, 'I'm sorry, Mum, Rose', he said, 'I'm sorry’. He says, erm, 'I'll have to do something about this lad. This is not right for me, I'm a police sergeant', which is true, in a way. So he put him in a, in a place for bad boys, and of course [slight pause] the first week he was there, this big bomber passed our, our street, big bomber, and he said, 'oh my god, where's he going, where's he heading for? Where’s he heading for?'. And it hit the place where my brother, where my dad put my brother in. Well you should have heard, I've told you about my sister, about the SRM husband, me mum went even worse. 'It's your fault, you've put him in there, and now he's been killed'. So anyway, dad went down to see what's happened, it was all-, and he found him, carried him home, like, sort of, fetched him home. And she went, she went absolutely livid with him, 'What you done? You've put him there, it's your fault. Our boy will be dead now. It'll be your fault', she said, 'and you can just, I don't care what you are, sergeant or what', she said, 'but don't come home here any more. If my s-, if my boy's dead, please don't come here any more'. Right? That was a good one, because the whole street, as soon as they saw us going with a stick, the catapult, used to catapult over with, and me with him, the whole street used to come out there door, running after us. They knew we was going for food. So, so in a way, it was cruel for dad, you have to feel sorry for the dad, don't you, I mean, when you're a police sergeant you've got to show, he should have shown a bit of-, but he didn't care, because all my brother was thinking about was starving people, so he said, 'if you want to put me in prison, you can do. I'm doing it, not dad’. And he told another policeman, he says, 'don't blame my dad, my dad told me what not to do'. He said, 'I'm doing this, not my dad. I'm feeding these children out here'. And he loved it. He had such a good heart, yeah. That was, that was Lolly. Lolly was on the Navy, he was a Navy man. He joined the Navy, he was on HMS Delight, was on the Delight, wasn't he, Gary [aside]. And then he went to Australia and he died at fifty years old, yeah. But when you have a big family, here's always a story behind it, isn't there? There is [inaudible] one [chuckles]. And that was the young one, that was the young one. And then my brother Vince, he was erm, he was on the merchant ships, he was on the merchant ships. I remember him, Vincent, Vincent Atkins, he took me once to his, his tanker came in. The Can't Take It, it was called, Can't Take It, and he showed me all the machinery, 'cause I like things like that, I like anything to do with boats or planes, or anything, and all these big machines going sloosh, you know, oh fantastic, yeah. He went to America. So one went to Australia, one went to America. They all sort of-, the family just spreads doesn't it after the war. But he done a lot, he went in the boom defence, the boom defence. Boom defence is a, is a defence in the harbour, innit, and he-, the boom defence, it's a dockyard, it's a dockyard thing, you know. He repairs things, yeah? Is this on, by the way? Is it? Oh really? Yes, and which other story I would have thought the best? [Long pause and background noise]. This erm, in Malta, the Germans were up to Italy. It's not very far from Italy to Malta. They'd captured different places, and nearly, they were nearly in Malta to take over as well, but what happened there they was very short of oil for the planes [background clock chime], the oil stores [chuckle, inaudible ] anyway, for the fuel. Very short. They were short of food, mainly fuel for the planes, right? And this Ohio, there was about three ships trying to get in with food, food and the things for the planes, and they were so battered, outside the harbour, all the ships, with German bomber bombing them, that the Ohio, was an American one, came to deliver the stuff and she just only barely got in that two ships had to go and get her in, holding her up each side, holding her, because she was full of food and other things, and she was like that off the water, really low, and these other two ships was coming in with it, which that bloke was on, one of them, and it came into the harbour with the corn, bags of corn, it just managed to get on there, that's the harbour, just managed to fetch her in, and we was all down there, and the young lads when they emptied it, the big corns, the big sacks of corn for the bread and that, the young boys had a blade so they was going [makes a slicing sound]. I've seen that done, but I don't think anyone on the ship seen it it done, and he tore it, so all the girls lifting their skirts up putting all the corns in their, stuffing their skirts or whatever they had, you know, jumpers, filling up with corn, running somewhere, put it in, running back, fill it up again, and I wasn't doing it, but I was with them, 'cause my sister did it, and that brother of mine, he was there doing it, he was getting the corn and everything, and the planes filled up and there was only about ten to twelve hours for the Germans to come from Italy, so they all, they were filled up, and you should see all the planes going out at once to stop the Germans. They was winning, Italy and the Germans together, at that time. Mussolini, and of course all these planes was already in Luqa, ‘whoof’, they got the fuel, you see, and they was all flying over, out, went out, yeah, to stop them, and they got them. They got every German out there, and it was blooming good. And I always remember my mum, she used to stay up and me dad used to say, 'Rose, for God's sake get to bed. Get to bed'. She says, 'no,' she said, 'there was about, about nineteen went out, and there's five hasn't come back yet'. She'd be there, waiting. 'There's five haven't come back, George. George, just leave me alone, there's five more to come, and then I'll be able to sleep'. So she used to count all the planes, going out, and then count them back, as they were coming back. Count every one. 'Oh', he used to say, 'you are a silly woman. Get to bed'. She says, 'no, I'm not, I'm not'. But there was times some of them didn't come back, and she used to cry. She used to cry, she'd say, 'oh, it's terrible. The young, poor young-', and she used to say, ' I wonder what their mothers would say now, I wonder what happened to them?' But then sometimes they used to come late, three o' clock in the morning, she'd hear one, she'd get up. 'Is that coming in? Oh, another one coming in, George'. Keeping him up. 'Oh, there's another come late, and another one coming, and another one coming'. [Laughs] she used to be, she used to be, absolutely as if there were her own kids, you know, own children. I mean, alright, sometimes nowadays you say, I say to someone, some couples, you know, they've been in the services. Most probably the Navy, most probably the Navy ones, and I say say I'm from Malta. And they says, 'Oh, oh, from Malta are you?'. I said, 'yeah'. And he says, 'Oo, are you from Straight Street?' I says, 'Oh no. I was not allowed anywhere near Straight Street', I says, 'don't tell your missus here [chuckles] [inaudible] Straight Street'. But there some bad girls there, you know what I mean? I said, 'no way!', I said, 'I'm not from there. I said you don't know my dad. My dad used to be a sergeant in the police and he used to warn, tell all his friends, 'if ever you see any of my daughters', because he had four daughters, 'any of my daughters near any bad places, send them home'. [Laughs]
MJ: Were there lots of bad places?
MS: But I mean, that's everywhere, you know, that's everywhere. But it's a shame because even as I say, my mum used to give them cups of tea, and make them chips, and that, and they'd say, 'oh, was she like that, was she?' I said, 'no, my mum, we're decent people', I said, 'there's decent people everywhere, you know', you know what I mean? But no, they always take things the other way [chuckles]. And it's always somebody that’s been somewhere they shouldn't have been [Laughs] But that's life, isn't it?
MJ: Here's a battery change for Mary Stuart.
MS: That it? Hmm? [background noise] Yeah. Well, the rest of my story, I've got quite a few more to do, but I'll just pick the last one, because I've kept this gentleman here with me too long, but I'm going to tell you the VE day in Malta. My father, as a sergeant in the police, he was on duty on the corner of the theatrical house in Valetta, as you go in Valetta, when it was bombed. He was in it. Anyway, he survived that, and on VE day he was there again, on duty, in the corner, whilst my mother, and me and my brother went to give him some sandwiches, and see him alright for some food. Meantime, outside the bombed place, there was a VE day celebration going on, and my dad put me and my brother in the front of that celebration day, which I have here, a picture, and that's why I'd like to put that in because that was VE day in Malta. I enjoyed it, and so did he, watching us while we took the photos. And that was very interesting indeed. I hope you all enjoy my little stories. Mary Stuart.
MJ: Let me thank on behalf of the International Bomber Command Oral History Project, Mary Stuart for her recording on ninth of May twenty fifteen. Thank you very much.
MS: Will you put nee Atkins in that beside-
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 Mary Stuart
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-09
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AStuartM150509
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
Civilian
Royal Air Force
British Army
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:54:45 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Mary Stuart, nee Atkins, was the youngest of nine children who lived during the Second World War on the island of Malta. She tells of her love of aviation and how she spent time on the roof of her house when Spirfires flew over. Mary recollects wartime hardships, German strafing and bombings and their effects of civilians (including an incident when people drowned in a shelter), her encounters with soldiers on the island as well as doing washing for the Royal Air Force. Mary also tells of her father, who was in the Malta Police Force, her grandfather, in the Irish Rifles, and finally her brother, who served in the Royal Air Force. The interview includes anecdotes about Robert Baden-Powell.
Finally, she talks about Joseph Bassani, a family friend who was an Italian spy, the American supply ship Ohio, and the Victory in Europe celebrations that took place on Malta.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Malta
Malta--Gozo Island
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1948-05-08
1948-05-09
bombing
childhood in wartime
love and romance
shelter
Spitfire
strafing
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/516/8748/PHatchM1501.2.jpg
d8ea507c92b2911874f3a4250ee60fa2
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/516/8748/AHatchM150730.1.mp3
22d3ce0e673b6b1303951b257282fcc8
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
Hatch, Maurice
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Hatch
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Squadron Leader Maurice Hatch (137372 Royal Air Force). He served with 97 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MJ: It's on now.
MH: My name is Hatch, Maurice Edward Hatch. My rank in the RAF at the end of the war was a squadron leader. [background noise] I was seventeen when war broke out and I volunteered for air service with the RAF and when I went before the committee who considered these things, I was asked what was my position in civil life and I said that I was an article clerk training to be a chartered accountant, whereupon I was immediately designated potentially as a navigator. I never had the chance as being trained as a pilot. On the whole, I think probably in the long run I didn't regret it. I actually went into the air force in about October of 1941 and after initial period of square bashing in some of the delightful holiday resorts of this country like Torquay, Brighton and Eastbourne I went on my flying training in South Africa. I sailed from Liverpool and I sailed in great luxury in a converted Dutch meat ship, from which the covers over the holds had been removed and down which a rickety wooden staircase had been mounted down which we all came. Then, of course, having the exalted rank lowest form of animal life and ordinary airmen and with a pack on my chest, a steel helmet on the back and the big pack on the on the back and you went down until my steel helmet was touching the back of the man in front until effectively the hold of that meat was a mash of human beings. Having got to the point where you couldn't get another mouse in, they said that was enough. They then tried to sort out the sleeping accommodation which was hammocks from the ceiling, so close together that they were touching and I never did get one. The trip took six and a half weeks, I spent that six and a half weeks sleeping on a straw palliasse under the mess table, and life was hard to say the least of it. We were three days stationary, moored outside Freetown in the hot season which was almost unbearable and we eventually landed in Durban. I won't tell you all the details of the journey because they are sordid in the extreme, suffice to say that I hope I never get nearer to hell than that! For two or three days we were under canvas on Durban racecourse and then we went to East London on the east coast of South Africa, south of Durban. And I was there for almost a year doing my initial navigational training. We were very lucky, myself and two other people with, with whom I'd joined up, we were, if you like, befriended by a family of Scottish origin who lived in East London and the husband was in fact the Union Castle representative in East London, Union Castle being the most powerful body in South Africa at that time, they ran the weekly ship to Cape Town before the war and owned most of the principal hotels including, of course, the famous Mount Nelson in Cape Town. The training period in South Africa from a flying viewpoint was not really particularly noteworthy, what was more noteworthy was the ability to live on fruit and food which we hadn't seen in this country for a long time, and also, not quite so fortunately, the rather strong but extremely cheap South African brandy. I eventually finished the training after about a year and went to Cape Town to board a ship home. In the interim whilst I was there, the husband of the family who had befriended us had been promoted and had become the Union Castle's principal agent [background noise] in Cape Town and was therefore in Cape Town finding a house to which he could move his family. He was staying at the Mount Nelson Hotel and therefore my last night before going home, I went to dinner in the famous Mount Nelson Hotel which was a fairly unforgettable experience, particularly at that time going back as I was to wartime rationing. I was lucky in that on the return I was on an American trooper which was not in convoy and so went very much faster and we we got home in about two and a half weeks, and the only misfortune was that for some administrative reason which I have never understood, the fact that I had been commissioned had not reached South Africa and I therefore went home as a sergeant and regretted the fact that I didn't have the officer's quarters. However, that was rectified when I got home and I went to Harrogate which was the usual place where aircrew were accommodated on their return from Canada, South Africa, Rhodesia, as it then was, and the very few from the United States, where effectively all of this flying training had been carried out. After some leave, I started on the further long process in the training channel which included, of course, the crewing up and we formed into a crew. Strangely enough, that was done largely by us ourselves rather than by any officials. We sort of went around and tried to decide people with whom we thought we might get on and in effect established a crew ourselves, and this we did. I was in fact the only commissioned officer in the crew; all the others were sergeants or flight sergeants. We went through the various stages, going from Wellingtons after a short period, we were onto Stirlings and then eventually onto Lancasters, and my first posting to a squadron, an operating squadron, was to 630 Squadron which was at East Kirby in Lincolnshire, and it was a very sudden and very marked experience of the reality of war after the joy of South Africa, where, frankly, the war seemed a long way away. And we finished up playing tennis and swimming rather than worrying too much about flying. On arrival at 630 Squadron, it was at the time when the raids in Berlin were going on almost nightly, and at that time, and maybe at all times I don't know but certainly at that time, it had become the practise that when a new crew, a sprog crew arrived on the squadron with no experience, the captain of the crew, the pilot, went first as a second dicky with an experienced crew, and we had arrived on the squadron at about ten-thirty in the morning, by mid-afternoon ops had been announced and we subsequently discovered it was on Berlin. My pilot was assigned as a second dicky to an experienced crew and off he went and did not return. He must have had the shortest tour of operations of anybody, one take off and one landing, the landing being by parachute. I'm delighted to say he survived the war and came through but he was of course a prisoner of war in that intermediate period. I was therefore left with the remainder of my crew within twenty-four hours of having arrived on the squadron of going away again with a delightful RAF expressions being the head of a headless crew which always struck me as an oddish [?] phrase. We went back to conversion unit, and this I suppose was one of my lucky periods during my life, I always find it slightly guilty or referring to another man's misfortune as being one of my luckies, but we linked up on our return to conversion unit to an experienced New Zealand pilot. If my memory's right, he was then a flight lieutenant, he had done a tour earlier in the war and had been instructing and had now come back for a second tour and we had no captain, he had no crew, and so the obvious thing was to put us together, and this was very lucky. The strange part about this was that he was a tough, back-woods, New Zealander whose language was frequently fairly colourful, but he had a strangely sentimental streak because his first tour had been on 97 Squadron, he was desperately anxious that this second tour should also be on 97 Squadron. The only problem was that in between the two dates, the Pathfinder Force had been formed and 97 Squadron had become one of the Pathfinder squadrons. Generally speaking, people, in quotes, volunteered to go on the Pathfinder Force, although I think frequently it was a form of volunteering which usually involved the twisting of an arm or two. But it was after seven or eight operations had been successfully completed and the crew had broadly shown itself as being competent. This, of course, was not the case; my New Zealand captain’s name was Smith, and he was always called Smithy by us, and he, of course, was an experienced pilot, but he had a crew who had never done an operation in their lives, and particularly a navigator, i.e. me, who had never been on an operation in his life. Somehow, he succeeded in getting us onto 97 Squadron; how he did it, whose arm he twisted, I have never known, but the fact remains that we did. Accordingly, I started once again by going then for, I think it was four or five weeks’ intensive Pathfinder navigation training at the PFF headquarters, PFF had become 8 Group, and the headquarters were outside Huntingdon, and for the moment I’ve forgotten its name.
MJ: Wyton.
MH: Wyton. And, well, I, I obviously successfully dealt with the specialist training because, at the end of the period, we were appointed, we were posted to 97 Squadron, which had just about turned up at Coningsby, having previously been somewhere else which I’ve moment forgotten, and I suppose the good fortune of that alignment with Smithy very quickly showed itself, because our very first operational trip as a new crew, we were attacked by two ME-109s, and I hate to think what, with an entirely inexperienced pilot and crew, might have happened. As it was, Smithy put us into a power dive and we successfully escaped, and I always remember, as we, nose went down and, of course, everything, the charts, the protractors, the dividers, the pencils, everything went all over the place, and all I remember was Smithy shouting ‘Never mind about the bloody charts, tell me if there are any hills around here!’ I don’t know how he thought I was going to do that, because of course the, the map showing such things as hills had gone with all the rest. However, eventually I did find it and told him that there were no hills, but by then it was too late, because fortunately there was none, and we were on our way home, fairly low, waking up a few French along the way. Well, after that, we had a comparatively inexperienced and exciting time, fortunately, the usual little problems of sometimes getting splattered by shrapnel from bombs exploding around one, but nothing really terrible except, I suppose, we, one, one, one night, a hydraulic pipeline was severed, and it wasn’t quite known whether or not the undercarriage was going to lock down, and so we were diverted to the diversionary airport at Manston in Kent, which, strangely enough, was a place to which I became quite attached and very accustomed later after the war. Smith finished his tour, his second tour, after twenty ops, and we were still there. The usual arrangement in the Pathfinder Force was that, instead of doing the normal stint of thirty ops in a first tour, then a period off and twenty on a second tour, one was encouraged to do forty-five ops through immediately, one, ah, all in one go, on Pathfinder Force, presumably because of the additional training and experience which one had gained in Pathfinder operations. I had by then become reasonably accustomed to my duties with H2S as it was then, the early form of radar, I suppose the predecessor of many of the systems with which we are accustomed now in our motorcars or boats or anything like that. By today’s standards, it was fairly primitive, but on the whole, it worked, and I effectively did forty-four operations, finishing my forty-fourth just about at the end of the war, and I think I’m right in saying that I failed to find the target first time only once in those forty-four operations. Again, we had one or two bits of excitement; by then, I was flying with the squadron commander because, when Smithy had finished his second tour, once again, we found ourselves as a crew without a pilot, and the squadron commander had just completed a tour and had gone, and he, his successor, a group captain, Group Captain Peter Johnson, the Pathfinder Force generally had ranks which were one up from the general Bomber Command so that, whereas most bomber squadrons were commanded by wing commander, Pathfinder squadrons generally commanded by a group captain, the flight commanders were wing commanders whereas usually they were squadron leaders, and leaders (wireless, navigation, gunnery and so on) were usually squadron leaders instead of flight lieutenants. And, of course, with the passage of time and people finishing their tours and, sadly, finishing their tours in other ways, meant that promotion was fairly quick and eventually found myself as a squadron leader, acting squadron leader, anyway. And I suppose at the age of twenty-three, briefing Pathfinder squadrons, it was good experience which has stood one good in civil life after the war. Only one thing, well, I suppose two things, really, stick in my mind: one is that we were coming back one evening from very long flight, somewhere way over in, I, Stet – somewhere in Poland, we’d been airborne for about nine hours and were running really rather short of fuel, and it was foggy, good old Lincolnshire fog, and we couldn’t get in at Coningsby. At Metheringham, which was close by, there had been installed a system which was called FIDO, which took the form of a, a channel being put alongside the runway and filled with aircraft spirit of some sort, and which I, in foggy conditions, it was lit, the idea being that the heat generated would disperse the fog. Unfortunately, the people who did it forgot the fact that the, the fire itself would have created more smoke, and we had problems. We went ‘round twice and couldn’t find the, the, the ‘drome, the –
MJ: Flare path?
MH: [background noises] I was saying that my captain had considerable experience in finding the flight path, we went ‘round twice and by then the fuel was running dangerously slow, ah, short, and fortunately, we turned on a third time and both the pilot and the flight engineer, more or less at the same time, just got a glimpsed, glimpse of the flight path and Peter Johnson very cleverly (not easy on a Lancaster) effectively side-slipped onto the air, airfield. We had a very bumpy landing but at any rate, we did get down in one piece. We subsequently discovered that part of the difficulty was not only the smoke created by FIDO itself but the plane that had come in immediately before us, or had tried to come in, had failed and had crashed right through the woodland alongside the, the aerodrome and all members of the crew were killed. So that was not a – it wasn’t the best of evenings when we got back in, in the mess that evening. My, my skipper, my pilot, Group Captain Peter Johnson, with typical sort of British stiff upper lip, when I think one member of my crew said to him as we were getting out, ‘Well, that was a bit dicey,’ and he said [blustering received-pronunciation] ‘Oh, it was alright, you know,’ and, but in fact, subsequently back in the mess, he did tell me, tell me that he was pretty worried and that, had we not seen the runway on that particular moment, he was seriously considering turning out to sea and trying to land in the shallows of the sea, so I’m, I’m glad the smoke cleared enough for us to get by. Apart from that, there were very few moments of great excitement. One memorable moment, not really a moment of excitement is that, in the Pathfinder operations, the Lancasters, the Lancaster Pathfinders were equipped with RT and WT; the main force was equipped only with WT. The master bombers, who were in Mosquitoes, they had only RT, and they were people like Cheshire and Tate and Gibson and names such as that, and on this particular night, we – one of the Lancaster Pathfinders was doing the job as link aircraft (this was passing on WT the RT instructions received from the master bomber), and the Pathfinder Lancasters used to take it in turn to be the link aircraft, in effect flying ‘round and ‘round the target passing the messages from the master bomber. Not the most popular of tasks, needless to say, but on this particular night, we were, well, my skipper was, in effect, the, the second string, which was the man who was the link, was very often, or very often at any rate, the senior officer in the Lancasters who was on the raid was the deputy commander, just in case the master bomber had mechanical trouble and had to turn back or had been shot down en route, and we were the, the second string, if you like, and, and we had a message from the master bomber saying that the raid was successful, radio home and go home, and go home we did, only to find out later that the master bomber had not got home, and the master bomber was no less than Guy Gibson. So it’s not exactly a claim to fame, it’s the most inappropriate form of words, but I suppose it is true to say that I and the other six members of the crew were the last seven people to hear Guy Gibson speak. I’ve never really, I don’t think most people have ever really fully satisfied themselves as to what happened to him; various rumours, most of them silly, but I’m, I’ve always been told (I can’t prove this), I’ve always been told that it was a complete wreck, the aircraft was on fire and everything was burned, and that the only recognition was that a sock was found with a laundry mark on it and this was Gibson’s. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know, but that was the story I’d always been told. So, that more or less finished my flying career. I, I went on a couple of daylight raids which I didn’t much enjoy; somehow, I didn’t think the Lancaster was, was fitted for formation flying as were the Americans. And I, I don’t, I don’t think they were terribly successful and they weren’t particularly enjoyable. At the, the days immediately on the end of the war, most of us were, to some extent, occupied in bringing back prisoners of war from airfields in Belgium and Holland, poor devils had been up to several years in prisoner of war camps and had been brought out to the coast and were being picked up. Two things remind me of that always: my good skipper, the group captain, who I may say was a first class man (he finished the war DSO, DFC, AFC and thoroughly deserved it all), we didn’t see each other after the war for almost forty years, and then by pure accident, I was, I’d been a member of the MCC for a great many years, and was one night at home looking through the annual accounts of the MCC, and there was a list of people who had been members of the MCC for fifty years and who were now called life members and no longer had a subscription to pay, and about the third in the list was Group Captain P.W. Johnson, DSO, DFC, AFC, and I said to my wife, ‘Well, there can only be one member like that!’ And at that time, my firm, I was of course by then a, a qualified chartered accountant and a partner in my firm, and we were then acting auditors of the MCC, so I said to my partner, who dealt with the MCC problems, would he let me know next time he went to Lords [?] for anything, would he go into the office and see if he could find the address of Group Captain Johnson, which he did, and a week or two later, I found out and got back in touch with Peter Johnson and we thereafter saw each other roughly every six or seven weeks. He was a good deal older, he was fourteen years older than me, and by then he was therefore he was eighty or eighty-ish, and we used to take him out. He was, he was on his own, he’d lost his wife, he was a rather lonely old man in many ways. My wife, I had met during the war, she was a WAF, a Scots girl, and we met, strangely, I think immediate, immediately after the war in Europe finished, because very quickly, the operational squadrons were being disbanded, people were being sent away and all sorts of things. Peter Johnson was sent almost immediately to join a party which was being put together by Bomber Harris to go to Germany and inspect at first hand the damage which Bomber Command had done, and so he left the squadron very quickly, and I didn’t then see anything of him for forty years. I greatly regret it, actually, the loss of that forty years ‘cause he was such a first-class chap, and we had many a happy meeting in the years between our meeting up again and when he, he died. He died in a way which suited him well, because he was then living in an old people’s home not very far from where we live, and so we, we were able to see him fairly frequently. He had always had a, an eye for the girls; it was well known in Coningsby that he had a girlfriend in Newark and another one in Boston, and his son had been married about five times, and I remember him telling me once that, after the fifth marriage, that if he, if he got rid of that wife, Peter Johnson was going to marry her himself ‘cause she was jolly nice, and she had actually come to visit him in the old people’s home. He was still driving, he’d taken her back to the station to catch the train back to where they were living, he parked his car outside the, the place where he was living, he had a long-ish walk into the front door, he collapsed halfway on that walk, and before anybody could really do anything about it, he was dead. So it was a suitable and fitting end, I don’t think he would have regretted it. But that ended, substantially ended, my air force career, because I still had a fairly high demob number and because I was fairly experienced with forty-four ops behind me with Pathfinder Force, I was allocated to a thing called Tiger Force, which some bright spark at the Air Ministry had decided that we should go to assist our brave allies, the Americans, in the Far East, and that we should try to operate the successful Pathfinder technique which had been operated in Europe. I mean, it was a crazy idea ‘cause it was quite impossible doing the thing; it one thing being on a, a pre-war, tarmacadamed airfield with permanent buildings and every sort of electronic communication then available. It was a little different being stuck in Okinawa or somewhere like that. However, that was, I was to be so-called wing navigation officer and was actually on leave when the Japanese war ended, and so I phoned the Air Ministry and said, ‘Well, you don’t really, seriously mean to go ahead with this, do you?’ And there was a bit of umming and ahing at the other end, but I did eventually – I was told that they would be in touch with me and a couple of days later, there was a telephone call to say that the thing was off but I was to report back to Coningsby, and I spent the rest of my time as station navigation officer at Coningsby, and I left the, the squadrons left Coningsby about a fortnight before I was demobbed, they’ve were moved to Hemswell in order that the runways at Coningsby could be lengthened for the V Bombers which were then coming on stream. I got in touch and said, ‘Look, I’ve been in Coningsby two and a half years, you’re surely not gonna send me away to Hemswell, I have another fortnight to go,’ so again, there was umming and ahing and said ‘No,’ but I had to stay at Coningsby the other fortnight, they didn’t let me go a fortnight early, but that ended my work, wartime career, if ‘career’ is the right word. Terrible, war’s a terrible thing, awful, awful times one remembers. One remembers times of great strain, times of danger, but equally times when, very often before leaving for a flight, the, the, the whole feeling oneself was flowing, there was a, there was a, a scare, I suppose a scare, a fright; on the other hand, there was a feeling of something quite exciting was going to happen. It was a strange feeling and it was very different when you came back, I think feelings there differed very much from person to person, and I think I’d – probably as good a note to end on, end on as any is that I think that it’s amply demonstrated why the men who did the sculpture in the Bomber Command memorial in Green Park, where he has the sculpture of a crew of Lancasters coming in after the end of an operation, and, whilst my eyesight, I’m afraid, these days is far from good, and I, I really was not able to recognise it, my wife always tells me that the expressions on the face of the seven people were quite remarkable and that the, the sculptor had really done a marvellous job. And it is a marvellous, marvellous memorial; I was lucky to be one of those still alive and able to attend its opening by the Queen, and those of us who were there and who had actually operated during the war were asked to line up at the end along the, effectively, the edge of the Green Park parallel with Piccadilly, and the Prince of Wales and his wife came along and shook hands with all of us individually, one by one. I think he missed his lunch in consequence, but I imagine he didn’t mind. I think that hopefully is, in brief, my story. I hope it may be of use and interest to somebody in the future.
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command, I’d like to thank Squadron Leader Hatch, at his home in Croydon, for his recording on the date of the 30th July 2015. I thank you very much. Bye-bye.
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 Maurice Hatch
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-30
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AHatchM150730
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
00:38:07 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Maurice Hatch was training as a chartered accountant when volunteered for pilot but was instead enlisted as a navigator. After initial training at Torquay, Brighton and Eastbourne he went to South Africa for a year. Upon returning he crewed up at Harrogate followed to a post at RAF East Kirby (630 Squadron) flying Wellingtons, Stirlings and Lancasters, mainly on operations to Berlin. Then he went on a five-week intensive Pathfinder navigation training at 8 Group headquarters, followed by a post with 97 Squadron at RAF Coningsby where he flew 44 operations. After the end of the war in Europe he was sent to the Far East with the Tiger Force as wing navigation officer, but the war ended before he started operational duties. Maurice returned at RAF Coningsby as station navigation officer until demobbed. He then became a qualified chartered accountant and a partner of his firm. Maurice talks about military ethos, prisoner of war, bailing out, operations, anti-aircraft fire, evasive manoeuvres, Guy Gibson, reunions, the Bomber Command memorial in Green Park, meeting the Queen and other dignitaries.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
South Africa
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Devon
England--Sussex
England--Torquay
England--Brighton
England--Harrogate
Germany
Germany--Berlin
England--Eastbourne (East Sussex)
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
630 Squadron
8 Group
97 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bale out
bombing
crewing up
demobilisation
Elizabeth II, Queen of Great Britain (1926 - 2022)
FIDO
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
Lancaster
Me 109
memorial
navigator
Pathfinders
prisoner of war
promotion
RAF Coningsby
Stirling
Tiger force
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/577/8846/AGregoryN150724.1.mp3
68369faff1465dab9c9367181bffe473
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
Gregory, Norman
Norman Ellis Gregory
N E Gregory
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Gregory, N
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Norman Gregory (-2022, 1473815) and his medals. He served as a bomb aimer on 101 Squadron. He flew five operations before his aircraft was shot down on 22 May 1944 over Dortmund.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
NG: Good afternoon my name is Norman Ellis Gregory, I served with Bomber Command during the war and my service number is 1473815. I finished my service in February 1946 with the rank of Warrant Officer. I joined the Air Force in 194unclear). I came on active service in the Air Force in 1942, going first of all to Regent’s Park. But at the time I joined up I had volunteered about a year before for air crew in York where I was at St John’s College, York. So the Air Force took a group of us who had volunteered and, er, spent all the available weekends and some evenings training us, er, through the course what would have been ITW, so that when we went to Regent’s Park we were all, all of us were LAC’s and that meant, you know, an increase in pay from half a crown up to seven and six a day, which was very nice thank you. But anyway, from Regent’s Park we went down to, erm, Brighton for what reason I can’t remember. But anyway from Brighton we, some reason we were dispersed all over the country and I was sent to Anstey which was just on the north side of Leicester. It was, erm, a flying school and I did twelve hours in Tiger Moths at, Anstey and at that place I was recommended for multi-engined aircraft. From there (pause) I eventually gravitated to Heaton Park at Manchester and from Heaton Park at Manchester in the latter part of 1942 I was sent to Greenwich on the Clyde, and I sailed to New York on the Queen Elizabeth the first time and we sailed into New York. And, er, from New York we went up to Halifax, Nova Scotia and from there me in particular, erm, I was handed over to the Canadian Air Force and I served for the next six months doing flying training, navigation courses and so on with the Canadian Air Force, not the Royal Air Force which had stations all over the place in North America. Anyway, six months later, er, the back end of June beginning of July 1943, by a strange quirk of fate I came back in reverse order, went back from Canada down to New York and I went back across the Atlantic onto Queen Elizabeth again. This time when I went up the gangway struggling with my kitbags, the officer at the top said brutally to me, I was by myself I wasn’t with a troop or whatever, he said “can you sleep in a hammock” I said “yes sir” he said “well you go far into the focus of the crew” and that’s how I crossed the Atlantic the second time swaying in a hammock with the crew. I came back to the United Kingdom, erm, I was then in posted to, erm, (pause) to Harrogate and from Harrogate we were dispersed to the various OUT’s over the country and, erm, I ended up at 28 OUT. But before that, I can’t remember the name off hand, erm, it was just outside Shepshed in Leicestershire and that’s where we crewed up. Having crewed up we went to Castle Donnington and for the next four or five months we were flying Wellingtons day and night and on one occasion we’d hardly taken off when the skipper called down to me in the nose and said “Greg Greg come up here I’m crook” he said and he was slumped over the controls. Now fortunately this went and we dual controlled and so I had to jump up into the co-pilot’s seat and I flew that Lancaster all night and we eventually came back to Castle Donnington and I had made my first run in to land the aircraft at night. I hastily add that I had landed a Wellington during daylight but not at night and I was going round for another circuit on to attempt to land the aircraft when the skipper came out of his coma and said “what are you doing”, “where are we” and I explained that we were on the circuit and he says “I’ll take over” and he landed it. And, erm, I expect everyone was very happy (laughs) to get their feet back on the ground again that night. Well from Castle Donnington we went to Hemswell, er, that was a heavy conversion unit and we were going to change or go up the ladder from two engines to four and they sent us from Hemswell to a brand new satellite and there were, I don’t know how many, possibly about twenty, very antique Halifax’s and in the first fortnight there we lost six aircraft and all the crews due to, erm, the Halifax mark. It had some sort of fault in the tail unit and all the aircraft after those six losses, all the craft were grounded and men came out of the Halifax factory and put the mark II tail unit on. From there we went to, erm, squadron. There was a time where you went to Lancaster flying school flying training school, but by then the squadrons preferred to run their own flying training school so it was, erm, end of March early April. We went to 101 squadron and for the next six weeks we were just learning to fly the Lancaster and I am proud to say that, erm, the skipper allowed me to sit in the pilot seat and fly the Lancaster and when we had completed night time, day time flying we would go on, the fighters would come along side and we’d shoot at the droves. You know from the Lancaster and we’d do daytime bombing with practice bombs and night time bombings with practice bombs and so on and when they were satisfied that we could fly the Lancaster then we were put on the rota for bombing operations and the night of the 3rd 4th of May 1944, erm, we went on our first op to a place called Milaca, it’s about a hundred miles east of Paris. And the aircraft, all Lancaster’s, came from One group and Six group, all in the Lincolnshire area, and goodness knows what happened that night. There’s all sorts of stories, but we were circling the (pause) turning point for twenty minutes and unfortunately there was a German night fighter station a matter of a few minutes away from where we are and so there was a Turkey shoot. There were out of the 350 Lancs on that target and incidentally it was a low level attack on a pre-war French barracks which was supposed to have an (unclear) edition there and so we were bombing at seven thousand feet instead of the normal twenty thousand feet. I’ve got photographs there, that, er, possible to see, there was not two bricks on top of each other, it was literally flattened without doing any damage to the local French community. Unfortunately we lost over forty aircraft and they scattered over say a ten mile radius from there. They’re all buried in church yards in that vicinity and I’ve been back at least five times over the last you know thirty years or so to visit the different burial places of these crews. Two years ago I went there with my daughter and we went to a village that I had never been to before and we were told that there was a crew buried in the church yard at this village and when I got there we had a service in the church yard in memory of this particular crew. Then the local people said that the aircraft in question came down in the forest, you know, over there sort of thing, and they were going to take us up into the forest to the exact spot, because in the previous year the local community had got a big lump of rock at to mark the exact place where this aircraft came down. It was all chiselled with the name of the aircraft and the names of the crew and everything, and when we went up in the forest I was the only man there who had actually been on that raid. I was literally gobsmacked because, erm, I’d known all these years that there were 350 Lancs on the target and what a loss there was, not only from my own squadron, but from many other squadrons. The local people told me that the aircraft in the forest was a Halifax and I’d never heard of this it’s (unclear), now this links up with the fact that during the time of circling the marker point before turning into bombing, I heard the master bomber over the RT say “this is your master bomber going down take over number two” and that was the Halifax that you know I visited in the woods. It turns out that this Halifax had belonged to the PFF and it had been vastly modified. It carried a crew of eight, they had removed all the Bombay’s and put long range tanks in, but he was shot down along with the other forty aircraft and they were all killed, very sad. When the local Mayoress unveiled this, er, memorial up in the forest, er, a little boy with a velvet cushion and a special pair of scissors went up to the Lady Mayoress and bowed to her, she took these pair of scissors and she cut the tricolour tape that went round. It’s customary apparently in those places that they chop up this ribbon and give it to all the important people. The first piece that was chopped off was presented to me, which I still have. Well unfortunately for me and for my crew I suppose, and a lot of other people too, we only completed five raids when we were shot down over Dortmand in the Ruhr on the night of the 22nd of May 1944. We were shot down from underneath and we were on our way literally within minutes of dropping the bomb load on Dortmund, and so the, er, shells of the enemy aircraft set the insentry load on the Bombay on fire and of course I was in the nose and there was the wireless operator, the navigator, the flight engineer and the skipper on the flight deck and none knew that the aircraft was on fire until something alerted the er the radio man that there was something wrong. He opened the door, and from there to the after the aircraft and the whole thing was a raging inferno, I mean it was a case of if the shells had been ten feet forward they’d have shot everyone in the flight deck you see. So the tail gunner was killed, the special wireless operator was killed and the mid upper gunner was killed there and then in this raging inferno in the aircraft, so the skipper decided in the next few minutes I had dropped the bomb load on (unclear) and the skipper said that we’ll have to abandon the aircraft. But of course I’m lying on the escape hatch and so I, I removed the hatch and you have to disconnect your (unclear) you have to disconnect your power supply to your, I had a power, erm, (unclear) heated chute and you have to, and your intercom, so it’s quite a, and then you’ve got to get your parachute and clip it on. And then you literally dive into the open shoot as if you’re diving into the water and captain and pull the ripcord, and in my case, and I’m afraid in lots of other cases, when I’ve compared notes years afterwards, that when this, erm, pack on my chest was pulled upwards when the parachute was displayed it caught me under the chin and knocked me out. Mind you in twenty three thousand feet there’s a remarkable lack of oxygen so, erm, that may or may not have played part, but anyway it knocked me out. And when I came to there was a deathly hush, there wasn’t an aircraft in the sky, they’d all gone home and I’m floating in this parachute, but I’m combed by a searchlight that I’ve never heard of anybody else, but obviously it could have happened many times, and the searchlight followed me all the way down to the ground. I thought that I would get a belly full of lead but I didn’t, my boots had fallen off and when I landed I was exceptionally lucky, I just happened to land in a small clearing in an area of forest or a lot of trees anyway, but unfortunately I didn’t see the land, the ground coming up, and I damaged my right knee. I could stand on my left leg but I couldn’t walk and so I crawled and crawled and crawled and crawled until I came to a little row of, er, small houses and just the nearest one I knocked on the door and a young woman a woman of about twenty came to the door she took me and in. Unfortunately for me that night in my navigation bag I had left my cigarette case, er, it was just something I’d never done before I usually kept the cigarette case about my person and so I said, I tried to, I couldn’t speak German at that time and I said to the made signs to this young lady that I would like a, had she got a cigarette and she disappeared out into the night. She came back ten or fifteen minutes later and handed me two gold flake (laughs) where she got them from I have no idea and she was accompanied by the village policeman and he started to speak to me in German. When I implied I couldn’t understand what was going on he started to speak to me in French and so my schoolboy French came into good use and, er, he was a POW for the French in World War I so there was a certain amount of empathy between the two of us. I still have a little giggle all these years later, that because I couldn’t walk he put me on the cross bar of his bicycle and I was wheeled into captivity (laughs). Well from there in the local lock up sort of a place, like a large village, I was picked up the next morning by a young under officer, a corporal I suppose in the Luftwaffe and he had come from the airfield at Dortmund and so I don’t know how far out of Dortmund I was, but a mile or two. He took me on the local train into Dortmund and of course that is what I’d had been bombing the night before so all these people milling about the railway station in Dortmund thought it would be a good idea to get hold of me. And so this corporal pulled his revolver and told me to get behind him and he threatened and he said “if you lay hands or try to lay hands on me” that he would fire his revolver so that was a good plus mark for me. So for the next few days I was in the sails of this airfield just outside Dortmund, the only aircraft I could see was a single engine (unclear) so there weren’t any night fighters or day fighters anything there. To my great surprise my skipper and navigator were already prisoners there and it turns out the information they gave me that after I’d bailed out seconds later the controls were within a shot away or burnt away and the aircraft went over. The skipper and navigator were literally thrown up through the canopy and the others, the wireless operator and the flight engineer, they didn’t manage to get out, you can’t if you’ve got that amount of negative to you you’re just pinned down. And so unfortunately that added two more deaths to the three already and the skipper and navigator. When we came back to Blighty a year later, they went their different ways. But they both died about thirty years ago of cancer, I presume from smoking, but they were literally in their sort of, well the navigator would only be about fifty-five when he died of liver cancer and the skipper died about ten years later exactly, it was cancer I know. Getting back to Germany the three of us went back down to Frankfurt to the interrogation centre and from there we went to, erm, a little village, a little town called Wetzler which is the home of Zeiss. They were in a newly made little camp and it was tents, bell tents, that they’d captured I suppose at Dunkirk. Every time it rained, the water ran through the tent and we got very wet at night, and subsequent to that we were sent down the skipper was commissioned by that time. He went to Luft 8 where they had that famous escape and the navigator and myself went to Luft 7, which was a new camp alleged in Silesia and (pause) it’s a change from the tents. This, this camp in Bancow was, erm, I don’t know how many hundred, but an awful lot of chicken huts, and we were six to a chicken hut instead of a tent and this was an improvement. But it was summer time and by late September early October, erm, nearby presumably Russian labour was used to build a permanent camp because the Germans were fed up of the RAF escaping or attempting to escape. They built all the barracks on stilts and at nine 0 clock each night, not only were we locked in, but they set all these Alsatian dogs out in the compounds. So trundling because you were on stilts was out of the question but (pause) we were only in that permanent camp for a matter of months, four months at the most I would think. Because it was towards the end of January 1945 that the Germans were being attacked, er, by the Russians on their own border. The Russians were breaking through in our direction from Warsaw and the Germans decided to evacuate us, as they did all the other POW camps you know. Some up on the (unclear) some in the South of Germany and so on and we were on the march for three weeks. There was a metre of snow on the ground and (pause) mostly in the first week we were only marching at night, turning if the roads opened from the German troop movements and tank movements during the day. Eventually after three weeks we got to a place called Luckenwalde about twenty or so miles or so south of Berlin and that was a huge er camp. I I, I couldn’t even dream of a POW camp of between twenty and twenty-five thousand men in it. And this camp, it wasn’t initially anything to do with the Airforce. Normally in the POW camps the German Luftwaffe made prison camps for Airforce people and the German (unclear) made their prison camps for the army and the Luftmarine. No, no not the Luftmarine but the German navy looked after their own kind, but in this place at, erm, camp in Luckenwalde they had separate compounds for the French, the Dutch the Norwegians, every nationality that they’d conquered had compounds there. But the predominant ones were the French because they were using the French, not only the French army and Airforce no doubt, but the French civilian males as forced labour in Germany. And anyway, I was part of a troop of RAF lads on this march, there were seven of us, and initially on march the first night we all slept by ourselves. The next night we slept in twos for warmth and eventually the seven of us, if there was any chance of kipping down in barns or whatever, we were seven in the bed, and bitter were the complaints “I was on the outside last night” (laughs). Incidentally the first month that I was in Germany I never had my clothes off or had a shower and it was a repeat run on this so called death march, nobody had their clothes off and so you know it was just do as best you could. But I had, I was exceptionally lucky, I don’t know where I got them from but I had four pairs of socks and on that death march I wore two pairs of socks by day and I had a strong pair of boots and the other two pairs were tucked inside my shirt next to my skin so that they were warm and dry. And so each night or day if the case was that we were going to stop marching for twelve hours or so, that the first thing I could do was to take my boots off, take my socks off put warm dry socks onto my cold feet and put the two pairs of socks that I’d taken off back to get warm and dry next to my skin. Well it seems curious to say this, but it’s perfectly true that when we got back to Luckenwalde, the barracks that were given were simply large empty sheds with a roof and windows that were closed and a concrete floor and we were just, you know, assumed to find a patch on the concrete floor where we could lie down, but it was actually wonderful to have (laughs) somewhere out of the weather, out of the rain and out of the snow just to lie on a bit of concrete. But there it was, it, we were only there oh two or three weeks when we managed to get into a different block where we had probably a room no more than fifteen foot square with bunks in it so the seven of us were in that room. And on one occasion, and the next compound was a Russian compound, and we managed to smuggle a Russian out of the Russian compound into our room, I don’t know how this, this was organised, but this man was allegedly a tailor to trade and he was doing all our mending. Whilst he was sitting there with his needle and thread and doing his mending for us, a Russian, a German officer came in and he would have been shot just where he was sitting if he’d known he was a Russian, but fortunately he wasn’t dressed like a Russian and so he just carried on doing sewing and, er, the German officer cleared off and what not. But anyway subsequent to that, we were all very hungry and short of rations, at that particular place one of the daily rounds was a German with a paler full of potatoes who came round and HE put his hand in the bucket and gave YOU a potato, if you were jolly lucky it might be a as big as a tennis ball, but believe me they were a lot smaller than that. So, erm, because I could speak French and nobody in that group of seven could, two or three of us including me were smuggled into the French compound so we could do barter to get some food for them because they were going out of the camp every day and could get access to food that we obviously couldn’t and it is a bit of a matter of some amusement that I changed my RAF uniform for a French uniform so it gave me freedom of movement about in that camp and the Germans didn’t, weren’t aware that I was anything other than what I looked like and, er, so I could you know move freely about trading for food on our behalf. Well in the latter part of our stay in Luckenwalde, the Russians were getting closer and closer to their attack on Berlin and it is still is a matter of amazement that the Russian guns were powerful enough to send shells ten or fifteen miles and so we didn’t hear the artillery firing, but we did hear the shells screaming overhead and we didn’t hear the shell exploding in Berlin but it was going on, you know day after day. Eventually we woke up one morning and all the German guards had disappeared and the same day the Russians arrived and the Russians were very keen to re-patriate us back to the UK via Odessa and the Black Sea, but we weren’t very keen on that idea so, erm, we heard on our secret radio, got in touch with the Yankee forces on the other side of the (pause) I can’t remember the name, but anyway we got in touch with these Americans and when they tried to reach the camp the Russians turned them back. However, they didn’t go all the way back where the Russians hoped they would go, they retreated about three miles the other side of a forest and we were left a note that if we could get back to these lorries by a certain time that we would be taken to the American lines. And so it was we escaped from Luckenwalde and we got, we drove for a long long time and we got to Hildesheim in Germany and we were in a pre-war German barracks and to this day I am gobsmacked that it was completely untouched, it hadn’t been shelled or bombed or anything like that, it was lovely accommodation and the British Red Cross were waiting for us and gave us, er, you know, fresh underwear, socks, toothbrushes, shaving kit and that sort of thing. We were only there the one night as far as I can remember and we were flown out by Dakota down to La Halle in France. We flew over La Ruhr and it was an eye opener to see the havoc that the RAF had made for the German cities in La Ruhr. We got to La Halle, and as I say I was in a French uniform and I traded that for a Yankee uniform and within twenty-four hours the Royal Navy had shipped us across to Southampton and back to the United Kingdom. Incidentally, VE Day we spent in Ludkenwalde, we didn’t get away from Luckenwalde until three or four days after the Russians arrived so we missed all the joy and fun of VE Day. We were all posted up to RAF Cosford near Wolverhampton and given fresh kit and given excellent food and sent on six weeks leave. After that, before and after, we had medicals and the following August the Japanese gave up and we thought all these thousands and thousands of air crew were redundant and we said please can we go home, can we finish, “no you can’t leave here the Air Force until you put back the weight that you were when you joined up” (laughs), well I was only about seven and half stone when I came back from Germany so it wasn’t until you know six months later that I recovered my previous weight and I was discharged. So there we are in a nutshell this is my experiences. When we got to La Halle it was a matter of amazement to me, I mean it was a tented camp, we all had a shower and a change of clothing if we wanted it and I did, and of course there was plenty of food and I had never been in an American Mess before, in the Sergeant’s Mess in the UK for that matter. You sat down at a table to, for your food, you know, for your breakfast, your midday meal and your evening meal and in this Yankee thing, I can see, it’s a tented encampment. The tables were about a foot higher than normal tables so you had to stand at the tables, there was no sitting down, you queued up and you were given a big metal tray and they put the food on your metal tray with you know a knife, fork and spoon and you went to these very high tables and you stood there and you ate what was on your tray, handed your stuff in, so there was an endless trail of people, instead of sitting down and talking you see, they were getting rid of you as quickly as possible so that was an eye opener. I could go back to Luckenwalde, the time between that elapsed between the Russians arriving and us escaping, we went into the local village and I can remember I saw a que of women outside a bakers and so I joined the que and I got a loaf of bread you know. I was highly delighted, ver, very delighted that I’d got a loaf of bread and a day or two later, erm, one of my friends who was called by the unusual name of Robert Burns, but unfortunately he was nothing to do with the Scottish poet, he was a regular in the Air Force and he was a Sergeant fitter, an engine fitter, and he was sent out on the empire training school system to South Africa. Now he was what do you call it, he was at Holten, and these Holten Bratts, it was, er, I don’t know whether it was actually written into the contract or not, but it was a clearly understood thing what a Holten Bratt was, whether you was an earphone fitter, an engine fitter or an instrument basher or whatever trade it was that he had the right to be re-mastered to air crew. I don’t know what he got fed up about, but I mean he was a Sergeant fitter in South Africa and I suppose living like a lord, but something upset him, I never knew what, and he remastered and became air crew and he became a pilot. .He was flying out of North Africa in Wellingtons and mostly he was flying across the Mediterranean and sewing mines in the, the airports of the Northern side of the Mediterranean, and this particular night he was sewing mines in a Greek port called Milos and they were shot at, sewing mines flying low over the water and he was shot out of the water and he was the only one to get out of the aircraft alive. He was fished out of the drink by a German launch or boat of some sort. It was the middle of winter in Europe and he was flying out of North Africa with shorts and a shirt, nothing else, I mean boots, but nothing else, and he was thrown by the Germans into a barbwire compound, no hat, no tent just a nice layer of snow on the ground and that really was incarcerated. And he, for some reason I’ve never found out, nobody else could find out I suppose, that he was never directly sent to a German POW camp, he was sent for several months from one civilian jail to another all through the Southern part of Europe. Eventually he was in the same POW camp as me, and getting back to Luckenwalde when you know a lot of POWs start scowering round the countryside looking for food, the food quickly disappears, and I said to him one day, look there’s no good us going looking for food in this locality lets go for a long walk and of course being me we went for five or six miles and we came to this German farm. That area, the German farm were always built in a square, one side was the farmhouse, two sides were barns one side the wall with a big double gate and we walked round this farmhouse and everything was shuttered, you couldn’t hear any cattle, couldn’t hear any human beings and we banged on the shutters and walked round like Joshua going round the walls of Jericho. Suddenly we just turned the corner and this corner was the front of the house part of the farm, the farmhouse, and a shutter opened towards us like that and from behind the shutter there came a fist with a big knife dripping blood, and his arm came out, then the shutter was moved a bit further then the head came out, and this Robert Burns looked at this head with the man with the blood dripping knife and he said “Milanovich” and then this man, with the bloody knife, said “Robert Burns”, and they’d both been down in Bulgaria (laughs) in a civilian prison, how this Milanovich got there, goodness knows, but anyway we got a little bit of a peak out of it. That was a wonderful day for us. That’ll do.
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command, I would like to thank Norman Gregory, erm, bomb aimer, warrant officer for his interview at his home address on the 24th July 2015. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Norman Gregory
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-24
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AGregoryN150724
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
00:45:23 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Having volunteered for aircrew in 1941 in York, Norman came into active service in 1942. He flew Tiger Moths at RAF Ansty and was recommended for multi-engine aircraft. After RAF Heaton Park, he went to Halifax, Nova Scotia. He spent six months training with the Canadian Air Force before being posted to RAF Harrogate and sent to No. 28 Operational Training Unit. Before that, he flew Wellingtons at RAF Castle Donington. Norman went to a Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Hemswell and a new satellite with Halifax Mark I aircraft, grounded after six aircraft were lost.
Norman went to 101 Squadron and learnt to fly Lancasters, serving as a bomb aimer. He describes his first operation to Mailly-Le-Camp where over 40 Lancasters, out of 350, were lost.
Norman’s aircraft was shot down over Dortmund with the death of five crew members. He was captured, as were the pilot and navigator. After the Frankfurt Interrogation Centre, they went to a camp in Wetzlar. Norman then went to Stalag Luft 7 at Bankau in Silesia, followed by four months in another camp. The Germans evacuated prisoner of war camps in January 1945 following Russian attacks. Norman marched on a “death march” for three weeks in snow to Luckenwalde, a camp with 20-25,000 men.
Norman escaped with the Americans via Hildesheim and Le Havre before returning to Britain. He was posted to RAF Cosford but could only leave when he had regained weight, which took six months. He finished in February 1946 with the rank of warrant officer.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Leicestershire
England--Yorkshire
Canada
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia--Halifax
France
France--Mailly-le-Camp
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Luckenwalde
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1945-01
1946
1946-02
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
101 Squadron
28 OTU
aircrew
bale out
bomb aimer
bombing
Bombing of Mailly-le-Camp (3/4 May 1944)
Dulag Luft
final resting place
Halifax
Halifax Mk 1
Lancaster
Master Bomber
memorial
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
RAF Ansty
RAF Castle Donington
RAF Cosford
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Hemswell
shot down
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 7
the long march
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington