1
25
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/475/8357/PBoyntonS1512.1.jpg
b8f48f9aeb2acc9b01ed571e88e5da23
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/475/8357/ABoyntonS150624.1.mp3
0ed41bfbe8c8db1cab395ef730cc5b81
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
Boynton, Stuart
Thomas Stuart Boynton
T S Boynton
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Boynton, S
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Stuart Boynton (1622415 Royal Air Force), He served as an air gunner with 103 Squadron.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Stuart Boynton 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
TSB. 1923,19,1939 I left Bridlington Grammar School eh, then, which I didn’t join the RAF straight away I joined the Air Training Corps, I was in there for about a year and a half. The war had already started after about a year and a half I thought well I’ll volunteer for Aircrew, which I went down to London, passed with flying colours, as I think and after that I was eh. I am trying to think where I went after various placed in the RAF in England. I was in Harrogate, I was in, up at South Shields. Then, I am trying to think of it, dates. That’s 1939 so, in after I had been in the RAF a few months I was posted to South Africa and my first wife and I then decided, ‘shall we get married and save the money until the war’s finished?’ Which, I got married when I was only twenty it was in the February ’43. And eh, the next within a week of being married I was transferred to South Africa where I, where I was on the Ansons, flying in the Ansons. On returning from South Africa about a year afterwards I as posted to LLandwrog in Wales. While in Wales there was quite a lot of flying the Anson again and eh just before my birthday which was 21st of March 1924, 1924 yes my first birthday my I was, my was transferred, I was transferred and posted to Finningley which is now Doncaster Airfield. So, so in February 1923, I was born in ’23, 1943 I was flying to South Africa which I say after South Africa I went to LLandwrog. Getting to Finningley which is on 21st birthday which was 1944 I was travelling from LLandwrog to Finningley with a kit bag over my shoulder, that was my 21st birthday. So consequently I flew from Finningley, I was on the Wellingtons for a short time. Eh, a leaflet trip to Holland dropping leaflets then from Finningley I went to Lindholme just down the road onto Halifax’s. While there I had a leaflet trip again to Holland and then from Lindholme I was posted to Hemswell onto the Lancasters. From Hemswell I was posted to Elsham, that’s where I did my first operation. I am only guessing now, Elsham I should say get to Elsham some time in September which was ’44. Our first operational trip was early I should say early November and I you ask me what that was like I can only answer [unclear] It was absolutely horrendous. The flak and everything else was shocking we were caught in the eh, eh the searchlights. Anyway with a bit of luck we got home safely. I just said to skipper ‘I am pleased were back from that,’ I said ‘ thirty trips like this we will double grave before we get to thirty trips.’ Anyway that was all right, we went into land, as we landed we flew straight off the airfield. The plane went up on its side we were straight off, all flat tyres. so that was the first one. After that most of our trips was over what we call the Happy Valley which was the German Steel places, Essen, most of mine was to Essen. Anyway we flew to Essen, we was very pleased to get back. Anyway we did about another ten trips after that ten or eleven trips after that. A couple of pretty bad ones after that but the biggest majority were what you call very easy. The last one we never made as we were coming on our way back, we had a very easy trip, a very quiet trip. The Rear Gunner said ‘We got a; fighter on our port side Skipper.’ Anyway he tried to do the evasive did a bit of a mm a mm, tried to get rid of him anyway. Consequently after about ten minutes, half an hour. Oh I thought we were on our way home. The next thing I knew was the Pilot saying ‘Abandon aircraft were on fire.’ I said, I was I went off in rotation. Just as I was going I saw, three [unclear] last thing I remember saying to my Skipper ‘I’ll see you down stairs Phil.’ With that I was pulling me ‘chute, just as I was pulling me ‘chute, I just heard on intercom the Rear Gunner say ‘Christ I’ve pulled me ‘chute.’ With that I’d gone, I didn’t know what happened after that. But what happened after that I was, only left on the plane was the Pilot, the Rear Gunner and the Mid Upper both the Gunners were Canadians. The young lad I thought I was the ablest, the youngest twenty one. Eddie was only just turned eight, nineteen for all I know he panicked and wouldn’t jump with the Mid Upper, Canadian, wanted him to jump with him, but he refused to jump. ‘No I’m not jumping.’ So all the Pilot said to Mid Upper ‘Get yourself off I’ll try to land the plane.’ The Mid Upper said, he jumped, as his ‘chute opened, all he saw was the wing dropped off with that the plane went straight into the ground, both killed. I have always said, I have always tried to find out to find out why this time, he was a bit older than me but had got two daughters. His wife had left Jersey, she was living in a hotel. Where ever he went she was living in hotels. So what she was left with was two daughters, no home to go to. I said I’ll, I always said he should have got decorated but he never did. So that is about all that I can say about that. So anyway when we was, when we were shot down we were taken to just a little village near from where we was shot down. They had seen us coming down so we had no chance of escaping. So they put me into a billet a Nissan hut with about thirty young Germans in. As I went in I was the only one of the crew that at the time, they found. I thought ‘well I am going to get knocked about here with all these lads.’ I had been in there about half an hour, one of them sidled up to me ‘there you are,’ gave me a bit of their ersatz bread. I thought it was awful, I put it in me pocket. Anyway about another half hour went by another young lad came, German lad, could speak, he could speak a bit of English. He just said ‘ me was a prisoner of Americans me look after you.’ With that he gave me a couple of blankets for the night. That is about all I could say about them, they were very good. But even today I still think now that would be December 1944 we were shot down. Even today he said, ah that is what he did say to me, ‘We have,’ when I was in this Nissan hut, ‘you have broken our lines we are now going to push you back.’ I never thought anything more about that at all until after the war. It must have been what you called ‘The Battle of the Bulge.’ So automatically now I often think ‘ I wonder if there are any of these young lads still living today?’ That’s all, that’s all I can say about that one. So after that we, we I was posted to eh, I can’t remember the name where was it, posted into Poland and one night, one morning woke up, right evacuating the camp. The Russians were coming very close to where, to where we were, so we had to, as the Russians were advancing we had to march away from them. So we were on, in the middle of winter, we were marching until about one or two in the morning carried on might have been one or two weeks, I don’t know. But there again I was one of the lucky ones, the last morning we were on the walk we’d get into farm, I’d went into the farm I were in the barn. I was one of the last in the barn and this would be one o’clock in the morning. When I woke up, whatever time it was, I don’t know all I can say it was light, it could have been five o’clock in the morning. There I was laid outside where it was twenty degrees below. I went, I couldn’t, me hands were, I couldn’t get me hands together, me feet was frozen, I said ‘ the only thing if the lads lit a fire.’ Got warmed up within two or three hours we were back on the wa,march again. So consequently we marched and again for another week, how long I don’t know. Once again I was very lucky one day they just piled all our section, our section were piled into rail trucks and how many were in the trucks I don’t know how we got on for weeing or whatever I don’t know how we got on about that. All I know before it took us about a day a day and a half on this truck, finished up somewhere near Berlin. That is when the Russians liberated us which was what I gather, I don’t know. I don’t know [unclear] prisoners. Once again I would be guessing but it was sometime in April time, May. I don’t know when the war finished. But once they, I always remember the Russians coming through our camp knocking all the fences down. There were men and women on the tanks, just the same and I must admit at the time I thought ‘well they are just like a pack a bandit these lot.’ We got on well with them, they didn’t bother with us, we didn’t bother with them. They would not, we were there two or three weeks at least, the Americans sent a couple of Troops to move us and they said ‘ you are going when it is out turn, we will let you know when you are going.’ So we got fed up of waiting, one day we set off from the camp ‘we will make our way to the Elbe to get across ourselves.’ So we [unclear] a mile down the road next thing we got, the Russians were in front of us back to the camp ‘ you go when we tell you.’ Consequently eh why I know a bit about the time there eh when they did allow us to go we got to Brussels, we got a bit of money, we got showered and everything, money we had a night out in, in Brussels. Consequently when I got back home my second birthday was May the 23rd 1945, So but, so consequently I didn’t get back for me twenty first, I didn’t get back until after me birthday which would be after the 23rd 1945. Consequently I was one of the last prisoners back so I got indefinite leave. So indefinite leave I was posted, well I was in Bridlington, got posted to Scarborough so I was backwards and forwards from Brid to Scarborough for about three or four months. Finally when the war finished they decided aircrew you could [unclear] aircrew but you could only go as ground crew. I just had to come out, I came out of the forces. So that’s about all I can tell you, that’s about it in a nutshell. That’s about all I could say. My Pilot was one of the last to leave Jersey before the Germans occupied Jersey. He was on the last boat to leave, his wife went with him, a young girl, went with him. They got married before they [unclear] over to England and where ever he was posted, Phil, she was in the hotel somewhere. She followed him around so there she was when he got shot down she was stood there on her own with two kids and that’s why I think he should have got married. The main thing of all so consequently I knew Phil only five months of my life and for seventy odd years I have never forgotten him [appears upset].
MJ. You shouldn’t you don’t have to worry, that’s part of it you see.
TSB. Yeah and all that I can say is that a marvellous lad, man, fellow.
MJ. Do you remember his full name, do you remember his full name, do you remember his name?
TSB. Phillip.
MJ. Do you remember his surname?
TSB. Picot that all it was and consequently I mentioned the two daughters and his three aunties all the rest of the family have all died. But the daughters have married very well they are very happy. Two lovely families two and two and eh three aunties I think they have all lost their husbands. But they are all lovely people, lovely people.
MJ. Went to London for your medical ?. [?].[unclear]
TSB. Yeah I can’t think [unclear] I know I went from Kings Cross [unclear] I walked from Kings Cross I can’t remember where it was now but I nineteen, as I say about eighteen to nineteen I was twenty three ‘40 to 1942 I should think would be when I came in forces, long time [laugh]. But eh no at least I have often said eh you have got your memories haven’t you, they are worth a lot your memories. That is why I get so sentimental with Phil my Pilot because as I say I only knew him five months. We were very friendly, we were very very friendly. Not many days gone bye without I think something about him.
MJ. What made you so friendly, what what ?
TSB. I don’t know, just the crew, I think during the war you you, fact, you you made up as a crew, seven of you and I think they tried to keep that crew as separate as they could. So in other words eh anybody lost they weren’t missed as much, they look after themselves because each crew was more or less, they look after themselves. So whenever we went down to the pub the seven of us went out together eh at least most nights of the week, five or six but we always stuck together all the time we were flying. Your mates, you were what you call mates as simple as that. In other words at the end of the day unless you were lucky, you died together. But eh I say I have these thoughts many a time but I am very happy and [unclear] I have had a marvellous life, marvellous life. As I say one of my old aunties I used to see her ninety five or so, she fell down stairs, I have not forgot she turned round to us and she said ‘Stuart I don’t want anybody to live as long as I have lived,’ she said ‘ I am not ready for going yet’ she lived till ninety seven well I got to ninety two now and she was definitely the eldest of all of my family. If I could get to ninety eight whither I do or not, grace of Gods is that. Eh but if I get to ninety eight I shall finish up as the eldest one in the family that’s it.[laugh]. But she was a right battle axe was my auntie, she taught me a lot and I still think of her at ninety seven anyway I’ve got to ninety two whither I get to ninety five by the grace of God, you don’t know, you don’t know. One thing certain and a betting man and I used to like betting on the horses and that as a betting man one certainty is we all know we have to die sometime. It’s a good job we don’t know when. We do we all know we have got to go sometime. And I say when I talk about luck if I get to a hundred very good but whither I do or not you don’t know. There is a lot of luck in life as well you know some people are born lucky and some are [unclear]. And I don’t know about you, you had an accident didn’t you. Was it motor accident you had then?
MJ. Em I’ll make sure this is on, go on.
TSB. After the war my mother, well during the war my mother got a telegram eh, just missing. So she went berserk, demented, crackers then of course shortly after that, presumed killed. So that she is worse than ever then about a month after that somebody came dashing into mums shop at Hilderthorpe Road End Bridlington saying ‘Nellie, Nellie, Stuarts alive, Stuarts alive.’And how they got to know that, not from the Air Ministry it was given over the news by Lord Haw Haw that Flight Sergeant Boynton is now a prison of war in Germany. That’s the first time my Mother new I was living. And it wasn’t, she didn’t get it from the RAF or the Ministry, Lord Haw Haw made it over the news one night, one day that’s first thing, first time she knew I was living. [laugh] killed presumed dead, it was a totally different thing when she knew I was still living you see.
MJ. On behalf of the International Bomber Command I would like to thank Warrant Officer Stuart Boynton on the date of the 24th of June 2014. Thank you very much my name is Michael Jeffery.
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 Boynton Interview
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
2015-06-24
Type
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Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABoyntonS150624, PBoyntonS1512
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
During 1939 Stuart left grammar school and joined the Air Training Corps. After about half a year he volunteered for air crew and was accepted. He and his girlfriend were married in February 1943. Stuart was posted to South Africa working on Ansons and about a year later was posted to Llandwrog in Wales. His next postings were to RAF Finningley, flying in Wellingtons and to Holland dropping leaflets from a Halifax. From RAF Finningley he went to RAF Lindholme, RAF Hemswell and RAF Elsham Wolds. Stuart described his first operational trip as absolutely horrendous. Most of the crew’s trips were then to the Ruhr and the German steel works in Essen. After that they did another ten or eleven trips. During the last trip the crew had to abandon the aircraft when it was shot down and burst into flames. All but two of the crew (one being the pilot, Phil Picot) baled out before the aircraft hit the ground. Stuart was captured and taken to a hut which housed about 30 Germans, but he was treated well. Stuart was detained in Poland. Their camp had to evacuate during a winter night as the Russians were advancing. They were marching for two or three weeks before being taken to a camp in Berlin by rail. They were liberated and eventually Stuart was posted to RAF Scarborough. He came out of the at the end of the war and said he had had a marvellous life.
Contributor
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Sue Smith
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
South Africa
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Essen
Wales--Carmarthen
Netherlands
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1943-02
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:23:24 audio recording
aircrew
Anson
bale out
bombing
Halifax
Lancaster
love and romance
military ethos
pilot
prisoner of war
propaganda
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF Finningley
RAF Hemswell
RAF Lindholme
RAF Llandwrog
the long march
training
Wellington
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1048/11426/ANeilsonW151116.2.mp3
98c9bdf26e9131b0392322666ce6b3a1
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
Neilson, William
William Arnott Neilson
W A Neilson
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flying Officer William 'Bill' Neilson (1923 - 2021, Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot.
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
2015-11-16
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
Neilson, W
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
WN: Yeah.
[pause]
WN: I’m William Neilson. I was born in Fife in 1923. And my elder brother Jim and I were raised by our mother, Jessie. My father and my mother’s two brothers had all emigrated to America in 1925 to escape the post-war depression in the UK. My mother stayed here to look after my grandmother as it was the duty of the daughter in those day to do so. Grannie died in 1933 at the age of seventy three. There were some photographs at home of my Uncle Willie who had been a pilot in the Flying Corps in the First World War. Among the aircraft he flew were a Sopwith Pup. A Sopwith 1 ½ Strutter and a Bristol fighter. When war was declared in 1939 I still had another two years to go before I could sit my final exams and would be free to leave school. I finished my Scottish Highers and with my mother’s reluctant permission I went to Edinburgh to join the Air Force in 1941. On the morning of the first day there were about thirty five to forty volunteers of whom nineteen were soldiers. These nineteen were all hoping to be accepted as air gunners but none were. By late afternoon on the second day only five of us were sworn in for aircrew duties, one of whom was Alex Steadman from Dunfermline. We kept in touch with each other during the next six months of deferred service and became friends. We remained so for the rest of our lives until his death in 2008. I was best man at his wedding in 1944 and he was mine in 1945. We were duly called up in March 1942 and had to report to Lord’s Cricket Ground in London. We spent the next three weeks being kitted out, learning to march, being shouted at, inoculated and learning about beer. Our first payday took place outside the Monkey House in London Zoo. After all this I was posted to 12 ITW at St Andrews. That’s only thirty miles from my home. Alex Steadman was posted to Scarborough. We did the usual ITW things but navigation, Morse code, transmitting and receiving, using the Aldis lamp, aircraft recognition, assembling and stripping down a Vickers K machine gun. More marching. And swimming lessons in case we got shot down on operations later on. The North Sea in April and May was very cold and I’d never done it in all my life until then. After a fortnight we were told that two forty eight hour passes would be on offer every fortnight. There were only two Scots in our fifty strong flight so we got them until the end of the course. I’d only been away from home for five weeks before I came home on the very first weekend pass. Later my one time school friend said I was in the BEF — back every fortnight. All fifty Cadets were interviewed by our CO during the training period. When I asked, when I was asked about my father’s job I said he was professional golfer. When asked what I could tell him about golf my answer was that it was a game invented by the Scots for the torment of the English. Now, the CO was a Scot. He was vastly amused. The pilot/navigator/bomb aimer scheme was introduced during my time at ITW to split the observers work into two separate categories of navigator and bomb aimer in the new four-engined bombers coming into service. After three months at ITW I was posted to 11 EFTS at Perth for pilot training. I went solo after six hours. I learned, I did all my flying from a big grassy field owned by some farmer out in the sticks. The trainees were bussed out there and back every day because Perth Airfield wasn’t big enough to cope with the number of trainees coming through. I know for certain that five trainees from my ITW flight got their pilot’s wings because I met them by chance years later. All these trainees were disbursed to Canada, Rhodesia and America so we lost touch with each other. I had two months waiting in Heaton Park in Manchester between August and September 1942 and met up again with Alex Steadman. We were both posted to 31 Personnel Depot in Moncton, New Brunswick in Canada knowing that we were going to America to continue our pilot training. From Manchester we took an overnight train to the Clyde and embarked on the Queen Mary which had had a collision with the cruiser Curacoa on a trip from Canada. Her bows were all stoved in and been filled with concrete to make her watertight. After five days at sea we docked at Boston, Massachusetts where the Queen Mary was to be repaired. We then had a wonderful rail journey up the east coast through New England and the vibrant colours in the Autumn trees was magnificent and unforgettable. We spent another month at Moncton before getting on a train to Oklahoma — to a place called Ponca City. That took four days. All the instructors there were civilians employed by the Darr School of Aeronautics. My course was the eleventh to be trained there since it opened in December 1941. With a hundred and sixteen members it was the largest to date. There were twenty Americans included and they were all required to have a college education and at least a hundred hours flying experience. It was said that their superiors in the American Air Force didn’t want their trainees to suffer by comparison with us RAF trainees who had come in off the streets with whatever education they had and only a few hours flying at grading school with a maximum of fifteen hours. I went solo again after seven hours on a Stearman PT-17 and went on to a total of seventy hours. Next step up was to the AT-6A or Harvard as the RAF named it, for another hundred and thirty hours. We flew during the course on either the morning or afternoon with ground school during the other half of the day. We were free to roam the skies when we flew solo and could dogfight or chase horses at ground level or fly at trains to frighten the passengers. I never heard of any complaints from the train company about this latter activity. We flew day and night across country and all of us were hoping to fly at the required standard and thus avoid being washed out. That meant being sent back to Canada to be trained as a bomb aimer or a navigator. One of our more curious pupils on my course found out that the flying instructors were prone to leave the door of their rest room unlocked at the end of the day. We were thus able to find out what sort of marks we were being awarded for our flying ability. All recorded on coloured cards with the highest being on white cards. I was pleased to see that most of mine were white which did wonders for my self-esteem. There was no entitlement for leave during the course but mother nature intervened with a heavy snowfall which stopped all flying. There were four courses going through training at any one time so there were about three hundred pupils affected. We were given a week off and five of us who used to hang out together decided to head south for Texas. We got a hundred miles down to Oklahoma City and found out that the snow extended down to Texas as well. So we stayed in Oklahoma City. There was drinking and dancing and dates at 11pm with girls who didn’t finish work until then as well as sightseeing and taking express lifts to the tops of sky scrapers. We were photographed by, many times by Americans who wanted to know, ‘What outfit we belonged to.’ They were confused by our RAF blue uniforms. During the last week in April 1943 all the pupils on my course were sent on a long cross country with another pupil. I was paired with Don McCready. There were seven legs between airfields to the [unclear] so we tossed up to see who would get to fly four legs and navigate three. And I lost. The route was from Ponca City to Amerillo in Texas. Then to La Junta in Colorado. Albuguerque in New Mexico. El Paso, Midland and [Hensley?] in Texas and then back to Ponca City. We spent the night at Midland and were lined up waiting to take off the next morning when three trainee pilots from an American flying school came in to land on the main runway in a cross wind. One after another they all ground looped. Schadenfreude. I didn’t do too very well with my navigation and did a bit more map reading than I should and Mac wasn’t much better but when we got back to Ponca City no one in authority seemed to mind. Maybe they were just relieved to see us back safely after eighteen hundred miles. All the other pairs got around safety except one pair who ground looped at La Junta and were sent back on a twin-engine Beechcraft. The wings exam came at the end of the course in May 1943 and a pass in all subjects was mandatory. I failed in meteorology so I had to re-sit. I hadn’t really got my head around the way the first meteorology exam had been structured so I was very happy to find the format for the next was more to my liking. Ten percent was knocked off because it was a re-sit. So the maximum I could get was ninety percent. I got eighty nine percent. We left Ponca City during the last week in May 1943 and returned to Moncton. The successful Americans went to fly Dakotas in the US Transport Command and eventually DC4s. Twenty three RAF trainees and three United States trainees were washed out during the course. That was a failure rate of fifteen percent for the US and twenty five percent for the RAF. We boarded the train for another four days travel to Moncton and spent another month waiting for a boat back to Britain. My [pause] we sailed from Halifax, Nova Scotia on a French liner called Pasteur heading for Liverpool. The Pasteur broke down in mid-Atlantic and took the best part of the daylight hours to mend. We feared the appearance of U-boats while we wallowed in the swell but after the war I learned that there were few U-boats in the mid-Atlantic. The ones on the American side were being refuelled by long range tankers and those in the European side by calling into ports in Germany and France. On our return to the UK we were billeted for six weeks at the Majestic Hotel in Harrogate. I was then posted with Alex Steadman to 40 Advanced Flying Unit in Banff where I was converted to flying twin engine Airspeed Oxfords and added another hundred hours to my flying time. I was expecting that the next posting would be our usual progression to OTU but instead was posted on the 1st of November to 1 Air Armament School at Manby in Lincolnshire as a staff pilot to fly Blenheims. Alex Steadman came as well. He had been posted to fly Ansons at a wireless op school on the Isle of Man but he wangled a change of posting to come with me. From a book I bought in 2014 I learned that in 1941 at 1 Air Armament School the station commander was Group Captain Ivans with the nickname of Ivan the Terrible. He followed regulations to the letter. Every week there was a station parade at which uniforms had to be immaculate and the staff, men and women, were expected to be perfectly groomed. Some engineering and ground staff worked from 6.30 in the morning till 10.30 at night so they didn’t take kindly to being disciplined for being poorly turned out. At the following week’s parade the entire base personnel were assembled in full uniform to salute the raising of the flag. As soon as the lanyard was pulled up a large pair of WAAFs nickers unfolded and started fluttering at the top of the flagpole while a wave of laughter spread across the parade ground. Group Captain Ivans was apoplectic with fury. He demanded to know who was responsible. Only to be met with a stony silence. He then announced that everyone was confined to barracks for seven days. There would be a colour parade every day and after normal working hours all personnel, including WAAFs would march around the perimeter of the airfield in parade dress. This would continue until the culprit confessed. It was clearly an outrageous punishment but within a few days he was replaced in 1943 but when I arrived in 19 [pause] In 1943, when I arrived he was back in charge as station commander once more. Three, three weeks went by before our instructor thought the weather was suitable to fly. I went solo on a Mark 1 Short Nose Blenheim after an hour and a half. I then had another six hours circuits and bumps on the Long Nosed Mark 4 before I was let loose with two bomb aimers to drop practice bombs on the beach north of Mablethorpe. There were four bombing ranges. Each separated by five hundred feet distance from the next. For obvious safety reasons. We flew a clover leaf pattern to drop bombs. That became my working life for the next five months. Weather permitting we were expected to bomb as high as possible up to ten thousand feet. Something went wrong on one occasion and two Blenheims collided over the target area with a total loss of life of all six crew members. Only one body was ever recovered and that came ashore in The Wash. In the Blenheims we practiced low level bombing at two hundred feet to educate bomb aimers destined for Coastal Command. Normally low flying was banned so we made the most of our legal opportunities. I remember low flying up the Yarborough Canal which runs from Louth in the direction of Grimsby. Our low level bombing target was set in a farmer’s field near the canal. So it was a temptation to fly up along the canal after we’d finished bombing. Temptation for me that is because the bomb aimers didn’t have any say on the matter. The swans on the canal would take off in an attempt to escape and would look back at the plane as it got near them. They would never fly out the canal but would land with a great splash of water. Great fun. In May 1944 a Wellington 13 arrived and all pilots were converted to fly it. I had an hour and a half instruction before I went solo and another three hours solo before I was let loose on the bombing ranges. This time with three bomb aimers. I flew both types until the end of July 1944 when the Blenheims were withdrawn. I only had two troublesome occasions with a Blenheim. On the way back to base after an exercise I noticed smoke coming from the port engine. Both engines were throttled back as I was descending to circuit height and the instruments didn’t indicate any engine trouble. There were no visible flames and I had to keep the engine going for safety reasons. I landed with no further problem and ran off the runway on to the grass to leave the runway clear. There had been an oil leak which dripped on to the exhaust and that had caused all the smoke. That was all. On the second occasion I had, had to fly two engine fitters with some spares to Bardney near Lincoln where one of our Blenheims had landed with an engine problem. After dropping off my passengers with their spares I left. I was very interested with the close-up views of so many Lancasters that I forgot an essential part of pre-flight check and off I went. At a hundred and sixty miles an hour I still couldn’t get the aircraft off the ground until I wrenched the control column hard back and raised the undercarriage to reduce drag. I was flying but not gaining height and all the time I was checking for a reason. I discovered I’d forgotten to close the cowling gills. This had spoiled the lift from the upper wing surfaces. The response was immediate and I was up and away. When the pilot of the other Blenheim came back to Manby he met me in the mess and said he’d watched my take off from the control tower. He admired my, ‘Lovely low take off.’ I advised him not to try to emulate me and told him the reason. It was decided to try night bombing. So, in August two other pilots and myself were sent to Catfoss to practice night flying on Wellingtons. The weather turned nastier and nastier and we were sent home after two days. In September we returned to Catfoss for another go and managed to get five nights circuits and bumps before being recalled. Since the Wellington was a heavier aircraft than the Blenheim it was decided that low level bombing in a Wellington should be carried out at four hundred feet. Some of the bomb aimers had trouble getting used to the low level bombsight for, that was used in Coastal Command and they asked me to drop the bombs for them. On the run in to the target I would watch for the triangulation target to disappear under the nose of the aircraft, count to three and use the master switch in the cockpit to drop the bomb. It was dead centre every time. The bomb aimers learned by observation when to drop their bombs at the correct [unclear], so it really wasn’t cheating. It was just a different way of helping them to learn. In November I had another sessions of circuits and bumps at Strubby. Only seven miles south of Manby. For some unknown reason the night bombing proposal was dropped but it was useful experience for me. I found out after the war that my wife’s brother in law, also a pilot, had done his operational tour of thirty ops from Strubby but was on leave in London when I was night flying there. I had only one problem with a Wellington while I was at Manby. I was on a wind finding exercise with three bomb aimers. One was in the nose measuring drift. One was seated at midship and the third was standing in the cockpit just looking about. He looked out at the starboard propeller which had started to vibrate massively. He thought the propeller was about to come off and then would come through the fuselage where he was standing. He’d pulled out his intercom plug and dived into the back of the aircraft. What I then saw was the spinner and the propeller both wobbling about in a very unsafe manner. I promptly pressed the feathering button and throttled back on that engine. Just before the propeller stopped the spinner came off and disappeared over the starboard wing. I felt it hit the tailplane before it fell clear. The prop stayed on but I concluded it was the spinner vibrating loose that had caused the propeller to vibrate. I didn’t restart the engine again in case some damage had occurred that I couldn’t see. I cancelled the remainder of the exercise and flew back to base to make my second single-engine landing at Manby. A policeman on his bicycle eventually found the spinner. I did only once have a bomb aimer who wasn’t keen to fly in a Blenheim when he saw the mag drop and wanted to use another aircraft. I explained my point of view. We could transfer to another aircraft but in any event they would all have the same five hundred revs drop. I said I flew them every day despite the mag drop and was happy to do so. It was normal. He accepted my reassurance and off we went. I flew Wellingtons there until I reached the top of the operational posting ladder. And on the 24th of April 1945 I was posted with Alex Steadman to 10 OTU at Abingdon with an additional four hundred and twenty six. [pause] Is that somebody at the door?
[recording paused]
April 1945 I was posted with Alex Steadman to 10 OTU at Abingdon with an additional four hundred and twenty six hours flying time. I was certainly a more experienced pilot than if I’d gone straight to OTU from AFU. And the first question one asks at a new station was usually about the local beer. Where was the best pub? In Abingdon it was the Lion in the High Street that got the vote. I duly made my way there. By 6 o’clock we were standing in the doorway when I was hailed by an old friend from my Ponca City days. He was there with a WAAF to whom he had just said he had just seen my name on the arrivals list and wondered if he’d see me. We spoke for about a half an hour and he introduced me to the WAAF. He had to go for his last cross-country to complete his flying programme and off he went. I never saw him again. So obviously he’s [unclear] I got myself a crew and started training but after a few weeks I was pulled out and given a more experienced crew from the course ahead of me who had lost their pilot througFh illness. I did another seventy hours flying. Forty by day and thirty by night. I was then posted to 1668 Heavy Conversion Unit at Cottesmore in Rutland. I remember one daylight cross-country in the western extremity of the UK and the second leg was along the south coast. A very strong wind was blowing and had blown all the usual smog away and we could see for miles. Down in to the Bay of Biscay. All along the northern European coastline as far as the Frisian Islands. We could see the east coast of the UK past the Thames Estuary. Past The Wash and up as far as the Humber Estuary. The Lancaster was a delight to fly and so easy to take off and land. I once put a Lancaster down after a cross country to Wick and I couldn’t feel the slightest transition from flying to landing. I was sat there with the stick in my lap and the throttles closed. I glanced at the speedo that showed I was doing fifty miles an hour and could no longer be flying. That’s the best landing I ever made in all my flying career. I was told during the course that our night navigation exercises were going to include astral navigation because we were to be posted as replacements to the ten Lancaster squadrons known as Tiger Force. These squadrons were to be sent to Russia to bomb Japan from the north to supplement the bombing campaign being carried out by the Americans. Luckily for us the war ended and the plan was abandoned. We were, I was then posted to 16 Ferry Unit in Dunkeswell in Devon with a view to ferry aircraft to the Middle East. That proposal fell through and we were informed we would be flying aircraft to the Far East instead. That scheme was also cancelled because our demob numbers would be coming up before we could really be used for a useful time. My remaining few months in the RAF were just frittered away in a holding unit at Bruntingthorpe near Leicester. And I was demobbed in 1946 with four and a half years’ service. 6 BFTS turned out fifteen hundred pilots during its existence. I left the RAF as a flying officer on a salary of six hundred pounds per annum. Started at the Ordnance Survey on two hundred and twenty three pounds ten per annum. For the first year I was paid weekly but thereafter monthly. So we had to save hard in that first year so we could survive for a month before being paid monthly in the second year. I joined 14 AFS at Hamble in 1949 and flew Tiger Moths again and then Chipmunks until the year it closed in 1953. I joined the 6 BFTS Club with annual meetings, the Aircrew Association with local meetings in Southampton and Project Propeller with an annual flight in June in a civil light aircraft to various airfields around the country. That’s still ongoing. The first two Associations have now disbanded due to a lack of members as we all become older.
[recording paused]
WN: Civil pilot. We went out to Canada. I went on down to America. Came back and when I came back we were back at Moncton. And the fellow I’d been going around with at ITW, I hadn’t seen him since he’d left ITW, he comes in to the washroom where I was having my morning, doing my morning ablutions. We had a brief five minute conversation and he went out the door. I never saw him again. But there was five of us went around together in the American Flying School. They were all civvies. And Johnny Thompson got washed out. He went back. Became a bomb aimer. The rest, the other four of us we got our their wings. Albert Slade went on to a squadron and he got killed on his first. He was shot down over Denmark. They were on a mine laying operation. He was shot down over Denmark on the night of the 14th 15th of May 1944. So Alex Steadman and I survived because we’d both gone to Training Command for a, for a, it took me seventeen months to get to the top of the operational posting ladder. And he stayed in as I say. He would have been, he was eligible for a group captain’s post but he, he got caught up in one of these financial rearrangements that the Labour Party were so found off. You know, they were cutting money. Cutting money for that. So he was certain there were too many wing commanders you see. So he got, and he had, I think he had four pensions. He had his old age pension [laughs] He got an RAF pension. He’d got, he’d become a civil servant and he worked for the Air Force. He knew the duties of a flight lieutenant, a squadron leader and a wing commander. When these fellas were coming, being posted at the Group headquarters he was able to advise them. Keep them on the right track. Right. And then he got a [pause] he’d, he’d got a, the odd thing is that we were so keen to fly and we got the wish but sitting in the middle of four Merlin engines it made us deaf. You see, that’s the sting in the tail. So your pension. He got a, no he didn’t — yeah. He got a pension for that ,see. So, I went and had my ears examined but it was a nineteen percent reduction. So I didn’t get a pension. I got, I got, I think a lump sum of I about three thousand odd quid which of course was a windfall but with all windfalls you spend it on something you wouldn’t normally spend money on. So, I, I was a warrant officer by the time I got to OTU which pleased me greatly because it tells anybody who wants to know that you’ve been up at least, at least two years flying experience in your, in your pocket you know. But they started then, at OTU they started commissioning pilots so I’m a pilot officer. Could have, could have come straight from a flying school and nobody would know. Then after six months I was a flying officer so that stayed until I came out, yeah. I’ve had a good life. And that, when I was posted to Abingdon Dave [unclear] sitting there talking to this WAAF and he introduced me to her and away he went. He did a night cross-country. I never saw him again. But I was very much taken with this WAAF so I chased her for ten weeks. Used to say I chased her until she caught me and at the end of ten weeks I was waiting for her coming off her shift work at midnight and asked her to marry me. She said yes. I didn’t go down on one knee. I didn’t get a kiss to say seal it with a kiss. She said, ‘I’m starving. The girls have got my supper ready for me. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Of course, the girls said, what did, ‘What did he want?’ She said, ‘I think I’m engaged to be married.’ The girls said, ‘You can’t marry him. You’ve only known him ten weeks.’ They all worked together. They all knew intimately the others lives you know. Well, she said, ‘Oh, I’ll ask him to wait for six months.’ But being a man I went off and saw a minister and arranged for the wedding to be in, call the banns for three weeks, you see. And get the wedding to the fourth week. So, fourteen weeks after I’d met her we were married. Sixty eight years it lasted. Sixty eight years. We were made for each other. Two and a half years ago she went. So, now as I say my mother looked after me for eighteen years. The air force looked after me for four and a half years. My wife looked after me for sixty eight years. And the last two and a half years it’s been, I’ve been going solo. It’s quite an illuminating experience you know. Because one thing I have learned — never to be afraid to speak to anybody because you never know what you’re going to get back in return and it’s sometimes quite surprising. Yeah. Anyway, I was bloody near killed at Shoreham back in the summer. You know it? Do you know about Shoreham?
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command Archive Unit I’d like to thank Bill Neilson at his home in Southampton for his recording on the 16th of November 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
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Interview with William Neilson
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Mick Jeffery
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-11-16
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ANeilsonW151116
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
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00:31:20 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Training Command
Description
An account of the resource
William Neilson grew up in Edinburgh. After training as a pilot in Canada and the United States he served as a staff pilot at Number 1 Air Armament School RAF Manby. He discusses low level bombing practice. He was demobbed in 1946 and became a civil aviation pilot.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Great Britain
United States
England--Lincolnshire
England--London
New Brunswick--Moncton
Oklahoma--Ponca City
Oklahoma
New Brunswick
Temporal Coverage
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1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
10 OTU
1668 HCU
6 BFTS
aircrew
Blenheim
bombing
British Flying Training School Program
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
love and romance
Operational Training Unit
pilot
RAF Abingdon
RAF Cottesmore
RAF Manby
Stearman
training
Wellington
-
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88f12b161e5a47cf71c561733e1c9465
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/477/8359/ABrileyW150522.1.mp3
18e7d5718da098c6dae85ec69ead9533
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/477/8359/PBrileyWG1503.2.jpg
ccd30a6b9b18cea87c0269a963f6dc2b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Briley, William George
George Briley
W G Briley
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Briley, WG
Description
An account of the resource
Eight items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer William George Briley (1586825, Royal Air Force), his log book, service material and a sight log book containing <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/987">18 target photographs</a>. After training in South Africa, George Briley completed 39 bombing and supply dropping operations as a navigator with 40 Squadron flying Wellingtons from Foggia in Italy. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by William George Briley and catalogued by Barry Hunter, <span>with additional identification provided by the Archeologi dell'Aria research group (</span><a href="https://www.archeologidellaria.org/">https://www.archeologidellaria.org</a><span>)</span>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-09
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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MJ: Now.
WB: My name is Warrant Officer Briley. I’m recording this for the International Bomber Command Centre on 22 May 19 - 2015. And we - where I am is at Ruskington in Lincolnshire. I’ll try and see if I can. Well, my first big run to get to a training place was down to South Africa where I stayed for five months and picked up my brevet. And then, where I, I came back down by flying boat which took four days from Durban to Cairo. From then onwards, I was doing all around that area until they had vacancies up on the training field where the temperature of 150 – 120 was very warm. Then we got back down to Cairo and for - picked up me flight to Italy where I went through Naples and out then to Foggia where I stayed with the 40 Squadron the whole time until I’d finished my term, and then I went back to Naples and they gave me a [unclear]. That gave me a lot more places and also I was sent up to Athens where I was a gunner on on private Wellingtons that had been stripped with passengers and freight all over the Middle East. Then then I was – land – I was - oh sorry. After we done all that I was land down – I was down on the ground there until they got me a job back on Egypt where they sent me up to Udine in northern Italy. No no way of getting up there, but I went out and a British army driver took me all the way, which was very good of him, and the little – when I got up there they hadn’t a clue what I was doing up there for, although they knew themselves, 39 Squadron it was and they gave me a leave over the weekend when I got there and there’s a chance I had of seeing and being in Venice in the holiday part of the RAF they had out there. We came back by a big – by a big plane from Bari having had a train journey all the way back. And that landed me on besides the besides the canal on the Suez Canal and from there we were doing I was doing quite a lot of driving which I wanted to do until they found a place for me which was in El Alamein[?] Back to Cairo and on to the flying the flying out to El Adam [?]. And I stayed here that’s where I picked up my WO. And I and I was put in charge, once I got away the driving they put me in charge of a sy – system well, well in in in an where the people going through and also the pilots and that. I had to, had to sign them through. Some didn’t want to do that and but then they had to. They got no signature otherwise. Anyway, from there that’s when I was sent – I was on leave then at the end and I made out. I picked up my brother who was in Cairo or rather he was up in – he was up in Palestine. Picked him up, we went to Haifa and stayed a fortnight. We enjoyed ourselves. I, I was lucky in that ‘cause I – that’s one brother. The other brother I picked up on the way in at Cairo. So I doubt if there were many other brothers who met du – met during the war. So [unclear] in the end it – we came by boat from Alexandria to Toulon. Waited there for the train back to England. And came – got back in June. One of the coldest Junes I think I knew at that time, especially when you’d been at a temperature of a hundred-and-twenty and that. Now the temperature here went across that boat was really ferocious. And then we was sent up to Wednesbury for discharge. They had to make a suit for me I was so ruddy small and out of all proportion and today I’m even worse. The trouble is I aint going in. I was dead on the lowest figure. When I was on the Foggia we took off from Foggia and went down the Corinth Canal or to it, where we had been told there was a big storm up. It’s too high to go over. Too low to go under. So we were given a height which was about the best. As we came into it. Here we go, the thing is we went up like a ruddy express [mumble] express lift, and stopped and went down straight away, and oh my head hit the blooming geodetics. It, it was so loud the pilot put - turned put it hard head round. He said: ‘What was that?’ I said ‘That was my flipping head.’ [Chuckles] It was yeah.
MJ: Yeah yeah.
WB: Yeah, we got through it and carried on. [Chuckle]
MJ: Well, well that’s the sort of thing –
WB: Yeah
MJ: - that you got to remember, you know.
WB: Hmm. [Chuckle].
MJ: What was it about the bridge?
WB: Eh?
MJ: That one about the bridge? You said about the [unclear]. Can you repeat that?
WB: Yes.
MJ: Please.
WB: [Sigh] [Background noise] I done that one.
MJ: So, so what was the story about that one?
WB: No, it’s not. It’s this one. The one with the four-thousand pound bomb. Kitzscher [?] And – our – well I was quite, quite surprised, you know, you see, where this bomb was. It was only a big hole that was there and they – one of the Italians came about and said ‘What you looking at it for?’ I said ‘I got an idea that’s our bomb.’ ‘Oh,’ he said – he said ‘What has happened?’ He said ’There were two trains on that bridge when you dropped it.’ He said ’One of them went into it to– [unclear] into reinforcements and one coming out. He said: ‘The one coming out got the bar –part of it. The whole the back of [unclear] train and that other one run into the hole that was there. [Chuckle] He says: ‘So you done a damn good job.’ [Laughter]. I’ve never been seen anybody about that - the crew I could tell to.
MJ: Well that’s -
WB: Yeah.
MJ: That’s the good part about it.
WB: Apparently in the Blitz –
MJ: Yeah.
WB: The eight months Blitz. Every night. [Chuckle]. And, it’s so much so I managed to get it out of – but other people commanding me. ‘I can’t go on the back of this bike.’ I said ‘Why not?’ He said ‘Well, I’m out in the open.’ I should have sat on mine all the time. [Chuckle] Any rate, in the end, a number of them complained about it and but, they were more or less protecting me. [Laugh]. I can see their point and any way, they said – they asked me whether I’d like to learn how to drive. I said ‘I would very much.’ And so they brought a driver in from a local gas company depot and he said ‘Now, let’s see. What do you wanna learn?’ I said: ‘Anything I can drive. I was able to – so lorries and that.’ ‘Ah, so you want double declutching.’ You know to this day, and that was in the war. To this day, I still use, I didn’t realise it, part of the double declutching.
MJ: Hm.
WB: Right the way through, and it was only my sister who told me that my changing up and changing down and that was smooth, and I can’t see how it – how it can be smooth? And I worked it out. The – I wasn’t doing the whole double declutching, what I was doing – now with double declutching you use your feet as well. That’s all I wasn’t doing. [Mumble] Step in here.
MJ: Here. It’s good. What – what –
WB: What?
MJ: What – what sort of ops and things did you actually stand out for one reason of another?
WB: What you want me to do?
MJ: I’m here.
WB: Supplied it and then I went and got – I went there to be of service there. [Laughter]. All on one aerodrome. We called it Kalamaki Avenue[?]. It was –
MJ: So – what ‘s that bit of paper?
WB: Yeah. [Unclear]. Can’t hardly read it now. [Unclear] Penetration. Frontal conditions. Last night your bombers carried out their mission with excellent results. This attack which – which you carried out [unclear] or in the port of crews participated. Please convey to all ranks under your command my opposition – appreciation of this noteworthy effort. That was from the Group Captain commanding 263 Wing.
MJ: What did you have to do in that?
WB: Hm?
MJ: What what what was the op? Operation? What operation – what?
WB: Oh these aerodromes.
MJ: You say you had to bomb them? Or –
WB: No, it – thing is they were all bombed on one night by different – they sent out the squadron. Three or four to one – three or four to [unclear].
MJ:
WB: I don’t think that was the one that hit me on the head. I hadn’t been given my flight badge then. I was just a Sergeant. [Pause]. 9th to the 10th of October 1944 [turning of pages] 9 10 of October –
MJ: What was that op?
WB: Hm.
MJ: What did you have to do for that one?
WB: [Pause] On the – on the 4th – 4th of October ’44 we went to the Danube and put a mine – two mines down there. Have having had to fly there at thirty foot and then there was a a – I think there was haystacks even higher than we were. So I was expecting anytime that we – that we should get a gun from behind them. Then the next one we went on the 9th we went to Athens, we did that and they were put for us they were pretty long trips. Athens six hours and the Danube was five fifty-one.
MJ: So what – why did you that one to similar to the Dam Busters one. Why?
WB: It was the [unclear] valley. There’s the valley. South, it was south of one of their big cities. I forget which one it was. Began with a B, I know that. [Laughter].
MJ: So what did you have to do that made it similar to the other dams? Did you have to go lower or was it just too hot or what?
WB: While we kept low was to get underneath their mining thing and also we were down there so as we could get in underneath it and without them noticing it, and we didn’t – did manage it seems ‘cause nobody came to try and have a go at us. Then five days later we went over there again. Not this to the Danube which was up south of a – a big city beginning with B, I think it was. And this this second one, our eleventh was on Kalamaki operation bombed over flares. So we had two long ones. [Pause] I know that we bombed one of the American bombings. They gave us a photo of what they had left. When we got there it hadn’t even been touched. So we had to do all the bombing for them. That’s the Americans all along, which I never did quite like.
MJ: [Unclear]
WB: [Unclear]. More modern, modern aircraft and that. I mean the Wellington was a pre-war, but we had it all the way through the war out there.
MJ: So did you fly different aircraft more often or just one particular one? ‘Cause you got –
WB: You could hardly see the blinder[?]. All I know is it was going off track and I couldn’t I couldn’t get the thing to go in at all. In the end, when he when he went ran out of [unclear] I expect and well that’s that. He said ‘[Unclear] Which way you going? I said ‘No, you’re too late to go the back.’ I said ‘So turn on and face, face Yugoslavia.’ And I said ‘When you get - as soon as you’ve seen the mountains over there, turn south. Don’t wait for me.’ I said ‘Then we’ll sort – start sorting out some.’ Anyway I got ‘em back in.
MJ: So what happened when you got to base then?
WB: Then – then I was a bit late when I got, of course, when we got in. But after that on three occasions I got them to go another route because there was a blooming eight-hundred – and sent us out on our own valley, there was a hill eight-hundred foot high and quite often the clouds comes came down so they forced them under the thousand so I sort of – ‘What’s the matter Briley?’ I said : ‘There’s a hill in that valley eight hundred foot.’ Said ‘Yeah.’ So he turned round to his thing[?]and said ‘Go and see if he’s right.’ The bloke said when he came back he said : ‘He’s right.’ ‘Oh, sent him round the end of the peninsula.’ That happened three times. I had to – ‘cause I knew where it was. I was coming in through the valley at two-thousand in the cloud dived down at the end where I knew it’d be.’ ‘Didn’t you – didn’t you see the target?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Well how come you came back here half-hour before any others [unclear]. I said ‘’Cause I used the valley.’ ‘But you told us.’ ‘But yeah I know where it is.’
MJ: So you took a short cut?
WB: Yep. You see the second time he was sending me down for – I I didn’t do much on that. I knew it – I knew how it was. So so we had a look down at it and found this thing this hill. ‘Right we can use that.’ I did on three occasions. Got back in. Nice time I was the only one on breakfast. [Chuckle]. Everybody else came in half-hour later. Every time ‘Missed it again.’ I said : ‘No we did not miss it.’ Berh, that was another bleeding officer and then, and I gather from one of our other, one of the crew I saw in Cairo. He said ‘You know what has happened up at up at - up at Foggia?’ I said ‘No.’ ‘ See they sent out those big aircraft, up our valley at a thousand feet.’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Three crashed into that hill you told them about.’ I said ‘That’s bloody murder.’ And if I had my way I’d have had him but they took no notice of me, but it was them that - I mean the big aircraft, American aircraft has about twelve people on board. The Wellington only had five. You think it. Three aircraft. Thirty-six. Dead. Before they’d even started.
MJ: ‘Cause they took the wrong route.
WB: Yeah. I wish I could have done but you supposed to be a – on their side. [Laughter]. Yeah. And one or two people told me about it and I said that ‘I said I quite agree with ya. But we daren’t do it.’
MJ: Yeah.
WB: Whether they learned after that when they hit this hill there’s one way to find out. Not the [unclear] of the bleeding crew though.
MJ: Was there any more situations like that you had before? Was it a lot like that?
WB: Yeah well. This is how it is.
MJ: Yeah.
WB: Another time she came down to – oh blimey – begins will L.
MJ: Well –
WB: Yeah.
MJ: Yeah. Well anyway yeah.
WB: Yeah. Anyway, she came down there. I was [unclear] been on there a fortnight and she said ‘That comes off.’
MJ: So you had to lose your –
WB: So my mate said ‘Are you gonna?’ ‘No,’ I said ‘I’ve got home. I’ve worked it out. I want us to have three weeks to see what it’s like.’ Anyway, I didn’t get any in the end. Wasn’t for her, it was for myself. It itched though underneath. [Shudder].
MJ: Yeah I know.
WB: So I –
MJ: Yeah. Don’t go good with a uniform. So I put that on. Ok I’m gonna take a photo. You in 40 Squadron.
WB: That’s 40 Squadron in 3 Group with Wellingtons in 1940 or ‘41. Towards the end of ’41, 40 Squadron moved toward Malta. Moved to Egypt early in ’42 into 205 Group. Moving to North Africa and eventually to Italy. During – I joined 40 Squadron in Foggia Italy in August ’44. First flight 30th of August ’44 and first op 1st of September ’44. And last one 39, 21st of January 1945. Book says last, last 13th of March. Hmm, it’s wrong. Otherwise how was I doing it in ’45?
MJ: There’s there’s –
WB: It was a remake Manchester. Found that the Manchester were two Merlins was like the blooming Wellington Mark II was Merlins. They’re useless, so they took it back, extended the wing, put in two more engines and extended other things, call it the Lancaster, and it was a success. Makes you wonder doesn’t it?
MJ: It does yeah.
WB: I’m lying. I don’t think it’s been made public much ‘cause the Manchester was a dud.
MJ: Yeah.
WB: Hmm.
MJ: This is Michael Jeffery on behalf of the International Bomber Command Historical Project Unit. Thank you to William Briley for his recording.
WB: It won’t. Make it George, George Briley.
MJ: George Briley, it is.
WB: George, it’s what I’m known as. You’ll find on here that no one knows about a Duckworth[?]. It’s George everybody.
MJ: Well that’s good.
WB: Yeah.
MJ: Well, it’s very nice to meet you George. Thank you very much for you co-operation and your photographs and such like and I hope to meet you again. On behalf of the International Bomber Command, thank you again. On the 22nd of May 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 William George Briley
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
2015-05-22
Format
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00:28:49 Audio recording
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ABrileyW150522
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.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-10
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Gemma Clapton
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
Description
An account of the resource
After training in South Africa, William Briley flew operations as a navigator with 40 Squadron flying Wellingtons from Foggia, Italy. One of his operations involved the dropping of a 4000lb bomb which derailed two trains. He was also involved in mine laying in the Danube.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Egypt
Greece
Italy
Italy
Danube River
South Africa
Greece--Zakynthos
Italy--Foggia
Greece--Corinth Canal
Danube River
40 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
mine laying
navigator
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/482/8365/PBryanWA1501.2.jpg
59162f541a4af207c564fe798763c837
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/482/8365/ABryanWA151028.2.mp3
fa10d5d05b642bb735e489ecc37ecb1a
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
Bryan, William A
William Bryan
W A Bryan
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bryan, WA
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Sergeant William Bryan.
He was a flight engineer with 102 Squadron.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by William Bryan 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
WB: My name is William Bryan, I was a flying engineer on (unclear) onwards during the war, on a hundred and two squadron, at Pocklington, and we had one or two rather dodgy moments. Um, the first one when we were flying to Kiel Bay, to lay mines in Kiel Bay, which was quite a fair distance. Er, everything went fine, you have to cross Denmark, and everything went fine. You come down to four hundred feet to drop your mines accurately, and then you have to climb back up to eight, ten, twelve thousand feet. So coming over Denmark we were flying in a rather dark, very dark night, and er, suddenly our rear radar Monica started to tick. You usually get this ticking when an enemy aircraft passes by fast, you'd get one tick, but this particular time the ticks started coming faster and faster and faster, and I could hear our gunners saying, 'can you see this fighter, can you see him, can you see him?' And I thought, 'well, if they can't see him, we've had it'. And so I got down as low as I could behind my, my control panel, and er, because I thought there was no point in me getting injured if I need to do something for the aircraft. So, I thought (coughs), 'well, I've got about three seconds to live here', because they hadn't seen this fighter, and it's coming in on us, and the next minute, our pilot, he flipped the plane over, into a dive, just flipped over, and down it went. And the German fighter pilot, he'd apparently turned up the wick too much on his engine, to catch us, and when we got to the bottom of this dive my pilot called out, 'come and have a look at this', so I went to the front, and the German was on fire, his engine was on fire, and he was going like a bat out of hell back to his base. Er, I've told my family (laughs) that our gunners shot it down. They might have done, but I don't think they did. I think he had an engine fire, and I did er, I looked up the history of these fighters, and the Germans had used ersatz material for their gaskets, and the gaskets used to blow on quite a number of them. The RAF used to get fires now and again, but no, not in the same way as the Germans got them. So we got away with that, and came home and reported it, but the thing that worried me at the time was our Monica rear radar is supposed to pick out only the enemy, and we feel, at least, I feel, that they've got our secret, they picked up our secret and used it to find us, which I think they did. Anyway, some months later Air Marshall Harris ordered all the Monica radar to be taken out, because they were death traps, the Germans knew where we were all the time. So, so that's that one trip. Another trip which was similar mining trip (coughs) in Kiel Bay. We got off course, somehow, and we were flying over Sweden, and the bomb aimer called up um, 'Ted, Ted', the navigator, 'we're flying over Sweden!'. Ted said, 'no we're not.' 'Yes,' he said, 'they're firing at us'. So Ted, Ted was then convinced (chuckles), so we got out of there fairly quickly. We laid our mines and came back over Denmark. But we'd been warned on briefing that the Germans had two flagships on the coast, right on the coast, we should be aware. And strangely enough, not for his fault, the navigator took us right across these flagships. We got badly shot up. Er, I asked the pilot after (unclear), I asked him how did he manage to evade the gunfire, and he said, 'well, it's predicted fire the Germans use, and you fly into the last shell burst', he said, 'and that confuses them. So if you fly into the last shell burst, they don't know where you're going to be next.' Eventually they stopped firing because we were too far away, and we went into a dive to get away from it, and landed safely. But not without some damage, we had a, a hole in the windscreen, with the air coming in through, and in the morning after breakfast I went up to the hanger to see this aircraft, and they told me that it was a right off, it was too badly damaged to repair. So that was the sum title of the, er, my dodgey times flying, although, there are times when you're pretty scared that there'd be fighters around at night with searchlights playing around, and you certainly wonder whether you would get back alright. (Pause) So for the rest of my tour it was a reasonably quiet time. It consisted mainly of the preparations for the invasion. And we were (unclear) of a lot of bombing in France, erm, marshalling yards, places like that, to disrupt all the trains so the Germans couldn't use it. Now this is approximately three weeks before D-Day. (Pause) So, we actually finished our tour about a week before D-Day, and I must admit, I was glad to see the end of it, of, of flying, and as for going back for a second lot, well, I always think that some of the crews had an exceptionally quiet first tour, went back, and got killed the next lot, on the next one. So, that's my story.
(Woman's voice): Carry on.
WB: Well, I don't think, at least I'm not sure whether our pilot reported at de-briefing, that the engine fire was caused by his gunners. He might have done, he might not. But I don't think the gunners would take credit for it, anyway. Er, and, by and large, I think there's a, it was pretty well a good job done that night. We did our job, and we got back alright. (Pause and noises off). When I finished flying I was posted to an operational training unit, where I became a member of the airmanship staff who were supposed to teach these crews coming on, airmanship, and how to handle things in the plane, which included parachute jumping, although we never went up to do that, um, dinghy drill. Now, with dinghy drill, we would take a crew, or sometimes two crews, in a Bedford truck to Cowley baths, in Oxford, and, I would tell them what was going to happen, 'you're going to do dinghy drill, you're going to have to jump into the pond, er into the pool, and you're going to have to turn this dinghy upside down, as you would in a heavy sea, so I'll blow the dinghy up', which I did, and turned it over and tossed it into the pool, and then they took their turns at jumping in, and turning the big dinghy, it was quiet a big dinghy, dinghy over. Er, I did some time at that. And then some years later, er I was posted to an RAF station in, up North, and er, unfortunately, after one leave, I missed some train, and I arrived at Peterborough, where they said there would be no train until the morning, but, they said, we have a post office van who has to go at four 'o' clock, he may give you a lift. So I asked this chap if he would give me a lift. 'Yes sir, jump in'. He took me up towards our camp, a long miles away, and he dropped me, this is dead, middle of the night, and he said, 'if you take that road, it'll lead you down to that camp'. And, where was I? I just managed to find my way round and I very happily took the right forks and the right bends in the right places, and eventually I came along a road, and I looked at the side off the road, there were some sheds (unclear) with lights on. And I thought, 'well, why do farm buildings have lights on at night?' And I suddenly realised it was the RAF camp I was looking for, so I walked in, up to the guard room, and booked in.
Woman's voice: And you got there in time?
WB: So all RAF places. The memory's gone. I can't remember.
MJ: That doesn't matter.
WB: Well, I can't remember. I should. It was North Luffenham, which is Rutland, and right by Rutland Water, you know? So as I'm finding my way I could hear the water, so I knew I couldn't be too (interrupted).
Woman's voice: So tell the story about when you were invited to this do, and this do, (WB talking across) yes, tell them
WB: Oh that one. I was invited. ER (pause). Yes ok. While I was at -
MJ: Is this right?
WB: Is it on?
MJ: Mm!
Woman's voice: It is on, Bill, it is on. Leave it alone.
WB: While I was at (pause) (unclear) Training Unit I met some of our H Squadron gunners, and we went out for a drink. And, one of them, one of them was a chap named Kelly, and he, he told us a story about, he was playing cricket at camp, and the CO was watching. And the CO came up and spoke to him, and said, 'where did you learn to bat like that?' And he said, 'at Sherbourne College'. 'Oh, really? So, why aren't you commissioned?', (chuckles) 'I never applied, sir'. He said, 'you apply for a commission right away'. (unclear) (woman's laughter in background) and that was that story.
Woman's voice: (laughter) Is that the one where someone came down all dressed up?
WB: No, no, yeah, there's more. And these, this Kelly and his rear gunner friend, the gunner was a rough lad from Birmingham, he said, 'Kelly's invited me to his home, for dinner'. He says, 'I'm going to go'. And he told me after, he said,' I dressed in my best blue, and I arrived at a stately home (chuckles), and I was ushered in by a butler. And I was offered a drink, and after a short while was asked to come and sit down for dinner. So I went and sat down, waiting for my friend to come down, and I turned, he was coming down the stairs in full gentleman's gear. The, the evening dress, the whole lot'. And he said, ' I was most impressed, but it made me feel rather inferior.' And that's the story.
Woman's voice: Carry on then. You don't have to do anything.
MJ: It's alright, it's on.
Woman's voice: Just say.
WB: Pilot Officer Bill Wood was the pilot of our group, and (coughs) I didn't know about his history, or how much flying he'd done before, but some months after we'd finished flying I met a chap who'd been an air gunner on Bill Wood's machines, er, a man from Whitworth Whitley, which was on Coastal Command down in Cornwall, and it was supposed to be flying out to attack submarines on the surface. Over the Bay of Biscay one day they found a U-Boat on the surface, and went in to attack. However, the U-Boat captain decided he would stand and fight, so their gunners got up on the their deck and started firing at the Whitley until they knocked an engine out and it caught on fire, So, our pilot, who was in actual fact at the controls although he was the second pilot, he decided they'd have to ditch. So they ditched down in the Bay of Biscay, and after about twenty four hours they were picked up by a Spanish trawler, who took them to Gibraltar. The strange thing about that is that I lived with our pilot for many, many months, and he never whispered a thing about this. I thought that was amazing. (Tape machine noises) Standard Rank.
MJ: Yes.
WB: And they brought in Standard Rank because they wanted to, all the temporary ranks, they wanted to cut those out, and so my substantive rank was sergeant, so everyone was knocked down one pip, at that time, to a substantive rank, which is what they would have been if they'd carried on and signed on in the Air Force. So, meant you had your own room, or shared with two of you. And the other guy, another Flight Engineer, he got promoted, he got commissioned, and he said, 'I'm going, can I leave this for you'. I said, 'yes, sure', so I put it in the bottom the the kitbag and forgot about it.
MJ: That's how you got your Halifax?
Woman's voice: Oh, that's how you got it?
WB: Put it in the bag and forgot about it. Well he meant, he said, ' I won't need this any more, going to leave it with you'. You know.
MJ: And that's how you got it.
WB: And anyway, it was a Lancaster station, North Luffenham, was a Lancaster station, not Halifax, so it wouldn't have been any good to them. Unless a Halifax had landed.
Woman's voice: And Halifax didn't land there?
WB: No, not usually, not usually.
MJ: Well, thank you for that, I'll tell-
WB: If they'd landed and got damaged, they'd have probably sent a crew from its home station to, ground crew from its home station. Sent a (unclear) and everything to see what's wrong with it, see if they could do something with it. But the main gear for lifting it up, trolleys and that to cart it around, that would have been supplied by the home station.
MJ: Well alright. On behalf of the International Bomber Command, I'd like to thank Bill Bryan on the twenty eighth of October two thousand and fifteen for his recording at his home in Southampton. Once again, we thank you with great thanks.
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 William Bryan
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
2015-10-28
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABryanWA151028, PBryanWA1501
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
William Bryan reminisces being hit by a German fighter and anti-aircraft fire while mine laying the Kiel Bay. The rest of the tour was a reasonably quiet time, consisting mainly of operations in the run-up of the Normandy campaign. Describes bombing in France on marshalling yards, trains and other targets. William's tour ended a week before D-Day. He then was posted to an operational training unit at RAF North Luffenham, where her taught airmanship, parachute jumping and dinghy drill. Reminisces a meeting with meeting Pilot Officer Bill Wood being shot down in the Bay of Biscay while attacking a U-boat. He was then picked up by a Spanish trawler and dropped off in Gibraltar. William discusses ‘standard rank’ adjustments when some were promoted and obtained commissions, while others ended up with a lower rank.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Rutland
England--Yorkshire
Atlantic Ocean
France
Gibraltar
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Germany
Atlantic Ocean--Kiel Bay
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
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
00:23:52 audio recording
102 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
ditching
flight engineer
ground crew
ground personnel
mine laying
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
pilot
promotion
radar
RAF North Luffenham
RAF Pocklington
Resistance
shot down
submarine
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/603/8872/PMarchantT1501.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/603/8872/AMarchantT150715.2.mp3
a088003f0ff9542450c26653477e41c9
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
Marchant, Thomas
Thomas Chas Marchant
T C Marchant
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Marchant
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Thomas Marchant (1604589 Royal Air Force). He flew operations in Transport Command and Bomber Command as a flight engineer with 101, 7, and 582 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
My name is Tom Marchant I was a Flight Engineer on Transport Command as well as Bomber Command. (slight pause) You may wonder why and how I got to be a Flight Engineer. I was only a young lad eighteen or nineteen , nineteen when I was actually operating, eighteen when I actually joined up. I couldn’t wait to get to fly. Now if I go back, I saw the Zeppelins fly over and I saw other aircraft flying around and I always wanted to be up there. I knew that as a working class lad from a working class family I could never afford to fly. I used to make my own aircraft, model aircraft, that flew from plans and with balsa wood and tissue paper and I used to fly my own aircraft and used to wish I could go up with them. I am just dying to fly, I wanted to fly. So actually when the war came along I was, em, I was er, what? fifteen or sixteen when it started and I couldn’t wait till my eighteenth birthday so I could volunteer for the RAF.
I hadn’t much education, just a basic education and I left school at fourteen without any qualifications, because I used to play about and play Jack the Lad and all the rest of it. So I thought I wouldn’t have a chance to get in the RAF but I thought I would have a go. I went, I was about seventeen and a half. I went and thought I could get away with saying I was eighteen. They started by asking me questions , how many degrees in a circle and things like that and of course I didn’t even know how many degrees there were in a circle. So I thought I had to do something about it. Suddenly I woke up, I went and got books from the library, I bought books, which you could do in these days for aircrew instruction and I got my head in these books and really started to educate myself and by the time I went, em, when I was just gone eighteen I volunteered again. I knew a lot more than when I first went and to my utter joy I was actually accepted to be aircrew. You can’t believe, to me it was almost like saying you can go to heaven and I just couldn’t believe it. Anyway em, I was eventually called up after about three to four months and em, (pause) I was sent to em, er, a camp under canvass, somewhere outside Warrington. From there we went to er, Blackpool. We went into digs at Blackpool which of course there were plenty going on in these days no em, holidaymakers, so that was the place and I went to Squires Gate airfield where I was trained, say training, er.
I ought to go back really because I did not have any formal education it was a problem getting a job. My parents weren’t very, they weren’t very helpful to me. I had a stepmother because my real mother died of consumption as it was called in these days, eighteen months after I was born. So I had a stepmother who never had any other children so I was a loner in effect, which in a way was a good thing because, em, I learnt to stand on my own feet so that helped in one way. When I went into the RAF I was quite happy to be amongst em, other lads which I didn’t have very much in my younger days em.
Any way well get back to, we went to Squires Gate and I was enlisted first was accepted as a em, Wireless Operator Gunner em, but before I was actually called up and joined the RAF I was re delegated to be a Flight Engineer because em, the four engined aircraft, bombers, were taking two Pilots and they were loosing two Pilots in one go, so they introduced the idea of Flight Engineer and I just had a basic training at Squires Gate airfield. While I was there I had to be on guard duties and I was out on the airfield on guard duty em, with a rifle and all the rest of it and I saw these ATC kids getting in an a a Anson aircraft and being flown off. So I said to the Sergeant who was on charge of us when I came off duty “can I get in there and get a flight, I have never been up in an aeroplane and I am supposed to be a trainee aircrew?” and he said “yeah you go over and join them.” So I did and I had my first er, en, flight in an Anson which are normally used for training Wireless Operators and people like that. Anyway we took off from Squires Gate and we flew round Preston Cathedral, I’ll never forget it and it was the first, I was on cloud nine. Anyway so I had more impetus in my er, my studies and I eventually, after I did my square bashing at Blackpool and er, em, the introduction to well what you call engineering. I think we filed a few bits of metal and whatnot and were shown bits of engines.
Anyway I went to St Athan where all Flight Engineers went to I understand. I er, em we learnt a bit more there I suppose and then I was passed out as a Flight Engineer.I couldn’t believe it, it was incredible really from being a hall boy in private service, scrubbing floors and then, then eventually footman in private service serving meals to people I’m suddenly in the RAF, I’m flying. I can’t put over, I can’t even think how it affected me, I just couldn’t believe it. I didn’t care if I was going to get shot at. I was only nineteen and em, I just couldn’t wait em, and eventually I passed all the Flight Engineer training and I was posted to an operational squadron. Oh no, sorry, go back. Was posted to an OTU Operational Training Unit at Dishforth where we flew in Halifaxes at first and then we flew in Lancasters, em. I think I’m missing something else out here. Of course we had to join up with a crew who had been flying Wellingtons,er, which is just a five crew aircraft and,er, this crew before they could go onto four engine aircraft had to pick up their,er, mid upper gunner and Flight Engineer and I don’t know how it was sorted out. We all got together and we got together and formed our crew and I had,em, I had an Australian pilot,(slight pause) no we had a Canadian navigator later on. So we had an Australian pilot and all the rest of us were British, English er, em, then we went onto Dishforth where we did our training on Halifaxes and then Lancasters. I just fell in love with the Lancaster, I was loving every minute of it, absolutely loving it. We went on cross country and I, it, I can’t describe. I’ve always loved flying, always will do eh, to get into the air and got through the clouds and then at night time you go above the clouds and you see the brilliant stars. . I never forget the stars that are in sky, you never see them now. Although he was an Australian he wasn’t your archetypical Australian, he was a sober sort of lad he didn’t drink and he didn’t smoke, all the rest of us did em, but that was his strength in a way, he was very level headed and he was very and he was strong as an ox. We was very lucky. I think it helped a lot, you have got to have a lot of luck but you have to have a certain amount of skill and he as we started flying with him, we got to know him and put our trust in him and he was a very good pilot.
Anyway comes our first op, all slightly nervous and apprehensive. I remember it well it was to the Happy Valley as they called the Ruhr in those days, far from happy for some and em Gelsenkirchen we went to, industrial town in the heart of the Ruhr. We did get shot up a bit, we got a little bit of flack holes and em, er, one of the pipe lines got broken but it was nothing much, no problems, all the engines working properly and we got back ok. That was a start of a series of raids on Germany, they were all on Germany I didn’t get sent abroad at all. So we went on, from 101 squadron this time from Ludford Magna we used to call it Mudford Magna because it was carved out of the Lincolnshire Wolds and made into an aerodrome not long before we got there and it was mud. I always remember the hut we were given, we were given hut number something or other and when we got there, there was a big painting of a chop, chopper there and we all knew what chop meant well you can imagine that did not inspire us very much. Anyway it turned out not to be true for us anyway. We quickly learned that a few people had been in there and not come back again, it all helped to make you cheerful when you went on you first op I suppose. Em, we survived the first op which was Gelsenkirchen that I have said and we went on. The next really impressive one was Hamburg, now Hamburg was the one where there was a fire storm. The first fire storm that was created and that was done I think on the first raid. There were three raids on Hamburg and we went on all of them and I always remember the one because the met said there was a front and it would clear Hamburg before we got there but we all knew what met was in those days they did not have satellites in the sky em, it was just by guess and by God to a certain extent. Anyway when we were approaching Hamburg on the second night er, we couldn’t get above the clouds and er, we could see sheet lightning and all sorts of lightning, anyway Bob decided to press on er, and we started getting lightning flashes right across from one engine to another, big flashes it was absolutely frightening, much more frightening than flack, em, electric lights going all around the canopy. It really was frightening and we still pressed on but we and we got into this culo, cumulous nimbus we started getting thrown all over the place.Bob decided to jettison the bombs and turn for home, but when he opened the bomb doors and we dropped we were thrown sideways and the bombs dented up the bomb bay doors and so we got quite a bit of draft in the aircraft going back. Anyway we survived and we got back home again (slight laugh) and that was another experience with something different that the sky can throw at you, probably more frightening than flak actually.
Eh, anyway the next one, the next sort of notable one we went to was Peenemunde, which was er, its up on the Baltic, on the side of the Baltic where the Germans were developing a rocket, eh, rockets which were eventually going to hit us later on. As opposed to the, eh, and the V1s which were the buzz bombs that went brrrrrrrr, you could hear them coming, I was in London when they first started using them. Anyway they were developing rockets there which were going to be the first rockets that anyone had used er, in warfare and this Peenemunde place was the place where they were er, developing them. We didn’t know this, we, it was highly top secret we weren’t told that this was a rocket place, we were told that it, that they were developing new types of radar which could home onto us. A story which eh, we all swallowed but it made us very determined to get of this place em, because it would make it easier for them to shoot us down, that was the sort of story we were given. We were attacking it in moonlight, it was the first trip we’d been in moonlight, we didn’t normally fly in moonlight and em, er , we were going to bomb it around six or seven thousand feet which was a long way lower than we normally bomb, from normally twenty one thousand feet and em, a full moon but the Germans didn’t really know that we knew about this place I don’t think and it wasn’t very heavily defended, there was just one or two searchlights. Er, I did a picture of this which shows one searchlight which is pretty well accurate. Anyway that was a reasonable success, it wasn’t as big a success as they thought, it did get rid of a few people and and it did slow up their production of these weapons for about five or six months. They eventually moved it all to a place in Germany, underground. Er, em, anyway then we started to what has been called the Battle of Brit, Berlin and we went to Berlin and er Nuremberg. I’m just going to read you from my Log quickly. We went to Berlin, Berlin, Manheim, Munich, Hanover, Munich again and then, and then after that we volunteered to go onto Pathfinders because I hadn’t really mentioned it, but our Navigator at that time wasn’t really up to the job. He took us back over London once from one of the raids and we got, we saw balloons going past us. The Mid Upper Gunner said “Hi skip I have just seen a big balloon” and we were amongst the London barrage balloons and ah, anyway I just remembered, that was frightening that was, anyway, full boost, full throttle ‘cause we were starting to come down for base. Anyway we thought if we volunteered for Pathfinders the Navigator wouldn’t be up to it and we were right. We landed up with a Cambridge educated whizz kid, little, we used to call him Brem. He was a little fellow but he was a fantastic navigator and I think that is another reason that we perhaps survived when we did. So we were lucky to have this navigator and eventually we went to Berlin, we actually went there fifteen times but we set off times but em, on two occasions we had engine problems or we had some sort of problem which made it not really feasible to carry on, so, so.
When we joined Pathfinders of course we had to do extra navigation, we had to do a lot of cross countries at night time and I used to love these cross countries jomits because we could see all the stars and on odd occasions we would see the Northern Lights. Oh, and going back when we went to Peenemunde we went right up north and we could see the lights of Sweden, Stockholm or is it Oslo, my geography. Anyway we could see the lights in Swindon(think he meant Sweden), I had forgotten that. Talking about the Northern Lights of course they are fantastic thing em, so I was still enjoying my flying. I was scared wittless actually over the Target but the target areas themselves were fascinating, there’s flares, there’s searchlights there’s puffs of black smoke all over the sky from flak, it’s, I’ve done paintings of, of raids but you can’t capture it, you really can’t capture it. The sight is incredible and em, er as far as firework shows they leave me cold, I’ve seen the biggest firework show on earth and I don’t know what else I have to say. You see, other than the fact that being aircrew I didn’t have to work on aircraft. The ground crew had a horrible job they had to patch up the aircraft when they came back and when they were at the, on the eh (pause) the perim, eh “what’s off the perimeter?” (someone suggests dispersal) dispersal, they had to work on dispersal points in all weathers. Freezing cold in the winter and we were tucked up in bed then. I mean providing you didn’t get shot down or you didn’t get injured and you came home safely, it was a dawdle. You just em, got scared to death on the op but when you were nineteen, (laugh) “that was a long time ago” it’s all an adventure er, em, it’s exciting in a way. It’s hard to describe unless you’ve been em, but can you imagine as a nineteen year old lad who has had a very boring life before and dying for something different, that I got it in mega bucks and it was a great. Em, and I am sorry to say this, to me, ok there were things that you tend to overlook. The odd nasty things that happen and discomfort in nissen huts and er, that sort of thing but to me I, I, just loved it. I’m sorry but that is the way I say it, I can understand how lots of other aircrew didn’t and they had a terrible time and when I see and read about other peoples’ experiences er, I had a walk in the park really in comparison.
Anyway on the last trip we had was what we thought was going to be a dawdle, which was marshalling yards just outside Paris. This was on the day, the night, the night, of D day and we were bombing marshalling yards and lots of other people were bombing gun emplacements on the south, the north French coast and that sort of thing, but our job was to blow up this marshalling yard just outside Paris called Juvisy . We were Master em, going to be acting Master Bomber which meant we did Master Bomber em er, a few times once you got well into Pathfinder. Being a Master Bomber you direct the bombing and you stay over the target till it all, till it’s all over and telling people not to bomb certain TI’s or certain markers. There wasn’t much doubt about this, it was well lit up and we again. It was one of those low level attacks I think we went in at six or eight thousand feet and I can remember seeing em,er, trucks going up in the air and whatnot and I did feel for any French railway workers down there which I’m sure there were, but that’s war. Anyway we thought that’s great we’re on our way home and we just about left the target when suddenly this ME110 appeared right up beside us, incredible, and before the Mid Upper Gunner could peel round on him he just peeled of. Of course after that we were waiting for the coup de gras. We thought and Bob really started throwing it about like the Spitfire he always wanted to fly. He was a real beefy bloke and he started throwing it about and em, we started doing this for about twenty minutes or so and we thought we hadn’t seen him again and we settled down again and he was just doing a bit of a weave and suddenly, pow! We got hit, feel everything juddering and em, we suddenly went into a dive. He’d hit the, he’d hit the elevators, the Rear Gunner, very lucky chap, he survived. He said “all the elevators have been hit” well we didn’t have to be told that(slight laugh)we felt that. The plane went into a bloody dive and I thought “bloody hell we’ve had it now.” Anyway old Bob being a beefy bloke he really held it back and we tried em, what did we try. Anyway we used the trimmer but it didn’t make any difference em, er, I was helping him pull it back and I remember I had my tool, all Flight Engineers had a tool bag with them, don’t know what they were supposed to do with them half the time. We weren’t going to crawl out onto the engine and start doing things. Anyway eh, I got a piece of thin nylon rope in my tool bag, I don’t know how it be or was there. I don’t know why I should carry this but I had it and we tied er, we tied, or tied a piece of it round one of the circles in the formers of the aircraft. There a lots of holes of course and we put it in there and put it round the yolk, round the upright part of the control column and that gave us quite a good purchase. Then just as we sorted that out we noticed the outboard starboard engine had started to smoke and flames started to come out of it so we eh, feathered that, pressed the fire extinguisher and fortunately the fire extinguisher worked, which it apparently didn’t on Paul that Just Jane from East Kirby. Anyway our fire extinguisher worked so everything was, but of course when all this was going on we were expecting to get the coup de grass, we though he would be back to finish us of. Somehow or other our luck as a crew held and we got back to Manston which is right on the edge of the Kent coast. Em and the landing of course, we weren’t sure if the wheels would go down em but em, he tried the flaps and the flaps worked and he tried then just before, he said “we could do a belly landing if necessary” with the wheels up and everything. We tried the undercarriage and incredibly the undercarriage worked, then the other tricky bit was the pressure required to flare out and hold it on a proper approach er angle and flare out. It wasn’t one of Bobs best landings but it was, you walked, they say if you walk away from a landing that it, your lucky if you walk away from a landing that’s a good landing, and it was. After that we should have done another couple of trips to make up for the two that were aborted but they stood us down and we all went our different ways.
I eventually went up to Lossiemouth and I em er I did instruction on dinghy drill which fortunately I never had to do myself but I had to learn how to do dinghy, I had to learn dinghy drill and then I showed it to operational people, OTU people who were going to have to go on ops. Well we never had that when I went to OTU. But em.and that was at Lossiemouth swimming pool, I always remember that, I enjoyed that. I got to fly, I still wanted to fly they had Wellingtons up there I think and they had other aircraft and I used to get flights er, when they were doing test flights, on any aircraft I would go up in it, I still loved flying, always have done and em er. After that I had to revert to what I was supposed to be which was an Engineer, but all they gave me was changing all the plugs on a Napier Sabre which was about forty eight plugs and that kept you busy for a bit. They didn’t let me loose on anything that was em very important. Em but and I always wanted to and I kept applying to go flying again and I got a job on transport, I got posted to Transport Command and it was a period when we thought we might have to, oh no sorry, the Far Eastern war was still going on. The Japanese war the er the Yanks hadn’t er yet bombed with the Atom Bomb and the Japs was still fighting and we was going to have to send Big Wigs out to the Far East and they were going to be flown over by a civilised version of the Lancaster, called the Lancastrian and for that you had to learn how to load certain loads. It was like civil aircraft, you had to load the aircraft properly with certain loads and whatnot, so we had to do a course on that. Then we eventually flew a Lancastrian and only a month or so after that after we got into this the Japanese war just stopped. The er the Yanks dropped there second Atom Bomb and they surrendered and so there was no more use for these Lancastrians to go out to the Far East.
So then I got, then was trouble flaring, possible trouble with Russia because they had overtaken Berlin and all the rest of it and everybody knows about the Berlin Airlift which I wasn’t on. I would like to have been on that. I was em then put onto Halifaxes and we were towing we were towing gliders and dropping parachutists over the Salisbury Plain we also had to drop ten pound guns and a jeep and they were all strapped under this Halifax, they took the bomb doors off and they strapped these thing on, and you had to drop them on the Plain. Those were the dodgiest piece of flying I think I ever did I think I would liked to have gone back on ops actually. Because they struggled off, off I think it was ridiculous really, they struggled off the end of the runway and if you had anything like a cross wind with all that underneath you sticking out. I can remember being really frightened on take off with that stuff but I must have been a very lucky bloke. I had another good skipper he was a Scot er. Anyway that was Transport Command, you are only interested in Bomber Command aren’t you?
Question by interviewer. “So when you were on Pathfinders?”
Yes of course before we were on Pathfinders, before we actually operated as a Pathfinder we had to do a lot more cross countries and night time cross countries which I used to like. It’s so lovely looking at that starry sky and em everything and very often it was semi moonlight because we did not operated on moonlight towards the end of the war. We did not operate on moonlight because you would get shot down so easily which we demonstrated when we went to Paris but em (pause)oh I get er, and when were on those cross countries that was when I used to get into the driving seat, the skip he’d put it in, you could put the Lanc into automatic you know it could fly itself but of course that is not quite the thing to do when you are operational. He’d put it in automatic I’d get he’d swap seats and I would fly it and I would turn, I knew how to control and aircraft anyway because I was so keen when I was a lad I learnt all about airplanes and em at first the crew said “hey you are not letting him in the seat are you?” (laugh). I took to it quite well and the Navigator would give a course to turn onto and I would turn onto the course and everybody was happy. I was happy, I was happy as Larry because I was flying the airplane, you know, hands on. Not many people have had hands on, on a Lancaster so it has always been one of my things.
From that when I came out I wanted to carry on flying but I had got married and em we were paying a mortgage on a house and you can’t afford to fly. I got a job, not a very not a well paid job, I had a job with Lucas actually in the press shop, not in the press shop actually, doing, getting materials up for them and everything. Then I went in the gas board, kids came along, eventually grew up and once I got, I started getting promotions and a bit more money I still got this feeling I wanted to fly and I wanted to fly the aircraft myself. The next thing the cheapest way of doing that is join a gliding club and er, I joined a gliding club near Grantham at er, Saltby where Flying Fortresses had taken off if you remember, didn’t they, from Saltby and there was a gliding club there which I knew from a friend. I went there and I started gliding. In no time at all I was sent off solo. I done quite a bit of gliding I got the Silver C which is staying up for five hours and er doing fifty K , it was all the fives. It was making a height of five thousand feet and fifty kilometres and five hours up and fifty kilometres and making five thousand feet, that’s right. I went beyond that but got my Silver C in gliding but there are days when you can’t fly anyway, you can be launched and you can take a launch up to fifteen hundred two thousand feet but if there are no thermal or anything at Salby anyway you just came down again. Anyway some friends of mine said “why don’t we get a motor glider?” he heard about a motor glider that was going, a Faulke motor glider he said “you can fly anytime then” and they do thermal as well. I have stayed up for three or four hours in a Faulke you know. We em went to so, and from there this was over a period of a few years, five six years and em you had to pass a test to fly the motor glider which was half way on to getting your private pilots license, but to do that you have got to have a proper single engined aircraft like a 150, Cessna 150 and em, of course that costs, that costs money. Then I was flogging my pictures and whatnot and got a better job. I got a company car that was another thing, I got a job with a company car in advertising driving all over the place and em, I got a company car and they were very easy about, they paid for all the petrol whither it was for me or not. I mean you would not get a job like that these days. (laugh) I was very lucky and from, from then you may not know Burnaston it’s where they make the Toyotas now and that’s just outside of Derby on the A38. That was an aerodrome during the war. They had all sorts there, it was a primary trainer, it’s only a grass strip, it’s a good sized grass strip and they eventually flew em what it’s names off there, didn’t they Pete? “Argonauts” yeah and Dakotas and things and it was sort of Derby, it turned into Derby Airport of course. Then it closed down for a while and Jack, what’s his name, Jones he opened it up, didn’t he? I helped, I just retired then when they started opening up Burnaston as an aerodrome again and I went and helped mark out the runways with a concrete,no it was a white, white chippings to line the runway to mark out the runway to make it commercially acceptable again for flying. They got em (pause) “terrible loose my words.” Em Cessna 150s which are a two seater private aircraft which are a very popular aircraft who want fairly cheap flying. Of course to fly one of those, to hire one out and fly it you have got to have a proper pilots license. That is the first step on flying really a PPL as it called and em er, I started flying these Cessna’s but I couldn’t afford to fly them very much as it was quite expensive to hire out an aircraft and I had got my share in this motor glider anyway. I wanted to add to my flying experience in effect I would like to have gone and done instrument flying so you could fly at night but it all costs money and time. When you are a family man you have to consider your wife and what not so. You are restrict, restricted to a certain extent. I did what I wanted to do to a, you know and I have been very lucky really, very lucky.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Thomas Marchant
Creator
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Mick Jeffery
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-15
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMarchantT150715
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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00:51:12 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Tom Marchant had always wanted to fly and at eighteen joined the RAF as a Wireless Operator Air Gunner but was remustered as Flight Engineer after his initial postings to Warrington and Squires Gate Airfield, Blackpool. He describes his very first flight in an Anson aircraft from Blackpool. His next posting was to St Athan where he passed out as a Flight Engineer and was posted to an Operational Training Unit at Dishforth in Yorkshire where he flew in Halifax and Lancaster aircraft and met the crew he would fly with. On completion of the OTU he and his crew were posted to 101 Squadron based at RAF Ludford Magna where they completed a number of bombing operations over Germany. The crew successfully volunteered for Pathfinder duties and had to complete further training in navigation and cross country flying. On these training sorties he actually flew a Lancaster.
On completion of operations Tom went onto instruct dinghy drill at RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland and from there went on to join Transport Command flying Halifax aircraft. After the war he left the RAF but continued to fly gliders and motor gliders from Salby (ex USAF bomber station) near Grantham. He eventually went on to gain his Private Pilots License.
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Hugh Donnelly
Language
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
101 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
fear
flight engineer
ground crew
Halifax
Lancaster
Lancastrian
Master Bomber
Me 110
military living conditions
military service conditions
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Dishforth
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Ludford Magna
RAF St Athan
training
V-2
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/625/8895/APeckE150708.1.mp3
2334991e37d6d1fee23c0e693d5cd7de
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/625/8895/PPeckE1508.2.jpg
37e199c70bc1aa7c8a7bef490b07177f
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Peck, Ted
Edward Peck
E Peck
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Peck, E
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Ted Peck (Royal Air Force). He flew operations with 622 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
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2015-07-08
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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MJ: It’s on.
ETBP: The name is Edward Peck. Everybody calls me Ted and have done ever since I was fourteen years of age so I’ve got used to it by now. My family called me Eddie which I didn’t like very much so I’m quite happy with Ted and I’m an ex RAF warrant officer who flew in Lancaster aircraft. Thirty operations without a scratch that’s showing. I’m ninety years of age and still fairly active which I’m very thankful for and I do get to meet some nice people in talking about my days in the RAF and Mick just happens to be one of them. I suppose the first thing that worried me when I was introduced to flying in the Lancaster that the engineer’s handbook says that all flight engineers should be taught to fly straight and level. So once we were on the squadron, 622 squadron I reported to the link trainer section and I had ten hours, not every day, ten hours just straight, a couple of hours a day maybe in the link trainer and eventually I was, I didn’t have to have an examination or anything it was just the fact that the instructor was satisfied that I could do what it said in my handbook and that was fly straight and level. So at the first opportunity we were flying on a a course at, over near Skegness on the bombing range and coming back from the bombing range the pilot said, ‘Right. It’s your turn in my seat and I almost froze but bravado being what it is he got out of his seat and I got back in it. He watched me for a little while and after, after perhaps about five or ten minutes he just gave me the thumbs up to tell me that I was ok, doing fine and he started to walk to every other crew station in the aircraft. So he started off with the bomb aimer in his, in the front, the navigator just behind me, wireless operator, mid upper gunner and they all said, ‘Who’s flying and the answer came back to them, ‘Ted.’ And then he went down to the rear gunner and he was a lad from Gibraltar and he was a little bit, he’d got a little bit of, I think, Spanish flare in him somewhere because the skipper banged on the back doors of the turret and the turret door, they slid them open from inside and said to the skipper, ‘Who’s flying?’ He said, ‘It’s Ted.’ And I can’t put on this tape what the, what followed because we understand from the skipper that it wasn’t printable. Anyway, he came back, back up the fuselage and he was giving me the thumbs up again and I got out of the seat and let him do his own job but I’d done the part of the training which was, which I was detailed to do. I could fly straight and level. So that was done so that at least somebody was close to the skipper. The pilot. If he was injured I could have taken over and flown straight and level but for how long I don’t know.
[machine paused]
ETBP: I suppose my interest in the RAF started when I was just turned sixteen and I wanted to join the Air Training Corps so I asked my father’s permission to go and volunteer in the, in the ATC and he refused and I was rather put out. But through the good offices of one or two uncles I managed to get them to talk to my dad and they, he afterwards said that I could join so one Sunday morning I joined the 1014 squadron ATC who were based at North Weald airport, air, air airfield and we used to go up there perhaps on a Sunday and if there was any flying going on it was great to see the squadron of Spitfires often taking part in the Battle Britain, taking off from this particular airport, airfield, all in vic of three formations, shining in the sun and you never knew how many came back so that was, that was a good sight. But the ATC did me, did me proud they really tuned me up for joining the RAF to the extent that I didn’t have to think twice when it came to drill parade or putting kit out for inspection so I had no problems at all with that. The only problem I had was if there was a swimming lesson going on somewhere and the ATC were involved in it because I was a non-swimmer and I didn’t like the water. I had an unfortunate thing happened when I was at school. In the swimming baths we were all sitting on, around the edge of the swimming baths and we got the order to jump in. I wasn’t the biggest of lads so I was a bit slow in jumping in. The instructor came behind me with a bass broom and pushed me but I don’t have many last laughs but I had the last laugh then because he had to come in to get me out.
[machine paused]
ETBP: We were talking about swimming a few minutes ago and I can remember, my wife was an ex-WAAF and, my late wife was an ex-WAAF and I can always remember the unit that we were on we used to have a little meet at one of the local pubs and all the lads and the lasses got together for a few drinks and back to, back to camp again but the route back to camp was, on this particular station, the quickest way was to go by the canal tow path and I’d had as many drinks as I could carry satisfactorily and I was at the end of a great big long queue all walking single file down the tow path and there was a young lady behind me and all of a sudden she came up beside me and said, ‘You’re not very steady and if, if you fall in the canal I will have to come and pull you out so I’d better get hold of your arm.’ And that belonged, that started something that lasted for fifty eight years.
[machine paused]
MJ: It’s on now so.
ETBP: Yeah. I suppose that the one of the things that in my flying days, in the early flying days we were still under training and we were flying a Stirling with 1657 Heavy Conversion Unit. That was immediately before we went on to training with the Lancaster and we were doing our final training flight. We went down to the south coast, along the south coast and up the coast of Cornwall and we got a little way up the coast and we were hit by a most terrific storm. It was really, it was black, the lightning was horrible. We’d got was what was known as st Elmo’s fire around the propellers and some of the instruments weren’t working too well, the flying instruments and we were in real difficulties and there’s, so much so that all of us were looking out for some reference point to get our bearings again but it was very very difficult and the rear gunner suddenly piped up on the intercom that he could see a red light in the sky and this was amazing. Why is there, why can we see a red light in the sky? And without, without having told the pilot what to do he, he absolutely put the engines in full power, pulled the stick back and we just, I don’t know what speed we were doing but it was a good speed for a Stirling and we gained some height and when he, when we got to the top of the climb he called Mayday which was, it’s a call for immediate help and we got a call back from St Eval which was an RAF base in Cornwall and we flew in to St Eval and found out that we must have been within feet of being in the sea. It was so, this red light was actually on the top of a cliff.
[machine pause]
ETBP: During the course of training the pilot had got another pilot with him who was a trained bomber pilot who was doing a course of instruction and we were, we were flying within the, within the bounds of UK. It was my job when the pilot was wanting to land was to make sure that the undercarriage was down and also the tail wheel was down, that used to, that used to be my job when it was coming in to land, or in the circuit. So one day we were up there going through the drill, coming in to land, the skipper calls for wheels down so I put the wheels down and then I had to run as the aircraft was coming down. I had to run back to the tail and wind the tail wheel down. Now, that took about twelve turns on a crank handle and I chased back up the aircraft, called up on the intercom again, ‘Three wheels locked down skipper.’ A voice came back which wasn’t the pilot’s voice, it was, it was the instructor and it said, he said, ‘You’ll have to be quicker than that engineer. I’m just about to put the wheels on the tarmac.’ [laughs] It’s surprising that perhaps not many people realise how a bomber command crew is made up and how ad hoc it can be. When, when I was ready for joining a crew the station that we were based on took you through final crew training for each of the, each of the crew stations but when it came to forming crews it was just completely ad hoc. We were all, everybody was told to mingle outside of the room where we were taking our final tests and we were outside in the nice June sunshine and everybody was talking to everybody else until somebody came, one of the officers came along and said, ‘Right. It’s time to form crews. Please do not re-enter the building until you have a crew of seven. Will all pilot’s start to form their crews.’ And from that on, that point on it was, it only seemed like minutes before there were little bunches of seven people all together. You never knew whether you were going to get on with everybody or whether everybody could speak, basically speak the same language and it was, it was completely hit and miss and it worked wonderfully well. Nobody could understand it but it was done purely on the choice of the first man. And when I, when I was selected our wireless operator was chasing around looking for an engineer who was spare and wanted to be part of a crew and he spotted me and the first thing he said was, ‘You looking for a crew mate?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ And he said, ‘Come on I’ll take you to meet our lads,’ and that’s how it started.
[machine paused]
ETBP: During my time on 622 squadron we had a change of squadron commanders. The, the group the wing commander that was in charge for most of the time I was there was a chap called Wing Commander I C K Swale. S W A L E. And he was, by all reports, one of the finest wing commanders that they had at Mildenhall in war years. He would make sure that all the newcomers, air crew newcomers were ok and that his officers knew that he was a chap that would stand no shilly shallying and wanted the job done according to the text book and his attitude towards us was that he immediately got his wish. Unfortunately, or more fortunately for him he’d reached the stage where further promotion took him away from the squadron and we had a new wing commander come who was a totally different kettle of fish altogether. We were sorry to see him go so the only way we could express our gratitude for the way he’d looked after us was by giving his time to attend a little party that we set up and he agreed to serve all the drinks. So one of the, one of the mess halls was decked out with decorations. Union Jacks. Blondies. His name, he was, he was a fair haired chap so we called him Blondie and he’d got a big blonde moustache to go with it. So that, he turned up in his full dress uniform and was immediately it was immediately suggested that he might go back to his quarters and dress more comfortably. So he came back in, still in, still in reasonable dress but with his shirt sleeves rolled up and he stayed until everybody had drunk enough or [laughs] or nobody else wanted serving with drinks and then he went back to his quarters but he was, he was a great man and the pictures show that there was a lot of feeling, a lot of big smiles that didn’t indicate that they were glad to see him go but they were happy for him.
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command Archive I’d like to thank Warrant Officer Ted Beck for his recording on the 8th of July 2015 at his home. My name is Michael Jeffery and this is another thank you from us all.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Ted Peck
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Mick Jeffery
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-08
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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APeckE150708, PPeckE1508
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Pending revision of OH transcription
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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00:23:23 audio recording
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Ted joined 1014 Squadron Air Training Corps at North Weald, then became a flight engineer and warrant officer. He flew 30 operations for 622 Squadron.
Ted describes an incident which occurred in bad weather in a Stirling at the 1657 Heavy Conversion Unit before he trained on Lancasters. He also discusses the ad hoc nature of forming crews and a well-respected wing commander at RAF Mildenhall.
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Great Britain
England--Suffolk
Contributor
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Sally Coulter
1657 HCU
622 Squadron
aircrew
crewing up
flight engineer
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
RAF Mildenhall
RAF North Weald
Stirling
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/186/2434/PMarshallS1513.2.jpg
df6f6cc8ff0327e30fb6a0b48ae46145
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/186/2434/AMarshallS150508.2.mp3
cfb718b423c94b1acd547feb3a16e437
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Marshall, Syd
S C Marshall
Description
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Ten items. The collection contains two oral history interviews with Warrant Officer Sidney Charles Marshall (1924 - 2017, 1594781 Royal Air Force), his decorations, training notes, photographs and a photograph album. Syd Marshall was a flight engineer with 103 Squadron and flew operations from RAF Elsham Wolds.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Syd Marshall and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-05-08
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
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AMarshallS150508
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre the interviewer is Mick Jeffries, the interviewee is Mr. Sidney Marshall. The interview is taking place on 8th May 2015.
SM: My name is Sid Marshall, I’m recording this for the International Bomber Command Centre on the 8th May 2015. I live in Boston, Lincolnshire, right then? I left school in 1938 at the age of fourteen which most people did in those days, this was about a year before the outbreak of war, so when that started I was still only fifteen, and I had gone to work with a local engineering, agricultural engineering I should say, we were repairing tractors and all kinds of agricultural equipment, and of course this I suppose was considered in war time to be extremely er important, farming, farmers were never called up and that sort of thing, and when I got to be eighteen I er discovered, in conversation with my boss that I was in a reserved occupation, which simply meant that my job was considered more important than me joining the forces, but I think there is a bit of peer pressure comes into it here, everybody keeps saying to me ‘when you joining up, when you joining up’ , and eventually I got a bit fed up with this and I discovered that if I volunteered for aircrew I could get out of it, this was about the only thing I could er go to do, er, which would get me into the forces and away from me civilian job. It’s quite a performance getting in as well, I had, I went one day I was out on the job and I knew the recruiting officer was at the local, [coughs] excuse me, was at the local Job Centre and er so I thought I would go and see them and to my surprise when I got there it was a young lady, and she looked me up and down and I was in my greasy overalls, I suppose I didn’t present a very good picture really, and she said you know I told her I wanted to volunteer for aircrew, and she said, ‘ you know you have to be absolutely fit for aircrew’, and she was sort of trying to be put me off I thought anyway I insisted, and of course that’s how it all started. I didn’t say anything to my boss about it for a start, but I had to tell him when I got called for a medical, I started off, I had to go to Lincoln and this was the same medical that was used for any kind of military service, they used to jokingly say if you had two arms, two feet, and you were felt warm, you were all right, [laughs] you’ve heard that before.
MJ: Yes
SM: Er, anyway I, eventually came round I had to tell him when I went to Lincoln, I said look, tell the boss ‘I said look I’ve volunteered for aircrew duties and I’ve got to go for a medical’, so I went and this was pretty simple really, and er, I there was then a break of probably a couple of months, and I then had to go to Doncaster which was the full aircrew medical. You had to go and be prepared to stay there for a couple of nights, so the thing was spread over three days really. So anyway I got myself to Doncaster, and I found the Selection Board and all that were in the top floor of a multi-storey shop, and er, the first thing you had of course was the medical because if you didn’t pass the medical then you didn’t go any further, and they were very very strictly, they didn’t exactly turn you inside out but very nearly, you had to blow up columns of mercury and hold them, and you had to do various exercises, you were given a much stricter medical then had been for you know for what I call ground crew job. Anyway I passed the medical okay and in fact if you didn’t that was as far as you went, if you hadn’t passed the medical you were sent home again, that got the first day over. The second day [coughs] because I hadn’t been to Grammar School I had to sit a maths and general knowledge sort of test, anyway as an engineer I had been taking lessons in er [coughs] excuse me, in science, er maths and technical drawing, and of course that had boosted my education enough and I managed to slip past the exam okay, and that was about the last thing on that day. The third day you went before a panel of officers and they asked you what you wanted to do, they interviewed you and er, I realised the fact that I hadn’t been to Grammar School was not going to help me and they said ‘what would I like to do?’, and of course I think everybody wanted to be a pilot originally, anyway I told them I had been studying at night school and that and they said ‘ oh I think you’ll just about make it’, but to try and put me off they said ‘we have got such a lot of applications we probably won’t be able to take you in for seven or eight months’, I think it was just a gag really to put you off. Anyway they then asked me was I what work I had done and as soon as I mentioned that I had been working in engineering for four years, ‘oh your just the chap we want you can become a flight engineer’ and I’m afraid my sealed, fate was sealed at that, so that’s how it all came about. I went back home anyway and told my boss that I’d be going shortly but I was another, I should think another two or three months before they called me up, and er, anyway that was it, he never got on to me about it I think he understood how I felt, and he did say, ‘well your job will be there when you come back’, which was fair enough wasn’t it. Anyway the time came round for me to go and I found myself on Boston Station early one morning with my little suitcase bound for Kings Cross. I got on the first train and er, when I got to Kings Cross there was an NCO working there, waiting I should say, and by that time there were seven or eight of us who were all going to the same place, we had to report to what they call the er, er, oh dear, RTO, that’s the Rail Travel Officer, and er she gathered us all up and then we set off on the underground to St. John’s Wood Tube Station. We got off the station there and there was a corporal there waiting, marched us in some sort of disorder to the holy, holy place, Lords Cricket Ground, that was where it all happened. The first day we got there, we were booked in, they took our names and that sort of thing, and then we were given a card with a number on it and told to go and sit in the grandstands until we were called, of course there were hundreds of other lads there, and er, eventually my lot was called, and you went in and you had another er medical, it was only brief, it was what they called, it had all these er initial letters in the forces, this was an FFI, free from infection, I don’t quite know what they thought what we’d had picked up in the interim, but anyway it wasn’t very severe that one, and we went on, and then er, the next then we got to er [coughs] we went and got kitted out, we were given a kit bag and you went down the line, and I was fascinated by how they got the size of uniform right, there was a sloping line on the wall marked off in feet an inches, and as you walked by one bloke called your height out [laughs].
MJ: [laughs].
SM: Another bloke put a tape measure round your chest and that’s why, that’s how they decided the size of uniform unit. So you finish up with arms full of stuff and a kit bag, and we stowed all that lot in there and that’s about all we did the first day, and of course the next day we had to kit ourselves up in uniform and something else that really tickled me was [coughs], we decided that, you’ve seen Poiroit on the television haven’t you in these very posh block of flats, well we were in one of those, mind you it wasn’t very posh, there was nothing much on the floor and each room just had a double bunk each side and that was it there was nowhere to hang your clothes up or anything else, if you aren’t wearing it, it lives in your kit bag [laughs] or hung on the end of your bed, and we er, and we were there in all for about three weeks, and when I wrote home my address sounded very good, and it was er, the house was called Grove Court Mansions and it was in Grove End Road, St. John’s Wood, London, which is a very posh address isn’t it, and of course when my mother wrote back, she said ‘ [unclear] lad you’ve got such a nice place’, I didn’t disillusion her, [laughs] I let her think if she was happy I would leave it at that [laughs], and we were there for about three weeks altogether, we started to drill, we had another full medical, we were divided up into swimmers and non-swimmers, and we started er the you know we had our meals by the way, the zoo of course was closed in those days, London Zoo, not being too far away we used their canteen that was our cookhouse, we had our meals there, and anyway time passed pretty quickly and we got to know er some of the other lads, there were four of us in this room and er, I, and we managed right the way through our training to keep together [coughs]. As I say in all we were about there for three weeks and then one night we were packed up and we were put back on the underground again back to Kings Cross Station, and they never tell you where you were going, and when you got to Kings Cross, I thought if you are going to Kings Cross you are going North. We got to er, overnight, we travelled at midnight, I think they put troops and that on the train at night to leave the trains free for the civilians in the day time, imagine that was the idea. Anyway we found ourselves in the early hours of the morning at er York, clambered out there and we were put on another train and er we arrived quite early in the morning at Scarborough, and here’s another posh address the place we went to there was called The Grand Hotel, and of course the forces used these places, they were empty in those days, nobody taking holidays were they, but it wasn’t very grand, but we didn’t have to worry us too much, because we had our breakfast there and then we were all drawn up outside and we were ticked off where we gonna’ go and they found there wasn’t room for us all at er Scarborough, so my flight which consisted of something like thirty of us were put on a train again and went to Bridlington, and this is where I did my, we got these letters again, this is ITW, Initial Training Wing, and when we were in London it was ACRC, which sounds a bit queer but it was Air Crew Reception Centre, you get used to all these letters don’t you. So this was where our initial training was going to be and in all I think we were there for about eight weeks, and it was the middle of winter and we used to do PT on the beach in the snow with the spray blowing off the sand, and do you know you never catch cold because you are fit aren’t you, and er when we went into the er Ex’, we were based in the Expanse Hotel, which I’ve seen since it’s still there, it is one of the top hotels, but of course they took us to these places ‘cause there was accommodation available didn’t they. We lived on the ground floor of the hotel in my particular case, and we were told when we went out to leave all the windows open get some fresh air in, well the sea was rough and the spray was blowing as well [laughs] which didn’t help matters. Anyway we were introduced then to our er instructor, a drill instructor, Corporal Horrocks, I won’t tell you what we called him, because would it be rude to mention it?
MJ: If you want to.
SM: [laughs].
MJ: It’s up to you.
SM: I won’t mention it, but you can guess what it was, he was a very nice chap actually, and er the only trouble was he was, we got lads there some of them from London, some of them from all over the country, and he was a Geordie, and you just couldn’t understand what he said a lot of the time, his favourite thing we used to drill in the streets, and of course along the seafront, no traffic about in those days as nobody had any petrol did they, and we used to be marching up and down there and I remember one occasion we came out of a side turning up to the promenade and he said something, he said ‘hey up [?]’, and we didn’t know if he said right or left and we parted company like that you know, one line went left the others went right, and there was a group of women coming up there with their shopping bags laughing their socks off at us [laughs], and of course he bollocked us as they say for that [laughs], but he was actually a very nice bloke he didn’t mess us about too much, and er we did, we had lectures in the Spa which is a sort of dance hall place there isn’t it, and we were, and I think the main thing was getting us fit, we sometimes we’d go jogging in just of a pair of shorts and if you like a vest if you like, and I remember on one occasion, while we had it I don’t know we had a rifle, a bayonet, a tin hat and all that and a gas mask, we never used any of those things did we? Anyway we, they took us one day, I’ve forgotten the name of the place there, seaside on the coast near er, and we all got out and er we had to march to the far end which was probably three or four miles and then we this lorry followed us up, we had to chuck all our kit in the back of the lorry get stripped off and run back, [laughs] this is all part of the getting fit process, and we had lectures as I said in the Spa, er it’s surprising we did drill instruct, drill we had to do shooting, we then started using, do clay pigeon shooting which was shooting at moving targets which I think was more akin to aircrew than anything else wasn’t it, anyway we were you know there in all for about eight weeks, and then we got at the end of the time we, it happened to be Christmas, we were very, very, lucky, we were sent home we had a ticket wherever you were going to get home and then we had to go back to London, so I was home for Christmas so that was very nice, I had a full week at home, and then I was back to Boston Railway Station again and down to Kings Cross and we had to return, and again we had to report to the RTO, that’s the Rail Travel Officer, they had these offices on all the main stations to you know supervise troops travelling about telling them where to go and all that sort of thing, and this time we were put on a train we knew were we were going, er we were put on a train to Wales, and we rode at first of all, I think we got as far as Cardiff and we had to change onto a slow local train then and this was taking us to our final destination for that, we pulled up er, went through Barry, and er we eventually stopped on the little wayside station it was at the bottom of cutting and it was one of those places where there was only about one man there he was the station master, the signal, the porter, and everything else, and er we got off the train there and er we then marched up there was a corporal, there always corporals aren’t they, corporal met us, with all our kit and that we were marched up to the RAF Station at Saint Athan, this was where we were to be for the next, I don’t know seven or eight months. In the war time you know the courses get shortened, I think the engineer’s course at one time would probably be nearer eighteen months, at the time I got there it was down to about seven or eight months, and er, if you had er, some people had engineering experience like myself didn’t find it too difficult, but some of the lads had never touched it and they of course you know an exam about every fortnight and if you didn’t get on very well you got put back a week, and I think if you got put back more than twice you were kicked off the course [laughs]. Anyway we were there for, let me just get my book, I’d only really got to er we’d just arrived at Saint Athan hadn’t we, for our training, I didn’t realise then how long it would be but we actually, er training of flight engineers lasted about seven months, and it covered all aspects of the aircraft, we had to know a little bit about everything, we had to know about the hydraulics, I mean the undercarriage and the bomb doors and all that sort of thing are all hydraulic, so then we had to learn about brakes because they’re pneumatic, and we had to learn about the engines and how to get the best out of them and keep in in an eye in view the amount of fuel we were using, if you opened the engines up too much the fuel consumption went up drastically and if you did that too much you might think you hadn’t got enough fuel to get home with again [laughs], this is the sort of things you had to you know get used to, but this is what we were taught to do, we had at the end of it we had actually we had an exam about every couple of weeks and if anybody was not quite up to scratch they were put back and did that section over again and you could do that twice but if you did it more than twice you got chucked off the course for taking too long [laughs]. All in all I was at Saint Athan for about seven months, you can’t really go into detail about it, it’s too technical and too complicated, but we had a [unclear] a list of all the things we had to do anything mechanical or anything that worked was my option, and my most important job really was in a Lancaster you know you got four engines and you got six fuel tanks and normally the two sides of the aircraft are separate, there is a valve in the mains bar[?] where you can open so you can transfer fuel from one site to the other, [sighs] but normally you took off on the middle tank, there was a tank between the engine and the fuselage, another one between the two engines and the third one was out in the, out part of the wing, so you’ve got, your wings are full of petrol and the floor underneath you was full of bombs, it’s not a very good situation really to be in is it, you don’t really want to get hit, and er, the most important job I had to do was, ‘cos an aero engine uses a lot of fuel er, anywhere between about twelve hundred and fifty horsepower each engine, in fact to put it an easier way a Lancaster did about one mile to the gallon, which is pretty [unclear], not far is it, and if you had a full load of petrol you could go out somewhere there and back and do two thousand miles and that was about your limit, you always had to keep at least a hundred or nearly two hundred gallons er back for landing you don’t want to be landing on your last gasp of fuel do you, and when of course they were arranging operations they took the weight of the aircraft and er then they [coughs] I had to look at the plan and calculate how many miles it was there and back, shall we say if was probably fourteen hundred miles there and back, and without going into decimal places the Lancaster did about one mile to the gallon, so okay fourteen hundred miles you want fourteen hundred gallons of petrol and they gave you two hundred gallons extra that’s your safety margin, so if all goes well you should arrive back at base with two hundred gallons of petrol, but it does allow for the fact you might get delayed, you might have a head wind which might make it take a bit longer to get back home again, you might not be able to land at your own base because it’s probably fog bound, so you have the hours grace, and I remember of one occasion we had to, we came over, got over Britain and we set off, er the bomb aimer, sorry, the navigator gave the pilot his last course back to base, we hadn’t been going long before we had a radio call through to say that we couldn’t land at base because it was covered in fog, and er we were to land I think it was somewhere in Norfolk, anyway that’s fair enough so we made a slight alteration of course and we are heading towards this not long after that we got another message to say we couldn’t land, it was Langham in Norfolk, can’t land there it’s now fog bound as well, so we start to circle around and they said to stand by, so did a wide circle round, we went round a couple of times, and I said to all of them [unclear] ‘we soon want to be landing somewhere because we are getting down on fuel’, and almost at the same time the wireless op, the mid upper gunner came on the, on the intercom and said ‘I can see a glow in the sky skipper it might be FIDO’, you know fog dispersal, so we made our way over there and we’d been told to stand by but we never got any further instructions I think they were struggling to find us anywhere to land, so we went on and we circled round over this and your call log if you were in trouble you called dark here, that was your trouble, it mean’t you were in difficulties, and our, our call sign was suedecoat, aircraft was C-Charlie, so you called ‘darkie darkie from suedecoat charlie’ and we got an immediate call back the usual lady’s voice, WAFS, ‘are you over an airfield with FIDO burning?’, so we think we are because we could see the glow in the sky so we came down a bit lower and er we called em again and they gave us landing instructions, and it was quite, I say it was a bit scary really, because do you know what FIDO was made of there were pipes laid down by the side of the fuselage, the runway, not too close to the runway, they were blocked off at one end and then holes drilled, a bit crude really, holes drilled in them and at the upper end near the entrance to the runway was a pump and a fuel tank and they were pumping neat petrol into these, and I don’t know who did it some brave guy must have gone out and lit it probably used a flare or something like that, and they only did about half the length of the runway but when you got lower you could actually see the flames and you usual drill was, er ‘yes Charlie you are clear to land call down wind’ that’s when you are coming down wind, so we called ’Charlie down wind’, you’ve got your wheels down, got your flaps down, [?] down, you then turn and say ‘Charlie Roger call funnels’ and your lights from the high up looked like a funnel that tapered into the runway, so they guided you onto the runway, in this case it was the flames, so we got on funnels they called ‘Charlie funnels’ they said ‘Charlie [?] mission is a Charlie pancake’ that means land, so we landed and there was a bar of flames and when we went over the bloody aircraft went ugh like than [laughs], like a kick up the backside, because tremendous heat from these flames literally lifted the aircraft, anyway we came in and we landed, I had my fingers crossed ‘cos I knew we’d got some damage, I said to Luke[?]the skipper ‘I hope to Christ we haven’t got a flat tyre if we swing off into that lot it will be unfortunate’, anyway we landed all right we taxied to the end and er a vehicle met us there and we followed it round, they took us round into a spare dispersal and of course you went through your drill close your engines down everything else, shut everything off, and er you can’t really leave anything in the aircraft so we went out loaded up with our parachutes and everything else which, we were then taken to a room where we was briefed, debriefed, and we discovered that the aircraft there were Mosquitoes, because one or two of them took off in that lot to go and bomb, so that’s they were using the flares to guide them, I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it, we heard this roaring come along, said ‘Christ it’s a Mosi’. Anyway we were debriefed, then we were given a meal and then we were given an armful of blankets and pointed toward a hangar, a Nissen hut, you go in there and there was Buckaroo [?] on the floor, it’s like dark brown lino on the floor usually isn’t it just so you can sweep it up, and you make your bed up and I think we was that ruddy tired, we just chucked the, we had three biscuits you know what biscuits are? Three padded squares that you put end to end, tuck a blank around it and that’s your base for your bed, I don’t know if we even bothered to do that we were that ruddy tired I think be then we just crashed out and went to sleep, we couldn’t get undressed ‘cos you’d nothing with you, trouble is when you got diverted like, you got no shaving kit, you got no ‘jamas or anything like that, you just had you were in what you were. Then we slept the sleep of the just there and next morning we went we found out, found the sergeants mess and had some breakfast, very much do it yourself isn’t it [laughs], and then we got, er we went to see, I think we went to see the CO or the squadron leader anyway, and he said ‘well you chaps look as if you are stuck here we can’t er, you’ve got some damage which your aircraft has got to be repaired before you can take it off again, you might even need an engine change’, and we discovered it was two days before Christmas and we knew we’d got Christmas festivities on at our base, ‘that’s bloody handy we are going to be stuck here over Christmas’, anyway our skipper went to see the adjutant and they had a bit of argy bargy with him and he came back and he said ‘we’re going home on the train’, we did we got [laughs] he’d got a , he’d got a ticket for the lot of us, so we the truck took us to the, I can’t remember where the nearest railway station was, um it might have been Cambridge even, I don’t know, I can’t remember now it’s a long long time ago. Anyway we got on there and we had to get on the train I think it took us to Norwich, then we had to go across to Peterborough, and then when we got to, we went through Boston and er we went back we got back to Grimsby, and then we had to get on a packed line from Grimsby to Elsham, now that railway train ran through Elsham that was still about three miles away from the camp, anyway we rung up and they come and picked us up, and you do, you don’t ‘cos we took our parachute with us and everything, and when you get on a train with your flying kit carrying your parachute you get some very funny looks off people [laughs], that was one of the most interesting things that ever happened to us, and anyway we had our ‘cos when you went on ops you emptied your pockets you’d no money, you’d nothing have you, you couldn’t even go in the sergeants mess and buy a pint as you’d no money. We had our Christmas there, and I, shows you in my book anyway, em I think we had Christmas and it was about four days after Christmas eventually one of our other crews flew us back to Graveley to pick our aircraft up, so we didn’t do anything for nearly a week [laughs] is that the sort of thing you’d be interested in?
MJ: Yes
SM: That’s a bit unusual and er.
MJ: Yes
SM: That was, we were halfway through a tour when we did that, but it’s just something that came to mind. I think er the first time we ever went out we got hit, I’m going backwards now. When you got the you’d finished your full training, ‘cos we did some further training after we got posted to a squadron and er we thought well we’d only done about nine and a half hours flying on a Lancaster, we did our ITW that’s interesting our heavy conversion[?} rather on Halifaxes, which wasn’t very good for me because I’d been trained to go on Lancs’ so I had to learn about Halifax a bit quick we did about sixty seven hours flying on heavy conversion unit[?} and then we went to Lancaster Finishing School and we went to Elsham we’d only nine and half hours flying on the Lancaster which wasn’t very much was it? We found out when we got there the reason was though because we’d, know you know what H2S is now the down [?] scanning radar and not all squadrons had it. The reason we went to the squadron was we were nearly there for nearly a fortnight before we did any operations because we’d never seen this apparatus before and the bomb aimer was the set operator so he had to learn all about the H2S and then we had to go on cross country flights using it to get the hang of it and get used to it so we were a fortnight really before we did any operations and of course we eventually we were ready [laughs], and that was I think it was the 14th October 1944, and er, the first, did I had already mentioned when we got, no I haven’t, um, so no I was going to say we got hit on our first trip didn’t I. We went our first trip was to Duisburg and er over the target we were going lined up you got, once your bomb aimer has taken over you can’t diverge you have to do what he says, he’ll say ‘left, left, steady’ and ‘right, right, steady’ and then when you dropped your bombs you also drop a photo flash and you take a photograph, well of course the photograph doesn’t want to happen until the bombs have hit the ground does it, so you going along straight and level over there you’re being shot at but you can’t do anything about it because you have got to keep straight and level and er then a light comes on on the dashboard telling you that the photographs been taken, and then you can open the throttle, put the nose down and get the hell out of it [laughs], and while we was over Duisburg I was also we used to have another job had to do was throwing bundles of Window, you know strips of silver paper, there was a chute in the nose of the aircraft and this stuff came in bundles with a bit of string looped through a brown paper wrapper, pull the string, tore the wrapper and you put it out the chute and it scattered all over and it caused blips on the radar which they couldn’t pick out the aircraft from the rubbish if you like, and I was down in the, down in the nose doing that, and of course er this pilot shouts out he said ‘come and look at this engine’, and I scrambled up and there were flames coming up out of the side of the end [?] port engine, and you remember to do your drill, the first thing you do is shut the fuel off, close the throttle, wait while the engine slows down then you know what I mean by feathering it, you know what I mean by feathering it , but if you don’t feather it the windmill will keep turning, so you have to turn the blades of the air screw so that the edge on to the wind so it’s stop turning and then and only then you can fire, fire extinguishers in the engine cowling, there’s two extinguishers in each engine fastened on the back plate and er you just press a button and er ‘cos there was flames coming out of the engine but we didn’t know what it was at the time and it went out, but we discovered afterwards if it had been petrol it probably wouldn’t have gone out, but a piece of shrapnel had gone through the side of the engine, smashed a hole the size of my palm in the engine casting and of course the oil spilled out and got on the red hot manifold [?] it was the oil that was burning fortunately for us not petrol, so that was our first time out we came back on three engines [laughs]. Just by way of introduction. Switch it off a minute. - Is it ready?
MJ: Yes.
SM: Well on this occasion I was asked to speak at a meeting which was a fundraiser aimed at raising funds for the new spire to go up on Canwick Hill, and I said I was wondering really what I could talk to you about, something I’ve often been asked about was what was it like to fly in a bombers stream at night, I said when you took off of course from your station you circled round over your own base until you had a time to set course, and I said there were several in er problems arose there because you’ve got people going right and people met head on an all this and collisions, so we had a special arrangement where we went from our base to Goole to Crowle to Scunthorpe and then back, all the aircraft in that area went round this big circuit instead of meeting other head on and that kind of thing and when it was your time to set course the navigator would tell you and you’d cut across and er so you set course at the right time, and well on this occasion I’m thinking about we often flew down to Reading and of course if there was no enemy activity over England you could keep your navigation lights on, you’ve got a red and a green light on your wing tip and a tail light that’s all you have got in’it, you don’t have any headlights or anything on car on aircraft, I said to you we flew down to Reading we changed course and then we [coughs], excuse me, we headed towards the coast and as we crossed the coast everybody starts to switch their lights off ‘cos you going in to over enemy territories and over the sea, so as up to then you can see one another ‘cos you’ve got lights on, now it’s all gone dark and it’s dark outside, I said the nearest thing I can give it to you is, you imagine you are driving down a motorway and everybody has their lights on and all of after time they start switching their lights off, first this one and then that one, and you finish up you are still bombing along there at about seventy miles an hour and now you can’t see one another, and I said you’ve got your eyes peeled you are looking in the dark because in an aircraft you you’re going a good deal faster er even with a bomb load on you probably cruising at about hundred sixty five or hundred and seventy mile an hour, and I said you find that er we used to have, I would sit beside the pilot, the pilot’s looking out in the front and over to his wing tip, I’m taking that side from the front round to the wing tip, the gunners are taking a quarter of the sky each at the back and if he is not doing anything else the wireless operator probably stood in the astrodome he’s keeping a look out as well, so you’ve got have five pairs of eyes looking out, and I said you see people sometimes coming when you get to a turning point everybody doesn’t always turn exactly the same you find somebody drifting towards so you have to go up a bit and he goes underneath you and then you turn and then you probably find you are chopping somebody else off, I said it was a bit scary, it was, that’s about as much as I told ‘em [laughs], and that was gonna’ last the rest of the trip wasn’t it, you didn’t put your lights on again until you were back over friendly territory at er it was a bit scary really the er you can imagine if it [unclear]. Anyway I er – I think that’s about it, was that any good? I remember being asked at a meeting some time ago to speak for a short amount of time I was at a loss to know what to talk about and I suddenly thought about to mention what it was like to fly in a column of aircraft at night, there could be three or four hundred aircraft all going to the same place, and er there would be spaced out of course, each aircraft had a time to be over the target and that sort of thing and it really meant that a raid that was gonna’ last er probably twenty minutes the aircraft flying at hundred eighty miles an hour roughly I mean, twenty minutes so that means that you’ve got a string of aircraft probably sixty miles long and that’s [perfectly fine until you get to a turning point when you find that er you’ve got you’ve got no lights on of course and er you might see a little bit of exhaust flame, but they carefully put some covers over the exhaust because it gave your position away to the fighters but also it mean’t so you couldn’t see one another either [laughs], it’s do debatable which is the worst situation, but getting along talking about what it was like at night if we were flying over England you could keep your navigation lights on providing there was no enemy action and I think on one occasion we flew down to Reading and then turned across head towards the coast as we got approached the coast everybody switched their lights off and of course you could see one another with your lights on so now we’re going along, your flying along at about hundred and sixty, hundred and eighty miles an hour and you can’t really see where you’re going, and on top of that you can’t see the other people who are going with you, er all you might get is a flicker of light now and then from something and er and I know it was the case of the pilot looking out the front and across to his wing tip and I’d be doing sitting at the side of him providing I wasn’t doing anything else keeping a look out, the gunners had got a quarter of the sky each er which they’re looking out for aircraft coming up behind you and er[coughs] excuse me – getting lost – I’m sorry I’ve lost my track.
MJ: That’s all right.
SM: The nearest thing I can tell you to flying along in a group of aircraft at night with no lights on, I want you to imagine that you probably driving down a motorway at night and everything is lit up as usual, headlights, sidelights, a bit of street lighting, you imagine what it would be like if suddenly the all the lights went off gradually, first one switches their lights off and then another, and you finish and you are still buzzing along probably sixty seventy miles an hour but now you can’t see one another and it was exactly like that in the air, unless somebody got very close to you, you couldn’t see them you had to keep a really good lookout, and er it was certainly the worst point was when you reached the point where you’re changed direction and you’ve got people cutting across the front of you and you went up a bit and let them go underneath or dived under or went underneath and so you could keep an eye on them and it really was quite exciting, never muind exciting it was ruddy dangerous really wasn’t it [laughs], but er that was what it was like, and er you had everybody provided everybody kept on time it wasn’t too bad but it was still a crush when something like three or four hundred aircraft all going to pass over the target in the space of about twenty minutes and er it really I think that was one of the most dangerous things apart from enemy action of course which er hopefully you’d avoid. – You asked me what I did on VE Day as it happens I was home on leave and of course as you can imagine there was great excitement everywhere and add to that we were very fortunate in Boston that the annual May Fair was there and of course this gave us something to do and I remember me meeting up with some of my friends I mean er a lot of them were away in the Far East and all over the place but there always seemed to be somebody you could meet up with, we’d got a couple of pals and then we got along with some er local people we had also one of my pals who was in the Navy joined us and we came across a I think it was a sergeant in the American Air Army and he seemed to be on his own a bit so we adopted him as well, and you know how it goes on these nights you [unclear] you pick up until you’ve got a little group don’t you and I remember particularly that we er went into one or two of the pubs and of course beer was always short in those days it wasn’t very long before they ran dry we came out of there and went somewhere else, there was a lot of toing and froing in that respect and by the end of the evening we had er several sufficiently to put is in a good humour I’ll put it that way, and I do remember particularly towards the end of the evening we had the sudden idea that we would swap clothes and I think I finished up the day with this American chaps tunic I think he was a sergeant actually, and one of my pals had got his sailors hat on, and we were all mixed up and we were going round, it was really very jovial and thoroughly I think we had a jolly good time and nobody considered the fact that we were improperly dressed or anything [laughs] silly like that it was just a jolly old night and a really memorable occasion, and it’s not the sort of thing that it happens every day very often is it?
MJ: No.
SM: Was that all right?
MJ: Sidney Marshall let me thank you on behalf of the International Bomber Command History Project, this is the end of the recording taken by Michael Jeffries on the date of the 8th May 2015 at three thirty. Thank you very much.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Syd Marshall
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00:44:58 audio recording
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Sound
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Creator
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Mick Jeffery
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-05-08
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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eng
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Pending review
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AMarshallS150508
Description
An account of the resource
Sidney Marshall grew up in Lincolnshire and worked as an agricultural engineer. He volunteered for the Royal Air Force at eighteen and trained as a flight engineer. On his first operation to Duisburg one of his Lancaster's engines was hit by shrapnel and they returned on three engines. Returning from another operation they had to divert and land at a station in Norfolk with the help of FIDO, as the aircraft was nearly out of fuel. He also discusses what it was like to fly at night over Germany as part of a stream of hundreds of aircraft, and his experiences of VE day celebrations in Boston.
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Wales
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Duisburg
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
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1944-10-14
Contributor
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Jackie Simpson
103 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
FIDO
flight engineer
H2S
Halifax
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Mosquito
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF St Athan
recruitment
training
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/505/8403/PDavisSL1501.1.jpg
6e4096e9e41fc641ba50790df8c92499
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/505/8403/ADavisSL151202.1.mp3
19415213e173ef5ffc6150fd7b822399
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Davis, Sidney Lawrence
S L Davis
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Davis, SL
Date
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2015-12-02
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Sidney Davis. He flew operations as a wireless operator with 617, 619 and 9 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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SLD: I’m Laurie Davis. I was a wireless operator in 619 squadron based at Strubby in Lincolnshire. I joined at Lords Cricket Ground at 10 o’clock in the morning on the 17th of May and found out that evening, when I went to St John’s Wood, the billet, that it was the morning that 617 returned from the Dambusters raid which brought back memories at the end of my squadron career but like all air crew we did our training. I was a wireless op and eventually I found myself at Silverstone and we went into a massive room and we were just told that you would come out the other end as a six man crew and this was somewhat flabbergasting but I wandered around and coming towards me was a chap, sergeant, we were all sergeants in those days, with wings up and we looked at one another and I said, ‘Are you with anyone?’ And he said, ‘No.’ And we introduced ourselves. Johnny Taylor from Bristol. And we wandered around and we found a chap, a navigator Jack [?] he came from Bath. We joined up. We thought, well, we’re halfway there and then we saw a chap with his B brevvy up. A bomb aimer. And he was Norman [?] a Londoner. Came from Potters Bar. So we were almost there. We thought we only wanted a couple of gunners now and we saw these two chaps coming along together. Compared with me being just twenty they were mature men to say the least but probably they were only in their mid-thirties but it turned out they were both married. Joe Crossland turned out to be the mid upper gunner. He was from Wakefield and Tommy [Klines] who was the rear gunner, he was from Warrington. So we all joined up finished up the other end of this room with a cup of tea or a coffee and it was then that the skipper as we called him, Johnny, John Taylor, said, ‘We’ll call you Red,’ because at that time I had bright red hair. So the rest of my time with that enjoyable crew was I called Red. We moved on there for a couple of weeks, three weeks I think, on Wellingtons. A noisy, rattly old thing and then we went on to Syerston on to Stirlings. Again, just familiarisation and that and that was then we picked up another member of the crew. An engineer and he came from St Helen’s and I must admit he’s the one fellow that I can’t recall a name all the time and to this day I still try to find out his surname and Christian name. Anyway, we then went on to Lancasters and to conversion and then finished going on to 619 squadron in Strubby at Lincolnshire and we did some flying around for a week and lo and behold we knew that to go on operations the pilot always went with an experienced crew and that caused a bit of sensitive humour because there was always some wit thrown in and Johnny Taylor came back from his office one morning and said, ‘I’m flying tonight with a crew,’ so we joked we’d sort out all his personal possessions and share them out if he didn’t come back because we knew that sometimes that’s what happened, unfortunately. So later in the afternoon I get a call to go to the wireless office to be told that I was flying with him and of course that caused more humour and we went off and with Flying Officer Whitely, a senior there and, believe it or not, it was the longest trip I did of the twelve raids. We went to Dresden. Nine hours twenty minutes and quite something in my memory to see the vastness of the fires as a first time on there because when you finished and the pilot and bomb aimer were doing a run up to the target, about a mile and a half or two miles away, my job was to stand up in the astrodome and keep a lookout above mainly because as I found out on the other raids you saw aircraft on other raids with their bomb doors open above you left and right so interrupting the bomb aimer who was calling to the pilot, ‘Steady. Left. Left. Steady. Left,’ I would say, ‘Johnny, there’s one at 11 o’clock’ or, ‘one at 2 o’clock,’ and he’d try and move over to save the bombs coming down through us. It was successful, that Dresden trip and we came back and we were very privileged and lucky to get through eleven more as a crew.
[machine paused]
MJ: It’s on.
SLD: Having, having experienced, pilot and I, our first raid which was horrendous as has proved over the years with Dresden we settled down to training flights and then successfully got through eleven more. One, one that again focusses in my mind of how lucky you are to be here today is we went to an oil refinery called Harburg just outside of Hamburg and as I experienced on the Dresden raid you flew in some two miles away with a straight course for the bomb aimer and the pilot but on this occasion all I could see over the target was a series of ten and fifteen searchlights and we were a mile or so away but I remember at least three aircraft were caught in the lights, hit by the barrage and exploded into a ball and down they went. And I can think, think now to myself thinking well I hope they don’t pick us up before we’ve got rid of ours but we managed to get through, drop the bombs and come out the other side and that’s the hairiest one I would think apart from the Dresden. The dramatic scenes of fire. But the raids, we were lucky and successful and as I say we did eleven as a crew. Twelve in all and they were great colleagues. When the European war finished we were switched to Waddington. 617. And we were involved in what they called Dodge and Exodus and that was flying POWs, our POWs from Italy, Naples and Bari back to England and we used to take twenty four soldiers out, sitting in the fuselage and fly them out and then do a return trip and the humorous part was, I suppose it’s humorous at our age of twenty, twenty one, I was still not twenty one but on the way back they wanted to go in to the mid upper turret so we used to say, I think we used to say, ‘Don’t go around one side more than twenty times otherwise it’ll unscrew,’ but they loved to and to see the patchwork quilt that was England really. They would go up forward by the navigator, the engineer or the bomb aimer and see it so the joy on their faces was worth every second of those flights, being POWs for years and came back. And then towards the end of ‘45 we’d been waiting to fly out to India as nine, with 9 squadron as part of the Tiger Force intending to bomb Japan from the isle of Okinawa where the Americans had made two runways. One for them and one for us. Anyway, it got postponed night after night. We went for a few drinks into Lincoln, came back and the whole station was alight. We said, ‘What’s happened?’ He said, ‘You’re taking off at 4 o’clock,’ and this was about 12 o’clock [laughs] so we packed all our gear, pouring with rain, and flew off to Tobruk then to Cairo and then Karachi and then down to a place called Digri just outside of Calcutta and we were there for a few months practicing different types of bombing and that with 9 squadron and of course the Japs surrendered so we came back. We landed at St Mawgan and we were given a rail pass and four days to get back to Waddington and that was the end of our crew as a unit flying. I was posted to Woodbridge in Suffolk where I found myself as a warrant officer looking after, with twelve men, three hundred polish chaps who were waiting to go home and I’d only stayed there about six months and I was posted to RAF in Germany, Bad Eilsen and stayed out there for just over a year at Signals Headquarters but to me the experiences that I had before and the company with friends was just a holiday really because I was very active in running and football and cricket and that’s what I toured around with the RAF team and we won the RAF Inter-Services, well the British Forces Inter-Services football match at Cologne stadium. Again, as a highlight because it was the army that was going to win the final. They had every army person there, senior level, we beat them and the whole reception afterwards went down like a lead balloon.
[machine pause]
SLD: Right. Laurie Davis, otherwise Red, from there, from the 619 squadron. When I left the Germany in November ‘47 I’ve kept in touch with various groups through my son and until this year I’ve done six marches at the cenotaph on Armistice Day but this year there was insufficient members to march so they didn’t lay a wreath on behalf of Bomber Command but on the 31st of October I meet up with the squadron and adjoining that group was a bomb aimer, Joe Dutton, he’s treasurer and secretary of 619 and we meet there and have a meal and go over and have a look at the statue and lay a wreath and it always amazes me that people that look at it and say, ‘Why are people raising their hand above their eyes?’ And I said to several, ‘When you came back off a raid three or 4 o’clock in the morning and left your aircraft and waiting in the layby waiting to be picked up to go for debriefing and then you hear in the darkness another flight coming in and you just automatically put your hand up to look, see, ‘Oh I wonder who this has made it back again with us?’ And that’s it and that is the feeling that goes on that you were lucky and you respect the fact that you’ve made it back and I was talking to Joe Dutton only in October that, I think I said to him that if we weren’t going on a raid tonight we’d probably go into the village and have a drink and I said here it is seventy one years ago and we’re lucky to be able to do that. Just mentioning something people often said, ‘Didn’t you feel anything of bombing the targets?’ And I go back to fifteen and a half years of age in Portsmouth when they had the biggest raid, the 10th of January 1941, fire watching with my dad outside the house and experience this whistle and continuous whistle and getting closer and closer. Little did I know that it was a bomb and then everything went black, covered in dust and our house had disappeared and that for me thinks, not apportioning blame but they did start it and Plymouth and London and Portsmouth and Southampton but it’s one of those and I’m very grateful and fortunate to have gone through the friendship and association throughout with that crew. Yeah.
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command I’d like to thank Laurie Davis at his home in Portsmouth for his recording. Otherwise known as Red. May he travel on well. 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
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Interview with Sidney Lawrence Davis
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-12-02
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ADavisSL151202, PDavisSL1501
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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00:15:46 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Laurie Davis trained as a wireless operator and first went to RAF Silverstone where crews were formed. Because of his bright red hair, he was then known as ‘Red’. The crew worked on Wellingtons for a few weeks and then Stirlings at RAF Syerston. They then went on to Lancasters and to conversion and finished going on to 619 Squadron based at RAF Strubby in Lincolnshire. Their first operation was on Dresden, the next operation was to an oil refinery just outside Hamburg. At least three aircraft got caught in the searchlights, were hit by the barrage and exploded into a ball. The crew did twelve operations together. Towards the end of 1945 they flew out to India with 9 Squadron as part of the Tiger Force; with 617 Squadron (RAF Waddington) he took part in operations Dodge and Exodus. Laurie was posted to RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk as a warrant officer. After about six months he was posted in Germany. He then toured round with the RAF team for football and cricket, winning the British Forces Inter-Services football match at Cologne stadium. Since leaving Germany in November 1947 he has kept in touch with various groups and has done six marches at the Cenotaph on Armistice Day. He meets up with the squadron every October when they laid a wreath.
Contributor
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Sue Smith
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Oxfordshire
India
Germany
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
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1945
1947-11
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
619 Squadron
9 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
crewing up
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
RAF Silverstone
RAF Strubby
RAF Syerston
RAF Waddington
RAF Woodbridge
searchlight
sport
Stirling
Tiger force
training
Wellington
wireless operator
-
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/310/3467/ANoyeR151022.1.mp3
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Noye, Rupert
Rupert Newstead Noye
Rupert N Noye
Rupert Noye
R N Noye
R Noye
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history with Rupert Newstead Noye DFC (1923 -2021, 1332761 Royal Air Force).
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-22
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Noye, R
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
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RN: My name is Rupert Noye. I was born in February 1923. When the war started I was, er, sixteen and in 1940, when Churchill formed the LDV, I volunteered for that. We were renamed later Home Guard and it came in useful when I eventually went into the Air Force because we had learned a lot of rifle drill, marching, things like that. And in, after just a few days after my eighteenth birthday I volunteered for the Air Force as a wireless operator air gunner. I was accepted in April ‘41 but then put on deferred service and eventually called up in September ‘41 and, er, went to Blackpool on a s— a radio course, failed it miserably and re-mustered to air gunner. We were posted to Hendon then and at Hendon for about six months and then I was posted onto Scotland to take the gunnery course. After gunnery course we did OTU on Whitleys at Abingdon. When that course was finished we were posted to St [unclear] attached to Coastal Command, where we were doing sweeps over the Atlantic and the Bay of Biscay, and one day we did actually see a submarine and attacked it but we never knew of any definite result. After that we were posted on to Wellingtons, went to Harwell to convert from Whitleys, and we were then to posted 166 Squadron at Kirmington and our pilot disappeared one day and we had another pilot, an Australian, starting his second tour. He was very, very good and, er, we finished our first tour at Kirmington when they converted to Lancasters in September ‘43 and I was posted to Operational Training Unit as an instructor. I was recalled in April ’44 to 12 Squadron at Wickenby to replace a rear gunner who had been injured and they, the crew, had already volunteered to join the Pathfinder Force so I went along with them. We went to Upwood and started operating with Pathfinder Force. You had to do so many marker trips before you got your Pathfinder badge and, er, but due to an incident of — we, the crew was broken up. I stayed at Upwood as a spare gunner and during that time I flew with quite a few different pilots and eventually finished up, er, in about September ‘44 with, er, Tony Hiscock. He was what we called a blind marker. He bombed on radar or dropped the flares on radar and we did quite a few, well we did about nineteen trips together, and the last one was over Hamburg, a big daylight raid just before the end of the — 31st March actually, 1945. After that we were all made redundant, went to various stations and different jobs and I volunteered to stay in the Air Force for another three years and eventually was posted back to Upwood on 148 squadron, again on Lancasters, and I stayed there until I was demobbed in 1949. That’s about it. I was very lucky during my time in Bomber Command. I did three tours of ops and was only once was attacked by a fighter. That was on the 5th of January 1945. We were coming back from Hanover and I saw [bell rings] a fighter, a single engine fighter, approaching from starboard side. I told the skipper and he started to corkscrew but the aircraft did fire at us and we were damaged in the tailplane and the wing. The damage to the wing disabled my turret completely because of the hydraulics were damaged and the — but there was no real serious damage. We got back to base quite happily but we did lose about three hundred-odd gallons of petrol. Then in March ‘45 I was again rather lucky and I was awarded the DFC and Tony Hiscock, the pilot I flew with, he was awarded a bar to his and, er, he was a very good pilot and we got on very well together as a crew, which was one of the biggest things you needed, to be a happy crew. I think that’s about enough. When you flew with Bomber Command you were in a crew and the crew — you were trained as crew and you got, generally speaking, you got on very well together and at times, er, when me as a rear gunner would have given instructions to the pilot, having seen possibly an enemy aircraft, instruct the pilot to dive or corkscrew and he would do that without any hesitatation, although I must say we were — that I was lucky in my time that we didn’t have many times when that was necessary but the crew, the crewing up system was a bit haphazard. When you reported to OTU you were all at one time, a varying number of pilots, wireless operators, navigators, bomb aimers and gunners were put in a big hangar or big room and told to crew up, which seemed very haphazard, but the system seemed to work. Later on, if you went on heavies as a crew, you went to a Heavy, Heavy Conversion Unit and got a mid-upper gunner and a flight engineer and, er, I never had that because as I joined from a place of rest to a place as a rear gunner. I think that’s about it. We got up to about to, er, on our training and we went into these Defiants and the — firstly you couldn’t, not allowed to work the turret until the pilot says so, and so he said, ‘OK.’ So, I turned the turret round and you have to raise the guns first, turn round and looked at the tailplane and there’s this little tiny tailplane behind you and you think, ‘That’s all that’s holding us up.’ [slight laugh] But it wasn’t, we had wings built the right way round and a good engine [slight laugh] but it was funny really because I mean that was the first time the vast majority of us had ever flown when we were on training because, I mean, you didn’t fly much in those days unless you paid five bob ride with Jack Cobham when he came round to a local airfield and you could go and have a short trip for five bob or seven and six or something. Alan Cobham that was. He started off doing refuelling in mid-air didn’t he, er, down in Dorset? But funny ‘cause when we were at Blackpool we went to the Pleasure Gardens there had they had what they used to call in those days the scenic railway and got on this thing and then down in almost vertical swoops and up the other side. And I think that was designed to put you off flying. [laugh]
MJ: Did it?
RN: It didn’t. No, Not really. Not when you got on a bit on bigger aircraft with the rest of the crew, you were alight, you were quite happy because you couldn’t do much with a Whitley [slight laugh]. It was quite good fun.
MJ: People don’t realise it was good fun.
RN: Well, it was as you steadily, as you, after you crewed up and got steadily got to know a bit more about the rest of the crew because, er, that pilot we lost when we got on the squadron because I think he went LMF. And — but he was married and had a young daughter. He was a Welshman and later on the wireless operator went LMF. There must have been something wrong with us because the navigator and the bomb aimer and myself finished the tour eventually on, on Wellingtons. But we had a nice picture of the Queen, didn’t we, for our 60th wedding anniversary? And I must get a frame for that. Put it up. But it’s a nice picture.
MJ: That’s the point. It’s — that’s how it works. That’s how you remember things.
RN: On Pathfinders, um, they were all volunteers from various squadrons but we used to have talks on the squadrons from, er, Hamish Mahaddie who was one of Don Bennett’s leading men and he used to come round trying to talk people into joining PFF and, um, he must have been very successful because they were never short of volunteers.
MJ: Did — what sort of training did you have to do for that?
RN: Well, when we went to PFF you went to Warboys because Warboys was the Navigation Training Unit for Pathfinders and you went there and you did so much, about a week or ten days’ course there, training, mainly training for navigators and then you were sent to the squadron and did the ops and marking as the time came [background noises]. You didn’t mark straight away because you were, weren’t considered experienced enough or trained up to the, the standard that they wanted.
MJ: Did you have to go with another crew then?
RN: No, you had instructor pilots that went with you mainly but, of course, all the navigators’ logs were sort of checked by the navigation officers after you came back from every trip whether it was training or an actual operation. [background noises throughout sentence]
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command I’d like to thank Rupert Noye DFC for his recording on the date of — I forget what it is now, 26th? 27th, ah —
RN: 31st is Saturday.
MJ: I’ve got — I’ll see this is on and stays on. 27th of October 2015. Once again, I thank you again and even though I got the date wrong. 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
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ANoyeR151022
Title
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Interview with Rupert Noye
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:12:40 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending OH summary
Creator
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Mick Jeffery
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-22
Description
An account of the resource
Rupert Noye completed two tours of operations as a rear gunner with 166 and 156 Squadrons.
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
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
Contributor
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Christine Kavanagh
12 Squadron
148 Squadron
156 Squadron
166 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
civil defence
crewing up
Defiant
Distinguished Flying Cross
Home Guard
Lancaster
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Abingdon
RAF Harwell
RAF Hendon
RAF Kirmington
RAF Upwood
RAF Warboys
RAF Wickenby
submarine
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/492/8378/AClarkRR160331.2.mp3
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Clark, Royston
R Clark
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Clark, RR
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Royston Clark (b. 1922). He flew operations as wireless operator with 101 Squadron.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Diana and Royston Clarke 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
(DC) My husband’s name is Robert Royston Clarke and he joined the war in 1940 –
(RC) Yeah
(DC) - and he did all the training and took up flying on Lancasters, eventually he was shot down over Germany. So you can carry on, yeah?
(MJ) Yep.
(RC) I was shot down over, over Germany. What, what else did I do?
(DC) You erm, you were shot down over Berlin, weren’t you?
(RC) I was shot down over Berlin –
(DC) And er, you came down by parachute.
(RC) Yes, yes –
(DC) You thought you were, you thought, you thought you were too light to come down by parachute –
(RC) I did.
(DC) You thought you were going up –
(RC) That’s exactly –
(DC) And you looked up and it was just like going up to heaven. And –
(RC) Yeah
(DC) And you eventually came down to the ground, alright?
(RC) Yes.
(DC) Can you carry on from there?
(RC) When I, when I bailed out of the parachute and after being shot up by the Germans. When I I was parachuting out, I looked up and it looked as if I was coming down -
(DC) [Unclear]
(RC) Coming out the parachute coming down it wasn’t very happy –
(DC) And what happened when you got down?
(RC) What did?
(DC) That the – all these people grabbed you and took you down an air raid shelter, didn’t they?
(RC) Oh yeah. Hmm, they did.
(DC) And they going to cut your limbs, they wanted your clothes. They were arguing who was going to have your clothes.
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) And they were going to cut all your limbs off and throw you in the fire.
(RC) They was going to cut me fingers, me feet off, me toes. Silly bastards.
(DC) [Unclear]
(RC) Silly blighters.
(DC) You got your Mae West on, hadn’t you?
(RC) Yes.
(DC) And it had a light on it that flashed.
(RC) Yes
(DC) And as it flashed it, it flashed all of a sudden for no reason and the, the Germans thought it was a pistol, didn’t they?
(RC) Yes they did.
(DC) And they shouted in the language, ‘Pistol. Pistol’ and they all shot back, and you ran out up the steps as fast as you could and you got under a train in the railway station.
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) Alright?
(RC) Yeah, this er, when they were trying –and what was it? Shouting ‘Pistol, pistol’.
(AC) The people in the air raid shelter that had got you and they were going to throw you in the fire. Didn’t - weren’t they?
(RC) Yes, because the - yeah.
(DC) You got out, under the train, and as you, you got underneath the train, and as you were going along, you were getting cold and wet from the steam and all that sort of thing, and you got up and gradually they pulled in at a station and you sneaked in and you got on top of a carriage, didn’t you?
(RC) That’s right.
(DC) A freight carriage.
(RC) Yes.
(DC) And then as you started off, you were going along and along, and you didn’t realise at the time that you were laying on top of poles, weren’t you? Metal poles.
(RC) That’s right.
(DC) And it was trudging along, you were gradually going down and down in these tru -poles. So you had to get out of that and lay across them the other way. And then, eventually, you, you were on the run a little bit, weren’t you? But eventually you were captured.
(RC) Yeah. The Germans didn’t like me.
(MJ) Why didn’t they like you?
(RC) [Chuckle]. The Germans and I were not very good friends during the war.
(DC) What he did – he er, he got a bicycle and –
(RC) I did.
(DC) Was [unclear] before he was captured, and he was going along and then he saw the troops coming towards him, and he went round the island the wrong way and obviously, they stopped him and found out – he said he was French. And the chap he spoke to him in French and it was the Vichy, Vichy French.
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) And it was the Vichy French uniforms, and they captured him then and you were put in prison after that, weren’t you?
(RC) They didn’t like me.
(DC) You were interviewed by a German officer. Wanted to know all the details of his camp –
(RC) Yes.
(DC) His crew and different things and you wouldn’t tell them anything. And they was - they got guards who come marching in and he said, ‘You will be shot’, and er, and he wouldn’t tell them anything. He said, ‘I should tell you nothing’, he said, ‘If you shoot me now -‘
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) He kept trying to get information out of you, didn’t he?
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) But you wouldn’t give any of the information and –
(RC) They kept asking me questions about this, and I said, ‘Actually I can’t say anything about it’. He - they said, ‘So we’ll shoot ya’. He said, ’If you don’t –‘
(DC) You said, you said, ‘If you were in my place, would you say anything?’ He said, ‘I’m not in your place’. And he says, ‘So we are going to shoot ya’. And then -
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) And then he marched the guards out. He shook his hand, and he says, ‘You are a good solider’. And gave you a cigarette and a drink.
(RC) He did indeed, yes.
(DC) That was one little bit, wasn’t it?
(RC) Yeah. To, to have a cigarette off a bloody German, and the German didn’t like me at all.
(DC) Another incident he was – he, he escaped once or twice but he got a friend. He was on his own most of the time, but he’d got a friend at this point and they were in Poland –
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) And he joined up with the Polish Resistance.
(RC) That’s right.
(DC) And he, he lived at a farm with family and there was a young girl there. I can’t think of her name now – and he – and they were in love, and they were a couple at the time, and then the Germans – something happened. They’d done something and the Germans came round looking for the Polish Resistance, and this girl, they got her and he was shouting, ‘No, No, she’s on the farm, working’, ‘cause they made out they were out working on the farm. And they just shot her in front of him. Lynkska was her name, wasn’t it?
(RC) Yeah, Lynkska.
(DC) And they just shot her in front of him, and the lady from the farm she came out and slapped him round the face and said, ‘Come on, get on with this work. We’ve got so much to do’.
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) And he got, he got away from that, but then you were escaping again and this particular time it was up through Lithuania, Latvia was it?
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) And –
(RC) Lithuania, Latvia yeah.
(DC) And he – there was some people hanging. They were hanging them. I don’t know whether you know this story? With the Latvians, Lithuanians – have you followed it a bit? He, he saw all these people and they were just hanging from poles and trees in the street where the Germans had, had hung them ‘cause they wouldn’t go over to the German side. That was that and before he went into Latvia and Lithuania, you were in with Poland there was all the people on the streets just little kids starving and dying on the streets and all that.
(RC) It was awful. Awful.
(DC) And then the – around about the same time he was going along, escaping, and there was this cattle wagon train and – no, it wasn’t, it was a building this particular time – a building.
(RC) Yep.
(DC) And there were loads of people in it and they were shouting, ‘Mia water, mia water’ or something like that. I don’t know how they say it. ‘Mia sand’.
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) And they wanted water to drink and sand to put on the floor where they’d have to go to the toilet to cover all that up. And they were people that they were taking by train to the, the concentration camps. It was terrible. Then -
(RC) To the concentration camps.
(DC) Then you got so far up – I’m going, I’m getting mixed up with the different stories actually, but they are all stories. He was in Poland and with the Polish Resistance, they wanted to – they heard that [sigh] Hitler was coming along on the train, so he went underneath the bridge and set a explosive to blow his train up. And as it happened, the troop train came along first and they blew the troop train, train up and Hitler got away with it, otherwise you probably wouldn’t be here now if they had known it was you? [laugh].
(RC) No, I had, I had a bloody rough time, but the fact is that I could speak a good language and I –
(DC) Actually he could speak fluent German.
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) That’ll do for now, won’t it?
[Restart of recording]
(RC) I had a - I didn’t have a very good war, but I did – I –
(DC) What made you go into the RAF? You wanted to fly was because you were in Coventry the night it was bombed, weren’t you?
(RC) That’s right,yes.
(DC) With a friend.
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) And straight away you said, ‘I’m not going in the Navy, I’m going in Bomber Command’.
(RC) Yes.
(DC) And you and your friend, you got a little baby out. You thought it was alive, but by the time you got it out it was dead, wasn’t it?
(RC) Yes.
(DC) And that really upset you, and from then on that’s what you said you would do, go in Bomber Command. All right?
(RC) I didn’t have – I mean wars are bad but I didn’t have a very good bloody war. I had a bastard of a war against – the Germans didn’t like me and I certainly didn’t like them and –
(DC) Another incident, you were escaping with your friend at this time, weren’t you? And the, they, the Gestapo were onto you with the dogs.
(RC) Yes.
(DC) So you went into the –
(RC) Bloody Gestapo.
(DC) the river. And you went into the river, didn’t you?
(RC) Yes, I did.
(DC) To hide. And you went in and then you went, kept under water, went up the bank so the dogs couldn’t scent - do your scent. And they never did find you, did they?
(RC) No.
(DC) They kept shooting in the water, but you were up the river more because you’d got up further and under the bank, and the dogs couldn’t scent you ‘cause -
(RC) That’s right
(DC) ‘cause you lost your scent in the water.
(RC) It was awful bloody water.
(DC) And then eventually you, you swam the Rhine, didn’t you?
(RC) Swam the Rhine, yeah.
(DC) With your friend –
(RC) Swam the Rhine, yeah.
(DC) And he said, this friend came from Poland, he said, ‘I can’t swim. I can’t swim –‘ so Roy said, ‘You can’t swim?’ And you come from Hull?’ So he had to have him on his chest, didn’t you?
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) And you swam on your back -
(RC) On me back.
(DC) To get him across.
(RC) On me back.
(DC) And he said, ‘Look, I can’t cope any more’. He said, ‘I can’t get you across’. He did so bad swimming, so hard swimming, and he said, ‘Oh, don’t leave me. Don’t leave me’. So he had another go, and they finally got across, and got the other side of the river and it was the wide part of the river.
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) So, that was a good thing. The only thing is you saw him after the war, didn’t you?
(RC) Yes.
(DC) Then you lost touch. When we went to find him, he’d passed away, hadn’t he? Syd.
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) Yeah.
(RC) I had a –
(DC) It’s sad.
(RC) I didn’t have –
(DC) Another time there was a – this is towards the end of the - he, he, they escaped off of a forced march, and I don’t know whether it was the main one, I really don’t know, but they escaped off a forced march. And then they went into this farm to stay for the night, ‘cause they were so cold, and there was three Germans there and they got the two of you, didn’t they?
(RC) Hmm.
(DC) And they were tie – they were going to tie them against a cartwheels and bayonet them –
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) And so you, you let them get close to you, didn’t you? And when you shouted to Syd, he said, ‘Now!’ And Roy knocked his chap out and Pete – Syd knocked his person out and then you got the third one, didn’t you, and you bayoneted them all.
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) Syd had got dysentery so he had one of the pair of trousers off them.
(MJ) [Chuckles].
(RC) [Chuckles].
(DC) Then you carried on, didn’t you? And you were so cold and you didn’t know what to do, ‘cause Syd was almost dying, wasn’t he?
(RC) He was.
(DC) And –
(RC) Syd Caldwell.
(DC) So –
(RC) He was - he almost died. Sad.
(DC) You were some vehicles, didn’t you?
(RC) Yes.
(DC) And you stopped, you left Syd for a while to recover a bit, he couldn’t get anywhere, could he really? And you went off to see if you could see who it was and it was the 11th Army Division was there.
(RC) Yeah, 11th Army.
(DC) From Lincoln.
(RC) Yeah. The Lincoln -
(DC) And you went up and put your hands up and they – you know – a bit dubious of you, weren’t they? But once they realised you were an escaped prisoner –
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) They made such a fuss. Got you warmed up, hot drink, got – they went and got Syd in –
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) And you travelled with them for so long, didn’t you?
(RC) Yes, I did.
(DC) And he was actually fighting with them as they were travelling. Roy, but they wouldn’t let Syd, would they ‘cause he wasn’t too well and you, he was shooting at them and then all of a sudden a bullet came straight past his ear and just missed ya, didn’t it? And it - oh it got the officer, didn’t it?
(RC) It did.
(DC) Yes.
(RC) It went whizzing by me.
(DC) [Unclear]
(RC) The bullet went right by my ear, which I –
(DC) And you sort of fell on him to make out it got you as well, didn’t ya?
(RC) Yeah, it killed the officer, [indistinct].
(DC) And he’s going round, going to the houses, ‘cause it was a village and there were trying to clear it out. And he went to this one vill – house and an old lady came and she was crying, and she said, ‘My husband is tort’, meaning dead –
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) And Roy went got her some corned beef and bread that they’d made –
(RC) Yes.
(DC) Off the army lads and she was so grateful, wasn’t she? So it wasn’t all wicked. Were you? [Chuckle]
(RC) [Unclear] My mother’s tort is died. Got killed.
(DC) Yeah.
(RC) [Unclear]
(DC) And then you got back to Belgium –
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) And you were flown home in a Lancaster, weren’t you? Yeah.
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) From there. But so much else happened in between, didn’t it?
(RC) Everything –
(DC) It was –
(RC) Everything happens in war, doesn’t it.
(DC) He was, Syd was a little bit impatient, I think, at times.
(RC) Yes he was.
(DC) And you couldn’t be impatient. And he, you were going and he said, ‘No, come on. Let’s go’ They’d come in to all these soldiers and they were all resting. I think they, were they Hitler Youth?
(RC) Was they what?
(DC) Hitler Youth?
(RC) Hitler Youth. Yes, they were.
(DC) When they put the guns up –
(RC) Hitler Youth. That’s what they were.
(DC) They were all resting and in the middle, they’d stacked all the guns up, like this. And Roy went in and talked in Germany, telling them off saying they shouldn’t be messing about like that and all this, and he said, ‘What about these guns here?’ You weren’t sure how to use them, were you?
(RC) No.
(DC) So he got one of them to show him how to use it and he went round the lot and shot the lot.
(RC) Yeah, they showed me how to use the gun, which I could use the gun. And I said, ‘Well, stay still. Stay still’, and I shot the bloody –
(DC) And another incident, they were on a forced march and there was chickens about the yard, so this lad come up to you, didn’t he and you said, ‘There’s some eggs under there’. And you said, ‘No, don’t touch them. They’ll have you if you take those’.
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) And the lad went away and, they, him and Syd grabbed them both. Oh, didn’t ya? But you gave this lad one and you had all the rest with your mates.
(RC) Of course.
(DC) [Laugh].
(RC) What’d ya expect?
(DC) Another one was, they were still on the march and they grabbed a pig, him and Syd.
(RC) [Chuckle]
(DC) And you squealed like anything, and you hit it on the head and all sorts. Couldn’t kill it could you? A little pig. A baby pig.
(RC) Yeah. A little pig.
(DC) And it squealed and you shut it up in the finish anyway. And the farmer had told the Gestapo about this, and they’d got this pig all sorted out and under the potatoes. They’d got potatoes on top of it. And the Gestapo were going round smelling the pots to see if they could smell it, but they never did. Did they?
(RC) No.
(DC) [Laugh]
(RC) No, no I had, I had a awful war. No wars are good.
(DC) [Chuckle]
(RC) But I had a bloody hard war.
(DC) Another time you spoke, Syd was with you, wasn’t he, yes and you were, you went by this, I think it was a farmhouse, I can’t quite remember now, but these Germans were laying asleep very early morning, and one was a officer, and you put your foot on his chest, didn’t you? And he says : ‘Photo, photo’, to try and get a photo out to show you and it was a gun he got, hadn’t he, so you shot him.
(RC) Well I had to.
(DC) He would have been shot.
(RC) He made out he just taking – he said, ‘Photo’, making out to taking the photo and he took a gun out. I mean I gotta shoot him. I mean it’s war, it’s war. War is war and you couldn’t have a photograph to shoot a bloke with you had a proper gun and I shot him which I had to do, but it was, it was just one of those things, and it was war, wasn’t it?
(DC) Hmm.
(RC) My last [indistinct] bloody shot down.
(DC) But that didn’t grieve you so much, did it? It was the 50 pound you’d left at the pub at Ludford Magna for your celebration. [Chuckle] He’s never got over that, have you?
(RC) I haven’t.
(DC) [Chuckle]
(RC) I had 50 pound when I was escaping –
(DC) Well it was all the crew put towards it, didn’t they?
(RC) And left it at the pub. And 50, and that was a lot of money then. It bloody is now. We lost it didn’t we?
(DC) Eh, hmm.
(RC) We had problems.
(MJ) How’d you lose that then?
(RC) Some thieving blighter.
(DC) Sshh.
[Both chuckle]
(DC) You got shot down, so you lost it.
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) Yeah
(RC) The Germans were using real bullets and they shot us down. Rotten sods.
[All laugh]
(DC) Arh dear.
(RC) It was – for me, the war was a bit – wars are not good very good, are they?
(MJ) No, they’re not very good.
(DC) We –
(RC) Eh?
(DC) He suffered terribly with Post, Post Traumatic Stress and after the war he worked on the railways as an accounts clerk, and he would sit at the desk and he’d face the wall – bare, a sort of a wall and all of a sudden a Lancaster came through, straight at him, through this wall. And he went to the doctors and the doctor said, ‘Oh, take a couple of aspirin’. Well, you know, he said just had to put up with it from then on and –
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) Then you had problems, didn’t you? He fell out of bed while trying to bail out of a plane a couple of times, didn’t you? And you were always restless, so the doctor sent you to see Mr Horner, the psychiatrist and he went through everything with him and he said, ‘You know, you shouldn’t be going through this’. He said, ‘You know, what about compensation.’ And, he got, Miss Drawner got him compensation for his stress. Well, well it’s a war, war thing -
(RC) War –
(DC) Monthly you get it. And through Mr Horner, he went into it seriously, ‘cause I - when we were first together he – when we first met - we were going – we – there was nothing to do when we were young, was there? So we sat in this pub and we went in there from work at six, half-past five and we sat in there all night, just the two of us. I had a drink, he had a drink. We never drank our drank, drink at all. We sat there all night, he just opened up and told me everything – more of less everything about the war. And he was saying how he suffered from this stress. Well throughout, you know, we got five children and I was saying, you know, to Miss Drawner, and I said, ‘The thing is –‘ I said : ‘There’s no way that a person can go through what he went through and not suffer stress’. And Mr Horner was writing it, all this down, and it’s since that incident that all this Post Traumatic Stress has come out through Mr Horner bringing it to light, isn’t it?
(RC) Hmm.
(DC) That’s how it’s all come about. Post-Traumatic Stress -
(RC) Yes
(DC) ‘Cause you never heard of it before, did you?
(RC) Never heard of it, no.
(DC) You know and he did a good job. And that was in the, about the mid-80s I think. Mid 80s it would have been.
(RC) Hmm
(DC) Yeah
(RC) What was that Post Traum- [indistinct] –
(DC) When you couldn’t sleep and used to shout out at night, ‘The Germans are coming’. And –
(RC) Oh yeah.
(DC) And things like that and you bailed out of bed to get out of your plane and that sort of thing.
(RC) Post Traumatic –
(DC) You used to do it often.
(RC) Hmm.
(DC) That was a bad time, wasn’t it?
(DC) Hmm.
(RC) Dreaming about the Germans and jumping out of bed, making out – thinking I was shot down when I was in bed. And I was thinking I was shot down and I bail out of bed, and I had a horrible life through that flying. Still here I is.
(DC) [Chuckle]
(RC) And there is – oh – and we love each other, don’t we?
(DC) Course we do.
(RC) And we got a good friend here.
[Indistinct]
(DC) There were coming round ready to land at Ludford Magna, and all of a sudden, they had a German that had followed them back and was shooting. You’d managed to get your wheels didn’t it, and you swivelled round on the on the runway and as they was shooting at the plane. They - a bullet went into the wall of, is it the White Hart opposite?
(RC) Oh yes.
(DC) Opposite it, isn’t it? And they, they recently patched it up in the last few years. But the hole was in the wall the wall for ages. And then the, was it - were they WAAFs that shot it down? WAAFs? They shot the plane down at the –
(RC) The WAAFs. The WAAFs did.
(DC) Yeah and they shot it down, and they were buried in Ludford Cemetery, but I think it’s been – they’ve been moved because we looked, didn’t we? A few years ago and there was nothing there, was there? So, that was another thing. You got away light there, didn’t you?
(RC) I always got – I always got away bloody light.
(DC) [Chuckle]
(RC) The Germans didn’t like me. I didn’t like them and whatever I did, I always got away lightly.
(DC) What when – when you were escaping that time and they said you were the person they were looking for.
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) Yeah, you could speak your German, couldn’t ya? What did- what did they say to ya?
(RC) They said [chuckle], he said [indistinct], what’d he say to me?
(DC) ‘You dis Englander?’
(RC) [Indistinct] ‘Englander’ I said, ‘Englander? Nien. Ich bein Deutsche. Ich bein Deutsche’. I had to make out I was bloody German.
(DC) You said you were an officer, didn’t you?
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) But you’d been wounded.
(RC) Yeah. And I had a bloody hard life. Yeah. I had to speak English and German at the same bloody time –
(DC) And previously you’d had a crash in a Wellington bomber in training and you had a - not through the crash, you’d had also been shot up and you’d had a piece of shrapnel go in your leg –
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) and left a bad scar. So you showed them that where you’d been injured, didn’t you?
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) And they believed you then, didn’t they?
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) They you were a off – a German officer had been injured.
(RC) I had a - I had a very, very hard war. And I had, had to make out I was a bloody German officer when I was killing as many Germans as I could. ‘Ich bien Officer. Yah. Deutschlander’. And then they [chuckle] I had to make so much – bloody hard –making out I was a German officer. It was a hard world, wasn’t it Chook?
(DC) It was. Yes.
(RC) Yeah, but here I is. Here is oh [indistinct] [chuckle].
(MJ) How did you learn German?
(RC) Eh?
(MJ) How did you learn German?
(RC) I learnt German –I learnt German quite easy because when I knew what I was going to go through, I practiced German and I learnt German quite easy. I could speak it quite well, could I?
(DC) You could talk it perfect.
(RC) Eh?
(DC) When we went on holiday in Morocco, a good few years ago, and he was talking to this Moroccan in German, and the Moroccan said to him, ‘You can talk good German but rubbish English’. [Laughter]
(RC) Yeah, yeah. He said, he said, ‘Ich bien Englander’. And they said, ‘Englander?’ I said, ‘Englander. Deutschlander’. So he said, ‘Oh yeah, Deutschlander. Deutschlander is you. Englander is not you. You speak Duetschlander because that’s your life. Englander, you don’t speak it very well’. [Laughter] I – he had a bloody job to – he says –
(DC) Funny.
(RC) He was a German and I could speak fluent German, and I I can always speak [indistinct] fluent English, but he said, ‘Do not, you do not speak English. Nein’. He said, ‘You be Englander. Nien. You be Deutschlander’. And I had to be English, German and I had to be every bugger. I had a bloody hard life, but I enjoyed it. I got over the war. Just about.
(DC) [Chuckle]
(RC) I got about – I got about mark here. Have I got a face - mark on my face?
(DC) No, people don’t notice it now darling.
(RC) No, they don’t. I do they -
(DC) He had all his face smashed up in the – what the – can’t think of the plane now. When you had your plane crash in this country –
(RC) Yeah.
(DC) and your face was smashed, wasn’t it?
(RC) We had a plane crash and my face got all smashed up. And I couldn’t –
(DC) In the Wellington.
(RC) In the Wellington, that’s right. And I could only see out one eye. One bloody eye, but I got over it, didn’t I?
(DC) Hmm.
(RC) I had a very, very hard war but nobody has an easy war, do they?
(DC) No.
(RC) But I did have a hard war ‘cause the Germans didn’t like me. I didn’t like them. And [indistinct] had a hard war, but I’m still alive. And I still got a nice wife, haven’t I?
(DC) I don’t know, am I? Only you can decide that. [chuckle].
(RC) I had a hard war, but no war really is easy.
(DC) No, there shouldn’t be such things as wars. It’s a terrible thing.
(RC) No. They shouldn’t –
(DC) You just make you wonder why there has to be wars. The way people think it’s – it’s just you know. Just impossible really. Everybody’s at war at the moment, aren’t they?
(RC) Picture. You want a picture, don’t ya?
(DC) [Unclear]
(MJ) Yeah.
(DC) I was only 5 when the war started, and I always remember my father standing at the front door watching what was going on, and we used to sometimes, we used to go down in the cellar for protection or under the strong kitchen table or in the air raid shelter. We lived in the country on the Tamworth Road, just outside Sutton Coldfield, and we didn’t see a lot of the war at all really. When the, when the aeroplanes used to go over, my mother never did know, but I was absolutely petrified of the planes, and I’d either run in the house or into the farm buildings. It wasn’t until later I, I remembered things going on and my father said to my mother, ‘Mother, these Coventry’s getting it tonight’. And he said, ‘They’re really getting it badly’, and then a bit later we had a big bomb drop, we had a big garden so it was way away a bit, but we had a big bomb drop at the top of our garden in the field and they came to get it out. They tried pumping it out with water, and all sorts and to my knowledge, that bomb is still there. They couldn’t get it out. Then, the next thing I remember going in to Birmingham and seeing all the houses bombed and all up Aston and all through Birmingham, and all bombed out. It was a terrible sight.
(MJ) On behalf of the International Bomber Command, I would like to thank Warrant Office Royston Clarke and Mrs Diane Clarke for their recording at their home near Lincolnshire on the date of the 31st March 2016 at 4 o clock.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Royston Clarke and Diane Clarke
Creator
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Mick Jeffery
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-03-31
Type
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Sound
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AClarkRR160331, PClarkRR1601, PClarkRR1602
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Format
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00:33:37 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Warrant Officer Robert Royston Clarke joined the Royal Air Force in 1940 and flew in Lancasters.
He joined Bomber Command after seeing the bombing of Coventry.
Robert tells about bailing out and being manhandled by the local inhabitants before escaping and hiding under a train.
He was arrested by the Vichy French and tells of how he was then interviewed by a German Officer.
He escaped on a couple of occasions, linking up with the Polish Resistance on one occasion and hiding from the Gestapo who were searching for him with dogs. He tells of his experiences ‘on the run’.
He then found himself with the 11th Army Division and was flown home from Belguim after the war.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Vivienne Tincombe
animal
bale out
bombing
childhood in wartime
crash
escaping
evading
Lancaster
lynching
Resistance
shelter
shot down
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/582/8851/PHillR1502.2.jpg
e2ce69320fb234668aa6f55c6f445996
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/582/8851/AHillR150707.1.mp3
18183987a7f123d61da22888e1f0bd0b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Hill, Roy
R Hill
Roy Ernest Hill
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Hill, R
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Roy Hill (Royal Air Force). He served as a wireless operator / air gunner with 207 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
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2015-07-07
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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RH: My name is Roy Hill and I was, erm, I’m aged 92, rather ancient for air crew [laughs] but, oh dear, I’ve lost it.
Other: In 1941, when was it?
RH: 1941 I joined up yeah [laughs] and, er, and oh crikey [pause] I was a wireless operator, air gunner on Lancasters and we were shot down over the Ruhr by a German night fighter. It’s rather unusual in as much as I know the name of the chap who shot us down. It was Karl Friedrich Mueller, that was the name of the chap who shot us down flying an ME 109 G, that was the type of aircraft he flew in and but unfortunately I never had the pleasure of meeting him because he died in in 1989 I think, yeah [pause].
MJ: Roy can you tell us who you are.
RH: My name is Roy Hill.
MJ: Yeah.
RH: And, er, I was in the RAF throughout the war.
MJ: Right.
RH: And er, I, I joined up when I was eighteen years old and I was in the RAF right through the war and, er, when we were shot down by Germans and incarcerated in Stalag Luft 1 in Germany. But at the end of the war I was very, very lucky in that so much as I was repatriated to England.
MJ: So Roy you got caught up in a prisoner of war camp, what was that like?
RH: [pause] [laughs] well it’s not a very good subject for conversation is it, because it was, I mean your, your freedom is taken from you and, er, you have to make the best of things while you’re there, but I was lucky because I was only there about six months and then we were, actually we were flown home by the Americans in their Flying Fortresses that’s what the chaps who flew us back and, er, that was of course the beginnings of a new life for me after the war.
MJ: Roy, you were, which squadron were you put into and how did it work through to when you got shot down, did you do long sorties, short ones or
RH: Mostly long.
MJ: And er, did you get to fly with the same crew or?
RJ: Always, yeah.
MJ: So, erm, how did that work, I mean I don’t know anything about this?
RH: No.
MJ: So if you could explain how.
RH: Well we were so very, very fortunate, we had, we got on very well as a crew. I’ll show you pictures. We were a band of brothers really, we er, some of us very young, two, two of the crew were only aged eighteen and I was only nineteen and at the time, of course and we had three of the chaps were in their thirties so we had a quite a wide [pause]
Other: Age range.
RH: age range [laughs].
Other: Then you’ve got Australians as part of the crew?
RH: Yeah we had three Australians in the crew and er I took them all home to see my folks and it was a great, a great occasion.
MJ: So you did everything, dancing, fire-fighting?
RH: Yeah, yeah we did yeah, we lived together, we were
Other: A crew.
RH: A crew, yeah [long pause]
MJ: Roy could you tell me who you are please.
RH: My name is Roy Hill [laughs]
MJ: Yeah
RH: I’m 86 [laughs] get it right. I was a flight lieutenant in the RAF during the war where I was a wireless operator air gunner and we flew in Lancaster’s and we were shot down on our eighteenth mission.
MJ: So how did you get into the RAF in the first place, did you -
RH: Volunteered, yes. When war, when war came I had the option of going flying in the air force so I applied to go in the air force and I was one of a group of four we all tried together to get into the air force and I’m the only survivor of those four. The other three were all killed subsequently.
MJ: Right, erm, did you plan to be a wireless operator or did you want -
RH: No, I, you see this was, this was all in 1941, the year after the Battle of Britain. Of course I wanted to be a pilot, everyone did, but in my case when I volunteered for air crew the only thing I was, I could qualify for was wireless operator air gunner and er that’s what I eventually became.
MJ: Did you erm meet your crew at the squadron or did you….
RH: No, no we got together at a place called Silverstone, that’s where they have the car racing now. It was when we all got together as a crew. It was wonderful really because the RAF they used to put you in an enormous hangar, hundreds of you, hundreds of you, all mixed up and they used they said ‘here we are form yourselves into crews of seven’ and er it’s amazing really it worked, it really worked, we were volunteers all of us and we got together as a team and it was one of those magic moments really.
MJ: So, erm, how many missions did you say you flew together?
RH: Oh well [unclear] we were shot down on our eighteenth mission, yeah.
MJ: So can you remember your first one?
RH: Very well, yeah.
MJ: Could you tell me a little bit about it?
RH: [laughs]
MJ: Because this was your first flight with your own crew I just wondered if you could sort of tell us what it was like please.
RH: It was a very hair-raising, hair-raising experience to be flying towards Germany with a full load of bombs for the first time and er, it was quite something, [laughs] but er, we were. We flew to, the target was Brest in France for that particular mission, and were bombing two battle ships which were there at the time in dock and I mean we obviously we survived much to our own relief [laughs] and er we took it from there. That was our first trip, mmm [pause]. At the end of the war I was a photographer and I was stationed at Farnborough where they have a school of photography. While I was there I had the job of giving orders to no less than a hundred and fifty chaps who were all NCO crew members, who’d, who’d, they’d all ended the war in on the squadrons and they were, all they wanted to do was go home, I’m talking about a hundred and fifty NCO’s and I was the chap in charge of them.
MJ: Yeah.
RH: And er all they wanted to do was, it was demob, they wanted to go home and I had to make it easy for them, which was a heck of a job [laughs]
MJ: So how did you do that?
RH: [laughs] Well, I had to organise games and things, anything that would, to keep them occupied and er it’s not a, it sounds easy but it wasn’t [laughs] when you’ve got a hundred and fifty blokes to please and all they had on their minds was they wanted to go home because their war was all finished and they were ready to, they had been repatriated.
MJ: Why did you have to send them back in sections?
RH: No I had to send them home to their various homes [sighs] not a nice job [laughs] [pause] Home! They wanted to go home, they were, the war was finished and all they wanted to do was go home and that applied to all a hundred and fifty blokes, they were all NCO’s, they had all completed a tour of operations and all wanted, for them the war was over.
MJ: So what did you have to sort out for them so they could go home?
RH: That’s right.
MJ: So what, what sort of things did you have to sort out apart from keeping them happy?
RH: No that was it.
MJ: That was your job, to make sure they -
RH: To keep them occupied until they could go home virtually, yeah, so I did that for some time and er course eventually I finished up at the school of geography and er that was it. My home was Leat [?] so I was able to live at home and er go to work at Farnborough, it was wonderful [laughs] There you go. [pause]
MJ: So you’ve been a prisoner of war?
RH: Yeah, in Germany, Stalag Luft 1, mmm.
MJ: Did you get caught straight away or did you have a bit of a run around first?
RH: No I was, I was free for a couple of days that’s all, then they caught up with me [pause]
MJ: How did they catch up with you, just in the wrong place at the right time or
RH: Me I was sitting in the forest going along and then all of a sudden a chap said halt, halt as the Germans do [laughs] and that was when my war ended virtually. [pause] mmm.
MJ: Were any of your other crew caught with you or?
RH: Yeah they were, no they were, we were all separated, we all went out various ways, I did, I did meet the pilot and the bomb aimer and the navigator in the Stalag, they finished up there in, in in the Stalag and others who were killed.
MJ: Oh.
RH: Mmm.
MJ: When you were incarcerated how did you keep yourself busy, like you said when the crews were demobbed you had to keep them busy, how did you keep yourself busy while you were incarcerated?
Other: Writing poetry.
RH: Ah, you see in those days I could write, I used to love to write, wrote all sorts of stuff but it’s all gone I can no longer write.
Other: It’s only because of his hand, I’ve just thought, in the book isn’t there some of your poems in it?
RH: No, that’s
Other: Towards the end [pause] everything’s in here really what you want to know about Roy, there he is prisoner of war with his number on him and everything. Would you like your cup of tea now? [pause]
RH: Hello my name is Roy Hill, I was a flight lieutenant in the RAF during the war and er I joined up in 1941. I had hoped to fly in the Battle of Britain but that was all over then. It, the Battle of Britain was fought in 1940 and I was, I just missed out on that one, and I joined up in 1941 the year after and er, of course I had subsequently had quite a long time in the Air Force right through the war until the end of the war when I was a photographic officer in the at the school of photography in Farnborough in Hampshire and it was, there, it was, sorry.
Other: That’s alright.
MJ: On behalf of International Bomber Command Digital Archive Unit, I would like to thank Roy Hill at his home at Woodpecker Cottage, for his recording on the 7th July 2015. Many thanks.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Roy Hill
Creator
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Mick Jeffery
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-07
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Sound
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AHillR150707
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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00:19:28 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Roy Hill joined the RAF wanting to be a pilot but became a wireless operator air gunner. On his eighteenth operation in a Lancaster flying over the Ruhr he was shot down by a German night fighter. He was captured and incarcerated in Stalag Luft 1 for about six months. He wrote poetry whilst he was a prisoner of war. He was repatriated by Americans and flown home in a Flying Fortress. At the end of the war he served as a photographic officer and was in charge of NCOs waiting to be demobbed.
Contributor
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Carron Moss
Carolyn Emery
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
England--Northamptonshire
Germany--Barth
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1944
1945
aircrew
crewing up
Lancaster
Me 109
prisoner of war
RAF Silverstone
shot down
Stalag Luft 1
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/298/3455/PMcClementsR15020003.1.jpg
cbd931dca507c3c834e1473ae2fbdbbe
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/298/3455/AMcClementsRAG150921.1.mp3
116852866337479117c915293c4fb279
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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McClements, Robert
Robert McClements
R McClements
Description
An account of the resource
17 items. Two oral history interviews with Robert McClements (-2022, 1796607 Royal Air Force) and one with his wife, Iris McClements (b. 1926). The collection also contains his log book, service documents, photographs and a model of his Halifax. He completed a tour of operations as a mid-upper gunner with 10 Squadron from RAF Melbourne. The log book belonging to L Kirrage, his flight engineer, is also included.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Robert McClements and catalogued by Barry Hunter and David Leitch.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-09-21
2015-10-21
2018-02-25
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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McClements, R
Requires
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1943: Volunteered for the RAF
19 December 1943 -11 February 1944: RAF Pembrey, No.1 AGS, flying Anson aircraft
23 April 1944 - 20 May 1944: RAF Lossiemouth, No. 20 OTU, Flying Gunnery Flight, flying Wellington aircraft
8 July 1944 - 23 July 1944: 1658 RAF Ricall, 1658 HCU, flying Halifax aircraft
30 July 1944 - 18 February 1945: RAF Melbourne, 10 Squadron, flying Halifax aircraft
July 1944 - February 1945: served on 10 Sqn as a Flight Sergeant Air gunner.
3 March 1947: RAF Kirkham, Released from Service, having attained the rank of Temporary Warrant Officer
Chris Cann
Robert McClements was born on 6 December 1924, in Belfast. He left school at the age of 14 and worked various jobs to help support his family. While there was no conscription in Northern Ireland, in late 1943 while working at the Harland and Wolff shipyard he volunteered to join the RAF, as aircrew.
Following basic training at RAF Bridlington and then initial gunnery training at RAF Bridgnorth, he was posted to RAF Pembry to join No 1 AGS and train as an air gunner. Air gunners course · IBCC Digital Archive (lincoln.ac.uk)
He completed the gunnery course in February 1944 and was posted to No 20 OTU at RAF Lossiemouth and then on to 1658 HCU, at RAF Ricall, to train on Halifax aircraft. In July 1944, with all training finally completed, he began his operational flying with 10 Squadron at RAF Melbourne flying Halifax aircraft.
His early operational trips passed without incident, but on one operation the aircraft experienced heavy icing, causing it to lose all lift and go into an uncontrolled descent. With the aircraft going straight down the order to ‘Bale out’ was given, Robert managed to get out of his gunner position, but then found himself forced to the floor unable to move. In the cockpit, the pilot engaged full power and he and his engineer battled with the control column to pull the aircraft out of its dive. The flight home passed uneventfully although the engineer reported that the aircraft never ever flew again.
Throughout the rest of his tour there were other eventful sorties. On one, two of the bombs ‘hung up’ and they had to release them from the carrier units using an axe. On another, the bomb aimer forgot to press the bomb-release button so they had to go around again. Luck was again on his side when, on a night raid, another aircraft on a turning point swung across the top of his Halifax, narrowly missing the top of his gun turret. Robert went on to complete a full operational flying tour of 38 operational sorties over Belgium, France and Germany amassing over 200 flying hours. PMcClementsR1503.2.jpg (1600×1299) (lincoln.ac.uk)
After his operational tour, Robert was released from flying duties. He remained at RAF Melbourne and trained as a Unit Fire Officer and he and his flight engineer took charge of the station warrant officer’s office. During a routine site inspection, he met a German prisoner of war who was making a wooden model of a Catalina aircraft for the officers’ mess. Robert asked him to make a model of his Halifax aircraft for him. The aircraft, remarkable in its detail, has been a treasured memento of his time served in the RAF. Robert McClements and his model of Halifax ZA-V · IBCC Digital Archive (lincoln.ac.uk)
Robert met his future wife, Iris, on a visit to the Observer Corp HQ at York where she was a serving member. He left the RAF in 1947 having attained the rank of Temporary Warrant Officer. He and Iris settled in England where they worked with her father, in York. Latterly, he and Iris set up their own business in Wakefield selling motor vehicles.
Chris Cann
Iris McClements (nee Dobson) remembers, at the age of 11, being issued with a gas mask before the war had started. When she was about 13 years of age, her family moved to Eldwick to avoid the bombs.
She was a member of the Home Guard before joining the Women’s Junior Air Corp where she attained the rank of sergeant. She recalled wearing a grey uniform, being issued with a bucket, stirrup pump and helmet for fire watching and learning the theory of the internal combustion engine.
In 1944, she passed the entrance exam to join the Royal Observer Corps and was based in York, as a plotter. Her role was to listen to information from the spotters via headphones and place it on to the plotting table. This included the number of aircraft, direction of travel, height, and whether they were friendly or hostile. This was to give warning of enemy operations or to track operations heading to Germany. She worked eight-hour shifts which changed each week. The spotters in the outposts were also watching for aircraft that were going to crash-land, so that the crash sites could be identified. Iris visited a couple of these sites. She met her husband to be, Robert, on one of his visits to the Royal Observer Corp HQ in York.
She lived on an ex-World War One motor launch in York that the family had used for recreation. When off duty she would often travel into York to go dancing, swimming and to the cinema.
After the war she and Robert worked with her father in the motor trade. She then set up business with Robert in Wakefield.
Chris Cann
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
My name is Robert McClements. I volunteered for the Royal Air Force at nineteen. I trained and finished up at Melbourne with 10 Squadron, on Halifaxes. Two points stand out in my memory which was nothing to the do with the Germans. But one was on a turning point. I believe it were Reading, during a night raid, we had another aircraft. I’m not sure whether it was a Halifax or a Lanc swung across the top of us on a turning point. Missing the top of my turret by six inches. This was rather upsetting at the time [laughs] Needless to say we got over it. The second point was coming back from a raid, I don’t know where, we iced up. And of course that means the aircraft loses flying direction and goes straight down. Our pilot seemed to have the presence of mind to drop us through to full power and dive down rather than fall down and consequently he pulled us out of the position we were in and get straightened up and flew home. That was worst part of the trip. During the bombing runs we had a few nervous squeaks one way or another with mainly with other bombs falling down over us and searchlights. And we were trapped in searchlights on two occasions. And fortunately, fortunately we got out. The rest of the trips were reasonably easy apart from the usual ack-ack and what have you. And night fighters. Cut it there.
[recording paused]
RM: My wife keeps talking about the time I was on leave and when we got back our kite had been on a trip with some, another crew obviously and didn’t come back. Consequently we got another aircraft. But my wife seems to worry that it was our aircraft that was missing.
IM: No. You didn’t like to go to another aircraft.
RM: Well when we were flying V Victor we were flying it. That was alright. But once it went missing. What? We got another one. Another V Victor. So it made no difference.
IM: It was like having an old car.
RM: No. No. No.
IM: To keep you happy.
RM: Not when you’re flying aeroplanes in a bombing raid. They’re all made for a job. There’s no comfort. That’s it. You get what you have and you do the best with it. That’s it. Didn’t want to do that [laughs]
[recording paused]
RM: When I finished the tour which was thirty eight trips I was invited out to the Observer Corps Headquarters at York to see how they handled the aircraft. That’s where I met my wife. Consequently, I came back to York after I’d finished my tour from Ireland and went to work for her father. Go on then. I’m going to go on as long as you want me to go. I’m not going to start Paisley. I’m not going to go Paisley [laughs]
MJ: Go on.
RM: Go on. Consequently, after I’d finished flying my engineer, or our engineer and the other gunner Reg Webb were kept back at Melbourne to do all sorts of jobs. Engineer was sent to the warrant officer’s office. And I was there for a while. And consequently I was sent on a fire officer’s course and came back from that after six weeks as a fully blown fire officer. For what was left of Melbourne which was slowly being closed down now. The war had more or less finished within reason. I met my wife in York who consequently I married and helped her father to start a business in York which was mainly concerned with motorcycles. And my wife spent a bit of time running around the country on a motorbike buying and selling. And that was the finish of the air force for me and consequently the end of the war. Thank you.
On behalf of the International Bomber Command I’d like to thank Robert McClements on the 21st of September 2015 for his recording for the Bomber Command Archives. And once again I thank him with great pleasure.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AMcClementsRAG150921
Title
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Interview with Robert McClements. One
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:05:25 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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Mick Jeffery
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-21
Description
An account of the resource
Robert McClements flew operations as a mid upper gunner with 10 Squadron.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Contributor
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Julie Williams
10 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
Halifax
RAF Melbourne
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/657/8930/AWorralJR150603.2.mp3
1b1651498a905ee755fa3b740b1b30f5
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Worral, Ray
Joseph Raymond Worral
J R Worral
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Worral, JR
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flying Officer Ray Worral (Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer with 44 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
My name is Raymond Worral, I am usually known as Ray and I joined the RAF in nineteen forty three as an Aircrew Flight Engineer. Sorry do you want more information about my name?
MJ. No, just that you are doing and interview for the Bomber Command thing .
RW. I am doing this recording for the Bomber Command, Historical Centre is it? And em em this is what my career is. I em joined the RAF in nineteen forty three, I was an Aircrew Flight Engineer, I volunteered, and I em I went on training. I joined up at the RAF Receiving Centre in January nineteen forty three and from there on I began my training as an Aircrew Flight Engineer. I stayed at the receiving centre for a few weeks, then after that I was posted to an ITW Initial Training Centre, Initial Training Wing at Bridlington in Yorkshire, where I stayed for about three months I think. From January, from the end of January until the end of March and we were kept busy at the Centre there. Square bashing em on parade, learning all the things we needed to know about, basic morse code, we had to know about the Aircrew discipline procedure and everything to do with the RAF. We had a lot of marching up and down the front, it was in cold weather. We were on parade at half past six in the morning on the front at Bridlington towards the end of January in freezing cold weather and then we marched about and did some square bashing and then we went to have our breakfast. Then after breakfast we were on parade again and then we went on various courses which we were told about in em, various places in Bridlington. That continued for about three months I think, em, I should think until the end[pause]. I should think it was till about the end eh, probably lasted about six weeks, so that would take me till about April, when I went down to St Athen on the Flight Engineers training course. This was all ground training and we learned all about aero engines. There was a big RAF Station there, a very big RAF Station in St Athen in South Wales. We went to lectures every morning in the workshops and we learned all about the construction of an aircraft, the framework and the engines. We learned particularly because I was designated to go onto Lancaster aircraft, we learned about the Lancaster. We learned all about the engines and all about the framework. That course lasted for about nine months I think. In the middle of it we were sent on a week’s course to Manchester to the Manchester factory at Ringway just outside Manchester to have a weeks course there. We were talked to by the people who actually worked on the aircraft. After about nine months on the course we were given a test and we graduated in November about the middle of November nineteen forty three.
From there I was posted to RAF Scampton which was a waiting centre and em, eventually I was posted to em, I think it was, Winthorpe which was a Lancaster Conversion Unit. There I met the rest of the Crew, the rest of the Crew had completed their training just as I had completed mine. The Crew of a Lancaster consisted of the Pilot, the Flight Engineer, the Navigator, the Bomb Aimer, Rear Gunner, Mid Upper Gunner and the Wireless Operator. We met in the Mess at Winthorpe and got to know people. Eventually we got together in a room and we got ourselves Crewed up. The others, apart from me had already been Crewed up and already done some training so we sat about and talked to each other and one of the Pilots came up to me and asked if I would like to join his Crew. He seemed a nice sensible sort of Chap so I said yes I would like to join his Crew and so I came to join his Crew. He was an Australian and I met the other members of his crew, the Navigator, an Australian, the Bomb Aimer and Australian and then the em, Wireless Operator, two Gunners were Englishmen and then we started out training at the Conversion Unit at Winthorpe. I think we were there for about two months doing cross country flights, practice bombing flights and em, all the other things we needed to do and getting to know the Crew. After we had done about two months, probably a bit more, probably about ten weeks we were then posted to what they called an RAF Finishing School, sorry a Lancaster Finishing School which was at RAF Syerston near Nottingham. Posted together from the time we were crewed up at Winthorpe we stuck together as a Crew completely. Did everything together even very often went out together to the Pub together and that sort of thing. So we left Winthorpe and went to the RAF Finishing, Lancaster Finishing School which was at Syerston near Nottingham. Continued out training there, special training as applied to a Lancaster Bomber. We had about six weeks there probably a bit more where as a Crew we were posted to the RAF Station at Dunholme Lodge, just outside Lincoln. Dunholme Lodge to 44 Squadron, Bomber Command it was a Rhodesian Squadron in those days and it was RAF, 5 Group Bomber Command. We joined this Squadron as a Crew, all in the same bus, we went in, and we went into the Mess, we were all Sergeants and we went into the Mess and em, It was just before lunchtime on a day before February, I forget what day it was. About the ninth of February and we got into the Mess. I can remember what happened then, it was the day after the well know Nurenberg Raid and eh,the Squadron had been out on that Raid the night before and there had been very heavy losses. When we got into the Mess they were all very, all the people there were silent and quiet and not very friendly and rather gloomy because there had been serious losses. It was not a very bright start to our joining an Operational Squadron. Anyway we had to continue and it was probably I should think, a month to six weeks until we had to do an Operation. We continued to practice doing cross country flights, air tests, bombing runs out on the North Sea off Skegness off the Coast there and a large number of cross country flights day time and night time.
Then at the beginning of April we got our first Operation to do. We were [Pause] I’ve got plenty of notes, I just need to look them up.[long pause] I’m sorry, Winthorpe I was sent to to meet up with the Crew, or did I say it was?On the thirty first of March nineteen forty four and over the following five months em. We entered the Sergeants Mess the atmosphere was cold and unfriendly, little was said. When the one o’clock news came on the Radio we discovered why people were so quiet and so unfriendly because the Squadron had taken part the previous night in the Nurenberg Raid.One of the Bomber Command disasters when seven hundred and ninety five aircraft were dispatched and ninety four were shot down and many others severely damaged. And em, had serious losses and em[pause].
We were briefed for our first Operation. It was a month or six weeks of non Operational flying at this stage and then on the twenty sixth of April we were briefed for our first Operational Target which was Swinefurt in Germany. We went to our briefing and we were told all about what would happen over, on the flight.Went through all our checks. I as Flight Engineer went through a detailed selection of checks. There was the aircraft, before we moved out and em straight and level to the Target and then we dropped our bombs and came back, so we had quite a good trip.
Then two nights later we went on a Bombing Trip to Oslo, in Norway. It was a long trip but it was quite a safe trip because we were flying over firstly the sea. Then on the night of the nineteenth of May nineteen forty four, I came back from leave we’d been on leave, and I came back and we went on a Bombing Trip to Amiens in France, then to on the twenty, no the twenty second of May we were off to Kiel in Kiel Bay to drop mines. Know as a Gardening Operation and so we carried on through our tour. We did twenty five trips successfully. Slight damage on some occasions, we got back. We had done twenty five trips, which was pretty well a record for the Squadron. The average losses, the crews lasted about ten trips so we done pretty well. Then we were briefed to go to Stuttgart on the night of the twenty fifth,twenty sixth of July Nineteen Forty Four. We set off for Stuttgart, it’s a big industrial town in Germany and our target was the Mercedes works, aircraft works in the centre of Stuttgart. We had been the night before, there were heavy losses but the raid had not been a success so when we set off on the twenty fourth, twenty fifth July, we were, I was going to say something. We were on our second trip in twenty four hours back to Stuttgart. On this trip we set off and normally we would fly over the Coast, the French Coast across the anti aircraft defences. All along that Coast was absolutely deadly and we always lost an awful lot of aircraft crossing the Coast. On this particular occasion the Allies had already, as I say this was the twenty fifth, twenty sixth of July,by then the Allies had landed in Normandy and they had built a Bridgehead in Normandy. So we didn’t have to cross the Coast on this particular occasion we were able to go over the Normandy Peninsula and miss out the anti aircraft defences all along the Coast. So we able to go over the Normandy Peninsula and missed out the anti aircraft defences all along the Coast. So we crossed over onto the Normandy Peninsula, flew up the Normandy Peninsula and then turned because we were flying over allied territory for about half and hour or so and we turned and headed for Stuttgart, unfortunately on the way to Stuttgart we were hit, bombs from another aircraft, so the Rear Gunner said. Aircraft got out of control, Skipper said “bale out,” we had to bale out, we had proper procedure for bailing out. The Bomb Aimer was first, he took the hatch of and em, em, baled out into space, then the Flight Engineer, that was me and then the Navigator and finally the Pilot and the Bombers and Radio Operator baled out from the rear, the rear exit. So we got the Bomber, the Pilot decided when we were hit, he asked me to help him with the flying controls. The Control Column was jammed, two of us pulling of it, pulling on it didn’t have any effect, he decided to bale out and it is a good job he did. If he had taken another thirty seconds to bale out we would have all been killed, he made up his mind very quickly and gave us the order to bale out. I went down into the Bomb Nose, saw the Bomb Aimer bale out, I baled out and fortunately my parachute worked and I landed, I don’t know, might have been about ten thousand, I don’t know between eight and five thousand feet when I baled out. When I left the cockpit I could see the altimeter and it was at about seven thousand feet, so it was probably about five thousand feet by the time I got down into the Bomb Bay, and em I saw the Bomb Aimer bale out into space and I hesitated a bit, I got scared, fortunately the Navigator came down behind me and said “bloody well get a move on” and gave me a push, so I had no choice and baled out. So I reckon it was about five thousand feet when I baled out, parachute opened thank God and I landed in Enemy Territory. I landed in a ploughed field, and em, I was in the parachute for a few minutes and em, landed in a ploughed field. I was lucky because it was fairly soft. I didn’t hurt myself. There was a road running alongside the field if I had landed there I might have broken a leg or back or whatever, so I was lucky. I picked myself up [garbled] and I was ok, I had a few bruises and scratches and that was it. So I hid my parachute as a drill, first of all em, first of all, the parachute is a tremendous thing on the ground and there was a gust of wind and it caught my parachute, a parachute as big as an English Bowling Green, filled with air, pulled me right across this field and I hang onto this parachute, it pulled me right across this field, got very grazed across one side of my face and when the wind dropped I managed to haul the parachute in and collected it all up and did as I was told to do, hide it, which was to hide it in a ditch. Then I, I well before that I had to of course hit the button which released the harness, the harness and the parachute went into the ditch.Then I was left, there I was in enemy territory all on my own, don’t know where the others had got to, very scary but I done as I was told and run off as fast as I could. Had to run off as fast as I could because I’m afraid you would do nothing. It had been found that after you had gone through that experience when you landed and did nothing you didn’t do anything until someone came and found you, until they collected you and you finished up as a Prisoner of War. So act quickly and get moving, so having buried my parachute I ran as fast as I could, don’t worry where you are going to, just get away from the scene of the crash, from the scene of where you dropped as quickly as you can. If someone has seen the parachute come down and they get there, you are some distance away and you have a chance of hiding. So I ran, I was fairly fit then, ran for nearly an hour I think and I was eventually tired, got down and began to walk. All very quiet and eventually I came to a little village and em there was a church in the village. I was fairly tired then I thought “I will get into the church if its open and collect my thoughts” So it was well after midnight I should think, don’t know what the time would be. Think it was about midnight when we were hit actually, it would probably be about one o’clock in the morning. I walked into this church and the door was open, so I went in and sat on a pew and collected my thoughts and rested, rested for about half and hour and then I thought “I had better get away.” I moved out and continued my walk right through the night and em, er just walked and then as dawn, well just before dawn I heard the sound as I was walking back, walking the sound of heavy bombers. They must have been our bomber squadrons going back having bombed Stuttgart. Anyway I continued walking and as it came to daylight I crept under a hedge and fell asleep er, Daylight came and I thought I had better hide myself. I hid under this hedge on the hard ground and er, early dawn just come daylight. I fell asleep, I was very comfortable and I slept until about one o’clock. I remember waking up at about one o’clock looking at my watch, I was woken up, slept all that time. When I woke up I could hear voices in the field next to me, so I didn’t show myself, I thought they might not be friendly. So I stayed where I was wondering what to do. I thought that the best thing I could do was to stay here hidden all day and when it gets dark will continue on some sort of a journey. So I lay all day under the hedge, could hear these voices in the field and then when it was beginning, it was late afternoon, beginning to get a bit dark and the people left working in the field. So before it got dark I thought well, “it’s no use staying under the hedge here, I’ve got my escape kit, got my escape map I have no idea where I am but I might be able to find it with a map. So I will get out before it gets dark and see if I can have a look at my map.” So I, before it got dark I walked out, the people in the fields had stopped working and gone home. When I got onto the road, just a narrow country lane I walked along and there were a few people about and I walked along and to my surprise, to my great surprise they took no notice of me. Well what was I wearing at this stage? Well I was wearing my Battle Dress over the top part of the Battle Dress I had a linen, sort of a brown linen jacket which you could plug into the aircraft and it was electrically heated but I didn’t need to use it, but I thought I would just use it as something to wear in the aircraft. It covered me from the hip upwards so it was, it covered the top part of my Battle Dress and the only bit of my Battle Dress that was showing was my collar and tie. But in those days the French farmers wore a grey shirt with a black tie invariably, so that was ok. My Battle Dress trousers well they were like a pair of scruffy overalls. The boots, the flying boots were made that so that you could cut the fitting off round the ankle, through the leg part away and to all intents and purposes it was just like an ordinary shoe. Very clever I thought the Air Force were pretty good at doing these things. I passed people looking like that and they took no notice of me, in fact I thought I heard one say “alez mons” I think that’s German, I think they thought I was a stray German that got in. They took no notice of me, I was very impressed, I thought this is good news. So I walked in, walked in, kept walking and passed people and it was ok. Then I came to a village, there were a few people in the village, and em and I thought well. Another thing is as I walked into the village there was a sign post, what a wonderful give away. I remember thinking at the beginning of the War when we had the invasion scare in nineteen forty all our sign posts and and everywhere, all the names of the villages were sealed off. If you went into a village and it had Fulford Post Office on it, Fulford was crossed out because they were scared of German Parachutes’ in nineteen forty four we didn’t want to give them any help and of course the Germans didn’t have time to do this during the War. So there were these sign posts, so I thought “right I will have a look at this sign post and see where it is pointing to.” I picked one name and see if I can find it on the map. So I walked through the village and got into a quiet field, got the map out, and sure enough this village Langur was marked on the escape map, pretty good. So I could see where I was and roughly where I wanted to go, so em, er I had done fairly well so far and so I thought I will continue to walk. I em, I felt as it got dark as it began to get dark I felt rather sick, I think it was reaction, I felt rather weak and so I saw a haystack and I crawled into it and I spent that night in the haystack. I was quite comfortable and woke up at the break of dawn next morning very, very cold and I decided to walk on. So I got out of the haystack and I must say I hadn’t had anything to eat since the time we had left Dunholme Lodge in Lincolnshire I had nothing to eat. I couldn’t do anything, there was an escape kit, very well done but I didn’t but I hadn’t, I didn’t there were things in it, chocolate, bars of chocolate, sugar sweets all that sort of thing. I got out of the haystack and I walked on The next period of excitement was when I, it was early morning and I came to another village and there was a road leading through it, all was quiet, very early in the morning. So I thought em, well I have two choices, I don’t want to be seen in the village so I will walk round it but it was a long way round. I wanted to conserve time and energy, I’ll risk it I’ll walk through the main village street, there is nobody about. So I began to walk through the village street, when it got to the cross roads in the centre to my horror I heard the sound of very heavy vehicles and I thought to myself “this isn’t good news” [Laugh]. One thing it could be; Germans. So I thought “well” I turned round and a few yards behind me was a walled garden with a gate so I managed to run like mad and jump into a bush inside that gate. I looked out from the bush and eh em, no sooner had a got there than one big German lorry packed with troops, came up to the cross roads, turned right in the direction I had wanted to go and it was followed by about five others all packed with German troops so I’d only just missed being caught so I had been very lucky. When they’d gone and disappeared I thought best thing now is to get out of this garden and get moving on my way. I didn’t know if the occupant of the farmhouse or whatever were friendly or not. So being a pessimist I thought he will probably be. Oh they were at great risk these civilians I mean if they were help to them they would get shot. So em there was a great temptation to hand us over to the Germans so I walked on through the village. I got to the other side of the village and to my horror I saw, I heard the sound of heavy lorries again. I thought “goodness me not again” well again I was lucky, there was a farm building across the fields and no hedges, so I run like mad and hid behind this farm building. When I looked round it I could see there were several lorries, I think they were the same ones, there were no troops in them this time. There was a driver, machine gunner on the running board, on the running the board the chap had a machine gun pointing to the sky and there was the driver, and em. I saw this from behind this farmhouse that I’d reached and they hadn’t seen me, there was about another four or five of them. They disappeared and I walked back onto the road. Until this day I cannot understand why they did not see me running across that field to the farmhouse, it was just one of those miracles. So I continued walking and em, it was quite amazing that they did not see me. I can only think that the driver had his eyes on the road, machine gunner was looking up to the sky, don’t forget there were RAF patrols flying over that area at that time of the War and em they might have been straffed, so I think they, he was watching the sky and just didn’t see me. So I walked on, I continued my journey getting hungrier and very tired and I passed other people and they did not take any notice of me, I thought this is marvellous and then em. The next worrying part was having walked most of the morning, I came up to a tee junction and the tee junction was about quarter of a mile or more ahead of me. Everything was quiet except that up to this tee junction came a Vaux wagon camouflaged German army car. I could see it had four soldiers in it and when it turns and goes in the opposite direction I’ll be lucky. If it turns right and comes towards me I am bound to be caught. So no chance to hide, they could see me from where they were. Just carried on walking, put my hands in my pockets, looked miserable, kept my eyes on the road. We were warned in escape drill don’t make eye to eye contact and this car came towards me, I thought the games up, comes to me, if I had put my hand out I could have touched it, it was travelling at twenty five thirty miles per hour and it came past me, waiting for it, expecting it to stop to come and get me. Didn’t stop, didn’t dare look round, looked round about ten minutes later, the car was gone. How they missed me I can’t imagine, I just can’t imagine, it was absolutely wonderful they just didn’t see me. I can’t believe it now when I look back on it all it was tremendous. So I carried on walking. The more I think of it these incidents are absolutely incredible. I continued walking until about lunchtime as far as it would be. I was getting rather desperate actually and I was walking along, em, just outside another village when a lad on a bicycle passed me, “Oh dear” I thought “what is he going to do?” Take no notice of him again, but he passed me and I heard him get off his bicycle and stop, I continued walking but I heard him call, so I thought “I have no alternative, I can’t run now” so I went over to him, he said “are you RAF” I said “yes” he said “well I can help you, follow me.” So I followed him, he took me off the road and led me up a bridle path and said “hide under this hedge, I’m coming back, I’m going to get help for you.” So again I lay under the hedge and waited, not quite sure what was going to happen and em, after about half an hour. Anyway it might be interesting to say why he say me when others didn’t and this was because I was foolish enough to be chewing some gum. The French didn’t get chewing gum during the War we got it in our escape packs and we were given it when we went out on a Bombing Mission, so we had chewing gum and I shouldn’t have been chewing it, he saw me, gave it away, gave the game away. So I waited and then a car, after about half an hour a car came up the bridle path and stopped and the lad, he would only have been about fifteen I suppose was in the drivers seat, was in the passenger seat and the driver got out. He was a tall man and he got out and he shook hands with me, spoke perfect English and said hello and all that and shook hands with me. He said put this overcoat on and get in the back of my car. So I did as I was told and he backed out and we went and backed out onto the road and drove off. The driver explained to me, he spoke very good English that he was the local Doctor and was aloud to have some petrol so that he could see his patients and occasionally he was able to pick up and help and Airman, I was one. He told me his wife was English, they got married in Brighton before the War and em, they came to live in France. We drove on and came to another village and the lad who picked me up left the car, thank you very much and all that sort of thing and I never saw any more of him. And that’s the way the Resistance works, I don’t think that lad would know where the driver, the doctor was taking me. If he was caught he could not give any further information away. That was the sort of way SOE and the Resistance worked. And em, drove on and I came to a farmhouse. Excuse me I must take a break.
MJ. This is the first recording of Raymond Worrall on the third of June two thousand and fifteen for the Historical Unit.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Ray Worral
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Mick Jeffery
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-06-03
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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Worral, JR
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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00:40:41 audio recording
Language
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Raymond (Ray) Worral joined the RAF in 1943. Ray completed his initial training in Bridlington and then St Athen for the Flight Engineers training course and learnt the technicalities of the Lancaster. After being crewed up at Winthorpe, Ray attended Lancaster finishing school at RAF Syerston and describes being stuck with the crew completely and often went to the pub them. Ray along with his crew was posted to RAF Dunholme Lodge, doing practice cross country flights before doing 25 operations. Ray then details on being hit on the way to an operation in Stuttgart, and then remembers the bailing out procedure and parachuting into a ploughed field. Ray then talks of his experiences of evading capture and hiding away from a column of German military trucks filled with soldiers. Ray also describes walking down the road past civilians and an enemy vehicle and was amazed for not being spotted. The interview finishes with Ray being helped by a French doctor and ending up at a farmhouse.
44 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bomb struck
crewing up
evading
fear
flight engineer
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF St Athan
RAF Syerston
RAF Winthorpe
Resistance
training
-
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/610/8879/PMillerP1502.2.jpg
3c813b020292a9e12b3c53fd1df379ed
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/610/8879/AMillerP150601.1.mp3
520ae851d62c7ebbaff997e1fd396243
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Miller, Peter
P Miller
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Miller, P
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Peter Miller (3008496 Royal Air Force). He served as an air gunner and gunnery leader with 12 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
2015-06-06
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
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
PM: You, you want my name or rank?
MJ: Yeah.
MM: Name and rank. Um I’m Peter, I’m [laughs] I’m nearly as bad as you. I’m recording this for Peter Miller, who is my husband, for the International Bomber Command Centre on the 1st June 20 -
MJ: ‘15.
MM: ‘15. We’re at Wragby in Lincolnshire.
PM: When I was called up. Is that alright?
MM: Ahum.
PM: 25th of the 11th ‘43. Went to Cardington. I was only there for a week getting kitted out and such. Was sent to Skegness, my home town, to do a couple of months foot drill. I was billeted about half a mile from home. So, when in the town I was the person sent by cycle on errands. Afterwards was posted to Halton on a flight mechanics course on which I was made AC1. Leaving Halton on the 29th of the 5th ‘44 I went to Digby, Lincolnshire, 527 squadron. Enjoyed time off, such, it was a Canadian station at the time. Then being posted to Bircham Newton, Norfolk, 695 squadron who were drogue towing. After a short while there I was sent to Blackpool in November classed as a PDC from which we went to Liverpool to get a boat. A Dutch ship called the [oanvan oldabarnevoort?] which after, after a late start we caught the convoy and going down the Med at Christmas Eve sailing past Gib onto Aden, then to Ceylon to drop some, some, some people off and then back up to Bombay to a transit camp. From Bombay we went to a place called Cawnpore [Kanpur]. That was our destination - 322 MU. Spending two and a half years in Cawnpore [Kanpur], returning from Bombay on the SS Somalia landing in Liverpool for being demobbed at a transit camp just outside Blackpool early July ’47. That’s, that’s my service career.
MM: What did you think to India?
PM: It was air, do you want the aircraft I worked on?
MJ: Oh yeah. I mean, well, that’s a, that’s a nice round off way of putting things how they are but yeah where, what, what, what did you do in Bombay because it seems a long way to be having an aircraft. I mean if you -
PM: It seems like a long way to what?
MJ: It seems to be a long way to go and play with aircraft so I just wondered what you had to do there.
PM: We were servicing them.
MJ: Yeah.
PM: Um Liberators.
MM: It was a big camp wasn’t it, Peter?
PM: A very big camp. Worked on Liberators to start with. About -
MM: Did you enjoy India?
PM: About five months.
MM: Did you enjoy India?
PM: Well yes. It was alright.
MJ: I suppose it was a good place to get a suntan.
PM: Yeah. Yeah but mainly. I had almost two and a half years on Dakotas.
MJ: So you mainly worked on Dakotas.
PM: Yeah, air frames.
MJ: Air frame.
PM: Air frame fitter.
MJ: Was it, was it very busy being in India fitting or was it -
PM: We were busy.
MJ: Quiet?
PM: Of course we used to service them from all over South East Asia Command.
MJ: So, so when people think that you were um in India probably having a quieter time than most you probably, you weren’t were you? You ‘cause
PM: Oh no, we weren’t living it up.
MJ: No. I mean that’s what people would think. I mean
PM: Yeah.
MJ: That’s what I’m saying. A lot of people don’t associate India with the RAF do they?
PM: Yeah. We weren’t living it up.
MJ: No. So, so how did you, I imagine it was very hot over there was it? Or -
PM: Very hot.
MJ: So -
MM: And you went up in the hills didn’t you on your leave -
PM: Pardon?
MM: You enjoyed going up into the hills didn’t you? On leave.
PM: We used to get on, we used to get our normal leave but also we had a, we used to go on hill parties, a month, probably fifty or sixty used to go by train to the foothills and then up by wagons to the place we spent the, spent the leave, the holiday. I had my twenty first birthday in Darjeeling.
MJ: That must have been interesting.
PM: Yeah. It was alright [laughs]. But the other places were, were very fair. They used to take us as far as they could by train, Then we had to go on, on wagons further up.
MJ: Did -
PM: We used to go by train to Darjeeling. Pre, pre, pre-war I think the moneyed folks had taken Darjeeling over and they weren’t all that keen on us blokes out there going to Darjeeling but er we made them happy.
MJ: Did um -
PM: But that’s a lovely spot that.
MJ: So even though the work was hard it was quite a nice place to be.
PM: Yeah. But, but regarding, regarding the weather it, it was very hot. During the hot season we used to go to work in the morning. There for seven and we used to work while one and after 1 o’clock the time was our own.
MJ: It was too hot to work?
PM: Yeah.
MJ: So, so, so in a way you were working nights really?
PM: [laughs] But we were we’ve had everything done I think. There was, it was a very big camp. There was three villages on the camp.
MJ: Was, was it more than just RAF then?
PM: Pardon?
MJ: Was it more than just RAF?
PM: Just RAF.
MJ: So -
PM: Yeah.
MM: There were locals. The villagers were locals.
PM: Local villagers. They were on, on the side -
MJ: Side.
MM: Doing your washing for you.
PM: Well they used to, they were our bearers and things were alright until the war finished.
MJ: What happened then?
PM: Until the Jap war finished. And then Pakistan and India were having a go at one another.
MJ: So you got stuck in the middle.
PM: Well more or less. We wanted to get home. They held, well, we believed they held our demob up for a while.
MJ: Why because of the conflict between the two -
PM: Well, in case there was going to be. Nothing happened. We got on the boat and came home.
MJ: So that, that was a better deal than you thought.
PM: Yeah. One of the biggest laughs we got was when we got to Liverpool on the way home. We were getting off the boat and a jet went over. Never seen a jet.
MJ: No.
PM: Only heard about them. You should have heard the cheer that went up.
MJ: That must have been, so you were probably one of the first people to see a jet flying.
PM: Yeah. In Liverpool.
MJ: You don’t -
PM: Vampire.
MM: Yeah.
[Tape paused].
PM: The cold season out there -
MJ: Yeah.
PM: Is about like this.
MJ: So it’s like having summer in the winter is it?
PM: Yeah.
MJ: So did you, you got warm -
PM: The, the snag is um these blokes that’s been in, in the desert and that, they reckon it goes stone cold at night. Not India. The sun, the sun sets and that’s it. Nothing else. Then the sun comes up and it’s daylight again and you’re getting warmer.
MJ: Yeah. So did you find you had to do more work in the winter per se or, or is it ‘cause, ‘cause the engine, or did you have to sort of -
PM: Yeah, in the, in the cold season we’d probably work another hour a day.
MJ: That, that doesn’t sound a lot but I imagine in those sorts of heats everything buckles including yourself does it?
PM: Yeah.
MJ: I mean, did, did you have to bring in, how did you get everything to where you were ‘cause you were saying you didn’t have any transport as such.
PM: When, when the war finished we, we were, they were sending in um Liberators to our place for scrap. We had a colossal scrapheap there. They were sending these Liberators there because - I don’t want it recorded because -
MJ: No it’s alright.
PM: Yeah well what we heard was that the Yanks wouldn’t take them back as returned lease-lend.
MJ: Well I mean that -
PM: And we just had to get rid of them but we weren’t allowed to sell them. That’s, that’s all we heard. They were wheeling them down to salvage and there was about seventy or eighty Libs there when I got posted home but on other places there was more Libs.
MJ: So I mean -
PM: And they just started destroying them. Took anything that, everything that was any use off the Libs and then, I can’t remember which station it was but there was one station in India was, had started to destroy the Libs. I, I don’t know what, well anybody that was in the RAF on aircraft would say it’s easier to build one then take one to bits. They um they took all instruments that were of any use out.
MJ: Right.
PM: Dinghies, first aid, everything like that. Armoury. All that out and then they took them onto the scrap, down to the scrapyard and drained all the oil out, out the engines and started the engines up and ran them flat out until they went bang.
MJ: So that they couldn’t be used again.
PM: No use whatsoever.
MJ: You know if -
PM: And then they recommended that what you did was have a, have a wagon or tractor fastened to the front of them and drive the tail unit up against a wall or something like that to break them up. Anything that’s riveted you see you can’t get it to bits by, by just undoing it.
MJ: It was built to last so -
PM: But that’s, that’s how it was but there was, there was about seventy at Cawnpore [Kanpur] when I came home that, that hadn’t been touched. Well, I say hadn’t been touched they’d been stripped but hadn’t been damaged.
MJ: I don’t think that was just yourself. I’ve heard things go, you know, because it’s hard to trans. Do you think it was hard to transport the stuff back? I -
MM: Distance.
MJ: You think -
PM: But the –
MJ: I would have thought it would be the pure economics of getting something, it was more expensive to -
PM: If the Yanks had taken them back they could have flown them back.
MJ: Do you think so?
PM: Yeah. I’m sure. They flew them there they could have flown them back.
MJ: Did, did any of the, anything else get left behind? Was it just the planes? Just, everyone leaves everything behind or did you bring most of it back?
PM: Well I don’t know what happened to them at Cawnpore [Kanpur] because they were still there when I left but there was a reunion at Cawnpore [Kanpur]. I was going on it but I got a new [motor?] and I couldn’t go and er the chaps said that the Indian air force wouldn’t let them anywhere near the salvage.
MJ: They wouldn’t let them anywhere near salvage. Well I’m surprised it’s still there.
PM: Yeah. They wouldn’t let them anywhere near salvage.
MM: But you used to go swimming didn’t you? You had a pool.
PM: Oh we’d go swimming. There was a swimming pool on the camp.
MM: A swimming pool and that. You enjoyed that.
MJ:: More than I can do.
MM: I can’t swim.
MJ: Yeah.
MM: So I mean there was some good times wasn’t there?
PM: Oh yes we had some good times.
MM: Good times. Friends. Lots of laughs.
PM: Off the camp mainly, the good times.
MM: Used to go down to one of the places nearby didn’t you? Villages, towns whatever you called it.
PM: Oh we used to go in, in to Cawnpore [Kanpur] itself.
MM: Yeah.
PM: The city
MJ: Well you say it’s a city. Was it sort of like -
MM: How big?
MJ: Was it a big place or –
PM: Oh it was a big place -
MJ: ‘Cause I mean -
PM: The city was. Yeah. The actual RAF camp was called, oh God - Chakeri.
MJ: Oh right. I thought -
PM: It was about four mile out of Cawnpore [Kanpur] but Cawnpore [Kanpur] was a city and we used to call the camp Cawnpore [Kanpur]. It was always Cawnpore [Kanpur].
MJ: Um maybe -
PM: Where were you stationed? Cawnpore [Kanpur].
MM: But you used to have meals didn’t you, in the city, when you went out?
PM: You what?
MM: You used to go for meals didn’t you? In the city went out -
PM: Oh could do. Yeah. Go in to the city. But we were only allowed in one part of the city. They um it was out of bounds to us.
MJ: It’s er so -
PM: It was, it was our military that put it out of bounds to us. They wouldn’t, wouldn’t let us in the -
So it wasn’t inflicted. It wasn’t, you weren’t put out of bounds by the city itself. It was the hierarchy of the military itself.
PM: Yeah. Yeah.
MJ: Saying you couldn’t go to certain parts.
PM: That’s it. Yeah.
MJ: Ah and did you, could you go out of uniform or did you have to be in uniform?
PM: We was, we were out of uniform most of the time. I mean when we used to go to work in a morning, 7 o’clock in the morning, you’d have a, a pair of shorts on, socks and shoes, bush hat and sunglasses and we used to go to work like that and at 1 o’clock when we, when we finished work we used to walk, we didn’t march back or anything. We used to walk back in groups, probably call at the swimming pool on the way back, used to go back and have lunch and then just loaf about.
MJ: Well I imagine it’s, it’s too hot to do anything else at that time. I mean -
PM: It was a funny old time.
MJ: Yeah I can agree with you there. You –
[Tape paused]
MM: Yeah.
PM: About the same height as I am now.
MM: Six foot.
PM: Weighed seven and a half stone.
MM: Rather slim.
PM: I got a demob suit and I kept my best blue. And I came home. The demob suit was slightly too big for me. ‘You’ll grow out of it’, that was that you see, which I did. Within, within a month my blue didn’t fit me. I didn’t care ‘cause I chucked it away and my demob suit was dead tight. I had to collect all the, all the family clothing coupons together and go and get measured for a suit, ‘Make it plenty big enough’ and I stopped growing then [laughs]. So I got one suit big and the other, other two too small.
MJ: So most people stopped growing and you took that many years to grow-
MM: His mother’s cooking that was. Put the weight on you. [laughs] Didn’t it?
PM: Yeah.
MM: Your mum’s cooking -
PM: Yeah.
MM: Yeah. Built you up again.
PM: My mother was in the first war.
MM: First World War.
PM: In the RAF. In Germany.
MJ: [That’s what?]
PM: Yeah. In the Royal Flying Corp.
MM: As it was then. Yeah.
MJ: So you inherited the job did you?
MM: Must have done.
PM: Yeah.
PM: When, when you were on about servicing, servicing aircraft we had to be there, we were in the hangars for 7 o’clock in the morning but if there were any aircraft either stuck outside or in the hangar that were going out you checked the tyre pressures before the sun got on them because you never know what the tire pressure would be after about an hour in the sun out there.
MM: And of course they couldn’t fly them till they’d got your little signature could they?
PM: Hmmn?
MM: You couldn’t fly them till they got your little signature.
PM: Oh no couldn’t. Well I was one of a team. I was the air frame rigger um on a Liberator four engines so there’d be four engine fitters, instruments, wires um guns and turrets all had to be checked and signed for before the pilot could have it.
MJ: How long did that take?
PM: Hmmn?
MJ: How long did that take?
PM: Well I mean if the aircraft was, was, was alright, if it had come out of the hangar after, after a major service it would be taken out on a test flight. One of each trade would go up with him if it was a bomber. Go up with him and you’d fly around and everything was alright. Come back. You’d check up again. Then before it flew again tomorrow it had to be serviced because between flights inspections on RAF aircraft if it, if an aircraft came, came up from London and landed on your airport there would be a between flights inspection before it could go again.
MJ: Oh I didn’t know that.
PM: Yeah.
MJ: How often did that happen?
PM: Hmmn?
MJ: Did that happen regularly?
PM: That was it. Between flights inspection. And being, being a rigger, that’s what I was, they were the last to sign the 700. The 700 was the aircraft manual and every, everybody that was concerned with anything on the aircraft had to sign and the rigger was the last one to sign because he was responsible for um the petrol cap being loose. Nothing, nothing to do with him normally. The um the blokes driving the petrol bowsers used to tighten them up but it was, it was his aircraft and he had to do something about it. So he used to tighten, tighten it up and any, any little panel that was loose he’d secure the panels and that before he signs and until he signed they couldn’t go anywhere.
MJ: Did you have a team of riggers or was it just you per plane?
PM: What?
MJ: Was it just you on one plane or did you have a few?
PM: Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah.
MJ: So -
PM: Didn’t, didn’t do a half a dozen planes. Just, just the one plane.
MJ: Yeah but did you work as a rigger on your own or did you have someone helping you?
PM: Was, was
MM: Was there more than one rigger on each plane?
PM: No. Only one rigger.
MM: Ahum.
PM: Yeah.
MJ: So that’s a lot of rivets.
MM: Ahum check them [laughs].
PM: Yeah well the aircraft, the framework of the aircraft and everything in general was alright. It was day to day um events um tyres and things like that. Brakes slipping. All those sort of things.
MJ: Do you think you had more trouble because it was hotter there than most would have?
PM: Of course being a rigger brakes were my job as well. [laughs]
MM: You said when you went to Halton it was a case of half of them for engines half of them for airframes wasn’t it?
PM: Yeah.
MM: So it just depends which side of the room you were on [laughs] you were telling me.
PM: [laughs] Yeah.
MM: You had some fun down there at Halton didn’t you?
PM: You what?
MM: Had some fun at Halton.
PM: Halton. Yeah. It was um water shortage. Halton camp is on a hill. The hill, the hill is that far and high that there’s two parade grounds on the hill.
MJ: Two?
PM: Two parade grounds on the hill. You go through the gates, you go up and, oh from here to the bridge there’s the bottom of the parade ground and it goes back into the hills and you carry, you carry on up the hill there and about, about another twenty, thirty foot up there’s another parade ground. It was a hell of a camp Halton was. It was a, um what’s it -
MM: Training?
PM: Oh God.
MM: Officer’s training do you say?
PM: No.
MM: No.
PM: Weren’t officers. They -
MM: Cadets.
PM: When you join, you join the RAF you -
MM: Cadets?
PM: You was a member. I was a member of the air force but I was only a sort of a temporary member but I, I, I didn’t sign on for ten years or owt like that but all the regulars they, they were right under the thumb. By hell they were.
MJ: So you think it was different for you. Was it ‘cause you -
PM: Yeah.
MJ: Because you were sort of part time if you like.
PM: Yeah.
MJ: For a better word.
PM: I liked Halton. It was a nice camp.
MM: Taught you how to shoot there didn’t there?
PM: Hmmn?
MM: Taught you how to shoot there didn’t they?
PM: Yeah.
MJ: This is um -
MM: One poor chap. Everybody dashed because -
PM: We had two, we had two Jewish lads -
MJ: Yeah.
PM: By God they were dim [laughs] and er they, they, they were on a, on a rigger’s course but everything, everything went wrong with them. On one day we had um rifle training so went up on the, up on the bus up the hill and there was um the targets. Perhaps six or seven targets.
MJ: Right.
PM: And a wall, a wall just below them and behind, behind the wall there was a trench so the blokes, blokes up there looking after, looking after the targets they were, they were safe and you had ten rounds and you just, you had your ten rounds and you got in front of one of, one of the targets and that and you’d been told how to fire them and everything. The corporal would shout, ‘Fire.’ And then down there on the range there used to be a flag on a pole come out and he used to stick on to the target where, where the bullet had gone through, if it had gone through. Well these two Jewish lads they couldn’t even hit the target never mind [laughs] and there was everybody else had to get off and let them pick their own target and everything. Our corporal was on the phone to them down there and, ‘Right. Fire. Take your time.’ Bang. Flag went like that. Bang. Next time it went [beuuuu]. Phone rang. Corporal said, ‘What’s the matter?’ He said, ‘He hit my mate.’ He’d, he’d hit his tin hat. Hit his tin hat. This bullet and had gone off his tin hat.
MJ: So he was safe though?
PM: Yeah.
MM: Most of them.
PM: And then we had hand grenades. There was, there was this wall. All sandbanks and that and over the other side of the wall about there, there was a, there was a hole and behind this wall there was another wall and everybody used to get behind that wall and the corporal used to bring one bloke around and show him, show him everything, make sure he, he was holding the grenade right, then he used to toss it over to go in the hole. Everybody else was doing alright and this one he dropped the grenade the other side just on the top and it rolled down so the corporal grabbed hold of this bloke, pushed him down and more or less sat on him. Bang. ‘That was close wasn’t it?’ the corporal said. And, and, we, we went up into the, up the hills. Sten guns. They were deadly you know. If you dropped a sten gun it’d bounce about all over the place till it emptied and [laughs] there was two corporals that had never, never met these two. ‘Watch them. We know what we’re doing.’ Corporals, ‘Alright.’ Showed them how to go on and everything. Give these two a sten gun each, got them to load them, ‘Don’t do anything. We’ll have you one at a time so you come with me.’ So he fired. Nowhere near the target or anything like that but he got shot of the, the ammo. The second one went, spun around, he says to the corporal, ‘It won’t fire’ pointing it at the corporal. [laughs] God. He said, ‘Stand still. Let go of the trigger. Put it down.’ If there hadn’t been anybody else around he would have clouted him around the side of the earhole with the sten. Anyway, they got rid of them. I don’t know where they went to but they were no good as, no good on engines or airframes or anything like that. They were completely useless, the pair of them.
MM: They were only young though you see weren’t they? Eighteen and a half.
PM: Yeah they’d only be just over eighteen.
MM: That’s what I mean. Today –
PM: Yeah.
MM: They’re at school aren’t they?
MJ: Yeah. So it’s surprising you’re here.
MM: Yeah.
PM: Yeah.
MM: Then he come back to Digby, Lincolnshire.
PM: Eh?
MM: You enjoyed Digby in Lincolnshire didn’t you?
PM: Yeah.
MM: No calamities there?
PM: No. Come back to Digby.
MM: You used to go in to Lincoln didn’t you?
PM: Yeah. Used to go in to Lincoln.
MM: On time off.
PM: It was a Canadian station. Everything underground.
MJ: Underground?
PM: Eh?
MM: Underground.
MJ: Everything underground?
PM: Everything was built underground. It was a radio and radar station. We didn’t, we didn’t know that when we were stationed there but, but they used to work underground.
MJ: That’s -
PM: At Digby. It was good station. It was a Canadian station.
MJ: Was that better than the RAF ones?
PM: Well, they were better supplied than what we were.
MM: Food was good [laughs] Yeah.
PM: Yeah a lot better supplied.
[Tape paused]
PM: We were all, all air frame fitters and one of the station aircraft, we got two Dakotas belonging to the station. One had gone to Lahore.
MJ: Right.
PM: From our place and um next morning they were refuelling it and the chap drove the petrol bowser with the dipstick sticking out and tore the underside of the wing. Well that was it you see. He didn’t just tear the surface of the wing he, he buckled the main spar. So we, we had several Dakotas there that would probably never fly again and using them as spares and got hold of, got hold of my mate we did and get a, get a mainplane from, from salvage. Give him, give him all the gen on this one aircraft, ‘Go and, go and check if it’s alright.’ So he come back he said, ‘Yeah it’s alright.’ He said ‘Right. The three of you,’ he says, ‘You Miller’ and what his name, ‘Go and fetch it off.’ And we took, we took the crane down with us and we got the, got the trestles and everything and the jacks underneath it’s wing and we disconnected the wing and took it away completely from the engines you see. You’ve got the two engines there and a centre section between them and the fuselage but beyond the engines that’s the outer so we got that and we got a Queen Mary. You know the Queen Mary’s, we used? The um -
MJ: Ahum?
PM: The long, the long low loaders. Very wide, ten foot wide, that the RAF used to drive around you’ve seen them there their low loaders haven’t you? They’re called the Queen Mary’s. They’re ten, ten foot wide and during the war if, if you had to take anything with, with a Queen Mary through, through a town you had a police escort and they’d take you the best way through the town because of, because of the width of the vehicle. And we loaded this, loaded this mainplane and all the gear we wanted and everything and we cleared off to Lahore. The three of us. It took us three days to get there. Close on four hundred mile.
MJ: What were the -
PM: Well the roads in India were just like the roads down to the villages here and we got there and this Warrant Officer [Pryor?] said, ‘Goodness I’m pleased to see you lot.’ He said, ‘Get on with it.’ So we took, took this mainplane off and they carted it off to salvage there and um they got all the gear there, got all the gear and everything but they wouldn’t let them touch it.
MJ: Why was that?
PM: So we, we had to do it you see. The plane belonged to us so we, we, we got the mainplane off and everything, put the other one up got it all, all bolted in. Everything. Control cables, electrics, everything and got hold of Taf Bevan, ‘Right. Fly it.’
MJ: How long did that take you?
PM: Hmmn?
MJ: How long did that take you?
PM: Well three days overall. ‘Fly it.’ He says, ‘Alright. Sign.’ So we signed for it and everything. The warrant officer, the err engineering officer at whatsit, he said, ‘You’ve done a very good job you blokes have.’ The CO was there as well. At Lahore. He was, he was there as well. He said, ‘It looks very, very nice,’ he says. He said, ‘I’ll get on to,’ Oh I don’t know the name of our CO. He said, ‘I’ll get on to him and tell him what a good job you’ve done.’ And we went up with Taf and he, he said, ‘Nothing wrong with this. It’s alright.’ Taf Bevan, he was a bloody Welshman. We never did find out his name. His first name. Never. And he was a warrant officer. He wouldn’t, he wouldn’t take a commission. He just wanted to stay non-commissioned.
MJ: Did he say why?
PM: Warrant officer.
MJ: Yeah. Did he say why he didn’t want to take a commission?
PM: He said, ‘I don’t want to be with that crowd stuck in the officer’s mess and that. Better off in the sergeant’s mess.’ He said, ‘I’m away next morning.’ We said, ‘You’re bloody well not without us mate’ and we transferred the um the Queen Mary to Lahore and climbed in the Dak with him and flew home. Thirty minutes. [laughs]
[Tape paused]
PM: Now can’t you? Between you?
MJ: I think so. You should be able to.
PM: You just, you know, well why not do that?
MJ: Did you -
PM: What about that? [Oh bought]
MJ: Yeah. People don’t think that so that’s why your lifestyle is different to todays because people don’t realise what you did. I mean so -
MM: Things have changed so much haven’t they? So much.
PM: I know we were on a test flight one day with Taf and um Taf used to let us take control for a while. He used to sit there but he knew what was happening and everything and one of the blokes he said, ‘Do you want it Taf?’ Taf says, ‘No.’ He says, ‘Just carry on.’ He got it lined up. It was about three mile out from the end of the runway. ‘Go on. You’re alright.’ He said, ‘Shall I land it?’ ‘No you bloody well won’t land it’ [laughs] He said, ‘I’d be the laughing stock of the bloody sergeant’s mess. Come out.’
MJ: Yeah.
PM: We used to, on a Dakota there’s a cockpit and there’s a cabin and it’s the full length of the aircraft near enough. You go in, you go in the double doors.
MJ: Right.
PM: And you go up to the, to another door and that that’s the control. There’s navigator, radio operator, two pilots and we used to, about three, four of us used to get up near the door and Taf would be sat there you know, nodding away there to himself and that. ‘Right. Now.’ And we’d run to the other end to the tail end [laughs]. ‘Come up here you lot.’
MM: He knew what you was doing?
PM: We, we’d run to the tail end.
MM: Yeah and made it, realised.
PM: [Climb?]
MM: Yeah.
MM: Realised what you were. You had a laugh at East Kirkby didn’t you?
PM: Yeah.
MM: They were doing a Dakota up at East Kirkby.
PM: Yeah. They were.
MM: You went out to, to have look and you said to the lads there, ‘Can I have a look inside it.’ I think you managed to get in it didn’t you?
PM: Yeah.
MM: And anyway you said to them.
PM: ‘Do you know anything about them?’ I said, ‘Yeah a little bit. I used to be on them in the air force way back.’ ‘Bloody hell. When?’ I said, ‘Oh I came out in ‘47.’ ‘God, I weren’t even bloody well born then.’
MM: Made you feel very, very old didn’t it duck [laughs] yeah.
PM: They were a lovely aircraft to work on. Dakota is. No trouble whatsoever.
MJ: Didn’t bite back.
PM: Hmmn?
MJ: Didn’t bite back.
MM: No. [laughs]
PM: They were no trouble at all. Used to fly around with the doors off.
MJ: Why?
PM: You see there’s, there was a passenger door and a cargo door on them.
MJ: Yeah.
PM: Take one or the other or both doors off. It didn’t half whistle and that inside the aircraft.
MM: Was there any reason to take the doors off though?
PM: No. No.
MM: No.
PM: You either take it off before you fly or when you land. You don’t take it off while you’re flying.
MM: No, presume not.
MJ: Was there any reason why you took them off when you flew? Or was it just because they were in the way?
PM: The doors come inwards. Not outwards.
MJ: So -
MM: What reasons did you take them off for?
PM: Eh?
MM: What reason did you take them off for?
PM: Well.
MM: Can you remember?
PM: No particular reason.
MM: Oh. Good job it wasn’t raining.
PM: During the war, on the Dakotas, along the top of the fuselage there was little windows about that size, along. So that when they were carrying troops they could open one of those windows and fire at any aircraft that was attacking them.
MM: Ahum.
PM: If they were carrying troops.
MJ: Really?
PM: Yeah. Yeah, I’m not kidding.
MM: Never heard of it.
MJ: I wouldn’t have thought of that one.
PM: I’m not kidding. Liberators, you know, you used to get in and out through the bomb, bomb bay. Get in and out through the bomb bay. The bomb doors, the bottom of the Lib is only about that far off the ground and the bomb doors go up like that and there’s a cat walk right through. The cat walk goes to, to the rear where there’s a mid-upper gunner and two, two [waist] gunners. One each side. And a rear gunner.
MJ: So you always had -
PM: And if, if you go forward up a couple of steps you get on to the flight deck where the crew, the air crew go. You, if they’re flying around and they opened the bomb doors there isn’t a bloody soul would dare go across that cat walk. From the back to the front or the front to the back. There’s not a soul would dare go. It’s, it’s perfectly safe, there’s no, no danger whatsoever and there’s plenty to hold on to. Hold on to all the bomb racks.
MJ: But no one would do it.
PM: Nobody would go in. No one would do it.
[Tape paused]
MJ: So what was this about Fred then?
PM: He, he used to go out first thing in a morning, he’d go to bed at night about nine, but first thing in the morning, probably 5 o’clock he’d cross to the cookhouse to get his porridge before they put sugar in it. Yeah. He wanted salt in his you see. Yeah. Well he was always messing about with, with animals and that and he went out one morning for a walk and there was a narrow path, trees at each side and that. He was approaching this corner when around the corner there come this panther. He says, ‘It stopped and I stopped, of course.’ He said, and its tail was going like that. He said, ‘And we stood there for about three quarters of an hour. Seemed like it.’ He said, ‘And I thought if that bloody thing comes at me there’s a tree just behind me. I can leap behind hopefully.’ He said, ‘I daren’t look around.’ He said, ‘I was weighing all this up’ he said and all of a sudden the panther put the foot down on the ground, spun around and shot off back the way it came,’ he said, ‘ And I shot off the way I came.’ He said, ‘We were about twenty five miles apart in ten minutes.’ He, he was, he was always doing something like that. Always messing about with, with animals. There was an empty cookhouse and he went and there was a wild cat in the bloody cookhouse. ‘I’ll have that.’ He went in there. This wildcat was flying around the walls. He said it was going that fast it was on the walls. He said, ‘I didn’t know what to do with it,’ he said, but the windows, the windows were all shut except one. He said it took a flying leap at that and crashed straight through the glass and everything and away it went. He said it went out, missed, missed the veranda and everything and landed out in the middle of the road. [laughs] He said, ‘I wasn’t frightened of it.’ [laughs]
MM: And who slept on a snake? One of you lads found a snake under his mattress.
PM: Yeah. Yeah. Rum lad that.
MM: Who was that? Who found a snake under his mattress?
PM: Oh er who was it? One of the other lads. Fred said, ‘I’ll get that out for you.’ He outed it. ‘Cause you see if you found a snake out there you had to find the other bugger. Nearly always travelled in pairs.
MJ: Do they?
PM: Ahum we had a, we had a snake in our billet one night. We got it and finished it off and we were looking around for its mate. Couldn’t find its mate anywhere so that was it. Wasn’t going under the mossie nets. Next morning this bloke got up and er there was this snake laid, laid in there. It had been crushed. He’d crushed it. You see the beds out there were wood. They were just a wooden frame and then there was like string across and then what they called a dhurry. It was like, just like an [asbestos] sheet the size of your bed. When you went anywhere you know on guard at night or something like that you took whatever you wanted in your dhurry. Got it all wrapped up in the dhurry. Then you had your mossie net and your mossie net was you had four, four bamboo canes that used to go inside the legs across the back of the bed like that and your mossie net went on the top and your mossie net was shaped, was shaped just like, just like a box. The box was down, the box was that way up and the things, the sides of the net came down you see and these, these four bamboo canes they went up behind, behind the leg and up the inside of the nets so it was all sprung out. That was how your mossie nets went. There were times when we’ve taken the mossie nets down and inverted them and then put the bed inside, inside it.
MM: But this snake that you was talking about.
PM: It was an open top.
MM: This snake you was talking about was underneath this here mattress thing wasn’t it?
PM: Underneath the dhurry.
MM: Yeah.
PM: Yeah.
MM: I didn’t realise he’d been sleeping on it all night.
PM: No. No.
MM: No. Oh horrible things.
PM: Well it was dead anyway. Fred says, ‘Poor little bugger. You’ve been laid on it all night.’
MJ: I’d like to thank Mr Miller on behalf of the International Bomber Command project on the 1st of January no oh June 2015 for his interview and, and for myself I’d like to thank him. My name’s Michael Jeffery and this is the end of the interview.
MM: My name is Mavis Miller, recording this for the International Bomber Command Centre on the 1st of June 2015. We live at Horncastle Road, Wragby, Lincolnshire. Yeah. I was at Minting, school at Minting, during the war. We lived about four miles from Bardney aerodrome so we saw a lot of the RAF lads and the WAAFs who used to come to the Sebastopol at Minting. My father also worked at the Bardney aerodrome so we were involved quite a bit. He always used to come home very distressed when, at times, the bombers would come back with the air force lad’s uniforms having to be burned because they were blood stained. Another small happening during the war was I was with my friends down Hungerham Lane about a half a mile from my home when we saw two of our fighters firing at this German fighter and it was brought down at Baumber, again only about three or four fields away from where we were. Unfortunately, no one got out the plane. We were told that it went up in flames. The farm workers couldn’t get anywhere near it but I was pleased to get home that night safe and sound. I think that’s about the end of my experiences.
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command Historical Unit I’d like to thank Mrs Miller for her stories of when she was a child and on the June the 1st 2015 I’d like to end the interview.
Dublin Core
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Interview with Peter Miller
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Mick Jeffery
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2015-06-01
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AMillerP150601
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Pending revision of OH transcription
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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01:02:55 audio recording
Description
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Peter was called up in November 1943 and after basic training was sent to RAF Halton to be trained as a flight mechanic. Whilst there he had several dangerous incidents during small arms training.
Initially posted to 527 Squadron, which was Canadian, at RAF Digby and then to 695 squadron at RAF Bircham Newton working on drogue towing aircraft.
Posted overseas, he arrived at RAF Chakeri near Kampur where he worked on servicing B-24 and C-47 aircraft for South East Asia Command. He recalls that as an airframe mechanic he had to sign the Form 700 certifying that all the other trades had carried out their servicing correctly.
The local town was largely off-limits and only certain parts were allowed to be visited. The weather was very hot and in the summer hill parties were sent to the hills to escape the heat. Peter spent his 21st birthday at Darjeeling. When hostilities ceased the spent its time dismantling and scrapping B-24s aircraft. Whilst India was partitioned, Peter's demobilisation was postponed in case of tensions between India and Pakistan.
After two and a half years he was sent home via Liverpool, where he saw his first jet, and was demobilised in July 1947.
Temporal Coverage
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1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1947-07
1943-11
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
India
India--Kānpur
India--Darjeeling
Pakistan
Contributor
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Terry Holmes
B-24
C-47
fitter airframe
flight mechanic
fuelling
ground crew
petrol bowser
RAF Bircham Newton
RAF Chakeri
RAF Digby
RAF Halton
service vehicle
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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
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Gregory, Norman
Norman Ellis Gregory
N E Gregory
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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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
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Transcription
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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
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Interview with Norman Gregory
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Mick Jeffery
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-24
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Sound
Identifier
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AGregoryN150724
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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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
-
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
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Sound
Identifier
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AHatchM150730
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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00:38:07 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/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
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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
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Interview with Mary Stuart
Creator
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Mick Jeffery
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-05-09
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AStuartM150509
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Royal Air Force
British Army
Format
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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
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Malta
Malta--Gozo Island
Temporal Coverage
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1948-05-08
1948-05-09
bombing
childhood in wartime
love and romance
shelter
Spitfire
strafing
-
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
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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
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-05-01
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Woods, L
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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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.
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AWoodsL150428
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Interview with Laurie Woods
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
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eng
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01:06:17 audio recording
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Pending review
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Mick Jeffery
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2015-05-01
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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.
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
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Australia
Great Britain
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
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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
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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
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Locke Brown, Kenneth
Kenneth Locke Brown MBE
K Locke Brown
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IBCC Digital Archive
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LockeBrown
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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
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Transcription
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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
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Title
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Interview with Kenneth Locke Brown
Creator
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Mick Jeffery
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-06
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ALockeBrownKL150706
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
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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
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Vivienne Tincombe
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
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1943
1944
Spatial Coverage
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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/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
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Johnson, Ken
K A Johnson
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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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
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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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
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Title
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Interview with Ken Johnson. One
Creator
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Mick Jeffery
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-06-03
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AJohnsonK150603
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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00:25:22 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
-
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/506/8404/ADeHoopJ150827.1.mp3
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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De Hoop, John
J De Hoop
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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DeHoop, J
Date
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2015-08-27
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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
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Sound
Identifier
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ADeHoopJ150827, PDeHoopJ1501
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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00:16:30 audio recording
Spatial Coverage
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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
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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
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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
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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.
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Interview with John and Vera Casey
Interview with John Casey
Description
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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
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Mick Jeffery
Date
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2015-06-10
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Julie Williams
Heather Hughes
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00:35:17 audio recording
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eng
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Sound
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ACaseyJ-CaseyV150610
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
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Great Britain
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Cheshire
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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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/555/8822/PPennyJ1501.1.jpg
fff42be023f2039d6a047d63b00ab006
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/555/8822/APennyJ150816.1.mp3
6ebaa9907dda395c064c30ee9492e7f8
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Penny, Jim
James Alfred Penny
J A Penny
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Penny, J
Description
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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.
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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2015-08-16
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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
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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.
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Interview with Jim Penny. One
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Mick Jeffery
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2015-08-16
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APennyJ150816, PPennyJ1501
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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
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Tracy Johnson
Language
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eng
Coverage
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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
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1940
1941
1942
1943-11-24
1944
1945
Format
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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/499/8389/PCranstonJ1501.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/499/8389/ACranstonJ151019.1.mp3
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Cranston, Jack
J Cranston
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Cranston, J
Date
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2015-10-19
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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
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Mick Jeffery
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-19
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ACranstonJ151019, PCranstonJ1501
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Format
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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
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Great Britain
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
England--London
France
France--Paris
Zimbabwe
Contributor
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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/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
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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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
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Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AHawkinsIFV151103
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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
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Christine Kavanagh
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
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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