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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/194/27236/BAdamsHGAdamsHGv3.1.pdf
b629d8156eacb9d34cd9571706ae198a
Dublin Core
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Title
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Adams, Herbert
Herbert Adams
H Adams
Herbert G Adams
Description
An account of the resource
88 items. Collection concerns Herbert George Adams DFC, Legion d'Honour (b. 1924, 424509 Royal Australian Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator with 467 Squadron. Collection contains an oral history interview, photographs of people and places, several memoirs about his training and bombing operations, letters to his family, his flying logbook and notes on navigation.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Herbert Adams and catalogued by Nigel Huckins and Trevor Hardcastle.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-02-15
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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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Adams, HG
Transcribed document
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
The War … Training.
Towards the end of 1941, the Air Training Corps was formed. Terry Cooke & I joined at once, and, due to my surname, my number was 10 001, the first in NSW. We trained at Ashfield in Whitehurst’s garage (the showroom floor was devoid of new cars by then), and Whitehurst himself was the Squadron Leader in charge – he was an ex-pilot from WWI. One of the benefits of joining the A.T.C. was that it gave you accelerated position on the waiting list for air-crew … then about 8 months. Air-crew enlistment was very popular, I guess partly due to the Battle of Britain publicity & the realization that air power would play a big part in the war. The Japs had shown at Pearl Harbour that planes could sink battleships (putting them out-of-date forever!)
Our training in the ATC consisted mainly of learning Morse Code, aircraft & ship recognition of both Allied and enemy planes & ships. Terry was already an accomplished plane modeller, & he added several to the growing collection hanging from the ceiling … we studied them, learnt their names & tried to recognise them at a distance and in subdued light.
We also did some P.E. The “old” tubby Squdron [sic] Leader surprised us early in the piece. He got us all to do as many push-ups as we could. No one got beyond 30, several couldn’t do 10. He then proceeded to do 50! He had a table-tennis set up & was quite adept, so we all got a go at that. In the city at that time the world doubles champions had an academy in Pitt St. He invited them to put on an exhibition for us, including a set of singles for some of us against one of them. Two of their ‘stunts’ stood out. Zabados [sic] (the older) would say, “it’s an easy game, see” while returning shots with his back to Keelan (who was good enough to put the ball onto his bat.) Zabados [sic] then turned, faced Keelan & returned several balls using the edge of the bat!
[page break]
I had a set against Keelan, and despite him “setting up” chances for my topspin forehand, he won 21-6.
We were promised uniforms in the spring of 1942. But, although we were then on the waiting list for call-up for aircrew, compulsory national military training had begun. In June, Terry was called up for the Army, & sent to North Sydney for Artillery training. As both our birthdays were in February, I enquired why I wasn’t called up too. We both realized that 6/- a day with everything found made us rich compared with public service wage of about £3 a week … paying board & fares.
I was surprized [sic] to learn they had me “in reserved occupation”! After a lot of phone calls and a consultation, that was scrubbed and I was called up for the Army on 3rd July & sent to Dubbo for basic infantry training .. 54th Company of 5th Infantry Training Brigade, army number 252661. We did the usual rifle, bayonet, machine-gun, anti-tank gun, mortars, grenades, & gas-drills, parade ground drill (not too much), P.E., routemarches ending in the “mad-mile” … obstacle course … a bit like we see at Kapooka on T.V. It was a solid month. Then our corporal invited any of us who could drive a truck to step forward … for a course at Moorebank for a month, likely to have us become a driver on infantry transport. All 30 of us stepped forward! After trying us out in 3 ton Fords, about 20 of us convinced them we could double-shuffle … (one chap never managed to change from low … just grind, grind, grind … so he didn’t go.), & we got on the course.
At Moorebank (next to the big Army camp at Liverpool) we spent most days on practical work, especially on Bren gun carriers, including some driving. The gear linkage was a mirror-reverse of normal gear H pattern …. a bit hard to learn. Gentle curves could be made with the steering wheel which put a bed in the tracks, but for sharper turns, we’d change down 2 gears, hit the accelerator & turn the wheel sharply, which [indecipherable word] one track
[page break]
The carriers were quite heavy (1/4” armour all round) & driven by a Ford V8 Mercury engine, so there was a lot of stalling learning to do sharp turns. Some of the heavier work was repairing broken tracks. We also did a lot of learning how to take-apart carburettors, petrol pumps, mend punctures, change wheels etc. Then, each night we had lectures on all sorts of things to do with transport, including how engines worked, clutches, diffs, steering, electrical etc. I managed to skip a few of these night sessions, but still studied the manual they provided. At the end of the month we had a written exam. A couple of lads hadn’t learnt to read & write very well, and I guess many of the them [sic] hadn’t excelled at school. Anyway, I came top of the class & was invited to do a 6-month course at Sydney Tech College & come out Warrant Officer instructor, age 18! Wartime promotion! I was tempted, since it was well known that the loss rate in Air Crew was high. However, I turned it down, went back to Dubbo for a few more weeks … mostly working on Bren gun carriers, until I got the call-up for air-crew .. on 12th Sept to Bradfield Park, No 2 I.T.S. (Initial Training School).
[black and white photograph of Herbert Adams in Australian Army uniform]
This is my only photo in Army uniform, taken at “Springfield” Mendooran, about the end of August ’42, probably on a short leave after completing the course at Moorebank, on the way back to Dubbo.
[page break]
At Bradfield Park we were 32 course (one a month since the [inserted] Empire [/inserted] Air Training Scheme began early in 1940 to provide aircrew for Britain … training done in Canada, New Zealand, South Africa & Australia.) Each course was divided into several “flights” graded according to our tested speeds at receiving Morse Code. I was one of 25 in 32D flight, … I think there were 7 flights. We all wore “goonskins” & berets.
Photo taken on 6/10/42
[black and white photograph of four rows of men wearing boiler suits and berets at the side of a hut]
Front Row: F. Morgan, J. Chigwidden, R. Roeder, C. Dowie.
Second Row: E. Cunningham, R. McCallister, R. Schneider, P. Rutherford, L. Davies, J. Boatswain, J. Thorne
Third Row: J. O’Brien, J. Weekes, K. Burns, A. Marshall, R. Loton, P. Skerman, B. Adams, D. Nicholls
Back Row: M. Coleman, D. Milliken, G. Lumsdaine, G. Benson, P. Brander, D. Placell, A. Dufty.
[page break]
The course at Bradfield Park lasted about 3 months. There was a lot more Morse Code training, aiming at 20 words/min for us all. There was a lot of introductory training about Theory of Flight, Meteorology, Guns & ammunition, bombs, elementary radio, principles of navigation & bomb aiming. We also got an indication of what further training would occur, & where, for the main categories:- pilots, observors [sic] (combined navigation, bomb-aiming & air gunnery), & WAG (wireless operator/gunner).
All got a dental overhaul. I think there were some ‘trainee’ dentists. I was supposed to get 6 fillings one day. After drilling until only a shell remained on one tooth; in trying to extract it, it broke off & so had to be a cut-job to get the root out. I had that happen 5 more times, about a week apart. No doubt my teeth were chalky. I got a new bigger plate.
Sometime during the course I got a mild case of mumps & was sent to the isolation hospital, Prince Henry, near Malabar.
When I got back I became part of 33 course, but then they decided that part of 33 course would be “rushed” to join 32 course … more places to fill at the various training venues. Those chosen had to be reasonably fast at Morse Code; I qualified & so rejoined 32 course.
We did a lot of P.E. One of our regular tasks was a run down to Fullers Bridge & back (uphill). The P.E. instructors gave us recruits a lot of “get a move on you soft ------- s”. It’s true most of the recruits were soft, straight from civvy street, many from desk jobs. But a couple of us had been toughened up by infantry training & told them not to be so tough. The upshot was a challenge who could get to the top first – us or the P.E. instructors. We won, I guess partly because they could have been at the NCOs canteen after work … we had to be tee-total.
There was a lot of emphasis on marching; we found out why … we we [sic] the main lot to march
[page break]
in Sydney in support of a War Loan Rally. We marched 12-abreast & on some corners collided with onlookers & barricades due to the tendancy [sic] of marchers to push outwards on corners.
The food at Bradfield Park was generally fairly good except for their scrambled egg … it was made from egg-powder & found to be so distasteful that garbage bins were overflowing outside the mess huts with discarded scrambled egg. Yet, later, in England we enjoyed scrambled egg made from egg powder. Better cooks maybe?
Towards the end of the course there was a co-ordination test … perhaps to indicate suitability for pilot training. (The bulk of us young fellows wanted to be pilots.) The test required use of a joystick & rudder pedals to cause a light spot to follow a projected light spot. When our course was briefed to do this I was at the dentist & so had to do it later on my own. I suspect I wasn’t given adequate briefing; but the main drawback was because, as a youngster, I had a flivver … you steered it with your feet just the opposite way that rudder pedals work on a plane; it had a handle worked to & fro joined to a crank to the back wheels, like the old railway fettlers ‘trikes’. Whatever the reason, I knew I’d performed badly on the test. So when it came to ask for Pilot, Observor [sic] or WAG, I said observor. [sic] the reply was …”don’t you want to be a pilot? Why observor?” [sic] So I said that I knew I’d done badly on the coordination test, but I’d done well in Maths & Science at High School so I thought I’d make a good navigator (the main task of the observor) [sic] .. What I didn’t say, if I asked for pilot & they’d said no, you can train as a W.A.G. They agreed for me to train as an Observor [sic] at Air Observors [sic] School (No 1 A.O.S.) at Cootamundra, starting on 10 Dec. ’42 after a few days leave.
[page break]
We arrived by train at Cootamundra in the morning. As I threw my kitbag on top of the truck-load of them, I fainted & woke up in the local hospital. A doctor wanted to operate at once for appenicitis [sic] but needed written parental permission as I was under 21. They’d phoned home but had no way to get written permission in time so he got me to sign it. I think I was dilerious [sic] for 2 or 3 days. Mum & May had arrived & stayed at a hotel for a few more days. I was treated (lucky for me) with penicillin, which was relatively new in hospitals then. A large needle was taped to a buttock & graduated doses squirted in … so many CC’s, wait a few hours, more CCs, wait, etc. … it took 24 hours to complete. I had a rubber tube in my side which oozed out grey pus. After 2 weeks I thought I might go home. But I was kept there for 4 weeks. Then sent home still with an open hole in the centre of the scar which had to be dressed & covered … no swimming. Just as I was leaving they said “You’ll have to go and have your appendix out in about 3 months time … all we’ve done has been to teat your infection .. sort of gangrene.” I had 2 weeks sick leave at Mendooran, & did wade in the dam a few times while Beryl & Meggs swam & dived.
[black and white photograph of Herbert Adams in uniform]
This photo was probably taken during that leave in January ’43 at Springfield.
The white strip on our berets signified “aircrew trainee.”
[page break]
When I returned to Cootamundra, I was put on “Light Duties”, in the Navigation Instruments section where they stored, issued, repaired & received maps, dividers, parallel ruler, & C.S.C.’s (courses speed calculators). One person could easily handle it so I did almost nothing. In our spare time I helped his little money-maker – making brooches etc from moulded plastic (he got that free) … all he bought were the safety pins embedded in the back.
I actually joined 35 Course for a while and attended some of the lessons, but didn’t fly with them. However I did get to attend their passing-out dinner at the Albion Hotel, .. the lads normally drank there or at the Globe, opposite, on Sat. afternoons. Some of them did literally pass-out due to too much beer.
On 30th March ’43, I entered Forest Hill RAAF hospital where a big-name RAAF surgeon from Melbourne took out my appendix, kept me there for 2 weeks then I got 2 weeks leave.
On 29th April I got back to Cootamundra and did a few weeks with 37 Course, actually doing my first plane flight ever with them on 11th May … being airsick twice in 3 hours. I attended their passing-out dinner too, and finally began the Observors [sic] course 38A.
In the classroom we did a lot of dry-swim exercises of plotting air-plots, fixes, wind-finding as well as learning more meterology, [sic] signalling, radio, ship & plane recognition, compasses & map projections, & photography. On any flight over 2 hours I got air sick, as did several others … the inside of the old Anson actually smelt like vomit, which didn’t help. I & a few others got some treatment at sick quarters for motion sickness which entailed sitting (strapped in) in a machine than [sic] combined swinging & rotating. It didn’t seem to help. The Ansons were not heavy planes, but one day we taxied to the far corner, it was only a grass ‘drome in those days), & got bogged as we turned to take off. The 3 trainee navs. & the W.O.P. got out & pushed & we got it out.
[page break]
Here’s a bit about the Anson from an old book we used to learn aircraft recognition.
[four drawings of an Anson aircraft]
[black and white photograph of an Anson]
AVRO ANSON
Valuable operations against U-boats stand to the credit of the Avro Anson, a coastal reconnaissance machine readily distinguished by its long windowed “greenhouse” cabin. It carries a crew of three, is driven by two 350 h.p. Armstrong Siddeley Cheetah IX air-cooled radial motors and armed with fixed machine-guns in nose and turret. The wooden wings have a span of 56 ft. 6 in.; the fuselage is metal, with fabric covering. The Avro Anson is also used extensively as a training machine. Top speed, 188 m.p.h.
We, later, also flew in Ansons at Parkes doing the Astro-navigation course, and at Llandwrog (North Wales) where we did “Advanced” (not very) Flying … really an introduction to navigating in Britain.
[page break]
At Cootamundra we flew 17 times for a total of 51 1/4 hrs, mostly day-time. Usually 3 trainee nav’s went on each flight, doing 1/3 of the actual navigation each. The other two practised map-reading, drift-taking, bearing taking (with hand-held compass). Our longest trip was to Parafield (S.A.) where we stayed the night. On the way over we flew above cloud nearly all the time, so no map-reading. The W.O.P. tried to get loop bearings on radio stations but these were often difficult to pick up & notoriously inaccurate. We got lucky – below the only break in the clouds appeared the town of Donald (surrounded by many miles of “nothing” for map reading). This gave us a chance to find the wind-velocity, readjust our course for Parafield & our ETA. We had a passing-out dinner, a weeks leave and a posting to Evans Head.
Below is the assessment for the A.C.S. course at Cootamundra … maybe a bit faint for copying from my log-book.
[table from log book between 27.5.43 and 19.9.43]
[page break]
On 20th Aug. ’42 we arrived by train at Casino, then RAAF transport lorry to Evans Head’s site of No 1 B.A.G.S. (Bombing & Gunnery School). We did a lot of classroom work on bombsights, bomb construction, and later on air-to-air & air-to-ground gunnery – the deflection problem, & operation of the Vickers Gas Operated machine gun. Our flying was done in Fairey Battle planes, some of which had survived the retreat from France (many didn’t, as they were no match for Me 109’s.). Although the Observor [sic] lay on the floor with his face just behind the radiator when bombing, getting hot glycol fumes, I was never airsick in them. Others were who hadn’t been sick in Ansons. For a typical bombing exercise we carried up to 8 practice bombs, dropped in separate runs on a patch of sand at the bombing range, where our error could be gauged & recorded. Before bombing, we’d use the drift recorder in 3 directions to find the wind to set on the bomb-sight. If our wind was wrong we’d get a bigger error than otherwise. My average error for 131 bombs was 123 yards although this included 45 from low level where the errors were smaller. I did only one night exercise with 3 bombs averaging 74 yards .. better than day-time. Total flying time for bomb-aiming was 60 1/2 hours for 19 flights.
For air-gunnery we would dip the .303 bullet heads in paint, load them into circular drum magazines and shoot at drogues towed by another Battle. Four different gunners, using different coloured paint, could fire at the same drouge [sic] before it was dropped & the number of hits recorded for each colour. The last of the 4 would often be shouted a mock dog-fight with the drouge [sic]-tower after he’d dropped the drouge. [sic] It usually included a loop the loop. The worst part of gunnery was cleaning the paint out of the magazines. I reckon my deafness may be due to the 1656 rounds fired with left forearm below the barrel, cheek alongside the breech-block of the gun mounted in the open rear cockpit on a spigot. My best result was 22 percent of 200 rounds worst 0 percent of 86 rounds (my first try) & overall average about 4 percent, I didn’t find it easy to allow the proper deflection.
[page break]
This is a bit about the Fairey Battle, from the same old aircraft recognition book.
[seven drawings and one black and white photograph of a Fairey Battle]
FAIREY BATTLE
This well-known medium bomber, which won an early reputation on the Western Front, has a distinctive feature in its long cockpit enclosure, terminating in the rear gunner’s position. A second machine-gun is situated in the starboard wing. Fuselage is slim and oval in section and the sharply tapering wings have a span of 54 feet. Power is provided by a 1,030 h.p. Rolls-Royce Merlin II or III engine giving a top speed of 257 m.p.h. and a range of 1,000 miles.
[page break]
We left Evans Head on 10th Oct, (no leave) and arrived at Parkes on the 11th, for a 1 month astro-nav. course. 1 A.N.S. (Air Nav. School). I think we were all promoted to L.A.C. after Cootamundra, getting (I think) an extra 6d a day. When we pass out at Parkes most of us will become Sergeants, some Officers and we’ll get our big O wing (O for observor [sic]), a sergeants pay goes up to 10/- a day.
Most of our days are spent in a classroom. We only did 6 flights (4 at night) totalling 20 hrs, in Ansons again. There was a lot to learn, including the names of the brightest stars in the Southern skies. The bubble sextants we used had a manual averageing [sic] mechanism. You turned the knob until the sun (or star) filled the bubble, pulled the trigger (back to zero) & did it again & again … I think 10 times, then read the average of your 10 sights … and in the air took the time at start and end, to the second (for most of us the first time we’d used a watch with a second hand). We began taking ground sights (so we knew where we were!) & ended up doing 92 of these on stars, the sun & a few on the moon. Our first “moving” sights were from the back of a truck on the smoothest, straightest part of the road Parkes to Forbes .. nice bitumen for those days. Every 4 sights took 2 pages of graph paper & calculations & for each one a position line drawn and error calculated. To keep the bubble centred & steady there needs to be [deleted] [indecipherable word] [/deleted] no acceleration or change of direction, so the back of lorry shots were rather inaccurate … and we had to calculate our position on the road to find our error. I still have 2 science graph books full of the working we did at Parkes as well as a Sight Log Book with all the details recorded, including those we did later in Wellingtons … all signed for & certified correct. During our 6 air flights I took 31 star shots, 7 sun, 3 moon and 1 planet, overall averaging about 5 miles error.
For air shots the plane needs to be kept straight & level with speed constant … later with autopilot in Wellingtons we got better accuracy.
[page break]
All those ground shots had to be done in our “spare” time, yet we were in the classroom all day 6 1/2 days a week except when flying. The peacetime course of 6 months had been compressed into 1 month. We had Saturday afternoon free & our instructor said he expected none of us to be sober by sundown. There was a written exam at the end of the month & I did well. I was made sergeant & we went straight to Bradfield Park again on 11th Nov. ’43 to await embarkation. I think we had a few days leave, then sailed on the SS Mt Vernon on 26th. It was an American troop ship with 600 of us RAAF & a lot of wounded/sick Yank soldiers who’d seen a hard time in the Pacific. We didn’t see much of them. We were all in one hold, 4-tier bunks, [deleted] all [/deleted] only narrow aisles between, portholes covered at night & no lights allowed as well. Luckily, we had a lad who played the saxophone well, so each night we’d have a few hours of songs before sleep-time.
The Pacific Ocean was fairly calm for about 10 days, we got our sea legs I think, because we then ran into 3 days of stormy weather (there were logs from the storms floating in San Francisco harbour when we arrived), but few of us were seasick. It was 10th Dec. ’43.
When we docked all our sea-kit bags were unloaded and the 60 of us observors, [sic] who’d been booked for Canada to do a Reconnaisence [sic] course there, were told they’d changed their plans for us, so we had to load our 60 kit bags onto a truck. Then they asked for volunteers to accompany the truck & load them onto the train there … promising that the volunteers would be into town ahead of the others. We’d heard of the “Top of the Mark” Hopkins hotel & agreed we’d all meet there. We volunteers were an hour later than the rest & when we got there they’d run out of all beer except Mexican, and it was worse apparently than American (which was sweet & fizzy). The real disappointment was missing the trip to Canada with the safe prospect of patrols in long-range Liberators over the Altantic, [sic] but instead destined for Bomber Command.
[page break]
[extract from a log book signed by Chief Instructor of the Air Observers Advanced Navigation Course]
[black and white photograph of two men and one woman. Herbert Adams is in uniform and the other man in a civilian suit]
October, ’43. Bert, Beryl & Meggs, just after completion of course at 1 B.A.G.S. Evans Head … on leave before going to 1 A.N.S. at Parkes.
In San Francisco we spent the night in a Transit Camp called Fort McDowell. The next day I bought a new watch with sweep second-hand, as we were told (before we sailed) that there was not enough issue watches in England for all Navigators. We didn’t have much time for sightseeing, saw the Golden Gate, Alcatraz & crossed the Oakland bridge to board the Southern Pacific train at Oakland on 11th Dec. It was a troop train, but with pullman cars like we’d seen in movies … aisle in the middle & little compartments to seat 4, but only 3 occupants, because at night a Negro porter pulled down an upper bunk for 1, & converted the lower seats & table to a double bed … he put on the sheets & blankets too. We all chipped in at New York & gave him a decent tip. There were steam pipes below the seats which worked well, except for the top bunk where I slept … on most mornings there were icicles hanging from the roof from my condensed breath.
[page break]
Our train rarely stopped for us to get off – it was often shunted on to a side track, to allow passenger &/or freight trains to pass.
[black and white photograph of a train]
This is one such diesel Steamliner express at Denver, about to leave for Chicago.
We were allowed off at Denver for 2 hours. I stopped at a chemist shop which also sold watches and asked if they could fix my new watch which had stopped after 1 day! The man fixed it in a few minutes with a dab of oil I think. He didn’t want any payment, but said he’d like an Australian kangaroo penny. I gave him the 4 I had. He thought that too generous! and came forth with a gift of a leather wallet … generous American.
As a group of us were walking back to the train a civilian noticed our little AUSTRALIA strips on our shoulders and said to us .. “Say, boys, I didnt [sic] know AUSTRIA was on our side in the war.” He was keen then to ask us all where in Australia we were from, a bit about our training & the boat trip.
Americans cooked our meals, which were then brought through the carriages by rotating teams of volunteers. For each meal we got a big stainless steel ”tray” of 5 compartments; if it was lunch we’d likely get a ladle of meat in one, a ladle of vegetables in each of 3 spaces, a ladle of sweets in the last & then a ladle of what we reckoned was plum jam spread over the whole lot! But it was nice food.
At Chicago we stopped for about an hour in a huge marshalling yard several tracks away from a platform. As there was snow on the ground most of us got out to have a snow-fight (I’d never seen snow). We soon got back in the train … it was -30o outside, & a chilly wind!
[page break]
On the train, as on the boat, we spent a lot of the daylight time playing cards, mostly pontoon for money but sometimes 500 for fun. Pontoon is a bit like Blackjack, but fairer to the non-banker players, and, I think allows a lot more judgement & maybe skill. On the train we put the limit bet up to 25C (from 2/-), which meant the maximum win possible after double & redouble, getting 5 under 21, which pays double, for $8 win … although that rarely happened.
At New York we went to a Transit Camp, Fort Slocum on 19th Dec. We had 2 days free in the city. I can’t remember much that I did besides going to the top of the Empire State building, going to an ice hockey match at Madison Square Garden, (I hadn’t realized what a rough game it was) sitting so high & far from the rink that I couldn’t see where the puck flew to when a shot missed the net, and having a leisurly [sic] drinking session – their beer seemed light & fizzy at Jack Dempsey’s Spagetti [sic] Bar. We tried the spagetti [sic] … I’d only ever had it from tins with tomato sauce, but there, it was just a big plateful of boiled spagetti [sic] with hard, dry, grated cheese in a shaker, no ketchup either.
From Fort Slocum we were taken to the harbour & loaded aboard the I’le de France on 22nd Dec. It wasn’t a very big troopship, but was stacked with American Army men going to U.K. ready for the invasion in June. Our lot was crammed into a cramped hold (?) below water-level, near the stern … the sides we [sic] quite sloped; the only access to the showers & toilets on the deck above us was up 2 vertical latters [sic] & through round waterproof doors (if closed) in the roof.
[page break]
And they had a plumbing problem with that bathroom, the toilets had overflowed onto the floor … we had to paddle through a couple of inches of watery muck to up more stairs to another bathroom. We were not happy, especially when they did a Boat Drill next day & it took our lot 2 hours to get up on deck.
Still we sailed on the morning of Xmas Eve, got as far as the Statue of Liberty, where the ship broke down – engine trouble, - and was towed back. Eventually, we were fed sandwiches about 9 p.m. The next morning they said we could wait on board for a meal (sometime) and get paid, or go off to the city without either, where there would, maybe, be American civilians willing to take us home for Xmas Dinner. We did that and a nice man Mr Richie took 3 of us to his home in Mt Vernon.
We got there about 1 pm, found the lounge room beautifully decorated for Xmas, a tree lit up, and drinks offered round. We were hungry & wondered when the dinner would begin. But the talking and sipping continued until about 7 pm when we sat down to a sumptuous meal, he carved the turkey, we had second helpings & they remarked that we had good appetites. He took us back to Fort Slocum & arranged to meet us at his factory on the 27th.
[black and white photograph of the front of a house]
Mr. Richies home in Mt Vernon, N.Y.
[page break]
His factory, among other things, made good quality hankerchiefs. [sic] He presented each of us with 1/2 dozen very nice ones, then took us to a businessmens’ [sic] club where we had a few drinks .. we weren’t allowed to buy … it was all paid by the member himself signing a chit … no cash appeared. He took us back to Fort Slocum for the night and we had 3 more days to wander about New York, spend what little money we had left; I think I went to a cinema or two, but can’t remember the films I saw.
On New Year’s Eve we were loaded aboard the Queen Elizabeth which had been converted to a troop ship earlier in the war … some of the cabins had been finished, other parts not … which allowed for even more bunks for troops. We got a double cabin with bathroom … each 6’ of wall had 3-tier bunks so 18 of us fitted in the cabin. We found that on the 3 (I think) open decks where there was a walkway about 10’ wide all round between the rail & cabins walls that they had 3-tier bunks, bolted to the cabin walls and U.S. Army men used them to sleep in 12 hour double shifts. I heard that they put over 20 000 troops aboard. We went to big dining rooms for a meal, twice a day. It took 4 hours for the first meal, a clean up, then 4 hours for the second meal. When it came to Boat Drill all the decks were crammed, all the big wide staircases & still many in corridors. Big fast ships like the Queens travelled alone relying on their speed for safety, cargo ships went in convoys at the speed of the slowest ship, escorted by the Navy & shephered [sic] by long-range aircrafts. A couple of days out we were told
[page break]
that they thought there was a U-boat pack waiting in Mid-Atlantic & so this ship was going to divert well North … up towards Iceland, at maximum speed. They told us to put on warm clothes as they would turn off the cabin heating to get more heat for the engines! One of the crew told us at Greenock, later, that they got to about 40 knots.
The Atlantic was fairly rough & all the rails seemed to be occupied by seasick Americans, but our 2 weeks on the Pacific apparently cured us. We spent most of the time playing cards – the pontoon games were now lowered to a 2C limit. Anyone who’d managed to retain a few dollars could get into crap games (dice) which the Americans played a lot of.
We actually sailed from New York on the morning of New Years Day, and arrived at Greenock, Scotland, near Glasgow, on 7th Jan. Several of the crew were Australians, and one of them took a few of us for a tour of parts of the ship not normally open to passengers. We climbed up inside the mast on narrow steps to, I guess, the crows-nest … it was so high as to be scary even though it only swayed a little, being anchored. He showed us a big gun near the bow … about 6” I think, and maybe 40’ above the water. He said that on a previous crossing ploughing through big waves that the previous gun had been torn from its mountings (bolts about 2” thick). We saw the kitchens & engines … it was great.
By nightfall we’d been loaded onto a train which arrived next morning at Brighton where the RAAF had taken over 2 of the big hotels on the waterfront the Grand & the Metropole, both about 8 floors high.
[page break]
We stayed at Brighton, No. 11 P.D.R.C, until 21st Jan. There were some lessons, a chance to begin learning the main stars ion the Northern Hemisphere – even on cloudy nights we could make use of a planisphere to learn the names & relative positions of those stars. I guess they consulted our records & maybe our log-books, but here they decided who would be navigator, who bomb-aimer, which pilots would go to Bomber Command & which to Fighter or other smaller planes. Sid Payne who’d trained at Cootamundra with me after earlier doing EFTS at Narromine and being “scrubbed” during SFTS at Uranqunity, became a bomb-aimer & I a navigator.
However, the first thing that happened after we got to Brighton was to be sent on leave for a few days. They had an arrangement called the Lady Ryder Scheme, where new arrivals could go to a private home as a guest for a week. My hostess was Mrs Adams, who had a nice house (modernised internally), called Huntercombe Farmhouse, Huntercombe Lane, Taplow, Buckinghamshire, not very far from Windsor. She made me feel at home but had to be absent almost the whole week – she gave the doorkey & said to help myself & recommended I visit Margaret Vyner, an Australian actress, who lived at Dorney Village, between Taplow & Windsor, & who was reputed to like having an Australian visitor. I did that & also met her husband Hugh Marlowe, a handsome English actor (he played The Saint in a film). They took me to the nearby Pub for a drink & yarn. While there, David Niven turned up in uniform (Army Captain) just back from North Africa on leave, with a case of brandy.
[page break]
I guess I was pretty much ignored as they’d been friends for years, & once they started on the brandy I took my leave. While staying at Mrs Adams’ place I visited Eton College and Windsor Castle.
[black and white photograph of Mrs Adams’ house]
Mrs Adams’ house, Huntercombe Farmhouse, Taplow, Bucks.
[black and white photograph of the pub, The Palmer Arms, with a bicycle leaning against the wall]
The Pub next door to where Margaret Vyner & Hugh Williams lived in Dorney Village, between Taplow & Windsor.
[black and white photograph of Eton College]
Eton College
[black and white photograph of the chapel at Eton College]
The Chapel
[page break]
During my first visit to London, Jan ’44.
[black and white photographs of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben]
Houses of Parliament, and Big Ben
[black and white photographs of the interior and exterior of St Paul’s Cathedral]
St Pauls Cathedral
[black and white photograph of Buckingham Palace]
Buckingham Palace
[page break]
[black and white photograph of Eton College]
Eton College
[black and white photograph of the chapel at Eton College]
The Chapel
[black and white photograph of Windsor Castle]
Windsor Castle
[black and white photograph of Windsor Castle]
From the Railway Station
[black and white photograph of Windsor Castle]
From the Soccer Fields
[page break]
On the short rail trip back to London from Taplow, David Niven was in the same compartment, with 6 other people. We merely said good-day; I think he had a hangover.
Back at Brighton, towards the end of our time there, a few of us navigators were interviewed by Group-Captain (later Air-Vice Marshall) Bennett, in charge of Pathfinders. He told us that when he first formed Pathfinders and asked the squadrons for proficient crews to volunteer, a lot of them got rid of crews who were troublemakers and their navigators not often their best. He offerred [sic] us the opportunity of skipping the other training we’d normally do, to go direct to Pathfinders where they’d train us their way; but of course, we’d have to do a second tour straight after the first tour. The end of the war seemed still a way off, and Pathfinders had to spend extra time at each target, so he got few takers, certainly not I.
I’ve saved a few postcards of Brighton, printed pre-war. In wartime they dismanlted [sic] a section of the 2 piers to prevent enemy landings.
[black and white picture postcard of East Cliff and Palace Pier, Brighton]
[page break]
[three black and white picture postcards of Brighton Pier, Brighton Beach and Preston Park, Brighton]
[page break]
While at Brighton we had a few hit & run air raids at night … it wasn’t far across to France. At first we went down to the basement, but stayed in our rooms for the others. Late on 21st Feb. we got on a train, which after a change or two and a truck ride we arrived at Llandwrog, North Wales, No 9 (O) A.F.U. on the 22nd. It was a war-time dispersed camp, several miles south on the coast from the narrow [inserted] Menai [/inserted] strait next to Angelsea, [sic] where Sid Payne was to do his Bomb-Aimers A.F.U. (Mona airfield)
The sleeping quarters were in Nissen huts below sea-level separated from the beach by a sea-wall. Therefore, there was no running water or sewerage. We had garbage tins between each hut to use as urinals at night … sometimes they ran over. There were hundreds of RAAF bicycles … you could take any you saw and leave it where you liked. To our east were the runways, then the hangars, the messes & toilets, showers & laundry facilities, about 1 1/2 mile ride.
We were to spend just over a month there; the flying in Ansons again. We found map-reading difficult; whereas in the Riverina there was lots of open spaces devoid of railway lines, towns etc, in the U.K. there seemed to be too many roads, rivers, towns … difficult to tell one from another, especially since there was mostly a lot of cloud about.
Our aerodrome was only a few miles from Mt Snowdon, the highest mountain south of Scotland. We were told that 13 Ansons had crashed on it during training flights (not all from Llandwrog). So beware. Our staff pilots, when returning to where the navigator said was (below the clouds) our ‘drome, they’d fly west for 10 minutes to descend over the Irish Sea, … just in case.
[page break]
On each flight, 2 trainee-navigators were on board, one to do the exercise and be assessed on it, the other to do practice map-reading, astro shots, drift reading etc. We did just under 36 hours of flying in 13 flights. In Australia, none of the Ansons had heating for the crew, but here it seemed after 5 flights, that they all did. Until the night of 5th March. We took off at 1910 & flew for almost 3 hours, & the plane was nice & warm, as usual, so we just wore our battle-dress uniform. After de-briefing, we were sent on another similar flight at 0250 (early morning), for 2 3/4 hr flying. But the plane wasn’t heated and it was about -30o at 4000! I was supposed to take sextant shots which required tracking a star, eye to the eyepiece for 2 minutes while the clockwork mechanism averaged a lot of readings (maybe 60). It was hopeless. The tears in my eyes began to freeze and I saw circular rainbows before the 2 min. elapsed. We just had to suffer the cold. The heating worked on our remaining 5 flights. My assessments ranged from 65 percent to 81 percent, with a mean of about 71 percent and a remark (written in log book): “average navigator, works hard and is keen.”
One funny thing happened there. Between the hangars & the mess was a wide expanse of bitumen. We saw two airmen on bicycles riding towards each other (not very quickly, luckily) … both tried turning away on the same side, then both back, until their front tyres met squarely head on catapulting both to fall on the tangled bikes.
We had a day off at weekends and visited Caernavon [sic] & Conway castles.
[page break]
[black and white photograph of Herbert Adams and another airman leaning against a hut]
With Col McLaughlin beside the instruction hut at Llandwrog.
[black and white photograph of Herbert Adams, smoking, standing in front of a Nissen hut]
Beside our Nissen hut, below sea-level at Llandwrog, N. Wales,
[black and white photograph of Herbert Adams standing at the bottom of steps at Caernarvon Castle]
At one of the entrances to Caernarvon Castle.
When Val & I revisited in 1994, Val took a photo of me in the same spot.
[page break]
[cutting with photograph detailing the Tail Drift Sight, Mk. IVA]
We seldom used the tail drift sight, preferring to use the bombsight fitted to the Ansons, (not all) but the Fairey Battle had one something like this (simpler). Once we got on to Wellingtons (& later) we had GEE and no longer bothered to find drifts.
Dublin Core
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Title
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The war - training
Description
An account of the resource
Writes that he joined newly formed Air Training Corps at end of 1941 as this would give an accelerated position on the waiting list for aircrew. Describes training and sports. Called up into army 3 July 1942 and describes training in basic infantry and as a driver. After exam, was offered course at technical college and position as warrant officer instructor but turned it down. Called up into Royal Australian Air Force 12 September 1942 and initial training at RAAF Bradfield Park and writes about training there. Describes coordination test as pilot which he believed he fails and opting for navigator training. Posted to Cootamundra he fell ill which delayed his course but when recovered goes on to describe his early navigator training on Anson. There followed in August 1932 bombing and air gunnery training school at RAAF Evans Head where he flew in Fairy Battle followed by astro-navigation course at Parkes NSW. He then goes on to describe his journey to the United Kingdom(departed 26 November 1943) via the United State (crossed by train) and then by ship from New York to Greenock. Covers activities in England in Brighton and other locations before training in North Wales on Anson which he describes in detail. Memoire also contains photographs of people, aircraft and places as well as a diagram of the tail drift sight MkIVA.
Creator
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H G Adams
Format
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Thirty page handwritten document
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Photograph
Identifier
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BAdamsHGAdamsHGv3
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
New South Wales--Ashfield
New South Wales--Liverpool
New South Wales--Lindfield
New South Wales--Evans Head
New South Wales--Parkes
United States
California--San Francisco
Illinois--Chicago
New York (State)--New York
Great Britain
Scotland--Greenock
England--Sussex
England--Brighton
England--Berkshire
England--Eton
England--Windsor (Windsor and Maidenhead)
California
Illinois
New York (State)
New South Wales
Temporal Coverage
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1942-07-03
1942-08-20
1943-10-22
1943-12-22
1944-01-01
1943-10-26
1944-06-21
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
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Tricia Marshall
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
Battle
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
Bombing and Gunnery School
military living conditions
military service conditions
navigator
Nissen hut
Pathfinders
RAF Llandwrog
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1153/34166/BThomasJHThomasJHv1.1.pdf
9a596508c094843367071bcd8c323d5f
Dublin Core
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Title
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Thomas, John Henry
J H Thomas
Description
An account of the resource
Seven items. Collection concerns John Henry Thomas (b. 1923, 424515 Royal Australian Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 102 Squadron. Collection contains an oral history interview, memoirs of his service and other events and a painting.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Thomas and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-01-22
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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Thomas, JH
Transcribed document
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Transcription
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SERVICE RECORD
JOHN HENRY (JACK) THOMAS
A424515
DATE OF BIRTH: 14TH September 1923
Enlisting in the R.A.A.F. in December 1941 my call-up was delayed until September 1942, as the Army had conscripted me in early 1942. My concern was that the Army was reluctant to release me and I was prevented from accepting the June, July and August call-ups by the Air Force. In early Septeber an R.A.A.F. recruiting van arrived at Hume Camp, Albury and the following morning I was on my way to Sydney for discharge from the Army.
I became an Aircraftsman 11 on the 12th Septemner 1942 at Bradfield Park, Sydney, completed the twelve week initial training course and was classified for pilot training.
On the 9th December 1942 I was posted to No 8 Elementary Flying Training School, Narrandera N.S.W. for training on Tiger Moth aircraft. After completion of a course lasting eight weeks, my logbook recorded 7 0 flying hours.
The next post was to No 1 Service Flying Training School at Point Cook, Victoria, arriving there on the 7th February 1943. Flying training was on twin engine Airspeed Oxford aircraft operating from satellite airfields at Werribee, Lara and Little River. I received my Pilot's brevet on 16th June 1943 and became a Sergeant Pilot with 200 flying hours in my logbook. The ground subjects were rather onerous, but navigation being a form of Trigonometry and having been in an army artillery survey unit I found it an interesting subject. A Tasmanian trainee and self finished equal first in the course.
After Embarkation leave and a short stay at Bradfield Park I went by train to Brisbane, stayed two days in an army camp in West Brisbane and then boarded a U.S. army transport for the voyage to San Francisco. "NOORDAM" was a Dutch 2nd class passenger/cargo ship of 11,000 tons and the sea trip was an 18 day non stop run. Four days were spent in a U.S. army camp on Angel Island in San Francisco bay. The ferry to Angel Island also called at Alcatraz. Ken Jagger and I stepped onto the wharf and a guard, with Tommy gun and loud hailer, situated in a tower promptly ordered us back on board the ferry; we complied even more promptly.
The next part of the journey was from San Francisco (Oakland) to New York by troop train. In New York boarded the "AQUITANIA" a 46,500 ton sister ship of "TITANIC". The voyage to Greenock in Scotland was a solo trip of 5 1/2 days. On board were 4,000 air force personnel and 7,800 American troops. Meals were twice daily only. In New York harbour the capsized French Ship 'NORMANDIE' was at the adjoining wharf.
The train trip from GREENOCK TO 11 P.R.D.C. Brighton on the English South Coast took place overnight, and in mid September was seconded (with Ken Jagger) to Empire Central Flying School, Hullavington. The purpose of this secondment was for comparison of training standards throughout the Empire Air Training Scheme. There
[page break]
were 96 types of aircraft at this establishment. Shortly after returning to Brighton I was post to No 18 Pilot Advanced Flying Unit at CHURCH LAWFORD (near RUGBY) IN WARWICKSHIRE. Completed course on Airspeed Oxford aircraft and now had 284 flying hours in logbook.
I was then posted to 21 Operational Training Unit Moreton in Marsh Gloucestershire and teamed up with crew. Unfortunately Navigator and Bomb Aimer dropped out and had to wait for next intake to complete crew. Completed course on Wellington Bombers on 27.4.1944 and now had 388 flying hours. It was at 21 O.T.U. sustained spinal injury in landing accident caused by instructor and failure of safety harness. Next posting was to 4.G.B.S. (Ground battle School) at Acaster Malbis in Yorkshire. Trained with the Kings Rifle Corps and the Coldstream Guards in self defence and escape routines plus night vision improvement. At the end of May posted to 1658 Heavy Conversion Unit (Riccall) in East Yorkshire where our crew was increased by the addition of Flight Engineer and totalled seven men. Completed course on Halifax MK2 Aircraft and had now 427 hrs, in logbook. Was posted to 102 (Ceylon) squadron Pocklington in East Yorkshire located 12 miles from York on the Hull/York road. After conversion onto Halifax MK3 Aircraft commenced operational duties on 12th July 1944 and completed tour of operations on 22nd January 1945.
The last five sorties the crew numbers had increased to eight now by the addition of a Mid Under[?] Gunner in a nacelle using a point 5 calibre Machine Gun.
[centred] CREW LIST [/centred]
FLYING OFFICER JACK THOMAS PILOT RAAF
PILOT OFFICER JACK WHITE BOMB AIMER RAAF
SERGEAMT DEREK TURNER NAVIGATOR RAF
FLIGHT SERGEANT ROSS PEARSON WIRELESS /OPERATOR RAAF
SERGEANT JOHN HUGHES FLIGHT ENGINEER RAF
SERGEANT NAT GOLDBERG MID UPPER GUNNER RAF
FLYING OFFICER NEIL DAVIES MID [deleted] UPPER [/deleted] [inserted] UNDER [/inserted] RAF
FLIGHT SERGEANT JOHN WILLIAMSON REAR GUNNER RAAF
Now had 613 flying hours in logbook, thereafter I was posted to 21 O.T.U. Moreton In the Marsh, as a screen (instructor) Pilot where I remained until 22nd June 1945. Logbook total 693 hours. Then posted to Brighton for Repatriation to Australia. Travelled on R.M.S. "STRATHEDEN" arriving in Sydney mid November 1945 and was discharged on 7th December 1945.
[page break]
[centred] SORTIES CARRIED OUT [/centred]
12-7-44 Les Hauts Buisson Night raid returned with bomb load as unserviceability of equipment prevented bombing
17-7-44 Bois De La Haire Daylight raid
18-7-44 Vaires Daylight raid on Paris Rail Depot
20-7-44 Chapelle Notre Dame Daylight raid
03-8-44 Foret De Nieppe Daylight raid
05-8-44 Foret De Nieppe Daylight raid
01-8-44 Novelle En Chausse II Daylight raid
07-8-44 Battle Area 3 Night raid on the Falaise Gap east of Caen & attack destroyed a Panzer division, 70.00[?] ton ammunition dump and allowed British and Canadian armies to attack the defending German forces.
08-8-44 Belle Croix Daylight raid
11-8-44 Somain Daylight raid on Marshalling yards
15-8-44 Eindhoven Holland Daylight raid on Philips Electrical works
16-8-44 Kiel Night raid on Submarine Pens & supporting factories
18-8-44 Sterkrade Night raid on German Synthetic oil refinery
25-8-44 Wemars Capelle Daylight raid
31-8-44 Lumbres Daylight raid
09-9-44 Le Havre Daylight raid cancelled with 7/10 cloud over target, bombs dropped in English Channel narrowly missing H.M.S. Warspite and H.M.S. Black Prince bombarding Le Havre, but well out of their assigned zone, trespassing in R.A.F. bomb disposal area
10-9-44 Le Harve Daylight raid
11-9-44 Gelsenkirchen Daylight raid on German Synthetic Oil refinery intense flak barrage
12-9-44 Munster Daylight raid, 400 fighter escort Mustang & Spitfires
20-9-44 Calais Daylight raid
7-10-44 Cleve Daylight raid with large fighter escort
14-10-44 Duisberg Daylight raid, RAF dropped 4,500 tons mid morning, USAAC bombed early afternoon and RAF bombed before midnight. Total bomb load 10,000 tons
15-10-44 Wilhemshaven Night raid on Naval Base
25-10-44 Essen Daylight raid
30-10-44 Cologne Night raid, Target covered by cloud P.F.F. used sky markers and target was successfully bombed by main force
02-11-44 Dusseldorf Night raid with a Night Fighter firing & missing
[page break]
18-11-44 Munster Daylight raid and Master Bomber in a Lancaster lost rear turret from a bomb dropped from above. He passed in front of me and I could see right up the fuselage to the cockpit.
I became hospitalised with severe tonsillitis at this time for a period of two weeks. Subsequently I had a tonsillectomy in March 1945.
From 25-11-44 to 20-12-44 Britain experienced the coldest winter for 40 years and air operations were at a standstill. Low cloud, snow, and ice were constant. The coldest day was 2 Fahrenheit.
24-12-44 Mulheim Airfield Daylight raid when RAF and USAAC bombed 8 major German airbases under the protection of an enormous fighter cover ... On take-off our airspeed indicator became unserviceable and navigational aids and bombsight were rendered useless. Target was successfully bombed by closely formatting with another Halifax. Landed at Carnaby as home airfield under cloud cover.
28-12-44 Munchen-Gladbach Night raid
29-12-44 Koblenz Daylight raid
02-01-45 Ludwigshaven Night raid
05-01-45 Hanover Night raid, near collision when a FW190 crossed our bow from right to left.
13-01-45 Saarbrucken Night raid
16-01-45 Madgeburg Night raid
22-01-45 Gelsendirchen Night raid
Typical procedures carried out in preparation for night bombing raid over Germany
Daylight 0745
0630 Reveille {broadcast over Tannoy}
0700 to 0830 Breakfast available in Messes
0830 Pilots report to flight office {if not already booked for 1 hour Link trainer session}. Other crew members report to their respective sections.
1000 Notification of operartions[sic] planned for tonight. War list drawn up in each flight office in accordance with number of aircraft by Operational Plan.
1100 Check of aircraft to operate, pilot and flight sergeant in charge of ground crew talk over vital points and airtest aircraft where necessary
1200 to 1300 Lunch available at Messes.
[page break]
1.30pm to 3.30pm Crews take rest
3.30pm Report back to sections, Shortly, call for all operational crews to go to respective messes for operational meal (Bacon, eggs, tomato, toast, tea etc.) thence proceed to briefing Room at 4.15pm
4.15pm Briefing room. All operational crews taking part are assembled. The squadron commander (wing Commander rank) arrives, says "sit down gentlemen" turns to the covered map on the wall, removes cover and announces the target for tonight (Magdeburg). The map has the route to the target indicated by a coloured tape, with changes of direction to avoid defended areas. The return flight is indicated by a coloured tape, again with changes of course to avoid defended areas. The Wing-Co states time of take off, E.T.A. (estimated time of arrival) having an accuracy of plus or minus 15 seconds.
He then says adjust your watches and everyone synchronises their wrist watches. The Wing-Co concludes his briefing and is followed by the intelligence officer, meterology officer, navigation leader, bombing leader, wireless leader, flight engineering leader and finally the gunnery leader. It is now about 5.15pm and the sun has set about 1 1/4 hrs ago.
The crews now travel to the Parachute section where they pick up their chute, don cold weather gear including flying boots and the gunners collect their heated flying suit. It will be cold, -45deg.c. at 24,000 feet.
The crews re-enter the crew buses and are transported to their respective aircraft which are around the airfield in dispersal bays. It is now about 5.35pm and take off has been set for 6pm. The aircraft nearest to the runway in use will start its engines in about 5 minutes and each aircraft thereafter will start engines so that when the first aircraft taxies from its dispersal point, onto the perimeter track, an orderly file of all the other aircraft involved begins.
The noise level created by the twenty, four engined Halifaxes moving round to the take-off position is very loud. As the first aircraft swings onto the runway it travels forward to ensure the tail wheel is straight before being locked in position. With brakes fully on, each engine in succession is run up to full revs and returned to idle. Now all four engines are opened up to 2,000 revs and the brakes released. The aircraft moves and begins to pick up speed as full revs (3,100 per minute) are achieved. Minimum take off speed, 120mph. is reached after a run of 1,200 metres, but usually held aircraft down until 130ph. showing, then lift off, squeeze brakes, lift undercarriage then the 5deg. of flap used for take off. At 160mph. engines throttled back to 2,300 revs. and climb to 2,000ft. level off, circle drome and set course for Germany. Each aircraft followed the above procedures and took off at little more than 20 second intervals.
The first 120 miles is flown at 2,000ft. to stay under enemy radar, then climb begins at 160 mph., 1,200ft. per minute initially but declining as the air gets thinner. The
[page break]
Dutch coast is crossed about one hour after take off at a height of 12,000ft. Climb continues and 24,000ft. is reached; it is now 1 1/2 hrs. since take off. At 160mph. indicated air speed, the aircraft is now travelling at true air speed of 227mph. We are now well and truly in the danger zone as German rader[sic] is tracking us and directing their A/A guns and night fighters. At 24,000ft. it will take 1 1/2 hrs. to reach Magdeburg. It is very cold and the air is clear. I had my side window open on the climb and when I tried to close it, no luck, it was frozen tight. Later I found the heel of my left thumb had been frost bitten through three glove layers from trying to force the window shut.
For 1 1/2 hrs. the aircraft, weaved, skidded and undulated to avoid being a steady target for any night fighters trying to home in. By this time the inside of the windscreen had iced up so there was no forward vision. The bombd aimer became the forward eyes of the aircraft. The target area comes into view and the P.F.F. flares are visible; now the Master bomber could be heard on the R/T directing traffic. This is the most dangerous time of the operation. Steady course, steady speed, aircraft straight and level, bomb doors open, bomb aimer watching the target marker slide along the bombsight until it reaches the cross, Bombs Gone. The sudden release of 9,000lbs. of bombs in just over 1 second causes the aircraft to suddenly rise 200 feet. Bomb doors shut, but fly straight and level for one minute for aiming point photo. Then turning (rate 1 turn) to starboard to go on reciprocal course for home.
Now its nose down 220mph. which is 297mph. true air speed for eight minutes and levelling off at 16,000ft. on course at 160mph. Indicated (205 T.A.S.) This part of the return flight takes 2 1/4 hrs., constantly weaving, skidding, undulating. After this, descent commences at 300/400ft. per minute crossing the coast again at 10/12,000ft. and continuing until 2,000ft. then level off, and the aircraft, because of its lightened weight cruises easily in the range 210/230mph. After some 14 minutes of flight the outer circle lights of Pocklington Airfield are sighted and after receipt of permission to land, taxy to dispersal area, leave aircraft and ride on bus back to parachute section then to debriefing. The aircraft had been airbourne for 6 hours 15 minutes. After debriefing back to mess for meal, as before, then to bed.
P.S. As Britain was subject to sudden cloud and fog cover, three emergency airfields were established, at Manston, Woodbridge and Carnaby, ringed by petrol filled piping, which ignited dispersed cloud or fog for safe landings. They were known as F.I.D.O. (Fog Intensive Disposal Of.).
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Service record John Henry (Jack) Thomas
Description
An account of the resource
Covers enlistment and early training in the Royal Australian Air Force. Continues with description of journey to England via the United States and training in England. Lists his crew formed during training. Joined 102 Squadron with Halifax Mk 3 on 12 July 1944 and completed tour 22 January 1944. Lists 36 operational sorties. Goes on to give a detailed description of a typical day's preparation for night bombing raid over Germany.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
J H Thomas
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-12
1942-09-12
1942-12-09
1943-02-07
1943-06-16
1944-04-27
1944-07-12
1944-07-17
1944-07-18
1944-07-30
1944-08-03
1944-08-05
1944-08-01
1944-08-07
1944-08-08
1944-08-11
1944-08-15
1944-08-16
1944-08-18
1944-08-25
1944-08-31
1944-09-09
1944-09-10
1944-09-11
1944-09-12
1944-09-20
1944-10-07
1944-10-14
1944-10-15
1944-10-25
1944-10-30
1944-11-02
1944-11-18
1944-12-24
1944-12-28
1944-12-29
1945-01-02
1945-01-05
1945-01-13
1945-01-16
1945-01-22
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
New South Wales--Albury
New South Wales--Sydney
New South Wales--Narrandera
Victoria--Point Cook
United States
California--San Francisco
New York (State)--New York
Great Britain
Scotland--Greenock
England--Wiltshire
England--Sussex
England--Brighton
England--Warwickshire
England--Rugby
England--Gloucestershire
England--Yorkshire
France
France--Paris
France--Nieppe Forest
France--Falaise
France--Somain
Netherlands
Netherlands--Eindhoven
Germany--Kiel
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
France--Pas-de-Calais
France--Lumbres
France--Le Havre
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
France--Calais
Germany--Kleve (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Germany--Essen
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Mülheim an der Ruhr
Germany--Mönchengladbach
Germany--Koblenz
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Saarbrücken
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Hannover
California
New York (State)
New South Wales
Victoria
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Six page printed document
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription. Under review
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BThomasJHThomasJHv1
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
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.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
102 Squadron
1658 HCU
21 OTU
air gunner
aircrew
bomb aimer
crewing up
flight engineer
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Halifax Mk 3
Heavy Conversion Unit
navigator
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Acaster Malbis
RAF Hullavington
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Pocklington
RAF Riccall
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
wireless operator
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1823/32461/PKentKD17010008.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1823/32461/PKentKD17010009.1.jpg
da353b87ad13ec93c0b464aab6e644a4
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Kent, Kenneth D
K D Kent
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-04-04
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Kent, KD
Description
An account of the resource
31 items. The collection concerns Kenneth Kent (b. 1922, 572440, 55219 Royal Air Force) and contains a photograph album and documents. He joined the RAF as an Apprentice in 1936, starting his training at RAF Halton later going to RAF Cosford. He completed his training as an aircraft tradesman and was promoted to corporal. He volunteered for aircrew and went to the United States and Canada for flight training in July 1942. He was commissioned in July 1943 and was posted to 106 Squadron at RAF Metheringham. He was promoted to Squadron Leader in August 1945.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Nigel Kent and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
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
San Francisco 1942
Description
An account of the resource
Two pages, the first has one photograph of central San Francisco captioned 'A few of San Francisco's skyscrapers'. with some of them named.
A second photograph has been removed.
The second page has four photographs, the first is of an imposing structure surrounded by trees captioned 'Band Stand Golden Gate Park'.
Second is of an even larger imposing building, with formal gardens and flag poles in front, captioned 'City Hall, Civic Center, San Francisco.'
Third has large building on the coast with rocks and a car park, captioned 'Cliff House and Seal Rocks-San Francisco'.
Fourth has part of San Francisco the harbour and Bay Bridge captioned 'Treasure Island (1939 World Fair).
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1942-11
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Five b/w photographs on two album pages
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PKentKD17010008, PKentKD17010009
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
United States
California
California--San Francisco
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-11
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
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.
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1823/32462/PKentKD17010006.2.jpg
3b31e1d4dff0725226299ea20e3fbd37
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1823/32462/PKentKD17010007.2.jpg
488f933ad7fc7c99fc6a671afa50a0c8
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
Kent, Kenneth D
K D Kent
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-04-04
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Kent, KD
Description
An account of the resource
31 items. The collection concerns Kenneth Kent (b. 1922, 572440, 55219 Royal Air Force) and contains a photograph album and documents. He joined the RAF as an Apprentice in 1936, starting his training at RAF Halton later going to RAF Cosford. He completed his training as an aircraft tradesman and was promoted to corporal. He volunteered for aircrew and went to the United States and Canada for flight training in July 1942. He was commissioned in July 1943 and was posted to 106 Squadron at RAF Metheringham. He was promoted to Squadron Leader in August 1945.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Nigel Kent and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
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
San Francisco 1942
San Francisco - Oakland Bay Bridge, California, USA
Description
An account of the resource
First page has four photographs, the first a close up of one of the enclose suspension cables appearing to sit on a young ladies shoulder, captioned, 'An American Miss holding a suspension cable'.
The second shows a semi circular tunnel captioned 'The Yerba Buena Island Tunnel lined with white tiles'.
Third is captioned as 'One of the towers'.
The fourth is of part of a bridge captioned 'The spans east of the Yerba Buena tunnel'.
The second page has four photographs, the first is captioned as 'The Bay Bridge from the Yerba Buena Island'.
The second shows the bridge with San Francisco in the foreground and Oakland in the distance captioned 'The bridge from the top of the Telephone Building San Francisco'.
Third captioned as 'The San Francisco skyline from the Bay Bridge'.
The fourth captioned as 'The Bridge at night downtown San Francisco in the background'.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1942-11
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Eight b/w photographs on two album pages
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PKentKD17010006, PKentKD17010007
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
United States
California
California--San Francisco
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-11
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
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.
-
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/.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
California--San Francisco
Title
A name given to the resource
San Francisco [place]
Description
An account of the resource
This page is an entry point for a place. Please use the links below to see all relevant documents available in the Archive.
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/518/10366/EChadwickRLaphamR431018-0001.1.jpg
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Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Lapham, Rosemary
R Lapham
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lapham, R
Description
An account of the resource
100 items. An oral history interview with Rosemary Lapham, the daughter of Roy Chadwick, family correspondence, congratulations on being honoured, personal documentation as well as photographs of family, acquaintances and aircraft. The collection also contains a thank you letter from Barnes Wallis to Roy Chadwick and a note from Arthur Harris to Robert Saundby about the in-feasibility of the Eder Möhne and Sorpe operation, some conceptual aircraft drawings and other mementos.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Rosemary Lapham and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[photograph]
[page break]
[postmark][postage stamp]
Sunday 17th Oct 43
My dear Rosemary.
I am writing this to you whilst in the Aeroplane flying from Los Angeles to San Francisco
It is a wonderful sight in the sunset. I send my love to Mother, Margaret & you. I am very well & enjoying my tour very much indeed. Daddy
Miss R. CHADWICK
“KINGSLEY”
GILBERT ROAD
HALE, CHESHIRE
ENGLAND.
[examination stamp]
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
Postcard of United Airlines aircraft
Description
An account of the resource
Postcard to Rosemary Chadwick from Roy Chadwick written while airborne between Los Angeles to San Francisco. Sends love to all. Postmarked Seattle, Washington State. On the front a photograph of a United Airlines DC 3.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943-10-18
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Postcard with colour photograph front handwritten on reverse
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
EChadwickRLaphamR431018
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cheshire
England--Sale
United States
California--Los Angeles
California--San Francisco
Washington (State)--Seattle
California
England--Lancashire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-10-17
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
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.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Steve Baldwin
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Roy Chadwick
C-47
Chadwick, Roy (1893-1947)
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1423/38400/BShakespeareHEShakespeareHEv1.1.pdf
b69ea67433a6031337fc762941761c94
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
Shakespeare, Harry
H E Shakespeare
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
2015-06-27
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Shakespeare, HE
Description
An account of the resource
One item. The collection concerns Harry E Shakespeare (426442 Royal Australian Air Force) and contains a memoir.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Susan Mason-Shakespeare and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MY TRIP FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO NEW YORK, ON ROUTE TO UNITED KINGDOM
[underlined] WITH R.A.A.F. 1943 [/underlined]
[underlined] AUS 426442. SGT H.E. SHAKSPEARE. [/underlined]
One of the first United States cities we reached the first big city was San Francisco. As we approached the city the sun was setting. It was a glorious sunset, the colors [sic] running in broad stripes, like futuristic daubs from a painter's brush, and varying in color from lilac, rust and maroon near the horizon to pale greens and blues and ochres, vivid yellows and oranges higher up, and shell pink merging into crimson where the last flickering rays of the sun caught the cumulus clouds above the horizon.
We didn't see the San Francisco skyline that night, because darkness fell quickly, but we did see thousand [sic] of pinpoints of light on the rising slopes behind the waterfront, and we did get a glimpse of the two great bridges for which the city is famous – the Golden Gate Bridge – the two great supporting columns of which are known as the Golden Gate – and the Oakland Bridge, the biggest in the world. The Golden Gate Bridge is 2 1/2 miles long and the Oakland Bridge, which links the two sides of the harbor, [sic] and Treasure Island, is seven or eight miles long. No leave in San Francisco, although we stopped there overnight, but next morning we saw a lot of the harbor (which is normally [missing letter]hrouded by mist, and was to some extent that morning.) We embarked on [missing word] ferry which took us on a 45-minute trip across the harbor to Oakland. On that trip we saw miles and miles of docks, which for layout and facilities generally were superior to anything in Australia; we saw Treasure Island in more detail; Alcatraz, the famous prison island known as “The Rock”, from which escape is said to be impossible; we saw our first skyscrapers, two or three huge buildings of what seemed to be 20 or 30 stories [sic]. Then we went ashore again, and straight on to a train. In next to no time the chaps had got busy with chalk, and the outside of each Pullman car carried such inscriptions as "Australia to Berlin," "If you're a peach, you're welcome here," and drawings of boomerangs and kookaburras, and tankards of foaming beer. The chaps were in a particularly good humour at finding sleeping cars awaiting them, and their spirits were still further improved when our first meal on the train came along. It was served, as all the meals on the train have been served, to us in our compartments, and still steaming hot when we received it. The food was first class – well-cooked, appetisin[missing letter] and varied, and the standard did not fall off during the entire trip. Occasionally with a meal, as on the first day, we were issued with a stick of candy, or a packet of cigarettes, or something of the kind, contributed, we understand, by unions and other organizations, in contrast to our Australian Comforts Fund system.
Our train pulled out from Oakland on Sunday, May 23rd, 1943[, with American girl stenographers leaning out of their office windows, waving goodbye, and before long we passed through a negro colony of old ramshackle, timber-frame houses, most of them two or three-stories [sic] high. We saw a number of cheerful, grinning negros, but the general impression of the colony was of squalor beside which [inserted] [[symbol] [/inserted] the worst slums in Australia would look like model housing schemes [inserted] [symbol]] [/inserted]. Individually, however, the negros are polite, willing and extremely happy, as our particular car porter, a carbon copy of Stepin Fetchit, has proved.
The next township we came to was one of the prettiest of the whole trip – a charming, sleepy little place called Sacramento, with delightful modern two and three storeyed timber frame homes, painted to merge into the green background of trees and shrubs which grew all
[page break]
-2-
around them. Lawn ran beneath the trees from house to house, and ther[missing letter] were no fences. When you see a place like this it makes you think how much prettier Australian cities would look without the fences around every suburban block. We all wanted to stop at Sacramento, but we rolled on across the fertile plains of California (climate similar to that of South Australia) on which almost anything grows – tomatoes, apricots, peaches, plums, olives, dates, and every kind of vegetable. There were scores of market gardens on the undulating plains.
Towards nightfall we were running through purple sage, and [inserted symbol] then we passed Winnemucca, and just as darkness fell we entered the [inserted symbol] Feather River Canyon, one of the loveliest pieces of scenery in California. We awoke the next morning, May 24th, 1943, to the beauty of [inserted symbol] Nevada mountains – the Sierra Nevada. Magazines were forgotten, and we spent the entire day looking out of the window. We travelled across[missing letter] the prairies, four or five thousand feet above sea level, and within a few miles of us on either side, were imposing, clearcut mountains, a most denuded of vegetation, for Nevada gets very little rainfall. The country was sparsely populated, but here and there were tiny homestead at the foot of the mountain slopes – mountain slopes from which the Blackfoot Indians rode down at dusk or at dawn in the days of early settlement, and the covered wagons gathered into their hollow circles. This was the country of Billy the Kid, cattle rustlers blazing six-shooters, and saloons. The mountains of Nevada are not something tiny like the Adelaide Hills but huge, majestic, towering peaks, rising to 9,000 and 10,000 feet, and nearly all snow-capped, their summits glistening white in the morning sun.
Then we came to Elko, a tiny little town which seemed to be inhabited by mixed breeds and whites, and here we had a short march, for exercise. Back into the train again and on past big cattle ranche[missing letter] into Utah, but still the mountains on either side. More vegetation on the mountains in Utah, but the peaks still blanketed in snow, and the mountains converging on us on either side. The second night came, and with it another magnificent sunset. This time the sky was mainly pale pink, lilac and crimson, and, with floodwater lying on the left of the line acting as a mirror for the sky and mountain peaks, there were some indescribably beautiful views.
In the afternoon of this second day we passed through Salt Lake City, travelling for miles before reaching it across a great dese[missing letters] of salt, the bed of a dried out lake, from which the city takes its name. Salt Lake City, is, I believe, a Mormon city, but we didn't see [inserted] into [/inserted] much of it.
On the third morning, Tuesday, May 25th, we crossed into Colorado, taking the scenic route after leaving a town called Grand Junctio[missing letter] Then, for probably 100 miles, we wended our way along the banks of the Colorado River through the Glenwood Canyon, which is undoubtedly the most glorious scenery we have seen. We were right down at the bottom of the Canyon, the track running within feet of the river on one side, and a magnificent motor road skirting the other bank. On either side the towering cliffs rose for 1500 feet or more. The river was flowing fast, with frequent rapids which lashed the water into a white fury, and great cliffs on either side were wooded with pines and firs and spruces. They rose in towering columns, with here and there an unusual rock strata which was reminiscent of pictures of the Colliseum [sic]. At every curve or bend in the line a new glistening peak would come into view, and then perhaps a brick red mountain, studded with bottle-green fir trees, the snow piled thick among the firs.
[page break]
-3-
America is a glorious country. There is no doubt about that. The homes just seem to have sprouted in among the trees, and are usually painted green and white. In the Glenwood Canyon we saw one particularly beautiful home. In front of it, sloping down to the Colorado River was about an acre of lawn, and behind the lawn was a beautiful little two storeyed home, painted green and white. This was the most beautiful stretch of scenery we saw on the entire route. Mountain peak after mountain peak, many of the larger ones snow-covered in endless succession. They formed a great chain on either side, and in between them was the raging water, snarling over the boulders, and forming almost continuous rapids.
Just before midday that day we saw our first sheep in America. They were grazing in lush alfalfa (lucerne in Australia) on the banks of the Colorado, with the thickly timbered mountains, still snow-capped, as a background.
Our train was climbing all the time now into the Rockies, and on the mountain slopes running right down to the train track were fields of taraxacum, small bright yellow weeds, the American counter-part of the Australian dandelion. In their profusion, however, they transformed the mountain slopes into a replica of Wordsworth's field of golden daffodils.
At this stage, about 11 a.m. or midday on Tuesday, May 25th, 1943, we were eight or nine thousand feet above sea level, and getting near the summit. About this time we passed through Red Cliff, another quaint little shanty town in a valley, with what appeared to be a mixed population. We were now getting near the snow level. There were snow-covered peaks above us still, but a few miles away on either side, and actually below us, were other peaks carrying snow. The air was bracing. It was a pleasure just to breathe it in. At 2:30 p.m. we reached the summit – 10,240 feet above sea level. Two huge locomotives each 15 feet high had hauled us to that height, and we left one of them behind at the summit, travelling fast down the slopes on the other side past snow fences erected to keep the snow from blocking the line. Then we rolled through Malta, another little shanty town, and at 4 p.m. we came to Salida, a little Midwest place something like an isolated suburb of an Australian capital gone completely American – a miniature King's Cross, with a five and ten cent store (Woolworth's), neon signs, and all the glitter and some of the glamour of the bigger American cities. A colourful little place, and it had a few pretty girls who evoked the long whistle of approbation which our fellows invariably turn on when anything with a figure and a skirt on goes by.
The warm summer sunshine was melting the snow on the mountains and on the eastern side of the Rockies tiny fast-flowing streams were [letters inserted] finding their way down the mountain slopes. Trout fishing is particularly good in this region according to our few American informants on the train, and from the train we could see anglers casting their flies. [inserted three words]
At Salida we took our second exercise march and the local population turned out in force to see us. Little negro boys ran alongside us as we marched, picking up the nickels and Australian pennies that the boys tossed to them. It was nice to stretch our legs and drink in the bracing mountain air nearly 7,000 feet up.
Then on we went again, with here and there a herd of mountain goats, and an isolated cabin or two. At this stage we had been travelling for nearly two days through scenery which for quantity and quality eclipsed anything which most of us had seen in Australia.
[page break]
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Just before Pueblo, which we reached at tea-time, we passed through the Royal Gorge Canyon, and here again towering cliffs rose almost vertically on either side of us. The railroad on which we travelled was built on a concrete foundation, and seemed in places to over-hang the water – the water in this case being the Arkansas River. If we had had fishing rods with us we could have done some trout fishing of our own in the stream. As we ran through the Canyon we passed unde[missing letter] the world's highest bridge – everything is superlative in the United States – the Royal Gorge Amusement Bridge, which spans the canyon, and is 1700 feet long and 1052 above the canyon.
At Pueblo the women of the town brought "cookies" (a broad descriptive term apparently covering all sorts of small cakes and biscuits), and piles of magazines down to the train. We read them until the daylight faded about 9 p.m. and it was time to go to bed. We had now been through four States – California, Nevada, Utah and Colorado, and had started our journey across Kansas to Kansas City on the border of Missouri.
We awoke on Wednesday, May 26th, 1943, just before we reache[missing letter] Council Grove – just another delightful little country town – and then the railroad wound along between undulating fields, the line itself bordered by wild irises and a pretty little white wildflower, the name of which we did not know. Two more pretty little towns – they are all pretty – Lyndon (population 750 people) and Ottawa (population 10,000) Ottawa being something like Sacramento in miniature, and not to be confused with the Canadian Ottawa. The lack of fences made it look as if the houses had grown of their own accord in among the cottonwood and beech and elm trees. From there we went on to Osawatomie (population 4,000) and here a crowd of negro boys and girls ranging in age from about three to about eight years, posed for their photographs to be taken and then scrambled for Australian pennies and American nickels and dimes, and oranges and apples, and anything else we had to give them. Bare-footed and clad in faded blue jeans or their elder brother[missing letter] long pants rolled up to the knees, their fruit-crammed pockets made grotesque shapes of their skinny little bodies.
On to Paola (3,500 people) – just as pretty as most of the other towns – and then on to Kansas City the second big city we have struck since San Francisco. Kansas City and the great Missouri River we were all waiting for them with keen anticipation – especially as we had an hour there, and were going to take our exercise marching through the city.
And so, at length, we came to Kansas City – bigger than Salt Lake City or Adelaide or Brisbane or Perth with a population of 425,000 and a magnificent railway station fringed with parks and concrete highways. However, as with most of the cities we have seen, the railway station was on the outskirts of the town, and our short march did not take us through the main streets. We passed a number of four and five storey buildings though, and got a big hand from the Kansas City girls. Kansas City has about half a dozen or eight big skyscrapers and is on the border of the State of Missouri, and lies on the Missouri River. As we marched through the streets we all whistled "Waltzing Matilda" and carried out the usual custom of tossing pennies and halfpennies with kangaroos on the backs of them to the negro boys and girls. At Kansas City, as at all the other places, we were staggered by the number of automobiles. Even in the negro quarter near Oakland there had seemed to be motor cars to burn, each ramshackle little home having two or three cars. The Americans seem to drive their cars to work, and
[page break]
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there were huge car parks outside every factory building. They get four times the Australian petrol ration. We stopped for about three quarters of an hour at Kansas City, and then rolled east again, crossing almost immediately over the Missouri. Kansas City we will remember as the city of bridges. There were bridges everywhere – four huge bridges over the river crammed into a river frontage of 200 or 300 yards and each bridge bigger than Prince's Bridge, Melbourne. The bigg[missing letters] cities have few level crossings, avoiding them by the use of subways an[missing letter] overways. The Missouri is a fine big river, as broad, if not broader [inserted words] than our Murray.
During the trip the officers on the train had financed a canteen and made arrangements for us to pick up supplied en route, and we eventually got them at Kansas City – such things as chocolates, razor blades, matches and cigarettes. For tens of miles then we passed through glorious, fertile country, with everywhere green crops, green grass, green trees. All America has seemed green to us. About the only things in the country which are not green are the Americans themselves. They know all the answers. Incidentally, they seem to be tipping Roosevelt strongly for another term as President. Except for one or two States, all the country here seems to be as good and as prosperous as the best in the Commonwealth.
St. Joseph, a typical American small city, was the next place we passed, and just at bedtime we reached Des Moines, almost due north of Kansas City. Travelling this way we missed St. Louis, and did not see a great deal of Missouri. Des Moines is the capital of Iowa, and although we had only fleeting glimpses of the homes on either side of the track, we could see the white circle of lights on the top of one of the skyscrapers, indicating that the city was the capital of the State. Then we went to bed, a little disappointed that we would be crossing the Mississippi while we were asleep. When we awoke on Thursday, May 27th, 1943, we were running through rich country in the State of Illinois and soon crossed the Rock River and came to a place called Sycamore. About midday, after travelling for miles through huge railway yards, we came to a stop on the outskirts of Chicago, so far out in fact that we couldn't see the skyscrapers which the city must have. It is an industrial city of the first magnitude, twice or three times the size of Melbourne. We passed hundreds of warehouses, many of them delapidated [sic], ugly buildings, and in the same quarter we passed through another negro colony, by comparision [sic] with which even the Oakland negro colony was a model suburb. The Americans may find, in the next generation or two that they have a huge slum clearance problem on their hands. At Chicago, for the first time, there seemed to be a preponderance of brick and stone buildings. Nearly all the homes in the other cities ha[missing letter] been of timber-frame construction. We took our exercise march through some better-class negro homes, and we passed a school for negro childre[missing letter] It was their lunch-hour and they came running out on to the road, completely disregarding their teachers, and scrambled for small coins, fighting so tenaciously for the money that at times half a dozen of them were on the ground at the same time. Nearly all roads in and out of Chicago are of concrete, banked on the bends, and we saw many huge motor trailers, and some of their street cars.
Leaving Chicago and its chimney stacks and big industry behind we skirted Lake Michigan, a huge expanse of water about 300 miles long and 60 wide, and swept on into Indiana, picking up water as we went from troughs between the rails. We were travelling right across the north of Indiana, near the State of Michigan, and South Bend,
[page break]
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another well developed little city, perhaps, 50,000 people was next on the line. America seems to have a lot of cities with populations from 20,000 to 100,000 bridging the gap between their big cities and their country towns. Seeing them makes you realise that Australia could do with more of them.
We all got a most pleasant surprise at Toledo. The maps we had did not show it to be a city of very great size, but when we pulled into the station about 5 p.m. we saw quite a lot of the central railway station there, and could see the outlines of two or three skyscrapers. There was quite a bit of fun on the railway station. The private ownership of railways in this country has resulted in what appears to be considerable duplication. America has 37 per cent of the world's rail-road mileage according to magazine advertisements, and from what we have seen the States must have at least 50 per cent of the world's rolling stock. Anyway, their railway stations have concrete platforms at ground level, with walk-down steps from the trains. At Toledo there were a dozen or so parallel platforms, and sleek stream-lined trains – crack railroad fliers owned by half a dozen different companies – were standing in them, carrying mostly civilian passengers with a sprinkling of service men and women. Beautiful girls, a lot of them were, and although they were separated by 15 or 20 yards our chaps quickly settled down to making friends. [inserted] letters [/inserted] One incident was particularly amusing. Three or four very pretty girls, waiting for their tea in the dining car of one of the sleak expresses nearby beckoned some of our chaps to come over, and a most interesting dialogue in sign language took place because we couldn't leave the train. The girls exhibited all sorts of inducements, including a bottle of whiskey, a packet of cigarettes, and their knives and forks, as much as to say "come over to dinner." [inserted letters] Perhaps it was just as well that their train pulled out at that stage. We pulled out ourselves a little later, giving the thumbs up sign and the two-finger V for Victory signal to all and sundry, and then we were on our way to Cleveland, running round the fringe of Lake Erie, and at one stage crossing a great bridge with broad expanses of water stretching to the horizon on either side. We have seen literally scores of big bridges on our trip.
Toledo and Cleveland are both in Ohio. It was after dark when we reached Cleveland after running through country very similar to that of Tasmania – rich and fertile, and split up into small holdings of 50 or 60 acres, worth about 125 dollars an acre. It has been a real pleasure to see neon signs again in some of the cities at night. At Cleveland we saw a magnificent building with a steeple summit, towering 300 or 400 feet up. Then we were rolling on across the north of Pennsylvania towards New York State. What happens from there we don't know but the rest of the trip will be a subject for later letters. We've all loved the United States so far, but the Yanks can have it. Australia will do us.
[inserted] HARRY SHAKSPEARE RAAF SQUADRON 460 MAY 1943 [/inserted]
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
My trip from San Francisco to New York, on route to United Kingdom with RAAF 1943
Creator
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Sergeant H E Shakespeare
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1943-05-23
1943-05-24
1943-05-25
1943-05-26
1943-05-27
Coverage
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Royal Australian Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Format
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Six page typewritten document
Identifier
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BShakespeareHEShakespeareHEv1
Description
An account of the resource
Detailed description of journey by train across the United States with comments about America and descriptions of many towns and cities passed through. Comments on some of his and his companions' activities. Makes several comparisons with Australia.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
United States
California--San Francisco
California--Oakland
California--Sacramento
Utah--Salt Lake City
Colorado
Colorado--Grand Junction
Colorado--Red Cliff
Nevada--Elko
Colorado--Salida
Colorado--Pueblo
Kansas--Council Grove
Kansas--Lyndon
Kansas--Ottawa
Kansas--Paola
Kansas--Kansas City
Missouri
Iowa--Des Moines
Illinois
Illinois--Sycamore
Illinois--Chicago
Lake Michigan
Indiana
Indiana--South Bend
Michigan
Ohio--Toledo
Ohio--Cleveland
Australia
Great Britain
New York (State)--New York
Missouri--Saint Joseph
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
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.
Contributor
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Sue Smith
460 Squadron
military living conditions
military service conditions
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/273/3425/AHibbardL170221.2.mp3
5a07a7983c3d49d0d418cc7bdd29ff0d
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/273/3425/PHibbardL1704.2.pdf
999ca0d570c954b7f1a0b64c75a9a3ac
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
Hibbard, Lindsay
Lindsay Hibbard
L Hibbard
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Lindsay Hibbard DFC (434253 Royal Australian Air Force), and a photograph. He flew 32 operations as a wireless operator with 57 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Lindsay Hibbard and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-02-21
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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Hibbard, L
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, the interviewer is Jean MacCartney and the interviewee is Lindsay Hibbard. The interview is taking place at Mr. Hibbard’s home in Banora Point, New South Wales, on the 21st February, 2017. Now then Lindsay, I believe you were born in Murbah, I was going to say Murbah ‘cos I happen to know that that’s the normal contraction but for everyone else, we better say Murwillumbah in 1924.
LH: Yes.
JM: So did that mean that you, your family was in Murwillumbah or, and they were staying there or –
LH: Yes, they were at that stage, they moved to Brisbane in 1927.
JM: Right.
LH: Yes, just for education, to be educated.
JM: Yep. And er, so 1927, so you had your first three years in Murwillumbah and then, and then Brisbane. What part of Brisbane were you in?
LH: Cooparoo.
JM: Cooparoo right. I’m not overly familiar with some of the suburbs of Brisbane, that one’s not ringing a bell. Which was that north, south, east?
LH: Oh it was towards the south, yeah.
JM: Towards the south, right.
LH: Near the Logan motorway.
JM: Oh, okay, right, right.
LH: Which wasn’t a motorway then.
JM: No, no, no, no, no, that’s right, yes, but I’ve, I’ve, I’ve driven up there and seen the turn off for the Logan motorway so that makes sense, yep, okay. So, from 1927 er, so that’s –
LH: 1939, we came back in 1939.
JM: Oh okay, to back to –
LH: To Tumbulgum.
JM: To?
LH: To the farm at Tumbulgum.
JM: Oh Tumbulgum, oh okay, so you had a farm there?
LH: My dad had a farm there from nineteen hundred and two.
JM: Right.
LH: He came up from Macklay in nineteen hundred and two.
JM: Mm mm.
LH: To the farm at Tumbulgum.
JM: Yep right, and so why, why were you –
LH: Still own it, well only some, the brothers still owns it, but anyway.
JM: Right, okay.
LH: Been in the family.
JM: All that since, that’s a hundred and sixteen years.
LH: Yes.
JM: My goodness gracious, and er, so did the whole family move to Brisbane?
LH: Yes, yes.
JM: So what, so what father, father just had somebody looking after the farm while you were up in –
LH: No he used to come down on Mondays –
JM: Right.
LH: To the farm and go back on Friday.
JM: Oh okay.
LH: Spend the weekend with him.
JM: Oh okay right, right.
LH: He had share farmers in.
JM: Share farmers in helping him, right.
LH: The farm was split into two farms.
JM: Right, right, okay, well that’s interesting. So you did your education in –
LH: That’s the reason mum nagged him into taking us to Brisbane so that we could go have a good education, completely wasted just quietly, but, [laughs], I’ve always been sorry that the poor old bugger [laughs], wasted all that money on us.
JM: Mmm.
LH: Went to the Brisbane Grammar School.
JM: Right, okay.
LH: Just on Brisbane [unclear]
JM: Yes, yes, a good school. And, and did you finish your Leaving Certificate there or -?
LH: No juniors, that was juniors.
JM: Intermediate.
LH: Came back when I was fifteen.
JM: Fifteen okay. Right, yes well if I did some arithmetic when you said you went back to ’39, fifteen, yes that’s right. 0kay so when you went back to the farm, did you then work on the farm?
LH: Yes.
JM: Right.
LH: I never learnt anything till I got on the job.
JM: [laughs] So basically you were just an offsider to dad on the farm.
LH: Yes, yes.
JM: So what were you running on the farm?
LH: Well now there was dairies in those days.
JM: Yes, yes, very much so.
LH: We converted to cane after the war.
JM: After the war right, that was a fairly early conversion still though really, wasn’t it? You would have been one of the first cane –
LH: Well no, they used to have cane back, oh the sugar mill had been on the cleat since 1880 or something like that.
JM: Oh yes, with the Con, the Condong one you’re talking about?
LH: Yes, the Condong Mill yes, yes, and most of the farms grew some sugar but er, dad had a [unclear] went on the dairy, stayed on the dairy the whole time.
JM: Right and what and then he went back to the sugar afterwards?
LH: Well he died three months after I joined the Air Force.
JM: Oh I see.
LH: He died in 1942.
JM: Right.
LH: Yes, three months after I joined the Air Force. [phone ringing]
JM: Okay Lindsay’s now dealt with his phone call so that’s all good. So we were, you were saying your father died in ’42.
LH: Yes ’42 three months after I joined the Air Force, he had a heart attack, fifty five.
JM: Goodness me, okay so –
LH: I’d been away at that time initial training, ITS.
JM: Right, right okay, so that’s interesting.
LH: But er, they didn’t call me out of the Air Force because me brother was coming back from the Middle East, he’d been at the Battle of Alamein, and the night he was coming home .
JM: Right.
LH: But unbeknown to us somebody pulled strings in parliament and got him out so when he landed back in Australia to run the farm.
JM: Run the farm.
LH: ‘Cos mum didn’t have a clue.
JM: Yes, yes. So were there just you and your brother, one other brother?
LH: No just after that the eldest brother was killed in Malaya, on the Thai Railway, he was, well he died on that anyway. Then there’s my brother, the one coming back he was in the [unclear] and then there was me, there’s four years between each of us.
JM: Each of you okay. And so, so you, you were helping dad on the farm until you enlisted.
LH: Yes.
JM: And so you just enlisted when?
LH: I got in the Air Training Corps, I did a year in that before, well I started when it started up.
JM: When it started up.
LH: In Murwillumbah.
JM: In Murwillumbah, so that was what when you were sixteen/seventeen?
LH: Yeah, sixteen.
JM: Sixteen. And then you enlisted then as soon as you were eighteen.
LH: Yes.
JM: And you enlisted in Brisbane?
LH: Brisbane yes.
JM: Okay and then you did your initial training, you said, at Kingaroy.
LH: Kingaroy.
JM: So that would have been what early ’43, or did you start in late –
LH: Late ’42.
JM: Late ’42 so you would have started up there in December? Did you?
LH: No it was before that, sixth of the eleventh ’42.
JM: Yeah, that was your enlistment but what about your ITS?
LH: That’s when I went in.
JM: That’s when you went in, oh right, so that was Kingaroy. So after Kingaroy when did you do your WOP, your wireless operator?
LH: I did it at Maryborough.
JM: You did it as Maryborough and what date was that? That’s July ’43, you were certified on the fourteenth of the eighth ’43, so that’s July ’43.
LH: Yeah that’s was wireless.
JM: Yes that’s your wireless, that’s what I’m saying.
LH: Then we went to do the gunnery course.
JM: Yeah then you did the gunnery after that, yes, which I presume was at Evanshead?
LH: Evanshead, yes.
JM: So Maryborough was fourteenth eighth ’43 was the graduation of that, and then the gunnery at er, was graduation at Evanshead was 17th September ’43 so that’s all good, okay. So how did you find, what I mean, I guess we can backtrack just a second, the fact that you had joined the ATC you had, you had an interest in that?
LH: Yes, it was always going to be Air Force.
JM: It was always going to be Air Force, yeah, and as I say having joined the ATC then obviously the natural progression was to go to in –
LH: So as soon as you got your eighteenth birthday you didn’t do anything, they just sent us to the centre in Brisbane.
JM: In Brisbane.
LH: To be interviewed.
JM: Okay. And what, what, what process was there for putting you into wireless, did you ask to do wireless or did they say –
LH: When I enlisted I didn’t but then I, yes, I did.
JM: What, ask for wireless?
LH: Yes, when I first went up for an interview. Well I had a sister, see, who had all these pilots, and gunners, and navigators, [unclear] visiting her, wireless ops [unclear]. Well I always figured I wasn’t confident enough to put myself in the hands of a crew, you know, I never felt, I had to be part of the crew but not the pilot.
JM: Not the pilot, okay. So you specifically decided on, on wireless so that’s good, so then they were able to oblige and you um, did, did your wireless, and then of course the usual story that they got the wireless people to also do the air gunning course as well so you –
LH: I held a gunning gunnery hits on the [unclear] board for Evanshead.
JM: Oh did you.
LH: Yes, well he told me when I was, just when he left, before we left, they definitely give me a [unclear] and everything I had thirty percent hits on the grove which was unheard of.
JM: Oh really.
LH: Yes.
JM: Well there you go. Was that because you’d been doing some shooting on the farm?
LH: Well I fired little bursts, instead of long bursts, they had what they called a Vickers Go Gun, gas operated, and it used to jump around and we were in the back of Fairy Battles, and we had no communication with the pilot at all. To start firing he waved his wings and to stop firing he pumped the tail up and down. And we were attached to the floor by [laughs], by a, a, what we called a fair rein, it was clipped if you didn’t have that on, you bounced up and down, you really hit the top. [laughs]
JM: You made –
LH: And we used to shoot at aluminium patches on the water and sand patches on the gunnery range.
JM: Right, so the patches on the water were in the ocean I presume?
LH: Yes, yes.
JM: Out there off Lennox Head or something I suppose –
LH: No there’s a gunnery range, a bombing range just beside Evanshead.
JM: Right, right okay, interesting. And so you ended up with the top score, well at that point obviously.
LH: Yes, yes.
JM: It would be interesting to know whether anyone ever bettered that after –
LH: Well I don’t think they would have.
JM: Yeah.
LH: Because you’re alone, the gauge wasn’t all that big [unclear]
JM: No.
LH: Used to jump around so much –
JM: Jump around so much.
LH: Yeah anyway.
JM: As I said –
LH: That’s said my claim to fame.
JM: Your claim to fame.
LH: [laughs]
JM: Oh I’m sure there’s a few other claims to fame, but um. as I say, did you do, when you were on the farm, did you do a lot of shooting –
LH: Oh we used to do a lot of shooting, oh yes.
JM: So therefore, you probably had quite a bit of, you were your aim was pretty, you know.
LH: Oh yes.
JM: And I guess, what were you shooting on the farm?
LH: Anything that moved, pigeons.
JM: Pigeons yeah.
LH: Pigeons.
JM: Did you have any foxes, rabbits or anything like that?
LH: No, there’d foxes but not rabbits.
JM: Did you shoot foxes as well?
LH: Well if we saw them we did.
JM: Yes, yes. So all of those moving targets would, would be very useful training for you in terms of –
LH: Yes, yes, oh I always thought I’d have been better as a gunner than a wireless op actually [unclear].
JM: Oh well, that’s all a good back story there so –
LH: It was no long, not long after this that we were sent to Sydney to get the boat, we didn’t know where we were going to.
JM: Going, no.
LH: Just put on the boat and sent to San Francisco.
JM: Yes okay. So you went down to um, you went to, you were sent to Sydney and then you –
LH: Transferred. We missed the first boat. What happened, they put us on leave when we left Maryborough, final leave they called it, and then we had to go to the South Brisbane Railway Station to get the train to Sydney, and the fellow, the fellow who was handling all these troops that were using the train, the train, he kept sending us home. And then they found that we should have been gone a month before, and anyway he put us on the train and sent us to Sydney and we missed the boat, and they sent us onto Melbourne and we missed the boat again, and then they sent us back to Sydney and then we got on the “USS Westpoint”, which was an American troop ship but it was an American top cruise liner before the war. “Miss America” it was before the war.
JM: Mmm.
LH: And believe it or not, we’d heard about these troop ship meals, you know, how terrible they were.
JM: Mmm.
LH: The first meal we had [unclear], turkey and asparagus and sweetcorn [laughs], we couldn’t believe it [laughs].
JM: So you lucked out, having had the inconvenience of going Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, all over the place, you ended up on –
LH: On the cruise ship.
JM: On the best ship.
LH: Three hundred and forty of us I think, on this forty thousand ton liner.
JM: Wow.
LH: Yes and we went to San Francisco.
JM: And you didn’t have any yanks, US troops of course, they –
LH: A few Americans, pregnant, no a few Australian pregnant women, and a few American wounded.
JM: Right.
LH: Yes.
JM: Right.
LH: But the women, there was a couple of dozen of them you know.
JM: Yes, yes.
LH: ‘Cos they were all coming this way.
JM: Yes, yes. So then, you had three hundred and fifty troops on this –
LH: Three hundred and forty, yes.
JM: Three hundred and forty troops on this huge boat, so you had a life of luxury compared to a lot of the other chaps.
LH: Oh hell yes, yes.
JM: Did you each have your own cabin or did you have to share?
LH: No, no, no, no, no, they put us in a very confined space.
JM: Oh did they now, oh.
LH: Yes, yes, a very confined space.
JM: Oh that wasn’t very nice.
LH: Well it was really, no, we had plenty of water, and plenty of everything you know.
JM: Yeah, yeah.
LH: Plenty of food, we could hardly get down the gangplank when we got to San Francisco [laughs]. And then they sent us across from San Francisco to New York, we got on the train.
JM: By train, yes.
LH: San Francisco and got off in New York, got off and then we were –
JM: No that’s right, and that was the normal thing, just to push you straight through. So then you got to New York, did you have any time in New York, before you left New York?
LH: Yeah we had a, had a I think a week or two, we were waiting, at that time that’s when the “Queen Mary” had to cruise in to, yeah, it had just got back into action. We didn’t go on the “Queen Mary”, we went on the “Andes”.
JM: Right.
LH: Just over twenty-seven thousand ton cruiser, we went from there to Liverpool.
JM: Right, oh Liverpool, okay, that’s different. So what date are we talking about here now? So, I guess if we finished the training, it has to be, you finished your gunnery training in September ’43, so this has to be end of ’43, potentially even early ’44?
LH: I think that the change of currency on the boat [pause], [looking through log book].
JM: Yeah, that’s right. Sorry.
LH: August 1943-44, air to sea.
JM: Yeah that’s you starting to do your gunnery stuff so we need to go past that.
LH: March/April ’44 that’s when we got in to Ansons.
JM: Ansons. Okay so obviously the point is that March, so obviously you’ve landed in the UK around about March, March ’44, is a good approximation for, for all we need at the moment. Okay so you –
LH: We were sent to advanced flying, thirty-first of the three, ‘43.
JM: Yes.
LH: That was Ansons.
JM: Yes, and what dates was that, that was the March and April was it?
LH: March/April ’44.
JM: Yes okay. And so what do you remember about that, that would have been the first time, because I mean –
LH: There was night flying.
JM: Night flying yes, ‘cos you had. wouldn’t have done, because your flying up until that date was only sort of sitting in the back of the other plane –
LH: Of the Fairy Battles.
JM: Fairy Battles, doing your –
LH: Being whacked [unclear].
JM: Yeah, yeah, so this is your first time in –
LH: Mainly Ansons.
JM: Er, a big plane, when you’re actually enclosed so to speak as well, because the Fairy Battles are open canopy there so, so was that the first time you’d been in a full plane like that.
LH: Yeah, yeah.
JM: Had you done any flying in the ATC, had you been up in the air at any time?
LH: No, no, no.
JM: So this was when you found out whether you really liked flying or not?
LH: Well I was always a bit worried about it [laughs] but it was better than marching [laughs].
JM: Yes.
LH: Well we got on the Ansons the thirty-first of the third ’43 to the thirteenth of the fourth ’44 [pause].
JM: Right, okay, and so –
LH: That was just for practice bombing mostly.
JM: Bombing, so basic flying, well advanced flying I should say, yes. So what did you do, so you probably did a, probably did at least one other, well you would have done OTU?
LH: We were sent to Silverstone on the fourth of the fifth ’44 to crew up.
JM: Oh okay, so that’s when you did your crewing up, yeah, okay. And what was, which squadron, what base were you at there?
LH: Silverstone.
JM: Silverstone, and did you have a squadron number there I should say?
LH: No, no, no, no.
JM: No, no, no.
LH: We just crewed up.
JM: Crewed up, yeah.
LH: They put, I think, thirty of each of you all –
JM: In a big room, square room.
LH: Didn’t know who they were, you had to sort yourself out.
JM: And so you, did you have any Australians, any of the chaps that you came over on the boat with, or any of the chaps that you done any of your training with?
LH: No, no, the fellows we came over on the boat with, they were there for wireless ops but none of the others.
JM: Yeah, so it was only the wireless ops that you knew.
LH: Yes, yes.
JM: And obviously being only one on each plane, you weren’t going to end up together.
LH: Yes, yes.
JM: So okay. So which, so what did you end up with in the crew?
LH: Well there was an Australian pilot and navigator.
JM: Right, who was your pilot?
LH: Jackson, Flight Sergeant Jackson.
JM: Yes.
LH: And er, and navigator Jim Wilson, and there was bomb aimer he, his name was Fred McClure, and then I was the other, I was the wireless op, and there were two pommie gunners.
JM: Right.
LH: Yes, so that was the six, you didn’t pick up the engineer until just –
JM: Oh once you start, almost dreaded, start ops.
LH: That was when you, oh yeah, when you got to heavy conversion.
JM: Heavy conversion, yeah that’s right, okay.
LH: So that went to [unclear] it’s on Wellingtons.
JM: Mmm, hmm.
LH: On the twenty-ninth of the fifth.
JM: Twenty-ninth of the fifth, okay, so all good.
LH: Then we were sent to 17 OTU at Towcester, at Towcester or whatever you call it. No that’s we’re still on Silverstone here. The fourth of the seventh ’44, yeah that was the last trip when we finished with Wellingtons.
JM: Right.
LH: Fourth of the seventh, yeah.
JM: Right, and then –
LH: And they wouldn’t even let us, they made us stay for the last one, but the pilot got married and they wouldn’t let us go to his wedding, yeah. We finished our last one with Wing Commander Lister, but anyway.
JM: Right, so then, so then you went into your OTU?
LH: No that was the end of the OTU.
JM: That was the end of the OTU, so when did the OTU end, that was at the fourth of the seventh was it?
LH: Ah, OTU.
JM: I wouldn’t have thought so, that I would have thought, it would have been a bit –
LH: Fourth of the seventh, yeah.
JM: Was that when it finished was it?
LH: Yeah, yeah, when OTU, that was on the Wellingtons.
JM: Right, okay. So what leave did you have in between any of this, so what did you do?
LH: Well we were given a week or two at the end of OTU and then we were sent to er, Heavy Conversion Unit [pause], Heavy Conversion Unit, Winthorpe, on the tenth of the eighth ’44, that was on Stirlings.
JM: Yep.
LH: Yeah, and that’s er –
JM: And that was probably about a month was it?
LH: [Looking through photos/book]
JM: Be careful, don’t rip them. It’s, it’s stuck there, so you probably won’t be able to separate that for the moment, but I will -
LH: Oh that’s it.
JM: Yeah but I wouldn’t, it’s very stuck up on this corner I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t be –
LH: The pages –
JM: Yeah, be careful, yeah well either that or it’s deliberately, looks like it’s been deliberately glued together so –
LH: Well there’s the summary for the course, that’s the Heavy Conversion, er, August/September 1944 unit [unclear] 1661, dated eleventh of the ninth ’44.
JM: Yes that’s right, that makes sense.
LH: I wonder why they glued them together?
JM: Oh possibly there was some figures that needed to be changed and rather than changing the figures they just glued the pages together to go into a new –
LH: Then there was the Lancaster Finishing School at Syerston, that was on the twenty-ninth of the ninth ’44, and the second of the tenth ’44. Then they sent us to Scotland.
JM: Yeah, okay.
LH: October ’44, 4th October.
JM: Right.
LH: Then we were given a few familiarise station exercises and then we were sent to Nuremburg.
JM: Right okay.
LH: Remembering what the one before [laughs].
JM: Yeah okay, well we’ll come to that in a moment, let’s just backtrack for a second. You said you had a week’s leave at the end of –
LH: At the end of OTU.
JM: OTU.
LH: Yes.
JM: And so what did you do, what sort of places did you go to?
LH: Oh well I always wanted to go to Scotland and we had a Scotch rear gunner, so I went up to Edinburgh with him, spent all my leaves in Edinburgh and then I –
JM: Right, right, well so that was good. And so you met his, did you stay with him and stay with his family?
LH: No, no, no, no, ‘cos he er, I had a hostel that started like the Australian Air Force started one later on, so we used to stay in hostel accommodation.
JM: Right, right, okay. And so did you see a bit of Scotland then did you, or just around Edinburgh?
LH: Mainly round Edinburgh but I got to know a few people there, lovely people, and up to Aberdeen and that’s about as far as we went.
JM: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well with only a week that didn’t give you much scope, but I mean –
LH: Well when we got on the squadron, you was supposed to get ten days leave every six weeks, but as the crews kept knocking off you kept moving forward, and then you had ten days every four weeks, and they were very good to us there was [unclear] give us five bob a day every day, every day, we were on leave that’s money, isn’t it.
JM: Oh my, yeah. So your crew altogether at this stage and at this point you’ve also now picked up your engineer I guess?
LH: Yes, we picked him up at the Stirlings, with the Stirlings.
JM: Yeah okay. And who was your engineer?
LH: A Joe Black, a Geordie from Newcastle.
JM: Right.
LH: Nice little fella.
JM: Yes, and so then um, you were posted to 57 Squadron and –
LH: 4th October ’44.
JM: 4th October, yep, and that’s, you did a few training runs?
LH: The first op was on the nineteenth, we did a fortnight’s familiarisation you know.
JM: Yeah okay. So your first op was –
LH: Nuremburg.
JM: Was Nuremburg. Nothing like a small task to start with?
LH: Yes.
JM: What was it –
LH: Well they lost ten per cent, they lost more on the trip before that than they lost in the whole of the Battle of Britain.
JM: Yes.
LH: Five Hundred and Sixty, they lost ten per cent of their planes on the trip before.
JM: Mmm.
LH: Over eighty planes. Eighty planes with [unclear] would you believe, yeah.
JM: So this would be in October ‘40?
LH: Yes, 19th of October ’44.
JM: Yep.
LH: And the second one was, the second was on the twenty-eighth that was to Bergen, Norway, U-Boats pens.
JM: Right. So what –
LH: That was a, oh no, the second op was the twenty-third, it was to Flushing in Holland, that was the second op.
JM: Right.
LH: That was done in [unclear], air gunners [unclear].
JM: Right.
LH: We nearly came to grief then because we got er, it was a beautiful day and the pilot didn’t put his retaining harness on, and we were just cruising along at about three and a half thousand feet, and then an anti-aircraft shell exploded in the bomb bay and put the plane in a mad dive. Up to three and a half thousand, and he didn’t have his harness on and he was floating in mid-air, and he ended up, he had to put his two feet on the control panels to pull us out. The only time I prayed [laughs]. Nearly wet, nearly wet me pants as well. I didn’t. We were all in mid-air, the plane was in a vertical dive –
JM: Vertical dive –
LH: Yes, yes, and we nearly came to grief then but anyway –
JM: So he managed, he just managed to exert enough pressure –
LH: Well he pulled us out yes, but well we didn’t have much clearance from the ground by the time he –
JM: Was it ground or water you were over at that point, ground?
LH: We were over the water going in to the downspin, but [unclear], well we’d have been over the sands, but that was where the gun emplacement was.
JM: Right.
LH: And the third one was er –
JM: Just a minute before you go to the third one, let’s go back to Nuremburg. What can you tell me about Nuremburg?
LH: That’s the third one. Oh no, it’s the first one.
JM: No, Nuremburg was the first one.
LH: Now when you go to, go to, before you go on ops your pilot is put in with another crew in –
JM: Second dickie?
LH: Yes, second dickie, and he did that, and when we got to Nuremburg nobody seemed to know what to look for. Well see, I’m inside the rear turret, and one of the gunners saw these lights out of the port and we went, and we were late over the target, nearly everybody had gone home then.
JM: Any particular reason for being late or-
LH: Well that’s because they’d missed, instead of turning off at the right time to make the bombing run, they’d overshot and had to turn round and come back.
JM: Back, oh.
LH: Yeah, yeah. And then once the bomb aimer got his sights on the thing, he told us, open the thing, put the nose down and go for it. Yeah, but we had quite a few near misses though shrapnel holes in the plane.
JM: Right, from that trip, from that?
LH: From anti-aircraft guns.
JM: Anti-aircraft guns.
LH: Yes, yes.
JM: Well I mean I guess if you are on your own, you’re a bit more of a target when you’re sort of sitting out there on your own.
LH: Yes, yes, yes. And they’d all gone, yes. By then probably all the guns were in their fixed position, so they’d put them in a fixed position and just fire as many shells. As soon as they found what the bombing height was, they’d just fire guns into us, you know.
JM: Yes yes.
LH: But you couldn’t sort of aim at them. Anyway, that was another near miss.
JM: Yeah, yeah. So all those holes, golly gosh, yes.
LH: Then the third one was Bergen.
JM: Yes.
LH: That was over Norway a submarine pen.
JM: Gosh and what happened there?
LH: Nothing much happened –
JM: Nothing much –
LH: Oh well, it was a, it was one of those targets that they, the Germans put them near the village as a, and they generally tried to put up a smoke screen, but if you got in before it, and they hadn’t marked it, but they wanted you to sort of get near misses. And knock off population so we didn’t get too friendly, sort of thing.
JM: So did you have any pathfinders going in dropping anything for you or in advance, or were you on your own just doing your own thing?
LH: No, no, [unclear] there would have been a couple of hundred planes I suppose, yes building up.
JM: Right, gosh that’s a fair number.
LH: Yeah. As I say anyway, it was well marked, I mean.
JM: It was well marked by simply just the number of planes.
LH: Yes.
JM: Okay. So that’s the end, that’s getting towards the end of ’44?
LH: That’s the end of October, and then the 1st November was Homberg, that was oil refineries.
JM: Mmm.
LH: Nothing particular there I don’t suppose. And then that’s the 1st November, the 2nd November it was Dusseldorf, it was daytime yeah, that was the [unclear], then the 4th of November was Dortmund-Ems Canal. Strange to say that was one of the most dangerous targets in Europe because they relied a hell of a lot on the Dortmund-Ems for transport, and the only thing they’d do, we could do was, there were two viaducts in Gravenhorst and Ladbergen and let the water out, blow the [unclear]. Now the Germans, then they’d build them up again and just when they were about open, we’d go back and blow them down, so they’d know when we were coming and that’s why it was one of the most dangerous targets believe it or not.
JM: Because they organised their defences because they anticipated your return.
LH: Yes, yes. They nearly brought is down later on [unclear]. And then the next one from that was Turin, that was a tactical target, and that one the wheels, the undercarriage wouldn’t lock down or wouldn’t say that it was locked down, so we sent a crash [unclear] to Carnaby, but anyway it had just a malfunction in the electricals as it happened, so we landed on [unclear]. And then [unclear], oh that was at Carnaby. Then the next one was the twenty-first, that was Gravenhorst, had to go up and somehow bomb the other viaduct.
JM: Right, again was that a similar sort of story in terms of the way they protected the –
LH: Yes, yes, ‘cos they waited for us.
JM: Yes.
LH: And then the next one was Trondheim, Trondheim.
JM: Back up to Norway?
LH: Yes, back up to Norway, now that was sub pen again. Now what happened there we had to, had to fly at night under a hundred and fifty feet for a thousand miles and we didn’t have radio altimeters, and at one stage I dunno how the plane but what they call a long tailing area, a long –
JM: Yes.
LH: It’s got a lot of little ball bearings on the end of that –
JM: Ball bearings, yes.
LH: And that hit the water and tore up, it was only thirty feet under the plane.
JM: Under the plane.
LH: And everybodys screaming, “climb”, and [laughs] but er, to make it worse, we got there and then they put up a smokescreen and they couldn’t get a clear view to mark the target, so having done all that, we had to fly back with the bomb load.
JM: Without dropping the bombs?
LH: Yes.
JM: So did you drop them off –
LH: We didn’t have to fly back low, we came back at normal height.
JM: Normal height sort of thing, yeah. But did you drop the bombs?
LH: No, no, we landed with them.
JM: Landed with them.
LH: There’s only a few, well most of the ‘dromes were alerted all the way from top of Scotland down to Lincoln, expecting we wouldn’t make it to land there, but we got back to base. I think there was only two planes that were struggling a bit for base and you know. Well we landed with one hundred and forty gallons in the tank, but it was, it was, that was two thousand miles.
JM: Well I was going to say, it’s a long way up to Trondheim.
LH: Two thousand miles.
JM: Yep.
LH: Two thousand one hundred and forty-five gallons of petrol, so that worked out a mile to the gallon.
JM: Plus all the bombs.
LH: Carrying bombs and everything, and we carried them there and we carried them back, yes.
JM: Yes. Amazing, must have been a very good pilot to be able to manage the, the, to nurse it along to maximise, yes –
LH: Yes, yes. So that was –
JM: So that’s your pilot, and that was still, um, Jackson?
LH: Oh yeah, all the time they’re all Jackson.
JM: Yeah. What’s his first name?
LH: Jerry.
JM: Jerry.
LH: Jerald.
JM: Jerald, mmm mmm.
LH: Harcourt I think was his, J H, Harcourt, Jerald Harcourt Jackson.
JM: Oh, okay.
LH: And anyway that was the twenty, that was the 3rd November. Then we get to December [unclear], that was on the fourth. The sixth was Giesson, that’s night time raid. And the ninth was Heimbach Dam, the first drop on Heimbach Dam was abandoned, I don’t know why I record it anyway. And then we did a daylight on Heimbach later on, that was on the eleventh of December, then must have gone on leave.
JM: So you didn’t do, in December you didn’t do anything on the Baltic Fleet in um, um, I don’t know how you pronounce it. Gdynia or something like that [spells it out].
LH: Oh Gdynia
JM: Yes.
LH: No.
JM: No you didn’t do any of that, right.
LH: No. There’s just [unclear] and Heimback Dam, then we were put on leave.
JM: Right, so what did you do for your leave there?
LH: Edinburgh.
JM: Edinburgh again, yes.
LH: [laughs] yeah.
JM: Did you have some attraction up there by this stage or not?
LH: Well I did have some. Funny thing, in 1962 one of the girls I used to go out with turned up in the Tumbulgum pub as the barmaid.
JM: Good heavens.
LH: By then I had five kids and a wife and everything, and she thought we could just go [unclear] [laughs]. Anyway I never said anything to my wife ever about it, but anyway it was good [unclear] because the pub was full when she was the barmaid there, and the proprietor thought she was paying a bit too much attention to his, to her husband, so she fired her, and she took all the customers up to the Riverview Hotel at Murwillumbah [laughs]. You could have tried to get in, but bloody emptied the pub. Anyway how the hell she found me after twenty years after the bloody war well –
JM: Amazing, she must have been keen.
LH: Oh she was [unclear] she was beautiful.
JM: Well, well.
LH: Well now we come to January.
JM: Come to January.
LH: The 1st of January, back to Ladbergen again, the Dortmund Ems, and then on the fourth, Royan, that was a garrison of er, I don’t know, [unclear] the fifth that was [unclear], that was tanks [unclear]. Ah that’s one I’m think about. And then there’s the seventh was Munich, that was a long one.
JM: Anything stand out about that one?
LH: It was eleven and a half hours, the Klondean one, it was a very long flight. Sorry what did you say?
JM: Did that Munich, anything about the Munich trip stand out or just, or was it just –
LH: Only the Swiss, came back over Switzerland, you could nearly hear the people drinking gin slings, and all the lakes were black, all around was white, and all the lights were lit up, because all Europe was blacked out, oh beautiful, why we didn’t bail out I don’t know [laughs]. Oh beautiful. And then on the fourteenth, it was Merseburg [unclear] oil refineries. On the sixteenth was Brux, that was Czechoslovakia oil refineries, that was about ten hours that one, and Merseburg was ten hours too.
JM: Gosh.
LH: Yes, ten hour trip. That took us to the end of January, then put on leave again.
JM: Yep, Edinburgh again?
LH: Yep.
JM: Yeah.
LH: [laughs] That was done for January. Ladbergen again [unclear], and then on the seventh, Pölitz, that was oil refineries, and then, oh that’s one where we nearly came to grief at Pölitz. We got four direct flak hits that put the intercom out, and blew one tail off, it was a hell of a lot, hell of a thing to see, cracked through the main spar, er, not the main spar, the one that the landing flaps were on the –
JM: Yes.
LH: Cracked through that –
JM: Cross member –
LH: No, we didn’t have wings, these were on the landing flaps, and we didn’t know that and it could have come unstuck when we were landing, luckily it didn’t, I mean.
JM: Yeah till, unstuck. And this was in February would you say or late January?
LH: That was 7th February.
JM: 7th February, yep.
LH: And for some reason they gave me a gong for that, I don’t know what for, I didn’t know they posted it out to me [laughs]. Oh, asked if I wanted to go and get it in England [unclear].
JM: No.
LH: No well that was after Pölitz, it was oil refineries. And then the nineteenth was Poland, that was Leipzig, that was more oil refineries. Then the twenty-fourth it was a daylight back to Ladbergen, Dortmund Ems, that was the end of February.
JM: Mmm. There couldn’t have been too much left of it by that stage was there? Or what did they keep building rebuilding it back again, yes –
LH: No they kept building, you know, and I think they knew there’d be plenty of easy targets, you know, there was, they could concentrate on the night fighter force.
JM: Their artillery onto, yes. Bees to the honeypot again was their view, that they could whack ‘em all off, whack ‘em off.
LH: And then March, seventh of the third of March, Ladbergen again.
JM: Mmm.
LH: And then 5th March was Poland oil refineries. The 6th March was Szczecin, that’s the Baltic Port of Denmark , the Germans were evacuating faster than us, ahead of the Russians, well thought out, they, Szczecin was the Danish port, and er, when we went in to bomb they put, we didn’t know, they sent in mine layers just before we went in, and they mined the whole of the front of the harbour and as we started dropping bombs the ships all started up to get out of the harbour they ran into this minefield, yes. It was pretty, I felt sorry for the poor old people killed in that way, but you know [unclear]. And then the seventh, that was to Hamburg, that was oil refineries. And the twentieth was Poland again, Leipzig oil refineries, we was betting on them at that stage. And the twenty-third was Wesel, now we didn’t know that was the crossing of the Rhine, yes we did that.
JM: So you were part of that, that big mission there for that.
LH: Yes [unclear], troop concentration [unclear].
JM: So what did you have a specific target that you had to –
LH: No, no, I think they took Churchill along to view that and they pulled the troops back for miles from the target, It was a pretty significant move in the war.
JM: It was, it was, it was a turning point in terms of, yeah.
LH: Into Germany.
JM: Into Germany. that’s right, yeah, yeah. But you were just part of –
LH: Just part of the bombers.
JM: You don’t remember roughly how many, how many planes were up there that night? Was it, that was another night one I presume?
LH: Aye?
JM: Was that a night or a day?
LH: Oh yeah, night.
JM: Night.
LH: Yeah.
JM: You don’t remember how many were, planes were up that night?
LH: No, there would have been at least two-fifty but no, I don’t think it wouldn’t have been bigger than that I don’t think, but two-fifty was a fair, quite a lot of bombs to drop, ‘cos each one had about seven tons to drop so seven thousand, fourteen thousand pounds.
JM: That’s amazing the amount of bombs when you think two hundred and fifty planes all dropping that sort of thing.
LH: Then back to, back to March [unclear]. Now we can do April [unclear], Nordhausen, now we didn’t know that was a concentration camp at that stage. It was daylight, but when we were coming up on the target I can remember this, the Germans, if they knew what we were up to, they’d put up a box barage and that would be a wall of guns that would be pointed into a, into a put a box that the planes were going to fly through –
JM: Planes were going to fly through, yep –
LH: And then they’d fire as many shells as they could.
JM: Shells as they could.
LH: When we was coming up, it was a beautiful clear day, but this was like a thunder cloud, just when they opened the burst of shells, that’s how many were going, yes, yes, a bit scary but anyway. And then we come to Mölbis, Leipzig, power, oil refineries, and that was the end bit.
JM: So what’s that?
LH: 7th April I think.
JM: Yes, 7th April. But that in total were there –
LH: Thirty-two ops.
JM: Thirty-two ops yeah, that’s, and all the same crew right the way through?
LH: Yes, well the navigator missed one trip, he had the flu or something.
JM: The flu or something, yeah, yeah.
LH: Yes, yes.
JM: But otherwise the complete –
LH: Otherwise it was the same crew
JM: The same crew, yeah, and therefore –
LH: So funny thing, when, when we got hit with lots of flak, you’ve got no idea the incredible amount of damage and yet nobody got hit, nobody no.
JM: That’s amazing isn’t it, that no one got hit, that was incredible.
LH: Yes.
JM: So then let’s go back to Pölitz, um, and you say that so, and that’s where you were, and after that, is where, a as a result of that you were given the DFC, awarded the DFC?
LH: Yes.
JM: Did all the members of the crew get the DFC?
LH: Only the pilot.
JM: The pilot and –
LH: Only me and the pilot.
JM: You and the pilot, right.
LH: It was Pölitz, wasn’t it?
JM: Pölitz, yeah.
LH: Oh yeah, Pölitz.
JM: So what with the, that’s where you had some of the biggest direct hits with the flak?
LH: Yes, yes, yes.
JM: Yes so –
LH: Well we had no idea of what, the plane flew, but why I don’t know. It was really, really, one tail was blown off completely.
JM: One tail gone, yes.
LH: It was such a mass of holes, yes.
JM: Did the, didn’t damage the hydraulics or anything so you had to –
LH: Oh yes I was covered in hydraulic oil, well it busted some pipes but er, and they couldn’t, couldn’t, the dry cleaners couldn’t get it out, had to, buggered me uniform, and I stunk like anything with hydraulic oil, yes. And we landed at, I can’t remember the, landed at down near the white cliffs of Dover, a base round there.
JM: Yes. So were you able to land properly?
LH: Yes, yes.
JM: You didn’t have to do a belly landing in the grass or anything?
LH: No, no, no, no. no.
JM: No.
LH: Well we were lucky, I think, I often wonder, this is just between you and me, how many losses were due to poor maintenance you know, because some planes they just went on and on and on and on and on. Like you all had your letters, and some letters kept going pretty, you know, pretty regularly you know, and I was often wondering whether maintenance had to do with some of it. It’s just my thoughts though.
JM: And did you, did you, after like that trip for instance did your plane, did you have to go onto a different plane then?
LH: Well no, we went back –
JM: They patched it up and –
LH: No we had to get back by train.
JM: Yeah, but the plane itself –
LH: Well they patched it up.
JM: Patched it up. So did you do any, so the next missions after that, ops did you do in a different plane or?
LH: No, it didn’t come back to the squadron until after we’d left.
JM: Right.
LH: And that was one of the things that stuck in me craw, because the crew that went down to fly it back to the base they, there was a, one of the WAAF’s at the station was getting an award to something and one of the London newspapers took the crew down to get pictures of her directing the plane in, and it was our plane, and they sent each of ‘em a big photo.
JM: A great big photo.
LH: He showed it to me but he wouldn’t give it to me, he didn’t. Miserable bugger.
JM: Who was that who showed it to you?
LH: It, it was a fella that did one op before the war ended and they’d gone down to pick it up.
JM: They’d gone down to pick it up. So they effectively were, nonetheless the paper didn’t have a clue the fact that this crew was purely doing a ferrying run and had nothing to do with the plane itself?
LH: Yes, yes, it was on a ferry run.
JM: Yes, yes, I see.
LH: So that’s it again, there’s the plane there you see [showing photo].
JM: Yep, yep, right.
LH: It had done ninety-seven trips by the end of the war.
JM: So you were, so you were flying “Sugar” were you?
LH: “Sugar”, yeah.
JM: Yeah, okay.
LH: And it had done ninety-seven trips by the end of the war and er –
JM: So what did you, so which one did you fly for the last, ‘cos you basically did another two months –
LH: Oh well I said, I think the last one was “W”.
JM: Yeah, you had basically two, two more months ahead of you, about another seven or eight.
LH: Yeah, they just put us on any plane that was available.
JM: Right, yeah.
LH: After, after Pölitz was “O”, “P”, “Q”, “W”, the last one was “W”.
JM: So would you say that there was any one event or sequence of events, out of all of that, that stayed with you more than anything else?
LH: No not really, just that we were incredibly lucky in stages.
JM: Lucky, yeah.
LH: No I think luck played a hell of a part really, but we had a good crew you know, a very good navigator and a very good pilot and yes. He used to worry me, he was so small but [laughs], and the funny thing, he couldn’t even drive a bloody car and two years later he’s flying a plane [laughs].
JM: It’s a common story that many of them were flying planes before they had licences, that’s what is a very common story and it’s just so, so bizarre that, and not only were they flying planes but they were flying planes in the most extraordinary difficult and dangerous circumstances and, and it just –
LH: Eighteen hundred killed training you know.
JM: That’s right extraordinary numbers. And then, with, so then you were, was on leave before you then discharged –
LH: We was put on leave until we were –
JM: Until you discharged, so that was April, so you basically had nearly six months, April, May, June, July, August, September, five months, so you had some leave over in the UK, and then you were, when did you come back to Australia?
LH: Well, I had my twenty-first birthday on the boat we came back through the Suez via Panama Canal.
JM: Right, well just a second the leave that you had after you concluded, you completed your tour –
LH: We went on leave until we were called to Brighton.
JM: Right.
LH: And then that was about a month, and from there we waited for a boat to come home, and that was “The Andes”.
JM: Again. So you went over and back on the same –
LH: Yes, we went over we crossed the Atlantic on “The Andes”, and we came all the way back to Australia on “The Andes” through the Panama Canal. It was a very interesting trip.
JM: Oh.
LH: And then when we got back here we were put on leave and then of course, the war ended before even we were given any jobs, and then I must have been a nutcase because while I was on leave, I got a telegram asking if I’d take a job, if I was interested in distant um, taking charge of a section of thirty-four WAAFs, mind you, in Bradfield Park and discharged, and I knocked it back [laughs]. And then later, there was one time, asked me if I’d like to go back to the victory ceremony on “The Sydney” to England, and I knocked that back. I must have been a bloody nutcase.
JM: Mmm.
LH: But anyway that’s that. I just wanted to get out.
JM: Yeah, you wanted to get out and er, um –
LH: Two offers like that, bloody hell.
JM: Good offers. So you don’t recall any particular reasoning, apart from the fact that you’d just had enough and you wanted out? Is that probably the, just the main -
LH: Well the war was over really –
JM: Yes that’s right, the war was over by that stage. So just backtracking there for a second, when you were on leave before you went down to Brighton, was that back to Scotland again?
LH: Yes, Aberdeen and that yeah, yeah. Oh we got in with some returning PoW’s, sort of thing, they’d been in German PoW camps, wild as ever, yeah, yeah [laughs].
JM: Yeah –
LH: Everybody’s letting their hair down sort of thing, yes.
JM: Well that’s right, I mean, imagine what it would have been like for those guys in the PoW camps.
LH: Oh, boys open like jack rabbits, hey no, to tell you what they must have been well looked after ‘cause they were all in pretty good condition.
JM: Okay. So then you had your twenty-first birthday on the boat on the return home?
LH: Yes.
JM: And um, and you said you came home, you, and you, the route for your return home?
LH: Through the Panama.
JM: The Panama, so that was an interesting experience.
LH: Yes, yes. They wouldn’t let us off the boat at Colón, that was the Atlantic side of Panama because the mob before us went through the town and wrecked it –
JM: Wrecked it, yeah.
LH: Yes, so they wouldn’t let us off, we had to stay on the boat.
JM: Right.
LH: [unclear].
JM: And were you confined to a small area again?
LH: On the boat?
JM: On the boat
LH: Well we –
JM: Were you allowed a bit more, spread out a bit more?
LH: Well you had your bunk, you had your bunk, but you had the run of the boat sort of thing.
JM: So how, but I suppose you would have been –
LH: But I couldn’t get over, we, we was warrant officers of course, not officers, and we were warrant officers and because oh, up to sergeant they were treated like the troops, but we had stewards and everything and you had everything set out on tables, table cloths and everything, yeah. Oh, we lived like bloody princes all the way home.
JM: All the way home, yeah.
LH: Yeah.
JM: And were there a few more troops on board, coming home, than there were going out?
LH: I think about two thousand, I think about twenty-two hundred I think on the boat coming home.
JM: Yeah, yeah. So slightly more than going over.
LH: Yeah, there were a couple of hundred FANYS, that’s Field Ambulance National Service Women, and that was it I think. And the officers looked after them, they didn’t let the troops [laughs].
JM: Didn’t let the troops near them, protected them, yeah.
LH: Yeah [laughs]. I tell you what, if you came through it you wouldn’t miss it for quids, you know you don’t think of the odds, it but it’s a really, a really good experience anyhow.
JM: How do you feel it changed your life?
LH: Well I was told, 1945 to 1984 that I had post-traumatic stress for all that time. Well I didn’t say anything, I knew I wasn’t right, but at one stage I used to ball, start crying for no bloody reason. I, I, you know, I’m still a bit of a nutcase, but thirty nearly forty years after the war [unclear], he said, ‘you should have been on a pension at the end of the war’, but nobody read it.
JM: Nobody recognised it.
LH: They had, if you got that in Bomber Command you’re classified LMF, yeah and that went on your record, yeah. Sorry if I was a bit rude but anyway, yeah. And then in the First World War, they used to shoot them for cowardice, yeah. I can’t, I know some fellas used to disappear off the squadron but we never sort of queried it so maybe they could have been some breaking down.
JM: Mmm, right.
LH: But I always used to look out the window when we took off, think, now there’s twenty going and nineteen coming back, surely the odds were in my favour, but, well you sort of think like that, but I don’t know why, yeah. Probably funny, you probably think it’s funny.
JM: No I don’t think it’s funny, I mean it’s, it’s just an amazing um set of circumstances to be working through when, when you know you are not even twenty-one. I mean it’s just, I think of what, what you chaps went through and what youth of today sort of sees as a problem for them and I think they, they don’t, their not in the same ballpark, it’s just a terribly different world so.
LH: I think the secret was not to let it get to you.
JM: Yeah.
LH: Not, not to dwell on things that you did do. But the thing that stuck in me crew and I didn’t get a campaign medal, that really stuck in me crew.
JM: Which campaign medal was that?
LH: For Bomber Command, you didn’t get a campaign medal. You could send away for one in 1970, but it wasn’t a, a one that was recommended by the Air Force.
JM: But there is one that’s now available for the Australian Bomber Command.
LH: Yes I got one.
JM: Oh you did get one.
LH: I sent away for one.
JM: Right, yeah.
LH: It was in 1972 –
JM: No, no, no, no. This is within the last few years.
LH: No, no that was just a –
JM: A clasp.
LH: A clasp, yes.
JM: Yes, yes.
LH: I stuck it on and it fell off and I don’t know where the hell it is anyway, yes.
JM: Right.
LH: And they told us that, and when I rang up, that’s another thing that stuck in me craw, I rang up about that to somebody over in England and they said, ‘Oh you contact somebody down in [unclear] because you’re colonials’. I thought, mmm, right buggers –
JM: No there –
LH: They, they sort of looked on us as a different class but they didn’t then.
JM: No, no, that’s right.
LH: But I thought it was a bit of an insult actually.
JM: So which particular, so which you’ve got 39.5 Star.
LH: Yes.
JM: Yeah, what else and which and –
LH: Oh I’ve got them all on a, on a thing there.
JM: Okay well we’ll get back, we’ll get those shortly then, we’ll come back to those. So then you came back, so there were quite a few Australians in the crew there, there was what, there was only one, one Englishman wasn’t there, two?
LH: Two, two.
JM: One was Scottish.
LH: Three, the engineer and two gunners.
JM: The engineer and two gunners that’s right. So did you keep in touch with the pilot, the navigator, or the bomb aimer, once you all came back?
LH: No I never, I never was one for writing letters, some of them contacted me. The bomb aimer ended up a homeless alcoholic and he died at er, fairly well he was not an old man, but anyway, and he was really young so I don’t know why, whether, why it would have been him but, his father was a top Melbourne surgeon.
JM: Goodness.
LH: And, and he well, I don’t know.
JM: What about Jerry and um –
LH: No, Jerry who was a lawyer and, and he ended up at Tukka, down on the Murray, and he married a, a fine lady and she came out here.
JM: Do you know if he’s still alive or you don’t?
LH: No, no I’m the only one left out of the crew.
JM: You’re only the one left, yeah, right.
LH: I was the baby of the crew, yes.
JM: Crew right.
LH: The mid upper gunner was twenty-eight, and the rear gunner was thirty-six, but no pretty older than me.
JM: Goodness, thirty-six is very old, yeah.
LH: Yeah, yeah.
JM: I mean, twenty-eight was considered old but thirty-six was even older, but yeah, and compared to you being less than twenty-one –
LH: Yeah, well, Jim, Jim Wilson was about three years older. That’s a funny thing now, he got engaged after the war to a pommy woman, and when he came back here, his mother was in a nursing home with a full time nurse, and he ended up marrying the nurse and cancelling the other one. Now the other one married an American Mustang pilot and she went back to California.
JM: America.
LH: Now here’s where the funny thing happened, Jim’s wife died in 1980 something, late eighties, and he was moping around and his crew, oh no, his kids bought him a trip on a Russian cruise liner, this is incredible, on a Russian cruise liner.
JM: Yeah, to?
LH: Wheeled him onto the liner and said, “Stay there, don’t come back.”
JM: Right, where was this Russian cruise liner going?
LH: I don’t know but anyway the, on the cruise liner the American, the pommy dame that he was engaged to and got married, her husband had died and she was on the Russian cruise liner.
JM: Yes.
LH: Now you wouldn’t read about it.
JM: You would not read about this.
LH: You would not read about it. So anyway, the outcome was that he used to go over and stay with her for four months, and she came out here and stayed at his place for four months, and then they had four months apart. But you, you couldn’t think that up if you were writing a book could you, you could not think that up.
JM: Unbelievable. And what that’s the way they –
LH: Well she yes, she died a few years ago and he died.
JM: They continued that way until they both, until she passed away basically.
LH: Yes, yes.
JM: What an incredible story, I really am –
LH: But you’d have thought she would have had a shitty on him for dumping her in the first place.
JM: Yeah, that’s right, yes.
LH: But that’s, that’s war.
JM: Mmm, that’s right indeed. So then once you discharged in September, you’re back in Australia in September ’45?
LH: Yes.
JM: And knocked back the other bits and pieces, so what, you come back up here to –
LH: No it never shifted from me, it’s the best place in Australia you know.
JM: I know that. So you’re back up here to the farm and –
LH: Yeah well, sort of at a loose end, didn’t know, I didn’t make, I made a bad mistake in I could say bought this war service scheme here, where you bought the farm and then they funded it at three per cent.
JM: Yep.
LH: But I didn’t take that up because my dad was taken, and we end up splitting the farm up, the three boys that was, took a third each, and we arranged, see, dad had left everything for life interest to me mum and we ended up buying it off her at a price that we paid so much a year that if she lived to be ninety-five that she’d have a good income for the rest of her life.
JM: For the rest of her life.
LH: So that’s how we got control of the farm, sort of thing.
JM: Right, yeah.
LH: And then we converted to sugar.
JM: And then you converted to sugar, yeah. And so did all three of you convert to sugar or -
LH: Yeah, well I was the first one but the others followed on.
JM: Oh okay. And so, so then you each had your own part of the old farm?
LH: Yes, yes.
JM: So who ended up with the house?
LH: There were three cottages on the farm.
JM: Right.
LH: But when I got married I, I built another house.
JM: Right, yeah.
LH: And luckily I got the third of the farm with that house on it.
JM: Right.
LH: With the house and the cottage. Oh, me youngest brother got the, the bigger house, because it was thirty-six squared, that’s pretty big.
JM: And when did you get married?
LH: 1952.
JM: Was it a local girl I take it?
LH: Yes, well the family didn’t sort of approve, we were known as the wild Hibbard’s [laughs], but I started to pick her up once [laughs] one, to take her out one night [laughs], as I walked up the side of her house, I heard her father say, ‘Here comes the yokel’ [laughs]. Anyway, she must have known I had nothing because I had the arse out of me pants and she worked in the bank so it must have, so it wasn’t money she married me for [laughs]. Blimey, they were the days.
JM: But you made a go of it and you –
LH: But that’s what I say, these fellas who were supposed to have married bliss, I don’t know. This fella reckoned I, I should have been, should have been treated for it right back then, but I, I had to pay, you had to earn a living then, and I think that, you know, one thing that worried me in Vietnam they gave them a listen now. When you go for your interview, these are the questions that are being asked and here’s the answers you’re given, that’s why I’ve got a mate getting nine hundred bucks a week and he’s no thicker than you or me. So there’s a lot of fellas playing the system, I mean, not right, but anyway.
JM: So you married in ’52 and then you had at least one son?
LH: Yeah, I had five kids.
JM: Five kids.
LH: A son, three daughters, and a son.
JM: Right. So did they stay on the farm or did they go off and do other things?
LH: No, they all, oh one want to stay on the farm but for a reason, oddly I had to, well I figured that the way sugar was going that it was going to be in trouble, so I sold out.
JM: Right.
LH: While there was a quid in it.
JM: Yeah.
LH: Mmm. I helped in Meadow Farm and I was a partner in it and that, and when I did that he, he sold his too.
JM: Mmm.
LH: But the only, he only went in it [unclear] two hundred thousand, hundred and fifty thousand, he ended up getting eight or nine hundred thousand for it when he sold it.
JM: That’s all right.
LH: He and his wife, he started playing silly buggers and they split up. But he’s got a good job now in tourism, always been able to walk out of one job into another and another sort of thing.
JM: Into another.
LH: And there always good jobs.
JM: That’s good. And where, when you got out of the farm, where did you go then, what did you do?
LH: Oh no I didn’t retire from the farm until I was seventy-six.
JM: Yes, yes.
LH: Yes, then I came straight here.
JM: Oh, okay, right, that’s when you sold out.
LH: Yeah, yeah. But by then I had twelve flats in Murwillumbah, and I kept the farmhouse, which was a mistake as it turned out, but anyway, I left that to the daughter. When I sold out, it was worth about seven hundred and fifty thousand but when [unclear] took off and all the people moved up to Murwillumbah, the traffic passed the door, reaped it’s value.
JM: Yes, yes.
LH: Could have used it, I went on the stock market and did all right.
JM: Mmm, well that’s quite, quite a –
LH: I don’t know if it helps you.
JM: Well the point is Lindsay, when we discussed, when we were setting all this up, is that, you know there’s just not recognition given to the Bomber Command people in the past and this is just a very belated way of making sure that some of recollections, true recollections of those veterans is recorded for posterity and that’s what it’s all about.
LH: Oh yes.
JM: That’s why –
LH: I really think they could have given ‘em more recognition with a campaign, a proper campaign medal [telephone ringing]. It was for putting solar panels on the roof and I tell you what, you send away to one, one charity –
JM: And you have a hundred back.
LH: Hah [unclear].
JM: Yeah that’s right.
LHL: Anyway.
JM: No, well I think we are probably just about wrapping up, we’ve probably covered most of the things that we needed to cover, the, yeah, I don’t, your crew obviously were a tight group –
LH: They weren’t one’s for partying but some crews had a lot of time in the pub and this that and the other, but they weren’t like that, no, no.
JM: And none of them, they were all good solid citizens.
LH: Solid citizens, yes.
JM: And none of them had any real superstitions or carried good luck charms or anything like that?
LH: Not that I know of no, no.
JM: But even if they did it was obviously worthwhile because of the fact that you all got back safely right through.
LH: Very steady, very steady lot, yes. I always had it stuck in my mind, it was something me dad told me from the First World War, ‘don’t ever volunteer for anything, don’t ever’. So when we were picking a crew, I didn’t go looking for a crew, I just stood back and let everybody sort themselves out, and the last crew looking for what got me [laughs], which wasn’t a very good bargain but that was my outlook on.
JM: Yes, well that’s right, clearly you, it worked, because, I mean, you clearly had a good pilot because he managed to get you home safely after all those ops after some pretty hairy experiences, so that’s even more important so yeah.
LH: Had a good navigator, that was very important.
JM: Indeed, indeed. So at this point, we’ll wrap up the formal part of it and as I say again, thank you very much for your time, it’s been marvellous talking to you.
LH: I don’t know why they waited until most of them are dead because –
JM: Unfortunately, but I mean it’s better than nothing.
LH: [laughs] Not much.
JM: Thanks Lindsay.
JM: Yeah, we’re just talking to Lindsay Hibbard again on 23rd February, continuing on from our interview on 21st February 2017, we are just talking in a bit more detail about a couple of the ops he did. 16th January, that’s in ’44, yeah. January ’44?
LH: October ’44.
JM: No I want the 16th January ‘44
LH: ‘45
JM: ’45, sorry my apologies, yes ’45, January ’45. Okay, 16th January ’45.
LH: Sixteenth, Lancaster –
JM: Ops, Bruge –
LH: Czechoslovakia ops –
JM: [unclear] yes.
LH: Oil refineries.
JM: Yes.
LH: Twelve five hundred standards and one four thirty standards.
JM: And you were on three engines?
LH: Bombed on three engines.
JM: So what was the story there, were you, how did you lose the, the other engine?
LH: It was a runaway, what you call a runaway prop, it just sort of disengages from the motor and got up to I think, to six thousand revs and if they hadn’t of controlled it and brought it back it would have caused a fire, but it was a malfunction of the propeller so they shut that motor down.
JM: Shut that motor down and then just continued on and completed?
LH: We bombed on three engines.
JM: Yeah.
LH: We jettisoned six five hundred pound bombs to, when we lost the prop so that at twelve thousand feet, yeah.
JM: Right okay.
LH: And he got a DFC for that.
JM: Sorry?
LH: He got a DFC –
JM: The pilot?
LH: The pilot.
JM: Yeah okay, the pilot got a DFC for that, yes that’s understandable, to manage all of that, and to have complete, to have successfully complete the bombing raid as well and then get back home again, that’s pretty good to say the least. So that time you were DXT so –
LH: Yes.
JM: Yes okay. So all right, and then on the 7th February ’45, you were on –
LH: Lancaster ops for Pölitz.
JM: Pölitz, yes. Four direct flak hits here.
LH: Yes, yes. Is that the one that we crashed on?
JM: No, not that one.
LH: Well we were [unclear].
JM: So what sort of damage was that, how much damage?
LH: Oh god, it blew the tail off and there was bloody hundreds and hundreds of holes, you know, the H2SN was blown off, it made a bit of a mess of the plane but nobody got hit.
JM: Nobody got hit. And what, did you have any extra –
LH: Oh yeah we rolled –
JM: Roles to do?
LH: Knocked the intercom out, and I don’t know, I didn’t know what I was doing but I fixed it anyway, ‘cos that’s what they gave me the DFC for, it went out twice.
JM: Mmm, right. What did you have to do to fix it?
LH: I had to find, find a set of wires in amongst the bloody carnage and mess and connect them up again.
JM: And at this stage there’s still flak coming around hitting left, right and centre was there so that you were –
LH: From the first here, yeah, and then there was some later on, it had it on the –
JM: Citation?
LH: Citation.
JM: Let’s pause a minute while you perhaps get the citation out. Right, Lindsay’s just got the citation here for me and it reads, ‘Warrant Officer Hibbard has throughout a large number of operational sorties proved to be a wireless operator of great skill and ability. On one occasion in February 1945, his aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire shortly before reaching the target area, this resulted in the severing of a number of cables causing the failure of the intercommunication system. Warrant Officer Hibbard quickly traced the seat of the damage and effected repairs. Whilst over the target, the aircraft was again hit by anti-aircraft fire and the intercommunication system rendered unserviceable, but with cool confidence, this warrant officer once more effected repairs. Warrant Officer Hibbard has, at all times, displayed outstanding courage, determination and initiative’.
LH: Yeah.
JM: Terrific.
LH: I didn’t think I was that good.
JM: Well I think there’s a fair degree of modesty here Lindsay, which comes back to, I suspect, to some of your country upbringing –
LH: I think they built it up a bit I didn’t think it was that good.
JM: Well the fact that you got it all working again and you had to do it not once but twice, it just means that the amount of flak you guys were copping and, as you say, got so much blown off.
LH: We landed at Manston –
JM: Manston, yeah. And did the pilot get a bar or anything as well?
LH: Not a bar, he just got a DFC.
JM: Yes, but I thought you said he had already been given the DFC for in the January.
LH: No, no, no, oh no, he didn’t get a bar for that.
JM: No, oh okay. And did any of the, none of the other crew members got any recognition out of that flight?
LH: No, no.
JM: Because you were having to try and do things in amongst a whole pile of ricocheting and everything else. Yes, okay. So that was probably, I think that was the last, that was the second, so that was the last time you flew DXU.
LH: Yes but that was the squadron commander’s plane actually I think.
JM: Right.
LH: It wasn’t –
JM: Right, oh okay. So he obviously must have been either in a different plane or not on that raid?
LH: No, he wasn’t on that raid.
JM: Oh okay, okay well that’s, that’s basically the couple of things that I had picked up on just going back through my notes and that’s, that’s good. And then is there anything else that you had thought of that we didn’t cover when we chatting a couple of days ago.
LH: No, haven’t.
JM: So you were flying in a few different planes over the course of your tour, with as you say a fair proportion was in “Sugar” but you certainly had a few more –
LH: Oh yes, because they had to maintain them.
JM: Planes, yes, that’s right, so that you were rotated round a little bit while they maintained it, and that, that new one, the one you were on over at Pölitz, that would have needed a fair bit of maintenance to get, before that could go back up in the air again?
LH: It was Pölitz that Teddy got shot down wasn’t it?
JM: No I –
LH: MacDonald, Teddy MacDonald.
JM: Yeah, yeah, but it was –
LH: It was either Pölitz or Rositz -
JM: I think it might have been Rositz, but because that was in January so –
LH: No February was Rositz.
JM: Yes, but he was.
LH: I said it was either Pölitz or Rositz that it was.
JM: Well he, I haven’t got my notes in front of me and I just, but I know it was January that he went down. And he was headed towards Leipzig from memory, I think Leipzig sticks in my brain as to where he was headed towards but he didn’t actually get there.
LH: Must have been the oil refineries that time. Oh well anyway.
JM: Yeah, so that’s it, yes, thank you very much, thank you again, and I shall stop the recording now.
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AHibbardL170221
Title
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Interview with Lindsay Hibbard
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:34:20 audio recording
Creator
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Jean Macartney
Date
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2017-02-21
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
Great Britain
California--San Francisco
United States
Panama--Panama Canal
California
Panama
Contributor
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Jackie Simpson
Vivienne Tincombe
Description
An account of the resource
Lindsay was born in Murwillumbah, Australia, before moving to Brisbane in 1927. Lindsay tells of growing up on the family, and how his eldest brother was killed in Malaya on the Thai Railway, and his older brother returning home to run the farm after his father passed away. Lindsay joined the Royal Air Force in 1942. He did his initial training at Kingaroy, before moving on to training as a wireless operator at Maryborough, completing that in July 1943. He tells of his experiences on the gunnery course at Evanshead, where his ‘claim to fame’ is that he got 30% of his hits off target. After going to San Francisco and New York, Lindsay tells of his trip across to Liverpool. Lindsay flew in Battles, and then went on Ansons, Wellingtons and Stirlings. He flew 32 operations all with the same crew, including Nuremberg, Dusseldorf, the Dortmund-Ems Canal, to the oil refineries at various locations, and operations to bomb the U-Boat pens in Norway. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1945, after his aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire on the way to the target at the Politz oil refineries in February 1945. The anti-aircraft fire severed a number of cables causing a failure of the intercommunication system, and Lindsay managed to make repairs. The pilot also received the same award for bringing the aircraft down safely. Lindsay jokes that his uniform was ruined as they could not get the oil out of it. After the war, Lindsay tells how he returned to the farm, his encounter with a lady who he used to date in Edinburgh, and his diagnosis of post-traumatic stress.
57 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
Battle
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
Distinguished Flying Cross
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster Finishing School
Operational Training Unit
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Silverstone
RAF Syerston
RAF Winthorpe
Stirling
training
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/309/3466/AMunroL150604.2.mp3
e4a1c8a20e21add227fdb978e901cb8a
Dublin Core
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Title
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Munro, Les
Les Munro
John Leslie Munro
John L Munro
John Munro
J L Munro
J Munro
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Squadron Leader John Leslie Munro CNZM DSO QSO DFC (1919-2015, Royal New Zealand Air Force). Les Munro trained as a pilot in New Zealand and Canada and completed 58 operations with 97 Squadron and 617 Squadron from RAF Woodhall Spa and RAF Scampton. His aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire on the way bomb the Sorpe dam and he returned to RAF Scampton still carrying his bouncing bomb.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-06-04
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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Munro, L
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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NB: Right. It’s quarter to five on the 4th of June 2015. I’m in the house of John Leslie Munro in Tauranga, New Zealand. Excuse the pronunciation. Tauranga in New Zealand. Um I wondered if we could start off by just finding out a bit about your life before you went into Bomber Command.
JLM: Yes. I was born to — my father worked on a sheep station at Dorman which was sixteen miles from the town of Gisborne. I was born and brought up and spent all my younger life in the Gisborne district. After I only spent two years at high school because of the slump. We were being brought up in the slump. My parents could not afford to keep me at high school any longer so immediately on leaving high school in 1936 I went to work on a small dairy farm on which I worked for about eighteen months and from there I went to a larger farm which was a mixed sheep, you know, sheep cropping, mainly maize and dairying. And after about two years in that — working on that farm the owner left to work for a rural department and left me in charge. I was in. When war broke out I considered that I should actually do my part in, in supporting the king and country and democracy and freedom and democracy and that sort of thing. Ah and I um postponed enlisting because my younger brother had put his age forward and he actually spent his twenty first birthday overseas and that upset my parents quite considerably and I respected their feelings about the matter and postponed my enlistment until I passed the age of twenty one. So, as soon I was twenty one I enlisted in the air force. And because I’d only did two years course at high school of which neither was in– covered mathematics they said I wasn’t suitable to be a pilot but I could be a gunner or a wireless operator if that was suitable to me. But I didn’t, I didn’t agree with that and they said, well I said I wanted to be a pilot and the air force said, well, alright you can do a correspondence course in mathematics and trigonometry [struggles over word] and if, if you pass that we’ll accept you as a pilot and that’s what happened. I did the correspondence course and it was very very hard to do trigonometry and that I just couldn’t follow for a while. And eventually I passed and I went into the air force at Levin which was a brown place, just a parade ground sort of experience. And on the 5th of July 1941.
NB: Right.
JLM: Yeah.
NB: What made you go for the air force?
JLM: Well I’m often, I’m often asked that and I think, I think the idea that I wanted to be a pilot. I would be in charge of my own destiny. I think that was what drove me to that. The other thing is that the second farm I worked on, the homestead was up on a hill and the commercial air, commercial planes used to fly past. I’d watch them flying and I think I got a feel for flying, for flying planes, myself. Yeah.
NB: So, once, once you enlisted having got your qualification what was the process they put you through for training?
JLM: Well as I said earlier I entered the air force on the 15th of July 1941 at a place called Levin. I only had about six weeks there and I was transferred to New Plymouth to number 2 EFTS, that’s the Elementary Flying Training School on Tiger Moths.
NB: Right.
JLM: Spent um, flew there. I got my uh went solo after about six and a half hours’ training which apparently was recognised as being fairly good in those days. Ten hours was recognised as the normal period in which to gain your pilot’s licence to be able to go solo. And I gained my pilot’s licence, well, not licence but go solo and after six and half hours and [pause] — I’m not sure, I haven’t got the dates with me. After about ten weeks I think it would have been we were sent on leave and I left New Zealand on the 20th of October 1941 for Canada.
NB: Right.
JLM: I was sent to Canada. Number 4 SFTS [Service Flying Training School] where I trained on twin engine Cessna Cranes.
NB: Right.
JLM: Just as a point of interest is at that stage the Americans weren’t in the war and we travelled to Canada on the SS Mariposa which was a cruise ship and we were, we actually were transferred as, or transported, as civilians.
NB: Right.
JLM: We had two to a cabin with a server. A steward waiting on us in the cabins and the same on the, on the dining room tables. We were waited on by stewards and we were treated as civilians all the way over which was a quite significant in the sense that if we had been on a troop ship we’d have been about — I don’t know how many to a cabin and all that sort of thing. Yeah.
NB: And did that take you to —
JLM: And went to we arrived at San Diego and berthed there for a couple of days and then we sailed again through San Francisco. We debarked — disembarked at San Francisco.
NB: Okay. And then how, how did you get into Canada from there?
JLM: Hmmn?
NB: You went up to Canada from there?
JLM: Yeah. I, we caught the train at [pause] what’s the name of it? No gone. Caught the train at, there’s another town is there? Across the estuary or somewhere from the town of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco up to Vancouver.
NB: Right.
JLM: And then over. Took the train from Vancouver. Again I think we had to change to Canadian Railways of course and went over the Rockies to Saskatoon.
NB: Oh right.
JLM: To the [pause] yeah, which is in Saskatchewan.
NB: Saskatchewan. And how long was your training period? And was there a difference in climate or —
JLM: Ah yes. At that stage we were in the middle of winter and the ground, the ground was covered in snow. The only evidence you knew about habitation was the plumes of smoke. Smoke coming up from the chimneys of the houses and that sort of thing. But yes, we were, I’d never seen, well, no, I’d never seen snow in my life I don’t think and — but the ground was covered in snow although there was no problem. We were still able to fly there. The runways were still capable of being flown from. And we’ve carried on there until the 28th of February of ’42 when we were granted our wings and appointed officers. Pilot officers to start with and we, you know we awaited our — were awarded our wings. If that’s the right way of putting it.
NB: Yeah. So did you return to or come from there straight to the UK or did you have —
JLM: We had a fortnight’s leave.
NB: Right.
JLM: And three of us, I think, that used to kind of stick together quite a bit went down to New York and then transferred back up and took to Halifax where we caught the HMS, well not HMS, it was a civilian er Cape Town, the Cape Town Castle.
NB: Right.
JLM: And went to Liverpool. From Liverpool, by train, to Bournemouth where we filled in time for about, er we used to call it a holding pattern. We were there for, I think, about two months and then were posted up to Shawbury in Shropshire and did a refresher course on Airspeed Oxford. Spent a lot of time flying on Link Trainers and then we went from there to er Luff- North Luffenham the operational, the OTU.
NB: OTU. Yeah.
JLM: OTU. Operational Training Unit. There for about um about you see I’ve got these notes [unclear], I haven’t got my logbooks which I can refer to. Um, we were there for [pause] maybe, somewhere about three months I think and we were posted to Heavy Conversion Unit at Wigsley. We were flying Wellingtons at North Luffenham and that was where I had my first brush with death, I suppose, in a way.
NB: What happened?
JLM: It was in the days when they were trying to build up numbers, the bomber numbers. At the time they were experimenting with the thousand bomber raids. I don’t know about experimenting but endeavour to get a thousand bombers in the air at once. And we were on two of the, not necessarily the Bomber Command, the thousand bomber raids but trying to build up numbers to seven or eight or nine hundred bombers in the air. They employed or co-opted a lot of Operational Training Unit planes and in this case, somewhere around about September ’42 we were co-opted to go on a raid to one of the cities in Germany. And then about two nights later and with that, went on, we completed that without incident and about two nights later we were scheduled to attack another city and as is normal custom we were allocated planes which we had to take up for night flying exercises. We had a night flying test and on the — during that test I was most unhappy about the power of the, or the ability of the plane to take up a load of bombs. And I complained about this when I came down. I said, I said, I didn’t think this plane was capable of carrying two thousand pounds of bombs. And anyway, they noted my objection and that night when we took off after flying up the runway at full throttle I couldn’t get the plane to get airborne. I got it airborne — about twenty or thirty feet above the ground. I couldn’t get it any higher. Except at, even at full throttle. So, eventually had to go past the end of the runway and the bomb aimer said, ‘Trees ahead.’ And we just clipped those and we carried on and then I was still trying to get the plane to climb and then all of a sudden, well, not all of a sudden, after leaving the trees behind that I’d clipped I just, the plane just settled down on the ground in the middle of a paddock. There were buildings and that ahead of us and the trees behind and settled down quite smoothly and without any real damage. Well, without it assimilating a crash position and it caught fire and we, the crew and I, the crew all got out and the plane burned out with the bombs exploding at intervals. So that was an indication to me that maybe I might be lucky. And as it turned out that was the first evidence to me, first indication to me that maybe Lady Luck was going to be on my shoulder and so it happened right through the war. I had several instances where I felt that I was quite lucky to, to survive.
NB: Is there a feeling, or was there a feeling among the crews that you banked luck? Or —
JLM: I don’t know that we ever really discussed the situation as to whether we were lucky or [pause]. Don’t — I don’t remember as a crew. My crew, sort of, were such that they never sort of queried, never questioned my ability as a, as a pilot right through the war. There were occasions when they could have said, ‘Well, you know we were lucky there’ or, ‘What did you do that for?’ Or something like this.
NB: So, after you left HCU where were you?
JLM: I went to Heavy Conversion Unit at Wigsley.
NB: Right.
JLM: I was only there for — what? A couple of months and then I was posted to 97 Squadron at Woodhall Spa. On the 12th of December 1942.
NB: Flying?
JLM: Lancasters.
NB: On Lancs.
JLM: Oh, firstly at Luffenham, at Heavy Conversion Unit I flew the Manchesters for seven and a half hours before switching to Lancasters.
NB: Right.
JLM: And of course, when I was posted to 97 Squadron that was all Lancasters. So, I arrived on an operational squadron after about, what? Eighteen months training, to fulfil the reason why I enlisted in the first place.
NB: In the first place. And had you already crewed up by then?
JLM: Oh yeah. Well when we were at the Operational Training Unit we got our navigator [pause] navigator, bomb aimer, wireless operator. It wasn’t until we got to Heavy Conversion Unit we picked up our flight engineer and the two gunners.
NB: Was there a mix of nationalities in the crew?
JLM: Yes. Well no. Only two. There was — I had two Canadians. My navigator was a Scotsman. The two Canadians were wireless operator and rear gunner and a flight engineer was an Englishmen. The flight engineer and the mid-upper gunner was English. Both English.
NB: So you were the only New Zealander on board.
JLM: I was New Zealand. Yeah.
NB: Is that why you didn’t go towards 75 Squadron?
JLM: Yeah. No, you didn’t have much option. When you finished your Heavy Conversion Unit, you were just posted.
NB: Right.
JLM: Posted here, there or anywhere. I don’t — they never called for volunteers. They never called for, like they did initially at New Plymouth. They called for your preferences. ‘Do you want to be fighter boy or do you want to be a bomber pilot and because, perhaps due to my conservative nature I think I opted to be a bomber pilot. So, yeah, so when we didn’t get, we didn’t get a full crew until we arrived at Heavy Conversion Unit.
NB: Okay. So, the op that you did when you were at OTU did that count for your tour?
JLM: No, no.
NB: So, you then started your full tour when you got to —
JLM: Yeah. When we got to Woodhall Spa on 97 Squadron we started. That was it, another funny experience in a way. It was the first and only time I felt fear. That was my very first operation which was a mining trip to the mouth of Garonne River down on the coast of France. And when we arrived at the dropping area I was thinking while waiting to get confirmation that we were, what heading I was to fly on and that sort of thing and the coast was dark and no lights to be seen on the coast was ominous and for some reason I was halfway expecting to be shot at and that sort of thing. I’ve never felt, never been able to explain the reason for that feeling fear and that’s the one and only time I ever felt fear. The rest, the other times — there was no other planes around, there were no flak anywhere. Just looked dark and ominous for some reason. And we, I was always too busy trying to get, making sure that the plane was being flown away from danger and that sort of thing in other times or just trusting to luck. I think, probably night flying over Berlin on an operation it was going to be, purely be luck to make sure that you didn’t weren’t hit by flak or caught by flak or fighters on the way in or out.
NB: So, I understand the lack of fear, was that the whole crew? You were all so busy that that was — the fear just didn’t surface while you were working, if you like.
JLM: My sense of fear?
NB: Well, you were saying that you didn’t feel fear normally because you —
JLM: Yeah.
NB: You were so busy. Did that cover the whole crew? Everyone was in that position.
JLM: Oh yeah. Absolutely. Although I don’t — I’m not sure. I’ve never ever — the funny thing I’ve never ever talked to my crew, asked them that, you know, were they scared or anything like that. And straight on — about one of the trips on Berlin. It was a pretty, pretty big raid and we were just sort of getting to the woods on the way out of Berlin and our wireless operator, Percy Pigeon, the Canadian, decided he’d come out to have a look from the cockpit and he looked out and the city was just a mass of fires and flak and searchlights. And to illustrate what I was leading up he looked out behind us at we had come through and he said, ‘Jesus Christ, have we come through that?’ I always say, ‘Well, that’s an illustration of what you don’t know, what you can’t see you don’t worry about.’ Yeah.
NB: So are there any other key points during those operations that stand out for you?
JLM: Not — well on one of the trips on 97, I think, coming back and returning to base. I think we drifted off course a little bit from it. I think it was on a trip to Berlin and coming back and I think we drifted a little bit close to either Hamburg or Duisburg. No, it can’t be Duisburg. It was one of the station, towns there and we were suddenly surrounded by flak and some fragments hit the plane and I got a little bit lodged in my flying boot but I put the nose down and started weaving, increasing speed until we got out of the troubled area.
NB: Now, obviously you were part of the dams raid. How did — when did you move it onto?
JLM: I, well we spent, I think I did twenty one trips on 97 Squadron when I read a circular letter on the notice board from group headquarters calling for volunteers from to form — from people that had, I think they specified that had — just nearing the end of their first tour which I was or just due to commence a second. Calling for volunteers to form a new squadron, to form a new squadron to attack a special target. There wasn’t, a special, I don’t think it just said the target was just something special without any evidence of what it was going to be. So, I discussed with my crew and all but my rear gunner said yes, we would. I was — they agreed that I should volunteer, which I did and posted almost the next day to Scampton where the other crews that had volunteered and, in some cases, had been picked by Gibson too because he knew them. We formed from around about the 23rd. I think I arrived on Scampton on the 23rd of May [means March] whereas some didn’t arrive until the 28th and that sort of thing. It was over a period of two or three days. The squadron was formed. Subsequently called 617.
NB: And your whole crew went with you. Even the rear gunner?
JLM: No. No. He didn’t come.
NB: He opted out.
JLM: No. He didn’t come. So, I got a new — and prior to that period when I of volunteering I [unclear] early stages of when I was on 97 my bomb aimer, when we were up at twenty thousand feet, around that, he started, he suffered from some sort of, either oxygen sickness or something like that and this happened about two, the first couple of high level bombing operations I was on. So, he was taken off operations. So, I had a succession of, of, of bomb aimers coming in to act as my bomb aimer and one situation — one bloke was a naval lieutenant who was studying bombing methods by the RAF. Yeah. I was actually sorry to leave him in a way. So, because I didn’t have a permanent bomb aimer when we volunteered I got, I got a new bomb aimer when I arrived on 617 and a new rear gunner which was Harvey Weeks, a Canadian, and the bomb aimer was Jimmy Clay.
NB: And I’m interested in how the crews — because the rest of you had been together quite a while. Bringing in new people, did that have an effect on the crew?
JLM: No. I don’t think so.
NB: No.
JLM: No.
NB: No. They fitted in well.
JLM: Yes. Yeah.
NB: So, tell me more about the, sort of, 617 preparations.
JLM: Well, we arrived there and before there was [pause] although Gibson knew what the target was I don’t think neither of the flight commanders were aware of it until quite later on. But Gibson [unclear], knowing what the target was and knowing what the range that the specifications for the flying — type of flying, the airspeed and all that sort of thing that was going to be employed or had been developed by Barnes Wallis. He knew and he decided and he decided on advice, what type of training would be required for the type of flight we were going to undertake and what the type of attack was going to be for the release of the Upkeep. And consequently we undertook, almost straight away, I think the first point, we specified and were required to undertake low level flying. Firstly, mainly in daylight and then secondly in simulated night moonlight conditions and then lastly at night. Moonlight, full moonlight. All the routes then took up out to the west of England, up through the lakes country, up to almost the border of Scotland out on to the sea and almost returned down. Turned down the North Sea and back to base. And it was on one of those training flights I had another close call in that we were travelling, it was rather a hazy, moonlight night and all of a sudden in the haze ahead of me I there appeared to be a convoy with balloons flying, attached to the ships by cable. And I yelled out to, we were flying at a level that would have been — would have gone through just above the decks of the ships. And I yelled out to the wireless operator to fire the colours of the day which he did do and in the light of the flares — the colours of the day were just coloured flares that explode. There was balloons all ahead of me attached to the ships by cable and I immediately pulled back on the stick and by the grace of God managed to get through all these without collecting any of the cables. And that was the closest, I believe, was a close call too that I overcome just by pure, pure luck.
NB: Yeah. Absolutely. If you hadn’t seen the — yeah.
JLM: So that was — our training over the next six weeks was all low flying and emphasis on from the pilot’s point of view, was on being able to assess how soon to gain height to clear obstacles that were on the route ahead. And this is where, to start with some of the pilots had a bit of, were a bit inclined to leave it too late to gain height and clipped the tops of trees and a few instances of that happened and they were returning to base with twigs and leaves and that sort of thing in the air intakes.
NB: Did you have any idea what might be ahead?
JLM: No. Not in the slightest. No. Some, there was a lot of conjecture about what the target would be and the closest anyone got to maybe what was involved was the attack on the capital ships like the Tirpitz and de Grasse. Well it wasn’t the de Grasse but attack on capital ships that sort of thing. That was the most common thought, and of course it wasn’t.
NB: So when did you find out the difference?
JLM: The afternoon of the day of the night, the day of the night of the operation when we entered the briefing room. The two flight commanders and the bombing leader and the [pause] who was the other one? Bombing. Navigator. Oh, the navigation leader. They were advised about the day about the day before briefing day of what the target was. And I’m in no doubt that they went into detail at that stage of what was required of our, flying the route in and the actual attack and that sort of thing. The only, only indication of perhaps what might be involved was about the three days. The 11th, 12th and 13th of May with these, the Upkeeps had been arriving on the station and twelve planes took part in trials, or test trials with the Upkeeps down on the Firth of Thames [Reculver] and six out of those twelve aircraft through either flying too high or like here flying too low were damaged by splash from, yeah splash from the bomb hitting the water, hitting the tail of the aircraft. Six of them. Five of them were repaired in time for the operation and one was so badly damaged that it couldn’t be repaired in time. The one that was hit by Henry Maudslay. So he was given another plane. We only had one or two spare planes and he was — we used all the planes except that one that was damaged.
NB: So how many planes went out that night?
JLM: Nineteen went over and only eleven came back.
NB: So, tell me more about the briefing and —
JLM: Well, we when we were called for briefing at a certain time we would be there at four o’clock or some time in the afternoon. And the first thing they did was look at the big boards and all the tapes from base to the target and back again and the tapes that all showed us leading to the dams. That didn’t worry, I don’t think that worried the crews unduly. What did worry them was the fact that the route from the, as we hit the Ruhr Valley to the targets we were in the Ruhr, the most heavily defended area in Germany was the Ruhr Valley and I think that worried the crews more than anything.
NB: Rightly so.
JLM: Hmmn?
NB: Rightly so. So, I mean how long was the briefing and how detailed was it and —?
JLM: I don’t really, I can’t, I can’t remember how long the briefing was. I think it was probably about an hour and a half and we went back and had our pre-op meal and we took off at 19 — 7.28. It was in the — what was that? May. Be coming up to Spring.
NB: Spring. Yeah.
JLM: Yeah. So, there was, it wasn’t — no, from memory now, yes. One plane took off ahead of me and you could see him, so yes you could see them so it was starting to get dusk and then it got dark and you were relying on the moon from a little after leaving the coast at Skegness. Ah yeah.
NB: And what was the sort of progression for you that night?
JLM: Hmmn?
NB: What was the progression for you that night?
JLM: Well, I — our, we had been selected, my crew and all the group of four that had been selected to fly to attack the Sorpe dam and we — our route was almost due east of Lincoln. Crossing the coast somewhere around Skegness there and flying due east again until we hit a point north of, north of the island of — [pause] — yeah. Yeah it would be north of the island of Zeeland, just past the other one there. What was the name? Texel. Yeah. Texel, yeah. And I was, when we turned and then we had to turn right so the navigator said, ‘Right, turn right and due course such and such’ and after we’d been flying for a quarter of an hour or ten minutes. Less than that. Only a few minutes. Ten minutes probably. I thought I could see the breakers ahead and the sand dunes behind it and I gained height to clear the sand dunes and started, had covered the crest of the sand dunes and was losing power, losing height rather, to get down to the water on the other side which was the Wadden Sea. And I saw, suddenly saw a line of flak at come towards me and felt a small thump and lost all communication and electricity as a result of being hit by a twenty shell, twenty mil shell and a hole blown in the side of the aircraft. And that, was the result of that that I couldn’t communicate with the crew so I asked my wireless operator, thinking that he would be the best one to look at any question of restoring the inter-communication intercom and also to check on the rear gunner to see that he was alright. And I just circled around the Wadden Sea on the red while he did that until he came back and said no it was not possible to restore communication. And my thinking then was that okay we need that communication for the navigator and the pilot to be able to converse and for the pilot to accept the directions of the navigator when to turn on the route. And secondly, if by any chance we were able to get to the target area it was imperative that the bomb aimer and the pilot were able to communicate with each other. So, I made the, it wasn’t a difficult decision in many ways because there was very little alternative. I think it was very dangerous for the, for me as captain to carry on. And made the decision to return to base so had the situation of the same gun emplacement firing at us as we crossed the sand dunes on the way out again. Yeah. I thought that was rather significant. But fortunately, they didn’t hit us. There was a lot of conjecture later on, John Sweetman and one or two others. Well, John Sweetman, I think he believed, in his investigation, determined that I was hit by a flak ship but I say my navigator not my navigator, Jimmy Clay, my bomber aimer, was inclined to agree. Whereas my mid-upper gunner who had a bird’s eye view of where the flak came from believed it was a land-based gun emplacement that hit me and that’s what I think happened. So a little bit of a difference of opinion between John, John Sweetman and me on that one.
NB: The net result was the same.
JLM: Hmmn?
NB: The net result was the same.
JLM: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, so that was my experience on the dams raid. Yeah. And when I got back we returned to the mess after being debriefed and we got periodic reports that such and such had been shot down and such and such had been shot down. And it was after debriefing when those survivors had come back and returned to the mess — started celebrating and I felt embarrassed that I’d been present during the celebrations because I hadn’t achieved what they had done and I felt, you know, rather embarrassed about that.
NB: I can understand but [pause] so how many ops did you complete in total during your time with Bomber Command?
JLM: Altogether — fifty eight.
NB: And you chose to go for a second tour.
JLM: I did another thirty six, thirty six. I think it was thirty six operations on 617 before the AOC for 5 Group took us, took Leonard Cheshire and myself and Joe McCarthy and Dave Shannon off operations and wouldn’t brook any argument about that.
NB: And then —
JLM: He said he wanted me to take over 1690 Bomber Defence Training Flight. Which I did. Spent a year on that.
NB: Right.
JLM: Flying Hurricanes.
NB: Enjoy it?
JLM: Yeah. I did enjoy it. Yeah. Yeah.
NB: So, I mean looking, looking back were there any real highlights and lowlights of your time in the Command?
JLM: I don’t know about, well, lowlight. The only lowlight really was, well lowlights was [pause] well I don’t know that’s a hard one to answer. Every operation, to a large extent every operation had the same sense, same degree of danger. You were likely to be attacked by a night fighter, particularly on the main, the main operations on 97 when you were on attacking the German towns. Yes, there was always the danger of night fighters and then you also, combined with that was the danger of being hit by flak. And I had, you know the time I was surrounded by flak on my right foot panel and I suppose I was lucky to escape any — apart from little bits of shrapnel, bits lodging in my flying boot. Nothing, nothing really untoward there. I managed to escape from that situation and had one or two other. One, later on when 617 was engaged in the attacking single targets we were taking, at low level, an electricity transfer station, or transformer station in northern Italy which we were due to, which we were bombing with five hundred pounders and because of haze we had difficulty in identifying the target and I think I gradually crept a bit lower and lower and when the bombs went off a bit of shrapnel came and hit my bomb aimer right on the tip of his nose [with humour]. Yeah. So I suppose that was a bit quiet, a bit close. But any highlights. Oh, highlights really was when a raid was successful. You felt a sense of pride. Particularly when we were, I was marking at low level in the early stages of 617 carrying out special operations, single, on single targets. Not like the main bomber force, blanket bombing. When we were, on one or two occasions when we marked the target with the coloured bombs dropped right on them, that was a sense of achievement, I think. Yeah.
NB: And how long did you stay in. And were you demobbed in ’45 or —
JLM: Yeah. I, as I said I spent twelve months on 1690 Bombing Defence Flight and that was where we were a small flight of fighter planes who were attacking drogues in daytime and night-time. Acting as enemy fighters attacking the bombers and the bomber’s pilots — they were training in evasive tactics with the, with the gunners having cameras in their, in their turrets and being able to check on how whether they would have shot us down if it had it been real.
NB: Right.
JLM: I enjoyed that. I did about two hundred and something hours on Hurricanes. I didn’t enjoy night flying because I always worried that okay, acting as a fighter at night time, would I pull out in time without colliding with a Lancaster? That was one fear I had but, I mean I persevered in that type of thing and I got — yep. I thought it was nice to be able to fly in a single engine fighter after a four engine Lancaster. Yeah.
NB: A bit more nimble.
JLM: Hmmn?
NB: A bit more nimble.
JLM: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
NB: So —
JLM: I must say another sense of achievement I think was in Operation Taxable was when the spoof operation on D-day. I felt a sense of achievement to have participated in that although it was — it wasn’t a dangerous mission. It wasn’t. But though the one, there was, that took part in several phases to that, there were other planes operating. And I think 218 Squadron lost four planes, I think. They were further up. Attacking, you know. And we were down by a [unclear] Calais and we flew Leonard, I was privileged to have Leonard Cheshire fly as my second pilot on that operation. We had, you know, we had we flew individual, each crew flew for two, each crew but divided in to one hour just flying these oblong series dropping the — what’s the —?
NB: Radar?
JLM: Radar. Yeah. Dropping aluminium. No, it’s not radar.
NB: Oh, the aluminium foil.
JLM: Yeah.
NB: Yeah.
JLM: I think there was a common name for it [Window].
NB: Yeah.
JLM: No. never mind. Yeah.
NB: I’m in a similar state. So, when you came out did you continue to fly? When you left the RAF.
JLM: Well only to the extent that in Gisborne, I returned home to Gisborne and it was not long afterwards they decided they’d form an aero club and I was part of that. Or part of that decision and I actually lent the club fifty pound, I think it was, as part of, to finance a Tiger Moth and I did five hours on the Tiger Moth and before my — I sort of got involved with a certain woman and I couldn’t get married and we couldn’t afford to get married and also fly too so I gave any thoughts of flying away.
NB: It’s those women again [laughs]. That’s brilliant. Have you got any particular thoughts that you want recording as to how Bomber Command should be remembered? How you’d like them to be remembered.
JLM: Well no, I was and still am very critical of the fact that it took the English peoples sixty seven years before there was a satisfactory memorial erected to remember or to recognise the contribution that fifty five thousand five hundred and seventy three people gave their lives. I think, and as, when it happened, I think that the resulting memorial was I did, did was was a significant reflection on those, the loss of those lives. I think it was what BB, what was his name that started it off and the three blokes, you probably know their names.
NB: Gibb.
JLM: The sculptor and the designer and that I think did a great job. If — if I would have a real difficulty in making any criticism of the memorial as a resulting memorial. I think it’s quite a good one. I think it’s quite a good one. And that led me to the medal saga.
NB: Yes.
JLM: Yeah. I think God you wouldn’t want to see this deteriorate for lack of money. And I, it wasn’t until I, with the boys and my daughter-in-law, visited the memorial in ’13 — what was I leading up to? And it wasn’t until then in company with Anna Marie Fairburn who was communications, one of the leading positions in the RAF Benevolent Fund. It wasn’t until then that I was aware, became aware that the RAF Benevolent Fund had been given the responsibility of the maintenance of that and I really, you know, I thought that was a hell of a big ask.
NB: Yeah.
JLM: And I think in a way, in a way I think that was unfair of the government.
NB: We think the same.
JLM: Yeah.
NB: Thank you for that. Thank you [pause]. Gosh, you must be exhausted. All that.
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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AMunroL150604
Title
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Interview with Les Munro
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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00:52:53 audio recording
Creator
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Nicky Barr
Date
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2015-06-15
Description
An account of the resource
John Leslie Munro was born in the area of Gisborne, New Zealand. He only completed two years of secondary education because of the economic slump and in 1936 began work on a sheep ranch and then a mixed farm. On the outbreak of the Second World War, he was determined to train as a pilot. He had to complete a correspondence course first to improve his qualifications. He began his training at Number 2 Elementary Flying Training School, going solo after six and a half hours’ training. He completed his training in Canada. After time on Operational Training Units at RAF Shawbury and RAF North Luffenham, and the Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Wigsley, he was posted to 97 Squadron at RAF Woodhall Spa. He volunteered and was accepted for the special squadron being assembled by Guy Gibson. With 617 Squadron, he embarked on further training that would lead to the Eder, Möhne and Sorpe operations. En route to the dams his aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire, losing all communication and had to return to RAF Scampton. Of the 58 operations Munro completed while in RAF Bomber Command, 36 were with 617 Squadron. He was taken off active operational duty to command 1690 Bomber Defence Training Flight. He participated in Operation Taxable, a decoy operation connected to D-Day. Munro recounts several near misses, such as almost hitting the barrage balloons hoisted from a convoy on the North Sea. He was highly supportive of the unveiling of the Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park and in particular, ensuring that it would be properly maintained.
Contributor
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Brian May
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Germany
Great Britain
New Zealand
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Rutland
England--Shropshire
England--London
California--San Francisco
United States
California
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943-05-16
1943-05-17
1944-06-05
1944-06-06
1944
1945
617 Squadron
97 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
bouncing bomb
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
crash
Eder Möhne and Sorpe operation (16–17 May 1943)
fear
Flying Training School
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Manchester
memorial
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Normandy deception operations (5/6 June 1944)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF North Luffenham
RAF Scampton
RAF Shawbury
RAF Wigsley
RAF Woodhall Spa
take-off crash
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/194/3326/PAdamsHG1704.1.jpg
980d8be504d2da9355ce447405cd8c1f
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/194/3326/AAdamsHG170215.1.mp3
041f97f2eedf07da91f07fc45cf06065
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
Adams, Herbert
Herbert Adams
H Adams
Herbert G Adams
Description
An account of the resource
88 items. Collection concerns Herbert George Adams DFC, Legion d'Honour (b. 1924, 424509 Royal Australian Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator with 467 Squadron. Collection contains an oral history interview, photographs of people and places, several memoirs about his training and bombing operations, letters to his family, his flying logbook and notes on navigation.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Herbert Adams and catalogued by Nigel Huckins and Trevor Hardcastle.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-02-15
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Adams, HG
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
RG: This is an interview with Herbert Adams for the International Bomber Command Centre on Wednesday the 15th of February 2017 at his home in Kooringal, Wagga, New South Wales, Australia.
LD: The name of the interviewers.
RG: Interviewers are Rob Gray and Lucie Davison.
LD: Alright. All good. Ok.
RG: Off you go.
LD: So, you were born near Gulgong.
HA: That’s right.
LD: New South Wales.
HA: Yeah.
LD: Were you born in town or on a farm? Or where?
HA: No.
LD: What kind of area did you grow up in?
HA: My father had a stock and station agency and carrying business in Birriwa.
LD: Yeah.
HA: Very small. You wouldn’t see it now if you went through it [laughs] but it was a prosperous little district. I went to primary school there. One teacher school.
LD: And did you work there or did you leave?
HA: No.
LD: Leave home to go to work before you signed up?
HA: When I was old enough I went to high school at Mudgee for five years — where I boarded. And in 1938 dad sold the agency and bought a farm at Mendooran.
LD: Oh yes.
HA: And that’s where I reckoned I lived for a while because after I came back from the war they were still on the farm. And in fact, they sold the farm at the end of the 1946 drought and moved into town. And my brother and I took up share farming at Mendooran.
LD: Right.
RG: That town being Mudgee or —? That town being Mudgee or —?
HA: Not Mudgee. It was Mendooran, sort of east of Dubbo. South of Coonabarabran.
RG: Right. Ok. Yeah.
HA: We did that for three years and then I took on carrying for about a year and a half. Carting cement from Kandos to Sydney.
RG: Yeah.
HA: And then I bought a sports store in Mudgee.
LD: Oh right.
RG: Ok.
HA: Where I strung tennis rackets and fixed cricket bats, sold toys and stuff like that for seven or eight years. Got married and had three kids there. Didn’t know what to do with myself when I sold the sports store so I went to teacher’s college in Sydney for a year.
LD: Oh. Wow.
RG: Ok.
HA: Boarded with me sister. Left my family at Mudgee and got appointed to Mudgee to teach.
LD: Well that was handy wasn’t it?
HA: Well [laughs] we were asked to give preferences of where we wanted to teach and I said ‘Mudgee. Mudgee. Mudgee.’ And they said, ‘Well you’re married and an ex-serviceman and you live there. If necessary we’ll move someone.’ Which they did.
LD: Oh.
RG: Oh. yeah. Very good.
HA: They moved a first year out. A young fella.
RG: Yeah.
HA: Our From Mudgee to Muswellbrook or Maitland or somewhere over there.
RG: Yeah.
HA: And I taught junior maths and, senior and junior biology for five years.
RG: Right. Ok.
HA: At the same time, I did a degree from Armidale by correspondence.
RG: A degree in —?
HA: Just a BA degree with a major in maths and education. Tried to get a science degree out of them but they wouldn’t agree to an external student.
RG: Oh for science.
HA: Getting a science degree even though I could have had more science units.
RG: Yeah.
HA: Than what they could provide from Armidale.
RG: It’s odd isn’t it? Perhaps it required laboratory work or something at Armidale or something like that.
HA: I don’t know, just one of those regulations.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
HA: Regulations you can’t undo.
RG: Yeah. I was going to say with your service background to put down Mudgee, Mudgee Mudgee you were liable to be sent to Coonabarabran or somewhere. Anyway.
HA: Yeah. So, I taught at Mudgee there for five years and then I resigned and joined the air force a second time. Came to Wagga.
RG: Oh. Ok.
LD: Oh right.
HA: As an education officer out here at Forest Hill.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
LD: Oh excellent.
HA: Which I did for just on three years.
RG: What were you teaching in the air force?
HA: First two years — adult trainees.
RG: Yeah.
HA: It was basic maths, physics and [Electrical] tech.
RG: Yeah.
HA: In the second year I was teaching fellas who didn’t want to be instructors to be instructors [laughs]
RG: Yeah. I was one of those. Yeah.
HA: It was an experience.
RG: Yeah.
HA: And I learnt more about teaching in that year than I did at teacher college. For sure.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
LD: Yeah.
HA: And then —
LD: That must have been most interesting. Going back into the air force again after all that time.
HA: It was, yeah, because I was straight away a flight lieutenant.
RG: Yeah.
HA: And I did Anzac Day addresses and things like that.
RG: When was that? When did you go back into the air force?
HA: ’65 ‘66. ’67.
RG: Right. So, twenty years after you left.
HA: Yeah.
RG: Yeah.
LD: That would have been fascinating.
RG: Have we got — sorry. Have we got Bert’s date of birth? Anywhere?
LD: Oh. No. What’s your date of birth, Bert?
HA: 23rd of the 2nd ’24.
LD: Ok.
HA: So, I’ll be ninety three next week.
LD: Wow. So, did you work before joining the air force the first time?
HA: Yes. I worked in Sydney for a year and a half. The local government department in Bridge Street.
LD: Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah.
HA: Didn’t like it much. Didn’t get much money.
RG: This was as a clerk or —
HA: Yeah.
RG: Yeah.
HA: Junior clerk. And when they brought in compulsory service for the army I was very keen to get in because six shillings a day was big money.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
HA: Like, I was paying board in Sydney and train fares and had nothing left. I couldn’t even play hockey because I didn’t have enough money to go and play hockey every weekend.
RG: Right. Yeah. So that, what year was that that you —?
HA: 1941 and 1942.
RG: So, so you were called up in —
HA: ’42.
RG: ’42.
HA: Yeah.
LD: So, you were called up in to the army initially.
HA: Yeah. Yeah.
RG: Where did you go to?
HA: Went to Dubbo and did the infantry training for a month and then was invited, if you could drive a truck, to go to Moorebank near Liverpool and do a motor-school for a month.
RG: Right.
HA: A lot of stuff with Bren gun carriers.
RG: Yeah.
HA: And internal, whatever you call it. A written exam at the end of it. We had lectures at night and that sort of thing. Some of the fellas could barely read and write and they were in the army. I’d finished High School with good passes.
RG: Yeah.
LD: Yes.
HA: I came top of the course.
LD: Yeah.
HA: I was invited to go to Sydney Tech College for six months and come out as a warrant officer instructor.
RG: Right.
HA: At aged eighteen.
RG: Ok. That was advanced promotion.
HA: I thought about it very seriously.
RG: You would have done. We’re talking about six shillings being good money.
HA: Anyway, I was already on the reserve for aircrew so when that came up I got out of the army.
LD: Oh right.
RG: So, did you volunteer for the reserve for the aircrew? Did you do that before you joined up? Or —
HA: Yeah.
RG: Yeah.
HA: As a matter of fact, when Air Training Corps first formed, late in 1941 I think it was.
RG: Yeah.
HA: I was one of the first in.
RG: Right.
HA: And that was supposed to get you a month or two precedence on the, on the waiting list. There was a big waiting list for aircrew.
RG: Yeah.
HA: Eight months. Something like that.
RG: So did you do — we’ve read Andy, sorry, Adrian Child, sorry Ray child — Charlwood sorry.
HA: I’ve read two of his books.
RG: Yeah. And his way, he did it he came in through the ATS got assessed, got accepted, sent home and then came back later and did some training and then got sent home again and then went and did his specialist — his navigator’s training was it? Did something similar happen to you? Did you like get accepted and sent home again?
HA: No. Air Training Corps was only part time stuff up at Ashfield. Never got any uniform.
RG: Oh. This is not the ATS —this is Air Training Corps. Yeah. Ok. Sorry. Yeah. Different.
HA: Sorry. Wrong thing.
RG: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking of the ATS. Yeah. Yeah.
HA: Yeah. Where we were up to?
RG: So, Ashfield.
HA: Ashfield.
RG: Yeah.
HA: Yeah.
LD: So, which ITS did you end up going to?
HA: Bradfield.
LD: Oh right.
HA: Number 2.
LD: Oh my God. That’s where Ken was.
RG: That’s where Ken was. Yeah.
LD: I have a relative who was there.
HA: Yeah.
LD: Ken Glover.
HA: I’ve got an idea as I can remember that name. I was in 32 course for a start.
LD: I’m not sure what course he was in.
RG: No. He —
LD: I haven’t been able to find that out.
RG: He became a rear gunner. He was in 463. And he was killed on Christmas Eve ‘43 over Berlin.
LD: He started out in 207 Squadron.
RG: Yeah. He started out in 207 RAF.
HA: Yeah. He was a bit earlier at Bradfield than me if he was on Berlin raids.
RG: Yeah.
LD: Yeah. He left [pause] he left Australia like January ’42.
RG: Yeah.
HA: Yeah.
RG: ‘43. He was killed at the end of ’43.
LD: Oh, I’m getting mixed up.
RG: Yeah. Yeah. Anyway.
HA: Yeah. There may have been another Glover that I met somewhere along the way.
RG: I’m sure there were scads of them really. Yeah.
LD: Yeah.
HA: I actually had a time. I got the mumps while I was there and went out to Prince Henry Hospital. Came back and I found myself in 33 course. And then they said, ‘They need more fellas at the training places. We’re going to do a rushed course so that you can go out with 32 course again.’
RG: Yeah.
HA: ‘Providing you’re quick enough at Morse.’
RG: Yeah.
HA: And because I’d been in the Air Training Corps I was fast enough at Morse.
RG: Yeah.
LD: Yeah.
HA: So, I ended up with 32 course at Bradfield. And then came to Cootamundra.
LD: Yes.
HA: 1 AOS. I didn’t even get inside the gate. We were throwing kit bags up on to a truck and I collapsed and found myself in hospital.
RG: As a result of the mumps?
HA: Woke up the next day with terrible trouble with appendicitis.
RG: Oh, ok. Yeah.
HA: I was delirious for a few days and a bit lucky to survive I think because penicillin was, luckily, available.
LD: Yeah.
HA: In those days.
RG: Yeah. And only just available too. Yeah.
LD: Yes.
RG: Yeah.
HA: And so, I was in the hospital for a month with a hole with a rubber tube gushing out rubbish. Finally sent home, I think for Christmas, still with a hole in my belly. And —
RG: So, this is Christmas ‘41
HA: ‘42
RG: ‘42.
HA: ‘42. Yeah.
RG: Yeah.
HA: And they said, ‘By the way you will have to come back to hospital next year and have your appendix out.’
LD: What?
RG: They hadn’t done it.
HA: They didn’t take it out. All they’d done was drain all the muck out of it to treat it.
LD: Oh of course. They needed to drain everything ‘cause if they tried to operate with —
RG: The poison would have got into the bloodstream. Yeah.
LD: Yes. Yes.
RG: Lucie is an ex-nurse so.
HA: Yeah.
HA: My wife’s an ex-nurse too.
LD: We’re good people [laughs]
HA: So, I came out of hospital and did some time with 35 course and helped in the sick quarters for a while.
RG: This is filling in time before the next observers course.
HA: Yeah. Then I came down to Wagga.
RG: So, you didn’t actually get to Cootamundra at all. You were posted there but didn’t get there.
HA: Oh yes. When I come out of hospital I was put on to 35 course.
RG: Yeah.
HA: And I went to lectures and did one flight with them. And then they said but you’ve got to go and get your appendix out so I came to the RAAF hospital out here at Forest Hill which hadn’t long been opened and had my appendix out. And went back and fooled around until 38 course started.
LD: [laughs] They must have been wondering if they were ever going to get rid of you.
RG: Yeah. So instead of three months it was nine months.
LD: Oh right.
HA: At Cootamundra.
RG: Yeah.
LD: Mind you that kept you out of the worst of it.
HA: It may have kept me out of going to the islands or somewhere like that, you know.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
LD: Yes. Yeah.
RG: Or the Battle of Berlin as well. Yeah.
LD: Yeah. Yeah.
HA: Anyway —
LD: Did you end up doing any of your training overseas or was it all done in Australia?
HA: Up to the wing stage — in Australia.
LD: Right.
HA: I did bomb aiming and gunnery at Evans Head for two months and then astro nav at Parkes for a month. And then after a bit of leave we got on a boat and went to San Francisco.
LD: Do you remember the name of the ship?
HA: The Mount Vernon. I think.
LD: Ok. Yeah. Did you go via New Zealand?
HA: No. Non-stop.
LD: Oh. Ok.
HA: And we got our sea legs I think because it was calm for the first week or so and then there was a big storm.
LD: Yeah.
HA: There were logs floating around in San Francisco harbour.
LD: Right.
RG: Did you leave from Sydney or Melbourne?
HA: From Sydney.
RG: Sydney. Yeah. By the way when you said you did one flight with 38 course.
HA: 35.
RG: 35. What sort of aircraft?
HA: Ansons.
RG: Ansons. Yeah. Ok.
HA: It was Fairey Battles at Evans Head and it was Ansons again at Parkes.
RG: Right. Yeah.
HA: Astro.
RG: Yeah.
LD: So were you happy to be a navigator or would you have preferred some other role? Because you said you did the gunnery course as well. Did you have any choice in this or —
HA: While we were at Bradfield park they asked us towards the end of the business which you’d like to be and nearly everybody wanted to be a pilot of course. The day that they did the coordination test I was at the dentist and so I missed that.
RG: [laughs] You had bad medical trouble there didn’t you [laughs]
HA: I had a lot of trouble with my teeth.
RG: Oh dear.
HA: And the test was to sit in a seat with rudder pedals and a joystick with a screen where somebody made a dot move around the screen at random and you had to chase it with your feet.
RG: Yeah.
HA: I knew I’d made a terrible mess of it. Partly because when I was a kid I had a flivver which you steered with your feet. If you wanted to go to the right you did that which is just the opposite.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
HA: To what you want to do in an aeroplane.
RG: Sorry a flivver.
HA: A flivver.
RG: What’s a flivver? What —
HA: Well it had a handle on it like the trikes that they had on the railway.
RG: The ones that you cranked. Yes.
HA: Yes.
RG: Oh ok. I didn’t know they were called flivvers.
HA: Yeah. Anyway, so, I knew I made a mess of it so when they came to ask me what I wanted to do I said navigator. They said, ‘Why don’t you want to be a pilot?’ And I said, ‘Well I made a mess of the coordination test and I’m pretty good at maths and stuff.’ I didn’t tell them that a lot of fellas say, ‘I want to be a pilot,’ and they say, ‘Oh well. You can be a rear gunner.’
RG: Yeah. [laughs] Ok.
LD: Yes.
HA: So, I got in first.
RG: That was a smart move.
LD: Yes. Yeah. They were getting to be short of rear gunners, weren’t they? Very sadly.
HA: So, we got on a, oh there was only six hundred of us on the ship. Most of the people were American servicemen who were either ill or wounded. Coming back from the Pacific.
LD: Yeah.
HA: And so, when we got to San Francisco they said, ‘There’s sixty of you navigators,’ or observers as we were then. We had an O wing, ‘Who thought you were going to Canada to do a six months reconnaissance course. That’s been scrubbed. You are now going across to Britain for Bomber Command.’ So, we had to —
RG: Oh. So you might have ended up doing reconnaissance flights in Mosquitos, I presume. Or something of that nature.
HA: Probably in Liberators across the Atlantic I would think.
RG: Oh ok. Ok.
LD: Right.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
HA: Anyhow.
RG: Yeah.
HA: That was scrubbed and we got on a troop train and went across America to New York and got on a ship called the Isle de France.
RG: Ah yes. Famous vessel.
HA: On Christmas Eve.
RG: That’s Christmas Eve forty.
HA: ’43.
RG: ‘43 yeah.
LD: Oh right. Yeah.
RG: That was the night Ken was killed.
LD: Yes. Yeah.
HA: It got as far as the Statue of Liberty and broke down.
RG: [laughs] That was the French.
HA: And we thought thank goodness because we were right down below the waterline at the stern with the sides coming down like that.
RG: Oh yes. Yeah.
HA: And had to climb through round portholes all around.
RG: Hatches. Yeah.
HA: Vertical ladders to get up to the next deck.
RG: Yeah.
HA: Anyhow, they kept us there overnight. They gave us some sandwiches I think and then the next morning they said, ‘You can wait until we give you some more sandwiches and some pay. Or you can do without that. Go straight into New York where there’s likely to be people taking you home for Christmas dinner.’
LD: Well there’s an option isn’t there?
HA: So, three of us went out to a very nice double decker house in Mount Vernon for lunch. We thought Christmas lunch, you know. Christmas lunch came time and there were plenty of little nibbles and plenty of drinks. This went on all the whole afternoon until about 7 o’clock at night and they brought out the turkey. Us three all said, ‘Well yes, we wouldn’t mind a second helping,’ [laughs]. He took us to his factory the next day. He had a factory that made, amongst other things, handkerchiefs. He gave us some handkerchiefs each.
RG: You don’t happen to remember the family name by any chance, do you? A big ask I know but —
HA: Richie, I think. Richie.
RG: Richie. Ok.
HA: And took us to his club. We offered to buy a drink after he’d bought us one. Everything’s done with chips.
RG: So, you can’t possibly. That’s a polite way to do it isn’t it?
HA: Took us back to our camp at Fort McDowell or Fort Slocum or something. I’ve forgotten the name and we had a few more days in New York. Went to Madison Square Garden and saw an ice hockey match for the first time.
LD: Oh wow.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
HA: Went to Jack Dempsey’s Spaghetti Bar.
RG: Ok. Yes. Sorry. Sorry Bert, I was just going to say, I know you said it was a camp. Fort Slocum or wherever it was. Was that like a transit camp for Commonwealth personnel or was it a US army camp or —?
HA: I can’t remember.
RG: Ok.
HA: I can’t remember. It seemed to be a useful sort of a camp.
RG: Yeah.
HA: Could have been [unclear] or that sort of thing.
RG: Yeah.
LD: I have read that Australian servicemen in the States, because there were a lot of people like you who were, you know, kind of in between places who ended up staying there for a couple of weeks or something were very welcome and, you know, never had to buy a drink and so on. Is that — is that your experience?
HA: They were very generous. The Americans.
LD: Yeah.
HA: Yeah. We didn’t buy a drink the time that we were with him of course. I can’t remember other Americans shouting us drinks while we were in New York but in Denver one day, we had a couple of hours in Denver and a fellow came up to us and said, ‘You’ve strange uniforms.’ We had Australia across here. ‘I didn’t know Austria was on our side.’ [laughs]
RG: [laughs] Did you point out that Hitler was an Austrian [laughs] Anyway, yeah.
HA: So, we talked to him a bit about Australia then and [pause]
LD: I have, I’ve also read about the Australians being mistaken for German POWs. Did you, did you have that experience?
HA: I think that could happen. I got mistaken for a policeman a couple of times in London. In the blue uniform.
RG: The blue uniform, yeah. Of course.
LD: Oh of course. The darker blue.
HA: Yeah.
LD: Yes.
HA: And because we’d been to London a few times and used the Underground I knew my way around London fairly well as far as the Underground was concerned. So if somebody said, ‘How do I get to —,’ such and such. I was able to say, ‘That way.’ [laughs] Didn’t let on I wasn’t a policeman.
LD: Fair enough.
HA: Yeah.
LD: So, did you have a safe trip across to Britain after all that. Did you have any problems?
HA: No. No. On New Year’s Eve we boarded the Queen Elizabeth.
LD: Oh. Right.
HA: And it had, it had been partly furnished for passengers before the war but it hadn’t been finished.
RG: No.
HA: There were parts of it were still open hold.
RG: Yeah.
HA: With stacks of —
RG: She came straight from the shipyard. Straight in as a troopship. Yeah.
HA: We got a cabin and there was —
LD: Lucky you.
HA: Eighteen of us, I think, in a cabin, with a little toilet corner in it. Most everywhere there was six feet on a wall with three bunks.
RG: Three bunks. Yeah.
LD: Ah yes.
HA: There were six walls altogether including the corner of it.
RG: Yeah.
LD: Yeah.
HA: We had a great time there. Used to sit on the floor and play cards.
LD: Did you have to — did you have to act as lookouts on the Queen Elizabeth?
HA: No.
LD: Right.
HA: No. We did boat drill which was a bit of a hassle because there was over twenty thousand troops on it. Two or three of the top decks that were open to the weather had three bunks up the wall. Bolted on.
RG: Yeah.
HA: Americans took twelve hours on, twelve hours off on those bunks.
RG: Wow.
HA: So they could fit more people in.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
LD: Oh my goodness. Yeah. I’ve read about the hot-bunking. I didn’t realise it was to that extent.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
HA: Two meals a day because it took four hours to feed them all.
LD: Yes. Yeah.
HA: Four hours to clean up and then another one.
LD: Yeah.
RG: Yeah.
LD: I also read that the meals were more than a bit basic.
HA: They were, they were alright.
RG: This was a British, this was a British ship. Not an American one. Different. Yeah.
HA: Yeah. We had good meals on the boat. On the trains across America too. It was a bit strange. They’d ask for volunteers to go and count the stuff through the corridor sort of thing. I never had to do that. But they’d arrive with a stainless streel tray, plate, with five compartments on it. You’d put meat there and vegetables there, vegetables there, vegetables there, fruit salad there. And then they’d get a ladle and put what we reckoned was plum jam and put it all over the plate [laughs]
LD: Oh.
HA: It may have been chutney I don’t know.
LD: It sounds awful.
RG: You’re right to separate everything and then join it up with — yeah.
LD: So, did you have the Pullman carriages?
HA: Yes.
LD: Yeah.
HA: Yes. A little compartment with enough people for four. And yet they only put three in it because at night time they had a negro porter came in and made up a double bed at the bottom.
LD: Yeah.
HA: And pulled down —
LD: Yeah.
HA: One at the top which I got in. Being wintertime, each morning I’d find icicles hanging down from the ceiling where the fellas underneath would be warm because they were steam heated.
RG: Yeah. Oh right. Yeah. Yeah.
LD: Yeah. So did you get to see snow on that trip as well?
HA: Yes. For the first time. We pulled up in marshalling yards at Chicago for about an hour and a half, I suppose. Nowhere near the platform but there was railway lines forever.
RG: Yeah.
HA: We saw it was snow on the ground so, ‘Oh, we’ll get out and have a snow fight.’ So, we got out and had the snow fight for about five minutes and it was minus thirty.
RG: Yeah. Chicago in the winter.
HA: We got back in again pretty quick.
RG: Yeah.
LD: Yeah. No. That’s, that’s my relative’s experience as well. Was seeing the snow for the first time.
HA: Yeah. It was the first time I’d seen snow.
LD: Yeah.
HA: Going across the Atlantic in the Queen Elizabeth after about three days they said, ‘There’s reputed to be a U-boat pack waiting out there somewhere so we’re going to go up near Iceland somewhere and we’re going to go flat out.
RG: Yeah.
HA: So, put your warm clothes on.’ We’re not going to — we’re going to turn the heating off and go as fast as we can.’
RG: Yeah.
HA: We met some of the crew in Glasgow. Greenock. They took us for a tour of the ship later and said that they got over forty knots.
RG: Wow.
HA: That night going up.
RG: She was fast. I didn’t realise she was that fast though.
HA: Yeah.
RG: Wow.
LD: So, did you, did you land in Greenock?
HA: Yeah.
LD: Yeah. Ok. Yeah.
RG: Yes, I suppose if you’ve got the threat of U-boats you’ll find the, you’ll find the extra knots.
HA: Yeah, they put all the steam they could get in to it.
LD: So, once you arrived in the UK where did you go to then?
HA: By train to Brighton.
LD: Brighton. Ok. And were you there for long?
HA: I think about three weeks.
LD: Right. Yeah.
HA: We did a little bit of training. I think the main thing we did was learn the stars of the northern hemisphere.
RG: Oh course. Yeah.
LD: Of course. Absolutely. Yeah.
RG: They didn’t teach you that while you were here?
HA: No. No.
RG: I mean even theoretically. That’s funny. I suppose a lot of you would have ended up in the Pacific theatre so, yeah.
HA: There’s enough to learn one lot at a time.
RG: Yeah. True enough. Yeah.
LD: Yeah. No. I remember the first time I went to Europe, you know, looking up at the sky and going —
RG: It’s all different.
LD: All the bases of my life were gone. It’s quite strange and it would have been even more so for you because that’s —
RG: Your trade.
LD: Yeah . That would have been really interesting for you.
HA: At Brighton there was two big hotels. The Metropole and The Grand that were taken over by the RAAF as a holding centre. And again, when we left to come home. Same place.
LD: Oh right.
RG: They’re both on the seafront aren’t they?
HA: Yeah.
RG: Yeah. I can remember the Metropole.
HA: When I went back to Europe in ‘94 and took a trip down to Brighton and had a look at them and they’ve dolled them up. They’re both nice looking hotels.
RG: Yeah. They’re both there though. Yeah.
HA: They were very basic then.
RG: Yeah.
LD: And was Brighton all — ‘cause I know Bournemouth had all the razor wire on the beaches and things like that. Was the same sort of protections there in Brighton?
HA: Yes. One of the, I think both of the piers had a hole cut in the middle of them so that they couldn’t —
RG: Couldn’t land on the end.
HA: Get on to one end and come ashore sort of thing.
LD: Were there any air raids or anything while you were there?
HA: Yes. There were air raids while we were there.
LD: Yeah.
HA: For a start we used to go down to the basement and they didn’t seem to do much harm so after that we didn’t bother. We just stayed in our bedroom.
RG: That would have been also around the time of the V1s and V2s.
HA: Yes.
RG: Did you have any experience of those? Or —
HA: Once or twice when I was in London on leave we heard one or two come over and we actually heard one stop one night and thought oh, this is going to be a bang.
RG: Oh dear.
HA: And sure, enough there was a bang not far away.
RG: Yeah. Yeah. I’ve heard people, Londoner’s I’ve met, who said that they were far more frightened of the V1s than the V2s because of that. You’d hear. In the buildings you couldn’t see them. You could hear them and when they stopped it was, ‘Where is it going to fall?’
HA: Yeah.
RG: Whereas the V2 was the crash and if you heard the crash — well you were still alive. So that was —
HA: Yeah.
RG: Yeah.
HA: I don’t think there was any V2s ever landed when I was in London. They were frightening.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
LD: Yeah.
HA: And I don’t think there was any of the London guns landed in London when I was there either. You’ve heard about the London guns. The V3.
RG: That’s the V3. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I have heard about it. I didn’t know they actually fired on —
HA: Yeah. They fired a few.
RG: Oh ok.
HA: But nowhere near what they wanted to.
RG: No.
HA: They were going to finish Britain off with the V2s and V3s.
RG: Well by that point they were disappearing back away from the French coast weren’t they?
HA: Yeah. That’s right.
RG: Yeah. You’re talking January ‘45.
HA: Yeah. So the London gun got bypassed.
RG: Shuffled back. Yeah. Became a Calais gun or something [laughs] as far as you could reach.
LD: So which OTU did you end up being sent to?
HA: Lichfield.
LD: Yeah.
HA: Before that we went to an AFU At Llandwrog. In North Wales.
RG: Wales.
LD: What was an AFU?
HA: They called it an Advanced Flying Unit.
LD: Oh right. Yeah.
HA: Avro Ansons again. That was mainly to familiarise navigators and bomb aimers I think with map reading in Britain.
LD: Oh right.
HA: Which was altogether different to the Riverina
LD: Just a little [laughs]
RG: [unclear]
LD: Not to mention the stars.
RG: Yeah. And at Lichfield — that was an OTU.
HA: Lichfield it was a fairly popular OTU where we crewed up and —
LD: Yeah.
HA: Flew Wellingtons.
LD: Right.
RG: For training.
HA: For training.
RG: Yeah.
HA: Yeah.
LD: So how did they crew you guys up? It seems to have been a little different in different places.
HA: They gave us two days to hang around in the hangar and hang around in the mess drinking beer and find ourselves a crew.
LD: Right.
RG: Right. But that was a five man crew wasn’t it?
HA: Six.
RG: Six. In a Wellington.
HA: Six I think.
RG: Six. Yeah. Ok.
HA: Yeah. Even though Wellingtons only had five in the crew.
RG: Yeah.
HA: You crewed up with six and the rear gunner and the mid-upper gunner took turns in the rear turret to practice.
RG: Oh ok.
LD: Oh right. Ok. Yeah.
RG: But you’re still one down from a Lancaster though ‘cause that was seven.
HA: Yeah. No engineer.
RG: No engineer. Right.
HA: So, Syd Payne and I who’d done our training in Australia together as observers and he had been a — started off as a pilot. Did Tiger Moths at Narromine and got scrubbed on Wirraways at Uranquinty I think. So, he looked like a valuable bloke to have in a crew. Somebody who could fly.
RG: Fly. Yes. Of course.
HA: And we were both navigator — bomb aimer, sort of thing and he trained.
RG: Tossed a coin to see who did what.
HA: He trained as a bomb aimer just across Anglesey from where Llandwrog was. So, we’re looking around for a pilot.
RG: Sorry. Did you two decide between yourselves who was going to be the bomb aimer and who was going to be the navigator?
HA: Before we’d even got there because he trained as a bomb aimer AFU.
RG: Yeah.
HA: I trained as a navigator AFU.
RG: Yes. Oh of course. That was before Lichfield yes. Of course. Yeah.
HA: Before Lichfield.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
HA: So we got together and we found a pilot with a wireless op attached. And they were both Queenslanders. Both same age as us. All twenty years old. And after looking at a few others, sort of thing, I think the pilot decided that, yes, we would do him sort of thing and so we were thinking about a rear gunner. And a pair of gunners. Looking around and then a pair of gunners came and found us [emphasis] They turned out to be fellas who came first and second in their gunnery course.
RG: Nice.
HA: So, they, they had the pick of the mob sort of thing. So they picked us luckily. We got on well with them so —
RG: Both Australians. So —
HA: Yes. All Australians.
RG: Yeah.
HA: The rear gunner was from Sydney. In fact, we had a connection. I don’t know whether he’d married already a girl that I knew in Mudgee.
RG: Oh. Ok.
HA: Or married her after.
RG: After the war.
HA: One or the other. And the other fella was a farm worker from Western Australia who was elderly. He was twenty five.
RG: Oh gosh.
LD: Oh. Poor old man. You’d have to help him on with a stick.
HA: And they were both teetotallers.
RG: Oh. Ok. Ok. Maybe that’s why they came first and second in their gunnery course.
HA: And they were good shots. The bloke from Western Australia had done a bit of clay pigeon shooting, well live pigeon shooting against kangaroos and stuff.
RG: Yeah.
HA: You know. So, he knew about leading.
RG: Yeah. And they used clay pigeons to the train the gunners. Yeah.
HA: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. So, they were good shots by the time we got together and of course we did a lot more training. One of the things we did at Lichfield in our training was do a bullseye.
RG: Yes.
HA: Several reckoned it counted as an operation. Others reckoned it counted as half an operation. Yeah. They got all the training planes together. Not only from Lichfield but a heap of them and flew up as if you were going to Wilhelmshaven or something like that. Up in the Baltic. When you got nearly there you turned around and came back while the rest of Bomber Command went to Munich or somewhere.
RG: Oh, you were the decoy force.
HA: Diversion decoy. Yeah.
RG: Diversion. Of course. Yeah.
LD: This is the first time I’ve actually been able to confirm what a command bullseye was.
RG: Yeah. Lucie’s relative, Ken mentions in his logbook about a command bullseye but they did these over London.
LD: But they did these over London. Yes.
RG: But and he just says command bullseye and we’ve asked the other veterans and none of them have known what it was. They didn’t do it. So —
LD: I’ve only found one reference to it in the research.
RG: Yeah.
LD: That’s really good. I’m really pleased [laughs]
HA: We did another one when we were on Stirlings. We did another bullseye.
RG: Oh that was still on Wellingtons wasn’t it?
HA: This was still on Wellingtons. Yeah.
RG: Yeah. And then you went over to Stirlings did you?
HA: Yes. Our next move after Lichfield was Swinderby.
RG: Oh yes.
HA: Near Lincoln. And I was on Stirlings.
RG: Yeah. Where you found an engineer at that point.
HA: Yeah. That’s where we got our engineer.
RG: Was he appointed or did you find him?
HA: He was just appointed to us and he was a man of forty four.
RG: Wow.
LD: Really.
HA: He’d been a policeman for years.
RG: Yeah.
HA: In Birmingham and Coventry.
RG: Yeah.
HA: And those sorts of places.
RG: So he was RAF.
HA: Yeah. Yeah.
LD: I didn’t realise.
HA: He was born in Scotland. His parents lived in Ireland. When we went on leave he had to change in to civvies to go over to Ireland.
RG: To go to Ireland [laughs]
HA: Yeah.
RG: Yes.
LD: So, did you do anything other than kind of like a spoof raid on the bullseye. Did you drop leaflets?
HA: No.
LD: Or anything like that?
HA: No. We just stayed over the sea all the time.
LD: Right. Ok.
RG: Ok.
HA: And the other one we did in the Stirlings I think we only went about as far as the Dutch coast. It was quite a short trip compared with the one that went nearly to Wilhelmshaven.
RG: Yeah.
LD: Yeah.
RG: So how long were you on Stirlings for? And again, this is just training isn’t it? On the Stirlings.
HA: Training. Yeah. We trained there for about a month I think.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
HA: It was mainly circuits and bumps and that sort of thing for the pilot more than —
RG: Get used to the four engines.
HA: Probably did about a couple of cross country’s and that sort of thing.
RG: Yeah.
HA: Some bombing. Fighter affiliation for the gunners.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
LD: So, the bullseyes. Were they both at night?
HA: Yes.
LD: Yeah. So that would have been training for you as a navigator as well wouldn’t it?
HA: Oh yeah.
LD: Sort of doing the real thing. Yeah.
HA: Oh yeah. Had to find our way there and back. But when we got to Lichfield I think, on OTU, on the Wellingtons we first had Gee.
LD: Yes.
HA: Which was a tremendous help for navigators. You could get accurate fixes whenever you wanted them.
RG: Yeah.
HA: Up as far as the enemy frontier sort of thing. They jammed it after that. If we could get an hour or two when we were on an operations of good fixes before Gee gave up. And they also had APIs which you don’t seem to be in the literature much. Air Position Indicators.
RG: No.
HA: They were the best thing going for —
RG: How did that work?
HA: When we were at Cootamundra or AFU we were expected to keep a manual air plot. Every change of direction or speed or height made a difference to the air plot each time.
LD: Yeah. Yeah.
HA: Then if you found a fix you could find a wind.
RG: Yeah.
HA: And that depended on the pilot sticking to the course that he was told to be on.
RG: Yeah.
HA: The speed he was told to be on and the height he was supposed —
RG: So pilot’s actually —
LD: Pilots don’t always do that.
HA: Navigation was very much a — perhaps. But with API they had a distance reading compass down the back that was half gyro and half magnetic.
RG: Yeah. Gyro magnetic compass. I know those. Yeah.
HA: And that came via the nav table through a control called a Variation Setting Control so you could set the variation on that.
RG: Yeah.
HA: And change it as you went across Europe.
RG: Yeah.
HA: From 11 around Lincoln to about 3 at Berlin or something like that.
RG: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
HA: And deviations.
RG: Yeah.
HA: They’d swing the compass every now and again on the ground. Give you a deviation card.
RG: Yeah.
HA: Generally only one or two degrees.
RG: Yeah.
HA: So the true directions would come out on the repeater compasses for the navigator and the pilot.
RG: Yeah.
HA: And the bomb aimer.
LD: Right.
HA: And the API had true directions going to it and then from the air speed indicator which didn’t give true airspeed by any means when you, as you went higher. The indicated air speed might be a hundred and sixty mile an hour and the true air speed be two hundred miles an hour.
RG: Yeah. Yeah. Thinner air. That’s going to —
HA: Thinner air. So that was accounted for as well.
RG: Wow. That’s —
HA: So the API had got true directions and true speed.
RG: Yeah. And altitude to make that variation. Yeah.
HA: Just had two knobs on it.
RG: Yeah.
HA: Two little windows.
RG: Yeah.
HA: And the normal thing we did for a start was to set the latitude and longitude of the airfield and as you flew along any time you wanted to find out where your air position was it was there. You just wrote it down. Latitude and longitude. Popped it down on your chart.
RG: And that was quite accurate.
HA: Yeah.
RG: Wow. Ok. So that were, that were in Lancs and Stirlings obviously. And Wellingtons.
HA: Yeah.
RG: Ok. So was this must have been, was this something that sort of came along later in the war? Do you know?
HA: I think it probably came in in late ’43.
RG: Yeah.
HA: I would imagine.
RG: Ok. Yeah. You’re right. I haven’t come across that either, but, yeah.
LD: Did you get — because from what I’ve read there was a lot of technology happening there around all sorts of things but, you know, including navigation.
HA: Yeah.
LD: Did you find there was a lot of changes in the equipment that you used and were you actually trained in those changes?
HA: Yes.
LD: Or did you just kind of wake up one morning and get on the aircraft and find it was new.
HA: We had — Lancasters were fitted with H2S when we got to Waddington.
RG: Yeah.
HA: And we used them in training on [pause] between — between the Stirlings and going in to the squadron we did a Lanc Finishing School. I think that’s where we first saw H2S on the planes.
RG: Yeah.
HA: All the planes had H2S at Waddington. And we used them for training exercises but we were forbidden to use them on operations because the Germans could home in on them with their fighters.
RG: Yes. Yes. Yeah.
HA: And so the only time we ever used H2S over Germany was on a daylight trip to Wilhelmshaven when they expected to have a lot of cloud over the target and so for the first time we ever got directions like this — ‘If you can’t see the target you can use H2S or you can drop your bombs when you see another one drop their bombs.’ [laughs]
RG: [laughs] Gosh.
LD: That’s precision bombing.
RG: Yeah.
LD: So you’re all sitting there going can any of us see the target? Who’s going to drop a bomb first?
HA: In our training with H2S the bomb aimer used to come and sit alongside the navigator. Both fiddled with H2S and so he came up and we were deliberating about where we were going to aim at sort of thing and we finally said, ‘Oh well, that’ll do.’ When we pressed the bombing tit two other Lancs dropped theirs.
RG: [laughs] Not sort of what you’d expect is it?
HA: We don’t know what harm we did.
LD: Might have killed a couple of sheep.
HA: Anyway, that was H2S. Gee didn’t change except as, as the allies crept up through France and so forth.
RG: Went further out.
HA: They opened up two more Gee chains besides the ones that were based in England.
RG: Yeah.
HA: One was called the Reims. One was called the Ruhr. And the other thing was after about two months, I think, Loran was fitted to the Lancs.
LD: Sorry. What was that?
RG: Loran.
HA: L O R A N long range air navigation.
RG: Yeah.
HA: Which related to Gee in that it measured time differences between the emitter and the plane. And that chart with curved lines in different colours. Same as Gee. But apparently it was only effective at night time because instead of getting direct radio signals they were bounced off the ionosphere at night time.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
HA: It had an extremely long range. Covered all of Europe. And when they came out to the Pacific it covered all the Pacific area.
RG: Really important in the Pacific. Yeah.
HA: So we trained with Loran while we were on the squadron and actually used it about halfway through our tour. Used Loran when Gee ran out.
RG: But was it as accurate as Gee?
HA: Not as accurate.
RG: No.
HA: And a bit more cumbersome to use because you tuned into one station and got one partition line at a time and then you had to tune into a second one.
RG: Get the second position line.
HA: Get the different and then transfer further along.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
HA: Parallel ruler and muck around. So it was a bit slower. I think it was accurate enough. Good enough to find the target anyway.
RG: Yeah. Yeah. Were you mostly on, at 467, on daylight operations at that point or still mostly night time? Night operations?
HA: We got back to mostly back to night time by that time. This was September when we started and D-day was back in June.
RG: Yeah.
LD: Sorry that was September. What year?
HA: ‘44.
LD: Thank you. Just to –
HA: We finished in January ’45.
LD: Right. Yeah.
HA: So we did a few daylight trips. The first and third ones were fairly big raids on le Havre and Boulogne in daylight. Big armies.
RG: Army support. Yeah.
HA: In both those places and they had side-tracked or bypassed them with the Canadians and British armies.
RG: Yeah.
HA: And finally, they decided it was about time they cleaned them out, sort of thing. So dropped a lot of bombs on various parts.
RG: Yeah.
HA: It wasn’t area bombing like there was on towns in Britain, in Germany. It was specific things.
RG: Yeah.
HA: Like oil dumps, E-boat pens. Stuff like this.
RG: Transport links and stuff like that. Yeah. Tactical. More tactical.
HA: Tactical stuff.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
HA: They didn’t want to kill too many Frenchmen.
RG: No. No. Exactly.
LD: No. One doesn’t.
HA: So, we did that in daylight.
LD: That’s right.
RG: So that was on your first and third trip.
HA: First and third trips. Yeah.
LD: How many ops did you complete?
HA: Twenty nine.
LD: That’s a good number.
HA: Pardon?
LD: That’s a very good number.
HA: Yeah. Well I think the bullseyes might have counted to make it thirty.
RG: I was going to say, Bert, it varied over time we noticed that the number of ops you had to do to do a, you know, to do a tour.
HA: A tour varied.
RG: Yeah. In your period it was how many?
HA: Thirty to finish.
RG: It was thirty still. Yeah. Ok.
HA: When we started it was thirty six because it had been made thirty six around D-day.
RG: Ok.
HA: With so many short trips.
RG: Of course. Yeah. Yes.
HA: And then a month or two after D-day they broke it back to thirty three.
RG: ‘Cause you were going back on the raids on Germany then.
HA: Yeah.
RG: Yeah.
HA: And then after we’d done about fifteen or twenty trips or something like that they said you only have to do thirty from now on.
RG: That was a bit of a relief.
HA: Yeah. But there was some longer trips coming up.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
HA: We did one long trip to Trondheim in Norway.
RG: Yeah.
LD: Wow.
HA: Almost eleven hours.
RG: Yeah.
HA: And they put a smokescreen over the target and so the master bomber said, ‘Well, you can take your bombs home.’ So we did almost eleven hours with a full bomb load.
RG: Wow.
LD: Did that count as an op for you?
HA: That counted as an op. Yeah.
LD: Because you didn’t drop any bombs.
HA: You’d only to go to the target and be on the op. Yeah. We did a couple of —
RG: You said you brought the bombs home.
LD: Yeah.
RG: You didn’t land with them did you?
LD: Yes. That’s what I was thinking.
HA: Yeah.
RG: You did.
LD: Wow.
RG: I thought the standard practice was to ditch them in the sea if you were —
HA: Only if you had too much weight.
RG: So —
HA: I think earlier in the war they might have ditched them but we brought our bombs back three times I think.
RG: Ok.
LD: Oh my goodness.
RG: So when you say too much weight you had too much fuel still in and there was like a maximum weight that a Lanc could land with.
HA: Yeah. Yeah.
RG: Oh. I see.
LD: Well, you wouldn’t have had much fuel left after a trip to Norway. Would you?
RG: No. That’s right. It would have been light enough I suppose.
HA: I wrote a bit about this later one time. We were the only one to get back to Waddington with our bombs on. The others either landed in Scotland or ditched their bombs in the Atlantic.
RG: Yeah.
HA: And then got back to Waddington. But we didn’t bother. We came all the way back and had eighty gallons left.
RG: Eighty gallons. Don’t go around the circuit once or twice [laughs]
HA: It’s not really enough to go around again.
RG: No.
LD: Yeah.
RG: Wow. Ok.
LD: It doesn’t kind of sound very safe landing with the bombs but —
RG: No. No.
LD: But obviously you managed it.
HA: Yes. I believe —
LD: And the big one would have only been a cookie in that case wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t have had —
HA: Yeah. I don’t think we had a cookie even then. I think we only had about eight or ten one thousand pounders. I could find out in the logbook.
RG: Yeah for that range you would have only had a small one. You’d need more fuel and less bombs for that range.
HA: They actually, like, we were two squadrons taking off from Waddington. So there would have been about forty planes. As you turned at the end of the runway, on the perimeter track to get on to the runway they had a petrol tanker there to top up the tanks.
RG: [laughs] Fair dinkum.
LD: Oh my goodness.
HA: They knew it was going to be touch and go you see.
RG: Wow.
LD: Wow.
RG: That must have been close to one of the longest return — one of the longest return raids of the war surely.
HA: For ordinary squadrons.
RG: Yeah.
HA: But the fellas who did the Tirpitz raids —
RG: Yeah.
HA: They did thirteen, fourteen hour trips.
RG: Yeah. They had modified aircraft though too didn’t they? Yeah.
HA: They threw out the turrets.
RG: Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
LD: Because that’s what I was going to ask with these raids was the crew or the aircraft modified in any way for those, for that long trip.
HA: No. No.
RG: The standard. Still must have come close. I mean there were some squadrons, some raids I believe where they flew across, dropped their bombs in east bloc Poland and then went on and landed at Russian airfields, refuelled and came back out.
HA: Yeah. They did the same with some of the Italians targets early in the war I think.
RG: Yeah. Flew down to North Africa. Yeah. Yeah.
LD: So did you guys know, well no, you didn’t know in advance did you? About where you were going? But how did you feel when you realised you were going to Norway?
HA: We feel pretty happy about it because we thought that’s going to be a safe target.
RG: Yeah.
HA: There’s not going to be anybody shooting at you all the way.
LD: Fair enough.
RG: Yeah.
HA: Actually it was a nasty trip for navigation. There was what they called an occlusion up in the North Sea where a cold front and a warm front got together.
RG: Yeah.
HA: It was raining. And the wind was variable and we were supposed to find our way up there after Gee ran out. For about another two or three hours flying after that. The bomb aimer gave what we thought was a pinpoint crossing the coast of Norway that turned out to be wrong. And he gave another one later on and he thinks it was right. But anyway we finally found the target. Then we had to fly for two or three hours without any aids coming back because it was ten tenths cloud. Still raining.
RG: And you were over the sea the whole way.
HA: When I finally got the first Gee fix we were fifty miles north west of where we should have been.
RG: That’s not bad.
HA: The wind had changed that much.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
HA: In four or five hours.
RG: Yeah. But you’re over the sea almost the whole way too.
HA: Over the sea most of the time.
RG: So if you ditched —
LD: You’ve got no points of reference have you?
RG: No. And if you ditched, you had to ditch you were in deep trouble.
HA: Yeah. Anyhow. We were heading, had a slight headwind at that stage which had been pushing us up that way. We increased the speed a bit because of the headwind and then after about an hour of finding Gee fixes I found the wind had changed to almost the opposite. Anyway, we said, ‘Skipper you can slow the plane down a bit now. We’ve got a bit of a tailwind.’ And so he and I and the engineer did some calculations. We’d already decided we’d land at Lossiemouth or Leuchars or somewhere. In Scotland. But after we did the calculations the skipper said, ‘I think we can give it a go to get back to base because of the tailwind.’ Maybe the other fellas didn’t do that workings. But anyhow we cut it fine.
RG: Yeah. So you started ops with 467 in September.
HA: Yeah.
RG: First and third raid. On your second raid. Where was that to?
HA: Stuttgart. Night raid. In between the skipper did a second dickie to Pforzheim. I forgotten where he went. Somewhere like Stuttgart I think.
RG: Yeah.
HA: And then the next night he went.
RG: Went out on a —
HA: Stuttgart on his own with us.
RG: What was your, how did you, what was your experience of the first raid? You know. The first German raid really. First. Stuttgart. How did you —?
HA: No problem much. The navigator stayed in his blackout curtained room with the light on and I seldom went out and looked at the target.
RG: Ok.
HA: So I left it to the rest of them to do all the looking out and so forth. Our gunners, bomb aimer and engineer all were very good at keeping a lookout.
RG: Good lookout. Yeah. I suppose the resistance from fighters and so forth was slowing down a bit by then wasn’t it? It was still there but —
HA: You’ve heard about Schrage musik.
RG: Schrage musik. Yes. Yes.
HA: That was something that took a great toll of bombers.
RG: Bombers. Yeah. Yeah.
HA: Right up to the end of the war I think. When we finished our tour. In the next two months Waddington lost both their COs and one of their flight commanders. All experienced fellas on second tours.
RG: Ok.
HA: Sort of thing and, we think, all to night fighters with their upward firing guns.
RG: The guns. Yeah. Yeah.
HA: Some of the some of the German aces were reputed to have shot down over a hundred, sort of thing.
RG: There were a few who got — yeah. Yeah.
HA: It was pretty dangerous.
RG: Yes. Yeah.
LD: I have seen — I think it was a Lanc with, there were modifications, not official ones but just ones that were done in particular squadrons with like, an observation point underneath. I remember seeing the ones with like the little round dome underneath.
RG: Yeah. Like an astrodome.
LD: Yes.
RG: But on the bottom of the fuselage.
LD: Yes, but underneath. So, I have read about you know some aircraft that had these unofficial modifications to watch out for Schrage musik. Did you have anything like that in your — ?
HA: No. We weren’t even told about it.
LD: Ah. That’s what I was wondering as well.
HA: You know, I’m sure the authorities knew about it. Probably months, maybe more, before we flew. They didn’t tell us about it. I think it was probably to keep the morale up.
RG: Morale. Yeah. Yeah.
HA: What they did tell us to do was to do banking searches and —
LD: Banking searches?
HA: Banking searches.
LD: Yes.
HA: Like earlier in the war, before Window, the searchlights and ack-ack were mostly radar controlled and so if you flew straight they would drop onto you and so the technique was to —
RG: Swerve.
HA: Just weave. Go a few — half a minute this way.
RG: Yeah.
HA: Half a minute that way. Sort of thing.
RG: So, predictors couldn’t predict in curves.
HA: Window came in and their radar wasn’t able to lock onto planes. The technique was to put up a barrage of flak and in daytime it looked pretty horrible with all these black puffs in the air. They’d hang in the air for a long time so it looked —
RG: Looked worse than it probably was. Yeah.
HA: So anyway, the technique was to straight, go straight. Don’t weave. Get through it as quick as you can. And all the time we were over enemy territory our pilot was quite religious about the banking searches. They could make the plane do that. Without it changing direction.
RG: Yeah.
LD: Yes.
HA: He’d say, ‘Down port.’ The gunners would have a good look underneath and say, ‘All clear port.’ Roll it over.
LD: Right. Yeah.
HA: ‘All clear starboard.’
RG: Ah ok.
HA: We would do that for hours.
RG: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
HA: And we never got shot at by a fighter.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
HA: A couple or three times a gunner saw a fighter and we started corkscrewing and we weren’t chased on any of those occasions.
RG: Yeah.
HA: The general opinion was that if a German fighter saw you doing a corkscrew they’d give up and look for somebody else.
RG: Someone easier. So, you never actually got attacked by a fighter.
HA: Never. No.
LD: Were you ever hit by flak?
HA: Oh yeah. Lots and lots of times. Sometimes a lot of holes. A couple of daylight lowish level ones we got holes from machine guns from the ground.
RG: Wow. Ok.
HA: Walcheren Island. We bombed Walcheren Island three times. Short daylight raids.
RG: Sorry? Whereabout?
HA: Walcheren Island.
RG: Oh sorry. Yeah.
HA: Scheldt Estuary. The first time this was what I was going to tell you about. 617 Squadron landing with their bombs on. I think they did there. We went. 5 Group sent about a hundred planes to Walcheren Island and the aim was to break the sea wall and flood the island and we did a run at about, I think about six thousand feet or something like that and drop seven bombs in a close stick and come around again and did another seven. In the same place. Hopefully.
RG: Yeah.
HA: And a hundred planes did that and they opened it up, the front of the island. Got a picture in The Sun and the next day, sort of thing, “The RAF floods an island.” Apparently 617 Squadron was standing by with tallboy bombs.
RG: Yeah.
HA: In case.
RG: Just in case you didn’t manage it.
HA: And they brought them home.
RG: Wow.
LD: They brought home Tallboys.
HA: Twelve thousand pounds.
RG: Yeah.
LD: Wow.
RG: I’d be terrified landing with a bloody Tallboy underneath.
HA: Yeah. Well, I don’t know if they brought them home and landed with them or whether they junked them somewhere else, you know but they didn’t need to use them on Walcheren Island.
RG: Actually sorry, one of the first chaps we interviewed — Arthur. He was, he did, he finished his tour in ‘45 and then was posted to an experimental unit experimenting with a blind landing aid which he told us a bit about and he said it was very very effective. He was there when the war ended.
HA: Yeah.
RG: But he, before he left his squadron he went down to the intelligence officer’s hut and nicked some of the photographs that he had taken himself on one of those raids and he gave us the photos and you could see the bombs striking the seawall. That was in Holland though. There was another one trying to break a dyke in Holland but at low level and — yeah. Arthur’s photos. Yeah. I forget what squadron he was with now but —
HA: The next two raids we did on Walcheren Island, they were both daylight, were on the big guns that were stopping the Canadians from going along the bank.
RG: Yeah.
HA: And stopping the navy probably from coming in as well although the estuary was mined and the navy had one go at it before and said, ‘No. It’s too dangerous.’
RG: Yeah.
HA: So, we were trying to bomb these big guns and they were pretty impervious to bombs I think but it ended up being a fairly hairy sort of a thing because we would go over and they’d say, ‘Oh yes, well the weather’s not too good. You might have to fly at six thousand,’ and you’d get there and have to fly at four thousand or something like that. And so, there was a lot of anti-aircraft fire.
RG: A lot of flak. Yeah.
HA: Small arms stuff even.
RG: Yeah. Four thousand feet. You’re not very high are you?
LD: I’ve read about bomb aimers keeping some of the Window and putting the Window on the bottom of their aircraft and lying on the Window to stop —
RG: A bit of armour.
LD: Yeah.
RG: Using the Window.
LD: To protect them from the flak.
HA: I’ve never heard of that.
LD: I I guess these were kind of individual things that people —
RG: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah
LD: Systems that people developed themselves.
RG: Did you have a mascot or a, you know, a token or anything.
HA: On the side of the plane.
RG: No. A personal one. A personal one.
HA: That one of us carried? No. None of us seem to have been too superstitious.
RG: Ok.
HA: A lot of them were but —
RG: Do you know of all the chaps we’ve spoken to most of them have said that? That they didn’t do it.
HA: No.
RG: Yeah.
LD: And yet you read such a lot about it don’t you?
RG: Yeah.
HA: About the only superstitious thing we did was we’d all pee on the tail wheel before we took off.
RG: [laughs] Yeah. I believe that was a common one.
LD: Was that very easy? In those flying suits.
HA: It was not. No. I can’t, I can’t ever remember using the toilet down the back of the plane during any of our trips.
RG: The Elsan.
HA: The pilot did it once.
LD: From the sound of things, you wouldn’t have wanted to use it if you could avoid it.
HA: Yeah. Yeah. Well, if you were above ten thousand feet you’d have your oxygen on for a start. So, you’d have to disconnect that. Get a hold of a portable oxygen bottle, go down, climb over the main spar which was about this high.
RG: Yeah.
HA: The pilot went down once on a daylight trip. I forget where it was to. So, I got to fly the plane for half an hour.
RG: Oh right.
HA: Straight and level.
RG: Yeah.
LD: And what kind of, we’ve heard about the — that the meal you’d had before an op. Was that still happening for you?
HA: Yes. Yes. But one of the early things you find out about being on an op on a night somebody would have said 2154 and that would be the number of gallons that a plane would hold and you’d say, ‘Oh well, it’s a long trip.’ And then the next thing they’d announce that the flying meal would be on at 3 o’clock. Something like that. And then a briefing at about 5 o’clock. That sort of thing. It would all lead up to actually take off time.
RG: Yeah. Yeah. It was quite a long period.
LD: So how far ahead would they kind of lock down the station? You know, set the security measures in place.
HA: I’m not too sure. I think it would probably be twelve, fifteen hours. Something like that.
LD: Right.
HA: Maybe a bit longer.
LD: Yeah. Yeah.
RG: Yeah.
LD: And did you guys get the wakey wakey pills too?
HA: Yeah. They gave them to us and I never used them once I don’t think. I don’t know if anybody else in the crew ever used them. Maybe the gunners did because they’d be tested on some of the long trips for staying awake.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
HA: In the dark.
RG: Yeah.
LD: How did they do that? Test them,
HA: They’d be stressed.
RG: And tested as in stressed.
LD: Oh right. Ok. Not examined.
HA: I used the wrong word.
LD: No. No. That’s fine. I just took it the wrong way. Yeah. Yeah. Examined. Yeah. That’s what I meant.
RG: So, your crew. You had the same crew throughout all twenty nine?
HA: Throughout. Yeah. No replacements. No.
RG: Yeah. Have you got their names and so forth?
HA: Yeah.
RG: I mean you probably almost certainly remember them.
LD: Yeah. But it’s got all this. Maybe it’s written in there.
HA: Our pilot was Peter Gray-Buchannan. With a hyphen. His elder brother had done two tours as a rear gunner earlier.
RG: Wow.
HA: Over there.
RG: Yeah.
LD: Gosh. He was a lucky man wasn’t he?
HA: Have you heard of Doubleday and Brill?
RG: No.
HA: From Ganmain. They’re both fairly famous men. They both enlisted from Ganmain early in the war. Both went over there and did at least two tours. Maybe three. Both were wing commanders with the DSO and a couple of DFCs. That sort of thing. Billy Brill was CO of our squadron when we arrived. And I’ll tell you about the DFC now.
RG: Yes. I was just about to come to that eventually.
LD: Yes, it’s on my list.
HA: When we got to the squadron Bill called all eight of the new crews that had arrived from training into his office and amongst other things said, because we were all, nearly all flight sergeants, ‘All you flight sergeants who were thinking of applying for a commission don’t bother until you’ve done twenty trips. And then if you keep your nose clean you get recommended.’ He didn’t say, ‘Most of you won’t make twenty.’ [laughs] But anyway, that was his — so when I had done twenty trips I applied for a commission and Bill — Bill had been moved on and we had a new younger CO called Douglas. And he took it upon himself to sort of decide who was officer material and who wasn’t, sort of thing. One of the questions he asked me was, ‘Are you going to be any more use to the air force with a commission?’ And I said, ‘No. I can’t say that I will.’ I didn’t give him the right answers anyway and he didn’t recommend me.
RG: Yeah.
HA: So —
RG: That’s a fair answer though Bert. I’ve got to say. I have to say.
HA: When we got towards the end of our tour. I think probably only with one trip to go. It may have been two. The group captain called me in one day and said, ‘I’ve a bit of a problem. I’ve got one CO who recommends you fellas when you’ve done twenty trips and you’ve looked after yourself. And the other fella says yes or no to some of them.’ And he said, ‘The RAAF hierarchy requires that even if the CO says no it has to come to me. It’s not final.’
RG: Yeah.
HA: ‘So that’s my problem. Are you a good navigator?’ ‘Oh, I think so. I’ve lasted this long.’
LD: You’d done at least twenty trips.
RG: Yeah.
LD: You must be good.
HA: That was the end of the interview. So apparently on that day he approved me for a commission and so sometime later I got, in the mail, a letter saying that I’d got a DFC and I was a pilot officer.
LD: Oh.
RG: So, you didn’t make pilot officer or —
HA: Yeah.
RG: Oh. Ok
HA: Yeah. So I was a pilot officer dated from the day that I saw the group captain.
RG: Because as an airman you would have got the DFM wouldn’t you?
HA: Yeah.
RG: So, maybe they were going to give you the DFM and they went, ‘Oh God, he’s a pilot officer, we have to — [laughs] Did you get the DFM DFC for any particular —
HA: No.
RG: Just —
HA: I could show you the citation but it’s just a standard one that they gave to most people. The pilot got one with the same wording apparently.
RG: Right.
[pause]
HA: That’s fairly standard I think. There’d be hundreds of those. Came in a nice little case.
LD: Oh, it’s not there anymore though.
HA: It’s there.
RG: It’s on there.
LD: Oh, it’s a beautiful box isn’t it? It’s lovely.
HA: Yeah.
RG: You’ve got the Bomber Command clasp.
HA: Yes. I only got that one last year.
RG: It’s recent isn’t it? Yeah. Yeah.
HA: It was a bit of a hassle because I filled in all the forms and so forth. Sent it to England. And they sent it back, they sent back word, ‘No. You don’t apply there. You apply at Canberra.’ So, I had to go through it all again. Copies of stuff from the logbook and all that.
LD: So how, how was it presented to you?
HA: It was just sent in the mail. It wasn’t. There was no, no ceremony at all.
LD: Right.
RG: There’s an interesting thing on the back of it I’ve just noticed. It’s got on it that it was obviously first issued in 1918 and it’s got George Rex on it and then 1945 is just stamped in at the bottom.
HA: Yeah.
RG: That’s you know, that’s interesting that they keep — yeah.
HA: Yeah.
RG: I suppose originally when they did they first design they didn’t think they’d need it again.
HA: Yeah.
[pause]
HA: A local federal MP gave out those sort of things at one stage.
RG: Oh, the sixtieth. Yeah.
HA: Yeah. Just a medal .
RG: Yeah. World War Two. Yeah.
HA: And I was sitting with some other fellas that day and they had a Bomber Command medal on their chest. And I said, I asked them, I said, ‘Where did you get that?’ And they said, ‘We bought it.’ You can’t get a Bomber Command medal. They haggled with the government over there for years about getting one and they were never approved. The best they could do was a clasp. But apparently —
RG: Did Fighter Command get one? They got one, didn’t they? Fighter Command.
HA: I don’t know. Battle of Britain got one I think.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
LD: Yeah. The Bomber Command one. That sort of — there were problems with that with the political ramifications of Bomber Command. After the war.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
LD: That became quite unpleasant.
HA: Yeah.
LD: To say the least.
HA: Yeah.
LD: I just checked out the squadron before we came.
HA: Yeah.
LD: And — yeah. So, you talked about the support of ground operations during the D-day landings at that time and so on. It said that 467 participated in the raids on Peenemunde.
HA: Yeah.
LD: Were you there then?
HA: No.
LD: Ok.
HA: It was a research station for the V2s and V1s.
RG: And V1s. Yeah.
LD: Yes. It was a fascinating raid. I’ve read a book about it. it’s pretty amazing. And were you involved in Operation Manna and bringing the POWs back from Europe?
HA: No.
LD: And dropping supplies and so on.
RG: No. You’d finished by then, hadn’t you? You finished in January.
HA: I’ll tell you why I wasn’t. As soon as I finished my tour our pilot got transferred to Transport Command and I got transferred to Training Command. And I was an instructor at a Con Unit.
RG: Whereabouts?
HA: At Wigsley. Near Waddington.
RG: Yeah. Ok.
HA: And we were getting crews ready to go to squadrons that were going to be in Tiger Force.
RG: Tiger Force. Yeah.
LD: Right. That’s what else I was going to ask about because it said 467 was involved in that.
RG: Yeah.
HA: So, I was an instructor right up until they dropped the atom bomb.
LD: Right. Right. Fair enough.
HA: Yeah.
RG: And were you still at Wigsley right to the end?
HA: Still at Wigsley.
RG: Yeah.
HA: And I stayed on at Wigsley for another couple of months after that and did a bit of ferrying. We ferried some Stirlings over to Northern Ireland and some Lancasters down to Southern Britain. Did a Cook’s Tour over some of the targets we’d been in Germany. But generally sort of loafed around.
RG: Cook’s tour.
HA: Alex talked about that. Yeah.
RG: Yeah. With a Cook’s Tour? Was that. Ok. Yeah. Well Alex was going over, he was a pilot. He’s living up at Orange. He was going over specifically to photograph the damage. Is that the same thing? Yeah.
HA: No. No. They just put a heap — a heap of interested fellas.
RG: It was literally a sightseeing tour.
HA: Like a real Cook’s Tour. I don’t know how many. A dozen or something like that in a Lancaster. I took my box brownie and took a few photographs.
RG: But did you land anywhere on the continent or just went out and came back or —?
HA: Somewhere I’ve got where we went. I think it’s probably in the logbook where we went.
RG: Oh. Bound to be. Yeah. Yeah. No. Alex said they were photographing the damage for analysis purposes. Cook’s tour. Base — Brentwood. [unclear] [ Cape Gris Nez, [ unclear] Aachen. Turin. Cologne. Krefeld, Duisberg — it was a tour wasn’t it? Ham. Munster. Wesel. Eindhoven.
LD: Ray, can you read them out loudly for the tape?
RG: Oh yes. Ok.
HA: Start at the with the ones inside Europe.
RG: Yeah. Well, Cape Gris Nez, [unclear] Maastricht. Aachen. Turin. Cologne. Krefeld. Duisburg. Essen. Ham. Munster. Wesel. Eindhoven. Turnhout. Ostende. [unclear] Calais. Cap Gris Nez,
LD: Wow.
RG: Yeah.
LD: That’s comprehensive.
HA: Yeah. It was good. Yeah.
RG: It must have been an odd feeling flying over and knowing that no one was going to shoot at you.
HA: Yeah. Oh yeah. We had a look at the Dortmund Ems Canal. I don’t know if that’s even mentioned there but —
RG: Dortmund. Not the canal itself is mentioned but no.
HA: The Dortmund Ems Canal was a place where Bomber Command did a lot of damage. I think we might have been one of the first raids where they actually breached the canal walls and let the water out and stranded the barges but there was ten attempts at it I think. Altogether. Some of them didn’t work. We did two on the Dortmund Ems Canal itself and another one the Ems Wesel Canal which was nearby. Both night-time raids. And because of its importance it was a very dangerous target to go to. The ack-ack was fierce. Had plenty of searchlights and usually we seemed to have to, for one reason or another, do orbits when we got to the target. Either because cloud was too — we had to come down through cloud to find it or one time they had trouble with the marking and so, they said, ‘Do an orbit until we can get it properly marked.’ ‘Do another orbit.’ ‘Now you can come and do it,’ sort of thing. That sort of business happened.
RG: Yeah.
HA: So, and we did, finally did a daylight one on New Year’s Day to the Dortmund Ems Canal. And I met a fella after the war, playing golf, who’d been in our same squadron and was on the same raid and they got one engine on fire for a start and I wrote in my logbook, log and chart of the day, not the logbook, I’ve got a lot of logs and charts.
RG: Oh ok.
LD: Wow.
HA: “Aircraft on the starboard beam going down on fire. “ Dot dot dot. “Gone.” That was them.
RG: Oh right. Ok.
HA: They didn’t go down. They got down to about four thousand feet and got control of the plane and started off staggering back. Then it got another engine on the same side on fire and kept going. This fella was the bomb aimer and he said he put a piece of rope around the rudder pedal to help the pilot try and keep it straight. They staggered along and got fired at repeatedly because they were on fire but they got as far as the front line. To where the Americans were. And all bailed out successfully.
RG: Wow. Ok.
HA: The pilot was last out and he managed to get out apparently and got a DSO for it. Straightaway.
RG: Well, it sounds like he deserved it too. Yeah. You also did a raid here on the Lützow the battleship?
HA: Oh yes that was probably something special.
RG: Yeah [unclear] special target.
[LD excuses herself]
RG: Well there’s a daytime raid. Bergen as well.
HA: Yeah. Bergen was an interesting one. That was one of the ones where they said, ‘Bert, you ought to come out and have a look at it.’ This target. Most targets I didn’t want to come out of my blackout curtains. But Bergen there was four thousand feet mountains.
RG: On either side.
HA: And in between there was a valley where I, as navigator, was able to get on a Gee position line and keep between the two mountains and come down because we were supposed to bomb at twelve thousand or something but they said come down to the cloud base. Four thousand. We came down to three thousand eight hundred I think before we got out of the clouds. And then we snuck up a little bit. Just skimming under the clouds to the target and they’re shooting from downstairs. They’re shooting —
RG: From above. Yeah. Wow.
HA: He said, ‘You ought to come and see this. We’re being shot at from above as well as below.’
RG: God. Return from Marston Moor. So yeah, I was going to ask that. On any of your trips did you come down somewhere else?
HA: Yeah.
RG: Come back
HA: Quite a few times. I don’t know how many. Two or three perhaps. You come back from Europe and Waddington and all the inland bases would be covered with fog.
RG: Ah ok.
HA: So, they send you somewhere on the coast to land there.
RG: Yeah.
HA: I remember one time we got in a tender then and they drove us back and got lost. And so, we wondered around. It was a really cold night. Looking for, looking for Waddington.
LD: That’s just what you need I imagine.
HA: No signs up anywhere, you know.
RG: I can just imagine some of the conversations you guys would have with the drivers of the tenders, you know. We got all the way back from Germany and you can’t find bloody [laughs] Waddington.
HA: I think one of the navigators finally got in the front with him [laughs] I remember there was a town with a five way intersection where he didn’t know which one to take and he went backwards and bumped into a lamppost and about two hours later he bumped into the same lamp post [laughs] So, we were lost.
LD: Oh dear. Might have been easier to leave it ‘til daytime.
HA: Other times you’d stay. We stayed the night at one of those places too and then just flew back the next day.
RG: Yeah. I had a friend in Canberra. He’s dead now. He was a pilot in Stirlings and then — he was a flight sergeant and his navigator was a sergeant and he said there was a notice up one day saying volunteers for special operations. Instant promotion. Up one rank and he thought, ‘This is a good idea. What do you reckon?’ It was Pathfinder force.
HA: Yeah.
RG: So he converted over to Lancs for that. But he said when he was on Stirlings they were doing a navigation exercise. And it was a daytime one and they flew over another field and one of the, one of the crew was an RAF guy. He lived in the village nearby and he said, ‘Skipper can you put us down there?’ He said. So, they did. They put him down at the airfield. Went and had lunch in the mess and went back out. Ducked off home to see his mum, you know. Came back. And he said it would have been all perfect. He said, ‘I was taxiing up the runway, got to the end to turn on to the runway and clipped his wingtip and broke the navigational knob at the end on a post at the end of the runway. So, when he got back he had to explain how he managed to break it in the air.
HA: Yeah. He was in big trouble.
RG: Did you ever do anything like that? Your —
HA: No.
RG: No.
HA: We came back from a trip one time. I forget which one it was but when we got back to Waddington you couldn’t see the circuit lights. You could see the runway. It was very bad visibility and so the pilot said, ‘I’ve got to land this like a Tiger Moth. We’ll just get around the runway and then come in like that.’
RG: Side.
HA: And the fella that was in the caravan with the green and red light, sort of thing, at the end of the runway. He said afterwards, he said, ‘You fellas almost took my caravan off. Coming down like that.’ And then they closed the, they closed the place down. After that everybody else had to go over to the coast.
RG: Bert could you explain, sorry. The circuit lights. Can you explain how that, that worked?
HA: Yeah. They would have the runway with the runway lights and then they’d have circuit lights going. I don’t know. Half a mile. A mile around or something like that.
RG: Yeah.
HA: Almost touching somebody else’s.
LD: Right.
HA: ‘Cause there were so many of them.
RG: Yeah.
HA: And when you came back wanting to land you’d come in on the right hand side, sort of thing. And you’d call up the girl on the microphone. Tell them who you were. “Mozart dog to slagwort.” They’d say, ‘Go to channel two,’ or something like that. She’d tell you to stay at four thousand. So you’d go around again. Then she’d say, ‘Prepare to land.’ You’d go around. You’d have to say, ‘Wheels,’ at a certain place and come around and then lining up with the runway. You’d say, ‘Funnel.’
RG: Funnel.
HA: Yeah. And if you got the green light from the bloke in the caravan you could land.
RG: Right. Ok. Ok. So with the circuit it was the same diameter with the aircraft stacked in the altitude?
HA: Yeah. Yeah.
RG: So, you had a whole bunch of aircraft circling.
HA: She used to stack you up at four thousand or three thousand. Something like that.
RG: Ok.
HA: So, you wouldn’t run into one other.
RG: And you were all going anti clockwise, I guess.
HA: Yeah.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
LD: Well it’s a very responsible position isn’t it?
RG: Yeah.
HA: Yeah. All done by WAAFs.
RG: Yeah. ‘Cause you would have had aircraft coming back and straggling back really wouldn’t you? All over the place.
HA: Yeah. Sometimes.
LD: And she would potentially be triaging to see who’s going to land before others because of problems.
HA: If somebody had damage they would get priority and they’d leave you stacked up there.
RG: Yeah. I heard, I heard, sorry, it was earlier in the war. I think it was about ‘42 that the Germans were using intruders raids. They tried to get in to the circuits. Get an intruder in to the circuit. A night fighter. Was that happening later in the —?
HA: Yes. When I was at Wigsley. I was duty navigator up in the tower one night and some ME110s came in with the bomber stream coming back and got across the coast without —
RG: Without being detected because they were in the stream. Yeah.
HA: And they came to Wigsley and a couple of the other Con Units. They shot down two training planes at Wigsley.
RG: Yeah.
HA: I don’t know how many they shot down altogether. Five or six I think. They went to Waddington and machine gunned the mess. Had a go at the bomb dump without [laughs] without any damage. Bomb dumps are hard to —
RG: Yeah. They’re well protected.
HA: That was some experience.
RG: Yeah.
HA: Because the people in the control tower — it was probably a duty pilot and a duty wireless op as well as a duty navigator and somebody in charge of it. A bit of a flap on. You know, what do you do with planes being shot down?
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
HA: Turn the runway lights off for a start.
RG: Yeah. And then what do you do with the stacked aircraft in the air. Redirect them?
HA: Tell them to look out.
RG: Yeah.
HA: Yeah. That was, that was a strange one.
RG: Yeah. Yeah. ‘Cause I thought later in the war I wondered whether that still happened because the Germans had lost so many aircraft.
HA: Yeah. That would have been, that would have been probably March or something like that. 1945.
RG: Yeah. It was between January and May so, yeah. Wow. So still that late.
LD: So were they using FIDO for you to land with at night?
HA: Only on certain ‘dromes. We didn’t have it on every drome.
LD: Oh right.
HA: There was only a few FIDO ‘dromes.
LD: Yeah.
HA: It was terribly expensive.
LD: Oh, that’s, that’s what I thought. Looking at it it must have been just in terms of fuel.
RG: Did Waddington? Did Waddington have it?
HA: Used up hundreds of gallons of petrol.
RG: Waddington didn’t have it?
HA: No.
RG: No.
LD: No. I sort of wondered how effective it was too. With all that petrol burning there’d be smoke and everything as well as well as, as well as the lights.
HA: Probably turbulence. I should think it’s probably very difficult for pilots to land in.
LD: Yeah.
RG: Hence what, hence what Arthur was doing. Yeah. [unclear] he said it was very accurate by the way.
LD: Yeah.
RG: He said you could land a Lancaster almost hands off at night without any trouble whatsoever.
HA: Oh well.
RG: Then the war ended.
HA: Good planes to fly apparently.
RG: I’ve heard that. Yes. The pilot. A couple of pilots we’ve spoken to have said that. Yeah. They really liked them. Arthur all this stuff. This is obviously very precious. Have they got copies in Evans Head or anywhere else? Or are there any copies of it?
LD: I think there’s a book here too Rob.
RG: Oh. Ok.
LD: Yeah.
RG: Because what I was going to say was if we can manage to get copies of all this stuff — if you’re happy to do that. Put them in the archive as well.
HA: I’ve got the other logbook here somewhere I think. Yeah. I might have it down here. I have another logbook that you could take perhaps. It’s got all the stuff in it for the operations. I copied them out. I’ll find it for you. Probably downstairs somewhere.
RG: If we could copy them. I mean we could copy them here before we go and bring them back to you today.
HA: Well you’re welcome. Yeah.
RG: Yeah. Thank you. I guess we could go to the library or somewhere.
LD: Office Works. If they’re open.
HA: That book right there.
LD: This would be fabulous.
HA: I was telling you about the crew that got shot, well they caught on fire.
RG: Yes.
HA: Their navigator produced this book afterwards about their experiences.
LD: Oh. It’s not yours. I just saw it was from a navigator. I didn’t realise it wasn’t yours.
HA: No. It’s not mine. It’s about their crew’s experience and so forth.
RG: [unclear]
LD: Oh, is this is what you were talking about?
HA: It’s got little bits. See. That’s some of —
LD: A copy of the logbook.
HA: Some stuff out of my log and charts of the day. I lent it to him and he got it put it into the book.
LD: Is that what you were talking about with the copy of the logbook?
HA: No.
LD: Ok.
HA: No. That was just to emphasise that our tour — I think twenty four out of our twenty nine trips were just with 5 Group. We only did about five trips with, big trips with seven or eight hundred of Bomber Command.
LD: Oh yes. Oh you weren’t part of those really huge bomber streams then.
HA: Not as, not as a rule. Mostly we were just 5 Group.
LD: Yeah.
HA: And on some of those little daylight trips only half of 5 Group, you know, about a hundred planes.
LD: Right. That’s a big change from earlier in the war, isn’t it?
HA: Yeah. Yes.
LD: Yeah. Arthur. Sorry Bert. That’s Rob getting the names mixed up when we arrived.
RG: Yeah. Sorry. And I just called you Arthur a minute ago. Sorry about that.
LD: Very bad of me. What sort of experience did you have with the Committee of Adjustment. Did you, within —
HA: Were they the fellas that decided on LMF and that sort of thing?
LD: Yes. Yeah.
HA: Never had any experience of it. No. I heard about it.
RG: Oh, Committee of Adjustment were the guys who cleared the crews who were missing. Cleared their possessions and stuff out.
HA: Oh yes. Yeah. We had another crew in the same room as us. Sixty on one side and sixty on the other side. Both about the same time. And the navigator of the other crew was a good friend of mine because he came from Tooraweenah and he said I’m the only fella that’s ever, he’d ever met in the air force that had ever heard of Tooraweenah let alone been there and had a drink in his father’s pub. And they got shot down on their twentieth trip. So, we got woken up a couple of hours after we went to bed by the service police coming in and asking us if we would just mind looking on when they were sorting out their belongings.
RG: Witnessing that. Yeah.
HA: If there was anything that we particularly wanted to do something with to send to their parents or something like that. But we didn’t find anything that we wanted to. They just took the lot.
RG: Ok. So they just bundled everything together and took it.
HA: In the middle of the night sort of thing. It would have been 4 o’clock in the morning or something it was.
RG: Right. Ok. ‘Cause we’ve heard different — different stations seemed to do it very differently.
HA: Yeah. They were Air Force Military Police.
RG: Yeah. Yeah. ‘Cause other stations they used just airmen and —
LD: Sometimes the chaplain.
RG: Sometimes the chaplain. Yeah. Alex Jenkins, the pilot from Orange. He got shot down and he was the sole survivor. He was in a German military hospital, a Luftwaffe military hospital. Only for a few weeks actually before the British army overran the place in Holland and so he was sent back and he said when he got back all his kit was gone and he had to go down to London.
LD: At the dead meat factory, he described it as.
RG: Yeah. The dead meat factory with all these steel boxes with all the kit in it. He said there were just thousands of them in this warehouse. He had to go in and say, ‘That’s mine. Get it out.’ Yeah.
HA: There’s a few things that I’ve put aside that might be worth your while copying if you want to.
RG: Yeah.
LD: Because you could maybe photograph.
RG: Photograph these but — yeah.
LD: Those. Yeah.
RG: [what I could do with it] actually, we will take copies of those. Thanks. Bert, this chap because this is his book not yours is he still around or is he —
HA: No. He was four or five years older than me. I played golf with him for a few years here at Wagga.
RG: Right.
HA: But he’s gone now. He’d be a hundred, I think, nearly, now. Sam Nelson.
RG: Is there family around or anybody because what would be good is if we could get a copy of the book for the archive but the other thing too for books like this and we did it for another chap at Orange who was a navigator. An RAF guy. He’d written a book about his time in a prison camp and we’re trying to get these things into the National Library because they’ll take them just like that.
HA: You can take that as long as you like.
RG: Would it be alright though ‘cause it’s not you know.
HA: I’ve read it.
RG: No. I was thinking like, if the family might object. I don’t know. Should we notify the family that it’s? Is there any way to contact?
HA: The navigator himself. I think he’s probably gone.
RG: Yeah. He’s gone but — the family —
HA: I could tell you one little snippet about them. His crew were part RAF and part Australian.
RG: Yeah.
HA: At one time they had a reunion in Australia. Went over to Canberra. At the time that the G for George had just been refurbished.
RG: Yeah.
HA: Put back in to the museum and was all roped off. And they went up and I think Sam himself said to one of the attendants, ‘This is our crew that flew in Lancasters and we’ve just had a reunion. How about letting us get in?’ And they held it up and let them get in.
RG: Yeah. Actually, this chap from, Alex from Orange. He did the same thing. It was only – we spoke to him last year and only a month or so before he’d been down to the war memorial. It was the last time he could go down because he was getting a bit frail and he got down there and they put on a lift thing to get him up to the door. He got into the fuselage and he got up to the main spar and the two young guys were in attendance, and they said, ‘Do you want to go any further?’ And he said, ‘Yeah. I want to get over that main spar just one more time.’ And he said, ‘It took quite a while,’ he said, ‘But I got over the damned thing and he got up to the cockpit.’ [And he got the gun ] in the cockpit and he stood on it but on his way out he was coming down. He looked through one of the windows on the side and there’s an ME262 over in the corner. And that was the aircraft that shot him down. Not the same aircraft obviously but yeah and he said that was a bit of an odd feeling. But he said that anybody who had ever flown in Lancasters would understand that. That he just wanted to get over the main spar just once more. They had to help him back across but if he could only get over one way. You know. Yeah.
HA: I can remember — one thing I didn’t mention before. You asked me about damage to the plane. Quite a lot of holes sometimes. If they weren’t too big they just patched them over, you know, But down where the rear gunner slid in to his turret there was a piece of, probably a piece of plywood or something like that that he sat on and then slid in to his turret. One time we came back there was a hole the size of your fist through that. It would have missed the rear gunner by that much. And another time the pilot put his ‘chute in and they inspected it. I don’t know if they always inspected it. Probably they did but anyway there was a lump of shrapnel.
RG: Wedged in the parachute.
HA: In his seat parachute.
RG: And he was sitting on that.
HA: He was sitting on it. It didn’t get through the parachute [laughs]
RG: So none of your crew was ever wounded?
HA: No.
RG: No.
HA: No.
RG: Lucky.
HA: We were lucky.
RG: Yeah. So, with your time at Training Command — because the training losses were really high weren’t they? Guys killed in training. But in, was that with, was there a squadron that you were with at Wigsley or was it a training squadron that was, or just an ATU?
HA: I don’t think they called them a squadron. It was just a unit.
RG: Yeah. Ok. But did you lose any aircraft or any people under training? Apart from the ones shot down by the ME110s?
HA: I don’t think so. When we were on Stirlings we had a hairy experience. There had been a lot of rain and dirt alongsides of the runway was soft and there was a Stirling came in trying to land in a crosswind. Put one wheel off the runway, skidded out into the mud and we went out and helped to dig the bomb aimer out of his turret which he shouldn’t have been in because the mud had pushed him up over the guns.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
HA: Like a bulldozer.
RG: Yeah.
LD: Not much space in there at the best of times is there?
HA: No. So the next day we’re doing a three engine practice landing in a Stirling with, obviously no bombs and not much petrol sort of thing. So you can understand what happened. You’re not supposed to come, once you get below a thousand feet for a three engine landing you should land. So our skipper’s coming in. Same cross wind. Knows about what happened the day before. Got down almost to the deck and said, ‘I’m going around again.’ Pushed the three throttles forward. Told the engineer to start the other engine. The navigator’s doing his usual job calling out the airspeed so he doesn’t have to worry about that.
RG: Yeah.
HA: The stalling speed is about eighty apparently and I’m calling out, ‘Sixty five.’ [laughs] ‘Sixty five.’ ‘Sixty five.’ The pilot’s hanging on.
RG: [laughs] Jesus.
HA: By the time I got to the end of the runway the other engine had started up and because we had flaps down too it took a while to get up in to the air again.
RG: To get the speed up. Yeah. Yeah.
HA: That was touch and go.
RG: Yes. I should say so. So, what about when you were — the other time in the UK between ops. On leave. Did you have any leave as such while you were there?
HA: Oh yes.
RG: On your squadron
HA: Yes. You normally got six days leave every six weeks while you were on ops.
RG: Oh ok. Yeah. Yeah.
HA: A bit less if a few others got killed because they had a waiting list, you know. It was your turn.
RG: Oh yes. I heard about that. Yes. Yes.
HA: So it might be only five weeks.
RG: Yeah. I’ve heard about that. So where did you do on your leaves? You went in to London obviously a few times.
HA: Oh I’ve been to London. Yeah. I went up to Edinburgh one time. Took a girl to the pictures one time in the middle of summer. I was thinking I might have a kiss afterwards. It was still bloody sunny. The sun was up at 9 o’clock 10 o’clock at night. They had double summer time on.
RG: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So, you’re not trying to photograph that logbook are you?
LD: Yeah.
RG: Oh it’ll take forever.
LD: No. It wouldn’t take that long but I can’t, the shadow of the camera keeps, the shadow of the phone keeps going over it.
RG: Bert, if we could borrow this stuff.
HA: Yeah sure.
RG: We’ll photograph it and or copy it and then bring it all back to you today.
HA: Ok. That’s fine. Yeah.
RG: We can do that. That’s cool.
HA: I was going to say about leave.
RG: Leave. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah.
HA: I think after about our twenty trips we had leave and by that time I had a car and the skipper had a car. His was twenty pounds. Mine, I think, was thirty or something like that.
RG: What was yours?
HA: A Morris. Morris Minor. No. A bit bigger than a Morris Minor. It was a little narrow thing but a sedan with high windows.
RG: Oh yeah. Yeah.
HA: Morris something or other.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
HA: A Morris Ten I think it was called. He had a Ford. And we decided we would do some touring down towards Devon and that sort of thing. Together. So we found somebody. I think the engineer might have put us on to an aunt or a niece or something like that and an address we could give down there. Where you couldn’t get to it by train.
RG: Yeah.
HA: And so you could petrol coupons to go.
RG: Oh ok. I was wondering. I was going to ask you about that. Yeah.
HA: Yeah. So we took off and we stayed at places like Stow in the Wold.
LD: They have such funny names some of them don’t they?
HA: Yeah. So we had a nice tour down that way.
LD: Did you have any family in the UK or anything? That you were able to visit?
HA: No. No. Some people did. Like Charlwood.
RG: Charlwood. Yeah. He went to the town of Charlwood to look up his ancestors. Yeah.
HA: When we first got to Brighton the first lot of leave we had there from there they had a scheme called the Lady Ryder Scheme.
LD: Oh yes. I’ve heard of that.
HA: Where they would send you for a week to somebody just to let you settle in to Britain, sort of thing and so I was sent up to a place not far from Windsor to a lady’s who was Mrs Adams.
RG: There you go.
HA: That’s probably why they picked her.
RG: Yeah.
HA: When I got there she’s got this lovely two storey house and she said, ‘I’ll just show you around the house and you can look after yourself. I’ll give you the key because my daughter’s having a daughter or a son or something and I won’t be here. Just help yourself.’ I never saw her again sort of thing.
RG: A bit pointless wasn’t it really. Not helping you to settle you in but still.
HA: But she said, ‘If you go to this little village. I think it was Taplow or somewhere there’s a woman here who likes seeing Australians. Margaret Vyner. Was that the name of the, yeah that’s right. Margaret Vyner was this Australian actress who liked seeing Australians.
RG: Ah ok.
HA: So she gave me her address and I went around there and was made welcome and she was married to an English actor called Hugh Marlowe who was a big handsome fella who’d played The Saint in one of the movies.
RG: Oh ok. Yeah. Yeah.
HA: I hadn’t been there very long and in comes an army captain with a case of brandy that they knew. I can’t just pick his name out from memory now but he was a very famous English actor.
RG: Not David Niven.
HA: David Niven.
RG: You’re kidding.
LD: Oh really.
HA: Yeah.
RG: Right.
HA: Back from North Africa.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
LD: Handsomest man in the universe I think.
HA: Yeah. A big name. So they got stuck in to the brandy and started talking about acting and all this sort of stuff and I said, you know, like, you don’t want me in the way. I snuck off back to Mrs Adam’s place.
RG: Oh well. You could say you met David Niven anyway.
HA: Yeah. And then the next day I decided to go to London. Got into a carriage. David Niven and a heap of others were in the same carriage. And he was there — [laughs] I said, ‘G’day,’ and he said, ‘G’day.’ And that was it [laughs}
LD: He’d had a big night had he?
RG: Yeah.
HA: Yeah.
RG: What about demob? What happened with demob? So you were there for a couple of months. You were there right up to VJ Day you said. In Training Command.
HA: Yeah. Finally we, we got sent to Brighton to spend some time waiting for a ship to come home. Got in a game of hockey at one stage which was the first time I had a game of hockey over there. I was very keen on hockey at high school. We played at Bournemouth in snow. Sago snow or something. They used a red ball instead of a white one [laughs] But yeah we put in some time at Brighton and then finally got on the Aquitania.
RG: Oh yes. Ok.
HA: Came home around South Africa.
RG: So that was what September or something? Or October. In 1945 still though.
HA: Late 1945.
RG: Yeah.
HA: About November or December ’45 or something like that I think.
RG: Yeah.
HA: Fair bit of waiting around for a ship.
RG: Yeah. Yeah. They were pretty busy. A lot of people to move.
HA: I went home to Mendooran and somewhere on the demob business in Sydney they did aptitude tests and that sort of thing. IQ tests I suppose and said — [pause] It’s lunchtime.
Other: Yes.
HA: In a bit I suppose. Well these people are going to leave very shortly.
RG: We’ll finish this off very quickly and you can have your lunch. We’ll just finish it off very quickly now.
Other: Ok.
RG: We’ve got to the end now.
Other: That’s alright.
RG: Five — ten minutes.
RG: Yeah.
Other: He can talk.
HA: I’ve got a pretty good memory.
RG: You do actually. Yeah.
HA: Where were we up to?
RG: Aptitude tests and IQ tests.
HA: ‘Oh yes,’ they said, ‘You can go to university and do virtually what you want to. Whatever you like.’ I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to go back to the public service. That’s one thing. So I elected to do Ag Science. Which I did. And I think only forty of the one hundred or so people who lined up for it passed because half of them were ex-servicemen and the place was overcrowded and they weren’t — didn’t have the facilities for big numbers that they should have had.
RG: Whereabouts was that? Sorry. That was at —?
HA: Sydney Uni.
RG: Sydney Uni. You said you only did a year of that.
HA: Yeah.
RG: Yeah.
HA: I thought to myself it’s a four year course. I’d used up nearly all the money I’d kept from the end of the war. What am I going to do for the next three years? Talked to a couple of fellas who had just finished fourth year Ag Science. They said, ‘The best we seem to be able to do is get a job with the Agricultural Department at about eight pounds a week.’ I said, ‘No.’ Dad had just sold the farm because of the drought and he had a bit of spare money. He said, ‘I could stake you some the money to start share farming.’
RG: That’s you and your brother did that.
HA: So we went share farming and made some money.
RG: Yeah. Yeah. And that was it.
HA: That was it. I did a bit of truck driving and had a sports store and then went back to, oh, went back to uni by correspondence while I was teaching at Mudgee.
RG: Yeah.
HA: Yeah.
RG: Is there anything else you’d like to add or any questions for us?
HA: If you’d like to read through those you’ll find some interesting stuff. I’ve written some three pages in the last couple of days of things that I’ve sort of —
RG: Ok.
HA: Thought were important.
RG: Yeah. Well we’ll definitely, we’ll take copies of those definitely. But we’ll let you have your lunch now.
HA: Yeah.
RG: Thank you very much for that.
LD: Can you just sign this here. This is just to say that —
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AAdamsHG170215
PAdamsHG1704
Title
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Interview with Herbert Adams
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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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01:53:42 audio recording
Creator
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Rob Gray
Date
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2017-02-15
Description
An account of the resource
Herbert Adams grew up in New South Wales Australia and joined the Air Training Corps as soon as it was established. He later joined the Royal Australian Air Force and after training, he completed a tour of operations as a navigator with 467 Squadron. He describes crewing up, flying operations in Lancasters and his experience of avoiding aerial attack. He recalls the use of navigational aids including Gee, API and H2S. He then became an instructor at RAF Wigsley. He discusses an occasion when Me 110s attacked the airfield. He talks of a Cook's Tour over Germany when others photographed the after effects of the war. He was demobilised back to New South Wales and later taught for the RAAF.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
California--San Francisco
United States
California
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
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1942
1943
1944
1945
467 Squadron
5 Group
aircrew
Anson
bombing
control caravan
Cook’s tour
crewing up
demobilisation
Distinguished Flying Cross
fuelling
Gee
ground personnel
H2S
Lancaster
Me 110
military living conditions
navigator
Operational Training Unit
promotion
RAF Lichfield
RAF Llandwrog
RAF Swinderby
RAF Waddington
RAF Wigsley
sanitation
service vehicle
Stirling
superstition
Tiger force
training
V-1
V-2
V-weapon
Wellington
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/207/3343/PBawdenHH1602.1.jpg
df5da1c4c93570824e924665aeffc7c5
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/207/3343/ABawdenHH160810.2.mp3
1b440b405014296da1ac20828edaf0e1
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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Bawden, Harvey Hayward
Harvey Hayward Bawden
Harvey H Bawden
Harvey Bawden
H H Bawden
H Bawden
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Warrant Officer Harvey Hayward Bawden (419835 Royal Australian Air Force). Harvey Bawden volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force and after training in the United States, flew operations with 153 Squadron from RAF Scampton and 150 Squadron from RAF Hemswell as a mid-upper gunner. He was shot down and became a prisoner of war on his 29th operation.
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
2016-07-10
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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Bawden, HH
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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JB: It's the 10th of August 2016, and the interview, my interviewee is Harvey Bawden from xxxxxx, Bendigo, Victoria. Harvey's squadron was 150, rank of warrant officer, and his crew position was mid upper, er, upper mid gunner. Um, so, the date you enlisted, and where did you enlist?
HB: I enlisted in Bendigo in 1942.
JB: And from the home town? Your home town?
HB: Er, from the hill where I lived. I came from the Pyramid Hill [?] of Bendigo to enlist, and then of course I had to go to Melbourne for induction and all those things.
JB: And you went, what school did you go to?
HB: I went to the Bendigo Technical College.
JB: And as a civilian, your job? You were a farmer.
HB: I was a wool grower, yes.
JB: What made you volunteer for Bomber Command? [pause] I suppose firstly, what made you volunteer in the war?
HB: Oh well, it wasn't a big decision to make, my father had been a serviceman in the First World War, as a light horseman. Er, stories of service life had been part of my growing up, I suppose, but I, when I became eighteen of age I automatically enlisted, er, I enlisted in aircrew because I was interested in flight [pause] and [pause], yes, I, I was looking forward to the time when I was able to enlist.
JB: Were you aware of the high casualty rates?
HB: Well, er, war stories were not new to me. I knew a little bit about the war, but also there was war all around us, and it was an inevitability that able-bodied people would be involved, and, no, I didn't give it a great amount of consideration, I must confess, no.
JB: What about your family? I mean how did they feel about it? Your mum.
HB: Oh well, I don't suppose they were happy to see me enlist, but as I said before, my father was an ex-serviceman, and I got plenty of encouragement from the family, yes.
JB: So, where did you, where did you train, once you'd enlisted?
HB: Ah well, very briefly, oh first I went to Summers, which was what they called initial training school, where we were given a lot of theory and [pause] grounding in aircrew things, but it was really assessing, I think, the young people, to see if they could cram a lot of subjects in a very short time, and had the ability to go on quickly. I can remember particularly at Summers there were some sheds were used for classrooms, and we didn't walk between those sheds, we had to, we had to, actually go at the double, because they were short of time, and we were very young and fit. But after spending the time at Summers initial training school, if we passed the course we were, we were [pause], we were assigned to different channels of aircrew training. We all, of course, would like to have been made pilot, young pilots, and I was very fortunate that I was categorised for pilot training, and I was sent then to initial, er, to elementary flying training school at the Nowra in Victoria, where we were trained to fly Tiger Moths. And it was a wonderful period of my life, I had an interesting and capable instructor, and we enjoyed very much the period of flying, from the time of first solo until we were practising aerobatics and doing solo cross countries, it was a very exhilarating period of a young person's life. At the end of that course we were again categorised for singles or multis, which meant going on to be a fighter pilot if you went on singles, or bomber pilot if you were multis. And again I obtained what I wanted to have, and that was fighter pilot training on singles, and I was sent then to Uranquinty in New South Wales, flying on Wirraways, and sadly during that course, and when I felt quite capable and comfortable with the course, nine of us were taken off the course and told that we were to be re-mustered to bomber crews, and of course this was a most disturbing and, er, disappointing thing to happen. However, we, we were sent to Bradfield Park in New South Wales, and given a choice of what we would like to do in bomber crews. And I chose to be a gunner. And I was sent to Sale and I did a gunneries course, and very quickly I was sent to England, er, via America, to join in Bomber Command, which was the ultimate, I imagine, at the time. We had a very uncomfortable trip to England, it was wartime of course, and we travelled from Brisbane to San Francisco in the United States of America, in a liberty ship, and they were terrible things. They were the first all-welded boats, made during the war for transport purposes. They weren't very large and they were certainly very uncomfortable. But after about three weeks we, one morning, saw, coming through the mist, er, one of the American airships they had patrolling their coastline, and coming through the fog we came into the, into the port of San Francisco. And after a bit of leave in San Francisco, we were put on [unclear], on a very comfortable Pullman train, and we travelled right across the States by train to New York. It took about a week, and that was a very interesting journey. And we had a short period of leave in New York whilst-
JB: S- sorry Harvey, there's a lovely story about the Afro-American on the train. I'd really like, 'cause it says a lot about the Aussies, so-
HB: Ah, well, I've just got to break into that somehow. Yes, well, on this train we, they were very comfortable old train carriages, they were Pullman carriages, they were sleepers, and, er, we had an African-American person in each carriage, looking after us. And some of us spent most of the day on a observation carriage type thing, talking to this, er, old gentleman who was our, looking after us. He was very, very interesting, he'd been on the route for a long time, and he could give us a lot of interesting information on the country we were passing through, and the cities we came in to. And, er, quite an old gentleman. At the end of our journey to New York we took up a collection, and gave to him in appreciation for his looking after us so well on the trip. And the old chap became quite emotional, and he said he'd been hauling American troops for years on the trains, but he'd never ever received the respect and attention that he had with the Australians, and he also said that the money we had given him would be sufficient to buy his son, who was about to go to a university, a new overcoat, and that was a very pleasant thing [unclear] to our trip across the States. In New York we had some leave whilst we awaited the arrival of the Queen Elizabeth, who was, of course she was doing a regular trip between America and Britain on, [pause], on eh as a troop ship. Eventually she arrived, and we were five hundred Australian aircrew, all Australians, and we didn't make much difference to the, the seventeen thousand, I think it was, on board the Queen Elizabeth. But it was a, after our experience on the liberty ship, it was a very luxurious journey on board the Queen Elizabeth. We aircrew fellas, I think we had to share, er, we had cabins, but only cut down slightly on normal accommodation. The Queen Elizabeth wasn't escorted, she was too fast to travel in convoy, she travelled on a zigzag course relying on speed and all the electronics and [pause] she had on board. We, we eventually pulled into the, the, into Glasgow, the port of Glasgow. The Queen Elizabeth never came right into port, she remained out in the straits and we came off by lighters, this was so she could be quickly manoeuvred about in emergencies from bombing. In Glasgow we [pause]
JB: -at all. As good as gold.
HB: We boarded a troop train, in Glasgow, and came down, all the way down through, er, through Britain, to Brighton, which was our destination, of course, and all the aircrew arrivals were billeted in one of two major hotels in Brighton. Er, quite a luxurious arrival actually. And we were very pleased to get to Brighton, we were all very weary after all our travel. But at Brighton which was a pool, and a place where all aircrew were sorted into groups suitable for training, we were given disembarkation leave. There was a great feeling of haste there about everything. This disembarkation leave was very, very brief, and we were very quickly put on course for operational training courses, and we could see the reason this was about, there were many losses, heavy losses in Bomber Command, and the war was at a very positive time, but after a very brief leave in London we were sent on operational, to operational training units, where we crewed up, and we were given a welcome by the commanding officer at our training station, and told that we would be given two or three days to crew-0p by choice [coughs]. The British had learned, I think from experience, that you don't allocate bomber crews, you allow them to crew-up as crews themselves. A bomber crew had to be compatible [coughs], and we crewed up.
JB: How did that actually, did you just walk round and meet each other, or-?
HB: Yeah, we did. We just talked around the bar, and chatted in the mess, and in real life, I think, you usually find that like-minded people do group together, and sort themselves out a little. But in our case, the first man I saw there, met, was my old friend Kevin Key, who I'd known at initial training school at Summers in Melbourne, I knew no one else, nor did he know anyone else, but we were delighted to meet, and we said well, whatever happened, we'll be on the same crew, and from there we just gradually melted into er, different groups, and, er, Jim Gillies was the next one that we met. We decided that we'd be a fairly good combination, and we ended up with our six members, crew members, all Australians. We crewed up only with six men for a seven-man crew because in England the flight engineers were all English, and they allocated. But as a crew we then began our training at -. And it was a very busy time, of course, we got into the elementary flying programmes, and finally we moved onto flying in Wellington bombers, training. The Wellington had been a front-line bomber at the beginning of the war, it was a twin-engined, quite serviceable, old aircraft. And it was still being used a little bit in coastal patrols and such things, but its major usage was in training bomber crews, and it was a twin-engine aircraft. And so we did quite a lot of flying in Wellingtons, and then we migrated to Halifaxes, which was a four-engined bomber, of course, and quite a big step for the pilots, and the crews. And after a course in Halifaxes we moved onto Lancasters, and the Lancaster, of course, was the outstanding heavy bomber of World War Two. It was said that, yes, it was the supreme heavy bomber. Er, it carried a crew of seven. It carried a much heavier bomb load than the American Flying Fortress. We had a crew only of seven, where the American Flying Fortress had a crew of eleven. It was an exciting aircraft. They could take enormous punishment in service. But anyway, we did a course on Lancasters, cross countries, and under all sorts of conditions and situations, until the time came that we were proficient, and we were allocated to a squadron. And we were fortunate we felt, we were sent to 153 Squadron at Scampton, which was a very famous squadron, not far out of Lincoln city. It had become famous in the fact that the Dambuster crews trained there, in fact they took off for the bomb raids from Scampton. It was the squadron where Guy Gibson did his flying. And it was a very interesting place, and a very comfortable billet, and we were very happy to go there. And we flew our first operation from there, and in fact we flew four operations from Scampton. And then we were told that we were being posted to 150 Squadron at Hemswell. Hemswell was a new squadron at a new wartime 'drome. A little bit further away from Lincoln. And we were a bit sad, of course, leaving the comforting billets that we'd become used to at Scampton, but we soon got used to 150 Squadron at Hemswell. The amenities weren't quite as comfortable, perhaps, but we joined in Hemswell a mixed body of young flyers. We were the only full Australian crew flying there. There were odd Australians in mixed crews, but there were Canadians, there were some Canadians, incidentally the Canadians and the Australians seemed to have a great rapport, they seemed to fall into step very easily. Our closest companions were Canadians, but there were British, and there were Canadians, and there were some, a few, New Zealanders. There were two squadrons at Hemswell, 170 Squadron and 150 Squadron. We [pause] we settled, we settled into flight from Hemswell, it was some distance back into Lincoln, of course, but any time we had free we drove back in to Lincoln for our relaxation. Hemswell was surrounded by farming land, very attractive farming land, but there was no township, or anything of that nature, there. From then on it was a matter of routine, the bombing missions all over Germany. Intermittently we were given leave, they were, the Air Force was, very generous, I believe, in its allocation of leave to aircrews, and we, we used to get well away from London and relax in those periods when we were given leave. We would go north to Scotland, or into the Lakes District in England, and generally enjoy and relax very well. But it was always sad, we found, coming back to the squadron after having been on leave because inevitably we found vacant places. And you even felt a little bit guilty [pause] that you'd been away while these boys had gone.
JB: Do you want me to stop it a minute?
HB: [Coughs]
JB: Sorry mate.
HB: That's alright.
JB: Um, yeah, let’s stop it and think. [Rustles and beep]. And away you go.
HB: When we arrived at the squadron, our crew was assigned to a brand new Lancaster. Her code number was PB 853 PB, and she was affectionately known as P-Peter. The ground crew painted a huge bee dressed in Australian battledress, and sitting astride a bomb, on the side of the fuselage. During the period we flew her, all of her engines were replaced, and many of her panels were patched due to flak damage. When flying on operations we carried escape aids to help if we had to bail out in neutral countryside with a chance of escape to the neutral country. It was a flat box, plastic box [pause] we wore inside our battledress, and contained a beautiful silk map of Europe, some German money, some phrases cards, in several languages, and some vitamin pills, for-, and also some pills for purifying water, a razor, and many little things likely to be useful. Each member of a bomber crew carried a secret compass. There were several kinds of these, my little compass was in the base of a, of a collar stud. When I became a prisoner of the Germans I was interrogated twice, once by the Luftwaffe, and once by civilians. They removed everything I had, but did not find my little compass, and I still have it. The Royal Air Force flew mostly at night. Our crew flew twenty nine operations before we were shot down. Twenty four of them were at night, and five were in daylight. Because we usually flew at night, high altitude we had [sneezes], we had to wear oxygen masks, and electric inner suits for the gunners, because in those days we did not have pressurised aircraft, and it was very cold. Flying could be up to ten hours, depending on the location of the target. We were briefed for our twenty ninth operation one morning to bomb synthetic oil refineries at Harpennig, near Dortmund in the Ruhr. The Ruhr is the industrial centre of Germany where most of the heavy steel industry is, is located, including the mighty Krupps armament works. It was known to bomber crews as Happy Valley, we had been to the Ruhr cities a number of times, and had always found them heavily defended. At four o’clock in the afternoon we were over the city, and the oil refineries underneath us. After seeing the target map on the brief, briefing room wall that morning, I believed that without being complacent we were quietly optimistic that we would complete our tour of thirty operations. There was only one more to go after this. We had survived twenty eight arduous operations, all of them on German targets. We were the senior crew on the squadron, with a reputation for reliability and efficiency. At four o’clock in the afternoon we were indeed over the city, flying at eighteen thousand feet. We were in the midst of a heavy anti-aircraft barrage, with flak bursting from fifteen thousand to twenty thousand feet. The target was clearly visible, not only from the target indicators, but from the smoke of exploding bombs. As we turned into our bombing run there was a target, there was a target, when we [long pause]. You right?
JB: Yeah!
HB: As we turned into our bombing run there was a great explosion, and the aircraft began to shudder violently. Flak bursting under us had put two of our engines on fire. We were out of control and going into a steep descent. When the order was given to abandon the aircraft the last words we heard from Phil were, 'I can't hold her any more'. Jim Gillies and I believe that Jim Griffin was killed by the flak. His body was found, thrown clear of the aircraft, in the woods some kilometres from the target area. There was no panic, and six of the seven of us were able to bail out. I was the last to leave. My turret hydraulics were supplied from one of the engines that was on fire, and it had stopped with the guns on the beam. With no hydraulics I had to manually wind the turret to the fore and aft position to get out of it. This operation took several seconds. As I disconnected my oxygen and intercom lead the aircraft began to lurch violently from side to side. I was having great difficulty leaving the turret, and suddenly found myself on the floor of the fuselage below. I was able to clip my parachute onto my harness before I realised that my left femur was broken up near the hip. I crawled upwards to the door and rolled out, counted to three, and pulled my rip cord. There was a sudden jolt and I found myself suspended at about sixteen thousand feet. My first reaction was of relief. The enormity of the situation took a moment to sink in. [Pause.] There were aircraft passing high above me with flak bursting under them, and I began to feel an incredible sense of isolation and loneliness as I watched those Lancasters disappearing into the distance, going home to England. As I descended in the parachute I had time to think of many things. I thought about the dreaded telegram my father would receive from the Air Ministry, advising them that we were missing. I remember the, I remember the RAF issue Smith and Wesson revolver I had underneath my Mae West. I realised it would be a liability in the situation that I was about to face, and I pulled it out and let it drop. The last few hundred feet arrived too soon. I could see I was drifting over a building [pause] and as I landed, further down under the cabbages I could see people coming. They were armed with shovels and garden tools. They hesitated for a moment, and then rushed over to me, and my flying boots were pulled off. Women were squabbling over my parachute silk, and others were trying to remove my harness in order to have my flying clothes. I could not move because they were standing on my hands, stretched above my head. I couldn’t see clearly because mud was running into my eyes. I was not having a very good time when an old soldier in uniform with a sub-machine gun moved through the crowd. He cocked his weapon, and they fell back. He then stood over me, undoubtedly saving my life. Another armed old soldier then arrived, pushing a large wheelbarrow with two wheels on the front. These soldiers were Volkssturm, or Home Guard. The first old fellow loaded me onto this conveyance, and then with the first of them walking in front with his weapon, clearing a pathway, the other pushed me over the cobblestones, and I was cursed and spat upon by the justifiably irate citizens as we approached a tin building which appeared to be a military barracks. I was deposited upon a concrete floor within this building, and as they left me I thanked these two old soldiers. They had saved my life, though I never saw them again.
JB: No. Just my wife [pause]. No, you're all right. Keep, still going. [Pause.]
HB: Lying on my back, with nothing under my head, I tried not to make the slightest movement because the tortured thigh was swelling rapidly, no doubt due to having been twisted about so much during the rough handling I had received in the vegetable field. Sometime during the evening I was interrogated by some military people, with a Luftwaffe officer in charge. He had an RAAF, rather, an RAF aircrew identification card with him, and he showed me those many identification cards, from obviously RAF personnel who had been shot down in the region [pause]. He, he went through these with me, and I showed no recognition, even though I saw Jim Gillies, our bomb aimer, I saw his card come up. Throughout the night [pause] a light in the ceiling above my head was something to focus on, and in a sense it gave me some company. I was very cold, and my leg was swollen, swelling enormously, and in the morning my trouser leg was stretched to the limit. At this time a soldier came in to me with a plate of porridge, before depositing it on the concrete beside me he put it to his mouth drinking the liquid from it [pause]. Later in the morning a rough splint was strapped over my leg. I was put on a stretcher and moved to a small prison cell. I had not had time to become fully acquainted with this [telephone rings] -
JB: - you go.
HB: And later in the morning a rough splint was strapped over my leg, and I was put on a stretcher and moved into a small prison cell. I had not had time to become fully acquainted with this superior accommodation, when the door opened, and guards escorting Jim Gillies arrived. We chose not to recognise each other, but I am sure that our body language would have indicated the relief we felt in knowing that the other was alive. Jim was wearing a paper bandage around his head, testimony of his inhospitable reception, er, on landing. The following morning Jim and I were taken to an open truck. There was no seating for a group of female soldiers and the two armed guards escorting us. We travelled through Dortmund into the countryside where we stopped to pick up the body of an RAF fellow from a field. His parachute had not opened, and he was probably blown out of an exploding aircraft. This incident caused Jim and me to be a little uneasy. The truck had stopped at the side of the road, and two, the two guards guarding us jumped out, ordering Jim to follow. He was then given a stretcher to carry, and the three of them marched out across a field, and from my position on the floor I soon lost sight of them. However, I heard no gunshot, and was relieved soon, later, to see them return with Jim and one of the guards carrying the stretcher. And as we continued our journey, Jim, who was very tired, sat on the body after saying, 'I'm sure he wouldn't mind'. We were then able to confer freely together. The road was in very poor condition, and I was relieved when we arrived at a Luftwaffe fighter base where Jim Gillies was placed in cells with a number of Canadian and American POWs. The following day Jim Gillies and the other airmen was moved by train and truck through Germany ending up at Fallingbostel POW camp. After a night in a cell alone, I was taken some distance to a place called Kirchlinde, a large town. The hospital was on three levels, and I was placed on the top storey. Two American soldiers, and a blind English soldier, and I, were the only English-speaking prisoners. The few orderlies were French, and the main function of the establishment seemed to be the patching up of injured Russian prisoners of war from the work parties that we could see filling in bomb craters and clearing roads. After so much time without any medical attention whatsoever I was given some surgery at this place. Since breaking my femur the muscles of my leg had contracted and the broken ends of the bones were overlapping, and my leg was shortened and not very straight. The doctor put on [unclear] my shin bone and attempted some traction, but after so much delay it was futile. It turned out that we were being held in what was to become known as the Ruhr Pocket, where the German, where a German army refused to surrender. There were, we were under constant attack from the RAF bombing throughout the region at night, and a tactical air force in daytime. The Germans had established an anti-aircraft battery quite close to the factory, and whenever the air raid siren began to moan, we would brace ourselves for the sound of the guns as they sent of a barrage of flak. Inevitably, eventually it happened, and the second floor, storey, was also replaced, er reduced to rubble and by the cannon fire. Again I was moved downstairs into what still remained of the building. By this time I was the only prisoner still confined to a bed. I remember an SS soldier coming into the ward, where I remained alone. He had a Luger in his hand, and I was given the strong impression that he would have liked to use it. I was after all a considerable inconvenience. I was relieved when he left after making his inspection. By this time most of the Russians had disappeared, street fighting had been going on around for some time, and eventually the first floor [pause] became shattered. And after a period the whole of the building was untenable, and we were moved down to the cellars underneath. I lost sign, I lost sight of the English soldier, the blind English soldier, and I think he could not have survived. I was lying on a concrete floor with a very, with a very young soldier, German soldier on my left. He was from a signal unit and had been wounded in the street fighting. He spoke very good English and we began to talk. He told me about his work in the army and said that he'd often heard English pilots on his listening set, talking and swearing at each other. He quoted 'tally-ho' [pause]. He, he spoke very good English, and his name was Helmut Liever, and he'd grown up in the confines of Hitler Youth Movement, where every aspect of life was regimented. He told me that the German people were very afraid of Royal Air Force bombing, especially at night. He said that he had received, he told me that he had relatives who had survived the classic raid on Dresden. He went on to describe in detail the sequences of the operation. I did not tell him I had seen it all from twenty thousand feet. In contract, in contrast to Helmut Liever on my right there was a German soldier who had a dagger that, that he pulled out several times in a threatening manner. Fortunately he was out of reach. Eventually the two Americans and I experienced a dramatic change in our situation. Four heavily-armed American soldiers burst into our cellar at about midday. They expected to find more than the three of us. It was a wonderful reunion for the two Americans. When they found out that I was an Australian airman they could not have been more supportive. They told us, however, that we couldn't be taken away for some time, as there was street fighting going on outside. Before leaving they left some cigarettes and a long black bottle of very old wine, and asked if, they came to ask if there was anything they could do for me. And I said, 'well, that old German with the dagger is annoying me, get that dagger', which they did, and I still have it with me. Early in the evening a jeep arrived for us. I was strapped across the bonnet on a stretcher. A padre sat beside me, steadying me on the, and holding a rifle with a Red Cross flag tied to the barrel. It was a rough ride, dodging bomb craters and wrecked vehicles and fallen cables. Before leaving the cellar, I quietly passed some cigarettes to Helmut Liever. We travelled through what seemed a considerable distance until we left the city and arrived at an American army field hospital. It was surrounded by wheat fields, and it was a mobile unit under canvas. I was something of a curiosity with the nursing staff. Most of them were female and knew very little about Australia. They could not be enough, do enough for me, and were very kind. I was told my femur should be re-broken and reset in England. They enveloped my knee in plaster for the trip to come home. Er, could you switch it off for a minute?
LB: Yeah.
HB: I just [unclear] it's getting pretty dreary now, what would like-
LB: I think just talk about the crew, what about when-
HB: Ah, yes.
LB: Um, hang on, hang on, hang on. Er pause, we can do that one [noise]. Um, Harvey, what can you tell me about your crew, or your team?
HB: Er, I would do that with great pleasure, er, in recollections of our team, and our [coughs], Philip Henry Morris was an accomplished pilot, trained in Canada, and we both looked forward to a life in farming after the war. In September 1944 we decided to buy a car. We found one that suited us, a Riley Nine, in Gainsborough. It was a very, in very good condition except that the tyres were very bad, and were difficult to attain. But I drove it back to the station, and whenever we had a day off, I proceeded to teach Phil, Phil to drive. It was an amazing fact that this man who had flown three types of heavy bombers, and many light aircraft, had never learned to drive a motor car. [Pause.] After a great deal of changing and slipping and gear grinding, we were able to go back to Gainsborough and secure his licence. When we arrived back to 150 Squadron at Hemswell, our ground crew took over the maintenance of the car. For special occasions we would let them have it out for a night. In a miraculous manner the worn and worn-out tyres that we couldn't replace, were replaced with new ones, and whenever we drove out of the station, there would be petrol in the tank. John Clement Jay Davis, the flight engineer, was English, of course, er, was assigned to us after OTU, and flew with us in training, and [pause] Jo Davis was a young Londoner, who grew up in Surbiton. He bonded with us very quickly. He was capable, courageous, and always cheerful. He was delighted to be part of an Australian crew, and often said that he would be emigrating to Australia after the war. One of his sayings after a pint or two in the sergeants’ mess was, 'we are not here today, and gone tomorrow, we are here today, and gone tonight'. Kevin Anthony Key came from Melbourne. He and I were old friends from Initial Training School at Summers, and were delighted to come together on Operational Training Unit at Lichfield. He was a [pause] he was an inveterate gambler, and a very successful gambler. I remember one, him one evening pushing a large Royal Enfield motor bike back to the billet, that he'd just won from Canadians, playing cards [pause]. He was an excellent navigator, and he kept us on track during all those black nights over Germany. Robert Lockyear Masters was a schoolteacher prior to enlistment as a wireless operator in Australia. He grew up in Tumut in New South Wales, and shared our interests in the appearance and style of a little old pubs and churches we found whenever we were on leave, in England. A stained glass window in the Tumut Anglican church commemorates his life and service to his country. James Noel Griffin, our rear gunner, was a Queenslander from Brisbane. Jim was more of a solo person when going on leave. A very handsome young airman, he seemed to have the ability to attract the girl, a girl at every [unclear] awaiting leave. James Henry Gillies, our bomb aimer, was a large amiable young man who had played rugby union after leaving school. He had trained as a bomb aimer in Canada. As the two surviving members of our crew of seven, Jim and I shared some extreme experiences, and after all these years we remained very close bond. He was, he was a retired dentist, living in Sydney with his wife Bettina, not far from numerous adoring grandchildren. Our ground crew were very important to us. The ground crew worked around the clock, often under the stress of extreme cold, to keep the aircraft flying. They were the engine mechanics, who served our engines. They were the electricians, who looked after our electrical systems. They were the armourers who loaded our bomb bays, and checked our turrets and machine guns. They were the WAAF drivers, who met us when we landed, day or night to take us to headquarters. All these people were a part of our team. They were always cheerful, and they would do anything for us. The aircrew, I will repeat their names: Phil Morris, pilot, from Sydney, New South Wales; Kevin Key, navigator, from Melbourne, Victoria; Joe Davis, flight engineer, from London, United Kingdom; Bob Masters, wireless operator, from Tumut, New South Wales; Jim Gillies, bomb aimer, from Sydney, New South Wales; Harvey Bawden, mid upper gunner, from Pyramid Hill, Victoria; Jim Griffin, rear gunner, from Brisbane, Queensland. Phil Morris, Kevin Key, John Davis, Bob Masters and Jim Griffin are buried in a war cemetery in the Reichswald Forest, near Kleve in Germany. A stone monument at the entrance to this cemetery carries this inscription 'The land on which this cemetery stands is the gift of the German people, who are [pause] for the perpetual resting place for the sailors, soldiers and airmen who are honoured here'. Harvey Bawden, Bendigo.
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ABawdenHH160810
Title
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Interview with Harvey Hayward Bawden
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:05:55 audio recording
Creator
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John Bowden
Date
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2016-08-10
Description
An account of the resource
Harvey Bawden, from Bendigo, Victoria, Australia, volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force in 1942 at the age of eighteen. After initial training school and assessment as an air gunner, he was shipped to England via the United States. After crewing up and training on heavy bombers, his first posting was to 153 Squadron at RAF Scampton, from where he flew four operations. He was then posted to 150 Squadron at RAF Hemswell. On their 29th operation, they were hit by flak. Bawden’s leg was broken before he bailed out, and he describes the experience of bailing out, interrogation and treatment in a military hospital in some detail. Only he and one other crew member survived. He was rescued by advancing American forces clearing the Ruhr Pocket. Bawden pays tribute to his fellow crew members, buried in the Reichswald Forest War Cemetery, and the ground crew who supported them.
Contributor
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Peter Adams
Mal Prissick
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
Germany
Great Britain
United States
England--Lincolnshire
Victoria--Bendigo
California--San Francisco
United States
Victoria
California
Temporal Coverage
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1942
1943
1944
1945
150 Squadron
153 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bale out
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
crewing up
final resting place
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Lancaster
mechanics engine
memorial
nose art
prisoner of war
RAF Hemswell
RAF Scampton
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/331/3491/PSouthwellDE1603.1.jpg
14aae2a01070e096fa9c00a5c57a4ace
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/331/3491/ASouthwellDE160424.2.mp3
bd5f88b470f50c82d0fece440095f478
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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Southwell, Don
Donald Edward Southwell
Donald E Southwell
Donald Southwell
D E Southwell
D Southwell
Description
An account of the resource
10 items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Donald Edward "Don" Southwell (b. 1924 - 2019, 423987 Royal Australian Air Force), documents including a navigation chart, and six photographs. He flew operations as a navigator with 463 and 467 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Don Southwell and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-24
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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Southwell, DE
Access Rights
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DES: [unclear] have you?
AP: My little question sheet.
DES: Oh, good, [unclear] you should have given it to me before.
AP: No, no, no.
DES: [laughs]
AP: So what I do, uhm, because of this little adapter, if I unplug it, the careful tuned thing dies and it gets embarrassing cause it never works. So, instead I have to plug in earphones, so that I can check cause this is a little splitter. I can plug in earphones so that I can listen to it, because if I just try on the speaker, it goes out the earphones so, anyway. It works now, that’ the most important thing, I’ve had a couple of interviews where I had to use the little microphone built in here cause I never know if this thing’s working. Very very [unclear].
DES: I didn’t know there was a mike in those. See, I use one of those all the time. [unclear]
AP: Well, some of them, some of them do, so there is actually a little camera up here, there is a little microphone there, so it is like for web cam, is not for very good quality and it picks up all the noise that’s around, this seems to be more, uhm, localised to adjust your voice, which [unclear] in the recording. I did one of those with a bloke, uhm, Jack Bell, who, he was shot down in Libya, uhm, he’s 98, he was shot down in Libya in 1942 and spent the rest of the war as prisoner, ’43, very early [unclear].
DES: Ah, prisoner.
AP: 42 [unclear]
DES: In Germany?
AP: Uhm, in Italy and then in Germany.
DES: Ah.
AP: Uhm, and the house next door was actually being demolished at the time we did the interview. In the background you can hear a little bit of it, but not very much. So, for a twenty dollar E-bay special, they are pretty good. Anyway, if you are comfortable and ready to [unclear]
DES: Yeah.
AP: All this is, as you know, IBCC interview, uhm, basically we just have a chat. Uhm, I’ve got a sort of list of questions to get us started, but basically I’ll let you run and we go wherever we go and then we might come back and fill in gaps, all that sort of stuff.
DES: You edit it. Yeah.
AP: Yeah, uhm, we just go until one of us begs for mercy basically. I know what you are like, so it could be for a while [laughs].
DES: No, no, no, it’s not right. No, I, whenever this comes up and I’m in a group, I know the people who’ve got all the interesting stories. I’ve been doing this since Australia all over.
AP: No, I.
DES: Down in, [unclear] I’m gonna write him a letter too, but, uh, Ian McNamara and uh he was, uhm, I was all, I did directing, at, down there, I got the, we got this bloke and got this bloke, got that bloke, got that bloke, he’s gonna get all interesting blokes, you know, I knew [unclear] too long [laughs] and they didn’t want me [laughs] Yeah.
AP: Very good. Anyway, uhm, so, look, the shortest interview I’ve done went from forty five minutes long to three and a half hours or so, you know, whenever we get, we get, it’s quite ok. As I said, there’s a list of questions to sort to start of, so
DES: Forty five minutes, [unclear]
AP: That’s very short one, that was very hard because I had to keep asking questions to. Uhm, my favourite one.
DES: You’d might have to do that.
AP: We’ll see what happens when I ask the first question, that’s always the same question I start with and once the opening response went for about ten words, the longest one has been an hour and fifty before I had to say anything else. Which
DES: [unclear]
AP: It’s astonishing, it’s really really good. Anyway, so, uhm, I start off with a little spiel, so, kick off with that now, just to sort of set the time and the place, uh, so, we are recording and it looks good. So, this interview for the International Bomber Command Centre is with Don Southwell, who was a 463 Squadron navigator at the tail end of World War Two. Interview is taking place at Don’s home in St Ives in Sydney, it’s the 24th of April, I should know that, it’s their [unclear] day, my name is Adam Purcell. Uhm, so, as usual, Don, we will start with the normal question, can you tell me something of your early life, growing up, what you did before the war.
DES: Yes, I can certainly do that. Ehm, I was born in Croydon, in New South Wales, in number 10, Hardidge [?] Street as a matter of fact and I was the third child of my mother Cathy. Ehm, I had my brother Brian, my sister and myself, we were four years between each of us and we lived in Croydon, in Sydney. My father died when I was thirty, when he was thirty five and my mother brought us all up to the [unclear], my, I went to school in [unclear] High school and I had, oh I had a job when I left high school. I was, uhm, my first job was at, uhm, RKO Radio Pictures and I was there for about eighteen months and uhm, my mother thought that this picture business wasn’t the sort of place that [laughs] her son should be spending his career in. So, she started to work on various people and I finished up with a job at the MLC. At the MLC, at this particular stage, they only took you with the leaving certificate. My mum couldn’t afford to keep me on the leaving, so, while my brother and sister went to Fort Street High School and did the leaving, uhm, my mum couldn’t afford it. Anyway, we, I went to RKO Radio Pictures and we, uhm, I lasted there and, uhm, I got the job at the MLC and my sister actually worked and that’s how I probably had a little bit of influence and they didn’t want to appoint me first of all but I reached the stage where there weren’t getting many men in because of the war and the war had started and this was in 1941. And so, uhm, I was very fortunate to get that job because I remind there laws about 90 and that’s not a jag either, this is quite true and I [unclear], I have to write, yeah, uh, I was there for eighteen months and the war came and I’d already enlisted, I’d already joined the air training corps, it was 24 Squadron at Ashfield and under control of squadron leader Whitehurst and he had the grads there and we did all the courses for the air training corps and I was also an ARP warden on my bike and I had an ARP band on my arm, patrolling the streets at night to make sure the people were keeping to the blackout rules. I used to sit in those, sit at the top of the town hall at Ashfield and looking for [laughs] Japanese planes coming over. We didn’t get any Japanese planes but we had to report all things that were going in there and then I got the call up for the army. Because I was eighteen the army called me up and because I was in the air force, I had already been in the air training corps it didn’t make any difference so I went up to the infantry training battalion at Dubbo in central New South Wales and, uhm, I was there for about three weeks, while the rifle regiment came in on a motorbike and looking for [unclear] and took me back to the, you know, the orderly room, I was put on a train to Sydney, I was discharged from the army and sent down to Woolloomooloo. In Woolloomooloo was the air force, uhm, recruiting depot and there we did the medical tests and so forth and I was then posted off and I to number nine Glebe Island [?], which is a wharf in Sydney, I went in as an aircrew, I was called, the air force had so many people for aircrew that they couldn’t cope with them at a particular time and they made us air crew guards and I served for three months in Sydney, there’s an aircrew guard, some of them got posted all the way from New South Wales but I was fortunate enough, I caught number nine Glebe Island, where we guarded little beds, belonged to the air force and so forth and we also did jobs working on the wharves and I was part of the secret war people talk about, that the wharfies continually being out on strike and so forth and they asked the, they sent one of us down to do various jobs on the wharves because later all the supplies were going up to New Guinea, was on a ship called the Marino and it belonged under contract to the air force and now, the wharfies were pilfering stuff from this convoys that were going up to the, the trips up in New Guinea, they were pilfering stuff there and so we had a, we were put, what do you call it? A revolver, a Smith and Wesson revolver around their waists and I did stay for one night, I’d be inside the wharf for one day, inside the wharf in the stores where they had all the stuff there laying. We had a guard on the door, a guard on the, uhm, where the crane came down and picked the, uhm, supplies up, one on top on board the ship and one down in the hold. And we virtually stopped the pilfering in the, but there was a great war against the wharfies in those particular days but a very interesting book has been written about the secret war and it’s not only happened there, but it happened in the army and all around the place. So, that was just a little side set up, while I was waiting to go to aircrew. I was then called up to number 2 ITS in Bradfield Park, to go and do my initial training school and, uhm, so began my career in the air force. Then, do you want me to go further?
AP: Yeah, can you keep going as [unclear].
DES: I’m in the air force then, ok.
AP: Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Absolutely.
DES: We’re in Bradfield Park and Bradfield Park was the centre of two ITS and we did the normal parades on the [unclear] rid marches, uhm, we did cross country runs, we did all sorts of subjects that were pertinent to air crew and so forth, meteorology, all that sort of business and we, uhm, that took us about three weeks to do that and then I was categorised as a pilot. Cause I wanted to be a pilot because my brother was a pilot and so they made me a pilot. They sent me off to number 8, I think it is number 8, EFTS at Narrandera and so began my career, started my career as a pilot. The time limit for getting through, through the school was you had to go solo in twelve hours, now came twelve hours and I hadn’t gone solo and the, uhm, my instructor said; ‘Come on, Don, we gotta get you through this’ and we were operating from a little satellite area, outside of Narrandera, he said you gotta go up and go solo today [laughs]. So, I worked out all what I had to do in the circuit and so forth and I went up on the, took off, made a nice take off but I got the wind changed and then [laughs], I didn’t know the wind had changed and I’m doing the circuit on the basis of when I took off, I did the left-hand circuit and so forth and coming, all of a sudden there is a Tiger Moth coming up beside me, it was my instructor and he was pointing down to the wind sock and I didn’t know what he was talking about, you know, so I didn’t, I just went up and landed, I did a beautiful crosswind landing, it was a good crosswind landing but that’s the last time I, I think I lasted for another half an hour or so flying and then they decided that I, you know, I hadn’t gone in twelve hours, didn’t look like it, so they scrubbed me, I was scrubbed and that was a terrible thing to happen to me, to be scrubbed, I wanted so much to be like my brother who could fly before the war. And, so, uh, I was then, I thought, oh, I’ll have it now the air crew but they transferred me. The boy that got a B in mathematics 1 and mathematics 2, the intermediate, they transferred me to embarkation depot as a navigator and so, but I, and then I stayed at the, I came from Narrandera back to Sydney and I stayed there at the embarkation depot and uhm, just as on the side, we used to, get my [unclear] at Burwood, that was a [unclear] about twenty minute train ride from Chatswood, we used to have a night down, tucked down under the barbed wire, get down a lady game driver, was not a lady game driver this near, walk up to take off, picked to be kept, seen the fiver air crew, when I say we there were a lot of fellows doing this, and we get, I get the train to Han, I spend the night at Ham (or Han), get out of bed at about five o’clock, then come back and up [unclear] at five o’clock ready for parade. And so that, that didn’t go on for long of course, but I did my, that was our waiting game but of course, we were going overseas an therefore we couldn’t leave Australia until we were nineteen, that was a government rule, they just couldn’t, you couldn’t leave, you couldn’t get out, be transferred out of Australia unless you were nineteen. So, I kept going, I was before I turned nineteen, I went to embarkation depot, so I kept [unclear] just about every day reminding them that I was, I’ll be nineteen on the seventeenth of April. Anyway, to cut a long story short, we were bound on a train up to, from Central Railway, we went up to Queensland and transferred to Kalinga and the army came, was a big army came and we slept in tents, oh, by the way, the train trip was terrible, we were in, we had to sit up or some fellows were sitting up, lying down on in the luggage racks upstairs but we had a terrible trip that night, that train, they put us like cattle in there, and so we got up to Brisbane to Kalinga and we had to wait there for our ship and that was somewhere around the first or second of July in 1943, ’43, yeah ’43, and we uhm, one night we had the cars or the truck all arrived and took us down to the boat, was the Noordam, was the United States army transport going back to San Francisco, empty or as empty, except for us air force, because they’ve been bringing all those hundreds of thousands of American troops over to Australia for the Pacific War and uhm, so uhm, we set sail from Brisbane heading or Morton Bay and then shortly about two or three hours out from Brisbane we [unclear] and we wonder what we were doing because of the Japanese submarines and all that sort of thing and it was the, only about three or four days before, or, yeah must have been before, we have to because the Japanese had sunk the hospital ship, the, the, the, the, because they sunk one of their hospital ships and we had two minutes of silence we expected to be torpedoed [unclear] and we headed on our way to, I think it took us about eighteen days to get to San Francisco and never been past Hornsby, past Wollongong, never seen the Blue Mountains, I hadn’t been out to the parks to the, in the [unclear] and to Dubbo in the army and, uhm, here I was, just coming into San Francisco harbour and so I made sure I was at the front of the ship and I never left that ship till about two o’clock in the afternoon, we came by, saw the Golden Gate bridge [unclear] I was nineteen years of age and we heard the, we saw the [unclear] prison and the San Francisco bridge and we landed at Oakland and from there we were put on a train and sent up to, up the uhm, West Coast of America, uh, to Vancouver, where we switched trains for our trip on Canadian national Railways, was a steam, was an old-burner train and we went to, went on our way through the Canadian Rockies to Edmonton and slightly north of Calgary at and the thing that strikes us, was the difference in travelling in Australia in the cattle trucks, where we had, uhm, they weren’t there for our Americans in those days but they were there for Americans were waiting on us, we had sleepers, everything was laid on, the Canadian people, the Canadian government were fantastic, and here we were, we were only leading aircraftsmen, we weren’t even sergeants, and so anyway, we got to Edmonton, I went to the, uhm, manning depot, manning depot and I have a big photo in my home here of the, uhm, on one of our parades, you can pick me out in the [unclear], we had the morning [unclear], you can pick out the Australians because of their blue uniforms, all the rest wore khaki, was in summertime, but anyway, you could pick us out, pick me out with the manning depot and then I was transferred from there, which was just across the road, really, to number 2 AOS Edmonton, that’s where I did my navigation course. My first trip on navigation course was a real, [laugh], was a real did last as far as I was concerned but I’ll tell you about it. We, uhm, I had a, uhm, another navigator, we were flying Avro Ansons and, well, just digress slightly on our Avro Ansons and then poor our navigator had to wind the wheels of the Anson, Avro Anson up, a hundred and forty-nine times to get the wheels up, that was their job for, just straight on take-off. Anyway, we went on from this first navigation trip, I had a second navigator with me, who was supposed to be giving me fixes and that sort of thing and I got lost and so while I was suggesting we do, the pilots by the way were all civilians, they were not in the air force, they were under civilian contract and that was [unclear] Canada and, uhm, Maxi Titlebomb his name was and he suggested we get out and have a look at the railway sign [laughs] so we went down to the railway station and were at a sort of place called Wetaskiwin, not far out of Edmonton, but it was Wetaskiwin so I proceeded to [unclear] I knew where I was, I got me air plucked for Wetaskiwin and went up and we continued on our course, I expected to be scrubbed straight off on that score but I wasn’t, no, they didn’t, was the best thing that ever happened to me because I made a mistake on my first trip, you were never, the navigators rule was never to drop your air plot and I dropped me air plot because if you kept your air plot [unclear] end your life to get a position, make some sort of, where you think it was but you, you’d always got the opportunity to do that and, so a navigator never had to, should never drop his air plot. But anyway I finished up, was about six months course, was about six months and we, incidentally we had to, people talk about the weather these days, it was forty degrees, one night it was forty degrees below zero, now was in Fahrenheit was thirty-two degrees and so was seventy-two degrees of frost. We had to warm the aircraft up in the hangers before we went out and we had winds, sometimes we had headwinds where we were going backwards up in the north part of Canada [laughs], you know, very, very frightening for a nineteen year old [laughs] that didn’t know a lot about navigation, but we got through all of it and we, I finished up with a reasonable max coming out of my course, I was always better at the air plot than I was, I always had trouble with my theory things, wasn’t very good on the theory but I was, even if I say so I was reasonable as a navigator. And so we got our wings there and was around December 1943 and I haven’t been out to find many [unclear] since I came across my fellows book called Navigator Brothers the other day and I wrote to the author, because in there was a photo of one of the group that was having their passing air parade, cause a big deal the passing air parade, the Canadians really put on all their pomp and ceremony for their passing air parade. The, uhm, uh, yes, we got our wings and we proceeded then to go to, uhm, to uhm, we’d being posted to Montreal [unclear] I just had a thought, we went to Montreal and we had to wait a bit to go over to England and, you know, during my stay in Montreal, we stayed at a place called the Sheen, we were sent off for six weeks up to a ski lodge, so they didn’t have a boat to take us over to England so they sent us, was about thirty of us, we were all sent up to a ski lodge, luxurious place for, you know, a couple of weeks, two or three weeks, we learned to ski, we learned to use the tennis rackets on the feet to walk in the snow, we learned to ice skate, to do all sorts of things, it was wonderful. Anyway, we got back from, we went back to the Sheen and I found out that my brother, was, uhm, who was a pilot in the Middle East and an instructor at Lichfield, which would probably entirely they said to be Bomber Command.
AP: Absolutely.
DES: But he, uh, I found out he was coming over on his way home to Australia having completed his tour, he was transferred back to Australia but on his way he had to go, he was [unclear] to fly back with a brand new Liberator and Bryan was in New York with his crew, but they’d been flying Liberators although a lot of these fellows who did this were Lancaster pilots, cause there’s two hundred of them eventually, and then Bryan and I we shared a room in Belmont Plaza Hotel in New York for a couple of days. Then he went on his way home or to California, I should say, where he did three months before he flew off back to Australia, If you like I might talk about that later on. But, then I went back to Montreal and we then got advised that a ship was waiting for us in Halifax, so we did a night trip to Halifax from Montreal and we joined the maiden [?] vessel called, the maiden [?] vessel called the Andes, was a flat bottom boat, a, yeah, a 20000-tonner I suppose, but it was very fast and on that boat we had a complete Canadian armoured division, were ten thousand fellows with their tanks and about a hundred aircrew, [unclear] pilots joining there, there were navigators, there were wireless operators, there was bomb aimers, all been trained in Canada and sending us all over and so we went over there on our own, we didn’t go in a convoy, we went on our own, took us about seven days, we went up towards the North Pole and [unclear] in Liverpool but we didn’t have any, uhm, we didn’t have any [unclear] things happening to us except that we, was a [unclear] taking more than seven days but it was a fast trip was what we did and we weren’t allowed about decks at night time, so, at night time you couldn’t go up on deck no matter what it was because people had a habit of lighting cigarettes and submarines could catch you but some of these, the Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mary, they were too fast for the submarines so they, we zig-zagged all the way across and we arrived in Liverpool and uhm, we uhm, got, we arrived nearly as the morning met by the salvation army, they gave us food and so forth, we went in the big tunnel out of Liverpool and came down to, went down to Brighton PDRC and that’s where I started my first, uhm, flying, my first events in England.
AP: What did you?
DES: Now.
AP: What did you think of wartime England when you first got there?
DES: When?
AP: As a nineteen year old Australian, you are now in wartime England. What?
DES: What I thought of it? Well, uhm, when I first got there I, we went by train down to, we skirted to London, we went to, Brighton was a lovely place but, we were, there was the IFF that had taken over the uhm, the uhm, the Metropole and the, the Metropole and the, the two big hotels, I have just forgotten their names but it was where Margaret Thatcher was blown up later on, she escaped the bombing near in Brighton some years later but we went straight down so, we didn’t see much of the, uhm, the countryside. We were billeted out from the hotels, the [unclear] were billeted out in homes quite near the hotel but we didn’t see any great, you know, people had their coupons, that sort of thing and I saw a lot of it after on my first leave to London, then was when I, you know, realised how terrible things were but there in Brighton, where we were, all the beaches were, they’re all pebble stones not sand all the beaches were mined so you couldn’t go there. If anybody knows Brighton as the Brighton pier, and then it had been chopped in half purposely and the bottom half was used by the air force to, but we used to go and gonna get paid there, we used to go and collect the money on a Thursday or whatever it was, and so uhm, we didn’t see, uhm, in all fairness, you know, I didn’t see, you know, it was, I wouldn’t say, you know, nasty looking, you know, there wasn’t, there was no visible damage that I saw down in Brighton but, my mother and father both came out from England in 1912 so I had relations to go to in England and so I was, uhm, my first leave I had when I went to, I went to a place called Maidstone where my mother was born and uhm, I went to see uncle Ted and auntie Gladys who became [unclear] mother while I was there and I stayed with them and they had a big two story home. He was the general manager of Fremlin’s Brewery, which was a big brewery [laughs] in London and Maidstone, and was a white, the emblem was a white elephant on all the London busses and he was the general manager of this [unclear] and so naturally I was well looked after. If they wanted some meat, if they wanted a steak or some, which was very rare, she takes it, make sure you keep the uniform on and we’ll go down to the butchers today and she, he’s my cousin from Australia you know and they’d toss out some special food for us. But uhm, they seemed to live pretty well you know I think they were, you had to be careful with petrol rationing and that sort of thing but in the group that I sort of as, you know, these people were part of, put in mind, you know, reasonably well off as people and, but she was a real mother to me, she used to take me round on, I always used to go there on leave but she used to take me round and onto, show me the Rochester cathedral or Ramsgate, where my mother used to go and swim as she was a kid and so forth, you know, and I’ve met all my relations but I, I don’t have any, it’s only when later on I went down when I was in the middle of the buzz bombs and the V2 rockets that I realised, you know, how terrible that, uh, what the Germans had done to our people here in London and, you know, when you see streets that are just completely, [unclear] smashed, it was quite something but generally speaking I can’t say that I, you know, I go shopping in London and I, one of the girls there I used to take out, Elisabeth Fulligan, she was a solicitors clerk in London and I used to see her every now and then when I was on leave but I generally speaking, you know, the, I go into a restaurant but we might have a bit difficulty in getting decent sort of stuff but, you know, I can always get eggs and bacon or some I think we had horse meat at some places in London but I didn’t know we were eating horse meat until somebody told us but. Uh, all I can say is about, the people there were marvellous [unclear] and if I can just get back, the people in Canada I missed them, I spent a lot of time when I was in Canada doing my course, one of the fellows on my course was Harry Thompson and he was a Canadian, he lived in 1065 107 Street and we used to go to weekends there and you know, they couldn’t do, his parents and their friends had us all out to their places and we go, they take us to their places and, you know, you can never pay for them, they , it was fantastic in what they did for us and I had, as I say, I had relations in England and they are all the same and I, I think that I was fortunate in that I had relations to go and stay with, all our on the other side of that I missed seeing a lot of England, I used to go down on leave to Wesperdale [?] , good to be when I was there, I was enjoying myself immensely you know, I didn’t drink beer, I drank cider and that was worse. I can always remember going to a Rotary club meeting in Maidstone and they introduced me to a sergeants household and I had to get up and say who I was and I didn’t drink beer and I thought I’d have some cider and I think I was silly as anything because I didn’t realise cider was, I any, I didn’t know much about the air force and before we finished I’d like to speak about to something about the air force that I would like to say but I answered that question there and that’s about the best I can do about the people and the conditions and that sort of thing.
AP: So.
DES: Except that I had a good time.
AP: Well, that’s the important thing.
DES: When I was on leave that was, all my leave [unclear], that’s when you notice these things.
AP: So, from Brighton, where did you go next?
DES: Oh, ok, from Brighton my first port of call was, I think it was 29 OTU, operational training unit at Bruntingthorpe, which was near Leicester and that’s, no, I’m sorry, that’s not where I went, I went to the advanced flying unit in Freugh in Scotland. There’s a good story about Freugh and that’s where we did our first lot of real navigation. We did all trips, day trips out to the Mull of Kintyre, we’re up right in the north of Scotland, no the north, but half way of Scotland, and we were doing all these trips. You went over pretty close to Ireland, we’re doing all these marvellous trips, you know, that’s where we really learned to be navigators, really into, we got our wings in Canada, but this where we really did the real thing and there we spent, West Freugh is near Stranraer and Stranraer was the main port of call when you go over to Northern Ireland and now we are on the maps, normal maps, you can find them on google now but on the normal maps you buy, you will never see West Freugh, I’ve asked many a Scottish bloke about West Freugh but they can never find West Freugh, they can only assume it was probably a farm of some sort but they had especially for that, they made it [unclear] because it was flying, we’re on Avro Ansons again, we were flying Avro Ansons there at West Freugh, they’re a two-engine aircraft, and they had two navigators on board and then we, uhm, so, I think from a point of view of a AF advanced flying unit, by the way, it was number 4 [unclear] which is [unclear], we stayed there about, uhm, oh, we didn’t stay there long, we stayed there from July ’44 to the end of July, early July, 5th of July to the 21st of July and that’s where we did our AFU advanced flying unit . Now, from there, we graduated from there and we were only doing cross country trips and that sort of thing from there. From there we went to 29 OTU at Bruntingthorpe and that’s where what we called crewed up and that’s where we, uhm, we’re all pilots, navigators, wireless operators, correct me if I’m wrong, there was, we didn’t have any engineers cause we didn’t have engineers at that stage we had two air gunners, not certain about if we had all, and the wireless operator and so we all, where we were, we were put in a big room and we were told to find yourself a pilot, navigators find yourself a pilot sort of, so, all was a real PR job, you know, we’d all yeah and there might have been a few drinks [unclear] around too as I say but they all, we were all supposed to be friendly and you wanted to find out if you, you wanted to find you’ll gonna have a team that you could work together with and I, I don’t know how I picked my pilot but I [unclear] [unclear] from [unclear] and was slightly older than me, he’s a big man and he had the biggest hands I’ve ever seen, he was a, he had a grape, not a vineyard, well it was a vineyard but he had dried fruits in [unclear] and now was to sitting behind a big bomber and we had to carry a full bomb load and with his hands gave him a great confidence. But I’ll get back to the Bruntingthorpe now, but we, we got together and we finished up with whatever we had to do and we all then did various cross country fighter affiliation where they send up and you get up in the air find another fighter plane to come and meet you and then attack you and all that sort of thing and all various subjects pertaining to air, Gee, H2S, all that sort of thing and we we’ve been introduced to, that was our navigational aids, air positioning indication, that was another thing we learned all about but that was, an hour on Wellingtons, Wellington bomber, well, they were bombers in the early stage, they were being used for training at this stage now and uhm, the uhm, and so we, when they thought the pilot was satisfactory, off we went then to, let me see, we went to, from to HCU which was the heavy conversion unit and that was our introduction to four-engine aircraft and we caught the Sterling, now said and the, uhm, we were there for a short time, that was just, this was mainly the, the pilot getting used to and the navigator, we were doing more, more uhm, things that we had done before, you know, were dropping bombs and packed us bombs and we were doing long, uhm, long cross countries, uhm, you know, five hours, two hours, that sort of thing and uhm, we, uhm, we’d be when the pilot was satisfactory trained, we were showed off to what we called the Lank finishing skill, it was the Lancaster finishing skill and we were introduced to Lancasters and the, from and that was once again, we all did our own thing with the pilot and he just had to become a professional on that particular type of aircraft and from there we were sent to the squadron. Which was Waddington, which was just a few miles away and, and that was when we started our operational flying.
AP: So, what was your first thought of the Lancaster when you first [unclear]?
DES: Oh, after being on the Sterling [laugh], after being on the Sterling it was marvellous, uhm, yeah, with, uh, yeah because [unclear], the carry under the Lancaster, you know, this was probably the best aircraft that had ever been produced at that time for the duration of the war uh, but everything was, when you are a new pilot on the squadron, you usually get the [unclear] aircraft, but some of them, some of had been there for a while had their own aircraft made sure that they kept their own aircraft, we were not allowed to do this, I was on my first start, we were on one particular type of Lancaster and but everything was so modern and up-to-date, you know for us the Gee was, the navigational instruments were all spot on, you know, we never, I don’t know who did the, to this day I don’t know who did all the mechanics and the [unclear], our aircraft was already, it was one of the ground crew base but, you never saw them at work, at least I never saw them at work, unless something really went wrong but yeah, the gap at the back steps of the Lancaster and to walk along the, yeah, it’s try I suppose when I first went up there, you wonder, Gee, where am I going, you had to walk over a big spare but then again I had my own room, well, area, it was just a small area with a black curtain around it but I had a nice desk, had the astro[unclear] up on top which would flashed the various maps down on the and the stars onto the table, everything was spot on and you know, we came to expect, we’re on a Lancaster, we’re on the best we had and that was the feeling that I had, that I was very, very fortunate, you know, some people like the Halifax , you know, but, you know, they say, I love the Halifax and so forth but we just happened to, uh, it had such a good reputation and such a wonderful aircraft and could carry so many more bombs than anyone else. Uh, you know, I think that, uhm, that was my feeling about my first, but I was amazed, really. I was in awe. Yeah.
AP: So, you then go to Waddington from, what’s it, I think, I saw Skellingthorpe in [unclear]?
DES: Yes, I did, I went to Skellingthorpe I thought that was after. I went to Waddington [unclear].
AP: [laughs]
DES: No we didn’t get to Skellingthorpe.
AP: You didn’t get to Skellingthorpe? [unclear] after.
DES: No, we went to Skellingthorpe after the war finished. We went to Skellingthorpe and we were all transferred to Skellingthorpe and we were, uhm, we had our final passing air parade in August, August 1945. We had our passing air parade.
AP: So, alright, we will get back to Waddington then.
DES: Yeah, get back to Waddington.
AP: Yeah [laughs]. Uhm, where and how did you live on the Squadron at Waddington?
DES: Oh, well now, Waddington was a permanent station in England, a permanent RAF station. It was, it had been there for many years and it consisted of what you would call apartment-type of accommodation, it was brick, big brick flats and in that we’d all, the officers, my pilot now was a flight sergeant right through but as soon as he went to the Squadron, he got his commission and that was the rule then he got his commission. And so he went to the officer’s mess and they had their own specific area and we had our own, we were in dormitories and, uhm, I had, I sort of, well, I was a flight sergeant a lot of that time but I was regarded as a bit senior, not senior but, I seemed to be the one that organises for when and what we are doing outside out of the, you know, for our recreation cause my pilot didn’t smoke or drink and that is marvellous, [unclear] didn’t smoke or drink, he was young too but, but he was a great one for, uhm. He was really wrapped in aircraft, which he should be I know, no, but he gathered at the end of the runway if we weren’t flying a particular day on the squadron he’d go off at the end of the runway and watch them all take off and that sort of thing, he was, he was a wonderful bloke and then he took a great interest in everything, but he. My brother was the same, he would do all that sort of thing, you know, they’re really wrapped but others might be doing something else, but, we used to, well, there were various things we could do, I used to take them down to the, we used to go down to The Horse and Jockey, which is still there, the hotel, but it was a hotel in the , you know, we could go and have something to eat down there, or we’d have a few [unclear], play darts, [unclear] balls and that sort of thing and there a lot of our lot, we had pushbikes and we could pushbike down to the Horse & Jockey and that was in the little town of Waddington, was only a little place and uhm, uh, a lot of our time was spent going around and then we’d have, every six weeks we’d have leave. But, sticking to Waddington, uhm, you know, we had a lot to do, we had dances, the west [unclear] we would have dances all night, yeah, we’re all, uh, I reckon that we were all well looked after and they really were, I’ve recently been back to the Horse & Jockey, and, you know, they are so pleased to see you and they were like that in England. Most, I think of most of them were, I’m not being a snob but I think most of them were pretty good party fellows, there were not a lot of drunks, gave me a favorite to drinks, we had a, we had right a bite back and a [unclear] who used to stop us every now and then and say: ‘Aye, aye, aye!’ but they wouldn’t do anything to us. They were quite, uhm, quite pleasant. But I’ve really found that the people there, I didn’t get involved in anything much outside [unclear] leave I had relations to go to [unclear] wonderful, cause I had my mother’s side and my father’s side so I had relations of both so [unclear] he was from, my father was from Maryport in Cumberland, right up in the north and I have been there a few times since. I met my grandfather that I had never seen and a bit quite of the other relations but the grandfather was the closest, he was a tenner and there was gaslight, there was no electricity, was gaslight, and he, I had to sleep with him, he had no other accommodation there was I think he had a family gone but there wasn’t a very big place and I had forgotten he had, I was [unclear] he was one of six brothers, my father was one of six brothers but later on I found out that my grandmother had fourteen kids so that meant we, in the last few years I’ve been chasing up all these people we’ve met, since I didn’t know we had but sticking to the, uhm, on the Squadron, yeah, we, uhm, I don’t think I had much more [unclear] than I, I had just a normal [unclear], I used to go to church at the Lincoln Cathedral every now and then, I used to go to Southwell. In case you don’t know that Southwell was six miles south out of Newark in Robin Hood territory and it’s a cathedral, it’s got a cathedral so it’s a city, it’s only a small place but it’s a city of Southwell, although they call it Southwell, and so I went there a few times, I was made very welcome and incidentally the Southwells in Australia is one of the biggest families in Australia but, and I am connected with them but they’re in Canberra and they, their offshoots are all, uhm, there is an enormous lot of them, probably the biggest family in Australia, the Southwells. You might, [unclear], but the government gave them a grant in the bicentenary they have their big reunion in Canberra, so there must be some truth in there.
AP: So, you mentioned The Horse & Jockey earlier. Uhm, if you walk into the Horse & Jockey, in wartime, what’s there, what does it look like and what’s going on?
DES: Looks like an old English pub.
AP: Yeah? Funny that.
DES: Yeah, a bit out [unclear] cause I went back a few months again and I hardly knew the place, it had been changed around, they moved a lot of the chimneys out, but I can’t remember getting to a reunion in 1995 at the Horse & Jockey and they had an upstairs everybody could go and we had a great get together that day which was been back on Channel 9 and I was lady in the singing of all the wartime songs in Waddington but it was a real meeting place down, there was another pub we tried [unclear] plus I didn’t drink much but I went to that, oh, I was drinking as at that stage I hadn’t started to drink but that’s another story. My brother, I didn’t mind, now I never drink in our family and my brother on his way back he came up to see me in Montreal at one stage and he said: ‘Would you like a beer?’ And I said: ‘Oh no, I will have a lemonade’. And he said: ‘I will have a beer’. I said, oh, so I didn’t say anything to him. And when since I got back to Montreal, I’ve had a beer and I’ve been drinking beer ever since [laughs]. But, you know, Canada was a funny place for beer because it’s a, they don’t sell beer in a, in those days they didn’t sell beer in a hotel, you had to go into a place that was especially designed and sit down and have a beer but you put salt into the beer to get the gas out of, it was so gassy, that’s another story. But, the Horse & Jockey now, I gonna say now because honestly I’ve forgotten what it was there like but now they have a lot of dart boards around, we played darts and we played balls outside, it was fun, uhm, but it was just, you know, there were members of the public, you know, the people that were working there, we would fraternise with them, they were all friendly with, so, it was generally, it was nice, actually it wasn’t a bad place to go and have a [unclear] and a [unclear]. No, I wouldn’t say that, [unclear] we were [unclear] but more recollections of the Horse & Jockey that was, I said, the crew kept together, I kept the crew together, we were all there together, it was the whole other six of us, there as, that didn’t mean, there was no worry about that but I would like to add that I had [unclear] to my place in about 1950 or 60 and he [unclear] smoked. So, [laughs], [unclear] it’s been a change, he remained a bachelor all his life. But he was wonderful fellow and he was another one, as I say he was very, very keen on, what he did, he took on the training course after the war in [unclear] and he was, he got a medal for that, an RFD or doing something like that, royal returned forces, no, not returned, what’s it, returned something forces decoration? Not returned forces. Anyway, as an RFD, as a, there’s a post normal or medal, but he, he got one of those. But he was a great fellow and he brought us home safely.
AP: [unclear] Alright.
DES: But I had a lot of confidence in him, as I was saying, earlier on, [unclear] blessed hands, they were bigger than mine, I got the tiniest hands you’ve ever seen, mine, my wife’s gloves won’t fit me, you know, they’re my hands, my hands are so tiny, but, yeah, he was, yeah, that’s about it, [unclear].
AP: Yeah, we’re going alright still. So, a little bit more about this daily life in Waddington. The Sergeants Mess, what was that like, what sort of things happened there?
DES: Oh yeah, the Sergeants Mess. Yeah, well, we spend a bit of time there, no, after a trip we do was going to the mess and there’s a lot of, a lot of untoward things went on in the Sergeants Mess and some of the other persons over there, a bit longer than I was, tell some wonderful stories about bringing a donkey into the mess and there’s the Officers Mess and all sort of that. But, we, uhm, I can’t recall, my memory is not that good for the Sergeants Mess. I can, I know what it was like but it was not a place that, you know, we all met there at various stages and had our lunch there and our dinner there and all that sort of thing but, uhm, this never stayed in my mind as being rather relevant to me, I don’t know why but I know we ate there and had our meals there and you know the ordering officer would come round and say: ‘Any complaints?’ [Laughs] Every day in the evening we had our meal there, the ordering officer would come round and say, quite often it was one of the, one of your pilots that, [laughs] you know, was his turn to come over from the officers mess and say: ‘Any complaints?’ What’s the officer, orderly officer, any complaints, I don’t know, that I had many complaints, no, I can’t help, I can’t recall a lot about the Sergeants Mess.
AP: Did 463 and 467 Squadron eat in, did they have their own officer’s mess [unclear]?
DES: No, we were all together, they had their own, the two were there together.
AP: So it was more [unclear] Waddington.
DES: yeah, yeah, yeah. Was Waddington, yeah. Yeah, when we went back to Waddington in, when we went to the Officers Mess there was just one place, yeah, there was only one place, there was 463 and 467, yeah, we got to know each other 463 and 467, as you know 467 was the first Australian Squadron, first Squadron on, uhm ,first was their own Squadron, they were formed in about 1941, something like that and then after they got a big bigger, we wanted to have another Squadron, so 463 grew out of [unclear]? Yeah, [unclear], grew out of [unclear], is it about November or December? ‘43, would that be right? 47 might have been ’42, I think it was ’43.
AP: Yeah, ’43.
DES: Yeah, it was ’43, I think. And so that’s how 463 was. Uhm, and that was under Wing Commander Rollo Kingswood-Smith, who send me off the parade ground for not having a shave. And I was only a young bloke who only shaved about four days a week and I was on, and they sent me off the parade ground for not having a shave. And then later on of course, I’m going ahead of fifty years I became the secretary of 463 Squadron, Rollo was, he is the patron at present, no, he is the patron, I think but he was and he came up to me, oh, I did know him a bit afterwards so. He came up to me and looked at me and said: ‘Oh, Don, you’ve done your shave today’. And days before he died, he said to me: ‘Don, you had your shave today’ and I reminded him when I came back from England but I became quite a good friend of Rollo, when I finished, cause he is really very, very good, he always [unclear], you know, he was a flight commander, no he was a CO, or was a flight commander, whatever he was, he wasn’t a station commander, because that was different from, but he was, he was a 463 commanding officer but he did his trips at the time, he never, he always did his trips, so, he could have quite easily have said, No, I’m going tonight or something like that, but Rollo would always do his trips and never fail. And he was always very good with his, I know, with his writing to people for, you know, lost their and lost their sons and but I believe he was a very strict, he was a very, very strict man, as I say, he was quite different in late years, well, he was, you knew where you stood with him but, and I think he had to be to be the commanding officer at that particular, and we had all walks of life in our, uh, in the air force.
AP: Did 463 Squadron have any superstitions or hoodoos or anything that you are aware of of [unclear]?
DES: Not that I am aware of, I always used to carry my RAF, I had no RAF scarf, always carry my RAF scarf, had to go back one night to get it, but, which I had forgotten, I had to get back but that was only a personal deal I don’t think I was really superstitious about I had to carry my RAF scarf, it was a scarf, it wasn’t a tie, it was a scarf, I didn’t see many of them, I still got mine on my top drawer beside my bed I’ve got my Royal Air Force scarf. I also had my Royal Air Force [unclear] [laughs].
AP: [laughs]
DES: Some [unclear].
AP: We were talking about off tape before we started. Very good. So, you flew nine operations [unclear].
DES: I did nine operations, yep.
AP: Do any of them particularly stand out?
DES: Yeah, was a couple I can have. The trip, uhm, I did to Pilsen. We took off, was a long trip, Pilsen was in Czechoslovakia and it was a long trip and not, we had a couple of hours and now one of our engines went and the skipper said to me: ‘Do you think we can make it?, and I said: ‘Yes, I think so. I think we can take a few short cuts [unclear] we might be able to make it, we don’t tell anybody whatever’. And he said, [skimming through pages of a book], yeah, the uhm, I said: ‘I think I could make it’ and I did a few calculations and even though I say [unclear] I reckon I did a pretty well navigation so I think that was that day because you know you had to be careful if you gonna take any short cuts it couldn’t stand out we were on a track that you were given and as long as you stayed four miles or five miles out of the side of the track you are fairly safe because that’s where all the other aircraft were going, and we were tossing out the silver paper, the Window, that made look as if there are more aircraft out and that sort of thing. But we had to be careful if we went out of it, you could be picked off by the German radar, so you had to be a little bit careful. So, anyway, we got there on time, uhm, we uhm, and uhm, so that was a long trip that I got a bit of praise for by my skipper in the briefing that we went back to and that was about uhm, eight hours and we bombed on three engines. We were diverted when we got back cause we didn’t have much fuel left, uhm, we landed at Boscombe Down that particular night and, uhm, then the next day went back to, uhm, to, uhm, Waddington but uhm, yeah, it was that. And one other night we went to [unclear]. I was in a couple of thousand bomber raids, daylight, we were over Essen and Dortmund and I, we bombed through a cloud there and this was, you realised we were getting towards the end of the war and the master bomber was down below the clouds and he’d come up the cloud, drop the target indicators and go back down again and see how they went and he turned on the RT, the radio telephone and he turned into [unclear] TI by ten seconds or something like that, you know, and he’d be conducting the whole operation from down below. And, so we were just, we just dropped bombs, we didn’t see where they go, we just dropped them on top of the cloud, and that was on the Krupp works at Essen and Dortmund and. But there was another one I was going to mention and we went to [unclear], and uhm, which is just south of Hamburg and the wind changed that particular night and the whole force was all over north-western Europe, we got a little blown away but well, I got a little bit off course, I got to say this, I got a bit off course and we were chased by the German jetfighters, the 263 I think it is? The 263, something like that, the 263? But, we went into a cork, we did have, we were well-trained, went straight away and went into the corkscrew and we did all that, and, cause they can only stay up for about ten minutes and so they, you know, you, if you did your corkscrew properly, probably you were safe so we got out of that but that was, we were picked off there because I got a bit off course. And then I went to uhm, smaller refineries, Bohlen, I went to Bohlen, that was out near Leipzig, for people that might know where Leipzig is, a lot of these synthetic oil refineries were in Eastern Germany and, uhm, we’re at the crossing of the Rhine when the British army were, uhm, crossing the Rhine, uh, we were given the job of bombing Wesel, we were given the job of bombing Wesel and, uhm, which we did and I think it was only, it was only our, you know, our group went that particular night but the British army were on one side of the river and the German side, the Germans were on the other side, and we bombed the other side but we were given a certain time because the British were going into the water at a certain time to go over and I took it with the loss of one life, I think it was in, General Montgomery, Field Marshall Montgomery, he, send the message back to, they brought it over to the loudspeakers the next day on parade, do you want something to eat?
AP: No, thank you.
DES: It was on parade and we were on parade and they read out a message from Montgomery to say how wonderful it was and we did a wonderful job bla, bla, bla, yeah, and uh, yeah that was interesting because you can, if you go to Wesel afterwards it’s quite, you know, I’ve seen some photos of it lately and I think they have rebuilt most of, most of the place. And lastly we did the last operation of the war which was on Tonsberg, which was in the southern part of Norway and we approached it from the North, so it was a long crossing over the North Sea, this was the last operation of the war, on Anzac Day, and with the, we came down the coast, I was coming down from Norway, with Sweden on the left hand side and Sweden was all beautifully lit up, all lit up and the other side was all black, blacked up there was the, Norway which was under the control of the Germans, anyway, we, uhm, that was the last operation of the war and we, uhm, that was bombed successfully but on, if I check forward about fifty years, I was at a funeral and, uhm, of a lady who was of Norwegian birth and the ex-consul of Norway was there and I went and spoke to him and I said: ‘I’ve never been to Norway except on the air’. And he said: ’When were you there?’ I said: ‘Oh, I was there on the 25th of April 1945’ and he said: ‘Well, your aim was pretty good that night’. [laughs] Not at all, so I thought we did pretty well. He said yes. He said, but some of your bombers did bomb the shipyards, some of them went astray and they bombed some of the civilians and he said that all the people of Norway, the war was coming to an end, the 8th of May was the end of the war, the war was coming to an end, they are all thrilled, all happy because everybody knew the armistice was coming on that particular day and he said, now, all the people in the rest of Norway, he said, we were burying our dead and he was very nice about the whole thing and, you know, he is, I got him down as a likely speaker for whoever wants someone to speak about it but, they were very understanding and. So I must really go to France these days, you know, the people in France they were terribly bombed, you know, was, they are thanking you and thanking you and we did an enormous lot of damage but they realised that we had to, that we had to do that for, uhm, sake of winning the war.
AP: So, you mentioned that Messerschmitt, or the jetfighter.
DES: Jetfighter, yeah.
AP: And the corkscrew. So, you are the navigator. You hear corkscrew port go. What happens next?
DES: I have been difficult. Well, we gotta a set of pattern what you got to do the, if the plane’s coming in from the port, you corkscrew port go the rear gunner or whatever the hillside part will do his corkscrew and he’d go down fifteen hundred and he’d turn and he’d go up fifteen hundred feet and it’s quite a ring morale to do but you fly, if you do it properly you fly, you know, a certain course even [unclear] and so, you know, it didn’t do much damage to our [unclear] we didn’t have to make much allowance for an hour in our navigation, if you had to corkscrew port, you, you could just sort of forget about it and just there’s, as long as you weren’t [unclear] too long but generally speaking you flew a net course for this business, all designed to and it was very successful the corkscrew but I, I think we did this about three times I suppose.
AP: What does it feel like?
DES: Oh, I don’t mind, don’t forget we are nineteen years of age there, this was just, this was just wonderful, trusting the aircraft. Oh, of course you were worried a bit about where you were being shot down that goes into it, but generally speaking the corkscrew never, we thought if we did the corkscrew port we would be safe. You’ve got that feeling in your mind that you’d do that, I always remember Redge Boys [?] he was our hero, he was [unclear], he was our navigation leader at Waddington and Redge he did two tours and he said he never believed himself that he’d ever be shot down and he tried to, he despite the fact that the pilot was the chief, he always made sure the crew were all, you know, positive about what we were doing, they were all, they were always convinced that they were gonna get through this. They had this positive attitude that they, you know, and I think it helped, while you’re up there, [unclear], I tried to adopt that attitude that, you know, we all wanted to get home and see the people and I want to get home but, I must admit that, when we were on a bombing run, I used to see, a navigator didn’t have his parachute on, he, you couldn’t work on a desk when, cause we had a chest parachute that fitted on a harness on your chest and you had it sitting beside you. Now, uh, if I was to leave there at my desk, I’d always put my parachute on and I would go, if we were on a bombing run, I would remember the course you got to steer after we dropped our bombs and I’d turn the light out and I’d go up and stand behind the pilot, and watch all the, what was going on and I could then pop down to the rear gunner, near the rear gunner and say, could I have a look at the pilot [laughs] and you’d see the fires and all that sort of thing in the background. But, you know, I felt as if I wanted to be part of the thing so I wanted to see what was going on. Cause everyone else could see what was going on except the wireless operator and what’s the name because we were sitting [unclear] bomb’s gone, you’d have to wait a while, while the photo was taken, away was given course 270 and off we go. And, yeah.
AP: Yes, that’s unusual, most, uhm, most navigators I have spoken to would, you know come up and have a look [unclear] take the head and go, no, don’t ask me to do that [unclear].
DES: Oh, now, that’s, that’s another story. Well, that is. After, a lot of people don’t know about this. But after the war we disarmed, the war had finished and we were disarming with all our, [unclear] disarmed and we had to get rid of all the bombs on the station. So, what they did was we’d [unclear] might have been a couple of weeks, I could look that up but that’s been a couple of weeks, we flew out of Waddington with four bomb loads, headed to the North Sea, about two and a half hours and straight course out, dropped our bombs, they were dropped safe, they weren’ dropped armed but they were dropped safe, and there, I know what the Greenies [?] had signed out because they knew all these thousands of bombs now there was really thousands of us, there was not only our Squadron but every other Squadron was doing this. We go out there and then we come back and if you were above the cloud, we used to have a lot of fun with the pilot with going over the cloud, as if you were low flying. We had some lovely time so, but what I’m coming to is I thought this particular dive [?] was navigation record, no had Gee operator, [unclear], I didn’t done any, I didn’t have to do any strict navigation set up, I, cause I had near position indicators which told me, anyway, we, I thought I’d like to get into the rear turret and I saw [unclear] was the rear gunner and he could come up and sit in the navigation seat and I’d coming in here for a couple of hours, you know. So I trotted off down to the and the [unclear] showed me what to do and [unclear] I couldn’t have gone out of there, couldn’t have gotten there faster, was scared stiff, you know I’d never been because you’re away from the tires of the aircraft, when you are sitting back behind you, so, you are sitting out in the open. You know, you’re away from the aircraft so you feel like it and I think [unclear] having to sit [unclear] on our trip to sit in this thing, you know, you’d be, mind you, these, while our air gunners had had the experience of flying they knew what they’d, you know, they’d got used to it I suppose but me as a person I was scared stiff, I was more scared stiff getting into, getting out of that turret than I was, say, sitting out there in the navigation and bombs, looking down and looking at bombs going off and [unclear] I was scared stiff on that trip. And I had the greatest of admiration for our rear gunner out there, how they could [unclear], and [unclear] you know, I’m not necessarily claustrophobic but I thought oh, Jeez, I couldn’t do this. And I realised how well off I was, because the navigator was lucky I reckon because, as I say, on a ten hour trip you’d have, you had to get a fix every ten minutes or so and, you know, you no sooner that you’d got your fix, you’d plotted it, as you got your fix, you plotted it, you’d make the necessary course, the course change and so forth so If you had to make any change and it took time and the time went quickly this was what the beauty was the pilot was the same, he may be sitting around looking, you know, sitting out on the front [unclear] putting on a [unclear] every now and then, yeah, most of the time but he, and but the navigator had to do and the wireless op was something similar to, he had a lot of work to do, he had to keep the schedules and report back and we had our jobs and our logs don’t forget, as soon as we got back, were handed in to the navigation leader and you were marked as if you were at school and you get 60 percent, or 50 percent or 75. And uhm, you know but this is why we had, oh I must say this as a navigator, that we had marvellous navigator, the navigators were, the Royal Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force, they were wonderfully trained, they, don’t forget, they took as about eighteen months to get into operations, the Americans, I understand can get in as navigating, get in about six weeks training, you know, and that’s not exaggerating, I believe as I say, because some of the B-24s out of Darwin carried, the Americans carried Australian navigators if you look up your history, which is not widely spoken about, but we were well trained and, as I say, we strictly [unclear], we knew our work was big marked anyhow so you had to be, you really gave you a greater incentive to be [unclear] but above all, you know, a ten hour trip might have seemed by far, you know, then, yeah.
AP: VE-day.
DES: Ah, VE-Day. This is all vivid with me, I had wonderful times on VE-day but VE-Day I did three trips to France bringing home, I think it was on VE-Day, yeah, it was on VE-Day, I don’t know if it was three or two we didn’t the next day, you know I did three trips of bringing home prisoners of war, we’d go over in Juvincourt in France and load up twenty five, it was called Operation Exodus and we were out, we load up to twenty five British war, British prisoners of war, they’d been, some of them had been there since Dunkirk in 1940 and the first load we carried, oh, they sit, the twenty five of them sat in the fuselage of the Lancaster on cushions, not seatbelts, uhm, they just had to hang on and [laughs] they just had to sit there and there were thousands of them, we brought out prisoners of war with this Operation exodus by the way, but they were, uhm, It was a wonderful experience, it was one of the greatest experiences of my life, you flew these guys out, they’d been prisoners of war all these years and they, uhm, the first load I carried they were all Sikhs, they were Indians the first lot we carried out. The next load we carried were all obviously from England and it seemed to be most obvious, I made sure that I went down and I got them to come up gradually when the white cliffs of Dover came, got them, and we ferried them up but it was nice and orderly and hear the tears was rolling down their cheeks, you know, was absolutely wonderful to see the, uhm, and they all shook hands when we, uhm, they all shook hands when they got off the aircraft and that was what I did on VE-Day. Now, shortly after VE-Day we had a lot of celebrations and I, you know, I can always remember smoking a cigar, having a few beers, I was Mister Churchill at one stage, you know, was a lot of hilarity and joyness and it was a wonderful feeling, they, you know, all the station was all together and we were all having, officers, ordinary, you know, the airmen, we were all together having a and they’d put on some wonderful [unclear] there and at that particular time and that’s my, I worked on the VE-Day there and we were so glad we were doing, and the guy that wrote our 463-467 book, Nobby Blundell he was a, uhm, he was a fitter, he was a fitter, uhm, an engineer and on a ground staff and he wrote our books incidentally, all the books on 464-647 fisher [?] books were all written by Nobby did a magnificent job but the uhm, was great the, uhm, he managed to, you know, get, gives us all the particulars that we wanted to know, I don’t know, and he was all of our flying set up, all of the, he’d used the, [unclear], is that called, the evidence of our doing your trip, he used to get all these information from the [unclear], he spend years on doing this and so we were forever grateful and he did this but, uhm, getting back to VE-Day, I was more than, more than pleased with what was happening and then of course we had to start thinking about what was gonna happen as it was after VE-Day.
AP: Uhm, how did you get back to Australia?
DES: Ah, that’s a good [unclear], you’ve got some good questions. They are very good, you know, [unclear], we uhm, the uhm, oh I made two efforts to get away. We were disbanded by the way, we were disbanded in August at, uhm, Skellingthorpe, I think it was Skellingthorpe, we’d moved to Skellingthorpe from the Squadron and they formed a Tiger Force for people that were gonna go out to fight the Japanese and uhm, we uhm, managed to particular Tiger Force the uhm, [unclear] you know just asking [unclear].
AP: How did you go home?
DES: How did you go home, yeah. Lost my train of thought. At my age you can.
AP: That’s one. That’s the first one in [unclear]
DES: No, I forget.
AP: Off you go.
DES: Oh, good. [laughs] I know you can scrub that out, yeah, but getting home. Yeah, but I wanted to mention about, we disbanded and then we were transferred to Brighton to wait for a boat and the [unclear] came along. Now, a lot of people in the Air Force know what happened there, there was virtually no, [unclear] but the conditions on the [unclear] which is the [unclear] boat, there was no P&O those days, [unclear] made all the newspapers that a lot of the trips walked off the ship at Southampton because of the conditions, I didn’t want to go twenty five days or so we gotta go and we went back through the canal and [unclear], well we didn’t stop, well we stopped in a few places, the uhm, it was, the, in Brighton we went from, we’d gone onto the ship on the [unclear], we’d got onto the ship and we sailed eventually, we sailed to half of it and wouldn’t you believe we broke down in the Bay of Biscay and the war was over, there was no submarines or so, the war had finished at this time, this was in August or September 1945 [unclear] and we, in between time we had been flying, we’d been doing, taking stuff out to drop the bombs and we’d been doing fighter affiliation and all, we then found work for us to do. Anyway, we set sail out of Southampton and we broke down, and we were flying the black flag, anyone knows it’s out of control and so we eventually we got, we slipped back to Southampton, the first time I have ever been sick was on that bay because we just it [unclear] and happened [unclear] it was about 20000 tons and was their luxury ship when the [unclear] luxury could have been made into a troop ship and we went back to Southampton we were sent then up to Millham. Now Millham is right up near West Freugh, up near Stranraer, right up on the North-West of England and [unclear] us all up to, it was the middle of winter. And we were in Nissen huts and we had to try and keep warm and they had to heat us there but ran out of coal, they couldn’t get, we were rationed the coal, so we smarty Australians [unclear], there was the coal, we got into the coal, [unclear] and pinched the coal, I caught a couple of sometime [unclear] about but we had to go and pinch coal to keep warm. And uhm, we eventually went from there, we were there about a week I suppose and then they found another boat for us which was the Durban Castle, it was a [unclear] ship which went from London, used to go from London to Cape Town and that was a nice ship was made up of air, the complement of going home was a lot of air force people, we had New Zealanders coming home uhm, was quite an interesting lot of people that were on board but we were in [unclear], I was a warrant officer then I’d got up to warrant officer and there under the normal chain, six months of flight sergeant, twelve months of, uh, sorry, six months of sergeant, four months of flight sergeant, then you’re put and made a warrant officer, that was the RAAF and so we’d became warrant officers and then was commission if you got a commission. And the uhm, we uhm, [pauses] [unclear] yeah, yeah, we’re back, we’re off from and, yeah, we were now on the Durban Castle, we’re on the, I forgot, the Durban Castle and the Durban Castle and we had a lot of, we pulled into Gibraltar, can remember Gibraltar, the conditions on the boat were good, the food was good, I put on a stain on the way back because, you know, we put a lot of potatoes, they had a lot of stuff [unclear] but they fed us well, it was a full ship really, but we picked up people on the way, we went to Gibraltar but that was to drop off somebody who was sick so we didn’t pull in, it was just off Gibraltar and we could see the place and if anybody is interested they oughta go to Gibraltar, it is one of the most interesting places to go there. Uh, you don’t expect to see what you see, so we, Gibraltar just a night, we dropped these people off and then we went to Taranto in Italy, in the heel of Italy and there we picked up the New Zealand war brides, that had married a lot of the New Zealanders, who were fighting in Italy, they’d either gone home or [unclear], but the war brides were on their own and so we picked up the war brides and that filled the boat a bit more and then we went from Italy to the Canal, went through the canal, and they wouldn’t let us off the boat in the canal and, you know, none of us would have been through the Suez Canal and so, that was working of course and so was [unclear] to Port Tewfik, Tewfik? No, Port Said, we went to Port Said and they, one of the guys in that was with me at the time, was called [unclear] and he had a DCM, Distinguished Conduct Medal which he had earned in the Middle East but he was in the Air Force, he was, he was a gunner in the Air Force but and he’d been to Port Said, you know, he knew all about this place and we had to get to Port, [mimics the gunners voice] so there was a ladder down at the back of the ship and so a few of us got out of the bumboats as they called them [unclear] and we went ashore, we went ashore, we didn’t take any notice of them people [unclear] we, most of the people were doing this but they were not supposed to. And so we were wondering around the town and the Arabs tried to come and sell us something, dirty postcards on sale [laughs], you know, and we were looking, [unclear] got out, went off and he hit one of these blokes, he hit one of these blokes, you know, because he was trying to do something wrong or I don’t know what it was but he knew what he can get away with, he slapped him on the face [unclear] we gonna get caught [unclear] being in a riot, anyway we got back to our ship alright and went up the gangway this time, no one said anything so. We went through the canal which was a great experience to go through and see how that operates, I’ve never been through the Panama but a lot of our fellows went through the Panama, which I would have liked to have done, uhm, then we went into Aden, and then we, that was near Yemen, and that was in Yemen where you nearly got a lot of troubles and then we went to, uhm, Perth, we went straight across the Indian Ocean to Perth and that’s where we dropped of the Perth blacks [?] and I remember carrying, not carrying but helping a bloke who’d had too much to drink in Kings Park and we were gonna miss the boat, cause you had to be up to Perth and the boat was at Freemantle, we had to get back by train and we had to get him back so [unclear] helped him back but he was not used to Australian beer cause the British beer was pretty, uh, pretty weak and this Australian beer was pretty, you know, pretty [unclear] anyway we got back, we came around the [unclear] to Melbourne, and was Melbourne we got off the boat and went to, uhm, went on the train, went on the train to Sydney, I don’t recall, must have been the train of the time, we sat up but we didn’t have sleepers, and no, we went up to Sydney and the Vietnam blokes all complain that they didn’t get a welcome home. Well, none of us got a welcome home but we were quite happy, cause we arrived at Central Station on platform number one, my mother and sister were there to meet me, they took me home and then a week later I was to report at Bradfield Park, I went to Bradfield Park, they gave me a dischargement home and I went back to work.
AP: That was it.
DES: That was it.
AP: Did you have any issues settling down again? [unclear]?
DES: No, no, no, I had no issues. The only thing is for a while so I went straight back to my job that I left at the MLC and I had been there eighteen months, for eighteen months so I didn’t know much about the business and so I got into, when I went to, I applied when I went back, this is in early 1946 I uhm went back to the MLC and they put me on, they had to put me on that was the law, they had to put you back on staff and they sent me to a department where I was the only fellow with a hundred and forty girls. I’d been in the Air Force all this time with fellows, we had the well WAAF around but generally speaking you weren’t used to mixing around with women, you know, and they put me there for, they put me there for a purpose, of course, and they put next to me the girl that spoke the most [laughs] she was a real gossip, she spoke the most, Shirley Reed, and Shirley, and I, the first two weeks I didn’t hardly, apart from doing my work I didn’t say anything but not because I didn’t [unclear], I was just out, I don’t know what to do, you know, I was just doing my work but I thought, and I wasn’t that good at conversation at that particular time [unclear] we had lunch at our desk in those days, we bought some sandwiches and had lunch at our desks, she kicked the chair from underneath me, I was leaning back and she kicked the chair it was dangerous, she kicked the chair, I went down under the [unclear], well, everybody laughed and I laughed and from that time on I was married [?] [laughs]. I was in that department for about two years and I was still the only fellow. And I have great memories of that, of that two years because I was single, I went to so many birthday parties and twenty-first birthday parties, to weddings, I talked to get a few other girls, my wife was one of them and well, became one of them and I went to work for her in the department and I made [unclear] she came to England for four years and then came back and I married her then but I don’t, was I was then move to, I went again they sent me to Tasmania to open up the office in Tasmania in Launceston and then I was there for two years and then I, they did that in those days, don’t do it nowadays, then I was sent to, I was in Sydney for a while and then I was posted to Adelaide in 1960 and I, I was in charge of the collector branch there in Adelaide and we had two children there, Dave and Jane and that was another wonderful experience and then. I’ve got to say something about the air force, don’t let me forget.
AP: [unclear] of course.
DES: But, we had, Adelaide was a wonderful place to bring children up, I became a fan of the, I was a rugby person, rugby union, I became a fan of Australian rules when I first went to Adelaide I was, uhm, every Monday we had lunch with a group in the industry, in the life insurance industry and I didn’t have much to, I didn’t have much to talk about because I didn’t know anything about the Australian rules, for all they talked about were the teams that played at the weekend so I thought, oh, the best thing for me to do was to join those, if we were gonna have, [unclear], I’d better join them, better go out with them, so, they were members, a few of them were members of the Stirling football club, Aussie [?] rules club, and, no, The Double Blues, I can sing you the song if you want me to sing it, but they are The Double Blues and I became quite a rugby, an Australian rules fan, I’m not forgetting me rugby cause I’m a rugby person still but the, I used to, family, it was a family setup, we’d go out on a Saturday and we’d go, we’d have the radio would be on at the eleven o’clock match and then we’d go on, we’d have lunch or something then we’d go up to see the afternoon, the main game in the afternoon and then we’d finish there we’d go and buy some beer and some food and we'd watch the replay of that game and then we’d watch the replay of the main game in Melbourne, that was our Saturday but all the kids were all around at home that particular day and they’d come to the game in Adelaide, then they got so much free bottle they could pick up and the kids used to go and pick it up and make a lot of money on a Saturday [laughs] and but I became quite a fan of that we won the premiership four weeks running and that was my introduction to Australian rules, what a wonderful thing to be, but it’s a wonderful game and I love Australian rules and I do follow the Swans, uhm, but I don’t go out and see nowadays, I don’t go and see the rugby except on [unclear] occasions again I go and watch the rugby but. And in Tasmania I played rugby union and my [unclear] was the president of the North Tasmanian rugby union, we had three teams and I played in one of the teams and, uhm, that was in Launceston and, oh I forgot, New Zealand. I was in, I was two and a half years in New Zealand and I was there for the Springbok Tour in 1956 and I saw quite a bit of the football there, I used to go to the football in those days but New Zealand was another great place to be I was married there but I came back to Sydney, married Dorothy and then came back to New Zealand when she came back, she came back to work at the MLC for twelve months and, uh, and then we came back to, and I had a wonderful time because I have got relations there In New Zealand, so, I had places I had to go, so, I’ve seen every city in New Zealand except Gisborne and I don’t know why I’m saying that but, uhm, it was a wonderful place for me and it was a good place to, uhm, yeah it was a good, I was the, I joined the Kendala Lawn Tennis Club and I played tennis and I became the treasurer of the Kendala Lawn Tennis Club and so I fitted into the New Zealand mob, cause New Zealanders by and large as a group don’t like Australians, you know, but they do like, when they meet individually we’re all great, you know, we might talk about the Anzac business but they have really odd, that’s only my observation of course, they don’t’ really and I’m a, I regularly go to funerals in New Zealand at the moment but you know I’m a great fan of New Zealand and they as a group, they are jealous of Australians, I think, cause we’re so big.
AP: Ok, could be something.
DES: Yeah.
AP: Yeah, worked with a few kiwis, anyway. Uhm, yeah, you were gonna say something [unclear].
DES: I was gonna say, I do a lot of this, you know, I’m gonna plug in for the Bomber Command Commemorative Day and I’ve been involved with 463-467 Squadron Association, I’ve been involved with, uh, the Bomber Command Commemorative Day Foundation but that’s just a little aside. Uh, I’m doing this really because [clears throat] I owe the Air Force something. [sighs] When my, when memoires bring us [unclear] when I went away on the Air Force, I didn’t know anything, I was a real greenhorn, I was a green eighteen, didn’t know anything cause mum, you know, we were never allowed to play cards on a Sunday as I’d never, we never had cards in the house, mum didn’t, mum was a bit, she was an Anglican and uh, but she wasn’t, she wasn’t an [unclear] or anything either but a [unclear] drink she might have been, we never had but grog in the place, I tried to have [unclear] sherry sometimes [laughs] she went [mimics and astonished expression] when she heard, she was a great mother by, a great mother by the way but our mum, I’m trying to get the message over that I didn’t know a lot about the world until I went to the Air Force and the Air Force made me and I feel I gotta make some contribution to the Air Force and the same thing applies to the office MLC, that they to me were absolutely marvellous and I only retired from there about two years ago when I, I retired in ‘84, I went back to do a job for three months, to set up the database, helped set up the database in the MLC and now twenty five years later I’m still there with two, with another guy, it was five of us who stayed on for a while, but then, three had died and two of us are still left. But the MLC were, they, you know, I was on a, I tell you I was on a two and half percent mortgage for a time at the MLC, and they didn’t pay as much as probably some of the other companies but you know, I never, you felt you had a real, uhm, you know, they never sacked anybody except if you pinched money [laughs] and that, it remarks the office that didn’t happen but the MLC were wonderful to me, the Air Force and the MLC were wonderful to me and a lot of my friends are not jealous of me but they would have loved to have had a job like I’ve got, working with the MLC until I was just on ninety and, uhm, and I was doing every bit as good a job as I was as the people beside me that I was working, I was doing all computer work and this sort of thing. Oh, when I say computer work, it wasn’t on a main frame but it was, was all the stuff was all set up for us to do but I did some work on the telephones and that sort of thing but there was a lot of sixty plus, sixty five plus fellows that could, they some of the companies could, instead of putting them off, give them extra time, you know, keep them employed on a, say, five days, four days, three days, because, you know, I was bored stiff for a while when I first retired and when I got this [unclear], I was a bit two-minded about going back and doing this and that was one of the best decisions I have ever made and so there for that, this is not wartime setup but the MLC they could have paid when I was in the Air Force but I was getting more money in the Air Force than I was in the MLC [laughs] so I didn’t much from it but. Had I not been in the aircrew I would have probably cause we were paid extra in the aircrew, not a lot but we were paid extra. And, yeah, so that was, I have a lot to thank the Air Force for and that’s why I’m doing, I do this work now with volunteering with doing various things on Bomber Command Association and the 463 business, anything to do with the Air Force I like doing, you know, and I meet a lot of nice people.
AP: Good. Final question. Uhm, what do you think the legacy of Bomber Command is and how you want to see it remembered?
DES: Uh, well, I don’t think we will ever see another Bomber Command, in these days we will never see another Bomber Command because the days of the, uhm, what do we call them? The, you know, the things that fly on their own? You’ll never see another Lancaster bomber bombing places, you will see atom bombs or, not atom bombs, but these other sort of, what do you call the little?
AP: Drones. Yeah.
Des: The drones, you see, just here in one of our Squadrons here now, the 462 Squadron in Adelaide, they are mixed up in drones, you see, and so, you know, I’m very proud of, uhm, joining and taking part in Bomber Command. I think they did a magnificent job; they’d had a rough trot until 1942, when they weren’t hitting their targets, [unclear] as things got better, they did the, I’m fully happy with all what the Bomber Command did. I think the world of Air Marshal Harris and I get, I get annoyed sometimes when people who want to criticize him. You know, every year I get a message from Melbourne about Dresden [laughs], which, you know, which annoys me, more than anything else, because Dresden deserved what they got, you know, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, London, Liverpool, Coventry, they all got a similar treatment and I don’t think, you know, there was a lot about Dresden that, and I’m sorry I brought that up but we know that there were a lot of people operating in Dresden which were military, they were hidden, slightly like the people today are putting, uh, children and some of these in where real targets are and there were definitely a lot of things in Dresden that deserved to be bombed and, you know, we’re at war, we had to do our best to do that but I’m quite proud of what we did in Bomber Command and I’m very, I think I finished my speech at the reflections at the Bomber Command thing in Canberra a few years ago and I was very proud and fine with Bomber Command and but I don’t think we will see another Bomber Command type of people, there will never be a group like us ever again, so I don’t’ think there is any future, but it will be done by the drones, what it’s gotta be done I think will be done by the drones and then that creates a bit of loss of life to civilians but I’m afraid when you are fighting a war it’s just, you know, it’s just the way it goes. Uhm, I don’t know, of [unclear].
AP: How do you want to see it remembered?
DES: How will I remember it?
AP: Yeah, how do you want to see it remembered, how do you want Bomber Command to be remembered.
DES: Oh, [unclear], oh, I just like the people here today to and that’s what we’re in the business with the Bomber Command Commemoration Day Foundation, we want the children of our people to carry on and thank the people of, like the 5000 who died, not us particularly but, ah yeah, the 5000 Australian airmen we hope you’ll remember them, you might forget them, as I hope you won’t forget the Vietnam people and the people who went to Korea and the people who went to [unclear]. We do remember them and I pray that they remember them on Anzac Day, uhm, but I think that, uhm, I would like to and I am amazed at, uh, the young people today that we have come into their [unclear] up to about four or five years ago and never heard of some of the things of their fathers and grandfathers had done. And I’m amazed by the number of people who came out of the woodwork to find out more about now and it’s up to us now, cause we are talking here now, it’s up to us to make sure that we get the message out to the younger people that their living today because of the sacrifice that the people made, that died over in the Bomber Command raids and that sort of thing, that they would be, uhm, might be leading a different sort of life, that they, uh, if it hadn’t been for the actions and the deeds of those who fought in Bomber Command. But I’d like them to think nicely of us and I think most of them do. I get, not amazed, but I’m really interested and pray that today for instance I’ve been talking to people that were involved and had involvements, you know, a lot of them didn’t know to a certain extent what things we’d done and how we’d helped shorten the war and that sort of thing, cause we did really and I suppose dropping the atom bomb bought us to and I’ve got no objections to the atom bomb being dropped either, it probably saved a lot of lives too. It’s a terrible thing but once, if I can say again, I’m amazed at the young people that are so interested and yet there are some families that they are not interested at all, not interested at all and parts of families, including my own, now, some of mine are not that interested, my son is and but, and I think [unclear] but one of my grandchildren is very interested. It’s on the other side but that’s their decision, we probably haven’t got the message over to them which is [unclear] and I am disappointed when I speak to some of my friends who don’t want to talk about it, it’s not boasting about these [unclear], people should know that these sort of things went on, that these, because of their actions, they’ve had fifty, sixty, seventy years of freedom here, even in Australia which might never have happened if those people hadn’t made the sacrifices that they did and volunteered and don’t forget, all the aircrew in Australia were volunteers, there was no, no one was conscripted, they were all volunteers. Yeah.
AP: Oh well, that’s the end of my questions. So.
DES: Well, that’s good. Yeah.
AP: You’ve done very well.
DES: [unclear] How long was that?
AP: That was one hour forty two.
DES: That was alright, well, that was [unclear]
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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ASouthwellDE160424
Title
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Interview with Don Southwell
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:42:57 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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Adam Purcell
Date
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2016-04-24
Description
An account of the resource
Don Southwell grew up in Australia and worked for RKO Radio Pictures and as an Air Raid Precautions Warden before volunteering for the Royal Air Force. After training in Australia and Canada, he flew nine operations as a navigator with 463 Squadron from RAF Waddington. He describes crewing up and everyday military life at the station, and gives accounts of his operations and being chased by Me 262s over Hamburg. He remembers ferrying liberated prisoners of war as part of Operation Exodus.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
Canada
Czech Republic
Germany
Great Britain
New South Wales
Alberta--Edmonton
Czech Republic--Plzeň
England--Brighton
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Essen
Germany--Leipzig
New South Wales--Sydney
California--San Francisco
United States
California
Alberta
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Sussex
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Temporal Coverage
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1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
29 OTU
463 Squadron
467 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
crewing up
fear
Lancaster
Me 262
memorial
mess
military living conditions
military service conditions
navigator
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Waddington
RAF West Freugh
Stirling
superstition
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/171/2319/AtkinsAH1501.1.jpg
830d36dbb0e2983788b5232c59af5c29
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/171/2319/AAtkinsA151121.1.mp3
a335b230e07e85171cab65215eb6d2d2
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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Atkins, Arthur
A H Atkins
Description
An account of the resource
24 items. An oral history interview with Arthur Atkins DFC (d. 2022, Royal Australian Air Force), his logbook and 23 photographs. Arthur Atkins grew up in Melbourne, Australia and joined the RAAF. After training he flew 32 operations as a pilot with 625 Squadron from RAF Kelstern.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Arthur Atkins and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-01-05
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Atkins, A
Conforms To
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Pending additional content
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AP: So this interview for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive is with Arthur Atkins, a 625 squadron Lancaster pilot during the Second World War. The interview is taking place at Arthur’s house in Kew in Melbourne. My name’s Adam Purcell. It’s the 21st of November 2015. Arthur we’ll start from the beginning if you don’t mind.
AA: Right.
AP: Tell us something of your early life, what you were doing growing up, and what you did before the war.
AA: Yeah well I was born at 212 Prospect Hill Road in, Prospect Hill Road oh what was the suburb? Surrey Hills, Surrey Hills. Then we moved to Canterbury when I was about eight or nine and I attended the Canterbury state school up to grade six. Then the equivalent of grade seven I started Scotch College. I was there for six years and I mainly concentrated on business subjects because that’s what I thought I would be going into and I did. I worked in an insurance company for about three or four years. I didn’t do any flying then but I, when I was a small boy and I was in the Cubs, you know, the junior Boy Scouts, they, one Saturday afternoon, we went down to the old airfield on Coode Island and I had my first flight in an aeroplane at about the age of nine, I should think. Eight or nine. Two cubs in the one cockpit. I don’t know who sat on whose knee. I can’t remember that but we were both in the cockpit half standing looking out over each side I should imagine but that was my first experience of flying and then I entered the Sun News Pictorial’s competition for someone most likely to fly, be able to fly an aeroplane and they’d get a free instruction to pilot licence but I didn’t, I didn’t win. There was, I think there was about a hundred people went for it and I was just one of them. I flew the aeroplane, an old Avro Avian I think it was. Single engine thing. I flew it for a little while because I’d flown model planes a lot and I knew exactly what it should do. I thought I did alright but no, I didn’t win it but then in my last year at Scotch I went in, tried to get in to the Point Cook pilot’s training system. I think there was about twenty vacancies or something and I think there was about two thousand people volunteered for it so I didn’t get that one either. However, when the war broke out I got in to the army militia I think in the middle of 1944. Well, that was alright. I didn’t mind it. September ‘44 it was and I had three months. September, October, November. I decided I’d get out so one day when I was on leave I called in to the recruiting office in Russell Street, for the Air Force that is, and they immediately signed me up. Gave me a piece of paper showing that I was a member of the RAAF and my rank was AC2. Aircraftman class 2. And then I had to attend about three times a week at various places to fit me for going into the initial training school. Mathematics and so on. Anyway, I got in and I, that was in nineteen, but the thing was going on to the reserve where I had to do these exercises and so on, lectures, about a fortnight before Pearl Harbour. This. About two weeks before that and the date of that is, December the 7th. I think it was about November the 20th or something that I enlisted in the Air Force. Just as well because I wouldn’t have been able to get out of the, the army as easily as I did and I was unfortunately of course it was mid-winter at Somers. Coldest place I’ve been in my life and some people used to wear their pyjamas under everything else because they only gave us very sort of flimsy one-piece overalls to wear in the midwinter at Somers. By September things were looking up a bit and I finished the course then and they called me in to tell me where I’d be going to next as everyone had depending on your results and they said, ‘We want to make you a navigator,’ because I was very good at mathematics at that stage and I was also a qualified accountant at that stage but I said, ‘No. I don’t want to be a navigator. I want to fly the aeroplanes. Thanks.’ And they said, ‘Well, you came top of your course.’ Course number 28 at Somers. ‘So you actually have a choice of what you’re going to do.’ They didn’t tell me that at first. Only when I objected to being a navigator. And they said well seeing you came top you can choose to train as a pilot and I went up to Benalla and flew Tiger Moths. I was there for two or three months. It’s all there in the logbook but Benalla was good fun flying the Tigers. I never broke one or landed one badly or anything like that and I came out of that alright and they sent me then after about three months, around about Christmastime ’44, ‘44 I suppose it would have been. No, no, would have been Christmas, Christmas ‘43 because I got to England in, in ‘43. Yeah, it would have been ’42. Yeah. Christmas ‘42 would have been the date I finished at Benalla and went to Mallala, South Australia about forty miles north of Adelaide. Looked like the desert and felt like it. I think it was a hundred and eight degrees for three or four days on one occasion and the beds inside the iron huts were that hot you couldn’t sit on the iron bedsteads because they were too hot to be comfortable. But anyway that was, it was quite good. I was there for, until about April or May. Mallala, South Australia, yeah, I’ll put my glasses on. I can read what I’ve written. Yeah. Yeah so I left Mallala on the, in April ‘43 and went to Ascot Vale showgrounds and I was there, only there for two or three weeks with, and fortunately I had a friend I was with, a fella named David Browne and we used to just wander around the city for a while doing nothing just waiting for something to happen and then finally in May, about the middle of April, 25th of April I was sent to Point Cook to do a course on blind approach. That is flying the beam in to land and had quite a bit of other, other work too. In fact, for about ten days I was in charge of the control tower at Point Cook. Not that any accidents ever happened so I wasn’t tested there. I just looked out the window and talked to the, the blokes from the fire cart and the ambulance from down below the control tower and I remember saying, ‘What happens if something goes wrong? What am I supposed to do?’ They said, ‘Send a signal.’ ‘Signal?’ I said. ‘What’s a signal?’ Apparently they meant send some sort of a telegram to, to someone or other. The boss of the group, of that particular group. Anyway, that only lasted a little while and then I was on flying there on Oxfords. Airspeed Oxfords. Mostly under the hood, you know, blind flying on the beam. After that I went to Bradfield Park in Sydney just prior to catching a boat to San Francisco and they put us on a, an American, converted to troopship so a small, sort of, it had been a coastal [trader] I think or something like that. Proper steam steamship called the Mount Vernon which was something to do with George Washington’s home town or something like that and we headed out across towards New Zealand. I was seasick but my friend David Browne wasn’t. I was a bit envious of him. He could still eat these rather sickly, sickly looking thick drinks that he used to get from the canteen while I was chuntering out over the rail. And we got in, finally we got in to New Zealand on the North Island. Auckland. And that was quite interesting. We got off the ship. We were allowed to stay to see New Zealand in four hours so we did that and two or three, there was a group of two or three of us just walking along in Auckland somewhere and we got picked up by a couple of girls who said, ‘Come home and have dinner with us.’ You know, and being generous to the troops so we followed them and went home and spoke to all their family and had a very nice dinner, the three of us, for nothing, you know, just because we happened to be in navy blue uniforms and the New Zealanders had the grey blue uniform of the RAF. But a funny thing happened. While we were just lolling around after dinner the fiancé or boyfriend of one of the girls arrived at the front door and everyone was a little bit embarrassed about that, picking up strange troops, you know, foreign troops, on in the street. So we said, ‘Oh well, we’re off now anyway. Thank you very much,’ we went back to the boat but the bloke who came to the front door was wearing a New Zealand Air Force uniform. He’d been on some island, I think, just north of New Zealand somewhere on duty and he’d just got some leave to come back to Auckland. Anyway, we got back on the boat and then the next thing we knew we’d, we were pulling into San Francisco harbour and sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge escorted in the last part of the trip to there by a blimp and we also saw a submarine. And there was a bloke working on a ship unloading it or loading it. An American ship alongside where we were and a couple of blokes sang out to him, ‘What are you doing sport?’ or something like that. He said, ‘Go home limey.’ [laughs] He thought we were British. He’d probably never heard of Australia. And while we were, we had about a month in America which was one of the most delightful times of my whole life because the Americans were very generous at handing out food, lifts here and there. We went down to New York on one occasion and we had a weekend in New York, in New York in 1943 which not many people from Australia ever experienced. And up, up the, up all the skyscrapers, the Empire State, and we went around to the theatre where the Rockets were dancing around the stage, about a dozen of them, high kicking on the stage. That that was sort of interesting. But then we, we found out that we could go in to any of the night clubs and just have a drink at the bar, and pay for it but you couldn’t sit down. You didn’t have to pay fifty dollars like the Yanks had to, to go in and sit down at a table. We could just go in and stand at the, at the bar and have a drink and watch what was going on and at one stage we were in the Astor Roof Nightclub and the band leader who was Harry, someone or other. Betty Grable, his girlfriend or wife, was sitting in the front row near the band. We were in the table a bit further back. We’d been, we were standing at the bar, a couple of friends and myself, air force people, and this bloke came over and said, ‘Would you like to sit at our table.’ I think there must have been just the two of us by that stage. One of them had gone off somewhere else and I said, ‘Yeah, that’s alright,’ and he sat us down at a table. He had his wife and two women. Married women probably. And we made up a nice party of six people all at his expense. Very good. Then we went back to his hotel afterwards and had a few whiskies I think, if I remember rightly. But that was how the Americans were with us. They asked some funny questions like, ‘Where did you learn to speak English?’ at times. I think they thought we came from Austria or something. Confused Austria with Australia. So, they didn’t know much about Australia, the Americans but we had, in New York, we had all the, comforts like free food, free breakfasts and so on that they had. Then a little later we got on to the Queen Elizabeth which was to take us to England or Scotland actually and it set off and I think there was a half a dozen of us together got into the, into the cabin which was allocated to us. Seven of us got into the cabin but there were only four, four, four bunks in it but fortunately I was one of the early ones getting in. I got one of the bunks. The last man in got the floor. Four days. The Queen Elizabeth mark one it was of course at that stage zigzagged all the way across the Pacific, the, sorry, the Atlantic to Scotland, one way, alternate turning movements you know with not all exactly the same but, so that was to fool any submarines that were watching and I think they, they said the speed they were doing at one stage was forty knots, the Queen Elizabeth. Well that’s about what forty five miles an hour or something like that. Not bad for a big boat like that. Anyway, nothing happened to us. We didn’t even see any submarines. Oh but yes that boat we travelled to in New Zealand and San Francisco on got sunk about three trips later by a Japanese torpedo so I’m lucky to be here. Anyway, the boat pulled in and then we went down to Brighton on the train. The same day the boat pulled in in the morning we got, all climbed on a train and went straight to Brighton in Sussex on the south coast. That was a beautiful time too. I liked Brighton. I could have stayed there for years but they only left us there for weeks and sent us to an RAF station at Andover. There wasn’t much flying going on there. I didn’t notice any. We were only there for, what, a couple of weeks doing ground subjects. Learning the way the RAF worked but the one thing I did notice we had a very nice room to sleep in and we had, we were all sergeants then by the way. The RAF conditions were way and above anything the Australian Air Force had ever thought of and you know we had people to clean the huts, sweep the floors out, make the beds and it was just like officers would have got in Australia if they were lucky and then and weren’t living in New Guinea or something like that but that was okay and then the next move was to Greenham Common where we were once again flying Airspeed Oxfords and an interesting thing happened the first day we were there. We got there in the afternoon and a couple of us, a couple of other fellas and myself walked out across the airfield the airfield a bit. Down one end of it where they, and they weren’t flying at the time we walked there. Must have been late in the afternoon. Anyway, we got to the runway and there was a big black patch about fifty or sixty feet across and we went and had a look at the black patch and we could see someone’s braces ends here and a bit of red meat there and so on. Someone had crashed an Oxford the night before and had burned out and they hadn’t scraped everything off the runway. They’d got most of him but they probably put a few bricks in the coffin because I was detailed because my name started with A and I was just taken off the top of the list and told, ‘You’re going to carry this coffin and load it on the train this morning.’ And that was my introduction to RAF flying, carrying what remained of the pilot to the local railway station where we shoved it into the guards van and said, ‘Goodbye Sport,’ and that was it. After that there was no accidents that I can remember at Greenham Common. We were flying, practicing flying on Oxfords and I got a, above average rating for flying Oxfords there because I’d had all that practice flying them at Point Cook. A bit unfair but I didn’t knock it back but then we went to a little place from Greenham to an airfield called Long Newnton. Long Newnton N E W N T O N. A pilots’ advanced flying unit. Well so was Greenham Common. That was 15 PAFU. They moved out, moved them all out because the Americans wanted somewhere to land, to store their invasion gliders so they shifted us from Greenham Common to Long Newnton and I remember we all got loaded into a bus or train or something and got out at the local station or was dumped off at the airfield at Long Newnton. Of course we didn’t hang around there. We thought we’d wander down and have a beer at the local pub. It wasn’t very far from the airfield. We walked in to the pub in the Cotswolds it was. The Cotswolds. And as we, we went into the bar and there was a couple of blokes in there. They must have been farmers. They were wearing just ordinary clothes which was a bit unusual in England at that time to find ordinary civilians in odd little clubs, they were mostly in uniform of some sort. And one of them said to me, ‘What do you think of the Cotswolds?’ I said, ‘Cotswolds? Is that where we are?’ And we were in the Cotswolds. I’d heard of them of course. I knew almost as much about the geography of England as I did of Victoria because I’d, you know, been buying books when I was a kid. All English comics and so on and a book called “Modern Boy” or something which consisted mostly of aeroplanes and steam trains and so on and we found it was quite a pleasant place, Long Newnton and we just continued to fly our Airspeed Oxfords there and train on them but we had one bad experience. We had to do night flying. Night, night cross-countries. A triangular course. You’d fly north, then northwest, then south west and bring yourself back to the, to the base. Navigating in the dark. Just flying on instruments and if you missed, missed one of the beacons, they had beacons were flashing lights like A for one of, one of the turning points and perhaps F or something for the next turning points. You had to know your Morse code so you knew where you were and then you knew where you were and one of our blokes didn’t come back. You know, it was all at night. Black as night. And England was black as pitch most of the places except for the odd airfields and the beacons, air force beacons like that. I think they were red but I can’t quite remember. There were two types. There was red beacons and white beacons and we were flying on the, I think the red beacons but he didn’t come back and we were just waiting around. Waited around for about another hour or so and someone came out and said, ‘You can all go home now. We’re cancelling the, the, the rest of the exercise tonight. That bloke’s crashed his Oxford and killed himself and we won’t be doing any more flying tonight.’ But it didn’t stop all the flying the next day. But after we’d spent a fair bit of time flying Oxfords we were put on to Wellingtons at um where was it? Lichfield, in the Midlands. 27 OTU. We never flew them. They, some, they split this particular group I was in into two parts. One of them, one part stayed at Lichfield and did all the practising on Wellingtons and the rest and the other half of the group did the Wellington flying at a place called Church Broughton. Church Broughton. And that was where I had my experience with one engine and when we were doing practicing circuits and bumps on approaches on one engine. Then you’d fire both of them up together and not actually land. Just practicing flying around on the one engine on the port engine. The starboard engine was, let me see, no, I think we had to, yeah, we had to power off on the port engine and just use the starboard engine for getting around. On the Wellington you weren’t supposed to fly against the good engine because, I don’t know, there was some reason for it. The Wellington didn’t have enough spare [?] in it to just fly very well on one engine and if you flew against the good engine you could be giving yourself a bit of bother. You mightn’t be able to control it. So, when the starboard engine went out and I was doing a left hand circuit as usual I didn’t quite know what to do and because, according to the rules we should have done a very big circuit around to starboard and landed and done a clockwise circuit. It was always anti-clockwise normal landing circuits in the RAF except on special occasions when the airfield mightn’t have suited a clock, an anti-clockwise approach. After that, well I was on Halifaxes. Halifaxes. Yeah, I haven’t got a picture of one of those here. They, they were quite good. We were flying Halifaxes for a month and, oh yes because I, with this engine off getting back to the Wellington with the crook starboard engine it was still giving some half power but there were sparks and things and black smoke coming out the back of it from somewhere and it had it there. We knew the engine had had it but I just, because it was giving us a little bit of power, I kept going on the anti-clockwise circuit and landed. Did a quite good landing too. Smooth landing but when we came to a stop on the runway and I tried to fire the engines up to taxi back to our parking spot I couldn’t do that. It just kept going around in circuits on the, on the good engine so we had to, we were all fitted with radio of course so I called up the control tower and said, ‘Send us out a tractor. You’re going to have to drag us in. We can’t taxi,’ and I got into trouble for not bailing the crew out which I’d never heard of them doing just because they had lost an engine and what else didn’t I do right? Oh I should have feathered the, feathered the propeller on the starboard engine. All good experience and I said, ‘Well it was still giving me a bit of power so I used it to pull us around into, into the landing, landing position.’ They said, ‘Oh that’s no good. You should have, you should have bailed the crew out and feathered the engine.’ Well I’d never had those instructions. I didn’t argue after that because he was, Australian he was the flight commander. He was a sour puss, I noticed, always. He got sourer than ever when I came back next day and he found the engine had to be changed but at least he didn’t have to change the bloody Wellington and he didn’t have to change the crew. They, we wouldn’t if I had bailed them out by the time they all got out I don’t think all their parachutes would have held them, held them up off, would have opened quickly enough to save them but that didn’t oh worry him. He just didn’t like, didn’t like the rest of us I think for coming in safely and not feathering one engine but I’ve read a lot of stories about Wellingtons trying to land on one engine and about fifty percent of them crashed and killed the crew. It’s probably through the wrong engine going or something like that. I don’t know. Anyway, after that we were on the Halifaxes. They were alright but we had a few worrying moments. The Halifax had four engines of course and there were a lot of Halifax squadrons flying at that time but they were mostly flying on the radial engine Halifaxes. What, we were training on the ones that had been rejected for operations and had the old early model Merlin V12 engines, you know and they had various faults. The Halifax used to have a bad habit of swinging to the left when you landed it. I was warned about that. Then I found out afterwards that they ran out of brakes. If you did, if you did a fair bit of taxiing you found you couldn’t, your brakes had ran out of air or vacuum or something. I don’t know whether they were vacuum brakes or air brakes but the brakes didn’t work if you’d run out of certain, certain distance. Anyway, the first landing I did in a Halifax, they were still using it for bombing here and there, the first landing I did in a Halifax I did a very smooth landing. I always did smooth landings and I was very pleased with myself. We just coasted down the runway just about, you know, ready to turn off in a cross runway and back to the parking area and suddenly the Halifax, I was quite relaxed, suddenly it swung around to the left like I’d been warned about, ‘Don’t let it swing on you.’ Well, I took that with a grain of salt and didn’t take a great deal of notice but fortunately, the, er the instructor who’d actually had done a couple of circuits with me on this practising single engine flying had got out and he wasn’t watching us. He saw us come in to land and he thought that was very good, got on his bike and rode off to the mess and then by the time the, the Halifax swung around to the left and did a circle, a half a circle on the grass he was in the mess on his pushbike, with his pushbike and no one in the control tower said a word to us about it afterwards. Anyway, it swung so far we went down the runaway and swung right around and was facing the way we came, on the grass. It swung to the left. The, I think the Lancasters had a, a tendency to swing to the right. You had to, when you, when you flew a Lancaster with the four throttles in your hand you had to push one further forward to, to stop the thing turning or running off the runway. When you were taking off that was. They were alright when you were landing her but they had a little tendency when you put the full power on to go one way or the other so you had the four throttles in one hand. You pushed one throttle ahead of the other. I don’t know whether it was the little finger or the first finger. I think the Lancaster tended to swing to the right. Well if it did you’d have to put a bit more power on the, on the outer, starboard outer engine to prevent that swing. But anyway, I, I just taxied the Halifax which was on the grass facing the way we’d come in, taxied on, got it back on the runway, took it down to where we parked it, got the truck back to the or our bikes probably at that stage, bikes back to the mess and nothing was said by anyone. Not even flying control. They hadn’t seen it and the instructor hadn’t seen it so we didn’t say anything to anyone about it but it was good experience though and I never did it again. I landed Halifaxes practically every day for the next month but I never swung off the runway again. I was watching it. You couldn’t relax until the thing had stopped, stopped rolling at your, at your parking spot. Then we went to a place called, I was commissioned by that time. I, I started off as a flight sergeant at, on the Halifaxes at, at Blyton which is in Lincolnshire and I was a sergeant pilot for a couple of weeks and then I was, I went to London and got my uniform as a pilot officer and lived in the officers’ mess which was not, nothing very special but it was better than, better than the sergeants’ mess but not much. Not much better but I liked that and I didn’t have to hand in my old uniform either. I’ve still got it. I think it’s in a trunk upstairs in the roof, roof space with a couple of officers’ uniforms. But I did alright with Halifaxes and the next move was to Lancasters at what was known as Number 1 Lancaster Finishing School at, at, Hemswell, Hemswell in Lincolnshire and we had about a fortnight there I think at Hemswell and then we were given a bit of a run-around at various holding units for a couple of days until we were, we’d finished our ten-day course at at Hemswell. Eleven days to be precise. Number 1 Lancaster Finishing School. No problems there at all. I’d had my problems with the Halifax and the Wellington. Hemswell was a piece of cake until we got to our operational station called erm Kelstern. I should remember that. It’s on the front of the house. Kelstern. And we were immediately given leave to go to London. You know, they probably had their hands full at the time. It was a busy station so we had a week in London on leave. Of course all this other stuff we had, weeks in London or the countryside and I went, used to get a ticket to Scotland, the northernmost railway station in Scotland so I could go anywhere between Lincolnshire or wherever I was. I wasn’t necessarily even in Lincolnshire. I could have been in the Midlands and I would just get a train. I think it was third class while I was a sergeant and first class when I was a pilot officer but I normally travelled third class because I found there were more interesting people to talk to in third class than in first class on those trains. And, um where was I? Oh yes when we finished our London, London leave on Kelstern which was 625 squadron they sent me up on a flying, on a, just a flight around the local neighbourhood to get used to the area and the approach to landing and so on. In a Lancaster of course because I was fully qualified Lancaster pilot by that time. Ten days at the Number 1 Lancaster Finishing School. Ten days instruction on Lancasters and low and behold we were just flying around the countryside admiring the scenery and then the flight engineer says to me. ‘The starboard outer engine is overheating.’ Cheers. [laughs] I’d learned my lesson so I just said, ‘Well feather the engine. Feather the prop. Turn it off and feather it.’ So we continued our flying on three engines, two on the left side and one on the starboard side and I had flown them on three engines. In fact I’d flown them at LFS on two engines and I knew they handled perfectly well on three engines so I didn’t hesitate to feather the, to shut that starboard engine down and feather the props so we just landed and I can remember the Lanc flew almost exactly the same on three engines, two on one side and one on the other, you know, on the approach to the strip, to the runway and just did a normal landing, and we just taxied it on the two inner engines to its parking spot and I, I said to the flight sergeant in charge, ‘You’d better have a look at that engine. It’s not working.’ He said, ‘Ok.’ The next day I went out to see how he’d got on with it and he said, ‘Oh there was nothing wrong with the engine. It was just the sender on the, and it wasn’t overheating it was just a sender on the, on the engine itself was faulty and it was sending out the wrong message to the gauge on the, the, um flight engineers panel.’ He had, he had the gauges in front of him. He could, he used to watch. And then I knew I’d got on to a good aeroplane. A couple of days later we were on our first operation because we’d had our leave. It didn’t take long for them to put us on to ops and about half of our crew flew with the remains of another crew piloted by a bloke called Flight Officer Slade and flight officer is not an RAF rank. It’s an American Air Force rank and he was an American and he wore a khaki uniform, the American flying uniform and when he was around in the mess or something he had on the American officer’s uniform. A flight officer, an American flight officer, was the equivalent of a pilot officer in the RAF. But that, that trip, oh when we were flying Wellingtons of course we did a lot of night flying too and we did fly over, over France one night with a load of leaflets and this was in the Wellington and that was all we carried. We had two cans. Two small bomb container cans which were about six foot long by eighteen inches high and wide packed tight with leaflets and when you got to the correct spot the bomb aimer who was down in the nose pressed the right button and the bottom of the canister after he’d opened the bomb doors of course and all the leaflets fluttered down below. Well, for some reason or other he had a nervous attack just before he, he had to release the leaflets over Chartres was the town about forty miles south, southwest of France. Anyway, we got to Chartres alright or the bomb aimer reckoned we were over Chartres so he pressed the button and in his haste he pressed the wrong button and this great canister, six foot long canister packed tight with leaflets hanging on a bomb hook disappeared from the aeroplane and went down with all its leaflets packed tight. When we got back they wanted to know where the, where the other canister was. I mean it could have killed someone, that canister, if it had landed on someone or put a big hole in the roof of the Chartres cathedral. I believe they have a cathedral in Chartres but we never heard any more about that apart from the bombing, bombing leader quizzing the, our bomb aimer as to why he’d just come back with one empty container and he had to explain what had happened. One of the reasons it might have happened because when we were crossing just before we were crossing the French coast heading for Chartres, this was at night of course, someone in the crew said, ‘There’s a searchlight on us.’ Well of course that rattled everyone including the bomb aimer. Searchlights. And after a while we found the searchlight was following us. Well searchlights are not mobile. Not that mobile.
AP: [not that fast] anyway.
AA: And I found someone had knocked the switch. It could have been me. It could have been anyone else on the crew. It could have been the ground staff left it switched on and knocked the switch that turned the landing lights on. Well, in the Wellington the landing light normally, not being used, points straight down. When you want to use it you pull a lever and it swings the landing light forward on a hinge so that it points forward where you’re going to land. We never used it, we never used landing lights all the time, the RAF weren’t using them at the time because they had such good flare paths. Electric flare paths. Anyway, this light followed us and it wasn’t until we were well over the coast, flying over German occupied France with this bright light shining straight down and all I can think was the Germans must have looked at that and said, ‘Oh well that’s someone practicing. It wouldn’t be a foreign plane you know, flying with a light like, on like that,’ so they didn’t bother sending anyone up to investigate. I was lucky. Every now and again someone got shot down on those exploits. They called them nickels. N I C K E L S. Nickels. Dropping leaflets and practically everyone had to do a nickel as part of their course on the Wellingtons so we did ours. Anyway, we, he got the right switch for the second one, he didn’t drop that. He just opened the bottom and all the leaflets went flutter, flutter, flutter down to, down to the cathedral underneath, hopefully. Or just the town of Chartres, I don’t know where they went. Might have all gone down on someone’s farm. That was a bit nerve-wracking especially when we found the searchlight was on us. The next time I found a searchlight was on us when we were bombing um a town in Germany. It was the, er, near Frankfurt, just a little town southwest of Frankfurt where there was a General Motors factory. General Motors, USA. Opel. It was just described as an Opel factory which was still a General Motors subsidiary at that, well it was had been a subsidiary of German motors for some time. The Opels. Opel cars. And we had to do a turn on a town south, south of Frankfurt. It turned out to be a fairly hot town because approaching this town of, let’s see. I’ll just um [shuffling of papers] yeah I started my tour on Bomber Command in, in July. On the 4th of July, that was my first, with Flight Officer Slade. There, just trying to work oh Russelsheim. The Opel works at Russelsheim. That’s where the factory was and we had a turning point of probably about sixty or eighty miles south of Rüsselsheim. We were flying eastward. Basically directly east and then we had to turn north and fly north to Rüsselsheim. That’s right. Rüsselsheim and the turning point was over a town called Mannheim. Now, it was a stupid place to have a turning point because that had been bombed quite a few times and it was full of anti-aircraft guns and searchlights and we could see the searchlights and we could see anti-aircraft fire bursting in front of us as we approached, approached Mannheim and it wasn’t very long before we got picked up by a blue tinged searchlight, radar controlled from what we were told. We’d heard about these blue tinged searchlights, blue lights, and they were directly controlled by radar from the ground and if the radar picked up a Lancaster flying they could just about pinpoint it with the searchlights but they would have needed about five, about five hundred radar controllers down below to pick up every one but they used to pick out one and have a go at it. Well, instead of everything being black we got his blinding light lighting up the whole plane. I could hardly see the instruments because I was blinded. I had, you know, flying through the night to get your night vision then suddenly a thousand candle power light’s shining in your face practically and I remember thinking, ‘Jesus I’ve done all this training and now I’m going to be killed,’ I thought to myself. I pushed the stick forward fortunately and she dived quickly and I immediately lost the blue tinged searchlights. You see, when they, when they put that blue tinged light had about another half a dozen focussed on you. They could see the blue light and they, they, we had about six searchlights altogether lighting us up but we lost the light. Immediately black as pitch. And we went into a manoeuvre called the corkscrew and you sort of fly in a down to your left. Then when you are half way down to where you’re going you turn to the right and keep diving. You’re diving. You’re going very fast and then when you get down over to the right you swing it to the left and come up again and do two or three of those. Well, we were basically told that they were, you know, to evade, avoid if you get a fighter behind you if you get the words from the rear gunner, ‘There’s a fighter on you. Go into a corkscrew,’ at night and mostly we flew at night anyway. Half the time we flew at night and half the time I flew in daylight. That was, that was a different thing altogether but and you could go into the corkscrew. That was all I could think to do and I looked at the instrument panel, the airspeed indicator, just as we got near the bottom of where I was going to pull out and I think I was doing four hundred miles an hour. The top diving speed of a Lancaster at that time was three hundred and sixty miles an hour. So we were doing four hundred miles an hour. Actually, it was calibrated in knots. I’ve converted it to miles an hour and we had a full bomb load on. Rüsselheim, yeah we had a four thousand pound bomb on. That’s the high explosive one. What did they call that? They used to have a nickname for that one. Blockbuster or something like that and I don’t know what the other ones were but um oh yes we had just one high explosive bomb, one four thousand and the rest were incendiaries. It made a nasty mess if it landed on you. Anyway, it was a total of, oh I don’t know what it would be, about six or seven thousand pounds sitting underneath us so I was very careful to pull out gently from the bottom of the dive. I didn’t want to leave the wings behind which could have happened to us if you did it quickly. I think on that same raid I saw a picture of a Lancaster that came back with, with both of its ailerons useless. He’d dived too fast and pulled out to fast like the same thing I did but I pulled out fairly gently. I knew quite a bit about flying aeroplanes theoretically as well as, as well as practically and I knew you couldn’t pull out quickly ‘cause I knew what could happen but it didn’t so we just carried on and bombed the, bombed the General Motors plant and then came home again. That was one of the most interesting ones. Another interesting trip I did much later though. We did, did this trip out over the Bay of Biscay. There was an estuary, the Gironde Estuary not far from the, what would have been the Spanish border of Spain and, and the Bay of Biscay, French coast but anyway this Gironde Estuary, oh there’s some wineries up there, up the Gironde. Someone heard I’d bombed near the wineries. He said, ‘Well you’re lucky you didn’t bomb the wineries because I wouldn’t be speaking to you if you’d spoilt my, spilt my wine.’ But we didn’t. We flew from Kelstern almost due south right down to the south coast, then turned right, south, just before the south coast and flew down out to Lands End and at that stage flying to Lands End we took it down to fifty feet going over Lands End and we flew all the way around out into the Atlantic at fifty feet. Fortunately, it was a very fine day and not much wind and round in a big wide circle fifty feet all the way. I think we had four hundred Lancasters on that one. Something like that. And we had an escort though to fly over the Bay of Biscay, escorted of long range Mosquitos, fighters, in case some German type decided to have a go at us but, no one, no one showed up because we were flying at fifty feet. That was to be under the German radar of course and they never spotted us till us we were over, over the river and then they didn’t have time to get, get there and do anything. We’d gone by the time they woke up to what happened but I remember we did this two days running. We did it was the same, same town almost, almost the same spot in the Gironde Estuary. We came hammering over the Bay of Biscay at fifty feet. As we got to the coast we had to rise up a bit because there was about a thirty foot lump of hillocks and trees and stuff there so we went up a bit and as we crossed the beach I looked down and there was an old horse. You could see it was an old horse because we were only fifty or thirty feet from him looking down. It was slightly to my left just plodding along. An old draft horse it was and the driver was sitting up on the cart. He didn’t look up and the horse didn’t look up. No one, neither of them looked up. We just shot over the top of them at about thirty feet above them because they had come up on this slight rise, this twenty foot rise from the, from the sand where the estuary started and I don’t know what happened to them afterwards. We didn’t drop anything or do anything nasty to them. They were probably French anyway. Not that that would have stopped me if I’d, if I’d had to bomb them but we didn’t have to bomb them. We just went along the estuary until we found the fuel oil tanks that we were going to do a bit of damage to. They were, they were used from time to time by submarines that’d sail up this estuary at night and fill up there. We were, this flight was in daylight of course. Beautiful day. No wind hardly. Blue skies. Not a cloud in the sky. A delightful day. I think I had my twenty sixth birthday that day so I got a nice birthday present. A nice trip to southern of France to the Gironde Estuary at fifty feet over the Bay of Biscay and we dropped bombs on it and I’ve got photographs of the, of the target area with a ship lying on its side. It wouldn’t have been our bomb because it was someone in front of me rolled the ship over with a bomb. He was supposed to bomb the tanks but he might have just bombed the ship instead. Now that was, that was August the 5th. I know that because it was my birthday the next day. No. August the 4th that’s right. August the 5th was my birthday. The second, the next day we, we did exactly the same route. Flew down to the south coast of England, turned right, almost to the south coast, and went down through Somerset and all those places to Lands End and off the end of Lands End at fifty feet, gradually taking it down to fifty feet as we got near Lands End. And this was the second day and we were all going hell for leather towards the er the Gironde Estuary as usual at a little town call Pauillac. P A U I L L A C. Pauillac. This was the second day and they were both, both in Pauillac but slightly different positions in Pauillac and we had ten thousand pounds of bombs on board approximately. Ten thousand five hundred pounds of bombs carrying on that one and it took us seven hours fifty five minutes altogether but as we were approaching the estuary out over the bay the rear gunner called up, ‘Someone’s going in.’ I looked around and there was a great splash of water still hanging in the air. One of the Lancs had dived into the, into the water but what had happened he’d collided with one of his friends from the same squadron. They were showing how close they could fly together which was the last thing they ever did. One of them survived but one didn’t. Anyway, on that, that, that occasion we, we didn’t go back to Kelstern because there was something wrong with the weather by the time we’d gone. To have two bright, sunny days over England in a row was a bit unusual and it was just the usual thing you know. It had clouded over or something. This was August. Well August can be cloudy or it can be very nice in England. Yeah but anyway it was too cloudy or foggy or something to land there so we landed at a different airfield, a place called Gamston. Gamston. That was a Wellington training base I think, at the time. Gamston. So they had a nice, nice long runway. One interesting thing happened with that. We had to just fly back to our base next door. We just had one night there sitting in chairs, sleeping in chairs, in the mess. Well the next day we returned, the weather cleared at Kelstern. Took us fifteen minutes to get from Gamston in the Midlands, more or less, to Kelstern in Lincolnshire and I remember taking off. I didn’t think, didn’t think of it at the time but we didn’t need to take off like we had nine thousand pounds of bombs on board at all. You know, we had very little fuel. See, that trip was a fairly long trip. Took us almost eight hours in the air and we didn’t have much petrol left when we got back and they didn’t fill it up. They said, ‘Oh you’ve got enough fuel to get back to’ [Gamston], or to ‘Kelstern alright.’ I just took off as usual and as usual was I usually took off in a Lancaster with about fifteen thousand pounds of bombs on it something like that and about two thousand gallons of petrol which I carried on a short trip and I just opened the throttles up and she lifted off, off the ground in about two hundred yards or less, a hundred and seventy, a hundred and eighty yards or something. Just floated up in to the air. I realised then that I didn’t need to open it up to full bore really. I could have probably opened up and we’d never been trained to take off a Lancaster when it was a light load. You were always shown how to take off in a Lancaster as fast as possible with the load that you’d got but of course I flew it a few times with only a light load and I knew what I was doing but the excitement of the trip and seeing the Lancasters behind us causing a great splash in the Bay of Biscay had changed, took my mind off what I was doing I suppose but up she went and we were home in about ten minutes or fifteen minutes I put down here I think. Fifteen minutes trip back to Kelstern. That includes landing it too. And that was about halfway through my tour but we kept going various places. Le Havre, that’s right on the French coast when they, they were trying to get Germans out of the forts that they had or buildings they had taken over in Le Havre which is on the coast of France opposite England. We bombed them in daylight of course. Half of my trips were in daylight. Sixteen. I did thirty two altogether. I did one more than I really needed to so sixteen night and fifteen day or something like that and I used to like the daylight ones because you’d look up and you’d see about two hundred spitfires and about a hundred something else, American fighters, sitting above you, about one or two thousand feet just above where you were flying so we mostly did our, our operations at about fifteen thousand feet. Frankfurt for instance. We did that at about seventeen thousand eight hundred feet. That was a good one. I liked Frankfurt. That was the night one of my best friends on 467 squadron, which is an Australian squadron near, near the town of Lincoln. Just south, south east I think of Lincoln. 467 squadron. I think you mentioned you had a friend in 467 squadron. Yeah, Bomber Command, 467 squadron crew. A relative of yours -
AP: Correct
AA: Flew. Right?
AP: Yeah. A few months before that but yes.
AA: Yeah. Yeah. So he was in March or April.
AP: May, it was.
AA: Yeah, 10th of May that’s right. Yeah, well I had this friend of mine in, in, in 467 squadron he was a deputy flight commander and he said they’re having a very rough time at the moment because people are getting shot down all the time including our flight commanders and they made him a deputy flight commander as a flight lieutenant which was one rank higher than I was. I was a flying officer but fortunately for us I wasn’t in a, in a squadron where they were having a lot of calamities. It was just a little less than average. I think it was because I think it was because it was a more disciplined squadron. The RAF was a lot more disciplined than the RAAF. Particularly the RAAF squadrons in England. They were noted for a bit of a lack of doing the right thing a lot of the time. I know they didn’t do the right thing by me because I visited, that Australian squadron, 460 squadron at Binbrook two or three times for various reasons. Sometimes to deliver a Lancaster there or bring one back from there. It was only about four miles from us because the, the, and the circuits interlinked so you had to be a bit careful that you didn’t fly into a 460 squadron Lancaster going in the opposite direction. But what I didn’t like about it I hung my cap, fortunately it wasn’t the round cap just the four and a half cap on the hook in the hall like I, in the, in the ante room like I did in my own squadron and I found someone had stolen it immediately. I wasn’t there that long. I just had lunch there. Took about half an hour. I thought I was doing alright. I go back and no cap. Well, I didn’t need it to fly a Lancaster because I had a flying helmet which I still had that in the, in the Lancaster or something like that but anyway you had to have a flying helmet. I hadn’t lost that. Just the ‘fore and aft’ cap. So I reckon the Australian squadron of [inclined] to be full of ill-disciplined, bloody thieves in a large, large section of them and that was, that was my opinion of the RAF as against the Australians like comparing the Australians were like a bloody Boy Scout troops except not quite so honest as the Scouts would be. And I didn’t like them. My, my old friend Dave Browne was, he had a bit of bad luck. He was, he got to his twenty sixth operation. I think they’d just made him a flight lieutenant, second in command of his flight and he did a couple of operations the same night as I did. I bombed Frankfurt September the, September the 12th 1944 Frankfurt and Dave Browne got shot down on that same night so it wasn’t much good him being a flight lieutenant and second in charge of the flight. It didn’t do him any good. Frankfurt. We bombed from seventeen thousand eight hundred feet and one thing I noticed about Frankfurt as we flew over it in a, in a sort of south easterly direction and came around, swung around to the left and flew back past it and you could look down and see Frankfurt and it looked just like Melbourne at night with the streets were all lit up but it wasn’t lights it was the burning buildings on each side of, of the street. Frankfurt was on fire that night and I set fire to most of it. Or a lot of it. Anyway, we had a good one on that. Frankfurt. Yeah. You probably think it’s a bit rough to think of burning people alive but it didn’t worry us. I’d seen, I’d seen Coventry in England. I’d seen Brighton. I’d seen a street in London where I used to go past and walk down part of. It was there from the first time I got to England in 1943, about July ‘43 and I’d seen this little street. Very attractive houses still intact and one night around about this time I happened to be in London again and it was a complete shambles. The Germans had sent up a special, special group of planes, probably not very many and bombed the hell out of it or it could have been those flying bombs I don’t know. Probably more likely to be that. The buzz bombs. They would do that. They were quite erratic. You never knew where they were going to land. I was in London when the first ones came over on leave. I looked out of the window of the hotel I was on the third floor of. A private hotel. It was the top floor and I heard this bop bopbopbopbop sound going across the sky. Just sounded just like my old motorbike. My 350 Calthorpe. Same sound except that there was this light at the back of it. My Calthorpe never had a light at the back of it. Oh it had a little red light you could hardly see but never had a big white glow at the back of it and it certainly didn’t go as fast as the buzz bombs but I can remember the anti-aircraft guns in London were firing at the thing but they never hit it and I could see what was happening. I could hear shrapnel starting from the, the exploding bomb started to land on the roof. I was up on the top floor and I could hear the things clang clanging on the top of the roof. Steel pieces from the, from the shells that they were shooting up at the flying bomb and not getting anywhere near it. I got under the bed for a while but I thought, ‘What will I do?’ There was no air raid shelter there so I just stayed under the bed till things quietened down and stopped firing. You could hear the guns going off as well as the buzz bomb flying over London. Everything went quiet after a while and I heard where it landed. It landed somewhere near a railway station up in er it would have been north east London a bit. North east somewhere. I’ve used that station afterwards when on my trips. I went, I did about half a dozen trips to, back to Europe, after the war, after I was married, with my wife and we went all over England and Scotland and Germany too. France and Germany. I liked the Germans. We got on very well with them. My last trip to Germany was in 1993, 1993 I think it was. We went with a group from the RAF association over in, it was in South Yarrow then. Frank. A bloke called Frank someone or other was the leader and apart from a lot of trips around England which we did which was very nice that included a visit to the Victory ship down on the south coast somewhere. We cruised, we visited the battle areas in France and then when we got to Germany we got to, I think we flew to Berlin and they had a, a small bus waiting for us and with two German air force pilots as drivers. One’s the driver. One’s the, one’s the navigator. Very nice blokes and they drove us all over middle Germany and East Germany, Not the north and not the very south either but the middle Germany. Berlin and then over to the French border where the southwest part of Germany is and they took it in turns to drive and navigate and when we got back to Frankfurt where I had done so much damage they’ve got a new, big new wide boulevard through the centre of Frankfurt. I knew the name of it at one stage but I can’t remember it now but they can thank me for putting that there. I removed a lot of old scruffy houses from a great strip in the middle of Frankfurt and they’ve got a big boulevard like St Kilda Road runs through it. Well, I did that, half the work for them. But anyway these two German blokes we got on very well with them and they took us to a couple of their airfields on the east border of Germany which used to be East Germany. It had just been changed, just amalgamated with West Germany in about 1995 or something like that.
AP: Before that. 1990
AA: 1990 was it?
AP: ’89 or – [? Just.]
AA: Oh that’s right ‘93 when I was there and the remains of the war were still there the West German wall but we went to the West German border somewhere near a town called Cottbus I think and there was a, air force station. They gave us a very good reception. Nice light lunch and so on and showed us the latest airplanes they had and we climbed all over the latest fighter the Germans had. In fact, the leader, the leader of the expedition Frank Wilson, that’s his name, he was a Lancaster pilot, he managed to get inside in the cockpit and wriggle the controls of one of them which was in the, in the hangar we were standing in. Then they did a bit of a demonstration flight for us. Low flying and a few aerobatics and so on.
AP: Beautiful.
AA: That was good. Then after that they drove us, the two blokes in this small bus drove us to the river which is the border I think between France and Germany on the west somewhere near the Rhine yeah it’s on the Rhine town Wesel W E S E L Wesel and we were taken as guests, honoured guests to a annual meeting of the ex-fighter pilots association.
AP: Wow.
AA: And they were all, had all these long tables in this room there with these pots of beer and they were singing songs, you know, bouncing these songs around. Our leader, Frank, he had to make a speech. He got up on the, on the stage and spoke to them and I suppose about three quarters of them would understand. They speak a lot of English in Germany and they were bouncing their big pots on the, on the ground and I turned back to the bloke next to me, he was German but he spoke English, they made sure we had a English speaking people sprinkled amongst our travel lot so we could ask any questions. I said, ‘What are they singing now?’ You know they were stamping their feet and banging their pots on the table, wooden tables and they said, ‘Oh that’s, “We’re marching against England.” ’ That’s what he said [laughs] and I said, ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’ Yeah and oh I got that plaque there from him, yeah.
AP: Nice.
AA: I got, we got a couple of pictures from him I don’t think they’re here. No. Mind your feet. I’ll just get the plaque down show you we got from him. From the opposition. There you are. How’s your German? Any good?
AP: Fair, Fair [?] it’s like an association of um fighter flyers associations.
AA: That’s right. Fighter.
AP: Yeah.
AA: They’re called flyers.
AP: [? ]That’s fantastic. I might take a photo of that later.
AA: Yeah. Well that’s come out its plug.
AP: Yeah that’s alright. It’s coming through the internal microphone now.
AA: Oh.
AP: Yeah, I couldn’t make it work so.
AA: That’s one of my favourite aircraft.
AP: Ah that’s an Anson.
AA: I used to like, I could fly them at night. Anytime. They’re good. Avro Anson.
AP: Yeah. Fantastic.
AA: And that’s the uniform we used to wear. That round cap beret with a sort of a what we called a goon skins they were, sort of one piece overalls and they used to try and make us wear them at, in mid-summer, at that place in South Australia where it was a hundred and eight degrees three days running and it was so hot you couldn’t sit on the metal beds inside the huts because they send they heat out more than the hut itself but anyway we talked, talked the boss into letting us wear shorts and shirts after a while. So, we weren’t so bad. And what else? On my last operation was on Cologne. Ah yes I, when I finished my tour in, here you are on, as a middle multi engine and that’s -
AP: above average yeah I read that.
AA: Well I got that for the Airspeed Oxford too but that was for being a good pilot but I think if you got back from thirty two trips he reckoned you must be above the average so he always gave that to someone who finished a tour which I did. Not everyone finished the tour. Old Dave Browne didn’t.
AP: Many of them didn’t.
AA: When my last operation was October the 31st on Cologne. What did we carry there? One four thousand. One blockbuster four thousand pounder and the rest in high explosive bombs but a lot of the times we carried about fifteen thousand pounds of bombs. Here’s one. Oh that’s fourteen thousand feet. Here’s another one thirteen, thirteen thousand pound bombs plus four five hundred pounders. Well that’s fifteen thousand pounds altogether which is about six and three quarter tons isn’t it?
AP: [?] yeah
AA: Divided by 2240 you get about six tons, six and a quarter tonnes. That’s a lot of weight you’re carrying and then there’s the petrol as well as that. Course that’s, that’s fairly high loaded. That was in Calais. We took part really in the invasion of Germany, of Europe. A lot of our work was supporting the, the British army. When they came up against a rather sticky situation they’d call for help from the RAF and we’d do a daylight trip on them so we wouldn’t bomb them instead of the opposition that they were complaining about and you know you killed a lot of Germans that way without killing any British. We never killed any British. We knocked off a lot of Frogs working with the Germans. Mostly in a little town just on the invasion coast. Where was it? [shuffling papers]. I don’t know. Another interesting thing was I’d flown over about eight different countries in Europe in a Lancaster. Eight. Including Sweden and Switzerland and Norway and Denmark and of course France and Germany and England and Wales and Scotland. I’ve been around in that Lancaster and that was a beautiful thing to fly. It was like flying, driving a Mercedes Benz. Beautiful. And probably your motorbike. Get as much enjoyment out of it except that that’s got a smaller engine than I had in my 350. Oh, yes, here you are. Have a look at this. There’s my motorbike.
AP: Oh fantastic. When’s that?
AA: Er that was -
AP: July 1938.
AA: ’38. I got that bike in ‘36. 1936. I wish I still had the damned thing. I shouldn’t have sold these things but I wanted to buy a car so I got a few shekels for that when I sold it, not very many and then bought a Singer Le Mans. A 1938 Singer.
AP: Fantastic.
AA: I haven’t got a picture of that but up there see those two top pictures.
AP: Yep.
AA: They’re of a car I had in England. That’s a Singer Le Mans. A nineteen, they’re both pictures of a restored, one’s been restored perfectly and the other is a lash up job um restored 1934 model Singer. Singer Le Mans because they did a lot of racing of Singer Le Mans and had a lot of victories and beat the MGs but then the next year in 1935 and, or ‘36 or something they had a lot of trouble with their brakes and they didn’t do any good at all but that, see that little black one.
AP: Yeah.
AA: In the corner? That’s the real one. That’s the one I had.
AP: That’s the one.
AA: In England.
AP: Was? As in this is when you were serving in England?
AA: Oh yeah. Yeah.
AP: Yeah. So, how did you get that car and what happened to it?
AA: Well it cost me sixty pounds. It was in the, just advertised in the local paper in Louth which is the local town for Kelstern and I just went along and bought it for sixty pounds. I had sixty pounds. We were fairly well paid and I didn’t gamble like, like most of my crew. They seemed to lose all their money but I never lent them anything. No. I was thinking if they’re going to lose their bloody money it’s their own fault. One of the blokes in the crew wanted to get married and he sent me a telegram. Unfortunately he wanted to borrow twenty pounds off me but fortunately I was on leave at the time so I never got that telegram until I got back from leave after his marriage day so that got me out of that. But that had two exhaust pipes like, like your bike out there but they just came out of one cylinder, one 350cc cylinder. Now, that was a beauty. One of the most thrilling experiences in my whole life and that includes Lancasters and anything, any other bloody thing was when I got that bloody bike.
AP: That motorbike. Fantastic.
AA: Yeah.
AP: Carrying on for a moment with the car. How did you fuel it?
AA: Oh we got an issue of four gallons a month if you were operational air crew. Well, I was an operational aircrew for six months because I was still on the squadron and I did four months actual, four months actual flying in Lancasters but then the CO decided to keep me on the squadron because I had an above-average rating for flying Airspeed Oxfords. Well, he had an Airspeed Oxford at his disposal and he used to like to go to visit other squadrons and perhaps his girlfriend’s town, I don’t know, and he like me to come along the next day, with a navigator of course, and bring him and bring him his aeroplane back and he’d fly it back. So he’d fly it to from Kelstern to Westcott or somewhere like that get out there at that airfield and I’d fly it back until I heard from him.
AP: That’s not a bad job is it?
AA: Well, he, he kept me on the station from the end of October, November, December till about half way through January doing that and he gave me a DFC for it. For being a good boy. Actually, most skippers of Lancasters if they completed a tour successfully got a DFC but he made sure I got one and I used to fly him everywhere. I even did a couple of trips to London with him I think. Or at least one anyway. And most of that would be around Lincolnshire somewhere and oh yes I had to investigate a crash on one occasion and I was, this was the first time I’d flown his Lanc, his Airspeed Oxford. We had to go to a station on the, on the south east coast, the south east coast of England, you know, and one of our Lancasters, it was a very bad night. Where were we bombing that night? I don’t know. Anyway, we were coming back from the middle of Germany somewhere and we were all told to fly over, over the top of a cold front that was approaching to get home again. As they said, ‘You’re going out you don’t have to worry about the trip to’ wherever you’re going ‘but when you’re coming back fly at twenty three thousand feet to get over the top of this electrical storm which you’ll run into.’
AP: Higher than that
AA: Well I was flying at twenty four thousand feet and it was very comfortable. We had a very nice bombing trip, killed a lot of nice Germans and we were flying back and there was no chance of the Luftwaffe chasing us at that stage because the weather down below looked pretty crook at times. It was nice and clear upside where we were until the rear gunner called out, ‘Hey skipper, my oxygen has gone out. I can’t get any oxygen.’ Well, he wanted me to say, ‘Well, oh well leave your turret and come inside,’ and I didn’t want to do that. I wanted the protection from him at the back as the most vulnerable side for us. The rear. The Germans liked to follow us up from the back. If possible shoot the rear gunner and shoot the rest of us and I said, ‘Look Ron.’ Ron smith his name was. ‘Look, I’ll take you down five thousand feet and that’ll get us down to eighteen, seventeen or eighteen thousand feet. You’ll be alright there.’ And he lived. I took it down to eighteen, seventeen thousand feet and we went through the top of this electrical storm. It worried me a little bit because it was pretty rough you know. The old Lanc was bouncing around a lot and fortunately we didn’t have any load on at this stage. We were empty. Just the petrol to get home and the four propellers each had a blue ring around the tip. You could see the big round blue circle around the tip and on the windscreen this little zigzag all over the windscreen. Sparks coming down the windscreen from the lightning. We were loaded. Loaded with lightning. However, we got past there. We got through it. It was a bit rough, you know. It was a bit bouncy but that didn’t worry me much. I was, I was more concerned about what the lightning was going to do. Whether it was going to get any worse than it was but we got back and he didn’t say much when we got back. I think he was reasonably grateful but at least he could breathe on the way home. He got out of there and plugged himself in to, no, he didn’t, he stopped in the turret. That’s right. I think what he wanted me to tell him to get out and plug himself in to one of the other outlets inside not in his, he was right in the back stuck in the glass with a big opening on the back so he could see clearly and er but he stopped there and he didn’t have to warn us that there was anyone else coming up behind us. I didn’t think there would be. Not through that storm. They would have, they would have corkscrewed into the ground I reckon if a fighter had tried to fly through there. It was bad enough in a Lancaster but that day, why I’m telling you that story, we lost a couple of Lancasters and one of them that didn’t come back they found it had dived into the sand, and into the sandy soil off the beach on the, in Norfolk somewhere and I was detailed by the CO with the knowledge that I hadn’t started flying him around to his girlfriend’s houses or anything at this stage but he’d seen the logbook. He used to read through everyone’s logbook. We had to put this in every month you see and he used to read everything in it. Better than reading the “Sporting Globe” I suppose but anyway he read that something like the same thing, you know, the competition the Germans and the British but we got, we got I was just detailed to fly this Oxford which I hadn’t forgotten how to fly to this American airfield on the, on the east, southeast coast there somewhere in Norfolk or Suffolk or, no, I think it would be Norfolk really but anyway we found the spot where the Lancaster had crashed and it had dived straight down apparently and the engines were twelve feet under the ground we estimated. Just an estimate by what was left of the Lancaster sticking up out of the back of it and as we were looking at er, looking at it a farmer wandered up and said to us, ‘Good day.’ He said, ‘There’s more remains over in the trees there.’ and I said, ‘Well, look we’re just inspecting the wreckage of the Lancaster. Someone else will be coming for the remains.’ So, I didn’t want to get stirred up with the remains of the, of the crew but that was his greeting to us, ‘there’s remains over in the trees there.’ So in, at the hit, Lancaster bits and pieces including the tree must have flown in every direction to have hit and got the engines that far underground. Must have been a bad one. It must have dived down from about ten thousand feet or something. Fifteen thousand. I don’t know. Twenty thousand. I don’t know but I was very glad we missed that thing ourselves but that was the closest thing I think we had to get into trouble. But no I’ve been to Poland twice. We went across the North Sea as usual. Across Norway. Now, this trip took about nine hours. Crossed in to Sweden which was neutral. As we got to the central of the Swedish, you know, it’s a long thing, goes up and down and I think the best parts are down low somewhere on the Baltic. Turned right there and headed south and on the way down the Swedes sent up a whole lot of Bofors shells but they only go to sixteen thousand feet. We were at about eighteen or nineteen thousand and it was a very pretty show actually. They come up in their bright colours reds and greens sometimes. Mostly reds. They used come up and you could see them coming up and bending gracefully over, starting to fall and blow up there. Bofors, 40mm but every now and again some keen type of Swede or someone who didn’t like the British, in the Swedish army, would send up a shot from a German 88mm high explosive shell but fortunately they were about four hundred yards on my left as I was flying south to Stettin in er in what is now Poland and I don’t think they hit anyone on that night but certainly I never saw them hit anyone there with their shells. I think they might have been trying though. As I say there was a keen type on the end of a German 88mm gun or a Swedish 88mm gun but that’s just the same sort of explosion as the Germans had at about, you know, we were at about eighteen thousand feet. And Bofors were 40mm guns which most of the Swedes were just sending up to let the British know that they weren’t allowed to fly over Sweden on the, in the rules, I don’t know what rules ruled most in those days but they let us know that we weren’t particularly welcome unless we had plenty of money to spend sort of thing. The Swedes used to sell steel to both the Germans and the British.
AP: But they were neutral.
AA: Well so did I. So were the Switzerland Swiss but we went over a corner of Switzerland at one stage. Where else did we go? I think they were the only neutral, neutral countries we flew over. I went to Stettin. That’s in Poland now. Used to be spelled S T E T T I N when the Germans had it. Now it’s spelt S C H E and something else, you know, Polish.
AP: A Polish name.
AA: Yeah.
AP: Makes sense.
AA: That’s about it.
AP: Were there any, I’ve got a couple, a couple more specific questions that I’d like to ask if -
AA: Yeah.
AP: If you don’t mind. Were there any hoodoos or superstitions with your squadron?
AA: No. There was no superstition. Just hope. Just hope that it doesn’t happen to you.
AP: Fair enough.
AA: Yeah. Oh no. We didn’t actually think about that much because we, when I look back I think we didn’t worry. We were used to going to town. Drink all the beer in Louth which was the local pub. I had a nice girlfriend, a WAAF, I used to go around with all the time. We used to go down to Binbrook in that black Singer. The black, the little black one in the corner there. It was the Plough Inn in Binbrook. We used to go down there and drink bottled beer. She liked bottled beer. I remember we went to, there was a dance in the sergeants’ mess. I wasn’t allowed to go. Officers weren’t allowed to go to that and I knew she was going to be there so I said, ‘Oh I think I’ll see you there.’ So, I borrowed the rear gunners, well he owed it to me for saving his life. I borrowed his, one of his spare tunics. He was a sergeant and I went along to the sergeants’ mess in it, just wearing the same blue pants that I normally had on and with his jacket on with the one wing and I’m dancing around with my girlfriend and the flight lieutenant um he was the orderly officer or something. He was, no, the squadron, the squadron something. He had some official position anyway. His job was to sort of get around and make sure everything was going all right and also collect the belongings of the people who got shot down, which happened from time to time. They used to come in at about 3am in the morning and wake me up while I was asleep and collecting all someone’s belongings. Which was, I didn’t like my sleep being disturbed like that. But what was he? Anyway, I got the job as assistant to him so that I could stay in the assistant, not orderly officer, some other name they used to use for this particular job and he used to, his main office was in the same little building as the CO’s office. And anyway, he said to me, he was allowed to be there because he’s the orderly bloke or the, what did they call him? I was, they actually made me the assistant something or other. I might think about it later. Anyway, I was being groomed to be in his, in his place when he went on leave in about three weeks’ time and we got on very well together and he looked across to me and said, ‘Ah,’ wearing my gunners uniform, ‘Ah Flying Officer Atkins,’ he says, ‘Are you enjoying the dance?’ I said, ‘Yes thanks, sir.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Oh well that’s good. I’ll see you in the morning.’ Well of course he didn’t give a damn anyway. If no one else complained he wasn’t going to complain. Fortunately, the boss, Cocky, the wing commander, wasn’t attending the dance. He was probably attending his girlfriends, girlfriend in the local pub. He used to have her stashed up in the pub at times because I, I was very friendly with one of the telephone operators and she used to tell me who he used to ring up. She just, oh that was the life. That was the one I used to take down to the Plough Inn at Binbrook and drink bottled beer with and of course it was mid-winter when I was visiting Binbrook. Very icy roads and where it went down in to a bit of a dip it was icier than ever. I remember we drifted down in to this dip, this girl and I, and only a two seater of course. There, you can see that. There’s only room for two people in those, those cars and anyway it did a complete, it slipped around did a complete circuit around this -
AP: Just like a -
AA: Black ice.
AP: Just like a Halifax.
AA: Oh yeah. Yeah but when it went right around with a Halifax I had to drive it around. This one spun around like bloody top on the ice. I must have pressed the wrong buttons or something. Anyway, we, we just drove out of it, drove out very carefully, very slowly. Drove out and parked in its usual spot outside the side of the Plough Inn in Binbrook village.
AP: Nothing happened to you.
AA: Good.
AP: You said the circuits with Binbrook and Kelstern interlinked.
AA: They crossed.
AP: Yeah.
AA: Interlinked.
AP: Were they separated in some way like levels or something like that? Or was it just a case of -
AA: No. We always used to do the circuit at a thousand feet and as far as I know no one’s ever said to me, ‘Binbrook’s going to be doing it at the same time.’
AP: Sounds a bit terrifying. I should, I should declare an interest here. I’m an air traffic controller so that sounds terrifying to me.
AA: Oh, well, if you saw a Lancaster operation that would be terrifying just to look at.
AP: I think you’re probably right. I think you’re probably right. What five miles?
AA: Talk about fireworks. My first navigator, I had him until about the middle of the tour until his nerve gave out. After he, after I, after the war I met the, my wireless operator a few times. A fellow named Trevor something. Trevor Jones. A very nice bloke and an excellent wireless operator. Never missed a beat. He got all the messages out and all, sent them all back as they should have and that had a lot to do with surviving. If there was a shift in the wind he’d know that. And this navigator was very accurate. We used to, I used to time it in minutes the time arriving at the target. I used to think back, ‘Now will these bastards be asleep or will they be open or will they be up having their breakfast or what will they be doing?’ And that would depend on whether I was there three minutes before the bombing started or about two minutes after it. After they’d, after they’d dropped their first few shots off and were loading their guns again. And he told me that when we were, every target we were over instead of, he used to say, ‘Tom,’ Tom was the navigator, ‘Tom, have a look out. It’s beautiful,’ you know. ‘There’s fireworks everywhere,’ he used to say. Well there were too. You’d see them going off. Red, green, blue, black everything. Mostly, mostly red and green. And the man in charge of the operation would be circling this town. Say it’s Stuttgart or something, circling around saying, ‘Bomb the greens, bomb the greens. The reds are too far south,’ or something like that and giving us instructions. Then, ‘Go home now,’ or something or, ‘Wait,’ wait till we get to bomb the markers in or something. That didn’t, fortunately, the waiting thing didn’t happen but I used to hear him say, and sometimes he’d just tell us to take our bombs home. He said, ‘I can’t see the target. There’s too much dust and smoke. Take your bombs home and return to base.’ That was very annoying because I liked to drop the bombs. I didn’t like to land with a load of bombs on but sometimes we had to land with six and a half tonnes underneath you.
AP: Of high explosive. Thanks.
AA: Well -
AP: Question I like asking pilots. Your first solo. What happened?
AA: What the, the first solo in what?
AP: Your first ever solo. So the Tiger Moth.
AA: Oh the Tiger Moth. I did a very good landing. That’s all I can say about it. It was nice. I was, I knew a lot about aeroplanes because I used to fly, you know, model aeroplanes. Light aeroplanes. You could, you would wind the thing up, run along the concrete path and rise up in the air. Little ones. I did that for five or six years when I was a kid. I was very interested in them so I knew what they did. I knew how you bent the wings and how you bent the tail plane to make them level and that helped me a lot. A lot of these blokes had never been in an aeroplane or never seen a toy aeroplane even and had certainly never driven a car half the time. This bloke Dave Browne who was a friend of mine I was going to go and visit him and show him my, my new car, new car [laughs] a 1934 model at, at that place near Lincoln. I don’t think he had a driver’s licence. He’d never had one. He was eighteen. Just eighteen when he, he would have been when he left school. He left school and joined the air force. Got on the reserve. Nice bloke. What question did you ask me then?
AP: First solo.
AA: Oh first solo. Yeah. Well there wasn’t anything special. I liked flying. I liked, I liked flying the Tiger Moth. I knew I could fly it alright. I knew just how to fly it. So when my first solo came up he said, ‘Ok off you go.’ I just flew it up and around exactly the same as I did when I was with him. Did just the one circuit and landed it without bouncing it unduly. Some people bounced those Tigers fifteen feet into the air.
AP: I’ve done it myself.
AA: Oh have you?
AP: I have.
AA: Oh God. Well I never did. I never bounced it more than a foot or two feet at the most I don’t think.
AP: I’ve had shockers.
AA: But er I, I have flown them since the war.
AP: Yes [that was my next question]
AA: But only with an instructor. In the, in the back seat I think the instructor was. The funny thing when we were under instruction on Tigers during the war I was in the back seat and the instructor was in the front.
AP: Yeah.
AA: Well, when I flew them for a fifty dollar flight or something I was in the front seat and it was a bit unusual and the instructor was in the back. I remember on one occasion I went up in a flight in a Tiger and I was talking to the pilot and the instructor first before we went in and said, ‘I hope you’ll let me have a go at flying this thing.’ and he said, ‘Oh, yeah. Well, have you flown them before?’ I said, ‘Oh yes. Yes, I’ve flown them plenty of times.’ He said ‘Oh? Where were you flying them?’ I said, ‘Oh at Benalla.’ ‘Oh Benalla,’ he said ,’Oh.’ He didn’t seem to know what the, Benalla was the, the head office for Tiger flying in the RAF, RAAF I mean, in nineteen, what would it have been? 1942, yeah when I was flying them in Benalla.
AP: Have you flown them much?
AA: ’42 ‘43 ‘42 ‘41
AP: Have you flown much since the war?
AA: Only in passenger planes.
AP: Yeah. [?]
AA: No. I’ve never flown anything except a Tiger Moth since the war but I have flown in the Concorde from -
AP: Oh lovely.
AA: From London to, my wife too with me, Heathrow to that big airfield near New York. What is it?
AP: JFK.
AA: Hmmn?
AP: JFK.
AA: Yeah, that’s it. Yeah and we were booked to fly in a helicopter from JFK to somewhere near the centre of New York and that was because we were doing a first class trip all around the world. I didn’t intend to do it actually do it first class but the way it happened I said, ‘Oh well first class will do,’ because they said it’ll only be about, what you’ve got to pay it will only be about five hundred dollars difference from flying first class all the way from Australia to around the world. So we went first class. I think the next time I we went first class too it wasn’t that bad it wasn’t that much difference to business class really. We used to fly business class mostly. I think we did six, six trips to England. First of all cattle class and then business class and then first class but Quantas’ first class was, it was the pits.
AP: Still, still more comfortable I imagine than a Lancaster.
AA: No. The Lancaster was very comfortable. I felt more comfortable in a Lancaster than I ever felt in a Quantas first class. Do you know where they put us? As close to the toilet door as that. The two of us. Right, right opposite the toilets. The blokes used to come in and out of the toilet doing their flies up and we were sitting, sitting there. Well that was the finish. I’ve never flown in Quantas since.
AP: Oh really?
AA: That’s right.
AP: There you go.
AA: You can tell them that. You can tell them as much as you like.
AP: I have one more question for you. It’s probably the most important one.
AA: Yeah.
AP: How, what do you think Bomber Command’s legacy is and how do you want to see it remembered.
AA: I think it will all be remembered by the people who were in it alright but well I think they’ve got this new place in the Green Park. That, that does a lot for them but I can understand why the people in, up the north decided to have a memorial. They’ve probably got relatives or sons or something or fathers or grandfathers who’ve been in it and they want to make a point of it. That they get remembered for what they did and you know the fifty thousand I think RAF types who got killed in Bomber Command. I think it was a figure something like that. I think it was about three thousand Australians in Bomber Command that were killed and I’m doing something to remember them in Melbourne. I’ve organised a new boat to be built by the rowing club in the city that I’m interested in and I’m putting David Browne’s name on it.
AP: [Beautiful].
AA: Instead of mine. They usually, if someone gives them a boat, they usually put their name on it. I had, I’ve given them a boat about twenty years ago, thirty years ago with my hard earned cash and I had my name on it. Arthur Atkins, on both sides of the point. Well they’re going to put David Browne’s name on it because he was a nice bloke. Well, that’s why I think the people in Lincolnshire are doing a good thing. North Lincolnshire? Where is it again? Where are they putting this memorial? Do you know?
AP: It’s, it’s within sight of Lincoln Cathedral.
AA: Oh.
AP: It’s on a hill. I don’t know the direction. I haven’t been there myself yet unfortunately.
AA: Ah yeah.
AP: But it’s on a hill within sight of the cathedral.
AA: That’s, that’s not in the freezing north of Lincolnshire.
AP: No. I don’t think it is.
AA: No. Well that’s where I was. Lincolnshire. Well Yorkshire was worse, of course. I drove my car from, all over England. Only one thing wrong with it. Oh well no, wrong, the most, the most, the worst thing that was wrong with it was the fact that it never had a hand brake and of course on one occasion the hydraulic main operating thing busted it’s rubber washer so I had no brakes and the funniest thing was I was going along a street and you know I just used to rev the engine and drop it down a couple of cogs if I wanted to stop it. Coming around, I came down the street like I was driving the car down here with just, fairly gently and I wanted to turn right here and just as I got turning right, you know, at about ten miles an hour or something a bloke with about four, four greyhounds were walking down the street crossed right in front of me.
AP: No brakes.
AA: No brakes at all and I wasn’t in a low enough gear to make any difference and I wouldn’t have time. So do you know what I did? I put my foot out like that and dragged it along ground and that stopped it. The foot stopped it.
AP: Like a motorbike.
AA: Eh?
AP: Like a motorbike.
AA: Well I had a motorbike once. I knew how to stop that. I knew what to do with that.
AP: Very good. Well I think that’s, you’ve been talking pretty well nonstop for two and a quarter hours now.
AA: Have I?
AP: That’s a pretty good effort.
AA: I’m sorry.
AP: No. That’s excellent. There’s some really good stuff in there. This, this is one of the easiest interviews I’ve said, I’ve done because I asked you one question at the start.
AA: Yeah.
AP: And then I sat back and just listened.
AA: Yeah.
AP: And it went. I timed it. It went for an hour and fifty before you took a break.
AA: Goodness
AP: So, thank you very much.
AA: No. I’m very, very interested
AP: Very, very much.
AA: In the air force and Bomber Command. I had a, it was the best job I ever had in my life was the air force. Especially the part when I was working for the RAF.
AP: Good.
AA: They were the real air force as they said. Not the Boy Scout air force like the RAAF.
AP: Fantastic.
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Arthur Atkins
Description
An account of the resource
Arthur Atkins grew up in Melbourne, Australia. As a Boy Scout, he experienced a flight in an aircraft and knew he wanted to be a pilot. He transferred from the army to the Royal Australian Air Force and started pilot training in Australia. He travelled to Britain in 1943, via New Zealand and the United States of America. After further training at various stations, he was posted to 625 Squadron at RAF Kelstern. Among the operations he describes are leaflet drops over Chartres, the bombing of the Opel factory at Rüsselsheim, the Gironde Estuary, Le Havre, Frankfurt, Cologne and Stettin. He completed 32 operations. While stationed at RAF Kelstern he often visited the Plough Inn at Binbrook.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Adam Purcell
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-21
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Mal Prissick
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
02:13:42 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AAtkinsA151121
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Australia
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Rüsselsheim
Poland--Szczecin
France--Chartres
France--Gironde Estuary
France--Le Havre
United States
Germany
France
Poland
California--San Francisco
California
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
27 OTU
625 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
control tower
entertainment
Halifax
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
promotion
propaganda
RAF Church Broughton
RAF Hemswell
RAF Kelstern
RAF Lichfield
searchlight
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1823/32463/PKentKD17010004.1.jpg
5735d0a54c979f51508d12b8ffe61949
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1823/32463/PKentKD17010005.1.jpg
f6851be1ac6909e5e4d6e6ab02cc1626
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Kent, Kenneth D
K D Kent
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-04-04
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Kent, KD
Description
An account of the resource
31 items. The collection concerns Kenneth Kent (b. 1922, 572440, 55219 Royal Air Force) and contains a photograph album and documents. He joined the RAF as an Apprentice in 1936, starting his training at RAF Halton later going to RAF Cosford. He completed his training as an aircraft tradesman and was promoted to corporal. He volunteered for aircrew and went to the United States and Canada for flight training in July 1942. He was commissioned in July 1943 and was posted to 106 Squadron at RAF Metheringham. He was promoted to Squadron Leader in August 1945.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Nigel Kent and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Golden Gate Bridge 1942
Description
An account of the resource
Four photographs the first is of the bridge with hilly coast line captioned 'The bridge from Presidio. A clear span of 4200 ft, height of towers 740ft'.
Second captioned ' Ocean and mountain scenery from the bridge'.
Third is a full span of the bridge over the harbour entrance, coast line in the foreground captioned 'The Bridge from Lands End'.
Fourth is captioned 'Close up of tower'.
The second page has four photographs, the first two are of the full length of the bridge the first captioned 'The bridge from the Marine Countryside'.
The second captioned 'The Bridge and San Francisco from the Marine Countryside'. The third captioned as 'Sunset'.
The fourth captioned 'The Bridge and San Francisco at night.'
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1942
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Eight b/w photographs on two album pages
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PKentKD17010004, PKentKD17010005
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
United States
California
California--San Francisco
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-11
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
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.
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1769/31040/BCleggPVIsaacsonPv1.2.pdf
ba487b62028e63735e7613a38953c436
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Clegg, Peter Vernon. Isaacson, Peter - folder
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. Contains photographs, biography of Wing Commander Peter Isaacson AM, DFC, AFC, DFM RAAF and extracts from his log book covering a journey from England to Australia.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-02
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Clegg-PV
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Extract from Peter Isaacson's log book
Description
An account of the resource
Covers his flight from England west via the United States to Australia in 1943.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
12 b/w photocopied pages
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BCleggPVIsaacsonPv10012
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 Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Canada
United States
Kiribati
Australia
England--Cheshire
England--Wiltshire
Scotland--Prestwick
Québec--Montréal
Ontario--Ottawa
Ontario--Toronto
California--San Francisco
Hawaii--Honolulu
Kiribati--Kanton
Queensland--Brisbane
New South Wales--Sydney
California
Hawaii
New South Wales
Queensland
Ontario
Québec
Kiribati
Korea (South)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
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
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
aircrew
Lancaster
pilot
RAF Lyneham
RAF Prestwick
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2114/35445/SGillK1438901v10030-0066.2.jpg
f0d0400d0f4d619fce50026d24d4b278
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Gill, Kenneth. Album one
Description
An account of the resource
Seventy-six items. Seventy four pages of photographs of people and places.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-07-09
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
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
Gill, K
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Chicago and San Francisco
Description
An account of the resource
Top - view across city with Trustees System’s Service building, now Century Tower and the Merchandise Mart. Captioned 'gloomy Chicago's industrial areas'.
Bottom left - view of distant suspension bridge across bay with ship. Captioned 'Golden Gate bridge, San Francisco'.
Bottom right - view of city across water. Captioned 'Skyscrapers at dusk, San Francisco'.
Identification kindly provided by Bill Hutchinson and Hans Sabel of the Finding the location WW1 & WW2 Facebook Group.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
United States
Illinois--Chicago
California--San Francisco
California
Illinois
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Three b/w photographs on an album page
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SGillK1438901v10030-0066
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
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1359/45951/SSmithRW425992v10002-0002 copy.1.pdf
12af6b6dff947f6f4e21b0dbbb02f12a
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Smith, Bob
Robert Wylie Smith
R W Smith
Description
An account of the resource
125 items. An oral history interview with Bob Smith (b. 1924, 425992 Royal Australian Air Force) photographs, documents and navigation logs and charts. He flew operations as a navigator with 15 Squadron at RAF Mildenhall.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bob Smith and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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
2019-03-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Smith, RW
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Bob Smith's Memoirs Book 2
Description
An account of the resource
23 pages of Bob's memoirs.
Covers his training.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Bob Smith
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Brighton
England--Sidmouth
Scotland--Aberdeen
England--Salisbury
Scotland--Stranraer
Scotland--Ailsa Craig
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Isle of Man
Scotland--Paisley
Scotland--Glasgow
France
France--Beauvoir-sur-Mer
Australia
New South Wales--Sydney
Queensland--Bundaberg
Queensland--Brisbane
New South Wales--Cootamundra
United States
California--San Francisco
Canada
Alberta--Edmonton
Nova Scotia--Halifax
Scotland--Gourock
Victoria--Melbourne
Manitoba--Winnipeg
Ontario--Trenton
Ontario--London
France--Châlons-sur-Marne (Arrondissement)
France--Caen
Germany
Germany--Kiel
France--Gironde Estuary
Poland--Szczecin
Netherlands
Netherlands--Eindhoven
France--Le Havre
Germany--Neuss
France--Calais
France--Pas-de-Calais
Atlantic Ocean--Kattegat (Baltic Sea)
Germany--Kleve (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Essen
Germany--Leverkusen
Netherlands--Vlissingen
Netherlands--Veere
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Homberg (Kassel)
Germany--Castrop-Rauxel
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Fulda
Germany--Bottrop
Germany--Heinsberg (Heinsberg)
Nova Scotia
Manitoba
Poland
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 New Zealand Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
23 printed pages
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription
Pending review
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SSmithRW425992v10002-0002
1653 HCU
3 Group
467 Squadron
5 Group
84 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bomb aimer
crash
crewing up
flight engineer
Gee
Hampden
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
mess
mine laying
navigator
Nissen hut
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Normandy deception operations (5/6 June 1944)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Andover
RAF Bishops Court
RAF Bridlington
RAF Cardington
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Cranwell
RAF Desborough
RAF Feltwell
RAF Halfpenny Green
RAF Harrington
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Silloth
RAF Stradishall
RAF Tempsford
RAF Waddington
RAF West Freugh
RAF White Waltham
RAF Wigtown
Stirling
tactical support for Normandy troops
training
V-1
V-weapon
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1359/45930/SSmithRW425992v10001-0002 copy.2.pdf
e098f17297286de16d0e6e087a3e2aad
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
Smith, Bob
Robert Wylie Smith
R W Smith
Description
An account of the resource
125 items. An oral history interview with Bob Smith (b. 1924, 425992 Royal Australian Air Force) photographs, documents and navigation logs and charts. He flew operations as a navigator with 15 Squadron at RAF Mildenhall.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bob Smith and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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
2019-03-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Smith, RW
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
Bob Smith's Memoirs 1
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Bob Smith
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2003-03
Description
An account of the resource
73 pages of Bob's memoirs. Concerns his recruitment and training. Includes a list of RAAF recruits.
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 Australian Air Force
Royal Canadian Air Force
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
73 printed sheets
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SSmithRW425992v10001-0002 copy
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Queensland--Brisbane
Queensland--Ipswich
Queensland--Maryborough
New South Wales--Cootamundra
New South Wales--Sydney
New South Wales--Wagga Wagga
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New South Wales--Blue Mountains
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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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115 Squadron
142 Squadron
15 Squadron
166 Squadron
4 Group
44 Squadron
463 Squadron
466 Squadron
49 Squadron
5 Group
619 Squadron
622 Squadron
640 Squadron
76 Squadron
78 Squadron
aerial photograph
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
Beaufighter
bomb aimer
Boston
crash
Distinguished Flying Cross
entertainment
H2S
Halifax
Initial Training Wing
killed in action
Lancaster
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Mosquito
navigator
Oboe
observer
Operational Training Unit
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Breighton
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF Halfpenny Green
RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor
RAF Kirmington
RAF Leconfield
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Waddington
RAF Witchford
recruitment
Red Cross
sport
Stalag Luft 3
Stalag Luft 7
training
V-1
V-weapon
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1359/45995/MSmithRW425992-230825-02.2.pdf
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Title
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Smith, Bob
Robert Wylie Smith
R W Smith
Description
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125 items. An oral history interview with Bob Smith (b. 1924, 425992 Royal Australian Air Force) photographs, documents and navigation logs and charts. He flew operations as a navigator with 15 Squadron at RAF Mildenhall.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bob Smith and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2019-03-25
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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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Smith, RW
Transcribed document
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Transcription
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Prologue
Voices of the Past
O, There are voices of the past
Links of a broken chain
Wings that can bear me back
To Times
Which cannot come again
Yet, God Forbid that I should lose
The Echoes that remain. Unknown.
March 2003
Five years ago, after listening to friends, young and old, as well as journalists, editors and historians requesting War Veterans and Pioneers to write their memoirs I realised that perhaps it was a duty to my descendants that I should do so. Accordingly, I ‘bit the bullet’ and started a draft of “My Service during WW11 in the Royal Australian Air Force”.
It soon became apparent that I should have done so many years ago when the memories were still fresh, although there could be some wisdom in the fact that sometimes the perspective is better if viewed from a distance. Much time has been taken in getting back in contact with old mates and crew members to ensure that what I have written is as historically accurate as possible. I have even had researchers and historians in the UK verify some of the detail, as well as refer to a few publications that have covered the period of my ‘Operational Tour’ on XV/15 Squadron, RAF Bomber Command. I did keep a diary for a while, but discontinued same when I started Operational Training in the UK, as diaries were then forbidden. I did have, however, a good diary in the form of letters home and which my Mother kept. Unfortunately these were lost or mislaid before she died in 1979. I do have all my logs and charts as well as photos, other items and notes from mates that have assisted greatly. On a few matters the original draft had to be amended, but after a few years of revision and the acquisition of a computer I was able about six months ago to commence on the final record. There will no doubt be some further amendments and additions as more confirming information comes to hand. I will cover same in a ‘summary’ at a later stage.
The question will be asked, “Why didn’t I write my Service History soon after the war?”, and why have so many not put their experiences to paper? Some did, and they are to be congratulated and thanked for their efforts. For many there was the old service adage that it was “Infra Dig to Shoot a Line”. I consider it was a common decision of most who returned from active service in any theatre of war to get on with life and leave the war behind.
My father served in WW1 as an ‘original’ in the 41st Btn A.I.F. and went through a number of the great battles in France & Belgium. He was wounded 3 times and gassed. His younger brother was in the 9th Btn A.I.F. that landed on Gallipoli on 25th April 1915, where he was severely wounded, and later fought in France & Belgium. Their youngest brother, after whom I was named, died on active service in France after being wounded 3 times. As a boy I often wondered why Dad and his brother never talked much about the war except between themselves and other returned soldiers. I now understand. I have now been in the same position. With your mates who survived you can recall facets of your experiences in an atmosphere of mutual understanding.
War has made me a realist. Indeed there is a season for all things. Yesterday is history and there is nothing you can do to change it, although we do see some historians trying to sanitise the past. It is to-day that is God’s Gift in your hands, and Faith that gives you hope for tomorrow.
I hope that what I have written about my service in the Air Force will be a valuable record for someone in the years ahead.
Official Identity Card for the Royal Australian Air Force
Date of Issue 23 December, 1942
Letter from Employer Giving Approval to Enlist in the Airforce
Enrolment in the Reserve
Certificate of Enlistment
Enlistment in the RAAF
Rookie-AC2
When war with Germany was declared on 3rd September 1939 I was a student boarder at the Ipswich (Boys) Grammar School in my ‘Junior’ years of study. I had been enrolled at I.G.S the previous year under a Qld R.S.S.A I.L.A Scholarship that I had won because my father was a returned soldier from WW1 and I had attained a qualifying standard in the 1937 State Scholarship exams. At that early stage, although under the age of 16, I had ambitions of joining the Air Force if the war were to carry on for many years, which it did.
After sitting the “Junior Public Exams” at the end of the 1939 school year, which I passed with above average results (4 A’s, 4 B’s and 1 C) I was accepted for employment in The National Bank of Australasia Limited at its Harrisville Branch. I took the place of Gordon McDougall who had enlisted in the RAAF. He went on to graduate as a pilot and lost his life in a flying accident in East Lothian, Scotland on Monday 6th September 1943.
The war did continue in Europe through 1940, and in early 1941 when I turned 17 years of age I took the opportunity to enrol as a correspondence student with the Air Force Cadets. I received educational material and exercises in Physics and Mechanics, incorporating the theories of flight and navigation etc. Exams were set for each lesson and in my case these were checked and marked by the Headmaster of the Milora State Primary School where I attended and sat the 1937 State Scholarship exam. Early in 1942 on reaching the age of 18 I was given the opportunity to make a formal application to enlist in the RAAF, subject to parents’ and employer’s consent. I made the application to the Bank and their approval was forthcoming on 31st January 1942, subject to a few qualifications as I was still a temporary clerk on probation which meant that my re-employment after the war would be subject to reassessment at the time. My parents gave their consent on my promise not to start smoking or drinking in the Air Force until I reached age 21. This promise I kept well beyond that time, as I have never been a smoker, and only a moderate drinker since into my 30’s. When I returned from active service in 1945 I realised what an enormous stress I had placed on my parents, particularly as my father had seen active service on the battlefields of France & Belgium in WW1 and my mother prayerfully relied on the strength of her Faith. Her prayers were answered.
Armed with the necessary consents I forwarded my application to the RAAF Recruitment Centre in Brisbane and on 13th February 1942 had completed the RAAF’s Form P/P/39A for Air Crew entry I was now on stand-by as it was policy for actual flying training not to commence until the recruit was of age 19.
In 1942, after the entry of Japan into the war and posing a real threat to Australian territory the government of the day was actively engaged in calling up qualified males into the Militia Forces. Apparently to keep a priority on Air Crew ‘hopefuls’ the RAAF instituted a call-up of those on ‘the reserve’ by creating the mustering of Air Crew Guard in Queensland, New South Wales & Victoria. It was under this mustering that I received my call-up to report to No.3 RAAF Recruitment Centre in Eagle Street, Brisbane on 21st May 1942. My position at the Bank was taken by John Neville Keys, the son of the then Manager at Boonah Branch, Neville Keys. He went into the next RAAF call-up, was given the number 426112 got his ‘wings’ as a Bomb Aimer and lost his life with No.466 Squadron Bomber Command on 11th April 1944 when shot down by a German night fighter on a raid on the railway installations at Tergnier in the lead up to the “D” Day invasion of Europe. I reported to No.3 Recruitment Centre along with 191 other recruits who were passed medically fit and duly enlisted, with service Nos from 425819 to 426010 inclusive, and proceeded on posting No.3 Recruit Depot at Maryborough, Qld with the rank of AC2. Authority P.O.R.135/42. I was given the No.425992, placed between No.425991 Bill Washbourne and 425993 Des Webster. Bill came from the Warwick district and Des from the Kilcoy area. This was to avoid surname of Smith under consecutive numbers. The same applied to the Jones & Murphies. The only Smith who remained in strict numerical order was 425891 Robert Angus Martin Smith.
We proceeded by train that evening to Maryborough where we were issued with uniforms, dungarees, boots, toothbrushes, razors etc and settled into barracks with palliasses and introduced to the Air Force life on 6 shillings a day for 7 days a week with free meals, accommodation, medical & dental treatment. In those days the Bank made up the difference in pay, which was not great but amounted to a bit of compulsory saving.
I Settle Into Life as a Recruit
Soon settled into a daily routine of a route march early in the morning while there was frost on the ground before breakfast, drills, lectures and vaccinations. Leave was granted most evenings and over the week-end. It was quite a common practice for the airmen to commandeer a push bike after going to the pictures in town, ride it out to the station gates and leave it there. The recruit depot was situated on the Maryborough aerodrome. Maryborough in those days was a town where everyone rode bikes, and the locals soon got to know where to look for their missing mode of transport. After three weeks intensive initiation into air force life we were passed as suitable recruits for Air Crew training and were split into several groups and posted to various RAAF stations in Queensland & New South Wales to serve as Guards until posted to an Initial Training School.
Bill Washbourne, Des Webster, Col (Snow) Wheatley and myself were posted to No.1 A.O.S at Cootamundra N.S.W. on 13th June 1942. Authority No,140/42. We travelled by train from Maryborough and arrived in Sydney only 2 weeks after the Japanese midget submarine attack on that city. We had to change trains in Sydney. At Cootamundra we were joined by Air Crew Guards from other States. Duties at Cootamundra included guarding the Ansons parked on the station aprons overnight, station perimeters, main gate guardhouse and the fuel depot about a mile out of town. Guard duties were usually 4 hours on and 4 hours off. The winter chill was a bit of a shock to the Queenslanders but we were treated generously with the issue of an extra blanket. Ice creams taken on duty at night to help you through your 4 hour shift could be left on a post, or tail of an aircraft and would not melt. If there was a sneaky wind blowing and the opportunity was judged safe we would crawl into one of the aircraft for a bit of a break. It was a fair risk that no one was doing the rounds to check on you.
Duty at the fuel dump was more relaxed. We stayed in a tent, and had trained the possums to eat fruit and chocolates out of our hands until they became a real nuisance. Horse riders, probably going home from the pictures or a dance in Cootamundra and travelling along the road that passed by the dump would be challenged “Who goes there?” Most took it in good humour, but occasionally one would get a bit stroppy but remain cautious in case we decided to fire a shot into the air and scare their horse. To relieve the monotony one night I fired a couple of shots at something flying overhead in the moonlight. Unfortunately these were heard back at the station and in no time a vehicle with more guards for reinforcement turned up. To the N.C.O who arrived I had to give a quick explanation. Told him I had challenged a person who had come through the fence, and when he didn’t stop but went back through the fence I fired a couple of shots after him. A bit of a recco of the area was made but nothing found, so I was instructed to report to the C/O’s office the next day. This I did along with others who were on duty at the time. They supported my account of events, but we were ordered to go to the rifle range for target practice and assessment. I was given 5 shots at the 200 yard range and scored 2 bulls and 3 inners, and explained further to the C.O that I would have fired close enough to the intruder to give him a fright. He ordered a close inspection of the site in daylight to see if there was any evidence of clothing caught in the barbed wire fence but nothing was found. I should imagine the C.O’s report on the incident would make interesting reading. Bill Washbourne was on guard duty with me at the time and at a reunion of the Air Crew Guards in Brisbane in the 1990’s he was surprised when I told him there was no intruder. He confirmed that at the time they all thought I was serious.
My first encounter with an aircraft accident and death was at Cootamundra on 21st September 1942. A Beaufighter from No.31 Squadron stationed at Wagga Wagga flew into our circuit and on turning to come in to land stalled and crashed about a mile from the station. The squadron which had been equipped with Beauforts had changed over to the Beaufighter only the month before. It was flown by F/Sgt. John Evan Jenkins (No.407435) and the second crew man, possibly the Observer, was Sgt. Vivian Sutherst (No.35755). Both were killed instantly on impact and are buried in the Cootamundra War Cemetery. I was with a few guards who were sent immediately to the scene of the crash, which we had to keep under guard for a couple of days. It was a sobering experience and I vividly remember the advice given to us at the scene by a senior sergeant that we were not to dwell on the death of the crew, but put it behind us, do our duty and get on with life. There was nothing we could do to change what had happened. That advice stood me in good stead through the experiences ahead and indeed through my life. It was while on guard duty at the crash site that we had some amusement shooting at rabbits. On one occasion a bullet ricocheted off a rock and as it whined its way across the country side it was amusing to see flocks of sheep scatter in its path.
The Presbyterian Church in Cootamundra had a very active Youth Fellowship Association to which I went with Bill Washbourne and other airmen. We were made most welcome and enjoyed many a happy time
On 16/9/42 we were officially attached to the newly formed No. 73 Reserve Squadron, but our routine on the station did not change.
On 11th October Des Webster and I were posted to No. 2 Initial Training School at Bradfield Park (Sydney) as our first step to Air Crew entry. There were also Air Crew Guards from other stations on the same posting, including Keith Mills, Noel Hooper and Eric Sutton who were at Maryborough with me. Since we enlisted our mustering was Aircrew V (Guard), with rank of AC11.
We were part of No. 33 Course at I.T.S. It was an intensive course of lectures on many subjects, but mainly on basic theories of flying, navigation, gunnery and bombing. Physical training played an important part and you were under constant observation for overall assessment as suitable for air crew and put through various tests to gauge reflexes and co-ordination before being interviewed by a selection panel to be mustered into a particular category.
A wide range of sports was available, including sailing, and evening leave passes were generous. Queenslanders who were issued with the tropical uniform were not allowed to wear it into the city (South of the Harbour Bridge), but that was not strictly policed. We would mostly go to the Anzac Club for a meal and then to a show. Then buy a packet of fruit, say 4 lbs (2 kilos) of Cherries for 2 shillings (20 cents) to eat on the train back to Lindfield and walk to the camp. If you fell asleep on the last train and got carried on to Gordon it was a long walk back to camp- had to hurry to make it by 2359 Hrs. Through the Anzac Club interstate and country servicemen could be introduced to residents in Sydney who were willing to extend home hospitality. I availed of this offer and came to meet Miss MacPherson, a retired Nursing Sister who had a unit on the slopes of the harbour at Neutral Bay. Mac’s place became a home away from home for a few young airmen. She was a dear soul and was like a second mother to a few of us. It was a great joy to visit, have a home cooked meal and occasionally sleepover on a Saturday night. She would make up a bed on the lounge and be amazed to find us sleeping on the floor in the morning. I kept up a regular correspondence with her while overseas, as did a few others, and 3 years later made a quick visit on my return in-transit back to Queensland after disembarking in Sydney.
While on the course a few of us including Keith Mills, Eric Sutton, Des Webster, Noel Hooper and myself were detailed to go to the University of N.S.W. where they were doing research into air sickness. We were good guinea pigs, as we were given vouchers for a meal of roast lamb and baked vegetables before the tests started. The tests involved being strapped into a stretcher and swung from ceiling to ceiling to see how long you lasted. I lost my meal after about 10 minutes as did most. As far as I can remember Noel Hooper was the only one who did not part with his meal.
The course finished on 1st January 1943 when we were assigned into various air crew categories for further flying training. The Selection panel tried to get me to accept a pilot’s course as my tests confirmed I was well suited to be a pilot. I pressed hard to be given a Navigator category as I was ‘interested in mathematics,’ and got my wish. Actually the main reason I applied for a ‘navigator’ was the good gen circulating at the time that those chosen for Navigator and Bomb Aimer courses would be going to Canada for flying training with the plan to go on to the U.K. to fly in Lancasters or Halifaxes. There was a proviso that you had to be 19 years of age by 10th January 1943, the date they would have to report back from pre-embarkation leave. (That was my 19th birthday and how I became to be the youngest of the draft). This was confirmed when we were given 10 days leave with instructions to report back at Bradfield Park No. 2 Embarkation Depot on 11th Jan 1943. As from 2nd Jan 1943 my mustering was Air Crew 11 (Navigator) and rank L.A.C. (Leading Aircraftman—not Lance Air Commodore).
It was not hard to take a weeks leave at home. It was a busy week visiting a few relations and then having to say farewells with many a prayer for a safe return from the war. I had made a good friend of the bank manager’s daughter, Jean Hall, and I had a feeling that many thought our friendship was more serious. I took Jean to a dance at the Harrisville School of Arts on the Friday night 8th Jan, but it was not like the old dances as it was overrun by RAAF and American airmen from Amberley which had now grown into a large air base servicing the Pacific war zone. Jean promised to write me while I was away and we did keep up a regular correspondence. A neighbour, Mrs Adams, gave me a poem with a sprig of white heather that I kept with me always. She had given the same to my father when he enlisted in WW1. My leave at home finished on my 19th birthday anniversary, Sunday 10th January 1943 as I left on the morning rail motor from Harrisville on my way back to Sydney, with a heap of goodies from home including a birthday cake.
At Home on Embarkation Leave with Mum, brother Alex and
sisters Margaret and Joyce – January 1943.
A Rookie Airman – No. 425992 ACII R.W. Smith
1942 – In Sydney
Embarkation Depot Sydney & To Canada
From embarkation leave at home I travelled on the “Kyogle’ line, 2nd division, from South Brisbane station arriving in Sydney and No. 2 Embarkation depot at Bradfield Park on Monday 11th January 1943. Leave was granted that night, so I went to visit Miss Mac with a piece of my birthday cake. The rest I shared with mates.
Leave arrangements while at Embarkation Depot were very generous. If no drafts for overseas postings had been issued and no particular duties allocated we were stood down after the mandatory morning parade until the next morning, or even over the week-end if it was on Friday morning’s parade.
The Waiting Period – Stand Downs, Outings and Farewells
There were a few of us who spent a lot of time together during this waiting period, mainly the youngest on the group to be sent overseas. Besides myself there was Keith Mills who had turned 19 only 8 days before me, Lou Brimblecombe whose 19th birthday was about 2 weeks previous to Keith’s, Eric Sutton who had his 19th birthday the previous August and Des Webster whose 19th birthday was in July. We all went on to train as Navigators and Keith, Eric and I became known as the 3 musketeers on the course in Canada. Des went on to train as a Wireless Operator. A few were over 30 years of age and we looked upon them as old fellows. Early in our stay Keith somehow met a girl whose father was a Fijian Envoy Representative in Sydney. Her name was Pat, and on the first Sunday there he asked me to join him and Pat and her friend Merle Green to spend the day at Cronulla and then go to Luna Park at night.
The next few days saw us assigned to some wharf duties at Waterloo and on Thursday 21st January we were detailed to the unloading of mustard gas bombs from an American liberty ship at Glebe Island. Keith Mills, Des Webster and I saw no future in this so we went A.W.L that night and stayed at the Allied Club in town. Stayed in town on Friday and went to the pictures at night with Pat and Merle. Took Merle home to Punchbowl and her parents insisted I stay the night with them. Went back to camp on Saturday morning to learn that we hadn’t been missed. As there was still nothing doing about overseas postings and leave had been granted over the week-end I went back into town, had tea and spent the night at Miss Mac’s. Went into town on Sunday morning to meet Keith, and we went with Pat and Merle for a train trip to Lawson in the Blue Mountains.
The next week saw the usual routine of parade, stand-downs, sports etc. On Friday we were placed on a draft with all leave cancelled and no telephone calls allowed. After lunch the unexpected announcement was made that leave was granted and extended to 1300 Hrs on Sunday 31st Jan. So I went out to Punchbowl to say my farewell to Merle and her family and thank them for their hospitality, and then on to see Miss Mac and the two girls who boarded with her. They insisted I stay for a home cooked dinner and stay overnight. Slept on the lounge room floor. Got back to camp at midday on Sunday to learn there was no further news on our embarkation and that leave had been extended to 0730 Hrs on Monday. As I had said my ‘Good-Byes’ I stayed in camp and wrote a few letters.
On Monday morning we were paraded and went on a long route march before breakfast and after lunch at 1300 Hrs given another stand-down. On Tuesday morning it was a swimming parade and early stand-down again. Wednesday morning was another swimming parade, a film on “Next-of Kin” after lunch and then stand-down until the next morning. Keith had got word out to Pat that we were still around, so we arranged to meet Pat and Merle in the evening and take them to the Prince Edward theatre to see “Reap the Wild Wind”. On Thursday morning we had another route march, pay parade (“The Eagle sh.. on each 2nd Thursday”) and stand-down at 1330 Hrs. It was the usual swimming parade on Friday morning, 5th Feb, and another stand-down after the 1330 Hrs parade until Monday morning. By this time we were beginning to wonder if were ever going to get on board a ship.
With a free week-end ahead I took the opportunity to contact Merle and meet her in town after work and go to the pictures and then see her home to Punchbowl. Again her parents insisted I stay over the week-end. On Saturday morning I went into town to buy a few magazines etc for the trip over to Canada and back to camp to change into tropical uniform of khaki shirt and shorts and back into town to spend the afternoon in the Botanical gardens and go with Merle to the pictures at night to the State Theatre to see “They all kissed the Bride”. Slept overnight at the Green’s and had a very quiet day on Sunday playing draughts and reading a very funny publication titled “One Big Laugh”. On the way back to camp that night the M.P’s boarded the train at Wynyard station and anyone wearing tropical uniform had to surrender their leave passes and were ordered to report to the guard house the next morning. Big trouble?? Wearing of shorts in uniform was not allowed south of the Harbour Bridge.
The Wait is Over
Monday 8th Feb 1943 dawned with guards on all gates at No. 2 Embarkation Depot, an early call to parade and orders given for clearances to be completed. All leave passes were cancelled, so no further use for the passes that were taken from us the previous night. This is it at last. After attending to clearances we were instructed to report back on parade with kit bags packed and ready to move on to buses at 1700 Hrs for transport to Woolloomooloo to embark at 1900 Hrs on the troopship “U.S.S. Hermitage”. It was a ship of 23000 tons which cruised at 18-20 knots. It was formerly the Italian cruise ship “Count Ciano” that travelled around the Mediterranean Sea as a floating casino on pleasure cruises. It had been captured by the American forces and had taken part in the landing of allied troops in North Africa and was on its way back to the west coast of America. We embarked as planned and had a good night’s sleep on board.
We were up at 0600 Hrs on Tuesday morning, detailed on to mess duties and instructed in ‘Abandon Ship’ drills while we lay at anchor in Neutral Bay to take on fuel after taking aboard fresh water, fruit and vegetables and other food supplies at Woolloomooloo. Spent the night at anchor in Neutral Bay and at 0830 Hrs on Wednesday 10th February it was ‘up-anchor’ and away, waving to the passengers on the ferries and sighting many hammer head sharks in the harbour. It was not long before we were out through ‘The Heads’ and setting course Nor-Nor-East into choppy seas with two Dutch Destroyers in escort. I started to feel a bit squeamy? But yes, managed to hold on to my breakfast. We are now under American terms for troops in transit—only two meals a day, but the canteen is open for an hour twice a day. As the Australian landscape slowly dipped from view everyone bravely sheltered their own feelings-generally a mixed feeling of adventure and uncertainty. Everyone realised and acknowledged that as we all went into flying training and operations over enemy territory not all would be returning to see their homeland again.
The destroyer escort left us at 0600 Hrs the next morning and we continued on a zig-zag course through choppy seas in light rain. I was detailed on to mess duties that afternoon and issued with Aussie Comfort Fund parcels. Soon settled into a routine. Those not on mess duties had to attend lectures-a good bit of armed forces psychology to keep the troops moulded into a unit with a common cause of complaint. A couple of albatrosses followed us for the first few days but they then peeled off formation on us. Sharks and flying fish were sighted and on Saturday a pod of whales was sighted on our port side. On Sunday morning we had church parade at 1000 Hrs and then ‘stand down’, but I was detailed on guard duties. Certain duties were allotted to the troops in transit such as mess duties/kitchen hand, deck patrol and shifts on the ack-ack gun at the stern. The ship’s officers were a bit concerned about the Aussies on the ack-ack gun as they were too keen to shoot at the ‘Met’ balloons that were released at regular intervals.
Monday 15th February, 1943, a memorable 2 days. We crossed the International Date line. So, we had Monday twice and the thought of only one day’s pay was given much discussion. Sufficient to record here that after our arrival in Canada due submission was made to RAAF Headquarters and suitable adjustment was made in our paybooks. A compensating adjustment was made on our return to Australia in October 1945. One of the Mondays was the end on my guard duty detail and the idea of lectures to fill in the day did not appeal, so I took a stroll around deck without my life jacket and was promptly apprehended and given 3 day’s kitchen duties, along with a couple of others who realised the opportunity to avoid lectures and enjoy more than two meals a day as we passed along the corridors with trays of hot food yelling “Hot Stuff” to warn others to be careful.
Pango, Pango
On Tuesday morning we sighted land ahead. American Samoa. Berthed in Pango Pango harbour in the late morning to take on fuel, fresh water and unload canned food for the American troops based there. Also embarked a contingent of American Marines. Those not on duties were allowed ashore for a couple of hours but had to remain in the vicinity of the wharf. As I was on kitchen duties I had to take on the scene from the deck, watching some of the fellows enticing the native girls in bright floral dresses to climb the coconut trees. Don’t think they were interested in the coconuts. Cameras were not allowed, under very strict orders, but some did manage to take a few snaps from the ship. We left Pango Pango at 0820 Hrs next day, Wed 17th Feb, and I finished my kitchen duties after midday. Had first good bath and change of clothes for a week, then strolled around the deck again minus life jacket and got another 3 days in the kitchen. Good Show!!
The next morning we sighted a cruiser and a passenger ship heading south-west, the opposite to our north easterly route. There was a rumoured submarine alert that night as the ship’s engines were stopped and we drifted for some few hours. Woke early on Friday morning to the sound of the ship’s fog-horns but there was nothing in sight. Crossed the equator that day with King Neptune coming aboard to put the rookies through the customary initiation ceremony. We all got a liberal coating of shaving cream. On Saturday morning I finished my kitchen duty ‘penalty’ and as the news on the bush radio was that we would be calling into Honolulu by Tuesday next, decided to stay away from penalty duties in case shore leave was granted. Lectures had been toned down a bit by now to make the days less boring. On Sunday, church parade was held at 1000 Hrs and then all were given stand down. So the “Bum Nut” club gathered around Russ Martin’s gramophone to hear Glenn Miller playing “In the Mood” for the umpteenth time, along with ‘Corn Silk’ and other hit tunes of the time. Just can’t remember how the group got the name “Bum Nuts”. Probably from Gum Nuts sitting on their bums on the deck listening to that one record and almost for sure would have been one of Russ Martin’s screwy ideas. Monday 22nd Feb saw the celebration of George Washington’s birthday with dinner of roast turkey, baked vegetables, salads and ice-cream. A welcome variation from the usual navy beans, saveloys and sauerkraut. A concert was held in the afternoon when we were presented with our ‘Crossing the Line’ certificates.
Honolulu
Sighted land early on Tuesday 23rd Feb and at 1000 Hrs berthed in Honolulu. Half of the RAAF contingent was granted shore leave that afternoon. I was in the other half who were given ‘liberty’ from 0830 hrs to 1200 Hrs the next morning.
So we were up early on Wednesday and down the gangplank at 0830 Hrs. I went with Keith Mills, Russ Martin and a few others primarily to buy new gramophone needles. On shore, the first thing we noticed was the number of shop assistants of Japanese descent and the heavily armed guards on all premises with a strong naval and military presence on the streets. We were wearing our tropical uniforms of khaki shirts and shorts and were taken as ‘boy scouts’ by many Americans, which did not go over too well. It was our first encounter with vehicles driven on the right hand side of the road and the ingrained habit of ‘look right’ before crossing soon had to be adjusted. I went very close to being hit by an army truck being driven by an Afro-American. It was a close shave, but fortunately my parents were not to receive that dreaded telegram.
Nowhere could we find gramophone needles-sewing needles, knitting needles. All sorts of needles, but no gramophone needles. Then it dawned on Russ Martin to give a play-acting role of a record spinning around on a turn table. And the shop assistant with a very serious expression said “You mean Phonograph needles”. Problem solved and mission completed. So the old record was going to cop a hiding for a few more days. There was other shopping to do, so we split up and went different ways. I stayed with Noel Hooper and we met an American Army Officer who took a real interest in us and invited us to have a look at the Pearl Harbour Naval Base. After going through a few check points, and might I add, given star treatment, we had to explain that we had to be back on board by 1200 Hrs and by then there was not enough time to go any further. We did get a view of the harbour and the devastation that had been caused and he agreed to take us back to the ship.
While we were ashore many seriously wounded and shell-shocked G.I’s from the Pacific Island battle zones were embarked for repatriation to their homeland. Many required full time medical attendants to apply necessary therapy to teach them to walk again and regain normal physical co-ordination. The ship was now crowded for the rest of the trip.
A band played on the wharf during the afternoon, and then it was ‘Aloha’ as we sailed away to strike rough seas and cold weather all Thursday and Friday, which kept us in our bunks and under blankets for most of the time. We were issued with sheep skin vests from the Australian Comforts Fund which were well received. The seas calmed down a bit by Saturday morning so I was able to enjoy breakfast of beans and an apple. Got some entertainment in the afternoon with the ack-ack guns firing at flak bursts. The Aussies also got some entertainment hearing the G.I’s calling their mates ‘cobras’ after hearing us call ours ‘cobbers’.
On Sunday 28th February, four days out of Honolulu, complaints were lodged about the breakfast because it was not hot. The weather was still cold and rainy. Church parade was held at 1000 Hrs. At 0100 Hrs we had advanced clocks by 30 minutes. In the afternoon I sewed some badges on Ben Smith’s overcoat and was rewarded with a sandwich-can only guess that he got it from the canteen. Clocks were advanced by 30 minutes at 0100 Hrs on Monday morning. We again woke to cold and cloudy weather but the sun managed to break through late in the morning. To keep us on our toes we were put through ‘Abandon Ship’ drill which didn’t go over too well with the American troops who embarked at Honolulu.
Up on deck after breakfast on Tuesday morning 2nd March to see a convoy ahead and a welcome to the sea gulls that had started to circle the ship as we moved towards land. Soon as it was a very spectacular view as we passed under the Golden Gate Bridge to enter San Francisco harbour and berth on the southern side opposite the famous Alcatraz prison island at 1600 Hrs when the tide was favourable. We were promptly disembarked, assembled on the wharf and marched to a ferry terminal to board the ferry across the harbour to Oakland where we were entrained and departed at 2000 Hrs for Vancouver.
We enjoy Our Trip to Vancouver Through to Edmonton
After a bit more than 3 weeks on the ship, it was luxury accommodation and service on the train, and I really enjoyed a good night’s sleep. It was breakfast in style on Wednesday morning as we sped through the foothills of the Cascade mountains, and we enjoyed the view of snow capped hills and frozen lakes for the first time. We descended on to the plains and farming communities of Oregon, fruit, chocolates, ice-cream papers and magazines (you name it) all available from the waiters on the train. We went through Roseburg, and on to Eugene, Albany, Salem (the Capital) and arrived in Portland just on dusk, with the snow capped Mt. Hood on the eastern horizon. The things we noted most during the day were the absence of fences between houses in the towns and cities, and the lack of paint on nearly all the wooden houses. Of course the Queenslanders could not help but notice the luxury of the train travel at speeds and stability that were unknown on the Queensland railways at that time. After such a full day of interest it was no trouble to settle back into the bunk for a good sleep as we travelled on overnight to Seattle and on to Vancouver.
Thursday 4th March was another memorable day. Woke at 0700 Hrs in Vancouver, had breakfast at the station then a pay parade to be issued with Canadian Dollars. Leave was granted from 1130 hrs until 1800 Hrs when we had to be back at the station. The Canadian hospitality came to the fore as we were approached by a Mr Keeler who introduced himself as a Rotarian (my first contact with Rotary) and offered a lift for a few of us into town to the tourist bureau and the YMCA where we enjoyed a meal for 5 cents. He arranged with us to call back at 1400 Hrs to pick us up and drive us around the sights of Vancouver and back to the station by 1800Hrs. There were three of us and as far as I can remember, although I am not sure, the other two may have been Ben Smith and Russ Martin. We were taken over the Lions Gate Bridge, through Stanley Park with its Indian Totem Poles and views of the snow capped Lions Head mountains as well as past the Houses of Parliament and through a few suburbs to be back at the station on time. After tea (what the Canadians called the evening meal) at the station we left by train at 2100 Hrs via the Canadian National Railways route through the Rockies to Edmonton.
We woke the next morning to be greeted by the most spectacular scenery as the long train snaked its way alongside frozen rivers and lakes and snow laden conifer tress in the foot hills, climbing all the time. All around were the majestic Rockies with not a tree on them but capped in snow. It was cold outside but we were in heated carriages with the same service that we enjoyed on the train from Oakland to Vancouver, but the waiters were Canadians. When we did stop at a station for the engine to take on water we could not resist the temptation to jump out and romp in the snow. Most were wearing their dungarees over the singlet and underpants, so it didn’t take long before the freezing temperatures scuttled them back to the warmth of the carriage. At our stop at Avola for 20 minutes it did not take long for a snow fight to develop and by some fluke or by accident a hard packed snowball hit the window of a carriage and broke it. (Jim Bateman it was). Anyway it made that carriage too cold for comfort so the occupants herded into adjoining carriages when we got under way again. Then we saw a bit of organization that you would not see on the Queensland Railways. As we pulled into Jasper the train stopped with the broken window right beside a ladder and a couple of tradesmen with the necessary tools and materials to repair the damage. In less than 20 minutes the new window was installed. We had now climbed to a good height and at Jasper there was a lot of sheet ice on the ground which caused us a few problems to stay on our feet. Three young boys gave us a bit of amusement as we threw our spare Aussie halfpennies along the ice and into snow drifts. After Jasper we crossed the Athabasca River and the highest point on the trip. From there it was downhill on to the prairies of Alberta. We had to stop for some unknown reason near Edson, before going on to Edmonton where we arrived early in the morning of Saturday 6th March 1943.
Avola – Where a carriage window was broken
Jasper – Where the window was fixed
During our 20 minute stop
We stayed on the train until 0600 Hrs and the arrival of a few canvas topped 3 ton trucks on to which we were loaded. The temperature was Minus 23. Fahrenheit and I soon realised that the best option was to be among the first to throw your kitbag in and jump in after it with others piling in after you to keep the cold at bay. We were taken immediately to No.3 Manning Depot (as the RCAF called it), given breakfast and allotted to barracks. We then had to assemble in the ‘Arena’ for a lecture on what to expect in our future movements and to remind us that in the RCAF the flag in front of HQ had to be saluted. This did not impress the Aussies. After that we were given leave until Monday morning. As a general rule most of the trainees under the Empire Training Scheme in Canada were given leave over the week-end. After a shave and a shower I teamed with an Ian Scott (RCAF) and went into town to the pictures and then to a dance at the Memorial Hall. It was very cold coming back to camp on the tram.
On Sunday morning we slept in until 1100 Hrs, then shaved, showered and had dinner before a few of us went into town to the YMCA which was well equipped with a ten-pin bowling alley, heated swimming pool, gymnasium, dance floor and dry canteen. Came back to camp reasonably early with Ben Smith and John Honeyman.
It was down to business on Monday morning as we were issued with flying suits and other gear needed. Photographs were taken for Identity Cards, Dental & Medical checks after dinner and then back into town with Bub Sargeant for a while before coming back to camp to write a few letters to home. On Tuesday morning we were paraded at 0900 Hrs and those mustered for training as Navigators were transported to Edmonton Airport where No.2 Air Observer School was situated, to be signed in, allotted to barracks and issued with text books and settled in after a quick trip into town to buy a few necessities. Three Australians-Jim Bateman, Bill Bowden and Geoff Cohen were assigned to Course No.71N1 along with a number of New Zealanders and Canadians. The remainder of the Australians, including myself, were assigned to Course No.71N2.
Navigators Course No. 71N2
No. 2 Air Observers School - EDMONTON, Alberta, CANADA
On Tuesday 9th March 1943, one month after embarking in Sydney, we started on the above course for training as Air Navigators. It was a rather quiet day, with the issue of text books and some navigation instruments. Even had time to write my first long letter home.
The following day however saw the start of what was to become a regular routine of breakfast, parade, lectures, dinner (at midday), more lectures, tea (evening) and study at night, interrupted on occasions with sport’s afternoons and later on with daylight and night flying. All interspersed with visits to the canteen where we soon learned to enjoy waffles with maple syrup, coke and ice-cream. On Friday at the end of the first week we experienced a very heavy snowfall, got issued with our navigation watches and had our first ‘Dry Swim’ as navigation exercises in the classroom are called. Leave was granted over most week-ends.
On Saturday morning we had another ‘dry swim’ to prepare us for our first flight and then it was stand-down until Monday morning. Church parades were always held on Sunday mornings. Went shopping on Saturday afternoon with Bub Sargent and to a show “Journey for Margaret”. Had a sleep-in on Sunday morning to 1100 Hrs, then shaved and showered and had a big dinner before settling down to write a few letters. Bub Sargent was doing the same and Keith Mills came by to try to get us to go out for tea.
On Monday 15th March we had the usual lecture periods, a pay parade at which the Red Cross managed to get a donation of $5- from us; study at night to keep up with the course. Between lectures the next day we were paraded for issue of battle dress, during which there was more snow fighting. For some reason Bub Sargent and I missed out on the issue that morning-they had probably run out of RAAF-Blue battle dresses in our size. Went to the pictures that night to see “In Which We Serve”. Bruce McGiffin came over from the Manning Depot while we were at lectures on Wednesday just to see how we were going. He was still awaiting a posting on to flying training. He was one of the “Bum Nut Club” on the troopship coming over. Got a letter from cousin Danny, in the Army in New Guinea, and answered it that day as well as writing home again. Lectures on Thursday included one on the camera which was very good. Made a visit to the barber before tea. On Friday we had more ‘dry swim’ exercises and at 1500 Hrs had a Wing’s parade for passing-out of earlier courses of Navigators and Bomb Aimers. Bub and I were issued with our battle dress, had a ‘signals’ lecture and I was put on my first duty on “Watch parade”. Cannot remember for sure now, just what that involved, but I think it meant you were not granted leave over the week-end. Had our usual lectures on Saturday morning, during which there was some excitement when a Boston crashed on the ‘drome. There was a false fire alarm in the barracks that night, probably something to do with Ben Smith smoking in bed. Was not feeling 100% and could feel the flu coming on. Still not feeling well of Sunday, just mooched around and went to bed early.
I Have a Spell in Hospital
On Monday 22nd March I was quite sick and stayed in bed, and was admitted to the Station Hospital with a severe attack of ‘flu. Bub Sargent and Ben Smith visited me after tea. The next day in hospital gave me something to write home about, particularly to Jean Hall who was a nurse in the Ipswich General Hospital. A nurse came and stripped me to the waist to wash me down, as she said, as far a possible. Then does likewise from the other end to wash me up as far as possible. Finally says “I now have to wash possible”. Slept most of Wednesday. Keith Mills and Ron Etherton dropped in with some mail that had arrived and on Thursday. Scotty Gall dropped in with some writing gear so that I could write a letter or two. Got discharged on Friday morning-missed the C.O’s parade. A couple of lectures in the afternoon and early to bed. Recuperated a bit on Saturday morning by sleeping in (no lectures) and then went into town after dinner with Bub Sargent. Met Ben Smith at the YMCA and went to a show at night. On Sunday morning did some study to catch up and after dinner went for a walk with Keith Mills and Ron Etherton, playing with some kids ice-skating in the frozen over gutters on the way.
Woke on Monday 29th March, (sister Margaret’s 18th birthday) to a great blanket of snow. 9 inches had fallen overnight, so the snow fights were alive again. This was when we experimented and discovered that an orange left on top of the ground froze solid in a very short time, but if buried in the snow took a long time to freeze We were due to have our ‘orientation’ flight the next day after muster and pay parade. The weather was dirty however, and this was scrubbed. Instead, we were given lectures on the layout of the Avro Anson, (the “Aggie”), and the 2nd navigator’s job of winding up the undercarriage after take-off, some 130 odd turns of the handle. For our training flights we were paired, the 1st Navigator did the log and plot charts and the 2nd Nav practiced map reading. I was paired with Scotty Gall, aged 30. After tea Keith Mills, Ron Etherton and I went to see “Random Harvest”.
Airborne at Last
Wednesday 31st March 1943 Whooppee!!! Airborne, Took off at 0907 Hrs in ‘Aggie’ No.6074 with bush pilot Mr Anderson on a flight plan: XD (Edmonton)-Wetaskiwin-Camrose-XD. Landed 1034 Hrs. What a familiarisation flight!!. Got a bit airsick and no wonder. The pilot thought the ‘Aggie’ was a fighter plane and shot up the school house at Looma where his girl friend was a teacher. Circled it a few times and could see through the windows as we flashed by.
Next day was April Fools Day but avoided being caught out as we had a packed day of more lectures. Then on Friday we had a few lectures and reported to the Records Office to have our fingerprints taken. Then in the afternoon we had our first photo flight taking hand held obliques. We were given a number of landmarks to photo and the pilot just went from one target to the next which was always in view because of the good visibility and the pilots local knowledge. No directions from the navigator were needed. In spite of the many banks & turns involved I did not get airsick, but others did suffer effects.
It was back in the air again on Saturday morning for another photo flight. This time it was taking vertical cross-country line overlaps from the school house at Namao to a bridge 2 miles S-W of there. Good fun-watch the drift. On these flights the duties of 1st and 2nd navigator were shared. Under strict instructions of course, not to let go of the camera when taking obliques out of the rear window. In the afternoon we relaxed—Ron Etherton, Keith Mills, Russ Martin, Lou Brimblecombe and I went into town, had two games of ten-pin bowling at the YMCA (Won the 2nd game), had tea at “Tony’s” and went to the pictures to see “One of Our Aircraft is Missing”. Back to barracks on the 2140 Hrs bus. As the weather conditions earlier in the week had set back the flying programme, some time was made up on Sunday. Church parade was held in the morning, and after dinner we were briefed for our first navigation exercise which was a flight of about 3 hours with 1st and 2nd Nav duties shared. Route was: XD–Fort Saskatchewan–Camrose-Lougheed-Mannville-Lake Yekau-XD. Took off at 1400 Hrs with Mr Ireland as pilot.
Training Continues
Included in lectures on Monday 5th April was a special talk from a Squadron Leader on the conditions prevailing in Britain. A signals lecture was held after tea, but I did not attend. On Tuesday morning, more lectures {classes on various subjects}, and after dinner we were transferred from “D” Barracks to a new barracks building across the road. Real ‘5 star’ accommodation, with central heating and bathroom/toilet facilities incorporated as well as the sleeping quarters. We still preferred to have some windows open and a bit of fresh air coming in, and Ben Smith still smoked in bed. It was quite a change, as before we had to run from the bath/toilet block back to your hut in temperatures that were unfit for brass monkeys. It was supposed to be a sports afternoon, but that had to be scrubbed.
On Wednesday morning we had another photo flight, this time with a female passenger, probably a friend of the pilot, Mr Lawrie. Then on Thursday we had a review and discussions on our first photo flight, as all the films had been developed and printed. This was followed by practice on the drift recorder. Leave was granted after dinner, from 1400 Hrs, but most of the class stayed in camp to catch up on studies and letter writing. After lectures etc on Friday I was rostered on Duty Watch parade, strolling around that night in rain & mud. More lectures on Saturday morning and more studies in the afternoon as we prepared for “Maps and Charts” exam. Duty Watch Parade before tea. Sunday was still wet and miserable and we studied most of the day, with Duty Watch Parades at 1000 Hrs and 1800 Hrs. A football appeared from somewhere, so a few fellows managed a game in the mud.
Got mail from home on Monday 12th April, with the photos that were taken when I was home on pre-embarkation leave. As the weather was still unsuitable for flying on Tuesday and Wednesday we were occupied with more studies and lectures as well as a game or two of football in the mud. I had to go over to the Manning Depot to have a photo taken and more fingerprinting. Got back in the air on Thursday for a photo exercise with the Ft. Saskatchewan bridge as our target. It was a very bumpy flight. On Friday it was back in the air again on Nav. Exercise No.2: XD- Bremner-Willow Creek-Beynon-Millet-Yekau Lake-XD. A very good trip. Got a telegram from home, and as it was the end of Duty Watch was granted 48 Hrs leave.
So on Saturday morning it was into town to do a bit of shopping, and while browsing through the book department of the Hudson Bay Company store I met a Mrs Gillespie who had some association with Australia, and she invited me out to tea that night, which I gratefully accepted. Went back to camp for dinner, and catch up on a bit of washing etc. Then went to Mrs Gillespie’s place, met her daughter Marsh who showed me over the nearby University after tea. Walked back to camp-about 6 miles. Caught up with studies on Sunday morning, and after dinner a few of us went on a long walk out past the riding ranch. It was about this time that John Stopp was posted from the course to another A.O.S. to complete his nav. course. (He went on to No.166 Squadron, and was shot down and killed on 13th June 1944 on a raid on Gelsenkirken-would have been very early in his tour)
On Monday 19th April we had our first exam in the morning on “Maps & Charts”. Got some mail, including Don Grant’s circular to the Bank staff in the services. Lectures that night on the stars-introduction to astro-navigation. More lectures on Tuesday morning and study in the afternoon to make up for the Easter Friday holiday at the end of the week. Collected my RCAF ID Card. Into the air again on Wednesday on Air Exercise No. 3 Took off at 0830 Hrs on route: XD-Bremner-Lloydminster-Marwayne-Bremner-XD. Almost went without my parachute harness, but it was a good trip. Went with Keith Mills to the pictures at night to see “Reunion in France”. Lectures all day on Thursday, and preparation for Air Exercise No. 4 which we were to fly next Sunday (Anzac Day). Stand-down on Good Friday so went out to tea with Mrs Gillespie & Marsh and met Lin Gilmore, a friend of Marsh’s and a brother of a Mrs Cairns who lived in Ipswich. Lectures again on Saturday morning and went into town shopping in the afternoon, met Lin and Marsh. Had tea with them and came back to camp to study. On Sunday (Anzac Day) we flew Exercise No.4 which was the first time we did an air-plot-previous flights were mainly map-reading. Route was: XD-Ft.Saskatchewan-Hughenden-Czar(Recce)-Wainwright-Ellerslie-XD. In the afternoon the Australians and New Zealanders held a remembrance service at the Cenotaph.
On Easter Monday, 26th April we had lectures in the morning and a photo flight in the afternoon. Then on Tuesday we had lectures all day. In the mail I got a letter from Don Grant with news about the bank employees who were in the services. On Wednesday we had an exam on “Magnets & Compasses” and flew Air Exercise No.5 in the afternoon. To Trochu & Torrington with a ‘recce’ of Three Hills. A very rough flight and most of us got air-sick. On Thursday we started studies on Astro Navigation and had a good lecture on Radio D/F Navigation which was very interesting. On Friday morning we had an exam on “Meteorology”, pay parade and an informative talk on the war in the Middle East. Late in the afternoon we took part in a Victory Loan parade through the streets of Edmonton with a pipe band leading the parade, and all the services involved.
Then on Saturday morning we flew Air Exercise No. 6 which was quite an experience. Mr Lightheart was the pilot and the route was: XD-Bremner-Scapa-Coronation-Bremner-XD. We climbed on track through cloud and heavy rain. Good experience in D.R.Navigation and instrument flying for the pilot. Most of the aircraft turned back but we soldiered on. At E.T.A Coronation came down through broken cloud and there under us was a small town and railway station that the pilot thought was Coronation, but he wanted to make sure and made a low level run past the station to see if we could read the station name. Too close the first time, so around again and stood off a bit further, when we were able to confirm that it was Coronation. So back into the cloud and D.R. Navigation back to Bremner and Base. I think at the end he may have homed in on a radio beam, but anyway I was pleased with the navigation exercise, and earned some brownie points for it.
The rain kept up in the afternoon so I went into town with Noel Hooper where we met Russ Martin and Bub Sargeant, and went to a dance with ‘Ivy” and a few of her friends that Russ and Bub had chatted up. On Sunday morning wrote letters home before dinner and in the afternoon went with Scotty Gall and Alex Taylor on a hike with the 20th Century Club. Here we met Alice Grosco, Mary, Isobel, Helen, Joe and a few others. Had a great time making a fire to toast marshmallows, and spin a few yarns about the ‘hoop ’snakes, and ‘wampoo’ pigeons in Australia. Alice became quite a good friend and kept up correspondence with me until I returned to Australia. On later hikes with Aussies on later courses she met Jim Cossart, who was on a Bomb Aimers Course, and was a friend of mine at Ipswich Grammar School in 1938-39. Jim lost his life on 14th March 1945 flying with 106 Sqdn on a rai to the oil plant at Luitzkendorf.
On Monday 3rd May it was lectures as usual and a crack at a D.R. Test in preparation for a mid-term exam on Friday. More lectures on Tuesday morning and two sports periods in the afternoon, when I would go out to the university track for athletics with a Canadian middle-distance runner, who was a good coach and gave me some good advice on the tactics of 440 and 880 Yard running. Brought my times in the 440 down to about 51 secs and the 880 to just on 2 mins. Called into town on the way back to camp and did some shopping. After tea did study on subject of ‘Photography’. Had our photography exam the next morning, it was an easy paper. In the afternoon we did another D.R. Test - ‘dry-swim’ for a bombing raid on Duisberg. Little did I realise then that I would bomb this target twice in one day seventeen months later. After that, prepared for a flight scheduled for the next morning. But the weather conditions worsened on Thursday and flying was scrubbed for the day.
In terms of arrangements made with Alice last week-end I phoned her (No.83882) to make a date for Saturday night. On Friday morning we had a C/O’s parade and our mid-term D.R. exam. Weather remained bad and flight scheduled for that night was scrubbed. Saturday morning was filled with lectures and after dinner it was flying again on Air Exercise No.6 that so many did not complete on the first attempt (to Scapa & Coronation). I had the job of 1st Nav. again, leaving Scotty to wind up the undercarriage and get a bit of map reading practice this time. It was a rough trip. Then, as arranged, I took Alice to a dance at the YMCA that night. Walked home in the rain.
A ‘phone call diversion during the week. Early in the week during a lecture the ‘phone rang and it turned out to be a girl wanting to speak Eric Sutton, or one of his pals. Somehow, I got the job, probably because I was nearest the phone and Eric saying that she would be referring to either Bob Smith or Keith Mills as he had mentioned those names to her when he met her last week-end. Three of us were regarded as the 3 musketeers, Keith & I were the two youngest on the course, and Eric was only a few months older. We had all enlisted on the same day as Aircrew Guards, been on separate postings for a few months, and then re-united at No. 2 Initial Training School at Bradfield Park to commence training as aircrew and mustered together to train as Navigators. To come on this course we were required to be age 19 by 10th January 1943, which was my nineteenth birthday, so I just made it as the baby of the course.
So to the phone I go - “All for one and one for all”. She explained that she had two very good friends and wanted to know if Eric and his two mates would like to join them one evening and go ‘shagging’. With a bit of quick thinking and with survival uppermost in mind I asked her to hang for a moment while I checked. It called for some reference to our Canadian Instructor which caused a bit of hilarity among the class and a few remarks about how you can be so lucky etc until he explained that in Canada the term meant ‘dancing’. With that bit of clarification and referral to Eric & Keith, I told her that we would be happy to meet them on Sunday afternoon. Had the usual church parade on Sunday morning and after dinner set off with Keith and Eric as leader to meet Mildred, Charlotte and Maureen. Spent some time with them at the YMCA and came back to camp in time for our first night flying exercise. It turned out the three girls became very good friends, I partnered Maureen O’Connor who was a primary school teacher. Took off at almost midnight on what was called exercise No. 21 for a 2 Hrs 45 mins flight, sharing 1st and 2nd Nav duties with Scotty Gall.
Monday 10th May saw us sleeping in until dinner time as we didn’t land from our night exercise the night before until after 0300 Hrs. Had lectures after dinner. Did very well with mail from home over the next two days. On Tuesday morning we flew exercise No.7, as 2nd Nav this time, and in the afternoon got the results of our mid-term D.R. exam. I got a mark of 87%, with which I was pleased. Had lectures all day Wednesday and a late night studying. On Thursday morning flew Exercise No. 8 “navigation by track error”, as 1st Nav. After dinner we were given leave. Went out with Maureen to the Capitol cinema and walked home with Keith who had taken Charlotte out, after we had seen the girls home. Made it a late night as it was an hour walk back to camp. Got more mail from home on Friday morning and had lectures all day. Detailed on Duty Watch Parade that night. Spent Saturday (15 May) in camp as I was on Duty Watch Parade, studied in the afternoon and prepared for night flying Exercise No.22. Took-off at 2305 Hrs, but had to return to Base with trouble in the starboard engine. Changed over to a ‘photo’ plane and took off again at 0045 Hrs (Sunday) for a 3 hours solo night flight. Didn’t get to bed until 0500 Hrs, but up again at 1030 Hrs to prepare for Air Exercise No.9, as 2nd Nav, that afternoon. Took of at 1335 Hrs, with Mr Barnard as pilot for a fight of 2 hrs 55 mins.
Had lectures all day on Monday 17th May and wrote 7 letters to friends at home to catch up on some of my mail. Also had to prepare for Air Exercise No.10 scheduled for the next day. It was lectures in the morning on Tuesday, and Air Exercise No.10 in the afternoon. Took off at 1355 Hrs with Mr Luyckfassel as pilot for a flight of 3hrs 15 mins as 1st Nav. It was a bumpy trip but a good navigation exercise as the pilot flew the courses given and didn’t tend to track crawl.
Wrote more letters and cards that night. Had lectures all day on Wednesday, and after tea prepared for Night Flying Exercise No.23. Took off at 2300 Hrs with Mr Rathbone as pilot on a trip that took 3Hrs 15 mins down to Little Fish Lake. It was time off in the morning so we slept in. Had 2 lectures after dinner and went swimming at West End before tea. It was then more evening lectures and preparation for Air Exercise No. 11 the next morning. This consisted mainly of preliminary work on the flight plan. On Friday morning took off at 0855 Hrs for a 3 Hrs trip as 2nd Nav, enjoying the scenery and pretending to be map reading with the pilot Mr Neale keeping an eye on your performance, as the pilots had to file a report after each flight. Had two lectures after dinner, and as it was the end of my stint on ‘Duty Watch’ I went out with Maureen to the Capitol cinema and saw “Hitler’s Children”.
On Saturday and Sunday had 48 Hrs leave pass after duty watch. Went into town and banked $40 in to an account I had established with the Royal Bank, to bring my balance up to $80-. It was Red Cross day in town so I bought a fountain pen, then called on Maureen to say I could not go out with her that night as I had accepted an invitation out to tea with Mrs Gillespie. After tea went for a walk with Marsh while Mrs Gillespie went to the pictures with a friend. Slept in as usual on Sunday morning and did some preparatory flight plan work for a flight scheduled the next day. In the afternoon went hiking with the 20th Century Club and we were joined by several Aussie Sergeants from RAAF No.30 course who had their wings and were in transit through Edmonton.
On Monday morning 24th May 1943 we took off at 0830 Hrs On Air Exercise No.12 with Mr O’Hanlon as pilot. I was 1st Nav and was satisfied with good results. It was a 4 hour flight and we had to plot a square search and leading line search patterns. Study after dinner, and then after tea I did my laundry that had been soaking for a few days and wrote a few letters home. Lectures on Tuesday morning and sports in the afternoon when we played softball and got beaten by one run. After tea we were up till late doing Aircraft Recognition. Had lectures all day Wednesday and prepared for flight that night. Took off at 2355 Hrs with Mr Craig as pilot on a 3 Hr 15 min flight navigating by D/F. Not a very satisfactory result as the pilot was obviously track crawling. After the night flight slept in until dinner time and then had a couple of lectures in the afternoon. Before tea went round to the University for athletics training (running & high jump). Got a telegram from home and at night it was practice with the sextant shooting a few stars. Called on to C/O’s parade on Friday morning and a passing out parade for Bomb Aimers. Sent a telegram home in the afternoon and as I was feeling a few sore muscles after yesterday’s athletic training I had a rub down and went to bed early. Had lectures on Saturday morning and moved to new classroom in new G.I.S. Buildings. Attended a Highlands Games in the afternoon where I represented the station in both High and Long Jumping. With not much success, but our team managed to come second overall. Met Marsh Gillespie at the games, who was there with two friends Pat and Betty. Flying was scheduled for that night, but had to be scrubbed owing to bad weather. Usual sleep-in on Sunday morning, and after dinner Keith Mills & I went out to Maureen’s home. Walked home in the rain.
On Monday 31st May it rained all day, but did not interfere with a full programme of lectures, but did cause night flying to be scrubbed again. Wrote home, and at night went out with Keith and Charlotte; Maureen was unable to come. The girls were going to Vancouver the next day. Bad weather continued all day Tuesday, so it was lectures all day and study at night. Got a card from Maureen on Wednesday to say the girls had arrived in Vancouver, and also got a letter from my old boss, Mr Lindsay Hall. We were supposed to have an Army Co-op exercise but that was washed out. Aldis Lamp tests in the afternoon and study at night. Put my forage cap in for dry cleaning. On Thursday (3rd June) had P.T. first thing in the morning and the “Synthetics on Astrograph”. Cannot remember what that entailed, probably an astro navigation dry swim. A morse test in the afternoon and two letters from home, one form Jean Hall and the Bank’s ‘Nautilus’ magazine. Answered Jean’s letter and also wrote one to Merle Green. It was usual C/O’s parade on Friday morning and our 13th week Navigation Test in the afternoon. Got a letter from Maureen, and after tea went in to town, went to a show, came back to camp and wrote a few letters. On Saturday morning we had more lectures, and after dinner wrote a couple of letters and did my washing. Went out to tea at Mrs Gillespie and went in to town with Marsh, bought progress numbers of Journal and Bulletin to send home. Usual sleep-in on Sunday and wrote more letters in the afternoon. Study after tea and preparation for a flight schedule for tommorrow.
On Monday 7th June we had lectures in the morning and flew Exercise No. 13 in the afternoon, as a 2nd Nav. Took off at 1425 Hrs and were airborne for 3Hrs 15 mins. More study after tea. Lectures most of the day on Tuesday with sports in the latter half of the afternoon. After tea went for athletics training at the university and came back to camp to prepare for tomorrow’s scheduled flight. Took off at 0855 Hrs on Wednesday on Air Exercise No.19 with Mr Williams as pilot on a low flying exercise of 3 Hrs 20 mins. It was great-best trip yet. After dinner got a letter from Maureen which I answered and also wrote some letters home. Had lectures all day Thursday as it rained all day. More running around in the mud, and athletics training at the university was cancelled. Friday saw lectures again all day, and start of another duty watch which I hoped would be my last time. The weather cleared up in the late afternoon and we were able to fly night exercise that night. Took off at 25 mins after midnight (Sat morn) with Mr Real as pilot. Usual 3 Hr trip as 1st Nav, being a night exercise. It was an interesting one on which a few got lost. Didn’t get into bed until 0430 Hrs so slept in until dinner time. Studied all afternoon as the study load was getting heavier, and it was early to bed as we had a flight scheduled for Sunday morning. Took off at 0855 Hrs with Mr Real as pilot, as 1st Nav on a flight of 2 Hrs 50 mins. Had dinner when we landed and slept all afternoon. Wrote a long letter home after tea.
For the week starting Monday 14th June we had a heavy programme of lectures and study as the weather continued to be poor, scrubbing all flying. I was on Duty Watch until Friday. It was still drizzling rain at the end of the week and on Saturday morning we had more lectures. After dinner Keith Mills and I went to a show, and then after tea we went to another show with Charlotte and Maureen, who were now back from Vancouver. Walked home from Charlotte’s home through large pools of water and mud. Was able to tell Maureen that I had received her card that morning that she had posted the day before in Calgary on the way home. Usual sleep-in on Sunday morning and study in the afternoon. Went to tea at Mrs Gillespie’s with Ian Pender and Don Plumb. Ian was on another course, and I cannot remember how Don came to be invited. A night flying exercise was scheduled, but had to be scrubbed.
On Monday 21st June it was still raining, so we had another full day of lectures and study. Got 2 letters from home. After tea managed to go to the university track for athletics training as the weather cleared during the afternoon. This enabled us to get airborne on Tuesday morning on Air Exercise No.15. Took off at 0855 Hrs, as 2nd Nav, with Mr Stewart as pilot on a flight of 3 Hrs 05 mins and managed to get some practice with the bubble sextant by taking a few shots on the sun. Rain came on again in the afternoon, so went to a film on the station “Road to Tokio”. It was still raining lightly on Wednesday, so it was lectures and study during the day, and after tea met Maureen in town and went to see “China”. Lectures all day on Thursday and training at the university track after tea. Saw Maureen and Charlotte on the way home. Weather cleared on Friday and was good enough to fly, so at 1435 Hrs took off with Mr Rungel as pilot on Air Exercise No.16 which was for only 2 hours.
On Saturday we got called for 2 lectures in the afternoon. Got letters from both of my sisters. Just after tea Maureen and Charlotte came riding bikes past the barracks so we had a bit of a yarn with them, but could not go out with them that evening as we had a flight scheduled for early the next morning. Immediately after breakfast on Sunday morning took off at 0910 Hrs with Mr Tibbets as pilot on Air Exercise No.17 as 1st Nav on a trip of 3 Hrs 25 mins to Cremona and a look at the Rockies. A very good flight. More athletics training at the university in the afternoon and then over to a sports ground where Keith Mills and Eric Sutton were playing cricket. Maureen, Charlotte and Mildred were there watching them. Took photos.
On Monday morning 28th June, we had ‘magnetism & compass’ exam and after dinner two periods of instruction/educational films. Two letters from Aussie in the mail. More training at the university after tea. On Tuesday morning another exam on Instruments and D/F. Went to the pictures after tea with Maureen, Keith and Charlotte to see “Happy go Lucky”. Was supposed to do Aircraft Recognition that night but missed it. Lectures all day on Wednesday and at 2355 Hrs took off on Air Exercise No.26. This exercise had been scrubbed about 6 times owing to bad weather. It was a 3 hour flight, which meant we didn’t get to bed until about 0400 Hrs on Thursday morning. So it was a sleep-in until 1045 Hrs.
Thursday 1st July was “Dominion Day” After dinner went to a sports meeting conducted by the Southside Business Ass’n, at the Southside Sports grounds which had a straight 220 yard track and a lap of about 880 yards. Ran in the 440 yards race and won it, for which I received the grand sum of $80-00. Soon after competed in the high jump, but could only manage 4th, which paid nothing. This was my first experience of a professional sports meeting that also included cycling. Athletes were not permitted to wear ‘spikes’. The dirty tricks played by the cyclists in team events really opened my eyes. Maureen and Keith and Charlotte came to the event and we celebrated afterwards by going out to tea at the Royal George on my winnings. At the meet 3 parachute jumpers put on a very interesting display.
Friday saw us with lectures all day and flying Air Exercise No.27 at night. Took off at 2355 Hrs with Mr Lannon as pilot on a good flight of 3 Hrs 20 mins. At this time of the year in Edmonton it is nearly midnight before it gets dark, so night flying is fairly restricted. Usual sleep-in on Saturday morning after night flying. Saturday afternoon and Sunday saw the usual week-end chores, study and letter writing.
Monday 5th July saw the start of 2 weeks of intensive lectures, study, flying and exams to complete our course on time. In peace time the course would take over 12 months but in the urgency of the war situation had to be concentrated and focus on the essentials. Flew Air Exercise No.18 that morning. Took off at 0900 Hrs with Mr Real as pilot on a trip of 3 hours. Then on Tuesday afternoon we flew Air Exercise No.20. This was blindfold exercise that took us all over the map for almost 3 ½ hours. We took off at 0900 Hrs with Mr Filby as pilot. Air Exercise designated No.19 must have been cancelled. Bad weather prevented any flying from Wednesday to Friday. Got a long letter from my brother Alex on Wednesday and then one from Miss McPherson in Sydney on Saturday. Lectures all day on Saturday and study at night before flying Air Exercise No.28 which was a night navigation on the same course of daylight exercise No.10. Took off at 2300 Hrs with Mr Barnard as pilot. Flew through storms and cloud out to Frog Lake. Slept in on Sunday morning-you were excused from Church Parade if you were flying the night before. After dinner studied meteorology for an hour or so and then went to watch Keith and Eric playing cricket and then we all met Maureen, Charlotte and Mildred at the corner of 109th and Jasper later in the afternoon.
On Monday 12th July we had our final D.R. (Navigation) test. Wrote home and did preparation for more flying tomorrow. A large bag of mail from Australia came in but I did not score a thing. Maureen phoned just after tea. On Tuesday(13th July) took off at 0835 Hrs with Mr Luyckfassel as pilot on Air Exercise No.21, which was a special, incorporating evasive action, designed to prepare us for active service conditions. More lectures in the afternoon and studied meteorology at night. Supposed to fly on Wednesday morning, but this was scrubbed-raining again. So we had our final meteorology exam. The rain kept up through Thursday and Friday so time was passed with sessions of lectures and study more lectures on Saturday morning, usual laundry chores and letter writing after dinner and as the weather had cleared prepared for flying that night after tea. This was night flight over the route of Exercise No.9 that we had flown in daylight two months ago. Took off at 2355 Hrs with Mr Kellough as pilot and as 2nd Nav. I had to practice astro shots with the bubble sextant. That meant a sleep-in on Sunday morning and as we had some catch-up to do in order to finish the course on time another night flight was scheduled that evening. Took off at 2325 Hrs with Mr McCall as pilot on the route of Exercise No.11 that had previously been flown in daytime.
It was the usual sleep-in after night flying on Monday morning 19th July. In the afternoon and on Tuesday & Wednesday we had a few final written tests. On Wednesday night our final night flying test was scheduled. Took off at 2300 Hrs with Mr Cusater as pilot on the route of Exercise No.12 flown in daytime. This flight of 3 Hrs 05 mins was the final air exercise on which we were assessed. On Thursday 22nd July after dinner we were advised that all had passed the course, and got instructions to attend to clearances for medical and dental and to hand in any equipment that had been issued to us. ‘Wings’ passing out parade would be held on Friday 23rd July 1943.
On Thursday night Keith, Eric and I took the girls out to The Barn and then went walked them home. We invited them to the ‘Wings’ parade, but they could not attend. Friday was a big day with the presentation of our ‘wings’ and the sewing of Sergeant’s stripes on our sleeves. At the pay parade after ‘wings’ presentation I was given a slip of paper with the instructions “Here is your Commission, it is now up to you to arrange for the issue of Officer’s Uniforms etc”. Also commissioned off course were Ivan Biddle and “Inky’ Keena who were posted to other Air Observer Schools as instructors, Ken Todd, Ted Hall, John Honeyman, Noel Hooper and Les Sabine. Ben Smith was on line-ball about passing and had to go to a review committee as at this stage he had admitted he had put his age back to enlist, and he was in fact aged 35 Yrs-not 30 years according to the records. Ben did eventually go on the fly in Bomber Command and lost his life on night of 24/25 Dec. 1944 on a raid on Cologne with 166 Squadron.
With kit bags packed and left at ‘despatch’ as instructed, I went to Maureen’s for tea. Her father drove me to the station where we left Edmonton by Canadian National Railway at 2130 Hrs for Toronto.
Reflections on leaving Edmonton
Thoughts that would be shared by all now on their way to the European Theatre of WW11.
All shared a sense of satisfaction and relief that we had earned our ‘wings’ as Air Navigators after a very intensive course of 4 ½ months that involved a total of 75 Hrs 55 mins of daylight flying and 34 Hrs 45 mins of night flying for the average member, and instruction and exams in 12 subjects such as Navigation, Maps & Charts, Magnetism & Compasses, Instruments, D.F/Wireless Telegraphy, Meteorology, Aerial Photography, Signals, Reconnaissance, Armament and Aircraft Recognition. In all I managed an overall pass of 82.4%. A few found the going hard towards the end of the course, as it was not easy and acknowledged the support, encouragement and assistance given by the chief instructor F/O. Brown (RCAF). He did encourage a few to hang in and was rewarded with their dedication and success. All realised though that there was still a long way to go with further training after our arrival in the UK before we were fully trained to assume the roll of a navigator in a crew on Bomber Command.
The main memories most of shared:-
• The extreme cold and snow covered prairies when we first
started flying, which made it difficult to judge height from
the air.
• The mud and slush when the snow did melt, and the river
thawed, and the great swarms of mosquitoes-large scotch
greys.
• The fields turning to green when wheat was planted and to
yellow as the dandelions came into bloom.
• The brown bears coming in close to town in search of food in
the late winter and playing with their cubs who often got a
disciplinary clout.
• Gophers popping in and out of their holes in the field beside
our barracks.
• Young children ice skating on the frozen gutters in the streets’
• Our own first try at ice skating on a frozen flooded tennis
court and being conned into playing ice hockey, which was
good because it gave you a hockey stick for support.
• The pain that a few suffered from frost bitten ears- in spite of
warnings.
• The Indian quarters that we passed through when walking to
town.
• The hospitality of the people.
• On a few reported occasions being mistaken for “Austrians’.
• The beauty of snow laden trees early in the morning.
• For Queenslanders—the 4 distinct seasons.
• Saluting the flag in front of HQ. The furore caused when an
item of female underwear was hoisted thereon one night and
the Aussies had no objection to saluting that particular
standard.
• The skill of the ‘Bush Pilots’ They were all civilians who had
good permanent work because of the Empire Training Scheme, but they were very competent at their job. True Canadian Geese-born to flying.
• Waffles and Maple Syrup and Coke and Ice Cream in the
Station canteen.
• Strictly taboo. But some made it** Flying under the high level
bridge.
• The sports facilities at the YMCA.
• Ben Smith’s accidents from smoking in bed.
Personally, there was the joy of wonderful friends made. The gang of the 20th Century Club and at the YMCA where I met Alice Grosco who kept up correspondence with me for two years after the war, until I told her I was going back to Scotland to marry Alma. Alice did have a special reason to keep in touch, as from a later Bomb Aimer course she met Jimmy Cossart on one of the Club’s regular hikes. He came from Boonah and was a boarder with me at Ipswich Grammar School 1938-39 and she was quite surprised when Jim told her he knew me. Later I was to meet Jim at the Boomerang Club in London on a few occasions until in the last months of the war he lost his life in a raid over Germany.
Perhaps the most cherished memory was the wonderful friendship that Keith and Eric and I enjoyed with Charlotte, Mildred and Maureen. They really treated us more like brothers and I would say did not put any pressure on us for a lasting relationship. We were welcomed into their homes. They truly were three girls who enjoyed the simple pleasures, and were good companions to each other. What you saw was what they were.
As we left Edmonton we were all aware that we were now on the way to the big adventure with its inevitable risks. Also we would soon be split up to go various ways. In fact when we got to Embarkation Depot at Halifax, after leave, a few of us would move into the Officers Mess, whilst the rest would be in the Sergeant’s Mess. But for the period of leave, and until we got to Halifax, those who were commissioned would continue with Sergeant’s stripes on our uniforms and stay as a group. Most important in our minds was to enjoy leave as we journeyed to Halifax across Canada with a break to visit New York. We had completed a course of flying training, all with over a 100Hrs up, and without an accident and with no loss of life.
These Were Fellow Course Participants
Following is a summary of the participants on the course and a brief detail of the operational experience of most, with pertinent information on those who lost their lives in training and on operations over Europe as well as those who were shot down and were taken Prisoner of War, or, in one case evaded capture.
After the war I kept in regular touch with Keith Mills, and since the late 1980’s with Lou Brimblecombe. We were the three youngest on the course. Eric Sutton did his tour with 622 Sqdn which was also based at Mildenhall where I served in XV/15 Squadron. And I did not get in contact with him again until December 2002, when he was traced living in Victoria. Roy Olsen moved to Tasmania after he retired as a school teacher and we had contact each Christmas. Noel Hooper, who came from the Nambour district died a few years after the war. Scotty Gall returned to work with the Bank of NSW and on retirement moved to Cooroy in Queensland, where I resumed contact in the early 1990’s. After his wife died he sold his property and moved to a retirement village in Brisbane, where he also died in 1999/2000. In one of those co-incidences in life, Scotty (or Vernon as he was known to his family) turned out to a brother of a friend we have known in the church at Alexandra Headland for many years.
It is interesting to note the service history of the ‘Todd’ Brothers, Ernie and Ken. They were both schoolteachers from the Newcastle area (both born in Canada). They enlisted together and went through initial training and operational training together and served on the same squadron flying in Wellingtons out of Foggia in Italy. They returned to their pre-service vocation. Ken, who was shot down and taken POW, died is 1986 at the age of 71 and Ernie died in 2002 at the age of 89.
Don Plumb “Bluey” did a tour in Halifaxes and died of acute leukaemia about 1987.
Course No.71N2-EATS-at No2. A.O.S EDMONTON, Canada. All members of RAAF
Duration 10/3/1943 to 23/7/1943,
Instructors:- F/O.W.H.Brown & P/O. Pogue ??? (both R.C.A.F)
NAME Number Birth Enlisted Discharged D.O.Death Posting on Rank Awards SeeNotes
Discharge ***
BIDDLE Ivan R. 424905 13/10/1913 09/10/1942 09/10/1945 8 O.T.U F/Lt Instructor in Canada
Goulburn Sydney
BRIMBLECOMBE C.L. 425592 23/12/1923 25/04/1942 07/12/1945 9 A.H.U F/O (218/514 Sqdn)
(Louis) Brisbane Brisbane
ETHERTON Ronald H. 423088 02/11/1921 20/06/1942 13/08/1944 76 Sqdn F/Sgt ***No.1
Sydney Sydney
GALL V. Scott 424915 08/08/1912 09/10/1942 16/04/1946 1315 Flight F/O (467Sqdn)
Mosman NSW Sydney
HALL Ernest T 406976 17/02/1914 26/05/1941 25/02/1946 9 A.H.U F/Lt Instructor in Canada
Perth Perth
HONEYMAN John 429498 23/05/1923 08/10/1942 15/02/1946 1656 C.U F/Lt D.F.C.
Deepwater Brisbane
HOOPER R. Noel 425851 16/12/1923 21/05/1942 21/08/1945 1 P.H.U F/Lt *** No.2
Nambour Brisbane
KEENA Ilford N. 424870 12/10/1912 09/08/1942 22/06/1945 9 A.O.S F/O Instructor in Canada
Ballengarra Sydney
LEWIS John H. 423142 27/01/1923 20/06/1942 08/11/1943 3 A.F.U. Sgt. ***No.3
Broken Hill Sydney
MARTIN H. Russell 418289 28/12/1922 15/05/1942 13/12/1945 21 O.T.U F/O D.F.C
Melbourne Melbourne
MILLS Keith C. 425954 02/01/1924 21/05/1942 27/10/1945 78 Sqdn W/O ***No.4
Mackay Brisbane P.O.W
MURTHA Harold H. 429473 30/05/1922 08/10/1942 05/09/1945 12 O.T.U F/O (463 Sqdn)
Brisbane Brisbane
OLSEN Roy P. 429479 10/07/1920 08/10/1942 15/11/1945 640 Sqdn W/O ***No.5
Bundaberg Brisbane
PALFERY Noel J. 424920 16/05/1914 09/10/1942 18/07/1945 467 Sqdn F/O (467 Sqdn)
Brisbane Sydney
PLUM Donald A. 424934 17/12/1919 09/10/1942 17/12/1945 96 Sqdn F/O (466/462 Sqdns)
Inverell Sydney
NAME Number Birth Enlisted Discharged D.O.Death Posting on Rank Awards SeeNotes
Discharge ***
SABINE C.W. Leslie 426165 08/12/1917 23/05/1942 01/07/1946 466 Sqdn F/Lt. D.F.C.
Brisbane Brisbane
SARGENT Allan J. 410098 19/10/1918 08/11/1941 22/01/1946 1 M.R.U W/O ***No.6
(Bulb) Williamstown Melbourne 44 Sqdn-P.O.W.
SMITH Benjaminn H. 424891 24/03/1914 09/10/1942 24/12/1944 166 Sqdn F/Sgt ***No.7
Merriwether Sydney
SMITH Ian H. 423913 20/10/1922 18/07/1942 18/06/1944 115 Sqdn F/Sgt ***No.8
Katoomba Sydney
SMITH Robert W. 425992 10/01/1924 21/05/1942 12/12/1945 32 Base F/Lt (XV/15 Sqdn)
Brisbane Brisbane No.3 Group RAF Bomber Command
SUTTON Eric C. 425910 04/081923 21/05/1942 17/09/1945 84 O.T.U F/O (622 Sqdn)
Gympie Brisbane
TAYLOR Alexander 424804 04/08/1920 09/10/1942 02/01/9/1946 R.A.F. F/O
Arncliffe Sydney Dumbeswell
TODD Ernest 424942 30/12/1913 09/101942 10/08/1945 3 A.O.S F/O (142 Sqdn)
Canada Sydney Italy
TODD W. Kenneth 424878 16/07/1915 09/10/1942 06/12/1945 142 Sqdn F/Lt ***No.9
Canada Sydney
General Comments
All participants in the above course were members of the RAAF, and many were recruited under the “Air Crew Guard” category in May 1942. They left Australia (Sydney) on the USS “Hermitage”, departing on Wednesday 10th February 1943, arriving via Pago Pago and Hololulu at San Francisco on Tuesday 2nd March 1943, where they disembarked and then entrained at Oakland to go by rail, via Vancouver, to Edmonton in Canada where they disembarked on Saturday morning 6th March 1943 when the temperature was reading –23 (Fahrenheit).
Course No.71N2 started on 10th March at No.2 A.O.S at the Edmonton airfield with Avro Anson aircraft flown by civilian “Bush” Pilots. Passing out parade and presentation of wings with promotion to Sergeant was held on Friday 23rd July. Eight members were commissioned off course to rank of Pilot Officer. No casualties were recorded on training.
All but 3 were posted to “Y” (Embarkation) Depot in Halifax Nova Scotia (spending some time on leave in Montreal & New York on the way) where they embarked on the R.M.S “Queen Mary” on Friday 28th August 1943 and sailed to the Clyde in Scotland where they disembarked at Gourock on Tuesday 31st August 1943 and entrained for overnight travel to the RAAF’s No.11 Personnel Despatch and Reception Depot at Brighton. From here most were posted to various advanced training units to be incorporated into a crew and fly in Lancasters & Halifaxes of Bomber Command.
Postings as listed in the above schedule are the postings as recorded at the time the airman was recalled to No.11 P.D.R.C at Brighton for repatriationto Australia, or upon date of death, or at time of loss on operation and taken POW. Sqdn reference under notes is one they did tour with (where known).
Course 71N2- Details of Casualties, either loss of life or shot down and taken P.O.W, or Evaded Capture
No.1. Ronald Henry ETHERTON No.76 Squadron. In Halifax 111 LL578 MP-H Bar on night of 12/13 August 1944 took off from Holme-on-
Spalding At 2129 Hrs to bomb the Opel Motor factory at Russelsheim. Crashed 2Km N.E. of Hamm (Germany)
and all crew were killed. They rest in France in the Choloy War Cemetery, which suggests their graves were
investigated by an American Unit. Of the 297 aircraft (191 Lancasters, 96 Halifaxes 7 10 Mosquitoes) that took part
in the raid 7 Halifax & 13 Lancasters were lost. 6.7% of the force. Local reports stated the factory was only slightly
damaged.
No.2. Rupert Noel HOOPER No.463 Squadron. In Lancaster 111 LM597 JO-W on night of 24/25 June 1944 took off from Waddington at 2229
Hrs on their first ‘op’ to bomb flying bomb base at Prouville. Crew, with exception of the F/Eng, were all
RAAF; believed shot down by night fighter. B/A, W/O/P and both gunners were captured and taken POW
Pilot, F/Eng & Nav (Noel) evaded capture Pilot W/Cdr D.R.Donaldson RAAF was among the most senior officers
to evade capture in 1944.
.No.3 John Hedgley LEWIS The Course’s first casualty, in training, on 8th November 1943 at No.3 Advanced Flying Unit, Halfpenny Green.
Buried in Chester (Blacon) Cemetery, Cheshire, England. Section A Grave No154
.
No.4 Keith Cyril MILLS POW. No.78 Squadron. In Halifax 111 MZ692 EY-P on night of 22/23 June 1944 took off from Breighton at 2230 Hrs to
bomb railway yards at Laon. First operation for most of the crew. Shot down by enemy fire and baled out. 5 were
taken POW and 2 evaded capture. All the crew, with exception of the F/Eng, were RAAF. Keith was arrested in
France and taken into custody by the Gestapo, being held with other members of his crew for about 3 months in
Buchenwald Concentration Camp until ‘rescued’ by the Luftwaffe and transferred to Stalag Luft L3 Sagan and
Balaria. POW No.8018. 4 Halifaxes were lost on this Laon raid.
No.5 Roy Peter OLSEN POW. No.640 Sqdn. In Halifax 111 LK865 C8-Q on night of 27/28th May 1944 took off from Leconfield at 2356 Hrs to
bomb Military Camp at Bourg-Leopold. Shot down by night fighter and crashed 0228 hrs near Antwerp. Pilot,
F/Eng & M/U/G were killed. Roy was taken POW and held in L7 Stalag Luft, Bankau-Kruelberg. POW No.95.
No.6 Allan Joseph SARGENT POW. No44 Sqdn. In Lancaster 1 LL938 KM-S on night of 21/22nd June 1944 took off from Dunholme Lodge at 2325
Hrs to bomb synthetis oil plant at Wesseling. Shot down by night fighter Pilot, B/A, W/O/P and R/G were killed
and are buried in Nederweert War Cemetery. Bub was taken POW and held in L7 Stalag Luft, Bankau-Kreulberg.
POW No.236. Of the 133 Lancasters & 6 Mosquitoes that took part on this raid, 37 Lancasters were lost—27.8%
of the force. 10/10 cloud was encountered and planned 5 Group’s Low-Level marking of the target was not
possible so H2S was used with only moderate success. 44, 49 & 619 Sqns lost 6 aircraft each. This was the last
occasion on which Bomber Command would suffer such a severe loss in operations to the Ruhr.
It is believed that above crew was the only Bomber Command crew lost in the war that comprised airmen from the 3 Commonwealth & Dominion air forces, plus a USAAF representative.
No.7 Benjamin Hartley SMITH No.166 Sqdn. In Lancaster 1 NG297 AS-K2 on night of 24/25 December 1944 (Christmas Eve) took off from
Kirmington at 1515 Hrs to bomb railway communications at KOLN-Nippes (COLOGNE). Crashed in the target area. All the crew were killed and buried locally, since when their bodies have been interred in the Rheinsberg
War Cemetery.
97 Lancaster & 5 Mosquitoes took part—5 Lancasters were lost over the target area and 2 more on return to
England owing to bad weather. Oboe marking was used with very accurate results. Local reports showed that
railway tracks were severely damaged & an ammunition train blew up. Nearby airfield,(Butzweilerhof) also
damaged.
No.8 Ian Harrison SMITH No.115 Sqdn. In Lancaster 1 HK559 A4-H on night of 17/18th June 1944 took off from Witchford at 0102 Hrs to
bomb oil installations at Montdidier. Dived into the ground and exploded with great force at Gannes (Oise), 5 Km N of St-Just-en-Chausse. All lie buried in the Gannes Communal Cemetery.
317 aircraft (196 Lancasters, 90 Halifaxes, 19 Mosquitoes & 12 Stirlings) took part in this and a similar targets at
Aubnoye and St Martin-l’Hortier. Targets were covered by cloud. Master bomber called off raid at Montdidier after
Only a few aircraft had bombed. Above was only aircraft lost on this operation.
No.9 William Kenneth TODD POW No.142 Sqdn. In Wellington Bomber took off from Foggia in Italy to bomb airfield on outskirts of Vienna. On 10th
May1944. It was crews 10th “Op”. Shot down by fighter in target area. In hospital in Vienna for short period before
going to Frankfurt for interrogation and to Stalagluft 3 at Sagan. And later to Luckenwald from where they were
repatriated to England..
NOTE
About 4/5 weeks after the course started John Henry STOPP, No.419738, born 3/7/1915 in Cairns Qld, Enlisted 10/10/1942 in Sydney was posted to another A.O.S to complete a Nav Course from which he was commissioned off course. On the night of 12/13 June 1944, flying with 166 Squadron on a raid on GELSENKIRKEN their Lancaster crashed in Holland and all on board were killed They were buried on 16th June 1944 in the ZELHEM General Cemetery It would appear that would have been very early in their tour of operations. .John Stopp was transferred when his flying Training-partner was hospitalised. I think it was Doug Rogers No.424609 who was commissioned off a later course and served in No4 Group RAF Bomber Command in Yorkshire - he was attached to 41 Base before returning to Australia.
Three other trainee navigators who sailed to Canada in the same draft were assigned to Course No.71N1. They were Jim Bateman No.423042 (149 Sqdn- awarded D.F.C), Bill Bowden No.424728 (261 Sqdn) and Geoff Cohen No.424725 who was commissioned off course and remained in Canada as an instructor at No.3 A.O.S.
Course 71N2 - Empire Training Scheme
No. 2 A.D.S. Edmonton – Alberta – Canada
10 March 1943 to 23 July 1943
Back Row: Keith Mills, Bob Sargent, Lou Brimblecombe, Noel Hooper, Eric Sutton, Alex Taylor
Middle Row: Ken Todd, Ernie Todd, Don Plumb, Noel Palfrey, Ron Etherton, Roy Olsen, Les Sabine,
Bob Smith, John Honeyman, Harold (Roy) Murtha
Front Row: Russ Martin, Ted Hall, Scotty Gall, Ian Biddle, W.H. Brown, ? , Ben Smith,
John Lewis, I.N. Keena, Ian Smith
We’ve Got Our Wings – Rookie Sergeants
The “Three Musketeers”
Eric Sutton, Bob Smith, Keith Mills
23rd.July 1943
As an L.A.C. in Edmonton
In Front of Wilsons Stationery Shop in Jasper Avenue
24 April 1943
Air Photography Exercises “Spring”
Bridge Over North Saskatchewan River about 1 ½ miles S.W. of Fort Saskatchewan
Looking S.W. in Direction of Edmonton Which is Visible in Distant Background
Notification of Selection for Appointment to Commissioned Rank
Effective 23rd July, 1943
1st July 1943
Dominion Day Sports – Winning the 440 yds
Eric Sutton, Keith Mills, Bob Smith
- at University Sports Ground
Keith said the Wrong Thing!
Have Wings *** Will Travel
From Edmonton, Canada to Brighton, England
We left Edmonton, with “N” Navigator wings and Sergeant’s stripes sewn on to our tunics, by train, at 2130 Hrs on Friday 23 July 1943. After the busy day of Wings Passing-out Parade and getting clearances we soon settled down to a good night’s sleep. Woke up in the early hours of Saturday at Saskatoon and travelled all day across the prairies through what seemed like endless fields of wheat and grazing country. It was almost express through Watrons, Rivers, Portage, La Prairie and arrived at Winnipeg at 1845 Hrs. Had a stop-over there and left again at 2000 Hrs. Into the bunk at 2230 Hrs for another good sleep. The scenery was different on Sunday as we moved into Ontario with mostly coniferous trees and a few Indian settlements. Arrived in Toronto at 0830 Hrs on Monday morning where those of us going to New York detrained and wandered around to have a look through a few shops before catching a train leaving at 1330 Hrs for Niagara. Had a few hours there to look over the Niagara Falls and then catch a train that left an hour late at 2230 Hrs down the Lee-High valley for New York. This was another train trip in the U.S. that went too fast to even count the telephone poles as they flashed by, and with the best of service from the Afro-American waiters on board.
New York and Sightseeing
Arrived in New York at 0900 Hrs on Tuesday 27th July and most of us including Keith Mills, Noel Hooper, Roy Olsen, Lou Brimblecombe, Russ Martin, Ian Smith, and Eric Sutton and myself made our way to the Anzac Club (somebody had the directions) where accommodation was arranged at the Wentworth Hotel-on the ground floor. Settled in to our rooms and had something to eat somewhere before we went to Madison Square Gardens where a circus was performing. After that we went to the Stage Door Canteen for tea, where we received a hospitable welcome and were given complimentary tickets for a few tours and shows the next day. Met the actress Connie Hayes there. On Wednesday morning we went on a sight-seeing tour during which we called into a few shops and I purchased a 2 ¼ X 2 ¼ Voigtlander camera which gave me good service for many years. After that we went to the Empire State Building and rode the elevator to the top. What a ride that was and what a view from the observation deck at the top. Keith, Roy, Lou, Noel, Russ and I then went for a stroll around Central Park where I took the first photos with the Voigtlander and on to the Stage Door Canteen for tea and more free tickets. The show that evening featured Xavier Cougat and his orchestra, the Andrew Sisters and other acts. We then went to a broadcast at the CBS studios before going back to the hotel.
Stayed in the hotel until midday on Thursday and then went to the Rialto on free tickets and on to the Rochefeller Centre to view an exhibition. Had tea and came back to the hotel to write a few letters. We were on the ground floor and it was hard to get a good sleep, the street outside was as busy at 0300 Hrs as it was at 1500 Hrs.
We Return to Canada
Noel Hooper and I decided that we had better do something about our Officers gear in Montreal and to leave New York a couple of days before the others. So on Friday morning we went to the station to enquire about trains. Met two girls going to the Statue of Liberty so went along for the ferry ride, back to the Anzac Club and a show at the Roxy. Caught a train by the skin of our teeth at 1850 Hrs. Had to change trains at Depew at 0500 Hrs on Saturday morning to go on to Toronto where we arrived at 0915 Hrs and left 30 minutes later for Montreal where we arrived at 1910 Hrs, running about 30 mins late as the train had hit a woman walking on the track about an hour out of the city. When we arrived we went to the YMCA where they arranged accommodation for us at 1491 Bishop Street.
On Sunday morning, 1st August, we went for a circular tour of the city by tram, jumping off at places of interest. Noel was bit non-plussed by the priests stopping on each step of a long climb up the hill to a large cathedral at the top. They appeared to pause briefly on each step in prayer. So, he taps one on the shoulder and recommended they install an escalator-a suggestion that was ignored. Asking directions on the tram was almost useless as the conductors gave the impression that they only conversed in French. We had tea at the YMCA and then went for a walk through the heart of the town. We must have given the impression of two lost souls as two girls approached us and started a conversation. Their names were Dorothy and Kay. They were students at the McGill University in Montreal and invited us to meet them the next afternoon and they would take us up Mont Royal to view the town by night.
We did our shopping on Monday morning where RAAF uniforms etc were available. Got issued with P/O’s braid, badges and cap, but decided to leave issue of quality uniforms and overcoat until we arrived in England. Met Dorothy and Kay as arranged in the afternoon and went up the mountain. As we had to meet up with the rest of our course on a train leaving Montreal at 1930 Hrs the next day the girls agreed to have dinner with us and then meet us again the next day at 1730 Hrs to show us over the University where they resided in one of the colleges on the campus. This we did on Tuesday after more sight seeing around the town and checking out of our accommodation. After our visit to the University it was a quick trip to the station with the girls to see us off and to catch up with the rest and board the train departing at 1930 Hrs. On the way to No.3 ‘Y’ Depot at Halifax. That was the Canadian designation for an embarkation depot.
Wednesday 4th August saw us travelling all day along the St.Lawrence River with its lumber mills, log jams and fishing villages and arrive in Halifax close to midnight raining cats and dogs. We were settled into barracks. Those who were commissioned off course were directed to the Officers Mess and Quarters and all others to the Sergeants Mess.
Halifax
Our late arrival did not prevent us being paraded at 0830 Hrs on Thursday and then attend to usual clearances etc. It seemed that there were still clearances whether you were arriving or departing. After dinner we were put through decompression chamber tests to assess our reactions to lack of oxygen. It was quite an experience as the chamber was decompressed to a height equivalent of about 18,000 feet. We were equipped with oxygen masks. At this height we were instructed to take off our oxygen masks under the supervision of trained personnel and to see how many times we could write the alphabet on the paper that had been issued. Supervisors kept an eye on each individual. I can remember being very pleased with myself as I visualised the alphabet written about six times on my piece of paper before I was told to put my oxygen mask back on again. Then I couldn’t believe my eyes-there was the alphabet written once and then down to about ‘m’ or ‘n’ before the pencil trailed away into a real scribble. Your mind had been telling you that all was well, so the danger of losing oxygen at heights over 10,000 feet was impressed on us. Most of us were non-smokers and had very similar results, but the smokers capacity to cope was really restricted and a couple had to be put back on oxygen very quickly.
On Friday we had a C.O.’s parade at 0800 Hrs and then it was back into the decompression chamber again for 2 hours, with oxygen masks kept on and listen to the supervisor giving more information on what we could expect flying for more than two hours at heights of over 20,000 feet. During this exercise the chamber was decompressed to a height equivalent of over 25,000 feet. After dinner it was P.T. exercise and games. Wrote a letter home and attended to a pile of washing that had accumulated.
Games of tennis and softball filled in most of Saturday morning. After dinner went into town with Ken and Ernie Todd (Ken had been commissioned off course but his brother Ernie was not) to the Anzac Club to give it the once over, and see what services and freebies were available there. Back to camp for a wash and change into clean clothes and after tea went back to a dance at the Anzac Club for a couple of hours. Slept in late on Sunday and spent all afternoon writing letters.
On Monday, 9th August, we were called on parade at 0800 Hrs for P.T. exercises and games. After dinner we underwent night vision tests, which I had trouble in passing and then back to more letter writing to catch up with my correspondence. Got a letter in the mail that day from Maureen. What seemed to be the established routine of parade, P.T. and games was the dose on Tuesday morning. For games, a rugby league match was organised for the Aussies and Kiwis between the Officers and the N.C.O.’s. It was a match that Keith Mills has not forgotten. I was playing on the wing for the Officers and going flat out for a certain try. I heard Keith behind me call out, “here Bob” when he had no chance of catching me. Not thinking I passed the ball back to Keith, who promptly propped, turned and set off back in the other direction. Unfortunately for him however, I was being supported by Kiwi P/O. Simon Snowden, of Maori descent and well built, and who was in the right position to effect a heavy tackle. Simon and I became good friends after that. Keith, I am sure learnt a lesson and did not appreciate the obstacle course we were put through after dinner.
On Wednesday morning, to keep us fit, we were employed on trench digging, and after dinner some of us were put through another night vision test. With a bit of assistance from a mate I did better than the test on Monday. Night vision was for gunners and not for navigators. Did my ironing after tea as we did not have the luxury of a batman yet.
Did well with mail on Thursday - 6 letters from home. After dinner went on a harbour cruise. I was on duty as Reception Officer that night and didn’t get to bed until 0430 Hrs on Friday. Received a telegram from home on Friday morning and another letter from Maureen. We had pay parade after which I went into town to buy a suit case, and did some ironing at night. On Saturday morning we had a lecture on ‘Rehabilition’ and I spent the afternoon writing letters to reply to those I had received during the week. Sunday was a very quiet day and a few of us went to a concert in the evening at the Anzac Club.
Monday 16th August was another good day for mail with 7 letters in the morning and 1 in the afternoon. So my correspondence was not up-to-date for too long. Pictures in the Officers Mess at night, “Desert Victory” and “The More the Merrier”. Usual parade and P.T. on Tuesday morning and into town after dinner for shopping and on to the Anzac Club for tea and a dance at night. More P.T. on Wednesday morning as we were waiting for a draft to embark. Went to see “Stage Door Canteen” at night with Simon Snowden. Since our football match we had spent a few times together looking around the sights of Halifax. Although he was of Maori blood, because of his surname he had become known as “Snowy”. Thursday afternoon was set aside for more sports and in the late afternoon we marched through town with a brass band at the head of the procession. It was into town again on Friday to buy a dressing gown and then to pictures at night to see “Jungle Book” Football practice occupied some time on Saturday morning. The bush telegraph was passing on a rumour that the “Queen Mary” was on the way from New York and would be calling within a few days, so I packed one of my kit bags in the afternoon. Slept in late on Sunday morning and after dinner went for a walk with Les Sabine around Mt Pleasant Park, and to the pictures in the Officers Mess after tea.
After mandatory parade at 0800 Hrs on Monday 23rd August we had lectures and a test on Aircraft Recognition. Managed to pass the test, but only just. After dinner went into town with ‘Snow’, met one of his mates and went to the Anzac Club for tea and a show afterwards. It was P.T. on Tuesday morning and we were given notice to be on parade again after dinner. That was a fair indication that a draft had been issued for embarkation. The draft was read out and as far as I can remember all the navigators from Course 72N2, except for a couple who did not come on to Halifax, were on it. We would be embarking within 48 hours. Broke off parade to have medical examinations, and then it was into town with ‘Snow’ again, who was also on the draft, for tea and the pictures to see “Song of the Islands”. On Wednesday morning we had to take our ‘Not wanted on Voyage’ baggage on parade and complete clearances. A few of us went to the Anzac Club that evening just to say good-bye to the place.
On Thursday 26th August 1943, we had pay parade in the morning, dinner and then our final parade with our ‘Wanted on Voyage’ baggage. We were then transported to the harbour and embarked on the “Queen Mary”. I was billeted in Cabin A24 with 14 others.
We Sail to the UK
Sailed early on Friday morning into good seas. It was back to two meals again while ‘in transit’. The ship had taken on a large contingent of American Servicemen in New York and it was very crowded. With such a large number on board, all were assigned to particular areas with coloured lines to follow to different venues to which they were allowed, such as sleeping quarters, bathroom facilities and Recreation and Entertainment areas. We had a limited deck space allotted to us and yellow lines to follow to the dining room and other colours to the toilets etc. On the lower decks the ‘other ranks’, mainly American troops, were assigned to sleeping areas on a shift basis.
The “Queen Mary” proceeded at full speed of over 30 knots on a zig-zag course and was unescorted. If you were walking down a passage-way when ‘she’ changed course by about 30 degrees you were pinned against the wall until ‘she’ got on a steady course again for another 15/20 minutes or thereabouts. You certainly had the feeling that a submarine would have very little chance of a torpedo attack. Time was passed playing cards, listening to music, reading the daily newspaper that was printed on board, writing letters and attending entertainment provided on board, which mainly favoured Officers. The seas stayed good all day on Saturday and at night most of us in Cabin A24 followed the relative coloured line to the large theatre on board to see a movie. Church Parade was held on Sunday, and another show in the theatre at night.
We continued to zig-zag through good seas at full speed all day Monday and enjoyed a concert in the lounge at night. On Tuesday we came around the north of Ireland and were greeted by friendly aircraft overhead and land in sight by mid-morning. This first sight of ‘the Old Country’ will remain in the memories of most on board for the rest of their life. There was a band of The Royal Marines on board and as we sailed up the Clyde past Arran with the Scottish coast of Ayrshire on our starboard the band played “Land of Hope and Glory”. As indeed it was at that time in history. There were not too many dry eyes on the decks, even among the American troops. We weighed anchor off Greenock and at 1900 Hrs were disembarked onto barges to be entrained at Greenock to travel to Brighton by rail.
Brighton, England
Travelled overnight and got our first encounter with a country at war with the blackout. Early in the morning the train steamed into the large railway yards at Crewe, then on to Rugby and the outskirts of London where we witnessed bomb damage for the first time. Arrived in Brighton at midday and were transported to No. 11 Personnel Despatch & Receipt Centre. Have never been able to work out how the despatch came before the receipt. We were assigned to billets. The N.C.O.’s to either the ‘Metropole’ or ‘Grande’ on the esplanade near the famous West Pavilion and the Officers to the Lions Head a bit further along to the east. Those establishments had been commandeered by the War Department and allotted to the RAAF’s No. 11 P.D.R.C, which had been transferred to Brighton from Bournemouth. So, on the 1st September 1943 we were officially disembarked in the United Kingdom. We spent the next two days attending to the requirements of reception, records, leave passes etc, and writing letters home as we awaited delivery of our ‘Not wanted on Voyage’ baggage.
In Central Park, New York
Roy Olsen, Keith Mills, Lou Brimblecombe, Bob Smith
Along the St Lawrence River - Part of the Aussie Contingent
Ross Martin and Ian Smith at the ‘Door’ in Tropical Uniform
In the Gardens – Halifax
P/O Bob Smith
Advanced Training-United Kingdom
Brighton, Sidmouth (Devon), West Freugh (Scotland)
Settling into No. 11 P.D.R.C. at Brighton, by midday on Saturday 4th September 1943 I had completed most of the requirements for reception and after lunch (now back to the system of calling the midday meal lunch and the evening meal dinner) I was rostered on my first duty as O.I.C. of one of the light ack-ack batteries on the esplanade, from 1400 Hrs to 1800 Hrs. Almost got court-marshalled when I gave permission to the two N.C.O.’s on the guns to fire a couple of rounds to test them. An English Army Major was soon on the scene to check on ‘the emergency’. After a bit of discussion he accepted my explanation and didn’t take the matter any further. After dinner I met ‘Snow’ who had also come over with the R.N.Z.A.F. contingent on the Queen Mary and who were also billeted with us in Brighton. We went to a dance at ‘The Palais’ that night. Had a very interesting conversation with a girl aged in her early twenties who came from Israel and was working her way through to a degree at an English University, as well as a couple of other girls who were more interested in ‘Snow’. They seemed to think he was a real heart throb. He was a good looking and good natured bloke.
This duty on the gun positions got me out of an awkward position on Sunday. We had Church Parade in the morning, usual roll-up, with quite a few Roman Catholics joining the Presbyterians. After lunch, by chance or design, Snow had met one of the girls we were talking to at the dance on Saturday night, and she suggested that he bring his friend along (that was me) as she had a friend to come with her and we could go to the pictures at night. Being a good friend I went along with him to the cinema on this blind date. Her friend turned out to be about 40 and did not appeal. There was no way I was going to be involved so I called Snow aside and explained the position. He saw my point of view and then backed me up with the explanation that I could not stay as I was rostered to go on Gun Duty in less than two hours. So I made a diplomatic departure and beat it post haste, feeling rather satisfied. Saw Snow the next morning and he told me I had made a wise decision.
On Monday morning I had more matters to attend to at reception. Mostly this was to deal with the issue of Officers uniforms etc. Got measured for my great-coat which was to be made by a tailor on Saville Row and issued with headgear-Officers for the use of.
Up to this point I had kept a small pocket diary since leaving Australia but discontinued the practice forthwith when it was brought to our attention in lectures and sessions held in connection with our reception at Brighton that diaries were not to be kept. This would be particularly enforced once we got on to operational squadrons. As a result from hereon I have to rely on memory and reflections with mates as we recalled our experiences in later years. For the next few weeks it was a daily routine of morning parade to hear who had been drafted to advanced flying schools etc, rostered on to duties such as the gun positions, or orders to attend lectures on the Brighton Pavilion. The beaches were heavily mined and this kept us on our guard when we were on gun duties, particularly when a stray dog wandered on to the beach. The Pavilion was also booby-trapped and was accessible only by walking a plank from the Esplanade.
When not on duties and on stand down we made regular trips to London on the train to get acquainted with the Boomerang Club in Australia House, and enjoy some food that was not available elsewhere. It also gave us an opportunity to explore that area of central London that was within walking distance and included many of the well known and historic buildings and landmarks. Here also, I was introduced to the Overseas Club whose members hosted Commonwealth servicemen on leave. I also had to go to London to be fitted and issued with my Officers Uniforms and Greatcoat. We were also introduced to sirens signalling an air-raid alert and ‘all-clear’, and the lives of Londoners who slept in the underground stations platforms. At Brighton the only enemy action I saw was one day when a German twin-engined bomber came in low over the channel, climbed to about 1000 feet over the town and as it circled around the outskirts dropped a stick of bombs and headed out to sea again. It was all over in less that two minutes and the gun batteries on the esplanade did not get a chance to fire at it.
I Go to Scotland On Leave
On 11th September 1943 I was given 7 days leave (authority POR 174/43) and headed off to Aberdeen to stay with Jim and Nan Joss to whom I had been referred by the Overseas League at the Boomerang Club. I wished to go to Aberdeen to have the chance to visit Kintore where by father and uncles spent leave during WW1. It was a wonderful introduction to Scotland, and the fore-runner of a few more happy times there when on leave which eventually led to meeting a lass who stole my heart, but more about that later. That’s in the future still. Got back from leave to learn that some of the course had been posted to Advanced Flying Units. Keith Mills and Eric Sutton and a few others had been posted to No. 4 Observer A.F.U. West Freugh, Scotland and John Lewis and Lou Brimblecombe had been posted to No. 3 A.F.U. at Halfpenny Green. A few weeks later John was to be our first loss of life when he was killed in an accident flying over Wales on a training exercise. A few days after I got back Noel Hooper, John Honeyman and myself were instructed to attend Course No.14 Aircrew Officers Training School at Sidmouth in Devon.
With necessary travel warrants and instructions we arrived in Sidmouth on Sunday 26th September. The three of us were impressed with the beauty of the English country side as we travelled through Hampshire and Dorset to Devon. It was hard to realise that the country was at war, until you passed an airfield or a large military establishment. We were met at the station and transported to the Training School that was situated in a stately mansion that was probably an up-market holiday resort in peace time.
More Training in Devon
The course was an intense period of lectures on Air Force Rules and Regulations, Physical Exercises, Field exercises with live ammunition, escape procedures and parade ground drills under an iron-fisted disciplinarian R.S.M. from one of the Guards Regiments, whom we referred to as the ‘screaming skull’, but not to his face. None of us was that brave. We were put over an obstacle course on the second day there and only a few of us managed to complete it in the approved time. I was still reasonably fit from athletics training and managed to go over all the obstacles except one, but within the time allowed. After 23 days we were put over the same course again and everyone passed, all the fittest they had ever been.
Field exercises included live ammunition with shots fired at medium range, hand grenades, firework crackers etc and it was our observation to identify the type and direction from which the detonation was heard and make quick decisions on evasion tactics. We were also given exercises in techniques of camouflage and the use of the terrain to move and avoid detection. In the event of being shot down over enemy territory it was your first duty to avoid capture. Parades and Parade-ground drills were real masterpieces with the R.S.M. in charge. The short straw must have had my name on it when it came to parade-ground drills. When we were given duties for colour parades and reviews. I landed the duties of S/M of Parade, Adjutant of Parade, C/O of Parade and Reviewing Officer of Parade. It is a mystery how I was not promoted immediately to rank of Air Commodore or above. Noel and John felt sorry for me-like b.hell they did!
On our first day we were fitted out and issued with khaki battle dress, army boots etc, and this was our standard dress for the course, except for evening meals when the traditions of dining in the Officers Mess were observed. A few got postings from the course either to A.F.U. or back to their unit. I remember one Aussie pilot who was sent to the course as a disciplinary measure after he pranged a ‘Wimpy’ on take-off at an O.T.U, apparently without injury to any of the crew. After about ten days he was posted back to his unit to take up further training with the crew. Nine Aussies started the course but there were only five of us there at the end. Leave was granted most nights and at week-ends, so we were able to spend some time in town and go to the pictures or a dance. Met a girl, Irene Collins, at a dance one night who asked me to escort her home-what a walk; I think it must have been to the next village. She worked in a shoe shop in town, and I did see her a couple of times after that when I went down town.
Most vivid memories of the course relate to small arms firing practice, throwing live hand grenades, and the cross country exercises when we somehow managed to make tracks through an apple orchard, stuff a few into our jackets and get back to discover that we had a sort of crab apple used for making cider. Also tried our hand at toasting chestnuts, but not much satisfaction there either. Drilling the squad when under the instruction of the ‘screaming skull’ provided a bit of entertainment, particularly when he decided to take over and show us how to do it. He would give the order ‘Quick March’ at the top of his voice and let the squad get down the road about 70/100 yards before giving the order ‘About Turn’. By the 50/60 yard mark the squad had agreed that from a certain person forward they would disregard the order, the ones at the crucial point would hesitate, and behind them they would do the about turn. That really curled the ‘mo’ and sent a string of invective over the countryside, when the ones in front said they did not hear him. He didn’t fall for it-had been through that mill many times before. We got the feeling that he would liked to blame the Aussies and give them a bit of extra drill, but as they were of higher rank he had to play it cool.
At week-ends we were given leave, although the whole course was de-facto stand-in for the local Home Guard Unit, we were given details of the mined areas on the beaches, most of which were at the base of high cliffs and difficult to reach. Generally it was the area immediately below these cliffs that were not mined. On our first Sunday Noel and John and I headed off west close to the coastline along the tops of the cliffs, almost to Exmouth from where we could see Torquay in the distance. As we had been walking for a bit over 2 hours, we decided to veer north to a village that had golf links nearby where we found a café and had lunch. We crossed a railway line, into a village called Otterton and followed country roads and lanes back to Sidmouth. The next Sunday we headed north towards Honinton and got as far as Aflington. On this walk, following roads and lanes off the main road we stopped to talk to some villagers to enquire if a village about 2 miles further north had a café that was opened on Sundays. They did not know, had lived there all their lives and had never been to that other village.
We would have walked about 20 miles on each of those Sunday hikes, and that kept us in good physical condition. Knowledge gained on the Sunday hikes proved very valuable later on and was put to good use. On the Tuesday of the last week we had our final test on the obstacle course. No problems for any of us, even up and over the poles that were fixed horizontally at varying heights between the trunks of two pine trees to a height of about 30 feet, the only obstacle that stumped me on our run over the course on our first day. I did not go over the top then, but under it. The next day we were given our final test of escape techniques. We were despatched at 0830 Hrs to go to a spot near the village of Axmouth which lay just south of the road to Lyme Regis and north of the seaside town of Seaton. It was up to us whether we went singly, or in small groups like a crew from an aircraft that had been shot down. But we had to get to the destination without being observed by the instructors who would be in positions at a couple of points along the way. The sergeant in charge of the exercise, when informed that Noel and John and I would stick together and go as a team for the exercise said that was a good idea and even recommended to the others to learn from these Aussies who often did well in this exercise. We did well, but it involved a bit of cunning.
Our plan was to let the field get away and ahead of us while we went to a café for morning tea to formulate our tactics. We had to be at the ‘target’ by 1600 Hrs. That gave us a bit over 7 hours to do about 9 or 10 miles measured in a straight line. We had prepared a bit beforehand, and by fair means or foul John had obtained a woman’s hat and shawl. After morning tea we set off walking to the village of Sidford less than 2 miles north of Sidmouth where we knew we could get a taxi and were sure that no scouts would be stationed along that route. I have a suspicion that John had had a discussion with a taxi driver in this village on one of our Sunday walks because we found him very co-operative and willing to help, although he was going to use up a bit of his petrol ration. Sometimes crosses my mind if he got a voucher from John to say his taxi had been commandeered for defence purposes. For him it was going to be a round trip of about 20 miles. I cannot remember what the fare was, but probably in the 5/10 Pounds range, and that was probably the best fare he had made on a Wednesday in war time. In the taxi we set off on the main road towards Lyme Regis and after about 5 miles turned right along a road that went past a quarry and then north-east to Colyford our destination for the taxi. On this last stretch we had a fair idea that scouts would be stationed, so John donned the hat with the shawl over his shoulders and sat up and surveyed the scene while Noel and I crouched down so as we could not be observed. With a bit of luck John spotted our friendly Sergeant sitting under a tree about 15 yards inside a field with a ditch between him and the road. No other scouts were seen. We left the taxi at Colyfield and walked the last mile or so to Axmouth and the designated meeting place. No one was expecting escapees to come in from a northerly direction so we arrived without being spotted to the amazement of the team that had congregated there. We timed things so that we did not arrive until just after 1530 Hrs. A few had already arrived carrying flags to indicate they had been spotted by one or more look-out scouts. Not long before 1600 Hrs the Sergeant, and other spotters arrived and were about to announce that no one had spotted the 3 Aussies, when he looked around to spot us and cried “How the hell did you three get here??” We told him we did not spot any other look-outs, but we did see him under a tree and where he was.
We had our story ready that we were coming up a ditch beside the road when we spotted him and realised we could not pass along that ditch without him seeing us, so we back-pedalled a bit using trees along the road as cover, and then crossed the road and away a bit to the north, which brought us in from that direction. We told him we were within the length of 2 cricket pitches from him, and that really had him flabbergasted. Somehow or another he got the correct information by Friday morning, and told us he was not very impressed, but couldn’t decide whether to admonish us for not entering into the true spirit of the exercise or just acknowledge that we had exercised initiative that we had so often been instructed to do.
Sunday 24th October saw the completion of our Air Crew Officers Training School, and on Monday morning we set off by train back to Brighton. We went via Salisbury where we had a stop over to have a look around the town and visit the famous cathedral. During WW1 my father had been billeted on Salisbury Plains with 41st Battalion A.I.F. and used to talk about the Cathedral and his visits around the area. I did not know it then, not even until the 1980’s, that my paternal great grandparents had come from East Hagbourne in Berkshire about 20 miles from Reading in the area that we were to-day travelling through.
Back at Brighton on Tuesday it was a return to the usual routine of morning parade, lectures and stand-downs as we waited for a posting to an Advanced Flying Unit. During this time we were attending a lecture in the old ball room on the Pavilion when the whole pier was rocked by an enormous blast. Someone had detonated one of the booby-trap mines on the end of the pier and really started some activity. We were evacuated very quickly. Never heard any more reports and whether there were any casualties apart from a few sea gulls. At Brighton a new contingent of EAT’s N.C.O.’s and Officers had arrived and the duties on the ack-ack guns had been assigned to them which gave us more time to take visits up to London.
My Posting Comes Through - Scotland
On Parade about 6th November my posting came through to No. 4 (Observers) Advanced Flying Unit at West Freugh, near Stranraer in Scotland. There were other navigators on the same posting that were on a course after No. 71 and arrived in Brighton about a month or so after I did. These included Keith Nunn, Hector Craig and Soapy Campbell. Noel Hooper and John Honeyman were posted to an A.F.U. affiliated with No 5 Group Bomber Command. I seemed assured to going into No. 3 Group which operated in East Anglia.
Those going to West Freugh left Brighton by train on Monday 8th November, travelled overnight, changing trains probably at Carlisle, and arrived in Stranraer and on to West Freugh by RAF transport on Tuesday to attend to the usual requirements of reception for a course that was due to start the next day. Keith, Hector, Soapy and I were all billeted in the same Nissen hut in the Officers quarters.
We certainly got our introduction to the Scottish weather coming into their winter. The famous Scotch Mist just hung on and on, in fact for the first six weeks we were there we never saw the sun from the ground, but at 2,500 feet you were above cloud and in clear sky. For the first few days we were kept in the lecture rooms for revision in most of the subjects we had studied at Edmonton and talks on what to expect as we moved on to become acquainted with new navigation aids etc that were coming into use in Bomber Command. Our air exercises at West Freugh over the 8 weeks we were there comprised 30 Hrs 35 mins of daylight flying and 18 Hrs of night flying atSS heights between 1500 feet and 5000 feet. The air exercises over routes as detailed in my log book were mostly over the Irish Sea area to landmarks in Northern Ireland, Wales and the Carlisle area to the East. In most cases the exercise started from Ailsa Craig, a landmark island in the Clyde Estuary. You had to be wary of your height and track to ensure you did not come to grief on the Isle of Man.
A great advantage of flying with RAF Staff Pilots was they flew the course given to them. They couldn’t see the ground anyway most of the time. This gave good experience in D.R. navigation and was a great help in charting an air plot. They were mostly very experienced pilots who had served with the RAF in India as well as on operations at home and were very experienced in flying Ansons and Oxfords.
Some Flying “Incidents”
The starting point of Ailsa Craig nearly caused an accident on one of our exercises. We had climbed through cloud and on course etc, when I said to the pilot we would proceed on our first course of the exercise from E.T.A. Ailsa Craig, which would have been not far out because of the short distance we had flown. He insisted on going below the cloud to get an accurate fix from which to start our exercise. Our course was nearly too accurate, as when we broke cloud at about 800 feet Ailsa Craig was almost dead ahead, and the faithful “Old Aggie” as we called the Anson flew past the cliff face too close for comfort. The pilot circled the island, flew a bit north of it and then came back on the course we were to fly on the first leg and climbed back into the cloud over the island with a satisfied look on his face.
On another exercise the first course was eastwards to Wigtown, and then on to Silloth, past a mountain that was about 1500 feet high near Gatehouse-on Fleet I think it was called ‘Crefell’ and it had claimed a few aircraft crashing into it, so we had to make sure we were at least at 2000 feet. For the exercise we had been given ‘met’ winds of 30/49 Knots from the west. By the time we got near Gatehouse-on Fleet it was obvious that the true wind was over 70 knots and in response to radio message we were recalled.
A flight of less than 30 minutes out took over 2 hours on the return with the Aggie at maximum air speed. Coming over the top of one of those high mountains you had the feeling you could just have jumped off like from a moving tram. A night exercise was scheduled to fly to Newcastle to give us navigation experience and the air defences there some dry-swim practice. Before we got as far as Silloth we were recalled as Newcastle was in fact being raided by the Luftwaffe. Sometimes I have wondered about the co-incidence. It was on one of those exercises that I had a bout of air sickness and on landing the pilot put it in his report. The O.C. Training ordered me to report to the M.O. for an assessment. I cannot remember what his examination involved but I was not scrubbed from flying.
On 30th December we were detailed on navigation exercises flying at 5000 ft. Two navigators were assigned to an exercise flying over the Irish Sea due south to Holyhead in Wales and then north west to Ballyquinton Point in Northern Island. This had the Isle of Man along this path. The two navigators on this route were Keith Nunn and Harold ‘Hal’ Peters, both graduates of No. 74N course. Most of the route was covered in cloud with base at about 1000 feet. It turned out to be a tragic day. The aircraft in which Hal Peters was flying must have descended through the cloud too soon and crashed into a mountain on the island. Hal was 33 years of age and came from Bentleigh in Victoria. He was buried in Andreas (St Andrew) Churchyard on the Isle of Man. My last navigation exercise at West Freugh, a week later, was over this same route.
Another flying incident at West Freugh that remains in my memory concerns the crash of a Hampden twin-engined bomber. A few of the RAF pilots were discussing the flying capabilities of this aircraft, a few of which were stationed at West Freugh for coastal surveillance work. A F/Sgt. pilot was arguing that the aircraft would not pull out of a spin. One of the ex-India RAF Officer pilots disagreed and said when the weather was clear enough he would take one up to about 5,000 feet, put it into a spin and pull out. He did this a few days later in sight of a few onlookers - but unfortunately the aircraft did not pull out of the spin and went down to crash into the sea. One of the ex-India pilots was heard to remark “That is only four of us left now”.
Leave in Oldhall – I meet Alma
As I had advised Jim and Nan Joss in Aberdeen that I had been posted to West Freugh, Nan wrote back to say that she had been in touch with a Friend/Cousin in Paisley and she and her husband would be happy to host me if I went to Glasgow. We were given 48 leave pass one week-end so I took the opportunity to go by bus, getting off at Oldhall between Paisley and Glasgow to visit Ronnie and Molly Whyte and their daughter Alma who lived at 39 Tylney Rd, Oldhall. This led to many enjoyable leaves in Aberdeen and Paisley when I came to be accepted freely by both families over the times ahead and which was eventually to see Alma and I marry. I think that we would both agree however that it was not love at first sight.
Hector Craig, who had some relatives in Glasgow came with me on the bus on our two week-end leaves. We were not happy with the smoke filled busses filled with farm workers in heavy sweaty smelling clothes, and not a window opened. It was winter, damp and cold, but some fresh air was desirable, so we would open the window a bit near our seat to get a look that only a Ranger’s fan would give a Celtic fan. Ronnie Whyte was a staunch Ranger’s follower and I was soon to learn of the rivalry between those two sides. The passion for football, what we called soccer, was new to us.
Our course at West Freugh was completed on 7th January 1944. Our posting came through the next day and we were given a few days to complete clearances-the usual medical, dental etc and pack our Officer issue steel trunk for despatch to our new station. Keith Nunn and Hector Craig and I were posted to No. 84 Operational Training Unit at Desborough in Northamptonshire. We realised then that we were destined for No. 3 group Bomber Command that was equipped with Lancasters. We were given 7days leave and travelling time and had to report to Desborough by 24th January (Auth POR 2/44). Travelling warrants were issued at the Adjutant’s office on 11th January, a day after my 20th birthday anniversary, and I went on leave to Aberdeen for a week and then to London for a few days to catch up with mates at the Boomerang Club.
Now it was on to joining a crew, further training as a crew with more advanced aircraft and at heights above 10,000 feet. As it turned out it was to bigger and better things and experiences that made men of us. ......
West Freugh – Laundry Hung Out to Dry In Our “Heated” Quarters
At Aircrew Officers Training School
Sidmouth, Devon
Noel Hooper, Bob Smith
Bob Smith, John Honeyman
Training as a Crew
Crew Formation at No. 84 O.T.U. (Operational Training Unit)
Desborough, Northamptonshire
For operational training I was posted to No. 84 O.T.U at Desborough in Northamptonshire, an Operational Training Unit under the control of No.3 Group, (RAF Bomber Command) as from 25th January 1944. This Unit was flying ex-operational Vickers Wellington X’s, with unit identification “IF”. This was our introduction to flying above 10,000 feet in aircraft equipped with oxygen. Radio I/D was “Foodramp”.
Along with Keith Nunn and Hector Craig I was accommodated in the Officer’s Quarters and went through the usual reception procedure. A programme of lectures and ‘dry-swim’ exercises started immediately and went on for two weeks. Flying exercises started on 15th Feb, crewed with a staff pilot and flying as a 2nd navigator under supervision, to gain experience on new special navigation equipment and flying at heights of 10,000 to 15,000 feet, wearing oxygen masks. Instructors, mostly with operational experience, assessed our work and passed us as satisfactory to proceed further into the formation of a crew and on to further training towards posting to an operational squadron. Over that first month lectures and tests occupied a lot of time, and were most interesting as we were instructed in new equipment coming into use, some of it still on the secret list. During that second fortnight we flew 2 daylight flying exercises and 1 night exercise of between 4 and 5 hours each. On 28th February after flying a special daylight exercise of 4 ½ hours at 15,000 feet all the aircrew under operational training were assembled at 1700 Hrs and told to sort themselves into crews by the next afternoon.
On 1st March 1944 our crew was formed. In the morning pilot F/Sgt. Ron Hastings approached me to see if I had been claimed yet and when he said he had obtained another Aussie as a Bomb Aimer and two RAF fellows who had come through a gunners course together and wanted to be together in a crew, I agreed to join them. Soon afterwards we approached a Wireless Operator who had many flying hours to his credit and had come from a unit where he was an instructor. So, for the time being we had a crew, with a Flight Engineer to be added when we went on to conversion to four engined bombers:-
The Crew:
Pilot F/Sgt Ronald William Hastings RAAF No.423112 Born 11 Nov 1922
Nav. F/O Robert Wylie Smith RAAF No.425992 Born 10 Jan 1924
B/A F/Sgt Harold Edward Burns RAAF No.422144 Born 5 Nov 1915
W/Op.F/Sgt Victor Frederick Pearce RAF No.1196145 Born 17 Jul 1920
M/U/G Sgt George Henry James Malyon RAF No.1432616 Born 7 Jan 1923
R/G SgtDonald George McFadden RAF No.1387716 Born 26 Feb 1923
All aircrew were volunteers, so the RAF fellows were in the RAF Volunteer Reserve. Between ourselves we were called respectively, Ron, Smithy, Bobby, Vic, Mike and Mac.
On 2nd March most of the newly formed crews, including us, were sent to the satellite ‘drome at Harrington, about 4/5 miles away, to fly a high level bombing exercise in daylight and then about 6 hours on circuits and bumps (which gave the navigator nothing to do) over 2 consecutive nights, and on the next night 2 ½ hours on high level bombing. Having completed these exercises it was back to the main ‘drome on 8th March to start a very intense month of flying training in daylight and at night. These exercises were always over approved set routes, sometimes with an experienced pilot as we went on long night flights, fighter affiliation exercises and high level bombing. Lectures still continued at times during the day and there were breaks for sports and evening/week-end leave.
Dealing With an Emergency
On 13th March, flying in an older Wellington 111 No. X3995 and letter coded “U” for Uncle we had an emergency forced upon us on take-off after lunch. Just as the aircraft started to lift off the runway the flap over the port wing fuel tank inlet sprung open, causing that wing to stall. As that wing started to drop it was only the quick corrective action by Ron that saved us from disaster. It took the combined effort of him and the Bomb Aimer who was standing beside him to hold the joy-stick hard over to starboard to keep the plane on level flight. The control tower had noticed our wild take-off, and before we could gather our wits they contacted us with a call “Foodramp Uncle-are you in trouble”. Ron replied with a brief description of the problem and immediately got a message back to circle if possible and come into land immediately as they would have emergency vehicles standing by. An experienced pilot was put in direct contact from the control tower to assist Ron. Although we did not know it at the time, sirens were sounded on the ‘drome and a fire tender, ambulance and crash wagon were rushed on to the tarmac. Ron instructed me to keep the runway on our starboard wing in sight and guide him around to the downwind end. Then, as he lined the aircraft up on the runway and started a landing approach he ordered all except “Bobby” Burns, the B/A, to take up crash positions, leaving the intercom to all positions open. With the two gunners I took up the crash position. Vic, the wireless operator, was tuned into a BBC radio broadcast and was not aware of the emergency, although he admitted later he thought the flying was a bit rough. I learned a lesson from this as I should have tapped Vic on the shoulder as I went past him to the crash position and beckoned him to join me.
Ron and Bobby managed to control the aircraft sufficiently to make a reasonable landing although it gave a severe lurch to port as we touched down, causing Mac, who was next to me in the crash position and had started to get to his feet as soon as the wheels touched the ground, to fall against me and force my head on to the side of the fuselage resulting in a bit of a lump on my right temple. Mac thought for a minute that he had severely hurt me as we both ended up lying on the floor. This lurch caused Vic to look around and see Mike, Mac and myself in the crash position and to wonder what was going on. So we had a bit of explaining to do. We were all O.K, and saw a certain humour in what happened next. As soon as we came to rest Ron contacted the control tower with their sign and the message “Foodramp Uncle here—we have pancaked”, only to get the immediate response “Foodramp Uncle, if you have pancaked you have not pancaked here”. A quick look around and we recognised the surroundings—we had landed at Harrington, the satellite strip. As they say, all is well that ends well, (in spite of Murphy’s Law). Transport was immediately sent out to the aircraft to take us back to the base ‘drome for a quick medical assessment, but we said we were O.K. The M.O told me I would probably get a black eye if any bruising came out and that my flying helmet had probably saved me from more serious injury. In reflection, it is possible that if Ron had attempted a full 360 degree turn back to the runway we had just taken off from, the outcome could have been much worse.
The M.O did not say anything about not flying for a day or two. The experience certainly strengthened our confidence in and respect for Ron, and taught us valuable lessons. We did not hear what happened to the ground crew responsible for fuelling the aircraft and ensuring that the wing flaps were properly secured. Probably went on a charge and received some form of punishment. The aircraft was given a thorough inspection, before it was moved and flown back to the base ‘drome. The undercarriage must have experienced some stress when we touched down. We flew again in the same aircraft four days later on a high level bombing exercise and had no problems.
By 8th April we had completed all the requirements of the course at O.T.U and were passed as fit material to proceed to conversion to four engine aircraft. We were given about 11 days leave (Auth POR 15/44) and instructed to report to No. 1653 H.C.U (Heavy Conversion Unit) at Chedburgh in Suffolk on 21st April. A signal had come through that a crew was required for an Australian Squadron in No.5 Group with a condition that it must comprise at least 4 Aussies in the crew. The only one to qualify on our course was P/O. George Edwards (Pilot) who had crewed with Keith Nunn as his navigator. Both had known Ron Hastings prior to this time. Keith had known Ron and his father before the war. Both Ron’s father and Keith were employed in the then Union Bank of Aust- later to become the ANZ Bank. Ron & George had trained together as pilots. That crew eventually went on to No.467 (RAAF) Squadron at Waddington in Lincoln and were shot down on their second ‘Op’ on 29th June 1944, bombing the flying bomb base at Beauvoir in France. George was killed and Keith was captured and taken POW. After the war Keith resumed his career with the Union Bank. I have no recollection of where Hector Craig and crew were posted to.
Previous Service history of our Crew members
Pilot “Ron”
When he was born in 1922 his family surname was ‘Heuzenroeder”. His father was employed in the Union Bank and in the mid-1930’s with the world scene focussing on the Nazi regime in Germany, and the bank considering his transfer to Manager of a country town, they requested him to change his surname. Ron was in secondary schooling at the time and chose the name ‘Hastings’.
Ron enlisted in Sydney on 20th June 1942 and was posted to No.2 I.T.S. at Bradfield Park. On 15th Oct 1942 he went to No.5 E.F.T.S at Narramine in N.S.W and on 17 Jan 1943 to No.8 S.F.T.S at Bundaberg in Queensland. On 7th May 1943 he graduated with his pilot’s wings and posted to No.2 Embarkation Depot with rank of Sergeant. Embarked in Sydney on 25th May 1943, travelling via the USA and arrived in the U.K. on 7th July 1943 at No.11 P.D.R.C at Brighton. On 7th Sep 1943 posted to No.15 (Pilot) A.F.U at Andover before posting to 84 O.T.U at Desborough on 25th January 1944.
Nav. “Smithy”
Enlisted 21st May 1942 at No.3 Recruit Centre, Eagle St, Brisbane in an intake of ‘Aircrew Guards’ and posted same day to No.3 Recruit Depot Maryborough Qld. On 13th June 1942 posted as ‘Air Crew Guard to No.1 A.O.S. Cootamundra N.S.W. where on 16th Sep 1942 was posted into No.73 Reserve Squadron. On 11th Oct 1942 posted to No.2 I.T.S. Bradfield Park , Sydney and on 2nd Jan 1943 to No.2 Embarkation Depot, Bradfield Park. Embarked Sydney on 8th Feb 1943 on troopship “U.S.S. Hermitage” to San Francisco and then by train to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. On 7th March 1943 posted to No.2 Air Observers School at Edmonton. Graduated with wings as a Navigator and granted a commission on 23rd July 1943. On 4th Aug 1943 posted to No. 1 “Y” (Embarkation) Depot at Halifax, Nova Scotia. On 26 Aug 1943 embarked on the “Queen Mary” to the UK. Disembarked on 1st Sep 1943 at Gourock, Scotland, and then by train to Brighton, England and posted to No.11 P.D.R.C. on 2nd Sep 1943. On 27th Sep 1943 attended Air Crew Officers Training School at Sidmouth, Devon, for a 4 week course. Posted 0n 9th Nov 1943 to No.4 (Observers) A.F.U at West Freugh, Scotland and on 25 Jan 1944 posted to No.84 O.T.U, Desborough,England.
B/Aimer ‘Bobbie’ or ‘Rabbie’
Enlisted on 25th April 1942 at No 2 Recruit Centre in Sydney and on same day posted to No.2 I.T.S at Bradfield Park. On 15 Aug 1942 posted to No.2 Embarkation Depot at Bradfield Park. And on 21st Aug 1942 posted to No.1 E.D. at Ascot Vale, Victoria. Embarked in Melbourne on 7th Sep 1942 and ‘disembarked’ No.3 Manning Depot, Edmonton Canada on 2nd October 1942. On 11th Oct 1942 posted to No.5 A.O.S at Winnipeg and on 29th Dec1942 posted to RCAF station at Trenton, then on 21st Feb 1943 posted to No.4 Bombing & Gunnery School at Fingal and on 16th May 1943 to No.4 A.O.S at London Ontario. On 13th Oct 1943 posted to No.1 ‘Y’ Depot at Halifax, Nova Scotia. Embarked at Halifax on 22nd Oct 1943 and ‘disembarked’ 31st Oct 1943 at No.11 P.D.R.C. Brighton, England. Posted to No.4 A.F.U. West Freugh, Scotland on 23rd Nov 1943 and on 25 Jan 1944 to No.84 O.T.U. at Desborough, England.
W/Op. Vic.
Enlisted in the RAF 2nd Dec 1941. Commenced flying training in August 1942 after transfer to the RAF V.R. After completion of Wireless Operator’s course was posted to Bobbington as an instructor prior to posting to No.84 O.T.U. Desborough on 25th Jan 1944
M/U/G. ‘Mike’
Enlisted in the RAF on 5th May 1941, in the RAF Regiment. Initial Training at Cardington, and on 30th June 1941 posted to White Waltham and Cranwell for a ground observers course before posting to the Outer Hebrides and Orkney Islands. In June 1943 volunteered for flying duty (R.A.F.V.R) I.T.W Bridlington ,Yorkshire and Air Gunnery Schools in Shropshire and Bishopscourt, Northern Ireland. Graduated with wings in Dec 1943 and posted to No.84 O.T.U, Desborough on 25th Jan 1944.
R/G. ‘Mac’.
Enlisted in the RAF on 5th Feb 1942 and served in the RAF Regiment until June 1943. when he volunteered for flying duties and had the same postings in flying training as ‘Mike’, which is why both wanted to stay together in the same crew. Both came from London.
The Crew in front of a ‘Wellington X’
Ground Staff
Mac, Vic, Mike, Bobbie, Ron Smithy
Hours flown at No.84 O.T.U.
Daylight – 34 Hrs 30 mins Night – 30 Hrs 30 mins
No. 1653 H.C.U. (Heavy Conversion Unit)
Chedburgh, Suffolk
This unit was equipped with ex-operational Stirlings 1 & 111. Unit I/D. H4.
On 21st April we were posted to No. 31 Base (No.3 Group R.A.F.Bomber Command), Stradishall, Suffolk, under whose administration were No.1653 H.C.U. and No.3 L.F.S. Feltwell for training in 4 engined heavy bombers. A Flight Engineer, straight from training at a Rolls Royce training school, was appointed to the crew. As a general rule this was a Flight Engineer’s introduction to flying. Sgt. Ron Partridge was added to the crew, and immediately earned the nick-name ‘Pheasant’ by Ron. His training in the Merlin engine at the Rolls Royce establishment was not put to use while we were flying Stirlings with radial engines, but was going to be valuable when we graduated on to the Lancaster Bomber. Ron was destined to stay with our crew only for our first 6 operational sorties.
After 3 weeks of extensive lectures, introductions to and instructions on the special equipment that we would be using on a squadron, most of it specialist to a particular crew member, and general information that applied to all given by experienced personnel on what to expect on operations over Europe as well as survival and escape techniques it was back to practical flying exercises. At first these were with an experienced pilot for dual familiarisation flights of circuits and bumps and then on to a high level navigation and bombing exercise before Ron was allowed to go solo with his crew.
We did not escape the now accepted ‘emergency’ that can crop up on training flights. On our last ‘dual’ flight on the morning of 18th May we had a F/O. Gill as Captain. On take-off he cut one engine to give Ron the necessary experience in that situation. It almost backfired as the aircraft we were in, R9287 H4-Y (Yoke) was rather sick on 3 engines and refused to climb while the under carriage was still down. Fortunately Chedburgh was on a plateau and the ground fell away from us. The under carriage was retracted and we did manage to gather a bit of speed to give us a safety margin above stalling. The ‘killed’ engine refused to re-start, so Ron also had experience with landing on 3 engines. An eventful 25 minutes. After lunch we were transferred to another aircraft and Ron was allowed to go solo with the crew for 2 hours of circuits and bumps.
Involved in a Diversionary Flight at Time of Normandy Landing
Over the next 18 days and nights we did a number of special cross country navigation and bombing exercises and then flew what was an ‘Op’, but it was not credited as such. It was on the night of 5/6th June 1944, the eve of “D.Day”. We took off at 2310 Hrs on a special exercise flying at 12000 feet which took us out over the North Sea, approaching the Belgian coast near Ostend and at about 20 miles from the coast altered course to roughly Nor-East for 15 mins, before turning to port and then heading back to base crossing the English Coast near Orfordness. We had been on a diversion raid to draw attention away from the landings on the Normanby Coast of France. When we got back over Suffolk we were given a triangular course to fly, still at 12,000 feet, until it was all clear for us to descend and land. Below was an extensive procession of aircraft heading towards France, so we soon realised that the invasion of German occupied Europe was under way. We landed about 0130 Hrs on 6th June, “D.Day”, and were informed that General Dwight Eisenhower would be broadcasting a special announcement later in the morning.
A day or two later we were paraded and given the duty of scouting through a near-by ‘wood’, as there had been a report that a parachutist had been seen to jump out of a German aircraft that had flown over. About 30 to 40 airmen hiked through that wood and surrounding fields, but found nothing. Later in the afternoon two farmers walked up to the guards at the station’s main gate with a suspect in tow. One was carrying a hay fork in a menacing manner. They found him on the edge of the wood, probably waiting for night to fall before moving on. Never did hear what the sequel to that was.
On 12th June, in the afternoon, we were detailed to take an aircraft on a flight test. On arrival at the aircraft we were met by a senior officer who informed us that an important passenger was on board who we had to deliver to Tempsford, the base of No.161 Special Duty squadron, and to fly below 500 feet all the way there and back. So I had to prepare a quick flight plan to Tempsford. When we got on board we discovered that our passenger was a very attractive young French lady, probably in her early 20’s, who was to be parachuted out over France that night on a special mission. What a girl?
No. 1653 Chedburgh – Suffolk
F/E Sgt Ron Partridge Added to The Crew That Went to “Ops”
Smithy, Bobbie, Ron, Pheasant?,
Mac, Mike, Vic
Two days later we completed out training at Chedburgh with a high level bombing and fighter affiliation exercise which involved corkscrews for which the Stirling was not particularly suited, and neither was my stomach. I have to admit that I did suffer some air-sickness on such occasions. On 14th June we were advised of our positing to No. 3 Lancaster Finishing School at Feltwell in Norfolk and to attend to our clearances from Chedburgh.
Hours flown at No.1653 H.C.U.
- Daylight 27 Hrs 25 mins, Night 20 Hrs 25 mins
No. 3 L.F.S. (Lancaster Finishing School)
Feltwell, Norfolk
Still under our posting to No.31 Base, Stradishall we were attached to No.3 L.F.S from 18th June 1944 for a concentrated 10 day course of lectures and instructions and our introduction to the “Lancaster 1”. The squadrons of 3 Group were equipped with the Lancaster 1 and Lancaster 111. The course was mainly for the pilot. Instructors were pilots who had completed tours on the ‘Lanc’.
P.O. Treasure was assigned to our crew for 3 hours of dual and solo circuits and bumps in daylight on 23rd June and for the same at night the following day. The next day we were on our own for a test flying a triangle over Norfolk for over an hour and 2 days later flew a cross country navigation test of over 3 hours.
It was a great thrill to eventually get on to Lancasters. A vast improvement on the Wellington and Stirling and truly the most successful heavy bomber of WW11. It was a ‘plane that gave the crews a feeling of confidence. Its power and manoeuvrability and load carrying capacity exceeded all others at that time. As far as I was concerned I had reached my goal. After some operational experience, you wee convinced that every one who operated in the light and medium bombers in the early years of the war deserved a ‘gong’.
On 27th June 1944 we were advised that we were posted to No.XV/15 Squadron at Mildenhall, Suffolk, a permanent RAF Base and one of the jewels of Bomber Command.
Hours flown at No. 3 L.F.S.
- Daylight 4 Hrs 20 mins, Night 6 Hrs 20 mins
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
Bob Smith's Memoirs
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Bob Smith
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2003-03
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Turkey
Turkey--Gallipoli
Australia
Queensland--Brisbane
Queensland--Ipswich
Queensland--Maryborough
New South Wales--Cootamundra
New South Wales--Sydney
New South Wales--Wagga Wagga
New South Wales--Lindfield
New South Wales--Blue Mountains
New South Wales--Neutral Bay
American Samoa
American Samoa--Pago Pago
United States
Hawaii--Honolulu
California--San Francisco
California--Alcatraz Island
California--Oakland
Canada
British Columbia--Vancouver
Oregon
Washington (State)--Seattle
British Columbia--Vancouver
Alberta--Edmonton
Alberta--Jasper
Alberta--Fort Saskatchewan
Germany
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Alberta--Calgary
Germany--Cologne
Tasmania
Italy
Italy--Foggia
Great Britain
Scotland--Gourock
England--Brighton
Germany--Hamm (North Rhine-Westphalia)
France
France--Laon
Belgium
Belgium--Antwerp
Germany--Wesseling
France--Montdidier (Picardy)
Austria
Austria--Vienna
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Queensland--Cairns
Saskatchewan--Saskatoon
Manitoba--Winnipeg
Ontario--Toronto
North America--Niagara Falls
New York (State)--New York
Québec--Montréal
Nova Scotia--Halifax
Scotland--Greenock
Scotland--Aberdeen
England--Sidmouth
England--Salisbury
Scotland--Ailsa Craig
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Isle of Man
Scotland--Gatehouse of Fleet
England--Newcastle upon Tyne
Wales--Holyhead
Scotland--Paisley
France
France--Beauvoir-sur-Mer
Queensland--Bundaberg
Victoria--Melbourne
Ontario--Trenton
Ontario--London
Saskatchewan
Québec
Nova Scotia
Manitoba
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 Australian Air Force
Royal Canadian Air Force
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Bob's memoirs from his early training until he became operational.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
107 printed sheets
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MSmithRW425992-230825-03 copy
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
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.
106 Squadron
115 Squadron
142 Squadron
15 Squadron
1653 HCU
166 Squadron
3 Group
4 Group
44 Squadron
467 Squadron
49 Squadron
5 Group
619 Squadron
622 Squadron
640 Squadron
76 Squadron
78 Squadron
84 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
aerial photograph
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bale out
Beaufighter
bomb aimer
bombing
Boston
crash
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
entertainment
flight engineer
H2S
Halifax
Hampden
killed in action
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Master Bomber
mess
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Mosquito
navigator
Nissen hut
Oboe
observer
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Bishops Court
RAF Breighton
RAF Bridlington
RAF Cardington
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Cranwell
RAF Desborough
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF Feltwell
RAF Halfpenny Green
RAF Harrington
RAF Kirmington
RAF Leconfield
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Silloth
RAF Stradishall
RAF Tempsford
RAF Waddington
RAF West Freugh
RAF White Waltham
RAF Wigtown
RAF Witchford
Red Cross
sport
Stalag Luft 3
Stalag Luft 7
Stirling
training
V-1
Wellington
wireless operator