1
25
31
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1246/16776/MNealeETH1395951-150731-096.1.jpg
9acaf92c3b098433ec6d5f9c53c08321
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
Neale, Ted
E T H Neale
Description
An account of the resource
123 items. The collection concerns Edward Thomas Henry Neale (b. 1922, 1395951 Royal Air Force) who served as a navigator with 37 Squadron in North Africa, the Middle East and Italy. The collection contains his training notebooks from South Africa as well as propaganda leaflets dropped by the allies in the Mediterranean theatre.
The collection also contains a photograph album, navigation logs and target photographs.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Alison Neale 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
2015-07-31
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
Neale, ETH
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[crest] 205 GROUP ROYAL AIR FORCE [crest]
Albania, Jugoslavia, Bulgaria, Syria, Iraq, Rhodes, Crete, Piraeus, Corinth, Leros, Daba, Capuzzo, Fuka, Halfaya, El Adem, Martuba, Tobruk, Benghazi, Tripoli, Mareth, Gabes, Cape Bon, Tunis
[map]
Palermo, Pantellaria, Syracuse, Messina, Salerno, Anzio, Viterbo, Guilianova, Verona, Turin, Pisa, Leghorn, Trieste, Milan, Sofia, Budapest, Steyr, Valence, Munich, Fiume, Bucharest, Ploesti, Danube
In the 1939 – 1945 World War
205 Group provided the only mobile force of heavy night bombers in the Mediterranean theatre. During the North African and Italian campaigns the Wellingtons, Halifaxes and Liberators of the Group, operating as a tactical force, attacked communications and concentrations of Rommel’s Africa Korps and of the Italian armies during their advance to the Quattara Depression, the Battle of El Alamein and during their retreat until their final capitulation in Tunisia. Without respite they operated against Kesselring’s army during the invasions of Sicily, Italy and the South of France. As a strategical force their targets – ports, airfields, marshalling yards, oil refineries and factories-ranged over the Mediterranean area and Europe. Aid was given to patriots in France, supplies and arms’ were dropped to Partizans in the Balkans and to the patriots in Warsaw. The Danube was mined persistently.
Shining courage is the epitaph of those who died.
We will remember them.
JUNE 1940 MAY 1945
[indecipherable word] A.B. Rud
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
205 Group Royal Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
A commemorative poster with a map of Southern Europe and North Africa. Around the outside is a list of locations where operations were carried out. There is a paragraph with details of the operations.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
205 Group Royal Air Force
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One printed sheet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MNealeETH1395951-150731-096
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
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.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Albania
Austria
Austria--Steyr
Bulgaria
Bulgaria--Sofia
Croatia
Croatia--Rijeka
Danube River
France
France--Valence (Drôme)
Germany
Germany--Munich
Greece
Greece--Corinth Canal
Greece--Crete
Greece--Piraeus
Greece--Rhodes (Island)
Hungary
Hungary--Budapest
Iraq
Italy
Italy--Anzio
Italy--Giulianova
Italy--Livorno
Italy--Messina
Italy--Milan
Italy--Palermo
Italy--Pantelleria Island
Italy--Pisa
Italy--Salerno
Italy--Syracuse
Italy--Trieste
Italy--Turin
Italy--Verona
Italy--Viterbo
Libya
Libya--Banghāzī
Libya--Martuba
Libya--Tobruk
Libya--Tripoli
North Africa
Romania
Romania--Bucharest
Romania--Ploiești
Syria
Tunisia
Tunisia--Mareth Line
Tunisia--Qābis
Tunisia--Sharīk Peninsula
Tunisia--Tunis
Egypt--Fukah
Greece--Leros (Municipality)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Steve Baldwin
bombing
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1826/33147/MScottEW188329-170406-05.2.jpg
8d339628d989d4029271af63a73ee7c5
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
Scott, Eric William
E W Scott
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
2017-04-06
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Scott, EW
Description
An account of the resource
139 items. The collection concerns Flying Officer Eric Scott (1425952, 188329 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, a memoir, correspondence, documents, newspaper cuttings, a flying course handbook and photographs. He flew operations in North Africa as a bomb aimer with 142 Squadron and then after an instructional tour in Palestine started a second tour on 37 Squadron in Italy where he was shot down and finished the war as a prisoner. <br /><br />The collection includes three albums.<br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2040"><span>Album 1</span></a> <span>Photographs of Jerusalem, Bethlehem. Tel Aviv, Haifa and friends.</span><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2041">Album 2</a> <span>Photographs taken during training in the United States and England and during his service in North Africa and Italy.<br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2046">Album 3</a> Correspondence, newspaper cuttings, documents and the last issue of the Prisoner of war Journal.<br /></span><br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Jacqui Holman and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
205 GROUP ROYAL AIR FORCE
[map]
ALBANIA
JUGOSLAVIA
BULGARIA
SYRIA
IRAQ
RHODES
CRETE
PIRAEUS
CORINTH
LEROS
DABA
CAPUZZO
FUKA
HALFAYA
EL ADEM
MARTUBA
TOBRUK
BENGHAZI
TRIPOLI
MARETH
GABES
CAPE BON
TUNIS
JUNE 1940
PALERMO
PANTELLARIA
SYRACUSE
MESSINA
ANZIO
VITERBO
GUILIANOVA
VERONA
TURIN
PISA
LEGHORN
TRIESTE
MILAN
SOFIA
BUDAPEST
STEYR
VALENCE
MUNICH
FIUME
BUCHAREST
PLOESTI
DANUBE
MAY 1945
[indecipherable name] A.B. Read.
In the 1939 – 1945 World War 205 Group provided the only mobile force of heavy night bombers in the Mediterranean theatre. During the North African and Italian campaigns the Wellingtons, Halifaxes and Liberators of the Group operating as a tactical force, attacked communications and concentrations of Rommel’s Afrika Korps and of the Italian armies during their advance to the Quattara Depression, the Battle of El Alamein and during their retreat until their final capitulation in Tunisia. Without respite they operated against Kesselring’s army during the invasions of Sicily, Italy and the South of France. As a strategical force their targets – ports, airfields, marshalling yards, oil refineries and factories – ranged over the Mediterranean area and Europe. Aid was given to patriots in France, supplies and arms were dropped to Partizans in the Balkans and to the patriots in Warsaw. The Danube was mined persistently. Shining courage is the epitaph of those who died.
We will remember them.
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
205 Group Royal Air Force Battle Honours
Description
An account of the resource
Map showing Mediterranean Sea and surrounding countries. Provides a history of of the group who provided the only mobile force of heavy bombers in the Mediterranean theatre. Wellington, Halifax and B-24 acted as a tactical force attacking communications and Italian and German forces throughout the North African campaign. Continued to support operations in Sicily, Italy, The Balkans and South of France. On the sides the locations of many of the targets attacked by the groups aircraft.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One page coloured map and printed text
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Map
Artwork
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MScottEW188329-170406-05
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Albania
Yugoslavia
Syria
Iraq
Greece
Greece--Rhodes (Island)
Greece--Crete
Greece--Piraeus
Greece--Corinth Canal
Italy
Libya
Libya--Tobruk
Libya--Banghāzī
Libya--Tripoli
Tunisia
Tunisia--Mareth Line
Tunisia--Qābis
Tunisia--Sharīk Peninsula
Tunisia--Tunis
Italy--Palermo
Italy--Pantelleria Island
Italy--Syracuse
Italy--Messina
Italy--Salerno
Italy--Anzio
Italy--Viterbo
Italy--Giulianova
Italy--Verona
Italy--Turin
Italy--Pisa
Italy--Livorno
Italy--Trieste
Italy--Milan
Bulgaria
Bulgaria--Sofia
Hungary
Hungary--Budapest
Austria
Austria--Steyr
France
France--Valence (Drôme)
Germany
Germany--Munich
Croatia
Croatia--Rijeka
Romania
Romania--Bucharest
Romania--Ploiești
Danube River
North Africa
Libya--Martuba
Egypt--Fukah
Greece--Leros (Municipality)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-06
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1945-05
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
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Steve Baldwin
B-24
bombing
Halifax
Warsaw airlift (4 August - 28 September 1944)
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/231/3606/BSpencerAHGSpencerAHGv1.2.pdf
e6d81c01549a2be263620cdcd67c798b
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
Spencer, Arthur
Arthur Humphrey George Spencer
Arthur H G Spencer
A H G Spencer
A Spencer
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history with Flight Lieutenant Arthur Humphrey George Spencer (b. 1921, 1311996 and 145359 Royal Air Force), a memoir and an essay. Arthur Spencer trained in the United States and flew two tours of operations as a navigator with 97 Squadron at RAF Woodhall spa and RAF Bourn. He later became 205 Group's Navigation Officer. He flew with British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) after the war.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Arthur Spencer and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-02
2017-02-27
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. 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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Spencer, AHG
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AN INTERESTING WAR
[page break]
To Jimmy Munro DFC, Ron Bennett DFM, 'Weasel' Hill DFM,
with whom I flew 45 bomber operations, mainly in J-Johnny of 97 Squadron,
to F/Sgt J Underwood, with whom I flew 15,
to Jimmy Silk DFM, Peter Burbridge DFC, and F/Sgt W Waller,
who were shot down over Berlin on the night of 22 November 1943,
and who have no known grave.
All are commemorated on the RAF Memorial at Runnymede.
Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
See how these names are feted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire's centre.
Born of the sun they travelled a short while towards the sun
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.
Stephen Spender 1933
[page break]
INTRODUCTION
My son-in law, Richard Knott, sent me in the summer of 2001 an extract from the magazine of the Royal Overseas League, of which he is a member, about the Second World War Experience Centre at Leeds. Having had quite an interesting war, and never having put anything down on paper before, I contacted the Centre with a brief synopsis of my experiences. The Director, Peter Liddle, previously a member of the History Department at Leeds University, responded immediately, and we agreed that since the Centre had no interviewer in the south-west, as it does in the south-east, I would put my recollections on audio-tape. This I did, completing the work early in 2002. The Centre sent me, as arranged, a copy of the transcription made by their transcriber, Carolyn Mumford. She had done a magnificent job on the material I had provided, but as an ex-English teacher, I was horrified by the number of times I had said 'Well...', by the number of times I had strung a series of clauses together with 'and', and by the repetitions of which I had so frequently been guilty. I decided to re-edit the material, using Carolyn's transcription as a starting point; this also gave me the opportunity to include several more anecdotes that I had previously omitted.
A.H.G.S.
August 2002
The more one writes, the more one remembers, so I have added another dozen or so anecdotes, as well as - at the suggestion of John Coote, Weston U3A - a couple of pages of my log-book, to this 'second edition' of my recollections.
A.H.G.S.
April 2003
Jennie Gray, author of 'The Fire by Night', much of which concerns 97 Squadron at Bourn, suggested that the whole would benefit greatly from the addition of photos, so I have completed a third, and probably final, edition with thanks to Jennie and John for their suggestions.
A.H.G.S.
July 2003
[page break]
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages,
What feats he did that day." [sic]
(Henry V before Agincourt)
I hope there won't be too many 'advantages' here, and certainly there won't be many feats' no heroics in this story; I just did as conscientiously as possible the job that the RAF trained me to do.
However, to begin, like 'Under Milk Wood', at the beginning, which is what I was asked to do. I was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, on February 11th., 1921. We - my Mother, Father, and I, an only son - must have moved to Southampton earlier than I can remember. Throughout my boyhood, my father was a postman there, which meant, of course, that we were never very well off, but at least he had a regular permanent job at a time when there were three million unemployed in this country. At first he walked the rounds; later he became a van driver, which gave him a slightly better income and certainly improved his working hours; later still he became a Head Postman, an indoor supervisory role, but was compelled to retire at 60 instead of being allowed to stay till 65 because of his poor health record.
He had served in the King's Royal Rifles during the first World War. He hadn't been very fit in his early years, which probably saved him from service in the trenches in France. He spent quite a lot of his service in Southern Ireland. He used to tell a rather nice story about being taken by my Grandmother to Salisbury Infirmary when he was quite small; on the way home she had said to him, "Roy, I have to tell you that you will never make old bones." Well, he was 93 when he died, having received a partial disability pension from the army for 69 years, and my Mother had died three months previously within a month of her 90th. birthday, so they both made fairly old bones!
Before I leave my father, it might be worth recounting another story. It concerns a much earlier war, the Boer War. He had been born in 1894, and had just started school when Mafeking was relieved after its long siege. It was a small two-teacher country school at Coombe Bissett, just outside of Salisbury. On the day that Mafekin was relieved - or more likely the next day, for news travelled slowly then - the two teachers came out into the playground, one carrying a Union Jack, and the other beating a drum, and assembled the pupils - not many of them - in a ring. They announced the relief of Mafeking, sang 'God Save the Queen,' and then the children were given the rest of the day as a holiday. He ran home to the next village, Dogdean, but at that early age couldn't say the word 'Mafeking' properly, so my Grandmother, thinking he had run away from school, beat him and sent him back again!
My Mother came from the neighbouring village of Homington and like many country girls had gone 'into domestic service' as soon as she left school. Like almost all married women in the twenties and thirties, she was a housewife who never went out to paid employment, though as the war went on, she went to work in the NAAFI near Southampton Docks for two or three years. She must have been a very
1
[page break]
good manager, for she achieved quite a reasonable standard of living on what must have been a very modest income.
When I started school, I went initially to Swaythling School, about half a mile from where we lived; I was fortunate enough thoroughly to enjoy school and three of us from my year group passed what was then known as the 'Scholarship' examination, and transferred to Taunton's School, a conventional boys' grammar school. It was quite a big school for those days, eight hundred boys with a big Sixth Form. I was always keen on games and probably spent more time on the games field than I should have done, but even so managed to make fairly steady progress through school and at the age of sixteen took a reasonably successful School Certificate with Matriculation exemption. It's probably worth mentioning that the Head had said to my parents at some fairly early stage of my school career that my French wasn't too wonderful; I'm sure this was an understatement; he recommended an exchange with a French family. The school, being right on the south coast, had very good links with France, and many boys went on French exchanges every year. I was lucky enough to go for three successive years, a month each time, to the same family in a little town in Normandy. We all got on very well and my French exchangee, and Jacques and I are still in touch with one another, though I must confess that it's our wives who do most of the writing!
A few years ago my granddaughter, who lives near York, went on a school-to-school exchange (these now seem more usual than the sort of individual exchange which I enjoyed) to a school near Orleans where Jacques now lives and spent a day with him and his wife. She had to compile a scrapbook about the exchange, and in it she has a photo of the two of us when we were fourteen or fifteen, and another when we were in our mid-seventies. An impressive example of life-long learning!
One incident which I recall from my earlier boyhood is a visit, on my father's motorbike, to Lee-on-Solent to watch the last of the Schneider Trophy competitions for the fastest seaplane; the last, because in 1931 the RAF won the competition outright with the Supermarine S6B, forerunner of the Spitfire, competing against Italy. It would be tempting to claim that this experience gave me a life-long passion for aviation; tempting, but quite untrue. It was an exciting and enjoyable day out, but it meant rather less to me at the time than a visit to the Dell in Southampton to watch Southampton F.C. or to the County Ground to see a county cricket match.
After Matric. I went into the Sixth Form (I am horrified now to think what a sacrifice it must have been to my parents to keep me at school, but, of course, I didn't realise it then) and continued to make fairly steady progress; thanks to the exchanges, my French was vastly improved, and this was now one of my Higher School Certificate subjects. In the first year in the Sixth Form came the Munich crisis, and it was pretty clear that war was coming sooner or later. A year later, Germany invaded Poland, and war was declared. Arrangements were in hand to evacuate schools from Southampton. We were lucky enough to go only thirty miles along the coast to Bournemouth. I have a picture of some of the school walking down to Southampton Station, two or three miles from the school, quite a long distance carrying a case, and, of course, a gas mask. The interesting thing about the picture is
2
[page break]
[Photograph captioned "Evacuation: September 2nd, 1939. Dr. H.M.King leads a group approaching Southampton Central Station.]
[page break]
that the teacher holding the placard showing that we were Taunton's School, Southampton, is Horace King, who happened to be my sixth form English teacher, but also became M.P. for one of the Southampton constituencies in the Labour landslide of 1945, and later still, during the Wilson administration, Speaker of the House of Commons, and later still, Lord Mowbray King.
Off we went to Bournemouth. We were very lucky, for our host school, Bournemouth School, had that very term moved into brand new buildings. In fact, the contractors were still working there; the paint was hardly dry. Moreover, the new school had been built on the outskirts of the town with more than adequate playing fields, something that Taunton's School had always lacked in Southampton. I heard Chamberlain's declaration of war sitting in a church hall in Bournemouth on September 3rd. Eventually, after about a fortnight kicking our heels, term began. Arrangements were made for half-day schooling, alternately morning and afternoon, with Bournemouth School, which wasn't quite has bad as it sounds because the half-days were lengthened, and really we didn't miss very much schooling, especially in the Sixth Form.
A friend and I were very lucky in our accommodation. We were billeted with a very kindly landlady in her sweet shop. (Sweet rationing had already started, of course.) He was captain of soccer and cricket, and I was captain of hockey, so it was a very sport-orientated home. As term went on, one or two younger members of Staff disappeared into the forces or into jobs with various Ministries, but on the whole school went on more or less as normal until the early part of the summer, when the Germans broke through the French lines and the evacuation from Dunkirk took place. Eight hundred French poilus were crammed into the building; most of them were very tired, in fact shattered; the weather was very fine, and they spent most of their time lying on the lawn outside the school sleeping. When senior boys of the school were asked to help, it gave me a very good opportunity to get quite a lot of practice in French conversation just before taking my examinations.
At about this time, news came through of the first Old Boy casualty in France, and news of another, now a Sergeant-Pilot, who had been mentioned in despatches. Later there were more casualties, one of them an Old Boy who had been a boy entrant of the Royal Navy and who had been manning a gun on a naval vessel in Portland Harbour when there was an attack by German aircraft; although badly wounded, he kept firing till he died; he was awarded the V.C. His name was Jack Mantle.
Eventually, examinations over, the school year came to an end. With about fifty or sixty other boys, I went off to a forestry camp in Cannock Chase probably harder physical work than I had ever done before, clearing hillsides of saplings; soon after that I applied to join the RAF as aircrew. I was accepted in the pilot/navigator category, but call-up was deferred. So many young men were volunteering for aircrew service at that time that the Air Force couldn't cope with such an influx all at once.
I looked round for a job in the meantime, and found that the ARP were advertising for drivers; I was lucky enough to have a driving licence, so I was able to
3
[page break]
join the Rescue and Demolition Service for two or three months until the RAF required my services. I earned £3 - 3 shillings a week, which was quite a reasonable wage in 1940. While I was serving with the R.& D. there were several daylight raids on Southampton, and we were called into action. One was an attack on the Supermarine works at Woolston where Spitfires were made, and another was on a factory at Eastleigh Airport. However, the RAF eventually remembered my existence, and I finally joined up as an AC2/ut (under-training) pilot early in November, just a week or two before the big night raids on Southampton began.
The RAF still found us too numerous to cope with, so after a couple of false starts at Uxbridge and Blackpool, we eventually reached Wilmslow, Cheshire, for kitting out and drill, universally known as 'square-bashing'. Then we were sent off to man gun-posts at various airfields. Later the RAF Regiment undertook this task. I was sent to Watton in Norfolk, a Blenheim base, and initially to its satellite airfield whose name I can no longer recall. One afternoon, the Luftwaffe raided Watton. Ken Romain, a friend of mine from the same gunpost, had gone into the parent station for a bath, there being no baths at the satellite field, and returned quite considerably shaken by his experiences. One of the attacking aircraft was, in fact, brought down close to the airfield by a device known as PAC (Parachute and Cable), which comprised, as one might expect, of a strong metal cable attached to a parachute so that, when fired vertically, it descended slowly and if the timing was accurate, it ensnared an approaching aircraft; the same principle as a barrage balloon, but low level and temporary. An entrepreneurial photographic section sold postcards of the downed Heinkel 111, from which all the crew survived unhurt, at 6d a card, and no doubt made a healthy profit! I believe that very few aircraft were downed over the land using PAC, but it was markedly more successful when used for convoy protection at sea, especially when, in a later version, a small bomb was attached to the cable.
After some weeks at the satellite field, all u/t aircrew were sent back to the parent station, where life was rather less rigorous. I was lucky enough to be at the gunpost on top of the flying control tower. The regular gunners joked that we were too soft to stand the conditions at the satellite, but I think it was really so that we could be available at short notice when the inevitable posting away from Watton came.
Eventually it did come; we were at last put back on the track of aircrew training, and sent off to the Aircrew Reception Centre at Babbacombe, near Torquay, really for a repetition of the drill and PE training we had already done. We felt rather old hands because some of the intake had come straight from civilian life, whereas we had all of six months service, so we put on the airs of old soldiers! After a few weeks at Babbacombe, we were sent off to ITW, Initial Training Wing, at Scarborough. We were based in the Grand Hotel, right on the cliff-top overlooking the front; we were supposed to undertake an eight weeks course, but the RAF, having neglected us for so long, rushed us through in five weeks. The course included the usual subjects for pilots and navigators: navigation, airmanship, aircraft recognition, meteorology, armaments. I never fail to think of the armaments lectures when I read or hear Henry Reed's poem, "Naming of Parts". In the third verse there is a minor grammatical error, exactly like the corporal who taught us about weapons would make;
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[Photograph, captioned "Heinkel 111 brought down by PAC at Watton, February 18th 1941."]
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[Photograph captioned "On the way to Iceland".]
[Photograph captioned "The RAF Transit Camp 17 km. from Reykjavik."]
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[Photograph showing a signpost indicating "Reykjavik 17 KM."]
[Photograph captioned "Hot springs near the camp."]
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'This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb.'
Rumour had it that we would be going to the USA to do our aircrew training, and this proved to be so; we were, in fact, only the second group to go under the Arnold Scheme. America was not yet at war, so we could not go in uniform, and were all kitted out in grey flannel suits, all exactly the same colour and pattern, so really a uniform in itself! We were also, because the British military establishment knew all about service in the tropics, and much to the amusement of the inhabitants of Florida when we eventually got there, issued with pith-helmets; what became of them I can't recall!
We sailed from Gourock in a tiny vessel which used to ply between Liverpool and Belfast and went to Iceland where we were accommodated in a transit camp some 15 miles outside of Reykjavik. It was a fairly horrendous journey; the sea was very rough indeed and nearly everyone was seasick. There was an Anson flying round and round the convoy; I couldn't help wondering just how effective it would be if we really were attacked. Fortunately there were no problems. When we reached Iceland, we were told immediately that Reyjavick was out of bounds, since it was thought to be, like Lisbon, a hot-bed of espionage. The majority of us were quite content to be off the sea, and quite content to be close to hot springs where we could wash, shave, and have an occasional swim.
It was May, so we saw very little darkness; after only a couple of days we were on our way again, bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia. This time we were much luckier in our transport. Only about a hundred of us were put on board an armed merchant cruiser, the Ranpura, the sister-ship of the Rawalpindi which had been sunk earlier during the war. Our ship was armed with one very large gun amidships and we sailed in the middle of the convoy. The Ranpura was large enough to be quite comfortable; just after we had embarked, the ship's commander called us all together, and said something like, "Gentleman" [sic] I must apologise, I realise you are all potential officers, but I haven't possibly got room for you all in the wardroom, but we shall make you as comfortable as possible". We were highly amused, for we weren't used to such treatment in the Air force. It seemed that the Navy was going to treat us in a much more gentlemanly way!
There was one moment of excitement on the way across to Halifax. A couple of days out the sirens sounded, and we all assembled at our boat stations. However, it wasn't a real crisis; the very large American convoy on its way to take over Iceland had come into view, and we were soon released back to whatever we did to occupy our spare time.
Arriving at Halifax, we were put on a train for a couple of days to go to Toronto. When we reached that attractive city, we were sent to a huge RCAF reception centre in the buildings of an old exhibition site, known as Manning Pool. As we marched in probably a bit sloppily, tired after our long journey, a voice shouted "You just over, lads?" We nodded agreement, and a terrific burst of spontaneous
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applause broke out all round the arena from these hundreds of new Canadian recruits. I'm sure we marched with an extra touch of pride in our steps after that.
A few days later, but not before a friend and I had managed to hitch-hike to Niagara Falls one evening, we were off on the train again, but this time in a southerly direction, to Lakeland School of Aeronautics in Florida. We were allowed a week-end's leave at the end of the ten-week course there, so a friend and I hitch-hiked to Miami where we spent two happy days mainly on the beach after we had found a hotel owned, in fact, by a Mancunian who was willing to accommodate us at a very preferential rate. The course at Lakeland was initially for pilot training, but although I soloed successfully and got through the first stage of the training all right, I was soon found out at the next stage at Montgomery, Alabama; I was by no means a natural pilot, and it wasn't long before I was sent back to Canada for remustering.
There were half a dozen of us on the train journey back to Ontario, one of whom was a young man already beginning to carve out a career for himself on the stage, Michael Aldridge; I saw him once or twice after the war when he was performing at Bristol Theatre Royal; he never quite became a star, but late in his career, he did achieve some fame as the garrulous retired headmaster in the BBC series "Last of the Summer Wine". As a navigator he had flown in the Balkan Air Force stationed in the heel of Italy, dropping supplies to partisans in Albania, Greece and Yugoslavia and sometimes even further afield.
Remustering took place at Trenton, Ontario; we were there in December 1941, and were given 5 days leave over Christmas. A friend and I decided that this would be the chance of a life-time to see New York, so we set off to hitch-hike there. Recrossing the border back into the USA took a little time, but eventually we got on our way. There was no shortage of lifts; almost every American who picked us up wanted us to go and spend Christmas with them; they were extraordinarily generous in their desire to be hospitable. (This was only weeks after Pearl Harbour, of course.) However, we insisted that we wanted to get to New York, and once there had three very exciting days. The United Services Organisation provided ample hospitality - free tickets to shows on Broadway, free meals, free tours. Our three days sped by, and all too soon we had to set off back to Canada, hitch-hiking once more through the Appalachians, and so to Trenton.
Soon I was on my way back to Florida again, this time to the United States Naval Air Service training school at Pensacola, where I did complete successfully the course as a navigator. One of my friends at Pensacola was George Brantingham; we stayed at the same units till he completed a tour of operations, and are still in close touch today. The course was very, very strong on theory, and we spent a great deal of time on astro-navigation, but much less strong on practice. My log-book shows less than 30 hours flying at Pensacola, most of that over the sea and with no night-flying, whereas if I had been at an RAF or RCAF school, I would have had between 120 and 150 hours training in the air. In spite of this, the RAF deemed half a dozen of us capable of navigating aircraft which were being ferried back to the UK. We were sent to RAF Ferry Command Headquarters at Dorval, near Montreal. There I crewed up with a very experienced civilian pilot, an equally experienced civilian wireless operator, and a second pilot who, like me, had just
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[Photograph showing a large hangar, captioned "Lakeland School of Aeronautics, Florida."]
[Photograph showing several bi-planes in a line, captioned "The flight line. Stearman PT-13s."]
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[Photograph showing six men in front of a bi-plane, captioned "Five of us with Bill Lethio, our instructor."]
[Photograph showing three men, captioned "Bob, Ginger, and Cyril in U.S. Air Corps "fatigues"
Bob later became Sqdn/Ldr R.G.Knight, DSO., DFC. with 617 Squadron."]
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[Photograph captioned "Pensacola: the weekly letter home."]
[Photograph captioned "Pensacola: practising astro-navigation."]
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[Photograph of a man standing on top of an aeroplane, captioned "Catalinas - PBY-2s - at U.S.N.A.S. Pensacola."]
[Photograph of several men in a classroom, captioned "Ground School".]
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[Photograph of three men outdoors, captioned "Pensacola: more - very relaxed - astro practice".]
[Photograph of the course students, captioned "Course 1A-P-(BQ) leaves Pensacola, May 1942".]
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[Timetable captioned "Flight plan for the ferry-delivery of a Ventura, Gander - Prestwick, May 1942".]
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[Photograph of four men standing outside a military tent, captioned "L.A.C.s Finney, Spencer, Manning and Stephens at No. 3 A.F.U., Bobbington August, 1942".]
[Photograph of three men in RAF uniform, captioned "Sgts. Stephens, Spencer, and Brantingham at No. 16 O.T.U., Upper Heyford, September, 1942. With brevets and stripes at last!"
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finished his training. We were allocated a Ventura to deliver to UK. We did no training flights but were briefed several times, learnt to use the oxygen system and did some dinghy drill, then, after a fortnight, we set out in this little two-engined Lockheed, rather like a Hudson, to fly to Gander, Newfoundland. The range of the aircraft was so limited, that everyone flew to Gander to shorten the Atlantic crossing, and even from there, a tail-wind component was needed! Quite a few of the pilots went via Iceland, or even via Bluey West, the American base in Greenland, but my pilot decided he wanted to fly straight across. We waited a fortnight for a favourable wind. In spite of the limitations of my training, we managed to make a landfall in Northern Ireland, and so on to Prestwick.
All aircrew arriving back in the UK from wherever they were trained were sent to Bournemouth, which, of course, was no hardship to me because I was able to spend a night or two at home in Southampton, and to visit my old school, still evacuated to Bournemouth. One incident which occurred during my brief stay there I do recall quite vividly; one afternoon, two Messerschmidt 109s swept in from the sea low over the roof-tops, each carrying a single bomb, which they deposited on hotels where air crew just arrived were billeted. They succeeded in killing a few young Canadians, newly arrived, who hadn't yet got into the war at all.
From Bournemouth we were sent on to Advanced Flying Units, in my case to Bobington, later called Halfpenny Green, near Stourbridge, in the Midlands. These Units were intended to familiarise aircrew who had trained in the good weather of Florida, South Africa and Rhodesia and elsewhere, where there were no nightly black-outs and there was excellent weather, with the very different conditions in this country. Once again, however, the course was considerably shortened; eight weeks again became five and then Bomber Command demanded our presence. All the members of our course were posted as sergeants since there was no time for commissioning interviews. I rather resented this at the time, but in the end it worked out much to my advantage, for had I been a pilot-officer I might well not have crewed up with the outstanding young Canadian who became my pilot, then a sergeant like myself.
The next stage of training was OTU, Operational Training Unit, at Upper Heyford, a few miles outside of Oxford. This was very much a pilot orientated course, and quite rightly so, Because the pilots, who previously had not flown anything bigger than an Oxford, had to convert to much bigger, heavier, operational aircraft, the Wellington. It was also important for the opportunity to crew up. Wellington crews at that time had five members: pilot, navigator, bomb-aimer, wireless operator, and rear-gunner. George said to me one day very soon after we had arrived at OTU, "I have got myself a pilot". He had teamed up with a larger-than-life American who had gone north of the border to join the RCAF. I approached this American at the next opportunity and said that I had heard he had got a navigator; could he recommend a pilot to me? He thought for a moment and said "Well, I reckon young Jimmy Munro is one of the best pilots on our course". That brief conversation is probably the reason I'm still here today! I saw Jimmy as soon as possible. No, he hadn't a navigator at that stage, and would be happy to take me on. I was keen to get a bomb-aimer who had also done navigation training; there were a lot of excess navigators finishing training at that time and some of them were converted to bomb-aimers. It seemed to me that we
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might as well have a second navigator rather than someone who had done only bomb-aimer training. Jimmy said at once, "Well, you find someone". In fact I already had my eye on a bomb-aimer wearing an Observer's brevet, which indicated that he was a qualified navigator, Eric Suswain, so that made three in the crew. In the meantime Jimmy had spotted a likely wireless operator, Snowy (I'm not sure that I ever knew his real Christian name) Nevard, son of an Ipswich publican, whose chief interest in life was horse-racing, and a rear gunner. The latter was a wizened little figure, Wesley Hill; I well remember my first conversation with him; he said "Everyone calls me Weasel!". He had been brought up in the Rockies with a gun in his hand, and to see him at clay-pigeon shooting was a revelation; he never missed one whereas if I hit one in twenty shots I was doing pretty well!
Once the pilots were converted to Wellingtons, we flew a number of cross-country flights together, some of them at night. Occasionally these night exercises were known as 'bullseyes'. These took aircraft over what would normally be highly defended areas; the searchlights attempted to cone the aircraft, and no doubt the anti-aircraft gunners honed their radar skills, but they didn't, of course, actually open fire. I've often wondered if the local citizens, seeing all the searchlight activity, but hearing no ac-ac asked themselves what was going on. Towards the end of the course all crews did what was known as a 'nickel', a leaflet operation over France or some other occupied territory. In our case we went to Nantes, and since we had to fly between that city and the highly defended port of St. Nazaire, a German U-boat base, so that the leaflets were blown downwind, we were subject to quite a lot of flak; we even heard several bursts in the Wellington, so they must have been fairly close to us, but we got home without any damage.
Our social life at Upper Heyford centred almost entirely on Oxford, there being transport to the city every evening, and a return bus quite late. George and I decided that as non-dancers we were 'socially constipated' and determined to put this right, so, most evenings, when we weren't flying, we attended Brett's Dancing Academy, and by the time we left Upper Heyford, we were probably better dancers than navigators.
Towards the end of our course at OTU we were on the airfield one afternoon when almost one hundred Lancasters swept across at low level and in loose formation. They were on their way to a low-level daylight attack on Le Creusot, and the impressive sight, the first time we had seen Lancasters en masse, more than confirmed our hope that we would be bound for a Lancaster squadron, rather than one equipped with Halifaxes or Stirlings.
We were lucky; at the end of our sixteen-week course we were posted to a Heavy Conversion Unit at Swinderby, just outside of Lincoln, a Lancaster HCU. This course, like OTU, was strongly pilot orientated, for the pilot now had to take a further step forward, and learn to fly a larger four-engined aircraft. Jimmy took to Lancasters like a duck to water. We flew circuits round the airfield, both by day and by night; we did several bombing practices over the Wash, but didn't undertake any longer cross-country flights. While there we picked up two more crew, Ron Bennett, a mid-upper gunner, and Harry Townsley, a flight-engineer. Just before Christmas 1942, three crews from that course made the short railway journey from Lincoln to
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[Photograph of two men in uniform, captioned "Sergeants Jimmy Munro and Arthur Spencer on leave at Southampton from OTU."]
[Photograph of one man in uniform, captioned "P/O Spencer at Southampton, August, 1943."
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[Photograph of crew in front of the tail end of their Lancaster, captioned "The original crew of J-Johnnie at Woodhall Spa, January 1943. Harry Townsley, 'Snowy' Nevard, Eric Suswain, Jimmy Munro, 'Weasel' Hill, Arthur Spencer, and Ron Bennett, then all Sergeants."]
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Woodhall Spa, where we joined 97 Squadron. One of the crews was that of Bill Tracey, the American I mentioned, with my friend George Brantingham as his navigator; the third was Doug Jones. The real war was getting nearer.
So here we were at last on an operational squadron. 97 Squadron was one of the first in Bomber Command to be equipped with Lancasters and had been one of the two squadrons to take part in the famous daylight raid on Augsburg in April 1942. The other squadron, 44, from Waddington, lost five of their six aircraft; their CO, the sole survivor from 44, flew a badly damaged aircraft home, and was awarded the VC. 97 lost only one of their six, Squadron Leader Sherwood, a flight commander, who was blown up over the target. He was the only survivor from his crew, and was awarded the DSO.
Now one might have thought that 97 Squadron would be keen to unleash us against the enemy as soon as possible; not so! They were not going to let a new crew, a 'sprog' crew to use then current slang, loose on one of their precious Lancasters without checking them out pretty thoroughly. We did a couple more cross country flights, and three more 'bullseyes' - one over Portsmouth and Birmingham, another over the Humber Estuary, and the third over Plymouth and Southampton - before they decided we were fit to go. As was usual for new crews at that time, we went 'gardening'. That is, our first operation was mine-laying. I suppose that we were lucky that we didn't go to one of the north German estuaries or to the Baltic; those trips could be quite 'dicey'. We went to the much quieter Gironde estuary and placed four 1500 lb. mines across the mouth of the river. We were short of petrol on the way back, and landed at Beaulieu in the New Forest, a Coastal Command station. The ground crew there had never seen a Lancaster before, and swarmed all over it, making it unserviceable! We had to wait several days till our own ground crew came down from Lincolnshire; it meant that once more I was able to spend a couple of nights at home in Southampton. In the meantime, the other two crews who had joined 97 Squadron with us had been fully blooded with a raid on Berlin.
Eventually, after a week's leave, our first real operation of Germany came at the end of January. It was, like so many subsequent trips, to the Ruhr; to Dusseldorf. We carried one 4,000 lb. bomb, and 12 small bomb containers (sbc.) each of 90 four-pound incendiary bombs. As we were approaching the target, and having given Jimmy the course out of the target area, there was no more I could do till the bombs were released, so I handed over to the bomb-aimer and asked Jimmy if I could move up to the front to have a look; normally, of course, I was working over charts and maps so I was behind a black-out curtain. He agreed, and I moved forward to be absolutely horrified; there seemed to be searchlights and flak all over the sky, and I just couldn't comprehend how an aircraft could survive in such a maelstrom of fire. When I thought about it more calmly afterwards, I realised that much of what one could see was really puffs of smoke from shells which had burst long before we entered the target area, and that it wasn't quite as bad as it appeared to a novice navigator at first glance. Eventually, I even got used to it! Bombs gone, we were much lighter, and with nose slightly down we sped home; I see from my log-book, that the flight lasted 4 hours 55 minutes.
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[Extract from Author's log book covering ten operations/flights carried out in March 1943]
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New crews at a squadron normally flew any aircraft that was available before graduating to 'their own' machine; we flew two or three raids in this way, but soon found an aircraft we liked, so Jimmy approached the Flight Commander to enquire if he would allocate us J-Johnnie; he was quite willing to do this thereafter J-Johnnie, and, of course, its associated ground crew, was our regular Lancaster. Either Jimmy, or the ground crew, invented a (I believe) fictitious Jane who was alleged to be Jimmy's girl-friend in Canada, and a scantily clad young lady soon appeared on the nose of our aircraft, rather like the Daily Mirror's famous Jane, with a lengthening row of bombs, one for each operation, alongside her.
Over the next weeks we operated against Hamburg, Cologne, Hamburg again, Nuremberg, St. Nazaire, the German submarine-base, where we were quite badly damaged in one of the starboard engines, Berlin, Hamburg yet again, and Krupps at Essen. This raid on Krupps was the first occasion upon which Oboe, the most accurate of the new navigational aids, but with a limited range, and carried only by Mosquitoes, was used. It was the first time any really serious damage was caused to Krupps, and we were lucky enough to get an aiming point picture. There were further raids on Nuremberg. Munich, Duisburg, where a fair amount of damage was done to the perspex at the front of the aircraft by flak, but no-one was hurt, Berlin, Krupps at Essen again, Kiel, Duisburg, Frankfurt, and La Spezia, where we did six runs over the target to try to get it right, suffered quite a lot of minor flak damage, and landed at Tangmere on return short of petrol because of those six runs! This was our last operation from Woodhall Spa and indeed in the Main Force of Bomber Command. We had survived 22 operations, and had, I think, been a reasonably successful crew; we had been coned by searchlights two or three times, which was a fairly terrifying experience, and had occasionally suffered minor flak damage, but nothing of too serous a nature.
During that period of three months, 97 Squadron had lost six aircraft. One of these was Sergeant Plaunt, a Canadian, in the raid on Essen on March 12th; he lived, like most of the NCOs, in a Nissen hut set in a little copse just off the road from Coningsby to Woodhall; at the end of the lane leading to the huts was a searchlight site. There were three such sites around the airfield, primarily for airfield defence, but also to form a cone over the airfield when we were returning from operations. Sergeant Plaunt had befriended and been befriended by the searchlight crew, and I remember how upset these soldiers were when they heard he had gone missing.
The last loss the Squadron suffered before we moved from Woodhall was Flying Officer Norton, who was lost after a raid on Berlin on March 29th. We returned from Berlin immediately behind him, and were told to circle at a certain height while Flying Control dealt with his aircraft. He called up for permission to land, and was given permission, but did not acknowledge; Flying Control called him again, and yet again, but still there was silence. Since we were next in the queue in our J-Johnnie we were now given clearance to land. We found later that Norton's aircraft had crashed in the village with the loss of the whole crew. Why he crashed I never knew. He was quite an experienced pilot. Perhaps he had a bomb hanging up on board which exploded; perhaps it was a momentary loss of concentration; perhaps the delayed result of some flak damage over the target; I have often wondered; he had
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been to Berlin and back successfully, and was lost at the last moment on his way home.
One of the advantages of life as aircrew was, of course, that when you were not 'dicing' (i.e. dicing with death) you led a very civilised life; nothing was too good for operational aircrew and you were not under constant fire like the troops in the trenches during the first World War. Our own social activity was based mainly upon the Sergeants' Mess and a local pub, the Leagate, in Coningsby. The Mess was very friendly, largely because it was small; we were a two-flight squadron, that is one made up of about sixteen or seventeen crews, and would be expected to send out eleven or twelve aircraft on a raid requiring maximum effort. While the officers messed at the requisitioned Petwood Hotel at Woodhall Spa, our mess was closer to Coningsby with the airfield in between. Most of the nights when we were not flying we would go to the Leagate. I went there again for the first time since April 1943 in September 2001; from the outside the inn was instantly recognisable and the bar, too, had not changed. Elsewhere there were great changes; it was now a hotel with bedrooms, and the area where we used to eat off rough tables was now a smart restaurant.
The landlord at the Leagate used to be able to provide us with a very substantial mixed grill during those first few months of 1943; he told me that on one occasion he had been visited by a Ministry of Food Inspector who had asked who most of his customers were. The landlord explained that they were mainly sergeants from the local airfield who patronised the pub on nights when they were not flying; the Inspector immediately increased his ration allowance, which I though was a very generous gesture indeed.
Occasionally I would ride my bike to the Leagate, and on one such occasion it was stolen. There were a lot of Irish navvies working on airfield construction in Lincolnshire, and when I reported the loss to the police, they said "Oh, I expect we shall find it in one of the Irish camps", and so they did and returned it to me. Later I lost it for good when it was taken from outside the briefing room while we were being briefed to go to Berlin. I felt this was adding insult to injury by stealing my bike at this time! It wasn't as if it was a service bicycle; it was my own bike on which I had cycled to school for many years. Once I had settled on an airfield, my parents sent it to me by train from Southampton. It arrived safely at Woodhall Spa Station, so I hitch-hiked from Coningsby to collect it.
The nearest town to the airfield was Boston Spa and a 'liberty' bus ran there every evening. We used it once or twice to go to Boston to visit the cinema I usually went with 'Sus', our bomb-aimer, but I can't remember a single film I saw there, and the occasions were pretty rare.
During March three crews, captained by Flight Lieutenants Maltby, newly arrived at the squadron, McCarthy, and Munro, began intensive low-level training. They were not screened from operations, but went off most days when there were no ops. to practise at almost zero feet. On one of these flights, the navigator of one of the crews, by coincidence the other Munro, but a New Zealander, was injured in what nowadays we would call a bird-strike. His crew were scheduled to go on
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operations, and I was detailed to go with him since we were not operating that night. We flew an air-test in the morning, but operations were cancelled ('scrubbed' was the term we used then) even before we got to briefing, so the name of one of the Dambusters appears in my log-book, (see the extract for March, 1943) but only for an air-test. For it was for the Dams raid that these three crews were practising, we later realised.
Eventually they went off to Scampton to join 617 Squadron under the command of Guy Gibson. McCarthy and Maltby both successfully completed the dams raid and both were decorated with the DSO; the latter, however, was killed in September when his aircraft plunged into the sea; Munro was unlucky enough to be hit by light flak crossing the Dutch coast which destroyed his intercom., so he had no alternative but to return to Scampton, though he went on to have a very distinguished career as a Flight Commander in 617 under both Gibson and Cheshire. Another successfully to complete the dams raid was Dudley Heal who had been on the navigation course with me at Pensacola; his pilot was Flight Sergeant Brown, a Canadian who won the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal for his part in the operation.
I ought not to leave Woodhall Spa without referring to the Squadron C.O. He was Wing Commander G.D. Jones, D.S.O., a rather stern unsmiling man who seemed rather remote to us sergeants; while I was with the Squadron (he left soon after we moved from Woodhall) he operated against only two targets, but did so whenever those targets were to be attacked; they were the two most heavily defended targets in Europe, Essen and Berlin; needless to say, the crews had enormous respect for him.
At the beginning of April, rumours began to circulate that 97 Squadron would soon be on the move; in the middle of the month, Air Marshall Cochrane, the Air Officer Commanding 5 Group came to Woodhall and announced to the assembled squadron that we would be joining Pathfinder Force in the near future; in fact by no means the whole squadron made the move; three crews were just off to 617; three crews were so close to the end of their tour that it was decided they should not join Pathfinders, but stay at Woodhall to join the new squadron being formed there and finish their tours with them, while one or two crews that we had lost recently had not yet been replaced. It was, therefore, by no means a complete squadron that flew off to Bourn, a satellite of Oakington, just outside of Cambridge on April 18th. As a WAAF in Woodhall subsequently wrote to me, "The last I saw of you was disappearing in a fairly ropy formation towards the south". She was quite right; it was a fairly ropy formation, but after all, night bomber pilots were, unlike their American daylight counterparts, not particularly skilled at formation flying, even though it had been stressed before we left that we ought to put on a good show for our departure.
We landed at Bourn, 5 miles west of Cambridge on the A45, the main road towards St. Neots and Bedford and soon found that 97 was to be transformed from the small two-flight squadron it had been all the time we were at Woodhall to a much larger three-flight unit, so that we now had between 27 and 30 crews on strength, and would be expected to send out about 18 or 20 aircraft on operations requiring maximum effort.
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We were placed in the new 'C' Flight, which was notable because it was commanded by a navigator, Wing commander Alabaster, DSO, previously the Group Navigation Officer. Most of the new crews that had joined the squadron at this time were returning for a second or even third tour of operations. Some of them had flown with 97 before; one such was Flight Lieutenant Rodley who had been one of the pilots to take part in the Augsburg raid a year before. The inevitable consequence of the enlargement of the Squadron was that the messes were much bigger, and some of the crew didn't take very kindly to the new Sergeants' Mess which was certainly rather a barn of a place compared with the warm, cosy mess we had left at Woodhall. The Officers must have been even more dismayed to have left the comforts of a top-class country hotel for a ramshackle wooden wartime building with fairly primitive billets around it.
Crews joining Pathfinder Force normally went to RAF Upwood, the Pathfinder Training School, but because we had moved as a squadron, the staff of the school visited us. Wing Commander Mahaddie came as 'Headmaster', a very much decorated officer, and we saw a great deal of Air Vice Marshall Bennett, the Air Officer Commanding 8 Group. I was very surprised how frank they were in talking to us, even in front of us Sergeants; they were both very critical of those regular officers who commanded their stations who were more interested in discipline and the smartness of their stations rather than the operational efficiency of the squadrons based there. Most of these Group Captains who commanded the stations had no experience of operational flying during World War II whereas Mahaddie, an ex-Halton 'brat' had an extremely impressive row of decorations, and Bennett had been awarded a DSO when he was shot down over Norway and walked home. Whereas at both Operational Training Unit and at Heavy Conversion Unit, the emphasis had been on the pilots, and quite rightly so, since they were learning to fly a much larger operational aircraft, now the importance of navigators and bomb-aimers was stressed; pilots, said Bennett, were merely chauffeurs to get the really important people, the navigators and bomb-aimers, there to put the target-indicators (TIs), flares and bombs down in the right place; all very encouraging for the morale of those of us who were in these two 'trades', as the Air Force called them!
We spent a fortnight in very intensive training both on the ground and in the air. We flew several cross-country exercises, some of them very long distance, and we learnt to use new equipment: the Mark 14A bombsight, the air position indicator, new radar devices. The emphasis was very much on navigational accuracy, and much higher standards were expected than had been the case in the main force or at OTU. I recall that on one of the cross countries, we were 70 miles off the east coast of Scotland at 20,000 feet on a brilliantly fine day, and we could see right across to the west coast and beyond; a marvellous sight.
After a fortnight, on May 5th., we did our first operation from Bourn, to Dortmund, the first raid on which more than 2,000 tons of bombs were dropped in a single operation. We didn't, on this first operation with PFF, carry any TIs., just a very heavy load of HE bombs, 1x 4000lb., 4x 1000lb., 6x500lb. and 2x250lb. That night is particularly memorable because we had our first and only serious encounter with a German night-fighter. We had just left the target - it was a good job that enormous load of bombs had gone! - when there was a shout from the rear gunner,
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'Turn to port and dive!' Jimmy didn't need telling twice; we were almost over on our backs and screaming away to the left; both our gunners were firing and the aircraft filled with the smell of cordite. Within moments it was all over; the German fighter disappeared into the darkness and didn't come back for a second attempt. It wasn't, I thought, a good omen for our career in Pathfinder Force.
The interesting thing from my point of view was that at that moment, when everything was happening, I didn't feel particularly afraid. There had been many previous occasions when we were making our way across Germany when one of the gunners had called up to say, "There's an aircraft out on the port (starboard) side, Jimmy; I can't see what it is but I'll keep an eye on it." On many such occasions, I had felt very afraid, but now that it was all happening, I didn't; I suppose it all happened so quickly, and there was such a rush of adrenaline that I didn't have time to be scared! There was one occasion when both gunners were certain that there was a German fighter flying along almost parallel with us, but presumably it didn't see us, nor spot us on its radar, or, more likely, was already following some other aircraft. Anyway, it didn't bother us, so, I'm sure wisely, we didn't bother it.
For the next couple of months, with the short nights of summer, my log-book looks like a Baedecker Guide to the Ruhr; Dortmund again - this time we did carry TIs so we began to feel like real Pathfinders - Dusseldorf, Cologne, Bochum, Dusseldorf again. In the middle of May, Jimmy's commission came through, Pilot Officer Munro; it wasn't long before I too was commissioned, appropriately dated April 1st. My friend George Brantingham was commissioned the same day; he now lives in Somerset and we see one another quite frequently; he pulls my leg that he is senior to me because although we were commissioned on the same day, his number was 145358, whereas mine is 145359. I tell him it's only because 'B' comes before 'S' in the alphabet.
We returned from one of our operations to the Ruhr to find East Anglia fogbound and were diverted to RAF High Ercall in Shropshire. I was very impressed that the station was able to cope with fifty or sixty Lancasters arriving probably at very short notice, debriefing us, giving us all an operational breakfast of eggs and bacon, accommodating us, and even providing us with some basic toilet kit so that we could have a shave and wash and brush-up before returning to Cambridgeshire the next afternoon.
Operations went on, but intensive training also continued. We flew more bullseyes over Plymouth, Liverpool and Manchester. These flights usually included a 'bombing' run on Goole Docks! A camera would show how accurate this was by picking up an infra-red light on the target; we must have 'bombed' Goole dozens of times! Another form of training was fighter affiliation. We would climb laboriously up to approximate operational altitude and then notify base that we were there; a Spitfire or Hurricane would then take off from a nearby fighter station and attempt to shoot one down, not literally, of course, but it carried a camera gun, and a subsequent analysis of the film would reveal how successful he had been, and also how successful the bomber had been in evading his attentions.
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It was normal on these occasions as a measure of economy to carry two rear gunners; one would be at the guns in the turret, while the other waited his turn just outside. Jimmy was something of a fighter pilot manqué, and would throw the Lancaster around the sky as if it were a fighter. On one such occasion, the rear gunner of another crew was installed in the turret, while Weasel, our own gunner, waited his turn just outside. Now, immediately outside the rear turret of a Lancaster is the Elsan toilet; Jimmy went into such a steep diving turn at high speed that the Elsan became detached from its housing, and deposited its content all over Weasel! No one could go near him for days afterwards, but eventually stores took pity on him, and although it was very difficult in those hard days of 1943 to get any new uniform, they finally decided it would be in everyone's interests if he had a new battledress, and certainly we in the crew of J-Johnnie appreciated it.
June came; the Battle of the Ruhr continued. We flew an air test in the morning, quite certain from the order of battle petrol and bomb load that we would be over Happy Valley again that night. We landed and taxied to dispersal. There waiting for us was the Flight Commander's van. 'Oh dear,' we thought, 'we're in trouble,' for only a few minutes before we had been 'shooting up' a train just outside Cambridge. This time, however, we were lucky. As the engines stopped, the Flight Commander called up to our pilot, "Jimmy, you're to take a week's kit, and fly up to Scampton directly after lunch." "O.K. What for?" "I don't know, you'll get all the gen. when you get there."
We didn't object; we would be happy to miss yet another visit to the Ruhr - the target that night turned out to be Cologne, in fact. The Ruhr raids had been going on for two months or more, and losses were increasing. While we had been in Main Force, losses had been about 2.4%; now they were up to 4%, so that on most nights there were usually one or two crews who failed to return. So, we had lunch, packed a week's kit, and with three other crews, Rodley, Sauvage and Jones, flew leisurely northwards till we saw Lincoln Cathedral appear from the haze, and dropped down to Scampton. Rumour had been fairly rife as to what would be expected of us at Scampton, as it was, of course, the home of 617 Squadron, the Dambusters. When we arrived, initially everything seemed to be chaotic. No one knew why we were there, and the squadrons in residence felt rather insulted that four Pathfinder crews should help them do anything. They were quite capable of looking after themselves. However, we settled ourselves in the Mess, formed a solid block in case of hostility, and awaited developments.
We didn't have to wait long. We were taken aside by an elderly Group Captain; when I use the term 'elderly,' he was probably all of 35, but we were all in our late teens and early twenties, so he seemed pretty elderly to us. He explained that there was to be a special operation by fifty plus of 5 Group's Lancasters led by the four Pathfinder aircraft, against a special target. Where? He couldn't or wouldn't tell us. When? Soon. That was all he did tell us except that several practices would be held during the next few evenings over Wainfleet Sands, a practice bombing range adjacent to the Wash, and that we were not allowed to go into Lincoln. That was rather disappointing, as everyone in Bomber Command had been stationed near Lincoln at some time or other, and the 'Saracen's Head' was worth revisiting. Sadly, it doesn't exist any more. However, we consoled ourselves by making up for this in the Mess,
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[Photograph captioned: "OF-J-Johnnie and crew just before bombing-up with TIs."]
[Photograph captioned: "Crew and ground crew and a 'cookie' in front of J-Johnnie, August 1943]
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and during the evenings flew over the Wash. Two of the Pathfinder crews - P/O Jones and ourselves - illuminated the target at the range with flares, two - Rodley and Sauvage - marked it with TIs, and the main force bespattered it with 11 lb. practice bombs. This, it had been decided, would be the plan of attack for the eventual operation, though using something heavier than 11lb. bombs, of course. P/O Jones's navigator, P/O Jimmy Silk DFM, and I became aware that there was considerable onus on us, since we would be putting down the first flares.
After a couple of days passed like this, we were briefed. The target was to be the old airship hangar at Friedrichshaven on Lake Constance, which was being used as an assembly shop for the construction of German radar sets. The Air Commodore in charge of the briefing added that the target was worth bombing from our own point of view, because the radar sets now in the hangar were destined for the Ruhr where they would considerably strengthen the defences. There was a murmur round the room that if he had been to the Ruhr recently, he would realise that the defences certainly didn't need any improvement, and the briefing continued.
The attack was to take place on the first clear night; perfect weather was needed at the target because of its pinpoint nature, very unlike the big areas which had been successfully 'coventrised' in the Ruhr. For the same reason a full or almost full moon was required, so that if the attack didn't take place within the next night or two, it would be cancelled altogether. Finally, and almost off-handedly, it was mentioned that Friedrichshaven was much too far into the continent for us to cross the enemy coast in both directions in darkness, so we were to fly south from the target over the Alps, cross the Italian coast just before dawn, and land at one of the newly acquired airfields in North Africa. "Have a good trip, chaps." We spent the afternoon drawing very basic tropical kit from stores, (no one had any badges of rank), preparing maps and charts, and calculating times.
In the evening the weather seemed very good and we walked optimistically to the Met. Office. The Met. Officer, however, was not optimistic. He shook his head gloomily. "No, not tonight." The next day passed slowly. We did an air-test, then sat in the mess playing shove-halfpenny. In the afternoon, a preliminary forecast was issued, which promised much better weather conditions than the night before. Eventually news came through; "Operations tonight." We had an operational meal, stowed away navigation equipment, flasks of coffee, and a parcel of sandwiches. The gunners dressed in their Irvines; we strapped on our Mae Wests and parachute harnesses, and taxied to the end of the runway.
We took off at 21.40, double British Summer time on the eve of the summer solstice, so there was still ample light. We climbed out of the Lincolnshire mist, and as we gained height we could see other Lancasters climbing from neighbouring airfields. Reading was to be our turning point, and we remained in a bunch to the coast, Selsey Bill. When we reached the coast, it was much too early, for it would still be light on the other side of the Channel. Sixty Lancasters circled the Bill and fighters from Tangmere, the nearby fighter station, came up and fluttered around inquisitively. Soon, well before I intended to let my pilot set course, one or two more adventurous spirits headed south once more. As the last light faded we could see the French coast in the distance, and set course. It had long been the custom for
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southbound aircraft to cross the coast at Cabourg, a little French sea side resort opposite Le Havre, which I had visited several times before the war when I was on my exchange visits to Normandy. We could always reckon on stream of light flak from the coast, and we were not disappointed; red, green and yellow tracers drifted slowly into the evening air, and extinguished themselves thousands of feet below us. We smiled contemptuously and put our nose down slightly to increase speed by 30 knots to take us through the fighter belt along the French coast.
There was scarcely any wind; navigation was no problem, and the Loire appeared on time. We turned east at Orleans, always very badly blacked out. The weather, which had till then been perfect, now deteriorated; thick cloud above prevented any use of the sextant, and obscured the light from the moon by which we would have seen something of the ground. We didn't worry, however for an occasional drift taken on a light showed that our track was being made good, and we knew that we should see the Rhine, no matter how bad the weather, and in any case the guns at Mulhouse would probably warn us of its whereabouts. Suddenly there was a shout from Jimmy, "Rhine coming up!" We were fortunately right on time, and right on track. Basle, just to the south, was brilliantly lit up, and we set course for Lake Constance, the Bodensee - the Swiss side as briefed. The Swiss illuminated a few ineffective searchlights, and fired a few ineffective shells. The engineer told us the unlikely story of an RT conversation between the pilot of a Flying Fortress, and the officer in charge of a Swiss anti-aircraft battery. The Fortress was over Switzerland, probably by mistake since the American navigation was not particularly accurate. "You are over Swiss territory. We shall open fire," called the Swiss officer. "I know," called the pilot, and a few moments later, "Your shells are bursting a thousand feet too low." "I know," replied the Swiss officer. We laughed, and circled the rendezvous point, a small headland, on the Swiss shore of Lake Constance. At Z-4 we set off across the lake on the agreed course, and seconds after crossing the opposite coast, we started releasing flares across Friedrichshaven; moments later a parallel line of flares appeared on our left. The defences were very active indeed; some were accurate too and we could hear shells bursting just below the aircraft; they rocked us about a bit, and shrapnel rattled against the fuselage, but without doing us any real harm. As our last flares fell, a searchlight fastened on to us, and immediately a dozen others held us fast. We twisted and turned frantically, and finally Jimmy dived from 12,000 feet to 2,000 feet out of the target area. Meanwhile the other two Pathfinder aircraft had marked the target with red and green TIs and the Master of Ceremonies was telling the main force aircraft which had been placed most accurately. Soon their bombs were raining down. It was very satisfying because we could see the results of our bombing, something we had rarely seen before; in eighteen visits to the Ruhr, we had seen the ground only twice. We climbed back to lay some more flares and add our few small bombs to the general conflagration. Once again the searchlights picked us out from the 60 aircraft circling round - the four Pathfinder planes were flying lower than the Main Force whom the MC had ordered to climb an extra 5,000 feet because of the intensity of the defences. Once again we were given all the attention of the flak but this time Jimmy turned hard about and dived out over the lake. Our contribution was complete. Soon the MC pronounced that the raid was at an end, and ordered us to climb hard for the Alps.
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[Photograph taken in front of an aircraft hangar, captioned: "Jimmy and the gunners at Bourn, September 1943."]
[Photograph taken in front of a Lancaster, captioned: "Some of the crew and ground-crew, September, 1943."]
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[Photograph captioned: "Jimmy and batman - and his dog - at Bourn, September, 1943."]
[Photograph of men on and around a tractor, in front of an aircraft, captioned: "(left to right) Underwood, Suswain, groundcrew, Bennett, Spencer, groundcrew, Hill, Munro, groundcrew, groundcrew in front of J-Johnnie (note the increasing line of bombs) at Bourn, August, 1943."]
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The Alps were very blue in the summer moonlight; as soon as we had crossed the mountains, we dropped down across the Italian coast and flew low over the Mediterranean. Oxygen masks were taken off; coffee was handed round; the wireless operator picked up some light music. The sun rose; the sea sparkled. We flew just over the wave-tops to escape radar cover. We realised that we were tired, but the excitement of this shuttle-service operation kept us all awake. An occasional smoke-float checked our track, and in two hours the coast appeared......enveloped in thick fog! Early arrivals skimmed the top of the fog leaving a trail behind like the wake of a ship in water. There were frantic voices on the RT; "Ten minutes petrol left!" "I can only fly for a quarter of an hour." It seemed as if a successful operation was going to end in a fiasco; that 420 aircrew would have to bale out, and that 60 Lancasters would be directed out to sea to crash in the Mediterranean when petrol ran out. Fortunately there was a man of considerable initiative on the ground. He was an American flying control officer who stationed himself at the end of the runway in his jeep, fired Verey cartridges up through the mist, and, long before the days of Ground Controlled Approach, talked us in. I shall always remember the expression he used. "The first man to make home base wins!" It was unorthodox, but it was effective; all the aircraft landed safely, about half at Maison Blanche, our intended destination, and the remainder at a neighbouring airfield, Blida. In one of the Lancasters, by coincidence an aircraft from 619 Squadron, which had been formed at Woodhall Spa when we left that station for Bourn, was a dead Bomb-aimer who had been killed when hit by flak over the target.
For a couple of days we lazed; we drank too much of the rather coarse Algerian wine; we had too much sun; we gorged ourselves on fruit which was now very scarce in England; we bathed in the Mediterranean. Once incident while we were there stands out in my mind; we had been issued with basic khaki drill uniform, and none of us had badges of rank except those few who had seen previous service overseas. We ate in an American Mess where one GI was unwise enough to question whether Johnny Sauvage was an officer; Johnny was a very senior Flight Lieutenant at the time, but he was one of those people who nearly always look scruffy because he needed a second shave by about two o'clock in the afternoon; his language at this challenge was picturesque in the extreme, and it obviously served to convince the GI that he really was a 'limey' officer.
Eight of the aircraft which had landed had been too badly damaged on the outward operation to take part in the return one; quite the worst of these was one of the Pathfinder aircraft, Rodley's, not because of action over the target, but because a TI had hung up in the bomb-bay of his aircraft; these exploded barometrically, so when he lost height over the Mediterranean, it went off and his Lancaster became filled with smoke and flames; fortunately he realised what had happened, and, opening the bomb doors, he pulled the jettison lever, the TI fell away, and he reached Algiers, but in no fit state to fly again till a good deal of work had been done on his Lancaster. Johnny's aircraft was also badly damaged, so there were only two Pathfinders on the return operation. All those who did operate against Spezia, for that was the homebound target, had a great deal of difficulty getting off the ground so heavily laden with petrol and bombs in the heat of a tropical evening.
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The homeward attack was something of an anti-climax after Friedrichshaven, and dropping our flares and bombs fairly hastily, we sped back across France. As we got back to Scampton, the sun was rising once more. The WAAF in flying control called us "Clear to land, J-Johnnie" and for once ignoring RT discipline, "Good show, J-Johnnie."
We were debriefed; I recall Jimmy telling the intelligence officer that we 'dove' out of the searchlights; it was years before I found out that 'dove' was legitimate New World past tense of 'to dive.' In the evening we flew back to Bourn. There was a reception committee waiting for us including the AOC, Bennett, and other senior officers. Bennett was exceedingly angry; he felt that four Pathfinders had been used so that 5 Group would have an excuse, someone else to blame, if the raid were not successful. Relations between Bennett and Cochrane, the AOC of 5 Group, were notoriously bad; Bennett commented at that debriefing that he would have had 20 Pathfinders illuminating and marking the target to ensure that the task was done properly. It was Bennett who had interviewed me for my commission earlier in the year; he didn't waste any time with 'social' questions which some of my friends had suffered from other AOCs, but launched straight away into fairly probing questions about navigation, and why I wanted to become an officer; presumably I was able to satisfy him on both counts.
The attack on Friedrichshaven had been our 29th. operation, and Spezia our 30th., so we got back to Bourn confidently expecting to go on three weeks leave; the pressure was on, however, and we were informed that we would have to do two more trips before we could be released. We went twice to Cologne before drawing our railway warrants and ration cards and setting off. At that time thirty operations constituted a first tour; one was then entitled to a 'rest' of at least six months before going back for a second tour, though some never did; in Main Force the second tour was twenty operations, but arrangements differed a little in Pathfinder Force. Having got a successful and experienced crew together, Pathfinder Force liked to keep them together for their second tour, so the crew went straight on without a break. In order to compensate for this, the second tour was reduced to 15 operations, and there was a three-week leave period in between instead of the usual two-week end-of-tour leave.
This last operation of our first tour is described in detail in 'Pathfinders at War' by Chaz Bowyer, under the title of 'Night of No Return,' written by Doug Jones, one of the four pilots to take part. There is also quite a long article about it in 'The Marker', the Pathfinder Association magazine, of summer 1991, by Rodley and a shorter one adding to Rod's article by myself in 'The Marker' of winter 1992. I read quite recently (spring 2002) Constance Babbington Smith's 'Evidence in Camera' and was surprised to find how quickly the attack had been organised; Churchill had visited RAF Medmenham, the Photographic Interpretation Unit, on June 14th., 1943, and been shown the pictures of the radar devices in preparation at Friedrichshaven; it was only six days later that the raid took place.
After those two operations against Cologne, I didn't go there again for many years, not, in fact, till the autumn of 1998, when my wife and I went down the Rhine on a river cruise starting there. We had not been on the cruise vessel more than
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ten minutes before there was a fire drill; when it concluded, I said to the Cruise Director, "This is a bit ironic, because the last time I was at Cologne, I was trying to start as many fires as possible!"
Most of our crew had decided to stay together and go on to complete 45 operations; by now we all had great faith in one another, and we all realised that in Jimmy Munro we had an exceptional pilot and captain; Bill Tracey had been absolutely right. (He, Bill, incidentally, had transferred to the US Army Air Corps fairly soon after we had moved to Bourn, and moved on after his thirty operations, so that now, after a long spell together, my friend George, his navigator, moved to a different station.) Two of the crew decided not to stay on: 'Snowy' Nevard, the wireless operator, and Harry Townsley, the engineer. In their place, we picked up two very experienced aircrew; Flight Sergeant Underwood as W/Op., and 'Ginger' Swetman, DFC, DFM, as Engineer. The latter, who eventually became squadron engineering leader, had quite remarkable night vision; he was frequently able to tell intelligence officers at debriefing just where our bombs and TIs had fallen, and time and time again this was confirmed by the photograph taken as we dropped our bombs.
When we got back to Bourn after our three weeks leave, we found the squadron agog with a new defensive strategy, 'Window,' the dropping of metallic strips to confuse the enemy radar. 'Window' was first used against Hamburg on the night of July 24/25 1943 and crews who had operated that night told us that the German searchlights and guns were all over the place, and there was great confusion between the night-fighters and their controllers. The loss rate that night was reduced to 1.5%, only 12 aircraft out of a force of over 700. We then operated against Hamburg three times in a week. On the 27th. the lost rate was just over 2%, 18 missing from a force of nearly 800; Window was still being very effective. This particular raid was the night of the great fire-storm; an enormous number of incendiaries was dropped and a great number of the inhabitants of Hamburg perished in the ensuing conflagration. In the same week we also did a trip to the Ruhr, to Remscheid, so we were operating at quite intense pressure at that time. The last of 'The Battle of Hamburg' raids was on the night of August 2nd. Although all 97 Squadron's aircraft returned, the Command lost 30 aircraft that night - over 4 per. cent. - and we began to wonder if Window was already losing its effect, but probably that night's losses were as much to do with weather as the German defences; the icing at 20,000 feet was more severe than we had ever known, and the wind was over 100 knots, so probably quite a lot of the casualties were victims of the weather.
I pause here from my chronological narrative to insert several anecdotes from this period. One day, we were due to take J-Johnnie on a night-flying test; these normally took place in the morning so that the ground crew could fix anything that needed fixing during the afternoon. For some reason we were not able to fly in the morning - possibly our ground-crew were busy on something fairly major on the aircraft. Whatever the reason, we went for lunch, and arrived to do our air-test early in the afternoon; there was no transport about to take us out to dispersal, so we trooped into the Flight Commander's office to explain. The Wingco said at once, "My van's outside; I shan't be needing it for an hour or two. Take that. "Jimmy at once responded that he couldn't drive. W/C Alabaster turned to me and commented, "It
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makes you realise how long the war's been on, doesn't it? Here's this chap who's done nearly forty trips in a Lancaster, and can't drive a car!"
The next story is a sad one. Bennett used to insist that his air staff officers at PFF HQ kept up to date by themselves going on operations from time to time. Two turned up one evening and, to my great surprise, both went off with the same crew, an Australian fairly new to the Squadron. I had flown a 'bullseye' with him one night when his own navigator was sick, and, after months flying with Jimmy, wasn't very impressed, so that I wouldn't have wanted to operate with him myself. Sadly both these officers, very experienced officers indeed, were lost with him.
Another story concerns a young night fighter pilot from a Beaufighter Squadron in the Home Counties, who came to spend a week's leave with us and flew on three operations. I was quite amazed that anyone's idea of a week's leave should be to spend it operating with a heavy bomber squadron. [italics] Chac'un a son gout! [/italics] He successfully completed his week, and Jimmy suggested that we would take him back to his base at Twinwood Farm; the main runway at this night-fighter station was considerably shorter than that normally used by a Lancaster, and although we landed without too much difficulty, taking off on an 800 yard runway, skimming over the trees at the end of the runway, was quite exciting. I believe Jimmy got a bit of a rocket when we got back to Bourn, but there isn't really much you can do to a chap who has done 40 operations except perhaps slap his wrists fairly mildly.
By now, we were, of course a very experienced crew; when new crews joined the Squadron, their captains were usually sent out with just such a crew before they operated themselves. One night we took a newly arrived South African with us, almost certainly, I think to Hamburg. We were making our way over northern Germany, more or less parallel with the coast and were somewhere near Bremen. "Now watch this," said Jimmy and held the plane absolutely straight and level for 30-45 seconds. Then he veered off to the left, and almost immediately three rounds of flak burst on our right, just where we would have been if he had continued straight and level.
Another visitor at about this time was Jimmy's father; he had been in the Canadian army in WWI, and enlisted again as soon as WWII was declared. Now he was back in England again as Private Munro. By now Jimmy was commissioned, and although Private Munro wasn't allowed to use the Officers' Mess, the Adjutant stretched a point, and accommodated him in the Sergeants' Mess, where he was very well looked after by the NCOs in our crew. He flew with us on an air-test on a very stormy day. While we were out over the North Sea there was a terrific bang, just like a burst of flak directly below the aircraft. We had been struck by lightning! We were lucky; flicking over the pages of Chorley's 'Bomber Command Losses' recently, I noticed that a Halifax which had been struck by lightning broke up in the air, and all the crew were killed. Our only damage was to our main P4 compass; it was never the same again. Although boffins arrived from Farnborough to degauss the aircraft, it could never be relied upon, but fortunately the Distant Reading Compass was still perfectly serviceable, and we relied on that from then on.
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We usually went into Cambridge when we were 'stood down' or not flying. (I can recall going into Bourn village only once to go to the Post Office.) The great attraction for me was the Cambridge Arts Theatre, and I used to persuade all the crew to go along quite frequently; they were all quite happy to humour me if a Coward, a Rattigan, a Priestley or an Emlyn Williams was on offer, but they all declined when I suggested a visit to the ballet! We all did enjoy very much indeed Terrence Ratigan's 'Flarepath'; it was, I believe, its first production, and starred Richard Attenborough, who was on an ITW course in Cambridge, but was held back on his course in order to play the leading part. We also spent quite a lot of time on the Cam, not in a punt, but in a canoe, for Jimmy, having grown up alongside the Ottawa river, handled a canoe just as expertly as he did a Lancaster.
After what Middlebrook calls 'The Battle of Hamburg' there was a quieter spell. We did two trips to Milan, and between them one to Mannheim. In the first of the Milan raids on August 7th., only 2 planes were lost out of 200 taking part, and on August 12th. only 3 out of 500, and only one of those a Lancaster. I never failed to be surprised at the reactions of some crew members when we were briefed to go on the eight-hour flight over the Alps. They used to complain about these long trips saying "Why can't we just go to the Ruhr?" Yet they must have known that casualties would be ten or even twenty times as many on a visit to Happy Valley! Moreover there was the joy of flying over the Alps (A very different experience from flying 15,000 or more feet above the mountains in the well-lit cabin of a modern jet), and long flights posed navigational challenges which I always enjoyed.
By now it was the middle of August, and nights were getting longer. The increasing hours of darkness was obviously going to give the C-in-C the opportunity to attack the target he really wanted: Berlin. We thought one morning that the day had come. We always had a look at the Order of Battle when it was published in the morning, not to find which aircraft we were flying in - we knew that - or to find the crew - we knew that too - but to have a look at the information tucked away at the bottom of the sheet; the bomb load and petrol load. These two figures gave a pretty good idea of the vicinity of the target. A small petrol-load and a large bomb-load almost inevitably meant the Ruhr. Conversely a heavy load of petrol and a small load of bombs probably meant much further afield; Italy or southern or eastern Germany. A moderate load of each would mean Hamburg, Berlin or thereabouts. On August 17th. we were scheduled for operations. When we looked at the Order of Battle we were horrified; the petrol and bomb loads appeared just right for Berlin, and yet it was a night of full moon; it would be a massacre - a massacre of the aircraft of Bomber Command by the increasingly skilful Luftwaffe night-fighter crews. There was a general lowering of morale but there was nothing we could do about it so we got on with our air-test, and did some bombing practice as well. "Press on regardless," as we said in those days!
We turned up for afternoon briefing, still feeling rather anxious, and found that although the red tape pinned across the map of Europe on the end wall of the briefing-room stretched out across the North Sea, it stopped short of Berlin. Not Lubeck. Not Rostock. Where? Eventually the target was revealed as Peenemunde, a place none of us had ever head of. We sat back and waited for more information.
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[Extract from Author's log book, captioned "August 1943: a busy fortnight in Pathfinder Force."]
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There is no need to write much by way of introduction about the Peenemunde raid. After the Dams operation, it is probably the best documented Bomber Command operation of the whole war. It merits a complete volume to itself by Martin Middlebrook; another by John Searby who was Master of Ceremonies; there are accounts of it and background information in almost any book referring to Bomber Command's activities, notably in R.V.Jones's 'Most Secret War,' in Max Hastings's 'Bomber Command', in Denis Richards's 'The Hardest Victory' and elsewhere. Briefly, Peenemunde was the research station and factory on the coast of the Baltic where the V2 rocket was being developed. It was, of course, a closely guarded secret. Although British intelligence had their first intimations of rockets as early as November 1939, they regarded this as a hoax to distract them from more immediate concerns, until more information came through a Danish engineer in December 1942, and even more when two captured German Generals were 'bugged' in March 1943, and were overheard discussing rocket attacks. Now there was a full alert. The Chiefs of Staff and the War Cabinet were informed and a decision was made to appoint Duncan Sandys to gather together all possible information. He worked very quickly and used photographic reconnaissance to amplify information which was also now coming in through the Resistance. His report to the War Cabinet was made on June 29th., and a decision was made to attach Peenemunde. At first it was thought that Mosquitoes could carry out the attack, but it was realised they couldn't carry the weight of bombs necessary. It would be a job for the heavies, so it was decided to wait until nights were long enough for a force of heavy bombers to get there and back in darkness. Now, in mid-August, that time had come.
Briefing took its usual form. There were introductory remarks and the target finally identified by a senior officer. The Met. Officer briefed us on the weather; conditions should be perfect. The Intelligence Officer told us what was known about defences. The Signals Officer briefed us about W/T procedures and, as always, emphasised the need for radio silence till the attack began. The plan of attack was explained; the operation would be in three phases. (We were to fly in the first.) This first wave was to be against the living quarters of the scientists and technicians; the second against the experimental station, and the last against the factory workshops. A number of special features were also explained; there was to be a Master of Ceremonies, the first time such a technique had been employed on a major operation of about 600 aircraft although we had an MC on Friedrichshaven with a much smaller force; there was to be a spoof raid on Berlin by a group of Mosquitoes who would drop 'window' and TIs to simulate an impending large-scale raid to attract the German fighters to Berlin. No mention whatsoever was made of rockets; we were told that we would be attacking an experimental radar station, a very important one, but nevertheless, radar was something we knew about. It was only later that we learned about rockets; it was thought that it would be disastrous for British morale if it were known that the Germans were developing rockets, so even the crews were not informed. Finally, we were told, and this was the only occasion I heard such a comment, that if the raid were not successful, it would have to be repeated night after night, irrespective of casualties, till the task was complete. Watches were synchronised. A final word from the senior officer 'Have a good trip chaps. Wish I were coming with you.' In fact, a very senior officer was with us that night; Group Captain Boyce, Senior Air Staff Officer at Group HQ, turned up and slipped quietly aboard Rodley's aircraft to witness the attack for himself.
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We went off to the Mess to have our operational meal, and, of course, made our usual funereal jokes. "Can I have your egg if you're not back tomorrow morning?" I suppose it sounds in very bad taste now, but it was our normal comment to one another; it was really wishing our friends a safe passage. Then I would go to clean my teeth, which by then had become a ritual, and easy enough to undertake because my quarters were between the Mess and the airfield; this had started because I thought that if I were shot down and taken prisoner it might be a long time before I could clean my teeth again! It would have been perfectly simple to carry a toothbrush with me; crew members carried all sorts of things with them. Another ritual was always to wear the silk scarf my Mother had given me when I started flying; I would have been very worried to have set off on operations without it.
Meanwhile the armourers had been busy at our aircraft, loading it with a 'cookie,' a four thousand pounder, five 500 pounders, and, most importantly, seven target indicators with which we hoped to mark the living quarters of the most important people at Peenemunde; the petrol bowsers had visited each dispersal site; the ground crew had done their final checks. We went to our lockers in the crew room for our flying kit, and then to the parachute section to draw parachutes, escape kits, rations, and then awaited transport to dispersal. Arriving there, we chatted to the ground crew; the smokers amongst us had a final cigarette; we had a ritual pee over the rear wheel of J-Johnnie.
We eventually clambered aboard and taxied to the end of the runway, ran up the engines to check magnetos, waited for a 'green' from the controller, and we were off; it was 20.50 DBST, so it was still light. As usual, there was a little knot of watchers standing at the end of the runway to wave us off. In 'Bomber Command' Max Hastings says that although this happened when the Squadron returned to Coningsby in 1944, there was never a group on the end of the runway at Bourn: not true. I even stood there myself on one or two occasions when I wasn't flying. The point probably was that there was never a big crowd, because the aircraft normally started their take-off run from the eastern end of the main runway, and all the domestic sites were at the western end, so that unless one had transport of some kind - I had a service bicycle at Bourn - it was a very long way to get there.
We flew out over East Anglia in daylight, and, as usual when we were heading east, crossed the coast at Southwold; darkness soon fell as we flew out over the North Sea. It was a beautiful night. The weather was, as forecast, perfect. The sea was calm. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, so as the full moon rose it was shining on the sea in front of us. The occasion was enhanced by the knowledge that we weren't, as we feared we might have been, on our way to the 'Big City.'
It took about an hour and ten minutes to cross the North Sea and reach the Danish coast. We made sure that we kept fairly well north of Flensburg, a spot to avoid when crossing the Schleswig-Holstein peninsula. The flak gunners at Flensburg were both trigger-happy and accurate, and whenever we went that way, there always seemed to be some unfortunate character whose navigator had not kept him clear of that city. We crossed Denmark in less than fifteen minutes and turned south east over the multitude of islands in the Baltic, which made navigation very easy. I gave Jimmy
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[Two photographs, captioned: [centred] "Over Hamburg, 29 July, and Berlin, 23 August, 1943, from J-Johnnie. Notice Jimmy's deservedly rapid promotion." [/centred]]
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and Sus the Estimated Time of Arrival, and just as that time was coming up, there was a shout from the bomb-aimer that there was a smoke screen ahead of us and he couldn't see very much at all. I came from behind my curtain, and he was quite right! I could see very little, but this was from a fairly oblique angle; there appeared to be 100% cover of the target, but as we got nearer and were looking down through the smoke-screen more vertically, it became obvious that cover was by no means complete, and that one could see quite a lot down through the lines of smoke. Defences were very meagre; a few searchlights straggled round the sky; we had no problem dropping our bombs and TIs on time. The attack seemed to have started well. We watch for a few moments and then turned away from the target just south of the inward route of those still approaching. There was someone in trouble of Flensburg, serious trouble. He was coned and blew up as we watched horrified, the only aircraft we saw shot down that night, most unusual. We flew back across the North Sea thinking that losses would be negligible. Our return to Bourn was uneventful; 97 Squadron had sent out 18 aircraft; one returned early with engine trouble; the other 17 all landed safely. Our flight had lasted 6 hours 50 minutes.
We had a quick word with the ground crew, then transport arrived to take us back to the flight offices. First we went to the parachute store, then to the crew room to deposit our harnesses and other flying kit, and so to the ops. room for debriefing. As usual there was a senior officer waiting to have a word with us as we went in and took a mug of coffee from a WAAF (with rum in it for those who wanted it, which always included the half-frozen gunners, of course), then on to an intelligence officer waiting to debrief us. We sat around a table with him, and told him about the raid, the defences, any aircraft we had seen shot down, the weather; it didn't take long before we were on our way back to our messes for the traditional post-operational meal of eggs and bacon and trimmings. And so to bed.
The next morning, as on every morning after operations, I was about early. Most of the crew, most of the squadron, would sleep in till lunchtime after flying at night, but probably I was horrified at the thought of missing a meal, so I was always up. I wouldn't pretend I was first in the mess for breakfast, but I would be up by about eight, have a shower, and reach the mess just before breakfast ended at nine. After breakfast, I would catch up with my correspondence, or do the Telegraph crossword, and read the paper or a novel. On this particular occasion, however, realising that the previous night's operation had been rather a special one, and with the threat made at the end of briefing still hanging over us, I decided to walk up to the intelligence library to have a look at the photographs which had, no doubt, been developed. The first thing I found was that we had lost 40 aircraft, 6.7% of the force. I was amazed; the only aircraft we saw downed was the one over Flensburg; usually we saw at least half a dozen over German targets. Apparently the German fighters circled Berlin as they were intended to, but when their controllers realised where the target really was, they redirected the fighters to the Baltic coast, and they arrived in time to create havoc among the later waves of the attack. The second wave suffered losses of about 14.5%, while the third, the Lancasters of 5 Group, lost almost 20%, an incredible one aircraft in every five. However, the raid had been deemed a success, so we should not have to repeat it, much to our relief. The attack is said to have delayed the V2 by about three months. The first V2 hit London on September 8th., and three months before that, almost to the day, the invasion was just getting under way, so we probably did
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something worthwhile. Reports tell of several top scientists and technicians who were killed; production was dispersed and decreased; the German general in charge of fighters committed suicide after failing to defend Peenemunde.
This operation was our 40th. We had five more to do. We did air-tests on August 19th. and 22nd., but didn't operate again till the 23rd. The full moon had passed, and now it really was Berlin. We lost 56 aircraft, Bomber Command's biggest loss in a single operation to date, 7.9% of the force despatched. One of the aircraft we lost that night was the Australian with two Staff Officers on board. Four nights later, we went to Nuremberg; the nights really were getting longer now, to go that far under cover of darkness; there was much evidence of aerial combat, but fortunately the fighters left us alone. On the 29th. we flew over to Oakington, our parent station, to operate from there while our runways at Bourn were under repair, and on the night of 30/31 August went back to the Ruhr, to Munchen-Gladbach, a flight of only 3hrs. 30 minutes. Take-off that night was after midnight, and by 20.20 the same evening we were back in the air on our way to Berlin. Losses were again high; 47 aircraft, 7.6%, but much higher among the Stirlings which lost 17 out of 106 sent, 16.0%. We lost one of our Flight Commanders, Wing Commander Burns, C.O. of A flight, with his much decorated crew. Fortunately he and a number of others of his crew escaped the aircraft and were taken prisoner. He had been Master Bomber over Berlin in the raid a week before.
One evening while we were waiting for take-off to Berlin at our dispersal point, which was right on the A45, the main road to Cambridge, a coach pulled up; it was carrying an ENSA party, who had performed at Bourn that evening, back to Cambridge. They saw that we were wearing Mae Wests and harnesses and carrying parachutes, so they had asked the driver to stop. They waved and shouted 'Good luck!' to us, and no doubt read all about the attack in the papers the next morning, so they were able to tell their friends that they had seen a crew just off on a big raid.
On another of our long flights into Germany, almost certainly to Berlin, I think, we were told at briefing that we would be taking a lengthy circuitous route across Germany, one of the strategies used to confuse the defences, and that this route would take us over a small town where a large number of seriously rich Germans were hibernating for the duration of the war. We might, if we wished, drop one of our smaller bombs there "to remind them that there was a war on." It was up to us! We crossed the Rhine well south of the Ruhr, and continued eastwards passing south of Kassel; as we were nearing the town, I informed Jimmy and we held a brief democratic crew conference. In the end we decided to take our full load of bombs and T.I.s to the main target; the balance of opinion was that we should drop as much as possible on "the Big City." However, it was my opinion that the crew probably thought that with me as navigator, they couldn't be sure that they were anywhere near the little town, but that even I could hardly miss the enormous sprawling city that was Berlin.
We were now in September with one trip left to complete our second tour. We did night-flying tests on two occasions, but each time operations were cancelled through bad weather. On the first of these occasions, the corporal-fitter in charge of J-Johnny, a young married man, was due to go on leave the next
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morning, but when operations were 'scrubbed' he wouldn't go; the same happened the next night; he was determined to see us safely through our tour. This was a considerable sacrifice, for ground crew got very little leave, and worked outside at dispersal sites, not in a warm hangar, in sometimes quite atrocious conditions; he really deserved an award for devotion to duty. I was glad that Jimmy saw the Flight Commander the next morning before we all set off on leave, explained what had happened, and the Wingco extended the corporal's leave, which officially had already started, by a 48-hour pass, a most unusual concession for those days.
We had expected a 'cushy' operation to Italy for that final operation; the petrol/bomb load on the Order of Battle seemed right for a long trip, and the invasion of Italy had begun that very morning, September 3rd., the fourth anniversary of the outbreak of war. We were soon disillusioned when we got to briefing; once more the red tape stretched across Europe to Berlin, but by a particularly long circuitous route, which accounted for the bomb and petrol loads. We went through the usual pre-operation routines, but when Jimmy was running up the engines on the end of the runway, the surge of power made all my radar unserviceable; not, I thought, a good omen for our last operation. However, our luck was in once again, for even at 20,000 feet the winds were quite light and variable that night, so we had no real navigational problems. We got a pin-point on the English coast, another on the Dutch, and the rear gunner was able to give me an occasional drift, so, even by that circuitous route, we got to the target successfully. The Halifaxes and Stirlings did not participate in this operation, as they had recently suffered severe losses; 316 Lancasters passed through the target in 20 minutes hoping to overwhelm the German defences of their capital. Evenso, [sic] 22 were lost, nearly 7% of the force. A year earlier, Bomber Command could hardly have sent 100 Lancasters, even on a 'maximum effort.'
We were routed over the south western corner of Sweden for the return flight. Martin Middlebrook's book on the Berlin raids refers to the correspondence between the Swedish ambassador and Anthony Eden, Foreign Secretary during the war; in his reply to the Ambassador's protest abut the 'repeated violations of Swedish territory,' Eden wrote 'On returning from their target, a number of aircraft took a northerly course and, despite the instructions which, as Your Excellency knows, have been issued to British air crews to avoid flying over Swedish territory, crossed the South West corner of Sweden before reaching the Kattegat.' Sheer hypocritical nonsense, of course; our briefing lay down the route for the return journey.
As we crossed the corner of Sweden we put the nose down and, for the last time, sped home. In spite of having no radar, we were easily first home that night. As we crossed the coast, we broke discipline by firing off the colours of the day from the verey pistol. When we got back to the parachute section, I pulled the ripcord of my parachute, which I wouldn't normally have done, of course, and it spilled over the counter. The WAAF parachute packer and I had a laugh about it, when I said that I was satisfied that it would have been all right if I had had to use it in earnest.
The following day we set off on a fortnight's leave. The possibility of surviving the war, although by no means certain, seemed considerably nearer.
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Sadly, Jimmy, Ron Bennett, and 'Weasel' did not survive; they, with our new wireless operator, Flight Sergeant 'Gremlin' Underwood, Jimmy Silk, from Doug Jones's crew, who replaced me, Peter Burbridge, from Johnny Sauvages's crew who replaced 'Sus', and a new engineer, were shot down over Berlin on the night of November 22nd./23rd. 1943, probably by a German fighter. They have no known grave. It was Jimmy's 57th. operation.
[centred] * * * [/centred]
What must have been the next J-Johnnie was not destined to last very long; it was shot down and all its crew killed on the night of 30/31 January 1944 returning from Berlin. I was, by then, many miles from Bourn, and was not to know about this for many years. However, in 1999, BBC Leeds made a programme about the recovery of the remains of the aircraft by Dutch engineers excavating at Zwanenburg. The programme did seem to include a number of anomalies, and I had a brief correspondence with the Research Assistant working on the programme, but she was unable to resolve my enquiries, and pointed out, quite correctly, that the programme was really about the excavation, not the minutiae of 97 Squadron's history. I had not known before the programme was shown that it was to be about OF (97 Squadron's identification letters) - J-Johnnie, only that it was to be about a Lancaster; it therefore gave me quite a [italics] frisson [/italics] to be watching a programme about OF-J, an aircraft with the identical identification to the one which I had myself been navigating only a few months before.
[centred] * * * [/centred]
I left 97 Squadron at Bourn on September 23rd. 1943, posted to No.26 OTU at Wing, just outside of Leighton Buzzard, as a navigation instructor. I hadn't been there many weeks when a notice appeared in Daily Routine Orders seeking a radar navigation instructor overseas. With the Middle East and North Africa now in allied hands, it was pretty obviously going to be Italy. I hadn't really settled to life as an instructor after life on an operational squadron; moreover the post was 'advertised' as a Flight Lieutenant vacancy, and since I hadn't been commissioned all that long, I asked the Adjutant to put my name forward. It wasn't long before I heard that I had been accepted, and went off on embarkation leave. On my return the unit was good enough to divert a cross-country to drop me off at Squire's Gate, the nearest airfield to Blackpool, where the embarkation unit was based. Within days I was on a ship bound for overseas from Liverpool, but conditions were rather different this time as I was travelling as an officer, and in any case the vessel was hardly a traditional troopship. We sailed well out into the Atlantic to keep clear of the aircraft attacking convoys from airfields in western France, then turned east to pass through the Straits of Gibraltar, where the fog was so dense that although the Straits are very narrow,
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nine miles at its narrowest, we saw no signs of the Rock whatsoever, and a couple of days later, docked in Algiers.
After a day or two in a transit camp there, I was flown to Tunis, Headquarters of Mediterranean Air Command, to which I was attached for the time being. The Air Officer Commanding was Air Marshall Tedder; he would come into the Mess occasionally, and was a delightful man; in fact, I never met any really senior officers who were not very pleasant people indeed. The more objectionable men were those pre-war regular officers, who had probably never operated during the war and got stuck at about Group Captain or Air Commodore level, were never going to get any further, and many of whom were far less attractive personalities than people like Tedder, who really did get to the top.
I was looked after by a Wing Commander and a Squadron Leader. It was now mid-December, and they took a light aircraft to Bone one day to visit the Market. They took me along with them, since I was under their wing, and because they had found out that my French was fairly reasonable. They had hoped to find some turkeys for the mess for Christmas, but were unlucky; all we did get was a sack of carrots, but probably it was appetising for people who had lived on service rations for some time to have some fresh vegetables. While there I did manage to visit the site of Carthage, and to have a swim in the Mediterranean on Christmas Day; it really was fairly chilly, but I wanted to say I had swum on Christmas Day!
A few days after Christmas, I set off further east to El Adem, a large desert airfield just outside Tobruk. I had learnt while I was at Tunis that the bomber squadrons, mainly Wellingtons, but one Halifax, No. 462, which had come up through the desert, and had spent much of the war raiding places like Benghazi and Tobruk, were shortly to move across to Italy, and that one of the squadrons, the Halifaxes, was going to become a target marking force, doing the same sort of job that I had been doing in Pathfinder Force. I spent initially only a few days with them before being required to visit HQ Middle East Air Force at Cairo, the HQ which, through 205 Group, had much more direct control over this bomber force than the HQ at Tunis. There were aircraft continuously going through El Adem on their way to the Far East, so a lift was once again arranged for me in a Wellington. Since the Wellington had its own crew I stood in the astrodome throughout the flight; I recall how impressed I was as we approached the Nile Delta at the sharp demarcation between the sands of the desert, and the green of the delta, not a gradual change at all, but quite sudden. The sergeant-pilot levelled out at about thirty or even thirty-five feet above the runway at Cairo West, then dropped the aircraft in with a terrific bang. Since I had been in the astrodome, not the warmest place in the aircraft, I was wearing a flying jacket; as I left the Wellington a Wing Commander approached me outside flying control and asked if I were the pilot of the aircraft which had just landed; since I was wearing my flying jacket, he could not, of course, see what sort of a brevet I was wearing. I very hastily disclaimed such responsibility and commented that I could quite understand why he was asking. He grinned and went off to find the real pilot.
I spent several days at HQ Middle East seeing a succession of fairly senior officers, most of whom had been in the Middle East for some time, and were not in close touch with recent developments in Bomber Command. One of them also
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introduced me to the delights of Groppi's, the famous Egyptian tea rooms, where one could gorge oneself on the sort of cakes that hadn't been seen in England for years.
Soon I was back at El Adem where 462 Squadron were still carrying out an occasional night raid on German harbour installations in Crete, but everyone was really just waiting for the move to Italy. Towards the end of February, all the ground crew moved back to the Delta to be ferried across to Italy to prepare an airfield near Foggia for the arrival of the Halifaxes. We kept our tents for the moment, but the khamsin was beginning to blow, and there was sand in everything. Occasionally a very old, quite enormous - and very dirty - Arab riding a donkey far too small for him would appear carrying a bucket of tiny eggs, which he would barter for a mug of sugar. The last night we were there, the tents were taken down and stowed aboard the aircraft for an early departure; we slept under the wings of the Halifaxes. I flew with the Squadron CO as navigator, since he had no regular crew of his own. The Engineering Officer (ground) flew as his flight engineer, so we had rather a makeshift crew. However, we reached Celone, our designated airfield, without problems. Just before we left the desert, I went into Tobruk and bought a pair of gumboots at the Offices' Shop; you were allowed to buy gumboots only if you were to be posted to Italy; it didn't seem as if we were going to have very wonderful weather in Italy!
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During the next few weeks, I spent most of my time with the squadron Navigation Officer and his team, some airborne on long cross-countries, talking to them about the techniques we had used in Pathfinder Force and the equipment we used, 'which in their case they had not got.' An entry in my log-book for May 2nd. 1944, shows the first air test of the Italian Gee chain; it was, of course, going to be an enormous advance for crews which had come up through the desert with no such aids to have Gee available, but they would certainly need it over the coming months for weather over Europe was very different from weather along the North African coastline.
At about this time, I was posted from 462 Squadron to HQ 205 Group as Group Navigation Officer (Radar) to distinguish me from the Group Navigation Officer; the work involved quite a lot of visits to HQ 15th. Air Force, which was based at Bari, and under whose aegis 205 Group operated. 462, now for some reason rechristened 614 Squadron, started operating in their new role. Their first attempt was something of a fiasco, not through any fault of theirs, but because the chosen target was in Sofia, and the mountains all round prevented their new radar devices from operating effectively; this was a pity, because it took them some time to win back their credibility with the supporting bomber squadrons.
One morning in June, news broke of the invasion of Normandy; the unit sick quarters had a radio, and I stood outside most of that morning (sick quarters being in a tent) and listened to the commentators, rather wishing that I had a hand in these great events taking place the other side of Europe.
Another event at about this time was the eruption of Vesuvius; a stream of smoke spread east from the crater over Italy right across the plain around Foggia, where all the main airfields were. We had to send out a navigation warning to all
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[Photograph of author outside a tent, captioned: "In front of my tent at El Adem, near Tobruk, February, 1944."]
[Photograph of author, captioned: "At Celone, near Foggia, Italy, April, 1944."]
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squadrons not to fly into the smoke from the volcano since it would cause the perspex in the cockpits of their aircraft to become opaque.
It wasn't long before I got the urge to go along with 614 from time to time. I knew only too well that Bennett had insisted on his Air Staff Officers operating in order to keep them in touch with current techniques, and now that I was a Staff Officer myself, albeit a very junior one, I thought I ought to do the same; moreover I was well aware of Hotspur's castigation of Staff Officers in Henry IV, and Siegfried Sassoon's poem about 'scarlet majors at the base,' so I decided I would join the squadron if there were appropriate opportunities. By 'appropriate opportunities' I mean providing I could go as a crew member; I knew only too well how much some crews hated having an 'extra bod.' on board as a supernumerary. Moreover, having completed forty-five operations, I thought it would be nice to make the round figure of fifty.
There was a meeting of the Air Staff every morning, which I attended. It was also attended by an army officer, a Guard, attached to the Group HQ, who was responsible for liaison with the Resistance, both in France and in Yugoslavia. He arrived one morning to inform us that the French resistance intended to attack an airfield in the Rhone Valley in the near future; they would be doing this at night, and would welcome a diversion by bomber aircraft making an attack on the middle of the airfield to make the Germans keep their heads down while they went about their business around the perimeter. This sounded a very interesting trip. I contacted 614 squadron and found there was one crew without a navigator, by coincidence, the same crew with whom I had undertaken the initial test of the Italian Gee chain. They were quite happy to accept my suggestion that I should join them for this operation as navigator. I got to Celone in ample time to renew acquaintance with Flt. Lt. Langton and his crew, and to be present at briefing, though I had all the information needed already, of course.
The front line at this time ran roughly from Ancona across Italy, just north of Florence. We were not routed to cross the line, but flew north as far as Lake Trasimeno, now, I believe, more commonly known as Lake Perugia; I prefer the former since that was the site of one [of] Hannibal's battles in the Punic Wars. We took off at about twenty to seven and set course for the lake; the date was July 24th., about three weeks before the invasion of southern France on August 15th. We turned west when we reached the Lake, and crossed the coast near Livorno, Leghorn. We crossed the Ligurian Sea, pin-pointed the northern tip of Corsica, and crossed the French coast just behind Marseilles, then north again along the valley of the Rhone as far as Valence. The airfield we were to attack was close to Valence; we were given its name as La Tresorie, but although I've looked it up in several reference books about the resistance since the war, I've never found anything about an airfield of that name. We dropped our flares and one TI from about 10,000 feet and watched while the main force, mainly Wellingtons, bombed the centre of the airfield. There was obviously some activity on the ground, small arms fire and a number of explosions. There seemed to be no defences whatsoever. The attack over, we turned about, and flew back to Foggia by the same route.
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A fortnight later, on August 6th., the Army liaison officer announced at our morning meeting that a message had now been received from the resistance in southern France. They had been well satisfied with the diversion provided, had destroyed 37 German aircraft on the ground, had blown up the ammunition dump, and killed an unspecified number of Germans.
I navigated twice more for 614 Squadron. One operation was a long trip to Hungary, to Székesfehérvár, halfway between Lake Balaton and Budapest, the other to the marshalling yards at Zagreb in northern Yugoslavia; the aim of both these trips was to impede the Germans as they retreated from the Balkans. I did two more in Wellingtons which were now much involved in supply dropping to the partisans. I thought that these would prove interesting; the first was in daylight, high in the mountains near Sarajevo; the partisans, looking like a gang of bandits, waved with great enthusiasm as our parachutes floated down to them. The same evening we dropped from 1,000 feet on to an enormous bonfire in the form of a cross near Trieste.
Life was not all operations and staff work, however; in August I was given the opportunity to undertake a Junior Commander's course at HQ Middle East in Cairo. I flew to Cairo via Malta and Marble Arch - a rather pleasanter flight than my previous trip to Cairo - and spent an interesting four weeks living on a houseboat, where the course also took place. The boat was moored to Gezira Island, and we were able to use the facilities at the club there in our fairly ample leisure time. Before I was allowed to return to Foggia, HQ ME sent me off to give a couple of lectures to navigators at their bomber OTU at Qastina and their Heavy Conversion Unit at Abu Suier on the techniques and equipment used in Pathfinder Force. And so back to Foggia, this time via El Adem, now very much a backwater, and Malta.
Most of the staff visits I undertook from Foggia were to Bari, but on one occasion I visited HQ MATAF (Mediterranean Allied Tactical Air Forces) at Sienna. Most of the day I was there was in an office with RAF and USAAC officers, but we did find time to walk round the great square; I thought what a wonderfully attractive place it was, and how I would love to go back there; in fact, it was a great many years before I returned on a day when the weather was appalling and the square was packed almost solid with tourists, so that my wife wasn't nearly as impressed as I had been almost fifty years earlier, when the sun shone, the sky was blue, and there was no one about but a few Allied troops.
I also visited MAAF HQ at the great palace at Caserta, and while there was able to ascertain the whereabouts of my first RAF friend, Ken Romain, who, I knew, was flying with a Spitfire squadron. They were stationed, in fact, quite nearby, so I was able to spend an enjoyable afternoon and evening with these fighter boys. They went off for a sweep over the front line while I was there. In their Ops. Room (a caravan), I noted that Ken had been credited with one half of a "kill." I pulled his leg about this, pointing out that all the time I had been flying over Germany, he had shot down one half of a Luftwaffe aircraft. However, he protested - and I am sure he was right - that Allied air superiority had been so great over North Africa, and now was over Italy, that opportunities for combat were very rare; when they were patrolling the front line, the German aircraft just did not leave the ground.
32
By now, my job in the Mediterranean theatre was just about over. The Target Marking Squadron was well able to look after itself. (During the autumn one of the new crews to join them was captained by an Old Tauntonian from Southampton, 'Scotch' Wilson; he was slightly younger than me but was an accomplished games player, so I had known him quite well; he was given a permanent commission, and was a regular member of the RAF cricket XI for several years; when he retired as a Group Captain he became Secretary of Notts CCC. We were planning to do an op. together when I was posted back to UK.) It was early December when I left Foggia. The Group Communications Flight took me across to Naples, and from there I was taken on by the USAAC Transport system. I had a couple of days at Marseille en route and then went on to Paris. Arriving at Orly, I enquired of the American movements sergeant if there was any chance of breaking my journey in Paris for 24 hours; "Sure, sir." I have the impression that the Americans were much more relaxed about such things; I would never have got away with that if I had been travelling with Transport Command. He probably thought I wanted a night out in Paris, and so I did, but not perhaps quite the sort of night he imagined. What I wanted to do was to look up the family I had known before the war, and find out about the friends of whom I had heard nothing since the collapse of France in 1940. I found a phone, and much to my surprise, the civil telephone system was working perfectly satisfactorily. I contacted my friends, spent a very pleasant evening with them, and was able to hear all about my acquaintances in Normandy.
Monsieur Hue, the father of the family, told a delightful story about an incident during the occupation. He had been strap-hanging on the Metro, when a German officer alongside him took out his cigarette case and lighter and was about to light a cigarette; M. Hue took him by the arm and pointed to the notice. "Defense de fumer, Monsieur," he said. The German officer put away his cigarette and lighter. Monsieur Hue turned to me, obviously absolutely delighted. "Petite victoire," he said, "petite victoire!"
When I reached UK I was sent on leave, during which I was able to organise a visit to HQ Pathfinder Force, where I still had some contacts. I spent a most interesting evening in the Ops. Room reacquainting myself with all the latest developments including particularly the use of Mosquitoes as the Light Night Striking Force; I spent a second evening with Wing Commander Burns DSO DFC who had been shot down over Berlin just before I left Bourn and lost a hand when he was blown out of his Lancaster; he had been in hospital the next two nights in Berlin when further big raids took place; not a pleasant experience he had assured me! Eventually he had been repatriated through Switzerland, the normal procedure for badly-injured servicemen, though his injuries did not prevent him doing a worth-while job as an Air Staff Officer at 8 Group Headquarters.
I was just beginning to think the RAF had forgotten all about me when I received a signal to report to a certain Wing Commander at Adastral House. After a few minutes introductory chatter, he asked what I wanted to do now. This surprised me as it wasn't the usual service way of doing things; I must have looked a bit perplexed, for he went on, "What about going to Transport Command?" I certainly had no objections to this, so he sent me off on leave again to await instructions.
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Eventually, sometime in February, I received instructions to report to the Transport Command OTU at Bramcote in the Midlands.
Although the vast majority of air crew arriving for the OTU course were very experienced, Transport Command saw fit to give us a very thorough training, especially in navigation and meteorology; the course in the latter was one of the best I had ever done. One of the advantages of the course was that if one got a certain percentage in the end-of-course examinations, and took an extra paper in civil aviation law one could qualify for a First Class Air Navigator's Licence, which would enable one to fly in civil aviation. We also did quite a lot of cross country flying in Wellingtons, there being a surfeit of them at the time. There were only three of us in a Transport Command crew; pilot, wireless operator and navigator. I crewed up with an ex-Spitfire pilot, and a wireless operator who had, in fact, flown in one of the Wellington Squadrons of 205 Group in the desert.
There was another rather more important piece of "crewing up" while I was at Bramcote, for I met my wife; she was a theatre staff nurse at Nuneaton General Hospital, where she had done her training; we were married not all that long after we first met. Our daughters sometimes tease us about that even now!
At the end of the course, we were posted to a Ferry Unit at Talbenny, which is beyond Haverfordwest at the far south-western corner of Wales. On the way there by train, I had to wait about four hours in Gloucester, where I arrived at about 7 in the evening. I went along to the nearest hotel for a meal. When I went in, the Manager was in reception and asked, "Are you with the team, sir?" I must have looked as perplexed as I felt, for he went on immediately to explain that the first of the Victory Test Matches between teams of servicemen from Australia and England was starting the next day at the Gloucestershire cricket ground, and that both sides were staying at his hotel. The two sides had a room booked for the evening for some social activity, and since I appeared to be the only other Air Force officer in the hotel, they invited me to join them. I had a most jolly evening with them; many of those present are now household names in the cricketing world; the Australians were captained by Warrant Officer Lindsay Hasset; the side included Keith Miller and other notables, while the English team was captained by Flight Sergeant Cyril Washbrook, and since I had always been an avid follower of country cricket, a host of names I had known for years. Many years later I was visiting the Australian Houses of Parliament at Canberra; our guide was very obviously a cricket enthusiast, so I recounted this story to him; he was able to recite the names of all eleven of the Australian players who took part! The party was still in full swing when I left to catch my midnight train to South Wales; it was a memorable evening indeed.
While at Talbenny - we were there for two and a half months - our only ferry delivery was to take an Anson to Algiers; it was going to a minor Arab royal in the Middle East, and was most luxuriously equipped. That, however, even with pre-delivery testing and the return flight took only about ten days, so we were pretty bored most of the time, and I wasn't sorry when my pilot, who was something of a socialite and seemed to have connections at Air Ministry, was able to persuade someone there to send us on a course to convert to Dakotas - DC-3s - with a view to joining one of the Dakota squadrons operating much more regularly. His connection
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[Photograph of a scene at Croydon Airport, captioned: "The control tower at Croydon with a Dakota - DC3 - landing. The building in the background is the airport hotel, which was the Officers' Mess during the war years."]
[Reprint of a photograph captioned: [centred] 'TAKING OFF FOR CAIRO, INDIA, AND AUSTRALIA' [/centred]
[centred] "B.O.A.C. Hythe taking off from Poole Harbour, May, 1946." [/centred]
[centred] "From the Radio Times of June 14th., 1946."[/centred]]
[page break]
proved to be a very useful one as we were soon posted to another Transport Command OTU, this one No. 109 at Wymeswold near Loughborough, where we spent a fortnight converting to Dakotas before joining 147 Squadron at Croydon. Our lives were transformed, for not only were we near London, but we had a real job to do. 147 Sqdn. was carrying passengers every day to all the big cities of north western Europe; we would fly to Paris one day, Berlin the next, Brussels, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Oslo, and so on, and the schedules were so arranged that we would night stop from time to time, especially at the more attractive destinations such as Copenhagen.
Copenhagen was also worth visiting for another reason; while we weren't exactly starving in England, there were many items still severely rationed, and many shortages; Denmark, on the other hand, was well looked after by the Germans as part of their 'larder,' but suffered from an almost complete lack of cigarettes. We bartered! The standard rate was 100 cigarettes for 30 dozen eggs; we could also obtain much other farm produce - ham, bacon, cheese, meat. On one occasion I acquired a whole Danish Blue cheese, which had such a pungent odour that the other two members of the crew insisted that it be removed from the flight deck and placed in the passenger compartment! Many Danish shops were far better stocked than those in England, and I was able to buy our first dinner and tea set from a large store in Copenhagen.
The flight to Oslo was also an interesting one, for it was emphasised at briefing how essential it was to fly up the right fiord; if one chose the wrong one, the fiord was too narrow to turn round to make an exit, and the Dakota lacked the power to climb steeply out over the mountains! I was very careful to select the right fiord!
From time to time we carried interesting passengers; one was the well-known Daily Express war correspondent, Alan Moorehead, though he did sleep most of the journey; another was Ivy Benson, leader of the all-ladies dance-band whom we took to Brussels where she was arranging a concert for her band. Another interesting experience was our first landing using GCA, Ground Controlled Approach. We were on a flight to Hamburg, and conditions got worse and worse from the Dutch coast onwards. When we arrived, I thought, "We shall never be able to land here," but a very confident voice started talking us down, giving us very, very detailed instructions, to which, of course, I was able to listen just as well as the pilot could. The final instruction was, "When you see the runway, go ahead and land." At that very moment we saw the runway appearing out of the murk in front of us. Conditions were so bad, even on the ground, that we had to follow a van sent out to guide us in, and when we did stop just by the control tower, I noticed that the RAF Ensign flying above it was actually in cloud; conditions couldn't have been much worse; it was a very impressive experience indeed, and gave us great confidence in GCA for the future.
We were at Croydon from September till December, then just after Christmas BOAC announced that it required move navigators, so I thought the time had come to use my Civil Air Navigator's Licence. Strictly, this is post-war experience, of course, as was the spell at Croydon, for I had listened to Churchill's speech announcing the end of the war at Talbenny. However, it seems all part of my
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war-time experience, for I should not have had the opportunity if I had not been a navigator in the RAF. In early January, I was posted from Croydon to Whitchurch, just outside Bristol, where all aircrew transferring from the RAF to BOAC - and there were considerable numbers at this time, of course - were sent to undertake a course to familiarise themselves with civilian methods. It was a thorough training lasting about two months at what was known as CTS - Civil Training School. Most of the work was in the classroom, but we flew one or two cross-country navigation exercises, and all had to undertake two flights outside the war zone of Europe, which didn't leave much scope, of course. I did one flight to Stockholm and one to Lisbon; we carried two navigators, one of whom navigated on the outward flight, and the other on the homeward, meanwhile the one not actually navigating practised astro in the astro-dome. We had to fly first to Hurn, now Bournemouth International Airport, to clear Customs, there being no Customs at Whitchurch. In spite of currency restrictions on the amount of sterling we were allowed, we returned laden with goods we hadn't been able to obtain for a long time, especially from Portugal, when we were able to purchase so many of those fruit we hadn't seen for years.
At the end of the course we were posted to various BOAC lines - the equivalent of an RAF Squadron. Most of us I think, hoped for a posting to London Airport for the Transatlantic route, but I was quite happy to join No. 4 Line which operated flying-boats out of Poole Harbour to Singapore, and whose maintenance base and administrative headquarters was at Hythe, on Southampton Water, only 15 minutes on the ferry from Southampton.
The BOAC flying-boats, themselves known as Hythes, were, in fact, ex-RAF Sunderlands with the gun-turrets fared in and the interior comfortably furnished for passengers. They were quite elephantine in size, internally scarcely smaller than a modern 'jumbo' yet we carried only 35 passengers. It was all very comfortable; it was also very leisurely, for the Hythes cruised only at about 130 knots, had a range of only about 800 miles, so that we had to make frequent landings to refuel, and were not pressurised, so that we rarely flew higher than 6,000 to 8,000 feet. I was sent down the route once with a BOAC experienced navigator; we flew to Singapore and back, which normally took crews 18 days, and then I was on my own. There was no regular crew as I had always been used to in the RAF, both in Bomber and Transport Commands. One turned up to find that one was scheduled to fly with a certain Captain, a certain First Officer, a certain Radio Officer and a certain Flight Engineer, and off we went; in the year I spent with BOAC I never flew more than once with the same aircrew member of any category. There were also 7 or 8 stewards under a Senior Steward who was usually an ex-Merchant Navy seaman.
Navigation was, by RAF standards, fairly primitive. I had a great deal of respect for these old pre-war Imperial Airways pilots, but they knew very little about radar, and didn't really want to know anything about it; they had always managed perfectly well without radar, and as far as they were concerned, they would go on managing without it! The navigator had an air-speed indicator, an altimeter, a driftmeter, a sextant, and an astrocompass, and occasionally the assistance of a radio bearing, but much of the navigation was by pinpointing places one passed over and by taking visual bearings to obtain position lines, which was fine in good weather conditions, but less satisfactory when the weather deteriorated.
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The Navigating Officer had other duties, too. In those days there was no radio-telephone contact between the flight-deck and the passenger cabin, so it was up to him to keep the passengers supplied with information; at least once an hour he had to provide an information sheet for the passengers telling them where they were, what they could expect to see on either side of the aircraft in the next hour, the height and speed over the ground, and the ETA at the next destination. Another duty was to climb on top of the aircraft through the astrodome if the pilot had to turn in choppy water; he would then walk to the wing-tip to keep the float on that side down in the water so that the pilot could execute his turn; I didn't have to do this on many occasions, but it was an interesting new task! Yet another was to sit halfway out of the astrodome when engines were being started up holding the fire extinguisher, so that if one of the engines caught fire as it was been started, the navigator could dash along the wing to dowse the fire; I've always been glad that I was never called upon to perform this particular part of a Navigating Officer's duty!
Our passengers were assembled at Airways Terminal in London and travelled by train to Poole, where they were accommodated at the Harbour Heights Hotel. The crew, too, arrived at the same hotel during the afternoon, and after a leisurely meal together, retired early since we always left at first light the next morning. The flying boats looked very elegant if one was watching them take off, but inside the boat it sounded, as someone once said, 'like dragging a rake across a corrugated tin roof.' fortunately, my experience at Pensacola had prepared me for the din. The first leg of our journey took us from Poole to Marseilles, a flight of between four and a half and five hours. We never normally night-stopped there, but flew on another five hours to Augusta in Sicily, previously an Italian naval flying-boat base. The schedule was so arranged that although the passengers went on the following morning with a crew already there, the crew spent two nights at Augusta, a most attractive place to stay with water-skiing and swimming off the jetty in almost guaranteed sunshine. Our blue uniforms were left there to be cleaned and pressed while we were further east, and we changed into khaki drill, picking up our blue uniform on our return journey. After two delightful days at Augusta, we flew on to Cairo, a six and a half hour flight. Landing on the Nile provided quite a tricky task for the Engineer, as it was his responsibility to slip a boat hook through a loop of rope on one of the buoys. Since the Nile is quite a fast-flowing river, this was not easy, but woe betide him if he missed first time, as he occasionally did, for the Captains were never happy to have to go round again. They regarded it as a sleight on their professional reputation if they didn't moor up first time.
From Cairo, usually after a night-stop on a house-boat on the Nile, to Basra was a further six hours. Once you had crossed the Suez Canal, there was little to see except desert, apart from the Dead Sea. Flights then had to keep north of Saudi Arabia as the King, Abdul Aziz Ibn Suad, did not allow flights across his kingdom. However if you flew too far north, you could probably see the pipeline across the desert, and eventually you would see the Euphrates and land close to its confluence with the Tigris. On one occasion we were flying quietly across the desert in a cloudless sky, when we suddenly hit a ferocious up-current of air; all my navigation equipment flew into the air off my chart-table and deposited itself all round the flight deck; one or two of the passengers sustained minor cuts and bruises, but it was all over in a
37
[page break]
moment; one of the dangers at not being able to fly high enough to get over the turbulence.
Another two and a quarter hours flying took us down the Red Sea to Bahrein, and then between six and six and a half hours almost due east to Karachi. We cross Qatar, and then the Oman Peninsula, certainly the most desolate landscape I had ever seen. Balukistan was on our port beam as we flew on to Karachi, where crews broke their journey again. We nearly all used to visit a cobbler there; we carried a cut-out of the feet of one's wife or fiancee, and he would make a very nice pair of sandals which could be collected on the way home. Clothes and shoes were still rationed in the UK, so they were very acceptable; they cost twelve rupees, about eighteen shillings.
An incident occurred at Karachi which I recall with amusement. When we stayed at hotels down the route, the Captain normally stayed at one hotel, the professional aircrew at another, and the stewards at yet a third - there were no stewardesses in those days, of course. On one occasion at Karachi, by some mischance, the Chief Steward was accommodated in the same hotel as the aircrew; I don't think it worried the aircrew in the least, but the Captain was horrified, and felt it necessary to see each member of the crew personally to apologise for the indignity we had suffered in having a steward in our hotel! It was a different world, of course.
We carried as far as Karachi on one occasion a group of six French models, mannequins as we called them then. They embarked at Marseilles, and were going to Australia as France attempted to rebuild its export market. As we travelled further east and south, the climate became hotter and hotter, for there was no air conditioning on aircraft then, and these six exceedingly glamorous young ladies started to divest themselves of their garments till by the time we were nearing Karachi, one would not have thought they could remove a further item and remain respectable. I never knew the flight crew so solicitous for the welfare of passengers; so many visits were made to the passenger cabin that it seemed at times there was hardly anyone remaining on the flight deck!
The next leg, across India, was quite the longest stretch of the journey, taking between eight and eight and a half hours, so we were just about at the limit of our range. Fortunately there was a lake between Karachi and Calcutta for use in emergency, and once on the homeward route, flying into a headwind and petrol getting low, we took the precaution of landing there. Calcutta was, I found, unbearably hot; in temperature it probably was not quite as hot as Bahrein, but Bahrein's heat was dry, whereas at Calcutta the humidity was so high that I was always glad to get back into the air a few thousand feet to cool down. I never once night-stopped there, which was probably a blessing, although in other ways I regret this [as this] is one of the world's great cities that I have never seen.
A four hour flight took us from the River Hooghly, just north of the Willingdon Bridge, where we had landed, to Rangoon in the great wide estuary of the River Rangoon, which is really, I suppose, part of the Delta of the Irrawaddy. It was quite a distance in a launch from the landing site back to the jetty; on one occasion, I
38
[page break]
had hardly put my foot on the bottom step of the jetty when a voice above me exclaimed "Arthur!" It was my old friend George Brantingham - now Squadron Leader Brantingham, DFC and Bar, command Navigation Officer - who was there to welcome one of our passengers; after leaving 97, he had served as a navigation instructor for a while at an OTU, then crewed up with a pilot who was going to the Far East to fly Liberators on very long-range bombing operations against the Japanese in Malaya.
A further flight of about five and a half hours took us to Penang, not normally a night-stop, but where we sat on the shore under sunshades while the Hythe was being refuelled, drinking fresh cold fruit juice and eating mangosteen. The final leg to Singapore took another three hours, a total for the journey from Poole of between fifty-five and sixty hours flying spread over nine days, nearly all of it in daylight. The passengers would reach Sydney four or five days after leaving Poole; a Qantas crew would be waiting for them in Singapore, and would take them on to Jakarta, Darwin, and so to Sydney.
We always had a break of two days at Singapore before setting out on the return journey, the same route in reverse. One remembered to pick up sandals at Karachi; silk stockings and wine, marsala, at Augusta, and also change back into blue there; taking off from Augusta, some of the Captains would always make a point of circling Mount Etna with its wisp of smoke blowing from the crater before setting off on the final leg back to Poole eighteen days after setting out. There was supposed to be a guarantee of seven days at home after each service flight, not all leave, because crews had to go to Hythe for debriefing one day, but on one occasion I had been at home only three days when I received a telegram requiring me to be at Poole for the next day's service.
Two of our flights took a slightly different route. From Rangoon, we flew to Bangkok, a flight of six hours, then on across the River Mekong to Hong Kong; the route was fairly close to Hanoi, but we were briefed to stay clear of the city because there was already trouble in what was then French Indo-China and anti-aircraft fire had frequently been seen above Hanoi. We flew on across the South China Sea, traversing Hainan, intensively cultivated, to arrive in Hong Kong six and a half hours after leaving Bangkok. Landing there then was very different from today; there wasn't a single skyscraper to be seen; our first flight to Hong Kong made a small piece of aviation history, as on August 27th. 1946, we were the first civil aircraft to land in Hong Kong after the war.
I flew with BOAC for just over a year, the final eight months of my RAF service on secondment, then six months on contract as a civilian. The Corporation offered me a post as an instructor at their School, which had now moved to Aldermaston, but even then I could see very little future for navigators in civil aviation, and events soon proved me right. Time was running out for the flying boats, too. They were slow and uneconomic. Moreover BOAC was the only airline operating boats, which meant that they alone were responsible for maintaining the bases from which they operated with the expense of launches and ground staff who could not be shared with other lines. In fact, BOAC continued to operate them for only another two years; they went out of service in November 1950.
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[page break]
My flying days were almost over; but not quite, for the post-war RAFVR (Volunteer Reserve) opened up in the summer of 1948, and since there was a base, Hamble, only 5 miles away from the village where we had set up home in Hampshire, I joined, and enjoyed about forty hours flying a year, mainly at week-ends, but with a fortnight's annual training every summer. Flying was mainly navigational exercises in Ansons, but there was an occasional flight into Europe, - we went to Sylt on one occasion - and I had the opportunity to fly on the Berlin Airlift for a few weeks, at about the time that the operation was coming to an end. I note from my log-book that the load we most commonly carried - in Dakotas once more - was coal. Flying continued at Hamble, No. 14 Reserve School, till the summer of 1953, when the incoming administration, desirous of making cuts in government spending, closed most of the Reserve Schools. However, No. 15, at Redhill, survived another year, and I did a fortnight's summer training there in 1954. Then the remaining Reserve Schools were closed, and although I held a war appointment post at HQ Transport Command for about five more years, that really was the end of my days in aviation, and therefore a suitable place to end this story.
A few years after the war, a memorial was built at Runnymede for those airmen with no known grave. It was unveiled by the Queen in 1953. My parents, my wife and I were asked to represent the Munro family, Jimmy's parents and two brothers; we did so gladly, but with great sadness.
My wife and I also represented Jimmy's brothers at the unveiling of the Canada Memorial in Green Park on 3rd. June 1994.
A.H.G.S.
April 2003
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[Photograph of author, captioned: "In front of the Brandenburg Tor, Berlin, during Operation Plainfare, the Berlin Airlift, August, 1949."
[page break]
[centred] Afterthoughts....two differing points of view. [/centred]
EPILOGUE
[Death of a Hero by Richard Aldington]
[Henry V before Agincourt by William Shakespeare]
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Title
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An interesting war
Description
An account of the resource
Memoir of the life of Arthur Spencer. Includes details of childhood and growing up. Continues with his joining the Royal Air Force and his training in the United States as a pilot and then navigator. Followed by training in England and then posting to 97 Squadron at Woodhall Spa where he flew 22 operations. Narrates how squadron was moved to Royal Air Force Bourn and joined the pathfinder force where he completed first tour with 32 operations before going on to a second tour for a total of 45. Describes how he subsequently went to North Africa and Italy where he flew with 462/614 Squadron before becoming 205 Group Navigation Officer. On return from the Mediterranean he converted to transports before leaving to join B.O.A.C. Illustrated with photographs of people, places and events of his life.
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Arthur Spencer
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2003-07
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66 page typewritten document with b/w photographs
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eng
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Text
Text. Memoir
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BSpencerAHGSpencerAHGv1
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Great Britain
Italy
United States
England--Lincolnshire
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina--Sarajevo
Croatia
Croatia--Zagreb
Hungary
Hungary--Székesfehérvár
North Africa
South Africa--Mahikeng
South Africa
Contributor
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Joy Reynard
David Bloomfield
462 Squadron
614 Squadron
97 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
bombing
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
C-47
evacuation
fear
Gee
ground crew
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
memorial
navigator
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
pilot
RAF Bourn
RAF Scampton
RAF Upper Heyford
RAF Woodhall Spa
Resistance
sanitation
searchlight
superstition
training
Wellington
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1276/17297/LOpenshawB19211117v1.2.pdf
1b306fc5afb7e26849ecbcaf2a8df46f
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Title
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Openshaw, Benjamin
B Openshaw
Openshaw, Ben
Description
An account of the resource
Contains 89 items concerning Flying Officer Benjamin Openshaw who after training as a navigator/observer in Southern Rhodesia and England, flew with 104 Squadron in Italy. Collection consists of training notes, official personnel documents, his flying and navigation sight logbooks and photographs of people, places and aircraft. There is also a sub-collection consisting of target photographs in Italy and the Balkans as well as celebrities and London landmarks.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Kevin Angell and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-04-04
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
Openshaw, B
Access Rights
Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies.
Permission granted for commercial projects
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
B Openshaw sight log book
Description
An account of the resource
Record of training navigation star and sun sights from ground and air between April 1943 and February 1944. Locations April to July 1943 at 24 bombing gunnery and navigation school at Moffat Southern Rhodesia on Anson aircraft. December 1943 at No 23 air observers school at RAF Millom and January and February 1944 at 15 OTU RAF Harwell. Flying log book for B Openshaw, Navigator, covering the period from 2 April 1943 to 6 July 1946. Detailing his flying training, Operations flown and post war flying with East African communications flight. He was stationed at RAF Moffat, RAF Harwell, RAF Oakley, RAF Westcott, RAF Foggia, RAF Aqir and RAF Eastleigh. Aircraft flown in were, Anson, Oxford, Wellington, Hudson, Mosquito, Curtis Commando and Dakota. He flew a total of 23 operations with 104 squadron, 6 Daylight, 6 night bombing operations and 11 supply drops. His pilot on operations was Flying Officer Chadwick. Targets were, Zagreb, Zsombachely, Sarajevo, Vicenza, Novi Pazar, Latisana, Klopot, Majevo, Matesavo, Piave, Cromelt, Circhina, Tuzla and Trieste.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
B Openshaw
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943
1944
1945
1946
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Front cover and twenty nine page log book
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Training material
Text. Service material
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MOpenshawB19211117-180404-02
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Berkshire
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Cumbria
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina--Sarajevo
Bosnia and Herzegovina--Tuzla
Croatia
Croatia--Zagreb
Hungary
Hungary--Szombathely
Israel
Israel--Ramlah
Italy
Italy--Foggia
Italy--Latisana
Italy--Susegana
Italy--Trieste
Italy--Vicenza
Kenya
Kenya--Nairobi
Montenegro
Montenegro--Kolašin Region
Montenegro--Podgorica
Serbia
Serbia--Novi Pazar
Slovenia
Slovenia--Cerkno
Slovenia--Črnomelj
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe--Gweru
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
1946
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
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Cara Walmsley
104 Squadron
15 OTU
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
Bombing and Gunnery School
C-47
Hudson
Mosquito
navigator
observer
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
RAF Aqir
RAF Harwell
RAF Millom
RAF Oakley
RAF Westcott
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2251/40596/PBirdJH18010016.1.jpg
c8c20f3ee4ae59ac54612abe344d524d
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2251/40596/PBirdJH18010018.1.jpg
6f152f3496a67ce29c34d4fd4036952e
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
Bird, JH. Photo Album
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-02-15
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
Bird, JH
Description
An account of the resource
The album contains images taken during his service in Italy and includes target photographs and descriptions of bombing operations.
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
Brod Oil Storage Tanks
Description
An account of the resource
Two target photographs for separate operations to Brod in former Yugoslavia.
1st photograph: Darkness, smoke, light trails and Flak bursts hide much of the ground detail but some roads can be seen. It is annotated 'A4' and captioned:
'1506. FOG. 8/9 July 44 // N.T. 8" 5,700' -> 330° 23.31
BROD. M. 1x4000. P6. SGT BIRD. G. 104.'
2nd photograph: Glare and smoke obscure most of the ground details except for a road or river running through the centre of the image. It is annotated 'A4' and captioned:
'1562. FOG. 14/15 JULY 44 // N.T. 8" 6000' -> 016° 22.46
BROD. B. 1x4000. P6. SGT BIRD. D. 104.'
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-07-08
1944-07-09
1944-07-14
1944-07-15
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-07-08
1944-07-09
1944-07-14
1944-07-15
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Croatia
Croatia--Slavonski Brod
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph on an album page
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Geolocated
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PBirdJH18010016, PBirdJH18010018
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Andy Fitter
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
104 Squadron
aerial photograph
bombing
target photograph
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/115/1174/PBaileyHH1608.2.jpg
2ae8913f27cb2eb91f357facb039c702
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/115/1174/PBaileyHH1609.2.jpg
a07a5f16d20c3fb9785f3fc808a3d725
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
Bailey, Harold H
H H Bailey
Bill Bailey
Description
An account of the resource
The collection consists of an oral history interview with Harold Hubert 'Bill' Bailey (b. 1925, 2221922 Royal Air Force) and eight photographs.
Bill Bailey completed 37 operations as a rear gunner with 31 Squadron, South African Air Force as part of 205 Group. He flew from Egypt, Palestine and Italy and took part in supply drops to partisan groups in Italy and Yugoslavia.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bill Bailey and catalogued by IBCC staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-05-01
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bailey, HH
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/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Daylight bombing of Pula harbour
Description
An account of the resource
Oblique aerial photograph of the harbour of Pula in Croatia centered on Otočić Sveti Andrija. The photograph focus is poor and has been folded several times resulting in horizontal tear marks cross the image. A big smoke cloud is rising from an explosion on Otok Katerina: other explosions are visible on land and water. {The donor identifies the splash, centre, to the impact crash of a B-24. The unit is 31 Squadron SAAF}
On the reverse:
'“POLA” NORTH EAST ITALY {sic}
NAVAL BUILDINGS AND HARBOUR INSTALLATIONS.
CREW.
LT. VAN DER WANT. PILOT
LT. ROBERTS. 2ND PILOT
LT. PERKINS. NAVIGATOR
F/O DE LONGH BOMB AIMER
SGT. SHE [two indecipherable letters] ERDINE WIRELESS OP
[indecipherable rank] WYNNE. MID UPPER GUNNER
[indecipherable name and rank] GUNNER
SGT. BAILEY REAR GUNNER
13,708
AIRCRAFT. LIBERATOR
FLAK. HEAVY, ACCURATE AND INTENSE
LARGE EXPLOSION IN TARGET AREA SMOKE RISING TO 4/500ft'
Additional information about this item has been kindly provided by the donor.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Cathie Hewitt
Stuart Cummins
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph with annotations on reverse
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PBaileyHH1608, PBaileyHH1609
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Croatia
Croatia--Pula
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
South African Air Force
South African Air Force
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Geolocated
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
31 Squadron SAAF
aerial photograph
anti-aircraft fire
B-24
bombing
crash
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1290/17407/POpenshawB1805-0019.1.jpg
561f18d4d172a94f71ce5c07d8060be1
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
Fiume
Description
An account of the resource
Target photograph showing a town with a main road running through from top right to bottom left. Captioned '641, FOG, 1, 21/22 Jan 44, NT 8", 8100ft→ , 330 degrees, [...]'. 'A4' Annotated 'Fiume'.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-01-21
1944-01-22
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph mounted on an album page
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
POpenshawB1805-0019
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
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Geolocated
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Croatia
Croatia--Rijeka
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-01-21
1944-01-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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
aerial photograph
bombing
target photograph
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1697/39486/SPowellNI1896919v10002-0003.2.jpg
6cf1cffe95ae0c0360c83b30920ee180
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
Powell, Norman Ivor
Powell, N I
Description
An account of the resource
262 items. The collection concerns Powell, Norman Ivor (b. 1925, 1896919 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, diary, target photographs, maps, photographs, correspondence, and two photograph albums. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 614 and 104 squadrons in North Africa and Italy. <br /><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2207">Powell, N I. Photograph album one</a><br /><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2209">Powell, N I. Photograph album two</a><br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Brian Powell and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-10-29
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
Powell, NI
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
Fiume and Brück
Description
An account of the resource
Two low quality copies of target photographs of Brück and Fiume (Rijeka).
The Fiume image (upside down). Captioned:
'2615 104/60 16 Feb 45 F8//12,500ft → 14.32 G A FIUME
Fiume was before Powell stated operations on 104 Squadron.
The Brück image shows some tracer trails and glare but has no discernible ground details. Captioned:
2723 104/77. 19/20-MAR-45. F8". NT. //9000'→355º. 22.02. BRUCK
G. 4x1000. 8x500. MkIII 21. F/O WARD (F/O SCOTT. B/A.). P.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1945-03-19
1945-03-20
1945-02-16
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-03-19
1945-03-20
1945-02-16
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Potsdam Region
Croatia
Croatia--Rijeka
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
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photocopy
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SPowellNI1896919v10002-0003
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
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Andy Fitter
104 Squadron
aerial photograph
bombing
target photograph
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2251/40598/PBirdJH18010019.2.jpg
1a03b29b3f174e2e370163b8e851b521
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
Bird, JH. Photo Album
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-02-15
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
Bird, JH
Description
An account of the resource
The album contains images taken during his service in Italy and includes target photographs and descriptions of bombing operations.
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
Fiume Oil Refinery
Description
An account of the resource
A target photograph for an operation to Fiume. No detail is visible on the ground and there are three streaks of light. It is annotated 'A4' and captioned:
'1598. FOG. 19/20 JULY 44 // NT 8" 9,800' ->305° 2249.
FIUME. L. 9x500. P8. SGT BIRD. M. 104.'
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-07-19
1944-07-20
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-07-19
1944-07-20
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Croatia
Croatia--Rijeka
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph on an album page
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PBirdJH18010019
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Andy Fitter
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
104 Squadron
aerial photograph
bombing
target photograph
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/19/23385/LBonneyA651126v1.1.pdf
06e28fc25ff0b9611bc446d60599dba5
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
Auton, Jim
J Auton
Description
An account of the resource
26 items. The collection relates to Sergeant Jim Auton MBE (1924 - 2020). He was badly injured when his 178 Squadron B-24 was hit by anti-aircraft fire during an operation from Italy. The collection contains an oral history interview and ten photographs.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Jim Auton and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-30
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Auton, J
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
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
Flying Officer A. Bonney’s Royal Canadian Air Force Flying Log Book for Aircrew other than Pilot
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.
Description
An account of the resource
Flying Officer A. Bonney’s Royal Canadian Air Force Flying Log Book for Aircrew other than Pilot, from 13th October 1942 to August 1944. Recording his training as an air gunner in Canada and England, two completed tours with 142 Squadron RAF based in North Africa, subsequent instructor duties, and operations with 31 Squadron South African Air Force (205 Heavy Bomber Group RAF) based in Italy. He was stationed at RCAF Mont-Joli Quebec (No 9 Bombing & Gunnery School), RAF Edgehill/Shenington (21 Operational Training Unit), RAF Blida (142 Squadron RAF), RAF Castle Kennedy (No 3 Air Gunnery School) and Celone Airfield (Foggia #1, 31 Squadron SAAF). Aircraft in which flown: Battle, Wellington, Dakota, Hudson, Anson, Martinet and Liberator. He flew 45 operations (all night-time) with 142 Squadron RAF on the following targets in Italy: Alghero, Angitola, Battipaglia, Borgo Rizzo, Cagliari, Caltanissetta, Castelventrano, Catania, Civitavecchia, Eboli, Elmas Decimomannu, Sesto Fiorentino, Formia, Marsala, Messina, Montecorvino airfield, Naples, Olbia, Palermo, Pantelleria, Pizzo, Rome (‘Nickels’), Salerno, Taranto, Villacidro and Viterbo. He also flew 12 night-time operations with 31 squadron SAAF on the following targets in Greece, Italy, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, France and Poland: Heraklion, Trieste, Bucharest, Fiume, Fanto oil refinery (Pardubice), Valence airfield, River Danube (‘Gardening’), Szombathely and Warsaw (dropping supplies). <span>His pilots on operations were</span> Sergeant Walkden and Captain Lawrie. He is recorded as missing from the last of these operations. Comments on operations include: 'Aircraft holed 24 times. 2 through my turret'.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Leitch
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
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
LBonneyA651126v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Algeria
Canada
Croatia
Czech Republic
France
Great Britain
Greece
Hungary
Italy
Poland
Romania
England--Oxfordshire
Greece--Crete
Italy--Sardinia
Italy--Sicily
Mediterranean Sea
Algeria--Blida
Croatia--Rijeka
Czech Republic--Pardubice
Danube River
France--Valence (Drôme)
Greece--Ērakleion
Hungary--Szombathely
Italy--Alghero
Italy--Angitola
Italy--Battipaglia
Italy--Borgo Rizzo
Italy--Cagliari
Italy--Caltanissetta
Italy--Castelvetrano
Italy--Catania
Italy--Civitavecchia
Italy--Decimomannu
Italy--Eboli
Italy--Elmas
Italy--Foggia
Italy--Formia
Italy--Marsala
Italy--Messina
Italy--Naples
Italy--Olbia
Italy--Palermo
Italy--Pantelleria Island
Italy--Pizzo
Italy--Rome
Italy--Salerno
Italy--Sesto Fiorentino
Italy--Taranto
Italy--Trieste
Italy--Villacidro
Italy--Viterbo
Poland--Warsaw
Québec--Mont-Joli
Romania--Bucharest
Scotland--Castle Kennedy
North Africa
Québec
Québec--Mont-Joli
Danube River
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1943-05-08
1943-05-09
1943-05-11
1943-05-12
1943-05-13
1943-05-14
1943-05-15
1943-05-17
1943-05-18
1943-05-21
1943-05-22
1943-05-23
1943-05-24
1943-05-27
1943-05-28
1943-05-29
1943-05-30
1943-05-31
1943-06-01
1943-06-02
1943-06-06
1943-06-07
1943-06-09
1943-06-19
1943-06-20
1943-06-21
1943-06-22
1943-06-23
1943-06-24
1943-06-25
1943-06-28
1943-06-29
1943-07-02
1943-07-03
1943-07-04
1943-07-05
1943-07-08
1943-07-11
1943-07-12
1943-07-13
1943-07-14
1943-07-15
1943-08-02
1943-08-05
1943-08-06
1943-08-09
1943-08-10
1943-08-11
1943-08-12
1943-08-13
1943-08-14
1943-08-15
1943-08-16
1943-08-18
1943-08-19
1943-08-21
1943-08-22
1943-08-25
1943-08-26
1943-08-27
1943-08-28
1943-08-30
1943-08-31
1943-09-01
1943-09-04
1943-09-05
1943-09-06
1943-09-07
1943-09-08
1943-09-09
1943-09-10
1943-09-11
1944-06-04
1944-06-05
1944-06-26
1944-06-27
1944-07-02
1944-07-03
1944-07-19
1944-07-20
1944-07-21
1944-07-22
1944-07-24
1944-07-25
1944-07-26
1944-07-27
1944-07-30
1944-08-01
1944-08-07
1944-08-08
1944-08-10
1944-08-11
1944-08-13
1944-08-14
1944-08-16
1944-08-17
142 Squadron
21 OTU
31 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
B-24
Battle
bombing
Bombing and Gunnery School
C-47
Hudson
Martinet
mine laying
missing in action
Operational Training Unit
RAF Castle Kennedy
RAF Shenington
training
Warsaw airlift (4 August - 28 September 1944)
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1246/16339/LCannonHO1802390v1.2.pdf
02d1cc01bf3ac2be0e21622c8fc94ce7
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
Neale, Ted
E T H Neale
Description
An account of the resource
123 items. The collection concerns Edward Thomas Henry Neale (b. 1922, 1395951 Royal Air Force) who served as a navigator with 37 Squadron in North Africa, the Middle East and Italy. The collection contains his training notebooks from South Africa as well as propaganda leaflets dropped by the allies in the Mediterranean theatre.
The collection also contains a photograph album, navigation logs and target photographs.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Alison Neale 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
2015-07-31
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
Neale, ETH
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
H O Cannon’s observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book for H O Cannon (1802390) air gunner, covering the period from 29 December 1943 to 3 November 1944 and from 16 October 1952 to 8 October 1953. He was stationed at RAF Moffatt, RAF Qastina, RAF Tortorella, RAF Upwood and RAF Hemswell. Aircraft flown in were, Anson, Wellington, Defiant and Lincoln. He flew a total of 28 operations with 37 Squadron 3 daylight and 25 night and 2 supply drops. Targets were, Brod Basanki, Smederavo, Romsa, Pardubice, Bucharest, Ploesti, Pesaro, Portes les Valences, Szombathely, Kraljevo, Genoa, Marseilles, St. Valentin, Miskolc, Bologna, Ravenna, Rimini, Hegyeashalom, San Benedetto, Borovnica, Tuzla, Ficarolo, Uzice, Klopot. His pilots on operations were Sergeant Reynolds, Major Bayford, Sergeant Merrick and Flight Sergeant Taylor.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
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
One booklet
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
LCannonHO1802390v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Austria
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Croatia
Czech Republic
France
Great Britain
Hungary
Italy
Middle East
Romania
Serbia
Slovenia
Zimbabwe
Austria--Sankt Valentin
Bosnia and Herzegovina--Tuzla
Croatia--Rijeka
Croatia--Slavonski Brod
Czech Republic--Pardubice
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
France--Marseille
France--Valence (Drôme)
Hungary--Hegyeshalom
Hungary--Miskolc
Hungary--Szombathely
Italy--Bologna
Italy--Foggia
Italy--Ficarolo
Italy--Genoa
Italy--Pesaro
Italy--Ravenna
Italy--Rimini
Italy--San Benedetto del Tronto
Middle East--Palestine
Romania--Bucharest
Serbia--Kraljevo (Kraljevo)
Serbia--Smederevo
Serbia--Užice
Slovenia--Borovnica
Romania--Ploiești
Zimbabwe--Gweru
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1952
1953
1944-07-14
1944-07-15
1944-07-16
1944-07-17
1944-07-19
1944-07-20
1944-07-21
1944-07-22
1944-07-23
1944-07-24
1944-07-26
1944-07-27
1944-07-28
1944-07-30
1944-07-31
1944-08-03
1944-08-04
1944-08-07
1944-08-08
1944-08-09
1944-08-10
1944-08-13
1944-08-14
1944-08-15
1944-08-20
1944-08-21
1944-08-22
1944-08-23
1944-08-24
1944-08-25
1944-08-27
1944-09-12
1944-09-18
1944-09-20
1944-09-21
1944-09-22
1944-09-26
1944-09-30
1944-10-31
1944-11-04
1944-11-05
1944-11-06
1944-11-16
1944-11-23
1944-12-03
148 Squadron
37 Squadron
97 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Bombing and Gunnery School
Defiant
Lincoln
RAF Hemswell
RAF Upwood
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/934/36457/BLovattPHastieRv2.1.pdf
295406378e70aa4d2aeb43baeaddc085
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
Lovatt, Peter
Dr Peter Lovatt
P Lovatt
Description
An account of the resource
117 items. An oral history interview with Peter Lovatt (b.1924, 1821369 Royal Air Force), his log book, documents, and photographs. The collection also contains two photograph albums. He flew 42 operations as an air gunner on 223 Squadron flying B-24s. <br /><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1338">Album One</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2135">Album Two</a><br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Nina and Peter Lovatt 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
2017-09-27
2019-09-03
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lovatt, P
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
Hastie DFC: The Life and Times of a Wartime Pilot
Description
An account of the resource
A biography of Roy Hastie.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Peter Lovatt
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2003-10
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
United States
Rhode Island--Quonset Point Naval Air Station
Bahamas--Nassau
New York (State)--New York
Bahamas--New Providence Island
Great Britain
England--Harrogate
Scotland--Perth
Scotland--Glasgow
England--Warrington
England--Blackpool
Luxembourg
France
Belgium
Netherlands
France--Dunkerque
England--Dover
England--Grantham
England--Torquay
Wales--Aberystwyth
Iceland
Greenland
Sierra Leone
Russia (Federation)--Murmansk
Singapore
France--Saint-Malo
Denmark
Sweden
Germany--Lübeck
Netherlands--Ameland Island
England--Grimsby
Germany--Helgoland
Netherlands--Rotterdam
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
England--Lundy Island
Germany--Cologne
North Carolina
North Carolina--Cape Hatteras
Aruba
Curaçao
Iceland--Reykjavík
Greenland--Narsarssuak
Canada
Québec--Montréal
Rhode Island
New York (State)--Buffalo
Gulf of Mexico
Caribbean Sea
Virginia
Florida--Miami
Cuba--Guantánamo Bay Naval Base
Puerto Rico--San Juan
Cuba
Florida--West Palm Beach
Cuba--Caimanera
India
Sierra Leone--Freetown
Jamaica
Jamaica--Kingston
Jamaica--Montego Bay
Virginia--Norfolk
Washington (D.C.)
Newfoundland and Labrador
Northern Ireland--Limavady
England--Chatham (Kent)
Newfoundland and Labrador--Gander
Gibraltar
England--Leicester
Massachusetts--Boston
Egypt--Alamayn
Algeria--Algiers
Algeria--Oran
Algeria--Bejaïa
Algeria--Annaba
Italy--Sicily
England--Milton Keynes
Germany--Essen
England--Dunwich
Europe--Scheldt River
England--Sizewell
Germany--Hamburg
England--Kent
Germany--Stuttgart
England--Crowborough
Netherlands--Hague
England--Peterborough
England--Bristol
Germany--Homburg (Saarland)
Belgium--Brussels
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
Belgium--Liège
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Aschaffenburg
Germany--Castrop-Rauxel
Germany--Mittelland Canal
Germany--Aachen
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Neuss
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Hagen (Arnsberg)
Germany--Leuna
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Ulm
Germany--Munich
Poland--Szczecin
France--Ardennes
Germany--Bonn
Belgium--Houffalize
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Grevenbroich
Germany--Dülmen
France--Metz
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Zeitz
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
England--Dungeness
Germany--Mainz (Rhineland-Palatinate)
Germany--Wiesbaden
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Koblenz
Germany--Chemnitz
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
Germany--Worms
Germany--Pforzheim
Germany--Darmstadt
Europe--Lake Constance
Germany--Bergkamen
Germany--Dessau (Dessau)
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
France--Aube
Germany--Augsburg
England--Feltwell
England--Croydon
Norway--Oslo
Sweden--Stockholm
Czech Republic--Prague
Italy--Florence
Portugal--Lisbon
Monaco--Monte-Carlo
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
Netherlands--Venlo
Netherlands--Amsterdam
France--Paris
France--Lyon
France--Digne
France--Nevers
France--Lille
Norway--Ålesund
France--Saint-Omer (Pas-de-Calais)
France--Bailleul (Nord)
Belgium--Ieper
Belgium--Mesen
France--Cambrai
France--Somme
France--Arras
France--Lens
France--Calais
Germany--Emden (Lower Saxony)
Netherlands--Vlissingen
France--Brest
France--Lorient
France--La Pallice
Egypt--Suez
Germany--Berlin
Yemen (Republic)--Aden
Cyprus
Turkey--Gallipoli
Black Sea--Dardanelles Strait
Turkey--İmroz Island
Turkey--İzmir
Greece--Lesbos (Municipality)
Greece--Thasos Island
Greece--Chios (Municipality)
Greece--Thasos
Bulgaria
Turkey--Istanbul
Europe--Macedonia
Greece--Kavala
Kenya--Nairobi
Africa--Rhodesia and Nyasaland
Tanzania
Sudan
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Sudan--Kassalā
Eritrea--Asmara
Yemen (Republic)--Perim Island
Ethiopia--Addis Ababa
Sudan--Khartoum
Ghana--Takoradi
Libya--Cyrenaica
Libya--Tobruk
Egypt--Cairo
Iraq
Greece--Crete
Libya--Tripolitania
Tunisia--Mareth Line
Libya--Tripoli
Tunisia--Qaṣrayn
Tunisia--Medenine
Italy--Pantelleria Island
Malta
Italy--Licata
Italy--Brindisi
Italy--Foggia
Italy--Cassino
Italy--Sangro River
Italy--Termoli
Yugoslavia
Croatia--Split
Croatia--Vis Island
Italy--Loreto
Italy--Pescara
Trinidad and Tobago--Trinidad
North America--Saint Lawrence River
Newfoundland and Labrador--Happy Valley-Goose Bay
Bahamas
Florida
Italy
Poland
Massachusetts
New York (State)
Algeria
Tunisia
Libya
Egypt
North Africa
Ontario
Québec
Germany
Croatia
Czech Republic
Ghana
Greece
Kenya
Norway
Russia (Federation)
Turkey
Yemen (Republic)
Portugal
Trinidad and Tobago
North America--Niagara Falls
France--Reims
Europe--Frisian Islands
Germany--Monheim (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Norfolk
England--Suffolk
England--Gloucestershire
England--Lancashire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Greece--Thessalonikē
Germany--Herne (Arnsberg)
Atlantic Ocean--Kattegat (Baltic Sea)
Libya--Banghāzī
Russia (Federation)--Arkhangelʹskai︠a︡ oblastʹ
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Jersey
Virginia--Hampton Roads (Region)
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
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
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
142 printed sheets
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BLovattPHastieRv2
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription
1 Group
100 Group
101 Squadron
157 Squadron
2 Group
214 Squadron
223 Squadron
3 Group
4 Group
6 Group
8 Group
85 Squadron
88 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
B-17
B-24
B-25
bale out
Beaufighter
Bismarck
Botha
C-47
Chamberlain, Neville (1869-1940)
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
crash
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
entertainment
evacuation
Flying Training School
Gee
Gneisenau
Goldfish Club
ground personnel
H2S
Halifax
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Harvard
He 111
Heavy Conversion Unit
Hitler, Adolf (1889-1945)
Hudson
Hurricane
Initial Training Wing
Ju 88
Lancaster
love and romance
Martinet
Me 109
Me 110
mine laying
Mosquito
Mussolini, Benito (1883-1945)
navigator
Nissen hut
Oboe
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
pilot
Proctor
radar
RAF Banff
RAF Catfoss
RAF Catterick
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Cranwell
RAF Dishforth
RAF Farnborough
RAF Horsham St Faith
RAF Kinloss
RAF Leuchars
RAF Lichfield
RAF Lyneham
RAF Manston
RAF North Coates
RAF Oulton
RAF Padgate
RAF Prestwick
RAF Riccall
RAF Silloth
RAF South Cerney
RAF St Eval
RAF Thornaby
RAF Thorney Island
RAF Windrush
RAF Woodbridge
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1882-1945)
Scharnhorst
Spitfire
sport
Stirling
Swordfish
Tiger Moth
Tirpitz
training
V-1
V-2
V-weapon
Whitley
Window
wireless operator
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/59/519/AAn00659-160808.2.mp3
4fc7f81d36d1cc8f18e84612642a7b8f
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
A survivor of the Karigador bombing
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
An00659
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with an informant who recollects his wartime experiences in the Verteneglio Brtonigla area.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-08
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Pietro Commisso: Sono Pietro Comisso e sto per intervistare [omitted] per l’archivio dell’International Bomber Command Centre. Siamo a Monfalcone, è il 08 08 2016. Grazie [omitted] per aver permesso questa intervista. Sono presenti Pietro Commisso e [omitted]. Prima di cominciare, vorrei farle alcune domande per essere sicuro che questa intervista venga registrata come desidera. È d’accordo che la sua intervista venga conservata presso l’Università di Lincoln, esclusivamente per scopi non commerciali, che l’università di Lincoln ne abbia il copyright e infine essere liberamente accessibile in qualsiasi formato per mostre, attività di ricerca, istruzione, e come risorsa online?
Bombing survivor: Sì
PC: È d’accordo che il suo nome venga pubblicamente associato all’intervista?
BS: No
PC: È d’accordo di essere fotografato per l’archivio digitale dell’International Bomber Command Centre?
BS: No, no, no.
PC: Ehm, mi dica qual è il suo ricordo più vecchio riguardante i bombardamenti aerei della seconda guerra mondiale.
BS: Dunque, sé una mattina, ‘desso non me ricordo proprio il giorno naturalmente, sarà stà aprile, penso così, circa no, eh [pause] mio zio coso mi ha detto che giù, in Carigador si chiama il posto, ghe sé una nave tedesca che sé piena di de robe dentro, de mangiare, de letti, tavole, e materas, di tutte le cose immaginabili, era dento di tutto insomma. Poi, sono ‘ndato giù in strada, era un mio cugino, li ho detto se mi porta giù con la bicicleta, perché io non, per forza non avevo la bicicleta [laughs], me ga portà giù, se vemo trovado là, eh, via le scarpe, i pantal, le braghe insomma, i pantaloni, semo ‘ndati a portar fora la roba di, tutte le robe, però era un pericolo [emphasis] naturalmente che venivi i apparecchi, esatto. Abbiamo messo due mie cugine di, come se disi, se le vedi magari i apparechi che vien lì: tut un momento le comincia a ziga’: ‘Aiuto, apparechi, apparechi!’. Scampa fori naturalmente de coso che era l’omo là per portar fora le cose, no, dunque, vignindo fora me son messo un bel ciodo sul, sul coso che era una tavola, che era una tavola, dà un scosson, e siamo ‘ndat, era un mio amico, ‘desso non me ricordo gnanca il nome, e siamo ‘ndati una siepe, semo nascosti là; passa il primo, era quatro, quatro caccia naturalmente, l’ha comincià a bombardar, bombardar e mitragliar, naturalmente no; te digo come te disevo prima anche, a non so, due, tre metri via de noi, era ste bombe che, che passava, iera, i fazeva dei solchi veramente, guarda, de veder, sì sì iera pericoloso veramente. Bon, finito il tutto [pause], siamo ‘ndati a per portar via non so, mi pare le scarpe, i pantaloni, le bombe sono cascate non sulla bar, sulla nave, sul, sul, come si disi?
PC: Bagnasciuga.
BS: Sul bagnasciuga no, pantaloni, no sé scarpe, no sé niente, tutto perso [laughs], e dopo siamo ‘ndati via naturalmente, che sé vegnudi, poco via che iera, che iera i frati ‘ndai da là, di Carigador, sé vignudi là a veder se sé qualcuno ferìo, morti naturalmente per, nissuno, tutto a posto, e te digo, el primo, el primo coso, bombardier, gà comincià: ‘Booom!’, bombe, te schizzava, te vedevi tutto, e mitragliava naturalmente; il secondo pure, il terzo uguale, il quarto uguale. Il quarto, i sé ‘ndadi via, basta, finito tutto. Dopo cossa volessi dir ‘ncora?
PC: Quale potrebbe essere la sua esperienza in quanto bambino, ragazzo?
BS: Sì bambino, tredici anni, cosa vuoi.
PC: La sua, la sua esperienza, anche con i suoi coetanei, lei mi diceva che, c’era la vedetta, c’era, riguardo i bombardamenti c’è anche altri ricordi? Come l’ha, come l’ha vissuta, la, la, questo pericolo dei bombardamenti?
BS: L’ho vissuta male, guarda veramente male, perché era il periodo che era, de note iera [pause], come se ciama?
PC: I partigiani.
BS: I partigiani, naturalmente, e di giorno i tedeschi e coso, ma gavemo passà guarda [sigh]. Ho pasado male, veramente, iera stai bruti quei anni là, ma molto bruti, molto molto, eh sì [pause]. Cosa dovessi dir ancora?
PC: Durante gli allarmi cosa succedeva?
BS: Dunque, guarda, come allarmi là da noi no esisteva perché iera il paese piccolo che si chiama Fiorini, che son nato in Fiorini io, allarmi no i ‘iera. Iera altri, me ricordo bene anche un altro coso, che poco via da ‘ndo che son nato mi, anche i ga butà giù i tedeschi un apparechio, inglese naturalmente, semo ‘ndati là a veder se era bulloni de coso, a veder, iera morto il pilota che iera, coso [unclear], un periodo molto brutto, eh!
PC: Fasso un’ultima domanda: dopo tutti questi anni che sé passadi, come la se pone nei confronti de, questi fatti insomma, questo pericolo che veniva dal cielo? Nel fatto de esser l’obbiettivo, esser stado l’obbiettivo de un, de un attacco aereo proprio.
BS: [sigh] Cossa devo dir?
PC: Come che la sé, cossa che la pensa de questo fatto?
BS: Bah, il fatto iera che iera molto brutto quei anni là, molto brutti, perché de giorno, ripeto, iera i tedeschi, il periodo ’40, ’41, ’42, ’43, coso, de noto, e de note i, i partigiani.
PC: Go capìo.
BS: Che i sé vignudi anche a casa mia, se pol dir, posso dir questo?
PC: Sì.
BS: Alora, spetta, sé una sera, ‘na note, sé vignudi i partigiani naturalmente, a casa mia. Batti la porta, ‘Chi sé?’, ‘Partigiani’, mia mama sé ‘ndada a aprir naturalmente, perché se no, ehi. Dise ‘Qua sé gente, dove sé i omeni?’, ‘ E perché?’ la ghe dise, ‘Perché i deve vignir con noi.’, ‘Mah, guardi, i omeni no i sé parché de giorno i sé i tedeschi che i ga fatto restrell, restrellamento, i se ga sconto; eh, no savemo n’altri dove che i sé’; perché mio papà, mio zio e un altro signor iera sconti in un, fa conto una parete così, da l’altra parte g’era l’altra familia, iera fatto un coso, così un, come se disi, come, grande come l’assensor dentro…
PC: Un nascondiglio.
BS: Esatto, un nascondiglio, te capissi però ‘l nascondiglio iera basso no, e iera mess un casson di farina, paria che roba; alora, sé vignui dentro, me ricordo benissimo, sé vignudi in camera mia, che mi dormivo con mio nono, sé vignudi, bon, butar via le coperte naturalmente visto che son fioi, mio nono vecchio naturalmente, sé andai in un’altra camera, ‘Dove i sé i omeni?’, ‘No i sé’ ghe ga dito mia moglie, ga dito, cioè la prima camera iera un mio zio, ghe ha dito ‘No sé meio che no ‘ndedi dentro perché ‘l sé un pochetin matto, sé meio’, che no iera vero niente, fortuna che no i sé ‘ndadi dentro, bon: ga visità dapertuto, i sé ‘ndadi , in soffitta coso, una casa grande de tre piani, ga visità de tuto, i sé ‘ndai in soffitta e dentro i ga trovà giacchettoni, roba, i ga portà via tutto, giacche, camice, tut i ga portado via. Quei iera, Madonna! Eh sì!
PC: D’accordo, io la ringrazio e, per la testimonianza.
BS: Quei tempi de coso, te digo mi, guarda che iera, iera molto brutti! Cos’ che me ga tocà a mi. Quasi meio che me ne stago zito, no digo niente.
PC: La ringrazio.
BS: Sì.
PC: La ringrazio per l’intervista.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with a survivor of the Karigador bombing
Subject
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World War (1939-1945)
Bombing, Aerial
Description
An account of the resource
The informant recalls the day when he and his cousin plundered a ship with a cargo of furniture, clothing and foodstuffs, which was moored at Karigador. He describes how the harbour was suddenly bombed and strafed. Remembers how they hid behind a hedge and realised that the bombs didn’t hit the ship but the shoreline, leaving a large hole in the sand. Mentions nuns from a nearby convent looking for wounded or dead people.
Mentions a group of partisans showing up at his home, asking aggressively for men ready to join the resistance movement. Describes how his father, his uncle and a friend remained hidden, while the partisans ransacked the house for items of clothing.
Creator
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Pietro Commisso
Contributor
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Marco Dalla Bona
Format
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00:09:53 audio recording
Language
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ita
Spatial Coverage
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Croatia
Identifier
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AAn00659-160808
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-08-08
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Coverage
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Civilian
bombing
childhood in wartime
home front
Resistance
strafing
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/19/43/PAutonJ1503.1.jpg
fcd84ad8b587a4e098652670dd63b4c8
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/19/43/AAutonJF150608.2.mp3
6ee59b7c7d75a4b3e1001264485de6ae
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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Auton, Jim
J Auton
Description
An account of the resource
26 items. The collection relates to Sergeant Jim Auton MBE (1924 - 2020). He was badly injured when his 178 Squadron B-24 was hit by anti-aircraft fire during an operation from Italy. The collection contains an oral history interview and ten photographs.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Jim Auton and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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.
Date
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2015-07-30
Identifier
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Auton, J
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: Well Jim, perhaps we could start with your date and place of birth please?
JA: Yes I was born at Henlow, my father was an officer in the RAF and he happened to be stationed at Henlow when I happened to be born.
CB: And what date was that?
JA: That was the 13th of April, 1924
CB: And what do you remember about your childhood?
JA: I remember when he was transferred to Cranwell, I started infant school at Cranwell and we had to walk across the aerodrome to school, and there were about twenty of us and we were told to walk in groups together and if you see an aeroplane coming in, stand still [emphasis] so he can avoid you and we used to see aeroplanes coming in to land on the grass field, they were bi-planes of course and we’d wave to the pilot and if he waved back to us that made our day because pilots were our heroes and we all wanted to be like daddy and join the RAF when we were old enough and next to the school playground there was an aircraft dump, old fuselages, they’d taken the engines out and the instruments but we’d climb into the cockpits and stand there and go ‘dud dud du du’, we were shooting down Germans when we were five years old, we knew the Germans were the enemy, I don’t think our government knew at the time.
CB: So you have happy memories of your childhood in Cranwell?
JA: Yes, and then of course we, he was stationed at Manston and we could go in the workshop and see the fitters working on the planes, they never told us to shove off, and we liked the smell of dope on the aircraft on the canvas and, but when they took an aircraft to the butts to synchronise the guns, they’d jack up the tails to get the plane horizontal and we’d stand around with our fingers in their ears while they were shooting into the pile of sand in the butts, and then when an aircraft broke down we used to rush out across the aerodrome to help the man, help the men push it and for kids it was marvellous, we loved aeroplanes.
CB: So do you think that’s what started your desire to join the air force later on?
JA: Well you see I was brought up on RAF stations, RAF camps and I didn’t know any other life, we were isolated from the outside community, we had free medical treatment, free dental treatment, we were in married quarters most of the time where even the crockery was provided, all the linen and everything, so our whole life was in the air force until we were adults, so naturally we all wanted to be pilots when we grew up, and when the war was announced I thought ‘oh good they’ll need more pilots now’ [slight laugh]
CB: So off you went to volunteer.
JA: Well when I was seventeen I couldn’t wait, I went to join up, and I registered as a pilot but I found later they put me down pilot navigator or rather pilot observer as it was in those days so they could change me any time they wanted, and I started flying training as a pilot and then when they introduced the four engine bombers they didn’t need two pilots, so they would have a pilot and a bomb airman who had done some flying training and he in an emergency would be able to take over from the first pilot so the bomber was a second pilot, but and [slight pause] I started flying in England but the German intruders flying over us, over England were shooting us down in our training planes, so the Government opened the Empire Air Training scheme.
CB: Where did you do your initial training?
JA: At Ansty near Coventry and then after much delay because flying schools were all full and there was a waiting time, I was sent to South Africa as a navigator and I trained there as a navigator, but I wasn’t very keen on being a navigator so I also trained as an air bomber, because I knew air bombers would be allowed to pilot the plane, in an emergency, and even during training the staff pilots would allow me to take out over and fly the Oxfords and Ansons because that’s all I wanted to do really and so I trained as a navigator and a bomb airman.
CB: What about your journey down to South Africa?
JA: That was marvellous, hundreds and hundreds of them on a small Liberty ship. We were told you mustn’t be below decks during daylight, so we had to stay on the top deck in all weathers and there wasn’t room for everybody to sit down, so if somebody stood up you immediately sat in that place and some of the troops perched on the ship’s rails until they broadcast anybody falling over will drown because the ship will not stop to pick anybody up, so we couldn’t sit on the rails so we had to stand up sometimes for ten, nine or ten hours, during the day, we were fed twice a day, seven in the morning and seven in the evening and the food was like an airways meal on a tray and it wasn’t enough to keep us alive and I asked the crew, it was an American Liberty ship and the crew were Filipinos and Negroes and I asked them ‘do you have this terrible food that we have?’ and they said ‘no we’ve got plenty of food’, they said ‘if you come and work in the kitchen for us, we’ll let you have our food’, so I spent couple of weeks washing up dirty dishes until the heat got too bad and I went back on the troop deck again, but during my time in the kitchen I was allowed to sneak some food out for my friends [slight laugh] who didn’t work in the kitchen, that was all unofficial of course.
CB: Was it better food in the kitchen or just more of it?
JA: More of it and better.
CB: So they were keeping you on starving rations basically?
JA: Yes, yes, eventually the doctor said I was suffering from severe physical debility but that was much later, we were on this ship for six weeks and they warned us we were in shark infested waters and the ship wouldn’t stop for anybody falling over board, but it was quite an interesting voyage except the sun was dreadful in the tropics and there was no shade, and the officer in charge of troops thought that we were cadet officers because we wore a white flash in our caps but we weren’t and when we got to Sierra Leone Freetown somebody must have told him we were not potential officers and he said ‘right, you’ll have to do all the duties’, fire picket, fatigues, peeling potatoes and all sort of things like that and guard duty for the rest of the voyage, another three weeks and my name beginning with an A, I was one of the first to be chosen for guard duty and it was a stinking hot day and we were anchored off Freetown to re-fuel and I found a hatchway and a collapsible chair and I sat in that hatchway and dozed off because I’d had no sleep, we couldn’t sleep on the deck as it was too hot and the smell of the engine oil, and I dozed off and suddenly I was awoken when the ship’s officer came round on his inspection with the ships warrant officer and they bellowed at me ‘what are you on? sleeping duty?’ and I said ‘yes, sir’ because I didn’t like to say no to anybody in authority and they said ‘you’re under arrest in five minutes’, ‘oh dear’ I thought ‘I’ll be all on my own in prison’, the brig, the ship’s prison was below the water line, it was nice and cool and I wasn’t on my own, there were eleven other air crew cadets in there with me and the police who looked after us took us round for dinner wearing their caps and then they said ‘you keep your mouths shut and we’ll go round again’ and they took their caps off and we had a second dinner, so being in the brig wasn’t so bad, except we were locked in and we were below the water line and there were submarines about, so we thought if, if a submarine hit we’ll certainly drown like rats in a trap but it didn’t happen of course.
CB: It must have been quite a relief to get to South Africa after all that?
JA: We anchored off in Table Bay about quarter of a mile from land and the dock workers had a big lump of rusty steel plate and they wrote on it in chalk: ‘plenty of food, plenty of women, plenty of booze’ [laughs] and the next day we docked in the harbour and we were told you will be discharged tomorrow, and there was nearly a riot because we’d been cooped up for six weeks and eventually they said ‘Ok, you can go into town but you must be back at midnight so we all went into town, it was paradise, things we hadn’t seen for years like pineapples and peaches and plenty of food and so we goaded a kind of a restaurant run by volunteers for service men and some old ladies served dinner, so we had a three course dinner and when we finished they said ‘would you like anything else’, and we said ‘could we have it again please?’, so we had another three course dinner, then we had half a dozen bananas on the way back to the ship [laughs] and we brought a coconut, it was paradise, but at flying school wasn’t so funny, the day we arrived we were told that five aircraft had crashed and twenty five air crew had been killed, that’s five pilots and two navigators in each plane and two bomber men in each plane, five men in each plane and the reason was the staff pilots had been low flying round a hospital where somebody’s wife was working and all five crashed (these would be Ansons?) they were Ansons and they, we were told report those pilots for low flying in future but we didn’t do that because we liked low flying because stooging about high up isn’t much fun, but low flying is exciting [clears throat].
So after training in South Africa [coughs] for nearly a year we went up by stages through central Africa, Rhodesia, Kenya, Tanganyika, Uganda, the Sudan to Egypt where we found we were going to live in the Heliopolis Palace Hotel, marvellous [emphasis] but when we entered we found there were no beds, no furniture of any description and we had to sleep on the marble floors and our kit had been left behind in South Africa so we only had the clothes we were standing up in, so I wrapped my shoes in a towel to use as a pillow and lay my uniform down on the marble floor and slept on that, I found that I had to sleep on my back otherwise my hip stuck into the marble and it hurt [slight laugh] and then, I was then sent to Palestine where there was a war, the Jews and the Arabs were fighting each other and both sides were fighting the British Palestine police and while I was there they blew up the radio station and they blew up hotels, and people were fighting in the streets and I thought ‘I haven’t got into the war yet but I’m going to get shot by our own police’, and they had said to us, because we each had a revolver, ‘hand in the revolvers in the armoury, so I went down to the armoury which was in the cellar of the hotel and I handed my revolver in, and I saw the men there were mounting twin machine guns on a platform to be carried on a lorry, so it was a war, but then we were then transferred to Lidder, after going back to Egypt and wasting some more time sleeping in the western dessert on the sand, we had to empty our shoes thoroughly because there was scorpions in the dessert and the sand was almost too hot to walk on and the authorities had laid a tarmac path but it never hardens and it was like sticky toffee so we couldn’t walk on that [slight laugh]
CB: And this was part of your flying training or were they just moving you from place to place?
JA: Moving us around, and then we went to Lidder for a conversion course, onto Liberators, about a five week course.
CB: Were you expecting Liberators?
JA: No, when we saw that we were going to fly Liberators, we thought ‘they are American planes, why haven’t we got Lancasters?’, ‘cause we knew about Lancasters we thought they were marvellous, Liberators were unknown and didn’t even know that the RAF had Liberators and we thought they’re gonna send us to Japan because the Americans had Liberators so we were a little bit frightened of that, because we thought we should be helping defend Britain, we thought the war in Japan is an American affair and we shouldn’t be anything to do with that, but after we’d been shuttled around in Egypt to Palestine for a bit we went to Algiers by air, nine hours, and we thought we were on our way to Italy, when we got off the plane we saw a French flag and we said ‘what’s this place?’ and a French airman said ‘it’s Algeria’ or at least he said ‘it’s Maison Blanche’, we said ‘where’s that?’ he said ‘it’s Algeria, it’s North Africa’ and we said we’re supposed to be in Italy but there was nobody to ask, we could ask any questions and he said ‘you can go to a hotel here and sleep in huts in the grounds’, and then you should go to Algiers’s downtown about twenty miles and report to the RTO, transport officer, we went to see him the next day and he said ‘oh bomber crews, you’ll be here for ages, you’re low priority’, he said ‘only fighter pilots are priority one’ and our navigator said to me ‘we are priority one, I’ve read the documents’ but I said ‘shut up, it’s nice here’ so I said to him ‘the French people don’t seem very friendly’ and one of the gunners said ‘no wonder, we’ve just sunk the French fleet in Iran, so [slight laugh] after three weeks we said to the corporal in the RTO’s office, ‘I think you ought to have another look at our documents’ and he stood and talked on the telephone for a few minutes, kept us waiting because we were so insignificant, a low priority, then he looked at the documents and nearly had a fit, he said ‘you’re priority one, you should have left the same day’ he said, ‘you’ll be on a plane this afternoon’, so we fly to Italy in a freight plane with a load of boxes and an aircraft wheel that wasn’t properly strapped down, it kept shuffling around and nearly run us over, we were sitting on the floor and when we got to Italy, no customs, no immigration, nothing at all, nobody to tell us where to go or what to do, so we, first thing a service man does when he goes somewhere new is look for a tea and a bun [laughing] or what’s called a ‘shy and a wad’ and there was a little sort of canteen with Italian girls serving and they were laughing and joking, I expected Italians to be hostile like the French but they were so friendly, I thought we’re gonna like it in Italy and they kept saying ‘capiche, capiche’, and I said ‘no, no cabbage thank you, just tea and a bun’ and they said they were saying ‘do you understand?, capiche’ but we didn’t know that, but we thought they seemed nice [laughs] hope there are going to be some women where we’re going.
CB: Is this around about Naples was it?
JA: It was in Naples, and then we were transferred to Portici to a, to a holding centre, and there were people there who’d done a tour of operations and they were going on a rest period, and they were so dejected, haggard and ill looking, and they wouldn’t talk to anybody and we thought it must be terrible on a squadron, that it was demoralising to see them, anyway we stayed there a few weeks and then we were sent to Foggia by train, and you understood that Foggia is a big aircraft base, there were thousands and thousands of Americans there, with Liberators and Flying Fortresses, B24s and B17s, and we had liberators but other squadrons, some of them had clapped out wellingtons obsolete or obsolesce wellingtons so the liberators were a bit better except they weren’t new machines, they were machines that had been damaged and done a tour in the American Air Force and were now in a sort of scrap yard called a maintenance unit, and the pilots would go and ferry them to our squadron and if we were lucky we’d get the one in reasonable condition but most of them had got terrible faults, some of them had even got twisted airframes, and engine troubles common, and our fitters worked in the open air, there were no hangars, and sometimes they worked through the night in all weathers, and we were reliant on them to keep us alive.
CB: Now your crew, there was the seven of you as in a Lancaster but in this Liberator is that right?
JA: Yes, when I talk about how when I won the war I always say ‘I didn’t do it alone, there was seven of us’, and three of them were Scotsmen, one was from the Shetlands, and it took me a few, few days to learn to understand them on the intercom, because the intercom system is not very clear, it’s like a poor telephone system, and their Scottish accents were very guttural and I knew my life depends on these fellas, so I had to learn [slight laugh] to understand them and the skipper was very pleased when I joined the crew because up till then he was the youngest member, he was twenty-one and I was twenty and of course as I trained as a navigator and as an pupil pilot I was a useful member of the crew, and I’d done a gunnery course so I could do anything if anybody was killed or injured, I could take over from them, I couldn’t land a Liberator of course but I could keep it in the air long enough for the others to jump out and I said, I think I was bombing I think it was Budapest and the flak was so thick I thought we couldn’t get through it without being hit, and I looked over the side and it was like black velvet, the sky was so dark and I thought I’d jump out if I dared but I had no faith in my parachute and as I said to a Polish pilot I knew, he had parachuted safely and I said ‘ I think I’d jump out if I dared, but I’d be scared’ and he said ‘you wouldn’t hesitate if your arse was on fire’ and he was speaking from personal experience.
CB; So, you were with this very close-knit group, you were a good team, a good cohesive team?
JA: Yes, yes, you see when we arrived on the squadron nobody would talk to us because they couldn’t be bothered with new boys and when we became senior crew, we couldn’t be bothered to talk to new crews because on average they were only doing seven trips before they got shot down, and it was bad enough if our friends got shot down, but we didn’t care much about strangers being shot down so we didn’t really want to make any friends, because it would be traumatic when they died.
CB: And what were the conditions like at Foggia?
JA: The conditions were absolutely terrible, we were in a field, there were no gates, no fence, we were in a field with one solitary brick building, and that was the orderly room, the medical offices office and something the commanding officer used, he lived in a caravan, we lived in little four man tents, bivouac tents, you couldn’t stand up in them and we had no beds, we had to make our own beds out of bits of packing cases, and I had the side of a packing case with a strut across the middle, in the middle of my back, most uncomfortable, covered in cardboard, the mid-upper gunner, had a sheet of corrugated iron, I said ‘that’s why, that’s why he walks so funny’ [laugh]
CB: But you’d have the heat, you’d have the rain, it must have been terrible.
JA: It was, we’d have the side of the tents rolled up and the end flaps were open because the heat was so intense and we’d get a couple of hours sleep at night, but we couldn’t sleep more than a couple of hours so we’d get up and walk around, and when the sun came up it was unbearable and there was no shade anywhere, there was a place that we called the dining room and it was a roof on six poles with no sides and we sat on forms at trestle tables, and the cook, had an outside kitchen arrangement made out of oil drums, and the first thing I noticed was his black arms and white hands, he was twenty-one, he never wanted to be a cook, we called him Gladys because he was a nice boy.
CB: And was the food any better?
JA: The food was terrible, you see sometimes the food didn’t arrive, the food was brought to us by a lorry from somewhere distant each day, only enough for one day and after everybody had had a bit of it on the way there wasn’t much left for us, and there was hardly enough to keep us alive and sometimes the food didn’t arrive at all and we’d have nothing to eat for twenty-four hours and one day we said to Gladys our cook ‘ God for Christ’s sake Gladys, find something, there must be something left over’ and he scratched around and he found an onion, a raw onion each and a mug of tea, and that’s what we had and we had to do a nine hour flight, on an empty stomach and of course I smoked twenty cigarettes on every trip because it took away the hunger pangs, and then the medical officer discovered that the cook was using some sort of cans of meat and vegetable stew that had blown, and most of us got severe enteritis and people couldn’t control their bowels and there were no toilet facilities in the air, so people were doing it in their trousers, and sitting there on it for the rest of the trip, and some of the crews were yellow with jaundice, we didn’t know if it’s contagious or what caused it but we were living in what they called a malarias area, there were boards around the perimeter of the field we lived in, saying ‘caution, malarias area, malarias area, area’ and everyday a bowser arrived, a tanker of water but we couldn’t drink the water, it tasted of chlorine it was terribly strong, so we could only use it for washing ourselves and trying to wash clothes but we had no washing powder, we’d save little scraps of soap and put a shirt in a tub and leave it for three weeks to soak [slight laugh] and then rub it, and then rinse it and lie it in the sun, and in the hot sun it was dry in about an hour and we had nothing to eat except a mug of tea twice a day, and when we came back from operations we went to the debriefing tent, and there was a billy can full of lukewarm tea there and half a dozen mugs, they were never washed they were just recycled, we dipped them in the lukewarm tea, but if we were gone for more than five hours on a trip, we were given five boiled sweets which we promptly ate on the ground before we took off, and we were given a gallon of tea between seven of us, in a thermos jug, but that got cold, we’d saved it for the return trip and Jock the wireless operator used to bring the tea round for us cold, cold as ice, and about once a month we got what we called a tuppenny bar of chocolate but it was tropical chocolate and it never melted and in the air, I would put a piece of chocolate in my mouth and chew it and it became like gravel and then it became like dust and then I swallowed it but it never did melt, and one day some, some things arrived at the cook house, we thought they were bails of straw but they were dehydrated cabbage and that’s the worst thing you can have when you’re flying because our stomachs swelled up and we had to loosen our belts and our flying clothes because our stomachs were expanded enormously and we farted furiously throughout the trip.
CB: Did you have proper flying clothes in all this?
JA: We had flying clothing, we just recycled, the only ordinary clothing we had were ones left behind by casualties and of course lots of it was very old and our kit bags were still somewhere in Egypt or South Africa, following on about three months later and when I was in South Africa, I brought thirty oranges for a shilling, no for three pence, you couldn’t buy less because they were in a net, thirty for a ticky it was called, a threepnee bit [sic], and my kit bag wasn’t quite full so I put thirty oranges in there thinking the kit bag would come with me but it followed on three months later and the oranges were well ripe by that time [laughs] they were putrid, and we were allowed to wear civilian clothes in South Africa, provided we wore our service cap, we could buy bush shirts and nice clothing in the gents’ outfitters, so if we took our caps off we looked like civilians, and that was good quality stuff and when that eventually arrived in Italy we were very pleased because we’d been dressed like scarecrows up until then with all sorts, I had a brown battle dress, it wasn’t khaki it was brown, a sort of teddy bear material, I don’t know what air force or army that was from, maybe Greek or something, and it was a bit big for me so I could wear two battle dress blouses, two pairs of trousers, two shirts, two vests and three pullovers, because sometimes it was twenty below in the air and then I’d wear my flying suit, going to the toilet to urinate was a bit difficult because I had so many clothes on, I couldn’t stretch my penis long enough in the cold air to have a pee in the pee tube, which was on the side of the fuselage with a tube leading out of the aircraft but usually they were blocked up with cigarette ends [laughs]. The Americans had had ashtrays in their Liberators, they smoked in the air, smoked cigars in fact but the RAF took the ash trays out so of course we smoked in the air, nobody knew and I would smoke twenty cigarettes during a trip and now and again I’d feel like another cigarette but I’d already got one alight and then I’d think, ‘what did I do with the last cigarette end, did I stamp on it? did I drop it?’ and I’d switch a torch on which had a bit of brown paper over the glass, inside the glass because that was regulation and try and find the cigarette end on the floor somewhere and, once we took a fitter with us to another airfield and he nearly had a fit when he saw me light a cigarette because you are not allowed to smoke within so many yards of an aircraft but it was alright, it was, smoking was less of a hazard than the flak, we were carrying a ten thousand pounds of bombs and thousands of gallons of fuel, petrol and oil and pyrotechnics, photo flashes, incendiary bombs so –
CB: A cigarette was the least of your problems –
JA: A cigarette was minor.
CB: What did you make of the Liberator as a plane?
JA: Well when I flew it, because I could fly it when the automatic pilot backed and the skipper said to me ‘you can take over if you like’, it was like, it was like steering the Queen Mary, if you wanted to change course you had a wheel instead of a joystick and you’d turn the wheel and wait and nothing happens for a few seconds and then suddenly it moves, and if you don’t turn the wheel back quick enough its gone too far, so it’s too sluggish and, of course my instrument flying, I only took over at night, my instrument flying wasn’t good enough, most of my instrument flying was in the link trainer under the hood, and instrument flying was tedious and I could only stand about half an hour at a time, then I was glad when the skipper came back and took over, we were all sergeants, we liked that, because it was awkward sometimes when there was officers in the crew, in one crew the tail gunner was an officer well that seemed silly because a sergeant in that crew was a skipper and he was in charge in the air but he had to salute the tail gunner on the ground, well he should have done if they hadn’t abandoned saluting, but there was so many American officers because all of their bomb aimers or bombardiers were commissioned and the navigators and the pilots, so they always, when they talked to me they always addressed me as lieutenant because they thought I must be an officer being a bomb aimer, bombardier, and I would say ‘no we’re not one, we’re sergeants’, but you see we didn’t wear rank badges because we hadn’t got any, when we qualified at flying school, they didn’t give us any sergeant strips and when we got to the squadron nobody was wearing any rank and the commanding officer said ‘you should wear rank badges’, we said ‘we haven’t got any’ he said ‘chalk them on’, chalk them on, well that seemed so silly we didn’t bother, we said ‘we can get some from the Americans’ he said ‘you’re not allowed to wear those’, so we didn’t wear anything.
CB: Did you get on well with the Americans?
JA: Yes, oh yeah they were lovely fellows, we went to a, about twenty miles away to Foggia, was a ruined town, it had been bombed by the Germans, the Italians, the British and the Americans so there wasn’t much left of it, but there was a bath house where they had shower baths, and when we had a day off we’d hitch a ride on a lorry, lorries were conveying chalk from the quarries and we’d hitch a ride on the back of a lorry carrying limestone, and then we’d get very dusty on there, the drivers were all American Negroes and they’d say ‘where you going, down town Foggia?’ and we’d say ‘yes’, ‘get aboard’, so we’d climb up on the limestone and go to the bathhouse which was a small with half a dozen cubicles which were meant for one or two people but there were always four or six people pushing in trying to get wet, under the water, and we’d be sitting there waiting to go in with our towels and our soap, all naked, and soon as someone came out we’d push our way in and try and get some water, and after the war I was invited by the Hungarian government to go, go to a meeting in Budapest, they’d invited all available flyers of every air force that was active over Hungary during the war, well Hungary was allied with Germany and I’d bombed Hungary but the Hungarian air force was very kind to us, they took us flying, you know in their aeroplanes and there were five Americans standing there, there were only two of us they could find from England, but I said to one of the Americans ‘do you remember the shower baths in Foggia?’ he said ‘yeah I must have seen you there’ but he said ‘I didn’t recognise you there with your clothes on’[laughing].
CB: So let’s turn to your missions, your operations, what were you involved in while you were there on your long range bomber?
JA: Well we could put most eighty aircraft in the air, RAF, Liberators and Wellingtons but the Americans could put up six hundred, or nearly a thousand, they flew during the day, we flew to the same time at night and of course we had the same opposition say for sixty planes as they had when they flew six hundred so our casualties were much higher than Americans but I liked the Americans, we got on well with them, they had a camp in a field not far from us and we went to visit them once, to compare their facilities with ours and they had tents with wooden floors and wooden walls and they had stoves, we had nothing like that, we didn’t have running water, they did, they had electric light, we didn’t, they had decent food, we didn’t, they had flak jackets to protect them when they were flying, we didn’t, they had an ice cream plant for making ice cream and when the weather was very hot, they used to take the ice cream up to about fifteen thousand feet to freeze it and they had a cinema on their site, we didn’t, so we felt really rather ashamed of our conditions compared with theirs ‘cause they didn’t know how bad ours were –
CB: I’m surprised there wasn’t mutiny but I suppose –
JA: Well we had some desertions, we didn’t, we felt mutinous but we didn’t actually mutiny, and our attitude was we want to get this bloody war over and beat the Germans, and get home, but after forty operations we should have six months instructing or some other job and then come back and do another forty so not many people getting through the first forty and by the time we’d done twenty we knew we wouldn’t survive, we were the most senior crew on the squadron, we lost the flight commander and all the senior people off the squadron and when people much more experienced than us were failing to come back, we thought ‘we haven’t got much chance’, and so we reconciled ourselves to the fact that we will die but everybody’s got to die sooner or later and we thought ‘we are gonna die now instead of when we are ninety-nine’ so that cheered us up the fact that everybody has got to go sooner or later anyway but what did worry us, is the thought that we’d be severely wounded and blinded and badly burned, that sort of thing and having to live with that from the age of twenty for the rest of our lives, we didn’t like that, we had been stationed in Torquey as raw recruits, and there was a hospital there for burned air crews, air crews that had had their faces burned off and they were disgusting to look at, and horrifying, and we didn’t want that to happen to us, it was very demoralising and it was happening to other men, it never happened to us, you know, we couldn’t understand how we keep getting away with it, the plane was hit, engines were knocked out, we were landing on one wheel and two engines and all sorts of things like that, but none of us were hit yet and we went on to, the skipper had done one air experience trip, before we started operating, so he was one ahead of us he’d flown with another crew for experience, we didn’t like that ‘cause we thought ‘if he gets bumped off we’ll have a strange pilot’, and anyway we went on, watching other people dropping like flies until our, until my, my thirty-seventh trip, and I was bombing German troops in Serbia, they were evacuating from Greece and the Greek islands, back through Yugoslavia, back to the home land, to defend Germany, and we were stopping them, and no matter how much we bombed them they never really took to it and they hit me, filled me full of shrapnel.
CB: Before we get to that Jim, your first operation I believe were against oil plants in Bucharest, is that right?
JA: The first one was an oil refinery in Fiume, that was an Italian port which is now Rijeka which Fiume and Rijeka mean river, and it’s now Yugoslav, Croatia now, and I know that oil refinery well, and I know a woman who used to go to school across the bay when I was bombing that oil refinery and I thought what a terrible thing it was she lived nearby and when I went past on the bus sometimes after the war and I thought I could’ve killed her and I would’ve hated to kill her she was such a nice person and, after the war I knew a lot of Germans, the German airmen, pilots, ‘cause I speak fluent German and they always thought I was German, they used to say ‘but your father’s German?’, and ‘no, no he’s English’, well your mother is German ‘no no’, ‘well where did you learn English?’, I was the head of the German department of import export firm for years and I had to learn German at school anyway, and I had a private tutors for languages after the war and, I even spoke Italian during the war, fifteen years after the war I opened an office in Milan, and I put a man there who was a Venetian, rather posh Italian, superior you know, and I said ‘hey Franco, have you changed the language?’ and he said ‘why?’ I said ‘well during the war we used to speak differently’ and he said ‘no we haven’t changed anything’ well he said ‘after Mussolini, we didn’t call people voy we said lay’ and I said ‘no it’s not that’ I said, I only speak these days when I’m on my monthly trip to Italy, to supervise the office, I only speak to bus conductors and waiters and people like that but they speak differently to the way I spoke, so I started talking to him in Italian and he said ‘for God’s sake don’t talk to the directors of Fiat, what you speak is Neapolitan dialect’, well I didn’t know that and I thought well if it was good enough for the girls in Sorrento, it’ll have to be good enough for the rest of the Italians, he said ‘you speak like those little black fellas down in the south’, ‘cause you know there was snobbishness between the north and the south but I liked the southern Italians, they were all nice jolly people you know, I’ve even got some distant relatives that are Italian, my, my grandmother’s sister married an Italian during the first war when the Italians were on our side, and they settled in England and had a multitude of children and I knew them all.
CB: So the operations, some of which were in Ploiesti in Romania, and they had a fearful reputation.
JA: It was the most heavily defended target in the world.
CB: You were bombing these oil plants, especially the one at Ploiesti at night obviously?
JA: Yes, yes it had tremendous defences you know, because it was the oil that was vital, what really finished the war was lack of petrol, they got, they’d run out of fuel for the tanks and the aircraft so all the war we should have only really been concentrating on oil refineries, oil fields.
CB: So the operation in October to do gardening or mine laying as it was properly known, mine laying in the Danube of which you reported was the most frightening episode that you’d ever been.
JA: Well the first time that we dropped mines in the Danube, we’d been told they are secret and you must make sure you drop them in the main stream, the Germans must not get the secret of the mines, they lie dormant for three weeks and they don’t go off until the second ship passes over them, so they are virtually un-sweep able, the Germans used to fly over them with special aircraft with a big magnetic ring on it to try and explode them, they’d gun barges adrift to go over them and nothing, they couldn’t sweep them and, within a few months we’d stopped a hundred percent shipping on the Danube, which was conveying oil from Ploiesti back to the German forces, so it was a very important thing and the fighter defences were enormous, we’d seen planes shot down every few minutes and that was a bit frightening, I used to think ‘I hope there’s not somebody I know in it’, because a plane would fly along beside us for seconds, it seemed like ages, on fire, and slowly descend in a curve and explode on the ground, and we were told, ‘don’t be distracted by crashes’ but you can’t stop looking at them, wondering ‘whose that?’ and thinking ‘why don’t they get out, don’t see any parachutes’, what we didn’t know was that the Germans had upward firing guns, and they’d creep underneath the plane in the dark and fire into the belly of the plane and nobody would see them, so the gunners didn’t open fire and wondered ‘why didn’t the gunners open fire on that?’, nobody told us about it, this was the secret.
CB: No, they were doing this to Liberators? They were certainly doing it to Lancasters weren’t they, they were doing this to Liberators as well?
JA: Yeah and you see we had no ball turret underneath, the RAF took out that bull turret, we hadn’t got a gunner for it anyway and then we had a gun turret in the nose but they took all the guts out of that, to decrease the weight, so we had no guns in the front turret, we had no gun underneath that could’ve seen these upward firing guns and we didn’t carry a lot of ammunition, mining the Danube we would use all our ammunition, immediately I’d drop the bombs, I would rush back to the beam position where I’d got two machine guns, one on either side, there was no gunner for those so in the event of an attack I would use those or when we were mining the Danube, I’d drop the mines, rush back there and use those guns to strafe the shipping on the water or any insulations on the banks, the banks were two hundred feet high, and the Germans used to stretch cables from bank to bank so we had to fly below two hundred feet so we normally went to a hundred feet in the dark above the water, and then we thought we’d be safe, except there was flak barges with barrow balloons and we couldn’t see the cables from those because the barrage ruins were too high up above us and you can’t see a cable in the dark, we were going too fast anyway and, I remember one time there was a man on a barge firing at me with an automatic rifle and I gave him a quick skirt, squirt from the machine gun as I went by, I would’ve like to have met him after the war if you lived to discuss that, you know I didn’t mean it really you know, I’d say ‘I’ve got nothing against you personally’.
CB: But if you’re going to fire at me, I’m firing at you, what was your bomb load on something like this?
JA: Ten thousand pounds, you see we couldn’t carry a big bomb like the Lancaster because we’d got the cat walk going down the centre of the plane, so the bombs had to be hung in rows one above the other on either side of the cat walk, so the biggest bomb we could carry was a thousand pounds, so we carried ten of those, ten thousand pounds, which is plenty anyway and we’d carry pyrotechnics, lots of incendiaries as well.
CB: And what was your job if there was a hang up, and the bomb hadn’t been released?
JA: I had to go along the cat walk, in the dark, with no parachute, and no oxygen, and holding onto the railings in the roof and skidding about on the ten inch wide cat walk, with the, the slipstream would take away my weight so I had a job to keep on my feet and when I got to the bomb which was usually the one right to the back, I would stand on the cat walk with one leg and kick it and it would never fall off, so I had to swing then holding onto the hydraulic pipes, which were not meant to be swung from they are only about an inch diameter, I’d hold them with two hands, my wrists would go like jelly, you know, I’d swing and kick with both feet and when the bomb eventually fell off it was like my stomach went off with it, ‘cause there was always lights twinkling on the ground and thousands of feet below, and one slip and I’m off to the ground you know, seconds to live, that was terrifying. The only other terrifying thing was throwing grenades when I went on an infantry tactics course during training and, swinging propellers, on tiger moths, on a wet windy and muddy day, I thought I’ll swing in to the propeller and get my head cut off, but when I was in South Africa a chap did walk into a propeller, a navigator, and it threw his head over the hangar, so propellers were a danger, you couldn’t see them rotating, they were invisible.
CB: So now you were also involved in what was known as the Warsaw uprising or the support of that, that’s right isn’t it Jim?
JA: Yes but to go back to the mining of the Danube, the first time we mined the Danube, I said to the skipper ‘we’re too low, we’re much too low’ and he said ‘we’re at a hundred feet’ and I thought ‘we’re bloody not’, I could tell by the droplets of water we’re not at a hundred feet, when we got back to base the compass was, the radio compass was checked and we’d been at thirty feet in the dark, if we’d touched the water we’d have been gone, so that, it was terrifying yet there was no, there was no pay off, if you dropped the bombs you’d see the explosions and things, you’ve done something but you dropped mines that are not going to go off for three weeks or more then there’s no, the stress is there, there’s no release from the stress except machine gunning like mad, and then of course on the way back you would get attacked by fighters so then I was stay by the beam guns or as the Americans call them the waist guns, and that was quite exciting really firing those, but the reflector sides illuminated, were too bright, they were meant to be used during the day and I couldn’t see through them at night so I switched them off and I fired watching where the trace goes ‘cause every fifth bullet it was a tracer, so I fired a gun like squirting a hose, and they’d burn out about I don’t know whether it was six hundred yards but up to that time I could see where they were going, firing like watering the garden it was, with a hose pipe [laughing] anyway you were asking me about?
CB: Supporting the Warsaw uprising, dropping the supplies?
JA: Yeah, I’d bombed a place in Hungary, we were pretty tired, it was the second of two nights we’d been in the air, and we eventually got back in the tent to go to bed and within three hours a runner, a runner arrived from the orderly room and he said ‘you’ve got to report for briefing’, we’ve only been in the tent for three hours and we were told you’re going on a secret operation, fly down to Brindisi, we didn’t know what it was all about, and in Brindisi we went into a hut and there was a big map on the end wall and it showed a tape going from Brindisi to Warsaw, we thought well it’s nothing to do with us, the Poles are on our side we’re not going to bomb Warsaw, but then we were briefed and told we’re not going to bomb, we’re going to drop supplies of explosives and ammunition and guns for the underground resistance fighters who were fighting in the city against the Germans and, they were expecting the Russians to arrive any minute so on the 1st of August they’d started to fight, and they were doing well for a few days, and the Russians stopped their advance so the Poles were on their own so they appealed for help, apparently Winston Churchill was in Italy checking the arrangements for the south of France invasion which was imminent and he said, ‘we must help the Poles, we went to join the war on their account, we can’t stand idly by’, our air officer commander told us this later and, so he said we should go with the special duty squadrons, there was an Polish squadron and an RAF squadron dropping supplies but they’d lost so many men so they couldn’t continue so three liberator bomber squadrons were called in to do the supply dropping, they said ‘you must, you must drop from below six hundred feet and the poles said ‘two hundred, otherwise the parachute containers will drift away’ and they said ‘we’ve been there, it’s safer at a hundred feet because then the Germans can’t bring the guns to there because at a hundred feet you’ve come and gone quickly’, but they said ‘there’s one building still standing and that’s sixty meters high, so don’t fly into that in the middle of the night’, when we got to Warsaw, the whole city was on fire, gun fire and everything was burning and we’d been told a particular street and squares where we were to drop the supplies but nothing was recognisable so I remembered them saying, Zoliborz, a district of Warsaw is still in the hands of the insurgents, well that was a few days ago and I thought there doesn’t seem to be any fires, or no fighting going on as far as I could see, we fly around for fifty minutes and planes were getting shot down all around us and I’d eventually counting the bridges, I knew where Zoliborz was, I dropped the supplies there and I said to the wireless operator, ‘we must be bloody mad you know flying around fifty minutes’ and he said ‘well we’re not going all that way to drop them in the wrong bloody place’, I thought we’re all crazy, the psychiatrist reported that we were crazy, in their official reports, which I read after the war, ‘they must be crazy and they all think it won’t happen to them’, it’s insulting, we knew it was going to happen to us sooner or later, why shouldn’t it happen to us, it did happen to me in the end, fortunately it wasn’t quite fatal [laughing] .
CB: Glad to hear it, so that was your philosophy really to imagine that you had been killed already basically?
JA: Well we knew that we would die eventually anyway, so it’s like people ask you ‘when did you have your holidays?’, when you’ve had it, doesn’t matter if it was June or September, its gone, so doesn’t matter when you die really, if you’ve got to die anyway what’s the date matter, we had to tell ourselves that sort of thing, but we had superstitions, we had lots of superstitions, my friend Deakey (?) the navigator, he had a lucky shirt and he couldn’t fly without his lucky shirt and if it was dirty he had to wash and dry it quickly ready for flying that night, we only fly once without his lucky shirt and we got lost, and that was on the way back from Warsaw, we went twice to Warsaw and each night we lost thirty percent and by the third night we’d lost ninety percent, ninety, the air force pretended it was seventeen percent but everybody knows it was ninety percent and there are plenty of documents saying it was ninety percent and our air officer commanding Sir John Slessor wrote a book in which he [said] the time of the Warsaw uprising was the worst time of his career and he mentioned it was ninety percent but after the war, Stalin had to be appeased so we didn’t want to tell, didn’t want to emphasize anything we did that he didn’t agree with, ‘cause Stalin was anti-Poles and he’d stopped his army to allow the Germans to polish off Warsaw, and Hitler said eradicate Warsaw, it was to be razed to the ground and he gave an order ‘all inhabitants to be killed’ and the new German commander who wrote a book after the war, he said ‘you don’t mean women and children?’ and he was told ‘yes’ [emphasis], the whole population is to be killed, that’s what was going on when we were flying over there, and we were told ‘if you get shot down near the Russian lines, they will shoot you, especially if you are dressed in blue’, well of course we were dressed in blue we were in the Air Force, so it was a bit late to tell us that now and, while we were flying to Warsaw we were being shot at by the Russians and the Germans because they didn’t agree with us helping the Poles, the Poles got a medal, the Germans got a special badge, the Russians got a medal, I’ve got one of them as a souvenir, and we got nothing, we got no recognition.
CB: Andy your pilot comes over as very calm.
JA: Yes, he was very determined, he was very stubborn and of course he was the skipper, he was in charge but I always felt that I was in charge you see and when we were lost on the way back from Warsaw, Deakey the navigator called me up and said ‘Jimmy can I have a word with you’, well I thought there’s something wrong and I just asked him a little while ago, ‘do you want a pinpoint?’ ‘cause I would navigate by map reading all the way there and back you see, but I hadn’t bothered because he, I said ‘do you want a pinpoint?’ and he said ‘no, no I’m alright’ now he says ‘can I have a word with you?’, so I scrambled up the front to the nose compartment and the tears were dripping off his chin and he said ‘I don’t know what country we’re over’, I said ‘give me the typographical maps, I’m shit hot at map reading, I could tell you in a few seconds where you are’ and I said ‘we’ve got no maps for this place whatever it is’, when we should be over the sea, we’re over land and when we should be over land we were over the sea of course we were over the Greek islands, they’re all messy you know, the little bits and we’ve got no map for that place and I didn’t know until after the way why we hadn’t got a map, the reason was he’d got diarrhoea and he’d used the map because there wasn’t any toilet in plane, and he wrapped it up and chucked it out down the flare shoot, that’s where the map was the Germans had got it, bit messy, and the plane had been on fire, the wireless operator had the wireless set in pieces and he was in his element putting it together, you know mending it, he was busy and I, went up the front to have a chat to the skipper with Andy, and I said to the flight engineer, he pushed past me to look at the fuel gauges, they were like a gauge on an oil tank, like a domestic oil tank, visual gauge with a bubble in tubes, I said ‘how we’re doing?’ he said ‘empty’, I said ‘we can’t be empty we’re still flying’ he said ‘yeah but I don’t know how long for’, we’re flying over aerodromes with German planes with black crosses on, they’re freight planes but we daren’t try and land there otherwise the you know the ground defences open up on us, so I said to Andy ‘we’re heading to the mountains’ and I said to him ‘land on this road’ I said ‘these strong, straight roads’ I said ‘we’re just flying over one now, look you can land here, that’s what I would do if I were you’ and he said ‘I think we’ll press on’, I thought ‘you’re mad, press on, [emphasis] we’re flying into the mountains and we’re out of fuel, and in any minute all the engines are going to cut out’, anyway he was right and we did press on and we got eventually over the sea and the radio operator had got the wireless together again and he always used to stand up and point when he was listening on the radio and he started waving his arms about and pointing and he said its Brindisi and we were facing the runway, we running up to Brindisi and we went straight in, if there had been anybody in the way we couldn’t have done round the circuit because when we got to the end of the runway the, all engines cut out, out of fuel, so we told the duty pilot where we were and that we were out of fuel, so they put some fuel in and flew back to Amendola near Foggia, of course we’d been gone so long we couldn’t still be in the air, our trip was eleven hours and forty minutes plus over an hour going to Brindisi over an hour coming back so we were so tired, I’d already dropped off to sleep for the last half an hour and when the plane landed I was still asleep and the ground crew got in and stirred me with a foot to wake me up, I was just dead tired, I’d been in the air longer than I’d been on the ground for about three days and no sleep at all you know (tired, hungry?) yeah but we were always hungry.
CB: And then you’d have to have the debriefing?
JA: Yes, that didn’t take long because we were always a bit impatient at debriefing, we’d answer questions, we didn’t volunteer any information and always something had gone wrong with the plane, like the guns didn’t fire, the oxygen cylinders were empty, all sorts of things, one engine cut out, two engines cut out and the ground crew would run out to us soon as we landed and they’d shout ‘any snags, any snags?’ and we’d swear and shout and say ‘this went wrong and that went wrong’ using lots of ‘f’ words but then we’d never report the snags, because we relied on those lads and it wasn’t their fault, the planes were clapped out anyway and they’d work through the night perhaps maintenance and they couldn’t get spares and some of the things they did were, were fatal, and they couldn’t help it, one of them said to me, ‘I don’t get very close to the air crews, I don’t make friends with them because’ he said ‘if a plane goes missing I’d wonder if I did something wrong or whether I’d forgot to do something’ and he said ‘I’ve been on a squadron a long time and lots of planes have gone missing and I always feel it might be my fault’ so he said ‘I don’t like to get friendly with air crews’, I can understand that, when I used to go to the, we weren’t allowed to take anything with us like a bus ticket or money or anything like that, and so I had a little wallet and I used to hand it to the sergeant fitter, ground crew fitter and I’d say ‘take that Jake and if I don’t come back you can keep it’, and he’d take it but he didn’t like touching it really and when I got back he’d shove it at me as soon as he could ‘cause he didn’t want anything to do with dead men’s property and I can understand that you know, he was squeamish and when I got wounded he was the chap who lifted me up and carried me out of the plane.
CB: So what happened on that your final operation obviously, what was it the thirty-seventh out of forty?
JA: Yes
CB: And what happened Jim?
JA: When we were told the target would be undefended, and for the first time ever you can bomb anywhere in the town, it’s just full of Germans, so I dropped a stick of bombs at predetermined intervals, and I hit about two or three blocks of flats right in the middle, the next one between two blocks of flats, the next one a road and rail junction, and then I said to the skipper, ‘hold this course for half a minute because we’re going into mountains now’, and we were low you see because the visibility you had to come down very low, ‘cause of the cloud, and just as I said that the tail gunner said ‘it’s flak, it’s stern’ and WOOF [emphasis to express being hit], and it’s a sensation like if you’re playing football and the football is wet and heavy and somebody kicks it and it hits you straight in the face, it’s a numb sensation at first and then comes the pain, well this was like a puff of wind, like being hit with something but no pain what so ever and then floods of blood, I seemed to be bleeding to death, and I felt for my parachute pack because I thought we were getting shot down but I was the only one hit actually, we were hit in one engine and me and the navigator wrote in his diary; ‘Jim’s eyeball is hanging out on his cheek’ [laughs] actually it wasn’t, I’d got a lump of Perspex because all the Perspex had become shrapnel, and there was a piece about four inches long stuck in my eyeball and of course all the blood was running down my face because I was hit in the head and the face and everywhere and the blood running down this Perspex made it look as though my eye was hanging out you see so he couldn’t look at me, so he tapped me on the head and I could see he was talking, we had throat microphones, American throat microphones, it were very efficient and he was telling the crew I’d been hit, I crawled under the flight deck and when I stood up in the well, the back of the flight deck, the wireless operator had got all the first aid kits open and he wanted to put one on my face but he was hesitant to do it and I thought ‘do it, do it’, but of course there was this four inch long piece of shrapnel stuck in my eye, and it wasn’t until it fell out that he could put bandages on and then he bandaged everything that was bloody including my right arm which was badly damaged and my left arm which I’d used to investigate my other wounds and that wasn’t damaged but it was very bloody so he bandaged that as well, he bandaged everything and then he said ‘I’ll give you a shot of morphine’, I said ‘I’m not in pain’, I had no pain what so ever and that frightened me because I thought, if you get your legs chopped off you don’t feel any pain, because the body reacts as though you get shock but you don’t feel pain and I thought I’m dying, I must be dying and I said ‘I’m not in any pain I don’t need morphine’ and he got some out the first aid thing and I’d got my eyes shut and he stuck the thing in my arm and the morphine came like a marble, raised up, it didn’t disperse and when we landed he said to the ground crew ‘I’ve tied a label on him saying I gave him morphine at twelve o’clock, but I know now that I shouldn’t do that because he’s got a head wound’ and ‘oh Christ he’s killed me instead of the Germans’ [laughing].
But anyway, all we did all the time was sing and tell jokes, and it was like a rugby club –
CB: In the military hospital?
JA: No on the squadron, we weren’t morose and we weren’t miserable, in fact everything was hilarious and because we had to keep flying it didn’t matter what we did, hooliganism didn’t matter, drunkenness, it didn’t matter, because we were either up in the air or we had a group stand down when we’d have two of three days off due to so many casualties, waiting for new crews and new aeroplanes, and we’d get drunk and forget everything you see, and if, if unexpectedly we had to fly after a night a free night in the mess and drunkenness, we’d have a headache like you’ve never experienced and I went to the medical officers little cubby hole and there was a youth leaning up the doorpost and I pushed past him and I was opening boxes and things looking for an aspirin and I said to this fella, ‘do you know where they keep the aspirins?’ and he said ‘yeah’ and he told me and I said ‘you know your way around?’ and he said ‘yeah I’m the medical officer’ [laughs]
CB: So you found yourself in this hospital?
JA: Yeah when, after we landed, I was put on a stretcher, propped up in a sitting position on some blankets, some blankets behind me and it seemed to take ages and the flight engineer said ‘what’s the bloody delay? Get him to hospital’ and they said ‘we’re checking the first aid kits’ which all had been opened and used and they said ‘there’s a pair of scissors missing’ and that’s why they were delaying and he said ‘if you don’t get him to hospital right away I’m gonna bloody do the lot of ya’, and he was a tough Shetlander and that made them pull their socks up, and they put me in the ambulance to go seven miles, no twenty miles into Foggia to the general hospital, military hospital, and the skipper said ‘I’ll come with you’, well he shouldn’t have, he should’ve gone back to be debriefed but I was glad he came with me, ‘cause I didn’t know what I looked like, I didn’t know if my ear had been chopped off or whether I’d got a complete nose ‘cause I knew a piece of shrapnel had creased the top of my nose and the bottom, I didn’t know how bad things were and he said I can show you and he and he got a little stainless steel or chrome mirror in his pocket and he showed me but that’s very distorting and I thought ‘bloody hell look at that’, and I heard the nurses talking and they were talking as though I was already dead and one of them said ‘he must have been a good looking boy’, he must have been? [emphasis] I’m still here, you know, and they stripped me, cut all me clothes off and I felt a bit embarrassed because I’d borrowed a pair of long johns from the tail gunner and I was stripped down to my long johns and I felt that was a bit embarrassing because long johns were a bit silly aren’t they, and then the skipper went back then but he had to hitch hike back and he was in his flying kit you know, and when he got back he got a bollock-ing ‘cause he should have gone straight back not gone to the hospital with me, and anyway he got over that and they decided as he’d done one more trip than me anyway and they couldn’t manage without me and they hadn’t got anyone to replace me, the crew could stop now and go for a rest period, and after a few days they did go, and so there I was in hospital four and a half hours, and a chap from the squadron had sprained his wrist or something and he called at the hospital, to see the medical officer at the hospital and he said, the medical officer said ‘we’ve got a chap from your squadron in here’ and he said ‘oh I’d like to go and see him’ and he said ‘no you better not he’s just recovering from four and a half hours on the operating table so you won’t be able to talk to him yet’, and I came round and it was evening but I couldn’t see and I was bound up like an invisible man, just all bandages and I could see a white apparition by the bed and I thought ‘I’m alive’, surprisingly and I muttered, [clears throat] ‘could you tell me if they’ve taken my ear off?’ and this thing said ‘what are you here for?’, and I said ‘I’ve been wounded’, and she said ‘well you’re have to wait until the day staff comes on, I don’t know anything about you’ so I had to wait the rest of the night to find out whether I’d got a nose and whether I had only got one ear and that worried my because in the day of short haircuts I thought I’d look a fool with only one ear [slight laugh] isn’t that silly and, of course I was blind in one eye and the, every hour they dropped penicillin in my eye, it was icy cold, they said ‘you’re lucky, you’re being treated with this new penicillin, new’, I’d never even heard of it and I said ‘can you warm it up, it’s cold’ they said ‘we keep it in the refrigerator’ [slight laugh], anyway, after a few days I was totally blind because my left, my left eye had been alright, well reasonable but then I was totally blind in both eyes and I heard them muttering about cross infection in the ward and I had to lie flat on my back for a month, thirty days I wasn’t allowed to sit up or move due to the eye treatment, they said ‘we’ve healed eyes before but usually they get an infection in the end and we have to remove them’ and I thought well if I can’t see with it it doesn’t matter, I might look alright with an eye patch, a talking point and they transferred me to another ward, they lifted me up flat, put me on a stretcher, wheeled me away, and all the others in the ward had thought I’d died and I said well nobody talked to me anyway, they said, ‘well when your eyes were bound up we didn’t know whether you were awake or asleep’, well I didn’t know what time it was or what date it was or anything and I used to doze off and come back to consciousness again all the time and I never knew whether it was morning or afternoon or evening and I used to listen to what was going on, are these night time sounds or day time sounds, very difficult to tell. Anyway I then after a while when I’d recovered a bit I had more operations on my eye under local anaesthetic, terribly painful, they picked out bits of steel, bits of Perspex and a piece of wood and the chap said to me, ‘what wood was there in the air craft?’ I said ‘well it was made of aluminium’ he said ‘well you’ve got a piece of wood in your eye, a tiny piece’, then I remembered, there was an air blower near the bomb airmen’s position and it would blow in my face so I used to put map over it and stand the astro compass box up against it and it was made of wood and of course that had been shattered and a piece of wood obviously went in my eye, and when they cut my clothes off in the hospital I’d got three pullovers on, lots of clothes you know, multiples of everything and two of the pullovers were air force issue but one I’d brought at Marks and Spencer’s before I joined up and I thought ‘steady on that’s my pullover they cut in half’ you know and that watch that got took off I brought that you know, got no compensation, but anyway it was terrible in the hospital because nobody had any time for me, I don’t know whether they were opposed to the bomber offensive or what it was.
CB: So what nationality were they, the nursing staff?
JA: British, in that hospital they were British, in a second hospital they had Italian nurses that was a bit better but the British nurses were quite cruel really and, except for one, she used to be on night duty and she’d come and sit on the bed and talk to me at night and bring me a cup of tea, I think she fancied me [laughing] and anyway when I could stand up, because I felt very dizzy, it was very difficult to stand up after being about six weeks in bed and I’d only got blood stained clothes on, ‘cause one battle dress was though the rats had eaten it, it just fell open, as I’d got more than one battle dress on, one of them weren’t too bad and, but it was all blood stained and my flying boots were all caped with blood and I felt stupid you know I wanted to have proper clothes, and I felt very truculent and resentful, and the nurse came round and she said ‘lie to attention’ [emphasis] and I said ‘what does that mean?’, she said ‘both arms above the sheets down by your sides, feet together, head straight’, [coughs] I said ‘I can’t do it’, can we wait a minute [pauses] and then got it up gradually from twenty to eighty percent.
CB: So you’re still in the hospital, how long were you in the hospital?
JA: Three months and I was transferred then to a place called Torre del Greco to another hospital, and we’d got Italian nurses there, very pretty, black hair and uniforms, white dresses with a red cross on their chest and their English was a bit faulty and they’d come round every day and ask me ‘lavatory?’ [puts on an accent] and I’d say ‘what’s that?’, ‘lavatory?’ [in accent again], that’s all they could say and I’d say ‘I don’t understand’, and then they’d write something down and go away and I was there for a month and then I was discharged and told you’re on twenty four hour stand by to go back to England wounded, never happened, after a few weeks, they put red crosses on my kit bags and loaded them on board a ship, I had a two week visit, sorry a two week voyage back to England through the, past Gibraltar, through the Bay of Biscay, submarine alert all the time, no beds no chairs and I sat on a form leaning on a table for two weeks.
CB: Still of course not a hundred percent?
JA: No I was ill, very ill and every now and then submarine alert and I’d got to scramble up on deck in a life vest and over coat and have to stand there in the drizzle and rain until the submarine alert was over, and I wasn’t treated as an invalid at all, I was just with the other troops, nobody had a bed, nobody had a chair, if some of them if they were lucky they could climb on the table and sleep on the table but I couldn’t get on the table so I had to sit on the form and lean forward on the table all night, and we put into Liverpool and we spent twenty four hours in the docks while the customs went thoroughly through the ship examining everything, I thought some people have been abroad for several years, what the hell are they looking for? and we’re all British anyway, and then I got off the boat and I had to carry two kit bags with the red crosses on, all to the station put them on the train unaided, I thought ‘what they hell are the red crosses for?’, and I reported to the Air Ministry with me two kit bags and they said ‘you’ve been sent back because they haven’t got the right facilities for treating you in Italy’, so I expected to go back into hospital again but they gave me five weeks leave, didn’t give me any money, they didn’t ask me where will you go on your five weeks leave but they said ‘every week report here again’, well my, fortunately my father was at an Air Ministry unit at Harrow and my parents lived in Hillingdon on the outskirts of London, so I could live with them, the morning after I arrived there, in my funny garb of odds and sods and I hadn’t got a proper uniform, I heard the first time of Doodlebug what we called pilotless planes (B1) I had heard about them, didn’t realise they were so noisy, I knew when the motor cut out they’d come down and one came over and the motor stopped and I said to my mother ‘what do you do?’ she said ‘don’t do anything’ and she went outside to peg some washing on the line and it just dropped at Greenford, which was not very far away from [pauses] not very far away from where we were living and then the rockets came and they were terrifying, the V2s, the rockets, because you’d hear terrible explosion and then hear them coming and in the newspapers and on the radio it was saying ‘gas mains exploding all over London’, well that was a lie, my father knew what they were and he was told ‘don’t evacuate your family as it will cause panic’ so he had to stay there, couldn’t tell his family the danger, it was quite silly during the war because when the Germans bombed a town we weren’t allowed to know which town it was, on the radio it would say ‘bombs were dropped at random’ and we thought ‘Random must be totally destroyed by now because its bombed every night’ [laughs], anyway my father said ‘haven’t you got a proper uniform’, I’d got this brown battle dress which I wore with a blue shirt and a black tie and a hat that had collapsed with a badge I had brought in a bazaar in Egypt which wasn’t a regulation badge, an air force badge it was sort of a souvenir thing bought in a bazaar ‘cause someone had stolen my badge and, he sized me up and brought me a tunic anyway but I was wearing a flying badge and strips on this brown thing and I was hoping people would ask me ‘what the hell are you?’ but nobody ever asked and I was passing military policemen, they should have said ‘excuse me, what air force are you in?’, nobody ever asked because there was so many foreigners in London of different armies and air forces that everybody looked different, anyway I realised I wasn’t, on my weekly visits to the Air Ministry, I wasn’t seen by what I would call proper doctors, I was seeing men in white coats, now psychiatry was in this infantry or psycho analysis and we were prime subjects for it because we were all bloody crackers, you see, so they asked me all sorts of questions, not about my injuries, no medical treatment but things like ‘do you like girls? What sort of girls do you like? Do you dream? What do you dream about?’ so I made things up, course the chap was writing things all down in long hand, ‘what sort of girls do you like?’ I said ‘girls with red hair’, well I had only known one girl with red hair, I nearly said to him girls who do or girls who say yes [laughing] but ‘what do you dream about’ so I made it up a dream and told him and it would amuse me to see him scribbling it all down, no medical treatment what so ever then I got a telegram, report to Innsworth, and I said to my father who’d worked his way up you see from being a corporal in the first world war to being a squadron leader, acting wing commander and he knew all the ropes, I said to him ‘god I could do with a few more days leave’ and he said ‘well send them a telegram’, I said what will I say?’ he said ‘wedding’, so I thought telegram style is quite ambiguous you see, and instead of saying ‘I request extension of leave for my wedding’ I just said ‘for wedding’, so it could be anybody’s wedding, they said forty eight hours granted and report to Manby in Lincolnshire, well I still hadn’t got proper uniform and everything, just one tunic my father had given me, this funny cap and other odd things you know, and I had to buy everything I needed to make it up, you should have three of everything, three pairs of trousers, three tunics etc. I had to buy it from the stores and a 664B which it the payment on clothing on repayment form, I can remember even the name of the form, form 664B, and I had it stopped out of my pay, so I was looking for a job, nobody knew what I was there for, there were people on a course, officers training courses and I said, they said ‘are you an instructor’ I said ‘I don’t know, can I look at your books?’ they showed me the books and I said ‘no I don’t know any of this stuff, it’s all up to date, you know I don’t know it so I can’t be an instructor’, ‘are you a pupil?’ I said ‘no I’m off flying so I can’t be a pupil’, I got pally with the armourist officer and I said ‘I’m sick of just hanging about, three weeks and nothing to do and have you got anything I can do?’ and he said ‘well we need someone to take charge of the low level bombing range but it’s night work’, I said ‘well I’ve got nothing to do during the day or during the night so I might as well be working at night, sleeping in the day’, so he gave me a squad of blokes and WAAFs and I was in charge of bombing range so after another three or four weeks he said ‘guess what, your documents have come through and you are attached to my section anyway, what would you like to do?’, I said ‘well what is there?’, he gave me two or three options and said ‘there’s a detachment on the coast with three bombing ranges, have a ride out there on the ration lorry, see if you like it, you can take charge of one of the ranges’, so I thought well anything to get away from the real air force, get away on a detachment.
CB: Your eyes were alright now were they?
JA: No, no I still couldn’t see out of my right eye, but they said, they introduced peace time regulations and things you see after the war had ended, and they said annual musketry, everybody must attend so I went to the rifle range and I fired off so many rounds and I didn’t get any bullets on the target at all, so they said ‘something must be wrong there, will you do it again?’, well I couldn’t see the target never mind hit it, and I was trying to use my left eye with the rifle on the right side you see and that’s impossible, anyway I was in charge of the bombing range for a year or two and I was sent for by the commanding officer, he was an air commodore and he said ‘air crews are allowed to take trade training’, and I said ‘well I don’t need any because I’ll be demobbed in about six months, demobilised, don’t need any trade training’, I said ‘what is there anyway?’, he said you’re only allowed to take group one or group two trades and I said ‘what are the group one’s and group two’s?’ he said ‘there aren’t any’, I said ‘well what is there then?’ he said ‘well if don’t volunteer for one of these I’ll damn well send you on one’ he said ‘there’s plenty of openings for cooks’, I said ‘oh I’d like to be a cook’, I thought you’re in the warm and you can get plenty to eat if you’re in the cook house, I said ‘I’d like to train as a cook’ and he was furious, he said ‘that’s a group five trade, you’re not allowed to take a low trade’ well I thought well it’d be nice you know in the winter in the cook house [laughing] so he said ‘I’m sending you on a photographic course’, so all the other people, I was in charge of the course of twenty five men because I was a senior man, and the others were people who had joined up to fly but before they could start training the war had finished so they got to go onto ground jobs, and the ones on the course were amateur photographers and they knew everything, well all I knew was you point a camera and press the thing and you send it off to Boots, and when it comes back it’s prints and how they do it I don’t care, but now I had to learn all about it, take photographs of things moving and you know all sorts, people walking, cycling, aeroplanes taking off and all that, I learned quite a bit actually and then I was transferred to Benson, near Oxford and I was put in charge of the photographic section, well I was the most naive photographer in the world because I wasn’t even interested, but I was put in charge and they were doing an air survey of the United Kingdom and Scandinavia, and doing hundreds of feet of film and it was all going through machines and it was all automatic, well I’d never seen such machinery and the photographic officer was always sliding off somewhere and he’d put me in charge and disappear and when he came back he’d say ‘hundreds of yards of film have been ruined’ and ‘how did that happen?’ and he said ‘you didn’t make them clean the film’ well I didn’t know they had to clean the film [slight laugh], so it wasn’t too bad because there was a lot of women there, WAAFs, they were quite jolly and I used to open the section at nine o’clock in the morning and they’d say ‘right we’re go off to breakfast now’ and we’d go down by the river, the Thames and have bacon and eggs and stroll back when we felt like it, and I hadn’t got the faintest idea, some of the people knew what they were doing and some didn’t you see, I didn’t know at all [laughs], so eventually I was demobilised from there and it took place at Uxbridge and I was given a chalk striped suit, like Max Miller I felt, and a hat, I’d never worn a trilby hat and we looked in mirrors in our civilian clothes and laughed like hell because we’d never worn anything like that before and when we come out the demobilisation centre there were chaps hanging around offering you two quid for the box of clothing, I offered them the hat, they didn’t want that, they wanted coats and trousers, ‘cause clothing was rationed you see, and the thing I would have really like to keep was an over coat because they had good overcoats in the air force and I hadn’t worn an overcoat you see, so I went to a market and they were selling second hand clothes which weren’t rationed and I brought a sailor’s overcoat [laughs].
CB: Did you keep in touch with your crew after the war?
JA: Up until the time they died, yes, except the one from the Shetlands who emigrated to New Zealand so we lost touch with him, but the rest of us stayed in touch until they all died, one at a time, not all together but they got heart attacks and cancer and things and I think that was through the stress they had during the war.
CB: You became a very successful international businessman after the war.
JA: I did, yes, I devoted all my time to educating myself, I attended a technical school, it was a commercial and technical school, they had commercial boys who did short hand typing and book keeping and technical boys, I was one, we did metal work and wood work and higher mathematics’ and science, advance subjects you know, we didn’t do the nice subjects like art anymore and scripture and things you know, easy subjects, we didn’t do that.
CB: There is one point I wanted to ask you, you were awarded the DFM, the Distinguished Flying Medal –
JA: Yes.
CB: Did you accept it?
JA: No I didn’t, I got a message, chaps used to come into town, my old friends who’d trained with me and were still on the squadron and they’d come in they said, one of them said, ‘see you got a gong then?’ and I said ‘I don’t know anything about it’, he said it was on DROs, daily routine orders, I did know about it because an officer appeared one day in the hospital and he sat on the bed next to me and I couldn’t see him, I couldn’t recognise him properly, because my eyes were badly affected and he said, in a very pompous way he said, ‘I have honour to inform you, that you have been awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal’ and it was as though I could hear a radio on in the background, it didn’t sound like me at all, and I heard myself saying ‘tell them to stick it up their arse, I don’t want a bloody medal, I want some clothes, I want a shirt and a tunic, and some trousers, I want some shoes’, because they hadn’t provided me with anything and another thing that upset me was a bitch had had puppies on the squadron, in the tent lines, and I’d got one of these puppies and that was the only thing I’d got in the world, I’d got the rest of the crew but I didn’t own them and the only thing I owned was this little Italian dog, he was a kind of Labrador and I used to save a bit on my plate from dinner or breakfast and bring it back for him, put it on the ground and he’d lick the plate clean, and the next morning I’d go to breakfast, forget to wash the plate and I’d remember later ‘oh god I forgot to wash the plate’, because it was always so clean, you see he’d licked it clean, and the lads came to the hospital and they said ‘the CO’s had all the dogs shot’, ‘what, why’d he do that, shot all the dogs?’, ‘cause they were good for morale those dogs and I used to look forward to my little dog you know when I came back from my trips, it might be the last day of my life, and he shot it, and that’s why I didn’t take the DFM, why I told them to stick it up their arse, now years after the war when I moved to Lincolnshire from London, where I live now, I was in Lincoln when I met somebody who turned out to be a flight commander from the squadron, and he was not the same flight I was in, we had A flight and B flight, he was the other flight and he said, I didn’t know him on the squadron ‘cause he came after I’d you know done most of my trips, he was the new boy, and he said ‘do you know the CO is still alive, he lives in Norfolk’ I said ‘no, I didn’t know that’ he said ‘I’ll give you his details, his telephone number and address’, so I phoned him and I said ‘I’d like to come and check a few things with you ‘cause I’m writing a manuscript for a book and the sort of things I’ve heard, I heard that you were a group captain dropped down to wing commander because you wanted what the Americans called some combat time, we thought you must be bloody potty,’ because he was non-compassionate at that time you see, I said ‘there’s certain things I’d like to check with you whether it’s true or not’, I went to see him, I said you never talked to us on the squadron because we were sergeants, he said ‘well I couldn’t because you were so much more experienced than me’ he said ‘I kept a low profile’ and I said ‘well you won’t remember me but I’ll tell you something now and it’ll remind you who I am’ and I told him about the DFM and where it should be stuck and he was flabbergasted, I had come back from dead you know to haunt him and he’d got a couple of dogs there you know, young two dogs, and how would he feel now if I shot his dogs –
CB: Did you mention that to him?
JA: I didn’t no, I just told him I was so embittered and outraged that I didn’t want the bloody medal but of course it was a mistake, looking at the Antiques Roadshow one day, I saw a few ordinary medals being auctioned and a DFM, and the DFM made about six thousand pounds or something put together with the other medals and I said to my wife what a fool I was I should’ve taken it, but it was involuntary you know when I said it, it was as though I wasn’t speaking, I was listening to somebody saying it, and I was in a bad way of course, I’d got no short term memory, for many months, I didn’t dare tell anybody because I wanted to get back on to flying you see, I thought you can fly with one eye, I’m not interested in anything else only flying, they wouldn’t have it, and [pauses] I was eventually, I was on this photographic course and coming out of a darkroom into the sunlight I couldn’t see I was blinded, my eyes are streaming, so I was sent to an army doctor in Aldershot, and he said to me ‘you’re up to British army standards’ and I said ‘maybe I am because you’re calling up people with one eye now’, they were towards the end of the war they called up people to serve with one eye. And I went back to my unit, one day I was called for by the medical officer and he said ‘you should have had a medical board last year’, I said ‘I did have one’ and he said ‘why do you say that? Nothing in your records about it’, I said ‘I went to Watchfield and I had a railway warrant for myself and a party of airmen and I was in charge, ‘and what do alleged happened?’, I said ‘well the medical officer who gave me a board he said ‘what’s your condition?’ and I said ‘about the same’ and he said ‘right we’ll leave it at that then, same’ and he said ‘I can’t understand you saying that’, and I said, he was flicking over pages in a file, I said, the pages are numbered, I said to him ‘there’s one page missing’ he said ‘it’s nothing to do with you’, I said ‘well it’s my records it’s something to do with me, that’s the page that gives you know, details of my last medical board’, he said ‘I’m a squadron leader, I’m competent to conduct medical boards, you are A1’, and I thought I can’t be A1, what’s their game, I thought, well they don’t want to pay me a pension for not being A1, so nothing I can do about it, I left the Air Force and I signed on with a panel doctor just before the National Health Service came into being, and he said I’ll just check you over while you’re here and he said ‘good God man you’re in a terrible state, what the hell has happened to you?’ I said ‘I was wounded when I was flying in the Air Force’, he said ‘well you should get a pension’ and I said ‘I can’t get a pension, I’m A1’ [laughs] he said ‘the bastards’ he said, ‘they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it’, he said ‘I’ll get some British Legion forms and fill them in for you, you sign it and send them off’, so that happened, I took a day off, I thought this is a waste of time and they said ‘yes you are due for compensation’, gave me nine shillings a week, nine shillings, I didn’t need nine shillings anyway within two years I was an armour men’s designer working for the Ministry of Defence and from there I progressed upwards until I was managing director or chairman of three companies at the same time and I was making an awful lot of money.
CB: How do you look back at your time in the RAF? is it with –
JA: With disgust, you see when I was a child, daddy was in the Air Force, all his friends were in the Air Force, they were my heroes, we were, Douglas Bader was stationed on there and he used to come to my father’s house and I saw Lord Trenchard, he was going by in his car on the aerodrome and people who became very famous later and I admired them, they were all my heroes, Amy Johnson and Jim Mollison, all those people you know, civilian pilots, I didn’t know any other life so naturally I joined the Royal Air Force and when we were living at Cranwell, that time 1929 and then again just before the war, the Royal Air Force was known as the world’s finest flying club, it wasn’t very big, only about thirty thousand men in the RAF, they would join with no rank and they’d go out in seven years with no rank, there was no promotion, you see there’s no expansion until late 1930’s and everybody seemed to know everybody, my father knew every commanding officer throughout the world, and he was well known, when I was in the RAF people remembered him you know and they’d look at my name and they’d say ‘have you got any relations in the service?’, and my brother was in the RAF and he said ‘I always say no, ‘cause we don’t want to let the old man down’, ‘cause he was a bit of a scallywag, and anyway, I used to forget to draw my pension of nine shillings a week, forty five pence nowadays and it would go on for about three months and I had to write away for it, and I let things slide ‘cause I was making an awful lot of money, I was eating in the best restaurants in the West End and hotels all over the world, staying in the best hotels.
CB: What do you think you would’ve done if you hadn’t gone in the RAF?
JA: God knows
CB; Do you think you would have just brought your success as a businessman you just have brought that forward as it were and you would’ve started it straight away?
JA: I don’t know.
CB: Or did you need your time in the RAF to form and develop?
JA: I think the RAF made me very aggressive and when I went for a job after ready for coming out of the RAF, I was in uniform and I had an interview with the personnel manager of an engineering firm and he said ‘what were you doing in the Air Force?’ no ‘what were you doing in the war?’, well I was dressed in uniform, I’d got a flying badge and medal ribbons, I thought it was pretty obvious what I was doing, I said ‘I was flying in the Royal Air Force’ ‘oh’ he said ‘not much use to us is it?’, I was very aggressive at that time, the war had made me a bit loopy, and I felt like I wanted to knock his head off but I thought just a minute he’s right, I’ve learnt how to fly an aeroplane, how to drop bombs, how to blow people up, how to shoot people, I’ve learnt nothing that’s of any use to a civilian employer, he’s right I’ve completely wasted my time, if I been a cook or a lorry driver I would have something to contribute, but that made me determined to overtake all the people who hadn’t served in the war so I started at the bottom in a factory, and I went to evening classes and I had private tutors, I spent all my money on tuition, I got language teachers, I leaned Latin, I learned Russian, and I perfected my German and within two years I was head of the German department in import export firm with only Germans working for me, because I was an engineer and a German speaking Englishman, so I’d got an advantage there, and the cold war had started, and I thought either there’s going to be a war with Russia or eventually the Soviet empire is so big there will be a demand for things –
CB: that’s where you did most of your trade –
JA: So I learnt Russian so I could negotiate contracts in Moscow in Russian –
CB: Tenacious, determined.
JA: Well I was determined to do better than everybody, I went for an interview ,when I first came out of the Air Force, because I understand the government were giving grants to ex-service men, and I went for an interview and they said ‘what were you doing before you joined the Royal Air Force?’ and I said ‘well I was in school until just before’, they said ‘were you not studying for a profession?’, I said ‘I was only seventeen when I joined the air force, I was studying higher mathematics and subjects that would get me through the selection board to be a pilot’, I said ‘the town was being bombed and I thought by joining the Air Force I could help to stop that’, they looked at me, they were thinking you simpleton, they said ‘we only give grants to professional people’, so few weeks later I made another application and the attitude to me was humiliating or intended to be humiliating, so I got, I was fed up with being humiliated so I told the interviewee off, I really told him off, in words, you’ve never heard before and the second man who was sitting with him, when I left, rushed out with me and jumped in the lift and he said ‘thank you for doing that’, he said ‘that was wonderful the way you told him off, I’ve had to sit there for weeks listening to his rudeness’ he said ‘you really fixed him’. When I got a job as an armours designer, because I’d been in the Air Force and been shot, not because I knew anything about designing [slight pause], all the other people in the department had gone straight from school, into the ministry and they’d all got a free education and got a higher national certificate which is what I wanted to do you see, so I thought they’ve never been in the service and they’re the same age as me and they’re well ahead of me, got their qualifications, I’ll beat them, I’ve got to be better than them, so that’s what drove me on, I was inferior and I became superior ‘cause I had to, I had to do it, I spent all my money on studying, spent all my time on studying.
CB: Well that’s been a fantastic story Jim, thank you very much indeed.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Jim Auton
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Great Britain. Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Jim Auton grew up on Royal Air Force stations and joined the Royal Air Force at seventeen. He trained as a pilot navigator and bomber at RAF Ansty near Coventry, then in South Africa under the Empire Air Training Scheme. He trained on B-24s at Lidder and after travelling up through Africa was stationed at Foggia in Italy, where he started his operations. He describes the tough conditions there, as well as the operations in which he participated, such as targeting an oil refinery in Fiume, now known as Rijeka in Croatia and Ploiesti in Romania. He took part in mining operations in the Danube as well as secret operations to drop supplies in Warsaw to support the uprising. Whilst on his thirty-seventh operation, he was injured and describes his time in hospital, the journey home and his ground jobs in the Royal Air Force after the war. He also relates why he turned down a Distinguished Flying Medal, and recounts his post-war career as a businessman.
Creator
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Clare Bennett
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-06-08
Contributor
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Emma Bonson
Heather Hughes
Language
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eng
Identifier
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AAutonJF150608
Format
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02:13:37 audio recording
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Warwickshire
Croatia--Rijeka
Danube River
Egypt
Italy--Foggia
Poland--Warsaw
Italy
Poland
Romania--Ploiești
Croatia
Romania
Danube River
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.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
animal
B-24
bombing
coping mechanism
demobilisation
Distinguished Flying Medal
fear
military living conditions
military service conditions
mine laying
RAF Ansty
RAF Benson
sanitation
superstition
V-1
V-2
V-weapon
Warsaw airlift (4 August - 28 September 1944)
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/456/7969/APoddaLK170828.1.mp3
37bed92cc4eacc48a1c85c2b8d9db858
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/456/7969/PPoddaLK1701.2.jpg
5fca6e3172013da0f954c2d246283774
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Podda, LK
Title
A name given to the resource
Kucic Podda, Liliana
Liliana Kucic Podda
L Kucic Podda
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Liliana Kucic Podda who recollects her wartime experiences in Rijeka and early post-war years in Trieste.
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
2017-08-28
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.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
PS: Allora se può gentilmente dirci dove è nata, quanto è nata e soprattutto raccontarci un po’ della sua famiglia e dell’ambiente familiare in cui è cresciuta.
LKP: Beh non sono grandi cose, sono nata in una famiglia molto tranquilla il 16 dell’11 del ’36 a Fiume, che si trovava allora in Croazia, nella repubblica cioè nel, lungo il golfo del Quarnero [Quarnaro] e faceva parte dello stato italiano. Oggi questa città fa parte della Croazia con il nome di Rijeka. In questa città ho nascosto, ho trascorso tutta la mia infanzia fino al febbraio del 1947 anno in cui tutta la mia famiglia è venuta a Trieste come profuga dalle zone occupate dalle truppe di Tito. Io quello che ricordo son poche cose perché ero una bambina molto piccola. La cosa che più eclatante che forse mi ricordo è stata quando c’è stato un grandissimo bombardamento a Fiume, credo che sia, adesso non ricordo se esattamente nell’autunno del ’43 o nella primavera del ’44 perché questo le date un po’ così ce le ho. Quindi intorno ai 7 anni, 7 anni e mezzo 8, di un episodio veramente eclatante. Allora la città era stata, dopo l’8 settembre, invasa dalle truppe tedesche, occupata dalle truppe tedesche che l’avevano messa sotto una grande morsa perché a Fiume, da quello che so da d’anche di aver dopo saputo, c’era una forte resistenza da parte di persone che aderivano alle truppe jugoslave, i famosi “titini” come li chiamavano, che vivevano nei boschi facendo ogni tanto delle incursioni. E questi tedeschi quindi setacciavano le varie famiglie alla ricerca di giovani o d’altro che potevano interessarsi all’azione. Anche vicino a casa mia c’è stato un episodio di due sorelle che sono state prese, di sentimenti comunisti e mi pare anche di nazionalità croata perché a Fiume conviveva sia nazionalità italiana che croata da tutta la sua lunga storia che avevano dei fratelli che vivevano nascosti nel bosco, nei boschi che circondavano Fiume e loro facevano la staffetta portando viveri e cose da mangiare e così via. Erano state segnalate, prelevate dalle truppe tedesche che le avevano portate nelle loro, uffici, non so dove perché, e le avevano anche picchiate, bastonate ma dopo le avevano rilasciate. Io ricordo questo vagamente che si parlava in famiglia, non avevo visto niente. Comunque sempre di quel periodo, ricordo intanto arrivavano, mi correggo, incominciavano le incursioni alleate. E si sentivano questi aerei bombardieri che arrivavano sopra la città. Io ero terrorizzata da questi aerei, tant’è vero che come sentivo suonare le sirene del largo ero presa di attacchi di coliche, dovevo andare nel WC. Se era una volta era una volta, se erano due, due volte, se era sette, sette volte al giorno e non c’era niente perché era un fattore psicologico. E noi prendevamo quel poco delle borse che avevamo preparate e scappavamo a dei rifugi, in dei rifugi preparati ad hoc. Quindi l’episodio di cui parlo è in una di queste incursioni, ha suonato l’allarme e lo ricordo come oggi sono uscita dalla porta della cucina nel cortile antistante e ho visto una luce immensa sopra la mia casa come un faro enorme e ho cominciato a gridare ‘Mamma! Mamma!’ tutti quanti sono usciti fuori. Al vedere questa luminosità so che mia mamma mi ha preso, mi ha spinto di nuovo in cucina ha chiuso la porta dopo di che io non ho visto più niente. Ho saputo dopo che questo era un razzo illuminante che gli aerei lanciavano, sostenuto da un paracadute per illuminare una data zona prima del bombardamento, questo l’ho saputo dopo. E questo razzo era vedi caso proprio sopra la nostra casa e scaduto giù e il paracadute si è poggiato sul muro di cinta del nostro giardino. Mio nonno è corso per prendere questo paracadute mentre fuori, così mi hanno detto, è passato un soldato, non so di che nazione nè che soldato, che si è preso questo paracadute e se l’è portato via, con grande rammarico di mio nonno perché sembra che sto paracadute fosse parecchi metri di seta pura che in periodo di guerra voleva dire una bella cifra. Questo è un episodio così. Dopo di che abbiamo preso le borse nostre e siamo fuggiti nel rifugio che distava, non so se poteva essere 500, 700 metri da casa nostra lungo una strada in salita quindi era anche abbastanza faticoso. Dopo di che sono arrivati gli aerei hanno bombardato ma non abbiamo sentito niente quando è finito l’allarme siamo usciti, una luce immensa illuminava la città a partire dal mare, avevano bombardato il silurificio di fiume e la raffineria Romsa che si trovava lungo il mare, distante da casa nostra, noi eravamo più interni con delle bombe incendiarie, radendo al suolo tutto e quindi la raffineria si era incendiata e questo fuoco ha bruciato per due o tre giorni consecutivi giorno e notte e in quell’occasione è morta una mia bisnonna che abitava una casetta, una delle tante casette che si trovava in un rione che si chiamava Torretta proprio vicino al silurificio. Queste casette erano state fatte ancora dall’Austro-Ungheria perché Fiume prima di divenire Italia faceva parte dell’Austro-Ungheria era stata fatto dall’Austro-Ungheria per i dipendenti del silurificio e il mio bisnonno era uno di questi e aveva ottenuto per la sua famiglia una casetta. Questa bisnonna rimasta sola non si allontanava mai da questa casetta, sotto insistenza di tutti non eh, molta, ma aveva una grande fede diceva sempre ‘Sarà quello che Dio vorrà’. E infatti neanche quel giorno si è allontanata, la casa è stata bombardata e quindi lei è morta sotto il bombardamento e l’hanno trovata rifugiata sotto l’acquaio, si era accucciata e si era rifugiata sotto, e lì l’hanno trovata quando l’hanno scavato. Aveva 92 anni, era una donna molto in gamba, viveva da sola. E ricordo quindi sta grande fuoco che era di questa raffineria che bruciava, e della notizia che ci hanno portato durante la giornata successiva della morte di questa bisnonna. Questo è uno degli episodi. A parte questo posso ricordare ancora gli aerei soprattutto durante il giorno, qualche volta arrivavano prima che potessimo arrivare ai rifugi, dipendeva dalla velocità con cui si muovevano e con cui davano l’allarme e si vedevano questi grossi aerei e ste bombe come scendevano che sganciavano, ma noi, ma non generalmente non nella zona in cui io abitava. Questo è un episodio che riguarda ancora il periodo dell’occupazione tedesca. Dopodiché fiume è stata invasa dalle truppe di Tito, e quindi i tedeschi quelli che c’erano, son stati fatti tutti prigionieri, e anche a questo proposito ricordo un altro episodio della mia famiglia se può interessare. Vicino a casa mia c’era una specie di caserma non so esattamente, un edificio dove avevano stipato una grande quantità di sti prigionieri tedeschi. Mio nonno che era stato ufficiale dell’esercito austro-ungarico conosceva sette lingue tra cui il croato, l’italiano, e parlava molto bene il tedesco, l’ungherese, il russo eh, e allora aveva un figlio, mio zio, in guerra di cui non sapevamo niente, ed era un uomo che aveva sempre un cuore enorme, sentiva una pietà per tutti e al di là di quelle che erano le fazioni religiose, politiche scusa, si è recato presso questa caserma e al comandante ha detto, in croato, si fatto, che lui ha bisogno di operai nel suo giardino e quindi se potesse dargli in affido due o tre prigionieri per lavorare per lui. E questo gli ha detto ‘Ma i prigionieri bisogna tutelarli’, che non abbia timore che lui ha il porto d’armi infatti era guardia pubblica al comune di Fiume e aveva il porto d’armi. Che lui ha il porto d’armi e lui ha detto però che si ricordi che se fuggono ci rimette lui e tutta la sua famiglia. Lui ha detto di non aver timore perché lui sa cosa fa e lui garantisce per se e la sua famiglia che questi non scapperanno, ma lavoreranno per lui. In effetti cosa faceva? Li faceva venire nel giardino, io lo ricordo, erano dei ragazzi, 17, 18 anni, giovanissimi, proprio le ultime reclute che aveva fatto fare Hitler, a loro dava da mangiare, giocavano con noi bambini, uno era meccanico aveva aggiustato una automobilina per mio fratello e non so se faceva dei lavori anche per nonno, qualcosa. La mattina li andava a prendere e la sera li riportava. Quindi ha messo a repentaglio tutta la sua savine [?] e ha detto ‘Io cerco di far del bene a questi pochi giovani, indipendentemente dalla loro nazionalità sperando che se mio figlio vive in qualche posto una persona faccia altrettanto con lui’. Quindi solo come gesto di umanità. È andato avanti per un paio di giorni, non so fino a quando dopo di che un giorno si è presentato in caserma: non c’era più nessuno. Abbiamo saputo che li avevano deportati e uccisi tutti. Ecco, questo è un episodio che mi è rimasto. Non saprei a parte quelle situazioni di terrore, di gente che scompariva che si diceva ‘Stanotte hanno portato via quello, stanotte hanno preso quell’altro’ perché a Fiume c’è stato una persecuzione terribile da parte del corpo jugoslavo quando è entrato in città, hanno cominciato a prendere tutte le persone più importanti, tutte quelle che avessero del denaro, dei beni eccetera, per impadronirsi, poi bastava che uno dicesse di essere italiano che venivano, ma si sa la storia, si legge dalle cronache, dalla storia di Fiume, da ciò che è successo, crimini orrendi. Dopodiché mio padre lavorava in ferrovie, gli è stato chiesto se voleva rimanere perché avevano bisogno di ferrovieri, ma lui ha detto di no, perché lui si sentiva italiano e voleva portare la sua famiglia in Italia, ha optato e quindi siamo usciti da Fiume nel ’47. Siamo stati i primi della nostra famiglia, dopodiché sono usciti gli zii e per ultimi i nonni che sono rimasti ancora un anno e mezzo ma con grandi sofferenze. Erano padroni di due case, complessivamente di sette appartamenti che erano stati requisiti dal governo jugoslavo, avevano messo delle persone che venivano dall’entroterra, Bosnia-Erzegovina, non so da dove, proprio gente che di civiltà conosceva pochissimo. Tanto per fare esempio, tenevano un maiale nella vasca da bagno, le tapparelle le tiravano su, le lasciavano giù di colpo perché a loro piacevano queste rollè che crollava, suonavano a lungo il campanello, non savevano mai immaginato di un campanello, tanto per dire la civiltà di tutta questa gente. E si mettevano oltretutto a spaccare la legna nel terrazzo del cucina. Ora i nostri terrazzi erano un terrazzo di stile veneziano, fatto da tante pietruzze così sparse e poi dei, con dei motivi alla greca che circondava tutto saldato e lucidato, quindi un terrazzo unico diciamo. Se si rompeva da una parte non era una mattonella che si poteva sostituire, bisognava farlo da capo. E a un’osservazione di mio nonno a quello che faceva sto lavoro, che gli ha detto che se rompe che per far sto lavoro in cucina lo può fare anche fuori perché se si rompe chi aggiusta? Questo ha detto che lui non si impicci, che se ne vada che se no gli tira dentro la mannaia. Al che mio nonno a sentire queste cose soffriva di cuore, gli ha preso una specie di infarto, è stato abbastanza male per un po’ di tempo, dopo di che ha detto ‘Ho deciso, vado dove sono i miei figli’ ha abbandonato tutto ed è venuto fuori in Italia. Siccome lui era dipendente, ex dipendente comunale di Fiume, aveva diritto a una pensione, ma quella volta i tempi erano lunghi fin che si sbrigavano ste pratiche e quando è venuto in Italia praticamente non avevano una lira di sostegno. Un po’ mia madre che era una delle figlie, un po’ l’altra figlia, un po’ il figlio si mettevano dei soldini perché potessero vivere in attesa di questa pensione. Quindi lui da signore benestante si è trovato povero mendicante vivere della carità dei figli. Fino a che un autunno, qualche anno dopo, non tanto tempo dopo, per una bronchite gli è subentrato un infarto ed è morto senza neanche raggiungere la pensione. Però io lo ricordo, mite, non imprecava, non diceva niente anzi scherzava con la gente, proprio un ricordo dolcissimo di un uomo che era stato piuttosto severo nella sua vita, ma che provato da tante cose non era diventato con animo esasperato eccetera, ma si era rassegnato ad accettare questo stato di cose, quindi con tanta dolcezza se n’è andato.
PS: Mi può parlare ancora un po’ del suo nucleo familiare, se ha dei ricordi di quando era bambina.
LKP: Questo è, questo le ho ricordato questo perché vivevamo in queste case che erano due case avevano sette appartamenti: in uno viveva i nonni, e negli altri tre vivevano i tre figli, quindi quattro, e gli altri tre erano affittati ed io ero amica dei, delle figlie e di questi inquilini diciamo. Mentre da parte di mio padre lui era originario di una famiglia che viveva non a Fiume centro città ma in collina, la collina si chiamava Drenova, un po’ come Opicina rispetto a Trieste, ed erano questo l’ho saputo dopo, prima non sapevo niente, c’era questa casa dove viveva la zia più anziana col marito gli atri erano, e un altro, c’era ancora un altro zio più giovane con la famiglia, vivevano in questa collina a Drenova e avevano stalle, campagne, non so, possedimenti, che poi col tempo quando avevamo fatto un po’ di ricerca eccetera ho visto che i miei, sti miei parenti, mio padre stesso, erano possessori di grandi appezzamenti di terreno, bosco, campagne e terreni coltivabili, tutto andato perso, tutto andato perso! Quando verso la fine ho cercato di avere qualcosa di preciso sulle particelle catastali che avevo già in mano, e son andata al catasto di Fiume, mi hanno risposto che le persone non esistono, non c’è nessun traccia, avevano cancellato completamente i proprietari e avevano cancellato tutto, quindi perso completamente tutto. E vivevano su in collina, di questi ehm quindi i nonni, il nonno no, era muratore, un piccolo impresario, faceva il muratore e la nonna coltivava la campagna, e dei figli, uno era mio padre che eran andato a lavorare in ferrovia, un altro figlio era rimasto in casa che era sarto e dopo erano delle figlie: una che è rimasta in casa e ha mantenuto dopo il padre fino alla sua morte, un’altra invece si era sposata anche con un ferroviere di origine barese ed era venuto a Trieste. Ecco perché dopo, finita la guerra abbiamo optato per venire a Trieste perché qui c’erano anche questi zii e quindi per ricongiungerci un poco con loro. Ecco questo è per quel che riguarda, per il resto tutto quello che c’era non esiste più. Io ho fatto un viaggio a Fiume l’anno scorso, ho rintracciato la casa in città dove vivevo, l’ho vista, due case erano collegate da un grande orto giardino, hanno fatto qualche modifica ma è sostanzialmente l’ho riconosciute, mentre la casa che era in collina, non essendoci più nessuno, è stata abbattuta, tutto venduto da dei cugini che erano rimasti lì. E quindi non, credo che della mia famiglia non sia rimasta più traccia, tutti i beni, i terreni sono stati assimilati dallo stato, non so cos’hanno fatto, sono spariti. So che appunto erano dei grandi possidenti terreni ma non se n’è fatto proprio niente, è tutto sparito quindi la casa e tutti i terreni sparito, non c’è traccia. Mentre quelle giù in città sono case che sono state nazionalizzate dallo stato Jugoslavo per cui mia nonna poi col tempo ha percepito una certa somma di denaro equivalente a un appartamento, rispetto a sette, anzi ne aveva otto perché poi ne aveva un altro in un altro posto, e ha ricevuto una quota che permetteva dell’acquisto di un appartamento come rimborso beni abbandonati nella città di fiume. Ecco.
PS: Mi diceva.
LKP: Altre cose non saprei perché ripeto ero troppo piccola, e quindi son venuta fuori che avevo dieci anni e mi sono messa qui, son iniziata la mia vita a Trieste quindi, anzi ricordo sempre dico ai miei figli che 10 anni sono venuta in gennaio mi ricordo, siam venuti in gennaio perché dovevamo venire prima ma volevamo passare le feste, le ultime feste assieme a tutti e abbiamo, siam venuti i primi di gennaio, e la ferrovia ci ha messo a disposizione un vagone merci in via Flavio Gioia, anzi un vagone merci era pieno dei nostri mobili per quando siamo andati via ci permettevano di portare tutti i mobili di casa dietro un elenco minuzioso che bisognava consegnare. Quando siamo arrivati a Trieste, la ferrovia ci ha messo a disposizione un vagone vuoto per poterci abitare, dove hanno messo dei letti, lo spaer [?] quella volta si usava, un armadio, il tavolo, le sedie. Ma i vagoni merci di una volta erano fatti di tavole sovrapposte con delle fessure che non dico, in quell’anno in gennaio è venuta una neve, una bora che la neve è entrata attraverso le fessure e ci ha coperto tutto il letto, ci siamo svegliati col letto coperto di neve per dire il freddo che c’era. Però dopo qualche mese la ferrovia ci ha dato un appartamento molto modesto ma per lo meno era un appartamento dove sistemarci. E io qui ho iniziato la mia vita praticamente. E tra l’altro sono andata in prima media pur avendo 10 anni, saltando la quinta, non so per quale motivo, già Fiume qualcosa avevano fatto, farmi saltare la quinta e questo, e quindi sono entrata in febbraio in prima media senza nessuna cognizione di latino, di niente, mi hanno buttata là dentro, è stata una piccola tragedia. Ero bravetta a scuola quando ero a Fiume, è stata una piccola tragedia per me, soprattutto sto latino, non c’era chi mi insegnava, mi arrangiavo insomma. Alla fine mi hanno promossa a giugno, infatti cercavo di studiare, l’italiano eccetera, ma. E dopo ho saputo che c’era l’ordine da Roma di favorire questi profughi e cercare di invogliarli ad andare avanti largheggiando nei voti. Quindi in parole povere mi hanno regalato il voto di promozione. Il secondo anno però mi sono impegnata, tra l’altro mia madre mi aveva fatto fare prendere delle ripetizioni durante l’estate di latino per un poco eh, quindi tanto meglio sono arrivata con la media del 7 in terza sono arrivata con la media dell’8 e da là son partita insomma no, ho recuperato diciamo, ma il primo anno è stato un anno così. E poi ho finito le magistrali, ho, mi sono preparata per l’esame di matura dello scientifico perché volevo far chimica, non si poteva accedere all’università con le magistrali però mi hanno bocciata. Quello stesso anno della bocciatura ho fatto un esame di ammissione in ottobre al liceo scientifico al quinto anno, presentando tutte le materie di quattro anni. Sono stata accolta, ho frequentato l’ultimo anno del scientifico, oltretutto avevo sempre il vantaggio dell’anno che avevo, per le magistrali erano quattro anni no? Quindi il quinto anno perso eh, e quindi sono uscita normale con la maturità del scientifico, poi ho fatto l’università e tutto il resto.
PS: In che anno è venuta.
LKP: ’47, nel gennaio o primi febbraio adesso non ricordo, fine gennaio a primi febbraio del ’47, proprio perché volevamo passare le feste del ’46. Però come episodi proprio di guerra ricordo questo del, e soprattutto questo clima di terrore che si era instaurato nella città per un anno intero fin che non siamo andati via, ma così sapevo circa ‘Quello l’hanno portato via, quello è stato ucciso’ ma sentivo dire dai miei perché non volevano che noi bambini ascoltassimo questi discorsi da grandi come dicevano e ci relegavano un po’ nel limbo. Mio padre non è mai andato in guerra perché lavorando in ferrovia, la ferrovia erano militarizzati, le ferrovie dovevano funzionare quindi qualsiasi, prima coi tedeschi poi coi croati quando son venuti, anzi gli avevano offerto di rimanere perché non avevano personale erano molti che andavano via. E quell’altro mio zio anche, perché era di servizio sul ponte di Sussak. Sussak era la città che confinava con Fiume mediante un fiume, il fiume Eneo, un ponte oltre questo fiume e Sussak era croata, sempre, anche durante l’Italia. Quindi si passava dall’Italia Fiume oltre il ponte, e lui era di servizio non so se eh guardia o cosa eh. È rimasto lì di servizio, solo il fratello di mia mamma è stato richiamato alle armi. Per due anni non si è saputo niente di lui ma si è salvato, è ritornato a casa. Quindi non ho perso, la mia casa non è stata bombardata. Ecco un altro episodio che adesso mi sovviene è quando i tedeschi stavano per ritirarsi dentro l’incalzare delle truppe croate, jugoslave quella vota. Di fronte a noi c’era una montagna, la collina dove c’era questa specie di sobborgo che si chiamava Drenova, che abitavano i nonni, una bella montagna. E ai piedi di questa montagna erano state costruite file di casette di operai, le chiamavano ‘Centocele’ cioè cento casette. I tedeschi avevano scavato nella montagna una galleria profondissima e l’avevano riempita di munizioni, come riserva. Prima di andar via hanno deciso di farle saltare. Sono venuti ad avvisare, hanno avvisato tutti gli abitanti di queste casette, un po’ anche di case di fronte, di andarsene, queste persone delle casette se ne sono andate, non so i miei cos’hanno, non so se li hanno avvisati o meno. Io che ero sempre terrorizzata quando ero eccetera, quella notte che hanno fatto saltare questa montagna ho dormito e non ho sentito niente, un miracolo. Loro hanno fatto saltare la montagna, queste munizioni, ha squarciato metà montagna, alla mattina dopo sembrava una cava all’aperto, le casette sparite il materiale tutto c’era venuto contra a noi, le tapparelle tutte rigonfie, calcinacci sui cortili ma le case più di tanto non avevano risentito. Ma si immagini che cosa una esplosione di una polveriera di, e io quella notte non ho sentito, mi sono alzata e ho detto ‘Cosa è successo?’ ma ho visto tutto sto disastro ma non avevo sentito niente. Una cosa, non so, incredibile, ma neanche dopo non ho sentito niente, ho continuato a dormire, e hanno fatto appunto saltare queste munizioni perché non cadessero nelle mani delle parte jugoslavo e sono fuggiti, ma si vede che sono stati [mobile phone noise] il ricordo di questo periodo, e il resto un’infanzia abbastanza tranquilla tutto sommato al di là della guerra perché noi avevamo questo giardino, il nonno si dedicava all’orto, questi parenti su in collina che allevavano bestiame e ci fornivano anche ogni tanto di cose da mangiare, quel poco di pesce si trovava a Fiume, non ho patito la fame quindi, non siamo stati bombardati, non c’è perché ero troppo piccola per capire ero in questo giardino con mia cugina e altre due coinquiline, quattro ragazzine che giocavano, eccetera a scuola, quindi, un’infanzia abbastanza serena nel complesso, al di là di questi episodi di, di guerra diciamo che mi son rimasti.
PS: Ehm si ricorda, si ricorda siccome bambini facevate dei giochi oppure si ricorda della, se aveva degli amici d’infanzia.
LKP: Bah, mah dico non frequentavo altri, altro che noi quattro, ma giocavamo di tutto. Poi avevo la zia che lavorava in una grande ditta di abbigliamento, di giocattoli, di Fiume, privata eh ma quella volta era grande, lei era la direttrice eh, e non avendo figli ci coccolava, quindi per San Nicolò avevamo pentoline, bambole, giocattoli che io poi son venuta a Trieste e ho portato una cassetta di giocattoli che tutte le bambine che vedevano meravigliate perché in periodo di guerra vedere tanti giocattoli, quindi giocavamo. Una di queste ragazzine che erano figlie di inquilini, suo papà era meccanico e le aveva fatto una cucina economica Spaer si chiamava in miniatura, ma vera, con tutti i cerchi e tutto, noi giocavamo fuori in giardino con, quindi un’infanzia trascorsa serenamente, andavamo al mare, quindi andavamo a piedi un pezzo di strada, si prendeva il tram che ci portava a Kantrida, andavamo al mare tutta l’estate. E a proposito del mare ricordo anche una volta che siamo andati più in là di Kantrida verso Voloska ed è venuta una piccola motovedetta tedesca, quella volta ricordo e vendendo sia me che mia cugina e le altre ragazze eccetera ci ha buttato dei salvagenti di questa che erano grossi pesanti e noi ci siamo divertite come se fossero della barche, co’ sti salvagenti a giocare quindi vedevano che noi bambine eh, e ci venivano, quindi non episodi violenti e tristi, episodi tranquilli insomma ecco in questo senso, quindi non è che. E conoscevo poco la città perché eravamo sempre lì fuorché andare a scuola alla chiesa che si andava, ho fatto la comunione anche durante la guerra, giocavamo sempre lì poi a me piaceva molto così inventare giochi, ci mettevamo anche a fare recite con delle vecchie tende, dei separé insomma, io ero un poco l’anima, quella più tremenda ma insomma, e le altre mi obbedivano e quindi si giocava bene eh. Quindi un ricordo ripeto, tranquillo della mia infanzia e dopo il problema era qui Trieste, problema, non era un problema, per me era una gioia, avevo questa zia che aveva due figli più grandi e uno più giovane di quattro anni più vecchio di me, questo ragazzino vivace da morire e quando io venivo qua a Trieste mi ricordo le lotte che facevamo coi cuscini sul letto, questa zia ci lasciava fare tutto che mia mamma no e io quando mio papà veniva a Trieste volevo assolutamente venire a Trieste per stare per giocare. Oltretutto gli compravano molti libri per cui lui mi regalava e quando mio papà veniva tante volte solo io aspettavo il suo ritorno perché mi portava una valigia piena di libri. Quindi una cosa fantastica per me con questi libri. A questo proposito ricordo un episodio, avrò avuto sette anni, il papà voleva venire a Trieste ho detto ‘Mamma vado con papà’ ‘Ma no tu resta qua’ ‘Eh no io vado io vado’ sai quei bambini che insistono, io ero molto insistente quando voleva. E mia madre fa a mio padre ‘Sì, sì ma dopo tu la perderai’ ‘ Ma dai figurati se poi la perdo’. Insomma mi ha lasciato e son partita. E io ricordo perché mi è rimasto impresso passeggiavamo dalla parte di Barriera e c’era mio papà mia zia che parlavano e io di dietro che guardavo le vetrine. Ho visto una vetrina con bambole e mi son fermata a guardare, quando mi son girata non li ho visti più, mi ero persa. Non mi son persa d’animo, sono andata vicino a una signora e le ho chiesto ‘Per piacere per arrivare in via Edmondo De Amicis’ quello me lo ricordavo ‘Cosa devo fare?’. Da tener presente che da Barriera bisognava arrivare qui, a rione San Vito perché la via Edmondo De Amicis è qui. Mi fa ‘Ma piccola mia ma è molto lontano sai, devi prendere un tram’ mi pare che fosse quella volta l’1 e andare fino alle Rive e dalle Rive dopo salire per. Ho detto ‘Ma non ho soldi’ e lei mi ha detto ‘Bon ti do qua’ mi ha dato 2 lire, il biglietto del tram costava 1 lira, ha detto ‘Queste dopo per un altro'. Mi ha regalato ste 2 lire per prendere il biglietto del tram, ho preso il tram, sono arrivata fino alle Rive, là non so, mi son fermata da qualcun altro che diceva ‘Oh sì sì ma io abito là vieni con me’. In parole povere sono arrivata a casa della zia, però la porta era chiusa, mi son seduta davanti aspettando che arrivassero. È arrivato sto mio cugino e mi ha chiesto ‘Cosa fai qua fuori?’ ‘Mi sono persa, sono arrivata a casa’ e dopo poco è arrivato mio papà con sta zia tutti, pore [?] che non mi trovavano decise di andare in polizia, mi hanno trovato seduta da sola, sette anni in una città che non conosceva, e non ho pianto, ricordo che non ho pianto, ho fatto questo, questo mi è rimasto tutto questo, sono arrivata a casa, immaginarsi mia madre quando glielo ha raccontato, immagina cosa gli ha detto, no? Per dire. Quindi tutto sommato reagiva abbastanza bene alle cose, no? Ero molto impressionabile, ma reagivo ero così, non mi lasciavo abbattere ecco. Questo ricordo me lo ricordo di Trieste. Altro non so.
PS: Lei aveva fatto dei riferimenti mi sembra a dei rifugi.
LKP: Dei?
PS: Rifugi, a Fiume.
LKP: Rifugi?
PS: Sì. Cosa si ricorda?
LKP: Beh sì, questi rifugi, sostanzialmente, vicino, ecco che ho accennato dove i tedeschi avevano fatto quella deposito di munizioni, vicino avevano scavato sta galleria nella roccia, dove la gente si riparava quando arrivavano i bombardamenti e così anche nel resto della città ma io non so dov’erano tutti sti rifugi. Inoltre ogni casa, ogni proprietario di casa, doveva fare un rifugio per i propri inquilini, e mio nonno, siccome la casa, soprattutto quella più recente era costruita su un piano inclinato diciamo, da una parte risultava un piano solo, dall’altra parte erano due piani, quindi c’era un pezzo di terreno che sosteneva, in questo terreno ha fatto scavare una galleria, l’ha rinforzato con del cemento, ha fatto delle porte di legno incrociate in modo che non entrasse diretto ma si entrava a zig zag, e ha fatto installare delle panche di legno in modo che, nell’impossibilità di recarsi in qualsiasi altro rifugio, ci si poteva infilare in questo, ma un rifugio che alle bombe non avrebbe resistito di sicuro, alle granate poteva resistere, questo sì, perché poi l’aveva coperto con sacchi di terra eccetera non so cos’altro poteva resistere, comunque c’era e quindi ogni casa aveva nel sottosuolo fatto dei rifugi per la casa, e in più c’erano questi rifugi esterni ricavati da dove c’erano gallerie, dove c’erano monti sotto e così via e so c’era questo di fronte a casa nostra dove andavamo quando suonava. Umidi ovviamente, i rifugi, questi sì c’erano ma di tanti non me li ricordo perché non li ho frequentati. Evidentemente c’erano perché dov’è morta questa mia bisnonna anche lì dovevano essere dei rifugi, infatti la gente, si chiamava Tonolli questa mia bisnonna, veniva da Rovereto, e loro sotto l’Austro-Ungheria, erano andati da Rovereto in, a Banja Luka perché l’Austria offriva dei terreni perché voleva colonizzare quelle terre, li aveva convinti che avendo dato loro dei terreni, eccetera. E loro in cerca di fortuna sono andati là, però era una miseria tremenda e questo bisnonno dopo essere stati non so uno o due anni, qualcosa cosa del genere, è caduto e si è rotto un piede, approfittando del fatto che era malato ha raccolto quel poco che aveva, ha comprato un carro e di notte ha caricato masserizie, figli e moglie ed è scappato, perché non dovevano, avevano firmato che dovevano restare lì, invece è scappato ed è venuto a Fiume e là a Fiume ha trascorso, son nati altri figli eccetera e così via, ecco come sono arrivati a Fiume ma loro venivano da su, da Rovereto, questa bisnonna no? E quindi, ed era molto arrabbiata anche del matrimonio di mia nonna col nonno, perché il nonno era della costa dalmata ma di origine più dall’interno, più croato diciamo così, e lei era italianissima, infatti questo bisnonno si chiamava Rastovich poi è cambiato in Rastelli, sotto il fascismo e non ha volto andare al loro matrimonio, e quando lui il giorno delle nozze voleva salutarla, si è abbassato per baciarle la mano a questa suocera, lei l’ha tirata indietro e ha detto ‘Andè andà, m’a gh’avè rubà la fija’ ‘Andate andate mi avete rubato la figlia’ [laughs] erano tremende le vecchie di una volta. E non è andata, è andato il papà, sono andati i fratelli ma la mamma non è andata al suo matrimonio, ecco. Sì eh proprio, era un calderone diciamo Fiume, no? C’era gran parte di italiani, la nazionalità è tutta una storia a Fiume, poi ho letto che la storia di Fiume e così via. Anche sotto l’Austria aveva una certa indipendenza, aveva un governo autonomo pur essendo sotto l’Austria, sempre di origini italiana, c’era sempre la Croazia che cercava di entrare di impossessarvi e sempre una lotta continua tra, però la convivenza c’era perché molti croati abitavano a Fiume per questioni di commerci, di lavori, eccetera. Quindi c’erano croati a Fiume, ma quando è arrivato le truppe di Tito che ha detto ‘Fiume era, è croata’, è errato: Fiume è stata sempre italiana, sempre hanno parlato italiano, sempre l’amministrazione è stata italiana, anche sotto l’Austro-Ungheria. Pur essendo questa convivenza con una buona porzione di croati, per necessità per questioni ovvie insomma, pacifica convivenza no? E noi eravamo della nazionalità italiana, eravamo la parte italiana, la mia famiglia ha sempre parlato italiano, io non sapevo una parola di croato, mai parlato croato a Fiume, e anche le scuole, scuole italiane ha fatto mia mamma e loro hanno fatto le scuole di computista commerciale che una volta erano molto così in voga diciamo no? E mia zia era bravissima a scuola ma non c’era la scuola di ragioneria a Fiume. Avrebbe dovuto venire a Trieste perciò si è accontentata, ma poi brava sì impiegata, è diventata direttrice di questo negozio che l’ha guidato fino alla fine e, così per inciso, quando lei ormai aveva deciso di venire in Italia, aveva votato col marito per venire in Italia e tutto, avevano organizzato con un camion tutti i mobili per portarla via, sono partiti di mattina presto prima di quello che si pensava, a metà mattina sono venuti degli, della polizia croata in sua ricerca, la ricercavano perché lei era stata direttrice del negozio di questi che erano considerati ricchi che dovevano essere arrestati. Quindi lei si era compromessa con i proprietari, avrebbero voluto arrestarla, per fortuna erano già passata, aveva già passato il confine. Per dire, no? Tremendo era quella volta, che aveva qualcosa, solo per il fatto che possedeva qualcosa veniva preso, ucciso, spariva e tutto confiscato. Sì episodi così questo me l’hanno raccontato i nonni, dopo quando sono venuti qui. E sto nonno sapendo parlare il croato, in un primo momento ha detto ‘Beh, se voi volete andare in Italia, ma io ormai son pensionato, non ho cosa fare, ho la mia casa, ho i miei appartamenti con la gente me la intendo perché so parlar croato, resto qua’. Invece quando ha visto il modo, come si comportavano questa gente che non, perché, non so se sai, però c’è stata tutta la politica di Tito, quella di mandare gente dall’interno della Jugoslavia sulla costa, per snaturare la costa, quindi lui ha favorito l’esodo, quindi l’uscita di tutti gli italiani e ha fatto entrare, ma non gente confinante, Bosnia-Erzegovina tutte queste cose, questi stati all’interno con una cultura molto arretrata e modesta, e riempire tutta la città infatti la città era una roba, c’erano animali, per le vie più importanti della città, cataste di legna, una cosa pazzesco si era abbruttita da morire la città sotto questo periodo, fatta proprio ad opera per denaturare quella che era la vera, l’anima della città. Dopo le cose si son cambiate ma è stato un periodo brutto. Però ricordo quando la prima volta sono andata, sono andata verso Abbauzzia, Laurana dove aveva, ah no sono andata a Senjska Draga non so, no Dovedo [?], camminavo e c’erano i tombini dell’acqua e scritto ‘Acquedotto di Fiume’ non l’avevano tolto anche se scritto in italiano, perché voleva dire, non facevano niente, non sapevano, dovevano lasciarlo c’era scritto, acquedotto di Fiume, in italiano. Cioè anche se volevano toglierlo ma c’erano tante di quelle cose che. E ricordo quando siamo arrivati la prima volta a Fiume proprio città dove c’era un parcheggio, un parcheggiatore fa ‘Venì venì qua x’è il posto’ in dialetto fiumano, uno dei pochi rimasti il quale ci ha visto e ci ha parlato in dialetto fiumano, perché non si poteva cambiare tutta la città di colpo nonostante le sue intenzioni, no? Eh dopo invece si è riequilibrato no? Adesso c’è una comunità italiana, c’è una scuola italiana, il giornale italiano, tutto un altro lo spirito diciamo, ma allora è stato veramente tremendo. Ecco c’è qualcos’altro?
PS: Sì io volevo tornare un attimo al discorso del, dei bombardamenti. A casa quindi non non si parlava molto, cioè non.
LKP: Di cosa? Dei bombardamenti?
PS: Sì.
LKP: Eh ma non c’era niente di parlare, tu sentivi le sirene che suonavano e quindi dovevi correre al rifugio, sentivi sti aerei che venivano, li sentivi, rombavano sopra di te erano terribili e dopo bombardavano, ma Fiume non è proprio tanto stata bombardata, la parte del mare dove c’era la, lungo il mare c’era la stazione, dopo non so che cos’era, qualche fabbrica, dopo c’era sto silurificio, sta raffineria Romsa, quindi quello era il posto che interessava, no? Ma per il resto non, e poi una volta che sono entrate le truppe di Tito, basta insomma, no? Perché i tedeschi non c’erano più, non a avevano le truppe militari alleate bombardare le truppe di Tito, no? Quindi non hanno più bombardato, a Fiume è vissuto il terrore del comunismo, non più del tedesco. Il terrore del tedesco sarà durato neanche un anno, subito dopo l’8 settembre, che sarà durato, non ho idea quando è durato ma non più di un anno di sicuro, dopo di che c’è stata l’entrata delle truppe Jugoslave a Fiume, e finiti i bombardamenti non ce ne sono stati più, però è subentrato tutto questo clima di terrore pazzesco per cui la gente, e cominciava, gente che spariva e gente che decideva di andarsene, quindi ‘Ah sai quello è andato via, quello va via, quello l’hanno preso’ sentivo queste voci così ma, nel mio giardino non vedevo altro, un po’ come il giardino dei Finzi Contini, no? Tutto avveniva dentro ma al di fuori più di tanto. E così era, era grande sto giardino nostro eravmo in quattro ragazzine, non ci mancava né da mangiare, sì ci mancava lo zucchero, quello mancava a tutti, la lo stesso riuscivano a procurare, poi una mia zia aveva due negozi, uno di pane e uno di latte e dolciumi che quando ha visto che le cose scarseggiavano, ha messo, ha tenuto in casa parecchie scatole di latte condensato Nestlè. E allora cosa faceva? Ogni settimana dava uno a noi, uno a loro, uno alla nonna e queste quattro nostra famiglia dava una scatola a testa a famiglia, avevano deciso tra di loro, aveva una bella riserva, e con sta scatola latte condensato zuccherato ci si doveva passare tutta la settimana, e dopo un po’ di latte qualche volta che andavano su a Drenova a piedi, era cosa camminare, avevano le mucche allora portava un po’ di latte giù. Quindi mancava perché era periodo che mancava, ma bene o male sempre qualcosa arrivava a questo contesto diciamo. Poi non so cosa mancava ancora, poi io non ero una mangiona, io non mangiavo quasi niente, a me piaceva solo la frutta e l’ovetto delle galline, quindi figuriamoci se mi interessava il mangiare, non mi interessava per niente proprio, quindi dico, è una cosa particolare la situazione di Fiume rispetto al resto dell’Italia perché una di quelle terre che poi, l’abbiamo persa no? È stato questo passaggio, quindi prima, durante la guerra neanche ci si scomponeva quella volta, poi c’è stato dopo l’8 settembre l’occupazione da parte dei tedeschi che è durata, non so se un anno, dopodiché l’occupazione jugoslava fino alla fine della guerra, con tutto il problema dell’esodo e dopo delle foibe di tutto il resto no? Si non, i bombardamenti più di tanto, non so se anche qualche aereo che era caduto ma più di tanto. Ricordo solo questa visione di questo aereo che vedevo passare e queste bombe come come grappolini che venivano giù no? Si vedevano perché era un giorno, di giorno quella volta, di solito venivano di notte e per fare mettevano sti razzi, che combinazione quello là è venuto proprio sopra la nostra casa perché coi razzi illuminavano, c’era l’oscuramento, questo sì, ricordo che su tutte le imposte era messa della carta opaca blu in modo che non uscisse la luce fuori, che era brutto vedere, che non mi piaceva per niente, c’erano tutte le finestre con questa carta blu perché non trapelasse la luce, questo ricordo. E basta nient’altro.
PS: Ehm ci si chiedeva in famiglia perché lo facevano, se erano inglesi o americani, oppure, non sa se ci si poneva un po’ le domande sul, intorno ai bombardamenti.
LKP: Guarda, niente so dirti, perché ripeto coi bambini non si parlava di questo. Certe cose che so è perché ascoltavo, sentivo, che raccontavano eccetera che ricordo, ma perché loro me ne abbiano parlato non mi ha mai parlato nessuno niente, non mi ha mai spiegato perché prima c’erano i tedeschi e dopo son venuti i croati e così via. Lo so, l’ho ricostruito dopo, col seno di poi con la storia eccetera ma nessuno in casa. Solo diceva ‘Silenzio non bisogna parlare basta non immischiarsi con nessuno’ per non essere eh, e basta. No, no, non so dirti niente, la mia famiglia non è stata coinvolta in nessun episodio particolare, avevo solo sto zio che era in guerra che poi è rientrato, i miei, mio papà aveva la divisa del fascio perché tutti i ferrovieri avevano la divisa ma non l’ha vestita neanche un giorno, era appesa lì. Lui non l’ha vestita, lui non si voleva immischiare. Questo mio zio che è andato in guerra l’hanno richiamato, aveva una conoscente della moglie, che poi è stata anche madrine della cresima della figlia, che era di tendenze fasciste e gli ha fatto avere la tessera del partito, lui ha preso la tessera è andata al partito e ha dato, pam! ‘Ve la restituisco, quando la vorrò ve la chiederò. Adesso non la voglio’. Glie l’hanno mandato una seconda volta, fino a tre volte gliel’hanno mandata, lui per tre volte è andato in partito e l’ha restituita, ‘Non ne voglio sapere’ e non l’ha restituita. Quindi nessuno, mio padre non era iscritto però era militarizzato essendo in ferrovia, quindi d’obbligo, però lui non l’ha mai messa sta divisa quindi la mia famiglia non era coinvolta politicamente diciamo, sempre risultavano i nonni sotto l’Austro-Ungheria, anche mia mamma è nata nel ’12 era Austro-Ungheria ancora a Fiume, passata nel ’21 quando è arrivato Mussolini, eh la marcia di D’Annunzio su Fiume, tutte quelle storie eccetera, è diventata, è stata annessa all’Italia Fiume dopo, quindi sono diventati italiani e fin che siamo, mia nonna di origine italiana perché ripeto veniva da Rovereto e, non, non c’è stato nessun problema di nessun tipo, mio nonno era di religione ortodossa, mi pare serbo-ortodossa credo, si è convertito al cattolicesimo per via dei figli e quando è venuto il fascismo, siccome sto figlio era abbastanza perseguitato a scuola per via del nome Rastovich, è stato una persecuzione da parte del fascismo in coloro che, ha cambiato il cognome in Rastelli, tant’è vero che poi questo mio zio è andato in Argentina, finita la guerra non trovava lavoro ed è emigrato in Argentina e quando doveva andare in pensione aveva bisogno dei, che vengano riconosciuti i versamento, le marchette, le bollette che si versava eh, e una parte era stata versata col nome di Rastovich e mi ha detto, e lui si chiamava Rastelli, bisognava dimostrare che Rastelli e Rastovich fossero la stessa persona. Con mio papà siamo andati all’università, nei sotterranei e abbiamo sfogliato all’università tutte le Gazzette Ufficiali, anno per anno fin che abbiamo trovato la Gazzetta Ufficiale col decreto in cui era promulgato il decreto diceva che Rastelli Daniele, Rastovich Daniele, chiedeva la conversione del nome in Rastelli per sé, per la moglie e per i tre figli, quindi ho fatto fare la fotocopia, autenticare in tribunale e gliel’ho spedita in Argentina. Quindi ricordo che ho fatto fare questo lavoro, che ho fatto fare, da quella volta si son chiamati sempre Rastelli no? Però a casa si parlava sempre italiano, sapevano qualche parola, così qualche volta al nonno scappava qualche parola in croato ma non, si parlava sempre italiano, io non sapevo neanche una parola e ho cominciato a imparare qualche parola di croato l’ultimo anno durante l’occupazione jugoslava, perché ho fatto un paio di mesi di scuola che era già l’occupazione, là ci insegnavano il croato e allora a casa col nonno leggevo, imparavo, ero anche brava! Infatti la maestra mi aveva regalato un libro di croato perché ero brava come premio. Ma quei pochi mesi dopo ho dimenticato tutto perché non, per dire, no? Come si studia il tedesco, l’inglese, così allora avevo studiato quelle poche parole, però la nostra famiglia era tutta di nazionalità italiana, decisamente, non c’era, per cui. Ma al di là di questo non era il fatto della lingua eccetera, proprio della persecuzione comunista che era, che è diventata tremenda, no? Della persecuzione di Tito contro tutti coloro che erano italiani per cui l’esodo è stato per il terrore, l’esodo è stato dettato soprattutto dal terrore che si era instaurato ecco. E lo stesso mio nonno è uscito perché ha detto ‘Se devo morire andrò a morire dove sono i miei figli’. Infatti una gli ha detto ‘Ma come signor Rastelli abbandona tutto questo bendidio?’ ‘Sarà quel che sarà, vado a morir dove xe i mì fijoi”. E così è stato, povero, morto sotto la carità, per carità, povero ma che umiliazione che deve aver, ma io immagino come se tutta questa casa improvvisamente non mi appartenesse più poi, ma deve essere una cosa terribile, terribile a provare, solo solo col pensiero già ci si terrorizza, dover abbandonare tutto, una cosa impressionante. E quanta fatica ha fatto, potevano, da giovane, per farsi tutta questa roba, sacrifici perché non erano benestanti di famiglia quindi e col loro lavoro eccetera, poco alla volta costruirsi prima la prima casa, dopo la seconda, sti appartamenti affitta. Tutto, zero, tutto sparito. Come ad esempio anche dalla parte di mio papà, dopo quando ho fatto la prima ricerca dei, delle particelle, dei terreni, ho scoperto che i Kucic, a parte che era un nome molto noto in città a Fiume, ancora oggi ci sono molti Kucic a Fiume. Questi Kucic, questi miei antenati diciamo, quindi sono risalita fino alla quinta generazione di questi Kucic, sono venuti dall’interno dalla parte, non so dalla parte di dove, verso la costa, e si sono posizionati su, a Drenova dove hanno comperato dei terreni di boschi perché di professione facevano i taglialegna e hanno comprato questi terreni di boschi per tagliare i boschi e portar la legna giù in città. Infatti la chiamavano ‘skuta’ taglialegna, il primo che ha scritto proprio in comune la particella per la casa, mi pare quinta o sesta generazione. Quindi molte generazioni indietro si son tramandati, ogni volta aumentando l’acquisto di terreni e mia nonna stessa, siccome sto nonno piaceva bere come tutti, allora quando portava, quando lui rientrava dalla città con i soldi, non so se settimanali o mensili, del mestiere che faceva, lei se li faceva dare sti soldi che li amministrava invece lei si viveva con quello che si faceva in campagna e questi li, quando ha un certo gruzzolo di denaro, quella volta non esistevan le banche, comprava un terreno, e lo intestava infatti un sacco di terreni erano intestati a mio papà che era il figlio più vecchio e un’altra mia zia, Amalia, che è quella più vecchia che è rimasta a Fiume. Quindi lei quando aveva dei soldi che le avanzavano comprava terreni, per cui mio papà [è] risultato possedere non so quanti terreni di baschi, di prati, di roba, ed erano tutto dei Kucic, mezza collina che veniva da su fino a giù, tutto sparito, non esiste. E avevano fatto una prima casetta che dopo mi hanno mostrato che poi l’avevano dato a una vicina di casa che c’aveva instaurato come un, una stalla, stalletta che era la prima casa tutta fatta in pietra, una casa da morire sai [laughs] si entrava, io l’ho vista perché mi piaceva vedere. Si entrava, di qua c’era come la cucina di qua un sottoscala dove mi hanno detto che tenevano la capra, le scale si andava su e dove dormivano, ti immagini che roba che era, col giardino di fronte. Dopodiché questi parlo, tre quattro generazioni no sono vissuti, dopo hanno comprato un altro terreno più in là e hanno fatto la casa nuova quella dove sono vissuti i mi nonni e così via. E a questa casa nuova, attaccata alla casa dei cugini perché là tutti si attaccavano l’un l’altro, questa casa nuova, siccome sto nonno, muratore diciamo il capo, muratori non so come li chiamavano, aveva deciso di ingrandirla allora ha fatto ha attaccato un altro bello appartamento, senonché erano tanti figli, il figlio più vecchio ha detto ‘Oh io sono il più vecchio, sono sposato, tocca a me’ è andato lui e quindi sto mio nonno è rimasto nella vecchia eh, che già era una grande, perché era, si entrava in cucina ma aveva tre stanze era fatto come un bel cortile così da, quindi per dire, no? Quindi era tanto, dopo sotto c’era, vicino c’era quell’altra l’altra casa attaccata, tutto sparito, addirittura hanno abbattuto perché la zona dove si trovava queste cose era una delle zone più golose della città di Fiume, tipo Opicina, ma Opicina si va giù, invece questa era proprio sulla, tu vedevi tutto il golfo di Fiume, ma era uno spettacolo, ma uno spettacolo mozzafiato. Quindi quelli che avevano terreni che hanno venduto si son presi un sacco di soldi, che son rimasti eventualmente perché era dei posti più ambiti proprio per fare, dopo hanno costruito case, come è successo a Opicina, no? Ma per dire, e dopo alla fine dei cugini che son rimasti, non so dove, hanno con dei testimoni falsi hanno giurato in tribunale che quello è loro eccetera, erano cambiato sti appezzamenti, hanno dopo venduto, in somma hanno falsificato della mia, della famiglia non è rimasto più cenno niente. Quindi perso tutto, anche quello, quello proprio perso, quello di Fiume giù, da parte materna qualcosa si è preso come beni abbandonati, quello su niente. È così ma per me è stato un bene, perché non avrei fatto l’università se fossi rimasta a Fiume, questo sicuro perché non c’era l’università allora a Fiume, non so cosa sarebbe stato ma comunque. Poi non mi rincresceva, avevo uno spirito molto avventuroso, il fatto di cambiare eccetera a me andava bene, già mia cugina era più così che rimpiangeva, qualcosa di quello che è stato, a me no, sono gli adulti quelli che hanno sofferto, i bambini difficile, poi bambini che non avevano avuto problemi di vita diciamo, perché i giochi li aveva, questa zia ci procurava di tutto, da mangiare avevamo, bene o male la casa non l’abbiamo persa quindi se vogliamo dire una guerra privilegiata, se non fosse stato per l’esodo no? L’esodo è stato la cosa, perché poi ci siamo sparpagliati quindi noi siamo venuti a Trieste, quella zia è andata a Valdobbiadene in provincia di Treviso che era la sorella della mamma, mentre il fradel, fratello questo figlio che era ritornato dalla guerra è andato prima a Mestre, non riuscendo a trovare lavoro è emigrato in Argentina, quindi proprio ci siamo sparsi. I nonni sono venuti, sono stati con gli zii a Valdobbiadene, il nonno è morto prestissimo per infarto e invece la nonna ha durato abbastanza ma tutto sommato poi l’è venuta la pensione da Roma, aveva la sua pensione, qualche soldo perché le è venuto qualche cosa di questi beni abbandonati, viveva un poco a Valdobbiadene, un poco a Trieste da noi, insomma ha fatto la sua vita tranquilla, non dico con grande signora ma non è che le mancasse niente dopo no? Il più povero è stato il nonno, quello che ha lavorato più di tutti, faticato ma che non ha goduto niente ed è morto così. Lui è quello povero che, il vero, colpito dalla guerra diciamo no? E questo è quanto. No, altre cose non saprei cosa dirti.
PS: Io volevo farle alla fine solo una domanda.
LKP: Ma fammi tutte le domande che vuoi, non so se so risponderti, perché è poca è la mia memoria di quel periodo.
PS: No, io più che altro vorrei chiederle, col eh, adesso oggi pensando a quel periodo, pensando ai bombardamenti e alla situazione della guerra, adesso lei come, come li vede, come pensa al, col senno di oggi ai bombardamenti, a chi li faceva.
LKP: Come mi sento? Guarda, io non posso esprimere giudizi perché ero troppo piccola e quindi tutto questo cambiamento, prima l’Italia, poi la Germania, poi la Croazia, la Jugoslavia e tutto l’insieme di cose non riesco a mettere insieme come bambina, non mi rendevo conto di niente. Come adulta sì, mi sono accorta, perché perché sapevo che di là c’era stata una parte della mia vita e dei miei che era stata cancellata e proibita, quindi c’era questo rimpianto diciamo, di un qualcosa che c’era e che poi non c’è stato più. Però io mi sono adattata benissimo alla vita qui a Trieste, ripeto ero troppo piccola e anche avevo un carattere così proiettato sempre verso li futuro, con tutta la mia vita è stata cioè, non mi risiedevo nel passato, non mi crogiolavo, però era sempre un tendere in avanti, far questo far quell’altro, far quel terzo, non avevo mai pace, mi inventavo sempre cose, infatti mio marito, mio fratello una volta che una delle figlie non so cosa faceva, m’ha detto ‘Daniele non ha mai pace, è come zia Lia’ [laughs] per dire no? Perché l’estate viaggiavo, andavo di qui, cioè la mia vita l’ho iniziata a Trieste, anche se c’è stato quell’episodio di Fiume, delle amiche e così via, era un episodio dell’infanzia ma un qualcosa chiuso in sè, basta, più di tanto, quei piccole. Mentre la vera vita diciamo l’ho incominciata a Trieste a venire, con la scuola, con le amicizie, con tutto il resto, per cui a me non è mai stato. I miei genitori non si sono tanto lamentati perché forse mio padre ad esempio, noi si, eravamo profughi ma profughi un po’ particolari, non abbiamo ricevuto assistenza, non abbiamo ricevuto niente perché mio padre non ha perso un giorno di lavoro. La ferrovia ha trasferito il suo personale da Fiume a Trieste, lui, altri in altre parti d’Italia, dandogli sempre lo stipendio, per cui lui non ha dovuto aspettare come tanti, lui il suo stipendio l’aveva, il suo lavoro l’ aveva, io inserita in questo contesto, l’unico beneficio che ho ricevuto è stato dal punto di vista scolastico, nel senso che fin che ero a scuola la Lega Nazionale mi forniva i libri di testo che era stabilito che ai profughi si concedesse questo per aiutarli, i libri di testo, quindi gran parte non tutti, ma gran parte dei libri di testo la Lega Nazionale me li dava e dopo li restituivo eccetera. Quindi il costo libri è stato quasi azzerato e quando sono arrivata all’università anche come profuga, potevo pagare solo metà, dovevo pagare metà tassa, l’altra metà siccome avevo una buona media per merito per cui io praticamente ho fatto l’università senza pagar tasse. Ecco questo è l’unico vantaggio di essere stata profuga, per il resto zero. Mentre altri hanno ricevuto, e colonie, non so cos’altro, e dopo le case e così via, niente di niente perché noi eravamo dei profughi particolari diciamo, perché appunto papà essendo statale la ferrovia, tutti i suoi dipendenti aveva chiesto ‘Volete restare o venire in Italia’. Se venite in Italia continuate il vostro lavoro in Italia. E così è stato. Per cui devo dir la verità, mi dispiace perché perché Fiume è una bella città, perché i ricordi belli dell’infanzia ce li ho eccetera. Anche quando ho visto, persin mia figlia ha voluto, ‘Ma io vorrei vedere le case’ e siamo andati a vedere, perché voleva vedere dove eravamo nati, dov’era tutto, perché i nonni parlavano tanto, la nonna si lamentava sempre tanto di cui, ma è chiaro, lei aveva perso, no? Io bambina non avevo perso niente, era lei che aveva perso, e lei sempre che si lamentava, e sempre ‘Sì ci hanno fatto, abbiamo perso tutto, tutto’. E sempre, e allora a sentire questo mia figlia voleva ‘Ma io vorrei vedere questa roba dov’era e così’ per cui siamo andati per vedere dov’era e così. Più che altro per lei, ma per dir la verità non, non avevo grandi rimpianti, mai avuti io. Forse ero un po’ incosciente non so, cioè ero senz’altro incosciente ma non mi fermavo a queste considerazioni, guardavo sempre avanti: dove vado? Cosa faccio? Dove muovo? Nel senso, capito? Ecco e qui è tutto. E anche il periodo di guerra ricordo ste paure tremende quando sentivo gli aerei, questo sì, è un qualcosa di incredibile proprio, un problema che mi prendeva qui allo stomaco proprio, il sistema del gran simpatico, come dicono, è un disturbo che mi è rimasto per tutta la vita eh, anche quando facevo l’università gli esami eccetera, ero magrissima perché quando eh mi prendevano sti spasmi non riuscivo a mangiare, rimettevo, eccetera, proprio un qualcosa di incontrollato, no? Che non dipende dalla nostra volontà. E son guarita da, tramite un medico che mi aveva dato i primi ansiolitici che erano usciti, che bisognava prendere ogni otto ore in modo da costituire un blocco di questo sistema, per, ma è una cosa tremenda eh, certe volte di notte mia mamma doveva chiamare la croce rossa perché stavo tanto male. Ma questo era un fattore fisiologico che purtroppo può succedere per qualsiasi emergenza infatti si è ripetuto anche dopo, no? Per cui quando sentivo suonare questi aerei era una cosa da morire, la paura che mi facevano, perché capivo che da lì veniva qualcosa di tremendo ma che l’avessi visto, no. È successo più lontano, non l’ho visto.
PS: Però lei, visto che lei sentiva questi aerei che venivano, lei.
LKP: Qualche volta suonavano che dovevano arrivare, qualche volta suonavano che erano quasi arrivati.
PS: Però lei sia come bambina allora, che come persona adulta adesso, lei non, sentendo questa presenza, lei non aveva qualche, non provava niente verso quella, quegli aerei che comunque rappresentavano una minaccia.
LKP: No, io mi rendevo conto che erano una minaccia e un pericolo. E questa sensazione mi è rimasta. Ti ricordi quando è stata la guerra qui in ex – Jugoslavia che passavano i bombardieri? Il sentirli mi creavano una specie di ansia, un po’ come quella che provavo, perché ricordavo nel mio subcosciente il rumore wroooom, questo rumore sordo perché sordo, quello è stato un momento che mi ha ricordato i bombardieri di Fiume, è stato brutto, qualcune notti erano brutte proprio, che li sentivo passare, perché mi ricordavano, perché hanno un rumore sordo, pesante, non sono veloci, perciò li senti, sto rumore, lento. E di solito però, quando suonavano correvamo in nei rifugio per cui non li aspettavamo che arrivassero e quando suonavano alla fine uscivamo, quindi a cose fatte. Qualche rara volta, e ripeto una volta li ho visti di giorno che sganciavano ste bombe ma lontano ma si vedevano e l'altre quello del, del razzo che è venuto dopo il bombardamento che avevano fatto, cosa impressionante. Hanno detto che hanno bombardato con delle bombe incendiarie a grappolo, per cui quando si è incendiato è stato un divampare incredibile, tutta la città era illuminata a giorno per due tre giorni, bruciava una raffineria intera e questo silurificio. Che poi ricordo quando andavano al mare, a una certa ora facevano le prove dei siluri e al largo li si vedevano a pelo d’acqua sti siluri che filavano, e noi ci piaceva da morire vedere sti siluri in lontananza, li ricordo, ho la visuale nitida, son quelle cose che restano, quei flash, di sti siluri, sto silurificio che faceva le prove, che era uno degli oggetti che tendevano così, ma basta, non, no no niente di più. Non sono capitata in mezzo a un bombardamento, non sono capitata in delle macerie [unclear], no. Mio papà sì, perché mio papà era sempre in servizio in stazione e quando suonava lui per arrivare a casa doveva attraversare un grande giardino, giardin pubblico, una bella salita, un bel pezzo di strada non c’erano mezzi quella volta e in una di queste, lui anche aveva molta paura infatti dalle paure gli è venuto un’ulcera che poi arrivato a Trieste ha dovuto essere operato, dalle grandi paure che prendeva perché la stazione è un oggetto che veniva bombardato. E allora quando suonava scappavano e in uno di questi momenti mi ha raccontato, o lui o non so chi, hanno cominciato a bombardare, ha visto le bombe che cadevano e in avanti c’era un suo collega, che preso in pieno e il bombardamento gli ha tagliato la testa, lui ha visto la testa di una parte e il corpo dall’altra. Immagini che, che è arrivato a casa ha detto la mamma bianco proprio, e dopo doveva tornare perché lui appunto le stazioni erano militarizzate, i dipendenti dovevano esserci, come se, nell’esercito. E quindi lui ha subito molte paure perché la stazione era uno dei posti, invece non è stata tanto bombardata, non l’hanno centrata tanto la stazione, non so, e di fronte c’era l’ospedale, quindi tutto centri importanti, no? Questa strada che esiste tutt’ora, quando sono andata adesso a Fiume l’ho vista, ho riconosciuto il giardin pubblico, l’ospedale eccetera. E questo episodio di questo collega che è successo perché quando suonava loro scappavano e dopo dovevano ritornare indietro. Ma io non ho assistito a niente, era [unclear] un poco più lontani, un poco fuori dal centro che fuori per modo di dire perché è proprio centro centro, ma insomma, alla periferia della città diciamo eravamo. Ma non ho visto niente niente fuor che questa esplosione del monte che ho visto dopo quando è successo ma una cosa che mi ricordo sta montagna eh, e ho visto sta roba enorme tutto bianco, sai come una cava, come una sega che avesse segato sta montagna, sparite tutte le centocele e sono rimaste solo alcune casette ai lati più estremi, più estremi. Due o tre ore prima dello scoppio hanno avvisato la gente di andarsene se no era un macello, e la gente è dovuta andare ed è rimasta senza niente. Ecco questo, non, altro non è che ricordi di più. Tutto qua.
PS: Quindi solo per concludere appunto.
LKP: Sì.
PS: Anche se me l’ha già fatto capire quindi lei alla fine non, non le viene appunto da esprimere un giudizio su.
LKP: In che senso?
PS: Su su quei bombardamenti quindi.
LKP: Sui bombardamenti?
PS: Sì sull’azione fatta.
LKP: Da che punto di vista?
PS: Vedendolo adesso dopo tanti anni che sono passati, tanti anni da quegli eventi, tanti anni dopo la guerra.
LKP: Mah quella, i bombardamenti erano una conseguenza della guerra, indubbiamente, era una strategia usata da parte degli americani per distruggere le forze tedesche perché solo coi bombardamenti riuscivano a distruggere le forze tedesche. Quindi i bombardamenti erano esclusivamente delle operazioni belliche per opprimere lo stato germanico, la Germania di Hitler che aveva fatto quei disastri che si sapeva. Solo, e quindi la prendevano non solo in Germania dalla parte della Francia eccetera ma anche tutti, e in Italia i tedeschi anche qui hanno fatto abbastanza perché dopo l’8 settembre, hanno, sono andati di brutto contro anche le popolazioni e tutto. Quindi i bombardamenti, in certo qual senso noi li sentivamo come, cioè ecco l’impressione che io provavo è come se fosse una punizione per noi, invece in effetti era una liberazione, ma io non potevo saperlo allora, non potevo saperlo, per me era solo una fonte di paure e di terrore come se qualcosa mi perseguitasse, mentre in effetti quello veniva per liberarci dalla fase tedesca. Però a questo da noi è susseguito immediatamente l’occupazione delle truppe di Tito che hanno peggiorato la nostra situazione quindi siamo stati dalla padella alla brace proprio come si dice passati. E si è instaurata questa specie di terrore nella città che si sentiva, lo sentivo da quello che parlavano gli altri, ma più di tanto non potevo perché ero piccola, non partecipavo, non riuscivo e gli adulti cercavano sempre di coprirci, di nascondercelo, non c’erano più aerei che bombardavano, non c’era più niente, non so cosa si aspettavano non ho idea. Solo si sentiva di gente che andava via, io non capivo perché andava via sta gente, non ho neanche capito quando mi hanno detto, anzi ero quasi contenta all’idea di andare, come si andasse, a non so, qualcosa di di, in vacanza in villeggiatura per modo di dire no? Quindi è una sensazione strana che io ho provato, quindi diversa senz’altro. Certo che peggio sarebbe stato dove son stati quei bombardamenti tipo Roma che è stata bombardata tanto e così via e tutte ste macerie, in Germania non se ne parla tutti bombardamenti che son stati micidiali da morire insomma, che hanno rimesso tanti civili perché al di là delle truppe venivano bombardate città intere quindi civili che non avevano né colpa né pena, e quindi è stata una devastazione. Si parlava, questo sì si parlava ‘Sai in questa città hanno distrutto, in questa città’. Sentivo parlare dei bombardamenti anche di Roma ho sentito parlare, qualcosa si parlava ma più di tanto non, non ho idea, neanche non mi rendevo conto chi fossero perché sti americani bombardassero, non, non sono sicura di non aver capito allora, perché venivano gli americani. C’era un qualcosa di cattivo nel mio, nel mio sub di di ragazzina, bambina diciamo, di qualcuno che voleva farci del male, però non avevo capito perché, nel modo più assoluto. No no non riesco ad avere altre immagini, cioè qualsiasi cosa me le inventerei col senno di poi ma non con i ricordi che ho di bambina, pensa ti sette otto anni, cosa può aver una bambina di sette otto anni? Niente. È difficile, poi vivendo tranquilla, in un sistema abbastanza tranquillo di vita ancor meno si ha la percezione del pericolo, no? Non, proprio no devo dire la verità. Forse hanno proprio nato proprio qua a Trieste che neanche a Fiume perché qui mancava da mangiare, so che mi dicevano che c’era un problema per accaparrarsi da mangiare e così via ma io a Fiume non mi sono accorta di questo, almeno in casa nostra, capito? Quindi è stata una cosa particolare, il peggio è venuto dopo, con l’esodo, no? Tutte le difficoltà e anche economiche perché ovviamente si viveva dello stipendio di papà ormai, non c’era niente altro, solo che su quello si poteva contare, basta, non c’era nessun contorno. Ed è stata dura, dopo pian piano le cose si sono rimediate ma in principio è stata dura. Ma neanche di quello mi son, me ne son fatta un problema, ti dico la verità. Pensa te, dieci anni, abitavamo in via Flavio Gioia che poi la strada parallela alla stazione, no? Dove si entra adesso in stazione, di fianco a dove c’è il parcheggio, quella è via Flavio Gioia. E più in là c’era ste rotaie con sti vagoni, ognuno, ogni famiglia, eravamo più di un ferroviere, no? Avevano due vagoni, uno con le masserizie e uno che ci viveva, però ogni tanto facevano manovra, allora ci venivano ad avvisare col lanternino 'Signori manovra! Signori manovra!’ e allora mi ricordo ci agganciavano, ci portavano fuori, poi ci portavano dentro, guarda una cosa incredibile. E dovevamo prendere la lampada ad olio, tenerla in mano perché se no l’olio si rovesciava. Per noi era un gioco! Ti, poi non so, scaricavano gli aranci, c’era il vagone, andavamo a prendere con il secchio pieno di aranci, e da via Flavio Gioia, a piedi andavo fino all’istituto Magistrale Giosuè Carducci, dieci anni, non conoscevo la città, non c’era nessuno che mi accompagnasse, avevo un fratello piccolo che era malato, mia madre doveva stare con lui, mio papà andava al lavoro, gli zii abitavano qua, da un’altra parte, sola a dieci anni attraversavo la città a piedi per andare a scuola, che i miei figli li ho accompagnati fino a non so quando andavo dietro di loro. Ma, necessità virtù, bisognava fare così perché non c’era altri sistemi, e questa ha fatto si che ho cominciato ad arrangiarmi, a fare le cose e così via perché, perché la vita mi ha costretta a fare da sola tante cose che in altre condizioni forse non l’avrei fatto e quindi. E ti dico la verità anche dopo ho conosciuto la mia amica qui, ho frequentato la famiglia, siamo andati amici, qui l’avvocato che mi ha sostenuto tutta la vita, aveva cinque nipoti nessuna voleva studiare, io sola ero brava a scuola, e lui mi incoraggiava e mia mamma. E quando ho finito le magistrali che volevo fare l’università mia mamma ha detto ‘Ma sai, ma sei già maestra, accontentati’ eccetera. È stato lui ha detto ‘La lasci fare, la lasci fare, vale’ e l’estate perché potessi guadagnarmi, quando l’impiegata andava in ferie andavo in ufficio da lui, battevo un poco a macchina, qualche robetta facevo, mi dava qualche liretta. E tutto così, e ho avuto anche fortuna ad incontrare certe persone, poi io son diventata amica della famiglia e così via, una buona famiglia quindi mi ha preso, però dico, bisogna così nella vita. Per cui io non avevo mai grandi rimpianti per il fatto dell’esodo, i miei genitori e i miei nonni sono stati quelli che hanno sofferto tantissimo, ma io no, ero troppo piccola e troppo incosciente, capisci, eh. Mio fratello poi ancor meno, sette anni di differenza quindi figurati, non ha nessuno ricordo neanche, e tutto qua.
PS: Va bene, niente guardi intanto, io la ringrazio per, per il suo tempo, di aver accettato di fare l’intervista.
LKP: Ma figurati abbiamo fatto una chiacchierata, ti ho raccontato cose così, mi dispiace non averti potuto dire cose più interessanti ma non ci sono.
PS: No no si figuri già.
LKP: Non ci sono, è uno squarcio di vita così particolare, un poco diciamo no? Che sì ma insomma, Fiume è sempre la mia città dove son nata e la ricordo sempre anche così con piacere, ma anche Trieste è la mia città perché ci ho vissuto tutta la vita ho fatto tutto a Trieste, quindi non posso dire che Trieste non è mia, è mia perché. Infatti quando ero ragazzina sai dicevo ‘Io sono di Trieste, io vengo da Trieste’ per me era Trieste il massimo no? Nessuno diceva Fiume, dopo sì, dopo, ma. E quando mi han suonato in quel concerto ‘Cantime Rita, cantime bella’ mi son sentita emozionata. Sai quella canzone, la conosci? C’è una canzone fiumana, una delle tante del eh, che è diventata un poco l’inno di Fiume e che dice ‘Cantime Rita, cantime bella, bella soave, dolce favella, dolce favella d’ogni fiuman, cantime Rita in italian’ ed è allegra sta canzone e quindi mi ha emozionato, e Marco che l’aveva presentata ha detto ‘Questa la ripeto in onore di mia mamma che è di Fiume’. Quindi mi ha fatto piacere una cosa del, e anche adesso c’è stato un concerto con la comunità italiana di Fiume, col Lions mi pare, col Lions di Trieste con tua mamma, non so se era con tua mamma che siamo andati lì dal, dalla Sala del giubileo dei greci e hanno cantato le varie canzoni tra cui questa. E ho detto ‘Ma come mai che sono parole’ ma era la comunità fiumana e questa è una canzone fiumana del 1920 o ‘25 non so, sta canzone è proprio l’inno di Fiume e anche loro i fiumani che ribattevano di essere italiani, ci hanno battuto tutta la vita proprio, no? Con i croati che tentavano sempre di entrare, sempre di prendersela e sempre cercavano di. C’era quel libro che è stato pubblicato da Il Piccolo, che lo cercavo e non so dove l’ho messo. Sicuro l’ho prestato a qualcuno, la storia di Fiume, dove appunto si narrano tutti sti episodi ed è chiaro lì, questa situazione, non è che a Fiume non ci fossero croati, c’erano croati, un terzo della popolazione era quasi croata, ma due terzi era italiano, il, la gestione era italiana, i personaggi del Comune, i rappresentanti sempre italiani, le associazioni culturali e tutto, erano tutti italiani lì. A Fiume viveva uno spirito italiano proprio, riconosciuto dall’Austria che aveva concesso a Fiume l’autogestione pur essendo sudditi dell’impero Austro-Ungarico. Fiume aveva un’autogestione sua italiana.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Liliana Kucic Podda
Description
An account of the resource
Liliana Kucic Podda recalls her early years in Fiume, stressing a serene childhood playing with her friends. Reminisces a severe bombing that hit the Whitehead torpedo factory and the ROMSA refinery - the latter burning for days - and mentions the death of her great-grandmother. Describes the intense fear caused by bombings and mentions how the anxiety continues. Mentions war anecdotes: flares falling close to her house, an enormous explosion near the city, her grandfather helping German prisoners, the questioning of two girls suspected of being communists. Gives a detailed account of how Tito’s men occupied the city and reminisces about the oppressive policies of the new regime. Describes her difficult situation when she came over to Trieste in 1947, when she had to live for a while in two railway coaches. Highlights the peaceful coexistence of different ethnic communities in Fiume before the war, and states her pride of being part of the Italian one.
Creator
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Peter Schulze
Date
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2017-08-28
Contributor
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Francesca Campani
Format
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01:34:00 audio recording
Language
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ita
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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APoddaLK170828
PPoddaLK1701
Coverage
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Civilian
Spatial Coverage
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Italy
Italy--Trieste
Croatia
Croatia--Rijeka
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
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-09-08
bombing
childhood in wartime
fear
home front
shelter
target indicator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/20/260/Memoro 235.2.mp3
6b4e125a06866355189e635088039564
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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MDL: La mia [?] è Croazia, Fiume è croata, è Croazia, sì adesso in questo momento è Croazia, praticamente, perché mio padre da giovane è venuto che aveva diciotto anni, è venuto all’epoca di D’Annunzio, quando ha preso Fiume, è stato là in quel periodo e faceva servizio di finanza alla frontiera. E quindi là ha conosciuto attraverso la Croazia, che mia madre veniva su e giù in città, appunto si son conosciuti, e si son trovati là. Capirà mio padre abituato alle donne meridionali un po’ piccoline diremo così, ben diverse da mia madre che era un pezzo di donna non, insomma abbastanza alta ecco per l’epoca, aveva, superava più o meno, era più alta anche leggermente di me che sono un metro e settanta insomma, quindi. E là, diremmo così noi, siamo nati tutti a Fiume dopo, tutte, mia sorella è rimasta la prima è nata nel ’33, mia sorella è rimasta là in Jugoslavia mentre noi siamo venuti via, con diremmo così, cos’è, quando c’è stato, diremmo così, il passaggio dalla Jugoslavia all’Italia. [background voices] Noi quando siamo venute via di là abbiam lasciato tutto [emphasis] completamente. Noi, io ero piccolina avevo esattamente otto anni, otto anni esatto, eeeh quello che ricordo di quel periodo della mia, diremmo così, della mia infanzia è molto poco. Il tempo della guerra mi ricordo che mamma aveva messo le famose tende pesantissime, mi sembra, adesso ricordando, avevano il colore del nostro jeans, molto pesanti, che così si poteva tenere le luci un po’ in casa senza essere soggette a, diremmo così, a poter veder fuori che vedevano le luci dentro. Ricordo piccoli ricordi, piccoli ricordi che ho è quando suonava l’allarme che la mamma ci prendeva in fretta e furia, sopra il pigiama ci infilava pantaloni, giaccone, cappotto e via nei rifugi che era sotto proprio di casa mia, che Fiume è un po’ in collina diremmo e quindi abbiamo roccia, abbiamo una buona parte di case costruite sopra la roccia, quindi ci si nascondeva sotto, dove c’è stato un periodo, non mi ricordo quando, una una scheggia di bomba ha attraversato esattamente il nostro appartamento. Praticamente è entrata dal, diremmo così dalla strada, ha perforato praticamente il soggiorno, è andata dall’altra parte fuori, e quindi non si sa dove, o era una scheggia, o era una bomba piccola non so che cosa era successo comunque, piccoli ricordi sai che ho ecco.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Mafalda De Luca
Subject
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World War (1939-1945)
Bombing, Aerial
Description
An account of the resource
Mafalda De Luca (b. 1939) recalls how her father moved to Fiume during the D’Annunzio occupation, where he met her mother. Remembers the blackout curtains at the windows and mentions underground shelters. Gives a brief account of a small bomb (or a shell splinter) that knocked down part of their flat.
Format
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00:02:55 audio recording
Spatial Coverage
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Croatia--Rijeka
Italy
Croatia
Identifier
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Memoro#235
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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Francesca Campani
Language
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ita
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Memoro. La banca della memoria
Type
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Sound
License
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Royalty-free permission to publish
bombing
childhood in wartime
civil defence
home front
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2231/33183/LBirdJH184015v2.2.pdf
cf3f787c3fd871713b3329a4994ab9c3
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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Bird, JH
Description
An account of the resource
50 items. The collection concerns Flying Officer J H Bird (b. 1921, 184015 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, note books, newsletters and a <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2251">photograph album</a>. After training in south Africa, he flew operations as a pilot with 104 Squadron. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Lissie Wilkins and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
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2018-02-15
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.
Identifier
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Bird, JH
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/.
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
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IBCC Digital Archive
Title
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J H Bird’s pilots flying log book. One
Description
An account of the resource
Pilots flying log book for J H Bird, covering the period from 29 March 1943 to 24 August 1945. Detailing his flying training, operations flown and instructor duties. He was stationed at RAF Induna, RAF Kumalo, RAF Gianaclis, RAF Peplow, and Italy. Aircraft flown in were Tiger Moth, Oxford, Wellington, Albemarle and Horsa. He flew a total of 38 night operations with 104 squadron. Targets were Porto Farraio, Orvieto, Valmontone Road, Viterbo Road, San Stephano, River Danube, Giurgiu, Terni Road, Almasfuzito, Trieste, Feuersbrunn Aerodrome, Bucharest, Brod, Milan, Fiume, Kraljevo, Valence, St Valentin, Miskolc, Bologna, Pesaro, Ferrara, Tatoi aerodrome, Brescia, Szekesfehervar, Salonika, Kalamaki and Verona. His pilots for his first 'second dickie' operations were Flight Sergeant Holmes and Warrant Officer Harrison.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944-05-11
1944-05-12
1944-05-13
1944-05-14
1944-05-22
1944-05-23
1944-05-25
1944-05-26
1944-05-28
1944-05-29
1944-05-31
1944-06-01
1944-06-02
1944-06-03
1944-06-06
1944-06-07
1944-06-09
1944-06-10
1944-06-12
1944-06-13
1944-06-26
1944-06-27
1944-06-29
1944-06-30
1944-07-02
1944-07-03
1944-07-06
1944-07-07
1944-07-08
1944-07-09
1944-07-10
1944-07-11
1944-07-14
1944-07-15
1944-07-19
1944-07-20
1944-08-10
1944-08-11
1944-08-15
1944-08-16
1944-08-20
1944-08-21
1944-08-22
1944-08-23
1944-08-24
1944-08-25
1944-08-26
1944-08-27
1944-08-28
1944-08-29
1944-09-01
1944-09-02
1944-09-03
1944-09-05
1944-09-06
1944-09-07
1944-09-10
1944-09-11
1944-09-13
1944-09-14
1944-09-15
1944-09-17
1944-09-18
1944-09-19
1944-09-20
1944-09-21
1944-09-22
1944-10-04
1944-10-05
1944-10-09
1944-10-10
1944-10-11
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Austria
Croatia
Egypt
France
Great Britain
Greece
Hungary
Italy
Romania
Serbia
Zimbabwe
Austria--Amstetten Region
Austria--Lower Austria
Croatia--Rijeka
Croatia--Slavonski Brod
Egypt--Alexandria
Danube River
England--Shropshire
France--Valence (Drôme)
Greece--Dekeleia
Greece--Thessalonikē
Greece--Zakynthos
Hungary--Komárom
Hungary--Miskolc
Hungary--Székesfehérvár
Italy--Bologna
Italy--Brescia
Italy--Ferrara
Italy--Milan
Italy--Orvieto
Italy--Pesaro
Italy--Santo Stefano Island
Italy--Terni
Italy--Trieste
Italy--Tuscany
Italy--Valmontone
Italy--Verona
Italy--Viterbo
Romania--Bucharest
Romania--Giurgiu
Serbia--Kraljevo (Kraljevo)
Zimbabwe--Bulawayo
Austria--Fels am Wagram
Danube River
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LBirdJH184015v2
104 Squadron
aircrew
Albemarle
bombing
Flying Training School
Horsa
Initial Training Wing
Oxford
pilot
RAF Peplow
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/656/15058/LWilsonJ1486634v1.1.pdf
0e9b78e07dd37d9a2ee74a5919353528
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
Wilson, Joseph
J Wilson
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Wilson, J
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Flying Officer Joseph Wilson (1923 - 2019), 1486434 Royal Air Force), his log book, identity card and a photograph. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 102 and 76 Squadrons before being posted to 624 Special Duties Squadron where he dropped supplies and agents to the resistance in Southern Europe.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Jenny Wilson and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-12-29
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/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Joseph Wilson's observer's and air gunner's flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Observer's and air gunner's flying log book for J Wilson, covering the period from 12 July 1942 to 26 March 1945. Detailing his flying training, Operations flown and instructor duties. He was stationed at RAF Penrhos, RAF Lossiemouth, RAF Pocklington, RAF Rufforth, RAF Linton-on-Ouse, RAF Holme-on-Spalding-Moor, RAF Tempsford, RAF Blida, RAF Sidi Amor, RAF Tocra, RAF Brindisi, RSAAF Youngs Field and RSAAF East London. Aircraft flown in were, Blenheim, Anson, Wellington, Halifax, C-47 and Oxford. He flew 6 night operations with 102 squadron, 9 night operations with 76 squadron and 32 night operations with 624 special duties squadron. Targets were Essen, Nurnberg, Munich, Stuttgart, Krefeld, Mulheim, Wuppertal, Gelsenkirchen, Cologne, Montbeliard, Remscheid, Corsica, Srajevo, Split, Sofia, Salonika, Marseilles and Toulon. His pilots on operations were Sergeant Giffiths, Sergeant Heaton and Flight Sergeant Povey.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
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
One booklet
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
LWilsonJ1486634v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Algeria
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Croatia
France
Germany
Great Britain
Greece
Italy
Libya
South Africa
Algeria--Blida
Bosnia and Herzegovina--Sarajevo
Croatia--Split
England--Bedfordshire
England--Yorkshire
France--Corsica
France--Marseille
France--Montbéliard
France--Toulon
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Essen
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Mülheim an der Ruhr
Germany--Munich
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Remscheid
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Wuppertal
Greece--Thessalonikē
Italy--Brindisi
Libya--Tūkrah
Scotland--Moray
South Africa--Cape Town
Tunisia--Sidi Ameur
Wales--Gwynedd
North Africa
Tunisia
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1943-03-03
1943-03-05
1943-03-06
1943-03-08
1943-03-09
1943-03-10
1943-03-11
1943-03-12
1943-04-03
1943-04-04
1943-06-21
1943-06-22
1943-06-23
1943-06-24
1943-06-25
1943-06-26
1943-06-28
1943-06-29
1943-07-04
1943-07-05
1943-07-09
1943-07-10
1943-07-15
1943-07-16
1943-07-30
1943-07-31
1943-09-17
1943-09-18
1943-09-23
1943-09-24
1943-10-18
1943-10-19
1943-10-20
1943-10-21
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
1943-10-24
1943-11-03
1943-11-04
1943-11-12
1943-11-13
1943-11-16
1943-11-17
1943-12-03
1943-12-04
1943-12-05
1943-12-06
1943-12-10
1943-12-11
1943-12-16
1943-12-17
1943-12-20
1943-12-21
1944-01-08
1944-01-10
1944-01-11
1944-01-12
1944-01-13
1944-01-14
1944-01-19
1944-01-20
1944-01-22
1944-01-23
1944-01-28
1944-01-29
1944-01-30
1944-01-31
1944-02-13
1944-02-14
1944-03-05
1944-03-06
1944-03-07
1944-03-08
1944-03-10
1944-03-11
102 Squadron
1652 HCU
1663 HCU
20 OTU
624 Squadron
76 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
Blenheim
bomb aimer
bombing
C-47
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Me 109
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Penrhos
RAF Pocklington
RAF Rufforth
RAF Tempsford
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1697/39005/CPowellNI-191029-010005.1.jpg
b10155e76716b5dc9baf7fcbaa6e683e
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
Powell, Norman Ivor
Powell, N I
Description
An account of the resource
262 items. The collection concerns Powell, Norman Ivor (b. 1925, 1896919 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, diary, target photographs, maps, photographs, correspondence, and two photograph albums. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 614 and 104 squadrons in North Africa and Italy. <br /><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2207">Powell, N I. Photograph album one</a><br /><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2209">Powell, N I. Photograph album two</a><br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Brian Powell and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-10-29
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
Powell, NI
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
Map of northern Italy and part of Dalmatian coast
Description
An account of the resource
Shows northern Italy, Corsica and part of Dalmatian coast.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Italy
France
Croatia
Slovenia
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Map
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One map
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
CPowellNI-191029-010005
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/1697/39555/MPowellNI1896919-191029-03.1.pdf
10bbef3c867f6d607724d711c5726523
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
Powell, Norman Ivor
Powell, N I
Description
An account of the resource
262 items. The collection concerns Powell, Norman Ivor (b. 1925, 1896919 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, diary, target photographs, maps, photographs, correspondence, and two photograph albums. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 614 and 104 squadrons in North Africa and Italy. <br /><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2207">Powell, N I. Photograph album one</a><br /><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2209">Powell, N I. Photograph album two</a><br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Brian Powell and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-10-29
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
Powell, NI
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Date:- 12th. April, 1945. 104 Squadron. C
Off 19.10
Landed 23.05
F/O. Ward.
Sgt. Powell.
Sgt. McGowan.
F/S. Piper.
F/O. Scott.
F/S. Scott.
F/S. Cole.
[photograph]A6
2890 104/94 12/13 APR 45 F8//N.T. 6800’ [symbol][censored] ARGENTA.
E. 2x1000 10x500. MKIII 18 F/O WARD (F/O SCOTT 12/13) C.
[page break]
[photograph]
2098 104/71. 11/12-MAR-45. F8. NT.// 8000’ : [symbol]. 240°. 19.30. VERONA.
D. 4x1000. 8x500. MKIII 22 F/C WARD (F/O SCOTT. 8/9). P.
[page break]
[underlined] SORTIE REPORT [/underlined].
Date .... 10th April 1945. "D". 104 Squadron.
F/O Ward.
Sgt Powell.
Sgt McGowan.
F/S Piper.
F/O Scott.
F/S Scott.
F/S Cole.
Off .... 1850.
Landed .... 0030.
Hours .... 5 hrs 40 mins.
Target .... INNSBRUCK. Marshalling Yards.
A. Route markers seen. Illumination 2140.
TMB/Green. 2143. 1 lot in town, 1 North end of target.
B. 2146 1/2 15,900 Heading 329, aimed visually, and E markers. Bursts not seen.
2 heavy at target.
D. Flare on way in only.
J. 12 S/L's in line South of Brenner Pass.
4 S/L's in line North of Brenner Pass.
K. "FD" Flashing beacon 40 miles NE of target. White in colour.
[underlined] Signed R. Pountney. [/underlined] F/O.
[page break]
[underlined] SORTIE REPORT. [/underlined]
Date:- 2nd. April, 1945. 104 Squadron. S
F/O. Ward.
Sgt. Powell.
Sgt. McGowan.
Sgt. Piper.
F/O. Scott.
Sgt. Scott.
F/S. Cole.
Off 18.30
Landed 23.50
Total 05.20 Foggia Main.
Weather: 8 – 10/10 stra cu.
Target: Trento Marshalling Yards.
A. Route markers seen. Flares 21.24. TOT 21.32. Reds seen but not located.
B
21.32 9500 042 2 x 1000 GPTD .025, 10 x 500 MCTD .025. Aimed for markers bursts not seen owing to cloud. MB not heard. Fires seen amongst incendiaries at 21.34.
C. SIH, 1 light at target, 3 s/L's S of target area near heavy battery.
Scattered heavy on track out fron [sic] target to Ferara.
D. 22.08, 7 – 8000', 3 fighter flares on coast on track out, yellow colour burning for 4 – 5 mins.
U/I A/C seen heading N from Ancona with nav lights on, firing tracer from rear turret.
G. Photo with bombing, flash O.K.
Signed W.R. Pountney, F/O.
[page break]
[underlined] SORTIE REPORT. [/underlined]
Date:- 22nd. March, 1945. 104 Squadron. R
F/O. Ward.
Sgt. Powell.
Sgt. McGowan.
Sgt. Piper.
F/O. Scott.
Sgt. Scott.
F/S. Cole.
Off 17.28
Landed 22.28
Total 05.00 Foggia Main.
Weather: Clear, hazy.
Target: Villach North Marshalling Yards.
A. Route markers seen. Flares 20.08. Target identified visually.
Greens 20.12, to west of reds. Reds 20.11 on target.
B.
20.17 10800 282 2 x 1000 GPTI, 10 x 500 MCNI. Aimed for reds, bursts seen across reds. PFF wind good. MB heard, faint. Good concentration on target. 20.17 large explosion target. Petrol or oil smoke up 1000' and fire.
C. SIH, SIL at target. 1 s/1 E of Fiume tracking aircraft.
G. Photo with bombing.
K. "V" shaped fire and many bush fires seen.
Signed W.R. Pountney, F/O.
[page break]
[underlined] SORTIE REPORT. [/underlined]
Date:- 18th. March, 1945. 104 Squadron. P
F/O. Ward.
Sgt. Powell,
Sgt. McGowan.
Sgt. Piper.
F/O. Scott.
Sgt. Scott.
F/S. Cole.
Off 17.20
Landed 221.45 [sic]
Total 04.25 Foggia Main.
Weather: 2/10 stra. cu at 3 – 4000', slight haze.
Target: Vicenza Marshalling Yards.
A. Route marker at Pt. B seen. Flares 19.41 on target. TOT 19.47 – 48.
Target identified visually. TMB/R 19 42 target area.
B.
19.47 9300 250 4 x 1000 GPTI, 8 x 500 MCNI. Aimed for markers, bursts seen on mean position of reds. Other bombing seen 19.45 – 50 in target area. 2 small fires in target area after leaving.
C. 3 heavy and 2 light inaccurate.
D. 20.08, on coast 8000' flares.
G. Photo with bombing.
Signed T.W. Gauld, F/O.
[page break]
[underlined] SORTIE REPORT. [/underlined]
Date:- 15th. March, 1945. 104 Squadron. P
F/O. Ward.
Sgt. Powell.
Sgt. McGowan.
Sgt. Piper.
F/O. Scott.
Sgt. Scott.
F/S. Williams.
Off 12.17
Landed x16.12
Total 03.55 Foggia Main.
Weather: 10/10 small cu from coast to target base 7000'. Hazy.
Target: Supply dropping Flotsam.
A. Target identified visually, X seen white chutes.
B.
14.34 2000 035 145 12 containers, aimed for markers, all chutes opened. 3 chutes failed. Good concentration.
D. 4 Spits seen.
G. Photo with dropping.
Signed W.R. Pountey, F/O.
[page break]
[underlined] SORTIE REPORT. [/underlined]
Date. . . . 25/26th April 1945. "R". 104 Squadron.
F/O Ward.
Sgt Powell.
Sgt McGowen.
F/S Piper.
F/O Scott.
F/S Scott.
F/S Cole.
Off. . . . 1935.
Landed. . . . 0110.
Hours. . . . 5 hrs 35 mins.
Target. . . . Freilssling M/Yds.
A. Route markers seen. Illumination 2238.
TMB/Reds. 2243 at target
B. 2247. 9200 Heading 255 Bursts not seen at time all on T.I's and around them.
Few heavy South of target.
K. Large Fire 15 miles North of target.
Signed R. Pountney. F/O.
[page break]
[photograph]A6
2970 104/101. 25/26-APR-45. F8”.//NT. 9200’. [symbol] . 255°. 22.47. FREILASSING.
G. 2x1000. 10x500. MKIII.21. F/O WARD. (F/O. SCOTT. B/A.). R.
[page break]
[underlined] SORTIE REPORT. [/underlined]
11th March 1945. "P". 104 Squadron.
F/O Ward.
F/LT Honeybourne.
Sgt Powell.
Sgt McGowen.
Sgt Piper.
F/O Scott.
Sgt Scott.
F/S Cole.
Sgt Young
Off. . . . 1635.
Landed. . . . 2205.
Hours. . . . 5 Hrs 30 mins Verona East M/Yds.
A. Route markers seen. Illumination at 1927.
Target markers. TMB/Green 1927 centre of target.
B. 1930. 8000. Heading 240. 4 x 1000 MCTI. 8 x 500 MCTI. aimed visually
Bursts seen across markers. Good concentration and fire started at 1931 1/2
Slight Heavy, and Light, 2 S/Ls. at target.
K. 2044. Double Reds. 4309N 1405E. Blinding flashes on coast at 5000 many Red lights seen.
[underlined] Signed R. Pountney. F/O. [underlined]
[page break]
[underlined] SORTIE REPORT. [/underlined]
[underlined] 4th April 1945. [/underlined] "S". 104 Squadron.
F/O Ward.
[deleted] Sgt Powell. [/deleted]
Sgt Powell
Sgt McGowan.
F/S Piper.
F/O Scott
F/S Scott.
F/S Cole.
Off. . . . 1835.
Landed. . . . 2350.
Hours. . . . 5 hrs 15 mins.
Target. . . . BRESCIA Marshalling Yards.
A. Route markers seen. Illumination at 2124.
TMB/Red. 2126 North end of target.
B. 2132. 10,600 Heading 308. aimed at T.I's. Other aircraft's bombing seen on T.I's.
Large explosion seen near Breda. Incend on town M/Yds and across town.
Slight inaccurate heavy, slight inaccurate lightm [deleted] 2 S/Ls at target.
2 S/Ls 10 miles South of target.
At target. 8000' U/I SE aircraft seen silhoutted[sic] some distance away.
6 fighter flares on coast on return.
K. Short burst of air to air firing in target area, no result.
Flare dropped on coast South of Ancona. 4380N 1345E.
On track but South of Gargansm two aircraft collided and crashed.
[underlined] Signed R. Pountney. F/O. [/underlined]
[page break]
A.P.F.U.
SORTIE REPORT
(Part A)
Sheet No. Oprep. Ref. No. Date 16-2-45 Squadron
Type of Aircraft
Aircraft No.
Aircraft Letter A
Captain
Crew
[deleted] F/S. Saville.
Sgt. Rennix.
Sgt. Stokes.
Sgt. Annison.
Sgt. Ough. [/deleted]
Time Up 12.31
Time Down 16.19
Total Time 03.48
Aerodrome or L.G. Foggia Ma[missing letters]
Type of Cloud
Amount of Cloud Clear
Base of Cloud
Visibility
General Weather
Map or Chart
Reference
[missing word] duty Shipping Fiume.
[a] Time [b] Height [c] Place [d] Narrative
[a] A [d] TOT 14.32 – 14.33. Target identified visu[missing letters] TMB/R not seen.
[a] B 14.32 [b] 12400 [c] 291 [d] 150 IAS. 9 x 500 GPTD .025, 3 x 250 GPNI [missing word] visually, bursts not seen. Godd [sic] concentra[missing letters] target area. Thick smoke over target.
[a] C [d] 20 light below aircraft at target.
[a] G [d] Photo with bombing.
Signed W.R. Pountney, F/O.
[page break]
[underlined] SORTIE REPORT. [/underlined]
Date:- 12th. March, 1945. 104 Squadron. P
F/O. Ward.
Sgt. Powell.
Sgt. McGowan.
Sgt. Piper.
F/O. Scott.
Sgt. Scott.
F/S. Coles.
Off 17.07
Landed 22.10
Total 05.08 Foggia Main.
Weather: Hazy.
Target: Padua Marshalling Yards.
A. Route markers not seen. Flares 19.45 over target. Target identifie[missing letter] visually. TOT 19.49 – 19.51. TMB/R 19.46.(?).
B.
19.50 8200 285 175 IAS. 4 x 1000 GPTI, 8 x 500 MCNI, aimed at markers and incends. Bursts seen beyond TI's. PFF wind good, MB heard. Bombing on target seen at 19.49. 2 small fires in target area 19.52.
C. 4 accurate heavy from fork in rlwy line at target.
F. Gee u/s.
G. Photo with bombing.
K. 19.54, incends, seen jettisoned on 2nd leg after target, 1 lot to port and 1 to starboard, on route out.
Signed W.R. Pountney, F/O.
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
Norman Powell's Operations
Description
An account of the resource
A thirteen page collection of target photographs and sortie reports.
Page 1: Vertical aerial target photograph of Argenta. Some roads, houses and open fields are visible in the upper half of the image. There are also canals, rail tracks or roads slanting across the upper right corner. The lower half of the image is obscured by tracer trails and glare. The photograph is captioned:
2890 104/94 12/13 APL 45 F8//N.T.6800'→ARGENTA
E 2X1000 10X500. MkIII 18 F/O WARD (F/O SCOTT B/A) C.
Behind the photograph is a sortie report giving details of the flight, crew and attack, though an area of typing is covered by the photo.
Page 2: A vertical aerial target photograph of Verona. The upper half contains tracer trails and smoke but some ground details can be seen near the left edge. In the lower left quarter there is more ground detail showing a pattern of roads, while the ground in the lower right quarter is hidden by smoke. The photograph is captioned:
2698 104/71 11/12-MAR-45. F8". NT.//8000'. →.240°.19.30. VERONA
D. 4x1000. 8x500. MkIII 22 F/O WARD (F/O SCOTT B/A). P.
Pages 3 to 8: Sortie reports for operations to Innsbruck, Flotsam, Trento, Villach, Vicenza, Freilassing.
Page 9: Vertical aerial target photograph of Freilassling. There is no ground detail visible in the image. The upper left quarter contains glare and the rest is dark with traces of smoke or cloud. It is captioned:
2970 104/101. 25/26-APR-45. F8"//NT. 9200'. →225°.2247. FREILASSLING.
G. 2x1000. 10x500. MkIII 21. F/O WARD (F/O SCOTT B/A). R.
Pages 10 to 13: Sortie reports for operations to Verona, Brescia, Fiume and Padua.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-02-16
1945-03-11
1945-03-12
1945-03-15
1945-03-18
1945-03-22
1945-04-02
1945-04-04
1945-04-10
1945-04-11
1945-04-12
1945-04-13
1945-04-25
1945-04-26
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Italy
Italy--Argenta
Italy--Verona
Austria
Austria--Innsbruck
Italy--Trento
Austria--Villach
Italy--Vicenza
Germany
Germany--Freilassing
Italy--Brescia
Croatia
Croatia--Rijeka
Italy--Padua
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Photograph
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Thirteen page document with copies of typewritten reports and b/w photographs
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MPowellNI1896919-191029-03
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Andy Fitter
Sue Smith
104 Squadron
aerial photograph
bombing
target photograph
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1251/16728/SNealeETH1395951v30024-0001.1.jpg
a68a2ac100a3af34c58e2573609b310d
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1251/16728/SNealeETH1395951v30024-0002.1.jpg
7d6902a3a8fa668bccb6e852b2c04a74
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
Neale, Ted. Navigation logs
Description
An account of the resource
33 items Navigation logs created by Ted Neale while he was serving as a navigator with 37 Squadron in the Mediterranean theatre.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-31
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
Neale, ETH
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
Operational Navigational Log - Target Figarola
Description
An account of the resource
A navigation log prepared by Ted Neale
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ted Neale
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-11-16
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two printed sheets with handwritten calculations
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SNealeETH1395951v30024-0001,
SNealeETH1395951v30024-0002
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Croatia
Croatia--Rovinj
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.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-11-16
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Map. Navigation chart and navigation log
Map
37 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
navigator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1464/36102/LGauntPH755625v2.2.pdf
2343374361dc18ac7eb7711107ea8716
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
Gaunt, Terrance John
T J Gaunt
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-30
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
Gaunt, TJ
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. The collection concerns P H Gaunt (Royal Air Force) and contains his logbooks. He flew operations as a pilot with 37 and 70 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Terence Gaunt and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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
P H Gaunt’s pilots flying log book. Two.
Description
An account of the resource
Pilots flying log book for P H Gaunt, pilot, covering the period from 20 October 1944 to 21 June 1952. Detailing his operations flown and post war flying at 69 reserve centre and 7 reserve flying school. He was stationed at RAF Foggia and RAF Desford. Aircraft flown in were Wellington, Tiger Moth, Anson and Prentice. He flew a total of 14 operations 9 with 37 Squadron and 5 with 70 Squadron. Targets were Szombathely, Tuzla, Sinj, Sjenica, Visegrad, Uzice, Bugojno, Podgorica, Matesevo, Mojkovac, Casarsa and Udine. The log book also lists dates and target details of his first tour on Hampdens. His pilot for a ‘second dickie’ operation was Warrant Officer Shiel.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1941-08-08
1941-08-17
1941-08-26
1941-08-29
1941-09-02
1941-09-28
1941-10-12
1941-10-13
1941-10-16
1941-10-20
1941-11-07
1941-11-23
1941-12-25
1942-01-08
1942-01-27
1942-01-31
1942-02-24
1942-02-26
1942-03-08
1942-03-10
1942-04-12
1942-04-14
1942-04-15
1944-10-20
1944-10-21
1944-10-31
1944-11-01
1944-11-04
1944-11-05
1944-11-12
1944-11-18
1944-11-19
1944-11-20
1944-11-23
1944-11-25
1944-12-03
1944-12-04
1944-12-19
1944-12-21
1944-12-26
1944-12-28
1944-12-29
1945-01-08
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Croatia
Great Britain
Hungary
Italy
Montenegro
Serbia
Bosnia and Herzegovina--Bugojno (Opština)
Bosnia and Herzegovina--Tuzla
Croatia--Sinj
England--Leicestershire
Hungary--Szombathely
Hungary--Visegrád
Italy--Casarsa della Delizia
Italy--Foggia
Italy--Udine
Montenegro--Kolašin Region
Montenegro--Mojkovac
Montenegro--Podgorica
Serbia--Sjenica
Serbia--Užice
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
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
Mike Connock
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LGauntPH755625v2
37 Squadron
70 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Hampden
pilot
RAF Desford
Tiger Moth
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1464/36103/LGauntPH755625v1.1.pdf
9d1cdafe29cfd550105dabb992ab7b3a
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
Gaunt, Terrance John
T J Gaunt
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-30
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
Gaunt, TJ
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. The collection concerns P H Gaunt (Royal Air Force) and contains his logbooks. He flew operations as a pilot with 37 and 70 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Terence Gaunt and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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
P H Gaunt’s pilots South African Air Force flying log book. One
Description
An account of the resource
South African Air Force pilots flying log book one, for P H Gaunt, covering the period from 23 August 1943 to 19 November 1944. Detailing his flying training and operations flown. He was stationed at SAAF Witbank, SAAF Pietersburg, RAF Qastina and RAF Foggia Tortorella. Aircraft flown in were Tiger Moth, Oxford, Lodestar, Wellington, and Dakota. He flew a total of 8 operations with 37 Squadron. Targets were Szombathely, Tuzla, Sinj, Sanskimost, Pregrad, Pecorra, Sjenica and Priboj. His pilots for his ‘second dickie’ operations were Flying Officer Lavack and Warrant Officer Shiel.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1944-10-20
1944-10-31
1944-11-01
1944-11-04
1944-11-05
1944-11-12
1944-11-18
1944-11-19
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Croatia
Hungary
Israel
Italy
Serbia
South Africa
Bosnia and Herzegovina--Sanski Most
Bosnia and Herzegovina--Tuzla
Croatia--Pregrada
Croatia--Sinj
Hungary--Szombathely
Israel--Ḥatsor
Italy--Foggia
Italy--Piacenza
Serbia--Priboj
Serbia--Sjenica
South Africa--Polokwane
South Africa--eMalahleni
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
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
Mike Connock
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LGauntPH755625v1
14 OTU
37 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
C-47
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2451/45542/LTaylorPR1580457v1.1.pdf
ba9dceeb07a487fbda73057dc7a6e3de
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
Taylor, Peter Ross
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. The collection concerns Sergeant Peter Ross Taylor (1922 - 1979, 1580457 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book and a photograph. He flew operations as a navigator with 38 Squadron in the Middle East.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Ross Taylor and catalogued by Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-08-03
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
Taylor, PR
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
P R Taylor’s observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
P R Taylor’s Observer’s and Air Gunner’s Flying Log Book, from 26 April 1943 to 25 October 1945, detailing training and operations as a Navigator (occasionally Bomb Aimer) in the Mediterranean area. Based at: Oudtshoorn (No. 45 Air School), George (No. 61 Air School), RAF Ein Shemer (No. 78 Operational Training Unit), Berka 3, Kalamaki, Grottaglie, Foggia and Luqa (all with No. 38 Squadron). Aircraft flown: Anson, Oxford, Wellington XIII, Wellington XIV, Warwick. Records 30 sorties, including bombing, anti-submarine patrols, armed/offensive reconnaissance, anti-shipping strikes, mine laying, flare illumination, convoy escorts, leaflet dropping and supply drops. Named targets/areas include: Portolargo (Leros Island), Karlovasi Harbour (Samos), Chalcis, Iraklion aerodrome (Crete), Aegean Sea, and Kalamaki. His pilot on operations with 38 Squadron was F/O Webster. On 17 February 1945 he notes “President Roosevelt aboard Cruiser Quincey”.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944-07-17
1944-07-20
1944-08-02
1944-08-03
1944-08-04
1944-08-05
1944-08-07
1944-08-09
1944-08-10
1944-08-12
1944-08-13
1944-08-24
1944-08-27
1944-08-30
1944-09-01
1944-09-02
1944-09-03
1944-09-05
1944-09-08
1944-09-09
1944-09-12
1944-09-15
1944-09-16
1944-09-17
1944-10-07
1944-10-08
1944-10-13
1944-10-14
1944-10-17
1944-12-19
1944-12-27
1944-12-31
1945-02-17
1945-03-04
1945-03-05
1945-03-20
1945-03-23
1945-03-24
1945-04-03
1945-04-06
1945-04-07
1945-04-12
1945-04-13
1945-04-17
1945-04-18
1945-04-24
1945-04-29
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Croatia
Croatia--Kamenjak
Greece
Greece--Crete
Greece--Ērakleion
Greece--Chalkida
Greece--Rhodes (Island)
Greece--Samos
Greece--Zakynthos
Israel
Israel--ʻEn Shemer
Italy
Italy--Foggia
Italy--Grottaglie
Italy--Trieste
Italy--Venice
Libya
Libya--Banghāzī
Malta
Malta--Valletta
Mediterranean Sea
South Africa
South Africa--George
Greece--Leros (Municipality)
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
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
David Leitch
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LTaylorPR1580457v1
38 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bomb aimer
bombing
mine laying
navigator
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1882-1945)
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/450/7930/LHarrisonR[Ser -DoB]v1.jpg
6e179190f8ff559eba00751da4b32fd8
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
Harrison, Richard
Richard Harrison
Dick Harrison
Description
An account of the resource
10 items. An oral history interview with Richard Harrison (b. 1924, 1833947 Royal Air Force) a page from his log book and documents about gunnery training. Richard Harrison flew operations as a B-24 air gunner with70 Squadron, 231 Wing, 2015 Group in Italy.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Richard Harrison 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
2015-11-16
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Harrison, R
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
Page from Ron Harrison's log book
Description
An account of the resource
An extract from Ron Harrison's log book detailing his operations as an air gunner with 70 Squadron between 2 March 1945 and 24 March 1945. Details targets in Italy, Yugoslavia and Austria: Verona, Pola, Gemona, Padua, Monfalcone, Bruck, Pragersko and St Veit. His pilots on operations were Sergeant Edwards, Flying Officer Laver, Sergeant Bennett and Warrant Officer Middleton.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ron Harrison
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1945-03
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One handwritten sheet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text. Log book and record book
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LHarrisonR[Ser#-DoB]v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Austria
Croatia
Italy
Slovenia
Austria--Bruck an der Mur
Croatia--Pula
Italy--Gemona del Friuli
Italy--Monfalcone
Italy--Padua
Italy--Verona
Slovenia--Slovenska Bistrica
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-03
1945-03-02
1945-03-03
1945-03-04
1945-03-07
1945-03-11
1945-03-12
1945-03-16
1945-03-19
1945-03-20
1945-03-23
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
70 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
B-24
bombing