2
25
501
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/140/1754/ERoyleBantoftFNBanksJH511203.2.jpg
ff012526876c2c8ba19dd77123042b27
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
Banks, Peter
P Banks
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Banks, P
Description
An account of the resource
17 items. The collection relates to James Henry Banks (b. 1916, 519903 Royal Air Force). He enlisted in the RAF 25 April 1935 and served as a photographer. The collection consists of two multiple page photograph albums, his service and pay book, his driving licence, statement of service and certificate of discharge, a NAAFI pass belonging to his wife, Grace Emily Banks, a pocket watch, loose photographs, and letters regarding his attempt to re-enlist in the RAF between 1948 and 1950. Also contains a RAF pocket book.<br /><br />This collection includes two albums:
<p style="margin-left: 40px;"><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/141" title="Album one" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Album one</a> contains photographs pre-war Harts and Harrow aircraft, of the RAF Advanced Air Striking Force in France in 1940, 2 Group aircraft and targets, and a number of aerial photographs of cities and targets in the Ruhr and the Low countries taken at low level during a sightseeing Cooks tour after VE Day. <br /><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/163" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Album two</a> consists of a number of post-war photographs of RAF Seletar, Singapore, Burma and Cambodia.</p>
<p style="margin-left: 0px;">The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Peter Banks and catalogued by Barry Hunter and Nigel Huckins, with further identification kindly provided by the Archeologi dell'Aria research group (<a href="https://www.archeologidellaria.org/">https://www.archeologidellaria.org</a>)<span>.</span></p>
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
No. 3619 (County of Suffolk),
Fighter Control Unit,
The Airport,
Nacton Road,
Ipswich.
3rd December, 1951.
I hereby certify that Mr. J.H. Banks of Ipswich, applied for enlistment into the Royal Axillary Air Force at this Unit, in July 1948, but as he was holding a disability pension, we were unable to enlist him.
[signed]
(F.N. ROYLE-BANTOFT)
Squadron Leader, Commanding,
No. 3619 FR.C.U., Ipswich.
[underlined]Royal Axillary Air Force[/underlined]
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
Certification of enlistment application by Peter Banks to Royal Auxiliary Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Noted that James Banks has applied to enlist in 3619 Fighter Control Unit of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Great Britain. Royal Air Force. 3619 Fighter Control Unit
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1951-12-03
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text. Correspondence
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ERoyleBantoftFNBanksJH511203
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.
Great Britain
England--Suffolk
England--Ipswich
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1951-12
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
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One-page typewritten document
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Bloomfield
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/159/1992/LParkinsH1891679v1.2.pdf
276900754f39dfa9ed3aa80a655cd108
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
Parkins, Harry
H W Parkins
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. Two oral history interviews with Harry Parkins (891679 Royal Air Force), his logbook, identity card and one photograph. Harry Parkins was a flight engineer with 630 Squadron and 576 Squadron and flew 30 night time and 17 daylight operations from RAF Fiskerton and RAF East Kirkby.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Harry Parkins and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-05
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.
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
Harry Parkins' flight engineer log book
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
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
LParkinsH1891679v1
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
Belgium--Antwerp
Belgium--Kortrijk
Belgium--Leopoldsburg
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Suffolk
France--Mimoyecques
France--Grandcamp-Maisy
France--Creil
France--Amiens
France--Annecy
France--Beauvoir-sur-Mer
France--Caen
France--Chalindrey
France--Châtellerault
France--Donges
France--Étampes (Essonne)
France--Givors
France--Joigny
France--Nevers
France--Paris
France--Pommeréval
France--Saumur
France--Tours
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Munich
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Wesseling
Germany
France
Belgium
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.
1943
1944
1945
1944-04-10
1944-04-11
1944-04-18
1944-04-19
1944-04-20
1944-04-21
1944-04-22
1944-04-23
1944-04-24
1944-04-25
1944-04-26
1944-05-09
1944-05-10
1944-05-11
1944-05-12
1944-05-19
1944-05-20
1944-05-21
1944-05-22
1944-05-23
1944-05-24
1944-05-25
1944-05-27
1944-05-28
1944-06-01
1944-06-02
1944-06-04
1944-06-06
1944-06-07
1944-06-08
1944-06-09
1944-06-10
1944-06-12
1944-06-13
1944-06-16
1944-06-17
1944-06-21
1944-06-22
1944-06-24
1944-06-25
1944-06-27
1944-06-28
1944-07-12
1944-07-13
1944-07-15
1944-07-16
1944-07-18
1944-07-19
1944-07-20
1944-07-21
1944-07-24
1944-07-25
1944-07-26
1944-07-27
1944-07-28
1944-07-29
1944-07-30
1944-07-31
1944-08-03
1944-08-05
1944-08-09
1944-08-10
1945-04-18
1945-04-22
1945-04-25
1945-04-29
1945-04-30
1945-05-02
1945-05-03
1945-05-05
1945-05-11
1945-05-26
1945-09-12
1945-09-29
1945-10-01
1945-10-10
Description
An account of the resource
The log book covers the training and operational career Sergeant Harry Parkins from 20 December 1943 to March 1954. He flew in Stirling, Lancaster, Anson, C-47, Lancastrian, Valetta, Lincoln. Harry Parkins flew 47 operations - 30 night operations and 17 daylight operations - with 630 Squadron and 576 Squadron, including six for operation Manna, plus five for operation Dodge. Includes details on bombing on targets in France, Germany and Belgium: Paris-Juvisy, Paris-La Chapelle, Brunswick, Munich, Annecy. Burg Leopold, Amiens, Kiel, Antwerp, St Valery, Saumer, Maisy, Caen, Balleroy, Etampes, Beauvoir, Wesseling, Pommereval, Mimoyecques, Chalindrey, Nevers, Thiverny, Courtrai, Donges, Givors, Stuttgart, Cahagnes, Joigny, Trossy St Maximin, St Leu, Chattellerault. His pilots on operations were Pilot Officer Jackson, Flying Officer Lennon and Pilot Officer Fry.
148 Squadron
1657 HCU
199 Squadron
50 Squadron
576 Squadron
630 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Helgoland (18 April 1945)
bombing of the Juvisy, Noisy-le-Sec and Le Bourget railways (18/19 April 1944)
bombing of the Pas de Calais V-1 sites (24/25 June 1944)
Bombing of Trossy St Maximin (3 August 1944)
C-47
flight engineer
Heavy Conversion Unit
Ju 88
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lincoln
mid-air collision
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Fiskerton
RAF Hemswell
RAF Scampton
RAF Shawbury
RAF Stradishall
RAF Sturgate
RAF Syerston
RAF Upwood
RAF Waddington
RAF Wigsley
Stirling
tactical support for Normandy troops
training
V-3
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/163/2063/PBanksP15020053.1.jpg
f32be18fc1813b852c782163cece9349
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
Banks, Peter. Album two
Description
An account of the resource
The album contains a varied collection of photographs taken whilst based at RAF Feltwell from 1937 onwards. There are aerial views of Windsor and Buckingham Palace, Harrow aircraft, plus social and service events. Post-war he was transferred to Singapore via India and Burma. The album reflects his social life with occasional photograph of his service activities at RAF Seletar. His return to UK via Bombay at the time of Indian independence is recorded, followed by scenic shots round Wick in Scotland. Finally there are some photographs of Angkor Thom in Cambodia. It also contains pages from newspapers dated 18 and 19 June 1940. <br /><br />Return to the <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/140">main collection</a>.
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One photograph album
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PBanksP1501
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
12 airmen at RAF Stradishall and 20 airmen at a Man Management Course
Description
An account of the resource
The first is a group of 12 men arranged in two rows in front of a building. Captioned 'Attachement (sic) to R.A.F. Stradishall for disastrous daylight raid by "Stirling" a/c'.
The second is a group of 20 airmen arranged in three rows in front of a wooden building. Captioned '28 day man management course 1945
Top- McGregor, Pricket, Reeves, Mayson, Tucker
Middle - Crawford, Self, Clarke, Lewis, Shea, Cunningham, Wheeler
Bottom - Hookem, Bartells, Horner, Smith,Healy, Bently, Thorn, Robins, Inst'.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1945
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two b/w photographs mounted on an album page
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PBanksP15020053
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
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.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Suffolk
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
RAF Stradishall
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/89/2342/ACalvertR151124.2.mp3
94d73ffc9db8c40dca7c8216a827bb55
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
Calvert, Roger
R A Calvert
Description
An account of the resource
Seven items. The collection consists of an oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Roger Alfred Calvert (b. 1923, 1488619; 152814), his logbook, navigators training course class book and 3 photographs. Roger Calvert was a navigator with 141 Squadron at RAF West Raynham flying Mosquitos on night intruder operations. For most of his operational career his pilot was Flight Lieutenant John Thatcher.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Roger Calvert and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-04-24
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Calvert, R
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: So, my name's Chris Brockbank and I am in Leeds with Roger Calvert a Mosquito navigator and we're going to talk about his early life, what he did in the RAF and then afterwards. So what's the earliest you remember in your life?
RC: Well I was born in Ripon Yorkshire, I’ve got three brothers and two sisters. I remember very little about the beginning of the war except I remember the war being announced. Um, I was at school then Ripon Grammar School and I was in the sixth form then, more or less ready to, to leave. I'd no idea what I was going to do after I left school. Well I did quite well with High School Certificate and so on and then I was tested and, in [background noises] April 1942 I joined and went down to Padgate. Um I enjoyed being at school one or two of my friends are good footballers and cricketers and I enjoyed those being in the first team. But, it was a bit of a shock going into the forces of course, I hardly left Ripon [laugh] at that age so it was a bit of a- amazing to eventually go to Canada to train and go to Egypt and places like that. So I remember very little about London and Padgate except there was a murderer down there floating about. I don't know if you remember that chap, that murdered several women, and, then I seemed to get lost in the, the movement and the training really. Um, so eventually I went to Canada which is by boat on the Queen Mary. I got on this boat one afternoon, on this ship, sorry the Queen Mary one afternoon I thought oh we'll be off in a couple of hours it looks full to me. They were going on, coming on board all through the night 'till the next day. I think there was about eighteen or twenty thousand on board the Queen Mary. Anyway it was quite safe because evidently it, once it got out into the Atlantic, it used to, only go so long and then turn onto a new course, and then I landed at Moncton and travelled by train across Canada to London Ontario, which was a beautiful city, and there trained as a navigator on Ansons, in the middle of the Great Lakes. And I eventually qualified as a navigator and was commissioned then, I don't know, that presumably due to the results I don’t know and then came home again. Eh, and more or less after I got back to England they wanted navigators to train on two-engined aircraft, with a, lot of systems why [unclear] you picked up incoming German flights into the bomber, eh the bomber stream. So I went on this training, and with the pilot who was training also, which took quite a long time. Eventually I went to OTU [background noises] where, I was lucky because there were very few, very few navigators there, in fact a lot of pilots so it was a bit boastful to say I got the pick of the pilots [laughs] but, that’s where I met John Thatcher who was a wonderful pilot, he'd been on Training Command, he'd done a lot of hours so I got on very well with him. He was ten years older than me but he was a really wonderful chap, wasn't he Margaret. Eh, I used to see him after the war, but we just had confidence in each other somehow and got on very well, so it was a very nice association, I was very lucky to be with him and eventually we transferred to Mosquitos. And [background noise] we did this first trip to France, they give you an easy trip the first one. When I got back I was a sick in the [laughs] in the cockpit and they were a bit frightened that it was this lack of moral fibre, but what had happened was my oxygen mask had come, come off and I hadn’t noticed it and that's why I, why I was taken ill really, the last part of the trip [pause]. I can’t really say much more about John, he was a grand man, you met him Margaret didn’t you several times, he lived at Tring. Whenever we could we always called in to see him and, I remember he was rather funny once. He said 'do you remember that fourteenth trip we did?' You gave me a wrong, you gave me a wrong direction over Hamburg and he'd never forgotten this [laughs]. I'd given him a wrong, a wrong, [background noise] so we had a good laugh about that. That was about the only thing we quarrelled about really [laughs]. Yes it was nice to meet him after the war, but em. Anyway we were very pleased to get on the Mosquitos it would be shortly before the time of the invasion I think. And em we'd done thirty one flights, thirty one operations, eh when I was taken ill on leave and went to the hospital in Bath and eh when I came back to the squadron after a month or so the war was nearly over, and I only did one more flight with a Flying Officer Rhymer [?] we eh, we intruded some airfield in Denmark. I've often wondered why, whether there was some high class Nazis there. Anyway the squadron attacked this aerodrome that was my last trip, that was the thirty second and that was the tour finished I suppose well the war finished, so [pause] I had a very quiet time on operations really although, fortunately John was a very good pilot, I remember the worst trip we had was to a place called Zeiss [?]. I think it was near Leipzig, and we were over the target and one of the engines went and, he blocked it off or whatever the word is and he flew me all the way back to, to England on this one engine, how he did it I don’t know but, we came into this aerodrome in Essex, it had got about a four mile long runway so there's plenty of room there. So I've very little so say about the operations really, we were intruding once or twice aerodromes and so but mostly we were escorting the bomber, the bomber stream and trying to pick up German fighters coming into it. We only met one once [laugh] which was an ME110 which we shot down. That’s about the only thing I remember about picking some — we picked one or two up but we lost them again, so that was a bit of a failure really.
CB: So just picking up on what the activity was, you were trained to intercept other planes, German aircraft in the bomber stream, were you therefore technically night fighters yourselves or were you interdictors so you would do bombing as well. What was the actual role that you had?
RC: We were escort really, yes, only once or twice we did these intruding into enemy aerodromes. I think the last but one flight was Dresden, never forgotten that.
CB: Ok tell us more.
RC: Well the whole city had been bombed by the US and ourselves and, we could see the Russian, the Russian, flashes from the Russian forces quite near Dresden at the time [background noises] so we thought the war must be nearly over but eh, it was a shame to bomb that place but it was, that was the RAF was ordered and we, I think Churchill let us down quite frankly then after his war speech, he never mentioned the RAF, I mean they had to go and they did what they had to do.
CB: What was it about the Dresden raid that really stuck in your mind?
RC: Well it was the firestorm afterwards really, yes.
CB: What was your role then, escorting the bombers?
RC: Um, yes there, yes [pause] and that was about the end of the war wasn't it, just about.
CB: Yes, yeah ok, so what was your feeling about the bombing of Dresden?
RC: Well, we were told — they were told to do it weren’t they?
CB: But at the time, what did you think about it at the time?
RC: I didn’t think about it any more than the normal trips, you know. I mean a friend of mine went to Nuremberg on that awful trip, ninety seven were shot down, and he told me he went there and back without any trouble, which is unbelievable isn’t it? It was a moonlight night and they got in an awful mess they shouldn’t have gone really, but that was Jeff Ward, do you remember Margaret? Mm.
CB: Was he a Mosquito man as well?
RC: No he was on, Lancasters.
CB: Right, going back to the — if we just go to the training bit -
RC: Training yes
CB: So you're trained to use the equipment for detecting, were they to detect other night fighters? So just talk us through, what was the training and what was the equipment, you were on Beaufighters. So what was the equipment supposed to do, how did it work?
RC: Well there was Gee, I can’t remember a lot about it, there was Gee, you could navigate on these pulses coming from, the middle of England.
CB: It was a lattice navigation system.
RC: Erm, yes, and then there was one that would pick up the coast beautifully, I forget what that was called.
CB: You didn’t have H2S on your....
RC: H2S that's it.
CB: Did you have that, you didn’t have that on the Mosquito?
RC: Yes.
CB: Oh you did, right, in the nose?
RC: Yes.
CB: Right okay.
RC: Yes the nose was altered.
CB: Right. What else did you have [pause] how did you detect?
RC: Well I had — I was looking in this box most of the time.
CB: Right.
RC: What were they called, AI I think.
CB: So airborne interception radar, AI yeah, okay.
RC: That’s what I was trained to pick up these aircraft.
CB: So this was a scanning radar was it?
RC: Um yes I suppose so, yes.
CB: So what were you looking for?
RC: Looking for aircraft coming in.
CB: Right, how could you detect them in a way that differentiated them from the bomber stream?
RC: I can’t remember.
CB: Okay, presumably the bombers had IFF so identification friend or foe so that meant that you would know from a signal from those what you were hitting. But where were you in the bomber stream, in relation to the bomber stream, above it, beside it, below it, where were you?
RC: Well we flew out after them because we were a lot faster of course, so um well we had our own — we were given our own routes. Our own plans which tied up with the bomber stream presumably [pause].
CB: So whereabouts did you catch up with them? 'Cos you had — did you fly around a lot or, because you'd have to throttle back to be in line with them?
RC: No we just went there, um.
CB: You just wandered around did you?
RC: No we just went there to the, to the -
CB: Over the target?
RC: Operation, yes.
CB: But you didn’t drop anything.
RC: No, no.
CB: So when you got close to the target did you go above the Lancasters and Halifaxes?
RC: Yes I think so, it's a — I can’t really remember quite honestly.
CB: Or to the side is really what I meant.
RC: Mm. Yes I think we would have been above them [background noises].
CB: But over the target, was it likely that fighters would operate there because of the flak?
RC: Well I think they would try to pick them up before they, before they -
CB: [Interrupted] and after?
RC: Yes.
CB: So you had gone over the target, the bombers are turning, they are in a stream, how are you going back with them, because the fighters are trying to get them then?
RC: No we are not going back with them we are just going back, yes.
CB: Oh you didn’t go back with them?
RC: No, no I think that was impossible really.
CB: So really you're operating on the basis of trying to defend them on the way there but on the way back you're not with them.
RC: No, no.
CB: Is that partly a fuel consideration was it, or?
RC: No I don’t know it was just the way it was done.
CB: Did others come out and take over for the return trip?
RC: No I don’t think so, no.
CB: Right okay, so the one you shot down, what happened there?
RC: I wasn’t shot down, no.
CB: No, no the ME110 that you shot down.
RC: Oh right yes, well we picked this aircraft up over France and um and got right behind it as near as we could and John said 'what do you think it is?' So I thought, ‘well looks like a 110 to me', he said, 'yes so did I' and eh, so anyway we, it wasn’t, it wasn’t weaving at all it was just flying, so anyway I gave it a couple of bursts and again and it went down and that was the last saw of that. But, whether it crashed or not we don’t know.
CB: So your armament was what, so you had four 20 millimetre cannon?
RC: Yes.
CB: And how many machine guns, another four of those?
RC: I’ve forgotten, it was either four or eight, it wouldn’t be eight would it?
CB: I wouldn’t think so.
RC: No four.
CB: It might have been but fairly potent when you got going?
RC: Yes, yes.
CB: What was the effect on the plane when you fired?
RC: [sigh] Well, certainly hit it, it was a big, big, big blow up, big blow up, yes.
CB: Oh it blew up, the 110?
RC: Well it was a conflagration or whatever.
CB: Conflagration.
RC: Conflagration right.
CB: Did you fire, on other occasions did you fire at other planes?
RC: No, no that's why I've been so lucky all my life. I’m lucky as far as we didn’t shoot more down. I mean one of our chaps did about — shot, killed about — he knocked about twelve German aircraft out.
CB: Did he.
RC: I was talking to Margaret the other day, I was just reading a book, this pair shot down about twelve I think it was and eh he got the DFC and two bars. And after the war he, was killed by a lorry running over him and they thought it was suicide because this poor [indistinct] chap, his wife had left him. It was very sad, he was such a nice bloke although he had more or less gone when I — he was going, he was leaving the squadron to some other higher post I think after I joined it, it’s sad isn’t it the war?
CB: It is, yeah. So going to the end of hostilities, in Europe, you’d been in hospital, you had one more trip to Denmark, that was escorting rather than doing any ground attacks?
RC: No, it wasn’t escorting, it was just intruding on this aerodrome.
CB: Which meant what, so when you say intruder what does that mean?
RC: Well we just bombed, actually we used that stuff napalm on the place and um. [pause]
CB: What did you drop that on?
RC: On the, on the aerodrome on the build — hangers and, yes, and I suppose the ancillary buildings as well. I think I had a feeling at the time, it was a queer place to go, I was just wondering whether some high flown Germans were there at the time. I mean why pick on that place? Anyway we did that and eh [interrupt].
CB: Had you done any of those before?
RC: We had one or two, we had one in Holland [?] airfield.
CB: With the same ordnance or the same, material in other words napalm or did you use bombs?
RC: No it wasn’t napalm, no napalm had only come in later on in the war I think.
CB: So you were bombing as well?
RC: Yes.
CB: And what else did you do?
RC: I remember one of them said he hit, there was a fellow going across the aerodrome in a steam roller, one of the Huns, he gave that a quick burst, I said, 'oh well that’s rotten isn't it really' [laughs], oh dear [pause]. No I just had this one flight with another pilot in the end.
CB: So the war came to an end but you still were flying, what did you do after the end of hostilities?
RC: Well I went on various courses and things, I went to a place called Rattlesden and there was a bit of a revolt there, a revolution there by the, by the air force. I think I was, I was the station adjutant to, I was a bit worried at the time, this recruit centre. There some under eh, I think the staff had been treated badly but I, anyway fortunately it was cleared up, you know.
CB: In what way, what was that to do with?
RC: Shall I show you something?
CB: Yeah, but this place was not flying this was not a flying station?
RC: No it was a recruit centre.
CB: So who was misbehaving?
RC: Well it must have been the staff I suppose, I don’t think it would be the recruits.
CB: What were they trying to do, put them through the mill?
RC: Trying to get better, better conditions. Then they went out to [background noise] Egypt I was supposed to be in charge of the base personnel office there [indistinct] in Cairo [hesitation]. Where's my paper?
CB: I'll pause there just for a moment.
CB: Ok we are restarting now, so the war is over and Roger is doing courses, so what was the first course you did after flying?
RC: After the war you mean, yes, well my brother was a chartered accountant and he lent me some books about it. And eh, I got this book on auditing and I found it quite interesting, including the legal cases that had, taken, taken place and eh. So I went on this three year training eh to be a chartered accountant [pause].
CB: And you were an articled clerk were you, so you got paid in that time?
RC: Yes, well I got a grant yes, £170 a year I remember it very well, lived quite nicely on it, £170 a year you wouldn’t believe it would you, so I was pleased to get through that examination or the intermediate and the final, especially the taxation. I don’t know how I got through it but still I did somehow. So, then I was looking for my first position. I think that was at um a job with the National Gas and Oil Engine Company in Lancashire, Ashton-under-Lyme it was the Bush Group, do you remember the Bush Group?
CB: Yeah.
RC: And eh, I was very happy there but eventually we ran into financial troubles with the Group and I managed to get a post in Leeds with a motor distributor, through my brother and I was with them till about 1974, then they ran into financial trouble as well. Not my fault I hope [laughs] no it was, the company was with the, British Leyland and, they had, they had the troubles, that was leading to our redundancy really, very sad. But I suppose their range of motor cars wasn’t as good as some of the Japanese and so on. Then I had a multitude of funny jobs.
CB: Such as?
RC: Well I was really, sort of, I was working through an agency you know, they would find the jobs for me and, eventually I got a post at Castle Howard in Yorkshire as accountant there for, which was very interesting because of the people involved, of course the Howards were the [pause] in charge of the Castle and its various commercial opportunities.
CB: Including TV, didn’t they use it for Brideshead Revisited?
RC: Yes they did, yes, yes that’s right that was after my time though, or was it before, oh it would be before wouldn’t it.
CB: So in the end you decided to hang up your tax book and retire.
MC: Yes.
RC: Yes, yes that’s right yes.
CB: You were an FCA I take it?
RC: Yes.
CB: And when did you have the delightful pleasure of meeting Margaret, how was that?
RC: Well that was at a film at, Moortown Golf Club, I jokingly [laughs] funnily enough I had a speech about a month ago didn’t I, I jokingly said I met Margaret on the 27th of September 1953 at 7 o’clock, they used to have a film about the professional competition at Wentworth didn't they Margaret, that was it, at the club and that’s how I met Margaret at this.
CB: Never looked back.
MC: [laughs]
RC: [laughs] No, no we've had a lot of fun certainly.
CB: And you continued with golf have you, all your life?
RC: Yes, yes.
CB: Did you take it up in the RAF?
RC: Golf?
CB: Yeah.
RC: Well I played at Newcastle, when we were up there but it was just a fun weekend, day off you know, sort of business, excuse me a minute [background noises].
CB: Yes, we are just doing a retake because, Roger found that there was surplus, a, shortage of navigators and he ended up making a choice himself, tell us how that came about and what — what happened?
RC: Well I had met John Thatcher at the OTU and, we got on very well really he was, he was, senior to me he had done a lot of hours flying and eh obviously very competent and eh there were two other prospective, one was a Squadron Leader Morley, I remember him who I could have flown with and this chap Banbury was his navigator and the navigator said to me, having a meal before we went on this trip, he said 'I won’t be coming back tonight, I feel, I feel awful' and I am afraid he didn’t you know, he must have been shot down.
CB: Did he have a premonition, is that what it was?
RC: Yes that’s it, yes.
CB: So there was a choice of three pilots.
RC: Em Yes.
CB: And
RC: Well it seems a bit bombastic to say that doesn't it, but I mean, I didn’t really approach the other two anyhow, they were looking for somebody.
CB: Was John Thatcher a creamy? Is that why he had been on training earlier?
RC: A creamy?
CB: Creamies were the people who were so good at flying they were immediately put onto training new pilots.
RC: Yes, yes.
CB: Was that his route?
RC: It must have been really, I don’t, he never talked about it.
CB: And after, so you were on the raid with this chap who had the premonition, what was your reaction when you got back?
RC: Well I suppose I was only twenty wasn't I, nineteen, hits you very hard doesn’t it?
CB: What was the loss rate like on Mosquitos compared with the heavy bombers?
RC: Oh it wasn't anything like, no [indistinct] was terrible, the chances they had wasn't it in the Lancaster really. I think they only did twenty five if they got through that it was a miracle really. They had one chance in three of getting, was it, I don’t know.
CB: Well they did a, the tour was thirty.
RC: Thirty was it?
CB: What em, what experience did you have of flak because the Lancasters were the main recipients of the flak but you're in the stream so to what extent did you get flak?
RC: No, no, no we could avoid that alright [laughs]. When we were — if we were, like that Danish trip, the flak from the airport [?], choomp, choomp, choomp, it went past you, it was amazing really. You couldn’t believe you got away with it [laughs].
CB: The German Air Force, airfield defence was 20, 20, quadruple 20 millimetre canon wasn’t it, so that’s what you were up against was it? But you didn’t get hit at all.
RC: No we didn’t, no.
CB: Were you in the lead or where were you in the um?
RC: We wouldn’t be in the lead, no. But I remember I went round two or three times and Pilot Officer Rhymer[?] said 'the bombs have gone, what shall we do, shall we go back home?' I said 'yes please' [laughs].
CB: Why did you have to go round three times?
RC: Well I suppose [interrupted]
CB: Before you dropped the canisters was it?
RC: I don’t remember whether it was the first run or the second one he dropped them. One bloke came back with his bombs, he wasn’t very welcome when he got to the station [interruption]. He had some technical failure with the, with the bombing.
CB: They wouldn’t release, did you do a strafing job against the ground, guns?
RC: Yes as far as I remember yes, yes.
CB: Because your fire power was fairly devastating in itself was it?
RC: Wonderful aircraft.
CB: Ok we're stopping again for a moment [background noises].
RC: [indistinct] Line-shooting.
CB: Now we are just going back to one of Roger's experiences when he was ill in the aeroplane because his oxygen mask became detached and it leads to what?
RC: It says here 'spoken by F/O Calvert'.
CB: What's the heading of this?
RC: About line-shooting, on the squadron [?].
CB: Line-shooting, right.
RC: 'Spoken by F/O Calvert' in brackets, ‘having failed to connect his oxygen tube on ops', the only time I get to sleep is when I am on ops witness [?] Flight Lieutenant Bates [laughs], oh dear.
CB: What other ones have you got, so you were branded for life, what others have you got there, line-shoots?
RC: Jock Barriman [?], wonder if there are any other pilots of my vintage still flying [laugh ]. It’s funny here, Willy Rhymer[?], that’s the chap I was flying with, the last one. You could almost hear the tracer sizzling as it went past [laughs].
CB: This is the ground attack job.
RC: Yes, they are listed there [background noises].
CB: Thanks, and just going back again um we are in a situation where operations have finished because the war in Europe has finished, you are then put on some training courses, what were those. Nothing to do with flying?
RC: No, well one was an admin course at eh, Hereford, Credenhill. Then I went on one of them on moral leadership in the Isle of Wight of all places. Then I went on another admin course, I think they were just waiting 'till they were able to get, get, get us moved on out of the forces really. One was at some HQ, I don’t remember that but.
CB: And then you went out to Cairo, why was that and what did you do?
RC: Oh, we went out by rail over France and then across the Mediterranean, in a ship. And I was in Cairo and I was in charge of the base personnel office, which was a bit much at my age, 21 or whatever it was. Anyway we were in charge of moving the RAF personnel round Africa, if they were short of cooks or something like that, we moved a cook across from Cairo when they came in, down there you see.
CB: Whereabouts in Africa would you send people?
RC: Well they were more or less in Kenya and places like that [pause].
CB: So it was a, you were doing postings?
RC: Postings, yes.
CB: What else?
RC: That’s about it really, it was a funny job because you were only working about four or five hours a day.
CB: So did you start early in the morning or how did that work?
RC: Well you worked about eight until two, something like that and then the day was free which was very good because you could go down to Gazera [?] Sporting Club and....
CB: Play golf?
RC: Well you could play golf if you had any clubs but used to, nice to watch the cricket and that sort of thing. It was a lovely place.
CB: Swimming?
RC: Yes um, um.
CB: How long were you there [pause] roughly?
RC: I should think about a couple of months [pause] April to July.
CB: ‘40?
RC: ‘46 [indistinct] year before I left, yes.
CB: So how did you know that you were going to be demobbed?
RC: Well um, I think there was a circular around about it and, [pause] I can’t really remember to be honest.
CB: That’s ok, so where, you were demobbed as soon as you got back to the UK.
RC: Yes.
CB: And that's when you took up your accountancy training?
RC: Well my parents lived in Bath and I was demobbed to Bath and then when the, eh that period was over I had a week or two to find some work. I came up to Leeds, to work with my brother in Leeds, articled.
CB: What had he done in the war?
RC: He was in the Royal Ordnance Company.
CB: He got out quicker, he got out of the army quicker than you.
RC: He was in the south of England and he got about fifteen embarkation leaves before he went on the invasion. And, he was in charge of a beach detachment in — in France, he was lucky too.
CB: OK. We're going to pause for a moment [background noises].
CB: We're talking about LMF because jokingly people had referred to it earlier. Roger what was your understanding and experience of people in that category?
RC: Well I think there was only one fellow as far as I remember who got to such a stage he just couldn’t carry on and um it was difficult for the forces to have sympathy with him in a way but you know he just broke down and, and I don’t know what happened to him, he left the force I think, for medical treatment, but that’s very rare really.
CB: What was his role and rank?
RC: Oh I don’t know, I think he'd be a, I think he'd be a navigator but I'm not sure.
CB: Was he commissioned or was he?
RC: I think he was a sergeant.
CB: Right, and do you know how they dealt with it?
RC: No I don’t, no.
CB: But there was a perception of how it was dealt with what was that?
RC: Well they were probably a bit hard at the time I suppose, I suppose they had to be really, hadn’t they? No, they more or less um nothing [background noises] like being in a Lancaster is it, that must have been awful.
CB: So you got on extremely well with your pilot.
RC: Yes.
CB: John Thatcher, in the squadron what was the general, what was the general [background noises] em attitude?
RC: Can we -
CB: I'll stop. We're restarting now because we've been talking about a lot of things and in this case we're just going back to the kill that Roger did with John, his pilot, um on that particular evening. So is it a summer time event.
RC: Well, I've got the minutes.
CB: Oh ok.
RC: I’ve got the, turn it off.
CB: So what we're talking about is how this particular combat mission worked, so you're in the bomber stream and then what?
RC: I just picked up this AI —
CB: On your radar —
RC: Yes and we turned and followed, followed it behind, underneath, for a while until we'd identified the aircraft, John said it was an M110 and I thought it was too, so he gave it a burst or two bursts —
CB: At what range would you normally expect to be opening fire?
RC: I don’t know but it'd be a few hundred, couple of hundred yards was it, I don’t know, I can’t remember, probably says in the record there.
CB: Yeah, ok, and um so, why were there two bursts were they fairly quick succession or was it that the first one didn’t work.
RC: No I, I think they both worked yes, yes.
CB: And what happened to the aircraft?
RC: It just went down, it disappeared, we didn’t see it crash so we couldn’t really claim it as a, had to claim it as, damaged, yes.
CB: Did it blow up?
RC: No not that I, no it was just burning as it went down.
CB: Right, and then what did you do, keep going or turn away, or what did you do?
RC: We turned away presumably, yes. It’s so long ago I can’t remember.
CB: Yeah, of course, that’s okay, now going back to your original training, how did the training work when you were in Canada? So you come out as a raw navigator, trainee. What did they do there was ground school and flying so how did that work?
RC: Well we were in the middle of the big lakes and we went out on these daily trips as far as I remember, probably two of us went, two trainees but we gave the more or less directions obviously in training for the round trip and we would [voice fades away] [interrupted].
CB: So you would have ground school before you started flying would you?
RC: Yes, yes.
CB: What did that entail?
RC: Sigh [long pause] I suppose we had to plan the trip [laugh] and, now I am lost.
CB: What I meant was that they teach you how to navigate so how do they teach you how to navigate, because it's more than just drawing a line isn’t it?
RC: Em, well of course I picked up a lot at Torquay at the initial training wing at Torquay really about navigation [interruption].
CB: OK, so how did that work?
RC: It was just putting it into action wasn’t it.
CB: Oh I see right.
RC: You know, in flight mm, mm.
CB: So how often did you, 'cause you were there for several months, so there must have been a lot to do?
RC: Yes, daily, it'd be daily I suppose.
CB: How long were the flights?
RC: [long pause] Looks as if it was about three hours, up to three hours.
CB: Would they, yeah?
RC: Yes, yes.
CB: Shared between the two of you on the same aeroplane?
RC: Pin pointing, astro-compass fixes and WV’s, what’s that? [pause]
CB: That’s using the sextant.
RC: Yes.
CB: How did you get on with that?
RC: We never used it with Gee [interruption].
CB: Ah.
RC: Never used it. Familiarisation flights, then we got onto nights eventually after a couple of months we started flying at night, [long pause].
CB: Ok, so shall we just go back to when you did the initial training so the ground school is what you were saying was at Torquay is that right?
RC: Yes, yes.
CB: So that's where you learned the rudiments of navigation.
RC: That’s right, yes.
CB: How did they do that?
RC: [long pause] I can’t remember, I know it’s terrible isn’t it.
CB: That’s okay, it doesn’t matter.
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Title
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Interview with Roger Calvert
Description
An account of the resource
Roger Calvert grew up in Ripon. He joined the Royal Air Force in April 1942 and completed navigation training in Canada. On return to Great Britain, he met up with his pilot, John Thatcher and they completed 31 operations in Mosquitos with 141 Squadron. He discusses use of Gee and H2S, operations including Dresden, escorting the bomber stream, shooting down a Messerschmitt Bf 110 and lack of moral fibre. He became the adjutant at RAF Rattlesden and served briefly in Cairo before being demobilised. After the war, he became an accountant.
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Chris Brockbank
Date
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2015-11-24
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Hugh Donnelly
Janet McGreevy
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00:52:06 audio recording
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eng
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Sound
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ACalvertR151124
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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Great Britain
Canada
Germany
England--Suffolk
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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
141 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
Gee
H2S
lack of moral fibre
Me 110
Mosquito
navigator
Pathfinders
training
-
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Title
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Green, Langford W
Bill Green
Joe Green
L W Green
Description
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Eight items. An oral history interview with Flight Sergeant Langford William Green (1923 - 2022, 2236292 Royal Air Force), his logbook, service documents and photographs. After training, Langford Green served as an air gunner with 218 Squadron at RAF Chedburgh. He flew 18 operations and several Operation Manna supply drops to Dutch civilians.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Langford Green and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
In accordance with the conditions stipulated by the donor, these items are available only at the International Bomber Command Centre / University of Lincoln.
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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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Green, LW
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IBCC Digital Archive
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Langford William Green
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Date
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2016-04-28
Contributor
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Julie Williams
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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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01:23:26 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AGreenLW160428
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Description
An account of the resource
Langford "Joe" Green was born in Wales but moved to Marlow, Buckinghamshire with his family when he was still a child. He worked in a factory from the age of 14 until he joined the Royal Air Force. After training he flew operations as an air gunner with 218 Squadron RAF Chedburgh. On a cross country training exercise, his aircraft suffered engine failure and the crew were told to bale out. Only the bomb aimer managed to exit the aircraft and the pilot landed with the rest of the crew on board. He also discusses the corkscrew manoeuvre.
In accordance with the conditions stipulated by the donor, this item is available only at the University of Lincoln.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Netherlands
England--Suffolk
Germany--Dresden
Germany
Temporal Coverage
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1945
Requires
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CB: Right. My name is Chris Brockbank and today we’re in Marlow and the date is the 28th of April 2016. We’re interviewing Langford Green known as Joe and we’re going to talk about his experiences as a wireless operator/air gunner particularly in 218 squadron. So, Joe, what was the earliest recollection you had of life and what did your parents do?
LJG: Well, we were poor. I remember that. It was just an ordinary life really. Yeah. I mean I had two brothers and a sister older than me and we lived in Wales and then when the job finished when I was four I think, we moved to Marlow. My father was working in [?] in Pontypridd working and the job was finishing so he got on his pushbike, cycled all the way to Marlow because I had an uncle living here on, he was a signalman on Great Western Railway and he put my father up for the night. He got a job and a house and cycled back again and we came back on the train ‘cause dad was only allowed one ticket a year. The posh people on the railway could get have than one but because he was a labourer we only had the one. And we moved to Marlow in 1927. I went to school at the Church of England school. Infant school in Oxford Road and then the big school and at fourteen I left school. Went to work in High Wycombe in a factory. Just an ordinary, everyday, like everyone else did. There wasn’t, there was very little employment in Marlow. I mean we had a brewery. And we had a few independent builders but they only employed a few people. They didn’t do many apprenticeships so my father got me a job as an apprentice in to marquetry and then of course in ‘39 the war started so that was the end of my working career. The war started when I was just over sixteen you see. The company went on to war work. They were doing the parts for aeroplanes I think. They were doing big bases anyway so and then I got fed up with that. I got away with it and joined the air force. Another experience.
CB: Why did you join the RAF and not the other?
LG: Well I thought it was the best one to do. I wanted to fly actually but I’m afraid my education wasn’t good enough to be a pilot or a navigator or anything like that but I went to Wycombe to try and join up and they said you’ve to go to Reading. I’d never been to Reading in my life. Didn’t even know how to get there. Then luckily I the sergeant who looked after, the police sergeant who looked after me when we was couriers he said, ‘Well get on a bus to Reading and ask the conductor where Broad Street is,’ and that’s where I went. I joined up that particular day. I had all my checks, exams and I come away with the kings shilling and I’d signed up for the air force as an air gunner. They said go home and we’ll send you a letter or a telegram to tell you where to go and that happened about two or three days later and there again I got this telegram report to Lords Cricket Ground. I mean I’d heard Lords Cricket Ground on the wireless but I didn’t, had no idea where it was. Hadn’t got the faintest. So back I went to see my police sergeant. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘No problem Joe,’ he said, ‘Get on the train at Marlow, you get off at Paddington and you’ll find a big red sign that says RTO, Rail Transport Officer. Go and ask him and he’ll tell you exactly how to get there. In fact,’ he said, ‘He might even send someone with you.’ So goes to Paddington, saw this officer and he put a squaddie with me. He said, ‘Take this gentleman down, show him how to get on, which train to get on to and where to get off.’ I finished up at Swiss Cottage which was the station nearest to Lords and I was there for about three weeks having all the injections, got my uniform. I lived in one of those big flats just outside Lords Cricket Ground. We had a room about three times the size of this, two of us. Lap of luxury. I thought this is great [laughs] but it soon changed. Yeah. Yeah I was there in London for about three weeks. Yes. Quite enjoyable. And then we were put on a train at Euston to Brignorth to have initial training. Then I, I was there for like five or six weeks I suppose. Waiting to come home and they said you’ll get a telegram report to gunnery school and there again had the same problem. You’ve got to go to Northern Ireland. How do I get to Northern Ireland? So when I got up to, I got the travel warrant. I went and saw this officer again. He said, ‘Oh that’s no problem. Euston station,’ he said, ‘And the train will be there.’ he said, ‘It takes you to Stranraer so you see, goes to Glasgow first and then goes back again,’ and off I went. Quite enjoyable it was too. I was a bit frightened at first. It was a long way away from home. Of course it wasn’t all that exciting but you do whatever they ask you, muck in and make the best of it. I quite enjoyed it in the end. I was there a few weeks and then I qualified, got my three stripes and my wing, came home and got another telegram to report to OTU at Peplow. That was a great bit that because you get there and you’ve got masses of people walking about. Pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, wireless ops, air gunners trying to, joined up to make a crew. They weren’t getting at you, just try and find yourself people you like. I, I met one of the air gunners that I trained with in Northern Ireland. We walked around together and finished up with the crew that we got. It was great. Found it a bit strange because the navigator was a pilot officer. All the rest were sergeants. The pilot, skipper Alfie Kemp was a sergeant, the bomb aimer was a sergeant but Dickie. Dickie Ball, the navigator, was a flying officer, a pilot officer but we got on well. He was alright. And as I say we done our training there and we were posted to Sandtoft to convert from Wellingtons. Twin engines in to four engines. We started on Halifaxes actually. They were, you know, clapped out old planes that weren’t fit for service but were good enough for training but as I say we did have one hair raising experience if you want to hear about that. We were doing a cross county on a Halifax and we were diverted because of fog. It really was, really foggy and we were diverted to Stradishall, or Mildenhall, I can’t remember, and we were losing height. Two engines. One engine had gone and then another engine went and we got on to traffic control and said put it in [George] head for the North Sea and bale out. Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a Halifax, there is an escape hatch in the front by the, between the, in front of the pilot, behind the bomb aimer and of course everything in the air force is done in routine. Bomb aimer goes out first cause he’s in the front and he goes out first and he goes head first, and the navigator goes out but unfortunately to get open this hatch you have to lift up the navigators seat ‘cause he’s facing crossways and Dicky Ball goes out feet first but his harness catches on the seat so there he is hanging outside on his harness and the door shut and of course luckily the skipper called us up the two gunners have an escape hatch at the back. He says, ‘Don’t go. We’ve got a problem.’ So we managed to get Dickie back in alright and by that time we were down less than a thousand feet which is far too low to bailout and with a bit of luck we saw a Lancaster with the wheels down so we followed him in. Got told off mind you but we got down on the ground safe and sound but the bomb aimer was in the police station at Peterborough [laughs] trying to convince them that he wasn’t a spy, he’d baled out. ‘Where’s the rest of them?’ ‘Don’t know,’ he said. Quite exciting isn’t it? But there again we got through it. And then we converted on to Lancs which was a blessing as far as I was concerned ‘cause I didn’t like the Halifax at all. I didn’t like a Lanc with the radial engines but I did like the Lanc. Yeah. It was such a beautiful aeroplane to be in. It flew like a fighter, like a fighter plane. We enjoyed it. And we gradually graduated. We were posted to 218 squadron which had moved from Downham Market to Methwold and when we got there they had moved to Chedburgh and that was where we spent the rest of our, the war. I’d done my first op. Munchen Gladbach I think, 1st of May, 1st of February 1945. Done a few more till the war finished. We were a distinctive squadron because we were one of the first squadrons to do Operation Manna. That was on the 29th April. The week before the war was officially finished. Dropping food on Holland. That was quite cheering. The war was still on officially. The High Command gave us permission to fly. We had to fly a direct route. They told us which way to come in and I think it was Rotterdam the first one. We’d done quite a few. Three I think because we were due to go on leave but because of this we, it was postponed and so we did have our leave in the end. They call it a week’s leave but you travel on a Thursday and go back on a Wednesday which is seven days really but it’s only five days at home isn’t it? Even from Bury St Edmunds it was a long, a long day to get there, get home to Marlow. Get in to London, across to Paddington and hopefully you’d get a faster train but that wasn’t always the case and when we went back off leave we done what was called Operation Exodus bringing POWs back. Twenty four in the base of a Lanc, Sat on the floor with their legs apart. Two rows of twelve. Yeah. And that’s where I finished my flying career. Chedburgh.
CB: What did you do after the war? When were you demobbed?
LJG: 1947. May 1947
CB: So what did you do?
LJG: Pardon?
CB: Between, what did you do between the end of hostilities and being demobbed?
LJG: We were given an option what we could train and I decided I’d be a storekeeper. Nice quiet job. So I went to Blackpool. Done about a three month course I suppose and graduated from that I suppose they call it and went home and said report to North Weald and I flew out to Singapore via Karachi and I spent the rest of my service career in Singapore. RAF Seletar till May the 9th. I got home and was demobbed. Went to Blackpool to be demobbed. Yeah. Great.
CB: Then what?
LJG: Well then I had a job to settle down. It’s such a different world, you know, coming back in to the real world. You had everything done for you in the air force. In Singapore I was a flight sergeant then. Got reasonably well paid. Everything found. Come home. Tried to find a job anything like it but couldn’t you know. Eight or nine pound a week was a lot you could get. Then you had to travel to get it. I had loads of jobs but none of them, I went into Parker Knolls in Wycombe being a store keeper but it didn’t last long. I used to cycle to Slough and I got a job in [Citroen?] cars being a storekeeper there and I moved from there into repair work in the factory all the small [?] I used to have. Used to repair them. Odd jobs. Then 1960 and I was getting fed up with it anyway. It was a long cycle ride and it was, the bus fare took a lot out of the pay packet. So my wife was working at [Broomways?] in High Wycombe then when it was a big factory and she said there’s plenty of jobs going over there. Go and try and get a job there which I did and I was there sixteen, seventeen years. Then I found I was getting on in years and I worked in a heavy division in [Broomway?] big compressors. Twenty six, twenty seven inch pistons. Had a job to lift them in and I got a job, oh I went to a company in Cressex called [?] Spark as a fitter, a general fitter but I was only there three years and it was taken over by an American company and most of them were made redundant. Fortunately, my luck was with me again. My brother was a union man. He got me a job at Harrison’s which used to be the sand factory in Wycombe and that’s where I stayed until I retired in 1948. Yeah. And that is my career as such and since then I’ve done nothing really exciting.
CB: So what age did you retire?
LJG: 65.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: So not 1948.
LJG: Hmmn?
CB: Not 1948.
LJG: [laughs] No, 1988 sorry.
CB: ‘88.
LJG: Yeah sorry I apologise. Yeah 1988.
CB: Ok. What was your most memorable experience of flying in the war?
LJG: [laughs] well the most frightening was Dresden I think. It was such a long way. It was over nine hours and when you think flying don’t start until the wheels are off the ground. When the skipper says, ‘Undercarriage up.’ That’s when you start flying. That’s when the time starts but you could have been in the plane a half an hour. I mean you get in, make sure everything alright, taxi around, you could, that could take you ten minutes and the same coming back you know as soon as the navigator feels the wheels hit the ground then you stop flying but you’ve got a long way to go back to dispersal and sort things out.
CB: Right.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: So what was frightening about Dresden?
LJG: Well I think it was just tiredness you know and –
CB: What do you remember about the raid itself?
LJG: Well, that was, that seemed to be quite easy but we did have a scare. I suppose you know that the actions of a pilot if you’re attacked by a fighter is dive and corkscrew.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Right. Well, George, the rear gunner thought he saw a Messerschmitt so he said dive port so down we go but nobody’s ready for it you know so all the papers the navigator’s got – all over the place. And he brought us back by the stars which was great but other than that we had quite an uneventful, just a job really. Just get in, go over there, drop the bombs, and come home again, you know. Go and have a drink.
CB: On how many occasions did you shoot at another aircraft?
LJG: Never. I never fired my guns once.
CB: Why was that?
LJG: No need. We only have to defend. Not to attack. Try to get out of trouble if you could rather than look in to it you know.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: My skipper was married and he wanted to get home to his wife [laughs]. No chances. No.
CB: No.
LJG: No it really was –
CB: Did you get attacked and hit on any occasion?
LJG: We did have one which only affected me. I suppose other people will tell you towards the end of the war the Germans didn’t attack individual aircraft they had a barrage of anti-aircraft guns and they decided to lose, let the bullets explode at a certain height so you had to go through it. That’s why we staggered at different bombing heights. Halifaxes went in lower because they couldn’t manage the height and we went in higher but they’d alternate it. Hopefully we could get away with it you know and that and so the explosion on hitting you, an explosion at a certain height. Well I had one. An 88 and through the fuselage at the floor, between my legs, between the guns, out the top and never went off.
CB: Oh a complete shell.
LJG: A complete shell.
CB: Yeah. And how did you know it was an 88?
LJG: By the size of the hole.
CB: Right.
LJG: Well that’s what, I’m only going with what the ground staff said.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. So this is the flak box -
LJG: Yeah. Oh yeah.
CB: That you’re talking about.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: And their detonation is based on a time.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: At height.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: To hit the height. Yeah. So it went wrong.
LJG: Yeah I mean when you get a raid of six or seven hundred aeroplanes you probably have four or five different heights. The first one would go in at say twenty thousand feet. The next hundred would go in at eighteen thousand feet and I think we were one of the lucky ones. It went straight through and out the other end.
CB: Did the, you were in the dark so it’s difficult to see but could you see effectively when you were approaching a flak box?
LJG: No. No. Only if it was I mean because me as mid upper I was always circulating.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: You know. George the rear gunner done ahead and below. Not so much above because he had a job to see above so I had the bits above and then I could, sometimes you could see it but often or not it was below you.
CB: Did you ever get attacked by a fighter from underneath?
LJG: No. No this one that George saw coming back from Dresden it was way up, you know. And he seemed to think it was coming towards us and then it veered away but we got away with it.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Unfortunately a lot of them didn’t but we did.
CB: Yeah. And as a crew how did you get on?
LJG: Great. We had a great time ‘cause funnily enough George, the rear gunner, lived at Clare and if you know that area at all in Suffolk Clare’s only about seven miles from Chedburgh.
CB: Right.
LJG: And the skipper had an old Austin 7.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: And the bomb aimer, the er flight engineer didn’t drink. He’d have a half a shandy last him all night. So he would buy his half a shandy, sit in the mess near the phone and near the phone was where battle orders went up the following day for the following either morning or night so we was off, we’d go down to Clare. Six of us in an Austin Ruby. If the weather was bad you stood on the running board if it was foggy and go down to George’s local and then when battle orders went up if we were on Don would give us, give us a ring. We’d say we’ll be in The Globe tonight or be in The Cock in Clare so he’d ring up, ‘Oh you’re not on tonight,’ so we’d stay there till one or 2 o’clock in the morning but we did get caught out once. I can’t think where it was we were going but it was we had a phone call at 7 o’clock to say, ‘You’re not on, there’s a raid, a daylight raid, take-off is at 6 o’clock but you’re not on it, we’re not on it.’ He rings up at 11 o’clock to say, ‘We are on it,’ so we had to get back, try and have a shower, sober yourself up and do a trip at about 6 o’clock the following morning. But that was life you know.
CB: When the battle orders went up how did the briefing work?
LJG: Hmmn?
CB: When the battle orders went up how did your briefing work?
LJG: Well -
CB: Because some of the crew were briefed differently -
LJG: Yeah.
CB: From the others. So how did that work?
LJG: Oh you were woken up by one of the people on guard, you signed a book to say you had, you’d been woken up. You had your breakfast. Then go to briefing. Then you get dressed afterwards. I mean the, it was only the two gunners really that had to get dressed as such. We wore a kapok suit with electric wires down it, and slippers with electric wires in it and gloves, the same. All connected up in your boots and, but the others they just wore the uniform.
CB: So the, how did the electric system work? You plugged it in how? ‘Cause you’re the mid upper. How did you plug that in?
LJG: Well each engine done something. I can’t remember which one was which.
CB: Right.
LJG: One done the electrics. One done the hydraulics but it was great because it wasn’t very comfortable in the mid upper turret. It wasn’t a very big comfortable seat. I mean George was alright in the rear turret. He had quite a cushy, and all this but my seat it reminded me of a child’s swing and that’s about what it was. A piece about so big. Fifteen by eighteen by six padded and you dropped it down off the hook to get in and you stood up and you hooked it back up again and got on it but it wasn’t very comfortable. Especially a trip like Dresden. Nine hours or something. No. But there we go. We got it.
CB: Just going back to the briefing. The pilot and the navigator would be briefed together would they? And how -
LJG: We’d all be briefed together.
CB: All briefed together.
LJG: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Right.
LJG: Well in my day anyway.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: So you come out, you go into a large room.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Where the initial briefing is carried out. Is that right?
LJG: Yeah. The -
CB: All the crews go in.
LJG: At the end of the hall it would be a big map.
CB: Right.
LJG: With the route.
CB: The route marked on it.
LJG: The route from Chedburgh to where we’re going to bomb.
CB: Right.
LJG: And then, I mean the squadron commander which in my case was warrant officer er Wing Commander Smith. He would tell you which way you were going and which way you were coming back and he’d ask then for questions from experienced pilots that was it, was anything going to be made better or easier. All we do is get there. I mean some places flak was quite heavy. Some it was quite light you know so it was, and then of course the weather man would get up and have a chat but he was never very good [laughs]. Our weather was more predictable from George’s parents. They had a small holding in Clare and he would tell you, you know what it was going to be tomorrow. Over here anyway and he was never wrong but sometimes the weather man got it wrong but you just accepted it didn’t you?
CB: What sort of mistakes would he make?
LJG: Well I mean he would tell you you were going to have clear skies and no cloud at all and when you got there you couldn’t see a thing but of course you must remember that in ‘45 a lot of bombing was done on flares and bombs with colours.
CB: Markers. The markers.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Yes.
LJG: So it didn’t really matter much about the weather being bad. You could, you could see a yellow marker at twenty thousand feet even if it was foggy you know so you had a good idea and of course towards the middle of April, February, March and April H2S was coming in which was another godsend. That was the, helpful for the bomb aimer wasn’t it? Yeah.
CB: Ok. Now you said you did three sorties in Operation Manna which was supplying food to the Dutch civilians. Yeah.
LJG: That’s right.
CB: Because they were starving.
LJG: I’m sure -
CB: So what, what how did that work? Initially, as you said there was no agreement with the Germans so how did it work over here? In other words what was the briefing for that because there was no agreement?
LJG: Well the, it was packed in sacks in the bomb bay and we were given a special route and a height and a speed so, we, it was quite an easy route really. I think the first one -
CB: I wonder, I wonder what you expected because if the Germans hadn’t given the ok at that point what was the crew’s reaction to the lack of authority to do it?
LJG: Well, they were, I think most of them were concerned because as I say never trust a German anyway but I think one or two did shoot at us but it never affected us. No. But we were only at about five hundred feet I think or probably a bit lower. It was quite low and I know the Lanc is quite good but it wasn’t designed for low level bombing. I mean, I know they done the Dambusters but that was exceptional. You couldn’t do that all the time.
CB: No.
LJG: I don’t think. They were really a high level bombing aircraft. Yeah.
CB: Now. What sort of height were you dropping?
LJG: Where?
CB: When you were dropping the food.
LJG: Manna. Manna.
CB: Manna. What sort of height were you flying?
LJG: Anything under five hundred feet.
CB: And do you know what speed you were flying at?
LJG: Speed?
CB: Ahum.
LJG: Just above stalling speed. About a hundred miles an hour.
CB: Oh really.
LJG: Yeah. Well we weren’t sure whether, what damage we could do ‘cause most of it was loose stuff you know. Flour and things like that. Potatoes. I think there was some canned stuff but they were concerned about it. Yeah. That was my first one. May the, April 29th I’m sure it was.
CB: So you did three of those? To different places were they or -
LJG: Yeah.
CB: The same place?
LJG: Yeah well I have got them down here somewhere. Here we are. Two to The Hague and one to Rotterdam. The first one was Rotterdam. It’s only just over three hours there and back.
CB: Ok. Now you then talked about Exodus which was the repatriation of prisoners of war.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Where did you pick those prisoners up?
LJG: Juvincourt.
CB: Where’s that?
LJG: In France.
CB: Right.
LJG: That’s the only airport or aerodrome capable of taking the Lanc.
CB: Whereabouts is that in France?
LJG: I’ve no idea. No idea.
CB: No.
LJG: But I’m sure it was Juvincourt.
[pause]
CB: I’ll just stop the tape a mo and we can take a look.
[machine paused]
CB: Right.
LJG: Westcott.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Dunsfold.
CB: Yeah. So can we just, go over that? When you were doing the Exodus you you flew each time into Juvincourt.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: In France.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: And then you flew where? What were the places you flew to?
LJG: That was it.
CB: So -
LJG: Tangmere was the first one.
CB: Ok.
LJG: Ford.
CB: Which was -
LJG: On the south coast.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: As well, well they were all on the south coast weren’t they? Ford was the third one. Westcott was the fourth one.
CB: Near Aylesbury.
LJG: Dunsfold.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: And Oakley.
CB: Yeah. Ok. North of Oxford. Yes.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: And how many, how many prisoners were they and what type of prisoners did you take each time?
LJG: Well they were all in fairly good condition. Well they had to be, you know, fit. Really. Well not really fit but they had to be reasonable to take the flight you know.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: We didn’t have oxygen masks for everybody so we had to keep under eight thousand feet anyway so we used to come back at about three or four thousand feet.
CB: Would there be several aircraft together doing that or –
LJG: Pardon?
CB: Would you be with several other aircraft?
LJG: Oh yeah.
CB: At the same time.
LJG: Yeah there would be -
CB: So you’d fly a stream would you?
LJG: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Right.
LJG: Quiet a stream of them actually. You had to be careful though because they were so keen, these POWs, to get home which was understandable and they used to wander about a bit and you know you can wander about too far in a Lancaster because we didn’t stop the engines.
CB: Right.
LJG: They were just ticking over but you could walk in to the prop and not know it you know and because it was my responsibility as, because I was the last one in you know.
CB: So what was your responsibility in that case?
LJG: Well, yeah.
CB: Was it, you’re responsible for loading up?
LJG: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Ok. How many in the aircraft?
LJG: Twenty four.
CB: Ok.
LJG: Two rows of twelve
CB: Yeah. Just sitting on what?
LJG: They sat on the floor, legs apart so they got two rows together. Yeah.
CB: And how long were the flights?
LJG: Well -
CB: Roughly.
LJG: An hour and a half.
CB: Right. Ok.
LJG: Two hours.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Nothing much. That was getting there and coming back was that much.
CB: So when you got in did you get up in to your turret or where did you go?
LJG: I was stood by the door.
CB: Right.
LJG: You know, to stop them, to stop them well walking about really. Had to be there. An aeroplane can be dangerous.
CB: LJG: Yeah.
So, yeah Ford and Tangmere. Tangmere was four hours there and back. Well from base to Juvincourt
CB: So the engines were running and you just, they climbed in while you were stationery.
LJG: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: With the engines running.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: I was the only one that got out.
CB: Were there any cases of accidents in that?
LJG: Not to my knowledge. No. No.
CB: Right.
LJG: As I say all the rest of the crew just stayed where they were you know. The marshall who was organising it used to bring them over in twenty fours and hand them over to me, you know.
CB: Right. Ok. We’ll stop there for a bit.
[machine pause]
CB: Right my witness today is Vic Truesdale and I’m just going to ask him whether he has any questions to put to Joe. Vic -
VT: I was just wondering what it was like, what difference there might have been for you between the daylight raids and the night time raids? I mean was it very routine and just the same more or less or -
LJG: Well I think we just took it in our stride you know. We looked on it mostly as a job. Yeah. A job that we wanted to do but I mean we were all volunteers and I didn’t mind daylights actually although we done as many nights as we did daylights although it was a daylight squadron. It was formed for that reason really. Well moved down to Suffolk because it had been all over the place hadn’t it? I think Woolford Lodge was a place it went to.
CB: Woolfox Lodge.
LJG: And -
CB: In Rutland.
LJG: Hmmn?
CB: Woolfox Lodge.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: In Rutland. Yeah.
LJG: Downham Market. They found Methwold a bit small I think.
CB: Did they?
LJG: Well even Chedburgh, I mean one of the runway was quite short really and it, you had to get really get back on the fence at the end of the runway to make sure you got off alright.
CB: Did you?
LJG: Yeah. There’s a lot weight. Especially if you’re going to the Ruhr. Happy Valley everybody called it. I mean probably have fourteen thousand pounds of bombs. A cookie. Four thousand pounder and ten one thousand pounders. I mean you couldn’t bring them back. You had to drop them somewhere. But I didn’t mind daylights actually.
VT: Forgive my ignorance but did you have an escort on the daylight raids?
LJG: No.
VT: No.
LJG: No. No. Only had each other.
VT: Yeah. And how much time you were actually up in the mid gun position when you were on a typical trip shall we say?
LJG: Well er-
VT: When did you go up and come down and things like that?
LJG: When did I get in?
VT: Yeah.
LJG: I was always the last one in the aeroplane. You got in an aeroplane in order. The bomb aimer went in first because his position was right in the front. Then the skipper. Then the flight engineer. Navigator. And wireless operator and he closed the bulkhead doors. That’s why they could wear their uniforms. That was the bit that was heated.
VT: Right.
LJG: Then George got in. Then I got in and then they would shut the door and take the ladder away but I always had to make sure the door was shut. Well I did anyway.
VT: The last one in.
LJG: And then you’d be sat in there and as I say well you’d be in there before the doors shut, the flight sergeant in charge of the aeroplane, to make sure it was alright had to sign the 600.
CB: Form 600.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: To say that everything was ok and the skipper was pleased with it and then, then you had to wait for permission to taxi although the engine was still going but they weren’t revving they were just ticking over. You were told to taxi around and the same coming back. I was always the first out then [laughs], it was, yeah.
CB: So when you were taxiing there would normally be a plane in front and another behind would there?
LJG: Oh yeah.
CB: And how long would it take to get from your dispersal to the end of the runway?
LJG: Well depends which runway you were using.
CB: Right, but on balance -
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Did you always park at the same place?
LJG: Oh yeah. Yeah.
CB: So -
LJG: Each aircraft had its own dispersal.
CB: Right.
LJG: You might not fly in the same aircraft as you can see by that it is R-Roger was our favourite but you had others as well and you took them back where you got them from. Then you’d wait then for the crew bus to take you back to debriefing.
CB: Afterwards.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Just quickly. That’s an interesting point. Why would one plane be more popular, your favourite, R-Roger than the others?
LJG: It was just one of those things I think. You know. You just felt, just felt good with it. I mean nobody like flying Q-Queenie and I don’t think it ever done a full op. There was always trouble with it but nobody could find out why. It was weird you know. You get used to an aeroplane. Plus we had it quite new anyway which was a blessing. R-Roger was very good. So -
VT: And would you like to say a bit more about the, I think you mentioned two targets including the mercy missions. Three or four targets. I just thought you might like to mention a few more.
LJG: I’m sorry I’ve got a problem with my hearing.
CB: Ok. Ok.
VT: Chris will relay -
CB: You did, when went on raids you went to different places so what were the targets that you hit? What are, what are the ones you’ve got there?
LJG: Oh yes.
[pause]
CB: Just looking in the logbook.
LJG: Yes.
[pause]
CB: That’s it.
LJG: As I said Munchen Gladbach was the first one.
CB: Yes.
LJG: That was a daylight. Then operation two was at Wiesbaden, a night drop. Operation three was Dortmund. That was a night drop. Then we done Dresden. Oh no we done one before. It was a daylight. [?]. Then we done Dresden which was nine and a half hours and the following night we done Chemnitz.
CB: Oh did you. Along the road.
LJG: That was nine hours.
CB: Nine hours as well.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Right. They were the two -
LJG: And then we done Dortmund. Another night one. Then we done Geilenkirchen. The next op we didn’t do because we got halfway there and we had engine trouble so we came back. Then the next one was a daylight to Dortmund on the sixth, in February. Datteln was another daylight raid. Geilenkirchen again. Dortmund again. Datteln again. Geilenkirchen again. [?] and that was the end of my bombing career. Oh no. Kirsburg and Kiel. Kiel was our last one. That was a day er a night trip.
CB: Kiel. Kiel was a major one at the end wasn’t it?
LJG: Yeah. Yeah that’s when they sunk the Gneisenau.
CB: Yeah. You mentioned Chemnitz. So that’s the same distance as going to -
LJG: Dresden.
CB: Dresden and they’re relatively close.
LJG: Well it’s in the same area.
CB: Exactly.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: So what was that one, how different was that from going to Dresden? Was it any different? Or -
LJG: No actually I think it was a better raid. We didn’t have any problems at all. Quite a nice raid actually. If you can call a bombing raid great.
CB: Well there were some experiences easier than others weren’t they?
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Why were some of the operations in daylight?
LJG: Well I think that’s what the war command wanted you know. I mean the Ruhr was very popular wasn’t it?
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Yeah. I mean which was the -
CB: Major place.
LJG: Major -
CB: Of military production.
LJG: Yeah. Yeah. We stopped that.
CB: Ok.
LJG: Kiel was a nice one.
CB: Yeah. But when you were in your daylight raids were there many fighters around?
LJG: We never ever saw one.
CB: No.
LJG: No. It wasn’t until almost at the end of the war we did, we saw a 262.
CB: Jet yes.
LJG: That was, I think that was in April.
CB: That was in daylight.
LJG: In daylight.
CB: LJG: Yeah.
LJG: But he was going the other way.
CB: Oh.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: And did he, did you see him shoot at anybody?
LJG: No. No. He was, he was above us actually but he was quite a long way away. As a matter of fact I wasn’t sure what it was and then George said, ‘Well that’s a, funny,’ he said, ‘I didn’t know they had a twin engine,’ he said, ‘But they got no propellers on it.’ He said, ‘It’s weird.’ And when we got back we reported it, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘That’s a jet engine.’ But no.
CB: What were the levels of losses like in your time? What was the rate of loss of aircraft in your time?
LJG: Very good. Very good. In my, as I say we got there, we got there on January 1st actually but we didn’t start bombing until February the 1st and our last raid was in April. We had three losses I think. That was all.
CB: Right.
LJG: Yeah. Unfortunately, it was one that we’d done towards the end of the war experienced pilots and experienced crews which we were considered to be after we’d done a dozen ops or so if a new crew came onto the squadron we’d often take the pilot with us and we took this new pilot –
CB: Just the pilot.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Just to give them some experience you know and the following day we was on a daylight and we lost him.
CB: Oh.
LJG: That was his only op but we don’t know what happened to him ‘cause one minute he’s there, the next minute, ‘cause once you’re on the bombing run you’re interested in yourself, not anyone else and as I say my job is to scan the sky above us.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Or in front of us and when we got back he was reported missing. And we had one which was lucky in one respect. He had an engine cut out, port inner, course he veered over and he landed in a field between the WAAF quarters and the airmen’s mess. Well he crashed in a field but only the rear gunner got out.
CB: Oh.
LJG: When it blew up it shattered off the rear turret and he was found a few yards away. He had a lot of broken bones but he was still alive and I think he was still alive when I left the squadron but that’s the only two I can remember.
CB: Right.
[machine pause]
CB: Now we haven’t talked much about your wife so where did you meet your wife? Under what circumstances and when?
LJG: I walked her home from the pictures when I was on leave one day. But I didn’t see her then until after the war.
CB: Oh.
LJG: No. I had, well I don’t know, I had lots of girlfriends but I didn’t think it was wise, being in the job I was on, you know, survival rate was very bad wasn’t it? So I didn’t want to put her through -. It was after the war, one of the jobs I tried to do I worked for the War Graves Commission and she worked there in the office and we met from then, you know. That was in 1947 ‘48. I didn’t stay there long because although it was civil service it had lots of perks but didn’t have a very high salary.
CB: Now you mentioned very briefly about the police so when you left school then you worked in the daytime but you also did another job for the police. What was that?
LJG: Yeah. We was, well sort of couriers they were in case the phones broke down and they wanted to contact other people in the area we would cycle along with the messages.
CB: Right.
LJG: So we stayed in the police station two nights a week. There was quite a few of us.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: And we stayed there overnight in case. This was, well, the beginning of the war of course. Yeah. It was alright. Yeah.
CB: It gave you something to do that was useful.
LJG: Slept in the cells.
CB: I was just going to ask you that. Yeah.
LJG: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Good. Just tell us about please about air gunnery. So when you were learning air gunnery how did that work? So from the beginning of being at Bishop’s Court what did you do. When you arrived, then what did you do?
LJG: Well our first training was with a twelve bore shotgun and -
CB: Yeah.
LJG: What do they call them?
VT: Clay -
CB: Clay pigeon.
LJG: Yeah. We had a few days of that and we had, I was very good at this, I could strip a Browning machine gun with my eyes shut and put it back together. Not everybody could do that and it was, I’d been there oh two or three weeks before we started flying you know and they flew, we had all Ansons to fly in, you know with a mid upper turret.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: And another aircraft would fly a drogue and there was usually four of us in there with, and we’d have a couple of hundred bullets all painted different colours so if you hit the drogue your colour would show up. Blue, yellow, greens and clear you’d all fire a couple of hundred rounds and come back, come back down again.
CB: Ok.
LJG: And they had, we also had cinecameras with, for fighter affiliation. Instead of -
CB: Ok.
LJG: Bullets you had a cinecamera.
CB: How did the fighter affiliation work? Who did what?
LJG: Well you had, you went into the turret with this special gun with adapted, with a film in it and it was usually an old Hurricane they had at Bishop’s Court attack you and you’d film it as if you were shooting it, you know.
CB: How did you get on with that?
LJG: Reasonable. It wasn’t until Peplow I think that I really got used to guns ‘cause we had Wellingtons there and George and I, the other gunner would take turns to be in the turret and then we had fighter affiliation, fighter affiliation there and I got better as the day went on, you know.
CB: In the fighter affiliation what exactly did the fighter do?
LJG: Well he would try and shoot you down. He would attack you as if he was going to shoot you down and you had to -
CB: So what angles would he come in at?
LJG: Hmmn?
CB: At what angles would he come in at?
LJG: All angles. All angles. Usually he’d try and get you in the sun but if you had a good skipper it didn’t matter but of course that was the most dangerous place isn’t it? In the sun.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: You don’t see them. Although we had sun, sun goggles you could put down it wasn’t the same.
CB: Did you have sun glasses or just sun goggles?
LJG: Well they were tinted goggles.
CB: Right.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Ok. Now when you’re flying as a gunner then you talked earlier about corkscrew which was getting the aircraft out of a jam, who would be calling the corkscrew normally?
LJG: Well, whichever gunner saw, saw something, you know.
CB: You said everybody was caught unawares by the rear gunner would they, would normally there would there be some kind of warning would they when it was far away?
LJG: Well -
CB: How would that work?
LJG: Well, it all depends on what you saw and when you saw it, you know. As I say we didn’t go looking for trouble. We tried to avoid it -
CB: Yeah.
LJG: If we could you know. I think that’s what George. I think he saw something and he wasn’t sure what it was and although he seemed to be going towards you from, but at an angle he decided he would corkscrew.
CB: Right.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: And how did the corkscrew work?
LJG: Well you turned in, you dived in to the direction that he was coming.
CB: Oh did you?
LJG: So if he was coming from the port quarter you would corkscrew port, roll, corkscrew starboard roll climb port climb starboard.
CB: Back on to where you were.
LJG: Back on to there. Hopefully you get back on the same course you know but we were fortunate we had a good navigator. He always got us there on time, always got us back on time.
VT: Did the Germans know that the corkscrew was a manoeuvre? A standard manoeuvre.
LJG: Oh yeah. Yeah. It was for a Lancaster. Yeah. I don’t know whether it would apply to a Halifax ‘cause they’re so different to fly. In fact my skipper reckoned the Lanc acted like a fighter pilot it was that easy to fly. Had lovely lines didn’t it?
CB: Brilliant. What was the combination of crew? Were they all British or –
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Where? Did you have a mixture?
LJG: Alfie Kemp was the skipper. He came from Bradford. Vic [Giles?] was the bomb aimer. He was an East Ender. Don Pryor was the flight engineer. He came from Peterborough. Dicky Ball, navigator. He came from Newton Abbott. Len Garnett, the wireless operator, he came from Leeds. I came from Marlow and George came from Clare. George Green, the rear gunner, came from Clare. As I say the six of us got on well. Well we got on alright with Don but he just –
CB: George Green did you say?
LJG: George Green. Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: No relation [laughs].
CB: No. What was the engineer’s name?
LJG: Engineer?
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Donald Pryor.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Donald Pryor.
CB: Yeah. Ok. On the social side Joe the crew all gelled together very well professionally.
LJG: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: And on the social side but one of the crew was an officer so -
LJG: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: How did he fit in with all the sergeants?
LJG: Yeah. He fitted in quite well. Yeah. Well I think he realised he had to rough it like the rest of us if he wanted to get on. And he did. He was great. Dickie. Yeah.
CB: Were you all sergeants or flight sergeants or what were you?
LJG: We were all sergeants, the six of us, when we joined 218. Now Alfie got his flight sergeant [pause] Yes. When we joined Sandtoft Heavy Conversion Unit.
CB: Yeah he became -
LJG: He became a flight sergeant.
CB: A flight sergeant. That’s the pilot.
LJG: And he got his commission -
CB: Yeah. Oh.
LJG: Towards the end of the war. April I think or March. March I think.
CB: Ok. Now after the war Joe how did, did they crew keep in contact or what happened?
LJG: Richard, or Dickie as we always called him, we kept in touch for a few years. He was the best man at my wedding actually.
CB: Was he?
LJG: But in the end they all married and gone to different places. George moved to Lincoln, Vic moved to Ipswich. I don’t know what happened to the skipper. I think I’m the only one alive. It’s, it’s only Dickie, the navigator.
CB: Navigator.
LJG: I’m not sure of -
CB: Yeah. Ok.
LJG: But the skipper is gone.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: The bomb aimer is gone. The bomb aimer went quite young. The wireless op’s gone. Don’s gone, Don Pryor went when he was in his forties. George died last year.
CB: Right. Ok. What was the greatest achievement do you think when you were in the RAF? What made you feel really proud?
LJG: Just thinking that we won. Yeah. And being part of it. Yeah. I enjoyed it. I think I went in with the right attitude that it’s a job I wanted to do. I wanted to fly and I think that that was my achievement you know.
CB: How do you feel about the, not having the opportunity of shooting down anything?
LJG: Well, not really. No. I didn’t think it mattered. As long as we’d done what we had to do.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Which was get there, drop the bombs, come home again ready for the next lot. I don’t think it mattered. Chasing after them wouldn’t have made any difference. The risks were too great. I mean that was their job wasn’t it?
CB: Yeah.
LJG: We had, we had an aeroplane full of bombs and we were told to take it somewhere drop them.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: And that’s what we done.
CB: Your job was to defend the aircraft. Not to shoot down other -
LJG: Well yeah.
CB: Planes. Yeah.
LJG: Avoid it if possible. I mean if you shoot down a Messerschmitt you’ve only killed one man in an aeroplane. If a Messerschmitt shoots down a Lancaster he’s killed seven people. You know. I think the odds were too great to go looking after trouble.
CB: Yeah.
VT: Did some crew go and look for trouble?
LJG: Yeah.
VT: Yeah.
LJG: Oh yeah.
VT: Can you tell us a bit about that?
LJG: Well I mean it’s only hearsay.
VT: Alright. What’s the hearsay then?
LJG: That they would look for trouble.
VT: So what would they do?
LJG: If they saw an aeroplane which they thought was a German they’d go after it or fly in that direction but I mean it was too dangerous for the rest of the crew because we went in a stream. I mean we weren’t like the Yanks. The Yanks made a formed a squadron pattern here in England and they all went out together. We would form a stream on the way out -
VT: Right.
LJG: You wouldn’t catch up in an aeroplane until you got to Brighton. So we didn’t look for trouble. If you stayed where you were supposed to be -
VT: Yeah.
LJG: You would bomb at the height you were supposed to be and there was always the risk that if you were on the lower tier someone up above would drop one on you but that’s the risk you had to take and that was my job you know. If there was one above me, dead above me, I would tell the skipper, you know. ‘There’s a Lanc above us skipper.’ ‘Which way do you want to go?’ He’d decide. I would tell him where it was and he was the skipper. He was the governor. You done what you were told. You tell him what’s happening and he, he’d solve the problem. Either move port or move starboard you know. It depends on where the stream was and what position you were in the stream. I mean we weren’t wing tip to wing tip. I mean we could be a mile wide and gradually move in to the target as we got closer to it. I mean it was, you were an individual really although you were part of a stream.
VT: Yeah.
CB: How much of the time could you see other bombers?
LJG: Hmmn?
CB: How much of the time could you see other bombers?
LJG: At night. Never see one at all.
CB: Right.
LJG: Very very rare unless it was a good moon but of course in daylight you would see them quite a lot.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Because you could be, depends on where you are in the stream they could be all around you.
CB: So just as a, why was it that Bomber Command flew in a stream and not in formation?
LJG: I’ve no idea.
CB: I would suggest it’s because it’s impossible to fly and it’s dangerous to try and fly in formation.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: In the dark.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: So the bomber stream is simply everybody’s going the same way.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: But the danger is as you just said ‘cause you can’t see anybody else -
LJG: The secret of that was you had to be at the right place at the right time.
CB: Right.
LJG: I mean if we went to the Ruhr from Chedburgh it would be base, Reading, Brighton and across the channel from there and then the course would be variable depending on hot spots.
CB: Why did, why did, why did the bomber stream not go straight out across from Chedburgh across Holland?
LJG: Well -
CB: In to Germany.
LJG: There were hot spots that were heavily defended. Very heavily defended. Others not so heavily defended.
CB: With anti-aircraft guns.
LJG: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Right.
LJG: So we, they tried to pick the safest route for us and the same the way back so you if you all went the same way and turned at the same time everything would be in the right place and you, the chance of having a collision were remote but you had to do what you were told to do.
CB: Yeah. Now on the bombing run the aircraft has to be stabilised.
LJG: Yeah. Yeah. Two minutes.
CB: So how, two minutes before was it?
LJG: Two minutes yeah.
CB: And then how many minutes after bombs gone did you keep straight and level?
LJG: As soon as you could. Get back in to the stream.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: ‘Cause you had, you to had to hold on for a while to do the photoflash.
LJG: Do the photograph.
CB: Right.
LJG: Yeah. It was only a few seconds really. About fifteen, twenty seconds. As soon as the skipper said, ‘Bomb doors closed,’ that was the sign to get moving.
CB: Right.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: You mentioned earlier about H2S radar system. Was that used very much?
LJG: Well, it was, it was used more at night than it was at daylight. You only used it at daylight I think if the weather was bad but we did use it once or twice yeah and got quite good results apparently. I mean I don’t know. I’m not a technician. The briefers, debriefers would sort that out, you know.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Another question. You carried a bomb load of how much normally? What sort of weight of bombs?
LJG: Depends where you went. I mean the aircraft was only safe with a certain weight in it so the more petrol you had the less bombs you had. At Dresden I don’t think was only six or seven thousand. I don’t, I don’t really know about the bomb load but it was a long way.
CB: Right.
LJG: So you had, I think you had twenty two, fifty gallons of petrol so that means the bomb load is displaced but Happy Valley say, you’d have fourteen thousand, fifteen thousand pounds of bombs and less tanks.
CB: So you talked about the cookie so could you describe what was the cookie?
LJG: Pardon?
CB: CB: What was -
LJG: Cookie.
CB: A cookie. Can you describe it?
LJG: A four thousand pounder.
CB: Yeah well what was in it?
LJG: Well that would depend on what the target was and what they wanted to do. There were devising one that exploded a thousand feet above the ground full of incendiaries and you only dropped high explosives, splatter it all over and a cookie would set fire to it. It was like an oil drum really.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: It was. Not a very attractive looking bomb but there again it mattered it was only going down. It wasn’t going anywhere else.
CB: It didn’t have any fins on it did it?
LJG: No. No. No.
CB: It was just like a big barrel.
LJG: Just like a forty gallon oil drum or a bit longer than that actually. Yeah.
CB: Ok.
[machine pause]
LJG: I think it was about four pound a week on the squadron.
CB: So the pay was in two parts was it? There was a basic pay and then a flying pay.
LJG: No. They just -
CB: Or just a basic -
LJG: Just a single pay.
CB: Ok and how much was that?
LJG: I think it was about four pound a week.
CB: And what was that in relation to what other people were getting?
LJG: Well I think we were reasonably well paid considering. I don’t know what other people were getting. No idea.
CB: In civilian life I mean. In civilian life -
LJG: Well –
CB: Was it better than or worse?
LJG: Well I don’t think there was much in it really. I know my elder brother he was an apprentice cabinet maker and he finished his apprenticeship as the war started but you see he was a lot older than me and I remember him coming home he had four pound and sixpence and he gave me the sixpence. Yeah.
CB: Because it bought a lot in those days.
LJG: Well yeah I mean three pounds was a good wage.
CB: Yeah that’s what I meant you see.
LJG: But then again things were that cheap anyway weren’t they you know. I mean I remember Tesco opening in Wycombe when it was a small shop then and my wife and I were both working at [minimum wage?] and if she spent three pounds on groceries in a week she’d had a bad week [laughs] but now -
CB: This is a company called [Broomway] making compressors.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: We were just talking about when we, when you in the latter days you were in Singapore.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: And then you were ready for demob so what happened?
LJG: They just told us to pack up our clothes and they put us on a boat. Actually I was on the boat the day before because I was mess deck sergeant on the way home and when we got to Southampton unfortunately, well fortunately we were the first ones off because we had the farthest to go. We had to go from Southampton to Blackpool and we got in to Southampton quite early in the morning. Seven or 8 o’clock. Got on the train, got to Blackpool and we got out civvy kit. I got home at midnight that night. Yeah.
CB: All day travelling.
LJG: All day travelling yeah. I’d been travelling for three weeks.
CB: Amazing.
LJG: Well we, at that particular time they were, India was getting independence and we were evacuating in troops and we had a load of band boys we had to divert from Singapore to Bombay to pick up these band boys and they stuck them right down at the front. The lowest deck of all. And as we come out of Bombay a day out hit a typhoon and we had to heave to for a day and the boat was doing this.
VT: Yeah.
CB: Frightening.
LJG: They was, they was sick and sick and sick terrible but as I say we got out of it.
CB: How many people on the boat?
LJG: A couple of hundred I suppose.
CB: And what was the liner called?
LJG: HMS Otranto. Otranto yeah. I think it rocked when it was in port, in dock. Not very exciting.
CB: So then you had your demob. What was the most, you said it was difficult to settle. What was the thing that made it so difficult -
LJG: Well it’s such a change -
CB: To settle?
LJG: Wasn’t it? Such a change you know. I mean in Singapore it was the lap of luxury. I mean, fortunately I didn’t do any work. It was in ‘45 when the Singapore RAF were on strike.
CB: Oh.
LJG: All junior ranks it was. Senior ranks weren’t allowed to go on strike. And although I had a double rank you see I was flight sergeant AC2.
CB: Yeah
LJG: Anyway the -
CB: Because you were reserve?
LJG: Yeah
CB: Volunteer reserve.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: And well Air Chief Marshall Sir Keith Park was in charge and Singapore was a pre-war station. We had lovely barrack blocks. Of course the Japs had used them so they were using.
CB: Right.
LJG: The swimming pool they used as an oil dump and everybody else, well [they had been?] on strike and this Mr Park he went to Australia I think and Group Captain Beamish became CO and he was sport mad. If you could play sport you were alright so I decided that I would play sport.
CB: What was your specialty then?
LJG: I was goalkeeper. I played for 389 MU. I played for the station once but if you were on guard duty and you were playing for the station you came off guard duty and went and played football.
CB: Oh right. Yeah.
LJG: And he got things going you know. He had football pitches marked out, he had a cinema cleaned out and working order. It was great.
CB: Right.
218 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bale out
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
briefing
crewing up
demobilisation
Halifax
Lancaster
military service conditions
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Sandtoft
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/204/3339/ABatemanJT160802.2.mp3
ed973811a2b5c581c1c4ee9acd8d25e7
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Title
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Bateman, James Thomas
James Thomas Bateman
James Bateman
James T Bateman
J T Bateman
J Bateman
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One interview with James Thomas Bateman (423042 Royal Australian Air Force).
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2016-08-02
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Bateman, JT
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Transcription
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This interview is for the International Bomber Command Centre the interviewer is Barry Jackson the interview is Jim Bateman the interview is taking place at Mr Batemans home in Marsfield, Sydney, Australia on the 2nd of August 2016.
JB. My name is James Bateman I joined the Air Force in June 1942 and eventually having been trained in Canada went to England and joined 149 Squadron where I served as a Navigation Officer and completed a tour lasting from May 1944 to December 1944.
BJ. Jim what made you volunteer for Bomber Command?
JB. I think it was purely adventure, I was very young, I was seventeen and a half at the time when I actually joined and em yes I looked forward to something exciting.
BJ. Were you made aware of the high casualty rate.
JB. No we were not.
BJ. Once you completed you training or you went back to Bradfield Park where did you go, you mentioned Canada?
JB. Yes after being at Tammora and not succeeding as a Trainee Pilot I was posted back to Bradfield Park, I waited embarkation and travelled to Canada, Edmonton where I was in the eh 2 AOS at Edmonton and did my training there as an Air Navigator and eh Then after that, having a wonderful leave in New York going to England where eh eventually going through advanced training flying course to understand the topography of the English countryside and that eh finished up at the OUT at Wing where I formed a Crew.
BJ. And how did you crew up eh how did you choose your crew how did you make that thing which is pretty important of course.
JB. Well crewing up was something that was completely, quite unexpected it was just herded us all into a large hanger, Pilots, Navigators, Bomb Aimers, Wireless Operators and we were told to find ourselves a Crew. Well luckily the Pilot I chose I trained with him at Bradwell Park well nearly twelve months before and I knew him, not that well and that was the start of our Crew.
BJ. I’ve got a question, what happened to the people that were left over in the Crewing side of things, was there anyone left over?
JB. I can’t remember
BJ. What were your thoughts on that first Operational Mission?
JB. The first Operational Mission was really quite a simple one, we did mining across the North Sea off the Dutch, the Islands of Holland and eh very uneventful but that was just to introduce us to the em Operational Experience but the first real Operation was a Resistance trip to supply the Resistance eh deep down in France and eh to our chagrin we found we had the Wing Commander going to fly with us. So we had him, him on duty and eh and all I can say is that the Bomb Aimer and I we did a fine job and got to the place where we were going to drop the eh packages but unfortunately nobody turned up and em after flying about six or seven times from the starting point to the small plot of land eh, the Wing Commander with us said “well you had better go home boys” and eh, that’s what we did. Then they sent us back to the same place the next night, so we got there and dropped out packages and did our job.
BJ. Well, well, how many ops did you take part in ?
JB. I did thirty, but the Crew did thirty five.It was due to the fact that I had a spell in Hospital at one stage, I had my appendice removed and to my great disappointment also was sick on the last trip. I had a bad attack of tonsillitis, they put me in Hospital and little did I know they were going to fly that night. Luckily they came back and we were tour expired and eh got away with doing five less than anybody else.
BJ. Eh and what happened then, how old were you then?
JB. I was still twenty.
BJ. Can you remember your last Op before you obviously got sick?
JB. It, it would have been to a eh place eh eh Oberhausen to do an attack on eh, eh Oil Refineries they were converting coal to oil and that was our task on a GH Operation which we were the Leaders.
BJ Ok and you never had any close calls with Flak or Night Fighters or anything like that.
JB. Oh we had a bad time, our first trip when we converted to Lancasters to a place called Duisburg and on that occasion due to inexperience with the aircraft we arrived at the Target. I as Navigator had the responsibility to put the Master Switch on so that the Electronics worked the Bomb Bay and fired the bombs. Unfortunately when we get to the target which was very quiet, nothing happened because I hadn’t switched the Master Switch on. Our Skipper who was a very conscientious man did a round again trip. In that round again trip everything happened there was searchlights, flack the whole thing, then having to work our way back into the Bomber Stream which was about six hundred bombers that night. So we were very fortunate to survive all that.
BJ. I reckon. What were the two aircraft that you done your Operations in, the Stirling and the Lancaster what are the pros and cons for each one of them and obviously ?
JB. Oh well as being a Navigator the Stirling was an ideal aircraft, had very comfortable appointments and eh for a Navigator. It was very stable and eh I think the Pilot liked flying the Stirling but when he got the Lancaster that changed his opinion all together, it was a superior aircraft in all ways and eh all that I can say is that I would fly in a Lancaster anytime.
BJ. Yeah, yeah you must, the maximum altitude of a Stirling was how high, how high was the maximum ceiling?
JB. Oh about twelve thousand feet, but you see when we were operating on a Special Duty job we were flying at five hundred feet, so it didn’t matter. With the Lancaster we were up at nineteen, twenty thousand and that was what we did.
BJ. Yeah yeah and during eh my previous interviews the eh Gentlemen that I talked to spoke about their eh last thoughts as they were taxiing out joining the stream. There was a very light I believe eh there was a light eh there was a lady that used to give you a green or red signal eh. Did you have any thoughts or were you just concentration on your work.
JB. No the Navigator he was busy at that time eh, working out what the Pilot had to do, what height to fly so he didn’t have much time to think about if it was going to be good or bad. The Gunners on the other hand were sitting with plenty of time on their hands. As far as I am concerned I was busy and that helped me all through the Operation, I was busy.
BJ. Yeah, yeah well that was a good way to be and what were the conditions like at the em Base that em you were at and eh did you have a good social life was the food good.
JB. [laugh] Well you see we were at a Wartime Airfield. Little did we know that sometime before after we finished our Con Unit training, to fill in the time they sent us on what they called a Battle Course. The Battle Course was held at Methwold and eventually well we didn’t think much about it, it wasn’t very comfortable and it didn’t have any atmosphere at all. Then they sent us from 149 Squadron at Lakenheath to 149 Squadron at Methwold so we were back at the same place and it wasn’t [laugh]a very inspiring choice. The point was a Squadron that had a great tradition, Middleton who had won his Victoria Cross there. So there was a very strong feeling of Family in the place. So that made up for War time discomfort.
BJ. Did you, that’s an interesting point because you had Australian, you had English I assume you had all the Commonwealth countries gathered around you had New Zealand, Canadians, South Africans did you all have different groups did you all just rib each other or did you ?
JB. Well speaking about our Crew we were all quite, very close, we had three Australians and three Englishmen and em, we got on well together and the em, atmosphere at the Squadron was good and em we used to go out to the local pubs and, and have social eh, interaction like that. So we didn’t really mix that well with other Crews,we knew them of course, I was a Navigator and got to know other Navigators and em really a lot of the people we didn’t get to know at all.
BJ. That Crew you really got to know really well,there was no outliers?
JB. No, we were very close, there was one occasion we had a bit of a problem, I had a problem with our Engineer and er I don’t think I should go into that sufficiently to say it was all patched up. It was a silly dispute and eh eventually travelling to England after the War I called twice to see our Engineer and his Family and we got on well.
BJ. Yeah but as I said to you before I knew you in my eh eh the Navigator and Pilot are very important but as a whole crew there are seven of you.
JB. All I can say about that is that we had a very good Skipper who had a very good affinity for us. All, all over the times between the end of the War and now and until Wal Crow died we were always going out together, always, as a Crew and the Wireless Operator who is still alive, we see each other as much as we can. So it was a very strong bonding that we had and that was typical of Bomber Command I would say.
BJ. And I loved the way the Crew were formed, my and you can probably tell me a bit more
JB. The skipper used to talk about “my Navigator” something would happen and he would say “I want my Navigator to know about that,” And I I later on in my life I joined a Probus Club with him and he was forever praising the little things I done. I was a Tourist, Tour Officer and he would always ring up next day and say that that was a good outing, you did very well Jim,that was his way, he was wonderful.
BJ. And of course and he had the Crew ah eh, he sounded eh like he had the Crew eh.
JB. Oh right behind him, he was considered very highly by the Squadron, he won a DFC and for my sins I won one too.
BJ. There you go, that’s what its all about eh there are another couple of questions here and I will ask about after the War. Did you have any thoughts of the Targets you flew over and the Civilians, possible Civilians.
JB. All I can say about that without going into the dispute with our Engineer, which was to do with that type of thing eh. When we did the GH Targets, bombing the Oil Refinery that to me is what I wanted to do, I wanted to do things that didn’t involve places, area bombing, bombing cities. I can’t say I was all that happy about that and that is the reason we had a bit of a dispute. He was an Engineer and previous to becoming and Air Engineer he was on a Squadron on Malta, on a Fighter Squadron and the Luftwaffe used to come over from Sicily every hour on the hour and shoot the place up. He had, he had very little respect for Germans as such. So our first trip with the Lancaster was to Duisburg on our return after settling down in our hut he said “I think we killed lots of Germans today” I said “I don’t think we did that Stan I said “I think we were bombing this” and one thing led to another and I gave him a fat lip.
BJ.Lets not beat about the bush.
JB.It wasn’t very good for a Crew at three o’clock in the morning to be doing things like that, anyway we got over that. I must say from my experience I was happier doing that other type of bombing.
BJ.Was there any trip that you would say was worse than the other or did one stand out as probably the worst mission you had ever done? Eventually when you were allocated that trip was oh no Christ what are doing?
JB I would say the Duisburg trip.
BJ.And why was that.
JB.It was putting us at the reality of bombing what a well defended target was, what you could expect and just wondered if every trip was going to be the same.
BJ.And when you finished, when you completed the thirty missions and obviously you had to visit the Hospital em when were you, where and when were you demobbed?
JB.No,no because of my training on the GH equipment it was decided to set up a small school at Feltwell nearby.
BJ.GH what did that stand for?
JB.Yes
BJ.What did that stand for?
JB.GH it was using the Gee Box system with the uses of the Oboe technology.
BJ.What happened after that then, you went back to training people?
JB.I was at Feltwell with a small group who were training new Crews eh on the, the GH System. Just prior to the War ending I was transferred to a Squadron where I was nominally called the GH Officer.
BJ. There you go.
JB. For a very short time.
BJ. Eh when the War finished eh where did you go, did you go back to your former work or did you.
JB. I must say eh I eventually came back and was disoriented like we all were. We had been used to a different way of life for some few years and settling wasn’t easy. I went back to my old job as a clerk in this motor body company and er. Eventually after a short time I was talking to a friend who told me Qantas were recruiting aircrew. So I reported to Qantas and I was employed as an Air Navigator on Qantas Airways.
BJ. For how long?
JB. Not for very long, just on two years until a decision was made by the eh Department of Air that all Navigators should produce first class licenses. Being a Wartime Navigator I was given automatically a second class license. Which involved sitting exams on very difficulty subjects and Qantas provided the opportunity for us by setting up a small school situation with a a a lecturer. All the Wartime Navigators were given time and for three weeks we attended classes to prepare us for these exams. Unfortunately for me I found that getting Maths to work out the various problems associated, I found I just couldn’t formulate equations in my mind resulting in the fact that I failed the exam and was told I couldn’t fly with Qantas at that time. Qantas offered me a job, they were a very small company then, they weren’t very big as an er Air Traffic Officer. Well I decided that was not a good idea and for a while I was getting married and I didn’t have a job [laugh].n
BJ. No problem we can sort that out. So how old were you then you must have been in your early twenties wern’t you?
JB. Twenty One. So eh [laugh] what happened next eh I lived at a place called Lidcolme, Lidcolme Jensen Australia Limited had their factory. They were makers of swimwear as everybody would know and sportswear. Anyway it occurred to me they might have some kind of job for people like me. So one day I went over there and asked to see the er office manager and er which I did and asked him about jobs available. He said “no unfortunately, but maybe the sales department do” He arranged for me to see the sales manager who said “we are just thinking about employing more salesmen and deciding what to do and we will let you know.” Well I was married still had no job, but then just after Christmas in 1947 eh, I eh, was told I had a position with Jensen as a Salesman and that became my career for the next twenty five years and I have a watch on my wrist as a token of their respect which is still going very well.
BJ. How good is that? Excellent and there is a whole load of discussion after the War. One of the things I wanted your opinion on is, what do you think of what you did during the War, Bomber Command and the legacy you left, the sacrifices you made and what that said to future generations,they younger generation today. Is it something that should be strictly remembered eh reminded of, the sacrifices that you, you people made in those years?
JB. Yes, I suppose immediately after the War like most of us we just wanted to get on with life and and not think too much what it was all about.Because eh, you had to bring up children and a living. I did start going to ANZAC marches with other Aircrew friends and they were always more or less eh, jolly occasions, not really thinking of the War much at all. As time went bye and maturity set in, it gave me like a lot of others, the opportunity to think what it was. Now being a member of the Bomber Command Committee, mixing with Bomber Command Boys that are still with us eh, and knowing why we were em there. I have come to the conclusion that Bomber Command was a very necessary weapon for the Allies to have. After all they had nothing else going for some time until D Day and the Russians were able to do what they did. So we carried the War on against Hitler and the Nazi’s and I prefer to think of the enemy as not Germans but Nazi’s and Hitler. The German people and I, I, have become friendly with some, they were possibly in the same situation as us. They needed to be released from the awful eh [unreadable] of the Nazi policy which was a totally violent and eh, non human organisation. So I’d answer the question, I think it was necessary for us to go to War. We had to stop Hitler and the Nazi’s and whatever we did to do that, had to be done.
BJ. When did you learn of the atrocities that were.
JB. And off course the War finished and the reality of what took place in Eastern Europe, that was more so the reason for us to have done what we did. The fact that our boys lost so many, after all Australians lost 3500 killed, prisoners of war as well and eh eh, wounded eh altogether 10500 Aircrew out of 52000 Aircrew. Em the losses were terrific and all that I can say is that we were fortunate that our time of Operations was a relatively easier and eh healthier, healthier time.
BJ. Do you, do you, were there many of your colleagues, friends and associates that didn’t settle down after the War. I had Uncles that couldn’t settle down after the Adventure that had to go and do something else Adventurous, like train for the Korean War for example.
JB. Well Aircrew were pretty sensible people eh. One of the members we lost track of and it took a long time to find him eh it turned out eh an English Boy and he turned up we found out as a warder in a prison. But we couldn’t, he had sort of moved away from us, I don’t know why but. Eventually he was caught up in our family because our Skipper had to go to England quite often with his business. So he was able to contact a man called Harry Sue and eh we got together again writing letters to each other. But he was one of the first of the Crew to leave us, he died rather early considering em and eh. Otherwise where it comes to other people I don’t think that Aircrew as such went through the same kind of trauma as other soldiers did. ‘cause after all, even though we saw some of the, some boys seen some of the worst things you could ever see, their Crew being wounded and things of that kind. We weren’t like Soldiers fighting and killing people. What we did we killed people no doubt, but they were at length, they were away, they were down there, so it didn’t it didn’t feel the same. I think looking back on the War and, and being close with old wartime colleagues em you realise what we did and how important it was.
BJ. For sure, and in that strain did you ever get any criticism either subtle or otherwise for what you did during the War?
JB. No, no we never had that happen to us but some would have, yeah some would have. Some were accused of being eh, Jap dodgers, going to England and doing what they did in Bomber Command. They certainly would have been dodging the Japs, so that was bad. We never experienced that, as I say eh. As a Crew we respected each other and the duties we had and that kept us above all that other noise that was going on. Its rather sad that the War finished when it did with the Leaders being so critical about what Bomber Command did and I refer now to Winston Churchill, he never in his Victory Address mentioned Bomber Command, it was left completely out. Because of legal questions his relationship with the Russians etc he joined the forces of criticism of what we achieved. We didn’t, didn’t have to destroy all those cities in Germany. It wasn’t necessary. We realised it was, because how else would the Germans have realised what, what, what they were up against.
BJ. A different era, the same argument could be about Japan, their dropping bombs.The bombs that they dropped on Tokyo in January plus the two Atomic Bombs. The same thing could be applied it was a job that needed to be done.
JB. I think it’s a em a case of em Politicians with there attitude em about what is possible and what is not possible, they change their mind very readily when they find they have opposition. And Churchill unfortunately despite all the wonderful things that he did in, in Bomber Commands opinion he let them down. We never receive a particular decoration for being in Bomber Command although there was a decoration called Aircrew Europe but that was on a limited basis reflecting the most difficult time of Bomber Command and from nineteen, middle of forty four on you could not qualify for that you qualified before that. We were given the France and Germany Star which was given to every Soldier eh, you know. So there was no distinction. Through all these years there has been a lot of lobbying to try and rectify that and what has happened is that they have issued a small bronze em, ah, em [slight pause] addition to our medals specifying Bomber Command. That is what they have done.
BJ. I was surprised that there wasn’t a Bomber Command medal.
JB. It was all to do with what was taking place politically. Once the Russians had occupied their area in East Germany they started to make all kinds of em unfortunate statements about what had happened there. For instance in Dresden they originally said that something like over 100,000 people were killed. That wasn’t so, after much research the situation wasn’t good but the number was nothing like that, it was 2500. Dresden after all was one of the cities that Churchill himself had designated as important for the Russians to have eliminated as, as opposition as they came through. That was decided six months before, so Dresden was always a fait accompli. The facts are that Dresden had many Wartime factories that produced all kinds of important instruments. So and it was a very big rail centre for the transferring of Troops into the East. So it was certainly a very important target and unfortunately for the people in Dresden the East German Nazi’s did not protect them. They did not have any air raid centres, the only air raid centre of any use was occupied by the Gael Lighter the German Political Boss of Dresden, he survived. It certainly was a tragedy that Dresden was damaged to such an extent. However I have had the fortune to be in Dresden three or four times and I have seen what has happened, it has been completely rebuilt. There are certain things that will never be rebuilt and not change, for example most of the buildings were made from a local sandstone and the horrific fires that came on the night of the bombing burnt into the stone and those stones are still black, they can’t remove it. And, but Dresden has returned to a very charming and beautiful city.
BJ. Do you think eh ah, certain authorities have done enough to recognise Bomber Command, I know they have opened up the Bomber Command Centre in Green Park. Do you think that has gone some way to recognising what you did?
JB. I think the Air Force people do eh, they, they have made great efforts to rehabil,rehabilitate Air Crew. Em,[unreadable] affairs have been good we are based on the standards of veterans, eh, I don’t think we are singled out particularly but er we are given a lot of eh, wonderful support. Em, I don’t think with Australia being involved with the Japanese threat, that the fact that Bomber Command operated in England against Germany etc eh made much impression on the general eh population of Austalia, I don’t think so.
BJ. In those days communication wasn’t as rapid as it now so they wouldn’t have known.
JB. However having said that I must say whenever I have marched on ANZAC day the amount of em, wonderful em, acclamation that comes from the,the crowd watching is a marvellous thing. They recognise a lot of them, because there has been many documentaries showing Bomber Command. If you go to Canberra to the War Memorial there is a wonderful display there of a, a bomber G for George, being attacked at night, a simulated attack if you wish. I think that has brought a lot to peoples minds.
BJ. No it’s a wonderful, I think it is better than anything I have seen in England it’s fabulous.
JB. I feel that Australia with the great respect and eh and eh care. I would have no, no criticism.
BJ. Are you feeling all right, do you want to have a break or?
JB. Yeah I’m alright or do you want a cup of tea?
BJ. Yeah we might do that.
JB. You sit here I’ll make it.
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Identifier
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ABatemanJT160802
Title
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Interview with James Thomas Bateman
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:39:41 audio recording
Creator
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Barry Jackson
Date
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2016-08-02
Description
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Aged 17, James volunteered for aircrew in June 1942 purely for the adventure as he was looking for something exiting. He trained in Canada as a navigator and after a wonderful leave in New York returned to England for advanced flying training. on completion he was posted to 149 Squadron flying Stirlings at RAF Lakenheath.
On one of his operations he arrived over France to drop supplies to the French resistance but, in the absence of a reception committee, returned home and successfully repeated the trip the next night.
After converting to Lancasters, his first trip was to Duisburg but he forgot to operate the bombing master switch which meant they had to go around again and work their way back into the main bomber stream. James considers himself very fortunate to have survived that episode.
He speaks warmly of his crew but admitted that on the morality of mass bombing he had a dispute with his engineer and actually came to blows.
In December 1944, he completed his 30th operation to the Oberhausen oil refinery but became ill with tonsillitis and hospitalised. On recovery he spent time at RAF Feltnell training new crews on the Gee-H navigation system.
James was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross and after demob spent time as a clerk before joining Quantas Airways as an air navigation officer. Unfortunately the training was too complex for him and he left to pursue a career as a salesman for 25 years.
James speaks at length of his strong feelings on the importance of the role that Bomber Command carried out, which was not recognised by the leaders, and considers that the enemy were not the German people but the Nazis.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Norfolk
England--Suffolk
France
Canada
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Germany--Duisburg
Temporal Coverage
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1944
Contributor
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Hugh Donnelly
Terry Holmes
149 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
crewing up
Gee
Lancaster
memorial
navigator
perception of bombing war
RAF Feltwell
RAF Lakenheath
RAF Methwold
Resistance
Stirling
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/205/3340/ABatesP151009.1.mp3
f5fd2ef009e496cfc1da092a451f6c89
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Title
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Bates, Philip
Philip Bates
P Bates
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Philip Bates (1307447 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer with 149 Squadron until his aircraft was shot down and he became a prisoner of war.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-10-09
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Bates, P
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BW: This is Brian Wright interviewing Mr Philip Bates at home in Urmston, Greater Manchester on Friday 9th of October at 2pm. Mr Bates could you please confirm your full name?
PB: Yes. Phillip Bates.
BW: And your rank.
PB: Sergeant when I was shot down but warrant officer when I returned back from being a prisoner of war.
BW: Ok. And do you recall your service number at all?
PB: Yes 1307447.
BW: It’s surprising how that -
PB: And I can tell you my prisoner of war number as well
BW: Ok.
PB: 222803
BW: 222803
PB: Stalag 4b.
BW: Ok. And what squadron were you on, sir?
PB: 149 at Lakenheath.
BW: Ok. So if you could just give us an idea of what your life was like prior to joining the air force so where you grew up and any sort of significant movements before joining the RAF and what prompted you to join.
PB: Yeah. Well I’m a native of Burnley, Lancashire, a cotton weaving town, until I was employed as a junior clerk with a local manufacturer but once the war started I was keen to get in and immediately after the fall of France I volunteered for the air force. And -
BW: So this would be May 1940.
PB: This would be May 1940 and went to Blackpool for a fortnight square bashing.
BW: Ok.
PB: Those of us who were on that particular course were then posted to Cosford and -
BW: Ok.
PB: Nobody thought about anything in those days except the imminent invasion of Britain and we who’d been in the air force a fortnight were given the job of defending Cosford against German paratroopers which was the most farcical thing you could ever imagine so a friend and I very quickly sneaked away to the orderly room and volunteered for training as flight mechanics and we both -
BW: Ok.
PB: Trained as flight mechanics and then as fitter 2E’s and my friend was posted to 149 squadron where I met up with him in 1943. I went to 86 squadron, Coastal Command flying the Beaufort torpedo bombers and moved from there to Scotland and eventually I was sent to Sealand to a huge maintenance depot on a six month potential NCO course with the intention that when I returned back to my unit I’d be made a corporal but whilst I was at Sealand a Manchester landed and this was June 1942 and I went to look at this Manchester. I’d never seen anything bigger than a, than a Wellington before and this thing was stood there with its bomb doors open and this was a few months after Butch Harris had taken charge and I looked up into that bomb bay and I said to myself. ‘Bomber Command is no longer a joke. It’s big. It’s getting bigger. I’ve got to be part of it,’ and so the next day I volunteered for training as a flight engineer.
BW: Ok.
PB: And I trained early in 1943. Posted to a Heavy Conversion Unit at Waterbeach where I was crewed up with a crew who had just finished their OTU on Wellingtons and we went from there.
BW: And so just thinking back to your decision to join Bomber Command. You’d already had some technical training -
PB: Yes.
BW: At that stage.
PB: Yes.
BW: And so you wanted to further that as a flight engineer.
PB: Well the obvious job for a fitter 2E was to be, was to be a flight engineer.
BW: Ok.
PB: And it didn’t require a great deal of training to bridge the gap of course.
BW: And there were a number of guys who went through Halton. Did you do any training for flight engineering at Halton or not? With [?]
PB: No. St Athan.
BW: Right.
PB: St Athan.
BW: So you weren’t one of Trenchard’s brats or anything?
PB: Oh no I wasn’t a brat. I was too old to be a brat [laughs].
BW: And so it was the sight of the Manchester that prompted you to join.
PB: Yes.
BW: Properly Bomber Command.
PB: Yes, yes.
BW: Were you able, at that stage, to volunteer for flying duties or did that come later? Did you foresee that as being part of that trade as a flight engineer?
PB: Once I became a flight, once I became a flight engineer obviously I was going to go into Bomber Command.
BW: Ok. And -
PB: When I arrived at St Athan I was given choices I could train to be. I could train to be on Stirlings or Halifaxes or Lancasters or Sunderland Flying Boats or Catalina Flying Boats. Now, as a fitter I’d always worked on radial engines and so I chose this, I chose the Stirling for the reason that it was Bomber Command and it had radial engines. It perhaps wasn’t the wisest choice. I’d have been better off on Lancasters probably but I I I liked the radial engine so that’s why I chose Stirlings.
BW: Speaking as an engineer how did you find the radials then? Were there, were there particular properties about them that you liked?
PB: Yes. They, they, they were more powerful than the Merlin for starters and they were more dependable and they could take more, they could take more damage.
BW: That’s er that -
PB: When I when I was a boy very keen on aircraft now to me the inline liquid cooled engine was just a big motor car engine. The radial was a proper aeroplane engine.
BW: Ok.
PB: That’s what it was all about for me. The radial was a proper aeroplane engine. The other was just a big motor car engine.
BW: I’m sensing there there’s a difference between the aerial engine and flying. Did you have a wish to fly at an early age?
PB: Well as a fitter whenever I worked on an aircraft and a pilot came along to do a test flight I invariably asked if I could go up with him so I flew on, I flew on Lysanders, Blenheims and Oxfords as a passenger.
BW: And which of those was your favourite? Which was -
PB: Oh the Lysander.
BW: Really?
PB: Oh gorgeous. You’re going, you’re going along and there’s a slow, you heard a terrible creaking noise and the slots and slats worked and the flaps come down.
BW: Ahum.
PB: And you could practically stand still. Wonderful aeroplane. Wonderful.
BW: They used that -
PB: Aeroplane.
BW: On special duties -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Squadrons.
PB: Short take off, short landings.
BW: Yeah.
PB: Yeah.
BW: But they were, they were a lovely aircraft to be a passenger in.
PB: Oh yes.
BW: Was it?
PB: It was a marvellous aeroplane was the Lysander. I loved it.
BW: Did you get many flights in those?
PB: Yes quite a few. Yes. I was on, I was on an ackack calibration unit. We worked in concert with the defences of Edinburgh the Forth Bridge and the Rosyth dockyard and I was once in a Lysander where we did dive bombing exercises on the Forth Bridge which was fantastic.
BW: Brilliant.
PB: Absolutely fantastic. It was like being in a JU87 almost.
BW: And this was just to calibrate the ackack guns as you say.
PB: Yes.
BW: To make sure they had the right sort of -
PB: Yes.
BW: Ranging or -
PB: Yes. Yes.
BW: Distance. There were no rounds fired in these -
PB: No. No. No just -
BW: Just to make sure.
PB: Calibration yeah.
BW: Right but either way the pilot imitated a dive bombing manoeuvre on a
PB: Yeah but we had a real clapped out aircraft.
BW: So having had some experience of Lysanders, a single engine aircraft and Oxfords the twin engine.
PB: Yeah.
BW: You then -
PB: All radial engines of course.
BW: And radial engines yeah you then opted while you were at St Athan to go forward for Stirlings.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And what was the course that lead you from St Athan to your squadron? How, how did you go about getting that?
PB: Well, we, we completed our course and we got our brevies and were posted to, to Waterbeach Heavy Conversion Unit and I was introduced to a pilot, a Pilot Officer Cotterill and he was my skipper and I then met the rest of the crew and we took it from there. Did our heavy conversion training.
BW: And how long did that take? Roughly.
PB: Not very long. Maybe about eight weeks I suppose. Something like that.
BW: And was most of that or all of it daylight sorties or were there night time -
PB: No.
BW: Ops involved as well?
PB: We did, we did two four hour sessions of daylight take offs and landings, circuits and bumps. Take of twenty minutes to take off and land for four hours. And having done eight hours of that in daytime we did another eight hours at night and then after that we did, we did cross country flights.
BW: And when you met your crew at this point did you stay together from the conversion unit through to, on operational squadron as the same crew or were the members interchanged?
PB: We lost two members. We lost two members shortly after we joined the squadron.
BW: And was there a reason behind that at all?
PB: Yes. Our first, our first navigator, Geoff was a regular soldier stationed in India when the war broke out. Browned off. To escape he volunteered for training as air crew. He had a stammer which didn’t help and he was a useless navigator and we knew he was useless and our first trip was a very simple mine laying in the North Sea and he flew us straight through the balloon barrage at Norwich coming back and the next day he packed his kit bags and left us.
BW: And was that his choice or -
PB: No. No, that was forced upon him.
BW: Right ok so it wasn’t something there like a moment of self-awareness. He decided to leave.
PB: No. No, he told, he told us he said, ‘They decided I’m not suitable for Bomber Command. I’m being posted to a Coastal Command station.’ Well I think that was just a face saver on his part. I can’t imagine what happened to him but he couldn’t navigate for toffee. Even, even, even with a Gee set he was useless.
BW: Ahum.
PB: And then we did two mine laying trips. We did a lot of fighter affiliation exercises and our mid upper gunner [Bolivar?] a Londoner was brilliant during, during fighter affiliation. Now, Len, Len the wireless operator was always sick. He spewed up everywhere and I sat there and think, ‘Why don’t you crash the bloody thing and get it over with.’ That’s how bad I felt and Bob was as happy as could be but we did two mine laying trips. One in the North Sea -
BW: Ahum.
PB: And one in the river estuary at Bordeaux and then our first target was the opening night of the Battle of Hamburg. 24th of July.
BW: This would be 24th of July 1943.
PB: Yeah. The next night we went to Essen. The next day our mid upper gunner reported sick with air sickness. Now, how he suddenly became air sick overnight I do not know but that was the end of him. So we had a new navigator and a new mid upper gunner.
BW: Sometimes after raids like that men would be removed if they were felt to perhaps have broken at some stage. Do you -
PB: Oh yes.
BW: Do you think that might have been an impact?
PB: Yes. He was still, he was still on the station when we were shot down and I’ve often wondered what he made of it that morning when he woke up and found five empty beds.
BW: And so if I can just touch again on the fighter affiliation. What kind of exercises were carried out there?
PB: Well either, either a Spitfire or a, or a Hurricane would make mock attacks on us and the gunners would give instructions to the skipper as to what evasive action to take and it was quite, it was quite, because our bomb aimer was a failed pilot who could fly, fly a Stirling perfectly well and the Stirling had dual controls so him and the pilot used to work together and we could really throw it about. Really throw it about. You could never have done that on a Lancaster what we did with a Stirling,
BW: No. There was only a single set of controls.
PB: Yeah. Oh it was a wonderful aircraft. Wonderful manoeuvrability aircraft. Couldn’t get very high but by George it could, it could manoeuvre.
BW: And so you mentioned about the raid on Hamburg. That was pretty close to being your first operational sortie.
PB: That was our first target yes after two mine laying trips.
BW: And what, what do you recall about that at all because it was Operation Gomorrah, the raid on Hamburg was pretty significant.
PB: It was operational. What, what, what was most fascinated me most was the colours. The colours of the lights. Reds, greens, yellows. Searchlights, blue searchlights, tracer shells, flak it was an incredible sight. An incredible sight and when you see, when you looked down and someone had just released a string of four pound incendiaries you’d get this brilliant white light like that and then it slowly turns red as the fire gets going. An incredible sight.
BW: So you’d see a sort of a line of white which would -
PB: Yes.
BW: Presumably be the magnesium -
PB: Yeah.
BW: In the incendiaries -
PB: Yes.
BW: Setting fire to the building which was then of course -
PB: Yes.
BW: Catch turn orange and burn.
PB: Yes it was quite remarkable.
BW: And did you only make the one raid on Hamburg or did you return because there was -
PB: We, we, we -
BW: Four days I think.
PB: In ten days this was our introduction to the target. In ten days we did four Hamburgs, an Essen and a [Remshite]
BW: Wow so you flew right through the raid on, or the operation against Hamburg -
PB: Yeah.
BW: In that case.
PB: And the second night of course. The night of the firestorm oh, deary deary me, that was terrible.
BW: Were you aware at all of what was, what was going on? It seems a lot of information has come out subsequently. What were you sort of aware of the damage at that time?
PB: Well where -
BW: While flying.
PB: On the second night when we were back over the sea I went up into the astrodome and looked back and there was only one fire in Hamburg that night. It looked to be about three miles across and it came straight up white, red and black smoke thousands of feet above us and I said over the intercom, ‘those poor bastards down there.’ I couldn’t help myself. It was a terrible, terrible sight. I’ve never seen anything like it on any other target.
BW: At once it’s a spectacular sight but it’s also when you see that sort of thing -
PB: We, we, we killed forty thousand people that night.
BW: When did that, when was that made aware to you? When did you become aware of that sort of statistic? Was it pretty soon after or was it -
PB: Well the newspapers reported it a couple of days later and gave the number of dead.
BW: Right.
PB: And quite honestly I was disappointed. I thought from I saw it must have killed more than that.
BW: It sounds like they might have underestimated.
PB: Yeah. But forty thousand people were killed that night.
BW: Ahum.
PB: Compare that to how many were killed in London in the entire period of the war. There was no comparison.
BW: No. It’s different isn’t it?
PB: But we never, we never, we never achieved anything like Hamburg again until Dresden of course and in Dresden it only killed twenty odd thousand.
BW: And so Hamburg has obviously made quite an impression for that reason.
PB: Hamburg, I think was undoubtedly Bomber Command’s greatest success of the war. I’ve just, I’ve just read a book by Adolf Galland who was in charge of the German night fighters and the things he says about what the consequences of Hamburg and what it meant to the High Command and the changes it was, it shattered them. Completely shattered them.
BW: So it had, it had certainly had ramifications on the ground but it had more ramifications for the Luftwaffe High Command is what you’re saying.
PB: Yes. Yes. It terrified the German fighter defence to pieces. Terrified them.
BW: And did you see many night fighters at this stage over Hamburg? Were they active?
PB: No because it was it was the first, it was just the introduction of Window and everything was at odds.
BW: And so Window was the anti-radar -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Jamming mechanism.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Where they chucked out strips of aluminium.
PB: But they recovered, they recovered from, from Window very very quickly and they got, they got a new form of defence which was more effective they forced it out before, before Window and I’ve read the German view that Window did more harm than good for Bomber Command in the long run because it completely organised their defences.
BW: But at least on that night or on those nights that you were flying over Hamburg the fighters were ineffective because -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Of the use of Window.
PB: The first night there were eight hundred aircraft and we lost twelve.
BW: Wow.
PB: And most of those were lost because they were off course. Separated away from the protection of Window.
BW: Were there any hits from the ackack below? German anti-aircraft fire was renowned as being very accurate. Did you feel that as you were flying over there?
PB: The one thing, the one thing that fascinated me about ackack was that the smell of cordite filled the aircraft. You were flying through clouds of the stuff but when we landed the bomb aimer and I always got our torches and we searched underneath the aircraft and if there was no damage we were disappointed. We expected to have been hit.
BW: So that, that, sort of, I suppose summarises or encompasses your first few trips on operations. What happened after Hamburg? What were the next -
PB: Well we flew on -
BW: Significant raids for you.
PB: We flew on the last two raids ever carried out on Northern Italy and we flew twice to Nuremberg which we always regarded as a particularly important Nazi target and we did a few other various towns in the Ruhr and then on the 31st of August we went to Berlin and that was something else. That was an absolute complete fiasco.
BW: And this was still 1943?
PB: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: In August ’43.
PB: Yeah. The raid on Berlin on the 31st of August. Well the trouble was we’d been, we’d been to Monchengladbach the night before and we quite often did two nights, two consecutive nights. Well, you do Monchengladbach you get very little sleep, you go for briefing and you’re told its Berlin. There were howls of rage from all the air crews and that manifested itself later because that night about eighty aircraft ditched their bombs in the North Sea and returned early. Biggest number ever ‘cause people weren’t prepared to go.
BW: That, that almost sounds a bit like a mutiny in a way doesn’t it?
PB: It’s not far off.
BW: Down tools.
PB: It’s not far off really but the raid was also badly planned. All the damage to Berlin had been in the west and it was intended that this raid should do damage in the east and so we were sent to a point south of Berlin. There was Berlin on our left. We expected to fly seventy miles east. Split-arsed turn, fly seventy miles back and approach Berlin from, from the east. Now, nobody did it. The pathfinders put their markers down two miles south of where they should have been and we all approached from the south so the creepback extended miles and miles and miles. We killed less than a hundred people in Berlin. We lost over two hundred airmen killed and over a hundred prisoners of war. It was a complete and utter fiasco.
BW: Wow and that simply stemmed from, as you say, the pathfinder markers being dropped two miles south.
PB: And we’re coming from the south.
BW: Yeah.
PB: You can imagine it, practically no bombs and the Germans that night for the first time put down these parachute flares. It was like driving down the Mall with all the lights on. It was an incredible sight and it’s such a big place to get through. It takes forever.
BW: And so the gunners clearly with those parachute flares they could have a clear sight presumably of the bomber stream.
PB: And you’ve got day fighters looking down.
BW: Wow.
PB: As well as the night fighters looking up and you’ve got the schragemusik by this time as well.
BW: Which are the cannons in the back of an ME110 to fire vertically underneath the bomber yeah.
PB: Yeah or a JU88.
BW: Yeah.
PB: Or a Messerschmitt 110.
BW: Yeah.
PB: Seventy degree angle, in between the inborn engine and the fuselage hit the main tanks. All you’d see is a great big flash in the sky and that’s it. It was gone.
BW: The crews often said they didn’t know they were there.
PB: No.
BW: Those who survived didn’t see them.
PB: You could see an aircraft flying peacefully and then the next second it’s a ball of fire and you’ll see no tracer and a myth arose and the myth was that the Germans were firing a new type of bomb, a new type of shell which we called a scarecrow and it was designed not to shoot aircraft down but to explode and give the impression of an aircraft blowing up and for months navigators would log these and they weren’t scarecrows. The Germans never had a scarecrow. They were aircraft blowing up.
BW: Actually the aircraft themselves.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And -
PB: And the irony of that is that in the First World War the British had upward firing guns to attack zeppelins.
BW: Ahum Yeah.
PB: [laughs] They never learn.
BW: Because they were difficult to shoot down as well. But so ok from, from there that’s two operations on the trot really. Monchengladbach and Berlin.
PB: Yeah.
BW: You mentioned those airmen killed. Were any of those from the squadron? Did you know any of those guys at all? Were there Stirlings in that lot that were shot down?
PB: Er we there was a raid on Berlin on the 24th of August as well but we were on leave but a crew that we trained with went missing that night and a friend of mine got shot down on the night we were on. A fella called Lew Parsons. He was shot down on the 31st .
BW: Luke Parsons?
PB: Yeah. L E W, short for Lewis.
BW: Oh I see. Lew Parsons.
PB: He was a flight engineer.
BW: And he was shot down on the 31st of August.
PB: Yeah. Yeah. But it, it was a dreadful night. Anyway, the next day our skipper and our navigator were commissioned officers and so the next day we met up with the skipper and he said Johnny’s reported sick and Johnny was our navigator. Flying Officer Johnny [Turton ]. A fantastic navigator. Absolutely fantastic and he’d gone sick and later in the day we were given a replacement. Another flying officer but a New Zealander by the name of McLean and he was the exact opposite from Johnny. Johnny was a big outgoing personality who radiated confidence. This chap had no, no, no personality whatsoever. He was with us five days. We scarcely ever saw him. We scarcely ever spoke to him. We never even learned his Christian name. And he got us shot down.
BW: And that was, of course then going to be your last -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Last flight.
PB: Yeah 5th 5th of September. Mannheim.
BW: Ok. I was just going to ask a question there and it’s just gone from my memory but I’ll probably come back to it. So, oh yes how far into your tour were you at that point? It sounds -
PB: That was our fifteenth trip.
BW: So exactly halfway through.
PB: Exactly halfway. We knew with Johnny we could do, we could do the tour because he was so brilliant but without him we were lost and he finished his tour. He joined another crew, finished his tour got his DFC, survived the war. He was brilliant.
BW: It’s strange how fate goes isn’t it?
PB: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Before we move on to your experience of being shot down I would just like to ask about what it was like for you as a flight engineer in the sort of preparation and flying out. What sort of things you would do? Perhaps if you could give us a sense of preparation you would go through to -
PB: Yes.
BW: To board the aircraft.
PB: Yes.
BW: What it was like to then go up in a Stirling.
PB: Well to begin with once we got out the aircraft there were a great many pre-flight checks to do. One of them was to go up onto the main plane with a member of the ground crew. Now, we had fourteen petrol tanks on a Stirling. Sometimes we only had the four main ones. Sometimes we had fourteen. Sometimes we had a mixture but my job was to go up on to the main plane with a member of the ground crew and he would open up the filler caps on all the tanks that were supposed to be full and I had to check visually that they were full to the, to the brim. Now, every night I’m stood on the leading edge of a Stirling. I’m twenty feet above the ground. I think when he moves to the next one and I follow, if I slip I’ll roll down the main plane I’ll fall fifteen feet to the tarmac and at the very least I’ll break an ankle and I’ll be alive tomorrow morning and I always, always considered that thought. I never did it of course. The thought was always there. It was in our own power to be alive tomorrow morning [laughs]. But once, once in the air my two main jobs was one to monitoring engine performance making sure the pressures, temperature etcetera were as they should be and that we were flying at the right airspeed and the right revs and the other was calculating every twenty minutes I had to calculate the amount of petrol used from whichever tank doing the past every twenty minutes recorded so that I always knew how much petrol remained in each tank because they weren’t over generous with their petrol allowance and people did run short very often. So that was, that was important, to keep, to know exactly how much petrol you had and where it was.
BW: So even though you’d done inspections and the ground crew had correctly filled the tanks presumably you could encounter unknown winds and like a headwind.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And use your fuel more quickly.
PB: As I understand it the calculation was made. This is your track. It’s so many miles. You’ve so much petrol. We’ll give you so much and we’ll give you another three hundred and twenty gallons as a, as a reserve.
BW: Reserve.
PB: But of course you get off track, winds are against you, anything can happen. You can’t hold height, you’ve got to get into rich mixture to climb again. All sorts of things could happen to make you use more fuel.
BW: And that would include of course having to take evasive action over the target or anything like that.
PB: Yes, evasive, any time when you had to open up the engines and go into full fuel. We were using a gallon a minute.
BW: That’s pretty significant and that’s just through one engine. A gallon a minute through an engine.
PB: No. It’s, that’s the aircraft.
BW: Oh, the aircraft. Ok.
PB: A gallon a mile through the aircraft.
BW: Oh right.
PB: A gallon a minute through each engine yes.
BW: And I think you said the Stirling was a, was a lovely aircraft to fly. What was your experience generally of the environment in which you were having to work? Was it cramped or was there enough room to do your job?
PB: I’ve only been in a Lancaster once and it horrified me. There’s no space to breathe. You could hold a dance in a Stirling. It was huge and because of the short wingspan it was so highly manoeuvrable. It was a beautiful aeroplane but it couldn’t get any height. Couldn’t get any height.
BW: A limited ceiling.
PB: We had to fight to fly at thirteen thousand. On the last night at Hamburg. The night of the big storm we did two runs over Hamburg at eight thousand feet with the bomb doors frozen up.
BW: Wow.
PB: That was a terrible night.
BW: Just out of interest the air supply gets pretty thin around ten thousand feet. Did you ever have to use oxygen?
PB: It goes on automatically at ten thousand feet.
BW: Right.
PB: Ten thousand feet, oxygen on and skipper charges into S gear.
BW: Into S gear.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And does that give you extra boost through the engines?
PB: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Ok and were you able, in some cases crews had to stow their parachutes. Were you able to move around with your parachutes on or did you stow it?
PB: No it was always stowed. Always stowed away.
BW: How did it feel when you were actually bombed and fuelled up ready to go and you’re at the threshold of the runway and you’d got the green light. Could you just talk us through that?
PB: Well -
BW: What you were feeling there and what you were doing?
PB: I experienced three feelings. Between briefing and going out to the aircraft, absolute terror. Once we delivered the bombs and the photoflash had gone off, wonderful. Once back eating bacon and eggs very, very satisfied. Those were the three emotions that I suffered.
BW: How did it feel when you were given that that green light? Presumably as a flight engineer you followed the pilot through on the throttles.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And you feel this surge of power of the engines going.
PB: Yeah all all the while was concentrating on getting the thing up because the Stirling had a violent swing. It had this ridiculous undercarriage and because of the torque of the engines it swung to starboard and you had to correct that swing either on the throttles or the stick. Now, if you got a cross wind as well that swing could be quite dramatic and it went like that and then like that.
BW: So a violent swerve either way.
PB: The undercarriage just collapsed you don’t want an undercarriage collapsing when you’ve got a thousand -
BW: No.
PB: Incendiary bombs stuck in the belly [laughs].
BW: Were there any incidents where aircraft were unable to take off because of that? They perhaps didn’t control the swing or there was a cross wind.
PB: Oh yeah. The very first Stirling on its very first flight in the hands of a very skilled test pilot on its very first landing wrote its undercarriage off.
BW: Simply because of the swing due the power in the engines.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And the imbalance.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And yet it looks from, as you say, the size of it -
PB: Yeah.
BW: It looks a very stable beast to fly.
PB: It’s incredibly strong that way. It’s not very strong that way.
BW: So longitudinally strength.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And laterally not so good.
PB: It was a very strong undercarriage but it’s so tall it [put a side strain on it] like that.
BW: Yeah.
PB: It goes. Time and time again.
BW: And of course these are pure manual controls. They’re not power assisted in any way.
PB: Oh no. No.
BW: So, but it was generally very smooth to fly and very easy to fly once you were airborne.
PB: Oh it was a beautiful aeroplane to fly. Beautiful. It really was. It was like a [? ] You could do anything with it.
BW: How many were, were in your crew? There were normally seven in a Lancaster.
PB: Seven yeah.
BW: The same in the Stirling.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And you had initially for your first part of your tour you had Johnnie [Turton] as your navigator.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And your pilot. Who was your pilot?
PB: Pilot. When I joined him in May it was Pilot Officer Bernard Cotterell.
BW: That’s right.
PB: By the time we were shot down he was Acting Flight Lieutenant Bernard Cotterell.
BW: Is that C O T T E R -
PB: Yeah.
BW: I L L?
PB: Yeah. E L L.
BW: E L L. And so who are the, you mentioned your wireless op.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Um, who was Len -
PB: Len Smith. Bomb aimer was Alan Crowther.
BW: Alan Crowther.
PB: Yeah the rear gunner was John [Carp?] a Scotsman.
BW: John [Carp?]
PB: He was always known as Jock rather than John.
BW: Jock.
PB: And the new, the new mid upper gunner was a Newcastle lad called Ray Wall.
BW: Ray Wall.
PB: Yeah, Ray Wall. There were only five of us, as I say, left from the original crew and of those five I was the only survivor. The mid upper, the mid upper survived and this new navigator survived?
BW: And so from there we’ve looked at sort of the raids and the preparation for them. What sort of things would happen on the return to base? You’d obviously be debriefed but what form would that take?
PB: Well, we, we, we always flew at the recommended airspeeds which got you the most miles per gallon. A lot of people just simply flew back as fast as they could regardless of wasting petrol so we were invariably the last aircraft to land which meant we always had to queue up to wait to be de debriefed which was a nuisance but then of course it was the bacon and egg lark. Bacon and egg time and off to bed.
BW: And what, what was the accommodation like? You were all crewed up. Were they in nissen huts. Was there a crews either side or was it -
PB: We, we, we were in a nissen -
BW: Different.
PB: Hut and I think we shared it with two other crews and one morning, one morning you would find that half the beds are made up and all everything’s gone because they had disappeared but the thing is you never, you never associated with anybody outside your crew. There was no point to it.
BW: Really.
PB: No point to it at all. A crew was a very. very tight little, little group. We did everything together.
BW: And so even though there would be two other crews in the, in the nissen hut with you you would still socialise only with your own crew.
PB: Oh yeah we never bothered with anybody else. Very rarely spoke to anybody else even.
BW: And where did you go during your off-duty hours? Where did you socialise?
PB: Oh the village pub in Lakenheath.
BW: Do you recall the name?
PB: No, I don’t actually. No.
BW: Ah.
PB: But I do remember there was a Mrs Philips who used to provide us with suppers some times. Just across the road. She used to put on bacon and egg suppers. I don’t know where she got the bacon and eggs from but she used to put on bacon and egg suppers.
BW: Just as a special treat for you.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And the rest of the crew.
PB: But you know you sit in the village pub at night and you were surrounded by farmers and butchers and bakers and all the rest of it. People for whom the war was just something they read about in the newspapers and you were just so happy, you’re so happy. It’s wonderful. There’s nothing like a crew. Nothing. Incredible relationship. Incredible.
BW: And did you have opportunity to mix with other locals? Not just the, the tradesman there, if you like, the farmers and the bakers or whatever?
PB: No. The only time we went out, off the camp was to go in to the little pub. On the nights we weren’t flying. We were in there every night we weren’t flying.
BW: Were there station dances at all or anything like that?
PB: No. There was no station. You’d the airfield there, you’ve the mess here and your billet over there and something else over there. If you didn’t have a bicycle you couldn’t exist in Lakenheath.
BW: So quite a distance between -
PB: Distances are immense. And I’ve visited it since the war. It’s an American town now.
BW: Yeah. It’s, it’s a huge place.
PB: Oh it’s a big place and when I, when I was there talking to them they produced some information about the wartime use and they spelt Stirling as if, as if it was the bloody currency [laughs].
BW: Were there, just out of interest, were there other crews in the pub where you went or was it pretty much just you guys?
PB: Well no doubt there were.
BW: Right.
PB: But we just sat in our corner and nothing else existed.
BW: Right.
PB: Nothing else existed.
BW: So tucked away in your own -
PB: Yeah.
BW: In your own little world.
PB: And there my skipper named my first daughter.
BW: Right.
PB: My skipper. I don’t know how we got on, how the conversation got around to that actually but one evening for some reason the skipper said if my wife and I were to ever have a daughter we were going to call her Penelope. I never forgot that and so very many years later when my first daughter was born she simply had to be Penelope. I had no choice.
BW: Well. As you say it obviously comes from being a tight crew.
PB: Yes.
BW: And that connection.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Ok. You mention then about your trip to Mannheim and this New Zealand navigator.
PB: Yeah.
BW: About your, of your crew.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Who, who got you shot down?
PB: Yeah.
BW: Just talk us through that if you would, please.
PB: Well we had a full petrol load which means a minimum bomb load of course. We were briefed for Munich and when briefing had been completed the CO said there’s a Mosquito on its way to Munich at the moment because it’s feared the weather may break down there so we’re going brief you for a possible alternative for Mannheim. So we had a second briefing then. Now, we’d no idea where we were going which meant of course the navigators had two flight plans to prepare. They’d doubled the work in the limited amount of time so they were under stress from the start. So we, we, we retire to our aircraft. Do all our pre-flight checks and the CO comes around in his van and says Munich is scrubbed. You’re going to Mannheim. So off we go. Immediately we cross enemy coast we were hit by flack. Now this had never ever happened to us before. He’d taken us straight over a, straight over a gun batt. I was shocked and I thought I’m going to spend, I’m going to spend the next hour checking the fuel in the hope we were losing fuel and we could turn back. And I went and did a meticulous check on the fuel but we weren’t losing fuel of course. Now, the raid was cleverly designed. You’ve got Ludwigshafen, the Rhine, Mannheim. If you fly over Ludwigshafen into Mannheim a creepback occurs. You get two targets for the price of one. And so that was the way we were to enter. So, to make sure we got it right for each wave of the attack the pathfinders was putting down a red marker. Now if you turn on a red marker on to the right course you flew straight over Ludwigshafen straight to Mannheim. So as we, as we were approaching the point where we could expect to see the flare the navigator says, ‘Keep your eyes open now. You should be seeing a red flare any time now.’ And suddenly there’s a red flare there and another red flare over there.
BW: So one to your left and one to your right.
PB: Yeah. So which, which is, which is the correct one? Only the navigator knows which is the correct one. ‘That one,’ he says.
BW: On the left.
PB: Nearer to the target. We get to the target five minutes early. The skipper makes what I still think was the right decision. He said we’d been hit by a bomb once at Nuremberg so we knew that. You’re either the only one over the target or the bombs are coming down from Lancasters. The skipper did an orbit but unfortunately the radar picked us up and as soon as we start to go in a blue searchlight comes straight on.
BW: Which is the radar guided one.
PB: Yeah and then then the column builds up and we’re flying straight over with the bomb doors open. So we continued like that until the bomb aimer got a sight and then you let the lot go in one go and we didn’t wait for a photograph. And over a target I always went up in to the astrodome facing backwards to help the gunner search for fighters and I was up there [ and we slowly began to pull away? ] and there were only a couple of searchlights on us and I thought I’d better check on my engines cause they’re getting a terrible thrashing. You’re only allowed a few minutes on full power so I get down, I get down from the pyramid and have a very long, I have a very long lead on my intercom so I can, don’t have to keep plugging and unplugging and I get down and I’m just going over to the instrument panel and suddenly there’s a terrible screaming and Len, Len the wireless operator had been just behind the main spar pushing out pushing out the window came running up through the main spar screaming, tripped over the pyramid, fell across my lead, pulled it out so I lost all communication and he fell at my feet and then this huge fire broke out in the fuselage and I’m steeling myself to stand and step over Leonard’s body to get to the fire extinguisher and out of the corner of my eye I see the mid upper gunner get out and put his chute on. I turn around. The navigator’s already on his way down the steps so instead of going for the extinguisher I go for my parachute and follow the navigator. I get to the top of the steps, the hatch is open. The navigator’s gone. I slide down. I get my feet through. The bomb aimer had gone up in to the second pilot’s seat to help the skipper. He started to clamber down from the, from the seat as I go past. I get my legs through. I feel a pressure on my back. I turn. Alan’s got his knees pressing in my back, tap him on the knee and go and as I go I feel the aircraft break in two and Alan never got out. So the rear gunner and Len were killed by the fighter. The skipper was wounded by flak that also set the port inner on fire and the skipper and Alan never had a chance of getting out because the aircraft had broken in two. The tail unit with the rear gunner’s body in it landed a considerable distance away. The main wreck landed right on the German Grand Prix racing track at Hockenheim.
BW: Wow.
PB: I have the map. I have a map showing the exact position and I saw the fire. It was a huge. We’d over a thousand gallons of petrol on board. We had enough petrol for Munich and the three in the aircraft were completely destroyed. Only, only fragments of bone left. The air gunners body was complete and so in the cemetery now at [Bad Tolz?] there’s a, there’s the rear gunners grave there, then there’s a headstone for Len, a headstone for the skipper, a headstone for Alan but what bits of fragments of bone there were are all buried in front of the skipper I’m sure. It was just symbolic. Never, never let the relatives know that of course. Never mention fire to the relatives but those two graves were empty and what bits there were were in front of the skipper which is right and proper.
BW: And you, you must have been pretty close to the ground when you baled out yourself.
PB: No. Oh, no. I was about ten thousand feet.
BW: Oh right. It was, it was the sense I was getting that it was almost a last minute sort of thing where you were able to escape.
PB: No. No, the aircraft broke in two very quickly. It was a tremendous. What happened I think the JU88 killed the rear gunner and then from, there’s a pump on the starboard engine, and dual pipelines to the rear turret that power the turret. Now I think it hit those pipelines. You’ve got hydraulic oil pressure, high pressure, high temperature came out and that’s what caught fire. The fire then came underneath the mid upper gunner, hit Len when he was doing the window in and stopped before it reached me but it was, it was a terror, it certainly was a fire and although I didn’t know till much later virtually simultaneously flak knocked out the port engine and the port inner engine and wounded the skipper and Ray, Ray told me later that when the skipper gave the order to bail out he [signed to say] as if he was badly hurt.
BW: And then at that point, the stricken aircraft, it must be almost I guess vertical if it’s broken up at that point.
PB: It didn’t, it didn’t go like that when it hit the ground it was it just come straight down like that.
BW: Yeah.
PB: I dare say some of it is still there buried under that racetrack. Some of the engine. But later I had a friend in Germany who was, who was in Ludwigshafen. He lived in Ludwigshafen. He was a schoolboy in Ludwigshofen. He may well have been on the flak gun that night for all I know.
BW: That would have been a coincidence wouldn’t it?
PB: Well after, he worked for the postal service after the war and when he retired he set himself up as what he called an air historian and he excavated a lot of shot down bombers and he was very keen on Bomber Command and he provided me with a lot of information and he produced a woman who’d been a schoolgirl in Hockenheim and on the morning after we crashed, after we were shot down, a neighbouring woman knocked on her door and she had what they described as a Canadian airman with them. It was in fact a New Zealander and the girl’s mother gave him a drink of water and later in the day the girl’s interest was aroused and she and a girlfriend went out to look at the crash and she provided me with a map of the actual crash site just by the, so whenever the German Grand Prix comes on I always, always watch it for a few minutes. I don’t like grand prix racing but I always watch it for a few minutes.
BW: Just that particular one.
PB: Yeah. That’s where it crashed.
BW: And have you been back to Hockenheim at all?
PB: No. No, I’ve not. No, I’ve not.
BW: But the information’s come through to you.
PB: Yeah.
BW: As to what’s happened.
PB: Peter provided me with a lot of information.
BW: What’s the air historian’s name? Do you recall?
PB: Peter Mengas M E N Mengas G A S.
BW: G A S.
PB: Peter.
BW: And is he still around?
PB: I don’t know. I’ve not, I’ve not heard from him for a year or two now.
BW: So you’ve managed to get out of the aircraft yourself.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And this is night-time. About ten thousand feet over Germany.
PB: Yeah 1 o’clock. It was just about midnight on my watch. It was 1 o’clock in the morning German time.
BW: And you pulled the rip cord and -
PB: Well, no. This was the problem when I, when I first joined the squadron I got a harness which could be adjusted. Now, I moved about a lot in the Stirling. I’ve controls there, there, there and there.
BW: All around the -
PB: And I used to [bend down?] around number seven tank and the shoulder strap would fall off and I thought I’ll get this fixed but I never did of course so when I baled out I was terrified of falling out of my parachute so I daren’t open it until I got myself you know [? ] as I could.
BW: Sort of braced against the straps were they?
PB: And when I opened it and I felt oh that’s it but it wasn’t that was just the parachute pulling the pack off my chest and then bang.
BW: The snap of the canopy.
PB: And I took all the weight there. The shoulder straps were up here. I came down in agony. I don’t know why it didn’t castrate me.
BW: Because of the tight grip around the -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Groin area where the -
PB: And then when I eventually I saw the ground rushing up and I rolled myself into a ball as I’d been taught and this buckle took two ribs with it.
BW: On the left hip.
PB: Yeah. Broke, broke two, broke two of my ribs and so I, it was, it was very painful. Very painful. And this is funny really by the next day my left side had seized up and I’m walking in a westerly direction trying to get to France [laughs] and, I don’t know and there was just one house which I had to pass and I thought, I thought a girl stood in the window had spotted me. I wasn’t certain but I thought she had. Anyway, I kept going and suddenly I hear a shout and I turn around and there’s this chappy running towards me and running behind him is a woman, presumably his wife and the two things I didn’t believe. I didn’t believe that fighting men put their hands above their heads like the baddies in the cowboy films and I didn’t believe the Germans went around saying. ‘Heil Hitler,’ to each other but as this chappy approached without any conscious effort on my part my hands went up. This one went up. This one wouldn’t.
BW: Your right one.
PB: He saw me like. He stopped running [?]and, ‘Heil Hitler.’
BW: So because you can’t raise your left arm you can only raise your right arm he thinks you’re doing the salute.
PB: He thought I was a Luftwaffe chappy. ‘Heil Hitler,’ he said [laughs] Well, I just I was in a pretty perilous state by this time. I just collapsed in to hysterical laughter. I just stood there and laughed and laughed and laughed and his wife came along and she sized up the situation immediately. She put her arm around me, took my weight on her shoulder and led me towards the town and the very first house we came to she made a very, very cross old woman let me into her kitchen, sit me down and made me a cup of coffee. So this woman very unwillingly gave me a cup of coffee. I hadn’t drunk anything for twenty four hours and I took a sip and I thought, ‘Bloody hell, I can’t drink this. It’s absolutely disgusting,’ and I thought, ‘Well if I don’t drink it it’s a great insult to this woman who’s been so incredibly kind to me,’ so I had to drink it. That was my introduction to the German diet oooph [laughs].
BW: And so you managed from a rough landing in a loose parachute in God knows where -
PB: Yeah.
BW: To get yourself together. You didn’t meet any of the other crew at this point because you obviously talked about -
PB: The -
BW: Yourself.
PB: The mid upper gunner landed right next to a railway signal box and was arrested within seconds. The navigator landed in a tree and had to be rescued. So they were captured very quickly. Both of them.
BW: So there was just you on your own at this point.
PB: I was on my own.
BW: Were you knocked unconscious or, or did it take some time to come around? I mean you’ve obviously had to get rid of your chute and -
PB: No I, I, I was shocked. I was shocked obviously and I was in pain from these ribs but I said I’ve a duty to the RAF and that was to get to Gibraltar. [Laughs] It’s a long way away.
BW: Yeah.
PB: I’d got the Rhine to cross for one thing. That’s not, that’s not easy. [laughs].
BW: And so the, the people that, that met you I mean you talk about heading west towards France and Mannheim is, is quite deep in western Germany.
PB: Yeah.
BW: So you’re actually being met by Germans at this point.
PB: Yeah.
BW: But they assist you.
PB: Yeah.
BW: So what then happened? Did they, they pass you on? Or -
PB: Well this couple took me to the police station where the other two were already held although I didn’t know it and we were kept there for about three days and a couple of Luftwaffe chappies arrived to take us up to Frankfurt to Dulag Luft interrogation camp and when we left we were given a bundle of the rear gunner’s clothing and his flying suit had hundreds of holes in it. The cannon shells must have hit the turret and exploded, it was absolutely riddled and his helmet and his, his oxygen mask was soaked in blood and there were the four guns from the rear turret as well. So we had that to carry. And we had, we had an adventurous journey. We couldn’t, it, this was the most successful raid on Mannheim Ludwigshafen at that time and it was complete chaos and we had to go by train in to a big detour so we travelled that day and went to a Luftwaffe camp and stayed the night in the guard room there and the next day we go back to the railway station and it was a, it’s a station something like Victoria in Manchester. A long corridor with steps going up to the various platforms. We were on the platform and what I call a typical Daily Express German came along, feather in his hat and oh he was furious he was furious and Hitler had issued an order to all military and police units that if civilians get hold of airmen before the authorities do the authorities were not to interfere. They must leave it to the discretion of the civilians what to do with them and this one was stark raving, oh he was angry. And in the air force there’s an offence known as silent contempt. You don’t do anything but you look at an officer who’s ticking you off and look at him and make it obvious you think he’s [lowly?] and it’s a serious crime in the air force. Well Ray and I were giving this chappy the silent cont and the navigator said, ‘Stop being a bloody fool.’ He was a good deal older than we were and eventually this chap storms off and we thought, ‘Oh that’s shown him.’ A few minutes later he’s back at the head, the head of a posse and they’re obviously, obviously intent on doing us serious bodily harm but fortunately there was, there was a train on the other side of the platform. Now, whether it was a troop train or not I don’t know but half a dozen soldiers got out and ranged themselves between us and the, and this crowd and our two Luftwaffe chappies whipped us down the stairs, along the corridor and up another platform and hid us in a room that was obviously used by guards full of red and green lamps and flags and so on and we hid in there until our train arrived and then ran back as fast as we could and got put on the train. But it was, when we thought about it later we were very nearly hanged or beaten to death or kicked to death or something very near but it was only, it was only those soldiers who saved us and that was contrary to Hitler’s orders.
BW: Because the RAF crews at this time presumably were being christened terror flieger.
PB: Yeah. Oh yeah.
BW: And so the civilians were -
PB: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Properly against them.
PB: Well there were a hundred Bomber Command people were killed by Germans and more than two hundred Americans because Americans, there were a lot more Americans. They had ten to a crew.
BW: And at this point in a station as you mention they’ve reunited you with the navigator and -
PB: Yeah. Well they were in the police station. Unknown to me at the time.
BW: Yeah.
PB: I met them when we got out of the police station. But before I left they gave me a shave. A fierce little barber came in and then he got out this razor and I thought, ‘I hope to God the air raid sirens don’t go off.’ [laughs]
BW: Yeah ‘cause he might, he might stop shaving you and decide to use the razor for something else.
[laughs]That’s the only time I’ve been shaved with a cut throat razor. I don’t want to ever experience it again. [laughs]
BW: So they’ve tidied you up and reunited you as a crew.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Presumably they didn’t interrogate you at this point even though you were in a police station. The Luftwaffe officers took you over and put you in a transport. Is that right?
PB: Yeah. We were taken, we were taken to Dulag Luft at Frankfurt and there I was put in a cell there. Quite a big cell really. It had, it had, it had a very long radiator attached to one wall and there was a bed attached to the floor alongside a radiator and there was a table and two chairs and there’s a bucket in the corner and two windows with shutters on from outside and a very dim light. No ventilation and all I could do was lie flat on my back with these ribs and although it was mid-September the heat on the radiator was turned up full. So I lay there for three days getting hotter and dirtier and stickier and the air getting fouler and fouler and then suddenly somebody opened the shutters. A very smart Luftwaffe officer walked in with a couple of files under his arm, put them on the table opened the windows wide and motioned for me to join him, poured two cups of English tea, a plate of English biscuits, a packet of English cigarettes and then the interrogation started.
BW: And at this point is there just you and this Luftwaffe officer?
PB: Yeah.
BW: In this cell?
PB: Yeah.
BW: And so he’s expected you to get up from the floor to the chair to sit in front of him. Nobody has assisted you at this point?
PB: No. No. No.
BW: So presumably your body’s quite stiff as well.
PB: Very very stiff indeed. Very stiff. I never -
BW: Well -
PB: I never had any medical attention at all. Never. I’ve got a great knob of bone there that will never heal.
BW: And so the interrogation begins and presumably, from what you’re staying, this is daytime at this point.
PB: Yeah. When he put these files down on the table there were two of them and the top one said Royal Air Force Bomber Command 149 squadron. I thought, ‘How the hell does he know 149?’ I said, ‘I wonder if the others had been forced to talk,’ and I had pictures of Humphrey Bogart being tortured by [laughs] but it was obvious the rear part of the fuselage wasn’t burned and the letters OJ. So, he gave me, he have me a great deal of information. First, generally about the air force and then specifically about 149 squadron.
BW: And because the letters on the aircraft had not burned through.
PB: No the -
BW: So the squadron’s code OJ were still visible.
PB: OJ means 149. They knew that so as I understood it he was trying to do two things. He was giving me a lot of information most of it factual but some which he picked up and he hadn’t had checked yet [or someone had corrected] and from my reaction [he got?] and then he picked up bits from me that he could put. That was the whole purpose of it. I don’t know what did affect the war effort. I don’t think very much. Anyway, eventually he finished and this was the middle of September and he said, ‘Are there any questions you want to ask me?’ I said, ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘What’s been happening in the war in the last few days?’ He said, ‘Italy has surrendered.’ I said, ‘Oh good. One down, one to go.’ [laughs] Well he didn’t like that [laughs] so he picked up his files and he left.
BW: You weren’t tempted to salute him either.
PB: But when we, when we were being transferred by cattle truck from Dulag Luft to Saxony to Stalag 4b we were in these cattle trucks and we had a German guard in with us and we had with us at one stage the only German I ever felt sorry for. He’d been born in Germany and when he was a very small child his people had gone to America. He’d been brought up in Brooklyn. He had a tremendous Brooklyn accent and he’d, they’d never taken American nationality and early in ‘39 or late in ‘38 they’d come to Germany on holiday and he was immediately conscripted and there he was [laughs]. Oh dear. So I’d never known anybody feel as sorry for himself as that poor fella. He said, he described his comrades, he said, ‘Bloody mother f***ing, c**k s***ng krauts,’ and those were his comrades [laughs].
BW: And they didn’t speak American -
PB: Deary, deary me,
BW: So he got away with it.
PB: Oh he did feel sorry for himself. And I’ve often wondered what happened to him because when the Ardennes offensive took place Hitler put a lot of American speaking Germans into American uniforms and of course they were shot immediately if they were captured. He was an absolutely perfect candidate for that job.
BW: Yeah. Quite possible.
PB: So I don’t know what happened to him but oh deary me he did feel sorry for himself
BW: And so it seems a fairly, alright it’s uncomfortable but it seems a fairly civil interrogation from the Luftwaffe officer before you -
PB: Oh it was very friendly. Very friendly very friendly. I mean I’d been lying in there for three days thinking about Jimmy Cagney and Humphrey Bogart and it was nothing like that [laughs]. No, he was charming. Really charming.
BW: And how soon after the interrogation ended and he stormed out did you then leave for er -
PB: Well I left the cell then went to the main part of the camp and stayed there for about a week until there was enough of us to make up a wagon load.
BW: And this was still at Dulag Luft.
PB: Yeah.
BW: In Frankfurt.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And so you’re there a little while longer transferred to Saxony.
PB: Yeah and we were lucky and we were unlucky. We were unlucky in the fact that all the luft camps run by the Luftwaffe were full and so we were sent to the biggest prison camp in Germany which was run by the army. It contained about ten thousand permanently and it had scores of working parties attached to it so that prisoners used to come in and get recorded and then sent out to work in mines or factories or quarries or whatever so there was a regular turnover. There was about ten thousand of us there permanently but a tremendous lot of Frenchmen, a couple of thousand Russians who were starving to death and various other nationalities and of course the German army didn’t have the same relationship with us that the Luftwaffe personnel would have had. In fact they hated us.
BW: Was there any, any ill will directed towards you because you were air force?
PB: They didn’t like us. They told us, they said, ‘When Germany wins the war you’ll spend the rest of your lives building the cities that you’ve destroyed but if Germany lose the war you’re soon to be shot.’ That was their attitude.
BW: And even though this was an army camp they, it sounds as though they weren’t just, were they just military personnel? The ten thousand French and Russians were they soldiers that were captured?
PB: Well I don’t know what they were.
BW: So they could have been.
PB: They were dressed in civilian, some in civilian clothes,
BW: Yeah.
PB: Some in bits of clothes. Some were in military uniform but we were lucky too because this was September. Italy had retired from the war. The Germans had taken over the Italian prison camps and they set up two new compounds in 4b. An RAF compound and an army compound. Now, a couple of thousand Desert Rats who’d been prisoners in Italy came in just as we did. Now, without them we’d have been in a right mess because the Germans gave us nothing.
BW: So you were on low rations and you were, were you made to work at this stage as well?
PB: No. No. They couldn’t make us work. Not with our ranks.
BW: Right.
PB: But you know we were put into a hut which has three tier bunks to sleep a hundred and eighty men. They gave us a sack which contained something or other which was supposed to be a mattress, two pre- First World War blankets and that was, that was all they gave us. No knife, fork, spoon, no cup, no plate. Nothing. And yet the food comes up, a great big vat of soup and all you’ve got’s your bare hands. So the army helped us a lot there.
BW: Presumably because they were allowed or brought with them their kit and they shared it.
PB: They brought with all their kit, yeah. Yeah. I mean they’d been prisoners years some of them.
BW: So they knew, they knew how it worked.
PB: They knew the ropes so yeah they knew the ropes alright but the difference between the army and the air force was, was, was incredible. The army compound was run like a barracks. There was a sergeant major in charge of each hut. Total control. And each morning at 7 o’clock there was roll calls outside in decent weather. The roll call in the army compound took fifteen minutes. The roll call in the RAF compound could take two hours. That was the difference in our attitudes. The army would say, ‘We’ll show them what real soldiers look like.’ and we’d say, ‘We’ll cause them so much bloody trouble they’ll wish they’d never been born.’ Different attitude of mind altogether.
BW: And so this is the, the British army in their compound.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Organising themselves to do their roll calls -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Like that.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And the RAF took the view well we’re there to -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Make a nuisance of ourselves.
PB: That’s it exactly. One day the Germans got so exasperated they brought the senior sergeant major and they stood him there and we’re all lined up in fives and he starts telling us we’re a disgrace to the bloody nation, we’re a disgrace to the air force and the replies he got. He’d never been spoken to like that in his life before. Never, ever, ever. He just went redder and redder and redder. Eventually, he turned on his heel and went and we never saw him again.
BW: Gave that one up as well.
PB: I know we really, we really did everything we could and we tamed the Germans eventually and it went whenever a German entered our hut whoever saw him first would shout, ‘Jerry up’ and whatever you were doing you could get away. At the end of the war the German would walk in to the hut, he’d stand at the door and shout, ‘Jerry up’ and wait two minutes before he walked in.
BW: It’s interesting you, you made a comment just before that although the Germans gave you nothing they didn’t make you work either because of your rank.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And the thinking was in the, in the early days with the RAF aircrew was that if they were all sergeants they would be treated better in prisoner of war camps.
PB: Not treated better, just treated differently in that they didn’t work.
BW: Right. So it was a case of you’re not made to work you were just -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Well you were just there and you exist, sort of thing.
PB: Yeah and the food of course was disgusting. The flour was ten percent what the Germans optimistically called wood flour. Which was sawdust. We, we, we had soup at lunchtime. A great vat of soup. We had [minute?] soup which was disgusting. We had [mara?] soup which was even more disgusting and most disgusting of all we had a soup that apparently was made from what was left of sugar beet after the beet er after the sugar had been extracted and we got a handful of boiled potatoes, usually rotten. That was the midday meal and then in the late afternoon you got a piece of bread to be divided between five people and a blob of white stuff which was supposed to be butter, it was about ninety percent water, and a spoonful of jam apparently made from beetroot or swede or some such and you’d get this piece of bread and it’s not a big piece of bread and it’s got to be shared between five people and every, every one of the five pieces had to be absolutely identical with the other four so we picked the man with the best irons and steadiest hand and he cuts the bread up and he gets last choice and the five pieces and he gets the last choice.
BW: And it went on like that for days.
PB: But we had the Red Cross parcels fortunately.
BW: How often were they delivered? Were they regular?
PB: Every Monday we got a Red Cross parcel.
BW: And were they delivered intact or were they interfered and inspected by the Germans.
PB: They were delivered intact until it was decided that they were being used in escapes and so after that they were all opened and every tin was punctured so that it had a limited lifespan. You couldn’t, you couldn’t store it up.
BW: And you see in war films, popular war films, the sort of black market operating in a prison camp and trading and bartering. Does that, did that ever happen?
PB: Oh yes, it was all, with cigarettes you could buy anything. Now in the RAF compound we had two people. We had an English and an Italian name. A chappy called [Gargini]
BW: [Gargini]
PB: Now he was, he was a skilled technician in British, in BBC television and he was an absolute wizard with the electricity. He built at least two radio sets and he also made a succession of heaters, immersion heaters, which you could put in a cup of cold water and fire up in no time at all. And we had another chap who was in fact was a civilian. Terry Hunt his name was. He worked for British Movietone news or some similar company and if you went to the cinema in England during the war from time to time to time on the newsreel you’d see shots taken from the nose of a light bomber during attacks on France. Now Terry was one of the men who took those photographs. He was given a degree of training. He was given an RAF uniform, he was given a RAF number, an RAF rank just in case he was shot down and captured and he had a camera. He had it inside a hollowed out bible with a little hole in the spine through which he took his photographs. Two quite remarkable men there.
BW: And that, that bible with the camera in he used in the aircraft and he kept with him in the prison camp did he?
PB: No. He got it whilst he was in the prisoner.
BW: Oh made it in the prison right.
PB: How he got through well cigarettes you could get anything with cigarettes. You could buy a woman for three cigarettes but there were no women.
BW: And in that case there must have been some sort of interaction with the German guards at that point -
PB: Oh yes.
BW: To be able to bribe.
PB: You waited. You waited until after dark and then you went out and found a guard and said [?] ‘Yah yah yah,’ out it came from a bag in his gas mask case gave him this bit of bread ‘[?] cigarettes?’ ‘Nein. [?]Nein. Deutschland caput’ [laughs]
BW: A piece of bread for twenty cigarettes.
PB: But you could buy anything with cigarettes.
BW: And did you partake in that yourself, did you?
PB: Oh yeah I was out most nights if I had cigarettes buying bread. It was, it was much better bread than we had. It was rotten bread but it was much better bread than we had.
BW: And did you, did you feel able to strike up a rapport or even an element of trust with some of these guards. Were you always meeting the same one or did you have to interact with others?
PB: No, whoever happened to be walking around the compound at the time. Some relationships must have been, must have been formed because big items were bought and of course if there were ever workmen in the camp all their tools were raided. They soon [? ] their tools.
BW: So there were, there were guys in the camp who were raiding the Germans’ tool sets.
PB: Yeah you see we, we had, you know, you got hundreds of air crew. You’ve got a couple of thousand senior NCOs in the army. You’ve got every talent. You’ve got architects, musicians, dancers, journalists. You got all sorts of people and it was amazing what could be done.
BW: And I believe they had classes in the prisoner of war camps as well to keep the men occupied.
PB: Oh yes. We, we had a little library in each hut. Some of them manned by professional librarians, we had lecturers. We had, we had a theatre group and a radio theatre group. We had people who went around individually giving lectures. The most popular lecturer was a chappy, an army man, who’d worked for a very prestigious London undertaking firm and the stories he had. Oh deary me. Deary, deary me. He was a popular lecturer he was.
BW: And so was your days, were your days regulated in any sense? Was there a structure put to you?
PB: No. You had a roll call in the morning, a roll call in the evening. That was it. And then you had the food arriving at mid-day and again about tea time and other than that you were on your own.
BW: So would you have about two meals a day then? Your main midday meal and a meal in the evening?
PB: I don’t think we ever had a meal at all really [laughs].
BW: Well, yeah.
PB: But yeah that’s the way it worked.
BW: Yeah.
PB: On Fridays, on Fridays, Friday was a big day. On Friday you got pea soup and pea soup was so good we didn’t get any potatoes on Friday. Well pea soup was the only soup we ever really ate. The pea soup was quite good.
BW: And do you still like it to this day or does that remind you?
PB: I like pea soup. Yes.
BW: Yeah.
PB: But we Lancastrians had a Red Rose Society. The Yorkists had a White Rose Society and there was a motoring club for people interested in cars or motorbikes. There were all sorts, all sorts of things set up. Every hut was given the name of a British football team. My hut was Wolverhampton Wanderers and a league was set up and matches were played and points scored and then in the RAF compound we formed the rugby pitch as well, I played a lot of rugby.
BW: Even, even though you’d had a bad injury from parachuting you were still able to play rugby.
PB: Eventually. It took, it took, it took about six months until I felt really free but -
BW: Did you manage to get any medical treatment from the British -
PB: No.
BW: While you were in the camp?
PB: Never. Never. I never bothered the British. By then it was healing. They even, even tried to play cricket but that didn’t work. The ground was too soft.
BW: What sort of ground was it? Was it sandy?
PB: It was sort of sandy soil, yeah.
BW: So and we’ve probably all have an image here of Sagan and the Great Escape -
PB: Yeah.
BW: And the sandy -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Sort of soil
PB: Yeah.
BW: And it was pretty much like that was it?
PB: When I played rugby every time I I got a graze and there was any blood it always went, always went rotten. I always had to go and get it, get it drugged up always, always went rotten.
BW: And what sort of drugs could they give you? Was there penicillin?
PB: Red Cross. Red Cross I don’t know what they were but the Red Cross provided drugs and we had, we had certain medical. We had a couple of army doctors as well. We had an English woman in the camp.
BW: Do you recall her name at all?
PB: Well we knew her as Mrs Barrington. She was an English woman. I don’t know whether she was divorced or widowed but sometime in the 20s or very early 30s she had a son called Winston and they had a holiday in Switzerland and met a German who got on very well with and they went back again a few months later and she married him and she and her son went to live in Germany. And then when, when 1938, ‘39 came along and war was obviously imminent she sent her son back to England to live with her parents and in due course he joined the air force in Bomber Command, got shot down, wrote to her where she was living in Vienna and she wrote back and eventually she decided she wanted to be nearer to him then that so she left Vienna and went to live in Muhlburg which was about five kilometres from the camp.
BW: Muhlberg.
PB: Muhlberg yeah and by this time her husband was a very high ranking Luftwaffe officer and when she moved to Muhlberg her husband came with her and we know that he visited the camp and we know that he met the commandant but we don’t know what happened there of course. We don’t know whether some informal arrangement was agreed between them or whatever but it was a fact that airmen were never allowed outside the camp because they’d just disappear but Barrington got outside the camp with French working parties several times, met his mother in Muhlberg and by early 1945 she was getting worried about what her fate would be when the Russians arrived and he reported that to the, to the escape committee and they decided she should be brought into the camp and the next time he went out he took some spare clothes [and met her] she came in to the camp, put in to RAF battledress and was hidden away under the stage in the theatre and stayed there for a few weeks till the end of the war. Not only until the end of the war but until we got away from the Russians but it took us a month to get away from the Russians.
BW: So you mention there about hiding her under the stage in the theatre -
PB: Yeah.
BW: In RAF battle dress uniform.
PB: Yeah.
BW: How did the, the tide of war affect you because many prisoners were forced on the long march but presumably if you were in Saxony in sort of lower -
PB: Yeah.
BW: South eastern Germany. Were you part of that of that -
PB: No.
BW: To evacuate the camps.
PB: No we weren’t in Poland. We were in Germany. Now, by this time the air was full of British and American fighter bombers. Everything that moved was attacked and the commandant gave us the opportunity, ‘If you want to be marched west across the Elbe we’ll take you,’ and the Poles of course jumped at that chance. They didn’t want to be with the Russians. And we said, ‘No. We’ll stay where we are until our allies arrive.’ [Laughs] Our allies.
BW: So you all managed to stay in the camp without being evacuated.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And so this Mrs Barrington stayed in the -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Theatre at this time.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Under your protection.
PB: Yeah she kept hidden. Eventually, when the, when the Russians arrived they made no arrangements whatever for us and so all we could do was break down this perimeter fence and stream out into the countryside to search for food and that went on for about three days and then the Russians got themselves organised and clamped down on it. We came and got a bargaining counter. They held thousands of British and Americans and there were tens of hundreds of thousands of Russians in the west and the Russians wanted them back. Many, many of them even wore German uniforms and they knew if they went back they knew what their fate would be so they didn’t want to go back so there was a lot of bargaining and we were part of the Russians strong hand and then they marched us out of the camp, marched quite a considerable distance and they put us into what was obviously a big maintenance depot full of huge workshops and we were billeted there and still nothing was happening so we began to drift off in twos and threes and tried to make our way across the river on our own which eventually we did. We, we were relieved by the Russians on St George’s Day, the 23rd of April and I reached the American lines on my 24th birthday. The 23rd of May. Exactly one month later. And then it was like moving from hell in to heaven. I lived for a week on steak and ice cream.
BW: You didn’t, you’d been on such bad rations there was no problem moving to that sort of -
PB: No. No. Never had any -
BW: High protein diet.
PB: A lot of people spent a lot of time sat down with their trousers around their ankles [laughs]
BW: You obviously had a tougher constitution.
PB: Yeah -
BW: So it didn’t affect you.
PB: It didn’t affect me. But oh it was great with the Americans. Even went to the cinema. They had a mobile cinema. I saw a film about a book which I’d read whilst in Germany. And then, then we were flown by Dakota to Brussels and handed over to the British. We arrived in Brussels on a Saturday afternoon. The British gave us a ten shilling note and a handful of Belgian coins and turned us loose on Brussels for a Saturday night [laughs]. And the next day we climbed on board a Stirling and flew back to Kent and from Kent we went up to Cosford which was a receiving centre and Cosford had been my first station in 1940.
BW: So this was almost a reverse of your trip out there because you’d gone out on a Stirling.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And then you were flown back from Brussels to Kent in a Stirling.
PB: In a Stirling.
BW: How did it feel to be back on your old sort of type of plane again?
PB: Oh it was funny really. About, about four Stirlings and one Lancaster landed and everybody but me and two other fellas ran for the one Lancaster. [laughs] I was more than happy to get into a Stirling.
BW: And that, that night in Brussels when you’d got a ten shilling note in your hand.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And a few Belgian pennies that must have been pretty memorable. How did it, how did it feel?
PB: I had a terrible emotional shock. There was a great big underground convenience and I was stood in there weeing away and in walked two women cleaners [laughs] and that rather set me back. I don’t remember much about what happened that night actually. I know I’d no money left at the end of it.
BW: Justifiably lost in celebration I think.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And so you were only twenty four at that stage.
PB: I’d just had my twenty fourth birthday, yes.
BW: And you, I guess you got, in retrospect, you got back to the UK pretty quick. I mean the war had only been over sort of three weeks when you were then passed over to the, to the British.
PB: Yeah.
BW: In May.
PB: Yeah.
BW: ‘Cause obviously some guys in service had to wait a long time to be repatriated.
PB: Oh some didn’t get back until well after the September.
BW: And so when you get back to Cosford.
PB: Yeah.
BW: What happened then? Were you able to, I mean, were you still in touch with your other crewmates at this point in your -
PB: No. No. Long lost them somewhere along the way. We were, first of all we were made to give a written description of how we were shot down which seemed to me to be to be a waste of time and then we were medically examined and bathed and haircuts and kitted out with new uniform and then we were sent on six weeks leave on double rations and by this time of course I’d been, I’d been qualified long enough to have become a warrant officer. And I had a lot of back pay. Got paid all the time.
BW: And how, how did they pay you? ‘Cause now it goes straight into your bank account but then did they give you cash?
PB: Cash.
BW: Or did they give you a cheque?
PB: I can’t remember. I can’t remember. I didn’t have a bank account so I don’t, I don’t really know. I know I had a lot of money to come. Several hundred pounds. I’d earned it. [laughs]
BW: Absolutely.
PB: I’d done more damage to German morale as a prisoner than I ever did as - [laughs]
BW: If I can, if I can just hop back to a point you made in the camp. You said there was an escape committee.
PB: Yes.
BW: And as I say they’re sort of impressions of, of “The Great Escape” come to mind. Were there any escape attempts made there?
PB: Oh yes there were people escaping all the time.
BW: Successfully?
PB: A couple of hours, two days. Maybe a week if you were lucky.
BW: So there was quite an active escape -
PB: Oh yes, yes.
BW: Committee from the RAF there.
PB: Oh yes there was a lot of escaping. What, what, what was a popular thing from time to time a British soldiers would come through the camp to be registered and recorded and photographed etcetera and then sent out on working parties and some airmen got the idea it would be easier to escape from a working party then from the camp and so they exchanged identities and this in the end caused tremendous confusion to the Germans because there was a New Zealand soldier, a Desert Rat who’d been captured and held in prison in Italy and he’d escaped and got in with a with a group of partisans and as he was the only professional as it were amongst the partisans he soon became their leader and he carried out minor acts of sabotage and he became a sort of Robin Hood and rumours were circulated about this new Zealander who was doing this, that and the other and the Germans got to learn of this and eventually they captured him and they decided to send him to Germany for trial but it wasn’t known whether he was to go to Berlin or to Leipzig so as 4b was about halfway between the two he came to 4b and was locked up in the [straflagge] and there he made contact with French working parties. French used to work in there regularly and the French notified the British and it was known that if he went to either Berlin or Leipzig and was put on trial he’d be found guilty and he’d be shot and so they decided that he had to be rescued and a plot was formed and the French removed a window from the room where the showers were in the [straflagge] and put it back in a temporary position and he was briefed that when it was known that he was going to leave he was to insist upon having a shower and he was to go in to the shower room and escape from this window and be smuggled in to the camp and one day quite out of the blue we were all told to get over to the French compound as quickly as we could and to start a riot and we all got there and started fighting and jostling and messing and shouting and all the German cars were rushing to the French compound and this chappie escaped and he was hidden above a ceiling in a hut up in the dark, in the rafters and remained hidden until the end of the war. And the gestapo arrived and they made our lives hell for a week and they tore the camp to pieces and eventually we put about the rumour that he’d now left the camp and was on a train going to Switzerland so they all moved out to Switzerland [laughs] to the railway lines then and we were left in peace but he remained in the camp until the end of the war and eventually got back to New Zealand.
BW: Wow.
PB: Remarkable story.
BW: I mean yeah he was -
PB: I’ve got his name somewhere in a book but I can’t remember it off hand.
BW: It would be interesting to, to find his name and look him up.
PB: Well I can get it for you.
BW: Doesn’t, doesn’t need to be straightaway. We can get that afterwards.
PB: I can get it for you in a flash.
BW: Ok well just pause the recording for a moment.
PB: So we’re just looking at a book here called “Survival In Stalag Luft 4b”
BW: Yeah.
PB: And his name is Tony Hunt.
BW: Terry.
PB: Terry.
BW: Terry Hunt.
[pause]
PB: 136
[pause]
PB: Frederick William Ward he’s called.
BW: Frederick William Ward.
PB: Yeah. Born in February 1912. Captured in North Africa in July ‘42. [pause] That will tell you about him there.
BW: Yeah.
PB: Fred Ward and this is, this is in the book by Tony Vercoe um which I’ll look up.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Um it says that he, he was captured and then interrogated and then will go into more detail about the activities with the French workers as you say. There’s a description there.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And then this lady you mentioned is called Florence Barrington.
PB: That’s right. Mrs Barrington.
BW: With a thirteen year old son, married a German photographer and that also gives us the correct name of, just so that I’ve got it right, Muhlberg M U H L B E R G so that helps identify -
PB: Yeah. Muhlberg.
BW: The camp.
PB: Muhlberg on the Elbe.
BW: Yeah. What I’ll do if you don’t mind I’ll have a look at this separately and sort of off air of the recording.
PB: Yeah.
BW: But that, that’s great that is good information.
PB: Yes. You’ve got the full story there.
BW: So we were talking just briefly before about some of the escape attempts and how you’d helped to rescue this New Zealander from, from being shot.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Were there any other memorable attempts at all?
PB: Yes. Yes, there was one other memorable one. I had a friend, Fred Heathfield, who was a Halifax pilot with 51 squadron. He’d been shot, he’d crashed landed a Halifax on three engines in the pitch dark in Belgium and lived to tell the tale and I think the only thing that kept him alive was that he had his parachute on his chest and that took the main force of the impact. He got two black eyes and a broken nose. He was eventually captured in an hotel in Paris but he was, he was a pilot. I was a flight engineer. There was a Luftwaffe field a few kilometres away from the camp and Fred and I decided that if we could steal a JU88 we could fly at low level to Sweden and we, we started to try to get some information about German aircraft but by this time the Germans had issued a warning to all prison camps saying that because of the seriousness of the war situation there were certain areas of Germany which could not be identified but which were of importance to the, to the safety of the country and anybody caught in such an area without authority would be shot out of hand so we decided not to bother and we gave what information we had to an Australian pilot. What was his name? I’ve got a book by him in there. Anyway, this Australian pilot had a Canadian bomb aimer in his crew and I think he’d been brought up in the French speaking part of Canada because he spoke French like a native and also had quite a good knowledge of German and they decided that they would put this plan into operation but instead of flying to Sweden they would fly east and land behind Russian lines and give themselves over which to me sounded like a suicide note. And they left the camp. They went they went out with a work, we agreed to provide cover for three days so for three days the Germans wouldn’t know they were missing and they went out with a working party and disappeared and it was the night of Dresden. The night they went out was the night of Dresden and they, they, they walked. They were stopped several times and were able to convince whoever stopped them that they were French volunteers who were being moved from one job to another job and were on their way there and they got to this airfield and they lay up in the woods surrounding the airfield to watch what was going on and a JU88 landed and it was refuelled and they thought that’s it. So they find a log of wood and they picked it up and put it on their shoulders and marched to the edge of the airfield, put it down, got inside the JU and, what was his name? Anyway, he sat in the cockpit looking at the instruments and the controls and sorting out what’s what and the ground crew come back and said, ‘What are you doing in here? Foreign workers aren’t allowed in German aircraft. Clear off.’ And they got out, they picked up their log of wood. They walked back to the camp and I remember it plainly I was stood at one end of the hut and the door was at the far end and suddenly, Geoff his name was, Geoff and his bomb aimer Smith come walking down the hut and the Germans never knew they’d been away. Never knew they’d been away. And they’d been sat in a JU88.
BW: And they’d nearly got away with it.
PB: If they’d landed. I mean the Russians didn’t ask questions. If you got out of a German aircraft they shot you.
BW: Yeah.
PB: It was the daftest idea I’ve ever come across in my life but that’s what they’d decided on. Geoff Taylor. He was, he was, he was a journalist in Australia and he wrote a book called “Piece of Cake” which had a forward by Butch Harris of all people. I’ve got a copy in there and that was the most audacious escape but of course like all other escapes it came to nothing in the end.
BW: And were there quite a few others who tried and -
PB: Oh yes. It was sport.
BW: Captured.
PB: It was sport. This notice that the Germans issued said escaping is no longer a sport but that’s what it had been. When you read about people who spend all their time organising an escape they’re just a bloody nuisance to everybody. They ruin life in the camp. Everybody has to give way to them. They’re not going anywhere. They might be out for a week but they’re back.
BW: And in the meantime everybody else is perhaps suffering.
PB: Everybody’s inconvenienced, yeah.
BW: Yeah but they’re getting more inspections presumably.
PB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To have a fella like Bader in your camp must have been hell. Absolute hell.
BW: That’s why they decided to put him in Colditz.
[pause]
BW: And you hadn’t been tempted to try yourself. You were making yourself a nuisance in the camp you made life -
PB: Only this -
BW: Miserable for the Germans.
PB: Mad plan we had to fly to Sweden which we gave up on. It was impossible. But we had an Australian pilot killed in the camp in a flying accident. This Luftwaffe camp was only a few kilometres away and once the airmen there realised that there were now airmen in 4b occasionally they’d come over and give us a bit of a, a bit of a thrill. They did and they’d come across in a JU86 which was an obsolete bomber based on a, on a civil aircraft. It was a bit like a Hudson it was and it were coming over the camp in a shallow dive right along the full length of the French compound which was the biggest and climb away and all the airmen in the compound would be going like this.
BW: Waving.
PB: And the army went mad. The army said, ‘You’re going to kill us all the way you’re going.’ You know, these lads know what they’re doing. Anyway, one came over one day and it wasn’t an 86 it was an 88 a powerful, big, powerful machine and he came perhaps a bit steeper than usual and when he pulled up his tail mushed in and his tail went into a wire fence and it dragged about twenty feet of wire and two or three fence posts with it. The tail plane hit this, hit this Canadian pilot who was walking around the compound. Killed him instantly. One of the posts hit his companion and badly injured him and I was in our own compound and I could see through the French huts and I saw this thing. It was no higher than that. I don’t know why the airstream wasn’t tucked in the ground and eventually it climbed away with all this wire streaming behind him and the Luftwaffe gave a splendid funeral to this Australian and we were told that the pilot had been stripped of his brevvy, stripped of his rank, and posted to the eastern front as a common foot soldier. I think, it think they just told us that to pacify us. I can’t believe for a moment that that’s what happened but that’s the story they gave us but to be killed in a flying accident walking around a prison compound it’s a bit much isn’t it?
BW: Yeah and as you say there’s got to be some for the tail wheel to be that close to the ground that there’s got to be the plane itself has got to be very, very low.
PB: It was no higher -
BW: Ten feet or less
PB: Than that. I don’t know why the airstream wasn’t hitting the ground.
BW: And that you’re indicating’s about two foot -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Three foot.
PB: Yeah I just saw it go I could see it between the huts.
BW: Wow.
PB: And then it just climbed away with all the stuff just trailing behind it. Beautiful piece of flying. Wonderful skilled bit of flying.
BW: Just unfortunate consequence.
PB: Yeah. So we did get excitement from time to time.
BW: How did it feel when the Russians came to liberate? I mean -
PB: Oh -
BW: You must have had a pretty limited amount of information getting through and an impression of what the Russian forces were like. How did it feel when they -
PB: Well -
BW: Came into the camp?
PB: Well the first thing on the newsreels I’d seen pictures of refugees in France and suddenly early in April we got German refugees going past the camp and it was, it was an incredible sightseeing German refugees like that and they were streaming past the camp to get over the Elbe. And then we could -
BW: The Elbe must have been quite close to the camp
PB: Oh it was only about five kilometres and then we heard gunfire and then on St George ’s day early in the morning someone rushed into our hut shouting, ‘The Cossacks are here,’ and we went out and on the main road there were four of the scruffiest most dreadful looking men I’ve ever seen in my life. On horseback. Oh they did, they looked murderous, every one and they were loaded down with sandbags full of food and ammunition and God knows what and they just sat there and later in the day the infantry arrived and they made no provision for us whatsoever. Nothing. So we just broke out of the camp to steal food and steal drink as well and steal women as well no doubt but the Russians clamped on that and then they started to register us and they were going to send us to a Black Sea port, Odessa or some sort of place, and sail us home from there they said. When the Americans are only five miles away. The other side of the river. And they started to register us and they had great big women, great big fat women, tables outside, taking the records, and they got some funny ones. There was a Micky Mouse and James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and it became chaotic and eventually we just said oh blow this and they packed it in and then they moved us, as I say, out of the camp and up into this maintenance depot.
BW: So they realised you were giving them some spoof names -
PB: Yeah.
BW: And not helping at all
PB: We sat in this maintenance depot about five of us who were all together and suddenly the most horrible screaming and I said the Russians have either got a woman or they’ve got a pig let’s go and to find out which it is. So we followed the noise and we came to a place and there were two Russians. There was one dead pig lying down and there’s another Russian with a pig like a cello with his hand way inside of it and the pig screaming away and we sit and we watch all this and we’re thinking they’ll give us something and we watch and we wait and eventually they killed it and they cut off the ears and gave us the ears. They took two pigs and gave us the bloody ears off one of pig.
BW: And kept the rest for themselves. And in general when they, as you put it, got their act together in terms of organising the camp presumably they re-erected the fence post that had been torn down.
PB: It became a far, far, far worse place than it had ever been.
BW: Yeah.
PB: They turned it into a punishment camp for German civilians. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of Germans died in that camp over the next five years and so the natives at Muelburg are attached to us really. We both suffered in that camp. It was a dreadful place. What it must have been like when it was dreadful when we were there. What it must have been like.
BW: And they weren’t bringing the civilians in while you were there?
PB: No, no.
BW: They presumably -
PB: No. It was after, after they’d repaired it and repaired all the damage we’d done.
BW: Yeah.
PB: And I think it was about five years they had it as a punishment camp. Must have been hell on earth. Hell on earth. Hundreds if not thousands died and this was just because of complaining about some regulation or other that the Russians had imposed. Anything at all, straight in there. Shocking that.
BW: But they didn’t, did they impose a regime on you as RAF crew waiting to be repatriated during that sort of interim period of April, May.
PB: Well it was all chaos. It was all chaos. I had quite an experience on VE day. They had their VE day a day later than ours because apparently they weren’t satisfied with the arrangements that the west had made so they decided to have their own, their own VE day the next day and I was, I was walking in the German town. Why I was alone and not with any of my friends I don’t know but I was alone and I was walking through this town and suddenly two Russian officers grabbed me and took me to their mess and gave me a huge meal. All, all looted German property of course. Animals, vegetables. The lot. And a particular sweet which I learned later was made from sour milk and it was absolutely gorgeous and after the meal they took me to a public hall where there was to be an address by a general followed by a concert and it was full of full of Russian soldiers, men and women, in all sorts of different uniforms and this general came onto the stage and I got, I got an example of what it was it was like being in a totalitarian state. He made a speech and the only words I heard were Churchill and Roosevelt every now and again he’d pause and somewhere at the very back of the, of the gallery [clapping sound] and immediately everybody’s clapping and immediately they all stopped like that.
BW: As if somebody was coordinating it.
PB: Someone’s coordinating. The whole thing was coordinated and eventually the speech finishes and we had this concert and it was absolutely fantastic. Oh the music and the dancing and the singing unbelievable. Unbelievable concert. It was terrific. Now what happened when it finished I’ve no idea. I haven’t a clue what happened to me that night. Not a clue. Not the slightest idea. I know I joined up with my friends the next day but what happened that night I don’t, I’ve no idea but I’ve never seen anything like the performance that these women who seemed to just move like that.
BW: Gracefully across -
PB: No, no leg movement at all.
BW: The stage yeah.
PB: And the Cossacks down on their heels kicking. Oh it was a fantastic concert and the singing and the balalaika playing. A night to remember that was. And that was VE day. VE day Russian version.
BW: How had you managed to celebrate it in the camp at all? You mentioned it was quite different to our celebration were there any –
PB: Well we didn’t know. We didn’t know it was VE day.
BW: So the only indication you got was from the Russians when they -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Held their celebrations.
PB: And as I say by this time we weren’t in the camp and in fact we’d broken and were trying to get across to the Americans on our own.
BW: And you mention you were in the town at this stage in Muhlberg.
PB: Ahum.
BW: What, what was it like what was your sense of being in the town? Were there, firstly, was it damaged but also were there German civilians who might be hostile.
PB: No.
BW: To the RAF at all.
PB: The civilians couldn’t get us in to their houses fast enough. We were never we were never short of somewhere to sleep or somewhere to wash.
BW: Right.
PB: Because I think the theory was if ten drunken Russians hammered on the door at midnight looking for women we would go to the door and say it was under British occupation you’ll have to go next door. It never worked out in practice [thank God] but that was the theory I think. They couldn’t get us into their houses fast enough.
BW: So a bit I suppose a bit of a protection there for them if the -
PB: Yeah.
BW: If the Russians had seen western RAF aircrew in a house -
PB: Yeah.
BW: They would be less likely -
PB: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: To interfere with it.
PB: And we slept we slept on a feather bed with a feather bed on top of us with a great big bed oh it was wonderful.
BW: And the Germans managed to put you up in the sense that they would feed you as well.
PB: Yes. Yes,
BW: Even though they would have probably been rationed at this stage and -
PB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they couldn’t do enough for us.
BW: And did you get to go back to Muhlberg in the intervening years?
PB: No, because I don’t know where we were. I don’t know where the Russians had moved us to.
BW: Right.
PB: The, the Stalag 4b Association organised trips to Muhlberg later and they became very popular because the Muhlberg people themselves were in the same boat but I never went. In fact they had a trip this year starting off in Berlin and moving down to Muhlberg.
BW: And when you came back to the UK we picked up the story at Cosford and we picked up the extra pay that you’d been awarded.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And you were washed and brushed up. What then happened to you sort of post war from Cosford?
PB: Well I was given three options. I could come out immediately or I could go to oh what’s the Yorkshire town, the spa town?
BW: Harrogate.
PB: Harrogate. On a rehabilitation course and then come out or I could opt to stay in until my normal release date. Well I thought there was still a chance of getting back on flying and getting out east and bombing Japan so I opted to stay in and I got posted to a, to a Mosquito squadron near, near Newcastle and there, there I became in effect the squadron warrant officer. I sat in an office all day doing nothing but we had a very, very good rugby team. Our sports, our sports officer was a first class scrub half and we had a very good rugby team and we won the group cup without any difficulty and we got drawn in for the semi-final of the national cup and we got drawn away against Ringway and we came down to Ringway and we found that although paratroopers are army the people who trained them were airmen and practically every one of them was a rugby league professional. So, we turned out on a rugby pitch at Ringway about six hundred red cap paratroopers lying around the pitch cheering their side on. We were up against these great hulking fellas who were fit like butchers dogs. Oh they murdered us. Absolutely murdered us.
BW: And do you still retain an interest in rugby league despite that? Do you follow -
PB: Not rugby league. I don’t like rugby league but we were, they were playing rugby union but they were rugby league professionals.
BW: Right.
PB: But when we got back, when we got back to Acklington I thought that’s it. There’s nothing, nothing doing for me now so I asked to be released and I was released within days.
BW: And was that in 1945?
PB: That would, no, it would be 1946.
BW: ’46.
PB: Yeah.
BW: From Acklington and from then on what happened in your civilian life?
PB: Well, I couldn’t settle.
BW: Your post war life.
PB: I couldn’t settle. I got I got a job as a clerk with a, with a big chemical manufacturing company and I was in this office with about six other people who were as dull as ditchwater, been there forever and all I was doing was calculating lorry loads [eight car loads used to go there and six car loads to go there?] making up that and oh it was absolutely soul destroying. I stuck it I think for three months and then I thought I can’t, I can’t, I can’t settle to this so I then decided I thought the only way to get some companionship again, get some comradeship again was if I joined the police force so I went to, I went to the police station in Burnley and they said, ‘We’ve no, we’ve no vacancies but we can put you in touch with our central organisation.’ So they did and I was called for interview at Wallasey and got into the Wallasey force with three other people and when we went to the police training school we found that three people on the course were Burnley recruits. Burnley. But this gave me my first insight into the police they were recruiting people but they wouldn’t recruit Burnley people. They wouldn’t have anybody who lived in the town going into the police force. So that was the first lie from the police. I worked hard. I came out top of the class and we got to Wallasey and for the first fortnight I was sent out on patrol with another policeman who’d been on patrol for years and I learned how to, I learned which cafes you could sit in the back rooms of and drink coffee and I learned all sort of tricks that really you shouldn’t be doing and it was a complete and utter waste of time and in a small force like Wallasey the opportunity for promotion were very, very few and far between. You had people who had been pounding the beat for fifteen years. They’d passed their sergeants examinations, they passed their inspectors examinations and they were still pounding the beat and the only way you could get on was to curry favour. Start oozing up to some officers and telling tales. It was the exact opposite of comradeship. Everybody’s telling tales about everybody. I thought I can’t stick this so I resigned from that and I was playing rugby in Burnley then and one of the team was a cotton mill owner and he said, ‘If you ever want a proper job I’ll give you a job in a cotton mill,’ so I went to work in his cotton mill and that was no good. And all the time I’m in touch with my bomb aimer’s father. Had regular correspondence and I said to him, ‘I can’t settle I’m going to go back into the air force.’ And he said, ‘Well don’t do anything for the next fortnight,’ and I received a letter -
[interview transmission interrupted]
BW: Alright, so we’re only, we’re only a couple of minutes from the end and I was just asking Mr Phillip Bates that after the end of the war in conclusion he’d said that he’d had a good war but it had had its moments um that were not entirely enjoyable but that overall he’d enjoyed it, his service in the RAF but I was asking just about the commemorations and the national, now centre, at Lincoln and you mentioned that you’d been down to London for the unveiling of the memorial there.
PB: Yeah.
BW: At Green Park.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And you got to meet Camilla as well did you say?
PB: Yes Camilla and the Prince of Wales. I got to shake both their hands. The Prince of Wales surprised me really. It was probably, it was probably the hottest day of the year and everybody had taken his blazer off and I was wearing my Raf Ex-Pow Association tie and the Prince of Wales came along and immediately recognised my tie which surprised me. And as he shook my hand he said, ‘Where did they keep you?’ I said, ‘Stalag 4b, sir.’ He said, ‘Were you a digger?’ I said, ‘Oh no I wasn’t a digger, sir. No. I left that to other people,’ and he was quite jovial and then of course he moved on and made his way down the line but I was amazed that he recognised my tie instantly.
BW: That’s a very nice point that, you know, he’s identified you by that.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And spoke to you particularly because of it.
PB: And part of the Royal Air Force. I’ve got photographs of it all.
BW: And how about now that there’s a centre for Bomber Command in Lincoln?
PB: Well yes he’s lost his football again. I was due to go there and a friend of mine, Dominic was taking me but when it came to it I wasn’t fit to go. I couldn’t have sat in a car for three hours. I just couldn’t. And then another three hours coming back. And Dominic also had a cold so we were ashamed to admit it and then again it’s Lincoln. It’s Lancasters. Bugger the Lancasters I say.
BW: Well perhaps it didn’t prove as reliable as the Stirling because it didn’t fly. They were trying to get the Lancaster flying for the Friday unveiling but they didn’t and I think it may have flown -
PB: Yeah.
BW: The day after but -
PB: What annoys me they chopped up every Stirling. Now, you think they could, it was the first four engine aircraft we had. You’d think they could have had two or three for museums wouldn’t you?
BW: Ahum.
PB: But no they chopped up the lot and that really does grieve me.
BW: And even now they’ve got a Halifax in Elvington.
PB: Oh I’ve seen that.
BW: Which is nicely renovated and so on.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Doesn’t fly.
PB: And it’s got, it’s got the Stirling’s engines in it as well. It hasn’t got Rolls Royce in it it’s got Hercules. It’s a mark iii. It’s that one. The mark iii.
BW: That’s the picture on the wall yeah. And there is a Halifax that they dug out or pulled out of a Norwegian fjord in 1973.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And that is in the Royal Air Force Museum in London.
PB: Yeah. Well for years we hoped that they’d would find a Stirling somewhere but er somewhere in Holland but they never did.
BW: Ahum ahum.
PB: A great shame because it was a beautiful aeroplane.
BW: Could take, from what you were saying, could take a fair bit of punishment and keep flying.
PB: Yeah it was a lot bigger than a Lancaster of course but it had some disadvantages you see. It couldn’t fly high and it couldn’t carry big bombs. It didn’t have a bomb bay. It had three separate ones which gave immense strength to the fuselage because you had these girders running the full length but you could only get a two thousand pound bomb in it so we mostly carried incendiaries.
BW: So just thinking in brief terms about the structure of a bomber formation in that case because you’d see that the pathfinders were going first to mark the target.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Presumably the Stirlings would then go in with the incendiaries.
PB: No. No, we were our main raid was either five or sometimes six waves.
BW: Right.
PB: And the Stirlings were always in the third wave. We got some protection from the first two waves going out and some protection from the last two waves coming back because we were a bit slower than they were. So we were always in the third wave.
BW: Right.
PB: Except, except Peenemunde. Now, that, that’s a terrible story. The night before Peenemunde we went to, we went to Turin and somewhere our radio packed in and we didn’t get the message telling us that East Anglia was fogged up and we had to land in Kent or Sussex. Wherever we could. We didn’t get that message so we arrived back at Lakenheath and asked for instructions to land and they said. ‘You can’t land here. It’s totally fogbound but if you get over to Oakington you might just get down.’ Well, we got over to Oakington, the other side of Cambridge and we just landed. They closed the, closed the airfield immediately we landed and they debriefed us and fed us and provided us with beds and in the early afternoon we went down to the airfield and the Lancasters of seven group were being bombed up and we knew we were on again that night and we were going on leave the so next day so we weren’t anxious to go bombing that night. Anyway, we’d no choice we started the port outer. Come to the port inner, nothing. The starter motor was dead. The starter motors they had in Oakington would fit a Lancaster, it wouldn’t have fit us so we rang Lakenheath to tell them. Eventually a lorry arrives with some fitters and a new starter motor and we landed at Lakenheath just as the squadron is taxiing out for take-off and we were very, very happy because we were going on leave the next day and then I discover we’d missed bloody Peenemunde and at Peenemunde the Stirlings went in first at five thousand feet in brilliant moonlight and all the fighters were circling in Berlin because Mosquitos were dropping target indicators on Berlin. The Germans got away scot free. Eventually the Germans twigged what was happening and got the fighters over and shoot down forty Lancasters and Halifaxes. Stirlings, scot free.
BW: And because you, they’d have been in the first wave.
PB: Yeah.
BW: They got away with it.
PB: There were three, there were three targets. The first one was at the very southern end was all the housing and the Stirlings destroyed that and then the next waves destroyed the science laboratories and then the assembly works and we missed it and it’s grieved me the rest of my life. I’d have given anything to have been on that raid and we were so happy that we weren’t. Oh, a friend of mine got shot down that night. No. I’d have loved to have been on Peenemunde.
BW: I mean that was, that was announced at fairly short notice. It was, you know sometimes a raid has to be planned quite well in advance.
PB: Yeah.
BW: But this was because of the intelligence about the weapons.
PB: Yeah.
BW: They were developing their short notice.
PB: The crews weren’t told, they were told that they were attacking an experimental place for new radar [and the better job of the radar they’d better defend themselves because they destroy all the latest airborne radar] that was the story that was given to aircrews.
BW: Interesting.
PB: Oh I’d have given anything to have been on that raid. Anything. Five thousand feet, brilliant moonlight and you were the first in.
BW: As you say it’s how fate goes isn’t it?
PB: Yeah.
BW: But -
PB: I’ve just been to the funeral of a friend of mine. George. He trained in Canada as a navigator. As a Mosquito navigator which is a specialised navigation job. He qualifies, he gets his brevvy, he’s ready to join the squadron and the war stops. They never even, he never even saw a Mosquito. Oh what a terrible thing to have happen to you. Terrible.
BW: Gone through all that. Well, I was reading in the prep really that they launched a raid on Peenemunde.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And just looking here at some of this um yeah it says here that 149 squadron took part in the early offensive against Germany.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And took part in the first thousand bomber raids with Stirlings.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Made a significant contribution to the battle of the Ruhr, Battle of Hamburg and the raid against the V weapons experimental station at Peenemunde.
PB: Yeah.
BW: And then between February and July ‘44 and in addition to dropping high explosives on the enemy the squadron helped supply the French maquis with supplies, arms and ammunition by parachute.
PB: Yeah.
BW: Of course that would be after you’d been shot down.
PB: About eight weeks after we were shot down Stirlings were taken off German targets completely. Some of them converted to Lancasters. Those that kept their Stirlings were used to drop supplies in France and to do mine laying and later to tow, to tow gliders but they never went to Germany again. The loss rate was unsustainable. I’d been on raids where we lost one in every five Stirlings. You can’t, you can’t keep that up for very long.
BW: No. No. Not at all. Do you think there was a particular weakness perhaps in the Stirling that the losses were so high or was it just good -
PB: You couldn’t get any altitude.
BW: Just because they were restricted to -
PB: Yeah, yeah.
BW: Low ceiling.
PB: Altitude. I mean, I had friends who flew at twenty two thousand feet. On a good night we would get thirteen. On a poor night we would get eleven. Everything that was thrown up reached the Stirlings and everything that was coming down reached the Stirling as well [laughs].
BW: I think you mentioned at one point a bomb hit your aircraft. A bomb -
PB: Yeah.
BW: Dropped from the aircraft above.
PB: This was the Nuremberg. I think it must have been a thirty pound incendiary because it went straight through. If it had been a four pound I think it would have stayed in the wing and burned. If it had been [eighty] it would have taken the wing off. Left quite a sizable hole.
BW: I would just like to show you this. There’s a photo here of a Stirling crew of 149 squadron based at Lakenheath.
PB: Oh.
BW: And I just wonder whether you might recognise any of the names. It’s only a longshot.
PB: Oh.
BW: But there’s -
PB: As I say we never bothered with other crews really.
BW: No.
PB: Except the ones we trained with at -
BW: But it looks like it’s outside the mess at Lakenheath that picture.
PB: Yeah I don’t recognise the photograph. Crowe, that’s a familiar name, Crowe. Oh he was a POW that’s why I know him. Was he a flight engineer? I knew a Tweedy in prison but he was a soldier. I don’t recognise the faces at all. Don’t know why their wearing uniform instead of battledress but there we are. Battledress were far more comfortable. That’s interesting. 27th of September. Oh well they would have been newcomers on the squadron when we were there. The average life expectancy was only six weeks. I had two friends, both on Halifaxes -
BW: Thank you.
PB: Both shot down on their first trip and my friend who were in training, a flight engineer on 15 squadron did four operations and got shot down twice.
BW: Right. I think that sort of brings us to the end as I say unless there is anything else you want to say.
PB: Well I hope I haven’t bored you.
BW: Not at all sir. No not at all there’s plenty of information. Some really interesting and diverse experiences. It’s been very kind of you to share those with me.
PB: It’s a pleasure.
BW: So thank you very much -
PB: A pleasure.
BW: For your time um what I’ll do is I’ll come to the signing of the release form now and a couple of photos so I’ll end the recording there and we’ll sort out the paperwork.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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ABatesP151009
Title
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Interview with Philip Bates
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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02:13:03 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending OH summary. Allocated S Coulter
Creator
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Brian Wright
Date
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2015-10-09
Description
An account of the resource
Philip Bates grew up in Lancashire and joined the Royal Air Force in 1940. He served as ground crew with Coastal Command before remustering as aircrew. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 149 Squadron until his aircraft was shot down and he became a prisoner of war.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Poland
England--Lancashire
England--Suffolk
Poland--Tychowo
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Nuremberg
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
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Julie Williams
149 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bomb struck
bombing
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
displaced person
Dulag Luft
entertainment
fear
final resting place
flight engineer
ground crew
ground personnel
Heavy Conversion Unit
home front
incendiary device
Ju 88
Lysander
Manchester
Me 110
military living conditions
military service conditions
mine laying
Nissen hut
prisoner of war
RAF Lakenheath
RAF St Athan
RAF Waterbeach
Resistance
Scarecrow
searchlight
shot down
Stirling
training
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/235/3378/PConacherG1701.1.jpg
1abb9d4268fb6cb9872a86d3d0d927bc
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/235/3378/AConacherG170411.2.mp3
e612302f57e8a4a63c3d121033230c2c
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
Conacher, Geoff
Geoffrey Conacher
Geoff Conacher
G Conacher
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Geoff Conacher (419799 Royal Australian Air Force) and a course photograph. He flew operations as a pilot with 622 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Geoff Conacher 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
2017-04-11
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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Conacher, G
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DM: Ok. We’re off. So the microphone is just up there.
GC: Right.
DM: So, I don’t know exactly how you want to do this.
GC: No. I don’t know what, what you want really.
DM: I just want a story from where to go. So starting on maybe why you joined up and when you joined up and so the reasoning behind it. And then what happened to you.
GC: Oh, I see. I see.
DM: Maybe that’s a good start.
GC: Yeah. Well I could talk for a while on that I guess. Well, I joined up mainly because — well the war was on and if you didn’t join up the army called you up and that was it. So I had a [pause] I always wanted to join the air force. I thought I’d join the air force. I knew that eighteen was coming up and I’d be called up so and I told my mother and father that, ‘If you don’t sign these papers I’ll finish up in the army.’ But they wouldn’t sign the papers. They didn’t want me to go overseas so they didn’t want me to fly. So, I did finish up in the army for about, oh it must have been about eight months I think before I could get out and get into the air force which I went in to in November 1942. Went down to Somers where the ITS was. Number 1, I think it was. Number 1 ITS. And did the three months course down there and was fortunate enough to be categorised as suitable for pilot training. And then I went to Western Junction in Tasmania and learned to fly Tiger Moths there.
DM: Ok.
GC: I was just, I was just turned nineteen then ‘cause I was in the army for most of my eighteenth year. Yeah, and so that all sort of went ok. Went well and I managed a solo and then the required seven hours I think it was. Or seven and a half hours tuition. And then when we graduated from SFTS as they called it — no. Not SFTS. EFTS. Elementary Flying Training School I was posted to Point Cook here in Victoria. Where it was number 1 SFTS and we flew multi engine, two-engined Oxfords down there and learned to fly those and graduated in July, I think it was, of 1943. And was fortunate enough to be posted to embarkation depot which meant you were going overseas and we went to [pause] went to England and went across. Went across to America actually by ship. American ship. USS Mount Vernon I think it was. And that took about two or three weeks. And then we went by train across to the east coast of America in, to Massachusetts. A place called Camp Myles Standish. Unfortunately on the train journey across I contracted scarlet fever and when I lobbed there I was put straight into hospital. I was the first or second of what was an epidemic that went right through the, through the camp and which upset everybody who was looking forward to going on leave to New York which didn’t, didn’t happen for most of them. But for those that did get scarlet fever we served our three weeks in hospital. Then we came out and went on leave to New York so —
DM: Right.
GC: It worked all right for us. We were, we were the main cause of other people missing out. But anyway, then we went by, by ship across the Atlantic on the Aquitania. USS Aquitania. No. Not USS — SS Aquitania and landed at Greenock in Scotland. And from there we travelled down to Brighton on the south coast where we were domiciled. All Australians when they arrived, initially they were, they were going to Bournemouth but then they changed it. Due to some enemy action they changed it to Brighton and so we all went to Brighton and stayed in either the Grand or the Metropole Hotel.
DM: Very flash hotels.
GC: Which were lovely hotels.
DM: Nice.
GC: Right on the, right on the waterfront. And we were there for oh [pause] see the trouble was when you went to England the weather got crook. At that time in the year — November, December, January. And of course all the training starts to bank up because they can’t fly. But anyway we eventually got back in to the air. It was about three months afterwards though since we arrived. After we arrived. And we did our training there which was mainly on [pause] we went on Oxfords again and did a course there. And then we went to OTU which was Operational Training Unit on to, on to Wellington bombers. And did our training there. It was whilst I was there my navigator who — we selected our own crews. They put you in, in a big hangar with umpteen aircrew and said, ‘Well now find yourselves a crew.’ So that went on and anyway it turns out that the little navigator that I got was English. They were all Englishmen. He, he obviously well didn’t make the grade. I didn’t have anything to do with it but the leaders, the navigation leader said, ‘He’s just not up to scratch so we’re going to remove him. So they took him away and I had to wait about six weeks before I got another navigator. And that put me all back right through the [pause] all the fellas I’d trained with, they all went ahead.
DM: Right.
GC: And so it was upsetting at the time. But anyway, to offset that I managed to meet a girl who made some sort of an impression on me and I must have done the same to her because we married within six months.
DM: Crikey. Yeah.
GC: And in ’44 that was. Late ’44. And so when I did get training again, when I did get a new navigator we got through there went on to our next training school which was over in Yorkshire. Which was, they called it a Heavy Conversion Unit. We went on to Halifaxes. Learned to fly Halifaxes. They were four-engined aircraft and from there we were posted to a squadron. Or they did another little course in between called Lancaster Finishing School but that was only about ten hours of flying and then I went to the squadron and it wasn’t until January 1945 that I got to the squadron whereas most of the fellows that I trained with they were, they were operational in November.
DM: Ok.
GC: But because of my holdup — but anyway that’s beside the point I suppose. But so I got, I was operational. I had a bit of bad luck on my first trip which — it was the custom to do what they used to call a second dickie. When a new pilot went [pause] and somehow or other I didn’t do one. I just went straight on to operations and had a bit of bad luck. Not through enemy action but just through mechanical problems and the aircraft finished up catching fire and we had to bale out.
DM: Crikey.
GC: So that was [pause] that caused a bit of an upheaval of course and we got back to the squadron about. We were posted missing but that was only because we didn’t get back in time. And we got back about two or three days later and flew the same. We baled out in liberated France.
DM: Ok.
GC: So we flew back to, we knew we were across the border and then we got out there so that was alright.
DM: So what sort of aircraft was that?
GC: Lancasters.
DM: Lancaster. Right.
GC: Yes. So that was a Lancaster squadron. 622 Squadron. And so then I just kept on. Well that was [unclear] they sent us on survivors leave which was the general practice. And that was a few days leave and we came back and we went operational again of course. I finished up doing another — I think I did fourteen. Fourteen or fifteen trips. And war finished for which we were all truly thankful.
DM: Very happy.
GC: Yeah. And so and then of course we, when the war finished we flew for a few days we were flying across to Europe and flying back POWs from, from France. The Americans were flying them out to France and then we were flying them from a place called Juvincourt in France back to aerodromes in Kent mainly where we unloaded them. And we did, I did about eight of those I think. Which was, you know was very rewarding.
DM: It would be. Those guys.
GC: To see those guys who had been POWs for up to five years. Some of the English army fellas had. And they just couldn’t believe it, you know. I don’t think they were all that impressed with all these young looking kids that were flying them [laughs] that were flying them over there. Because we were all about, you know, twenty one.
DM: That’s right.
GC: Twenty two. That sort of age. But they — to see the smiles on their faces when they got to England was just incredible yeah.
DM: [unclear]
GC: Yeah. And then, you know, we went on leave of course. That was one long leave for months until we got ships to bring us home. I came home. I think the war finished in May and we, we all left for Australia in the October I think. We got back in November.
DM: Quite a long time.
GC: Yeah. We got back in November. But of course those of us that were married it didn’t matter whether we were, but anyway the wives were not allowed to travel with you. We had to leave them behind and it was six months after that before they came out.
DM: Right. They came separately. Yeah.
GC: And so then when that happened of course we were getting back to Civvy Street. Back to living life as whichever way we found it. Yeah.
DM: To normality.
GC: Yeah.
DM: So what the base that you flew from?
GC: Mildenhall.
DM: Mildenhall. Whereabouts is that?
GC: Mildenhall’s near Cambridge. Newmarket. Closer to Newmarket. Yeah. Suffolk.
DM: There’s a flat bit there of course.
GC: Yes. It’s all very flat. Yeah. Yeah. I think they, what do they call it? The Fens, don’t they?
DM: Yeah, I think so.
GC: Yeah.
DM: So was that a proper RAF base? Or was it —
GC: Yeah.
DM: It was.
GC: It was a permanent RAF base.
DM: Yeah.
GC: It was built it was quite interesting really. It was built in about 1935 and was, and was opened by the [pause] the, well it was Goering anyway that opened it. And he was, he was chief of the German air force.
DM: Oh right.
GC: Luftwaffe. So and —
DM: That’s a claim to fame.
GC: Yes. Yes. And it was also the start of the Melbourne Centenary Air Race which was a race from England to Australia in 1934 or ’35 to celebrate the [pause] the — Melbourne was a hundred years old so it was the hundredth anniversary of Melbourne.
DM: Right.
GC: They flew from London to Australia. The race was won by a couple of Englishmen. Black and Scott. And they flew in a — it was like an early [pause] early Mosquito type of aircraft. A Comet.
DM: Oh yes. I know the Comet.
GC: Yeah. The Comet. And I think it was about two days and twenty hours it took them to and they won the race.
DM: Right.
GC: Of course a bit slow compared to what they do now.
DM: So there would have been a fair few squadrons at Mildenhall together would there not?
GC: Only two.
DM: Only two.
GC: Only two at Mildenhall. There was 15 Squadron and 622 Squadron.
DM: So you never flew the Stirling because that was what they originally had.
GC: No. I didn’t fly the Stirling. Yeah. That’s right. They did at Mildenhall.
DM: Yeah.
GC: They were, they did have Stirlings and then they converted to Lancasters I think in about ‘43 I think it was.
DM: Ok.
GC: They all, they all converted from Stirlings. So they all had —
DM: Yeah. They gave them away.
GC: They flew throughout the war but Stirlings didn’t have, they had a bit of a height problem. They couldn’t get up. Beautiful aircraft. People who flew them said they were just a lovely aircraft to fly. But I can’t imagine it being better than a Lancaster.
DM: No. Certainly the Lancaster has the reputation as the best. So when you found a crew what sort of a process was it that you — I mean how did you get on? How did you connect with people?
GC: Well we were — course you stood around with other pilots, we were. Because they were pilots and, ‘Who are we going to get? Do you know anybody?’ ‘No I don’t know anybody.’ So you’re just sort of standing there and looking around didnt quite knowing how to go about it.
DM: Like a dance almost.
GC: Yeah. And then these, these couple of young blokes came up to me and they said, ‘Have you got a crew skip?’ So I said, ‘No. I haven’t got a crew. I haven’t got anybody.’ They said, ‘Well we’re a couple of gunners. We’d come with you,’ you know. Or, ‘We’ll go with you.’ And I said, ‘ Oh well we’ll see about that,’ but we’ll, you know. I met them and so and then they said, ‘Well we know a bloke who’s a navigator,’ or a bloke who’s a bomb aimer. I forget which. Anyway they rustled around and found these fellows and brought them up and we finished up getting, getting a crew and apart from the navigator that I said we lost, unfortunately the wireless operator when we got to a squadron or just before we got to the squadron actually and we were using oxygen, oxygen masks, he had a problem with a rash. He used to get a rash all around his mouth.
DM: Oh so he was allergic to the rubber.
GC: Allergic to it.
DM: Right. Yeah.
GC: So they, you know they had to scrub him which was very sad. He was an officer too. A young officer. He’d been commissioned of course and so he had to go but anyway we got another one and away we went. Yeah.
DM: Ok. So I guess the training you did together was fairly limited then, so you’d done virtually all your training as individuals and then you gather at the end.
GC: Well, yes you do. You, you, we formed up as a crew in [pause] I think it would have been May. May I think it would have been in 1943 and we flew together in training until the January before we went to a squadron?
DM: Right. Ok.
GC: Yeah. So, and so and you probably did a fair bit of flying in those.
DM: So a lot of training flights.
GC: A lot of training flights. Yeah.
DM: So by the time you got on operations you knew each other pretty well.
GC: Oh yeah. Yes. We did. Yeah. And I’ve got, there’s only one of them left. The flight engineer who came to us. Flight engineers joined the crew only when you got into four-engined aircraft. And he was only a young bloke and he’s still alive. He’s —
DM: Ok.
GC: He’s ninety, ninety one I think he must be. Yeah. Ninety one. Lives in Manchester and we still are in contact with one another.
DM: Ok. So you kept in contact with all of them over that.
GC: Well I tried to. Yes. I tried to. I went across. We went back to England in 1956. We had a couple of children then and my wife’s parents hadn’t seen them of course. So we took them back to England and we were going to stay for, oh you know, a while. Twelve months or a couple of years or whatever. It didn’t work out anyway. My English wife — all she wanted to do was get back to Australia.
DM: [laughs] right.
GC: As quick as she could. And that particular year, in the December I think it was or the November, the Suez Crisis came up and she couldn’t get out of there quick enough because she thought there’d be another war.
DM: Yes. That’s right.
GC: So anyway —
DM: So have you don’t any flying since those days?
GC: No.
DM: No.
GC: No. I didn’t do any flying. I just went back. I worked in the bank. In a savings bank in Victoria before the war or early in the war. When I turned sixteen I suppose it was. Yeah. And I went back to the bank. Stayed there for four or five years and so and then I resigned. I thought, you know, I can do better than this. I can make more money doing something else.
DM: Right.
GC: But I fiddled around and went into retail. General stores in the country. [unclear] Port Welshpool down here. Victoria. But I didn’t, didn’t make any fortunes.
DM: Right.
GC: I went to work for a living and sold, sold biscuits with Arnotts Biscuit Company for about nine years. And then I switched over to wine. And we sold wine in Victoria for Seppelts.
DM: Ok. And is that why you live in Wine View Street or is [laughs] that accidental?
GC: No. It’s just sheer coincidence. Yeah.
DM: Right.
GC: And I’m still very interested in wine.
DM: Right. Ok. So when you joined the air force and you said you would prefer that to the army. Was that the principal reason? That you just didn’t want to be in the army or was there something else that attracted you to the air force?
GC: Well it wasn’t, I wasn’t sort of, you know, very keen to be a flyer.
DM: Right.
GC: It wasn’t that. It was just that I thought that, I thought the army was a pretty uncouth sort of outfit.
DM: You’re quite correct, I think [laughs]
GC: And that being, being in the air force, you know, you wore shoes and wore respectable clothing. So I guess it was that that influenced most of us to join the air force. There were some that were, you know, really wanted to fly.
DM: Yeah.
GC: But as far as I was concerned you had to do something in the war and I thought well you might as well choose what you like. You think you’d like.
DM: That’s right.
GC: And that was the air force. Which, I was very happy in the air force — it was. The whole, the whole period, you know for nearly four years I suppose it was. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I know we, you know, and of course I enjoyed all the more because the war finished early and I didn’t have to complete a tour or try and complete a tour. So it was, it was a very happy part of my life. Yeah.
DM: Which parts of Europe did you fly to on the operations you did?
GC: Mainly, mainly Germany.
DM: Right.
GC: Pretty well. I didn’t do many into France because that was, that was sort of after D-Day which was June the 6th ’44 and I didn’t get to the squadron until the end of the year. And so it was mainly the Ruhr.
DM: Right.
GC: And places further east.
DM: Ok.
GC: I didn’t do the infamous Dresden raid because I was on leave.
DM: Right.
GC: That particular time. We used to get, you’d fly, you’d be operational for six weeks and then you would get six days leave.
DM: Ok.
GC: So it happened that my six days leave was up and I went. When I came back I heard all about, about Dresden.
DM: Yeah. So even at that point people talked about it a bit.
GC: There was a bit of talk about it. Yeah. There was a bit of talk about it and you know I feel that at that part of the, that time in the war there was a quite a lot of feeling amongst some pilots anyway that they [pause] it was becoming almost abhorrent to them, you know. To go over and drop all these bombs on and there was no, there was no, well there may have been an attempt to say this is the aiming point and what it is but it was just an exercise in, as far as we were concerned in obliteration.
DM: Pure destruction. Yeah.
GC: Yeah. And that, that got to a lot of the fellows you know. They –
DM: Yeah.
GC: I know I had quite good friends that, after the war it played on their minds and to the extent that they eventually they didn’t deny it because it happened but they, they never talked about the war. They didn’t, you know, so —
DM: Right.
GC: And a couple of them had DFCs but they wouldn’t, wouldn’t face them. Wouldn’t acknowledge them even.
DM; Right
GC: So it was, it did [pause] but you know. It was still the air force and you were, you were, you did what you were told.
DM: Yeah. That’s right.
GC: Yeah.
DM: The rules of the game.
GC: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.
DM: Right. So mostly over Germany. Ok. I guess that last few months of the war they were concentrating back on the German cities.
GC: Yes, they were. They were. Especially in the Ruhr, you know. Oil plants. Synthetic oil plants in, in the Ruhr. Gelsenkirchen. Oh I forget the name of them all. And occasionally there would be something else. You know. We did a raid. A night raid I remember on Potsdam.
DM: Ok. Yeah.
GC: And I don’t know what that was for. Why they picked Potsdam but anyway they did.
DM: There were no raids down into Italy by that time were there? Or —
GC: No. No. They’d all finished. Yeah. They’d all finished. That would have been in ’43 I think they were going down there.
DM: Right.
GC: Yeah. I think ’43.
DM: And I guess when you went on leave because you were married at that stage you went to your wife.
GC: Yes.
DM: While these other guys –
GC: Oh they all went home to their –
DM: Because they were all English I guess –
GC: Yeah and they would, they had their homes.
DM: Yeah.
GC: A couple of them were married fellows, but four of them weren’t. Three or four of them I suppose. And they used to go home. Have their leave at home and then come back.
DM: Yeah.
GC: We didn’t go off on leave together.
DM: Right.
GC: Because it was circumstances. Yeah. I was married and that’s where I went on leave. To Wolverhampton where I was married and where Alice lived. And I was there for [pause] ‘cause we got weeks and weeks and weeks of leave, you know while we were waiting for ships.
DM: Yeah.
GC: And I spent a lot of time in Wolverhampton. Yeah.
DM: Ok. So where was your favourite place in England apart from –? Would Brighton be a sort of highlight?
GC: Well, you know, Brighton always, always had an attraction for me yeah. But certainly, you know, down, down the south of England but of course you got, you know we were posted to Operational Training Unit was a place in, in [pause] called Hixon which was in Staffordshire.
DM: Ok.
GC: Not far out of Stafford and it was from there that I got to Wolverhampton and met my first wife. Yeah.
DM: Ok. So —
GC: They used to have, they used to have a dance at the Civic Hall in Wolverhampton every Thursday night and aircrew came from far and wide to this, to this dance which was, had a reputation and was one to be looked forward to so —
DM: Ok. Was there much competition between army and air force?
GC: Not a lot.
DM: No.
GC: Not a lot. I didn’t strike it anyway. The army was evident but not [pause] and Americans of course. They were [pause] they could be dominant in an area. But no, I never really, we certainly didn’t, never got into fisticuffs or anything like that.
DM: Not like that.
GC: It was like a reputedly did here in Melbourne between the Americans and the —
DM: Yeah.
GC: And the Australians.
DM: There was a little bit of history there.
GC: Yeah. But no, nothing like that.
DM: Ok. So generally everybody got on fairly well under wartime conditions.
GC: Yes. I think so. Yeah. It was a wonderful, wonderful experience, you know. From mainly because I was fortunate in that I met this girl and got to live with an English family.
DM: Yeah. You got to know people.
GC: And spent time with them and you just got such an understanding of the nature and the calibre of the English person. They were just incredible. Just accepted everything that was dished out to them without [pause] well that’s the way it is, you know. That’s the war. It was, it was a great experience. Yes. So, that’s, you know.
DM: I think I’ve run out of questions.
GC: You’ve run out of questions. Oh well. Yeah, well that’s alright.
DM: I don’t know enough about it though. I see you’ve got a model up on the [unclear]
GC: I had, it’s been for years. Yeah. There’s a couple up there I think. But isn’t that a nice painting?
DM: Yes. My dad had that one.
GC: Did he?
DM: Yeah.
GC: Yeah. That’s Cheshire.
DM: Yeah.
GC: Signed. Autographed. Signed. Signed by Cheshire.
DM: I’m not sure if his was signed.
GC: Yeah.
DM: But it had the same colour.
GC: Had the same. Yeah. Yeah. Was your dad in the air force?
DM: Yeah he was on Lancasters as well.
GC: Oh was he?
DM: He was a gunner.
GC: Maybe I’ll just —
DM: Oh right.
GC: Stop the recording.
[recording paused]
GC: We had to take some of these aircraft, not very many but we had one on the squadron I think where they had a hole cut in the floor and a .5 machine gun used to be mounted on this.
DM: Yeah.
GC: And we, you had to take a spare gunner if you happened to be allotted that aircraft. And this particular trip, which was our furthest, we got that aircraft. Q-Queenie. And the, the gunner was a fellow named Edwards. Flight Sergeant Edwards. Didn’t know him really at all, you know. We just, we were allotted him and he turned up at briefing and that was our first trip and it was his last trip.
DM: Oh right.
GC: Which I thought was most unfair. The flying commander to sort of work it that way that surely [pause] but anyway he came with us and we ran in to trouble with an oil leak which we didn’t know where it was coming from. It was coming from an engine. From the port inner engine. But I kept saying to the flight, the flight engineer, you know, ‘Is everything alright?’ He said, well the revs are this, this and that and the other. He said, ‘I don’t know where the oil is leaking from.’ And because we didn’t have the experience, you know. Perhaps I should have known but I didn’t and it turned out that it was coming from the constant speed unit which is a motor type arrangement which governs the pitch on your propeller.
DM: Oh yeah.
GC: But I didn’t know that at that time. I couldn’t work out where the oil was coming from. And it got to such a state that we had to turn back. We were only, we weren’t that far from the target but the outside of the aircraft where the turrets were covered in oil. So we decided we’d have to turn back and we’d feather, we’d feather the engine. As soon as we touched the feathering button the engine just was, you know, the propelling part of it just ran up to four thousand revs a minute and we couldn’t control it in any way.
DM: Right.
GC: So and obviously there was, we thought it was going to overheat. It was going to get hot and with all this oil around. So — and it became uncontrollable, it was – the vibration was so bad that I couldn’t control it. Couldn’t do anything about it. Anyway, we got back to, as I said over liberated territory and we got out. But the Flight Sergeant Edwards wouldn’t jump. This is what the crew tell me.
DM: Right.
GC: Because he was lined up with them to go but he kept stepping back and saying, ‘No, you go.’ Because they were going out the back door and I must admit when you stand at the back door of a Lancaster in flight you’d swear that if you jump out you’ll smash into the tail plane.
DM: Right.
GC: And he must have had that in his head plus the fact that the recommended drill was to – if you had one of these .5 machine guns that you released the gun and went out the bottom.
DM: Right.
GC: They couldn’t release it for some reason or other. I don’t know what the problem was but they couldn’t. He couldn’t release the guns so of course he kept going back to the door. And he wouldn’t jump. I didn’t know anything about this until [pause] well until we got down to the ground. The drill is of course that you, you keep in communication with the pilot.
DM: Yeah.
GC: You plug in to, and he must have not done that. He must have come back to the .5 machine gun again to try and of course from, when you turn around in your seat and look down the back of the aircraft you couldn’t see down there because it was down the step that the main spar ran across and you couldn’t see. And I didn’t know he was there. When I got out I called up, you know, ‘Anybody here?’ ‘Anybody here?’ And I knew there was nobody there because I knew the others had gone. I’d seen them go. So I got out and he was still in there.
DM: Right.
GC: And but he hadn’t plugged in. I didn’t know he was there. Nor could I see him. And he did jump eventually but his parachute was on fire.
DM: Oh dear.
GC: When he jumped. Yeah. So that was a really sad occasion.
DM: Yeah. On his last trip
GC: On his last trip. Yeah. His last trip. He’d just got married. And only a young bloke like we were all young.
DM: Yeah. That’s right.
GC: He was, he was only in his early twenties I think. And we were over, went over to England again in 2012 and we were touring around through France and the area that we baled out in. He’s in [pause] buried in a cemetery in Belgium. Cemetery, [unclear] Mille, Mille, M I L L E.
DM: Yeah. It could be. Yeah.
GC: So anyway we went to the cemetery and found it. Found it. I had the engineer was with me and we found his grave in the War Cemetery there. So, you know it was all sad. That was sixty years ago. You know, not sixty but fifty years after it happened.
DM: Yeah.
GC: Anyway that’s war.
DM: That’s right. So the reason for that machine gun was because of the night fighters that had the cannon that fired up.
GC: That’s right. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
DM: To combat that.
GC: It was supposed to help combat that.
DM: Yeah.
GC: Not that we saw any of those up-firing machine gun cannons that they were using but that was the idea.
DM: Yeah.
GC: Yeah. Yeah.
DM: Yeah. I hadn’t recognised that somehow. I’ll have to look up again to see what his extra trips were.
GC: Yeah. Yeah.
DM: I did record that.
GC: Oh did you. Yeah.
DM: So you’re happy with that?
GC: Yes. That’s alright. Yeah.
Dublin Core
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AConacherG170411
PConacherG1701
Title
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Interview with Geoffrey Conacher
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
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eng
Format
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00:41:18 audio recording
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Pending review
Pending OH summary
Creator
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Donald McNaughton
Date
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2017-04-11
Description
An account of the resource
Geoffrey Conacher grew up in Australia and after a few months in the army he joined the Royal Australian Air Force in 1942. After training he flew 14 operations as a pilot with 622 Squadron. His aircraft was shot down and he bailed out over liberated France.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
France
Great Britain
United States
England--Suffolk
Temporal Coverage
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1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
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Julie Williams
622 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
crewing up
final resting place
Halifax
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
love and romance
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Mildenhall
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/236/3380/ACooperFA170810.2.mp3
654e9d538c89f433d64a0478a6f31ed1
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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Cooper, Frances Anne
Frances Anne Cooper
Frances A Cooper
Frances Cooper
F A Cooper
F Cooper
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Frances Anne Cooper (b. 1931), a memoir, family history and a photograph.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Frances Cooper and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-08-10
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cooper, FA
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank, and today is the 10th of August 2017, and we’re in Sandhurst talking with Frances Cooper about her experiences in the war, and after the war, and in life in general. But what is your first recollection of life?
FC: Well, I was brought up, I was born and brought up in Uganda and my parents lived on safari, and I think [emphasis] the first serious memory I have is of the – we called them the natives - killing a goat. And I think they must have cut its throat and then it sort of danced around with its head hanging off, and the natives thought it was hysterical and they were all dancing about too and I went back to my mother splattered with blood and she was quite shocked and upset about it, she thought perhaps she shouldn’t have let me go, I think that’s the first thing I can remember. Little smatterings of life in Uganda: the smell of zinnias, I think, flowers, coming home on the boat when I was about two and a half, having a real tantrum being put on a lavatory and the water came up and wet my behind, because previously I had always been on a potty, and having a real go at my poor mother. Also as a great treat from my father being taken down to the engine room of the ship to see all these very noisy bits of machinery, you know; he thought it was interesting. My parents decided, because in those days it was thought better for European children not to stay in the tropics too long, to stay at home when I got to be about six. My father had one more two and a half year tour to go, on his contract, and so they bought what, in those days, was a cheap house in Suffolk for me and my mother to live in while he went back to Uganda to do his last tour. As it happened, war broke out and he was stuck in Africa and poor mother was stuck at home with a small child in Suffolk, and it was a very [emphasis] remote part of Suffolk, still is, and in those days it really was, but because she’d lived on safari, you know, she could cope with it. I went to a local sort of dame school, kindergarten I supposed it was called, and then somebody who was the wife of a parson in a local village near Sudbury had a little prep school, I went to that, and after my father came home in 1941, because a, I was an only child in a very isolated village, the only education was elementary school which my mother, who was a bit of a snob, didn’t really approve of, I went away to boarding school in a village called Long Melford, which was not very far away. It had been based in Felixstowe, but it was evacuated because it was dangerous on the coast, to an old rectory [cough] in Long Melford, and then when the war was nearly over everybody moved back to Felixstowe. It was quite a small, not very good school and didn’t teach children over about fifteen or sixteen, so then I left that school, went to girls’ grammar school, High School, in Sudbury, for two years, or may have been three and then I did a year’s commercial course in Ipswich, after which I joined the Air Force. All right?
CB: I’ll stop there for a mo. Thank you. That’s really intriguing, so what was your father doing in Uganda?
FC: He’d come out of the RFC. He wanted to stay on and be a pilot. His mother had recently been widowed with four younger children. She wanted him not to be in a nasty dangerous occupation. He would have very much liked to have been a river pilot, a Thames pilot which his father had been, but his father unfortunately went to the dogs. He got syphilis and um, because he was never at home, and so my grandmother didn’t want that [emphasis] for her precious son, so he had to find a job and the Ordnance Survey I think were offering to train people, they went, he went down to Southampton for a year, trained as an ordnance surveyor and then he was employed by the Colonial Office, in Uganda. [Throat clear] And my mother met him when he was on home leave, probably after about three or four tours that he did. They did two and a half years out there, six months’ home leave and so on and so on, and he was engaged for twenty years.
CB: Engaged in the job for twenty years.
FC: Yes. By the Colonial Office, and then he was finished. Because again, it was considered the white man’s grave, you know. And that’s why they ended up in Suffolk.
CB: Sure. So what sort of education did your parents prepare you with in Uganda?
FC: Well, I don’t remember being educated. I just do remember doing letters in a notebook and I just think my mother talked to me, um, just chatted. I can’t remember being educated, you know.
CB: So when you got back here you had to start school, so how did that work aged six?
FC: Yes, started at school. But it was a very small school and I suppose we did lettering and learning to write. Don’t remember much else. My mother was a great reader so I suppose I just accepted that I would learn to read and I suppose we did sums but I can’t remember. Haha.
CB: What about sport at school? Games?
FC: No. Well there was none in the dame school, I don’t remember much at the prep school, of course this was in a war, a lot of the teachers had disappeared. We did have games at boarding school, netball mainly, what laughingly called athletics in the summer – high jump, running races things like that - nothing at all, nothing like nowadays, you know. You were sent outside in very few clothes and told to run up and down, you know. It was horrible! [Laugh]
CB: So when the war started you were about eight, coming up to eight.
FC: Yes. Eight or nine. I do remember the famous broadcast, I’m pretty sure I do [emphasis] remember, and my mother being terribly upset because she was stuck in, you know, in one place and my father was in Africa. But she’d been very worried before, because she could remember the First World War, and there’d been preparations in the village, things like you had to black out your house, the Home Guard was beginning, and we had a telephone, one of the few in the village, and the sergeant of the Home Guard lived just near us and, so he of course didn’t have a telephone so mother was delegated, if the Germans came, she had to go and get him up, or out, or whatever. And she did have to go a couple of times, in her nightie, across the road, you know, she’s not happy. Fortunately the Germans didn’t come, so you know, but she was sort of nearest point of contact.
CB: Quite sophisticated really! [Laughter]
FC: Later on in the war, an awful lot of men obviously were conscripted, but farm labourers were considered to be, it was called a reserved occupation and so they stayed at home to do the harvest and they had their rations topped up by meat pies, which were sort of like meals on wheels I suppose. You had to have a ticket, an entitlement to a meat pie, and my mother – who was a very fierce woman - was in charge of the meat pies. [Chuckle] So presumably a lorry delivered them to the local school, which was unused, and she was on duty to dish out these pies to people, and you know, [telephone] it was from ten to twelve, a very strict routine, ten till twelve, she was on pie duty. If they didn’t turn up in that time the pie went back to the factory, you know. She was very fierce! So I think they were all a bit frightened of her. But anyhow, she was in charge of the pies, that was her war work.
CB: And the telephone. And the telephone!
FC: Yeah.
CB: So what do you remember specifically about the first days of the war, apart from that?
FC: Well I do remember, because in this village there was a sharp right angled turn, great convoys of troops used to come through, I don’t quite know where they were going, I think we thought they were going to the coast, but I really don’t know, and a soldier was posted on this corner to direct the traffic round the corner ‘cause otherwise they would have shot off down a little back road. So he was there on duty and I used to go and talk to him and it was a huge coincidence was his name was Frances too, so for a child, I thought that was miraculous and I don’t know, we just used to chat. And eventually the convoys stopped and he went away, but that was in the early days of the war. Otherwise all I can remember is my mother being very anxious, worried about food, although in the country you didn’t starve by any stretch of the imagination. We had a big garden and you got eggs, and we had milk from the farm and then I think milk must have been rationed ‘cause we ended up having goat‘s milk and goat’s butter from a farmer who kept goats a bit down the road, sort of top up our nourishment, and I’ve never been able to eat goat’s cheese ever since, haha, but at the time it was nice. Don’t you like goat’s cheese? No. [Laugh] Then in 1941, after a lot of hoo-ha, my father came home from Africa having had to go round the Cape instead of through the Mediterranean, on the boat back from Mombasa. Mother knew he was leaving Africa, and she knew he wouldn’t be able to come the short way so she didn’t expect him to come as quickly, I think he took six weeks, she didn’t expect to hear from him for some time. Then she got a cable from Freetown to say he was still on his way, much later than she expected and she didn’t know where Freetown was, she said ‘it must be Ireland, it must be Ireland’ – wishful thinking I suppose - and looking at in my school atlas and finding it was West Africa which was a terrible disappointment, and then, we didn’t know, but the convoy, not his boat, but one of the boats, was torpedoed coming up across the bottom of the north Atlantic, I think two ships were damaged so then they had to go to Halifax in Canada, when she heard from him again, for the ships to be repaired and then they had to come across the north Atlantic, you know, in the middle of the war. So it was, it must have been an awful time for my poor mother and he ended up in Greenock or somewhere up there, then he came home on the train and I can remember going to Lavenham station to meet him and he just said hello, there were, nothing, I suppose we were both shy of each other and really after that my family life rather deteriorated because I’d had my mother to myself for three years and suddenly this strange man turned up, you know, and before very long I went off to boarding school and really that was the end of my childhood I think. I’m making it sound very, very soppy, and it wasn’t, and they did the best they possibly could, but from a child’s point of view, looking back, it was unfortunate to say the least. They were very hard up because my father’s pension had been set in 1921 and by 1940 something money had you know, gone down the drain, so they were on edge about money I think. He tried to get a job but he was too old, tried to be an admin officer at Wattisham: too old or too awkward. He worked for some man in the Works and Bricks of the Army in Sudbury and he didn’t get on with him and he ended up in the Observer Corps. I don’t know if they got paid or not, the Observer Corps, but not much if they did. He did that for the war. We had a very big garden, so it was a bit like “The Good Life”. Grew things, kept bees, ducks and geese, mother bottled fruit, made jam. It sounds idyllic but it was bloomin’ hard work for them both there, because they were worried about money all the time. Anyhow, that’s really why I ended up joining a service, because there was nothing in Brent Eleigh. I had done quite well at school, in Geography, and I rather fancied doing meteorology which they did in the WRNS. I applied to join the WRNS but didn’t get in. It was quite a, it was a snobby thing; the WRNS was better women’s service. My father thought that joining the RFC had done him the world of good and I think he thought it would set me up, you know, so really I went from boarding school to the Air Force. It was a continuation of what I was doing, you know; it wasn’t any particular vocation. When I joined the Air Force, well you had to go and have tests and interviews, and at the time Russian, learning Russian, was the thing and I had been quite good at languages, so I said, well, you know, I suppose they asked what do you want to do and I said ‘well, anything but sums, I’ll do Russian or whatever’, and guess what, I was put on an accounts course. [Laughter] Which is, I think they might have been trying to tell me something but I didn’t realise, you know, and so that’s what I, did the OCTU and then went on an accounts course.
CB: So when you applied for the RAF did you know that you were going in as an officer?
FC: I think so, I don’t think my mother would have tolerated anything else. I think I was, it was just expected that I would go in on a Short Service Direct Commission it was called. I think that’s why, I had to go to the Air Ministry or somewhere in London; in the Strand or The Aldwych, for interviews, and doing what now they call telemetric tests or something I remember, you know, what shapes fit boxes and that sort of thing.
CB: And how long was the engagement?
FC: Three years.
CB: Okay. So you didn’t feel too happy with being put on to accounts, or did you just become resigned?
FC: No, I was horrified! But I don’t think I knew that when I went on the original Officer Training Course, you know. You were accepted, you went to OCTU and then you waited to be told what you were going to do after that, by which time you were in the Air Force, you know.
CB: No choice.
FC: I don’t remember there being, no, any choice, no. [Laugh]
CB: They were probably short of accountants at the time.
FC: Well they must have been desperate, yes, I was terrible, terrible [chuckle].
CB: Just pause there for a mo. So near where you were living with your mother and then father, what was being constructed nearby?
Fc: Well, there was a village called Waldingfield on the way to Sudbury which is where we used to do our shopping every week. We used, there was no petrol so we used to have to cycle to Sudbury through Waldingfield and the main road ran parallel with what I suppose was the peri track of a big, big American airfield and the whole place was, even our village which was four or five miles away, overrun with very glamourous American soldiers in jeeps, with their feet hanging, legs hanging out of the side, you know, whizzing about, annoying all the men, the British men, including my father. Who do they think they are, the Yanks? You know. Any woman, or female I suppose, over fourteen or so or was considered fair game by the Americans, or was thought to be, thought to be fair game. My mother, who I say was pretty fiery, was cycling home from Lavenham one day and she was stopped by an American in a jeep, I think who, well propositioned her somehow, and when she said certainly not, he gave her a tin of peaches and some other kind of gift, because they had everything and we hadn’t, you know, so she came home with a tin of peaches. And they were just so glamorous I can’t tell you. They had lovely uniforms, beautiful barathea instead of hairy old things that the Home Guard had, they were young, they had American accents like film stars. There were all kinds of terrible rumours about women going, or being no better than they should be, et cetera, you know. When I was at boarding school, one of the girl’s mothers, I think was having affairs with an American, I don’t know what had happened to her father, and she had records and shoes and nylons – that was the thing, nylons, you know. And as a child it was just so [emphasis] exciting because I wasn’t worried about people being killed or anything like that. We did have a Liberator crashed at the end of our village and all the kids went running up to look at it. It was just a big hole in the ground with bits of metal and a lot of mud, but I don’t remember being the slightest bit moved by it. When my father was looking for a job he, I think he thought he might drive an ambulance, thought that might be useful, but he went out with an ambulance and they, the people in it, said that they’d been to collect somebody who’d been a, an American in a crash, and was burnt and this man was shrieking all the time, so my father thought well he didn’t think he could stand that so he didn’t pursue that any more. They just took over the countryside, you know, and we used to cycle past all these aircraft and dispersals.
CB: They had an image that they were over paid, over sexed and over here.
FC: Well that’s what the locals thought, you know, that was just the perception. Because I was a child I didn’t really appreciate that. We did also have prisoners of war in camps, who got, if they were German they got taken out to the farms, under guard, to help with the harvest, things like that. If they were Italian they very often lived at the farm because the Italians were thought not to be interested in escaping. And I mean a lot of the Italians, particularly, were peasants, they loved working, you know, it was like being at home, they stayed, married the farmer’s daughter and you know, lived happily ever after. And we also had a Polish camp, I suppose it was a Polish Army camp at a village, can’t remember its name, called Groton I think, which was on the way to Sudbury. The big house in our village was volunteered, well, I mean they were commandeering big houses and these people jumped first and were taken over as a convalescent home for wounded soldiers, who all wore blue uniforms, with red ties, do you remember? White shirts, in case they escaped from the hospital I suppose, you know. And they were all walking about the village smoking cigarettes, thoroughly miserable, annoyed my father. Um, and they sort of, well they were more interesting than cattle, and farm labourers as far as I was concerned. And then I went away to school and very few competent teachers, [microphone banging] because even the women were conscripted, so there were all kinds of sort of fairly useless has beens who were teaching. And that’s all I can really think of at the moment. Sorry!
CB: We’ll stop there if that’s all right.
FC: And the Germans were feared, and my mother, at the beginning of the war, told me, you know, if you see a nun with boots, it’s probably a German parachutist, they really believed [emphasis] it, especially if he offered you sweeties, you know. And they, it sounds ridiculous but we all believed it in those days. They took signs off the signposts in case they help the Germans go from one small village to the next, you know, because they were [emphasis] afraid of invasion, really, seriously. We all had gas masks, which again my mother insisted on me practically taking to bed with me, where other people’s mothers were much more free and easy. I can’t really think of any more, just at the moment.
CB: So we’re talking really, you were born in 1931, so you were ten when your father came back.
FC: I suppose, yes.
CB: 1941. So at the end of the war you were fifteen, sixteen, er, fourteen, fourteen, weren’t you.
FC: Yes.
CB: So your interest was changing as time went on. How did you feel about that?
FC: Yes. But, because I suppose I’d led quite a sheltered, isolated life, being away to girls’ boarding school, then came back home to go to this, the grammar school, on a coach, and then you just came back again and did your homework, and so on and so on. Then I went, lived in Ipswich, in digs, when I was on a commercial course. I didn’t really have a life, you know, it just a case of doing courses and getting through the time. I mean I never, didn’t have a social life, went to the pictures occasionally, but always with my parents, or my mother, and because we were poor and isolated, nothing happened, compared with nowadays. It just didn’t. I don’t remember feeling deprived, but it just, nothing happened.
CB: And the catering was quite good because although there was rationing, the garden was providing what you needed. Is that right?
FC: Yes. And as I say, the farmers were generous with eggs and things like that, and when it was just mother and me we didn’t eat an awful lot of meat or anything like that. We had been established in the area before the war broke out and in those days you had a butcher who came and a grocer who came, so we were part of the system. And again, as a child, I didn’t really worry about food, it was mother who worried about nourishment and such things. When my father came home he was a very big man and he worked very hard in the garden, and I think he probably felt hungry. But every, I mean things like eggs which were rationed were always distributed fairly, he didn’t have more than his share I don’t think. He just had to fill up on bread and potatoes, things like that.
CB: What age was he at this time?
FC: He was, er 1941, he would have been forty three; he was born in 1898. [Throat clear] A different era.
CB: Yes. So this airfield was constructed and the American Air Force, Army Air Force, moved in and they’re big aeroplanes, and noisy, so how did the local population get on with this disturbance?
FC: I don’t remember any particular feeling at all, I think really they were just sexually jealous of the American airmen. We never came across any socially, at all, because we didn’t have a social life, we didn’t belong to anything, or get invited, so I don’t know. I mean they were noisy but you just got used to them I suppose, like the aircraft from Heathrow going over, you just sort of take them. And you know as a child you just accept it all, don’t you. There’s no question of querying it, it just happens.
CB: And as a girl you weren’t old enough to be going out in the evenings in any case.
FC: No, no. And because it was such a long way away from anywhere there was no social, I think the farmers’ sons went to the occasional Young Farmer’s thing, Hunt Ball, I don’t remember Hunt Balls. They did have an occasional Young Farmers’ Dance but I never, never went to them. My mother was, as I say, snobbish, she thought she was a bit, a cut above rather. But I don’t remember feeling deprived. It’s only looking back I think golly, what a funny old life.
CB: You talked about your father and yourself having a slightly distant relationship.
FC: Yes.
CB: That was something that a lot of people, after the war, found with their parents. Did this improve or did you always have this slight distance?
FC: Yes. Well of course you see I then went away to school and he remained a stranger.
CB: Away from you. Yes. And when he returned, he, you returned home and went to grammar school. Did you have a different relationship with your father?
FC: I don’t think so. I think if anything, I was a bit frightened of him. He was a very big, physical, physical man. And I think it was really because he was hard up all the time. He was always anxious and edgy and if something broke or went wrong it was a really serious problem, and it, you know, it makes people crotchety because they’re worried all the time about how they’re going to cope. They had a dreadful struggle paying my school fees but they thought it was worth it, because people did in those days. My children can’t understand it, but that’s what people did.
CB: Yeah. So the war ended on the 8th of May 1945. What do you remember about that?
FC: Yes. I remember, it was probably half term at school, and it was extended a bit because of VE Day and I, again, can remember my father being cross because he said the school was swinging the lead a bit giving us a few more days off, you know, when they should have been educating us [laugh]. But we were back at Felixstowe by then.
CB: The school was. Yes.
FC: Yeah. Big anti-climax as far as I was concerned, I mean nothing happened in Suffolk for VE Day.
CB: Nothing happened in the village.
FC: No, as far as I remember, no.
CB: What about the Americans? What did they do?
FC: Well I don’t know what they did, I’ve no idea, ‘cause I was just home on holiday, from school, and I mean it was a good thing, but I don’t, there was no celebration and you, know.
CB: And when you got back to school, then what was the school’s approach to that?
FC: I don’t remember anything.
CB: Just carried on as usual.
FC: Just carried on as usual, as far as I remember. Nothing.
CB: And VJ day was in August so that was holiday time. What do you remember about that?
FC: I just remember, I think probably general relief, but although a lot of Suffolk men were in the Far East, I suppose a lot of them didn’t come back but I’m not aware of that, and I just think was just general exhaustion and relief and then when the General Election came and Labour got in, you know – horror! [Laughter] Because it was accepted that Churchill would carry on, and he didn’t.
CB: Yes. Well the Tories got out, got caught out the same way as they did with Corbyn this time.
FC: Yes, amazing, absolutely amazing. This time last year we were joking about Trump and Corbyn, and now haha!
CB: What did your father do when the war ended?
FC: Well he tried to get various jobs and then he ended up in the Observer Corps and then when that stopped he didn’t do anything.
CB: Because he had his Colonial Pension, which wasn’t big.
FC: Minute yes, I think it was four hundred and eighty pounds a year, which wasn’t very much in 1940 something. Because of the Depression, although you were supposed to get an increment every so often, some time in the late twenties or thirties they decided that you would miss out on one, one increment, which meant that his final income was less than it should have been so then halve that, pretty pathetic by the time he got it. Just hard luck, but not enjoyable. And he had no family money.
CB: Right. So it was hard altogether after the war as well.
FC: Yup. And mother had no money, so you know, it was, I think they had a hard time.
CB: We’ll pause there for a mo. So we’ve covered the wartime. So you, we touched a bit earlier on you joining OCTU, the Officer Training Unit, so where did you sign up and get your initial training?
FC: Well I can never remember taking the King’s Shilling. I can’t remember sort of a ceremony at all. I can remember going for interviews, being told I’d passed and being told to report to RAF Hawkinge, which is in Kent, on a particular day, which I did. Was like going back to school actually. And then, as far as I remember, we were put in probably rooms of four people, in huts, that was like school. Tailors came down from London to fit us up in our uniforms – our best blues. We were issued with battle dress, you know, everyday stuff. We did drill on the airfield, marching up and down, some poor flight sergeant [chortle] who was very polite, but you know, pick up your feet ma’am, and you know how women march, putting their arms wrong, he must have nearly gone mad, but you know, we did manage to learn. We had to learn all the um, when you give the order, you know, by the left, one two, halt, all that kind of thing, because he knew we were going to be telling people who had to do it on the right thing. We learned how to salute and march up and down and yeah, mostly it was the sort of giving of the orders, you know, how to do it at the right time, because you couldn’t just say stop, it all had to be according to protocol. We must have had lessons about Air Force life. How you mustn’t put the port on the table at dining-in-nights. I suppose how to behave socially, but I think most of us knew that.
CB: Which way round the table do you pass the port? Which way round?
FC: Left to right, but they don’t do it, don’t take any notice now!
CB: Don’t they?
FC: No! We used to go to, because John was with the AEFs, we used to go to dining in nights [banging sound] thumping the port all the way round, my hair standing on end, anyhow, it was pretty trivial isn’t it, things like that. I remember we were taken to Manston to look at a Mosquito. The local Member of Parliament took us round the Houses of Parliament. Just I suppose, general, after school education. And then we had a passing out day when our parents came and then we were all sent off on leave and then on courses.
CB: How long was your initial training anyway?
FC: I think it was twelve weeks, but it might have been a bit longer. I know I went in in July and I ended up on the accounts course in January, so it was.
CB: Where was the accounts course?
FC: Bircham Newton, in Norfolk. Coldest place on earth, really awful in January. We lived in one place, we ate in another mess and we were on the accounts course in another place. We spent all the time marching backwards and forwards, one place to the other, in January, in Norfolk and it was hell, hell. [Laugh]
CB: How long was the accounts course?
FC: Well I think it was three four months, something like that, I can’t remember.
CB: Then did you get a choice of posting? Or how did that work?
GC: No, I don’t remember. I was posted to Stafford, 16 MU, which was an enormous [emphasis] Maintenance Unit on the edge of the Potteries, so it was dirty, hanging our shirts out to dry and all covered with smuts. And if you’ve lived in Suffolk and Africa, that was a bit of a shock. It was a very big, soulless place, full of all these remustered aircrew, and I was hopeless at accounts; I didn’t enjoy it at all. I don’t know, do you remember having a form called a 1369?
CB: Absolutely.
FC: Well on mine, at the end of the first year at Stafford, at the bottom of it you have to say what you want, you know, how do you see your future or something, and I put ‘a small unit in the country’. Which amused the Adjutant, very much. But I was posted to Feltwell, so they did do what I asked. [Laugh] Still as accounts, but then I managed to get transferred to P3, which was airmen’s careers, which I really enjoyed. When I’d been at Stafford I had been seconded, I suppose you would say, to the P3 department there, which was run by an elderly schoolmaster so efficiently, and so when I went to Feltwell the place was, the P3 department was a bit of a shambles but I managed to rejig it how this man had done his, and it was well thought of actually, when we had a Group inspection, I think they were quite impressed, but by that time I was on my way out so I never hit the high spots.
CB: So, what rank did you reach in the end?
FC: Flying Officer, and that was just time.
CB: Yeah. Time served.
FC: Yes. You didn’t have to do exams or anything, it was just, you know.
CB: Not for that promotion.
FC: No, no it wasn’t really promotion, it was just.
CB: Same for Flight Lieutenant, yes. But did, you were on a three year engagement but were you obliged to be in the Reserve for a while afterwards?
FC: Yes, I think so.
CB: How long was that?
FC: I think it was two or three years, but I really can’t remember. And it was all fairly theoretical, being a woman, I think the men got called up to go to Korea or somewhere, but the women didn’t.
CB: No. So while you were in, what sort of experiences did you have, with other people there?
CB: Well nothing really, well I mean yeah, he was there as well.
CB: Who was that?
FC: John was there, yeah. There were two messes, two officers messes, there was the mess that belonged to the admin part of the station and there was Number Two Mess where, it was a Flying Training School, where all the cadets messed and some of the instructors lived as well. I lived in the main, Number One Mess, and John lived in the Number Two. But I think we all ate together, as far as I remember. And you know, we just went backwards and forwards. I don’t think Number One people went to Number Two, but Number Two people came in and the WAAFs had a wing of the Number One Mess, just at one end, [cough] in a wing and I just lived in the mess. Again it was really quite like school, you know, you went to work, came back for lunch, went back again, so on. Orderly Officer, which I always thought was a bit ridiculous: there was I, nineteen years old, supposed to go round guarding the station in the middle of the night, especially at Stafford, which had lots of outposts. And you were driven round with a couple of very, or probably only one, National Serviceman who hadn’t much more clue than I had, you know. if anything had cropped up I don’t know quite what we would have done but it was what one did, you know.
CB: What was the attitude of the National Servicemen in the RAF would you say?
FC: Um, I think they just accepted it. I don’t think they were terribly pleased to be there, but I think they put their heads down; most of the ones that I came across just got on with it. They did keep applying for postings to get nearer home if they happened to be sent off into the wilds, but they went on courses, I think they just decided that they’d just get on with it, not make waves. I did feel very sorry for quite a lot of the air women who, when they joined up, all wanted to be drivers or dog handlers, and they were inveigled really. They were told well join up and then once you’re in we’ll see about you being a driver or a dog handler, and they wanted to be drivers ‘cause they wanted to learn to drive a nice big, were they Humber Hawks, with the little flag, you know?
CB: My driver.
FC: Yes, you know the feeling. But you haven’t got a flag, have you!
CB: Not yet [laughter].
FC: And that’s what they hoped, but they ended up.
CB: Driving staff cars.
FC: Yeah. But they ended up as batwomen and in the kitchens and things. And they were always coming and saying can I, what about this course, can’t I be in, hugely [emphasis] over-subscribed, even more so with dog handlers, but they were in by then, you know.
CB: So with dog handling what was the attraction, particularly?
FC: Well I suppose they just liked dogs, thought they’d like to be looking after a dog. I mean they probably lived in a slum somewhere or very poor background and they thought it would be lovely.
CB: These were not National Service. These were people who’d signed on.
FC: These were women, yes.
CB: How long would their engagement be?
FC: Well I suppose two or three years, I really don’t know. And of course because it was quite soon after the war it was almost, it was an option to join one of the services because a lot of their sisters and people had done it, had been conscripted, but it wasn’t quite such a strange thing to do in those days.
CB: So we’re talking there about what was commonly in the Air Force called the erks, but there were National Service Officers. So what was their approach?
FC: Yes. Well I think they were a bit peeved, but again I think they got on with it. I do remember being very [emphasis] impressed with the, what did they call the sub-adjutants, the ones that worked in the Adjutant’s Office, under, he was called the under Adj or something anyhow, and he was Jewish and one of, an educational process was going to a court martial. In the Maintenance Unit, people were very light fingered, they were stealing platinum points off the sparking plugs hugely. Anyhow there was a, there were court martials and we had to go to a court martial to see what happened and this Jewish person wouldn’t wear a hat, you know, for the oath, and wouldn’t take the oath, the normal oath.
CB: On the bible.
FC: On the bible, yeah. And I can remember, I’ve never ever, as far as I knew, met a Jewish person before, you know, and I admired him for sticking up for his, um, his religion I suppose, you know. I mean nobody made a fuss about it, but it was, I didn’t even know it happened, you know, I was so wet behind the ears. And another fairly funny thing that happened, when I was at Feltwell, very junior, people were given jobs to do apart from their work and one of which was being I/C badminton. Well, I have never [emphasis] picked up a badminton racket in my life and I was made I/C Badminton! And had to go to Halton for a meeting about badminton I can remember. Talk about a farce, you know! I can’t remember what happened there. It was a very nice mess, it was a Rothschild place.
CB: It’s still in use.
FC: Yes, still is. It was all terribly grand, and we all presumably talked about badminton and then I came back again, you know. It’s ridiculous wasn’t it.
CB: Everybody else was keen on it, but not you.
FC: I presume, and were fit! You know. [Laugh] And I also represented Group, I think, in the relay race. ‘Cause I was tall, could run reasonably fast and didn’t drop the baton, you know, and I got a medal [chuckle] but it was pretty pathetic really.
CB: So when you met your husband to be, John Cooper, what was his role at the time and how did you come to meet him?
FC: Well we lived in, more or less, in the same mess, he was an instructor and we just came across each other and he asked me out and you know, one thing led to another.
CB: So you kept in touch, ‘ cause he stayed in the RAF and you left.
FC: No, oh yes, he was, I left, but he was still in the Air Force. He was posted to Ternhill and we went to Ternhill together, but I was out of the Air Force by then, I was just a wife, you know.
CB: Oh, you got married while he was, you were both still in the RAF did you?
FC: Yes. But you weren’t allowed to be married, a married officer in those days. Somebody had to go and it was always the woman. And also he had more of a career than I had.
CB: Sure.
FC: And we lived in a caravan because there were no quarters for junior officers, lived in the caravan on an airfield, which eventually became the deposit for our house. [Laugh]
CB: So when you came out?
FC: Yes.
CB: So when did John leave the RAF?
FC: Well, we went to Felt, er we went to Ternhill.
CB: Ternhill. That’s in Shropshire, yes.
FC: Yeah. And then he came back to run the Communications Flight at um, somewhere near Croydon, I can’t remember the name of the airfield.
CB: Kenley was it?
FC: That’s right, Kenley. We came back down in our caravan and by that time I was pregnant with our first child. [Cough] He dearly wanted to stay in the Air Force, but there were no jobs for pilots, you know, they were just so many pilots, not enough pilot’s jobs, so he just had to come out and eventually became an air traffic controller [throat clear] and then he got mixed up with the Air Cadets and became a, what they were called, an Air Experience pilot, for the cadets which he absolutely enjoyed because he could go off to camp, fly aeroplanes at the Air Force’s expense, you know, so and I was completely out of it. [Background sneeze]
CB: So he was in the Volunteer Reserve for that.
FC: Yes, yes. But by then I’d got children so my life took a different turn.
CB: We’ll stop there, thank you. [Beep] We ran out of time with this interview, so we didn’t cover certain things to do with the war which we’ll pick up with later, and her career after she left the RAF when she became a teacher and came across a head who’d been a SWO. [Beep] Incidentally the significance of this interview is that Mrs Cooper, as a child in the countryside, had experienced living next to an airfield which the Americans operated from, and also came up against evacuees and prisoners of war, both Italian and German, and at the end of the war she was still a mid teenager, but later married an RAF bomber pilot when she was serving in the RAF herself.
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ACooperFA170810
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Interview with Frances Anne Cooper
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
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eng
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00:54:45 audio recording
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Chris Brockbank
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2017-08-10
Description
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Frances Cooper spent her early life in Uganda before settling with her parents in England for her schooling, then joining the WAAF. She speaks about the small village she lived in during the war, the arrival of Americans and prisoners of war, as well as the effect this had on the local population. Frances recalls the end of the war, then her time in the service before marrying a pilot and leaving to raise her children.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Civilian
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Great Britain
Uganda
England--Suffolk
Temporal Coverage
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1941
Contributor
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Anne-Marie Watson
Carolyn Emery
childhood in wartime
civil defence
ground personnel
home front
Home Guard
military service conditions
prisoner of war
RAF Bircham Newton
Royal Observer Corps
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/238/3382/PCooperS1501.2.jpg
2a23a039a4e935255b71c83868fe4af0
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/238/3382/ACooperS151027.1.mp3
743d46ca47820faff3930564f5cdd69e
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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Cooper, Sydney Foster
Sydney Foster Cooper
Sydney F Cooper
Sydney Cooper
Syd Cooper
S F Cooper
S Cooper
Description
An account of the resource
12 items. Two oral history interviews with Sydney Foster "Syd" Cooper (b. 1921, 1528331 Royal Air Force), photographs and other items.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Syd Cooper and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-10-25
2015-10-28
2017-09-13
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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Cooper, SF
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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GR: This is Gary Rushbrooke for the International Bomber Command Centre. I am with Sidney Cooper at his home in Pointon near Manchester and it is the 27th of October. Sid, if you can just tell me a little bit where you were born and ‒.
SC: I was born in Blackpool.
GR: Born in Blackpool.
SC: Born in Blackpool 15th‒, 15th of October I921. I’ve always been a worker. I started work when I was ten. We used to go in singing halls. And in those days people used to walk down the prom singing away, you know, mill girls and that. And they come to us and said, ‘Hey, you lads, do you know “When the love birds leave their nest?”’ So I says, ‘Yeah, we know that’. So they said, ‘Can you sing it for us?’ So me and Metcalf (pal of mine) we sang it. Yeah, right. ‘Can you stand there?’ ‘Yes’. People walking by, looked in, seen those kids singing and after we’d got a few people there we’d buzz off. They’d give us tuppence and then we’d go to another one, and we did that.
GR: And that was at ten years old.
SC: Oh yeah, I’ve done all sorts of ‒. I’ve sold black puddings on Blackpool Prom for threepence apiece and gone to Chester, run errands for stallholders and this that and other. It was a past time of mine and er, I did that oh ‘til I was fourteen.
GR: Brothers and sisters?
SC: Brothers and sisters, yes. I had two sisters and ‒, two sisters and four boys, and our Jack ‒, he’s here somewhere, here he is, there’s me brother. He joined ‒, he joined, the bloody Fleet Air Arm.
GR: Was you the oldest or youngest?
SC: I’m the eldest boy.
GR: You’re the eldest boy, yeah.
SC: He’s three years younger than me or two years younger than me. He went in the Fleet Air Arm.
GR: He went in the Fleet Air Arm. So that was in Blackpool?
SC: So I tried to get in the Air Force when I was about twelve or fourteen and wrote to them and they sent me a form back to fill in. I filled it in to the best of my abilities and sent it off and they wouldn’t accept me. I wasn’t of the accepted standard required by the RAF. I only weighed about four stone, four or five stone and small, and so I never get in, but I got my own back and joined up and became an engineer.
GR: So you tried to join the RAF, what when you were, what, fourteen years old?
SC: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
GR: Which was a bit young.
SC: Yeah, yeah, well you see, because I wanted to go in as an apprentice, you see, and they’d go to school. They’d march down with a piped band, and walk back with a piped band all the time. I knew quite a bit about it, you know, found out about things but anyway it wasn’t to be.
GR: So you were turned down initially.
SC: Oh yeah, turned down. Well after that ‒ [unclear].
GR: Right so when was that? How did that happen?
SC: That was 1941. 1941 I joined the Air Force.
GR: And they sent you for training?
GR: Sent me for training as a flight engineer, which I passed and came away with a first class and went to er, ‒, posted to Blackpool. That’s where I come from. And you’re posted in The Progress Hotel. I thought, ‘I know her, I know her, I know the owner’. It’s just gone out of my bloody mind now, I thought ‘Smashing!’ I walked in there, walked in there, bloody queer you know. Holmes, Mrs Holmes. Bloody place, we were just in one room, just beds, nothing else. Electric light, yes. Heating, no. And this was 1941, Christmas. So, anyway, I was posted ‒. I was going on to 256 Squadron then at Squires Gate, which I knew, and we had to walk there and have meals, and then walk right across the airport to where we were. I had A for alpha er, to look after from a flight engineer’s, from an engineer’s point of view
GR: So you were a fitter engineer.
SC: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I never had a fly in one. There was an accident there with a Blackburn Botha, Blackburn Botha, and a flood and one of our aircraft, it was a Defiant, Defiant and that was a bad aircraft and over Central Station it crashed, but of course I didn’t know much about it because I was in the Air Force at the time. Anyway, I left there ‒.
GR: Just going back, 256 Squadron where you was an engineer fitter. Was it Hurricanes and Defiants?
SC: Pardon?
GR: Hurricanes and Defiants?
SC: That’s right, yeah.
GR: And what did that encompass? Was you an engine fitter?
SC: Engine fitter. Yes. Engine fitter and, of course, they had the same engines in them anyway. And I got posted then to Stradishall and there was no aircraft there or anything. We were waiting for it to commence and I was on Air Speed Oxfords ‒,
GR: Still as a fitter?
SC: Oh yeah, yeah and sort them. Oh, Stradishall was a queer place. There was 214 Squadron were there on Wellingtons and er ‒.
GR: Stirlings I think?
SC: Stirlings, yes there were, 3 Group and oh, I don’t know who I was with but there was another squadron on the station, 138 Squadron. They had Whitleys.
GR: Sid’s putting his fingers to be silent. I think 138 was a special duties squadron.
SC: They had Whitleys, Manchesters and ‒, oh, it’s just gone out of my head, and you know ‒.
GR: You said Manchesters. Halifax, Stirlings?
SC: No, no, no.
GR: Lysanders?
SC: Lysanders, Westland Lysanders [emphasis]. They had Whitleys and Lysanders and er, I have seen people [unclear] taking secret people to France. I see them get up the rope. Anyway, there was one incident that I saw, a Stirling, sorry a Lysander, skid and go in the back of a wagon, just pulled the canvas off, nobody hurt, nobody killed, but we went when it was terrible weather, terrible weather. We didn’t have an aircraft at all but we were employed clearing the runways. My address was number 35, Married Quarters, an empty, empty house. There was nothing there, just three beds in there, no lockers, anything at all, just three beds then usual blankets for to cover us, two blankets apiece, and in the morning we had to get out there, no fire, no hot water and we got all wet through. We had to put our wet trousers on and go out again ‘cause there was nowhere to dry ‘em. Anyway, there was no flying for about eight days it was that bad, 1942 this and ‒, I’m trying to think of where ‒. Oh, I was keen, as I say, always after the money, so I heard they were forming the RAF Regiment so I jumped down and wanted to join the RAF Regiment. They says, ‘Who are yer?’ I says ‘I’m here, I’m there’, anyway he says, ‘You can’t’. You see, because in the Air Force there was six groups of money.
GR: That’s right.
SC: All the people could be of the same rank but all on different money dependent on training. There was group one engineers, group two, group three, group four, group five, and six was ‘M’ [unclear] medical . You can only re-muster upwards and you’re at the top and there’s nowhere you could go. So I says ‘Oh, right, so’.
GR: Probably, as an engineer fitter you was more needed as that.
SC: That was the best job they had in the RAF for people of my age. Anyway, I decided I’d go in as a flight engineer.
GR: So you volunteered for aircrew.
SC: Yes, volunteered for air crew. So they says, ‘Yes, medical, this, that and the other, yes. You’re just the type we want’, so I went as aircrew.
GR: ‘Cause I believe in 1942 as Bomber Command was moving into four engine bombers ‒
SC: That’s right.
GR: Stirlings, Lancs, Hallifax.
SC: Exactly.
GR: So, the extra crew member they needed was the flight engineer.
SC: And a gunner, mid upper gunner.
GR: With your background obviously ‒. So did you do training then? More training?
SC: This will amuse you. Jack Campbell [?], he joined together with me. We even started school together he and I. He joined, he was going as a gunner, wireless operator air gunner, WOP AGs they called them. So of course, being volunteers we were tested, you weren’t tested if you were brought, you was summoned in, so we went into a little room, not much bigger than my lounge and there was queues in there so we go in the queues and was given a bible apiece, a bible apiece, so we were there he recited something and we’d repeat it you know, obeying all the laws and kings and queens and that bloody rubbish. So, we said, ‘Yes, so where’s this bloody shilling coming in?’ The King’s shilling I’d heard of, anyway we came out of there with no shilling. Well, I thought he’s had about 50 shillings that should have been ours, or not. But apparently it’s a myth I think [unclear]. So, that was it. Anyway, so I was in, so I went from there to er, I’ll go and try and find it the name ‒ but it was the head place, the main headquarters, where the boy entrants were and all that ‒ .
GR: Alton?
SC: Alton. Correct, correct. We went there to new entrant headquarters. We were there for a fortnight. Of course, we were hierarchy you see, so that was fair enough, altogether we were off on our way, marched up, and they decided so many people, and we all got a corporal in charge of us and we went to Cardiff, yes Cardiff. ‘Where we going now?’ Goes up the road, another train, we end up in Llanelly, I don’t know, it was always called ‘Slash’ to airmen. We went to Number 1 SDF air crew training, gunnery school, Pembray and that’s me at Pembray. You can see me, the good looking one.
GP: We’re just looking at the photograph of the good looking one on the front row?
SC: Yeah, and he was the instructor, Flight Sergeant Marley.
GR: RAF Rembray, Number 1 Air Gunnery School
SC: That’s right.
GR: January 1943. Wonderful photograph.
SC: Yeah, right. So then came the good news in the morning. He said ‘You lads go out and enjoy yourselves’. Out we went, you see, we’d just arrived, come back, then in the morning we were told what we were going to do. We were under this gentleman. He says, ‘Well this is a very interesting course that you’re going on and of course you’re going to learn a lot. And that’s the good news. Now the bad news, you are not allowed out all week’. Couldn’t get out of the camp, couldn’t go for a drive, so we started about half past eight in the morning to about eight o’clock at night learning about these guns, trying to fit a nice [unclear] on ball turret , different things and armour piercing bullets, and tracer bullets and Christ knows what. Anyway we learned about them SGO Vickers gas operated guns, Tommy guns and oh we left there, all of us one morning, we’re off again. This is after about eight days. We got on this train and went to Cardiff, to Cardiff and then we went from Cardiff to ‒.
GR: It doesn’t matter if you can’t remember.
SC: Gillston, Gillston, all off there and then we were marched to St Athan.
GR: St Athan.
SC: That was a big place and we went there and we, of course, were greeted as we usually were with ‘Who are you? We didn’t know you were coming’. [Laughs]. Anyway, we went in the airmen, went in the airmen’s mess and got bedded down and the next morning we were all marched together, there’s more than this, this was just part of it, and righto, fall out, fall out there and he said ‘So-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so’ calling out our last three hundred names, ‘All here’, and ‘So-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so go they were there and so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so go they were there.’ So, they say right, ‘You are training to be a flight engineer on Halifaxes. You are going on Lancasters and you’re going on the big ones.’ Well the big ones was like going up in the air, like going up a mountain. So we were trained on Halifaxes and, so anyway, after we finished the course, passed out, in a puffer train again and we went to er ‒ oh I don’t know what they called it? Went somewhere to a con unit.
GR: Heavy conversion unit.
SC: Yeah, yeah, yeah, heavy conversion unit and this was in Yorkshire, anyway went there, and we were going to be crewed up there. The crewing is remarkable because this ‒ the crews which were there, they’d come off Wellingtons you see, of course they’re only a five man crew. They want a rear gunner and engineer and you mixed among yourselves and you sort yourselves out.
GR: And you’re in a big room.
SC: Yeah, well it’s nice. You go for a drink, this, that and another and they say, I suppose, ‘Well, he’s not so bad is he?’ you know and that’s how you crewed up. You’re not detailed. So, you’re going in with welcome arms. So, we joined, we joined up with this lot. [Background noise]. Oh, you’ve got that. I was trying to remember their names. That’s the crew that I was with.
GR: So, this is 427 Squadron.
SC: Yeah, that’s right.
GR: And the pilot, Sergeant Hank Henry.
SC: Aye, Henry, Hank Henry.
GR: Hank Henry and he was with the Royal Canadian Air Force and so were two of the other crew members.
SC: Yeah, that’s right but one, the navigator was a foreign officer.
GR: Yes.
SC: In the Canadian Air Force. Anyway, and there was no rubbish. Everyone was the same, you know, when we were out, on board, and so ‒
GR: And so was this the summer of 1943 or ‒
SC: No, winter ’43, early.
GR: Early winter 1943.
SC: Early ‘43.
GR: You crewed up at 427 Squadron.
SC: Yes, you see, they’d been on Wellingtons. They’d already got some ops in so we went over to er ‒ and we were taken to er, Leeming.
GR: Leeming.
SC: Leeming in Yorkshire. Well, that was 6 Group. That was the first group being formed with Canadians, so it was Canadian governed from start to finish and that was OK. So we did a few ops there. I can’t remember how many, about twelve, something like that.
GR: Can you remember your first operation that you flew on?
SC: Yeah, Bochum, yeah, I’ll never forget that, Bochum, and the navigator says to me, ‘This is where we’re going’ and oh I was dead keen, you know, up for it, dead keen, and Christ it looked as if you could put your hand in it, for flak. I thought, ‘ This is good’. Anyway ‒
GR: So, just before the first operation you had your briefing. Was you frightened? Was you looking forward to it? Or did you just take it in your stride?
SC: Well, well, I mean I didn’t know anything about it. You know, it was all completely new to you. We did a few cross countries, high and low tests, and one thing and another but we were all keen on things you see. No, well, a Halifax is a difficult, I hasten to add, ‘cause there’s twelve tanks, six in each main plane and ‒
GR: And they’re your responsibility.
SC: Oh yeah, well we had good, good skins. I mean you didn’t ask anything, I just said to Hank, I said, ‘I’m just going to switch over’, ‘Aye, OK’, he said, you see. So, anyway ‒.
GR: Did it make you feel a bit easier when you did your first operation that some of the other crew had already done ops?
SC: Well, well, yeah, I mean, you know, they were old hands, you know. Well, they were very, very, very good, you know, we got on marvellous. And people say to me, ‘Well, what did the bomb aimer do? And I’d say, ‘I don’t know’. Well, I was that busy myself ‘cause I got a panel there with all the instruments that the pilot had and I’m watching them for pressure, pressure, temperature and this, that and the other. Very, very keen ‒ and I had [unclear]
GR: Careful with your chair Sid, you’re about to go over some of your photos. Now, that’s alright, leave it there. So, Bochum was a bad one, the first one, lots of flak.
SC: Pardon? Well, yeah, well, I mean there’s not much difference to them but I mean before that I’d had nothing to compare it with. Because I remember one ‒, one place I think ‒, and I’ve got a bad memory, I think it was Wuppertal we went to. We went up there and I’d been looking through the little dome that I had, little dome, and ‘Christ there’s something coming towards us!’ And I just says, ‘Duck!’ and we went under it and it went over and this was absolutely forbidden to go over the target the wrong way, so we’d gone over and you should go right round and have another go but er, anyway, we managed that and we got on very well, very well, anyway it had become probably September, September, September they formed 427 Squadron at Leeming. They were all Canadian there and they decided, the powers that be, decided to form another squadron, namely 514 Squadron, 3 Group. 514 Squadron 3 Group and of course they were getting short, well I hadn’t been told but it appeared that they were getting short of technical staff ‘cause they had nothing, just can’t get them. [unclear]. So ‒, so we went there and it was a place called Foulsham, went to this place.
GR: So is that your whole crew?
SC: No, no just me.
GR: Just you.
SC: Just me. Engineer. So, I finished me flying, I hadn’t done a tour but they decided because where’d they get all the fitters from? See, you know, you need what? One hundred and fifty or two hundred men of different types. So anyway we goes there and they didn’t have an aircraft, they hadn’t even got an aircraft but they were forming the people. I’d overstepped it. Who should ‒, who should be the only sergeant? But Giles, who I knew at Stradishall. He was bent and he was a corporal. He had an accident where he got a screwdriver in his eye, lost his eye, and requested he stopped in the Air Force and he stopped on in the Air force until he was demobbed in ‘46 and he died when he was about 96 or 98. I used to go and see him.
GR: How did you feel about going from ground crew down to obviously air crew and back down to ground crew again?
SC: Yeah, well, I was promoted to Sergeant as a tradesman.
GR: But did you not want to keep on flying?
SC: Well, well not really. It was a relief to some extent but I missed the camaraderie that existed. It was absolutely marvellous. There was one occasion and I forget where we were going, on ops and my ‒, say this is the aircraft, my seat was here, here’s the bulkhead with my instruments on, well I couldn’t see ‘em from there, so I got my parachute and I used to sit on it, sit on this parachute and underneath was a lot of oxygen bottles, yep, and I could look up at them like this or stand up. Anyway, on one occasion I’m going to the back, going to the toilet actually, going to the back there and I grabbed my parachute. The parachute was what they called the observer type that you clipped on. The pilot sat on his, that was the pilot’s parachute. Get this, I picked up the wrong handle, I got the metal handle. [whooshing noise] bloody parachute right down to the bottom before you could say ‒, bottom of the aircraft.
GR: So, the parachute exploded in the plane?
SC: Oh, aye, well, it’s held together with bungee cables, you know, [unclear] there’s no explosion down there. When I was there the other side of it was the wireless operator and I says ‘Christ, that’s me, if we’re in trouble that’s me’. He said, ‘It won’t make much difference, if it comes to it we’ll go together you and me’, and you know I nearly bloody cried when he said that, and I believe him. People, [coughs] pardon me, if we’re talking people many think I’m telling lies but I’m not, I was really upset, and I was crying with pleasure because I know [unclear] he would, I’m bloody certain he would. So, anyway that was one unfortunate bloody thing that happened.
GR: So you are now with 514 Squadron? Obviously back to being a fitter, a fitter engineer.
SC: Yes, yes, then we were receiving aircraft to make the squadron up you see and give them what they called an acceptance examination. You can’t just use it and some required some modifications, you don’t hold the system up because they put it in a different flare chute in, you have to put it in when you get to mace [?]. So we formed up and then in December 1943 this is, December 1943. The last operation they did, I forget where it was, but they went to ‒, went from Foulsham and landed at Waterbeach, which was new station, nicely built place etcetera was there, so we were there ‒, I think over ‒, I think it was the second Christmas we had the misfortune on sea [?] flight. They say that a bomb dropped off an aircraft and there was about twenty three killed, killed on sea [?] flight, but well, we don’t know what happened really. Anyone with any information was dead and it was a [unclear]. Mind you it was mixed, a lot of old, er, chaps who were on pension and had been called in you see. And I mixed with people who were much older than me. We’d got Charlie George, Charlie George and Ginger Leadbetter. They’d wouldn’t have nought to do with women. If you went on holiday, and it wasn’t payday, you could go on a casual and take a few quid to go with. So, I was there and Ginger Leadbetter came away, Ginger Leadbetter, aye, and Charlie George says to him ‘Have you got your money?’ These two were old friends. They’d be forty-odd. ‘No’ he says, ‘I haven’t got it’, ‘Well, wouldn’t they give it to you?’ ‘Oh aye’, he says, ’It was a woman!’ So he says, ‘Where?’ He says, ‘The officer, a woman!’ He wouldn’t take the money. [Laughs].
GR: I bet you [emphasis] did.
SC: Oh, I would have done but lots of people didn’t, not because of the women so much, but anyway it was ‒. I really enjoyed myself there, and the CTO, Chief Technical Officer was er, a ‒, oh Christ, smashing bloke. He knew everything that went on. Anyway, the war’s over Christmas 1945, that’s right ‘45, just before Christmas ’45. Only my eldest daughter was born at August towards ‒. I got no leave, not like today. Can’t get [unclear]. So, he says ‘Right, post you to Italy’. Italy, Christ! So, we went to Italy. Well, this was rumoured again, it wasn’t publicised but it’s rumoured and I really want to emphasise this is rumour, that there was a chance of a war breaking out between Yugoslavia and Italy ‘cause Italy was on our side then.
GR: Yes.
SC: They changed, you see, and this was to show force and round about fifteen bombers, Lancasters, used to come out every day, land at Pomigliano, which is Naples, which I was at at that time, or Bari, which is on the Adriatic side, along there, go backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. I don’t think they [unclear] on there [unclear] in their quarters. ‘Cause we were stable there, we had our own places in which to live, but that’s what happened and there was no bullshit there, nothing, and someone said ‒, you’ll laugh, you won’t believe this but it’s true, ‘A parade in the morning’, a parade [emphasis], ‘Get out’, ‘There is’, and anyway we all formed and don’t forget we got German prisoners of war in tents on camp. Somebody says ‘There’s something going on’, he says, ‘Cause Latchthorne[?] has had a bloody haircut’. He was the [unclear] officer, had a haircut. Anyway, a strike had broken out in the Far East, an RAF strike, and they were frightened it would go right through ‘cause we were, what you’d call, Middle East, Middle East Mediterranean Forces, and that was funny.
GR: How long did you stay in Italy for?
SC: Well, came back from Italy and this will amuse you, come back, I think it would be June when, this is testing my memory, when apparently political things had settled down a bit, we were withdrawn and we came back from there and then ‒
GR: So about June 1946?
SC: Yes, yes,
GR: Came back to the UK?
SC: Yeah, came back. Didn’t know where we’d go. We see all these go backwards and forwards, go back on a train six in a carriage, six senior COs in a carriage, in a compartment, and eight for the others and we’re there and I said, ‘We ain’t gonna get any bloody sleep here’, took us four or five days to get home. So I says, I says, ‘Aye, this is awkward. I’ve sorted it out. What do you reckon?’ So, I says, ‘Right, seats, one man on each. Right, luggage rack, one man on each’, so he says, ‘That’s alright, well ‒’, he says, ‘There’s six of us’, I says, ’Well, I’m coming to that, one fella lies on the floor between the two benches’, he says, ’That’s five ways, what about the last one?’ I says, ’ That’s me. I’m gonna make a bloody hammock over the top with the bloody kit bag ropes’. Of course it was alright for about three quarters of an hour but the rope broke [laughs] and I fell [unclear] so anyway that’s what happened. So we, we, we, eventually got to England across [unclear]. I don’t fancy the water. I says, ’I don’t fancy the weather, the weather’s supposed to be bad.’ So he says, ‘It’s not so bad, it’s alright’. [Unclear] you silly bloody dope. We came back on the very day lots of ships got sank on the race around England. Anyway, we er, managed and then early morning parade, calling names out this, that and the other, well this, that and the other, over there. And he says, ‘Right, you’re going to Church Lawford’. Oh, right. ‘Church Lawford, you’, and I was going to Church Lawford. That was the AFTS, Advanced Flying Training School, with Harvards (American aircraft). Well I knew the bloody engine’s just the same. So Ginger and I went and unfortunately ‒, Ginger, he was a rigger, on air frames on the other side, and we went to this place. Well, in the Air force when you go from station to station to station you have to have an arrival chit and it has to be endorsed by the person to say that they know that you’re here, you see, and there’s about a dozen, at least a dozen places, what with a medical here, there and everywhere. So anyway, different ones. Well of course it takes you some time to go to these people to introduce yourself. Well the first place you go, pay accounts, another payroll, so I goes there and signs in. So we went to the doctors and dentist, goodness knows what. The last one, where’s that? Where you’re gonna work. That’s two days you’ve been doing now. So we goes, and some NCOs seem to have a certain amount of freedom with the officers because quite often they knew more than the bloody officers above your engineers and that. You’d get engineer graduates from college and well they knew nought about aeroplanes. Anyway, goes there and when I was there you could tap on the door and then put your head round and he’d say ‘Come in’, or ‘I’ll send someone out in a minute’, you see, so he had that licence. So Wing Commander Perry (never came across a wing commander before in the engineering, very queer), anyway, him and I stand there outside, smarten up, you know, no answer ‒ . So anyway [laughs], so Ginger says ‘Come on, let’s go and get a coffee’. I say, ‘There’s someone in here’. He says ‘There isn’t. There’s nobody in there is there?’ I says, ‘I can hear him writing’. He said, ‘Writing?’ Of course, biros hadn’t been invented. I could hear him scratching, you see, ‘cause I had bloody good ears then, which I haven’t now. I said, ‘There’s somebody in there.’ So, he says, ‘Oh right’. So anyway taps on the door and walks in, stood in front of him, he’s still writing, Ginger is still next to me. This is true to the letter. He says, ‘Did you hear me say ‘Come in Sergeant’?’ He said, ‘No Sir’. So he says, ‘Did you hear me say ‘Come in Sergeant’’, I says ‘No, Sir’. He said, ‘Well f‒ off out then!’ [laughs]. I’d never came across language like that from a bloody wing commander so we bloody goes out. Anyway, we’re in the bloody s‒ here with him. Anyway, a girl comes in, calls in and says ‘Welcome’ and then that and the other. He must have been about forty five years of age, must have been by the looks of him. So anyway, we went over and there was two men that we were relieving. There should have been about five senior NCOs and rumour had it, somehow, it has just dawned on me that one of them, that I relieved, had been a prisoner of war and they still wouldn’t let him go ‘til they’d got a replacement, and they got a bloody replacement and that was me! I never seen him again, he’d gone, but I really enjoyed myself in the Air force to some extent, well to a large extent.
GR: When was you demobbed?
SC: Demobbed on 16th August 1946.
GR: And what did you do next?
SC: Well foolishly I did nothing, just hung about and that. ‘Cause I went to Blackpool, took the wife and kids to Blackpool and then I couldn’t get a job.
GR: Now, you’ve mentioned it, was you married?
SC: Pardon?
GR: Was you married during the war?
SC: Yeah, I was married in 1946, 1946. No, no. no, married in 19‒.
GR: ‘Cause you mentioned your wife a couple of times.
GR: Before the war started?
SC: Oh no, no.
GR: During the war? It doesn’t matter exactly when.
SC: Married in May ‘44, May 1944 ‘cause I wouldn’t get married while I was flying.
GR: While you was flying.
SC: My wife wanted to get married earlier but I wouldn’t, not while I was flying, so we married in the April next year, er, ’44.
GR: So after you’re demobbed, back in Blackpool.
SC: Back in Blackpool. I couldn’t get jobs and that was a terrible place for employment.
GR: Unless you was singing on the pier.
SC: [Laughs] That’s right but my voice had gone so I couldn’t and I got some contacts in Blackpool but it wasn’t to be and I went to Standard Telephones and er, in the model shop, gets out of there, goes back to Blackpool, went to the accounts department. I had a good job there ‘cause there was two of us in my place, a big place was Standard Telephones. Chap next to me, he was first class, he went on holiday, [unclear] I got a lot less. Anyway I must have suited them ‘cause I got a £2 pay rise. They used to come in and put it face down in case anybody had a look. Oh Christ, £2! So I got a job there then. Well, when I was at Church Lawford I was dealing direct with a company where the ‒, a motor company, that was agents, main agents for Pratt and Whitney you see, I’d lend them stuff and they knew me by name. Anyway, ‘course I know [unclear] ‘cause there was no one above me, I was the gaffer, and I left there and joined British Airways, British Airways. My brother said to me, ’Oh, you want to get with British Airways, they’re good in aircraft despatch and that’, because you got to work out the balance before it went in the air. You know when you’re a kid and you’re on a seesaw you’re going one way, ‘hey there, get further back and get so and so’. Well you can’t do that with an aeroplane. It’s got to be balanced before it’s up. You can’t do it once it’s up.
GR: So you joined British Airways as a ‒?
SC: As a clerk, as a clerk on five pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence. And I lost twelve quid. I was bloody annoyed. Anyway I went up and eventually there was a new system coming out and I don’t know how it got about but I became top of Europe, you know, ‘cause I said to my boss, I says, ‘Are you trying to make a bloody fool of me on that bloody thing?’ ‘No, no, no’ he says ‘You must go’. Anyway I came top, and it was only British Airways of course. So I was promoted to the hierarchy and I stayed there until I left when I was sixty, ‘cause my wife was very poorly so I had to leave there. In fact I got a letter here ‒
GR: So you finished your working career with British Airways?
SC: No, I got a letter here to say that one of 427 Squadron had crashed on BA property and they were holding a meeting, I got it here somewhere, the meeting. Yeah, that’s it, that’s the letter they sent me. Because I belonged ‒.
GR: British Airways have dedicated a memorial to 427 Squadron for a crashed aircraft and did you attend the unveiling?
SC: No, well I couldn’t leave the wife and she wasn’t fit to fly so I never went.
Gr: So, I’ll switch off.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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ACooperS151027
PCooperS1501
Title
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Interview with Syd Cooper. One
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:47:48 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Date
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2015-10-27
Description
An account of the resource
Sidney Cooper was born in Blackpool and joined the Royal Air Force in 1941. He first served as an engine fitter in Fighter Command before remustering as aircrew. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 427 Squadron from RAF Leeming. He later served as ground crew with 514 Squadron. On leaving the Royal Air Force in 1946 he worked for Standard Telephones and British Airways.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Fighter Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Italy
England--Norfolk
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
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Christine Kavanagh
Creator
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Gary Rushbrooke
427 Squadron
514 Squadron
aircrew
Botha
Defiant
fitter engine
flight engineer
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Hurricane
Lancaster
military living conditions
Operation Dodge (1945)
RAF Church Lawford
RAF Foulsham
RAF Leeming
RAF Stradishall
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/238/3383/PCooperS1501.1.jpg
2a23a039a4e935255b71c83868fe4af0
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/238/3383/ACooperSF170913.1.mp3
f5ab974b220266502dd18f4c17ee7b44
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
Cooper, Sydney Foster
Sydney Foster Cooper
Sydney F Cooper
Sydney Cooper
Syd Cooper
S F Cooper
S Cooper
Description
An account of the resource
12 items. Two oral history interviews with Sydney Foster "Syd" Cooper (b. 1921, 1528331 Royal Air Force), photographs and other items.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Syd Cooper and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-25
2015-10-28
2017-09-13
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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Cooper, SF
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
SP: So this is Suzanne Pescott and I’m interviewing Syd Foster Cooper today for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We are at Syd’s home and it’s the 13th of September 2017. So, Syd do you want to tell me a little about life before the war?
SC: Well, I lived in Blackpool and Blackpool is a peculiar thing, I’ve worked on the Promenade, I’ve sold black puddings for threepence, with mustard on, and I’ve run errands, I’ve demonstrated yo-yos: anything for money. I was money mad. Run errands for people and that was my, that was my life, which I enjoyed and I used give everything to my mother, I never kept any money. But I really enjoyed it, but of course times were hard in those days, you know. People used, mill girls walking arm in arm singing the tunes. You see Trevor MacGoff, a friend of mine, we knew all the tunes when they came out you see, and we went past the singing rooms – there was about four singing rooms in Blackpool – they said, ‘hey do you know Shepherd of the Hills?’ ‘Yeah, aye.’ [Indecipherable] They said ‘can you sing it for us?’ And we’d sing it for ‘em and they’d say aye, they do! And these’d just come out! So they got us to sing, he and I, we’d be about twelve, or ten, and we sang it and we knew all the popular songs immediately they were published, you see. So we said eh, we’ve got some money here so we’d go to one singing room and say do you want any singing? Yeah, aye, and we’d sing a couple of songs, they’d give us tuppence, we’d go to another and do the same and that was anyway that was a way we earned money. Well of course the, we used to go to the air shows of course, at Squires Gate, and we, I don’t know, we joined it of course, there’s a war, I’m doing this, I’m doing that, I’m doing, and what they were going to do, you see, and some were going in the navy, I’m weren’t going in the navy, I didn’t fancy it – I couldn’t swim anyway - so I lost them during the war. Well I’m working for this, in the Air Force, I’ll go now and this, [whisper] see I’ve forgotten what they called it, it was 1521 BAT Flight, 1521 B A T and this B A T stand for, er, B A, I don’t know, anyway, they had curtains, had to fly by instruments, and one evening, this is just an isolated incident, one evening I was on night flying, would be about half past three in the morning, and an officer came up to me and said ‘where’s this so and so gone?’, I says, ‘he’s gone’, ‘how long’s he been gone’, ‘oh about fifteen minutes’. ‘Right’ - and the wind was ferocious [emphasis]. Of course Blackpool’s always windy, particularly the airport you see, and I’d got a big can of oil with me, and I was taking it to another part that required it, and I’m stood like this, and I was stood like this and he was saying ‘where’s so and so and what are you doing’ and ‘well, I’m finished in the short term’ and the oil was dripping out of the can. Not only was it dripping out of the can, the wind was taking it on to his trousers! [Laugh] Course you see I was only what, twenty and I got the wind up, so that was an incident, I never heard anything but I don’t know whether he ever knew where he got that oil from. Anyway, it was a nice place there and I’ll tell you an incident that is remarkable. There was an aircraft taking off, it had been raining a bit and the main planes were wet, wet, well the whole situation was wet, this was at Stradishall, I’ve just remembered, Stradishall in Suffolk, where the 214 Squadron or 138 Squadron, anyway, Bill come, said ‘I’m going up’, I said ‘are you going up?’, so he said ‘yeah, right’. So the Airspeed Oxford is hand started; you have to wind it up, you see. That’s on, you know, I don’t know whether you know aircraft at all, but on the nacelle, that’s where the engines, on the inside, you get what they call a dzus, that’s D Z U S, turn it a hundred and eighty degrees and flap comes up revealing place where you can put your starting handle. So I was doing this, this was on the port side. Anyway, I’m winding this, got it going, got the starboard going and said ‘you’re all right now’ and he throttled back, in the car, and pointing, so I looked and the flap had come up from where the starting handle goes in, enters. Oh Christ, so I go come back, you know, to lower your engine speed, you see, they’re not much, the, not automatic, someone at the front door, post, mail [pause] yeah, [door closing] so I tried you see, they couldn’t make the engine, no air coming, you see, because they weren’t variable propellers, they were just ordinary wooden propellers, so it was still a draught coming apart from the elements and so I tried to get up there. [Chuckle] I went up there and my feet come from under me - it was only a little to get to help you and anyway I stood right back until my calves were touching the leading edge of the tail plane and I ran right and I got to the top and I just get at the top and my bloody feet come from under me, over the top I went and the engines are running and I fell on the ground. There’s only a little distance between the rotating propellers and the leading edge, but anyway I was all right, and he was like this - the pilot - like that with his eyes, but I’ll never forget that, I’ll never forget that. I don’t think he will either! Anyway so, I left there, what did I do? Oh yeah. [Pause] Right, think it, trying to think what I, where I went after that. Oh, I was, that’s at Stradishall, righto, so I thought right I’m not stopping here, I’d gone to the top of me tree, so I’m going in for a flight engineer, that’ll be my bloody thing. So I went in to be a flight engineer; flight engineer I became, and I did pretty well on it and er, [whisper] and it was something new you see, there were very few flight engineers and it was the, went, had to go somewhere for stock, for stores procedure and all sorts of things that really wouldn’t be there, but anyway, we left there and went to er, to Cardiff and went to a place, Brays in Wales, and it's the Number 1 Gunnery School in Wales, and we had to, on an air gunner’s course. We arrived at Pembrey and went to, there’s a place, I don’t know the town but it was locally known by the blokes as Slash, we went there and had a few drinks and went in, next morning we paraded. ‘Well gentlemen you know this is going to be a very concentrated course, you’ve got to be full gunners when you leave here and it will last about eight to ten days. We’ve got a cinema here but there’s just one thing that well, you won’t be pleasant about and that is that you’re not allowed out, you cannot go out of the airport at all’ [emphasis]. So I said, so we started there about nine o’clock in the morning and sometimes we were still doing something at nine o’clock at night, and going on the beach and firing, firing different guns. See we had, we did really a condensed air gunner’s course, which we weren’t too bloomin’ happy. So, anyway we left there, oh, and my memory, we had to pass a course of aircraft identification, you see, because you don’t want to shoot anyone that’s your friend, [chuckle] and some aircraft are quite similar to the British aircraft and little bits of things that you recognise, so, I was bad on them so the chap said ‘well I’m going to cough every time it’s English, so come on’ [cough] English, friend, friend. Anyway we passed there and we came out and we went, went on the train and ended up in Yorkshire, that’s right. No, no, no, we didn’t, no, we went to er, there used to be, is there, huge place, Christ. We got off and marched up to this airport in Wales, and of course it was the training ground for flight engineers, and we marched in and anyway, in the morning we were got together and we were dictated which we were going to be: Lancaster, Halifax or, the English one, the big one, yeah, or Stirlings, and we didn’t have any option, we were told, and I was going on them. Anyway, that was fair enough and I did very well on that, I think. And so we were nominated, we were then flight engineers, right, see, and people were busy sewing sergeant’s stripes on and brevets; brevets were scarce was the flight engineers, I don’t think they got to making many of them but however we, whatever we would do and we went our different ways and we arrived in Yorkshire, and I can’t remember the name of the airport but it was a Con Unit - that’s a Conversion Unit - and along came some people we were just learners for the flight engineer’s point of view we knew all about the aircraft, or at least we thought we did, well we did, we came in, and it was some Canadians and they’d been on Wellingtons which only have a crew of five, now they need a crew of seven: an extra gunner and a flight engineer. And they did something which I think was very, very good, in as much as we went up with various people, you know, and we were, they were watching us do the job and that, you see, and they were converting from Wellingtons to the big aircraft. Well, we’d been there about five days and a chap came up to me - I knew him because I’d been flying with him – and he said ‘Syd’, he says, ‘I don’t know how you’re going to take this’ he says, ‘but we’ve been watching different people that we’ve met, people that with whom we’ve flown and it’s been unanimous: we want you to be our flight engineer.’ Well, [indecipherable] Christ, you know, yeah, and so I became their flight engineer. We’re there, we went up one day, we come down and we crashed, not badly, just undercarriage come away, and went to the doctor’s, went to the hospital straight away, nothing wrong with us so we got in, got up, went up in another aeroplane, anyway we did our Con Unit business there and I was directed to go to, well the number that were there, went to Leeming, Leeming in Yorkshire, and they were forming, then, 6 Group, because they hadn’t got their own Air Force on then, and so we were, 427 Squadron, was the first of the 6 Group, Canadians, and I flew with them. Well, and we had some fun, fun there. The first time we went I was a busy bee. You see you can have nothing to do but you can make yourself work, when you’re flying, you go and say how do to somebody and this that and the other, and that’s quite all right. Well, on the, I used to stand up on take off and I, the wheels, there is a signal in, there’s a lever inside the cockpit that you lift up and the undercarriage will come up, but it's governed that it must be airborne, [laugh] but I could put my finger in and lift it, lift it and bring the undercarriage up, but it shouldn’t be. Well I used to stand to his right hand doings, and quite often in the speed, you got chatter, chatter, and you put them fully forward for maximum take off weight but the vibration and chatter they would start travelling back and you had to hold them together, or sometimes I’d get up there and I’d hold them together, hold them by the fingers there and he’s again this, because we were taking over the Great North Road, and rumour had it, I don’t know [emphasis] but rumour had it that they stopped large vehicles going, taking off, passing there while we were using that runway. While, one occasion I’m there, we wore goggles in case you’ve got a window closed, open, well he, the pilot, Hank, would hold the control column fully, er, driving that, and watching the doings, don’t chatter, hah, he used to put his thumb up, right, okay, up with the bloody undercarriage straight away you see, because you gather speed because they had, they reckoned it was as bad as thirty degrees of flap, undercarriage down, anyway and I pulled them up. Well we’d done this several times like that he goes like that, I goes oh, oh with the bloody undercarriage you see. Well then, I felt sure it went like that, and I looked up, and it wasn’t that, it was because his goggles had fallen over his eyes [laugh] and to this day now, there’s only me knows that I brought the undercarriage up too early! Anyway, this was just the first trip of which I’ll tell you about, and it was a place called Bochum, but anyway, everything went okay and bloody navigator said to me ‘what you doing Syd?’, I said ‘I’m just having a look out’, so he says ‘come here, that’s where we’re going.’ [laughs] [indecipherable] I thought, well bloody hell. Anyway I was really excited and I used to do a lot of work and run backwards and forwards and I used to stand up see if I could see anything you know and help in that respect. It really took it out of me because, I don’t know why, ah well when we disembarked on arrival back to town, back to home, we were allocated to certain tables and we were talked to by the, by intelligence officers and making notes and what was it like, so and so, did you see this, you see, I suppose and then they’d compare them with others, and where’s he? Oh, and you could have coffee and rum – I was asleep on the floor! So, it had took something out of me. Anyway, that was it and we had a, quite a good doings. You see, now, the trouble is, I get embarrassed by your novels and people that write books and stories about Bomber Command and this that and the other because a lot of it’s not true, and you know, like they say, ‘oh Commander to tail end Charlie, are you there, Ned?’ [Laugh] I said all that rubbish ‘cause they don’t do that, no rank on the aircraft. The pilot, Henry, that was his surname, Henry, Henry was a sergeant, I was a sergeant, bomb aimer was a sergeant – he was Canadian - mid upper was English, he was a sergeant and the tail gunner was a flight sergeant, but however, and we’re on one occasion we were having trouble, we’d been what they called coned when you get a lot of searchlights on you at the same time and by jove it’s light and of course, I don’t understand artillery, but there’s some means that they can do something to the guns where the explosion takes, occurs, on a predetermined altitude. Well when there’s a do you go in waves, you see, well we know that eighteen thousand, they set the guns to fire at eighteen, but you see you get a wave and you might be going in at twenty thousand feet, you see, well the Germans – height twenty thousand feet, get ‘em up, but before the guns, they’d, twenty have gone over and someone’s come and they’re flying at sixteen thousand feet and they’ve got to readjust the guns and that’s the idea and in consequence you have to be on, over the target on time [emphasis] or otherwise you would be dropping bombs on your fellows or they’d be having a go at you! So it was very essential that you were there on time. Well, we’d had a do and we’d been evading, evading artillery and searchlights, successfully, and obviously we weren’t on course and he called me, ‘Syd, here, come here, what do you reckon that is?’ So I just got just across, you know, from here to that table, so I went, I says ‘it’s a lake, innit.’ So he says ‘yeah, what is it? Do you reckon it’s so and so so and so?’ I says, ‘Christ,’ I says, ‘I don’t know’, I says ‘I’m not geography, I don’t know.’ He says ‘I reckon it is.’ Well of course, I hadn’t thought, but you see you cannot navigate until you know where you are to start, you see, and of course when you have a few minutes of diving and climbing and that, of course you don’t, you’re not on course. Anyway we had to, we hadn’t been over the target, but anyway we did our job and came away and he managed to calculate where we’d been and he did a fine job, and that was it, but I’ll never forget that day. Deviating somewhat, I’ll tell you this: this is surprising. Well no, it’s a shame really, [cough] my wife and I, not at the airport, at home - this is after the war - and we went to a place and we were having a lunch and she says ‘I’ll go and get, I don’t know what I want, I’ll see what I want’, so I said, so I sat in a chair, I said I’ve got two chairs, you see, and I was guarding those and how you look around and up at the other end of the restaurant room, I saw a man, biggish chap, and he’d got the diabolical table manners, he appeared to me, and I’d seen that but I felt that I wanted to have another look and I kept looking. Anyway, this feller stands up and he comes wobbling down to me, I thought now I’m for it, you know, I mean I was eight stone wet through and he was about sixteen stone and I thought well we’re in for it! He says ‘do you know me?’ I said to him, ‘well I thought I did’. He says ‘only you was looking.’ I says ‘I know I was, I thought I knew you.’ He says: ‘well?’ I says ‘well I don’t know you.’ So he says ‘oh’, he says ‘I wondered why you kept looking up and I were getting a bit annoyed’ or embarrassed. ‘Oh’, he says, ‘that’s a Bomber Command badge in your doings’, so I says ‘yes’. He says ‘are you in the Air Force?’ I says ‘I was’, ‘oh’ he says ‘yeah, oh right!’ And of course we were buddies then. We were buddies then. So he says ‘where you go? I said ‘I go to the Cheshire Aircrew Association’ so he says ‘do yer?’ He says ‘it’s supposed to be a bit smooth there.’ So he says ‘aye, well I go to Barton, you see, that’s at the aerodrome’, I said ‘do yer?’, so he says ‘I’d like you to come’, he said ‘and you’ll like it and you’ll probably want to start coming with us.’ So I said - you see well he hadn’t mentioned anything about me looking at him - so he says well, I forget, he said ‘I’m known there, everybody knows me there’, you see, you see, he says me name’s. I said ‘what is your name?’ he says Morgan, he says, ‘better still, they call me No Fingers Morgan.’ I says pardon, No Fingers Morgan that’s the reason why he couldn’t manipulate his eating, so he says ‘they all know me: No Fingers Morgan.’ So I says okay and he was one of the New Zealander, the New Zealander surgeon that looked after the RAF and he’d been there and seen him and his hands finished there. So I says ‘Christ’ I says, ‘did you jump?, I didn’t know that till then, so did you fall out?’ So he says no. I thought he’d parachuted you see, and you could get frostbite, so he says no, I went there, and he was the flight engineer to see the damage and the door was just hanging on the hinges this that and the other, and of course he’d did what he had no right to do: he’d gone without oxygen, because we used to carry oxygen with us. That was, I’ll never forget that. But after a time they’d finished their operations because they’d all been on Wellingtons, they left there and I, now where did I bloody go then? I left there and oh, and er, oh, and oh, er, I’d been, well I went direct from there, I think I went direct from there to 514. Oh yeah, I went there to 514.
SP: So you went from Halifaxes at Leeming, you’re flying Halifaxes, to 514.
SC: Yes, yes. Now, I’d had an option to say would I like to be an engineer, I says I am a bloody engineer! So she says but would you like to do all the lot, so I says yeah, yeah. So I was an engineer, but I wasn’t sergeant, but that to come. Well I went to, oh, I went to Foulsham, that’s F O U L S H A M: pronounced wrong and spelt right, it was foul, terrible! Anyway we went there but 514 hadn’t started, they didn’t have an aeroplane. I think they had one or two, maybe, and they were doing what they call acceptance, you see you just don’t have aeroplane and go flying, you check everything’s on right you see. And they were just forming in Foulsham and they had, just prior to them forming this, but there would be [muttering] er, anyway, Foulsham and getting parts together and one thing and another, and I worked there on the aircraft, then, we’d only been there about maybe a month and we moved to Waterbeach. Well, who should be, no, I was a sergeant when I went there, anyway, it don’t matter, but chap come, Orderly Sergeant, Giles, him that I knew at the other place, and Jones, they were there, but they had to gather people from anywhere to form because, you see that shows you, those are just engineers, no, that picture there, the R and I – Repair and Inspection - he was a marvel was, that’s him there, he was just my size him, Squadron Leader, and well that shows, all these were associated with the maintenance of the aircraft.
SP: So what you’re showing me is a plane with about-
SC: Pardon?
SP: So you’re showing me a plane that’s got crew the width of the plane and about seven deep, so there’s a lot of people on there, so.
SC: Well, you can have the photograph if you want.
SP: We’ll photograph it and put it with the recordings, there’ll be a photograph of this, but we’re talking about the Technical Wing, commanded by Squadron Leader.
SC: That’s him. Jim Healey, yeah.
SP: Jim Healey, and this was at Waterbeach.
SC: He was a smashing, you see, and they were running short of engineers who could do the job, you see. I don’t know whether they blame the schools or not, but it was just the job. So I went there as an engineer and they didn’t have Halifaxes, they had Lancasters, and I never had anything to do with the, well you have to have aircraft as they come. Some have radial engines, some have in line engines, they don’t say pop ‘em on, we’re short of an in line, we’re not going to bother until we can get one, you know, so radial like a Hercules they’re a different thing, I never had much to do with them. Anyway, and Giles there, Giles in’t it, fancy seeing you anyway. Now, you see I’m just interrupting meself now, and there is too [emphasis] much emphasis laid on aircrew at the expense of groundcrew. Now Giles, we used to call him Farmer Giles, miserable bugger he was, but I got on well with him, and he didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke and he never did but work and he was a marvellous worker, sergeant, and he come and he’d lost an eye, I don’t know what happened, but in the meantime of me going other place he lost an eye, and him, he got on his knees to let him still join, keep the Air Force, and he stayed until he was chucked out and he’d only got one eye. I must tell you this before I go any further, well eyes, in those days went to Moorfields which is supposed to be the epitome of good eye people in London: Moorfields. He went to, sent him to Moorfields and they measured it or whatever they do, and he had that eye, but of course in those days they were glass eyes, plastic hadn’t got, I’m going forward, well I’ll leave that there, and he was a good worker was Giles, so that was fair enough. Of course I got promoted to corporal, I got promoted to sergeant you see, so that suited me, suited Giles and everyone, and I would say this, I don’t know why, but I was the only person ever [emphasis], as far as I know [sound of steps then drawer opening and cutlery] who they had a whip round for their marriage and they bought me cutlery and that, and Giles organised it and I’d never come across him before.
SP: And you’ve still got that one today – you’re just showing me the cutlery.
SC: And that was very, very, I was grateful of that, not because of the doings, anyway, I had that. Anyway, we went and we had our, oh, and bloody hell, 19, we went there in ’94. We left there and went to another station.
SP: 1944.
SC: And that was, they’d gone, coming to block one night, well in later days bleedin’, bloody Waterbeach, there’s limited flying and that, they says right, you’re doing, looking at, assessing equipment, so because we didn’t need it any more, finished, 514 wasn’t flying no more and you know. Service, you had different coloured labels and I had to sign them that: fit for reissue, beyond repair and this that and the other. Anyway, so we goes to this bloody place and there’s a Squadron Leader Knight was in charge and he says, ‘are you Cooper?’ I said yeah, he said ‘right, I’ve got a job for you’, he said. I said ‘bloody hell what’s that?’ See ‘cause they’d finished, and he’d just men there, so he says ‘we’re packing up and you can do that and you’ll be at hangar number three.’ So anyway that went by and Christmas time, no I’m going back a year because they had an explosion at Christmas in C Flight did 514, and there was about eleven killed, at Christmas time, but I was away on leave at the time so I missed that.
SP: Do you know actually happened?
SC: Pardon?
SP: Do you know what caused it?
SC: Well a bomb came off, bomb, I don’t, well you see, you never know you see, because they were loading bombs on and anyone that has an idea weren’t there! They were killed.
SP: So this was as they were loading the loading bombs for an operation.
SC: Yeah, I think there was about seventeen killed. But anyway, that was very sad. Anyway, where the hell was I? I got posted from there to there, I was there, I was only there two days and going there, and I can’t remember the place but it was a nice, nice place to go but I never went. They called me in says we’ve got a job for you, I says oh, so I said ‘where is it?’ He said, oh, previous to this, the, a Flight Lieutenant Wand tried to get me to go to this Spain, and Healey thought the world of me, I don’t know why, then he says, called for me, Squadron Leader, so he says ‘look do you know, would you like to go to Italy?’ I says ‘Italy?’ So he says yeah, he says ‘Wand’s put you to Italy’, he said ‘you don’t want to go there, there’s bloody mosquitos and that, do you still want to go?’ so I says no, so he says, ‘right, you’re off.’ Anyway, of course they all caught up with me, Healey goes, posted off somewhere else ‘cause this man he hadn’t got a job and then come and said ‘oh we’ve got a job for you – Italy.’ I says ‘Italy? But the war’s over’, so I says ‘well how come’, so he said ‘oh you’ll see. Anyway, you’re going to 1 or 2 LSU’, that’s Lancaster Servicing Units in Italy. So, bloody hell, so I went to Italy and unbeknownst to lots of people, I venture to suggest, is that there was a chance of a war breaking out between Yugoslavia and Italy over, it’s not called Siles, what they call it, the big city up north? I’ll think of it later, over this city. It had gone from one to another over the years and of course Italy had recently transferred their [cough] favours to England rather than Germany you see, so right. But of course you never get a hundred percent, yes there was still, for reasons best known to themselves, sooner be in with the Germans, but anyway, so I’m on my bloody way to Germany, to Italy. It was good in Italy, we did a lot there. The services had took the palace – apparently there used to be a king of Italy, king of this palace - you could go there and have a shower or something like that, press your suit for you or something, and in Sorrento, have you been to Italy? Sorrento, well the main hotel in the square, near where the YMCA was, they took that over as well so we could go there, I went there about three times for the weekend, free, and of course we could go over to er, Capri, Capri they had a Capri backwards and forwards. Well, I’ll come to that later. Anyway, Brown, who was a bit up, I mean I remember his telephone number, Weston 1368, plenty of money, I thought I’d got them in here [paper rustling].
SP: You went to the opera, yeah.
SC: And he made these for us, for, see these are all things that I’ve seen. They’re in English.
SP: So you’re showing me all the programmes 1945 to ‘46.
SC: Yeah, I mean with them being Italian, the one thing, Italian talk, all the time and you don’t know what’s going on, but that helps you.
SP: Yeah. Details for the British Military Authorities of Naples, all transcribed, the actual operas of La Boheme, Rigoletto, and you got invited to all of these.
SC: Well we went regularly, well we had to pay, but this chap was familiar with, something a bit highbrow. Brown they called him; he had a beautiful case like that, with seven razors in it, he says, ‘Oh no, I’ll use Wednesday today’, [chuckle] but he was nice chap. They won’t be interested in those, would they?
SP: I’ll photograph them so they’re with, I’ll photograph one of them so we’ve got it with it.
SC: Oh right. But it’s quite a thing isn’t it.
SP: It is, yeah.
SC: And we were at the piano which is on the first floor which is next to the Royal Box. You couldn’t have the Royal Box but we’d be one side or the other side. Of course we had to pay, and I thought perhaps that might, you might want that.
SP: So you’re showing me here your operational records for all of 514 Squadron, again we’ll put these, I’ll photograph this for the Archives and leave everything with you and take the photograph.
SC: I thought perhaps that was of some interest, the Opera House.
SP: Yeah, very much so. So obviously, after your time in Italy did you then return to England?
SC: Yeah. Well, I went backwards and forwards. It was hard work, but these bombers came in to let these, look we know what’s going on, but it was never published. I’ve never come across anyone that knows. There was between eight and twelve bombers, every day [emphasis] went there, somewhere, there to Bari, Bari’s on the Adriatic, that’s LS2, LSU2, on the Adriatic coast, Bari, B A R I. Funny part was, that railway line crossed the landing, coming in across the landing coming in, that’s aircraft there, but I enjoyed it but it put me back so I didn’t get released, but there’s no medal for that, no medal for that, no, not to this day there isn’t, because lots of people don’t know that it existed. I mean and they was nine months, backwards and forwards, these bombers, just to let them know that we were a force to be contended with, still, in spite of the war finishing; that’s what we heard. Well, I’ll just tell you this, it was there you never bothered about nothing, saluting or anything there. [Chuckle] Came up hey, there was going to be a parade. Parade! A parade, [emphasis] no bloody Parade! Oh aye there is, there’s a parade. Now, a strike had broke out in Far East and they thought it was coming right through, so they’d block it there and then. I’ll never forget, so we just stood there, you know, for this doings and bloody Wing Commander, er Squadron Leader Wright came out and said, you know, he knew about it, I suppose they had advised the Station Commander and he came and a bloke said there can’t be a strike, and Lapthorne, Lapthorne was the MT, Motor Transport, in charge. I suppose he was a Flight Lieutenant or sommat, but he was a rough ‘un, so bloke says there’s something going on cause Lapthorne’s had a bloody haircut! [Laughter] So anyway, that’s what happened and it didn’t develop. But we had a good time in Italy really, and that, but I mean lots of people decided to go home. Spent the first time, the first Christmas in Italy and there was going, there was something non, non, I forget the name they gave to it, you’re not to associate with Germans, English people, and of course it went with the staff. Well on this place we had what used to be a very big olive grove and we turned it into an RAF camp. We had German prisoners of war and - poor souls - they’d gone out the desert and they’d got shorts on, and cotton tops, and this was Christmas 19, Christmas 1965.
SP: ’45.
SC: Christmas 1965.
SP: ’45, yeah.
SP: Yeah. ’45 and so we said, and some of them, and some of them were nasty people because they belonged to German, Hitler Youth, and waiters in the sergeant’s ess, what bloke can do, can’t give them jobs. Anyway we held a little, I think I’ve seen a bloody picture short time ago of the, [drawer opening] oh that’s it, that’s behind the bar at, it’s the sergeants mess, but I’ve got one of the mess somewhere, and the waiters, and we held a little meeting, there was only about fourteen of us, senior NCOs, and said yeah but they’re bloody Germans, what do we do with them? They were in tents [emphasis] and this is Christmas and snowing. Yeah, oh Christ, it was cold. There was a fellow from Glossop, a sergeant, and he says, excuse me, you know, we were chatting amongst ourselves, what can we do you know, chatting amongst ourselves, what can we do, and this that and the other, we can’t talk, we can’t have nowt to do with ‘em, and he got the bloody real people moaning, because we wanted them to enjoy Christmas as we did - to a lesser extent - and anyway he says, the quiet bloody, this chap in from Glossop, the sergeant, he says ‘from now on we’ll call you’ -what bloody hell did they call him? Ferodo, - he says ‘your bloody behaviour would stop a bloody eight ton truck’, you know, Ferodo, the bloody battery works out there. Anyway, they enjoyed themselves to some extent. I used to walk to work, about from here maybe to the main road, which was quite way, taking chocolates for kids and sweets and they’d come and meet you on the way down. But anyway I come up, got, it closed. Oh Christ, we came up on the train, oh Jesus, through the Apennines and through Austria, took us about six or seven days to get home, on the trains! Bridges broken down and one thing and another. [Laugh] Senior NCOs, there was six to each carriage, so how the hell we’re going to bloody sleep? I says don’t know. We’d got all our clobber with us, he says he’s at it again, he’s going to organise this, be nothing when he’s bloody finished! So I says ‘right, seats across, one on each. One on the floor between the two seats, on the floor. Right’, I says, ‘and two of us on the luggage rack’, you see, luggage rack each. So says, ‘oh right, we’ll put on there now’, says there’s bloody seven, ‘there’s six of us’, ‘oh yeah’, I says, ‘I’ll make a bloody hammock!’ So I got some rope off the kit bags and this that and the other, emptied hammock, put it on the door, that like that and I was up swinging in this and it pulled the bloody door off the hinges! So I landed on him on the bottom! But anyway, you know, we had some really good times, I mean just didn’t, you see we, of course you can’t put it down he was with me, and he and I a very short, very [emphasis] short of people like us, not because it was us, but engineers and that, and someone had let ‘em go, you know, released, and I was, and both of us were sent, well I didn’t know, I was at Rugby station and he turned up. I says where you going and he says so and so, I says so am I! So anyway we’d gone to this here squadron, it was No 1, No 1 Advanced, it was letters, headlines, No 1 Advanced Flying Training School, so he and I were there.
SP: Who was with you?
SC: Well, he was with us in Italy. But I meet him, I met him on the platform.
SP: What was his name?
SC: Pardon?
SP: What was his name?
SC: Don’t know, he comes from Darlington, Ginger he was known as, he comes from Darlington. We goes there and we arrive there and there were Harvards, you’ve heard of Harvards, haven’t you, well they’re American. But of course, I mean they had American single bank bloody radials, made no difference to us. We got there and they was waiting, and it was said [emphasis] that one of the, the engineer, who I relieved, he’d been a Japanese prisoner of war! But he said right, I’m off and buggered off. Anyway I was in charge, he was in, and Ginger was in charge and there should have been about, there should have been a Warrant Officer, we’ll say two, four, four, er, sergeants and four flight sergeants with a crown over the top and four ordinary sergeants like we were, him and me, but that’s all there was, only him and me. Anyway, I must tell you this, although perhaps you won’t do it, but in the Air Force lots of people, you go on your own somewhere, you know, they needed so and so to go, right. Well you have an Arrival Form to have filled, with the various departments. Likewise, when you leave the station you have a Departure Form of which you must have endorsed for every place: doctor, dentist, fire brigade, gas, you had to have gas, and sergeants mess and so on and so on, so you can’t walk away with stuff. Well you see, of course if you’re going away maybe you want to, can’t get away quick enough, but [emphasis] to arrive is a different kettle of fish. We thought oh Christ, it’s going to be murder, it’s going to be bloody murder here, [cough] so we get this thing this thing, it’s about that size, got to go [laugh] and this that and the other. So, course when you arrive there you see, I mean I’d come a sweat then, I know what was going, a sergeant, you know, but I’d been there six years, and you live and learn, so course there’s this list and you go and get them to sign that you’ve reported, you see. Course the first one, where do we go? Pay Accounts, so you get bloody paid, second place you go: sergeants mess you want to get your head down you know, and all that. You see. Where’s the last? The last is where you’re going to work you see, so you go there. [Chuckle] So anyway, and [muttering] and we went there, I noticed, now I can’t remember his name and I know you wouldn’t be able to find it, it was a shame, but he was a Wing Commander over the engineering, Wing Commander White, just one syllable his name, but it’ll come some time, anyway [laughter] we goes to the, goes there, well I’d had to come, you know, polish your boots, extra [rubbing sound] buttons, you know and this that and the other. Anyway, knocks at the door. Well it’s a funny thing, but from the engineering point, senior NCOs, I mean because a lot of the officers knew nothing about the bloody job and they relied on you, you see, you usually knock on the door and open it, and say only a few minutes, er, girl will come, you know, secretary will come and let you in, so you while, so obviously, you see, so we gets up there, knocks on this, bloody Wing Commander that must have come across, right, knocks at the door, no, knocks at the door, no. So [laugh] Ginger says ‘there’s nobody in, bloody hell, come on, let’s go to the mess.’ I says ‘there is somebody in.’ He says ‘how the bloody hell do you know?’ I says ‘I can hear ‘em writing’, biros hadn’t been invented, I could hear [scraping sound], and course I went like this. I says ‘there’s somebody in there, I says, ‘I can hear them writing’, so knocks on the door, opens the door and there’s this fellow sat at the desk, looks up, carries on, so goes in. Ginger, there’s somebody, I say told you. So we goes in, so he says ‘did you hear me say come in sergeant?’ so I says no sir. He says [laugh] ‘well, eff off, get out!’ Ginge says ‘No, I didn’t hear you either’, says ‘well you can eff off and get out.’ So went outside then he come out and girl come and says Wing Commander so and so would like to see you. So we goes in and he was smart as paint. Oh, you couldn’t, and I would guess him to be at least fifty odd, fifty five, Wing Commander. He says well, he says, you’ve got a lot of work to do, and this that and the other, you see, bloody hell, I was, so I yes I understand that, he said do you know Harvards he says. No, I said, but I know the bloody engine. Oh right, so he goes there. I’ll tell you this, out of it, he’s walking round, and he’s got a, he was an officer, with a mil board to write down anything he tells him. So he comes to me, says Cooper, always called me bloody Cooper, Cooper he says, right yeah, and he got this feller, this officer, and he was knocking on as well, so he says ‘‘scuse me sir, ‘scuse me’ - I don’t know his name – ‘but what do you want Johnson?’ He says ‘you’ve got some white chalk on your trousers.’ So he looks this, imagine he’s tall, he’s about six foot two, and he looks this: ‘white, yes, chalk, you don’t bloody know’, he said, and he dusted it off, and anyway, he said, ‘you were right, it is bloody chalk.’ I thought, Christ, work with him. Anyway I know on one occasion he come there and said how are things going, oh they’re all right, and he knew everything that went on, so he says so and so and so and so, he says not working on this? I says no, I says it’s only just come in. It hasn’t, he says, I saw it yesterday, oh Christ! But anyway, he was always, and he’d shout full length of the doings for me, you know, are you there and that. Anyway, I can’t remember how much, but I had a sum of money offered if I’d stay on, it was about four hundred pound if I’d join, but of course I mean I was married, I had no home to go to, she was in with the mother in law and all that, so you know I don’t like going, but I enjoyed it really, I was you know, some days, important, aye. Well if you broke anything you see, anything like a drill, you had to take the shank, but the shank, not the twisted part, and give it them you see or otherwise you could take the other part next and get two! [Chuckle] Bloody Giles, he says to the doctor, ‘I don’t suppose it’s any much point in the stores’, so he says ‘why, what’s wrong Giles?’ He says ‘I dropped me eye’, dropped it. He says ‘you what?’ He says ‘me eye.’ His false eye, he’d dropped it on the floor: smashed to bits. So he said ‘I didn’t know you’d have to bring the bloody bits for an eye!’ So anyway they did, they sent him to Med, well you just can’t buy an eye. Now this is a bit embarrassing: [laugh] we was going on the bloody train, this is at Waterbeach, we were going to London. I was going to see my wife to come but, and he was going to Moorfields for another eye, well you just can’t order one, you know, it’s really. So imagine that’s the [paper rustling] carriage, goes that way. There was a lady there and a lady there, and they looked matronly, if that’s the right thing, well Giles gets in and gets there and I get there but, separate spaces, and right, off it’s going, so he’s going to Moorfields and I’m going to Welwyn Garden City over the, [laugh] and hustle and bustle, a man come in, big man, big man about fifty, fifty something, sits between me and that woman over there and [blowing sound], so opens his attaché case and gets papers, drops ‘em [banging on paper] thought we’re going to have a bloody good time then. [Cough] Anyway, it was obvious to me he wanted to go to the bloody toilet. So I, he, Giles, never told him, but anyway, he goes to the toilet, and he goes to the toilet through the bloody window of the, as the train’s going along. People won’t believe this but it’s true as true, and he come back, you see, dead smart he was, mac and bowler hat and this attaché case, and says er: ‘Well ladies and gentlemen, ladies, you must, I must apologise, what else can you do,’ he said, ‘and you too gentlemen’ he says, ‘but I wouldn’t burst my bladder if I was dining with the Queen of England!’ [Laugh] Bloody hell, people will not [emphasis] believe that! Now I used to be able to get hold of Giles. Giles lived till he was about ninety seven! I used to go to his house to see him in the Lakes. Now Jones lived in Birmingham, it’s really sad you see, and it’s coming to lots of people, could be me if I’m not careful, as he had to go into a home, he came from Wigan. I knew his son and he’s gone, but I didn’t know where he’d gone or anything and Wigan’s a big place really, and so I phoned his son up, so he said, well he said, leave it, I won’t tell you over the phone, call and I’ll give you, I’ll write it for you, letters, but he says but I must warn you, he says, he does a lot of sleeping and I think it is, I said to him across road, says, I mean if I’m here and this that and the other, there’s a, so that was it. So I went with British Airways for twenty eight years and then of course I got a job as a clerk and here I am, fed up! [Laugh]
SP: And you worked quite a long time didn’t you? Was it, what age did you retire from your clerking?
SC: Well I wanted to go till I was ninety but I was taken ill when I was ninety, eighty nine, eighty nine and I had to be brought home three weeks running, but it’s.
SP: So you worked as a clerk until you were eighty nine. That’s fantastic!
SC: Yeah, I used to do everything at home, but I can’t do a thing, can’t even go up the loft now. But it’s very, very upsetting really, you know, I mean to say, as I said to Albert across the road, I said we are not living, we’re just existing, till you know, till the final day. See I won’t go in a home.
SP: I think Syd, you’ve done remarkably well to work until you’re eighty nine and you’ve got a fantastic home so I’d just like to thank you on behalf of International Bomber Command Centre for your time today and all the stories that you’ve told us.
SC: Do you think they’ll accept the manner which we’ve done it?
SP: Absolutely, you’ve just told us exactly your story and that’s what we’re after at the International Bomber Command Centre, so thank you.
SC: Yeah.
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Interview with Syd Cooper. Two
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01:14:46 audio recording
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Susanne Pescott
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2017-09-13
Description
An account of the resource
Sidney Cooper was born in Blackpool and speaks about his early life there. He joined the Royal Air Force in 1941. He first served as an engine fitter in Fighter Command before remustering as aircrew. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 427 Squadron from RAF Leeming. He later served as ground crew with 514 Squadron. On leaving the Air Force in 1946 he worked for Standard Telephones and British Airways. Syd finally retired at eighty nine.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Fighter Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Italy
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Norfolk
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
England--Blackpool
Italy--Bari
England--Lancashire
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
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Anne-Marie Watson
Carolyn Emery
427 Squadron
514 Squadron
aircrew
entertainment
flight engineer
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Harvard
Lancaster
military living conditions
Operation Dodge (1945)
Oxford
RAF Foulsham
RAF Leeming
RAF Stradishall
RAF Waterbeach
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/256/3403/PFoxDR1701.2.jpg
e8210b0c77c5386c8bfbcb5cf96826c1
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/256/3403/AFoxDR170215.2.mp3
8d01ac63c1907f675eeb99b456b2d88c
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
Fox, David Rayner
David Rayner Fox
David R Fox
David Fox
D R Fox
D Fox
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with David Rayner Fox (426065 Royal New Zealand Air Force).
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-02-16
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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Fox, DR
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MS: This is Miriam Sharland and I’m interviewing David Fox today for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We’re at David’s home in Hastings, New Zealand and it is the 16th of February 2017. Thank you very much David for talking to me today. Also present at the interview is Glen Turner from the 75 Squadron Association. David, can you tell me a little bit about your early life before the war?
DF: I was born at Oamaru, North Otago and into a farming family. I went to a small, very small school. Single teacher. When I first went there, there was probably fifteen to twenty pupils. When I finished there, there was, I think, ten. And six of us were in, six of the pupils were in the one class. A year or two later that school closed. Then I worked on the family farm until I joined the air force in 1941/42 at Ohakea. From there I went to Rotorua. And after final leave we were shipped off to Canada. We were at Edmonton in Alberta, at a holding station until courses became available and I went to Winnipeg on a wireless operator/gunner course. From Winnipeg we went to Quebec and did our actual flying at Mont-Joli which was up the St Lawrence River from Quebec. Then over to England. And New Zealanders went to, New Zealanders and Australians went to Brighton. We were in the Grand Hotel and the Australians were in the Metropole. Canadians went to Bournemouth. And when a course became available I went to Westcott. And there we, of course, Oakley was a satellite station to Westcott so we did time at both stations and we were in Wellingtons there. And after there, that, we went to Chedborough. That was a Heavy Conversion Unit and we went on to Stirlings. And from there we went to [pause] Mepal, for a while where we went on to Lancasters. And from there to the squadron. We got to the, got onto the squadron about, probably the 10th or 11th of June. It was just shortly after D-day. And our first trip was to Le Havre. One night the Germans apparently still had control of Le Havre and the e-boats were coming out at night time and causing a bit of bother with the invasion fleets. And [pause] oh it’s a bit difficult when the mind goes blank isn’t it?
MS: What made you decide to join the air force David?
DF: I got turned down for the army. [laughs] So I joined the air force [laughs] which seems a silly thing but apparently the air force didn’t want you to do as much walking as the army did. So the army actually was my first choice.
MS: And how did you end up becoming a gunner?
DF: I failed the wireless test so the gunner was the next thing.
MS: Did you want to become a pilot?
DF: No, I didn’t, strangely enough. I was given the opportunity at Ohakea to transfer to a pilot’s course but I didn’t want to do it. Possibly I thought it was going to be a longer course and somehow the war might finish before I got there.
MS: So you were quite keen to get to the war.
DF: I think a lot of us were at that stage. We were young and silly and really didn’t know what we were going to.
MS: So how did it feel when you arrived? How did it differ from your expectations of what it was going to be like?
DF: Actually getting into action? It [pause] it wasn’t as frightening as I thought it might have been. Again, being in the air we were a bit more remote to the actual fighting than perhaps the army guys were.
MS: As a rear gunner you probably had quite a low life expectancy and were in – sorry were you a rear gunner or an upper gunner?
DF: Pardon?
MS: What — were you an upper gunner or a rear gunner?
DF: A rear.
MS: A rear gunner. So you would have been in the thick of it. It’s quite a vulnerable position on the plane.
DF: Oh yes. Probably not much more vulnerable than the rest of the positions.
MS: So what was it like going from New Zealand to England? What kind of differences did you find?
DF: The weather mainly. We went to Canada. We stopped at Pearl Harbour on the way over and docked at San Francisco. Then by train up to Vancouver and then over the Rockies to Alberta. Edmonton in Alberta. Until I went to Winnipeg.
MS: So what sort of things did you cover in training? And how did you find the training courses that you went on?
DF: We did Morse. Map reading. Maths. Didn’t do very much flying. It wasn’t until we got to England that we did much flying at all.
MS: How did you feel when you did your gunner training? What was it like being in that turret?
DF: I quite liked being in the rear turret. I didn’t think it might have been a bit claustrophobic because I was very, never very keen in getting in confined spaces but I think with having so much Perspex and vision around it made it quite a bit different.
MS: So what did you do on your days off when you had some leave? Did you go into, in to explore the local area and meet any local people?
DF: We used to ride around to the different villages close by and check out the pubs that seemed to be a very important thing to do.
MS: Can you remember any of those pubs David? The names of them.
DF: No. I can’t.
MS: Did you get to meet many local people?
DF: Oh yes. Yes. The local people were very approachable. In the pubs and even on the streets.
MS: Do you remember a place called Chequers in Ely?
DF: Chequers. Yes.
MS: Can you tell me about that? Do you have any memories of that?
DF: No. No. It’s just the name at the moment.
MS: Can you tell me how you crewed up?
DF: Yes. We were assembled in a hangar that was, I don’t know, probably fifty or sixty humans. And the CO of the station addressed us and then he said, ‘Right you form yourselves into crews.’ So that’s what we did. I had seen Dave Moriarty when we were at Ohakea. He was – at that time he was in the pay accounts and I’d landed in the hospital for a few days and he brought my pay to me. So, you know, we didn’t really know one another but when we were told to crew up I recognised him as from Ohakea. So I approached him. And that’s how it all started.
MS: Can you tell me about the other crew members?
DF: Our navigator was Harry Willis from Napier. Our bomb aimer was Ian Ward from Hastings. He eventually became my brother in law. We had Alan Teverson. He was an English bloke. He was our wireless operator. Alf Williams was our gunner. He was our mid-upper gunner.
MS: So you had a mixed nationality crew.
DF: Yes. UK and New Zealand.
MS: So can you tell me what squadron you were in and what, what rank you held?
DF: On the, on operations. 75 Squadron and I was a flight sergeant.
MS: And did you stick with the same crew pretty much through your whole time? Operational time.
DF: Yes. The only thing was that we we had several different pilots after we lost Dave. We did two trips with a flight commander and he finished his tour with those two trips. And then we had an Australian. We inherited him because he had been court martialled [laughs] and his crew had gone on and done, finished their tour. And he had a certain number of trips to do to make up his tour so we — we had him after we lost our permanent pilot.
MS: Can you tell me how you lost your pilot?
DF: He [pause] there was a burst of flak in the forward of the aircraft and a piece of shrapnel came through the windscreen and it went in his left eye and out behind his ear. Behind his left ear. And even though he’d had that piece of shrapnel through his head, he piloted the plane back to base and landed. And that was why he was awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal.
MS: Can you tell me a little about the pilot that replaced Dave Moriarty?
DF: Well, as I said, we had a flight commander for a couple of trips and then we had the Australian bloke.
MS: Was that John Aitkin?
DF: Hmmn?
MS: Was that John Aitkin?
DF: No.
MS: No.
DF: No. John had his own crew. There was Neil Davidson, John Aitkin and David Moriarty’s crew were all, came on the squadron at the same time and we were, used to hang out together quite a bit.
MS: How many operations did you do David?
DF: Thirty.
MS: So can you describe to me some of the raids? Some of the ops that you went on — do any of them stay in your mind particularly?
DF: Probably two of the longest would be once we went to Stuttgart and another time we went up to Kiel. And there was nothing really much unusual about them.
MS: Where else did you fly to?
DF: Not having my logbook here I can’t recall. But we did go to Walcheren Island off the entrance to Antwerp. The Germans had heavy guns set up on the, on the banks of the dykes. And we were sent there to breach the dyke’s wall so that they didn’t have the, they only had the top of the dykes to live on. Rather than being able to get down into the where the main population normally was.
MS: How did it feel before you went on a raid? Can you remember when you went for the pre-operation briefing? Can you tell me a little about what happened at those and what the mood was like in the room?
DF: Well, first of all we each went and checked our own department of the aircraft. And then there was usually a pre-flight meal and then we went to the main briefing. And we were a bit nervous going to the briefing until we found out where we were going and then it just seemed to become normal.
MS: Did you have any particular rituals or mascots or anything like that on your crew?
DF: No. No. We didn’t have any. There was one, one crew. One of their their ground crew members was bald and they always, as they climbed in to their aircraft they would put their hand on his bald head. [laughs]
MS: Did your plane have any nose art on it?
DF: Yes. I forget what it was. It had for every trip there was a bomb painted on the side. White for daylight and a red for night trips.
MS: What planes did you fly on?
DF: Lancasters.
MS: Just Lancasters the whole way through.
DF: Hmmn?
MS: You just flew Lancasters for the whole time you were there.
DF: On the squadron yes, but we as I said before we started on Wellingtons and moved on to Stirlings before we finally got the Lancasters.
MS: How did those planes compare to each other?
DF: A bit hard to compare them because the Wellington, the Wellingtons and the Stirlings. They were designed in the early 30s whereas the Lancaster was quite a bit later. A more modern plane. But the Lancaster of course was the best of the lot in our opinion.
MS: Were you involved in any particularly bad crashes?
DF: No crashes.
MS: Can you tell me a bit about your ground crew? Do you remember them particularly?
DF: No. I can’t. I don’t remember much about them apart from the fact they were a very good ground crew. Anything we wanted checked over they would do it no trouble at all. And double check.
MS: What was life like on the base? What kind of things did you do when you weren’t flying?
DF: It was. It was like most of the, even on the training squadrons it was — the life on the base was much the same.
MS: What kind of food did you have?
DF: It was plain. Quite nourishing of course. We did get extras when we were flying. Quite often got a fresh egg. Something like that that wasn’t commonly served up.
MS: And did you manage to have much communication with your folks back in New Zealand while you were overseas?
DF: Yes. By letter.
MS: How did your family feel about the kind of work you were involved in? Did you talk to them about it very much?
DF: No. We didn’t discuss it with them. I suppose they were what I call families that had people overseas. They were anxious.
MS: Did you have other family members that were serving during the war as well?
DF: Pardon?
MS: Did you have other family members that were serving during the war.
DF: Not over there. Most of my friends in New Zealand were fighting in the Pacific.
MS: What about the previous generation of your family? Were any of them involved in the First World War?
DF: No. Oh my uncles. Some of my mother’s brothers were.
MS: What did it feel like when you eventually came back to New Zealand? How did you find it? Adjusting?
DF: It was a bit difficult because after almost four years the air force had become my family.
MS: What kind of challenges did you face coming back?
DF: No particular challenge I don’t think.
MS: What did you do after the war?
DF: I went back and helped on the farm.
MS: Did you keep in touch with any of your crew?
DF: Yes. Yes. We had, there was Dave Moriarty in Wanganui and Tom Monaghan. He was in Hastings for a while but eventually he went and settled in Christchurch. Of course Ian Ward. He was, used to see him regularly. The wireless operator and the other gunner who were in England. We used to be in touch at Christmas time and exchange Christmas greetings.
MS: So you said that Ian Ward became your brother in law. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
DF: I married his sister. I met her when I came, came up to visit Ian on. [pause] When we got home we were given free rail passes for a fortnight or so and me and my parents came up and visited the Wards and I met Iris then.
MS: How old were you when you came back to New Zealand
DF: I’d just. Just turned twenty three. I had a birthday on the way back.
MS: How do you feel about the way Bomber Command was treated after the war?
DF: I think they were treated a bit roughly. Particularly Air Marshall Harris.
MS: So now there’s a Memorial in London to Bomber Command. Were you aware of that? What do you think about that?
DF: Oh I think it’s a good thing.
MS: Can you tell me a bit more about what it felt like when you were on an operation as a rear gunner? What kind of things did you see out of the back of the plane?
DF: Very little because they were mostly night trips. And if I saw a form, I couldn’t identify what it was, behind. I would get the, I’d get the pilot to alter course a few degrees and if it didn’t follow it would have probably have been another aircraft in the stream. That is why I was reluctant to fire at anything because it could possibly be one of our own planes.
MS: Did you ever shoot at any planes and take any down?
DF: No. Never fired my guns in anger.
MS: Was there anything else you can remember about your time in Bomber Command that you want to tell us about.
DF: No. I don’t think so.
MS: Ok. Well I’ve covered off all my questions so thank you very much indeed David for talking to me today.
DF: You’re welcome.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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AFoxDR170215
PFoxDR1701
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with David Rayner Fox
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:32:34 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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Miriam Sharland
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-02-15
Description
An account of the resource
David Rayner Fox grew up in New Zealand and joined the Royal New Zealand Air Force in 1942. After training, he flew operations as an air gunner with 75 Squadron from RAF Mepal. During one operation his pilot, Dave Moriarty was terribly injured when a piece of anti-aircraft fire entered his eye. Despite this injury he piloted the aircraft back to base saving his crew for which he was awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal. David also describes the attack on Walcheren Island.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Great Britain
Netherlands
New Zealand
England--Suffolk
Netherlands--Walcheren
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
75 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
Conspicuous Gallantry Medal
crewing up
Lancaster
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
pilot
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Mepal
Stirling
superstition
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/262/3410/AGouldAG160708.2.mp3
73437c87dfac06a7e6749cfe5ed84141
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
Gould, Allen
Allen G Gould
Allen Gould
A G Gould
A Gould
Description
An account of the resource
Twenty-seven items. Concerns Allen Geoffrey Gould (b. 1923, 1605203 Royal Air Force). He completed a tour of operations as a flight engineer with 620 Squadron and the Special Operations Executive. Collection consists of an oral history interview, his log book, flight engineer course notebooks, pilot's and engineers handling notes, mention in London Gazette, official documents and photographs.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Allen Geoffrey Gould and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-08
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Gould, AG
Requires
A related resource that is required by the described resource to support its function, delivery, or coherence.
Sgt. Allen G. Gould – 1605203, was born in 1923, after leaving school in Bournemouth at 13, he worked for the Danish Bacon Company until being called up in 1943. Choosing to join the RAF, initially wanting to be a Navigator, he ended up as a Flight Engineer, flying in the Short Stirling Mk. I, II, III and IV variants. Training at RAF St. Alban, then the Heavy Conversion Unit. Allen joined No. 620 Squadron, flying from various bases, RAF Chedburgh, RAF Leicester East and then RAF Fairford. The roles for this squadron were not just bombing missions but Minelaying, Supply drops, Glider Towing and Paratrooper drops. He took part in D-Day, dropping paratroopers from the 6th Airborne Division over Caen, France on the night of 5th June 1944, returning on the 6th towing a glider of heavy equipment. He was also a part of Market Garden, towing a glider on 17th September 1944 and returning on the 19th and 21st on supply drops. There were also numerous drops on behalf of Special Operations Executive (SOE) as well as Special Air Service (SAS) dropping supplies and paratroopers.
Andrew St.Denis
Allen Gould was born on 16 June 1923 in Bournemouth. He left school at fourteen and worked for the Danish Bacon company until he was called up. His father having spent four years in the trenches, in WW1, advised him against joining the Army, so he volunteered for the Royal Air Force.
He joined the RAF on in October 1942 and following basic training he attended the first-ever direct entry, Flight Engineers’ Course at RAF St Athan.
On completion of flight engineering training, he joined up with his crew on 1657 Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Stradishall, then moved with them onto 620 Squadron at RAF Chedburgh and later RAF Leicester East.
The squadron later relocated to RAF Fairford where they trained to tow gliders. He was billeted with 12 others in a Nissan hut, conveniently close to a trout stream. They often caught trout, away from the watchful eye of the bailiff and cooked them in a tin on the large coke stove that heated the hut. The illicit bounty was a most welcome supplement to the barely adequate daily rations they received.
Direct out of training with no aircraft experience he had to earn the trust of his crew who up until then had only come across experienced flight engineers. On only his second operational trip and flying with an inexperienced crew, they arrived late over Ludwigshafen, where they found themselves alone and under concentrated anti-aircraft fire. The aircraft was being peppered and was full of holes while the pilot was executing extreme manoeuvres trying to avoid further damage. A fuel tank was hit and Allen had to work hard to ensure the engines received sufficient fuel to keep running. At the same time he had to make sure there would be enough fuel remaining to get back to the south coast of England for an emergency landing. As the aircraft approached the runway, the airfield lights went out and the pilot announced he was going to do another circuit. Allen told him, bluntly, he couldn’t as he didn’t have enough fuel, so the pilot made a steep turn and conducted a blind landing with no fuel to spare. Allen bonded well with his crew and in their free time they would often all go out to the pub together.
Throughout his tour his squadron undertook a variety of roles, much of was it in support of the Special Operations Executive personnel, operating covertly in occupied Europe. They also trained to tow gliders and dropped parachuting troops on D Day.
Allen completed 32 operations as a flight engineer with 620 Squadron and he totalled over 460 flying hours on Stirlings. PGouldAG1610.2.jpg (1600×2310) (lincoln.ac.uk)
For his services to 620 Squadron, he was ‘Mentioned in Despatches’ for distinguished service. MGouldAG1605203-160708-13.2.pdf (lincoln.ac.uk)
Post war, he married his wife, Norma, who was training as a mechanic at St Athan when he met her. PGouldAG1601.2.jpg (1600×2412) (lincoln.ac.uk)
Allen was discharged in October 1946 having attained the rank of Warrant Officer. PGouldAG1604.1.jpg (1600×2330) (lincoln.ac.uk)
He returned to the Danish Bacon company where he worked for another 40 years.
Chriss Cann
October 1942: Volunteered for the RAF
January 1943 - July 1943: RAF St Athan, Flight Engineer Training
July 1943 - September 1943: RAF Stradishall, 1657 HCU, flying Stirling aircraft
September 1943 - December 1943: RAF Chedburgh, 620 Squadron, flying Stirling aircraft
January 1944 - March 1944: RAF Leicester East, 620 Squadron, flying Stirling aircraft
March 1944 - April 1945: RAF Fairford,620 Squadron, flying Stirling aircraft
8 October 1946: Released from service having attained the rank of Warrant Officer
Chris Cann
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the eighth of July two thousand and sixteen, we’re in Oxford talking to Allen Gould about his experiences flying Stirling’s in the war. Allen what are your first recollections of life with the family?
AG: Well I went to school at Winton and Moordown council boys school in Bournemouth, erm, left when I was fourteen, which irritated my father, ‘cos he hadn’t got the money to pay for me to go to grammar school, there were only two seats allocated to our school, after the erm, eleven plus, and, erm, everybody there failed except for the doctor’s son and the councillor’s son, who both got a grammar school seat, which I would have loved but there you are, because in those days that was the only way you could get to university, grammar school first and then go, [pause] and I left school at fourteen, got a job with the Danish Bacon Company, [pause] a shit house firm right from the start, I was there for, getting on for forty years, after the war I came back there and erm, and then I, my nerves got back to normal when I was, after I had been away from the air force for, ten or twelve years, and erm, I got another job, which I was quite pleased about but they wouldn’t let me take my pension with me which my new firm offered to do and treat it as though I had been there all that time, but they didn’t, they made me take the whole thing out, not the part they paid in, all I’d been paid in, they made me take that out as part of my last week’s wages there, ‘cos the income tax that week would frighten anybody, [laughs] and that was it, and I was there until I got called up, with erm, three other fellas, I was the only one that came back without any damage, two of ‘em got killed, one of them finished up with one leg about three inches shorter than the other, I was the only one that was alright when I came back, and then went on the road and did commercial travelling, up and down the country, and I did that with a new firm I joined, Patrick Grainger and Hutleys, nice firm based in Fordingbridge, [pause] so I was up at half past five in the morning going to work, driving up to Fordingbridge, and picking up one of my drivers along the way [pause]
CB: Ok, so, you started with the bacon company, how did you come to join the RAF?
AG: Well, I rather fancied it you know I mean when I was called up my father had done four years in the trenches and he said ‘no way are you going into the army, my cocker’ so I said ‘ Oh alright I’ll take your advice on that’, so I put my name down for the RAF, and when it came to a choice between this and that and I thought flying, oh wow, let’s have a go at that.So, er, I, finished up in Blackpool getting my uniform and one thing and another, and then erm, posted from there down to St Athans, on this first directory, first direct [emphasis], flight engineers course, because they were losing so many flight engineers who’d taken a long time, a really [emphasis] long time in training and they couldn’t afford it any longer. So we were pushed through, erm, six months and I was out on the squadron, at erm, Stradishall and then in the finish we wound up at Fairford and we were there for years, [pause] the only other aerodrome we flew from during that time was from Hurn, just outside Bournemouth
CB: So, you did your training at St Athan, what was the training that you did there?
AG: Direct entry flight engineer
CB: Yeh, but, what was involved in that?
AG: Well, really all it boiled down to was, looking at pictures of engines and exploring the airframes, and one thing and another, so when we were flying I was always on the move, bouncing up and down on me toes for up to twelve hours if we went down as far as Switzerland, ‘cos flight engineers don’t have a seat [pause]
CB: Ok, so on the training though there’s a lot of aspects of the aircraft?
AG: Yeh
CB: So, what aspects were you dealing with, you talked briefly about airframe, but what else were they focussing on?
AG: Oh, erm, the engines and erm, more particularly the amount of fuel they would be using and heights we were going to, how it objected on the fuel take up and er all that sort of thing
CB: So, on an aircraft the size of the four engine planes, how many tanks would there be on those planes?
AG: Err
CB: Fuel tanks
AG: Numbers two and four, and one, two and three in each wing
CB: So, what was the flight engineer’s job in that?
AG: Well. I had to control that, when the pilot was fiddling about with the controls, I was watching the dials and making sure that everything was as it should be, erm, we only got into real trouble on one flight, erm, when we were still sort of, an inexperienced crew, we had to, erm, join bombers going to Mannheim Ludwigshafen and we were bombing the Ludwigshafen, and being a sprog crew, ‘cos we got there ten minutes late all the others had gone through, so we were going over on our own and we were really getting bashed. Our pilot was doing mad dives and turns to get us out of it, the only thing that we lost was the number four tank in the starboard wing, so I had to run all the engines off that to make sure we used everything we possibly could, and, we did, just save enough to get back to an emergency aerodrome on the south coast, whose name I’ve forgotten to be honest, and we were just going into land and they turned all the lights off, and the pilot said ‘I’ll do another circuit’ and I said ‘ you can’t, you haven’t got enough fuel’, I’m afraid that became a funny word to them because every time he saw me in future he said ‘We can’t, we haven’t got enough fuel!’. So, he did a sweep to the left up on one wing and came straight back in and landed, lights or no lights, he was going in, and we did, I said to the bomb aimer, who was also the second pilot afterwards ‘how did you, er, cope with that ‘? He said ‘well’, he said ‘you know when the undercarriage is down you get a green light’ he said, ‘and if it’s not you get a red light’ So, he said ‘we were as bouncing down the runway and it was going red, green, red, green, red, green, red, green’, [laughs] I said, ‘Oh, thanks very much, cheered me up no end that has’
CB: But, it stayed down?
AG: Oh, yeh, we got down no bother, we just got enough. The pilot came out the following morning and said ‘Look, if we’ve got any fuel left, I’m gonna kick your arse all round this aerodrome’, so I dipped every tank, he and I walked across the wings and I dipped every tank, and it was just enough left in one of them to damp the end of the dipstick, so he shut up after that [laughs]
CB: So, it was reassuring that the gauges were accurate
AG: Well, I wondered if that was what finished up with that MiD of mine, ‘cos they must have made a note of it because we had to abandon the aircraft there and get a lift back to our aerodrome at Fairford, we just left them on this, at this other aerodrome, whose name I don’t remember unfortunately
CB: So, MiD is, mentioned in despatches?
AG: Yeh
CB: Right
AG: Yeh, so somebody must have made a note of it, I expect my pilot went back and said, ‘he was right you know, we didn’t have any fuel’ [laughs]
CB: Saved the crew, effectively
AG: Well, there you are, yeh, so, perhaps that’s what I got it for
CB: So, the reason I asked you about the training is, because clearly, it was focussed on, what in those days was state of the art aircraft, the first of the heavy bombers was the Stirling,
AG: Hmm
CB: but it was different from the other bombers, in that it had electrical circuits for so many things where others would use hydraulics
AG: Oh, yes
CB: In your basic training, what emphasis, was there, on hydraulics and electrics, in the training at St Athan?
AG: Well, skimming over it, as it was a direct entry course they didn’t waste a lot of time, I’ll tell you
CB: How did you come to do flight engineering, because you, had you, when you were working for the bacon company, had you been involved in technical matters then?
AG: No, no
CB: So, how did you come to be selected to train as a flight engineer?
AG: Well, I think they wanted when we were in Blackpool, they wanted flight engineers more than anything because they’d lost so many, and erm, I was automatically put onto that, you know, I’d erm, I think I put my name down to start with for navigation, but never got to that [pause]
CB: So, you finished the training after six months and how did you feel at the end of the training about your knowledge of engineering and aircraft?
AG: Well, I thought at the time that it wasn’t up to scratch, really, I mean, when I thought of the work that previous flight engineers had, had to do, different courses and out on a squadron for six months and then come back and do another course, I mean what we, what they went through to get us out was quick and easy, you know, and that sort of thing.
CB: So, the process for crewing up aircrew, was that at the operational training unit the crew got together, the flight engineer didn’t join until the heavy conversion unit?
AG: That’s right
CB: So, what was the crew like when you, how did you come to join an existing crew that had been on Wellingtons?
AG: Well, they were a bit iffy about having a direct entry flight engineer
CB: Were they?
AG: Because they were told I was one, and they’d never heard of anybody like that, you know, and they thought they were going to get somebody who had been out working on aircraft, on the flights, on the aerodromes, but they didn’t they got me and er, until this second trip, when I got away with this fuel business, after that we were, they relied on me, really, and er, were extremely friendly
CB: As a crew, what were the ranks, was the pilot always commissioned or was he only
AG: Oh yes
CB: Commissioned later?
AG: Yes, the pilot and the navigator and the rear gunner were all commissioned, [pause] and the wireless operator was a sergeant like me when we started flying together [pause]
CB: Ok, so you joined at the heavy conversion unit, where was that?
AG: Stradishall
CB: Right
AG: I do remember that name
CB: And how long where you at Stradishall?
AG: Oh, only about a week [pause], then we went up to Fairford and started ops
CB: Right
AG: Our first one was erm, minelaying, off erm, [unclear] Byrum [?] I think I got the name right, other side of Denmark, going down towards where the Germans were
CB: The far side of Denmark?
AG: Yeh
CB: The Swedish side?
AG: That’s right, yeh, yes, I remember coming back from there, we were flying along and you could see all the Swedish coast, all lit up, the pears, the piers and everything, all the lights
CB: Didn’t do you any good from a silhouette point of view, did it?
AG: No, it didn’t, no that’s true, yes, the only other place, that er, we were worried about the silhouette was erm, we did erm, three or four trips to Norway, supplying free Norwegians, who were up in the mountains, we had to look out for them and then drop stuff to them, funny enough, I see in the paper, that it was only last year, that they found some of the stuff that had been dropped for these people, that they never found and it was still in the snow, but when we were flying over there, we only went up there on a really full moon at night, and we could see our shadow going across the snow, well if anybody had been up, all they had to do was to look at the, moon and our shadow and they knew exactly where we were, and of course the only thing we had to worry about there, was the right up in the north of Denmark was this big German fighter unit, they used to cover the North Sea and out in the Atlantic and all over
CB: So, you were supplying the SOE, the Special Operations Executive in that case, weren’t you?
AG: Yeh, that’s right
CB: So, are you saying that the squadron, 620, had a variety of roles?
AG: Oh yes, we erm, D Day, we dropped parachutes on Caen bridge, and then we had to go back and come over again in the afternoon with gliders, with heavier equipment, down in the same place
CB: So, on gliders, where did you train for towing gliders?
AG: At Fairford
CB: What was the main activity at Fairford then?
AG: Well, the main activity there, was putting us out on raids or supply trips, which went on for years
CB: Rather than bombing you were supplying agents
AG: Yeh, oh yeh
CB: Right
AG: We did bombing raids as well, because I remember we, that, our troops on the ground had got this, surrounded this wood which had got the Germans in it, and we had to go over and bomb these German troops in this wood, and we had a plane going over there about every ten minutes so they wouldn’t get any rest or peace and we just had to keep on bombing this wood
CB: And the effect?
AG: Well, it seemed to work alright, but erm, [pause]
CB: And what about the bombing then, other bombing, what other tasks were there? So, you talked about mine laying
AG: Yeh
CB: Well, let’s just cover minelaying for a bit, mine laying was at a low level wasn’t it
AG: Oh yes
CB: What height were you doing the mine laying?
AG: About five hundred feet
CB: Right
AG: And erm, after that I think, we were mainly doing supplies, down over France, to anyone who needed it, and we did take some paratroops over there, Occasionally we had some odd characters, there was a bloke arrived there, put his parachute on, and he’d got a very smart suit on and a bowler hat, and he was, we were dropping him outside some village, where he had to get in by himself after he landed, and pretend to be the mayor, which is why he was so smartly dressed [laughs]
CB: This was after D Day, was it?
AG: Oh, yeh, yeh, well after, yeh, and then we were sent down, a little while after that, we were sent down to Italy, ‘cos I think they had some idea of us towing gliders from Italy with heavy equipment across to Greece, but it didn’t come to anything, we been there about four or five days, and the whole thing in Greece, came to a grinding halt, so they just said, no we don’t need you and we came back to England. That picture there, is erm, when we were in Italy, Pomigliano, I think it’s a little aerodrome, not far outside Naples, [pause]. Not that we were looking forward to trying to get off there with gliders, because they’ve got these great big heavy power lines right across the end of the runways, we couldn’t see how the hell we were going to get high enough to get the glider over those
CB: Well, it’s the wrong side
AG: Fortunately, we never had to try
CB: Right, it was the
AG: We were a bit worried about that [laughs]
CB: It was the wrong side of Italy to go to Greece anyway wasn’t it?
AG: Oh yeh, yeh
CB: But, the gliders were on this airfield as, well, were they?
AG: Well, no, we didn’t get as far as that
CB: Right
AG: They would have been coming from somewhere else
CB: Yeh
AG: But they stopped it in the end, said it wasn’t necessary, Greece was in a hell of a mess at the time anyway and our troops were in there, so they didn’t need the gliders, so, go on home, so we went, back to England
CB: What was the balance between supplying, agents, in activity and doing bombing raids?
AG: Very few bombing raids, it was mainly, either supply, or erm, taking people over there. I remember we had to go to an American aerodrome and pick up some American paratroops, I was very sorry for them, ‘cos the sergeant in charge said ‘have you got a gun’ I said ‘well yes, of course I’ve got my usual forty five issue’. He said ‘right, well if the first bloke refuses to jump shoot him, I shall be pushing from the back and you go out anyway’ and I thought well that’s a fine way, and I didn’t even unholster the gun ‘cos I had no intention of doing it, but erm, I’m afraid with some of these Americans I was very sorry for them, they were shit scared and badly trained, still
CB: In what way were they badly trained?
AG: Well, they’d never done a jump before, this is why he thought the bloke in front might stick his toes in and refuse to jump out, ‘cos in the Stirling, it was a big hole in the floor and you went out that way, you didn’t go out the door, ‘cos there was always the danger of being caught by the wing, by the tail, plane as it came by, so, the Stirling had a hole in the floor, and erm, these people hadn’t done any jumps at all
CB: How extraordinary
AG: Yeh well this is it, you know, they got in and clipped on
CB: They had a static line to clip on?
AG: Yeh, that’s right, yeh
CB: But, they all went?
AG: Oh yes, they all went out, no bother at all, but erm, I won’t going to shoot anybody anyway, I was very sorry for them
CB: Now, on the supply raids and when your’e dropping, trips, when your’e dropping material and people, this is largely low level is it?
AG: Oh yeh, yeh,
CB: What sort of height?
AC: Particularly with people because you had to drop them from a reasonable low height, it’s no good chucking a parachute out you know, at eighteen thousand or something like that, and hoping he’s gonna get down to where he should, because if there’s any wind blowing he would land miles away
CB: So, what height were they being dropped?
AG: Oh, between five and six hundred most of them I think, as far as I remember
CB: And most of this is in the dark, is it?
AG: Oh yes, yeh of course
CB: How did the navigator find the target for this, because you’re on your own when you do this?
AG: Oh yes, yes, oh yeh. Well, he was told, you know, where to go and miles from wherever, and er, we just had to find it, or he did
CB: Were there electronic devices used to help?
AG: No, no, we didn’t have anything like that, we had an, erm, sort of a semi radar thing, in the plane which was the start of that sort of thing, but erm
CB: Was that H2S or different?
AG: I have no idea
CB: Or other words, a mapping radar, was it?
AG: Yeh, well, it showed up, you know, things like mountains and things like that, but that was all, I mean it was fairly beginning things
CB: So, when did you start, flying with 620 Squadron?
AG: Erm, [pause], oh dear, [pause], well, it was after I’d done my six months at St Athans, so that would be
CB: So, when did you go to St Athan?
AG: Erm, so that would be erm, [pause] when I were called up, I went to Blackpool, so it would be, erm, [pause] beginning of forty-three, I suppose
CB: For six months?
AG: Yeh [pause], or was it forty-two for six months? and then on, [pause] difficult to remember because
CB: So, when in forty-one did you join, what time of year?
AG: Oh, in the September
CB: Ok, so then you went to Blackpool?
AG: When I was called up, yeh
CB: Yeh
AG: I developed scarlet fever, the week I was called up, so the doctor said I’d got to stay there, I was in bed, with a blanket over the door, which had been sprayed by my mother, to keep the germs in the bedroom [laughs] and then so when I got to Blackpool, I had to report sick with scarlet fever, and the bloke said, ‘how long have you had it’? and I told him, and he said ‘no, that’s alright, you can carry on’ [laughs.] Yes, I remember that, I was sitting there and the nurse came round and said ‘why have you come’ and I said ‘’cos, I’ve got scarlet fever’ and I could see these two blokes, either side, go like that [laughter]
CB: Amazing, [pause] so, how long were you at Blackpool?
AG: Erm, oh, must have been about, I was there quite a long time
CB: You did your square bashing there, did you?
AG: Yeh, must have been, what, three months, oh, we were not only square bashing, I was, out digging in some place where they were putting in, erm, assault courses for people to practice on, we were out digging that, while I was there, they didn’t waste us.
CB: So, that would take you to Christmas?
AG: Yeh
CB: So, you went from Blackpool to St Athan?
AG: Yeh, well, I couldn’t tell you when
CB: So, that sounds like the beginning of forty-two, we’ll check it out anyway
AG: Yeh
CB: And you were there six months, so you would have joined the squadron
AG: Yeh
CB: When?
AG: I went from there, straight to Stradishall and joined up with the crew and then we finished up in Fairford
CB: But, you were involved in operations in D Day?
AG: Oh yeh, yeh
CB: How many tours did you do?
AG: Only the one
CB: Right, and how many ops did you do?
AG: Oh, thirty-two, something like that, just over thirty, a fraction over thirty
CB: I’m going to stop just for a mo.
AG: Yeh, right
CB: We are just going to talk a little bit about the crew, we’ve talked earlier about, when Allen sorted out the fuel distribution arrangements and how they were short of fuel, and that got him accepted, but how did the crew gel?
AG: Oh, very well, erm, our pilot had a car, I don’t know where he got it from, but he had a car at Fairford, and erm, we used to go out at night, to one of the local pubs, all of us
CB: All seven of you?
AG: Yeh, oh yeh, I think we meshed very well actually
CB: Right, and how well equipped were the pubs for supplying thirsty air crew?
AG: Oh, very well, particularly the one we used to go to which had a lot of really nice-looking girls serving there, which always started my pilot, [laughs] away [laughs] if he got half the chance [laughs]
CB: Yeh, and did they ever run out of beer?
AG: No, never, never, yeh
CB: So, part of the crew was commissioned, and part of it was NCO?
AG: Yeh
CB: So, what were your quarters like as an NCO?
AG: What were my what?
CB: Quarters, where were you?
AG: Oh, I was just in a billet with, twelve other people
CB: Right, so, what was the billet, a Nissan hut?
AG: Yeh, a Nissan hut, yeh, and at Fairford, we were right down the bottom of the hill, by the stream, where we could go fishing for trout, very naughty, and we knew what time the bailiff used to come round, and make sure there was nobody fishing in this trout stream, and so, we always used to make sure we weren’t down there when he came by [laughs]. No, I used to like trout, done on a coke stove
CB: Is that the coke stove in the Nissan hut?
AG: Yeh, yeh, that’s all the heat we had in there, was just one of these big coke stoves
CB: So, what was the recipe then, how did you deal with it, so you got the trout?
AG: Oh, put it in a tin on the top, after gutting it and chopping it, putting it on, and just standing it on the stove until it was cooked, knowing what the food was like, you know, we was always trying to add to it [laughs], one way or the other
CB: Were you normally hungry or was the normal amount adequate?
AG: Well, it was for me but I don’t think it was for some of them, but er, no, I always, I always, seemed to get on fairly well. The only funny thing that happened down at that Nissan hut that we were in, eh, one of the blokes had gone into town on his bicycle, when he came back, he’d thrown the bicycle over the fence, not realising, that he’d thrown it into a sewerage pit, so he climbed up and jumped in after it he turned up at the back door of the hut covered in green muck, and we threw things at him until he went away and got in the shower with all his clothes on [laughs] we weren’t going to let him in [laughs] Yeh, I can see that bloke standing there now
CB: How many uniforms did you have? He had to dry it out, first did he?
AG: Er, well, you really had one and a spare which you kept, you kept one, you know, for parades and one thing and another, and a spare, and of course when I became a warrant officer, then I was never short of clothes and it was all extremely smart, and I had more spares than I could cope with
CB: At what stage did you become a warrant officer?
AG: Oh, in my third year, because you went up one rank every year, this is why we had flight lieutenant rear gunner, he’d gone [laughs] gradually up [laughs] anyway
CB: So, you, worked well as a crew?
AG: Oh, yeh, really well
CB: And, erm, how did the food come, if you were flying at night, before you
AG: Well, we had to eat before we went
CB: Right, so what was that
AG: If it was a night flight
CB: Ok, what did you get?
AG: Well, anything that was going, you know, I seem to remember a lot of sausages in those days, I suppose they were easy to come by and easy to make so, they were alright, yeh
CB: Did they keep pigs on the station?
AG: No, not that I ever saw
CB: And, when you landed after an op, what did you get for food?
AG: Eh, well roughly the same thing again, whatever was available, you know, but erm,
CB: Bacon and egg?
AG: Oh yes, yes, we always had that, the only thing that I remember about coming back late one night, before we’d taken off, I’d gone out to the aircraft with a bicycle and had a look round like, as I usually did, and er, when we landed I got on the bike and whizzed off back, and, in the meantime they’d put a barbed wire fence across the bloody path and I rode straight into that and went flying, pitch down, and I got barbed wire cuts all up one arm, and of course, we hadn’t been debriefed or anything, so in between take off and being debriefed, I’d been wounded, I was entitled to a wound stripe, and I thought I shall never have the cheek to wear it, so I didn’t, ‘cos it wasn’t my fault they’d put a barbed wire fence up there
CB: Now, you’ve raised an interesting point there, the wound stripe, how was that allocated and then shown on the uniform?
AG: Well, you had an upside down v, a little red v on the bottom of your left-hand sleeve, I mean I’ve seen
CB: On the wrist?
AG: I saw a bloke once, he’d got fifteen of these all up this arm, so I thought, he must be ruddy unlucky [laughs]
CB: So, this will come as a result of aerial combat of some kind, would it?
AG: Oh yeh, oh yeh
CB: So, how often were you hit and by what?
AG: Well, the only time we were hit, hit badly, was when we were so short of fuel, because they’d absolutely peppered the aircraft, it was full of holes all over, up in, down, and underneath, under the tanks in the wings and everywhere. It was our own fault because we’d arrived ten minutes too late, we blamed the navigator, the rest of the bomber crews had gone on by, so we were flying over Ludwigshafen on our own, we were getting pasted
CB: No fire?
AG: No, fortunately
CB: And er, so that’s flak, so what about fighter attack, how often did you have those?
AG: No, we were lucky, we never had one, ever, [emphasis] although our gunners were ready, but we were lucky to get away with it, particularly when we were doing those Norway trips, ‘cos we’d got no cover there at all, and everything was wide open, you could see our shadow moving across the snow, and this German fighter place up in the north of Denmark, was huge, God knows how many fighters they had there, but we were lucky, we got away with it every time we went to Norway we got away with it without seeing one. The only time we got shot at in Norway, going up the creek to Oslo, and we had to go over Oslo and up into the mountains, to drop this stuff, and in the creek was three islands, one there, one there and one there, and they all had German flak guns on, fortunately, we came in so low that we were leaving a wake up this creek, I looked out and I could see it
CB: On the water?
AG: On the water, and this island was firing at us and hitting the other island, which we thought was quite good [laughs] but when we got to the third one of course, we were just taking a chance, round and round and out quick and after that it was just up over Oslo and into the mountains [pause] interesting, it was only last year that it was in the paper that they found some of this stuff up there that had been dropped, and the people up there never found it
CB: Where they able to find out who had, which aircraft had dropped it?
AG: No, no, they couldn’t find out anything about it at all
CB: So, you said, earlier, that the, Stirling was grossly under-rated, and you thought it was a brilliant aeroplane, what was so special about the Stirling in your perception?
AG: Well, the fact that it was solid metal, you know, it would stand up to practically anything, and only get minor damage, and of course the engines were superb, far better than anything on any of the other aircraft
CB: So, what engines were on the Stirling?
AG: Oh, those Bristol Radials
CB: Hercules
AG: Yeh, I know that we started off with two, two banks of pots and finished up with three, and erm, they were really good, far better than these Merlin engines, ‘cos these would take punishment, the others wouldn’t
CB: Going back to your training, looking at your training manuals, books you filled in, erm, exercise books, when you were training, there, there’s a section on everything but, the significance of the Stirling was it was, it had so much electrics on it, so how well were you prepared at St Athan, for going onto an aircraft that had such a large amount of electrics?
AG: Oh, pretty well, I think I never had any trouble with any of it, the only thing I nearly did one night, was to cook the pigeon, they gave us, in case we came down in the North Sea, and we were sat in a dinghy, there you know, waiting to be rescued, they gave us a pigeon that we could put on out last position and send it off, and I put this pigeon on the floor and I didn’t realise until I got back, that I’d stood it up against this heating pipe that was coming through from one of the engines, I thought the bloody thing will be cooked, but it was perfectly alright, thank goodness [laughs]
CB: Just gone deaf
AG: Well, it must have been warm, which was more than the rest of us were on some of these flights
CB: Where was the warmest part on the aircraft?
AG: At the end of this pipe that was coming through from the inner starboard engine
CB: That was the heater for the fuselage, was it?
AG: Yeh, that’s right, yeh
CB: So, what were the things that were electric, driven electrically, on the Stirling?
AG: Well, practically everything, I mean, I’d got a bank of dials in front of me where I was, which were, erm, you know, gave you an indication of how much fuel was in each tank, ‘cos you had one for each tank, starboard and port, and that was all run by electrics, I mean, if you lost your electrics, you’d got no guides at all, that sort of thing, but we never did, fortunately
CB: And, were any of the flying controls electric?
AG: Ah, the only thing that I knew about, that was my job, was the undercarriage, which was electric, down and up, but, erm, if that had failed I could do that by hand take me about half an hour I should think [laughs] ‘cos it was really hard work, but er, that you could do
CB: And, what about the trimmer? so, in the flying controls, were the trimmers electric?
AG: Erm, yes, but that was done either by the co-pilot, the bomb aimer or the pilot, I never had anything to do with that
CB: You said earlier that you had to stand up all the time, but did you have a seat for take-off and landing?
AG: Well, I had to sit on the parachute
CB: Where?
AG: The type of the parachute was the cushion type, with the two, rings at the back, which you just clicked onto your harness, which was there at the front, you just clicked on, yeh that’s right, on the front, [pause] and as it was that sort of thick, and that big, we used to sit on it
CB: Now, thinking now, about the take-off and landing, as the engineer, to what extent, were you involved in helping with the take-off with the throttles?
AG: Not at all, the pilot did it all and I used to watch the dials and make sure that there was nothing I had to tell him
CB: So, were you sitting next to him at that point, or
AG: No, no I was
CB: You were standing?
AG: No, I was either standing, bouncing up and down on me toes or, sat on the parachute looking at all this, wall of dials in front of me
CB: And erm, with most flight engineer tasks, positions, er, logs had to be taken, so,
AG: Oh yeh
CB: What logging did you do and how often?
AG: Well, you had to do one for every flight
CB: But, during the flight, what did you have to record?
AG: Well, if anything went wrong or, we needed something that wasn’t there or whatever, you had to put it in the log, you know, but erm, I never seemed to have any trouble with that, we were lucky really, we really were lucky
CB: From what you have said, fuel management is a key matter, so, of the tanks, in what sequence did you, use for fuel, you’d have one for take-off and then how did you distribute the fuel?
AG: Well, there was two big tanks, number two and number four, in each wing, and you used those for take-off particularly if you were towing a glider because you used a lot of it, and er, once you were up and on a long, fairly longish flight, because we did, we had to go twelve hours sometimes, which took us nearly down to the Swiss border, to supply, Free French that were in the hills there, in the foothills, and erm, as I said, it was, by the time we got back to base again, we’d been out twelve hours
CB: And erm, in terms of the next range of tanks, how did you switch, in what sequence did you use the fuel?
[background noise]
AG: Well, you used the little ones, number one and number two
CB: Which are on the wing tips?
AG: Number one and number three, out, at the far end, you use those first, on both wings, and you tried to keep them going to the engines, you got [pause] like two engines there, and two engines there and you had to keep them going, from the same tanks, pretty well for the same length of time, so you’d know exactly what type of tank was going to be empty, you didn’t have to look at your dial until it went empty, I mean, you had to do it by time, and er, whatever revs were on the engines
CB: And, setting the revs on the engines, and the pitch of the screws, who dealt, did that?
AG: Oh, that was the pilot, did that
CB: Right
AG: And if you didn’t like what he was doing, you had to tell him and he had to alter it
CB: And to what extent was it necessary to synchronise the engines in flight?
AG: Er, not a lot really, we had an extremely good ground crew and normally we found that they’d adjust, perfectly, [pause] because we really relied on our ground crew a lot and we had four really good blokes
CB: And did they come out with you, in the evenings sometimes or did they?
AG: Oh yeh, yeh, oh yeh, we thought a lot of those fellas, in fact I gave one of them my bike, when I left, when I was posted away from the squadron, erm, I gave him my bicycle, which I was sad about, but, he deserved it
CB: So, you come to the end of your tour, and you did thirty, thirty-two operations, what did you do after that?
AG: Well, we only had one flight after that because the officer’s mess had run out of beer, we had to fly over to Northern Ireland and bring back a load of beer for them [laughs]
CB: Must have been an arduous trip!
AG: Oh yeh, [laughs] because we’d have liked to have gone on over there and done something, really naughty, because at that time the IRA were building bonfires in the shape of arrows, pointing, to where the aerodrome was
CB: Oh, for German bombers?
AG: That’s right, yeh, bastards [emphasis]
CB: And, how long had they been doing that for?
AG: Practically, since the war started
CB: And how were they dealt with?
AG: Well, they should have been bloody shot, but we never got around to it! It’s like that bloke McGuiness, I mean he’s in the Irish government now, he was the one that started that Bloody Sunday, he was the one on top with the rifle, firing at our troops what did they think, that we weren’t going to fire back? I don’t know, that bastard should have been shot, and you can write that down and put my name on it [laughs]
CB: So, the arrows bit is interesting, how long did that go on for?
AG: Oh, quite a long time during the war, [pause] yeh, swines
CB: And, what did the beer taste like when you got it back
AG: Oh, that weren’t for us, that was for the officer’s mess, we weren’t allowed to touch it
CB: Didn’t you sample it to make sure it was ok?
AG: No
CB: So, your last flight was keeping them topped up, then what did you do? So, you’ve left the squadron now
AG: Oh, well, I was erm, posted away then, and er, [pause] and finished up at a place called Burnham Beeches
CB: In Buckinghamshire?
AG: Yeh, and erm
CB: What happened there?
AG: Well, nothing really, I don’t think they knew what to do with us, I mean that was where I learnt how to play tennis, one of the blokes there, he’d been champion of Yorkshire for two or three years, and he gave me one of his racquets, and I’ve still got it, I’d still use it, if I played tennis, which I thought was very nice of him, and er, we went rowing on the river there and all sorts of things. As I said they didn’t know what to do with us, we were just keeping out the way
CB: So, we’re after Arnhem now aren’t we, so
AG: Oh yeh
CB: So, what sort of time are we talking about? In the autumn or are we later?
AG: Oh erm, [pause] now, I think I went there if I remember rightly, I went there in er, January, February somewhere like that, fairly early
CB: Forty-five
AG: At Burnham Beeches and we were erm, we’d taken over this big country house that was there, and erm, they just kept the top floor, to live in, and we had the offices all down below, and er, working in there
CB: Doing what?
AG: Well, I was sat in the office there, and it was a most peculiar effort, if they, had a man posted from Edinburgh to Glasgow, an RAF policeman, he had to come all the way down to us, be booked into my office and booked out again, and given travel warrants and away he went, most peculiar efforts, still there you are, you wondered who was running these things sometimes
CB: And then after, how long did that go on for?
AG: Oh, I think I was there for about erm, three or four months [background noise] and then I was posted to Leicester
CB: Leicester East? The airfield, Leicester East?
AG: Oh no, no, no, no, just somewhere in Leicester, erm, and erm, I was there for about a fortnight or so I think, and then I went back to Burnham Beeches and got discharged, and went to London and picked up my civvies
CB: Then what? So, you’re discharged, demobbed, what did you do then?
AG: Well, I went home and had a week off and then I went back to work for the Danish Bacon company, shit house firm
[background laughter]
CB: Would you like to explain why they were like that? What was it that was so upsetting about the Danish Bacon
AG: Well, because I’d
CB: Company
AG: Been here for nearly forty years, until I got another job and I wanted to take my pension and money, put it into this new firm and they were going to treat it as though I’d been there all the time, so I’d have had a really good pension when I did eventually retire, but they wouldn’t do it, they made me take all the money out and it was only what I’d paid in, nothing of theirs, and I had to take it out as my last week’s wages and the income tax was unbelievable, not a nice firm, fortunately, they went out of business after that
CB: Right, so
AG: It went broke
CB: When did you leave them?
AG: Ah, [pause] I’m scratching for the year, [pause] I can’t remember to be honest
CB: So, you left the RAF in forty-five
AG: Yeh
CB: How long did you stay with the Danish Bacon people?
AG: Er, oh another [pause] eight or nine years
CB: Then what?
AG: Then I got this offer of this new job
CB: At?
AG: Patrick Grainger and Hutley’s, at Fordingbridge
CB: What were you doing there?
AG: I was assistant manager and I was also travelling round, seeing some of their customers, and building up trade of course
CB: Ok, we’ll just have a break there, thank you
CB: So, you kept staying, kept with Patrick Grainger, who’d then been taken over by Danish Bacon until you retired after forty years. We are now going back to flying, so when you were flying Allen, as the engineer, you had to log various things because it was important to see how the plane was performing. What were you logging?
AG: Well, if you have a look at this, its erm, oil pressure, oil temperatures and cylinder temperatures
CB: Right, ok, and how often were you doing that? Did you have to do it at a particular time? Every hour?
AG: Yeh, well, this, if you look at the times down the left-hand side, its roughly about every fifteen minutes, I think
CB: Right
AG: But, I had another line, right the way across
CB: Yeh, so, when you got back, you, the aircraft lands, we didn’t get on to debrief, but, you’re the engineer, when you get out of the aircraft, who’s the first person you speak to, is that the Chiefy?
AG: Erm
CB: Your ground engineer?
AG: No, I wouldn’t see anybody until I got back into the debriefing hut
CB: Ok, so at debriefing, what would you be doing?
AG: Well, I had to hand my log in
CB: Right
AG: And erm,
CB: That you’d been completing in the flight?
AG: That’s right, yeh this one
CB: Yeh, ok, and then what, who was the person that looked at that?
AG: Well, they used to take them all away, and erm, if I remember rightly, it was the chap who was in charge of all the, erm, maintenance and all that stuff, he’d go through it, and any anomalies he’d then probably come, and ask you what happened then and [unclear]
CB: This would be the station engineering officer?
AG: Yeh
CB: Who would be dealing with all of that or one of his erm, people?
AG: Well, it was a bloke in charge of erm, all the ground crews
CB: Yeh, yeh
AG: He’d want to see that
CB: Now, would you then join the rest of the crew for the crew debriefing, what would happen?
AG: Oh yeh, yeh, we would all go and sit down together
CB: Where would that be and who would you see?
AG: Well, the CO would be there and a couple of his underlings and erm, they’d just go through the whole thing, right from the take off and erm, and talk to the pilot about what happened here and what happened there, and did he have any trouble, and went right through and made sure that we’d put either the bombs in the right place or erm, or supplied the people that were in the exact same spot that they were supposed to be in, because sometimes all you would get was one bloke flashing a morse letter on his torchP particularly if we were on one of those Norway trips, we used to go miles over the snow, and there would be some poor bugger right up in the mountains, with his torch, and then we would drop all these containers down there, so, what they did with them after that I don’t know, whether they towed them away or what
CB: So, the debrief, covers all the aspects of the flight?
AG: Yeh, oh yeh
CB: And, bearing in mind in many cases, your, you were a special duties squadron, so you were supplying SOE, to what extent were there SOE people there, during the debrief?
AG: Well, we assumed that, you know, there would be one or two officers there that we didn’t know where they come from, so it would have been them
CB: They were the air force officers?
AG: Yeh, it was either SOE or SAS
CB: Right
AG: Yeh
CB: What was the most memorable thing about your operational career, on operations?
AG: Oh, that one when we just got back with hardly any fuel, [laughs] the only thing that stands out in my mind
CB: Now, the aircraft had been peppered, pretty badly, why was it, it didn’t catch fire?
AG: Well, it was the way they were built, this is why we like the Stirling’s, there was nothing there to catch fire
CB: Did you have self-sealing fuel tanks?
AG: Well, up to a certain point but, that time we got caught with it, I mean, it had blown a hole about that big and of course that self-sealing didn’t work, over that size
CB: But the tank was empty anyway?
AG: Well, yeh, I ran all four engines on it, until I could see there was nothing left, and just went switching from one to another, then eking it out as well as I could, until we got back, right [hand clap] good
CB: Finally, where did you meet your wife?
AG: Ah, when I was at St Athans
CB: And what was she doing there?
AG: Well, she was doing this erm, mechanics training course, which she finished up doing, erm, I don’t think she was ever on, erm, an operating squadron, er, she was at this aerodrome down by Exeter, I went down there to see her once or twice, and erm, you know, that was it
CB: Was she on the flight line looking after the aircraft, or in the hangar?
AG: Oh, both, because erm, the only thing she ever moaned about it was the fact that they were working out in the rain, with no cover and erm, the only way they could get dry was to go in and stand with all their clothes on by this coke stove, get it red hot and stand there and hope their clothes dried, which is why she finished up with really bad arthritis in her legs, I reckon, because of that
CB: So, when did you meet her, oh you met her when you were at St Athan
AG: Yeh
CB: When did you marry?
AG: Oh, about er, about ten years later [pause] I can’t remember what year it was that we got married, no idea
CB: Sounds like about nineteen fifty-three?
AG: Hmm, probably, somewhere around there [background talking] yeh, one thing I should remember and I don’t
CB: Thank you very much
AG: Oh, it’s alright sir
CB: On the minelaying, you were talking about, so this is, the other side, having to fly the other side of Denmark
AG: Yeh
CB: How did that raid go, were you high up and then went down or, and how did you do the mining run
AG: Well, it was our first op that was, erm, well it was just a question of relying on the navigator, ‘cos I didn’t know where we were going, and erm, anyway, we had to come down really low, off this island I think it was called [unclear] Byrum [?] and er, drop these mines right across the erm, entrance to the harbour. If anything had come in there, they would have gone off, so, and then we came back, and flew up between the other side of Denmark and Sweden, and watched all Sweden being lit up, lights on the piers and all the way along the sea front, looked beautiful, we ain’t seen anything like that for years
CB: And then you were, we’ve got a picture here, of your, aircraft, on the flight line ready for take-off for Arnhem, so, could you talk us through that one?
AG: Well, erm
CB: What were you carrying?
AG: Well, the first day was alright, we were just carrying supplies, the only thing that buggered up Arnhem was the Americans, again, as usual. Erm, our troops took the first bridge, the Americans were supposed to take the second one, and we dropped our troops on the third one, and they’re the ones we were supplying, and erm, of course the Americans made a cock of it and couldn’t take theirs, which left our blokes on the third bridge sticking out on their own, and unfortunately, the intelligence was so bad, that nobody realised that, just a little way, away from there, there was, a big mass of Germans, who had taken back for a rest from the Russian front, and they had got their tanks and everything there, and our blokes on the third bridge didn’t stand a chance. They were gradually surrounded, erm, we went over there again and dropped more supplies, but the third day when we went over there, we didn’t realise but we were dropping to the Germans, and that we were sitting ducks at that height, fortunately, our pilot decided not to climb away and leave us vulnerable, he went down even further, and went in between the two milk factory chimneys and came out over the sea, clever bloke
CB: At what height were you dropping?
AG: Oh, about five hundred feet
CB: And how much stuff did you drop, it was in containers with parachutes, was it?
AG: No, it was all in, yeh, it was all in containers with parachutes, because we were, the first and second time actually dropping to our troops, it was the third time when we weren’t and didn’t realise it
CB: What was in the containers?
AG: Oh, small arms and food and supplies, and all that sort of thing
CB: Right, anything else? Good, thank you
AG: And we were erm, the planes were being loaded up, for supplies to the French, in some area, and er, we were walking out and one of the containers fell out the plane, and hit the ground, so we all went flat, so we thought knowing what was likely to be in them. Anyway, when the dust had settled and they hadn’t gone off, we walked over and had a look in this container, half of it was full of socks and the other half was full of durex, and I thought the French don’t need those [laughter] and they don’t use them anyway, [laughter] and I thought well, that’s a bloody fine thing, we are risking our necks taking over socks [emphasis] and anyway [laughter] that’s what wars all about I suppose
CB: They’d say that’s what they put in them before they chucked it
AG: Yeh, I’d forgotten, yeh, I’d forgotten about that, and I suddenly thought about this thing dropping down, and we all dived flat, because we reckoned it was going to blow up, but it didn’t, and we walked over to have a look, and that what was in it, socks and durex [laughs]
[Other] That’s the first time I’d heard Dad be angry about the Americans
AG: They were normally shit scared and badly trained
CB: The Americans?
AG: Yeh
CB: Right, erm, thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AGouldAG160708
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Allen Geoffrey Gould
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
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:10:32 audio recording
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-08
Description
An account of the resource
Allen Gould grew up in Bournemouth and worked for the Danish Bacon company until volunteering for the Royal Air Force. He completed 32 operations as a flight engineer with 620 Squadron from RAF Fairford. Post war, he married his wife, who was training as a mechanic at St Athan when he met her. He returned to the Danish Bacon company and worked there for another forty years.
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
Norway
Wales
England--Gloucestershire
England--Suffolk
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Italy
Italy--Pomigliano d'Arco
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Cathie Hewitt
Chris Cann
620 Squadron
aircrew
animal
bombing
flight engineer
mine laying
RAF Fairford
RAF St Athan
RAF Stradishall
Special Operations Executive
Stirling
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/264/3412/AGrayLW170301.1.mp3
8141028f5d068b9ddb3bbcb25f8c5b0d
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
Gray, Lloyd William
Lloyd William Gray
Lloyd W Gray
L W Gray
L Gray
Bill Gray
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Lloyd William "Bill" Gray (428691 Royal Australian Air Force).
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-03-01
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Gray, LW
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
LWG: Anyway look I’m in a mess because my wife just recently died and that leaves one in one hell of a mess of course and I haven’t been able to redress the place as it is, so excuse that.
RG: Right.
LWG: Tell me then, I want to know, why I’m little confused is that my eldest brother’s eldest son is Robert Gray.
RG: Oh truly.
LWG: And when you ring I thought he was the one that had been addressing me if I seemed a bit offhand because I thought he was having a shot at me. [laughs]
RG: Okay, no you didn’t, I didn’t take that wat at all. Yeah actually I am sorry with the name and the spot I would be [unclear] as well the correct way both of us, so yeah okay, okay I see that point.
LWG: You don’t look anything like him I can tell you —
RG: He’s a very lucky man, a very lucky man. [laughs]
Other: I’ve just got some kind of admin type stuff to do to start. What year were you born Bill?
LWG: Tell me before we start that I’d be intrigued to know how you got on to me.
RG: Okay what it is we it’s the International Bomber Command Centre in Lincoln there setting up an archive —
LWG: In England?
RG: Yeah, yeah in Lincoln.
LD: It’s the University of Lincoln.
RG: That’s running it.
LWG: Right.
RG: So what they’re doing is there putting up a, Lucy’s actually got a there’s a sheet there that tells you a bit about it, but basically it’s a museum archive for Bomber Command, so there collecting right across the world interviews with people like yourself, veterans, just to capture the stories, capture the whole story as much as we can before it’s all too late. Now how they got on to you was we are directed by a woman in Sydney, Annette Gitteritz [?], she was told about you by someone else here in The Grange, I don’t know who that was she just said somebody else here in The Grange mentioned to her that you were a Bomber Command veteran and that’s how she got on to you and she got your details, that’s the best I know Bill. We just get our records would you go talk to this person.
LWG: Well, I’ve had a busy morning already, the postie came and gave me that —
RG: It’s one of those awards yes.
LD: Oh it’s another one?
LWG: Well I, I haven’t got every, all my so called medals and so on, one reason they contacted me and said, ‘Oh well we’ll try and rouse that for you.’ And that arrived only by the post this morning.
RG: Oh okay.
LWG: So I haven’t opened it yet.
LD: Just to interrupt can you just do the intro on the —
RG: Yeah I just need to do an intro for the recording Bill. This is a recording with Bill Gray in his at his home in Deakin, ACT, on 1st March, 2017, interviewers are Lucy Davison and Rob Gray.
LD: The name’s William Lloyd Gray.
RG: Lloyd William. Sorry his full name is Lloyd William Gray.
LD: Okay. All right I just need to do some a bit of an admin here. Where were you based Bill?
LWG: I was in 3 Group and that was at Mildenhall.
LD: Mildenhall yeah, no worries.
LWG: Think that’s Suffolk isn’t it?
RG: Somewhere in that area.
LD: And did you only fly Lancasters?
LWG: Oh in operations yes.
LD: Yes, yes, no worries. Okay do you have a pen Rob?
LWG: No you’d only fly those things one at a time. [laughs]
LD: Now do you —
LWG: Plus I was a flight commander, a flight commander of 15 Squadron, RAF.
LD: Okay, so I can fill in all that. Are you okay that your name is associated with the record or do you want to remain anonymous?
LWG: Oh I’ve got nothing to hide.
LD: That’s good no worries.
LWG: Depends on what you’re going to do with it or use it for.
LD: So you’re Lloyd William Gray.
LWG: Lloyd [spells it out] I was told by my folks that I was called that because of Lloyd George.
RG: Oh yes.
LWG: Thank God they didn’t put the George in.
RG: Yes. [laughs]
LWG: I’ve never used Lloyd don’t like it.
LD: Can you just sign this one.
LWG: Well what I am signing?
LD: You’re just saying that Lincoln University can use the audio record that we have here.
RG: For research purposes.
LWG: Just there?
LD: Yes. Thank you.
LWG: That’ll do.
LD: Okay, not a problem.
LWG: I was born in 1923 which makes me too old for these things now I would have thought.
LD: The only other thing is if you have any documents that you want to donate to the university, do you have any documents or anything that you want to donate to the university?
LWG: Oh I’ve actually got my log book there what did I do with it?
LD: Just if there are there’s another form to sign to you know say ‘cos we would just take copies of them and there’s another form to sign but we can sort that one out later, yeah we can sort that one out later, no worries. All right. So I read up on you a bit —
LWG: Anyway where’s, where’s my log book that’s interesting I went and got it a minute ago and I put it down somewhere and I’m probably sitting on it. [laughs] Probably put it down when you rang the bell there it’ll come up, it’s easily identified, here we are that’s it.
RG: Yeah that is it yes.
LD: That’s not like other log books.
RG: No it’s different it’s a pilot’s log book we haven’t seen a pilot’s one before. All the people we’ve interviewed with one exception have all been navigators.
LWG: Navigators?
RG: Yes for some reason we’ve only interviewed one other pilot and he didn’t have his log book he’d already donated it.
LD: Oh.
LWG: When we get right into this I’ll tell you about my navigators I had three in all.
LD: Sorry.
LWG: Not at the same time though.
LD: Can I jump in again Rob please. So are you okay for us to take photographs of your log book and send to the university?
LWG: Well probably as we go along let me sort all that out.
LD: Yeah no worries.
LWG: I am surprised that you contacted me anyway and I must confess I was dreading it very likely because I thought about my brother’s son [laughs] I thought it was [unclear] taking the mickey. [laughs].
LD: No, no not your brother’s son.
RG: With the name thing you said you never liked Lloyd for Lloyd George, well so my father’s family emigrated to Australia in 1925 they came in on a ship called “The Barradine” and dad was almost born at sea and they were gonna name him Barradine that would have been the worst thing possible I would think. [laughs].
LD: Anyway if we can get, we’ll sort out all the other stuff afterwards, but like I said I, I read up on you a bit and you’re really a local boy aren’t you from what I read you were born in Goulburn and grew up in Queanbeyan is that right?
LWG: Yes that’s true, if you go back far enough, I’ve had a very complicated life really and I suppose if you want to know it all of course it’ll come out anyway not that it’s anything to be ashamed of. My dad was a policeman and I was born in Goulburn because there was no hospital, you could be born in Australia in 1923 closer than my grand my mother’s mother and father lived in Goulburn so they took me over to Goulburn to live.
LD: Oh so your parents were actually living in Queanbeyan?
LWG: No, oh no, in those days I’ll tell you where, I was born and my dad was then, I told you he was a policeman, that’s where you stay and move on as you get promoted and so on. I was born when they were at a place called Daysdale you would have never have heard of that it’s near Corowa, that’s New South Wales. And from them he went to, er, now let me think where did we go to Leyton, from Daysdale to Leeton to Jellico [?] which is south of there as well, Jellico [?] to Culcairn, Culcairn we went then from Culcairn to Crookwell, Crookwell to Kuma, Kuma[?] to Queanbeyan, and there I finished my schooling by riding a bike from the police station in Queanbeyan to Civey [?] every day. And got the leaving certificate.
LD: That’s a good long ride every morning.
LWG: It used to take us thirty five minutes and we’d be hanging on behind a bus [laughs] or a truck used to sit on. Do you know Queanbeyan?
LD: Yes.
LWG: Do you know where you cross the road there’s a bridge, a bridge side and so on we used to hang on there because there’s a downhill.
LD: Yes.
RG: Yes.
LWG: So that means if you took off from there you got your speed up quickly on your bike.
RG: Indeed.
LWG: And then we used to sit on sit on in behind Quadlings bike, you ever head of Quadlings?
RG: No, no.
LWG: Well they owned it, anyway he used to hate us doing that he used to look in his rear vision mirror. We went to school the four of us, two in, I had a great mate called Freddie Greentree, I don’t know whether you know Greentree’s Café, Queanbeyan?
RG: No.
LD: Mmm, a long time ago aye.
LWG: Oh yes everything’s a long time ago now.
LD: Yes.
LWG: We used to sit up the top there and as the bus came down, down, going downhill we’d peddle like mad get behind the bus and you’d catch your wheel right up the back you know and then means you’re in the draw of the bus —
RG: Yep you’re in the slipstream.
LWG: And of course eventually the ultimate did happen it wasn’t me, but Freddie hit the back and it threw him off and broke his leg and things such as that. There’s so much that you know you, I can talk about which goes through my mind which will be useless in a sense although that presents you the sort of person to you.
LD: Well that’s exactly it and this background kind of really is important because it shows the kind of you know the, it’s shows the people who are behind all this you know, you’re not just a pilot there’s a person behind this and you know and it’s important I think. Anyway what kind of work did you do, did you work before you joined the Air Force or did you join directly from school?
LWG: Er, well I suppose waiting for, well work I suppose, ‘cos then war had started then, and my brother was, I was born into a wonderful family in actual fact. My eldest brother was R. R. Gray and I don’t know whether you remember the name if you ever got a refund from the tax department it would have been signed by R. R. Gray.
RG: Okay.
LWG: I don’t suppose it rings a bill, but anyway Ron he became a deputy commissioner of in Sydney, but he was in records section in the tax department so as I came up to the end of the schooling of course he got me in at the tax department.
RG: Oh okay.
LWG: So I joined that and I was working there for oh how long was I there? Six months or something like that.
RG: Was it in Canberra or in Sydney?
LWG: Here.
RG: In Canberra here.
LWG: I was a despatch clerk and that meant I licked the stamps [laughs], and I used to get have them [unclear] was always bleeding [laughs] and mother used to go [unclear]
LD: They didn’t get you a little sponge? [laughs]
LWG: Well they did and I thought that’s ridiculous because that have you ever tasted the sponge when you, you know you’ve got a sheet of stamps, you’re not sending one letter out you’re sending out so they [unclear] got their share of it. [laughs] So I was there for about six months when I and next big thing that happened is I turned eighteen, ‘cos I wanted, I always wanted to fly aeroplanes of course. And when I was eighteen I got my dad to walk me down to the oh the town clerk in town in Queanbeyan and joined up there and they, I had a, eventually had a medical, a big medical down in Sydney, Palmer and Pluckett Streets [?] you’re making me think way back a long time now of course, but if you want to get a format of what I’m about you probably need to know these things.
RG: It helps, it all adds up.
LWG: And I passed the test there, that was one hell of a test incidentally. Always tell the story about the way they tested you Palmer and Pluckett Streets down in Woolamaloo, if you know Woolamaloo?
RG: I do I was in the Navy I was a guard and I —
LWG: Were you? Good.
RG: So I know Woolamaloo well.
LWG: What were you doing in?
RG: I was in weapons electronics.
LWG: Ah.
RG: Yeah.
LWG: Did you have an association with Harmon?
RG: No, never got posted to Harmon no, no, no, never got posted to either of those.
LWG: They put Harmon in whilst I was, we were in Queanbeyan incidentally.
RG: Ah it would have done ‘cos it was during the war wasn’t it, the early stages of the war yeah that’s right.
LWG: We used to have a lot of sailors coming in —
RG: Villconnan Transmitting Station [?] as well —
LWG: Villconnan was receiving, I’ve forgotten which one was receiving —
RG: Bombshore was receiving I think that was transmitting Villconnan yeah, yeah.
LWG: So.
RG: So medical was seemed a bit rigorous —
LWG: They did it down at Plank Street in Sydney, I remember I was there all day walking around with underpants, I can’t remember whether we did, I didn’t think we had underpants in those days [laughs] all day.
RG: You said the hearing the test, you said the way they tested the hearing —
LWG: Oh yeah that was, that was corny, I even laughed because everything was very serious you know, they put you in a, open a door and I stood there as everyone else was ‘cos there was a queue and there was a bloke standing at the far end of that room with the door, the window open and all the noise was coming from Woolamaloo, Woolamaloo then was a busy place is still is.
RG: Yeah absolutely.
LWG: It was busy because not because of trucks it was busy because of horses drawing the feed.
RG: Ah.
LD: Ah, ah.
RG: Yep.
LWG: And there was a lot of noise you know cracking of whips and all sorts, so it was unbelievable hearing test and the bloke at the window would say twenty-two [whisper] he’d whisper it, [laughs], and I would say twenty-two. [laughs]
RG: Very scientific. [laughs]
LWG: I remember on one occasion I should have [unclear] and he said, ‘Speak up I can’t hear you.’ [Raucous laughter]
LD: Funny.
LWG: It’s funny that, that I did a lot during the war but I’ve lived with it ever since incidentally you never got away from it because every time I put my head on pillow I’m thinking about the war or part some part of it ‘cos I was always in it, and a bit unusual as well because I turned eighteen and immediately I was called up into the Army.
RG: Right okay.
LWG: Because when I joined up with the, they accepted me into the Air Force incidentally except there was a ten months waiting list and did the whole thing but in the course of that they called me into the Army and I ended up being the defenders of Sydney ‘cos I was up on North Head.
RG: What unit were you with, sort of militia unit or?
LWG: 110th Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment.
RG: Right okay.
LD: I’m sorry but just for the tape for the future they had conscription in Australia then?
LWG: Yes, yes.
LD: Just to be clear for the record that’s all.
RG: Yeah, yeah. So sorry North Head did you say?
LWG: North Head. Actually I had to be trained of course and so on.
RG: What were you doing in the battery?
LWG: Gunner—
RG: [unclear] or something.
LWG: Now actually it suited me because it was to do with the air because it was a Bofors Gun, do you know what a Bofors Gun is?
RG: Yes yeah, we had a lot of those on the ships, same guns hardly changed still using them into the ‘80’s yeah.
LWG: Well I went this 110th Light Anti-Aircraft tour of duties, and they took me first in the Army, took me first to the showground where I got my Army hat and uniform which is a story in itself, to get the uniform they used to, they had a big long counter and there were blokes there serving, serving you with your uniform and they didn’t come up to the measuring tape or something, he’d say, ‘Oh he’s a thirty-six’ or whatever.’ I remember I the first weekend after getting my uniform they gave us that weekend off and thought that was strange wasn’t it gave you a weekend’s leave which means I came back to Queanbeyan changed trains at Goulburn and we got here late, well early in the morning, my folks were still in bed and I used to creep in, did this a number of times. So on this occasion creeped in and knocked on the door and folks were still in bed, I walked in and my mother looked at me and she cried and she said, ‘What have they done to you?’ ‘Cos I could walk with the uniform they gave me and I put it on I could walk in that take three steps before it moved, before it started moving. [laughter] Sounds stupid but it was a fact.
RG: Oh yeah, yeah.
LWG: And of course she spent the whole weekend, which is of course why they gave us leave, she spent the weekend with the sewing machine sewing the uniform. [laughs] Unbelievable.
RG: So where did you go for your training with the Army, you were kitted out at the showground?
LWG: There was, you know where the racecourse is?
RG: Yeah, yeah.
LWG: Well next to that was another racecourse do you know what that was?
RG: No.
LWG: Kensington.
RG: Ah.
LWG: Kensington Racecourse and they’d taken that over by the Army so they took us to Kensington Racecourse where this regiment was. I was a gunner I wasn’t a private I was a gunner.
RG: A gunner yes artillery yeah.
LWG: [unclear] All that’s incidentally, I’m in a mess I understand that, most of that though is because, um, I don’t know how to take all this, if you want to, wanting I’ll be talk, telling, giving my story for the UA.
LD: Oh yes.
RG: Oh yes.
LWG: You know the UA? Military and they’d been interviewing me about that and I thought that’s how you came by —
RG: Ah it might have been actually, it might have been someone through UA yeah, yeah.
LWG: Could have been. Anyway they’ve been doing a lot of research on my history, anyway to quickly go over the top of it they trained us in, Percy Lamb, Percy was at school with me, he also did the riding to Cirry [?] and so on, and Freddie Greentree did, there was four of us used to do that, and he was called up the same time as I was and we both went into this Bofor Gun regiment, and ‘cos I’ve got to think back about all these things.
RG: So you did your initial training at with —
LWG: We went in mainly with a lot of old blokes and so on, some were young, and Freddie, and Freddie Greentree and myself stood out in one particular way we could read and write.
LD: Ah yes, yes.
LWG: Most old people couldn’t read and a lot of them anyway.
LD: Yes we’ve heard that before.
RG: Yeah.
LWG: Which is amazing isn’t it.
RG: It is actually.
LWG: Because of that he and I picked things up quickly, Freddie and I, and because we did and the Army we found was completely useless they were learning themselves ‘cos was early in the war, and Freddie and I eventually became, no not Freddie, Percy Lamb.
RG: Percy yeah.
LWG: Freddie Greentree, not Freddie Greentree, Percy Lamb, Percy and I. Percy and I became well we were best friends anyway, he was a bigger man Percy than I was I’ve always been a little squirt as they call it, and eventually we became bombardiers which is equivalent of corporal and we became instructors.
RG: ‘Cos how long would have you been in the Army by then for God’s sake not long?
LWG: Not very long no. I think I was only I can’t remember how long about six months I think.
RG: Oh wow.
LWG: And I’ve got a huge ringing in my ears ‘cos we ended up eventually in North Head, and you know what’s up in North Head?
RG: There’s a quarantine station.
LWG: Right on the head was a big coastal —
RG: Oh battery, coastal battery.
LWG: What was that —
RG: Nine point two inch I think they had.
LWG: Nine point something.
RG: Nine point two yeah, yeah, big, they were a bloody big gun those ones yeah.
LWG: Ah.
RG: I doubt they were naval guns.
LWG: And we didn’t know it in that we put in our Bofor Gun we established it there and put a bag —
RG: Sandbag.
LWG: Sandbag.
RG: Yep.
LWG: Protection around it filled it with the stuff which we were levelling the garden, the heads, and we built this high protection around it, now what was I gonna say about that?
RG: What, what your ears.
LWG: They had to shoot eventually, they shot, can’t remember if it was one or two, if you stand beside a big gun and they put a shell in it ‘cos you know how it’s done I suppose or may be longer and then they shoot it, we’d just finished building this wall around our Bofor Gun, knocking it down and putting it in place by bricks you know, and we’d worked pretty hard on that levelled it off and so on, and it shot once or twice I can’t remember, once or twice now, but you could watch the shell come out of the end of the big gun, oh it came up out of the ground it was on a lift and we didn’t know we had that, I didn’t know.
RG: Bit of a shock when it fired.
LWG: So we were there it just said that we were having a shoot today and the next thing you saw was this blasted big thing and they shot it and to my surprise we stood just beside it and, and to my surprise you could see the shell come out of the end of the bow and you could watch it all the way, and we could see them taking a tug boat —
RG: For the target.
LWG: The target, splashed in the water didn’t hit it, it was close but it hit the water, but this huge concussion.
RG: Concussion.
LWG: And both my ears are screaming now and can’t do anything about it.
RG: Didn’t put you out for aircrew service at all though?
LWG: I didn’t tell them about that.
RG: I thought that might have been the case. [laughs]
LWG: [unclear]
RG: Oh yeah they’d have knocked you back on that wouldn’t they. Did it ever cause you any problems with you know communication with the aircraft with the headsets?
LWG: Well I came through that.
LD: So once you left the Army ‘cos my little record says that basically you were discharged from the Army and you joined the Air Force the next day —
LWG: Well that’s the work we just waved goodbye they didn’t want us to go, and they promised us we’d become sergeants immediately [laughter] and they were going to send us to officers training.
RG: Oh okay.
LWG: That’s Percy and myself.
RG: Yeah, yeah.
LWG: ‘Cos we were —
RG: ‘Cos you were educated.
LWG: In actual fact we were a week there, in the [unclear] we couldn’t comprehend most other kids couldn’t read or write.
RG: Yeah we interviewed a bloke in Wogga [?] a couple of weeks ago and he said exactly the same thing that, that the guys he was in with in the Army most of them were illiterate yeah, yeah, he was in the Army first as well.
GWG: Illiterate sounds a bad word but it wasn’t their fault.
RG: No, no.
LWG: [unclear]
RG: Yes, yes, absolutely.
LD: So once you joined the Air Force did you, did you go to an ITS immediately, or did you have to wait for that to happen, or how did that work?
LWG: We were up in North Head protecting Sydney. [laughs]
LD: Trying to hit the targets pulled by tug boat.
LWG: Gosh I’ve gotta think back so far, ‘cos the Army was unbelievable —
LD: Doesn’t matter if you can’t remember.
LWG: Mmm?
LD: Doesn’t matter if you can’t remember it’s a long time ago.
LWG: Oh yeah but it was very interesting. I gave a list of towns where I’ve lived and at this stage, the first I’d been in the way of travel was the place which is five miles in distance and a million miles from Care [?], do you know where that is?
RG: No.
LWG: That’s Manley.
RG: Oh of course yes.
LD: Yes of course.
LWG: And we had gone, my family and I, had gone to Manley a number of times and so we knew about Manley, and so whilst I was up on the Head incidentally we went up there just at the time when the submarines came into.
RG: Yes, yes, yes.
LWG: Into Sydney Harbour, and so everyone was on edge then.
RG: Do you remember —
LWG: We had, we were a group that went was servicing that Bofor Gun of course but we only had one rifle amongst us and we only had one clip of bullets so you had to be precious with those.
RG: Yeah, yeah.
LWG: And I don’t know whether, I used to get as scared as hell so did the rest of us because North Head is populated by thousands probably of bandicoots and at night of course you’d be on duty minding the gun on your own and you’d hear this rustling and we were expecting the Japanese at this stage.
LD: Yes, well when you had the Japanese fleet of subs in the harbour, yeah.
LWG: And um,
RG: It’s probably lucky you only had five bullets or there’d been a lot of dead bandicoots. [laughs]
LWG: There certainly would have been, when you hear guns going off all night because —
RG: There’s all the shooting down in the harbour itself wasn’t there.
LWG: Well we know what was happening there it was all of us up there on North Head.
RG: Oh really okay yeah you’re centuries firing at —
LWG: Oh well yeah they get nervous.
RG: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
LWG: There was one bloke, we were in tents, there was one bloke there I can’t remember his name, late at night he’d all of sudden sit upright and scream his head off and that used to put you on edge. [laughs]
RG: So so when you say the Air Force came back and said we want you, so where did you do your initial Air Force training?
LWG: At Greatfield Park [?] we went in there.
RG: Oh yes yeah.
LWG: We went in there I think it was course thirty-two.
LD: That’s the same as Burt Adams.
RG: Yeah but,
LWG: Adam?
RG: Burt Adams, navigator, he’s the chap out at Wogga we interviewed a couple of weeks ago he was in thirty-two course as well.
LWG: Really.
RG: Yeah, yeah, pretty sure it was thirty-two.
LD: He said he started off in thirty-two until he became ill.
RG: He had a bad run he got appendicitis and got taken off the course and put on the next course and then and then he got put on the next one and you know yeah he had a bit of a rough trot on that.
LD: But he started on thirty-two course.
LWG: Ah. Well it’s interesting every time I went to a new place or moved on as we did I immediately joined forces with a special bloke and each time was fortunate enough to, to hook up as very close mates, we weren’t gay and all that sort of garbage, I don’t understand that.
RG: I think this happened in the services I did the same thing you’d join a new ship and you’d always be beaten and there’d be one bloke who’d was your special oppo and often he would be posted away to a different ships or whatever and you’d probably never see them again but you’d find someone else who’d be yeah.
LWG: We were all together for quite some time and he’s in the War Museum over here incidentally his story.
RG: Who’s that?
LWG: Colin Flockhart [?].
RG: Flossard?
LWG: Flockhart.
RG: Flockhart.
LWG: Colin Flockhart. His sister is a resident here.
RG: Oh okay.
LWG: Allison Aitken, she’s, she married —
LD: Is Colin still with us?
LWG: Colin no, he was killed, I think most of the blokes, my close friends were, would build up as we moved on of course we all went over you know that’ll come out in due course.
LD: So was Percy in the same, was he in 32 Course with you as well?
LWG: Yeah.
LD: Oh good.
LWG: But he did, he, we went to Bradfield Park, Bradfield Park was an ITS they called it an Initial Training School and you couldn’t I personally at school I did use to reasonably well at school I always had the ambition of being top of every class I always came second.
LD: That’s pretty good still.
RG: Yeah.
LWG: What was I gonna say then, ah, I hooked up with when I went to ITS, the first bloke I met was this Colin Flockhart, and we became great mates he was a wonderful fella and he would have been one of those blokes that was always coming first, [laughs], but he and I followed one another over to England sadly he was killed over, oh, it’s really is becoming dull this day. That’s my diary lets have that.
RG: Yeah sure.
LWG: This incidentally is a cover, we all bought one of those ‘cos there was one of the ground staff was making these.
RG: Oh.
LWG: She would walk around all these people who had got this book, we all bought one and it’s done its work ‘cos it protected the book.
RG: Yeah, yeah, [unclear] was sitting there —
LWG: Now what was I going to tell you, what was I —
LD: You were saying —
LWG: Oh this has got a list of everything you need to know here, what I flew, where I was, that’s all the places I was at, and you can have a look at that if you like.
RG: Yes I will thank you.
LWG: ‘Cos I need glasses on.
RG: Yeah.
LD: Bill did you do any of your training overseas, you know some people were sent to places like Canada and Rhodesia and stuff to do their training?
LWG: No, let’s catch up, we did split in this course, some went elsewhere and so on, but that’ll tell you where I went. The first place was —
RG: Temora [?].
LD: Temora [?].
LWG: Yeah once we got out of ITS that was Bradfield Park we went to Temora [?], [unclear] that was —
LD: Yeah but, yeah there’s a —
LWG: That was Avro Ansoms.
LD: Yeah there’s a bunker there still a communications bunker, a World War Two communications bunker there still.
LWG: I wouldn’t be surprised.
LD: That place on the coast yeah.
RG: South Australia?
LD: Oh no I’m not.
LWG: That’s South Australia.
RG: You’re thinking of someplace else.
LD: Maraputa [?].
RG: Maraputa [?] you’re thinking of.
LD: Yeah sorry.
LWG: I got my wings in Mallala [?] went to Temora first after Bradfield Park, then went to Temora.
RG: Was Temora was for single engine flying or and then multi engine at Mallala?
LWG: No that, they were Tiger Moths.
RG: So single engine.
LWG: Yeah single engine.
RG: Yeah, Temora, so Mallala that —
LWG: Mallala was Avro Ansoms, we were going, we all wanted to fly Spitfires.
RG: Of course yeah.
LD: They had other uses for those Spitfires —
LWG: But in actual fact one would discover when you got to England wasn’t the Spitfire that won the war it was the Hurricane.
RG: The Hurricane yeah, yeah.
LWG: Hurricane was much more adaptable.
RG: Spitfires had the glory though didn’t they?
LWG: Oh god yeah they had a new one out every couple of weeks and so on.
RG: A good looking aircraft.
LWG: Mmm?
RG: A good looking aircraft.
LWG: Oh yes, well they won that race.
RG: Yeah they did, yeah.
LWG: England to Australia, fascinating.
LD: Bill did you have any trouble qualifying as a pilot did you pass everything easily and you said you always liked to try to come first?
LWG: Not easy no, this was something new, it was, I’d only been, I always wanted to be I tell you what I always wanted to be I wanted to be when I was early life I wanted to be firstly I wanted to be a lion tamer.
LD: Of course. [laughs]
LWG: Lion tamer where did I go from there, [laughs].
LD: A lion tamer to flying a Lancaster it’s a bit of a leap isn’t it?
LWG: Actually I learnt a lot lion taming it was good, I had an, we had an Alsatian dog we used to put him on the, on a chain and put the chain on the clothes line and he would chase up and down, used to make a hell of a lot of noise.
LD: Oh yes, yes, yes.
LWG: But he was a lovely dog and I used to tame him I used to crack I had a whip, crack it and he’d look at me with [unclear] but anyway I wanted to be a lion tamer, but then I always wanted to be a pilot wanted to fly used to read books [unclear] have you ever heard of that.
LD: No.
LWG: So I always wanted to be a pilot.
LD: Well that’s good that you were then.
LWG: And the first flight I had we were at Crookwell, I think it was Crookwell, and someone came in with a DH type of aircraft and [unclear] well the pilot came in, came in and was talking my dad he wanted to take people for joy rides but dad being the policeman there he had to give his permission and he, the pilot was pulling out his [unclear] I’d like to had a trip and the pilot there was talking to my father used me as the lever [laughs] so eventually —
RG: How old were you then do you reckon?
LWG: Six or something like that, it was a De Havilland landed about three miles out of Crookwell and he agreed to take my mother, and my brother I think Ron, anyway I think four of us went up in this aircraft we got into a bit of a cabin it had a hole in the back I remember through that I could see the pilot I didn’t see much of the ground ‘cos I was watching him I remember, but anyway that was my first trip in an aeroplane thought it was wonderful. Then I used to build up, my big job in the home was cutting the wood and in those days you didn’t cut, you didn’t get a little box and I used to position them so as I could sit in the middle of them, that had wings on so on and I used to fly that. [laughs]
LD: The dog may have been quite relieved about this change in vocation I think?
LWG: Who’s that?
LD: The dog he may have been a bit relieved about the change in vocation.
LWG: Oh it was a lovely dog.
RG: So just going back to the training, so Temora first, then Mallala —
LWG: Mallala we got our wings at Mallala.
RG: And that was Ansoms yes?
LWG: Avro Ansoms yeah. Do you remember you won’t remember any of this, during whilst we were there or it was just before we got to Mallala, a bloke was I don’t know whether it was a Mallala either, but he was in an Ansom and another aeroplane landed on top of him.
RG: That was at Wogga or here in [unclear].
LWG: Yes it was here —
RG: Funny the top one the crew on the bottom were killed —
LWG: A photograph —
RG: And the top guy —
LWG: He landed them both together —
RG: But he had the engines on the bottom one ‘cos his engines stopped and he used his control surfaces and they gave him his wings and they damn well should have. [laughs]
LD: I’ve seen a photograph of that it’s just unbelievable.
RG: I think it was Wogga or here in Quinty.
LWG: Here in Quinty it was singles.
RG: Ah it must have been Wogga then or may be Temora. So that was the end of your flying training?
LWG: Oh no, gosh no.
RG: In Australia I mean.
LWG: That’s getting your wings, we got our wings of Mallala and I’ve got photo of that there was about sixty of us came out on this Course 32 and you had, I don’t know but I don’t remember how many hours we’d had when we got our wings and then they brought us back to Sydney or took us or sent us home and then took us to Bradfield Park again. Bradfield Park, we weren’t there very long but then they took us down to the harbour put us on the “Mount Vernon” [?] I think it was the name of the ship.
RG: Yes, yes, “Mount Vernon”.
LWG: That’ll tell you because it’s got a better memory than I have, that left we didn’t know where we were going, they told us we were going, of course all this was happening at the time the Japanese were —
RG: Yeah ‘cos this was the —
LWG: It was twelfth —
RG: 12th August ’43, even had U-boats down here at that point.
LWG: Oh yeah. They bunged us into this “Mount Vernon” used to be called the “Old Washington” it was an American ship and you always know when you are in, in with the Yanks, they used to have one thing they always be doing and say over the tanoy, ‘Now here this.’
RG: Yeah, they still do it. [laughs]
LWG: Do they.
RG: They still do it, they do though yeah.
LWG: This is Jo. Come in Jo.
Jo: Oh hello you’re busy I’ll come back later.
LWG: Alright I shall see you a little later on, okay sweetheart, thanks. She’s upstairs lovely girl yeah, she become, she was great friend of my wife’s.
LD: Ah that’s good.
RG: So “Mount Vernon” where did you go?
LWG: Ah “Mount Vernon”, they put us in the “Mount Vernon” we thought we were going to go north but instead of turning left they turned right, and we were on for a fortnight roughly I think —
RG: Ah yeah exactly fourteen days.
LWG: Took us over to San Francisco.
LD: So did you go via New Zealand?
LWG: Ah in that direction but no we didn’t stop.
LD: Okay, so you stopped, so you —
LWG: Went direct to America yeah.
LD: Okay, and, and you —
LWG: And they took us from the boat.
LD: San Francisco.
LWG: We passed out of [unclear] watch him — [laughs]
LD: He couldn’t swim over.
RG: I couldn’t swim anyway [laughs], I never even passed my swimming test in the Navy believe it or not but I still got to warrant officer anyway.
LWG: They put us on to a, on to a train at San Francisco we were on that for how long?
RG: Four days.
LWG: Four or five days.
RG: Yes.
LWG: Took us across America.
LD: These the Pullman carriages.
LWG: Yeah, Negro, there was one Negro waiter on each carriage. We were always we couldn’t understand how they used to treat the Negros, I couldn’t understand the Negros that they formed big battalions out here there were lots of them, you’d think that the way they used to treat them they wouldn’t force them to become soldiers.
RG: Yeah, yeah.
LWG: Anyway they took us we went as far as Massachusetts, I think it was Massachusetts this Camp Miles Standish [?]
LD: Ah that’s where Ken went.
LWG: That was an embarkation place not far from Boston and we were there for some time. Ah —
LD: Was it in the winter when you were there?
LWG: We were only there for —
RG: No it’s summer, summer, August.
LWG: Summer.
RG: Actually you were there for a while you were there for —
LWG: I was there for six weeks.
RG: Yeah, yeah, you left on October more ten weeks or so.
LWG: Colin Flockhart, who was my great friend we were together all this time of course, and we parted there because we were supposed to be there for ten days I think and eventually we were there for —
RG: It was about ten weeks.
LWG: Ten weeks.
RG: Yeah, yeah.
LWG: ‘Cos every time they were going to move the next day some of them would come up with an injection they gave us to test us, we had, one of the blokes got scarlet fever so we all had to be tested.
RG: Yeah.
LD: Yes ‘cos it’s so contagious.
LWG: I was a positive which meant that I had come in contact with it apparently this is what they told us. Colin Flockhart hadn’t he didn’t get the red dot.
RG: So he got moved out first.
LWG: So he went out first, he, he came over on the “Aquitania” I think it was.
RG: Yeah.
LWG: But we went down eventually they put us on to, went into this room in trucks, huge room, big pavilion and had doors on it and I didn’t catch on at the time, none of us did didn’t know where the hell we were they didn’t tell us, but it proved to be the side of the “Queen Mary”.
RG: Ah.
LD: Ah.
LWG: It was against the wharf and all the blokes were [unclear] and there were, I don’t know how many there were of us about a hundred I suppose, but there was sixteen thousand Yanks going on there as well.
RG: A huge number of troops.
LWG: And all the activity was there and they put us in this room and when we got in there I thought it was a big building I’d gone into it proved to be this ship.
RG: “The Queen Mary”.
LWG: They put us somewhere downstairs wherever it was and it sailed out, we passed the Statue of Liberty and so on, didn’t tell us where we going all that sort of thing.
RG: Did you sail in convoy or unescorted?
LWG: We were going in convoy.
RG: Right okay.
LWG: But the convoys speed was four knots that was open to U-boats and so on so as soon as we got passed the Statue of Liberty I remember “Queen Mary” we took off.
RG: Yeah she did thirty odd knots.
LWG: Yeah, altogether different.
RG: Did they, ‘cos we had Lucy’s uncle was a tail gunner who was killed and but he went over on the “Queen Mary” was the “Queen Mary” wasn’t it?
LD: “Elizabeth”
RG: “Elizabeth” but they used them as anti-submarine lookouts, did they do that with you guys at all?
LWG: [unclear]
RG: As anti-submarine lookouts they used them, they used the airmen as lookouts for periscopes and submarines and so forth.
LWG: Oh no.
RG: No they didn’t do that with you guys.
LD: Was the ship very crowded?
LWG: Yeah there were sixteen thousand Yanks on it.
LD: Were you guys hot bunking?
LWG: Hot, hot —
LD: Hot bunking no.
LWG: What’s that?
LD: I have heard of you know basically that the ships were so crowded that at times you know basically people would leave the bunks somebody else just comes into it directly that there weren’t enough bunks for people to have separately.
LWG: Oh no, actually I think on the “Queen Mary” I think we, we laid down on the ground, we were down like the fourth, we were underneath the water level anyway. And they kept you busy by putting you in a queue, you had to queue, join the queue you’d find the end of the queue and you’d spend all day going around for your meals.
RG: Yeah.
LWG: It used to take that long. And we were on it for five days.
RG: It doesn’t say here actually how long you were on the “Queen Mary” but it would have been about four days or so, five days.
LWG: Yeah, we went to Liverpool I think.
LD: You arrived in Liverpool, and where, and before you actually sent to an ITU and everything where did you stay?
LWG: You should be able to tell me, we all went to the same place when we got to Liverpool —
LD: I’ve heard Brighton or Bournemouth.
LWG: They put us on a boat, a train and took us down to Brighton.
LD: You went to Brighton —
LWG: And Colin Flockhart was there, he had the bed next to him reserved. [laughs]
RG: They put you in one of those hotels in the seafront?
LWG: “The Grand Hotel” I started the other one was “The Metropole”.
RG: “Metropole” yeah.
LD: That’s where Ken stayed “The Metropole”.
LWG: I didn’t get “The Metropole” until later on I went into “The Grand”. And incidentally when we got our wings we all became sergeants except one he happened to be the, his name was Tom Hughes, he was the grandchild of, er —
RG: Not Billy Hughes?
LWG: The premier, the prime minster.
RG: Billy Hughes.
LD: No the present —
LWG: The prime minister, what’s his name?
RG: The president?
LWG: Yes the president.
RG: Oh, oh, oh Turnbull.
LWG: Turnbull yes.
RG: Ah this is Great Britain, oh okay.
LWG: You go back you find, and he incidentally he obviously came from a special family because he was the only one amongst us all —
RG: Who got a commission.
LWG: Got a commission. [laughs] And he never ate with us either what’s more he used to when we were being trained at Mallala, I remembered you’d see him occasionally during the course of the day but he didn’t chase the mice and so on like the rest of us did.
RG: So he just kept himself away.
LWG: He always stayed in a hotel.
LD: Oh.
LWG: And that’s not I’m up to belittling I wouldn’t have minded doing it myself.
RG: Oh no, but you know yeah.
LWG: But then he was favoured he came with us in the boat to, the boats as well, but he, he came on, he broke away from where I was he went over on the “Aquitania” sent to Britain, England.
RG: Then from Brighton you went on to somewhere in Wales, 29 AFTS, Griff Pidard?
LWG: Clyffe Pypard.
LD: So what OTU was that?
RG: That’s 29 AFTS.
LWG: Didn’t do anything, I remember I taxied a Tiger Moth somewhere, Colin Flockhart had to hang on to the wing if I remember, but we, we then had to be, things started to move of course and we had to wait for our opportunities, we had a lot to learn. We had to learn to fly but by the time I could fly a Tiger Moth before the Avro Ansom which was [unclear] they’d been civilian training if you like just to how to fly an aeroplane used to have to learn to fly a little bit more than what they taught.
RG: So at 29 AFTS did you, what did you fly there was it Oxfords?
LWG: I went on to, eventually I went on to oh what’s the name?
RG: Oxford?
LWG: Yeah, Morris Oxford, not a Morris Oxford.
LD: That’s a car. [laughs]
LWG: It’s got another name, something Oxford, the Oxford and it was a very nice aircraft and a little bit more elite than the Avro Ansom.
RG: Was it a twin engine?
LWG: Twin yeah,.
RG: Twin yeah.
LWG: Oh we were destined for bombers then, well we were when we finished at Mallala in actual fact, I don’t know of anyone who went on to Tigers.
RG: Coastal Command?
LWG: And I’m thinking about it these days I’m pleased they, that’s, that was playing with toys compared with what we were doing.
RG: Yeah, yeah absolutely. So was this the Oxford at, that was in Wales wasn’t it Clyffe Pypard?
LWG: Clyffe Pipard, er well it was all, I never actually knew I knew where the pubs were [laughs] I don’t well that’s about the only time we didn’t know anyone and you’re kept busy, the amazing thing is and they didn’t say this when I went to Bradfield Park, we, we had to do air frames and learn about aeroplanes and the air and wings and all that sort of thing, but god that was the best schooling you’ll ever get, they started, the first thing they did they got us all in we all had to write out our wills, because that’s was happening of course everyone, and all the blokes, Colin Flockhart, and all the others [unclear] and the fact that I wasn’t touch wood about that I suppose that’s plain fortunate.
RG: And then?
LWG: Anywhere where are we up to?
RG: Well that was 29 AFTS and then it says here you went back to Brighton for a while only about three weeks in Brighton, and then you went on to 23 AHU at Hednesford.
LWG: At where?
RG: Hednesford.
LWG: Hednesford. Oh we were, there we, there we split up, Colin Flockhart he went on and I had to wait, they took me and, this is all [unclear] Actually I’ve had someone else doing my story and I ought to just give you that because I did all the research for that, that’s the third eye that’s —
RG: Mmm. It would be good to get hold of that but —
LWG: Anyway —
RG: So AHU is it?
LWG: We went from the Oxford which was a nice aircraft to fly but it was still a training type of aircraft and then ah, then we went on to Wellingtons. Where we were when we got —
RG: It said here you went from to Brighton to Hednesford, Hednesford and then to Wheaton Aston 21 AFU.
LWG: What’s after that?
RG: And then after that is reserve flight at Purton, and then ATU, 30 ATU at Hixon.
LWG: It must have been Hixon where I, I think where I was when we got our crew.
LD: Yes I was wondering about that crewing up experience.
RG: You must have done that before you got on to the Wellingtons.
LWG: It’s all so long ago now.
LD: Excuse me Bill where’s the toilet?
LWG: Oh yes sorry, in there third door shut there that’s the toilet.
LD: Thank you.
LWG: Or if you’d rather be more further away from us you go into that bedroom down there, be right there I think. There’s a light switch on your left hand side.
LD: Thank you.
RG: So would have crewed up for the Wellington though wouldn’t you?
LWG: Yeah now, we’ve got to guess the stage how I got my crew was interesting, er, let’s have that.
RG: Yeah sure.
LWG: Get my glasses what did I do with them?
RG: I did see them actually, there we are.
LWG: I’ve got them there have I?
RG: Oh no there’s a pair there, there broken ones.
LWG: Well you can help me.
LD: How?
LWG: My glasses, there probably in the bathroom are they?
LD: Oh okay I’ll have a look.
LWG: What have I done with them probably in my darn pocket.
LD: Not in the bathroom.
LWG: Oh it’s all right.
RG: In your pocket? [laughs]
LWG: There’s the aircraft I flew.
RG: Yeah.
LWG: Oxfords, we went on to Wellingtons, then we were on to Lancs, then on the Lancaster Mark 2 that had radial engines, then eventually we ended up with that got on to the Mark 3, 4, 5 I think.
RG: They had the Merlins didn’t they?
LWG: And they were Merlins a lot of difference mainly because the 2 the Lanc 2 had the Hercules and that was radial so it was good next to the ground.
RG: But not high at altitude.
LWG: Not high.
RG: Yeah.
LWG: But the 2’s with the Merlin engines lovely aeroplane, it was a lovely aeroplane, but the Merlin was wonderful as well the Merlin.
RG: Your crew was it a mixed RAF, RAAF, RCAF?
LWG: Yeah.
RG: Did you have one crew all the way through Bill or did it, did you?
LWG: Am not sure about that mainly the navigator was, I got my first navigator and towards [unclear] We all got to, no it must have been, confused where was I when we got our?
RG: It doesn’t matter Bill when you got the crew it will be in here anyway.
LWG: Give me my thoughts though, slow down.
RG: Do you want that open page again with the —
LWG: I’d be lost without this thing. Should have done my own research shouldn’t I?
RG: Ah. [looking through book]
LWG: Ah 30 ATU Hixon we were Staffordshire, and I started off with one, two, three, four, five crew.
RG: That’s a crew for a Wellington isn’t it five?
LWG: Yeah we were at Hixon and they, I’ve forgotten how many there were of us I think there might have been twelve, twelve pilots, twelve navigators and so on, and put us all in a room together ridiculous, and said [unclear]. Met another great mate his name was a nickname of course his name was Danny because his name was Daniel Carne and I think one thing that was outstanding was that he was, he had been a professional snooker player.
RG: Ahh, he’d have been handy in the pubs [laughs]
LWG: Yeah, I loved snooker as well not as though I was all that good then, but he used to use me as the wall that is he’d bounce off me because, we, he and I met one another in the snooker room of course.
RG: Right yeah.
LWG: And we both had a game and he’d say you can break so I would break and then he’d sink them all.
RG: Clear the table [laughs], so he was in your crew was he your first crew?
LWG: He was just like another bloke I met later on who was a cricketer, Keith Miller, Keith Miller, he just looked like Keith Miller slicked back hair.
RG: Yeah.
LWG: And he and I became great mates and I was always having to put up with him and his girlfriends because he attracted all the girls.
RG: Yes.
LWG: You know and so on. But he was a great bloke we got to know one another very well over the snooker table he taught me how to play snooker properly and so on and —
RG: So crewing up you just in that room and you just found —
LWG: Well they put us in there were twelve pilots as I was saying all the ones along, and they said, ‘Right oh sort yourselves out into crews.’ Which I thought was ridiculous, and I said to Danny I said, ‘This is ridiculous come on we’ll go have a game of snooker.’ And we did, he said ‘Good idea.’ And we went next door away from this group that were all milling around trying to make friends and so on which was just plain ridiculous, and after a while there was a knock on the door and what anyway, well there’d be twelve blokes came in and they had formed themselves into the crews but they needed a pilot, they said ‘We’re looking for a pilot, two pilots.’ So we, I said ‘Well.’ To Danny I said, ‘Well god this that’ll suit us I suppose so we’ll toss.’ [laughs] And I tossed and that way I got my crew and he got the others, and I had one, two, three, four, five people, one of them was an older bloke, Sergeant Lake he was to be the navigator and he didn’t want to go to war his wife didn’t want him to go to war and he had a lot of trouble.
LD: Yes.
LWG: Eventually the crew came up, he came with us and we started training and so on and he showed his true form and the crew came up to me one day and said, ‘We’ve had enough of George I think your let’s see if we can find another navigator.’ So I asked the CO whoever it was because we’d been doing a bit of work together, I said, ‘I think we’ve [unclear] a problem.’ I thought, he said, ‘Oh you’re lucky we’ve got another navigator here who’s looking for a crew.’ His name was Steve Tinkler and was Steve Tinkler navigator, Steve Tinkler, pas de deux [?] because he’d already done one —
RG: One tour.
LWG: One, what used to be called?
RG: One tour of operation.
LWG: Tour yeah, and he wore glasses, proved to be a bit of a drunk used to have to put him together [unclear] [laughs] He was a great bloke, but he was older, and he was a genius.
RG: Was he AAF or RAF?
LWG: He was RAF, he came from Ireland, lovely bloke had glasses, and mumbled a bit and so on, but he was, he proved to be, he was great with G, you know what G is?
RG: Yep, yep.
LWG: He used to be able to, he got that down to a fine art and now you should be able to turn here because you’ll turn onto the runway or something he was so good —
RG: Precise.
LWG: Advanced, and I was lucky to get him. So he did another tour with us twenty-four he finished his second tour, and then I got another —
RG: So when you say he was older he was only a couple of years older?
LWG: Yeah, but he was, oh he would have been in his forties may be I suppose.
RG: Oh he was in his forties okay.
LWG: Could have been, I never asked, I never asked him. And I remember we’d just changed and I got another, there was another bloke on Mildenhall Station looking for a new crew he was an Indian, Stanley Berry and he’d done some, I’d forgotten how many he’d done, he might have done six or seven or whatever it was trips himself with somebody, with somebody else and I lost him eventually not didn’t lose he did his twenty-four, and we went on our, I remember when he left we went to, where did we go where we went missing? That’ll all come out anyway. That’s the time we got lost at Stockholm, got caught in a storm and we were reported as missing they lost contact with us and so on, and Steve Tinkler was getting nervous ‘cos he used to listen to what was happening and they weren’t hearing from me and they were trying to contact someone, so they assumed we’d been shot down so he gathered all the gear and he robbed my wardrobe I remember and he’d gone didn’t want to wait, he’d gone by the time we got back and I lost contact with him then.
LD: Were you able to get your belongings back?
LWG: Ah, I didn’t know what he’d took he’d ransacked the thing, that was a terrible thing you know he and I, he was a great bloke, I used to put him to bed every night because he’d, he’d go into the mess and drinking he used to put twelve whiskeys on the table and he’d drink and then I’d grab him and take him home and put him to bed.
RG: Twelve whiskeys that’s reasonable enough yeah. So, so he was your first navigator or the first one was the chap who wasn’t up to it.
LWG: First one was George Lake.
RG: Yeah, and then —
LWG: Oh, George we eventually dropped him and he joined another crew and in actual fact my crew didn’t tell me about this until later on.
RG: Yeah.
LWG: He followed us with another crew and was shot down the first —
RG: First trip?
LWG: The first trip.
RG: So how many trips did you do?
LWG: Twenty-nine.
RG: Twenty-nine.
LD: And was that all with 15 Squadron?
LWG: Yeah.
LD: Yeah. And they were all in Lancasters?
LWG: Oh yeah.
LD: Yeah, yeah.
LWG: I, I, we did which is unusual, we did, I did more daylights than —
RG: Oh okay.
LD: Right.
LWG: I did some which day trips, I had, I was good at formation flying and stuff, and I always believed first I was leading the squadron, then on a couple of occasions I led the whole raid, we used to do that in formation.
RG: Any particular trips stand out for you?
LWG: Oh yeah, there all here, one was the one I just mentioned where we got lost which will come up in due course.
LD: So were you with that trip where you got lost over Stockholm were you able to get back to Britain or did you go down over Europe?
LWG: No well I got back, we lost contact. We were chased by [unclear] lights, runway lights going on and off we was at, we were within, right up here, Heligoland, terrible weather and so on we recorded. Anyway we got back and I didn’t, I hadn’t, we’d been chased by the Germans of course and I kept quiet and I was over, we got back to the squadron before they knew I was, that we were coming back, anyway that’ll all come out one way or another. Er, so long ago now really dragged us back, that’s why you’d be better probably taking what —
RG: Well look we will do that, we will take it them as well, yeah.
LWG: Later on. You can see that, can you see that one —
RG: On the top there?
LWG: Yeah.
RG: Yeah.
LWG: They haven’t put it into a book form yet there doing that.
LD: ‘Cos we can copy that and return it to you.
LWG: Well you can do that, but there, there’s a few things that I want to change in there although definitely take them, I don’t like to lose contact with these things.
LD: Oh no I understand that entirely absolutely.
RG: Oh yeah this is lovely.
LWG: There’s a few things that I want to change in there anyway but more or less that tells you about what I’m telling you now.
LD: So were you or any of your crew injured during your ops?
LWG: Not to [unclear] the aircraft [unclear] we used to bring it back US and so on flak and whatever, but no we, none of us actually came to any harm in the air.
LD: Fortunate with that. Did you, were you was the aircraft ever so injured that you know you were damaged that you were coming back on one or two engines that kind of thing?
LWG: Oh yeah. Never did I have to come back on one or two for that matter, come back you’d lose an engine but usually you’d lose them for other reasons. You’re always being attacked of course and had holes all over you and so on and they’d have to patch it up, but I was lucky we didn’t get hit personally but the aircraft was many times.
LD: Were you more concerned about doing the daylight raids then the night time raids or did that not make much difference for you?
LWG: Oh they were both difficult if because leading the raid for instance you had to make a lot of decisions it wasn’t all according to orders and you had to make decisions and so on. We used to be going up and the Yanks were coming back in daylight, and at night time one of the big things that was always pretty difficult and you’re always being shot at and all that sort of thing, but at night time was like they draw the curtains down because everything was in the dark you didn’t have lights on.
LD: The time that you got lost over Stockholm, ‘cos I haven’t, I had heard that you know Stockholm didn’t have blackouts were you able, you said there was a bad storm, were you able to see any lights in Sweden to help you navigate home?
LWG: We was very lucky as a matter of fact because we were lost well and truly, the navigational equipment, like G and all that sort of thing went US and we lost our way and we were in, it was a bad storm that they hadn’t predicted. They sent five of us there to, what were we doing? Oh we were mine laying and we had to find exactly where we were to drop the mines in the right spot it was in this area of the water that the Germans were using all the time and we had to be certain of what we were doing, and everything went US with the aircraft when I took off. ‘Cos they sent in, they sent a hundred I think it was a hundred off as a diversion, for the five of us and I was sent from 15 Squadron the others came from different squadrons and the five of us were the ones that were doing, what they were looking for was to drop these mines, ‘cos the Germans were moving their ships with stores and so on up to Caterech [?] and so on up to Russian.
RG: You see right up in the Baltic, it was in the Baltic.
LWG: And we ran into, to start with, we left, we ran into this storm and it was very thick they were flying blind as we used to say and G and so on didn’t work when you got anywhere near Germany ‘cos they used to jam all that. And we got lost and, what happened, how did I do this, I decided to go low ‘cos we’d been doing that from probably twenty thousand feet or something, and so I dived down broke, broke cloud and I was over a big city with all the lights on.
RG: So you were over Sweden?
LWG: Yeah we were over, oh what’s the name?
RG: Stockholm
LWG: Stockholm yeah, and we thought that was so and it proved to be that but we’d been blown a long way out of our area and so on running short of fuel, on the way back everyone else had gone home because they’d sent a hundred over Heligoland to side track the Germans.
RG: Yeah.
LWG: And, oh god what happened, as I was flying back towards England it started to clear and I could see the ground well you couldn’t see the ground ‘cos it was dark and so on, but we did come back over an area where I knew there were Germans had night fighters and so on, and I noticed just in front of me the lights came on and go off which meant that was one coming one of the fighters being sent off, that happened six times when I thought I’m gonna have to do something now so I thought well I’m going to do the opposite of what they would do and as blind as I am I’ll get down on the deck. I couldn’t see the deck at all ‘cos it was dark but guessed the best area as far as the height was concerned the altimeter told me that and as I was flying over these lights kept going on they came on six times and they’d sent six fighters off and they didn’t catch up with me until I could see the searchlights in England.
RG: Right.
LWG: When one attacked —
RG: Were you still down low at that point?
LWG: No well I was lowish but I wasn’t real low. I didn’t you couldn’t tell it was just black you couldn’t tell how high you were and my altimeter I’d never [unclear] you couldn’t read it because of the storm the barometer changed.
RG: Ah massive change to the air pressure, yep. So you were —
LWG: Anyway I started and I had to do what they used to call a corkscrew so and I was good at doing I used to teach them how to do the corkscrew, that meant you didn’t do things finally you had to be in desperate situations and I used to teach that to the rest of crew in 15 Squadron, got a few bods coming along ‘cos they all did the same thing corkscrew was something that would help them out of trouble. Anyway we were doing that and I threw them off into the dark and I must have been flying a hundred feet at that stage ‘cos you couldn’t see the ground it was a bit of a worry, but eventually we came through that and ‘cos we were something like an hour late or something they’d written us off.
RG: You must have been dead low on fuel?
LWG: Yeah.
RG: If you were an hour late.
LWG: Yes we were.
LD: Were you able to land at your at Mildenhall or did you have to land elsewhere?
LWG: That’s where Steve or John, ‘cos we’d been described as missing.
RG: Did you ever have to come down in another field, another airfield?
LWG: Yeah. I remember coming down once on a Yankeedrome, they had, oh let me, what was the name of the aircraft they were flying?
RG: A 710, Liberator, Liberator?
LWG: You what?
RG: The Liberator.
LWG: Liberator, Liberator. And we had to be diverted once and we landed there, we all looked like a bunch of kids incidentally, and they grouped around us when we got to that place and we went into the bar and they were saying, ‘There only bloody kids.’
RG: Were they, were they older though?
LWG: Oh yeah, no they were all older blokes.
RG: Oh okay.
LWG: Oh interesting, we landed there and they were trying to work out what they would do with us anyway one of them offered to show me one of the Liberators and we went over and they used to carry cookies as you know, used to carry about twenty thousand pounds of bombs huge [unclear], and we went and had a look at these Liberators, and they said, ‘come and have a tour bombed up ready to go.’ [telephone ringing in background]
LD: So do you remember carrying the tall boys or the grand slams.
LWG: No, no we didn’t do that. Well they were using them because they wanted to penetrate the pens at Heligoland but they never did it you know. Oh incidentally, I remember leading the crew and I had to position the formation and we were, what was it, three thousand [unclear] daylight, we went to Heligoland and, oh god, I’ll have to study my old book again to find out what we did.
LD: So when you finished your tour Bill —
LWG: I didn’t finish a tour.
LD: You didn’t?
LWG: No.
LD: Oh okay.
LWG: They called the war off. [laughs]
RG: How, how, how many were you expected to do in a tour?
LWG: Thirty.
RG: Thirty okay. You know if that varied over —
LWG: It was automatic but all things went through but thirty was the deal. We all wanted to do that ‘cos the whole crew wanted to do that ‘cos we were senior people at that stage.
LD: So when they called the war off were you involved in missions over Europe you know dropping food and bring POW’s back and so on?
LWG: Yeah we dropped some food, actually we dropped food because I, they gave me the job of flying over our drome where we were to find out what height we should do it from.
LD: Oh yes, yes.
LWG: And I did that for them but I never actually, did I drop, I might have done one trip with food otherwise I did a number of trips on bringing prisoners of war back.
LD: Right okay.
LWG: Used to go to a place called Reims and oh this is a bit of tale might tell you a little later on. Used to go to Reims.
RG: Where were you when, what’s your memory of VE Day what was, what happened to you on VE Day when they called the war off do you remember how you thought about it or what you did?
LWG: What did I think, well you were relieved, but I didn’t throw my hat in the air and those sort of things. I was very involved at the end on Mildenhall, but no what they did is they just pulled the sheet from underneath your feet and you were of no use to anybody from then on you had to find your own way. Poms wanted us to go back to redress the country and so on, British were good, some of the Australians were bad, a lot of idiots amongst them as well.
LD: So were you involved with Tiger Force, or the preparations for Tiger Force were you involved in that in any way?
LWG: Oh no I think no, trying to think what was they called the ones supposed to deal with used to go pick up drop a flare?
RG: Oh Pathfinders.
LWG: Pathfinders. I wasn’t in the Pathfinder group but I was doing their work for them.
LD: Oh okay. What sort of work were you doing for them?
LWG: Just leading, we used to be in front of everybody.
LD: Oh okay.
LWG: I remember Pathfinders, I was leading I’ve forgotten which troop that was towards the end anyway I was, had everyone formatting on me and five of these Pathfinders came up and they took a wrong turn I think we bombed as a consequence I heard later on we bombed a prisoner of war camp or something, I’d forgotten about that.
LD: Yeah.
LWG: 5 Group were supposedly the elite of the bombing group but they got the pick of the troops.
RG: Pick of the crews and so forth yeah.
LD: When you were doing the day time raids you must have been involved with some precision bombing were you?
LWG: Precision.
LD: Yes.
LWG: Well none of it was haphazard I can tell you that. [laughs]
LD: Some of it was perhaps more precision than others, but were you involved in any particular raids for very special targets?
LWG: Well they were all special targets. Oh yeah, we used to go out in hundred or two hundred lots and so on and, oh, if you didn’t of course you‘d have Gerrys all over you share the weight a bit, and they were firing those oh what is they called, the V2’s, V1’s.
RG: Was you involved in the raids at Pienemunde at all?
LWG: Pienemunde.
RG: Did you do those at all?
LWG: Yeah I think I was on Pienemunde I forgot.
RG: It’ll be in here in the log —
LWG: No we knew Pienemunde, we, I can’t remember, we certainly did it whether I was on airstrips or not now, but that’s why that books important to me, forgetting things.
RG: Yeah.
LD: It’s not surprising it’s all so long ago. So once they called the war off were you, did it take long for you to get back to Australia or were you floating around Britain for a while wondering what to do?
LWG: No I was, took us back to Brighton.
LD: Yeah.
LWG: And we were lost souls then, no we were there for some time, came back on the, what was the name of the ship, I went through it around the world.
RG: “Stirling Castle”.
LWG: “Stirling Castle” yeah. Came back through the Suez.
LD: Had a bit of a Cooks tour didn’t you?
LWG: Yeah all the way round.
RG: And you did do a Cooks tour of Germany the cities after war I know it’s in here in your log you did one of the Cooks tour trips after the war.
LWG: What’s it got in there?
RG: You did Operation Exodus ones which was the prisoners, and a Cooks tour of Germany from your base at Dover to —
LWG: Yeah I was, I was a senior bod in Mildenhall and we were given the opportunity of taking the ground staff and aircrew around anywhere we wanted to go in Germany and that we called a Cooks tour, Baedeker and yes we did that. I did that in fact it was interesting, Molly and I, Molly was my wife, Molly and I went back to England and we took a trip down the Rhine. [telephone ringing] Excuse me I’ve got to take this. She’s took over from my accountancy I built up in Batumba [?], she was my secretary.
LD: I was wondering what you did after the war?
LWG: Another story altogether.
LD: Did you have trouble finding work when you came back?
LWG: Oh well, that’s a different story you’ll find that I’ve had a very full life one way or another, it didn’t stop with the war anyway.
RG: Well I’m just going to photograph your log book page by page so we’ve just got a record of that if that’s all right?
LWG: Yeah I think that’s all right. I didn’t make any extra secret thoughts or anything like that in the corner I just used to, I was too young, didn’t realise what I should have done, because I had an actually an amazing story to tell, can’t do it now forget things, and my brother Ron comes into that and oh lot of things happened during my life.
RG: Did Ron serve during the war as well?
LWG: No wouldn’t let him go, he, he became the commissioner of —
RG: Oh he was a reserved occupation.
LWG: Yeah, he was very wise, he used, he had signed your refund cheques [laughs] but that was not a big deal.
RG: I was always going to get a refund cheque.
LD: So when you came back to Australia if you became an accountant you must have gone back to study is that right?
LWG: Yeah, um, I have to think about this, I was working in the tax department when I turned eighteen, when I turned eighteen I was called into the Army and I had joined up into the Air Force, and after the ten months when I got into a course and started and when I came back I was still acceptable, pardon me, to the tax.
LD: Yes, yes.
LWG: But I had to do my studies which I did mainly by teaching myself, asked for all the accountancy work and they told me, oh when I came back I was a very sick boy I ended up spending totally six years in Concord Hospital I got a bad touch of the flu in London, got sick, got pleurisy, I was sick when they brought me home in the boat, and I spent six years in Concord Hospital.
LD: Oh my lord.
LWG: In three goes. And eventually they sacked me if you like or whatever, and in the meantime I had studied accountancy and I passed that and got qualified as an accountant here in theory and I was called back to the tax department and I came back here and Ron told me that you’ll never get anywhere if you came to Katumba to Canberra so we’ll send you down to Sydney, so I went down to the tax department in Sydney, so what street was that? Elizabeth Street.
LD: Yes.
LWG: And I was there for years and till eventually I got sick and I was gonna die and all sorts of things because I contacted tuberculosis, so I was in hospital for six years about and they told me I’d never work again.
LD: Oh right, yeah.
LWG: Eventually they, um, now what do I do with this, anyway I decided I would try for work, oh I got married [laughs].
LD: I figured Molly came into it somewhere.
LWG: Yeah I married Molly she was my nurse at Concord Hospital.
LD: Oh that’s so sweet.
LWG: Yeah she was a beauty. So she spent her time nursing me there which I, and I got to the stage where I was getting well, she was myself actually, until I was told they couldn’t do anymore for me anyway and we decided to get married which we did and I decided. They said the best thing you could do is get up in the mountains clean air and so on.
LD: Yes, yes.
LWG: I’d been the yardstick in sense for people in Concord, I got onto a lot of equipment and I refused they wanted to take my lungs out and all sorts of things.
LD: Oh.
LWG: I refused on that we decided we’d try and right it ourselves and we did eventually.
LD: That was probably a good decision.
LWG: I taught myself to, I had got the infection up here on my right lobe, I taught myself they said you’ll never, I had a haemorrhage, they said they’ll never cure that because you can’t stop yourself from moving it, so despite the fact you had to stop moving using that the only way we can do that is take your lung out.
LD: Yeah, yeah.
LWG: I saw what that meant and I saw people getting around despite this because they took all your ribs out, so I said no I’ll do it myself, took me a year, I controlled my ribs sitting very I used to get them to force me to use my stomach.
LD: Yes
LWG: And the lower lobes kept this one as steady as I could.
LD: Goodness
LWG: And it took me a year and they said, took me, you know those scans, ever had a scan?
LD: Yes, yes, I have indeed.
LWG: I had the first scan it was brought to Concord, and they used me as a guinea pig, and they put me in a room all by myself, near the hospital labs, heard this thing clanking, getting closer, and closer and closer and trying out a lot of bad stuff whatever. Wasn’t even aware of that, I became a guinea pig. Anyway after a year they said that cavity has healed itself, the best thing you can do is get up in the mountains so Molly and I got married we went up to live in Katumba [?].
LD: Oh that’s remarkable —
LWG: The best thing I ever did —
LD: Remarkable tenacity.
LWG: Beg your pardon.
LD: Remarkable tenacity.
LWG: And I hung my shield up took me six months to get my first customer basically built up the biggest accounting practice in the mountains and eventually, I had a wonderful secretary, in fact she just rang me, she took over I gave her the practice, she got her accountancy qualifications and she’s running the practice now, she rings me up every day if she’s got a problem, it was her she rang earlier.
LD: Oh that’s wonderful. Did you and Molly have, well yes you obviously had children you spoke to me about them.
LWG: Two children, boy and a girl.
LD: Do they live nearby?
LWG: One lives in [unclear] and Janet is [unclear]
LD: Oh that’s good.
LWG: And they’ve both got kids and so on so it’s all gone rather well.
LD: It’s a remarkable life you’ve led you know, especially this you know this section in Bomber Command you know you said when you went to the American base they were surprised how young you were you know when you look at those bomber crews they were you know they were —
LWG: Well we were only kids we hadn’t done anything in life.
LD: Yeah, I look at my son sometimes, my youngest son you know and I can’t even imagine him doing that, I just I can’t wrap my head around the level of you know skill and —
RG: Responsibility.
LD: Yeah amazing responsibility involved with lads that was so young it’s, it’s a remarkable thing that you all did it really is and yeah it’s, it’s you know.
LWG: There were thousands of us doing it of course.
LD: Yeah, it is important that it is remembered and acknowledged, it’s very important.
LWG: Of course the Yanks were a different thing altogether, interesting the Yanks do things better than we do, Australians I’ve got no time for in total sense, not real smart.
RG: Us Australians?
LWG: Yeah.
RG: Yeah I agreed.
LWG: The Poms were good but they had sense and did it according to oil, if you know what I mean by that because they do things according to what they were told and —
RG: What they were supposed to do.
LWG: The Yanks were different altogether they were freelancers, oh yeah they would do everything because they would pay for it number one, they wouldn’t do it on the yardstick they’d do it properly and I admired the Yanks they were great in their way. The Poms were good, the Australians they were caught short.
RG: Sloppy is that what you mean.
LWG: Yeah, not that they weren’t sincere and so on they were doing that but I don’t know how you’d describe it.
RG: Cut corners a bit or?
LWG: No they certainly weren’t better. The Poms showed us how to do it, the Yanks would do it, and in between the Australians towed it along and that wasn’t wrong. Incidentally Colin Flockhart he was killed and Rolly Wall was and everybody was killed around I was lucky and that not to be killed.
LD: What happened to your friend Percy, your school friend Percy?
LWG: We finished, they wanted us to stay in the Army because what I told you everyone, most of the people we went in with couldn’t read or write and which means they were taken from an area there was nothing wrong with them in a sense but they wanted us to stay. Used to do stupid things they weren’t Australians are good but not the ants pants that we think we are.
RG: Take unnecessary risks?
LWG: Oh?
RG: Take unnecessary risks?
LWG: Oh no, no, oh some of them might have done that no I didn’t mean it that way no, I’ll get into areas where I’m very critical. The worst thing I decided to do was to move out of Katumba and come here to Canberra and I keep saying oh what a terrible place this is, and it’s not the place the city of Canberra’s wonderful but it is, it has everything here just the people who live in it I’m sorry I’m not throwing this at you but I wouldn’t give you five bob and the rest of my family live here and their part of the deal, this working as a public servant is for the [unclear] not for real people in my book, well you can see the decisions they make, or don’t make, or shouldn’t make.
RG: Well Bill thanks a lot, you know, we’ve got a lot of good stuff. Your, you’re a Knight of the Order of Leopold, Belgium.
LWG: I saw you turn that up.
RG: Sorry,
LWG: No —
RG: Yeah, yeah, I photographed the yeah it’s here a Knight of, when did you receive that the Knighthood from the Belgium, the Belgium Knighthood?
LWG: There was two of us on 15 Squadron well he might have been on 622 there was another squadron and he did twenty-nine the same as I did and the routine was that at thirty you got the DFC and so on, he and I only got to do twenty-nine and the CO said that I’m handicapped here because the routine is you know thirty, and I didn’t do thirty I only did twenty-nine, succeeded twenty-nine. So, and they gave me, what’s it called?
RG: It’s the Chevalier —
LWG: Chevalier, Order of Leopold.
RG: Yeah something like that.
LD: The Belgium Croix de Guerre.
LWG: Croix de Guerre yeah.
RG: Order of Leopold, Croix de Guerre with palm [?] It’s in relation to Croix de Guerre 1940 for courage and bravery da, da, da.
LD: And the Belgium Knight of the Order of Leopold.
LWG: Where did you get that from?
LD: The Internet Bill, the internet you’re famous. [laughs]
LWG: No I’m not. It’s interesting the DFC was, I was ready to, I hated the tax of course didn’t like public service but I suppose I lost my faith in human nature when I see what happens in public service in Sydney I got fed up of that. So I applied to and they were advertising for TAA so I got called up for TAA, but because of my health problem I got called into the Concord Hospital at the same time.
LD: So did you ever fly as a civilian pilot?
LWG: Yeah a little bit you might have—
RG: Yeah a little bit there’s a stuff about Cessna’s and things.
LWG: Things didn’t stop there but I was part owner of a Tiger, what did we buy, a Tiger Moth.
RG: All right.
LWG: I never [background noise] down here you can look there and you see you know where Seven Cross is there’s a big store —
RG: A big tower —
LWG: A big tower beside it, if you imagine that as cloud just looks like exactly like the cloud that was over when I landed on and I landed on Woodbridge, we had to break cloud I had to dive into this and then I came underneath ‘cos underneath that was an area where you could see ground and I broke cloud underneath and as I was coming down there was a Flying Fortress coming straight for me, how we missed one another I’ll never know, he crashed they were killed they were all burnt to death I suppose ‘cos they were burnt, I managed to stay within this little cell, what did I do, anyway a very hazardous trip doing steep turns, I only had three or was it two engines or something I’ve forgotten now, yeah this plane was coming straight for me and I flew it down and we just missed one another, they told me to taxi up the end of the runway when I got down.
RG: So you came down with FIDO on that one?
LWG: Yeah, FIDO had the cloud, that was what —
RG: Oh that was what —
LWG: FIDO had pushed everything up and gave you this little area if you could get in to it.
RG: So they’d done that to get you down?
LWG: Oh no not only me.
RG: And the rest of the stream.
LWG: There was I think three or four then, a lot of the aerodromes had FIDO we didn’t have it Mildenhall.
RG: I think Bert said they didn’t have it at Waddington as well.
LD: That’s right yeah.
LWG: As soon as we landed they had to sell the aircraft put us straight into a bus and drove us out of there to get us away from the place took us straight all the way back to Mildenhall.
RG: Woodbridge did you say Woodbridge yeah?
LWG: There was three I think the other two I can’t remember their names but Woodbridge was the one that was operating that day. I could see it, I could see it for miles in front of me ‘cos I was above cloud and there was this tower and that’s why —
RG: Oh I see pushed the cloud up —
LWG: Yeah.
RG: Ah okay.
LWG: Just looked if you —
RG: Yeah, yeah.
LWG: You see that you can imagine that as being a cloud —
RG: So it was a beacon as well as —
LWG: Well it was because it was daylight, well it forced all of the air up until it looked like —
RG: A tower.
LWG: A three story building and it just looks like that.
RG: Wow.
LWG: And I, what I did I found I aimed for the bottom of it and broke into that area and it was clear only in that area.
RG: Yeah it would have been quite small actually you’d have been doing really tight turns.
LWG: Doing steep turns all the time.
RG: Did you have any trouble the last chap we interviewed he finished his tour and was sent to training command at Wigsley and he said one night they had a couple of MM110 night fighters came back with the bomber streams in ’45 and couldn’t do anything they peeled off when they got into England they attacked Wigsley and they attacked Waddington. Did you ever have any problems with intruders coming back into the after a raid back into the —
LWG: What day or night?
RG: Night.
LWG: No I don’t think that happened I think he’s having you on, we certainly didn’t run into that, but then at the same time we were running into late in the, in the war itself as I said when the war finished I was still on squadron we were going and picking POW’s and bringing them back. We went to Reims.
RG: You had an overnight stopover in Reims didn’t you on one trip?
LWG: Yeah, and we went somewhere, we went to café we had no money and the Yanks saw us to that they’d shout us, we went out we were looking for somewhere, it came dark it was night and we couldn’t find any, what did we do, we had landed at a place called, that’ll tell me, Juvincourt, Juvincourt, [?] that’s right and there were two hundred aeroplanes sitting on this drome we decided as a crew, we decided oh let’s go out and we’ll hitchhike into Reims, ‘cos they told us Reims wasn’t far away which we did, and I think a Yank pulled up in one of his jeeps and we all hopped on and when we got in there we found that was full of Yanks it was evening, so we went into, had no money or nothing, went into a a French café I suppose it was a café it was interesting there was a big huge marquee tent you see which I associate with that and we went and got into this café or whatever it was and the Yanks were in there and they shouted at us ‘cos we had no money and so on and we came out of there and we wondered what we’d do, oh, I suppose I should show you that, I’ll take it —
RG: Put that back on the cradle —
LWG: I’ll show you, I only brought that one through there more or less, I’m lying because I got caught in a landslide.
RG: Oh
LWG: Down near Wellington.
LD: Oh, that’s enough to make you lay.
LWG: They want to take my legs off told them no.
RG: [whispers] Turn it off.
LD: Oh sorry
Dublin Core
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AGrayLW170301
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Interview with Bill Gray
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
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eng
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02:06:45 audio recording
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Pending review
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Rob Gray
Lucy Davidson
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2017-03-01
Description
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Bill Gray was born and grew up in Australia and volunteered for the Air Force. After training, he flew 29 operations as an air gunner with 15 squadron from RAF Mildenhall. He returned to Australia after the war but contracted tuberculosis. He was hospitalised for six years, during that time he studied as an accountant, and met and married Molly who had nursed him at the hospital. After recovering he opened his own accountancy practice which he ran until his retirement.
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
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Australia
Great Britain
England--Suffolk
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Jackie Simpson
15 Squadron
3 Group
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
bombing of Helgoland (18 April 1945)
crewing up
FIDO
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 2
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
RAF Hixon
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Woodbridge
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/267/3417/AHallettB161122.1.mp3
beedd47aeb8a53dc6459daa7cbc6ecf0
Dublin Core
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Title
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Hallett, Bill
Bill Hallett
B Hallett
Description
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One oral history interview with Bill Hallett (1587281 Royal Air Force).
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-11-22
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Hallett, B
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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JM: Right, this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Jean McCartney and the interviewee is Bill Hallett. Also with us today is Bill’s wife, Edna. The interview is taking place at Mr Hallett and Mrs Hallett’s home at Pottsville in New South Wales on the 22nd of November 2016. OK Bill, let’s start at the beginning, 1922. You were born in Over Wallop. Is that how you say it?
BH: Yes, that’s true but it’s probably registered as being Andover.
JM: Right.
BH: But it’s.
JM: Right, all your early years spent around that area or?
BH: My younger years was in this little place of Over Wallop but then we moved to Andover which was ten miles away.
JM: Right. So your schooling was there?
BH: Um. My schooling was really in Over Wallop and Nether Wallop and yeah, so um.
JM: Right.
BH: Moved to Andover mainly so my sister and I could get a job.
JM: Right. And when you left school, what, where did you, what sort of jobs did you go into? ‘Cause I’m assuming you were working before you went into the services? Or when did you enlist?
BH: I was working with, for a gentleman that was in charge of the maintenance of Tidworth Barracks. And I was working with him. And going on as I increased with age with that, and War started and all these sorts of things. And he got me an exemption from call-up because of the work that I was doing with him. And then because some of my friends were joined up and was going the only way I could sort of move and get out of that exemption was to volunteer for aircrew in the RAF. That was the only way. So I done that. I didn’t explain anything to him until it was too late for him to do anything about it. So that’s where it was. That’s when my service started.
JM: Right. And what year would that have been?
BH: Ah, I guess it’s 1942.
JM: Right ’42, yeah. And where did you do your initial training?
BH: My? Not sure about that either, I can’t remember. That was just a thing where everybody had to go to. It was sort of a thing that introduced you to the forces.
JM: Um.
BH: Then I moved from there to Cosford in the Midlands to do a mechanics’ course and then I stayed there and done a fitters’ course on engines. From then on I moved over to, I think it was, I don’t know my memory’s not that good about those little things, but I think it was Stradishall where we just formed up and we chose, we had the right to choose a crew because it was a centre point where everybody, bomb aimers, navigators, pilots and all these things came in there. So that was the start of the thing when we were training started at Stradishall.
JM: At Stradishall? Yeah, OK. And what training did you do there?
BH: It was mainly on flying. When a crew was selected and got their guy. It was mainly training on Stirlings.
JM: Um.
BH: The Stirling aircraft.
JM: Were you in one of the, which sort of role were you in?
BH: I was an engineer, flight engineer.
JM: Engineer the flight engineer? Yeah, right OK.
BH: Um.
JM: And so what, were you with any of your mates that you’d sort of been able to join up at the same, that had been around?
BH: No. They were all.
JM: Scattered around.
BH: All sort of strangers to start with.
JM: Yeah.
BH: But there we just flew and done circuits and bumps as they called it.
JM: Um.
BH: Just flying around landing and taking off.
JM: Yeah.
BH: Then we’d go on sort of trips around the country. Then we done some night flying with it and then later on we started on operations. Do you want me to carry right through now?
JM: Well, you do.
BH: Well, it was just then that was.
JM: How you.
BH: That was with 4 Squadron.
JM: Yes.
BH: Then later on that squadron was changed from Stirlings to Fortresses, the American Fortresses.
JM: American Fortresses, yeah.
BH: I think we were the only squadron doing that, flying a foreign aircraft. So then we had to do training with that.
JM: Yes.
BH: New things. And then after that well we didn’t do any bombing at all, we were just carrying a specialised crew. And we’d go off and get up to, in those days the great height of thirty three thousand feet, and fly over the top of everyone else. And then we had this German speaking wireless operator on board and we used to sort of handle a bit of windows and that sort of thing to confuse the radar of the Germans that sort of thing. I never got involved with that because when we moved to the Fortress I, I became second pilot which sort of made me a little bit happier because when I joined up that was the reason I’d joined up was to become a pilot.
JM: To become a pilot, right.
BH: But when the engineer thing came along they just came up and said ‘We’ve got too many pilots at the moment, we want other crew members.’ So I had a choice of joining everything other but I chose an engineer because I , I knew so much about motors and that sort of thing.
JM: And that was, air force engines were more interesting than army or navy engines?
BH: Yeah, it was those, ‘cause when I joined up it was the old piston type engines. That applied with the Fortress they were the same kind of engine, not the same make. Oh yeah I got into that so I slotted into that very easy and we done a number of trips over there and we were quite happy because we didn’t see any fighters, we didn’t have any flak because we were too high.
JM: Um. So these were actual missions flying over Germany was it?
BH: Um.
JM: So.
BH: So we would normally get to the target before the others. And the wireless operator, I might add at that moment everything was so secretive. Nobody knew what was really going on, although we were talking to the special wireless operator there, that was in there, but I guess he was told not to divulge anything what he was doing.
JM: Um.
BH: It’s only since a gentleman has started to write a biography about myself that he’s delved into it and found out all these things, what it was doing. But the Fortress was never designed for night flying so the super chargers were operating in the exhaust part of it which showed up very clearly at night time with the four dots in the air. And then when the brilliant person that said we’d fly over Holland to a motor place in Antwerp at six thousand feet we thought that was, before we took off, we thought well that was going to be it because we were just sort of sitting there like [unclear] ducks ‘cause everyone would have seen us at six thousand feet from the ground. So that was the way it happened, and we just got shot down.
JM: Shot down um.
BH: And, yeah but.
JM: And what, when, what date was that?
BH: It was in May ’44.
JM: May ’44 right.
BH: And yeah. It then, as I said it just was a happier time for me then, ‘cause my pilot he said ‘Well what’s the use of having a second pilot if he doesn’t know how to fly and land the thing’ if he got sick or injured. So from then on he took it into his control to ensure that I, that I could handle the aircraft. Because the RAF in their wisdom never gave a second pilot any manual.
JM: Training.
BH: So, that made me a lot happier. I used to fly the thing around with him and under his control for a while until he considered me efficient to do it and so I as quite happy then. But from that date of course, that’s when the trouble started. We just got down and then became a prisoner of war. I could go on a lot with the real detail but I don’t know whether you want to do that ‘cause.
JM: Well you can go.
[External noise -helicopter]
JM: We just paused a second there because we had a helicopter in the background, it seems to have gone again so we’ll continue on. We were at the point where you’d been getting some more, you’d been getting the flying as second pilot and then but then unfortunately in the May of ’44 that you were shot down over Holland?
BH: Um, and one of the those things because the navigator said we were thirty miles off the coast so we assumed there was going to be land when we came on but when we did come down we came down in the flooded part of Holland and when we, one other crew got together and come round, got up and went to a house and they were quite friendly and said ‘Yes’ they’d help us because the system of getting back to England was getting starting to get very strong then on the Continent so we thought it was but then afterwards we spent the night with them and they were drying our clothes, we found out afterwards that they had already contacted the Germans that we were there. And we were quite angry because if they couldn’t have helped they could have let us go probably onto someone else. But afterwards when things got back to normal we were down there we found out that these people that lived there they were on a death notice if they helped anything so after that we just forgot but at that time both of us decided we were going to go back after the War and have a go at these people but we never did because of the threat that they lived under. So then it was just a matter of moving from one place to another in prisoner of war camps. We eventually got taken up to a camp in Breslau, which was up in the Polish border and we settled there for a while. And then the Russians were coming down, advancing down on the thing, so later on they decided to get us on a forced march away from the Russians. And that’s when we experienced the real cold weather. It was reputed to be minus fifty degrees when we were out one time.
JM: And I presume you didn’t have much in the way of clothing to protect you from the elements?
BH: No, we didn’t have the sort of set things you’d expect to have, big coats and that sort of thing but it was an amazing thing we had a balaclava on because of the breathing on there it just got like a piece of wood, breathing out all the time and you could sort of knock it, so hard, and after that we were marching for about three weeks I guess until eventually we ended up going to a place just south of Berlin. We got on, ‘cause we got on a train which delivered us down there. And it was that place where we were eventually released by the Russians then Americans came to pick us all up and the Russians said ‘No, you’re not going to pick ‘em up.’ So they under fire or something made the Americans leave and we were left stranded there for some time. And eventually the Russians got some trucks and took us to a place. I have all this down in the diary but I can’t remember just off. Then they, they met up with American trucks at this place and eventually that was it. We got released and got back to England.
JM: What time, roughly what sort of time was that?
BH: Almost twelve months to the day.
JM: Almost twelve months?
BH: To the day yeah we got back.
JM: So May ’45 before you got back?
BH: Yeah. Yeah, as I said there’s a lot more details that I had because I kept a diary going in there and I think I just said to you this guy is making, tells me it’s gone to a publisher now, my biography. And all this is, all this is listed down so it’s yeah. But as far as remembering it and talking to you it’s a bit difficult.
JM: That’s alright, no you’re doing fine. So when you got back in May ’44 what, you wouldn’t have been discharged straight away, I presume? I would presume that they, you did some other things before you were discharged?
BH: Yes I.
JM: May ’45 i should say, my apologies.
BH: Think we were given six week’s leave if I can remember. So we went home and then I’d already met Edna prior to that, she lived in Wolverhampton. My parents lived down south in Andover so I used to travel between the two during my leave. And then eventually we went back to some place, I can’t remember that, I did get a discharge. And that was a discharge on the grounds of being a POW. That was it. It’s funny how things go. I suppose I’d been reasonably fortunate in some things on there but while, while I had to bail out, bailed out from the front hatch but the wireless operator forgot to wind in the trailing area which was an area which had lead weights on it. And as I went out I tangled up with and sort of wrenched myself and ever since then I’ve suffered with a back complaint. Now, being young and I wanted to get back to now my wife to see her, I just, they asked if you had any disabilities or anything unfortunately I said ‘No’, I just wanted to get out and that was it. That was one of the bad things looking back on that I didn’t do. So from then I’ve suffered with it but I’m still lucky in a way that I’m still able to carry on a little bit. I did get onto the Government over in England saying about my issues about it. No ,they didn’t have any ,they said they had no reciprocal things with Australia for things and if I had injury or something I could apply for a pension. I didn’t really want a pension I just wanted some little bit of security for my health that went on but there was just nothing going from them about it. Then when things were happening here as I mentioned where Australia rewarded people for being prisoner of war and being on the forced march and doing that I again contacted the British Legion over there to ask if there was any system or scheme going to help things but no there was nothing so at that time I just gave up with a feeling that I didn’t, with a feeling that I didn’t have much sympathy with British Government.
JM: Yes well I’m afraid I’m of no, have no information to offer at this point that could assist you in that regards. So, the chap that you were with when you went into that first house after you, when bailed out, did you stay with him all the way through?
BH: Yes.
JM: Were you through until you actually sort of released by the Russians?
BH: Yeah. All of the crew excepting the pilot and the wireless operator, mid-upper gunner, which I said to you, now you look on it and sort of feeling the reason why he wouldn’t jump, jump out of the aircraft, because he was scared. He was, I mean we never had any real training on what to do with that sort of thing. It was just a matter of survival when you looked at the aircraft with a wing burning. I applied all the fire extinguishers but they made no effect. It was just getting worse. It appeared to be white hot and it was quite obvious that it was going to drop off at any time. Excepting for those two, the crew did get together and we sort of ended up in the same camp but funny enough it ‘cause systems you were always segregated, you could never keep together. And I sort of never really contacted any of them after I got demobbed. Even though coming to Australia I didn’t know because my wife and we had a daughter then, made a special trip to the relatives of the pilot because I was really friendly with him, I considered him a real mate.
JM: So the pilot was Australian?
BH: Yeah.
JM: Yeah.
BH: So I thought, and we had taken pictures of him in my sort of spare time and I thought it would have been nice to give them to his mother or something in Sydney. Anyhow as I said we had a wife and daughter. So we stopped in Sydney and found somewhere to sort of stay and travelled out to this area where he was. So we went out with this parcel, feeling very proud of myself for doing this. But I was met by the door I guess by some relation of his and she said ‘Oh yeah that’s nice, thank you very much. Oh well have a good day.’ And that was it, so I had no contact with his mother or anything at that time. So from then on I never bothered to make any contact, no. Then we travelled up to Murwillumbah where my wife Edna had relations up there. And we went to Murwillumbah and that was it. But it was not until I found out later that the ordinary wireless operator in the crew, Tommy Larr, lived in Repton which was just a short distance away from Coffes Harbour. And in the job that I had I used to travel to Coffes Harbour pretty regularly. It was sort of one of those things. You thought Well, gee I was down there next door to him and didn’t even know, know him.’ Yeah so, unfortunately I found out through another source that he died. One of the, one of the nephews of Peter Hockley, Alan Hockley I should say, who was the pilot who lived in Sydney. His nephew is, he’s sort of writing a story, including the things of, the person his uncle or whatever it was. And he wrote a complete story up and he was keeping in touch with me and I gave him all the information that I had. I, he got my diary, and he took a fair bit of the things on there. I think he’s still got that going. Strange I can’t remember his name. Wouldn’t know it, I’ve got it on the computer. But yeah, really the experiences of others have been covered prior, it was over. So yeah, we’ve lived in Murwillumbah until I retired from work and then we moved down and bought this place were we have now in the, and been living here ever since.
JM: Right, so just backtracking a bit. So, you said you came out in 1951?
BH: Yeah.
JM: So ,you obviously had decided that you wanted to come, what was the motivation to come to Australia do you think?
BH: It was mainly my wife. All her mother and father had moved out here.
JM: Oh, OK right.
BH: And she had three, four, brothers out here. And they were all living in the Marumba area.
JM: Right.
BH: That was the main thing. Plus, plus after I found out certain things I thought life over in Australia would be a lot better than in England with the weather and such things as that, which has proved to be quite true. So, I’ve never, even though I left behind my mother and father and sister, I’ve never really regretted moving over to Australia. It’s been a great place. I did go back once to see my mother, after my father died. But I couldn’t afford to go back to his funeral because in those days air travel was very expensive.
JM: Horrendously expensive. That’s right.
BH: So, I missed out on there but I did go back to see my mother and sister. Yeah, so it’s been a good sort of life here but. I have two daughters which are healthy and they’ve done pretty well for themselves.
JM: What work did you go into when you got here? Well, to Murwillumbah I should say.
BH: Yeah. Well I started off, because when I left the RAF in England I was working as a maintenance fitter in Walsall, that’s near Wolverhampton. So, we came out with the idea of finding work. But because at the place that I had, a friend of one of my boss’s over in England he had a friend in an aircraft factory in Sydney. So he contacted them. And because I had the mechanical knowledge they offered me a job when I got here after an interview. So when we stopped in Sydney, with the thing, I went out to Bankstown where it was, it was De Havilland.
JM: De Havilland yeah.
BH: Went out there for interview and it was quite good. And they said well ‘Once you’ve settled down.’ ‘Cause I said I wanted to go, the wife wanted to go up to see her family in Murwillumbah. And they said ‘Well when you come back come back and see us and we’ll find you a job here.’ Well after coming up to Murwillumbah, just living that short time in Sydney, coming to Murwillumbah where people were taking me fishing and doing all the things as normal, I said ‘I don’t want to go back to Sydney.’ So, then I couldn’t find a job as a maintenance fitter up here. There were only the sugar mills really that were eligible. That meant that I’d have to go Brisbane and that didn’t appeal to us. So, I started off driving a laundry truck around. And that was the best thing that ever happened to me ‘cause I got to know so many people. And soon after that, when I’d done there I got offered a job in the Banana Groves Federation and I just went there in the store for a while and then they offered the Transport Manager’s position. So, I stayed on there. And in those days it was very big. A very big thing, sending bananas to Coffes Harbour to Sydney, Newcastle, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. And it was quite an involved sort of situation. So I stayed there until I retired.
JM: And that was? Would that have been in the ‘80’s sometime or other? Or ‘90’s?
BH: At those times I could retire at sixty.
JM: Right.
BH: But at that time I was enjoying my job and it was sort of thing. So I left it to sixty one and a half and then I decided I might just as well retire. But I would have to go back and think. So that was when I was sixty. So, yeah it was in the.
JM: Mid ‘80’s sometime?
BH: Yeah. In early ‘80’s I guess, it was um.
JM: Yeah.
BH: Take that time off my age and somebody would find out what it was. So yeah.
JM: And did you then stay in Murwillumbah for a little while before you came over here to Pottsville? Or did you?
BH: Yes. We had a house in Murwillumbah and then we bought this place down here ‘cause I was pretty keen on fishing. We used to come down here and go fishing. And we spent a lot of time repairing it and modernising it a bit. My daughters hated it because in that time it was an isolated place here. But now they have different ideas of course. But in those days it was really fun because I had a vehicle that travelled on the beach, fishing and it was a really good time of my life. Before. And then when I retired we bought a caravan and we spent, kept going caravanning, on and off for a couple of years. Travelled round Australia and Darwin a couple of times and all this, Edna and I loved that, so yeah we really had a good life.
JM: It’s magnificent that the North Coast cannot be beaten basically is the bottom line.
EH: Is this your life story?
JM: Chalk and cheese.
EH: Well what’s it being written for?
BH: It’s alright only for mainly about me on Bomber Command that’s all.
JM: Bomber Command yeah.
EH: Well you finished that a long time ago.
BH: That’s right.
JM: So, in terms of keeping. You said you didn’t keep up with anyone else but you obviously came across George Anderson at some point I guess, obviously you both being in Murwillumbah there?
BH: Yeah, I can’t remember just where George and I met but we’ve sort of been in, we having been living in one and other’s pockets, but we’ve sort of kept in touch with one another. I can’t really remember where we sort of met, but yeah. So it’s, he’s lived in Murwillumbah and we’ve sort of lived down here.
JM: Yeah. That’s right. Well George, he would have been there for some of the time you were in Murwillumbah.
BH: Oh yeah, yeah.
JM: Yeah.
BH: As I said I can’t remember where I sort of met him, it was, I’ve never sort of advertised around that I was in the forces, or aircrew or what, so most of the people round wouldn’t even know.
JM: No.
BH: Only George probably would know.
JM: Would know, right. As a fellow traveller sort of thing having.
BH: Yeah.
JM: No, it’s certainly a difficult time that you had there in your service so yeah it’s.
BH: Yeah, it was as I say I just thought that, thought that the Government over there could have sort of helped people. But I guess there’s so many in the.
EH: Wasn’t it work that you could go and study for over in England?
BH: Yeah, that.
EH: Yeah study in tech, pick up a career?
BH: Yeah, I’m sure they offered that because they did sort of pay for my passage out here. I didn’t sort of emigrate, I was sort of, they covered the cost of that, which I thought that was the best thing. [laughs]
JM: And that presumably was by ship?
BH: Yeah, it was. It was a good trip and then I think it took us five weeks to get here. Because not like other immigrants who were given some money, we had a proper passport so we could get off the boat wherever it docked, so we sort quite a few places around the. All with different names now like Port Said and some of these other ones, what do they call that?
JM: Columbo?
BH: Columbo. That’s right that was one. Don’t know what they call that, what do they call that now?
JM: I forget.
BH: But that was an enjoyable time when we come out here. It was sort of magnificent really. We met up with a Catholic priest. And we weren’t Catholic but we just met up with him going on there. And he used to go with us when we went off the boat and he used to show us around because he’d done it before and then we, yeah. Pretty lucky with the things around.
JM: Were there other ex service personnel on, I know that quite a lot of the boat was probably immigrants, were there other ex service?
BH: Didn’t know of any.
JM: No. There was nothing to sort of, yeah? Didn’t make any particular contact with anyone during the time you were travelling out that you became aware of them being ex service?
BH: No, I didn’t really. There was, you know we met up with lots of people of course, but none of them had anything relative about the services at all.
BH: Yeah so. It’s been pretty good and we’re sort of lucky that we’ve reached the age we have now.
JM: Yes you’ve certainly done very well. Good North Coast air that’s what it is. [emphatic]
BH: Yeah it must be Jean. Yeah we’re so lucky. Even though I’m my age I’m still driving and having got any limited licences or anything so I can still do that which we get around about still. You know this is a funny sort of area. We got involved with the Pottsville Neighbour Centre because one of our daughters works there. She’s sort of, you could almost say she’s second-in-command I suppose. That’s been brilliant ‘cause we meet so many people, that’s been brilliant because we sort of go down there and Edna’s been in the op shop and I’ve been out with the furniture and seeing where things are, it’s been most enjoyable. Yeah so.
JM: Um.
BH: Yes, [unclear].
JM: Very satisfying life by the sounds of it?
BH: [laughs] Yeah. We have one daughter that lives up the Sunshine Coast. She has four boys and now of course they’re all married and have children so we have about six great-great grandchildren now. And they come down here to visit us quite often ‘cause we have this, and close to the beach.
JM: That’s right, yeah. And what’s the name of the chap that’s writing up your biography?
BH: Jesus, [exhalation of breath].
JM: That’s on the computer isn’t it? So we can get it off the computer?
BH: Yeah.
JM: That’s OK so.
BH: It’s um. Yeah, as I said he give me a DVD of the thing so far. It’s been adjusted since then. The reason it slowed down, just used to live across here. He was a jeweller and he used to write books as a hobby. And then he came on, talking to me a bit and then he asked me if he could do it. And that’s the way it started. Debb is his second name. Daniel, Daniel Debb. Yeah, well he used to do work up the Gold Coast, jeweller, and then his mother got sick and they lived in [unclear] so he decided to pack up here and go back and live with his mother and that. Since then he said he’s had to take three months off from looking at the book because of conditions down there with his mother. And he’s had to travel to Sydney to get work as a jeweller. He rang me up two weeks ago and said that he hopes to start again on it. He’s very excited about it but I’m not. It’s, I think there’s been so many biographies given out on something but he’s, he feels quite adamant that it’ll be a success. ‘Cause it’s sort of listed from when I grew up as a little kid in this Over Wallop, through to Andover, to all this. So it’s all covered on that, that sort of thing, yeah. So we’ve just got to wait until that comes out, but the way he’s going I’ll be lucky if I survive it. [laughs]
JM: Well, see how it goes. You look pretty hale and healthy at the moment so that’s good. Alright, well we might wrap it up at this point. You’re happy with that, there’s nothing else?
BH: Yeah OK.
JM: Nothing coming to mind that you wanted to particularly mention at all?
BH: I don’t think so. I think it’s briefly cut it down, I mean there’s lots of things happened when we were prisoners of war but there not relative now, so, as I said it’s in the diary but I’ve never discussed it very much.
EH: You’ve never even told the girls.
BH: No, not much about it.
EH: And then you’re opening up to a stranger.
BH: No.
EH: Yes. Got it all down on there.
BH: Edna’s got some funny ideas but she, yeah. They’ve always said that they wanted some recognition of my life story so that’s why when this Daniel Debb when he sort of said this, they’d get a copy of it when it comes back so that’s why it started from when I was younger. Gone through, as I said, to when I met Edna and going back from home living in Wolverhampton.
JM: Yeah. What service medals were you, have you got? Do you know off the top of your head?
BH: It was the, I got the ordinary medals that came in. Then I got a later one, don’t know what it was.
EH: Service overseas?
BH: Yeah, but because of the feeling that I had about the Government over there with what was a, quite frankly I wouldn’t even know where my medals are. My daughter could have them, I don’t know, but yeah.
JM: Do you remember if you have a ’39 – ’45 star?
BH: Yeah I did get that.
JM: Right, OK. And what about, are you aware of the Bomber Command clasp?
BH: Yeah, I’ve got that.
JM: You’ve got that?
BH: My daughter got it for me.
JM: Oh OK, right.
BH: Yeah, yeah. Perhaps I was expecting too much? But when the medals came out the actual aircrew medal was exactly the same as a ’39 – ’49 star with the exception of the colour of the ribbon. And I thought ‘Gee that’s strange’ because there’s not much recognition between the two. It was, yeah, so I still, I still occasionally go the RSL Club, I used to go to the one in [unclear]and then when I came back here I’d go to the one at Pottsville but it doesn’t, it doesn’t hold the same feeling as what the people do that go on that are over from Australia ‘cause most of them are on [unclear] or something like this. The Government tends to help them but I’m sitting here like a woolly duck still here talking about these things.
JM: Um. Alright, well I thank you very much for your time Bill, it’s been greatly appreciated and thank you indeed.
BH: Well, good luck with your thing.
JM: Thank you.
BH: From what I hear of it all you’re going to get out of it is the satisfaction that you helped out to.
JM: Well, it’s important that everyone’s story is recorded. That’s the important thing because the recognition hasn’t been there. This is now small steps towards getting that recognition in place. So that it can’t be changing what’s gone in the past but it can change for the future. So.
BH: Yeah. Well as I said I was known over there as Walter William Charles Hallett, soon as I stepped foot in Australia I just became William Hallett. The other names are forgotten, thank God.
JM: Yeah. Very good. Well once again thank you very much. Thank you.
BH: Would you like?
Dublin Core
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AHallettB161122
Title
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Interview with Bill Hallett
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:52:01 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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Jean Macartney
Date
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2016-11-22
Description
An account of the resource
Bill Hallett was born in Over Wallop in 1922. He joined the RAF in 1942 despite having an exemption due to the work he was doing at Tidworth Barracks. He flew operations in Stirlings and B-17s as a flight engineer with 214 Squadron. Rather than bombing, their role was to jam enemy transmissions. His aircraft was shot down over Holland and he became a prisoner of war After he and his wife Edna moved to Australia where he became a delivery driver before joining the Banana Groves Federation where he worked until his retirement aged sixty-one.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
England--Suffolk
214 Squadron
aircrew
B-17
bale out
flight engineer
prisoner of war
RAF Stradishall
shot down
Stalag Luft 7
Stirling
the long march
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/301/3458/PMcPhersonGM1604.2.jpg
dd2ac1eb4ebcb48c7080f69f18d8bec1
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/301/3458/AMcPhersonGM160221.1.mp3
0b7ecf8569165bee4f966dd6ad59e791
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
McPherson, Gerald
Gerald Murray McPherson
Gerald M McPherson
Gerald McPherson
G M McPherson
G McPherson
Description
An account of the resource
Four items An oral history interview with Gerald Murray McPherson (430468 Royal Australian Air Force) and his flying log book and two photographs.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Gerald Murray McPherson and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-02-21
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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McPherson, GM
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AP: This interview for the International Bomber Command centre’s digital archives with Gerald McPherson, a rear gunner with 186 Squadron during World War Two, the interview is taking place at Gerald’s home in Box Hill, in Melbourne. My name’s Adam Purcell and the date is the twenty-first of February twenty sixteen. So, Gerald, we’ll start if you like with er, well at the beginning, erm, tell me something of your early life, where you grew up and early education, and things like that
GM: I was born in Dimboola in Victoria on the fourteenth of November nineteen twenty-four, and er, moved to Horsham when I was five and did all my schooling at Horsham [pause] what else do you want to?
AP: Ok, well, I’m sorry, what were you er?
GM: I was one of er, seven boys and er, one girl in the family, three of us were in the, air force, one was a dive bomber pilot, my eldest brother, another was a rear gunner on a Halifax and myself
AP: What were you doing before the war though, what first job and things like that?
GM: I joined the Bank of Australasia, in nineteen forty, and moved to Neale in nineteen forty-one, and in nineteen forty-two I was called up to the air force [pause] nineteen forty-three, January forty three
AP: Did you have any prior military service, for that?
GM: No, just air training, I was in the Air Training Corp
AP: Ah, what did that involve?
GM: I was just going to lectures on maths and that sort of thing
AP: Ok, um
GM: I also learnt er, [pause] morse code, and er, my brother was a telegraphist, and fortunately he taught me morse code
AP: Excellent, um, why did you enlist in the air force, why did you pick the air force?
GM: Ah, my two elder brothers had already joined the air force, and I felt I’d rather do that then foot slog [laughs]
AP: Sounds, sounds quite reasonable, erm, what about, alright, so, having decided to join the air force then, erm, can you tell me something about the enlistment process, what you had to do, to actually get in?
GM: Well, I had to have permission from the bank to join the air force, for the first place, er, once I did that, being in the Air Training Corps, you just filled in a form for application to join the air force. My father was in the area office for the Army in Horsham, and he, ensured that I wasn’t called up for the Army before I was called up for the air force [laughs]
AP: Was erm, can you remember much about the interview or the medical tests that you had to do?
GM: Ah yes, erm, in late January forty-three, I caught the train from Melbourne, er, from Horsham to Melbourne, we over landed at three thirty in the morning, arrived in Melbourne and went straight to er, Preston Motors in Russell Street, I think it was, for my medical and spent all day there, checked medical, colour blindness and everything else like that, spent the day there, and then er, that night we went down to Somers
A: Oh, so this was after you’d enlisted, and you’d been accepted and essentially called up, the first medical that you actually did, was that day that you were called up?
GM: Hmm
AP: Is that right? Very good
GM: Yeh, I say we because I was with a friend of mine who, I went to school with from when we were both the same age, we both came down together
AP: Right, excellent
GM: Erm, years later, a fighter, fight pilot in the Middle East
AP: So, you got to Somers which is the initial training school, what happened then?
GM: Er, had training and er, had trouble with my teeth, because in those days during the depression we had a lot of decay and er, I went to the dentist at Somers, [pause] and he said ‘I’ll have to take all your top teeth out’, yeh, he took four out and he said ‘how are you feeling’, I said ‘alright’, he said, he took another four out, ‘how you feeling’, ‘alright’, he finished up taking all the teeth out in one sitting, that night I was in hospital, bleeding, and he had to come and stitch me up [laughs] [pause] and I had to go back a course, because I was, thirty seven course, to thirty eight course, to finishing course, because I had to have a couple of weeks sick leave because of the problem with my teeth [laughs]
AP: What’s erm, what’s air force dentistry like, what’s air force dentistry like, I don’t?
GM: Not bad, erm, probably the best set of teeth I’ve ever had, with the first set, I smashed them playing football at Ballarat when I was in the air force [laughs]
AP: Alright, what’s, what sort of things did you cover in ITS, what sort of things did you cover in your initial training school?
GM: Oh, er, morse, mathematics, er, aircraft recognition I think, can’t remember what I did down at, it was mainly like, back at school, and when I was interviewed at the end of the course, er, I, give allotment, and he told me I was to be a wireless air gunner, I wasn’t very happy about that, but er, probably my training in morse, that had er, influenced that, I would have been as probably a better, would have been a better navigator ‘cos my maths was pretty good, anyway, that’s how it fell, probably I’m lucky he did make me, because I’m still here [laughs]
AP: So, you finished at Somers, actually, just before we leave Somers, can you tell me something of what Somers, what the actual camp was like, how it was set out and what a normal day sort of entailed?
GM: Er, the camp was good, you did a lot of drilling, erm, [pause] it was just like school I suppose, back at school, you did your lessons and went to bed, unfortunately I, when I arrived there they, gave us a pallet [unclear] to fill up with hay, usually there’s a pallet, but by the time I got down there, all the hay had gone, so I finished the next two months sleeping virtually on an empty bag on the floor, you can imagine what that’s like [laughs]
AP: Yeh, what time of year was it?
GM: Nineteen forty, January, February
AP: Oh, so at least it wasn’t too cold
GM: Or February and March, it wasn’t cold, but your hips, lying on your side, and then, half an hour later you’re on the other side, it was dreadful, that was the only major inconvenience down at Somers, was er, lack of sleep because of the er, virtually sleeping on a wooden floor [laughs]
AP: What er, was it like then, a barracks sort of building?
GM: Yeh, barracks, a tin, tin hut, er, Nissan huts I suppose they were
AP: How many, how many men might have been in there?
GM: Oh, twenty
AP: Twenty, something
GM: Down both sides
AP: Alright, so, you then left Somers, and I think you went to Ballarat next?
GM: Ballarat, yes
AP: What happened at Ballarat?
GM: I was at air gunner school, er, I could do the morse, but I couldn’t cotton on to the theory [pause] er, my other brother had, had, the same trouble, and he, he, they made him an Australian air gunner, so I said oh, that’ll do me, so I told them then that I didn’t want to finish the course of wireless operator and be a straight air gunner, er, that’s it. It was the coldest place we’d ever lived in, Ballarat, the Nissan huts had doors on either end, there was about twenty in each Nissan hut, we used to put on our flying gear to go to bed, it was that cold, the doors were, weren’t flush on the base at either end, and the wind used to come in one end and right out the other end, and it went right through the huts and er, most of us felt cold there, it’s always a cold place Ballarat anyway
AP: It is, I was just there, last weekend and it was only about twelve degrees in the middle of summer, anyway, erm, alright, the first, can you remember something about the first time you went in an aeroplane, what was it and what were you doing?
GM: Erm, I didn’t do any flying at Ballarat, er, I was only there for about four months, and they sent me to Sale, air gunnery school, and there I did my first trip in a Fairey Battle, I was with another gunner, in a practice air to ground gunnery and er, after the other airman had done his, his exercise, I stood up to put the magazine in the gas operated gun, the round magazine, and we, we’d been told that if we lost it, it would cost us five pound, now five pound was a lot of money in those days, for us, a few, couple months pay, and, I was stood up in the Fairey Battle to put my magazine on the gun, it slipped out of my hand, the plane bumped about a bit, slipped out of my hand, was sliding down by the side of the plane and I reached out and caught it sliding down to the ground, sliding down the side of the plane, and, I then realised that I’d taken off my safety [laughs] and I was half way out of the plane, [laughs] anyway they caught the, caught the magazine and [unclear] I finished my exercise
AP: This is your first ever flight?
GM: Yes
AP: Right
[laughter]
GM: [unclear] fumes in the Fairey Battle were dreadful, I couldn’t stand fighting in them too often, just as well I played cricket, a lot of cricket, because otherwise I would have lost that magazine
AP: Indeed, erm, did you encounter any accidents or anything, did you see any accidents or hear about anything during training?
GM: No, not down at Sale I didn’t hear of any, or see any
AP: Perhaps, later?
GM: [pause] No, I saw a plane shot down
GM: Not so much accidents, but we’ll get on to that shortly, I’m sort of more looking at training at this point. Alright, so, you’ve finished at er, at Sale, you are now a qualified air gunner
GM: Yeh
AP: Then you get shipped overseas
GM: Come out of Sale, then we went to Ascot Vale, showground embarkation depot, we were only there for a couple of weeks and they moved the embarkation depot to Melbourne [unclear] er, there for about a fortnight, sleeping in the old southern stand, underneath the old southern stand, we called it pneumonia alley, and on the seventeenth of November we were, headed off to er, [pause] Port Melbourne to sail to America, on the [unclear] line, we left Melbourne and went down south, New Zealand and up to San Francisco, we were there at Angel Island which was just near Alcatraz, we were at Angel Island for three or four days and then we went across America by train, there was about two hundred and fifty of us, mainly air gunners. [pause]
Arrived New York at two thirty in the morning, calm morning and had to march about a month to Fort Slocum, [pause] walked about a mile, [unclear] to Fort Slocum where we were billeted for the next fortnight, we had a great time in New York, it was Christmas time, Anzac House looked after us, every day, we had somewhere to go, on the weekend we would go to a family, Christmas Day we went to a family, I can’t say enough for Anzac House in New York, the way they looked after us, went to all the major buildings, the Empire State building, the radio station, went for a weekend down in [pause] where was it? A suburb of New York, New Rochelle was it, not sure, I can’t remember now, we had, three of us had a very nice time down there for the weekend, [pause] we left New York on New Year’s Eve, on the er, er, what’s the name of the ship? [pause] some’ at, Samaria, it’s about twenty thousand tonner which used to run on the Odessa line, and, twenty thousand ton ship with fourteen thousand troops on board, American, mostly American, a lot of erm, negroes, and the first night out was very rough and, a lot of the Americans hadn’t been to sea before, and the next morning it was terrible, sewage was all overflowing and it was floating down the gangways, [laughs] you know. We got up to see if we were in a convoy, two of us, a friend of mine, and er, it took us about two hours to get up to the promenade deck, we were down on eighth deck, two hundred and fifty Australians in one room, with one door each, so you can imagine what happened, we were below water line, if it was torpedoed, and the kitchen was in the same area, and there was, three tier bunks, all around this area, counting the two hundred and fifty Australians, and I was just near the exit door.
When we got up to the promenade deck we saw ships everywhere. We were in a convoy of about one hundred and twenty ships I think it was, the oldest battle ship Texas, was right next to us, which was a bit, a bit thankful for that. [pause] Unfortunately, we only had two meals a day and we missed breakfast because it took us another hour to get downstairs, and our meal time was over, so we had to buy some chocolate in the canteen for breakfast. [laughs] [pause] Seven days later we arrived in Liverpool, luckily, we avoided any submarines, although at one stage, the smoke was coming from our funnels and the Texas signalled us, I read this on morse, ‘if you don’t stop the smoke you will have to drop out of the convoy’, that worried us a bit, [laughs] luckily, they stopped the smoke and we were able to stay in the convoy. We arrived in Liverpool on the seventh of January, I think it was, forty-four, and er, caught a train down to Brighton, and er, [pause] we were billeted in the, in the Grand Hotel in Brighton, [pause] we were offered er, leave, at, people’s homes, in, in England, and I, accepted that offer in one case, and went to High Wycombe where I was in a town for a week by a family by the name of Cook, the husband was a, headmaster of a, college in High Wycombe, and they were very nice, treated me very well, there was only four hundred, their house was only four hundred yards from Bomber Command headquarters along the road. [laughs]
After that, we were posted to, in February forty-four, late February forty-four, we were posted to Silverstone, which is now the, the er, you know erm, the car racing, where they had Wellingtons, after a couple of weeks there we were formed into crews, all the, all the airman were assembled in a hangar, and said, right oh, sort yourselves out into queues, crews, well, I’d been a friend of another gunner since we’d arrived and the Melbourne cricket ground he, he, came from Griffiths, in New South Wales, and we decided we were both at Silverstone, we decided that, he’d be a mid-upper gunner and I’d be a rear gunner and try and get in the same crew, and a New Zealand pilot came around and said ‘have you got crew yet,’ ‘no, no’, so we told him we’d be prepared to fly with him as mid upper and rear gunner, he also got an Australian navigator, an English wireless operator and an English bomb aimer, that completed the crew of six at that stage. We then went to Turweston, satellite aerodrome of Silverstone, to do flying after we’d been doing lectures on aircraft recognition, gunnery and guns, etc, etc, and we’d only been there a couple of days and, our wireless operator was asked to fly with another crew on a gunnery exercise near the North Sea, and er, the wireless operator, he came to me and said ‘Gerald’ he said ‘I’ve got to fly with another crew and I haven’t got a watch. and I’ve got to send messages back at certain times, will you lend me a watch?’, and I said ‘yes’, the family had given me a watch as a send-off present a couple of months earlier, that afternoon I heard that the plane had ditched in the North Sea, lost an engine, and er, [pause] the only one that didn’t get out the plane, ‘cos there were about nine on the plane, was the, our wireless operator, he was killed. I asked one of the Australian gunners what happened and he said well he was sitting in my ditching position next to me, and all of a sudden he got up and raced back to his set and he, he must have been knocked out, because he didn’t get back, and I said he went back to pick up my watch, that’s the only reason he’d have gone back, they put them on the desk, the wireless operator, so they could see the, that’s been on my mind ever since. [pause] That night, seven, six people from the same hut as us, there was about three crews in the hut, were all killed in the aircraft accident, they were doing circuits and bumps, and er, obviously something wrong, went wrong, and they crashed near the aerodrome. There were seven killed in our hut, out of about twenty in one day, [unclear] this other crew and Australian pilot, er, [pause]
They finished our training at Turweston, without any further problems, and returned to Silverstone to do er, [pause] er, what do they call them? They used to fly around England, and training?
AP: Navigation flying
GM: Navigation flying
AP: A cross country thing
GM: Cross country, yeh, flights, [pause] one night we were, we’d just taken off towards dark, on a cross country up to Scotland, and back to Wales and then back to base, and er, ran, ran into the edge of an anvil cloud, and er, it ruined all of the electrical circuits in the plane, [pause] er, the navigator had to do all his navigating on his own, wireless operator couldn’t help him, and when we were due back to base, we didn’t know where we were, because there was a lot of fog about, we weren’t sure where we were, and er, I spotted a lantern flashing two letters, and I told the pilot and he said what were the letters and I said, I told him what they were and the navigator, thanks very much, we know where we are now, we were only a few miles from home, [laughs] we arrived home safely, and that was about the only incident, worth noting I think [pause] [unclear] not sure, yeh, that’s right
After finishing at Silverstone, went to [pause] Methwold, were we did some, didn’t do any flying, we just did some er, PT, physical training and getting fit for conversion unit at Shepherds Grove, we were only at Methwold for about a week, left the Shepherds Grove, er, conversion unit [pause] and er, [pause] had a scotch engineer when we arrived there, he, he was brilliant, he was an engineer, although he was only twenty two, he was an engineer in the civil air force before he joined the air force, finished up with a DFM, had er, on one occasion at Shepherds Grove, we were going on a cross country and he went out to inspect the plane we were to fly in, with a small torch, you know, like a pencil like torch, the size of a pencil, inspect seven planes with this pencil before he’d get in one to fly, I said ‘this’ll do me’ [laughs] he’d point out the discrepancies on the plane, to the ground staff and said, ‘I’m not flying in that one’, eventually got one that we flew in and managed to get back. While we were at Shepherds Grove, one night were [pause] there was a Nazi, er, a German fighter came in and shot one of the Sterlings down at the base and crashed into the hangar and cleaned out two more Sterlings, three Sterlings, plus the one night, we didn’t know anything about it until we went down to the flights the next day, and saw the wreckage, it just missed the conning tower, the er, control tower, [pause] Shepherds Grove, we did some cross country, [pause] [background noise] and then we went to [unclear] Con unit, er, LFS, Lanc finishing school at the [unclear] and er, the first time I’d been in a Lancaster, I, was sitting in the rear turret and all of a sudden, the pilot sent the engineer full power, [emphasis] and I just went back [emphasis] and I thought, this’ll do me, I said [unclear] flying and taking off in Wellingtons and, and er, Sterlings before that, I used to say a prayer they’d get up off the ground, but I knew the Lancaster would because you could feel the power. We were only there for about, a week, and then we went to 15 Squadron at Mildenhall, on the twenty-third of July, we went on a loaded climb, er, three hour flight with bombs on board, to give the pilot practice taking off, with bombs in bomb bay, then we returned to base at Mildenhall, we, unfortunately, the skipper forgot he had a heavy load on, tapped the engine before we reached the runway, it landed on the road and bounced over the fence and onto the runway, [laughs] luckily there were no cars on the road [laughs] That was the only problem we had at Mildenhall, until a few days later our pilot was selected to go out with another crew on their last trip, as a second pilot, going to experience before he took his own crew on ops, on the first night, they returned early because the rear gunner got convulsions on over the target, and er, the crew returned to Mildenhall without carrying out their exercise, bombing raid. The next night, they were sent off again on a raid on Stuttgart, towards the end of July, [pause] about two hours before they took off, I could see the pilot was distressed, he really couldn’t find his lucky charm, a little tiki, and I spent an hour going through all his, with him, going through all the gear and everything for his tiki, we never found it, yes a [unclear] and when he left me, I think he had a premonition, because the crew never returned that night, they were shot down over France on the way home, all they were killed. The next day the Wing Commander, asked us if we’d consider being spares, stay at Mildenhall and be spares for other crews, with different er, people unavailable from illness or replacements, we said no, we were a crew, all we needed was another pilot, and he accepted that, after a lot of discussion, and then we then went back to Wratting Common conversion unit to find another pilot. [pause] [background noise] There, we picked up an Australian pilot, [unclear] class and completed a conversion unit course with him, we then returned to Feltwell to do, for a week or so, to do a course on Lancasters, and then we’re posted on 186 Squadron in Tuddenham in Suffolk, on the twenty-sixth of October nineteen forty four, twenty eighth of October forty four, we did our first op, and the Wing Commander took us on our first op, he had a habit of doing that with new crews rather than sending a [unclear] other crews. [pause] Our first target was Flushing, Scheldt estuary, and bombing at eight thousand feet, when we arrived out at the plane to take off, I got into the rear turret and found out there were no guns in the rear turret, so I called up on the intercom to the Wing Commander, to tell him there were no guns in the rear turret, and he said ‘oh well it’s too late, to change planes, we’ll have to go without them’, he said, ‘oh well, keep your eyes open and tell me what you can see’, so I’m probably the only rear gunner that’s ever flew on an operation without any guns in the rear turret, thankfully we were not attacked by any fighters or anything, but I did notice a lot of flak. [pause] The following day we went on another daylight operation to Westkapelle on Walcheren Island, going bombing at eight thousand feet, on er, gun, gun placements I think it was, the target, [pause] a few weeks before that, a couple of friends of ours, was shot down over Westkapelle and were taken prisoners of war, two gunners that I’d met at Melbourne cricket ground when I was, and we became firm, pretty good friends, they were in a different squadron, in 5, er, 5 Group, er, now, and our first night trip was our third trip to Koblenz on the sixth of November, forty four, and on the way home over France, I saw a light miles behind us, and it was following us, I didn’t report it because it was well away from us, couldn’t work out what it was though, then all of a sudden it went straight up in the air, [emphasis] I said, talked about a sight, I didn’t know what it was but I think later on, I think I realised it must have been a, a, er, jet, they called, what’s the name, ME, Messerschmitt 262 was it?
AP: Yep, 262 was a jet, yep
GM: Whether it was or not, I don’t know, but I wasn’t going to mention it in debriefing when we arrived home because they might have thought I was going mad, [laughs] and take me off ops, that wouldn’t have been fair to the crew, so, I said nothing. And then, erm, we, the next er, [background noise] the next date, nine, ten, ten operations were in daylight, mainly to the Ruhr, on er, tagging er, [pause] oil refineries and er, communications, [pause] [background noise] on one of those raids on Gelsenkirchen, I, I saw a crew that slept in the same billet as me, shot down, [pause] er, they were hit on, and they were only about a hundred yards to our port and er, they were hit by flak, caught fire, and I saw three or four of the crew bale out, when the pilot, he must have been very brave because his whole cabin was on fire and he kept it steady for some twenty odd seconds, half a minute or so, and I saw three of the crew bale out, and then all of a sudden the plane went into a steep dive and crashed, a dreadful sight. [pause]
What else can I tell you? [pause] [background noise] Yes, thirteenth of April, there was a night raid on Wurzburg, near Leipzig [inaudible] to tell, there were seven hundred and fifty anti-aircraft guns guarding this, this place, like fireworks that night, looked like them [laughs] I believe them, [laughs] I er, we were hit, on this raid, by flak, and er, lost our air speed indicator and the pilot decided to land at the emergency aerodrome at Woodbridge, which had a very long and wide runway, they got down, did repair and got permission to land, cranes and everything on the side of the runway just in case you crashed, [unclear] for the next plane coming in, they put us up for the night, the next morning I saw all the great area of smashed planes [laughs] fighters, bombers, [laughs] everything, they were parked in an area safe to the aerodrome, er, [pause] at the end of December, forty-four, our squadron was transferred to Stradishall from Tuddenham, er, early in January, our wireless operator was late back from leave, and missed an operation that we, we were put on, so the Wing Commander told him that if there was ever a shortage of a wireless operator through illness or late back from leave, he’d have to replace him, and this happened, a couple of weeks later, the wireless operator, another wireless operator back late from leave, and er, our wireless operator was called up to replace him, he went to briefing, was out in the plane, a night operation it was, and er, he was sitting in a plane waiting to taxi out, when all of a sudden he got a tap on the shoulder, ‘this is my crew you can nick off’, in other words, so he, I, he packed up and went back to bed, [emphasis] meanwhile, we were in the mess area drinking as all the planes were taking off, and all of a sudden, a terrific explosion at the end of the runway, one of the planes had crashed and exploded, enquired what plane it was, it was the plane that our wireless operator was briefed to fly on, so we went back to the bar and had a couple of drinks on him, then went to bed, and now, the rest of the, the pilot he wasn’t with us but er, the rest of the crew were NCO’s at that stage, we all went back to our barracks and went to bed, the wireless operator didn’t sleep in the same barracks as us, as he had a room at the inn, where we used to keep all our parcels from Australia and had a primus stove, and used to cook our meals, and had a good meal now and again because you didn’t get a very good meal in the sergeants mess, and er, next morning, we didn’t know he’d gone to bed, and the next morning he appears at the door of our barracks, ‘where have you been?’, ‘why?’, I said, ‘you were on that plane that crashed and exploded last night’, and he said, ‘oh no’, he said, ‘the other wireless operator turned up and kicked me off the plane’, he went white, later that day, three other Australians in the crew got notices that they got parcels at the post office to be collected, the base post office, and there was nothing for him, our wireless operator, and he usually got as many parcels as anyone, so when I went down to pick my parcels up, he came with me, and he casually said at the WAAF behind the counter, ‘any parcels for Warrant Officer Perry?’, ‘oh yes, we are sending them back to London because he was killed last night’, we then realised that no one else knew that the other wireless operator had turned up, so we raced down to the adjutant, and told him, [laughs] and he was about to send off the telegram [unclear] for our wireless operator [laughs]
Er, what else can I tell you? [pause] Oh, one of our daylight raids, we were badly, hit by anti-aircraft fire, and er, when we were hit, we started to go down, and I called up on the intercom and no one answered me, so I prepared to get me shirt and bale out, and all before, I took me helmet off, hold on we are out of control, what had happened was, as we were hit by anti-aircraft fire, at the same time we ran into the slip stream of another Lanc, and then went into a dive, and the pilot said, had been too busy getting control of the plane to answer me, so, luckily I didn’t bale, hadn’t bailed out by then, we arrived home, found out that [unclear] the aircraft incendiaries shell had burnt itself out in the spars between the petrol tanks
AP: Ooh
GM: I understand it was sent to, to Air Ministry and they didn’t know that the Germans had these, the anti-aircraft shells in the, in the shells that they were firing, we thought we were a bit lucky there. [pause] Erm, thirteenth of February, we went to Dresden, night operation, and we were told that the Russians had asked us to bomb it, said he, and that er, Dresden did produce precision implements for the German forces, like binoculars for the tanks, bomb sights and er, periscopes, so we had no hesitation, in, we believe we had no hesitation in going on that raid, although I have said some [pause] people have had misgivings since then, but [pause] it certainly was a, heavy raid and er, caused a lot of damage, we were told that the Russians, which were about thirty or forty miles away from Dresden, where they were being held up by troops coming through Dresden and that was the reason why they asked us to bomb it. [pause] What else can I tell you?
AP: I’m just letting you go at this point, [laughs] I will have some more questions for you later but I’m seeing if you answer them as you go, so
GM: Ah yes, on the ninth of March forty-five, we were [unclear] on a daylight raid to [unclear] which is a coking plant, daylight raid, and er, after we’d taken off we lost an engine, about ten thousand feet, fly around England and the pilot and the engineer discussed whether we could still complete the raid, on three engines, climbed to twenty thousand feet, and they agreed that they could, provided they cut corners on each dog lick, well, when we arrived over the target, we were about the twelfth plane to bomb, arrived back safely, the er. [pause]
On the raids, daylight raids on Gelsenkirchen on the fourth of march forty-five, we were severely damaged by flak, and er, on the way back the mid upper gunner told me to turn my turret to starboard and had a look at the, er the, power plant, and, which I did, I saw there was a hole about six inches by twelve inches in the elevator, only a couple of yards from where I was sitting, I think the shell must have gone clean through the elevator and exploded above us, all tanks were holed except one on that same trip, [unclear] ever, hit twice, and a big hole near elevator, forty holes in the aircraft, and when we arrived back it was sent to the scrap heap, as far as I know [pause]
Er, one of the other daylight raids, we were [unclear] Munster railway marshalling yards and we were the leading aircraft, in the whole of the hundred and eighty-four planes, hundred and eighty odd planes in the raid, we were leading the raid we were about to bomb, when I saw another squadron directly above us open their bomb doors, so I reported to the skipper, he had er, they opened their bomb doors and started dropping bombs, [laughs] so we had to direct the pilot to dodge the bombs coming down, [laughter] wasn’t very nice. We were on time and I think the planes there, the squadron there was ahead of time [pause] What else can I tell you? Oh, our last raid was on, last operation was my thirty seventh, we went to Kiel on the ninth of April, [unclear] she was, after dropping our bombs we were covered in searchlights, and the, pilot threw the plane around like a fighter, the engineer assured me that at one stage we were upside down, on a ninety degrees bank, and the pilot got us out of that and eventually, we, after about ten minutes, we escaped the searchlights and headed back home. We were briefed, that once we crossed the Danish coast and North Sea, we were to descend to four, seven thousand feet, well we’d lost a lot of height whilst over the target. The pilot was tired and he said, I’m going to put the nose down and go like a bat out of hell to get down to seven thousand feet, well, all of a sudden, I sitting in the rear turret, I felt the tails skin and I instinctively looked over the side, and there were two gunners, the rear gunner and the mid upper gunner looking at me from another Lancaster, well that was about two o’clock in the morning, you get a lot of light, in the northern Europe, I still don’t know how our tails didn’t hit each other and the fins on the, I reckon we couldn’t have missed them by more than a feet, a few feet, the other [unclear] the other plane. After we’d returned from that raid, we were told that we’d finished our tour and we’d already finished it before we went on the raid, because a signal came through from the Air Ministry reducing the tour from forty to thirty-five, and our crew had already done more than thirty-five. They bought the notice of the new Wing Commander who was an Englishman, and he said, ‘oh they are on the battle order now it’s too late to change and let them go’. Nice, virtually could have been our last trip for our crew and another crew if we had hit each other over the North Sea. Anything else?
AP: Always more, erm, always more, right so, you have given me a pretty solid erm, one of my questions was do any of your operations stand out in your memory, and I think you’ve answered that one, [laughs] but erm, some more general questions if you don’t mind, erm, your life on the squadron, can you describe the sergeants mess and the sort of things that happened there?
GM: [laughs] Ah, the sergeants mess, well we were all officers in by January
AP: Ok, well the officers mess, the mess, describe the mess
GM: It was great the officers mess, sergeants mess wasn’t too bad, we used to enjoy a drink together, we were like a family, er, there wasn’t much variety in the food, but we were well looked after by our own parcels we received from Australia, we had a little stove which we used to cook things on, if we felt like a good feed we had one, had plenty of tinned sausages and fruit cake, tinned fruit, soups, we had er, we looked after ourselves if we had to. That was when we were in the sergeant’s mess, in the officer’s mess we didn’t have to, that’s because we were well looked after there
AP: What did it look like, the officers mess, how was it arranged and?
GM: Well it was a, Stradishall was a peace time station and all buildings were brick, [unclear] and brick, yeh, just like a reasonable life
AP: Did er, how did you cope with the stress of flying, you did thirty-seven trips, so presumably you got pretty good at them, but what did you do in your downtime and how did you sort of wind down?
GM: You got leave every six weeks, two of them on the squadron, I used to go to, stay with friends of a brothers, she was, she looked after three hotels for her father, one was in Louth, in Kings Head in Louth, another in Leicester, another in Lincoln, and I was invited down there anytime I was on leave, to any of those places, she was managing the place. I went to the three of them
AP: Did er, did you actually catch up with your brother much at all, in England?
GM: Ah yes, I, after I finished at Silverstone before I went to Methwold, I had seven days leave and I er, he was up at Kinloss, north of Scotland, not far from Inverness, and I went up there by train and I didn’t tell him I was coming, and I reported to the guard house and they tannoyed for him, and he didn’t appear, so they said he must be in town, so I sat in the guard house for a couple of hours, and all of a sudden a bus comes in from town and out staggers my brother. ‘What are you doing here?’ [emphasis] I said, ‘I have come up to see you’, he said ‘you didn’t let me know’, I said, ‘no I didn’t, took me this long to find out where you are, a couple of months.’ Anyway, he organised a bed for me and we had a couple of days together before I went back to base. He completed the tour, he er, his crew had a mid-air collision near Rockford, while they were in training, the crew of the other Wellington were all killed including one of his best mates and his plane was, had a supervising pilot, he bought the plane back down in the paddock, at night, the plane was on fire and my brother couldn’t get out of the rear turret and they chopped him out with an axe. I understand that the pilot got the George Cross for that incident. [pause] He completed, he only did a tour of twenty and his crew had taken off ops to go down to Boscombe Downs to test flight the Avro three, er the Halifax 111, and he was down there several months doing that. Then he was sent up to Kinloss
AP: Were there any superstitions or hoodoos within your squadron or your crew, you told me about the tiki thing, were there any other sort of, lucky charms or [inaudible]
GM: Oh, I had a kangaroo around my neck, a little kangaroo that was given to me, round my neck, I didn’t think it was a lucky charm, I just thought it was something that had been given to me
AP: Fair enough
GM: I used to say a prayer every time we took off, going up, sitting in the rear turret, [laughs] I’m not as religious now as I used to be [laughs]
AP: I guess that it concentrates the mind some what?
GM: Yeh
AP: It would, that’s an interesting question in its self I suppose, was there much in the way of religion or spiritual guidance or support or something during your tour?
GM: No, I didn’t notice any
AP: Nothing in particular?
GM: No, nothing in particular, there
AP: Erm, all right, so er, a general operational question I guess, you as a gunner, you are sitting there in the aeroplane and you see a fighter and you say, ‘corkscrew, port, go’, what happens next?
GM: Oh, I didn’t have to fire me gun
AP: Well, that was lucky because you did one trip without them
GM: No
[laughter]
AP: Ok, theoretically, what happens next, I suppose you would have done fighter affiliation and that sort of thing?
GM: Well, yeh, you try and focus on the plane, you can’t fire until he gets closer to you, he’s probably firing at you because he’s got cannons, you’ve only got 303 machine guns, and you can’t fire at him when he’s miles away, but er, when he got within four hundred yards, you were entitled to have a shot at him, and, you had to arrange a deflection, and planes, your own plane is going down in a corkscrew and he’s coming across, they got fired at, and you have to allow deflection, and try and hit him, [laughs] but I didn’t have to. We were told that er, if you saw, at night time, you saw a plane, a German fighter, try and avoid them, we did see one coming back from Koblenz on our first trip, he was an 88, a Junkers 88 and he hadn’t seen us, well we didn’t think he had, we told the pilot and the pilot said, ‘well I’ll just change course and see if he follows us’, which he did, and he didn’t follow us, so we, we just kept away from him, and that was our instructions, we weren’t there to fight them, because we were there to bomb and carry out the operation and do our bombing, if we keep away from the fighter was the best thing to do, was to try and avoid them
AP: Can you describe, you’re sitting in your rear turret in a Lancaster, what’s around you, what does it look like, what does it feel like?
GM: Well, in daylight you saw a lot, see the, as you’re leaving the target it would be the bomb going off and you know the
AP: Shockwaves
GM: Shockwaves going out with the four thousand pounders going off, and er, at night time it was just dark, [emphasis] [laughs] below me looking over in the dark, trying to see anything, and er, probably the biggest problem was your own planes, collisions, there were a lot of collisions during the war over Germany
AP: Probably more than we think as well, two aeroplanes just sort of going missing, yeh indeed. Erm, I might back track a little bit, let’s have a look what else. Your, when you first got to England, what did you think of wartime England as an Australian just arriving in war time England, what was your first impressions?
GM: [laughs] Well, I can’t say that any impressions were, I was surprised that the [pause] well there wasn’t that much to worry about in those, forty, early forty-four, some fighters used to come and fly over Brighton and fly over but never caused any trouble while we there
AP: What did you think about the English civilians?
GM: They were brave, they must have had to put up with a lot more, I know that, the big cities. I wouldn’t want to be seeing what I saw in daylight over Germany, I wouldn’t want to be down on the ground there, it would be the same for the English people
AP: Indeed, right we will go back to the very beginning, erm, where were you when you heard the war was declared, and what did you think at the time? You would have been relatively young I imagine?
GM: Yes, I was er, fourteen, fifteen. I came to church and I came out on Sunday night and I heard Mr Menzies [unclear] England’s at war and Australia was there for them
AP: What did that make you think?
GM: It didn’t mean much to me at the time because I thought it would be over by the time I had to go there, be done with it [laughs]
AP: Were you in the Air Training Corps at this point or did that come later?
GM: No, no, oh that didn’t start until, oh a year or two, and after that they started the employee training scheme, they produced that at me
AP: So, alright, and now we’ll jump to the end, you’ve told me how your tour ended, erm, how did you find readjusting to civilian life?
GM: Very difficult, I was drinking too much, smoking too much and luckily, I played cricket, and I think that was what got me through er. [pause] I had work and er, and cricket probably, and then football, I played cricket and football, all the year round so it kept me reasonably fit
AP: Was that amongst servicemen or was that just in a general team?
GM: Err
AP: Were there other servicemen involved in those clubs, or was it?
GM: Ah, just a few, yes, yes, there were a few, a navy man, a navy man in my team, [unclear] first eleven [pause] My brother had a worse, I think he was a bit worse than I was, he became an alcoholic, really, he had a heart attack and died when he was about fifty-six
AP: This was your, the one that was in the air force?
GM: Yeh, the one that had the mid-air collision [pause] My father was, where was he? Oh, at church at Horsham, and superintendent of the Sunday school and he was a bit disgusted in Harry, my brother came home from England, because he was rolling home drunk every night, but er, my oldest brother he was er, a dive bomber pilot, and the same like me and told my father to forget about it because of what we’d been through [cries] [pause] That was pretty difficult as a family [pause] I don’t know that they had er, what they have now the stress problem, they probably did, but they didn’t know anything about it in those days, we didn’t get any counselling when we got home [pause]
AP: So, it took you a number of years to get back to normal, so to speak, you think?
GM: Yeh, I think so, I was a pretty heavy drinker for a long time, which didn’t help when you are working in a bank. I think they understood, I hope it
AP: So, I guess that my, my final question, perhaps the most important one, what do you think is the legacy of Bomber Command, and how do you want to see it remembered?
GM: Well, I think they helped win the war but no, they helped out, the damage they must have caused to the communications and synthetic oil plants and oil plants, and we were on mostly daylight targets, we had GEE-H which was supposed to be more accurate than visual bombing, er we were specifically targeting not, area bombing, we were targeting, targets like marshalling yards, went to Cologne four times, and we bombed the marshalling yards four times in daylight, went over, turned out years later the Cologne Cathedral just needed a, the yards were still there [laughs]
AP: Certainly is
GM: I remember one raid on Cologne, there was so much flak, it was a clear day, by the time we left the target there was a cloud over the, over the city, it was just flak, flak
AP: How do you think Bomber Command is remembered today, how do you think Bomber Command is remembered today?
GM: Well, I think it’s remembered more than it was, than just after the war, I think people have got to realise that they did do something other than bomb Dresden [pause] I’m not one for thinking things like all that, I’m one that remembers things, [laughs] what happened
AP: Fair enough, that works. So, any final thoughts?
GM: No, just glad that I’m home [laughs] still going, [laughs] don’t know whether it will increase my life or not, but I’m ninety-one now, and I still remember all these things
AP: Very good, well, on that note, thank you very much Gerald
GM: It’s been a pleasure.
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AMcPhersonGM160221
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Interview with Gerald McPherson
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Sound
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eng
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01:25:29 audio recording
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Pending review
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Adam Purcell
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2016-02-21
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Gerald McPherson grew up in Australia and was working in banking before he volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force. He flew operations as a rear gunner with 186 Squadron.
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
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Australia
Great Britain
England--Suffolk
United States
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Cathie Hewitt
15 Squadron
186 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
Battle
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
crewing up
faith
Gee
Operational Training Unit
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Shepherds Grove
RAF Silverstone
RAF Stradishall
RAF Tuddenham
RAF Turweston
searchlight
Stirling
superstition
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/302/3459/PLambAM1702.2.jpg
5bb20bc0ccac9b450bc8f96ec8e8496b
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/302/3459/AMcPhersonLambA150726.1.mp3
5e35283fa31ed4090662324faaffc571
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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Lamb, Alexander
Alexander McPherson Lamb
Alexander M Lamb
Alexander Lamb
A M Lamb
A Lamb
Description
An account of the resource
11 items. An oral history interview with Alexander McPherson Lamb (b. 1925, 1827673 Royal Air Force), his decorations, album and photographs. He flew operations as an air gunner with 15 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Alexander Lamb and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-25
2017-08-16
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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Lamb
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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BB: Good morning Alistair, and thank you for letting me come into your home. I am representing the International Bomber Command Centre at Lincoln and we’re doing an oral history of Bomber Command veterans. So this interview is being held with Mr Alexander McPherson Lamb in his home in Stirling. Would you like to tell us your story? Thank you.
AML: Well, I joined the RAF in — I think it was March. I’m not quite sure now unclear] I think it was March. And I volunteered for aircrew. I was a junior clerk in the civil service. War Department. And I joined the RAF in, I think it was March. March ’44 I think it would be. I can’t remember.
[background chat]
BB: Sorry Alistair.
AML: That’s alright. You start again? Or is it alright?
BB: No. Just carry on.
AML: You’ve stopped it.
BB: Yeah. Just carry on. Yeah.
AML: And I think it was March ’44. And I volunteered as an air gunner. Had my attestation and medical and whatnot initially in Edinburgh prior to that. And I think I actually joined in March ’44. Yeah. March ’44 was when I actually joined. Went down to London to Aircrew Reception Centre in London where we were sort of needles stuck in us and examined and —
BB: Was that the one in St John’s Wood?
AML: Pardon?
BB: St John’s Wood.
AML: St John’s Wood. Yes. St John’s Wood. Then we went from there overnight by train to Bridgnorth.
BB: In Wales.
AML: I can’t remember the number of the OTU. Of the thing it was. Bridgnorth anyway. I can’t remember where, what it was actually called. It would be RAF. I can’t remember what Bridgnorth was. I’ve got it somewhere. Maybe get it in my logbook.
BB: Ok. We’ll look at that later.
AML: And then did our initial training there. March, gunnery, various things. Air force law. The usual jazz that you get when you join up first of all. And after that we were then [pause] I can’t remember how long we were there. I’d need to look up my logbook again. We then went to gunnery school which was at Stormy Down in Wales.
BB: Right.
AML: Number 7.
BB: That’s right. Number 7 Air Gunner’s School.
AML: At Stormy Down’s in Wales. Near, near Porthcawl. A lovely — it was a good station and I enjoyed it very much. We flew in Ansons there.
BB: Yeah.
AML: We did our gunnery in Ansons there. We passed out. It would be in 28th I think. 28th of July or June, I’m not quite sure, ’44. And then came home on leave. From that we went back to Market Harborough. OTU. 14 OTU Market Harborough.
BB: Yeah.
AML: Where we spent the first three weeks more or less meeting people. Knowing about, meeting guys. All the crews that were there. And you were allowed a month, a fortnight or three weeks to what was called crew up. There was no compunction. You picked your own crew over a period of time and that. Then you went in a huge hangar and I don’t know who it would be, the CO or somebody said, ‘Who are the people who have got full crews?’ And they all went to one side. The last of us were left. If you didn’t have a full crew you were then left and there would be other spare people left as well.
BB: Right.
AML: And they would then say, ‘Well here’s a spare pilot.’ ‘Here’s a spare navigator.’ ‘Here’s a spare gunner.’ Would you all like to, ‘Would you like to crew up?’ And basically that’s how you crewed up.
BB: Which was all very sensible really because you got to know people that you could trust and you liked and you got on well with.
AML: That’s right. That’s right.
BB: So there was method in their madness.
AML: Oh there was. The usual thing as you do in all these things when you join up first. There’s always somebody who knows something about everything. And they said, ‘Oh look for a warrant officer pilot because he’ll have a lot of flying experience. Don’t look for a young flying officer who’s got none.’ Or a young sergeant pilot. A general thing.
BB: Very sensible.
AML: It didn’t matter. You just picked who you found. You took a like to somebody even before you know their qualifications. If you liked them you liked them you know.
BB: Yes.
AML: We picked a warrant officer pilot and when we went in to be crewed up we were told well he’s been posted somewhere else. We were then left standing until this lone sergeant pilot arrived. We didn’t know he was French and they said, ‘Well here’s a pilot needing somebody. What about a crew?’ And I must have been looked at and he said, ‘What would you like to ask?’ I said, ‘Well we’ll take up then.’ So that’s how we got crewed up.
BB: So you had this French, a French airman.
AML: Very very much French actually.
BB: French pilot.
AML: Yeah.
BB: Who was kind of left.
AML: That’s right.
BB: Was he in the French Air Force or was he in the RAF?
AML: He was in the French Air Force initially I think.
BB: Right.
AML: He came from — maybe this is more or less rubbish to you.
BB: No. No. Carry on.
AML: He came from France when the Germans invaded. I forget where it was. It was down in the south of France. Not as far as they were but it was quite far down. Near Bordeaux I think he was.
BB: Right. Southern France. In Vichy France.
AML: Aye. And he escaped and came back to this country and because he had very little English at that time he was put in a reserved occupation building aircraft. He was punching wing ribs out for an Auster aircraft in Leicester.
BB: Oh I see. Right.
AML: That’s where he was sent to. And he got so fed up with it he said the only way you could get out of a reserved occupation during the war was if you were volunteered for submarines or aircrew.
BB: I see. Right. They were so short on both.
AML: So he volunteered for aircrew and did his training, I understand with the French Air Force and the French training him. Probably the RAF but under the auspices of the French.
BB: Yeah. Yeah.
AML: And then in the usual way the wheels worked somebody said, ‘What’s this guy with a Scottish, with an English name doing in the French Air Force?’ Jack was then humped out of one into the other and we got him at OTU. His language was quite a problem for a while but we got to know about it. We then went on to Wellingtons at OTU at Market Harborough. And, I don’t know, I can’t remember the dates at Market Harborough. I need to look up my logbook.
BB: That’s ok.
AML: But you can fill them in after. I think we went to Market Harborough in ’44 some time. I can’t remember when. August ’44. I need to look at my logbook. You’ll see it in the logbook.
BB: Yes.
AML: ’44. Market Harborough I think. And we left there and when we did our stint we did a hundred and ten, about a hundred and ten hours on Wellingtons at Market Harborough. The reason we did so many is another story I wouldn’t bore you with. Anyway, and we then went home on leave and came back as a crew to — what did I say it was? Heavy conversion. 1654 Heavy Conversion Unit.
BB: 1654 Heavy Conversion Unit at Wigsley.
AML: Wigsley. Wiglsey.
BB: Yes.
AML: Flying Stirlings.
BB: Yes. How did you find the Stirling?
AML: I liked the Stirling very much indeed. I was very taken with the Stirling. Very very strong aircraft. Very robust aircraft. Plenty of room in it. Because you know how tremendous.
BB: Yes.
AML: I got extra flying time. We used to carry on till the [unclear] you see.
BB: It was a long way off the ground. I remember. And I see you have a model here too which shows the size of it.
AML: That’s right.
BB: Compared to the same scale.
AML: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: That you have a Wellington or a Lancaster.
AML: Aye. It was wingspan. You know the story. The wingspans were reduced to get it in to the hangar.
BB: Yes. That’s right.
AML: Which didn’t do it any good at all.
BB: No. Not good at all. No.
AML: It was literally a Sunderland wing.
BB: Yeah. Oh I see.
AML: You see.
BB: Made by Short’s of course.
AML: But ninety nine feet which made it very manoeuvrable but it couldn’t get much higher than —
BB: Couldn’t get the height.
AML: Sixteen thousand and there.
BB: Which made it very vulnerable to flak and fighters.
AML: Very vulnerable to flak. Yeah. Yeah. Same types of turret I had in the Lanc of course. Exactly the same. Anyway —
BB: Yes. Frazer and Nash turret.
AML: Went from there to the same OTU, same conversion. We went to, joined Lancs at that unit. We were then, we went over to Lancs at the same place. 14 OTU.
BB: 1654 Heavy Conversion Unit.
AML: Conversion Unit.
BB: Yeah.
AML: We went on to —
BB: 15 Squadron.
AML: No. Not at that time.
BB: Ok.
AML: We were then posted when we finished that course. I forget how long. I don’t remember how long. It wasn’t terribly long. We then went to 15 Squadron at Mildenhall in March ’45.
BB: That’s right.
AML: More or less a year after we joined. March. I joined a year ’45. And the first thing we did when we got there we were sent to Feltwell to do a GH bombing course.
BB: Gosh that must have been interesting.
AML: It was only about a fortnight’s course I think. A beautiful little airfield. I think it was Harvards they had there. It was a fighter. I think. I can’t remember.
BB: Yeah.
AML: But it was a very nice peacetime ‘drome. A lovely place. I liked Feltwell for the short time we were there.
BB: So that was fighter affiliation.
AML: No. We simply did GH bombing training.
BB: Just bombing training. Ok.
AML: For the navigator’s really.
BB: Yeah.
AML: The navigators and bomb aimers. This type of GH bombing. I can’t remember.
BB: Yes. That would meant that you would have two yellow stripes on your tail when you qualified to be a bombing leader.
AML: Aye. GH leader. Some of —
BB: Yeah.
AML: Some of the aircraft had yellow striped on the tail.
BB: Yeah. That’s right.
AML: Some hadn’t. It was a means of identification.
BB: Yes. Yes.
AML: Then we came back from there just more or less overnight to RAF Mildenhall itself. Where we were originally. And we were there at RAF Mildenhall until we left in — when would it be? When did we leave Mildenhall?
BB: Mildenhall.
AML: ’46 I think we left Mildenhall.
BB: 20th of August ’46 I think you mentioned before.
AML: Yeah. They moved. They moved to Wyton. The squadron moved to Wyton.
BB: Did you go with them to Wyton?
AML: We went to Wyton. Yeah.
BB: Yeah. Ok.
AML: And the crew, the whole crew went to it. That was the last trip my skipper did. He was then posted as an instructor.
BB: Right. He was screened.
AML: Aye.
BB: And went off to an OTU.
AML: Aye and of course by that time everybody was getting broken up because ’46 the demobbing was taking its toll and people were coming and going. And new people were coming in and sort of general get togethers what was disappearing quickly because you were losing people left, right and middle. And as I say I was fortunate. I stayed flying until I was demobbed which was quite lucky for me.
BB: Yes. Yes. That’s right.
AML: Because 15 was a peacetime squadron. So that’s why I think.
BB: Yes. So with that pretty well organised.
AML: Pre-war squadron.
BB: Yes.
AML: That’s why we were probably kept as such. 44 and 15 and some of the others, 7 were all peacetime squadrons.
BB: All the wartime squadrons were disbanded.
AML: That’s right. Yeah. Were all disbanded.
BB: The peacetime squadrons were re-kept.
AML: Yeah.
BB: And some of the wartime ones were re-kept.
AML: Yeah well —
BB: Like 617 for example.
AML: We had Tuddenham. We talked about Tuddenham.
BB: Tuddenham. Yes.
AML: Just across the road from us.
BB: Yeah. Yes.
AML: A case of wheels up, wheels down, landing.
BB: Yes.
AML: Then we stayed there until we were posted. As I say we were posted to Wyton. Wyton, a beautiful station. A peacetime.
BB: Yes. I’ve been to Wyton. Yes.
AML: A very modern peacetime station.
BB: Yes.
AML: A lovely station. And I was there until I was demobbed.
BB: Yes.
AML: We did a lot of stuff after the war. Immediately after the war, before the war actually ended in Japan. We brought liberated prisoners of war back. We did supply dropping to the Dutch.
BB: Yes.
AML: I got a medal from the Dutch government for that. We did three trips of supply dropping to the Dutch and I think we did three trips for bringing prisoners of war back but I think we came in to —
BB: Yeah.
AML: Westcott.
BB: Westcott. Yes.
AML: I think so.
BB: In Bucks.
AML: Oh my memory’s not as good as it used to be I’m afraid.
BB: So — that’s ok. So how many actual operations did you do? You came in late in the war.
AML: I came in very late. I didn’t join —
BB: Did you do six or five or —?
AML: I did, I did, the crew did six and I did five.
BB: Ok.
AML: I took food poisoning.
BB: Oh right. So you did your five ops. And —
AML: Four daylights and one. Four daylights and one night.
BB: Ok.
AML: Kiel was a night op. And I understand that the war was still on this time — these supply drops trips and prisoner of war would have been turn ups. I don’t think they were actually given as that.
BB: No.
AML: And somebody said to us, ‘Oh you could, in a push, count them as ops,’ but I never ever did that.
BB: No. No.
AML: I didn’t do. But that was —
BB: No.
AML: That was on.
BB: But in terms of bombing German or French targets. Yes. Yes.
AML: Actual bombing Germany itself.
BB: Yes. As target. Yes. Yes.
AML: I did four daylights.
BB: Four daylights.
AML: Munster, Bocholt, Heligoland, Kiel and Bremen.
BB: And Bremen. And Bremen was your last one.
AML: Last one we did.
BB: Yeah. And did you, did you drop — did you have a chance to drop those big bombs?
AML: No. Not at that time.
BB: The Tallboys. No.
AML: 15 Squadron wasn’t doing that.
BB: No. No.
AML: It was a specialised.
BB: Yes. 617. Yeah. Yeah.
AML: 617.
BB: Yes.
AML: Was a specialised squadron for that.
BB: So you dropped the normal, you had a normal cookie and the normal other ones. Yeah.
AML: That’s right. A normal cookie.
BB: Normal load. Yeah.
AML: Or an eight thousand pounder double cookie sometimes.
BB: Right.
AML: And I’ve got to know, I think about a fourteen thousand pounds was about the standard bomb load we had.
BB: Bomb load. Right.
AML: Sixteen hundred gallons of gas. Fuel.
BB: Yeah.
AML: It’s in my logbook. You’ll see it there. Yes. Then 15 Squadron became a sort of — well we were doing a lot of training. Long range navigation exercises. Things like that. Then we started to convert to get the Lancaster ones, the ones they were using for the ten ton bomb.
BB: Yes.
AML: I forget why it was. Like B1 specials I think they were called.
BB: B1 specials. They took the nose turret off and —
AML: The top turret off.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And bomb doors off.
BB: And the bomb doors off to take the Tallboys.
AML: That’s right.
BB: Yes.
AML: We dropped those. We called it Operation Farge I think it was called. We did the dropping of these bombs on the U-boat pens at Farge.
BB: Yeah. Ok.
AML: Because they didn’t know when the war ended exactly what damage was being done with the Halifax that did this. Then we did — oh what was the operation? There was a point but I can’t remember. Where we bombed [pause] ships in the English Channel to see what would happen to bombs.
BB: Oh to see what the damage —
AML: Yeah.
BB: Yeah. Would be —
AML: We flew then at a certain height and we dropped a stick of bombs. I think they were five hundred pounders. And then if and when we went to hit a boat [laughs] It was HMS Firefly. I think it was. It was an ex-mine sweeper. They then stopped the bombing and the navy went aboard the board and put a real bomb in where our bomb had struck or where somebody’s bomb had struck.
BB: Yes.
AML: And then detonated that bomb from a launch so they could then say that an aircraft at eighteen thousand feet dropped a five hundred pound bomb going into number two engine room would do X amount of damage.
BB: X amount of damage. Yes.
AML: This is what we did. We did some research on that.
BB: It was to see what the actual damage was.
AML: That’s right. That’s right.
BB: To a vessel being hit by a bomb of that kind.
AML: That’s right. That was to give them —
BB: So they could either improve the munition.
AML: Yeah.
BB: Or just to see the damage.
AML: It was to give them a general – they didn’t physically know, you know, but now they could actually do it. So we did quite a bit of that.
BB: Right.
AML: And then we got, we were lucky enough to get a trip to Italy.
BB: You went to Italy to bring back POWs.
AML: No. To bring back guys on leave as well.
BB: Oh ok. Right.
AML: I think it was a reward. The squadron got a reward. The squadrons got a reward.
BB: A chance to go and get some oranges and stuff like that.
AML: That’s right.
BB: From Italy. Yes.
AML: Yeah.
BB: And some wine no doubt.
AML: Yeah.
BB: Excellent.
AML: I think we landed at Blackbushe.
BB: Blackbushe right.
AML: Coming back. Aye.
BB: And did your crew all survive the war?
AML: Yes. Yes.
BB: Do you keep in touch with them at all?
No. They’re all away now. My skipper died. I’ve been to see my skipper. My navigator and I went to see my skipper in Australia. I went on my own once and he came with me the next time.
BB: Right.
AML: And he’d been over here. Funnily enough I’ve just had a phone call from Australia saying they’re coming across for my eightieth — for my ninetieth birthday.
BB: Oh that’s nice. That’s good. That’s very nice. Now just to remind me. When were born again. What’s your date of birth?
AML: 1925.
BB: Pardon?
AML: 5.9 ’25.
BB: 5.9 ’25. And that was in Stirling.
AML: Stirling.
BB: Yeah.
AML: In this house.
BB: In this house. Right. Ok.
AML: I’ve lived here ever since.
BB: So you’ve lived in here.
AML: Ever since.
BB: Ever since.
AML: No desire to move.
BB: No. And you were with the civil service before you —
AML: Yeah.
BB: Before you went and when you came back from the war that’s what you did.
AML: I was —what do you call that? I worked in the War Department as a boy messenger initially.
BB: Ok.
AML: For a few months until I then got a junior clerks job. And when I left I was a clerk. What they called temporary clerks because there was no establishment at that time, I understand. During the war.
BB: And that was in —
AML: Stirling.
BB: In Stirling.
AML: [unclear] in Stirling.
BB: Oh in the military side of it there.
AML: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: Ok. Ok. And so they didn’t [pause] was that a reserved occupation in that sense?
AML: Probably it might have been. I don’t think so. Anyway —
BB: Because you volunteered for air crew.
AML: Aye.
BB: Yeah.
AML: But what happened then I understand. I don’t know maybe you shouldn’t quote this but I think, I think the people who had gone out had to get their jobs back. You know, after the war.
BB: Yes. They had to be kept for them yeah.
AML: And I went back in. And realise there would be no things like that. I then transferred to what were called the Department of Health and Social Security I think we called it.
BB: Ok.
AML: National Insurance, I think. In Stirling. I was still a temporary clerk.
BB: After, after the war.
AML: Yeah. After the war.
BB: Ok.
AML: And I was there when I had to sit the civil service exam.
BB: Right.
AML: If I wanted to become established. That was the only way you could keep it.
BB: Yeah.
AML: So I sat the civil service exam, passed it and was posted on a permanent, as a permanent civil servant to Elgin.
BB: Elgin. Right.
AML: Elgin. And I was in Elgin for seven — nine months. Then I got back to Stirling. Well I got back to Alloa.
BB: Yes.
AML: And then I got from Alloa to Stirling.
BB: Right.
AML: I was in Stirling until I was demobbed.
BB: Right.
AML: And became a HEO, acting HEO and I was that until I came out. Where did I come out? ’48. Would it have been 1984 ’85 ’86? I can’t remember.
BB: That’s when you retired.
AML: When I was sixty.
BB: Sixty.
AML: In my grade, at that time, you had to go. At your age.
BB: Right. You couldn’t, you couldn’t negotiate.
AML: You couldn’t stay on. Now you can go on forever I understand.
BB: Right. Ok. And you went to school in Stirling.
AML: Went to school.
BB: What? The High school?
AML: Riverside.
BB: Riverside. And that’s where you, did you get your school certificate there?
AML: Yeah. Well I got — I left at fourteen.
BB: Yeah.
AML: As most people did in those days. .
BB: Yeah.
AML: I think I got what they called was it a day school or—? I can’t remember actually.
BB: Yeah. But you had, but you had enough to qualify for aircrew.
AML: Well, I don’t think it really mattered what scholastic abilities you had if you passed.
BB: Passed their test.
AML: The sort of general assessment test.
BB: Yeah. Yeah. Well there were –
AML: Yeah — there were quite a few lads, that’s the wrong word, who were plumbers or joiners who had, you know.
BB: Done apprenticeships the same.
AML: That’s right.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And they went too. Yeah.
BB: Right. Ok. And your mother. Your parents lived in this house.
AML: Yeah.
BB: And obviously that was a great worry to your mother. Going off flying bombers.
AML: Yeah. Yeah. My father died.
BB: Rear gunners position in the bomber at that. The most dangerous position in the aircraft.
AML: My father died. I think in ’40. 1940.
BB: Oh right. Ok.
AML: He was a regular serving soldier prior to that.
BB: What? In the army.
AML: Yeah.
BB: Ok.
AML: A twenty eight year man I think he was.
BB: Did he die in the war? Or did he —?
AML: No. No. He was out of the war. He came out the forces in 1924.
BB: Oh. Ok. So must have been a boy soldier and worked his way up and all that.
AML: Yeah. He joined the Seaforth Highlanders when he was eighteen.
BB: Ok.
AML: I think.
BB: Ok. And these are his medals on the wall.
AML: That’s right. Then after, after the Sudan campaign. Kitchener’s Sudan campaign.
BB: Yeah.
AML: He came back to Egypt.
BB: Right.
AML: In fact I’ve got a letter there written when he was in Egypt. He lost a sister during the terrible flu epidemic. I remember that was in the letter.
BB: I see he’s got the Egyptian Medal.
AML: That’s right.
BB: And the First World War.
AML: Yeah.
BB: War and Victory Medal and looks like —
AML: He’s got a Long Service Meritorious Medal.
BB: Long Service Medals and Meritorious Medal. Yes.
AML: He also has the Russian Order of Saint Stanislaus as well.
BB: Oh right. Ok. Interesting. So he served in the first, he had been a combat soldier.
AML: A regular serving soldier.
BB: In those campaigns.
AML: He was —
BB: How much did his military service influence you in, you know in going into the RAF?
AML: No. I don’t think so. Terribly much.
BB: No. No.
AML: I was never really army orientated.
BB: No. I didn’t mean the army. Just the whole military culture was in the family.
AML: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
BB: Yeah. That’s good.
AML: My cousin was killed at Dunkirk.
BB: Was he? Yes. What was he in?
AML: He was in the Royal Artillery.
BB: Royal Artillery. So he’s buried in France.
AML: Somewhere in France.
BB: Yes. Yes.
AML: I don’t know where.
BB: Exactly where. No. Oh dear. Ok.
AML: Research to that.
BB: Right.
AML: And all my other cousins were in the forces during the war.
BB: Yes.
AML: You know. In various bits.
BB: Yes. But no brothers and sisters.
AML: No.
BB: No.
BB: But you remember your cousins were in the armed forces during the war. Did you ever meet up in Stirling? On leave and things.
AML: No.
BB: No.
AML: I never met them at all.
BB: Never met them at all.
AML: No. It just so happened that, you know —
BB: What was leave like? Did you get regular leave or did it — haphazard? Or —
AML: When you were flying on operations you got I think every seventh week was a leave week. I can’t really remember.
BB: Right.
AML: You got quite a bit of leave. We were quite fortunate. I think, I think it was every seventh week. I can’t remember to be quite —
BB: Yeah. But you did get regular leave.
AML: We got regular leave. Better than most people.
BB: Yes.
AML: Better than most people. Yes.
BB: Yes. Yes.
AML: Yes we did. Aye. Aye.
BB: I’ve heard that before from other veterans.
AML: Yeah. And we always got our [unclear], you know. Of course. I’m talking from an NCO point of view.
BB: Yes. Yes.
AML: I don’t know remember what the officers got. They would get the same as us.
BB: Right.
AML: But that’s, that’s their —
BB: Were you made up to flight sergeant before?
AML: After a year I was —
BB: You were a warrant officer weren’t you?
AML: I was, after a year I got my flight sergeant.
BB: Yeah. You went in as a, sorry, you must have joined as an LAC.
AML: Oh I think I was an AC2. I don’t know —
BB: Sorry, AC2.
AML: An AC2 I think.
BB: And then gone through your training.
AML: Training.
BB: And then you would have got your sergeant’s stripes.
AML: Sergeant. That’s right and then I got my flight sergeant.
BB: Now, was that before you went to OUT? Sergeant. To be sergeant.
AML: Yes.
BB: Yeah.
AML: Ah huh. When everybody went to OTU they were all aircrew by that.
BB: Yes.
AML: They were all qualified aircrew.
BB: Ok. Ok. So once you got your wings you made a sergeant.
AML: That’s right.
BB: And then you got your flight sergeant.
AML: Yes.
BB: And then you got your warrant officer.
AML: Warrant yeah.
BB: That’s very good.
AML: I got my warrant officer last. I told you. After nine months.
BB: Yes.
AML: You could take, you could take your flight sergeant after nine months.
BB: Yes.
AML: And your W after a year.
BB: Yes.
AML: But Tom said, ‘Oh no you should do it the other way around. You get more money.’ But you don’t get it you know.
BB: And was that was that on a selection basis or a board?
AML: No. It was automatic.
BB: Was it automatic?
AML: Yeah.
BB: Oh I see.
AML: Unless you really had been a bad boy or something.
BB: A bad boy. That’s right.
AML: As far as I can understand it virtually just came through on station, a station order, you know.
BB: Routine orders. Yes. That’s it.
AML: Follow through on flight sergeants.
BB: Right.
AML: In fact I’ve got the papers of my father.
BB: Right.
AML: The same way.
BB: Yes.
AML: In the army way back.
BB: So it was, it was on a good record and on time.
AML: That’s right. Yeah.
BB: Ok. That’s fine.
AML: And I got my warrant officer the same way.
BB: Yes.
AML: The warrant officer was slightly different. I can remember. I think you went in front of the CO.
BB: Yes.
AML: Or your squadron CO.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And he asked you a few questions. Blah blah blah. He knew of you. He knew of you of course by this time anyway.
BB: Yes, of course he did.
AML: And he would say ok.
BB: And he would have had your flight commander’s report and all the rest of it. Yeah.
AML: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
BB: And so you got your Tate and Lyle’s on your, on your sleeve.
AML: Aye. I’ve got a picture. Over there.
BB: Yes.
AML: Over there.
BB: Yes. Yeah. Got your Tate and Lyle’s.
AML: My Tate and Lyle’s. Yeah.
BB: Yeah.
AML: Yeah.
BB: That’s great. Now tell me about, tell me about, I’m going to ask you certain aspects of Bomber Command and you can say well did you know about these things or not. There was a lot of, there was a lot of problem with venereal disease in Bomber Command. So much so that the Bomber Command chief medical officer went to see Bomber Harris and —
AML: In his book yes. It’s in the book. Aye.
BB: Was there any instances of that on your squadron that you knew? I mean it’s not something that somebody would brag, talk about.
AML: No. No. I don’t think, I don’t remember.
BB: No.
AML: I don’t remember.
BB: The medical officer didn’t give the talks and all that kind of thing.
AML: No.
BB: No.
AML: No. We got a very terrible talk. A horrible talk at ITW. At —
BB: Initial Training Wing. Right.
AML: At Aircrew Reception Centre.
BB: Oh right.
AML: Most of us didn’t know the first thing they were talking about. That’s how innocent we all were.
BB: So naive and young then.
AML: Oh absolutely. People don’t believe it. We were really.
BB: Yes.
AML: You got an odd guy who’d been a bit of a man of the world sort of style.
BB: Aye. No.
AML: But the rest of us we knew what women were and all the rest of it.
BB: Ok.
AML: But that was it.
BB: Alright. That’s fine.
AML: No it was —
BB: No. It was fine.
AML: It was a sort of movie. I mean they actually, you know.
BB: You grew up very quickly no doubt.
AML: Yeah. It was an American made movie.
BB: Right.
AML: About how they met and this guy goes with this lassie and all the rest of it.
BB: Right.
AML: And then graphic pictures of your [laughs]
BB: Yes. Yes.
AML: Thingummy.
BB: All the aftermath of all of that yeah.
AML: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: But to scare you as well and to give you information.
AML: Aye. It did. I never ever met anyone to my knowledge.
BB: No. No. Ok. Well as I said it’s nothing you would sort of say, hey. You know. But the other thing I want to talk about is LMF. Lack of moral fibre. Did you have any knowledge or —
AML: I never met anybody of LMF.
BB: No. Anybody on your squadron or the station that —
AML: Our first navigator.
BB: That you know.
AML: Our first navigator. We’d had a long protracted training at OTU because we kept losing people.
BB: Right.
AML: We lost two navigators at OTU.
BB: What? They were scrubbed?
AML: Aye. Scrubbed.
BB: Yeah.
AML: The first one just suddenly packed up his nav bag one night and said, ‘I’m not having any more of this.’ And disappeared. That’s the last we saw of him.
BB: Right.
AML: I don’t think it was LMF. It was just a case of —
BB: Just got out of it.
AML: I mean he was fully qualified to be a navigator.
BB: Yeah. Yeah.
AML: And then the next thing what happened to me was much the same. Two navigators on the trot and of course —
BB: That would have delayed you graduating from OTU.
AML: Yeah. Of course the pundits said to us, ‘Oh you’ll get a lot of hours in Wellingtons you’ll finish up in the Far East in Wellingtons.’ This sort of thing. You know. That’s what happened to us. That’s why we were held up first of all.
BB: Right. Ok. And the other and the other issue was morale generally. Because at your time with, in Bomber Command it was towards the end. Was morale fairly high?
AML: Oh aye. Very high. Yeah. Yeah.
BB: Yeah. I mean the losses had, the losses in Bomber Command were horrendous.
AML: Oh aye I’d be the first to admit that. It was unfortunate of course. People getting killed the last day of the war.
BB: Yes.
AML: That happened.
BB: Yes.
AML: But we didn’t have the colossal losses they had in —
BB: 1943.
AML: 1943/44.
BB: 1944. Early ’44. Yeah.
AML: Oh No. No. No.
BB: The Battle of the Ruhr. The Battle of Berlin.
AML: That’s right. That’s right. That’s when the chop rate—
BB: Were more or less gone
AML: That’s when the chop rate were really something to —
BB: But German night fighters were still flying.
AML: Oh yeah.
BB: When they got the fuel.
AML: Yeah.
BB: And the flak was just –
AML: Yeah. Flak was, your biggest worry was flak.
BB: Did you ever get to see any of the German jets?
AML: Yes.
BB: The Luftwaffe jets.
AML: Yes. I saw a 163 in actual action. It’s all in my logbook.
BB: Yeah. Yeah.
AML: And we went to [pause] the last raid of the war we did. I saw a 163 way below us [schwoooo noise]
BB: That was the Bremen. Bremen.
AML: Bremen.
BB: Yes.
AML: Aye. Aye. Aye. But no —
BB: It didn’t, it didn’t attack or —
AML: No. It had come up — I think 5 Group went to Hamburg the same day.
BB: Right.
AML: And —
BB: Of course you were in 4 Group.
AML: I was in 3 Group.
BB: Sorry. 3 Group.
AML: Some of the things I’m telling you now is on reflection. I mean I would need to really, you know think what exactly it was what it was on reflection I can remember.
BB: Right.
AML: Because I don’t want to line shoot to you under any circumstance. No. That was, that was, I saw a 16. I saw, I saw 262s in Germany after the war.
BB: After the war. On the ground.
AML: We were over in France.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And I saw them there.
BB: Yeah.
AML: They were certainly a very terrible aeroplane. Wonderful.
BB: Right. Now. Dropping the food parcels and other things to the Dutch. That must have been very rewarding.
AML: Oh very. Great. Great.
BB: Because the Dutch were starving at that stage.
AML: The great thing about it was you were allowed to fly low.
BB: Yes.
AML: Down to two hundred or less. Three hundred feet. In fact lower. My skipper took us down to about twenty eight feet some of the time. We were so low. Because he wanted to low fly and I used to say I’m getting water in to the tail turret [laughs] We flew low over —
BB: You did three of those you said.
AML: Pardon?
BB: You did three trips.
AML: We did three trips.
BB: Yeah.
AML: Yeah. Yeah
BB: And then the other humanitarian thing was bringing the POWs back.
AML: That’s correct. Bringing prisoners of war back. Yeah.
BB: From Italy and Germany.
AML: Yeah. The Americans were flying them from either lower or upper Silesia and we were picking them up at Juvincourt.
BB: Right.
AML: And I can remember I think the station was run by Germans as far as I can remember. Nearly all the German people seemed to be able to do the menial tasks there.
BB: Yes. Right.
AML: And then we, the Japanese war was still on of course.
BB: Yes. Of course.
AML: We were bringing them back from Germany at that time. Yeah.
BB: And they, they were obviously very pleased to get, be getting home.
AML: Oh yeah. Yeah.
BB: How many could you get in a Lancaster?
AML: I think I can remember off hand. It was either thirty or twenty six. I can’t honestly remember.
BB: And they all sat on the floor.
AML: Yeah.
BB: Or wherever they could.
AML: Yeah. They used to say in the air force you know this is a rubbish and that’s rubbish. I never saw organisation so wonderful as supply dropping and the prisoners of war. When we, when we went out to bring the prisoners of war back I can remember I was given a bag and in it was discs. And on the disc was a stencilled number one, two, three, four, five, six.
BB: Yeah. Whatever yeah.
AML: And on the fuselage someone had stencilled numbers inside the fuselage. And the idea was that I gave you a number five disc and you went in and the other gunner would say, ‘There’s number five. Sit there.’ And he sat on the floor.
BB: Yeah. Ok.
AML: At number five.
BB: So it was like a boarding, a boarding pass today.
AML: It was really.
BB: Yes.
AML: A very highly organised.
BB: Everybody had their place they had to sit.
AML: That’s right.
BB: And this would have been worked on a centre of gravity basis in the aircraft presumably.
AML: It must have been. Although it was some of the, some of the crew wanted to see land and of course they moved about, you know.
BB: Right.
AML: And I said, ‘Now don’t move about.’ You know.
BB: And did you ever go on any Cook’s Tours as well to look at the German cities that had been bombed.
AML: Yes. I did the Cook’s Tours as well. Yeah.
BB: Yeah.
AML: You’ll see the places we went to.
BB: Yes. That must have been quite sobering.
AML: We took, we took ground crew with us.
BB: Yes. Yes. Ground crew and the ground crew and the people from ops and the WAAFs.
AML: That’s right. Aye.
BB: And so on. Yeah.
AML: Took them with us. Aye.
BB: Yes. Yes.
AML: I forget where we went.
BB: Ok.
AML: You’ll see it.
BB: Did bomber Harris ever come to see you at the station?
AML: I think he did. As I told you, I think, yesterday.
BB: Yes.
AML: I can’t honestly remember but I’m almost certain somebody told me he did — I can’t, I would be wrong to tell you.
BB: No. No. He did go around.
AML: I’d be wrong to tell you. Yeah.
BB: How was he perceived by the guys on the squadron? Was he just, was he just Harris and that was it or –
AML: Oh aye. He was —
BB: Or did they actually —
AML: He was a good leader.
BB: Yeah.
AML: He did a lot for aircrew. He, again this is all —
BB: Yes.
AML: Sort of —
BB: Your own opinion. Yes.
AML: General talk.
BB: Right. Right.
AML: I don’t know how true or how bad it is.
BB: Right.
AML: But I understand he was the person who wanted every aircrew be commissioned. Or everybody LACs.
BB: Right.
AML: And I mean no different. He wanted all crews to be the same because they were all taking the same risks.
BB: Right.
AML: It couldn’t have worked that way.
BB: No.
AML: But that was the idea.
BB: Yeah.
AML: Most pilots of four engine aircraft were commissioned.
BB: Yeah. Or warrant officers.
AML: Or some —
BB: Yeah.
AML: We had two ome sergeant pilots.
BB: Yeah. A lot of sergeant pilots.
AML: They blotted their copy book but were so good they stayed as they were.
BB: Yeah.
AML: If you came on a squadron it was possible to be still a sergeant. Might have been a flight sergeant by the time he got to bomber, to thingummybob.
BB: Yeah.
AML: But there was. You’ll see on the crew list there.
BB: Yeah. Sergeants.
AML: Sergeants. Aye.
BB: And and and then you came out – what in ’47.
AML: I came out in ’47. I think it was ’47.
BB: ’47. You know the war had been finished a while so you had all that civilian.
AML: Flying.
BB: Flying. And you had obviously bringing back prisoners of war still at that time.
AML: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: Some weren’t being released until late.
AML: Yeah. Yeah. We converted on to Lincolns before I came out.
BB: That’s right. Because they were —
AML: Tiger Force.
BB: Tiger Force. That’s right, they’re the ones that were going to go to Japan but didn’t happen because they dropped the atomic bomb.
AML: No. Just as well.
BB: Yes. And so you didn’t consider staying in as a regular? Transferring to the regular air force after the war.
AML: Yes and no. But then somebody said, ‘Well, ok you stay in.’ Who the hell wants a gunner when the war’s finished? I’d have to re-muster probably.
BB: Well it had them in the Lincolns so you would have been a very experienced air gunner if you’d stayed on the Lincolns.
AML: Ah. No. I mean they were on the Lincolns. Ok
BB: They’d probably give you a job on ops or something like that.
AML: I didn’t – Unless I was flying I wasn’t interested.
BB: No. Ok. So you weren’t tempted. One because you had this very good job in Civvy Street which was being held for you.
AML: Well that’s right.
BB: Yeah.
AML: At that time it wasn’t such a good job. Just a normal clerk’s job.
BB: But it was a regular job.
AML: But I had a job to come back to.
BB: It was a regular job.
AML: Plus the fact my mother was living alone.
BB: Yes. Exactly. Here.
AML: Here.
BB: Right.
AML: And I thought well what am I going to do?
BB: Yeah. That’s right.
AML: Funnily enough I met quite a few chaps who I’d served with in the squadron who had stayed on and signed on and finished up at Lossiemouth.
BB: Oh yes.
AML: And when I went to Elgin. My first posting with the civil service at Elgin.
BB: That’s very close to Lossiemouth.
AML: I met one of these guys, one or two guys in the pub. They said, ‘You should go back in again. The money’s good.’ And I half thought of going back.
BB: Yeah. Because you could have re-mustered.
AML: Oh well.
BB: Because they, you were, once they awarded your brevet.
AML: Yeah.
BB: You wore it forever.
AML: You wore it. Yeah.
BB: Unless you did something really wrong.
AML: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: And they took it away from you.
AML: Yeah. Oh no.
BB: But you know I —
AML: They couldn’t take your brevet off you.
BB: But when I was a reservist I was one for thirty three years. When I first joined as APO, acting pilot officer up at Kinloss and other stations you had these old hairies as we used to call them. Who still had their —
AML: That’s right.
BB: You know, wartime brevets on.
AML: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
BB: But they’d been re-mustered as ops clerks.
AML: Did you never, did you never fly at all Bruce?
BB: In Nimrods.
AML: Oh Nimrods.
BB: I used to fly in the Nimrods.
AML: What as? Not as aircrew though.
BB: No. I was —
AML: I thought you said the technical. Aye.
BB: Well I was in intelligence so I was there to look at things. Yeah. Yeah.
AML: No. I never thought much about that.
BB: No. No. But they were a great bunch. And of course the Nimrod is a multi crew aircraft.
AML: That’s right.
BB: So it had kinships to Bomber Command.
AML: Oh yeah. Yeah. That’s right.
BB: You know. You had your crew.
AML: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: And you know everybody stuck together and —
AML: Oh you could read each other like a book.
BB: Oh yes. And of course we had to brief those crews much the same. And it hasn’t changed. You know, they’d all come to briefing. They’d sit down. The wing commander would stand up. Or the group captain would stand up. The curtains would be drawn.
AML: That’s it.
BB: Just like that.
AML: Aye.
BB: And they would either go [groan] another Atlantic trip or another Mediterranean trip or wherever it was. And all the plot would be up there. Where everything was.
AML: Isn’t it funny that you found out about your crew in many ways? Our wireless operator thought he was the greatest wireless operator in the world.
BB: And was he?
AML: I don’t know. But anyway we had an exercise we did occasionally to go out to the North Sea or out to the Atlantic to — navigation really .
BB: Yeah. Nav ex.
AML: To find a weather ship.
BB: A weather ship.
AML: Or a destroyer. Or something.
BB: Yeah.
AML: I can’t remember all the details. And you had to signal and of course he was in the astrodome and of course aldis they had in the Navy you see —
BB: The aldis lamp.
AML: Aye.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And I always remember he couldn’t read so he said to send up, ‘Please send slowly.’ [laughs] He couldn’t read the navy. You know, they were, they were tremendous. You know.
BB: Yeah, that’s right.
AML: I’ll always remember that.
BB: That’s right.
AML: And my skipper. He hated, he didn’t like landing in the half light and it used to annoy my navigator furiously because you were coming back and I’ m talking about, this is basically after the war. Of course during the war you were restricted what you could and couldn’t do. A long cross country you know.
BB: Yeah.
AML: Our navigator was a great one for food. He was desperate for food. And he would say, ‘I’ve packed up my nav bag. You’re alright. You’ll be over the fields in ten minutes.’ And Jack would say, ‘I want a dog leg.’ And he would get a fury, ‘What the hell are you on about?’
BB: I want to eat my sandwiches.
AML: ‘I want to land in the dark.’ And I said why do you like landing in the dark?’ He said, ‘What I can’t see doesn’t bother me.’ [laughs]
BB: Yeah. Well that’s very true.
AML: Yeah. That was him.
BB: Yeah.
AML: He liked to land in the dark. Yeah.
BB: That’s good. That’s right. And then of course when they came back from their trips in the Nimrod, just like in Bomber Command, we would sit down and debrief them.
AML: That’s right.
BB: And they used to hate that.
AML: Aye. Aye.
BB: Because they wanted to get away to their bed or get their breakfast.
AML: That’s right.
BB: Or whatever.
AML: The trouble with that was with your egg. We got an egg with everything.
BB: Yeah. But you really had to be very strict with them and say, ‘No. Let’s get this done and then you can go.’
AML: You had to get an egg with everything.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And the favourite was, ‘I’ll have his egg if he’s not coming back’
BB: if you’re not coming back.
AML: This sort of thing.
BB: And of course you must have seen even even at that late stage of the war, bomber offensive, you must have seen vacant chairs at breakfast and —
AML: Aye well —
BB: Guys that didn’t, that went out and didn’t come back.
AML: Funny. We were very fortunate on 15. I don’t think the time I was on it we had a very heavy —
BB: Casualty rate.
AML: Casualty rate. Funnily enough one of the chaps in the Aircrew Association was on 15. A hell of a nice bloke. He was shot down in France. I didn’t know him in the squadron but he was shot down in France. Had quite a rough time getting out. Eventually captured and became a prisoner of war.
BB: Right.
AML: And was on The Long March.
BB: Right. Ok.
AML: He was on the same squadron as I was. 15.
BB: Right. That must have been.
AML: Quite a lucky squadron. 15.
BB: That wasn’t great.
AML: I don’t think we had colossal losses on 15. I don’t know why or how. I don’t remember saying oh —
BB: What about, what about losses at OTU? HCU. There must have been crashes there.
AML: They were quite high. Yeah. Those. Somebody said to me after, of course, please understand I’m talking fifty sixty years ago.
BB: Yeah. I understand.
AML: Somebody said there was almost a crash every day at OTU. Now, I couldn’t ascertain that or confirm that. I don’t know.
BB: Well —
AML: But there were certainly one or two crashes when we were at OTU.
BB: I know that my late uncle was killed as an OTU. Instructing.
AML: Yeah.
BB: At Westcott. Number 11 OTU.
AML: Yeah. And we had one or two hairy do’s at OTU.
BB: And we paid, we paid tribute to him a couple years ago and all the guys at OTUs. And I did my research and something like eight thousand aircrew killed at OTU in Bomber Command. And just in Bomber Command.
AML: Probably would be. Well the chop —
BB: From collisions or bad landings.
AML: The chop rate on Wellingtons was quite high.
BB: Yeah. One in ten.
AML: They were second hand aircraft at OTU.
BB: Yeah. Yeah.
AML: I mean they weren’t, aircraft had been sent to OTU. You know.
BB: Yes.
AML: So we understand. I don’t know.
BB: And they went didn’t they? Yeah. Well there were, yeah. Well you take the Whitleys. They were front line aircraft.
AML: That’s right.
They were relegated to the OTUs.
AML: That’s right. Yeah.
BB: You know you went on the Whitleys.
AML: Well, they certainly were.
BB: And the Wellingtons as well.
AML: Wellingtons at OTU.
BB: And the Stirlings of course at the Heavy Conversion Unit.
AML: Aye. Heavy Conversion. Stirlings. Aye. Aye.
BB: Because they didn’t, they —
AML: They took them off.
BB: You either went to a Heavy Conversion and then on to a Lancaster Finishing School but you —
AML: I don’t know why we did that.
BB: Didn’t do that.
AML: This is the thing. Quite a lot of people — had to believe, hard to believe I was on Stirlings. Most of them went from OTU to Lanc Finishing School.
BB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
AML: And that was it. I don’t know why we went on. I don’t know. Just the way the system worked.
BB: The system worked. Yeah.
AML: We went, they went on to to that and we weren’t really long on Stirlings.
BB: No.
AML: But we were on Stirlings anyway.
BB: But it gave the heavy, it gave you the heavy, it gave the crew the sort of heavy experience that they needed.
AML: Aye. I liked the Stirling very much indeed.
BB: It looked a very roomy aircraft.
AML: It was a very roomy aircraft. Just like a big Sunderland.
BB: Yes. Yes.
AML: Really is.
BB: Yes.
AML: And I liked it.
BB: A Sunderland with wheels.
AML: Yeah. I didn’t care much for the Lincoln.
BB: Well it was a kind of a hybrid wasn’t it? You know.
AML: A hybrid. I didn’t care much for Lincolns.
BB: We’ll add a bit of this and add a bit of that.
AML: We had a twenty millimetre cannon on a Lincoln.
BB: Yes. Yes.
AML: And a lot of trouble with them and a lot of trouble —
BB: They used them in, against the terrorists in Malaysia.
AML: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: The Australian Lincolns anyway.
AML: We never did that and I think latterly the two turrets that took the twenty millimetres out the turrets. I can’t remember honestly but I flew in the tail of a Lincoln all the time. I flew first, initially I flew as an air gunner instructor and for a while the rule was flying that when we first got Lincolns they were nearly all ex-instructors that were in the top turrets.
BB: Yeah. Yeah.
AML: Because the bloody cannon recoiled across your head. If you moved out the road the, rotated, you could get your head taken off easily.
BB: Right. Right.
AML: These are things you remember yet you couldn’t put down on paper and say this is the God’s truth. You know.
BB: No. No. No. No. I know.
AML: It’s just the things I remember. It’s difficult.
BB: Well Alistair thank you very much for for telling us your story and we do appreciate it very much. And I’ll now terminate the interview. And I’ll have a look at your logbooks and other bits and pieces if I may.
AML: Aye. Aye. Sure. Sure.
BB: Yeah. Thank you.
AML: A lot of that stuff of course you’ll probably be able to edit out. You won’t use it all will you?
BB: No. No I don’t think so.
AML: No.
BB: And also thank you for signing the sheets and the other forms that I’ve asked you to sign. Thank you very much. So —
AML: Aye. Aye. Aye.
BB: So —
AML: I think you’ll find that most aircrew don’t really talk very much about it to other people unless it’s aircrew people.
BB: Right.
AML: And you can always find out somebody immediately they start saying, for example that I was told to bale out, and the crew – the nineteen crew baled out, you know someone makes a mistake.
BB: Yeah.
AML: You know right away that they’re actually line shooters. Ahat they said, you know.
BB: Yeah.
AML: You can’t really.
BB: No.
AML: Well we never did that, you know. Like on our squadrons, we cleaned our guns, well a lot – we didn’t do that on our squadron. I depended on the gunnery.
BB: The armourers used to do that.
AML: Yeah.
BB: But mind you had to be able to clear blockages in the aircraft.
AML: Oh yeah. Sit down, blindfold, sit down blindfold.
BB: Yeah. Yeah.
AML: And all that sort of thing.
BB: Right.
AML: But each squadron had its own different thing that depended how the CO looked at a particular item.
BB: Right.
AML: He might say, ‘Well I want you to do this,’ and you did it.
BB: What about dinghy drills and things like that.
AML: We did that as well. Yeah.
BB: Was that a regular thing?
AML: I don’t think so. No. We went to [pause] now where did we go? When we were at OTU we went to the Leicester Baths.
BB: Yes.
AML: And the baths were blacked out.
BB: Sure.
AML: And you got in first of all and they said, ‘Right this is your dinghy drill.’ There were RAF instructors I’m sure there. We all went up in one of these big huge big gareys. These big trucks they had with maybe four or five crews. Or three crews anyway. And we wondered why these guys were all dashing to go in such a hurry, you and saying, ‘You’re bloody keen,’ but we didn’t realise that if you went in first you got dry flying kit. If you went in second you put a dirty, you put a wet flying kit on.
BB: Ok right.
AML: You put the flying kit on you see.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And you had to use this and you had to jump in the dinghy with the lights out.
BB: Yeah.
AML: That’s why you had a whistle.
BB: Sure. Because it was dark. Simulating Bomber Command.
AML: The whistle was supposed to, aye. That’s why the aircrew used whistles.
BB: Whistles.
AML: Every aircrew whistled you know.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And you did this. Then they turned the dinghy upside down.
BB: You had to right it.
AML: You’ve got to right the dinghy again.
BB: Right.
AML: Exactly.
BB: And it was a five man dinghy. Or a seven man dinghy.
AML: Five man dinghy. Something like that.
BB: Yeah. Yeah.
AML: These are the sort of things you remember. That was one of the things. Why were they in such a hurry to get in? Because that was —
BB: What about using the parachute? Did you have any training?
AML: No.
BB: On how to do that?
AML: No. Never had any training on the parachute training at all.
BB: It was just there it is. Count. One. Two. Three. And pull the string.
AML: That’s right. That’s right. I think basically the reason would be that if you had to do a parachute jump and something had happened you wouldn’t jump in an emergency.
BB: No.
AML: You know you may be frightened to do that.
BB: Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. And that’s very good wisdom. Yes. Because —
AML: I think probably. I don’t know.
BB: If it’s your first time to go anyway.
AML: These are things that have come up in reflection when you were talking to a pupil.
BB: Yeah.
AML: Maybe that’s the reason why we didn’t do that.
BB: Yeah.
AML: You know.
BB: Ok.
AML: I don’t think there was any sort of written down about that. But we did do a bit of, of what I can remember now, we were in a hangar and we seemed to get a harness on.
BB: Oh yeah and swing a bit.
AML: And you jumped and you swung down and landed.
BB: Yeah. Just tell you how to land.
AML: Close your knees and this sort of thing, you know.
BB: Yeah. And what about parades and drills? Did you do squadron parades?
AML: Air crew are notorious for not wanting drills you know.
BB: Yeah.
AML: We really were a rough shower. I mean we were really were. I mean we got away with murder. I mean I must admit.
BB: Well I can assure you they haven’t changed.
AML: Yeah. If we could get away with it we got away with it.
BB: Yeah.
AML: I’m not going to bore you to tears of course, I hope.
BB: No.
AML: One of the great things you would probably know — after the war things changed of course dramatically as you can well imagine. And they had, I think it was a Friday. I can’t remember. The whole airfield shut down. And you had to participate in organised games.
BB: Oh yes.
AML: The whole station. WAAF. Everybody had to go on organised games. And it was organised in as much as they came around the gunnery section and said, ‘Right. Who’s all going to be play football?’ ‘Who’s all going to play rugby?’ ‘Who’s all going to play netball?’ You know. This sort of thing. It was all down. Your name was put down.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And I, when you’re out in your —
BB: Your PT kit.
AML: Your PT kit and your fancy [unclear] You went down to the front of the hangars and somebody would, I can’t remember, maybe the station would detail all the crews. Who’s going to be?’ And I hated sport. I hated sport. I never was fit. My father was a football referee and all that. I had no time for sport. I still don’t have time for sport. Anyway, I thought well this is bloody terrible.
BB: So what did you do? How did you get out of that?
AML: Well —
BB: Stay in the goal and hope nobody came near it.
AML: No. Well it was quite regular. You had to be back at a certain time. And I thought how can I bloody get out of this thing and I happened to hear one day to hear oh he said there’s flying. I said how do you get in to Waddington, or how do you get to so and so. Oh we’re flying. And I thought so I said to skipper, ‘Did you hear that?’ Because he hated sport too. And I said, ‘Can you no volunteer us to fly crews up?’ And he always wanted somebody in the tail, we all, so that would be a good idea. We got away with that for, however, we didn’t get away, they said right. I said, ‘Well what’s the least supervised job you could get?’ Cross country running.
BB: Go away and hide somewhere.
AML: So we used to run in to the pub [laughs] we used to put a pound note in our shoe.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And around the nearest pub and sit in the pub and then come running back.
BB: Running back. I see.
AML: We got caught out because when the squadron sports came on.
BB: Yeah.
AML: They couldn’t get relay through. The three mile relay run. They couldn’t get, the skipper said, well the CO said, ‘All those who did cross country running can do it.’ We nearly got killed doing this ruddy thing after. You know.
BB: Never mind. Ok.
AML: We were found out, you know.
BB: Right.
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AMcPhersonLambA150726
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Interview with Alexander Lamb. One
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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
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:47:13 audio recording
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Pending review
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Bruce Blanche
Date
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2015-07-26
Description
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Alexander Lamb grew up in Scotland and worked in the civil service before he joined the Royal Air Force. He flew five operations as an air gunner with 15 Squadron.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Suffolk
Wales--Bridgend
Contributor
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Julie Williams
11 OTU
14 OTU
15 Squadron
1654 HCU
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
bombing of Helgoland (18 April 1945)
Cook’s tour
crewing up
Gee
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lincoln
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Feltwell
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Wigsley
RAF Wyton
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/307/3464/PMooreWT1506.2.jpg
ba450a2587f7d4bdd809b39eda3c5fa9
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/307/3464/AMooreWT160703.2.mp3
6fa0b673061052f9a9f442da1a4176b2
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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Moore, Bill
William Tait Moore
William T Moore
William Moore
W T Moore
W Moore
Description
An account of the resource
Eight items. Three oral history interviews with William Tait "Bill" Moore (1924 - 2019, 1823072 Royal Air Force) and five photographs. He served as a navigator with 138 Squadron.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-28
2016-03-18
2016-07-06
Rights
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Interview Agreement Form - Moore, WT, William Moore-03
Identifier
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Moore, WT
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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TO: Right, good morning, good afternoon or good evening, whatever the case may be. This interview is being filmed for the International Bomber Command Centre. The gentleman I’m interviewing is Mr Bill Moore. My name is Thomas Ozel and we’re recording this interview on the 3rd of July 2016. Now, could you please tell me what year you were born?
WM: 1924.
TO: Mhm. And when you were a child, were you interested in aircraft?
WM: The first time I was introduced to the aircraft was when I was taken to Guyun [?] Southern Highlander’s annual camp and that was when I came in contact with my, my first aircraft. And at that time, I was a drummer [?] boy in a band [?], and at that time my father had made me eighteen month older and I was supposed to be because otherwise I would have been too young to have went to the camp with men. As a matter of fact, that eighteen months stood by me for the rest of my life.
TO: And whereabouts did you grow up?
WM: I grew up in a town called Dunoon which is on the Firth of Clyde in Argyllshire in Scotland.
TO: And were your parents involved in the First World War?
WM: My father was, yes. As a matter of fact I just told somebody the other day, that I knew where my father was a hundred years ago. In other words, he was right through the whole of the First World War. He was a great battles, the Battles of Boulogne [?], first and the second one, and also the one that was also celebrated this week. And then he was actually taken prisoner by German forces and he was taken to Poland, and he worked in Poland there and that was, and that was until the armistice came along. In other words, he had about, he about between six and nine months as a prisoner of war, mm.
TO: And what was your first job?
WM: My first job, all depends how you mean your first job. If you mean your first job when you started doing [emphasis] something and getting paid for it, well I was delivering milk and newspapers in the morning. Later on I delivered butcher, butcher meats and I delivered the evening papers, and among one of the most famous characters I delivered to was Sir Harry Lauder, who was a very famous Scottish singer and comedian. And every time I went there I got a farthing [emphasis] each time, which meant that I got a fully penny in one day, but that was four farthings. And I did that from, from Monday to Saturday. And anyway, after that of course I left school, but I left school when I was thirteen. The reason I left school when I was thirteen was because it was during the Great Depression years and every penny my family could earn was to be encouraged because people needed it to survive [emphasis], although my father was always in work, but that was about it because I used to come in. And that was what my mother saved the money so that I could have my school books paid for, instead of, instead of waiting for someone to pass on second hand books to me.
TO: And in the 1930s, did you hear about Hitler’s aggressive behaviour?
WM: Well yes. As a matter of fact, of course I did, but it was quite, quite strange. Go back further than that, when I was a young boy, I was in what we called the Boys Brigade, which was just an organisation but it was started, it started way back in 1883 by a chap called William Smith, and the uniform they had then [emphasis] was, was taken more or less from the Third Lanark Rifle Volunteers in Scotland. It wasn’t military but the idea was for discipline, because in those days Scotland, Scotland and discipline was two things that people wanted, although with me, that was many years later. I did not meet Sir William Smith himself but I knew both of his sons who carried on the Boys Brigade after him, and also I met Mrs McVicker in Belfast in Northern Ireland when I used to take the Boys Brigade myself [emphasis] over there, and that, that was, she was the, she was the wife of the founder of the Boys Brigade in Northern Ireland. When I joined the Boys Brigade it was through the Life Boys, which was a genuine organisation. I went through there and I went right through the Boys Brigade, and at my age, I’m still a member of the Boys Brigade Greater World Fellowship.
TO: Would you mind if I just closed the window?
WM: No, carry on, yeah.
TO: Is that okay?
WM: Oh, you might get the traffic, yeah.
TO: Yeah, is that okay?
WM: Yeah, carry on [pause while window is closed]. That’s okay.
TO: Okay, thank you. And what did you think, what did you think of Chamberlain?
WM: Well first of all, going back before Chamberlain’s time and before he was making speeches, what I was saying is we used to look at news reels and we used to see about all the equipment that the German boys and girls were getting, and at times we were quite envious of it, because there was gymnastics, there was gymnastics, I was swimming, I was hiking, I was doing all these same things as, as a, the German Youth were there. Maybe not so severely [emphasis], but that was where the Boys Brigade, as I’ve just said.
TO: Mhm. Sorry, there’s a noise coming from the kitchen. Is it okay if I shut the door to there as well?
WM: Yes, yes, yes –
TO: Sorry [door closes].
WM: Can you stick that through?
TO: Sorry.
WM: You could get a nickel [?].
TO: Yeah [pause during continued background noise]. Sorry about this, sorry. And what did you think of the Munich Agreement?
WM: Well, put it, put it this way. What did happen was that I think growing up at that particular time, we weren’t really interested too much in politics, but then we began to gather that things were getting rather serious. And the big thing that was going around at that time was, was people sincere? And there’d been so many promises broken that, and I’m talking about Scotland now, was the people in Scotland at that time just said, ‘well if, if these people keep on breaking promises, what’s, what’s the Prime Minister going to do? Is he going to be leaving it [could be believing it].’ And of course, it seems, it seemed to us at that particular time that he was being foreborstered [?], brainwashed and as if he was being used as, as they all were in those days was, is a patsy.
TO: And what did you think of Churchill?
WM: Well, Churchill in the early days was quite a hero [emphasis] because he was a type of fellow who had been through the Boer War, he’d been through the, through the First World War and of course he was still a fiery rebel as far as politics were going as, at that time in the UK.
TO: And do you remember the preparations that were being made for war?
WM: Well, it all depends on who’s side you mean, because the big thing that we noticed, and that was that where, where the German forces were going over [?], taking over different places. Some of them were, were considered to be German lands of former times, but, but even when they came to Austria and they were welcomed into Austria, at times we wondered whether there were other people there who weren’t quite happy about it, with this, you know? But it wasn’t ‘til, it wasn’t ‘til as we say, clouds [?] are going that, and horizon, as if the, all the promises that were given, made were just null and void. The reason we said that was at that particular time was because the fact was that even, even being with Chamberlain, trying to negotiate [emphasis], and of course France as well were negotiations to see if they could actually bring about a more sensible [emphasis] approach, ‘cause people like my father said that the terms of various things that had been laid in after [emphasis] the First World War were so severe that it was almost impossible for the, for the German people not [emphasis] to revolt against these conditions, and of course this is what people were thinking in the UK at that particular time, was that that’s what they were trying to do was just to regain what had been lost. But of course later on when it came into the, these negotiations that they had, nobody was very sure [emphasis] whether that Chamberlain was playing for time or not. It could have been, it could have been a great strategy on his [emphasis] part. Many people think it was, many people think that he was quite gullible. But if one reads on the history of the Royal Air Force, well the Royal Air Force was starting an amalgamation between the, the Fleet Air Arm, or the Naval Services. The Naval Service became the Royal Air Force and that was 1918. Now, with that coming on, we noticed as young people, we noticed that there was different things happening [emphasis], and also, I remember at one time I noticed that the, the talk was about different types of aircraft, ‘cause that was through the magazine I used to subscribe to. And then of course what happened, I was in the school cadets in my grammar school in Dunoon and we, we were the Army cadets, and of course we wore the kilt et cetera, the same as the local Hern [?] Division, and the Guyun [?] Southern Highlanders. Anyway, I, I started thinking about aeroplanes and there was an organisation just started up which was called the Air Defence Cadet Corps. Well this Air Defence Corps, Cadet Corps, the nearest place to Dunoon where I was, was at what is now Glasgow Airport, and I had to find a handout, to find the money for to go in the boat and train and go up there and attend the lectures et cetera what was necessary to do to be a member of the Air Defence Cadet Corps. Anyway, of course along came different aircraft that we saw, and the, the first of the new [emphasis] ones that I saw and touched was the Wellington Bombers, and that Wellington Bomber came up to me, to Abbotsinch, which is, as I said, Glasgow Airport. Abbotsinch I managed to walk through it and I was absolutely taken with it. As a matter of fact I felt as if I’d fallen in love with it. And then of course what happened, things went from one to another, and then of course along came, along came the Polish incident and with that Polish incident of course it was followed very closely in Scotland because the people of Scotland, people of Poland were always very close [emphasis]. A lot of people don’t realise [emphasis] that but it was a fact, because I always remember that they used to send boxes of eggs from Poland and what we used to do, we used to buy these boxes, these crates, and we’d turn them into canoes that we, that we lined with canvas, and we used to sail in the Clyde. But that, you know, that was, that was our knowledge of in Poland on that day, apart from what I’d been told by my father. Anyway, what happened was along came, along came, as I say, with the trouble in Poland, and of course, then of course the First World, the Second World War started and at that time, being in the Boys Brigade and being in the Air Cadet Defence Corps, I was nominated as a member of the ARP, the Air Raids Precautions people, as a messenger. Then that was fine, that was alright but I still had to go to my lessons with the Cadets, but that was alright, everybody carried on. That carried on and then of course along came, along came 1941 [emphasis] and that was when the Air Training Corps started, and I, I went along. I had to say I was finished with the Air Defence Cadet Corps which everybody else [emphasis] was, and we signed up for the Air Training Corps. That was quite strange, that was on a Monday night, and I went back along on the Friday [emphasis] night at the first official meeting, and we fell in and we fell in ranks according to sizes et cetera, et cetera, and I was made a flight sergeant. And the reason was that, I asked them and said ‘oh no, you’ve had training [emphasis] in the Air Defence Cadet Corps, so you know probably more about it than instructors do,’ because they were all school teachers who had volunteered to do that cadet work, and of course being made a flight sergeant, without uniform of course, it took a wee while to get uniforms, but that was it, and that was, that was me well and truly a part of the Royal Air Force. Anyway, that went down very well and I passed all the examinations. My aim was to become a member of aircrew. I fancied that, not just the glamour of it but there was a practical side. Anyway the, along came a day when I went along to Edinburgh and I took all my papers, exam papers and everything else, and bearing in mind that I was a year and a half older than I was on paper than I was supposed to be, and when I got into Edinburgh the chap says to me, ‘are you sure [emphasis]?’ I said ‘yes.’ He said ‘what you were doing?’ So I told him, he says ‘oh, that seems alright,’ he says ‘alright,’ he says ‘we want you to go along to this hotel and you stay there and you come back here in the morning, and you go there and you find that you’ll be registered and et cetera, et cetera.’ So I did that, go back there the next day and there were one or two other chaps around that I knew, and we, we went in again [emphasis] and we had exams to take and tests to take and, a by the time the day was finished I was a member of the Royal Air Force, and what they did to us was that they gave us a little silver badge that we, we had to wear at all times. And that was to show that we were a fully fledged member of the Royal Air Force, and all we had to do then was just wait until they were ready to take us in [emphasis]. And it wasn’t, it wasn’t being called up for National Service, we were all volunteers of course, which is a big difference because we were already members, voluntary members, and of course the, joining the Air Force like that you volunteered. But as I say, after that, once you’re in, you didn’t get to volunteer again [laughs]. You, you’re then volunteered [emphasis, laughs].
TO: And do you remember what you were doing on the day the war started?
WM: The day the war started, yes [tape beeps]. It was a Sunday morning and I was at a bible class in Dunoon, and shortly after that the sirens went and we all had to go to a post. And with us at that particular time, as I say, I was with the ARP. So we had to go there and be ready for to, for to be messengers. That was what, that was what my job was then, to be a messenger [emphasis], so I had to go to my post, which we all knew where we had to go to, and that was it. But after the all clear went then we stood down again, no, mm. But of course there was, was times when there were raids on the Clyde and all the rest of it later on, and my compatriots had a lot of hair raising activities. Most of that by that time I was, I was in the Royal Air Force.
TO: And was there much bomb damage or bombing around where you lived?
WM: Well, not so much on my [emphasis] side of the Clyde but across the water on the Firth, right from Greenock and Glasgow, Greenock and Port Glasgow, right up the Clyde, right up to Clydebank into Glasgow itself. Oh yes, all the industrial areas. There was quite a lot of very heavy damage, yes.
TO: And when the war started, were you, were you expecting that German bombers would be coming on the first day?
WM: Oh yes, well that was, that was it. It wasn’t, it wasn’t long after that there was a couple of raids that was, that was, that came across Scotland before there was even, even them in England, yes.
TO: And how did you actually feel when you heard the war had started?
WM: Well, put it this way, with having quite a knowledge from my father about his experiences, and what we had, what we had actually seen on the news reels about Poland, and I really mean about Poland, that was when we realised what could happen, yeah.
TO: And did you watch news reels a lot at the cinema?
WM: Oh yes, oh yes. Yeah, when you went to the, when you went to the cinemas there was always, always a portion for the news reels at the beginning of every performance, and that was very good. The news reels were very good, they, they brought everything to you, mm [papers shuffle].
TO: And so when you volunteered for aircrew, what kind of medical tests did they give you?
WM: Well, you had, you had a full medical. You know, you had blood, heart, you had all sorts of things done and then, you even had a type, a place where it was called up [?] on night vision. We never knew about night vision in those days and we were told, told about that and you had a test to see whether you could, you could see and come back again and your vision – you had, you were taken into a darkened room and they had various sort of tests they gave you in there, including different things and different numbers and the results was in different colours [emphasis], and if you, if you, if you could identify these things through these different colours then that meant that your, that your night vision was quite good, and you passed and you could identify then, then you’re dropped out. ‘Cause that was one of the main things at that particular time, was night vision.
TO: And what role did you train for aboard, in aircrew?
WM: Sorry?
TO: What, what position, as in, were you trained for?
WM: Well you see, when I went to Edinburgh I was classified PNB, pilot, navigator, bomb aimer, you know, the idea being that you selected for that term [?]. Anyway, what happened then was that I was called, called to the colours, not called up, I was called to the colours which once again, as I say, was different from being called up for National Service, very proud of that of course. Anyway, I, I got a notification to go to London and there I went to, to Lords Cricket Ground and, with many other people. There was one or two people that I’d met on the train, met down there before, went inside and some of these fellows I still know today, which is quite amazing. Anyway, what happened there in, in, at Lourdes, you – and there is a big plaque there today, big black plaque indicating that was where the aircrew was at that particular time. Going back to that, we had further [emphasis] tests and, I suppose to see whether anything had happened in between times, and then we, we got all the usual jabs for left and right, two arms up together and that one and that one going along r at the same time and, and then you had FFIs and things like that, and then of course you came along to another [emphasis] big room and that’s where you started getting your uniform. And there was a system [?] what you’re gonna get, when you’re gonna get, and by the time you got to the end you wonder if you’re able to carry everything, you know. Anyway, we all managed to get there, and at the end of that we were introduced to a corporal, two stripes. Now, we thought that was a high rank [phone rings], oh –
TO: Is that a phone call?
WM: I’d better take it. Sorry about that [tape beeps]. It’s a bummer [?] –
TO: Hmm, anyway –
WM: Anyway.
TO: So you spoke to her [unclear] –
WM: So anyway, as I was saying, we, we were then under this corporal [laughs]. He, he told us that he would be looking after us in more ways than one [emphasis] for the, for the next few days. Anyway, we went along in London to a place called Avenue Close which was a new block of flats in St. John’s Wood which had been built and never been occupied, and the Royal Air Force used that for all their new recruits, and, but there’s no, there’s no canteen facilities there, no mess hall, and we went across to Regent Park’s zoo where we dined. The animals had been evacuated and we were there in place of the animals [laughs].
TO: And did you train to be a navigator?
WM: Put it, put it this way, what happens, all depends how deep you want me to go into this, I don’t know. Anyway, what happened was that we had to, we had to pass more, several tests there. They were very strenuous, very strenuous, extremely strenuous, you know. And then of course we were there for about a week, and we were all setting off to different places and the group that I went with was up into the north east of England, to a town called Scarborough where they had quite a number of initial training wings. And what they were, they were just like boarding schools [laughs], certainly a little bit different but that’s what we took them to be. It was just like going back to school or college and starting all over again, and my one was number seventeen, and I was in what we called the Odelpha [?] Hotel, which is a hotel right opposite the Italian gardens in Scarborough. Now, there we studied navigation, theories of flight, engines, just about everything, even how to use a knife and fork in the mess, and that is quite true [laughs]. That seems quite a thing but that was quite true [laughs]. But that was a little on the side [?] there. But we actually studied all of these things, and at the same time we had to do guard duties and various other things like that, and there was two or three times when we were there, there were air raids go on and even a time when there was suspected that we might have had a German couple of U-boats in, about eight boats coming along and they expected them to come up and be looking for certain people that were there on that shore [?] there, people who had been at a conference and we were all turned out for that. They didn’t tell us very much about it but later on we heard it was Churchill and the cabinet members in the Retreat as they call it nowadays. Anyway, but that was, we didn’t know anything, why it was [unclear]. Anyway, what happened was that we had to sit the final exams and everybody in there was doing the same exams, you know? Anyway, what happened after, I passed, I pass through that quite successfully and I was waiting a posting. My posting then was a place called Scone [pronounced Scun], not Scone, Scone [pronounce Scun, emphasis], which is just, just outside of Perth in Scotland and that was where you got to learn to fly on Tiger Moths. Now, when you flew in Tiger Moths up there, we had already been classified from ACs to AC1s and when we, we went up to Scone, actually passed Scone in the Tiger Moths and we thought we could be trusted to do a couple of circuits and you came back down. They didn’t give you wings in those days, they gave you a propeller, always a propeller on your left sleeve, and then we became a leading aircraftsman, which was your first step up. Anyway, what happened after that, I, I was sent from there all the, all the kit bags and everything, and I was sent to a place called Broughton-in-Furness. Broughton-in-Furness, it was like a commander course, only the Royal Air Force calls it an escape course, and you did everything on there that you could possibly do if you were trying to escape. It was always put down to you in the Air Force that you had to try and escape if you were taken prisoner. That was, that was a thing. It was always drilled into you, if you could get back, so much the better. Anyway, that was, that was all about. When that was finished I went to a place called Heaton Park in Manchester. Now, Heaton Park in Manchester, it was mostly Nissan huts, the old corrugated iron ones, you know? And sometimes you also got billeted out with the local people, sometimes you’re lucky and you did both. Well we, we were quite lucky. We were billeted out, and just within a stone’s throw off Heaton Park [laughs], and we, we were with a landlady whose husband was in the Middle East at that time, and we used to pay her half a crown, was two shillings and sixpence in those days and that was for, to leave the snub [?] off the window so that we could lift the window sash up and crawl in after half past ten at night. Well she used to make, she used to make a cup of bronzer [?] up for that [laughs], because she had let out two rooms and that was eight of us in her house, yeah. Anyway, the, everybody knew it happened, but you’re [unclear] to be in by eleven. It was just in case you had trouble getting back you know. Anyway, if you were in the main camp, you had to make sure you were in at half ten at night [laughs]. Anyway, after that we were, we were taken back into the camp, and this was a big camp. There was hundreds of people in there and guesses – we didn’t do a lot of paperwork there but we did a lot of physical training, marching, all that sort of thing, and every time the, every time the Royal Air Force tunes went up you had to march to attention. Doesn’t matter what you’re doing, you had to march to attention. Anyway, what happened after that, you got your uniform. Now, if you were going to, to South Africa, we, we began to learn these things, you went to South Africa you get tropical kit but long [emphasis] trousers. If you were going to Rhodesia, you get tropical kits with short [emphasis] trousers. If you’re going to America, you more or less get issued with civvies, as we called them, and if you were going to Canada then you were alright. Anyway, what happened to us was that we got issued with short trousers and we said ‘oh no, we know what we are [?], we’re going to Rhodesia. That’s pilot training,’ et cetera, et cetera. Good, anyway, we got shipped out, we were on a ship called The Andes [emphasis]. You’ll see a little thing there –
TO: Oh yes.
WM: Andes, you know, ship.
TO: Oh right.
WM: And I’ll show you it afterwards.
TO: Yeah, show me it afterwards.
WM: But what it was, was this ship, The Andes was brand new in the Clyde in nineteen, 1939, and it disappeared then came back again all painted grey, but where we [emphasis] met it, we met her in Liverpool. And this friend of mine, Alec Care, we must have joined up, helped each other, and we were on the ship and we said ‘bye-bye’ to Liverpool. There’s the – ‘bye-bye, bye-bye,’ you know, and we sailed down the Mersey. Anyway, a while after that we, I judged that we had been round the head of Northern Ireland, go down the west coast, and now they could, well according to roughly the speed of the ship and that, and we’d be near the Bay of Biscay. All of a sudden night fell and I said to my friend, ‘Alec, this boat’s going the wrong way.’ He said ‘you and your Clyde navigation.’ I said, ‘this boat’s going the wrong way [emphasis], we’re now going back north.’ So we ended back up in the Mersey again. Then what happened, we got in there because I suppose they got word there was a pack of U-boats around, you know, and that’s why they changed us. Anyway, we got up into the Mersey and looked across and I said to Alec, I said, ‘there’s the five-three-four over there.’ He says, ‘what’s a five-three-four?’ I say, ‘I’m not telling you, you might be a spy.’ He says, ‘euch.’ I says ‘oh, that’s a five-three-four.’ He says, ‘come on Bill, what is it?’ And I say, ‘that’s the Queen Mary.’ ‘Oh.’ Anyway, we admired this big ship because, well I knew her from the Clyde right from when one of my great uncles was helping to build here. Anyway, there she was. Anyway, we, we had a meal there, and the next thing we heard was the whistle went, ‘all RAF personnel so and so and so and so,’ went ‘oh that’s us, what’s happened now? Oh.’ ‘Get all your kit together, assemble here in, in fifteen minutes.’ ‘Oh boy that was, that was quick.’ ‘Cause you hadn’t, hadn’t taken in any kit bag, was just us, you stood up so it was just a matter of taking your kit bags and going to deck. We were then taken across onto the Queen Mary, and we were weighed [?] down so far in I thought we were going to go to New Zealand or somewhere, and [laughs] – anyway, the Queen Mary set off and a few days later we were in New York [emphasis]. We didn’t see a lot of New York, we had a bit of leave time on the promise that we wouldn’t be late coming back, so that was good, and we got on a train and we went up to Moncton, New Brunswick. All the way up to Canada by train which was a great experience for us, ‘cause the first thing we noticed was the food. Now, there was nothing rationed, this was American trains and we were getting the best of everything. Anyway, we got to Moncton, New Brunswick and the, and we were not given any winter clothing because we were still in this kit that we thought we were going to Rhodesia, so anyway [laughs], for two or three days we walked about up there and they used to call us ‘Scors’ because we were walking around with blankets on us to keep us warm, mm [laughs]. Anyway, that was, that was all part of the trials and tribulations. Then of course was, we were told to fall in and you, you, you’re told that you’re now going to a training station. They didn’t tell you where you were going, they just told you’re going to a training station. So we got on a train, and this was the Canadian national railways and we said, ‘well, Canadian pacific goes that side and nation [?] is that side, mm, oh well, fair enough.’ So we landed up in Winnipeg, went all the way through to Winnipeg, then we got off that [emphasis] train and we went up to another [emphasis] one, up past Portage la Prairie and then the railway finished so we got, we got on we’ll call it a bus [emphasis], and this took us up to Dauphin, Manitoba and then we, we were at Paulson and Dauphin and there we did bombing and gunnery training. We did all these sort of elements again that, that everyone had to go through the same things, and then the next round of course we did, we did flying training and, and then of course we did the navigation, another step up. That was fine and we were still all together, no deviations. Then of course we passed all that and I had a, I had an excellent, I had an excellent bombing record, really excellent one if I say so myself, you know. Anyway, next thing we knew, we graduated from there. You had to pass, it was a hundred percent pass, you know, there was always people dropping out and, but we carried on and we went, we went down, down [emphasis] the line to Portage la Prairie. Portage on the Prairie, that was – now that there [emphasis] was the school for air observers, you know? That was number seventeen air observer school, Portage la Prairie, and there of course we, we got changed around a bit. I was told that I was a good candidate for, to be air observer. I said, ‘how about piloting?’ ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘if you’re an observer you’ll get to fly as well. You’ll get to pilot as well,’ you know. I said ‘well that’s okay.’ He did really ‘cause you were told [emphasis], you know? Anyway, I graduated from there. I got my wings there, and eventually, eventually ‘cause we [coughs], we went back to Moncton, New Brunswick and we got on a ship to come back to the UK and that ship I recognised as [laughs] the Empress of Japan. I said to my friend, I said ‘I don’t like that name, Empress of Japan,’ you know. We got up beside it and it’s now called the Empress of Scotland [laughs]. They had changed its name. Now this was in Halifax, Nova Scotia, so we come back, we come back across the Atlantic, the North Atlantic, and we sailed up the Clyde and eventually we went to a place called Harrogate. So Harrogate we were more or less brought back to earth again. Rations of course still, instead of the food we’d been having in Canada and that, you know, America. And we, we then – well the [laughs]. It was quite strange, they gave us another FFI to see if we’re alright and we’re okay that way, and another medicals to see if we’re alright, you know? And the next thing I knew, I was, I was in a detour [?], so my friend went that way and I went that way, so that was it. Anyway, I landed up at a place which is just outside of Wolverhampton, and this was an advanced navigation and low flying school called Halfpenny Green. Now, quite a number of years ago they made a film there and then called it “Halfpenny Field,” but it was Halfpenny Green [emphasis], and today it’s been nominated to be Wolverhampton Airport. Anyway, what we were doing there is that we were taught low lying pass flying, landing on beaches, landing on small areas and we wondered why this was all about, you know? But anyway, we didn’t ask any questions, you just did as you’re told and [laughs], ‘cause you’ve already volunteered [laughs]. Anyway, that was it and we [unclear] was successful, it was, it was excellent. We [tape beeps] treetops. We were making bomb, making, making bomb attacks on the railway bridges across the Severn and even, even the RAF stations that knew we were coming but of course they weren’t open up at us ‘cause they knew it was an exercise, and all various target like that. And also as I say, we were learning to land on short, short runways or grass and beaches and all sorts of fancy things like that. Anyway, this was all preparation because what you didn’t realise that you were, you were being selected there, and that was, that was when I was, I felt as if there was something, something strange [emphasis] about all of this because everybody was going to do different things, and that was where, where, where we were taken aside one day and told out where we were going to, you know? And some of the, some of the chaps went one way and I went another way and I landed up in this aerodrome which the first thing I had to do was sign the Secrets Act all over [emphasis] again, because you’d always, everybody signed it but this was what they called a double one, extremely secret, you know? Now, with that all I could see around this place was a multitude of different types of aircraft [laughs]. So we wondered what this was all about. Normally you went to an air station there would be two different types or something like that but on this particular one there was several, you know? And, and of course [laughs, pause] what we, erm, I’ll bring it back [pause], hmm.
TO: Was this for the SOE?
WM: Yeah, this is, this is, this is really the beginning of the training for that, you know? Well the, we had been doing the training, you know, and of course, as I say, when we were, what we were doing this sort of thing, you see, the secrecy that was coming up, we really wondered what we were, what we were doing [emphasis], you know? Anyway, we were told then that we had joined 138 Squadron, you know? Now, just like everything else, nobody ever knew what 138 Squadron was doing or any other squadron, but we soon began to find out what it was. And it always seemed strange at the beginning that no one would tell us much and we began to wonder what we were doing there, and we were, we were confined to the station. We were confined to the station for at least two weeks [laughs]. Anyway, that’s what we, what we were doing then was we were, we were learning to fly once again low level at night time. We had to do all sorts of things and [pause] we just – oh we were introduced, we were introduced to people who were pilots and, and aircrew and to us, you know, they were a bit rag tag and bob tailed by the looks of them, they were, they weren’t exactly all spick and span like we expected us to be, you know [laughs]. Anyway, excuse me a minute.
TO: It’s okay [tape paused and restarted].
WM: We were introduced to groups of people and we were told that ‘you’ll fly with this one and fly with that one, but you might fly in two different ones on the same night.’ ‘Oh, that’s alright.’ ‘So what we’re going to do is, we’re going to introduce everybody, but just remember that when you do get introduced is that, remember what you’re signed [?].’ ‘Cause there was a secret come out, we were at Tempsford. That was the home of the flights for the SOE, and of course there again that was the reason why all these different odd aircraft was lined [?] up, was that they were used for different purposes. Later on what we used to say, we used to say that Bomber Harris used to send over there all the old junk that he didn’t want on Bomber Command [laughs]. Anyway, what happened then was as I say, you got to know the different colours ‘cause by that time, as I, as I, as I say, I was, I was classified and reclassified into what I was doing and this was observer, and that was what I graduated as, and of course I still kept up my flying skills. That’s another story, I’ll come back to that. But anyway, there we were and we, we had one or two short flights with different pilots [phone rings] and we got to know – [tape beeps].
TO: No problem.
WM: No, when we, when we flew with these different chaps, they got to know us, we got to know them and each had their own specialities, and what used to happen then was once, once the powers that be realised that you could do [emphasis] what you’re supposed to be able to do on paper, then they would trust you with an operation. The reason being was that we were using the fields or pieces of, strips of roads or even, even old glider fields, we had to land, and it wasn’t always the best of territory ‘cause we did this with Lysanders which was the single engine one, you know? I got lots of pictures of Lysanders over there somewhere, mm, and the idea being there’s, is that when – you were given a map reference, and you had to study that map reference very carefully. And we never [emphasis] tried to find out how our passengers were, and they didn’t try and find out who we were. There was no communication. The reason being is if we got shot down, or either of us got taken prisoners you couldn’t, you couldn’t tell them about the other ones, alright? ‘Cause the ACA [?] people were considered to be a different category from what, even what we were, and we were a different category from them entirely, and we were a different category from normal aircrew, and even – that was known in Germany, that was known. Don’t tell me how they got to know but that’s another story. Anyway, we did, we did several of these operations. We were taking people out and sometimes it was a matter of taking two people or three people about. Squash, it was a bit of a squeeze in the, in the Lysander but we weren’t [?] gonna enjoy the ride, and all I could say was all the trips that I made was very successful, and I flew with certainly [?] different pilots from time to time on that. Then of course likewise they had different observers, you know? But we had great faith in each other, and the navigation aids that we had was elementary map reading, night flying et cetera. We didn’t have the joy of T and all the other things that came up later on. We were actually doing it like the old time pilot, many, many years before.
TO: I don’t know how much detail you can tell me about this, but when you brought these agents over from Britain to Europe, did you have a certain, were you, did you have an arranged landing field?
WM: Oh yes, when we, you know, same thing [?] we left, we left Tempsford. Well, I knew where we were going [emphasis], I had to know where we were going, and the pilot knew where he was going but I took him there, you know? I took him there, passengers there. Well these passengers were known to be coming. There would be a reception committee ready for them to whisk them away as soon as they were on the ground, oh yes. There was a good communications, yes.
TO: And did you ever see any German aircraft when you were flying on these missions?
WM: Oh yes, yes. There’s – oh we, well, put it this way. In those days we were flying low [emphasis], very low, and we weren’t too bothered about it. Now and again you run into a bit of trouble, but the night fighters was mostly come to different bits, I’ll tell you more about that, alright? But the, even, even by all the secrets that we had, there was a terrible tragedy that happened through the London office where somebody infiltrated into the London office SOE, and they, they gave away people on the ground, and they were just massacred. But you know, that was one of those terrible things about that, and that was country man to country man, and I’m sorry to say that was in Holland, mm. But we, we, we never knew exactly how our people got on, alright, or if we were picking somebody up and taking them back to the UK, as soon as we landed back at Tempsford they were taken away and we never saw them again, but they were taken away to their different places like that. Quite strange to say there was a big house just quite near here where, where they used to go back you, you know? Did –
TO: Did you, sorry.
WM: No.
TO: Did you – it’s an odd question, but did you get a sense of pride knowing you were helping secret agents?
WM: Oh yes [emphasis], yes. Well as a matter of fact, we, we felt we were doing a good job that way, because the thing was nobody, nobody heard about it, but we knew what was going on, sometimes by results. We got, you know, we got to know back, back on the station how well the people that we had delivered had reacted to what was going on, ‘cause there was just a matter of them infiltrating back into populations and we never heard anything, but if it was a special operation they were going to do, someone would say well, ‘well done chaps,’ or something like that, you know?
TO: So what, what, do you know what year it was that you started helping SOE with this?
WM: 1942.
TO: And was it just western Europe you went to?
WM: Well, well put it this way, what happened after, after a while, we started getting different aircraft, ‘cause in our station we used all the old stuff, Whitleys and things like that and various other ones like that, vintage. Then of course we got, we got one or two of the American ones come in, you know? And there was one time that we were delivering stuff to the Maquis. Now the Maquis was different from SOE, Maquis’s French. So what we were doing, we were delivering guns and ammunition, there was a full load in a Hudson. Now the Hudson was an American aircraft that was designed to land in the prairies, naturally [?] on good tarmac runways, but anywhere a farmer would put up a windsock, that’s where they were designed to for, and one particular time we, we had this load of stuff, full load, and we had to land on this area and it turned out to be, it was an old glider drone where people used to learn to fly gliders [emphasis] in France, you know? ‘Cause where we were [?] about a hundred and eighty kilometres north east of Colonia [?], you know? As near as I can tell you about that one, ‘cause a lot of stuff’s still secret. Now that is fact.
TO: Mm.
WM: Anyway, what happened was that we, we landed safely, we turned around and as we turned around to face to go out again, we began to sink. Anyway, I said to Nobby who was the skipper, I said ‘Nobby I don’t like this.’ He said ‘aye, you’ll be alright Bill, we’ll get rid of all this rubbish, we’ll be alright.’ So anyway, the Maquis came out the bush, as I call it, took all this stuff away. They disappeared and then the, the lady who’s in charge of that section, she came and she says, ‘what’s troubling you?’ I says ‘I don’t think we’re going to get out of here.’ So we got the sticky bombs ready for, to stick it to the aircraft and blow it up, and she said ‘ah, I’ll see if I can get the villagers up, push you out,’ you know, just like that. Anyway, she went back to the village. Now, normally we were aware on the ground about fifteen, twenty minutes at the most ‘cause anything after than that was dangerous, yeah, you know? She went down and she got the villagers up and it was quite a way away, but anyway, I asked [?] too many questions about that. Up she comes with the villagers, but on their way back they met the general sergeant who was in charge of the village, and he turns round and says to them, ‘now, all you people, you’ll be in trouble. You’re out here, it’s after curfew, you’re supposed to be in the village.’ And of course the idea was that she turned round and said to them, ‘but your big black aircraft is stuck in the mud and we’ve got to push it out, and the Gestapo says if we don’t push it out they’re going to shoot us all and you.’ So he says, ‘I’ll go and look after the village, you go and push the aircraft out.’ So in the end they got us out. We didn’t need to blow it up.
TO: So just to clarify, were you stuck in the mud [emphasis]?
WM: Aye, just going down, like that.
TO: And how big was this aircraft?
WM: Hudson.
TO: And how –
WM: Twin engine aircraft, hmm.
TO: Were you ever scared during these missions?
WM: Of course, yeah. But they, you don’t go like that you, you, gung ho, you know what I mean by gung ho? We weren’t gung ho. We prided ourselves on being professional.
TO: And is there, are there any other occasions from your time with SOE that you are allowed to tell me about which you recall, a lot?
WM: Oh yes, lots of things that we – as a matter of fact, during, we didn’t bring them all [emphasis] back, but during the time that we were there [emphasis] we brought back four chaps, four men, Frenchmen, who actually in later years turned out to become prime ministers, prime ministers of France, hmm.
TO: And sorry, did – when you, what happened when you left SOE and started back on standard bombing missions?
WM: Well anyway, what, what happened was we were always alternately from time to rime on different missions. It wasn’t as if we, we just jumped from one back into that one, but we were always, was always in the, always doing the missions. Sometimes it was only a few aircraft going out for a special mission, or sometimes, sometimes we joined up with the, a bomber stream. It all depends on how, how we were required, and we, a lot of our chaps became leading lights on the Pathfinders, because of our highly successful rates in navigating to targets.
TO: And do you remember your first bombing mission?
WM: Yeah, first, my first bombing mission was to Kiel, Kiel Canal, mm. And that, that, that was also for – the idea there was to try to block the canal from time to time. We, in the early days there wasn’t anything that we had big enough that could do [emphasis] it, but the idea used to be that if you could bomb something, you know, bomb ships or something like that, that would make traps in the canal, you know, then of course that, that would be a help on keeping stuff from going through it, you know, hmm. But, no we covered a high variety of trips, you know, oh yes.
TO: And what aircraft were you in for these bombing missions?
WM: Well first of all I was in, I was in Wellingtons, you know? We did a lot of Wellingtons and then of course we were onto Lancasters. We converted [?] onto Lancasters, mm.
TO: And could you please describe the conditions inside a Wellington?
WM: Well in the Wellington there was, it was rather cramped but we still considered it a good aircraft. And by that time we had six in the crew, and we, we had crewed up and we were flying together, but you know, it was just, it was just, there was no comfort, there was no comfort. Each person had their own little cubby hole or section [coughs] but that was all. But once you got up over ten thousand feet, then of course, then it gets a bit uncomfortable, you know? You’re always [?] trying to keep warm was the thing, you know? Then of course you’d all sorts of wires for – you had your air com [?], you had your oxygen masks, you had all these sorts of things, you know? And as I, as I say, it was, it was a lot, a lot colder than it was later on in the Lancasters and even the Halifaxes and Stirlings, mm.
TO: And as an observer, what were you duties for the mission?
WM: My duties – we were highly skilled navigators then. We were, we were a step above the, we were a step above the normal navigators, mm, yeah, because we did, we did everything. We did the whole job. It was the same thing as – at one time, what happened was that the, every aircraft had two pilots. Anyway, there came a time when they took one pilot away and then it was the observer that was the backup pilot, you know? Anyway, after that, after that when the big four engine jobs come out, the, they brought in the role of flight engineer, and the flight engineer was supposed to be able to fly, but the way I’d seen it right from very beginning was that I reckoned that I knew enough about flying, and I told people ‘as long as I can take her home and land it, that’s good enough for me’ [laughs].
TO: Slight side story, a few weeks ago I interviewed a man who was a flight engineer for Lancasters, and he said he was taught how to fly the plane but not how to land it.
WM: Yeah well [laughs], well that’s the – my, my big thing was I was taught how to land them, yeah. And I had a good, had a good background in flying and piloting in the lighter aircraft, but then of course between the Wellingtons and the Lancasters and the, we had a – well we did it quite often. We did it as part of an air, sometimes, sometimes you went up for, to test your engines. You did that, you did that pretty often, or to see the rest of the aircraft, and I always took the opportunity to be able to land the aircraft.
TO: And can you tell me a bit about Halifaxes?
WM: Not a great deal. I didn’t do a lot of trips on Halifaxes but you know, she was also a good aircraft, but I know there’s, there’s friends of mine who, if you have an argument they say ‘ooh, it’s far better than a Lancaster’ and blah, blah, blah, but that’s only, the Halifax was a good aircraft. It couldn’t fly as high [emphasis] as a Lancaster and it wasn’t as fast as Lancaster but that was just about it, mm.
TO: And what’s your take on Halifax versus Lancaster?
WM: Oh [laughs] to me it was the Lancaster [laughs].
TO: And was the interior of a Lancaster different from that of a Halifax?
WM: No, much the same, mm, much the same. It’s just the skin.
TO: Mhm.
WM: Just the skin, you know? You know, you know, everything was for bomb loads.
TO: Mhm. And you mentioned something about Stirlings earlier.
WM: Yeah.
TO: What’s your take on them?
WM: The Stirling was, she was the first of the heavies, and she was, she was quite slow [emphasis] and didn’t have a high ceiling rate, you know, but she did a good job in her day [?], oh yes. There was many, many a crew that did great work in Stirlings, oh.
TO: There’s a D-Day veteran I spoke to a couple of years ago, his glider for D-Day was towed by a Stirling.
WM: Oh yes [emphasis]. Well there was a lot of that. Halifaxes and Stirlings did a lot of glider towing, yeah, oh yes.
TO: And what bombing mission of the war do you remember the most?
WM: Er [pause]. Just, just before, just before the war finished we [tape beeps] there were two big ones, and that particular night our wing commander, Wing Commander Murray, who I’d known from Tempsford days, you know? He, he came along and he said he wanted to fly with us that night and be the captain, and he said, and I said ‘no, you can bugger off.’ It’s not we wanted [?] coming into aircrew, you know, taking over. ‘Cause I could say that to him because we’d flown together a lot. Anyway, he says ‘what happens if I don’t sit in the pilot’s seat.’ I said ‘alright then you can come along, that’s my seat’ [laughs]. I mean it was my seat when I was needed, yeah. I said ‘no you can come along and be second pilot,’ you know? But it was, it was, it was quite a thing. It was a place called Magdeburg, it was of the big ones that we were on, but several other big ones as well of course. I could, just hold that a minute? [Pause, tape beeps]. Now there was several big ones but the last, the last big one was Potsdam. That was a real big one, yeah. As a matter, matter of fact, that one was in the, in the fourteenth, fourteenth, 14th of April, so that was one of the last big ones, you know? And that was a night one, and there was another was on the 13th [emphasis] of April was another time we went to Kiel, and what had happened was the night before we went to Kiel, and we put this battleship and we sunk it, we turned it over, mm. And it came back but they wanted us to go back again, but one of the retorts was that night, one of the crews was, ‘I hear you don’t want us to put it back up again’ [laughs]. But that was a, and that actually blocked a canal, that actually blocked a canal, you know, ‘cause then of course one of the, one of the last of the big ones we did was to Bremen on the 20th and 22nd of April, you know, yeah. And course there was places like Merseburg and various other ones like that, you know? But this is something I keep to myself.
TO: Okay.
WM: You know? Because I got, you know, I’ve got – the way I look at it is, it’s not, not a thing we brag about, you know? It’s, it was wartime and that was it. And today I’ve got, I’ve got, I’ve got many friends across Europe and across Africa and they come from all sorts of walks of life and all sorts of countries.
TO: Sorry, can I ask what happened to the wing commander who wanted to be on the flight?
WM: Oh yes, oh well he came in the flight with us there and that was it, Wing Commander Murray. We were flying F for Freddie, yeah, and of course, well anyway, he was in charge of the squadron, you know?
TO: Mhm.
WM: And he stayed on the Air Force for a while, you know, and I lost touch with him, you know?
TO: Mhm.
WM: Because we’d been, we’d been quite good friends there, mm. But after the war, after the war was, you didn’t really go out of your way [emphasis] to keep in touch, although with my own crew [emphasis] in the Lancaster we have done. As a matter of fact even, even now [emphasis] one of my chaps in aircrew, a fellow called Jimmy Dagg, a New Zealander, his great grandson plays rugby for the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team. His name is Israel Dagg, mm.
TO: And are, just in raids in Germany in general, how much anti-aircraft fire was there?
WM: Oh plenty. As a, as a matter of fact, what a lot of people don’t realise was that the amount, the amount of German troops, and specialised German troops that had to be contained within Germany because of what the, the Bomber Command was doing. Now as a matter of fact, that was, it was, it was a surprising, there must have thousands upon thousands had to be retrained in Germany who could have been going somewhere else, and they were all very highly trained people, mm.
TO: And did you ever encounter night fighters?
WM: Oh yes a couple of times, but we were quite lucky. We, we managed to corkscrew away, but the night fighters, what you had to watch even more carefully than over, over a target area or on the way back was just before you landed, because there used to be quite a few of them that used to prowl round about aerodromes and airfields in this country, and waiting for people to come in ‘cause that’s when you’re, you’re, you’re most vulnerable, when everything was shut down. And there was quite a number of people that got shot down just before they landed.
TO: And could you please tell me how this corkscrew evasive manoeuvre worked?
WM: Well that’s, that’s just what it was, a corkscrew. You might have been flying more or less level or up and down a bit, and then the corkscrew was like that. That was a corkscrew, yeah. They got away, yeah, mm.
TO: Did anyone in the crew ever get sick when that happened?
WM: Oh yeah [emphasis], my mid upper gunner used to get sick as soon as he put his foot inside the aircraft [laughs]. Once we were still fly, still take off he was alright.
TO: Mm. And did you ever, during the, did you ever find out how much, whether you’d hit the targets during the raids?
WM: I know we did [emphasis]. As I say, one of my specialities was, was bombing.
TO: But could you see photographs of it later?
WM: Oh yes, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, mm, yeah.
TO: And were you ever on raids to Berlin?
WM: Yeah, mm. Oh yes, as I say, that was, that was, that was one that would come up quite often, mm [pause]. Hell [?], mm.
TO: Sorry, you still okay for me to ask questions?
WM: What?
TO: Are you okay for me to ask questions?
WM: Yes, yes.
TO: ‘Cause just let me know if you want to stop.
WM: No, no.
TO: Okay. And what did you think of the German aircraft of the war?
WM: Oh very good, excellent, yeah, excellent yeah. As a matter, as a matter, as a matter of fact, at the end of the war there was one, one German one, you know? And I thought, I thought at first it was a shooting star, you know? And it wasn’t, it was a jet, and it flew past me just as if it was a shooting star and when I went back to report on this, and they said ‘ah, it probably was a shooting star you saw.’ I said ‘no, no, no, no, this is an aeroplane.’ That was one of the areas [?] ones that we’d seen [?] and spotted, yeah, ‘cause, you know, you got debriefed after every, every trip.
TO: Was there any ever occasions where you had to turn back from the target because of bad weather?
WM: No, I was, we were alright. No, we didn’t, we never, we never turned back. Ground crew were every bit as good as our aircrew.
TO: Mm.
WM: They kept our aircraft in excellent [emphasis] condition. We never had any [emphasis] complaints about our ground crew, mm.
TO: And you explain to me how the briefings worked for the missions?
WM: Right, well what, what happened was that when, when you landed, when you landed you’re taken from the aircraft back into wing on, it was trucks, we used to call them crew trucks. So in other words you didn’t split up, you’re taken in, in a crew truck, and there you’re integrated and say how the trip went. And of course you had your version of what went on and then of course your cameras that you had in your aircraft also their versions, and we always seemed to marry, marry up on tours exactly the same, no. But we had a, we had an excellent [emphasis] crew. We had two New Zealanders, two Scotsmen, two Englishmen and one Londoner [laughs].
TO: And what about the briefings that you had before [emphasis] you went on a mission?
WM: Well the briefing was, what happened, they assembled. Now first of all they had an all-in briefing where the, every member of the aircrew was there, and then after that was, that briefing was done and that was more or less told you where you were going and et cetera, et cetera, and you split off into different sections. The gunners was going to see about their guns and talk to their gunnery officers and the flight engineers, they went to see the air officers. The air observers and navigators would go in together and the pilots and the, and the observers were together, you know? That’s, that’s how it went ‘cause you know, we, we had to make sure we were exactly correct at all times between the pilots and observer, the pilot and the navigator, mm.
TO: And when you, were you sitting in the cockpit during the mission?
WM: Yeah.
TO: Could you, could you actually see anything below you during the mission?
WM: From time to time you could, yes, mm. From time to time you could, yes, mm.
TO: And what sort of things could you see?
WM: Well it all depends. The more water about the place the better it was, better reflections and things like that.
TO: And could you see what the Pathfinders had left?
WM: Oh yes, it all depends – well that was to be able to recognise, make sure that you had taken the right targets.
TO: Mhm.
WM: Because the Germans were, were quite sophisticated because they could try to imitate your Pathfinder’s TIs, what they put down, no.
TO: And were you involved in raids to other cities like Hamburg?
WM: Oh yes, mm.
TO: And what do you remember from those missions?
WM: Well a lot of them, well the big, the big one in Hamburg was a big fire raiser. But that happened to be that the wind conditions, everything was just right or wrong [emphasis] as regards which way you’re looking at it. As far as we concerned that was right, as far as the Germans were concerned, it was a big disaster because at that time a lot of the buildings in Hamburg were wooden, mm.
TO: And were you surprised when you heard how successful the raid had been?
WM: Not surprised, ‘cause that’s what we went for. Most successful it was, well, the better the raid was, mm.
TO: And was, were you involved in the raid on Dresden?
WM: No I wasn’t, but we were on standby, but I wasn’t involved in that one, no.
TO: Mhm.
WM: The, some, some people on the 90 Squadron were, ‘cause at Tuddenham 90 Squadron and 138 Squadron ran alongside each other, you know?
TO: Mhm.
WM: No.
TO: And when did you, when did you react, or how did you feel when Churchill announced that they would start bombing Germany?
WM: Start [emphasis] bombing?
TO: Yeah.
WM: Oh that was right at the beginning.
TO: Yes but how did you feel?
WM: That was [sigh], well put it this way, we had already had casualties our side, so it was just war, no. It was war, yeah.
TO: Mhm. And was your aircraft ever damaged by anti-aircraft flak?
WM: Oh we had, we had, but we had nothing really serious, mm. No, we had holes all over the place from time to time. Some very close to the occupants was [laughs] but –
TO: Mhm.
WM: No, we always managed to get back.
TO: And were you ever given, did you get new bombs as the war went on?
WM: Oh yes, yes. We, we dropped just about everything that was going, yes. Oh yes, no.
TO: Did you ever, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. Did you ever get any of the massive bombs that Barnes Wallis had developed?
WM: Well, there were different ones yes, yeah we did. We went on a couple of trips to Bordeaux and things like that, yes –
TO: Might be –
WM: But, I know for a fact that even Barnes Wallis’ bombs, and the big ones, big ones that were dropping there, the German’s fortification of the submarine pens was, was terrific. Now they even today you can have a walk through them and see what it’s like, oh yes. But there [emphasis] is what I say, is that the – sorry I, there’s what happens is what – the amount of German personnel that had to be employed because [emphasis] of the Bomber Command raids was tremendous, tremendous [emphasis]. It wasn’t just one or two round the village or something like that. The number of people they kept back within Germany itself was properly, oh it must have been millions.
TO: And what do you think was the most important battle of the war?
WM: Well it all depends what you mean battle. Do you mean aircrew or land or –
TO: Any, anything.
WM: Or the ships.
TO: Well most important campaign then.
WM: Well, they’re all different, all different. You know it all depends, you know, if you say that – well the thing that lead up to the retention and taking back over Europe, and that was D-Day.
TO: Mm. And were you involved in that?
WM: Oh yes, yes.
TO: Can you tell me about any of the missions you went on?
WM: What, what we were doing, we were, we were, we were on the mock, one of the mock raids further up the coast. And a lot of the stuff that we were dropping that night was, was like aluminium foil, and that was showing them, well came up on the radar where there was massive amount of aircraft flying around, you know? And [laughs] of course at the same time we carried a lot of bombs, but we tried as much as possible to use them away, away from where we’d be flying over, as if it was again going further afield in. But at that time what we were trying to do was trying to keep away from human habitation because that was, that was just something that we were asked to do, because keep it away from the towns and cities and northern France, mm.
TO: Mm. And on, in bombing missions in general, what kind of targets were you actually given at the briefings?
WM: Well it all depends, you know, because no two briefings were the same, no. Yeah, you had factory towns, all sorts of things that you’re going after. You know even, I wasn’t, as I say, I wasn’t in on Dresden but there is a book called “Dresden,” and if you want to know anything about Dresden, get hold of that book. Now, it’s about that thick, and it goes back into the old days of Saxony, and it goes all the way through from the different things all the way, right through, right up until modern times. But that explains exactly what happened in that city. It’s very [emphasis], very complicated. It’s, but it tells the whole story of Dresden, not just one side of the, it’s the whole story, mm.
TO: And, I’m sorry to ask this but did you suffer heavy losses on your missions?
WM: Oh, well, from time to time we had losses, but we never, we never had what we considered a heavy loss, mm.
TO: And what did you think of Arthur Harris?
WM: Oh, we supported him. He was, he was our, our chief. We looked up to [could be after] him, yeah, we did.
TO: And what do you think of his tactics and strategy?
WM: Well I thought they were alright, because if you go back, go back in time that was his instructions that he was getting from the Air Ministry. That, that what a lot of people forget about, was that he [emphasis] was getting told by the Air Ministry what they wanted [emphasis], and that came from the cabinet meetings.
TO: Mhm. And do you think Bomber Command was treated unfairly after the war?
WM: No [emphasis]. They were not treated fairly. It was completely unfairly. As far as I’m concerned, even, even it took, it took for recognition, it took over seventy years [emphasis]. Now, on my, my medal bar, I’ve got the ‘39-‘45 Star, but also I wear [tape beeps] a little brass mounting [?] which says ‘Bomber Command,’ you know? That took seventy years for them to give it to us. Have you seen it?
TO: I think I saw it briefly when I met you last Sunday.
WM: It was in the middle.
TO: Yeah [paper shuffles]. And could you ever see fires below you on the ground?
WM: Oh yes, oh yes, definitely.
TO: Mhm, were they large or small?
WM: All depends, all depends what area and what you were doing. Some time you knew, you knew, you know, you had raging fires. Sometimes, sometime, see it all depends what the target was.
TO: And do you remember seeing fires when Hamburg was bombed in 1943?
WM: Well that’s what I said to you, I said to you already that that was a big one, you know.
TO: Mhm.
WM: But that was – then again, you’ve got to read the story about Hamburg, because what happened was that all the conditions for a bombing raid was right. The wind and the target and the structures of the building and everything, it all came into it.
TO: Mhm. And what did you think of the thousand bomber raid on Cologne?
WM: Well that, that was one of the best adverts that Harris could have. I won’t tell you what the thousand bombers were because nobody knows, but what he did was he got all the aircraft that could fly and return from there and used that. You know, right down to, there were some of the Blenheims [emphasis] that were in there to make up a thousand bombers, you know? That was a big propaganda one. And not only that, you say something about Harris and doing that, but there again, all of these things came from the War Cabinet. You know, this is what people forget or don’t know, there’s War Cabinet and then you come down to the Air Ministry, and the Air Ministry would then passed it onto Harris. And Harris was, alright at times Harris was dogmatic about what we were doing, but you think of Dresden. The Russians were fighting like hell coming our way, and at the same time the amount of German troops and everything else that was passing through, through Dresden, and what was happening in Dresden, what they were actually manufacturing [emphasis] for the, for the German, erm –
TO: War effort?
WM: Well, the German war effort [emphasis] was terrific. There was everything from stuff for the U-boats and aircraft and everything like that, it was all over the place. And this is admitted in this book, this book is, is called “Dresden” and it tells you street by street what they were doing, mm.
TO: And do you remember hearing about the attack on the Ruhr damns?
WM: Oh yes. Oh we were also, we were also on standby for that mission. We were sat, you know – the idea was that if it didn’t work that night, we were going to go the next night. There was, there was another three squadrons ready to go the next night –
TO: And –
WM: But it actually came through.
TO: And did that improve morale a lot?
WM: Oh yes, definitely.
TO: This is going to be –
WM: Scampton, were the, were the, were the Dambusters squadron was, we were also stationed at Scampton for a while, mm.
TO: This is probably going to be an odd question, but what was your least favourite aircraft to fly in?
WM: A Bolingbroke.
TO: Mm.
WM: A Bolingbroke was the American Canadian version of a Blenheim. She was underpowered and if you lost one engine, you had trouble trying to make it back to your base. But in Canada, a lot of chaps were lost over the lakes in the wintertime when they lost one engine, they went down through the ice.
TO: Mm.
WM: But that was, that was my one, a Bolingbroke. But as I say, I flew them and we were alright.
TO: And what was your favourite aircraft?
WM: Well I started off, I had a love for the Wellington but of course, later on it was the, it was the Lancaster. But old Lizzy, she never let us down and Lizzy was the Lysander. But the other thing, there’s one that’s hardly ever mentioned and that was the Anson, and of course the, the amount trainees that was through on the Lysanders was amazing. Everybody praises the Lysander, the Anson, mm.
TO: Mm. We’re actually out of battery on the camera, so is it okay if we have a break while I charge it up?
WM: Yeah, yeah, sure [tape paused and restarted].
TO: Okay so, can you tell me a bit about how you came to be involved in Operation Manna?
WM: We, we were stationed at RAF Tuddenham and we, we’d actually been on ops and we were called forward to stay and we thought ‘oh, well it’s another op,’ and this was on a Sunday.
TO: Mhm.
WM: And we were told that we were going to have stuff loaded on and we were to drop it, but it wasn’t bombs. It was in our containers, the containers that we’d used for dropping the stuff into the, into the Maquis as well, when we used to drop stuff. And that, that was alright. And when we got in the air, of course we didn’t know the whole [emphasis] story but it’s like a very good friend of mine says, her grandmother told her to hide under the table because she thought this was a message [?] they were gonna come and do some bombing [emphasis] round about there. Instead of that of course we were dropping the food. Well that was, that was the plus the operation started, but I suppose you know the story about that, about the two Canadians who went – can I tell you that one? Well what happened was Operation Manna came about because there was two young Canadian officers who had permission to go over to the German lines and speak to the German commander if it was possible and advise them that they could arrange for, to have food dropped into Holland because all the people there were starving, and that included the German troops that was there. Anyway, after negotiations, they had managed to get to them and they managed through the negotiations, the fact that we would be flying in Lancasters [emphasis] and dropping the food and we would not be dropping bombs. And of course the Germans advised that their anti-aircraft guns wouldn’t be firing at us, but they forgot to tell a lot of people with a rifle that what was happening, so it wasn’t impossible for us to get a few pot shots aimed at us with people on the ground with rifle fire. But anyway, we landed, we didn’t land [emphasis] of course, we just went in and we dropped it and certain food dropped and that was it, but later on, on the second or third day, by that time they’d got a bit organised and we were dropping food into, into football grounds. And what had happened, they got the local people to put big white crosses on the football grounds and that’s where we had to drop into. And one of the, one of the trips we were doing was at, we were flying in, and this, all the Lancasters said ‘ooh, a sprog crew.’ And this came, become across us and we had to veer quickly and let him come in, and when we were dropping our stuff, one of them went outside and landed on the railway line. Anyway, I could see lots of people round about it ‘cause it was taking quite a while to get into it of course, but by this time they’d realised it was, it was food in it and not bombs. Anyway, many years later in Africa when we were reopening a new rugby field, and in the pavilion later on I was telling the story, and I said ‘yes, it was, we were dropping the food to Holland’ and there was one of these things, a fellow, and I said ‘it was just like a lot of little ants round a sugar lump.’ And all of a sudden, somebody put his hand on my shoulder and I looked round, there’s this big fellow, a youngster, must have been in his early twenties, and he said to me, ‘you nearly killed me.’ And I said, ‘what do you mean I nearly killed you, I’ve never seen you in my life before.’ He says, ‘I was the first of these little black ants to get there’ he says, ‘because I saw it falling outside and I rushed to it, and all the other people came and dived on top of me’ [laughs]. So you see, it’s a small world there. But also I’ve got, I’ve got a large number of friends in this area, Dutch people, who actually received the food and they also still have services where, where they bless Manna, and there’s one particular family who come here into our court here, our Debbie’s [?] court and one, one Wednesday a month, and she was five years old when we dropped our first lot of food, and she’s always been thankful, thankful all the time, and she does tell people that ‘oh, Mr Moore, Uncle Bill here, he saved my country from starvation’ [laughs]. So you see that that was a real pleasure to do that, and I was actually awarded the Dutch Medal on that one, and very earnestly I consider that one of the finest medals and for the finest properties [?] that I received during the war.
TO: So would you say that’s the mission you’re most proud of?
WM: Yes.
TO: And when you first learned about Operation Manna, were you surprised that you’d be dropping food and not bombs?
WM: Oh yes, no, no.
TO: And could you, what do you remember most about Operation Manna?
WM: Well, the amount of aircraft. Well after, after the first Sunday, after the first Sunday it was well organised, ‘cause the first Sunday and Monday it was a trial run to see what happened really, but after that we, we had several squadrons that was dropping the food, and of course even, even some of the Americans were dropping food as well. But there were dropping food further afield than what we were, you know.
TO: And –
WM: At the beginning the war was still, the fighting was go on. It wasn’t, you know, it carried on afterwards but the first, the first few days of it that was still when the war was going on, you know.
TO: And what about, could you see if any Dutch civilians on the ground were waving British flags?
WM: Oh yes, well you could see them waving [emphasis]. You’re not always sure what they were waving but they were waving and clothes and waving anything at all when I realised on the second wave what we were doing, ‘cause it wasn’t, wasn’t bombs we were dropping.
TO: Mm. Well Bernie, the veteran, other Manna veteran whose number I gave you, he told me that flying so low he could see a Dutch boy waving a Union Jack.
WM: Yeah well, he must, he must have been very lucky to have – ‘cause it maybe that someone dropped the Union flag –
TO: Mhm.
WM: And then he got it, but not a Union Jack [emphasis].
TO: Mhm.
WM: It’s a Union flag. Do you know the difference?
TO: No, please explain.
WM: Well the Union Jack [emphasis] is flown in the brow of a ship –
TO: Mhm.
WM: The Union Jack is the one that’s – Union flag [emphasis] is the one that’s flown everywhere else.
TO: Oh right, I didn’t know that. Thank you.
WM: Mm, the Union Jack is the small staff in the front of a ship.
TO: Mhm [pause]. What kind of, when you were sat in the cockpit, what kind of equipment did you have in front of you?
WM: I know, I know that this is [?] navigational equipment that we could use. We had, we had G, we had Oboe, we had all sorts of different ones, yeah, mm.
TO: And how did G work?
WM: Well G was, G was in two, two, two beams, and where these two beams crossed, that’s where you were. It’s as simple as that.
TO: And did that improve navigation?
WM: Oh yes, yeah, mm. Well the H2S was a different story entirely. The H2S was you were beaming down and the more [?] water that was around the clearer the river [?] became, but your only trouble about that was the German fighters used to vector onto the, what we were, we were projecting. Sometimes that could become a hazard.
TO: And how many occasions do you think you deployed Window?
WM: Oh quite a number, even, even when we were doing training operations we were dropping Window, which we never counted, it didn’t count as operations as such. But we, we were dropping Window many a time, yeah, during training flights, mm.
TO: And when bombs were dropped from an aircraft, did the plane become noticeably lighter?
WM: Oh it came, you rose, you rose slightly yes, mm. All depends on how much, how much stuff you’re actually carrying or dropping.
TO: And could you please explain what the procedure would be for, in terms of what the crew would do, each crew member would do and say when you got over the target?
WM: Well each person had their own to do. The pilot, he was taking instructions from whoever was doing the, the lead onto the target. Sometimes we did that with myself, quite a number of times of course, and sometimes, sometimes it was the wireless operator, sometimes it was another, we had a radar operator as well, they used to use that over the targets ‘cause as I say, we were, we were still on special duties. Of course your gunners were always on the left and as I say, engineer, he had to be very careful then making sure everything was alright on his side, yeah. But everybody was active.
TO: Mhm. And were there ever any times on a mission when you could more or less relax?
WM: No [emphasis]. If you relaxed you, it was wrong. There’s many, many a time, many a time – what happened with us was that, and I’ve said this before, we never really relaxed until we were home. Can we give that a break for a minute? I’ll show you something.
TO: Yes, certainly [tape beeps]. Mhm. And did you or anyone else in the crew have a special name for your own aircraft?
WM: Yes, well we, we called our one after the Loch Ness Monster, that was it, yeah, mm [laughs]. It was, it was a favourite of ours you know, especially with two Scottish men was there [?] and we adopted, we adopted the rest of them, you know? Mm.
TO: [Paper turns] and when you were on missions, could you, or rather night missions, were there other British planes flying near you?
WM: All depends, all depends on what type of mission you were on.
TO: Mhm.
WM: Now, if you’re in the stream, well – at the beginning the squadron took off but you had a rendezvous point. A lot of rendezvous points were like Beachy Head, you know, and they used to assemble in that area and then they took off. And of course the thing about that was that the Germans also knew we were assembling at different places, and they could actually send out their night fighters if, if they did, you know? But there was, there were umpteen different places and they couldn’t, they couldn’t get to them all [emphasis] because often there was more than one raid on one night, on the same night. And that was deviations to keep away from maybe the real big one of that occasion, you know.
TO: And how many times a week would you go on a mission?
WM: Well sometimes it was night after night, three nights in one week [emphasis]. Sometimes according to the weather, it might be about eight days, maybe a week.
TO: Mhm.
WM: The weather had a lot to do with it you know?
TO: And were you ever escorted by fighters?
WM: We, well we, we were escorted ‘cause we did quite a few daytime raids, yes, we were. But we, we were quite, we were quite happy with that, mm. ‘Cause we used to see them, we used to see them on the verges of the, of the streams, you know, mm.
TO: And do you remember what kind of fighters they were?
WM: Well the ones that we saw was Mustangs, mm. All depends on how far in you were going. If you were going a long way in that was, that was a Mustang. Sometimes, sometimes it was a Hurricane, sometimes it was a Spitfire, mm. But they were only used as short flights, mm, whereas a Mustang was built for long range, mm.
TO: And was it cold aboard the planes?
WM: Oh it was never pleasant [laughs]. At one time everyone used to have a different [?] suit. It was like a fur jacket and things like that. But once we got onto the heavies they took all that stuff away from us, saying we didn’t need it. Well that was alright for these [emphasis] people, they weren’t flying [laughs], mm.
TO: And did you ever carry food with you aboard the plane?
WM: Ever carry?
TO: Food with you?
WM: No, all I carried, used to carry was five, five barley sugars, sweets.
TO: And what sort of entertainment did you have back at the airfields?
WM: Well all depends on what the, if it was, if it was one of the pre war stations there was generally a building that was used for dances and things like that, and concerts. If it was the war time ones then sometimes all you did was make sure there, there was an empty hangar and you had something in there. But, you know, that was how it was done, no. But that, that, that was the main thing of entertainment, you know, ‘cause the picture shows and things like that within the camp always started off as I say with propaganda [laughs], mm.
TO: When you saw those propaganda things, did you ever wonder whether they were being truthful?
WM: Well, the things we used to say ‘woah, woah, woah, woah’ [emphasis] and things like that, you know, the British sense of humour, you know, mm. And that’s a fact, mm.
TO: And were there any particularly popular songs?
WM: Oh yes there was all the, all the, I’ve got, I’ve still got all the tapes here of all the popular songs, mm, oh yes, I have all them, yeah. All of the artists at that time, yeah, and these artists I have, I have run [?] many a concert here and had the same ones come performing for me.
TO: And was there anyone that you knew of who refused to go on bombing missions?
WM: I never met anybody who refused to go on a mission, but I always remember there was two people who graduated and got their wings and then they, then they refused to go on ops. But that’s the nearest I ever came to it. But they never did any ops, they never were in, they weren’t even on a bombing station. And I’m sorry to say that we heard later on that they’d transferred to the Pioneer Corps and both of them got killed [pause].
TO: You mentioned that there was a raid where you had to attack a German warship in Kiel.
WM: That’s right.
TO: Do you remember its name?
WM: Not off hand, no.
TO: Would it be the Hipper?
WM: Oh it’s quite possible, it’s quite possible it was, yeah. I’ve got the date there, I told you the dates of it the other –
TO: Mhm.
WM: Yeah.
TO: I think I remember, I remember the sinking of the Hipper though because it was sunk on the 9th of April which coincidently is my birthday.
WM: Oh [emphasis].
TO: So –
WM: Oh [emphasis], 9th of April?
TO: I think I kind of have a selfish reason for remembering that if you see what I mean. Or maybe it was the Cher [WM laughs], I’m not sure. I do know though that –
WM: No, no, no. 9th of April [pause], 13th, 13th of April.
TO: What does it say was the target, or –
WM: That was in Kiel, mm, yeah. That was the 13 of April.
TO: Mhm.
WM: That’s what that was, that was the target.
TO: Mhm.
WM: That was the one that I told you that we, that we we bombed it that night and knocked it down and we had to go back again and make sure, one of [?] the chaps said ‘are you sure you don’t want us to put it back up again?’ [TO laughs]. ‘Cause you’d obviously got somebody –
TO: Mhm.
WM: Who [laughs] would give you an answer for something [laughs], mm.
TO: And were there ever any occasions were you could, where you ever flew over neutral territory and could see the cities all illuminated?
WM: There was one night we were, we were coming back from a trip, and the next thing I saw was these lights, and I thought ‘well what the hell is going on?’ And what had happened was that the [laughs], we were almost sent to Dublin, and what that was, was that the wind speed was ferocious and what we thought we’d found out was that we were nothing near [emphasis], we were nothing near the wind speed, what the actual wind speed was, and of course as soon as we saw that we turned round and we were on the way back.
TO: Mm.
WM: But that was the nearest I’ve been to being on neutral territory, you know.
TO: Mm.
WM: From that point of view, mm.
TO: Mm, and were there ever any occasions where you were accidently fired at by allied anti-aircraft guns?
WM: Well, what we, what we had was that we had the Junkers 52-53 aircraft, and we used to do special missions on that and we used to fly low [emphasis]. And what had happened was that that one had been liberated in the desert and we were using it on special duties, but there was no esigners [?], painted black, and going out was fine. Coming back [emphasis], it wasn’t until we got into our own territory that we used to get a few pot-shots at us, you know? Probably because [laughs] we were flying without the proper identification and things like that, that’s why we get into trouble. But we never actually, never actually had anything serious happen to us.
TO: Mhm.
WM: But that was under secret risk [?].
TO: Mhm. So was it, so you were trying to use, you were using German aircraft for the missions over France?
WM: Yeah.
TO: For the SOE.
WM: Yeah, SOE, yeah.
TO: So it wasn’t always Lysanders then?
WM: No we, we used many, you know, the Lysander was for the agents.
TO: Mhm.
WM: But as I said before we used to use other aircraft for taking other stuff in, for Maquis and things like that, you know.
TO: Mhm.
WM: Oh yes, mm.
TO: And did you ever meet any senior commanders during the war?
WM: Well every now and again you had a parade where we didn’t actually, we didn’t actually get to meet [emphasis] them as such. Not like, not like last Sunday, no.
TO: Mm. And were some missions much more dangerous than others or were they more or less the same?
WM: Well, what we used to do, we used to classify every mission as dangerous, because if you didn’t and you dropped your guard, that’s when you would have been in trouble. I don’t say they weren’t, but we never loaded [?] to be.
TO: And were there ever any times where you, where your missions were just taking photographs of areas?
WM: Oh yes, we had that [emphasis] from time to time, yes, mm.
TO: Could you tell me about any of those?
WM: Well they were, they were done by 138 Squadron and that was, you know, the idea behind that was sometimes it was targets, that they had been bombed, and sometimes they might have been targets that we flew past. We passed them as if we were going somewhere else and we might have been taking them then. But we got a lot of practice in that, because that’s another story I can give you, mm.
TO: And did you hear how other events of the war were going?
WM: Oh yes, we were kept up to date, we were kept up to date. As I say, between the news reels and bulletins, you were kept up to date, mm.
TO: Were you ever worried that Germany might win?
WM: Well, we, I would never say that, that I was frightened of them winning [?][emphasis], but we always worried every now and again where it might have been something that was going the wrong way, but not, not for an all out win no. No, no, no.
TO: And what was the most feared German night fighter?
WM: The Junkers-88, ‘cause she’d a cannon on her, and she, she actually fitted onto her guns that would fly, fire upwards and try and get under the bellies of the Lancasters. And that’s where we lost quite a number of Lancasters, firing guns from the, from the JU28, JU88s, yeah, mhm [pause].
TO: And did you ever feel any animosity towards Germany?
WM: Well, that’s a difficult one because, you know, there was people who lost friends, relations and all the rest of it. Some of them got quite bitter but on the whole people just took it as war.
TO: And how do you feel today?
WM: Ah, what I can say is that I have been involved in promoting rugby, football all over Europe and all over Africa, that’s my answer to that.
TO: And how do you feel today about your wartime service?
WM: It was something – when I had to something and that’s what I did, mm.
TO: And do you think the war was worth the price?
WM: I think yes. I think yes, because that’s another story I can tell you, that you haven’t asked me about.
TO: Yes, tell me, yeah.
WM: Well after, after the war finished, we still had special duties to do, and one of the first was to bring, bring back prisoners of war which were British, well there was all sorts involved but most of the ones we brought back were British, and a lot of the stories that they related to me including two of my uncles who were prisoners of war since 1940. Some of the stories they had to say was horrific. Anyway, when we finished that job bringing back the prisoners of war, we, we then went onto ferrying people from parts of Germany down into a place called Eastridge [?] in France and we had camps there where we took the refugees into, and a lot of these people thought that we were going to lock them up, same as they’d been before. But it was trying to tell them that it was to help them and that the, the camp was just secured so that the local people wouldn’t be coming in to try and get what they were getting, ‘cause this was to try and build them up again, you know. But then of course after that, the next big thing after that, we, we were put on photograph and the whole of Europe. We started off with photographing the likes of London from about two thousand feet, and then towns like [unclear] Woking here, from about four thousand feet and then the countryside was from, anything from ten to twenty thousand feet. We did that for the whole of Europe, mm. And that was 138, 138 Squadron again, because what we did, we’d started doing it at Tuddenham and then when they realised that we were quite successful, they transferred us over to RAF Benson and we did that over at Benson. And then of course we, we had several substations, substations in Norway, substations in France, we had substations around the country here at different places where we would load [?] to land and fuel up, and we had special signal recognition that we could, we could use and that went on for quite some, quite some time, ‘cause that photographing Europe was one of Churchill’s ideas that he left behind after he was out of office.
TO: And during those photography missions, could you see the damage from the bombing?
WM: Oh yes that was the idea, mm. Anyway you done it at two thousand feet you could see right down, no [unclear] of course, mhm, mm. That’s where we, well that’s where we started [emphasis] photographing, mm, but it was the while, the whole area was done, mm.
TO: Are there any other missions of the war that stand out a lot to you which you’d like to tell me about?
WM: Personal ones?
TO: Well any, any ones you were on from, that were missions that, but only if you’re willing to talk about, don’t if you –
WM: No.
TO: If you don’t want to talk about it it’s fine.
WM: No, as I say in general, in general we, we carried out what we had to do, and as I say, 138 Squadron of special duties, we were doing all sorts of things and there’s lots of things that, that we still should not talk about, because we are sworn to secrecy about them, because that was in conjecture [?] with SOE, ‘cause there was lots of people who maybe still, maybe not in favour of some of these operations.
TO: Mhm. What about some of the other bombing missions? Are there any others that you’d like, any others that stand out that you’d like to tell me about?
WM: You know, you know, the big, a big, a big thing was that there was missions we knew [emphasis] –about and there was other missions that people were on that we got to know about and [tape beeps] I can assure you that once the reason, these missions – people said ‘oh that could have been us,’ you know? ‘Cause even the Dambusters, ones we were a back up squadron for that. It wasn’t a method, it wasn’t just a method of a few fellows doing that, there was back up squadrons as well.
TO: And when did you hear about the Holocaust?
WM: Well that, that’s hard to say because we, we, we got, we got to know in bits and pieces. As I say, I started to learn a lot of that from our own prisoners of war that we were bringing home, and then of course we found out from other people who, who had been there in the camps. And, course the big thing about it was you didn’t realise just how widespread it was. I don’t think anybody did at that particular time. I know there was some friends of mine who visited Belson and visited the other ones in person and as I say, they were horrified how the treatment that people was getting. But that’s a different category all together you know, that was someone away from, away from a normal war. That was, that wasn’t the same.
TO: Were there ever any times when you were tasked with dropping leaflets?
WM: Oh yes we had that from time to time, mm, we had that, mm. We were never sure whether the leaflets were doing any good or not.
TO: Arthur Harris said after the war that never engaged in those leaflet dropping exercises because it only accomplished two things. One, it gave the German defenders practice in getting ready for the real thing and two, it supplied a substantial quantity of toilet paper for –
WM: That’s right.
TO: The Germans.
WM: That’s more or less correct, yes, mm.
TO: Mm [page turns]. Did you ever wish you’d been in something other than the Royal Air Force?
WM: I had been in the Guyun [?] Southern Highlanders –
TO: Mhm.
WM: But not, not an active service, no. But I never, never felt as if I should have been there, no.
TO: And did you ever wish that you hadn’t been an observer or a navigator? Did you ever wish that you’d been a different position on board the aircraft?
WM: Well we did, on aircrew we went around the different jobs in case anything happened to one of us up there. We actually flew in different positions [emphasis] from time to time [emphasis].
TO: So did you ever fly the Lancaster yourself?
WM: Oh yes, yes. Oh yes.
TO: But the pilot would always do the takeoff and landing?
WM: Well that was the idea, although we had to do, I had to be able to land the aircraft.
TO: Mhm. So would you consider yourself a flight engineer as well as an observer?
WM: No, observer, my observer, my observer – I covered all these courses –
TO: Mhm.
WM: As an observer, mm. The flight engineer came into his own with the four engine bombers, mm.
TO: And you mentioned you were on Wellingtons for a while.
WM: Mm.
TO: Were they generally reliable?
WM: Oh course [emphasis]. They were the most reliable bomber that we had.
TO: And did you hear about the, how the early bombing of the war was progressing?
WM: Well the thing is, everybody hoped that it was for the best because there’s everything else. There’s, the accuracy improved. Obviously the saturation bombing was started by the Germans. They started saturation bombing. Our people tried to go for individual targets and alright, after that there was [emphasis] saturation bombing, you know.
TO: And were your airfields ever attacked by German fighters?
WM: Not to my knowledge no.
TO: Mm. And I’m sorry to ask this, but were any of your friends killed during the war?
WM: Yes. A lot of school friends, school friends and friends from the Boys Brigade, oh yes, mm. School friends were the younger ones but the older friends were the ones I’d made through the Boys Brigade, and they were, most of them was on aircrew [emphasis], different categories.
TO: How, how was morale in Bomber Command throughout the war would you say?
WM: Good, it was good. It was excellent.
TO: And why do you think it stayed so high despite the losses?
WM: It was the camaraderie of sticking together, yeah, oh yes, mm. We were all volunteers, and we’re still volunteers [laughs].
TO: And you know after Dunkirk, was there a general fear of invasion?
WM: Not fear [emphasis] of invasion. There was, what did I say, there was – people didn’t think it was imminent but [phone rings] it could happen, you know? Hello?
Caller on the phone: Hello.
WM: Hello dear.
Caller on the phone: How are you?
WM: I’m very, very [tape beeps].
TO: And what did you think of the atomic bombs that were used against Japan?
WM: Well the big thing about that is that it could have happened to us, because as we know from hindsight, that the Germans had been working on that, and that could have been us. And of course, if the development of the V2s had come, could have come, come all the way across the Atlantic into America [emphasis]. As far as I’m concerned it’s, it’s one of these weapons that it could, it could obliterate mankind if it went on too long. And of course we noticed what happened with the aftermath of these things, but our war was nothing compared with that. I also, also think that if it hadn’t been for the, for the ones dropped in Japan that millions of troops would have been massacred, and it doesn’t say how far on everything else would have went if they hadn’t been dropped because that may have gone on for years and years and years, so it may have been at the time was a good thing.
TO: And, just going back to the crew that you were good friends with –
WM: Mm.
TO: Did, did they talk much about their lives before they joined the Air Force?
WM: Yeah, we all had that, but yeah. The pilot, pilot was a sheep farmer in New Zealand, our radar [?] man was an accountant in New Zealand, our wireless operator, his father had a joinery business across in Lanes [?] Bay, across the water from where I come from. The, the rear gunner was an, a surveyor for the [unclear] down the water here and the mid upper gunner his, his family had got a hotel in Canterbury in Kent, and that’s quite strange was that I got married on a Friday night in Scotland, and we had another party in the Fleur-de-Lis Hotel in Canterbury on the Wednesday following, because the crew was all going home to New Zealand and places like that. But no, we did, and as I say, Jimmy Dagg, his great-grandson is playing rugby as Israel Dagg for the All Blacks, [unclear] rugby, mm.
TO: And did you ever actually, I know you could see them from the sky, but after the war did you ever go through any of the cities like Berlin or?
WM: No I didn’t. All I did was flew, flew over them you know, mm.
TO: Mhm. And what’s your opinion on Britain’s involvement in recent wars like Afghanistan?
WM: Well there, there again the – that’s an entirely different thing. It all depends how far back you get. It’s always been said that, that nobody ever wins a war in Afghanistan, ‘cause even going back to even before Christ [emphasis] there’s been, been wars and people trying to take over and trying to settle Afghanistan region. But some, some of the other, some of the other wars that goes on, you just wonder why, no, because – on the other hand you don’t really get down to it, you know. The likes of Korea was quite a war, and also the McArthur at the time, he was right up to the Chinese border and he was, he wasn’t defeated or anything but the American government told him to come back, and of course that was reintruded when the, when the two states were formed, Northern and South of Korea. Now, if you talk about Sing, Malaysia. Now in Malaysia there was thousands of troops and everything in there, and where I was from in Africa, there was African regiments in there from, from Rhodesia, from Kenya, from Tanganyika. They were called the King’s African Rifles and they Rhodesians, the Rhodesian regiment, they were all involved in there, no. And then of course you got these other skirmishes up, was up in Europe and there again, they all seemed to arise from either petty politics or religions. If you, if you go into some of these other ones where there’s still fighting today, and you turn around and you say to Syria, but what is it? It’s one against one, it’s a civil war. That’s really what it is, but why can’t they get together on it? You know, there was a civil war in Spain pre-1938. Now that was a vicious war as well, but 1938, thirty-nine it came to a close and a person who took over Franco and the nation was brought together again. Before Franco died, he brought back the king and that was, that was brought back and that settled both people, both lots of the people in Spain. Now you see all these other ones that’s gone on, skirmishes and even in the South American countries, that’s all about drugs, that’s not really about people, it’s about drugs and things like that which is entirely [emphasis] different thing entirely [emphasis]. Now holy wars as I call them can never be settled, ‘cause one, one against the other they will never, never change [emphasis]. What happens with these things is they just goes on and on and on, and that, and that’s been going on for centuries, or one country wants to take over the other one and it’s through, it’s though their, their type of religions it happens, which is wrong.
TO: And one of my last questions now, what’s your best memory of your time in the war?
WM: When I met my wife [both laugh]. I came, I came back from a raid, a raid on Bordeaux and I was given three days leave. Instead of that I got it made up to ten days and I, I went home and I got a lift in fish truck. I was never sure if it was real fish or scrap fish for [laughs] for to go for manures or something like that. But anyway, I got there and the first thing my mother did was put all my clothes in the boiler and she’d have put me into the boiler if I hadn’t got into the bath. Anyway, that night I, I went along to the local dance, the big pavilion, the big high balcony and all the people up there spectating, and I was dancing with this young lady, and my friend wanted to dance with her. ‘Come on, come on, this is my one, you go and pinch your own lady,’ you know, ‘your own girl,’ you know? Anyway, what I didn’t know was that her mother and father, two sisters and sister-in-law and some kids were all up on the balcony, and every time I danced, being in the Air Force they were shouting ‘hooray,’ because their son Walter was in the Air Force in India, and my friend Vann Muir [?] was in the Navy, so I was winning according to them, and I did [laughs]. That was my happiest [emphasis] that was my happiest [emphasis] occasion in the whole war, mm.
TO: Mhm. Well that’s all of my questions –
WM: Alright.
TO: Do you have anything at all that you want to add?
WM: No, it’s just [unclear] want to say this, I’ve had another two of these interviews, there might be a little discrepancies or differences but –
TO: That’s fine.
WM: It’s all going from in here you know.
TO: That’s fine, your memory’s been great –
WM: Oh.
TO: And I’ve really enjoyed what you’ve told me.
WM: Oh, no.
TO: So thank you so much for telling me.
WM: Oh okay, thank you, welcome, thank you very much.
TO: Thank you so much for your wartime service as well.
WM: I must see you from time to time somewhere –
TO: Yeah.
WM: Along the line. You come to some of these gatherings from the Royal Air Force, I’ll be there.
TO: Mhm, thank you.
WM: Yeah.
TO: It would be great to see you.
WM: Thank you very much indeed.
TO: Thank you.
WM: Anyway –
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Interview with Bill Moore. Three
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02:50:38 audio recording
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Tom Ozel
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2016-07-06
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Bill Moore grew up in Scotland and volunteered for the Royal Air Force. He completed 36 operations as a navigator with 138 and 161 Squadrons.
Please note: The veracity of this interview has been called into question. We advise that corroborative research is undertaken to establish the accuracy of some of the details mentioned and events witnessed.
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Katie Gilbert
138 Squadron
161 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
Bolingbroke
bombing
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
briefing
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
displaced person
fear
Gee
H2S
Hudson
Lancaster
Lysander
military service conditions
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
perception of bombing war
RAF Halfpenny Green
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RAF Tempsford
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-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/317/3474/APorteousB161102.1.mp3
80867f55350bb6d512266a1b71d81dc6
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Porteous, Bob
Bryson Porteous
B Porteous
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One oral history interview with Bryson "Bob" Porteous (441356 Royal Australian Air Force).
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2016-11-02
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Porteous, B
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Transcription
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BG: OK, so I’ll introduce us just the way they suggest. Which is, this Interview is, this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Bob Porteous and the interviewer, interviewee is myself Barry Green and its taking place at Bob’s home, Meadow Springs Estate in Mandurah. So, first of all Bob, um, you, you’ve signed the agreement?
BP: Yep.
BG: And so the mainly the focus of this is your experience in Bomber Command but if, to set the background, [clock chime] where did you grow up?
BP: Born in Kalgoorlie, grew up in, er, William Street in Perth, Customs House in William Street in Perth. Then, er, my mother divorced the old man because he was infe— infidelity and then she married a Lawrence Povey of Povey’s Furniture Manufacturers and we lived in North Perth. And I did all my schooling in North Perth School, state school, and then Perth Boys’ School and, because the old man was an abusive drunk, I went bush. Did a few things in the, er, bush, came back and he — first thing that Seth [?] asked me what was I doing after a couple of years in the bush? And I said, ‘Oh, I don’t know. I think I’ll go and enlist or something or other on Monday.’ Of course that was on the Thursday and I said, he said to me, ‘What about tomorrow?’ Being a Friday. So, I said, ‘OK.’ And Friday morning I went into the A and A [?] House I think it was then and enlisted, and I was the last person on my course, and we went to England.
BG: What, what year was that?
BP: It was 1942 and, er, luckily he unknowingly gave me a good, good thing, because everyone who enlisted on the Monday they went to Rhodesia to train and then they went up to the desert and they are either still in the desert or they became POWs in France, in Italy. So, his words about when I should enlist actually served a good purpose.
BG: Right. So, what happened from there?
BP: Trained at Cloncar [?]. I have a friend here. He’s in the next room. He’s an ex-padre and we always have fun and games over the fact that he’s a padre and I tell him that I spent more time in chapel than he did. And he wanted to know why. And I said we were billeted in, in a chapel. So I sent three months in a chapel. [laugh]
BG: So, this is when you were training as a navigator?
BP: As a navi— no, I was just training as an airman then and we were then sent to Mount Gambier. That was a navigation school and, er, gave, given the choice of going Point — to other places, Evans Head and all the rest of it, and we had a lot of air cadets fresh, fresh out of school, who all wanted to go to Port Pirie because it was nearer to Perth, but we being a few old heads we said, ‘No. We’ll go to Evans Head.’ So, according to the Air Services and all the rest of it, we, well I, went to Port Pirie and all the other boys went to Evans Head. They went up to the islands and they’re still up there.
BG: So, from there you were — at what stage did you first get into an aircraft?
BP: A trainer or a real one?
BG: Well, the trainer, yep.
BP: The trainer was, oh, about three or four months after I enlisted and we had great fun and games because three of us were training as navigators and we had three, er, navs and a pilot to train in an old Anson and they drew straws as to who was going into the first leg of this triangular course and I lost, and consequently I drew the nav table, and I opened the nav drawer to put my charts in it and found that the chap who had it before had been sick in it [laugh] so consequently the pilot, when we returned, he complained to — and the chap they found out who had been the person who had been sick and he had the job for the next couple of weeks of examining all aircraft every morning before they took off to find out that they were fit, besides his ordinary work. [laugh]
BG: So, how long did you spend there before getting into, er, operations?
BP: It took three, five, six months of actual training before we were graduated as navigators and got a weeks’ leave and then we went to Melbourne and we were billeted in the embassy. Gee, a cold bloody hole that was [laugh] and then came the day we were issued with our, um, woolly flying gear, which was no indication we were going to England but that was no indication in the Services of the gear that they issued you, er, meant that you went there because I have known people being sent to the tropics with their woolly flying gear. Any rate, we were on this boat and we were told we were going to Vancouver because we had some EA air cadets, EATS cadets, who were to be trained in Calgary. So, after twenty-odd days on the ship we pulled into Panama. The next thing we know we go through the canal and we land in Boston. And, er the OC troops on the ship says, ‘We want volunteers to take these air cadets to Calgary.’ So they numbered us all off and he said, ‘Alright, everyone on — with a two in their number is a volunteer.’ So, I had a free trip according to the CPR railways to Calgary with these four hundred-odd cadets. Consequently when I got back to Fort Hamilton in New York all the rest of the chaps who’d travelled on the boat from Melbourne they, had been shipped to England. Unfortunately that ship was torpedoed and they were lost in the North Atlantic. So twenty-two of us had an extra couple of weeks in New York where I was fortunate enough to be billeted with a millionaire. [cough] His name was Mendenhall which was a — not an excuse — was a bit of a blow because the final drome that we had in England was Mildenhall so I had to think to whom I was talking and what about I was talking as to what was the name of the place, whether it was Mendenhall or Mildenhall. [laugh] Any rate, we, er, oh —
BG: So, how did you find New York? How long were you there for?
BP: A couple of weeks. They knew absolutely nothing. They were dead bloody hopeless. My opinion of the Yanks and their learning ability is zero from what they knew. Lofty and I were walking down Fifth Avenue dressed in our RAAF uniforms and a couple of cops pulled us up, thought that we were Austrians [emphasis]. They couldn’t bloody well read.
BG: Yep.
BP: ‘You come from Australia?’ They had said, ‘I thought, oh, that’s a little island in San Francisco Bay?’ Alcatraz. And things like that they were bloody hopeless [emphasis] as far as geography and things like that were concerned and the more I learned about them during the war the, the less I thought about them. [clears throat]
BG: Right, so from New York ship across the —
BP: Ah, as there were only twenty-two of us we were put on the Queen Mary, QM1. We had seventeen thousand Yankees, a regiment of them, on the boat going over and they — everyone had to do a job. So they said, ‘Twenty-two Australians. What on earth will we to do with you?’ So they gave us submarine watch on the bridge. It took — we were two hours on, one hour off. It — where we were billeted down on the boat I was Blue C4. It took twenty minutes to — from there up to the bridge, you spent two hours on bridge watch, then twenty minutes back, which gave you twenty minutes time to go to the toilet and that and you had twenty minutes to come back again so we told the first officer, ‘What’s the use of giving us an hour off to go and do that? We might as well stay up on the bridge.’ So, he agreed the thing. So the first officer and Captain Bisset (he was the captain of the Mary at the time) — so we used to do navigation exercises so I’ve navigated the Queen Mary. [laugh]
BG: Right. You’d more time to think about that.
BP: Yeah. Well, so, er, navigation exercises for five days. The twenty-two of us we navigated the Mary across to Greenock in Scotland.
BG: Right. Go on.
BP: Got, got to Scotland and we were then sent down to, mm, Padgate. That was a PDRC outside Warrington, and of course mum had always told us if you go anywhere do see as much as you can of the place. So, one thing and another, the first thing we did was when we put our gear down and all the rest of it, ‘What’s the time? Let’s go into town.’ We wanted to see town so during every spare moment my friend and I we visited whatever we could. So, over the whole of my tour in England, I visited most of England in one time and another. Any rate, we went to Warrington. We used to go in there and come down to the coffee shop, which was opposite the railway station, have our tea in there. Actually it wasn’t coffee. It was a bun, sticky bun and tea, and so when the train pulled up we hopped, raced across the road and hopped into the train because we didn’t have to pay for it, being servicemen, Australian ex-servicemen, Australian servicemen. Only this happened to be — we did that on the Wednesday and the Thursday. On the Friday we did the same thing only the train happened to be special train going to Manchester. So, the first time I went to Manchester was by mistake. [laugh]
BG: So your first operational unit when you got to the UK —
BP: [cough] It all depends what you call operations because when we were on, um, at Bruntingthorpe we were on Wellingtons at the time and we were given the job of annoying, under Operation Annoy, and annoy the German air flak gunners on the Friesian Islands and all up and down the coast. It was our job to fly up and down just out of range, toss window out the chute and all the rest of it, and annoy the German gunners. So, they didn’t call that operational but we were two crews still hut [?] we flew H-Howard and another crew flew, Bert’s flew M-Mike and we, er, did the first twelve trips alright and came the thirteenth one and we got down to the briefing room and found out that the silly looking operations officer there had made a balls up of the things and we were listed to fly M-Mike and Bert and his boys flew H-Howard. So when we came back after the raid they told us that it was OK to land but beware of the burning plane in the funnels. That was Bert and his crew in our plane. So that was my first experience of Bomber Command and their misdeeds.
BG: So, you, you were up in the, you went up in the wrong plane basically but as it turned out the best plane to be in?
BP: Yes.
BG: And this — what squadron was that?
BP: That was on Heavy Conversion Unit, HCU, before we even got on the squadron so we thought to ourselves if we can do things like that before we got on the squadron what do we do when we get on the squadron and we went to — I was posted — actually, I went to the ablutions hut one morning and had a shower and a shave and all the rest of it and someone stole my navigation watch. So the crew was delayed a couple of days while we faced a court of enquiry as to how and why and where I’d lost my watch. When we got on the squadron we found out that the crew that had taken our place were, um, had been in this particular hall and we were delayed on entering because they were cleaning the, their gear out. They had, er, taken off the previous night and hadn’t come back. So, could have been us.
BG: Yep.
BP: Any rate I was on 622 up at Mildenhall and being a base drome, three other aerodromes around the place, and a couple of [unclear] squadrons on the drome we got the dirty work. Why should they go out to one of the satellite dromes and give their information and all their rest of it to someone else. So, being new chums on the drome we got the, er dirty work of doing things around the place. So as far as operations work my work on operations was very limited and — [cough]
BG: So, getting back to your — this was your first operations and your, your log books. Tell us more about that.
BP: The things that we did with the odd jobs around the place and my six [unclear] for instance, they got us on a special trip. We supposedly flew an admiral and a commodore with their aides. In actual fact was all they wanted was a Lancaster to fly to Gibraltar because the officer, secret service officer down there said, ‘Alright, we’ll do a trip over to Tangier.’ And when we went to Tangier we had a chappie there who was another, er, secret officer, who gave us a tour of the town whilst they left, whilst we had left the plane on the drome, which we were not supposed to do but he, being a wing commander — alright, he says, ‘Leave the plane there and go into town.’ You don’t disobey the wing commander so we did. When we came to take off we found out the plane was heavy. We had flown from England to Gib, taken off and flown into Tangier. By then we should have only had, oh, probably a half a petrol load. But that plane was fully loaded. We found out of course when we landed at Gib we were heavy in the landing and of course you don’t land a heavy Lancaster the same way as you do one that’s half empty, so they had to tell us we had a full load on board, but they didn’t tell us what the load was. Turned out to be seven tons of gold [clears throat] so in actual fact it had been a gold smuggle. They wanted the gold that had accumulated from Africa into Fez and Tangier and then taken to Gibraltar to pay for he lend lease of the British war effort so it’s one of those little things and yet it’s not in my log book. When I have been to Canberra to talk to my old veterans over there I found out that their log books do not agree actually with what they did. One chap has had twenty trips written into his log book that he never did. I mean, he said twenty-five trips, you know, he actually did but he’s listed as forty-five trips. The other twenty-five, where did they come from? The same as my log book. I do not have it to be able to verify it, but I have seen a copy of the records and the records that, that have been obtained from the — Canberra and all the rest of it do not agree with my memory of the log books. So, knowing a few things that have happened during the war and that, the log, the record keeping of the Air Force or Air Ministry and that is up the balls up.
BG: So were you mostly flying as the one crew or was the crew —
BP: We — a chap Quinn and crew, the same crew all the time and, er, luckily we kept it al— always. They were mainly things that, um, other crews around the place — we were very disappointed over the fact that we didn’t do more trips, operations, than the, that the others but we were listed as the “bunnies” round the place doing the odd jobs. So, they put us on things like, um, gardening and Operation Manna, Operation Exodus bringing back ex- ex-POWs from France, from Juvencourt and that and we had the job of Operation Python, bringing back, taking people out to Italy and bringing them back from there. So, shall we say I was not a fully operational man. I did my work with 622 but the thing was after the VE Day they wanted people to fly with Operation — what was it? Out to Australia, out to Okinawa — I can’t think of it.
BG: The, the nuclear thing or —
BP: Yeah. They wanted us to go out to, um, Okina— join up with a crew, not that crew, but to join up with 460 Squadron to go to Okinawa and fly and bomb Japan and — what’s the hell name of that?
BG: Do you mind if I keep going because, you know this will be edited? So, I’m trying to think the name of the place.
BP: I’m trying to think of the name of the thing that we all joined. [clears throat]
BG: As in a —
BP: Well, it’s a well-known thing that all the Australians in England were given the opportunity of joining 460 Squadron to come out here and we trained for a couple of months, low level work, heavy loads and things like that to fly out to Okinawa and bomb Japan.
BG: Right. So this was after —
BP: After VE Day.
BG: After VE day, right.
BP: When VJ Day came along the — we had a Wing Commander Swan. We were being briefed to take off the next morning when the chappie came in with the wireless thing and showed him and said Japan had surrendered. He said [slight laugh] — he threw the message down on the table and he said, ‘I don’t know what you buggers are going to do but I’m going in the mess and get drunk.’ He said, ‘Anyone who wants to go into town go and see the adjutant.’ [laugh] So we all shot through to London for V, VJ Day.
BG: So how long were you in England?
BG: ’45.
BP: ’45. And we got on board this ship, the Orion, SS Orion, which set out to reclaim its record to Australia but had broke down in the Bay of Biscay and unfortunately the, er, one of the insurer’s representatives had found us at Southampton and as we had surplus Sterling money on us got us to insure our kit bags and that and, er, I said OK and I had a couple of pounds so I insured my kitbag. Any rate we went back to Southampton and they sent us on a train up to Millom [?] in Scotland. They reopened an old drome at Millom and instead of sending us on leave as they should have done. So we stayed at Millom for about a fortnight and they promptly found out that we were causing too much damage to their turkey flocks because, being Australian and that, we were very expert of killing sheep and skinning them and also ringing turkey necks so consequently they sent us on leave in London and we finally left England on the Durban Castle and then —
BG: This is after VE Day?
BP: After VJ Day.
BG: After VJ Day.
BP: And it was not until I arrived back in Australia that I learned that my flying kit bag had gone missing for which actually I had insured and got forty pound, yeah, Australia was still in the Sterling bracket, I got forty pounds insurance money for the kit bag, but the thing was I lost my log book.
BG: Ah, right back then.
BP: Yeah. So that’s where it is.
BG: So any, any particular missions that you went on? You’ve mentioned a few. Any others that sort of come to mind?
BP: Actually no because we just did — we dropped people over in France and things like that so we didn’t do actually bombing missions or mine a harbour or two or something like that but the war was nearly over by the time we had so all my actual war experience was on 622 but I still, we still had to fly.
BG: So you were flying over, over enemy territory in Europe?
BP: All the time, yeah. We, even though they had, the Air Force had a lot of planes and crews doing nothing they put on tourist trips where we had to fly people, ground crew and interested parties on the drome, we flew them to places like Normandy and the, um, the bomb sites and things like that, and also up and down the Rhine to see how the bridges that we, that had been bombed and things like that. So, er, I cannot claim to have done very much bombing experience.
BG: So, you said you did some mining, mine laying. What, what was involved in that?
BP: Oh, that was on Hamburg Harbour and, um, one place we did bomb was Hamburg but that was just a mass raid and everything like that because, er, later on the experience that the padre (he is an ex-serviceman padre) and when I told him when I was examining the window and told him, you know, it looks nice and bright this scene of a burning town and told him that it looked like Hamburg and that and he said, we bombed that and he said, ‘Yes. I had a job of clearing it up afterwards.’ They sent him over as a padre in that place so he and I don’t exactly get on well together. [laugh]
BG: Right.
BP: I’m trying to think of that name [beep sound] and I forget what the American, New Zealand squadron was to represent them.
BG: Yep. I’m just trying to get the name. I can’t help you there. I’ll put that in the back and it might pop out a bit later. So did you cop much — had any mechanical problems on your flights?
BP: I don’t know about mechanical problems, the only time we got shot at properly we were on supposedly on a safe [emphasis] trip dropping food to the Dutch. We were to fly in over a racecourse, I think it was this first time, and drop food. Lancasters had all the food up in the bomb bays in the open top coffins. And, er, sometimes the drop bars would come high up and the food would drop and sometimes the whole of the assembly would drop, and you could see a, an incendiary container hit a cow, or something like that and everyone had cow meat for lunch. And when we came back the ground crew they said we were very lucky. They counted we had ninety-seven bullet holes in our plane and luckily underneath the navigator’s seat was one of these incendiary containers that hadn’t fallen off, and in the bottom of it was half a dozen dents from bullets, where the bullets had struck. So the worst raid that we had was supposed to have been the safest because we had four of those. [clock starts chiming] We got shot up the first time. The second time I think we had a couple of bullet holes in the wings but nothing as near as bad as that so, um, that did count as one of our operations.
BG: Right. So how many was in the crew?
BP: Seven.
BG: Do you remember them all? Do you remember names? Do you want to mention names or not?
BP: Oh, Frank Quinn. He got married over there. A chap, Nobby Clarke, was the bomb aimer, and we had Bill Day as the tail gunner, Chick [?] Anderson as mid upper gunner and — I forget the name of the wireless operator. That was one of the things that as, er, Bert and his boys, before he bought it the — I was in the crew, I was in his crew and when they had a pretty good night in the mess his navigator got too, too well liquored up and he cycled across the paddock instead of going down the roadway and went, went over a creek, which was by then was frozen and the ice broke and he went into the water, and he went into the hut and other than getting dry or anything, he went to bed as he was and he got pneumonia and died. So the replacement chap was a friend of the other crew so we changed crews so the crew that had Bert and his crew, which I was originally on, was the crew that bought it. So the new crew was Frank. So, I outlived that one all right. [clears throat]
BG: A cat of nine lives.
BP: And a few more. [laugh] [clears throat]
BG: So, the mechanics of the aircraft. Pretty reliable? You didn’t have too many —
BP: They were very, very good. We lost, um, two motors one night on doing something or other and they gave us — they said they were no good, that they — we’d have to get another plane because they had no engines to fix it up so they sent us to, the duty crew, took us to Lindholme and Lindholme had a, a warehouse and alongside the warehouse had been a hut site for two dozen huts with their concrete floors and the air strip. And so went in and, er, signed for the new aircraft and the chap said, ‘Oh. That one there,’ he says, ‘You can have that one.’ So, okeydoke, and when we took it, when we looked at where we had to go to get to the strip, it was over these concrete bases, and he said — we complained or Frank complained that every time we went over a bump the wings, you know, fluttered and all the rest of it, and he rang up on the radio and said that it was a horrible bloody ride, and the chap said, ‘The wings stayed on,’ he said, ‘That’s part of the test.’ So, okeydoke, so we had a new aircraft we had to take up and test out so, um, apart from that, the loss of two motors things, otherwise things were OK. The only accident that we saw occur was one where we were doing low level flying around two hundred feet in Britain in dusk. That is not recognised as being very healthy and, er, this particular time I, being a pretty good navigator, I was in the lead and the others had to follow. We had our tail plane, er, painted so that they recognised who was the lead navigator. And so I was in front and the rest were following me and the chap at the rear, his, one of his motors caught alight and he said, ‘Bail out.’ And at two hundred feet bailing out at that height it’s a no-no and they couldn’t find out where he landed and it was a week later they found out that he had landed in a farmer’s silage pit, so he drowned in a load of shit.
BG: Not nice.
BP: Not nice. [clears throat]
BG: So, tell us more about the navigation. What, what you had to work with. So, were you good at maths at school is that why you went down that path or —
BP: Actually, I was colour blind and I did, when I was at ITS, I had to go into town once a week or twice a week and that, and see a Dr Rardon [?] and have my eyes tested, and all the other things that he did, and I found out when I got back to navigation school that all our maps were orange not red. So, consequently, being red colour blind didn’t affect me. So all the lines on our radar maps were either black or orange so as you — they were big, not semi-circles, eclipses [emphasis] with the radar stations that were bases in England so you had, er, diverging lines going out over the continent, so you had to do your cross, T-crosses, where they crossed and so it was the further you went from England the worse it got. There was no such thing as accurate map reading. The only thing it was that we had a new invention. They called in H2S. It was a radar dome in the bottom of the aircraft which gave you an excellent view of things like rivers or lakes or, um, coastlines and things like that. The only catch was that the Germans knew when you operated that they could trace the signal so if you turned your H2S on you were liable to be to be shot at. And of course they had just developed the German night fighter with up firing guns so consequently they lost a lot. So they did not like you using H2S too frequently. The only other time that we had trouble, one place we were at, that they had, um, war-time huts. They were ordinary, just about cardboard, you know, hard cardboard and that —
BG: Right.
BP: [cough] And a couple of the chaps had been to the mess this night and they’d come in the rear door and they had left the, er, outside door open because they had a door, you know, a light lock on the two doors at each end and, er, they’d hear this plane buzzing round the place and this silly little chap went down and opened both doors and stood in the door way. ‘What’s going on?’ Of course, the chap came down and shot him. [slight laugh]So, we — there were twenty of us in the hut and we had to claim baggage insurance on the baggage insurance, go down to the warehouse and claim new baggage.
BG: So, in terms of your navigation, did you use D-Beam, inter-directional beacon? Did you track on VHF transmitters or anything like that?
BP: No. Dead reckoning all the way because they were just — you were so, so scarce on navigation aids it was dead reckoning. Unless you were good you’d had it. [clears throat]
BG: So, I mentioned I worked on the Becker navigation which I understand came out of Loran. Did you have any experience with that?
BP: No. We didn’t on that. The Pathfinder Force boys were the ones that got Loran. They wanted, everybody in Pathfinders wanted it, and they were busy making Pathfinder Force a regular thing, so we just did not get it because it wasn’t available.
BG: Right. Right. So, do you want to perhaps describe your, your job from — so prior to the, um, mission you’d be — tell, tell us what you’d be given and the process you’d go through. You’d have some time to plan your course before you went out or what?
BP: We didn’t have much time. They’d take you down to briefing around about 4 o’clock and you’d be given what, where you were going that night and they’d tell you what routes you had too and they would say what the expected winds were. And never rely on the Met men. They were bloody hopeless. They were worse, they were worse than the people we have at present. And they would tell you it would be a nice fine night and of course there’s be 10/10 dense bloody cloud and then you’d have the opposite. So, you know, you’re going to have a bumpy ride tonight and it would be a clear, clear fighter moon night. So you just didn’t know what was going.
BG: So, on the overcast nights, um, your dead reckoning’s pretty challenging I would think?
BP: Yes. Oh, you had to, you had to be on the ball, what you were, and of course the thing was that if it was a clear night you could actually see [emphasis] people. Of course the odd person didn’t switch their lights off and things like that. They were bloody hopeless. You were supposed to go with no navigation lights, nothing, and yet you could see half a dozen lights around the place. You knew, you knew that you were somewhere right because you had someone following you. Whether you were in the wrong place you had half a dozen people in the wrong place.
BG: So the missions that you were on were mostly not bombing missions so you were a lone aircraft. You weren’t part of —
BP: Part of three or four people, planes that went out.
BG: Right, so in most cases there would be, you wouldn’t be a single aircraft going out?
BP: No. Very rarely were we ever single.
BG: So you kept in visual contact with the other aircraft or —
BP: Tried not to. [laugh]
BG: Tried not to. Right.
BP: Because of the reason, the fact of the enemy could see the other aircraft and have a go at him and they could also, also see us so it was a case of beware, get out.
BG: Yep. Did you encounter German fighters much or
BP: No. We were lucky in that regard that we didn’t. We, once we had a few stray shells come. Where from, we hadn’t clue. We were flying, you know, I wouldn’t say it was dense cloud. It was very misty, foggy and things like that a couple of stray bullets came up through the — well, they weren’t bullets. They were blody fifty millimeter shells or something like that. Yeah, they tore holes in the fuselage sort of thing. But uneventful.
BG: Do you want to have your cuppa?
BP: Oh, yeah. You can shut it off for a while.
BG: At the end of the war, did you come back by ship?
BP: Yep. We came back by the Durban Castle. That was the ship that the, after the war, the steward murdered someone, some girl, and pushed her out the port hole.
BG: Life was cheap in those days. [laugh]
BP: Yeah. We had an ENSA party on board and, er, we were coming down the Red Sea. Nice clear night, nice and smooth, the moon was out and things like that, and the ENSA party was on the front deck. They were, um, doing Service songs and Service skits and things like that. The Dominion Monarch pulled up alongside of us. They had the, er, Maori Battalion on board. So there they are, the two ships, within ten yards of each other, doing twenty-odd knots down the Red Sea and the ENSA party having a whale of a time and come midnight [coughing]. You talk too much and you get a tickle in your throat.
BG: Right. [pause] So, do you want to call it quits with that? Have you had enough?
BP: No. I’m just going to finish off there. [pause] So, it was on New Year’s Eve, this New Year’s Eve party, and it came to the end of the party at midnight and there was a hoot on the hooter from both the ships and the Maori battalion gave us the haka. It’s a sound that you, a scene that, I’ll never forget. The two ships, the moonlight and where we were in the Red Sea and the haka being — one of those, one of those things that you would never ever forget. And that’s the thing that war always reminds me of, the finish of the war.
BG: Yep, yep. Then you came back to Perth?
BP: Yes. The old man was still alive. So, I told mum, ‘Alright. He’s alive.’ So I went and joined 37 Squadron, where we used to fly up and down to Japan and, er, we served BCOF in Japan where there was a few points to the Philippines and that and we used to fly up to New Guinea, New Britain, [unclear] round Australia. Even flew politicians around from bloody Canberra to Melbourne or Sydney and back. Don’t ask me about that.
BG: So, how long were you in the Air Force after the war?
BP: Three years. [clears throat] And one of those things, I met a girl. Her husband used to work for the manager. He was where they had a B and B up in Noarlunga and he used to be manager of CSR in Fiji and he had this B and B and they were looking for someone to make up a four for bridge. They used to hold a bridge night each Tuesday night. So they found Norma and her husband had been up in New Guinea during the war. He got killed. So, er, I finally met her. So the four, two of us lived for four years. She suddenly dropped [clears throat] dead one day. She was the second fiancée of mine to die. The first one was by a flying bomb in England. We used to — it’s a funny thing. I was on the, on the squadron and all the rest of it. Bomber squadron. We used to go on leave to Croydon which was the middle of flying bomb alley. Over the road from us on the thirteenth green from us was a flak battery. They used to fire across the roof of the house at the bombs as they came up the Thames valley and Faye and I used to go to the local pub two hundred yards down the road. Been to an English pub?
BG: No.
BP: Smoke, smoke and more bloody smoke and all the rest of it and of course one thing is I don’t smoke. So, I said, ‘Better get out of here. You know, too much smoke and all the rest of it. Come for a walk down the road.’ ‘I want to talk to the girls.’ ‘Talk to the girls, alright.’ So I went down the road and I only got a hundred yards down the road when a flying bomb flattened the pub. So instead of going on leave I went to a burial party.
BG: Bad lot.
BP: One of those things yeah.
BG: So you got back to Western Australia. So, you said you sent the rest of your life in Western Australia?
BP: Yeah. Oh, sent a few years in Sydney. Then, er, mum wanted me to come home and I said I wouldn’t come home until Seth [?] died. Of course he died on the operation table from something or other. So, I managed to get through uni and that ultimo and came over here and I joined the BP refinery and they were wanting people to manage the place so they sent a few of us over to Grangemouth to learn how to run a refinery. You should have heard mum, ‘You’re away for fifteen bloody years and all the rest of it. You come home for a fortnight and you go to London for six months.’ [laugh] She was not amused.
BG: So I guess your engineering experience through the Air Force would have been invaluable in your later life?
BP: [clears throat] Well, I was their emergency controller. By day I did nothing. All, all the time I did nothing but if the siren went and there was an emergency I was in charge of the place. So people had to do what I told them. I didn’t have to know names. All I knew was what people could do, so I said, ‘You do it.’ And of course they couldn’t argue about it because I could tell them what to do.
BG: Yep. So getting back to your time — so you were always RAF crews. They didn’t mix crews up of Air Forces?
BP: Well, we had a Scottish engineer. He was from Glasgow. His family were in, er, Coventry when it got bombed. That was the reason why he was a very good — he joined the Air, he joined the RAF. When we used to go to France on Operation Exodus and other such things, rather than wear the RAF uniform, we used to outfit him with the blue RAAF uniform. We were WOs at the time so we also gave him a WO badge. He was only a sergeant, flight sergeant, in the RAF but he was a WO in the RAAF. [laugh]
BG: Right. So in the week typically how many missions during the —
BP: Two, three but of course during the off times, in the summer time, they used to send all the spare bods out to the farmers to pick peas and dig potatoes and you name it and we were veg— I wouldn’t say we were vegetarians, we were gardeners. [laugh]
BG: Right. So that was part of the job.
BP: Part of the job. I’ve got some photos if you were here long enough to show of me doing things like that.
BP: Recreation. Now, that’s censorable. [laugh] No. I knew Faye but I was a good boy. For recreation we used to go to London. Of course, thing was we used to be paid what? Thirty bob a day then. And we had an odds incidental form, Form 1257. You got paid three pence for a bloody hair cut or three pence a week because you didn’t — a hard living allowance or you didn’t have a batman or things like that, so every three months we used to get this sheet which was about another thirty pound. So, every month we had about forty pound to spend and every third month we had about sixty and so we used to go to London and spend it.
BG: So, it wasn’t a bad life if you survived.
BP: If you survived it was a good life because I used to go to wherever I was. I’ve seen more places in England than a lot of English people purely because they iss— as we were RAAF people we were allowed a rail pass to anywhere in Britain.
BG: Right, right.
BP: The RAF or the English people could only go to their home town. We went to anywhere so go down to the pay clerk and say you were on leave, for your leave warrant, and coupons and that. ‘Where are you going this week?’ We had a map. ‘Oh we’ll go there.’ [laugh] Been over cotton mills and steel works, you name it, and all the rest of it. I’ve been from Plymouth up to Lossiemouth and things like this. We had bags of fun.
BG: Well, it’s been great talking to you Bob and I really appreciate you taking the time.
BP: Well, if you had a couple more days to talk I’d tell you what I really did. [laugh]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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APorteousB161102
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Bob Porteous
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
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:52:20 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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Barry Green
Date
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2016-11-02
Description
An account of the resource
Flight Sergeant Bob Porteous grew up in Australia and after spending time in the bush he joined the Royal Australian Air Force. After training and spending time in the United States, he travelled to Scotland on the Queen Mary. He flew operations as a navigator with 622 Squadron from RAF Mildenhall. On one occasion he describes a secret operation to Gibraltar and Tangier on a Lancaster that brought back gold. He also explains his role as navigator and equipment such as H2S.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Great Britain
Morocco
United States
Gibraltar
England--Leicestershire
England--Suffolk
Morocco--Tangier
North Africa
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Christine Kavanagh
622 Squadron
aircrew
Cook’s tour
entertainment
H2S
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
military living conditions
military service conditions
mine laying
navigator
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Mildenhall
training
Wellington
Window
-
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/340/3507/AThomasK160402.2.mp3
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Thomas, Ken
William Kenneth Thomas
William K Thomas
William Thomas
W K Thomas
W Thomas
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with William Kenneth 'Ken' Thomas DFC (1022415 and 186493 Royal Air Force), two photographs and a memoir. Flight Lieutenant Ken Thomas flew operations as a pilot with 622 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Ken Thomas and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-01
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Thomas, WK
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GR: This is Gary Rushbrooke for the International Bomber Command Centre. I am with Flight Lieutenant Ken Thomas, 622 Squadron pilot. It’s the 2nd of April 2016, and we’re at Ken’s flat in Coventry. So, so morning Ken. If you can just tell me a little bit about yourself.
KT: Right.
G: I know we’re in Coventry, was you from Coventry originally?
KT: I beg your pardon.
GR: Was you born in Coventry?
KT: No, no I’m, I’m from Liverpool originally and my father was a chemist and he had a business in Liverpool and he moved to North Wales. So I was brought up in North Wales and I went to grammar school in North Wales and I could’ve gone in for anything that I wanted but, as I say, I never, I never took the, what shall I say, the —
GR: The exams or, no —
KT: I don’t, never bothered didn’t I, I just carried, carried on and I went, went to, to grammar school I didn’t learn anything in the grammar school either most of my — whatever I learnt I learnt during my time in the RAF.
GR: In the RAF, yes. Do you have any brothers or sisters?
KT: I have a sister and she, of course, was May Queen in Beaumaris in North Wales and that’s about the, the peak of her, what shall I say,
GR: Yeah.
KT: Childhood thing.
GR: Childhood. So just the two of you?
KT: Just the two of us. Yes. But, er —
GR: Which was unusual for that era in the twenty’s because they were usually big families, weren’t they?
KT: That’s right. I was originally, when the war started, I was about ready to go to sea and I was measured for a uniform and I remember going to Liverpool to do the, um, examination.
GR: Yes.
KT: Which I passed alright and no problem at all and I was ready to go and my mother said ‘you’re only seventeen you’re not going there’s too many ships going down.’ So I didn’t go to sea.
GR: So had you actually volunteered for the Navy?
KT: So I volunteered for the Merchant Navy.
GR: For the Merchant Navy.
KT: Merchant Navy.
GR: ‘Cause you could do that at sixteen?
KT: Er, seventeen I was.
GR: Seventeen.
KT: And she had control because I wasn’t a, of the age of conscription.
GR: Yeah.
KT: So she, she decided that I wasn’t going to go and so I said well listen mother I’ve got to do something. I’ll have to join the RAF. So I joined the RAF and she said on one condition that you don’t fly. And I said alright and —
GR: Well that should be interesting.
KT: I went in as a flight mechanic and I didn’t, didn’t do any work at all you know, and I passed out as an AC2 and then I, then I became an AC1 and then by that time I was getting a bit fed up and I —
GR: So this was actually, you’d, you’d gone in as —
KT: The war was on now.
GR: As ground crew?
KT: That’s right.
GR: Engineering, mechanic?
KT: Yes, yes and well —
GR: Yes.
KT: Stuck you see.
GR: So, so, so you’re there as an engineer, mechanic?
KT: Yes.
GR: Did you then volunteer for — or did you ask for air crew?
KT: No, I, I, I as I say I got so fed up with being on the ground and being messed around and on a little station in North Wales that I decided that I’d go in for aircrew and —
GR: What did you tell your mum?
KT: I didn’t tell my mother, I, I, I didn’t tell my mother till I was on my way to Canada and it was too late to stop me then so, in any case I didn’t have any idea that I would do anything at all in the RAF because I didn’t work very hard anywhere I went.
GR: Yeah.
KT: In those days and I just lounged about you see and I decided I’d go to night school when I got to the RAF and I had some very good instructors and they took a lot of time with me and I found that I could do the work quite easily because I’d already done it in the grammar school anyway but I hadn’t paid any attention to it but it was there and I sailed through the ground school and I remember seeing the CEO in a place called, oh, Talley in North Wales where, where we had, in the early days, we had a bombing school, it was a bombing school where I was and [pause] oh
GR: Now you said you were on your way to Canada, so obviously you applied for aircrew?
KT: Yes, I did, sorry.
GR: It’s all right. You applied for aircrew anything in partic, did you want to be a pilot or did you just apply for aircrew?
KT: No I just, I just, I just applied for aircrew because everybody said you’d never be a pilot because you know there choosey now these days and they’re chucking everybody out and I said we’ll have to wait and see. Well in actual fact I went to ground school as I told you and I had no trouble with the examinations and the CEO in North Wales, I forget what it was a group captain, Group Captain —
GR: Doesn’t matter about his name.
KT: Oh I can’t’ think his name but anyway he said you’d have no trouble and certainly I didn’t.
GR: No. So what did you think about going to Canada to do your training?
KT: So, I went to Canada and everybody said well, you know you, you’ve gone in for aircrew but they’ll sort you out and they won’t, you, you won’t have a chance to get on a pilots course. Well before I went to Canada I did what they call a, an EFTS, not an EFTS, um, a, oh dear —
GR: Yeah, it’s, I think your thinking it’s an exam you can take or like a training to see if you have got the aptitude for flying.
KT: That’s right yes.
GR: Yeah.
KT: And —
GR: You must have come out of that very well.
KT: Into what they call ACRC, Air Crew Receiving Centre in London.
GR: That’s right.
KT: Yeah, and from there they sent me to a, um —
GR: That would have been at St John’s Wood?
KT: Yes that was St John's Wood.
GR: And you would have been marked out as probably pilot material.
KT: I went, went to Paignton before ITW in Paignton and I did my ground school there
GR: Yeah.
KT: In Paignton and after doing the ground school and passing out of that I had to do what they call a grading course which was twelve hours flying on Tiger Moths. Which I did at Desford just outside Leicester and we had to, the idea was to go flying solo day and solo night and I remember doing this going solo in the day time and going solo at night as well. And I did it all in about twelve hours and after that they posted me to Manchester, Heaton Park.
GR: Heaton Park.
KT: Manchester.
GR: Yeah.
KT: To wait for a ship to go to America.
GR: Yeah.
KT: And I got into an American convoy and I was on a boat called The Thomas H Barry, which sailed out of Liverpool in convoy in those days and we had two or three ships sunk on the way across.
GR: On the way across.
KT: And I remember them firing the guns on the back and of course we were doing gun duty as well on board ship and guard duty and fire duty whatever you’d like to call it and we sailed, sailed across. We, it took about the best part of three weeks.
GR: The Atlantic Crossing.
KT: In those days and we landed, I landed in New York and then I got the train from New York up to 31PD at Moncton, New Brunswick.
GR: New Brunswick.
KT: In Canada where they sorted us out again and I went from there to an EFTS to a place called Stanley, Nova Scotia and I did a, a course at Stanley, Nova Scotia on Fleet Finch aircraft. Not on the Tiger Moth on the Fleet Finch.
GR: Fleet Finch.
KT: Which had a Kinner B-5R radial engine, I remember and it was a particular good plane for learning to fly because it had, you know, if there were any snags —
GR: Yeah.
KT: They showed pretty quickly. And I passed out of that school and returned again to Moncton and outside Moncton they had an SFTS, which was a Service Flying Training School and at that Flying Training School, er, I got my wings.
GR: You got your wings.
KT: I got my wings. And —
GR: It sounds as though pilot training was quite easy.
KT: Well it wasn’t — I didn’t find it hard.
GR: No.
KT: I didn’t find it hard in those days but —
GR: And how did you find life in America and Canada? As I understand it there was no food shortages?
KT: Oh no.
GR: And it was quite a good place to do your training?
KT: Very good, yes, yes. I don’t understand [unclear]
GR: Yeah, yeah. So then shipped back to the UK?
KT: I, well, as I say, I did, I did my flying training over in Canada and in Lake, a place called Lakeburn which is just outside Moncton, which was an FSTS and from there I returned to England.
GR: Yeah.
KT: And I, on a boat called the Louis Pasteur.
GR: That’s [unclear]
KT: Which sailed from Halifax. It was a French liner.
GR: It used to have — I was just going to say it used to be a liner.
KT: Sailed by itself, it didn’t have any convoy.
GR: Fast.
KT: Very fast ship.
GR: Fast ship, yes.
KT: But conditions on board the ship were pretty grim because as I say we were all in hammocks.
GR: Yeah.
KT: And if anything had happened you’d never get out.
GR: You’d never get out.
KT: Never get out.
GR: They were banking on the speed of the ship.
KT: Yes. And in any case I didn’t, didn’t like sleeping accommodation because I say we were all on top of each other sort of thing you know.
GR: Yeah.
KT: So hot, down near the engine room, but —
GR: Yeah.
KT: Well, s I say I was glad to get to Liverpool I really was.
GR: Yeah.
KT: And from Liverpool I went to Harrogate and from Harrogate I went to, Harrogate to, um —
GR: Would you have gone to Heavy Conversion Unit somewhere?
KT: Yes I went to, oh dear —
GR: Doesn’t matter. ‘Cause somewhere along the line you would’ve met your crew.
KT: Yes, I’m just wondering, um, oh dear, where did I meet my crew [laughs]
GR: [laughs] You would’ve crewed up probably at Heavy Conversion Unit.
KT: No it wasn’t heavy.
GR: No, just before.
KT: Well as I say we picked up the, picked up the flight engineer at the Heavy Conversion Unit.
GR: And the mid upper gunner?
KT: And I had a mid upper gunner before because I was on Wellingtons.
GR: Right.
KT: I did my OTU, Operational Training Command.
GR: Yeah.
KT: That’s right. And I did that at Northampton, 18 or 16 OTU.
GR: Yeah.
KT: 16 Operational Training Unit.
GR: Right, yeah.
KT: And from there I went to the Heavy Conversion Unit at Stradishall.
GR: Yeah, that sounds —
KT: On Stirlings and when I was on Stirlings I had a medical and the medical people said I had to go into hospital because I had very high blood pressure and they took me off flying for a while and they did various tests. Couldn’t find anything and I finished up at, at London central medical board and I think the idea was to finish me with flying but anyway they passed me there they said they can’t find anything wrong with me.
GR: Yeah.
KT: And they posted me back to operational duties really so I went back from there to Mildenhall really and that’s how I got to Mildenhall well after, after Feltwell, because after the, after flying on the [unclear] original flying on the —
GR: Stirling?
KT: Stirling, on the Stirling I had to get back again into flying then they put me on to Lancasters and they gave me twelve hours on Lancaster.
GR: Yeah.
KT: And then they posted me to Mildenhall that’s where I finished on the —
GR: I think there was something called LFS, Lancaster Finishing School or something.
KT: That’s right Lancaster Finishing School, Feltwell.
GR: That’s right, yeah.
KT: At Feltwell.
GR: Yeah about 12 hours there and then you were posted to 622 Squadron at Mildenhall.
KT: Yeah. I don’t know what you can make of that but —
GR: No, no, no that’s very good.
KT: Very [unclear] but, er —
GR: What did you feel like on your first operation? Can you remember where it was to or —
KT: Er, yes, I did Second Dicky my first operation was a Second Dicky with a Flight Lieutenant Autman [?] and I went to East Burg [?]
GR: To East Burg [?]
KT: Neuss, place called Neuss, N, E, U, S, S. Neuss on the Ruhr.
GR: On the Ruhr.
KT: And it’s near Duisburg and er —
GR: What was that trip like?
KT: It, it wasn’t too bad.
GR: Yeah.
KT: And I got through that alright and from there — oh —
GR: Then you took your crew out for the first op —
KT: First operation, I can’t remember that [laughs] and that’s the truth and er, by that time I’d picked up a flight engineer of course.
GR: Yes.
KT: Because I didn’t have a flight, yes I had a flight engineer after finishing operation training command.
GR: Yeah.
KT: But until I got onto four engines I didn’t have a flight engineer.
GR: That’s right yeah. And did you keep the same crew all the way through?
KT: I kept the same crew right the way to Mildenhall.
GR: Yeah.
KT: But when I got to Mildenhall my navigator was, what shall I say, he said he, he went LMF really.
GR: Right.
KT: Lack of moral fibre and, but —
GR: Was this before you’d actually flown any operations?
KT: Yes, that’s right, yes. Really.
GR: Yes.
KT: And I was then waiting around Mildenhall for a, a navigator to take his place and I got a very good navigator by, well it, I was very lucky, and he was an Indian and he came from Calcutta originally and I flew sixteen, seventeen operations with him.
GR: And then did he have to —
KT: And then he got badly wounded because we got shot up on, on a place called, oh, Homburg in the Ruhr.
GR: Homburg.
KT: Very, very shot up and he had it in the back. I had an engine knocked out and, starboard inner engine and in actual fact it was out, it was panic all stations [unclear] I’m afraid because —
GR: But he was wounded but you obviously got the plane back?
KT: I, I got the plane back. I landed it at a place called Woodbridge on the coast of England.
GR: Yes.
KT: And my navigator had to go to hospital there pretty quickly because he was losing a lot of blood and that’s why I landed.
GR: Yeah.
KT: In actual fact. But I was on, I was on two engines by the time I got there because we had trouble with, with another engine with the [unclear] pressure and as I say that’s where we landed.
GR: Yeah.
KT: Woodbridge.
GR: Yeah. ‘Cause Woodbridge was an emergency landing —
KT: Yes it was an emergency landing place yes. And —
GR: Can I ask you did the navigator make a recovery, your nav?
KT: He made a recovery but not in time to —
GR: To fly with you, no.
KT: So after that I flew with any navigator that I could get hold of.
GR: Right, like a spare nav?
KT: I must have had about seven different navigators during my operational tour, I think that’s why they gave me [laughs] they kept on saying oh well get rid of this bugger you know [laughs]
GR: [laughs] Can I ask, did you get the DFC for bringing the plane back that night?
KT: Yes. My navigator got the DFC as well.
GR: As well.
KT: Immediate DFC. It’s in the book there.
GR: Yeah.
KT: He got the immediate and he told me he said, he said you’re going to get the DFC when you finish your tour, and he was right I got the DFC [laughs] yes. How I don’t know.
GR: Well —
KT: I didn’t’ do an awful lot but as I say he was a damned good navigator.
GR: Well you did a full tour.
KT: He was seconded to DOAC.
GR: Right.
KT: And he did a, well quite, quite a long tour with DOAC and he came out as a nervous wreck apparently and he used to smoke, and smoke and smoke and his ashtray used to be filled with cigarette stubs at the end you know.
GR: Yes.
KT: In the early morning. And, and as I say he’d smoke all night.
GR: Smoke all night.
KT: And he didn’t last long.
GR: Didn’t last long. Oh dear.
KT: Because I think originally before he come to me he was taken ill with TB and, as I say, I did about sixteen operations with him.
GR: Yes.
KT: And I found him excellent.
GR: When did your tour finish? Would that have been 1944?
KT: Yes forty-four end of forty-four.
GR: End of forty-four.
KT: Just beginning of forty-five.
GR: Right, yeah. And what happened to you then Ken did you —
KT: I just —
GR: Did they send you to do training or —
KT: Yes I went to Banbury.
GR: Yeah.
KT: I did [unclear] on an OTU at Banbury for a while.
GR: Yes.
KT: And I didn’t like that and they put me on a, on a, I think I went on a, um, oh —
GR: Because you were probably there as the war finished.
KT: Yes.
GR: Yeah.
KT: Yes and that was on Wellingtons, the OTU.
GR: Yeah.
KT: And then I went from there to, as I say Banbury and —
GR: Well, I’m sure then they were moving you about and doing different, different places.
KT: Yes because they, they didn’t want aircrew in those days and they had too many.
GR: Once the war had finished, yeah.
KT: I was put on Tiger Moths, put me on Tiger Moths course in Eldon, in Eldon, in Birmingham and I did a Tiger Moth course and I didn’t like that very much and I got posted to, after that, to Air Transport Auxiliary.
GR: Right.
KT: So I did a lot of ferry work.
GR: Ferry work.
KT: And that.
GR: Yeah.
KT: And that’s where I finished and I got fed up of ferry work and I said I’ve had enough of this and I just walked out I think [laughs] it was the end of the war so —
GR: End of the war.
KT: They were glad to get rid of me.
GR: Yeah.
KT: Yeah.
GR: What did you do afterwards Ken?
KT: I flew with, well I joined Sir John Black with the Standard Motor Company and I travelled the world after that.
GR: Oh right.
KT: So I saw pretty well every country in the world I should think.
GR: Yeah, yeah.
KT: Not many countries I haven’t been to.
GR: So you let somebody else do the flying.
KT: Oh yes.
GR: [laughs]
KT: I’d had enough flying, I tell you.
GR: You didn’t have chance to go to BLAC then 'cause I know a lot of the pilots at the time were —
KT: I probably could if I’d been keen but I wasn’t very keen, in actual fact I think my nerves were just about shattered.
GR: Yeah.
KT: And I’d enough flying I felt I’d enough because I’d made a lot of, lot of what shall I say, very heavy landings, and I, I had an idea I’d like to get out.
GR: Yeah.
KT: And they were going to get me out anyway.
GR: Yeah.
KT: At the end of the –
GR: Yeah. At the end of the war. Yeah. Yeah.
KT: Period they didn’t want me in the RAF.
GR: So how long had you spent with the Standard Motor Company?
KT: I spent thirty, thirty-three years, thirty-four years with the Standard Motor Company and as I say, that was, that was a good, good move that was.
GR: Yeah.
KT: I had a nice little job with that, with service and guarantee all over the world.
GR: All over the world.
KT: Mainly on standard products in those days. Of course we changed over during the period and, er, as I say they changed companies you see.
GR: Yeah.
KT: So we went on to, to, we went on to Rover, Land Rover, Range Rover, Jaguar and then also went to the Austin Morris we had the whole lot under our wing at one time and I had the opportunity of learning all about these different models that were coming out.
GR: Yeah.
KT: And, as I say, I saw, saw all these countries.
GR: Wonderful. I shall finish it there. Thank you Ken.
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AThomasK160402
PThomasWK1601
PThomasWK1602
PThomasWK1603
Title
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Interview with Ken Thomas
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
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eng
Format
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00:25:52 audio recording
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Pending review
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Date
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2016-04-01
Description
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Flight Lieutenant Ken Thomas flew operations as a pilot with 622 Squadron.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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Great Britain
England--Suffolk
Contributor
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Tracy Johnson
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Gary Rushbrooke
3 Group
622 Squadron
aircrew
Distinguished Flying Cross
Lancaster
pilot
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Woodbridge
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/354/3526/PWorsdaleE1701.1.jpg
e8d8cddb114b6f59dc3b6014cf8ba83d
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/354/3526/AWorsdaleE170708.2.mp3
5533818d52e1491124984b40177b2e44
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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Worsdale, Eddie
E Worsdale
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Eddie Worsdale (412919 Royal New Zealand Air Force) and a photograph. He flew operations as a wireless operator/ air gunner with 75 Squadron
The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-07-08
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Worsdale, E
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MS: This is Miriam Sharland and I’m interviewing Eddie Worsdale today for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We’re in Wellington on the 8th of July 2017. Thank you, Eddie for agreeing to talk to me today.
EW: Fine.
MS: Can you tell me a bit about your earlier life before the war?
EW: I was born in, born in Christchurch and I spent my early life at a place called Lake Coleridge which was one of the first hydro-electric stations to supply power to the, one of the major cities in New Zealand. And that supplied power to Christchurch. That was a very isolated place. Only a small community. And then as we grew up we had a family. I had two elder brothers and a younger sister. And then Depression days at that time things were very [pause] the family had to move from there. We moved to Christchurch just prior to the war but we had virtually, we couldn’t afford boarding school, boarding for secondary education in Christchurch so basically, times were pretty tough. But then we came, then we came to Wellington and I worked in a furniture shop as a salesman. And then my brother joined the Air Force and went away with the first echelon and I thought oh well, the Air Force sounds something good. I’d been in the Territorials. It was a, a bit of an adventure the [pause]. I was due to go to Canada and that’s how it started. It was, and I had to the volunteer for the Air Force with your education qualification. I had to do, I did a night school and a correspondence course to qualify for the requirements. Passed those and off to Canada.
MS: And how did you find Canada compared to New Zealand?
EW: Well, of course it was a huge adventure as it was for thousands of others. Young. No idea, well what war was all about but it was an opportunity and I guess the way I looked at it, and you had no idea what the war was all about. Immature and whatnot. You hadn’t grown up and a wonderful experience and basically going through Canada you’re learning all the time about life and a bit about the Service and so forth but you didn’t realise what it was all about. Well, I didn’t. I didn’t have the maturity until you first encountered what it was all about. Then you realised that it, it wasn’t a big game. It wasn’t an adventure, simple as that and from then on it was things just happened.
MS: So, what squadron did you end up —
EW: We, well after doing the OTU at a place called Bassingbourn we were posted to 75 Squadron at Mildenhall. And Mildenhall was one of the main Royal Air Force stations that had married quarters and so forth and the aircrew were given the, the married quarters as accommodation as against the, a lot of the other squadrons just lived in Quonset huts. So, the conditions were very good. It was a Canadian squadron prior to the 75 moving from Feltwell. And then, this was in August, I think 1942 than half the flight transferred to, I just forget, to Mepal to convert to Stirlings and the other half stayed on at Mildenhall and I’d be the, the sole surviving member of 75 Squadron that went through Mildenhall.
MS: What role did you have?
EW: I was a wireless operator gunner.
MS: How did you come to do that role?
EW: Well, in the, in the, I didn’t have the qualifications for a pilot the, but I’d been in the, in the Territorials as a signaller and a wireless operator and that’s how I became a wireless operator.
MS: Did you want to be a pilot?
EW: No. I didn’t have the qualifications. I remember the, one of the first questions I answered was the, “What’s your knowledge of the internal combustion engine?” Well, mine it was nil. If I was asked the same thing about a bicycle [laughs] I could, I could take a bicycle apart and put it together again but that was the way it was.
MS: Can you tell me a bit about your training in Canada?
EW: Well, it was all basically we were at the, we trained at a Wireless School in Winnipeg. Very warm in summer and bitterly cold in wintertime. Wonderful people. They just sort of did invitations to their homes. Just loved the New Zealanders and made you very welcome but it was all a completely different life, different way of life. I remember one of the first impressions was seeing the horse drawn ice carts in Winnipeg. And then, and I think the only time I ever felt ill with the cold was in Winnipeg and it was bitterly cold there but that’s, it was just a wonderful experience. Completely different. But at nineteen you’re so immature. It was just all adventures and I remember being on final leave at the top of the Empire State in New York when the Normandie caught fire. And then I went to a concert at the Lewisham Stadium and heard Grace Moore and she was one of the leading sopranos in the world and that was a wonderful experience. So there’s, that was the, that part was it was, that was always something that always interested me, yes. Music and so forth and whatnot.
MS: What did it feel like the first time you flew in training?
EW: Well, of course you were taken up there on the, you became a bit airsick and so forth and you were flying lots and the instructors were sometimes a bit sort of brassed off with doing the same old thing all the time. They did a bit of aerobatics and sort of and whatnot. But that was part and parcel of it. That was learning and so forth.
MS: So then when you came to England after Canada how did that compare?
EW: Well, it was, we, we came [pause] just thinking back there from the, it was the huge number of people together when you were at Halifax and joined up and there’s thousands and thousands of Air Force personnel. And then you were just arrived in England and we ended up down in Bournemouth. Put in the lovely hotels that Bournemouth consisted of. But you just took it in your stride and so forth and adapted and as I said it was all a big learning experience. A fun game until somebody started shooting at you and then you realised that it was no longer fun.
MS: So, you went from Bournemouth to Mildenhall.
EW: Pardon?
MS: Did you go from Bournemouth to Mildenhall?
EW: Well, yes. We went, we went through various training establishments. The Wireless School. We went to [pause] to be qualified profession to go and then you went to operational training. The, it was called OTU and then you, then you at the end of that training you crewed up same with the pilots were doing the same and the observers, and navigators and gunners and wireless operators and you crewed up. And then you were posted to the squadrons.
MS: How did you crew up? How did you choose—
EW: Well, you just, just met the — the pilot would pick somebody out. They wanted a wireless operator, or a observer. And that’s the way it happened. And you got that sort of mainly at the, at the OTU and then you stayed there when you were posted to a to a squadron. But then there was the casualty rate was so high that in the early days of squadrons they were crewed up they’d have to give one of their own crew to another crew due to casualties. And the losses in those days were high and the thinking was that the, the talk among the crews well if we survived the first five operations you were lucky. You might get through ten. I got about seven I think and that was all.
MS: How did you feel when they told you those statistics?
EW: Pardon?
MS: How did you feel when they told you those kind of statistics?
EW: Well, I mean you never worried about it. You thought, well you played hard and so forth on leave and you never worried. I didn’t. It was just you were there. You never thought about it. Some people did. Other ones couldn’t stand it and they just packed up and, but a lot just accepted that’s all and that was what it was all about.
MS: Can you tell me a bit about your crew?
EW: Hmmn?
MS: Can you tell me a bit about your crew?
EW: Yes. Well, they, we were made up of the pilot was a New Zealander, Jack Hugill. His parents had a, they had an apple orchard up north of Auckland. The, the navigator was a chap called Johnny Pete, he was an Englishman. The rear gunner, Len Newbold, he was an Englishman. And the bomber, the other bomb aimer was Jim Barnes. He was one of the older members who really was supposed to be too old to be there in his thirties and he was later mayor of Dunedin and an MP for St Kilda and Dunedin and was later received a knighthood. He was Sir James Barnes and he received an MBE for his work as a POW in in Germany because he’s the, he was the one that baled out. The only one that baled out when we were attacked and he spent the rest of the war as a POW. Len Newbold and I walked to Switzerland but Hugill and Pete, they were killed in the crash. We, we, Jim and I were very close. Very good friends. He was my best friend and the final leave we went together but Len Newbold was never very close until we were shot down and Johnny Pete was not. You crewed with them. That was all. But socially we weren’t very close. And Howard, he was, he was a wee bit of a loner.
MS: What kind of things did you do when you went on leave in England?
EW: Mainly it was you visited the pubs. That’s all. Although, we went not all the time but then you had a free rail ticket and you went. A lot of the crew went up to Inverness. We went down to, on our final leave because I had relations, an aunt in England. In London. I stayed with her on the occasional times. But a lot of the crew would go as far away as they could. This was in, perhaps in England and so forth.
MS: And what was the atmosphere like in the pubs? Did you meet the local people?
EW: Oh, well just, it was all the wartime and so forth. You know. You spoke. Looking back, you didn’t, didn’t have much time really.
MS: Did you meet many local people?
EW: Pardon?
MS: Did you meet many local people?
EW: Yes. Initially, I remember one place in [pause] I’m just trying to think where it was now. I think it may have been up in Harrogate in Yorkshire. We were doing a course. We met some people there and I remember they made us, took us out for dinner at their place and we had rabbit pie. I remember seeing this whole rabbit. The head of a rabbit. But as I said being in the country, brought up at Coleridge you used to trap a lot of rabbits but the people were very hospitable really, you know. They’d take you out, people on leave and right, just made you so welcome. But it was a difficult sort of lifestyle looking back. Entirely different, wartime.
MS: What kind of ways was it different?
EW: Well, the, I suppose the, it was war. War shortages and so forth and thinking was different. The whole lifestyle was, was different. The way people thought. The, I think people were subjected to the propaganda a lot and looking back on the English people prior to the war the huge number of the working class people what their life was. What they went out. And then the so called middle class sort of and then the aristocracy. Completely different to what New Zealand life was all about. And that was the, the war and the association with the troops from the empire came out, Canada and Australia and South Africa that changed the thinking of the English people really. I think that was a lot to do with the war. But that’s the way it was. The way you saw it and you really didn’t have much time to think about those things. You, I think you were aware of them but things were happening so quickly you never gave it much thought.
MS: What about local women? Were there, were there many romances that went on with the local girls?
EW: With the —
MS: With the local girls were there many romances?
EW: No. Well, there was never much I [laughs] a lot of people played socially with the dances and the NAAFI but I suppose I was not in to that. I was very immature and so forth. That didn’t interest me very much. That’s a great thing so that was all to change later on. Never mind. Part and parcel of growing up. But that’s, that’s the way it was.
MS: So when you went down to London on leave what kind of things did you do in London?
EW: Well, it was mainly the big thing was the pub life. As I say the pubs didn’t open until 2 o’clock in the afternoon and then the evening at the, at, the big thing was the social life at the, at the local. That was everything. That was the, that was a completely different life to what it was here because we didn’t. I never had a drink until I was in Canada. Too immature but that’s, that was part and parcel of growing up.
MS: Did you ever experience any of the German bombing while you were in London?
EW: Any?
MS: Any of the German bombing. Were you in London for any part of the Blitz or any of the bombing?
EW: The bomb —
MS: Did you experience any bombing when you were in London? Were you in London when there were any bombings?
EW: Bombing. Not, not at that time. After I came back from Switzerland I did with, with the, the rockets and buzz bombs. Prior to that because I’d remember seeing the the tremendous devastation in Bristol and then the other time was Harrogate was seeing York after that was bombed. When they were bombing the cathedral station. That was in ’42 and I’ll never forget seeing the devastation and the people saying to me, one woman saying to me, I think it was a woman saying, ‘Well, I hope you can give the Germans something back.’ And the devastation to see the helplessness and the, on the faces of people. But then coming back all those the years later I’ve seen the reports of the devastation in Hamburg as I mentioned earlier. You got things in perspective and realised the, that civilians everywhere were the pawns in war. That was, they were the ones that suffered and still are. But the utter devastation when you see the, I remember Bristol and Plymouth and, but the recovery when things recovered. Look at the, after the war seeing Cologne. The absolute utter devastation in Cologne and the, the Cologne Cathedral virtually untouched surrounded by total devastation. The Cologne Railway Station was one of the aiming points of the Bomber Command, remarkably unscathed. But that’s the [pause] and then you see today the utter devastation in Syria and other countries and this is [pause] it’s all the same.
MS: Did the local people talk to you quite a lot about the fact that you were taking the war to Germany?
EW: Well, there was, what you’ve got to consider is then at the time the the reaction to that, that the bombing and so forth the everything about war it’s terrible. The anger it generates and creates and so forth. And then in time when everything is healed and so forth but it still goes on. But no matter who it is, whether, who they are people have feelings and the loss of their homes and so forth. The utter hopelessness. That’s, that’s the tragedy of war.
MS: What was the general feeling when you learned about the V-2 rockets and the buzz bombs that you met?
EW: Well, that was later you see. That was the interesting part because when I was in Switzerland I was privy to the evolvement of this weaponry at first and then prior to leaving seeing the the areas and especially in the Pas de Calais area which was incessantly targeted as the sites for these, these rocket sites and whatnot. And then to experience when getting back to London and seeing them flying over and then they being close one night before I left London one of the V-2 rockets hit the hotel just opposite, I guess. I can’t get out of this place quick enough. And the, then reading, later on in life reading the accounts of what those rockets could have achieved had they been deployed slightly differently or a little earlier it’s frightening. And today when you look back and think of that technology is today they fire these things in smaller versions from backs of trucks. It’s just terrible to think of it.
MS: So, can you tell me a bit about your history? The number of operations that you went on.
EW: The —
MS: The operations that you went on. Can you tell me?
EW: Yes. Well, the first one as I say is when the, there was a mining operation in the Channel and we flew over a German, what’s it called? A flak ship which was in a escorting a convoy a long way from where it was supposed to have been and experienced the fire for the first time. Anti-aircraft gun. And then over the later there’s only the seven trips over the Ruhr unlike the heavy, the light aircraft fire and then hearing the heavy aircraft explode outside the aircraft but that’s when you realise what it was all about. But it, it didn’t worry me. I never, I was never worried. I was never frightened about that at all because that was just life. But then the worst factor when the, was when we were coming back from Milan and a night fighter hit us and then being, that was the worst realisation of it all. Then things happened so quickly and things go through your mind and whatnot and then we knew. Always thinking well you’ll never. I thought well we’ll never get out of this alive. You’d given yourself to the impossibility of it but, you know we survived. And then I’ll never forget the next morning in France waking up to the extreme, I suppose, loneliness. All of a sudden you’re in a foreign country. You, you total virtually hopelessness. What do you do? And, and then once you recover from the shock. Once you’d recovered from the shock and decided well we’ll try and walk to Switzerland and then it all started then. Just luck and so forth and good fortune you survived. That that’s the way it was.
MS: Where were you going on the raid that you got shot down?
EW: We were going to Milan in Italy and had been to Genoa the night before and it had been one of the most wonderful sights I could remember was flying over the Swiss Alps in moonlight. Over Mont Blanc and it’s absolutely unbelievably beautiful. Then the next night, cloud. We couldn’t get over twelve thousand feet. Couldn’t see a thing and had to turn back and were shot down. But we survived. We lost, lost two and then there was two aircraft were lost that night. Both from 75 Squadron. The other aircraft they lost all their crew. All killed. That was war. That’s the way it happened. And then the, one of them when you look back one in three personnel were killed in that period. That’s the chances were so [pause] but that’s, that’s the way it was.
MS: So, after you crashed and you discovered two of your crew had died what did you do? You said you started to walk towards Switzerland.
EW: Well, we, I mean the next day we, we, of course looking back and going over the, the events I think one of the big things in in our favour of not being caught the next day was we’d walked all during the night as far away from the crash as we could. I think that would have been in our, must have been in our favour. That’s reading the history and of course now it’s literally since the, Max Lambert wrote his book, “Night After Night,” and the association with him in terms of 75 Squadron these, all these years later it just brought back to me the, how fortunate and so forth and of course the hundreds of other people who’d had similar experiences. But I was only, in 1942 I think I was the only New Zealander on Bomber Command who evaded so [pause] it was lucky.
MS: So, you walked as far away as you could.
EW: We walked, well that, and I think that was, you see that was one of the basic things you, that you were taught. That if you were shot down and you had an escape kit certain things you wouldn’t do. That you’d do is you’d, you’d survey the area if you could and just approach places with houses or farmhouses with a bit of caution. You didn’t just rush in and sort of knock on the door, first door. They were just basic things. Of course, everybody couldn’t do that. If you were injured and so forth you’d not much option but seeking help but, and then it was just a matter of luck. If you, you had to make decisions on the spot to go one way and do one thing. If you, if it was right you got away with it. If it was the wrong decision you were caught. Simple as that. And it it required a lot of luck really to be successful in getting away with escape or evading capture and so forth and that’s what we, we, we I suppose practiced those things as much as you could and we were lucky. We got away with it.
MS: Did any local people help you?
EW: Oh yes. At the farm. The farm people and so forth were very, they were helpful and they took tremendous risks you know with people. If they were caught assisting they were just dragged away or some were just shot on the spot. But it’s, it’s amazing the, I’ve read a number of people who have, evaders and it’s the same old story. You got away from the crash if you could and you walked, and sheltered and walked during the day, the light time and hid up during the night. But basically, if all these things were pretty similar and you relied on people had got a bit of food and so forth. The ones, lucky you contacted the escape organisation which became available later on and, and from ’42, ’43 on. But all these things are usually a basic happen, that happened and as I said if the things went wrong you had to make your mind up. It was good luck that got you through.
MS: What was the date of your crash?
EW: It was October 25, 1942. Yeah.
MS: Did any of the organised escape —
EW: No. We didn’t have any, any help at all from the organisations. And then it was in Switzerland we, I was working in the Consulate in Geneva. We were dealing a lot with the people in the, in the Toulouse area. The Maquis people there. And I was actually, later on when I was in Toulouse and met the head of the organisation there, a woman called Francoise in Toulouse. And, and interestingly the person she took over from was Pat O’Leary. He started the O’Leary Line back in 1940, I think in, in Marseilles. I’m pretty certain, I can remember the day in Geneva when O’Leary was caught. He was betrayed by a British traitor and, and I remember getting, we got this message from Francoise in Toulouse that O’Leary almost certain it was a Tuesday afternoon that O’Leary had been caught. But he survived the war. But he set up a wonderful organisation. And the dep’ Hickton was there. He met him in Marseilles that would be if that was where they started but I met Francoise in in Toulouse. And I came out of Switzerland with a Lieutenant Commander Stephens who had escaped from Colditz and arrived in Switzerland two weeks before Newbold and I did in ’42. And he was in, he was one of the senior Naval officers that was involved with the raid at St Nazaire when they blew the dry dock. The Campbeltown went and blew up the dry dock up there in ’41. But I didn’t know him in Switzerland. I met him the day before in Geneva. And yeah, and then we, interestingly enough he, it’s funny how things happen. That when we came to the decision and the, when we couldn’t get passeurs in to Toulouse because the Francoise contact had dried up and we had a French Air Force corporal took us into the area of the Pyrenees but he reneged at the last minute to be a passeur, to take us over and we were on our own. And I always remember Stephens, and we picked this other chap up, a French Canadian, Duchesnay, in Toulouse. And this night we had to leave this house we were in because the word was the Germans were coming to the village to take all the able-bodied Frenchman. The rumour. So we out smartly and eventually on our own in the morning and we had a disagreement. Stephens and Duchesnay wanted to go back to Toulouse, to Francoise and I said, ‘Well, I’m not going back. That’s France. That’s Spain over there.’ I suppose it’s angels go in where fools fear to tread but I knew the situation. It would be hopeless trying to get back to Toulouse which they found out. And they decided, well they’d come with me which we were successful just walking on the compass overnight. But I’ll never forget Stephens saying to me in this little hut, a shepherd’s hut on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees. He thanked me for, and said, ‘Well, it’s thanks to you that we’re here.’ That was a great honour for me to accept that. That’s, he was a senior Naval officer and what not, but that’s the way it goes and but that that was the, it was, that was, we were looking back there. How we got through God only knows. The luck of it. But that’s, we made decisions and they, they worked out well. But I’ve read lots of, and especially post-war the, and of course when I was in Switzerland I met two generals Hargest and Miles and I met the Frenchmen who took them both from Geneva into Spain. And when Brigadier Miles, he committed suicide in Andorra and Brigadier Hargest met me in London after and took me to lunch and we had a long discussion about things in there because basically looking back we should never have been sent out of Switzerland at that time just so close to D-Day. And we didn’t have the correct documents to be in that area of the Pyrenees without special permission from the German authorities. We learned this later on from this chap that, the Frenchmen who took these, the generals out. He came out to see Brigadier Hargest’s family in Invercargill and I just thought my gosh how lucky we weren’t asked for the passes and for papers. That we should never have been in that area out in the wilds of the Spanish frontier without these special passes and that we never had them and we should have had them. But that’s, that’s the way it was.
MS: And from there how did you get back?
EW: Well, I just came back then. I was interviewed within MI7. And then I came back to New Zealand and I was commissioned and I went up the islands as a cipher officer and spent my time, the rest of the war there. But I was, whether I was very lucky to have survived the war, to survive the crash and have a wonderful unique experience in Switzerland for eighteen months and been privy to some of the top secrets of the war. Unbelievable, looking, looking back and I’ll never forget saying to myself, it was after lunch I was walking down the Quai Wilson in Geneva having been privy to some top intimation and they said, ‘Well, what you’ve got to do everything you’ve seen or you see in that office when you leave that you put it out of your mind and you forget about it.’ And that’s what I did. And I, I practiced that for a long time because I was subject the Official Secrets Act that I never talked even a long time after the war. Took me years after the war ended. I never disclosed to any of my friends in the Air Force the type of work I was doing in Switzerland.
MS: So you, you walked to Switzerland and then they employed you in the —
EW: Pardon?
MS: So, you walked to Switzerland.
EW: Yeah.
MS: And then did they employ you in the, in an office in Geneva?
EW: Well, that’s eighteen months in Switzerland. In the, the latter nine months I was employed as a cipher clerk at the British Consulate in Geneva. In the British Consulate there. That was the headquarters of our European espionage and the person who ran that Vanden Heuvel, he received all the information from Admiral Canaris through a contact of his in Berne. A Polish woman. And at that time I never knew what it was all about. It was only years after I realised the significance of what I was involved in. At the time I had no idea. I knew it was all very important but there were only bits and pieces. It was only later I put them altogether. And then, then we left the, I met with Lieutenant Commander Stephens the day before D-Day and came over with the, the French Underground. Got under the wire because we were classified. I was classified as an evader and had to sign a document in Switzerland if the chance ever came I would leave Switzerland because we were free to roam around. Basically, we were still under the control of the British authorities but in civilian clothes and so forth. But had we, had we arrived there in uniform we’d have been interned. But it was a funny thing you’re, and you’re completely out of the Service. There was no Service life at all. It was just a civilian existence paid for, your accommodation paid for by the British government. And then, and the person in, he was a man called Major Ferrill he was in Geneva and he had the job of looking after the espionage and so forth but mainly organising escapes for people such as myself and people that arrived there because there was some pretty high ranking officers that had arrived in Switzerland. Group captains and wing commanders and so forth who had been shot down and whatnot and got them back to England through the escape routes and so forth.
MS: So, giving you that job it was a front really to enable you to escape.
EW: Pardon?
MS: So, when they gave you the job in the Consulate that was as a form of, really it was a front so that they could then move you back.
EW: Yes. Well, you see —
MS: And out to the —
EW: I was, I turned out to be a very special sort of a case. The, on the New Year’s Eve ’43 it would have been, I’d only been in the Consulate a few months and I was put in a group of about I think it was about a dozen people which Major Ferrill had arranged to leave the group. There were officers of all ranks, all nationalities and we, we were briefed in the Consulate in Geneva. It was New Year’s Eve I think ’43. We were picked up in a dry-cleaning van, I think it was about 9 o’clock at night and taken to the border and it was pitch black. Snow and ice everywhere, and they couldn’t contact the contact we were supposed to meet to take us across the border and on so that mass exodus was abandoned. And from then I was involved with the head of the section Vanden Heuvel and the head of the MI7 in London that I was not to leave Switzerland in which, until the chances of me getting through were more than favourable. It was a bit of a [struggle] because the people who, from organising the escapes and Vanden Heuvel must have thought well look, I know too much. I don’t know. Too big a risk to risk being caught. We had no, no briefing and, and being interrogated and whatnot I wouldn’t know but it came back from London that Worsdale was I was not to leave. I saw the message myself so that was interesting. But that was, that was there. I’d got to be involved there and that was the only mass escape plan that I was aware of that was important.
MS: I would imagine it would have been extremely risky.
EW: Well, well looking back I couldn’t see the, the value of, the risks would have been so high to my mind in the group otherwise in line. It would have been so obvious to my mind then and I think the person who organised had made a grave error of judgement and, but I don’t know and as I say I daren’t think. Looking back we should never have left because so close to D-Day. I knew myself what information I was privy to that D-Day was any day. Didn’t know the exact date. I knew it wasn’t far away and I couldn’t see the reason but never questioned it. It didn’t worry me. We were sent and we could have been caught. Could have spent unnecessarily, especially with this situation as it was with the Maquis getting passeurs to take people over the border and what was happening? They would get, then be paid the money and then they would take the people in to the, with the passeurs, and these passeurs would be traitors and they would say to the people, ‘Look, just through that area there now. Through that bit of forest and — ’ Blah blah blah. ‘That’s the border.’ And of course, waiting were the, the Germans for them. We knew that was happening. I knew it was happening. I saw the reports of it. And that’s why they couldn’t get the passeurs in Toulouse. Francois didn’t have them and the whole organisation had broken down. There was a bit of every man for himself and this was confirmed to me later on in a, in a book written about the mass escape from, of the twenty who were shot at Stalag Luft 4 and there was only two got away I think from that. One of them a Flight Lieutenant Van Der Stok, a Dutch Spitfire pilot and I met him in Spain after he’d crossed the border and been in hiding in Holland and it confirmed there that the time, and he came through after I did of what chaos there was at the border area. There were a lot of Jewish refugees trying to get across and these passeurs just playing fast and loose with, with the Maquis. Some groups good, others bad and that was the situation. But he confirmed that. But that’s the, that’s the way it goes. But I was very lucky to have had that wonderful experience and still be able to talk about it.
MS: So how did you eventually get back to England?
EW: Well, we went to, we spent about five, I think it was four or five days in [unclear] Prison, Spanish provincial prison after we crossed the border at a place called Bauzon in France and walked, gave ourselves up to the Civil Guard and then we were taken down to the provincial capital at Lerida and we spent time there but the the British authorities knew we were on their way and once they knew we’d arrived we were given special food that was sent into us by the Red Cross and so forth and then we came out. We got out there. We went to a place called, I think it was Alhama. It was a mountainous, like a spa which became a reception area for the hundreds of the people just coming over the border. Americans, Canadians, all sorts coming over and one of the Spaniards they, they treated us royally there and then we went to Madrid and then finally flew home from Gibraltar. Then I met Stephens again there. That’s the last I saw of him. The last time I ever met him. Nothing to do with him. Yeah. On the same plane. But the Spaniards, the prison was, was shocking really. Eight in a cell. Rife with, with rats and so forth but shocking place but then the Spanish Air Force got us out of that and I remember they took us to this place in, called Alhama. I think it was called Alhama. Wonderful spot and they were, they were really good but that’s, that’s a long time ago.
MS: And how did it feel when you landed back in England?
EW: In England. Wonderful. Of course, you were, were just, unbelievable really the, how everything happens so quickly. You were meeting all these top people and I suppose the thrill to me was I suppose a little lonely warrant officer being, meeting the heads of the British Secret Service in the, it was pretty wonderful really. But I was just lucky to be involved with it. That was a huge learning curve for me. But and looking back on the decisions that were made at the time. You had to question of course the old old story. Hindsight’s a wonderful thing.
MS: And you probably got interviewed pretty thoroughly when you got back to camp.
EW: Oh yes. Yes. It was all, but the interesting thing was the, was being one of the, I suppose the highlights to me was was in the British Embassy in Madrid and being given the, the all the details of the suicide, of Brigadier Miles when he reached Spain and knowing both, meeting both Brigadier Miles and Brigadier Hargest in Geneva. But then to be, have all this information given to me in the British Embassy in Madrid which was all top secret, even to my own New Zealand government and so forth. The chief of the air staff didn’t know the circumstances until I told him. And being involved in the, with the people that sent him out, and meeting the Frenchmen later on when he came out in the ‘70s who didn’t know the full circumstances. It was all very interesting that.
MS: Were you able to write and tell your family where you were?
EW: No. I had, I had my, I had this aunt who was in London. She, I sent her a telegram from when I was cleared in Switzerland. We were told not to write letters or anything like that and so forth so my family knew I was in Switzerland from my aunt because otherwise they’d give me up after eighteen days. Normally, well you were confirmed dead or you, you were a POW. That’s, that was the, the other great thing. But yes. But as I say I was, I look back as being very very lucky.
MS: What happened to the rest of the crew that crashed with you?
EW: Ok. Well, Len Newbold, he, well the two who were killed are buried in this cemetery in the village in France. Jim Barnes, he’s passed away. Sir James Barnes. And Len Newbold, he returned. I’d never seen him but I went to see in him in Geneva when I was back on a business trip. He married the girl at a café he met at in Vevey and, but I never got the, the unfortunate thing was the day I was in, in, went to see him in Vevey it was a Tuesday and that was the day the café was closed. So I didn’t see him. But that’s the way it goes.
MS: And do you know what happened to your plane?
EW: Well, that’s the plane up there. That’s the wreckage there the next morning. That was taken by the French farmer whose nephew I think it was sent that photograph to Max Lambert but Glen Turner had heard when he was over there that there was a photograph in existence. That’s only the last year or so that this has come to light and the photograph and they have got a photograph also of the pilot who was thrown clear and then again it was inside but the pilot was thrown clear. He was killed but the big mystery is he had no flying suit on and so forth so there’s lots of theories I hear of whether, how he could be outside the aircraft without his flying suit on. Whether it was the explosion, whether it blew him out. Whether he was, before the explosion he was trying to take, he’d taking off his flying suit and so forth in the fire because the aircraft was burning so furiously I don’t know but that, that’s what was left of it and when we got out through the rear turret I’d made the entry for the rear gunner to get out. Then he pushed back and I got out and we just got clear and she blew up. Huge explosion. How I don’t know. That’s, that’s what we walked away from.
MS: What kind of plane is that?
EW: Hmmn?
MS: What kind of plane?
EW: It’s a Wellington. That was one of the last of the, the second last. There was two lost on 75 Squadron that night. They were both from 75 Squadron and they were the last Wellingtons to be shot down on a bombing mission during the war. There was one later I think on a mining operation. But that was the last of the Wellingtons so it was pretty historic was that aircraft.
MS: What was your plane’s number?
EW: Yeah. It’s up there. I forget the number. AA. Yeah.
MS: DAA.
EW: I think it’s in there. In the things in the records. [pause - pages turning] yes. AA Wellington Mark 3. Yeah. Yeah.
MS: How do you feel about the way Bomber Command was treated after the war?
EW: How what?
MS: How do you feel about the way Bomber Command was treated after the war?
EW: Well, I never had any recollection of the controversy that Bomber Command was subjected to because up in the Pacific and I wasn’t, I wasn’t aware of it. But looking back its easy to form opinions of the, the uselessness in the early stages the, but that’s something. But as it grew it certainly shortened the war. But then the loss of life later on to the, the policy that Harris took have to be questioned. But then the other side that’s total war. That was going on and war, and what’s being done today I don’t know. War is just so horrible and the civilians are the ones that suffer and you can’t, you see we were one of the gas squadrons in 3 Group. And I attended two briefings when I was there in ’42 for gas reprisal attacks. The rumours were that the Germans were out to deliver a gas attack but the response about the futility of trying to drop gas attacks from the cylinders we had in those days it would be so futile it was just really propaganda that’s all. But they were there then. I saw it with my own eyes in my own squadron. But that’s, but the, the, you can have opinions and they’re always wrong but the sacrifices that the, and risks and the toll of young lives both sides. Both Air Forces did it. Suffered. You see, the average age of Bomber Command in New Zealand was twenty two. And then we were, they say one in three were killed in those days. That’s the huge thing and then the injuries. The horrific injuries then. That was something that always worried me was the burns that you were likely to sustain in an aircraft crash. And I actually was going to throw myself on to the oncoming fire to get it over quickly. It went through my mind and I thought well where there’s life there’s hope. Stick with it. Because I could see my way out. That’s what I faced and it was just a matter of life and death, of just hanging on and thinking clearly that saved my life and able to make, to being an instrument in saving the life of the rear gunner. But that’s, that’s the way it was. But that’s the, when you read of the, and see or seen the terrible facial injuries that the chaps that were dragged away from burning aircraft and that’s, that’s one of the worst features. And they actually sent them to, to Switzerland as a recovery holiday after being operated on for the, with the skin grafts and all this stuff. But that was one of the worst. That’s the horrors of war but there are things later on you faced about, and you realise. Prior to that you think it’s a big adventure until it happens and it proves as simple as that. So that’s what it was all about and thank goodness we’ve seen the last of the days when tens of thousands of men are needlessly slaughtered. It’s all push button, the terrible results and devastation will still continue and the weaponry they’ve got. It’s frightening to think of it but that’s, that’s the way it is.
MS: So, when your plane crashed it was on fire and you were still inside. Is that right?
EW: The —
MS: When your plane crashed it was on fire and you were still inside.
EW: It was on fire before it crashed.
MS: Yeah.
EW: It was burning and bits were falling off and you, I remember the, when the fire that hit us the, I was in the astrodome. I felt all this hot liquid. I thought it was blood but it was the hydraulic fluid that had been, lines had just well so close to me it wouldn’t have mattered. Only a couple of feet away. But then to see the bits falling off the thing. But that’s, you do what you’re trained to do. Take position of [unclear] Luckily I didn’t suffer a broken arm when we crashed when you see the result of that thing there. That was after it exploded but it was just a mass of flames once it hit the ground. But you read of the, the amazing things that people walk away from. But the horrific injuries some of them one suffered. But that’s the way it was. But I’m just one of the lucky ones.
MS: So how many of you survived the crash?
EW: How many what?
MS: How many of your survived the crash?
EW: There was three of us. The, well no, two of us because Jimmy Barnes, he baled out. He was, he was taken prisoner the next day. So, there was Hugill and Pete they, they were killed and Newbold and I got out. Just by the grace of God. Yeah. But that’s that’s the way it was —
MS: You mentioned before about Hamburg.
EW: The —
MS: About Hamburg we were talking before about Hamburg. You were saying how currently with the —
EW: Of how —
MS: In Hamburg currently.
EW: Oh, Hamburg. Yes. Yes. Well, you see the, the, to read the reports at that time of the utter devastation and where human bodies were just carbonised in their own heat. They couldn’t get into their shelters. And it, it was the first time I suppose, due to immaturity as I say I had my twenty first birthday in Switzerland not realising the horrendous consequence that civilians paid. I’d seen a bit in Harrogate and so forth but then you were in London and, but those reports of the bombings there were just, you know nothing like it anywhere else there. And that there and then that hit me, and no. This is not right. That’s the, and then say today that to see the G7 holding their summit and to see the violent protests and so forth and the fires that were lit by the protesters and whatnot seventy odd years later. What it must have been like in those days when they just no escape. But that’s what it’s all about isn’t it?
MS: And you said to me before that knowing what you do know —
EW: Well, yes you see it’s the, everything in life has changed so much. The way we live, our values and everything else. They’ve all changed. It’s a different lifestyle altogether seventy years on and you wonder what it’s going to be like in another hundred years. When you’ve lived and seen almost a hundred years of of living you can say to yourself well the world’s not going to come to an end. I’ve seen it all before. Life, the sun will still shine tomorrow so why worry? There will be ups and downs and these threats and counter threats and goodness knows what. But self-preservation will save us all. There will be a way around it and and it won’t stop but life won’t come to an end that’s for sure.
MS: And you also told me before that you would be a conscientious objector now.
EW: I would yes. I’d say well because as I say what’s the point? Why does man keep on killing man? Look at the hatred and so what’s the point? Look at this, look at this Syrian business. You think of those people there. The children. What sort of generation are they going to grow into? They’ve been, when you’ve been subjected to such trauma as children, you know it’s, it’s frightening. That’s, they won’t stop at the, I mean they’ll still kill each other. I don’t know. It’s, it’s life. Yeah.
MS: And after the war when you came back to New Zealand?
EW: Yes. I came back and I suppose a bit unsettled so I worked my way back to England as an assistant butcher on a boat and I was going to try, and I was still interested in plastics and I want to learn more about them so I, but I was over in London and saw an opportunity to start a business here in plastics. And came back here and started a business in plastics and that was another story. Yeah. Yes.
MS: Plastics were very new weren’t they during the war and quite an innovative —
EW: You what?
MS: Plastic was quite an innovative material wasn’t it during the war?
EW: Yes, well I was interested in in plastics even during the war. When I was in Geneva I went and saw a factory that was making watch straps of all things. And then I wanted to see another, a factory in, I knew nothing about plastics, in Basle who it was I think it was an injection moulding thing and I got my knuckles firmly rapped by the British people saying, ‘Well, you, you don’t make arrangements to see factories without our permission,’ and what not so. Yes. But oh no it’s the, yes life hadn’t been too bad.
MS: You didn’t have any trouble adjusting to life after the war?
EW: Eh?
MS: Did you have any trouble adjusting to peace time?
EW: No. I suppose the, the life in Switzerland, eighteen months showed me a different sort of life than I’d ever have known being back here or being in the Army or the Air Force as a POW or anything like that and that changed my whole life. My thinking and so forth. A taste for certain living. I don’t know. But then you look back and say well that’s the way you’re made. You’ll always be that way. I don’t know. I still think I’m still doing things. I’m experimenting now with cooking. I’m slow cooking and all that which means cooking in a slow cooker very very slow on temperatures about fifty degrees. Cooking steak for about four or five hours and some as long as twenty hours. So, I made up a little vacuum pump using a vacuum cleaner to extract the air from a plastic bag before I seal it. Before I put it in the water. So, I’ve got some lamb steaks cooking at the moment so I’ll see how it goes [laughs] So, I’m still thinking. My mind is still thinking of doing things. So, keep the, keep as long as I can. I’ll do that.
MS: Do you want to tell me anything else at all about your time in Bomber Command?
EW: You what?
MS: Was there anything else you wanted to tell me about your time in Bomber Command that we haven’t covered?
EW: Not really. No. There’s not really a lot of things you can think about at this time. It’ll come back to you at different times and so forth that, it’s strange you forget that they, they’re out of your mind and some little thing will remind you of them but I’m lucky to still have a good memory of most things and so forth but, oh no I’ve got no complaints.
MS: And can I just confirm your rank? You said you were a warrant officer. Is that —
EW: Pardon?
MS: Can I just confirm what rank you were rank in the Air Force?
EW: The —
MS: Your rank.
EW: Rank? Pilot officer
MS: Pilot officer.
EW: Finish now.
MS: Ok. Alright. Well, that concludes our interview. Thank you so much Eddie, for your time. It’s been really fantastic to talk to you. Thank you.
EW: Lovely.
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Interview with Eddie Worsdale
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
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eng
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01:33:39 audio recording
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Miriam Sharland
Date
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2017-07-08
Description
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Eddie Worsdale was working as a furniture salesman in Wellington, New Zealand after the Depression era curtailed his education. His brother volunteered for the New Zealand Air Force and so Eddie followed him. After initial training he continued his training in Canada before arriving in the UK and being posted to 75 Squadron at RAF Mildenhall. On an operations to Milan their Wellington aircraft was shot down. One crew member baled out and Eddie and his crewmate escaped from the burning aircraft. They then set off to walk to Switzerland. Eddie was employed as a cipher clerk for the secret intelligence service which gave him access to top secret information. The decision was made that he and other evaders would make the journey back to the UK via Spain. After his return to New Zealand he was posted to the Islands as a cipher clerk for the rest of the war.
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Temporal Coverage
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1942-10-25
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
New Zealand
Spain
Switzerland
England--Suffolk
France--Toulouse
Germany--Hamburg
Italy--Milan
Switzerland--Geneva
Contributor
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Julie Williams
75 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bale out
evading
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
RAF Mildenhall
shot down
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
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81e8d485ebaa1faca0c2e7fc8ce934c8
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/193/3527/AYeomanHT161013.1.mp3
bc5e3721d340abe4d24b5b171dcc0968
Dublin Core
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Title
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Yeoman, Harold
Harold Yeoman
Harold T Yeoman
H T Yeoman
Description
An account of the resource
31 items. Collection concerns Harold Yeoman (b. 1921 1059846 and 104405 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 12 Squadron. Collection contains an oral history interview, a memoir, pilot's flying log book, 26 poems, a photograph and details of trail of Malayan collaborator.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Christopher E. Potts and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-10-28
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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Yeoman, HT
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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PL: My name’s Pam Locker. And I’m here today in the home of Mr Harold Yeoman of [deleted] on Thursday the 13th of October at 10 o’clock. 2016. So I’d just like to start Harold by saying thank you very much indeed on behalf of Bomber Command Memorial Trust for agreeing to an interview today. And if I could just start by asking you a little bit about your, your younger life and how you came to be involved with Bomber Command in the first place.
HY: Well, as far as my younger life’s concerned I worked in local government. And when the year came to about 1935 or ‘6, it was the day that Mussolini invaded Abyssinia, I realised then that I was of an age where I would have to do something. So, I talked to my parents and I had, my father had been in the army in the First World War and the RAMC. My brother was just about ready to go into the Royal Artillery. So my thoughts were primarily of army. And I thought well, I’ve got to volunteer for something before I’m called up and told what they’re going to do. They might put me in the Navy which I thought would be pretty horrible. So I went along to the local Drill Hall, the Army Drill Hall and said, ‘I’ve come to volunteer.’ And they said, ‘Well, that’s very hard lines because we’re full up. You can go on the waiting list if you like.’ I said, ‘No. I don’t think so. I’ll find something else.’ So [coughs] excuse me about that time I used to go to the pictures about once a week and one of the newsreels that came on, it was black and white of course was quite topical. It was dealing with wartime subjects and it was, the screen was divided into four parts. The picture. And one of the parts was a tank. Another one was a big gun and the one I was interested in was a picture of an aircraft flying along from left to right. I didn’t know what it was then but later I realised it was an Avro Anson. And here was a little man sitting in the gun turret on the top of the Anson. And I thought I could do that. You know, I don’t see why I shouldn’t do that. So, instead of thinking about the army I started thinking about the air force. Anyhow, the army said they were full up, they’d put me on the waiting list. I said, ‘No, thank you. I’ll find something else.’ The something else turned out to be the air force. So my brother who was eight years older than me and he saw what I was going to do and he got a bit jealous. He said, ‘Well, I’ll do the same thing.’ So we both went up to [laughs] we both went up to Newcastle to the, the Recruiting Centre which was in the west end of Newcastle. Scotswood Road. It was a school up on the hill and said, ‘We’ve come to volunteer for the, the air force.’ They said, ‘Righto.’ Took all my particulars and took my brothers particulars and said, ‘Well, you’ve got to have a medical.’ I said, ‘Ok. I can do that.’ And said, ‘well, come this way.’ They gave me [laughs] they just counted my arms and legs and saw whether I could see. They said, ‘Oh yes, you’ve got through.’ So that was it. ‘Just go outside and we’ll do the rest.’ So my brother came out and I said, ‘How did you get on?’ He said, ‘Oh. I failed.’ I said, ‘You failed?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘What was the matter?’ He said, ‘Well, I’ve got varicose veins.’ I said, ‘Well, so have I but I got through.’ I got a small one which has developed since then but it’s no bother. Never mind. So he came away quite despondent and I came away quite happy that I’d got in to the air force and volunteered for aircrew. I thought I’d be a gunner sitting in the top turret of an Anson somewhere or other. And in due course I got a letter to say that I had to report to the Reception Centre at Babbacombe, a suburb of Torquay. Just, it was just described as P, I think it was P, PUB or something like that which meant pilot, observer or bomb aimer or something some such. POB. So I reported there and learned I was going to become a pilot which was a great surprise to me. So, did all the necessary ground subjects at Babbacombe. Drill, PT and so on and so forth and a bit of air force law. And then I was posted next door into Torquay itself at Number 3 Initial Training Wing. The subjects on the ground developed into a bit more complicated. A bit of navigation, some gunnery. A bit of air force law. As a subject dealing with tactics in, in the air when you were doing civilian, when you, before you got operational. And that all went off. I’d got a written examination there and passed that alright. And from there I was sent to really start finding out about aeroplanes which I’d never, I’d never been close to an aeroplane before that. Never been up in one. Never seen one close too. Never touched one. And went to Number 6 EFTS at Sywell which is just outside Northampton. It’s probably Northampton Civil Aerodrome now, where they had Tiger Moths and did my initiation on to Tiger Moths with a very unpleasant instructor who shall be nameless but I’ve got his name in the back of my mind. Got rid of him and got a much more pleasant instructor which improved my flying no end. I went solo in ten hours forty five minutes I think. Something like that. And I did my first solo flight in a Tiger Moth on Christmas Eve of 1940. And I did my first solo cross-country from Sywell to Cambridge where there was another EFTS where I had to land, report to the watch office and take off again. Come back to, come back to Sywell. Navigating myself which was quite easy. Had a map on my knee. Had to keep a log on the other knee. And I got through that alright and that was more or less the end of that course. And did some aerobatics which I was not very good at. Which I was very poor at actually. From there I didn’t know what was going to happen but I soon found out the next stage was the intermediate training which because of the enemy activity that was going on was done as far away from England as possible. So I was sent out to Canada to 32 SFTS at Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan where I flew Harvards. I went solo on them inside a very short order. It was only about half a dozen hours of duel I think on Harvards. We did the same sort of, same type of flying. Solo cross-country’s lasting anything up to about an hour and hour and a half. One was from Moose Jaw to a place called Dafoe. Up north in the north of Saskatchewan. From Dafoe to Watrous which was another small town. And from Watrous back to Moose Jaw. That was quite a nice, nice ride. And did a certain amount of aerobatics at which I was very, very poor. I thought well if I’m going to be a fighter pilot this is not going to serve me very well. So, at the finish of the, the course when I got through everything including examiners, examinations, the interview by the chief instructor, chief flying instructor, then the chief instructor of the station who was a very nice chap and he said, ‘Well, I suppose you want to go on to Spitfires like everybody else do you?’ I said, ‘No sir. I don’t.’ He said, ‘You don’t. What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘I want to go on to bombers.’ I said, ‘My aerobatics are very poor. I know that myself. And my instrument flying is quite good and I enjoy instrument flying so I’d rather go on to bombers.’ He said, ‘Well, I can’t promise you anything but we’ll see what we can do.’ And in due course I came back to England and was sent to Operational Training Unit at Bassingbourn which had Wellingtons. Amazingly enough I went solo on Wellingtons in less than four hours which was astonishing to me because I’d only flown single engine up ‘til then and getting into a Wellington was like coming in to a, in to a house. It was huge in my eyes having just been on single engine stuff. So I went solo on them in about three hours forty five minutes or so and did sort of a lot of basic work. Cross country’s and a bit of blind flying with the hood pulled down so you couldn’t see where you were. Including a blind take off. Well, that was very interesting. Settling down on the runway and getting yourself central. Then the instructor said, ‘Pull the hood down now and you’re going off.’ So I had to just do the take off completely blind with the instructor in the front and just went off by feeling when it was ready to get airborne. Eased back on the stick and away we went. And when I got airborne, climbed up to a thousand feet or so he said, ‘Right. Pull the hood back now. That was ok.’ That was an interesting one. I enjoyed that very much. And that was the initiation on to Wellingtons. Then the important thing was the crewing up which as you may know was done in a very haphazard manner. I just went into a room and there was a whole lot of mixture of pilots, observers as they were then. Observers as were then navigators and bomb aimers. There were gunners as well. And it was just a whole crowd of people and you just had to sort out your own crew and you’d come up to somebody and say, ‘Are you looking for a navigator?’ ‘Are you looking for a gunner?’ And it was like that. Well, I got a good navigator in an Australian chap called Colin Fletcher. The wireless op was from Solihull. We know, we knew him as Mick. Mick Pratt. And the two gunners. One was from Sudbury in Suffolk, Johnny Roe. And the rear gunner was from Balham. He was Tommy Evans. And that was the crew. So we then flew as a crew and did all the basic cross-country flying, night and day. And by that time we were ready to be posted on to a squadron. So we were posted to 12 Squadron at Binbrook. And that’s how I got to 12 Squadron. So was that enough or do you want some more?
PL: Well, what happened next? Once you got to Binbrook. Tell me a little bit about your operations.
HY: Yes. Well, we got to Binbrook as a crew and to [pause] I got into [pause] I was sent to B Flight which was commanded by Squadron Leader Abraham who was a very pleasant chap. And [coughs] my co-pilot who had been a Canadian, he wasn’t, I thought he was a Canadian. He was American actually. My co-pilot whom I picked up at OTU was then, he was detached to go in to another crew and I became co-pilot to Sergeant Potts and we did one or two operations. I did one or two operations with him. The first one I did was supposed to be to Cherbourg as a fresher operation which was one of the Channel Ports. And that was ok except that when we got as far as the south coast of England we started to have trouble with the starboard engine which started to leak glycol vapour. The glycol vapour then became ignited due to the exhaust, the heat of the exhaust. And the engine caught fire and we were trailing a plume of flame about sixty or eighty feet long. And the, the captain who said, who was a very nice bloke actually, Sergeant Potts, he said , ‘We’re going to have to put this thing down somewhere.’ So, it was pitch dark. It was at night and there was a bit of a moon and we, I didn’t know where we were and neither, I suppose neither did he because the navigation had just gone completely out of the window on that side. It was a question of survival. We were too low to bale out. We were only at, on the, over the coast. We were about eight or ten thousand feet. And the, the captain said, ‘We’ve got to go back because the engine’s giving trouble.’ This was before it caught fire. He said, ‘There’s no point in sticking around up here on oxygen. We might as well go down low.’ So we got down to two or three thousand feet by which time the engine had really caught fire. And we started to lose height almost immediately on one engine and we were too low to bale out. Ralph Potts said, ‘I’m going to have to put it down somewhere.’ So eventually we, we did a crash landing in a field by which time the engine was more or less, had more or less subsided. I’d pressed the fire extinguisher button and eventually it took effect. It flooded the engine with foam apparently. I didn’t know that. But I just pressed the button and hoped. Kept my fingers crossed. So, we, we came down in this field and luckily without any undue further mishaps. The engine was still very red hot. And when we hit the field we broke the back of the geodetics which came up through the floor and the aircraft was virtually in two bits. Luckily there was no, no injury to anybody so we all got out the, out of the top escape hatch over the pilot’s seat. And as we got out I was the last one out. I got the rest of the crew out. The captain went out first and I got the crew out by the seat of their pants. Literally pushed them out of the top and they jumped down on to the wing. I was the last one out. As I got out I found that the port engine with having flown on that for so long that was now red hot itself and I thought well that’s going to catch fire so I had to get back in and press the extinguisher button on the port engine. And that was it. We, we all got in to the field and didn’t know where we were. The next thing we knew there was an army corporal came across and said, you know, ‘Are you all ok?’ And we said, ‘Yeah. We’re all walking,’ And I said, ‘Where are we?’ He said, ‘Well, you’re near St Albans.’ So that was news to us. And he helped us over the hedge and the army then took charge of us and said, ‘We’d better get you some billets for the night and get you to a telephone. You can ring your aerodrome, let them know what’s happened.’ So we got the IFF box out of the aircraft. Which was the secret, highly secret in those days, it was a radar tracking appliance which we put on fifty miles from the English coast. We took, sorry we turned that off fifty miles from the English coast going out and put it on a hundred miles from the English coast coming back. And we took that out of the aircraft and put it into the local police station in to the safe. I was billeted in the house with a couple of middle aged ladies and just slept on the floor. There was nowhere else we could go. We got through to the, to Binbrook and let them know that we were, where we were. That we were down and safe and that the aircraft was rather bent. That was about it. We got, we got a meal, a couple of meals at the house. Thanked the ladies very much. And the next morning we got rail warrants to get back to Binbrook. So we had to travel by train from St Albans to London, across London and then from London up to Grimsby. And from Grimsby we got transport to, to Binbrook. And it was a bit, a bit amusing having to go across London on foot and in our flying kit with parachutes. People were looking at us thinking we were enemy spies. But we had, we had quite a nice journey from Kings Cross up to Grimsby. There was, I think there was a business that saw our predicament and didn’t ask many questions but he knew we’d had some trouble. So he took us along to the dining car and gave us a meal which was very kind of him. Anyhow, we got back to Binbrook and resumed activity. That was it.
PL: So, did your, your plane had to be rescued, was that repairable or were you given a new plane?
HY: I think it was. I think it was eventually put together again. And whether it became operational I don’t know but it wasn’t a complete right-off but it was as near as makes no matter [pause] And from then on we, I started in the, I’ve forgotten whose crew it was now. Oh yes it was a Canadian called Harold Cook, who took, took me over with the rest of the crew. My co-pilot, the American whom I thought was a Canadian, Elmer [Menchek?] he went into another crew and I flew with, with Harold Cook. Did a few operations with him which weren’t exactly uneventful but they were survivable. And then I developed, developed stomach trouble. Air sickness. I think it was with the stress of the burning aircraft which we’d had initially. I think that had a lot to do with it. The anti-aircraft fire had a lot more to do with it. And I was being airsick most of the, most of the time. I reported to the MO and he gave me some pills. But I did a few trips with, with these pills and they just didn’t work so I was then grounded. I was sent to Number 1 Group Headquarters at Bawtry Hall just to do a bit of admin as a supernumerary. And from there I went into intelligence. Became an intelligence officer. Did a course at Highgate in London. Got through that. Sent to, they asked me where I wanted to go to. I said well, told them where I lived. As far north as possible. So I got a posting to Linton on Ouse and there was an intelligence officer there for a time with 76 and 78 Squadron which had Halifaxes until I had a difference of opinion with the station commander who was a group captain. Greatly outranked me. He wanted me to do certain other jobs apart from intelligence work. I said, ‘Well, I don’t know how I’m going to fit them in. It’s not possible.’ He didn’t know. He’d just come, come from India. Been posted from India. He was what we called a wingless wonder or a penguin. And he hadn’t a clue about operational flying so as I said we had this difference of opinion. The next thing I knew I was shot out of the station. Posted elsewhere. You couldn’t win an argument with a group captain. It didn’t matter how hard you tried. So then he got rid of me and I was sent out of intelligence in to admin. Posted to [pause] I’m just trying to think of the name of the place now. It was a satellite of Mildenhall. Tuddenham. To assistant adjutant of 90 Squadron at Tuddenham. Which was a very, it was a nice job. It was not connected intimately with flying but it was, we had, we had aircraft on, on the station. That was the main thing. I did a time there and then the bull fell. I was posted to India. I reported to the one of the headquarters in Bombay and they said, ‘Well, you know you’re going to be posted to [pause] it was up in, on the northwest frontier. I said, ‘What’s the rank of the post?’ It was a sergeant who was doing the paperwork. He said, ‘Well it’s a flying officer post.’ And I was a flying officer by that time I’d got a thicker ring. I said, ‘Haven’t you got a flight lieutenant post anywhere?’ I thought I might as well stick my neck out and go the full hog. So he had another look at the paper and said, ‘Oh yes. We have as a matter of fact.’ So [laughs] I got a second ring and I’m just trying to think where I went. My memory is not as good as it was but —
PL: What year was this Harold?
HY: Oh, that was [pause] I think it would have been 1943 or ‘4. One or the other. And I got this flight lieutenant post at Baigachi, near Calcutta. From there I was posted further out east to Penang and I was adjutant of 185 Wing in Penang which was a very pleasant job because Penang is or probably still is the holiday resort of Malaya. And I had a very pleasant time there. It was quite an easy job. We had plenty time of job off. Played cricket. Played rugby. Played soccer. Everything that was going. Did the job as well. And made friends with a family in in George Town which was the, the main town on the island. And then the next thing that was, I think that was the end of my RAF service really because from then I was, I made my own, my own release document out. Being adjutant of 185 Wing I was responsible for moving people around. And I made my own release document out and came back to England and got released from the RAF. And that’s the end of the story.
PL: Well, Harold, just going back a little way. What were you, when you were India flying what what was the —
HY: I wasn’t flying in India.
PL: Oh right. Ok.
HY: No. No I’d been grounded.
PL: Right. Right.
HY: For good by then.
PL: Right.
HY: Had a medical board and been grounded.
PL: Oh right.
HY: Yeah.
PL: Ok. So none of that changed. So what sort of jobs were you doing?
HY: In India?
PL: Yes.
HY: Purely administrative. Movement of personnel. You’re responsible in a way for discipline among the NCOs and airmen which wasn’t a pleasant, it wasn’t an easy, it wasn’t a difficult job because they were all very well behaved. Apart from one bloke who shall be nameless. But they sorted him out quickly. And that was about it. I had plenty of time off and as I say played lots of sport and became quite friendly with as I said a local family who had a very charming daughter. We were quite friendly for a good time until I came home and we lost touch. And that was about it.
PL: And can, can I just take you back to your time in, at Linton when you were doing intelligence work and you left there. What sort of work was that?
HY: Well, that was at, at Linton on Ouse. What sort of work? Well, it was primarily briefing the crews for an operation and interrogating them when they came back. We had a form like you have. We had to ask certain questions. The first one was, ‘Where did you bomb?’ That was the, the target that you briefed them on and incidentally the targets were all military objectives. The aiming points as ours were when I was flying were military objectives. There was no question of deliberately bombing built up areas but we knew that there was now as you say his term collateral. We knew that built up areas were going to be hit. But the briefing was simply hit a certain factory. A main railway station. A GP — the head post office or some important communication centre. And when we came back we had to, they were asked, ‘Where did you bomb? And they always said the primary target which was what we’d briefed them on. ‘What height were you?’ ‘What course were you on?’ ‘How did you identify the target?’ ‘What was the opposition?’ ‘Where were the guns?’ ‘Were there many guns?’ ‘Where were they, where were they based?’ ‘Could you tell me where they were stationed around the target?’ And, ‘How did you identify the target?’ ‘And what was the navigation like?’ ‘What was the weather like?’ ‘What did you determine the wind speed and direction?’ How many, ‘What was the cloud formation?’ ‘How many, how much cloud was there in ten tenths, five tenths?’ Or whatever. And, ‘Did you see any aircraft shot down?’ ‘Could you identify them?’ ‘Where were they?’ ‘What time was it?’ And that was about all I think. So, any questions?
PL: Well, one thing that I always ask is how you felt Bomber Command were treated after the war? Do you have any comments you’d like to make about that?
HY: Yes. I think we became a dirty word. Nobody wanted to know us because we’d done some area bombing. Not, not personally. We knew that we were going to hit built up areas and quite frankly if we couldn’t find the primary target we used to say well we’ll just bomb a built up area if we can find one. And we would do that knowing that the Germans had started it by bombing Rotterdam and by bombing the East End of London fifty odd nights in a row. By bombing Coventry into obliteration. Incidentally, it’s a little aside, when I was in Northampton and they had Sywell posted, billeted out in Northampton with a very nice civilian family. They had a niece who had been in Coventry when it was very heavily bombed and she was staying with them at the time and we became friendly for quite a while ‘til I lost touch again. So as far as built up areas went we knew that the German Air Force had started indiscriminate bombing and our attitude was if we couldn’t find the primary target any built up area would do. We’d bomb any built up area irrespective of where it was as long as it was in enemy territory and it wasn’t in occupied territory which were, you know friendly territory to us. So that, that was the attitude we had about built up areas. There was two things we were, well the thing we were briefed on when we were sent on operations we’d got the primary target which as I say was a military objective — a factory, a railway station, a head post office. We got a primary target in the city. We got a secondary target. If you can’t find that one your secondary target is so and so. And failing all else your alternatives are what was known as SEMO and MOPA. S E M O and M O P A. Self Evident Military Objectives or Military Objectives Previously Attacked. SEMO and MOPA. They were the last resorts. And that was it.
PL: So, we’re just going to stop the tape for the moment.
[recording paused]
PL: Re-commencing tape with Harold Yeoman. So, Harold would you like to tell me a little bit about some of the operations that you were on?
HY: I think the ones that stood out in my mind very clearly were the trips we did to Essen which was the, the city where, in the Ruhr Valley in which Krupps Works was based. And that was the arsenal of the Nazi regime. And I did three trips to Essen altogether. Two of which were within twenty four hours which was a pretty horrific experience. We, the first one we got there at 11 o’clock one night and bombed. We think we bombed the primary. Came back again. I’d reported on the way in when we were approaching Essen I thought well there’s two fires going ahead of us. And I looked. We’d got to pick the correct one. And I worked out that we, we should go to the starboard. Pick the right hand one. That was the proper target. So we did that. When we got back we found that most people had bombed the wrong target which was the left hand fire which was further up the Ruhr Valley. Which was probably no bad thing but it wasn’t what we, the powers that be had said we had to get. So we, we discussed this over breakfast time the next morning and thought well that’s just too bad. We’ll, you know sometime we might get back there. And we thought we were going to have the day off today. Went up to the crew room and found that briefing was at 3 o’clock. So we went back to the, went to the crew room. We got briefed for Essen again and we had to be there by 11 o’clock that night. So that was twice within twenty four hours. And Essen was about the worst target in Germany apart from Berlin which I’d luckily never got to. And we were there within twenty four hours and got away unscathed apart from a few little minor holes. But we lost our own commanding officer on the second raid, Wing Commander Golding, who was a very nice chap. And a Canadian pilot whom I’d come with from Canada on the ship. Met on the ship and we became friends. Flight Sergeant Lowe. He was lost that night too. So we lost two in one night from, from 12 Squadron. Which was a bad blow but that was the thing that happened. That was the way it went. You just had to live with it and get on with it.
PL: And was the target destroyed in that instance?
HY: Well, we never, we never really knew until much later on because the only way we could find out was the, if they sent the, we just called it the PRU Photographic Reconnaissance Unit. They were unarmed Spitfires who went over at about forty thousand feet and took pictures and came back with the photos of the, the target you’d been to. But quite often we didn’t get to know. Occasionally we did, but that was very occasionally. The only, the only place we got to know first-hand was a, really it was an amazing briefing. Really. We’d never imagined that we’d ever get a target which was inside the city of Paris which was declared, virtually declared to be an open city which hadn’t to be attacked, bombed or hadn’t to knock a brick down. But we had a target of the Renault factory and that was in the, the southwest central of the city. The suburb of Billancourt. It was a night attack as all our raids were. They were all night. We didn’t do any daylight raids thank goodness otherwise the casualties would probably have been much heavier, probably Including myself. But this was a night raid and it was at low level which was an unaccustomed thing. We used to be at as high as possible. Usually eighteen thousand to twenty thousand feet was what we aimed at. We usually got that. Sometimes we got a little bit higher than twenty thousand feet but not much. It was a high rate of climb. Anyhow, the Renault factory had to be attacked at low level and it was going to be marked by, and it was marked by flares. A whole lot of flares which were laid by Stirlings which carried a big load. They were four-engined, and they carried quite a huge load. And the Stirlings kept the target marked by means of two rows, parallel rows of flares on either side of the target. All we had to do was find the flares. Fly up the corridor and find the target and drop your bombs and come away. And the opposition was absolutely nil. There was not a gun within range of us. There was one gun firing in Paris. In the, away to the east and it was firing tracer in to the air. At what we never knew. We didn’t care. It was so funny. We were just laughing our heads off at that. They were shooting at nothing and we were at the other side of the city. And we got absolutely no opposition. It was just like taking cake from a baby as they say. So we bombed at about twenty five hundred feet instead of twenty thousand five hundred. We were two thousand five hundred. The height you bombed at was limited by the highest capacity of the bomb that you carried. If you were carrying a four thousand pounder your minimum height was four thousand feet. If you were carrying a one thousand pounder that was your biggest one you could go down as low as a thousand feet. So we split the difference and bombed at two thousand five hundred. And as I say it was, it was just like walking down the street at home. Quite easy. And the target was put out of action for — I think it was nine months. Completely. It was. I’ve seen photos of it. I’ve got them in a book somewhere. And it was absolutely devastated. Unfortunately, we couldn’t help it of course, there was overshoot and undershoot and we killed two or three hundred French civilians. Which was regrettable but we got the message through to say, from the French Resistance to say that how much damage had been done and how many people were killed and said well it’s, that was war. And they were not happy to accept it but they accepted it as one of the risks of war. So these poor French people they paid the price of slight inaccuracies in bombing. Because you dropped your stick of bombs you couldn’t guarantee that every single one was going to hit the target. If you had a, you sometimes carried fourteen two hundred and fifty pound bombs. If you were dropping a stick of fourteen bombs and you were flying at a hundred and eighty miles an hour. Well you can calculate how far apart they were going to be. So if two or three hit the target that was great and the rest were overshoots and undershoots. So that’s about it.
PL: So did you know what was being made at the Renault factory? I mean —
HY: Yes. They were making wheeled vehicles of all sorts for the Germans obviously and to be used on the Russian front. And the Russians were, in those days were our great friends and allies. Supposed to be until we learned differently. There was only one thing they were, they are interested in, or were interested in, that was the Russians. They couldn’t care less about anybody else. Allies or not. But we didn’t know that at the time. Uncle Joe was Uncle Joe and he was great friends, you know. We were all pals together. So we were helping the Russians which we thought was a great thing. That’s what they were doing. Making wheeled vehicles for the Germans to use along the Eastern Front. And as I say production was completely stopped for about eight or nine months. Which is as much as you can expect.
PL: So were there any other raids that you remember Harry that, Harold, that you’d like to talk about?
HY: Well, the, the last one I did was to Cologne which was, I believe the last raid or the last but one before the thousand bomber raid in May of 1942. And that was the last trip I did to, to Cologne which was a brilliant moonlit night. It was a wonderful night really and the target was quite easy to find. We were routed to find the Rhine and we, once we found the Rhine and we flew down it and until we got Cologne in the sights and that was it. That was it. It was quite an easy, an easy one to find. And the trips to Essen were quite hair raising. They were very, very fraught because the opposition was so fierce. I mean it was, there were very few night fighters in those days. I only ever saw two and we got out of there quite smartly but the anti-aircraft fire was intense. And when you’re being shelled by heavy anti-aircraft shells and they’re bombing, they were bursting not very far away from me. You knew all about it. It’s a pretty horrifying experience. It’s one which I wish I [pause] it comes back to me now and again with great clarity. [pause] So that’s about all. Well, as I say at the end of a talk. Any questions?
PL: So, your, your — before you were grounded what was your last, your last trip out before you were grounded?
HY: My last what?
PL: Your last flight out before you were grounded.
HY: That was to Cologne.
PL: That was the Cologne one.
HY: Yeah. That was number fourteen I think. That was my fourteenth trip. And as I say I was being air sick. It started when, when I went to the Paris raid. That was the sixth or seventh trip. That’s when I started having this airsickness and it went on all the rest of the time despite the MOs pills. He said, ‘Well, this can’t go on. We’ll have to stop you flying.’ So, as I say I went to Headquarters 1 Group just as a supernumerary admin officer. I was given six months non-operational flying by the, a medical board in London. And [pause] I was ferrying. That was it. I went on to ferrying from, picking up brand new Wellingtons from a place called Kemble near Cirencester and flying them to Moreton in the Marsh where I was based which was an OTU for pupils who were going to North Africa to join the Desert Air Force. And we picked up, they would ring up in the morning and say, ‘We’ve got —’ one, two, three, maybe four, ‘New aircraft. Come and collect them.’ So the CO would say, ‘Right. You. You. You. Get in the, get in the Anson.’ Be flown up to Kemble and you would say, ‘Well, which one’s mine?’ ‘Oh, that one over there.’ You’d go there. The ground crew would be standing around, they’d say, ‘Would you just sign that,’ and give you a piece of paper. Signing for one brand new Wellington. And you’d get in on your own and just start it up and taxi out and fly back to Moreton in the Marsh and land. And signal. You used signal for transport. We had no radio. We were on our own. It was only a forty mile ride I think. Something like that. And we’d get to Moreton, I’d get to Moreton and signal for transport by pushing the throttles up and down a couple of times to full revs and that told them that you were overhead. You needed something to bring you back to the, back to the flight office.
PL: So were they, were they limited, was there limited equipment in them at that stage?
HY: No. They were fully operational.
PL: Right.
HY: And what —
PL: Apart from the radios.
HY: Well, the radio was there but you were flying. You couldn’t use it. You couldn’t turn it on or off or change the frequency or anything. You just ignored it. But they were handed over to trainee crews at this, this OTU who took the aircraft over and did a certain number of cross-country’s with it and they flew them out to North Africa. That was their first really long flight and it was a long flight. They flew to, from Moreton in the Marsh to Portreath in Cornwall I think. An aerodrome there. From Portreath they flew to Gibraltar. And from Gibraltar to Malta. From Malta to North Africa. And that was the chain that we were part of. Handing these brand new machines over to pupils who flew to North Africa with them.
PL: So Harold is there anything else about your wartime experiences that you’d like to share that perhaps aren’t necessarily to do with operations?
HY: Well, the thing is I still miss is being surrounded by people in uniform. I miss that very much indeed. Even to this day. It comes back to me very clearly at times. I wish there was a crowd of uniforms around me that I could just have a chat to. But incidentally I haven’t mentioned this but when I was sent in to intelligence at Linton on Ouse, the second or third morning I was there. Sat down at the desk. Desk here, telephone there, telephone there and another officer, intelligence office on my left waiting for the, a target to come through. And we had WAAF watchkeepers who act as, virtually they were virtually secret telephone operators. They dealt with all the secret traffic over the telephones can’t you. The second or third morning a WAAFs corporal came in, sat down. I thought I like the look of her. She looks very nice. And finished up dating her. Well, I didn’t date her. I went on a blind date. Somebody arranged a blind date. The girl who arranged it, the WAAF who arranged it said, ‘Would you like to come along?’ I said, ‘Yes. I’ll come along. Where are you going?’ ‘Oh, we’re going to the pub in — ’ not Doncaster. It was a town near Doncaster. Yes. I’ll come along. Who am I taking?’ She said, ‘Oh we’ll find someone very nice for you.’ And it was this WAAF watchkeeper, the corporal watchkeeper and we got on like a house on fire. We chatted away and came back together and I finished up marrying her years later. And that’s her on the mantelpiece.
PL: What a lovely story. So when did you marry?
HY: Well, I, we agreed not to get married until after the war. So I met her in — when was it? 1943 or ‘4.
PL: And how old were you then?
HY: Oh, in, well 1943 I’d be twenty two. And we got married in 1947. Yeah. I got demobbed in ’46 and by the time we got accommodation, that was the big problem, post-war accommodation. My parents and I had to search around here for it and eventually we got a couple of rooms near to where Bill lives now. And we then got, I told Joan that I’d found this and would she like to come up and have a look. So we had a look at them and she said, ‘Yeah. That’s ok.’ I think they weren’t very much. But we got married then. In Guildford where her aunt lived. Her aunt gave us a wedding present as a, got us married and reception etcetera. And I was married at Guildford. We settled down up here. But her home was in Worthing which was a long way but we used to go there on holiday. Spend half the holiday here and half down in Worthing.
PL: So you were demobbed in 1946 and you must have come out of the war thinking, what do I do now?
HY: No. Well I went back to my, my job.
PL: What happened next?
HY: Just, not far from here. A couple of hundred yards from here. I’d been an assistant at the time. Not an inspector. And I went back and just started to study and qualified as a weights and measures inspector and worked, as I say about three hundred yards from where we’re sitting in now. That’s where I met Bill.
PL: And then you’ve had, and that’s where you worked for the rest of your career.
HY: Yes. Yes.
PL: Just stopping the tape again.
[recording paused]
HY: After I was —
PL: Restarting the tape. Sorry Harold.
HY: Yes. After I was grounded my crew continued to fly. They did, I think it was one trip to Hamburg which was a successful one. They got back ok. They did the next trip to Essen. Again that was the bogey target. And they didn’t come back. And they’ve never been found. I’ve made enquiries from the RAF Museum. The RAF Museum at Hendon. And I’ve been over to Amsterdam. Got in touch with the people there who were very interested in RAF history as they used to hear us going over every night as it were. And see if they could do anything to trace them. They put me in touch with, with two people by letter and I’ve been in touch with them to see if there was any possibility of finding out what happened to my crew. But nobody knows anything. They just, they just went missing and they never came back. So all I can assume is that they were damaged in some way and they went down in the North Sea. And that’s the end of that story. No more I can do about it.
PL: You were going to tell me another story about coming back from the French coast, was it? And you saw some lights in the sky.
HY: Oh the glow. Yeah. The single glow. Yeah. When we were going, on the way to Paris we were quite low and just as we crossed the coast I saw a single light ahead. I reported this to the skipper who was flying it. I said, ‘Look. There’s a, I think there’s a fighter ahead. One. It’s a single engine.’ He, he’d got his eye on it and he said, ‘Yeah. I think it is too.’ So we flew on for a bit. I said, ‘We’re not losing him. He’s going the same direction as us.’ So he said, ‘Well, ok. Let’s alter course a bit.’ So we altered course to try and get out of his way and then resumed flying and he was, the glow was still there. In a couple of minutes I said, ‘Do you know that it is?’ I said, ‘That’s the target.’ And we could see the target burning virtually from the French coast. This was the one I’ve told you about. The Renault factory. I said, ‘That’s the,’ so and so, ‘Target. Just aim for that.’ So we just, we just went for that and it was. It got bigger and bigger and bigger. And we got there and we found the whole place was in flames. It was quite, quite an experience. I’d forgotten about that.
PL: Good heavens. And then just another thing we’ve talked about. When you were — leaping all the way back to Penang, you had an experience there where you were involved with a court case.
HY: Yes.
PL: With a local.
HY: Yes. A message came through to my CO. I was his adjutant then. And it came through and he came to me. He said, ‘Look they had the Judge Advocate General’s Department on the phone through our headquarters and they want three officers to sit on a court to try a local man who has been collaborating with the Japanese.’ And he said, ‘They want [pause] they want an army officer,’ who was in charge, a major who was in charge. ‘They want an army captain and they want an RAF officer,’ And he said, ‘You’re it.’ He said, ‘You’re sitting on the court case.’ So. It lasted about a fortnight. We sat there every day. We had to take it all down in longhand. Everything that was said. My hands at the finish were just absolutely useless. We tried this collaborator who was a chap called Carlile da Silva. He was Eurasian and he’d been collaborating with the Japanese and giving them information as to who the English sympathisers were and they’d be sorted out and taken away and tortured and killed and goodness knows what. And he had a very bad history like that. And of course after the war his number was virtually up because people came to us and said, ‘Hey. Get hold of Carlisle de Silva. He’s the man who was betraying you to the Japs.’ So he was arrested and put on trial. And it was very interesting, the trial. They got all the evidence from the various witnesses as to the connections with him. What had happened. What had happened to them. And we had to have, I think it was three interpreters because the, while the locals on by and large spoke some English, some of them very good English but the witnesses were sort of ordinary, ordinary Penang citizens. And some were Indian, some were Chinese and some were Malays. And we had to have interpreters for the three different. In fact the Chinese had two interpreters because some spoke Mandarin and some spoke, most of them spoke Hokkien which was the North China dialect. The North Chinese dialect. So, we had to have four interpreters to interpret the, what they were saying. Or interpret the questions to them and they would answer in their language and that would be interpreted back into English to us and we’d take it all down. And as I say the trial lasted about a fortnight and eventually we found him guilty and he was sentenced to a certain number of years of rigorous hard labour. Which I’m told involved picking up heavy stones and carrying them about twenty yards. Putting them down. Then picking them up again and carrying them back. Until they dropped with fatigue. That was the rigorous hard labour. No more than he deserved because most of them deserved to be put up against the wall but that wasn’t on the cards. But it was, that was an interesting experience being, there was a Major Blacklock I think was the chairman and there was myself and an army captain. The last morning I was a bit disturbed when I, when we were all the three of us came in and sat down on this dais with a desk and the public were admitted to all the proceedings. It was all open. And the last morning when we were going to pronounce sentence and telling him what was going to happen to him the door opened at the back and four or five locals came in and I just didn’t like the look of them. I thought they were pals of the defendant. They were going to probably throw a bomb or a hand grenade or something. So I reported it to the, the major, I said, ‘Look. I don’t like the look of those bods who’ve just came through the door, I said, ‘Can you do something about them?’ So he said, ‘Oh yeah. We’ll see to that.’ So he just got on the phone and the next thing we got a few military policemen came in and just gave them the once over and they were ok actually. They were just local civilians who, who had attended but they had a very suspicious look about them to me. So Carlisle de Silva got eight to ten years rigorous hard labour. Lucky to get away with it I think. But we couldn’t —
PL: Did you ever hear what happened to him after that? Did he survive —
HY: No idea.
PL: The —
HY: No. No idea. He just, it was published in the local paper. In the Penang Times Herald I think it was. I think I’ve got the cutting somewhere. All colourful stuff.
PL: Which leads us neatly to —
HY: Pardon?
PL: Which leads us neatly to your story about the filming of, “The Wooden Horse.”
HY: Oh yes. The local newsagent had an assistant then. A girl assistant. And I used to go in there quite frequently to get a newspaper, magazines or whatever. We became quite friendly and she knew, she was interested in in RAF wartime activities. And do you know I had long, long talks to her. She came here, had a cup of coffee. And when I watched, I watched a film on the box called, I think it was, “The Wooden Horse,” and to my astonishment one of the characters was my own flight commander from 12 Squadron and he was playing the part of the adjutant of a particular unit. And he was completely recognisable. I recognised him instantly. I said, ‘Oh that’s Squadron Leader Abraham.’ So I told this girl who had a very knowledgeable friend about film matters and he was a film photographer himself and he knew all about taking stills of programmes. So he got the still I made I got for her to tell her all about it. And she came and had a look at the, at the recording I had made and she said, ‘Oh, I can get, get a still made of Squadron Leader Abraham’s picture.’ So she did and I’ve got that on the wall behind me. So I’ve got my own flight commander in the room as it were.
PL: Did you ever find out how he got involved with that?
HY: Pardon?
PL: Did you ever find out how he got involved?
HY: No. I didn’t actually. He did change his name from Abraham to Ward apparently. I got to know that through a fellow survivor who I was very friendly with on the squadron who unfortunately lived in Kent. I’ve only seen him twice since the war. But we always talked about, you know the B Flight at Binbrook and Squadron Leader Abraham. He told me that he had a rich relative, an aunt I think who said she would leave him quite a lot of money as long as he changed his name to hers. And he changed his name to Ward. So he became Squadron Leader Ward. But he was from, I think it was Kidderminster. I never saw him after the war at all but I met this friend of mine from B Flight. He was an observer in, in Abraham’s crew actually. Eric [Foynet?] I met, met him a couple of times or three times since the war, in London and I’ve lost touch with him now. I think he must have died. He was a bit older than me. But a very good friend of him. And that’s about it.
PL: Well, Harold, thank you so much for sharing your fascinating stories with us.
HY: I’m glad you found it so. It was quite ordinary to me but obviously to someone else it might be more interesting than I found it.
PL: Extraordinary. Thank you very much indeed.
HY: Oh, you’re very very welcome. I’m glad to have been of help.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AYeomanHT161013
Title
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Interview with Harold Yeoman
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:11:49 audio recording
Creator
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Pam Locker
Date
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2016-10-13
Description
An account of the resource
Harold Yeoman volunteered for the RAF hoping to become an air gunner and was surprised to find he would be trained as a pilot. He describes a crash landing in a Wellington returning from an operation to Cherbourg and being sent to Essen twice within twenty four hours. After several operations with 12 Squadron he was removed from operational flying due to air sickness and became a ferry pilot. His original crew went on to do more operations without him before they were lost.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
France
Germany
Great Britain
India
England--Lincolnshire
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
France--Paris
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Essen
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-12-24
1942
1943
1944
12 Squadron
76 Squadron
78 Squadron
90 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
crash
crewing up
Flying Training School
ground personnel
Harvard
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
love and romance
medical officer
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
pilot
promotion
RAF Bassingbourn
RAF Kemble
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Sywell
RAF Torquay
RAF Tuddenham
recruitment
sport
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/191/3591/LOHaraHF655736v1.1.pdf
557abec419df40658803dece8c9dfd75
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
O'Hara, Herbert
Paddy O'Hara
H F O'Hara
Description
An account of the resource
59 items. The collection concerns the wartime career of Flight Sergeant Herbert Frederick O'Hara (1917 – 1968, 655736, 195482 Royal Air Force). Herbert O'Hara served on 12 Squadron at RAF Wickenby between February and May 1944. His aircraft was shot down over France in May 1944 and he evaded until he was liberated in September 1944. He was then commissioned. The collection contains service records and two logbooks, notification of him missing as well as correspondence from and photographs of French people who helped him evade. In addition there is an account of travelling across the Atlantic for flying training in Florida as well as notes from his aircrew officers course at RAF Credenhill. Finally there are a number of target and reconnaissance photographs and six paintings.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Brian O'Hara and catalogued by Nigel Huckins and IBCC staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-11-21
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
O'Hara, HF
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/.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
France
Germany
Poland
Wales
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
England--Lincolnshire
England--Staffordshire
England--Suffolk
France--Nord-Pas-de-Calais
France--Lyon
France--Mailly-le-Camp
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Friedrichshafen
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Stuttgart
Poland--Gdynia
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Title
A name given to the resource
Herbert O'Hara's South African Air Force observers or air gunners log book
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
LOHaraHF655736v1
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
South African Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1944-02-25
1944-02-26
1944-03-01
1944-03-02
1944-03-15
1944-03-16
1944-03-18
1944-03-19
1944-04-09
1944-04-10
1944-04-11
1944-04-20
1944-04-21
1944-04-22
1944-04-23
1944-04-24
1944-04-25
1944-04-26
1944-04-27
1944-04-28
1944-04-30
1944-05-01
1944-05-02
1944-05-03
1944-05-04
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Log book for Sergeant Herbert O'Hara from 7 November 1942 to 9 September 1962. He was stationed with 12 Squadron at RAF Wickenby, where he flew Lancasters as navigator. The log book shows 14 night operations over France and Germany, with one to Poland. Targets were: Augsburg, Aulnoye, Berlin, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Essen, Frankfurt, Friedrichshafen, Gdynia, Karlsruhe, Lyon, Mailly-le-Camp, Mantenon, Stuttgart. His pilot on operations was Flying Officer Maxwell. The log book is noted DID NOT RETURN beside the last operational flight. It is subsequently noted in Sgt O'Hara's hand that his aircraft was shot down leaving the vicinity of Mailley-le-Camp on 3 May 1944, abandoned by the crew, and that he was in France for 4 months before being liberated and flown home by the Air Transport Auxillary on 3 September 1944. He was subsequently posted to Advanced Flying Units and Flying Schools until finishing in 1962.
12 Squadron
1657 HCU
26 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Bombing of Mailly-le-Camp (3/4 May 1944)
C-47
Dominie
evading
Heavy Conversion Unit
killed in action
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lancaster Mk 3
Lincoln
missing in action
navigator
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
prisoner of war
RAF Binbrook
RAF Feltwell
RAF Halfpenny Green
RAF Llandwrog
RAF Penrhos
RAF St Mawgan
RAF Stradishall
RAF Wickenby
RAF Wing
shot down
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/295/3615/AWallerT151027.2.mp3
fabda2f9ca0e4a33deecf28b4415ef22
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Waller, Tom
Tom Waller
T Waller
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Corporal Thomas Waller (- 2018, 1096366 Royal Air Force) a memoir and photographs. Tom Waller was a fitter/armourer with 138, 109 and 156 Squadrons and served at RAF Stradisall, RAF Wyton, RAF Warboys, and RAF Upward.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Thomas Waller and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-27
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Waller, T
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: So this is an interview with Thomas Waller. It’s at his house in Swanland. It’s the 27th of the 10th 2015. Approximately 10 past 10. My name is Dan Ellin and this is an interview for the International Bomber Command Digital Archive. So Mr Waller could you please tell me what you did before the war and before you joined the RAF?
TW: I left school when I was fourteen. Worked on the fish docks. I left there when we came to Swanland in 1936. I went to work at the Blackburn’s which is now British Aerospace at Brough. I couldn’t stand being penned in there so I came and worked in the local village grocery shop. Wednesday was our half day so when I was in town one Wednesday I went in to the recruiting office and joined the RAF. I came home. Mother said, ‘Why did you do that for? You’ll not pass your medical.’ So I said, ‘Ah. Let’s see.’ So I went for my medical and passed A1. And she said, ‘Well you couldn’t have done.’ But I never found out why. So I joined up. Went in for MT driver but I’d joined up just at Dunkirk and they’d lost a lot of armourers in Fairey Battles so I became an armourer. Hadn’t the vaguest idea what it was – came home on leave, home and my brother he was a flight engineer. Ground crew. I said, ‘What’s an armourer?’ He said, ‘Oh guns and bombs.’ ‘Oh I don’t want to do that. I’m not doing that.’ He said, ‘It’s good pay. Good promotion.’ I said, ‘Money’s not everything.’ Anyhow, I went. Got on the course. And the lad next to me said, ‘Well, I don’t want to do this.’ So we filed up and down. Up and down. The tutor came around and said, ‘You two can stop messing about. Get on with it because we know you can do it.’ So we did. So we passed out flying colours so went out there in the armoury after it had finished. An officer come along and says, ‘Those whose names I call out please step forward.’ My name was called out. Go for fitter armourer to Credenhill in Hereford. So my mate said, ‘We didn’t want to do that, did we?’ I said, ‘No. But we’ll have to go won’t we?’ So we went and we enjoyed it and we got through that course alright and then I was posted to Stradishall. 138 Squadron. SOE Squadron. I wasn’t there very long because Tempsford was its main base and they decided to put all the SOE section together. So they transferred me to Wyton. But instead of Stradishall sending me to Wyton they sent me to Upper Heyford. So, when I got there they said, ‘Where have you come from?’ I said, ‘Stradishall.’ ‘Well you’re not supposed to be here mate.’ I said, ‘Well I have a railway warrant for here.’ ‘Well, we’ll fetch you up a bed for the night and feed you and see.’ I was there for a week and then they said, ‘We’ve found out where you should have been. You should be at Wyton.’ So they said, ‘Get your kit ready and come down to the orderly room tomorrow morning. Half past eight. We’re flying you over in an Anson.’ Oh, I thought lovely. My first flight. Here I go. I got to the orderly room. ‘You’re going by train.’ It’s got a snag. They took me to the station. Stood there. Thought got to get rid of him and make sure he gets on the train. So when I got to Wyton they said, ‘Where have you been?’ I said, ‘I’ve been at Upper Heyford.’ ‘Well what did you go there for?’ I said, ‘Well that’s my railway warrant.’ You know. So he said, ‘Well have you come through King’s Cross?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said. ‘Have you been stopped by the police?’ I said, ‘No.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘We’ve got them at your house looking for you.’ So I said, ‘No wonder my mother was agitated.’ So I settled down there and then, you know [pause] I eventually got to Wyton and the lads said, ‘Oh you’re our new armourer are you?’ So, I said, ‘Yes sir.’ They said, ‘Right.’ So we got settled in. Got working on the aircraft and then came home on leave. Got back off leave. Just got to the guard room and there was a terrific explosion. All the people came out the guardroom, the guard chaps. There’d been an explosion there, hadn’t there. Now had I been, not been on leave I wouldn’t be here now. So I’m one of the lucky ones and the billets at night with all the empty beds. It was really horrible to see it, you know. So we plodded on. Carried on. And then I was transferred from Wyton to [pause] from Stradishall. I went to Wyton and from Wyton I went to Warboys. To 156 Squadron. Start of Pathfinder force. And then they transferred over to Upwood and I went over to Upwood. And then I was there till 1946 and I was sent to a satellite drome near Stratford on Avon. With a dummy four pounder in the bomb dump, fifty rifles in the armoury. I was a corporal and there was me and another lad there with nothing to do. So when demob come I was glad to get out. But if I’d been on a proper station I would have stopped in because I really enjoyed the life. So I came home. Went back to my job in the village. And then at that time I was engaged to a WAAF in London so I got a job with Barclays Baking Machines. Went down to their factory in London and trained to be a mechanic. Service mechanic for the area. So we came back home again. But my lady friend said, ‘I’m not going to Swanland to live.’ So that brought that up. So I did it but I had to give it up because I didn’t have the money to buy a car or a motorbike and doing all the villages. And I walked from Holme on Spalding Moor to Easingwould carrying a wooden box with all my kit in. And I were going, and I went to one place, Newbold. And you’re allowed an hour and a half to service a machine and when I got there I had a new blade to put on. There were only a bus in the morning and one at night [laughs] so I panicked. I got it on. So I gave the manager my address. I said, ‘If anything happens send me a telegram and,’ I said, ‘I’ll come over,’ you know. Anyhow, everything was alright, thank goodness. So, but it was having walking from one village to another and buses it was that awkward so I gave it up. And I came back to the local shop again. Met a local girl and got married. And then I went to work for a local multiple store. Cousins. Down in Ferriby. And I used to go into the shop on the corner, a big shop on the corner where, down where we lived on a Sunday morning to do the bale machine for him and sort his yard out for him. So one day he said, ‘Would you like to come and work for me? I’ll give you a pound more than what you’d do down there.’ A pound in them days was a lot of money. And I had four children then. So I said, ‘Oh yes. Yeah.’ So I came and I was there for nineteen years. And then he brought his nephew into the business and of course he fell out with everybody. Fell out with me. It was horrible to work in. I was fifty five then and I thought where I go from here. Anyhow, Everthorpe Prison was advertising for a canteen manager’s assistant storeman. So I applied for the job. Went for the interview and then I got a letter saying no. The other man was there. He’d been a manager but I’d never been a manager. Anyhow, on the Monday they rang me up. Was I still interested in the job? I said why. Well the manager walked into the canteen on the Friday dinnertime and walked out. He said, ‘I’m not doing this.’ So he said, ‘The job is yours if you want.’ So I did nine and a half years there and took early retirement. So then my hobby was decorating. So I had a little business decorating.
DE: Right. I see. So you, going back to when you were working in, in the grocer’s shop and you had your early day off on Wednesday afternoon.
TW: Yeah.
DE: Why did you decide to join the RAF?
TW: I just did it on impulse. No real reason. I just, I just thought I’d go, you know. My brother was in the RAF so maybe that was one of the things as well, like, you know.
DE: Did you consider any of the other services?
TW: No. Never. If anything it was always going to be the RAF. So I got what I wanted but I didn’t get the job wanted.
DE: No. Because you wanted to drive.
TW: I wanted to drive. Yeah.
DE: Why. Why did you want to drive?
TW: I was always interested in driving and I learned to drive when I was at the village shop so. But I never passed a driving test. Because when the war came in 1939 just, just as I was taking mine and I’d only done driving down country roads and I did my test in the town. And I’d never been in front of a policeman before. And in Hull, there was a street in Hull where it was just a snake of people because when we had the ferry you’d see people going down , down the outside to the ferry. The policeman was waving me on you see and saying, ‘You’ve got to go hadn’t you?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, They’ve got to move for you,’ you know. He said, ‘Well, your driving’s alright but you need more experience in the town.’ Well the war came so I kept my licence going and it became a full licence after the war so –
DE: I see.
TW: So me being a clever man, I taught my eldest son to drive. So I said to him, ‘Well we’ll finish you off at a driving school because I’ve never passed a driving test.’ So I got these people to come. So I said, ‘No. I’ve never passed a driving test. But,’ I said, ‘I’ve done my best so will you take him and finish him off.’ So they went and they came back and they both got out the car and folded their arms. He said, ‘You taught him to drive.’ I thought – here it comes. He says, ‘We can’t fault him anywhere. We don’t know how he didn’t pass the test. He said, ‘We’re putting him for his test straight away because he’s brilliant.’
DE: Wonderful.
TW: I always say to him now, ‘Now you didn’t listen to what I said to you? Did you?’ He borrowed my car once. He said he wanted to follow the RAC rally. I said yes. It was in November and it was snowy and icy. I said, ‘Go to Harrogate and Howard House but whatever you do do no go on the moors.’ ‘Ok dad.’ 3 o’clock in the morning a neighbour came down, ‘They’ve had an accident.’ ‘I’ll kill him,’ I said, ‘I’ll kill him when he gets home.’ Looked out the window when I heard this wagon outside a few hours later. Looked out. I said, ‘Look at my car. I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him.’ ‘Calm down. Calm down. Calm down.’ I said, ‘What did I tell you?’ ‘Well.’ ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘But when you was driving the car you were in charge of the car. You should have done what I told you.’ So every time we go up on to the moors there’s an archway. ‘That’s where I had my crash dad.’ I said, ‘Don’t keep reminding me.’
DE: Oh dear. So the RAF didn’t want you to be a driver. They sent you on the armourer’s course.
TW: Sent me on the armoury course because at that time – Dunkirk and we’d lost a lot of armourers on Fairey Battles apparently. So, and they were short of armourers so that was it.
DE: So what did the course entail?
TW: Well, it entailed making little parts for guns and that and then you sort of went on to turrets and how to look after guns and how to sort the turrets out and that, then finished that armourers course, called out outside. Then this officer calls through, ‘These names please come forward.’ So we stepped forward. We all went to be fitter armourers. I went to be fitter armourer. Should have been general if I wanted to go on bombs but I was just fitter armourer but I ended up doing everything. You know. Bombing up and everything. So [pause]
DE: And what was it like on an, on an operational station?
TW: Oh it was fantastic. The spirit amongst the lads and that. Yeah. They were brilliant. And the aircrew were brilliant as well. Especially if they’d been in a hangar for a service. You saw the pilot, ‘Are you going up for a flight? Can I come with you?’ ‘Yeah.’ So, the first time I went up it was in a Wellington. Well that was by mistake because it had been in the hangar for a service and they took it out on to the airfield and revved the engines up and then they usually took the crew down to the dispersal points. So I thought well I can go down. Get a lift back. So I went and I thought he’s revving his engines up. Well it was running up. ‘I haven’t got a parachute.’ ‘Don’t worry. None of us,’ there were two other bods there, ‘None of us have parachutes. Don’t worry.’ So any chance after that I got. So the Lancaster was next. So I said to the pilot, ‘Are you going up?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ So I went with him. So I was felt real happy and light headed. I thought oh this is lovely you know. I got a tug on my leg and this chap said, ‘How long have you been up there mate?’ I said to ten. ‘My God,’ he said, ‘Plug this into the intercom. Plug this in to the oxygen because if we come down quickly it’ll blow your ears out.’ Got on to the pilot, this, told him I was up there. So, anyway and then we got out over The Wash. I thought – panic. Only one engine. I thought, what’s happening? What’s happening? So when we got back I said, I said to the pilot, ‘How did you manage to fly on one engine?’ ‘Oh don’t worry.’ He said, ‘That Lancaster can fly on one engine.’ He said, ‘Guy Gibson’s done it.’ I thought, I said, ‘Thank God for that.’ I said. But he said, ‘I’d forgotten you was up there mate. It’s a good job the chappie saw. Saw your legs hanging down. Because,’ he said, ‘It put me in a spin because I could have damaged your ears if I’d come down too quick.’
DE: Where were you? In the mid-upper turret?
TW: In the mid-upper turret. Yeah. Lovely. Lovely sight from out there. And then when D-day started we was called out because previous to D-day – well about six months before we took all the front turrets out of the Lancasters because it gave them twenty five miles an hour more speed. So when D- day started we was all called out of the aerodrome to put these turrets back in again. Drizzling with rain. Just getting, it was just getting light. So I was out of the nose of the Lancaster guiding this turret in and the sky turned black. And all these aircraft come over with the white markings on and I shouted, ‘D-day’s started, D-day’s started.’ The most fantastic sight. So, we got, we got all the turrets put back in again. We had to – the time I was in the pilot’s cockpit. No scaffolding. Health and safety today would go up the wall because the only scaffolding they had was for the engine people. So you had to climb out over the and crawl along a little but to the turret to guide it in and check if you wanted. If anything had happened inside. Check nothing loose. It was moving slow. Check that there were no oil leaks. So you had to take the cover off and check the oil pipes and that and put it back on. They’d grab you by your collar and turn you around and you’d go back in head first.
DE: That sounds like a really interesting job that.
TW: It was. It was really good. I really enjoyed it. As I say had I been on a proper ‘drome when the war finished I would have stopped in. I did really enjoy it.
DE: What other sort of things did they have you doing then?
TW: Being a gunner armourer I should never have been on bombs. But I was put on to a bombing up crew. I mean I didn’t know anything about the fuses or anything but I was putting fuses in and then we got – when we got Mosquitoes they couldn’t get four target indicator bombs on. So I had to shorten the tails till we could get four target indicator bombs on. So we got that sorted out.
DE: What were target indicator bombs like then?
TW: They were, well I think they were about two hundred and fifty pounds and that and they had about a hundred candles in. So when it dropped all the candles came out and should have burned but they didn’t. But we’d be, we got pressed for – Professor Cox came down and we helped him to perfect this so that when they dropped if they snapped everything burned. So we used to go to Thetford Forest. Got it on to a Lancaster. Go to Thetford Forest. Wait for it to be dropped. Go and see. Our fourth attempt was a successful attempt so we achieved something.
DE: So did you have four different prototypes then? Is that how it, how it worked?
TW: Yeah. You did one and put it to one side. Then marked it number one. Then number two, number three, number four. And of course when number four dropped it cracked but with having the metal rods down the cap it didn’t – it didn’t snap the rods. So it all burned when it fell.
DE: I see.
TW: Yeah. So, so we was coming back from Thetford when the war finished, one time, we said, ‘What’s everybody cheering for?’ You know. We stopped and asked somebody. ‘Well the war’s over.’ So that was nice surprise for us coming back again.
DE: So what were the conditions like on the stations that you were working on?
TW: The worst one was Stradishall because it wasn’t a proper ablutions. It was more open than that. Very basic. But the rest of them were fantastic. Beautiful toilets and showers and everything. And the barracks were good as well. There was, you used to get each station I’d been on after that there were the parade ground and then there was four blocks at each corner of the parade ground. Four blocks of houses. For people, for the crews. The airmen to be in. So then you went off to your, on to the ‘drome and then you went on to your armoury and did your business.
DE: Right. So could you describe a typical working day then for me?
TW: We’d have breakfast and then start about 8 o’clock and you’d sort of check your turrets over and then go and have your dinner and then come back. And if there ops on you would, I would be bombing up which I shouldn’t have been and then you stood there for them to go off and if you was conscientious you were there for when they came back again. But that was the worst part. Waiting for them to come back again. ‘Cause you would think if yours was the last one in and it hadn’t arrived. You’d say, well there was another one to come in yet? Another one to come in yet? And he’d come limping in. Probably be shot up a bit and a bit of damage on the wings and that. Our aircrew were good. They never made any bones or anything if they were hurt or anything. Because one day we had the Americans come in. The fighters shot the ‘drome up right down the runway. Then the B17 came in. Got out, ‘Where’s the blood wagon? Where’s the blood wagon?’ Kissing the ground. Pathetic, absolutely pathetic. My brother, my brother was all for, all for the Americans. I said, ‘Well, you can have them. You can go over there and live with them.’ I said, ‘From what I’ve seen of them I think they’re pathetic.’ Then we used to go to the pictures in Huntingdon. We was coming out one day and Clark Gable, the film star, was walking in. Oh there’s Clark Gable there. With it being Americans there you see. Huntingdon was the nearest with a cinema so they used to come there.
DE: So what other things did you do when you had an evening off then?
TW: Well, when I had an evening off we, sometimes my mate and I would go right around the villages and then we got to this little village of Benwick. So we stopped and went in to the pub and got a drink and went outside at the back because they had a lovely bowling green at the back. And we sat and there was a couple sat next to us. So they asked, ‘Are you from the local ‘drome?’ So I said, ‘Yes.’ They said, ‘Would you like a game of bowls?’ So I said, ‘Oh I’ve never played bowls.’ My mate said, ‘Oh come.’ We won them [laughs] and so they said, ‘Are you sure you’ve never played before?’ So I said, ‘No.’ I said. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘You’ve managed to get the right bias on the bowls because you managed to get them through, you know.’ So, anyhow they invited us over to, for supper. And we used to go over regular and they had two boys and a girl. Now, the girl she’s what, she’ll be in her seventies now. We’re still in contact with one another. I made her a doll’s bed. She had two boys. Her boys had boys but she’s still got the bed. She said, ‘I might get a great granddaughter one day so I’ll pass it on to her.’ So we were regularly in contact with her because the family were fantastic to go to. You come home on leave, ‘Are you going on leave?’ He said. ‘I’ll come around night before and we’ll give you some eggs.’ Come home with some eggs. And sometimes you’d come home with a chicken. My mother didn’t know she were born. When I was going with a WAAF in the telephone exchange and they used to cook for themselves so if they got kidneys and I was coming home on leave they‘d give me the kidneys because they never ate them.
DE: Right.
TW: So mother would have my kidneys which was a luxury in them days. Couldn’t get them from the butcher and that. So she did well did my mother with eggs and that. But my brother was a rogue. I came, on the first leave I came home on leave he was home on leave. So, I gave my mother my ration card and the money. She said, ‘What’s this?’ I said, ‘Well, my ration money.’ So she said, ‘Well Maurice never give me it.’ Give it me back. And do you know what he said? ‘It’s something that’s just started.’
DE: Oh. I see.
TW: I said, ‘No. It’s been going on since you’ve been in the forces so don’t talk daft.’ But her blue eyed boy could do no wrong could my eldest brother.
DE: And what was – what was he? Did you say he was –?
TW: He was an engineer but he had a painting and decorating business before the war.
DE: Right.
TW: But he was stupid. Get a lad to. Employed a lad to work when he should be working himself. And of course when the war started his business flopped because he had a load of credit. So after the war my mother said, ‘If anybody asks where Maurice is you don’t know.’ He went into partnership with a chap and I used to work with a chap at the bottom of the road here and his partner used to come to me for a box of matches and look at me because before the war I didn’t wear glasses. After the war I were wearing glasses. He’d look at me and he’d go outside and he’d be pondering. And he came every week. I thought well I know who you are mate but I’m not going to make myself known to you [laughs] Oh dear. So those were the days.
DE: You, you mentioned a bit earlier on about an, about an explosion.
TW: Yeah. That must, must have been when they were bombing up. Because I was coming back off leave so it had to be an evening one. And I just got through the gate and there was this terrific explosion. And the chap said, ‘By. Something’s gone up there.’ You know. So the next day we had to go out on to the drome. Looking in the crater. See if we could find anything. And three Lancasters looked like they’d been made of corrugated iron. All, every bit of them but I don’t know, as far as I can remember I don’t think the tyres had gone down. In the crater you couldn’t find a thing. And the only funeral from there was a WAAF driver. And she was stood at one of the Lancasters with a crew wagon and she was the only one that was killed. She was buried in Bransby churchyard.
DE: I see. And what had happened? Did you ever find out?
TW: All I can think of – it was a barometric fuse. ‘Cause they were very delicate and if they got knocked they could have gone off. And we had a lad from London and I don’t know how he became an armourer because he was thick. And he wasn’t in the billet at night so two of us said, ‘I wonder if it’s him.’ Tried to tighten it up and hit it with a hammer. ‘Cause if he had have done it would have gone off, you know. Because it was the only explanation we could think of ‘cause it couldn’t have gone up otherwise. But never did find out really. There was nothing to piece together to sort things out.
DE: Right. How did that make you feel when you were loading up the bombs?
TW: It didn’t bother me. You don’t. You don’t feel fear. I mean when you’re sat on top of the Lancaster you don’t think about falling off. In them days you didn’t have any fear in you. You was, you was bravado, you know. Fearless. No. It was a good job. I enjoyed it.
DE: How many people worked in the team that were bombing up these aircraft?
TW: It would be about four. It would be one upstairs winding the winch. Two or three downstairs. Especially if it’s putting the four thousand pounder on. To guide it so that it didn’t swing. Otherwise three could have done it because one upstairs doing the and the other two just guiding the bomb up till it got in to, as far as it could get. Until it go into its – I forget what they call it now. It’s anchorage.
DE: Right.
TW: Yeah. But Mosquitoes were the worst ones to do. Mosquitoes were the worst ones to do because you had to get in the back and wind the winch. Nearly crippled you.
DE: This was, this was by hand.
TW: All by hand. Yeah.
DE: Right.
TW: Everything was done by hand. Even the winches in the, winching them up in to the Lancasters. All hand winches. We weren’t modernised technically in them days.
DE: So it was quite hard physical work as well.
TW: It was. Yeah. But it didn’t bother you. You just took it as part of your – what you had to do and you just, you didn’t think about it. It was a job to do and you did it and enjoyed it. I enjoyed it anyhow so.
DE: Did you have any particular friends on any of the stations?
TW: One friend. But we lost contact after the war but we used to go out when we had time off on night time. We used to go out and cycle around the villages and as I say, going to Benwick. This couple. But that was the only one I had. But, I mean, in the group, the armourers, we were all friends and that. But you see you all go your separate ways and your lives change when you go into Civvy Street.
DE: Sure. Yeah.
TW: So you’ve got to adapt.
DE: What about the WAAF? Did you have anything to do with, with them?
TW: Well we’re still, we got engaged. We were still engaged when the war finished. And she came down for a holiday and she said [pause] I’d arranged for take her to see Richard Tauber in Old Chelsea. At the theatre. So we went there and when we came back there used to be an old man sat outside the Station Hotel. And I used to always give him a coin when I passed through. He was a really nice fella. And when, getting off the bus I wanted a halfpenny change but she wouldn’t get off the bus until the conductor come downstairs and give me a halfpenny. Then when we got home she said, ‘What did you waste money for? Going to the theatre.’ I said, ‘Hang on a minute,’ I said, ‘I didn’t waste money.’ I said, ‘I treated you.’ I said, ‘I haven’t seen you for months,’ you know. I said, ‘Well what about you? I didn’t complain about you when you said you’d been here, there and everywhere.’ I said, ‘I’ve sat at home knitting a rug. I haven’t been wasting my time. But you’ve been gallivanting. You blamed me because you lost a pen because you had to write to me.’ I said, I’ve stood in – the girl’s on the phone, ‘Ringing you and you weren’t there.’ ‘I was.’ I said, ‘No you weren’t,’ I said. On Edmonton Green apparently there were four telephones and the girls on the exchange used to know me. ‘I’m sorry Mr Waller but there’s nobody there. We’re trying them all.’
DE: Oh dear.
TW: So I said I’m wasting my time. So it fell through. So we had a friend who’d been engaged and she’d packed in so she had, when you got engaged you could get dockets and units if you were going to get married. So we got our dockets and units so I managed to get a bedroom suite and two fireside chairs. I bought them. So it’s just before I went down to Edmonton. So I went down to Edmonton. She stood outside the gates of the factory, followed me home to my lodgings and then knocked on my door. And then they said, ‘There’s a lady at the door for you.’ I said, ‘There can’t be.’ She said, ‘Well she’s asking for you.’ ‘What the devil do you want?’ ‘I wondered if you’d like to take me to the pictures tonight.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘Clear off.’ I said, ‘I’m not taking you anywhere.’ She sent a great big Pickford’s van down to my, our house to pick some stuff up. I mean the fool. She must have been a fool because I mean, she didn’t know what she was going to send for. And my mother didn’t know anything about it. When this chap got to the front door. ‘What do you mean you –?’ He said, ‘You mean to tell me I’ve come all this way for nothing.’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what you’re supposed to be collecting like.’ Anyhow, I wrote to her and said, “Why did you send a Pickford’s van down to our house for?” I said, “You didn’t want a Pickford van. A little pickup would have been done.” So she wrote back, “What do you mean?” I said, “Well, don’t forget I paid for the bedroom suite. I paid for two fireside chairs. I paid for the tea set we had.” I said the rest of the stuff will just go in a cardboard box.” I said, ‘Just send for a little pickup.’ But you see her father was a police inspector and she thought it might frighten me a bit but it didn’t. So the Pickford van come. He said, ‘This is all I’ve got to pick up is it?’ She said, ‘Yeah.’ It was the same man that came before.
DE: Right.
TW: So he said my God. I thought I was coming to fetch a great big mansion box but a little portmanteau thing, you know. But she was [pause] I don’t think I’d have ever married her if it had gone on. She was a bit a one for herself. You know. Yeah.
DE: Sounds like it.
TW: And I was always wrong. And there was me. I had sore fingers from knitting. ‘Cause you couldn’t get canvas in them days so you used to wrap wool around a wooden ruler. Cut it. And then you got the right set. So you knit, put it in, knit a stitch and turn it around. Made some lovely rugs. I was very good at knitting. I knitted my first son’s christening shawl when he was born. Yeah. My sister was useless but I’ve got, I’ve got my mother’s genes because she was court dressmaker was my mother. But she would never help me because when I was growing up I wanted to be a dress designer. Oh no. No. No. No. I’ve dressed dolls as brides and they’re all over the world. I can make them ever week. People wanting them but my mother wouldn’t help me one little bit.
DE: Oh.
TW: And my sister couldn’t even, couldn’t even knit. It took her all her time to sew a button on. I could do the lot. In fact up until my children starting school I made all their clothes for them.
DE: Ok.
TW: Yeah. I was an industrious little lad. Used to have a nice decorating business. Go out at night decorating. And then when I retired I was with the prison service. They said, ‘Are you going down to London for a retirement course? They’ll explain all the things to do for getting a job and that.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘No. No. I’m not going.’ I said, ‘I know what I’m doing.’ ‘What do you mean?’ they said. ‘Well I’m going to do my decorating.’ ‘Oh, you’re going on this course.’ I said, ‘I’m not going on a course.’ I went on the course and I made twenty seven quid. I said, ‘What?’ Because I went to the cashiers. They said, ‘How did you get the tools?’ So I said, ‘I went on the bus.’ They said, ‘No. You went by taxi.’ ‘I didn’t,’ I said, ‘I went on the bus.’ ‘No. Taxi. You got a taxi back as well. When you go to London where do you get a taxi to?’ I said, ‘I didn’t. I walked.’ ‘No you didn’t.’ I said, ‘I walked.’ He said, ‘What hotel did you stay at?’ I said, ‘I didn’t stay at a hotel.’ I said, ‘My brother lived at Hatfield so,’ I said, ‘I commuted each day from there.’ ‘Oh no. You stayed at a hotel. Now that looks a good one. You stayed there’ And I thought, afterwards I thought well that’s all over the country happening. It’s an eye opener sometimes. And that was in the prison service. No. I don’t know.
DE: Strange.
[pause]
DE: I’m just having a look at my notes.
[pause]
DE: Was the, did the different stations feel particularly different? I mean you say you worked with an SOE squadron and you worked for Pathfinders.
TW: No. They’re all types sort of thing, you know. There was no sort of difference in it. The only difference was Wyton. The bomb dump was at the other side the main road.
DE: Right.
TW: But the rest of them were all on the ‘dromes.
DE: I see.
TW: No. But they were all the same, there was no difference in them. Just because they were different squadrons. There were no, the routine was more or less the same all the way through.
DE: Ok. And the target indicator bombs that you were experimenting with in Thetford. Were these the sky markers? Or the –
TW: The sky markers. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
TW: Some some used to drop them in the cloud. A break in the clouds. And others used to drop down on the ground. And they were in different colours so there was a Master Bomber up above directing so if Jerry lit a decoy they’d change the colour. ‘Don’t bomb on red. Bomb on green.’ ‘Don’t bomb on green. Bomb on yellow.’ I wouldn’t like the Master Bombers job. To be up there all the time when the raid was on. Circling around.
DE: Yeah.
TW: No. I enjoyed it though.
[pause]
DE: And you say you, you chose to be demobbed because –
TW: I chose demob because I was on a satellite ‘drome. I had nothing to do and you just got bored. There was nothing you could do about it so you were glad to get out of it in the end. But that’s to say if I’d been on a proper ‘drome I would have stopped in.
DE: Right. I see.
TW: But I wasn’t so –
DE: What was the demob process like?
TW: Dead easy. Mind you I’ve always had a query with it. My demob. Because the medical officer examined me. Went and fetched another doctor. And I wondered why. So I’ve now developed an irregular heart beat so whether that was coming on then I don’t know but I’ve had this sepsis into regular rhythm.
DE: Right.
TW: When I was ninety two. Put me in the cubicle. ‘My God. We’re sorry. We shouldn’t have done that to you at your age.’ The cut off point’s ninety. I said, ‘Well it’s too late now isn’t it?’ He said, ‘Well you won’t get it done again. It’s back to normal. Its back to its regular beat again.’ Yeah. So they can’t do anything about it.
DE: Did you have much to do with the RAF medical services?
TW: No. Never.
DE: No.
TW: I’ve never bothered anybody. British Legion or anybody. I’ve bought my own wheelchair. Bought my own mobility scooter. I’ve a step son won’t part with a thing. He had a leg off. We’ve a wheelchair in there. We’ve a zimmer outside. We’ve two stools. I said, ‘You want to send those back.’ ‘Oh I might need them.’ I said, ‘You won’t need them.’ He won’t part with a thing.
DE: I see.
TW: They’re stood there. Brand new.
DE: Some people are like that though aren’t they?
TW: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. You were showing me before we started the interview this research that you’ve been doing.
TW: Yeah.
DE: About the Halifax bomber crash. Could you tell me a little about that?
TW: Well it happened. We lived in Swanland. We came to Swanland in 1936. My parents left in March 1944. So I came back and knew nothing about it and then and a guy in the village wrote a book and there was a bit about it in there. And we were out one day with the church on an outing and yon side of Gilberdyke there was this model of where Halifaxes had crashed and there was two sort of intertwined. So I said, ‘Something should have been done about those two chaps who were killed in our village. Anyhow, a week or two went by and nothing happened so I thought I’ll take it on myself you see. So I thought he’s buried in Bury so he’s got to be a local lad. Got on to the paper and that. No. Couldn’t find anything about him. There was nothing about him at the cemetery and nothing about him at the War Graves Commission. No address or anything. So I got on to the records office and they rang me up and said, ‘He comes from Nottingham.’ I said, ‘Well, its seventy years since it happened. Can you tell me where?’ ‘Oh no. He came from Nottingham.’ So I wrote to tourist the board in Nottingham and they gave me the address of the radio station and the paper. The local paper were like the Daily Mail in Hull. They were useless. Two little pieces at the bottom. One, the modern Nottingham paper was in the Bygones letters in back of the paper. Two lines at the bottom. And the radio station at Nottingham were brilliant. They did a magnificent programme. But they rang me up to say would I go on the station but I was away on holiday and my son took the call. They said, ‘Well, tell your dad we’ll read out his letter out he sent us. We’d have liked to have him on it but we can’t change a programme now.’ So they wrote to me to tell me what they’d done and then [pause] I’ve got a blockage [pause] So, I got on to the tourist board and they said he’d come from Nottingham. So Radio Nottingham put a programme out and I heard nothing. Now, the other pilot, he came from Tottenham and he’s buried and I knew he was buried near his parents. Now, the War Graves just had the address of the church where he was buried so London University took it over from me but they couldn’t trace any relatives at all then. And then about four months after I started investigating I got a telephone call one night. ‘When are you having the service? I said, ‘What service?’ ‘For the airmen you found.’ I said, ‘I’m not because I haven’t found anybody.’ ‘He said, ‘I’m a nephew.’ He said, ‘We’ve just found out from Australia.’ I said, ‘Australia?’ He said, ‘Yeah. Eastern Australia.’ So how it got over there. Whether he’d been on the internet and that I don’t know. So he said can you arrange it. So I arranged a new service and about fifteen came down. They said, ‘Oh we owe everything to you. We thought he’d been killed over Germany.’ And they said, ‘But we’re grateful to you for what you’ve done. We’ll keep in contact.’ So Christmas come. I got a Christmas card. I’ve written letters. I’ve never heard a thing from them. Now, on the Monday night after it was on television a cousin who knew him – she rang me up. She said, ‘Oh I wish I’d known. I would have been there. Can I come over and see you?’ So she came over and we took her over to show where it crashed and the plaque in the church. And we took her to the cemetery to his grave. And then she said, ‘When was you born? And we found out we were born on the same day so it seems as though fate decreed that I should find him you know. His relatives. And we were keeping in regular contact with her. And we found out that he was with the 1160 Heavy Conversion Unit from Blyton near Gainsborough where he was killed. And so he was killed just up the road from where we live now.
DE: I see. And what, what was it that made you think it was important to tell this story?
TW: Well I think everybody who was in the air force should be recognised if it can be. And being out on this car ride and seeing that I thought well something ought to be done so that’s when I set about doing it. But I didn’t think I’d come against so many brick walls. But you do but you get through in the end you know. But the point I can never understand why his wife had him buried in Beverley. Why she told his family he’d been killed over Germany. There’s something funny there.
DE: Yeah.
TW: And you see all those there was about fifteen came. None of them knew him. There was his sister in law and his brother. Well not his brother because his brother had been killed. But his sister in law there and his nephews and that. But none of them knew him. Even his sister in law didn’t know him. But this cousin she’s brilliant. She keeps in, there’s a photograph in there of her and she always readily comes. What I want now when this gets seed I don’t know how they’re going to work it at the spire. In the plaques. But he’s Cumberworth and so whether they’ll put 1160 Conversion Unit in or not or whether it will just be a plaque with C’s on. Names of C’s.
DE: It’s alphabetical. Yes. I mean –
TW: Yeah. Cause I know a lady in the village she’s been down and she’s found her father’s name. And hers is J so I thought C must be up if J’s. J’s there.
DE: What’s there at the moment is 1 Group and 5 Group.
TW: Oh he must have been in one of them. She’s got – they gave me their memory card to put on the computer and there’s a picture of her pointing to her dad’s name.
DE: Yeah.
TW: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. So I think this gentleman will be on –
TW: Cumberworth.
DE: Cumberworth will be on the next lot of names that go up. Yeah. Yeah. Leslie Cumberworth.
TW: So if I can manage to get a photograph sometime I’ll get one.
DE: Yeah.
TW: I can get and get a photograph and send it to his cousin. She’d be really grateful.
DE: Yeah. I’m sure we can arrange that when the names are up.
TW: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. So you said earlier you’ve never joined any squadron associations or any, any groups.
TW: I’ve joined the RAF Association.
DE: Right.
TW: Yeah. But Hull’s useless. Right from the very start, useless. They said they were short of money. So I did a mini market for them and I raised five hundred pound. And the lady who did the catering she did everything. Paid all her expenses like I do. Pay all expenses so everything you get is profits. I handed that money over to a flight lieutenant in cash and I’ve got a letter of thanks for a receipt. Where did that money go? I’m sure they’d have sent me a receipt if they’d got the money –
DE: Yeah.
TW: But I didn’t realise it at the time. It was afterwards I thought about it you know. And then I went down and I said I’d organise a competition. They said, ‘Oh you can’t do it because you’re not on the committee.’ I said, ‘I’m not joining the committee because I know what would happen. I’d end up doing everything.’ I said I like to everything. So, I said so I was working at Everthorpe then so I got a thousand copies done. So I said if you give every member ten copies you get a pound from every member. That’s a tenner each. If I give you a prize for the winner. So I gave them a lovely Parker, Parker pen and pencil set. That got pinched. ‘Cause they said I said to them when I went down I said, ‘Well you’ve got a prize to go with it so,’ I said, ‘Parker pen and pencil set.’ But it wasn’t there upstairs in the office.
DE: Oh dear.
TW: So I said, ‘Well have you started yet?’ So they said, ‘No. No. They said, so I started, ‘Oh you can’t start it. You’re not on the committee.’ So I said, ‘Have you started that?’ So she said, ‘No, not yet but,’ she said, ‘We’ll buy a prize out of what we make.’ I said, ‘No. I’ll give you another prize.’ When I do a thing I stand the expenses myself. I always have done. So I saw her a fortnight after. Four pound. I said, ‘You what? Four pound?’ I said, ‘I’ve done it twice and I’ve made over fifty pound each time.’ Then in 19 what 60s 70s fifty pound was a lot of money in them days. So I stopped going then ‘cause my son has joined as associate members.
DE: Yeah.
TW: And my daughter in law. Well the third time I went my daughter in law won the jackpot. You should have heard them. ‘You’ve only been here three weeks.’ I said, I went to the bar, I said, ‘Is this the way they go on?’ He said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Well, I said we’re supposed to be an air force group,’ I said esprit de corps, where is it?’
DE: Yeah.
TW: I said we’ve joined and paid our money. So I went in one night and I sat in this chair and this woman tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Excuse me, she said, ‘That’s my chair.’ I said, ‘I beg your pardon?’ She said, ‘That’s my chair.’ So I got up. ‘Well it hasn’t got your name on it.’ So I said, ‘I’m not moving.’ And this was how good our club was. We had a trip to [pause] the memorial down in London. Castleford invited us back for supper. And they did a fantastic spread. Absolutely brilliant. So we invited them down to our club. I went down on the Wednesday night when it was due. There was only me and another fella in the club. The chap behind the bar, he said ‘We don’t usually see you here on a Wednesday night Tom.’ So I said, ‘Well, where is everybody?’ ‘Why?’ he said. ‘Castleford are coming tonight.’ ‘No they’re not.’ ‘Yes they are.’ With that the door opened. They all walked in. So I said, ‘I do apologise but I said, ‘You’ve picked the wrong club to come to because this is useless. This club.’
DE: Oh dear.
TW: I said, ‘I’ve just come in,’ I said, ‘And it’s obvious they’ve forgotten.’ So they had to dash out and buy pie, pea and chips. No. I wouldn’t join no committee. I used to run a coffee morning every Wings week. We raised quite a lot of money. Got some good, one prize we had was a Hornby Double O train set. Folks said, ‘We like your coffee mornings because you always have a good raffle.’ I said it’s the people that you know they can get something from me. Where you go to you know.
DE: Yes.
TW: Very generous. You know.
DE: So apart from that Association what do you think about the way Bomber Command’s been remembered over the last.
TW: Very poor. Very poor. I mean the spire when it was opened. Did BBC do anything about it?
DE: I think –
TW: No. Only local stations. But BBC, I mean there’s all the people around the country in bomber command. BBC should have been doing that as well. I think their biased.
DE: Why do you think that is?
TW: Well, why weren’t they there? I mean you don’t seem to get much about the RAF or anything like that on the BBC.
[pause]
TW: I’m an old man. I do things differently. If I get a letter I answer it straight away. Anything that I’ve done I do it straight away but today it’s so lackadaisical. I mean this cousin of the airman. I sent some things about the Association and some photographs. A month ago. I’ve never had, I rang her up and said I’m sending you this parcel. I’ve never had a telephone call, an email or anything to say she’s got it. I just can’t understand folks.
[pause]
DE: Hello. I’ll just pause it there a moment.
[recording paused]
DE: That’s fine I’ve just started it recording again. Sorry about the interruption. Is there anything else? Any other stories that you think you’d like to tell us?
TW: I don’t think so because we covered it pretty well cause my memory is not as good as it was and I get, I’m talking and I go blank.
DE: I think you’ve done very very well.
TW: Yeah. So but I think no I think we’ve covered it really well.
DE: Just one other thing I think you covered it in the phone conversation when we were arranging this. What do you think about the stories of people like yourself and ground personnel have to tell?
TW: Pardon?
DE: What do you think about the stories of ground personnel? How well do you think they’ve been remembered?
TW: They haven’t. Because somebody was saying if it wasn’t for ground crew the bombs wouldn’t have gone off. But we haven’t been remembered. You never hear anybody talk about us. We’re just a forgotten crew. But I’m not worried because I did my best so. They rewarded me with a mention in dispatches so I can’t complain.
DE: Oh. How. What was the story behind that?
TW: I’ve no idea.
DE: No.
TW: All I can think it was because we helped Professor Cox design his target indicator bomb and alter the tail fins for [pause] to get the bombs on to Mosquitoes. I can’t think of anything else that I’ve done that’s deserving of it. Because getting out on D-day I mean that was just part of the job I think.
DE: Yeah.
TW: So [pause] and my grandson has my medals and my certificate because he’s a keen, very keen on what his granddad’s done. So he said, ‘Can I have your medals granddad.’ So I said, ‘Yeah. You can have that as well.’
DE: That’s wonderful.
TW: Because I know you’ll look after them.
DE: Yeah.
TW: So this is I’ll be able to tell my son. Show his photograph of his granddad and what he’s done. And he’s got my war memoir so he’s got that so. So I’ve got something to show him when he grows up.
DE: Wonderful. Right. So I’ll press pause there and thank you very very much.
TW: Pleasure.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Thomas Waller
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-25
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWallerT151027
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
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.hh:mm:ss
Format
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00:56:09 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Thomas Waller volunteered for the Royal Air Force and hoped to be a driver. However, he undertook training as an armourer and was based initially at the Special Operations Executive 138 Squadron. He was posted to RAF Stradishall, RAF Wyton and RAF Warboys. He returned from leave on one occasion and had just arrived back on the station when a massive explosion occured. He helped to develop and test target indicators with Professor Cox. He recently undertook research into the details of a Halifax crash to make sure the airmen were remembered.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Suffolk
England--Cambridgeshire
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
138 Squadron
156 Squadron
bombing
bombing up
crash
final resting place
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Lancaster
memorial
military living conditions
Mosquito
Pathfinders
RAF Stradishall
RAF Upwood
RAF Warboys
RAF Wyton
sanitation
Special Operations Executive
target indicator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/178/5757/LBriggsR1893726v1.1.pdf
d1312b0386b0e78b8ed0110246e7101f
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
Briggs, Roy
R Briggs
Description
An account of the resource
24 items. One oral history interview with Roy Briggs (1893726 Royal Air Force), his logbook, service material, training material, official documents and 12 photographs. Roy Briggs trained as a wireless operator and flew four operations with 576 Squadron from RAF Fiskerton. He also took took part in Operation Manna and Operation Exodus as well as Cook’s tours over Germany.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Roy Briggs 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
2016-01-28
Identifier
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Briggs, R
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.
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
Roy Briggs' flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners and flight engineers
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
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
LBriggsR1893726v1
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.
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Herefordshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Shropshire
England--Staffordshire
England--Suffolk
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Cuxhaven
Germany--Helgoland
Germany--Plauen
Netherlands--Delft
Netherlands--Rotterdam
Netherlands--Valkenburg (South Holland)
Wales--Gwynedd
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.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1945-04-10
1945-04-11
1945-04-14
1945-04-15
1945-04-18
1945-04-22
1945-04-29
1945-04-30
1945-05-01
1945-05-02
1945-05-03
1945-05-07
1945-05-16
1945-06-05
1945-06-30
1945-07-04
1945-08-15
1945-08-17
1945-08-26
1945-08-28
1945-09-13
1945-09-15
1945-10-01
1945-10-03
1945-11-07
1945-11-09
1945-11-23
1945-11-24
1945-11-26
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Description
An account of the resource
Navigators, air bombers, air gunners and flight engineers flying log book for Roy Briggs. The log book covers the period 30 December 1942 to 17 March 1947. Roy Briggs trained as a wireless operator in Great Britain. He flew four night time and daylight bombing operations and six operation Manna supply drops in April and May 1945 with 576 Squadron from RAF Fiskerton. His targets were Bremen, Cuxhaven, Heligoland and Plauen. His pilot on operations was Flying Officer Roberts. Aircraft flown were Anson, Dominie, Lancaster, Proctor, Stirling and Wellington. He also took part in Cook's tours and the repatriation of troops from Italy as part of Operation Dodge.
138 Squadron
156 Squadron
1660 HCU
30 OTU
35 Squadron
576 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Helgoland (18 April 1945)
Cook’s tour
Dominie
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
Proctor
RAF Balderton
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Catterick
RAF Cranwell
RAF Fiskerton
RAF Graveley
RAF Hixon
RAF Llandwrog
RAF Madley
RAF Seighford
RAF Swinderby
RAF Tuddenham
RAF Upwood
RAF Warboys
RAF Wyton
RAF Yatesbury
Stirling
training
Wellington
wireless operator