2
25
91
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/246/31394/LDenverI422844v1.2.pdf
ee6771b3f9282a13181a67a1a36ad1f0
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
Denver, Ian
Ian Denver
I Denver
Description
An account of the resource
Five items, Collection concerns Ian Denver (422844 Royal Australian Air Force) and contains an oral history interview, extracts from his log book and photographs.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Ian Denver 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
2017-02-21
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
Denver, I
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
Extracts from Ian Denver's log book
Description
An account of the resource
Extracts from log book from July 1944 on No 1 LFS and 625 Squadron on operations flying Lancasters and Oxfords on beam approach training, and then onto 156 Squadron in September 1944 until May 1945. There is also a summary of operations flown on 156 Squadron, a list of the stations he served at, a Tiger Moth endorsement and Link trainer sessions. His first or second pilots on operations were Pilot Officer Maxwell, Flight Lieutenant Marvin, Pilot Officer Kelsey, Pilot Officer Pollard and Flying Officer Lambert. Completed 60 Operations plus Operation Manna and Operation Exodus. Operations 4-18 missing from logbook. This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form. No better quality copies are available.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
22 photocopied pages
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LDenverI422844v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
France
Germany
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Germany--Kiel
France--Calais
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Germany--Bottrop
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Essen
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Düren (Cologne)
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Osterfeld
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Mainz (Rhineland-Palatinate)
Germany--Wiesbaden
Germany--Goch
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Chemnitz
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Worms
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Halle an der Saale
Germany--Plauen
Germany--Potsdam
Netherlands
Netherlands--Rotterdam
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
Belgium
Belgium--Brussels
Germany--Lübeck
Netherlands--Walcheren
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Germany--Hamm (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Herford
Germany--Bielefeld
Germany--Bad Oeynhausen
Germany--Hildesheim
Germany--Kleve (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Netherlands--Arnhem
Netherlands--Hague
France--Bordeaux (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
France--Douai
Germany--Braunschweig
Netherlands--Uden
Poland
Poland--Szczecin
England--Yorkshire
England--Cambridgeshire
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1944-07-18
1944-07-19
1944-07-20
1944-07-28
1944-07-29
1944-09-15
1944-09-16
1944-09-20
1944-09-27
1944-10-12
1944-10-20
1944-10-21
1944-10-23
1944-10-24
1944-10-28
1944-10-30
1944-10-31
1944-11-02
1944-11-03
1944-11-06
1944-11-16
1944-11-27
1944-11-28
1944-11-30
1944-12-01
1944-12-04
1944-12-05
1944-12-06
1944-12-07
1944-12-17
1944-12-18
1944-12-28
1944-12-29
1944-12-30
1944-12-31
1945-01-01
1945-01-02
1945-01-03
1945-01-22
1945-01-23
1945-01-28
1945-01-29
1945-02-01
1945-02-02
1945-02-03
1945-02-07
1945-02-08
1945-02-13
1945-02-14
1945-02-15
1945-02-17
1945-02-21
1945-02-22
1945-03-05
1945-03-06
1945-03-08
1945-03-09
1945-03-11
1945-03-16
1945-03-17
1945-03-21
1945-03-22
1945-03-24
1945-03-25
1945-04-04
1945-04-05
1945-04-09
1945-04-10
1945-04-11
1945-04-13
1945-04-14
1945-04-15
1945-04-29
1945-05-02
1945-05-07
1945-05-10
1945-05-25
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.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
156 Squadron
1667 HCU
18 OTU
625 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Cook’s tour
Flying Training School
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
RAF Hemswell
RAF Kelstern
RAF Lindholme
RAF Sandtoft
RAF Warboys
Tiger Moth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1801/32064/MStewartEC87436-170727-02.1.pdf
ba150c34c0e26764b6fb67ddd8726a08
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
Stewart, Edward Colston
E C Stewart
Description
An account of the resource
272 items. The collection concerns Edward Colston Stewart DFC (b. 1916, 87436 Royal Air Force) and his wife, <span>Flight Officer </span>Ann Marie Stewart (nee Imming, b. 1922, 5215 Royal Air Force). It contains his log books, documents, bank notes and photographs. He flew 50 operations as a pilot with 1446 Ferry Flight and 104 Squadron. After the war they served in the Far East. <br /><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2013">Ann Marie Stewart collection</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2012">Bank notes</a><br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Paula Cooper and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-02-24
2022-06-21
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
Stewart, EC
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[front cover]
[page break]
1/9.
F/LT L.C. PIPKIN
BOMBER COMMAND
[underlined] LONDON [/underlined]
[table]
[crest]
[page break]
NOT P/WAR LECTURE – NO NEED TO GO TO A CAMP.
A TALK ON MY EXPERIENCES WHICH MIGHT HELP YOU.
[inserted] IF YOU KEEP FIT [/inserted]
FEEL SURE YOU CAN ALL EVADE THESE COWARDLY STUPID PEOPLE.
LECTURES.
IMPRESSED UPON ME:- GETTING FAR AWAY FROM CHUTE OR AIRCRAFT ON FIRST NIGHT.
BEST IS SAFE HIDING PLACE FROM SEARCH LASTS 0600 – MIDDAY OVER VAST AREA.
[underlined] STARTING FROM BEGINNING. [/underlined]
[page break]
[blank page]
[underlined] FIRST NIGHT [/underlined]
FIGHTER ATTACK
LOSING BOOT AND SEARCH LIGHT
SEARCH POCKETS AND £5
ALL CLEAR
MEETING SENTRY – RETRACE STEPS –
CROSSING FIELD – FARMER SHOUTING.
RHUR WIRE DEFENCES – CUTS – TREATMENT.
CLOTHS [sic] WET DUE TO DEW
CYCLISTS ON ROAD 0530 GREETINGS
[underlined] FIRST DAY [/underlined]
MAKING FOR WOOD AND SEEING TROOPERS
TO COPPICE
SENTRIES AT 0600
COMMANDER SHOUTING ORDERS
TROOPS OVER HEAD
THE SEARCH
15 HOURS UNCOMFORTABLE WAIT
DURING DAY SINGING GERMANS
UNABLE TO RECCO [sic] DUE TO SENTRIES
KNEW VILLAGE NEAR BY CHILDREN.
[page break]
[blank page]
[underlined] SECOND NIGHT [/underlined]
FIRST ATTEMPT TO MOVE (TROOPERS)
GET AWAY
BUILT UP ROAD AND DITCHES
FIGHT WITH TROOPERS
GET AWAY
DRY MOUTH AND EXHAUSTION (ENDURANCE TABLETS)
CAMP UP OTHER SIDE OF ROAD AND CAMP
[underlined] THIRST [/underlined]
HORLICKS – CABBAGE – DEW
LIGHTS AND FARMERS GUARDING FIELDS
UNIFORMED CYCYLISTS [sic] ON ROAD AT 0400
[underlined] SECOND DAY [/underlined]
BLISTERS ON FEET VERY PAINFUL
SLEPT IN DITCH UNDER TREE BY RAILWAY AND WOOD
THIRST AND MILKING COW ATTEMPT
RECCO SAW SENTRIES ON RAILWAY LINE
INSECT PEST
[page break]
[blank page]
[underlined] THIRD NIGHT [/underlined]
WALKING DIFFICULT USED HANDKERCHIEF.
CABBAGE FIELDS AND THIRST
GETTING TIRED USED ENDURANCE TABLETS
MAIN ROAD RELIEF TO FEET AND SEEING TWO UNIFORM MEN ACCROSS [sic] FIELDS TO HAYSTACKS
ATTEMPT TO GET WATER DOG
WATER IN CABBAGE FIELD
RUBBER BAG AND CHLORINE TABLETS
[underlined] DAY [/underlined]
SLEPT IN UNDERGROWTH
GERMAN TROOPS SINGING
PEOPLE WORKING IN FIELDS
NOTHING EXCITING.
[page break]
[blank page]
[underlined] 4th NIGHT [/underlined]
UNDER THE WEATHER
DIFFICULT TO WALK
PASSED TROOPER AND GIRL IN LANE
RESTED AT BASE OF HAYSTACK (ENDURANCE TABLETS)
MUST GET TO BELGE OR WATER AND FOOD
MEASURED DISTANCE ON MAP IC FOR POSITION
[underlined] 4th MORNING [/underlined]
IN HOLE BY BUSHES IN SAND OUTSIDE FARM.
OLD FARMER STARTLED
WONDERFUL FAMILY
(POOR) FOOD THEY OFFERED BUT THEIR BEST (BREAD UGH!!)
BANDAGE AND WASHED FEET
PROPAGANDA [deleted word] LEAFLETS
WIRELESS UPSTAIRS
COUNTING CATTLE – EGGS ETC.
ADMIRED MY FLYING CLOTHS [sic]
[underlined] FIFTH NIGHT [/underlined]
[underlined] ENGLISH SPEAKING MAN AND SUGGESTION OF ROUTE TO FOLLOW [/underlined]
SLEEP IN BED
[page break]
[blank page]
5th MORNING
LOUNGE COAT OVER UNIFORM UNDER SHIRT
CROSSING MAAS AND CYCLES TO HOLLAND
MEETING DUTCH FAMILY
MORE PROPAGANDA PAPERS
DIEPPE RAID
GERMAN SOLDIERS STAND AT DOOR
[underlined] 6th NIGHT [/underlined]
WALK TO ANOTHER FARM NEAR BELGE FRONTIER
INTERVIEW WITH [deleted word] GOVERNOR AND TALKS OF VENLOW – COMMANDOES – OSNABROOK – ROTTERDAM – DUSSELDOLF
I LOVE HITLER TALE
[underlined] 6th DAY [/underlined]
SLEEP WITH GERMANS EATING
BELOW
MEETING FRENCH PRISONERS
[page break]
[blank page]
[underlined] 7th NIGHT [/underlined]
WALK TO COLLECT BYCYCLES [sic]
MEETING SENTRY ON ROAD
CROSSING FRONTIER ON BYCYCLES
[underlined] IN BELGIUM [/underlined]
CYCLING WITH GERMAN TROOPS ON BYCYLES
LEAVING CYCLES AND WALKING TO AN ORGANISATION
TORCH SHONE ON US BY TROOPERS
[underlined] SEVENTH MORNING [/underlined]
TRAVEL WITH WORKERS TO LIEGE
[underlined] LATER [/underlined]
TRAIN TO BRUSSELLS
WORKING IN ORCHARD AND GARDENS
SEEING THE TOWN
JOURNEY TO LILLE AND PARIS
CUSTOMS BARRIER
TROOPS PUSHED IN TRAIN AT LILLE
FOOD AND BEER AT LILLE
(OVER)
[page break]
[blank page]
[underlined] PARIS [/underlined]
PROPAGANDA POSTERS
METRO – PICTURES – SHOW – VISITING FRIENDS
CHURCHILL – ENGLAND DAGULLE [sic]
COLONIES AND PROPAGANDA BY GERMANS
WIRELESS MUSICAL BOX
[underlined] CROSSING TO SPAIN [/underlined]
GUARDS RIVER ON FRONTIER
SHEEP WITH BELLS
KEEP FIT FOR THE JOURNEY
LIGHTS AS GUIDE TO TOWNS
CIVIC[deleted letter] GUARDS – GRAY UNIFORM – GESTAPO
DANGER OF RAIL TRAVEL
COSTOME [sic] OF PEOPLE – COAT SHOULDER – ADIOUS
BANANAS AGAIN
[page break]
[blank page]
[underlined] SUMING [sic] UP [/underlined]
RAILWAYS: CAREFUL OF SENTRIES
ROADS:- CURFEW AND GUARDS
FIELDS:- FIELD GUARDS - GERMAN BAD
[underlined] OCCUPIED GOOD [/underlined] – MAYBE!!
POLICE IN TOWNS:- OLD GOOD – YOUNG DOUBTFUL
INSTANCE IN PARIS
ON TRAINS:- CONTROLLER GUARDS USUALLY GOOD IF NOBODY NEAR
HELP IN TOWNS:- PROSTITUTES – ELDERLY WOMEN – JEWS
IDENTY [sic] CARDS: DIFFERENT IN BELGE AND FRANCE
[inserted] GUNNER:- [/Inserted]
CONVERSATION WITH BELGE PILOT:- STOMAR B.B.B F.F.F
HEIL HITLER NOT USED
HORLICKS – CHLORINE – ENDURANCE TABLETS
MAPS AND COMPASS NEED FOR ALL CREW TO USE COMPASS
NEED FOR: MEDICAL EQUIPMENT IN PARACHUTE FOR SORE FEET – SCRATCHES – INSECTS.
[underlined] SOAP [/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
Flight Lieutenant LC Pipkin's Diary
Description
An account of the resource
A diary kept by LC Pipkin and subtitled Bomber Command, London. It records his time after baling out of aircraft after a fighter attack. He managed to evade capture and reached Spain.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
LC Pipkin
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One handwritten diary
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Diary
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MStewartEC87436-170727-02
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Netherlands
France--Dieppe
Belgium
Netherlands--Venlo
Germany--Osnabrück
Netherlands--Rotterdam
Belgium--Liège
France--Lille
France--Paris
Spain
Germany--Düsseldorf
France
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
bale out
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
evading
Hitler, Adolf (1889-1945)
propaganda
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2619/45583/LHubbardGA519989v1.1.pdf
6216cd9fa3ea3da2d6bbf4695811e4e1
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
Hubbard, G A
Description
An account of the resource
One item. The collection concerns Sergeant G A Hubbard (b. 1919, 519989 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book. He flew operations as a wireless operator with 408 Squadron.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Robert Bell and catalogued by Nick Cornwell-Smith.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-09-11
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Hubbard, GA
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
G A Hubbard’s Royal Canadian Air Force Observer’s and Air Gunner’s Flying Log Book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LHubbardGA519989v1
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
G A Hubbard’s Flying Log Book as Air Gunner and Wireless Operator from 2 October 1941 until 17 June 1946. Initial training at No. 2 Wireless School, RCAF Calgary and No. 5 Bombing and Gunnery School, RCAF Dafoe. Further training at 24 Operational Training Unit. Posted to 44 Squadron as wireless operator for operations. 1943 saw posting to 14 OTU as an Instructor. Posted to Canada for one month before moving to 1659 HCU as a wireless operator. Second operational posting to 408 Squadron in October 1944. Posted to 242 Squadron (Transport Command) in March 1945. Final posting was with 437 Squadron (Transport Command) which ended in June 1946 when the squadron was disbanded. Served at RCAF Calgary, RCAF Dafoe, RAF Dunholme Lodge, RAF Topcliffe, RAF Linton-on-Ouse, RAF Stoney Cross, RAF Blakehill Farm. Aircraft flown were Noorduyn Norseman, DH Moth, Battle, Whitley, Manchester, Lancaster, Wellington, Anson, Oxford, B-24, Halifax, Stirling, C-47. He flew 31 night operations with 44 Squadron, his pilots being Flight Lieutenant Walker (26 operations), Flying Officer Pilgrim (1 operation) and Warrant Officer Sanderson (4 operations). His targets were Genoa, Hamburg, Turin, Mannheim, Nienburg, Duisburg, Gironde River, Essen, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Lorient, Milan, Wilhelmshaven, Nurnberg, St. Nazaire, Stuttgart, Gdynia, Rostock. With 408 Squadron he flew 20 operations (5 day and 15 night). His pilot was F/O Wylie. His targets were Cologne, Oberhausen, Dusseldorf, Bochum, Gelsenkirchen, Julich, Munster, Duisburg, Hagen, Karlsruhe, Soest, Osnabruck, Opladen, Troisdorf, Hanover, Saarbrucken, Grevenbroich. Last entry is a log of a flight in Concorde in 1983.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Alberta
Alberta--Calgary
Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan--Dafoe
Great Britain
England--Hampshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
Italy
Italy--Genoa
Italy--Milan
Italy--Turin
France
France--Gironde Estuary
France--Lorient
France--Saint-Nazaire
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Grevenbroich
Germany--Hagen (Arnsberg)
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Jülich
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Leverkusen
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
Germany--Nienburg (Lower Saxony)
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Rostock
Germany--Saarbrücken
Germany--Soest
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Troisdorf
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Poland
Poland--Gdynia
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Nick Cornwell-Smith
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-11-06
1942-11-07
1942-11-09
1942-11-13
1942-11-14
1942-11-20
1942-11-21
1942-12-06
1942-12-07
1942-12-08
1942-12-09
1942-12-10
1942-12-17
1942-12-20
1942-12-30
1943-01-08
1943-01-13
1943-01-16
1943-01-17
1943-01-18
1943-01-23
1943-02-04
1943-02-05
1943-02-13
1943-02-14
1943-02-15
1943-02-16
1943-02-17
1943-02-18
1943-02-26
1943-02-27
1943-02-28
1943-03-01
1943-03-02
1943-03-03
1943-03-04
1943-03-05
1943-03-06
1943-03-08
1943-03-09
1943-03-10
1943-03-11
1943-03-12
1943-03-14
1943-03-15
1943-03-22
1943-03-26
1944-10-28
1944-10-30
1944-10-31
1944-11-01
1944-11-02
1944-11-04
1944-11-06
1944-11-16
1944-11-18
1944-11-30
1944-12-02
1944-12-03
1944-12-04
1944-12-05
1944-12-06
1944-12-24
1944-12-28
1944-12-29
1944-12-30
1944-12-31
1945-01-05
1945-01-13
1945-01-14
14 OTU
1659 HCU
24 OTU
242 Squadron
408 Squadron
437 Squadron
44 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
B-24
Battle
bombing
Bombing and Gunnery School
C-47
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Ju 88
Lancaster
Manchester
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
RAF Blakehill Farm
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Stoney Cross
RAF Topcliffe
Stirling
training
Wellington
Whitley
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/759/17789/MCruickshankG629128-150428-01.1.pdf
88af35156645f0f986b15c6b1c90d57b
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
Cruickshank, Gordon
G Cruickshank
Description
An account of the resource
76 items. Concerns the life and wartime career of Flight Lieutenant Gordon Cruickshank DFM who joined the Royal Air Force in 1938. After training as an air gunner he flew 52 operations on Manchester and Lancaster with 50, 560 and 44 Squadrons. Collection consists of a 1956 memoir with original photographs donated separately, a memoir of his life on squadron from December 1941, his logbooks. a further notebook with memoir, playing cards annotated with his operations, official documents, lucky mascots, medals and badges, dog tags, memorabilia, crew procedures, as well as photographs of aircraft, targets and people.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Linda Hinman and catalogued by Nigel Huckins
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-04-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cruickshank, G
Access Rights
Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies.
Permission granted for commercial projects
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
G Cruickshank operations playing cards
Description
An account of the resource
52 playing cards listing 53 individual operations. The 52nd card (10 of diamonds) shows promotions from A.C. 1 to Pilot Officer. Operations 32, 35 and 38 are all listed on the four of hearts.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1942
1944
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
52 playing cards with handwritten annotation
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Physical object
Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MCruickshankG629128-150428-01
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.
France
France--Saint-Nazaire
Netherlands
Netherlands--Ameland Island
Germany
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Rostock
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Saarlouis
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Germany--Essen
Germany--Wismar
France--Le Creusot
Italy
Italy--Genoa
Italy--Milan
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Stuttgart
France--Clermont-Ferrand
Germany--Nuremberg
France--Toulouse
Poland
Poland--Gdańsk
France--Paris
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Munich
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1944
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
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
mine laying
superstition
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1391/24512/LDunmoreG635201v1.2.pdf
7c8da56611c596e153043f6ebb2f76fd
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
Dunmore, George
G Dunmore
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
2017-05-26
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
Dunmore, G
Description
An account of the resource
17 Items concerning Flight Lieutenant George Dunmore DFM (5601) who flew 45 operations as a flight engineer on Lancaster with 83 Squadron at RAF Scampton and then as part of the Pathfinder Force at RAF Wyton. Commissioned in 1944 he continued to serve in the general duties branch as flight engineer and then equipment branch until 1967. The collection contains his logbook, an account of a maximum effort operation, official documents and letters, a history of an individual aircraft, pathfinder certificate, recommendation for DFM, career notes as well as photographs and memorabilia. A sub-collection of 58 photographs of aircraft under repair or being manufactured in factories.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Louise Dunmore and catalogued by Nigel Huckins
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
George Dunmore’s RAF Observer’s and Air Gunner’s Flying log book
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
LDunmoreG635201v1
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
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
Flying Officer G. Dunmore’s RAF Observer’s and Air Gunner’s Flying Log Book, from 25th June 1942 to 3rd October 1943, recording operations as a flight engineer with 83 Squadron RAF, mainly as part of the Pathfinder Force. Aircraft in which flown: Lancaster I, Lancaster III. He was stationed at RAF Scampton and RAF Wyton and flew a total of 45 operations (44 night, 1 day) on the following targets in Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy and Poland: Berlin, Bremen, Danzig, Duisburg, Dusseldorf, Essen, Frankfurt, Genoa, Hamburg, Karlsruhe, Kassel, Mannheim, Mulheim, Munich, Nurnburg and Heilbronn, Osnabruck, Pilsen, Pointe de Coubre, River Gironde, Saarbrucken, Spezia, St Nazaire, Turin, Vegesack, Wilhelmshaven and Wuppertal. His pilots on operations were Flight Sergeant Calvert, Wing Commander Elliot, Flight Lieutenant Partridge, Squadron Leader Daniels, Wing Commander Shaw DFC, Squadron Leader Swift, Flying Officer Tilbury, Pilot Officer Davies and Flight Lieutenant Garvey DFC.
Includes several crew listings and various comments on operations, including: 'DIVE IN EXCESS OF 450 M.P.H!!', 'SOUND RECORDING MADE ON BOMBING RUN - BROADCAST BY BBC' (3/4/43), and 'THE GREAT TORNADO' (Hamburg 2/8/43).
This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form. No better quality copies are available.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Leitch
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Czech Republic
France
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Poland
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
Italy--Po River Valley
France--Gironde Estuary
France--Pointe de la Coubre
France--Saint-Nazaire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Heilbronn
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Mülheim an der Ruhr
Germany--Munich
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Saarbrücken
Germany--Vegesack
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Germany--Wuppertal
Italy--Genoa
Italy--La Spezia
Italy--Turin
Poland--Gdańsk
Czech Republic--Plzeň
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1942-06-25
1942-06-26
1942-06-28
1942-06-29
1942-06-30
1942-07-02
1942-07-03
1942-07-08
1942-07-11
1942-07-14
1942-07-15
1942-07-19
1942-07-21
1942-07-22
1942-07-23
1942-07-26
1942-07-27
1942-08-09
1942-09-01
1942-09-02
1942-09-03
1942-09-06
1942-09-10
1942-09-11
1942-12-08
1942-12-09
1942-12-20
1942-12-21
1942-12-22
1943-02-28
1943-03-22
1943-03-23
1943-03-27
1943-03-28
1943-03-29
1943-03-30
1943-04-02
1943-04-03
1943-04-04
1943-04-11
1943-04-14
1943-04-15
1943-04-16
1943-04-17
1943-04-26
1943-05-25
1943-05-26
1943-05-29
1943-05-30
1943-06-11
1943-06-12
1943-06-22
1943-06-23
1943-07-12
1943-07-13
1943-07-24
1943-07-25
1943-07-27
1943-07-28
1943-08-02
1943-08-03
1943-08-07
1943-08-08
1943-08-27
1943-08-28
1943-08-31
1943-09-01
1943-09-05
1943-09-06
1943-09-07
1943-10-02
1943-10-03
1943-10-04
83 Squadron
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
flight engineer
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
Pathfinders
RAF Scampton
RAF Wyton
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1647/26406/PHuttonGR20010003.2.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1647/26406/PHuttonGR20010004.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1647/26406/PHuttonGR20010005.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1647/26406/PHuttonGR20010006.1.jpg
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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
Hutton, George. Album
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. An album containing photographs of George Hutton's service and telegrams about his wedding.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-05-26
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Hutton, GR
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
George Hutton and Airmen
Description
An account of the resource
17 photographs from an album.
Photo 1 is a group of airmen arranged in five rows in front of a Stirling, captioned '199 Squadron Stirlings Lakenheath November 1943. Dad is third row up, fifth from left'.
Photo 2 is four airmen standing under the nose of an aircraft with a jester painted on it. It is captioned 'Achmer Germany 1945 Left to Right Chipy, Frank, Dad, Baron'.
Photo 3 is two airmen standing under the nose of an aircraft, captioned 'Achmer Germany 1945 Dad (mid upper gunner) and Frank (navigator).
Photo 4 is a pilot leaning out of the cockpit of his aircraft, captioned 'Achmer Germany May 1945 Chip the Skip (pilot)'.
Photo 5 is Chipy and Frank standing under an engine beside a propeller, captioned 'Achmer Germany 1945 Chipy (pilot) and Frank (navigator)
Photo 6 is Baron sitting on a propeller hub, captioned 'Acher Germany 1945 Baron "Shooting a line" . '
Photo 7 is of two airmen. One is on a ladder looking into the cockpit. The second is in flying kit, leaning on a propeller.
Photo 8 is two ground crew and Frank at the nose of a Mitchell, captioned 'Achmer Germany 1945 Two ground crew Alf and George with Frank (navigator)'.
Photo 9 and 13 are Chipy standing under the nose of his aircraft, captioned 'Achmer Germany 1945 Chipy again! (pilot).
Photo 10 is Baron and Frank standing at the nose of their Mitchell, captioned 'Achmer Germany 1945 Baron (bomb aimer) and Frank (navigator).
Photo 11 is an airman in the front of a bomber.
Photo 12 is an airman at the rear gunner's station, captioned 'Achmer Germany 1945 "The Baron of Leipzig" in office'.
Photo 14 is four airmen standing in a row, captioned 'Achmer Germany 1945 "The Boys" Hicky, Tommy, Baron, Nuts'.
Photo 15 is Baron standing amongst bombed buildings, captioned 'Achmer Germany May 31st 1945 "The Baron" "How I done it" Osnabruck'.
Photo 16 is a head and shoulders portrait of George.
Photo 17 is an almost full length portrait of George standing in a camp.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
17 b/w photographs on eight album pages
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PHuttonGR20010003, PHuttonGR20010004, PHuttonGR20010005, PHuttonGR20010006
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
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943
1945
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Osnabrück
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-11
1945-05
1945-05-31
199 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
B-25
bomb aimer
navigator
nose art
pilot
RAF Lakenheath
Stirling
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1877/37560/LBennettHW561480v1.2.pdf
a7714f75d3683d270584b511231d20df
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
Bennett, H W
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
2017-06-20
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bennett, HW
Description
An account of the resource
19 items. The collection concerns Squadron Leader H W Bennett (Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, photographs and letters. He flew operations with 88 squadron, as part of the Advanced Air Striking Force in France, and as a navigator with 97 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Roy Bennett and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
H W Bennett’s RAF Observer’s and Air Gunner’s Flying Log Book. One
Description
An account of the resource
H. W. Bennett’s RAF Observer’s and Air Gunner’s Flying Log Book, from 23 April 1937 to 14 June 1943, detailing training, operations and instructional duties as an Air Observer, Air Gunner, Bomb Aimer and Navigator. Includes bombing and photographic reconnaissance operations with 88 Squadron as part of the RAF Advanced Air Striking Force (AASF) in France 1939-1940, and later Bomber Command operations with 97 Squadron. Based at RAF North Coates Fitties (No. 10 Air Observers Course), RAF Feltwell (214(B) Squadron), RAF Boscombe Down (88(B) Squadron), RAF Acklington (No. 7 Armament Training School), RAF Evanton (No.8 Armament Training School). With 88 Squadron, as part of the Advanced Air Striking Force in France, he was based at: Auberive, Mourmelon-le-Grand, Moisy, Les Grandes Chappelles and Houssay. Following evacuation from France, bases are: RAF Sydenham (Belfast) (88 Squadron), RAF Swanton Morley (88 Squadron), RAF Coningsby (97 Squadron), RAF Lichfield (27 OTU) and RAF Whitchurch Heath (also known as RAF Tilstock) (81 OTU). Aircraft flown: Hawker Hart, Westland Wallace, Saro Cloud, Short Scion, HP Harrow, Hawker Hind, Fairey Battle, Douglas Boston, Blenheim, Manchester, Lancaster, Wellington, Whitley, and Anson. Various 88 Squadron targets with the AASF are recorded, such as gun posts, bridges, road/rail junctions, enemy troop column, convoy and concentrations. Records a total of 30 completed night operations with 97 Squadron. His pilots on operations were Flying Officer Riddell, Flying Officer Maclachlan, Warrant Officer Rowlands, Squadron Leader Dugdale, Flying Officer Rodley, Flight Sergeant Croppi, Flight Sergeant Crouch, and Sergeant Stephens. Targets in France, Germany, Italy, Norway and Poland are: Bordeaux, Bremen, Brest, Cologne, minelaying Danzig Bay, Duisburg, Dusseldorf, Essen, Frankfurt, Gdynia, Gironde, Hamburg, Kassel, Mannheim, Neustadt, Osnabruck, San Jean de Luis, Trondheim, Turin, Wilhelmshaven and Wismar.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Leitch
Cara Walmsley
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LBennettHW561480v1
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1937
1938
1939-11-30
1940-01-09
1940-06-06
1940-06-08
1940-06-10
1940-06-11
1940-06-14
1941
1942-01-09
1942-01-10
1942-04-11
1942-04-27
1942-04-28
1942-04-29
1942-05-02
1942-05-03
1942-05-30
1942-05-31
1942-06-23
1942-06-24
1942-06-25
1942-06-26
1942-06-27
1942-06-28
1942-06-29
1942-06-30
1942-07-02
1942-07-03
1942-07-13
1942-07-14
1942-07-26
1942-07-27
1942-07-30
1942-07-31
1942-08-24
1942-08-25
1942-08-27
1942-08-28
1942-09-10
1942-09-11
1942-09-13
1942-09-14
1942-09-15
1942-09-16
1942-09-17
1942-09-18
1942-09-19
1942-10-01
1942-10-02
1942-10-06
1942-12-04
1942-09-05
1942-12-06
1942-12-07
1942-12-08
1942-12-09
1942-12-10
1942-12-17
1942-12-20
1942-12-31
1943-01-01
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Norway
Poland
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Italy--Po River Valley
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
England--Northumberland
England--Shropshire
England--Staffordshire
England--Wiltshire
France--Abbeville
France--Aube
France--Auberive
France--Bordeaux (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
France--Brest
France--Condé-sur-Noireau
France--Eure
France--Evreux
France--Gironde Estuary
France--Loir-et-Cher
France--Mourmelon-le-Grand
France--Saint-Jean-de-Luz
France--Vernon (Eure)
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Neustadt an der Weinstrasse
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Germany--Wismar
Italy--Turin
Northern Ireland--Belfast
Norway--Trondheim
Poland--Gdynia
Scotland--Ross and Cromarty
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Poland--Gdańsk
214 Squadron
27 OTU
81 OTU
88 Squadron
97 Squadron
air gunner
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
Battle
Blenheim
bomb aimer
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
Boston
Lancaster
Manchester
mine laying
navigator
observer
Operational Training Unit
RAF Boscombe Down
RAF Coningsby
RAF Evanton
RAF Feltwell
RAF Lichfield
RAF North Coates
RAF Swanton Morley
RAF Tilstock
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/934/36457/BLovattPHastieRv2.1.pdf
295406378e70aa4d2aeb43baeaddc085
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Lovatt, Peter
Dr Peter Lovatt
P Lovatt
Description
An account of the resource
117 items. An oral history interview with Peter Lovatt (b.1924, 1821369 Royal Air Force), his log book, documents, and photographs. The collection also contains two photograph albums. He flew 42 operations as an air gunner on 223 Squadron flying B-24s. <br /><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1338">Album One</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2135">Album Two</a><br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Nina and Peter Lovatt and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-27
2019-09-03
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lovatt, P
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Hastie DFC: The Life and Times of a Wartime Pilot
Description
An account of the resource
A biography of Roy Hastie.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Peter Lovatt
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2003-10
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
United States
Rhode Island--Quonset Point Naval Air Station
Bahamas--Nassau
New York (State)--New York
Bahamas--New Providence Island
Great Britain
England--Harrogate
Scotland--Perth
Scotland--Glasgow
England--Warrington
England--Blackpool
Luxembourg
France
Belgium
Netherlands
France--Dunkerque
England--Dover
England--Grantham
England--Torquay
Wales--Aberystwyth
Iceland
Greenland
Sierra Leone
Russia (Federation)--Murmansk
Singapore
France--Saint-Malo
Denmark
Sweden
Germany--Lübeck
Netherlands--Ameland Island
England--Grimsby
Germany--Helgoland
Netherlands--Rotterdam
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
England--Lundy Island
Germany--Cologne
North Carolina
North Carolina--Cape Hatteras
Aruba
Curaçao
Iceland--Reykjavík
Greenland--Narsarssuak
Canada
Québec--Montréal
Rhode Island
New York (State)--Buffalo
Gulf of Mexico
Caribbean Sea
Virginia
Florida--Miami
Cuba--Guantánamo Bay Naval Base
Puerto Rico--San Juan
Cuba
Florida--West Palm Beach
Cuba--Caimanera
India
Sierra Leone--Freetown
Jamaica
Jamaica--Kingston
Jamaica--Montego Bay
Virginia--Norfolk
Washington (D.C.)
Newfoundland and Labrador
Northern Ireland--Limavady
England--Chatham (Kent)
Newfoundland and Labrador--Gander
Gibraltar
England--Leicester
Massachusetts--Boston
Egypt--Alamayn
Algeria--Algiers
Algeria--Oran
Algeria--Bejaïa
Algeria--Annaba
Italy--Sicily
England--Milton Keynes
Germany--Essen
England--Dunwich
Europe--Scheldt River
England--Sizewell
Germany--Hamburg
England--Kent
Germany--Stuttgart
England--Crowborough
Netherlands--Hague
England--Peterborough
England--Bristol
Germany--Homburg (Saarland)
Belgium--Brussels
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
Belgium--Liège
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Aschaffenburg
Germany--Castrop-Rauxel
Germany--Mittelland Canal
Germany--Aachen
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Neuss
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Hagen (Arnsberg)
Germany--Leuna
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Ulm
Germany--Munich
Poland--Szczecin
France--Ardennes
Germany--Bonn
Belgium--Houffalize
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Grevenbroich
Germany--Dülmen
France--Metz
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Zeitz
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
England--Dungeness
Germany--Mainz (Rhineland-Palatinate)
Germany--Wiesbaden
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Koblenz
Germany--Chemnitz
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
Germany--Worms
Germany--Pforzheim
Germany--Darmstadt
Europe--Lake Constance
Germany--Bergkamen
Germany--Dessau (Dessau)
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
France--Aube
Germany--Augsburg
England--Feltwell
England--Croydon
Norway--Oslo
Sweden--Stockholm
Czech Republic--Prague
Italy--Florence
Portugal--Lisbon
Monaco--Monte-Carlo
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
Netherlands--Venlo
Netherlands--Amsterdam
France--Paris
France--Lyon
France--Digne
France--Nevers
France--Lille
Norway--Ålesund
France--Saint-Omer (Pas-de-Calais)
France--Bailleul (Nord)
Belgium--Ieper
Belgium--Mesen
France--Cambrai
France--Somme
France--Arras
France--Lens
France--Calais
Germany--Emden (Lower Saxony)
Netherlands--Vlissingen
France--Brest
France--Lorient
France--La Pallice
Egypt--Suez
Germany--Berlin
Yemen (Republic)--Aden
Cyprus
Turkey--Gallipoli
Black Sea--Dardanelles Strait
Turkey--İmroz Island
Turkey--İzmir
Greece--Lesbos (Municipality)
Greece--Thasos Island
Greece--Chios (Municipality)
Greece--Thasos
Bulgaria
Turkey--Istanbul
Europe--Macedonia
Greece--Kavala
Kenya--Nairobi
Africa--Rhodesia and Nyasaland
Tanzania
Sudan
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Sudan--Kassalā
Eritrea--Asmara
Yemen (Republic)--Perim Island
Ethiopia--Addis Ababa
Sudan--Khartoum
Ghana--Takoradi
Libya--Cyrenaica
Libya--Tobruk
Egypt--Cairo
Iraq
Greece--Crete
Libya--Tripolitania
Tunisia--Mareth Line
Libya--Tripoli
Tunisia--Qaṣrayn
Tunisia--Medenine
Italy--Pantelleria Island
Malta
Italy--Licata
Italy--Brindisi
Italy--Foggia
Italy--Cassino
Italy--Sangro River
Italy--Termoli
Yugoslavia
Croatia--Split
Croatia--Vis Island
Italy--Loreto
Italy--Pescara
Trinidad and Tobago--Trinidad
North America--Saint Lawrence River
Newfoundland and Labrador--Happy Valley-Goose Bay
Bahamas
Florida
Italy
Poland
Massachusetts
New York (State)
Algeria
Tunisia
Libya
Egypt
North Africa
Ontario
Québec
Germany
Croatia
Czech Republic
Ghana
Greece
Kenya
Norway
Russia (Federation)
Turkey
Yemen (Republic)
Portugal
Trinidad and Tobago
North America--Niagara Falls
France--Reims
Europe--Frisian Islands
Germany--Monheim (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Norfolk
England--Suffolk
England--Gloucestershire
England--Lancashire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Greece--Thessalonikē
Germany--Herne (Arnsberg)
Atlantic Ocean--Kattegat (Baltic Sea)
Libya--Banghāzī
Russia (Federation)--Arkhangelʹskai︠a︡ oblastʹ
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Jersey
Virginia--Hampton Roads (Region)
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
142 printed sheets
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BLovattPHastieRv2
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription
1 Group
100 Group
101 Squadron
157 Squadron
2 Group
214 Squadron
223 Squadron
3 Group
4 Group
6 Group
8 Group
85 Squadron
88 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
B-17
B-24
B-25
bale out
Beaufighter
Bismarck
Botha
C-47
Chamberlain, Neville (1869-1940)
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
crash
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
entertainment
evacuation
Flying Training School
Gee
Gneisenau
Goldfish Club
ground personnel
H2S
Halifax
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Harvard
He 111
Heavy Conversion Unit
Hitler, Adolf (1889-1945)
Hudson
Hurricane
Initial Training Wing
Ju 88
Lancaster
love and romance
Martinet
Me 109
Me 110
mine laying
Mosquito
Mussolini, Benito (1883-1945)
navigator
Nissen hut
Oboe
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
pilot
Proctor
radar
RAF Banff
RAF Catfoss
RAF Catterick
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Cranwell
RAF Dishforth
RAF Farnborough
RAF Horsham St Faith
RAF Kinloss
RAF Leuchars
RAF Lichfield
RAF Lyneham
RAF Manston
RAF North Coates
RAF Oulton
RAF Padgate
RAF Prestwick
RAF Riccall
RAF Silloth
RAF South Cerney
RAF St Eval
RAF Thornaby
RAF Thorney Island
RAF Windrush
RAF Woodbridge
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1882-1945)
Scharnhorst
Spitfire
sport
Stirling
Swordfish
Tiger Moth
Tirpitz
training
V-1
V-2
V-weapon
Whitley
Window
wireless operator
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2330/43393/LClarkHA532059v2.1.pdf
5b3fb05ff0650d27a3ac2e68c5cf300c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Clark, Herbert Ashton
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. The collection concerns Wing Commander Herbert Ashton Clark (b. 1911, 532059, 43414 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books. He flew operations as a pilot with 37 Squadron from the UK and North Africa.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Wayne Clark and catalogued by Nick Cornwell-Smith.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-12-02
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Clark, HA
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
LClarkHA532059v2
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Title
A name given to the resource
Herbert Ashton Clark's pilots flying log book. Two
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
Description
An account of the resource
Pilot’s flying log book for Flight Sergeant Herbert Ashton Clark from 8 March 1937 to 20 August 1956. Detailing operational posting in Iraq with 70 Squadron. On return to England further training with 215 Squadron. Conversion to the Wellington at 11 OTU followed by posting to 37 Squadron in August 1940. Posted to the Middle East in November 1940. Promoted to Squadron Leader and then Wing Commander during this posting. Awarded DSO and DFC.
Stationed at RAF Hinaidi, RAF Driffield, RAF Manston, RAF Honington, RAF Bramcote, RAF Bassingbourn, RAF Feltwell, RAF Shallufa. Returned to England post-war staying in the RAF. Aircraft flown were Valentia, Harrow, Wellington, Magister, Lysander, Maryland, Fiat CR42, B26, Harvard, Auster, Proctor, Anson, and Prentice.
He flew 1 propaganda leaflet drop with 11 OTU, 1 day and 21 night operations with 37 Squadron in Europe. Targets were St Omer, Eindhoven, Soest, Osnabruck, Frankfurt, Stockum, Bottrop, Hannover, the Black Forest, Gelsenkirchen, Hamm, Flushing, Bitterfeld, Rotterdam, Mannheim, Leipzig, Kiel, Hamburg, Berlin.
12 day and 18 night operations with 37 Squadron and 257 Wing in the Middle East. Targets were Benina, El Adem, Derna, Berca, Bardia, Tobruk, Benghazi, Rhodes, Brindisi, Halfaya, Marble Arch landing ground, Heraklion, Misurata, Homs, Palermo, Gabes, the Mareth Line, El Hamma, Kourba, Pantelleria, Villa San Giovanni, Vibo Valentia, Adrano, Cape Peloro. Posted to HQ RAF Middle East where carried out 28 day supply dropping operations.
Post war career included postings to Air Division Control Commission Germany, Flying Training Command, 41 Group, 22 Maintenance Unit and RAF Negombo, Sri Lanka.
Log book also contains Form 3921 – Aircrew Qualification Record, a 1949 calendar and Form 2745 Record of Service, Educational and Professional Qualifications.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-08-09
1940-08-10
1940-08-15
1940-08-16
1940-08-17
1940-08-18
1940-08-19
1940-08-20
1940-08-24
1940-08-25
1940-08-26
1940-08-27
1940-08-29
1940-08-30
1940-09-01
1940-09-02
1940-09-04
1940-09-05
1940-09-07
1940-09-08
1940-09-12
1940-09-13
1940-09-14
1940-09-15
1940-09-20
1940-09-21
1940-09-29
1940-09-30
1940-10-02
1940-10-03
1940-10-05
1940-10-08
1940-10-09
1940-10-10
1940-10-11
1940-10-14
1940-10-15
1940-10-16
1940-10-17
1940-10-21
1940-10-22
1940-10-23
1940-10-24
1940-10-25
1940-10-26
1940-12-08
1940-12-10
1940-12-11
1940-12-13
1940-12-14
1940-12-17
1940-12-18
1940-12-20
1940-12-21
1941-01-02
1941-01-05
1941-01-13
1941-01-14
1941-01-20
1941-01-22
1941-02-16
1942-11-07
1942-11-08
1942-11-25
1942-11-26
1942-12-02
1942-12-03
1942-12-22
1942-12-23
1943-01-08
1943-01-16
1943-01-17
1943-02-03
1943-02-04
1943-02-24
1943-02-25
1943-03-17
1943-03-19
1943-03-20
1943-03-25
1943-03-26
1943-04-13
1943-04-14
1943-06-10
1943-06-27
1943-06-28
1943-07-15
1943-07-16
1943-08-01
1943-08-08
1943-08-09
1944-02-29
1944-03-02
1944-03-25
1944-05-05
1944-05-15
1944-05-31
1944-06-01
1944-06-02
1944-06-09
1944-06-10
1944-06-16
1944-06-27
1944-07-03
1944-07-12
1944-07-25
1944-07-27
1944-08-03
1944-08-15
1944-08-17
1944-08-19
1944-08-22
1944-08-25
1944-08-29
1944-09-07
1944-09-12
1944-09-16
1944-10-13
1944-10-21
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
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Kent
England--Norfolk
England--Suffolk
England--Warwickshire
France
France--Saint-Omer (Pas-de-Calais)
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bitterfeld-Wolfen
Germany--Black Forest
Germany--Bottrop
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hamm (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Soest
Greece
Greece--Ērakleion
Greece--Rhodes (Island)
Iraq
Italy
Italy--Adrano
Italy--Brindisi
Italy--Palermo
Italy--Pantelleria Island
Italy--Vibo Valentia
Italy--Villa San Giovanni
Libya
Libya--Al Adm
Libya--Banghāzī
Libya--Bardiyah
Libya--Darnah
Libya--Miṣrātah
Libya--Ra's Lanuf
Libya--Tobruk
Netherlands
Netherlands--Eindhoven
Netherlands--Rotterdam
Netherlands--Vlissingen
Syria
Syria--Homs
Tunisia
Tunisia--Mareth Line
Tunisia--Qābis
North Africa
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Nick Cornwell-Smith
11 OTU
215 Squadron
37 Squadron
70 Squadron
9 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
B-26
bombing
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Service Order
Harrow
Harvard
Lysander
Magister
Operational Training Unit
pilot
Proctor
RAF Bassingbourn
RAF Bramcote
RAF Digby
RAF Driffield
RAF Feltwell
RAF Honington
RAF Leconfield
RAF Manston
RAF Shallufa
RAF Silloth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/831/10818/PGallagherGCK1701.2.jpg
18f2a784cc197099b741e796bea0c630
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/831/10818/AGallagherGCK170925.1.mp3
c266a866d675842ed4d97ce7c9b8a05c
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
Gallagher, Charles
Gordon Charles Kilbride Gallagher
G C K Gallagher
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Flying Officer Charles Gallagher DFC, (b.1924, 191699 Royal Air Force) and a photograph. He trained as a navigator / bomb aimer and flew operations with 76 Squadron
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Charles Gallagher 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
2017-09-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Gallagher, GCK
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: So, this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive. The person being interviewed is Gordon Charles Kilbride Gallagher known as Charles.
CG: That’s it.
CB: And my name is Cathy Brearley and I am the interviewer. Also present in the house is Mrs Mary Rose Gallagher who is Charles’ wife and the date is Monday the 25th Of September 2017. So —
CG: Cathy, great to meet you.
CB: Thank you very much and first of all I would like to thank you very much for giving us this interview. It’s very kind of you. Thank you. So —
CG: Pleasure.
CB: So, could you start off by telling me a little bit about whereabouts you were born and where you grew up?
CG: I was born in a little village, in those days on the, well it’s still of course on the banks of the River Trent outside Nottingham my father being clergyman of the parish. Wait a minute. He was rector or vicar. He was rector, that’s right, of Wilford village. That proves in nineteen [pause] deary me 1924, I lived there for the first six years of my life and then my father exchanged parishes with one named South Brent on Dartmoor in Devon where I had a wonderful boyhood which took in all the country sports. I’m ashamed to say of one but it was natural at the time but that was otter hunting. And they asked me to, having been out one day they asked me to, within the, to be the hunt whip which was moving in the front of the pack of hounds up rivers, lakes and so on. And I just loved it.
CB: So where, how old were you when war broke out?
CG: War. When the war broke out I was, I was fifteen and let’s see now, I was fifteen and I had just gone to Blundell’s School in the West Country about, thirteen miles out of, north of Exeter. I loved the five years I was at Blundell’s. I’ve always been tremendously keen on doing sports. Cricket and rugby. And then, let’s see now, what happened next that I really loved and remembered because I was jolly lucky. I loved all these activities at school and then went up to Cambridge in the, to join the Cambridge Royal Air Force Squadron. You maybe wanted to ask why on earth I joined the Air Force. It was two principal reasons. One, during the Battle of Britain I was there. We endlessly talked what was going on and really it was as simple as this. We had one objective. The aircrew uniform and the second was the inspiration from the men who wore them. After six months at Cambridge which I dearly loved, wonderful, wonderful university I moved up to [pause] from Cambridge I flew while I was there in the old squadron at Duxford and was finally assessed for which category of aircrew I was going to train for. It turned out that I did, I missed the pilot but got navigator, bomb aimer training combined and moved to South Africa on a wonderful passage. First of all we started at Manchester, Heaton Park where the drill, the drill sergeant had the thickest neck I’ve ever seen on a human being. He was the Heavy Weight Champion of Great Britain at the time. Boxing. And then a fantastically moving fortnight. I may be a day or two out. It was about a fortnight with a party of, I thought wonderful ladies who regarded themselves largely responsible for the Air Force because we lived with them for about, as I say a fortnight and then moved on either to South Africa or to Canada. I went with a wonderful bunch of young men aged eighteen and a half on the [pause] now what? I’ll remember it later. The troop ship, which took five weeks to get us to Cape Town and then on finally to [pause] what’s that wonderful place, port on the east coast that escapes me? It’ll come to me later. But we were greeted as all of the members of the British services were greeted. By an incredible lady known as the White Lady. The Lady in White, and she greeted us. Greeted us with the old song, “Songs of England,” which was a wonderful experience. It really was unique. Then transferred down to East London which was what? I’ve forgotten exactly how long we had, we had down there but it was the best part of six months. Yes. Six months, and then on to our Flying School. A place called Oudtshoom in the, in a little desert on the east side of South Africa having had an incredibly amusing weekend because we got lost. They sent us down to Cape Town, to the Air School there and we were not actually meant to have gone there. It was to Oudtshoom where we had another three or four months before we graduated as, in our case about thirty of us, navigator, bomb aimer and then finished up in, there was one little Air School where we did gunnery, in addition. And then finally just after Christmas back to the UK. I’ve done nearly too much talking.
CB: No. No. No. That’s all interesting. So how long did it take on the troop ship? It must have taken several weeks, was it?
CG: What? Going out to.
CB: Back to the UK.
CG: Going out to South Africa took five weeks.
CB: Yeah.
CG: Which was a heck of a long time.
CB: Yeah.
CG: It was due to having to dodge submarines and one thing or another. We went practically over to South America before turning east and arriving in to Cape Town to a wonderful welcome.
CB: What sort of things did you do on the ship?
CG: On the ship?
CB: To keep, to keep busy for five weeks.
CG: That was fascinating. We did a very healthy amount of physical stuff to keep us fit and it was just even looking at endless sea during the five weeks it [pause] the fascination of it then. It’s difficult to describe.
CB: What was the food like on the ship?
CG: Food was absolutely wonderful as long as you avoided one thing. They used to serve mealies. The chefs used to serve mealies instead of porridge which was, for me was Teflon and sand but still we get over that. And one thing was delightful. When the chef who was serving the mealies passed you behind you never never to ask for the salt when he asked you the inevitable question because all he did to give it to you and he gave it to you in large quantities was lean forward and it was everything running off his forehead went into your stuff.
CB: Very unfortunate.
CG: There you are. You asked me, Cathy. I’ll tell you [laughs]
CB: Yes [laughs] So, after your training you came back to the UK. Whereabouts did you come to?
CG: First of all we went to Millom, in Cumberland where we simply did acclimatise European conditions. Flying. Then on to [pause] a peaceful little village in the Cotswolds to Operational Training Unit where we flew Whitleys. I always thought a Whitley was rather to be compared with an elephant as far as the flying was concerned. Not, in no way attractive. That’s all really I would want to say about Whitley except that we did one of the most important and fascinating things in my life there. At [pause] oh, what was the name of the place?
CB: Stanton.
CG: Stanton Harcourt.
CB: Stanton Harcourt near Abingdon.
CG: That’s it.
CB: Yeah.
CG: Abingdon was a regular station. That, that was, I was just going on to say a wonderful, wonderful thing in my life happened there. The crewing up. And it was fascinating. We formed our own crew. It was the last thing we expected. It was just simply eighty, eighty of us. Seven in a crew. Twelve. Anyway, seven aircrew and [pause] first of all we were completely gobsmacked when we were told. We were marched into this hangar and were told to crew up. We never never expected to have to do it ourselves but actually it turned out marvellously well. I don’t know whether it was Jim, the navigator or myself that spotted him first but what mattered was that we spotted him. One man sitting on his own reading something or other. I’ve forgotten what. And Mac MacFarlane became one of the great friends of my life. He’s still alive. He’s ninety five now. Not very well sadly. I’m ninety three. But we’ve been life-long friends and this was a magical occasion being able to pick our own crew. We just went round spotting people. We really didn’t know much about their flying ability as members of the crew but we knew whether we liked them or not and that played an enormous part.
CB: So, who were the other crew members?
CG: Sorry?
CB: Who were the other crew members apart from yourself and MacFarlane?
CG: Well, I remember —
CB: MacFarlane.
CG: The pilot obviously who turned out to be not only a top class, and Jim and I of course absolutely latched on to this. We discovered that he’d been a trainer in America after he’d passed his own pilot training. He went on and trained Americans for a year. Now, that of course gave him a huge amount of experience and we thought this is just the man we’re looking for so we, we asked him, knowing that he was going to be the boss [laughs] We asked him if we might join his crew rather than, ‘Will you come and join our crew?’ I remember that so well. But this was all the wonderful light but fabulous sense of humour that Bomber Command eventually possessed. And I’m sorry if I’m diverting again for a moment but that is why I came to be able to continue a question from people I talked to while selling my book later was, ‘How the hell can you stand there, look me in the eye and say that they were the, one of the best in my life when half of you were killed.’ And I said it was simple. It was a combination of comradeship, probably towering above all others and sense of humour because it gave you the balance in your life that you had to lead and that you can’t have wanted to leave because the brilliance of the training amongst other things. It taught you [pause] it taught you with a sense of humour to get the balance in your life that you had to have and finally of course the sense of humour was one of the most wonderful ways of breaking tension. Tension that is bound to come in the conditions you were in and one wisecrack from a member of the crew at a time it didn’t disturb your concentration. It just built your ability to do your work. Yes. And the extraordinary effect it had actually and I didn’t discover this for about thirty years, on your later life in Civvy Street. How to handle people. If we all could learn that lesson we wouldn’t have half the problems in life the way internationally we’re going through now, and internally. I hope that gives you a bit of an idea Cathy, of why I was able to answer that question. Why was it? Well, five eventually years of your life so happy.
CB: Lifelong friendships.
CG: It was.
CB: And who, who else was there with you then? Who was your rear gunner?
CG: Our rear? We had a rear gunner and an upper gunner. We had a flight engineer who was a little wee Jock as we called him.
CB: Sorry?
CG: Wonderful little Scotsman.
CB: What did you call him?
CG: A wonderful little gunner.
CB: Wee?
CG: Wee Jock.
CB: Oh, wee Jock. Yes.
CG: The skipper was a wonderful skipper and he was a big Jock [laughs]
CB: Do you remember their actual names?
CG: Oh Lord, yes. Jim Portwood, navigator. Mac MacFarlane. Walter MacFarlane. We called him Mac. Then you had the two gunners. Jack. I’ll call him Jack for the moment. I forget his surname. I never called him by it. The mid-upper gunner. And for the first twenty trips because he was on his second tour he only had to do twenty trips. Jack. Jack. Jack. The second Jack. No. We called him just Jock. Sorry. Big tall chap. And he left us after twenty trips and we took on a little fella. Absolutely brilliant man. No [laughs] It’s all in my logbook.
CB: It may come back to you.
CG: I can’t remember.
CB: So, you crewed up.
CG: Yes.
CB: And then where did you go to after that?
CG: We crewed up. And the other thing that was so wonderful we never, all of us, all of seven from different backgrounds, different lives altogether and the comradeship was superb. It had to be.
CB: Yeah. Of course.
CG: There weren’t options. I’ll tell you what.
CB: So, was that when you then joined 76 Squadron? Was that when you joined 76 Squadron?
CG: 76. We went through the historic battlefield at Marston Moor to do our operational conversion to Halifax bombers. And then of course one was aware of the intense rivalry but continuing tremendous comradeship when we met up with the Lanc boys. Lancaster bombers based in Lincoln.
CB: Yeah.
CG: We were based in Yorkshire. A little place called Marston Moor.
CB: What sort of things did the conversion training focus on?
CG: Sorry?
CB: What sort of things did the conversion training focus on because you had been flying in Whitleys?
CG: Whitleys. Halifaxes.
CB: And then, yeah. What sort of things was the training actually focused on?
CG: Endless, [pause] how you, how you do forget some things. Landings and take offs but the —
CB: As a navigator was there a huge difference?
CG: Sorry?
CB: As a navigator was there a big difference for you? In the different aircraft.
CG: Oh yes.
CB: Yeah.
CG: We, we grew to love the Halifax. I thought the Whitley was a ridiculous thing but —
CB: And what sort of system did you use in the Halifax for navigation?
CG: Well, I —
CB: Did you use Astro navigation?
CG: Oh well, I was, I was navigator bomb aimer.
CB: Oh, you spent more time as a bomb aimer.
CG: Once [unclear] and I met up at Stanton Harcourt.
CB: Right.
CG: We realised one could do [laughs] I shouldn’t be saying this should I but one could do both and the other could do one. So, it was obvious. And we were also great personal friends.
CB: What was life like at the base on the days when you weren’t flying? What sort of things did you spend time doing when you were not flying?
CG: When I was —
CB: Not flying. When you were at the base.
CG: Yes. We were cramming in as much time in to York as we could. We had two buses permanently based at Holme on Spalding Moor that would take us into York whenever we were allowed to go and I’m sure you can guess all the kinds of things we did when we got there.
CB: And the local people were very welcoming.
CG: Sorry?
CB: The. the local people were very welcoming.
CG: Oh.
CB: Hospitable.
CG: Yes. Wonderful. But the village was not really pleasantly walkable.
CB: No.
CG: It was a bit of a distance. But the pubs in the village were altogether different. Different [sadly]
[recording paused]
CB: So as a bomb aimer then whereabouts exactly in the aircraft were you?
CG: Next to the pilot. That’s when he’s going home when he’s not, actually in the action part of the bomb aimer is simply on the bombing run. But I did quite a bit on, oh radar and various other things to help the navigator.
CB: So, you were lying down.
CG: Lying down on the bombing run and in control. In other words, you were telling the pilot exactly what to do. The bombing run would be sounding from the bomb aimer. ‘Left. Left.’ ‘Right.’ [pause] ‘Bombs gone.’ That would be roughly there. That sort of thing. But it would be, have to be on the pilot’s return what he said was always wonderful. It reminded me every time particularly Mac with his voice. Particular, steady quiet control. It was, it was so effective on the crew. It really was. If you heard a joke he, even if it wasn’t a worried voice it wasn’t actually doing that, certainly to him but, but it was concerning. Now, Mac had this extraordinary control. Quite a steady, and authoritative voice.
CB: Was it difficult to communicate with each other when you were, you were in the aircraft because it must have been very noisy?
CG: It could be very noisy but as opposed to the Americans, I must say this because I have a lot of time for the Americans but they could be shouting. You couldn’t hear them sometimes. I’m taking it from the, largely from the very good film of some of their things, “Twelve O’clock High,” for instance. It was, they were very good. They really did. But they were, in their communications they were much noisier. There’s no question about that.
CB: How long did it take to get from, how long was the flight typically from home to where we went.
CG: Well, in total we were away for eight hours if we were on the Eastern Front. Their Eastern Front. For instance, to give you an idea, in the article that I’ve written now to go into the new edition I talk about one episode when we were diverted. I wanted to put it in because there was nothing like it before on the American 8th Air Force. The [pause] the Liberator and the Flying Fort, Flying Fortress in reverse order because it was in reverse order, their numbers. Far more Forts. But I loved it because it enabled me to talk about the type of men they were and they had so much in common with the training. We’re not on the air, are we?
CB: Yes. We are recording now.
CG: Oh.
CB: I started it when I asked about your crew position.
CG: That’s fine. That’s fine.
CB: Yes. Yes. We are recording. So, how did you feel when you were setting off? Did you feel afraid?
CG: Wonderful moment. This is the training because this, I forgot to tell you about our training. Why it was so incredibly effective. They trained you in many ways just as though you were a hairdresser or anything you care to think of. Just doing it as a, it’s a job. You don’t think, ‘Oh crikey. I’m going —’ You might quietly sort of say, for a second but your whole attitude during the day when you’d heard what the target was. It was based on very differently at times but you were trained. That’s what, I volunteered to do it. All flying people, submariners, people like that, they wanted to do it.
CB: And were you told just immediately before you set off what the target was?
CG: Yes.
CB: That was something you found out at the very last minute obviously.
CG: We had a full briefing. Supposing, supposing it was a maximum effort and around about twenty four aircraft were going from the squadron you would get a rumour very often when you woke up in the morning but always the target would be announced. Announced at briefing where all twenty four men multiply it by seven if you will and, and it would be that number of men who were going on that particular trip and that would be all be in one room having gathered at briefings at something like 5 o’clock in the afternoon. Don’t forget we operated in winter so we left earlier. So we were getting in to Germany in the dark.
CB: So, was it mainly night flights that you did?
CG: Yes. But we did quite a lot of daylights and the time we got so badly beaten up was in daylight. Holland. Battle of Osnabruck it was, sort of thing and to get to the target we’d had to turn left and the American Fortresses turned right to get past each other I remember. But I’ll tell you just out of interest really that we were really smashed up. A hundred and ninety six, I think it was holes in the aircraft. Some of them, you know that size.
CB: Three feet wide.
CG: Yes.
CB: By two feet deep. Goodness.
CG: Yeah. So, the outer framework on the aeroplane just blown away.
CB: It’s amazing you survived that.
CG: The under-gun turret I remember which luckily wasn’t used that day [pause] That was shot clean out. But —
CB: So, had anybody been there it would have been a different story wouldn’t it?
CG: Oh, just gone. But — [pause]
CB: A hundred and ninety six.
CG: It’s in the old Osnabruck and it was absolutely incredible how you could cause so much damage, one engine gone and seven of you would sit there and only the flight engineer had his arm slightly [pause] We pulled his leg endlessly for weeks afterwards because he went and put up the wound and survived and it might have been a scratch of a rose. But it, it was a genuine war wound what I’ve been told. He did it just for fun.
CB: That must have been real teamwork then to have brought that aircraft back home.
CG: Sorry?
CB: It must have been real teamwork to have brought that aircraft back home.
CG: Well, yes. I think the thing that appeals to people when they talk to me about it afterwards was that the skipper had said, told us to bale out and he called it, and he wrote the article on it and he called it his mutiny and of course he —
CB: His mutiny.
CG: With a big smile on his face. We just said, ‘No. We can’t possibly let you try and land this thing on your own. We shall stay.’ But it’s worth reading. I have one for you. We had to do the North Sea in in the dark. On one occasion in fog, and I think if I can find it —
[pause]
CG: It’s from my old school. They’ve bought eighteen books on the —
CB: Blundell’s. Yes.
CG: On the first one. That was, she, she I’ll show it to you because it’s been honestly very typical.
CB: That’s lovely if they’re doing some work.
CG: Yeah.
CB: In schools.
CG: Oh, they are.
CB: At that particular school.
CG: And she, she has an extraordinary—
CB: On people who were students.
CG: I will show you the diary. The school diary later because it shows a group of about twenty five thirty people that, she is a development officer there and she takes some, I think one group a year around the battlefields of Europe to teach them history because she thinks it’s the best way.
CB: It is. Absolutely.
CG: Of course, it really does teach them history. You’ve got the date of when we went on to Dakotas, haven’t you?
CB: Yes. The Dakotas. You did the conversion training in June 1945.
CG: Right.
CB: According to your logbook.
CG: Now —
CB: And then went on ops in the August.
CG: That is completely accurate.
CB: Yes.
CG: The old logbook.
CB: Yes. So, what was the Dakota like then to fly in?
CG: Lovely.
CB: Was it?
CG: Oh, it was a lovely aircraft. Totally different. But it was a joy to be in it.
CB: And that’s a troops carrier. So you did that for some weeks.
CG: And that we did when we got to India and you’ve got all the dates there on flying out to India and when we got to India we arrived at Mauripur which is again there, I think [pages turning]
CB: What was it like there apart from very different?
CG: Yes. Totally different atmosphere but we had great fun in a way. And we went down to [pause] then we were very soon went on to Poona which was a lovely place surrounded by hills and beautifully green and not desert at all, like Mauripur. We loved it.
CB: And that was still moving troops around in that area.
CG: That was. Yes. Can I, we picked them up at [pause] a place on the east coast. A big port. It should be there.
[pause]
CB: Not Wadi Halfa.
CG: No. That’s beyond.
CB: No.
CG: That was on the way out.
CB: Masirah?
CG: That was in the sort of Egypt area.
CB: Mauripur. Poona.
CG: Carry on.
CB: Just looking —
CG: Sorry about the state it’s in.
CB: Just looking at the logbook now. [pause] So after being in Broadwell.
CG: Yes.
CB: Whereabouts did you go to from there?
CG: From Broadwell, I think we went, that’s when we changed from [pause] Yes, it must have been because we were 76 Halifax Squadron towing these gliders around full of troops and they were, that was all in preparation for the attack on Singapore. Then one night we were having one hell of a party. I shall never forget it. I don’t remember it in detail but I shall never forget it. And what happened then? Then we were told at the end of the evening as it got to the end of the evening they said, ‘Right. It’s all off boys.’ The bombs were dropped on Japan. So, no need to go out to bomb.
CB: And that was Hiroshima.
CG: And that was still towing them in with our Halifaxes. And then it was all on again. About a week later we got another counter telegram telling us to, that it was on again and to train on Dakotas for India.
CB: Yes.
CG: Still to India but for a different purpose. For bringing internally the prisoners of war around.
CB: So, you went to India.
CG: Yeah.
CB: And you were in Karachi for about a year.
CG: I think, do you know, how about this for a memory this was all of seventy three years ago. We left on the 16th of September. See if that’s right. Or don’t. Do whatever you like. Have a look at it.
CB: It’s alright. So, you left on the16th of September. Which year?
CG: ‘45. And took us four or five weeks. No. It didn’t. I’ve gone without looking at that.
CB: So, you went out to India.
CG: But it would have taken us probably about inside ten days obviously and then I taught my skipper to play cricket and squash at Poona [laughs] He was a great guy. I excused him not being able to play cricket because after all he was a Scotsman.
CB: What was life like in Poona?
CG: Very good.
CB: Was it?
CG: Very good. We, we had one wonderful evening. Absolutely wonderful. We walked back into the mess one evening, always did look on the notice boards straight away because there were sometimes goodies going and there was a goodie going. It was a theatre. I can’t remember offhand. Its somewhere but I can’t remember quite if I put it in the book or not. The theatre. A famous, a famous show of some sort or another and then that was followed by the Governor of India putting notices on the board. The governor was from that area. You know, the governor of Bombay. That’s right. He had a house or something out there or his palace I suppose and he sent two officers from the Navy, Army, and Air Force around here, invitation to his evening to a Welsh Choir which was touring India at the time. We thought this was too good to be true and luckily we were the first two in there so we nailed it. And I’m telling this story because I shall never forget. Never. In there, and when we got there they’d probably been invited to something else earlier in the day or something were the top princes of India both Muslim and Hindu which we found fascinating. Otherwise, you had the Maharajas and whatever they called the Muslim and I shall never forget the Welsh Choir and we never forgot it. Any of us. That they played the [unclear] before finally obviously the British national anthem. And the, all these Indian nobles stood stiffly to attention and we hadn’t moved because the Welsh were still, we hadn’t realised that we should stand when they and so that was wonderful but it was just seeing them standing there in millions of pounds worth of jewellery. Dripping with it. Oh, it was fantastic. it was. It was very moving. Very moving.
CB: So, it was the —
CG: I’m sorry about all that.
CB: That’s interesting. So that was the [pause] where you were there was sort of known as the first and the last.
CG: Something we did.
CB: Yeah.
CG: When we were in Poona.
CB: Yeah. So, they, you were, the work you were involved with then was flights that were internal flights around India.
CG: Yes.
CB: And obviously there were troops coming and going from there to the Far East.
CG: Yes.
CB: And yours was the first.
CG: Yes. I think we probably, probably did a few but it was mainly prisoners of war. Thin as rakes. And I had complete diversion I won’t spend any time on it but I had lunch with Mary the other day with one of those men. Aged now a hundred and eight. No, he was ninety eight. Incredibly well, healthy man who had been a prisoner of war. And some of the stuff he’d had to go through. Some of the things will never be known. But we couldn’t understand how he looked so well.
CB: It’s good that he did.
CG: In the book.
CB: Good that he did. So, you had two different kind of experiences in India. You said one was very much in the desert and the other place in India was —
CG: Cricket.
CB: Not in the desert at all.
CG: Cricket.
CB: Cricket. What was the desert like? Apart from hot, obviously?
CG: Mauripur. Mauripur was another beautiful place. It was a fascinating place. Something, something we’d never seen before. I mean that’s the best I can say really. Poona was utterly beautiful and that’s why I got some very good cricket but later in the turn of the year I got up this cricket team because I suddenly realised, we all did that there wasn’t that much for us to do.
CB: Were you kept busy when you were in Mauripur? In the desert. Did you do a lot of flying.
CG: No.
CB: Or did you have a lot of time where —
CG: Not a lot.
CB: You weren’t.
CG: We did a bit. We went down to Jiwani as soon as we got there. The little place on the south coast of Arabia somewhere called Jiwani. No airfield. Just a sort of a dirt track and we landed out there. They were completely out of water. No water at all. So, they said, ‘Hey, we need something to drink. We’ve got nothing and it’s boiling.’ So, we, the first job we did when we got to India was to load up with water and go down there and landed on this old track I remember and exactly, [pause] Let’s get this right. ’46 yes. Exactly forty years later I took my youngest daughter to to India, on up to Kashmir and coming back I was standing at the, with her having coffee at the, oh what aeroplanes were they? Anyway, they were BOAC aeroplanes and I forget what, I don’t know first of all what the things are but he we got chatting and talking about old days and he said, ‘Well, come up to the flight deck and sit and we’ll have a chat.’ So, lovely and I took Katie up there with me and it was really great fun. I put that in this book.
CB: And whereabouts were you when the war ended?
CG: When the war ended I was in the back end of, oh sorry I beg your pardon when the Jap war ended? The whole thing?
CB: Well, victory in Europe.
CG: In Europe, by the 8th I was on the squadron and that night I think it was I shot up to Scotland. I just forget where and I can’t remember why we didn’t all go but we didn’t and out of the front door of the house came a very pleasant looking woman. Turned out to be his sister and he was very very fond of her, I remember and she smiled. She said, ‘Right. Off.’ And we, ‘Oh God.’ The telegram had just arrived. We’d just left the squadron that morning and, “Return to the squadron immediately.” We got back there. The place was absolutely buzzing with excitement. They said we’re off and the only thing they could tell us, they couldn’t even tell us where other than the Far East. So, then all the excitement started again.
CB: So, for you because of where you were based.
CG: In —
CB: Victory in Europe, the 8th of May didn’t mean —
CG: Oh yes.
CB: The end of —
CG: No.
CB: Your operations and your work, did it?
CG: We didn’t leave Portreath until, I’m sure I’m accurate on this until the 15th or the 16th of September 1945. Although it was only just after the war ended in May. So we’d been about what? May? June? So, five months.
CB: And then when your Service had finished did you stay in the RAF? You didn’t. You left, didn’t you?
CG: No. I had a wonderful life. I mean, it’s all a series of a wonderful part of life. I wrote to British South American Airways and said, ‘Can I have a job please?’ And I got a ground job and I found it fascinating. They were doing passenger handling and it was a really interesting job and anyway I got that and do you know within a month I got a call from the head of passenger handling. He said, ‘We’re posting you out to, I’ll tell you where in a moment, when —' so and so, ‘Comes back.’ So I realised it was an overseas posting. Where did they send me but Bermuda. Oh, Bermuda. It’s gorgeous.
CB: How long were you there for?
CG: Sorry?
CB: How long were you there for?
CG: I was there, only there for three months. They warned me it wouldn’t be more than that but I mean, sheer heaven.
CB: And you were awarded the DFC.
CG: Yes. I was.
CB: When was that? Was that —
CG: They always look the same don’t they? When was it? I’ve got that upstairs, torn up, half torn up it’s all I’ve got left of it but sending over my father in England to me in, and I was then in Poona I think. Which just said you’ve got the DFC.
CB: So, he knew before you did.
CG: Hmmn?
CB: He knew before you did.
CG: Yes. And —
CB: It must have been difficult for your parents.
CG: Well, they were the people in the war I was so sorry for. I mean they always knew when a telegram arrived what it was. And mother got one and —
CB: Was that for a specific act? Your DFC. Was that awarded for a particular event?
CG: I think, quite honestly I think it was a sort of a rather particularly successful tour.
CB: Yes.
CG: And having a good crew.
CB: Yeah.
CG: And that was what I believed it was and I’m sure of it. And I always felt sad that the other four members of the crew didn’t get one. Jim got one. Mac got one. I got one. But there we are.
CB: Indeed. Well, thank you. Thank you very much for your time and thank you for giving us this interview.
CG: Not at all. I hope I’ve covered all you wanted to know.
CB: I’m sure. I’m sure. Thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Charles Gallagher
Creator
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Cathy Brearley
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
2017-09-25
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AGallagherGCK170925, PGallagherGCK1701
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Format
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00:57:13 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Charles Gallagher was born in a small village outside Nottingham where his father was rector of the local church. At the age of six the family moved to South Brent on Dartmoor where Charles enjoyed country sports and helped with the local hunt. At secondary school he enjoyed cricket and rugby before going up to Cambridge where he joined the university air squadron. On joining the Royal Air Force he was selected for navigator/bomb aimer training: after a five week journey by troop ship to Cape Town he commenced his training near East London in South Africa. Charles then attended an Operational Training Unit in the Cotswolds before transferring to RAF Stanton Harcourt where he joined his crew as bomb aimer. He described the process of crewing up and how in his case it led to a lifelong friendship with one of his crew. After flying Whitleys which he described as an ‘elephant’ of an aircraft he was posted to 76 Squadron and transferred to flying Halifax aircraft at No. 165 Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Marston Moor. Charles recalled one operation on Osnabrück while stationed at RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor where his aircraft returned with 196 holes in the fuselage. The pilot ordered the crew to bail out but they stayed with the aircraft which made it back to base. In June 1945 the squadron converted to C-47s and flew to India with Transport Command. On return Charles joined British South American Airways on ground passenger handling, including a short posting to Bermuda.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Oxfordshire
South Africa
South Africa--East London
Germany
Germany--Osnabrück
India
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-06
Contributor
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Jim Sheach
Julie Williams
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
76 Squadron
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing
C-47
crewing up
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
military ethos
Operational Training Unit
RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Stanton Harcourt
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/605/8874/PMatthewsEH1501.2.jpg
07bb41282e142374781bf2112f1129de
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/605/8874/AMatthewsEH151013.1.mp3
dc51483b34648765b1e7054ad5ee5c36
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
Matthews, Edward Harry
E H Matthews
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Matthews, EH
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. An oral history interview with Sergeant Edward 'Ted' Matthews (1925 - 2017, 1899046 Royal Air Force), his log book flight engineer's course notebook and photographs. He flew operations as flight engineer with 77 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff and Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-13
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: Today we’re in Haddenham and speaking with Edward Harry Matthews ‘Ted’ about his experiences as a flight engineer with 77 Squadron. My name is Chris Brockbank and I’m accompanied by Mr Edward Andrews as a witness. Ted, where did you — where were you born? How did life run for you in your early days and then right through to your retirement?
EM: I was born in Worthing. My father was a manager of a gent’s outfitter. We were fairly well off in those days but coming up to the war we — dad was made redundant and we had to move to South Norwood. When I was there the school I went to was Stanley Technical College which I went to until I was fourteen. From there I got a job with the Croydon Technical College as a lab assistant. But again, dad had to move his job and we came to Esher where I went to work for the Admiralty research as a lab assistant in the ASDIC and fire control of ships. It was from there I joined the air force. I was about coming up to eighteen so I would have had to have joined by conscription. I volunteered for aircrew and after the interview in — I think it was Euston Road they said, ‘Ok. You can be a flight engineer.’ I returned to my job for a few months and I was sent then, when I joined the air force, to St John’s Wood. The aircrew reception for the square bashing, more tests and kitting out. Three weeks there and I went to Newquay on ITW for six weeks. From there I went to Locking for introduction to aircraft engineering. It was Locking near Weston Super Mare. Having completed that course I was then sent to St Athans for the major course. I passed out there fairly well and I was, had a few weeks [pause] well flying training in Oxfords and even in Tiger Moths. From there I was sent to the Heavy Conversion Unit at Riccall. I met with my skipper at a rather different way from the usual. His flight engineer was taken sick and during a flight with him he had engine trouble and I managed to sort it out. And after that he decided I was going to be his flight engineer. Well, just after Christmas we were sent to 77 Squadron. The first raid being to mines, a daylight. A fairly busy sort of raid. Not too hectic. Nothing much. From there the next one –
[pause]
CB: Just looking in your logbook.
EM: The next one was Cologne. Another daylight. That was interesting because we were told not to hit the cathedral there. We were there to aim at the bridges over the Rhine. Our bomb aimer, as we were coming up said, ‘Oh I think I can hit those bridges. I can put my bombs straight through between the two spires,’ [laughs] but I don’t think we did hit the bridges. We missed them [laughs] but we shook them up I believe. After that we had a night raid to the Ruhr to Kamen which was an oil dump. Now, this one really got exciting. This was the one where we came back and when we were approaching landing — on the radio we were told there were intruders around. So, the skipper told the gunners to stay in place. It’s just as well he did because as we were approaching the circuit there was a JU188 coming the other way. And following that we had a dogfight from over Full Sutton all the way up to Croft where we’d been diverted. At Croft he disappeared for a while so we managed to land which was just as well because we were so low in fuel another — almost minutes, we’d have run out. We landed. I went back and locked the controls and while I was in locking the controls the others had got out and were sort of having five minutes. But while I was in there I heard this terrific noise. Bang and aircraft engines. I looked out and there they were running down the peritrack being chased by this JU188. They found a sort of dug out at the side of the runway and jumped into it and they were up to their knees in mud and water. Very unpleasant. Anyway, we were, we were lucky. We got away with it. This was the part of what the Germans called Operation Gisela. There was the three operations they did. About nine hundred aircraft flew in with us in the bomber stream. It was their last sort of major and during this time on that raid we’d lost seven aircraft but with these intruders they shot down another twenty eight. And they sent similar raids the following two nights but nowhere near as successful. They only got one or two but they never did it again. That’s one of the hair-raising ones.
CB: Why was it that they were less successful on the second raid? Were — were the gunners more alert? Or what was it? Why were they more —why were there less casualties on the second and third raids?
EM: Well, I think mainly because one — they did it for some Americans and they did it again but I think our people were a bit understanding and guessed it might happen again and we were warned. They did get one or two.
CB: Right.
EM: But it’s quite a bit of history that one.
CB: Yeah.
EM: Because one or two of theirs were shot down and one crashed into a farm near York killing the farmer and his family.
CB: What other excitements did you have?
EM: The next raid I did was to Helmstedt which was fairly hectic in the way of anti-aircraft fire but we got away with that one. Another nasty one was when I went to Dortmund and Wuppertal. Or was it? Yeah. The other night raid where it was dodgy was to a place called Witten where we got a direct hit into one of the outboard engines. The starboard engine. We were just coming into the target and it blew the engine to pieces with bits flying everywhere. As we had a full bomb load on it we were just about keeping height but we managed to attack the target and get home, nursing it a bit. We did find on the way back that the starboard inner engine had been damaged as well. So, we came back on two and a half engines if you like. But by nursing it we got back ok.
CB: When the engines were hit what was your job? Ted.
EM: Another one. We went to Recklinghausen. That was in, that was a daylight but I can tell an interesting story about this one. We couldn’t, we didn’t drop any bombs on it because we just couldn’t see a thing. But on the way back the bomb aimer was in the nose and in a space in the woods he saw some railway lines up near the Dutch border. So, thinks. We go around and have a look. So, the skipper says, ‘Oh let’s put one down there and see what happens.’ We did. We thought the earth had fallen in. Well, we didn’t know what it was. No one knew what it was. But when I was working at Westcott I had to go to Germany and I was looking at some of their rockets. I had to go to this ammunition dump near the Dutch border where they were still digging out bits and pieces then. And I was talking to one of the sergeants there. I said, ‘What happened?’ He said, ‘We had one single aircraft come over and drop one bomb and it hit a munitions train that was due to go to the Russian front.’ And he said, ‘There’s still bodies in there.’ It was enormous.
CB: Fascinating.
EM: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
EM: I — my next interesting one is Osnabruck which was to hit the rail line there. Evidently it was extremely accurate but it was a daylight and we got hit in the bomb bay with a load of shrapnel which cut our hydraulic line and we couldn’t open, couldn’t shut the bomb bay. But I saw where it was and with some of the bits of rubbish I’d picked up — namely a piece of rubber tubing and some wire. I managed to slip it over the cut and we managed to shut the bomb bay doors. When we got back I managed to get the undercarriage down but the flaps wouldn’t come down. So, we were diverted to Croft and made that ok so —
CB: What was the significance of Croft?
EM: Pardon?
CB: What was the significance of Croft?
EM: Oh Croft. Sorry. Carnaby.
CB: Carnaby. Ok.
EM: Yeah.
CB: So, what was the —
EM: The big runways and that. As a matter of fact, on one of our night trips we were diverted there because of fog. It was very thick fog. We couldn’t see a thing but they had FIDO and I can tell you landing on FIDO, it’s like, well, you came across the flames and the plane rose and you had to put the nose down. You had to dive through it. Anyway, it was quite hair raising. I think the skipper was saying a few words. There’s one [pause] and then we come to Heligoland and Wangerooge. Just about the last ones. Heligoland was a daylight. It was quite a doddle that one. But we went to Wangerooge which was on the islands. Now, that — they were really, it was a beautiful clear day and they were really letting us have it with anti-aircraft guns. And in front of us there were two Halifaxes probably about a hundred yards apart and suddenly one of these got a burst of anti-aircraft gun under one wing which floated it over right into the other one and they collided. Two got out. There’s one trip that I did which was a most spectacular I’ve seen. And that was to an oil plant. Now, this oil plant was enormous. It had a series of huge spheres all containing fuel of some description and they were all in huge lines. One after the other. And we were loaded up with a mixture of explosive and incendiaries and we went in lower than usual to make sure we got them in line and we went down each line. Dropping, you know, a skein of bombs, you know. Anyway, the spectacular. We were low enough that we saw these spheres collapse and then they opened just like a tulip and at the centre was a huge flame coming up. It was quite, you know, if it wasn’t such a destructive thing it was almost a thing of beauty. But when we came back all the paint was scorched underneath [laughs] yeah. That’s, I think most of my operation.
CB: Could you feel the heat? Could you feel the heat from that?
EM: Pardon?
CB: Could you actually feel the heat in the aeroplane?
EM: Hmmn?
CB: Could you feel the heat of the oil plant explosion?
EM: Sorry I —
CB: The heat burnt the paint. Could you feel it?
EM: Oh, I wasn’t exactly scared. I was kept too busy. Well, for instance, when I went on to the squadron. At that time I wanted to get myself a degree when I left. So therefore, I got a correspondence course and when I was in the early part, when I was flying on ops the, say up to the coast and that I used to do my homework. You know. English. Maths. You know the typical matric as it was then. It, it did me fairly well. But —
CB: So, what about the other members of the crew? What were they like? Starting with the skipper. Who was he?
EM: The wireless operator. He was a lad from Glasgow. The Gorbals actually. A bit of a rum sort and I won’t —
CB: Who was he? What was his name?
EM: Oh dear. Tom.
CB: Never mind. We’ll come back to that.
EM: No. I can’t. The skipper’s name was Bingham.
[pause]
CB: Right. A picture of the crew we’re looking at. Ok.
EM: Yeah.
CB: Ok.
EM: They — I can’t remember all their names. Our rear gunner, at that stage, was a Canadian. An ex-cowboy. How he got into that rear turret I shall never ever know. If I can put it bluntly he was built like a brick outhouse. You know.
CB: Yeah.
EM: But there’s a funny story about that if you want funny stories.
CB: Go on. Go on. Go on.
EM: On one of the raids. I can’t really put a finger to it. There was a sudden shout, ‘I’ve been hit. I’ve been hit.’ From the rear turret. So, I went down and there he was [groaning]. And the seat is a thick piece of aluminium with wood underneath. And there sticking up through it, about like that, was a piece of shrapnel. Gone right up between the cheeks. Well, anyway the funny part is the doctor gave him some ointment to rub in. Well he couldn’t reach it. So, we got the job of every night rubbing it [laughs]
CB: Amazing.
EM: Yeah. Is it stories you want?
CB: Yeah. Keep it going.
EM: Yeah. The bomb aimer. He came from Hersham. His wife was a hairdresser. I found he was — I didn’t get on well with him. The navigator. He was a Canadian. The mid-upper gunner was a bloke about my age. An ex-miner from Wakefield. We did lose one gunner. It was, he hadn’t even been on a raid. He went on a spare crew. My skipper was Flight Lieutenant Bingham. John Bingham. He’d been a training instructor out in America for a while before he came back and took over this job as, on Bomber Command. He could be a bit of a pompous so and so. You know. A real strict disciplinarian. But on the other hand, that made him a good pilot. He was a good pilot whatever anyone says. What else?
CB: So, the mid-upper gunner.
EM: Mid upper gunner. That was the lad from Wakefield.
CB: What was his name?
EM: His name was Mounty so we used to call him Lofty. And he wasn’t a big bloke [laughs] [pause] Somewhere or other — I don’t know if I’ve got their names.
CB: Well let’s come back to those later. Could you just go back a bit now? No. Sorry. How many operations did you complete in the end?
EM: I did — what was it? I did fifteen.
CB: Ok. And what stopped operations? Was it the end of the war?
EM: Pardon?
CB: What stopped you going on operations? Was it the end of the war? Or what was it?
EM: Well the reason I didn’t go for a commission — I was recommended. I went for an interview but I made a silly mistake. I told them, when they asked me what I was going to do after the war I said, ‘I want to go to university. Get a degree.’ That was it.
CB: They didn’t like that.
EM: Yeah.
CB: Right. So, you stopped flying when? When did you stop flying?
EM: Oh, it was around about September ‘45. Until then I was, we were engaged in taking all the old ammunition, bombs and that from the various airfields around and dumping them in the North Sea.
CB: Right. Where did you do that? Where? Where?
EM: Well we were stationed still at Full Sutton but we did places like Snaith and all the surrounding airfields that had got bombs. We used to, for instance, they used to put the bombs in the bomb bays of course but where it was machine gun ammunition they just piled it in the, by the back door and I used to go and kick it out. You know, open the door and out. But that was — we did quite a few of those.
CB: Ok. Now after you finished flying then on operations you dropped the bombs in the North Sea. Then what did you do?
EM: There was all sorts of jobs while I was waiting to take another course. Another business. But eventually I went back to St Athans and took a safety course. Mainly packing parachutes, safety equipment. That sort of thing. When I’d finished that I was sent to Germany. To Fassburg. Which was just outside Belsen. Which was unpleasant. It was there I managed to take the two exams I’d been working on. I got all sorts of jobs there. It was on a Maintenance Unit where we used to go around to various stations and re-pack their chutes or look at their — as well as advise them on safety equipment. And from there I was demobbed and came back to England. From there I was on leave for a while when I applied to go to a university but they said, ‘Oh you’re too late. The regulations have run out.’ So, what happens? I go back to evening class and get a job with Bayer Products as a lab assistant. At the same time, I managed to pick up on the government job I was working with and I got [pause] they took me on as a scientific assistant making chemical warfare agents.
CB: Where was that?
EM: This was up in Lancashire where I met my wife. At Sutton Oak. And then I was transferred. They moved the whole lot of us down in to Cornwall where I was in the research labs making nerve gas and such. When that closed down I came up to Westcott and became a rocket engineer on solid propellants. Working mainly, quite often, on air to air missiles like Red Top for Lightning, Sky Flash for the Tornado and working on materials for high temperatures. And that’s when I sort of became me and became retired afterwards.
CB: So how long did you work at Westcott for?
EM: Thirty five years. In fact, you might see my footprints somewhere around.
CB: Sounds interesting.
EM: Yeah. It was in solid propellant division.
CB: Right. So, did you work your way up there or what happened?
EM: Well, I ended up there as a senior scientific officer.
CB: Right.
EM: I did — I did some flight tests on a missile in a Lightning. I got taken up in a Lightning to do some tests from a valley.
CB: Oh, did you? Right.
EM: Oh, this would be — I can’t give you a date. It’s [pause] oh no, I can’t. I’d be [pause] I think I’d be almost be pulling your leg if I gave you a date.
CB: So, was this as a jolly or a practical observation you were doing? Was it an enjoyment flight or were you doing it as an observation?
EM: Oh no. it was busy. It was, they wanted, they wanted me to — they were doing some of the tests and I had to observe. Something strange was happening and they wanted me to have a look. See if I could sort it out.
CB: This is the rocket motors was it?
EM: It was the sort of thing — you see when you launch a rocket you get such a spread of strange mixture of gasses.
CB: Yeah.
EM: That as it goes out in front they go in to the air intake of the plane and they often cause a hiccup and we wanted to find out whether that was doing it. So apart from having instruments they needed someone to actually observe the instruments and see what was happening visually.
CB: Right.
EM: Yeah. It was rather funny. The pilots had a bet. Thinking I was a dumb scientist. They didn’t know I’d been on ops and they had a bet to find out whether they could make me airsick [laughs]
CB: So, you put them right in the end, did you?
EM: Oh yeah. Yeah. I was bought beer all night [laughs]
CB: How interesting. Can we go back now? Can we go back to your early training?
EM: Yeah.
CB: So, what happened when you were being trained to begin with? What did they do about training in St Athan?
EM: Oh.
CB: What was involved?
EM: Well basically you went through — for the first few weeks you were put through quite a concentrated course on aircraft engineering. Getting very close to what you were going to do. After that you took the exam. You were then selected for an aircraft. I don’t know how they did it but I’d done some time on Lancs and Halifaxes and most went on Lancasters. I was selected for Halifaxes. As you know.
CB: Yeah.
EM: I did fly once or twice in Lancasters. That was more I think by luck, by judgement. They just wanted a flight engineer, you know. To get experience. They also, the idea, I think was that if after we’d done our ops we might go on to Lancs or something. But I’m just trying — but it was really a concentrated course. In fact, I wrote it all up here.
CB: Oh good. Ok. We’ll come to that in a minute. Can we just go now — so you get to the HCU? So, in the HCU what are you doing there?
EM: Well, we still kept, how can I put it, an interest in all the engineering and kept up to date. You know. With anything new that comes on. We flew with all sorts of varying skippers and crews to get the hang of it. And then of course at the same time the skippers were looking for flight engineers and as I say that was the way it happened for me.
CB: Because normally crews had crewed up at the OTU and then added a flight engineer. But in your case, you went with several different crews.
EM: Yeah. Yeah. The lad I took over from. I don’t know whether he was glad to get away from the crew or not but he was terribly airsick. You know, it wasn’t a case of not liking it or not wanting it. He was so bad that after one flight they [hoist?] the ambulance out to him. He was actually, you know, really–
CB: What had happened to him then?
EM: Well he was so sick. You know. Terribly airsick you know. You know, he was absolutely useless once he got going and that was after, you know, just two or three flights. It steadily got worse.
CB: Did it? Yeah. So, when he was flying what did he do?
EM: Well he vomited a lot. He was very giddy and that sort of thing. As I say, this time he really collapsed. So, well they couldn’t have him. I don’t know what happened to him. Whether they had him lack of moral fibre but he just disappeared.
CB: Well, what do you think about the LMF matter?
EM: It was most unfair.
CB: Go on.
EM: It was. I mean of course you were blooming scared. It [pause] it made you work that bit harder and made you do the things properly and harder but looking back I’m sure that they were being very cruel in many cases.
CB: You say many cases. So how many people did you know about who were dealt with under LMF.
EM: I only came across really one. But he’d already done half a dozen ops and some nasty ones and had a bit of a rough time. I think that was a case that was a bit cruel because after all he had done some ops. He’d proved himself. They didn’t seem to realise this sort of thing.
CB: In what way had he proved himself on those operations would you say?
EM: Well, he, as I say he’d done a half a dozen ops. He’d done exactly what was asked of him.
CB: By whom?
EM: And it was only just [pause] well, the only other thing. He’d been married recently. Whether that? Yeah. Yeah. That might well have been the case but honestly, I wouldn’t like to judge anyone.
CB: What was the reaction of the crew to what he was doing?
EM: Well one or two of them were down on him but I can’t really be certain on that one but some, again some were with him. But it’s understandable if you had a bad time and you’ve got responsibilities at home. And there was — the thing is there was one case. On one of the night raids I was on I must admit it gave me the shivers. We were going into the target and the master bomber said, ‘Christ I’ve been hit.’ And up ahead, not far ahead, there was a little flash of flame and he’d left his mic on and he screamed all the way into the ground.
CB: Good lord.
EM: And I think that might have frightened a lot of folk too. I know it sent cold shivers up my back because you heard him screaming all the way down and suddenly there was a flash and it went quiet.
CB: But no sound from any other members of his crew.
EM: But that —I think there was always a little feeling that if you were going to go you prayed to God let it be quick.
CB: Yeah.
EM: I know that was always my feeling. It —
CB: What height were you operating? What height? How high up were you operating then?
EM: Well, often at twenty thousand. Occasionally we, like several of the raids we came down to ten. And I think the other thing that made you a bit creepy was when you were going into the target and the master bomber says, ‘Oh don’t bomb. Come down to twenty. Angels ten. Angels ten.’ And you’d have to circle right down.
CB: To get down.
EM: Going down through the bomber stream and then being in the target area for so long — that was a bit uncomfortable.
CB: Sounds a strange thing to do if everybody else is high. Why would he do that?
EM: Well quite often the target was obliterated for various reasons. And –
CB: By what?
EM: By perhaps smoke or something and the further down of course you could often see more. Or there was the other times you’d be told to circle over the target while they re-laid the markers. And you’d be over the target for two or three minutes at least.
CB: Really. Yeah.
EM: Again, something very nasty.
CB: Now, going back to in the aeroplane. What was your role? What did you do from when you got in the aeroplane to when it landed again? What were doing as the engineer?
EM: Well, basically when I first got in I’d have a check around over it. I’d start up the engines with the pilot. Then when we’d take off I’d set the, once we’d taken off I’d set the, reset the fuel tanks to — so that each engine — well let me put it this way. On take-off you had a tank for each engine. After you would take off and you were at level flight you just put one tank to two engines. The tank with the most in it. And then when you got towards the target you would then put one tank per engine. And then when you came out and you were coming back home steady you’d perhaps re-change the fuel arrangements. Perhaps fill up tanks one from another. Again put one tank per two engines. And then all that period you’d be logging what you were doing. You know. Where the fuel was going. How much fuel. Calculating it. Also, I’d be, I’d go around and inspect at regular intervals looking for things. And then the, as we were perhaps coming in towards the target we’d be dropping Window and it was my job to go and heave that out. Then the other thing of course was to go around checking regularly. I mean there was one case in the early part of a flight I went around and checked the [pause] what was happening and I found — you know the floodlight bomb.
CB: The flash.
EM: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. After the bomb, after the bombs had gone you sent the flash down.
EM: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. For the picture.
EM: The little propeller on the end was turning.
CB: Yeah.
EM: And, well, if it had gone on much further we would too. So, I got chewing gum on it and stopped it from going down. It worked out alright later but that’s the sort of thing. So much depended on you seeing it and noticing it. Flaws. Something I also did before we took off was to — when I knew we were going I used to go out to the dispersal and perhaps have a look. Go over the plane. Talk to the chiefy. Talk to the lads who were doing the repairs so that I had —well it was part of a good will mission and part of being certain that you knew that they knew the plane. That was the way it went.
[recording paused]
CB: Ok. Now, on take-off what was your role?
EM: I used to, some, on occasion I used to sit by the pilot but our bomb aimer, we took it in turns. But otherwise I just sat there and checked that the engines were operating correctly. And looking for trouble.
CB: When you came into land did you have a role there or were you in your safety seat?
EM: No. I used to just sit in my position and be there if I was wanted. There was not much I could do then except the odd time we had the — I was pumping like hell on the flaps and hydraulics trying to get them down but that’s about the only thing.
CB: Ok. And when you landed, when you eventually landed did you have to do some kind of check on the aircraft?
EM: Well, if I landed at my own airfield we’d just — the skipper and I would just chat with the chiefy. Tell him, you know, what we’d found. What had happened. But if it was to — we were sent to another airfield. Diverted. I’d speak to the ground crew. You know, give them the details and then if there was no, unless there was no one around I’d lock the controls and shut it up and then go and report to the engineering officer.
CB: So, could you describe why is it, why was it that you would lock the controls?
EM: Well.
CB: Once it was on the ground.
EM: Basically, I mean, if they weren’t locked if there was a breeze or a wind they’d flap and they’d damage. Otherwise you could be in trouble with them.
CB: As far as the ground crew were concerned what relationships did you have with them?
EM: Well with our own we had a very good one. We used to — I was in B Flight at 77 Squadron and we used to get together once a month or whenever we were free and take them for a beer and, you know, something to eat. It was fairly good relations. In fact, I can’t think of a better one.
CB: Good. And as far as debriefing was concerned. So, the aircraft is parked. You are all taken back to the intelligence officer for debriefing.
EM: Debriefing.
CB: What was your job to do there?
EM: What? Sorry?
CB: On debriefing.
EM: Yeah.
CB: What did you do?
EM: Well we just sit around with a mug of coffee. Smoking like hell. They’d just — everyone would have a little say of what we noticed or what we didn’t see. Anything strange. What had happened to us. What we’d seen on the — over the target. Anything new. Different. It was just standard report on what you’d done.
CB: How many times were you hit by enemy fire?
EM: Well, it was very rare that we didn’t come back with a hole somewhere. I believe, in ‘44 that people said, ‘Oh well you didn’t have night fighters.’ Well we did. But the flak was, I found on many occasions, was very heavy and what’s more it was pretty accurate. I’ve seen all sorts of reports but I’ve still got the feeling that on some of the more important targets it really was heavy and I can’t remember one where we didn’t come back with some hole or something there. You know, in fact there was one occasion there was a twang close to my ear and a piece of shrapnel had hit the hydraulics. The undercarriage lever. And the result was I got sprayed with hydraulic fluid before I could close it off. But that’s one problem. I must admit I stunk like heaven for weeks.
CB: Because?
EM: From the oils. Horrible smelling stuff.
CB: Yeah. Did you get attacked by fighters at any stage?
EM: Well, we, I did see some of, some of their jet fighters. There was one daylight where we saw one of their jet fighters. It came straight up through the stream. It wasn’t doing anything but it gave our gunners a wonderful bit of target practice. And it just went up and disappeared.
CB: What was that? Was that a twin engine was it? A 262. Was that a twin engine fighter? A 262.
EM: Yes. You didn’t get a good view of it that you could identify it but you could see the outline well enough and it sort of went through the stream more at an angle.
CB: And was it firing as it did it?
EM: Oh, it had fired. It didn’t hit anything.
CB: Was this in the daylight or at night? In the daylight.
EM: Daylight.
CB: Right. Ok.
EM: You know it was a clear day. You could see it easily.
CB: Yeah. Now –
[phone ringing]
CB: Ah. Changing the subject slightly. What about, hang on. What about Scarecrows? Did you get any of those and what did you know about them?
EM: Well, there were several discussions about that. I thought I saw one and I mentioned it. And they said, ‘No. Can’t.’
CB: Who did you mention that to? The debriefing or to the pilot?
EM: Well, I mentioned it to the pilot and I checked up at debriefing. And again, they said, ‘Oh. No.’
CB: What did you understand a Scarecrow was?
EM: Well, the way it was put to me and it’s why I thought it was one that it looked like a dummy aeroplane going down. But still today when I try to remember I’m not sure myself.
CB: So how did you identify what you thought was a Scarecrow? What did you see?
EM: Well, virtually it looked like a splash of flame and bits coming down from it, you know. It looked —
CB: So —
EM: But having seen planes in daylight being hit and going down. I mean, for instance there was one occasion where we were flying along and there was again a plane — say a hundred yards, two hundred yards away and it was surrounded by a massive shrapnel burst. Flak bursts. And the next minute he seemed to fold up and go down. Now, thinking back, I can’t be sure that that Scarecrow would look anything like.
CB: Right. So that was effectively because they bracketed.
EM: Yeah.
CB: So, what did you understand the term Scarecrow meant?
EM: Well I always got the feeling that the name itself described it. In other words, it was something they put up to make us think there were more being shot down then there was.
CB: Right. Did you ever find out what it really was? Ok. So –
EM: I’m curious if anyone knows.
CB: Right. So, the night fighters. A number of the night fighters were fitted with upward firing cannon. So, they would trace, they would follow the bomber having identified the one they wanted to track underneath from behind and then fire thirty millimetre or twenty millimetre cannon into the fuel tanks.
EM: Yeah, the musik.
CB: Schrage music.
EM: Yeah. Well there was an interesting thing about that too. On our squadron they cut the H2S blister in half. They removed the back half and inside the other shell they put a plank of wood and various other attachments and put a .5 Browning in. The gunner was held in by something like a climbing harness and a huge bungee that went to the back. I know this well because I was sat there and in fact on one raid I sat in it most of the way when I wasn’t pilot or flight engineering. And it was most cold and unpleasant.
CB: And the idea of that was to counter the night fighter.
EM: Yeah. But it didn’t last for long. They were — when, they certainly didn’t have them on the Mark 6 and the aircraft that did have them were [pause] well — put out to graze. They were [pause] they disappeared off the site. You know. I think that occasion was the last I saw of them.
CB: Right. Because it didn’t work? Or why?
EM: Oh, it worked because I believe there were a couple of blokes earlier in ‘45 ‘44 had used them and they did work. They — but I must admit I felt uncovered, uncomfortable when I was told I might have to sit there.
CB: ‘Cause the other gunners were busy as well.
EM: Pardon?
CB: The other gunners were busy.
EM: Oh yeah.
CB: So, they couldn’t sit there.
EM: Oh yes. Yes. We did, on — oh it was used again once but this time they put a proper gunner in there. Thank God. Talking of — there weren’t many fighter attacks in ’45 but I think there were the odd ones because I did remember seeing in the dark, way up there, one or two sights. It looked like fighters attacking but it was only once or twice at the most I saw that.
CB: What about corkscrews? Did you do many corkscrews? Did you do many corkscrews?
EM: Oh yeah. Yeah. When we would do – met the, well, the intruders we were corkscrewing all the way across Yorkshire.
CB: At low level.
EM: Yeah. Yeah. I was stood there. That was quite, yeah. Not long ago I was up in Yorkshire and I met the, I was introduced to the Lord Mayor of the County and I told him about this and I said, ‘Well they haven’t sent me the bill yet.’ He said, ‘Oh they will do.’ [laughs]
CB: Just changing to the crew really now because we’ve covered a lot of things. Thank you. What was the relationship with the crew? How did the crew get on together?
EM: A bit mixed. The Canadians got on well together. The one bloke I felt was a bit of a sore thumb was the bomb aimer. I think he thought he was a bit something different. I didn’t define. We got on. We did the job together. We did what we could together and we worked together. But the blokes I rather liked were the Canadians, the mid upper gunner and the wireless operator. In fact, the wireless operator — I visited him at his home on one occasion. But it was a very, it was friendly but occasionally remote. It wasn’t the sort of crew you would have, that people would always go on about on the radio. We tended to be a bit separate.
CB: Was it a mixture of commissioned and NCOs or all NCOs?
EM: Well the bomb aimer got a commission but the rest of us —oh the Canadian navigator —he was a flying officer. The skipper was a flight lieutenant. Later becoming a squadron leader. The bomb aimer became a pilot officer and he let us know. He was that sort of bloke, you know. But we all got on well as I say doing the job. Doing the job we was there.
CB: But not socially. Socially was different.
EM: Yeah. Outside we used to have an occasional drink together and, in the mess, we used to be quite friendly. And we were in the same nissen hut. So, it was good will. There was no bad.
CB: Right.
EM: Particularly when we had to deal with the rear gunner’s rear end.
CB: Right.
EM: But oh no it was [pause] you couldn’t have wished to have been worse. They weren’t, there was nothing wrong with them. It was just that I don’t think we gelled, you know, together that well. We were good friends but after that no.
CB: It wasn’t really a family.
EM: No.
CB: Which so many crews were.
EM: Pardon?
CB: Many crews were families. They were families of people weren’t they?
EM: No. There was no sort of family feeling.
CB: No.
EM: It was just friends.
CB: And did you –
EM: It was a team doing a job.
CB: Yeah. Did you socialise at all with the ground crew? Did you socialise at all with the ground crew?
EM: Well, nothing serious. I think the wireless operator was the only one. We went out with young ladies together. And he’d pinch mine more often. But he was alright. As I say I met his family and I got, had a very good weekend with them. I think he was the closest I got.
CB: So, was it a difficult situation to leave the RAF or did it not matter?
EM: Well —
CB: Or did you look forward to it?
EM: I didn’t really want to join the RAF. I had my own ambitions as to what I wanted to do after the war which was to go into research science. And I think that was the main thing.
CB: Why did you join the RAF in the first place rather than the navy or the army?
EM: Well, my dad had been in the First World War. Started out as — in the artillery. From there he graduated to observer in balloons. From there he graduated as an observer in RE8s. And towards the end of the war they selected him as a pilot and he ended, he ended up on the last day of the war sitting in the cockpit of an SE5.
CB: Oh. Did he?
EM: But having said that I’ve always been interested in flying. Whether it was model aeroplanes. And in fact, behind our house in Worthing there was a big field and Alan Cobham used to have his Flying Circus there. And occasionally I’d nip over there and join them and run errands for them. For the, for the treat they used to give me a flight in an Avro Tutor or something. Or one of their old planes. Occasionally they let me tighten up a nut and bolt [laughs] [unclear]. So, what else could I do? I mean it had to be. Apart from that I didn’t fancy marching all over the place. If I was going to do it I was going to do it in luxury. If you call it that.
CB: When [pause] when you were on operations how did you feel about what you were doing?
EM: Well, something else. When we were in South Norwood it was in the Blitz and we got bombed more times than enough because we, where we were living there was Norwood Junction right behind and there was anti-aircraft guns going up. There were loads of bombs going down. And the result I saw all the blitz so when it came my turn I wasn’t too [pause] but on the other hand the thing that I wasn’t happy about killing folk and things like that. I felt there was a bit of a conscience there but it was — but that all changed when the things I went and saw in Germany afterwards. Like Belsen. And I thought, I think basically my feeling was — ok it’s a job that’s got to be done and if we don’t do it they’ll have us in a most unpleasant way.
CB: Ok.
EM: But —
CB: The same for all of the crew or did they feel differently? What did the rest of the crew feel?
EM: I think they were much of a muchness. It was a job that had to be done. Not a very nice job. I mean like putting down a pet dog that’s got rabies. I mean you might like the dog but it’s got to go.
CB: That’s been really interesting and really helpful. It’s Tuesday the 13th of October. And thank you very much Ted.
EM: Oh well I hope it’s been interesting.
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 Edward Harry Matthews
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-13
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMatthewsEH151013
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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01:19:57 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
With an interest in flying after experiencing Alan Cobham’s Flying Circus, Ted volunteered for aircrew. He went to the Air Crew Reception Centre at St John’s Wood, followed by Newquay on the Initial Training Wing. Ted proceeded to RAF Locking for an introduction to aircraft engineering. He did a more concentrated course at RAF St Athan and flew Oxfords and Tiger Moths. Ted went to the Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Riccall. He replaced a flight engineer in another crew and joined 77 Squadron at RAF Full Sutton, flying Halifaxes.
Ted carried out 15 operations. The first two were daylight ones to Mainz and Cologne. The third was a night operation to Kamen on the Ruhr and they encountered an intruder JU188 aircraft when landing, as part of the German Operation Gisela. Other operations included Helmstedt with anti-aircraft fire; Dortmund; Wuppertal; Witten where they were hit on the starboard engine; Recklinghausen where bombs dropped on a munitions train instead of their target; in Osnabrück they were hit in the bomb bay by shrapnel; Heligoland and Wangerooge saw two Halifaxes collide mid-air. Ted describes the spectacle of lines of fuel on fire in an oil plant.
Ted discusses in detail his role as a flight engineer.
Ted stopped flying in September 1945. He dropped old ammunition and bombs in the North Sea and did a safety course at RAF St Athan. He was sent to a maintenance unit in Faßberg, near Belsen, and was demobilised. He became a government Senior Scientific Officer.
Contributor
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Sally Coulter
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
England--Somerset
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Soltau
Germany--Helgoland
Germany--Helmstedt
Germany--Kamen
Germany--Mainz (Rhineland-Palatinate)
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Recklinghausen (Münster)
Germany--Wangerooge Island
Germany--Witten
Germany--Wuppertal
Germany
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1945-09
77 Squadron
aircrew
bombing of Helgoland (18 April 1945)
fear
FIDO
flight engineer
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
Ju 88
Master Bomber
mid-air collision
military service conditions
mine laying
Oxford
RAF Full Sutton
RAF Locking
RAF Riccall
RAF St Athan
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/554/15907/PPattersonGE1901.1.jpg
060ccb192e773a320fa5c2d80b95b204
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/554/15907/APattersonGE190126.1.mp3
e165630a23c378907244fd1745908a55
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
Patterson, Ernie
Gilbert Ernest Patterson
G E Patterson
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Patterson, GE
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-08
2019-01-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Warrant Officer Gilbert Ernest Patterson DFM (b. 1922 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a wireless operator / air gunner with 635 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BE: So, this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, the interviewer is Beth Ellin and the interviewee is Mr Gilbert Patterson. The interview is taking place in Mr Patterson’s home in Darlington on the 26th of January 2019. Joining us is his daughter Catherine Hodgson. Off you go!
EP: Me? Well I was accepted into the RAF on the 4th of February, 1942, and prior to that I was helping to build aerodromes such as Middleton St George which is a bomber station and the satellite to Middleton St George which was Croft, that was, and from there I was called up into the RAF and the first place I went to, where everybody went to, was Blackpool and it was there that I was trained and learned to do Morse Code which was, I’d been accepted for. And we, it was all done in the Winter Gardens and all the teachers were ex GPO instructors and they were the ones, and there you had to get to ten words a minute and you got tested four, six, eight and ten, and if you failed any of them on the way to ten, if you, you sat it three times and if you sat it the third time you’re out.
BE: So you passed.
EP: That was, that was, the first thing you were doing all the foot slogging and everything. The Marks, I always remember the Marks and Spencers was where they kept all your documents. We used to do a guard duty on ‘em, two, two hours on and two hours off and we’d march up to somebody’s back street they’d stop outside somebody’s garage, they’d open the garage door and it was full of rifles and that was where we had to get, we were issued with rifles then and we did rifle drill on the Promenade at Blackpool. We were there about three or four month and we used to do PT on the sands, and the next time we went from there would be a ground wireless operator, place called Madley and from there we went, the next stop was Yatesbury where I trained to be air wireless operator and from there I think we went and we did a, I went to gunnery school up at Evanton and trained to be an air gunner as well, but I was never in the turrets on operations. Am I doing, is this all you want? And that was at Evanton up in Scotland and from there, that’s where we got our three stripes as a sergeant and we marched to the RAF marchpast when we’re on the passing out parade, I always remember that, but it’s hard to remember where I was. Then after that we ended up at, I forget what is was we were at, it was at, I think we ended up at an advanced flying unit where there was sprog navigators and sprog wireless operators and we had instructors with us on this at the advanced flying school, and from there I went, I don’t know I went to there first, after the gunnery school, and we ended up crewing up which was at a place called Abingdon and it was there that you all crewed up and you were all put in a hangar and you had to pick your own crew. You once told you were flying with them, you picked your own crew there. And I think we flew from there, our first time I was flying and their satellite was called Stanton Harcourt and that was where we flew in Whitleys. Then from there we went from Whitleys up to heavy unit on Halifaxes, at Rufforth, that’s near York, have you heard of that? That’s near York, and from there, we were, when we graduated from there we were recommended for that we could have either gone to 10 squadron in Melbourne which is main force or we could have gone to Downham Market on the Pathfinder and we plumped for that. See we, that was our dealing with us then, we could have gone there and got the chop, but this, we got to Downham Market. At Downham Market I was there a month [emphasis] before we went on operations and prior to that we had been training for five month as a crew, you know, before we got on operations, so when we got to Downham we were training on Downham Market for five, for four weeks before we got on operations which was after D-Day and it was there that I crossing the runway to do a DI on a bomber I found a horseshoe which is now over the back door in my kitchen and it were on every bombing raid I went on that, that horseshoe. Look. No kidding that.
BE: And were there other things people had, in the plane that were for superstitions?
EP: Pimpernel.
BE: Well, yes.
EP: We got, there we were issued Pimpernel aids. Have you heard of that, eh? Have you heard of it?
BE: Tell me.
EP: That comb on there, I’ve got it, show you, it’s got a compass inside it: that was one, they were called Pimpernel aids. Then there’s also you know the clip on the pencil which navigators had, you know the metal thing that goes on with the blob on the end, that was another one, you could stand it on the end of the pencil point like that and the blob on the end pointed north, this was in case you got shot down, help you to find where you were and which way to start walking.
BE: And the trees. South.
EP: And we went to lectures to see, they showed you pictures of places where you could get shot down and to give you extra idea of where you were and the only thing I learned from it was that the longest branches of the tree point south, [emphasis] that’s the only thing I can ever remember of it! Not that you could do – but we didn’t need any of them – but also you could have pipe which navigators, a pipe, you pulled the stem out the pipe and in the end of that stem there was a bit of cotton wool there was a compass in there! That was in a pipe and you could have a pick whatever you wanted. And you could also get a pair of buttons, which you put on your trousers and if you could pull them off and turn the buttons round like that and there was a pin on one end and there was a dot on the other one and it would point north, that was another helping to find you, where you were. Have you been told this before?
BE: Not, in an interview, no. It’s really interesting.
EP: Right. That was another way of finding, if you needed, to find your way back. But as it was, that was, as you know, main force you did thirty missions, then you went on to, you go as an instructor somewhere, then you go back and do another fifty. But on Pathfinder Force you had to do the fifty, cause you had all the latest gadgets for navigating and they didn’t want you to leave, so you had to do fifty trips on Pathfinders, if you didn’t make it. Now as we went on to, with us being recommended, lots of crews would go on to Pathfinders that were already on a squadron and they’d done ops, but when you go on to, I suppose this happens on a squadron anyway, well if you hadn’t done any operations and you get on to the Pathfinders, your pilot goes with an experienced crew – I bet you’ve known this before cause they’ve told you - and they fly with another crew to show him what it’s like before he takes his own crew. Well what happened on our, with us he did his second, call his second dicky, and he, cause and he and the two navigators who had already done, he’d done thirty trips, we, they were taken off and posted away, cause you had to be good as a navigation team, that was the main thing on a Pathfinder crew, and with him doing his second dicky we only did twenty nine the rest of the crew and that pilot and the two navigators weren’t making the grade as far as Don Bennet went, he was the boss of Pathfinders, and they were posted overnight and I don’t know where they went, but that left us all spare, the rest of the crew. We’d all done our twenty nine. Well I got on to another crew that lost their wireless operator. Apparently they’d been at the same stage as us, well you know what they were doing, and apparently they’d been shot up over somewhere and they were on two engines coming back to this country and he was heading for Woodbridge, emergency landing strip in Surrey, and on the approach he lost another engine and it crash landed. They all got out bar the wireless operator, he was killed and I took his place.
BE: And his name was?
EP: And his name was Jimmy Crabtree. I think he was from Rochdale, I always remember that, and I think he was an ex-police cadet before he joined the RAF. I always remember that.
BE: And what happened about his sister, writing to you?
EP: And his sister, once she got all his belongings and that, there was a picture of me in it and I’ve got a picture of him somewhere, and she said I hope you have better luck than what Terry did. That was from his sister.
BE: You’ve still got the letter?
EP: Eh?
BE: And you’ve still got this letter.
EP: And I’ve still got, I haven’t got her letter, I’ve got his photograph.
BE: His photograph.
EP: That was that time. Then what was the next thing? I got in with this crew and after that we were top dogs after that. We lost the, I was this wireless operator, and towards the end, I’ll go back to when, when you’re on a Pathfinder Squadron you’re not all marking the target, you know what the Pathfinders did, don’t you, you marked the target, but lots of you, you didn’t all mark the target you went as a supporter, you supported, supported the ones who were marking the target. Anyway when you get to be, you were selected to be a Master Bomber and you were a Master Bomber as you get, first there you were marking the target, you find it and marking it for the bombers and I can always remember the calls, the callsign was Portland One and it always reminds me of a bag of cement, I used to say. And as I said you’re first there and you’re orbiting the target, directing operations to where the TIs and marking the target and the skipper’d tell, speak to all the bombers who were listening out to you, and you had to, and time was the main thing. You had to be there on that minute so that you didn’t bump into one another: there was lots of people lost by that. Where the TIs went down off marking aircraft, being a Master Bomber you’re circling and you’ve got a deputy going round with you, and you’d be wherever the target indicators were going down and cascading on to the aiming point, see we’d marked the aiming point and you tell them if you weren’t on the target, the Master Bomber would tell all the bombers to bomb to one left, or to one right or to the cascading red greens or whatever to go, he’d maybe tell you to ignore the bomb the fading green TIs and bomb the red ones, so that’s what the Master Bomber did. When that raid was over the skipper would assess that raid whether it was successful or not and me as the wireless operator, he’d tell me and I used be in touch with this country before any bomber got back, with that information. And he’d say if that wasn’t a success, said we’ll be coming here again. [laughs] That’s what a Master Bomber did, and I can still remember our base callsign was Off Strike and the aircraft was called Cut Out. I can still remember all that. And I’ve got a, I’ve got a thing in the garage now, and it’s got all the callsigns of all the squadron on a piece of lino, [emphasis] which were, and it’s written in chalk and I’ve still got that chalk on that lino from 1944.
BE: Wow!
EP: It’s in my garage now. Nowadays there’d be some sophisticated computer to give you, give ‘em all information like that.
BE: What about the bombs and people getting killed with the wings getting chopped off?
EP: Oh aye, and on a daylight you think you’re the only ones in the sky when it’s dark, at night time, and on a daylight raid when you used to go, you had to watch if you were getting bombs dropping from an aeroplane that was above you: knocking wingtips off, knocking rear turrets off with the gunner still in it – it happened all the time, but.
BE: What about when you used, with the coffee and trying to get through the plane?
EP: I was in charge of six, a flask six coffees in, to me, I called it creosote. I’ve never drunk coffee ever since, it was that terrible and I used to have to go down to the rear gunner with a flask of coffee and emergency oxygen bottle and you had to slide down on there you couldn’t just walk there, you were all over the sky avoiding flak and searchlights and all that. And I can remember, with being on the Path, you had what they called an H2S, which the second nav, you see we had two navigators. The second navigator operated this H2S and it was like a gadget you could see through cloud with it, onto the road, and that was why, with very little of it, we were the first to get it and you could see the ground. I’d just go back to rear turret, bang on his door, he’d open the door and I’d take the top off flask and give him, straight into his mouth and he’d break a lump of ice off his lung, off his exhaust thing on his mask and give it to me and I’d take it back up to the front and I’d throw it on the navigator’s table and the next day when I went to do a DI on that bomber it was still there but it’s smaller. And that was, that was one of the trips. And in that there were six flasks of coffee and they were all breakable so you can imagine they all did get broken, you’d just get the case off the back of your truck, and you’ve got a packet of rations and in it was six boiled sweets, handful of raisins, packet of chewing gum and a block of chocolate. Have you been told that before?
BE: No.
EP: That’s what we got for the rations.
BE: What did you eat when you landed?
EP: When you landed we got egg and bacon, and chips. And they was all rationed in civvie street, we had a ration thing for it. But we had three, I’ll give you three stories. This particular day, when the army couldn’t take Osnabruck, right, if you remember that was one of the places, and we were on, if you weren’t on missions you were on training and I can remember when we’d go on a cross country run that was for the navigators and meet up with the fighters somewhere, exercise for the gunners or we’d end up over the Wash to drop the, for the bomb aimer to practice dropping smoke bombs that were called ten pound smoke bombs. And what fascinated me, and still does, when the skipper talked to the ground, tell them that we were going to start bombing, the target was in the Wash, you used to have to tell ‘em what height you were at, they used the word Angels, right, Angels Five, you were at five thousand feet, you were ready to bomb the site, that sticks in my mind, what a lovely word: Angels Five to describe your height. I always remember that. [laughs] Anyway, this particular day, we, and I had to, me, I had to contact base every half hour in case there was a recall and this day there was. We had to get back and it was to bomb Osnabruck which the army couldn’t take, they were having trouble getting it so we had to go and soften it up, but the thing was, when we got back and we were briefed to where we were going and we went straight away, whereas as a rule, they take, once you know where you’re going, they take you out to the bomber and you’re kept there for an hour, an hour and a half, before you left but this raid was very important for the army. We took off straight away, but when we got in the aeroplane, we found it weren’t full up and one of the ground staff they left it to another lad to put petrol in and he didn’t and we were ready to go out to take off. The flight engineer, that’s him there -
BE: His name?
EP: Harry. Sitting next to me on that picture. Harry, his name was Harry Parker, but his real name was John Henry: that’s him, and that’s him. He said we haven’t got enough petrol to get us there and back skipper. And the skipper said we must have, he said how much have we got and he, the navi, he tried to work it out – the flight engineer – and he said well what was in, it’s not enough to get us there and back and the skipper said we go and we’ll bale out over France!
BE: Coming back.
EP: We got out to take off, got to the end of the runway, he turned on and went on to another dispersal, broke RT silence and I said about that we had no petrol, cause we were, otherwise we would have had time to sort that out, but we could have taken off straight away after being briefed. Anyway, what happened, but navigation leader and had to talk with the navi, they came in a bomber and they were all taking off to go and he, you know when you go to a target you dog leg, you never fly straight there, did you know that? You fly dog leg, that way Jerry’s guessing which way you’re going by doing that, and he has his fighters on a certain place and you don’t go there, that’s how we used to fox the fighters. And he said we’ll have to cut that leg out and that leg out and take off at such-and-such a time. By the time they got the bowser from the NAAFI, one of the NAAFI drivers got the bowser, that’s the thing that carries the petrol in, hundred octane it is by the way, not what you could buy, this was hundred octane, by the time they got him down there, to fill and to give us enough petrol to get us there and back. He said well -
BE: Somebody came, someone came on the plane.
EP: We cut that leg out, we’re going to be taking off at this time. And he said well, the joke that’s coming, he said in the end, we set course fifty minutes late: they were all well on the way by then. And in the end the skipper said well we’ll cut all the legs out, we’ll go straight to the target, and one of the navigators, Buddy, he said we can’t go, bloody suicide going that way, and the skipper said well we’re going, are you coming with us? That’s the line and somebody said I might as well, got nothing better to do. That’s true story that.
BE: Very, very brave.
EP: We went straight, and that was the highest we ever got, we used to bomb at about nineteen thousand feet all the time, we were up at twenty three thousand feet that day and I was always in the astrodome. You know what that is, don’t you, the dome and inside that was a piece of bullet-proof Perspex in that in case you were attacked, we had to do that, and that particular day we were at twenty three thousand feet to try and avoid some of the light flak, or flak, and all of a sudden there was about half a dozen bursts of flak on our tail. Straight away the rear gunner shouted flak skipper: dive! And he put the aircraft into a dive and I were looking in the astrodome and I could look back and you could just imagine they were reloading and firing, and they burst and we were split second in front, away from it, if they’d been a bit nearer they’d have hit us. But we dived out of the way but that’s what happened and do you know the feeling when you’re last to go to bed you think somebody’s behind you, that’s the feeling I had. You could see all these flaks burst right behind, follow you, you could see, following you down like that, you could see where we’d been but anyway where these things gone off. Anyway, we managed to get there in time we did what we had to do and that was it. That was at one of the raids.
BE: How did they check the dive?
EP: Eh?
BE: How did they check the dive?
EP: Oh that was on Nuremburg that was.
BE: Oh right.
EP: D’you want another story? Right, we did a daylight on Nuremburg, do you know on a night raid we lost ninety five bombers, did you know that? You didn’t! Well you, we lost ninety five bombers: Lancasters, Halifaxes in one night, [emphasis] You didn’t know that, well you should have done. The lads must have told you that. I wasn’t on that raid though. And there was twelve crash landed in this country which were write offs, but that was the most we ever lost. Anyway, we did a daylight raid, that was a night raid but we did after that, being in the forty five we did a daylight raid on Nuremburg and we were on the first to drop ours and we got walloped and the aircraft, affected the ailerons or something, we went into a dive, and Harry, he told me he had his back up against the pilot’s control and he was pushing the control stick back with the pilot and it eventually responded and he levelled out so he came round, the raid was over, they’d all, they were all gone and on their way back home to England and we, he came round, just dropped the bombs, and he eventually turned round, tried to find our way home and all of a sudden these two fighters we thought were coming for us, and when they come along, I could see the mid upper gunner waiting for ’em, he was ready to have a go at them, they were coming and they were Mustangs, you’ve heard of them, haven’t you. Have you? American Mustangs, well they flew right along, escorted us back, and there was one on each side of us and this feller at this, on the starboard side, he had his hood back, coloured lad, and he was smoking a Havana cigar, let the smoke out. That’s a true story. [Unclear] They were based over there somewhere.
BE: You had no engine power, gun power, is that right?
EP: That was another time, that. Anyway, when they left, from out of nowhere what came alongside? It was a Spitfire! Where the hell he’d come from? He followed until we crossed into the Channel area and he broke away as he was based over there. That was another story. Are you interested?
BE: Very interested!
EP: And that’s what happened to him. Do you want another story?
BE: Definitely!
EP: I think, we were briefed to go to Leipzig and our second navigator, he was a Russian Jew, his name was Boris Brezlov. He came from Russia with his grandparents and the name was Breslovski and they cut the ski off the end and they called themselves Breslov, anyway he was doing his chart, in flying control and he could sense somebody standing behind him, and he said the waiting [unclear] to go and he said don’t stand there behind mind, bugger off somewhere else and at that this arm came over his shoulder with all the bloody gold braid on it and he seen it and it was Don Bennett, Air Vice Marshall, but he was in charge of the Pathfinders, and he said, and he expected to be taken outside and shot. Said only RAF to tell an Air Vice Marshal to bugger off! That’s another story. True story that, yeah. But, er, is that enough?
BE: If you would like to take a break, we can take a break and come back in a bit.
EP: We’ll take a break.
BE: So we’re just coming back from a little bit of a break.
EP: Well this first pilot I flew with his name was Jack Harold, and he had a car, a Morris Minor, and with him getting posted, he came into the billet, he says anybody want to buy a motor car? And I said to him Jack, yeah I’ll have it, how much you want for it? He says twenty eight pound. And I said to him I said well I’ll have it Jack no intentions of driving and I’ve still got, I went into out Downham, into village, and I borrowed, I took twenty five pound out of me Post Office Saving book, what I’ve got in that drawer over there, and I had three pound in me pocket and that was the twenty eight I give him for the car. And the very first time we all three of six of us went into Downham Market in it and it, what happened, I found the brakes weren’t very good so the next time, before I went the second time I went in the car and I found I’d have a job, and they were all cable brakes and not like they are now, and I of course, clever me, I just thought I’d slacken them off meself and I put, and we got in it and of course when I took off I’d tightened them too much, and they were getting really hot and hubs of the wheels were red hot with binding, they was stretching acting as a brake, I couldn’t hardly move so we stopped and I could see all the hubs of the wheels were red hot so what we all did we did, we had a pee on the wheels to cool ‘em off. True that. Yeah. We did.
BE: [Laugh]
EP: We got back in and went the rest of the way and back without any brakes at all. I managed, I slackened them right off. I thought I’d adjust them by tightening them and we found that all brakes on cars you could hear ‘em when you tune up, you can hear ‘em catching. That’s how they should have been. Cause I slackened them right off and we went the rest of the way there and back without any brakes. And that was where I used to go to what they called the Corn Exchange in Wisbech and that was where you had all dance bands in there, that’s where I learned to dance and where I met my wonderful wife. In the end eventually she used to phone me up in to the mess, at times there weren’t allowed any outside calls come in, security wise, and you know you never seen anybody with cameras, they were taboo, you weren’t allowed cameras but she used to phone me every day and if I wasn’t going to see her on the night I used to say to her how did work go down this morning and when I said that she knew I wasn’t going to see her then on that night. You couldn’t, there were times when they wouldn’t allow outside calls coming in. That’s how security was, when you, like you see on here you talk about. That was it. You never went anywhere. What’s next?
BE: Octane, hundred octane fuel for your car.
EP: Anyway, we got a shop in the village, I managed to salvage one of the lad’s, we had water bottles and a bag that fit it to put it in, and I managed to salvage that and I got three of these bottles and they just went snug into this bag and I used to take them out to the ground staff lads out that, where the bomber was based, but sometimes they only had MT petrol, was a lot less than hundred octane. But course you know they used to, with the petrol that the ground staff lads had, they used to clean the nacelles, you know where the nacelles are on the bomber, it’s where the wheels go in to and they used to clean the engines nacelles with the stirrup pump and petrol in the bucket and pump it away inside the bomber where the wheels go and one guy used to fill these three cans for me with six pints with petrol what they used to clean the engine out, and he’d put it in and leave the bags in the back of the car, he’d, after I’d filled the tank up with that six pints he’d get it after he’d had his dinner, he’d go back to the bomber and he’d put, he’d fill ‘em up again and he’d come back and he’d fill it up again, and that’s a gallon and a half for the night out and I used to pick him up and the six of us in the one car and that. That was very naughty, you aren’t allowed to do that. But we also had FIDO and it used ninety thousand gallons an hour and it used to disperse the fog, you know on the side of the runway. There was only two bomber stations that had it at the time and we were one of them.
BE: So what did you do when you went out with your crew on kind of leave time and your relaxation time?
EP: Leave.
BE: What did you do with, you say you’d go to the Corn Exchange?
EP: That was what we’d do of a night time, it was where a dance bands, that was proper dancing in those days, quicksteps, waltzes and all that, you got a lot of excuse-me dancing there, and that was where I met the wife and she was in the Land Army, have you heard of the Womens’ Land Army, and she was on a shilling an hour, five p an hour, that was her wages for her that. And you know me, as a flight sergeant, do you know what my pay was, sixty two and a half pay, that’s twelve and six a day, that was my pay, a shilling of that was danger money, that was right, sixty two and a half p a day. Now when I left school in 1936 and went to be apprentice joiner, my pay were twenty seven p a week: that was the pay. In those days you could buy a three bedroomed semi-detached house for three hundred and sixty five pound!
BE: Did you mention Newcastle airport?
EP: Then with me being a joiner, I was, when the war started 1939, all building work stopped and I ended up, before I went into the RAF, I ended up working at Middleton St George which was a bomber station weren’t it, and Croft was a satellite to it and I worked there and from there I was called up and went in back to where, you know where I started off with this going to Blackpool. That was when I started.
BE: When did you go to Newcastle Airport?
EP: That was, as I say I was working at Newcastle Airport, it was called Goosepool before, that was it’s name. I can remember when I was a young lad I used to go and meet me cousins that lived near the airport, and we used to go bird nesting where it was Bomber Command, took off from there, and that was there. I can always remember I was working in one of the village for the future crew, soldiers and all was gonna take it over and the army was having a practice, a display, one lot was chasing the others and they [unclear] down to some aircraft flying nearby and some of these soldiers came through these billet holes I was fixing a doorway in and on the frame of the doorframe there was a strap to hold the frame together when you fixed it, and I was stood, what amused me was, one of these, one of them, you know the red the red army banners on and ran through one was being chased by the green lot of soldiers, they was practicing whatever, and he tripped up over this blinkin’ lath and he just dropped, he just fell out of the aeroplane and they were chasing, chasing and he tripped over this lath. [Laughs] He gets, the man said get up and he runs off. I didn’t dare face him anymore, I had to turn away. That was, that was before I went into the RAF, all that. All a long time ago.
BE: What about the characteristic of a Lanc take off.
EP: Did you know that the Lancaster has a pull to port on take off? Did you know that? She knows it.
BE: Tell the story though, be great.
EP: No, but this is it. The pilot had to juggle with it. That’s why we had eight in the crew. There’s two navigators, one was, one of them, the proper navigator, he was a lecturer in zoology at Reading University before he went into the RAF and the other one was, I told you, Boris Brezlov and he came from Russia with his grandparents, and he used to operate the H2S, the gadget we see through the floor.
BE: Their names, Graham Rose, their names?
EP: Graham Rose, he was the navigator, but you wouldn’t think he was on a bloody bomber here, cause I sat here and he sat there, and Boris sat there and I used to stand up and look through the astrodome, cause I got good marks, one exam I had I had excellent night vision, eyesight, this was part of it, when we got near the target he used to shout over tannoy get in that astrodome Pat, that shows I had good eyesight, keep me eye open for fighters, but the thing was you don’t fire at them unless they fire at you. This H2S, do you know what, it was all see through cloud, you could see the ground and now and again you’d get the navigator telling the pilot to tip his wing like that so that he could send the bloody radar to check how near another city was, used to check his and you wouldn’t think he was on a bomber raid he was that involved, with his, every five minutes on his chart was a little diamond track, and he was on course all the time and this is why I put it down to how we get away with it: we were in the right place at the right time. A good crew they were. And we all kept going until we all did, some did about fifty four trips, we all kept going till we all got our fifty in and that. And that, the first crew I was with, we seemed to get more, and out of all the fifty one raids we was on in all we lost two hundred and seventy five bombers, that was, I kept a check of it, and I got three hundred and fifty flying hours in Lancasters alone, and two hundred and fifty of ‘em was operational and I never got the defence medal because I wasn’t, I’d got to do three years non-operational. You see on the phone they said you only did two, they had tabs on you all the time, you only did two and I was still training, that was two training with the crew before I got on ops. And I always remembered, if I’d been in the Home Guard or the Fire Service that would have counted, all the time I was building aerodromes before I went into the RAF, so they could have taken that into account, couldn’t they? That was better than being on Home Guard, that’s what it was. And I can still remember our callsigns, I may have told you this anyway: it was Off Strike: base and Cut Out for the aircraft, and you more or less got your same aircraft all the time unless it was getting a service and that. Wonderful aeroplane, the old Lancaster, wonderful. We had a squadron of Mosquitos with us, you know what, there was about eight, seven or eight Mosquito Pathfinder squadrons during the war and biggest part of them was Mosquitos and we had a squadron of Mosquitos and they originated from Thornaby, which is just up the road, and they could take off with a four thousand pound bomb if the bomb doors weren’t fully closed. I’ve got, show you some pictures. Pull it back. This was, is it still going? This was our, my last raid on Heligoland.
BE: Oh, wow!
EP: That was there. Read the bottom of it, tells you the height we were at and everything. And that’s the raid we did on Nuremburg where we had a bit of hiccup there.
BE: They’re amazing.
EP: That’s all bombs leaving the bomber. Yeah, there was a four thousand bomb following all that.
BE: That’s incredible.
EP: That’s, that was from our own aeroplane. Yeah. This is my log book. Just look at that front page. You see what you can read on the right hand side. Read all the places I was at. We were on that one sunk the battleship von Scheer. German battleship, we were on that raid.
BE: Amazing. The red and the green and the black means different things.
EP: The red’s night time and the black’s daylight bombing raid and the green’s the daylight raids. You see Admiral von Scheer. Now my very first trip was on Stettin, you know where that, that was Poland. Eight and a half hours airborne and it wasn’t put, we went there a few times. On one raid we went up, we came over Norway, over Sweden, down into Poland. Eight and a half hour trip it was, and one time this pilot was listening out on his radio, and Sweden was opening fire, they weren’t trying to hit you, and you’re listening out and they said: ‘you are flying over neutral territory,’ you know, you shouldn’t be doing that, and pilot said, ‘we know, anyway coming back don’t open fire again.’ This pilot answered: ‘you are three thousand feet off target,’ [emphasis] and they answered them, said, ‘we know!’ They weren’t trying to hit you, they were just warning shots. True story that. That’s something to read that, that’s just that one, that’s the last page and that says, [pause] I was awarded the DFM, you know what the DFM is, don’t you, you do! Distinguished Flying Medal. I got twenty quid with that when I got demobbed! Yeah. It’s worth about four thousand pound now. And also, you get me that pen over there, all of that, all that. I’m going to show you some of my proud possessions. Being in the Pathfinder Force, you had to have a permit to wear them, to wear the badge, the gold badge. You could be pulled up, you could be pulled, that was my pilot, you could be pulled up by the Military Police if you were wearing it. Lots used to masquerade and weren’t entitled to it and were pulled up, and this was a permit I had, that was a permit I had to wear it, signed by Air Vice Marshal Bennett. You read that.
BE: That’s amazing! Awarded Pathfinder Force Badge, 23rd of February 1945.
EP: And that, not until you get permission from him, and that’s it, that’s one of my proud possessions.
BE: It’s amazing.
EP: Are you reading it?
BE: Yeah.
EP: You soon read that! And that’s the skipper, the second skipper I flew with. He died in 1990.
BE: His name?
EP: DSO, DFC he got. We all got decorated.
BE: His name.
EP: Eh?
BE: His name?
EP: Alex. That’s his book there look. There’s his name, there’s his book.
BE: Alex Thorne, DFC, DSO.
EP: That’s him there, he was top, a hell of a bloke, hell of a pilot. That’s what I put it down to, my idea, the navigator was the main one. He went, took you over the right spots, but and those, because cameras weren’t around get the very full pictures you get now. All the pictures you see and that’s his book. And that was at the Nuremburg raid. You can see the craters, see all the bomb craters on that one.
BE: Yeah, it’s amazing.
EP: The garrison see, flattened it. and we go on about the Germans, Germany did to us. We got nothing in this country to what the Germans got. The damage we did was out of this world to what, to what they got. Terrible. I thought that was sad, the damage we did. But er, if you want to read that after.
BE: Do you want, about the dinghy training?
EP: What?
BE: Dinghy training in Blackpool.
EP: What was that?
BE: About the training you did in dinghy training. If you came down in the sea and the aids that were on it.
EP: Well that’s it. You remember the comb? There’s the comb with the, with the compass inside. Can you see, if you look, you can shake it you can hear it at times. Can yer?
BE: No, I can’t.
EP: Can you [unclear] see there’s something inside the plastic, in there. Turn it over, there’s a compass in there.
BE: You would not know.
EP: Eh?
BE: It’s very clever. You would not know.
EP: Yeah, you just break it. Used to say you had two pins, two buttons you could sew on your flies, I said you put them on your trousers you’d pull them off to see where to go and your trousers would fall down. I used to crack on about that. But that’s all the page that. When you’ve finished doing this you can read that, but that was one of my proud possessions. You put it back did you? Was that. That was a permanent award. When I got demobbed you got, it was called a gratuity. It’s called redundancy now when you get, you finish work, in those days it was called gratuity, I got eighty two pound for all that and I got twenty pound for me gong, but now with all the memorabilia, with my DFM, me Pathfinder Certificate, that thing there, and me mate and all that: it’s worth two or three thousand quid.
BE: Amazing.
EP: And she kept them, my, in that, it’s all in that cabinet over there. I made that cabinet.
BE: It’s lovely.
EP: What else, pet?
BE: This was about the dinghy training and you used to, how you would detach from the plane and the training in Barrow-in-Furness
EP: Barrow-in-Furness, I don’t know how we go there. But the thing was you had to put all this flying gear on, what someone else had been training on it, it was all wet, trying to put it on and in turn you had to jump off the high dive, into the water, into a dinghy and one of the exercises was: the instructor there, he’d turn the dinghy over and you had, in turn you had to jump in the thing and try to get on to your knees into the round part of the dinghy and a couple of rubber handles on the bottom like that and you got to lift, don’t you, you’re right underneath it aren’t you and all the rest of the crew there would be in the water waiting to get in it and they’re all going get in it and you’re underneath it, [unclear] all get in it [laughter].
BE: So if it came down in the sea what was it equipped with?
EP: Inside of it? I was in charge of a portable tele, transmitter. The handle was folded up and also you’re tied to the bomber, in the right, into the starboard wing there was a plate there and on the inside of the aircraft if you know you’re coming down in the sea, channel, you pull this cord and it inflates the dinghy in the wing and blows this panel off and then you’ve got to get out of the aeroplane and get into the dinghy before it goes down and there’s a knife in there in the socket, you’ve got to cut the wire, if you didn’t it would pull you down in the water wouldn’t it so you’ve got to cut yourself free and make sure you’re all in it, and that’s how and this portable wireless that I was in charge of, what you’d to do you’d just connect this handle and crank it and it sent out SOS on a continuous note so they could take a bead on you, see where you are. I don’t know whether it worked or not, but that was what the job was, this portable and it was covered in about six inches of foam so it wouldn’t sink. And did you know the wings, the petrol tanks on the Lancasters, it’s got about six inches of foam round on about six petrol tanks. You take off two of them, and then you use the others and when you take off the two you landed on and they’re covered in six inches of foam, in case you get hit with flak, of course it’ll seal it again. Once you get, I only ever saw two fellas ever bale out of a Lancaster, they was all in the stream, bomber stream and they were on fire and I only seen two get out and it still kept going along with us, till eventually got away. But I’ve seen aircraft get a direct hit in the air and it just explodes. Pretty terrible, awful sight. Don’t know they’re born now. And do you know what, I don’t get a penny pension for what I went through. You don’t get nowt. I came out A1, if I’d come out wounded I’d have got one: I don’t get any pension.
BE: What about the dispersal, when you landed in fog and you followed a vehicle on the runway.
EP: The very first trip I did with this second pilot, we went to Merseburg and we lost a lot of bombers that night. And coming back it was that foggy where we were based, was working, and it was all, technical aircraft that they landed there, yes I, I had to listen to Group headquarters and the message was to all us bombers: we were diverted to Ford down near Southampton. I always remember that, and we were up at ten thousand feet, and the women, who were controllers, they were marvellous, their voices, women, they used to handle it, bring aircraft down wherever they were at, and you would get an aircraft calling up permission emergency to land short of fuel and someone ill on board and it would er -
BE: You landed, and a vehicle.
EP: And when you do land, you land and all of a sudden a little fifteen hundred weight van would nip in front of you and big words would appear on it: follow me and you would follow him somewhere then and when you get where he switches the light off and he goes and gets another aeroplane. Then the next day you had to go find, there was that many bloomin’ aircraft on the ground it took you ages to find your own aeroplane, course they all look alike on the ground, don’t they. Yeah. And coming back right, we were at the lowest I’ve ever been, we were hedge hopping all the way back. You know what hedge-hopping is? That’s what it means, hedge-hopping.
BE: Tell me.
EP: You used, rather tricky, you come down, had to take down to at least a thousand feet. We were just keeping low to get back, we were that low I couldn’t use the radio to tell them that we were coming home.
BE: What’s hedge-hopping?
EP: That was it, that was called hedge-hopping.
BE: You mentioned about when you checked the plane after you’d landed for the holes.
EP: That was the first trip, more action, you walk round the bomber, with, you all had equipment, to count all the holes you got in there, I can remember the flak used to go straight through the aeroplane you know, no problem at all. I can remember getting out of my seat to look at the astrodome and then when I went to sit on it again I put my hand on my seat to steady me down and there was hole, a bit of flak had gone through there. I wasn’t sitting on it at the time or it’d have gone right through!
BE: Lucky.
EP: That would have made your eyes water wouldn’t it. [Laughs]
BE: It would!
EP: That was it. Was a wonderful aeroplane. Three hundred and fifty flying hours in one and three hundred, and two hundred and fifty is operational. My longest trip was eight hours and fifty minutes, in the air, all at once. You take on oxygen all the time.
BE: What was the time you had a go at flying it?
EP: Oh aye, skipper give me, I had a fly of the bloody thing, you know. He had the automatic pilot in and I sat in the seat and the radome switched it back out back of that and you can feel your nose going, you pull your nose back and when you’re done and you feel going over like that and you pull that back you should go up over you go to pull that down, and the navigator Boris he comically said now try using your hands. [Laughter]
BE: Not your feet! What were the tests where they clipped your column?
EP: When they were testing for night vision tests. There was four of you sat round this thing in front of you and you all had a screen each and so you wouldn’t go forward to see what was, and they’d send a silhouette picture of a German aircraft, you had to identify what make it was and how far away it was. Cause guns we had were only effective at four hundred yards. Did you know that? You didn’t did you? They were Browning guns and they were only effective at four. And so that you wouldn’t cheat and lean forward they used to fasten your coat to the back of the chair, so you couldn’t go forward. Then at gunnery school we were, we were firing air to ground. There was a mixture of tanks, well there was the tanks on the ground and what we’d do, we’d take off, these were in Ansons, a different type of aeroplane, you fly down England, go to the targets were there, and this, with an instructor gunner and he kept saying hold your fire, you know I thought, and you go down - this was right on the edge of the coast where you would see - and you’d fly out to sea, turn round, come in and you come this way your guns would be on the other side then wouldn’t they, coming down there and he kept saying hold your fire and you’d come on and come on and you’d go out to sea at that end, turn round come back, he said this three or four times. I said what am I keep holding my bloody fire for? Then all of a sudden coming along there I heard the word fire so I let go and I was firing all of me bloody guns at target I could see the bullets ricocheting off all off ‘em all over and between the short bursts I could hear him bawling, ‘what the hell you doing? Can’t you see those bloody fellers putting that gun right?’ I just stopped in time or I’d have hit some of them, they were putting something, doing something to the model and that’s why he kept telling me hold your fire, they weren’t ready to be fired at, and I just heard, I just, all I heard was the word fire so like I just let go! Any more pet? [Laughter]
BE: The recent anniversary, at the unveiling of the Canadian pilot at St [unclear] George’s Hotel at Teesside Airport.
EP: This is only four or five, four years ago.
BE: Yes, but this guy that sat next to you how that came, and he had a silk worm.
EP: Well we had a Canadian Bomber come on the squadron, didn’t we, you know that, and it based at Middleton St George and I got chatting to this fellow, he flew from there and he -
[Other]: [Unclear]
EP: He had a caterpillar on his lapel, you know what that’s for don’t you? For using the parachute, the lad was saved with a parachute. You know and I’m chatting to him and apparently I was on the same raid as him that was on Hannover, not Hannover, Dortmund, and he was, I was, we lost fourteen bombers that night and he was in one of them, and I showed him, anyhow I pointed out in my log book and he was on that raid and he was there, that same night that I was on the same raid as him and I was down in Norfolk and he was flying from Middleton St George.
BE: And he was taken prisoner.
EP: And he was taken prisoner, weren’t he. He was, he was, good time he had as a prisoner. This is my proud, that’s it, and he didn’t have his log book because when you got shot down they take everything and you never see them. Well I’ve still got mine and anything in the papers mind I check it with this. You see that page there? It shows you Admiral von Scheer, there was a German pocket battleship, the Admiral von Sheer, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, that was three of them and they were all German battleships, they all got sunk you know. Our lads, hell of an aircraft, the Lancaster. I was thinking of buying one and I keep it in the garden.
BE: What about the story when you were demobbed and were sent to India?
EP: Oh, after the war I was recommended for a commission though after, be the same time we got a fortnight’s leave and we had to go back to the squadron and I, we decided get married and I got a wife and a fortnight’s extension of leave. And the [unclear] seven days granted you only got seven days, you had to go back. But this particular, we finished flying they give me seven, they give me a fortnight, and course while I was on leave at home I was bloody posted to another Pathfinder squadron and I never got me commission.
BE: It’s still out there waiting.
[Other]: Aw!
EP: I was a warrant officer.
BE: Where were you sent to in India?
EP: So instead of that, if I’d have taken a commission, you know when you get a commission in the RAF you get discharged and you’re brought in as an officer with a different number and you’ve got to do at least twelve month. But the war was over, I wanted out so I didn’t pursue it. I was going to pursue it, and it had gone a month, they’d mislaid it so I didn’t bother, I wanted out. But they sent me, I still ended up out in India. A place called Korangi Creek, near Karachi, I ended up out there. I was out there about ten month.
BE: And Keith was born, your son.
EP: And Keith was born there.
BE: No he wasn’t. He was born whilst you were out there.
EP: While I was out there. He was seven month old before I saw him. Nowaday they let you sit by their bed when they have babies, in the services. I tried to get out of it by reporting sick, it was the only time I ever reported sick in the RAF, had a hell of a cold, I’ve still got it, the same one, Friar’s balsam in a basin, with a towel over your head, breathe over it, you’re going to India and I still went out there. I ended up in flying control out there, in charge of flying control and it was there where I got a trip in a Catalina. That was a flying boat. But it -
BE: The incident with the boat and the paddle and you nearly died.
EP: We used to go fishing on the creek. If we caught anything we used to give it in to the mess, the sergeant’s mess. And this particular day, we took this little boat fishing and we couldn’t get back into put to shore because we, the current carried us out into the Indian Ocean. And do you know what the paddle was made out of? A lid off a tin of paint on the end of a brush and trying to get back and that and in the end the bloody launch takes, sees the aircraft, the Catalina’s off: they came to get us. But that was it.
BE: But how? How did you do it? How did you [unclear]
EP: I lifted it up, I just flicked it like that, and it flashed awhile on the shore and they saw it and they came out to get us, they knew we were in trouble. And when you get off the little boat off the creek onto the land, it’s like opening the oven door, it was that hot out there. Terrible.
BE: About your flying boots and your ammunition.
EP: Oh aye. With the flying boots we had on, when we went to squadron they issued us with a 38 revolver. We used to have to go on this range they had. In those days you used to fire like that, nowadays it’s like just two hands, isn’t it. You couldn’t hit anything with that so I brought the thing out and they used to give you a packet of ammunition. I used to empty the packet of bullets down my flying boot, so if I’d baled out the buggers would have dropped out wouldn’t they! [Laugh]
BE: What was the laminated thing you had if you came down and you had to say in Polish?
EP: We went, the Russians were and we had a, first time I’d ever came across plastic. We had a plastic thing round our necks with the union jack on it, and we had to say something - we are British airmen or something - and of course with the second navigator come, he knew Russian, he’d come, originating from Russia, he said, if you said it like what we had to say he said if we said it like that we will shoot you. [laughs] Couldn’t get your mouth round it, in case you had problems you’d be easier to fly on than land in Russia, come home. Long trip we did, like Kiel, some hot spots going over there. I can remember was a Mosquito squadron where we were and it landed was in daylight and we were going on the same raid as them, give ‘em a hand, and he said the flak’s that thick you can put your wheels down and ride across on it! [Laugh] Always remember that. Course they’re a wonderful aeroplane. You know that we were losing that many aircraft bombing Berlin, I wasn’t on any of them, I wasn’t qualified by then, we were losing so many they stopped going to Berlin as early as March 1944. We lost seventy bombers on the last raid on Berlin, but the Mossies were going, they could get up to thirty five thousand feet, they couldn’t reach ‘em and they’re the ones that carried the war on on Berlin, was the Mosquito, that’s a wonderful aeroplane it had this two engines, like the Lanc had four engines. And full tanks on the Lanc was two thousand one hundred and fifty four gallon, that was full tanks and we had six tanks. You took off on two and then you used the others – that was your flight engineer’s job to keep switching tanks for the pilot - and you landed on the same two you took off on, so you knew we had plenty of petrol.
BE: What did you write on?
EP: Eh?
BE: What did you write on?
EP: Write on what?
BE: When you were a wireless operator. You made your notes on something.
EP: As the wireless operator, all your information, frequencies and callsign and people it changed every six, every six hours and so you had to have two lots of information and it was all on rice paper and I used to tear a bit off the end and chew it, just to make sure, you had to, it changed. And I can always remember when the skipper was speaking to the main force, he used, they all had a callsign, and most of the time it was Press On, cause we used to say press on rewardless, and our callsign for base was, I’ve told you this haven’t I, was Off Strike, and you flew in your same aircraft all the time from Cut Out, that was the base call, and I’ve got a piece of lino in the garage now with those callsigns in chalk, still on a piece of lino. Would you like to see that?
BE: Love to after the interview.
[Other]: And what about the reunion mum went to with you in the Royal Albert Hall and Bennett was there and you did a present -
EP: That was the Lancaster Hotel that.
[Other]: Oh right. And you presented Bennett with the scroll.
EP: Oh, that’s right.
[Other]: And mum said there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
EP: Mum went, and Don Bennett was there as well because he was the boss of Pathfinders, and there was dancing and all that. Do you remember Kenneth Wolstenholme what used to be on the television? He was there and he was dancing with your mum, when he met Kenneth Wolstenholme and was it Benson that -
[Other]: It was a reunion, long after the war.
EP: Yeah. Bennett gave a speech to all the lads that, they were all ex-Pathfinder aircraft crew. The thing he said it made everyone emotional didn’t it.
[Other]: And mum said there wasn’t a dry eye in the house and everyone stood up -
EP: That’s true.
[Other]: To acknowledge him. Yeah.
BE: He was our boss. That was where he put his arm -
[Other]: Must have been the seventies, dad.
EP: He was the one that put his arm over Boris’s shoulder, you know, you called, shouted bugger off. Oh, he said, I expected to be taken outside and shot. He said there’s no one in the RAF told an Air Marshal to bugger off! True story that!
BE: Brilliant. Do you want to stop now? Yeah.
EP: Have a cup of tea.
BE: Thank you very much. It’s been absolutely brilliant. I’ve loved all the stories, they were absolutely great. Thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Ernie Patterson. Two
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Beth Ellin
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
2019-01-26
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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APattersonGE190126, PPattersonGE1901
Language
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eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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01:08:37 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Before joining the Royal Air Force on 4 February 1942, Ernie worked as an apprentice joiner. On being called up he went to Blackpool for training, which included Morse code. Following training at different places he then attended the advanced flying school. After travelling to RAF Abingdon for crewing up they trained on Whitleys and then Halifaxes. From there they went to RAF Downham Market to train on Pathfinders. Ernie was transferred to another crew to replace their wireless operator who had been killed. When flying, members of the crew each had a ration of six boiled sweets, a handful of raisins, a packet of chewing gum and a block of chocolate. He explained about dinghy training. Ernie recall an operation when they had a recall to bomb Osnabrück; another squadron did aa operation to Nuremberg and lost 95 bombers in that one night. The crew did a daylight operation on Nuremberg and they were escorted back by two Mustangs. Ernie remembers buying a Morris Minor from a colleague and describes the mishaps he had due to its poor brakes. Ernie met his wife at a dance at the Corn Exchange in Wisbech. His son was born while he was posted in India. He had 350 flying hours in Lancasters, 250 of which were operational. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal a Pathfinder Award Badge. At the end of the war he was offered a commission but didn’t take it as he wanted to return to civilian life.
Contributor
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Sue Smith
Anne-Marie Watson
Steph Jackson
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Germany
England--Norfolk
England--Oxfordshire
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Nuremberg
England--Wisbech
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Wiltshire
England--Durham (County)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-02-04
635 Squadron
aircrew
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
bombing
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Medal
ditching
FIDO
H2S
Halifax
Lancaster
love and romance
Master Bomber
military service conditions
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
P-51
Pathfinders
RAF Abingdon
RAF Downham Market
RAF Middleton St George
RAF Rufforth
RAF Stanton Harcourt
RAF Yatesbury
superstition
target indicator
training
Whitley
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1066/11522/PPayneG1702.2.jpg
2f46ef1a16000254b14a168175fe9b28
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1066/11522/PPayneG1701.2.jpg
b039d51b699a66b9cdfd0a9ed039e2d9
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1066/11522/APayneGA170528.1.mp3
4f2ec096b73aad4bee119f3e1be46588
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
Payne, Geoff
Geoffrey Albert Payne
G A Payne
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Geoff Payne (b. 1924, 1584931 Royal Air Force) and his memoir. He flew operations as a wireless operator / air gunner with 115 and 514 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Geoff Payne and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-05-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Payne, G
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BJ: So, this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Brenda Jones. The person being interviewed is Geoffrey Payne. The interview is taking place in Mr. Payne’s home in Cumbernauld on the 28th of May 2017. Mr. Payne, thank you for agreeing to talk to me today. Could you tell me about your life before you joined the RAF?
GP: Well, my life was a bit raggedy, I was an apprentice to Sheet Metal Work and worked in a company in the centre of Birmingham and we were manufacturing spats for Lysander aircraft and making fire pumps, things like that and more interested in sports than anything else [laughs].
BJ: And how did you come to join the RAF?
GP: Well, I joined the Air Training Corps, which I was one of the original members and it was the Air Training Corps was at Birmingham was the Austin Motor Company Squadron which was 480 and 479, there were two squadrons in the, ATC squadrons, and that’s why I started to get involved with the, with the Air Force, thinking a lot about the Air Force at the time. We went to camp to RAF Weeton, which was a Pathfinder Squadron, 7 Squadron, which were flying Stirlings and the most funniest part about us, we wanted to go into St Yves for the evening and we had to know a password to go out of the place because there was operations on that night and they said the password was WATER, which was this, I think they were pulling our legs or something like that, they said because the Germans can’t sound the w’s is wasser, so that was the sort of thing, that gave me a great interest in the Air Force.
BJ: OK. And when did you come to join the Air Force?
GP: I joined when I was seventeen and a half and I went to Vishyde Close in Birmingham to get assessed and I was assessed as a pilot and I was given a number and then sent back to work again because they wouldn’t call me up until I was eighteen but in the meantime I had a letter from them saying that it would possibly take far too long for me to become a pilot and that they’d had other vacancies in the Air Force which was an air gunner so I decided to do that.
BJ: And what year was this?
GP: 1943, yes.
BJ: And what happened when you started with the RAF?
GP: What happened?
BJ: Yes, what did your training involve?
GP: The training, we went to London, to Lord’s Cricket Ground and then we were put into high-rise flats and then we had our meals at the London zoo and used to march there every, for breakfast those [unclear] and tea and there’s one occasion there when there was a heavy air raid and at Lord’s Cricket Ground there’s the Regent’s Park and [unclear] anti-aircraft comes and we had to move out and go to another set of flats which was a hospital, which the RAF hospital, and carry all the patients down from the high floors cause they wouldn’t, couldn’t go down in the lifts and carry the, down in stretchers into the basement and back up then and then after that initial training, I went to Bridlington for ITW and that’s a nice seaside place, enjoyed it there and then off we went to Air Gunners School which was in the Isle of Man, just outside Ramsey, a place called Andreas and then, after three months of training, we were sent to an ITW, which was in Banbury where we were crewed up and flew in Wellingtons and from then we, we had to go to Heavy Conversion Unit which was a Stirling set-up, a place called Wratting Common in Cambridgeshire and we did that and then also we moved to, did an escape course at Feltwell and which was hilarious and then.
BJ: What did they teach you there about escaping?
GP: Unarmed combat and this sort of thing but it was, it just became a laugh actually [laughs] so, but we were there for the week and then we went back onto Wratting Common on Stirlings but at that time the Stirlings was being phased out from operations in the, for the main force in Bomber Command and we were transferred to, onto Lancasters which were radial engines Mark II, Hercules engines and from then we did a couple of weeks training there before we were put onto the squadron.
BJ: How did you find the Lancasters compared to the Stirlings?
GP: I didn’t like the Stirlings at all.
BJ: Ah!
GP: No, they frightened me because whilst I was converting onto Stirlings, I had to go to Newmarket to do a short gunnery course there and in the meantime my crew then crashed one of the Stirlings at [unclear] market so and but I, they phased these Stirlings out and that’s why I went on to Lancasters and then from Lancasters on Waterbeach we moved to a squadron which was RAF Witchford.
BJ: Ok. What happened when you got to Witchford?
GP: [laughs] We arrived at Witchford and then the following day we had to go round, signing in, which is a normal thing, you go to all the various sections and sign in and so forth like that and you get your billets and that and I went to the gunnery leaders office to sign in there and he says, ah yes, he says, you’re on tonight and that was the second day I was there [laughs] and I was, I said, what for? He says, well, there’s a rear gunner taken ill and you’ll have to, you’ll be flying with Lieutenant Speelenburg who was South African.
BJ: How did you feel about that?
GP: Terrible, it was, it was, to do a first op with a sprog crew which, the crew was a, they hadn’t done any operations before anyway and I hadn’t done any operations so they obviously bloodied with a new crew and that was one of the most horrendous air raids I’ve been on and that was to Augsburg, in southern Germany which was an eight hour journey, it was the most frightening experience I’ve ever had in my life so.
BJ: What happened on the mission?
GP: Oh, we got attacked over the target by a, by two Messerschmitt 109s, well, we got through that alright but it was, I never in my life would have expected to witness such a melee which was over the target, and I thought to myself I’m not coming out through this loss.
BJ: Do you remember what the target was?
GP: Augsburg.
BJ: Yes.
GP: It was the MAN works.
BJ: Ok.
GP: So that was, it was a night trip, eight-hour trip.
BJ: And did you stay with that crew then after?
GP: No, no.
BJ: No. So, how did you get assigned to a crew?
GP: I’d already got my crew,
BJ: Oh, ok.
GP: From, from Banbury, from Chipping Warden. I’d already got my crew, my crew were there but they were doing cross country south. So that was me doing me first op and I thought, I’ll never gonna get through this. So, that was my first operation and in the morning I couldn’t get off to sleep so I decided to, I walked into Ely and the Oxford and Cambridge boat race was on there so that was the, because they didn’t have the boat races in London because of the bombings, so I saw the boat race there.
BJ: Oh, ok.
GP: And came back, that’s it, so I said, no, that’s it, you can’t, you got to, maybe get through this alright but just forget about it and take it as it comes.
BJ: Ok. So, what, what was, can you tell me a bit more about some of the other missions you flew from Witchford?
GP: Well, I only did, I only did five operations from Witchford and I got frostbite, because we got attacked by a night fighter which destroyed all the communications and heating in the aircraft, but we managed to get back ok. So, that was alright and that was me put away from frostbite to Ely hospital for some time and then I was transferred to Waterbeach for recuperation and then I picked up another crew at Waterbeach which is Ted Cousins’s and I finished my tour of operations at Waterbeach with that crew.
BJ: What were you flying in at Waterbeach?
GP: Sorry?
BJ: What planes were you flying in from Waterbeach?
GP: Lancaster IIs.
BJ: Lancaster IIs. Ok, right, and can you tell me as what it was like on the base there, day to day life?
GP: Base was good because Witchford was a wartime place and everything was so dispersed you could walk miles for meals and things like that. But Waterbeach was a pre-war station and everything was on tap and there were nice billets and cosy, not like the Nissen huts that we did have, so these were brick-built, brick-built buildings and quite comfortable in a way.
BJ: And what did you do in your time off?
GP: Just going home [laughs].
BJ: Really? Aha.
GP: If you could get home. [unclear] the time off just mainly drinking [laughs].
BJ: What was it like coming home after being on operations?
GP: It was very strange and it’s a funny thing, I haven’t been away from home until I went in the Air Force. It’s a very strange feeling when you come back home and see that, it was a good feeling, but it didn’t last long so I had to go back again and that was it.
BJ: And what did you tell your mum and dad about your life in the RAF?
GP: I didn’t tell them anything, I didn’t think it was fair.
BJ: Ah.
GP: Because my brother, my brother was a navigator wireless operator on Mosquitoes, he was out in Burma so there’s both of us, there were three boys in the family and just my elder brother and myself were in the Air Force and the younger brother, he went in the army, just after the war. It was, it was quite strange because all your friends were away and we just had to nosy around, just going to the pictures or something like that. It wasn’t all that pleasant, it’s nice to see your family but as I say, it was quite boring.
BJ: And what sort of missions were you involved in, when you were at Waterbeach? Where were the targets?
GP: The targets, Witchford was, the targets were German targets, Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Augsburg and one or two others. From Waterbeach there was quite a variety of targets which are sometimes daylight raids and night raids, sometimes were French targets, and then all of a sudden you’d be onto a German target at night, which is [unclear] sorted it out.
BJ: What did you have a preference for daytime or nighttime missions?
GP: I used to like to rather go at night time, I didn’t like daytime [laughs]. You could see too much.
BJ: Right. Were there any particularly memorable missions that you flew on?
GP: Actually, most of them were quite memorable, we did a raid to Beckdiames which was in Southern France and that was an eight hour trip and this was a daylight raid and we went out at under a thousand feet all the way and until we got to the target, the target was a port actually and we climbed up to the bombing height, bombed and dropped down to, under a thousand feet again because of the radar, that was the idea of it but it was a long trip, it was an eight hour trip and it was quite a dangerous trip because the Bay of Biscay it was the, the Junkers 88 used to wonder around there quite a lot, you know, so. And then, there was another one which was to Stettin which was in Poland and that was another long trip, under a thousand feet all the way, this was a night time raid and we flew over Denmark and we could see the lights of Sweden and the anti-aircraft fire was coming up from Sweden, things like that [laughs] and then we went to, got to Stettin which we got to the bombing height and came back down again and what [unclear], we just lost one, one squadron, one aircraft on that squadron. So, and there was, there’s quite a few things which, one of the most scary attacks that we had was my last operation really to Duisburg. And that was the, the squadron went out early to bomb Duisburg, there was over a thousand aircraft to do it, and then, as soon as we got back, over the target the air was black with flak and it was the most frightening experience, I was in daylight did not expect to go to a German target in daylight and then it gradually settled down then but when we got back, we were sent down to, the air gunners were sent down to the bomb disposal place to help to load bombs up again for the same target and then the following day the German, the Americans bombed the same place, that was a disastrous place, terrible. That was about it, you know, but most of the trips were rather scary cause you never knew what was gonna happen there [unclear], you could be attacked by fighters any time.
BJ: What was it like being up in the turret?
GP: Very cold. Very cold [unclear] with ice all the way down there because we didn’t have any Perspex in the turret, we had it taken out because you can just imagine if you are flying at night and you can get attacked by a fighter and if you get any dirt on your Perspex you wouldn’t, it would be a, you wouldn’t know whether you got a fighter coming through, you see but where I got frostbite was around about forty degrees below but you see, your oxygen mask you had a lot of breath dripping down you know, froze up and all that.
BJ: What were you wearing to keep warm then?
GP: Well, I had a heated suit actually, the first time was one of these urban jackets and trousers which were all [unclear] and things like that. Eventually they got full heated suits which you’d plug into your boots and plug into your gloves, they heated up all over so you, you weren’t so cumbersome in the turret so, so that wasn’t too bad. It was when, the one time I said when the, the heating got shot up but it was cold.
BJ: Ok. And anything else that you remember about your time in the two squadrons?
GP: I’m just trying to think about it now. I was involved in athletics with the squadron so I did [unclear] got plenty of time off, things like that, apart from my flying, I was excused duties because I was, I got involved in football and things like that, I didn’t have to do any guard duties and things like that so.
BJ: Ok. Did that involve you going around to other bases?
GP: Sorry?
BJ: Did you go to other bases doing that?
GP: It was just the odd at lib sort of things, you know, you compete against the Americans or something like that, you know and,
BJ: Ok, how did you get on?
GP: We weren’t as good as the Americans, I tell you.
BJ: [laughs]
GP: No, we weren’t as good as the Americans, no, they got far greater facilities and that sort of things like that, you know.
BJ: Ok, and what did you do at the end of the war? What, you know, how did you get demobbed and that sort of thing?
GP: Well, when the, as I finished mature, I was sent up to a place in Northern Scotland, place called Bracla and that was for time expired men, aircrew you see, had [unclear] virtually offices and things like that, and my, my flight commander was up there as well, Lord Mackie, he ended up as Lord Mackie and we just had to march about and things like that and then we were selected for ordinary jobs in the Air Force you see and I wanted to become a PTI which is a Physical Training Instructor because I would’ve had the opportunity to go through to Loughborough and take sports right the way through and then that’s what I wanted to go for but they put me down as a driver [laughs]. So I moved from there and went to driving school at Weeton in Blackpool which was quite good actually, it was quite enjoyable and then from then I was, I went to various camps in this country and then my final camp was in Germany where I was with a microfilm unit taking microfilm documents of all the machine tool drawings and things like that and that’s,
BJ: Where was that?
GP: That was at Frankfurt, Frankfurt but we wondered around Stuttgart and other places, went round all these factories and taking these microfilms of these documents and things like that, that was the, that was my end, I ended and came back to Weeton where I was demobbed.
BJ: So, what was it like being in Germany, down on the ground, this time?
GP: It was, it wasn’t too bad, we weren’t allowed to fraternise at all, you know, we did play football against the Germans and things like that and got thrushed.
BJ: Oh, alright [laughs]
GP: So, I played for the army when we were in Frankfurt and we played a game against the Germans, select team which is if we really got thrushed and that was the first time we realised what sort of football the continentals played as compared with our football but anyway that was, I enjoyed my time in Germany and I learned to speak German quite fluently and which stood me in good sted with my civilian job so that was good and
BJ: How did you learn to speak German?
GP: Well, I had to speak German [laughs].
BJ: Yeah?
GP: Well, I mean, if you were driving around and things like that and you lost your way, you had to talk and things like that so that’s how it went [unclear] I wish I had kept it up actually, which it would have been useful to me but it was useful anyway because I dealt with the Germans, a German company in me civilian life more so than anything and of course was a strange thing that the fellow that I dealt with in Germany, he was a Luftwaffe pilot [unclear] [laughs] and something I know quite well actually.
BJ: Did you tell him you’d been in the RAF?
GP: Yes, yeah. So, I mean it was no end to the, not at all, not with service people [unclear] so they got a job to do, we got a job to do and that was it but
BJ: So what did you do after you were demobbed then?
GP: Sorry?
BJ: What did you do after the RAF? After you left?
GP: I went back to my old company and I gradually progressed there, we were manufacturing cars, Standard, the Triumph and the Triumph Spitfires and these sort of things, and but there was so much, so many problems down in the Midlands with the car industry of strikes and all that sort of thing and I just got married and we bought a new house and things like that, it’s becoming very difficult because we’re going on short time, even when you’re on staff you’re on short time so, I decided to make a move and come up here and that was that.
BJ: What did you do up here, in Scotland?
GP: I ended up as a production director at Carron company in Falkirk and but I set up a, came up and set up a plant for manufacturing steel bars and that sort of thing and then I did twenty-three years there and that’s it.
BJ: Ok, and how do you think being in Bomber Command affected the rest of your life?
GP: It did affect me because the, the people, the people that you met in Bomber Command, they were virtually like your brothers, a wonderful set up, it was great and as I say, it was still, we’re still getting involved with reunions and one of the addresses, the two addresses that I gave you, these are the people that I flew with, so, it was, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Really.
BJ: Ok. Alright, anything else you’d like to add, Mr. Payne?
GP: No, I don’t think so. I think that’s about all, that’s, I summarised quite a bit.
BJ: Alright. Thank you very much.
GP: Ok, thank you. [file continued] I’m trying to fill it all in you, you can’t.
US: I know you can’t [unclear], I just.
BJ: Right, this is the interview with Mr. Payne continuing.
GP: Right, one of the most horrendous trips that I did was to Frankfurt. And after the target, we were coming back, we were about half an hour away back from the target when I spotted a aircraft with about four hundred meters behind below and it turned out to be a Messerschmitt 109 and I wanted, I tried to warn the, I tried to warn the pilot but the intercom had frozen up, my mouthpiece had frozen up and I tried to Morse coding with the emergency light and the emergency light wasn’t working so that was it, there was actually nothing I could do about it and as the aircraft came closer to me, which was below at about a hundred meters, I opened fire on it and the guns jammed so therefore I was completely at a loss, I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t warn the captain or anything about cause I’ve no intercom and no emergency lighting so I just had to hang on a bit and then after a minute the aircraft came underneath us and opened fire and blasted all the centre of the aircraft and the smell of cordite was amazing and then the aircraft started to manoeuvre all over the sky doing very violent evasive action or I thought that we were out of control, completely out of control so I got out of my turret and walked back and found that the main door was swinging open and then I got up to the mid upper turret and the mid upper gunner had gone, he’d bailed out and there was all cannon shell holes all around his turret there, so eventually I thought, that so quiet I thought the rest of the crew had gone, now I walked up, gradually I got through into the main cabin and found the rest of the crew were ok and so forth and that we went back to the sit in the turret, well, I couldn’t do anything anyway, so we were coming in to land, but we got back home ok, coming in to land and I started to smell cordite and I, I looked about at the back in the, in the ammunition panniers and there was a fire in there which must have got hit by an incendiary bullet and we had to land, emergency land and it was, it was an incendiary bullet, that was wedged in the bullets, so [laughs], that was that day but there was also another one, no, I don’t think I will talk about that, just [unclear].
BJ: Ok, thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Geoff Payne
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brenda Jones
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
2017-05-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
APayneGA170528, PPayneG1702, PPayneG1701
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:32:26 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
Wehrmacht. Luftwaffe
United States Army Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Geoff Payne has his first experience of the Royal Air Force with the Air Training Corps, at RAF Wyton in Cambridgeshire, where he had one of his first experiences of military humour. He joined in 1943 at the age of 17 and a half hoping to become a pilot - he took the faster option because of his young age and trained as an air gunner.
Basic training was carried out at Lords Cricket ground in London. One clear memory is helping to carry patients down several flights of stairs from a nearby hospital during an air raid.
Time was spent at RAF Bridlington on Initial Training Wing before attending Air Gunnery School in the Isle of Man. Further training was undertaken at RAF Banbury where he was crewed up on Wellingtons, before moving to the Heavy Conversion Unit at Wratting Common to convert to Stirlings. During his time here he attended an escape course at RAF Feltwell and was instructed in unarmed combat, which he dismissed as pitiful.
He and his crew were posted to RAF Witchford, Cambridgeshire, where he flew his first operation in February 1944 replacing an ill air gunner. He later discovered this was an inexperienced crew. He remembers the target was around Osnabrück in Germany and it was a melee over the target where they were attacked by two Me 109s, which they successfully shook off. On his return, he remembers being unable to sleep and went for a walk into Ely. There he discovered the Oxford Cambridge boat race was being held and watched it
Target areas of Germany included Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Augsburg. On his 5th operation, the aircraft was attacked, and the aircraft lost its heating and communications. He suffered frostbite and spent several months recovering in Ely hospital.
On regaining fitness, he was transferred to RAF Waterbeach and was allocated to a crew led by Ted Cousins. Waterbeach was a pre-war airfield with comfortable facilities. Time off was spent competing in athletics and football along with drinking at the local public houses.
When time allowed, he went home, but found the experience boring: all his friends were serving away, and there was little to do except drink or go to the cinema. His elder brother was serving as a navigator in the Far East, and he felt it unfair to talk about his experiences with his family.
At RAF Waterbeach there was a greater variety of operations. Targets varied from Germany to Southern France. He also remembers one trip to Poland. This entailed flying over Denmark and they could see the lights from Sweden and anti-aircraft fire.
He has a clear memory of most of his operations but does not wish to dwell on some. On one occasion he spotted a Me 109, he tried to warn the pilot but his intercom had frozen and emergency light was inoperative. He tried to open fire but his guns jammed – the night fighter opened fire and hit the centre of the aircraft. The aircraft began violently manoeuvring and he wasn’t sure if this was deliberate evasive manoeuvres or if they were out of control. He made his way forward and discovered the aircraft door open and the mid upper gunner missing. There were cannon holes all around the centre of the aircraft. He still wasn’t sure if he was the only one on board until he reached the main cabin and found the rest of the crew in position. They made it back home where they realised an incendiary bullet was lodged in the ammunition pannier.
His last operation was one of the thousand-bomber operations in Germany, the air black with anti-aircraft fire. On his return, the air gunners went sent to the bomb dump to assist the armourers in preparing the bombs for the following days attack which was carried out by the United States Army Air Forces.
After completing his tour of operation, he was posted to RAF Brackla, hoping to be retained as physical training instructor, but ended up at RAF Weeton near Blackpool to be trained as a driver.
He served at several locations across Southern England before his final posting which was with a microfilm unit in Frankfurt. Fraternising with locals was not allowed, but he did manage to learn German. He played in a football match against a much better German select team.
After demob, he returned home and was involved in the manufacturing of cars at the Triumph factory. He married, and because of unrest and strikes in the car industry, he moved to Scotland and was employed at the Carron company in Falkirk as a production director manufacturing steel bars, where his ability to speak German became an advantage in his dealings with foreign companies. He met an ex Luftwaffe pilot and experiences were exchanged - there was no animosity whatsoever and it was accepted they both had been carrying out their duty.
Geoff looks back on his time in Bomber Command with great fondness. It was like a big family. He still has contact with surviving crew members, and still attends reunions.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Ely
England--Lancashire
England--London
England--Norfolk
England--Northamptonshire
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
France
Germany
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Stuttgart
Denmark
Sweden
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Isle of Man
Scotland
Scotland--Falkirk
Scotland--Nairnshire
Scotland--Stirlingshire
Germany--Osnabrück
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-02
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ian Whapplington
Peter Schulze
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
115 Squadron
514 Squadron
7 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
crewing up
Heavy Conversion Unit
incendiary device
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 2
Me 109
military ethos
military living conditions
military service conditions
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
RAF Brackla
RAF Bridlington
RAF Chipping Warden
RAF Feltwell
RAF Waterbeach
RAF Witchford
RAF Wratting Common
RAF Wyton
sport
Stirling
training
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1183/11755/PWalkerS1702.2.jpg
babc0b9cbc0985d587cfa6760ef2ed9b
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1183/11755/AWalkerS170108.2.mp3
014f1bb7f6bf67b33c2a981c28d2f46c
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
Walker, Stephen
Stephen Michael Walker
S M Walker
Description
An account of the resource
40 items. An oral history interview with Stephen Walker about Ronald Cecil Walker (b 1924) photographs and documents.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Stephen Walker 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
2017-01-05
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Walker, S
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 8th of January 2017 and I’m here with Stephen Walker to do a proxy interview for his father, late father, Ronald Cecil Walker. And they lived in the Salisbury area. So in practical terms what are the earliest recollections you have of your father and what he did?
SW: Well my first memories are really as a young boy. Mainly standing by or sitting by the back door watching dad walk up the garden path in his long grey raincoat having finished his day at work and looking forward to seeing him there. So that’s really my first memories of him as a boy. He was a keen sportsman. He liked his football and his badminton which he very much did in his early days as a lad and then through to being an adult as well. I did go and see one movie with him as a young boy which obviously would have stuck in my mind because it was the Battle of Britain. But that’s the only movie we ever saw as a father and son team. But he, those are my memories really initially as a small boy.
CB: Right. So the question next is what did father do? Where was he born and when? And what did the family do?
SW: He was born on the 19th of October 1923 in West End, Southampton. He was one of four boys and two sisters. Born to Frederick Austin Walker and Lillian Maud Walker. And Frederick’s — his father’s occupation was a shopkeeper. And again in Southampton. So that’s his father’s role. With regard to Ron in his early days he attended, school wise, he was at the Deanery School in Southampton. He spent, in fact all of his schooling time at the Deanery School. Whether it be the junior school or the senior school.
[recording paused]
SW: With regard to when dad left school. That was in December 1937. He left the Deanery Senior School and he went out into the workplace and secured work with an accountancy firm as a junior clerk. So that was his first steps in to the workplace which, I guess is probably linked to the fact, in some way that his own father was dealing with figures and shop-keeping and retail. That, that type of thing so, and that’s what he did. And then in 1941 he joined the Air Training Corps. Number 424 Squadron in Southampton.
[recording paused]
SW: So after joining the Air Training Corps in December 1941 he joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve and he joined the RAF because two of his other brothers — family wise they decided that one would join the army, one would join the navy and one would join the RAF. And so Ron joined the RAF in December ‘41. He formed part of a process that was pilot/navigator/bomb aimer. So he was assessed as being most suitable for the bomb aimer role.
[recording paused]
SW: From Southampton, having joined the Volunteer Reserve he went on to ACRC at Lord’s. And then, I believe, on to Scarborough for his initial training. And post that initial training he was then sent out to Canada. A place called Defoe which was a Royal Canadian Air Force, 5 Bombing and Gunnery School. Exactly how much time he spent out there I’m not sure but on his return from Canada he went to the Climate Assimilation School and then to the Heavy Conversion Unit at Marston Moor. And from there on to 102 Squadron at RAF Pocklington in 1942.
[recording paused]
Both Marston Moor and Pocklington are in Yorkshire which is where he spent his time and then moving on from there as a bomb aimer flying Halifaxes with 102 Squadron. With regard to some of the missions they are currently being researched to get finer detail with regards to his ORBs and exactly what happened. I’m waiting for results. The information from Cranwell. But he did his full tour and the information that I do have would have included operations to Cologne, Osnabruck, Sterkrade, Nuremberg, Witten and Mainz and I have some details with regard to the Halifax that he would have flown on those occasions which would have been PP179. And MZ426 on the operation to Mainz. But subject to receiving more information from Cranwell I should be able to fill in a lot more details with regards to his ORBs.
CB: Do you have any information about whether the aircraft was hit by flak or fighters?
SW: I don’t. No. There is nothing that I have by way of the personal scrapbook that I made when he passed away that shows any aircraft that he was either in at the time but it could quite be possible but I don’t have anything that can confirm that.
CB: So accompanying this on a memory stick we’ve a lot of pictures and narrative.
SW: Yes.
CB: Which can be matched up and we’ll top up later.
SW: Yes. Yeah.
CB: Good.
SW: A lot of further information to come with regard to that. That background.
CB: Now, when he ended the war — what rank?
SW: He ended the rank as a warrant officer which we’ve identified from his uniform and the hats and in the photographs that I have. So yeah that was his leaving rank.
CB: Good. Thank you very much. Thank you Steve.
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 Stephen Walker
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
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
2017-01-08
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWalkerS170108, PWalkerS1702
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:06:50 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
Second generation
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen’s father, Ronald Cecil Walker, was born in Southampton in 1923. On leaving school he worked as a junior clerk with an accountancy firm. In 1941 he joined the Air Training Corps, 424 Squadron, in Southampton and in December the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve where he was accepted to train as a bomb aimer. He trained with the Royal Canadian Air Force, 5 Bombing and Gunnery School, at Dafoe in Canada. His next posting was to the Climate Assimilation School and then to the Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Marston Moor. In 1942 he joined 102 Squadron at RAF Pocklington where he flew Halifaxes with the same squadron. His full tour included operations to Cologne, Osnabrück, Sterkrade, Nuremberg, Witten and Mainz. He finally left the RAF as a warrant officer.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Steph Jackson
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Witten
Germany--Mainz (Rhineland-Palatinate)
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Saskatchewan--Dafoe
Saskatchewan
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
102 Squadron
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Pocklington
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2082/34447/SWeirG19660703v030002.2.pdf
6093cee04ee3743562a569c79a567a0f
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
Weir, Greg. Ross, Joseph
Description
An account of the resource
Eight items. Collection concerns Joseph Ross a Halifax pilot who flew operations on 102 Squadron from July to December 1944. Contains propaganda leaflet, a map and five flying log books.
The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-04-26
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Weir, G
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
J S Ross’s pilots flying log book. Two
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SWeirG19660703v030002
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
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
Description
An account of the resource
Pilots flying log book for J S Ross covering the period from 21 January 1943 to 12 March 1946. Detailing his instructor duties, operations flown, flying training and post war duties with 246 Squadron and 511 Squadron. He was stationed at RAF Tatenhill, RAF Grove, RAF Ramsbury, RAF Little Rissington, RAF Windrush, RAF Bruntingthorpe, RAF Bitteswell, RAF Marston Moor, RAF Pocklington, RAF Merryfield, RAF Nutts Corner, RAF Holmsley South and RAF Lyneham. Aircraft flown in were Oxford, Magister, Wellington, Halifax, Stirling, York, Dakota, and Lancaster. He flew a total of 34 operations with 102 Squadron. Targets were St Martin L’Hortier, Domleger, Mimoyecque, Caen, St Nazaire, Hauts Boissons, Stuttgart, Wanne Eickel, Le Foret de Nieppe, La Belle Croix les Eroyerus, Somain, Brunswick, Sterkrade, Lumbres, Venlo, Gelsenkirchen, Buer, Duisburg, Essen, Dusseldorf, Julech, Horten, Hagan, Soest, Osnabruck and Drams Fjord. This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form. No better quality copies are available.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal air Force
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944-07-01
1944-07-04
1944-07-06
1944-07-07
1944-07-09
1944-07-10
1944-07-23
1944-07-24
1944-07-25
1944-07-26
1944-07-28
1944-08-02
1944-08-03
1944-08-05
1944-08-06
1944-08-08
1944-08-11
1944-08-12
1944-08-13
1944-08-18
1944-08-19
1944-08-31
1944-09-03
1944-09-11
1944-10-06
1944-10-14
1944-10-15
1944-10-21
1944-10-23
1944-10-24
1944-10-25
1944-11-02
1944-11-03
1944-11-16
1944-11-27
1944-11-28
1944-11-30
1944-12-01
1944-12-02
1944-12-03
1944-12-05
1944-12-06
1944-12-07
1944-12-12
1944-12-13
1944-12-14
1944-12-17
1944-12-18
1945
1946
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Norway
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Atlantic Ocean--Dramsfjorden
England--Gloucestershire
England--Hampshire
England--Leicestershire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Somerset
England--Staffordshire
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
France--Amiens Region
France--Caen
France--Calais
France--Fougères Region (Ille-et-Vilaine)
France--Lumbres
France--Neufchâtel-en-Bray
France--Nieppe Forest
France--Saint-Nazaire
France--Somain
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hagen (Arnsberg)
Germany--Jülich
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Soest
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
Netherlands--Venlo
Northern Ireland--Antrim (County)
Norway--Horten
Great Britain
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
France--Domléger-Longvillers
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Geolocated
102 Squadron
1652 HCU
29 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
aerial photograph
aircrew
bombing
bombing of the Mimoyecques V-3 site (6 July 1944)
C-47
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
Flying Training School
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Halifax Mk 3
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Magister
mine laying
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Bitteswell
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Little Rissington
RAF Lyneham
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Nutts Corner
RAF Pocklington
RAF Windrush
Stirling
tactical support for Normandy troops
target photograph
training
V-1
V-weapon
Wellington
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1526/29154/LTeaseJ[Ser -DoB]v1.pdf
94d967ee89bd516193d9252705e81bfb
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
Miles, Reg
Reginald J Miles
R J Miles
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
2016-07-26
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
Miles, RJ
Description
An account of the resource
102 items. The collection concerns Reg Miles (1923 - 2022) and contains his audio memoir, log book, photographs and documents. He flew 36 operations with 432 and 420 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by R Miles and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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
Jim Tease’s pilots flying log book
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
Pilots flying log book for J Tease, covering the period from 13 June 1944 to 10 October 1944. Detailing his operations flown. He was stationed at RAF Tholthorpe. Aircraft flown was Halifax. He flew a total of 35 operations with 420 squadron, 14 night and 21 daylight. Targets were St Pol, St Martins, Bientques, Bamiers, Forest D’eawy, Thiverny, Nucourt, Caen, Ferme du Forestal, Ferfay, Stuttgart, Hamburg, Croix en Tournois, Foret Du Nieppe, Bois de Cassan, St Leu D’Esserent, Le Hague, Foret de Chantilly, Foret de Montritchard, Bons Tassilly, Brussels, Connantre, Marques-Mimoyecques, Le Havre, Castrop Reuxel, Osnabruck, Kiel, Boulogne, Calais, Bottrop, Sterkrade, Bergen, Dortmund and Bochum. His pilot for his first 'second dickie' operation was Pilot Officer Keegan.
This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form. No better quality copies are available.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One photocopied 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
LTeaseJ[Ser#-DoB]v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Norway
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
Belgium--Brussels
England--Yorkshire
France--Béthune Region
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
France--Caen
France--Calais
France--Creil Region
France--Falaise Region
France--Le Havre
France--L'Isle-Adam
France--Marquise
France--Montrichard
France--Neufchâtel-en-Bray
France--Nieppe Forest
France--Nucourt
France--Paris Region
France--Saint-Omer Region (Pas-de-Calais)
France--Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise
France--Troyes Region
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Bottrop
Germany--Castrop-Rauxel
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Stuttgart
Netherlands--Hague
Norway--Bergen
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
France
France--Creil
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
France--Chantilly Forest
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-06-14
1944-06-15
1944-06-21
1944-06-23
1944-06-24
1944-06-25
1944-06-27
1944-06-28
1944-07-12
1944-07-15
1944-07-16
1944-07-17
1944-07-20
1944-07-24
1944-07-25
1944-07-26
1944-07-28
1944-07-29
1944-07-31
1944-08-01
1944-08-03
1944-08-04
1944-08-05
1944-08-07
1944-08-08
1944-08-09
1944-08-10
1944-08-12
1944-08-14
1944-08-15
1944-08-18
1944-08-19
1944-08-27
1944-09-10
1944-09-11
1944-09-13
1944-09-15
1944-09-16
1944-09-17
1944-09-25
1944-09-26
1944-09-27
1944-09-30
1944-10-04
1944-10-06
1944-10-07
1944-10-10
1944-10-11
1944-07-18
420 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Luftwaffe night-fighter airfields (15 August 1944)
bombing of the Pas de Calais V-1 sites (24/25 June 1944)
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
pilot
RAF Tholthorpe
tactical support for Normandy troops
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/551/23213/LLancasterJO103509v1.2.pdf
56bf3c9cc310d03cf9f44312ba2ba698
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
Lancaster, Jo
John Oliver Lancaster
J O Lancaster
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lancaster, JO
Description
An account of the resource
17 items. Two oral history interviews with John Oliver 'Jo' Lancaster DFC (1919 - 2019, 948392, 103509 Royal Air Force), photographs and six of his log books. Jo Lancaster completed 54 operations as a pilot with in Wellingtons with 40 Squadron, and after a period of instructing, in Lancasters with 12 Squadron from RAF Wickenby. He became test pilot after the war and was the first person to use a Martin-Baker ejection seat in an emergency.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Jo Lancaster and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-18
2017-03-08
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
Jo Lancaster’s pilots flying log book. One
Description
An account of the resource
Pilots flying log book for J O Lancaster covering the period from 6 July 1937 to 15 September 1943. Detailing his flying training, operations flown and instructor duties. He was stationed at RAF Sywell, RAF Ansty, RAF Desford, RAF Sealand, RAF Ternhill, RAF Lossiemouth, RAF Wyton, RAF Wellesbourne Mountford, RAF Upavon, RAF Wymeswold, RAF Kirmington, RAF Wickenby and RAF Binbrook. Aircraft flown were Tiger Moth, Cadet, Hart, Audax, Master, Wellington, Bombay, Oxford, Stirling, Magister, Lancaster, Whitley, Halifax, Martinet, Skua and Spitfire. He flew a total of 54 operations, 31 with 40 squadron 1 daylight and 30 night, 2 night operations with 22 Operational Training Unit and 21 night operations with 12 Squadron. Targets were Calais, Hamburg, Hannover, Atlantic, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Cherbourg, Brest, Munster, Osnabruck, Mannheim, Duisburg, Frankfurt, Berlin, Turin, Stettin, Rotterdam, Emden, Nurnberg, Essen, St Nazaire, Terschelling, Haugesund Fijord, Lorient, Wilhelmshaven, Bremen, Munich and Spezia. His pilot for his first 'second dickie' operations was Sergeant Taylor.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LLancasterJO103509v1
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.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Netherlands
Norway
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Northamptonshire
England--Shropshire
England--Warwickshire
England--Wiltshire
England--Worcestershire
France--Brest
France--Calais
France--Cherbourg
France--Lorient
France--Saint-Nazaire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Emden (Lower Saxony)
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Munich
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Italy--La Spezia
Italy--Turin
Netherlands--Rotterdam
Netherlands--Terschelling
Norway--Haugesund
Poland--Szczecin
Scotland--Moray
Wales--Flintshire
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
Poland
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1941-05-09
1941-05-10
1941-05-11
1941-05-12
1941-05-15
1941-05-16
1941-05-27
1941-06-02
1941-06-03
1941-06-11
1941-06-12
1941-06-23
1941-06-24
1941-06-26
1941-06-27
1941-07-02
1941-07-03
1941-07-04
1941-07-05
1941-07-06
1941-07-07
1941-07-09
1941-07-10
1941-07-22
1941-07-23
1941-07-24
1941-07-30
1941-07-31
1941-08-12
1941-08-13
1941-08-16
1941-08-17
1941-08-18
1941-08-19
1941-08-25
1941-08-28
1941-08-29
1941-08-31
1941-09-01
1941-09-02
1941-09-03
1941-09-07
1941-09-08
1941-09-10
1941-09-11
1941-09-12
1941-09-13
1941-09-15
1941-09-16
1941-09-29
1941-09-30
1941-10-03
1941-10-04
1941-10-11
1941-10-12
1941-10-14
1941-10-15
1941-10-16
1941-10-17
1942-06-01
1942-06-02
1942-11-03
1942-11-04
1942-11-07
1942-11-08
1942-11-09
1942-11-10
1943-01-04
1943-01-05
1943-01-08
1943-01-09
1943-01-23
1943-01-24
1943-01-30
1943-01-31
1943-02-02
1943-02-03
1943-02-07
1943-02-08
1943-02-11
1943-02-12
1943-02-13
1943-02-14
1943-02-15
1943-02-16
1943-02-17
1943-02-18
1943-02-19
1943-02-21
1943-02-22
1943-03-03
1943-03-04
1943-03-05
1943-03-06
1943-03-08
1943-03-09
1943-03-10
1943-03-12
1943-03-13
1943-03-22
1943-03-23
1943-03-27
1943-03-28
1943-04-03
1943-04-04
1943-04-05
1943-04-18
1943-04-19
12 Squadron
20 OTU
22 OTU
28 OTU
40 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
Flying Training School
Halifax
Lancaster
Magister
Martinet
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Ansty
RAF Binbrook
RAF Desford
RAF Kirmington
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Sealand
RAF Sywell
RAF Ternhill
RAF Upavon
RAF Wellesbourne Mountford
RAF Wickenby
RAF Wymeswold
RAF Wyton
Spitfire
Stirling
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1297/20289/LBoltonJD67631v1.1.pdf
bd5b0871e283106a18a5f4bd648c05e2
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
Bolton, J D
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. The collection concerns John Derek Bolton (915543, 67631) and contains two Log books and squadron maintenance log containing a memoir. He flew 80 operations as a pilot with 455, 571, 608 and 162 squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by David Bolton 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
2017-09-06
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bolton, JD
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
John Derek Bolton’s Pilots flying log book. One
Description
An account of the resource
Pilots flying log book for John Derek Bolton, covering the period from 18 October 1940 to 11 December 1945. Detailing his flying training, operations flown, instructor duties and post war flying duties. He was stationed at White Waltham, RAF Watchfield, RAF Cranwell, RAF Upper Heyford, RAF Swinderby, RAF Waddington, RAF Skellingthorpe, RAF Wigsley, RAF Finningley, RAF North Luffenham, RAF Upavon, RAF Mildenhall, RAF Bruntingthorpe, RAF Woolfox Lodge, RAF Bitteswell, RAF Warboys, RAF Oakington, RAF Downham Market and RAF Bourn. Aircraft flown were, Tiger Moth, Oxford, Anson, Hampden, Magister, Wellington, Whitley, Lysander, Master, Douglas DC3, Ventura, Lancaster, Martinet, Defiant, Mosquito, M18, Spitfire, Proctor, Hurricane, Auster and Beaufighter. He flew a total of 80 operations which included 30 with 455 squadron, 1 daylight and 29 night operations. 13 night operations with 571 squadron, 28 operations with 608 squadron, 27 night and 1 daylight, 9 night operations with 162 squadron. Targets were, Hamburg, Dusseldorf, Essen, Ameland, Wilhelmshaven, Hannover, Munster, Wangerooge, Mannheim, Aachen, Cologne, Lorient, Bordeaux, Lubeck, Bremen, Berlin, Gottingen, Scholven, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Wanne Eickel, Karlsruhe, Brunswick, Kassel, Nuremberg, Osnabruck and Stralsund.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LBoltonJD67631v1
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.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Berkshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Rutland
England--Suffolk
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
France--Lorient
Germany--Aachen
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Göttingen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Lübeck
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Stralsund
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Netherlands--Ameland Island
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
Germany--Wangerooge Island
France--Bordeaux (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1941-09-07
1941-09-08
1941-09-11
1941-09-12
1941-09-15
1941-09-16
1941-09-29
1941-09-30
1941-10-01
1941-10-02
1941-10-12
1941-10-13
1941-10-23
1941-10-24
1941-10-28
1941-10-29
1941-10-31
1941-11-01
1941-11-04
1941-11-05
1941-11-08
1941-11-09
1941-11-30
1941-12-01
1941-12-27
1941-12-28
1942-01-06
1942-01-07
1942-01-08
1942-01-09
1942-01-10
1942-01-11
1942-01-26
1942-01-27
1942-01-28
1942-01-29
1942-02-07
1942-02-11
1942-02-12
1942-02-21
1942-02-22
1942-02-23
1942-02-24
1942-03-09
1942-03-10
1942-03-11
1942-03-13
1942-03-14
1942-03-24
1942-03-25
1942-03-26
1942-03-27
1942-03-28
1942-03-29
1942-04-06
1942-04-07
1942-04-10
1942-04-11
1942-04-12
1942-04-13
1944-06-22
1944-06-23
1944-06-24
1944-06-25
1944-06-26
1944-06-27
1944-07-05
1944-07-06
1944-07-07
1944-07-10
1944-07-11
1944-07-20
1944-07-21
1944-07-22
1944-07-24
1944-07-25
1944-07-26
1944-07-27
1944-07-28
1944-07-29
1944-07-30
1944-08-05
1944-08-06
1944-08-08
1944-08-09
1944-08-10
1944-08-11
1944-08-12
1944-08-13
1944-08-15
1944-08-16
1944-08-17
1944-08-18
1944-08-25
1944-08-26
1944-08-27
1944-08-28
1944-08-30
1944-08-31
1944-09-01
1944-09-04
1944-09-05
1944-09-06
1944-09-07
1944-09-16
1944-09-17
1944-09-27
1944-09-28
1944-10-01
1944-10-02
1944-10-06
1944-10-07
1944-10-10
1944-10-11
1944-10-16
1944-10-17
1944-10-23
1944-10-24
1944-10-29
1944-10-30
1944-11-08
1944-11-09
1944-11-25
1944-11-26
1944-11-28
1944-11-29
1944-11-30
1944-12-06
1944-12-07
1944-12-11
1944-12-12
1944-12-15
1944-12-16
1945-01-04
1945-01-05
1945-01-28
1945-01-29
1945-02-03
1945-02-04
1945-02-23
1945-02-24
1945-03-10
1945-03-11
1945-03-18
1945-03-19
1945-03-30
1945-03-31
1945-04-13
1945-04-14
1945-04-17
1945-04-18
1945-05-24
1945-07-04
1945-07-24
16 OTU
162 Squadron
25 OTU
29 OTU
455 Squadron
571 Squadron
608 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
Beaufighter
bombing
C-47
Cook’s tour
Defiant
Flying Training School
Hampden
Hurricane
Lancaster
Lysander
Magister
Martinet
mine laying
Mosquito
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
pilot
Proctor
RAF Bitteswell
RAF Bourn
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Cranwell
RAF Downham Market
RAF Finningley
RAF Mildenhall
RAF North Luffenham
RAF Oakington
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Swinderby
RAF Upavon
RAF Upper Heyford
RAF Waddington
RAF Warboys
RAF Watchfield
RAF Wigsley
RAF Woolfox Lodge
Spitfire
Tiger Moth
training
Ventura
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/837/34465/BMarshCGoldbyJLv10001.2.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/837/34465/BMarshCGoldbyJLv10002.2.jpg
6d8cac2dc2c8a7dd95d26aaa8c02fba7
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/837/34465/BMarshCGoldbyJLv10003.2.jpg
cd7f176ae1972d3e966f2ffc1dab672a
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
Goldby, John Louis
J L Goldby
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with John Goldby (1922 - 2020, 1387511, 139407 Royal Air Force). He was shot down and became a prisoner of war in December 1944.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by John Goldby and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Goldby, JL
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JOHN LOUIS GOLDBY SERVICE NO. 1387511 and 139407 Version dated 21 July 2020
[inserted] Corrected August 2020 [/inserted]
John joined up on 31 May 1941 at Babbacombe in Devon. He completed ground training at the Initial Training Wing at RAF Kenley. He then went to Air Observer School at Jurby in the Isle of Man from October 1941 – May 1942. For some of his fellow volunteers it was the first time they had been in an aircraft. He completed navigation and gunnery training on Blenheim aircraft and bomb aimer training on Hampdens whilst at Jurby, using air-to-air towed targets. He gained 3 stripes as a Sergeant Observer. He then went to Stanton Harcourt (near Abingdon) to 10 Operational Training Unit in June 1942.
He became part of a crew under pilot Captain Watson RE, seconded onto Whitley aircraft in the role bomb aimer. Captain Watson was a 2nd pilot on the first 1,000 bomber raid on Cologne on 30 May 1942. The second 1,000 bomber raid targeted Essen and John flew on the third 1,000 bomber raid in a Whitley bomber to Bremen on 25 June 1942. This was a 5-hour round trip.
Bomber Command then extended the number of crew needed on 4 engined aircraft from 5 to 7 crew members, adding a bomb aimer and flight engineer.
No. 10 Operational Training Unit Detachment at St Eval was led by Wing Commander Pickard who was portrayed in the film 'F for Freddie' which detailed the raid on Amiens prison, in which Wg. Cmdr. Pickard was killed.
Twin-engined Whitley aircraft of Bomber Command were being used on anti-submarine duties because of the U-boat threat.
The unit was based at St Eval in Cornwall using black-painted Whitleys (Coastal Command aircraft were painted white). Flights involved a 10-hour flight dropping depth charges over the Bay of Biscay. It was a deafening experience as the crew had no hearing protection. The unit completed 6-8 operations.
John then moved in September 1942 to Marston Moor (Yorkshire) and completed a conversion course on to 4 engined aircraft – the Halifax 2. These were notoriously difficult to handle, with original tail fins and Rolls Royce engines.
John took part in a number of mine-laying operations off Heligoland, which counted as a 1/2 operation. These were called 'gardening' trips – planting mines at low level. On 11 December 1943 John was a crew member in a Halifax 2 aircraft of No. 78 Squadron which took off from Linton-on-Ouse with a heavy load of fuel on board, bound for Turin. An engine caught fire on take-off and the aircraft had to ditch in Filey Bay. The crew were rescued by local fishermen. By February 1943 he had completed 8 operations which was very stressful. He received news of his commission and went to London to get his uniform, but he developed a very bad throat infection and ended up in an Army hospital in York with an abscess on the carotid artery, and then had his tonsils removed. He spent his 21st. birthday in June 1943 in hospital at RAF Northallerton.
His commissioned service number was 139407. His mother came up from Sidcup for the commissioning ceremony – a very difficult journey in wartime.
John was posted as a Bombing Instructor to Moreton-in-March (Gloucester) from winter 1943 until late Spring 1944 (???) on Wellington aircraft. He then moved back to Bomber Command Operations and completed a Bombing Leader course at the Armaments School at RAF Manby in January 1944 at the beginning of July 1944 at RAF Riccal (York). He was posted to No. 640 Squadron at RAF Leconfield In Yorkshire on Halifax 3 aircraft as a bomb aimer with the rank of Flight Lieutenant.
In his position as a Bomb Aimer leader, John was supposed to complete only 2 operations per month, but if a crew lacked a bomb aimer then John would go on the operation to complete the crew. For his actions when his aircraft was damaged during a raid over Germany in September 1944 John was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (although he did not receive the actual decoration until June 1945 (see separate piece).
[page break]
On 6 December 1944 John's aircraft – a Halifax III with radial engines – was hit whilst returning from a bombing raid over Osnabruck in Germany. John thinks his aircraft collided with a German night fighter. He was fortunate to escape from the falling aircraft – he still does not know how he got out of the fuselage), and landed by parachute in a field full of water. He sustained various injuries, and recovered in a hospital run by nuns at Neemkirchen in northern Germany until 20th January 1945. He was then sent to the interrogation centre at Dulagluft at Frankfurt-an-der-Oder near Barth near Stettin in Pomerania. The camp had an airfield alongside it. The camp was divided into 2 parts – an American section for USAF personnel and a British RAF Group Captain commanded the British prisoners. You were placed into the appropriate section according to which air force you had flown with. The camp was liberated by Russian forces on May 1st. 1945. Shortly afterwards members of the American Army appeared and took over the camp.
2 Group Captains from the camp managed to get through to the Allied lines at Lubeck and arranged for the camp prisoners (all RAF men?) to be flown back to the UK on B17 Flying Fortresses, 25 men to each aircraft on 13 May 1945. John's aircraft landed at Ford, and he then caught a train to (RAF) Cosford.
He underwent a rehabilitation course in Air Traffic Control at RAF Henlow.
He was demobbed in late 1946.
POST-WAR CAREER
John re-joined the RAF in 1949, and completed a 9 month Navigator and Bombing refresher course at No. 1 Air Navigation School at Topcliffe and RAF Middleton-St-George respectively between 1 June and 15 August 1949 on Anson and Wellington aircraft. This was followed by training at No. 201 Advanced Flying School at RAF Swinderby, flying Wellingtons with pilot Wing Commander Oxley, between 29 September and 30 November.
Wing Commander Oxley (known as Beetle), was quite dangerous as he did not like to use his instruments. On one operation John's aircraft was diverted to Anglesey and Beetle overshot the runway.
John then posted to No 236 Operational Conversion Unit at RAF Kinloss in Scotland, flying Lancaster aircraft, until 5 April 1950. It was a very cold experience as they lived in unheated tin (Nissen) huts. John then was posted to 38 Squadron at RAF Luqa, Malta, flying Lancasters on Maritime Reconnaissance Operations, including exercises with various Navies and Air Sea Rescue duties), until 19 July 1952. During this period he was seconded to RAF Masirah located on the island of Masirah in the Indian Ocean as Commanding Officer of the staging post between Aden and India.
There were frequent visitors, to the RAF base, especially the top people from the Defence College. Back in Malta, on 12th May 1952 John flew with 6 Lancaster aircraft from No. 38 Squadron which set of [sic] on a goodwill visit to Ceylon (Sri Lanka.) They flew via Luqa (Malta), Habbaniya (Iraq), Mauripur (India) to Negombo. They returned leaving Negombo on 31st May via Mauripur, Aden and Khartoum (Sudan) reaching Luqa on 4 June 1952.
On leaving Malta in September 1952 John was posted to No. 1 Maritime Reconnaissance School at St Mawgan in Cornwall as a Navigational Instructor, flying Lancasters until the end of September 1954. During this period John had two breaks, one being in the procession at the Queen's Coronation in 1953, and the second at the Queen's Review at RAF Odiham. In October 1954 until September 1956 John was posted to HQ 64 Group Home Command, at Rufforth in Yorkshire, as PA to the Air Officer Commanding (this was a non-flying role, apart from accompanying the Air Commodore on internal visits).
[page break]
From September 1956 until 23 January 1957 John attended Bomber Command Bombing School at RAF Lindholme, Yorkshire, for navigation training for the V-Bomber Force. In summer of that year he was posted instead to the Air Ministry, London Intelligence Branch. During his term at the Air Ministry he had a spell of 2 weeks at St Mawgan, flying as Navigator on Shackleton aircraft with the Air Sea Warfare Development Unit. This was to qualify him to receive flying pay. From October 1960 until May 1962 he served as Assistant Air Attache at the British Embassy in Paris. John was promoted to the rank of Wing Commander and liaised with the French Air Force for participation in air shows.
John retired from the RAF in May 1962, as there was only a 1 in 4 chance that he would be posted to a flying role, and by then he had 2 small children at home.
In September 1962 he joined Shell-Mex and BP Ltd, soon to become separate companies. He stayed with Shell until his retirement in June 1982.
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
John Louis Goldby Biography
Description
An account of the resource
A biography covering John's training and service in the RAF.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-07-21
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Devon
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Essen
Germany--Bremen
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Germany--Helgoland
Italy--Turin
England--Filey
England--Northallerton
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Barth
Malta
Oman--Masirah Island
India
Yemen (Republic)--Aden
Sri Lanka
Iraq--Ḥabbānīyah
Pakistan--Karachi
Sri Lanka--Negombo
Sudan--Khartoum
Germany--Lübeck
Italy
Sudan
North Africa
Germany
Iraq
Pakistan
Yemen (Republic)
Oman
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Kent
England--Lancashire
England--Yorkshire
England--London
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Personal research
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Three printed sheets
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BMarshCGoldbyJLv10001, BMarshCGoldbyJLv10002, BMarshCGoldbyJLv10003
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
10 OTU
38 Squadron
78 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
B-17
bale out
Blenheim
bomb aimer
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
Distinguished Flying Cross
Dulag Luft
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Halifax Mk 3
Hampden
Lancaster
mine laying
navigator
Nissen hut
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
RAF Cosford
RAF Ford
RAF Henlow
RAF Jurby
RAF Kenley
RAF Kinloss
RAF Leconfield
RAF Lindholme
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Manby
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Middleton St George
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Odiham
RAF Riccall
RAF Rufforth
RAF St Eval
RAF St Mawgan
RAF Stanton Harcourt
RAF Swinderby
RAF Topcliffe
Shackleton
Stalag Luft 1
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/88/1931/LYoungJ1569980v1.1.pdf
fb760915619d3e45c356c32067e67b27
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
Young, John
J Young
Description
An account of the resource
13 items. The collection consists of an oral history interview with Sergeant John Young (1569980, Royal Canadian Air Force), his logbook and 11 photographs of aircrew groups and Halifax aircraft. John Young was a flight engineer on 432 Squadron based at RAF East Moor, part of 6 Group. The collection shows a number of aircrew groups which include him as well as ground and air shots of his Halifax Mk 3 with Ferdinand II nose art.
The collection was donated by John Young and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-02
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Young, J
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
John Youngs’ flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners and flight engineers
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
Description
An account of the resource
Royal Air Force flying log book for Sergeant John Young, flight engineer, covering the period 28 June 1944 to 6 January 1945, detailing training, and operations flown. He was stationed at RAF St Athan, RAF Eastmoor. Aircraft flown in were the Halifax III, V & VII. He flew 30 operations, 13 night time and 17 daylight with 432 Squadron. Targets were le Havre, Dortmund, Wanne-Eickel, Osnabruck, Kiel, Boulogne, Calais, Bottrop, Stekrade-Holten, Duisberg, Essen, Homberg, Cologne, Hannover, Oberhausen, Dusseldorf, Bochum, Gelsenkirchen, Julich, Munster, Opladen, Troisdorf, Hanau, Magdeberg. His pilot on operations was Pilot Officer Stedman. The log book has a photo after the last operation which shows seven aircrew under an aircraft. Captioned ‘Back Row: L to R: Self; ‘Cam’ (Mid Upper); Earl Fox (Bomb Aimer); Lloyd Gapes (Navigator) Front Row: L to R: ‘Buzz’ (Tail Gunner); J Hartley) W/Op; Les Steadman (Pilot)’.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
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
LYoungJ1569980v1
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.
France
Great Britain
Germany
Wales
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
England--Yorkshire
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
France--Calais
France--Le Havre
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Bottrop
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Essen
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hanau
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Homburg (Saarland)
Germany--Jülich
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Leverkusen
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Troisdorf
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1944-09-09
1944-09-10
1944-09-11
1944-09-12
1944-09-13
1944-09-15
1944-09-16
1944-09-17
1944-09-25
1944-09-26
1944-09-27
1944-09-28
1944-09-30
1944-10-14
1944-10-15
1944-10-21
1944-10-23
1944-10-24
1944-10-25
1944-10-28
1944-10-30
1944-10-31
1944-11-01
1944-11-02
1944-11-03
1944-11-04
1944-11-05
1944-11-06
1944-11-16
1944-11-18
1944-12-17
1944-12-18
1944-12-28
1944-12-29
1944-12-30
1944-12-31
1945-01-06
1945-01-07
1945-01-16
1945-01-17
1664 HCU
432 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
flight engineer
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Halifax Mk 5
Halifax Mk 7
Heavy Conversion Unit
RAF Dishforth
RAF East Moor
RAF St Athan
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2254/41947/LHaileyKJ1449497v1.1.pdf
d84f6b06132cd9ce39cdd3cfb9662dd7
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
Hailey, Keith John
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. The collection concerns Warrant Officer Keith John Hailey (b. 1921, 1449497Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, documents and photographs. He flew operations as a wireless operator / air gunner with 433 and 635 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Sheila Mathison and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-08-30
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.
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.
Hailey, KJ
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
Keith Hailey's Royal Air Force navigator’s, air bombers and air gunner’s flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
K J Hailey’s Wireless Operator’s Flying Log Book covering the period 6 May 1943 to 9 May 1945. Detailing his flying training and operations flown as Wireless Operator. He was stationed at RAF Yatesbury (2 Radio School), RAF Manby (Empire Air Armament School), RAF West Freugh (4 OAFU), RAF Honeybourne (24 OTU), RAF Topcliffe (1659 HCU), RAF Skipton-on-Swale (433 RCAF Squadron), RAF Warboys (PNTU), RAF Downham Market (635 Squadron) and RAF Lossiemouth and RAF Elgin (20 OTU). Aircraft flown in were Dominie, Anson, Whitley, Halifax, Lancaster and Wellington. He flew 32 night operations (two early returns) with 433 Squadron and 7 night and 7 day operations with 635 Squadron, a total of 46 (two early return). Targets were Berlin, mining, Stuttgart, Schweinfurt, Dusseldorf, Karlsruhe, Essen, Nuremburg, Aulnoye, unspecified French targets, Ruhr unspecified, Dortmund, Boulogne, Dessau, Kassel, Wuppertal, Zwiebrucken, Nurnberg, Bremen,Bottrop, Osnabruck, Kiel, Potsdam and Berchtesgarten. His pilot on operations were Pilot Officer Smith, Flying Officer Eyolfson, Pilot Officer Watson and Squadron Leader Ashworth.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-01-24
1944-02-03
1944-02-15
1944-02-20
1944-02-23
1944-03-13
1944-03-22
1944-03-24
1944-03-26
1944-03-30
1944-04-11
1944-04-20
1944-04-22
1944-04-24
1944-04-26
1944-04-27
1944-05-01
1944-05-03
1944-05-08
1944-05-15
1944-05-20
1944-05-21
1944-05-31
1944-06-02
1944-06-03
1944-06-05
1944-06-06
1944-06-09
1944-06-12
1944-06-14
1944-06-15
1944-06-18
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Great Britain
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Huntingdonshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
England--Wiltshire
England--Worcestershire
England--Yorkshire
France--Aulnoye-Aymeries
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
France--Nord-Pas-de-Calais
Germany--Berchtesgaden
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bottrop
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Dessau (Dessau)
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Potsdam
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Wuppertal
Germany--Zweibrücken
Scotland--Dumfries and Galloway
Scotland--Moray
Germany
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LHaileyKJ1449497v1
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Terry Hancock
Trevor Hardcastle
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
1659 HCU
20 OTU
24 OTU
433 Squadron
635 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
bombing of the Boulogne E-boats (15/16 June 1944)
Dominie
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
mine laying
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
Proctor
RAF Downham Market
RAF Honeybourne
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Manby
RAF Skipton on Swale
RAF Topcliffe
RAF Warboys
RAF West Freugh
RAF Yatesbury
training
Wellington
Whitley
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1950/39396/SWhittakerH186316v20001.2.pdf
20668e9a2588d473e96013050d8c980d
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
Whittaker, Harry
H Whittaker
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-24
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Whittacker, H
Description
An account of the resource
26 items. The collection concerns Sergeant Harry Whittaker (Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, documents and photographs. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 158 and 635 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Simon Whittaker and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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
Ken Calton’s navigator’s, air bomber’s and air gunner’s flying log book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SWhittakerH186316v20001
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
Description
An account of the resource
Navigator’s, air bomber’s and air gunner’s flying log book for Ken Calton, flight engineer, covering the period from 27 March 1943 to 4 October 1946. Detailing his flying training, operations flown, instructor duties and post war flying duties. He was stationed at 1662 Conversion Unit RAF Blyton, 12 Squadron RAF Wickenby, 156 squadron RAF Warboys, 7 Squadron and 242 Squadron RAF Oakington, 3 Lancaster Finishing School RAF Feltwell, 635 Squadron RAF Downham Market, 35 Squadron RAF Graveley, Lancastrian Conversion Unit RAF Full Sutton and 51 Squadron RAF Stradishall. Aircraft flown in were Lancaster, Lancastrian, Oxford, York, Anson, Mosquito, Botha, and Manchester. He flew a total of 45 operations, 3 night operations with 12 Squadron, 23 Night operations with 156 Squadron, 5 Night operations with 7 Squadron and 7 Daylight and 7 Night operations with 635 Squadron. His pilots on operations were Squadron Leader Young and Squadron Leader Ashworth and Flight Lieutenant Hitchcock. He also flew on 4 operation Exodus, 2 Operation Dodge and one operation Manna. He also completed 5 Cooks tours. Targets were Essen, Dortmund, Dusseldorf, Wuppertal, Munster, Bochum, Cologne, Montchanin, Krefeld, Mulheim, Turin, Hamburg, Milan, Peenemunde, Berlin, Mannheim, Munich, Montlucon, Hannover, Leipzig, Dresden, Dessau, Kassel, Zweibrucken, Nurnberg, Bremen, Bottrop, Osnabruck, Kiel, Potsdam, Berchtesgaden, The Hague, Rotterdam, Brussels, Lubeck, Juvincourt and Bari.
This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form. No better quality copies are available.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One photocopied booklet
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-04-28
1943-04-29
1943-04-30
1943-05-01
1943-05-04
1943-05-05
1943-05-23
1943-05-24
1943-05-25
1943-05-26
1943-05-27
1943-05-28
1943-05-29
1943-05-30
1943-06-11
1943-06-12
1943-06-13
1943-06-16
1943-06-17
1943-06-19
1943-06-20
1943-06-21
1943-06-22
1943-06-23
1943-06-24
1943-06-25
1943-07-08
1943-07-09
1943-07-12
1943-07-13
1943-07-24
1943-07-25
1943-07-26
1943-07-27
1943-07-28
1943-07-29
1943-07-30
1943-08-02
1943-08-03
1943-08-15
1943-08-16
1943-08-17
1943-08-18
1943-09-03
1943-09-04
1943-09-05
1943-09-06
1943-09-07
1943-09-15
1943-09-16
1943-09-22
1943-09-23
1943-09-24
1943-10-18
1943-10-20
1943-10-21
1945-02-13
1945-02-14
1945-03-07
1945-03-08
1945-03-09
1945-03-12
1945-03-13
1945-03-14
1945-03-15
1945-03-16
1945-03-17
1945-03-21
1945-03-24
1945-03-26
1945-04-13
1945-04-14
1945-04-15
1945-04-22
1945-04-25
1945-04-30
1945-05-05
1945-05-07
1945-05-08
1945-05-10
1945-05-15
1945-05-23
1945-06-08
1945-06-12
1945-06-14
1945-06-25
1945-07-03
1945-07-09
1945-08-03
1945-08-05
1945-08-22
1945-08-24
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
France
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Netherlands
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Belgium--Brussels
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
France--Montchanin
France--Montluçon
Germany--Berchtesgaden
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Bottrop
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dessau (Dessau)
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Lübeck
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Mülheim an der Ruhr
Germany--Munich
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Peenemünde
Germany--Potsdam
Germany--Wuppertal
Germany--Zweibrücken
Italy--Bari
Italy--Milan
Italy--Turin
Netherlands--Hague
Netherlands--Rotterdam
France--Juvincourt-et-Damary
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
115 Squadron
12 Squadron
156 Squadron
1662 HCU
242 Squadron
3 Group
35 Squadron
51 Squadron
635 Squadron
7 Squadron
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
Cook’s tour
flight engineer
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
Lancastrian
mine laying
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Pathfinders
RAF Blyton
RAF Downham Market
RAF Feltwell
RAF Full Sutton
RAF Graveley
RAF Oakington
RAF Pembrey
RAF Stradishall
RAF Warboys
RAF Wickenby
RAF Witchford
training
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/298/10067/LKirrageLG1869665v1.1.pdf
40fdceab62d6e3754a8b5c7930373995
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
McClements, Robert
Robert McClements
R McClements
Description
An account of the resource
17 items. Two oral history interviews with Robert McClements (-2022, 1796607 Royal Air Force) and one with his wife, Iris McClements (b. 1926). The collection also contains his log book, service documents, photographs and a model of his Halifax. He completed a tour of operations as a mid-upper gunner with 10 Squadron from RAF Melbourne. The log book belonging to L Kirrage, his flight engineer, is also included.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Robert McClements and catalogued by Barry Hunter and David Leitch.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-21
2015-10-21
2018-02-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
McClements, R
Requires
A related resource that is required by the described resource to support its function, delivery, or coherence.
1943: Volunteered for the RAF
19 December 1943 -11 February 1944: RAF Pembrey, No.1 AGS, flying Anson aircraft
23 April 1944 - 20 May 1944: RAF Lossiemouth, No. 20 OTU, Flying Gunnery Flight, flying Wellington aircraft
8 July 1944 - 23 July 1944: 1658 RAF Ricall, 1658 HCU, flying Halifax aircraft
30 July 1944 - 18 February 1945: RAF Melbourne, 10 Squadron, flying Halifax aircraft
July 1944 - February 1945: served on 10 Sqn as a Flight Sergeant Air gunner.
3 March 1947: RAF Kirkham, Released from Service, having attained the rank of Temporary Warrant Officer
Chris Cann
Robert McClements was born on 6 December 1924, in Belfast. He left school at the age of 14 and worked various jobs to help support his family. While there was no conscription in Northern Ireland, in late 1943 while working at the Harland and Wolff shipyard he volunteered to join the RAF, as aircrew.
Following basic training at RAF Bridlington and then initial gunnery training at RAF Bridgnorth, he was posted to RAF Pembry to join No 1 AGS and train as an air gunner. Air gunners course · IBCC Digital Archive (lincoln.ac.uk)
He completed the gunnery course in February 1944 and was posted to No 20 OTU at RAF Lossiemouth and then on to 1658 HCU, at RAF Ricall, to train on Halifax aircraft. In July 1944, with all training finally completed, he began his operational flying with 10 Squadron at RAF Melbourne flying Halifax aircraft.
His early operational trips passed without incident, but on one operation the aircraft experienced heavy icing, causing it to lose all lift and go into an uncontrolled descent. With the aircraft going straight down the order to ‘Bale out’ was given, Robert managed to get out of his gunner position, but then found himself forced to the floor unable to move. In the cockpit, the pilot engaged full power and he and his engineer battled with the control column to pull the aircraft out of its dive. The flight home passed uneventfully although the engineer reported that the aircraft never ever flew again.
Throughout the rest of his tour there were other eventful sorties. On one, two of the bombs ‘hung up’ and they had to release them from the carrier units using an axe. On another, the bomb aimer forgot to press the bomb-release button so they had to go around again. Luck was again on his side when, on a night raid, another aircraft on a turning point swung across the top of his Halifax, narrowly missing the top of his gun turret. Robert went on to complete a full operational flying tour of 38 operational sorties over Belgium, France and Germany amassing over 200 flying hours. PMcClementsR1503.2.jpg (1600×1299) (lincoln.ac.uk)
After his operational tour, Robert was released from flying duties. He remained at RAF Melbourne and trained as a Unit Fire Officer and he and his flight engineer took charge of the station warrant officer’s office. During a routine site inspection, he met a German prisoner of war who was making a wooden model of a Catalina aircraft for the officers’ mess. Robert asked him to make a model of his Halifax aircraft for him. The aircraft, remarkable in its detail, has been a treasured memento of his time served in the RAF. Robert McClements and his model of Halifax ZA-V · IBCC Digital Archive (lincoln.ac.uk)
Robert met his future wife, Iris, on a visit to the Observer Corp HQ at York where she was a serving member. He left the RAF in 1947 having attained the rank of Temporary Warrant Officer. He and Iris settled in England where they worked with her father, in York. Latterly, he and Iris set up their own business in Wakefield selling motor vehicles.
Chris Cann
Iris McClements (nee Dobson) remembers, at the age of 11, being issued with a gas mask before the war had started. When she was about 13 years of age, her family moved to Eldwick to avoid the bombs.
She was a member of the Home Guard before joining the Women’s Junior Air Corp where she attained the rank of sergeant. She recalled wearing a grey uniform, being issued with a bucket, stirrup pump and helmet for fire watching and learning the theory of the internal combustion engine.
In 1944, she passed the entrance exam to join the Royal Observer Corps and was based in York, as a plotter. Her role was to listen to information from the spotters via headphones and place it on to the plotting table. This included the number of aircraft, direction of travel, height, and whether they were friendly or hostile. This was to give warning of enemy operations or to track operations heading to Germany. She worked eight-hour shifts which changed each week. The spotters in the outposts were also watching for aircraft that were going to crash-land, so that the crash sites could be identified. Iris visited a couple of these sites. She met her husband to be, Robert, on one of his visits to the Royal Observer Corp HQ in York.
She lived on an ex-World War One motor launch in York that the family had used for recreation. When off duty she would often travel into York to go dancing, swimming and to the cinema.
After the war she and Robert worked with her father in the motor trade. She then set up business with Robert in Wakefield.
Chris Cann
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
L Kirrage's 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
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.
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. Log book and record book
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LKirrageLG1869665v1
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
Flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners and flight engineers for LG Kirrage, flight engineer, covering the period from 9 May 1944 to 5 July 1945. Detailing his flying training and operations flown. He was stationed at RAF Ricall and RAF Melbourne. He flew a total of 36 operations with 10 squadron, 18 Daylight and 18 Night operations. Targets were, Foret-de-Nieppe, Tirlemont-Gossencourt, Brest, Homberg-Heerbeck, Le Havre, Scholven, Kelsenkirchen, Keil, Boulogne, Neuss, Calais, Cleve, Essen, Cologne, Bochum, Munster, Hagen, Soest, Osnabruck, Bingen, Mulheim, Hanau, Saarbrucken, Magdeburg, Stuttgart, Mainz, Bonn, Goch, Wanne Eickel, Chemnitz and Wesel. His pilot on operations was Flight Lieutenant Grant. L Kirrage was the flight engineer in Flight Lieutenant Grant's crew and flew with Robert McClements.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
England--Yorkshire
France--Brest
France--Calais
France--Le Havre
France--Nieppe Forest
Germany--Bingen (Rhineland-Palatinate)
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Bonn
Germany--Chemnitz
Germany--Kleve (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Essen
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Goch
Germany--Hagen (Arnsberg)
Germany--Hanau
Germany--Homberg (Kassel)
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Mainz (Rhineland-Palatinate)
Germany--Mülheim an der Ruhr
Germany--Neuss
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Saarbrücken
Germany--Soest
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1944-08-05
1944-08-15
1944-08-17
1944-08-27
1944-09-10
1944-09-12
1944-09-13
1944-09-15
1944-09-16
1944-09-17
1944-09-23
1944-09-24
1944-09-26
1944-09-27
1944-10-16
1944-10-17
1944-10-23
1944-10-25
1944-10-28
1944-10-30
1944-11-04
1944-11-18
1944-11-29
1944-12-02
1944-12-03
1944-12-05
1944-12-06
1944-12-22
1944-12-24
1945-01-06
1945-01-14
1945-01-16
1945-01-17
1945-01-28
1945-01-29
1945-02-01
1945-02-04
1945-02-05
1945-02-07
1945-02-08
1945-02-09
1945-02-14
1945-02-15
1945-02-17
1945-07-05
10 Squadron
1658 HCU
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Luftwaffe night-fighter airfields (15 August 1944)
Cook’s tour
flight engineer
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Heavy Conversion Unit
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
RAF Melbourne
RAF Riccall
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2238/41416/LFairbanksLW10611800v1.1.pdf
be60bc44ce85466f33f4cf324d15618d
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
Fairbanks, Leonard William
Fairbanks, LW
Description
An account of the resource
16 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Leonard William Fairbanks (b. 1911, 1061800, 136326 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, documents, photographs, and propaganda leaflets in French.
He flew operations as a wireless operator and a special operator with 408 and 223 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Jean Carol Carter and catalogued by Lynn Corrigan.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-02-15
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Fairbanks, LW
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
Leonard William Fairbanks' Observer' and Air Gunner's Flying Log Book
Description
An account of the resource
Leonard William Fairbanks' log book covering two tours from 3 January 1941 to 15 April 1945, detailing his training schedule and operations flown. Training was undertaken at Air Gunnery School at RAF Stormy Down, 25 OTU RAF Finningley, 25 OTU RAF Balderton and 20 OTU Lossiemouth. Operations were flown with 408 Squadron, RAF Leeming and 223 Squadron RAF Oulton. Aircraft flown were Dominie, Proctor, Whitley MK1, Wellington, Hampden, Oxford, Halifax, B-24 and Anson. The first tour, with 408 Squadron, comprised 28 night operations to Brest, La Rochelle, Wilhelmshaven, Paris, Heligoland, Rennes, Emden, Essen, Lorient, Bremen, Saarbrücken, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Osnabrück, Flensburg, Frisian Islands, Turin and Berlin. Many of the second tour's 20 nightime operations, with 223 Squadron, provided Window cover for the main force in addition to shore patrols. Target areas were the Ruhr, Dortmund-Ems Canal, Friedrichshafen, Bremen, Mannheim, Münster, Hagen, Würzburg, Kassel, Hamburg and Berlin. His duties were as air gunner, wireless operator and special operator. The pilots on operations were Sergeant Anderson, Flight Sergeant Wood, Sergeant Locker, Sergeant Jennings, Sergeant Ross, Sergeant Bell, Pilot Officer Kaye, Wing Commander Ferris, Squadron Leader Carrington, Flight Officer Thompson, Flight Lieutenant Allnutt, Flight Lieutenant Allnutt, Flight Lieutenant Croft and Flight Lieutenant Levy. Leonard was described as being 'an average air gunner' and as 'above average' with Special Duties (RCM).
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-12-14
1942-01-02
1942-01-06
1942-01-07
1942-01-10
1942-01-11
1942-05-05
1942-05-06
1942-05-07
1942-05-08
1942-05-09
1942-05-10
1942-06-01
1942-06-02
1942-06-03
1942-06-04
1942-06-06
1942-06-07
1942-06-08
1942-06-09
1942-06-16
1942-06-17
1942-06-22
1942-06-23
1942-06-25
1942-06-26
1942-07-14
1942-07-15
1942-07-16
1942-07-29
1942-07-30
1942-08-04
1942-08-05
1942-08-06
1942-08-07
1942-08-15
1942-08-16
1942-08-17
1942-08-18
1942-09-19
1942-08-28
1942-08-29
1942-09-14
1942-09-15
1943-01-21
1943-01-22
1943-02-04
1943-02-05
1943-03-12
1943-03-13
1943-03-27
1943-03-28
1944-09-19
1944-10-01
1944-10-04
1944-10-05
1944-10-15
1944-10-16
1944-11-06
1944-11-07
1944-11-10
1944-11-11
1944-11-18
1944-11-19
1944-11-25
1944-11-26
1944-11-29
1944-11-30
1945-02-03
1945-02-04
1945-02-07
1945-02-08
1945-02-13
1945-02-14
1945-02-15
1945-02-28
1945-03-01
1945-03-02
1945-03-03
1945-03-05
1945-03-06
1945-03-07
1945-03-08
1945-03-15
1945-03-16
1945-03-17
1945-03-18
1945-03-19
1945-03-30
1945-03-31
1945-04-04
1945-04-05
1945-04-08
1945-04-09
1945-04-10
1945-04-11
1945-04-13
1945-04-14
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Norfolk
Scotland--Moray
France
France--La Rochelle
France--Paris
France--Lorient
France--Rennes
France--Brest
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Helgoland
Germany--Essen
Germany--Emden (Lower Saxony)
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Saarbrücken
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Flensburg
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Friedrichshafen
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
Germany--Würzburg
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Hamburg
Italy
Italy--Turin
Europe--Frisian Islands
Germany--Hagen (Arnsberg)
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LFairbanksLW10611800v1
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Lynn Corrigan
20 OTU
223 Squadron
25 OTU
408 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
B-24
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
Dominie
Halifax
Hampden
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Proctor
RAF Balderton
RAF Finningley
RAF Leeming
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Oulton
RAF Stormy Down
training
Wellington
Whitley
Window
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2093/34664/SWeirG19660703v090013.1.jpg
92e9ba54b68e8ea263bcf8ef830d0c91
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
Weir, Greg. Flannigan, J and McManus, JB
Description
An account of the resource
Seventeen items. Collection concerns Flt Sgt James Flannigan who flew as a wireless operator/air gunner on 77 and 76 Squadrons in 1941, he failed to return from operations 31 October 1941 and J B McManus (RAAF), a Halifax pilot who flew operations on 466 Squadron in 1944-45. Collection contains their log books, mementos, parade notes, medals, documents and photographs.
Collection catalogued by Nigel Huckins
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-04-26
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Weir, G
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
List of operations
Description
An account of the resource
List of targets and some comments. Image of a Halifax at top.
This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form. No better quality copies are available.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Germany--Kleve (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
Germany--Soest
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Mainz (Rhineland-Palatinate)
Germany--Goch
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
Germany--Worms
Germany--Kamen
Germany--Chemnitz
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Essen
Germany--Wuppertal
Germany--Bottrop
Germany--Witten
Germany--Recklinghausen (Münster)
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One page handwritten document
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SWeirG19660703v090013
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Personal research
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
bombing