1
25
86
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/147/1572/LColeC1605385v1.2.pdf
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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
Cole, Colin
C Cole
Colin Cole
Description
An account of the resource
31 items. The collection relates to Warrant Officer Colin Cole (1924 – 2015 RAF Volunteer Reserve 1605385) who served with 617 Squadron. The collection contains two oral history interviews his, logbook, service documents, medals, memorabilia from the Tirpitz and six photographs.
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. Six items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties or to comply with intellectual property regulations. 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
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-01-27
2015-07-27
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cole, C
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
Colin Cole's navigator's, air bomber's, air gunner's and flight engineer's flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Navigator’s, air bomber’s, air gunner’s and flight engineer’s flying log book for Warrant Officer Colin Cole from 5 August 1943 to 23 September 1946. Detailing training schedule and operations flown. Served at RAF Yatesbury, RAF Mona, RAF Barrow in Furness, RAF Market Harborough, RAF Winthorpe, RAF Syerston, RAF Woodhall Spa, RAF Digri (Bengal) and RAF Scampton. Aircraft flown were Anson, Proctor, Dominie, Wellington, Stirling, Lancaster and Lincoln. He carried out a total of ten daylight and one night-time operations with 617 Squadron at RAF Woodhall Spa as a wireless operator on the following targets in Germany, Netherlands, Norway and Poland: Bergen, Dortmund-Ems Canal, Hamburg, Ijmuiden, Lützow, Oslo Fjord, Rotterdam, Tirpitz Tromsø, Urft Dam and Viesleble [sic] (actually Bielefeld) viaduct. <span>His pilots on operations were </span><span data-ccp-props="{"201341983":0,"335559739":200,"335559740":276}">Flight Lieutenant Leavitt and Flight Lieutenant Price. </span>Annotations include bombing the Tirpitz and an attack by an enemy jet aircraft. Operation Exodus and Cook’s tour flights are included, as is a tour of India in 1946.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LColeC1605385v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Pakistan
Norway
Pakistan
Poland
Wales
England--Cumbria
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Wiltshire
Wales--Anglesey
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Oslofjorden
Germany--Bielefeld
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Schleiden (Kreis)
Pakistan--Digri
Netherlands--Ijmuiden
Netherlands--Rotterdam
Norway--Bergen
Norway--Oslo
Norway--Tromsø
Pakistan--Digri
Poland--Świnoujście
Germany--Urft Dam
Netherlands
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
1946
1944-11-12
1944-11-13
1944-12-08
1944-12-11
1944-12-29
1944-12-30
1945-01-12
1945-02-14
1945-02-22
1945-02-24
1945-04-09
1945-04-13
1945-05-08
1945-05-10
1945-05-15
1945-09-27
1945-09-29
14 OTU
1661 HCU
617 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Cook’s tour
Dominie
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lincoln
Me 262
Operation Catechism (12 November 1944)
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Guzzle
Operational Training Unit
Proctor
RAF Barrow in Furness
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Mona
RAF Scampton
RAF Syerston
RAF Waddington
RAF Winthorpe
RAF Woodhall Spa
RAF Yatesbury
Stirling
submarine
Tiger force
Tirpitz
training
Wellington
wireless operator
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Stephen Dawson family scenes and in airline uniform
Description
An account of the resource
Left page.
Top left - Joy Dawson in swim suit sitting in a garden.
Top right - Stephen Dawson in swimming trunks reclining on mat in garden.
Captioned for top left and right photographs ' Hesslemount - May 28th, Bathing Beauty, and beast'
Middle - Joy Dawson in swim suit sitting on a low wall in garden with trees in background.
Caption 'Barton on Humber'
Bottom left - Stephen Dawson in swimming trunks sitting on a rocky beach.
Bottom right - Joy Dawson in shorts and top sitting on a rocky beach.
''Captioned for bottom left and right photographs 'Contemplation, and, Subject'.
Right page.
Top left - Stephen Dawson in British Overseas Airways Corporation uniform standing with part of a building in the background. Caption 'Intrepid Birdman'.
Top right Joy and Stephen Dawson standing together in front of brick building with window. Captioned 'Stop pinching!'.
Centre - Stephen Dawson on the left and another man in airline uniform sitting on a step with ivy covered building in the background.
Captioned ' Karachi Airport Mess, April 47'.
Bottom left - Top right Joy and Stephen Dawson standing together in front of brick building with window. Captioned 'That's better'.
Bottom right - Stephen Dawson on the left and another man on the right standing in airline uniform. In the background a single story building.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1947-04
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Ten b/w photographs mounted on two album pages
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PDawsonSR16010017, PDawsonSR16010018, PDawsonSR16010019, PDawsonSR16010020, PDawsonSR16010021, PDawsonSR16010022, PDawsonSR16010023, PDawsonSR16010024, PDawsonSR16010025, PDawsonSR16010026, PDawsonSR16010027
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Barton-upon-Humber
Pakistan
Pakistan--Karachi
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1947
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.
-
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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
Friends and scenes in India and Pakistan
Description
An account of the resource
Left page.
Top left - two girls in winter coats either side of a pram with baby. Fence and trees in the background. Captioned 'Janet, Chris and Sheila, March 1950'.
Top right - Two men standing in front of a house. The man on the left has his foot up on a wall and a baby sitting on his upper ;leg. Caption 'Sunny, isn't it'.
Bottom left - baby in a cot with fence and trees in the background. Bottom right - same image as top left but with the addition that Joy Dawson is now also standing on right of group.
Right page.
Top and bottom left - Group of three men sitting on veranda in various states of dress with a servant approaching in one photograph and serving drinks in the other. Captioned 'Ned Farrel, Ted Smith and "Sandy", Palace Hotel Karachi, April 50'. On the reverse of the second 'Sandy, Ted Smith, Farrell'.
Top right - Pile of chairs burning inside a building. Caption 'Burning chats by river Hoogly, Calcutta'.
Bottom right - outside view of a temple. Captioned 'Temple Calcutta'.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1950-03
1950-04
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Eight b/w photographs mounted on two album pages
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PDawsonSR16010182, PDawsonSR16010183, PDawsonSR16010184, PDawsonSR16010185, PDawsonSR16010186, PDawsonSR16010187, PDawsonSR16010188, PDawsonSR16010189, PDawsonSR16010190, PDawsonSR16010191
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
India
India--Kolkata
Pakistan
Pakistan--Karachi
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1950-03
1950-04
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/83/7964/EMullinsRNCochraneDH451109.2.pdf
97075e7f6f78b7cc4cb7abb51dc507a0
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
Cochrane, Donald Harvin
Donald Harvin Cochrane
D H Cochrane
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Great Britain. Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
13 Items. The collections concerns Donald Harvin Cochrane DFM (1926 - 2010, 1395422, Royal Air Force) and consists of his log book, letters, service material, photographs and a memoir. Donald Cochrane completed 29 operations as a wireless operator with 460 Squadron <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Pamela Ann Staffel and catalogued by Barry Hunter.<br />
<p>This collection also contains items concerning Colin Farrant. Additional information on Colin Farrant is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/107397/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.</p>
<p> </p>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-12
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cochrane, DH
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[postmark]
[postage stamp]
Mr D H Cochrane
No 8 Raydean Road
Barnet
Herts
England
[page break]
R.N.Mullins
c/o Qantas Empire Airways
Shell House Carrington St
Sydney NSW.
Colombo [indecipherable word] 9/11/45
Hello Don!
I was very pleased to recieve [sic] your letter recently, I often wonder how all you chaps are getting along, of course I hear from Jock occasionally and I have heard from your Ted on one occasion. I thought you would probably be married before this. I may beat you to it yet, I hoped to be back to marry Pat before now but things have been in a mess with us. I have done [indecipherable word] trips from Aust to Karachi but never seem to be able to get right through, however I’ll manage it one of these days and will do my best to let you know so as you can come to the wedding, I would like to have you and Jock there also any of the others if we can let them know but then I don’t know just when it will be. I rather think now
[page break]
that it will be about next Feb.
I’m still a second pilot on these bloody Lancastrians and I’m not terribly keen on the job although the money is very good, it will be much better later on of course when I get some promotion. Most of the wops are pretty dim, they are always blaming the set for their mistakes, I feel that some of your RAF boys who have had plenty of experience on the equipment could do a better job, these civil people are very jealous of R.A.F. types you know, but we won’t lose any sleep over that will we Don!
Yes Don. I sometimes long for the old days we spent on the Sqdn, they were wizard days weren’t they?
I suppose you will soon be a civvy again, I hope so Don as I think you have had your share of service life.
[page break]
Re the girl back home whom you mentioned Don, that finished last August when I fell for Pat, I’ll never be sorry about that as Pat is a wizard kid.
Cyril Woolmough is still in England, he married a WAAF from Surrey. I hope to see him home early next year.
I suppose winter is setting in over your way now, the weather is very hot in Australia at present.
Each one of these trips takes about 15 days Don as we stop off for three days rest at each halt then we get about 16 days off in Sydney before commencing the next trip so you can see that we’re really not overworked.
Well Don, that’s about all for now. I’ll let you know when I’m coming over in the meantime all the Very Best From Your Old Pal Reg
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
Letter to Donald Cochrane from Reg Mullins
Description
An account of the resource
A letter written by Reg Mullins to Don Cochrane. There is a discussion on wartime colleagues and getting married. Reg is a co-pilot on Lancastrians but misses his time in the RAF.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Reg Mullins
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1945-11-09
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Handwritten two page letter and envelope
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
EMullinsRNCochraneDH451109
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Sri Lanka
Pakistan
Pakistan--Karachi
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-11
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
Emily Jennings
Lancastrian
-
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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
Miller, Peter
P Miller
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Miller, P
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Peter Miller (3008496 Royal Air Force). He served as an air gunner and gunnery leader with 12 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-06
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
PM: You, you want my name or rank?
MJ: Yeah.
MM: Name and rank. Um I’m Peter, I’m [laughs] I’m nearly as bad as you. I’m recording this for Peter Miller, who is my husband, for the International Bomber Command Centre on the 1st June 20 -
MJ: ‘15.
MM: ‘15. We’re at Wragby in Lincolnshire.
PM: When I was called up. Is that alright?
MM: Ahum.
PM: 25th of the 11th ‘43. Went to Cardington. I was only there for a week getting kitted out and such. Was sent to Skegness, my home town, to do a couple of months foot drill. I was billeted about half a mile from home. So, when in the town I was the person sent by cycle on errands. Afterwards was posted to Halton on a flight mechanics course on which I was made AC1. Leaving Halton on the 29th of the 5th ‘44 I went to Digby, Lincolnshire, 527 squadron. Enjoyed time off, such, it was a Canadian station at the time. Then being posted to Bircham Newton, Norfolk, 695 squadron who were drogue towing. After a short while there I was sent to Blackpool in November classed as a PDC from which we went to Liverpool to get a boat. A Dutch ship called the [oanvan oldabarnevoort?] which after, after a late start we caught the convoy and going down the Med at Christmas Eve sailing past Gib onto Aden, then to Ceylon to drop some, some, some people off and then back up to Bombay to a transit camp. From Bombay we went to a place called Cawnpore [Kanpur]. That was our destination - 322 MU. Spending two and a half years in Cawnpore [Kanpur], returning from Bombay on the SS Somalia landing in Liverpool for being demobbed at a transit camp just outside Blackpool early July ’47. That’s, that’s my service career.
MM: What did you think to India?
PM: It was air, do you want the aircraft I worked on?
MJ: Oh yeah. I mean, well, that’s a, that’s a nice round off way of putting things how they are but yeah where, what, what, what did you do in Bombay because it seems a long way to be having an aircraft. I mean if you -
PM: It seems like a long way to what?
MJ: It seems to be a long way to go and play with aircraft so I just wondered what you had to do there.
PM: We were servicing them.
MJ: Yeah.
PM: Um Liberators.
MM: It was a big camp wasn’t it, Peter?
PM: A very big camp. Worked on Liberators to start with. About -
MM: Did you enjoy India?
PM: About five months.
MM: Did you enjoy India?
PM: Well yes. It was alright.
MJ: I suppose it was a good place to get a suntan.
PM: Yeah. Yeah but mainly. I had almost two and a half years on Dakotas.
MJ: So you mainly worked on Dakotas.
PM: Yeah, air frames.
MJ: Air frame.
PM: Air frame fitter.
MJ: Was it, was it very busy being in India fitting or was it -
PM: We were busy.
MJ: Quiet?
PM: Of course we used to service them from all over South East Asia Command.
MJ: So, so when people think that you were um in India probably having a quieter time than most you probably, you weren’t were you? You ‘cause
PM: Oh no, we weren’t living it up.
MJ: No. I mean that’s what people would think. I mean
PM: Yeah.
MJ: That’s what I’m saying. A lot of people don’t associate India with the RAF do they?
PM: Yeah. We weren’t living it up.
MJ: No. So, so how did you, I imagine it was very hot over there was it? Or -
PM: Very hot.
MJ: So -
MM: And you went up in the hills didn’t you on your leave -
PM: Pardon?
MM: You enjoyed going up into the hills didn’t you? On leave.
PM: We used to get on, we used to get our normal leave but also we had a, we used to go on hill parties, a month, probably fifty or sixty used to go by train to the foothills and then up by wagons to the place we spent the, spent the leave, the holiday. I had my twenty first birthday in Darjeeling.
MJ: That must have been interesting.
PM: Yeah. It was alright [laughs]. But the other places were, were very fair. They used to take us as far as they could by train, Then we had to go on, on wagons further up.
MJ: Did -
PM: We used to go by train to Darjeeling. Pre, pre, pre-war I think the moneyed folks had taken Darjeeling over and they weren’t all that keen on us blokes out there going to Darjeeling but er we made them happy.
MJ: Did um -
PM: But that’s a lovely spot that.
MJ: So even though the work was hard it was quite a nice place to be.
PM: Yeah. But, but regarding, regarding the weather it, it was very hot. During the hot season we used to go to work in the morning. There for seven and we used to work while one and after 1 o’clock the time was our own.
MJ: It was too hot to work?
PM: Yeah.
MJ: So, so, so in a way you were working nights really?
PM: [laughs] But we were we’ve had everything done I think. There was, it was a very big camp. There was three villages on the camp.
MJ: Was, was it more than just RAF then?
PM: Pardon?
MJ: Was it more than just RAF?
PM: Just RAF.
MJ: So -
PM: Yeah.
MM: There were locals. The villagers were locals.
PM: Local villagers. They were on, on the side -
MJ: Side.
MM: Doing your washing for you.
PM: Well they used to, they were our bearers and things were alright until the war finished.
MJ: What happened then?
PM: Until the Jap war finished. And then Pakistan and India were having a go at one another.
MJ: So you got stuck in the middle.
PM: Well more or less. We wanted to get home. They held, well, we believed they held our demob up for a while.
MJ: Why because of the conflict between the two -
PM: Well, in case there was going to be. Nothing happened. We got on the boat and came home.
MJ: So that, that was a better deal than you thought.
PM: Yeah. One of the biggest laughs we got was when we got to Liverpool on the way home. We were getting off the boat and a jet went over. Never seen a jet.
MJ: No.
PM: Only heard about them. You should have heard the cheer that went up.
MJ: That must have been, so you were probably one of the first people to see a jet flying.
PM: Yeah. In Liverpool.
MJ: You don’t -
PM: Vampire.
MM: Yeah.
[Tape paused].
PM: The cold season out there -
MJ: Yeah.
PM: Is about like this.
MJ: So it’s like having summer in the winter is it?
PM: Yeah.
MJ: So did you, you got warm -
PM: The, the snag is um these blokes that’s been in, in the desert and that, they reckon it goes stone cold at night. Not India. The sun, the sun sets and that’s it. Nothing else. Then the sun comes up and it’s daylight again and you’re getting warmer.
MJ: Yeah. So did you find you had to do more work in the winter per se or, or is it ‘cause, ‘cause the engine, or did you have to sort of -
PM: Yeah, in the, in the cold season we’d probably work another hour a day.
MJ: That, that doesn’t sound a lot but I imagine in those sorts of heats everything buckles including yourself does it?
PM: Yeah.
MJ: I mean, did, did you have to bring in, how did you get everything to where you were ‘cause you were saying you didn’t have any transport as such.
PM: When, when the war finished we, we were, they were sending in um Liberators to our place for scrap. We had a colossal scrapheap there. They were sending these Liberators there because - I don’t want it recorded because -
MJ: No it’s alright.
PM: Yeah well what we heard was that the Yanks wouldn’t take them back as returned lease-lend.
MJ: Well I mean that -
PM: And we just had to get rid of them but we weren’t allowed to sell them. That’s, that’s all we heard. They were wheeling them down to salvage and there was about seventy or eighty Libs there when I got posted home but on other places there was more Libs.
MJ: So I mean -
PM: And they just started destroying them. Took anything that, everything that was any use off the Libs and then, I can’t remember which station it was but there was one station in India was, had started to destroy the Libs. I, I don’t know what, well anybody that was in the RAF on aircraft would say it’s easier to build one then take one to bits. They um they took all instruments that were of any use out.
MJ: Right.
PM: Dinghies, first aid, everything like that. Armoury. All that out and then they took them onto the scrap, down to the scrapyard and drained all the oil out, out the engines and started the engines up and ran them flat out until they went bang.
MJ: So that they couldn’t be used again.
PM: No use whatsoever.
MJ: You know if -
PM: And then they recommended that what you did was have a, have a wagon or tractor fastened to the front of them and drive the tail unit up against a wall or something like that to break them up. Anything that’s riveted you see you can’t get it to bits by, by just undoing it.
MJ: It was built to last so -
PM: But that’s, that’s how it was but there was, there was about seventy at Cawnpore [Kanpur] when I came home that, that hadn’t been touched. Well, I say hadn’t been touched they’d been stripped but hadn’t been damaged.
MJ: I don’t think that was just yourself. I’ve heard things go, you know, because it’s hard to trans. Do you think it was hard to transport the stuff back? I -
MM: Distance.
MJ: You think -
PM: But the –
MJ: I would have thought it would be the pure economics of getting something, it was more expensive to -
PM: If the Yanks had taken them back they could have flown them back.
MJ: Do you think so?
PM: Yeah. I’m sure. They flew them there they could have flown them back.
MJ: Did, did any of the, anything else get left behind? Was it just the planes? Just, everyone leaves everything behind or did you bring most of it back?
PM: Well I don’t know what happened to them at Cawnpore [Kanpur] because they were still there when I left but there was a reunion at Cawnpore [Kanpur]. I was going on it but I got a new [motor?] and I couldn’t go and er the chaps said that the Indian air force wouldn’t let them anywhere near the salvage.
MJ: They wouldn’t let them anywhere near salvage. Well I’m surprised it’s still there.
PM: Yeah. They wouldn’t let them anywhere near salvage.
MM: But you used to go swimming didn’t you? You had a pool.
PM: Oh we’d go swimming. There was a swimming pool on the camp.
MM: A swimming pool and that. You enjoyed that.
MJ:: More than I can do.
MM: I can’t swim.
MJ: Yeah.
MM: So I mean there was some good times wasn’t there?
PM: Oh yes we had some good times.
MM: Good times. Friends. Lots of laughs.
PM: Off the camp mainly, the good times.
MM: Used to go down to one of the places nearby didn’t you? Villages, towns whatever you called it.
PM: Oh we used to go in, in to Cawnpore [Kanpur] itself.
MM: Yeah.
PM: The city
MJ: Well you say it’s a city. Was it sort of like -
MM: How big?
MJ: Was it a big place or –
PM: Oh it was a big place -
MJ: ‘Cause I mean -
PM: The city was. Yeah. The actual RAF camp was called, oh God - Chakeri.
MJ: Oh right. I thought -
PM: It was about four mile out of Cawnpore [Kanpur] but Cawnpore [Kanpur] was a city and we used to call the camp Cawnpore [Kanpur]. It was always Cawnpore [Kanpur].
MJ: Um maybe -
PM: Where were you stationed? Cawnpore [Kanpur].
MM: But you used to have meals didn’t you, in the city, when you went out?
PM: You what?
MM: You used to go for meals didn’t you? In the city went out -
PM: Oh could do. Yeah. Go in to the city. But we were only allowed in one part of the city. They um it was out of bounds to us.
MJ: It’s er so -
PM: It was, it was our military that put it out of bounds to us. They wouldn’t, wouldn’t let us in the -
So it wasn’t inflicted. It wasn’t, you weren’t put out of bounds by the city itself. It was the hierarchy of the military itself.
PM: Yeah. Yeah.
MJ: Saying you couldn’t go to certain parts.
PM: That’s it. Yeah.
MJ: Ah and did you, could you go out of uniform or did you have to be in uniform?
PM: We was, we were out of uniform most of the time. I mean when we used to go to work in a morning, 7 o’clock in the morning, you’d have a, a pair of shorts on, socks and shoes, bush hat and sunglasses and we used to go to work like that and at 1 o’clock when we, when we finished work we used to walk, we didn’t march back or anything. We used to walk back in groups, probably call at the swimming pool on the way back, used to go back and have lunch and then just loaf about.
MJ: Well I imagine it’s, it’s too hot to do anything else at that time. I mean -
PM: It was a funny old time.
MJ: Yeah I can agree with you there. You –
[Tape paused]
MM: Yeah.
PM: About the same height as I am now.
MM: Six foot.
PM: Weighed seven and a half stone.
MM: Rather slim.
PM: I got a demob suit and I kept my best blue. And I came home. The demob suit was slightly too big for me. ‘You’ll grow out of it’, that was that you see, which I did. Within, within a month my blue didn’t fit me. I didn’t care ‘cause I chucked it away and my demob suit was dead tight. I had to collect all the, all the family clothing coupons together and go and get measured for a suit, ‘Make it plenty big enough’ and I stopped growing then [laughs]. So I got one suit big and the other, other two too small.
MJ: So most people stopped growing and you took that many years to grow-
MM: His mother’s cooking that was. Put the weight on you. [laughs] Didn’t it?
PM: Yeah.
MM: Your mum’s cooking -
PM: Yeah.
MM: Yeah. Built you up again.
PM: My mother was in the first war.
MM: First World War.
PM: In the RAF. In Germany.
MJ: [That’s what?]
PM: Yeah. In the Royal Flying Corp.
MM: As it was then. Yeah.
MJ: So you inherited the job did you?
MM: Must have done.
PM: Yeah.
PM: When, when you were on about servicing, servicing aircraft we had to be there, we were in the hangars for 7 o’clock in the morning but if there were any aircraft either stuck outside or in the hangar that were going out you checked the tyre pressures before the sun got on them because you never know what the tire pressure would be after about an hour in the sun out there.
MM: And of course they couldn’t fly them till they’d got your little signature could they?
PM: Hmmn?
MM: You couldn’t fly them till they got your little signature.
PM: Oh no couldn’t. Well I was one of a team. I was the air frame rigger um on a Liberator four engines so there’d be four engine fitters, instruments, wires um guns and turrets all had to be checked and signed for before the pilot could have it.
MJ: How long did that take?
PM: Hmmn?
MJ: How long did that take?
PM: Well I mean if the aircraft was, was, was alright, if it had come out of the hangar after, after a major service it would be taken out on a test flight. One of each trade would go up with him if it was a bomber. Go up with him and you’d fly around and everything was alright. Come back. You’d check up again. Then before it flew again tomorrow it had to be serviced because between flights inspections on RAF aircraft if it, if an aircraft came, came up from London and landed on your airport there would be a between flights inspection before it could go again.
MJ: Oh I didn’t know that.
PM: Yeah.
MJ: How often did that happen?
PM: Hmmn?
MJ: Did that happen regularly?
PM: That was it. Between flights inspection. And being, being a rigger, that’s what I was, they were the last to sign the 700. The 700 was the aircraft manual and every, everybody that was concerned with anything on the aircraft had to sign and the rigger was the last one to sign because he was responsible for um the petrol cap being loose. Nothing, nothing to do with him normally. The um the blokes driving the petrol bowsers used to tighten them up but it was, it was his aircraft and he had to do something about it. So he used to tighten, tighten it up and any, any little panel that was loose he’d secure the panels and that before he signs and until he signed they couldn’t go anywhere.
MJ: Did you have a team of riggers or was it just you per plane?
PM: What?
MJ: Was it just you on one plane or did you have a few?
PM: Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah.
MJ: So -
PM: Didn’t, didn’t do a half a dozen planes. Just, just the one plane.
MJ: Yeah but did you work as a rigger on your own or did you have someone helping you?
PM: Was, was
MM: Was there more than one rigger on each plane?
PM: No. Only one rigger.
MM: Ahum.
PM: Yeah.
MJ: So that’s a lot of rivets.
MM: Ahum check them [laughs].
PM: Yeah well the aircraft, the framework of the aircraft and everything in general was alright. It was day to day um events um tyres and things like that. Brakes slipping. All those sort of things.
MJ: Do you think you had more trouble because it was hotter there than most would have?
PM: Of course being a rigger brakes were my job as well. [laughs]
MM: You said when you went to Halton it was a case of half of them for engines half of them for airframes wasn’t it?
PM: Yeah.
MM: So it just depends which side of the room you were on [laughs] you were telling me.
PM: [laughs] Yeah.
MM: You had some fun down there at Halton didn’t you?
PM: You what?
MM: Had some fun at Halton.
PM: Halton. Yeah. It was um water shortage. Halton camp is on a hill. The hill, the hill is that far and high that there’s two parade grounds on the hill.
MJ: Two?
PM: Two parade grounds on the hill. You go through the gates, you go up and, oh from here to the bridge there’s the bottom of the parade ground and it goes back into the hills and you carry, you carry on up the hill there and about, about another twenty, thirty foot up there’s another parade ground. It was a hell of a camp Halton was. It was a, um what’s it -
MM: Training?
PM: Oh God.
MM: Officer’s training do you say?
PM: No.
MM: No.
PM: Weren’t officers. They -
MM: Cadets.
PM: When you join, you join the RAF you -
MM: Cadets?
PM: You was a member. I was a member of the air force but I was only a sort of a temporary member but I, I, I didn’t sign on for ten years or owt like that but all the regulars they, they were right under the thumb. By hell they were.
MJ: So you think it was different for you. Was it ‘cause you -
PM: Yeah.
MJ: Because you were sort of part time if you like.
PM: Yeah.
MJ: For a better word.
PM: I liked Halton. It was a nice camp.
MM: Taught you how to shoot there didn’t there?
PM: Hmmn?
MM: Taught you how to shoot there didn’t they?
PM: Yeah.
MJ: This is um -
MM: One poor chap. Everybody dashed because -
PM: We had two, we had two Jewish lads -
MJ: Yeah.
PM: By God they were dim [laughs] and er they, they, they were on a, on a rigger’s course but everything, everything went wrong with them. On one day we had um rifle training so went up on the, up on the bus up the hill and there was um the targets. Perhaps six or seven targets.
MJ: Right.
PM: And a wall, a wall just below them and behind, behind the wall there was a trench so the blokes, blokes up there looking after, looking after the targets they were, they were safe and you had ten rounds and you just, you had your ten rounds and you got in front of one of, one of the targets and that and you’d been told how to fire them and everything. The corporal would shout, ‘Fire.’ And then down there on the range there used to be a flag on a pole come out and he used to stick on to the target where, where the bullet had gone through, if it had gone through. Well these two Jewish lads they couldn’t even hit the target never mind [laughs] and there was everybody else had to get off and let them pick their own target and everything. Our corporal was on the phone to them down there and, ‘Right. Fire. Take your time.’ Bang. Flag went like that. Bang. Next time it went [beuuuu]. Phone rang. Corporal said, ‘What’s the matter?’ He said, ‘He hit my mate.’ He’d, he’d hit his tin hat. Hit his tin hat. This bullet and had gone off his tin hat.
MJ: So he was safe though?
PM: Yeah.
MM: Most of them.
PM: And then we had hand grenades. There was, there was this wall. All sandbanks and that and over the other side of the wall about there, there was a, there was a hole and behind this wall there was another wall and everybody used to get behind that wall and the corporal used to bring one bloke around and show him, show him everything, make sure he, he was holding the grenade right, then he used to toss it over to go in the hole. Everybody else was doing alright and this one he dropped the grenade the other side just on the top and it rolled down so the corporal grabbed hold of this bloke, pushed him down and more or less sat on him. Bang. ‘That was close wasn’t it?’ the corporal said. And, and, we, we went up into the, up the hills. Sten guns. They were deadly you know. If you dropped a sten gun it’d bounce about all over the place till it emptied and [laughs] there was two corporals that had never, never met these two. ‘Watch them. We know what we’re doing.’ Corporals, ‘Alright.’ Showed them how to go on and everything. Give these two a sten gun each, got them to load them, ‘Don’t do anything. We’ll have you one at a time so you come with me.’ So he fired. Nowhere near the target or anything like that but he got shot of the, the ammo. The second one went, spun around, he says to the corporal, ‘It won’t fire’ pointing it at the corporal. [laughs] God. He said, ‘Stand still. Let go of the trigger. Put it down.’ If there hadn’t been anybody else around he would have clouted him around the side of the earhole with the sten. Anyway, they got rid of them. I don’t know where they went to but they were no good as, no good on engines or airframes or anything like that. They were completely useless, the pair of them.
MM: They were only young though you see weren’t they? Eighteen and a half.
PM: Yeah they’d only be just over eighteen.
MM: That’s what I mean. Today –
PM: Yeah.
MM: They’re at school aren’t they?
MJ: Yeah. So it’s surprising you’re here.
MM: Yeah.
PM: Yeah.
MM: Then he come back to Digby, Lincolnshire.
PM: Eh?
MM: You enjoyed Digby in Lincolnshire didn’t you?
PM: Yeah.
MM: No calamities there?
PM: No. Come back to Digby.
MM: You used to go in to Lincoln didn’t you?
PM: Yeah. Used to go in to Lincoln.
MM: On time off.
PM: It was a Canadian station. Everything underground.
MJ: Underground?
PM: Eh?
MM: Underground.
MJ: Everything underground?
PM: Everything was built underground. It was a radio and radar station. We didn’t, we didn’t know that when we were stationed there but, but they used to work underground.
MJ: That’s -
PM: At Digby. It was good station. It was a Canadian station.
MJ: Was that better than the RAF ones?
PM: Well, they were better supplied than what we were.
MM: Food was good [laughs] Yeah.
PM: Yeah a lot better supplied.
[Tape paused]
PM: We were all, all air frame fitters and one of the station aircraft, we got two Dakotas belonging to the station. One had gone to Lahore.
MJ: Right.
PM: From our place and um next morning they were refuelling it and the chap drove the petrol bowser with the dipstick sticking out and tore the underside of the wing. Well that was it you see. He didn’t just tear the surface of the wing he, he buckled the main spar. So we, we had several Dakotas there that would probably never fly again and using them as spares and got hold of, got hold of my mate we did and get a, get a mainplane from, from salvage. Give him, give him all the gen on this one aircraft, ‘Go and, go and check if it’s alright.’ So he come back he said, ‘Yeah it’s alright.’ He said ‘Right. The three of you,’ he says, ‘You Miller’ and what his name, ‘Go and fetch it off.’ And we took, we took the crane down with us and we got the, got the trestles and everything and the jacks underneath it’s wing and we disconnected the wing and took it away completely from the engines you see. You’ve got the two engines there and a centre section between them and the fuselage but beyond the engines that’s the outer so we got that and we got a Queen Mary. You know the Queen Mary’s, we used? The um -
MJ: Ahum?
PM: The long, the long low loaders. Very wide, ten foot wide, that the RAF used to drive around you’ve seen them there their low loaders haven’t you? They’re called the Queen Mary’s. They’re ten, ten foot wide and during the war if, if you had to take anything with, with a Queen Mary through, through a town you had a police escort and they’d take you the best way through the town because of, because of the width of the vehicle. And we loaded this, loaded this mainplane and all the gear we wanted and everything and we cleared off to Lahore. The three of us. It took us three days to get there. Close on four hundred mile.
MJ: What were the -
PM: Well the roads in India were just like the roads down to the villages here and we got there and this Warrant Officer [Pryor?] said, ‘Goodness I’m pleased to see you lot.’ He said, ‘Get on with it.’ So we took, took this mainplane off and they carted it off to salvage there and um they got all the gear there, got all the gear and everything but they wouldn’t let them touch it.
MJ: Why was that?
PM: So we, we had to do it you see. The plane belonged to us so we, we, we got the mainplane off and everything, put the other one up got it all, all bolted in. Everything. Control cables, electrics, everything and got hold of Taf Bevan, ‘Right. Fly it.’
MJ: How long did that take you?
PM: Hmmn?
MJ: How long did that take you?
PM: Well three days overall. ‘Fly it.’ He says, ‘Alright. Sign.’ So we signed for it and everything. The warrant officer, the err engineering officer at whatsit, he said, ‘You’ve done a very good job you blokes have.’ The CO was there as well. At Lahore. He was, he was there as well. He said, ‘It looks very, very nice,’ he says. He said, ‘I’ll get on to,’ Oh I don’t know the name of our CO. He said, ‘I’ll get on to him and tell him what a good job you’ve done.’ And we went up with Taf and he, he said, ‘Nothing wrong with this. It’s alright.’ Taf Bevan, he was a bloody Welshman. We never did find out his name. His first name. Never. And he was a warrant officer. He wouldn’t, he wouldn’t take a commission. He just wanted to stay non-commissioned.
MJ: Did he say why?
PM: Warrant officer.
MJ: Yeah. Did he say why he didn’t want to take a commission?
PM: He said, ‘I don’t want to be with that crowd stuck in the officer’s mess and that. Better off in the sergeant’s mess.’ He said, ‘I’m away next morning.’ We said, ‘You’re bloody well not without us mate’ and we transferred the um the Queen Mary to Lahore and climbed in the Dak with him and flew home. Thirty minutes. [laughs]
[Tape paused]
PM: Now can’t you? Between you?
MJ: I think so. You should be able to.
PM: You just, you know, well why not do that?
MJ: Did you -
PM: What about that? [Oh bought]
MJ: Yeah. People don’t think that so that’s why your lifestyle is different to todays because people don’t realise what you did. I mean so -
MM: Things have changed so much haven’t they? So much.
PM: I know we were on a test flight one day with Taf and um Taf used to let us take control for a while. He used to sit there but he knew what was happening and everything and one of the blokes he said, ‘Do you want it Taf?’ Taf says, ‘No.’ He says, ‘Just carry on.’ He got it lined up. It was about three mile out from the end of the runway. ‘Go on. You’re alright.’ He said, ‘Shall I land it?’ ‘No you bloody well won’t land it’ [laughs] He said, ‘I’d be the laughing stock of the bloody sergeant’s mess. Come out.’
MJ: Yeah.
PM: We used to, on a Dakota there’s a cockpit and there’s a cabin and it’s the full length of the aircraft near enough. You go in, you go in the double doors.
MJ: Right.
PM: And you go up to the, to another door and that that’s the control. There’s navigator, radio operator, two pilots and we used to, about three, four of us used to get up near the door and Taf would be sat there you know, nodding away there to himself and that. ‘Right. Now.’ And we’d run to the other end to the tail end [laughs]. ‘Come up here you lot.’
MM: He knew what you was doing?
PM: We, we’d run to the tail end.
MM: Yeah and made it, realised.
PM: [Climb?]
MM: Yeah.
MM: Realised what you were. You had a laugh at East Kirkby didn’t you?
PM: Yeah.
MM: They were doing a Dakota up at East Kirkby.
PM: Yeah. They were.
MM: You went out to, to have look and you said to the lads there, ‘Can I have a look inside it.’ I think you managed to get in it didn’t you?
PM: Yeah.
MM: And anyway you said to them.
PM: ‘Do you know anything about them?’ I said, ‘Yeah a little bit. I used to be on them in the air force way back.’ ‘Bloody hell. When?’ I said, ‘Oh I came out in ‘47.’ ‘God, I weren’t even bloody well born then.’
MM: Made you feel very, very old didn’t it duck [laughs] yeah.
PM: They were a lovely aircraft to work on. Dakota is. No trouble whatsoever.
MJ: Didn’t bite back.
PM: Hmmn?
MJ: Didn’t bite back.
MM: No. [laughs]
PM: They were no trouble at all. Used to fly around with the doors off.
MJ: Why?
PM: You see there’s, there was a passenger door and a cargo door on them.
MJ: Yeah.
PM: Take one or the other or both doors off. It didn’t half whistle and that inside the aircraft.
MM: Was there any reason to take the doors off though?
PM: No. No.
MM: No.
PM: You either take it off before you fly or when you land. You don’t take it off while you’re flying.
MM: No, presume not.
MJ: Was there any reason why you took them off when you flew? Or was it just because they were in the way?
PM: The doors come inwards. Not outwards.
MJ: So -
MM: What reasons did you take them off for?
PM: Eh?
MM: What reason did you take them off for?
PM: Well.
MM: Can you remember?
PM: No particular reason.
MM: Oh. Good job it wasn’t raining.
PM: During the war, on the Dakotas, along the top of the fuselage there was little windows about that size, along. So that when they were carrying troops they could open one of those windows and fire at any aircraft that was attacking them.
MM: Ahum.
PM: If they were carrying troops.
MJ: Really?
PM: Yeah. Yeah, I’m not kidding.
MM: Never heard of it.
MJ: I wouldn’t have thought of that one.
PM: I’m not kidding. Liberators, you know, you used to get in and out through the bomb, bomb bay. Get in and out through the bomb bay. The bomb doors, the bottom of the Lib is only about that far off the ground and the bomb doors go up like that and there’s a cat walk right through. The cat walk goes to, to the rear where there’s a mid-upper gunner and two, two [waist] gunners. One each side. And a rear gunner.
MJ: So you always had -
PM: And if, if you go forward up a couple of steps you get on to the flight deck where the crew, the air crew go. You, if they’re flying around and they opened the bomb doors there isn’t a bloody soul would dare go across that cat walk. From the back to the front or the front to the back. There’s not a soul would dare go. It’s, it’s perfectly safe, there’s no, no danger whatsoever and there’s plenty to hold on to. Hold on to all the bomb racks.
MJ: But no one would do it.
PM: Nobody would go in. No one would do it.
[Tape paused]
MJ: So what was this about Fred then?
PM: He, he used to go out first thing in a morning, he’d go to bed at night about nine, but first thing in the morning, probably 5 o’clock he’d cross to the cookhouse to get his porridge before they put sugar in it. Yeah. He wanted salt in his you see. Yeah. Well he was always messing about with, with animals and that and he went out one morning for a walk and there was a narrow path, trees at each side and that. He was approaching this corner when around the corner there come this panther. He says, ‘It stopped and I stopped, of course.’ He said, and its tail was going like that. He said, ‘And we stood there for about three quarters of an hour. Seemed like it.’ He said, ‘And I thought if that bloody thing comes at me there’s a tree just behind me. I can leap behind hopefully.’ He said, ‘I daren’t look around.’ He said, ‘I was weighing all this up’ he said and all of a sudden the panther put the foot down on the ground, spun around and shot off back the way it came,’ he said, ‘ And I shot off the way I came.’ He said, ‘We were about twenty five miles apart in ten minutes.’ He, he was, he was always doing something like that. Always messing about with, with animals. There was an empty cookhouse and he went and there was a wild cat in the bloody cookhouse. ‘I’ll have that.’ He went in there. This wildcat was flying around the walls. He said it was going that fast it was on the walls. He said, ‘I didn’t know what to do with it,’ he said, but the windows, the windows were all shut except one. He said it took a flying leap at that and crashed straight through the glass and everything and away it went. He said it went out, missed, missed the veranda and everything and landed out in the middle of the road. [laughs] He said, ‘I wasn’t frightened of it.’ [laughs]
MM: And who slept on a snake? One of you lads found a snake under his mattress.
PM: Yeah. Yeah. Rum lad that.
MM: Who was that? Who found a snake under his mattress?
PM: Oh er who was it? One of the other lads. Fred said, ‘I’ll get that out for you.’ He outed it. ‘Cause you see if you found a snake out there you had to find the other bugger. Nearly always travelled in pairs.
MJ: Do they?
PM: Ahum we had a, we had a snake in our billet one night. We got it and finished it off and we were looking around for its mate. Couldn’t find its mate anywhere so that was it. Wasn’t going under the mossie nets. Next morning this bloke got up and er there was this snake laid, laid in there. It had been crushed. He’d crushed it. You see the beds out there were wood. They were just a wooden frame and then there was like string across and then what they called a dhurry. It was like, just like an [asbestos] sheet the size of your bed. When you went anywhere you know on guard at night or something like that you took whatever you wanted in your dhurry. Got it all wrapped up in the dhurry. Then you had your mossie net and your mossie net was you had four, four bamboo canes that used to go inside the legs across the back of the bed like that and your mossie net went on the top and your mossie net was shaped, was shaped just like, just like a box. The box was down, the box was that way up and the things, the sides of the net came down you see and these, these four bamboo canes they went up behind, behind the leg and up the inside of the nets so it was all sprung out. That was how your mossie nets went. There were times when we’ve taken the mossie nets down and inverted them and then put the bed inside, inside it.
MM: But this snake that you was talking about.
PM: It was an open top.
MM: This snake you was talking about was underneath this here mattress thing wasn’t it?
PM: Underneath the dhurry.
MM: Yeah.
PM: Yeah.
MM: I didn’t realise he’d been sleeping on it all night.
PM: No. No.
MM: No. Oh horrible things.
PM: Well it was dead anyway. Fred says, ‘Poor little bugger. You’ve been laid on it all night.’
MJ: I’d like to thank Mr Miller on behalf of the International Bomber Command project on the 1st of January no oh June 2015 for his interview and, and for myself I’d like to thank him. My name’s Michael Jeffery and this is the end of the interview.
MM: My name is Mavis Miller, recording this for the International Bomber Command Centre on the 1st of June 2015. We live at Horncastle Road, Wragby, Lincolnshire. Yeah. I was at Minting, school at Minting, during the war. We lived about four miles from Bardney aerodrome so we saw a lot of the RAF lads and the WAAFs who used to come to the Sebastopol at Minting. My father also worked at the Bardney aerodrome so we were involved quite a bit. He always used to come home very distressed when, at times, the bombers would come back with the air force lad’s uniforms having to be burned because they were blood stained. Another small happening during the war was I was with my friends down Hungerham Lane about a half a mile from my home when we saw two of our fighters firing at this German fighter and it was brought down at Baumber, again only about three or four fields away from where we were. Unfortunately, no one got out the plane. We were told that it went up in flames. The farm workers couldn’t get anywhere near it but I was pleased to get home that night safe and sound. I think that’s about the end of my experiences.
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command Historical Unit I’d like to thank Mrs Miller for her stories of when she was a child and on the June the 1st 2015 I’d like to end the interview.
Dublin Core
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 Peter Miller
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-01
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AMillerP150601
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:02:55 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Peter was called up in November 1943 and after basic training was sent to RAF Halton to be trained as a flight mechanic. Whilst there he had several dangerous incidents during small arms training.
Initially posted to 527 Squadron, which was Canadian, at RAF Digby and then to 695 squadron at RAF Bircham Newton working on drogue towing aircraft.
Posted overseas, he arrived at RAF Chakeri near Kampur where he worked on servicing B-24 and C-47 aircraft for South East Asia Command. He recalls that as an airframe mechanic he had to sign the Form 700 certifying that all the other trades had carried out their servicing correctly.
The local town was largely off-limits and only certain parts were allowed to be visited. The weather was very hot and in the summer hill parties were sent to the hills to escape the heat. Peter spent his 21st birthday at Darjeeling. When hostilities ceased the spent its time dismantling and scrapping B-24s aircraft. Whilst India was partitioned, Peter's demobilisation was postponed in case of tensions between India and Pakistan.
After two and a half years he was sent home via Liverpool, where he saw his first jet, and was demobilised in July 1947.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1947-07
1943-11
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
India
India--Kānpur
India--Darjeeling
Pakistan
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Terry Holmes
B-24
C-47
fitter airframe
flight mechanic
fuelling
ground crew
petrol bowser
RAF Bircham Newton
RAF Chakeri
RAF Digby
RAF Halton
service vehicle
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/105/9434/LAmbroseBG1604870v1.1.pdf
1a5e8468db59f1bd1c383f4c6c486278
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Ambrose, Basil
B G Ambrose
Basil G Ambrose
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-29
Description
An account of the resource
18 items. The collection consists of an oral history interview with Basil George Ambrose (1923 – 2016, 1604870 Royal Air Force), his log book, a page from his service book and 15 photographs. Basil Ambrose was a flight engineer flying Lancasters with 467 Squadron Royal Australian Air Force from RAF Waddington between September 1944 and March 1945 and with 617 Squadron from RAF Woodhall Spa.
The collection was been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Basil Ambrose and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Ambrose, BG
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Requires
A related resource that is required by the described resource to support its function, delivery, or coherence.
6 March 1942: Joined RAF as a trainee turner
Posted to RAF Sealand, qualified turner
Posted to RAF St Athan, Flight Engineer training
5 July – 8 September 1944: RAF Swinderby, 1660 HBCU, flying Stirling aircraft
8 September 1944: Promoted to Sergeant
22 – 26 September 1944: RAF Syerston, Lancaster Finishing School, flying Lancaster aircraft
29 September 1944 – 23 March 1945: RAF Waddington, 467 (RAAF) Squadron, flying Lancaster aircraft
Commissioned, promoted to Pilot Officer
November 1945 Promoted to Flying Officer
22 April 1945 – 9 January 1946: RAF Woodhall Spa, 617 Squadron, flying Lancaster aircraft
11 January 1946 – 15 April 1946: Detached with 617 Sqn to Digri, India Command
28 May – 1 July 1946: 617 Squadron RAF Binbrook
October 1946: 1604870 Flying Officer B.G. Ambrose released from Service
<p>Basil George Ambrose was born on 24<sup>th</sup> June 1923 in Derby Street, Reading, the youngest of five children. He attended Wilson Road School near Reading’s football Ground. In 1937, when he was just 14 years old, he left school and took up employment as an apprentice turner at the Pulsometer. He was paid five shillings a week, half of which he had to give back to pay for his indenture training.</p>
<p>Although engineering was a reserve occupation, on 6<sup>th</sup> March 1942, he was able to join the RAF as a trainee turner. On completion of training, he passed out as a Leading Aircraftsman and was posted to RAF Sealand. Whilst there, he applied, and was accepted, for Flight Engineer training at St Athan.</p>
<p>His first ever flight was memorable in that he took the opportunity to join an old family friend (a test pilot at St Athan) who was taking a Beaufighter up for an air test. While airbourne over the Bristol Channel he witnessed a long line of merchant ships, all nose to tail as far as the eye could see, the ships were readying for the for the D Day landings.</p>
<p>On 7the June 1944, he completed his Flight Engineer training and joined the HBCU at RAF Swinderby, before moving on to the Lancaster Finishing School at RAF Syerston. In September 1944, Sergeant Ambrose and his crew, now fully trained, joined 467 Squadron (RAAF) at RAF Waddington. </p>
<p>On just his second operational flight, tasked with destroying enemy field guns in Holland, his aircraft had to drop below the cloud base at just 4000 feet. Almost immediately, the aircraft alongside them was hit by ack-ack and went down in flames. Basil’s aircraft returned safely, but the mission ended in failure.</p>
<p>Just over a fortnight later, his first ever night operation proved even more eventful, one they were all very fortunate to survive. En-route to Brunswick, a fire in the cabin set alight the blackout curtains surrounding the pilot and navigator. Basil had to use two extinguishers to put out the fire. The events caused significant delay and at their estimated time of arrival on target, they were still approximately 40 miles away. By the time they got there all the other aircraft had gone through and were on their way home. Basil’s aircraft was now completely alone over the target and although they were able to drop their bombs successfully, the aircraft was illuminated by a whole cone of search lights from the ground, plus an enemy fighter aircraft was fast coming in from the port side. The skipper took evasive action by immediately putting the aircraft into a 5000 feet dive and Basil found himself pinned to the cabin ceiling by the ‘G’ force; conversely when the aircraft pulled out of the dive, he was forced down to the cabin floor. The evasive manoeuvre was repeated one more time before they managed to lose the searchlights and the fighter. The trip home was conducted at low level without further alarm. In all, Basil and his crew went on to record thirty operations together. </p>
<p>After 467 Squadron, Basil was commissioned as a Pilot Officer and was posted to 617 Squadron in April 1945. He was never to fly operationally again although with 617 Squadron he served for a brief period in Digri, India. Basil reached the rank of Flying Officer and was demobbed in 1948.</p>
<p>Basil returned to the Pulsometer and finally qualified as a turner. After a short period working in Birmingham, he settled in Reading with his wife Jean and two children. He continued to work in engineering, eventually moving into the engineering safety field. He retired from his final position of Chief Safety Advisor for Greater London Council in 1981.<a href="https://www.getreading.co.uk/news/local-news/war-veteran-still-swing-90-4802178"></a></p>
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
Basil Ambrose’s flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners, flight engineers
Description
An account of the resource
Navigators, air bombers, air gunners and flight engineers flying log book for Basil Ambrose, flight engineer, covering the period from 5 July 1944 to 11 July 1946. Detailing engineers training, flying training and operations flown and post war operations. He was stationed at RAF St Athan, RAF Swinderby, RAF Syerston, RAF Waddington, RAF Woodhall Spa, RAF Binbrook and Digri India. Aircraft flown in were Stirling, Lancaster, Lincoln and Oxford. He flew a total of 30 Operations, seven day and 23 night with 467 squadron. He then flew Operation Exodus to Juvincourt and Reine, Operation Dodge to Bari and Operation Spasm to Berlin with 617 squadron, Targets were, Walcheren, Brunswick, Nuremberg, Flushing, Harburg, Duren, Dortmund-Ems Canal, Trondheim, Munich, Ems-Weser Canal, Wurzburg, Wesel, Heilbronn, Giessen, Urft dam, Houffalaize, Baux, Siegen, Karlsruhe and Bohlen. His pilot on operations was Flight Lieutenant Sheridan.
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
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
37 colour prints
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
LAmbroseBG1604870v1
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
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1946
1944-10-14
1944-10-15
1944-10-19
1944-10-20
1944-10-23
1944-11-11
1944-11-16
1944-11-21
1944-11-22
1944-11-23
1944-11-26
1944-11-27
1944-12-04
1944-12-05
1944-12-06
1944-12-07
1944-12-09
1944-12-11
1944-12-17
1944-12-18
1945-01-04
1945-01-05
1945-01-07
1945-01-08
1945-01-13
1945-01-14
1945-01-15
1945-01-16
1945-01-17
1945-02-01
1945-02-02
1945-02-03
1945-02-04
1945-02-07
1945-02-08
1945-02-19
1945-02-20
1945-02-21
1945-02-22
1945-02-24
1945-03-07
1945-03-08
1945-03-16
1945-03-17
1945-03-20
1945-03-21
1945-03-23
1945-03-24
1945-05-09
1945-05-10
1945-05-11
1945-10-05
1945-11-05
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
France
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Netherlands
Norway
Pakistan
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
Belgium--Houffalize
France--Les Baux-de-Provence
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany--Düren (Cologne)
Germany--Giessen (Hesse)
Germany--Harburg (Landkreis)
Germany--Heilbronn
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Munich
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Siegen
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Würzburg
Italy--Bari
Netherlands--Vlissingen
Netherlands--Walcheren
Norway--Trondheim
Pakistan--Digri
Wales--Glamorgan
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Urft Dam
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
France--Juvincourt-et-Damary
1660 HCU
467 Squadron
617 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
flight engineer
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lincoln
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Oxford
RAF Binbrook
RAF St Athan
RAF Swinderby
RAF Syerston
RAF Waddington
RAF Woodhall Spa
Stirling
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/949/9457/PWrigleyJ17040014.1.jpg
70fb2545ab9eee0b312ffd2fe4f77af0
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
Wrigley, James. Album
Description
An account of the resource
Photograph album containing 51 photographs of James Wrigley's family, training and post war service in the United States and the Far East with 97 Squadron.
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
Wrigley, J
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-07-09
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
Lincoln and Sigs Inst Course
Description
An account of the resource
Photograph 1 is a side view of a Lincoln, captioned ''Dirty Dog' (Lincoln RF505 'D') 97 Sqdn Karachi, Pakistan, 1948.'
Photograph 2 is ten airmen arranged in two rows, the front row of six is seated with four men standing behind. It is captioned 'Sigs. Inst. Course. St Athan. May 1945
N.C.Pipin C.J.Weale A.J Daniels W.T Atkins
Self, D.K. Ottley D. Ekhorst J.H.Jenkinson H.L. Durban F.N. Bradley'
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1948
1945-05
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two b/w photographs from an album
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
PWrigleyJ17040014
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.
Pakistan
Pakistan--Karachi
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1948
1945-05
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.
97 Squadron
aircrew
Lincoln
RAF St Athan
training
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/781/9471/PWrigleyJ17050009.2.jpg
84ae1a11bf729d6bf0864cab568a5826
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
Wrigley, James
J Wrigley
Description
An account of the resource
27 items. The collection concerns James Wrigley (1920 - 2010, 1029740 Royal Air Force) and contains an interview with his widow, Alice Wrigley, photographs, his log book, decorations, and a photograph album of his service in the UK and and Far East. The collection also contains a log book made out to Rascal, his mascot or lucky charm. James Wrigley completed 47 operations as a wireless operator with 97 and 635 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Susan Higgins 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
2017-07-09
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Wrigley, J
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
Lincoln at dispersal
Description
An account of the resource
Side view of Lincoln 'RF505'. There are access ladders and bombs awaiting loading.
Additional information about this item has been kindly provided by the donor.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PWrigleyJ17050009
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.
Pakistan
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1948
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1948
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.
bombing up
Lincoln
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/53/9515/PBoldyDA17010033.2.jpg
e46d2aab4d0e327f5a58d184269f12ef
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
Boldy, David
Dave Boldy
D A Boldy
Description
An account of the resource
334 items. The collection concerns Flight Sergeant David Adrian Boldy (1918 – 1942, 923995 Royal Air Force) and consists of his school reports, letters from school and photographs of family and locations in India, letters from training and service, and photographs from his social life and time training. It also includes newspaper cuttings and letters about him being missing in action. David Boldy was born and attended school in India and studied law at Kings College London. He volunteered for the Royal Air Force and trained as an air gunner in South Africa. He flew operations in Manchesters and Lancasters with 207 Squadron from RAF Bottesford. His aircraft failed to return from an operation to Gdańsk 11 July 1942. <br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by David Boldy and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.<br /><br />Additional information on David Boldy is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/102182/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Boldy, DA
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
Man standing behind a desk reading a document
Description
An account of the resource
A man wearing light suit and tie standing behind a desk looking at a document. To the right a man wearing suit seated. On the left a man in spectacles seated. On the desk a sign '[..]kistan Jute Association'. In the background a wooden double door.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
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PBoldyDA17010033
Coverage
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Civilian
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Pakistan
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Boldy, David. Family and friends photographs in India and Bangladesh
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IBCC Digital Archive
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/983/10255/AShipmanJ181010.2.mp3
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Shipman, John
J Shipman
Description
An account of the resource
43 items. An oral history interview with John Shipman (1923 - 2020, 1694683 Royal Air Force) his diary, documents and a photograph album. He served as ground personnel in India and the Middle east
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by John Shipman and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-10-10
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Shipman, J
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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HB: It’s the 10th October 2018. This is an interview with Mr John Shipman who was in Transport Command and served in India. It’s being recorded in the village of Croxton Kerrial in, which is still in Leicestershire.
Other: Just.
HB: Ish. John, thank you very much for agreeing to be interviewed.
JS: Pleasure.
HB: Now, when were you born, John?
JS: When? 26 12 ’23
HB: Right. And where were you born?
JS: Stathern.
HB: Stathern. Right. And what, what did you, what school did you go to? What schooling did you get?
JS: Stathern School until I was eleven and then the Modern School for Boys in Melton until I was nearly fifteen, I think.
HB: Yeah. That’s in Melton Mowbray. Yeah. So, what, what were your sort of interests at the time, John?
JS: Well, not a lot of anything because in those days at my age we were looking forward to getting into the forces. We were going to be called up at eighteen. We knew that. So, what I did with a lad, a very big friend of mine out in the village we joined Melton ATC. 1279 Squadron. I think we’d be about the openers of that squadron in those days.
Other: Yeah.
JS: That took up a lot of our time, spare time because there was no transport. Only pushbikes. We had to bike from Stathern to Melton for various classes. Filing and engineering and all sorts of things like that. Parachute packing. Oh, no. Sorry we had to go and bike to Spitalgate Aerodrome for parachute packing.
HB: Spitalgate.
JS: And Morse Code. Yes. That’s near Grantham.
HB: Yeah.
JS: We had to bike there because there was no other transport so, this took up several days of the week and nights especially. And then we joined the ATC because we’d got a good chance then of getting into the RAF at the trade we selected.
HB: Right.
JS: So, it was up to the authorities whether you got it or not. But anyway we, I can’t [pause] I’ve got my medical thing. We got a medical at Leicester. After we’d turned eighteen we had to go to Leicester. Of course, the medicals in those days they just counted your arms and legs and they made you A1 [laughs]
HB: [laughs] Yeah.
JS: Waiting for the big call up. Well, I got my call up papers. I can’t think what day we had to go. I had to report to RAF Padgate which was the place where you got kitted out. That was near Warrington. So, of course, by train. In those days, there was a station at Stathern and we got on the train from there and got to Padgate and found, oh it was an awful place. Terrible for living. You had to get kitted out or you got your number, rank and name and everything there. You got kitted out with your uniform. They gave you brown paper and string to pack your civvies up, send home. And then from then on it was all queue for this, queue for that. We used to have to queue for our breakfast in a great big shed place and of course one or two of the lads were that hungry they were passing out.
HB: Blimey.
JS: And we got kitted out from there anyway. I can’t remember —
HB: What year was this, John?
JS: The nineteen [pause] 1942.
HB: Right. Right.
JS: August 1942.
HB: Yeah.
JS: And —
HB: So, you’d actually got people so hungry they were, they were —
JS: Oh, it were terrible.
HB: They were fainting.
JS: Yes. And it was everything there was [pause] everything. The kitting out was measuring and throwing things at you [laughs] Kit bags and two uniforms and, and everything like that.
HB: Yeah.
JS: They were all mess. Knife, fork and spoon and a mug and you got all this trailing behind you.
HB: Good grief. Yeah.
JS: Anyway, from there we got sent for square bashing to Blackpool. I can’t think how long we were there. That was, I know it was getting on towards the back end of the year because the winds at Blackpool was pretty terrible then. You couldn’t keep your hat on. But very much, there was a lot of bull at Blackpool. You’d got to keep your buttons absolutely shiny and that was wonderful in the sea air and you’d got to have creases in your trousers. So, what we used to do, we’d got no press we used to soak the inside and lay on them to get the creases in. But we were in like boarding houses there. Of course, they took Blackpool over in the war. It was an RAF station. We were in boarding houses there. About four to a bedroom and about three bedrooms was taken with the lads and there was one bathroom. And well, that was Blackpool life and I don’t, I can’t think how long we were there. Several months.
HB: Had they, had they decided what your trade was then or —
JS: Yes. Sorry. They decided our trade at Padgate.
HB: Right.
JS: I wanted engines and we got engines and I joined up with a lad from, from Padgate and I kept with him all the while I was in the Air Force. Al Staley he was. He lived at Burton on Trent. I kept with him all the way until we got back from India and then he got posted elsewhere. But anyway, after Blackpool we were going on technical training. We were sent, we were trained at technical training at RAF Locking near Weston Super Mare.
HB: Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah.
JS: And we did all the necessary technical work there. Engines and we were stripping engines. Engine runs and everything like that.
HB: So, all, all the engines that the RAF were using at the time.
JS: Yes. Well —
HB: You’d be learning about them.
JS: Well, the Rolls Royce. In those days we were trained on the Kestrel and the Pegasus in America were radials. Bristols they were, weren’t they? And then engine running and starting. Tiger Moths and hand starting, and Tiger Moths. Everything like that. Anyway, from there we decided, they decided from there we were going for a posting. We’d got to go overseas which was rather a shock at our age.
HB: Blimey. Yeah.
JS: So —
HB: So how, how long did your trade training take do you think, John.
JS: I should think seven. Seven or eight months, I think.
HB: Right. And did, did you keep any of your notes?
JS: Oh yes. I’ve got them.
HB: Yeah.
JS: In that tin trunk in the—
HB: Yeah.
JS: In the shed [laughs] yeah, and various training books and things like that. They’re all in there somewhere. I forgot about that. Anyway, we, they decided we were going to be posted overseas which was rather a shock. So, the first leave we got was embarkation leave. I think we got a month.
HB: Right.
JS: Then of course in those days you’d no idea where you were going to be sent. So, went home and I think what happened then? I think we had a month embarkation leave at home.
HB: Who was at home, John?
JS: Well, I lived on a farm.
HB: Right. With?
JS: Mum and dad and brothers and sisters.
HB: Right. How many?
JS: I’d already got a brother in the Army.
HB: Right.
JS: And they extended, I’ll always remember they extended the embarkation leave for another month. I think they couldn’t make out what they were going to do with us. Anyway, we got, we had to report back to Locking.
HB: Yeah.
JS: Off leave. And then of course you’d no idea where you were going to go. We got sent back from there back to Blackpool because Blackpool was the, as I say was an RAF station in those days. A big posh hotel on the front was our station headquarters. And we were kitted out at Marks and Spencer’s in Blackpool for KDs. Tropical kit. That was the clothing store. And another kit bag. So we had two sets of, and a blooming great Bombay bowler.
HB: A Bombay bowler —
JS: [unclear]
HB: Oh.
JS: There and then we got a bit of an idea we were going somewhere hot. So I think we were there for, I can’t remember how long we were there. It must be in my book somewhere. So, then we got drafted from there to West Kirby near Liverpool. We had an idea then wherever we’d be going we would be sailing from Liverpool which we were. And we got moved from there, West Kirby to Liverpool to get on the boat and we got on the P&O liner troopship Otranto. And we, I think my berthing thing in there E4 deck. And that’s below the water line. We had a boat stations one morning. The first morning and squadron leader somebody, I don’t remember what his name was told us we were the nucleus, I’ll always remember it, the nucleus of a new force and where we were going it would take us seven weeks. That was a comforting thought, wasn’t it?
HB: So, this is 1943.
JS: Oh yeah.
HB: You’re in a boat and you still, you still don’t know where you’re going.
JS: No. Hadn’t a clue. Oh no. No. It was all top secret. You didn’t know anything then, did you? Anyway, we had to put up with it. I’ve got all my trips there. In there. But we, I think we were averaging about three hundred mile a day on this damned boat [pause] I thought we put down how many more. Anyway, we had, they used to have a, I was so seasick and I always remember when we were getting on the boat every twentieth person was handed a thing to say that you was mess deck orderly for the next twenty, nineteen people. I got one and couldn’t think of anyone better because I damned well couldn’t keep anything down because I was so seasick.
HB: Oh no.
JS: But I had to.
HB: Yeah.
JS: And I was responsible for anybody who wanted to go sick. Or cigarette ration, chocolate ration. Food. Sorting the food and everything. Of course, I got, I was only ever having ship’s biscuits because I were so sick.
HB: Oh dear.
JS: But anyway, that passed over and we used, we were issued with a hammock. Well, how the devil could we sleep in a hammock? I used to, we used to sleep on the deck every night. Take the hammock up and everybody was issued with a life thing like two cotton pads so you could use that as a pillow. Of course, we were getting very hot then and when we got into the tropical kit well it wasn’t too bad really.
HB: How many, how many were you on the boat? Can you remember?
JS: Pardon?
HB: How many people were on the boat?
JS: Oh, God. Thousands I should think. Army as well.
HB: Right. So it was a real big mixed.
JS: Oh yes it was.
HB: Yeah.
JS: You see we were only allowed on certain dates. Officers were allowed on the deck.
HB: So, what did you, how did you keep yourselves entertained for seven weeks?
JS: Well, I was saying we, I don’t know. We used to play cards on the deck, I think and there was no entertainment arranged or anything like that.
HB: No.
JS: I don’t know. There was no radio or anything. I don’t know what we did [laughs] There was nought to look at. Only sea.
HB: Yeah. But it improved a bit when you got to wear your tropical kit then.
JS: Well, they, when we got to South Africa we found out where, we anchored off Cape Town. Oh, I’ll tell you what we anchored off West Africa. The Gold Coast.
HB: Yeah.
JS: They called it White Man’s Grave then, didn’t they? We anchored off there. I think to take water on I don’t know but anyway we were there for about two days. My God it was hot. And it was the first sight of bananas we got there. Of course, there were no bananas here.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
JS: And from there we sailed on to, we saw Cape Town. We stopped there for something. Of course, and then we went in to Durban and we found out we were getting off the boat in Durban to change boats. That wasn’t too bad. But in the meantime on the boat I got this great big abscess come up on the back of my neck so I got transferred straight in to hospital there. Springfield Military Hospital which was very good and I was very lucky [laughs] because the other lads were on the Clairwood Race Course which had been rapidly converted to a camp and there was not a bed or anything. They just lay on a blanket under this open shed. So they didn’t fare so well. The only thing that they got there was white bread and apricot jam. They reckoned that was marvellous [laughs] because old Alfie used to come and see me in hospital. He used to tell me all this you see. Anyway, I was in hospital for, I think I were there for about three weeks but while we was there people, the white population of Durban used to come and fetch us out. Take us out. So I did very well. I went, took me two or three times to the coast. Isipingo Beach and Manzanita Beach and Valley of a Thousand Hills. They took us everywhere. Mrs Anderson it was used to take us out and of course she had to take us back at night. And then we got drafted again. All good things came to an end. We got put on another boat. The P&O Strathnaver.
HB: Right.
JS: And I’ve got the berthing thing there but we weren’t quite so low deck on that one but of course we’d crossed, already crossed the Equator getting down to Cape Town. So, we still didn’t know where we were going. So we set sail again and we crossed the Equator again going up the other side of Africa and we finally arrived in Bombay.
HB: Seven weeks.
JS: Seven weeks later. When you think about it can you imagine what today if they told some of these youngsters they were going to be seven weeks on a damned boat? They’d have a fit, would they? But anyway, we were put in camp at Bombay. Worli. I always remember going through a Gateway to India at Bombay, isn’t there? A big arch. We went through there. We got motor of the transport to this transit camp at Worli and then we were there for a day or two. We still didn’t know the destination and from there we were put on a troop train and we were told it would take two and a half days on a damned troop train. Can you imagine it? I think all we lived on was boiled eggs because I think they used to boil them in the engine. And there was hardly any toilets or anything and imagine the heat. It was awful. About eight to a carriage. We had to sleep there with one place to wash. Anyway, we were towards the end of this terrible journey we crossed, oh, I don’t know. We could look out. Paddy fields and all this carry on in India. We finally arrived at Karachi. So we were told that this was our destination and we would be stationed at RAF Mauripur which was just a new station just outside Karachi. So we got on the, we used to call them garreys, didn’t they? The back of the garrey and delivered to RAF Mauripur in the middle of the, on the edge of the Sindh Desert. Passed through Karachi. The other side of Karachi.
HB: Yeah.
JS: Fortunately, we was only about three or four miles off the Arabian Sea. To the beach. So we weren’t too bad there. A bit of a [unclear] So we were billeted there. They were only building, only building this blooming place. The billets, we’d got no electricity. They give us these hurricane lamps and the old Indian bed. The charpoy we called it. We got to know all that. It was just a strange knotted thing and a, a mosquito net. Ten to a block. There was like double blocks. There were ten this side and ten this side. And then work started.
HB: So, during —
JS: I was an AC2 flight mechanic in those days.
HB: Yeah. During all of this travelling and getting there did you ever have any refresher training? Or —
JS: No.
HB: They just relied on the fact you’d been and trained. Been trained and that was it. You were going to remember it all.
JS: We got pat, there was one or two of the older lads there I’ll tell you because a lot of these lads that were there was one or two lads there had escaped from the Japs at Singapore. Do you remember that?
HB: Yeah.
JS: When the Japs, a lot of the lads had got out. Quite a few of the older lads had been out there before Singapore and places. So we got posted with a fitter. I was only a AC2 flight mech then. We got posted. We each had a fitter and we just did the jobs. Got all my details. I’ve got details of every aircraft.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
JS: At that, in those days it was more fighter stuff coming in. We had Spitfires and Hurricanes and Beaufighters and Blenheims and —
HB: So how did they arrive John? Were they, were they being flown in on by —
JS: They’d be flown in.
HB: Ferry pilots.
JS: Yes. Flown through —
HB: So, where had they come from?
JS: Well, they’d come through, they’d come from the various airfields in the, in the through the Middle East which wasn’t at war. At Sharjah and Habbaniya and places like that. And then we had a satellite strip I think. What was the name of it? Jawami. They had to land there.
HB: So, had they all come from England?
JS: Yes.
HB: Had they actually flown from England?
JS: Yeah. Yeah.
HB: Or had they been, had they been on ships.
JS: Yeah. That’s what we were doing. We were doing minor inspections on them you see so they went through to the different squadrons in India. But quite a lot of Spitfires were assembled at another place near Drigh Road. They used to come in crates to there. They assembled there and then they came to us for putting into squadron use you see.
HB: So what, so what would, what would you got a new Spitfire or you got a Hurricane or whatever.
JS: Yeah.
HB: What would, what would you actually do? You’ve got it sort of come to you —
JS: Well, we had to make sure that everything was [pause] we had sort of an acceptance check.
HB: Right.
JS: And Mosquitoes we had as well. And gradually things got bigger. We got Dakotas and Liberators and oh, I don’t know. You’d not got Yorks in those days. Hellcats. A lot of American stuff as well. Hellcats, Corsairs, we were doing just, just doing well, a detailed inspection on whatever they wanted. I think every forty hours they had these minor inspections. Minor star inspections and things like that. We worked to a schedule.
HB: The —
JS: The fitter did so much and the flight mech did so much, you see.
HB: So how, how did you, I mean like the Hellcat or the —
JS: We’d no training.
HB: The Liberator, how did you actually learn about the engines?
JS: We didn’t. We didn’t. We just had to do it.
HB: So, it was —
JS: If there was a mag drop we had to change the plugs. I’ve got quite a set [unclear] I was saying there were no training on American. The Pratt and Whitley twin wasps on the Dakotas. We’d no training on them.
HB: So —
JS: We just did it.
HB: So, nobody actually said, ‘Right. Sit down. This is what this is.’
JS: Not a thing. No. We had to do it because we were a fitter and we had to do a fitting. No. No. There was nothing like that.
HB: Right.
JS: Gradually, after several, I don’t know about a year or so I had the chance to have a re-mustering board to, to become a fitter 2E from flight mech. Which would be quite a bit more money.
HB: Yeah. Important.
JS: I had to go down to this Drigh Road. The other side of town for that. I can’t, I always remember the bloke that took it with me. A Flight Lieutenant Schultz, his name was. Oh yes. We had to do all sorts of things. Draw oil systems, fuel systems, cooler systems. Answer no end of questions and gradually ok. I found, found out I’d become a fitter 2E.
HB: Right. So, the, so and that’s, and that was —
JS: More money that was.
HB: Yeah.
JS: We were only on two shillings a day you know.
HB: Oh right. Right. Well, yeah I suppose AC2. Yeah.
JS: Yeah.
HB: You would be.
JS: Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
JS: I think the, of course we were on Rupees there. I think the average, I think the exchange rate was for thirteen, I don’t know if it was thirteen Rupees to the pound.
HB: Right. So that was, that was quite a significant pay rise then.
JS: And then, and then we got into the bigger stuff like all that. That’s just a year’s work in there.
HB: Yeah.
JS: We had Corsairs, Yorks, no end of Yorks. Liberators there.
HB: And that would, that would the York would be what towards the end of ’45.
JS: That was in ’45.
HB: ’45. Yeah.
JS: Getting towards the end of the war years.
HB: Yeah.
JS: And of course, with us being Transport Command everything that came in to India came through us you see. Landed with us. We had flight, we used to have Lord Louis. Not in those days. I think the Viceroy in those days when we first got there, I think it was General Wavell. And then he changed to Lord Louis Mountbatten and he used to come through regular and being six foot tall I got lumbered with being on the guard of honour. So, we, if there had been an accident unfortunately we had to go and bury everybody and we used to have to stand guard of honour for Lord Louis and Edwina and people, all the VIPs used to come then because people started to show a bit of interest in us.
HB: So, RAF Mauripur must have gone, it must have expanded really.
JS: We went from 317 MU to 48 Terminal Staging Post.
HB: Right.
JS: That’s how we, and then everything came through us like. In fact, they built quite a nice hotel on the airfield to entertain these people as they were coming through.
HB: So —
JS: And then quite a lot of dissatisfaction in those days because every, South East Asia was neglected terrible. I mean, for a start we’d got nothing to use. We had to use a split pin twice. There was nothing. They gave us the most basic tool kit. And things did improve eventually and then of course we had this strike didn’t we?
HB: Did you?
JS: Oh aye. All the, all the, the whole line went out on strike because the treatment we got wasn’t very good. I can’t remember what date the strike was.
HB: This was serviceman.
JS: Oh yes. it was very serious. Frightened us all to death because it was, well I mean the whole line was out on strike.
HB: When you say the line.
JS: Right through from all the Middle East and everywhere. They were all, it all stopped.
HB: What? Just stopped work?
JS: Yeah.
[pause]
JS: I mean —
HB: I can pause this while you have a quick look in your diary. John. That’s not a problem.
[recording paused]
JS: Tuesday the 22nd of January everything stopped.
HB: Nineteen forty —
JS: 1946.
HB: Right.
JS: “On strike from eight in the morning until certain promises are made as regards demob etcetera. Whole station went out. Afternoon lecture by the padre. Still keeping out until satisfaction obtained. Meeting at 8 o’clock.” You had to meet when it was dark you see because no one would dare. Had to put the lights out.
HB: And that’s all in your diary.
JS: Yes. Meeting. Cairo West was out, Jiwani was out, Jodhpur was out. And they all came out. Sharjah. And all they came out on strike as well.
HB: And what was, what was, what was the reason for the strike, John?
JS: Well, we got the war was over here then in ’46 and we were getting nowhere out there and when, when the lads that had been out there for four years should have been sent home, repatriated they sent all the blooming Indian Army in place over for that damned great Victory Parade in London.
HB: Right.
JS: It caused quite a bit of dissention.
HB: Yeah.
JS: But anyway, the results of the strike came out quite well really because they reduced the tour from my tour. I should have been there four years to three years. So, I was already over my time.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
JS: So after, actually it affected me as well and all the lads that went out with me because we had to wait while all these troops came over here for their Victory Parade. Anyway, we did eventually get notice we were going to be repatriated so —
HB: So what were the, so you mentioned earlier about the conditions as well. What were the conditions like in ’46 then?
JS: They had improved but we was forgotten.
HB: Yeah.
JS: Living quarters had improved considerably and we’d got cinemas and tennis courts and things like that. The food was much better and working conditions. They built us some beautiful big hangars. Open like big half-moon hangars and about that much either side and they were cool. No doors on them and much better working conditions. We got better tooling and equipment. Instead of having to stand on oil drums we were getting proper, proper equipment.
HB: I was going to ask you to go back a bit on that John from earlier on. When you got there you were saying about you got a basic tool kit and you had to use split pins twice. So —
JS: Well, it was —
HB: So —
JS: There was no electricity then.
HB: Yeah. How did you, did you have to make pieces yourself.
JS: Well, we had to. We had to, we had these basic, we had to do the best as we could. There was no electricity. For the runways they used to light those, Nitrolights, was it?
HB: Yeah. Nitrolights. Yeah. So —
JS: Never had any water.
HB: Yeah.
JS: We couldn’t drink the water anyway but there were hardly any water to wash. I think they used to have to pipe it from the Indus. And all the drains was open. We used to have to jump across the drain to get to the mess.
HB: Blimey.
JS: The showers was, of course there was no hot water of course. We had to have cold showers but there was hardly any water. It used to be a big occasion. Somebody used to shout, ‘The showers are on.’ And every, of course, we never used to wear much. We only used to wear a towel when we were in the billets. We didn’t take a lot of dressing. It didn’t take long to get to the shower.
HB: Right. So, they, so that was really basic.
JS: Basic.
HB: Living and working.
JS: Terrible.
HB: At that time. When did that improve? Was that sort of towards ’45 then?
JS: Yes. Towards ’45 it did improve slowly. Yeah. As the war gradually finished this side we were getting more attention.
HB: Right.
JS: But the food, it was, I don’t know, I’m sure. One day a week we had to live on K-rations. Those American packs.
HB: Yeah.
JS: We got a pack for breakfast and pack for lunch and a pack for dinner. A tin of something and a few biscuits. Three cigarettes and a box of matches. These matches. About sixty sheets of toilet paper. And we had, I think there used to be egg and bacon in a tin for breakfast or something like that. Stew for dinner. Maconochie’s, I think it was.
HB: Yeah. So that sees you through to ’46 so because over here they were they were preparing in Bomber Command they were doing a thing called Operation Tiger. Did you ever hear anything about Operation Tiger over there?
JS: No.
HB: Because that was where they were gathering up experienced crews.
JS: No. We wouldn’t hear anything you see.
HB: Yeah.
JS: Because everything was top secret, wasn’t it?
HB: Yeah, because the plan was for Tiger was for them to go out to India and then move on through Burma to bomb Japan.
JS: We wouldn’t have any radios or anything, you see.
HB: No.
JS: Never heard a thing.
HB: So, how, how did you get to know what was going on in the war then?
JS: Well, we used to, I used to buy a newspaper. the Daily Gazette and pay [unclear] a day it was.
HB: Right.
JS: We had the paper come.
HB: Yeah.
JS: I’ve got one in there actually.
HB: Yeah.
JS: Of when the war finished.
HB: Yeah. So and that was your only source of information.
JS: Yeah.
HB: You, didn’t, you didn’t —
JS: Rumours.
HB: Yeah. I was going to say you didn’t get drawn in every month.
JS: No. No. No. Nothing like that.
HB: So, so, if anybody started a rumour it would be believed.
JS: Oh yeah. It would go like mad.
[clock chiming]
HB: What sort, hey up. That will go well on there. It’s recording it nicely. So what sort of rumours did you get John? Can you remember any of them?
JS: Not really. No. I can’t remember really what there were.
HB: Yeah.
JS: As I say we used to say we used to get this paper every day. That’s about, and we use to get information probably from the front. And past Calcutta wasn’t it? And it was east of the Brahmaputra.
HB: Right. Right.
JS: You used to get a bit of it when the lads used to come because some of the lad used to come back posted to us you see and we used to [pause] any lads that was injured or anything like that we would ferry them back here.
HB: Yeah.
JS: Some of the troops. In fact, after the war we [pause] they built a big trooping camp at Mauripur and most of the lads that were coming back from Burma came through us. We used to get about forty take-offs a day. Dakotas out.
HB: Yeah. And they were flying —
JS: We used to have to service about three aircraft on a shift in them days.
HB: Did you?
JS: Stirlings or Yorks or Dakotas, Liberators. They made everything into a transport.
HB: Yeah.
JS: They even made up a Lancaster. They made a Lancastrians didn’t they? It only held about fifteen people but —
HB: Yeah. Well, if got them back. Yeah. it’s important. So, you’re working your backside off. What about mail from home. Letters from home.
JS: Plenty of mail. We got —
HB: Yeah.
JS: Mail was pretty good actually.
HB: You’re still a single man at this stage, are you?
JS: Yes. Yeah. We used to, we used to get quite a, quite, in fact when I was twenty one my mum sent me a cake.
HB: Oh lovely.
JS: I used to send no end of stuff home because the Yorks especially when we, when we got the Yorks coming through full blast we used to go downtown and buy say boxes of tea and [pause] put, in fact I bought mine with a watch and put it inside the tea because you had to be a bit careful [laughs] And we used to sew these parcels up and the York crews used to post them for us here. They were very good at that for us.
HB: Right.
JS: So I used to get shoes for my sister and mum and I used to send mum dress lengths and things like that. We’d got quite a good thing going actually. But you used to have to parcel them up and then you had to put a declaration on the front. What was in it? You know. For customs this end.
HB: What? Like box of, box of tea containing watch. Yeah.
JS: For this end, you see.
HB: Yeah.
JS: It had to go through customs.
HB: Yeah.
JS: So —
HB: Did you ever have any bother with that?
JS: No. No. No. Well, these aircrew we used to at the back of the outboard engine on the York nacelle there was a big empty space and these lads used to put mats in there, carpets, Indian carpets. We used to take this damned thing down and they used to — [laughs]
HB: This sounds like, this sounds a bit interesting this though.
JS: Well, one thing led to another. It was alright. It was all very legal [laughs]
HB: Yeah.
JS: Well, we got this thing going and then eventually you see we got our turn to come home. So, I went around. We waited. I know was on, off, on, off repatriating for ages. We were getting a bit cheesed off. Eventually we got into a group where our group was coming on. So we got cleared of Mauripur and we had to, we were going to be flown to, this was another thing. We were flying everybody home and we had to come home by boat [laughs] Anyway, we, we got clear of Mauripur and we got we were going down to Bombay. We got in to Dakotas and flown down to Worli at Bombay. While we were down there it was the monsoon season. It just chucked it down with rain about every second. Anyway, we eventually got on to another troop ship. What was that? Strathnaver, was it? Something like that. We weren’t too bad on that one. We weren’t on deck below the water line. But it was the monsoon season and I was sick about every day for a week I should think. I’ve got in there somewhere.
HB: Oh dear.
JS: It was that rough.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
JS: But coming back you see we could come back through Suez because the Middle East was open you see. The war had finished.
HB: Oh, of course. Yes.
JS: So once we got clear of this nice smooth seas it wasn’t too bad. We came through the Suez Canal.
HB: Did you stop on the way through?
JS: No.
HB: At Cairo or anywhere.
JS: Only to take water in at was it Port Said. Port Said, isn’t it?
HB: Yeah.
JS: And it was nice through the Suez. There’s a big statue isn’t there? Ferdinand de Lesseps pointing at Port Said. I think he was something to do with the building of it or something. We passed Aden and Malta and finally got back here.
HB: Where did you land when you came back?
JS: We landed at Liverpool.
HB: You left at Liverpool and you come back there.
JS: Yeah. And what happened then? We got, from Liverpool we went back to a place I think it was West Kirby again. Of course, we were back in our blues then. We got rid of, we threw all the blooming tropical kit overboard into the Arabian, into whatever sea it was we were crossing.
HB: Did you?
JS: Yeah. Bombay bowler and all that went. Anyway —
HB: Was that official or was that just something you did?
JS: We didn’t want the stuff, did we? We’d got to carry it. Anyway, we were back in blues then and it was, oh it was hot when we got back here. It was a beautiful summer. I think it was around about July or August. Got sent home on this embarkation leave for about a month. Then what happened? Oh, I know. I got posted. Waiting for a posting this end I got posted to RAF Silverstone. I think it was 70 OTU, on Wellingtons which was quite nice really. It wasn’t too good for getting home though at weekends. But anyway, I did do. We weren’t there long before they closed Silverstone and we went to, from there to North Luffenham. North Luffenham was, well Silverstone Aerodrome we were, anyway it was a wartime station. We were posted everywhere. Everybody was issued with a bike to get to the technical site.
HB: Oh yeah. And of course that’s Silverstone in Northamptonshire. Where the —
JS: That’s right. Yeah.
HB: Where the Grand Prix circuit is now.
JS: We were all issued with a bike. You had to watch your bike though because if somebody broke the chain they’d pinch yours [unclear] puncture. You had to take your bike to bed with you more or less. Tie it to the side of the bed. Anyway, they closed Silverstone and we got sent from there, the same unit to North Luffenham. That was near Oakham, wasn’t it?
HB: What, was that an OTU?
JS: Terrible that was. Pardon?
HB: Was that an OTU?
JS: Yeah. The same one. The same unit.
HB: Oh right. The whole kit and caboodle moved. Yeah.
JS: They moved out and we moved in.
HB: Right.
JS: But the bull there was terrible. No matter what time you would hear the bugle would go at night we had to stand and salute the blooming direction of the flag. It was terrible there. Anyway, they closed that. Well, they didn’t close it. We got moved from there to Swinderby. The same unit again. There had been Lancasters I think at Swinderby but we took the old Wellingtons there. And from there I got demobbed.
HB: Right.
JS: I got demobbed in [pause] it was that bad winter. Was it ’46? ’47?
HB: ’46/47. Yeah.
JS: Just right coming back from the tropics, wasn’t it? Anyway, I got a job at Avro’s which was only just down from that. Four or five miles wouldn’t it be.
HB: Can I just stop you there, John. You’ve come back. You’ve gone to these OTUs. What was, what were the OTUs doing with the Wellingtons?
JS: Training crews.
HB: They were training crews.
JS: Operational training units.
HB: Right. Right
JS: Training crews I should think. Yeah. On an OTU.
HB: Right.
JS: And then —
HB: So you, so you came back. You get demobbed at Swinderby.
JS: I got demobbed from Swinderby. We had to go back up to West Kirby to get demobbed.
HB: Oh blimey.
JS: And you got, of course, you got a suit and everything didn’t you and a bowler hat [laughs] or a shirt and tie.
HB: Yeah.
JS: And you had to, you were supposed to keep your uniform because you weren’t officially demobbed fully. You were only put on hold for the duration of the present emergency.
HB: Right.
JS: You see, so they could send you back anytime they wanted you.
HB: Right. So, yeah.
JS: If war broke out again.
HB: So, it wasn’t like —
JS: It didn’t.
HB: It wasn’t like the Reserve. It was —
JS: I got a job at Avro’s.
HB: Yeah.
JS: And strangely enough they got a big contract for York refurbishments. I was working on the same aircraft that I had been on in the Air Force.
HB: Yeah.
JS: [unclear]
HB: So where was Avro’s at the time?
JS: Langar.
HB: Yeah.
JS: It was only about four miles from home.
HB: Yeah.
JS: Probably not that.
HB: You were still a single man.
JS: Yeah.
HB: Right.
JS: And I think I was there, I was there about twenty one years actually at Avro’s but I was on engines just the same. Well, I did all systems of engines. I specialised on engine controls at Avro’s and to be on them you had to be, you had to have a [AID] approval. Air Ministry inspected approval. So, I got quite an interesting job there actually.
HB: Did you have to take exams to get that?
JS: No. No. No.
HB: That was, yeah.
JS: It was just something you got. You just got inspected for. You got your job inspected, you know. And I was on engines there. We had a Lanc. We had a York contract and we had a Lancaster contract. We had Lincolns, Shackletons, Vulcans.
HB: The Vulcan.
JS: Yeah. We did experimental jobs on Vulcans. We changed the, we did an experimental fitting of the conway on the Vulcan. And then another one we did we fitted a very high-powered Olympus engine on another one. It was so high powered it was sucking the skin off the intake. But anyway and then another Vulcan when we did the Blue Steel rocket. That was very very secret. They even screened our parents for that.
HB: Did they?
JS: And I got married then in, when [pause] in ’56. I was still at Avro’s. And then of course in ’68 they closed it down. The runways weren’t, it wasn’t worth doing or something. I don’t know.
HB: Yeah. Wow.
JS: I can still quote you the firing order of a Merlin engine.
HB: Quote me the firing order.
JS: A1, B6, A4, B3, A2, B5, A6, B1, A3, B4, A5, B2.
HB: Never forget it.
JS: No.
HB: So overall, you know considering you went in in ’42, you know and you’re well in to ‘46 coming up ’47 when you finished what, what’s your, what’s your biggest, your longest memory? Your best memory of your time during the war.
JS: Comradeship. Miss it a lot. I must tell you this. When, after I’d been at Avro’s some time about the first month or two I just couldn’t settle. I missed the, I seemed to miss the lads and the comradeship, you know. I mean, when you’ve been living with say twenty lads for three years nearly it was like a family wasn’t it? You used to share each other’s joys and sorrows. But I missed, oh I did miss the lads. There came a scheme because that cold war was starting and they bought a bounty scheme out where you could get, they would pay you three hundred pound to go back and you’d keep the same, everything the same as when you left. So, I thought oh I considered doing that and I sent for the papers but as it happened my dad had a, like a stroke, didn’t he? And I thought I just couldn’t leave mother again so I scrubbed around it. But while we were at Langar on the Yorks the Berlin Airlift was on and we worked, we could work for twenty four hours a day because if we wanted because the Yorks were ferrying everything in weren’t they? The Yorks and Dakotas and that and they were all coming back to us in a terrible state.
HB: Yeah. Yeah, and you were doing the maintenance.
JS: Yeah.
HB: On the engines for that. Yeah. Yeah.
JS: Yeah.
HB: So, it was the comradeship that kept you.
JS: Oh yeah.
HB: Going.
JS: I missed it terrible.
HB: When, when you were out in India you were almost isolated.
JS: Yeah.
HB: This RAF camp. What did you do? I mean how did you work for leave?
JS: Oh yes.
HB: Because you were there for what? Three years.
JS: Yes. well, on leave I was. Yes, I must you that. We had a month’s leave each year and I used to go with Alf who I was with all the time. Alf and I we used to go to Simla in the Himalayas. It’s Shimla now. They’ve put an H in it now, haven’t they? We used to go there for a month. I’ve got some nice photographs of that and it used to take us, it used to be a day and a half to cross the Sindh desert by train.
HB: Yeah.
JS: And then another it would take us two days to get to Simla anyway and two days back but it was lovely up there. Seven thousand five hundred feet up, isn’t it?
HB: Yeah.
JS: We did that and then what else? We were so near the, as I say the Arabian Sea. We were at the edge of the desert and there was absolutely nothing there whatsoever. Only desert. We built a, like a little camp there with packing cases of whatever the glider, oh, we had a glider assembly place at Mauripur. We weren’t on that but they came in packing cases and we built this, like a rest camp right on the edge of the sea and we used to go over. We could go there for a weekend or if we got, you know slack time we used to go. We used to bike there across the desert. Yeah. It was smashing there because we never used to wear a stitch [laughs] Not a stitch.
HB: I was starting to wonder they gave you a uniform [laughs]
JS: You were in and out of the sea. There was nobody at all. Only us.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
JS: We were in and out the sea. I’ve got photographs of it but they did put some shorts on for —
HB: Yeah. So —
JS: Oh, it was, it was smashing there.
HB: Yeah.
JS: You know, it was different. You can’t imagine. I can’t imagine it now, you know and how it was, how relaxed it was there. There used to be, you used to go for long walks right along the beach at night. Of course, there were no mosquitoes there you see at the edge of the sea. So, of course, in the camp we had to sleep under a mossie net and the only big thing about the beds were we used to get blooming bed bugs terrible. And they were only like threaded string along the wooden frame so what we used to do we used to bring a can full of [unclear] petrol back from the tech site, take your bed outside into the middle of the square where there was nothing. Only sand. Louse it with petrol to kill them.
HB: Ah, I thought you were going to say you were —
JS: Bang the blooming bed down and out came the bugs.
HB: I thought you were going to say you set fire to it. Yeah. Yeah, that’s, that would it. That would do it.
JS: Aye. And in the corner of the mosquito net and the damned bed bugs were terrible. And I’ll tell you what else we used to get a lot of. Scorpions. You used to have to tip your shoes upside down at night before you got in to bed because they used to get inside them. What else? Well, there was Praying Mantis and [unclear] cobras under the chocs we used to get. Quite a lot of them.
HB: What, what, what were they?
JS: They were like a big lizard only very poisonous like. Big things. They used to go under the chocs. We’d pull the chocs away probably one of those things would run out.
HB: Sounds a bit —
JS: You got used to it didn’t you?
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You’d have to. That’s where you were working. Yeah.
JS: Well, the scorpions, if you got a scorpion you used to kick it outside and put a ring of petrol around it and light it and it used to commit suicide, don’t they?
HB: Yeah. Yeah. So, so did you, you’d got this massive airfield at Mauripur. You’ve got all these planes coming in. You’ve got all different aircraft types coming in. You’ve got people going, passing through. I mean you must have had, you must have had some accidents.
JS: Oh, we did. We had. We had terrible accidents. We had a Liberator crash one night and of course right around the airfield there was this massive ditch built. Monsoon ditch. Ditch Like a big dry riverbed to protect the airfield in the monsoons but it never did. But anyway, that’s what it was for and this Liberator must have, I don’t know how it managed to crash but it crashed into one of these monsoon ditches, ditches and there was eight Army sergeants in that. Killed them all. Burned out. And you see in those days we had to bury the same day in that climate. We had to, we used to, me being on guard we used to have to fire over the grave and they used to take photos of the grave to send back to the, of course some of these lads were all different religions as well. They had to have different burials [unclear]
HB: And that was, and that was there was a cemetery on the airfield was there? Right.
JS: There was a cemetery in town.
HB: In town.
JS: In Karachi. Yeah. RAF cemetery.
HB: Right.
JS: Well, a troop cemetery because there was a big army barracks there as well. Napier Barracks.
HB: Oh right. So, we’ve been out there, that your best memory is the comradeship. What’s your worst memory? What was the thing that you hated the most?
JS: Heat.
HB: The heat.
JS: Ahum. You got used to it and I tell you what, you used to get awful prickly heat. That was awful. You used to get it around your waist and that. Anywhere where your clothes fitted tight.
HB: What, what was the treatment for that?
JS: None. Eventually, right towards the back end of while we were there they organised hot baths and it was a crude affair. They used to do boil the water outside in this mass tub and the old ones used to come and fill the hot baths for you and you used to get as much hot water over you as you could because it opened your pores and you got rid of, it was the salt in your pores that causes prickly heats and the heat and the water opened your pours and cleaned it all out. So it was quite a good cure for it. But there was no other cure.
HB: Right. So, we’ve come out. Come back. We’re back in England. We’ve gone to work at Avro’s at Langar. So how did you meet your wife?
JS: A dance.
Other: A dance in [Woolsthorpe]
JS: Well, my brother is married to the wife’s oldest cousin.
HB: Right.
JS: Well, we I think we were at a ball at [Woolsthorpe] weren’t we?
Other: [Woolsthorpe] yeah.
HB: Yeah. And that was it.
JS: There’s one other thing I forgot to mention was the monsoons. About [pause] well prevailing wind used to mostly come from the sea which wasn’t too bad but when the monsoons was coming, about June it would change around completely and come from the land. And then we had the most awful sandstorms. Terrible. With having no doors or windows in the barracks, in the billet, it used to fill everything with darned sand.
HB: It must have made maintenance difficult.
JS: And they had to close the airfield.
HB: Yeah. It must have made maintenance on the engines difficult.
JS: Oh well, they had to shut everything down and wrap everything up. Put the engine covers on and everything. It used to like come in drifts but we were issued with special spectacles for that. They had guards on the side because it affected your eyes and used to wrap around your legs. It was terrible. And then when the monsoons came well it was, we only had, it used to last about a week. It used to flood the complete blooming airfield. We’d got no work again and it used to, like I say this monsoon ditch which was supposed to drain it away but it never did but originally the old, well the old it used to wash the top off the blooming billet because it was only like mud. Eventually they proper roofing on. But we used to have to put your ground sheets across the top of your bed just to —
HB: I see. Make do and mend.
JS: I’ll tell you what else it used to be good before. It used to cure the prickly heat. As soon as it used to rain everybody used to strip off completely and run out in it.
HB: So, you didn’t have many female staff on the station then.
JS: None. Oh well, they didn’t bother. These Indian women used to do all the work, didn’t they? The builders and everything.
HB: Yeah.
JS: They didn’t bother. We didn’t bother about them but we did have a, each have a, each billet had a bearer which was an Indian sort of coolie. We used to pay them a Roopee each a week and he used to, we had a water bottle [unclear] we had a bottle. He used to fill that for us, make our beds and sweep the floor and do that for us. Paid him a rupee a week.
HB: Yeah.
JS: He lived on that as well. That would be ten rupees a week which used to be about a pound wouldn’t it?
HB: Yeah.
JS: Not quite a pound.
HB: Yeah. Well, it’s fascinating John. I can see, I can see why we wanted your interview.
JS: Well, that was life in India.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. And what, after Avro finished in the 60s what did you do then?
JS: Went up to [pet foods] in Melton.
HB: Oh right. Right.
JS: Got a job in the maintenance there.
HB: Yeah. Well, I think that brings us neatly to the end of the interview, you know. And if you’re happy.
JS: Yeah. Are you happy?
HB: I’m always happy. I’ll stop the interview now.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with John Shipman
Creator
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Harry Bartlett
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
2018-10-10
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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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AShipmanJ181010, PShipmanJ1802
Conforms To
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Pending review
Format
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01:05:31 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
John Shipman was born in Stathern, Leicester and as a teenager would cycle to Melton Mowbray to attend ATC meetings. He joined the RAF and started training as a flight mechanic. He joined a troop ship to start his posting and the journey took a very long six weeks before he finally arrived in India. Conditions on base were rudimentary and their tools were basic and there was a make do and mend mentality. John worked on a wide range of aircraft. He was promoted to the role of fitter. After the war, in 1946 there was a strike among the Servicemen who were frustrated at the delays in sending them home for demob.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1946-01-22
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
India
Pakistan
Pakistan--Karachi
B-24
C-47
demobilisation
ground crew
ground personnel
military discipline
military living conditions
military service conditions
Raf Mauripur
training
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/725/10725/ABrandonJP180302.2.mp3
03e83eb935f3c68e6ca7bede2207ffe2
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
Brandon, June Pauline
J P Brandon
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with June Pauline Brandon (b. 1923, 8382 Royal Air Force). She served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-03-02
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Brandon, JP
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JeB: This is an interview, is being carried out for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Jennifer Barraclough, the interviewee is Mrs June Brandon. The interview is taking place at Mrs Brandon’s home near Warkworth, Auckland. The date is the 2nd of March 2018. Okay, Mrs Brandon could you tell us, thank you very much for taking part. Could you tell us a little about your early life and how you came to join the Air Force, please.
JuB: As my father was with the Ghurkhas I was born in India, in the Himalayas and we had a wonderful life out there, riding twice a day and father had to go up the North West Frontier at regular intervals, we just wanted to keep the Afghans north of the North West Frontier so they didn’t come down into India, and they took tours of duty. We got leave in England every three years and when I was nine, my, the Gurkhas themselves are only about five foot three. Wonderful, loyal, great fighters, but the Afghans pick off the big ones cause they know they’re the officers. Father was brought back from the Frontier wounded, unfortunately got another bout of malaria and died, so we had to pack up. I was nine, at the ten, time, my brother was seven. And so we packed up, came back to England with mother who was widowed at twenty nine. And I can remember coming up the Suez Canal, I hated the topees, which were cork hats, and mother said to us, “come on you can throw your topee into the sea, you won’t need it again.” And I stood at the rail, threw the topee over and burst into tears and mother said what’s the matter. I had a pet donkey in India, I adored her and we just had a lovely relationship and I said, “I’ll never see my father or my little donkey again.” We came back to England and I was sent to boarding school. It was a school for all permanent officers’ daughters in Bath. I loved it there, they were great people and when the war started, the Navy, because we were on a hill above Bath, took over the school because they wanted to signal ships in the Atlantic. So we were moved to a beautiful country house where they built classrooms. We used to sit on the stairs and have lectures with ancestral portraits peering down at us. We had science lessons in the stables and art lessons in the Orangery. And I was, took school certificate there and I left school at seventeen. I looked around for what I should do and thought of nursing, but it looked like too many bedpans, [chuckle] so we weren’t allowed to join the Air Force till we were eighteen, so I put my age up a year, went up to London with mother who had some business to do, and whilst she went, I went along to Kingsway House and enlisted. They asked me for my birth certificate and I said, “oh I was born in India.” She didn’t seem to know. Father would obviously have registered me at Somerset House, so I got away with it. [Laughter] Well the next thing I know I’m on the train with a crowd of girls and the Germans didn’t bomb, this was after Dunkirk. They didn’t bomb Morecombe or Blackpool cause they thought they’d be there themselves in a few weeks. So first of all it was Morecombe and this endless marching up and down for drill. I found the shoes awful, I think they had slabs of concrete on the bottom, and I got chilblains. It was very, very cold. Well one morning the sergeant said to us tomorrow morning put on your overshoes. These were a kind of a galosh thing that came up to your ankles and did up with two buttons. So that morning I was doing great, I was marker cause I was the tallest, and at the end of the parade the sergeant said now take off your shoe, your moccasins, for inspection. I took them off, and everybody burst out laughing! I was standing in the middle of the Morecombe parade with a pair of red moccasins on. The officer looked at me, she couldn’t charge me with not being dressed on parade cause I had been. She just shook her head and walked away. [Laughter] The next thing I knew, I was posted to the Photographic School because I told them I had played with photography at home. And it was a six month course, and we started, it was lovely because you suddenly realised the class system had gone. In the desk next to me was Rachael Tennyson, Lord Tennyson’s granddaughter. Next, the other side was little girl that had worked in a chemists shop. We were all in it together, didn’t matter what our background was. We started off with the properties of light, then we went on to different lenses on cameras. We had an exam every two weeks, if you failed an exam [whistle sound] you were off. They couldn’t waste time on you. There were eighteen of us, our only trouble was we were billeted in Blackpool and there were bed bugs in our. Some people were moved three times, luckily I was only moved once. Some of the landladies were lovely, others were awful. Well, we got through the course, and they decided we must have a passing out parade. Well there was wide driveway with a wall down one side and suddenly the officers decided they had to be elevated to take the salute so they got on top of the wall. I was glad I was marker and they couldn’t see me grinning cause we did eyes right to five pairs of black polished shoes, [interference] we couldn’t see anything else. Well after two weeks leave I was put on camera guns [/interference] and these would, guns, synchronised with the real guns and they took a photograph of anything the Spitfires would shoot at. I was sent up to Newcastle to a fighter station. And there was only one other photographer, a corporal, he was a lazy thing. So my job was, I was given a bicycle with yellow and black stripes, given a satchel with the magazines and I had to cycle round all the operative Spitfires and test the cameras every morning. Well, I was always very careful going across the end of the runway if they were using that runway cause the Spitfires used to come in very low and very fast and I realised they weren’t going to stop for me! So I got up to the squadron and a sergeant came out and said, “what are you here for?” and I said I have come to test the cameras. And the whole lot of them burst into laughter. They’ve sent a girl! They were slapping their knees and dancing about and I thought what a greeting! So I grabbed a wheel chock; they were big triangular shapes of wood, with a rope through them and they put them in front of the Spitfire wheels so they didn’t move. Now the Spitfire wing is quite high and I had to look down. So I gathered the chock, took it to the port wing between the canon and the fuselage, took a screwdriver out of my pocket, undid a little panel in the wing, checked that there was, and then I said to one of them, the mechanic, could you jump into the cockpit and just give a quick burst to the camera only button. So, being a bit surprised, he did that. Then I took the magazine out to make sure there was enough film, put it all back together [interference] again and went to the next aeroplane. Then I had to sign a Form 700 [/interference] which was everything was checked, every morning and I had to sign for the camera gun. Well, there was a bit of fighting up there and several times the Spitfires went out and I got a call one day: “One of the pilots is sure he hit something, come out and get the magazine.” I cycled out there, I couldn’t believe it. There they were, with the film like this, looking at it and I said you’ve just ruined the film, you’ve put it to the light. They wouldn’t believe me! So I said come with me back to the dark room and I’ll show you. And I wound it on a big frame and developed the film for them. And they saw it was black, cover to cover. I was surprised pilots didn’t know about that. Anyway, a little later on I got a terrible pain in my stomach and the sergeant was roaring at me to get out of bed and get going. And I said I just can’t move. A friend of mine came over, realised I had a temperature and went and got one of the medical staff: acute appendicitis. So I was put on a stretcher, loaded into an ambulance. They couldn’t find mother because she was driving an ambulance in London. And I was taken down to the hospital, bumping over the tram lines, which was extremely [emphasis] painful. We get to the hospital and the nurse that came with me was carsick, so in the middle of an air raid with all ack acks going off, she was taken in as the casualty leaving me lying outside. They at last realised they’d got the wrong people, came with a stretcher on a trolley, put me on it. As we were going in to the hospital I said to the orderlies, don’t hurry the pain’s gone. They immediately started to run, my appendix had burst. No penicillin in those days, I didn’t realise how sick I was till I came to and found mother sitting beside my bed, she’d come all the way up from London. Well, I recovered and got, all told, four weeks sick leave. It was beautiful. I went to some friends of ours in the country. They were so kind to me, and this beautiful countryside, and you could forget the war. Well, when I was told I was fit enough, I was sent to RAF station Benson. Now we only [emphasis] took photographs, that was the sole purpose of the place. There were two cameras loaded behind the Spitfire cockpits and we had some um, Mustangs, not Mustangs, it’ll come to me. They were all painted blue and, making it hard to see against the sky. And the cameras were placed so that there was always an overlap this way, cause they didn’t turn over fast enough and this camera overlapped that way so if there was a damaged negative you could make it up with the other two. They were lovely girls there and we had a common room and the men had a common room. We used to have to change the chemicals at regular intervals so they gave us - because the hypo rotted our shoes - they gave us clogs. They are the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever worn. And we used to clatter about sounding like horses on a hollow bridge. Because you had to change the chemicals by buckets. You had to fill the bucket and go up the thing and change the, in these big machines we had. And I was always the one in the dark room. I don’t know why. You went through double doors into the dark room and there was a red pan light. You had a spool here with the film on it to be developed and it was threaded through the machine as just a spare piece of film, so you’d cut the film like this with a razor, pull out a piece of red tape, which always amused me, press it down and fold it over and cut it again with a razor blade, then you’d turn the machine on. And there were these rods that went down into the chemicals, and you slowly lowered them, there were two for water to get the film really wet, then it went into the developer. There were six, this was all in the dark, then there were two of water and two of neutraliser and then the film went through a little rubber letterbox, and was finished in the open. There were three of us in a crew working these machines. The one in the middle saw that everything was developing correctly and washing correctly. There was a viewing chamber as it went up onto the dryer, which was long fluorescent lighting with warm air being blown through it and it would go round this and someone at the end would see that it spooled up properly. Then it went through to the printers which had similar machines, but just printing, only. When that was finished all the films were bundled up and sent over to Intelligence for a quick look at what we’d got. It was nearly awaysl of bombing raids to see the damage we’d done or not done. Then it was sent to Medmenham, which was the Central Intelligence Unit, for final analysis. We used to have in the hall a huge what we called the Sortie Board, which listed the sortie number and its ETA so that we had an idea and when it arrived it was put down as arrived, when it went into the developing, when it went into the printing and when it was finished was all noted down. The sadness comes if someone came down and drew a line right through it. Plane was missing. Sometimes they landed at another airfield, sometimes: the inevitable. I always admired those pilots because they had to fly with no guns because the cameras were so heavy. They had to get to the target, fly up and down, taking photos, then scoot for home, and they knew that the Germans gave their pilots a bonus if they shot down a reconnaissance plane. We used to get a lot of requests for shipping movements, troop movements, where things were. We found in one stage the Tirpitz in a Norwegian Fjord and they got her when she came out. We also found the Bismark, took photographs of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau that were bombed. And all together it was an extremely interesting but stressful job because you couldn’t make mistakes. The girls were lovely, I never had any argument, none of us did, and when there was no flying we’d all sit in the common room and do beautiful needlework or knitting or something. We were in a separate hut, the photographers. Well, one night the sirens went and it was freezing, I was a corporal then, and I said to the girls, do you want to go down the shelter, which was what we were meant to do. No. So I said stay here, these shelters were very nice concrete but there’s steps going down and water run down and when you got to the shelter you were sitting ankle deep in ice cold water! So we stayed where we were, suddenly after a lot of running round in the thing, the door burst open and a sergeant covered in mud started to curse us. “Who’s in charge here?” And I said me. “You’re on a charge for disobeying an order!” Cause they’d opened up the shelter and found nothing. So next morning I was in front of the CO, so he said to me – after the usual charging - why didn’t you go down there, and I said I had a feeling. So he caught on and put it down to women’s intuition. Actually, my only feeling was it was too damn cold” So I got off. [Laugh] So, well I was there for about four years I think it was, and then I was sent to Medmenham. That was all enlargement work and specialised work, but there were no aeroplanes, I really didn’t enjoy it. So I got a commission and I was sent to the usual training. By this time the Americans were in the thing and you know what we thought of them. You’ve heard the saying [chuckles] and I was disgusted when were sent on a talk to learn how to public speak, and the Americans just took us as, for popsies that they could pick up! Me and my friend were asked were we staying the night? We said certainly not, we’re going back to camp. They turned their back on us and went and talked to the others because we weren’t going to sleep with the devils! So that was fine. And then, I can’t remember why, I was on Windermere station and a train came in, doors flew open, this was near the end of the war, and a troop of soldiers jumped out carrying rifles and they lined up all the way down to outside the gate where there was a staff car. Two more carriages opened and two officers jumped out with their hand guns in their hand. Next thing you know the middle door opens, Rundstedt walked out. We’d captured him. He looked magnificent [emphasis] with that red general stripe down his trousers. I noticed that her wore the Iron Cross, but no [emphasis] swastikas. They put him on an island in the middle of Windermere Lake, as a prisoner. I can’t remember what happened to him in the trials afterwards. Well. Can we stop this? During the bombing, when I was in London, you think it was never, ever going to stop, just noise, noise, noise and you didn’t know what was going to happen. I used, if possible, to curl myself into a ball and recite poetry which I loved. I was always terrified of getting an arm or leg blown off and they’d feel sorry for me. Usually the bombers went home about three o’clock in the morning. And then we had the start of the doodlebugs. I was at home one day on forty eight hour leave in mother’s flat in London and the sirens had gone nine times. You forgot whether it was all clear or what, and mother always used to go into the hall of the flat cause there were no glass. I had a very interesting radio programme on – National Velvet about a horse. And she was shouting at me to come and a doodlebug went past the window. We were only on the fourth floor. There was a bit of a silence and then a great big explosion and mother said come on, we’d better go and see if we can help. We went round to a little square that was near us, all built by people that had escaped the French Revolution and it was all built in that lovely French style. The doodlebug had gone straight through one block house right down into the cellar. The house was completely gone, but standing on a landing on the top, with absolutely nothing underneath her, was a woman screaming her head off. Luckily the firemen came along with a long ladder and rescued her. And then we had the V2s coming and it was very, very difficult to find where they were coming from. And we kept taking photographs round Holland and round the coast and finally one of the intelligence girls found it at Peenemunde and she got the MBE for that, and we bombed that, which stopped quite a lot of the V2s. And then the war did end.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with June Pauline Brandon
Creator
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Jennifer Barraclough
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-03-02
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ABrandonJP180302
Format
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00:30:18 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
June Brandon was born in India, returning to England when her father died. She joined the WAAF and went into the Photographic Section, loading cameras on Spitfires then carrying out development of the films. She served at several RAF stations, telling stories of conditions in various places as well as experiences she had in service and on leave.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Pakistan
England--Bath
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Lancashire
England--London
England--Oxfordshire
Pakistan--Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
England--Somerset
Contributor
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Anne-Marie Watson
Bismarck
bombing
ground personnel
RAF Benson
RAF Medmenham
Spitfire
V-1
V-2
V-weapon
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/868/11109/AHendersonIG171017.1.mp3
e974e79a8803f3c38d25b705429b1cb2
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Henderson, Ian
Ian Grant Henderson
I G Henderson
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. An oral history interview with Ian Henderson DFM (b. 1922), his log book, a diary of operation, a memoir and a photograph. He flew operations as a navigator with 153 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Ian Henderson and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Collection is NtA.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-09-18
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Henderson, IG
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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JS: Ok.
IH: Right.
JS: Right. This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Jim Sheach. The interviewee is Ian Henderson. The interview is taking place at Mr Henderson’s home in Lockerbie on the 17th of October 2017. Ian, thanks for agreeing to be interviewed today. Could you tell me a little about your life before you joined the RAF?
IH: Yes. Well, the war started in 1939 when I was seventeen. And I had left school by that time and I went to Edinburgh University to study law and I had two years there before I joined up. I wanted to be a pilot but, and I went to London, at Lord’s I think we started off with. We had several stations. Training stations. And when I was twenty I went to Canada. At Edmonton, Alberta, still as a pilot trainee. Then after about a few months I was told they had too many pilots, trainees and I was asked to be a navigator. Train as a navigator. Of course, you just did as you were told in these days and I did that. I finished my navigator’s training, came back to this country and further training. And then I joined up with a crew and we went to Scampton, 153 Squadron. My pilot was a South African. Donald Legg. And an excellent pilot. And I’m quite sure we owe our lives to him because at that time one of the main dangers, risks was collisions with adjoining Lancasters or bombs being dropped from above on to you and a good pilot could avoid that. So we survived the war. We had one rather difficult experience. At December 1944 it was we were trying to bomb a dam called the Urft Dam and we were hit. Before that the cloud came down. We couldn’t see the target so we were told to come back home again. Dump the bombs in the North Sea. But then we were hit and an engine caught fire. We couldn’t get the fire out. It burned for about two hours. However, we got as far as the North Sea, dumped our bombs, got back to Brussels which was free at that time and landed there. Made a forced landing there and got home safely the next day. Actually, the following day the Luftwaffe came across in force and shot up all the aircraft in that particular airfield. So we lost our plane. It was pretty badly damaged anyway. And then, that was December 1944. The war ended about six months later and I was sent to India as a navigator instructor. Spent a year in India. And then I was demobilised in 1946 or ’47. Came back home, completed my law training in Edinburgh University. Came back to Lockerbie and went in to my father’s business where I spent the next forty five years. So I, I had a very enjoyable life. I’m glad I lived when I did [laughs]
JS: What, why, why do you think you wanted to join the RAF as opposed to anything else in the services?
IH: I think it was the [pause] it seemed the most, I don’t know, exciting service to be in. I still think that. Flying was such an adventurous thing and you were less regimented I think than in the Army. Or at least I got that idea. And I’m sure I made the right decision. I enjoyed my stay in the RAF immensely.
JS: You mentioned you did your training in Canada. So, how did you get to Canada?
IH: Oh, well we got to Canada by Mauretania ship. It was supposed to take ten thousand passengers. There were thirty thousand of us aboard in the hold. The various parts that they were very cramped. And we had to go very quickly to avoid the submarines. Thirty miles, I think it was thirty knots we travelled at. And we realised then we were so packed that if we were torpedoed there wasn’t much chance of getting up and into a lifeboat. However, there was no, we got across to Canada quite uneventfully and landed in Halifax. Took the train across to Edmonton, Alberta where I spent the next year, or eleven months I think it was. Before that as I said I was training as a pilot to begin with and then told I had to remuster as a navigator which I did. So after completing the course in Canada we came back home and, what year would that be? 1942 it was, I think. And spent most of the rest, I spent a good year, a year and a half at at Scampton near Lincoln. I think we did thirty, thirty operations without much. I think, I think we had quite a successful tour altogether. We were hit several times but nothing, nothing too serious except the time we caught fire. The most dramatic operation of course was Dresden. And we were one of fifteen aircraft from 153 Squadron at Scampton and our pilot was a South African. Donald Legg, who was a pilot. A Canadian called Russell Rawlings. A wireless operator, a Welshman. And upper-gunner was Andrew Andrews and the rear gunner was a Scot called Jock Beet from Dundee. Donald Legg, our pilot was thirty two years of age. Much older than the other members of the crew who were all in their early twenties. The Lancaster P-Peter, the second one of that name which this crew had. The first one had been destroyed a few a few weeks earlier when after a bomber operation on the Urft Dam the first P for Peter had been hit by flak which had started a fire in the port engine. The fire could not be extinguished but the pilot had been able to fly as far as Brussels and to land there. Brussels was at that time was in the hands of the allies. Before going to Dresden we’d been advised that the Russians had particularly asked for the RAF to carry out the attack to help them. They had believed, the Russians had believed that there was a build-up of German troops and armour in Dresden preparing to make a counter attack on them. To the crews involved it was simply another operation. The principal difference being that it was a very much a longer distance than the average operation and they would be under possible attack from enemy fighters and flak for a longer period. There was a strong wind blowing that night. We took off at 21.22. About ninety miles from Dresden the pilot told me to stop navigating because he could see the fires that were burning on Dresden. The Americans had been up there earlier. So, due to the, due to our diversionary tactics which confused the Germans no enemy fighters were encountered in the operation. But this was very exceptional and there was no sign of the Luftwaffe being any less strong or active previous to or after the Dresden operation.
[pause]
IH: My personal view at the time was that Dresden was just another operation which was intended to give assistance to the Russian allies and would be a further step in defeating the enemy which was still a powerful war machine in operation and was quite capable of carrying out long enough to develop and use more powerful weapons. Which they were working on. Namely guided rockets and the atom bomb. I firmly believe that the devastating destruction caused to Dresden which was contributed to by an exceptionally strong wind that night was a psychological blow to the Germans that resulted in the war ending many months earlier than it would have been otherwise and so probably hundreds of thousands, saved probably hundreds of thousands of lives of death camp prisoners, British and American servicemen and British civilians. At this stage of the war Germany was still occupied, had still occupied much of Europe including Yugoslavia, Greece and the Channel Islands. Jews were being murdered and the gas chambers were still operating in the concentration camps. The Germans had developed a new weapon, the V-2 and were attacking London with these rockets. There was no clear indication of when the war, which was in its fifth year would end. The orders to bomber crews were to hit only military targets and this they endeavoured to do despite heavy enemy defences.
[pause – pages turning]
IH: That’s Dresden.
JS: You spoke, you spoke, you spoke earlier before we started recording about your role as a navigator and some of the navigation aids that you had. Do you want to just —
IH: Yes. Yes.
JS: Say a little bit about that?
IH: We were lucky. We had several very useful navigation aids. Gee was a machine which recorded the position of your aircraft in relation to the ground. Beams sent out from Britain which the machine was able to interpret and tell you more or less where you were. It was frequently jammed by the Germans so you didn’t have the use of it more than maybe halfway through your trip. And the other was H2O. That was the name. H2O. Which sent down rays, reflected them back and you could interpret, find out your position that way. The only, they were useful over the coastlines and lakes, lochs but they had their limited use. Just. They didn’t tell you exactly where you were. So most, and of course you had the astro navigation which was a bit tricky at times because the aircraft was moving up and down so quickly that you couldn’t take an accurate fix. So it was dead reckoning most of the time. You knew approximately. You had your compass and your winds and you worked it out that way. It worked.
JS: You mentioned your crew.
IH: Oh yes. Ah huh.
JS: How did you crew form up? And how did you get on with your crew?
IH: Yes. Yes. Yes. Well. when you were fully qualified you were all taken to a large hangar and told to sort yourself out. And it was quite a hit or miss business joining up. I think the pilot would come around and spot you and ask you what was your position, what was your qualifications and when he got to the right number of his crew that was it. It was very, it was very hit or miss but very successful. We got on very well with our crew. We spent a lot of time together. The officers of course were billeted in one part of the, the airfield. And the other ranks, the rest were mostly at that time sergeants. Non-commissioned officers. Apart from the pilot who was a South African. So we got on very well together and we spent all our recreation time together. We were very often in Lincoln at a dance or, you know pub.
JS: How was Scampton as a base?
IH: Oh, Scampton was a war, a peacetime, I beg your pardon a wartime. No. A peacetime base it was. It was a very good station to be on. We were, I can’t, I think, I think we were in, I can’t remember what we were in. Probably in Nissen huts. No. I can’t quite remember that at all. The Nissen huts were quite primitive in these days but cold in winter. You were very lucky if you got a bed near a stove to keep you warm in winter, but yeah. When you’re in your twenties you don’t notice discomfort at all. At all. So I was glad I lived when I did and had a very happy experience in the Air Force. In the RAF.
JS: How was, how was Lincoln in those days?
IH: Lincoln was packed with RAF personnel of course every night. And my pilot had brought his wife across. They stayed at Vicar’s Court just beside the Cathedral. 4 Vicar’s Court. And very nice. A very nice city was Lincoln. A lot of happy memories of it.
JS: You, you mentioned your, your training in Canada. Just to take you back to that. So you were there for, around nearly a year.
IH: Yes. About, about a year. Slightly less than that. To begin with I was training as a pilot, and we flew Oxfords. Oxfords and Ansons. I think I was there probably about two months before I switched over to navigation. Edmonton was a very nice place to be. Well, we were out, slightly out of Edmonton but went in quite a lot. And it was a very happy experience. Canadians were a particularly hospitable people and when I landed in Canada, we landed in a small town. The lights were blazing. The shops were full. It seemed like, seemed a wonderful place to be. I was surprised afterwards a Canadian told me that that particular town was one of the most rariest in Canada. To me it seemed a wonderful place.
JS: So the weather there would be quite different from that you were accustomed to.
IH: Oh yes. Very cold in winter. Very, quite hot in summer. You went on parade in the hot summer weather. Hot summer day. Hot days. Someone always tended to faint, you know. Standing there in the heat. But a complete change in the winter. The winter was very, very cold. Yeah. But it was a wonderful place. Canada.
JS: How did the aircraft of that time cope with the diversity in weather from the incredibly hot to icily cold?
IH: I think they coped very well indeed. I never noticed any problems at all. No. No. I don’t think there was any, was any problems. I’d say they were mostly Oxfords and Ansons they were called. Two engined planes we flew in. But —
JS: You, you mentioned, again just back to your, your crew and the fact that the officers were separated from the NCOs which was, which was most of the crew. So how did operations and time off work like? What was the sort of balance between those? Like how often would you do operations compared with being stood down and recreational time and things like that?
IH: We did thirty operations over [pause] let me think now. Six or seven months. So quite a few training flights in between. But let me think now. The recreation. I think there was no difference then between the officers and the other ranks. We were all mostly sergeants, flight sergeants except for the pilot was a lieutenant. A flight lieutenant. The bomb aimer was a Welshman. Dave Jones. He was also commissioned. That left five of us flight, flight sergeants. And we were definitely inside at that time. Not in a, not in a Nissen hut. I remember we were in a permanent room in an inside building. I think we all spelt in the same room which was fine. And [pause] but, and recreation we’d all go out together in to Lincoln. To a dance or the cinema. Or a meal. No. Not a meal. We didn’t eat out much. But no, that was a very happy time.
JS: Good.
IH: A happy time.
JS: Good. You [pause] you talked about the operation where you had to land in Belgium. So you obviously lost your aircraft there then.
IH: Yes. The aircraft was quite badly damaged of course and we stayed that night in Brussels in an ex-German barracks. And we got some, given some money to go into the town for the evening, and next day we got, we flew back again in another aircraft. A Dakota. Back to Scampton. And either that day or the next day the Luftwaffe came across in force and shot up all the aircraft in this area where we’d landed in Brussels. So we lost our aircraft, our Lancaster completely that time. And we got a new one when we got back. Back to Scampton. That was the December. December 1944. So we’d have that until the war ended. That was in May 1945. After that we were split up and I went to Crosby near Carlisle to navigate for the longer distances over the Pacific against the Japanese. But before the course was finished the Japanese surrendered and instead of going out to fly, to operate there I was sent out to be a navigation briefing officer. By that time I was commissioned and at Karachi near Mauripur. Karachi. And all the planes were bringing back Army personnel by aircraft so all the planes went through Karachi and they were briefed about the various risks involved on the way back. Where not to have a forced landing because the natives were hostile. And I was there about a year. A year I think it was in Karachi. Again, a very enjoyable experience. After that I got back home. I was demobbed. Went back to Edinburgh University. Completed my law degree and joined my father in his business, legal business in Lockerbie. I met my wife to be at a dance in Lockerbie. She was in the WAAF but we didn’t, we didn’t meet in the Air Force so I met her at this dance and we got married a year later. And after that my life was uneventful but very happy.
JS: You, you spoke about being in Brussels and being given some money to go.
IH: Yeah.
JS: And do Brussels if you like.
IH: Yes.
JS: For the evening. How was it then? Because I mean it couldn’t have been liberated for particularly long before that time.
IH: Oh no. No. It was very bleak at that time. There must have been some shops but there was no, no light. No nightlife. I suppose we spent our money I suppose going to some local pub or would be. I don’t remember having anything having a meal of any sort. And certainly the, we’d spent the night in an old German barracks which were very primitive. Just a night but again at that age you don’t, not at all conscious of any, any, any discomfort. Took it all in [pause] took it all in our stride.
JS: That, that must have been quite a rare experience though for someone in your squadron to end up if you like having to put down on the continent.
IH: Oh yes.
JS: And then come back because to a certain extent you were on the right side of the line so to speak.
IH: Yes. Yes. Yes. That’s right.
JS: Ok. As a, as a Bomber Command veteran how do you think you were treated after the war when you came back?
IH: Well, very well indeed. No complaints at all. We were demobbed and given a suit of clothes. A new suit of clothes. I think a hundred pounds. And things were very different. Very strict, strict rationing then and there was strict rationing for about seven or eight years afterwards. But again, these hardships don’t mean much to you when you are in your early twenties. You just accept them. No. We were very well treated when we got back. And so I was very glad I joined the RAF in preference to the Army or the Navy. It was a very exhilarating time.
JS: You, you mentioned when we spoke earlier about Churchill’s attitude to Bomber Command and, and the end of the war.
IH: Yes. Yes, indeed. Well, Churchill had authorised or instructed I should say the bombing of Dresden. Up to that time the, the Germans had been bombing British cities, killing a lot of people and there was a great animosity towards the Germans and a great support for the RAF. For the bombing operations they carried out. But once the war ended I think it’s a slight change. The criticism of the bombing of the German towns especially Dresden. And I was a very keen supporter of Churchill during the war. I think he did a marvellous job. I was slightly disappointed at his lack of support for the Bomber Command at the end. And I think however it was understandable. He wanted, Churchill was keen to get back in to power in parliament and he thought that too much support of the bombing of Germany might damage his chances of being successful. But, and that, that was I think quite understandable. So, but no I was a keen supporter of Churchill really and that was, and I understood his reason for what he did.
JS: When you went to Karachi did you have a choice to be demobbed before that or was that just where you were sent?
IH: No. Just where I was sent. Yes. At that time. Yes. I ‘d been switched to Transport Command at that time and we were being demobbed in groups according to when, how long you’d been in service and I had a year after the war ended before I was demobbed. My turn. When my turn came up.
JS: But, but the thing you were doing in Karachi was predominantly to do with if you like that flow of, of prisoners and service personnel coming home then.
IH: Exactly. They all, they all I think came through Karachi and Transport Command at that time was taking them back home.
JS: And, and what sort of aircraft were doing the majority of that work?
IH: I think they were mostly Liberators. Big American planes in Karachi. In Transport Command. At that time I remember I was sent to Cairo for a few days to check up on the, the route and that was a Liberator I was on. And I found Cairo an interesting place. It [pause] the, then I came back to, went back again to Karachi and eventually we were demobbed. We came back. Yes. By, by sea it was. We flew out to Karachi but we came out by sea through the Suez Canal and that took quite a long time in these days. I can’t remember. Quite a long time. Going out to Karachi took, took about three days. Various stops in North Africa. But coming home of course by sea was a very pleasant experience. It was all over then.
JS: So, so what, what sort of ship did you come back on? Can you remember?
IH: I can’t remember the name of it. Like I can remember the name of the boat going out to Canada. The Mauretania. But I can’t remember the name of the boat, the ship we came back in. It was a passenger, a passenger liner. That’s all.
JS: Great. That’s been super.
IH: That’s great.
JS: Thank you very much for sharing.
IH: That’s a great pleasure.
JS: That’s been very —
IH: It’s been a great pleasure.
JS: Very, very interesting.
IH: A great pleasure indeed.
JS: Thank you very much. I’ll stop this.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Ian Henderson
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
James Sheach
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
2017-10-17
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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AHendersonIG171017
Format
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00:35:43 audio recording
Language
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eng
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Alberta--Edmonton
Belgium
Belgium--Brussels
Great Britain
Germany
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Urft Dam
Pakistan
Pakistan--Karachi
England--Lincolnshire
Alberta
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-12
1945-02-13
1945-02-14
Description
An account of the resource
Ian Henderson was born in Lockerbie and studied law at the University of Edinburgh for two years before joining the Royal Air Force. He travelled to Canada onboard the RMS Mauretania to train as a pilot, after two months near Edmonton on Oxford and Anson aircraft, Ian transferred to navigator training. He joined 153 Squadron at RAF Scampton flying Lancasters. Ian’s crew included Pilot Donald Legg from South Africa, Wireless Operator Russel Rawlings from Canada, Bomb Aimer Dave Jones from Wales, Upper Gunner Andy Anders from England, Rear Gunner Jack Beat and Flight Engineer Jack Ross from Scotland. He recalled an operation on the Urft Dam in December 1944 where his aircraft P–Peter suffered an engine fire due to anti-aircraft fire and they carried out a forced landing in Brussels, then under Allied control. After a night spent in an ex German army barracks his crew flew home to RAF Scampton aboard a transport aircraft. His damaged Lancaster was destroyed on the ground at Brussels in a Luftwaffe attack shortly after. Ian described using both Gee and H2S navigation aids, with Gee being jammed by the Germans for perhaps 50% of the duration of an operation. On the 13/14 February 1945 Ian took part in an operation on Dresden, he described how to the crews it was just another operation. Crews were briefed that it was at the request of the Russians who feared German troops were amassing in the area. When they were around 90 miles from the target Ian recalled being told there was no need to navigate further as the fires from the burning city were clearly visible. Ian was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal. On completion of 30 operations Ian was commissioned and transferred to Transport Command as a navigation briefing officer. Posted to Karachi he briefed crews making the journey from the Far East to Great Britain on known hazards they could face. Returning back in 1946 he resumed his studies at the University of Edinburgh before joining his father’s law firm in Lockerbie.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jim Sheach
Julie Williams
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
153 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
B-24
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Distinguished Flying Medal
forced landing
Gee
H2S
Lancaster
navigator
Oxford
pilot
RAF Scampton
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1103/11562/ARogersLC160822.1.mp3
ad21d284dbbdd015f55a5a200970cce9
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
Rogers, Lawrence Clark
L C Rogers
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Lawrence Clark Rogers (1063761, 189969 Royal Air Force). He completed a tour of operations as a wireless operator / air gunner with 75 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Rogers, LC
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DB: Right. I’m interviewing Lawrence Clark Rogers at xxx in Huddersfield, and it’s the 22nd of August 2016 at 8.30pm and we’re in the interviewee’s home. Lawrence, could you tell me a little bit about your life and how it, how it is with the RAF?
LR: Yes. I think I can. If I can remember I will tell you of course. But schooldays, after schooldays. Well school, I went to school and I wasn’t over keen on school at all, but I decided, at the age of seventeen, that I’d like to — I knew that I would be called up. So, I didn’t want to go in the Navy, I can’t swim, I didn’t want to go in the Army, so I thought, right, I’ll go in the Air Force, so, I went down to the Drill Hall in Huddersfield and volunteered. I told my Father, I told my Mother, who wasn’t at all pleased, but she said she would, alright in the Air Force as long as I didn’t fly, which I promised. And from there on, I went to East Kirby – West Kirby, sorry, near Liverpool, and I was there for the training. I remembered the time when we first joined. When we first entered there, we got a good meal, and then the day after, we were signed in and the sergeant who took us out said, ‘Now, you’ve not got a name. You’ve got a ‘B’ number’. So, we did quite a lot of drill there, on the parade ground, the aircraft engine in the distance was going so all the shouting, this, that and the other. And from there I went to Wigtown in Scotland where I was an instructor. Oh no, sorry, I went first of all because I signed up for a wireless operator when I volunteered. They asked for volunteers, we put our names up, our hands up, and we went to Blackpool for the wireless. Did our drill on the bottom prom, all the holidaymakers on the top prom watching us. And then we went to Yatesbury, which was the station for aircrew and we did the radio wireless training there, and then from there, I got posted to Wigtown. No, I think I got that out of context a little. Wigtown in Scotland, I was there, posted there as an instructor on wireless operation. This went quite normally. It was a nice station. They provided us with a bicycle and this, that and the other, food wasn’t too bad, and we flew in Ansons. And on one trip, which the, it was usually from Wigtown down to Anglesey and back, all the time. Most of the time they sent us up north a bit and we got a recall. It was a bad day and we got a recall and he asked the navigator, pupil navigator where we were, and he didn’t seem to know. So the pilot said, ‘I’ll fly five minutes west and then come down over the sea’. We flew five minutes west, we didn’t come down in the sea. We crashed in the Kingsborough fleet, I think they called it Hibble Hill – the place where we crashed. We were there quite for a while in cloud, probably twenty four hours, something like that, till the clouds broke in the morning and I was flashing, there was aircraft about. I was flashing my aldis lamp and I couldn’t, I couldn’t transmit but I could receive. It had been damaged in the aircraft. If we’d have missed this part where we should have, where we did crash then missed that, we’d have gone nose first into higher mountains just further on. But anyhow, that didn’t happen. The group captain came over in his Tiger Moth and dropped us a big parcel of food which was, I don’t know, a cheese sandwich in — it was supposed to be, I don’t know how thick. Two big slices of bread, it was terrible. Anyhow, later on, after a few hours, they climbed up the, and brought us down. We didn’t get survivor’s leave, I don’t know why, but we didn’t. Anyhow, I was stationed there for two years actually, and we tried our best to get down to, to get on the squadron. Eventually we were sent to OUT, I think it was Chedburgh, and from there, we were posted to 218 Gold Coast Squadron, Woolfox Lodge. I did about eight or nine, about nine operations from there, and then we lost our pilot. He had an accident. Not a flying accident but an accident on the road, and we were transferred to 75 New Zealand squadron. We were approached by a squadron leader, we were given a new pilot, Squadron Leader Rogers, a New Zealand pilot, and he was in charge of, I don’t know, I think it was A group pilot. We got all the dirty jobs, of course. used to pass us, ‘You, light the fire’, and this, that and those things, didn’t want to delegate too much. And we did the rest of the operations there. I did thirty two, if I remember correctly, operations, because I had to do two operations with another pilot who hadn’t got a wireless operator. And on the thirtieth operation of mine, I could have packed in, but the crew wanted me to carry on, and do the, do up to the thirtieth, so I did two more, of course, which I did thirty two. From there, we were posted down to London, to go overseas. They messed us around quite a bit. At first, we were going to sail from there, and then they said we were going to fly from there, I can’t remember the place where we flew from, but we flew from there to Karachi. I was stationed in Karachi for quite a while. There was a, what was the first [pause], what it was? I forget what it was – the first job I was doing, but the second job was when we were posted to Singapore just before the capitulation by the Japanese. We went by landing craft, which was going back to Australia, and we landed in Singapore at roughly, on the same day as the capitulation came up. And I was accommodation officer for one of the forward, I went over in a landing craft that was going back with twenty four drivers and escorts, doing the chapatis on the desk — on the deck and things like that. I met a good friend from Pocklington, I’ve forgotten his name now, oh dear. Anyhow, we were together in India all the time, and I got, I wasn’t there too long actually. We sailed back to England, I don’t remember [pause], if I remember correctly, it was after, after the capitulation by Germany, and after VJ day as well. And whilst I was there in Singapore, it was arranged between Audrey and myself, my late wife, that we should get married, and we came back to Lichfield, and from there, I had two or three different intervals, because I didn’t want to go back to the job where I were, which was a travel agent. But we had two or three interviews, I had two or three different jobs, short jobs, two or three weeks jobs and then I got a job. A choice of jobs between textiles again and engineering, I decided to go in for engineering and I worked at the engineering firm, which was WC Holmes at that time, at Huddersfield, for thirty two years, I think it was, something like that anyhow. And I retired there at sixty four, voluntary redundancy. I’d been trying for redundancy since I was sixty, and at sixty four, I got it. A new director came up, which was very friendly with me, and he called me to the office. He said, ‘Lawrence, do you want to be made redundant?’ I said, ‘Yes please’. He said, ‘You’ll be first on the list tomorrow’, which I was. And since then, I’ve had a great retirement. I still drive at my age of ninety four, I still play bowls for the league, and I play snooker for the league also. And I’ve really enjoyed my retirement. I’ve been retired now thirty years, I think it is, and I’ve got four grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren and we’re quite a happy family. I, regretfully, I wanted my eldest son Graham, to go down and get, and go inside the Lancaster. My wife went with me down to Hendon years ago, and they allowed us to go in. I wrote to the people first, and they said, ‘Just make yourself known’, but when I went down to Hendon again, they wouldn’t. They wouldn’t let us go in the aircraft at all, but they did put a platform up, so that we could go up and look in through the pilot’s window, but we couldn’t see where the wireless operator was, of course. And just shortly after that, my son got very ill, had a major operation and he died some ten weeks ago, 10th of June this year, and I’ve now got two great-granddaughters that look after me. They do, they really look after me. I have a youngest son who now lives in Wales, I get invited down there, and he comes up here regularly, reasonably regularly anyhow, and we get — he’s a very good son. Just no distinguishing between the two really and I treated them both the same, and that’s about it. I’m still here and there we are.
[recording paused]
There was one incident whilst I was in the Air Force, that I was home on leave and I was on a squadron at the time, and I met my friend at the bus stop, as I was going back off leave. Kenneth Richardson, they called him, and he was, I didn’t know, but he’d joined the RAF, and he joined Bomber Command. And he went out, I don’t know whether it was his first or his second trip, but he never returned, and he’s never been found as far as I know, anyhow, and, you know, I would have liked to known what, you know, what happened to him. But it’s a long time ago and there we are.
[recording paused]
Yes, and another addition, that I was just looking at the photograph of my crew in front of the Lancaster. There was George, who was a Cockney from London, he was the oldest man of the crew. Next was Ron Brown, who was the flight engineer, and a very good friend of mine. Even after the war, we used to see each other and visit each other. Then there was Brian, who came from Birmingham. He was, well he was the joker of the family, I mean, at one time, we were in the station going back off leave, and he went up to this woman and asked her how she got her fur coat, but that’s beside the point. Harry was the pilot, Harry Sheldon, he lived in Nottingham. He was a nice fella. He moved to Canada and he’s since died, you know. Ron has also passed away, next one along is myself, and then there was Tom, Tom Brook, Tom [pause], I’ve forgotten his last name. He was the rear gunner and I don’t know roughly where, I’ve not heard from him. And then Don was the navigator, Don Whittaker. He has since passed away, of course, but he was a very nice fella. He lived very close to me and I used to visit, and during the war, he ran a small car, actually, and he used to pick me up at Stockport and take me down. We used to sleep halfway, and about 5 o’clock in the morning, there used to be a knock on the window. It was the land girls who went on duty, and they used to wake us up, to, so we could continue the journey. And that’s about it. 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 Lawrence Clark Rogers
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Denise Boneham
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
2016-08-22
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ARogersLC160822
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:14:31 audio recording
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Singapore
England--Rutland
England--Suffolk
England--Staffordshire
England--Lichfield
Pakistan
Pakistan--Karachi
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
Description
An account of the resource
Lawrence Rogers joined the Royal Air Force at 17, and trained to become a wireless operator. He served with 218 Squadron at RAF Woolfox Lodge and then with 75 Squadron, flying in both Ansons and Lancasters, He eventually completed 32 operations with Bomber Command. Lawrence tells of being stationed in Karachi and Singapore, the latter just before the Japanese capitulation. Reminisces of coming back to Lichfield for his wedding. Lawrence tells of his retirement from WC Holmes Engineering Firm - playing bowls, snooker and still driving at the age of 94. He talks about his family and his visit to Royal Air Force Museum at Hendon with his wife and son.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Vivienne Tincombe
Language
A language of the resource
eng
218 Squadron
75 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
crash
Lancaster
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Woolfox Lodge
training
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1106/11565/ARossiterHC150913.2.mp3
fec6b127aef3d0344f0ef2e51fba0776
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
Rossiter, Harry
Henry Charles Rossiter
H C Rossiter
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Harry Rossiter (1922 - 2019, 1332079 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a wireless operator / air gunner with 115 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-23
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Rossiter, HC
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AS: This is an interview for the International Bomber Command Centre at Lincoln carried out by Adam Sutch on the 23rd of September 2015 with Mr Harry Rossiter who carried out a full tour as a wireless operator on Bomber Command. Harry, thanks ever so much for agreeing to this interview. It’s fantastic to get the chance to talk to people with, with such memories. Could we start with a little about where you come from and your background before you ever joined the Air Force?
HR: Yes. I was born in Stratford, East London on the 11th of August 1922. And when I was ten years old, we moved out in to Essex. In a place called Laindon which you may, talking of the Battle of Britain I had a ringside view of that. Anyway, we’ll come to that presently. In 1938 I was a member of a District Scout Rover crew whose aim in those days was to do anything for public service and learn to lead the proper life. And part of it was I joined the air raid precautions. That was in April 1939. I took an anti-gas course. Learning all about the various types of poison gas that might be used against the British civilian population. Following on from that I became a cyclist messenger when the war actually broke out in 1939, at the age of seventeen. And it was very well organised on a district basis. The idea being that if the telephone service broke down there was an admirable means of district communication. I served in that until I joined the RAF. I cycled up to the Romford Recruiting Centre where I said I’d like to be a telegraphist in the Navy. ‘There are no vacancies at the moment but the RAF desperately need wireless operator air gunners. What about that?’ So I said, ‘Well yes. Alright. If they’re so —' [laughs] So I could do six words a minute Morse code from my time in the Boy Scouts which came in very useful. Ultimately on the 16th of January I attested at Uxbridge as 1332079 AC2 Henry Charles Rossiter. And they said to a gang of quite a lot of us, ‘We’re not ready to start aircrew training yet as far as you’re concerned. You can go home and wait six months and we’ll send for you on RAF pay. Or you can come in straight away.’ So, we all looked at one another. Well, we’d all said our goodbyes and whatnot so we’ll come in. And so, a group of us was sent to Northern Ireland on ground defence outside Lisburn, Lisburn Landing Ground it was called, which actually was a blessing in disguise because by the time we did start aircrew training we was marching like all seasoned airmen. And I noticed that particularly. One of my, a chap I became rather friendly he came straight out of the [unclear] university and he was seen, found crying because he was homesick. But by the time we left there he was just one of us and quite a decent chap. I do hope he survived the war. His uncle was an air vice marshal and he wrote to his uncle several times, ‘When are we going to start our training?’ In August ’41 we did. I went to Blackpool to do Morse training. And then we were sent to ground operating to get experience and so I went to 16 Group Headquarters in Gillingham which was an area combined headquarters. And I was there for six months doing ground operating. Which is very useful. I’ll tell you a funny little story about that. The sets we had were like packing trunks. About, you know, about a foot wide, deep, called the Tin 84. Thirteen valve set, excellent radio. And there was a repair gang that used to go around keeping them in order. One of them was a Sergeant Moran and he was known, always known in his absence as Spike Moran. So, one day I’m sitting there and it went dead. And instead of engaging brain before mouth I said, ‘Spike. My radio’s dead.’ And of course, he came and thumped his fist on the table, ‘How dare you call me Spike? Sergeant Moran to you’ [laughs] Anyway, profuse apologies and the set was fixed. In August ’42 [pause] wait a minute. I’m ahead of myself. I said I went to Morse training. I forgot to say in the August, in the Autumn of 1941 we went to Yatesbury in Wiltshire where Number 2 Signals School where I did my radio. And I played, I played trumpet in a brass band in a dance band and cornet in a brass band and my training suffered for a little bit. But anyway, I passed and as I say we were sent on ground operating. Then in August ’42 went to Madley in Herefordshire to do flying training. We flew in the Domini. That’s a twin-engine aircraft with five, five students, the pilot and instructor. And we took it in turns to sit on the radio and do an exercise. I wondered what that scruffy looking biscuit tin with the rope handle was doing in the corner but I managed to keep my food to myself. That’s alright [laughs] Anyway, following on from that we did some training in the Percival Proctor. A single engine aircraft. Just myself and the pilot. And I passed alright and then I was sent to gunnery school in Walney Island just off the coast at Barrow. Now these, the Gunnery School there used the Boulton Paul Defiant. Rather unusual for gunnery training but that’s all they were fit for really after their initial success and of course they were quite good as a night fighter. But the fighter, fighter command couldn’t use them anyway. Did my training on Defiants. This is August. No, it was later than that. My memory [pause] where were we? Oh yes. I’ve got it here. September 1942 posted to Air Gunner’s School, Walney Island. And of course, it was still summery weather and after we’d done our little detail the pilot hopped along the beach to Blackpool and we flew along the sand almost at zero feet. All the holidaymakers waving to us. And after that we finished our gunnery school, gunnery course. ‘We want four volunteers for Coastal Command,’ So, Bomber Command’s not too clever these days. Yes, all right. What we didn’t know of course was that it was to train on torpedo bombers. The Bristol Beaufort which wasn’t very clever [laughs]. To cut a long story short we went to Number 5 OTU where they trained people on Bristol Beauforts. A crew of four. A pilot, the observer who was a navigator/bomb aimer and two wireless operator/air gunners. And we were quite a happy team as regards the crew. And then we did our torpedo training and then they said, ‘Right. You’re going off to —' They didn’t tell us in words of course. It was a bit hush hush but what it transpired, what it came out to us we were to reinforce 217 Squadron in Ceylon. So we found ourselves at Portreath in Cornwall on the 12th of June ready to fly out. But the radio, there was trouble with the radio so delayed for twenty four hours. Anyway, we flew out and when we got to Karachi in India where all the aircraft entering India had to be serviced and made ready for tropical service, you know. Water tanks and all that sort of stuff. Special air filters and all that. They declared all Bristol Beauforts were now obsolete. Considering that we went to the Bristol Aeroplane Works and collected a brand new Beaufort and it had got twenty hours off the assembly line it seems an awful waste of taxpayer’s money. But there it was. We kicked our heels at the aircrew transit port in Poona. And all aircrew in those days were more or less during the war quite multi-national. A lot of Australians. And of course they kicked up a fuss. They were a bit uninhibited and who could blame them? They’d come all the way from Australia and then they’d only been messed about by the stupid poms as they called us. Anyway, be that as it may. In November we left Bombay on a troop ship and got home eventually on the 4th of January. And after leave we went to the Advanced Flying Unit in Millom to start re-training on Bomber Command. And after training we joined a squadron, 115 Squadron on the 15th of August 1944. And the rest, and the rest as you say is history. Not quite I suppose because we had and we were very lucky. We were attacked by night fighters several times but the skill and the sharp eyes of the gunners and the skill of the pilot we never received any damage at all. The only time we did the Germans were holding out at Le Havre. We went there four times. The first couple of times were rather, was a bit tragic in a way because a lot of Frenchmen got killed. They’d sent us to the wrong place. But the last one we did we were well and truly we found them and they put a cannon shell in our port outer. We stopped it but a Lancaster can fly well on three engines so we were in no danger but that’s how low we were. They said, ‘Do not bomb below nine hundred feet if the cloud base is at such.’ The bomb aimer, being a very enthusiastic Northern Irishman, I won’t use his exact words he just said, — concern [laughs] ‘The flak. Let’s bomb.’ Which we did and as I say we got a cannon shell in our port outer for our sins. The only time we ever got damaged. And I remember standing up in the astrodome looking, plugged into my radio, making that extra pair of eyes and in the night time it was, well it’s as though you’re watching a film in a way. I can’t quite explain it. Deep down you were, you were scared. Anybody who says they weren’t either have got no imagination or they’re telling lies. You couldn’t help it. You knew damn well what was going on. I mean you could see a Lanc, a Lancaster, it wasn’t quite as pitch black as you might think. What with the fires we were flying over and the searchlights you could see quite a distance and you could see a Lancaster suddenly a big, a great big red ball of fire. A big ball of fire as they say, there it goes, and the bomb aimer would say, ‘Chalk port.’ Which meant somebody had got it, you know. And that’s how it was. And then we did a lot of daylight raids and that was another danger. I’ve got the piece here to show you in here. This is, this is A Flight. The Flight I was in. Yes. Those two aircraft, those mentioned on there, they said they collided. But we had other ideas about that because we were bombing on radar. Very accurate. There was a great deal of accuracy with this stuff called GH. And it resulted in several aircraft trying to be in the same spot in the same, in the sky at the same time. And of course, what happened? They dropped their bombs on the one below. And though it just, it just says they collided. But three times standing looking up I looked straight up in the open bomb bay of a Lancaster direct above us. Obviously, they knew we were there otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here but three times that happened. It was scary that was.
AS: And because both of these aeroplanes are down as collided —
HR: Yeah.
AS: The explosion took both aeroplanes out.
HR: Absolutely and that means Runnymede panel. That means there’s no known grave.
AS: Yeah.
HR: At Runnymede there’s a memorial to twenty seven thousand RAF and Allied aircrew who have no known grave.
AS: Yeah.
HR: So, some of them just, well they were all atomised I suppose you’d say. A full bomb load. Two aircraft colliding on their way to Dortmund. That’s where we were going. And the last occasion we were flying our last drop and there’s a bit of a tradition to be try and be the first back. So, the skipper tried a little experiment. I was looking out the astrodome and I could see the bursts of the anti-aircraft. They had got our height exactly and each burst was coming closer. The rear gunner said, ‘Skipper. They’re knocking on the back door.’ So he quickly dived back into the cover provided by Window. Metalised strips that confused the German radar. That was the other, that was the other case when we nearly, when we were in danger. But David, David Jenkins, the pilot, he was completely unflappable. If you look at that photograph, you’ll see. The next. He’s the tallest one. Now, that one, that’s Bill Ranson, a pharmaceutical chemist in civvy street. He was about ten years older than us. A hard headed Yorkshireman. And [laughs] they didn’t get on too well together but it never showed up because we functioned as a very good crew together. But he would sometimes say, ‘Jenks,’ he called him Jenks for short, ‘We’re one degree port of track.’ [unclear] Completely unflappable and he rightly got the DFC. If, if you look, if you look at that I can tell you. That’s the flight engineer. He was, he was a regular. He joined as a boy, a boy entrant, as a mechanic. That’s the mid-under gunner. Where are we? See that there? That’s a .5 sticking out the bottom. He sat astride a big hole with a .5 pointing up like that because the Germans used to go underneath.
AS: That is unusual. Does, does that mean then that you didn’t have H2S?
HR: That’s right. Yes.
AS: You had a .5 fitting.
HR: That’s right. Yeah. And next to him is Bill Ranson I told you about. That’s Bob. Bob Patton from Dungannon. The bomb aimer. And that’s myself. And that’s Bill Gorbon, the rear gunner and this chap is Reg Bijon from Vancouver. Royal Canadian Air Force. He’s the mid-upper. So we had eight in our crew instead of seven.
AS: So, many nations. From Canada to Yorkshire.
HR: Oh yes. Yeah. They had a lot of Australians, New Zealanders. One or two West Indians. Several Canadians. Bomber Command was really a multi-national force. One of our flight commanders was from the South African Air Force. And he achieved a little bit of notoriety. Well, that was the wrong way because he was doing a good thing. Towards the end of the war the Germans had taken all the food they could from Holland and they were starving. So 115 Squadron was selected to drop them some emergency food parcels. The Germans agreed not to fire on them and this chap, this South African, Captain Martin his name was, he led, he led the first drop of food to the starving Dutchmen. Later on, of course it was very well organised. And when the war ended the Americans joined in as well and dropped it. Ever so many food parcels for the starving Dutchmen. Anyway, so our tour came to an end of ops. We all went our different ways. I think I’m the only surviving member, they’re all they’re nearly all dead now, they are. I used to keep in, keep in quite contact with him. Bill Gorbon. He moved to Canada. Who else? Oh and of course, David. David Jenkins, the pilot. They’ve all, they’ve all shuffled off I’m afraid. I’m the last surviving member of the crew. Now, what are my thoughts about Bomber Command? Well at the time we were doing a job to shorten the war. Occasionally you thought, you know, those poor buggers down there are getting the rough end of it. But then we were told it was necessary because there was a lot of talk about area bombing. We were always given a target to bomb. Factories. Always factories. We did a lot of Ruhr bashing. And there’s only one, one occasion when we were aware of it. We did a raid on Stettin which is a long way away. We took off, we took off at dusk and landed at dawn. We were out all night on that one. Nine hours ten minutes. And it was a ship repair facility and the idea was to burn the workers out of their homes so that they couldn’t work on the ships. That was the idea. Now the only time we ever mentioned, ‘Your target tonight is the old city of Stettin which is occupied by a lot of people repairing ships. If your raid is successful, they won’t be able to any more.’ It wasn’t particularly aimed at the population. It was just aimed at their houses so they had to move out. Whether it worked or not I don’t know. We did several raids on Stettin. The raid I did was with another crew. That’s how I came to do thirty ops, because normally only the pilot, his first trip was with another crew so the rest of the crew only did twenty nine but I did another one with another crew and that’s how I did thirty. After my ops I was posted to an air sea rescue station at Beccles. They were flying the Warwick which was like a larger version of the Wellington and they could carry an airborne lifeboat. It dropped on three parachutes. And on the station strength there I was working in the ops room as what they called signals briefing. If a crew was going out they all took it in turns to put them up to date if there were any changes. I always used to remind them make sure you switch your sets on and check that they’re on. Because there was [laughs] an unfortunate incident that happened regarding a rather senior member. Anyway, that’s by the way. That was part of my job and while I was on the squadron. I was promoted flight sergeant. And in due course of time I was promoted warrant officer. Well, the station closed in August ’45. Just after VJ day. And 280 Squadron as they were were sent up to Thornaby on Tees. So, there we are. There were four of us, four warrant officers doing this job, signals briefing as it was called, and we were all out of a job. And the chap who took over the command of the station said, ‘Look you chaps I’ve got four jobs for you. Pick them out and please yourself.’ And we looked and one of them was station warrant officer. And that’s the one I picked. So, I suddenly found myself the senior NCO on the station. Only about a hundred and fifty men left because they were just packing up stores mainly. But I had a job to do and I did it. And one of them, before the signals staff were posted away, ‘Mr Rossiter would you like to take the wireless operators out in the perimeter track and give them a spot of drill?’ I thought yeah okay, ‘Righto sir,’ and I did. And they, you’re not supposed to move when you are giving orders. So, I’ve got a good voice and they’re marching along and a lorry went by just as I shouted out, ‘About turn.’ And you’ll never believe this. Half of them turned and the other half didn’t. So, they were [laughs] ‘About turn,’ and of course they both turned inwards and they collapsed with laughter, you see. This is perfectly true and it couldn’t, it couldn’t have been worked better if they’d prepared for it. It was so funny. But that was my experience of drilling. Anyway, the time came when the station completely closed and they sent me up to Thornaby to do the same job with the squadron. Briefing. Signals briefing. And I was discharged from there. Well there’s one little thing. My Lorraine was born in March ’45. She was just coming up to fourteen months old and my wife said, ‘Can you try and get a pushchair?’ Well there was a Halfords. Just across the river from Thornaby is Stockton on Tees and there was a Halfords there. And I bought a pushchair for the grand sum of two pounds ten shillings. Quite a sturdy thing and just before I left Thornaby the group captain said to me, ‘Well, I see you’ve had a year’s signals experience. You’d probably keep your rank if you stayed in the regular Air Force,’ because normally you drop a rank. He said, ‘You’ll probably keep yours but I can’t make any promises.’ I said ‘Well sir I’ve got a daughter — a wife and daughter, and I think my first loyalty is to them. So, thank you very much sir but I must decline the offer.’ So, the following day I’m walking out the station. I’ve got a kit bag, an attaché case and a pushchair. Transport. And I walked out and he came by and said ‘I see what you mean by domestic responsibilities!’ he said [laughs] Yeah. That ends my tale of RAF service and — any questions?
AS: Absolutely, Harry. That, that is the best, most joined up, most coherent presentation I have ever seen.
HR: Thank you.
AS: Ever heard. Thank you very much for that. I think we’ll pause and have a chat about some of the things that are in it if that’s alright.
[recording paused]
AS: There is of course more after RAF service, Harry.
HR: Yes. When I was discharged from the RAF in May 1946 I could strip a Browning gun in the dark and I could send Morse and receive Morse code at eighteen words a minute. I hadn’t got enough flying hours in to join civil flying so I went where I could earn money and it turned out to be the Ford Dagenham. Ford’s at Dagenham. Building gear boxes. The pay was good and their formula was very simple. You work and we’ll pay you accordingly and I got a decent wage but my health began to suffer. I did six years. There I was, half asleep, taking the gear box off the line, putting the back end on, putting it back on. Forty seconds that took and I could do it without thinking about it. Anyway, as I say my health began to suffer. I was always catching colds and my hands were perpetually permeated in grease. So wherever I did, you know. Anyway, I said to Edna, my wife, ‘I need to get out of there. I need an outdoor job.’ Right. You know, ‘You can see I’m not all that much.’ She said, ‘Why don’t you join the police force?’ Well, I was horrified. Me a copper? But it was the best thing I ever did.
AS: Yeah.
HR: Because I was outdoors. The middle photo there is when I was a village policeman. A constable. Village constable. And the one above is my wife standing at the door of the police house. A place called Horndon on the Hill in South Essex. And I had six very happy years there. Or we did. They used to come and speak to her as much as they spoke to me because if she didn’t know she knew where, some way to find out and she was very popular in the village. And she loved it and so did I. But in the fullness of time they decided to make me a sergeant and I was posted to Chelmsford and I was in the town there. And then I was sent on a rural section. I don’t know if you ever watched that programme “Heartbeat.” Well it’s similar to that but, mind you not all my men were on duty at the same time. I had to spread them out over like most of the day and night. But that was called a rural section at a place called Danbury which is an Essex beauty spot. I stayed there for six and a half years and then I bought my own, we bought our own house in Braintree. This particular job, a rural sergeant you had to live on the job. So they posted me back to Chelmsford town where I was a station sergeant for about six months. Then I asked to be transferred to Braintree where I was living. So, I finally finished up resigning, retiring from Essex police in August 1977 after twenty five years’ service. And then I went to the Lord Chancellor’s Department in charge of court security at Chelmsford Crown Court. And then I became a county court bailiff. And that was a most interesting job. As a county court bailiff you were entitled to, you were able to do, make legal arrangements. Suppose you owed this sum of money I would come to you and say, ‘Now, you owe this sum of money. How can you pay it? Have you got any way of paying it?’ Well we could manage so much a month. Well, I said, ‘Sign your goods over to me. So long as you do what you say you’re going to do you won’t see me again.’ And occasionally I would, if they were a bit overdue I’d call on them and collect the money. It didn’t matter to me. I wasn’t supposed to but the person got their money. That was the important thing. That’s why I considered that to be the most important. I did get a couple of pats on the back for it. Whenever you’re bending the rules a little. If they’re overdue you’re supposed to take their goods away. But then the plaintiff had got their money. You know. That was the most important thing. So I quite enjoyed doing that.
AS: That’s great. Look. I think we’ll pause again there.
HR: Okay. My arms hurt.
AS: Yeah.
[recording paused]
HR: We were all sent. The three of us, and my friends. The four of us who volunteered were sent to Turnberry. It’s now a golf course but it was an RAF station. On the top of the hill overlooking the golf course as it is now is a large hotel. That was an aircrew hospital. Anyway, I say there was a bunch of us and then there’s this big room. I seem to remember there was some booze knocking about. I’m not quite sure about that. I know it was all very friendly. And I started talking to a chap. He was a Londoner. A chap called Ted Hall. He came from Ely and he was a furniture designer. A bit older than me. So he came to me and he said, ‘I’ve found a nice pilot,’ he says, ‘I think he’s very intelligent. Come with me,’ So we went, and Bill Thompson his name was and he came from Largs in Ayrshire. Quite a well to do family. His uncle was Lord Mackay. He used to run British Caledonian but I didn’t know that at the time. A very likeable chap. Same age as me. A civil engineer. And then we looked around. Of course, we had what they called an observer. An observer being the one who had both trades of navigator/bomb aimer and he wore the O brevet. And we found this chap was sitting in the corner looking rather disconsolate so we went and spoke to him. He was an older man. [unclear] Monroe. He came from Wimbledon. And so he came and we, the four of us got on very well together. We were together for a year — 1943. And we never never ever had a crossed word between us at all.
AS: And you were all first tour were you?
HR: No. This was, we never did do a tour. This was Coastal.
AS: Yeah.
HR: This was Coastal Command training.
AS: Yeah. So, when you crewed up none of you had ever been on operations?
HR: Oh no. That’s quite right. Yeah.
AS: Okay.
HR: Yeah.
AS: Can you think back to, to what the OTU training involved?
HR: Yes. It’s a Coastal Command. As I say they were torpedo bombers. But they were also used for general reconnaissance. So did a lot of navigational exercises over the Irish Sea and to the northwest of Scotland. What’s the furthest outpost? I forget the name of it now. Out in the Atlantic. We had to fly there by dead reckoning and there was no problem with that. Spot on time. ETA. There it was. You probably know. I just can’t remember the name of it now. It’s a rocky outpost.
AS: Rockall?
HR: This is on the northwest of Scotland. I don’t think that was the name. No. I’m not sure. You may be right. I can’t remember.
AS: I’m rarely right, Harry. We can check that out on the map.
HR: I mean that’s, that’s how, sorry, he was good. Course we all clapped hands [laughs].
AS: Were you involved in the navigation with him? Were you taking bearings, QDMs and all the rest of it?
HR: Well, this involved mainly him. But he did ask me twice for a QDM. You know what that is of course. But mostly his mathematics were spot on which is one of the reasons why I couldn’t. I had to be a wireless operator because my, I left school when I was fourteen. A thorough training. A very good training. The 3Rs.
AS: Yeah.
HR: Excellent. Laindon High Road School. Excellent school. But, oh yeah, one thing I forgot to mention. In November, when I was on the squadron the signals leader, he said, ‘Right son, I’m putting you up for a commission’. Alright but when it came to it of course the flight commander, a Squadron Leader [Gorrey?] I remember him very well. He put a piece of paper and on it was A+B=C. He said, ‘Do you know what that means?’ And it just blinded us. And I said, ‘I’m sorry, sir. I haven’t a clue.’ I mean the most simple. I know all about it now but I didn’t know then. So he said, ‘What sort of education did you have?’ I said, ‘I left school when I was fourteen, sir.’ ‘Oh I see. Well, I’ll pass you on to the squadron commander. See what he thinks.’ Wing Commander Shaw. I remember the name. He said, ‘Well, you’ve obviously got some quality otherwise you wouldn’t have been recommended but I’m afraid your lack of education shows.’ I said, ‘Yes sir. It’s no more than I expected.’ He said, ‘Try again in six months’ time. In the meantime, find a good officer and see what your shortcomings were.’ That’s rather funny. It’s all written down there. And the Irishman, is that him, yes Bob Patton from Dungannon. He got himself blind drunk. He was missing for twenty four hours. They found him in the toilet, dead drunk.
AS: The gents, I hope.
HR: Was he a good officer? [laughs] Flying officer, in fact he was. Anyway, there we are. But the war, the war in Europe finished in six months because I’d finished my ops in December ’44.
AS: On, on the Coastal you told us there were two wireless operator/air gunners. Did you switch duties?
HR: That’s right. Well we had a gun turret in the Beaufort. Two gun turrets. So, one worked it and then another day he’d say, ‘Harry, would you like a turn and I’ll go and sit in the turret?’ That’s how we worked. Very friendly. As I say this lot we performed quite well. We all seemed to do our job. There was no arguments in the air but when we finished our tour the group captain said, ‘We’d like you to go on Pathfinders. You’re a good crew. But you’ve got to go together. So he said, ‘I’m not flying with him anymore.’ So that was that. So there, as I say we had so we had a reputation as a good crew. Otherwise they wouldn’t have said that.
AS: So when, when you’d come back from India you’d been in the Air Force quite a long time.
HR: Two years. Yeah.
AS: Were you really keen to get on to operations or —
HR: Well, yeah we were really. I mean, we were completely in the dark as to what we were going to do. Didn’t know we were going on to Bomber Command. We guessed we might be. The possibility. But we didn’t know until all of us got our embarkation leave. We thought to RAF Number 2 Advanced Flying Unit. And that’s what it was about.
AS: And so you, in a sense you’re going through the training mill again.
HR: Yeah.
AS: For a very different job. What —
HR: So 1943 was a complete waste of time because that’s when we did all our Coastal Command training.
AS: Yeah.
HR: A complete waste of time. And then when you shudder, it makes you think, taxpayer’s money. I mean. There was about twenty crews. Not as many as that. About fifteen. About fifteen. I think it must have been at least fifteen crews flew out from Portreath to India. Diverted to join 217 Squadron in Ceylon. As I say that was as far as we got. Karachi and Poona. Poona was just a, just a rest camp really. It didn’t, the CO was a Wing Commander Beck and I really felt sorry for him because he did his best. Him and his adjutant was a Squadron Leader Findlay Fleming. They did their best to find us things for us to do but the Aussies didn’t appreciate it very much. One day, oh and incidentally we were all issued with 38 Smith and Wessons when we left to go to India. Why, I don’t know. We never knew. Anyway, afternoon in Poona all taking a nap and these Indians, there’s a road ran through the camp, these Indians with their monkeys performing tricks. ‘See the monkey dance sahib?’ You know. And suddenly a bang bang bang. Looked out and there’s these chaps running for their lives. And this Aussie is sort of clinging around this post of his, blazing away, over their heads of course. ‘You, waking us up. Waking us up you silly bastards,’ et cetera et cetera. So, there was a hell of a stink of course. They called in all our revolvers. We didn’t want them anyway. But there you are. That’s typical of Aussies. There was another occasion too when we were on OTU. A couple of chaps came in late and they were arguing the toss so one of these Aussies, ‘Put that light out.’ ‘Get knotted.’ ‘I said put that light out.’ Old gunner et cetera. So he pulls out an air pistol and shoots the bulb out.
AS: Yeah. On, on this year, or more than a year when you were training and then on the Coastal and out to India did your music, did you take that through or did, as well?
HR: Yes. At various because I used to do a lot of trumpet playing. Because what happened, when I was twelve I was in the Boy Scouts Brass Band and there was [unclear] at a place called the Manor Mission which is the only part of old Laindon left. Everything else has gone. Anyway, and they had an adult brass band and one of them volunteered to be the band master. So he said to my uncle who had played tenor horn in the band, ‘If we put Harry on tenor horn you’ll see he practises won’t you?’ He said, ‘Of course I will.’ And he did. That was quite fun actually. That’s when I started playing. But we didn’t use the expression cool in those days but it was cool really for a young man to play cornet. You were playing a tune you know. You were somebody. So I did, I graduated to cornet. I tried euphonia first for a while which I quite liked but I had to get on cornets which I did. And that graduated to trumpet playing. And I played in a village dance band called the Rio 7. There were never seven as far as I knew. Edna said they were crap. Those were almost exactly her exact words. But we were the only band in the village so we got plenty of work playing the trumpet. When I went into the RAF, if there was any opportunity, I did some trumpet playing. When I was on my signals course, as I say I played. There was a Training Wing dance band. I played second trumpet. A big band it was too. Mostly Glenn Miller stuff. And other places where we moved to if they had a dance band I’d go and sit along, sit down with them, you know. So I did a fair amount. And 1945 I was in the Beccles place after my tour. Of course, the end of the, the end of the war in Europe there was a lot of parties and that little band we had, we were in great demand and my nose started bleeding. When I saw the MO, he said, ‘Well you’d better pack up the trumpet for a while. It’s a good job it did bleed,’ he said, ‘It may have given you a stroke. High blood pressure like that. So leave it. Leave it off for about six months.’ So I was thinking, alright. I’ve got to play something. I know. I’ll learn to play the piano. So I go in to Beccles and find this lady, very well known in show business called Madame Shapiro. And she gave me the piano lessons and she said, ‘What you’ve got to do is to play scales and play scales every day for an hour at least. You’ve just got to do it and the sooner you can play scales without looking at the keys you’re ready to start playing.’ Well, I hadn’t got the patience. In any case If I started doing that in the sergeants mess I’d probably have something thrown at me. So, I never really did get, did master the piano. But it went off and I was back playing. In 1963 it was, in the police force, the Essex Police Band was formed and Edna said, ‘Well I know you like playing. You go along and play if you want to but you might regret it.’ Very prophetic. I’ll tell you about it in a minute. So I went along and played in the Essex Police Band and I was their principal cornet for a while till somebody along, came along a bit better than me. Then I was the deputy principal cornet. There we are there. That’s it. You can see me sitting. That one. That’s the Essex Police Band 1972. And I had some quite happy times. And what she meant by, ‘You might regret it,’ I was in charge of a small section in North Chelmsford called Melbourne Park and myself and five constables. And the chief constable came along to see me one day, Sir John Nightingale. ‘Sergeant Rossiter, why haven’t you passed your promotion exam?’ I said, ‘I suppose I haven’t studied hard enough.’ He said, ‘Well bloody well get on with it. I need inspectors.’ Well that was most unusual. I’m not kidding you. You don’t get chief constables telling that to sergeants every day. He was inviting me to be, he said ‘I want you to be an inspector but pass your exam.’ I never did. Too much playing you see. That’s what Edna meant. She said afterwards, ‘Well, perhaps you might have been a bit worrying. You’re happy being a sergeant, aren’t you?’ I said, ‘Yeah. It don’t worry me.’
AS: Fantastic. When, when you were back and it’s after D-day by this time you were posted to, to the heavies to crew up all over again. What was that process like? Much the same or —
HR: Much the same. Well it was slightly different. This was at Silverstone. A big old bomber OTU there. We went there in early April and, well actually what happened was in between OTU [pause] no, the AFU at Millom and the OTU we had, we had ten days leave so I got married. In March 1944 we got married. And there was another humorous situation because the vicar, we knew him quite well, I said I’ve only, ‘I’ve only got a few days,’ you know. So he said, ‘Oh that’s alright. I can get you a special licence. Don’t worry about the banns. You haven’t got time for the banns.’ So he got me a special licence. And we were married in this church, ‘And I now pronounce you man and wife’ and he said it, so funny, he said, ‘Oh go on Harry. Kiss her’ [laughs] as if needed prompting. Yeah. And so, there you are. And I, Edna said, ‘Well ask them for an extension of leave then. They can only say no. They can’t shoot you.’ So I did. And of course it came back, ‘No. Come back.’ So, when I started OTU which was at Silverstone, it was a big crowd, about two hundred of us sitting in this room. And the instructor said, ‘One of your number recently took himself a wife. He liked it so much he wanted an extension.’ Ha ha. And my friend said, ‘I bet that was you.’ It was [laughs] Anyway, he left and said, ‘Get yourselves crewed up.’ Well we were wandering about. Now who did I meet first? I can’t remember really. Yeah. Who was it who I met first? No. It wasn’t Bill. I think it was Jenks actually. Yes. I went up. I saw this tall chap with pilot’s wings and he stood here, I said, ‘You looking for a wireless operator?’ ‘Yeah. You’ll do,’ he said. ‘That’s alright. Yeah.’ And then we were joined, who was on next? [pause] One of the gunners. Which one was that? The French Canadian. Reg Bijon. He was the next one. And then, I don’t know how we got on to Bill. Bill Ranson, the navigator. I suppose he was looking sorry for himself. I don’t know. And the flight engineer. We did all our Bomber Command training on Wellington’s which strictly speaking didn’t need a flight engineer. But nevertheless he was part of the crew. And then when we learned to fly four-engined stuff, Stirlings it was called a Conversion Unit. A Heavy Conversion Unit. Then we acquired an extra gunner which was Bill Gorbon. A farmer from Northwich in Cheshire.
AS: Wonderful. Now, you, you’d come off twin-engined coastal. Virtually early, early war so you were doing wireless and DF. Did you have to learn a lot more to cope with the equipment in the heavies or was it much the same equipment?
HR: It wasn’t, it wasn’t a question of it. Just that the, there were, that’s why we had to go to this. Because of the Bomber Command way of doing things. It wasn’t very complicated and already got the basics thoroughly ground in after the service with Coastal Command. As they, as they say, take it on board. It’s quite easy really. Radio silence was strict but there was one. This trip I did with the other crew was different. It was a wind finding aircraft. It’s all in those notes. As you know when you drop a bomb it’s liable to be knocked off course by the wind. So they had to feed, to steer, you steered to allow for it. And that was called wind finding. So what they did, this particular crew every half an hour the navigator and the bomb aimer between them estimated the speed, the speed and direction and I was handed a slip of paper and told to send it back to base. In the Morse code, you know. It was all Morse code. I did it every half an hour. And when Bomber Command, because we weren’t the only aircraft doing it and they worked out what, decided what was a good mean average wind speed and direction and half an hour before zero hour on the raid it would be transmitted to the whole force to be used.
AS: So everybody set the same wind vector on to the bomb sights.
HR: Yeah. Yeah. And it did help but as you know in 1944 things were starting to get better because we had the Gee. The Gee. The Gee box as it was called. A very good thing. Oh that was another funny story. At Beccles this 280 Squadron, occasionally one of us would be sent up with one of the crews to see how they got on and we had a load of ATC boys. About four of them anyway. And the Warwick was quite roomy. A table about this big with, and, so one of them said, ‘Can you show us how you work out.’ So I said, ‘Yes. You —’ I had a copy of the receiver in the thingy, ‘See those bits,’ you know they were lined up, you know. And took the readings off them and put them on to the chart. And we were over the North Sea at the time but according to my calculations we were just off the coast of Cornwall. I thought my face was red. I was using the wrong chart, that’s why [laughs] So we got the right chart and managed to save my face.
AS: Because there, there was more than one Gee chain wasn’t there?
HR: Yeah.
AS: Yeah. Could we talk a little, a little bit about preparations for, for a mission briefing and what not?
HR: Yes. Well —
AS: What was your, you know, day for a raid or a night for a raid? What would be a typical?
HR: Suppose it was a night raid. The, over the tannoy would come, ‘There will be a lecture for navigators at 12 o’clock,’ at so and so. And that was the beginning. That meant that we were going on ops that night and that’s how they announced it. So all the navigators got together and of course they were given all the details and usually joined by the pilots. They found it a good idea to do so. They were allowed to do so if they wanted. Most of them did. And then posted up in the sergeant’s mess and the officer’s mess would be the battle order. A big A4 sheet of paper detailing all the crews that were on it. And that’s when you knew. And then you went on to the main briefing which would be about two hours before or about an hour before take-off time due. Then first of all you’d would get the intelligence officer saying what the raid was all about. Then you get the Met. And then you get the squadron commander. Then you go into details and they used to talk about all, about all up weight, the amount of petrol you were carrying and all that sort of stuff. Don’t quite know what good that was but there you are. And then as I say the squadron commander would go into the details and what to avoid. What’s this and what’s that and don’t forget your banking. We didn’t have, didn’t have a mid-under gunner at first. We used to do banking searches like that to make sure nobody was hiding underneath. And there was, oh yes that was another funny thing which is in there. Before we got the mid-under gunner Paddy the bomb aimer said, ‘I’m going to drop a flare.’ You know, the bombs go. ‘Would you mind walking down and see if it goes?’ Well, we were at oxygen height so I clipped an oxygen bottle to my parachute harness and down I went. Down the fuselage and just as I got to the chute I saw it go down. Zunk. And then suddenly I was thrown off balance. We were being attacked. And I’m in pitch darkness I hadn’t a clue. There’s an intercom socket but I couldn’t find it. So about five seconds there was a bit of panic because I didn’t know what was going on. Whether we were going down in a dive or whatever. But I couldn’t stand up and the reasons why it was the bottle had become detached from my parachute harness and I was treading on it. And that was why I couldn’t stand up. I did. Plugged in and it was okay. I said it went, you know and that was all he wanted to know. But yeah, it’s one of the, one of the only times really when I really was what you might call blind panic because you don’t know what’s going on.
AS: So that was a fighter attack.
HR: Yeah.
AS: At this stage of the war what, were the fighters your chief concerns or the flak or collision or or what?
HR: Fighters really. Yeah. No doubt about it. But they had, they had choice, you know. They were spoiled for choice. And the infamous raid in March on Nuremberg. You may have, if you ever, if anybody talks about the Nuremberg raid they talk about the one in March which was a complete and utter fiasco. We lost a hundred bombers that night. A hundred. Ninety six were shot down, mainly by night fighters and another ten were written off when they got home and crashed. A hundred and six I think is the official figure. One of them is mentioned in there as being number ninety six or something. Shot down.
AS: Picking up on that, and not so much the raid but the loss of aeroplanes, what, how big a factor was, was the weather? Did you ever go out and the weather changed and you end up with this —
HR: Yes.
AS: Big mess over England.
HR: The very last one. December is when Glen Miller was killed. And I’ll tell you what happened. Well it’s been generally accepted what happened. December the 15th we were sent out to bomb a place called [Siegen?] and there was a lot of, the weather was putrid and all civilian flying was cancelled, you know. There was no question of it. Because what happened of course as we climbed up to fifteen to sixteen feet icing took over and one Lancaster, when one Lancaster crashed because of it they called us all back. Well we never landed with a full bomb load. We used to jettison our bombs in The Wash but others jettisoned them in the Channel. What the popular theory is now is that Glen Miller’s plane was brought down either by a direct hit from a bomb but more likely from a blast from a bomb. Because there was a rear gunner reported seeing a light aircraft plunge into the water. It must have been Glen Miller’s plane because there was no other plane out.
AS: Yeah.
HR: That’s the only time. There was another occasion I believe. In that box file is my flying logbook.
AS: Shall we pause and get that?
[recording paused]
AS: Okay. Harry, so we’re, we’re back again with the tape running. We’ve just been talking about an example where the smooth bomber stream perhaps didn’t quite happen on the [ Siegen ] raid. Could you tell me what happened then?
HR: Yes. There was very very thick cloud. A lot of Cumulonim about which was a rather dangerous cloud. So we were dodging that but when we finally broke cloud about fifteen thousand feet the bomber force — the Lancasters and Halifaxes were all over the sky. So whoever was leading the raid decided to do a big loop. A circuit I suppose you’d call it. And as he did it so we all formed up and so we headed for the target in some sort of order.
AS: So this was a force of hundreds of bomber aeroplanes.
HR: About two hundred and forty.
AS: Doing a merry go around in the sky.
HR: That’s right. Yeah.
AS: And not, not troubled by flak?
HR: No. We weren’t actually [pause] of course I couldn’t tell you where we were but we were certainly over the continent somewhere. Because of the thick clouds as I say when we finally, obviously trying to avoid collision in the cloud but when it finally did break through as I say we were scattered far and wide. And I was standing up looking out the astrodome. I saw it all happen.
AS: And this, this actually was your second consecutive trip to [Siegen ] and the first one.
HR: We didn’t.
AS: In your logbook says —
HR: Didn’t get there. Recalled.
AS: Duty not carried out. What was that about? Was that the weather?
HR: The weather, yes. Icing. Icing.
AS: Okay.
HR: After icing had brought down one Lancaster they called the rest of us back. And that was the day when Glen Miller was killed. And it’s a popular belief now that he was killed by jettisoned bombs in the Channel because he couldn’t land with a full bomb load. And our squadron jettisoned in the Wash so we weren’t responsible. But some squadrons jettisoned in the Channel. And we think Glen Miller was brought down by some of the bombs.
AS: Okay. Did you have, as a squadron and as a, as a group particular forming up procedures to join the stream and places to go?
HR: No. We were just told to fly in a sensible, sensible gaggle formation and just be careful to avoid collisions.
AS: And this was on daylights presumably.
HR: On daylight raids. Yes.
AS: Was it any different at night?
HR: Well you couldn’t see. Although, as I say visibility wasn’t as bad as you might think at night time but you couldn’t sort of, you couldn’t see everywhere and in any case another Lancaster, perhaps it was a half a mile away or so it would just be lost in the darkness. But we did see others sometimes and we always used to try and keep clear. But I don’t, I don’t remember any cases of collisions at night, strangely enough when you might have thought it would have happened.
AS: How about coming home? Did you, well your navigator would do it but did you come home on Gee to particular points?
HR: Well, we did, you had this course of course to come home on and we had Gee to help navigation. What we had to be careful of when joining the circuit to land was intruders. At Witchford they used to have, and all the airfields had a red, red light flashing out their code so you could know where you were. And if they were switched off that was to warn you that German fighters were about. Of course, you were coming in to land totally relaxed and they would nip in and shoot. In this book there’s a record of intruders at Witchford where, where I think three Lancs were lost one night through intruders.
AS: Wow. Can you remember the procedure then? What if the light goes out? What happened then? Do you scatter or go to a beacon or — ?
HR: No. You just continue flying but you’re very much on the alert. Until they just gave up and went off. It was all clear and the light would come on again and we’d land.
AS: When you landed and a big sigh of relief, switched everything off there’s the debriefing. Could you tell me some details of how debriefings used to go?
HR: Well, as soon as we touched down that was a moment for relaxing and a great sigh of relief. Whoopie we’re home again. Thank the good lord. Yeah. That was, that was the feeling and a noticeable lack of tension. Because when you were taking off you’re flying into the unknown. You don’t know what’s going to happen. Whether you would be coming back or not. But when you had come back and decided all was safe then we used to get out and say, ‘Jenks, well done,’ you know. And he’d say, ‘Well, never mind. I couldn’t have done it without you lot.’ It was a great relief. And then we used to go to be picked up by the crew bus and given cups of coffee with, laced with rum which used to, strangely enough helped us to sleep. And everybody got asked whether they had anything to say, you know. And we’d say, ‘I saw ——' And one would say, ‘Yeah. I saw a chop,’ he’d say. ‘Whereabout were you?’ ‘We were just passing over the middle of the target and saw a chop out to starboard.’ There was a little bit of, I don’t know what you’d call it but it’s put about that the Germans put up what they called Scarecrows. Things that explode to make you think it’s one of your bombers being, being hit by night fighters or flak. Well, the Germans denied any knowledge of that. They said, ‘No, we didn’t.’ So it did seem as a little bit of thing to try and keep the morale up. It wasn’t, well they weren’t, that was the Germans trying to scare us. The Germans said no that wasn’t the case.
AS: So potentially at least the Scarecrow story was put out by your own.
HR: Yeah.
AS: High Command.
HR: Yeah.
AS: Yeah. And you’re talking about, about tension and the release of tension. When, one of the things that what one certainly reads about that for trips, long trips sometimes Benzedrine or wakey- wakey pills were available. Did you as a crew or an individual have any experience of, of this?
HR: Well, you were, you were given the choice. You were given the Benzedrine tablets. I usually took one. We weren’t sillily taking them. Just the one. There was one raid when we were coming back and I found myself, see I sat in a seat with the bench in front of me with the Morse key on my right and the set in front of me and I was down under the, my head was banging underneath the table and I was sound asleep and I came, obviously because what happened when they wore off you didn’t exactly go faint but you’d used up all your energy as it were.
AS: Okay. What — so they were freely available. Were they, well they weren’t on the table like sweets but did the medical officer hand them out or —?
HR: You know I can’t remember.
AS: I’m not surprised.
HR: Let me think. When we were, when we were being briefed we were given flight rations. Glucose sweets, chewing gum. I don’t remember ever getting chocolate. I know we used to get these boiled sweets and chewing gum. Chewing gum was very useful because as you got higher so your eardrums tend to stick and if you’re chewing gum they didn’t. That was the reason for these you know, it’s [pause] And I just can’t remember about the wakey-wakey pills as we used to call them.
AS: It was certainly available to you and I mean looking –
HR: Oh yes.
AS: At your logbook here. Stettin is a nine hour flight.
HR: That’s when, as I say we took off at dusk and landed in the dawn. Out all night.
AS: So would you take them, as you say on take-off but regularly or just when the longer flights or a mix really.
HR: I have to admit I can’t remember.
AS: It’s not, it’s not surprising.
HR: You know.
AS: Yeah.
HR: I remember taking the odd one but I certainly never took them in the daytime. I know that. Never took them in the daytime. Only for night time.
AS: Okay.
HR: Because obviously in nature you sleep at night so you’re in opposition to your body’s usual clock so you had to take something to compensate to keep you awake. That’s what it, really the reason for them.
AS: There’s a lot of, a lot of notes on flak in your, in your logbook.
HR: Yeah.
AS: An ever present danger.
HR: Oh yes. The German ack-ack was extremely accurate. It was very good. That’s why we dropped these metalised strips which completely confused their radar screens. But if you were out by yourself you were dead. Absolutely a sitting duck as far as they were concerned.
AS: What was your crew or your skipper’s attitude to weaving to try and avoid the flak? Did he do it? Or did his navigator persuade him not to?
HR: No. As I say we didn’t seem to have that problem because of the Window. I can never, can never remember — I mean as I say that the last occasion I mentioned in daylight when it did. It certainly changed height. Got back in the Window stream as it were. But apart from that I don’t think so. We were more, we used to weave of course if they were, if we were being chased by a fighter which apparently obviously worked because as I say I wouldn’t be sitting here otherwise. I’ll tell you a little thing that I only thought about it in recent years. At being briefed, it might be about twenty odd crews sitting in the big room all around a big table. You know. Seven, seven husky young men and a few hours later their remains are being shovelled into one coffin.
AS: Did you — ?
HR: Didn’t know about it at the time of course. It’s only, it’s only come out recently. It’s all, it’s in here. It’s all in there.
AS: Yeah. Its perhaps a very insensitive question but did you, when you were looking around the room of twenty crews did you ever get the feeling well he’s not going to come back.
HR: Yes. It did. We wondered. You know, the chap sitting there. He might be brash and bragging about his feminine conquests or something like that, you know. Yeah. I wondered, I wondered if he’d be doing the same tomorrow night. You know. Or tomorrow morning. Did occasionally. Not, not very often. You’re too preoccupied with your own thoughts, I think. Am I going to make it somehow?
AS: Yeah. On, on those own thoughts. Although you were very close obviously as a crew did you keep them very much to yourself? Did you ever discuss in the crew these issues of survival or not?
HR: No. It was never, it was never discussed amongst ourselves. No. I suppose, well I can’t explain it really. When you’re on the ground and after raids or before it you would, you would talk about other things. Sometimes I’d talk about music because there was this Welsh flight engineer. He had a good voice. He used to like singing. And talk about Welsh music sometimes. Things like that you know. Anything but, shall we say. Yeah. I often chatted. And sometimes when you were up, when you were flying the skipper would say, ‘Cease idle chatter.’ Yeah. It didn’t happen very often though in the air.
AS: So, so is it fair to say that, as young men you, you had to fight this personal battle, internal battle as well as being on top of your training and doing your job?
HR: I can’t say I’m aware of that. I used to think of, obviously at the time when I was on ops I was married and Edna was expecting actually. You know. I’d think about her and what she would say if she got the telegram. If I didn’t come back, you know. But not a great deal. My memory doesn’t serve me all that well. I don’t remember ever being in very, in much intensive conversation. We used to go to the squadron pub called the Lion of Lamb which is now just called the village, The Village Inn it’s called in Witchford it’s called. You went in there and all sorts of silly things, silly games you know. Singing around the piano perhaps.
AS: Yeah. Your, your ops were, were quite close together. There’s not a lot of stand down time was there? At this, at this period of the war.
HR: Yeah. There was some of course. But as you can see in red and green. Any in blue would be non-operational. Sometimes we were called upon to, if an aircraft went in for a major inspection. It needed an air test and the very last trip we did together was an air test. That was in January ’45. I think you’ll see it there. Air test.
AS: Yeah. Yes. Transit Thornaby. Yeah.
HR: And the only one I ever saw again was David. The pilot. David Jenkins. I never saw any of the others again. I spoke to them. Bill Gorbon, the rear gunner, he emigrated to Canada. He died in Toronto, I think. He was living near Niagara Falls. And Bill, Bill Phillips, the flight engineer, he’s dead. As a matter of fact, it’s through him, writing to him, I’ve still got the letter somewhere that he got out, he sent a letter. It just came out of the blue really, “You may remember me. I was your flight engineer.” Et cetera et cetera. And that’s how I got in touch with the others. And he started it really. As I say two or three of them. I mean, I was told that he was dead, and that he was dead. I don’t know about, that’s Les [Algon?] the mid-under gunner. He comes from Edmonton, and Bill Ranson was from Doncaster but I never knew anything about them at all.
AS: It seems a fairly common part of of service, or at least Bomber Command life that crews were almost deliberately dispersed I think.
HR: Well, I don’t know about that. I’ve got, I’ve only got these records because they’re my friends and this is a boyhood friend of mine in Laindon. We were in the Scouts together and he was a navigator on 83 Squadron. And he had three lucky escapes. The first time — that was a raid on Stettin and the aircraft was damaged. Was fatally damaged and they ditched in the sea. And they all got in their dinghy and floating along. Suddenly one of them fell out. He stood up. And they were off the coast of Sweden and [laughs] they thought the rough seas, rough seas were coming their way. It was the breakers on the beach. So they were very lucky. And the second time they were coming, they went out on operation but they’d developed, two of the engines packed up so they had to bale out. And, but then he did a second tour and in November 1943 they were shot down over Berlin and he was killed in action. And this other one with, he was the one who gave me the dig in the ribs and said, ‘I bet that was you, his name was Peter Barnes. He was on Beauforts. We were on Beauforts together. And they were killed on their first op in a brand new Lancaster. The first, the first the first operation for the Lancaster and the first operation for them and they were shot down at Russelsheim. That’s why I keep those.
AS: Yeah, I can, I can understand that. Did you mainly have you’re your own aeroplane?
HR: Mainly yes. It survived the war. It’s HK5 78. That’s the serial number, you know. Because some of the aircraft went from squadron to squadron so they had different squadron letters. We were, as you might be able to see on there KOC. C for Charlie.
AS: Charlie. Yeah.
HR: KO was the squadron letters. Because there were three flights. Each flight, eight to ten aircraft so of course you run out of letters in the alphabet. So the Flight C had a different course, different letters. KO was A and B Flights and C Flight was A4. And in November ’44 195 squadron was reformed using C Flight. And they went off to a place called Wratting Common and then we acquired another C Flight with the letters IL. And that’s how it worked. And some squadrons did different. They would say C flight would have the letter, they would put the letter F2 or something like that. Another way of doing that. But that was number 3 Group. That was the way we did it in 3 Group. One squadron that was part of our base, 514, they put up twenty two aircraft. That was the Nuremberg raid. Only four came back. They lost eighteen aircraft. That’s how it was. Yeah.
AS: Did you ever have anything to do with the emergency landing grounds? Woodbridge or Manston or Carnaby?
HR: We knew all about them but no. No. We, as I say we only got, we only got damaged once and that was just the one engine. We knew all about them of course.
AS: Yeah. A different theme entirely if I may. When you weren’t on ops was there much training? Dinghy drills?
HR: No. The only thing that used to happen if you weren’t on ops each each aircrew trade had its own leader. So, all the wireless operators, all the air gunners, all the navigators if they weren’t on ops they had to meet up and the leader of their trade, I mean ours was called the signals leader would give you any latest information. Points to watch, you know and anything that was new and you had to go. I remember this one chap, the signals leader was a Flight Lieutenant Hartley. A very nice chap. A gentleman. But one [laughs] he had to tell him off about his language and the strange thing was about that man I had some email from a relative, “I understand you knew… his name was Marston, Sergeant.” ‘Yes, I remember Sergeant Marston because he was told about his language.’ He wasn’t the only one of course who swore but Mr Hartley didn’t like a lot of it in open. And as I say it was during one of these sessions that he said to me, ‘I’m putting you up for commission.’
AS: Going again in another direction. When you were in Bomber Command, out in the pubs or wherever or on reading the press and listening to the newsreels what sort of sense did you have of how the population thought about Bomber Command at the time?
HR: There wasn’t much to tell about that. If we, if somebody had said to them, oh think of all those civilians that were killed, you know. Hamburg was the worst. Forty two thousand people were killed in air raids in Hamburg. They talk about Dresden. Twenty seven thousand. I mean that’s bad enough. Two wrongs don’t make a right and all war is evil. Whatever people say. If anybody talks to me I say civilians were killed. Yes. But then all war is evil. But what people used to think at the time was ---— bloody good luck. They started it, you know. We remember Coventry and Rotterdam. Of course, as you know Exeter took quite a pasting. Now, I’ve got a book. Oh, it’s upstairs, called, “The Baedeker Raids.” And it’s a lot of, and there’s one [pause] now where was I at? Let me think. Is it in here? No, I don’t think so. No. Anyway, there was in the, in this book it mentions Exeter and it said Number 17 Regent’s Park took a direct hit and it wasn’t this house. It was over there. The numbers were different.
AS: Yeah.
HR: But then all the tiles were blown off. That’s why there’s a lot, there’s a lot of moss on them. Because instead of the earth with the material I’m thinking of? They’re concrete tiles and they, ‘cause the moss, a lot of moss. And somebody suggested I ought to have the roof cleaned. A number of builders came along and one of them, common sense, said, ‘Does your roof leak?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Well leave it alone. There’s extra protection.’ I’ve never thought of that. But that’s why.
AS: Yeah.
HR: Anyway, there we are.
AS: So very much the public was, was supportive.
HR: Oh yes.
AS: Behind you during that.
HR: Absolutely. Yeah.
AS: When it was over and you went back to civilian life do you think that support changed over time as new ideas came in?
HR: Not in the current population because they were, it’s very well for the people to talk about in the piping days of peace. They’ve got to, people have no idea how people were during the war. They can only guess unless they, they’ve still got parents old enough to tell them. It’s so totally different. You can’t really reconcile the two points of view really because people thought differently. I mean some people saw their relatives blown to pieces by bombs. We know that we killed more of them then they did of us and two wrongs don’t make a right and war is evil. But there it is. That’s the war. I did, I did send a letter up once to The Express and Echo. I think it’s in one. I don’t know if it’s in there or not. I’m not sure. Talking about this and I said. Oh yeah. Talking about the Memorial. That’s right. It’s a waste. I said, ‘Never mind about your thoughts about civilians. That Memorial is to the fifty five thousand five hundred men who were killed in action. Not killed or wounded. Killed in action.’ No other, no trace of them, you know. Their graves are there to be seen. And that’s a lot of people and if you’d have told them, I mean as I say this chap when we were sitting at OTU and talking about it I thought, ‘You don’t know it mate but you’ve only got about four months to live,’ you know. You didn’t think of that. Didn’t think of it of course. We thought we’d all survive. I had some good friends. One of that crew that collided, the wireless operator, he was a Canadian named Joe Dunsford, Flying Officer Joe Dunsford. He always had a book under his arm. Never went without it, ‘Hiya Harry. Read any good books lately?’ And suddenly he wasn’t there. You know.
AS: Yeah. Did you go to the opening of the Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park?
HR: Yes.
AS: Yeah.
HR: I was in the salute area. Gina was with me. I’ve got, I’ve got photos of all that. This lot is Sunday. Last Sunday at St Paul’s Cathedral.
AS: Wow.
HR: You show me what they are and I’ll tell you what they were. Oh, that’s Mitch coming out of St Paul’s toilet. They’re four members of the Yatesbury Association, three members of the Yatesbury Association who I met there.
AS: So you all trained or did part of your training at Yatesbury Wireless School.
HR: I did my training.
AS: Yeah.
HR: They didn’t. The other three are they were all post war. That’s inside, that’s inside the City of London Guildhall where they had a reception after.
AS: And that is a large chunk of your family.
HR: That’s it, yes. That’s Lorraine who you’ve just seen. Gina. Gina, my granddaughter. My son in law and my grandson. You know, the one who’s up there. The Batchelor of Science.
AS: Why is it that aircrew always attract stunning blondes?
HR: Do you know who that is?
AS: I don’t.
HR: Have a look. It’s somebody quite famous actually.
[pause]
AS: It’s Carol Vorderman?
HR: That’s right.
AS: It is.
HR: It is.
AS: She’s had her hair blonded.
HR: That’s right. Yeah.
AS: She lives less than two miles from me.
HR: Does she?
AS: I didn’t recognise her.
HR: And there’s that one. I was wearing, I’ve got a little pin badge shaped like a Lancaster. It's in my lapel. And she explained to this city alderman, she said, ‘See. That’s the four Merlin engines on the Lancaster,’ she was saying to him.
AS: The same.
HR: The same. That’s a copy of the same one.
AS: Yeah. Fabulous. I’ll just pause that.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Harry Rossiter
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Adam Sutch
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
2015-09-13
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:19:05 audio recording
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ARossiterHC150913
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
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Description
An account of the resource
Harry Rossiter grew up in East London but his family moved to Essex which gave Harry a “ringside view” of the Battle of Britain. He volunteered as a bicycle messenger and tried to join the Royal Navy as a telegraphist. He was encouraged to join the RAF to train as a wireless operator. He was originally posted as support for 217 Squadron in Ceylon but he was later returned to England and posted to 115 Squadron at RAF Witchford. His crew survived a number of night fighter attacks while on operations. He recalls the losses on Bomber Command and his demobilisation in 1946. Harry had always had a love of music and played the trumpet and cornet in dance bands throughout the war and into civilian life.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
India
Pakistan
Sri Lanka
England--London
England--Cambridgeshire
Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean--Rockall Bank
Poland--Szczecin
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
115 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Gunnery School
air sea rescue
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
Defiant
Dominie
entertainment
fear
Gee
Lancaster
memorial
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
perception of bombing war
Proctor
RAF Barrow in Furness
RAF Madley
RAF Millom
RAF Witchford
RAF Yatesbury
training
Window
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1243/16479/PAllenBW18010011.2.jpg
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8b7a57195cbb4b569a447d59576e7577
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
Allen, Bert
B W Allen
Description
An account of the resource
22 items. the collection concerns Bert Allen (1923 - 1993, 1898094 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book and photographs, including some taken in Mauripur and Mumbai. He flew operations as an air gunner with 207 Squadron from RAF Spilsby. He was subsequently posted to India and was demobbed in 1946.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Mathew Allen and catalogued by Peter Adams.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-05-03
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
Allen, BW
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Bert Allen at RAF Mauripur
Description
An account of the resource
A full-length photograph of a man in uniform fatigues, with sergeant's stripes. He has his hands in his pockets, and is not wearing a cap. He is standing in a large open space, with a pond behind and to his right. In the background can be seen a collection of huts and some earthworks. On the reverse, 'outside the billet', 'Nov. 46 M'Pur (1)'.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1946-11
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph and reverse
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
PAllenBW18010011
PAllenBW18010012
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Pakistan--Karachi
Pakistan
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1946-11
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.
Raf Mauripur
-
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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
Allen, Bert
B W Allen
Description
An account of the resource
22 items. the collection concerns Bert Allen (1923 - 1993, 1898094 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book and photographs, including some taken in Mauripur and Mumbai. He flew operations as an air gunner with 207 Squadron from RAF Spilsby. He was subsequently posted to India and was demobbed in 1946.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Mathew Allen and catalogued by Peter Adams.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-05-03
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
Allen, BW
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Bert Allen sunbathing at Mauripur
Description
An account of the resource
A man wearing only white shorts, dark socks and white shoes is sunbathing in a chair outside a brick and concrete building with pillars. On the reverse, 'I was just about to sneeze when Eddie took this one Glad. But his shadow spoils this one', and , 'Nov 46. M'pur (1)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1946-11
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph and reverse
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
PAllenBW18010013
PAllenBW18010014
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Pakistan--Karachi
Pakistan
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1946-11
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.
Raf Mauripur
-
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1243/16481/PAllenBW18010016.2.jpg
8a67e96cf650f5cb4db95e3c7daf521e
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
Allen, Bert
B W Allen
Description
An account of the resource
22 items. the collection concerns Bert Allen (1923 - 1993, 1898094 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book and photographs, including some taken in Mauripur and Mumbai. He flew operations as an air gunner with 207 Squadron from RAF Spilsby. He was subsequently posted to India and was demobbed in 1946.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Mathew Allen and catalogued by Peter Adams.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-05-03
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
Allen, BW
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Bert Allen in the wilderness
Description
An account of the resource
A man, in tropical uniform, is squatting in front of a cactus bush. In the background a featureless, desert-like landscape extends to the horizon. On the reverse, 'me, a cactus bush and the wilderness of India!!' and, 'Taken outside camp', and, 'Oct 46.'
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1946-10
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph and reverse
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
PAllenBW18010015
PAllenBW18010016
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
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1946-10
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Pakistan--Karachi
Pakistan
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.
Raf Mauripur
-
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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
Allen, Bert
B W Allen
Description
An account of the resource
22 items. the collection concerns Bert Allen (1923 - 1993, 1898094 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book and photographs, including some taken in Mauripur and Mumbai. He flew operations as an air gunner with 207 Squadron from RAF Spilsby. He was subsequently posted to India and was demobbed in 1946.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Mathew Allen and catalogued by Peter Adams.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-05-03
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
Allen, BW
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
An airman in uniform is sat outside on some stone steps. On the reverse, 'I think this is the best one duck, me on the end of my pipe' and, 'Nov. 46 M'Pur. (1)'
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1946-11
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph and reverse
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
PAllenBW18010018
PAllenBW18010019
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Pakistan--Karachi
Pakistan
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1946-11
Title
A name given to the resource
Aircrew sergeant with pipe
Bert Allen
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.
aircrew
Raf Mauripur
-
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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
Shipman, John
J Shipman
Description
An account of the resource
43 items. An oral history interview with John Shipman (1923 - 2020, 1694683 Royal Air Force) his diary, documents and a photograph album. He served as ground personnel in India and the Middle east
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by John Shipman 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
2018-10-10
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
Shipman, J
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
'ENSA Pie' Programme
Description
An account of the resource
A programme for an ENSA show starring Elizabeth Kaye, Biddy O’Connor, Ann Dennis, Rita Massara, Joan Whitfield and Ken Noyle.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
ENSA
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One double sided printed sheet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MShipmanJ1694683-181126-010001,
MShipmanJ1694683-181126-010002,
MShipmanJ1694683-181126-010003
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Pakistan
Pakistan--Rawalpindi
entertainment
-
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9a390583a072605acb17c3998d698796
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
Shipman, John
J Shipman
Description
An account of the resource
43 items. An oral history interview with John Shipman (1923 - 2020, 1694683 Royal Air Force) his diary, documents and a photograph album. He served as ground personnel in India and the Middle east
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by John Shipman 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
2018-10-10
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
Shipman, J
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
Sind Open Boxing Tournament Programme
Description
An account of the resource
A programme for a boxing competition.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-05
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two printed sheets
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MShipmanJ1694683-181126-020001,
MShipmanJ1694683-181126-020002
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Pakistan
Pakistan--Sindh
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-05-11
1944-05-12
1944-05-13
entertainment
sport
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/983/21903/MShipmanJ1694683-181126-030001.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/983/21903/MShipmanJ1694683-181126-030002.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/983/21903/MShipmanJ1694683-181126-030003.1.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
Shipman, John
J Shipman
Description
An account of the resource
43 items. An oral history interview with John Shipman (1923 - 2020, 1694683 Royal Air Force) his diary, documents and a photograph album. He served as ground personnel in India and the Middle east
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by John Shipman 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
2018-10-10
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
Shipman, J
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
A Grand Concert
Description
An account of the resource
A concert programme listing the songs that will be sung and the names of the singers.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-06-24
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One double sided printed sheet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MShipmanJ1694683-181126-030001,
MShipmanJ1694683-181126-030002,
MShipmanJ1694683-181126-030003
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Pakistan
Pakistan--Karachi
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-06-24
entertainment
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/983/21904/MShipmanJ1694683-181126-040001.2.jpg
69397c680a8085f13d64c016c58bc5c5
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/983/21904/MShipmanJ1694683-181126-040002.2.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/983/21904/MShipmanJ1694683-181126-040003.2.jpg
12212afbc386f966c6d6be4aa0cf0468
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
Shipman, John
J Shipman
Description
An account of the resource
43 items. An oral history interview with John Shipman (1923 - 2020, 1694683 Royal Air Force) his diary, documents and a photograph album. He served as ground personnel in India and the Middle east
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by John Shipman 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
2018-10-10
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
Shipman, J
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
Variety Show Programme
Description
An account of the resource
A programme for a variety show to held in the Station cinema.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
RAF Station Mauripur
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1945-01
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One double sided printed sheet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MShipmanJ1694683-181126-040001,
MShipmanJ1694683-181126-040002,
MShipmanJ1694683-181126-040003
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Pakistan
Pakistan--Karachi
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-01
entertainment
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/983/21906/MShipmanJ1694683-181126-06.1.pdf
1c2fbd21f3b4ffe58782bba10cb852ae
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
Shipman, John
J Shipman
Description
An account of the resource
43 items. An oral history interview with John Shipman (1923 - 2020, 1694683 Royal Air Force) his diary, documents and a photograph album. He served as ground personnel in India and the Middle east
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by John Shipman 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
2018-10-10
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
Shipman, J
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
Sandscript
Description
An account of the resource
The first edition of a magazine produced by RAF Mauripur. Articles about station life, sports reports, a film review and adverts.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1946-05
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
47 printed sheets and one inserted sheet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MShipmanJ1694683-181126-06
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Pakistan
Pakistan--Karachi
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1946-05
entertainment
Raf Mauripur
sport
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/983/21907/MShipmanJ1694683-181126-070001.2.jpg
474befc6495840eac29f4405af3ce914
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/983/21907/MShipmanJ1694683-181126-070002.2.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/983/21907/MShipmanJ1694683-181126-070003.2.jpg
6488ae55a27c62fae23dde21a75dc4cc
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
Shipman, John
J Shipman
Description
An account of the resource
43 items. An oral history interview with John Shipman (1923 - 2020, 1694683 Royal Air Force) his diary, documents and a photograph album. He served as ground personnel in India and the Middle east
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by John Shipman 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
2018-10-10
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
Shipman, J
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
Three meal bills
Description
An account of the resource
Three bills from three different meals.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Three printed sheets with handwritten annotations
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MShipmanJ1694683-181126-070001,
MShipmanJ1694683-181126-070002,
MShipmanJ1694683-181126-070003
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Pakistan
Pakistan--Karachi
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/983/21908/MShipmanJ1694683-181126-08.2.pdf
b4ff3a5a7a5b3ae1fbd1dc422a088280
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
Shipman, John
J Shipman
Description
An account of the resource
43 items. An oral history interview with John Shipman (1923 - 2020, 1694683 Royal Air Force) his diary, documents and a photograph album. He served as ground personnel in India and the Middle east
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by John Shipman 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
2018-10-10
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
Shipman, J
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 Shipman's Notebook
Description
An account of the resource
A notebook containing dates of aircraft daily inspections and snags during 1945.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
John Shipman
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1945
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
34 handwritten sheets
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
MShipmanJ1694683-181126-08
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Pakistan--Karachi
Pakistan
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
B-24
Beaufighter
C-47
Halifax
Mosquito
Stirling
York