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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/7/13/ADerringtonAP150715-01.2.mp3
2af1448baa606754816904ab2f0786c3
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Title
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Derrington, Arnold Pearce
Arnold Pearce Derrington
Arnold P Derrington
Arnold Derrington
A P Derrington
A Derrington
Description
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Two oral history interviews with Dr Arnold Pearce Derrington DFC (- 2016, 187333 Royal Air Force), a navigator with 462 and 466 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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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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Derrington, AP
Date
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2015-07-15
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IBCC Digital Archive
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and I am conducting an interview with Doctor Arnold Pierce Derrington and we are in his house in Cornwall and we are going to talk about his experiences over the years in the RAF but starting off in his early days and then after the war with his civilian career. Today is the 14th July 2015 and I’m asking Derry to start in the early days. What was your background Derry and how did all of that progress?
DD: Well I was a child in Devon. I came to Cornwall at the age of eighteen months to live at St Erth. That’s still my model village and I was there until about 1930 and the family had grown by then and we moved to Marazion near St Michael’s Mount and I had my childhood days there. Very happy memories of Marazion and I still see friends from there and still hear from there.
I had a friend living nearby in a place called [?] and he was a navigator too. He’d been a clerk in an agricultural merchants and the, he went into the air force, and did a tour with Coastal Command and was posted to Rhodesia where he was an instructor. When he died eventually I spread his ashes from a lifeboat in Mounts Bay. But he and I were childhood friends. We were little rogues really because his father was a policeman and the father was very incensed sometimes. Some man came to him and said someone’s put water in the petrol of my motor tank in the tank the petrol tank of my motorbike and it turned out that we two boys had done it. Very embarrassing for the policemen. That boy’s sister is still alive. She visits me occasionally.
And at Marazion I was at the county school at Penzance and never dreamed I’d be flying. I saw Alan Cobham’s Air Circus. I’ve got his little notebook here. It’s in that blue container there. Do you have it? Alan Cobham’s book. That’s it. And I have a very dear friend I haven’t seen for seventy seven years. I went to that air display with his parents. And that was an air display that flew around with trailers behind the planes saying where the display was taking place and we were talking recently about that actual airfield which is between Marazion and Haile and my mother said, ‘Don’t you dare go up flying’ and I was offered a free flight and I did say no but within ten years I’d done a tour and got a DFC. It’s amazing how things go on isn’t it?
Now, where do we go from there now? I was at Marazion in the LDV or Home Guard and when I went to college at Exeter I decided to join the LDV there. And after a month or so the University Air Squadron was opening up in Exeter and I joined that and I was at St Luke’s, Exeter which was a teacher training place and until the last two or three years there were a few of us around but I’m the last one of them still going strong. One of the chaps Archie Smith from St Austell was on the county council with my wife. She was a councillor and had a very good career about it. She ended up with an MBE.
Well I went on then to University Air Squadron from this Home Guard lot there and I’ve even got a greeting telegram somewhere from a relation congratulating me on joining this University Air Squadron. I could dig that out if you want to see a picture of it I expect.
And well it was good training. We had a, a, a commanding officer called Searle who was the head of the physics department at Exeter and he had an adjutant called Crosscut and the main chap we met from an interesting flying point of view had the Croix de Guerre. He was a rear gunner. He was badly scarred.
And from the University Air Squadron I was attested in Weston Super Mare in June 1942 and that same month I joined the air force at Lords Cricket Ground. Our first payday, first money I’d earned in my life cause having been University Air Squadron I was a leading aircraftsmen and we were very superior indeed to the AC plonks. They only got a half a crown a day. And after a short time at Lords I was posted to Manchester to await overseas posting but they discovered that I needed corrective goggles so I was sent down to Brighton Aircrew Dispersal Wing, ACDW and had a very happy time there staying in a huge great hotel, sleeping on rough beds at the Hotel Metropole. And there was another one The Grand there was well and the [air?] parade still took place in those days and we saw some of the rather shaky soldiers who came back from there.
And from ACDW I was posted to grading school Ansty near Coventry. I was made into, well I did fly in a Tiger Moth but I was made into as a navigator and I’m very glad I was because it kept me going during the very horrible times that we were doing operations. I had my head down getting on with the job. I did look out a time or two but it was so horrific I got back to my base very soon and from the grading school I went to Blackpool waiting for overseas posting and from Liverpool I sailed to South Africa. It wasn’t straightforward because we were afraid of the submarines that might have damaged us so we went across the coast to America and then back again to freestone, Freetown and then from Freetown down around the Cape to Durban. We didn’t get off the boat at all. I was on gun duty on oerlikons.
When we got to Durban we went to a transit camp called Clairwood and there we were thrown an empty linen case and told to stuff it with grass because that would be our palliasse bed and the toilets, they were like huge great egg racks. I think there was accommodation for about eighty. And they fed us very well. It was very nice. The novelty of South Africa was interesting indeed. I met very interesting people there who worked in the Red Shield Club and they invited us into their homes and there was one family called Thornton who had a son same age as myself training as a doctor. I’ve heard from him right until recently when he died. And when I moved away from East London to Durban, Durban to East London we did some training in the air force work there. I went up there to do night flying at a place called Aliwal North and that was a place outside the town of Queenstown. It was a very strange volcanic rock there with a big flat top called [?] and there was [?] Association and I was a member of that for a long time and correspondence kept on.
And I met a dear man who was flying beside me called Harry Dunn. Because my name came in the alphabet first before his I was graded as first navigator he was graded as second navigator. And well I did turn out to be a better one than he did because I came top of the course. But Harry came to me when we went to our next stage up at Queenstown almost in tears. He said, “My maths is no good at all. Will you coach me?” Harry was out with the girls and drinking and didn’t bother at all really. He was good company but very happy go lucky.
And well we both got through and he came back with me on the same troopship back through Tufik (?)in the Red Sea. And the Germans were still in Italy and we had a lot of women and children on board who were being repatriated from India. They were service families. And they weren’t going to take any risks. When the Germans were clear, after a fortnight in Tufik we came back through the Mediterranean and home in time for Christmas 1943. And we were very popular because we brought back things which were normally rationed.
I bought a lovely Omega watch in East London for seven pounds ten shillings and well the same watch these days is nearly two thousand pounds. I lost that but that’s another story. I’ve bought another Omega since. I navigated on that one all the way through. They issued us with proper watches but I was delighted with my Omega. And I believe I had to hand wind it. I’d rather forgotten but recently I’ve seen the certificate when I bought the watch and apparently it had to be handed in to be oiled every year. Well mine never got any oil on it at all and I navigated on it pretty well. I was very happy with it. Delighted with my Omega.
Now where have we got? Oh yes. We were posted after Christmas leave, to West Freugh to acclimatise to British conditions and we flew up and down the Hebrides. Very fascinating indeed. I saw Iona which has a church which is the same pattern as our village church here in Pendeen - cruciform. And after going to this unit at West Freugh Harry got posted off to Transport Command and I was posted to Bomber Command. We were told, ‘write your wills. You won’t be here in six weeks time.’ I thought I’d find out how Harry’s going on. No reply. Wrote his parents – no reply. So I thought, well that’s it. I still have a lovely photo of him.
And I went on from West Freugh to, let’s see, OTU at Moreton in Marsh. Operational Training Unit. And that was on Wellingtons. In the meantime Harry had gone to Canada and became a fur merchant after the Transport Command experience as a fur merchant like his father was. And twenty or fifty years later on his conscience was pricking him because he had borrowed a book from an old aunt living near Bath and he came back to England from Canada to take this book to her. She was dead. Had an uncle ten miles away. Went to see him. He was dead too. So he thought I’m so far west I’ll go down Penzance and see old Derry. He didn’t tell me he was coming. I didn’t know where he was. I hadn’t forgotten him. And that day my wife and I were taking an old lady to hospital so we weren’t there in order to see him and Harry caught the train back to [?] to stay or he hoped to stay with a [sugar bidder[?]] there that he played rugby with before the war. When he got to the a [sugar bidder[?]] house he was out but the caretaker said, “Come on in and have a meal. He’ll be back in the morning.” and he was telling his tale of the book and going down to Penzance to see an old navigator friend. And that caretaker said was that navigator called Derry Derrington. He said, “How did you know that?” “I sat beside him on thirty one operations in bomber command. He was my navigator. I was his bomb aimer.” That dear boy has died since but his wife is still alive.
So after being at West Freugh Operational Training Unit there we crewed up, six of us, because we only had Wellingtons. We weren’t on a four engine outfit so we needed a flight engineer later and we gelled as a crew very quickly. Our pilot was an Australian called Les Evans, a dairy farmer’s son and he came from a place called Kingaroy in Queensland. And Les Evans was a very good pilot. He had been an instructor. We were all good chaps. We were never, there never was as good a crew as we are. Charlie will think so too. Charlie was friendly with another gunner called Dennis Cleaver and those two had crewed up together and they were looking for somebody to join and my pilot, Les Evans chose me for his navigator. I was delighted. Didn’t care whether he was Australian or Chinese or whatever he was. He was a dear old boy.
And after Les Evans, he and I were together, we chose the oldest wireless operator we could get and that was Tom Windsor. Tom was thirty one. We thought he was our grandfather [laughs] and Tom was a good old boy with the girls. One of the joking things which Charlie and I still talk about he used to say, “I’d like as many shillings,” and what that definitely meant we don’t quite know but we could guess all sorts of things. We were quite youngsters really in our early twenties. Tom was thirty one.
And well, we had Jonah who was in antiques with his brother. I was a trainee schoolmaster just qualified. Tom Windsor was a bookies clerk and Charlie and Dennis, the gunners, were both fitters and there were six of us. And we did OTU work at Moreton in the Marsh on Wellingtons and that was good. I saw my area where I live here from the air for the first time. I had been to see Alan Cobham’s Air Circus and did a flight - very limited indeed, but this was very wonderful to see our area from the, I suppose it was about ten thousand feet.
Well from the OTU we were posted to a Heavy Conversion Unit to get used to a four engine aircraft and we picked up an engineer who had been on the Queen Mary - Jock. Dear boy. Scotsman. A wee haggis we called him and he was good. In fact we had the most hair raising experience when we were doing a flight near the Isle Of Man because he had to change the petrol tanks over every so often in order to balance the aircraft, trim it up properly and he needed to go to the elsan and whether he was there longer then he should have done or what we don’t know but two engines cut out on us and I as navigator had to hold the escape hatch open, I did, ready for the crew to bailout and we got, Jonah, no Jock the engineer came back quickly, switched the right tanks over and she picked up and there we were again but we were very dicey indeed in those days.
Well we started our tour of operations. We were posted from our Heavy Conversion Unit to Driffield in Yorkshire just about twenty miles north of Hull. A lovely peacetime station. And the pilot did a second dickey, that is to give him experience. In the meantime we did all sorts of training to keep us well and fit. And on from there we started our own tour. And the first trip was an easy one cap griz nez. It was to do with army cooperation.
The second trip is one that was probably the most momentous in our lives. It was to a flying bomb site. Now on our back from leave we’d gone through London. We’d seen the headlines - Pilotless Aircraft over England and well those were the V1s and we didn’t know what that would mean and we were told this was a highly secret operation. We were not to talk to anybody about it at all and we were going to hit this target over, in daylight, at minute intervals. And as we were going down the country toward Beachy Head some silly bounder flying alongside us pressed the wrong button and what the crew were saying among themselves mentioned the name of the target. And that was [?] for the Germans. My pilot could see that every other aircraft was being shot down and he climbed an extra two thousand feet after Beachy Head [?] and did a shallow dive on the target. That gave us that bit more speed and we got there that split second before the minute was up but the flack came up and the Germans shot down one of their own fighters on our tail. Oh the gunners were quite screaming about it and we really felt we were getting acclimatised.
Well we got back from that we knew we’d got an aiming point. I’ve got a reconnaissance photograph of it here. It’s in my file which I’ll talk to you about later. That big fat file there is a list of all the things we did. All the, and I think it’s quite unique because the Australians were such a happy go lucky mob they didn’t collect them from us to shred them like most other people had done. I’ve got a complete unique set of operations and I know that we did well. We were good at wind finding and we did PFF support because we used to broadcast the wind that we found that was used by the master bomber.
Now where did we go from there? Well we did thirty one ops. Mainly over the Ruhr - Happy Valley, Flak Alley - all sorts of names for it and we got hit a time or two but we luckily came back and a lot of our dear chaps didn’t. I got back from a week’s leave and found seven complete crews wiped out. And they were dear boys. They were a jolly lot. They were mad as hatters. Motorbikes going around the mess, footprints on the ceiling. My speciality was doing forward rolls on the top of billiard tables or else in the fireplace. I’ve been told this later but I don’t remember it. And one chap flying with us he was the navigation leader he smoked his pipe through the side of the oxygen mask which was a little bit risky I think what do you think? Would you fancy doing that?
CB: No.
DD: No. No sensible person would I’m sure. In the middle of my tour I came home once and I thought I I’ll go up and see how my dad was getting on and I found him lying dead in the garden beside a bonfire. He’d had a stroke at the age of fifty four. That was, I was the oldest one of four children and my brother and I are the only two in our family now left but that was a great shock to me. It was the first dead person I’d seen and I was very saddened about it. I determined I wasn’t going to do any more flying when my tour was up although we were invited to be PFF people but I explained that I was the eldest of four and I couldn’t go back again and it wasn’t held against me. I was with a very fair lot.
The Aussies were a mad, happy lot. I got on wonderfully well with them. They were dears. And I never knew them do a bad, evil deed with anybody at all. They were wonderful. You’ll see pictures of some of them and some of the targets we had in my main logbook there.
Well we did get through our tour. I say the general thanksgiving every day for our creation, preservation. Preservation deeply underlined because we were preserved from all sorts of horrible things and we were able to save ourselves and our country by what we did. My Charlie, the rear gunner has a grandson I think it is who’s a Member of Parliament. There’s a photograph of him up there and I’ve got a letter of his in my general logbook here saying, ‘If I can do a much for the country as you chaps in Bomber Command then I shall feel I’ve done well.’ He’s a Doctor of Medicine as well as a Member of Parliament and I believe he had an increased majority at the last election. Charlie’s very proud of him. Charlie comes down this way on holiday occasionally. He was staying at a place called Mousehole not far from here with his, this man’s brother owns it and Charlie and his wife were down and we had some wonderful times together.
Earlier on I was talking about my friend in Canada who was, who met my bomb aimers crew over in Effingham near Goring and when this Harry came at one time he gave me my computer. Do you know it?
CB: I do.
AS: It’s a whizz wheel.
DD: A Dalton.
AS: A Dalton computer, yeah.
DD: A Dalton mark 3. While we were training as navigators this was our bible AP1234. There is an AP4567. I’ve seen it but I can’t get another copy. Anyhow, where I got this I don’t really remember but it was a precious book.
Well the tour was horrific. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world but I wouldn’t wish anyone else to have done it. And the crew were magnificent. We never had any quarrels or arguments. Les was a wonderful leader and well the mid gunner was a bit dicey sometimes but he was a jolly old boy and he loved singing too. We got on well. Talking about singing I’ve got a list of some of the ribald songs we sang.
We had lots of waiting around and because I live in the sticks down here in West Cornwall it took a long time to travel from Yorkshire to Cornwall. Twenty seven hours usually, stopping in London overnight very often, that I couldn’t come home on a forty eight hour pass. The time would be spent all with travelling and I passed my time away by doing this. This was my engagement present for my wife. This I did on an engineer’s bench in Air Force Station Driffield. The Song of Songs. In the back it says where it was done. Bound and written out by Arnold P Derrington between October and December 1944 at Driffield. I’m very proud of the title page of it. And I gave this to my wife and it will be my daughter’s eventually and this is the main title page. There.
CB: Wow.
DD: The Song of Songs. And I have bound a book before under ideal conditions but that was done on an engineer’s bench. The leatherwork as well and it’s very precious as you can imagine.
CB: What prompted you to do that?
DD: Pardon?
CB: What prompted you to do that?
DD: Well the language in it is very lovely and I felt it was a suitable engagement present for my wife.
[pause]
I’m wondering what is the next thing to talk about?
CB: Would you like to have a break?
DD: Hmmn?
CB: Would you like to have a break?
DD: No.
CB: Ok.
DD: No.
CB: So you said it was horrendous on operations so could you describe a typical operation that was hairy please?
DD: I got a diary which is totally illegal. There’s a black book over there somewhere. That’s it I think
[pause]
Yes diary of an RAF career after the 20th June ACRC etcetera. A tour of operations. An illegal document. Well its written, there’s quite a bit of detail there and I used it on one occasion for the people who are writing a history of our squadron. You see a book there, a big heavy book. That’s it. And my grandson Adam, who is going to have this stuff was so delighted he bought a copy for himself and, I was given a gratis copy and the two chaps who wrote it one is called Lax he was an ex air commodore and the other man there, a hyphenated name he was a chemistry professor very near where my daughter who lives in Australia. I’ve never met these two chaps but I’ve just had phone calls from them and with extracts from our diary and other things o sent them they got fifty references to us as a crew in that book. What’s it called again?
CB: To See the Dawn Again.
DD: To See the Dawn, yes. Well number, operation number eighteen. After much lighting, lightning the usual restless night I woke to a lovely morning. No signs of movement. Today is St Luke’s day. What happy memories it recalls. Possibly too many of us over the world - Canada, Africa, India, Gib West Indies and dear old England. Have I longed to, how I’ve longed to be on the cliffs today. Hanging around in the morning. FFI in the afternoon. Promise of pay then wait. Nothing doing. Draughts and roll call. Detailed for more, for move off tomorrow. I can’t read my own writing. Five weeks have elapsed since I heard from Helen and another five weeks will pass before I hear anything more. [?] I hadn’t done any operations that day.
CB: So this was a diary that you kept in addition to your logbook was it?
DD: Yes my logbooks are rather scruffy looking things.
CB: Yes I saw it on there.
DD: The South African one.
CB: Right.
DD: If I’d had it in England it would have had a rather nice blue cloth cover instead of a plain cover like that.
CB: Right ok. What prompted you to keep the diary?
DD: Oh just being [fussy?] and breaking regulations sort of thing.
[pause]
DD: I ought to be reading my own writing but I can’t.
CB: Well off the top of your head though what would you say was the most hair raising experience you had in a raid?
DD: Well even in the last raid we did. It was the 27th of December and we were going to the Ruhr and I’d had flu and I didn’t feel like flying at all. It wasn’t a case of LMF and it wasn’t a case of jitters it was a case of finishing near the end of the tour but I just did not feel well. My pilot Les said come on you’re alright you’ve always done well for us so far on previous occasions and off we went and I got taken sick and Jonah was sitting next to me the bomb aimer and I could tell him what to do when I couldn’t do it myself. And then I passed out and the heating failed at minus forty four. And we had to come down and I just vaguely knew what was happening. We had to come down to ten thousand feet because of the oxygen shortage. The heating had failed and the oxygen failed as well. And we had bombs being dropped by our own chaps up above and they were shooting at us down below and the fighters on our tail but I was able to work out the courses for the pilot. I’m sure you all know what the preparation is beforehand and there are estimated courses and things which one should take and as a navigator I’d worked that out in the briefing beforehand and I just read off from those and applied variation and deviation and gave the pilot those courses and we got through where we were going and whether we hit the target or not I don’t know because I handed over to Jonah, the bomb aimer. And on the way back I was feeling very unwell indeed and this was all due to the flu business I think. Anyhow, we did get back and thank God for that. That was a very hair raising situation to be in. I didn’t like feeling unable to do the job I had to do.
It was a very necessary job but a very horrible job and when I think we were trained to kill it’s a very revolting thought but if we didn’t do it we would have had much worse done to us as a nation and so I was very grateful to have got through my tour and because we were the only pommie crew amongst a lot of Australians they didn’t discriminate against us. Maybe we were favoured all the more I don’t know but they were dear fellows. We loved the lot of them and a very sad time it was when some got lost. There’s a recording of so many names of people who were lost after an operation.
That was a bit hair raising. Anything else you’d like to ask me?
CB: Yeah in practical terms was after the pilot was the navigator the most worked member of the crew?
DD: Oh yes and I was glad I was occupied like that. I didn’t see some of the horrible things that were going on but I had to record things. I had to give him new courses if need be and my main job was wind finding and I was able to do that well and our winds that we found were picked up, were broadcast so PFF could pick them up. And we were helpers of PFF we weren’t direct PFF people but PFF support was the denomination that we were given.
CB: So what is PFF?
DD: Pathfinders.
CB: Pathfinder right.
DD: Yes. They could wear a very special little golden wing.
[pause]
There’s a little map showing Elvington and such places we were talking about. You’ve got it alright?
CB: Yes thank you yeah.
CB Now on your plane.
DD: On?
CB On your Halifax did you have H2S?
DD: Oh yes.
CB: How did you use that?
DD: Yes.
CB: How did you use it?
DD: Well there was good screen to pick up the shape of towns and if a town had particular projection on one corner we could take a bearing on that and know where we were and I’ve got one chart in my, the big book which you can look at later on and I’ll show you a map which was specially adapted for H2S work. Gee was our main help and I’ve a Gee chart there. That gave us position line and we took a fix every six minutes and that was very handy because six minutes is a tenth of an hour and we could use the decimal point to move whatever our speed was. It was my job to find out what speed we were going. If we were getting to a place too early we’d have to do a dog leg beforehand. Do you know what that means?
CB: Just a weave.
DD: It was an equilateral triangle.
CB: Oh right.
DD: And you flew sides of it instead of a third and you just dodged with a piece across the bottom and you could lose two minutes or three if you would but that if you did that you were taking a colossal risk because you were crossing the main stream coming along. We were pretty close to each other sometimes.
CB: You couldn’t see them could you?
DD: No and there were times when you felt the slipstream of other aircraft almost as if the plane had hit a brick wall. She juddered because of it. Can you imagine that?
CB: How did you do your wind finding?
DD: Joining up the position on the ground to the position in the air and taking the vector that you got between the two you could work out the speed and the direction of the wind. The angle between the air position and the ground position gave you the direction of the wind. The length of the vector a quarter of the time you’d been working in the air you could work out the speed. It was done, this computer, are you aware what it was like? We had a red and green end on the pencil. It’s a laptop.
[pause]
DD: Had you seen one of these? No?
CB: No.
DD: No? Well speeds are set like that, went around that way and you put your wind on and you take a reading off against this point here and you know what angle we were working on.
CB: So this is the navigational computer mark 3, the Dalton Computer.
DD: And this was the circular slide rule converting centigrade to fahrenheit. Nautical to statute miles and so on. And my dear old friend on Transport Command brought that home from Canada for me.
CB: Oh did he? So it wasn’t standard issue in -
DD: Yes.
CB: The RAF? Was it?
DD: Oh yes.
CB: Oh it was. Right.
DD: Have a good look at it.
CB: Yes.
DD: And in that navigation manual there it tells you how to use it.
CB: Yeah.
DD: It talks about the duties of a navigator as such in that book too. The Navigator’s Bible.
CB: So back on operations a lot of it was the Ruhr. How did you actually find the target?
DD: Oh well the Pathfinders had been ahead normally and dropped flares. In daylight of course. It was a matter of the bomb aimer having taken near the target he’d then take over when we were say within ten miles of it, whateve,r and the target, when the PFF marked it, they had different methods of dropping flares. One name, I almost get nightmares about it - Wanganui. That was the name of an island near where Pathfinder Bennett lived. I’ve seen it from the air. Charlie Derby who you’ve met had been right around the south island of New Zealand and so had I. We went out at different times and stayed with Les Evans and his family. Les Evans has been here and stayed with us too. And Wanganui was the, when they dropped three different colours of flares and the master bomber would be overhead circling, looking down at the target and he’d give the bomb aimer instructions, drop your bombs to the right of the yellow flares or whatever. Yellow flares, red flares and green flares. Those were what we used.
And just to explain that Les Evans was an Australian but he emigrated to New Zealand.
DD: He married a New Zealand girl.
CB: Oh right.
DD: And he moved to Auckland.
CB: Right ok. So when you weren’t on operational flights what were you doing?
DD: Well keeping, getting as near to the right track as possible to the next turning point and we didn’t fly directly there. I can show you some little dots on little charts I’ve got there. Show you the operations we did and I’ve drawn them on straight lines but we never flew directly to the targets. This was in order to fox the Germans and we did all sorts of zigzags and shapes like that. And we also dropped window. Do you know what that is?
CB: Yeah.
DD: There’s some bits of window in my main big heavy blue book there. One of the wireless operator’s jobs used to throw out leaflets, propaganda leaflets. One thing which is rather saddening I had a lovely collection of leaflets and on one occasions when I was talking to a group somebody pinched them. I’ve got a few leaflets left but not the main lot that I did have.
CB: A collectable item.
DD: I suppose so yes.
So when you’re flying to the target you’re in a stream.
DD: Yes.
You’ve no idea where the other aircraft are. You said there were a number of issues, things that happened and you were glad you weren’t watching them because you were navigating so what sort of thing was that?
DD: Well it was up to the gunners and the bomb aimer went down into the nose. And they were keeping their eyes open for other aircraft too. We had no lights on of course as you can imagine and the pilot of course was alert to see that he was avoiding any other aircraft and you could feel the slipstream of other aircraft sometimes. It was quite a jolt at times to feel that but I still stayed at my post as navigator recording what was said by other people if it was necessary to record it and also making sure that I could easily feed the pilot with the course to steer once we’d been to the target.
I have rather an interesting business happening. Every October I go to a place called Porthleven and that’s where Guy Gibson was and I was flying at the same time as Guy Gibson but not actually on the same operations as he was and the people of Porthleven, he was there as a boy they’ve got a plaque up on a wall near the town clock which is away on a wing beside the harbour and because I’m a flying fellow I get invited over to it each year and they come and collect me for it and it’s a wonderful occasion. Very heartrending. And people reminiscent of their experiences of Guy Gibson as a child living in the town. Porthleven is about thirty miles from here I suppose. Out towards the Lizard Peninsula.
CB: As a crew, as a crew you did everything together.
DD: Oh yes.
CB: So when you weren’t flying what were doing?
DD: Writing that book you saw. Difficult to say. Ordinary sort of things. We visited local towns and did a bit of shopping. We weren’t a drinking party.
CB: Did you have many tasks to do on the airfield though?
DD: No.
CB: When you weren’t flying?
DD: Orderly Officer sometimes.
CB: Ahum.
DD: I was orderly officer on one occasion and a boy came up to the table and collected his pay, a corporal, and he’d been a boy at school with me. This was when I was at the Operational Training Unit and I got a message over the tannoy would Corporal Mitchell report to the Ordinary Officer. Got the fright of his life. Sounded terribly officious and when he saw me he just melted completely. And he was a boy with me at St Erth. His father was a carpenter and the president of the little band in the village and he was in that band.
CB: Now as you finished your operations.
DD: Oh yes.
CB: Then what happened?
DD: I got posted to Operational Training Unit as an instructor at Moreton in the Marsh and I decided then it would be a good time to get married and we lived in a village called Blockley which wasn’t far from the airfield there. It was an interesting little village. The plumber was called Mr Ledbetter.
[laughs]
The butcher was called Balhatchet. The chemist was called [Milton?] and I might think of a few more in a minute but, and the vicar was called Jasper. I was confirmed in Blockley.
CB: And what did you actually do as an instructor? Did you -
DD: Well, I didn’t fly then.
CB: Go up in the Wellingtons much
DD: I was a ground instruction.
CB: Right.
DD: And the young fellows who were going through were just needing, they were glad of my operational experience and one student who came through was a squadron leader who’d been with me in South Africa. He was a regular I think. I can’t think of his name now.
CB: And why would he be there?
DD: Oh to take a tour of operations. He hadn’t done any operations beforehand. He, he’d been a navigational pilot instructor. I can’t think of his name at all.
CB: No. So he was a pilot instructor as a pilot.
DD: Yes.
CB: But why was he getting navigation -
DD: He wanted -
CB: Training from you?
DD: To do a tour.
CB: Right.
DD: A tour was normally thirty one.
CB: Ahum.
DD: I believe Charlie who you met he had to do an extra one and he did it with a crew he had some illness or had flu or something and couldn’t go on operation with us and he said that they were a ropey lot. They were smoking. They were falling out among themselves and they were no, no sense of duty at all. But we were a very agreeable wonderful lot together and it was an experience that I can’t define. Closer than brothers. Our lives depended absolutely on each other and we relied on each other totally. Absolute trust. Absolute frankness.
CB: So what was your feelings at the end of the tour when you were all dispersed?
DD: When I was?
CB: When everybody was dispersed to other places.
DD: Well we wanted to keep in touch. We kept in touch with each other. I went to Dennis’ wedding at one time down at Llanelli and Dennis was a good old singer as I was saying. He had been a rather broad Oxford dialect beforehand. Now he’d become quite a little Welshman.
CB: So how long were you at the OTU as an instructor and what happened at the end of it?
DD: Well I was approached by someone who said, “You are an experienced navigator. Would you like to become a full time navigator?” I took the staff end course at Shawbury which was not far from Shrewsbury and right near there a place was called Church Stretton and the hill Caradoc which is the bungalow name here was overlooking where we were flying from. And the doctor who lived in this house before me came from that home district and he named this house after that hill called Caradoc which is a [?] in Shropshire.
Church Stretton has been rather precious to me because I had an aunt who lived there. She had a Breeches bible and she gave it to me which I’ve now handed to my son. My grandson Adam who will receive all my air force stuff he was married to a girl who came from there so we went back there to his wedding. And so church Stretton has been a little bit meaningful to us.
We had very good instruction there and I flew up to Reykjavik in Iceland. Went up on astro and came back on LRN Long Range Navigation.
CB: When you said you went up on astro that was because you were using the astrodome.
DD: Yes.
CB: And the sextant
DD: It wasn’t very, it wasn’t very accurate.
CB: But using a sextant.
DD: Oh yes.
CB: How often?
DD: A proper sextant.
CB: How often did you use sextants?
DD: Very rarely.
CB: On operation?
DD: I got I knew how to use one but it wasn’t used very often because it did need really precision and Gee and H2S gave us that. We could be much more precise than just map reading and well we were so high sometimes map reading wasn’t so easy and of course sometimes there was no character in what the land was below us.
CB: So how did you feel about using Gee because -
DD: Oh Gee was ideal. Yes the Gee screen gave us the position lines which we plotted and the more the angle between two position lines got nearer to a right angle the more precise it was. If it was shallow and less then say fifteen degrees it was little bit too inaccurate so we attempted to get position lines that would do that. In the book that I’ve got there the big heavy one you can look in that. Maybe you’d like to turn over a different pages in that and talk to me about that.
CB: Yes.
DD: But we, I stayed there after Shawbury, went back to Moreton in the Marsh again and I think I was offered the chance, “Would you like to come back in to the air force. Full air force.” No I didn’t wish to. I wanted to settle down to married life and family life and I did but I did ATC cadet work and that was very rewarding indeed.
CB: So -
DD: One of my cadets is still a local farmer here. He was a farmer’s boy and he was such a good cadet he was given something that in 1950 or so was a great privilege - a free flight to Singapore. I still see him and he still remembers the joy of being able to do that sort of thing. He went back to farming again.
CB: When were you demobbed and where?
DD: In September 1945. And my son David was born in that month as well. I was demobilised, where was it now? Harrogate I think. I’m not really sure. Harrogate I think.
CB: Right. I think in a moment we’ll pause for a break but just talk to me please a little more about H2S because that was sort of a mixed blessing.
DD: Well it was very good. H2S - just a code name for it, gave you on your screen a fluorescent picture of the ground below and towns stood out more so than anything else and if a town had a particular projection you could cotton on to that in order to get a bearing from it. And you’d rotate the screen [phone ringing] in order to – can you answer it please?
Tape mark 5308 the telephone begins to ring and the interview answers it for the interviewee – not transcribed.
Tape mark 5348 TAPE THEN REPEATS UNTIL MARK 1.47.20
CB: Derry we were just talking about the fact you were on 462 and then 466 squadrons
DD: Yes.
CB: At Driffield. Could you just explain how that evolved with the two squadrons?
DD: Well I started off with 466 all together but, and then 462 had been in the western desert and were posted back to England to take special duties. They were going to have a station of their own later on so we were transferred from 466 to 462 for that interim time. When 462 was built up to be a good squadron size then we were posted back to 466 and I can’t remember the name now but 462 went to not Swanton Morley
CB: Foulsham
DD: Faversham was it? That’s it so they were posted to that. They were a complete squadron on their own and you can read about it in the book by Mark Lax and the professor of chemistry. It’s possible that Mark Lax may be coming over to see me in late autumn this year. I’ve invited him. Whether he will or not I don’t know.
CB: So what’s his involvement with the squadron?
DD: He was just interested writing its history.
CB: Right.
DD: What his Australian Air Force career was I don’t know but he was an Air Commodore.
CB: And what age is he?
DD: Oh I should think middle fifties I should think.
CB: Right.
DD: They’re both younger than we are.
CB: So that covers that extremely well thank you very much and what were, oh final point. What were special operations?
DD: They might have been gardening which of course is laying mines in shipping tracks that was called gardening - code name for it. It could have been dropping food to needy people in certain areas that were damaged, overseas that is not in England. Those were their special duties.
CB: Right.
DD: They weren’t torpedo dropping but I did have a friend who was on Swordfishes dropping but that would have been a special duty but that was left to the RNAS which later was embodied in the RAF.
CB: Thank you. I’ll stop it there and pick up later.
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 Derry Derrington
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Great Britain. Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Dr Arnold Pearce Derrington grew up in Cornwall and joined the University Air Squadron at Exeter. He joined the Royal Air Force in 1942 and completed training at RAF Ansty, South Africa, RAF West Freugh and RAF Moreton in the Marsh, where he trained as a navigator on Wellingtons. He was posted to RAF Driffield where he served with 462 and 466 Squadrons. Most of his operations were over the Ruhr. He discusses H2S and Gee in detail. He was later an instructor at RAF Moreton in the Marsh and was demobbed in 1945. He kept a diary of his time in Bomber Command.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-14
Format
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00:56:20 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Identifier
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ADerringtonAP150715-01
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Heather Hughes
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.
South Africa
Great Britain
England--Gloucestershire
England--Warwickshire
England--Yorkshire
Scotland--Wigtownshire
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
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.
1942
1943
1944
1945
462 Squadron
466 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
Gee
H2S
Heavy Conversion Unit
love and romance
memorial
navigator
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
pilot
RAF Ansty
RAF Driffield
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Shawbury
RAF West Freugh
sanitation
training
V-1
V-weapon
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/87/2205/LWoolgarRLA139398v1.2.pdf
35b154fb1d680686ee063c2241368776
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
Woolgar, Reg
Reg Woolgar
R L A Woolgar
Jimmy Woolgar
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Bombing, Aerial
Description
An account of the resource
<a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/browse?collection=87">17 items</a>. The collection consists of an oral history <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/2148">interview</a> with air gunner Reginald Woolgar DFC (139398 Royal Air Force), correspondence to his father about him being missing in action and subsequently rescued from the sea, his <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/2205">log book</a>, <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/854">service and release book</a> and nine photographs.<br /><br /> He flew operations as an air gunner with 49 and 192 Squadrons.<br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Reg Woolgar and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle. <br /><br />This collection also contains items concerning John William Wilkinson. Additional information on John William Wilkinson is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/125319/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Woolgar, R
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-04
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Requires
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Please scroll down to see all X items in this collection.
Reg ‘Jimmy’ Woolgar was born and schooled in Hove. He began working life as a valuations assistant and was training to be a surveyor, which was interrupted when, in December 1939, he joined the RAF. Although he had aspirations to become a pilot, he trained as a wireless operator/air gunner instead. His wireless operator training was carried out at the wireless training school, RAF Yatesbury. https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/87/849/PWoolgarRLA1609.2.jpg His air gunnery training on Fairy Battle aircraft was conducted at RAF West Freugh. On 15 November 1940 he was promoted to sergeant and posted to No 10 OTU at RAF Upper Heyford. https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/87/845/PWoolgarRLA1601.2.jpg Initially flying Anson aircraft and then Hampdens with C Flight, he had his first ‘Lucky Jim’ moment, on 6 February 1941, when his Hampden aircraft was forced to crash land in a field near Cottesmore, in Lincolnshire. The aircraft was written off, but he and the pilot survived with minor injuries. At the end of operational training, instead of going directly onto operasations, he spent the next 5 months as a screen operator instructor. Eventually, on 1 September 1941, he was posted to 49 Squadron, Hampdens, at RAF Scampton https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/852 where his very first operational trip (described as a baptism of fire) was to Berlin. With headwinds going out and coming back, and nil visibility, it was likely the crew would have to bail out. Fortunately, the skipper found a break in the clouds and the aircraft landed wheels down in a field near Louth. The aircraft had to be recovered back to base, transported by road, on a low loader. On another occasion, on a mine laying operation to Oslo Fjord, his aircraft was peppered with anti-aircraft fire, it returned to base with 36 bullet holes in the fuselage and mainplane. A bullet had also passed through the upright of his gun sight while he was looking through it, whilst another tore through his flying suit. The nickname ‘Lucky Jim’ was beginning to stick.
In February 1942, on an operation to Manheim, the port engine, hit by flak, cut dead. Despite jettisoning all superfluous weight, which unfortunately included all the navigation equipment, the aircraft rapidly lost height, and the pilot ditched the aircraft in the English Channel. Whilst the crew had struggled to keep the aircraft airborne, (on a single engine), it had steered on a massive curve and unbeknown to them was headed down the English Channel, before it ditched. The crew scrambled out onto the wing and managed to inflate the dingy, then had to cut the cord attaching the dingy to the aircraft using a pair of nail scissors, moments before it sunk. In the water for hours, the crew thought they were drifting near the Yorkshire coast, but were rescued by a motor anti-submarine boat, much to their surprise, near the Isle of Wight.
Operational flying was intense, Reg would feel wound up before take-off and there was much apprehension on the way out to the target. Often, they flew through intense flak that was sometimes so close they could smell it. There was always a sense of sense of relief once they came away from the target. In between operations, each day was treated as it came along with many off-duty hours spent socialising in the local hostelries https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/853
After his first operational tour (he completed two) he was commissioned and became gunnery leader with 192 Squadron in 100 Group.
After the war ended, he signed on for an extra two years and was posted to Palestine as an air movements staff officer. Luck was again on his side when, one day, he was on his way to an Air Priorities Board Meeting at the King David Hotel when the hotel was bombed, resulting in many army and civilian casualties.
After a short tour in Kenya, as Senior Movements Staff Officer, he returned to Palestine flying with 38 Squadron until August 1947. In his flying career he amassed over 1000 flying hours. For services to his country Reg was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/858
He was released from the RAF in September 1947. Initially employed as an assistant valuations officer, he studied to become a Chartered Surveyor and secured a job as a senior valuer with the City of London. He later became the planning valuer of the city. After 14 years he was made a partner at the firm St Quintin Son and Stanley. Reg retired in 1971.
08 December 1939: Joined RAF as a wireless operator/air gunner
28 August 1940: 145, 3 Wing, RAF Yatesbury - Wireless Operator training
29 October 1940 - 15 November 1940: RAF West Freugh, No 4 Bombing and Gunnery School, flying Battle aircraft
November 1940: Promoted to Sergeant
15 November 1940 - 20 August 1941: RAF Upper Heyford, No 10 Operational Training Unit flying Anson and Hampden aircraft
02 September 1941 - 24 March 1942: RAF Scampton, 49 Squadron, flying Hampden aircraft
28 April 1942 - 24 June 1942: 1485 Target Towing and Gunnery Flight flying Whitley and Wellington aircraft
02 July 1942 – 3 July 1942: RAF Manby, Air Gunnery Instructor Course
4 July – 10 July 1942: RAF Scampton, Air Gunnery Instructor flying Manchester and Oxford aircraft
25 July 1942 – 10 August 1942: RAF Wigsley, Air Gunnery Instructor flying Lancaster aircraft
3 October – 27 October 1942: RAF Sutton Bridge flying Wellington and Hampden aircraft
28 October 1942: RAF Sutton Bridge, Gunnery Leader Course
End of 1942: Awarded RAF Commission
09 Nov 1942 – 18 March 1943: RAF Fulbeck flying Manchester aircraft
14 May 1943 – 11 June 1944: RAF Sutton Bridge flying Wellington aircraft
20 June 1944 – 27 July 1945 RAF Foulsham, 192 Squadron flying Halifax and Wellington aircraft
29 April 1946 – 30 August 1946: Palestine, Air Movements Staff Officer
01 September 1946 – 21 January 1947: Kenya, Senior Movements Staff Officer
30 January1947 – 10 June 1947: Ein Shemer, Palestine, 38 Squadron flying Lancaster aircraft
13 July 1947 139398 Flt Lt RLA Woolgar released from Service.
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
Reg Woolgar's observer's and air gunner's flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Observer's and air gunner's flying log book for Flight Lieutenant Reg Woolgar from 29 November 1940 to 21 July 1947. Detailing training schedule, instructional duties and operations flown. Served at RAF Yatesbury, RAF West Freugh, RAF Upper Heyford, RAF Weston, RAF Peterborough, RAF Scampton, RAF Barrow, RAF Manby, RAF Wigsley, RAF Sutton Bridge, RAF Fulbeck, RAF Catfoss, RAF Foulsham, Levant AHQ, Nairobi AHQ and RAF Ein Shemer. Aircraft flown were Dominie I, Fairey Battle, Anson, Hampden, Hereford, Whitley, Wellington, Manchester, Lancaster Mk 1, Mk 3, Mk 7, Oxford, B17, Master, Martinet, Halifax Mk 3, Tiger Moth, York, Dakota, Lodestar, Hudson and Argus. He carried out a total of 43 operations on two tours with 49 and 192 Squadrons as a wireless operator / air gunner on the following targets in France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Sweden: Aachen, battleships in Channel, Berlin, Bremen, Brest, Cologne, Emden, Essen, Frankfurt, Fresians, Halse, Hamburg, Kassel, Kiel Bay, Le Havre, Lorient, Mannheim, Helsingborg, Oslo Fjord, Rostock, Wilhelmshaven, Flensburg, Frankfurt, Gdynia, Mainz, Munster, S.D. operations, S.D. patrol, St Leu, Stade, Stuttgart, Walcheren and Wiesbaden. His pilots on operations were Pilot Officer Falconer, Pilot Officer Allsebrook, Sergeant Davis, Pilot Officer Ellis, Pilot Officer Hazelhurst, Pilot Officer Thomsett, Wing Commander David Donaldson, Flight Lieutenant Hayter-Preston, Flight Lieutenant Stephens, Flight Lieutenant Ford and Squadron Leader Fawkes. Includes notes on crash landings and forced landings, ditching off the Isle of Wight, infra-red trials and a Cook’s tour in the Ruhr Hamburg area. Reg was assessed as having exceptional night vision, had proficiency record above average and received air officer commanding commendation on second tour.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Kenya
Norway
Poland
Scotland
Sweden
Middle East--Palestine
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Oslofjorden
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Oxfordshire
Europe--Frisian Islands
France--Brest
France--Creil
France--Le Havre
France--Lorient
Germany--Aachen
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Emden (Lower Saxony)
Germany--Essen
Germany--Flensburg
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Mainz (Rhineland-Palatinate)
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Rostock
Germany--Stade (Lower Saxony)
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Wiesbaden
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Netherlands--Walcheren
Norway--Halse
Poland--Gdynia
Scotland--Wigtownshire
Sweden--Helsingborg
Netherlands
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Atlantic Ocean--Kiel Bay
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-09-02
1941-09-03
1941-09-06
1941-09-07
1941-09-08
1941-09-09
1941-09-12
1941-09-13
1941-09-16
1941-09-17
1941-09-28
1941-09-29
1941-09-30
1941-10-01
1941-01-13
1941-01-14
1941-11-07
1941-11-08
1941-11-09
1941-11-10
1941-11-23
1941-11-23
1941-11-26
1941-11-27
1941-11-30
1941-12-01
1941-12-07
1941-12-08
1941-12-16
1941-12-17
1942-01-14
1942-01-15
1942-01-17
1942-01-18
1942-01-25
1942-01-26
1942-02-07
1942-02-10
1942-02-11
1942-02-12
1942-02-14
1942-02-15
1942-03-10
1942-03-11
1944-06-30
1942-03-31
1944-07-04
1942-03-05
1944-08-07
1944-08-20
1944-09-13
1944-09-15
1944-09-17
1944-09-19
1944-10-03
1944-11-18
1944-12-12
1944-12-13
1944-12-15
1944-12-16
1944-12-18
1944-12-19
1945-01-16
1945-01-17
1945-01-22
1945-01-28
1945-01-29
1945-02-01
1945-02-02
1945-02-02
1945-02-03
1945-03-30
1945-03-31
1945-05-02
1945-05-03
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
LWoolgarRLA139398v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
16 OTU
192 Squadron
49 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
B-17
Battle
bombing
bombing of the Creil/St Leu d’Esserent V-1 storage areas (4/5 July 1944)
C-47
Cook’s tour
crash
ditching
Dominie
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Hampden
Hudson
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
Manchester
Martinet
mine laying
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
RAF Barrow in Furness
RAF Foulsham
RAF Fulbeck
RAF Manby
RAF Peterborough
RAF Scampton
RAF Sutton Bridge
RAF Upper Heyford
RAF West Freugh
RAF Wigsley
RAF Yatesbury
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
Whitley
wireless operator / air gunner
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/183/2381/LWoodC1451225v1.1.pdf
216ec66745b3d4c0ff1f52309fe0300c
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
Wood, Colin
Description
An account of the resource
15 items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Colin Wood (1922 - 2021, 1451225 Royal Air Force), his log book, service record and seven photographs including pictures of some of his crew. Colin Wood trained in Canada and flew operations as a navigator with 106 Squadron from RAF Metheringham. His crew were:
428289 - Andy A Anderson, pilot
1593692 - D Evans, flight engineer
1451225 - Colin Wood, navigator
1564707 - G H McElhone, bomb aimer
1873924 - P Thomas Tobin, wireless operator
1584474 - Vernon R Grogan, mid upper gunner
1595586 - R O Day, rear gunner.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Colin Wood and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-25
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Wood, 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
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Colin Wood's Royal Canadian Air Force flying log book for aircrew other than pilot
Description
An account of the resource
The log book covers the training, operational career and and post war flying of Colin Wood from 8 July 1943 to 7 February 1946. He trained in Canada and in Great Britain and was stationed at RAF Metheringham, RAF Coningsby and RAF Full Sutton. Aircraft flown in were Anson, Wellington, Stirling X, Lancaster I and III, Lancastrian, Dominie. He flew 25 night operations with 106 and 83 Squadrons to targets in Germany, Norway, Poland, Italy, and Czechoslovakia: Bergen, Bohlen-Leipzig, Brunswick, Cham, Danzig, Dortmund-Ems canal, Dusseldorf, Harburg, Horten harbour, Kaiserslautern, Karlsruhe, Komatau, Lutzkendorf-Leipzig, Molbis-Leipzig, Munich, Trondheim and Wurtzberg, His pilot on operations was Flying Officer Anderson. Colin Wood also flew operation Exodus to Rheine and two operation Dodge to Bari. Additional remarks include corkscrew training, H2S, and stowaway Olive on cross country flight. Post-war 231 Squadron.
Creator
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Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Format
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One booklet
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
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LWoodC1451225v1
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Norway
Poland
Scotland
Czech Republic--Chomutov
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Kaiserslautern
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Munich
Germany--Rheine
Germany--Würzburg
Italy--Bari
Manitoba--Winnipeg
Norway--Bergen
Norway--Horten
Norway--Trondheim
Poland--Gdańsk
Scotland--Wigtownshire
Czech Republic
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Manitoba
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1944-09-23
1944-09-24
1944-09-26
1944-09-27
1944-09-28
1944-10-14
1944-10-15
1944-10-28
1944-10-29
1944-11-03
1944-11-04
1944-11-05
1944-11-11
1944-11-12
1944-11-21
1944-11-22
1944-11-23
1944-11-26
1944-11-27
1944-12-14
1944-12-15
1944-12-16
1944-12-17
1945-02-19
1945-02-20
1945-02-21
1945-02-23
1945-02-24
1945-03-03
1945-03-04
1945-03-05
1945-03-06
1945-03-07
1945-03-08
1945-03-14
1945-03-15
1945-03-16
1945-03-17
1945-04-07
1945-04-08
1945-04-09
1945-04-17
1945-04-18
1945-04-19
1945-05-10
1945-05-31
1945-09-13
1945-09-15
1945-09-29
1945-10-01
106 Squadron
1661 HCU
29 OTU
83 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Cook’s tour
Dominie
H2S
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
Lancastrian
navigator
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Bitteswell
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Coningsby
RAF Full Sutton
RAF Metheringham
RAF Syerston
RAF Warboys
RAF West Freugh
RAF Winthorpe
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/7/3394/ADerringtonAP150715-02.1.mp3
6cd1f162411f8a65aa035d4d1151c5ab
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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Derrington, Arnold Pearce
Arnold Pearce Derrington
Arnold P Derrington
Arnold Derrington
A P Derrington
A Derrington
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Dr Arnold Pearce Derrington DFC (- 2016, 187333 Royal Air Force), a navigator with 462 and 466 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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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Derrington, AP
Date
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2015-07-15
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AS: It’s 15th July 2015. My name’s Adam Such. I’m a researcher for the International Bomber Command Centre and this is the second half of an interview with Flight Lieutenant Derry Derrington former DFC, former navigator on 466 and 462 squadrons RAF.
Derry first of all good morning thank you for allowing me to come back.
DD: My joy.
AS: Great. I’d like first of all really to take you back to briefings. I know that they weren’t all exactly the same but can you give me a general idea of how long they’d go?
DD: Well a briefing used to last about three quarters of an hour at most. Sometimes it could be done in a quarter of an hour and once we had the briefing the navigator would settle down to make out what his flight plan. Do you know what a flight plan is?
AS: Roughly. But if you’d like to go through it.
DD: It’s on every chart and every log I’ve got here and you’ll see that we knew the complete journey that we had to make and it wasn’t always direct. It would appear that it should be but we had to do all sorts of diversionary courses in order to fox the enemy and I’ve got a chart that I want to give you which shows every target we went to with, as it were, a straight line going from Driffield or our take off point was called Flaxfleet and it wasn’t a straight line as my chart shows but it’s easy for anyone to notice and we didn’t go in straight lines like it appears to be. I’d like to give that to you now while I think about it.
AS: Ok.
[pause]
AS: Now I now have your chart in front of me with your thirty one missions on it.
DD: Yes.
AS: Yeah, as you say straight lines but the doglegs would be quite substantial I suppose depending on where the -
DD: Well depending on the time. We could always lose time. We couldn’t pick it up unless the pilot really stepped on the gas but two minutes was the most that we have to, we mustn’t get there too early or we had to lose some time but we didn’t do that very often but of course once your jigging around like that you’re crossing the path of other members of the stream of aircraft and you were taking a risk. You’ve got to be very alert. You don’t want collisions in the air.
AS: Back, back to the briefing where we started did, did the whole crew go just to one briefing or was there separate briefings for pilots and navigators.
DD: No it was a total, all the crew was there for it and they went back to do whatever they wanted to do with their equipment but we had to sit down and work out our flight plan and the flight plan was a very handy thing because it depended of course on the forecast winds of that time. They may have changed completely by the time we would do the operation but they would have been just about five or six degrees difference perhaps from one course to another and it wasn’t just a case of the calculation course you had. You had to work out deviation and also each aircraft was tuned differently so that you had to amend the calculated course that you were going to steer. You applied correction and deviation but that was the navigators job to do that and well it took some time with the computer working out the courses that we had to go but the bomb aimer might have been with me on these occasions. Jonah our bomb aimer was quite keen and he would be watching what I was doing. And we were great pals. They were wonderful crew to be with.
AS: After, after the briefing and you’d worked out your flight plan it’s, what happened then? I mean
DD: Well.
AS: We hear about the operational meal, the operational egg. What -
DD: Well we had, some of the chaps said they had a good meal beforehand. I only seem to remember a good meal afterwards [laughs] they gave us plenty to eat. Two Eggs on My Plate is, I believe is the title of one book written about our experiences in those days. But they did feed us very well with a good old fry up.
AS: Then out to the aeroplane.
DD: We felt we were very privileged people because in those days were the days of rationing.
AS: Then out to the aeroplane. How long before take-off would that, would that be?
DD: Probably two hours, two and a half hours or so before take-off. And it wasn’t a case of being waved off we just were there and we went and didn’t know who was waving us off or what we were just intent on being there and doing our job.
AS: You were, were 4 Group, in, in Yorkshire.
DD: I was - ?
AS: 4. In Number 4 Group.
DD: 4 group yes.
AS: Now that’s between the 6 Group North.
DD: Yes.
AS: And the other groups South. Did you climb out directly on course or or did you have to avoid the other aircraft from -
DD: Well we had a collecting point to move from near Spurn Head, a place called Flaxfleet and we didn’t set course from the airfield as such we were out warming up and going around, flying in orbit around the area but we wanted to be at Flaxfleet by the time of take-off. TOT time of take-off or time over target TOT. And we set off from there and well we were on the alert all the time to see we weren’t too near other aircraft. I say we - especially the gunners. They were the eyes of the plane and the pilot.
AS: Once, once you had formed up and I presume for daylight operations there was more of a coming together than, than at night time?
DD: You mean the aircraft flying close to each other?
AS: Yeah.
DD: I suppose there must have been. Most of our operations were night time, dark, in the darkness but we did some daylights. The Yanks were daylight people. They didn’t do too much dark, night time flying but we were day and night. And our trips were not quite as long as some people spent a long time. I suppose the maximum length of time you’ll see from our logbooks the maximum length of time on any of our operations was approximately eight hours but some people had time longer than that.
AS: Yes, I -
DD: We didn’t have any very long drawn out operational time. I’m amazed we did what we did in such a short time.
AS: I see Magdeburg probably was, was the furthest you went.
DD: Probably, yes.
AS: On your trips or perhaps Koblenz.
DD: Ahum
AS: Yeah. Coming, coming back now if I may coming back from the trip was there much of a desire to be home first? To open the taps? To -
DD: No. No, we went along steadily the only thing was in the funnel when we were coming to land we sometimes the Germans had a fighter lurking around and we had to be equally alert at landing time as we were taking off. That was that. Have you heard much about that happening?
AS: No I’d like you to tell me about -
DD: Well -
AS: The whole process.
DD: They had fighters in the funnel sometimes and of course our fighters were up to combat them but we had to be on the alert because of that.
AS: Could you talk I know you were inside behind your curtain but could you talk me through perhaps the, the sort of aids to final navigation? The funnel lights, the drem pundits, Sandra - that sort of thing. Could you talk me through the process of coming back to base and landing?
DD: Well I didn’t have much to do with that. I got them back to the area where we had to be and the crew looked after that as a whole. They got their eyes open and the pundits, those are, those are the flashing lights you’re talking about?
AS: Ahum.
DD: Well the pilot had his job to do and the bomb aimer might have been there to help him and be observing with him but as a navigator I’d was, I’d got them back to very near the base and I’d done my job but I was alert to write and record whatever had to be done and I’d hear the conversation of the crew and if I heard anything significant then I’d make a note of it on my log.
AS: Which brings me nicely into afterwards. After landing. You said you’d done your job but perhaps you were the most important man at the debriefing. What was the debriefing like?
DD: We were asked all sorts of questions and were you at the target in time? What opposition did you get there? And of course the crew would say as much as I would about that. If they’d said at the time they would have been on my log recording it. I believe my logs are pretty neat. I’m not as tidy and neat now as I was then but I know you’ll their fairly clear. I did everything printing. I didn’t do anything cursive writing at all. It was fine print.
AS: And they, they would they go through your navigation log either then or afterwards,
DD: Oh they’d have an overview quickly. And after the operation was over the navigation leader would have a look at the log and the chart. They were handed in together. And he’d write a comment do you see there are comments on the front page of it - A satisfactory trip or did you take enough fixes, take more than you do and what they may say what was your opinion of H2S when it came in to us initially. You’ll see one or two of my charts are in a colour different from the others instead of the normal red printing on a white background.
[OTHER: LONG PERSONAL CONVERSATION NOT TRANSCRIBED]
DD: Yes they had a white background and the towns shape is in brown and the brown showed up very good against the white background and if a town it isn’t just a red glowing dot on the fluorescent screen it was a shape on the chart that we had and if there was some projecting point in some way that you could identify then that a bearing on, from that could be taken and that would give me my position. It was, your attempt was to get a position every six minutes at least apart from any visual sightings there may have been and this radar was a wonderful help.
AS: Was it generally reliable?
DD: Oh yes. They did try to jam us but we didn’t have much of that to worry about. They couldn’t jam the H2S but the window that we scattered was supposed to confuse their ground systems for identifying us.
AS: But the actual installation in the aeroplane? Could you be confident you’d go in there and turn it on and it would work?
DD: Oh yes.
AS: And work in the air
DD: Oh yes it was very reliable.
AS: Was that generally true for the aeroplane? You’d walk to your allocated aeroplane and it would be fully functional for the trip.
DD: Yes. Oh yes.
AS: So the standard of maintenance was, was pretty high.
DD: Very good indeed. The ground crews were very helpful. And if we weren’t satisfied they soon knew it. [laughs]
AS: Were your ground crew predominantly Australians by the time you were on ops or a mix?
DD: We were a totally pommie crew with an Australian captain. And I don’t think we were, it wasn’t a case of tolerated we were treated as equals. We had a very good company. A jolly good lot they were too.
AS: The ground crew? Were they mostly Australians?
DD: No I don’t know any ground crew were Australian. They were all British I believe.
AS: Ok.
DD: One thing which was rather interesting I ended up as a lecturer in Manchester University eventually and there was one fellow who came on the staff. He said, [?] ‘My job was I trained as a navigator but they were beginning near the end of the war not to need any more air crew things were going on so well and it was my job to load you up with our bombs, with the bombs. I was doing that job’. So he has diversified to be loading up bombs for us and well we just took off with what they gave us.
AS: When we talked yesterday we talked a bit about the French at Elvington. Did you have much to do with the Free French squadrons?
DD: We just knew they were there and we were just delighted I think that we were cosmopolitan as we were. We had a Maori in our squadron and well we were British and the French were there and well they had the same directions and the same intentions as we did and we were just delighted I think that we were a multinational gang, 4 Group
AS: Yeah. Indeed you definitely were.
[pause]
There we are. So we talked that you were an Australian squadron fully accepted as English people.
DD: Ahum.
AS: The Australians were far from home can you tell me a bit about their life. What they did for leave and how - ?
DD: Well quite a few Cornish people went overseas mining years ago. There’s an adage if there’s a hole in the ground there’s a Cornish miner at the bottom of it. And the thing is that some of these Australians who came over had relatives in England. They weren’t all convicts [laughs] and they went off and had leave and visited relations and well they liked going to London to see the bright lights.
AS: Did your Skipper, did he come home with you? Did he?
DD: No. He has been home since but not during operational time.
AS: On the squadron can you recall any real characters and why they were characters?
DD: Oh there was a chap called Tiny Cawthorne. He was a very big chap. Very tall. There was a man called Ern Shoeman and Ern Shoeman was reputed to be a millionaire property wise and he and I were good friends. He used to write me quite a bit and he knew we had a handicapped daughter. Our daughter Mary is fifty nine, she’s Downs Syndrome and she’s a very sweet, gentle little soul. She’s at a home up in Wadebridge and she’s got a very good carer looking after her. My nephew Michael is very good to her, takes her out for morning coffee and so on. She doesn’t speak because she lost her voice when my mother in law died and she was annoyed. Or Mary’s reaction was, ‘I’m not going to speak any longer ’cause granny’s not here and she didn’t tell me she was going.’ And we’ve had speech therapists for her and she is not speaking but my son David is coming down, takes her off for a walk somewhere when they’re the only two there and she’s able to make herself known. She understands sign language and she’s a great joy and friend to us and we’re very relieved to think that she’s looked after so well because we’re ancient and we shall probably pass on before she does but normally Downs Syndrome people don’t live beyond the age of fourteen but we were told that she wouldn’t live beyond the age of two but she’s still going on ok.
AS: That’s
And they treat her like a little doll up there where she is with the Home Farm Trust. That’s the name of the organisation looking after her at Wadebridge.
AS: And she, she used to interact with this character from the squadron. The property developer.
DD: Oh no, Ern Shoeman -
AS: Yes.
DD: Used to write and ask how she was getting on.
AS: Ok.
[phone ringing]
DD: He was a very pleasant man. He was a pilot I think.
AS: Are there any other characters that you can recall?
DD: Well there was this chap Jackson who used to smoke his pipe through the inside of the oxygen mask [laughs]
AS: That was insane.
DD: Very risky business.
AS: Presumably when he was on oxygen.
DD: I think so.
[PERSONAL CONVERSATION REGARDING PHONE CALL NOT TRANSCRIBED]
AS: So there was room in the squadron for characters was there? Discipline was, was reasonably relaxed?
DD: Oh yes. Yes. We didn’t go on parade very much. I can’t think of many more. We were characters I suppose.
AS: Characters and survivors yeah. So, what, what would a day on the squadron, a non-flying day on the squadron have been like?
DD: Difficult to say. I did some of my book. You’ve seen the -
AS: Yes.
DD: Song of Songs. Places like, let’s see, Mablethorpe. That seems people used to go there for a day out if there was a forty eight hour pass or a stand down I ought to know if I thought of that I could think of that easily I just can’t think of any. They would go to one or two coastal towns between Spurn Head and oh I just can’t think of the names of them.
AS: Don’t
DD: [I ought to. I’m ancient you see [?]
AS: Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. So switching tack a bit. You have the DFC.
DD: Yes.
AS: How did you hear about your award and how was it presented to you?
DD: I’ve got a newspaper cutting about it there. It was in the Gazette. Rotherham Gazette I think and I had a very nice letter from the George VI - Secretary presumably. The king was indisposed. Wasn’t able to be presenting personally as he would wish to do and wished me well in my future career and it came through the post [laughs]. No ceremony or whatever. My wife has the MBE. We went to Buck House to get that and my sister in law and my daughter could go with us.
AS: Fantastic.
DD: But there was no ceremony about it and immediately after the war and for at least twenty years Bomber Command was almost in the dog house. They were thinking in terms of all the damage they did to oh someplace or other. Let’s see which would be the one?
AS: Was it Dresden?
DD: Dresden.
AS: Yeah
DD: That’s the one. Well we weren’t involved in that at all. We don’t know if we injured many civilians. There were bound to have been at times but you couldn’t be that selective. Necessary they might have been injured or killed. We tried to do our best not to damage local human beings but bombing is a very, well not exactly indiscriminate but we had taken, aimed to be as accurate as we could.
AS: You mentioned at Bomber Command as you put it was in the doghouse after the war. Was this a real feeling that, that you and your comrades had that your -
DD: Oh we didn’t feel that. It was the attitude of the general public and Bomber Command wasn’t popular with the national attitude for some time. It was some, afterwards I think people have come around to believe and to know that we were the only ones to really get to the heart of Germany and the industrial heart of it. And if it wasn’t for Bomber Command well the war would have gone on much longer. And of course Guy Gibson’s dam busting that created havoc and that shortened the length of the war, the length of the time of the war finishing.
AS: I’m, I’m really interested in the fact that you think that it’s, it’s changing. For what it’s worth I agree. But do you think things like the Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park and what we’re doing up in Lincoln, do you think that is, signifies a change in public attitude?
DD: It was very popular at a time when the green park memorial was the biggest attraction in London and some silly fools went and defaced it with some paint.
AS: Yes I saw that. It was
DD: You saw that?
AS: Yes I was up there for the opening as you were.
DD: Oh it was a lovely day.
AS: Yeah.
DD: Yes they fed us well. They provided positions for us. We booked to go to it in good time to go see it. I went a day or two earlier I was so excited about going and Charlie and I were together and my son and my grandson went with me. They were the two guests I had and they were very impressed and delighted.
AS: There, there was this feeling amongst the aircrew that they weren’t appreciated before that. Is that the case?
DD: We didn’t think or care about it.
AS: No just -
DD: We were there and did the job and it had to be done. We didn’t care what the public thought. I will say this in terms of the public and Bomber Command I’ve been to a few reunions and I sometimes had a taxi to go from Paddington to another station, our reunions were often up in York, and I met a taxi man and he said, “Oh come with me I wouldn’t dare charge you chaps. I know what you went through.” And that was a lovely gesture. I’ve met that on two or three occasions.
AS: Moving completely different track if I may for a moment - use of wakey wakey pills - amphetamines or Benzadrine I know they were in the escape packs but were they ever offered to you before flying?
DD: I don’t recall anything about it at all. I don’t think so. No, we didn’t, I didn’t take any. I knew they existed but I didn’t want any or need any and neither did our crew.
AS: Excellent that’s good. Continuing on with the escape kit theme did you have any sort of escape training?
DD: Yes.
AS: And what did that consist of?
DD: We went to battle school and I seem to remember walking around on my hands and knees and I believe we had details to store a map in our caps or in our shoes in case we needed to make reference to the land to find our way around. We did escape training about a fortnight as far as I know.
AS: In your training before going on operations what, what sort of, of flying did you do? I’ve heard of bullseyes for instance. What were they all about?
DD: Yes they were practice flights to targets and they gave the bomb aimers and the gunners experience and the bullseye was operational experience and the bullseye was operational experience and a part of operational training. We didn’t do that when we were on operations. That was prior to operations.
AS: And did you get involved in leaflet dropping as well in training?
DD: No. I think the wireless operator’s job was to throw leaflets down through the chute and he’d take a handful every three minutes or so and they were in different languages. Some of the leaflets were like little booklets. I’ve got one or two there stuffed away in my general folder but I did have a lovely collection of leaflets and I went out to give a talk on one occasion and I’m sorry to say someone obviously pinched them.
AS: Oh Lord.
DD: I reckon I lost about twenty different leaflets on that occasion.
AS: That’s not a very nice thing to do.
DD: One leaflet I remember particularly was about the flying bomb site Watten that we went to and that’s now a visitor attraction with a coloured leaflet to hand out to people. And we knew that we had an aiming point. There was a great hole beside of the take-off place for these V1s and the walls of it were eight feet thick so you can imagine they needed to give good protection to the missiles which were stored inside.
AS: And you destroyed it.
DD: Hmmn?
AS: And the bombers destroyed it.
DD: Well they shook it up a lot [laughs].
AS: All the way through the crew has been the major part of your experience I think. Since the war I think you’ve kept in touch. Have you had -
DD: All the time.
AS: Have you had reunions?
DD: Oh yes we’ve had reunions. We went to Llanelli where Charlie the, Dennis Cleaver was, he married a Welsh girl. Whether we went to the wedding or what I don’t quite know. I did give an address at Jonah’s funeral. I am a Reader in the church and I wanted to talk about Jonah at the time. He was my particular close fellow ‘cause he sat beside me while we were on operations.
AS: What, what, what form did the reunions take? Would you all go off to a hotel somewhere or go back to Driffield or what?
DD: In York itself I think, mainly. It was Betty’s bar they used to talk about. They used to meet there when - you said what do people do on their day off or when they had free time - Bettys Bar in York was popular. I wasn’t a drinking fellow and that was very popular. They were a very hearty, jolly lot the Australians. Very easy to get on with.
AS: And you’ve been to Australia yourself a number of times.
DD: I’ve been nine times. Not just because of our daughter but there have been reunions in Australia. I did have some reunions to do with South Africa too. The [Hornclip?] Association. [Hornclip?] was a volcanic mountain with a flat top near where we flew from and that Association has packed in now but that was quite a popular meet up. I think we had one or two reunions in London.
AS: I think we’ll, we’ll pause there.
[pause]
DD: I don’t think we were using H2S until the end of our tour.
AS: We have from your fantastic folder here we have a, a collection of souvenirs[?] papers from each mission and one of them we have here - Mission 25 to Cologne does in fact have your H2S map here. Could you, could you talk me through what we’ve on this map?
DD: Well we had a fluorescent screen same size as the Gee was and the shape of the town would come up as a darker pink glow against a faint background and the shape came up like you see here. These different shapes of towns. You see London over there, a big patch, different towns in England and that was a case of navigating by H2S and I could take a fix every six minutes with no difficulty. See the scattering towns look.
AS: Yes.
DD: That’s the Ruhr there. You can see the shape of towns alright there.
AS: But on here you have a number of different coloured lines and writing could you, could you talk me through those. Base at Driffield there with -.
DD: Yes on the track that we wanted to keep there’d be two arrows and the wind that we found would have three arrows on it, the vector with the wind and we took off from Flaxfleet but you see our base Driffield is about twenty miles north of Hull and there’s a place called Flaxfleet not far away. That’d be the start of that thing. It was a village I suppose. I’ve never been to Flaxfleet. I’ve got a, somewhere over in that file over there big file I think I’ve got a postcard with a picture of Flaxfleet on it. Not that it’s very important but that’s the name of it.
AS: And then this, this is your track pre-planned. This is the track you’d planned beforehand.
DD: That’s right. On the way out. That was the wind vector there. That green.
AS: Ahum
DD: The target would have a triangle there.
AS: So you’re routing over, over Reading on this particular occasion.
DD: Yes.
AS: Is that, is that a regular route?
DD: I don’t know. Not often.
AS: But would you, would you always avoid London?
DD: Oh I suppose so. It’s such a sprawl. Anyway so long as I got my fix every six minutes that was all I really needed to have, needed to do.
AS: And you’re calculating a lot of wind vectors. One two -
DD: We were probably wind finders about that time and maybe[?] transmit that to PFF. There’s a rash of towns along -
AS: And as you say they all have different, different shapes.
DD: Shapes.
AS: What was the -
DD: Cologne.
AS: What was the target in Cologne?
DD: Railway. Railway marshalling yard.
3549 Other: Morning.
DD: Morning Abigail everything ok
PERSONAL CONVERSATION WITH ABIGAIL FROM MARKER 3605 - NOT TRANSCRIBED.
AS: So an enormous amount of information on here and you put this, which of this would you put on before you took off.
DD: Nothing.
AS: Information -
DD: Maybe that green, we dropped leaflets or something.
AS: That’s window, says window or something.
DD: Oh yes that might have been put on there before we took off.
AS: Also with your chart here we have a second chart and that’s -
DD: Sometimes we were asked to replot an actual operation and that might have been such a case. I don’t know.
AS: At short notice.
DD: After the operation. Analysing what we did.
AS: Ok.
DD: They kept their eye on us pretty well.
AS: And we also have a flight log. Flight plan, excuse me.
DD: Yes that was, that was target there. Before the target. After the target.
AS: Ok.
DD: What does it say here?
AS: Ok. - KJ Brown , Flying Officer.
DD: Hmmn
AS: So he was -
DD: He improved.
AS: Entirely satisfied with that one, with the Cologne trip. Can you, can you talk me through some of this. Here where it says watch - fast and slow. What’s that all about?
DD: Oh by watch when they gave us the time signal. Was it four seconds ahead of the actual Greenwich time signal or four seconds behind. That would be recorded there and the time would be important if I was doing anything to do with astro navigation but to the nearest minute well in terms of astro navigation a minute meant, a minute in time meant a four miles position difference and we had to correct for that.
AS: So you were navigating to that, that degree of accuracy?
DD: Yes.
AS: Ok. Here we have - is that required track?
DD: Yes, and those were the different winds we used.
AS: These would be given to you before the op would they?
DD: Yes. Yes that’s right.
AS: And then is this after take-off. This section of the form is
DD: That’s right
AS: After take off
DD: Yes.
AS: What actually happened rather than -
DD: That’s right. Watches synchronised so my time was what the pilot had in front of him. Why did I underline that I wonder. Is that take off time?
AS: Airborne. Yeah.
DD: Yes.
AS: Climb to six thousand over base. That must have taken quite a long time with a -
DD: Heavy aircraft.
AS: Heavy aircraft.
DD: The pencil’s a rather light colour. You can read it anyhow.
AS: Ahum [pause] and what’s that say?
DD: Master switch off. The master switch meant that the bombs couldn’t be released afterwards once it was off. We had a hang up or two once or twice with bombs. It’s not easy landing when the bombs are held up.
AS: Can, can you recall what size of bombs they were?
DD: Oh there’s a list of it. I’ve got a list of it on, let’s see, I think in the logbook there’s a list of the weight of bombs which we carried. You remember you’ve got the logbook?
AS: Yes. Yes, we can, we can have a look through that but this is marvellous this is a record of every single thing that happened isn’t it?
DD: Well that’s what the navigators job was you see. Not that we were going to do a post mortem or anything like that but at the debriefing they may have had questions to ask us.
[pause]
AS: And also you have a target photograph.
[pause]
DD: Cologne.
AS: Yeah.
DD: Anything on the back? No.
AS: What’s that telegram say?
DD: Best wishes and love, Helen.
AS: Fantastic.
DD: And that was the envelope the telegram came in. You don’t get greeting telegrams, you don’t get telegrams at anymore I suppose.
AS: And what’s the address there? Is that something Hall? Is that your officer’s mess?
DD: [Arley?] House, Marazion. That was my home address.
AS: Ah ok. Right. Shall we?
[pause]
Derry in amongst the things that you’ve kept is this Gee lattice chart here.
DD: Yes.
AS: Gee lattice chart North German chain. Could you talk me through what Gee was and how you used this chart?
DD: Well Gee was signal which came to us from a ground station and sometimes of course those did get attacked but we were delighted to be able to pick up these transmissions and we had a screen in front of us and we could find out where we were and the position lines as you see had certain values written on them and the value on that it made sure we were keeping to the same signal all the time and we had to record our position and we wanted to get two signals. One signal to cross the other and the better it was in terms of being a right angle it was more spot on. If it was say a thirty degree angle between the two position lines it wasn’t very satisfactory so we had to pick out the signals that were the most suitable to give us an accurate position and when we got our fix we used to make a mark with a cross on the chart according to where we were and it was my hope all the time to take a fix whichever method we did it every six minutes because six minutes being a tenth of the hour it was easier to work out by moving the decimal point the speed that we were doing and the Gee fix that we got showed us our ground position. By joining the air position to the air position we got an angle, a vector from which we could work out the wind direction and speed and that was the navigator’s job. The duties of a navigator are shown very well in the AP1234.
AS: Yeah, we, we’ll come to that.
DD: Does that tell you a lot?
AS: That does tell me a lot thank you and I can see here the crosses that you, some of the crosses that you’ve made.
DD: Yes.
AS: The lines are the Gee lines, the lattice lines are in green, red and purple. So were they different lines for different stations?
DD: That’s right. Yes.
AS: Ok and what would you see on your instrument, your Gee instrument? Would you see the values or -
DD: No I would set with some little tuning knob which station I was on which, and then take the reading for the position line and transfer that on to the chart I was navigating on.
AS: Ok and on here also apart from the crosses we have this pencil line coming down from [Maesemunde?] along the Dutch coast and then inland to by Krefeld.
DD: Yes.
AS: What, what was that? What does that represent?
DD: I don’t know. It might be if we were flying in that area whether we would be dropping window or whether we’d be dropping leaflets. It should be labelled but I’m not aware of it if it’s not labelled.
AS: Ok
DD: Is it a man-made line or a printed one?
AS: It’s a thick, thick pencil but no matter, it was a general query. Do these grid squares do they match up to a GJ there. HJ
DD: Pardon?
AS: They match up to your squares on your -
DD: The transmitting units? Those are different, the transmission would be here.
AS: Yeah excellent.
DD: Well modern laptops, on the computers are quite a frequent things but this is a laptop and it’s a circular side, slide rule and here we set the speeds and we used to prop the wind from that centre point how long it was, each one of these is ten miles and when we rotated this we set on the course that we were going to fly and take the reading off at that point there and I don’t really remember how I used this completely but it was a very useful tool.
AS: Which course would you pass to the pilot? Would you pass the true course?
DD: No. No, it had to compass the deviation and the compass correction and the true course was just, was a mathematical figure but that wouldn’t be handed to the pilot. And that was for converting statute to nautical. Centigrade to Fahrenheit. Indicated air speed.
AS: That’s a remarkable tool. It has a green and red pencil. What, what was the significance of the green?
DD: Well.
AS: And the red end?
DD: We used green for the fixed position and red for the target position but the green was used much more frequently than the red. And you’ll see the different colours on the charts that I’ve got.
AS: Yeah.
DD: Used occasionally but I think more likely than not ordinary pencil is more significant in my calculations than the different colours.
AS: Ahum
DD: I hope I’m talking sense.
AS: Absolutely. Now amongst your souvenirs alongside the computer is this air navigation.
DD: Oh AP1234.
AS: Now that is your bible perhaps.
DD: Yes.
[phone ringing]
DD: The ladies will answer that.
AS: Yeah. Now it -
DD: Somebody will come up very soon
AS: It seems.
DD: Oh she’s got the extension with her I expect.
AS: Fantastic. Quick thinking. It seems incredibly comprehensive
DD: Yes.
AS: Scope of navigation, bearings, compass error - was this a tool you used every day or something like a textbook from, from training or both?
DD: In training time. It wasn’t taken in the air with us. If you look somewhere around page thirty.
AS: Page thirty.
DD: Yeah that’s, that’s the -
AS: The circular slide rule. Excellent. Which is what we’ve just been looking at. The navigation computer mark III.
DD: Yes, I used that which is in your hand if I was giving a talk somewhere and that would have been put on top of that page I expect.
AS: Ok.
DD: These straps were there for a Mosquito pilot who was wearing it. He’d strap it to his knee and it had, it mustn’t move, like that. That would keep it from falling off his knee and being readily found if he needed it ’cause more likely than not he didn’t have a navigator with him and that was, he did his own navigation.
AS: Good Lord.
DD: [mentioned?] about arrows? Yes. Track two arrows the course that the pilot had to go was with that single arrow and three for the wind I think. Yes the vector of all wind velocity. The triple arrow.
[pause]
AS: It’s completely comprehensive isn’t it? The formula and the dos and the don’ts.
[pause]
What sort of examinations on all this did you have in training that you had to pass? Were they very detailed or - ?
DD: I don’t remember at all.
AS: Ok.
DD: We passed those exams that’s the thing.
AS: Yeah. You did your training in South Africa. Was there any anti-British feeling that you came across amongst the Boers?
DD: Oh yes we had to walk out in fours because there was a group of desperate Boers called the OBs [?] the Brothers of the Wagonette they were horse drawn people and they, they would assault air force people because of the pro-Boer feeling. South Africa had apartheid going on out there, colour bar, and that was cancelled later on but we kept together if we were walking out so we wouldn’t be attacked by these desperadoes.
AS: Was there, the other side of the coin was there a lot of kindness shown by other -
DD: Yes. .
AS: South Africans to you?
DD: Oh yes. South African families. Met some very interesting people called Thornton at East London and the lady of the house her husband was supposed to have the best stamp collection in South Africa. He was delighted to show that to us. They had a son and his friend, same age as myself and a friend, and they were training as doctors and I kept in contact with their son Geoffrey until he died about ten years ago and they, they were delighted to look after us. And the lady, Mrs Thornton, it so happened that when we moved to Queenstown from East London they were in a Red Shield Club, Salvation Army there was a friend who’d been to school with the lady that had met us in East London.
AS: Incredibly small world isn’t it?
[pause]
AS: Derry, one of the other the other things you’ve kept is your, your logbook.
DD: Yes.
AS: Observers and Air Gunners Flying Logbook. It’s not a blue one. It’s not a nice blue one. Why is that?
DD: Oh yes well of course the thing the normal ones are issued in England had a cloth binding. This one in South Africa just the bare boards. And this started to come to pieces and the repair I had done with that that blue colour there is the colour it should have been and it’s repaired somewhere in the St Just area. There’s a very good shop in St Just called Cookbook and they, I buy books there occasionally, I sell them books occasionally and they bind books as well and they repaired this for me.
AS: It’s a wonderful job.
DD: That you see there was my log when I went to grading school at a place called Ansty near Coventry flying Tiger Moths. Only small amounts of time.
AS: And these exercises 1, 1a, 2 they’re still used today.
DD: Oh are they?
AS: Yeah. Still used today. Very short time. September the 13th to what, the 26th is there any more on the back. Less than a month. Twelve hours.
DD: Ahum
[pause]
That’s Guy Gibson.
AS: Yes. So grading school and then in October 1942, and then jump straight to Queenstown in South Africa.
DD: Ahum.
AS: In October ’43.
DD: That’s when I passed out.
AS: Ok. Qualification.
DD: Do you know the pewter tankard I’ve got? It’s got a glass bottom in it. Do you know why?
AS: No.
DD: You don’t know?
AS: No.
DD: Well if it was a solid bottom and you were drinking than someone could easily draw a knife or whatever and give you a prong and that’s so you can see what was happening.
AS: I didn’t know life in an officer’s mess was so dangerous.
DD: Hmmn.
AS: Right. This is your result of your ab initio course.
DD: That’s right.
AS: At Shawbury.
DD: Shawbury?
AS: Ahum.
DD: Ahum that was a speck end course we called it. I’m entitled to the letter capital N like people put BA after their name but I don’t use it.
AS: And what, what’s your remarks there? What do, what do they say about you?
DD: Good results on course. With his pleasant personality and keenness this officer can satisfactorily fill a staff position. So you see I was called a staff navigator. They might have called me into a briefing room or something like that and there we are, that’s part of it.
AS: I’m just trying to get a sense of how much flying you did in training.
DD: I don’t think I did more than six hundred hours.
AS: It’s quite intensive Derry.
DD: Ahum.
AS: In South Africa on Ansons. I mean here - 14th of July. Good Lord, that was, 14th of July 1943, that was seventy two years ago yesterday.
DD: Yes ahum.
AS: Yesterday. You did three trips in an Anson.
DD: Ahum. Usually two as first navigator and second navigator. My friend Harry Dunn I was telling you about would be flying with me then and they had all sorts of strange names, Dutch names, these Boer people. South African Air Force they wore a khaki uniform.
AS: And army ranks.
DD: Yes.
AS: I believe. Yeah. In training did you feel it was high pressure and very intense or was it reasonably relaxed?
DD: Oh reasonably relaxed. My terrible feeling all the way along was will I be ready in time to do something worthwhile and we used to blame Air Commodore Critchley who was supposed to be a Training Command Officer and we used to blame old Critchley for not moving us on quickly if we got waiting and waiting and waiting for the next posting and I didn’t think I was going to live long enough to do operations but thank God we did.
AS: So did you get the feeling that there were an awful lot of aircrew in the system by time this time?
DD: No. No, we just accepted the fact we were a course going through and they must have planned well ahead to make places for us in South Africa and in Canada and in Rhodesia. I did write something about our overseas training. The Empire Air Training Scheme they called it.
AS: Was that published somewhere or -
DD: I don’t think so.
AS: Ok.
DD: It might have appeared in, there was an aircrew magazine called Intercom and I believe it was published in that but I’m not sure.
AS: I can look out for that. And then from South Africa by the time you left South Africa you had done what forty two hours day.
DD: Not very much.
AS: No eighty eight hour day flying and twelve hours twenty at night. Total flying. Left South Africa. And how did you get back to -
DD: On a troop ship called the Orduna.
AS: Ahum
DD: A South American boat. And there were a lot of women and children on board being repatriated out of India, service wives and children, and we went up through the Red Sea and we were kept at Tufik on the Red Sea until the Germans were cleared out of Italy and then they were afraid that we might meet some submarines in the, in the Mediterranean so we were well protected. They made well and truly sure that we’d be safely transferred.
AS: Ok. And you came into, to Liverpool?
DD: Liverpool again, yes.
AS: Super. Had you been commissioned by this time?
DD: Oh yes but we didn’t have commissioned uniforms until I’d travelled from Liverpool to Harrogate and that’s where the measurement and fitting of pilot officers uniform came into it.
AS: I hope you got a first class travel warrant.
DD: I suppose so [laughs]. I expect I did.
AS: And then we’re at Number 4 AFU is that Advanced Flying Unit?
DD: Yes, Advanced Flying Unit yes. Was that West Freugh?
AS: West Freugh, yeah.
DD: Stranraer.
AS: Yeah. And this was still, I suppose, individual training for you. You hadn’t crewed up at this point?
DD: No.
AS: And this was on Ansons?
DD: That was Ansons again. To get used to British conditions.
AS: Navigating in the fog. Yeah. Was it, was it a shock coming from the, the bushveld and the plains of and South Africa to what, what we have in the UK.
DD: No. We just took it for granted that it would be slightly different and we coped.
AS: And all the principals and all the training were - you could carry them straight.
DD: Yes.
AS: Straight across. Ok. Right, so we’ve got here a pundit crawl. Can you remember what that was all about?
DD: Travelling from red light to red light I think.
AS: Really ok.
DD: Whether it was the gunner’s point of view or from my navigation point of view I don’t know. Maybe I just had to record what was done. A pundit crawl.
AS: Yeah. And then 21 OTU.
DD: That’s Moreton, Much Binding in the Marsh.
AS: And it seems to get really serious at this point. You’ve got a page of dinghy drills, parachute drills, wet dinghy drill.
DD: We went to the Baths at Cheltenham for that. In the middle of England well away from the sea.
AS: Yeah. And by this time you, you’d crewed up?
DD: Yeah. No.
AS: Ok.
DD: Yes at OTU we crewed up, that’s right.
AS: Ok and you were using Wellingtons.
[pause]
Right.
[pause]
And that is super we did your OTU and crewing up and whatnot yesterday so I think we’ll draw a pause there if we can.
DD: Ahum
[pause]
DD: Turning on now?
AS: Yes.
DD: Occasionally we had a little wicker cage with pigeons in it and I believe the idea was that if we were shot down or if we were captured then the homing pigeons would come back with the news [laughs] and it only happened to us two or three times but I was aware that it did happen occasionally.
AS: And did you carry them on every trip or just -
DD: No. No.
AS: Just a few.
DD: Just occasionally.
AS: What, one wonders how you could release a pigeon from an aeroplane at two hundred miles an hour but perhaps it was if you crash landed.
DD: The crash would release the cage. The poor pigeons.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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ADerringtonAP150715-02
Title
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Interview with Dr Derry Derrington
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.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:08:21 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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Adam Sutch
Date
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2015-07-15
Description
An account of the resource
Dr Arnold Pearce Derrington grew up in Cornwall and joined the University Air Squadron at Exeter. He joined the Royal Air Force in 1942 and completed training at RAF Ansty, South Africa, RAF West Freugh and RAF Moreton in the Marsh, where he trained as a navigator on Wellingtons. He was posted to RAF Driffield where he served with 462 and 466 Squadrons. Most of his operations were over the Ruhr. He discusses H2S and Gee in detail. He was later an instructor at RAF Moreton in the Marsh and was demobbed in 1945. He kept a diary of his time in Bomber Command.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
South Africa
England--Gloucestershire
England--Warwickshire
England--Yorkshire
Scotland--Wigtownshire
France--Watten
France
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
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1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
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Julie Williams
462 Squadron
466 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
animal
Anson
bombing
briefing
Gee
H2S
Halifax
memorial
navigator
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Ansty
RAF Driffield
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF West Freugh
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/257/3404/PFraserC1501.2.jpg
1b37fb0db87bcc24ea45c3ca9410d737
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/257/3404/AFraserC151113.1.mp3
c25ed2496f5e21b68df313bc38956864
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
Fraser, Colin
Colin Fraser
C Fraser
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Colin Fraser (Royal Australian Air Force) an account of his being shot down, a crew photograph and a piece of parachute memento. He served as a Lancaster navigator on 460 Squadron. His aircraft was shot down in April 1945 and he was a prisoner of war.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by XXX and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-13
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Fraser, C
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AP: This interview for the International Bomber Command Centre is with Col Fraser. A 460 Squadron navigator. The interview is taking place at Camberwell in Melbourne. My name’s Adam Purcell. The date is the 13th of November 2015. Col. I believe you have got something prepared. Let’s go.
CF: Yeah. I was born in Melbourne on 5th of November 1922. My air force number was 435111. And when the Japanese came into the war I decided to join the air force but they had many volunteers and the army wanted me so I went into the army on the 31st of December ‘41 and it took me ‘til March ‘43 to get back into the air force at Number 2 ITS Bradfield Park in Sydney. Where I was then classified as a navigator which is what I wanted. By changing Australia where the system was to have a observer, which means you could be a navigator, a bomb aimer or both depending on the size of the crew. I graduated in February forty — oh sorry. It was ‘43. ’44 sorry. Yeah. I graduated, sorry, in February ’44 as a navigator and had leave and then lived in the Melbourne Cricket Ground grandstand for seven days before I sailed off to England. I arrived in Brighton where the Australians were — had a reception centre, in February, sorry in March ’44. And we were told then immediately that there would be a delay because the fact is that the Bomber Command was not losing the people and aircrew were surplus for the moment there. I took leave courtesy of the Lady Ryder Scheme at a farm in, outside York. And I then returned to the new area of the instruction things at Warrington in Lancashire. And I and my mates spent a lot of time from there looking around various parts of England while we were waiting and we had some leave. At that time the RAF stopped the number of pilots being trained and there were empty airstrips and aeroplanes. So they said the pilots had been waiting a long time, for three weeks down to these airstrips and an empty backseat. They sent the navigators and bomb aimers to learn about map reading in English conditions. I finished up at Fairoaks which is in the Windsor Castle area. And we arrived there in early June ‘44 and we could see with flying at only a few thousand feet around the area that the invasion was well and truly on. And a couple of nights later we were not surprised at the amount of aircraft flying around for the invasion date. The — and then about ten days later we woke up to the sound of the V2. The flying bomb. We were not on the direct route from France to London, but the stray ones often were within our sight and two at least came over our area. We went back to Padgate and there we were split up into navigators and bomb aimers and I, being a navigator went up to West Frew in Scotland. And there we were joined by a section from New Zealand boys and I did my first DR navigation for six months while there. Then we were sent to 27 OUT at Lichfield which was the Australian OTU. And there we met up with our bomb aimer mates who we’d trained with, and I crewed up with Dan Lynch for the following day. We discussed having a pilot and decided we wanted one who was big and strong and had to be mature. About twenty three or twenty four [laughs] so we mixed with the pilots and picked out two pilots who seemed to fit the bill a bit. And we were at the same meal table as them that evening and the following morning when we decided that we wanted as a pilot Harry Payne. Known as Lofty because he was six foot three. So later that morning when we all got in the big hall we sat behind Lofty and were chatting to some gunners who’d also paired up. And when the chief flying instructor said, ‘Righto boys. Crew up,’ we tapped Lofty on the shoulder and said would he like a navigator and a bomb aimer and he said, ‘Yes. Do you know any others?’ and we said, ‘There’s two nice gunners over there. So we had them. They in turn knew a wireless operator from the night before so we finished up with a crew which was Harry ‘Lofty’ Payne from West Australia. Dan Lynch, the bomb aimer from Tasmania and myself, Colin Fraser from Melbourne. Our wireless operator was Bill Stanley from Melbourne. And then we had two Sydney boys as gunners. Jack Bennett, upper, mid-upper and Hugh Connochie known as Shorty, as the rear gunner. We then did ground subjects for a couple of weeks. Everybody. And I was then introduced into the mysteries of Gee. The radar navigation aid. We were taken out to the Wellington aircraft with a instructor pilot and he showed Harry how things were done and then said to him, ‘Now you can take off for three landings and take offs and then call it a day.’ Well, we took off and landed twice and the third time as we reached height the port engine failed and we went into emergency drill which for my position was in the middle of the aircraft where I couldn’t see anything. As we went around I pulled a nacelle cock to get rid of some petrol from the plane. And when Lofty turned in to make the landing he instructed me to pull the air bottle which I did and down came the undercart. The original Wellingtons that would also blow all hydraulics. But the pilots had all been advised that all planes on the station had been adjusted. That this would not happen. However, as Harry went to put down the flaps nothing happened. And he finished up banging the aircraft down halfway down the strip and he ran through the fence, across a road, a fence the other side, a bush or two, and finished up in a ditch with the back broken and up in the air. We all managed to get out of the escape hatches with any trouble, no injuries except a few minor cuts. And we took on, went back to flying the following day. And the only one there the one night the heating failed just after take-off and I had to navigate around with frozen hands. Putting them in gloves and out again. Navigation was a bit sketchy. And when I handed the log in, the instructor said to me it wasn’t too good. I maintained that in the circumstances it was quite ok. His comment back was, ‘In Bomber Command there are no excuses,’ which stayed with me for the rest of the tour. We finished there on the 11th of December and then we went in to Poole which meant sitting around for nothing for a couple of months because it was winter and there wasn’t any flying going on anyway. And we took leave to several places such as Edinburgh and there. Then on the 2nd of February we then went to Heavy Conversion Unit at Lindholme and met up with the mighty Lancaster bomber. As the navigator I met up with the H2S which allowed you to look through cloud and pick up the signals from the ground. It was good on the coast but not too good with towns. And one night when we were flying on a decoy raid which meant you flew within a few miles of the enemy coast and then turned back to make them think you were going to attack them. And that night it turned out that my oxygen tube got twisted and I was only getting half the amount of oxygen, and as such I got — cut out a dog leg we should have done and got back earlier to be noted that they were bandits in the area which was code for German fighters. Anyway, we got down. The last crew in to land while a mate of ours at 460 Squadron, Binbrook was shot down on a training flight and two of his crew were killed.
AP: Col.
CF: There were about a hundred JU88s came back with the bombers.
AP: Col. I’ll stop you there for a minute.
Other: I’ve heard this story.
AP: I haven’t yet.
[recording paused]
CF: Ah yes.
AP: Now where weren’t we?
CF: That’s how it goes. Now, where was I in this?
AP: We were talking about bandits returning from your decoy trip I think. Bandits. You were returning from your decoy trip.
CF: Oh yeah.
AP: And there were bandits.
CF: Yeah. Which meant that therefore we landed. I think we said we landed. And got, Binbrook. That’s right. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. So we’re as we said before any former on there. We finished on that at Poole, there we’ve got the — ah that’s right we’re at Lindholme. Ok. So Ok. Now where do I start from now when.
AP: Say again. Alright. Have you finished.
CF: Yeah.
AP: Your prepared statement shall we say. Ok. You said you were picked as a navigator and you said you wanted to be a navigator. Why?
CF: Because I’m good at figures. I’m not very good with my hands. I never wanted to really drive a car like all the other kids were fighting to get the steering wheel and I’d say, ‘Give me the map.’ So [laughs] yeah. I haven’t got the co-ordination with my hands. Well the obvious thing is my wife very nicely said to me, ‘You know dear if we lived on what you made with your hands we’d be below the poverty line.’ [laughs]
AP: Fair enough.
CF: No. I’m good at maths and I enjoy doing the figures. And secondly to stare, to sit with your steering column in front of me for five, six, eight, nine hours. That’s deadly. I like, I’ve got figures in front of me. I’m working on this time . Doing it there. So all in all the idea of being a pilot, although I had all the things. In those days my eyes were good for landing and everything. I was pilot/navigator category only because I was six feet one and they would not make you a gunner if you were over six feet.
AP: That’s why you’re —
CF: When I went in for my interview as to what I could be and they said, ‘What do you want to be?’ I said, ‘A navigator.’ And they probably looked at each other and said well that’s a change because ninety percent or more say a pilot. And they had a look at my figures that I had done pretty well in the exams. The mathematics and so forth. So yeah. So I was happy with being a navigator, yes. I wouldn’t have liked to have been a bomb aimer. Again, you would be steering there on a bombing trip for hour after hour whereas, you’re working on it. Mind you, at the same time you have a lot of pressure on you because if you’re not there and where you should be the crew look upon you. I always remember reading memoirs of some fella that when he said they got there and he said, ‘But we’re there,’ and the pilot and the rest of the crew said, ‘There’s no markers down. No, nothing. Are you sure you’re right Bill?’ You know. And then all of a sudden some markers went down and the pilot said, ‘Oh well done. The markers are down.’ He said, nobody apologised for all the queries and suggestions that I’d stuffed up really [laughs] yeah. No I enjoyed being a navigator. Yep. Yes.
AP: Very good. Can we — we might backtrack a little bit actually. Your early life when you were growing up. What, what did you do before the war?
CF: What?
AP: Yeah.
CF: Well I grew up at, in Hawthorn you might say. Down near the Quay on tennis courts on Scotch College where we had the Gardiner Creek winding around and like all the little kids along the Gardiner Creek we played down there when we shouldn’t have probably. We even had a bit of naked swimming there when we were six or seven or eight sort of business there in the creek. And somebody asked me once what was the, your memory of childhood? And I said, I thought for a while and I said, ‘Freedom.’ We were free. There was never any worries about anything sort of business there. Admittedly in the Depression I never gave my parents enough credit for the way they looked after us four kids during the Depression sort of business then. But the point was that as I said at my elder brother’s funeral my first memory of him was mother calling out, ‘Take you little brother with you and look after him.’ And that was the way that it acted in those days. Big sisters and big brothers looked after little brothers and I had what you might — and of course there was no TV. And we played games within the family and with our mates, sort of business, there. I had a great mate who died only a few months ago with a sudden heart attack and I went out my back gate and up a couple of houses in his back gate and vice versa and he was just as much — had two sisters he didn’t [pause] but he was just as much an elder brother as I was for the girls. They just treated me like a brother. He was over so often, he was always with us. Yeah. But the freedom was that was it. I could do what I sort of liked. Mother never said ‘Where are you going?’ Or something or other. I would just say, ‘Oh I’m going down to see Bill Jones or something like that.’ There was no worries that there were going to be any strange men or odd people around about. I had the — and there weren’t that many cars on the road either sort of business. That was it. It was freedom type of business that I had on there. And I was in the, one of the higher ones up in class. Again fortunately I had brains. I had nothing with the hands but the brains. I had the brains. And I can remember at state school you had two, what you’d call, very smart bastards, and I was one of the next three or four after that to get fired over two or three or four of us. But those two were outstanding and then we three or four or so were varied from time to time as to who was the smartest bastard shall we say. But that was it. We had freedom type of business of it there. And what was more. To do it there, more we had security ahead of us. It was obvious that if we’d ever thought about it we would grow up and get married and have kids and have a house. And that was, you know, the feeling was there was life ordained and certainly anybody who took a job in the public service would be, assume that they would see their life out in the public service. Again, if you joined a big company like BHP or something like that you would again, would assume that you’re there. So that was also better. But on the other hand of course as you were growing up you didn’t think too much about security. You just assumed I suppose that there was a instruction. And living in Hawthorn black was black and white was white. It was only when I went into the army I found there was a lot of shades of grey, depending on circumstances and the viewpoints of people etcetera. But in Hawthorn where I was, as I said we had all those. We had all that creek and the open land to run and play and fished and so forth etcetera there and I can remember the actual Quay on tennis courts there being built shall we say on it there. But that was it. It was the freedom of doing things. We might, as I say, Depression we might have had a second hand football or cricket bat or something or other. You had something. That was it, sort of business there. You weren’t looking for much sort of business there, and as I say you had a lot of, a lot of kids in that area I suppose moved at the same time and there was always. You walked out the house and walked around to the next over or you’d run into a couple of kids and you sort of business there. Yeah. Yes.
AP: Yeah. [unclear]
CF: A good childhood really. As I say not a very, not a rich one in any way or form sort of business there but a good childhood of freedom. Yeah.
AP: What— was the army your first job. Was the army your first job?
CF: What?
AP: Sorry. Sorry. Your first job. Was, was that — did you come straight out of school and straight into the military or did you do something?
CF: At that stage, Year 10, the intermediate was where everybody except the, the title used recently — only the swots went past Year 10 and they would be the future doctors and so forth there. The only the very, very smart ones you might say, the top ten percent or something went past Year 10. The rest of but again, looking, you went to work in a big company and when you started out they had — shall we say half a dozen new boys started at the end of January or something and you worked in the mail room. And for twelve months you delivered papers and picked up papers all around and you got to know what happened in the company. And then after that or sometime during it perhaps you then got a job of doing — writing something up or doing something and you stepped up your attitude. And you also went to work — you went to night school to learn book keeping accountancy. Or whatever was the thing of it there. So for two nights a week and maybe a bit of time to do a bit of study you were occupied shall we say. You didn’t have much money so you couldn’t go out much sort of business there. You did the things. Yeah.
AP: So why did you want to join the air force? Why? Why did you want to join the air force?
CF: Well I’d never had much to do with the water so the navy was out for a start. The idea of being on a ship sailing around on water had no appeal. The army — well I had read a few books about World War One. In the trenches and such and again the idea of face to face, shall we say, bayonet and so forth didn’t appeal much to me and so I couldn’t see a place in the army for my clerical skills shall we say. That type of business. So the air force and being a navigator appealed to me. Yeah. Yeah.
AP: Fair enough. You were, I think you said ITS was at Bradfield Park. Your Initial Training School was at Bradfield Park?
CF: Yes. Don’t ask me why they sent a Melbourne boy, like a fella said to me when he went to do his initial training as a pilot, he lived in Adelaide and thought he’d go to Padfield or something.
AP: Parafield.
CF: And no. No. No. They sent him over to Wagga.
AP: Ask not. Just do.
CF: The mysteries of postings. Yes.
AP: What happened at ITS? What, what sorts of things did you — were you taught. What sort of things did you do?
CF: Well you learned the theory of flight was the main thing there. Why did a plane stay up shall we say. You did mathematics for your because later on your skill. You did plenty of PT to keep yourself in good fit there. Incidentally, the fittest I ever was after the army induction because we did marching, drill there. PT. And then we’d finish up at four in the afternoon with a swim in the [Goulburn River?] And at the end of six weeks of that or something like that we, at nineteen years of age you were very fit when you’d been doing all this exercise every day for six weeks sort of business there. Yeah. The [pause], I can’t really think what else you did in there as I say the theory of flight. The theory of there and as I say mathematics. And PT. Yeah. I can’t think of really much else you did in that sort of days. I didn’t ever keep any records of what we did but certainly when you were on the reserve they would send you homework to do on mathematics. Do that there. So we had a reasonable amount of mathematics in there. Teaching up at there. But now I can’t remember really much other than the fact that we did the mathematics and the theory of flight etcetera up at there. Yeah. They might have had something else up at there. I don’t think if that was the question when you know they would ask you how you got up there. Yeah.
AP: So the first time that you ever went in an aeroplane what aircraft was it? Where was it? And what did think?
CF: It was an Anson aircraft at Mount Gambier which was Number 2 Air Observer’s School. So that was where I go on from ITS to Mount Gambier. And we went on [pause] I think it was an initial flying thing. We flew over the land and we flew over the ocean. And I think that was, you might say, showing us what flying was about. I don’t think we did anything other than fly around and see what was there. Yeah. And the Anson. Yeah.
AP: Did you —
CF: And what was more you had to wind it up a hundred and six turns because you were the, you were there. The pilots wouldn’t wind it up. You were part of the crew who had to wind it up. Yeah.
AP: That’s the undercarriage. That’s the wheels.
CF: That was the navigation. Yes. And you flew two to a crew. Two to a crew. One was the navigator and the other was the secondary one who had to take some notes about the countryside. Yeah.
AP: Did you, did you encounter any accidents or incidents in that early training? Did you, did you see any or —
CF: No accidents in the early training.
AP: No.
CF: Australia had none of the training actually till I was a sergeant and I didn’t actually get involved in any accident that time at all. Sort of business there. No.
AP: Alright. Once you got your wings you passed out as a qualified navigator. You then went to the UK somehow. How did you get there?
CF: We actually went to Brisbane and we caught a American twelve thousand dollar victory ship. They were the ships that they were welding for the first time. They had the, what was the seven thousand tonnes was called the something or other. And I was on a twelve thousand tonne called the Sea Corporal. And we went from Brisbane to San Francisco. And the two things I remember was A) I could see a rain storm and I could see a rainstorm had length and it had width but living where I was in the sort of valley a bit really of Gardiner Creek you only ever saw the rain coming at you sort of business there. You could never see the width or the depth of it but then all of a sudden there you had the ocean. Look across there and there is a rain going across and it’s got width and it’s got length. And the other thing. One day we went into the doldrums when the sea is perfectly smooth. There was no waves crashing. Smooth. There’s no, not a ripple on the water. This was what the old time sailors with the sail used to dread getting. I can imagine. That’s it there. I saw that one day. Yeah. It was eerie to watch this, shall we say, waves — not raising high obviously but, you know, up in the air, yeah.
AP: Very nice. You got to the States. Did you spend any particular time in the USA or was it straight across?
CF: Oh we had six hours. We went to a place called Angel Island in San Francisco Bay which was an American camp and we were given six hours from 6 o’clock in the evening till midnight to see San Francisco. That was our time in San Francisco. Then the next day we caught a train. A train across America. And the great thing about that — on the Pullman carriages they had sleepers. Great thing. Yes. We had to sleep sitting up in Victoria. Well in Australia and in England and then we got to outside New York and we got three days leave in New York. And then we went down to the harbour to there and on one side was the Queen Elizabeth of eighty four thousand tonnes and on the other side was a boat, I’ve forgotten the name, fifty five thousand tonnes. And we had never seen a ship bigger than twenty thousand tons. So eyes opened up big and wide. We didn’t know actually we were going to go on, you see. We actually slept in the Queen Elizabeth. In the third class cinema with bunks three high. And they had something like twelve to fifteen thousand troops on. I understand the American soldiers had eight hours each to sleep. That was it. There was only one bed for three American soldiers when they were taking them across. Six were there. So that was — you had two meals a day. And you had about, I think about half an hour you were allowed up for fresh air once a — once a day you got half an hour on the deck to get a breath of fresh air or something. Because the Queen Elizabeth had done that trip, you know, how many times they had the work down to a fine art. You had to wear a colour patch on your uniform and you weren’t allowed to move outside that colour patch except to go down and have your meal. It was a highly organised thing of it sort of business there. Yes it was. Yeah.
AP: How long ago — sorry, how long did that take. That voyage.
CF: Five or six days it took us to get across. Yeah. Yeah.
AP: Not much fun. Not much fun.
CF: Yeah.
AP: Alright. You get to England. This is the first time —
CF: Actually you finish up in the Gourock in the Clyde. Firth of the Clyde.
AP: Ok.
CF: Yeah.
AP: You get to the UK though.
CF: You take the train down and in actual fact you get in the train and you go to Glasgow and then you come to a city that’s got a big castle. And it’s got Waverley. That’s when we asked where we were. ‘You’re at Waverley.’ We couldn’t find Waverley on the map. And of course later on, some a month or two or so later somebody went up to and said, ‘Hey that was Edinburgh.’ Waverley is the station like Flinders Street.
AP: Certainly is. This was the first time you were overseas.
CF: Yes. First time. No. Sorry the army was the first time I was outside Victoria.
AP: Really.
CF: Yeah.
AP: Ok. So as a young Australian, the first time you were overseas wartime England would have been fairly confronting I suppose. What did you think of wartime England when you first got there? What was it like?
CF: Well, wartime. We got there in April which was spring you might say. And we had seen many pictures of England. Of the green land and so forth there. And coming down from Scotland the land was open shall we say and pleasant and the main memory I got down there seeing, for instance all the poles to stop planes landing from the invasion and other matters that indicated there was a war on around the place and England, I read a book. The same thing. It seemed to fit in pretty clearly of what you’d seen in the papers shall we say because you weren’t looking at the slums of London or anything of that nature. We were at Brighton which was the big as you probably know was the big holiday resort with the pubs all along the front. Like something, you might say, like the Gold Coast or something or other like that. And plenty of, actually in peacetime B&Bs behind that, also around places etcetera there. But no England was comforting I would say. There was no problem in there and of course they spoke the language [laughs]
AP: What did you think of the people?
CF: Incidentally, going across to America we had one naive nineteen year old saying to some American officers talking about America and he said, ‘Won’t they think it funny we haven’t got an accent?’ Took the Americans about five minutes to calm down with their laughter.
AP: Fair enough. What did you think of the people in England? Did you, did you have much to do with the civilian population?
CF: Well as they said in the book of, “No Moon Tonight” the author said if there was ever a Commonwealth spirit it was in England during the war. There were no — the Canadian, the English and such and one of the great things about being an Australian was that there were no Australian army troops to stuff it up in England. The air force by and large were ground crew admittedly as well. But by and large the Australians over there were, shall we say middle class and educated and were very popular with the locals and with the girls. That’s it. Yeah. And we were pretty well paid shall we say. Not as well paid as the Americans but we had — yeah.
AP: What — what sort of things, when on leave and these could be at any point when you’re in England. When you’re on a squadron or when you’re in training. What sort of things did you get up to when you were on leave or when you were off duty?
CF: Well, I went on leave with Dan Lynch who — he’d been doing the first year of a medicine course so you might say that we, on leave looked at seeing what we could of England, Scotland and Wales sort of business of it there. So we were always looking for the views and what was there and the old castle and all those types of things of it there. We had a few drinks but basically we didn’t hang around the pubs etcetera there. We, we wanted to see the actual country and as a tourist shall we say there. Yeah. That was my particular little group of, shall we say half a dozen mates and so forth you mixed. In other words you soon found out who wants to, you know, we were friendly with a couple of older blokes who, you know. They were shall we say twenty five or twenty seven or something like that. They’d like to, and they were married they liked to just go down to the pub and just have a drink and a talk. That was fair enough. Whereas we would possibly pop into the pub for one or two drinks and then on to the dance or something of that nature of it there. Yeah. So, like, how things go, when we were at OTU we got a week’s leave and Dan Lynch and I went out and went to hitchhike a ride with the Americans trucks to Brum. Birmingham. And we –they pulled up and, ‘Where do you want to go.’ I said, ‘Birmingham,’ and, ‘That’s ok we’re going to Oxford.’ ‘Could we come to Oxford?’ ‘Oh yes. Hop in the back.’ So we finished up at Oxford. And the following night we went and saw a George Bernard Shaw play which I had never seen one before. But that’s, as I say, a mate of mine. Dan Lynch. He was, that was his culture more so than mine, shall we say, etcetera. Yeah there. Again it was mixed up with you that for instance out of hours, 7 that was what we had to go to get back by the way that we picked up with the English. Bill Stanley and Dan and I would often make a three and go to the dance shall we say. Whereas the navigator Jack Bennett would then be he was a bit of a, he had a couple of other blokes or something. He was chasing the girls and so forth there. And he would, he’d go there and go sometimes with Shorty and the pilot. They tended to do other things shall we say. Yeah. But that was it. You, you soon found the people that wanted to do things that you wanted to do. Yeah.
AP: Did you spend much time in London? Did you spend much time in London?
CF: No.
AP: Not at all.
CF: No. We thought, having had a good look around London on a couple of occasions when we were there. No we didn’t spend, we spent some time there but no we wanted to, when we went on leave we would head down to either Cornwall and Devon or John O’Groats up in Scotland. We never made either place, or land. We didn’t make Lands End. We didn’t make John O’Groats but we would head off with a pass and went off with a thing and we’d stay one day, two days, three days and then all of a sudden realise that we’ve only got two days left. Perhaps we had better in that case make a firm plan where we’d go but that was it. Yeah. We went we made the opportunity. The one little group I sort of mixed around in was to see as much of England, Scotland and Wales as possible in the time. Yeah. In fact, Ireland as well. When the war was over, over there I actually went over to Ireland. Yeah. Where my Irish grandfather came from.
AP: Excellent. What did, what were your thoughts when you finally got out of that Wellington? Or the Wellingtons that kept having engine failures.
CF: Yeah.
AP: And you’re now on four engine aeroplanes. You’re looking at a Lancaster for the first time.
CF: Well, wait a second. When I, when after the Wellington crashed or when we moved in to the Lancaster.
AP: Sorry. In general. When you moved on. So you’ve left the Wellingtons behind.
CF: Left it behind you. Yeah.
AP: Yeah. Thank goodness for that.
CF: The old story was that the following day we went flying and that crash was they rolled the Wellington. That’s what happened. We didn’t suffer any and our main thought then was we’d got a bloody good pilot who didn’t panic. He did everything he could to keep the aircraft going and so forth. Safety sort of business of it there. Because as I said they found out that aircraft somehow had not been modified. I never found out why and so forth. Anyway, no, you, we were young. You got on with it and when you got to a Lancaster well let’s face it, let’s say the Lancaster at the Heavy Conversion Unit might have been a little battered but it was better than the Wellington. At the OTU sort of business there. Yeah. And you had four engines too. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No. You didn’t worry too much about that.
AP: Can you, can you describe for me what the navigator’s position on the Lancaster is like? What? What’s there when you’re sitting at your desk. What’s around you and what’s it like?
CF: Well a Lancaster you had first of all you were the pilot and the flight engineer stood alongside of each other with the great things in front of them. You, then there was a big black curtain could be pulled across there where [unclear] and you actually faced sideways with a desk in front of you and therefore in front of you you had a compass which theoretically agreed with the compass in the — [paused]. You had to check that there because sometimes it didn’t. And you then had a set for the Gee which you used frequently. You read the thing and you got two, and two things on that and then you plotted on a special sheet which curved and let there. And then you had a, then a thing for the, on the side, for the H2S when you had that equipped on it there. And the rest of the thing of course your tables had your log and most of all you had your flight plan which you drew on as you went along and filled the detail in it there. So you had a couple of pencils and a compass and you had then a, the calculator. I’m trying to think of the name that is that you put your thing on and drew a couple of things on. It was a calculator for navigators to use. I’m trying to think of the name of it now. Yeah. That was it. At that stage you hadn’t, the navigator didn’t have a drift recorder and the ones we had which you had in the Anson and so forth to get there but when you had the Gee in the aircraft you didn’t need that. You had your map on there. Yeah. So as I say you sat on the side and then as I say you had a curtain between you and the, really, flight engineer and then you had a curtain on the other side to keep the light going out that way type of business of it there. So you were in your little cocoon with the light going on. As they said one navigator came out of the second or third raid and had a look at it, and said, ‘Bloody hell,’ and he said he never looked, he never would come out of his cocoon again. He didn’t want to see it.
AP: Did you ever have a look at a target? Did you ever come out and have a look?
CF: No. I went out and had a look. As one navigator said if you’re coming this far let’s have a look. But as they say in my thing that I had down there that on my first trip we were down for a place near Cologne which is in the Ruhr. Where the ack ack is pretty severe and the point was that we got there. We — ok there. Everything was going nice and easily and you’re thinking it’s a nice and easy sort of business there and then you see what’s there. But the bomb aimer’s there and he says everything and then all of a sudden he says, you know, ‘Bomb doors. Bomb doors closed.’ That’s the thing and then he called down a rather, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’ I must admit that the rest of the crew including me were feeling much the same way as he was feeling. This is no, no place to be for us nice blokes. That was straight out of there and say, as we were flying across occupied France and Germans had —half an hour later something after we’d dropped the bomb or something, maybe there, a shot come up and went through our wing and kept on going thank God. And it was dark. You couldn’t see outside and our pilot, having already done one trip as a second pilot said, ‘Oh it’s alright boys. A near miss.’ And about twenty minutes later when daylight appeared the mid-upper gunner said, You’ve got a bloody big hole in the wing,’ [laughs]. But that’s it. We got back home and we felt a bit guilty that, bringing back an aircraft another crew normally flew with a hole in the wing. As if we had been a bit careless about the whole thing. Yeah.
AP: That sort of leads on to the next question. The ground crew. What sort of relationship did you have with your ground crew?
CF: I didn’t have much of a relationship because as the navigator I was working up to the last minute finishing the plan we’d been told and so forth. And I was taken out to the aircraft just before it was time to — I never, never really saw the ground crew at all. And of course when we got back there was a no talk for the crew. So I had no relationship with the ground crew for the simple reason, as I say, that I didn’t — I was not there like the rest of the crew had been out doing a check and so forth etcetera there. But I was a late comer because I was there and sometimes you got you had to then finish your flight plan because you hadn’t had time to finish it beforehand. Yeah. So our pilot had a good relationship with the ground staff. I don’t know about the other crew members that were there as to whether they did or didn’t. I have a feeling that we only did seven trips so we weren’t there a long time and I don’t think, I think basically our flight engineer and our pilot had a good relationship with the ground crew but the other members I don’t think they really had much relationship with them type of thing.
AP: Alright. I’ve done that. Were there any superstitions or rituals that you, either that your crew took part in or that you saw in the squadron? Hoodoos or anything like that?
CF: No. No. I heard of various rituals and odds and sods but as far as I know there was no rituals about you always wore a blue tie or a certain hankie or something or other. As far as I know, in our particular crew, there was never any particular ritual, as you said. Some crews there was a ritual something or other but with our crew as far as I know there wasn’t any.
AP: Did you have any nose art painted on your aeroplane or were you not there long enough? Did you have anything painted on the front of your, on the nose of your aeroplane.
CF: No.
AP: You weren’t there long enough.
CF: No. No.
AP: That’s alright. Just thought I’d ask the question. So oh that was what I was going to ask you. As the navigator you’re working pretty hard when you’re flying. I believe it was fixing a position every six minutes or something along those lines. Can you remember much of the process of the actual physical what you were doing?
CF: Well when you were in England and you had the Gee which gave you your position, as you, I think you mentioned, every six minutes. You had to get a reading where you were and from that you had to work out the wind that had blown in the last six minutes and then readjust your flight plan as to whether to tell the pilot to change course if so what to change to. And you also had to check your estimated time of arrival likewise. Every six minutes. Which meant that you were working steadily shall we say? Yes. Yeah. As I say that was the great thing as I was good at mathematics I could, I could meet those six minutes all right shall we say. Yeah. Yes.
AP: And when, when you were no longer —
CF: And then once you, once you got over Germany and your Gee was jammed or you had difficulty getting a good reading because Gee lines were curved and over a certain distance they tended to merge into each so you could you know could be a half an inch deciding where they actually crossed sort of business there. But when you, after that you were dependant on if the bomb aimer can tell you something and sometimes the Pathfinders would drop a light to say this is the turning point to something of that nature there which I don’t remember ever having that myself. And basically we were flying on what information we’d had and anything we’d had in the first half hour or so or an hour or so of flying. And that’s one thing. When we started operations the [pause] see this was the — we started in March ‘45 the actual operations and the, that stage they were getting into the German border which meant that you possibly had a couple of hours of what the actual wind was that you could do yourself, sort of business a bit there. Other than that you flew on your flight plan and if you were over cloud, well, there and there were at times a wind direction might be come over from the Pathfinders. They might send it back if the wind was so and so and you might get a thing from them. Very rarely we did that but I heard it happened at times. We basically flew on DR. Dead reckoning. Once you got past the, into the German jamming and so forth there. Yeah. And of course it was always nice to see the Pathfinders drop the markers and you got off the course. Or you could see them ahead of yourself. Yes.
AP: The [pause] alright, what was the drill if one of your gunners spotted a night fighter and said, ‘Corkscrew. Port. Go.’ From your perspective as a navigator what happened next?
CF: Never happened to us fortunately there but as a navigator you mean when they said, ‘Go.’ Well, as a navigator you just sit there and grind your teeth or something or other. Or say, that there is nothing you could do and the only great thing what you had to do was to make sure that the, your gear on your desk when they flew into a steep curve didn’t go flying anywhere. And particularly because I remember the first time when we’d been practicing doing it for the first time when the pilot flew it down and the bomb aimer for some reason was having a rest on the bed, the rest bed which went along the aircraft. And my compasses flew up in the air and was flying towards him. And he was trying to push away this compass coming at him. At that — so I learned from that that if there was at any time the first thing I would do would be yes to put my hand on my gear and hold it there.
AP: Hold on for dear life.
CF: But fortunately I didn’t have to do that. Yeah.
AP: Ok. You mentioned something when we were at the RSL at Caulfield the other day. At the EATS lunch. You came up and you said something happened on Anzac Day 1945.
CF: Happened on —
AP: Anzac Day 1945. You haven’t told me that story yet.
CF: Well that’s what I’m getting on to later on. That was the, in actual fact that’s the day we got shot down.
AP: That’s what I was hoping you’d say.
CF: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: Please tell me about that experience.
CF: Yeah. Well I’ll tell you about the whole story. That’s part of my story.
AP: That’s part of your story.
CF: Yeah.
AP: Well ok.
CF: In actual fact I did that for this group, did one and I got for what turned out to be would I have my photograph taken and I said yes and I turned up like this and the, I found out that there was a team of five or six people. Not just one from the publicity. And one wanted the story and one wanted a photograph and so forth there. And I finished up getting my medals out and having a photograph taken and then they said, ‘Would you say a few words?’ I said, ‘Well a couple.’ A few words turned into, ‘Will you make a ten minute speech?’ So I finished up making a ten minute speech which described what happened from the day before when we were on the battle order which was the, picked like lead teams. That was the team that picked for the following day which was Anzac day. And my story lasted from there till the time that [pause] where does that go? Till the time we got to the Stalag. That’s right. Yeah. Ten minute speech. Yeah.
AP: Well I’ve got to the point in my questions now where we’ve been talking about operations so this is probably an appropriate time to carry on with your story if you —
CF: Yeah.
AP: If you’re happy to do so.
CF: Yeah. Yes. Well as I say. Right. Ok. Well now. Where were we? We’d got [pause] oh we got to Heavy Conversion Unit. I got introduced there, that I forgot to mention the fact that we picked up a flight engineer there. English flight engineer at the, when we got to Lindholme we picked up a English engineer. He had been, he was one of those fellows who’d been trained as a pilot and been sitting around for eight or ten weeks doing nothing and therefore he volunteered to go to go to a six weeks to be flight engineer and therefore get into operations. So we finished up, as I say a bit there that he was happy to fly with an Australian crew and we were happy to have him as a second pilot shall we say because he was a qualified pilot on it there. And he did a little bit of flying of the Lancaster while we were there and while we were at 460 so that he could take over if anything happened to our pilot. It was reassuring to have him. Yeah. Yeah. So then we get to, let me see, then we get to the 460 in March. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Ok. We start on that now?
AP: Yeah. Go for it.
CF: While at the start of our Heavy Conversion Unit we met up with our new flight engineer required for a Lancaster. He — name of Rick Thorpe and he came from Sheffield in Yorkshire. He was happy to join an Australian crew and we were happy to have him as a flight engineer and second pilot if necessary. We finished our training at HCU in March ‘45 and was transferred to Australian squadron number 460 at, near the village of Binbrook in the Lincolnshire. We did a training trip and the [pause] our skipper then did a second dickey trip with an experienced crew over Germany and after he came back about three days later we were on the battle order for that night. And we had the briefing. Found out we were going to bomb [Bruckstrasse?] which was a town close to [pause] what was it? Cologne. Everything went well. We took off at about 1.45 in the morning. Flew to [Bruckstrasse?] Started our bomb run. Everything was going nicely along. Nobody was saying anything. There was radio silence except for the navigator. The bomb aimer giving directions. And then the bomb aimer said, ‘Bombs gone. Bomb doors closed. Let’s get the bloody hell out of this,’ in a rather excited voice. And the rest of the crew felt that they had the same feelings. It was time to go. And on the way back across occupied France the plane got a shudder and the pilot told us that it was a near miss but it was dark at the time. Twenty minutes later when daylight came they found out that they had a hole in the wing that the shell had gone right through. We went back somewhat shamefaced that we’d injured the plane that was usually flown by one of the more experienced pilots. We then did several more trips and went ok. And then we went to Potsdam which was our longest trip to that date and as we dropped our bombs on Potsdam we were grabbed by the searchlights circuit and that’s very dangerous because the guns keep following those searchlights. And we dived very, very smartly and very steeply and heaven knows what speed we got to but we got out of the searchlights and flew back home. We did a trip to Bremen and as we were starting our bomb run the word came over, the code word, ‘Marmalade,’ which means cancelled. No bombs. So we had to dodge over Bremen to miss the flak and come home and land with a five or ten tons of bombs. Then on the 24th of April we were on the bomb order for the following day which would be our seventh flight. And wake up time was 2.15 am. So an early night. Up next morning, breakfast, flight plan, briefing and we were going to Berchtesgaden area. Not the town. In two waves. The first wave of a hundred and eighty planes was to bomb the houses of Hitler and all the Nazi leaders who’d also built their holidays home there and the communication centre and administration buildings. The second wave, of which we were one were to bomb the barracks of the Gestapo and the army that were looking after the Nazi leaders and their communication centre and administration quarters. That was one hour later. We took off just after 5 o’clock in the morning and flew down to the meeting point, joined the gaggle and were flying over The Channel and along over the French countryside. It was a lovely day. Beautiful blue sky. No clouds. Green fields, lakes and rivers down below and on the right was the majestic Alps and with the snow shining on the snow tops. Absolute picture book. We got near the target area and I left my table and moved behind. Ten inches behind the seat of the engineer because on the floor was a parcel of metal strips for [pause] we looked ahead, the flak looked light-medium so no worries. And the bomb aimer took over and he said, ‘Left. Left.’ And then, ‘Bombs gone. Bomb doors closed.’ And as he finished that word we were hit and something flew up past my face and out over the roof. And I looked down and in the centre of the parcel there was a jagged hole. In the meantime the pilot and the engineer were closing down the starboard engine which was a mess and the two inner motors which had also gone. So we were flying on one engine and an empty Lancaster will fly on one engine. The pilot checked the crew and found that everybody was ok. And he then said that the port outer engine, the remaining one was not giving full power and perhaps it would be best if we jumped while he had full control. Nobody wanted to jump. And the flight engineer said, ‘But we can’t do that Lofty. We’re over the Germany.’ At the time I thought that was a very sensible remark. Then we decided that we would try to reach the line of the allied army but very quickly the port, the remaining engine stopped and we were gliding and we had to go. And the drill was to all escape underneath the plane so you wouldn’t get hit by the tail plane. And the bomb aimer was the first to go and the four others all followed in due rate. And then the rear gunner appeared with the parachute in his arms. It had caught on the way up and opened. The pilot told him to get the spare parachute. He came back to say it wasn’t there. Later we found that they had taken it out to repack it and not — failed to replace it. The pilot then made a very very brave decision that rather than leave the rear gunner to his fate he would try and make a crash landing. At this time there was petrol floating around on the floor of the cockpit. His chances weren’t too good but he found that with the five men gone, the petrol also gone and such the plane would glide much better. And he saw a field down below of what looked like wheat and he glided the plane down. Dodged some wires close and put it down on a cornfield. They then both got out of the plane. Ran forty or fifty yards. Threw themselves down on the ground, looked back waiting for the explosion but nothing happened. The earth they’d driven into had apparently put out the flames. But appeared four Hitler youth boys aged about fourteen or so carrying a couple of machine guns which they pointed at the two Australians who were pretty worried. The boys were very excited. Talking to each other. And then along came the Volkssturm. The German Home Guard who took over and took the two Australians back to the regular army. Harry, the pilot, Harry was interrogated by a very high German officer there who said to him, ‘Why are you Australians here? We haven’t got any argument with Australia.’ Harry didn’t attempt to explain it but — meanwhile I had parachuted down to the ground and landed near a couple of houses in which the housewives were standing. Presumably looking at me coming down. And I hastily unbuckled my harness and parachute and left it there and went, walked quickly over to where there was a large clump of trees. The Volkssturm didn’t take long to turn up and no doubt the ladies pointed out where I was. And they were — I thought they said, ‘Pistol? Pistol?’ and patted me. I said, ‘No, and shook my head very vigorously. They said, ‘Parachute.’ and I just raised my eyebrows there and I assume that the couple of German ladies would be wearing silk underwear in the future. They took me to an army camp where there were my, the [unclear] were, was there and in the next couple of hours along came the mid-upper gunner and the flight engineer. And two or three hours after that again the pilot and the rear gunner appeared. The remaining member of the crew, the bomb aimer dropped first. He landed in the snow in the foothills and was captured by the mountain troops who took him deeper into the mountains and he actually didn’t get out of there till two days after the war ended. On May the 10th. The Americans turned up there. We were taken from the camp into the town where they had taken over the hotel as a headquarters and we were put in a room and finally given a piece of dry bread and it was covered in honey and ersatz cup of coffee. There was no hostility there. They were, but they were treating us as prisoners but not close guard. And came the evening light was there and we were put in the back of a covered wagon with the parachute of the, we think, the flight engineer. And we left there with a couple of guards. You might say nominal. Nobody was taking it too seriously. And we drove into the mountains and through the night. There was lots of traffic both ways on the roads. The Germans were using the darkness to avoid the allied fighters who were everywhere. And we then changed over half way across. We changed over to an open truck and we got under the parachute to open the parachute. Yeah. And at 6 o’clock we arrived at the Stalag 7a. Moosburg. Where they opened, a couple of the allied troops actually opened a couple of Red Cross parcels and fed us some breakfast which was very welcome. They then drove us further on to a communication centre at [Mainwaring?] about twenty kilometres away. And that afternoon the interrogating officer had Lofty, our pilot, in and asked him the questions and they got the usual answers there. And they said where, ‘Where do you come from?’ Lofty said, ‘West Australia.’ And the interrogating officer said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I know that quite well. I was an agent out there on several occasions for German firms buying wheat and wool.’ And Lofty said we then had a chat about the west Australian back countryside of which he knew more than I did. And then he said, ‘Well you’d better get back to your crew.’ So he said that was the interrogation. The Germans had given up. And the next morning, we stayed the night there and the next morning we were taken back to the Stalag on a tray, a horse tray with two horses to carry us back to the thing and we did a mixture of walking and sitting on the truck. And we talked to various Australians along the way who had been working on the farms. Where was the question? And we got back to the Stalag and the chief Australian officer said, ‘Do you know what’s going to happen to us prisoners when the allies arrive?’ And our pilot said, ‘Oh yes. We’re going to be taken back to England in the back of bombers.’ ‘Oh,’ said the group captain, ‘How would you know?’ Our pilot said, ‘Well the day before we got shot down they marked twenty five places on our plane where people could sit.’ ‘Oh.’ That was the end of that. The, on the 29th of April the American 14th Division came in and we were free. But it was some time before we got back to England.
AP: And you did go back to England in the back of a bomber. Did you go back to England in the back of a bomber?
CF: Yes. I think that’s about enough there but in actual fact what happened was that was the 29th of May. On May the 1st, yeah the 29th of April, May the 1st two days later General Patton arrived sitting on the front of a truck and at least a hundred correspondents and photographers if not a thousand were there and he announced that we would all be home in two or three days. Back in England in two or three days. And the, some of the Americans would be back in America in two to three weeks. At which the old timers such as me and such were a little bit cynical because of the amount of numbers. And we, yeah, so we sat in the Stalag with the — somehow or other the food was still coming in and the Red Cross parcels were being tapped and so forth. There wasn’t much difference under the Americans than there was under the Germans shall we say because I wasn’t going to go out into the town that I couldn’t speak the language and there were some wild people around. And, yes, I stayed in camp. But the long term prisoners who could speak German went into the town and in actual fact slept in some of the houses because the German, the German civilians liked to have you sleeping in their house if you were well behaved. There was no, any wild men turned up in the middle of the night sort of business, there. On the 7th of May. The night of the 6th of May we were told the following morning at 5 o’clock we would be taken by semi-trailer to air strips where we would be loaded on DC3s. A Dakota who would take us to the main ports, airports where we would then get into either American or British bombers. On the 7th of May we got up at 5 o’clock and duly got on the back of semi-trailers there and we were driven, I reckon forty odd kilometres if not more to an airstrip, a grass airstrip and quite a few. A big crowd. Only a few planes turned up. And therefore that night we were taken back to the German, at Ingolstadt the German. And we did some souveniring of some German wear and tear. And they took us back to the airstrip again the following day. And that was May 8th. Everybody was celebrating. One plane turned up, don’t ask me how they got to one plane there. So at lunchtime, by then the fella in charge of the shipment out said, ‘Go away and have a swim in the river or whatever you do. There’s nothing. Nobody is going to come in today and get it there.’ So an, sorry English long term prisoner who slept just near where I was in the hut said, ‘Oh come into town.’ I said, ‘ Oh ok.’ He said, ‘We’ll go and get, go in to the house and get some hot water for which we’ll give them American cigarettes,’ which were a very strong bartering tool and we’ll take some coffee in. He said, ‘I’ve got some of the stuff that the Americans who got taken out yesterday left on the ground. And let’s put it this way. A long term prisoner never threw anything away. You could, if you didn’t want it you could barter it for something else. And, ‘Yeah. Ok,’ and we went in and I don’t know whether he’d sized it up before we went in this house and we saw them and said you know could we get some water for a wash and a shave and we got some American cigarettes. And yes that’s ok. So we had a wash and a shave and then we said we’d got some coffee and they said yeah. So we were there and two daughters appeared aged, well they might have been nineteen, twenty, twenty one. Some like that age. And we found out that they had married some local boys who had then been grabbed by the army where ever it was. They were taken into Stalingrad. Do you know? Have you heard of Stalingrad?
AP: Yes.
CF: And as such they wondered whether they’d ever see their husbands again, sort of business, there. So that was their message. That we were celebrating the end of the war and they of course weren’t celebrating. And the two daughters were wondering you know just what the bloody hell was going to be the future of them. Anyway we had some nice cup of coffee with them. We having produced the coffee grains there to do it. Yeah. And we went back to the camp and we were taken to a jail that night and there was a bit of a fire about four in the morning or something or other. Some screaming. We got out of that and went and spent the rest of the night back at the airfield and using the overcoats that had all been abandoned by the, because they wouldn’t let you take overcoats on planes. It would make the load too heavy. And that was the 8th. The 9th and the 10th a few planes came in and the English bloke with the German language and so forth managed to wangle himself on one of the planes. So we didn’t go back to the house again and we just filled in the day just walking around. It was nice warm weather and such. So on the 11th there we were having breakfast. Oh we slept out those two nights using the overcoats and so what shelter there was and such so the following morning we’re there and the whole bloody plane, DC3s turned up. So we have to grab what breakfast we could and go and get ready, ready to go and you know make up plans. You had to go and list. Before you got on a plane you had to list everybody who was getting on the plane so if anything happened you knew what was happening . So we got taken to Rheims. To the small aerodrome and then we were taken by semi-trailer across to the major airport which of, was Juvencourt which was, you know, had about, probably had about five runways. Whatever it is. Anyway, we got there and I was allocated to a New Zealand Lancaster crewed by new Zealanders. And the pilot — I’d been in advanced flying unit with him six months before. He looked at me a bit surprised. ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘What the bloody hell do you think I’m doing?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Come and sit alongside me.’ So I, I didn’t sit in my designated spot but sat alongside him and got quite a nice view as we flew back. So anyway I was back on the 11th but the rear gunner, the bloke in there, he got back late on the 7th. He was the only one that came through on the one day where we were at the whole five thousand were supposed to do or something or other. Don’t ask me who was doing the statistics and everything around the place. Anyway, he got through on the night of the 7th and he was tired and they slept at some English ‘drome near London. Were there when fighter ones probably saw it and in the morning he and the other blokes hopped in a bus or something or other. He said, ‘What’s all the people wandering around shouting and jumping and everything else.’ ‘Oh the war’s finished. They’re celebrating.’ They said, ‘Oh is it?’ Oh. So he said he got down to Brighton on the 8th. The mid-upper gunner and the wireless operator had got as far as Holland no the 7th in other words but there was no plane to take them back to England that night. And so they got back on the 8th. That’s three. We don’t know what happened to the English engineer, he, after that he didn’t reply to any mail or anything etcetera. That was four. That’s right. So I got back on the 11th when, as I say, I got back to England on the 11th and the pilot actually stayed another four days after this. He didn’t leave the Stalag until about the 11th. Then he got flown to Nancy and then he took the train to the [pause] somewhere near the English Channel. And then flew across The Channel. He got back about the 15th. So if you get the idea that all your POWs are going to be flown back home in two days [laughs] — but I will say this much. We got very well treated when we got back to Brighton. In England. There, we got special treatment from there and when I went on leave I got, I think quadruple rations, I think, to take to the people I stayed with etcetera. Yeah. I got very well looked after. So that was the story of there. That as I say and that’s one thing on the DC3s you get quite a nice view of the Maginot and the what’s the name, the Siegfried Line. And all the debris of war was still spread out across the countryside shall we say. Nobody had had time to clear it up. It was, it’s out of the way, just leave it there and we’ll do it next week or something or other like that. The debris was and the bridges had been blown up and you could see what war had done to the countryside. You know. Yes. Oh yes. So that’s the story.
AP: Well I have three more questions.
CF: Yeah.
AP: Alright. So after that experience you came home to Australia. What did you do? How did you adjust back to normal life again?
CF: I had very little time adjusting back shall we say. And for instance my mate, Dan Lynch, who I, he was Tasmanian but he’d come over to Melbourne and he stayed in Melbourne and did the, went to the Melbourne University and got a degree in biology and then joined the fisheries and game department as their first biologist actually. And I formed a lifelong friendship and so I for the next few years while we were batchelors we saw a lot of each other. As we did with another couple of fellas who we trained with — Frank Kelly and John Hodson etcetera there. Yes. Four bachelors played around and one went up to The Northern Territory and then three bachelors played around. Yeah. So we all, as far, we all seemed, we all seemed to get pretty much, Frank actually I know started to do a course on something. I forget now. But he gave that away and then he got a job with a international there. The motors and so forth with them and from there he moved on to the South Melbourne City Council. I got a job back with a small building firm that I’d worked with and went back there. And went and did my accounting studies and then moved to a job with what was then Vacuum Oil which is now Mobil oil there. And Dan, as I say, got this thing and then he got a job. Those three of us, none of us had any, well as I say Frank had got shot down. And Dan and I had got shot down. And in actual fact the other fellow, John Hodson, he was sick one night. Didn’t fly. His crew didn’t return. So he had to get another crew etcetera. He, he, he sort of felt the war, shall we say, more than he did because he’d been pretty friendly with that crew and did a lot with them whereas we didn’t lose over there the same feeling as he got. And we also adjusted quite well to doing it there and I don’t quite know. By and large aircrew seemed to adjust pretty well back to there. Maybe the fact that we did it at remote distances as distinct to fellas that were there but on the other hand there were like the other day one fellow who didn’t do too well. And I know another fellow who didn’t, for thirty years did nothing because his best mate had got killed on 460 Squadron. I don’t know much about it. His third of fourth trip the plane crashed and killed the whole lot. Now why the plane crashed about twenty miles from base I don’t know. It could have been that something had been frayed and wear and tear over those next hundred miles might have caused something and all of a sudden some control might have snapped and the plane went in before the pilot could do anything about it. If he was flying at only a couple of thousand feet ready to land you don’t know. But that fella wouldn’t just come, for thirty years he wouldn’t come back to the air force. So there were people who were affected by the things but in my immediate knowledge of the people I trained with and saw a lot of in the next few years, none of them suffered from any kind of mental stress that showed in any way at all, sort of business there. So it did appear that being possibly a little bit away from it and so forth there but that’s how it goes on it there. In actual fact my biggest loss was a friend I grew up with who joined the air force before I did and went up to New Guinea. And on his first flight was shot down and he was injured and captured by the Japanese and the bloody Japanese sergeant then bloody murdered him. Which was a nasty one at the time but you know that one of your boys had not only not killed in action but bloody murdered sort of business there and we were told like, and the family afterwards said that they were told that they, that sergeant had been killed and they couldn’t do anything about it as a result sort of business. But that was the only, really he was the only one that was, really hurt me shall we say. My brother was in the army in the anti-aircraft in New Guinea but he was ok. And the other as I said this mate of mine. This is the odds of course. In Berkeley Street which is the next street to where I was in Kooyongkoot Road, Hawthorn. My mate did the thirty trips. The one that was there. Next door to him was a fella called Bob Benber who later became a big dealer in the insurance industry. He did a trip and got his DFC. And exactly opposite them was where Alec Wilde who did two trips — two tours. A tour and then another tour with 460. They all survived. And Kooyongkoot Road where I lived there was this lad I was telling you about got killed by the Japanese. I was a prisoner of war and a little further up the street was a fellow who was captured in the army at Crete. So two streets, three blokes all had tough luck. Next street three blokes who lived as close as you could possibly get all survived Bomber Command which was a dangerous place. Don’t ask me about the statistics. Yeah.
AP: Someone. One of my interview people said, ‘That’s the important thing in war. To have good fortune,’ he said.
CF: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: That, yeah. That’s exactly what you just explained.
CF: Yeah.
AP: I’m getting closer. I have two more questions. You mentioned when, I think it was your pilot, Harry, was being interrogated or when he was captured the German asked him, ‘You’re Australian. Why are you fighting us?’ I’m just curious. If he had attempted to explain why Australia was there what might he have said? What I’m interested in is why was Australia there?
CF: Well Lofty was not shall we say a well-educated man. He was a country boy. Grew up in the wheat fields and then moved into Perth. As such his, I don’t quite know what he might have said actually with his background of it there. It’s a little hard to say what you would say on it there. And whether he might have said, you know, we were fighting for the king or something. I can’t quite, can’t quite imagine him saying kind of thing that er. We were fighting. The best thing I could say he’d say we’re fighting because you Germans are threatening the rest of the whole of the world. Something of that nature is about all I think he might have said at that stage. But as I said he was not well educated in the sense of the word. He was a doer rather than a thinker type of business there. But as for a man in an emergency he comes out much higher than anybody else I know.
AP: I guess he was tested there.
CF: In other words, we said on his eightieth, so much so that both Dan and I worked it out that we would be in Perth around his eightieth birthday and we then took him up to Frasers restaurant, by name. Which is the big restaurant in Perth overlooking the township from what’s its name there? Have you been there at all? Anyway, we went there and we said, I said, ‘Except for picking our wives — Dan’s wife was there so she said, Thank you Colin.’ Picking Harry as a pilot was the best personnel decision we ever made. And he said, ‘Yes. I agree entirely. It was the best personnel decision that we made.’ And as you heard before we just about picked his crew for him. But as I said he was, we were right he was a solid citizen and that was it type of business of it there. He’s the type of bloke thank you want in your back line I suppose, at football. Sturdy. Dependable. And always be there. Yes. Yes a real bloke. A pity of it that they only had one daughter who was a smart lady. In actual fact she didn’t get married. Yeah. You could pass some of his genes down shall we say but there it is. Yes. Yes. He died some years ago and I flew over for his wedding [laughs] for his wedding — for his funeral and made a speech on there. Yes.
AP: The final question and probably the most important one. In your opinion what is Bomber Command’s legacy? What is the legacy of Bomber Command and how do you want it to be remembered?
CF: Well I’m not too sure where Bomber Command stands at the moment as you said. The thing is that hurt most of all that Churchill deserted Bomber Command. In fact he did it there and the — Harris, the one said he was sitting with on May 8th listening to, with the head of the American bombers and they listened and he mentioned Fighter Command and Transport Command and Coastal Command. Not one word one way or the other was Bomber Command in the Churchill’s speech of the victory over Germany mentioned. And in actual fact a couple of there before that after he was the man who agreed with Stalin that Bomber Command would bomb Dresden and he then sent the message back to the head of the air force — Portal. Who then passed the message down to Harris. And as Harris said all he said was the decision was made by somebody much more powerful than me and he was quite aware that no doubt he had a good relationship with Portal. He was probably mentioned of it there and he [pause] that, that hurt most of all. That later on there but that was it. When the war was close to finishing and all of a sudden shall we say the bishops and the [unclear] were saying oh we shouldn’t have bombed. Oh no. Look. Bombings nothing supposed to be like that. It’s just supposed to be drop a little bit in their garden or something. Look. Look at all the houses you’ve knocked down. Look at all the [pause] No. So in England there was great horror that those nice German people they used to see on holidays had been. Yeah. Anyway. The point is that it should always be remembered that the amount that Bomber Command did for the — well they sunk more capital ships then the navy and as Harris said didn’t even get a thank you [laughs] The army in the war in Europe would go back, instead of calling up the artillery they would call up Harris and say would you drop a few bombs on something or other on the business of it there. And while the, for instance the Americans got — grabbed a lot of praise for stopping the advance the Germans made in December, January sort of business there. Nobody ever mentioned that Bomber Command went and, in the, where there were the roads, two very important roads crossed. That Bomber Command just blasted that crossing out of action and nothing could move through there for another twenty four to forty eight hours. Reinforcements and so forth etcetera. That sort of thing never got talked about. Yeah. Well the thing is that in more recent times they have come around to realising that Bomber Command did a lot of things there. And one of the things that they did was that they bombed the artificial petrol factories there and the German fighters basically from the invasion on, or before the invasion were short of their hundred degree err hundred octane petrol because of the artificial petrol being made from coal — I think it was about eighty seven where they wanted a hundred. So they had to add things to it to make it a hundred and the, from before that the German fighters were not sent up anywhere near as often because they were trying to save petrol and of course the funny thing was that [pause] what is really never said and that is both against the Japanese and the Germans that the code breakers were able to get the messages that had been tracked on the wireless and they could then tell you what was going to, they could then tell you what was going to happen, sort of business of it there, and they never got the accolades. It did sort of business of it there. Because anyway they got the message and Churchill and the head of the army, the head of the navy and the head of the air force and I think about two other leading politicians etcetera there. I’m not too sure. They were the only ones that were allowed to be given the information that was coming through and they knew how it got there. So Portal, as the head of the air force knew that the Germans were short of petrol. Not only for their planes but for their tanks and so forth etcetera there. And he’s wanting Harris to really bomb the artificial factories more, more, more, and Harris who’s been told over the years it’s ball bearings, its gear boxes, there’s something else that was going to win the war was getting this message about it, about this. And in fact that it got to the point when Harris said to Portal, ‘Well if you don’t like my bombing programme I’ll hand my resignation in and you can get somebody who will do it.’ Portal couldn’t say, ‘I’ve got this information.’ You could understand why Harris was irate. So it was a bit tricky for some months there as to a bit of a chill between them because one knew all the information he was right but on the other hand he could understand why the other one was arguing against it there. But oh well it’s like there and I think in the last few years that the Bomber Command has been done there but it will never get the credit because it certainly did the damage and I must admit when you see the damage that Bomber Command did they did it, sort of business. And probably this is the old story of course people say oh they should have stopped it much earlier and you ask people in January ‘45 how long would the war last? You know. January February. Could go on for twelve months or so. And they say well why didn’t they stop doing it etcetera there. They probably could have stopped it a little earlier but it’s very difficult to say. Nobody knew that Hitler was going to commit suicide. If they knew that Hitler would commit suicide. Ok. Sort of business there. But as I say our raid that we got shot down on was completely unnecessary because Hitler was never going to come back to Berchtesgaden but a lot of people thought he was and he did sort of the business of it there. Ah yes I was quite glad as several leading people have said there, said the main character is that, I’m trying to this of his name. He said — he was a farmer in the Wagga area and he and another fella in Wagga further on he said, the war as he saw it was it’s like how you are at home. If there’s a fire or a flood on a neighbours territory you down tools and go over and help him. And he said, that’s what we were doing. Australia. England was in trouble and we were going over to help it sort of business of it there.’ And he [pause] Bill Brill and Arthur.
AP: Doubleday. Doubleday.
CF: Yeah. Yes. They had amazing bloody careers on there and I read somewhere that neither ever had to bring back an injured crew member. Absolutely amazing the fact that they had flown. Each of them had done sixty trips or something or other. Or more. Just one of those things. Yeah.
AP: Well that’s all the questions I have so unless you have anything, anything else to add to the discussion just before we wrap up.
CF: I don’t think so. The business of it there. The great trouble was of course after the war here as you probably knew that the fellas who came back from Europe were blackballed a bit. In fact some of them were accused of running away and actually anyway when the war was over the people who were out here were very annoyed when the people who’d been in Europe came back and told them what a real war was about. And as the fella who later became chief of the air force and the actual Governor General — sorry, the Governor of New South Wales he said he was in the mess and he said and somebody was saying, ‘There must have been forty planes, forty guns firing at me. It was terrible.’ And as this fella said, ‘I didn’t say something but I had had four hundred guns shooting at me sort of business of it there. And that was the thing. The reason there and they appointed the wrong bloke as chief of the air force during the war. They got the wrong diagram or something or other. I forget what it was. Anyway. Yeah. So that was a pity that it took ten years after the war I think to sort of get that nexus between those who had been in the war there. The fella I was telling you about Eric Wilde did two tours now he’s a bit of a character but he went to having got the DFC and the DFM and a flight lieutenant and all the rest of it. He was, went to an OUT, up I think to Mildura or somewhere like that and he was classified as not suitable for flying in The Pacific. And he promptly got a discharge and went and got a very nice job with A&A flying planes and he was made for life and that sort of business there. But some other fella came back, he’d been a wing commander over there and the best they could offer him was a flight lieutenant’s job or something or other. Those sorts of thing. Yeah. There was a bit of a nastiness as well as difficulty that fellas who had handled miles of stuff — when they came back here they would say the people who had the bit of power they’d fought in The Pacific and that was, ‘oh we had to do it. We didn’t have brick buildings to go back to at night time.’ And we had to do that and so forth there. One of the interesting periods of that incidentally was the fact that the fella came over as a wing commander at Binbrook and in that period in December, January when the big war was on. The Battle of the Bulge. And the air was there he said Binbrook when the snow came down he looked at the amount of equipment they had and he thought well in The Pacific we had one ‘drome and that was it. One big strip. That’s all we could make. So he told the bloke in charge of the ‘drome that he was to put his all equipment pick out the main one that was used and keep that one strip open. The other two strips don’t worry about them. Keep that main strip open and keep your, all the equipment on that and as he said at one time, or something or other we had seventy planes come and landed there and he said, ‘Where did you put them?’ And he said, ‘We put the one on strips we weren’t using.’ That was it. In other words where the one fella who had only ever been in England always had three strips tried to keep three strips open. Whereas he had been in The Pacific where, you know that was it. A few little things like that appeared here and there. On their, on the business side of it there. Yes. Yes. Of course there were a lot of politics on it. On the business of it there. But it’s there and the point is that’s true about Lofty Payne on there. That was in various magazines over the time and even in The Sun and it’s in the bomber what’s the name there, Bomber Boys. Lancaster man. Yeah. And I asked Lofty. He said, ‘I have never talked to anybody.’ I think he did talk to the fella who wrote the history of 460 Squadron during the war. He was Australian. I think he might have talked to him. But he said all the others — no. I’ve never talked anybody about that. Where they’ve got the information from I don’t know. But none of them ever come or ring me up or talk to me about it sort of business there. Yeah. It’s irritating slightly shall we say. Sort of business. Yeah.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AFraserC151113, PFraserC1501
Title
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Interview with Colin Fraser
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.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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02:10:16 audio recording
Creator
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Adam Purcell
Date
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2015-11-13
Description
An account of the resource
Colin joined the British Army in December 1941, and eventually moved to his preferred Royal Air Force in March 1943. He went to Number 2 Initial Training School at RAAF Bradfield Park in Sydney as a navigator, graduating in February 1944. His first flight was in an Anson at Number 2 Air Observers’ School at Mount Gambier. Colin then sailed to Britain.
There were some delays as Bomber Command had surplus aircrew. He spent some leave through the Lady Ryder Scheme and went to RAF Padgate. He was sent to RAF Fairoaks and witnessed V2 flying bombs before returning to RAF Padgate. Colin was sent to RAF West Freugh and did dead reckoning navigation. His next destination was 27 Operational Training Unit in Lichfield. Colin describes how they crewed up. He was introduced to the Gee radio navigation system and Wellingtons. He went to a Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Lindholme and encountered Lancasters and H2S.
Colin discusses his impressions of England and his activities. He also outlines how he carried out his role as a navigator.
They transferred to 460 Squadron at RAF Binbrook and started operations in March 1945. Colin describes some of their seven operations, which involved damage to the aircraft on a trip to Saarbrücken; being caught in the searchlights at Potsdam; cancellation mid-route of their trip to Bremen. On 25 April 1945, they flew in the second wave to Berchtesgaden and were hit, losing all but one engine. Some of the crew baled out but the pilot crash-landed the aircraft with the rear gunner because of a missing parachute. Colin was taken to Stalag Luft 7 at Moosburg. They were freed on 29 April 1945 by the American 14th Division, although it took some time to return to England and ultimately Australia.
Colin gives his views on the treatment of Bomber Command and the politics involved.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Staffordshire
England--Surrey
England--Yorkshire
Scotland--Wigtownshire
Germany
Germany--Saarbrücken
Germany--Potsdam
Germany--Berchtesgaden
Germany--Moosburg an der Isar
Germany--Ingolstadt
Poland
Poland--Opole (Voivodeship)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1943-03
1944
1944-02
1945-04-25
1945-04-29
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Sally Coulter
27 OTU
460 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bombing
C-47
crash
crewing up
Gee
H2S
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
military service conditions
navigator
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
Portal, Charles (1893-1971)
prisoner of war
RAF Binbrook
RAF Fairoaks
RAF Lichfield
RAF Lindholme
RAF West Freugh
searchlight
shot down
superstition
training
V-2
V-weapon
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1280/19140/LStewartJ1522846v1.2.pdf
0fcc9b8b200096bd6304c98b9ed16e52
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Stewart, James
J Stewart
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. The collection concerns Sergeant James Stewart (1522846 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book and photographs. He flew operations as a navigator with 207 and 630 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Jean Quartley and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-02
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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Stewart, 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
James Stewart’s flying log book for aircrew other than pilot
Description
An account of the resource
Flying log book for aircrew other than pilot for James Stewart, navigator, covering the period from 17 July 1943 to 21 December 1945. Detailing his flying training, operations flown and post war flying duties. He was stationed at RCAF Portage la Prairie, RAF West Freugh, RAF Turweston, RAF Silverstone, RAF Swinderby, RAF Syerston, RAF Spilsby and RAF East Kirkby. Aircraft flown in were, Anson, Wellington, Stirling and Lancaster. He flew 10 operations with 207 squadron 1 daylight and 9 night and 10 operations with 630 squadron 1 daylight and 9 night. His pilots on operations were Flying Officer Dougal, Flying Officer Lawson, Flying Officer French, Flight Lieutenant Downing, Flying Officer Cranston, Flying Officer Price, Flight Sergeant Grange and Flying Officer Lowman. Targets were, Homburg, Geissen, Heinbach- Urft dam, Munich, Gdynia, Politz, Royan, Merseburg, Siegen, Gravenhorst, Ladbergen, Dortmund-Ems Canal, Bohlen, Hamburg, Wesel and Kiel Bay. He also flew 2 Operation Exodus to Brussels and Lille with 630 squadron and 1 Operation Dodge to Pomigliano with 207 squadron.
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
Cara Walmsley
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
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LStewartJ1522846v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
Canada
France
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Poland
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Atlantic Ocean--Kiel Bay
Belgium--Brussels
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Northamptonshire
England--Nottinghamshire
France--Lille
France--Royan
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany--Euskirchen
Germany--Giessen (Hesse)
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Homberg (Kassel)
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Merseburg
Germany--Mittelland Canal
Germany--Munich
Germany--Siegen
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Italy--Pomigliano d'Arco
Manitoba--Portage la Prairie
Poland--Gdynia
Poland--Police (Województwo Zachodniopomorskie)
Scotland--Wigtownshire
Germany--Urft Dam
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Manitoba
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text. Log book and record book
Text
207 Squadron
44 Squadron
630 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Cook’s tour
crash
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
mine laying
navigator
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Silverstone
RAF Spilsby
RAF Swinderby
RAF Syerston
RAF Turweston
RAF West Freugh
Stirling
take-off crash
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/218/22130/LBruhnKC437927v1.2.pdf
1cc5e96b5c4e33925f4024f4160c1521
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
Bruhn, Clarence Keith
Clarence Keith Bruhn
Clarence K Bruhn
Clarence Bruhn
Keith Bruhn
C K Bruhn
C Bruhn
Description
An account of the resource
Nine items. An oral history interview with Flying Officer Clarence Keith Bruhn (437927 Royal Australian Air Force) documents, photographs and his log book. He flew operations as a navigator with 463 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Keith Bruhn and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-30
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bruhn, CK
Access Rights
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Clarence Keith Bruhn’s flying log book for observers, air gunners and wireless operators
Description
An account of the resource
Flying log book for observers, air gunners and wireless operators for K C Bruhn, covering the period from 9 September 1943 to 7 September 1945. Detailing his flying training, operations flown and post war flying duties. He was stationed at RAAF Mount Gambier, RAAF Port Pirie, RAF West Freugh, RAF Lichfield, RAF Wigsley and RAF Waddington. Aircraft flown in were, Anson, Battle, Tiger Moth, Wellington and Lancaster. He flew one operation to Pilsen during which the crew were forced to bale out. His pilot on this operation was Flying Officer Hagley.
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
Cara Walmsley
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LBruhnKC437927v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Czech Republic
Germany
Great Britain
Czech Republic--Plzeň
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Staffordshire
Scotland--Wigtownshire
South Australia--Mount Gambier
South Australia--Port Pirie
South Australia
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
1945-04-16
1945-04-17
1945-09-07
1654 HCU
27 OTU
463 Squadron
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
bale out
Battle
bombing
Cook’s tour
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
navigator
Operational Training Unit
RAF Lichfield
RAF Waddington
RAF West Freugh
RAF Wigsley
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1359/22529/ASmithRW190325.2.mp3
d4141e837d5350df08734bd3233cd24b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Smith, Bob
Robert Wylie Smith
R W Smith
Description
An account of the resource
125 items. An oral history interview with Bob Smith (b. 1924, 425992 Royal Australian Air Force) photographs, documents and navigation logs and charts. He flew operations as a navigator with 15 Squadron at RAF Mildenhall.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bob Smith and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-03-25
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Smith, RW
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
LC: Okay, this is an interview with Robert, Bob, Wally Smith 425992, navigator, 15 Squadron, Royal Air Force. The interview is being conducted at the residence of Bob and Alma Smith [redacted] Boulevard, Queensland, on Monday 25th March by myself, Wing Commander Lee Collins of People’s History and Heritage Branch. This interview will be recorded and may be transcribed and will become property and part of the Historical Collection of the Royal Australian Air Force and Bomber Command and be available to future researchers. So Bob, thanks again for agreeing to be interviewed. It’s my privilege to interview you and to obtain your personal account of your experiences of service in the RAF and particularly as a navigator on ops with RAF Bomber Command during World War Two. So, I’d like to maybe begin the interview by, if you go back to your early childhood and upbringing, and your family and schooling before you joined the air force. So, your early life, so where were you born? Where did you grow up?
BS: Well now, I was born in Brisbane, back in 1924. My father had been in the World War One, he was a, wounded three times, and he was original in the 41st Battalion.
LC: 41st Battalion, okay, yeah.
BS: He came back and he, when he got married to my mother, you know, she was also in that, from that district, they rented a corner shop, at the corner, a corner shop, was at the corner of Ipswich Road and Victoria Terrace in Annerley in Brisbane.
LC: Yeah, yeah, yep.
BS: Now, well we grew up there, normal thing, and started school I think it was 1928, at the Junction Park State School. Now his mother had another daughter and a son-in-law who were managing the farm for her, the old family farm known as Greenwood, in Harrisall.
LC: And where was that?
BS: Harrisall, ‘bout two and a half mile, or a couple miles south east of Harrisall on the Malara road, on the road to what they called Malara, or on through to Kalbar, and Boonah, you know.
LC: Boonah. Yup.
BS: Well at the end of 1932, he had to, he sold the business and we went back to the farm. Went to, took up the farm, so the family, we went, while he was arranging transfer, my mother took the family, myself and my two sisters and young brother, went on holiday up to Maleny while dad organised the thing and he, he drove the horse and cart from Annerley up to the farm.
LC: And how far was that?
BS: Oh all day. And we come up, take it after there, well of course then we followed, we went up to the farm then and settled in with Granny Smith. Now we thought at the time, woah great, Granny Smith, you know, she must be famous, she’s had an apple named after her!
LC: Exactly!
BS: But we soon found out, but she was a wonderful person, mum, granny; she was an original. Between Granny Smith and myself, Granny Smith, migrated to Australia as a young girl in 1855 while Queensland was still part of New South Wales, you know. They moved to Queensland then a couple of years later and with her father she moved up to the, near to the district what they call the Pink Mountain Holding in about 1858, ‘59, something like that. They were then since at Churchill, a place called Churchill down where there was a cotton ginnery established, ‘cause cotton was the main thing in those days, you know. And that’s how they, the Smiths had to, worked up to Harrisall ‘cause they were given a grant and land to grow cotton. Now we started school then at Malara. In 1932 get on and I did a, went through there and did scholarship at the Malara School, at the Malara School and now by virtue that dad was a returned Digger, I won a Naracelle scholarship to attend the Ipswich Boys Grammar School as a boarder for two years, so ‘cause dad couldn’t afford to be, at the end of that, I did, I finished and while just before -
LC: What years were that, your last two years of high school?
BS: ‘38, ‘39.
LC: So that was your last two years at high school.
BS: Yeah, ‘38, ‘39, the, and when we finished, ‘39 just before we finished the junior exam, war had been declared over Britain, you see. Now, I came back with the scholarship and with the tertiary education opened up room for me to apply for work in the public service or the bank or thing, which I did, I applied to commence work in the bank in Harrisall, and I was accepted. Accepted as a temporary clerk on probation I think it was, whatever it was, and I was still a temporary clerk on probation when I went to join the air force two years later!
LC: So you are what, about seventeen, seventeen years of age at this stage?
BS: Yeah, now where, I went into the bank then. Now just after I joined the bank, I got a communication from school and from the air force, we were given notification to apply, if we were interested in joining the air force, ‘cause I always stated I would be, we could apply to be registered as air cadets by correspondence.
LC: Okay, yes, yes.
BS: So I took that offer up. I asked, got my parents’ permission do that there. Dad was quite happy that I go in to the air force in a way, although I realised what, what strain I did put on him, to go in, but not into the army, you know.
LC: So did you have any, what was the reason you were more interested in the air force than the army? Your dad was a Digger in the 41st Battalion.
BS: The air force, so I did that, I did the courses with the air cadets, get this thing, when I finished the tests each, as each step went along, the air tests, took ‘em to the headmaster at the Woolora School, he ticked them off, that okay and advised the air force, the air cadet training system okay, see me right, carry on.
LC: And that’s that exercise book you showed me.
BS: Now, when Japan raided Germany, raided -
LC: Pearl Harbour.
BS: Pearl Harbour then in December ‘41, there was a bit of a panic among the air force, because all of us, we couldn’t join the air force until we were nineteen, that means you, in those days to be, you had to go into initial training at about two months before your nineteenth birthday, so that you were ready then for flying, you couldn’t fly till you were nineteen, you know, or go overseas anything like that, volunteers, so and then also on the reserve at that time were a lot of unprotected occupations, school teachers, a lot of school teachers had applied and they were very keen to get school teachers to do the course and they could go on as instructors ‘cause they needed them for the Empire Air Training Scheme you know. The air force jumped at the crews then, that they would form what they call air crew guards and that means that we could go in and that avoided us being called up into the militia. It was quite good. So with that I then had to apply to the bank for leave then and that was granted and so in May 1942, it didn’t take ‘em long, air crew guard callups were held in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne to bring up a lot of these, make sure the militia didn’t get us, you know, the army didn’t get us at that age. Although some blokes did, were called up for the militia apparently and, but they then told the militia to go to hell. They went in to the air force.
LC: Can I just step back one? You mentioned where you were when, you were at the bank when Germany, we declared war on Germany in ‘39 and then when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour in December 1941, do you remember those times well? Do you remember sort of, you know in September 1939 when war was declared do you remember what you were doing or did you have any particular thoughts what were you thinking when something was declared? What was Bob Smith thinking?
BS: Just put the thing into working, getting organised in the bank, you know, winding the office clock every Monday morning, getting out the fresh blotting paper, gradually working in, getting on. No, but that was right. Still carried on, played a bit of sport around Harrisall, lived on the farm, where you learned a lot.
LC: What about December 1941, when, so, Australia had already been at war for a while-
BS: Yeah, that’s right.
LC: So in, suddenly you hear Japan has attacked Pearl Harbour, do you remember where, what you were doing when you heard that news?
BS: No, no, not much, we just thought ah, well things are coming and then of course we found out on the news about it, this going on and coming out and then it was all in the papers, conscription was gonna be brought in.
LC: Was there much an awareness before that of any concerns about Japan before war was actually declared, for a number of years?
BS: Yeah, there was, bit like, in 19, back just after we went to the farm there was a bit of concerns going on about Germany, you know, because we had German occupations and I remember an old German farmer that lived near us, we used to meet him now and again and ‘Oh you’re joining the air force eh, you’re going to go over there, good show, that Hitler he bad man’, you know things just sort of rolled one thing into the other. Then when we, when the call came up and we went in to, in May 1942 we were called down to Brisbane, to the recruiting depot. Went through all the jazz there, then that evening given our numbers and whatnot, told us to take the oath and all this business, and sign up and shoved on a train that night up to Maryborough.
LC: Right. So then when you then signed on do you remember where exactly in Brisbane that was? Where did you actually sign on?
BS: Eagle Street in Brisbane.
LC: Eagle Street, okay.
BS: Recruiting Depot. Number, number whatever Brisbane number 3 Recruiting Depot in Eagle Street in Brisbane.
LC: Now that stage, you were going in the air force, but did you actually have confirmation that you were going in as aircrew or were you just joining the air force and see what?
BS: No, we were going to be training as aircrew under Empire Air Training Scheme.
LC: Right, so you knew that when you went and put your hand on the bible.
BS: I asked that earlier about the thing there at that stage when you went in air crew were you aware of the dangers of flying over in Germany, things like that, you know, I said, well we were. Because I had two cousins from, who lived up in Maleny, they were both shot down in England, one in 1940 he was in early in a Blenheim, flying in a Blenheim, the other one, no he was in a Whitley and the other one was flying out of Libya, he crashed, he was shot down off Tripoli, rescued by an Italian ship, navy ship and taken to Italy. When they came down into the sea, he was badly damaged, these reports as they say, in Germany, in the German reports for the thing ‘received in damaged condition’, but he couldn’t walk, okay. Now he thanks the German doctors for getting him back to walking. Their spinal treatment, that was way above. They came, he was shoved from hospital to hospital in Italy and one night a Luftwaffe officer came in there, looked at him, and looked and he says we’re taking you back to Germany, I we think we can fix you. To a German Luftwaffe -
LC: Hospital.
BS: Which they did, and they got him. I think the bloke was a bit like Douglas Bader, I think they might have been sorry they did fix him up.
LC: [Laugh] So he caused more trouble after they fixed him!
BS: I tell you what, he caused them a bit of trouble! He was that sort of bloke.
LC: So he’s wonderful. What was his name?
BS: Cuthbertson. Guy Cuthbertson.
LC: And the other guy that was shot down in the Whitley?
BS: The bloke was Bill McLean.
LC: Did he survive?
BS: No, no he was killed. He was killed. They shot down, they’ve since found out the pilot that shot him down and got a rough idea of where he crashed into the North Sea. That’s all right.
LC: Okay, but you knew about this.
BS: Then my others, my brother’s, my mother’s other sister that lived in Ipswich, she had a son who was in the navy, he was in, he went down with the Perth, actually didn’t go down with the Perth, they found out later that he did get off the Perth, and they got ashore and they were murdered by the Indonesians who thought they were Dutch.
LC: Is that right? Okay. You know a lot of the survivors of the Perth were captured by the Japanese.
BS: Yeah, yeah. We more or less knew the dangers we were going in to, you know.
LC: So knew, all this occurred when you, before you enlisted. Okay, so you put your hand on the bible, you’ve gone up to Maryborough. So what happened at Maryborough?
BS: Route marches in the morning. First thing out, you’re up, got issued with your dungarees and stuff like that and a route march first in the morning, quite try to remind them we didn’t join the air force to march.
LC: What was that unit called?
BS: Eh?
LC: Do you remember the name of the unit?
BS: No, just Recruit Depot.
LC: Recruit Depot, okay.
BS: No, no, in that thing there, Maryborough, yeah, at the Maryborough airport, yeah.
LC: Okay right. Fair enough.
BS: We quick learnt to go into town, get a, probably walk in to town or get a, don’t know how we got in to town half the time or something, but to come home at night all you do was pick a, outside the pictures grab a bike, ride it home and leave it the main gate. Of course Maryborough soon got used to it I think if your bike was missing you went down to the base and there it was the next morning!
LC: You went down to the base. It was like an honour system.
BS: It was quite good. So when we finished our course there we were assigned to guard duties and I was posted through to Cootamundra, Number 2 AOS at Cootamundra.
LC: Cootamundra?
BS: Yeah. They, they looked upon the Queenslanders quite freshly, they gave us an extra blanket, we used to say they should also give us a WAAF, but they wouldn’t be in that.
LC: No, no, no!
BS: No, no. So we decide the better thing there was a newspaper in between the two blankets and that was quite warm enough, you know. Down to Cootamundra.
LC: It gets a bit nippy down there doesn’t it!
BS: It was a bit nippy, yeah. We found out. You could go on guard duty at least, but at least you could take a, have a heart or an ice cream, type of thing out leave it on top of a post or something it stayed frozen for the night, you know. Bit cheeky, you could crawl up in to an Anson or something now and again, and have a bit of a sneak look or if nobody was around, nobody looked around.
LC: What was that school there? What was Cootamundra, what was the purpose?
BS: Air Observer School, Number 2 Air Observer School and also 75 Squadron was formed there at the time. Now when we were at Cootamundra, a couple of things happened there, that’s the first experience we had of death in the air force, crews from the training unit, one of I think it was about 76 Squadron, or something like that, in a Beaufighter come in and they landed at Cootamundra, but must have done a tight turn in the thing and stalled and then crashed on take off. Well we were called out to the scene and I’ve got to thank an old, he was a fatherly sort of a corporal in charge of the guards or something like that, when we got out there he said to us young blokes, he said ‘Now listen you young fellers, don’t take this to heart. There’s nothing you can do for these fellers now, they’re gone; death is death. Accept it. That’s it.’ And it was wonderful advice, for what we.
LC: Yeah. Because they’re beyond suffering at that stage.
BS: We sat out there at the beginning of that and it was, it was a mess.
LC: You were guarding the aircraft were you?
BS: I can still remember the pilot, he was thrown out of it and his body was, what was left of it, was about well probably a couple of chain away. The second officer, it’d be his observer, was just a, every bone in his body had been smashed, he was just a lump sitting in that, in there, and they moved it out and what struck us then too was they come in, they picked up the pilot, bits, they come in and they looked out and on the thing and to make up a bit of weight, put in a bit of a sand bag, to make it look okay and that. So they’d get it back to the thing.
LC: To go for the burial later.
BS: While we, while we sat there, we, while there, time passed during the day with, I can still remember once, we had a young bloke from, he was from Sydney or something, looked out and he saw these rabbits running around over there, he’d like to shoot one. He said, ‘Well there’s one under the fence over there’, but we looked out and said ‘No, can’t see a rabbit there’, but there was a fair size of a stone, a stone there. ‘No, I’ll have a shot.’ Well he did. He was pretty good: he hit it, but the bullet ricocheted off that stone, and the whine of the bullet, well what was the funny part of that was, just after that whine there was the sheep all over the place, scattering, the whine then sheep going everywhere.
LC: Didn’t have to account for the bullet? He didn’t have to account for the bullet?
BS: Then also at night they’d have to occasionally send us out to the fuel dump which was about a mile out of town or something on the road and we’d live in a tent there, and unfortunately, we’d take a bit of fruit out or something and we trained the possums to eat out of our hand which we regretted later ‘cause they’d get up on the top of the tent and bash up and down and make a hell of a racket! They were a nuisance. Then to fill in a bit of time one night, we get on with things that, oh this is boring and whatnot. I’m to blame for this, the, I don’t know what it was that flew overhead us, something went overhead, but I upped with the rifle, had a shot at it and missed. Well it wasn’t long before boy they heard it back at the station, come flying out and we had to report to the CO the next day. So I told ‘em at the time, I said, ‘No, no’, I said ‘Look there’s a bloke coming along the fence there, and he was trying to get through, I gave him the order, halt or fire, and I fired a shot in the air, there were two shots and he didn’t get, so I fired another one’ and ‘Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, okay, righto, well you better get out the range tomorrow, you blokes, the company.’ So went out to the range. I don’t know what the report was I think, ‘cause when we come to the range they put us on two hundred yards. I got two bulls and three inners, and four inners with me six shots!
LC: That’s all right.
BS: When he said to me, ‘Oh’, he said ‘Don’t worry, that bullet wouldn’t have gone too far off him.’
LC: Excellent.
BS: I got him. But they tried to look through the fence to find a bit of clothing, and wander round the fence, but nothing was there.
LC: Yeah, yeah. Of course.
BS: That was all right. But that went off and then eventually came before, a few months to go we were called up to Number 2 ITS at Bradfield Park for initial training school.
LC: Where’s Bradfield Park?
BS: Bradfield Park at Ipswich, in Sydney.
LC: In Sydney.
BS: Linfield I think it was, the name, it was a, it didn’t have a very good name, old Bradfield Park apparently.
LC: Can I just ask a question first before you go there. You mention when you went to Cootamundra was the Air Observer School, now at what stage, did, how did they make the decision, you knew you’re going in as part of the Empire Air Training Scheme, at what stage was the decision made which guys would go off as pilots and which ones would go off as navigators?
BS: At the initial training school.
LC: Right. How do they make that decision?
BS: That’s the idea of the Initial Training School, you go through all this training, various things, you know. They used to have a thing like a pilot, like kicking around to adjust your thing and I, I came through that when we went to the selection committee for the, after that, they just looked at it and say, they looked at it and say, ‘Oh, you’re a pilot.’ God. You’re above average at everything or something, like that you’re going to be a pilot. I said ‘I don’t want to be a pilot’ because not long before this came out rumour was getting around that those who were selected as navigators and air bombers were to go to Canada for training and then to go on to the new four engined aircraft that were coming in to operation over in England, you know. I said, boy go to Canada, that sounds all right to me. I said ‘No, no I want to be a navigator, my thing’s set on being a navigator’. ‘Why do you want to be a navigator?’ ‘Well I’m just interested in maths’, you know. He said ‘Well you got a good high score in your maths stuff like that. All right’, he says. So I went off happy as Larry.
LC: There you go.
BS: So we went off on leave then, home for pre-embarkation leave. And we had to be back at the embarkation depot number two it was, in Sydney, wasn’t it, embarkation depot, on the 10th of January. That was my nineteenth birthday.
LC: That was ‘43. January 1943. Yep.
BS: Yeah. 1943.
LC: That’s pretty quick from you know 7th 8th of December when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour to early January, that’s very quick.
BS: 19, yeah. So we got sorted out then. So that was us at the embarkation depot. While I was at home, of course naturally our farewells and whatnot, moving around and the normal things, you know, and I suppose one of those things but I was, somehow I never doubted, that I’d, that I’d be killed; I’d come back. It was just there, something, something told me and I believed it. So that stood by me.
LC: Yeah, yeah. Well it worked obviously.
BS: Never knew fear when I was operating, we never worried. We had a crew that, all the while, we only had one, but had a pilot, I can tell you more about him later on, but he was excellent and he always believed in: “you’re not in trouble till you’re hit”. You just carry on as normal; things are normal. There could be flak flying around you, could be fighters looking, lurking around. Until he hits yer, you just carry on, then you treat the position as it is.
LC: That’s right.
BS: That’s well, and he, I suppose this is what stuck to us when we, when we went into Canada, forgot now, oh where were we there?
LC: You’re at the embarkation point. Can I just ask one further question? At the Air Observer School, was there any flying training there or was that all ground school? At the Air Observer School did you do flying training there at Maryborough or was that-
BS: No, no, no.
LC: That was all ground school.
BS: No flying training, we weren’t allowed to fly, until you’re nineteen. Through Initial Training School at Bradfield Park, there’s no flying training there, anything like that.
LC: That didn’t really start till you got to Canada.
BS: It’s not till you go to, then if you’re a pilot you go to what they call an Elementary Flying Training School.
LC: Then on to the, you know, Tiger Moths and that sort of thing.
BS: Or a navigator to a nav course, to a bomber, to a bomb aimer’s course, to WAGs course, or wireless operators course, that sort of thing.
LC: So you’re at embarkation, so at this stage so you’d had some period on leave, some embarkation leave. So you got back to Queensland.
BS: Yeah, yeah, got back to Queensland and I went, caught the train then went down to Brisbane on the train and down to Sydney and while we’re at, attached to the embarkation depot at Sydney, we were allowed, leave was pretty good, lot of sports and that. A few, they put us through a bit of a experiment there. We were called up one day to go out to the University of Sydney, they were doing experiments on sea sickness.
LC: Okay.
BS: And what they, what we done, we were strapped to, we were put into stretchers and they were swung from ceiling to ceiling.
LC: Are you all willing volunteers for this?
BS: Out we went, oh, we’re given a lovely dinner, roast lamb and peas and whatnot sort of. Mine didn’t last too long I can tell yer! [Laughter] But we had one bloke there, they couldn’t make him sick. That was this.
LC: And that was handy training before you jump on board the ship.
BS: Yeah, and a lot of other things you could do, you could go on, there were lessons in sailing and swimming and all various things you get to do.
LC: So how long was this period?
BS: And then a few lectures during the day from blokes that coming back from England, that had completed all the latest on the war, or something like that, you know, intelligence reports, various subjects going through there while you’re on embarkation, but leave was pretty good, over weekends.
LC: So how long was that period, you know, of embarkation?
BS: We were there not all that long, about a month I got. We, I embarked on the 10th of February.
LC: 10th of February.
BS: On the Hermitage.
LC: The Hermitage.
BS: On a ship called the Hermitage. It was an Italian ship that had been, when war broke out in England and it was in the Suez Canal port and it was interned there, so it left.
LC: Okay, yeah.
BS: When Japan bombed Pearl Harbour the American government commandeered it, they took it over, moved it to the east coast of America to a place called I think it was Norfolk or something.
LC: Norfolk, Virginia.
BS: Yeah. For it to be converted to a troop ship.
LC: Okay.
BS: Armed, armed with guns on the rear and stuff like that, you know, it could do about, travel about twenty four knots or something like that I think and was regarded, it could zigzag a course and fast enough to dodge submarines, you know, so we ended up on the old Hermitage.
LC: Right.
BS: Now, get on the Hermitage, landed there, Woolloomooloo on the night, on the day of the 10th I think on the 9th, it might have been the 9th of February and sailed on the 10th anyway, of February.
LC: Did it sail on its own or were you part of a convoy?
BS: Eh?
LC: Was there any escorts or did you sail on your own?
BS: No, we sailed on our own. We, out of, the first day out of Sydney, we sailed from Woolloomooloo, the first day out of Sydney we were escorted by two destroyers. One was a Dutch destroyer and they get out but the next morning they’d gone.
LC: Yeah, ‘cause there was the submarine threat.
BS: More or less the zigzag course, then they got, put us on to lectures during the day and stuff like that, you know.
LC: Were you aware of the submarine threat, of the submarine threat while you were on board the ship?
BS: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
LC: Did they have special, any drills?
BS: They did because they, on these lectures and that, we thought well this is a bit of a gem of an idea, the lectures, I thought, and I went round once on the deck, we’re allowed the deck space, you’re on a Yankee ship, now you only got two meals a day when transit, the American ships, you know, and I wander around looking, I’m on the deck and didn’t have a life jacket on, you see so I’m nabbed, Oi! No life jacket on the deck, down to kitchen duty. Three days kitchen duty but I tell you gee this turns out all right.
LC: All right!
BS: You can have three meals a day, you cart hot stuff around and although that’s where I got to like sauerkraut and saveloys and of course baked beans, typical Americans. And then after the three days, we get on, get up to wander round the deck, [unclear] I got nabbed again, back down the kitchen duty you see. But then we’re getting to on then, was on the last day of that when we called in to Pango Pango.
LC: American Samoa.
BS: No leave there, and word got around then the next stop would be Honolulu, we’d be given leave there, we would be stopping overnight you know, Pango Pango we stopped overnight. So I said well no after this we won’t worry about this ‘cause you know we better have a bit of leave in Honolulu, when we get there, if we get there. But just before we got to Pango Pango, I think it was about two days before, we drifted for quite a while one night. Now what it was there was some rumours around they think there was a sub in the area and they shut the engines off, something like that, but the next day we get going again and whatnot, if they’re worried about a sub or leaving any remark, then woke up during that day that it had taken on a lot of supplies for the north, to take the troops over for the North American landing and they had a lot of supplies on board, you know, but they had a lot of chocolates on, Chorley’s chocolates, and they’d gone bad in the Tropics, stuff like that, so these Chorley’s chocolate bars, they were leaving -
LC: Leaving a trail of chocolates.
BS: Leaving a trail of Chorley’s chocolates out, oh god.
LC: I can just picture that, a Japanese submarine following a trail of chocolates to the Hermitage!
BS: But they wouldn’t have caught up with us anyway ‘cause they were doing twenty four knots and that, they cruise along pretty well, it was not a bad ship like that.
LC: So when you’re not getting nabbed and doing kitchen duty, what was the standard routine on, you had lectures, training, PT?
BS: Yeah. You were on training or you could be assigned to gun duty at the back, but they soon gave that away to the Aussies, ‘cause they used to have to put up a weather balloon every so often, if Aussies were on the gun crew they shot at it.
LC: Took pot shots out of it.
BS: They popped at it. They’d get it. So we were out of favour. [Laughter]
LC: So the crew was all American were they?
BS: Yeah, but they had the canteen was open for an hour a day, you could get sandwiches there, and we’d generally get on. Now, while we were going across there, we had a group we called the Bunduck club, I don’t know how they got that name, but they used to, they sat around the deck. Well I never had much to do with them ‘cause I got sent down for kitchen duty. But this bloke had a gramophone, only had one record, it was “In the Mood”, and of course by the we time got down there and get to Pango Pango and going off on this one record the needle had had it, you know, [unclear] so when we go on the leg up to, going up to Honolulu they reckon they’ve got to, on back on the Bunduck Club, they reckon right we’ve got to get a gramophone needle when we get to Honolulu, you know. So we cruise along to Honolulu all right, with odd lectures and stuff like that. We managed to get by.
LC: So how long was the cruise?
BS: Eh?
LC: How long did it take to get to Honolulu?
BS: Four weeks.
LC: Four weeks to Honolulu.
BS: Well no, three weeks, we got the, we got six days, it was a week to Pango Pango, another week to Honolulu, another week to, or just about a week.
LC: Okay. So your time in Honolulu did it that, you said you had some leave. Did the ship go in to Honolulu Harbour or did it go in to Pearl Harbour?
BS: No, into Honolulu Harbour. Now we were split into two, one lot were given leave the afternoon we arrived there, it was about midday we arrived there about then, they were given leave till about eighteen hundred hours or something like that, then in the morning we were also given leave till 23:59 hours. So away we go, few of us, and this bloke out chasing this gramophone needle, you know. Now that’s the first time I’d ever struck traffic driving on the wrong side of the road.
LC: Oh yes, of course you did.
BS: So my mother went close to receiving that telegram!
LC: Oh dear!
BS: You look right and step out and the next minute, this thing come phoom, great negro driving this truck, bloody hell! Oh boys we got to look the other way! So we go round looking for this gramophone needle. Well, we’re getting shown everything: bloody knitting needles and darning needles and sewing needles, and all sorts of needles, you know. We had this bloke Russ Martin, Russ was a bit of a wag, real outgoing bloke, so we go into one place, and of course what we couldn’t understand, what we noticed also there was the large Japanese population in all the stores, and guards on every door, on every shop door.
LC: American guards.
BS: Yeah. And of course If any, they they stuttered they get shot, no muckin’ around. So we go in to this place, and old Russ no, no gramophone needle, you know, you’ve got to think thing you turn round and round and you put the thing down – ah you mean a phonograph needle!
LC: Oh right, yes!
BS: So then we’re right, we got our phonograph needle.
LC: Once you know the American lingo you’re all right.
BS: So we got that and another bloke and myself, Noel Hooper, we come out, and we’re wearing our tropical uniforms, Noel came from Nambour and he was shot down too, but evaded capture and died not long after the war, but he, we’d come on back and this Yankee bloke come and talk to us, what you got to do, would you like come and have a look at Pearl Harbour? He was a Yankee officer. Well, that’ll be great, but he took us to, we went through two check points, now at the last checkpoint we’re looking down on Pearl Harbour and now at this time it was about half past eleven, you know, we said to him ‘Listen we can’t go on we’ve got to be back on the ship by 23:59’, ‘Oh okay’, he said, no, no but we’d got that far, you know, he was quite willing to, take us down there. Generous, so he took us back to the ship then.
LC: But you didn’t quite get to Pearl Harbour.
BS: We got a chance to look down on Pearl Harbour. Just to look down on.
LC: Oh, you looked down on it. Could you see the damage?
BS: Yeah, yeah. So that, that was a bit of an experience.
LC: Well it would have been, yeah, only months after.
BS: Then we went, went back on to board the ship then sailed. And as for sitting out on the deck playing the gramophone record that was out of the question, ‘cause God it was cold! The seas were rough and cold eh, once we left Honolulu, oh, just lousy. Fortunately at Honolulu they must have anticipated this, we were issued with sheepskin jackets those, from the Australian Comforts Fund. They come in handy.
LC: Yeah. They would’ve. So where were you sailing to now?
BS: Going to San Francisco.
LC: San Francisco, okay.
BS: So we met then, came into San Fran after a couple of days of that, getting the seagulls around and whatnot, come in to San Francisco, under the Golden Gate Bridge, coming up the Golden Gate Bridge, the ship’s not going to go under there! Look that! But there was tons of room.
LC: Oh yeah, just a bit!
BS: Oh what a sight, you know. Pulled up opposite Alcatraz, the prison camp, and we were unloaded pretty quickly and put on to ferries to go over to Oakland, where we were put on to a train, we got a meal and put on to a train and then sent north to go up to, through, Oregon, Seattle and Vancouver. That was a⸻
LC: You didn’t get any—
BS: So on the train--
LC: So you didn’t get any time off in San Francisco, just normal movements.
BS: No, no, we caught the ferry across. We were away that afternoon on the train from Oakland, you know, and just with our wanted on voyage luggage or something, you know, not wanted on voyage would have been unloaded, it was following us somewhere. So we get, and that was an experience ‘cause to get on to the train then oh god it was comfort, it was warm and negro walking around, magazines, ice cream, anything, oh god everything, you’re whipping through, the damn thing’s going that fast you couldn’t count the telephone poles going past, you know. Boy this is not like the Queensland ride! [laughs] What a great trip that was.
LC: Did you do any stops on the way to Vancouver, did you stop on the way?
BS: Yeah, couple of stops at Salem or something.
LC: Or Seattle.
BS: All the meals were on the train. One thing we sort of noticed a lot, no fences between buildings, and a lot of them not painted, you know really a difference you know, different, fir trees right on up till we got nearly to Seattle and then we couldn’t get over, that’s when we first sighted Mount St Helens, blew up later there.
LC: That’s the one, yes.
BS: All the snow on top of it.
LC: Yeah, yeah.
BS: And then in to Seattle and then moved on then up to Vancouver.
LC: Right.
BS: Got to Vancouver and then, that was early morning, the meal, breakfast at the station, issued with Canadian currency and given the leave for the day. Now that was my first contact with Rotary. A bloke, a Rotarian, said you blokes come round, you like to look around? So he drove us around town and out to the Capilano -
LC: Yup. The Narrows.
BS: Where it is, the park out there, you know and looked out at about mid-day, he says ‘What I’ll do’, he says ‘I’ll take you round’ and he went away, come round, then he arranged to come back and pick us up, ‘You go out and wander around the park there, you know, I’ll come back and pick you up at about three o’clock or some [unclear] and take you back to the station, give you a look around town and take you back to the station so you can meet, you’ve got to be there at 1800 hours or something and head off up over the Rockies to Edmonton.’ So he did that.
LC: And he was with the Rotary.
BS: We had a pretty full day.
LC: So you’re back on the train again heading to Edmonton.
BS: That was one of the greatest days out, that trip up through the Rockies.
LC: Yeah. It’s still winter isn’t it?
BS: Yeah. The middle of winter, go outside, and all the rivers frozen.
LC: At this stage were given you any extra clothing? Had they given you any extra cold weather clothing at this stage?
BS: Oh no, the trains were air conditioned, we were warm as toast in there. We were just sitting there in our dungarees more or less, looking out, getting over and some of these blokes, the waiters on the train there too, looking out, look all the snow cover and down between the trees there’d be a clean line of snow, down, you know. And they’d tell us: oh the bears keep that clean so they can skid down. I don’t know whether they were pulling our leg or not, might have been. But we believed them anyway.
LC: Oh yeah well, why not.
BS: Then we got to this place called Avola, and they had to stop there, we had a couple of stops before that, you know, going past Mount Robson but we couldn’t get over not a tree on them, you know, just bare rock and snow. What a great water, water resource that is, you know, we could do with that here, just then it melts quietly during the summer and sends it all down through the Prairies and whatnot, and down through the Mississippi and whatnot. So I did, we eventually got to Avola, got there into things, fixed it up in camp and then we set off from Jasper to Edmonton. Now, there’s a bit of a hold up just outside of Edmonton when we get down a bit, and then we arrived at Edmonton. I tell you, you blokes are lucky, the temperature’s twenty six below, now you’ve gotta get out, there’s trucks here to take you out to what they call the Manning Depot at Edmonton, you know, M Depots, they don’t call them reception depots or anything, it’s like the embarkation depots were called Y depots, I don’t know what the Y stood for, but the Manning Depot. I get this, the temperatures this side and they’re gonna get the trucks out, I said the best thing to do is make sure you’re about the first on. I’m grabbing the back and everybody else piles in behind you, they went out and they told us there the truck driver said there, if you were, if the temperature was two degrees cooler, that was twenty six degrees Fahrenheit, minus twenty six degrees Fahrenheit, if two degrees further and everything would be closed, everything would stop, okay so. Anyway we got out, we got us to Edmonton all right. We back down, put into some barracks there. The first barracks we were in, they were older barracks and the ablution blocks and that were, oh, about a chain away or something, you know, twenty, thirty, forty yards away, something like that.
LC: In the cold weather.
BS: If you had to race across to ‘em, you know, if you did, you had a shower or anything like that and you’d come out and your hair was wet, time you got back to the barracks it was all ice! You got back in a hurry. But not long after we were transferred to new barracks just across the road and they were all air conditioned and the toilets, everything was inside all in the one building, you know, and then we got issued first of all at the Manning Depot got called and then to issue our battle dress and our instruction books, text books and that on various, meteorology and navigation and whatnot, you know, and the first day like that, we didn’t get, another bloke and myself we didn’t get our battle dresses that day because they’d run out of Australian battle dresses there, so we had to go back oh, about a week later and get ours, back to the Manning Depot.
LC: So this would have been the dark blue.
BS: So this was out of the aerodrome, yeah. This was out of the aerodrome. So we settled in then.
LC: So your course was starting there then?
BS: Settled in to lectures.
LC: And Go!
LC: Oh yeah, right on, you know. It was on.
LC: Almost the day you got there, you went right into it.
BS: Right into it, yeah. They didn’t muck about. They get on and you did certain amount of lectures before your first flight, you know and they had to be ready for that and got issued with flying gear and whatever. And all various things and that’s where I had, I mentioned to you there before, where one of our blokes, the three of us that were good mates and stayed together we, and one of them had gone out and met this girl or something, we went into the, what we couldn’t get over there, we went into the YMCA, the YWCA rather, no YMCA over there, YWCA. Terrific facilities, you know, indoor heated swimming pool, dance floor, bowling alley, cafe, you know, dining facilities, dance floor and all, oh, terrific, you know. And Eric, who met up with one girl there too the first day and tied up with and we were invited then to be the, there was a group called the Twentieth Century Club, this girl was Italian and she used to organise hikes and that of a Sunday and we would go on them you know and that, Eric must have been out somewhere and he met this other girl, and just on the lectures a couple of days later this, the phone rings, wanting to speak to Eric Sutton or one of his friends, and this is this girl, ringing up, going oh yeah, well look Eric’s told me about you two friends look I’ve got two lovely friends too she says and they’re quite interested in meeting, how about come out and come meet us and we can go shagging one night. And you know shagging. I come back to the instructor and of course after the haw-haws about the shagging and whatnot going on, the instructor explained that shagging in Canada is dancing! So we said yeah.
LC: That’s all right though still. [Laughter]
BS: So we went out. They were great kids, they put no pressure on us, they were just - we were brothers, and that’s the way it was. Now the girl I went with, her father, told us when we left, he come out, he couldn’t thank us enough, now look, I can’t thank you boys enough for what you’ve meant to our, these three girls. He said none of them have got brothers, and they’re good friends, you’ve put no pressure on them, apparently, well it’s, I don’t know whether he explained, there’s never any pressure like this, they couldn’t attend all the things, they couldn’t come to our passing out parade because they were occupied, one was away, on holidays, one was a schoolteacher, you know they had their thing, but they were great kids, and their parents.
LC: So the locals were very happy, very happy to have you around.
BS: Yeah. He was great. When we left, when we had to go on to embarkation depot when we left from there, he come out to the train, we went to his place, to go along, thing is he said ‘I’ll drive you all to the train. I’ll take you in to the train’ then, but the girls didn’t come with us. They just, well, said goodbyes at the house.
LC: So you’re training at Edmonton, so now what aircraft was that on? What aircraft are you on?
BS: Ansons.
LC: Ansons, yeah.
BS: And you did, you flew in pairs, you had two, you had a flying mate come in. The second one, the first one did the navigation, you did practical navigation, you’re on set courses. There were a number of set courses which you flew by day then you flew the same course by night. And they were all bush pilots, Canadians, leased out, the bush pilots and they, they flew by the seat of their pants, I’ll tell you that, they were good pilots.
LC: Was this medium level, low level navigation?
BS: No. Very, very seldom went above two thousand feet.
LC: Okay, right, so it was very much visual.
BS: Yeah, bit of cloud that forced you up, but no, down low.
LC: So what you are learning is primarily visual and dead reckoning and that sort of thing.
BS: Yeah, just dead reckon navigate. The second bloke, the second nav on that trip, you’d do the first trip and he’d do the second. Second nav sat there, he did map reading. He practised his map reading and the old Ansons there didn’t have automated wind up the undercart, he had to wind up the undercart, hundred and thirty six turns.
LC: Oh bloody hell!
BS: Bloody. They were good. The er, we had a couple of trips there I think were, were memorable. The first trip we went on, well, our first flight, we had a bloke, his girlfriend was a schoolteacher at a school just outside of Edmonton, something business well did he do that turn up, I was starting to get a bit airsick by the time we was finished, he’s getting [unclear] was down there looking through the window of the school.
LC: Is that right? Beating up his girlfriend.
BS: That poor old Lanc he must have thought it was a Spitfire I think, the Anson, you know.
[Other]: I’ll give you two minutes. I’ll give you two minutes.
LC: Okay. Alma’s just entered the room and we’re being told to take a break in a few minutes.
BS: Right oh.
[Other]: [Unclear] we haven’t even left Canada yet!
LC: Yeah, we’ll get there, oh we’ll get there!
BS: That was, you know, gave us the two minutes. Then we had a trip later on, which is a, which a pilot, one of the few pilots who didn’t, who was not always on course ‘cause the thing there, for training and for navigation over in England was a bit rich ‘cause you go, your first leg’s to Ellerslie, well Ellerslie, that’s the three wheat silos down the line there, so you see it, and of course they know it’s there. But we had a trip, we had to go to a place well down, was a long way down and we were over ten tenths cloud and a lot of them pulled back, they came back. We had to go to two thousand feet to get above, I said ‘No we’ll carry on’ [unclear] and the pilot gets there, I said right we should be over, oh hang on [pause] no, I just, oh Coronation, a place called Coronation, and he looks around, he come down, there’s a break in the cloud there, yeah, we went down. ‘Oh’, he said ‘We’ll have a look at the railway station there and see, should be there’s a railway station there’, so he gets down. So he runs along, I think he damn near ran the wheels along the train track, Coron-wheesh, just went like there, no chance, so he goes round again and we shot off a bit, yeah, Coronation, he said ‘Righto, we’ll climb back up.’
LC: You’re reading the signs on the station were you!
BS: Yeah, yeah, read the name on the station to make sure. ‘Oh’ he says, ‘That’s good.’ Well I think I got brownie points for that trip, come back the old nav kind of thing. You’ve got to thank the pilot, he flew the course you gave him, you know, not tracking it, you know. Well he had to, he couldn’t see the ground anyway.
LC: So how many training trips did you, flights did you do on the course before the end?
BS: I think, I think the course was about twelve days, twelve or fourteen day trips and twelve or fourteen night trips.
LC: Okay. And how many a day, was it sort of you know, fly, day off, fly, day off?
BS: Oh we finished there the end of July, it was only over a couple of months, it was solid.
LC: Okay so you’re flying almost every day?
BS: Yeah yeah yeah yeah, quite a few, weather’d stop you quite a few days stop you, then you’d have catch up, night time and whatnot.
LC: Okay, we might take a break in a second, but so basically we’re up to, you’re coming to the end of the, coming up to your passing out parade so when we come back after the break we’ll go from there to Halifax and then we’ll get stuck in to operations in the UK.
BS: To Halifax. We’re going on holidays to New York [unclear].
LC: Okay, this is part two, we’re reconvening at half past twelve after a very, very nice lunch and a cup of tea. Okay welcome back, Bob, okay, now we got to, we’re talking about the time at Edmonton on the Ansons, the, so at the end of your training there, so was that the stage where you passed out, with your passing out parade. Was that the stage where you actually, did you get your wings, your brevet at that stage.
BS: Wings, yeah. Navigation brevet and then we get on, [cough] and after we left as I said with, we had that, spent the last day with the families of the girls, the three girls we were friendly with there. One of the fathers drove us to the station so then we left Edmonton then, by train, at night, all across the prairies, down through Winnipeg to somewhere got off, changed trains then to go on down to New York, via by Niagara Falls had a few hours at Niagara Falls and a couple of days at New York, looking around there sort of. And then Noel Hooper, one who along with myself were commissioned off course, we came back early from New York to Montreal to pick up our pilot officer ribbons and that, you know, we were given our slip on the pay parade, last pay parade at Edmonton, here’s your commission, sort things out yourself, something like that. Then we decided there in Montreal no, we’ll just take that, we’ll just do the pilot’s thing hang on to our present uniforms and wait till we get to England to be issued with officers uniforms, you know [cough] and then we caught up with the rest of the crew, the rest of them coming back from New York, coming up to Montreal and then we head off by train then again and along the Hudson river to Halifax, arrived at Halifax at the Y Depot.
LC: Right, that’s embarkation depot.
BS: Yeah, we were, completed our clearances, as they say in Canada they’re clearances whether you’re arriving or going, they’re all clearances. Completed there and settled in to officers quarters and whatnot, you know and pretty well straight away the first day, the first couple of days exercises in the decompression chamber. The Y Depot, the air force’s Y Depot emigration there, was situated on the naval station so they had those facilities so we did the decompression chamber and then a bit of practice or what to do, how to get into a dinghy from off the wing sort of. Generally leave was pretty good, mucking round there. After a few weeks we suddenly got the call yeah, go on parade: we’re on to the Queen Mary.
LC: Right, okay.
BS: So right, get on to the Queen Mary and we were billeted, there were twenty four of us, we were up on A deck, A24 and run by the, under the Americans [unclear] sort of thing and as you know on the Queen Mary the top decks were reserved for Commonwealth troops, officers and even men, you know and non-commissioned officers and the ship’s crew and American officers like that, and I think they went down to about the first four or five decks and below that you were then below decks where the main force of Americans, ‘cause after we boarded the Mary, the Queen Mary we went then straight to New York to pick up Americans. They, and I believe on that trip we go, there were fifteen thousand personnel on board the Queen Mary for that trip over.
LC: Bloody hell! Oh dear.
BS: So you can imagine the Americans, particularly the negroes, and that who were confined to below decks.
LC: Yeah.
BS: Conditions there were rotten.
LC: Because it had been refitted, it wasn’t like normal passenger cabins.
BS: No, no, they were rotten. At our deck we had, we soon learned that we had to follow the yellow line down to our eating, our mess as you call it sort of is, and I think it was the green line down to the big cinema where they showed pictures at night, the entertainment area and stuff like, and another red line to go somewhere else. But it was sort of colour coded where you go.
LC: So how long was that cruise across to?
BS: So we arrived in America late one afternoon, they loaded all night I think, and got away late the next afternoon. Then for three days went on a zigzag course across to -
LC: And you’re with a convoy as well?
BS: No, no, no, on your own, the Mary was on her own, see the Mary operated, from, its regular run at that time was from Gourock in Scotland, across to Halifax to New York back to Gourock. I think the Queen Elizabeth was also on the run but I got an idea the Queen Elizabeth operated from Southampton, and come down south of Ireland, you know, across there. We come in to north of Ireland. Then coming in to north of Ireland we cruised in lately and we were greeted pretty well by few low flying aircraft coming in to meet us round the north of Ireland and in towards the, the Ayrshire coast, moving up into the Clyde into Gourock and the most moving part of that was the Band of the Royal Marines which was aboard, down on the open deck, just below where we were standing, thing we were standing on, played Land of Hope and Glory.
LC: Oh, okay, for the Yanks, for the Poms.
BS: Well you can imagine, the Americans, there were tears in their eyes because Britain then was the land of hope and glory, there’s no doubt about it.
LC: Hope and glory, yeah that’s right.
BS: Anyway, so into Gourock lined us up on to lighters straight into, early in the morning, ah, that was about midday when we came, straight on to lighters, over on to the railway station. I think we got a meal and stuff like that, waited there, then set off that night down to England.
LC: So what was your first -
BS: So that was, travelled all through the night and then in the morning woke up, we’re getting in to the outskirts of, down past the Midlands a little bit and the first evidence of bomb damage I think, and what struck us most too, was we sped through the Crewe railway junction, that train just rattled through there at a reasonable speed and you suddenly realise in those days all the signals that were probably operated by hand, no automatic stuff or anything like that. Rattled down and then further on after we come into the real bomb damage and into London and on down to Brighton where we were accepted. The officers in Brighton were taken in to what they called the Red Lion Hotel, along and then the NCOs were billeted up in the, the Metropole and one of the other hotels further up, bit west. So we settled in there for a while, then about the second night come in, I’m suddenly given the job on duty, officer in charge of one of the guns on the front. Right, on the front, go down to this gun and a couple of other gunners come there, sort of looked at it, what do we do now? I says ‘Well I hope they’re working. Well, we’d better fire a couple of shots just to make sure’, you know, so bang, bang bang, ‘Oh they’re right’, okay. Well of course it wasn’t too long before some officious looking English sergeant major of some sort came flying, ‘What’s going on here, what’s going on here? You’ll have to be court martialled’, I said ‘What’s the sense of us being here if we’re not out testing the guns?’ We’ve got to make sure they’re working.
LC: This is on the main, when you say the front, that’s that main area on the foreshore.
BS: That’s right, the long the esplanade. Along past the main, what do they call it? The pier. So anyway he settled with that, it was all right. You can do that. Then with, we’re on to lectures that day on the pier, and I think one of the lectures on the pier, we’re on there one day, and all of a sudden there’s, you had to go up a plank on to the pier and all of a sudden there’s an unholy explosion, something happened. They were mined and one of the mines on the pier had gone off.
LC: Oh bloody hell!
BS: Got off there okay, that was all right and then it was only a few days later most of the crew we went, suddenly got their transfers, a couple of us went to London to organise our uniforms, officers uniforms and stuff like that and get to know the Boomerang Club and what it meant, had a look around.
LC: Where was the Boomerang Club?
BS: Eh?
LC: Where was that?
BS: In Australia House.
LC: In Australia House, okay, yup.
BS: I opened an account at the National Bank there as I was a bank officer, and it was then all the, the bank was all boarded up and that, there was a bit of bomb crater damage across the road with the St Martins in the Fields and that is now the official air force.
LC: Certainly is.
BS: Organised the Boomerang Clun and got the way, air force headquarters were up in Kodak House, Kingsway. We’d come in to Kingsway on the train up and come down to Boomerang House and then do the runs around, did the run up through there, to Buckingham Palace and around, got to know a bit of the area sort of thing.
LC: So getting your uniforms, were there tailors there just did standard work?
BS: Yeah, uniforms were fitted, in Oxford Street I think it was.
LC: Was that one of those places like Gieves and Hawkes or Johnsons?
BS: One of the great ones, yeah, all made to measure, beautifully made and got that settled. [Cough] It was only after a couple of days then Noel Hooper and Johnny Honeyman and myself were transferred to an Officers Training School down in Sidmouth.
LC: That’s, where’s Sidmouth, what’s close, where’s that, that’s down on the south coast?
BS: In Devon.
LC: Devon. Right. Yeah.
BS: So right, we got shot off to there, that means we then got shot behind the rest of our blokes who went through the course with us, they all got, while we were away there they nearly all got transferred to advance training schools and round about. So down to the Officers Training School and that was an absolutely solid four weeks training, in air force history, protocol, everything, you know. Run by the RAF Regiment and largely designed to train you to, if you were shot down to escape. Now, first day there, we’re put through an obstacle course. Now I’d been doing a lot of work as an, because before we left the squadron to, to go to Halifax, no wait a minute, no that’s later on, no, and in Edmonton you know, that’s the next squadron, [unclear] group there, and the, I got through the, I did the whole course within the time.
LC: Yep. That’s the obstacle course.
BS: The obstacle. But only one thing the, one thing was two pine tree poles something long enough with bars across, you had to climb up one and go over the top bar, come down, I looked when I got up there and I thought I’m not going over bloody top of that: I went underneath it. They spotted it!
LC: Oh bugger!
BS: They got it. Now there’s only one other bloke that was within the time. Now about three days before we left, the course finished, we were still there, the whole course did that course and they all completed it, in time and everything, so it showed you how they built up our fitness, the fitness of all those blokes. We would do, get on this training course was how to avoid - if you were shot down and somebody shot at you - to avoid so you go through all this drill all using live ammunition.
LC: Oh, okay.
BS: So you had to know what a 303 bullet felt like that whizzed past you a foot or two away, you know, from the rear. No mucking round.
LC: Health and Safety wasn’t very big there.
BS: So right we go on a route march one day, come along, there’s a bang, crack, crack, bang! You‘ve got to, bang! Now I get back, tell us on that route march what did you hear, what was that first one as you were coming up? Oh, some bloke, somebody let off a couple of double bangers. Oh that sounds reasonable. The second one? That was a rifle. Where was he? It was behind us, to our right. Now, if you think he’s going to shoot again, what do you do? Which way do you go? He says you go to your right, you don’t go that way, to avoid the chance of hitting you again, you go this way, right, and down, that, and down. So do that. What was that? A grenade. You’ve got to know a grenade. So we do grenade practice, get in a sandbag area, and the blokes get in, and of course half way through the grenade practices you’re told what to do, if grenade falls, you get out. Half way through, what does the instructor do, oh shit! I dropped one! Your reaction has to be straight away. Boom. Out!
LC: How long did that course at Sidmouth go for?
BS: Four weeks.
LC: Four weeks and then straight from there to -
BS: Now when we, they give you an exercise to go on, on that practice. Now you set off at the, at the school or you go to a place just outside Sidmouth, there, set off to go to school, start from here, now you got till three o’clock this afternoon to arrive here – told you where you had to go – up was a place about oh, I suppose ten or twelve mile up to the north east. So right, away you go! And we get off, you can go individually or you can get into a group, this is, you’ve got to use your own judgement, you’re own, right. Well Noel Hooper and John Honeyman and myself, the three of us said okay, she’ll be right, well we were, of a Sunday morning we’d all go, the three of us would go on hikes around, we knew a place with a bit of a cafe up just north of the thing and that and talk in there and we’d hike, we’d do twenty or thirty mile of a Sunday; we were pretty fit. So we go to this cafe and Noel, John Honeyman come up with an idea, he said, ‘I’ve got something, I was up talking to a girl the other day and I’ve got this woman’s hat’, Noel takes out a woman’s hat, thought about it, so we go to this, cafe, sitting there, do you think we can get a taxi, can we get a taxi? The taxi says, ‘Yeah, I think there’s a bloke’, organises this, this taxi turns up, so we explained to him what we wanted, oh, you beauty, says, I can do that for you, we probably gave him five months of [unclear] we get it so we worked out, we get in this taxi. So Honeyman sits up in the back seat of the taxi like they do in English taxis, come in and you sit in the back seat not beside the driver, I’m in the front seat with the driver, lying down, Hooper’s in the back seat, lying down. So we’re driving this taxi round, up they get, gets along, we knew the route, we had a fair idea where this instructor would be too, you know, so we’re coming up, up along a road and there’s a ditch along this road and a tree up along there and Honeyman looks over there: there he is, over against that tree over there, look, oh yeah, okay make a note and we just, we kept going. And the taxi let us off, went up, went up to a place and dropped us off about two mile north of where we had to go and we walked that last two mile, came out of there so we’re coming in as a group. So three o’clock comes about, it’s about a quarter past two, a bit before three o’clock, he turns up, to this point, this instructor, and a couple of others. ‘Now right, are they all here? Who’s not here – the three Aussies.’ Next minute we walked in – ‘Where the hell did you blokes come from?’ Ah. ‘How did you get past me?’ ‘Oh we got past you all right, oh, we’re coming up this road and there’s a bit of a ditch along there, we’re coming up this road and we looked and we see and there you are up against a bloody tree we lie down again and we said oh no we can’t go on past there, look around, so we crawled back down the ditch and went down further along, along past a tree, there’s bit of a dip in the road went up past there went, come a bit past and a bit north again and then come out.’ Oh bloody hell, fair enough. ‘Well’ he says, ‘Bloody amazing how these Aussies always seem to put it over us in these things isn’t it’, he said, ‘But you did, get you went together, well okay you used your initiative.’ The day later he found out what happened.
LC: Well, it’s still initiative.
BS: And he still accepted it.
LC: Good! Well you used your initiative!
BS: That ended up, so anyway we ended up, passing the course and getting out. Got pretty good. The course had a screaming skull, there was, you gave certain duties. They felt sorry for me because, I know now why, but one was Sergeant Major of Parade or yeah, Commanding Officer of Parade and Reviewing Officer of Parade: they were Colour Parades. Now, what bloody happens, but who’s, when this time when they come on, Commanding Officer of Parade one week, who’s Commanding Officer of Parade the first? Me. You’re sort of the drill sergeant of parade, you see, sort of. Now, you’ve got to parade, you’ve got to be awake here, this is parade ground drill this is, ‘cause now you’re here and the parade’s there. Now, this is advancing, that’s retiring. That‘s to the right, that’s to the left. Now, if they’re advancing if marching, if they’ve to move to the right they’ve got to do a left turn, to the left of the, you know a left turn to the right of the parade, you’ve got keep your wits about you to get right turn, parade off, [marching commands] retreat or something like that there, about turn, there, quick march, come on, yell out, they’ve got to bloody hear you! [Laughing]
LC: You’ve got to make sure you got your left and right turns right.
BS: The, get down there, the parade will advance, about turn! Come on. Parade will move to the left, or to the right, left turn. You got it right, you got it right, that same instructor. And he was, yeah, that’s all right. There’s the same as CO on parade, you’re doing other things, Commanding Officer on Parade with bloody nothing to do but stand round.
LC: Exactly.
BS: He gets on, we trained a couple of those, one day before this, we were out when he was teaching us how to yell, you know. How to, you’ve got to throw your voice, now come on, get out here now. You’d get the blokes out, line up, march them down the road, he’d hang on till they’re about eighty to a hundred yards away. Right, give ‘em, tell ‘em about turn, about turn, well of course your voice wasn’t too good, they wouldn’t do it. He’d show you. Come on, I’ll show you how to go. Right, he’d get up, he’d get one of the other blokes there, up about turn so we’d head off this day, we’re going down, there’s three of us there and then another bloke, he was a Canadian I think, he said listen, us and the ones in front hesitate. All you blokes behind do an about turn, the other blokes in the front there the three four ranks in front keep going, so he’s there, well, about turn! well back he bloody comes. You buggers, I know what’s going on here! You organised that, didn’t yer! He knew bloody well. Oh yeah, there’s a good YouTube thing on the return of the Black Watch to Glasgow and that’s got, that. I’ve often wondered why one unit of the Black Watch carries the shoulders on the right arm and other one carries them on the left arm, you know that screaming skull there, it was a screaming skull there, you bloody heard his voice, they threw that voice. Bloody terrific.
LC: Amazing. So that was, was that all practice for your passing out parade, was it?
BS: That was all the thing. And they said review, now I found out later towards the end, find the thing it was, squadron, the CO after we were in training to bring the squadron back here, that I was supposed to be navigator of, and be promoted one above substantive rank, you know, which would have been to squadron leader. Now, when my report comes back was recommendation about if ever approved for rank above or substantive rank by wing commander or above to be approved, without further question.
LC: Okay. Is that right?
BS: Yeah.
LC: Oh, that would’ve been right.
BS: Now, none of that records on your things. It’s like those records come through, it’s like the nav records from training. I’ll get to that when I get, when we got to the squadron. So we got that, we come back then. And then when I got them we were transferred up to Scotland, to West Freugh. I was with a course, blokes that went through, also went through Edmonton but they were two courses behind us.
LC: Yeah. Because they didn’t have to do the officer training.
BS: Eh?
LC: Because they didn’t have to do officer training?
BS: No, no. They didn’t. Not too many did that. There were a few Aussies on it. A couple were there for disciplinary reasons.
LC: Okay!
BS: Well, one was a bloke had pranged a Wellington on take off at an OTU. He was sent there for disciplinary reason for some reason or other; I suppose he wiped the bloody aircraft off, you know. But he was only there for a few days, he was recalled back to the Operational Training, to the OTU because he was upsetting the staff, his crew, see they’d already had a crew organised he had his crew so he didn’t last too long. He went back and there were others who were called off the course back to squadrons or back to courses or something like that, yeah.
LC: Okay.
BS: But it was an excellent course on the history of the, the psychology of the British Army, the British and the history of the air force, protocols and whatnot. I was set up. So you know you benefited a lot from it. So we went back then, so we went to West Freugh and then that’s where you started training with staff pilots. They were air force pilots, not like the -
LC: Bush pilots.
BS: Bush pilots in Canada, yeah, they were air force pilots and so on. The first courses there were set courses too, on the navigator, they also had set courses that you flew at day and flew at night, about a half dozen courses.
LC: What aircraft was this on?
BS: Most of them were over the Irish Sea, back out, over to Northern Ireland, back of Bangor, or across to, towards Newcastle from Ingham, where they were allowed, they didn’t interfere with operations or you know.
LC: So what aircraft were you flying?
BS: So they were sort of training areas for flying schools and that. So right, we did those, we and in the old Anson the main things there was the, going on Anson once we had to watch the hills round Dumfries and that, Scotland, something there called Criffel, which was a fairly high peak you know it claimed if you had flown into it you know, like around Wales there and the old Anson wouldn’t fly through a hill.
LC: Not real well.
BS: We set off one day on a flight, actually I think it was to, to Newcastle. We had two flights, we had trouble to Newcastle. We, we start off, all of a sudden, the met winds were supposed to be about, I think only about twenty five knots or thirty knots or something, but they got up to about sixty or seventy knots, you know, bloody hell we’re flying along we, and suddenly they woke up, no, no, we were recalled, we’re gonna get there too soon, you know, recall. Well by that time we were, what the hell we were getting pretty close to round about Gretna Green or somewhere, round Dumfries there, something like that, we had to come back. Well, we’re going, coming back that bloody Lanc we had a ground speed I suppose, of twenty mile an hour at the most.
LC: Yeah, with that wind, yeah.
BS: Twenty miles an hour. We come back, now we come over couple of these high peaks and you could have damn near jumped out. And then on our night exercise to go to, we had a, go to Newcastle. That was to combine the Newcastle anti-aircraft with a practical exercise, you know.
LC: Okay yes, so they can have, they can see an aircraft.
BS: They get, do a thing, probably do a camera thing or gawd knows what. So we head north, but we had the same thing, getting pretty well along about Carlisle something, we were recalled - Newcastle was having an actual.
LC: Oh okay, having a real air raid.
BS: Air raid, a proper air raid.
LC: So the anti-aircraft guys having some real practice, okay.
BS: Then we had another interesting flight which was, one of our flights used to take us -
LC: And this is still on the Anson. This is still flying the Anson.
BS: On Ansons, these were on Ansons, nearly all our navigation exercises from West Freugh would start from Ailsa Craig, that was a well known landmark, off the coast of Ayrshire, you know, Ailsa Craig. You go there, and of course they’d take off, they get over Ailsa Craig and away you go, down to Anglesey, Wales and across and come back to Ballyquintin Point or somewhere in Northern Ireland. Now on that leg you’re flying straight over the Isle of Man. This day, crew one, mates the, one of the crews they were over cloud on this, they flew that, and coming down, coming back to the Isle of Man they’re over cloud and the Ballyquintin Point had to be back below under cloud at a certain height, you know, do something, and the, come down through cloud, what do they do, straight into the mountain on the Isle of Man. Killed.
LC: Oh dear.
BS: That was the first, first accident of on that crews in flight now on that course. Then when we got to, when we finished that course, okay -
LC: What was that course called?
BS: Advanced Flying.
LC: Advanced Flying Course.
BS: Over there, yeah, and flying and bit of conditions you get over there, crook weather and half the time you can’t see the ground. Now, I’d say the six, it was about five or six weeks we were at West Freugh we only saw the sun about for a couple days, on the ground, [emphasis] at twelve hundred feet, or fifteen hundred feet you’re up in sunlight.
LC: Was that just fog or low cloud?
BS: So we were then transferred to Chedburgh so that was the first indication that we, we’re heading for Bomber Command. Because Chedburgh’s Number 3 Group’s training, training, Operational Training Unit and where crews are formed, you know.
LC: Starting to feel a bit real now was it.
BS: Settle in to Chedburgh, went down, got in, settle into Chedburgh, settle in to officers quarters there, as they, so called, and straight on to a few exercises and a crews, and to train crews, instructors, fly with other pilots and stuff like that, you know. We’d be under as a navigator, they’d check your nav courses on the bomber, do a couple of exercises, nav you know. Come back and your logs would be checked, same as the pilot, he’d be under instruction or something like that. To do, that conversion on to Wellingtons, they’d be doing circuits and bumps and you’d be doing with odd crews circuits and bumps, navigator.
LC: On the Wellingtons.
BS: And then after that they’d say right, all passed, you passed, everybody’s passed the thing. Now, into that hangar and by tomorrow morning sort yourselves out into crews. It worked. It was the best, it was the preferred method. So I go along, get on a crew and next minute Ron Hastings come up to me he says, he says you got a crew? No. He says I’ve got two, two English air gunners here who’ve been through courses together and want to stay together, they were all right and another bloke was there which the name of the bomb aimer [unclear] bomb aimer, he hadn’t been taken to a crew, Bobby Burns, we take him, and then there was another, older bloke there Vic Pearce, nobody’d take him, came up to Vic. Vic had come off, an instructor, been an instructor for quite a while so he didn’t come through with crews that had been training, you know, so he didn’t have mates or anything get him sorted out with others going through. Now Vic said - oh God yeah, Vic, Vic had so many hours experience, so we formed a crew. And they said we’d be right.
LC: Okay, so it was basically as you said, that you’re just put in the hangar, and just sort it out amongst yourselves.
BS: So we set out. Then once you’ve got a crew, and then you’re under instruction out to the, out to the satellite ‘drome to do a few circuits and bumps with the pilot on his own you know.
LC: That’s still on the Wellingtons, still on Wellingtons.
BS: Still on Wellingtons, then back to the squadron, back to the squadron. Now the first exercise we had to go on, nav exercise, bombing and high level bombing and nav exercise supposed to be, you know, from that, from Chedburgh, we were in this aircraft – it was U Uncle the same as the first aircraft we had in the squadron. And so it was, the first thing Ron on his own and that, us all as a crew, so right we’re taking off, and I’m sitting as you do in the Lanc, you know looking at the runway flying past and all of a sudden the runway goes wheet, what’s that, the runway didn’t do that, the aircraft did that, the wing dropped. The fuel tank flap on the port wing flew open and stalled that wing.
LC: Oh god.
BS: And that wing stalled. And how that wing didn’t touch the ground, if it had touched the ground we would have been killed, would have piled in, probably gone up in flames, you know.
LC: Fully loaded aircraft.
BS: No, no bombs.
LC: No, no. But full fuel load.
BS: Right, and it took the pilot straight away, we get a call for [unclear] Uncle, that was our callsign [unclear] Uncle you’re in trouble, yeah we can see that, we’ll hand you straight over to a pilot, to a trained pilot, an instructor pilot to guide you in, guide you now from now on, you know. So he come on to Ron. Now Ron at that time, and he needed the, the bomb aimer to help him hold that stick right, right over down here, low, hold that stick to get that aircraft flying level ,to keep that wing up, you know. And I’m standing up at this time and he said, ‘Smithy, see that strip ahead of us keep your eye on it and guide us around to it will yer?’ So I, looking at it, yeah, yeah, she’s right, keep going, we’re right now, we can see it okay, get back to crash positions! So I get back and I crawl past the wireless operator. Now this is where I learned something. I should have tapped him on the shoulder and told him come down to crash position, but I just walked past, and got down to crash position, sat on, the two gunners were sitting there and I sat on the edge over beside the fuselage, out on the starboard, or the port side and there we go, next minute down, down, down, come in there, landed, you know. That instruction was to come around again. Now what we didn’t know, and I didn’t know, till thirty, forty years later until another bloke that was on that second nav course that went to, went to Chedburgh with us, they weren’t flying that morning, and the word had soon got around, ’cause all the sirens went, the fire brigade had to get out, the ambulance everything out on to the runway to meet this aircraft coming in to crash land you know and it soon word got around that it was Hastings’ crew and of course Keith Dunn, there was a navigator, this navigator that I met thirty years later, he knew, he knew Brian Hastings, our pilot ‘cause Ron’s father was in the Union Bank of Australia, and Keith was in the Union Bank of Australia, and they both worked at the [unclear] Hunter Street Branch of the Bank of Australia at the time you see, so he knew of Ron. And they thought oh god, don’t tell me it’s Ron, it’s Ron and Bob Smith because we’d become good friends and next minute goes on, we land. Just as we land of course, the land, the sometime, my son said to me at the time he says, and the pilot, the plane swerved, because the rear gunner left go of the, and the pilot couldn’t hold the stick there again, we’re still at flying speed and the son said to me once, that wonder the undercart didn’t collapse I said no, no weight on the undercart, that’s still at flying speed, the weight’s still all on the wings. You know. But it swung. Now, I felt the wheels touch the ground, [unclear] and went to stand up to get out, and the rear gunner had done the same, and he was a big bloke, and of course when we swung, when it swung there, he fell against me and bashed my head against the - well I got a blunt trauma.
LC: Is that what that scar is?
BS: Led to all my troubles later on, you know. Yeah. So, I’d been knocked out, I know that, ‘cause they told me then, they were laughing, what you laughing at, they said the field ambulance had just come back, Chedburgh, just came back [unclear] Uncle, if you pancake you haven’t pancaked here! So Ron took a look around, he looked around and he, and oh no, took a while, the wireless operator looked around said what’s going on, ‘cause wireless on, sitting on, listening to some bloody -
LC: So he didn’t know what because you didn’t tap him on the shoulder.
BS: No, no. He’s away in another world, what’s going on, so with the joke and I’d got up then too and we looked out and I could get up stand up well I said we’re back at Honington, this is, we recognise the screen, went out, so we told them then, they worked out, they sent a crew out to take us back, we had to go straight to the medical guy to get checked. A feller there told me there, he says well you’ve got a bit of a bump there, you got and, bit of a bump there and oh god, that eye’s bloodshot, that should come all right, if you get a bruise come out and a bruise comes out probably okay, but he said if it doesn’t you might have trouble later on and that’s what did happen. It had damaged the optic nerve as well, you know, and caused pressure and also caused that cancer, meningioma core something, which didn’t happen till I retired, you know, just after. I never mentioned, the bloke treating for me glaucoma the ophthalmologist in Brisbane, I never mentioned to him that I’d had a trauma there and he couldn’t work out why I was getting, you know. And with the, about three days later the skipper said to me, he says ‘You’d better go and see about that eye again, it’s still bloodshot’, I said ‘Oh it’ll be right, we’re not bloody losing you as a pilot, the way you handle this.’ So it just went on. It never worried me then till oh, 1960, oh about twenty years after, when I was at Cumbria, you see I noticed driving that little smirr in the vision of the eye, you know, so I went to the optometrist. Oh he said I’ve got to send you to an ophthalmologist, a specialist down in Brisbane he says you know, you’ve glaucoma, high pressure, glaucoma there, if I’d mentioned it then he might have said, you know, he said yeah, he did that, put in a bit of a valve up there, which was supposed to last, only supposed to last for twenty five years but was still going fifty years later!
LC: Bloody hell! That’s all right.
BS: But it looks as though, no, he says it’s been damaged under that optic nerve and he says it’s gradually getting worse, he said no, you’ll gradually lose sight there, then when I come up and got out, that tied the two together and went, put in for disability with it, you know, with the, the Vietnam boys got on to me, they went through with it and then they said that could see no evidence of sharp trauma or something, we’re not talking about a sharp trauma, we’re talking about a blunt trauma sort of thing, but the he come in had me allowed, traumas, these traumas they can move too and also are allowed that can form non-malignant growth, tumours can form, you know, on the skull if the skull’s been damaged slightly somewhere there.
LC: But at the time though that didn’t preclude you, obviously didn’t preclude you from flying after that.
BS: No we had, the old bloke, the, Ron always reckoned we disturbed the medical officer and his WAAF assistant, he couldn’t get rid of us quick enough!
LC: Okay.
BS: So we got that out of the road anyway and we kept going and completed the tour there, went on and had a few quick trips in the old Wimpeys, good experience, get on, nothing more greatly unusual, just the usual thing, lectures and stuff like that.
LC: So that point then -
BS: And of course a lot of lectures from blokes that’d already completed tours or had escaped, been shot down and escaped given a few clues on what to do, what happens over there you know and the present position [unclear] shot down and whatnot. Then from from Chedburgh then we were shot through to what they call 31 Base at Stradishall. That attached us to Chedburgh which is Stirlings, we were flying Stirlings to convert on to four engines and they, we also picked up a flight engineer there, you know. That was our first flight engineer that we had the problems with. Our troubles with, or Ron’s experience, unusual experience with aircraft went, now Chedburgh was on a plateau and it happens there one day they’ve got to do a take off, they’re doing the engine failure on take off see, so right, taking off and the old the instructor cuts an engine. What happened then? So Ron, put a little bit of extra revs on, not getting anywhere, couldn’t start the bloody thing again.
LC: Oh dear.
BS: But fortunately it’s on the plateau, the ground fell away from us.
LC: Of course, ‘cause you’re on the plateau
BS: So the ground fell away from us to give us a couple of hundred feet to do a bit of a dive to get up speed, get a bit of flying speed and then the engines would, so that, that worked out all right, you know, so he had a go, so he, he had a, so the instructor said well you handled that all right he says you might as well try a three engined landing. So righto, I know I’m no [unclear] right now, so he’s got’d to do a three engined landing, that was good experience. So that was a great, we got the [unclear] of Ron.
LC: How flights did you take?
BS: So we weren’t going to let him go.
LC: How many flights did you do then on the Stirlings, four engine on the conversion.
BS: Oh, between circuits and bumps and I wouldn’t know, probably about twenty. It’d be quite a few.
LC: Okay. Over two or three weeks.
BS: Quite a few various ones. We, one day there we had to deliver, we had a, got an instruction out just Ron, Ron and the flight engineer and the wireless operator, I think there’s only three of us. Ron come, said ‘Come out here we’ve, we’ve got to go out, we’ve got to do an air test,’ he said to me, ‘The CO’s taking us out’, so we get out to the Stirling, we’re told there, you got to go to Stradishall, well we knew Stradishall you can do a pub crawl to Stradishall. So we got in. There’s this gorgeous looking girl sitting up in the Stirling, on the nav seat. You’re to go over to Tuddenham.[pause] Don’t fly over five hundred feet, so Ron didn’t take any notice that extra nought, that means fifty feet, so right we go over, in your log book you don’t say landed, and then took off again, just come back and land back here, you’ll be met over there. So over we go, landed Tuddenham airfield, this girl to come in, she’s to be dropped over France that night, one of the Special Duties Squadrons, you know.
LC: Okay, so she’s one of the SOE agents.
BS: Yeah, yeah. Whether she’s parachute, or drop her by parachute or drop her or a Lysander or something, jumps in and jumps out, you know, well of course she was a lovely girl, could speak perfect English and French I suppose.
LC: Was she French was she?
BS: What?
LC: French was she?
BS: She was French, I think, I think she was French. I’ve got an idea she was. Yeah, yeah she was, that was an experience on the old Stirling, get on, and then once we got the flight engineer then, he’d come off straight on, well he was just straight to the crew come in from the course somewhere, plumped on and well I don’t know what good he does on Stirlings, on Pratt and Whitney engines or whatever they had, I don’t know, but then we went across to the Lancaster Finishing School at Feltwell for a few days and that was just circuits and bumps with the pilot under instruction. We get on to and a for a, oh I think about a few hours each, a couple of days up. That’s when I first met Keith Miller, cricketer. Ray Lindwall was there at the time and I think that’s where they met and Keith came over, something to do with the cricket, or something like that, and yeah, we had a game of cricket and get on and then we come along, we’re told then right you’re appointed to 15 Squadron. We pack up, there’ll be a, get your clearances, called round here, there’ll be transport, there’s a couple of other crews, I think there was one other crew went to 15 Squadron and another one came from another Lancaster Finishing School or something I think at the same time you know. So we moved across to 15 Squadron, got settled in.
LC: And where was that at?
BS: Went round to the nav section.
LC: Where was 15 Squadron located?
BS: At the nav section, that’s where these, where you realise how the training under the Empire Air Training System and then with the RAF was pretty damn thorough. Now, I walk into the, I go in to the nav section and our flight lieutenant, the nav looks at my things, oh you’re the sort of nav bloke we could do with, good on yer, we’re not going to have any problems with you, okay, so led away. There was another navigator there who’d just finished school, a bloke called Flying Officer Johnny Moore. He was the first Australian that finished a tour with 15 Squadron. He said ‘Well now listen, you blokes should be right. I’ve just broken the hoodoo on Aussies on 15 Squadron, I’ve finished a tour, I’m the first Aussie that’s finished a tour on 15 Squadron.’ And of course the two English blokes that were with us, they thought that’s a bloody good idea, if he’s got, finished a [unclear], we’ve got a fair chance of getting back too sort of business. But and [unclear] sort them out, but now.
LC: That was at Mildenhall.
BS: Yeah. Now at Mildenhall. On that, on that report it comes in for the flight engineer must have been a report to the flight engineer as well, there was some concern about our flight engineer, ‘cause in our first op the flight engineer came with us as a instructor. See the, on the squadron the nav officer can’t fly with the crew for some unknown reason, don’t know what that is, the, the COs can, I don’t think the flight officers can take a sprog crew, but the gunnery officer can take ‘em, the wireless officer doesn’t need to I don’t think [unclear]. So right, so we had the nav officer, the flight engineering officer, now which was fortunate, ‘cause change of wind, we were on the short runway, which comes out and goes in, went pretty well over the officers quarters, the old Mildenhall officers quarters, you know, and, on the short runway, now this is the first time that a pilot takes off with the full bomb load and full petrol load and we’re just starting to take off and he says ay, ay, ay get those things through the stick we’re on the short runway you’ll never take off, you’ll never get off if you don’t, so he rammed it full through, we got off.
LC: But this was your first operation.
BS: Yeah, yeah, this was our first op. But after that things were pretty good, was down to flying bomb base there, a good trip down, individually, flew in, we were on the second wave on this flying bomb base, dropped our bombs, light bit of, there’s a bit of light flak, no fighters things like that, they had a turn off down to the right and dive, go down towards where the troops had landed after D-Day, you know, and then go out over, that’s our first sight of the Mulberry.
LC: Oh yeah, Mulberry Harbour was it. Aramanches.
BS: What a sight, so we got down, good sticky at that and back to England.
LC: Now you mentioned to me earlier on that you did a sortie supporting D-Day. While you were still on your training, on Lancasters.
BS: Yeah, we went to north of France, that was down up off the north of France, went to, had to fly down and stop five miles short, well Gee set was operating good, and it was all right so five mile short, if you were out, if the navigator was out and he overshot by five mile, he could have been in trouble, he would have been in the defences on the coast, you know, but no, it was all, we just cruised along the coast dropping the Window out there. So then on the, after we did, there, that was in Uncle, which was a brand new aircraft, oh it was a great old aircraft, first one and our next trip there in Uncle, we did a couple of trips after it that Ron came with us, he was all right, he went in to to Fleurie de Louche, was an oil dump in the north of France and that was okay, no flak or anything like that. Then we went to Chalon sur Marne a railway marshalling yards just north east of Paris, or north west.
LC: Yep. And this was in support of the D-Day landings.
BS: Yeah, yeah and it was a pretty solid trip for navigation dodging the defended areas and stuff like that, and the, got over there, bit of flak, fair bit of flak, got back and the flight engineer, Ron, that flight engineer Ron then, he, he reported sick the next morning and he was still sick when we, when we were, went to Kiel. Now Kiel was an unusual target, the place we only got flak and searchlights, were a problem, you only got, the flak there was what they called flaming onions. Now it wasn’t the anti-flak gun, you know, the 135mil or the 128mil, it was rocket propelled 38mil because the rocket was over Peenemunde you know where they experiment with the rockets and that, Peenemunde, rocket, and this thing, and we took, and so we get to Kiel, now just as well when we arrived, Ron wasn’t with us - we got caught in searchlights.
LC: Ron Hastings
BS: Yeah. We got caught in searchlights, and these flaks, they’re amazing things, you’re looking at it, you get a light pinkish sort of a glow, and looking at it from the aircraft they just seem to go “deeee, wheest”, explode a few hundred feet above you. Right, we got out of that, got out of the flak all right, got back, okay, well, and then the next trip, one more trip I think was okay, he was all right with us, down to, that might have been Falaise, down to the Falaise Gap or something like that then we were sent mining down to the Gironde river.
LC: You’re dropping mines?
BS: Sea mines, into the sea lane of the Gironde river.
LC: Okay. I actually didn’t realised Lancasters did that.
BS: This was where Uncle’s, that Gee set in Uncle was a terrific Gee set. And I only used Gee, like most of us did, on, where you had a coastline. There were a couple of blokes could use it inland, they could pick up a lake, or a town or a slightly different signal from a forest, but I never got down that, picked up a Gee set, you know.
LC: That’s just, gives bearing doesn’t it.
BS: And so we go down, we had a fly over ten thousand feet over the Brest Peninsula ‘cause the Yanks were in there then, then drop down to eight thousand feet, down fast, the estuary of the Gironde river, bit below the estuary, cross the, cross over the river then, go on to a course 010 into the shipping lane, you know, now I’ve got the, the old Gee set was good, looking out and as soon as we crossed the coast a bit there, the bomb aimer gave the skip, said righto skip go on to 010 now on to the thing to drop the mine. And I looked at this if we’re on that we are going to be over the narrow part of the thing we’re gonna drop on the narrow lane, we’re not be on the thing, no, I said no, no, no, no, we can’t do this, we’re not in the lane, we’ve got to go round again. So round again we go. I said I’ll tell you when to turn. We went across, I watched it on the Gee set, and then this is it, righto, now, so right, we’re on course, beautiful, with the Gee set one thing we were right on target with it, you know. Now up we go, drop the Gee set, and it went, the instructions were there, to, on the last, on dropping the last mine to turn sharp to port and dive at two hundred and forty mile an hour, now, that’s what it is, sharp to port, and that’s what happened, just after we dropped the mine, the bit, they couldn’t get this straight away but when they did, we must have, there must been a hill, or were defending that gun position at Royan to the aircraft, where we were to drop the mines. By the time he was up, we were on a dive, and we had oh, tracer and that’s going, that only seemed to be going that far above the aircraft, but I suppose it was a bit higher, you know, but he couldn’t get down quick enough, we were driving too fast for him, and got out of his range, you know, and now by the time we got out through the estuary, Hastings was just about down in the mists of the waves. [Laugh] And of course when we get out there, I got cursed at, Smithy, you don’t do that again.
LC: Was that go round again?
BS: Now, what happened, [unclear] will know that either, when I was doing those cruise ships there and going through the history of there was a raid on Royan in January that cost five aircraft. Now, and the position of Royan, what it is, now if we had been on that first round, we were flying straight at that garrison, at that, he couldn’t have missed us. We’d have been straight at him, straight for him, at eight thousand feet and then when we turned on the thing, he couldn’t have bloody missed us. We’d have been gone for sure, you know. And at Royan, it’s very interesting the history on Royan, cost five aircraft, that garrison. A German, a French officer committed suicide over it. He got word to the Yanks that this Royan, they should get a message to the Bomber Command, they should bomb Royan, the garrison at Royan, is the only, the only French are left there favoured, on the side of the Germans see.
LC: Collaborators.
BS: Yeah. They were collaborators, yeah. Now what happened is, they did two, did two raids on that, the first raid went, bombed it, did bloody lot of damage, not too many civilians were killed, they were all, the warnings were given, they were all in air raid shelters stuff like that come out, and then when that stopped, they all come out of the air raid shelters, the guns are quiet, next minute another raid comes and a lot of them think, and a lot of them were still the old French, the German garrison’s still all right and of course a lot of in that area of France they were, they supported the Germans a little bit, round Bordeaux and that, ‘cause they provided employment, you know, bought their fruit and their vegetables, and the farmers, so. And those, in the second wave they were [unclear] by time the second wave, the a lot of the aircraft, I think there were five Lancasters went down, a couple of them collided and a couple didn’t make it, they had damage over the thing and had to prang [cough].
LC: Amazing yeah. [cough] So could you -
BS: Amazing. But what, see what happened there, when the, when the Yanks took over, when they took over Paris, and the Vichy French, you know, sort of come in and de Gaulle’s troops, the Free French forces up in the Brest Peninsula, they were given control of that area but they were not given the equipment to go and bomb, go and get stuck in to these other units at Royan and those places, you know, they just held back and held back and held back, they didn’t have the equipment. So when we came back we had to climb back over ten thousand feet over the Brest Peninsula again.
LC: Oh, bloody hell.
BS: Because at night time, the Yanks, anything up there’s not theirs so they just shoot at ‘em!
LC: So could you give me a sense then, of a, could you just run through a typical day if you’re on ops, how your day would start or [unclear].
BS: If you start like this. Well, I’ll give it you like this then, the, yeah, well after that we had no in flight engineer for a while, you know we got to do so – I’ll cover that in a minute - and then one day this engineer turned up, a Jock Munro, a Scottish lad, he turns up, Jock comes and straight into it. Well there’s, now Jock’s first flight was a trip to Stettin, nearly ten hours, in old Uncle again, and with its good Gee set, we got wonderful fixes all along the north coast of Denmark and that, you know, and down across Malmo and over Sweden, across Malmo, what happens over Malmo, anti aircraft sets up a fair dinkum, shot down about five of us, but there’d been a bit of story something before that they were, the Yanks had got stuff in to the Swedes about they were shooting and they were shooting going too low and not being fair dinkum and the searchlights were pointing towards Germany and all this sort of whatnot, but they and the Swedes must have thought they’d better do something about it, you know. So they shot down a lot, they were Sweden now.
LC: They were Swedes, okay, Malmo of course.
BS: Over Malmo. Yeah. So Jock sitting there, this is all right, we get over Stettin, and over Stettin was another target, the flak was heavy, searchlights again, searchlights got us, we got coned there again, it’s an experience being coned in searchlights, oh god, you just, you just, but they weren’t quite as severe in Stettin as they were in Kiel, ‘cause the atmosphere was pretty clear and stuff like that. In Stettin, by the time we’d bombed, I think we were on second wave, you know, and time we got there there was a fair bit of smoke down the ground, it was cloudy over the target area, the searchlight were rendered a bit ineffective, you know, so anyway then we got back, and when we get back over Stettin, over Malmo, there’s quite a few had held up one of their thousand pound bombs, was quite obvious, now and again boom, boom, and then all of a sudden -
LC: Oh dear.
BS: I’m looking out, I’m looking out and next minute this bloody almighty explosion, now, that was more, either that or he hit an ammunition dump or something down there or, or somebody saved his cookie.
LC: This round by Malmo, this is Sweden.
BS: Somebody saved his cookie, there’s this almighty explosion. What’s next? A blackout. [laughs] So now we go, now we’re headed out across over Denmark, down low over Denmark and that’s where we come out over Denmark, out, no we’re still a fair height then, we had to drop to two hundred and forty mile an hour down across the North Sea, to beat the sun, you know, so right, Ron sets the must have set it on Gee set two forty down to eight thousand feet, so right down to eight thousand feet, seven and a half thousand feet, seven thousand feet, oh look at Ron, give the old flight engineer a ring, see if Ron’s asleep – he was! Flight’s on Gee.
LC: Oh no! Single pilot too. Bloody hell!
BS: So what does that do? That, that gives us, puts us ahead of the rest of the squadron or anybody else that wanted to do the same, get back, you know, anyway, back we get and get back and I’ve got a note on one of those log sheet of mine, you’ll see the notice by the nav assessment officer - good trip spoiled by uncontrolled speed on the way home. But we arrive back a bit before the rest of the crews, which was, did happen a bit later, [unclear] but old Jock, Jock just stood there, as calm as you like, we said well, boy, this is the flight engineer we want on the crew.
LC: Oh, brilliant.
BS: And he did, he proved himself, another one Ron then, just after that was, we were on, was it more or less, wasn’t a typical day, out of typical day, one day we were on the battle order to bomb Stettin in the morning, a m raid on Stettin in the morning. Wake up at two o’clock for, get out of bed, get down to the mess and have a meal at three o’clock, half past three four o’clock, be at briefing at four o’clock, you know, over to briefing, stuff like that, get all that down. So away we go, this is all right, and we’re on the second wave here, this is on the second wave on Stettin, on Duisburg, Operation Hurricane, on the morning raid, the Yanks were following us, after, they bombed after us, and so we come in, old Jock’s carry on, but Ron this time, time we come up, our turn to bomb, just before we released our bombs, the Master Bomber gave the code word for “bomb at your own discretion,” ignore the, don’t worry about the thing, the target area’s been hit hard enough and bomb at your own discretion and now as soon as he said that, Ron come out, I can still, I can still hear it: he didn’t call the pilot, the bomb aimer by bomb aimer, ‘Hey Burnsy don’t bomb, don’t bomb a residential area!’ Just screamed like this, you know. Now, Burnsy, oh Burnsy said ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got a target ahead the same as this aircraft that’s just up in front of us, there’s a ship berthed beside a dock up on the Ems canal up just ahead of us’, I can see him, and this bloke I think has got the same thing, he did, and both our sticks of bombs get in there, but I can still hear Ron with that -
LC: Don’t bomb a residential area, yeah.
BS: Now I didn’t know till fifty years later when we met Ron over in Perth, went over Ron in the 1990s, to meet him: he was German descent.
LC: Okay, yeah.
BS: His father was, his family name was Hohenzonberg, it’s in the thing there, he was in the ANZ Bank, and had been transferred to Dubbo I think it was, well one of those places in New South Wales, in 1936. At the time when Hitler was starting to get a bit unpopular and the Germans, and the ANZ recommended to him that he anglicised his name, the family anglicise his name and Ron picked the name of Hastings, he was at high school at the time, Ron picked Hastings. That just explains it. I can see a lot of German in Ron: he was methodical, very methodical. The German methodical business. We’re not in trouble till we’ve finished. Old Ron. So there we are. And then we get back from, from Duisburg, what happened, about midday, get up and go and have dinner, you know, after debriefing and dinner, there’s another battle order out: we’re on it to bomb Duisburg again the same night.
LC: You’d only just finished!
BS: Back at, back at the darned briefing again at about seven o’clock or something, and too late to go to bed, just going, so we hung on kind of thing, go to briefing, get sorts out, and away we go.
LC: Did that happen often that you’d -
BS: No, no, no.
LC: It was just a mistake in schedule.
BS: Just the way it was, yeah, just the way, we had to catch up a bit I suppose. There were a couple did the two trips, maximum efforts, you know. It’s a saturation raid, and on we go. Over on the night, well of course going down no trouble finding it that night, the fires are still burning, you carried on and carry on and you look down on there and say how the hell would you like to be in Duisburg tonight, today, come back out, then on the way back out, it was bloody cold night, I think that might have been the night we got to a temperature about thirty five degrees centigrade outside, you know Lancs, the instruments, the temperature instruments were in centigrade, the speed, that was in miles per hour!
LC: Just to confuse things.
BS: So we’re on the way out, at twenty thousand feet and cloud tops and whatnot come out, and just I suppose oh, ten, fifteen minutes later, out of the Ruhr and then by that time, getting over probably over you know the top of Belgium, France somewhere, out of the Ruhr anyway, going, over France and there’s these cloud tops and all of the sudden there’s a bright moon shining on the cloud and this great canyon between the two clouds and the moon, you took one look and said what beauty. Now you look back there, now there’s what man has made, and look at that: what God has made.
LC: Yeah, yeah. Contrast.
BS: Just hits you, it just hits you, you know. You’re not meant to, and the Lanc with the purring you know old engines didn’t seem to interfere with it. You just sat there. You’re sitting on a platform and a lot of people never got the chance to see that, only now you know, night time. Beautiful sight. We got back to bed I think, got back to bed about two o’clock, four o’clock in the morning. We had to get over it, it was a long way, bit of a route out, come out four o’clock in the morning, we had to, we held up, no we weren’t held with briefing or anything. See a lot of, you’ve probably seen in a report with ninety five aircraft were shot down over, over Nuremberg one night, you know, the greatest loss in one night and somebody, they come out on the record books and operation books, ninety, over five hundred aircraft reported no problems; didn’t see anything. They won’t use their nous like. Now, you’re about a seven or eight hour, nine hour trip, you know, by the time you come back it’s got to be something bloody important before you tell these these interrogation, intelligence blokes, ‘cause when they get their teeth into something, they hold you up there for about a flamin’ hour, you know! No, nothing to report.
LC: Exactly, just want to get to bed.
BS: No, nothing to report, bombed on the markers, we think they were out a bit, but we bombed on the marker, get out and get back and get your cup of tea and get back into bed! [laughter] You’ve got to be practical. You’ve got to be practical.
LC: Yes. They probably knew it too.
BS: That was Bomber Command.
LC: Bob, do you want to take a short break?
BS: See that was a short, like a typical day, would be up, you’d be on the battle order, when you’d have to report for meals, then your briefing, then out to the aircraft and go and some things. Intelligence was quite good, we were always warned, after, some book I read once after the thing they went back to the mess and the hotel for a couple, [unclear] that was out, no way in the world would we go, ‘cause we’re always warned the old Bird in the Hand Hotel, they had ears in the walls and this was proved a couple of times, blokes would come back that were shot down they told us, we’d only given our name and numbers but they told us who our new CO was and he’d only been there a couple days.
LC: Is that right?
BS: Intelligence, we were put on to a target one night there when we flew in Sugar. Now Sugar was, Sugar’s dispersal point was out right against a sugar beet block, a bit of an old wire fence against it, so we get out and just as we’re ready to go out intelligence bloke comes flying in. Hold on, he says, time on target’s been put back an hour, word had just come through that Jerry’s changed the changeover, changed the shift an hour. So the idea was and then he woke up after a while, that if there were the shift coming on didn’t come on till half an hour later till that other shift had gone, the two shifts weren’t there together, that’s the idea [unclear]. So we go out to Sugar and we’re killing time you know, that’s when I took that photo that’s on the, and walked over to the fence to have a yarn to a couple of Land Army girls there and these two blokes, I don’t know where they come from, Cornwall or something I think, chipping the sugar beet - you boys flying tonight? Yeah. [Rural accent] You won’t be coming back here in the morn, be foggy. They were right too. Now this was, now what happened this night we got we went, on the way back we got recalled to - Mildenhall was closed for fog - and we were diverted to Honeybourne, down near Devon somewhere or some thing, Honeybourne, Honeybourne. Now you might realise Mildenhall is nearly on the Greenwich Mean Dateline, you know, and this night took us all, we’re never going west anyway, so you had nothing west on your chart, that was, so soon as that comes up, everything lines up greatly and sweetly must have lined up around Bomber Command, where the hell’s Honeybourne, what’s the lat and long of it, you know? But fortunately they came back with a Gee set, with the Gee reading for it, you know, so you got to a Gee on a certain channel, on 18.2 or something 18 02 or something, and follow that till you come to and you see the pundit, so that that worked out you know.
LC: Okay. You got in there and were okay.
BS: Yeah. So we got it and then we flew back the next day, you know. And then the last op, when we thought we were on the last one that was Dortmund. We come back, I, I got called up, the skipper come to the, down to the nav section, we’re on a bomb, on a battle order again to go to I think it was Gelsenkirchen I think it was, on the battle order that night, to go there and in this, after Uncle was shot down I didn’t tell you about the one we had the trouble at Homburg with after Uncle was shot down over Hindburg, you know, we got given another new aircraft: N Nan. So Nan, we’re in Nan for this to go to this event in to Dortmund in Nan, and get back, the skipper comes to us: we’ve got to go up and see the CO. He said well listen, you blokes, you’ve done your thirty trips, you’ve done one more as a matter of fact, he says now will you do another two to see the mid upper gunner finishes his tour? And Ron, that night over Hamburg when we got badly hit, Ron wasn’t in the best of things for that, that’s why he didn’t, wouldn’t take the, I think the CO could see, didn’t want him, want us to take him to as the Master Bomber to Hindberg, you know, so he Ron said no, no, no I can’t do any more, and I backed him, ‘cause I could see he was no good and also we had to consider three of the others, there were three others in the crew had completed.
LC: That was it then.
BS: Anyway, they, they saw their crew out and anyway, it was getting to a time when the risks weren’t all that great. Just, just the odd one, where the petrol became available to the thing, or the weather went against or something. weren’t all that great you know, or that unlucky shot, which does happen. Does happen, yeah.
LC: So when you’re officially told okay your tour’s over, what then happens, what then happens to you, once you’ve done your tour what do they do with you?
BS: Well, I was, we were given a fortnight’s leave, fourteen days leave. So I went back up to Scotland, moved around about, then when you came back, we were, I was posted as a navigator to a place called Husbands Bosworth, great name.
LC: They’ve got some great names in UK, don’t they.
BS: Husband Bosworth. So went and got our clearances, another bloke: Jim Claresbrook, he finished his tour. We used to fly together, we were the two lead navigators. There were three of us who were appointed what they called wind navigators. After a couple of trips when Met winds were out to billyo, they decided they’d have, get their main navigators to send back their wind, their wind speed what the wind they’d calculated at, and give it to the wireless operator and he would transmit it in code, right. So he was another wind navigator and the two of us always led the squadron on DH raids over the last few, last few six weeks or so. So Jim and I come in, so we go up to the CO’s office: he’s not in! But his offside is there, you know the old adj, he said oh the adj’s not in, but I’ll, just take a seat there if you want. He said there’s a bit of, bit of a mess, signal in from Bomber Command that might interest the two of you, better have a look at it on the table. We read it and this read two commissioned navigators who have just completed a tour of operations are to be retained on the squadron. One as a navigation assessment officer and one as a GH officer. Well Jim used to usually be at the GH lead, so we looked at them, so the adjutant comes in, we looked at him, and said look hey that job’d suit us, well you bloody beauties, he said, that solves a problem for me, doesn’t it, he said, I’ll cancel your postings, get back to the nav section!
LC: Okay!
BS: So Jim and I went back to the nav section where Flight Officer Webb couldn’t have been happier. Oh you beauties! I can do with you two back here so he’s laid down what he wanted. We could go, as long as one of us was there, that was right, the other one could be on holidays or do whatever he liked, as long as he was doing his duty wherever he was wanted somewhere else, that’s all right, and as long as we didn’t disturb him, he would, we could do briefings that he might not be, but he’d be there when the crews returned from operations, he’d pick up the turn, he would do that and he would always be in his room for an hour, an hour and a half after meal time, after meals, after he had his meal every day, he apparently he stood on his head behind the door or something and he had some separate yoga system or some bloody, he was an odd bod in some ways, very good bloke, but boy was he pleased to see us back there. So that was, that got him good.
LC: All right, okay well we might take a break now and then we come back just for a bit more final session and then maybe just cover the last stage of the war and the end of the war and demob and return to Sydney.
BS: That won’t take long, I’ll just cover that.
LC: Do you mind if we just take a quick break?
[Other] I’ll make another cup of tea, cheers.
LC: Okay, this is now part three, at twenty to three. So where were we Bob? Just sort of you’d done the end of your tour, you’ve gone back as a -
BS: Finished the tour, yeah.
LC: You’d been back there as one of a couple of navigators working back on the squadron.
BS: Yeah, yeah.
LC: So I asked you earlier on, what was your feeling though, when you, when you landed after that final mission on your tour how did you feel? Was it just, did you get out of the aircraft and sort of just -
BS: No well we didn’t know.
LC: Oh you didn’t know!
BS: The last time. We didn’t know until the CO told us, no.
LC: So did you know, did you know at the beginning how many missions you had to do to complete the tour or did they change that?
BS: Thirty. Though they lifted it at one place at one time to thirty five. Yeah.
LC: Okay,
BS: But that didn’t last long, they withdrew that.
LC: Okay, all right. So you hadn’t, had you been counting your missions as you went along, number eighteen, number nineteen.
BS: Put them in your log book, op one, op two, op three. Better not call them missions!
LC: Oh sorry. Ops, sorry! [Laughter]
BS: So we went down and then six months in I was called in to, after we settled in to the nav office with the nav officer outline what he’d be happy for us to do. Got tied up in a couple of enquiries about, one about a WAAF who had been promoted but it didn’t work and then another about an Aussie aircrew who had more or less referred to one of the girls in the Parachute Section as a Malvern Star who lodged a complaint when somebody explained to her what Malvern Star was in Australia!
LC: Oh dear! [Laughter] Oh dear.
BS: Called in all sorts of things, you know, but quite interesting, kept going, you know, kept up our our athletic training, we had a good athletics team there that sort. [Cough] At the end of the war after the end of the war when the, when the British Games were back in, the News of the World British Games at White City were on we entered a team for the 4 x 880. We come fourth in that, we should have won it, but we came fourth, we made a bad blue in the order of the runners, that worked out all right.
LC: Wonderful.
BS: Just with filling in time more or less, waiting, coming out here, you know. And then I, we got, eventually got called, they called down to Brighton then at about the end of May or something it was, time went around, at that point gave us leave weeks to do, up to Scotland a few times, round, just just more or less time was your own, got a bit boring as a matter of fact ‘cause you’re more or less waiting for a draft for a ship to come home.
LC: So at this stage, was the war in, Germany hadn’t surrendered at this stage, it was still the war in Europe’s still going.
BS: Europe had finished, yeah.
LC: Europe had been. So did it at any stage look like you may be posted or 15 Squadron deployed to the Pacific?
BS: We were, when we were called back I was in line then, 15 Squadron and 622 Squadron were forming a squadron of Lancasters and be supplied with Lancasters designed to carry the larger bombs, you know, to come out here to Australia, but when the RAAF or the Australian Government recalled us all to Brighton you know, that fell through.
LC: Okay.
BS: So if, if it was a decision made at the time without knowledge that the nuclear bomb was on the way, it was a very risky decision.
LC: Yeah, yeah. So would you have potentially then, so you said you were waiting for a draft to get on the ship to come back to Australia, was there any, was it definite at that stage you would demobilise or would you then come back and be part of the Royal Australian Air Force in Australia and go on operations with RAAF in the Pacific.
BS: You could do, some of them re-enlisted back in the air force, but no I, I wasn’t at that stage.
LC: So which stage, you mentioned earlier on you went up to Scotland when you’re sort of biding your time there, is that where you met Alma?
NS: Oh no, I’d met her before locally but then it wasn’t till we came back till, I was, after the tour and then, oh, a few month before we left home and was on leave, we sort of realised we had soft spots for each other.
[Other]: Ah!
BS: And agreed and worked out then, if when we eventually got the call to, on to the troop ship to come home, agreed that we’d correspond for a year, just give a year, kind of thing, and if we still felt the same way after twelve months we’d announce our engagement.
LC: There you go.
BS: And then get married. So that stuck to it, you know. Come back and got stuck into the war, I went back and we got married.
[Other]: Courted by correspondence for two and a half years.
LC: Two and a half years!
BS: Went through a heap of dry gullies and whatnot since, up and down like everybody else does.
LC: Yeah. Outstanding! So how many years have you been married now then?
[Other]: Seventy!
LC: Seventy years!
BS: A bit over seventy years.
LC: You’ve got your little card from the Queen and the Governor General and all that. Sixty.
[Other]: Sixty and seventy.
LC: Sixty and seventy, yeah.
BS: I got that from Queen Elizabeth, Bessie. When I got transferred to the squadron, I didn’t mention there before, but just a few days after we were there, the Royal Family paid a visit, that was one of the most interesting days I’ve had in my life.
LC: Yeah, is that right. Young Princess Elizabeth.
BS: When we found out that the old King he was, well, how he enjoyed talking to us, no errors in his speech, something like that.
LC: No stuttering?
BS: After he had visited the squadron and made an investiture over in the, in one of the hangars, and after lunch, we’d course we had all been given the protocol we had to follow with the royal at lunchtime: we couldn’t finish our meal before the King and we had to address him as Sir, the Queen was Ma’am, strict rules and tried to hide ourselves in the, in the lounge area after meal, till the visitors came in, was about three or four Aussies together, stood together over the side, the window near the main entrance to the officers mess, and when he come in to it he made a beeline straight for us.
LC: Did he!
BS: Yeah, straight for the, come over, how‘s it going, seemed to be very interested in what we were doing and whatnot, and one of the fellers said to him ‘You seem to be interested in something outside the window there, Sir.’ He says ‘I’m just looking-‘ where we’ve had that thing out there, I said ‘In that garden bed over there, they’ve whitewashed all the stones’, he said ‘I’d like to go over there and see if they’ve been whitewashed underneath!’ And that’s what his aide de camp told us, he says he’s with it all the way. He just get on, and when he explained a few things to us, to about Elizabeth was, made some remarks about one of the fellers gone up, we said to him well she could have come up and talked to us, he said oh no, there are -
[Other]: Are you recording this?
LC: Yes, yes.
BS: He says, there is a restriction he said, that made the Queen mother with the restrictions, but better not mention that.
LC: Not at all. Okay.
BS: But he was, he enjoyed it, and we gained the impression from him and from the aide de camp - that he’d given specific instructions that Elizabeth was not to be commissioned, she had to be, go through the ranks, and both her and, both him and her mother, were quite aware that since she’s been in the army and as a driver, she was learning quite a lot about boys. She had a real, he gave the impression she had a real fun attitude about her I can understand why she married a bloke like Philip, who’s the same as [unclear] tells things as they are.
LC: Yes. Exactly.
BS: The situation as it is.
LC: They only got married a couple of years later.
BS: Eh?
LC: They only got married about what, 1947.
BS: Yeah, yeah, you know just before that. Good on.
LC: So can I just get a general question then? You experienced some initial time training with the Royal Australian Air Force in Australia, and then you did the Empire Training Air Scheme, training and Canada, ops then, do you have any general observations of the efficiency of it all? The Empire Air Training Scheme?
BS: The whole, the general idea I think of the whole training was tremendous, it was really well thought out, it was tremendous. A Bomber Command squadron was a unique family: ground crew, aircrew they depended on one another and they treated it that way. I was on the squadron, there were two COs, the commanders of both squadrons made it quite clear that we were a family, [emphasis] we were brothers and sisters, the WAAFS. Now probably, might realise in all families now and again there is a black sheep brother and a black sheep sister, accept them, but that’s it. The ones that are, you’d treat them as sisters and I’d like to think that Bomber Command in particular goes down as one of the main factors in winning the war.
LC: Yup. That was going to be my next question.
BS: Because they tied up, they tied up so much of the German defences protecting their cities, that great heaps of guns and ammunition and manpower was not available to fight on their other, the African front or the Western Front., you know, gets on. When you look at it and I think some of their leaders recognised this at the end of the war, they suddenly realised that if they’d had this equipment available on the Russian front, or on the, down in Africa and the Middle Eastern Front, they’d have come out on top there. But they didn’t.
LC: So the, looking back at it now, while you were there on ops, did you get, you saw the sort of the targets you were bombing on a, you know, on a regular basis. Did you get much, were you given the opportunity to get much appreciation of the overall campaign? You got briefings on this is the way, this is what we’re trying and this is your part in it.
BS: At the time, the overall campaign particularly after D-Day and with the American Air Force bombing, we, we could see whether Montgomery and Churchill, or whoever was behind it, or Bomber Harris of Bomber Command, who had a definite strategy, don’t worry about the tactics, the strategy, you know. It was quite obvious to us that the Eighth Army Air Force had adopted Bomber Command strategy of area bombing, and by some great spin as I suppose you might call it, they somehow still got the word back to America they were still tactically, tactical bombing. ‘Cause we know some of their, some of their blues they were well out.
LC: Yeah. Well they bombed primarily, they decided to go mainly daylight bombing while the RAF -
BS: Well they only bombed daylight. Some of the things we‘re aware of, they’re well documented now too, in in histories of Bomber Command and the logs and that come in, the, bombed wrong targets, missed targets all together, didn’t take easy way out of things, you know, sort of. Yeah, yeah. Just got on.
LC: So have you got any observations about general command level, you said you had a couple of COs on 15 Squadron, other levels of command up the chain, did you have any observations and thoughts on, were they good commanders, from Bomber Harris down, were they, did you find them good commanders?
BS: Not really, no. That all seemed to work.
LC: Yeah, yeah. Okay.
BS: The general strategy, they had a good strategy, like I think Bomber Harris’ strategy: right, we’ll fight them on their terms - they started it, they get the same terms back, and that was it. And we backed him, his crews backed him.
LC: And now his statue is outside St Clement Danes.
BS: He never wavered from it, he never wavered from it, he never wasted time going round looking for photoshoots, making things for COs like politicians do today and COs and stuff like that, he had a job to do and he stuck to it and he never wavered.
LC: And was that generally, was that the general feeling on the squadrons at the time? Everybody had a deal of respect for this guy?
BS: Yeah, yeah. With us being the [unclear] squadron, yeah. I’d say so, yeah.
LC: So at the end you’re down there, down at Brighton, you’re waiting for your draft to get on the boat back to Australia so how did that all, that process all go, you eventually obviously?
BS: That’s good. ‘Cause we’d met a lot of blokes that had been taken prisoner of war, and coming back, you know and blokes that served on other squadrons so you met them again.
LC: Comparing notes!
BS: Went through along, yeah yeah. Made up for things. Then we could run around on the beach again, ‘cause the mines had been taken off, and all this sort of business, go to a few shows, and up to the Boomerang Club, a lot of blokes had ended up out in the Mediterranean too, see they’d come back to there, no.
LC: So how did the process work then? Suddenly you would have got a message at some stage, you’d got your slot, a spot on a boat to come home.
BS: At squadron there was a parade every morning at which Daily Routine Orders came out on, on that was, if a draft or duty the Daily Routine Orders who’s the officer in charge of the parade the next day and whatnot, sort of is, and you look at that and quite often you’d see the officer on the parade the next day is Flying Officer Joe Blow or something and you know Joe Blow is going on holidays up to some relatives and he’d be away for another three days so you or somebody else would stand in for him, that’d do and you knew darned well if you went away like that, and you got a leave pass, nobody worries about that sort of thing, and if you were away you’d send back a telegram, want an extension of two days, it was always granted. We’d go in to the Boomerang Club, we had our, collect mail and also we’d collect our pay there, going on your pay would accumulate, you’d go into Boomerang Club and get your pay up to date and then take it around and put it into your bank account at at the bank, you know round in Australia House, National Bank at Australia House. We had our contact, contacts in Australia House who would say to us there was no troop ship available for at least six weeks. So you knew right then any application for leave was going to be approved.
LC: Okay.
BS: No. But it was wasted time. And then when we got, when we did get out, I got home, I got on to the, we were told got to go on the Stratheden to come home, we came home via, through, called at Gibraltar and then at Port Said and Suez and then come around through the, straight around the corner down to Freemantle, you know, then up to Sydney. We had to wait, we had to slow down a bit after Freemantle ‘cause the Andes was coming, it left after us, but it had Queenslanders and New South Welshmen on board as well but the Andes was taking crews through to New Zealand and we had a few New Zealanders on as well that we’d picked up in the, coming through the Suez Canal and Al Quattara so the Andes caught up with us and that docked ahead of us in Melbourne so the New South Wales blokes and the Queensland blokes that were on the Andes got off and come on to, on to the Stratheden and that’s when my pilot, I met my pilot again, coming out, he’d come on the Andes and a couple of other fellers, you know, so we had a good yarn with Ron for a couple of days. We come on then up to Melbourne, shot out of Melbourne the next day up to Sydney, In the morning into Sydney, all on deck again to come through the heads, on to Sydney, into Perth at Woollamaloo again. The Queenslanders and that were the first off there and they got to shoot off out to Bradfield Park again, and told us what we had to do again, we had to be back and to be on the up at the, Gordon, to entrain to go on through to Newcastle and up to Brisbane, you see.
LC: So you did the rest of the way by train.
BS: Yeah, yeah. So when we get there that’s all right. When we come out it, I was, it was a bit confusing in a way, ‘cause when the draft come out, I was still on the draft as Flying Officer R W Smith, you know, but on my pay book and all, my war substantive rank of Flight Lieutenant had been, what they say, had been promulgated.
LC: Promulgated, yeah.
BS: Yeah, and they woke up to that just before I got on to the ship, you know, so right, but that didn’t make it, I didn’t worry about that. We get on to the train at Gordon to come home after killing bit of time. I raced back and saw an old lady I used to made her home available to me before we left, you know, and tell her I’d met a Scottish girl, she was a bit disappointed, she thought I’d pick a good Aussie girl, [laughter] but she said whatever you find probably right. So we got on the train, got in to Newcastle, [pause] Newcastle that night, yeah, that night and this Warrant Officer comes up, looking for Flight Lieutenant Smith, Flight Lieutenant Smith, yeah that’s me, you’re officer in charge of this contingent you know, no I said the first I’ve been told, he had a great heap and wad of papers that he kept to himself anyway, went and gave me through a bit of a run through what had to do sort of, you know, he’d go and then the next morning was the casino or something for breakfast and he come up and he turns up again he said now what’ll do is, we’re to be met, there are cars, RAC are providing cars to take us from the end of what was the junction – Clapham Junction, no - Brisbane -
LC: Brisbane, Run street?
BS: No, no, it stopped at South Brisbane, it stopped before South Brisbane, some there, maybe [unclear] airfield that it was, there was a some junction there, they’d be taking us from there, into the city and out to Sandgate, you know. Now when we get to Sandgate, they’ll take you right through to where you’ve got to congregate. The parents are all be up at this area here. Now I’ll parade them all, line them all, tell them up, call you up in to the front and give the order to quick march up to there and then when you get up to there we will be dismissed. I said righto, fair enough. So right, we get up to and do this: Quick march getting along, quick march, okay, there the parents there, I said well if I’m in charge of this bloody parade, I’ll just dismiss the damn thing! So we get up to court area, Squad Halt! Squad Dismiss! The bloody war’s over! Well I heard, I heard somebody say to dad waiting up there, my sister had said god, dad there he is up front. I heard some bloke say to my father – who was in the army you know in the army - is that your son, yeah, dad said to him I wouldn’t call the King my bloody uncle today. [Laughter] This old Warrant Officer looks over, he just sort of wandered off with a heap of paper.
LC: Brilliant!
BS: That’s what I said to dad, the war was over, the war’s just finished.
LC: The war is [emphasis] over. So what stage -
BS: They picked me up with my cousin who was in, had fought in Woolang Bay and got the, come out, wasn’t too good, and, ‘cause my younger brother now, couldn’t get over how much he’d grown. But now, my cousin Daniel Pampling, before the war Danny and I were great friends, ‘cause Alec was, quite a few years between Alec and myself, you know, a bit, eight years or something and Danny and I, actually we were close, we were as close as brothers, even after the war, we could talk to one another, about experiences, he’d tell of experiences with Japs, he was, he was hooked up all day in a heap of guinea grass with Japanese on the other side of it, they didn’t know, you know, and we could talk to things about that sort of, you know, Danny and I and get on now. When we came back Danny drove us down, he come back and on the way back, Dad used to take the cream into people in Harrisall, a Mrs Fresser, they were German, Karl Fresser and his mother, their son was in, was shot down and killed, about a year before I operated, you know, he’d only done a few trips, but he ended up on a, on a Pathfinder squadron and he was shot down on one of the Berlin trips, you know, in the winter of ‘43 ‘44. Well after that, she used to, I think she more or less adopted me as a son, she said to dad, she was always asking after me, you know. Now before we went home, back to Greenwood, to the farm, we come through Harrisall, dad wanted us to call on Mrs Fresser. [pause]
LC: Yeah. Oh nice, you popped in there did you?
BS: When I think about it I cry.
LC: So how did you -
BS: She was crying.
LC: Yeah. It’s a very, very emotional experience. Very emotional.
BS: Always called on Mrs Fresser. That’s how things change, never called her Pauline; and she always called him Mr Smith. You know, isn’t it amazing. Two sisters that, hey.
LC: So how did you find, you mentioned you were able to, your mate you were able to talk, your experiences with, how did you find communicating with other friends and family who hadn’t been, experienced it, was communicating was an issue or?
BS: I found that hard [cough] Mrs Fresser, but another great mate of mine, Jimmy Cossett from Boonah, Jimmy was shot down too, but he was murdered towards the end of the war, to meet his sister, you know, to meet the sisters or the close relatives of boys that had been killed. I had about three or four of them waiting to meet. It was a bit sobering.
LC: That would be very sobering, very, very emotional too I’d imagine.
BS: Little bit sobering. Anyway, we got, like Bomber Command blokes, we’re trained in the worst place to, it’s a game of life and death. There’s only two things we’re given to by our creator: that’s birth and death and death is it. That’s it. It’s like old Grey’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard: once they’re in there, all their joys are gone that’s it, the disappointments they had, well, and as Napoleon said what’s an honour or can any, any worth mean, what’s a posthumous award mean to the recipient?
LC: Exactly.
BS: Nothing. that’s why they cut out the posthumous awards.
LC: The French Army.
BS: Even with the Croix de Guerre and stuff like that. And they, of course they cut out all the Imperial awards too, like Distinguished Flying Crosses [unclear] and stuff like that. So you settled down there and that was it.
LC: So you were demobbed. Did you, did you have any sort of follow on support from the air force or the government?
BS: [unclear] I settled back into the war and then went back and got married. When we came back, after I married, we married, we shot to, Alma come to a different world, you know. And when we arrived was the best dust storm I’ve ever seen at Harrisall, when we got back to Harrisall to the farm, you know. And dad come in from the Territory, you’d better go into the bank they got a message for you, yeah, they want you to come back. I went back in, yeah, they wanted me to open a branch in Upper [unclear]. I did that, I went down and saw them, I opened that branch with a feller called Paul Gardner and he was a Rat of Tobruk. Now, and with a couple of a, couple of reunions we’ve had with our aircrew guards over later years there, come in, you realise in a way the bloody futility of, wars are not, not between two blokes, the people of the country. Now this Paul was a Rat at Tobruk, now at [unclear] on the corner of Kessel’s Road now where the Garden City or something, I had a relation bit further on had a strawberry farm there, but there were two blokes worked in the Department of Primary Industries as it was called then, you know. One was a, don’t know what he was, the other was a feller called Harry Warnenburg. Now, Harry come in to the bank one day to open an account something, and he’s sitting down talking to the boss, and Harry, he said to the boss, I’ve come out, no, I came out, I applied out here after, I think I was, came out from Germany after the war, and the war I was in Rommel’s Panzer Division over there. Paul said I was a Rat of Tobruk, he says oh we were around at Tobruk and they suddenly started talking to one another and they could remember things that both happened and seen there.
LC: Absolutely fascinating isn’t it, that’s incredible.
BS: Now there’s two blokes, ‘bout ten years before that, eight years before that they were fighting one another, or they weren’t fighting one another. They eventually come to the agreement, you found out the safest place on the war was on the patrol at night. Now, what you do as a patrol at night, if you’re coming round, you know the German’s there, so you maybe whisper something, you want them to overhear it, give ‘em a bit of false information, the German’s not going to let you know that he’s there, so he’s, he’s going to keep quiet too, get right so, and he said that happened on one particular incident that’s been well recorded with the Stuka shot down, with the one ack-ack gun that was there, got him fair and square first shot but it was a fluke, and they they immediately thought hello, hello, they’ve got a secret weapon and they stopped that raid and there were no raids for a couple days after till they worked out, somebody’d worked out for ‘em what it was. But there they are, two blokes, and then that blokes that meet at these things, that were prisoners of war, they’ve had their, over in England now at Bomber Command for quite a number of years there were get-togethers for trips down the Rhine every year. The blokes that shot ‘em down once they found out who shot them down.
LC: Have you every had the opportunity to meet any of the, any Germans?
BS: Only that feller.
LC: That bloke there.
BS: No German. I nearly did have one that had come over but he had gone back.
LC: Well Bob, I think that probably covers it, very comprehensively. But it’s been fantastic sitting down with you and hearing, hearing your experiences, but those, and your records that you’re graciously allowing us to copy, they will be a great complement to the recording of this interview so thanks again, thanks again for that.
BS: If you want to have a copy, a whole lot of those I’ll have a yarn with my sons, where to put them, you know. I happen to be a lad that comes from Harrisall which was on the doorsteps in Amberley, where my things’ll rest up there, with my grandmother that came out, between her and myself, the two of us, we’ve seen the whole development of that district. We overlapped by eight years on, on. But she was a girl, oh some of the stories, she was, she’s a wonderful woman, not like her two sisters. No, dad, bit like her father, they were get on. She had a way of telling you, if you did something wrong, she wouldn’t just chastise you, she’d say you know you’d better think about it, it might be very wise not to do that again.
LC: Yeah, just give you a hint, yeah.
BS: She’d make you think about it. It might be very wise not to do that again you know. I had a, made sure dad, mum sent us to Sunday School every Sunday morning, walk across the paddocks. I had a a Sunday School teacher, he was a Scotsman out here, he was killed later on out here, but you did something wrong in church or Sunday School he’d take you round the back behind the water tanks and give you a clout behind the ear.[laughs]
LC: Well it was effective. It was very effective!
BS: Well my dad gave me effective thing for being bullying. When I was a young lad, the bloke on this place next door, his father was a, was a champion rifle shooter, you know, the Queen’s medal, the King’s Medal they used to call in those days, go over to England, this feller annoying hell out of me, annoying things, I came to dad, said next time he does that heck, sock him one on the nose. Which I did.
LC: Didn’t bother you again?
BS: No, didn’t, not beat me. No, I got stripes in Ipswich Grammar. I’ve always been like that as a lad. Blokes’d have a go and I got caught Ipswich Grammar School having a fight in the in the thing one day, the old Dean come up and no ‘cause I, nobody would pick a fight with me because they thought he’s a bloody boxer! This bloke, when I came, I come in one day, I can still remember this like, how old would I have been ‘bout six, something, covered in bit of blood, so mum cleans me up, you know, I’m getting a hell of a dressing down, stop fighting, then all of a sudden it wakes up to mum that it’s not my blood: it was his out of his nose.
LC: What’ve you been doing!
BS: And of course dad, what you do? I just cuffed him one on the blood, on the nose. Dad said it was the best thing you could have done! I agree with that. Mum had the other one.
LC: Well seeing like Bomber Harris’ strategy, you started it, we’re gonna finish it!
BS: Yeah! Bomber Harris, he used to -
LC: Well that’s probably a good way to finish it Bob, so thanks for, thanks for the time, it’s been an absolute pleasure sitting down and talking about your experiences.
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 Bob Smith
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Lee Collins
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-03-25
Rights
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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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ASmithRW190325
Format
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03:30:53 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Bob Smith was born in Brisbane, Australia. He recalls moving to the family farm in 1932 and being a member of the Air Cadets during his school years. Upon leaving school, Smith undertook training as a bank clerk. Following the events of Pearl Harbour, Smith registered for the Royal Air Force as an air crew guard on the understanding that once he turned nineteen, he would train under the Empire Air Training Scheme. In May 1942, he was called up for initial training. He describes his first experience of death, while stationed at the Air Observer School in Cootamundra, and persuading the selection committee at Bradfield Park to alter his crew role status from pilot to navigator. On the 10th February 1943, Smith embarked from Sydney on the USS Hermitage. He recounts the details of the five-week voyage to San Francisco including kitchen duty on the ship, hunting for a record needle in Honolulu, and observing the damage at Pearl Harbour. Smith trained on Ansons in Edmonton, Canada, before traveling to Britain, where he attended Officer Training School in Sidmouth and the Advanced Flying School at RAF West Freugh. He describes the formation of his crew at RAF Chedburgh, training on Wellingtons and Stirlings, and receiving blunt head trauma on a training flight (which he traces health issues in later life back to). While stationed in RAF Feltwell for the Lancaster Finishing School, Smith recollects supporting D-Day by dropping Window along the coast of France, and using Gee during a mining operation over the Garonne River. Smith’s crew joined 15 Squadron, stationed at RAF Mildenhall, where he carried out 30 operations and remained on the squadron as a wind navigator. He details the events of his first and last operation, the process of morning and night-time operations, and flying over the Ruhr, Arromanches, Malmö, Duisburg, Stettin, and Dortmund. Finally, Smith describes demobilisation, reuniting with his family in Australia, and visiting Scotland to marry his wife, Elma.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tilly Foster
Anne-Marie Watson
Carolyn Emery
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
New South Wales
New South Wales--Cootamundra
United States
Hawaii--Honolulu
Hawaii--Pearl Harbor
Canada
Alberta
Alberta--Edmonton
Great Britain
England--Norfolk
England--Devon
England--Suffolk
Scotland--Wigtownshire
France
Europe--Garonne River
France
France--Arromanches-les-Bains
Sweden
Sweden--Malmö
Germany
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Dortmund
Poland
Poland--Szczecin
Hawaii
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1932
1942-05
1943-02-10
Language
A language of the resource
eng
15 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
crewing up
debriefing
demobilisation
Gee
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
mine laying
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
observer
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Feltwell
RAF Mildenhall
RAF West Freugh
recruitment
searchlight
Special Operations Executive
Stirling
training
Wellington
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/305/24579/LMillerRB423155v1.2.pdf
9f14a06741bef06dd5b293dcaa776f9c
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, Robert
Robert Bruce Miller
Robert B Miller
Robert Miller
R B Miller
R Miller
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Robert Bruce Miller (1924 - 2021, 423155 Royal Australian Air Force) a photograph and his log book. He flew operations as a navigator with 51 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Robert Miller and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-04-30
2017-01-29
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Miller, RB
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
Robert Miller’s observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book for R B Miller, navigator, covering the period from 15 November 1942 to 10 April 1945. Detailing his flying training, operations flown and instructor duties. He was stationed at RCAF Winnipeg, RAF Clyffe Pypard, RAF West Freugh, RAF Abingdon, RAF Marston Moor, RAF Snaith, RAF Langar and RAF Woolfox Lodge. Aircraft flown in were Anson, Tiger Moth, Whitley, Halifax and Lancaster. He flew a total of 41 operations with 51 Squadron, 21 daylight and 20 night. His pilot on operations was Warrant Office Faulkner. Targets were Morsalines, Lens, Hasselt, Orleans, Aachen, Bourg Leopold, Trappes, Paris, Amiens, Douai, Foulliard, Martin St L’Hortier, Siracourt, Oisement, Mimoyecques, Wizernes, Villers Bocage, Croix D’Alle, Les Catalliers, Nucourt, Evrieville, Bottrop, Kiel, Foret de Nieppe, Tracey Bocage, Bois de Cassan, Nieppe, Hazebrouck, May-sur-Orne, Foret de Mormal, Brest, Hamburg, Lumbres, Venlo, Nordstern, Wilhelmshaven, Boulogne and Neuss.
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
Cara Walmsley
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LMillerRB423155v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
Canada
France
Great Britain
Germany
Netherlands
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Belgium--Hasselt
Belgium--Leopoldsburg
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Rutland
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
France--Amiens
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
France--Brest
France--Caen
France--Cherbourg
France--Douai
France--Hazebrouck
France--Lens
France--L'Isle-Adam
France--Lumbres
France--May-sur-Orne
France--Neufchâtel-en-Bray
France--Nieppe
France--Nieppe Forest
France--Nucourt
France--Oisemont (Canton)
France--Orléans
France--Pas-de-Calais
France--Paris
France--Rennes Region
France--Saint-Omer (Pas-de-Calais)
France--Villers-Bocage (Calvados)
France--Vire Region (Calvados)
Germany--Aachen
Germany--Bottrop
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Neuss
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Manitoba--Winnipeg
Netherlands--Venlo
Scotland--Wigtownshire
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
France--Morsalines
Manitoba
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1944-05-10
1944-05-12
1944-05-22
1944-05-23
1944-05-24
1944-05-25
1944-05-28
1944-05-31
1944-06-01
1944-06-11
1944-06-12
1944-06-13
1944-06-14
1944-06-15
1944-06-16
1944-06-17
1944-06-18
1944-06-22
1944-06-23
1944-06-24
1944-06-27
1944-06-28
1944-06-30
1944-07-01
1944-07-04
1944-07-06
1944-07-07
1944-07-09
1944-07-15
1944-07-16
1944-07-18
1944-07-20
1944-07-21
1944-07-23
1944-07-24
1944-07-28
1944-07-30
1944-08-03
1944-08-05
1944-08-06
1944-08-07
1944-08-08
1944-08-09
1944-08-25
1944-08-26
1944-08-27
1944-08-31
1944-09-03
1944-09-11
1944-09-14
1944-09-15
1944-09-23
1944-09-24
10 OTU
1651 HCU
1652 HCU
1669 HCU
51 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Flying Training School
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Master Bomber
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Abingdon
RAF Clyffe Pypard
RAF Langar
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Snaith
RAF West Freugh
RAF Woolfox Lodge
tactical support for Normandy troops
Tiger Moth
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/308/24681/LMottersheadF422232v1.1.pdf
f76801c86e1314e5d06be70cf352a3ad
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
Mottershead, Frank
F Mottershead
Description
An account of the resource
Eleven items. An oral history interview with Frank Mottershead (422232 Royal Australian Air Force), photographs and his log book. He flew operations as a wireless operator with 463 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Frank Mottershead and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-30
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Mottershead, F
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
Frank Mottershead’s observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book for F Mottershead, wireless operator, covering the period from 29 April 1943 to 9 April 1945. Detailing his flying training and operations flown. He was stationed at RCAF Calgary, RCAF Mossbank, RCAF Pat Bay, RAF Lichfield, RAF West Freugh, RAF Syerston and RAF Waddington. Aircraft flown in were Norseman, Fort II, Bolingbroke, Anson, Hampden, Wellington, Stirling and Lancaster. He flew a total of 30 operations with 463 squadron, 6 daylight and 24 night. Targets were Rheydt, Dortmund, Calais, Karlsruhe, Kaiserslauten, Wilhelmshaven, Bremen, Flushing, Brunswick, Bergen, Harburg, Duren, Ladbergen, Munich, Heilbronn, Geissen, Gdynia, Houffalize, Mitteland Canal, Politz, Brux, Dresden, Rositz, Bohlen, Wesel, Ijmuiden and Hamburg. His pilots on operations were Flying Officer Smith and Flight Lieutenant Huxtable.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LMottersheadF422232v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
Canada
Czech Republic
France
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Alberta--Calgary
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
Belgium--Houffalize
British Columbia--Vancouver Island
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Staffordshire
France--Calais
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Düren (Cologne)
Germany--Giessen (Hesse)
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Heilbronn
Germany--Kaiserslautern
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Leipzig Region
Germany--Mittelland Canal
Germany--Munich
Germany--Rheydt
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Netherlands--IJmuiden
Netherlands--Vlissingen
Norway--Bergen
Poland--Gdynia
Poland--Police (Województwo Zachodniopomorskie)
Scotland--Wigtownshire
Germany--Hamburg
Saskatchewan
Alberta
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Czech Republic--Most
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
1944-09-19
1944-09-20
1944-09-23
1944-09-24
1944-09-26
1944-09-27
1944-09-28
1944-10-05
1944-10-06
1944-10-11
1944-10-14
1944-10-15
1944-10-23
1944-10-28
1944-10-29
1944-11-11
1944-11-16
1944-11-21
1944-11-26
1944-11-27
1944-12-04
1944-12-06
1944-12-18
1944-12-19
1944-12-30
1945-01-01
1945-01-02
1945-01-13
1945-01-14
1945-01-16
1945-01-17
1945-02-08
1945-02-09
1945-02-13
1945-02-14
1945-02-15
1945-02-19
1945-02-20
1945-02-21
1945-03-20
1945-03-21
1945-03-23
1945-03-24
1945-04-06
1945-04-09
1654 HCU
27 OTU
463 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
Bolingbroke
bombing
Bombing and Gunnery School
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Hampden
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Operational Training Unit
RAF Lichfield
RAF Syerston
RAF Waddington
RAF West Freugh
Stirling
training
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/341/24682/LTinningHW19585v1.1.pdf
dce1da7637ab34989057226f81050674
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
Tinning, Herbert
Herbert William Tinning
Herbert W Tinning
H W Tinning
H Tinning
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Herbert William Tinning DFC, his log book and three photographs. He flew operations as a navigator with 51 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Herbert Tinning and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-14
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
Tinning, HW
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
Herbert Tinning’s Royal Australian Air Force Observer’s Air Gunner’s And W/T Operator’s Flying Log Book
Description
An account of the resource
Herbert Tinning’s Royal Australian Air Force Observer’s Air Gunner’s And W/T Operator’s Flying Log Book from 25th August 1942 to 11th March 1945. Recording his training as a navigator in Australia and Great Britain and a full tour of operations with 51 squadron, followed by a short period with 96 squadron (Transport Command). He was based at RAAF Cootamundra, RAAF Sale, RAAF Nhill, RAF Desford, RAF West Freugh, RAF Lichfield, RAF Church Broughton, RAF Marston Moor, RAF Snaith and RAF Leconfield. Aircraft in which flown: Anson, Battle, Tiger Moth, Wellington and Halifax. He flew 40 operations (19 day, 19 night, 2 abandoned/recalled) on the following targets in Belgium, France and Germany: Alencon, Boulogne, Brest, Caen (Emieville), Calais, Cape Griz Nez, Chateaudon, Collines-Beaumont, Croixdalle, Essen, Foret de Nieppe, Hannover, Haringzelles, Hasselt, Herquelingue, Homberg, Kiel, Kleves, Le Grand Rossignol, Le Havre, Les Catelliers, Marquise, Mont Fleury, Morsalines, Neuss (Dusseldorf), Oisemont, Siracourt, St Martin L’hortier, Sterkrade, Stuttgart, Trappes, Villers Bocage, Wilhemshaven and Wizernes. His pilot on operations was Flight Sergeant Moore. On 6th June 1944 he notes: “‘D’ DAY OPENING OF SECOND FRONT”. In October 1944 he notes “AWARDED - DFC”.
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
David Leitch
Cara Walmsley
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LTinningHW19585v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Belgium
France
Germany
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Derbyshire
England--Leicestershire
England--Staffordshire
England--Yorkshire
Scotland--Wigtownshire
Belgium--Hasselt
France--Alençon
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
France--Brest
France--Caen
France--Calais
France--Cap Gris Nez
France--Châteaudun
France--Colline-Beaumont
France--Croixdalle
France--Haringzelles
France--Herquelingue
Belgium--Rossignol
France--Le Havre
France--Les Catelliers
France--Marquise
France--Morsalines
France--Oisemont (Canton)
France--Siracourt
France--Soligny-la-Trappe
France--Neufchâtel-en-Bray
France--Villers-Bocage (Calvados)
France--Saint-Omer (Pas-de-Calais)
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Homberg (Kassel)
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Kleve (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Neuss
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
New South Wales--Cootamundra
Victoria--Sale
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
France--Ver-Sur-Mer
France--Neufchâtel-en-Bray
Victoria
New South Wales
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
France--Nieppe Forest
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1944-05-10
1944-05-11
1944-05-12
1944-05-13
1944-05-31
1944-06-01
1944-06-02
1944-06-03
1944-06-04
1944-06-06
1944-06-07
1944-06-08
1944-06-09
1944-06-22
1944-06-23
1944-06-24
1944-06-25
1944-06-27
1944-06-28
1944-06-30
1944-07-01
1944-07-04
1944-07-06
1944-07-09
1944-07-17
1944-07-24
1944-07-25
1944-07-29
1944-07-30
1944-08-18
1944-08-19
1944-08-25
1944-08-26
1944-08-27
1944-09-10
1944-09-14
1944-09-15
1944-09-16
1944-09-17
1944-09-23
1944-09-24
1944-09-26
1944-09-27
1944-10-06
1944-10-07
1944-10-21
1944-10-23
1944-10-25
1652 HCU
27 OTU
51 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
Battle
bombing
Bombing and Gunnery School
bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944)
bombing of the Pas de Calais V-1 sites (24/25 June 1944)
Distinguished Flying Cross
Flying Training School
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Halifax Mk 3
Heavy Conversion Unit
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Church Broughton
RAF Desford
RAF Leconfield
RAF Lichfield
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Snaith
RAF West Freugh
tactical support for Normandy troops
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2056/33788/LDoxseyJA630441v1.1.pdf
fc12441228a525cb4f9bb0f0103af7e6
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
Doxsey, JA
Description
An account of the resource
Nine items. The collection concerns Warrant Officer John Alfred Doxsey (b. 1921, 630441 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, photographs and documents.
He flew operations as an air gunner with 149 Squadron before serving with No.3 aircraft Delivery Unit in North Africa.
A sub-collection photograph album contains pictures of aircraft, people and places in Europe and Africa during and after the Second World War.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Nigel Doxsey and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-09-20
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
Doxsey, JA
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
J A Doxsey RAF observer's and air gunner's flying log book. One
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet with b/w photographs
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LDoxseyJA630441v1
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
J A Doxsey’s RAF Observer’s and Air Gunner’s Flying Log Book from 5th October 1939 to 25th January 1944, recording training and operations as a Wireless Operator/Air Gunner, and Transport Command ferry duties across Africa, Brazil and USA. Aircraft in which flown: Heyford, Wellington, Blenheim, Wellesley, Martin Maryland, Liberator, B-17E, DC-2, DC-3, Boston, Bisley, Beaufighter, Baltimore, Sunderland, Hudson, Anson, plus others as a passenger. Based at: RAF Yatesbury, RAF West Freugh (No. 4 Air Observer School), RAF Mildenhall (149 Squadron), RAF Bassingbourn (11 OTU), RAF Station Takoradi (Ferry Pool, No. 1 Aircraft Delivery Unit (ME), No 3 Aircraft Delivery Unit). Records a total of 27 operations (20 night, 7 day). Numerous operations are only recorded vaguely, for example: “Sweep”, “Norway” or “Raid as detailed/authorised”. Named targets in Germany, Netherlands and Norway are: Hamburg, Hamm, Heligoland Island, Kolleda, Rotterdam, Stavanger, Sylt and Wilhelmshaven. His pilots on operations were Squadron Leader Harris, Pilot Officer Innes, Flying Officer Robertson and Pilot Officer Whitakar. Also includes photographs of aircraft and crew, cuttings and maps.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939-12-03
1939-12-18
1940-01-02
1940-03-15
1940-04-06
1940-04-07
1940-04-12
1940-04-17
1940-04-25
1940-04-26
1940-05-05
1940-05-06
1940-05-10
1940-05-11
1940-05-14
1940-05-15
1940-05-19
1940-05-20
1940-06-13
1940-06-14
1940-06-17
1940-06-18
1940-06-19
1940-06-20
1940-06-29
1940-06-30
1940-07-11
1940-07-12
1940-07-13
1940-07-14
1940-07-23
1940-07-24
1940-07-25
1940-07-26
1940-08-01
1940-08-02
1940-08-07
1940-08-08
1940-08-09
1940-08-10
1940-08-11
1940-08-12
1940-08-16
1940-08-17
1940-08-25
1940-08-26
1941
1942
1943
1944
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Africa
Brazil
Denmark
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Norway
Puerto Rico
United States
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Suffolk
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hamm (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Helgoland
Germany--Kölleda
Germany--Sylt
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Ghana--Takoradi
Netherlands--Rotterdam
Norway--Stavanger
Scotland--Wigtownshire
Ghana
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Leitch
11 OTU
149 Squadron
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
B-17
B-24
Beaufighter
Blenheim
bombing
Boston
C-47
Hudson
Ju 52
Me 109
Me 110
Operational Training Unit
RAF Bassingbourn
RAF Mildenhall
RAF West Freugh
RAF Yatesbury
Sunderland
training
Wellington
wireless operator
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2080/34434/SWeirG19660703v010002.1.pdf
66f771baf607d1f5d889c05e98612230
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Weir, Greg. Taylor, Alexander
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. Sub-collection concerns Alexander Taylor (Royal Australian Air Force) who flew operations as a wireless operator or special operator on Halifax of 462 Squadron form November 1944 to may 1945.
The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-04-26
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Weir, G
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Alexander Taylor Royal Australian Air Force observer's, air gunner's and w/t operator's flying log book
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SWeirG19660703v010002
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Description
An account of the resource
Observer’s, air gunner’s and W/T operators flying log book for A Taylor, wireless operator, covering the period from 25 January 1943 to 3 November 1951. Detailing his flying training and operations flown. He was stationed at RAAF Parkes, RAAF Port Prairie, RAF West Freugh, RAF Moreton-in-Marsh, RAF Marston Moor, RAF Driffield and RAF Foulsham. Aircraft flown in were Wackett, Battle, Anson, Wellington, Halifax, and C-47 Dakota. He flew a total of 25 operations with 462 Squadron Royal Australian Air Force. Targets were Bochum, Gelsenkirchen, Essen, Duisburg, Cologne, Hanau, Heligoland, Mannheim, Kochem, Bonn, Weisbaden, Heilbronn, Krefeld, Lake Constance, Emden, Meppin, Hagen, Bremen, Wesel, Hamburg, Berlin, Magdeburg, Lubeck and Flensburg. His pilots on operations were Flying Officer Howrigan, Flight Sergeant Sharp, Flying Officer Ely, Flying Officer Boyd, Flight Lieutenant Robertson, Pilot Officer Anderson, Warrant Officer Whattling and Flight Lieutenant McGindle.<br /><br /><span data-contrast="auto" xml:lang="EN-GB" lang="EN-GB" class="TextRun SCXW144579412 BCX0"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW144579412 BCX0">This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form. No </span><span class="ContextualSpellingAndGrammarError SCXW144579412 BCX0">better quality</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW144579412 BCX0"> copies are available.</span></span><span class="EOP SCXW144579412 BCX0" data-ccp-props="{"201341983":0,"335559739":200,"335559740":276}"> </span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944-11-04
1944-11-05
1944-11-06
1944-11-28
1944-11-29
1944-12-17
1944-12-18
1944-12-21
1944-12-22
1945-01-02
1945-01-03
1945-01-06
1945-01-07
1945-01-14
1945-01-15
1945-01-17
1945-01-18
1945-01-21
1945-01-22
1945-02-03
1945-02-04
1945-02-08
1945-02-09
1945-02-20
1945-02-21
1945-02-22
1945-02-28
1945-03-01
1945-03-02
1945-03-03
1945-03-04
1945-03-15
1945-03-16
1945-03-21
1945-03-22
1945-03-23
1945-03-24
1945-04-03
1945-04-04
1945-04-05
1945-04-08
1945-04-09
1945-04-23
1945-04-24
1945-05-02
1951
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Germany
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Gloucestershire
England--Norfolk
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Bodenseekreis
Germany--Bonn
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Cochem
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Emden (Lower Saxony)
Germany--Essen
Germany--Flensburg
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hagen (Arnsberg)
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hanau
Germany--Heilbronn
Germany--Helgoland
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Lübeck
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Meppen
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Wiesbaden
New South Wales--Parkes
Scotland--Wigtownshire
South Australia--Port Pirie
New South Wales
South Australia
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
1652 HCU
21 OTU
462 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
Battle
bombing
Bombing and Gunnery School
C-47
Cook’s tour
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Operational Training Unit
RAF Driffield
RAF Foulsham
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF West Freugh
training
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1937/38399/LJolliffeFSW197221v1.1.pdf
5ebbe4cf55d4bb3df97af95b62af5f33
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
Jolliffe, Frank Sidney Walter
F S W Jolliffe
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-18
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
Jolliffe, FSW
Description
An account of the resource
129 items. The collection concerns Wing Commander Frank Sidney Walter Jolliffe (b. 1923, 1314311 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, documents and photographs. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 149 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Margaret Lowe and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Frank Jolliffe's flying log book. One
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944-09-20
1944-09-23
1944-09-24
1944-09-25
1944-09-26
1944-10-14
1944-10-21
1945-02-03
1945-02-04
1945-02-13
1945-02-14
1945-02-27
1945-02-28
1945-03-01
1945-03-04
1945-03-06
1945-03-07
1945-03-08
1945-03-09
1945-03-11
1945-03-12
1945-04-04
1945-04-05
1945-04-09
1945-04-10
1945-04-13
1945-04-14
1945-05-01
1945-05-04
1945-05-10
1945-05-11
1945-05-16
1945-05-29
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
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 Canadian Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text. Log book and record book
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LJolliffeFSW197221v1
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Canada
Germany
France
Manitoba--Brandon Region
Ontario--Ashfield Region
Scotland--Wigtownshire
England--Leicestershire
England--Rutland
England--Norfolk
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Suffolk
Northern Ireland--Down (County)
England--Yorkshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Hampshire
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
France--Pas-de-Calais
Germany--Celle
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dessau (Dessau)
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Essen
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Kamen
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Merseburg
Germany--Neuss
Germany--Recklinghausen (Kreis)
Germany--Salzbergen
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
Manitoba--Dauphin Area
Netherlands--Hague
Netherlands--Vlissingen
Northern Ireland--Down (County)
Scotland--Wigtownshire
Netherlands
France--Juvincourt-et-Damary
Manitoba
Manitoba--Rivers
Description
An account of the resource
Flying log book for F S W Jolliffe, bombe aimer/navigator, covering the period from 11 December 1942 to 29 September 1952. Detailing his flying training, operations flown, instructor duties, Post war flying duties with 35 and 98 squadrons and RAE Farnborough. He was stationed at RCAF Rivers, RCAF Paulson, RCAF Port Albert, RAF West Fraugh, RAF Market Harborough, RAF Husbands Bosworth, RAF North Luffenham, RAF Feltwell, RAF Mepal, RAF Methwold, RAF Tuddenham, RAF Graveley, RAF Bishops Court, RAF Leeming, RAF Wahn, RAF Manby, RAF Celle and RAF Farnborough. Aircraft flown in were Anson, Bolingbroke, Hampden, Wellington, Martinet, Stirling, Lancaster, Oxford, Hornet, Warwick, Mosquito, Dakota, Viking, Dominie, Storch, Devon, Lincoln, Harvard, Meteor, Valetta, Firefly, Athena, Hastings, Prentice, Canberra, Beaufighter, Avenger, Sea Fury, Pioneer, Chipmunk, Blackburn GR17, Sea Venom, Sea Hornet, Brigand, Balliol, Barracuda, Varsity, Provost, Fortress and Packet. He flew a total of 20 operations, 6 with 75 squadron, 11 with 149 squadron and 3 with 138 squadron, 13 were daylight operations and 7 were night operations. He also flew 2 Manna operations and 4 Exodus operations. Targets were Pas de Calais, Neuss, Cap Griz Nez, Duisburg, Flushing, Dortmund, Dresden, Gelsenkirchen, Kamen, Wanne Eickel, Saltzbergen, Dessau, Essen, Datteln, Merseburg, Kiel, The Hague and Juvincourt. His pilots on operations were Flight Sergeant Mcritchie, Flying Officer Winter, Flying Officer Friedrich, Flight Sergeant Sturgess, Pilot Officer Kerville, Squadron Leader Stanton, Flying Officer Nicolay, Flight Lieutenant Davidson, and Flight Lieutenant Claring.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Cara Walmsley
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.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
138 Squadron
14 OTU
149 Squadron
1653 HCU
35 Squadron
75 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
B-17
Beaufighter
Bolingbroke
bomb aimer
bombing
Bombing and Gunnery School
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
C-47
Dominie
Flying Training School
Hampden
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lincoln
Martinet
Meteor
Mosquito
navigator
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
RAF Bishops Court
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Farnborough
RAF Feltwell
RAF Graveley
RAF Husbands Bosworth
RAF Leeming
RAF Manby
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Mepal
RAF Methwold
RAF North Luffenham
RAF Paignton
RAF Tuddenham
RAF West Freugh
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1984/39608/LCockramJC419379v1.1.pdf
b1027c4208eaae9af5e8bd7e1e3b8890
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
Cockram, J C
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
2017-11-14
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
Cockram, JC
Description
An account of the resource
42 items. The collection concerns Sergeant J C Cockram (Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, two photographs and navigational charts. He flew operations as a navigator with 466 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Shirley Anne Cockram and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
J.C. Cockram’s RCAF Observer’s and Air Gunner’s flying log book
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Bangladesh
Canada
Egypt
France
Germany
Great Britain
India
Netherlands
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
France--Pas-de-Calais
Alberta--Edmonton
Bangladesh--Comilla
Egypt--Bilbays
Egypt--Cairo
England--Derbyshire
England--Yorkshire
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
France--Caen
France--Etaples
France--Le Havre
France--Seine-Maritime
France--Vaires-sur-Marne
France--Watten
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Homberg (Kassel)
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Kleve (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
India--Bilāspur (Chhattīsgarh : District)
Netherlands--Eindhoven
Netherlands--Soesterberg
Netherlands--Waddenzee
Scotland--Wigtownshire
France--Les Catelliers
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
France--Nieppe Forest
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LCockramJC419379v1
Description
An account of the resource
J.C. Cockram’s RCAF Observer’s and Air Gunner’s Flying Log Book, from 1st May 1943 to 8th July 1945, recording training, operations and Transport Command duties as a Navigator. Stationed at: RCAF Edmonton (No.2 Air Observer School), RAF West Freugh (4 Observer Advanced Flying Unit ), RAF Church Broughton (27 OTU), RAF Driffield (466 Squadron and 462 Squadron), RAF Leconfield (96 squadron), Bilbeis (1330 Conversion Unit), Cairo West, RAF Station Bilaspur and RAF Comilla (96 Squadron). Aircraft in which flown: Anson, Wellington, Halifax, Dakota. Records a total of 34 operations completed (12 night, 22) day) on the following targets in France, Germany and Netherlands: Ardouval, Bochum, Bois de la Haie, Boulogne, Brunswick, Caen, Cologne, Coqueraux, Duisburg, Dusseldorf, Eindhoven, Etaples, Foret de Nieppe, Gelsenkirchen, Homberg, Kiel, Kleve, La Pourchinte, Le Havre, Les Catelliers, Nordstern (Gelsenkirchen), Soesterberg, Sterkrade, Vaires (Paris), Wanne Eickel, Watten, Weskapelle and Wilhelmshaven. His pilot on operations was Pilot Officer Hickey. <br /><br />This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form. No better quality copies are available.
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
David Leitch
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944-07-17
1944-07-18
1944-07-20
1944-07-21
1944-07-23
1944-07-24
1944-07-25
1944-07-26
1944-07-28
1944-08-06
1944-08-07
1944-08-08
1944-08-09
1944-08-11
1944-08-12
1944-08-13
1944-08-15
1944-08-16
1944-08-17
1944-08-18
1944-08-19
1944-08-25
1944-08-27
1944-08-31
1944-09-03
1944-09-09
1944-09-10
1944-09-11
1944-09-12
1944-09-13
1944-09-15
1944-09-16
1944-09-17
1944-10-06
1944-10-07
1944-10-09
1944-10-14
1944-10-15
1944-10-29
1944-10-30
1944-11-02
1944-11-04
1945
1652 HCU
27 OTU
462 Squadron
466 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
bombing
C-47
Flying Training School
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Halifax Mk 3
Halifax Mk 5
Heavy Conversion Unit
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Church Broughton
RAF Driffield
RAF Leconfield
RAF Marston Moor
RAF West Freugh
tactical support for Normandy troops
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington