1
25
9
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1982/41550/EHopeAD-[Mrs]TurnerL[Date]-010001.jpg
b0bfe3cbdc0f393ca166d340691033c7
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1982/41550/EHopeAD-[Mrs]TurnerL[Date]-010002.jpg
e7d2fede10bd63b5b73352117492d6c1
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
Hope, Arthur Denis
A D Hope
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-12
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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Hope, AD
Description
An account of the resource
26 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Arthur Denis Hope (169139 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, correspondence, documents, newspaper cuttings and photographs. He flew operations as a wireless operator with 62 Squadron before becoming a prisoner of war.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bruce Neill-Gourlay and Pat Hoy and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Envelope Addressed to Mrs Turner
Description
An account of the resource
The envelope is addressed to Mrs Turner in Tasmania, Australia. On the front is handwritten in pencil 'I think Turners son flew with dad. P/H'
On the reverse 'Sender :- F/Lt & Mrs Hope RAF North Luffenham, Rutland'.
Creator
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AD Hope
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Tasmania
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
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Text
Text. Correspondence
Format
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One handwritten envelope
Identifier
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EHopeAD-[Mrs]TurnerL[Date]-010001, EHopeAD-[Mrs]TurnerL[Date]-010002
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
aircrew
RAF North Luffenham
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/300/32122/MMcDonaldDA410364-151013-02.1.pdf
6199184d703609ba0ef66a21865ce63f
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Title
A name given to the resource
McDonald, Donald
Donald Alexander McDonald
Donald A McDonald
Donald McDonald
D A McDonald
D McDonald
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. One oral history interview with Donald Alexander McDonald (1920 - 2021, 410364 Royal Australian Air Force) as well as two letters, a concert programme and notes on his interview. He flew operations as a pilot with 466 and 578 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Donald McDonald and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-13
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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McDonald, D
Transcribed document
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Transcription
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International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive Interviews – Adam Purcell Interview Notes: 410364 Don McDonald, 578 and 466 Sqn Halifax pilot 1944-45 Koo Wee Rup, where Don’s family had their dairy farm, is a regional Victorian town approximately 65km south-east of Melbourne city. Wilson Hall is the ceremonial hall of Melbourne University. The original Hall, in which Don sat his Public Service exams, was destroyed by fire in 1952. See an article about the fire at http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/18256075. Mount Martha, the site of Don’s Army training camp, is a small suburb of Melbourne, on Port Philip Bay, some 60km south-east of the city. It is about 50km west of Koo Wee Rup. Broadmeadows, from whence came the WWI-era tents in which Don and his fellow recruits stayed, is a northern suburb of Melbourne and has hosted an Army camp since the early days of WWI. 1 Initial Training School was at Somers, also not far from Koo Wee Rup, on the shores of Western Port. 7 Elementary Flying Training School was at Western Junction, near Launceston in northern Tasmania. The airfield remains active as Launceston Airport. 1 Service Flying Training School was at Point Cook, 25km south-west of Melbourne. It was Australia’s first Air Force base and it remains the oldest continually-operating military airfield in the world. Though no flying units are now based there it hosts the RAAF Museum (see http://www.airforce.gov.au/raafmuseum/index.htm). The Showgrounds are located at Flemington, an inner-western suburb of Melbourne. They are adjacent to Flemington Racecourse, the home of the Melbourne Cup horse race, which Don mentions towards the end of the interview. Camp Myles Standish was a US Army staging camp near Taunton in Massachusetts. Most Australian airmen who travelled across the US on their way to war would have been among about a million soldiers, sailors and airmen who went through the camp. The railway lines that Don mentions following while training from Point Cook went to Ballarat and Seymour. Don’s first gunner was named Chas Mears. His mid-upper gunner was Johnny Cowell. Don completed HCU at Rufforth. 578 Squadron was at Burn. AFL, or Australian Football League, also known as ‘Aussie Rules’, is a football game popular in the southern states of Australia. It is played on an oval ground and is characterised by long kicks, spectacular ‘marks’ (catches) and four upright goal posts. Rugby in this case refers to rugby league, the opposing code which is popular in New South Wales and Queensland. Don’s first grocery stores were at Fawkner, a northern suburb of Melbourne, and Hampton, which is on Port Philip Bay some 15km south-east of the city. The ‘Birdcage’ is a particularly exclusive marquee at the Melbourne Cup horse racing carnival. The actual population of Ballarat is about 96,000, and of Colac (another regional town) about 11,500. Scans: Don was unable to find his logbook at the time of the interview; he thinks a grandchild has it. If he finds it he will let me know for scanning. The only photographs that Don has of his wartime service are framed on his wall; they are under glass and so cannot be scanned. However there is a crew photograph available through the Australian War Memorial; see https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/P03759.001. Air Vice Marshal Henry Neilson Wrigley was the Air Officer commanding RAAF Overseas Headquarters in London from 1942 until he retired in June 1946. It was in this capacity that he signed the letter sent to Don on the award of his DFC in November 1944. The Programme series of scans relates to a particular leave that Don and a mate enjoyed in London in March 1944. Unfortunately, he only remembered to tell me the story when we were scanning the documents so it was not recorded, but a description follows, which I wrote up from my postinterview notes shortly after arriving home: "The thing to do when you went to London", Don said, "was to organise accommodation as soon as you arrived in the city", because of high demand. Unfortunately, on this occasion Don and his mate found themselves in a pub for some beers, which became another pub for more beers, and another, and another. When they were booted out at about 11pm - closing time - from the final pub (pubs had staggered hours in London during wartime), Don asked his mate where he was staying. He replied, dunno, what about you? Don hadn't organised anything either. The Boomerang Club was not an option at that hour, either were the other services clubs in the city, but the Strand Palace could perhaps take them, they thought. (One of the more exclusive hotels in London, the Strand Palace would well and truly have exceeded the budget abilities of the average Flight Sergeant, as both were at the time). So they went there, to be confronted by a large queue of American GIs in front of the booking desk. Here was one occasion where the distinctly blue Australian uniform came in handy. The concierge came up to them, past the Yanks, and enquired quietly whether they had a reservation. They replied, no, we don't. He nodded. "Come with me." The concierge led them to the desk, and asked the receptionist in a loud voice, "Which is Mr McDonald's room?", holding out his hand for a key, which he then gave to Don and his mate. "If those Americans had known that we didn't have a reservation either and we'd jumped the queue like that....." he said to me with a shudder. In any case, in for a penny, in for a pound, they thought. The following day they were talking at breakfast to a woman who asked if they had anything planned for the afternoon. They replied no, thinking about how little funds they had left following their extravagant accommodation. She said that she would be pleased to provide them with tickets for a show. In Royal Albert Hall. In the Royal Box. And there would be special people in the audience. Given strict instructions not to speak to royalty, should any be present, unless first spoken to, Don and his mate went to Royal Albert Hall for what turned out to be "A Grand Concert as a Tribute to Sir Henry J. Wood", and sat in the second row of the Royal Box. Shortly before the performance began there was a great cheer from the crowd (Don's mate leant over and said, "Do you reckon they're cheering for us, Mac?"), and into the Royal Box swept the Queen and the two Princesses, Margaret and Elizabeth (who of course is now the current Queen). The royal party sat in the row of seats directly in front of Don and his mate and they did indeed have a short conversation with them. This being a particularly memorable leave, Don decided a souvenir would be required from the hotel. They debated about pinching a towel (replacing it with their ratty, grey Air Force-issue towels) but decided it wouldn't last very long, so something more permanent was more appropriate. They settled on a small crystal glass. Somehow it survived the next year or so of travelling around in Don's kitbag and came home with him. As Don was telling this story he went to a cabinet and returned with the crystal glass. It is in Don’s hand in one of the photographs I took following our interview.
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Title
A name given to the resource
Interview Notes: 410364 Don McDonald, 578 and 466 Sqn Halifax pilot 1944-45
Description
An account of the resource
Notes on locations for Don McDonald's home, training in Australia. Notes people mentioned and scanned documents relating to a leave that Don enjoyed in London and includes a story of the leave written up by the interviewer from his notes which was missed in the interview.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Victoria--Melbourne
Tasmania--Launceston
United States
Massachusetts--Taunton
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Victoria--Port Phillip Bay Region
Victoria
Massachusetts
Tasmania
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-03
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Adam Purcell
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Bloomfield
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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MMcDonaldDA410364-151013-02
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Australian Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Personal research
Format
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Two typewritten sheets
466 Squadron
578 Squadron
aircrew
Halifax
pilot
RAF Burn
RAF Rufforth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1359/45995/MSmithRW425992-230825-02.2.pdf
934a1d70a17a0697f9ce5b48153226fb
Dublin Core
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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 document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Prologue
Voices of the Past
O, There are voices of the past
Links of a broken chain
Wings that can bear me back
To Times
Which cannot come again
Yet, God Forbid that I should lose
The Echoes that remain. Unknown.
March 2003
Five years ago, after listening to friends, young and old, as well as journalists, editors and historians requesting War Veterans and Pioneers to write their memoirs I realised that perhaps it was a duty to my descendants that I should do so. Accordingly, I ‘bit the bullet’ and started a draft of “My Service during WW11 in the Royal Australian Air Force”.
It soon became apparent that I should have done so many years ago when the memories were still fresh, although there could be some wisdom in the fact that sometimes the perspective is better if viewed from a distance. Much time has been taken in getting back in contact with old mates and crew members to ensure that what I have written is as historically accurate as possible. I have even had researchers and historians in the UK verify some of the detail, as well as refer to a few publications that have covered the period of my ‘Operational Tour’ on XV/15 Squadron, RAF Bomber Command. I did keep a diary for a while, but discontinued same when I started Operational Training in the UK, as diaries were then forbidden. I did have, however, a good diary in the form of letters home and which my Mother kept. Unfortunately these were lost or mislaid before she died in 1979. I do have all my logs and charts as well as photos, other items and notes from mates that have assisted greatly. On a few matters the original draft had to be amended, but after a few years of revision and the acquisition of a computer I was able about six months ago to commence on the final record. There will no doubt be some further amendments and additions as more confirming information comes to hand. I will cover same in a ‘summary’ at a later stage.
The question will be asked, “Why didn’t I write my Service History soon after the war?”, and why have so many not put their experiences to paper? Some did, and they are to be congratulated and thanked for their efforts. For many there was the old service adage that it was “Infra Dig to Shoot a Line”. I consider it was a common decision of most who returned from active service in any theatre of war to get on with life and leave the war behind.
My father served in WW1 as an ‘original’ in the 41st Btn A.I.F. and went through a number of the great battles in France & Belgium. He was wounded 3 times and gassed. His younger brother was in the 9th Btn A.I.F. that landed on Gallipoli on 25th April 1915, where he was severely wounded, and later fought in France & Belgium. Their youngest brother, after whom I was named, died on active service in France after being wounded 3 times. As a boy I often wondered why Dad and his brother never talked much about the war except between themselves and other returned soldiers. I now understand. I have now been in the same position. With your mates who survived you can recall facets of your experiences in an atmosphere of mutual understanding.
War has made me a realist. Indeed there is a season for all things. Yesterday is history and there is nothing you can do to change it, although we do see some historians trying to sanitise the past. It is to-day that is God’s Gift in your hands, and Faith that gives you hope for tomorrow.
I hope that what I have written about my service in the Air Force will be a valuable record for someone in the years ahead.
Official Identity Card for the Royal Australian Air Force
Date of Issue 23 December, 1942
Letter from Employer Giving Approval to Enlist in the Airforce
Enrolment in the Reserve
Certificate of Enlistment
Enlistment in the RAAF
Rookie-AC2
When war with Germany was declared on 3rd September 1939 I was a student boarder at the Ipswich (Boys) Grammar School in my ‘Junior’ years of study. I had been enrolled at I.G.S the previous year under a Qld R.S.S.A I.L.A Scholarship that I had won because my father was a returned soldier from WW1 and I had attained a qualifying standard in the 1937 State Scholarship exams. At that early stage, although under the age of 16, I had ambitions of joining the Air Force if the war were to carry on for many years, which it did.
After sitting the “Junior Public Exams” at the end of the 1939 school year, which I passed with above average results (4 A’s, 4 B’s and 1 C) I was accepted for employment in The National Bank of Australasia Limited at its Harrisville Branch. I took the place of Gordon McDougall who had enlisted in the RAAF. He went on to graduate as a pilot and lost his life in a flying accident in East Lothian, Scotland on Monday 6th September 1943.
The war did continue in Europe through 1940, and in early 1941 when I turned 17 years of age I took the opportunity to enrol as a correspondence student with the Air Force Cadets. I received educational material and exercises in Physics and Mechanics, incorporating the theories of flight and navigation etc. Exams were set for each lesson and in my case these were checked and marked by the Headmaster of the Milora State Primary School where I attended and sat the 1937 State Scholarship exam. Early in 1942 on reaching the age of 18 I was given the opportunity to make a formal application to enlist in the RAAF, subject to parents’ and employer’s consent. I made the application to the Bank and their approval was forthcoming on 31st January 1942, subject to a few qualifications as I was still a temporary clerk on probation which meant that my re-employment after the war would be subject to reassessment at the time. My parents gave their consent on my promise not to start smoking or drinking in the Air Force until I reached age 21. This promise I kept well beyond that time, as I have never been a smoker, and only a moderate drinker since into my 30’s. When I returned from active service in 1945 I realised what an enormous stress I had placed on my parents, particularly as my father had seen active service on the battlefields of France & Belgium in WW1 and my mother prayerfully relied on the strength of her Faith. Her prayers were answered.
Armed with the necessary consents I forwarded my application to the RAAF Recruitment Centre in Brisbane and on 13th February 1942 had completed the RAAF’s Form P/P/39A for Air Crew entry I was now on stand-by as it was policy for actual flying training not to commence until the recruit was of age 19.
In 1942, after the entry of Japan into the war and posing a real threat to Australian territory the government of the day was actively engaged in calling up qualified males into the Militia Forces. Apparently to keep a priority on Air Crew ‘hopefuls’ the RAAF instituted a call-up of those on ‘the reserve’ by creating the mustering of Air Crew Guard in Queensland, New South Wales & Victoria. It was under this mustering that I received my call-up to report to No.3 RAAF Recruitment Centre in Eagle Street, Brisbane on 21st May 1942. My position at the Bank was taken by John Neville Keys, the son of the then Manager at Boonah Branch, Neville Keys. He went into the next RAAF call-up, was given the number 426112 got his ‘wings’ as a Bomb Aimer and lost his life with No.466 Squadron Bomber Command on 11th April 1944 when shot down by a German night fighter on a raid on the railway installations at Tergnier in the lead up to the “D” Day invasion of Europe. I reported to No.3 Recruitment Centre along with 191 other recruits who were passed medically fit and duly enlisted, with service Nos from 425819 to 426010 inclusive, and proceeded on posting No.3 Recruit Depot at Maryborough, Qld with the rank of AC2. Authority P.O.R.135/42. I was given the No.425992, placed between No.425991 Bill Washbourne and 425993 Des Webster. Bill came from the Warwick district and Des from the Kilcoy area. This was to avoid surname of Smith under consecutive numbers. The same applied to the Jones & Murphies. The only Smith who remained in strict numerical order was 425891 Robert Angus Martin Smith.
We proceeded by train that evening to Maryborough where we were issued with uniforms, dungarees, boots, toothbrushes, razors etc and settled into barracks with palliasses and introduced to the Air Force life on 6 shillings a day for 7 days a week with free meals, accommodation, medical & dental treatment. In those days the Bank made up the difference in pay, which was not great but amounted to a bit of compulsory saving.
I Settle Into Life as a Recruit
Soon settled into a daily routine of a route march early in the morning while there was frost on the ground before breakfast, drills, lectures and vaccinations. Leave was granted most evenings and over the week-end. It was quite a common practice for the airmen to commandeer a push bike after going to the pictures in town, ride it out to the station gates and leave it there. The recruit depot was situated on the Maryborough aerodrome. Maryborough in those days was a town where everyone rode bikes, and the locals soon got to know where to look for their missing mode of transport. After three weeks intensive initiation into air force life we were passed as suitable recruits for Air Crew training and were split into several groups and posted to various RAAF stations in Queensland & New South Wales to serve as Guards until posted to an Initial Training School.
Bill Washbourne, Des Webster, Col (Snow) Wheatley and myself were posted to No.1 A.O.S at Cootamundra N.S.W. on 13th June 1942. Authority No,140/42. We travelled by train from Maryborough and arrived in Sydney only 2 weeks after the Japanese midget submarine attack on that city. We had to change trains in Sydney. At Cootamundra we were joined by Air Crew Guards from other States. Duties at Cootamundra included guarding the Ansons parked on the station aprons overnight, station perimeters, main gate guardhouse and the fuel depot about a mile out of town. Guard duties were usually 4 hours on and 4 hours off. The winter chill was a bit of a shock to the Queenslanders but we were treated generously with the issue of an extra blanket. Ice creams taken on duty at night to help you through your 4 hour shift could be left on a post, or tail of an aircraft and would not melt. If there was a sneaky wind blowing and the opportunity was judged safe we would crawl into one of the aircraft for a bit of a break. It was a fair risk that no one was doing the rounds to check on you.
Duty at the fuel dump was more relaxed. We stayed in a tent, and had trained the possums to eat fruit and chocolates out of our hands until they became a real nuisance. Horse riders, probably going home from the pictures or a dance in Cootamundra and travelling along the road that passed by the dump would be challenged “Who goes there?” Most took it in good humour, but occasionally one would get a bit stroppy but remain cautious in case we decided to fire a shot into the air and scare their horse. To relieve the monotony one night I fired a couple of shots at something flying overhead in the moonlight. Unfortunately these were heard back at the station and in no time a vehicle with more guards for reinforcement turned up. To the N.C.O who arrived I had to give a quick explanation. Told him I had challenged a person who had come through the fence, and when he didn’t stop but went back through the fence I fired a couple of shots after him. A bit of a recco of the area was made but nothing found, so I was instructed to report to the C/O’s office the next day. This I did along with others who were on duty at the time. They supported my account of events, but we were ordered to go to the rifle range for target practice and assessment. I was given 5 shots at the 200 yard range and scored 2 bulls and 3 inners, and explained further to the C.O that I would have fired close enough to the intruder to give him a fright. He ordered a close inspection of the site in daylight to see if there was any evidence of clothing caught in the barbed wire fence but nothing was found. I should imagine the C.O’s report on the incident would make interesting reading. Bill Washbourne was on guard duty with me at the time and at a reunion of the Air Crew Guards in Brisbane in the 1990’s he was surprised when I told him there was no intruder. He confirmed that at the time they all thought I was serious.
My first encounter with an aircraft accident and death was at Cootamundra on 21st September 1942. A Beaufighter from No.31 Squadron stationed at Wagga Wagga flew into our circuit and on turning to come in to land stalled and crashed about a mile from the station. The squadron which had been equipped with Beauforts had changed over to the Beaufighter only the month before. It was flown by F/Sgt. John Evan Jenkins (No.407435) and the second crew man, possibly the Observer, was Sgt. Vivian Sutherst (No.35755). Both were killed instantly on impact and are buried in the Cootamundra War Cemetery. I was with a few guards who were sent immediately to the scene of the crash, which we had to keep under guard for a couple of days. It was a sobering experience and I vividly remember the advice given to us at the scene by a senior sergeant that we were not to dwell on the death of the crew, but put it behind us, do our duty and get on with life. There was nothing we could do to change what had happened. That advice stood me in good stead through the experiences ahead and indeed through my life. It was while on guard duty at the crash site that we had some amusement shooting at rabbits. On one occasion a bullet ricocheted off a rock and as it whined its way across the country side it was amusing to see flocks of sheep scatter in its path.
The Presbyterian Church in Cootamundra had a very active Youth Fellowship Association to which I went with Bill Washbourne and other airmen. We were made most welcome and enjoyed many a happy time
On 16/9/42 we were officially attached to the newly formed No. 73 Reserve Squadron, but our routine on the station did not change.
On 11th October Des Webster and I were posted to No. 2 Initial Training School at Bradfield Park (Sydney) as our first step to Air Crew entry. There were also Air Crew Guards from other stations on the same posting, including Keith Mills, Noel Hooper and Eric Sutton who were at Maryborough with me. Since we enlisted our mustering was Aircrew V (Guard), with rank of AC11.
We were part of No. 33 Course at I.T.S. It was an intensive course of lectures on many subjects, but mainly on basic theories of flying, navigation, gunnery and bombing. Physical training played an important part and you were under constant observation for overall assessment as suitable for air crew and put through various tests to gauge reflexes and co-ordination before being interviewed by a selection panel to be mustered into a particular category.
A wide range of sports was available, including sailing, and evening leave passes were generous. Queenslanders who were issued with the tropical uniform were not allowed to wear it into the city (South of the Harbour Bridge), but that was not strictly policed. We would mostly go to the Anzac Club for a meal and then to a show. Then buy a packet of fruit, say 4 lbs (2 kilos) of Cherries for 2 shillings (20 cents) to eat on the train back to Lindfield and walk to the camp. If you fell asleep on the last train and got carried on to Gordon it was a long walk back to camp- had to hurry to make it by 2359 Hrs. Through the Anzac Club interstate and country servicemen could be introduced to residents in Sydney who were willing to extend home hospitality. I availed of this offer and came to meet Miss MacPherson, a retired Nursing Sister who had a unit on the slopes of the harbour at Neutral Bay. Mac’s place became a home away from home for a few young airmen. She was a dear soul and was like a second mother to a few of us. It was a great joy to visit, have a home cooked meal and occasionally sleepover on a Saturday night. She would make up a bed on the lounge and be amazed to find us sleeping on the floor in the morning. I kept up a regular correspondence with her while overseas, as did a few others, and 3 years later made a quick visit on my return in-transit back to Queensland after disembarking in Sydney.
While on the course a few of us including Keith Mills, Eric Sutton, Des Webster, Noel Hooper and myself were detailed to go to the University of N.S.W. where they were doing research into air sickness. We were good guinea pigs, as we were given vouchers for a meal of roast lamb and baked vegetables before the tests started. The tests involved being strapped into a stretcher and swung from ceiling to ceiling to see how long you lasted. I lost my meal after about 10 minutes as did most. As far as I can remember Noel Hooper was the only one who did not part with his meal.
The course finished on 1st January 1943 when we were assigned into various air crew categories for further flying training. The Selection panel tried to get me to accept a pilot’s course as my tests confirmed I was well suited to be a pilot. I pressed hard to be given a Navigator category as I was ‘interested in mathematics,’ and got my wish. Actually the main reason I applied for a ‘navigator’ was the good gen circulating at the time that those chosen for Navigator and Bomb Aimer courses would be going to Canada for flying training with the plan to go on to the U.K. to fly in Lancasters or Halifaxes. There was a proviso that you had to be 19 years of age by 10th January 1943, the date they would have to report back from pre-embarkation leave. (That was my 19th birthday and how I became to be the youngest of the draft). This was confirmed when we were given 10 days leave with instructions to report back at Bradfield Park No. 2 Embarkation Depot on 11th Jan 1943. As from 2nd Jan 1943 my mustering was Air Crew 11 (Navigator) and rank L.A.C. (Leading Aircraftman—not Lance Air Commodore).
It was not hard to take a weeks leave at home. It was a busy week visiting a few relations and then having to say farewells with many a prayer for a safe return from the war. I had made a good friend of the bank manager’s daughter, Jean Hall, and I had a feeling that many thought our friendship was more serious. I took Jean to a dance at the Harrisville School of Arts on the Friday night 8th Jan, but it was not like the old dances as it was overrun by RAAF and American airmen from Amberley which had now grown into a large air base servicing the Pacific war zone. Jean promised to write me while I was away and we did keep up a regular correspondence. A neighbour, Mrs Adams, gave me a poem with a sprig of white heather that I kept with me always. She had given the same to my father when he enlisted in WW1. My leave at home finished on my 19th birthday anniversary, Sunday 10th January 1943 as I left on the morning rail motor from Harrisville on my way back to Sydney, with a heap of goodies from home including a birthday cake.
At Home on Embarkation Leave with Mum, brother Alex and
sisters Margaret and Joyce – January 1943.
A Rookie Airman – No. 425992 ACII R.W. Smith
1942 – In Sydney
Embarkation Depot Sydney & To Canada
From embarkation leave at home I travelled on the “Kyogle’ line, 2nd division, from South Brisbane station arriving in Sydney and No. 2 Embarkation depot at Bradfield Park on Monday 11th January 1943. Leave was granted that night, so I went to visit Miss Mac with a piece of my birthday cake. The rest I shared with mates.
Leave arrangements while at Embarkation Depot were very generous. If no drafts for overseas postings had been issued and no particular duties allocated we were stood down after the mandatory morning parade until the next morning, or even over the week-end if it was on Friday morning’s parade.
The Waiting Period – Stand Downs, Outings and Farewells
There were a few of us who spent a lot of time together during this waiting period, mainly the youngest on the group to be sent overseas. Besides myself there was Keith Mills who had turned 19 only 8 days before me, Lou Brimblecombe whose 19th birthday was about 2 weeks previous to Keith’s, Eric Sutton who had his 19th birthday the previous August and Des Webster whose 19th birthday was in July. We all went on to train as Navigators and Keith, Eric and I became known as the 3 musketeers on the course in Canada. Des went on to train as a Wireless Operator. A few were over 30 years of age and we looked upon them as old fellows. Early in our stay Keith somehow met a girl whose father was a Fijian Envoy Representative in Sydney. Her name was Pat, and on the first Sunday there he asked me to join him and Pat and her friend Merle Green to spend the day at Cronulla and then go to Luna Park at night.
The next few days saw us assigned to some wharf duties at Waterloo and on Thursday 21st January we were detailed to the unloading of mustard gas bombs from an American liberty ship at Glebe Island. Keith Mills, Des Webster and I saw no future in this so we went A.W.L that night and stayed at the Allied Club in town. Stayed in town on Friday and went to the pictures at night with Pat and Merle. Took Merle home to Punchbowl and her parents insisted I stay the night with them. Went back to camp on Saturday morning to learn that we hadn’t been missed. As there was still nothing doing about overseas postings and leave had been granted over the week-end I went back into town, had tea and spent the night at Miss Mac’s. Went into town on Sunday morning to meet Keith, and we went with Pat and Merle for a train trip to Lawson in the Blue Mountains.
The next week saw the usual routine of parade, stand-downs, sports etc. On Friday we were placed on a draft with all leave cancelled and no telephone calls allowed. After lunch the unexpected announcement was made that leave was granted and extended to 1300 Hrs on Sunday 31st Jan. So I went out to Punchbowl to say my farewell to Merle and her family and thank them for their hospitality, and then on to see Miss Mac and the two girls who boarded with her. They insisted I stay for a home cooked dinner and stay overnight. Slept on the lounge room floor. Got back to camp at midday on Sunday to learn there was no further news on our embarkation and that leave had been extended to 0730 Hrs on Monday. As I had said my ‘Good-Byes’ I stayed in camp and wrote a few letters.
On Monday morning we were paraded and went on a long route march before breakfast and after lunch at 1300 Hrs given another stand-down. On Tuesday morning it was a swimming parade and early stand-down again. Wednesday morning was another swimming parade, a film on “Next-of Kin” after lunch and then stand-down until the next morning. Keith had got word out to Pat that we were still around, so we arranged to meet Pat and Merle in the evening and take them to the Prince Edward theatre to see “Reap the Wild Wind”. On Thursday morning we had another route march, pay parade (“The Eagle sh.. on each 2nd Thursday”) and stand-down at 1330 Hrs. It was the usual swimming parade on Friday morning, 5th Feb, and another stand-down after the 1330 Hrs parade until Monday morning. By this time we were beginning to wonder if were ever going to get on board a ship.
With a free week-end ahead I took the opportunity to contact Merle and meet her in town after work and go to the pictures and then see her home to Punchbowl. Again her parents insisted I stay over the week-end. On Saturday morning I went into town to buy a few magazines etc for the trip over to Canada and back to camp to change into tropical uniform of khaki shirt and shorts and back into town to spend the afternoon in the Botanical gardens and go with Merle to the pictures at night to the State Theatre to see “They all kissed the Bride”. Slept overnight at the Green’s and had a very quiet day on Sunday playing draughts and reading a very funny publication titled “One Big Laugh”. On the way back to camp that night the M.P’s boarded the train at Wynyard station and anyone wearing tropical uniform had to surrender their leave passes and were ordered to report to the guard house the next morning. Big trouble?? Wearing of shorts in uniform was not allowed south of the Harbour Bridge.
The Wait is Over
Monday 8th Feb 1943 dawned with guards on all gates at No. 2 Embarkation Depot, an early call to parade and orders given for clearances to be completed. All leave passes were cancelled, so no further use for the passes that were taken from us the previous night. This is it at last. After attending to clearances we were instructed to report back on parade with kit bags packed and ready to move on to buses at 1700 Hrs for transport to Woolloomooloo to embark at 1900 Hrs on the troopship “U.S.S. Hermitage”. It was a ship of 23000 tons which cruised at 18-20 knots. It was formerly the Italian cruise ship “Count Ciano” that travelled around the Mediterranean Sea as a floating casino on pleasure cruises. It had been captured by the American forces and had taken part in the landing of allied troops in North Africa and was on its way back to the west coast of America. We embarked as planned and had a good night’s sleep on board.
We were up at 0600 Hrs on Tuesday morning, detailed on to mess duties and instructed in ‘Abandon Ship’ drills while we lay at anchor in Neutral Bay to take on fuel after taking aboard fresh water, fruit and vegetables and other food supplies at Woolloomooloo. Spent the night at anchor in Neutral Bay and at 0830 Hrs on Wednesday 10th February it was ‘up-anchor’ and away, waving to the passengers on the ferries and sighting many hammer head sharks in the harbour. It was not long before we were out through ‘The Heads’ and setting course Nor-Nor-East into choppy seas with two Dutch Destroyers in escort. I started to feel a bit squeamy? But yes, managed to hold on to my breakfast. We are now under American terms for troops in transit—only two meals a day, but the canteen is open for an hour twice a day. As the Australian landscape slowly dipped from view everyone bravely sheltered their own feelings-generally a mixed feeling of adventure and uncertainty. Everyone realised and acknowledged that as we all went into flying training and operations over enemy territory not all would be returning to see their homeland again.
The destroyer escort left us at 0600 Hrs the next morning and we continued on a zig-zag course through choppy seas in light rain. I was detailed on to mess duties that afternoon and issued with Aussie Comfort Fund parcels. Soon settled into a routine. Those not on mess duties had to attend lectures-a good bit of armed forces psychology to keep the troops moulded into a unit with a common cause of complaint. A couple of albatrosses followed us for the first few days but they then peeled off formation on us. Sharks and flying fish were sighted and on Saturday a pod of whales was sighted on our port side. On Sunday morning we had church parade at 1000 Hrs and then ‘stand down’, but I was detailed on guard duties. Certain duties were allotted to the troops in transit such as mess duties/kitchen hand, deck patrol and shifts on the ack-ack gun at the stern. The ship’s officers were a bit concerned about the Aussies on the ack-ack gun as they were too keen to shoot at the ‘Met’ balloons that were released at regular intervals.
Monday 15th February, 1943, a memorable 2 days. We crossed the International Date line. So, we had Monday twice and the thought of only one day’s pay was given much discussion. Sufficient to record here that after our arrival in Canada due submission was made to RAAF Headquarters and suitable adjustment was made in our paybooks. A compensating adjustment was made on our return to Australia in October 1945. One of the Mondays was the end on my guard duty detail and the idea of lectures to fill in the day did not appeal, so I took a stroll around deck without my life jacket and was promptly apprehended and given 3 day’s kitchen duties, along with a couple of others who realised the opportunity to avoid lectures and enjoy more than two meals a day as we passed along the corridors with trays of hot food yelling “Hot Stuff” to warn others to be careful.
Pango, Pango
On Tuesday morning we sighted land ahead. American Samoa. Berthed in Pango Pango harbour in the late morning to take on fuel, fresh water and unload canned food for the American troops based there. Also embarked a contingent of American Marines. Those not on duties were allowed ashore for a couple of hours but had to remain in the vicinity of the wharf. As I was on kitchen duties I had to take on the scene from the deck, watching some of the fellows enticing the native girls in bright floral dresses to climb the coconut trees. Don’t think they were interested in the coconuts. Cameras were not allowed, under very strict orders, but some did manage to take a few snaps from the ship. We left Pango Pango at 0820 Hrs next day, Wed 17th Feb, and I finished my kitchen duties after midday. Had first good bath and change of clothes for a week, then strolled around the deck again minus life jacket and got another 3 days in the kitchen. Good Show!!
The next morning we sighted a cruiser and a passenger ship heading south-west, the opposite to our north easterly route. There was a rumoured submarine alert that night as the ship’s engines were stopped and we drifted for some few hours. Woke early on Friday morning to the sound of the ship’s fog-horns but there was nothing in sight. Crossed the equator that day with King Neptune coming aboard to put the rookies through the customary initiation ceremony. We all got a liberal coating of shaving cream. On Saturday morning I finished my kitchen duty ‘penalty’ and as the news on the bush radio was that we would be calling into Honolulu by Tuesday next, decided to stay away from penalty duties in case shore leave was granted. Lectures had been toned down a bit by now to make the days less boring. On Sunday, church parade was held at 1000 Hrs and then all were given stand down. So the “Bum Nut” club gathered around Russ Martin’s gramophone to hear Glenn Miller playing “In the Mood” for the umpteenth time, along with ‘Corn Silk’ and other hit tunes of the time. Just can’t remember how the group got the name “Bum Nuts”. Probably from Gum Nuts sitting on their bums on the deck listening to that one record and almost for sure would have been one of Russ Martin’s screwy ideas. Monday 22nd Feb saw the celebration of George Washington’s birthday with dinner of roast turkey, baked vegetables, salads and ice-cream. A welcome variation from the usual navy beans, saveloys and sauerkraut. A concert was held in the afternoon when we were presented with our ‘Crossing the Line’ certificates.
Honolulu
Sighted land early on Tuesday 23rd Feb and at 1000 Hrs berthed in Honolulu. Half of the RAAF contingent was granted shore leave that afternoon. I was in the other half who were given ‘liberty’ from 0830 hrs to 1200 Hrs the next morning.
So we were up early on Wednesday and down the gangplank at 0830 Hrs. I went with Keith Mills, Russ Martin and a few others primarily to buy new gramophone needles. On shore, the first thing we noticed was the number of shop assistants of Japanese descent and the heavily armed guards on all premises with a strong naval and military presence on the streets. We were wearing our tropical uniforms of khaki shirts and shorts and were taken as ‘boy scouts’ by many Americans, which did not go over too well. It was our first encounter with vehicles driven on the right hand side of the road and the ingrained habit of ‘look right’ before crossing soon had to be adjusted. I went very close to being hit by an army truck being driven by an Afro-American. It was a close shave, but fortunately my parents were not to receive that dreaded telegram.
Nowhere could we find gramophone needles-sewing needles, knitting needles. All sorts of needles, but no gramophone needles. Then it dawned on Russ Martin to give a play-acting role of a record spinning around on a turn table. And the shop assistant with a very serious expression said “You mean Phonograph needles”. Problem solved and mission completed. So the old record was going to cop a hiding for a few more days. There was other shopping to do, so we split up and went different ways. I stayed with Noel Hooper and we met an American Army Officer who took a real interest in us and invited us to have a look at the Pearl Harbour Naval Base. After going through a few check points, and might I add, given star treatment, we had to explain that we had to be back on board by 1200 Hrs and by then there was not enough time to go any further. We did get a view of the harbour and the devastation that had been caused and he agreed to take us back to the ship.
While we were ashore many seriously wounded and shell-shocked G.I’s from the Pacific Island battle zones were embarked for repatriation to their homeland. Many required full time medical attendants to apply necessary therapy to teach them to walk again and regain normal physical co-ordination. The ship was now crowded for the rest of the trip.
A band played on the wharf during the afternoon, and then it was ‘Aloha’ as we sailed away to strike rough seas and cold weather all Thursday and Friday, which kept us in our bunks and under blankets for most of the time. We were issued with sheep skin vests from the Australian Comforts Fund which were well received. The seas calmed down a bit by Saturday morning so I was able to enjoy breakfast of beans and an apple. Got some entertainment in the afternoon with the ack-ack guns firing at flak bursts. The Aussies also got some entertainment hearing the G.I’s calling their mates ‘cobras’ after hearing us call ours ‘cobbers’.
On Sunday 28th February, four days out of Honolulu, complaints were lodged about the breakfast because it was not hot. The weather was still cold and rainy. Church parade was held at 1000 Hrs. At 0100 Hrs we had advanced clocks by 30 minutes. In the afternoon I sewed some badges on Ben Smith’s overcoat and was rewarded with a sandwich-can only guess that he got it from the canteen. Clocks were advanced by 30 minutes at 0100 Hrs on Monday morning. We again woke to cold and cloudy weather but the sun managed to break through late in the morning. To keep us on our toes we were put through ‘Abandon Ship’ drill which didn’t go over too well with the American troops who embarked at Honolulu.
Up on deck after breakfast on Tuesday morning 2nd March to see a convoy ahead and a welcome to the sea gulls that had started to circle the ship as we moved towards land. Soon as it was a very spectacular view as we passed under the Golden Gate Bridge to enter San Francisco harbour and berth on the southern side opposite the famous Alcatraz prison island at 1600 Hrs when the tide was favourable. We were promptly disembarked, assembled on the wharf and marched to a ferry terminal to board the ferry across the harbour to Oakland where we were entrained and departed at 2000 Hrs for Vancouver.
We enjoy Our Trip to Vancouver Through to Edmonton
After a bit more than 3 weeks on the ship, it was luxury accommodation and service on the train, and I really enjoyed a good night’s sleep. It was breakfast in style on Wednesday morning as we sped through the foothills of the Cascade mountains, and we enjoyed the view of snow capped hills and frozen lakes for the first time. We descended on to the plains and farming communities of Oregon, fruit, chocolates, ice-cream papers and magazines (you name it) all available from the waiters on the train. We went through Roseburg, and on to Eugene, Albany, Salem (the Capital) and arrived in Portland just on dusk, with the snow capped Mt. Hood on the eastern horizon. The things we noted most during the day were the absence of fences between houses in the towns and cities, and the lack of paint on nearly all the wooden houses. Of course the Queenslanders could not help but notice the luxury of the train travel at speeds and stability that were unknown on the Queensland railways at that time. After such a full day of interest it was no trouble to settle back into the bunk for a good sleep as we travelled on overnight to Seattle and on to Vancouver.
Thursday 4th March was another memorable day. Woke at 0700 Hrs in Vancouver, had breakfast at the station then a pay parade to be issued with Canadian Dollars. Leave was granted from 1130 hrs until 1800 Hrs when we had to be back at the station. The Canadian hospitality came to the fore as we were approached by a Mr Keeler who introduced himself as a Rotarian (my first contact with Rotary) and offered a lift for a few of us into town to the tourist bureau and the YMCA where we enjoyed a meal for 5 cents. He arranged with us to call back at 1400 Hrs to pick us up and drive us around the sights of Vancouver and back to the station by 1800Hrs. There were three of us and as far as I can remember, although I am not sure, the other two may have been Ben Smith and Russ Martin. We were taken over the Lions Gate Bridge, through Stanley Park with its Indian Totem Poles and views of the snow capped Lions Head mountains as well as past the Houses of Parliament and through a few suburbs to be back at the station on time. After tea (what the Canadians called the evening meal) at the station we left by train at 2100 Hrs via the Canadian National Railways route through the Rockies to Edmonton.
We woke the next morning to be greeted by the most spectacular scenery as the long train snaked its way alongside frozen rivers and lakes and snow laden conifer tress in the foot hills, climbing all the time. All around were the majestic Rockies with not a tree on them but capped in snow. It was cold outside but we were in heated carriages with the same service that we enjoyed on the train from Oakland to Vancouver, but the waiters were Canadians. When we did stop at a station for the engine to take on water we could not resist the temptation to jump out and romp in the snow. Most were wearing their dungarees over the singlet and underpants, so it didn’t take long before the freezing temperatures scuttled them back to the warmth of the carriage. At our stop at Avola for 20 minutes it did not take long for a snow fight to develop and by some fluke or by accident a hard packed snowball hit the window of a carriage and broke it. (Jim Bateman it was). Anyway it made that carriage too cold for comfort so the occupants herded into adjoining carriages when we got under way again. Then we saw a bit of organization that you would not see on the Queensland Railways. As we pulled into Jasper the train stopped with the broken window right beside a ladder and a couple of tradesmen with the necessary tools and materials to repair the damage. In less than 20 minutes the new window was installed. We had now climbed to a good height and at Jasper there was a lot of sheet ice on the ground which caused us a few problems to stay on our feet. Three young boys gave us a bit of amusement as we threw our spare Aussie halfpennies along the ice and into snow drifts. After Jasper we crossed the Athabasca River and the highest point on the trip. From there it was downhill on to the prairies of Alberta. We had to stop for some unknown reason near Edson, before going on to Edmonton where we arrived early in the morning of Saturday 6th March 1943.
Avola – Where a carriage window was broken
Jasper – Where the window was fixed
During our 20 minute stop
We stayed on the train until 0600 Hrs and the arrival of a few canvas topped 3 ton trucks on to which we were loaded. The temperature was Minus 23. Fahrenheit and I soon realised that the best option was to be among the first to throw your kitbag in and jump in after it with others piling in after you to keep the cold at bay. We were taken immediately to No.3 Manning Depot (as the RCAF called it), given breakfast and allotted to barracks. We then had to assemble in the ‘Arena’ for a lecture on what to expect in our future movements and to remind us that in the RCAF the flag in front of HQ had to be saluted. This did not impress the Aussies. After that we were given leave until Monday morning. As a general rule most of the trainees under the Empire Training Scheme in Canada were given leave over the week-end. After a shave and a shower I teamed with an Ian Scott (RCAF) and went into town to the pictures and then to a dance at the Memorial Hall. It was very cold coming back to camp on the tram.
On Sunday morning we slept in until 1100 Hrs, then shaved, showered and had dinner before a few of us went into town to the YMCA which was well equipped with a ten-pin bowling alley, heated swimming pool, gymnasium, dance floor and dry canteen. Came back to camp reasonably early with Ben Smith and John Honeyman.
It was down to business on Monday morning as we were issued with flying suits and other gear needed. Photographs were taken for Identity Cards, Dental & Medical checks after dinner and then back into town with Bub Sargeant for a while before coming back to camp to write a few letters to home. On Tuesday morning we were paraded at 0900 Hrs and those mustered for training as Navigators were transported to Edmonton Airport where No.2 Air Observer School was situated, to be signed in, allotted to barracks and issued with text books and settled in after a quick trip into town to buy a few necessities. Three Australians-Jim Bateman, Bill Bowden and Geoff Cohen were assigned to Course No.71N1 along with a number of New Zealanders and Canadians. The remainder of the Australians, including myself, were assigned to Course No.71N2.
Navigators Course No. 71N2
No. 2 Air Observers School - EDMONTON, Alberta, CANADA
On Tuesday 9th March 1943, one month after embarking in Sydney, we started on the above course for training as Air Navigators. It was a rather quiet day, with the issue of text books and some navigation instruments. Even had time to write my first long letter home.
The following day however saw the start of what was to become a regular routine of breakfast, parade, lectures, dinner (at midday), more lectures, tea (evening) and study at night, interrupted on occasions with sport’s afternoons and later on with daylight and night flying. All interspersed with visits to the canteen where we soon learned to enjoy waffles with maple syrup, coke and ice-cream. On Friday at the end of the first week we experienced a very heavy snowfall, got issued with our navigation watches and had our first ‘Dry Swim’ as navigation exercises in the classroom are called. Leave was granted over most week-ends.
On Saturday morning we had another ‘dry swim’ to prepare us for our first flight and then it was stand-down until Monday morning. Church parades were always held on Sunday mornings. Went shopping on Saturday afternoon with Bub Sargent and to a show “Journey for Margaret”. Had a sleep-in on Sunday morning to 1100 Hrs, then shaved and showered and had a big dinner before settling down to write a few letters. Bub Sargent was doing the same and Keith Mills came by to try to get us to go out for tea.
On Monday 15th March we had the usual lecture periods, a pay parade at which the Red Cross managed to get a donation of $5- from us; study at night to keep up with the course. Between lectures the next day we were paraded for issue of battle dress, during which there was more snow fighting. For some reason Bub Sargent and I missed out on the issue that morning-they had probably run out of RAAF-Blue battle dresses in our size. Went to the pictures that night to see “In Which We Serve”. Bruce McGiffin came over from the Manning Depot while we were at lectures on Wednesday just to see how we were going. He was still awaiting a posting on to flying training. He was one of the “Bum Nut Club” on the troopship coming over. Got a letter from cousin Danny, in the Army in New Guinea, and answered it that day as well as writing home again. Lectures on Thursday included one on the camera which was very good. Made a visit to the barber before tea. On Friday we had more ‘dry swim’ exercises and at 1500 Hrs had a Wing’s parade for passing-out of earlier courses of Navigators and Bomb Aimers. Bub and I were issued with our battle dress, had a ‘signals’ lecture and I was put on my first duty on “Watch parade”. Cannot remember for sure now, just what that involved, but I think it meant you were not granted leave over the week-end. Had our usual lectures on Saturday morning, during which there was some excitement when a Boston crashed on the ‘drome. There was a false fire alarm in the barracks that night, probably something to do with Ben Smith smoking in bed. Was not feeling 100% and could feel the flu coming on. Still not feeling well of Sunday, just mooched around and went to bed early.
I Have a Spell in Hospital
On Monday 22nd March I was quite sick and stayed in bed, and was admitted to the Station Hospital with a severe attack of ‘flu. Bub Sargent and Ben Smith visited me after tea. The next day in hospital gave me something to write home about, particularly to Jean Hall who was a nurse in the Ipswich General Hospital. A nurse came and stripped me to the waist to wash me down, as she said, as far a possible. Then does likewise from the other end to wash me up as far as possible. Finally says “I now have to wash possible”. Slept most of Wednesday. Keith Mills and Ron Etherton dropped in with some mail that had arrived and on Thursday. Scotty Gall dropped in with some writing gear so that I could write a letter or two. Got discharged on Friday morning-missed the C.O’s parade. A couple of lectures in the afternoon and early to bed. Recuperated a bit on Saturday morning by sleeping in (no lectures) and then went into town after dinner with Bub Sargent. Met Ben Smith at the YMCA and went to a show at night. On Sunday morning did some study to catch up and after dinner went for a walk with Keith Mills and Ron Etherton, playing with some kids ice-skating in the frozen over gutters on the way.
Woke on Monday 29th March, (sister Margaret’s 18th birthday) to a great blanket of snow. 9 inches had fallen overnight, so the snow fights were alive again. This was when we experimented and discovered that an orange left on top of the ground froze solid in a very short time, but if buried in the snow took a long time to freeze We were due to have our ‘orientation’ flight the next day after muster and pay parade. The weather was dirty however, and this was scrubbed. Instead, we were given lectures on the layout of the Avro Anson, (the “Aggie”), and the 2nd navigator’s job of winding up the undercarriage after take-off, some 130 odd turns of the handle. For our training flights we were paired, the 1st Navigator did the log and plot charts and the 2nd Nav practiced map reading. I was paired with Scotty Gall, aged 30. After tea Keith Mills, Ron Etherton and I went to see “Random Harvest”.
Airborne at Last
Wednesday 31st March 1943 Whooppee!!! Airborne, Took off at 0907 Hrs in ‘Aggie’ No.6074 with bush pilot Mr Anderson on a flight plan: XD (Edmonton)-Wetaskiwin-Camrose-XD. Landed 1034 Hrs. What a familiarisation flight!!. Got a bit airsick and no wonder. The pilot thought the ‘Aggie’ was a fighter plane and shot up the school house at Looma where his girl friend was a teacher. Circled it a few times and could see through the windows as we flashed by.
Next day was April Fools Day but avoided being caught out as we had a packed day of more lectures. Then on Friday we had a few lectures and reported to the Records Office to have our fingerprints taken. Then in the afternoon we had our first photo flight taking hand held obliques. We were given a number of landmarks to photo and the pilot just went from one target to the next which was always in view because of the good visibility and the pilots local knowledge. No directions from the navigator were needed. In spite of the many banks & turns involved I did not get airsick, but others did suffer effects.
It was back in the air again on Saturday morning for another photo flight. This time it was taking vertical cross-country line overlaps from the school house at Namao to a bridge 2 miles S-W of there. Good fun-watch the drift. On these flights the duties of 1st and 2nd navigator were shared. Under strict instructions of course, not to let go of the camera when taking obliques out of the rear window. In the afternoon we relaxed—Ron Etherton, Keith Mills, Russ Martin, Lou Brimblecombe and I went into town, had two games of ten-pin bowling at the YMCA (Won the 2nd game), had tea at “Tony’s” and went to the pictures to see “One of Our Aircraft is Missing”. Back to barracks on the 2140 Hrs bus. As the weather conditions earlier in the week had set back the flying programme, some time was made up on Sunday. Church parade was held in the morning, and after dinner we were briefed for our first navigation exercise which was a flight of about 3 hours with 1st and 2nd Nav duties shared. Route was: XD–Fort Saskatchewan–Camrose-Lougheed-Mannville-Lake Yekau-XD. Took off at 1400 Hrs with Mr Ireland as pilot.
Training Continues
Included in lectures on Monday 5th April was a special talk from a Squadron Leader on the conditions prevailing in Britain. A signals lecture was held after tea, but I did not attend. On Tuesday morning, more lectures {classes on various subjects}, and after dinner we were transferred from “D” Barracks to a new barracks building across the road. Real ‘5 star’ accommodation, with central heating and bathroom/toilet facilities incorporated as well as the sleeping quarters. We still preferred to have some windows open and a bit of fresh air coming in, and Ben Smith still smoked in bed. It was quite a change, as before we had to run from the bath/toilet block back to your hut in temperatures that were unfit for brass monkeys. It was supposed to be a sports afternoon, but that had to be scrubbed.
On Wednesday morning we had another photo flight, this time with a female passenger, probably a friend of the pilot, Mr Lawrie. Then on Thursday we had a review and discussions on our first photo flight, as all the films had been developed and printed. This was followed by practice on the drift recorder. Leave was granted after dinner, from 1400 Hrs, but most of the class stayed in camp to catch up on studies and letter writing. After lectures etc on Friday I was rostered on Duty Watch parade, strolling around that night in rain & mud. More lectures on Saturday morning and more studies in the afternoon as we prepared for “Maps and Charts” exam. Duty Watch Parade before tea. Sunday was still wet and miserable and we studied most of the day, with Duty Watch Parades at 1000 Hrs and 1800 Hrs. A football appeared from somewhere, so a few fellows managed a game in the mud.
Got mail from home on Monday 12th April, with the photos that were taken when I was home on pre-embarkation leave. As the weather was still unsuitable for flying on Tuesday and Wednesday we were occupied with more studies and lectures as well as a game or two of football in the mud. I had to go over to the Manning Depot to have a photo taken and more fingerprinting. Got back in the air on Thursday for a photo exercise with the Ft. Saskatchewan bridge as our target. It was a very bumpy flight. On Friday it was back in the air again on Nav. Exercise No.2: XD- Bremner-Willow Creek-Beynon-Millet-Yekau Lake-XD. A very good trip. Got a telegram from home, and as it was the end of Duty Watch was granted 48 Hrs leave.
So on Saturday morning it was into town to do a bit of shopping, and while browsing through the book department of the Hudson Bay Company store I met a Mrs Gillespie who had some association with Australia, and she invited me out to tea that night, which I gratefully accepted. Went back to camp for dinner, and catch up on a bit of washing etc. Then went to Mrs Gillespie’s place, met her daughter Marsh who showed me over the nearby University after tea. Walked back to camp-about 6 miles. Caught up with studies on Sunday morning, and after dinner a few of us went on a long walk out past the riding ranch. It was about this time that John Stopp was posted from the course to another A.O.S. to complete his nav. course. (He went on to No.166 Squadron, and was shot down and killed on 13th June 1944 on a raid on Gelsenkirken-would have been very early in his tour)
On Monday 19th April we had our first exam in the morning on “Maps & Charts”. Got some mail, including Don Grant’s circular to the Bank staff in the services. Lectures that night on the stars-introduction to astro-navigation. More lectures on Tuesday morning and study in the afternoon to make up for the Easter Friday holiday at the end of the week. Collected my RCAF ID Card. Into the air again on Wednesday on Air Exercise No. 3 Took off at 0830 Hrs on route: XD-Bremner-Lloydminster-Marwayne-Bremner-XD. Almost went without my parachute harness, but it was a good trip. Went with Keith Mills to the pictures at night to see “Reunion in France”. Lectures all day on Thursday, and preparation for Air Exercise No. 4 which we were to fly next Sunday (Anzac Day). Stand-down on Good Friday so went out to tea with Mrs Gillespie & Marsh and met Lin Gilmore, a friend of Marsh’s and a brother of a Mrs Cairns who lived in Ipswich. Lectures again on Saturday morning and went into town shopping in the afternoon, met Lin and Marsh. Had tea with them and came back to camp to study. On Sunday (Anzac Day) we flew Exercise No.4 which was the first time we did an air-plot-previous flights were mainly map-reading. Route was: XD-Ft.Saskatchewan-Hughenden-Czar(Recce)-Wainwright-Ellerslie-XD. In the afternoon the Australians and New Zealanders held a remembrance service at the Cenotaph.
On Easter Monday, 26th April we had lectures in the morning and a photo flight in the afternoon. Then on Tuesday we had lectures all day. In the mail I got a letter from Don Grant with news about the bank employees who were in the services. On Wednesday we had an exam on “Magnets & Compasses” and flew Air Exercise No.5 in the afternoon. To Trochu & Torrington with a ‘recce’ of Three Hills. A very rough flight and most of us got air-sick. On Thursday we started studies on Astro Navigation and had a good lecture on Radio D/F Navigation which was very interesting. On Friday morning we had an exam on “Meteorology”, pay parade and an informative talk on the war in the Middle East. Late in the afternoon we took part in a Victory Loan parade through the streets of Edmonton with a pipe band leading the parade, and all the services involved.
Then on Saturday morning we flew Air Exercise No. 6 which was quite an experience. Mr Lightheart was the pilot and the route was: XD-Bremner-Scapa-Coronation-Bremner-XD. We climbed on track through cloud and heavy rain. Good experience in D.R.Navigation and instrument flying for the pilot. Most of the aircraft turned back but we soldiered on. At E.T.A Coronation came down through broken cloud and there under us was a small town and railway station that the pilot thought was Coronation, but he wanted to make sure and made a low level run past the station to see if we could read the station name. Too close the first time, so around again and stood off a bit further, when we were able to confirm that it was Coronation. So back into the cloud and D.R. Navigation back to Bremner and Base. I think at the end he may have homed in on a radio beam, but anyway I was pleased with the navigation exercise, and earned some brownie points for it.
The rain kept up in the afternoon so I went into town with Noel Hooper where we met Russ Martin and Bub Sargeant, and went to a dance with ‘Ivy” and a few of her friends that Russ and Bub had chatted up. On Sunday morning wrote letters home before dinner and in the afternoon went with Scotty Gall and Alex Taylor on a hike with the 20th Century Club. Here we met Alice Grosco, Mary, Isobel, Helen, Joe and a few others. Had a great time making a fire to toast marshmallows, and spin a few yarns about the ‘hoop ’snakes, and ‘wampoo’ pigeons in Australia. Alice became quite a good friend and kept up correspondence with me until I returned to Australia. On later hikes with Aussies on later courses she met Jim Cossart, who was on a Bomb Aimers Course, and was a friend of mine at Ipswich Grammar School in 1938-39. Jim lost his life on 14th March 1945 flying with 106 Sqdn on a rai to the oil plant at Luitzkendorf.
On Monday 3rd May it was lectures as usual and a crack at a D.R. Test in preparation for a mid-term exam on Friday. More lectures on Tuesday morning and two sports periods in the afternoon, when I would go out to the university track for athletics with a Canadian middle-distance runner, who was a good coach and gave me some good advice on the tactics of 440 and 880 Yard running. Brought my times in the 440 down to about 51 secs and the 880 to just on 2 mins. Called into town on the way back to camp and did some shopping. After tea did study on subject of ‘Photography’. Had our photography exam the next morning, it was an easy paper. In the afternoon we did another D.R. Test - ‘dry-swim’ for a bombing raid on Duisberg. Little did I realise then that I would bomb this target twice in one day seventeen months later. After that, prepared for a flight scheduled for the next morning. But the weather conditions worsened on Thursday and flying was scrubbed for the day.
In terms of arrangements made with Alice last week-end I phoned her (No.83882) to make a date for Saturday night. On Friday morning we had a C/O’s parade and our mid-term D.R. exam. Weather remained bad and flight scheduled for that night was scrubbed. Saturday morning was filled with lectures and after dinner it was flying again on Air Exercise No.6 that so many did not complete on the first attempt (to Scapa & Coronation). I had the job of 1st Nav. again, leaving Scotty to wind up the undercarriage and get a bit of map reading practice this time. It was a rough trip. Then, as arranged, I took Alice to a dance at the YMCA that night. Walked home in the rain.
A ‘phone call diversion during the week. Early in the week during a lecture the ‘phone rang and it turned out to be a girl wanting to speak Eric Sutton, or one of his pals. Somehow, I got the job, probably because I was nearest the phone and Eric saying that she would be referring to either Bob Smith or Keith Mills as he had mentioned those names to her when he met her last week-end. Three of us were regarded as the 3 musketeers, Keith & I were the two youngest on the course, and Eric was only a few months older. We had all enlisted on the same day as Aircrew Guards, been on separate postings for a few months, and then re-united at No. 2 Initial Training School at Bradfield Park to commence training as aircrew and mustered together to train as Navigators. To come on this course we were required to be age 19 by 10th January 1943, which was my nineteenth birthday, so I just made it as the baby of the course.
So to the phone I go - “All for one and one for all”. She explained that she had two very good friends and wanted to know if Eric and his two mates would like to join them one evening and go ‘shagging’. With a bit of quick thinking and with survival uppermost in mind I asked her to hang for a moment while I checked. It called for some reference to our Canadian Instructor which caused a bit of hilarity among the class and a few remarks about how you can be so lucky etc until he explained that in Canada the term meant ‘dancing’. With that bit of clarification and referral to Eric & Keith, I told her that we would be happy to meet them on Sunday afternoon. Had the usual church parade on Sunday morning and after dinner set off with Keith and Eric as leader to meet Mildred, Charlotte and Maureen. Spent some time with them at the YMCA and came back to camp in time for our first night flying exercise. It turned out the three girls became very good friends, I partnered Maureen O’Connor who was a primary school teacher. Took off at almost midnight on what was called exercise No. 21 for a 2 Hrs 45 mins flight, sharing 1st and 2nd Nav duties with Scotty Gall.
Monday 10th May saw us sleeping in until dinner time as we didn’t land from our night exercise the night before until after 0300 Hrs. Had lectures after dinner. Did very well with mail from home over the next two days. On Tuesday morning we flew exercise No.7, as 2nd Nav this time, and in the afternoon got the results of our mid-term D.R. exam. I got a mark of 87%, with which I was pleased. Had lectures all day Wednesday and a late night studying. On Thursday morning flew Exercise No. 8 “navigation by track error”, as 1st Nav. After dinner we were given leave. Went out with Maureen to the Capitol cinema and walked home with Keith who had taken Charlotte out, after we had seen the girls home. Made it a late night as it was an hour walk back to camp. Got more mail from home on Friday morning and had lectures all day. Detailed on Duty Watch Parade that night. Spent Saturday (15 May) in camp as I was on Duty Watch Parade, studied in the afternoon and prepared for night flying Exercise No.22. Took-off at 2305 Hrs, but had to return to Base with trouble in the starboard engine. Changed over to a ‘photo’ plane and took off again at 0045 Hrs (Sunday) for a 3 hours solo night flight. Didn’t get to bed until 0500 Hrs, but up again at 1030 Hrs to prepare for Air Exercise No.9, as 2nd Nav, that afternoon. Took of at 1335 Hrs, with Mr Barnard as pilot for a fight of 2 hrs 55 mins.
Had lectures all day on Monday 17th May and wrote 7 letters to friends at home to catch up on some of my mail. Also had to prepare for Air Exercise No.10 scheduled for the next day. It was lectures in the morning on Tuesday, and Air Exercise No.10 in the afternoon. Took off at 1355 Hrs with Mr Luyckfassel as pilot for a flight of 3hrs 15 mins as 1st Nav. It was a bumpy trip but a good navigation exercise as the pilot flew the courses given and didn’t tend to track crawl.
Wrote more letters and cards that night. Had lectures all day on Wednesday, and after tea prepared for Night Flying Exercise No.23. Took off at 2300 Hrs with Mr Rathbone as pilot on a trip that took 3Hrs 15 mins down to Little Fish Lake. It was time off in the morning so we slept in. Had 2 lectures after dinner and went swimming at West End before tea. It was then more evening lectures and preparation for Air Exercise No. 11 the next morning. This consisted mainly of preliminary work on the flight plan. On Friday morning took off at 0855 Hrs for a 3 Hrs trip as 2nd Nav, enjoying the scenery and pretending to be map reading with the pilot Mr Neale keeping an eye on your performance, as the pilots had to file a report after each flight. Had two lectures after dinner, and as it was the end of my stint on ‘Duty Watch’ I went out with Maureen to the Capitol cinema and saw “Hitler’s Children”.
On Saturday and Sunday had 48 Hrs leave pass after duty watch. Went into town and banked $40 in to an account I had established with the Royal Bank, to bring my balance up to $80-. It was Red Cross day in town so I bought a fountain pen, then called on Maureen to say I could not go out with her that night as I had accepted an invitation out to tea with Mrs Gillespie. After tea went for a walk with Marsh while Mrs Gillespie went to the pictures with a friend. Slept in as usual on Sunday morning and did some preparatory flight plan work for a flight scheduled the next day. In the afternoon went hiking with the 20th Century Club and we were joined by several Aussie Sergeants from RAAF No.30 course who had their wings and were in transit through Edmonton.
On Monday morning 24th May 1943 we took off at 0830 Hrs On Air Exercise No.12 with Mr O’Hanlon as pilot. I was 1st Nav and was satisfied with good results. It was a 4 hour flight and we had to plot a square search and leading line search patterns. Study after dinner, and then after tea I did my laundry that had been soaking for a few days and wrote a few letters home. Lectures on Tuesday morning and sports in the afternoon when we played softball and got beaten by one run. After tea we were up till late doing Aircraft Recognition. Had lectures all day Wednesday and prepared for flight that night. Took off at 2355 Hrs with Mr Craig as pilot on a 3 Hr 15 min flight navigating by D/F. Not a very satisfactory result as the pilot was obviously track crawling. After the night flight slept in until dinner time and then had a couple of lectures in the afternoon. Before tea went round to the University for athletics training (running & high jump). Got a telegram from home and at night it was practice with the sextant shooting a few stars. Called on to C/O’s parade on Friday morning and a passing out parade for Bomb Aimers. Sent a telegram home in the afternoon and as I was feeling a few sore muscles after yesterday’s athletic training I had a rub down and went to bed early. Had lectures on Saturday morning and moved to new classroom in new G.I.S. Buildings. Attended a Highlands Games in the afternoon where I represented the station in both High and Long Jumping. With not much success, but our team managed to come second overall. Met Marsh Gillespie at the games, who was there with two friends Pat and Betty. Flying was scheduled for that night, but had to be scrubbed owing to bad weather. Usual sleep-in on Sunday morning, and after dinner Keith Mills & I went out to Maureen’s home. Walked home in the rain.
On Monday 31st May it rained all day, but did not interfere with a full programme of lectures, but did cause night flying to be scrubbed again. Wrote home, and at night went out with Keith and Charlotte; Maureen was unable to come. The girls were going to Vancouver the next day. Bad weather continued all day Tuesday, so it was lectures all day and study at night. Got a card from Maureen on Wednesday to say the girls had arrived in Vancouver, and also got a letter from my old boss, Mr Lindsay Hall. We were supposed to have an Army Co-op exercise but that was washed out. Aldis Lamp tests in the afternoon and study at night. Put my forage cap in for dry cleaning. On Thursday (3rd June) had P.T. first thing in the morning and the “Synthetics on Astrograph”. Cannot remember what that entailed, probably an astro navigation dry swim. A morse test in the afternoon and two letters from home, one form Jean Hall and the Bank’s ‘Nautilus’ magazine. Answered Jean’s letter and also wrote one to Merle Green. It was usual C/O’s parade on Friday morning and our 13th week Navigation Test in the afternoon. Got a letter from Maureen, and after tea went in to town, went to a show, came back to camp and wrote a few letters. On Saturday morning we had more lectures, and after dinner wrote a couple of letters and did my washing. Went out to tea at Mrs Gillespie and went in to town with Marsh, bought progress numbers of Journal and Bulletin to send home. Usual sleep-in on Sunday and wrote more letters in the afternoon. Study after tea and preparation for a flight schedule for tommorrow.
On Monday 7th June we had lectures in the morning and flew Exercise No. 13 in the afternoon, as a 2nd Nav. Took off at 1425 Hrs and were airborne for 3Hrs 15 mins. More study after tea. Lectures most of the day on Tuesday with sports in the latter half of the afternoon. After tea went for athletics training at the university and came back to camp to prepare for tomorrow’s scheduled flight. Took off at 0855 Hrs on Wednesday on Air Exercise No.19 with Mr Williams as pilot on a low flying exercise of 3 Hrs 20 mins. It was great-best trip yet. After dinner got a letter from Maureen which I answered and also wrote some letters home. Had lectures all day Thursday as it rained all day. More running around in the mud, and athletics training at the university was cancelled. Friday saw lectures again all day, and start of another duty watch which I hoped would be my last time. The weather cleared up in the late afternoon and we were able to fly night exercise that night. Took off at 25 mins after midnight (Sat morn) with Mr Real as pilot. Usual 3 Hr trip as 1st Nav, being a night exercise. It was an interesting one on which a few got lost. Didn’t get into bed until 0430 Hrs so slept in until dinner time. Studied all afternoon as the study load was getting heavier, and it was early to bed as we had a flight scheduled for Sunday morning. Took off at 0855 Hrs with Mr Real as pilot, as 1st Nav on a flight of 2 Hrs 50 mins. Had dinner when we landed and slept all afternoon. Wrote a long letter home after tea.
For the week starting Monday 14th June we had a heavy programme of lectures and study as the weather continued to be poor, scrubbing all flying. I was on Duty Watch until Friday. It was still drizzling rain at the end of the week and on Saturday morning we had more lectures. After dinner Keith Mills and I went to a show, and then after tea we went to another show with Charlotte and Maureen, who were now back from Vancouver. Walked home from Charlotte’s home through large pools of water and mud. Was able to tell Maureen that I had received her card that morning that she had posted the day before in Calgary on the way home. Usual sleep-in on Sunday morning and study in the afternoon. Went to tea at Mrs Gillespie’s with Ian Pender and Don Plumb. Ian was on another course, and I cannot remember how Don came to be invited. A night flying exercise was scheduled, but had to be scrubbed.
On Monday 21st June it was still raining, so we had another full day of lectures and study. Got 2 letters from home. After tea managed to go to the university track for athletics training as the weather cleared during the afternoon. This enabled us to get airborne on Tuesday morning on Air Exercise No.15. Took off at 0855 Hrs, as 2nd Nav, with Mr Stewart as pilot on a flight of 3 Hrs 05 mins and managed to get some practice with the bubble sextant by taking a few shots on the sun. Rain came on again in the afternoon, so went to a film on the station “Road to Tokio”. It was still raining lightly on Wednesday, so it was lectures and study during the day, and after tea met Maureen in town and went to see “China”. Lectures all day on Thursday and training at the university track after tea. Saw Maureen and Charlotte on the way home. Weather cleared on Friday and was good enough to fly, so at 1435 Hrs took off with Mr Rungel as pilot on Air Exercise No.16 which was for only 2 hours.
On Saturday we got called for 2 lectures in the afternoon. Got letters from both of my sisters. Just after tea Maureen and Charlotte came riding bikes past the barracks so we had a bit of a yarn with them, but could not go out with them that evening as we had a flight scheduled for early the next morning. Immediately after breakfast on Sunday morning took off at 0910 Hrs with Mr Tibbets as pilot on Air Exercise No.17 as 1st Nav on a trip of 3 Hrs 25 mins to Cremona and a look at the Rockies. A very good flight. More athletics training at the university in the afternoon and then over to a sports ground where Keith Mills and Eric Sutton were playing cricket. Maureen, Charlotte and Mildred were there watching them. Took photos.
On Monday morning 28th June, we had ‘magnetism & compass’ exam and after dinner two periods of instruction/educational films. Two letters from Aussie in the mail. More training at the university after tea. On Tuesday morning another exam on Instruments and D/F. Went to the pictures after tea with Maureen, Keith and Charlotte to see “Happy go Lucky”. Was supposed to do Aircraft Recognition that night but missed it. Lectures all day on Wednesday and at 2355 Hrs took off on Air Exercise No.26. This exercise had been scrubbed about 6 times owing to bad weather. It was a 3 hour flight, which meant we didn’t get to bed until about 0400 Hrs on Thursday morning. So it was a sleep-in until 1045 Hrs.
Thursday 1st July was “Dominion Day” After dinner went to a sports meeting conducted by the Southside Business Ass’n, at the Southside Sports grounds which had a straight 220 yard track and a lap of about 880 yards. Ran in the 440 yards race and won it, for which I received the grand sum of $80-00. Soon after competed in the high jump, but could only manage 4th, which paid nothing. This was my first experience of a professional sports meeting that also included cycling. Athletes were not permitted to wear ‘spikes’. The dirty tricks played by the cyclists in team events really opened my eyes. Maureen and Keith and Charlotte came to the event and we celebrated afterwards by going out to tea at the Royal George on my winnings. At the meet 3 parachute jumpers put on a very interesting display.
Friday saw us with lectures all day and flying Air Exercise No.27 at night. Took off at 2355 Hrs with Mr Lannon as pilot on a good flight of 3 Hrs 20 mins. At this time of the year in Edmonton it is nearly midnight before it gets dark, so night flying is fairly restricted. Usual sleep-in on Saturday morning after night flying. Saturday afternoon and Sunday saw the usual week-end chores, study and letter writing.
Monday 5th July saw the start of 2 weeks of intensive lectures, study, flying and exams to complete our course on time. In peace time the course would take over 12 months but in the urgency of the war situation had to be concentrated and focus on the essentials. Flew Air Exercise No.18 that morning. Took off at 0900 Hrs with Mr Real as pilot on a trip of 3 hours. Then on Tuesday afternoon we flew Air Exercise No.20. This was blindfold exercise that took us all over the map for almost 3 ½ hours. We took off at 0900 Hrs with Mr Filby as pilot. Air Exercise designated No.19 must have been cancelled. Bad weather prevented any flying from Wednesday to Friday. Got a long letter from my brother Alex on Wednesday and then one from Miss McPherson in Sydney on Saturday. Lectures all day on Saturday and study at night before flying Air Exercise No.28 which was a night navigation on the same course of daylight exercise No.10. Took off at 2300 Hrs with Mr Barnard as pilot. Flew through storms and cloud out to Frog Lake. Slept in on Sunday morning-you were excused from Church Parade if you were flying the night before. After dinner studied meteorology for an hour or so and then went to watch Keith and Eric playing cricket and then we all met Maureen, Charlotte and Mildred at the corner of 109th and Jasper later in the afternoon.
On Monday 12th July we had our final D.R. (Navigation) test. Wrote home and did preparation for more flying tomorrow. A large bag of mail from Australia came in but I did not score a thing. Maureen phoned just after tea. On Tuesday(13th July) took off at 0835 Hrs with Mr Luyckfassel as pilot on Air Exercise No.21, which was a special, incorporating evasive action, designed to prepare us for active service conditions. More lectures in the afternoon and studied meteorology at night. Supposed to fly on Wednesday morning, but this was scrubbed-raining again. So we had our final meteorology exam. The rain kept up through Thursday and Friday so time was passed with sessions of lectures and study more lectures on Saturday morning, usual laundry chores and letter writing after dinner and as the weather had cleared prepared for flying that night after tea. This was night flight over the route of Exercise No.9 that we had flown in daylight two months ago. Took off at 2355 Hrs with Mr Kellough as pilot and as 2nd Nav. I had to practice astro shots with the bubble sextant. That meant a sleep-in on Sunday morning and as we had some catch-up to do in order to finish the course on time another night flight was scheduled that evening. Took off at 2325 Hrs with Mr McCall as pilot on the route of Exercise No.11 that had previously been flown in daytime.
It was the usual sleep-in after night flying on Monday morning 19th July. In the afternoon and on Tuesday & Wednesday we had a few final written tests. On Wednesday night our final night flying test was scheduled. Took off at 2300 Hrs with Mr Cusater as pilot on the route of Exercise No.12 flown in daytime. This flight of 3 Hrs 05 mins was the final air exercise on which we were assessed. On Thursday 22nd July after dinner we were advised that all had passed the course, and got instructions to attend to clearances for medical and dental and to hand in any equipment that had been issued to us. ‘Wings’ passing out parade would be held on Friday 23rd July 1943.
On Thursday night Keith, Eric and I took the girls out to The Barn and then went walked them home. We invited them to the ‘Wings’ parade, but they could not attend. Friday was a big day with the presentation of our ‘wings’ and the sewing of Sergeant’s stripes on our sleeves. At the pay parade after ‘wings’ presentation I was given a slip of paper with the instructions “Here is your Commission, it is now up to you to arrange for the issue of Officer’s Uniforms etc”. Also commissioned off course were Ivan Biddle and “Inky’ Keena who were posted to other Air Observer Schools as instructors, Ken Todd, Ted Hall, John Honeyman, Noel Hooper and Les Sabine. Ben Smith was on line-ball about passing and had to go to a review committee as at this stage he had admitted he had put his age back to enlist, and he was in fact aged 35 Yrs-not 30 years according to the records. Ben did eventually go on the fly in Bomber Command and lost his life on night of 24/25 Dec. 1944 on a raid on Cologne with 166 Squadron.
With kit bags packed and left at ‘despatch’ as instructed, I went to Maureen’s for tea. Her father drove me to the station where we left Edmonton by Canadian National Railway at 2130 Hrs for Toronto.
Reflections on leaving Edmonton
Thoughts that would be shared by all now on their way to the European Theatre of WW11.
All shared a sense of satisfaction and relief that we had earned our ‘wings’ as Air Navigators after a very intensive course of 4 ½ months that involved a total of 75 Hrs 55 mins of daylight flying and 34 Hrs 45 mins of night flying for the average member, and instruction and exams in 12 subjects such as Navigation, Maps & Charts, Magnetism & Compasses, Instruments, D.F/Wireless Telegraphy, Meteorology, Aerial Photography, Signals, Reconnaissance, Armament and Aircraft Recognition. In all I managed an overall pass of 82.4%. A few found the going hard towards the end of the course, as it was not easy and acknowledged the support, encouragement and assistance given by the chief instructor F/O. Brown (RCAF). He did encourage a few to hang in and was rewarded with their dedication and success. All realised though that there was still a long way to go with further training after our arrival in the UK before we were fully trained to assume the roll of a navigator in a crew on Bomber Command.
The main memories most of shared:-
• The extreme cold and snow covered prairies when we first
started flying, which made it difficult to judge height from
the air.
• The mud and slush when the snow did melt, and the river
thawed, and the great swarms of mosquitoes-large scotch
greys.
• The fields turning to green when wheat was planted and to
yellow as the dandelions came into bloom.
• The brown bears coming in close to town in search of food in
the late winter and playing with their cubs who often got a
disciplinary clout.
• Gophers popping in and out of their holes in the field beside
our barracks.
• Young children ice skating on the frozen gutters in the streets’
• Our own first try at ice skating on a frozen flooded tennis
court and being conned into playing ice hockey, which was
good because it gave you a hockey stick for support.
• The pain that a few suffered from frost bitten ears- in spite of
warnings.
• The Indian quarters that we passed through when walking to
town.
• The hospitality of the people.
• On a few reported occasions being mistaken for “Austrians’.
• The beauty of snow laden trees early in the morning.
• For Queenslanders—the 4 distinct seasons.
• Saluting the flag in front of HQ. The furore caused when an
item of female underwear was hoisted thereon one night and
the Aussies had no objection to saluting that particular
standard.
• The skill of the ‘Bush Pilots’ They were all civilians who had
good permanent work because of the Empire Training Scheme, but they were very competent at their job. True Canadian Geese-born to flying.
• Waffles and Maple Syrup and Coke and Ice Cream in the
Station canteen.
• Strictly taboo. But some made it** Flying under the high level
bridge.
• The sports facilities at the YMCA.
• Ben Smith’s accidents from smoking in bed.
Personally, there was the joy of wonderful friends made. The gang of the 20th Century Club and at the YMCA where I met Alice Grosco who kept up correspondence with me for two years after the war, until I told her I was going back to Scotland to marry Alma. Alice did have a special reason to keep in touch, as from a later Bomb Aimer course she met Jimmy Cossart on one of the Club’s regular hikes. He came from Boonah and was a boarder with me at Ipswich Grammar School 1938-39 and she was quite surprised when Jim told her he knew me. Later I was to meet Jim at the Boomerang Club in London on a few occasions until in the last months of the war he lost his life in a raid over Germany.
Perhaps the most cherished memory was the wonderful friendship that Keith and Eric and I enjoyed with Charlotte, Mildred and Maureen. They really treated us more like brothers and I would say did not put any pressure on us for a lasting relationship. We were welcomed into their homes. They truly were three girls who enjoyed the simple pleasures, and were good companions to each other. What you saw was what they were.
As we left Edmonton we were all aware that we were now on the way to the big adventure with its inevitable risks. Also we would soon be split up to go various ways. In fact when we got to Embarkation Depot at Halifax, after leave, a few of us would move into the Officers Mess, whilst the rest would be in the Sergeant’s Mess. But for the period of leave, and until we got to Halifax, those who were commissioned would continue with Sergeant’s stripes on our uniforms and stay as a group. Most important in our minds was to enjoy leave as we journeyed to Halifax across Canada with a break to visit New York. We had completed a course of flying training, all with over a 100Hrs up, and without an accident and with no loss of life.
These Were Fellow Course Participants
Following is a summary of the participants on the course and a brief detail of the operational experience of most, with pertinent information on those who lost their lives in training and on operations over Europe as well as those who were shot down and were taken Prisoner of War, or, in one case evaded capture.
After the war I kept in regular touch with Keith Mills, and since the late 1980’s with Lou Brimblecombe. We were the three youngest on the course. Eric Sutton did his tour with 622 Sqdn which was also based at Mildenhall where I served in XV/15 Squadron. And I did not get in contact with him again until December 2002, when he was traced living in Victoria. Roy Olsen moved to Tasmania after he retired as a school teacher and we had contact each Christmas. Noel Hooper, who came from the Nambour district died a few years after the war. Scotty Gall returned to work with the Bank of NSW and on retirement moved to Cooroy in Queensland, where I resumed contact in the early 1990’s. After his wife died he sold his property and moved to a retirement village in Brisbane, where he also died in 1999/2000. In one of those co-incidences in life, Scotty (or Vernon as he was known to his family) turned out to a brother of a friend we have known in the church at Alexandra Headland for many years.
It is interesting to note the service history of the ‘Todd’ Brothers, Ernie and Ken. They were both schoolteachers from the Newcastle area (both born in Canada). They enlisted together and went through initial training and operational training together and served on the same squadron flying in Wellingtons out of Foggia in Italy. They returned to their pre-service vocation. Ken, who was shot down and taken POW, died is 1986 at the age of 71 and Ernie died in 2002 at the age of 89.
Don Plumb “Bluey” did a tour in Halifaxes and died of acute leukaemia about 1987.
Course No.71N2-EATS-at No2. A.O.S EDMONTON, Canada. All members of RAAF
Duration 10/3/1943 to 23/7/1943,
Instructors:- F/O.W.H.Brown & P/O. Pogue ??? (both R.C.A.F)
NAME Number Birth Enlisted Discharged D.O.Death Posting on Rank Awards SeeNotes
Discharge ***
BIDDLE Ivan R. 424905 13/10/1913 09/10/1942 09/10/1945 8 O.T.U F/Lt Instructor in Canada
Goulburn Sydney
BRIMBLECOMBE C.L. 425592 23/12/1923 25/04/1942 07/12/1945 9 A.H.U F/O (218/514 Sqdn)
(Louis) Brisbane Brisbane
ETHERTON Ronald H. 423088 02/11/1921 20/06/1942 13/08/1944 76 Sqdn F/Sgt ***No.1
Sydney Sydney
GALL V. Scott 424915 08/08/1912 09/10/1942 16/04/1946 1315 Flight F/O (467Sqdn)
Mosman NSW Sydney
HALL Ernest T 406976 17/02/1914 26/05/1941 25/02/1946 9 A.H.U F/Lt Instructor in Canada
Perth Perth
HONEYMAN John 429498 23/05/1923 08/10/1942 15/02/1946 1656 C.U F/Lt D.F.C.
Deepwater Brisbane
HOOPER R. Noel 425851 16/12/1923 21/05/1942 21/08/1945 1 P.H.U F/Lt *** No.2
Nambour Brisbane
KEENA Ilford N. 424870 12/10/1912 09/08/1942 22/06/1945 9 A.O.S F/O Instructor in Canada
Ballengarra Sydney
LEWIS John H. 423142 27/01/1923 20/06/1942 08/11/1943 3 A.F.U. Sgt. ***No.3
Broken Hill Sydney
MARTIN H. Russell 418289 28/12/1922 15/05/1942 13/12/1945 21 O.T.U F/O D.F.C
Melbourne Melbourne
MILLS Keith C. 425954 02/01/1924 21/05/1942 27/10/1945 78 Sqdn W/O ***No.4
Mackay Brisbane P.O.W
MURTHA Harold H. 429473 30/05/1922 08/10/1942 05/09/1945 12 O.T.U F/O (463 Sqdn)
Brisbane Brisbane
OLSEN Roy P. 429479 10/07/1920 08/10/1942 15/11/1945 640 Sqdn W/O ***No.5
Bundaberg Brisbane
PALFERY Noel J. 424920 16/05/1914 09/10/1942 18/07/1945 467 Sqdn F/O (467 Sqdn)
Brisbane Sydney
PLUM Donald A. 424934 17/12/1919 09/10/1942 17/12/1945 96 Sqdn F/O (466/462 Sqdns)
Inverell Sydney
NAME Number Birth Enlisted Discharged D.O.Death Posting on Rank Awards SeeNotes
Discharge ***
SABINE C.W. Leslie 426165 08/12/1917 23/05/1942 01/07/1946 466 Sqdn F/Lt. D.F.C.
Brisbane Brisbane
SARGENT Allan J. 410098 19/10/1918 08/11/1941 22/01/1946 1 M.R.U W/O ***No.6
(Bulb) Williamstown Melbourne 44 Sqdn-P.O.W.
SMITH Benjaminn H. 424891 24/03/1914 09/10/1942 24/12/1944 166 Sqdn F/Sgt ***No.7
Merriwether Sydney
SMITH Ian H. 423913 20/10/1922 18/07/1942 18/06/1944 115 Sqdn F/Sgt ***No.8
Katoomba Sydney
SMITH Robert W. 425992 10/01/1924 21/05/1942 12/12/1945 32 Base F/Lt (XV/15 Sqdn)
Brisbane Brisbane No.3 Group RAF Bomber Command
SUTTON Eric C. 425910 04/081923 21/05/1942 17/09/1945 84 O.T.U F/O (622 Sqdn)
Gympie Brisbane
TAYLOR Alexander 424804 04/08/1920 09/10/1942 02/01/9/1946 R.A.F. F/O
Arncliffe Sydney Dumbeswell
TODD Ernest 424942 30/12/1913 09/101942 10/08/1945 3 A.O.S F/O (142 Sqdn)
Canada Sydney Italy
TODD W. Kenneth 424878 16/07/1915 09/10/1942 06/12/1945 142 Sqdn F/Lt ***No.9
Canada Sydney
General Comments
All participants in the above course were members of the RAAF, and many were recruited under the “Air Crew Guard” category in May 1942. They left Australia (Sydney) on the USS “Hermitage”, departing on Wednesday 10th February 1943, arriving via Pago Pago and Hololulu at San Francisco on Tuesday 2nd March 1943, where they disembarked and then entrained at Oakland to go by rail, via Vancouver, to Edmonton in Canada where they disembarked on Saturday morning 6th March 1943 when the temperature was reading –23 (Fahrenheit).
Course No.71N2 started on 10th March at No.2 A.O.S at the Edmonton airfield with Avro Anson aircraft flown by civilian “Bush” Pilots. Passing out parade and presentation of wings with promotion to Sergeant was held on Friday 23rd July. Eight members were commissioned off course to rank of Pilot Officer. No casualties were recorded on training.
All but 3 were posted to “Y” (Embarkation) Depot in Halifax Nova Scotia (spending some time on leave in Montreal & New York on the way) where they embarked on the R.M.S “Queen Mary” on Friday 28th August 1943 and sailed to the Clyde in Scotland where they disembarked at Gourock on Tuesday 31st August 1943 and entrained for overnight travel to the RAAF’s No.11 Personnel Despatch and Reception Depot at Brighton. From here most were posted to various advanced training units to be incorporated into a crew and fly in Lancasters & Halifaxes of Bomber Command.
Postings as listed in the above schedule are the postings as recorded at the time the airman was recalled to No.11 P.D.R.C at Brighton for repatriationto Australia, or upon date of death, or at time of loss on operation and taken POW. Sqdn reference under notes is one they did tour with (where known).
Course 71N2- Details of Casualties, either loss of life or shot down and taken P.O.W, or Evaded Capture
No.1. Ronald Henry ETHERTON No.76 Squadron. In Halifax 111 LL578 MP-H Bar on night of 12/13 August 1944 took off from Holme-on-
Spalding At 2129 Hrs to bomb the Opel Motor factory at Russelsheim. Crashed 2Km N.E. of Hamm (Germany)
and all crew were killed. They rest in France in the Choloy War Cemetery, which suggests their graves were
investigated by an American Unit. Of the 297 aircraft (191 Lancasters, 96 Halifaxes 7 10 Mosquitoes) that took part
in the raid 7 Halifax & 13 Lancasters were lost. 6.7% of the force. Local reports stated the factory was only slightly
damaged.
No.2. Rupert Noel HOOPER No.463 Squadron. In Lancaster 111 LM597 JO-W on night of 24/25 June 1944 took off from Waddington at 2229
Hrs on their first ‘op’ to bomb flying bomb base at Prouville. Crew, with exception of the F/Eng, were all
RAAF; believed shot down by night fighter. B/A, W/O/P and both gunners were captured and taken POW
Pilot, F/Eng & Nav (Noel) evaded capture Pilot W/Cdr D.R.Donaldson RAAF was among the most senior officers
to evade capture in 1944.
.No.3 John Hedgley LEWIS The Course’s first casualty, in training, on 8th November 1943 at No.3 Advanced Flying Unit, Halfpenny Green.
Buried in Chester (Blacon) Cemetery, Cheshire, England. Section A Grave No154
.
No.4 Keith Cyril MILLS POW. No.78 Squadron. In Halifax 111 MZ692 EY-P on night of 22/23 June 1944 took off from Breighton at 2230 Hrs to
bomb railway yards at Laon. First operation for most of the crew. Shot down by enemy fire and baled out. 5 were
taken POW and 2 evaded capture. All the crew, with exception of the F/Eng, were RAAF. Keith was arrested in
France and taken into custody by the Gestapo, being held with other members of his crew for about 3 months in
Buchenwald Concentration Camp until ‘rescued’ by the Luftwaffe and transferred to Stalag Luft L3 Sagan and
Balaria. POW No.8018. 4 Halifaxes were lost on this Laon raid.
No.5 Roy Peter OLSEN POW. No.640 Sqdn. In Halifax 111 LK865 C8-Q on night of 27/28th May 1944 took off from Leconfield at 2356 Hrs to
bomb Military Camp at Bourg-Leopold. Shot down by night fighter and crashed 0228 hrs near Antwerp. Pilot,
F/Eng & M/U/G were killed. Roy was taken POW and held in L7 Stalag Luft, Bankau-Kruelberg. POW No.95.
No.6 Allan Joseph SARGENT POW. No44 Sqdn. In Lancaster 1 LL938 KM-S on night of 21/22nd June 1944 took off from Dunholme Lodge at 2325
Hrs to bomb synthetis oil plant at Wesseling. Shot down by night fighter Pilot, B/A, W/O/P and R/G were killed
and are buried in Nederweert War Cemetery. Bub was taken POW and held in L7 Stalag Luft, Bankau-Kreulberg.
POW No.236. Of the 133 Lancasters & 6 Mosquitoes that took part on this raid, 37 Lancasters were lost—27.8%
of the force. 10/10 cloud was encountered and planned 5 Group’s Low-Level marking of the target was not
possible so H2S was used with only moderate success. 44, 49 & 619 Sqns lost 6 aircraft each. This was the last
occasion on which Bomber Command would suffer such a severe loss in operations to the Ruhr.
It is believed that above crew was the only Bomber Command crew lost in the war that comprised airmen from the 3 Commonwealth & Dominion air forces, plus a USAAF representative.
No.7 Benjamin Hartley SMITH No.166 Sqdn. In Lancaster 1 NG297 AS-K2 on night of 24/25 December 1944 (Christmas Eve) took off from
Kirmington at 1515 Hrs to bomb railway communications at KOLN-Nippes (COLOGNE). Crashed in the target area. All the crew were killed and buried locally, since when their bodies have been interred in the Rheinsberg
War Cemetery.
97 Lancaster & 5 Mosquitoes took part—5 Lancasters were lost over the target area and 2 more on return to
England owing to bad weather. Oboe marking was used with very accurate results. Local reports showed that
railway tracks were severely damaged & an ammunition train blew up. Nearby airfield,(Butzweilerhof) also
damaged.
No.8 Ian Harrison SMITH No.115 Sqdn. In Lancaster 1 HK559 A4-H on night of 17/18th June 1944 took off from Witchford at 0102 Hrs to
bomb oil installations at Montdidier. Dived into the ground and exploded with great force at Gannes (Oise), 5 Km N of St-Just-en-Chausse. All lie buried in the Gannes Communal Cemetery.
317 aircraft (196 Lancasters, 90 Halifaxes, 19 Mosquitoes & 12 Stirlings) took part in this and a similar targets at
Aubnoye and St Martin-l’Hortier. Targets were covered by cloud. Master bomber called off raid at Montdidier after
Only a few aircraft had bombed. Above was only aircraft lost on this operation.
No.9 William Kenneth TODD POW No.142 Sqdn. In Wellington Bomber took off from Foggia in Italy to bomb airfield on outskirts of Vienna. On 10th
May1944. It was crews 10th “Op”. Shot down by fighter in target area. In hospital in Vienna for short period before
going to Frankfurt for interrogation and to Stalagluft 3 at Sagan. And later to Luckenwald from where they were
repatriated to England..
NOTE
About 4/5 weeks after the course started John Henry STOPP, No.419738, born 3/7/1915 in Cairns Qld, Enlisted 10/10/1942 in Sydney was posted to another A.O.S to complete a Nav Course from which he was commissioned off course. On the night of 12/13 June 1944, flying with 166 Squadron on a raid on GELSENKIRKEN their Lancaster crashed in Holland and all on board were killed They were buried on 16th June 1944 in the ZELHEM General Cemetery It would appear that would have been very early in their tour of operations. .John Stopp was transferred when his flying Training-partner was hospitalised. I think it was Doug Rogers No.424609 who was commissioned off a later course and served in No4 Group RAF Bomber Command in Yorkshire - he was attached to 41 Base before returning to Australia.
Three other trainee navigators who sailed to Canada in the same draft were assigned to Course No.71N1. They were Jim Bateman No.423042 (149 Sqdn- awarded D.F.C), Bill Bowden No.424728 (261 Sqdn) and Geoff Cohen No.424725 who was commissioned off course and remained in Canada as an instructor at No.3 A.O.S.
Course 71N2 - Empire Training Scheme
No. 2 A.D.S. Edmonton – Alberta – Canada
10 March 1943 to 23 July 1943
Back Row: Keith Mills, Bob Sargent, Lou Brimblecombe, Noel Hooper, Eric Sutton, Alex Taylor
Middle Row: Ken Todd, Ernie Todd, Don Plumb, Noel Palfrey, Ron Etherton, Roy Olsen, Les Sabine,
Bob Smith, John Honeyman, Harold (Roy) Murtha
Front Row: Russ Martin, Ted Hall, Scotty Gall, Ian Biddle, W.H. Brown, ? , Ben Smith,
John Lewis, I.N. Keena, Ian Smith
We’ve Got Our Wings – Rookie Sergeants
The “Three Musketeers”
Eric Sutton, Bob Smith, Keith Mills
23rd.July 1943
As an L.A.C. in Edmonton
In Front of Wilsons Stationery Shop in Jasper Avenue
24 April 1943
Air Photography Exercises “Spring”
Bridge Over North Saskatchewan River about 1 ½ miles S.W. of Fort Saskatchewan
Looking S.W. in Direction of Edmonton Which is Visible in Distant Background
Notification of Selection for Appointment to Commissioned Rank
Effective 23rd July, 1943
1st July 1943
Dominion Day Sports – Winning the 440 yds
Eric Sutton, Keith Mills, Bob Smith
- at University Sports Ground
Keith said the Wrong Thing!
Have Wings *** Will Travel
From Edmonton, Canada to Brighton, England
We left Edmonton, with “N” Navigator wings and Sergeant’s stripes sewn on to our tunics, by train, at 2130 Hrs on Friday 23 July 1943. After the busy day of Wings Passing-out Parade and getting clearances we soon settled down to a good night’s sleep. Woke up in the early hours of Saturday at Saskatoon and travelled all day across the prairies through what seemed like endless fields of wheat and grazing country. It was almost express through Watrons, Rivers, Portage, La Prairie and arrived at Winnipeg at 1845 Hrs. Had a stop-over there and left again at 2000 Hrs. Into the bunk at 2230 Hrs for another good sleep. The scenery was different on Sunday as we moved into Ontario with mostly coniferous trees and a few Indian settlements. Arrived in Toronto at 0830 Hrs on Monday morning where those of us going to New York detrained and wandered around to have a look through a few shops before catching a train leaving at 1330 Hrs for Niagara. Had a few hours there to look over the Niagara Falls and then catch a train that left an hour late at 2230 Hrs down the Lee-High valley for New York. This was another train trip in the U.S. that went too fast to even count the telephone poles as they flashed by, and with the best of service from the Afro-American waiters on board.
New York and Sightseeing
Arrived in New York at 0900 Hrs on Tuesday 27th July and most of us including Keith Mills, Noel Hooper, Roy Olsen, Lou Brimblecombe, Russ Martin, Ian Smith, and Eric Sutton and myself made our way to the Anzac Club (somebody had the directions) where accommodation was arranged at the Wentworth Hotel-on the ground floor. Settled in to our rooms and had something to eat somewhere before we went to Madison Square Gardens where a circus was performing. After that we went to the Stage Door Canteen for tea, where we received a hospitable welcome and were given complimentary tickets for a few tours and shows the next day. Met the actress Connie Hayes there. On Wednesday morning we went on a sight-seeing tour during which we called into a few shops and I purchased a 2 ¼ X 2 ¼ Voigtlander camera which gave me good service for many years. After that we went to the Empire State Building and rode the elevator to the top. What a ride that was and what a view from the observation deck at the top. Keith, Roy, Lou, Noel, Russ and I then went for a stroll around Central Park where I took the first photos with the Voigtlander and on to the Stage Door Canteen for tea and more free tickets. The show that evening featured Xavier Cougat and his orchestra, the Andrew Sisters and other acts. We then went to a broadcast at the CBS studios before going back to the hotel.
Stayed in the hotel until midday on Thursday and then went to the Rialto on free tickets and on to the Rochefeller Centre to view an exhibition. Had tea and came back to the hotel to write a few letters. We were on the ground floor and it was hard to get a good sleep, the street outside was as busy at 0300 Hrs as it was at 1500 Hrs.
We Return to Canada
Noel Hooper and I decided that we had better do something about our Officers gear in Montreal and to leave New York a couple of days before the others. So on Friday morning we went to the station to enquire about trains. Met two girls going to the Statue of Liberty so went along for the ferry ride, back to the Anzac Club and a show at the Roxy. Caught a train by the skin of our teeth at 1850 Hrs. Had to change trains at Depew at 0500 Hrs on Saturday morning to go on to Toronto where we arrived at 0915 Hrs and left 30 minutes later for Montreal where we arrived at 1910 Hrs, running about 30 mins late as the train had hit a woman walking on the track about an hour out of the city. When we arrived we went to the YMCA where they arranged accommodation for us at 1491 Bishop Street.
On Sunday morning, 1st August, we went for a circular tour of the city by tram, jumping off at places of interest. Noel was bit non-plussed by the priests stopping on each step of a long climb up the hill to a large cathedral at the top. They appeared to pause briefly on each step in prayer. So, he taps one on the shoulder and recommended they install an escalator-a suggestion that was ignored. Asking directions on the tram was almost useless as the conductors gave the impression that they only conversed in French. We had tea at the YMCA and then went for a walk through the heart of the town. We must have given the impression of two lost souls as two girls approached us and started a conversation. Their names were Dorothy and Kay. They were students at the McGill University in Montreal and invited us to meet them the next afternoon and they would take us up Mont Royal to view the town by night.
We did our shopping on Monday morning where RAAF uniforms etc were available. Got issued with P/O’s braid, badges and cap, but decided to leave issue of quality uniforms and overcoat until we arrived in England. Met Dorothy and Kay as arranged in the afternoon and went up the mountain. As we had to meet up with the rest of our course on a train leaving Montreal at 1930 Hrs the next day the girls agreed to have dinner with us and then meet us again the next day at 1730 Hrs to show us over the University where they resided in one of the colleges on the campus. This we did on Tuesday after more sight seeing around the town and checking out of our accommodation. After our visit to the University it was a quick trip to the station with the girls to see us off and to catch up with the rest and board the train departing at 1930 Hrs. On the way to No.3 ‘Y’ Depot at Halifax. That was the Canadian designation for an embarkation depot.
Wednesday 4th August saw us travelling all day along the St.Lawrence River with its lumber mills, log jams and fishing villages and arrive in Halifax close to midnight raining cats and dogs. We were settled into barracks. Those who were commissioned off course were directed to the Officers Mess and Quarters and all others to the Sergeants Mess.
Halifax
Our late arrival did not prevent us being paraded at 0830 Hrs on Thursday and then attend to usual clearances etc. It seemed that there were still clearances whether you were arriving or departing. After dinner we were put through decompression chamber tests to assess our reactions to lack of oxygen. It was quite an experience as the chamber was decompressed to a height equivalent of about 18,000 feet. We were equipped with oxygen masks. At this height we were instructed to take off our oxygen masks under the supervision of trained personnel and to see how many times we could write the alphabet on the paper that had been issued. Supervisors kept an eye on each individual. I can remember being very pleased with myself as I visualised the alphabet written about six times on my piece of paper before I was told to put my oxygen mask back on again. Then I couldn’t believe my eyes-there was the alphabet written once and then down to about ‘m’ or ‘n’ before the pencil trailed away into a real scribble. Your mind had been telling you that all was well, so the danger of losing oxygen at heights over 10,000 feet was impressed on us. Most of us were non-smokers and had very similar results, but the smokers capacity to cope was really restricted and a couple had to be put back on oxygen very quickly.
On Friday we had a C.O.’s parade at 0800 Hrs and then it was back into the decompression chamber again for 2 hours, with oxygen masks kept on and listen to the supervisor giving more information on what we could expect flying for more than two hours at heights of over 20,000 feet. During this exercise the chamber was decompressed to a height equivalent of over 25,000 feet. After dinner it was P.T. exercise and games. Wrote a letter home and attended to a pile of washing that had accumulated.
Games of tennis and softball filled in most of Saturday morning. After dinner went into town with Ken and Ernie Todd (Ken had been commissioned off course but his brother Ernie was not) to the Anzac Club to give it the once over, and see what services and freebies were available there. Back to camp for a wash and change into clean clothes and after tea went back to a dance at the Anzac Club for a couple of hours. Slept in late on Sunday and spent all afternoon writing letters.
On Monday, 9th August, we were called on parade at 0800 Hrs for P.T. exercises and games. After dinner we underwent night vision tests, which I had trouble in passing and then back to more letter writing to catch up with my correspondence. Got a letter in the mail that day from Maureen. What seemed to be the established routine of parade, P.T. and games was the dose on Tuesday morning. For games, a rugby league match was organised for the Aussies and Kiwis between the Officers and the N.C.O.’s. It was a match that Keith Mills has not forgotten. I was playing on the wing for the Officers and going flat out for a certain try. I heard Keith behind me call out, “here Bob” when he had no chance of catching me. Not thinking I passed the ball back to Keith, who promptly propped, turned and set off back in the other direction. Unfortunately for him however, I was being supported by Kiwi P/O. Simon Snowden, of Maori descent and well built, and who was in the right position to effect a heavy tackle. Simon and I became good friends after that. Keith, I am sure learnt a lesson and did not appreciate the obstacle course we were put through after dinner.
On Wednesday morning, to keep us fit, we were employed on trench digging, and after dinner some of us were put through another night vision test. With a bit of assistance from a mate I did better than the test on Monday. Night vision was for gunners and not for navigators. Did my ironing after tea as we did not have the luxury of a batman yet.
Did well with mail on Thursday - 6 letters from home. After dinner went on a harbour cruise. I was on duty as Reception Officer that night and didn’t get to bed until 0430 Hrs on Friday. Received a telegram from home on Friday morning and another letter from Maureen. We had pay parade after which I went into town to buy a suit case, and did some ironing at night. On Saturday morning we had a lecture on ‘Rehabilition’ and I spent the afternoon writing letters to reply to those I had received during the week. Sunday was a very quiet day and a few of us went to a concert in the evening at the Anzac Club.
Monday 16th August was another good day for mail with 7 letters in the morning and 1 in the afternoon. So my correspondence was not up-to-date for too long. Pictures in the Officers Mess at night, “Desert Victory” and “The More the Merrier”. Usual parade and P.T. on Tuesday morning and into town after dinner for shopping and on to the Anzac Club for tea and a dance at night. More P.T. on Wednesday morning as we were waiting for a draft to embark. Went to see “Stage Door Canteen” at night with Simon Snowden. Since our football match we had spent a few times together looking around the sights of Halifax. Although he was of Maori blood, because of his surname he had become known as “Snowy”. Thursday afternoon was set aside for more sports and in the late afternoon we marched through town with a brass band at the head of the procession. It was into town again on Friday to buy a dressing gown and then to pictures at night to see “Jungle Book” Football practice occupied some time on Saturday morning. The bush telegraph was passing on a rumour that the “Queen Mary” was on the way from New York and would be calling within a few days, so I packed one of my kit bags in the afternoon. Slept in late on Sunday morning and after dinner went for a walk with Les Sabine around Mt Pleasant Park, and to the pictures in the Officers Mess after tea.
After mandatory parade at 0800 Hrs on Monday 23rd August we had lectures and a test on Aircraft Recognition. Managed to pass the test, but only just. After dinner went into town with ‘Snow’, met one of his mates and went to the Anzac Club for tea and a show afterwards. It was P.T. on Tuesday morning and we were given notice to be on parade again after dinner. That was a fair indication that a draft had been issued for embarkation. The draft was read out and as far as I can remember all the navigators from Course 72N2, except for a couple who did not come on to Halifax, were on it. We would be embarking within 48 hours. Broke off parade to have medical examinations, and then it was into town with ‘Snow’ again, who was also on the draft, for tea and the pictures to see “Song of the Islands”. On Wednesday morning we had to take our ‘Not wanted on Voyage’ baggage on parade and complete clearances. A few of us went to the Anzac Club that evening just to say good-bye to the place.
On Thursday 26th August 1943, we had pay parade in the morning, dinner and then our final parade with our ‘Wanted on Voyage’ baggage. We were then transported to the harbour and embarked on the “Queen Mary”. I was billeted in Cabin A24 with 14 others.
We Sail to the UK
Sailed early on Friday morning into good seas. It was back to two meals again while ‘in transit’. The ship had taken on a large contingent of American Servicemen in New York and it was very crowded. With such a large number on board, all were assigned to particular areas with coloured lines to follow to different venues to which they were allowed, such as sleeping quarters, bathroom facilities and Recreation and Entertainment areas. We had a limited deck space allotted to us and yellow lines to follow to the dining room and other colours to the toilets etc. On the lower decks the ‘other ranks’, mainly American troops, were assigned to sleeping areas on a shift basis.
The “Queen Mary” proceeded at full speed of over 30 knots on a zig-zag course and was unescorted. If you were walking down a passage-way when ‘she’ changed course by about 30 degrees you were pinned against the wall until ‘she’ got on a steady course again for another 15/20 minutes or thereabouts. You certainly had the feeling that a submarine would have very little chance of a torpedo attack. Time was passed playing cards, listening to music, reading the daily newspaper that was printed on board, writing letters and attending entertainment provided on board, which mainly favoured Officers. The seas stayed good all day on Saturday and at night most of us in Cabin A24 followed the relative coloured line to the large theatre on board to see a movie. Church Parade was held on Sunday, and another show in the theatre at night.
We continued to zig-zag through good seas at full speed all day Monday and enjoyed a concert in the lounge at night. On Tuesday we came around the north of Ireland and were greeted by friendly aircraft overhead and land in sight by mid-morning. This first sight of ‘the Old Country’ will remain in the memories of most on board for the rest of their life. There was a band of The Royal Marines on board and as we sailed up the Clyde past Arran with the Scottish coast of Ayrshire on our starboard the band played “Land of Hope and Glory”. As indeed it was at that time in history. There were not too many dry eyes on the decks, even among the American troops. We weighed anchor off Greenock and at 1900 Hrs were disembarked onto barges to be entrained at Greenock to travel to Brighton by rail.
Brighton, England
Travelled overnight and got our first encounter with a country at war with the blackout. Early in the morning the train steamed into the large railway yards at Crewe, then on to Rugby and the outskirts of London where we witnessed bomb damage for the first time. Arrived in Brighton at midday and were transported to No. 11 Personnel Despatch & Receipt Centre. Have never been able to work out how the despatch came before the receipt. We were assigned to billets. The N.C.O.’s to either the ‘Metropole’ or ‘Grande’ on the esplanade near the famous West Pavilion and the Officers to the Lions Head a bit further along to the east. Those establishments had been commandeered by the War Department and allotted to the RAAF’s No. 11 P.D.R.C, which had been transferred to Brighton from Bournemouth. So, on the 1st September 1943 we were officially disembarked in the United Kingdom. We spent the next two days attending to the requirements of reception, records, leave passes etc, and writing letters home as we awaited delivery of our ‘Not wanted on Voyage’ baggage.
In Central Park, New York
Roy Olsen, Keith Mills, Lou Brimblecombe, Bob Smith
Along the St Lawrence River - Part of the Aussie Contingent
Ross Martin and Ian Smith at the ‘Door’ in Tropical Uniform
In the Gardens – Halifax
P/O Bob Smith
Advanced Training-United Kingdom
Brighton, Sidmouth (Devon), West Freugh (Scotland)
Settling into No. 11 P.D.R.C. at Brighton, by midday on Saturday 4th September 1943 I had completed most of the requirements for reception and after lunch (now back to the system of calling the midday meal lunch and the evening meal dinner) I was rostered on my first duty as O.I.C. of one of the light ack-ack batteries on the esplanade, from 1400 Hrs to 1800 Hrs. Almost got court-marshalled when I gave permission to the two N.C.O.’s on the guns to fire a couple of rounds to test them. An English Army Major was soon on the scene to check on ‘the emergency’. After a bit of discussion he accepted my explanation and didn’t take the matter any further. After dinner I met ‘Snow’ who had also come over with the R.N.Z.A.F. contingent on the Queen Mary and who were also billeted with us in Brighton. We went to a dance at ‘The Palais’ that night. Had a very interesting conversation with a girl aged in her early twenties who came from Israel and was working her way through to a degree at an English University, as well as a couple of other girls who were more interested in ‘Snow’. They seemed to think he was a real heart throb. He was a good looking and good natured bloke.
This duty on the gun positions got me out of an awkward position on Sunday. We had Church Parade in the morning, usual roll-up, with quite a few Roman Catholics joining the Presbyterians. After lunch, by chance or design, Snow had met one of the girls we were talking to at the dance on Saturday night, and she suggested that he bring his friend along (that was me) as she had a friend to come with her and we could go to the pictures at night. Being a good friend I went along with him to the cinema on this blind date. Her friend turned out to be about 40 and did not appeal. There was no way I was going to be involved so I called Snow aside and explained the position. He saw my point of view and then backed me up with the explanation that I could not stay as I was rostered to go on Gun Duty in less than two hours. So I made a diplomatic departure and beat it post haste, feeling rather satisfied. Saw Snow the next morning and he told me I had made a wise decision.
On Monday morning I had more matters to attend to at reception. Mostly this was to deal with the issue of Officers uniforms etc. Got measured for my great-coat which was to be made by a tailor on Saville Row and issued with headgear-Officers for the use of.
Up to this point I had kept a small pocket diary since leaving Australia but discontinued the practice forthwith when it was brought to our attention in lectures and sessions held in connection with our reception at Brighton that diaries were not to be kept. This would be particularly enforced once we got on to operational squadrons. As a result from hereon I have to rely on memory and reflections with mates as we recalled our experiences in later years. For the next few weeks it was a daily routine of morning parade to hear who had been drafted to advanced flying schools etc, rostered on to duties such as the gun positions, or orders to attend lectures on the Brighton Pavilion. The beaches were heavily mined and this kept us on our guard when we were on gun duties, particularly when a stray dog wandered on to the beach. The Pavilion was also booby-trapped and was accessible only by walking a plank from the Esplanade.
When not on duties and on stand down we made regular trips to London on the train to get acquainted with the Boomerang Club in Australia House, and enjoy some food that was not available elsewhere. It also gave us an opportunity to explore that area of central London that was within walking distance and included many of the well known and historic buildings and landmarks. Here also, I was introduced to the Overseas Club whose members hosted Commonwealth servicemen on leave. I also had to go to London to be fitted and issued with my Officers Uniforms and Greatcoat. We were also introduced to sirens signalling an air-raid alert and ‘all-clear’, and the lives of Londoners who slept in the underground stations platforms. At Brighton the only enemy action I saw was one day when a German twin-engined bomber came in low over the channel, climbed to about 1000 feet over the town and as it circled around the outskirts dropped a stick of bombs and headed out to sea again. It was all over in less that two minutes and the gun batteries on the esplanade did not get a chance to fire at it.
I Go to Scotland On Leave
On 11th September 1943 I was given 7 days leave (authority POR 174/43) and headed off to Aberdeen to stay with Jim and Nan Joss to whom I had been referred by the Overseas League at the Boomerang Club. I wished to go to Aberdeen to have the chance to visit Kintore where by father and uncles spent leave during WW1. It was a wonderful introduction to Scotland, and the fore-runner of a few more happy times there when on leave which eventually led to meeting a lass who stole my heart, but more about that later. That’s in the future still. Got back from leave to learn that some of the course had been posted to Advanced Flying Units. Keith Mills and Eric Sutton and a few others had been posted to No. 4 Observer A.F.U. West Freugh, Scotland and John Lewis and Lou Brimblecombe had been posted to No. 3 A.F.U. at Halfpenny Green. A few weeks later John was to be our first loss of life when he was killed in an accident flying over Wales on a training exercise. A few days after I got back Noel Hooper, John Honeyman and myself were instructed to attend Course No.14 Aircrew Officers Training School at Sidmouth in Devon.
With necessary travel warrants and instructions we arrived in Sidmouth on Sunday 26th September. The three of us were impressed with the beauty of the English country side as we travelled through Hampshire and Dorset to Devon. It was hard to realise that the country was at war, until you passed an airfield or a large military establishment. We were met at the station and transported to the Training School that was situated in a stately mansion that was probably an up-market holiday resort in peace time.
More Training in Devon
The course was an intense period of lectures on Air Force Rules and Regulations, Physical Exercises, Field exercises with live ammunition, escape procedures and parade ground drills under an iron-fisted disciplinarian R.S.M. from one of the Guards Regiments, whom we referred to as the ‘screaming skull’, but not to his face. None of us was that brave. We were put over an obstacle course on the second day there and only a few of us managed to complete it in the approved time. I was still reasonably fit from athletics training and managed to go over all the obstacles except one, but within the time allowed. After 23 days we were put over the same course again and everyone passed, all the fittest they had ever been.
Field exercises included live ammunition with shots fired at medium range, hand grenades, firework crackers etc and it was our observation to identify the type and direction from which the detonation was heard and make quick decisions on evasion tactics. We were also given exercises in techniques of camouflage and the use of the terrain to move and avoid detection. In the event of being shot down over enemy territory it was your first duty to avoid capture. Parades and Parade-ground drills were real masterpieces with the R.S.M. in charge. The short straw must have had my name on it when it came to parade-ground drills. When we were given duties for colour parades and reviews. I landed the duties of S/M of Parade, Adjutant of Parade, C/O of Parade and Reviewing Officer of Parade. It is a mystery how I was not promoted immediately to rank of Air Commodore or above. Noel and John felt sorry for me-like b.hell they did!
On our first day we were fitted out and issued with khaki battle dress, army boots etc, and this was our standard dress for the course, except for evening meals when the traditions of dining in the Officers Mess were observed. A few got postings from the course either to A.F.U. or back to their unit. I remember one Aussie pilot who was sent to the course as a disciplinary measure after he pranged a ‘Wimpy’ on take-off at an O.T.U, apparently without injury to any of the crew. After about ten days he was posted back to his unit to take up further training with the crew. Nine Aussies started the course but there were only five of us there at the end. Leave was granted most nights and at week-ends, so we were able to spend some time in town and go to the pictures or a dance. Met a girl, Irene Collins, at a dance one night who asked me to escort her home-what a walk; I think it must have been to the next village. She worked in a shoe shop in town, and I did see her a couple of times after that when I went down town.
Most vivid memories of the course relate to small arms firing practice, throwing live hand grenades, and the cross country exercises when we somehow managed to make tracks through an apple orchard, stuff a few into our jackets and get back to discover that we had a sort of crab apple used for making cider. Also tried our hand at toasting chestnuts, but not much satisfaction there either. Drilling the squad when under the instruction of the ‘screaming skull’ provided a bit of entertainment, particularly when he decided to take over and show us how to do it. He would give the order ‘Quick March’ at the top of his voice and let the squad get down the road about 70/100 yards before giving the order ‘About Turn’. By the 50/60 yard mark the squad had agreed that from a certain person forward they would disregard the order, the ones at the crucial point would hesitate, and behind them they would do the about turn. That really curled the ‘mo’ and sent a string of invective over the countryside, when the ones in front said they did not hear him. He didn’t fall for it-had been through that mill many times before. We got the feeling that he would liked to blame the Aussies and give them a bit of extra drill, but as they were of higher rank he had to play it cool.
At week-ends we were given leave, although the whole course was de-facto stand-in for the local Home Guard Unit, we were given details of the mined areas on the beaches, most of which were at the base of high cliffs and difficult to reach. Generally it was the area immediately below these cliffs that were not mined. On our first Sunday Noel and John and I headed off west close to the coastline along the tops of the cliffs, almost to Exmouth from where we could see Torquay in the distance. As we had been walking for a bit over 2 hours, we decided to veer north to a village that had golf links nearby where we found a café and had lunch. We crossed a railway line, into a village called Otterton and followed country roads and lanes back to Sidmouth. The next Sunday we headed north towards Honinton and got as far as Aflington. On this walk, following roads and lanes off the main road we stopped to talk to some villagers to enquire if a village about 2 miles further north had a café that was opened on Sundays. They did not know, had lived there all their lives and had never been to that other village.
We would have walked about 20 miles on each of those Sunday hikes, and that kept us in good physical condition. Knowledge gained on the Sunday hikes proved very valuable later on and was put to good use. On the Tuesday of the last week we had our final test on the obstacle course. No problems for any of us, even up and over the poles that were fixed horizontally at varying heights between the trunks of two pine trees to a height of about 30 feet, the only obstacle that stumped me on our run over the course on our first day. I did not go over the top then, but under it. The next day we were given our final test of escape techniques. We were despatched at 0830 Hrs to go to a spot near the village of Axmouth which lay just south of the road to Lyme Regis and north of the seaside town of Seaton. It was up to us whether we went singly, or in small groups like a crew from an aircraft that had been shot down. But we had to get to the destination without being observed by the instructors who would be in positions at a couple of points along the way. The sergeant in charge of the exercise, when informed that Noel and John and I would stick together and go as a team for the exercise said that was a good idea and even recommended to the others to learn from these Aussies who often did well in this exercise. We did well, but it involved a bit of cunning.
Our plan was to let the field get away and ahead of us while we went to a café for morning tea to formulate our tactics. We had to be at the ‘target’ by 1600 Hrs. That gave us a bit over 7 hours to do about 9 or 10 miles measured in a straight line. We had prepared a bit beforehand, and by fair means or foul John had obtained a woman’s hat and shawl. After morning tea we set off walking to the village of Sidford less than 2 miles north of Sidmouth where we knew we could get a taxi and were sure that no scouts would be stationed along that route. I have a suspicion that John had had a discussion with a taxi driver in this village on one of our Sunday walks because we found him very co-operative and willing to help, although he was going to use up a bit of his petrol ration. Sometimes crosses my mind if he got a voucher from John to say his taxi had been commandeered for defence purposes. For him it was going to be a round trip of about 20 miles. I cannot remember what the fare was, but probably in the 5/10 Pounds range, and that was probably the best fare he had made on a Wednesday in war time. In the taxi we set off on the main road towards Lyme Regis and after about 5 miles turned right along a road that went past a quarry and then north-east to Colyford our destination for the taxi. On this last stretch we had a fair idea that scouts would be stationed, so John donned the hat with the shawl over his shoulders and sat up and surveyed the scene while Noel and I crouched down so as we could not be observed. With a bit of luck John spotted our friendly Sergeant sitting under a tree about 15 yards inside a field with a ditch between him and the road. No other scouts were seen. We left the taxi at Colyfield and walked the last mile or so to Axmouth and the designated meeting place. No one was expecting escapees to come in from a northerly direction so we arrived without being spotted to the amazement of the team that had congregated there. We timed things so that we did not arrive until just after 1530 Hrs. A few had already arrived carrying flags to indicate they had been spotted by one or more look-out scouts. Not long before 1600 Hrs the Sergeant, and other spotters arrived and were about to announce that no one had spotted the 3 Aussies, when he looked around to spot us and cried “How the hell did you three get here??” We told him we did not spot any other look-outs, but we did see him under a tree and where he was.
We had our story ready that we were coming up a ditch beside the road when we spotted him and realised we could not pass along that ditch without him seeing us, so we back-pedalled a bit using trees along the road as cover, and then crossed the road and away a bit to the north, which brought us in from that direction. We told him we were within the length of 2 cricket pitches from him, and that really had him flabbergasted. Somehow or another he got the correct information by Friday morning, and told us he was not very impressed, but couldn’t decide whether to admonish us for not entering into the true spirit of the exercise or just acknowledge that we had exercised initiative that we had so often been instructed to do.
Sunday 24th October saw the completion of our Air Crew Officers Training School, and on Monday morning we set off by train back to Brighton. We went via Salisbury where we had a stop over to have a look around the town and visit the famous cathedral. During WW1 my father had been billeted on Salisbury Plains with 41st Battalion A.I.F. and used to talk about the Cathedral and his visits around the area. I did not know it then, not even until the 1980’s, that my paternal great grandparents had come from East Hagbourne in Berkshire about 20 miles from Reading in the area that we were to-day travelling through.
Back at Brighton on Tuesday it was a return to the usual routine of morning parade, lectures and stand-downs as we waited for a posting to an Advanced Flying Unit. During this time we were attending a lecture in the old ball room on the Pavilion when the whole pier was rocked by an enormous blast. Someone had detonated one of the booby-trap mines on the end of the pier and really started some activity. We were evacuated very quickly. Never heard any more reports and whether there were any casualties apart from a few sea gulls. At Brighton a new contingent of EAT’s N.C.O.’s and Officers had arrived and the duties on the ack-ack guns had been assigned to them which gave us more time to take visits up to London.
My Posting Comes Through - Scotland
On Parade about 6th November my posting came through to No. 4 (Observers) Advanced Flying Unit at West Freugh, near Stranraer in Scotland. There were other navigators on the same posting that were on a course after No. 71 and arrived in Brighton about a month or so after I did. These included Keith Nunn, Hector Craig and Soapy Campbell. Noel Hooper and John Honeyman were posted to an A.F.U. affiliated with No 5 Group Bomber Command. I seemed assured to going into No. 3 Group which operated in East Anglia.
Those going to West Freugh left Brighton by train on Monday 8th November, travelled overnight, changing trains probably at Carlisle, and arrived in Stranraer and on to West Freugh by RAF transport on Tuesday to attend to the usual requirements of reception for a course that was due to start the next day. Keith, Hector, Soapy and I were all billeted in the same Nissen hut in the Officers quarters.
We certainly got our introduction to the Scottish weather coming into their winter. The famous Scotch Mist just hung on and on, in fact for the first six weeks we were there we never saw the sun from the ground, but at 2,500 feet you were above cloud and in clear sky. For the first few days we were kept in the lecture rooms for revision in most of the subjects we had studied at Edmonton and talks on what to expect as we moved on to become acquainted with new navigation aids etc that were coming into use in Bomber Command. Our air exercises at West Freugh over the 8 weeks we were there comprised 30 Hrs 35 mins of daylight flying and 18 Hrs of night flying atSS heights between 1500 feet and 5000 feet. The air exercises over routes as detailed in my log book were mostly over the Irish Sea area to landmarks in Northern Ireland, Wales and the Carlisle area to the East. In most cases the exercise started from Ailsa Craig, a landmark island in the Clyde Estuary. You had to be wary of your height and track to ensure you did not come to grief on the Isle of Man.
A great advantage of flying with RAF Staff Pilots was they flew the course given to them. They couldn’t see the ground anyway most of the time. This gave good experience in D.R. navigation and was a great help in charting an air plot. They were mostly very experienced pilots who had served with the RAF in India as well as on operations at home and were very experienced in flying Ansons and Oxfords.
Some Flying “Incidents”
The starting point of Ailsa Craig nearly caused an accident on one of our exercises. We had climbed through cloud and on course etc, when I said to the pilot we would proceed on our first course of the exercise from E.T.A. Ailsa Craig, which would have been not far out because of the short distance we had flown. He insisted on going below the cloud to get an accurate fix from which to start our exercise. Our course was nearly too accurate, as when we broke cloud at about 800 feet Ailsa Craig was almost dead ahead, and the faithful “Old Aggie” as we called the Anson flew past the cliff face too close for comfort. The pilot circled the island, flew a bit north of it and then came back on the course we were to fly on the first leg and climbed back into the cloud over the island with a satisfied look on his face.
On another exercise the first course was eastwards to Wigtown, and then on to Silloth, past a mountain that was about 1500 feet high near Gatehouse-on Fleet I think it was called ‘Crefell’ and it had claimed a few aircraft crashing into it, so we had to make sure we were at least at 2000 feet. For the exercise we had been given ‘met’ winds of 30/49 Knots from the west. By the time we got near Gatehouse-on Fleet it was obvious that the true wind was over 70 knots and in response to radio message we were recalled.
A flight of less than 30 minutes out took over 2 hours on the return with the Aggie at maximum air speed. Coming over the top of one of those high mountains you had the feeling you could just have jumped off like from a moving tram. A night exercise was scheduled to fly to Newcastle to give us navigation experience and the air defences there some dry-swim practice. Before we got as far as Silloth we were recalled as Newcastle was in fact being raided by the Luftwaffe. Sometimes I have wondered about the co-incidence. It was on one of those exercises that I had a bout of air sickness and on landing the pilot put it in his report. The O.C. Training ordered me to report to the M.O. for an assessment. I cannot remember what his examination involved but I was not scrubbed from flying.
On 30th December we were detailed on navigation exercises flying at 5000 ft. Two navigators were assigned to an exercise flying over the Irish Sea due south to Holyhead in Wales and then north west to Ballyquinton Point in Northern Island. This had the Isle of Man along this path. The two navigators on this route were Keith Nunn and Harold ‘Hal’ Peters, both graduates of No. 74N course. Most of the route was covered in cloud with base at about 1000 feet. It turned out to be a tragic day. The aircraft in which Hal Peters was flying must have descended through the cloud too soon and crashed into a mountain on the island. Hal was 33 years of age and came from Bentleigh in Victoria. He was buried in Andreas (St Andrew) Churchyard on the Isle of Man. My last navigation exercise at West Freugh, a week later, was over this same route.
Another flying incident at West Freugh that remains in my memory concerns the crash of a Hampden twin-engined bomber. A few of the RAF pilots were discussing the flying capabilities of this aircraft, a few of which were stationed at West Freugh for coastal surveillance work. A F/Sgt. pilot was arguing that the aircraft would not pull out of a spin. One of the ex-India RAF Officer pilots disagreed and said when the weather was clear enough he would take one up to about 5,000 feet, put it into a spin and pull out. He did this a few days later in sight of a few onlookers - but unfortunately the aircraft did not pull out of the spin and went down to crash into the sea. One of the ex-India pilots was heard to remark “That is only four of us left now”.
Leave in Oldhall – I meet Alma
As I had advised Jim and Nan Joss in Aberdeen that I had been posted to West Freugh, Nan wrote back to say that she had been in touch with a Friend/Cousin in Paisley and she and her husband would be happy to host me if I went to Glasgow. We were given 48 leave pass one week-end so I took the opportunity to go by bus, getting off at Oldhall between Paisley and Glasgow to visit Ronnie and Molly Whyte and their daughter Alma who lived at 39 Tylney Rd, Oldhall. This led to many enjoyable leaves in Aberdeen and Paisley when I came to be accepted freely by both families over the times ahead and which was eventually to see Alma and I marry. I think that we would both agree however that it was not love at first sight.
Hector Craig, who had some relatives in Glasgow came with me on the bus on our two week-end leaves. We were not happy with the smoke filled busses filled with farm workers in heavy sweaty smelling clothes, and not a window opened. It was winter, damp and cold, but some fresh air was desirable, so we would open the window a bit near our seat to get a look that only a Ranger’s fan would give a Celtic fan. Ronnie Whyte was a staunch Ranger’s follower and I was soon to learn of the rivalry between those two sides. The passion for football, what we called soccer, was new to us.
Our course at West Freugh was completed on 7th January 1944. Our posting came through the next day and we were given a few days to complete clearances-the usual medical, dental etc and pack our Officer issue steel trunk for despatch to our new station. Keith Nunn and Hector Craig and I were posted to No. 84 Operational Training Unit at Desborough in Northamptonshire. We realised then that we were destined for No. 3 group Bomber Command that was equipped with Lancasters. We were given 7days leave and travelling time and had to report to Desborough by 24th January (Auth POR 2/44). Travelling warrants were issued at the Adjutant’s office on 11th January, a day after my 20th birthday anniversary, and I went on leave to Aberdeen for a week and then to London for a few days to catch up with mates at the Boomerang Club.
Now it was on to joining a crew, further training as a crew with more advanced aircraft and at heights above 10,000 feet. As it turned out it was to bigger and better things and experiences that made men of us. ......
West Freugh – Laundry Hung Out to Dry In Our “Heated” Quarters
At Aircrew Officers Training School
Sidmouth, Devon
Noel Hooper, Bob Smith
Bob Smith, John Honeyman
Training as a Crew
Crew Formation at No. 84 O.T.U. (Operational Training Unit)
Desborough, Northamptonshire
For operational training I was posted to No. 84 O.T.U at Desborough in Northamptonshire, an Operational Training Unit under the control of No.3 Group, (RAF Bomber Command) as from 25th January 1944. This Unit was flying ex-operational Vickers Wellington X’s, with unit identification “IF”. This was our introduction to flying above 10,000 feet in aircraft equipped with oxygen. Radio I/D was “Foodramp”.
Along with Keith Nunn and Hector Craig I was accommodated in the Officer’s Quarters and went through the usual reception procedure. A programme of lectures and ‘dry-swim’ exercises started immediately and went on for two weeks. Flying exercises started on 15th Feb, crewed with a staff pilot and flying as a 2nd navigator under supervision, to gain experience on new special navigation equipment and flying at heights of 10,000 to 15,000 feet, wearing oxygen masks. Instructors, mostly with operational experience, assessed our work and passed us as satisfactory to proceed further into the formation of a crew and on to further training towards posting to an operational squadron. Over that first month lectures and tests occupied a lot of time, and were most interesting as we were instructed in new equipment coming into use, some of it still on the secret list. During that second fortnight we flew 2 daylight flying exercises and 1 night exercise of between 4 and 5 hours each. On 28th February after flying a special daylight exercise of 4 ½ hours at 15,000 feet all the aircrew under operational training were assembled at 1700 Hrs and told to sort themselves into crews by the next afternoon.
On 1st March 1944 our crew was formed. In the morning pilot F/Sgt. Ron Hastings approached me to see if I had been claimed yet and when he said he had obtained another Aussie as a Bomb Aimer and two RAF fellows who had come through a gunners course together and wanted to be together in a crew, I agreed to join them. Soon afterwards we approached a Wireless Operator who had many flying hours to his credit and had come from a unit where he was an instructor. So, for the time being we had a crew, with a Flight Engineer to be added when we went on to conversion to four engined bombers:-
The Crew:
Pilot F/Sgt Ronald William Hastings RAAF No.423112 Born 11 Nov 1922
Nav. F/O Robert Wylie Smith RAAF No.425992 Born 10 Jan 1924
B/A F/Sgt Harold Edward Burns RAAF No.422144 Born 5 Nov 1915
W/Op.F/Sgt Victor Frederick Pearce RAF No.1196145 Born 17 Jul 1920
M/U/G Sgt George Henry James Malyon RAF No.1432616 Born 7 Jan 1923
R/G SgtDonald George McFadden RAF No.1387716 Born 26 Feb 1923
All aircrew were volunteers, so the RAF fellows were in the RAF Volunteer Reserve. Between ourselves we were called respectively, Ron, Smithy, Bobby, Vic, Mike and Mac.
On 2nd March most of the newly formed crews, including us, were sent to the satellite ‘drome at Harrington, about 4/5 miles away, to fly a high level bombing exercise in daylight and then about 6 hours on circuits and bumps (which gave the navigator nothing to do) over 2 consecutive nights, and on the next night 2 ½ hours on high level bombing. Having completed these exercises it was back to the main ‘drome on 8th March to start a very intense month of flying training in daylight and at night. These exercises were always over approved set routes, sometimes with an experienced pilot as we went on long night flights, fighter affiliation exercises and high level bombing. Lectures still continued at times during the day and there were breaks for sports and evening/week-end leave.
Dealing With an Emergency
On 13th March, flying in an older Wellington 111 No. X3995 and letter coded “U” for Uncle we had an emergency forced upon us on take-off after lunch. Just as the aircraft started to lift off the runway the flap over the port wing fuel tank inlet sprung open, causing that wing to stall. As that wing started to drop it was only the quick corrective action by Ron that saved us from disaster. It took the combined effort of him and the Bomb Aimer who was standing beside him to hold the joy-stick hard over to starboard to keep the plane on level flight. The control tower had noticed our wild take-off, and before we could gather our wits they contacted us with a call “Foodramp Uncle-are you in trouble”. Ron replied with a brief description of the problem and immediately got a message back to circle if possible and come into land immediately as they would have emergency vehicles standing by. An experienced pilot was put in direct contact from the control tower to assist Ron. Although we did not know it at the time, sirens were sounded on the ‘drome and a fire tender, ambulance and crash wagon were rushed on to the tarmac. Ron instructed me to keep the runway on our starboard wing in sight and guide him around to the downwind end. Then, as he lined the aircraft up on the runway and started a landing approach he ordered all except “Bobby” Burns, the B/A, to take up crash positions, leaving the intercom to all positions open. With the two gunners I took up the crash position. Vic, the wireless operator, was tuned into a BBC radio broadcast and was not aware of the emergency, although he admitted later he thought the flying was a bit rough. I learned a lesson from this as I should have tapped Vic on the shoulder as I went past him to the crash position and beckoned him to join me.
Ron and Bobby managed to control the aircraft sufficiently to make a reasonable landing although it gave a severe lurch to port as we touched down, causing Mac, who was next to me in the crash position and had started to get to his feet as soon as the wheels touched the ground, to fall against me and force my head on to the side of the fuselage resulting in a bit of a lump on my right temple. Mac thought for a minute that he had severely hurt me as we both ended up lying on the floor. This lurch caused Vic to look around and see Mike, Mac and myself in the crash position and to wonder what was going on. So we had a bit of explaining to do. We were all O.K, and saw a certain humour in what happened next. As soon as we came to rest Ron contacted the control tower with their sign and the message “Foodramp Uncle here—we have pancaked”, only to get the immediate response “Foodramp Uncle, if you have pancaked you have not pancaked here”. A quick look around and we recognised the surroundings—we had landed at Harrington, the satellite strip. As they say, all is well that ends well, (in spite of Murphy’s Law). Transport was immediately sent out to the aircraft to take us back to the base ‘drome for a quick medical assessment, but we said we were O.K. The M.O told me I would probably get a black eye if any bruising came out and that my flying helmet had probably saved me from more serious injury. In reflection, it is possible that if Ron had attempted a full 360 degree turn back to the runway we had just taken off from, the outcome could have been much worse.
The M.O did not say anything about not flying for a day or two. The experience certainly strengthened our confidence in and respect for Ron, and taught us valuable lessons. We did not hear what happened to the ground crew responsible for fuelling the aircraft and ensuring that the wing flaps were properly secured. Probably went on a charge and received some form of punishment. The aircraft was given a thorough inspection, before it was moved and flown back to the base ‘drome. The undercarriage must have experienced some stress when we touched down. We flew again in the same aircraft four days later on a high level bombing exercise and had no problems.
By 8th April we had completed all the requirements of the course at O.T.U and were passed as fit material to proceed to conversion to four engine aircraft. We were given about 11 days leave (Auth POR 15/44) and instructed to report to No. 1653 H.C.U (Heavy Conversion Unit) at Chedburgh in Suffolk on 21st April. A signal had come through that a crew was required for an Australian Squadron in No.5 Group with a condition that it must comprise at least 4 Aussies in the crew. The only one to qualify on our course was P/O. George Edwards (Pilot) who had crewed with Keith Nunn as his navigator. Both had known Ron Hastings prior to this time. Keith had known Ron and his father before the war. Both Ron’s father and Keith were employed in the then Union Bank of Aust- later to become the ANZ Bank. Ron & George had trained together as pilots. That crew eventually went on to No.467 (RAAF) Squadron at Waddington in Lincoln and were shot down on their second ‘Op’ on 29th June 1944, bombing the flying bomb base at Beauvoir in France. George was killed and Keith was captured and taken POW. After the war Keith resumed his career with the Union Bank. I have no recollection of where Hector Craig and crew were posted to.
Previous Service history of our Crew members
Pilot “Ron”
When he was born in 1922 his family surname was ‘Heuzenroeder”. His father was employed in the Union Bank and in the mid-1930’s with the world scene focussing on the Nazi regime in Germany, and the bank considering his transfer to Manager of a country town, they requested him to change his surname. Ron was in secondary schooling at the time and chose the name ‘Hastings’.
Ron enlisted in Sydney on 20th June 1942 and was posted to No.2 I.T.S. at Bradfield Park. On 15th Oct 1942 he went to No.5 E.F.T.S at Narramine in N.S.W and on 17 Jan 1943 to No.8 S.F.T.S at Bundaberg in Queensland. On 7th May 1943 he graduated with his pilot’s wings and posted to No.2 Embarkation Depot with rank of Sergeant. Embarked in Sydney on 25th May 1943, travelling via the USA and arrived in the U.K. on 7th July 1943 at No.11 P.D.R.C at Brighton. On 7th Sep 1943 posted to No.15 (Pilot) A.F.U at Andover before posting to 84 O.T.U at Desborough on 25th January 1944.
Nav. “Smithy”
Enlisted 21st May 1942 at No.3 Recruit Centre, Eagle St, Brisbane in an intake of ‘Aircrew Guards’ and posted same day to No.3 Recruit Depot Maryborough Qld. On 13th June 1942 posted as ‘Air Crew Guard to No.1 A.O.S. Cootamundra N.S.W. where on 16th Sep 1942 was posted into No.73 Reserve Squadron. On 11th Oct 1942 posted to No.2 I.T.S. Bradfield Park , Sydney and on 2nd Jan 1943 to No.2 Embarkation Depot, Bradfield Park. Embarked Sydney on 8th Feb 1943 on troopship “U.S.S. Hermitage” to San Francisco and then by train to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. On 7th March 1943 posted to No.2 Air Observers School at Edmonton. Graduated with wings as a Navigator and granted a commission on 23rd July 1943. On 4th Aug 1943 posted to No. 1 “Y” (Embarkation) Depot at Halifax, Nova Scotia. On 26 Aug 1943 embarked on the “Queen Mary” to the UK. Disembarked on 1st Sep 1943 at Gourock, Scotland, and then by train to Brighton, England and posted to No.11 P.D.R.C. on 2nd Sep 1943. On 27th Sep 1943 attended Air Crew Officers Training School at Sidmouth, Devon, for a 4 week course. Posted 0n 9th Nov 1943 to No.4 (Observers) A.F.U at West Freugh, Scotland and on 25 Jan 1944 posted to No.84 O.T.U, Desborough,England.
B/Aimer ‘Bobbie’ or ‘Rabbie’
Enlisted on 25th April 1942 at No 2 Recruit Centre in Sydney and on same day posted to No.2 I.T.S at Bradfield Park. On 15 Aug 1942 posted to No.2 Embarkation Depot at Bradfield Park. And on 21st Aug 1942 posted to No.1 E.D. at Ascot Vale, Victoria. Embarked in Melbourne on 7th Sep 1942 and ‘disembarked’ No.3 Manning Depot, Edmonton Canada on 2nd October 1942. On 11th Oct 1942 posted to No.5 A.O.S at Winnipeg and on 29th Dec1942 posted to RCAF station at Trenton, then on 21st Feb 1943 posted to No.4 Bombing & Gunnery School at Fingal and on 16th May 1943 to No.4 A.O.S at London Ontario. On 13th Oct 1943 posted to No.1 ‘Y’ Depot at Halifax, Nova Scotia. Embarked at Halifax on 22nd Oct 1943 and ‘disembarked’ 31st Oct 1943 at No.11 P.D.R.C. Brighton, England. Posted to No.4 A.F.U. West Freugh, Scotland on 23rd Nov 1943 and on 25 Jan 1944 to No.84 O.T.U. at Desborough, England.
W/Op. Vic.
Enlisted in the RAF 2nd Dec 1941. Commenced flying training in August 1942 after transfer to the RAF V.R. After completion of Wireless Operator’s course was posted to Bobbington as an instructor prior to posting to No.84 O.T.U. Desborough on 25th Jan 1944
M/U/G. ‘Mike’
Enlisted in the RAF on 5th May 1941, in the RAF Regiment. Initial Training at Cardington, and on 30th June 1941 posted to White Waltham and Cranwell for a ground observers course before posting to the Outer Hebrides and Orkney Islands. In June 1943 volunteered for flying duty (R.A.F.V.R) I.T.W Bridlington ,Yorkshire and Air Gunnery Schools in Shropshire and Bishopscourt, Northern Ireland. Graduated with wings in Dec 1943 and posted to No.84 O.T.U, Desborough on 25th Jan 1944.
R/G. ‘Mac’.
Enlisted in the RAF on 5th Feb 1942 and served in the RAF Regiment until June 1943. when he volunteered for flying duties and had the same postings in flying training as ‘Mike’, which is why both wanted to stay together in the same crew. Both came from London.
The Crew in front of a ‘Wellington X’
Ground Staff
Mac, Vic, Mike, Bobbie, Ron Smithy
Hours flown at No.84 O.T.U.
Daylight – 34 Hrs 30 mins Night – 30 Hrs 30 mins
No. 1653 H.C.U. (Heavy Conversion Unit)
Chedburgh, Suffolk
This unit was equipped with ex-operational Stirlings 1 & 111. Unit I/D. H4.
On 21st April we were posted to No. 31 Base (No.3 Group R.A.F.Bomber Command), Stradishall, Suffolk, under whose administration were No.1653 H.C.U. and No.3 L.F.S. Feltwell for training in 4 engined heavy bombers. A Flight Engineer, straight from training at a Rolls Royce training school, was appointed to the crew. As a general rule this was a Flight Engineer’s introduction to flying. Sgt. Ron Partridge was added to the crew, and immediately earned the nick-name ‘Pheasant’ by Ron. His training in the Merlin engine at the Rolls Royce establishment was not put to use while we were flying Stirlings with radial engines, but was going to be valuable when we graduated on to the Lancaster Bomber. Ron was destined to stay with our crew only for our first 6 operational sorties.
After 3 weeks of extensive lectures, introductions to and instructions on the special equipment that we would be using on a squadron, most of it specialist to a particular crew member, and general information that applied to all given by experienced personnel on what to expect on operations over Europe as well as survival and escape techniques it was back to practical flying exercises. At first these were with an experienced pilot for dual familiarisation flights of circuits and bumps and then on to a high level navigation and bombing exercise before Ron was allowed to go solo with his crew.
We did not escape the now accepted ‘emergency’ that can crop up on training flights. On our last ‘dual’ flight on the morning of 18th May we had a F/O. Gill as Captain. On take-off he cut one engine to give Ron the necessary experience in that situation. It almost backfired as the aircraft we were in, R9287 H4-Y (Yoke) was rather sick on 3 engines and refused to climb while the under carriage was still down. Fortunately Chedburgh was on a plateau and the ground fell away from us. The under carriage was retracted and we did manage to gather a bit of speed to give us a safety margin above stalling. The ‘killed’ engine refused to re-start, so Ron also had experience with landing on 3 engines. An eventful 25 minutes. After lunch we were transferred to another aircraft and Ron was allowed to go solo with the crew for 2 hours of circuits and bumps.
Involved in a Diversionary Flight at Time of Normandy Landing
Over the next 18 days and nights we did a number of special cross country navigation and bombing exercises and then flew what was an ‘Op’, but it was not credited as such. It was on the night of 5/6th June 1944, the eve of “D.Day”. We took off at 2310 Hrs on a special exercise flying at 12000 feet which took us out over the North Sea, approaching the Belgian coast near Ostend and at about 20 miles from the coast altered course to roughly Nor-East for 15 mins, before turning to port and then heading back to base crossing the English Coast near Orfordness. We had been on a diversion raid to draw attention away from the landings on the Normanby Coast of France. When we got back over Suffolk we were given a triangular course to fly, still at 12,000 feet, until it was all clear for us to descend and land. Below was an extensive procession of aircraft heading towards France, so we soon realised that the invasion of German occupied Europe was under way. We landed about 0130 Hrs on 6th June, “D.Day”, and were informed that General Dwight Eisenhower would be broadcasting a special announcement later in the morning.
A day or two later we were paraded and given the duty of scouting through a near-by ‘wood’, as there had been a report that a parachutist had been seen to jump out of a German aircraft that had flown over. About 30 to 40 airmen hiked through that wood and surrounding fields, but found nothing. Later in the afternoon two farmers walked up to the guards at the station’s main gate with a suspect in tow. One was carrying a hay fork in a menacing manner. They found him on the edge of the wood, probably waiting for night to fall before moving on. Never did hear what the sequel to that was.
On 12th June, in the afternoon, we were detailed to take an aircraft on a flight test. On arrival at the aircraft we were met by a senior officer who informed us that an important passenger was on board who we had to deliver to Tempsford, the base of No.161 Special Duty squadron, and to fly below 500 feet all the way there and back. So I had to prepare a quick flight plan to Tempsford. When we got on board we discovered that our passenger was a very attractive young French lady, probably in her early 20’s, who was to be parachuted out over France that night on a special mission. What a girl?
No. 1653 Chedburgh – Suffolk
F/E Sgt Ron Partridge Added to The Crew That Went to “Ops”
Smithy, Bobbie, Ron, Pheasant?,
Mac, Mike, Vic
Two days later we completed out training at Chedburgh with a high level bombing and fighter affiliation exercise which involved corkscrews for which the Stirling was not particularly suited, and neither was my stomach. I have to admit that I did suffer some air-sickness on such occasions. On 14th June we were advised of our positing to No. 3 Lancaster Finishing School at Feltwell in Norfolk and to attend to our clearances from Chedburgh.
Hours flown at No.1653 H.C.U.
- Daylight 27 Hrs 25 mins, Night 20 Hrs 25 mins
No. 3 L.F.S. (Lancaster Finishing School)
Feltwell, Norfolk
Still under our posting to No.31 Base, Stradishall we were attached to No.3 L.F.S from 18th June 1944 for a concentrated 10 day course of lectures and instructions and our introduction to the “Lancaster 1”. The squadrons of 3 Group were equipped with the Lancaster 1 and Lancaster 111. The course was mainly for the pilot. Instructors were pilots who had completed tours on the ‘Lanc’.
P.O. Treasure was assigned to our crew for 3 hours of dual and solo circuits and bumps in daylight on 23rd June and for the same at night the following day. The next day we were on our own for a test flying a triangle over Norfolk for over an hour and 2 days later flew a cross country navigation test of over 3 hours.
It was a great thrill to eventually get on to Lancasters. A vast improvement on the Wellington and Stirling and truly the most successful heavy bomber of WW11. It was a ‘plane that gave the crews a feeling of confidence. Its power and manoeuvrability and load carrying capacity exceeded all others at that time. As far as I was concerned I had reached my goal. After some operational experience, you wee convinced that every one who operated in the light and medium bombers in the early years of the war deserved a ‘gong’.
On 27th June 1944 we were advised that we were posted to No.XV/15 Squadron at Mildenhall, Suffolk, a permanent RAF Base and one of the jewels of Bomber Command.
Hours flown at No. 3 L.F.S.
- Daylight 4 Hrs 20 mins, Night 6 Hrs 20 mins
Dublin Core
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Title
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Bob Smith's Memoirs
Creator
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Bob Smith
Date
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2003-03
Spatial Coverage
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Turkey
Turkey--Gallipoli
Australia
Queensland--Brisbane
Queensland--Ipswich
Queensland--Maryborough
New South Wales--Cootamundra
New South Wales--Sydney
New South Wales--Wagga Wagga
New South Wales--Lindfield
New South Wales--Blue Mountains
New South Wales--Neutral Bay
American Samoa
American Samoa--Pago Pago
United States
Hawaii--Honolulu
California--San Francisco
California--Alcatraz Island
California--Oakland
Canada
British Columbia--Vancouver
Oregon
Washington (State)--Seattle
British Columbia--Vancouver
Alberta--Edmonton
Alberta--Jasper
Alberta--Fort Saskatchewan
Germany
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Alberta--Calgary
Germany--Cologne
Tasmania
Italy
Italy--Foggia
Great Britain
Scotland--Gourock
England--Brighton
Germany--Hamm (North Rhine-Westphalia)
France
France--Laon
Belgium
Belgium--Antwerp
Germany--Wesseling
France--Montdidier (Picardy)
Austria
Austria--Vienna
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Queensland--Cairns
Saskatchewan--Saskatoon
Manitoba--Winnipeg
Ontario--Toronto
North America--Niagara Falls
New York (State)--New York
Québec--Montréal
Nova Scotia--Halifax
Scotland--Greenock
Scotland--Aberdeen
England--Sidmouth
England--Salisbury
Scotland--Ailsa Craig
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Isle of Man
Scotland--Gatehouse of Fleet
England--Newcastle upon Tyne
Wales--Holyhead
Scotland--Paisley
France
France--Beauvoir-sur-Mer
Queensland--Bundaberg
Victoria--Melbourne
Ontario--Trenton
Ontario--London
Saskatchewan
Québec
Nova Scotia
Manitoba
Coverage
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Royal Australian Air Force
Royal Canadian Air Force
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Bob's memoirs from his early training until he became operational.
Language
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eng
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Text
Text. Memoir
Format
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107 printed sheets
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MSmithRW425992-230825-03 copy
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IBCC Digital Archive
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
106 Squadron
115 Squadron
142 Squadron
15 Squadron
1653 HCU
166 Squadron
3 Group
4 Group
44 Squadron
467 Squadron
49 Squadron
5 Group
619 Squadron
622 Squadron
640 Squadron
76 Squadron
78 Squadron
84 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
aerial photograph
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bale out
Beaufighter
bomb aimer
bombing
Boston
crash
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
entertainment
flight engineer
H2S
Halifax
Hampden
killed in action
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Master Bomber
mess
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Mosquito
navigator
Nissen hut
Oboe
observer
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Bishops Court
RAF Breighton
RAF Bridlington
RAF Cardington
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Cranwell
RAF Desborough
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF Feltwell
RAF Halfpenny Green
RAF Harrington
RAF Kirmington
RAF Leconfield
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Silloth
RAF Stradishall
RAF Tempsford
RAF Waddington
RAF West Freugh
RAF White Waltham
RAF Wigtown
RAF Witchford
Red Cross
sport
Stalag Luft 3
Stalag Luft 7
Stirling
training
V-1
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1912/35964/MHayhurstJM2073102-170725-050001.1.jpg
b5826d3652fa2749614c035a99c5873a
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1912/35964/MHayhurstJM2073102-170725-050002.1.jpg
88a510877650751360cdd884bf7d1ea0
Dublin Core
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Title
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Hayhurst, Jose Margaret
J M Hayhurst
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-07-25
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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Hayhurst, JM
Description
An account of the resource
108 items. The collection concerns Sergeant Jose Margaret Hayhurst (2073102 Royal Air Force) and contains decorations, uniform, documents and photographs. She served as a radar operator in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Andrew Whitehouse and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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Cadbury's Energy Chocolate Wrapper
Description
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A wrapper off a chocolate bar. On the reverse 'War-time Emergency Label'.
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Cadbury's
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
Tasmania--Hobart
Tasmania
Coverage
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Civilian
Language
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eng
Type
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Physical object
Format
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One double sided printed sheet
Identifier
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MHayhurstJM2073102-170725-050001, MHayhurstJM2073102-170725-050002
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
home front
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2048/33184/AMcCulloughF210621.1.mp3
d8b712349412abcb5c40a9cda95fb48e
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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McCullough, Fred
F McCullough
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history with Fred McCullough about his uncle, Sergeant Henry McCullough (645957, Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer with 61 Squadron and was killed 9 March 1943. <br /><br />The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff. <br /><br />Additional information on Henry MucCullough is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/115432/">IBCC Losses Database.</a>
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2021-06-21
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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McCullough, F
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DE: Ok. So that’s recording. So, this is an interview with Fred McCullough about his Uncle Harry or Henry. Sergeant Harry McCullough. He was a flight engineer with 61 Squadron. This is an interview for the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive. It’s taking place over the telephone. Fred is in Tasmania and the time is sometime just after 6pm and I’m in the UK and it’s sometime just after 9am. So, Fred, thanks very much for agreeing to do this. This telephone interview. Obviously, your uncle died before you were born. How did your family remember him and what’s your experiences of his memory when you were growing up?
FM: Well, his name was just brought up obviously from time to time in my early years living in Belfast. You know. From my father mainly. He obviously, he was killed three years, I was born in 1946 so I never did meet him. My elder, my older brother had vague memories of him but mine are, mine are all from photographs and sort of family stories basically. And it wasn’t until later years, I mean as a young lad there was a lot of, a lot of our family were involved with various aspects of the military during the Second World War. My father was in the 8th Army. He was in the [unclear] campaign and the Italian campaign. My Uncle Harry who was killed, his younger brother, younger brother Joe also was in the RAF and had, he was taken prisoner in in Greece, just north of Athens for quite a while and so a few stories and then he was released and we have back in Northern Ireland. So a few stories from my father and his brother basically that I know of the background of my Uncle Harry really. And its probably not until my later years, when you’re a bit older you sort of start really taking all this stuff in. So it’s not really until probably when I was in my fifties and then I was married with children my father and mother came visiting quite a few times from Northern Ireland to Tasmania. And it’s not until you’re a little bit older that you start to take a bit of interest in your family history and where you’re from. Also, I had taken a lot of interest in more local history. I worked for a while at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery here at [unclear] and started to learn, take on board more about your surroundings and the people that led to where we are now. So that’s probably how I came to be interested in the first place. My father brought his logbook out and gave it to me in the late 1990s. I want to say something like logbook. That makes it a sort of concrete bit of documentation as opposed to just a story but it was from then on that I took a more personal interest.
[recording interrupted]
FM: We were lucky that the logbook actually was on a whole passed from my grandfather to my, to the eldest brother in the family. My father was one of four boys and two girls. Harry, who was the second eldest. An older one again and he had, he had all our family logbooks and history and medals and all that sort of stuff. So, I don’t know why it came in my direction because as I say have an older brother. He lives in [unclear] in the South of Ireland but for some reason they decided maybe it was because of my artwork and [unclear] with family history but his medals were given to me. I have them here beside me hanging up on the wall in fact with his photograph and so through that sort of thing my father bringing those out to Australia and giving them to me was what sort of triggered my interest in the background. There had been different pieces prior to that. And then I suppose I started looking at the logbook and just starting random pieces of work based on, on the information in the logbook that was operating to Essen [unclear] and so on. So I just took a random one and started doing that and after a while it became largely because I did the series from, it was in his tenth operation as you know that he was killed.
DE: Yeah.
FM: So it just seemed logical that I, from that sequence I did an introductory painting called, “Above and beyond,” and it was all to do with, the paintings are quite abstract in, visually with perhaps [unclear] relating to the contents on the back. But interestingly these paintings, and I did ten paintings on his logbook and then I did a conclusion painting which was based on Fürstenfeldbruck which is where he was shot down north of Munich and [unclear] a photograph of his first burial site, the cross etcetera. Him and the crew.
DE: Yeah.
FM: So, I did sort of contain the [unclear] twelve paintings in all and I have that series here at my home in Glengarry. I’ve used it a number of times. Particularly at an exhibition in Hobart back in 2015 as a lead-in. But in 2009 I put, I reproduced [unclear] on canvas [unclear] and added more information from the logbook of aircrew names etcetera and dates and flight times and that’s what I took to Belfast in the Waterfront Hall in Belfast and all those things that are now in East Kirkby next to Lancaster, “Just Jane.” The Belfast was significant in that my father and his family all grew up in the very centre of the city. My grandfather was a fireman.
DE: Yeah.
FM: All the family lived there from the early days in the fire station. That was prior to him joining the Army and therefore [unclear] where they were living. So his family had a big association with the fire brigade and just coincidentally on the Waterfront Hall where I exhibited is just across, literally a hundred and fifty, two hundred metres across the road [unclear] building in the centre of Belfast from where they lived. So that made it quite appropriate. Yeah. So that, that’s as far as that first series goes. I, after I’d displayed those paintings I also then and the coincidence of where all these events took place and my wife and I travelled from Australia. I’m to Ireland virtually every year right up until my father died in 2003. My mother lived until 2011 so I would go home every year for a number of weeks to look, just to check on her and on the way my wife if she was with me rented a van unit and travelled [unclear] stayed there and cycled out to find Durnbach War Cemetery and you know obviously had a look where the whole crew are buried.
DE: Yeah.
FM: Which was quite a fantastic location. When I got there they were actually renovating. They were actually landscaping over landscaping and they had actually closed that one section of the cemetery. So I thought well I’ve travelled twelve thousand miles. I stepped over the rope to get in to have a closer look and I had with me a small, about four inch by twenty section of a Lancaster I’d purchased from the International Bomber Command. They were, they had refurbished the tail section of the Phantom of the Ruhr. They were selling off small sections which were advertised through the Lancaster Association. And I had bought, I bought two small sections and one of them I had engraved with the family names starred my father, sister, my grandfather and grandmother.
DE: Yeah.
FM: And I sort of hastily buried that.
DE: Oh wow.
FM: Beneath the headstones of where the crew are buried in Durnbach. So hopefully that is still there.
DE: I’m sure it is. Yeah.
FM: Yeah. So that was significant and I brought back, I have sitting here in front of me a pinecone from Durnbach, from the cemetery and I took two small soil samples from the, from the area because from Munich we flew to England.
DE: Yeah.
FM: I’d arranged through the RAAF Association here in Launceston in Tasi, to put me in contact with flight lieutenant [Hughie] Hector. Now, I hadn’t ever met [Hughie] Hector but I had close communications with her so I told her I wanted to visit Syerston where he flew from. She arranged, and she arranged something. I knew they were flying gliders.
DE: Yes. That’s right. Yeah.
FM: Up there. And through her she arranged that I would get in. We go there and they actually if we went to, we spent two or three nights in that area and they actually took me up on two glider flights off the same runway that Harry would have used in 1943.
DE: Oh wow. So you got to see the area from, from the air. Yeah.
FM: Yeah. The whole, the whole set up of the, of the Trent coming through at the end of the runway and frost and all that sort of stuff. And I was really lucky getting that because we visited there in 2017 and I think there has become stricter now with the Ministry of Defence. The young gentlemen that came virtually was very sceptical that I had actually managed to get a flight there. He was telling me who the pilot and that was so it happened some of the photographs of that flight and that, dad actually encouraged me and said [unclear] state of the logbook by the end of the series based on the glider flights flying from there quite a few painting based on that and one of the painting which was a link between that, a glider flying and again randomly chose one aircraft W4270. I did one on that and within a number of weeks just coincidentally again through the [unclear] link at the Lancaster Association they had an article about [unclear] services and it just coincidental I recognised the aircraft number and that then triggered off that he had, my uncle had actually flown that, that aircraft two weeks before he had his operation to Dusseldorf and Nuremberg and the aircraft I think was probably shot up a bit and they then used it as a training aircraft for another crew. And so in this the article was saying pieces of that aircraft had been found in the area by a local farmer [unclear] Ablewhite who you may —
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
FM: Have heard. They were sitting on the Memorial. Anyway, I got in touch with Di Ablewhite through the Lancaster Association and when we visited them in 2007, sorry [unclear] my times now.
DE: That doesn’t matter.
FM: Yeah. We were able to look at some [unclear] very small fragments of the aircraft and they knew it was that aircraft because one of the fragments in particular had a serial number on it. And that’s how they identified it still. So then that started me off on the ones that I sent you, Dan.
DE: Yeah.
FM: The paintings, “The Seven from Syerston.” So, and they took me to see the location where the aircraft went down and that sort of thing and again through as you know, a man who follows history the more you find out the more, the less you know.
DE: Oh, definitely. Yeah. Yeah.
FM: Lead to a bigger picture. I discovered that Warne who was the pilot had actually flown with my uncle’s crew at one point when my uncle must have been off on leave or doing a course or something but they did do a flight. It was an operation to Milan with [Walters]as the pilot and all the rest of the crew so he must have flown as second dickie or perhaps as the flight engineer with the same crew that my uncle had flown with. So, there it was. What maybe just a number of weeks later that Warne and his crew were doing that training flight from Syerston and the aircraft had engine failure and the crash. So there was that double link if you like from finding out the name of the crew and the crew had flown with another crew. And then handling bits of aircraft were just [unclear]
DE: Yeah.
FM: So all of that became part of a greater exhibition I did in 2015 at a gallery in Hobart. About seventy paintings I had and the lead in of the exhibition was to do with his logbook series. And then that led into my experiencing the, “Seven from Syerston.” Then other, other aircraft, local ones near in Australia came with one called Little [Neva]. It was a [unclear] bomber crashed on the way back from New Guinea and I took, that coincidentally was called after my daughter. Coincidences. It was called Little Neva. And it was something based on that. Flying up the Gulf of [unclear] and there was the wreck of the aircraft. it’s pretty well inaccessible. So all of those sort of the Bomber Command stuff was the beginning of the sequence if you like and lead in. But then gave me a pathway through to explore other aspects in a broader way.
DE: And so you know your original interest in this was, was sparked by the stories you’d told, you’d been told about your uncle and finding the logbook. And then, “The Seven from Syerston.” It’s, it’s you know it’s largely it seems to me it’s a coincidence that you chose this aircraft that crashed that you found later on had a, had a connection. Yeah.
FM: Yeah.
DE: That’s incredible.
FM: It was actually a coincidence to that is for some reason I’d chosen as W4270 prior to reading about that because it featured in one of the larger paintings with the number. Yeah. I mean my paintings that are not paintings of aircraft which perhaps disappoints some people. I know people tend to like things like look like what they expect to see. But I find my paintings, the way I do that I’m able to include broader information than just depicting an aircraft if you know what I mean. It was pulling other information together past and present.
DE: Yeah. I mean I’ve looked. Looked at the work you do and yeah it’s mixed media isn’t it? It’s a mixture of Perspex and acrylic paint and digital and, and there on the, they’re unframed, aren’t they? Just on the canvas. Is there, is there a reason behind that?
FM: Sorry Dan? [unclear]
DE: Is there, as I remember they’re not framed. Is, is there a reason behind, behind that? Is that —
FM: No. The actual central surface has a small trim around them. The, the logbook series they have a frame. The frame is actually part of the painting. The central piece of the painting and the central piece I tend to imply it’s more about the person, the experience. The experience of the moment in time if you’re sitting there in a very confused situation and the big broader outside piece which had been in the original pieces of 30 ml of craftwood with the middle bit inserted in that. And the outside of it is more to do with the aircraft so, but at times, and the same with the [unclear] at times the outside finds itself competing with the inside and vice versa because of the confusion of the moment.
DE: Yeah.
FM: I’m not trying to replicate the situation but I would imagine they were having a very confusing time and the confusion of the moment the inside and the outside sort of come together. [unclear] outside the aircraft the centre. The frame itself is the frame but it’s also part of —
DE: Yeah. It’s part of the art. So yeah, it’s quite, it’s quite abstract and there’s bits that represent the crew and there’s bits that represent the aircraft and then its about the relationship between the aircrew and the aircraft I suppose. Is that —
FM: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. And particularly, there’s one there is only one which you actually see a figure [unclear] a clear image of my Uncle Harry from a photograph. His head is the operational [wing pattern] and I used his head. I engraved that. I engraved his head and made it on a bit of Perspex and then in the ink so that name fits over the top of a piece of the painting. So you get an interaction between the transparency of the Perspex and the paint and the images behind. So it’s almost like a reflected or refracted imagery coming together as one. You bring the person and the object together.
DE: I suppose there’s a sort of ghostly element to it as well a bit. You know it could be interpreted like that anyway. I mean, yeah. I see. I see your point about you know some people who are expecting to see a sort of photo, realistic painting of, of people in aircraft but my, my son has just completed a degree in animation so I’m, he uses mixed media and he’s very abstract as well. So I kind of get that sort of thing. It’s all about impressions and feelings isn’t it?
FM: Yeah. Well, the guy who did the interview in Belfast [unclear] prior the afternoon before the opening. I mean he said there were a lot of aircrew and there were and I actually gave a short talk the previous day to the RAF Association in Belfast. A number of those guys there and they were all coming that night. And he said, ‘Well, you know what do you think they’re looking over it?’ And I said well it depends [unclear] open ended. Different people will take different things from from the work.’ And I said, ‘I suspect with people who are coming from the RAF Association perhaps would be more interested in the documentation and information that they can read as opposed to interpreting [unclear] in mind you know and make up with composition. So —
DE: Yeah. But that’s, that’s included on the, in the artwork itself as well, isn’t it?
FM: Yeah. Yeah. The crew names and the numbers and the flight times, and the operational times. All that is included. More so in the three that are in England. I would choose one where we had a little bit of information. Series one they’re in relief and for example you know the location of the operational [unclear] would be Munich or Dusseldorf or whatever was actually raised up as three dimensional relief from the object. So the huge one which I have here is much more physically three dimensional. They are more relief panels whereas by transcribing it on to canvas obviously it’s more of a flatter painting.
DE: Yeah.
FM: And I did that but then I had the work tools so they’re not just reproductions of originals. They are another step forward and more information added. And also logically it had taken me twelve thousand miles to actually transport them to Belfast and they were, just rolled the canvases up and then I put them together, set them all together in frames and what have you while I was in Belfast trying to make the exhibition transformation from there.
DE: And they’re the ones that are now in East Kirkby. Yeah?
FM: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. I went to East Kirkby in 2017 with my cousin who lives in Woking and another cousin is [unclear] outside London. And she was getting married and my cousin and my wife came with me and my cousin, Sam who lives in Woking who has also been stored a lot of family history as well. And the only living relative of my Uncle Harry and my father was a sister and she was alive until she died about two or three years ago. But she came with us from, we drove from London up to, well they drove, we took the train up and met up with her, went to, I went to East Kirkby and had a look at the paintings [unclear] quite a few [unclear] there. Just Jane and the paintings [unclear] it isn’t actually hanging. In fact, it’s interesting, a coincidence in one history cabinet I discovered, we always assumed that the crew, my uncle’s crew, Sergeant Walters I always assumed that they were all [unclear] at the beginning and end of their career but in fact I discovered an [unclear] in one of the glass cabinets there [unclear] the crew prior to my uncle joining them like in the November of 1942. So I [unclear] five operations with Sergeant Walters [unclear] he actually had quite a few. More than ten when they were done.
DE: Oh right.
FM: Operations of my uncle and that was a [unclear] thing because my father [unclear] was that he thought my uncle was getting very close to his tour but in fact, as you know a tour is thirty operations.
DE: Yeah.
FM: So he was far from the end. But I think he might have discovered that in fact, the historian we met and my grandfather was perhaps it was Walters and the rest of the crew that had done a lot more than the ten operations. So you know they might have been getting close to the end of their tour. They were just unfortunate to not get out of it altogether [unclear]
[recording interrupted]
FM: Flight engineer. He joined in 1939 and he went in, he trained, this is just information he trained at St Athan in Wales, in Cardiff as a flight mechanic. My grandparents, it’s quite funny because I have a letter here. The last and only letter I’ve got which [unclear] gave which my uncle wrote. He must have written it [unclear] from St Athan. I can read it. Would you like me to read you a little bit of it?
DE: Yeah. If, if you’re ok. Yeah.
FM: This is a letter from my Uncle Harry to my father and mother who were still in Belfast. This is in 1939 and he obviously had only joined. He’d had gone to St Athan and Glamorgan for training and he says just a few lines, “Dear Sam and Marg, just a few lines to wish you luck and give you, give you Sammy [pause] Britain,” oh try again, “Britain has a lot of men who are so called heroes out here without you joining. So for God’s sake use your brains and stay at home and leave it to Joe and I.’ Joe was the younger brother who was in the RAF [unclear] 1944 and became a POW. “And let them do things to keep Jim from doing.” So also, he was the younger brother. So he had to [unclear] join up because they were streetwise and they can, “They know the ropes. They’ll not get into any trouble. If you do join now you would have to, you will have a hell of a time. They’ll push you all over the place. It’s not so bad for us. I’ve seen others train and the best way is to run like hell. Believe me I ain’t no hero and don’t intend on pushing my way to the front. I hope to be able to use my brains also and come out alright. If I don’t I will have had a good time.” Anyway, and it goes on in a more personal level of celebrating out on the town that night.
DE: Yeah.
FM: Local people he’d met and they’d got to take [unclear] Someone obviously knows and stay at home. By the looks of thing you will have plenty to do.” My father was in the Reserve Police at the time in Belfast. A [unclear] special. So there’s a man and he went on. Trained as a flight mechanic and obviously then obviously with the big Lancasters came on board and he’s obviously seen operations of that sort.
DE: Yeah.
FM: And for some reason ignored his own advice and became a flight engineer.
DE: Yeah. With, with the expansion of the RAF you know ground, ground crew were under a lot of pressure to, to remuster as, as air crew and particularly as flight engineers. So yeah.
FM: Yeah. And that would have suited him in a way because he always had a, one of the photographs that comes up on the internet he always has a [unclear] motorcycle and how they work and —
DE: Yeah.
FM: Weekend rides on the motorbike when they were living at the fire station pre-war which obviously [unclear] a Sunday morning ride and would snap the bike and put back together again. So he obviously was mechanically minded so the engineering and things obviously suited him. And then just transferred that skill and information interest to aircraft.
DE: Yeah.
FM: Yeah.
DE: And I’m just, it’s interesting that, you know you discovered that the rest of the crew had done more ops than him. Perhaps, I mean flight engineers weren’t needed in, in aircraft like Wellingtons so perhaps they’d fly on ops in something, you know, twin engined, and were then moved, yeah, to 61 Squadron wasn’t it? So yeah. Interesting.
FM: Again, some of the interesting things you find in the logbook after one of the operations they didn’t land at Syerston and they landed [unclear] they were then because their aircraft and the thing actually it may have been 4270 which was damaged and they flew back to Syerston and he flew back as a mid-upper back from England where the base was at Duxford or —
DE: Yeah.
FM: Bottesford. To Syerston, and he was mid-upper and the pilot was Flight Lieutenant Hopgood. And then again it turns out Hopgood in the end, they were his, they were down at Syerston introducing, the radial Lancaster being introduced and Hopgood was ferrying a radial Lancaster around Syerston and Harry just hitched a ride as a mid-upper. But it turns out Hopgood, as you probably know turned out to have had a second go at the Mohne Dam.
DE: Yes. A bit of a famous name. Yeah.
FM: Yeah. So they were, they were most, a lot of the Dambusters were selected from that, from Syerston and they formed that squadron command but I guess not from Syerston and of course by that time Harry was obsolete on 9th of March 1943 this [unclear] called the Dambusters.
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
FM: But [unclear] there was fantastic. I mean [unclear] operational place the whole landscape there [unclear] and we really, we’ve had two trips around that area and fantastic bit of landscape. Unfortunately, when we went into this with my aunt [unclear] who is now dead they wouldn’t let us on the day for security reasons and she and my cousin went back to London and my wife and I went back the next day and chanced our arm at the gate and spoke in the intercom and explained we were just over from Australia and the guy came down and could take us in, ‘I’ll take you in for five minutes.’ [unclear] and what have you but Margaret she never did get the chance to actually go on the base even. However, a lot of the side roads you are able to drive up and park right next to the [unclear] where the bays were.
DE: Yeah.
FM: So she at least got a feel of where he had flown from which was pretty, probably pretty emotional for her. Because she was only young. She’d have only been a baby. Very young. Well young. During her early, in her teens when her brother was killed she was. Yeah. So she actually joined the WAAFs towards the tail end of the war. She must only have been about seventeen.
DE: Oh right. Ok.
FM: She was a WAAF until the war finished.
DE: Do you think the —
FM: So I don’t, I don’t know Dan what else I can add. I mean I could ramble all day. I’m not sure what you really want.
DE: Well, you’ve answered most of my questions. I understand now your new project you’re looking at sort of a maritime trilogy is it?
FM: Yeah. I I had again a lot of my things become not necessarily coincidences in my family and what have you. My grandfather on my mother’s side was with the Royal Irish Reg. He was a runner in the First World War. I did as part of that exhibition in Hobart I did a space based on the Great War including some information on his background and I visited a friend of mine in Melbourne with the Sandringham Yacht Club. I understand that he sailed [unclear] actually he sailed from Sandringham Yacht Club. It turned out there was a eighty five metre 1917 British submarine which they brought to Australia in 1918. One of five and in the end they [unclear] scuttling it at the breakwater at Sandringham and it lies there to its massive hulk. So I did a [unclear] from that and that led me in to all the maritime information. My daughter is up in Queensland near Fraser Island. At the back of Fraser Island there’s a boat called, a ship called the Moheno. The Moheno was built in in Dumbarton in Scotland in 1904. She was the New Zealand Steamship Company but they brought it to New Zealand and took it back and converted it into a hospital ship and it served Gallipoli.
DE: Oh right. Ok.
FM: [unclear] Then locally here we have working, having a worked in the museum here I knew of a vessel called the Nairana. Now, the Nairana as it turns out because [unclear] I started looking at history of the different vessels it turns out it was built in the same shipyard as the Moheno in Dumbarton. And the Nairana was a fantastic looking vessel because they converted into an aircraft carrier in 1917 which is [unclear] livery. So you got this, these two vessels built in the same place for two totally different functions and in the Great War and off the back of [unclear] the aircraft by gantry from the back of the carrier in 1917. I mean that was, aircraft were only flying what five years or something from their invention. This thing was very much it appears the dazzle had been very [unclear]
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Dazzle paint’s fantastic, isn’t it?
FM: [unclear] 1911.
DE: Yeah.
FM: [unclear] if you like but the aircraft was picked up [unclear] there was an aircraft called [unclear] one, two, three of the top of my head and they were built in Belfast from where I was born. So there was a bit of a Belfast link there and also in that the Nairana at the end of its service went back to Australia. It was refurbished at Harland and Wolff Shipyard [unclear] that was built in East Belfast and then it came and it served between that and the Tasman run between Melbourne and Tasmania until 1948. So again, yes I did that maritime thing with bringing past and present together if you like. I did it on the Moheno on Fraser Island and took a lot of photographs and I presume that Maritime Exhibition is until the 19th. Yeah. But again [unclear] even though it, even if it’s maritime it still has the actual flavour of —
DE: Yeah.
FM: Past. Bringing past and present together.
DE: And the geographical connections as well. I’m just, I’m just looking at my notes and some of the questions I’d put. I think I read or heard somewhere that during some of your research you were, you got in touch with a family member of one of your uncle’s crew.
FM: Yes. Well, I I exchanged emails many years ago with, I think it was Young. A Canadian crew. And it was a bit strange. I’d go on to the emails but they weren’t enthusiastic emails [unclear] and whether it was a brother or uncle I’m not quite sure but sort of lost that chunk out. And the only other one that I sort of come across was the machine gunner called Briggs. He was called Briggs and he was only twenty two and he actually appears, there’s a photograph of him in the last few years. More recent form of publication for the Lancaster Association. I had a query if it was him. A guy called Jack Waltham who lives in [unclear] sorry in Newark and [unclear] giving them to the Lancaster Association to publish by this Jack Waltham and I have a telephone number for him. I actually wrote a letter to him because I would have liked to have got a copy of that photograph but I’ve had no response.
DE: Oh right. Ok.
FM: But at least I have a magazine with a photograph.
DE: Yeah.
FM: Of one guy, a twenty three year old in it. So other than that that’s the only sort of contact I managed to have with any sort of vaguely any crew. I’d love to get a photograph of the crew but I haven’t been lucky with that forthcoming. I don’t know how whether there were any taken or what have you.
DE: Yeah. I don’t know. I mean it always astonishes me that you know so many years after the, after the events that people keep coming forward with, with photographs and you know bits of memorabilia and things like logbooks and letters and diaries and those sorts of things so, yeah.
FM: The only photograph I have of Uncle Harry in uniform I don’t know where it was taken. [It came in a case] with my grandfather but there doesn’t seem to be any insignia at all on his tunic. But it’s pretty [unclear] formal tunic but I can’t see any. He actually looks quite old in it. He was. He was probably older than the rest, any of the crew at twenty seven when he was killed.
DE: Yeah.
FM: And the pilot was twenty six. Most of the crew were around the mid-twenties other than the two, the gunners was only twenty two sort of age. But I haven’t any of him in any sort of formal [unclear] insignia or what have you. I do have, sort of in here medals and that sort of stuff and in [unclear] I have the one that was awarded to him for service because there was no campaign medal as you know for, for bomber crew and you know three or four years ago they did actually strike a bar with a —
DE: Yeah. The Bomber Command clasp. Yeah.
FM: And the clasp. Yeah. And when I was there she [unclear] gave that to me myself from that year because she had a medal collection. So yeah.
DE: Yeah.
FM: If you’re interested I have actually got sitting in front of me here on the table is my, one of my nieces who lives in Belfast she sent me a poppy from the poppies that were exhibited in the Tower of London.
DE: Oh yes.
FM: There was like thirty thousand of them and she, at the end of it they sold them off and she bought one. Beautifully packaged they were. A really good project they did. She sent me that and I, what I did with that [unclear] I have it mounted on a beautiful slab of blackwood which is a Tasmanian timber with part of a shell case inverted and that, then the stem comes up through that and on the shell case I have engraved my uncle’s name, my father’s name, service number plus my wife’s, my wife’s from Tasmania, her dad and what have you all served with the Australian Army in North Africa, Borneo and what have you. And my grandfather named [unclear] I’ll send you a photograph of that if I can bring it up on the internet. It’s just a really nice piece of sculpture. I mean it was a fantastic project the installation they made in the Tower of London.
DE: Yeah. It was. Yeah. Yeah. It really was.
FM: So rather than just keeping the poppy I made a sort of [feature] of it and I actually included that in the Hobart exhibition of 2015 as part of the [unclear]. Yeah.
DE: Smashing.
FM: Quite coincidentally in the 2015 exhibition I, there was a bit of, particularly a local Legacy here which is a bit like the British Legion. They look after wives and families of ex-servicemen and a guy I met who was a pilot in the helicopters in Vietnam. He got the DFC. A guy called Peter [unclear] Through Peter I had a table and I actually sat next to him for the two weeks it was on and I paid for three panels and they were one from the Great War period, one for the 1939/45, some post-war things and I created part, I’d done a sort of preparation of imagery as a sort of background imagery and the bottom I gridded it up and people who visited the exhibition were invited to put something on the bottom segment of these paintings and they were up for auction. For sale at auction then all the money raised from those three paintings went to Legacy.
DE: Oh, that’s a good idea. Yeah.
FM: Some very interesting people came in and gave me a whole range of thumb prints on that. Some from ex-Lancaster crew [unclear] who was Australian who flew DFC [unclear] years ago and a lot of interesting people came through and put a thumbprint. Then I took them away, worked on the painting and people then could bid for them.
DE: Wow, ok. Yeah.
FM: Initially the poppy inspired me. I did some wood blocks based on the poppy installation. That was going to be too complicated so the thumbprints were the second best thing and that turned out actually better. Much more personal.
DE: Yeah. Definitely. I mean some people, some people collect signatures but a thumbprint is, is —
FM: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. Ok. I just have, I just have one more question that I usually ask in these sorts of interviews. It’s just how, how you feel about the way Bomber Command is being remembered. I just wondered you know if you have a different perspective from some because you know you’ve seen how it’s remembered in the UK and in Australia.
FM: Mixed feelings because only recently a book was being published that mentioned Bomber Harris. And they make Bomber Harris out to be an ogre of course. I mean they mention I think that Bomber Command went too far with their bombing too and they perhaps didn’t really need to but I I can understand why [unclear] much longer. So I have mixed feelings about it. Some [unclear] in the community perhaps think it shouldn’t have happened in terms of how they went about it. I’m perhaps more sympathetic as to why they had to do it. I mean my, my mother was actually at the receiving end of the Blitz. They called it the Blitz in Belfast in 1941 because she, we grew up in East Belfast. My brother was born. My brother was like one year old and my father was away in Africa and my mother’s house, she remembered the Blitz and [unclear] coming down. And lucky enough after the second wave they had taken her out to the country so back home the house was demolished. So family wise was quite an interface out of that fact that Britain had [unclear] as Churchill said they’d sown the wind, they shall inherit the whirlwind but I can, I can understand that attitude. And the things is all the Northern Irish men were all volunteers. There was no conscription in Northern Ireland so we were very much there voluntarily for whatever they were [unclear]
DE: Yeah.
FM: If you like, which is another story.
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
FM: Well, Dan I don’t know what else [unclear] I’ve answered all your questions or made them more confusing but —
DE: No. It’s been wonderful. It’s really interesting. Yeah. Thank you very much unless you can think of anything else to add I shall, I shall press stop on the recording now. But [pause] yeah.
FM: Well, [unclear] one thing I’ll do I’ll forward you a photograph from the internet if I can bring it up on the poppy sculpture. Because I think that link [unclear] which are down here. Yeah. So, as I say if you have any other specific questions [unclear] if you want to ask by email or something I’m happy to reply to you.
DE: Smashing. Yeah.
FM: There are, there have been a number of articles. In fact, you can probably access them. There was an article with a guy who did an interview and it appeared in the Belfast, a weekend Belfast paper 2019. The guy lives in Canada. America. From Los Angeles actually. A writer. He contacted me after the [unclear] exhibition in 2019 and he publicised [unclear] with his family background and there’s a double page spread in the Belfast Sunday paper talking about [unclear] operations in their family. What he did and [unclear] and what have you.
DE: Right.
FM: And it also appeared, a similar article was printed in the, in the Irish Herald in California prior to that so there are other people’s websites. It gave a potted story about [unclear]
DE: Okey dokey.
FM: Questions [unclear] and then he put it all together and he was a professional journalist he went on to publish them. Yeah.
DE: Right. Well yeah, we can have a look for that.
FM: Yeah. I could ramble on as I say which I’d probably be repeating myself after a while. The only thing that Durnbach as a cemetery was fantastic. It was a beautiful location. It took my wife three hours to get to it because we were staying at [unclear] which was about thirty kilometre from the main route. You were directed by the scenic country route and the Germans are worse than the Irish for giving directions I can tell you. It took us a long time to find the cemetery and they didn’t call it a war cemetery they call it a soldier’s cemetery. The local population there. But we found it eventually and had a look at that. My son actually had been there the year before.
DE: Ok.
FM: With his then partner. He’s since married her and they were tourists. They toured around. They went by car and just coincidentally when he was there [unclear] out of nowhere no people, very quiet and while they were sitting at the headstones of the crew there was a fly past of a jet aircraft.
DE: Oh wow.
FM: They did a pass and did a half wing pass over the cemetery because I think [unclear] is still an American base not far from Munich. May have been probably again coincidental but it was were quite strange that this happened.
DE: Yeah.
FM: [unclear] flew over the cemetery.
DE: It was. Yeah. It felt quite poignant I imagine. Yeah.
FM: Yeah. But the cemetery itself is in a brilliant location. A brilliant location. Real atmosphere. Yeah. Yeah. And hopefully my piece of the Lancaster is still at the headstone.
DE: I’m sure it is because, yeah no one else is going to go digging around there are they? So, yeah. Right. I shall press, press stop on the recording. Right.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Fred McCullough
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-06-21
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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.
Format
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00:48:22 Audio Recording
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMcCulloughF210621
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Description
An account of the resource
Fred McCullough discusses his series of abstract art works which are an homage to his uncle, Sergeant Harry McCullough, a flight engineer with 61 Squadron. He was killed on his tenth operation and is buried at Durnbach Cemetery.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Second generation
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
Northern Ireland--Belfast
Tasmania
Great Britain
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
2015
Contributor
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Julie Williams
61 Squadron
aircrew
arts and crafts
crash
flight engineer
killed in action
Lancaster
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Syerston
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/659/8932/BAndersonRJAndersonRJv1.2.pdf
ec9e1bb95758e7ae0310e8c3d9401ca5
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
Anderson, Robert
Bob Anderson
R J Anderson
Description
An account of the resource
One item. An unpublished memoir by Flying Officer Robert Anderson.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by
Christopher Nash 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
2016-06-06
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Anderson, RJ
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[Drawings of Australia shoulder flash, RAAF pilot’s brevet and medal ribbons.]
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1.
This is not written as any kind of record of facts, neither does it include any of the finer detail. It is only a vague outline of my own experience of a relatively short, but crowded period, while I was involved in surviving a war as one of many aircrew. No doubt many other people have much different ideas, mainly because their experiences would have been different, some better, some worse, I had no experience of injury to myself or crew, either through enemy action or just plain accident, but there were times when we put that down to our better than average good luck. Not once did we even have what could be called a crash landing. My crew would disagree and say they were all far below the average safety level, but could still grin when they said it, so there were times when I accept that as almost praise, they still hoped for some miracle, even if it didn’t happen.
But back to the beginning
[signature] R J Anderson
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2.
At the beginning of the war in Europe, all of our age group were called up for home service in the army. A referendum for overseas conscription having been defeated. However P.N.G. was a mandated territory at this time so it was included in home territory.
I joined the 3rd Div. sigs as a despatch rider because I had an interest in motor bikes, but the army didn’t ride the way we did. Of course you had to take your own bike along as the army only had a few, mostly antiques.
They soon managed to acquire every side valve model in the country to make up the numbers. Mine, being OHV, I took home again, the army thought these were unreliable.
The courses here were very simple, internal combustion engines, Morse code, sig by flags etc. plus the usual armaments. The rest was pack drill and physical exercise.
Went OK, until our selected officers turned up to take command straight out of school. Perhaps they could count to ten without using their fingers, but they didn’t know one end of a gun from the other, let alone what went on in between. They also had the greatest ability to get lost once they were more than 10yds (3m) from the main road. So a few of us decided we would be better off somewhere else. We all thought, perhaps if we could fly, we may have some hope of getting away from the stupidity (just do as you are told we are never wrong) how could anyone achieve anything that way.
Not that we thought air force officers would be any different, but if you were flying by yourself, you should have some chance of making some of your own decisions, be they right or wrong. So, as the camp period lasted only three months, we then returned to normal work until our next call up for another three months.
At this time we just signed on, not as pilots as we had hoped, but just as aircrew, the airforce [sic] then sorted you into whichever they considered you most suitable for.
Of course there was a very tough physical examination to pass, and then back to school three nights a week to catch up on maths, etc. it was then left up to the airforce to claim us from the army. As they had first claim because we were already partly trained. However I managed to get my release two days before the next camp was due to begin. So I carried on the night school until called up for the airforce. By this time the empire air scheme was getting well organised. Ours was No. 23 course at Sommers. Accommodation was mostly huts, but some tents, just to make up until they could build more huts.
It was the day after our arrival in camp when the Japanese entered the war, of course this must have added to the need to speed up the training, but it still took nearly four months of solid study. Subjects included - all maths, alg, geom, trig, etc. Morse code, send and receive minimum 17 words to minute. Met, Navigation, theory of flight, internal combustion engines, carburation, super chargers some physical and structural stresses, and a lot more interesting junk that you would never hope to use in practice.
As it had been a few years since I had left school, it wasn’t easy but some of these were new subjects anyway.
Four of us from the army course had arrived for this intake, so I wasn’t the only one with strange ideas. (I was later told that the 3rd div. was almost wiped out in New Guinea, perhaps they didn’t have time to learn).
A lot of time was put into physical training too up and down the sand dunes etc. as many of this intake were league footballers, rugby players from N.S.W. and some of our better known athletes in other sports, the competition was always pretty keen.
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3.
I remember being told off by a W.O. because I let one chap beat me at something I said “yeah, but I could have beat him if I have to”. He said “My boy, you only come second once in a war there is no second chance”.
He was so right.
Here too, were the first of the assessment boards, you marched into a room, when called, to face 4 or 5 officers, ex-school master types, seated behind a long desk, each with a list of questions to fire at you.
The questions would be on all strange unrelated subjects, often overlapping before you had time to complete your answer to the previous question.
There must have been a reason somewhere as these were regular up to ops squadron, but at the end of the course we were divided into groups, pilots, navs, wops etc. and sent to different camps for further training in our selected fields.
I was lucky enough to be selected as a pilot. Our mob went to Western Junction (Tas) to start on Tiger moths.
Our quarters were unlined gal iron huts with no heating which was not a lot of protection from the snow on the hills outside. I think most of us slept with our clothes on plus a few spare news papers tucked between the couple of issue blankets, but no one complained too much, after all, we were doing what we had set out to do.
Between the flying we still did plenty of ground courses, Nav, Morse, theory of flight etc. Met became a very important subject now to learn the types of clouds and try to read the winds and weather conditions that went with different types at different heights.
The link trainer is the first introduction to practical navigation using instruments only with no possibility of map reading from sightings on the ground, however the main aim at this time was to learn to fly instruments only.
The “link” is a little dummy aircraft fixed to the floor, fitted with a complete set of instruments, controlled entirely by the pilot. It is capable of doing all turns, climbs, dives, spins, variations of speed and heights, flying any compass course etc. in fact anything a plane can do without going anywhere, but always the instruments register everything the pilot does.
You climb in the same as in a plane, a cover goes over the trainee so you cannot see anything outside your little cabin. All instruments have repeaters on the instructions desk, along with a pen on wheels, as on a recording graph, this plots your track you actually fly on a map. Speeds, height etc. can be read off along the track by the instructor.
A map of a chosen area is fixed to the bench top, with North corresponding to your compass North; and the pen set at your starting point. You have a similar map with your track, turning points, heights etc. marked on it, so if you can fly the correct courses you have worked out, at the correct speeds, then the pen on the desk will trace the correct track on the map, but I think most of us went off a bit. The only to tell when to turn is when your calculated time for that track is up. Trouble is, if you go off track, or flown too fast, or too slow you are no where near where you should be when you turn, and the error increases as time goes on. Hard to believe when you see the results on the map on the desk. However the instructor can talk to you through the intercom, so he does put you right now and then. It’s easy to go into a spin at the beginning, if you are good enough you can, get out again, if not you crash without getting hurt, but either way it’s a good way to practice.
[underlined] Tiger Moth [/underlined]
Basic trainer for R.A.A.F. in fact most of the Empire air training at the time. This is a simple aircraft, very stable in flight, fully aerobatic, speed about the top speed of my motorbike, but no trees to miss.
It has no flaps, no super chargers, only one petrol tank, fixed propeller, with a strong head wind it can fly backwards relative to the
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4
ground, open cockpit, no radio, only a tube speaking system between the seats. There are no brakes either, which makes it hard to taxi. Only method of steering is by use of the rudder, but with a strong wind from the side, it can be greater than the airflow from the slipstream, which means the aircraft automatically turns into wind, only correction is a burst of throttle against a full rudder, but the stick must be held hard back or this will lift the tail and smash the prop into the ground.
Tiger Moth DH 90
Engine 130hp Gipsy Major Inverted
Span 29’ 4”
Length 23’ 11”
Height 8’ 9”
Take Off [deleted] Height [/deleted] W/T 1825 lbs
Max Speed 109 mph
Top Ceiling 13600 ft
Range 302 mls
Fixed prop No brakes No flaps
A fairly high drop out rate at this time considering the already carefully selected personnel, mostly through lack of co-ordination etc. most of these would be able to fly quite well but there just isn’t time to teach them. This was my first experience of hearing of someone freezing (mental & physically) one chap on final approach pointed the tiger at the end of the runway and just kept going until it hit.
He was unhurt, a tiger lands rather slowly, but he stayed in hospital a couple of days before the shock came out. Most of those who failed this initial course were changed to other aircrew ratings usually wireless ops or gunners.
Obviously a tiger is a very easy aircraft to fly, obviously I was not very good, because it took me a long time to go solo. It seems there was a lot to learn and my trouble was I could not accept anything without trying it first, so I wasted too much time just doing the same things over again. Little things like crabbing or skidding on approach or side slipping to lose height because I started too high.
It would have been hard to get lost here, because we only flew in good weather, never far from the drome but I guess we managed to fit all the essentials in and gradually built up our confidence.
Provided you did the routine checks before take off and landing everything worked out OK. They said of the tiger, if it was properly trimmed when flying and you got into trouble, you just took your hands and feet off and it would get itself out but I didn’t try that one.
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5
It was still very cold flying in the open cockpit between the snow covered hill tops, so most of the trips were pretty short. This has advantages too because it gives more takeoff’s [sic] & landings for the total hours flown.
One of my instructors had been an instructor in civvy pre-war. He had joined the airforce hoping he would be put into fighters and sent to New Guinea, but the airforce needed good instructors rather badly and obviously knew he was far more valuable as an instructor.
This was very good for us but rather frustrating for him. Just about the end of my course his frustration started to show, but this was even better for me because it did teach me some of the things to watch in low flying. Low flying in civil flying is anything below or about 500ft, low level flying in the airforce is just above to just below the tree tops. In daylight this is not too bad, in moonlight it is rather worse, add in flak and searchlight – you need a lot of luck.
He picked a day with a fairly strong wind, but once we were airborne he said “I want to show you a few things, unofficial of course so you will have to forget they happened OK?”. I said “OK” and began to wonder what this was going to be.
We drifted away from the drome to one of his paddocks where he took over control and said “ hands and feet off and just watch”, he then dived down to grass level at full speed and went charging along with the wheels just touching the grass until he spotted a hare running in our direction, he tried to hit it with the wing tip, of course this is very hard to do because the wing hides the object from view when you get close to it. Then climbed and turned towards our starting point, but he couldn’t see the hare again.
His next effort was to pick two trees spaced a little apart, he obviously knew his paddock. We were now going in the same direction as our first run so he built up speed again and dived straight through between two trees with not a lot of space either side. We then returned to our starting point again, he then said “right you’ve got it, I want you to fly between those two trees like I did, but don’t go low enough, stay just above the tops OK?”.
Well-it’s just as well I stayed above the tops because I would have gone straight into the tree on the right hand side. Not so good he said.
Next we went to the left of the paddock and again turned towards the trees. He managed to do a steep turn to the left just before we got to the first tree. Back to the starting point, and as before, it was my turn, but again above the tops. Back to the routine exercises..
When we landed back at base he explained why he had shown me these effects. He said he had picked a day when he knew the wind was strong enough and in the right direction for his paddock. What he wanted to show me was the effect of wind drift on the aircraft relative to the ground. If the wind is head on, you go much slower relative to the ground. When you fly with a cross wind your aircraft goes sideways at the same speed as the wind is blowing regardless of the speed you are flying at. If the wind is from behind you, you go that much faster relative to the ground.
The reason I would have hit the trees on the first run through was simply because I had not allowed for any drift. The reason I would have hit them on the second run was slightly different, partly because the wind would again have blown me into the trees, but also, when an aircraft or any object is travelling in a straight line at speed and you try to change it’s direction it tends to continue in the same direction.
In the case of aircraft you change the attitude of the aircraft, but it’s kinetic energy carries it on it’s original direction for some distance, so the trick is to learn to allow for this.
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The one thing he did say is a good idea for beginners was to practice on the clouds, but always remember the clouds don’t move, but the trees and houses always move.
He was so right.
His object on the first crossing was not to chase the hare, it need not have been there, it was only to check the wind drift while we were clear of the trees.
This later proved to be a very valuable lesson.
At this time the Japs were well involved in our war getting closer to our north every day, but some of us were still chosen to go to the U.K. I for one tried to change it but it seems big decisions like that can’t be changed. So a few of us were posted to Sydney. The crossing from Tas. to Melbourne in that little tub must rate as one of the roughest, being the only time I was sea sick. Our trip from Melbourne to Sydney must have been one of the worst too. Anyone who travelled on this trip pre-war must have really needed to go. We were all unloaded at Albury to change trains. It was a different gauge rail in N.S.W. at that time. Then packed into N.S.W. trains like squashed sardines, we were supposed to sleep that way, I’m sure we didn’t.
We camped at Bradfield park in Sydney waiting for our ship, but the Japs had sunk it somewhere so we all came back to Melbourne to wait again for the next one.
This was the Klip Fontain a 10000 ton Dutch freighter that normally carried a few passengers. The only armament was a singly [sic] little cannon mounted directly aft., but it was a fairly modern motor ship, cruised at about 18 knots. So there was no escort and we went far to the south from the usual trade route.
Not much out of the ordinary on this trip except for one incident where we almost had a head on collision with another ship at night, no lights of course, our little ship almost dived under when turning to starboard. The idea was to run directly away so that the gun on the aft deck could be used but it must have been one of ours, so we just continued on our way.
We had some rough weather which was unfortunate, because a table came loose in the temporary mess hold. It must have spent the night bashing everything to pieces because the next morning there was only a great pile of match wood left and thereafter we had to stand up to eat.
Three of us volunteered to be guard Capt.’s on this trip, against our principles really but it gave us full access to the cook house which is not a bad idea. The duty of the guard Capt.’s was only to check on the odd guards who were posted at different points around the ship 24 hours a day. No problems really until I went to check on one guard stationed in the hold one night. This was a pretty terrible position. It was an empty hold but the previous cargo had been a load of cow hides, they had removed all the hides but the smell in this closed area was most noticeable. There was also one steel door that swung with a creak all night, perfect ghost atmosphere, no one knew what was being guarded either. Anyhow I had just opened the hatch at the top of the stairs (not ships talk) when the poor guard pulled the trigger of the rifle. The bullet went crashing from wall to wall to wall making no end of noise in the confined area, but he did not manage to shoot himself so I wandered down and talked to him, but I did hold the rifle. It only delayed the inevitable, he was scrubbed in Canada and sent home.
It is essential to get some exercise on board ship, so our mob had to do the usual drill. One of the chaps job pre-war was a pianist at the Tiv” [sic] for the ballet more for a change than anything he taught us to do some different steps, like the about turn and change step etc. quite spectacular for the ballet, but it was just exercise for us.
Eventually arrived at San Pedro USA and made a slow trip by train up west coast to Vancouver, then across the rockies [sic] to Edmonton which was our base camp until we once again sorted into our respective groups for training purposes.
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We were rather worried about this train trip after our last experience, but there was no comparison, these trains had all the mod-cons including a porter to look after you. The porter didn’t get paid by the company, but had to tender to the rail company to get the job, his only pay was a from tips collected from the travellers. He had to clean all the carriages as well as look after his passengers, also the seats had to be made into beds every night, including the ones that folded down from the top, very comfortable too. We couldn’t afford to tip him on every occasion so we all put in and paid him at the end of the run. He made far more than we did that week. Travelling up the west coast changed our ideas of American life completely, we had looked to America as Gods country but that was only for the few. The people we saw were extremely poor. The farm houses would not have passed for decent pig pens in Australia, but the one big difference was the cars they drove, all late model yank tanks, petrol at that time was 3 pence per gal, in Aus it was about one shilling and eight pence.
The contrast in the farms was very similar to the desert and Mildura, which turned out to be typical of all the parts we saw, either they had the lot or nothing at all, not what we were used to.
The Canadian Pacific Rail, over the rockies to Edmonton was perhaps a little better than the Yank train. The railway paid their porters but you still had to tip some times. The scenery on this run must be some of the best in the world. The rivers are magnificent, often packed with Oregon logs floated down to the mills, then held by booms across the river until ready to be used.
Probably the one reason for such scenery is the fact that at the higher altitudes the air is so cold you can see even small detail for miles.
Continued across the rockies to Edmonton, which was our base camp until we were once again sorted out into our respective groups for training purposes. Edmonton at that time was a fairly big camp, but mostly for new recruits, so they were trying to teach discipline in a big way.
This wasn’t part of our deal. They were not very interested in us. There was nothing for us to do, so they kicked us out of the gate each morning and were not all that happy to see us back each night. Sometimes they held a roll call so a few of us would roll out and answer for everyone and everyone was happy.
Eventually posted to camp Borden, an RCAF camp about 60mls north of Toronto to continue our flying training. Our party have been divided into two groups, some to train on twins on dromes further west and our crowd to train here on fighters.
We were taken over by a French Canadian flight sgt who’s job it was to march us from place to place as required. English was not always his best subject so we used that as best we could. Probably one of the best scenes while doing drill was, first to march with our thumbs straight up. He stopped us all and said “non non non” took a long time to learn to keep our thumbs down, next we did the change step we had practices on the ship, then the about turn, he was very patient, perhaps he was use to idiots.
He had his laugh in the end though, once the snow arrived. We were marching down to the flight one day and coming back the other way was a group of Canucks, as they went behind a hut from us we all broke ranks and quickly made snowballs, when they were clear of the building we threw everything we had at them, but we didn’t know much about snowballs and they had spent their lives at it. They killed us in no time flat and the sgt thought it wonderful. Unfortunately they had a keen type officer with them who may have copped a snow ball, because he was very much in favour of putting us all on a charge of some sort just on principle. Their local basket ball team decided to challenge us to a game, so we said OK even though we had never heard of the game. It only
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8
lasted about 5 minutes before we were all ordered off the court. It seems you are not allowed to bump your opponent off the floor.
Here we saw the first example of instant lawns. They had erected a new flag pole and levelled out the ground around it as a parade square. Next they brought in great rolls of turf and rolled it out, side by side, rolled it down and watered it. Much quicker than sowing seeds, anyway they probably wouldn’t have grown it was just before the snow.
Their living conditions and food were much like the Yanks, so far ahead of ours, what with grapefruit and tomato juice etc. Just help yourself. The huts too were central heated, we didn’t realise at the time that this was essential to survival later when weather really got cold. Perhaps it was an early hint when Bing’s new film was put on in the camp theatre. “White Christmas”. It was the first white Christmas I had ever seen. I didn’t think Tassie was cold anymore.
Our first aircraft is a Yale. This is an early development of the NA16, ordered for the French air force training, but at the fall of France they were taken over by the EATS (Empire air training scheme).
A small advance on the tigers, being a monoplane, with fixed undercart, fixed prop-boost, radio & intercom, closed cockpit, rudder
Yale
Early model of NA 16
Engine S3 HL Wasp 350hp
Fixed undercart
Flaps and Brakes
Harvard
Engine 600 hp Prat [sic] & Whitney
Span 42’
Length 29’
Height 11’ 8”
Take Off Weight 5300lbs
Max. Speed 208mph at 5000’
OP ceiling 24000’
Range 730mls
Operated brakes, hydraulic flaps, a bigger motor, radial instead of inline, but still gills to control engine temperature a bit more work to do, it did fly faster, but not as stable, which meant you had to fly it all the time.
Next on to the Harvard which is a further advance on the Yale. Bigger motor DH hydromatic prop, retractable undercart etc. At this time, the drome was covered with snow rolled hard by large corrugated rollers, no runways visible. Strange to spin on landing, to be able to do nothing but sit and let it spin while it slid along until it stopped.
Here I won the award of the week for taxiing with flaps down. Just forgot to put them up after landing. It seems lumps of ice can be lifted by the slipstream and put holes in them.
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A lot of experiences I had here were very valuable later but rather frightening at the time, surprises like, to fly on a “clear” day and drop from a big height on landing. On complaining to the instructor because the aircraft stalled at higher speed, I was taken back to the aircraft where he said “watch this” and bashed the wing with his hand, from the point of impact, cracks spread across the wing. It was covered in clear ice therefore the aircraft was much heavier. When ice is present (if you know) landing speed is increased.
Next was to get caught in snow, nothing visible outside except white parallel lines, not easy the first time, not easy any time.
Next was to be lost while flying No.2 in formation practice in fog. Broke formation in a thick patch and lost No.1.
I called base and was told to use emergency map, but there was no map, someone needed it more that I did I guess. Finally found a small town, and described this to base i.e. Direction of main street railway crossing etc. given a course to fly from their recognition, called again in 10 minutes, very relieved to note that his voice was louder.
Leader landed in snow field safely but the kite stayed there until after the snow.
Here too, I flew into cloud deliberately for the first time, I was quite sure I was right and the instruments were wrong, but I came out the bottom in a very fast spiral dive, luckily there was enough room to correct before the ground.
This was the beginning of another duty that had a steady increase. Pall bearers for some of our mates who were not so lucky. Often there was little left to bury, so mostly just a bag of sand to make up the weight but the smell was always the same.
One of the airforces [sic] faults I thought. Always for these “Honours” they pick the duty detail from the top of the list i.e. Names starting with A.
A good number dropped out from here, some sent home, some to other aircrew musterings, w/op, bomb aimer etc. There were many strange landings, even upside down on the golf course. Luckily I always got home.
The last part of the training here was an advanced unit, bombing, dive bombing etc., all on the bombing range. There was also a machine gun range, so, while trying to do low flying, we could shoot at sea gulls, never hit any of course but it was fun to try. Tried to fly formation on the migrating wild geese too but they were a bit too slow.
The weather here was extreme to us, to see hard frozen snow blowing like sand to be confined to heated living quarters because 10 minutes of bare skin exposure could mean frost bite. Tales of people loosing [sic] fingers etc., but the worst we saw was similar to sunburnt skin going brown and peeling, only on fingers and ears. Chaps flying with cockpit open because of bad visibility.
A great deal of pressure was applied towards the end of the course when it came to tests.
The first was a non-stop aerobatic act with [deleted] no [/deleted] [inserted] AN [/inserted] instructor to tell you what to do next and ensure you didn’t stop or make them too gentle.
After 3 / 4 of an hour of rolls, barrel rolls, loop rolls off the top, rolls off the bottom, even a couple of high speed stalls (unintentional) just bad flying, I was happy to get my feet on the ground. Next came unannounced again starting at “A”. A new instructor said “instrument test” I said “I haven’t done any” He said “I haven’t time to wait for that you can do some now”.
These aircraft were the same as the others except for a cover that fitted over the pilots cockpit so the only thing you could see were the instruments.
The instructor of course was not enclosed he had to watch for other aircraft as well as your flying.
I found this rather hard at this time even though the routine must have been fairly simple, compass courses, changes of course e.g. 180’ to 68’ to 240 to 60’ etc. with rate one turns, but I managed to turn the wrong
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[underlined] 10 [/underlined]
way sometimes. Perhaps I would never make a pilot even after all the link training.
Another of my better efforts was to try to land with the wheels up. The Harvard, like most planes, has two indicator lights that show red with the wheels up and green with the wheels down, it also has a loud horn right behind your ear, this only works (automatic) when you close the throttle with the wheels up as on landing.
Guess I had (a) forgotten to put the wheels down (b) check the lights (c) ignored the red lights from the control tower (d) ignored the hooter in my ear (rather bright boy) but I Couldn’t ignore many red very lights they fired off from everywhere, so I had to go around again.
Didn’t get the award for that, I guess it must have been beaten by someone else that day.
The miracle was, I eventually passed and had my wings but I was nowhere near the bright boy of the course.
Up to that time, there were two incidents of over confidence. The first at about 100hrs in “Tigers”, the second at about 300hrs total. So I was much luckier than some of my course. On looking at the registration numbers of aircraft I had flown (log book) it would seen you hardly even flew the same aircraft twice. I suppose each aircraft is slightly different so it is better practice to fly different aircraft each time rather than get used to the same one.
Our next step, we hoped, was England and Spitfires. After a short leave in America we assembled at Halifax NS. To await a ship. This must be one of the worlds coldest ports I think, everything covered in clear ice, it was hard to stand up without sliding down the hill.
In time we were joined by other courses, some who had flown Ansons, Cessna twins etc.
The ship was rather large 45000 tons. “Andies” built for the south American run (pre-war) therefore it was fairly flat bottomed for shallow water. This of course meant it rolled continuously and sometimes rather too much. We had to put two ropes over our bunks to keep us in but that was no real problem. Again we were unescorted, it being a fast ship, but this time we were somewhere up near the north pole, its [sic] just as cold as the south. As the spray went over it built up as ice on every rope on the rigging even the deck was covered in ice, caused many broken arms when people slid as the ship rolled, then they crashed into the superstructure to stop, arrived iat Glasgow after a very rough and very cold trip but we did avoid the subs. Then down to Bournemouth to await posting. At this time there was no need for fighters. The change was now to bombers so very few made it to “Spitfires” but some did manage “Beaufighters” as night fighters.
The next step for me was to Oxfords. These little twin engine aircraft were very easy to fly after the violence of single engine flying, but you could not do aerobatics, not even a spin, in fact we were told, it was impossible to recover from a spin because the fuselage blanked the airflow over the rudder, therefore the plane wouldn’t straighten out. Didn’t try to prove it.
After conversion a good deal of this flying was navigation, trying not to get lost, but you could always get a fix (your position) if you had to by radio, you just called up and asked for a fix and kept your transmitter button pressed until they took a bearing on you from two different points and sent the point where these crossed back to you add the time and direction you have flown since the fix and that is where you are.
After this came night flying, from one pundit to the next on a cross country circuit.
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Airspeed Oxford
Engine Two 375hp AS Cheetah x radials
Span 53’ 4”
Length 34’ 6”
Height 11’ 1”
Take Off Weight 7500lbs
Max. Speed 185mph at 7500ft
OP Ceiling 19500ft
Normal Range 960mls
The distance between the pundit called for 20 minutes or so straight flying until you could read the next one. A pundit was a red light fixed on the ground, usually near a drome, the light flashed the letter of the drome in Morse code so all you had to do was pick the right one, do your turn on it and fly the correct course to the next one.
It was carefully chosen weather for beginners so there were no real problems, but it is strange to be alone in a plane at night for the first time looking down on nothing except an odd beacon flashing somewhere in the distance (there was a total blackout).
Differences in planes were not hard to overcome. To apply the brakes on a “Harvard” you pushed your toes down, as in a car, one wheel only (for steering) you pushed that side rudder forward and toe down. So aircraft was steered while taxiing simply by slowing the side you wished to turn towards. In a twin engined [sic] aircraft you can turn by using more power on the outside motor.
The brake system was a little different on English aircraft. There were two leavers [sic] on the wheel either, or both would put the brakes on, the rudder was then used to distribute pressure to both or either wheel as before.
Unlike single engine planes you don’t have to wobble from side to side to see where you are going when taxiing, only other difference was on take off where you could increase power on one motor to help correct swing. This was good in the first part of take off, before the slip stream had enough power over the rudder.
For some forgotten disciplinary punishment I was told to shift 14 planes from one side of the drome to the other without help even from the ground crew. To start a Oxford, you must climb onto the wing and insert crank handle into inertia starter (i.e. wind up the spring some 40 or so turns) repeat on the other side motor, prime both motors, put the push bike in the kite, climb in and start, if you miss the start, out and wind again, you then taxi to the other side of the drome, park the aircraft and return on bike, about 1k for next aircraft. A very slow job, but you do learn how to start engines. My first experience of .05before it was heard of as such. At the party the night before I must have been “reasonably” full, but of the next morning. The job was to fly 7 w/ops on a training flight. I only had to fly all the courses they could work out from their fixes (loop) and
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eventually return to base. I didn’t realise, alcohol removes oxygen form [sic] the blood, so does altitude. On return I had so much trouble trying to see the drome let alone the runway it wasn’t funny.
In fact the chewing gum turned to sand in my mouth. I offered to let anyone of the w/ops try, but they were not impressed, none of them had seen one of these kites before.
Managed to arrive after about the fourth try. Later I learned the answer (just breath [sic] plenty of oxygen from the oxy. Bottle).
Another part, of this course was the SBA (Standard beam approach and landing). This is approach and landing on Lorenze beam. All done on instruments with no outside vision. A hood is fitted over learner with instructor in the right hand seat keeping full external vision. You are then flown to some point away from the drome and given a course to fly, so you fly back until you cross the beam.
A beam consists of a 2˚ wide control beam (steady buzz) with identification superimposed in Morse, outside that, on one side dashes, on the other side dots.
As you cross the beam you carefully time the width of the beam, then a rate 1 turn 90˚, fly for 1 minute, and another 1 90˚ back toward the beam, time the width of beam again as you fly through. If it is more, you are going away, if less, you are going towards the drome. You then turn back onto beam, heading toward the drome. You must cross the drome to find which marker comes first. Reduce height to 1000 ft (having landing permission from drome and Barometric pressure set on your altimeter, checked with control tower).
Fly along the beam, if you swing to the left you get –s, if you go to right you get .s so you try to stay in the middle. When you cross the outer marker you must start to let down at 300ft per minute, holding steady decent [sic] rate and keeping in centre of beam (beam is getting narrower as you approach the end of runway).
When you cross the inner marker (lights on main beam) you should be at 100 ft cut throttles and prepare to land (wheels and flaps are down before outer marker of course). This is not easy because at this point, the beam is very narrow and with even a light cross wind it is hard to stay in the middle, but even in bad weather, there would be some lights to see, so the last part would be a visual landing (you hope).
At this point when practising, instructor sometimes releases cover, which gives you full visibility, surprise, there is a control tower right in front of you. Not good for the nerves, but it proves you must stick to the beam.
Back to Bournemouth again to wait for the next posting. In between there is nothing to do, so we are often selected in small groups and sent off somewhere to do a short course in something or other just to fill in the time, until we can be posted to further flying training.
As Bournemouth is on the south coast, the whole beach front is guarded by barbed wire with gun emplacements at intervals. There were a number of a/c a/c guns (light) Bofors, I think, in front of our pub. Just to keep them in practice, they sometimes flew a fairy battle along parallel with the beach and towing a drogue, much to our horror, it only took two or three shots to knock the drogue down.
So we were beginning to wonder what our chances were going to be if it was as easy as all that. However there came a day when 2 FW190’s sneaked in low across the water, sure, the gunners saw them soon enough but they flew around quite safely, just going up and down.
Just for good measure they flew straight down the beach, machine gunning everything, as they went, then turned out to sea and disappeared untouched.
Well at least there must be some chance for survival, watching the trace from the guns, it was always too high – too low or just too far behind, but they were not amateurs flying those kites and they were pretty fast.
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Our next training exercise, just a few of us, who’s names started with ‘A’ were packed off to Whitly [sic] Bay new [sic] Newcastle. This is our third commando style camp, on arrival, in the late afternoon, we were shown to our huts, which we thought were a bit strange, because they appeared to be almost new houses, unused, but there was no glass in the windows, OK well maybe it would be a bit cold, but we were used to changes by now so we soon got off to sleep alright, but not for long.
It seems the KG5 was being fitted out just down the road. Its [sic] hard to sleep when the sirens go, but its [sic] much harder once the guns start. It was soon obvious why there was no glass in the windows. There was one big gun just outside our “hut” each time it went off, it caused quite a compression in the room as well as the noise. We had no idea where the nearest shelter was, so we just stayed put. This course was mostly unarmed combat, with the usual assault course to run over, but also a ‘demo’ of how to throw hand grenades. I don’t know why. Interesting when one didn’t go off, after a given waiting time an officer and an NCO crawled out with the necessary equipment and placed a small charge, which exploded the grenade, and everyone was happy.
The usual was 6 of us in the trench at a time and the instructor and each of us had to throw one grenade in turn out of the trench and down the range toward a target, observed by someone with files [sic] glasses out side to check the results.
This went OK until one idiot hit the edge of the trench and the grenade fell back in. In the half second panic that followed, we all went vertically upwards, then sideways, without touching the sides, then flat on our faces. It must have been a very long fuse, because it seemed age before it went off harmlessly in the trench. Can’t say the instructor was at all happy. His Scots. Accent was hard to understand normally. None of us ever knew the words, but I’m sure we got his meaning. It did prove we were all fit enough though.
The air raids here were fairly frequent although there was usually only about a dozen planes at a time. There were plenty of guns on the ground, and someone said about 3 acres of rocket site, so plenty of noise and plenty of searchlights just to brighten it all up. An interesting variation to some of these rockets was that they fired a kind of net into the air, which was then held up by parachute but also trailed small explosive charges in the hope that an aircraft would fly into them, never heard of any being effective, but how would you know.
We had been to sneak a look at these rockets, when we got caught in the next air raid. The rocket launches seemed very simple, just an angle iron frame that could be rotated and vary its angle for height. The rocket appeared to be dropped on, similar to a mortar, but ‘wooshed’ off instead of a bang.
Anyhow when the raid started again we didn’t know the area, so we didn’t know which way to run for a shelter. Someone spotted a shop verandah in the dark, across the street, so we raced across and stood close to the wall laughing at the tons of shrapnel falling and bouncing on the road. All OK until we looked up and noticed there was only a frame left above us, so we would have been just as safe anywhere, but it didn’t last long, and this was another lucky day. It seemed to be a big risk to put expensively trained aircrew in the middle of air raids, but you did see the other side. I never knew later why they claimed the Germans didn’t have rockets. Perhaps they thought we would believe them or the rockets would go away or may be they just didn’t know how to counter them.
Our next posting is to Litchfield on Wellingtons. Lichfield was officially an Australian operational conversion and training unit, but shortage of some categories of aircrew meant that RAF bods had to fill the vacancies, so, six pilots from here, six navs from somewhere else, six w/op, six bomb aimer’s and six gunners all arrive and sort themselves into crews. Usual method seemed to be to go down to the local and tell each other how bad you were at your particular branch of
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flying. My crew all believed me, but claimed they were even worse. So out of this batch of “no hoper’s” we had to mould a unit.
The idea being that each man knew his job to perfection, but more than that, there must be complete confidence, understanding and instant unquestioned action from everyone. Perhaps we were lucky here too, because it was the best English weather (no ice or fog).
The course was designed to give each of the crew a chance to learn his part in conjunction with the rest of the crew.
Navigation trips to test navigator, w/op and bomb aimer, accuracy of pilots flying too. I suppose, and often a friendly fighter attack to test the gunners ability with camera instead of guns. In the evasive action, directed by rear gunner, we sometimes had some very sick crew members.
As this course advanced, the trips became longer and more complicated often across country north ward up the Irish sea to Scotland, often in or above cloud most of the way. On one of these trips we were in 10/10 cloud off Scotland at 13000ft. when there was a very big ‘explosion’ I thought we had been hit by a navy shell, as everything smelled of burnt sulphur, but at the same time we had been propelled downward. Out of the bottom of the cloud height now 2000ft. no sign of any navy craft on the sea, but we were flying level.
On accessing the damage we found a burnt out wireless set, trailing aerial burnt off, some fabric burnt off fuselage and the port wing. Decided better to land at nearest drome to check the damage properly. So, we headed for Prestwick, but arrived at the same time as about 50 Boston’s that had just crossed from USA as their fuel was almost out we had a longish wait before landing.
On inspection, they patched out fabric replaced a tyre (flat) and sent us home with only R.T. Decided we had flown into a cu-nimb (thunder storm) inside the stratus, been hit by lightning and dropped the 11000ft. in a vertical down draught. I don’t know but I didn’t do it even if, I did get the blame.
Next effort was a night cross country trip. The idea of these, was practice for us and practice for the home defences i.e. a/c a/c searchlights and also night fighters.
The searchlights would pick you up and the a/c a/c would fire real shells, but always much lower than your altitude even the searchlights were small and let you off pretty easy. We never saw a night fighter (maybe they were painted black).
The first time we saw a searchlight it was right on our starboard wing. I dived all over the place trying to get away but it didn’t even move. Well the top end didn’t move, didn’t go past our wing either but the bottom end shifted. Se we stopped our evasive action and turned our landing light off. The w/op had to disconnect the wires at the switch, something had shorted out.
The landing light, on a wimpy is set in the under side of the wing, pointing straight downwards, if used for landing, there is a lever operated by the pilot which swings the beam anywhere between straight down and straight forward. I don’t remember anyone ever using a landing light in practice but I’m sure we would have been shot down a dozen times with that light showing (must have lost another 10 out of 10 for that little effort).
On our next night cross country trip two crews, ourselves and Fred Mathews were given new aircraft. These were fitted with a new automatic mixture control, one lever less to pull. There is no flight engineer in a wimpy so the pilot had to do all these things himself as well as all the checks on gauges, oil pressure, brake pressure, oil temp., head temp. fuel gauges etc.
To check fuel gauges you had to lean across and press a button on the far side of aircraft, this lit up the gauges to show amount of fuel left in tanks. You must do this at regular intervals to ensure fuel is used evenly, to keep balance of aircraft, you can, by changing taps, use fuel from any one tank. Usually emptying outside tanks first.
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At some point, less than half way, I decided to check total fuel left. Had to call on navigator to workout quantity used for distance travelled compared to distance left to go. We went straight home without any corners and lost a few more points, I guess for not doing the trip. The other new kite had the same trouble but ran out of fuel and crash landed on the railway line near Manchester, probably mistaking the signal lights for a runway, but who knows, he could have called “mayday”.
Our next job was a trip to Manchester by train to bury the bods. Flying lost a few more points in my book. No survivors Fred’s rear gunner had been grounded and a substitute had made that trip (some people are not lucky). There were always extra gunners on this course, because when some crews finished, they were posted to four engine conversion units and needed another gunner (mid upper) other went to wimpy squadrons with standard crews. Not all front line aircraft were four engine at this time, as this was almost the end of our course, we were told we would need another gunner so I asked Vic (our rear gunner) if he knew one he could get along with. His immediate choice was ‘Titch’ Fred’s gunner who had stayed at home. This completed our crew, except for f/t engineer who joined us at con unit.
So we now had self 25 f/sgt. As pilot, not very efficient nearly always in trouble, mostly because I liked to try my own ideas and RAF does not approve of anything outside its standards (just like the army).
Rod Ramsay Aust. f/o navigator about 32 ex Commonwealth Bank, married, very serious, very cautious, very thorough and often very worried (perhaps he was right).
Alan Withers Aust. P/o Bomb-aimer about 28 married also worried at times (they both had more sense than I did) Alan had been on same course as me as, a pilot. Had passed in Tas. On tigers and then posted to cesnas [sic] in Canada where he was scrubbed as pilot and remustered as bomb aimer.
He would have been one of the few at Litchfield [sic] that I had known before. These two, I think were good friends with similar problems both starting to loose [sic] a bit of hair, down the middle, so one was baldy and the other was egghead. The argument over who was the worst was not enough to stop them joining the same team and trying to drown their troubles down at the local, but that didn’t really work, not beyond those few hours anyway.
Blue Kellaher Aust. Sgt w/op about 23, redhead Irish ancestors, rather carefree, happy sort of bod. “She’s apples mate” being the favourite saying but still very efficient underneath. Only trouble was he was almost always airsick in the earlier part, sometimes to the point of being helpless, lying on the floor, don’t think he ever quite got over it, but he never complained either.
Vic Blackwell rear gunner RAF Sgt. At 34 the eldest of the crew, married with two kids ex Watford footballer and still very keen on his soccer. Insurance salesman before the war, but a very keen gunner now as his target practice could prove.
Titch Crowley mid upper RAF Sgt. About 21 about 5ft. high with a very small face to match, in fact we often wondered how he could see once the oxy mask was on his face. His favourite saying in the Air, when asked about some kite in the area was always “I can’t see nothing mate” in perfect cockney.
This was not exactly Rod’s idea of English. He would say “Of course you can’t see nothing, you idiot, no one can” but we were stuck with it, you don’t change years of perfect English dialect just like that.
At this time there was very little time left to improve (we thought) but we still tried anyway.
As the captain of this bunch of ‘airmen’ I suddenly found myself responsible for all their mistakes (as if I didn’t make enough myself). Just the little things, like my immaculately dressed rear gunner, who marched carefully up to receive his pay. Signed the pay book, stepped back, stood
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to attention and saluted, turned and marched away. He was almost to the door, before there was a screech from the WOD who had just noticed he was wearing his cap in his shoulder strap instead of on his head.
Vickers Wellington
Engine I590hp Bristol Hercules
(x1)1590hp(v1)1650hp(xv1)1870h
p
Span 86' 2"
length 64' 7"
Height 17 6"
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Max. Takeoff WT 29000lbs
Weight
Max. Speed 12000ft
OP Ceiling 19000ft
Range with I500lbs 2200mls
Or "Blue", who could walk past the CO with one hand in his pocket and say "Gooday mate" instead of saluting.
So we were a pretty scruffy bunch over all, not exactly RAF standard I'm afraid.
At the end of this course I had to front up to the flight commander to give my assessment of each of the crew. I thought they were much better than he did. He then suggested I put in for a commission, but I said "No thanks I'd rather be a w/o better pay and no bills. He said "In that case I will have to give you a different report won't I", so he tore that one up (its sometimes hard to win).
Just before we left Litchfield we were lucky enough to have a try in their new flight simulator which they had just installed at a cost of about [symbol] 1,000,000.
This looked like a wheat silo from the outside. Only the pilot and nav did this exercise as a combined trial. We climbed to the top of a great flight of steps, there was a small platform mounted out into space with a couple of seats, a set of flying instruments in front of the pilot and a complete nav set up for the nav who sat sideways and just behind the pilot. This could be used for day or night training but it was only night for us. So all the lights were turned out, then very little showed on the ground, the sky showed only stars and occasionally cloud cover.
The ground was a very big map, you took off and flew like the link trainer but there was no pen on the map, instead the map moved across exactly as you flew over it. The stars moved too, in relation to your speed and direction. To map read from this height at night is always impossible except for the odd bend in river or a scrap of coast line, but the
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nav could nearly always take astro shots, so it was a help. No one told you anything about the trip you were doing before we started. We were just, given a target area and told to plot our track and times over the target etc. So off we went, climbed to height, and set our course for target.
Imagine the surprise as we crossed the enemy coast, the searchlights came on right on target (us) and, slung between the floor and sky were wires with lights at intervals up their length. These flashed in order from the ground upwards just like real Flak, when any of them came near enough to our little cockpit area, it rattled all over the place and almost fell to bits. Not a very good feeling in the dark, especially when you know how high you are above the floor, but you can't really get hurt or shot down.
We also spent a few hours doing dingy drill, in case we ever had to ditch. For this they had a wrecked wimpy just sitting on the ground, so the whole crew took up their usual positions for flight, and in theory we did a ditching. We then had to release all escape hatches, dingy etc., clamber out and into the inflated dingy. For this we were given just over 1 minute, lost a bit of skin off the shins and elbows etc. Escape hatches are not padded. The other half of this was done in the pool. Dingy to be inflated and everyone to get in. Apart from the cold and the wet, this wasn't too bad.
Two crews. Bruce Simpson and ourselves are next posted to Conversion unit at Swinderby 5 group, so it would seem we will go to one of the Aust. Squadrons in this group either 463 or 467. On arrival, there was little time to look around, we were allotted a flight engineer, Johnnie Lancaster from Lancaster, RAF Sgt. Johnnie was just 19 and had been an apprentice to a pro golfer (Cotton I think). Perhaps because of his age, and the short time since leaving school, he rather tended to stay strictly to the book. I couldn't say that for the rest of the crew. So there were times when he was lonely, but he knew his job well enough. There were some `Lanc's' here, but only enough to do the final conversion. The first part
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had to be done on `Manchester's'. These were the original, almost as big as the `Lanc' (looked the same) but only two engines instead of four. Engines were bigger and heavier but not very reliable. We almost got through without a serious problem until we had to do gunnery practice over the Wash. While Alan (bomb aimer) was firing the front guns, a hydraulic pipe burst. This completely covered my windscreen with dark coloured oil. No trouble to fly home as I still had instruments, could also see out the sides OK, but nothing out the front so it would be hard to land.
Manchester
Engine Two Rol's Vulture. Each motor was made by joining
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two rols Kestrels one inverted, to form an x section
giving 176hp.
Span 90' 1"
Length 69'
Height 18'
Takeoff Weight 50000lbs
Max. Speed 273mph
OP Ceiling 19200ft
Range 1630mls
On the way back, I got the bright idea that if I opened the side window, and by keeping my left arm pressed against the side. I might be able to slide my hand around to the front and wipe a little spot, enough to see through. I then reduced speed, lowered wheels and flaps to get the maximum drag, but the slowest speed you can fly these at is 120mph. I only had part of my arm out when the wind took it backwards. There must be a better way of breaking an arm. So I gave that idea away very quickly, but that didn't solve the landing problem. Had to raise the wheels and flaps and return to base. By now the crew were only half as worried as I was. At least that was a change, but time was running out and the oil was worse than ever.
It was taboo to have anyone in the nose on landings in case of a crash but I decided if I put Alan down there to look through the nose cone, he could guide me onto the runway, as on a bombing run (right left, left steady as required) I would have to hope he was right, and I could judge the height out of my side window. The landing worked OK but it was lucky Alan had done some time as a pilot, because the hardest part is often keeping straight on runway after landing and there is very .little time to check a swing (which would finish in a ground loop) with about 30 tons at 90 mph in a machine that is not really made for road work.
Anyhow we made it safely but had to keep Alan in the front to taxi back. Now I'm in trouble again for not notifying control of this little
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problem before I landed, so I asked just what could they have done to help/ [sic] The answer was simple, "The fire cart and ambulance could have followed us close down the runway. (Oh well).
Again I am called up to the flight commander to see if I have considered a commission, again I refuse, but within no time at all I have to front up to the CO. He didn't propose that I took a Commission this time, he told me I must because there was no way that I, as an NCO could give orders to the officers in my crew. So either I took a commission or lost my crew and start again. I did point out that we got along quite well, but he didn't agree (just not done, old boy, What?) Later I learned none of this had much to do with it. The real reason for having a commission was in case we were POW. We would get much better treatment as officers. I don't know why this didn't apply to w/ops; and gunners though. Soon after this we converted to Lanc's, a bit bigger, a bit heavier, two extra motors, but much more manoeuvrable and a much better rate of climb. A lot of the load is taken off the pilot now, as the engineers job is to check all gauges, temps, boost, revs, fuel etc., he even helps on takeoff by locking throttles once you have top power, raising undercart and flaps, when told (pity there are no dual controls I could have sat and watched). Also there are repeater dials on gyro compass and airspeed, one for the pilot, and one in nav compartment. This allows Nav to call airspeed on take off and landing so that pilots job is keeping it straight, and judging height and distance etc.
It is the engines of every aircraft that always seem the most important item. You can get by with some bits missing from other places, but those fans up the front end have to keep going all the time (you hope) so, even at the beginning you must learn to look after the motors, and when times of pressure do arrive, you try not to exceed their limits. Its not always easy to slow them down when you want to go faster, but when the gauges say that's the limit its a good idea to take notice. The basic principle is the same as any internal combustion engine, but a bit more
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sophisticated with extras like super charger (sometimes 3 stage) fuel injection dual ignition (magnetos). Always variable shutters of some kind to control air flow over (oil coolers) radiators, an [sic] inline engines (water glycol cooled). The theory being that the engine gives its best performance at the correct temperature, therefore the shutters must be used to keep the temperatures constant, head temp, water temp, oil temp, etc. In the cold winter mornings it could takeover half an hour just waiting for the motors to warm up. It may seem a waste of time, but on take off, a small loss of power can leave you with some very anxious moments. The standard drill was simple, warm up motors, run up to test maximum revs. In fine pitch (3000) reduce to 2650, switch off one mag switch, note rev. drop, turn on again, switch off other mag switch, note drop if any, turn on again. If rev. drop is greater than 100 rpm. mag must to checked, could be just a bad plug, but often it was moisture in the mag.
If mags are OK revs. Up to 2850 test pitch control, return to fine pitch, check all pressure gauges etc. if all OK you should be ready to taxi.
Take off for small aircraft was simple. Stop before runway check [inserted] TR [/deleted] [deleted] l [/deleted] imes, mixture, pitch, fuel, flaps, sperries (instruments) gills gyros etc. get OK clear from control, turn onto runway, open throttle push the stick forward to get the tail up, hard rudder to stop the swing caused by slipstream, hold it until flying speed is reached, checking swing as speed builds up, ease back on the stick and climb away. The heavier twins were usually held on brakes until the motors were reved up to get more power, this took less distance to get flying speed. In the loaded Lanc. we used all the runway, brakes locked on until the two inner motors were flat out and locked. As the outer motors were then reved up and the tail started to bump off the ground, the brakes were released to let it roll forward, as speed was gained, some swing could be conected by pushing one outer throttle more than the other, but as speed increased the rudders became effective. There is a lot of strong wind from four motors going flat out, but it does tend to go in a spiral rather than straight and therefore pushes
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the tail to one side. Trims must be set before take off to help counter this swing (part of standard pre takeoff check). Continual checks on all instruments must be taken while in flight, especially oil pressure and temperatures. Temperatures can be controlled by changing radiator openings but loss of oil pressure would mean the engine would seize and often go on fire. So it was better to close down the motor than take the chance, but if it were only the gauge at fault you would have to be a `dill' to close the motor down and loose all that power, as well as overloading the remainder, loosing fuel economy and making the kite much harder to fly.
So a faulty gauge was always a worry. Even after you had decided it was definitely the gauge at fault, you could never be really certain until you had landed and had it checked, and by that time, it didn't matter anyway but the ground always felt a bit more solid somehow once you had made it back to base.
After some practice in all aspects of bombing, fighter attacks, searchlight, a/c a/c, High level bombing etc., we were posted to a squadron. Not an Aust. Squadron as expected but 106 at Syerston. This was a permanent pre war base and now has 2 squadron 106 61 both RAF both operating from here. This causes a bit of crowding when everyone returns at the same time. We get a few days to settle in before I go on my first `op' just as a passenger with an experienced crew, but it does give some idea of conditions to be encountered in the future. The crews pilot was Flt A Poore 617 sqd. Unfortunately the weather is getting much worse by now, also the nights are getting longer, this means longer trips and much more time spent over enemy territory.
I think this combination plus bigger concentrations of aircraft on both sides took a lot of fun out of flying for the next few months.
As a crew we decided we had to change some of the standard RAF patter between the gunners and pilot, as it was too vague and too slow. Our new idea worked alright in practice but it was a bit hard on
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w/op and navigator who got very little (if any) warning and therefore no time to prepare for the violent evasive action. Often the Navigator would loose all his equipment including charts which were thrown all over the place.
We missed one trip from Syerston just because we couldn't find the kite in the fog. Another night we had to be guided to the end of the runway by following a truck. Take off was on compass but not too bad. Our worst trip here, was to return in a very heavy storm. Our radio was u/s so we missed the diversion order to another drome. Couldn't contact control for permission to land, finally came very low over tower and used the aldis lamp. When we finally landed and turned off the runway all the four motors cut out (no petrol) I reckon we spent too much time trying to do the right thing. Should have landed first and asked afterward, but it takes time to learn. Someone said "If you live you learn if you learn you live" (chicken & egg situation). About this time, it was decided someone else needed this drone, so we all had to do the big shift, 61 squadron going to Skellingthorp [sic] and 106 to Metheringham. Apart from the problems in shifting to a partly finished drome in the middle of winter (mud everywhere, no showers, huts were still pretty basic and the training had to continue as often as possible. Must have been rather rough on the ground crews. One of the reasons for so much continuous training was the addition of new electronic equipment. We now had 25 different sets fitted into our kite, including H2S monica mandril, fishpond G. etc. H2S (radar) and G were navigation aids, some of the others were supposed to detect fighters, confuse fighters, you name it we had it. Unfortunately the fighters often used these beams we were transmitting to detect us, even radar could only be used for short intervals without having an angry JU88 on your tail (makes life interesting don't it).
By this time we have a reasonably efficient crew, who work together very well. It seems to fall on the pilot (as captain) to help sort out each crew members personal problems because somehow they seem to
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show when flying. He must therefore be able to judge how much work load can be applied without help from someone else. I don't know who checks the pilot or how they can help, but maybe they did at times. These air crew generally are a pretty quiet lot. The only time they play up is on leave. The bar in the mess is open most of the time, but usually empty. Nothing like those airmen of 1918 most of them seem to be just too tired I would think. By reports from other dromes, our losses are very low, but always there are new crews coming in as replacements, new aircraft tom. Still "Cockies" airforce (Cochrane being the AOC 5 group) were often accused of getting the best aircraft and maintenance facilities but they didn't [inserted] g [/inserted] [deleted] b [/deleted] et the best of targets. They sometimes operated as a special force on specially selected targets (not always easy) 617 squadron had been formed for this purpose by taking a couple of senior crews from each squadron in the group and combining them to form a new squadron. Gibson was from 106. Their aircraft were all specials, depending on the job they were used for.
Interesting to watch the reactions of the old crews to the new replacements. They could tell you how many trips they would manage before they went missing. Trouble was, even the old crews, who were doing the judging didn't often get past 20 before their luck ran out. The terrible weather must have been a big factor in so many ways in our losses it was always bad or worse, We once had to spend the afternoon digging snow off the runway just so we could take off. If you think digging snow off a 3000yd runway is easy, (try it). On one of our earliest trips Kassel we went into cloud at about 200ft from take off, came out in a small hole over target, back in again to return, but had to land away from home because cloud had come down to ground level. (Good test for sprog crews).
Takeoff's and landings were always dicey. Take off because it was always a heavily loaded kite, and therefore had trouble getting flying speed. We had very little time to take off. All aircraft having to taxi
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along tarmac facing down wind, which meant motors overheating very quickly. If there was ever a slight hold up we had to try to turn partly into wind to get some air through the radiators, but there was no room for error, one wheel in the mud at the edge of the tarmac would stop half the squadron getting off (other half came from other side).
Our take off rate was about 1 every 3/4 minute and land one every minute. In take off you were very close behind the next aircraft so there was much buffeting from his slipstream.
Given the heavy load and the low flying speed it was often hard to hold it in the air. Each alternate aircraft turned slightly port or starboard, which meant by the time you get to 200ft you were OK.
Landing problems were even worse. Just too many aircraft trying to land at the same time and all nearly out of petrol.
Often aircraft from other squadrons diverted because their home drome was closed or we would go to their drome for the same reason. (very thick fogs were common).
One of the jobs allotted to the bomb aimers on each op was to throw out "window". Window was the code name for the aluminium foil strips. These were cut to the exact length to match the German radar frequency. Each one gave the same reflection as an aircraft on the radar screen, so each time another hand full was thrown out it showed up as another 30 or so aircraft.
Being very light in weight, it slowly drifted downwards. With hundreds of aircraft doing this it formed one big box of reflections and it was almost impossible to pick one as a single aircraft. Excepting of course for those who got outside or too high above the box, or the leaders, who were always the little blip on their own with the fan shape of aircraft trailing out behind. There are safer places than being leaders, especially when you are in front of P.F.F. (Path Finding Force).
One other problem for all aircrew was loss of night vision when you were hit by searchlights before you had time to turn away, it meant
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you could not be sure of seeing another aircraft even if he were close for the next five minutes or so.
There is no way you can use a light to see any of the instrument, as this would show outside, so to overcome this, the instruments were all done with luminous paint, barely visible, but set high up behind the pilot on both sides, were two ultra violet lights directed onto the instrument panel (invisible) but the power could be increased to make the instruments show up much brighter if required, even then these had to be kept as low as possible because it could spoil your vision too.
On one return we were diverted to a drome up north and stacked to 13000ft. They said later there were only 3 dromes open in the whole of England. Some control points even told their crews to head their kites out to sea and bale out, but I didn't know of any that did that, but trying to imagine 6 to 8 hundred aircraft trying to land on three dromes in the dark with very little fuel, so very little time left for anyone. It also meant those 3 dromes didn't have the best of weather either. This could explain why so many trips were cancelled at the last minute I guess. Well that's for main force anyway, because there were always shot up kites who had priority (lost more on return than by enemy action some nights but these were never counted in the losses) only the ones the enemy could positively prove, that is the ones that crashed inside their territory. There were times too, when the enemy fighters came in with the bombers returning and shot up the dromes and unsuspecting kites. Each of our kites was fitted with I.F.F (Identification Friend or Foe) but obviously you could not shoot down every kite that didn't have it working, there were lots of reasons why it might not be, shot up or burnt out etc., but the result was the same. So out went all the lights, this included our own navigation lights, which we had just switched on. Had to wake everyone up to watch for other aircraft because they were not all flying in the same direction now, and the chances of collision were very high.
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"George" (auto pilot) was fitted to all aircraft but I don't think it was used very often even on the longest trips. I sometimes tried to use ours on the early part, climbing to height over England, but it always did the same trick, a steady turn to starboard, so it was pretty well useless. Never the less it was always set in "spin" ready to be put in an emergency. One of our crews with a full bomb load and hotly pursued by fighters had completely lost control in a dive, even the trims had no effect, in desperation the pilot engaged "George" and out they came. Even the fighters had given up by then. Its quite a sensation to build up a speed like that in the dark. You do think about the kites flying lower than you. Also wonder if the wings will stay on when you are trying to pull out of the dive. The pressures on your body are so high its impossible to lift an arm. Your head is on your chest and your eyes seem to be halfway down your face, but you recover instantly the pressure comes off.
Ice is one of the big worries in this weather. The moisture builds up on the cold aircraft as condensation all over then freezes to ice as you slowly gain height because of the fall in temperature with altitude, therefore the all up weight increases and slows the rate of climb even more. Leading edges of wings are covered with a deicing strip and thick grease. This causes ice to crack and flake off which helps, makes some terrible noises when the slipstream throws it against the fuselage though.
Carburettors have icing problems also even though they have heaters. Also the pilothead (airspeed and static pressure for instruments). It is fitted with electric heater, but doesn't always manage to cope with these temperatures.
Another effect was a build up of static electricity in the fuselage. This caused pale blue flames like metho burning. They danced along the wing edges etc. but the worst was the flickering on the windscreen, each section of perspex had its little row of flame top and bottom which continually joined in the centre then flicked apart again. Disturbing for two reasons, one because you could not see out (we were used to that
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anyway) by wondering what would happen, if we ran into the other side of the charge (+ or ).
I was later told, this is a very old phenomenon known to the earliest sailors. They called it St. Elmo's lights (not harmful well, not at ship speed).
To be able to read the clouds, was often important too, as it could indicate changes of wind etc. which would help the navigator but there was no way we could change course drastically to avoid the rough ones, so we had to press on, bumps and all.
Often on return from Berlin we would climb a little higher (to about 25 or 26000ft) here you would be clear of cloud (nearly always) :because it was too cold to hold moisture but there would be continuous `con' trails as each kite left its own track behind it, no need to navigate, just follow the road and keep a very careful watch for fighters.
This almost proved our undoing on one occasion as I had forgotten about the predicted flak. Thinking the box of aircraft below should cover us, but their radar was better than that. We were too high at
27000ft. Caused a bit of a panic when a couple of big shells exploded right under our starboard wing.
The shrapnel sounded like hands full of gravel hitting a tin fence. Somehow we had been rolled over by the blast. No one was injured but my straps had been too loose and we were obviously in some trouble because I was jammed hard up against the instrument panel with my head trying to push the roof out. I called up each bod in turn to check how they were, gunners didn't appear to be too bad (guess they were used to it) but everyone else complained they were lying very heavily on the roof by now, with the force built up so high, the only thing I could do was to jam the stick forward against the panel and hold it there. Seemed to be an hour before we came out, then the rubbish returned to the floor and we were almost on course again just a couple of thousand ft. lower. Bomb aimer was unlucky, seems he got to the floor first in his compartment,
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followed by the pressed steel tins (which had held the window foil) one of these landed on his head and cut through his helmet. His explanation was quite colourful, but there were far more complaints from the navigator as all his charts and equipment had been sucked out a hole in the side. We were almost to the Dutch coast anyway so we knew our way home and the G was working for the last bit. I did put the nose down to help us along.
Our usual kite in the earlier part was O orange which we shared with another crew when we have a night off they fly in it.
I guess we were late getting back from leave one night, just in time to see the kites returning (early takeoff) as we stood and watched them join the circuit one above the other circling while waiting to descend and land, we were more than surprised to see one idiot going the opposite wa [deleted] s [/deleted] y around, that is against the traffic on a one way street. So we waited to we him land. It was a good landing so we didn't know why. We didn't know who either until next morning. Our beautiful O was shot to pieces, great holes in the fuselage, hardly any tail section left, but it had flown home, even if it could only turn one way. Replacement kites came in almost daily, but not this time. We had therefore to fly N as a second crew to a senior crew, but it wasn't long before they went missing and took the kite with them.
We then became the senior crew on a new N, (very doubtful privilege) but did get stuck with one ground crew, which was good because they tried very hard to keep that kite perfect. The second it had stopped rolling on return, they were there to see how much damage I had done to their master piece. There never backward in telling a rival crew, theirs was the best aircraft on the station and theirs was the best aircrew flying it. I suppose it helped their morale's because it must have been a terrible job in the freezing cold (anyway they didn't have to believe it did they).
There were times when an aircraft had problems soon after take off. It was very obvious you could not land again with a full load of
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petrol plus bombs. OA weight being too great. You then carried on out over the wash or north sea to a safe spot and dropped the 4000lb. `cookie' before returning to land. We were always told where any ships might be just in case, but one night someone must have been in trouble very early and the cloud cover was pretty thick so the bomb went down a bit early, no one had said the navy was underneath but they soon let us know, don't know if they hit anyone but they fired off a lot of a/c a/c and we weren't very high at that time.
Overall the Berlin trips were as rough as any 7 to 8 hours duration, but even though the track and direction would be changed, the defences were always very heavy. You would see every kind of German aircraft; in the air using all kinds of rockets and things (unheard of). They often flew aircraft above and parallel to the bomber stream, dropping flares down each side. This would light up a long corridor with bright reflection off the cloud (if any). There were faults in our system here, because you could watch our kites being, shot down but there was no way you could even warn them. Our own evasive idea seemed to work very well. We rolled a lot to let the gunners see below as well as other points. A lot of the attacks came from below as this was a blind spot unless you did roll. Its hard work with a heavy kite at this height, but it always gave us time to break first. Its a nice feeling to see the trace or rockets going the wrong way and no damage to the old kite. We always lost the fighter too, which was a comfort.
Bombing runs were always dicey, as you had to hold straight and level for so long.
First on the run in onto aiming point then it took about 2 minutes for bombs to fall from this height. The camera was timed to take its pictures where the [deleted] flak [/deleted] flash went off. This gave a row of overlap photos of where you had actually aimed at, also showed every little wobble in your flying. Almost held too long on one occasion, rear gunner warned me of dornier sitting out of range directly astern. Gave an unheard of
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order "weave mate". I did [inserted] , [/inserted] just as a rocket whizzed past on the starboard side leaving a great trail of flame. We had sometimes seen kited [sic] shot down by this method, but it was usually from much closer and almost directly below. There was very little chance of escape as there was usually just one big explosion when the bomb went off.
We always reported these sightings but were always told, such things couldn't happen because no one had equipment like that. Much later they called it slanting music which sounds a bit like the proper name in German.
We did loose [sic] a lot of kites at turning point especially the first ones on the way out. A lot of kites, no lights of course, converging onto one theoretical point at the same time and height from different directions, often in very thick cloud. As each two collided, there would be a visual explosion, followed by a bump, if close, then many different coloured lights as everything that was left fell burning to the ground. Each different metal used in the plane burns with a different colour.
No wonder there were so many bods missing unaccounted for.
Another strange sight at this height on return from Berlin, was a sheet of thin vertical cloud at right angles to out [sic] track. As each aircraft went through it left a clear hole. The result when we arrived looked similar to a sheet of pegboard bigger and softer of course.
Its at this time, for the frst time that you realise, there are so many often very important decisions to be made instantly as well as some you have little time to think about, but it is so obvious they are all your decisions and you must be sure they work out. Its no use afterwards, if there is an afterwards, to say well it was your idea and it didn't work, because you, as the captain went along with that, but you had to remember too that each one of the crew was a specialist at his task, so when there was time you accepted his judgement before the final decision. The instant ones were instant and mostly the well proven theory. Its better to do something than to do nothing because even if you were wrong there
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may be a chance to change but if you have done nothing the opposition has done it all, there are no prizes for second and you don't exist anymore.
The old saying from WWI still applied the quick and the dead.
We had done very few trips when we found ourselves up front with the leaders. I mentioned this to Rod (Nav). He said "Yes I know, I complained to the nav officer and said we needed more experience before we got a job like that", but he was taken over to the results board, (showed times, tracks, aiming points etc.) and our results were up near the top, besides a few more of the old crews had failed to return and someone had to take their place (great, its hard to stay young and innocent) one other drastic effort of a weather change was notable, as we crossed the north sea on return, the rear gunner (looking towards the better light in the east) complained about the size of the waves, as my altimeter was reading 1000ft I told him he was mad, nobody could see waves from that height in the dark. Next the bomb aimer enquired about a fixed light approaching from high up front. Turned out to be a lighthouse on the cliff above. We had to climb rather smartly to get over it. Didn't know why a lighthouse should be operating during war time, but it was lucky that it was, we could have made quite an impression on return. It was normal practice to get a new altimeter setting (barometric pressure) on return just in case there had been a change in pressure (front) I usually left it a bit later than this, didn't usually get that low, that early either, but I was trying to beat one of the other crews back to base so I had pushed the nose down to gain some extra speed. I still came second in that race.
On one relatively good day without ops, we have a practice run for high level bombing. Take off climb to 18000ft or so, do a run across the bombing range, drop a few little practice bombs and return to base and check the results which are phoned through and plotted on target map.
Unfortunately we are 3/4 down the runway on take off, but no airspeed call from the Nav. This is not too unusual, as the IAS does not start to show a reading until about 60mph. He suddenly realises it is not
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working a quick glance at mine just proved he was right, but by this time there is no room left to stop before the fence anyway, so off we went. Of course you can't do a bombing run without an indicated air speed. It has to be set on the bomb sight, so we must return to have it fixed. After calling up for permission to land, we had to evade their enquiry as to the reason for return because the correct procedure for a landing like this is rather long and complicated, involves another aircraft flying beside you but slightly in front, the idea being if his speed is right, you should have some idea of you [sic] speed.
I decided we were better on our own despite a few groans, and reminders from the crew. Later someone said we were better off without an airspeed indicator, as that was the only decent landing we had done up till now. Later the ground crew Flt. Sgt. Went [sic] to a great deal of trouble to line up his crew to thank us. It seems the penalty for this fault in maintenance was a bit rough on all who had signed to say it was OK. The fault must have been pretty obvious because we still managed to do our practice trip and I don't think anyone else even heard about it. One other fault that developed before take off was a complete loss of brake pressure, right at the end of the runway. As this [sic] . In [sic] my opinion was going to be an easy trip (French special target with 617) I decided to take off and worry over brake pressure on return. Should have known better, but I called up base just after crossing south coast on return to tell them of the problem. I did know there were crash dromes with extra long runways so I thought we would get diverted, but we still had to return to base, where they put the engineering officer on the air. He couldn't help us so we were sent back to Wittering. Here they had a 61/2 mile long runway and I think we used most of it, trouble is without brakes to check the swing, you must use inside motor (inside the swing) but this doesn't slow you down. There were watch towers at intervals along this runway, all lit up and after we had passed the third still going very fast I was beginning to get a little worried. I had no idea, at that time, how long this runway was, but having
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lost our main speed the last bit slowed down fairly quickly. Had to leave the kite to be towed back to maintenance by a tractor, returned to base the next day. Never did find out the cause of the trouble, probably a burst pipe. I did think to myself "next time we stay home" its [sic] just as bad as being shot at.
Another thing I tried, to overcome this loss of control on take off with heavy load of bombs I picked a night with take off just before dark (bad judgement) as I was too easily recognised I held it down on the runway to about 140 then lifted the wheels without climbing away this built up speed very quickly. Also put the bods riding their bikes along the road at the end of the runway into the ditch. Vibrated a few things off the mantle piece in farms and caused many complaints all around. CO (Group captain) had a well selected set of words to say next day. Completely ignored my protest that the higher the speed the safer the flight. His final words were something like this, "Look Andy I know you can do that with your eyes shut and your hands behind your back, but think what will happen when some of the new crews try the same thing, you are supposed to set a good example (well I did try).
Next time I had to front up for a similar variation of the rules his final words were "you don't have to be the best pilot in the airforce but you could to be the oldest." It was a good thought, but there was no chance of me being either of those.
At one point our flight commander went missing, his replacement was a bit keen, and said a few nasty things about the appearance and discipline of our crew result I'm up before the CO again.
This time he was on my side, reminded the new bod that we were a very experienced crew and going by the results shown on the board, also very competent, but as he was only the CO G/cp. and not the OC flying on our next trip we had to leave our Nav. Behind [sic] and take the squadron Nav. Officer who volunteered to check us out. His confidence was quite a
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compliment as this made his 143rd trip. He had no complaints on return so it just faded out.
I managed to get into a couple more disagreements with the OC flying w/cm mostly over our revised method of evasion and the instructions that went with it.
He thought it was quite wrong, we should stick to the standard RAF procedure which, he said, was proven, l didn't say for 1914, but a voice from down the back end said "Why don't thee tell the silly mate" and that didn't raise our share value either, even worse, no one could identify the voice (strange language English as she is spoken).
Shortly after this we won the fight against a couple of jerry night fighters without any damage to ourselves, which was rather lucky as our guns didn't work for a while.
One went down in flames and the other climbed slightly above us before it exploded but we were only allowed one as no one else had recorded the other one going down.
I was then called in to tell the OC how we did it, my reply was "Exactly as you said Sir". Didn't go down at all well, in fact he kicked me out of his office instantly.
Soon after this he went missing and I had second thoughts as I said to Rod "he was on our side." Rods [sic] reply surprised me, he said "No mate, anyone who tried to teach his crews that rubbish had to be one of Adolphs [sic] best men". (Great, but there were 6 others in that crew who had no choice). Then again war is like that. The one thing that is for certain by now is that you make no friends, it isn't good for the morale, they just don't last long enough and that sometimes makes you think maybe its my turn next.
We had always managed to cope with fighters. Its obvious you never see the fighter first, otherwise he would not be attacking you, but if you can see him soon enough to be able to turn away as he is closing in and just before he opens fire then the nose of his aircraft hides you and as
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he has to fire in front of you, on your line of flight to hit you his trace always went high and behind. He then has to pass and attack from the other side but mostly he would loose sic] you in the dark.
We also managed to escape the searchlights very quickly, before they had time to cone up. This meant we kept away from usual a/c a/c or fighters that were near enough to catch you but when it came to beating all the a/c a/c it was only luck.
The intelligence figures were something like 22000 heavy guns many of them mobile units on the track in, often about the same on the way out again. It didn't pay to fly over towns. They soon told you where they were.
Most heavy guns worked in conjunction with the searchlights. The system was very effective. If you became isolated enough to be picked out by radar, the first you knew, was a flick of pale blue, then a steady beam fixed on you. This was the master beam light, directly controlled by radar. It doesn't operate until you are located. Instantly this light comes on, all other standard lights in the area close in on it, giving a very wide cone of lights from all sides, if you had not escaped by then, you were in for a very bad time, because as you flew out of range of those ; behind, another batch in front picked you up progressively. Every gun within range tried it's luck, so the air got a bit thick, even the fighters would sometimes have a go if the guns didn't seem to be winning. It's not good to watch this show and not be able to help, but you can't afford to watch either. The only method of searchlight evasion we got to work was an instant height loss of a minimum of 2000ft almost straight down. Someone calculated that this would get you out of the narrow radar beam quickly enough so that they didn't know which way to follow. Maybe it did, maybe it was only luck, but if you could beat the lights forming a cone with you in the middle, it seems to be hard for them to pick you up again. A lot of flak was fired directly upwards into the general formation area. Many of these shells came very close and no doubt hit a lot of kites,
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but even if you got bumped about and sometimes rattled with shrapnel, you never worried unless this was followed closely by a repeat, then it was time to make a hurried exit to somewhere else.
To see a main force target on a clearish night must have been rather frightening for a new crew for the first time, large, coloured target indicators (these were different colours, like the colour of the day, they changed fairly often to try to stop the enemy imitating them with similar flares over empty fields) e.g. 2 red 1 green, I [sic] similar combination. Usually these were parachute flares, backed up at intervals with new ones. Searchlights everywhere, when they could get through the cloud, when they couldn't, they shine on the clouds turning them into a bright white base, silhouetting all aircraft for everyone above to see.
The better German fighters used this to great advantage, their method was simple. They stayed high above the bomber stream until they picked out one kite flying reasonably straight and level, then closed in the distance until they were almost level, but still high above. The next step was to dive almost vertically down passing just behind the bomber, they by lifting the nose almost vertically upwards they lost speed quickly, but they were also directly, and pointing at the bombers bomb bay, usually unseen by that crew. There is no vision downwards, no one to look either.
A long burst of cannon fire set the bombs off or at the worst, for them, hit the motors, tanks, pilot or crew. The need for them at this time was a very quick retreat to miss the bits remaining so they would flip over onto their back at the top of the loop and dive away below. To do this in the dark is not an easy thing, the only aircraft that I saw that could do it, was the JU88. The ME210 was supposed to be their best aircraft for night fighting, but I never say [sic] one do this.
It was not true to say the rear gunner was often the target of the fighters, he was a very small target compared to the centre section but he was often the first in line from attacks from the rear. His job also needed
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a lot of cool nerve too, because he had to watch all the tracer coming straight at him while trying to shoot back, some of it goes very very close.
The main force on major targets was usually (not always) divided into 3 phases one behind the other, in theory anyway, to spread some of the congestion over the target area, but this still left about 200 aircraft crossing the same point at the same time, at about the same height for each phase. The point of fire for all a/c a/c guns was obvious, so there was one big black ball, (smoke) from the exploding shells, which was filled with red to orange flashes from the new ones going off. I'm sure everyone held their breath for the bombing run, as you had to stay straight and level for so long, until you were right through to the other side.
To look at this from the approach, you would say it was impossible to get through without being blown apart. You did get bumped by the flak and often much too close to other aircraft. Once on a Leipzig raid, a fighter going in the opposite direction over our head, was so close, I could seethe [sic] rivets in his wings. Just a few inches lower and our luck would have run out with a big thud. The closing speed would have been somewhere about 700 mph, at that speed, in the dark, there is no way you can see him quickly enough to do any evasion. The type of marker used on these targets (above cloud) is always dropped before the target, and, therefore must be bombed on a fixed, pre arranged heading and speed so that the bombs carry on past the markers (aiming point) to the target below, on clear nights the markers are on the ground.
This bombing run must have been the cause of many losses too, especially for beginners. As I remember out first trip as a crew, the bomb aimer called bomb doors open as we approached the target, we held the straight and level for what seemed to be a quarter of an hour, despite the nav's protests that we were nowhere near the target. In the end we closed the doors and flew on until we came to the target. That was the first time our bamb aimer had seen a target and his judgement of distance was not very good.
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Under these conditions you are a sitting duck if a fighter turns up, but you couldn't blame him, as a target is visible for a long way from that height, some times up to 300mls from that height, especially to the last phase of the attack (beginners).
Here I should add, an experienced crew have the bomb doors open for the minimum time. The bomb aimer steers you onto the target before the doors open and he knows exactly when to call to close them again.
The nervous tension is still pretty high for those few minutes, probably just because you know the concentration of flak and aircraft in such a small area.
On our first trip I remember being soaked with perspiration, even my gloves were wet through, but you improve on that with practice. We wore three set of gloves, first silk, to stop them sticking, then wool to absorb the moisture, then long leather gloves over the outside to stop contact with any metal we had to touch. To touch any bare metal at these temperatures means your skin just sticks to the metal if you try to pull away you leave your skin stuck there.
A lot of kites were hit by falling bombs from higher flying aircraft, the usual bomb load for this type of main force target, being one 4000lb cookie and the rest of the load made up of hundreds of small incendiaries (4lb). These were square in section and packed tightly into crates, held in place by a bar across the bottom. When dropped, the bar felt away and the incendiaries just fell out to spread in all directions.
The method of dropping was usually progressive, one crate after another, called stick bombing, so this spread the bombs over a longer area. Idea was that the 'Cookie' blew things apart and then the incendiaries lit it alt up, with all these bombs dropping in such a limited time and area, it's no wonder the rescue services had problems. The numbers of people killed was often in the thousands in one raid, they didn't count the injured. It was said that any airman unlucky enough to come down near the target
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area was treated as a war criminal and hanged on the spot by the civilians, so you hoped the army found you first.
We did quite a few courses in unarmed combat in training, partly to keep fit and partly to help if there was a chance of escape. We were also given a 3 cal revolver, as was our right, but told it was a good idea to leave it home. If you had a gun in your possession at the time of capture, you could be shot on the spot (Geneva Convention).
In view of the reported mood of the German people that seemed to be a very good idea.
It seemed to me there would be very little chance of escape from Germany, unless you could speak German anyway. Perhaps in France or Belgium where you might get local help it may have been different.
Most of our clothing was made to rip to pieces so that we could pass as civilians, even the fur lined tops could tear off the flying boots, some of the buttons on our battle suit were really compasses, but you had to have two, one to act as pivot for the other.
We carried small maps and a small compact high energy food pack. Mostly dehydrated, which needed water to increase it's volume and make it edible, also a bundle of money relative to the country flown over, but we always had to give it back on return (maybe it was real). Standard
drink of orange juice and a small bar of chocolate.
Standard equipment for each aircraft to be checked before takeoff included, portable oxygen bottles, fire fighting equipment, first aid kits, including plenty of little tubes (toothpaste type), but smaller, when the cap was removed, there was a built in needle for injections, each tube held a measured shot of morphine for anyone who had been shot up or injured, with strict instructions as to the number of shots that could be given within the time limits. A major problem on these trips would have been fatigue. After an hour or so on the return trip, you would tend to relax, not because you wanted to, just because you were going home and it was
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so much easier to fly a kite without the bomb load and over half the fuel load used up.
I always called every member of the crew in turn about every 10 minutes, just to check in case of oxygen loss or freezing. We were issued with "wakey wakey" pills to be taken if you got too tired. I took one on return from Berlin one night, but it had the opposite effect I kept dozing off and people were calling me (quite a change). The effect didn't last long, and needless to say it was never repeated. I should have tried one out first when we were not flying, but I took their word for it when they said it would work, not my usual practice, but it may have worked under different circumstances. Made you wonder about the pep pills in the escape kit though.
There was no question about being tired. Everyone would have been the same, the daily routine didn't allow for much time off: One problem was the broken times of operations. As there is so much dark time at this time of the year, take off time was sometimes 4pm and sometimes 00.30am but regardless, aircraft still had to be tested daily, weather permitting, there was also the training required for new equipment which took all our spare time, and we were often briefed for ops day after day, but often it would be cancelled sometimes as late as when we were getting into the aircraft and all ready to go.
At one period, we were briefed to go to the same target 10 nights in a row, and in view of the threat to security everyone was more than pleased to see a change of target.
A short period of worry one night on a Berlin raid was caused by a simple fault, the Packard Merlin's we had were fitted with solenoid cut outs on the carburettors, this just meant, to start the engines you had to turn on the switches, this energised the solenoids, which turned on the fuel.
Unfortunately we must have run into another load of static on the way, this somehow turned off the solenoids with the switches still on. No
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one was very happy, when the old kite went into a noiseless steep glide, heading for the deck with a full bomb load, but fortunately the noise started up again just before we had decided to bail out (guess we were always lucky).
This has just been another Berlin raid, we have had our usual share of troubles, but this may have shown one weakness in our system of communications. Basically, it was, complete silence from everyone unless they needed something. The idea being the time for gunners to call, must not only be as short as possible but also be as clear as possible. This can't happen if someone else is talking, so no talking.
The one exception was the pilot who had to call each member of the crew from time to time. This was kept to a minimum like Vic OK?, Titch OK?, you could not call the w/op because he was off the intercom, operating anti fighter electronics or the wireless, but the Nav could check him. Pilot could see the engineer, so the only other one was the bomb aimer, it was just a quick check, but always had been effective. This night was different, on the last check, the rear gunner had complained of the cold, (not surprising, as the temp. gets down to 60°C below at this height) his electric suite wasn't working but he said he was OK. This time there was no answer when I called. This could mean a loss of intercom' contact or worse, so I called the Nav to put the w/op (Blue) onto the intercom.
I must explain the situation to him, because being off the intercom, he didn't know anything was out of normal routine.
Something like, “Blue can you take a couple of portable oxygen bottles and check on Vic". There was a lengthy period of silence to follow, but also the tension builds up because we now have a blind spot. I can't fly far from straight and level to help the mid upper gunner to see, as I would like to. I must just fly straight to help the w/op as much as possible.
When he arrived at the rear turret, it was sideways on, so he bashed on it, but got no reply, so he had to rotate it by hand to get the
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doors to line up with the back of the aircraft. When he got the doors open our gunner was almost unconscious, so he then pulled his intercom plug out and put his own in. We decided the first thing to do was to put him onto a portable oxygen bottle and take him out of the turret, then replace him with the mid upper gunner, but he was very firmly frozen to the floor and he just couldn't shift him. However he soon started to regain consciousness with the oxy supply flat out. Next the w/op looked at the rubber tube on his helmet. There had been a slight downward bend in the rubber tube and because of the extreme cold all the moisture from his breath had condensed and formed ice in the tube untt had completely sealed off the supply, and no one lasts very long at this height without oxygen. Having achieved all this "Blue" was then able to quickly check his flying suite circuit.
The heating elements are built into the suite, but all the press stud type buttons are the contacts from the power supply.
Somehow he had undone a couple, which cut off the power supply. Normally he would have checked these himself, but no one is very efficient when their oxygen supply is gradually cut off.
Once the heat in his boots came on again, and he had his oxygen supply back, he decided he was OK to stay there.
After that I called a little more often.
We all thought "Blue" had done a terrific job, back at base they said it was just routine, just the same effort required as putting out the fires in their crazy electronic junk, which was pretty often anyway.
To me it was quite an achievement to find your way down the length of a bouncing aircraft, over all the built in obstacles, in extreme cold, on emergency oxygen, and all in complete darkness, then find your way back again. He must have looked something like a modern day frog man without the flippers, but he would have had to carry the bottles as they didn't come in packs. Just routine when you know your job (they say). You Wonder [sic] how many crews were lost this way too because, had
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we been attacked at that time, we would have had no warning, and, assuming we were not shot down in the first attack, we would have had no chance to revive our gunner. Maybe the mid upper would have managed OK after the initial attack, but he is completely blind to anything below, and we would have had only two guns instead of six.
Care had to be taken to check every order or direction given. As everything in the aircraft is in complete darkness except for the small sealed compartment of the w/op and nav. With all the outside noises, it was very easy to have the course given by the nav. at turning points misunderstood.
It had to be a spoken heading, no use writing it down because you can't read in the dark. The nav. then had to check the new course on his repeater compass. On one trip I misread the given course and flew off on an eastward course at a tangent, out of the protective block of "mirrorcover", but by this time we had a fair idea of where we were by the permanent concentration of flak, so we soon corrected and set a new course direct for the next turning point, which put us back into the stream
again.
Luckily, (we thought) although we were a single, isolated little spot (on radar) all ready for the radar to find, and all that would follow, we didn't even get challenged by a light, a gun or a fighter.
On some of the Berlin targets we saw strange little football shaped objects flying at our height, always with a vertical pale blue bean going straight down from their centre point. We reported these at debriefing, but they didn't exist, we were told, and although they often changed direction, I never saw one do any damage to anyone. Still they were treated with respect because we though they had to belong to the enemy, we never got close enough to fire at them so I don't know what the result would have been. (30 years later, they were still unclaimed by either side), some called them phoo fighters, and claimed they came from outer space.
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A great deal of effort was spent by the enemy placing false markers in the wrong place, building dummy towns in their attempts to divert the bombing, and it did work to a fair degree, especially with the inexperienced crews, but a careful look would show slight differences in the colours used and a radar scan would prove it wrong, but then not many aircraft had radar at this time.
Through all this our old kite staggered on, often tested to the maximum and sometimes seriously over strained, but I though, as long as it was prevented from skidding, that is, provided always there was no structural damage done to the spars or controls.
On one of our shortest raids (Essen) which was fairly heavily defended, being a very important industrial centre in happy valley. We were unlucky enough to have about a foot shot off one blade of the port inner prop. This changed the balance so much that the whole aircraft jumped up and down at a great rate. The nav. had trouble keeping his junk on the table. So we decided to feather a motor and go hone on three, but we didn't know which one it was, or what the cause of the vibration was at this time either.
The only thing was to try one at a time, started at the port outer, it was ok, next the port inner and there was no doubt that was the one causing the problem, but (so sorry old chap) no port inner meant no generator and therefore the power for the G set and a heap of other goodies we needed, so I turned it on again, and to over come some of the vibration, increased the revs on that motor. The effect of this was to put the motors out of syncro, also increased the vibrations, but the bumps were smaller and much faster. Everyone managed to cope much better. I though[inserted] t [/inserted] the closer we could get to base before that motor packed up, the easier it would be.
We had to keep a very careful watch on all the gauges. Especially the heating side, but it lasted all the way. It should have been turned off and feathered before landing (anti fire etc.). I did think about it and
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decided it was still giving plenty of power, therefore I decided to use it as normal.
In the next days maintenance, the whole front shaft and gears had to be changed, not important compared to the job it had done. It's no wonder so many praised the Merlin.
As our average fuel consumption was always 1.1 mpg and the loss of power from one motor would have forced us to use more revs on the remaining motors this could have caused a possible shortage before we got to base. We may have had to land away from home, and we only did that when we really had to.
Of course there was a good chance too, that by driving this motor at these revs, and so far out of balance, it should have pulled itself to pieces (The good luck was still on our side).
Main force bomber command operated at this time as a unit. The total number of aircraft for each raid varied according to the number each separate squadron could manage to get back to airworthy state for the night. The other factor being that often the main force would be split into two or more raids to try to divide the enemy defences.
The usual briefing held by each squadron, would give you, the target and the tracks to follow and the times to bomb, also all the forecast winds, cloud conditions, possible ice etc., as well as the known defence strong points. Unfortunately they didn't know them all, just because so many guns were mobile, and if they could get early warning from their radar they sometimes managed to get within range.
The target would be marked by PFF, but many aircraft still had trouble getting there on time. One big problem was always the winds given by met. when there was 10/10 cloud there could never be any reference points visible to compute drift from, and when you had to fly in cloud, sometimes 3hrs or so without seeing anything, this would call for very accurate flying so that the nav. could do all his courses and times
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from dead reckoning. This means if you have flown all your courses accurately then you should arrive exactly on target exactly on time.
As we were fitted with radar, it became our job, with other senior crews, to lead, checking our dead reckoning points against radar points. Rod then had to complete a corrected wind and "Blue" signalled it to group. From these results, corrected courses given by the leaders, a mean course was taken, then relayed from group HQ back to the following aircraft. A tribute must be paid to this aircraft that it could fly so accurately under such conditions, with such a heavy load. In contrast to today's aircraft, they were loaded to their maximum for their power, but flying at this height they were hard to keep straight and level, in fact they seemed to wallow all over, obviously they didn't.
It took along time to climb through the often very bad weather, and there was no way you could get above it eve [inserted] n [/inserted] with a light build up of ice. I [inserted] t [/inserted] was just a lucky guess by the met. people as to what was out in front, sometimes an unlucky one. Add to all that the total commitment of a very advanced enemy defence system (e.g.) to ask for a fix (your position) over England was relatively quick and safe but to break radio silence over Germany meant a stack of fighters on your tail if you managed to avoid the Flak. (It was better not to be a leader).
An example of a bad forecast was on a trip to Leipzig, everyone at the higher altitude was caught in an unsuspected jet stream, ourselves included. This meant we had to circle over Berlin area for 3/4 of an hour to wait for bombing time. For some strange reason there was almost no a/c a/c so it was not as dangerous as it sounds, but it should have been.
It seems, or so the theory said, the a/c a/c. didn't want to fire because it would give their position away. (I don't believe it).
If we had dropped our markers, chances were that all the kites flying at lower levels would not have got to the area before the markers had burnt out.
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Interesting to watch the Flak coming up. The lighter calibre, quicker firing guns sent up streams of trace. They called it hosepipe Flak. It seems they wobble the guns similar to holding a hose pointing upwards, and the trace took the same shape as the water would.
To look down on it starting from the ground level it appeared so slow, it was hardly moving but in no time at all the speed increased until it flashed past almost invisible and often much closer than you expected. The big ones you never saw at all, only the flash when they went off and cloud of smoke left behind. There is nothing you can do about these, no way to avoid what you don't know or can't see, either you are lucky or you are not.
A case of good luck by one of our crews was to be hit by a shell as it went upwards, but it didn't explode, however it did go right through the main wing area and cracked the main spar. They flew it gently home without much trouble. Luckily they were not attacked by fighters on the way or the wing would have fallen in half, but they, and the rest of us too, were amazed that it had held together for so far.
Another of our kites, on his bombing run, was hit by an incendiary falling from a higher flying kite. It got stuck just near the port inner motor, just above the main fuel tank on that side and burned away like any good incendiary should burn. There was no way they could put it out, so the pilot put into a steep dive and built up enough speed to blow it out. He came home to tell us all about it too, we couldn't say it didn't happen, you could see where it had been.
We didn't see many of the crashes that happened near our drome, we were mostly flying too. There was never a panic as in civvy dromes, when the whole town is waiting, often there is no warning at all, but the fire cart and ambulance are always ready and waiting.
One of the crashes happened on take off: As the kite crashed off the end of the runway, the "cookie" broke loose, it didn't explode as it should have, but rolled along and split the casing and then started to burn.
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Explosives usually burn safely enough unless there is some compression. As this casing had split, they decided it would be reasonably safe enough to go out and extinguish it just in case, but they never made it. The compression built up in one half enough to explode all that hadn't burnt.
The blast from this always has one strange feature, although there is always an overall shock wave fairly evenly all around, there are also narrow strips of very intense pressure that are quite unexplained, so it is possible, as in this case that one chap lost an arm, the other just disappear.
There were many, like one of ours, badly shot up but still holding together. He was on the down wind leg nearly ready to turn in for landing, but as he put his wheels or flaps down, they must have been holding things together, the aircraft suddenly fell apart and dived straight into the ground. It's height would have been about 1000ft, but when they dug the motors out they were 12ft down. We were diverted to a Canadian drome one night because of bad weather at our base, had the usual trouble getting down from a crowded sky, but had made it safely and parked off to one side of the drome as directed. Climbed out of the kite to stretch our legs and wait for transport. It soon became obvious there was something wrong as a couple of incoming aircraft got red lights and had to go around again.
We soon spotted the trouble, coming in very low and making funny noises, he too must have been shot up badly and was going to do a belly landing because he was off to the other side of the runway. The general procedure for a belly landing is to land on the grass, as this causes less friction than the concrete runway, and also because the kite digs into the ground and slows down much quicker. It also keeps the runway clear for further use by other aircraft, which was very important.
We watched this chap do a beautiful landing, but as he slid along the ground a great stream of sparks went flying out the back just as though
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you were grinding steel on an emery wheel but much bigger, as the plane skidded on, the sparks followed, but at the back end there was a little flame which soon followed the plane, so we concluded he had broken some petrol lines somewhere.
By now the ambulance and fire cart were chasing madly across the runway with all lights on but there was along way to go to catch up. The plane was slowly losing speed by now, but the little flame was going faster as though it was trying to beat the fire cart. As the plane lost speed, the starboard wing tilted downwards and something on that side dug into the ground. The tail of the plane lifted and. turned so that it came to rest at right angles to it's original direction , but that little flame had got bigger and soon caught up the remaining space.
The ambulance was leading the race, but just at this point the driver turned sharply away, he was none too soon either. The explosion that followed was more like a woof than a bang and the surrounding air seemed to be sucked in towards the flame rather than pushed away. A great cloud of smoke and flame rose above the plane lighting up the whole drome. The top escape hatch had been sprung, but no one left the aircraft.
l was awakened from my staring by a ground staff corporal who was saying "your transport is waiting sir," your equipment will be ok in the plane, come on sir, bring your crew there is nothing you can do now and it's better not to watch."
The fire cart arrived and charged straight in, but time had already run out.
As we went around the other side of the drome in the transport there were a few small explosions, maybe tanks or oxy bottles or even the ammunition, but l don't think it made any difference now. After debriefing, we were invited to the mess and open bar. These boys were already celebrating, they had only lost 5 kites, but they had drunk enough grog to float the navy. We soon left their party and found ourselves some beds.
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There was very little left of the aircraft when we took off next morning, just an outline surrounded by a few trucks and crews trying to clear up the metal remains.
About this time our group decided to install a "Fido" system on our drome. Fido was set up with a pipe down each side of the runway with burners at intervals and just off the side of the drome, a large storage tank of petrol. The petrol was pumped through these pipes and all the burners were lit. This used about 58000 gals an hour. Apart from the light it gave, the heat generated dispersed the fog for the full length of the runway giving a long tunnel to land in. This was not finished before we left, so we never landed on it. I think this would have been a very crowded drome in the future, but they did install a few others at other dromes too.
Bomber dromes are always large areas. The requirements are always the same. A central control watch tower to control air traffic and direct all taxiing on the ground. Long runways, a perimeter taxi strip all around and off this, dispersal points for parking all aircraft at intervals so that they were never in bunches or a straight line. This gives some chance or saving a few kites when the place is shot up or bombed. Just outside the tarmac area, the flight offices and crew rooms and at an other point, opposite side of drome, are the living quarters; all using the same system of dispersal, but the big disadvantage is transport between points. Because there is a shortage of fuel in war time everyone is issued with a push bike to go between all necessary places.
Aircrew, going from flight huts to and from aircraft being excepted because of the load of flying equipment they always had to carry. This always has to be returned and put into [inserted] D [/inserted] [deleted] f [/deleted] rying rooms between flights. This helps to avoid the risk of frost bite caused by moisture freezing at the lower temperatures of the higher altitudes, and so, about twice a day every day, everyone rides the distances between the mess huts and the flight rooms on the bike. We sometimes cheated, rather than ride
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around the road, we climbed over the fence and rode around the perimeter, which was probably 20 yards shorter. It was the morning after one of our crews night off that we were doing this trick, partly to have a look at one of the kites that had been shot up the night before. There was no doubt it had had a bad time going by the holes in the side of the fuselage, been caught in searchlight cone and hammered with heavy flak, but it did get back to base.
We didn't take much notice of the crows fighting over the scraps as we passed until one came out of the kite with a lump of meat, then the fight for possession was on again. No doubt the medics had done a good job of cleaning up the night before but it was dark, and the wounded would have had first priority. The final cleanup would be fnished later. Someone said, it doesn't really matter how the recycle job is done anyway, but there wasn't a lot of laughter for the rest of the day.
Perhaps these are the reasons you don't make many friends.
The set out of [inserted] c [/incerted] [deleted] d [/deleted] rew rooms was always about the same. Flight commanders office on the end, next the pilots room, then the navigators, W/ops and gunners, in that order. May seem strange to separate categories, it did have its advantages, mostly it gave the newer crews, divided as they were to learn a lot from the older crews, that is from the same categories in the experienced crews. I know I learned a lot from the older pilots in my earlier stages. Just the fact that they argued about different ways of doing the same thing. You still had to make up your own mind which way was right, but there were so many things you had never heard of.
There were other moments too, when some were sitting around the very hot pot bellied stove trying to keep warm, someone would get out his cigarette lighter and flick the flint over the hot top. The little flashes that continually rose in the thermal were so like flak in the distance. I'm sure it didn't do much for some of those shattered nerves.
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By this time I think my flying had calmed down a bit too, it may have been the result of experience, or fatigue, or perhaps even the influence of the little WRAF I had met at Syerston before we parted from 61 squadron.
That was only a few weeks really but it seemed like years.
Some of the group leaders had always been opposed to the main force bombing idea led by PFF, believing they could do better by bombing in smaller groups on selected targets. So about this time 5 group (Cochran AOC) started to do tests on a new idea of special bombing, but as their aircraft were stripped of almost everything excepting guns, so that they could carry the big bombs, 6 crews, 3 from 106 squadron sometimes 3 from squadron were picked to lead the way and mark the target area.
Allowing for wind drift, 3 aircraft flying parallel dropped 3 parachute flares at an even spacing as we crossed the area, followed by the next 3 planes, then return and drop 3 more.
Cheshire (first flying a Lanc., but later a mosquito or mustang) would fly around at low level until he could definitely identify the target. He then dropped a spot fire (ground marker) as close as possible to the target. We usually had to go around again a few times and back up the flares as the first ones burnt out. When he was satisfied his marker was close, he would call in his kites to bomb in order. His call was often, e.g. on heading of 185 bomb 30yds to port. The original idea didn't work because he marked the target but the first bombs blew the markers away, so he had to change and mark away from the target. It worked very well, as we hit one target 30ft. x 30ft. about 600 miles from base, but of course these were only French factories taken over by the Germans and never very heavily fortified.
On one of these, out [sic] kite, the last to bomb was the only one to hit the target. (Allen's head got bigger) but someone did hit something one other night. The explosion at ground level must have been fantastic, there
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were rocks about the size of houses coming down from above us and we were at 8000 ft.
One of our main worries on these trips were the magnesium flares. They were carried almost loose in the fuselage, extremely unstable, burnt with a brilliant light, but very dangerous to carry around especially with the bumps. The poor W/op had the job of dropping them down a special shute exactly when the nav. told him to.
We nearly always had some delayed action bombs on these targets too (1000lbs.) each. The delay time varying from one hour to a day or more. This idea is to stop a quick clean up, as you would have to wait until all the bombs had exploded before it was safe to start to repair the damage, or defuse all the bombs first.
On return one night, we were diverted to a drome down south, and left our kite to a local ground crew for servicing, unfortunately it was not a bomber drome and the ground crew were not used to bombers. I awoke to a terrific panic, it seems we had a temporary hang up, one bomb we didn't know about, after we had closed the bomb doors, the bomb had just dropped from it's cradle and lay on the bomb doors all the way home.
When they pumped the doors open for inspection it dropped onto the tarmac with a thud. No one managed to start to run away, the shock much have been too great.
Then they realised it was a delay. The action of a delayed action bomb was simply a glass tube with filler in it. At the other end is a little container of acid which brakes [sic] when bumped, the acid then eats through the filler until it ignites the cap. The delay time can be changed by changing the length of filler in the tube.
No one knew if the action had started from the first bump to the bomb doors or the second bump to the tarmac, or what the time delay was anyway, so we were most unpopular. Finally they took the only chance they could, there was no one there to defuse it, no time anyway. The tied it on a long rope to a truck and dragged it across the drome into some trees
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on the far side, but no one was allowed to take off for 2 days, in case it went off at that time. Don't know if it ever went off but it just proves how gentle the old kite was, or maybe it was a dud, but we had sat on it all the way home. (Some people are still lucky).
It was only a I000lb.'er. We weren't very popular when we got back to base either, was one way of getting a night off.
We did have some troubles on the Nuremburg raid (main force) because it was a very clear night bright moonlight, without any cloud, and the defences picked up the bomber stream very early. It was normal practice to log every kite that was seen to blow up or get shot down (time and place). This would be checked up by command after return to give total later. Knowing your own losses, you can tell time and place of enemy planed [sic] shot down, provided they have been logged. There were too many on this night, most crews stopped logging them, mostly because it took too much time on the intercom. We needed it far more than ever in case of sudden attack. We were supposed to be sending back wind corrections but we were continually attacked by an ME210. We could usually loose a fighter fairly quickly, but it is not so easy on a clear night like this, almost daylight at this height, he keeps coming back, so the only hope you have is to beat him on the turns.
In theory he has to point in front of you if he is going to hit you, but you [inserted] r [/inserted] gunners can shoot all the time he is within range.
Unfortunately our guns didn't work for a while (frozen oil lines). The guns, like the turrets were operated hydraulically, but because the turret was continually moving, the oil remained free, just the little bit up to the guns that was isolated that remained static unless the guns were fired. There should have been some way to circulate the oil without firing the guns, because of this delay the fighter was getting in a bit too close, that is dropping his speed and trying to follow behind us, we would then be a sitter every time we turned. It was just as well it was a Lanc. We
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were in, there weren't many fully loaded bombers good enough to stay inside a determined fighter.
There was no time or chance to jettison the bombs so I was beginning to wear down a bit before Vic got his guns going properly. The 210 soon paid the price of getting in too close after that. There was great relief and satisfaction in Vic's voice when he said "got the b - " understandable, l felt the same way. He had put up with a lot of trace going very close for some time, to see that explosion must have been pretty good.
We didn't get much of a break before Vic reported another, ME 109 this time, approaching by weaving across as he closed in from behind.
We let him came in as close as possible without us loosing [sic] the advantage. When the time came to fire Vic said starboard, as we turned, one burst was enough, he climbed to starboard and burst into flame before falling to the ground.
We were able to resume course, perhaps we were lucky once again, he must have just turned to follow us on the turn, instead he climbed to starboard and burst into flames before falling away, but after 3/4's of an hour of continuous evasion, we didn't have much idea where we were or what the wind might be either. Had to use the radar to locate out position again, thus inviting more fighters, luckily none came.
Although this was very hard work on the physical side, it was a clear night, there was always a clear horizon to be seen and therefore no excuse for bad flying, quite unlike a dark night with heavy cloud, that means you do violent aerobatics in the dark.. [sic]
Always, after the first turns the instruments spin violently and are no use to fly by, they need a little time flying relatively straight and level again before they settle back into proper functional use.
Easy enough to fly with out instruments when you have a clear horizon, but not so easy when you have neither. Could be why it was
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easier to loose the fighter too because they had to turn sharper to get inside your turn. Combine this with a very restricted range of vision and you had to win, provided you saw him before his attack, (but you had to win anyway.
By this time we had long since qualified as senior crew having [rest of page blanked out]
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be at sea level to avoid radar detection from land or German navy ships in the area.
For this trip we all had new aircraft, must have been one off specials at that time, I never saw anything like them again, even to the end of the war. They were “Hush hish” too. They arrived on the drome and [rest of page blanked out]
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We were now approaching the canal at right angles we had to climb to 150ft. (bombing height), and turn to starboard for the bombing run. About this time, it seemed every searchlight and every gun (well three or four anyway) east of Berlin went into action, none of them were ours either but we were the only target. Mines had to be dropped all from the same height, and at intervals down the length of the canal.
By now the trace was coming from both sides and we were forced downwards, so I called for more revs from the engineer. He said "yes I think so too." The terrific surge of power that followed put us all back in our seats. Our speed jumped to about 300mph. All that was left to do was go up and down to dodge the trace, and hope it worked, as we couldn't swerve away from the narrow canal. Sometimes we were down below the banks and the trace was firing down crossing from each side just above our heads, but we still had to come up to 150ft. each time to drop a mine. By now our gunners were using up a lot of ammunition putting out searchlights and gun posts, but you can't shoot the ones in front, only the ones behind, we could have used another man in the front turret, the bomb aimer was far too busy at the time. One searchlight came on from out across the bay in front pointing straight down the canal. Although it was almost blinding, it did save our lives as it showed up the masts of a ship in the canal, I pulled hard back on the stick to gain some height and we were able to clear the tops, then quickly down again. At the end of the canal, hard back again, this time straight up. The only thing I have seen (before the jets) that could climb like that was a contra prop spitty and that was much later.
By now I had my first chance to look at the instruments. Johnny had pushed both boost and revs to the maximum, no wonder it leaped forward. When I said that was a bit much, his reply was positively rude. The kite was hardly damaged and we still had one mine we hadn't time to drop before we came to the end of the canal. Maybe we were going too fast, maybe I didn't get up to height often enough, but we did have an
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alternate dropping spot off the coast, so down again and dropped it and turned for home. Back across Sweden, on across Denmark. Still low level but not like the target area. Our worry now was being so isolated, even if they all got through (which they didn't) there were only 6 kites and almost 900 miles to go, but I think this monster was almost as fast as most fighters at this height, but it would be so easy to get plotted as we crossed Denmark. Our luck was still on the good side. Perhaps all the fighters had followed the main stream south, perhaps they hadn't had time to refuel, or perhaps they mistook us for "mosies" [sic] which did a regular run to Sweden. Given a little start they knew they couldn't catch them.
Our aircraft was isolated again (under guard) on our return, so it wasn't only the mines that were "hush, hush" but it had been flown away early next morning and we never really got a look at it.
If old N was a good kite (and it was) this monster was magnificent.. [sic] I don't know how it would have been at high level though.
Still 8000hp is a lot of power to pack into one kite. We did use it all for that short time. It's only after, that you notice the effects.
The next day I found the pressure had lifted a thick layer of skin off the palms of both hands, they soon healed back again.
That was about all the damage, didn't even see how many holes there were in the kite, couldn't have been many or they wold have had to patch it up before it went.
Only a few more trips to do at this point but none of the older crews left, and no one has managed to finish a tour from our flight either.
Have even lost a crew on their last op. As this was about the worst period for losses during the war, due to an all out effort by bomber command prior to invasion, and a corresponding all out effort by the enemy's opposition, and added in some of the longest raids in some of the worst weather, especially on take off and return. The fogs would have been enough, but added to this and very well mixed in, must have been thousands of tons of coal smoke caused by every little factory chimney
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working night and day flat out and producing something for the war effort, even some private houses were used.
It was normally very easy to find your home base, you simply got reasonably close by navigation and then joined in on the circuit lights of the drome. Our drome always had a Sandra light (little searchlight) pointing straight up from the control tower. The circuit itself was a ring of lights mounted on poles at regular intervals, and pointing straight upwards.
The only break in the circle of lights being at the entrance to the runway in use.
As you enter this space for approach, there were two straight rows, one either side set on converging angles to guide you onto the runway as the sides of a funnel. At the beginning of the runway on the ground level, on both sides of the runway there was a GPI (glide path indicator). This can only be seen from the approach end of the runway. It is divided into 3 colours giving angles of approach (height) ie. red too low, green ok, amber too high. This gives points of touchdown on runway, amber - too long, green ok, red -too short. No other lights are visible from the air, but at very low heights, or at touchdown, there are lights down each side of the runway and along the taxi strips, all are hooded so that they can°t be seen from above about 100ft.
On one nights return, a rude awakening came, as we approached our drome with trace going in all directions from intruding fighters, who had come in undetected with the bombers. This caused no end of confusion, as all aircraft lights went out. All the drome lights were out excepting for the hooded ground lights and the GPIs. Thanks to the easy handling of the Lanc., a few of us managed to land. We simply set the direction of the runway on the gyro compass, flew straight down the runway, took our time form [sic] the time we crossed the GPIs flew for 1 minute, 90° rate one turn to port, flew for 1 minute 90° turn to port, flew 2 minutes, another 90° rate one turn port and flew for I minute, and there on
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the port side were the GPIs another 90° turn into compass heading letting on normal approach on GPIs. Almost at ground level the runway lights became visible, so the rest was a normal landing. We did have to use the radio RT with control to keep spacing and notify of being clear etc. There were no nav. lights to look for even for taxiing on the.ground.
It's doubtful if this was a useful exercise, as the drome had been shot up already, I gather before the lights went out. The risk of flying at 1000ft. with wheels and flaps down must have been pretty high, (you could not do evasion) and the fighters could not stay long anyway. I suppose it could have left more time for someone who could have been running short of fuel.
Some of the intruders were chased by our night fighters about this time, and it seems the further they went the further our fighters got left behind. It's possible they were some of the first of the jets (German) to operate over England. I didn't see any of them.
Up until now we have had three "Boomerangs", early returns because of faults in the aircraft. The responsibility is with the pilot, he is always supposed to press on provided there is some chance of getting to the target. For my part, I couldn't see why, when your kite wont go any higher than 8000ft. because it is covered in ice or the guns or instruments wont work. All of these, or even some of them would just mean you would almost certainly by shot down. That is a loss of one Lane., plus a fully trained crew. If you turn back, you have to drop the cookie in the sea, but provided you land it safely, that's the only loss. If you were shot down, the cookie didn't hit anything anyway.
To me it seemed better to run away and come back another day than dig your own grave. Not what heroes are made of though is it?
Probably the worst torture for the old Lanc. would have been the standard evasion, 5 group corkscrew. As the gunner called the position of the attacking fighter, i.e. port or starboard, the stick was pushed hard forward, at the same time, full aileron and full rudder on the same side
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(say port) so full roll to left full rudder to left with full downward dive. As the speed builds up very quickly you must then roll to the right, with full roll and full rudder, still going down. As the speed builds up, the controls become much harder to operate, so before it gets too high you must start to pull out, hard back on the stick again while still turning to the right. This is the point of greatest strain, if the speed has been allowed to build up too high, it becomes impossible to shift the controls without using the trims. As the speed starts to fall off on the way upwards, you then roll back to the left i.e. full left roll, full left rudder. This has regained some of your height and should be somewhere near your original course, (depends on how good your flying is). Speed drops off very quickly near the top of this climb, so care must be taken not to let it get too low or you are again a sitting target with no flying speed left to manoeuvre with if the fighter is still there. Mostly he will overshoot you on the first dive. Either way he is just about ready to attack again, so you must repeat again, usually from the opposite side and hope again to lose him on the break again in the dark. There is no way you could have time to jettison your bombs, so in view of the total weight involved, and the accurate way you have to fly, if you want to keep the wings on, this gets to be hard work. With reasonable flying the old kite could take it much longer than l could.
Later, while instructing at Litchfield, I tried this manoeuvre in a hurricane [sic]. It's easy to see why a fighter found it hard to follow, especially at night. The only way seemed to be to drop the speed, let down 20° of flap and try to stay behind, but if you have to fire in front of the bomber, you can't see him, so you go straight on while he goes the other way, and just as we found on ops, you are a sitting target for the bombers gunners.
Our last trip with 617 was to carefully bomb the railway yards at Paris. By this time 2 squadrons of PFF (path finding force) have been reformed in 5 group to take over the marking job we had been doing. It seems the deport [sic] for all our escapees trying to return along the
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underground escape line was right there beside the tracks. Bombing had to be spot on, or not only would we kill our mob, we would also break the escape line. However, there was not a lot of a/c a/c to worry over, so we were down to the usual 8000ft. at that height the old Lane. was so stable to fly you could land the bombs within feet of the aiming point. So we were happy to wreck the railway and I don't think anyone was hurt (quite a change). The flak increased on the outer edges of the city, but compared to the German targets it was like the kids with pea shooters, Our substitute navigator spent his time, not only counting the gun flashes on the ground, but timing from the flash on the ground to the explosion of the shell. This somehow gave him the position and calibre of each gun. Not that that helps much as most of them are mobile, but I guess it kept him busy and helped to calm his nerves.
He was the only aircrew member left on the squadron from when we had started. Even the CO who should not have been flying was missing.
Flak happy was the term used to describe crews at our stage, and at times it was true. No one would have known the dangers better than we did, but often we would ignore the flak that was too close for too long and just say ha ha you missed again, but the flak didn't hear you, it didn't go away either, it just kept trying. I'm sure this was never over confidence, just plain fatigue, sometimes I would alter course to clear a heavy concentration of flak, and Johnny would say "go straight through, it won't hurt you", well it doesn't either unless it hits you.
About this time we had a visit from the ABC who's object appeared to be a recording for transmission on stations in Australia. They needed a crew to glamorise I guess. They tried very hard to get us to say how good we were, and how easy it was to beat the opposition, but this wasn't a glamour crew. The conversation was all one sided. Someone said something like, "no mate we are not a good crew really, its just that we are lucky, lucky that we haven't met anyone on the other side that's
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better, so far, but that doesn't mean we wont [sic]." So they gave up. I'm sure they would have broken the record before they got out the gate. There was never any place for a crew on a squadron once they had finished their tour, in fact the postings were through before the last trip. I did have to front up to the new CO to give a final assessment on each of the crew members ability, relative to where each would be posted as an instructor, but that was all.
The Australians were going beck [sic] to Litchfield but the rest were split up to various RAF depots. Met Vic, rear gunner, once on leave in London but never heard from the others.
Back at Litchfield, things have changed, it's almost a complete RAAF station now excepting for the ground staff. Instructors are all ex ops, (there are some who finished a tour).
Some who are very much afraid of flying now, many with an controllable, unconscious twitch in hands and face muscles and some who claim they fly much better when they are drunk, but a lot have managed to remain reasonable [sic] normal (I think).
Most pilots go into the flights teaching conversion to wimps (Wellingtons). I managed to get into the gunnery section. We take a crew with their pilot flying and their gunners in the turrets. These are all dual control "wimpies", so the instructing pilot has the right hand seat and gunnery instructor is able to instruct from outside the rear turret (inside the kite of course). We can direct the fighter to do all the different styles of attack from different directions by RT. As it was often hard to get the fighter to do the attacks we needed, we often had to change over and fly the fighter ourselves on the next trip.
The turrets were fitted with cameras instead of guns (IR for night) practice [sic]. Our Hurricanes had a light (IR invisible, except to the film) set in both wing tips, so the film showed not only the direction of the gunners [sic] fire, but by measuring the width of the lights on the film you could tell the range when he started to fire and when he stopped. That's if he managed
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to get you in the picture of course. If you found, in theory, you could shoot him down too easily, you had to go back and try to teach the pilot to improve his evasion. Twice I managed to overdo this bit. The first time was a nasty surprise, I didn't realise you could make anyone so afraid. I had expected them to be used to violent aerobatics but most of these new pilots were trained on twins and their aerobatics had been limited to steep turns.
Anyhow I had done my best to show them how to beat the fighters, (it's not easy in the daylight) and handed back to him to fly back and land. He went ok until the final approach, but at about 300ft. I realised we were going straight in. The poor bloke had pointed it at the end of the runway and frozen hard, just like the one in Tassie had done.
It isn't easy to take the controls off a bloke in that state (but you can). So I had to take him back the next day and do it all again. This time it didn't even worry him. I think there should be a bit of crazy aerobatics in everyone's training.
The next time this happened I was watching for it, but I was more surprised, as the pilot had done one tour of ops. in the middle east on "Wimpies" should have been able to fly them better than I could, but as he said, he had never seen a fighter let alone having to evade one.
By this time it made little difference which aircraft we flew in. We had Miles Master, Martinets, and Hurricanes as fighters and half a dozen fighter pilots to help out, so there was plenty of practice, you even got attacked when you were flying the Hurricanes.
The Master was really designed as an advanced trainer, but it was nearly as fast as a Hurricane and very manoeuvrable, just a little bit stiff, which was a bit more tiring. The Hurricane must have been one of the best aircraft of it's time, it flew like a bird, always exactly right.
In fact in fog you could fly it straight down the runway, because you can see down through a fog but not across.
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Wheels and flaps down, just at the far end of the runway, you cut the throttle, lift the nose and with full rudder it falls over sideways, points it's nose straight at the ground, then with just a little throttle, it lands it's self back along the runway. It has to be a thick fog to do this or the noises form [sic] control can be very disturbing.
In one of our brighter moments here, when the first Martinet arrived, two of us decided we would fly it. The Martinet is a two seater, advanced from the Master, bigger motor etc. We found the hand book with all the instructions and positions of all the controls etc., my mate in the back seat with the book. We were half way down the runway when I realised I couldn't get the tail to lift off, so I'm shouting out where's the trim (hadn't done my checks?) but he couldn't find the page, so we took off at about 90° from the runway and had to fly around finding things before we could land again not really dangerous, but not very professional either.
We did a very short course in instructing from here. It was a joke I think, the instructor RAF was still 1918 and never more than rate one turns (it would be too dangerous at night) so after our little disagreement as to how to evade a fighter, I found myself grounded as incompetent again, which didn't go down too well with the rest of the flight They did all the work, I just sat and watched. After a while they got sick of that, but they found they had to import an outside qualified instructor from somewhere else to do a test before I could fly.
When he did arrive he picked everything I did around the taxi strip. Taxied too fast etc. Even had the gunner swing his turret on take of, which acts like a rudder and makes the kite turn unless you counter it. After cutting the odd motor and trying just about everything else that could upset normal flight. He said "you can take me back, I hate perfectionists", but his report not only put me back to work it upset the CO who said I had tried to get grounded in the first place. Which must prove --- (it ain't what you say, so much as who you say it to).
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Most of our training trips took us across the west side of England as this was well clear of all ops dromes and testing areas, although it did cross much of the area used for training glider pilots (pre invasion). Also the storage area for all invasion equipment. The roads were filled with tanks, trucks, etc. parked end to end, ready to move in a continuous line south to the ports to cross the channel when ready. Many of the fields were stacked with fighter aircraft. It appeared to be impossible to fly them off, until you looked close enough to see the hedges were only painted on the grass.
The aircraft we flew here had no effects from enemy action but we still had minor troubles with the odd panels falling off.
They.were old and well worn planes (not by today's standards) but they had had a very rough life. Sometimes a motor would give up. One motor on one Wimp continually gave trouble while flying, but on the ground tests it was always 100%. After l had continually written it off as u/s they stripped it down to find it had no top left on one piston, just burnt out.
It seems that was fairly common on Herculies [sic] motors.
One incident here while night flying, was to hear a trainee pilot call control from dispersal area and ask for an ambulance to be sent out. To the girls insistent query "why?" he said "my rear gunner has crashed through the prop, he's not very pretty."
No one ever knew why he turned his turret sideways and got out over the side, as he would do if he were abandoning aircraft in the air. Normally on the ground, he would centralise the turret and come out through the aircraft. No one knew why he walked straight through the prop. either.
One of our gunnery instructors RAF who often flew with me in the Wimp, was an Englishman with strange pre war interests, one was the ancient castles which he often flew over and he could recognise from a quick glimpse through a little hole in the cloud, he would then tell you it's
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history, all very interesting too. There are a lot of castles along the Welsh border line. His other hobby had been mountain climbing, which had taken him to the same area.
As these were all dual control aircraft, but we only took gunners for practice over the Irish sea he often used to fly us back from the right hand seat. This way he could follow his own selected track back and pick out as many interesting spots as possible to tell us about. On one trip we were flying along a deep valley, just above the hill top level on either side, when we were hit by a very strong down draught. I managed to take over with full power and full climb before we landed in the river, but it shook his faith in his flying ability a little. Proved I should not have been asleep too.
On one of these trips I noticed a Wimpy flying along below me with both props feathered and streams of black smoke pouring out the back of both motors. I called up to report this, as I expected he would have to crash land somewhere pretty soon, but the answer from control was slow incoming back. When it did, they just said "shut up and forget it, it's under control" couldn't see how, but I had done my part.
This turned out to be fuel tests on jet engines which were mounted directly behind the normal engines testing various types of fuel mixtures in flight, so it was all quite safe, just looked dicey to someone as ignorant as I was. Jets were stilt unheard of at this time excepting to the few who were working on their development.
Certainly the German had then [sic] in operation, but I doubt if you would be able to pick a jet at night, especially if you had never heard of one before.
As the war in Europe was coming to an end, the demand for transport aircraft was increasing, so I applied for a transfer to a transport squadron flying Halifaxes [sic] to the middle east and back which I thought would be a change.
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In due course I was told to pack my bags as I had the job, but right then the war in Europe finished and I lost the job, because all Australians were grounded. It seems our government had been trying to get us back for the Jap war for a long time, but they didn't want anyone killed after the war in Europe ended. So this left us with nothing to do. It was a points system really, how long you had been away from home, how many ops. Hours you had done, married or single etc., most of our points were much too high, so no more flying.
We had a visit from some bod RAF who was trying to give away some AFCs and MIDs but no one wanted those. When he asked "why?" someone said "it's a joke mate, you have to get killed in the navy to get an MID." He was not anti navy, but he did point out some facts, like, if you are in the navy in one battle, it may last 2 hours, there may to so many tons of shells fired, there may be a few "bods" damaged etc., but everyone gets a gong to commemorate that battle as well as the few, (sometimes many) who are decorated, whereas on one Berlin raid, 6 to 8 hours, thousands of tons of explosives used, minimum about 300 "bods" missing but it's just another raid, you don't get a gong for that, you don't get a gong for 6 raids, not even for 10, and that's about 70 hours over enemy territory and 3000 lives, and you still have 20 more to go, but he didn't sell his gongs.
However he was right about his gongs, the usual for bomber command seemed to be one for the pilot as leader, sometimes one for the navigator, but there were pilots here who had done their 30 trips for nothing.
Our crew of 7 must be hard to explain too, as 5 got gongs and 2 didn't. They were in the same kite on the same raids. Also I got an immediate award for one raid, that means nothing for 29 others.
Cheshire was given a VC because he was the leader of the 617 group who pioneered the new marking system. Just watching him I think Cheshire earned 6 VCs on his own. As gongs are no use to the ones who
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get them, maybe they boost the morale of the newer recruits, maybe it's just something for the papers to write about. Afterall [sic] the civvy population needs a boost too.
Back in civvy street a gong can be a definite disadvantage.
It's hard to compare the airforce officers to the army officers, for many different reasons, first the army were completely inexperienced, being straight from school and depending on the odd corporal and Sgt from the permanent malitia [sic] to help them out. Whereas many of the airforce were also straight from school (civvies) but were specialists in their fields i.e. pre war pilots, navigators, Morse code operators from PMG etc. They were not required to know the admin. Side, that was left to about 2 or 3 who had been regular airforce who we rarely sa[deleted] y [/deleted] w anyway.
It was not until we were getting towards our final training that we had much to do with the pre war types. Most of them were good blokes, but they seemed to have trained as a cross between a commercial pilot and a politician, very good pilots, but their combat tactics were still 1914. They refused to change as the Germans had. Most of them were out of ops. by now but still in the front line squadrons as admin. We did try to tell them of some changes, but it isn't the thing "old chap", no junior has the right to suggest a change to his senior. The whole thing has to wait until the top brass issues an order and it creeps back down the line. In these times you had to change almost every day because of all the new junk on both sides.
Every effort was made to advance the electronic side, but no effort seemed to be made to counter the Germans counter actions except by the crews themselves, perhaps this was considered the best way, because no one would be better informed than the ones who had done the trip last night, and it was up to each crew to listen to all the reports.
As for comparison to the army officers, this was a different end of the war and secondly a different war anyway.
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I have no doubt the army officers improved if they managed to live. There were a few of the original airforce officers left, but very few.
A percentage managed to survive the war because they were shot down and taken prisoner. The percentage of pilots in this lot was relatively low because they had to stay with the aircraft to try to keep it under control until the rest had managed to bail out. Some managed to crash land, I don't know how. George kept it straight enough for a few who were quick enough, that's if George still worked. Some ditched in the Zider [sic] Zee, but they did survive, some of us were even luckier, we just went home.
It' [sic] easy to see this has many faults.
The first is the limited, and therefore monotonous use of language, like jumping up and down in the one spot. The other criticism is to say it put down our efforts, to hide them behind a camouflage of good luck, but, this was a good crew, in my opinion anyway, one of the best in bomber command. This may seem strange because it was not a specially selected crew, rather it was one that just happened.
As these crew members met at OUT for the first time in most cases, it was their own choice whether they stayed together, or walked away and joined someone else. There never appeared to be any conscious assessment of anyone's ability or character, they just came together and stuck, for better or worse, may have been quite different if someone didn't fit though, I'll never know.
The one exception being the engineer, who was allotted later. All of these had one thing in common, they were inclined to rebel against the approved system.
Caused me no end of trouble at times, but to me it was good, as it proved they could think beyond the standard RAF text book. Not that they said it was wrong, just that it was sometimes out of date, and there could be something better.
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It is true that underneath, this was a very confident crew, but they never overestimated their own ability, nor under estimated the enemy either. I think it is also true to say others had a higher opinion of us than we did, but I think this could have been, because, after the first couple of months we had lived long enough to be a senior crew and it is natural for the new crews to look up to experience.
At least three others in this crew had the ability to be the leader and make all the decisions, but I had to be the undisputed leader just because all the quick decisions, there are many, have to be carried out by the pilot, therefore time, or mostly lack of it, dictates that he alone is the leader.
We all tended to give more credit to the other members of the crew than to ourselves. Never when they could hear you of course, e.g. on return from Nuremberg, after debriefing, I was leaving the hut when the CO stopped me. Thinking I could get in first, I said "my gunners did a very good job Sir", He just shook his head and grinned as he said "yes but you weren't too bad yourself'. Here I should explain that debriefing is all done in the one room, but only the first part is done as a crew, you then divided into sections, pilots, navigators, wireless ops, gunners, each in their section, so you never know what they say about you.
As far luck.
It was the end of a briefing for a Berlin raid. The CO finished off with, "and good luck to all of you, any further questions?".
Someone's navigator, more to break the tension (there is always tension at briefing) than to be serious I think, said "Yes Sir, can you define luck for us?". Without a moments hesitation the CO said "certainly, in any high risk to personnel business, I define luck as complete dedication in attention to detail and eternal vigilance". Maybe that could account for a lot of things, perhaps even 99% but not all. Just think of one 4.7 AC shell.
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They predict you [sic] height, speed and direction etc. They assume you fly a straight line, which you don't. The minimum range is about 5 miles, assume the shell goes straight, which it might, assume you zig when you should have zagged.
It's true a predicted shell will always be fairly close, but you can't dive into a trench, you can only hope. Then there are the hundreds fired straight up into your bombing run when you can't do anything except fly straight. If one shell misses you that's lucky, but they fire a hundred or more at you in one night. If they all miss, to me that's a lot of luck.
I don't think that 1% is as small as it looks.
When counting the nightly losses, it was the policy of bomber command to show only the aircraft missing which they knew the enemy could positively be certain came down in enemy territory.
Therefore the figures shown are highly misleading e.g. Nuremberg raid --- next morning the loss posted on the ops. room board in our crew room was 145. The German news in their broadcast claimed 130, so our figures immediately dropped to 120. From there it slowly came down to 96.
In the period in which we were on ops., the average loss per raid was 7%. According to Rod that was 7% per raid x 30 raids = 210% chance of being shot down. The final figure of 106 sqdn, adjusted for overall duration was about .15%.
Hard to work that out, until you realise that they take the total number of trips done by all Lanc's. and then divide by the total losses of 106 sqdn. In praise of our ground crew, I should mention one small episode that stood out.
The usual procedure for us, prior to ops, was to air test our aircraft in the morning, return it to dispersal, note any faults found, if any, ready for take off on ops.
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About 3/4 hour before take off time, they would run all motors to warm up before we arrived. This meant everyone's aircraft was ready for take off at about the same time, so there were few hold ups.
We arrived at our aircraft one night in time to get ourselves organised, do the final run up and checks ready for take off, only to find the motors closed down and the complete ground crew starting to work like crazy on one motor. In a few minutes one ground crew member was peddling his bike frantically back to the hanger while the rest were erecting their mobile decking around the port inner motor and stripping off the cowlings and prop. Thinking we had no hope of going anywhere, much to our delight, I called out to the chief (staff Sgt) to see if we were scrubbed for this one.
He said "may be but wait a while first." In a couple of minutes, a truck with a frame mounted on the back, left the hanger and raced out to our site, returning the bod on his bike.
It then backed to the motor in question, removed the prop, backed further under the motor until it was bolted to the frame. At the other end of the motor, all the control cables, fuel lines, oil pipes, electric cables etc. were removed. Next another truck arrived with a new motor. The old one drove off to the hanger, the new ones backed in, and the controls were being replaced as the first of our kites were starting to taxi out for the take off.
In next to no time the last cowling was screwed back into place, the motors primed, and the chief was holding up his hand to start.
It had taken less than an hour to completely change the motor and remove all stands etc.
We got off about 1/2 hour late. I wouldn't have believed it, considering the freezing conditions. These poor bods had to work out in the middle of the paddock, in all the wet without any protection even from the wind, but their idea was different, if we wanted to go, the least they
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could do was everything they could possibly do to help, and we depended on them all the way.
To Quote Harris
"in bomber command we had to lay on, and more than often than not, carry through al [sic] least one and occasionally more than one major battle every 24 hours. That was a situation no naval or military command has ever had to compete with. Navy's fight 2 or 3 battles per war. Army's maybe a dozen, we had to lay on during my 31/2 years well over 1000."
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[underlined] FINIS [/underlined]
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Huricane (11 C)
Engine Rols [sic] Merlin xx 1200 hp
Span 40 ft.
Length 31 ft. 5z [sic]
Max. Speed 340 mph
Camouflage on most day fighters was standard green and brown on upper side but usually light blue underneath.
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Miles Master (11 )
Engine Wasp Jun 825 hp
Span 39 ft.
Length 31 ft.
Height 11ft. 5”
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Miles Martinet
Engine 870 hp Bristol Mercury xx or xxx
Span 39ft.
Length 30ft. 11"
Height 11ft. 7"
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Wing Area 238sq ft.
Weights Empty 4640lbs
Loaded 6750lbs.
Max. Speed 240 mph
Range 694mls.
The airforce like the other services used many words and phrases developed within their own system and this became standard language, hard for any outsider to understand. None of this language had been used in these notes, but some of the following may help with some explanation.
One of the bigger differences between the services seemed to be. Troops in the army stayed in their units for longer periods and became close friends, the navy likewise many staying on the same ship for the duration, but even as a crew, in the airforce you were divided, first by rank, and also by living quarters, seldom sharing even part of the same hut, but you were forced into very close cooperation when it came to flying.
Looking at the time of arrival at OUT. That is the first meeting of most of the crew. It was only 2 months before we were a complete crew and one more month before we were engaged on ops.
At the end of ops we once again became separated individual people again.
Some we never met again.
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There is no attempt to detail any raid, as many are a repetition of the previous ones. The attacks by fighters, flak, searchlights, etc. could and did happen at any time on any target. It also seems pointless to detail all the casualties and crashes, so a description of only one of any type has been included.
True, some raids were relatively free from challenge by enemy defences, owing to factors such as weather condition etc. It [sic] we could climb above the thick layer of heavy cloud with ice, into clear conditions, and the fighters had to climb up through worse conditions, even with their greater rate of climb, they sometimes didn't get through, but if they acid it would reduce their endurance time. No doubt they had problems on landings with fogs too, but it is easier to do a tight circuit in a fghter than in a bigger kite.
The weather did not effect the a/c a/c in any way except to make visible coning by searchlights impossible, l would say there were very few trips without some fighters, and none without some fighters, and none without searchlights and a/c a/c and always the big risk of collision. A constant search of the sky from wing tip to wing tip and above, on return your vision passed over, and checked, all instruments and back to starting point. An aircraft flying in the same direction and apparently parallel could appear small in the distance, but before your vision returned to it, it could slide across your track and just too close.
Most a/c a/c guns on low level raids were quite different, being small calibre, i.e. machine guns and 25[inserted] .[/inserted] 5mm cannon, much greater in
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numbers in the local target area and much faster firing rate, bit like flying through a woven screen, so the evasion tactics had to change, but there was still the target to hit. Some low level targets had many "blimps" on cables. Our aircraft were fitted with cable cutters on all sections of the wings i.e. when the cable hit the wing it slid along until it hit the cutter which automatically fired a chisel against an anvil, hopefully cutting the cable, didn't happen to us.
The Lanc. was progressively overloaded, even carried 22000lb bomb, compared to the fortress's 3000lb bomb load, that's a big difference but it didn't have many guns. The little 303's range was only about 400 yards, the 20mm cannon on the German fighters was much, much greater. The theory was, you can only see so far in the dark, but they must have forgotten about the hundreds of searchlights and the reflection from the clouds. Later they installed 2/50 cal guns in some rear turrets also put a few night fighters mixed in with the bomber stream, never saw one. They said there were 5 one night on Berlin but about 800 bombers spread over ? miles. Our fighters, like the Germans were fitted with a radar device to detect the German fighters never heard any of the results.
About this time (the battle of Berlin) the Germans changed from offensive to defensive, i.e. switched their bombers to fighters. They claimed their bomber pilots were very successful as night fighters. In the battle of Briton the English bomber pilots were not successful as fighter pilots but of course the Germans would have been very experienced pilots by then, and there were quite a lot of them. The twin engined types JU88 ME210 & ME410's were directed mostly from ground radar the single engined types ME 109 & FW 190's fitted with radar as our night fighters were. They were directed into the bomber stream by radio R/T from ground station, then let to find their own targets.
Some comments say there should be much more detail on the technical side of flying, but there seems little you could say about this, the
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basics were trying to avoid the heavy icing on fuselage and wings which increases your overall weight and drag, and trying to get the best economy for fuel. In time of attack by flak or fighters the economy becomes a secondary thought. Constant checks on all gauges with adjustments could always help. We tried to maintain the most height possible on longer trips, but this was often dependent on the winds.
You did get better ground speed at higher altitudes therefore better economy but the best was at near ground level without using second stage supercharge. Would be very unsafe for mass bombing and you can't drop big bombs from there unless there are time delays, you can't time delay "cookies" they just go off on contact.
As much depended on good navigation as any other factor, no point in wandering around over enemy territory with a bomb load unless you find the target, and the best height for navigation would have been about 8 10000ft, but I think they would have been very short one way trips at that height, unless you were very lucky.
Max. cruise speed for a Lanc was given at about 270mph perhaps 300mph may have been a little under rated for a "special" flat out at ground level.
Details of landing procedures were standard, but very necessary when so many aircraft were trying to land at the same time.
Our squadron call sign "optrex" our station call sign "[deleted] O [/deleted] Affray". So as we approached the drome we called (optrex nan to affray over) rely [sic] (affray to optrex nan, followed by the position you were allotted to land, i.e. first aircraft "funnel" that is approaching to land, second aircraft, down wind, i.e. wheels and flaps down parallel with runway and heading away from touch down point. Third, cross wind, i.e. right angles to runway and flying across the far end of runway before the down wind leg, all at 1000ft from there all aircraft step up 500ft, continue on a left hand circuit and listen to call as each aircraft clears the end of runway after landing, then you drop down to next lower position in order. All aircraft
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have nav lights on (normally) so most are visible from the ground up in a big spiral circuit around the perimeter lights (DREM).
There are emergency calls on fixed frequencies for anyone who was in trouble or got lost in fog. Mayday which is still used internationally and Darky which was mostly used by anyone lost in fog. You had to call darky three times followed by your call sign three times. Your position was then plotted and you were then given a course and distance to fly to the nearest drome that would accept you landing, but if you didn't get the procedure right you got no reply.
We sometimes laughed at the Yanks, lost in fog on return from a daylight raid, we should not have done that, because we did know what the feeling of wondering how to get down when the fuel was quickly running out, and it can be harder to find a drome in daylight than in the dark, the lights do help.
The Yank system was different to ours, where each of our aircraft had it's own navigator, and flew independent of all others, the Yanks, because they flew in formation, followed their leader and dropped their bombs when he did, so the problem came when the formation broke up on return and had to find their own bases.
You would hear things like "Hello Darky honey, MIs brown's little boy Johnny sure is lost up here" but Darky didn't answer, even after so many calls however they did vector a fighter across to identify him and lead him to a drome. This was not always the safest thing to do because they never minded who they shot at, so the escort had to be pretty careful. It was often said "the Yanks didn't need an enemy."
Darky's worry was any enemy raider could use the system to pin point any drome, which would be a big help to him if he were trying to bomb it.
There was never any white around the roundels on any camouflaged aircraft on ops. The thin yellow line was a gas detector, just in case the enemy dropped some gas bombs on the drome.
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This would give some warning in case personnel were isolated in a raid and lost all communications. Everyone carried gas masks at all times, some thought they were too heavy and replaced them with spare socks etc. Luckily there were never any gas bombs. The socks just kept the appearance in the shape of the bag.
Medals were rarely granted before the end of a tour therefore none were worn around the station or on ops by any aircrew. Some of the administration staff who had them from WW1 or a previous tour of ops were the exception. There appeared to be some form of grading here, in that only higher ranks could get higher standard medals. VC's always excepted. There were only two VC's while we were there. Cheshire of course (not our squad), the other was Jackson, Miff’s crew, but as he was taken POW I don't think this was granted until after the war. Miff’s was a Canadian, very solid build, always a happy type, tended to be common. His kite was U for Uncle so it carried the insignia of Stalin and called Uncle Joe. The story of this episode is in one of the Lanc books (I think). Miff’s was killed in the crash.
Another of the kites E easy had it's insignia painted on for some time before they decided they would paint the words on. We take anything. The next trip (Berlin) they took just about every thing the enemy could throw at them, but they brought it all back.
Much time was spent cleaning perspex especially by the gunners, always a damp cloth and plenty of cigarette ash, but as the smallest speck shows up at night, even if you know its there, it still distracts your vision, so finally the whole back panel was removed from the turrets.
Don't know how they managed when the turret was turned past the 90° as you would be in very strong wind, but they must have done it on the canal raid. The normal loading for machine gun belts for normal targets (aircraft) was one standard, one armour piercing, one incendiary, one trace, but when you have four guns each firing about 1200 rounds a
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minute this gave too much trace, which ruined all your night vision, so much of the trace was replaced with standard or incendiary.
Each squadron or group had it's own crest, but like the group photos few people ever bothered about them, it's only long afterwards you remember them, but I have forgotten the faces now anyway.
Bill Akers, one of the original intake went to a lot of trouble to try to find out the fate of all those in this intake. Some refused to say.
o. 1. I.T.S. Somers
I J.G. Alston W/ag P.F.F.
2 no sure think A.S. Simpson
3 R.A. Kingston Pilot K.I.A. R.A.F.
4 D.O. Donaldson discharged qualif. to run farm
5 R.F.C. Badman Pilot K.I.A. RA.F
6 D.C. Carter Pilot K.I.A. R.A.F
7 K. Travina Gunner K.I.A. Germany 1944
8 J. Bellock D.F.C. Pilot
9 D.V. Harvey W/op K.I.A. R.A.F
10 No idea
I1 P. Walters Pilot died POW Far East
12 C.J. Thoday Catalina Pilot
13 G.R. Balcombe Pilot K.I.A. R.A.F
14 A.V. Withers D.F.C bomb aimer our crew
15 Do not know
16 Do not know
17 C.W. Milburn Pilot discharged to run farm died
20/5/80
18 Do not know
19 J.W. Bassier Catalina Pilot
20 J. Humphrey D.F.C. nav P.F.F
21 W.R. Lardner not sure
22 D. Fisher W/ag returned died since
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23 G. Blanch K.I.A 5sqdn
24 R.F. Anderson Pilot D.F.C
25 S.G. Lee Pilot K.I.A R.A.F
26 K.C. Bell left to run farm
27 R.J. Adams W/ag 10sqdn K.I.A
28 R.C. Martin Pilot buried Germany
29 M.J. McCann not known
30 F.N. Birch Pilot Ormond Trnsprt Cmmnd
31 B. Woods D.F.C gunner P.F.F died after return
32 W. Bates unknown
33 S. Williamson D.F.C P.F.F W/ap transport to Japan,
drown Port Phillip Bay 1980's
34 C.T. Akers D.F.C gunner
33 A. Lord Pilot K.I.A R.A.F
36 L.G. Rigg Returned
Of the pilots in this course (23) it shows only 2 out of every 10 in the European theatre (R.A.F) survived, of the other categories 8 survived to every 2 K.I.A but as many are not accounted for this is not a true summary. Only one pilot in the Pacific area died as a POW, but only 4 of this original course went to Tas, others must have been at different EFTs.
We never had any connection with P.F.F. P.F.F was started because in the earlier times Bomber Command couldn't even hit Germany. So Bennet [sic], an Aust, a pre war commercial pilot with a great deal of experience with air lines flying international routes and regarded as one of the best air navigators in the world, was given the job of forming a squadron to mark the target area. He had already done a tour of ops, been sho [deleted] w [/deleted] t down over Norway and escaped back to UK. Also set out the air route for convoys of aircraft flying from USA.
His idea was to take the best crews from odd ops squadrons and further train then to be pathfinders, but many of the squadrons sent their worst, wanting to keep their best, he tried them and sent them back. Harris was against having any group as more elite than any other, saying it was only one air force (didn't mention 617). 5 group wanted their own markers, of which we were part. As the feelings on both sides became
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stronger Harris decided to take two Lanc squadrons off P.F.F and return them to 5 group, but P.F.F still had to train the replacements. The first of these operated on Paris (20/04/44) just before we finished. I have been told that all crews joining 106 later were asked to volunteer for P.F.F after they had done 6 trips. (perhaps Cochrane didn't give up). The difference in target marking was simply that 5 group, that is, Cheshires mob, picked one select factory which specialised in a product considered important to the war effort, and that was our only target. The theory in main force, P.F.F, was more to select one area of a city containing several important factories. The R.. [sic] A.F said, there are two ways to stop production, one knock out the factories or two, knock out the workers. The workers can't produce without the factory the factory can't produce without the workers, but even a combination of both must be effective.
The main difference in 5 group marking was the use of a master bomber (Cheshire or Martin). Their job was to mark the specific factory and direct the bombing of each aircraft, but our trips with them had very few aircraft, not the hundreds as in main force. As there seemed to be no count kept on casualties of conscripted labour, and many of them were forced to work on war production, the loss of life to them will never be known. I did meet one Balt out here long after the war. He asked if we had bombed Leipzig on that date. When I said we had, he said how very good we were, the bombs had all around them in their camp, but no one had been hurt. It was a night of solid cloud, the winds were all wrong, we all bombed on sky markers, we didn't even know they were there. (I'm sure he was very lucky).
When returning from each trip we called control and were given a QFE & a QFM i.e. barometric pressures for one, your own base. When this is set on your altimeter, you altimeter would read zero feet at ground level on your drome. The other was the barometric pressure at sea level, so if you were diverted to any other drome, you had to adjust for the height of that drome above sea level. The heights of dromes are marked
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on your maps. It is critical that all aircraft landing at one drome have the same altimeter setting, otherwise the variation in heights in the circuit would be very dangerous.
Date Target A/c no. No a/c on op Time Op loss
(hrs.)
1943
Sept. 27 Hanover P ja973 678 6 5.6
Oct. 18 Hanover O dv297 360 6 25 5
28 Leipzig N ed801 258 2.50 4.5
22 Kassel U in301 569 6.25 7.6
Nov. 3 Dusseldorf O dv297 589 4.40 3.1
22 Berlin T jb593 764 7.50 3.2
26 Berlin O jb534 443 8.05 6.2
Dec. 2 Berlin O bj534 458 6.45 8.7
3 Leipzig O jb534 527 7.50 4.7
16 Berlin O jb534 483 7.35 5.2
Jan. 1 Berlin Z ni339 421 7.30 6.7
27 Berlin N jb664 515 3.10
28 Berlin N jb664 677 7.45 6.8
30 Berlin N jb664 534 6.35 6.2
Feb. 15 Berlin N jb664 891 7 4.8
19 Leipzig N jb664 823 7.15 9.5
20 Stuttgart N jb664 598 3.15 1.5
25 Augsburg N jb664 594 7.55 3.6
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24 Scheinfurt N jb664 734 8.20 4.5
Mar. 1 Stuttgart N jb664 557 8.15 7
15 Stuttgart N jb664 863 7.25 7.3
18 Frankfurt Njb664 846 5.30 2.6
20 Angouleme N jb664 20 7.05
14 a/c of 617
22 Frankfurt N jb664 816 5.50 4
25 Lyons N jb664 20 7.10
14 617
24 Lyons N jb664 20 8
26 Essen N jb664 705 5.10 1.3
30 Nuremburg N jb664 795 7.20 11.9
Apr. 5 Toulouse N jb664 144 7.20 617sq
9 Konigsberg B 6 9.15 106&9
18 Swinernunde N jb664 168 7.15 2
20 Paris rlw stn N jb664 247 4.15 617 2
22 Brunswick N jb664 238 5.55 1.5
1943
Struck fighter flares before we reached the Dutch coast, saw a P.F.F kite going down in flames. Rear turret u/s from Hanover. "Blue" had to go down and pump oil every 15mins. 0/0 cloud, flak moderate. Came back north over Baltic and Denmark. Had to let down over sea, were damn near on the deck. Almost cleaned up a light house, had to climb to clear it. Nearly had our time. Lost one crew, P/O storer [sic] , they were only kids and had put off their leave to be home for Christmas.
December 21st
P/O Starkey and crew took our kite to Frankfurt last night and got it all shot to hell. Half the port rudder and elevator shot off by cannon, about half the port aeleron [sic] too, broken main spar and plenty of holes in the wing, they were lucky to get back, they could only do right hand turns.
December 23rd
Briefed for the big city, take off put off from 1650 to 2340, taxied out, then a kite bogged on end of runway, prevented us from taking off, in bed by 0230.
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1944
January 2nd
Berlin 9th trip 94821lbs of bombs 1425mls 7hrs 30. Took off at 0028, near miss by Scarecrow over north sea. JU88 passed 20ft above going the other way like a bat out of hell, a bit too close for my liking, nearly pranged by a Lanc on the way home, stupid bastard was weaving like the clappers.
Two crews lost P/O Holbourne & P/O Garnet, Holbourne was in our hut, he was married.
January 22nd
Briefed for Magdeburg but a kite bogged in front of us and prevented 6 of us from taking off.
January 27th
Started off for Berlin but boomeranged. Pressure line in mid upper turret broke, then API went u/s. First G box blew up, later H2s box blew up and caught fire, managed to put fire out and decided to press on regardless, but just before we reached the Dutch coast, rear turret went u/s, so decided to come back. Loud cheers.
January 27th
Berlin 10 trip 9037lbs 1425mls 7.45hrs.
Went in over Denmark and Baltic, saw a Lanc shot down over Sylt, and saw it explode on the ground. Near Rostock engaged by heavy flak bursting just under the tail, close enough for us to hear it. Shrapnel rattled against the kite we bounced around all over the place.
Fighter had [deleted]tb [/deleted] go at us with a rocket, successfully evaded it and it just passed over the top of us. Then another fighter came in and tracer whizzed over the top of the starboard wing. Took off after midnight landed 0800 in bed by 1015.
January 29th Monday
Berlin 11th trip 10702lbs 1287mls 6.35hrs.
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Took off 1720, in over Denmark out over Holland, moonlight, saw 10 kites shot down. Just before target, a JU88 went down in flames, spun, lost a blazing wing, then exploded, a wizard sight, that will teach the bastards to interfere.
Saw a combat going on and both kites went down in flames. F/O Forsyth was hit by a rocket from DO217 fired from a free gun mounted on top when enemy a/c was flying 800ft below. Rocket burst in bomb bay bomb load saved the pilot. Bags of fighter flares, Kirkland missing.
February 15th Berlin
12th trip 10036lbs 1328mis 6.35hrs.
Vic's oxygen gear froze solid and he passed out just before reaching target. "Blue" went back and changed his helmet, was pretty shaky too, as there were evidently plenty of Jerry fighters up by the amount of tracer flying around. Vic must have been out for 10 minutes. A bit more flak than usual but no fighters sighted by us. Had another fire in some nav equipment, but soon put it out.
Heaviest raid yet on Berlin.
2500 tons, 900 odd 4eng kites.
One of our kites flown by P/O Dickenson pranged in circuit area, only survivor a cove named Ramsay mid upper a/g. This kite was our old O Oboe. Alan and Rod have worked it out that out of the 20 crews at OUT four months ago, there are only 8 left.
February 19th
Leipzig 13th trip 9710lbs 1304mls 7.15hrs.
Took a 2nd Dickie P/O Bartlett
Weather was bloody awful, bags of ice, had to do 12 dog legs and an orbit to fill in time. Fighters were waiting for us over the north sea and followed us all the way around. Saw about 6 kites collide over target. Fighters whizzing all over the place 79 kites lost, biggest loss yet, one crew from ours missing, Dickie Legget.
February 20th
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Stuttgart. Boomeranged as generators were u/s.
February 24th
Scheinfurt, 14th trip 9238lbs 1491 mls.
We were in the second attack, 2 hours after the first and saw the first attack start while 300 400 miles away, visibility marvellous, saw Switzerland plainly, it was a wonderful sight, moonlight on the snow and all the houses with their lights on. Quite [sic] trip. On the way back over England saw an air raid on London saw 6 Jerry kites sho [deleted] w [/deleted] t down.
February 25th
Augsburg. 15th trip 9060lbs 1521mls.
After 6hrs sleep out of bed again, quiet trip, my compass u/s. Bob steered wrong course and we went over Switzerland but were only one minute late on target by cutting comers. Snowing when we arrived back.
March 2nd
Stuttgart. 16th trip 9584lbs 1430mls.
Nothing much happened, our nav lights were u/s so we arrived back late purposely and our ground crew had given us up for lost.
March 16th
Stuttgart. 17th trip 9762lbs 1483mis.
We had to go in 5 minutes ahead of P.F.F.
Attacked by a DO217 with a belly gun, combats all around.
March 19th
Frankfurt. 18th trip 12326lbs 1006mls.
Took a second Dickie, Ken Warren, too many searchlights for my liking. 22 kites missing.
March 21st
Angouleme. 19th trip 5998lbs incendiaries only 1116mls.
Went on special do with 617 squadron (Gibson & Cheshires, Dambusters). We acted as P.F.F for them 617 went in with 12000bders [sic], they go off with quite a thump, each one bombed in turn, we spent an hour over target. Brake pressure u/s on return had to land at Wittering.
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March 22nd
Frankfurt. 20th trip 12536lbs 1106mls.
Heaviest and most concentrated raid of all time. 3000 tons in 15 minutes. Bounced around by Flak over target. Picked up by searchlights but thanks to Bob we got away from them. Slipped s/lights with kites on either side coned, saw only one fighter.
March 23rd
Lyons. 21st trip 10082lbs 1245mis.
With 617 again, spent one and a half hours over target, marking and bombing.
March 26th
Lyons. 22nd trip 5998lbs incendiaries 1362mls.
We acted a [sic] P.F.F. Target was a factory 100yds by 50yds. Going on navigation only, I told Alan when to drop the flares, and our first flare hit the factory roof and set it on fire.
March 29th
Essen. 23rd trip 13436lbs 860mls.
First trip to happy valley since November, ran into a bit of Flak over target, lost a foot off one of the prop blades, made the kite vibrate like hell.
March 30th
Nuremburg. 24th trip 10032lbs 1405mls. Bright moon light all the way. Just south of happy valley the fun started, an ME210 attacked us, both Vic and Titch scored hits on it. He came in several times and each time Vic poured lead into him and sent him pitching and tossing all over the sky. Some of his stuff came uncomfortably close. Later Vic picked up an ME109, got him with a long burst, he went down in flames and exploded on the deck. Combats were going on all around us, saw 8 Lancs go down in flames in 20 minutes. Heaviest loss yet 96 kites out of 600.
For March we did 9 trips, 7 in 10 nights, briefed 14 nights in a row.
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April 5th
Toulouse. 25th trip 9396lbs 1386mls.
With 617 sqd Alan's bombing was the best for the night
April 9th
Konigsberg canal. 26th trip 78501bs 1739mls.
Longest trip we have ever done, 9.5 hours.
Briefed to go in at 150ft and if we thought defences were too hot we were told not to go in, first time this has happened. Only 6 aircraft on this, 3 of ours & went with main force as far as Danzig then went on another 100 miles loosing height to cross coast at 1000ft, then lost height to ground level, had to climb to go over a factory. As soon as we started our run we were picked up by 4 searchlights and about a dozen 20mm from a distance of 50yds to about 600yds. Their fire forced us down to 10ft from the water. Bob did a wizard job lifting and dropping the kite to dodge their fire, four of the five mines dropped dead in the centre of the canal, one hung up. Vic. Titch, and Alan opened up with their guns between them accounted for 5 S/ls and a couple of gun positions. Canal was only 156ft wide and our wing span was 104ft, so had only 8yds clearance on each wing tip. We were so low that we were below the level of the canal banks. As we came up the canal ship shone it's S/l right in Bobs eyes and blinded him, how he kept the kite in the air I don't know, it was a super human effort. Had the ship not put it's light on we would probably have crashed into it.
We whizzed along at 3000 revs and +18 boost, must have been doing 300mph. Only our three kites dropped their mines. Old "Butch" was tickled to bits, saying, "it was the best effort since the dam busting." Even the Admiralty condescended to give us a pat on the back. We became famous over night, but they can stick this honour and glory, it's too dangerous. Bob was recommended for a DSO and myself a DFC. These were back to a DFC for Bob and SFA for me. Next day we heard a
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sub was sunk in the canal after hitting one of our mines. The canal was closed for 16 days, bottling up a cruiser (Koln) and 43 subs in the harbour.
These mines could not be neutralised, only way to remove them was to explode them, this would play hell with the canal banks and those who try.
April 18th
Swinemunde. 27th trip 7850lbs 1428mls.
Mining again came back over Sweden.
April 20th
Paris. 28th trip 7850lbs 710mls.
Central rail yards. Quiet trip, light Flak.
April 22nd
Brunswick. 29th trip 12234lbs 1050mls.
These records of target are originally from Alan's diary, but as I got them from Rod, it is obvious they have been rewritten to apply to a navigators view, as the nav rarely sees anything outside. As Alan's original notes were rather colourful, Rod must have censored them. Also the first 9 trips are missing, the total, including 3 boomerangs should have been 33 but ended at 29. Less the first 8 or so. To try to fill in the first few trips ---
September 27th 1943
Hanover. 12830lbs 950mls
My first trip, went as 2nd dickie with F/L A Poore and his crew. They left 106 and went to 617 sqdn. A very good skipper, a very good crew. For me an interesting and useful trip, although there were no problems, maybe he knew how to keep out of trouble and still do the job.
October 18th
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Hanover. 12827lbs 949mls.
Our first trip as a crew. This was the trip when Alan ordered bomb doors open so long before the target, but luckily we had no problems.
October 20th
All instruments u/s, G u/s caused by heavy ice, cloud base on return 400ft, only 4 a/c landed back at base.
October 22nd
Kassel. 11962lbs 915mls.
Went into low cloud at takeoff, cloud all the way small hole over target, back into cloud, on return. Diverted on return, cloud base 800ft heavy static in cloud, all instrument flying.
November 3rd
Dusseldorf. 13128lbs 782mls.
Clear night with lots of searchlights.
November 22nd
Berlin. 11994lbs 1230mls.
This would be our first Berlin raid. Everything possible happened on most of these.
November 26th
Berlin. 11279lbs 1455mls.
10/10 clear with heavy con trails and fighters everywhere.
December 2nd
Berlin. 10856lbs 1234mls.
Bad forecast for winds, heavy losses.
December 3rd
Leipzig. 998lbs 1351mls.
December 16th
Berlin. 9740lbs 1328mls.
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Defences always very heavy, all types of a/c, many med. sized with rockets mounted as free guns on top of fuselage, often used captured a/c, even Lancs flying above and to each side of the stream dropping flares to assist the fighters.
"The bomber command war diaries" cover a general history of all the bomber raids. Well, almost all.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Robert Anderson's memoir
Description
An account of the resource
Robert Anderson describes his training in Tasmania and Canada, and his tour of operations to targets in France and Germany with 106 Squadron.
Creator
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Robert Anderson
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IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
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Trevor Hardcastle
David Bloomfield
Steve Christian
Peter Bradbury
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
58 photocopied sheets
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BAndersonRJAndersonRJv1
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
France
Germany
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Staffordshire
France--Angoulême
France--Lyon
France--Paris
France--Toulouse
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Königsberg in Bayern
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Schweinfurt
Tasmania
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
106 Squadron
5 Group
617 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
fear
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
Ju 88
Lancaster
Manchester
military living conditions
military service conditions
mine laying
Oxford
Pathfinders
pilot
RAF Lichfield
RAF Metheringham
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Swinderby
RAF Syerston
searchlight
service vehicle
Tiger force
tractor
training
Wellington
Yale
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/257/17914/PFraserC1503.2.jpg
ed7b4a3fe8b8442e13060693828b4132
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
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-13
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Fraser, C
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Fragment of a parachute
Description
An account of the resource
A fragment of a parachute on which is written ‘Anzac Day 25.4.45, In M-Mike, Berchsgarten (Hitler’s Hang Out), 460 Squadron crest and moto strike and return, 460 Sqdn, F/O "Lofty" Payne, (WA), F/Sgt W A Stanley (Vic), Col Fraser, ( " ), "Buck" Bennet (Syd), Shorty" Connochie, ( " ), Rick Thorpe, Danny Lynch (Eng), (TAS), Stalag V11' A’.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One piece of silk fabric
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Physical object
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PFraserC1503
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.
Germany
Germany--Berchtesgaden
Australia
Western Australia
Victoria
New South Wales--Sydney
Tasmania
Germany--Moosburg an der Isar
New South Wales
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.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1945-04-25
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-04-25
460 Squadron
heirloom
prisoner of war
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/257/17915/PFraserC1502.1.jpg
ed7ba5140f8dba754a839dea04535770
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
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-13
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Fraser, C
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The crew
Description
An account of the resource
Three-quarter-length portrait of seven RAF aircrew in uniform with with aircrew brevet. Each individual identified “JR ‘Buck’ Bennett, mid upper gunner-NSW, WA ‘Bill’ Stanley, Wireless operator-Victoria, HR ‘Shorty’ Connochie, rear gunner-NSW, DD ‘Danny’ Lynch, bomb aimer-Tasmania, HG ‘Lofty’ Payne, pilot-Western Australia, CN ‘Col’ Fraser, navigator-Victoria'. Submitted with the caption ‘Crew Photo’. Additional information about this item was kindly provided by the donor.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PFraserC1502
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
Western Australia
Victoria
New South Wales
Tasmania
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.
air gunner
aircrew
bomb aimer
navigator
pilot
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/235/31384/PConacherG1705.2.jpg
f98def58cc1abd7614c112666f02fc7b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Conacher, Geoff
Geoffrey Conacher
Geoff Conacher
G Conacher
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Geoff Conacher (419799 Royal Australian Air Force) and a course photograph. He flew operations as a pilot with 622 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Geoff Conacher and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-04-11
Rights
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
Conacher, 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
Course passing our photograph
Description
An account of the resource
A large group of airmen wearing RAAF uniform with pilot's brevet and side caps. Sign in front reads '33 Course' Card alongside 'Trainee pilot passing out, Per Ardua ad Astra, Launceston, Tasmania, 6/3/43'. Submitted with caption 'Geoff_Conacher_33couse passing out_1943'.
This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form. No better quality copies are available.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943-03-06
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph and one printed card
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PConacherG1705
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 Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Tasmania--Launceston
Tasmania
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-03-06
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
aircrew
pilot
training