1
25
2
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/562/8830/AWinterP160418.2.mp3
f845e45061463aeac09c3f83a2be823e
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
Winter, Phillip
P Winter
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Winter, P
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. An oral history interview Sergeant Phillip Winter, (748547, 144466 Royal Air Force) and five photographs. He flew operations as a pilot with 102 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-18
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AS: That’s that one. Ok, we are ready to start. This is Andrew Sadler, uhm, interviewing Phillip Winter at his home in Bromley on the 18th of April 2016 on behalf of the International Bomber Command Digital Archive. Thank you for letting me come, Phillip. Uhm, can you, can I start with some general questions about your background?
PW: Yes, sure.
AS: Where, you told me that you’re ninety-nine years of age and we are here with your wife who is ninety-five. Where were you born and when?
PW: I was born in Herne Hill in 1917. My mother was in [unclear], uhm, well that’s it, yes. [laughs] My mother was in [unclear] Herne Hill, I never fathomed why. My father was in the trenches and her father was in a pub in Tunbridge Wells and my first memories are of the pub in Tunbridge Wells, uhm. Why all this happened I don’t know, but my mother went to stay with her father and mother and my father came over the war, uhm, a bit of a broken man.
AS: But he survived?
PW: He survived, yes, he had a minor wound to his hand, but he survived, but uhm, mother told me that if they were out and a car backfired, he’d lie on the pavement straight away,
AS: So he was very badly affected by it.
PW: Shell shocked, yes, yes.
AS: And so you, when you left school, what did you do when you left school?
PW: I was a civil servant. I took the competitive exam at the clerical class and that year they took seven hundred and I came five hundred and twenty fifth, so I was in. And when they asked me what I wanted, I said: ‘Air ministry’ and it came back, board of education. So, I was in the board of education, teachers’ pensions department, which couldn’t have been duller and uhm, by the end of 1938 I was fed up and my brother had taken a short service commission in the RAF, and I thought: ‘Well, I’ll take a short service commission, but first I want to know if I can fly’. And I joined the RAFVR, stayed in my office and joined the RAFVR and went down to Gravesend and then in July ’39 I did my first solo in a Tiger Moth and uhm.
AS: What was your reason for joining the RAF rather than going into any of the other forces?
PW: Because I liked flying, I liked the idea of flying. Ehm, when I was a little boy of twelve and my brother was ten, nine, nine or ten and we were living with my grandfather in the pub in Tunbridge Wells and one of the post First World War flying circuses came to Tunbridge Wells and over the dinner table one day my grandpa put out a ten [unclear] and said: ‘Go and have a fly’. So, the barmaid took us down to the field in the afternoon while this, where this flying circus was, and I had my first flight ever. And after that I just wanted to fly. It was wonderful, looking around, seeing the world from a different angle.
AS: Did your father’s experience of the First World War have any part in your decision?
PW: No, not at all. No.
AS: No. And so, when you joined the RAF, how was it that you came to become into Bomber Command?
PW: How? Well, I joined the RAFVR and of course at the beginning of the war we were, VRs were caught up straight in fact on the first of September and trained, went to Cambridge, inhabited the colleges, did, uhm, I did, initial training wing, uhm, and from there. Where are we, what was the question?
AS: It was, it was, uhm, why you were in Bomber Command.
PW: Ah, that’s it. Well, when I finished my training, uhm, I was asked what I wanted to fly, and I said: ‘Bombers’, because in those days there was a Fairey Battle, single-engine bomber and I was trained on single-engine aircraft, so I thought that would be alright. While I was on leave, uhm, my posting to a Fairey Battle OTU was cancelled and I was sent to Abingdon. And, much to my surprise, Abingdon was twin-engine Whitleys OTU, so I had to convert from single-engine biplanes to twin-engine monoplanes with retractable undercarriages and flaps, uhm, was quite a trial but I managed to, I managed it. Uhm, I had a night flying crash which set me back a bit, but eventually I passed out and was posted to 102 Squadron in Yorkshire, at Topcliffe they were. Uhm, from then on, ah, [sighs] it was extraordinary, I did three trips as a second pilot. Obviously, you had to do several trips as a second pilot, and on my third trip the, uhm, I was back in the navigator’s seat, while he was in the bomb aimers position in the front and uhm, we were coned in searchlights and everything in the district opened up on us and I got a, a lump of shrapnel, straight through my left ankle. Uhm, anyway, we got through, we got back and uhm, I was taken to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, where they tried to make my foot better, but there was a hole straight through the ankle and out the other side. Uhm, from there I went to RAF hospital at Ely and uhm, they managed to fix it and sent me to a rehabilitation unit at Hoylake, in Cheshire, but it wouldn’t work, I had so much pain. They said: ‘You will have to go back to hospital and we will fix it, so that it doesn’t move’. So, since the age of twenty-four my left foot has been glued to my left leg [laughs] uhm, and I’ve been lame. Well.
AS: Can you tell?
PW: So, my operational career was very limited, three trips, but uhm, I got back to flying eighteen months later at Driffield for towing targets for 4 Group Bomber Command [unclear] out over the North Sea, which was good, I enjoyed it. Then, an aircraft called the Martinet, there’s a photograph.
AS: So, uhm, how long were you actually, how long was it before you actually had to give up operations?
PW: Well.
AS: It’s in your logbook.
PW: [shuffling] Whitley, Whitley, Whitley, Whitley. June, June the 12th ’41 was the night I got wounded and then I was back on flying a Tiger Moth. [shuffling] December '42, so June ’41 to December ’42, I was eighteen months in hospital and rehabilitation unit, uhm, and then went back to towing targets, that’s the, some of our lot.
AS: And you were the pilot obviously.
PW: Yes.
AS: And, uhm, and did you do that then for the remainder of the war?
PW: No, I didn’t. Uhm, when Europe was invaded, we didn’t have to, we were moved about, and I was sent to Tempsford to fly Oxfords, which were used for training resistance workers who had been dropped over the other side. Uhm, secret R/T operators, I was just the pilot, uhm, involved a bit of night flying and after that.
AS: Was this part of the Special Operations Executive?
PW: Yes, yes.
AS: So, you, you didn’t know who you were carrying presumably and?
PW: I didn’t know their names or anything about them. I was carrying the instructors and the people, the resistance workers who were being taught to use certain, very secret R/T operators [unclear] ground to air communications. So, I didn’t really know anything about it, I was just the pilot and coupled with that I was also, did long cross countries, training bomb aimers to map read not to a town or a village but to the corner of a field, uhm, that was, I enjoyed that, yes. And then for the last months of the war, I was posted to Lyneham, Transport Command, operations room, I then held the rank of flying officer but to begin with I was a volunteer as a sergeant pilot. That’s a very brief history [laughs].
AS: Yes. When you, uhm, so, what happened when the war ended, what did, how, were you demobilised then?
PW: Yes, I was, uhm, demobilised, here we are, [shuffling] 20th of December 1945.
AS: And I mean the crew that you,
PW: And then, I was very glad to get back into the civil service. You see, I told you I’d think forth of resigning from the civil service and taking the short service commission, but that I wanted to see if I could fly first, and discovering that I could, but I’d no sooner discovered that I could then the war was on and I was in my uniform having to do as I was told [laughs].
AS: Uhm, when.
PW: When I came out, I was very glad that I hadn’t left the civil service. I was in what was then the board of education, which was a non-cabinet post, was ruled over by a president. And uhm, at that time, I was lucky because the 1944 Education Act had been passed, uhm, secondary education for all and of course the education department just blew up like a balloon. And I was lucky, I worked hard and went up with it, had my first, well after, when I was demobbed I went straight back to my old department, which was teachers’ pensions. Uhm, and I worked hard and got promoted and then I was moved to the main office and got a post as a higher executive officer in schools’ branch, which dealt with local authorities and schools. And then, I was posted to establishments branch which I hated and then a curious thing, uhm, a man at the V&A Museum had retired and they wanted somebody to fill his shoes. So, I applied for that, I thought this would be very interesting. So, I applied, and I succeeded in the competition and became deputy and museum superintendent. Uhm, after about a year, the superintendent moved on and there was a competition for his job, but of course I was sitting pretty. So, I became the museum superintendent of the V&A with a flat in the museum and I brought up my family there.
AS: Oh, marvellous.
PW: [laughs] And, well about 19 [pauses] ‘48, ‘45, yes, about 1945, the, uhm, Education Department took over responsibility for the staff in all the national museums and they wanted somebody who knew about staff in museums, which I did after thirteen years, uhm, to take charge of it, so I finished up as a senior principal, uhm, and retired at fifty-eight.
AS: What age did you leave school and join the civil service?
PW: Uhm, [pauses] sixteen, seventeen.
AS: When you, uhm, went out on your three missions, uhm, and you were injured, were any of the other crew injured or?
PW: No, no. But I met the man who was skipper that night, a chap called Oscar Rees, he’d done two Bomber Command tours, a tour on Pathfinders and he got a DSO for bringing back an aircraft with everybody dead or wounded except him and he got a DFC as well and a Pathfinder badge. I met him in the ops room at Lyneham, wonderful chap called Oscar Rees and I haven’t been able to get in touch with him. Amazing.
AS: Excellent. Let me just.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Phillip Winter
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Andrew Sadler
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-18
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWinterP160418
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:20:01 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Philip Winter worked in the civil service before he volunteered for the Air Force. He trained as a pilot and flew three operations with 102 Squadron before he was wounded in the ankle. After recuperating he flew towing targets for air gunnery practice and transport for RAF Tempsford. After the war he worked for the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Bedfordshire
England--Yorkshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-06
1942-12
1945-12-20
102 Squadron
4 Group
aircrew
Anson
Battle
Martinet
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Abingdon
RAF Tempsford
RAF Topcliffe
Special Operations Executive
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/109/2425/LGreenLC1318527v.1.pdf
b5e686d98ddbb0320085b55c6d541553
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
Green, Leonard
Len Green
L C Green
Description
An account of the resource
Twelve items. The collection relates to the service of Warrant Officer Leonard C Green (1318527 Royal Air Force) and consists of his log book, correspondence, a newspaper cuttings, four photographs and a foreign languages phrase book. Leonard Green flew Lancasters with 50 and 61 Squadrons from RAF Skellingthorpe and completed 19 daylight and night time operations.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Mark Boother and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-01
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Green, LC
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Leonard Green’s navigator’s, air bomber’s and air gunner’s flying log book
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LGreenLC1318527v1
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
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Description
An account of the resource
Navigator's air bomber’s and air gunner’s flying log book for Flight Sergeant Leonard Green, wireless operator, covering the period from 15 December 1942 to 20 January 1946. He was stationed at RAF Manby, RAF Wigtown, RAF Bitteswell, RAF Bruntingthorpe, RAF Swinderby, RAF Syerston, RAF Skellingthorpe and RAF Coningsby. Aircraft flown in were, Dominie, Proctor, Anson, Wellington, Manchester and Lancaster. He flew a total of 23 operations, 13 night with 50 Squadron and 3 day and 7 night with 61 Squadron. He also flew operations Exodus with 61 Squadron and Dodge to Bari, Italy with 83 Squadron. Targets were, Hannover, Dusseldorf, Modane, Berlin, Leipzig, Frankfurt, Brunswick, Magdeburg, Bohlen, Gravenhorst, Dortmund-Emms Canal, Lutzkendorf, Wurzburg, Bremen, Wesel, Nordhausen and Molbis. His pilots on operations were Pilot Officer Lundy and Flight Lieutenant Phillips. The log book also contains many newspaper clippings relating to the targets attacked, aircraft flown in and events of the war and post war. It also contains pictures of the crew positions of Navigator, Bomb Aimer and Wireless Operator.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Scotland
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
France--Modane
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Würzburg
Italy--Bari
Scotland--Dumfries and Galloway
Germany--Böhlen
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Nordhausen (Thuringia)
France
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1943-10-18
1943-11-03
1943-11-10
1943-11-11
1943-11-18
1943-11-19
1943-11-22
1943-11-26
1943-11-27
1943-12-02
1943-12-03
1943-12-20
1943-12-21
1943-12-29
1943-12-30
1944-01-02
1944-01-03
1944-01-14
1944-01-15
1944-01-20
1944-01-21
1944-01-21
1944-01-22
1945-02-19
1945-02-20
1945-02-21
1945-02-24
1945-03-14
1945-03-15
1945-03-16
1945-03-17
1945-03-22
1945-03-23
1945-04-04
1945-04-05
1945-04-06
1945-04-08
1945-04-09
1945-04-26
1945-05-06
1945-05-12
1945-05-14
1945-07-17
1945-09-09
1945-10-16
1945-10-20
1945-12-14
1945-12-20
1660 HCU
29 OTU
50 Squadron
61 Squadron
83 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing up
Cook’s tour
Dominie
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
Manchester
military service conditions
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
Proctor
RAF Bitteswell
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Coningsby
RAF Manby
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Swinderby
RAF Syerston
RAF Wigtown
training
Wellington
wireless operator