1
25
39
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/900/24850/LJarmyJFD134695v1.1.pdf
f8359d06e1c1f6ebf8e121a357d933ef
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
Jarmy, Jack
Jack Francis David Jarmy
J F D Jarmy
Description
An account of the resource
23 items. And oral history interview with Jack Francis David Jarmy DFC (b. 1922, 134695 Royal Air Force) his log books and photographs. He flew operations as a navigator with 75 and 218 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Jack Jarmy 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
2015-09-21
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Jarmy, JFD
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
Jack Jarmy’s Royal Canadian Air Force observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book. One
Description
An account of the resource
Navigators log book for J Jarmy covering the period from 7th August 1942 to 12th November 1957. Detailing his flying training in Canada and England and operations flown, including various certificates and a list of his operational crew. He was stationed at RCAF Portage La Prairie (7 AOS), RAF Carlisle (15 EFTS), RAF Westcott (11 OTU), RAF Waterbeach (1651 HCU), RAF Mepal (75 Squadron), RAF Feltwell (3 LFS) and RAF Chedburgh (218 Squadron). Aircraft flown in were Anson, DH82 Tiger Moth, Wellington, Stirling, Lancaster, Oxford, Meteor, Harvard, Hastings, Beaufighter, Pembroke, Valetta, Dakota, Shackleton. He did two tours of operations, flew 21 night operations with 75 Squadron and a further 20 operations (7 night and 13 daylight) with 218 Squadron. His pilots on operations were Flight Sergeant Mayfield and Flight Lieutenant Guinane. Targets were the Freisians, Hamburg, Bordeaux, Nuremburg, Turin, Peenemunde, Gladbach, Berlin, Mannheim, Boulogne, Montlucon, Modane, Hanover, Kassel, Frankfurt, Bremen, Warne-Eikel, Hohenbudburg, Dresden, Chemnitz, Wesel, Dortmund, Kamen, Cologne, Gelsenkirchen, Dessau, Datteln, Hattingen, Bocholt, Hallendorf, Kiel, Heligoland and Bad Oldesloe. The log book also lists his post war RAF Flights.
This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form. No better quality copies are available.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike French
Cara Walmsley
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LJarmyJFD134695
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1943-07-30
1943-07-31
1943-08-03
1943-08-04
1943-08-06
1943-08-07
1943-08-10
1943-08-11
1943-08-12
1943-08-13
1943-08-16
1943-08-17
1943-08-18
1943-08-27
1943-08-28
1943-08-30
1943-08-31
1943-09-01
1943-09-05
1943-09-06
1943-09-08
1943-09-09
1943-09-15
1943-09-16
1943-09-17
1943-09-22
1943-09-23
1943-09-24
1943-10-03
1943-10-04
1943-10-05
1943-10-08
1943-10-09
1943-10-10
1943-11-18
1943-11-19
1943-11-20
1945-02-07
1945-02-08
1945-02-09
1945-02-13
1945-02-14
1945-02-15
1945-02-18
1945-02-20
1945-02-21
1945-03-01
1945-03-02
1945-03-04
1945-03-05
1945-03-07
1945-03-08
1945-03-09
1945-03-14
1945-03-18
1945-03-22
1945-03-29
1945-04-13
1945-04-14
1945-04-15
1945-04-18
1945-04-24
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
France
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Manitoba--Portage la Prairie
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Cumbria
England--Norfolk
England--Suffolk
France--Modane
Germany--Bad Oldesloe
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bocholt
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Chemnitz
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Dresden
Germany--East Frisian Islands
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Mönchengladbach
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hattingen
Germany--Helgoland
Germany--Kamen
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Italy--Turin
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
France--Montluçon
Germany--Mönchengladbach
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Peenemünde
Germany--Hannover
Manitoba
Germany--Dessau (Dessau)
France--Bordeaux (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
11 OTU
1651 HCU
218 Squadron
75 Squadron
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
Beaufighter
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
bombing of Helgoland (18 April 1945)
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
C-47
Flying Training School
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Meteor
mine laying
navigator
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
RAF Abingdon
RAF Carlisle
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Chivenor
RAF Dishforth
RAF Feltwell
RAF Kinloss
RAF Mepal
RAF Middleton St George
RAF North Luffenham
RAF Shallufa
RAF Swinderby
RAF Topcliffe
RAF Waterbeach
RAF Westcott
Shackleton
Stirling
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1221/15070/SAttwoodSG1814420v10008.2.jpg
0fddecfc08941f0a20b727f99d808cc9
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
Attwood, Stanley Gordon
Attwood, S G
Description
An account of the resource
19 items. The collection concerns Stanley Gordon Attwood (1924 - 1983) and includes photographs and newspaper cuttings that mainly relate to a documentary made in 1969 about a Lancaster aircrew of 50 Squadron reunited after 25 years.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Andrea Giles and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-24
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Attwood, SG
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Royal Air Force [Royal Air Force Crest] Hereford.
No. 2 School of Admin. Trades
Vivian of Hereford.
No. 14 “A” Basic Storeman Course 1957.
AC’s Graham Isaac Smith J. Isaacs Brosnan Bird Gray Fulleylove
AC’s Harwood Fox Tithecott Stones Canham Simkins Harriott Howell Womersely
AC Smith V. ACW Standing Cpl Atwood Instructor Flt Lt. Wilkinson Flt. Cmmdr. AC Gale ACW Johns AC Carter
Instructor
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
24 airmen and women
Description
An account of the resource
A group of 22 airmen and two airwomen, arranged in three rows. The header reads 'Royal Air Force' Hereford No.2 School of Admin. Trades' and the footer 'No 14 "A" Basic Storeman Course 1957.'
Surnames given below. Cpl Attwood is front row, third from left.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1957
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SAttwoodSG1814420v10008
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Herefordshire
England--Hereford
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1957
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Claire Monk
ground personnel
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1982/41574/LHope169139v4.2.pdf
781dde810de17852ace660d30587286a
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
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-12
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
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
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
A D Hope’s personal flying log book. Four
Description
An account of the resource
Personal flying log book 4 (aircraft operating crew) for A D Hope, covering the period from 15 March 1950 to 15 February 1963, Detailing his civilian flying duties. He was based at Broxbourne, Southend, Stansted, and Gatwick airports. Aircraft flown in were Tiger Moth, York, Tudor, DC4, Super Trader, Bristol 170, Britannia, Viscount, DC6 and Comet.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Arthur Hope
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Essex
England--Hertfordshire
England--West Sussex
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LHope169139v4
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1950
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
aircrew
Tiger Moth
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2160/41026/LSweeneyAE573980v1.2.pdf
ed313baa3dff5563a54732513ab64e74
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
Sweeney, Alfred Edward
Description
An account of the resource
One item.
The collection concerns Flying Officer Alfred Edward (Todd) Sweeney (Royal Air Force) and contains his log book. He flew a tour of operations as a pilot with 115 Squadron from RAF Witchford.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Malcolm Sweeney and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-02-20
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Sweeney, AE
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
Alfred Sweeney’s RAF Pilot’s Flying Log Book
Description
An account of the resource
Alfred Sweeney’s RAF Pilot’s Flying Log Book from 17 May 1942 to 30 July 1962 detailing training, operations and post-war duties as a pilot and instructor, including VIP duties. (Several logbooks bound into one volume).
He was stationed at RAF Stoke Orchard (No. 10 Elementary Flying Training School), RCAF Station Neepawa (No. 35 Elementary Flying Training School), RCAF Station Carberry (No. 33 Service Flying Training School), RAF Carlisle (No. 15 Elementary Flying Training School), RAF Church Lawford (No. 18 (P) Advanced Flying Unit), RAF Desborough (No. 84 Operational Training Unit), RAF Wratting Common (No. 1651 Heavy Conversion Unit), RAF Feltwell (No. 3 Lancaster Finishing School), RAF Witchford (115 Squadron), RAF Langar (1669 HCU), RAF North Luffenham (1653 HCU), RAF Waterbeach (514 Squadron), RAF Syerston (1333 Transport Support Conversion Unit), RAF Almaza, RAF Aqir, RAF Kabrit (78 Squadron), RAF Palam (AHQ(I) Communications Squadron), RAF Fassburg, RAF Lubeck, RAF Bassingbourn and RAF Waterbeach (24(C) Squadron), RAF Marham (115 Squadron and Bomber Command Jet Conversion Flight), Bassingbourn (No. 231 OCU), RAF Boscombe Down (Handling Squadron), RAF Lyneham (216 Squadron) and RAF Watton (51 Squadron).
Aircraft in which flown: DH82C, Anson, DH82A, Oxford, Wellington X, Stirling I, Stirling III, Lancaster I, Lancaster II, Lancaster III, Dakota III, Horsa, Dakota IV, Halifax VII, York, Harvard, Lancastrian, Valetta, Washington, Meteor, Canberra, Varsity, Firefly, Pembroke, Valiant, Sea Venom, Vampire, Jet Provost, Sea Devon, Hunter, Pioneer, Whirlwind, Chipmunk, Comet, Beverley, Seamew, Venom, Javelin, Gannet, Swift, Vulcan, Hastings, Victor, Skeeter, Prentice, Auster, Devon, Heron, Bristol Freighter, Dragonfly, Shackleton, Viscount, Sea Prince, Sycamore, Sea Balliol, Lincoln, Sea Hawk.
Records 30 completed operations (22 night, 8 day) on the following targets in France and Germany: Amaye-Sur-Seulles, Beauvoir, Bec D’Ambes, Biennais, Bordeaux Bassens, Brunswick, Cap Gris Nez, Chambly, Cologne, Coulonvillers, Domleger, Dortmund, Dreux, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Foret de Lucheux, L’Hey, Le Havre, Le Mans, Lens, Lisieux, Montdidier, Nantes, Ouistreham, Vaires (Paris), Valenciennes, Watten and Wissant.
Also includes photographs of various aircraft, various documents, technical notes, medal awards paperwork and VIP passenger lists (including Pandit Neru, Sir Claude Auchinleck).
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Leitch
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LSweeneyAE573980v1
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Egypt
France
Germany
Great Britain
India
Israel
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Cumbria
England--Gloucestershire
England--Norfolk
England--Northamptonshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Rutland
England--Warwickshire
England--Wiltshire
Middle East--Palestine
France--Domléger-Longvillers
France--Beauvoir-sur-Mer
France--Bordeaux (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
France--Calvados
France--Dreux
France--Gironde Estuary
France--Le Havre
France--Le Mans
France--Lens
France--Montdidier (Hauts-de-France)
France--Nantes
France--Normandy
France--Oise
France--Opale Coast
France--Pas-de-Calais
France--Somme
France--Vaires-sur-Marne
France--Valenciennes
France--Watten
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Manitoba--Carberry
Manitoba--Neepawa
France--Coulonvillers
France--Cap Gris Nez
Egypt--Kibrit
North Africa
France--Ouistreham
Manitoba
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944-04-20
1944-04-21
1944-04-22
1944-04-23
1944-05-01
1944-05-02
1944-05-07
1944-05-08
1944-05-09
1944-05-10
1944-05-19
1944-05-20
1944-05-21
1944-05-22
1944-05-23
1944-06-02
1944-06-03
1944-06-05
1944-06-06
1944-06-07
1944-06-10
1944-06-11
1944-06-12
1944-06-14
1944-06-15
1944-06-16
1944-06-17
1944-06-18
1944-06-21
1944-06-23
1944-06-24
1944-06-27
1944-06-28
1944-07-02
1944-07-05
1944-07-06
1944-07-07
1944-07-08
1944-07-12
1944-07-30
1944-08-01
1944-08-04
1944-08-05
1944-08-08
1944-08-09
1944-08-11
1944-08-12
1944-08-13
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
115 Squadron
1651 HCU
1653 HCU
1669 HCU
216 Squadron
51 Squadron
514 Squadron
84 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
B-29
bombing
bombing of the Le Havre E-boat pens (14/15 June 1944)
bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944)
C-47
Cook’s tour
Flying Training School
Halifax
Halifax Mk 7
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
Horsa
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 2
Lancaster Mk 3
Lancastrian
Lincoln
Meteor
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Aqir
RAF Bassingbourn
RAF Boscombe Down
RAF Carlisle
RAF Church Lawford
RAF Desborough
RAF Feltwell
RAF Langar
RAF Lyneham
RAF Marham
RAF North Luffenham
RAF Syerston
RAF Waterbeach
RAF Watton
RAF Witchford
RAF Wratting Common
Shackleton
Stirling
tactical support for Normandy troops
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/900/31403/PJarmyJFD17010021.2.jpg
b8c0312c2dfd3d531d068d4b830a9779
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
Jarmy, Jack
Jack Francis David Jarmy
J F D Jarmy
Description
An account of the resource
23 items. And oral history interview with Jack Francis David Jarmy DFC (b. 1922, 134695 Royal Air Force) his log books and photographs. He flew operations as a navigator with 75 and 218 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Jack Jarmy 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
2015-09-21
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Jarmy, JFD
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
Annual Inspection by AVM PD Cracroft Pitreavie Castle, 1957
Description
An account of the resource
A row of airmen being inspected by a senior officer.
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
1957
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PJarmyJFD17010020
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Scotland--Dunfermline
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1957
aircrew
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/163/22402/PBanksP15020034.1.jpg
5ddb1e124300597d777db3519a3177db
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
Banks, Peter. Album two
Description
An account of the resource
The album contains a varied collection of photographs taken whilst based at RAF Feltwell from 1937 onwards. There are aerial views of Windsor and Buckingham Palace, Harrow aircraft, plus social and service events. Post-war he was transferred to Singapore via India and Burma. The album reflects his social life with occasional photograph of his service activities at RAF Seletar. His return to UK via Bombay at the time of Indian independence is recorded, followed by scenic shots round Wick in Scotland. Finally there are some photographs of Angkor Thom in Cambodia. It also contains pages from newspapers dated 18 and 19 June 1940. <br /><br />Return to the <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/140">main collection</a>.
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.
Format
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One photograph album
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PBanksP1501
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Another great wings total
Description
An account of the resource
Front page of air mail newspaper (the official journal of the Royal Air Forces association). Includes headlines: running neck and neck with 1956's. top camera man is a judge, treasurer at head, branch is first with high flight, Lord Tedder presents R.A.F.A. memorial to the few, tribute on the air. Tow photographs. 1 - lord Tedder accompanied by other officer and padres at podium giving address. In the background left spectators and choir with ensigns to rear. On the right a Huricane. 2 - three Hunter aircraft in line astern and vertical pointing down.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Royal Air Forces Association
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1957-11
1957-12
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One newspaper page
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PBanksP15020034
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Kent
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1957
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.
Hurricane
memorial
RAF Biggin Hill
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/900/31404/PJarmyJFD17010021.1.jpg
b8c0312c2dfd3d531d068d4b830a9779
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
Jarmy, Jack
Jack Francis David Jarmy
J F D Jarmy
Description
An account of the resource
23 items. And oral history interview with Jack Francis David Jarmy DFC (b. 1922, 134695 Royal Air Force) his log books and photographs. He flew operations as a navigator with 75 and 218 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Jack Jarmy 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
2015-09-21
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Jarmy, JFD
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
AOC's Inspection - No 18 Group, 1957
Description
An account of the resource
Several rows of airmen being inspected by a senior officer.
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
1957
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PJarmyJFD17010021
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1957
aircrew
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1343/22243/MTyrieJSB87636-190601-11.2.jpg
c185afa6a6dd5a49fbd6ac7ed799ea24
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
Tyrie, Jim
Tyrie, JSB
Description
An account of the resource
34 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Jim Tyrie (1919 - 1993, 87636 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, photographs, correspondence and prisoner of war log as well as a photograph album. He flew operations as a pilot with 77 Squadron before being shot down in April 1941.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Brian Taylor 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
2019-06-01
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
Tyrie, JSB
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
Categorisation Certificate
Description
An account of the resource
A certificate awarded to Jim Tyrie at category A1
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
RAF Shawbury
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1956-07-12
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One typed sheet with handwritten annotations
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Service material
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MTyrieJSB87636-190601-11
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
England--Shropshire
Germany--Wunstorf
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1956
1957
RAF Shawbury
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1027/26179/LMcVickersCG1042135v1.1.pdf
2345da87e3c847e2ac316c46eb50751b
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
McVickers, Christopher George
C G McVickers
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. An oral history interview with Flight Sergeant Christopher George McVickers (1922 - 2018, 1042135 Royal Air Force), his log book identity card and disks and his decorations. He completed a tour of operations as a wireless operator with 218 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Christopher McVickers 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
2017-10-06
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
McVickers, CG
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
Christopher George McVickers' flying log book
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LMcVickersCG1042135v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Egypt
France
Germany
Great Britain
Oman
Singapore
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
North Africa
England--Cornwall (County)
England--Cumbria
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Rutland
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
England--Wiltshire
France--Calais
France--Le Havre
France--Saint-Omer Region (Pas-de-Calais)
Germany--Borken (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Braunschweig Region
Germany--Castrop-Rauxel
Germany--Chemnitz
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hattingen
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Kleve (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Merseburg
Germany--Mönchengladbach
Germany--Neuss
Germany--Recklinghausen (Münster)
Germany--Saarbrücken
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Gibraltar
Northern Ireland--Ballykelly
Oman--Masirah Island
Scotland--Kinloss
Wales--Bridgend
Germany--Wuppertal
Egypt--Suez Canal
Great Britain
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1944-07-08
1944-09-05
1944-09-06
1944-09-08
1944-09-12
1944-09-13
1944-09-28
1944-10-05
1944-10-07
1944-10-15
1944-12-31
1945-01-01
1945-01-03
1945-01-06
1945-01-13
1945-01-15
1945-01-29
1945-02-01
1945-02-03
1945-02-13
1945-02-14
1945-02-15
1945-02-18
1945-02-19
1945-02-23
1945-02-27
1945-03-09
1945-03-12
1945-03-18
1945-03-22
1945-03-29
1945-04-04
1945-04-05
1945-04-09
1945-04-10
Description
An account of the resource
Flying log book for C G McVickers, Wireless operator, covering the period from 6 April 1943 to 16 August 1965. Detailing his flying training, operations flown and post war flying duties with 90, 97, 12, 100, 101, 199, 192, 220, 210, 224 and 205 squadrons. He was stationed at RAF Compton Bassett, RAF Stormy Down, RAF Topcliffe, RAF Millom, RAF Ossington, RAF Bircotes, RAF Gamston, RAF Chedburgh, RAF Wratting Common, RAF Stradishall, RAF Woolfox Lodge, RAF Methwold, RAF Feltwell, RAF Tuddenham, RAF Full Sutton, RAF Binbrook, RAF Scampton, RAF Hemswell, RAF Shallufah, RAF Watton, RAF St Mawgan, RAF St Eval, RAF Kinloss, RAF Ballykelly, RAF Gibraltar, RAF North Front, RAF Masirah Island and RAF Changi. Aircraft flown in were Dominie, Proctor, Anson, Wellington, Stirling, Lancaster, Lancastrian, Lincoln, Mosquito, Washington, Canberra, Shackleton, Prentice, Neptune, Varsity, Viking and Comet. He flew a total of 31 operations with 218 squadron, 21 Daylight and 10 night. Targets were Wemars/Capel, Le Havre, Frankfurt, Calais, Saarbrucken, Kleve, Wilhelmshaven, Vohwinkel, Castrop Rauxel, Neuss, Gelsenkirchen, Krefeld, Mönchengladbach, Dortmund, Dresden, Chemnitz, Wesel, Datteln, Hattingen, Bocholt, Hallendorf, Merseburg and Keil. His pilots on operations were Flying Officer Lloyld, Flying Officer Hill and Flying Officer Boome.
100 Squadron
101 Squadron
12 Squadron
1651 HCU
1653 HCU
1657 HCU
192 Squadron
199 Squadron
205 Squadron
210 Squadron
218 Squadron
220 Squadron
82 OTU
90 Squadron
97 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
B-29
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Dominie
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
Lancastrian
Lincoln
Mosquito
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
Proctor
RAF Binbrook
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Compton Bassett
RAF Feltwell
RAF Full Sutton
RAF Gamston
RAF Hemswell
RAF Kinloss
RAF Methwold
RAF Millom
RAF Ossington
RAF Scampton
RAF Shallufa
RAF St Eval
RAF St Mawgan
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Stradishall
RAF Topcliffe
RAF Tuddenham
RAF Watton
RAF Woolfox Lodge
RAF Wratting Common
Shackleton
Stirling
training
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1526/29192/PMilesRJ16040005.2.jpg
f1be57b535590aa684f8fb5cb62df6d7
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Miles, Reg
Reginald J Miles
R J Miles
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Miles, RJ
Description
An account of the resource
102 items. The collection concerns Reg Miles (1923 - 2022) and contains his audio memoir, log book, photographs and documents. He flew 36 operations with 432 and 420 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by R Miles and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Crashed Hastings
Description
An account of the resource
A crashed Hastings still smouldering. In the foreground a group of firemen putting out the flames. Information supplied with the collection states '511Sqdn Hastings 615 crashed Oct 1957'.
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
PMilesRJ16040005
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. Transport Command
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1957
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1957
crash
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/640/32452/MSmithBM582378-170220-01.1.pdf
a787de22dce39ba9300fbe485fa7e8fb
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Smith, Barry
Barry Michael Smith
B M Smith
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Smith, BM
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Sergeant Barry Smith (b.1929, 582398 Royal Air Force). He was an aprentice at RAF Halton and served as a fitter. Also includes service memoir and a photograph.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Barry Smith 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. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Preface to Barry's Curriculum Vitae 1 of 5
My initial training, a three year apprenticeship, at Royal Air Force Halton, was essentially directed towards aircraft electrical installations. A fourth 'improver' year at RAF St. Athan involved 3rd & 4th line servicing of electrical equipment & components. After a spell on Link trainer vacuum motors I was moved to AERS, which I think was Aircraft Electrical Repair Squadron. I subsequently worked on aircraft until 1952 although on becoming a Corporal Technician in 1951 I had become a Ground Electrician. From 1952 until 1957, by then at RAF Honington, I was employed on 1st. 2nd, & 3rd line servicing of Mechanical Transport, Marine Craft, Airfield Equipment & general Ground Equipment, including D4 Link Trainers.
Having volunteered for duties on Synthetic Trainers (Nearing my service exit date at 12 years I needed a job to go to in civvy street) I then spent two years in Civilian digs in Crawley (at Wendy Tantrum's house) with Messrs Redifon. After a 3 month comprehensive course on analogue simulation principles, theory of flight & associated subjects, we spent a further 3 months studying the Javelin Flight simulator, it's circuitry, computation processes, components & equipment. In fact writing the training/Service manual for the machine.
The next 18 months were spent, 'on the shop floor' actively engaged in Test & Calibration. With another RAF technician, one simulator was taken from a part wired, assembled shell to a "flying entity".
At the end of this fascinating period I was attached to Fighter Command Headquarters at Bentley Priory. My work there was to prove an exciting & rewarding experience with staff of Eng 5 (with W/O Doug Lendy, FIt/Lt Brian Catlin & Sqn Ldr D.T.Brown). Much of my work (including making the coffee) involved research & investigation into Special Occurrence Reports & Technical Defect Reports. Later I had specific responsibility & authority for the Electrical & Instrument aspects of the fitting out of the 'New' Electronic Servicing Centres being built at Fighter Stations. An important aspect of the task was liaison with builders, manufacturers, & fitting parties & I was able to contribute to the solution of several problems. Later, on the establishment of an office specifically for the electrical & instrument aspects of the Lightning I became the assistant to Sqn Ldr John Grossman.
My next period of employment was with the R.A.F Education Branch. After an exellent [sic] 3 month course at RAF School of Education, at RAF Uxbridge on Teaching Techniques, Educational Psychology & associated studies I began an enjoyable 4 year tour teaching a variety of subjects associated with Physics & electrical technology, including Inertial Navigation. (which preceded Satellite Navigation).
At the end of this period of secondment I was employed on the design & manufacture of Training Aids for a short time, (my boss was Flt/Lt Robin Cooper), when I was selected to instruct the new courses of Ground Electrical Craft Apprentices. The syllabus for which I helped to write.
Three years later, in 1969 I commenced a 13 month tour in Bahrain. During this time Pat, my wife spent 5 weeks with me there & I managed 5 weeks leave at home. The tour was followed by 18 months with Tactical Communications Wing of 38 Group at RAF Benson. I volunteered & was accepted into the Trade Standards & Testing organization. This initially involved setting exams for tradesmen to Chief Technician level, writing & monitoring the Multiple Choice Questions, setting & vetting of practical examinations & Trade Test tasks. Finally, at RAF Brampton, I wrote a range of Skill & Knowledge Specifications for various trades. Retiring from RAF in 1975.
[page break]
Curriculum Vitae Barry Michael Smith 11/5/1929 2 of 5
Relevant Numbers; National Identity DQGU22112 Service 582378 National Insurance AB362008C
[underlined] Early Days [/underlined]
Born at 242 Bath Rd. Kettering. Lodged at Mrs Auburns house on The Green in Stotfold until our New build house by Turby Gentle was ready at 19 Coppice Mead. Later renumbered 43. Started school at St.Mary's with Pat Trafford, who lived at number 7. Our Headmistress was Mrs Bonnet, who lived in a big detached house on the corner of The Green. At 7 I transferred to Stotfold Council Boys School. At this time I made my first 'model aeroplane from three logs. Recall Mum being in tears after Mr. Chamberlain announced the war on Sept 3rd, when I came in from the garden where I had been helping to dig "an Air Raid Shelter"!
Dad had been transferred to No 6 MU at Brize Norton & we were allocated a new build house at 3 Springfield Oval, Witney into which we moved in 1940. I went to the Batt Central School placed in the A stream, in which I stayed, I suspect from parental design, rather than aptitude. I very much enjoyed woodwork which we did on a Friday afternoon & Gardening on another afternoon. With Mr. Goldsmith I first developed an interest in things 'organic' & indeed things chemical in general. Mr. Goldsmith made a significant impact on me, which coloured the whole of my life.
[underlined] Education & Qualifications [/underlined]
As one of the two students in my school to get 'homework' (another parental intervention!) I was enabled to 'just pass' the entrance exam for an RAF Apprenticeship. While awaiting the result my mother got me employed by Mr. Mullard as an optical tens maker; my first job in 1944. This turned out to be short term, until we found I had 'passed' for Halton.
Starting at Halton on Feb. 13th 1945 I JUST managed to 'pass out' in March 1948. Most of us were posted to 32 MU at RAF St. Athan for 'improver' training (which I think most of us needed.)
Under W/O " Tubby" Lockhart I passed the CCTB board to gain my AC1 & soon (one of the first in the entry) to be promoted Acting Corporal. Subsequently I obtained Forces Preliminary Examinations in 5 subjects & GCSE's in English Language, Human Biology, & Electrics/Electronics. One attempt at French, even with Madame Long's superb efforts, was a failure..
In 1951 I attended a 10 week course at RAF Stoke Heath on electro plating. Much later I discovered that all the notes we had taken long hand had been converted into Air Publication 880.
I did gain my Ordinary National Certificate in electrics & passed the first two years of the Higher National, but didn't complete it. I attended a 3 month Junior Education Officers Course at RAF Uxbridge & I later obtained a City & Guilds Technical Teachers Certificate at Aylesbury College. As part of my mustering as a Synthetic Trainer Fitter I followed a 12 month period of training/education at Redifon factory in Crawley. At RAF Upwood I attended a 3 weeks Senior Trade Management Course & a one week extra mural course at Aston University on programmed Learning & Teaching Machines.
[underlined] Royal Air Force Career [/underlined]
[underlined] 1948 -1950 [/underlined] At RAF St. Athan: Complete overhaul of "Link Trainer" Vacuum motors, UKX generators (fitted to Lancaster) E5A generators (fitted to North American Harvard), & Type 9 Control Panels.
1950 -1952 At RAF Cranwell as AC1/LAC/JT 1st & 2nd line servicing of Harvard & Prentice Promoted substantive corporal. Given choice of air or ground specialism for promotion? 'advancement’ to Corporal Technician. I chose the Ground option.
1952n - 1954 In Malta; after a week on HMS Vengeance (a light fleet carrier) on her way to Australia for sale; in charge of deck party's chipping off rust from the flight deck with club hammers (much to the distress of the sailors on the cable deck beneath). In charge of 3rd/4th line electrical servicing of MT vehicles at 137 MU RAF Safi. With 3 civilian electricians Mr. J. Cuchceri. Andrew Zarb & Tony Debattista. Who became life long friends.
[page break]
3 of 5
John Tony & Andrew were superb workers & among their commanding skills was an ability to fabricate new wiring looms for AEC's, Hillman Minx, Standard Vanguard, & even the Coles Crane. Way out of my league!
I then worked at 1351 (incidentally my HAA members number) Marine Craft Unit (MCU) at Marsa
Schlokk [sic] (O/C Fit. Lt Fisher.) Where, with 2 Airmen, we handled the electrical aspects of a High Speed Launch. Two pinnaces & two flying boat tenders. In addition there were the occasional Airborne Life-boats in for routine inspection. When I asked my 1st reporting Officer, FIt Lt Caple'(Capable Caple' a Dam Buster I believe) why my promotion to Sergeant had been refused, replied "First you always want a hair cut & second you're never here". Can't argue with that! However Flt. Lt Lindley (my 2nd reporting officer said " If I'd known you were near promotion I'd have given you a better assessment"
1954 -55 Wintered for 3 months at RAF Rufforth, Yorks (commuting to Aylesbury by my old Hillman Minx, with no heater, & a dodgy wiper). In charge of a battery charging room of the 60MU Recovery & Salvage Unit. This was an unpleasant period, but I did join the chess club & helped them win the only away match we played, in York. I stayed in a small wooden but with a central stove, quite the worst accommodation I experienced.
[underlined] 1955 -1957 [/underlined]
RAF Cottesmore, Rutland (an exchange posting hopefully closer to home) but for a few weeks only. I had time to start to play snooker & blow up a few balloons for the Corporal's club Christmas do, before we all moved to RAF Honnington [sic] where I was in charge of Battery Charging rooms, Airfield lighting, & Link Trainers. During this time I qualified as a Senior Technician & (also) subsequently accepted promotion to Sergeant. During this time I stripped, derusted & hand painted the Hillman Minx with Dulux paint. A not very successful venture as the autumn brought condensation as just one of the problems with painting in the open. On promotion to Sergeant I was immediately selected for Mess caterer duties (running the mess bar) For me, a casual drinker a daunting task. A steep teaming curve resulted in a pleasant fortnight over the Christmas period in which I managed to cover my drinks, cigarettes & a small profit with a complete bar stock check by the mess treasurer each morning. During this period a decision needed to be made on future career prospects as I approached the end of my 12 year commitment. In the event I applied to sign on & was rejected. Volunteering for Synthetic trainer duties I was informed I needed at least 3 years further service. & was accepted for an extension of 3 years!
[underlined] 1957-1959 [/underlined]
Attached to Messrs Redifon (Crawley) On a comprehensive course on the Gloucester Javelin Flight Simulator followed by an extensive period of Test & Calibration duties at the factory. We took one from a "part wired shell" on the factory floor to a "Flying Entity" with some support from Redifon Staff. During this period I was remustered as E Fitt G (Q-Syn-JF) (Qualified Synthetic Trainer Fitter- Javelin Fighter).
1959 --1961 My Simulator was postponed to be modified into a mark 9 with reheat. & I obtained an attachment to Fighter Command HQ in Eng 5 at Bentley Priory. Where my immediate boss was Fit. Lt Brian Catlin & Eng. 5 was Sqn. Ldr. DT Brown. Here, apart from becoming "the coffee boy" I was involved in Staff work on many aspects of electrical/Instrument Aircraft & Ground Equipment. This involved research investigation into Special Occurrence Reports (Accidents) & liaison with other departments. During this period I qualified as Chief Technician & was promoted. I believe I was responsible for the first use of X-rays for diagnosis of an electrical fault in the Royal Air Force. At this point Non Destructive Testing was in it's infancy. The switch fault causing “Runaway Tail Trim” in Hunters (& I believe Canberras) was identified with 3 view x-rays of the offending switch by my Dentist! The manufacturer "Rotax" was criticised. During this time I had specific individual responsibility for the establishment of Electronic Servicing Centres in Fighter Command. They were uniquely developed separately from those already set up for Bomber Command, but Bomber Command installation teams were employed.
[page break]
4 of 5
[underlined] 1959 -1961 [/underlined] continued
My duties included design, layout & provision of power supplies for instrument & electrical servicing benches & test equipment, Liaison with Builders & Manufacturers, & Fitting Parties. Later it became necessary to establish an office exclusively for the electrical/instrument aspects of the English Electric Lightning, when I was appointed office assistant to Sqn.Ldr John Grossman, when the Command started to equip with those aircraft which incorporated the developed OR 946 Project (The advanced integrated weapons system.)
[underlined] 1961-1969 [/underlined]
As the preceding attachment was coming to an end I volunteered for secondment to the Education Branch & was accepted as a Junior Education Officer. After a 3 month Instructional Technique Course at RAF School of Education at Uxbridge I taught physics, mechanics & Inertial Navigation & then, at Halton, Electrical Science to ONC standard to 3 year Aircraft Apprentices. This later included setting & marking of ONC examination question papers. This was followed, on return to basic trade, by a short period designing & building Training Aids, & then being appointed to take charge of a small group of civilian & service instructors in order to develop & establish all aspects of preparation & implementation of a syllabus for the first courses of Apprentice Ground Electrical Fitters.
[underlined] 1969 -1970 [/underlined]
Selected for an unaccompanied tour at RAF Muharraq in Bahrain, Five weeks of which my wife spent with me in Manama & five weeks I spent on leave in UK, effectively foreshortening, what was, a pleasant 13 month "unaccompanied" tour. My compatriot George Stuart, who became a W/O MT fitter ensured we always had "wheels' & I am sure ours was the only SNCO's bunk with a thick white carpet, indeed the only one with a carpet! I briefly rubbed shoulders with Sqn/Ldr John Grossman, with whom I had worked at Bentley Priory. I was able to persuade the Station Commander to allow me to build a functioning indoor .22 rifle range, which became a well supported recreational facility. One outstanding memory was one morning, cycling to work I saw a USA Globemaster standing on the pan (it had landed the previous evening) with it's battery just "hanging " on it's connecting cables, OUTSIDE the aircraft. I didn't report it as I was confident someone would notice it before it attempted to taxi for take off! A lot of leisure time was spent Sailing as crew, Swimming (I learned to swim a length underwater) Shooting & helping George with his private motor repairs. A luxury in the mess was Barracuda steak brought up from Salala [sic] by Ardet. (The Argosy Aircraft Detachment)
[underlined] 1970 -1972 [/underlined]
On returning to UK I was posted to 38 Group Signals at RAF Benson. Here I was in charge of a small group of electricians, a part of a Tactical Communications Team. This involved the maintenance & servicing of a wide range of Electrical Ground Equipment. At one point I was selected to accompany a field team to RAF Goose Bay to carry out field tests (in arctic conditions), of our communications equipment (in particular aerials). We found ourselves much better equipped for arctic conditions than the airmen who were stationed there for a whole tour of duty,
In an attempt to manipulate my career a little I volunteered for duties with the Central Trade Test Board, which was set up at RAF Halton. I went to Swanton Morley for a selection interview & was accepted. My posting to RAF Halton was soon promulgated.
[page break]
[underlined] 1972 -1975 [/underlined] 5 of 5
I became part of the Trade Standards & Testing organization of the RAF, initially at Halton & subsequently at RAF Brampton. The task included writing & assessing questions in a Multiple Choice Question Library (essentially electrical/electronic bias) & the production, setting & marking of tests for all ranks……from…..from Aircraft Apprentice to Chief Technician in the Ground Electrical Fitter trade. Subsequently, as part of a small team, at RAF Brampton, I was engaged in the assembly of Skill & Knowledge Specifications for all `Ground' Trades. These "Objective Statements of Individually Identified Tasks" were couched in specific Behavioural Terms & ranged (for me) over many ground trade boundaries, from Aircraft Engineering to Safety Equipment & from Medical & Marine craft to Musical skills.
[underlined] 1975 – 1985 [/underlined]
Civilian Career
On leaving the RAF, accepting voluntary redundancy, when my rank & trade & birthday appeared in POR'S, I was offered work with Messrs Burroughs Machines as an Electrical/mechanical Foreman at £50 per week (if I worked nights). I told the boss that I couldn't afford to pay my income tax on such a salary. After six months on enhanced unemployment benefit I was appointed, at RAF Halton as a Civilian Instructor. teaching Ground Electrical Apprentices in accordance with the new Skill & Knowledge Specifications, which I had helped to write, & had been teaching in 1969. The training of Ground Electrical Apprentices was then transferred to RAF St. Athan. I was offered the opportunity to transfer to the Aircraft side but declined. I applied for a post as lecturer at Southall College of Technology (Air Engineering Department) & was accepted. During this period I taught British Airways Aircraft & Ground Electrical & Instrument Engineer Apprentices & overseas students, School Link (Technology Acquaintance courses) as well as Libyan Airways service & civilian aircraft technicians. I wrote & taught NVQ's helped to incorporate IT into teaching profiles & examination techniques. I took early retirement on change of college status to 6th form college & the demise of the Aeronautical Engineering Department under Mr. Alf Fox, as British Airways closed their Apprentice Scheme.
General
I first took an interest in sport at RAF Cranwell in 1952 I started to train for the Station sports but was posted to RAF Safi in Malta before the event. Here I continued, won a few events & was selected for Command training. I became interested in small & (later) full bore shooting under Fl/Lt Cumnor-Price. The interest continued & I was able to take up the sport again when I was posted to RAF Honington in 1956-57 where I won several matches at the Suffolk County Shoot. In particular I picked up the Courtney-Warner Trophy (a superb rose bowl which I couldn't keep). Pat & I purchased our Whittington/Westminster chime clock in Bury-St.-Edmunds from the winnings at that meet. I shot for Bomber & Training Commands &, with Sqn/Ldr Tom Gilroy, won the RAF Bren gun run-down shoot in 1967 (he was later asked by a fighter pilot mate "Who was that old feller you won the bren gun with?") (Tom later dropped his Buccaneer in the Irish Sea & only one wheel & a bone dome were recovered) Occasionally among the Top Hundred at Bisley, Dallied in amateur dramatics. Secretary Aylesbury Gardening Society for 17 years. Life Member & Life Vice President. Vice President Aylesbury & Halton Branch RAFA. Married to Pat in 1950. Set up first home in flat by The Modern Imperial Hotel in Sliema Malta GC. We were blessed with 5 daughters & 11 Grandchildren. Pat widowed me on 8th October 1991.
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Curriculum Vitae Barry Michael Smith
Description
An account of the resource
Preface covers his training as an apprentice at RAF Halton and subsequent training as an electrical fitter at RAF St Athan. Outlines career with transition to ground engineer and then other postings. Continues with time as an instructor teaching a variety of technical subjects before a tour consisting of the design and manufacture of training aids. Outlines his final tours in Bahrain, RAF Benson and Brampton. Main CV covers early days, education and qualifications and a full description of his RAF career from apprentice at RAF Halton in 1948 until leaving the RAF in 1975. Concludes with his civilian career up to 1985.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
B M Smith
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Five page printed document
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
MSmithBM582378-170220-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
England--Suffolk
England--Crawley (West Sussex)
England--London
England--Middlesex
Bahrain
England--Oxfordshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Rutland
England--Sussex
Bahrain
Bahrain--Muḥarraq
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1951
1952
1957
1969
1975
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Peter Bradbury
ground crew
RAF Benson
RAF Bentley Priory
RAF Brampton
RAF Cottesmore
RAF Cranwell
RAF Halton
RAF Honington
RAF Muharraq
RAF St Athan
RAF Uxbridge
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1401/27312/LMooreD1603117v2.1.pdf
8031b7ca16f67fab2f6e5956b15bf27d
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
Moore, Dennis
D Moore
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
2015-05-06
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Moore, D
Description
An account of the resource
37 items and two albums.
The collection concerns (1923 - 2010, 1603117, 153623 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, documents, photographs and two albums. He flew operations as a navigator with 218 and 15 Squadrons.
Album one contains photographs of his family and his training in Canada.
Album Two contains photographs of his service in the Far East.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Terrence D Moore and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Dennis Moore flying log book. Two
Description
An account of the resource
Flying log book for D Moore, navigator, covering the period from 28 June 1951 to 4 June 1959. Detailing his instructor duties and navigator duties with Flying Training Command, telecommunications flying Unit and Radar Reconnaissance Flying Unit. He was stationed at RAF Shawbury, RAF Lindholme, RAF Shinfield Park, RAF Defford and RAF Pershore. Aircraft flown in were Wellington, Anson, Valetta, Proctor, Chipmunk, Prentice, Balliol, Devon, Canberra, Hastings, Lincoln, Ashton, Dakota, Meteor, Vampire, Wayfarer, Whirlwind, Marathon, Varsity, Shackleton and Hermes.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LMooreD1603117v2
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
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Berkshire
England--Shropshire
England--Worcestershire
England--Yorkshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
aircrew
Anson
C-47
Lincoln
Meteor
navigator
Proctor
RAF Defford
RAF Lindholme
RAF Pershore
RAF Shawbury
Shackleton
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1937/38349/LJolliffeFSW197221v3.1.pdf
5df50533165672ea2c3bca8070b9ea36
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Jolliffe, Frank Sidney Walter
F S W Jolliffe
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-18
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Jolliffe, FSW
Description
An account of the resource
129 items. The collection concerns Wing Commander Frank Sidney Walter Jolliffe (b. 1923, 1314311 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, documents and photographs. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 149 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Margaret Lowe and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Frank Jolliffe's flying log book. Three
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
England--Hampshire
England--Norfolk
England--Suffolk
Singapore
England--Yorkshire
Great Britain
Malaysia
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. Fighter Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text. Log book and record book
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LJolliffeFSW197221v3
Description
An account of the resource
Aircrew flying log book 4, for F S W Jolliffe, navigator/radar, covering the period from 4 December 1956 to 20 July 1961. Detailing his flying duties with 46, 141, 41, 60 squadrons and headquarters number 11 group. He was stationed at RAF Odiham, RAF Horsham St Faith, RAF Coltishall, RAF Wattisham, RAF Martlesham Heath, and RAF Tengah.</p>
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
141 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
Meteor
navigator
RAF Coltishall
RAF Horsham St Faith
RAF Leeming
RAF Martlesham Heath
RAF Odiham
RAF Wattisham
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/759/17788/LCruickshankG629128v2.1.pdf
a75bdc43555d2ac4328ddd3906ece5a9
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Cruickshank, Gordon
G Cruickshank
Description
An account of the resource
76 items. Concerns the life and wartime career of Flight Lieutenant Gordon Cruickshank DFM who joined the Royal Air Force in 1938. After training as an air gunner he flew 52 operations on Manchester and Lancaster with 50, 560 and 44 Squadrons. Collection consists of a 1956 memoir with original photographs donated separately, a memoir of his life on squadron from December 1941, his logbooks. a further notebook with memoir, playing cards annotated with his operations, official documents, lucky mascots, medals and badges, dog tags, memorabilia, crew procedures, as well as photographs of aircraft, targets and people.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Linda Hinman and catalogued by Nigel Huckins
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-04-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cruickshank, G
Access Rights
Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies.
Permission granted for commercial projects
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Gordon Cruickshank's flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners and flight engineers. Two
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LCruickshankG629128v2
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
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
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Duplicate copy of air observers and air gunner’s flying log book for Gordon Cruickshank covering the period from 30 May 1941 to 19 July 1957. Detailing his flying training and operations flown and post war flying. He was stationed at RAF Evanton (8 AGS), RAF Stanton Harcourt (10 OTU), 50 Squadron (RAF Swinderby and RAF Skellingthorpe), 11 OTU (RAF Westcott), 44 Squadron (RAF Dunholme Lodge and RAF Spilsby), 630 Squadron (RAF East Kirkby), 17 OTU (RAF Silverstone) 49 and 100 Squadrons (RAF Waddington), 7 Squadron (RAF Upwood) and 199 Squadron (RAF Hemswell). Aircraft flown in were Botha, Whitley, Manchester, Lancaster, Wellington and Lincoln. He flew a total of 30 night-time operations and one daylight operation with 50 Squadron, targets were St Nazaire, Rostock, Duisburg, Wilhemshaven, Essen, Wismar, Kiel, Le Creusot and Genoa. He also flew four night-time operations with 44 Squadron, targets Kassel, Dusseldorf, and Berlin and 18 night-time operations with 630 Sqn to Berlin, Schweinfurt, Augsburg, Stuttgart, Clermont-Ferrand, Frankfurt, Berlin, Essen, Nurnburg, Toulouse, Danzig, Paris, Brunswick and Munich. Total 53 operations. His pilots on operations were Flying Officer Goldsmith, Squadron Leader Calvert DFC, Wing Commander Russell DFC, Flying Officer Flynn and Flight Lieutenant Weller.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Poland
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Northamptonshire
England--Oxfordshire
France--Clermont-Ferrand
France--Le Creusot
France--Paris
France--Saint-Nazaire
France--Toulouse
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Munich
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Germany--Wismar
Italy--Genoa
Poland--Gdańsk
Scotland--Ross and Cromarty
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
1944
1944-03-30
1944-03-31
1944-04-05
1944-04-06
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1957
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Terry Hancock
10 OTU
100 Squadron
11 OTU
17 OTU
199 Squadron
44 Squadron
49 Squadron
50 Squadron
630 Squadron
7 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
bombing of Toulouse (5/6 April 1944)
Botha
Lancaster
Lincoln
Manchester
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Evanton
RAF Hemswell
RAF Silverstone
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Spilsby
RAF Stanton Harcourt
RAF Swinderby
RAF Upwood
RAF Waddington
RAF Westcott
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/759/17787/LCruickshankG629128v1.1.pdf
011eb1ad0e5b538cd89b441d744b437a
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Cruickshank, Gordon
G Cruickshank
Description
An account of the resource
76 items. Concerns the life and wartime career of Flight Lieutenant Gordon Cruickshank DFM who joined the Royal Air Force in 1938. After training as an air gunner he flew 52 operations on Manchester and Lancaster with 50, 560 and 44 Squadrons. Collection consists of a 1956 memoir with original photographs donated separately, a memoir of his life on squadron from December 1941, his logbooks. a further notebook with memoir, playing cards annotated with his operations, official documents, lucky mascots, medals and badges, dog tags, memorabilia, crew procedures, as well as photographs of aircraft, targets and people.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Linda Hinman and catalogued by Nigel Huckins
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-04-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cruickshank, G
Access Rights
Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies.
Permission granted for commercial projects
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Gordon Cruickshank's observers and air gunners flying log book. One
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LCruickshankG629128v1
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
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
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Air observers and air gunner’s flying log book for Gordon Cruickshank covering the period from 30 May 1941 to 19 July 1957. Detailing his flying training and operations flown and post war flying. He was stationed at RAF Evanton (8 AGS), RAF Stanton Harcourt (10 OTU), 50 Squadron (RAF Swinderby and RAF Skellingthorpe), 11 OTU (RAF Westcott), 44 Squadron (RAF Dunholme Lodge and RAF Spilsby), 630 Squadron (RAF East Kirkby), 17 OTU (RAF Silverstone) 49 and 100 Squadrons (RAF Waddington), 7 Squadron (RAF Upwood) and 199 Squadron (RAF Hemswell). Aircraft flown in were Botha, Whitley, Manchester, Lancaster, Wellington and Lincoln. He flew a total of 30 night-time operations and one daylight operation with 50 Squadron, targets were St Nazaire, Rostock, Duisburg, Wilhemshaven, Essen, Wismar, Kiel, Le Creusot and Genoa. He also flew four night-time operations with 44 Squadron, targets Kassel, Dusseldorf, and Berlin and 18 night-time operations with 630 Sqn to Berlin, Schweinfurt, Augsburg, Stuttgart, Clermont-Ferrand, Frankfurt, Berlin, Essen, Nurnburg, Toulouse, Danzig, Paris, Brunswick and Munich. Total 53 operations. His pilots on operations were Flying Officer Goldsmith DFC, Squadron Leader Calvert DFC, Wing Commander Russell DFC, Flying Officer Fynn and Flight Lieutenant Weller.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Terry Hancock
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Poland
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Northamptonshire
England--Oxfordshire
France--Clermont-Ferrand
France--Le Creusot
France--Paris
France--Saint-Nazaire
France--Toulouse
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Munich
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Germany--Wismar
Italy--Genoa
Poland--Gdańsk
Scotland--Ross and Cromarty
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1957
1942-04-15
1942-04-16
1942-04-19
1942-04-20
1942-04-22
1942-04-23
1942-04-24
1942-04-25
1942-07-25
1942-07-26
1942-07-27
1942-07-31
1942-08-01
1942-08-03
1942-08-04
1942-08-06
1942-08-07
1942-08-09
1942-08-10
1942-08-24
1942-08-25
1942-08-27
1942-08-28
1942-08-29
1942-09-01
1942-09-02
1942-09-03
1942-09-04
1942-09-05
1942-09-06
1942-09-07
1942-09-08
1942-09-09
1942-09-10
1942-09-11
1942-09-13
1942-09-14
1942-09-15
1942-09-16
1942-09-17
1942-09-23
1942-09-24
1942-10-12
1942-10-13
1942-10-14
1942-10-17
1942-10-22
1942-10-23
1942-10-24
1942-11-06
1942-11-07
1942-11-08
1942-11-09
1942-11-10
1943-10-22
1943-11-03
1943-11-04
1943-11-18
1943-11-19
1943-11-26
1943-11-27
1944-01-27
1944-01-28
1944-02-24
1944-02-25
1944-03-01
1944-03-02
1944-03-10
1944-03-11
1944-03-15
1944-03-16
1944-03-19
1944-03-20
1944-03-22
1944-03-23
1944-03-24
1944-03-25
1944-03-26
1944-03-27
1944-03-30
1944-03-31
1944-04-05
1944-04-06
1944-04-09
1944-04-10
1944-04-20
1944-04-21
1944-04-22
1944-04-23
1944-04-24
1944-04-25
1944-04-26
1944-04-27
1944-04-29
1944-04-30
10 OTU
100 Squadron
11 OTU
17 OTU
199 Squadron
44 Squadron
49 Squadron
50 Squadron
630 Squadron
7 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
bombing of Toulouse (5/6 April 1944)
Botha
Lancaster
Lincoln
Manchester
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Evanton
RAF Hemswell
RAF Silverstone
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Spilsby
RAF Stanton Harcourt
RAF Swinderby
RAF Upwood
RAF Waddington
RAF Westcott
training
Wellington
Whitley
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/667/38114/LAlgarHKM1801102v2.2.pdf
a7d1d4b72567162e96d13cf988cebd23
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
Algar, Harry
Harold Keith Mael Algar
H K M Algar
Description
An account of the resource
Thirteen items. An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Harry Algar (1924 - 2022, 1801102 Royal Air Force) and his log books and documents.
He flew a tour of operations as a bomb aimer with 463 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Greg Algar 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
2017-05-20
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Algar, H
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
H K M Algar’s flying log book for navigator’s, air bomber’s, air gunner, flight engineers. Two
Description
An account of the resource
Flying log book for navigator’s, air bomber’s, air gunner, flight engineers for H K M Algar, Navigator, covering the period from 6 April 1954 to 12 June 1959. Detailing his flying duties with 36 Squadron, bombing trials unit, royal aircraft establishment, 231 Operational Conversion Unit and Maritime Operational Unit. He was stationed at RAF Topcliffe, RAF Luqa, RAF West Freugh, RAF Farnborough, RAF Bassingbourn and RAF Kinloss. Aircraft flown in were Neptune, Oxford, Lincoln, Anson, Sunderland, Sea Prince, Valiant, Canberra, Meteor, Vulcan, Javelin and Shackleton.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Malta
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Hampshire
England--Yorkshire
Scotland--Dumfries and Galloway
Scotland--Moray
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LAlgarHKM1801102v2
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
aircrew
Anson
Lincoln
Meteor
navigator
Oxford
RAF Bassingbourn
RAF Farnborough
RAF Kinloss
RAF Topcliffe
RAF West Freugh
Shackleton
Sunderland
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/900/31330/PJarmyJFD17010019.1.jpg
44dc89a8d34315935fec4bca6f2d285e
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
Jarmy, Jack
Jack Francis David Jarmy
J F D Jarmy
Description
An account of the resource
23 items. And oral history interview with Jack Francis David Jarmy DFC (b. 1922, 134695 Royal Air Force) his log books and photographs. He flew operations as a navigator with 75 and 218 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Jack Jarmy 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
2015-09-21
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Jarmy, JFD
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
HQ No 18 Group RAF Pitreavie Castle 1955
Description
An account of the resource
A group of 30 airmen and one woman arranged in three rows outside a stone building.
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
1955
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PJarmyJFD17010019
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Scotland--Dunfermline
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1957
aircrew
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1062/11457/APayneJB150608.2.mp3
d15cef4ebe65bbad4bec4356ee9b1cbb
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Payne, Brian
John Brian Payne
J B Payne
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Brian Payne (b. 1932, 2530371, Royal Air Force). He served on Canberas 1951-1959.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-08
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Payne, JB
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MH: Good morning to anybody that’s listening to the recording of this morning. I have the pleasure of interviewing Mr John Payne at his home address xxxx xxxx. The date today is Monday the 8th of June 2015. The time by my watch now is 11:41 and basically, I’ve got the purpose here to interview Mr Payne regarding reflections and memories of his time with the Royal Air Force, dating between 1951 and 1959. He will also be touching on a very interesting subject also about his father, who was potentially one of the first people to join the combined service back in 1918, in the formative year of the Royal Air Force having moved over from the Royal Flying Corps. There may be other points that Mr Payne wishes to touch on. I may or may not be taking notes during this and there may or may not be some direct questions at the end, but I’m now going to hand this recording over to Mr Payne and I’ll get him to run through his story.
JBP: My Christian name is Brian. This was the name of a close friend of my father’s, who was two years older than him. In 1916, he was called up in Bradford to join the Bradford pals, trained as an infantryman, went over to France in January of 1917 and was killed on the 22nd of February 1917, on the Ancre River, which is not far from Rheims. In 1940, things were looking difficult. The evacuation of Dunkirk was taking place, Hitler’s armed forces seemed to look unstoppable, we lost most of our equipment left in France. Churchill had just taken over and formed his first war cabinet and everything looked black, but as a seven year old boy, these things were not in my mind at all. One day, my father left his bureau open and I had a look inside, and I saw the usual kinds of things, and in one corner, there was a little portion set aside for technical notes. I didn’t know what they meant but what I did know was, that there were three photographs, and they were photographs of biplanes in front of a hangar. So that evening when dad came home, I said to him, ‘What are these photographs, Dad?’ And he said, ‘Well, when, in 1918 when the First World War ended, I was flying one of those aeroplanes and I was training to be pilot, but I didn’t finish my training because the armistice stopped all the flying so I never got my wings’. Well, as a little boy going to school with other little boys, this was a goldmine. This was a wonderful thing to find out. That my father had been a pilot in the Air Force, even if he didn’t go flying and dropping bombs and things on Germany. He was there, he did his bit, as far as he could and from then on, I dreamed of going into the Air Force and flying. I didn’t mind whether it was flying as a pilot or a navigator. I just wanted to be able to say, ‘I’m aircrew in the Air Force.’ Times passed. I got myself seven credits at school certificate, which was very unusual because mostly, I just worked for other people I enjoyed and looked forward to having as my teachers. And I got one A level. Not enough to go to university but plenty to go into the Air Force to fly, and I was called up as a national serviceman. Started off by going to Padgate and learned to dislike drill corporals who hazed us from day, dawn to dusk. 6 o’clock in the morning reveille till bed time, and got the uniformity that they wanted in terms of what we were wearing and how we cleaned equipment, and then off to a grey Hornchurch to be graded as a potential aircrew, and when I finished the grading, they said, ‘You’re a grade three pilot, but you’re a grade one navigator’. So I said, ‘I’d like to try being a pilot first’. So that October, I was sent up to RAF Digby, where they had Tiger Moths, and I had a marvellous time. The only snag is, the twelve hours that I flew, I always had an instructor with me. Never went solo. Never, never did landings on my own. And that really meant that I could only look forward to being a navigator, but I consoled myself that if I was a navigator, I might not kill myself as easily as if I was a pilot, and with that thought, I went on. Now, the Air Force was in a phase of expansion when I joined them but the majority of the aircraft were World War Two aircraft, propeller driven, and by that time the speed of aircraft meant that propellers couldn’t be used to power aeroplanes because they couldn’t go fast enough. They came up against a problem called the speed of sound, which didn’t do anything good for propellers, and jet engines were coming in, witness the Meteor and the Vampire, which were our front line defence but when it came to Korea, and the North Koreans invading the South Koreans then the, one of the few occasions when the United Nations Council sent troops somewhere to fight, and we were one of the sixteen nations that answered the call of the UN, sent people out to Korea, but of course, we found that the Koreans had jet aircraft from Russia, MIG15, and these MIG15s could play havoc with our slower piston engine aircraft, the bombers, and the fighters weren’t very good against them either, but I was going in on this wave of enthusiasm about the first jet bomber in the country, which was the Canberra. The B2 Canberra. Oh, and I did want to fly that aeroplane. I was hoping I could get on to that aeroplane, to fly a jet bomber. My father had been enrolled in the Air Force a fortnight after it became the RAF from being the RFC and the Royal Naval Air Service, so he started something new and here was I with a chance perhaps of flying in a Canberra. Well off we went for our training. They opened up some temporary camps. First at RAF Usworth near Newcastle, which was a dump. We were in wooden huts. Fortunately, it was February when we went there, when it was bitterly cold, and by the time we finished it was August and it was nice and warm, but we couldn’t get anywhere from the camp very easily, because the buses didn’t run very frequently to Sunderland or Newcastle, and certainly, there was no Sunday morning service to either place from Usworth, so we were out there, trapped on an airfield with nothing to do, but I passed that. Had some adventures, like a compass being wrong in the aircraft and me flying over cloud for an hour, an hour and a quarter and finding us miles away from where we should have been, because the compass was in error by five degrees, which is a lot of miles if you’re flying at two hundred miles an hour. From there, I went down to Lichfield, which again was another temporary, it was a wartime training base where they had Wellington B10s. My course went through successfully, most of them anyway, but a couple of, four of the lads were involved in crashes. The first was a Wellington that was doing a let- down, and the trainee navigator set the coordinates wrong for his Gee set. Instead of letting down to the airfield, he let down in the side of a hill, but they all three survived it because the pilot pulled the nose up as soon as he saw the hillside, and he kind of, was climbing, and the hillside was climbing a bit faster, so eventually, the hillside hit him underneath and he was going on alright until he hit a wall and then it broke into pieces. The other accident happened when they were in the circuit, coming in for final landing. The pilot made an error, the co-pilot was killed, one of the navigators was trapped in the wreckage and the pilot went off to find help and the other navigator stayed with his mate. The fog came down. It took them four hours to find the aircraft. Having got through that, we had a joyful occasion when I got my navigator’s brevvy, and I was confirmed as a pilot officer in the royal service, and incidentally, my initial commission as acting pilot officer was signed on the first day of the current Queens reign. What a long time ago that was. It’s like having a first, first cover stamp isn’t it? Well then, the moment of truth. Hardly anybody from our course at Lichfield went on to jets, just me and two others. We were told we were going to Bomber Command Bombing School at Lindholme, now notorious as a prison, where we did the practice with the Mark 14 bombsight that the Lancasters and Lincolns used, which was called the T2 bombsight for the Canberra. Unfortunately, the bombsight was only an area bombsight in the Second World War and they could have an accuracy of up to four hundred yards with the bombsight. In jet aircraft, the areas were even bigger. It was not a successful bombsight. The work hadn’t been done sufficiently in advance, but we were grappling with flying near the speed of sound at high altitudes, and the problem with the visual bombsight is, you couldn’t see the target when you want to release the bomb, because it was too far ahead to allow for forward propulsion, before the bomb eventually went down vertically, and our experience with a jet bomber dropping inert bombs, just cast metal with explosive inside and a fuse was never very successful. But the time came when we went to 231 Operational Conversion Unit at Bassingbourne, and this was the big time. I was very lucky because the first pilot that I crewed up with, with a Scottish navigator that we had under, Pilot Officer Ford was sent off one day to do circuits and bumps, part of his training before he could fly with his crew, and he took off and got lost and landed downwind at RAF Duxford, which was an inactive fighter station. We never saw him again. And then we got crewed up with a Flight Lieutenant John Garstin, and he was a major influence in my life. We flew together for two years. He was a career officer on a regular commission, destined to go a long way. He’d already served as a aide-de-camp to the governor of one of the Caribbean islands, and he’d instructed at the Initial Training Unit at RAF Cranwell, which is a prestigious post too, so he’d obviously destined for future roles. Anyway, I got him for two years flying in our Canberra which was Willie Howe 725. We got it brand new from the makers via RAF Binbrook where they fitted the particularly RAF equipment in to the aircraft and made it ready for operational use. As flight commanders Terry Geddoe was A Flight commander and John Garstin was B Flight commanders. Flight commanders had their own aircraft. Terry’s was 724 and ours was 725. 724 ended up in a fire dump and was written off, 725 ended up at RAF Duxford, now the Imperial War Museum, Duxford, where it stands as an example of the B2 bomber. The training was interesting but when we finished the course, I had done roughly two hundred and fifty six hours flying since joining the Air Force and there I was, a navigator observer, in the first jet bomber to be flown by the RAF and was I proud? My word I was. From Bassingbourne it wasn’t a long haul up to RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire. We got there on the 26th of May 1953. A date engraved in my mind because the first four crews to go to flying on 15 squadron in the Canberra era, or the Canberra chapter as well call it in the [pause], oh never mind. There were five squadrons building up their strength. There was 15, 10, 10, 10 squadron, 15 squadron, 44 squadron, 56 squadron and 149 squadron and we were all training to become operational in the first eighteen months of our stay at Coningsby, but in the following August, we were sent, we’d been there fifteen months or so, we were told we were going to go to Cottesmore, because they wanted to lay a three thousand yard runway at Coningsby for the V force when it finally arrived. So off we went to Cottesmore, which was a very happy time. Nine months there and off we went again. This time to RAF Honington, which had just had a three thousand yard runway installed for the V force, and there we stuck until the Canberra squadron was dissolved in 1957, but a lot went on before then. For example, the first serious detachment that we did from one of these bases, was from Honington to El Adem. This is in North Africa, near Tobruk famous for the battles between Bernard Montgomery and Rommel in the 1941 and ‘42 years of the Second World War. So it was exciting to go to such a historic place. We were there to fly a week’s intruder exercise over Greece, where they had the ancient Meteors and the ancient Vampires, so we had to fly at a low speed so they could catch us. We cruise normally at .72 Mach, but for those exercises, we had to cruise at .66/67 Mach so they could catch us, so that was quite fun. But I remember about that is the gritty wind, all day and all night - blowing, blowing, blowing - and as dusk fell, you could hear the explosions of mines that had been laid in the Second World War and not cleared, just lying there corroding. Expanding, contracting, expanding, contracting, until all of a sudden, they went off. We did make one visit, we went forty miles along the road from Tobruk, to a famous area where the forces really clashed. I can’t remember the name of the area but there was a peninsula, and on it was a German war memorial. We went up to this war memorial. Everybody started going quiet and whispering, and we looked at the ages of the people on this war memorial, and it was covered. All the granite was covered with names hundreds of young men, and I guess we all had the same thought. Eh up, this could be us. We were a very subdued bunch going back to the officer’s mess at El Adem that evening. When we got there, the local paper was in. They’d discovered the body of a Second World War soldier who’d died in 1942 in the Africa Korps and they found him, twenty yards off the main highway between Tobruk and Benghazi. Twenty yards, in a bit of a scrub, sitting behind a machine gun. Again, it brought it down to earth. And when we got back to England after our attachment, people were beginning to write about Suez and Egypt, and the possibility of confrontation, because Nasser, in July of ’56, nationalised the Suez Canal. Now it’s perfectly logical why he did it, which I can say now in hindsight, ‘cause I can’t remember very much about my attitude at the time except that, oh dear, this is what I got paid flying pay for. It started off with Nasser wanting to build the Aswan Dam. He wanted to build the Aswan Dam because he wanted to control the waters of the Nile, to make them more useful agriculturally, but also as a source of power to power electricity stations and improve the infrastructure. All very laudable, but for that he needed loans, and at the time that the Aswan Dam was starting, or was waiting looking for funds, first the Americans, then the British said, oh, we’ll lend you some money, but after that, Abdul Gamal Nasser made the mistake of buying his weapons of war from the Russians. Not from America and not from England, which upset the politicians. So they said, ‘Well, if we can’t have your orders for aircraft, you can’t have our, we’re going to nationalise the Suez canal, because if we can’t have your loans, we’ve got to pay for it somehow and we’re ongoing with the work’. Now, Anthony Eden had been one of the leading pacifists in the run up to the First World War, and had accompanied Baldwin when he went with that paper peace in our time. He was a sick man, but he wasn’t going to make the same mistake with a dictator again as he’d made with Herr Hitler, and he decided that the, the legal side of international lawyers should tell him whether the nationalisation of the canal was legal, and much to his chagrin, the lawyers said, providing he pays a reasonable compensation to the shareholders, he’s quite within his rights, and it’s quite legal for him to nationalise the Suez canal. This wasn’t what Anthony Eden wanted to hear, but Mr Anthony Eden decided that he was going to teach this fellow a lesson, and he thought of gunboats, which was his age, and he thought the Canberras would do the job. It just showed how little he knew. We knew what we were being prepared for. We were told not to talk to our wives and girlfriends, which we didn’t. We were confined to camp and it all got very tense. Then we were ordered out to Nicosia in Cyprus. At the time there was the EOKA shooting British officers in the back, so we didn’t fancy really, going to Nicosia but when we got there, we found we were alright, because they wouldn’t let us out of camp anyway. Every square foot of the airfield was occupied. There were no permanent accommodation for junior officers, they just slept in tents. The food, with all the people on board, was atrocious, and to cap it all, it was my twenty fourth birthday, and two days after my twenty fourth birthday, my pilot Dennis Wheatley and I were in the briefing room, preparing for our first raid over Egypt, because war had been declared. When they told us that, I just wanted to get on my own for a bit and think out what it could be like. It was a bit scary, but we’d been sent out there in our lovely Canberras. There’s only two problems. The first problem was, we had no way of navigating the aircraft accurately, because the system that was used over Europe was called the Gee system and this was two, two, a master station, two slave stations and they sent out signals. The master sent it out direct to the aircraft and sent one to the, same signals at the same time, and then the two slaves retransmitted the signal to the aircraft, so the aircraft had three readings, and from that, could fix their position by use of a special chart overprinted with Gee values, so we could look at the Oscilloscope and take the C readings and plot the aircraft’s, and that was how we were trained. But there was no Gee station over in Cyprus, nor could they build one in time, but we hadn’t any other aids. We hadn’t even got an astro compass or a bubble sextant. That didn’t do, that didn’t work very well in a fast flying aircraft anyway so we were without navigation aids. And the first raid we went on, was at Kibrit airfield, and we had, we couldn’t, the straightforward way, would have been go due south from Cyprus to the mouth of the Suez canal, go up the Suez canal, and bomb Kibrit airfield, but we thought that, or the powers that be thought, well even the Egyptians will have anti-aircraft gun going up the canal, so if we go up the canal, we’re liable to get shot at so we’d be clever, we’ll fly a series of three courses, and come around like a big question mark. Based on Cyprus, we went down the arm, then round, round, round and at the third turning point, the Valiants would come from Malta, and they would drop markers on the turning point, so we would know where to go to start our bombing run, and then some Canberras of 138 Squadron would mark the target with different target indicators so we’d know what to bomb. Well, nobody had thought that flying three legs without any nav aids is easy to do, because a slight mistake in terms of piloting the aircraft could put you miles off course. And so it was. When I came to the time when we should have been at the last turning point, there were no TI’s from the Vulcans that I could see. I couldn’t see anybody attacking any airfields within visual range of our aircraft. I’d not seen the canal, but it should stand out on a, on a dark night. In fact, there we were, with six one thousand pound armed bombs, going back to an airfield we didn’t know, very close to a large mountain. So Dennis said, ‘We’d better jettison our bombs’, so we went out to sea and dropped the bombs in the water, and hope nobody was swimming underneath. So ingloriously, we went back to base, not having even seen the target. The fact of the matter is, that until that flight, I’d never seen TI’s anyway, ‘cause they were economical during peacetime. They didn’t use everything there so TI’s didn’t get dropped. The next airfield to be attacked was Luxor, which is down to the south of Egypt, and the reason we were attacking Luxor was that Nasser had put his IL28 bombers, the Russian jet bombers, down there out of sight, he hoped. They lined them up on a runway and the air, the photo reconnaissance people saw the aircraft, so that was our target. So we were sent there, in the dark again, but that’s a maximum flight for a Canberra. We have one bombing run, one bombing run only. Well, after our first incident, we were very unhappy, me and Dennis, because we’d not even found the target. On this occasion, the TI’s were dropped and we saw them. A lovely sight. It was November the 5th again. But because of the limitations of our bombsight, built as it was during the war for Lancasters and Halifaxes and Stirlings, flying at two hundred knots, the maximum speed you could fly was three fifty knots, which was way below our maximum speed, and the maximum height you could bomb was twenty five thousand feet, because that was all, we liked to fly at forty thousand feet so going, flying over at high level, coming down to a bombing level, dropping the bomb then climbing up again. We did a cruise climb from the Luxor target, on the first occasion, to conserve fuel, it’s a way of flying a long way. We got to forty eight thousand feet and I have never been as cold as I was that day. Neither had Dennis. It was freezing at forty eight thousand feet, but we got back and joined the queue of aircraft waiting to land, but this time, we had dropped our bombs, and you know how big an airfield is. We missed it. So our bombs fell just outside the perimeter, as did a lot of bombs, but the interesting thing about the debriefing was, the intelligence officer debriefing us was trying to put our bomb burst closer to the target than we wanted to, and I said to him, I said, ‘Look’, I said, ‘I dropped the bloody bombs. I know where they went. You put them where I said, not on the runway, I didn’t hit the runway’. Well when we got back home, it was agreed that it had been a failure. It had been a complete waste of time sending the Canberras, because we didn’t have an accurate wind to put on the bombsight, we had blind navigation, just dead reckoning and that’s anybody’s guess, dead reckoning, so they sent us back the next day to the same airfield, but they had us take off half an hour earlier, so we’d have the last of the light to bomb by, which was intelligent, but didn’t help the results much because we still had no accurate wind over the bomb, over the airfield. Nobody transmitted one to us. So we’d flown all that way by dead reckoning and again, this time I could see the bombs drop, and they did drop inside the airfield, but they dropped on a place which was neither good nor useful. It didn’t disable the airfield and it didn’t disable the IL28s. As it happened, the following day, the French sent in a low level attack force and destroyed them all, but what a waste of time. And then the fourth raid I did, at Suez, was with our squadron commander, Squadron Leader Scott, and I was flying as nav plotter instead of single navigator, so the nav observer went down in the nose and he map read from the coast to the target, and from the target back to the coast, so I didn’t have anything to do except sit there and listen to the conversation, but the final attack was a place called El Marsa barracks, and by this stage, we were supporting the Army in, just out of Port Said. But the nice thing was that, a few days later, they sent us back home to England. That was, that was marvellous, that was the good news, because it got us into our own beds, and good meals and things like that, but they wouldn’t let us off camp. We were still restricted and we were told that although we’d come back in early November, that beginning of, end of December, we were going to go out to Malta, Exercise Goldflake was a kind of surveillance from Malta of the area when it had all calmed down and has a wing of Canberras out there, so we had another month to serve so it was coming up to three and a half months before we’d see our loved ones again [pause]. But when I started doing research on the internet, and the National Archives, it was interesting because so much was glossed over, but I understand that Sir Anthony Eden didn’t have a war cabinet for this particular operation, he just worked with one single senior civil servant, but the planning of the whole exercise made you feel that it was a kind of a mismatch. Senior officers were keeping their stiff upper lip type faces, but I think they were fuming inside because of the way that the arms had been used, or not used properly and all the embarrassing things that could be said, perhaps weren’t said by those in authority at the time [pause]. It was strange drawing up all of a sudden. I had a feeling of how people were when they were going to war, in a real war, not an adventure like this one, and I wrote a little song about it. Have you heard that song “Flying In a Jet Plane,” John Denver?
MH: Ahum
JBP: Well, just right on the top. I won’t, that’s it, that’s it. I won’t, I won’t, I’ll just say it to you rather than sing it. I can sing it but I’m all flat. This is, “Flying In a Jet plane” by me. I pay full tribute to, certainly to John Denver, because it was his thing that started it off -
All my kit is packed
I’m ready to go.
The moon is full, the coach is slow.
I’ve a three hour trip to base, my weekend’s done
Tomorrow is a flying day. I’m 536 we’re on our way.
Flying east, towards the rising sun.
So kiss me and smile for me.
Tell me that you’ll wait for me.
Hold me like you’ll never let me go,
Because I’m flying in a jet plane. I don’t know when I’ll be back again.
Oh Anne, I hate to go.
All leave is cancelled. Weekends too.
The future’s bleak, but I love you.
You fill my waking thoughts the livelong day.
Every place I go, I think of you.
In my sleep at night, I dream of you.
Pray for peace to hold. Not all outright war.
So kiss me and smile for me. Tell me that you’ll wait for me.
Hold me like you’ll never let me go.
‘Cause I’m flying in a jet plane. I don’t know when I’ll be back again.
Oh Anne, I hate to go.
The die is cast. Now the war’s begun.
We fly by night till the bombings done.
Then we fly back to England once again.
A month in Malta, for our crews,
Then we are told the welcome news, of leave for every other man.
So kiss me and smile for me.
Tell me that you’ll wait for me.
Hold me like you’ll never let me go.
‘Cause I’m working in a jet plane. Navigating back to you again.
Landing gently in your arms. Landing gently in your arms.
That’s my poem. A better singer than me can sing it to you [laughs]. Well we got back to England, after our stay in Malta, which was quite pleasant, it’s just that we weren’t seeing our girlfriends and wives, you know, but when we got back, we found that the Canberra squadron, 15 Squadron was being disbanded and this would take place on the 17th of April 1957. This would mean that the Canberras would all go back to the maintenance units and be handed out to other squadrons that were being formed. We’d be, we’d all go our different ways, but the squadron would reform with the Handley Page Victor in 1989, so it wasn’t going to be disbanded for very long, and it could become a Victor squadron, but I’d got to decide what to do. I went home for my first leave in February, and I discussed seriously with my father whether to resign my commission immediately and come out of the Air Force, but he said, ‘Don’t be so precipitous, it’s been a big shock and you are a Christian, but let’s look at the options’. So we went through the options. I didn’t want to fly in the V bombers, ‘cause I didn’t, I didn’t want to drop a hydrogen bomb or atom bomb on anybody and we eventually decided that the best use I could make of my time, would be a navigation instructor, so I went back to the squadron and discussed it with our friends, and the CO got me some forms to apply and I was taken in number 46 staff nav course, which was a course designed for two things. The first was to broaden your experience of the way that navigation was conducted in each of the commands flying, you know, Fighter, Bomber, Coastal and Transport Command. I think that’s all. If I’ve forgotten one, put it in, and the second purpose is to learn how to write staff papers and appreciations, which was very, very useful in my future life, as an insurance consultant. I enjoyed the course, I came out second, and then a guy called Polly Parrot, who was in the Air Ministry on his ground tour, he rang me up one day. He did junior officer postings. He said, ‘Brian’, he said, ‘I’ve got some good news for you. You’ve got a posting to 231 OCU at Bassingbourne. How does it feel?’ I said, ‘That’s great’. I said, ‘When are you getting out of your ground job?’ He said, ‘Oh next year. I’m coming out and I’m hoping to get on the V force’. I said, ‘I’ve got a girlfriend in Sheffield that I think I want to marry’. But I went off to OCU and I got some very good helping from the chief instructor, who took me under his wing and got me working properly. He gave me confidence, and then the Indian Air Force started coming through Bassingbourne, as part of a deal for them to buy our Canberras, we’d train their pilots, navigators, and I got friendly with a Flight Lieutenant Nath. I couldn’t pronounce his Christian name, so he said, ‘Oh call me Juggy’. So Juggy Nath he was and we got on like a house on fire. He came up one November the 5th to our home at Sheffield and met my parents, met my girlfriend, only she was close to being my fiancé then and my young brother who was setting off fireworks, and he really enjoyed himself, and then years later, I got a telephone call out of the blue and we were in here, about 1985, and he was flying with Indian Airways as a captain, and he’d just got married for the first time. He was in his fifties then, at fifty five then, a wing commander in the Indian Air Force he was, and he phoned on spec, and tried some Payne’s in the address book and got hold of me, so we were delighted, and he brought his wife up and came. The first time he was up, he talked to my parents and enjoyed that, so he talked in the evening to my parents. A thoroughly wonderful occasion. Doing research for this about eighteen months ago, discovered that a Wing Commander Nath, N A T H, was the most decorated Indian Air Force pilot in the history of the Indian Air Force, and my friend Juggy, who was a bit of a playboy. He didn’t like flying desks, he loved flying. He loved anything to do with sport. Very keen sportsman and good fun as well. And then the following, I’d been at Bassingbourne six months and just settled in nicely, I made the one major mistake of my career. Polly Parrot rang up and said, ‘I need a station navigation officer at RAF Finningley’, which is very close to Sheffield. ‘Are you interested?’ Of course I was interested. Oh great. So I went up there and the, not that the group captain I didn’t know, but the wing commander was a navigator in charge of the operations room, and he was security cleared to deal with V bomber crews and his deputy, Pete Harle, squadron leader, he was an H bomb specialist and he was cleared to work with these crews, but I’m a flight lieutenant, station navigation officer, the squadron’s navigation officers outranked me. I was only a flight lieutenant, they were squadron leaders. Wing Commander Dawson kept all the interesting stuff about navigation so I began to wonder why I was there, ‘cause I’d got nothing to do. Nothing to do. No security clearance to help with the V bombers or anything in any shape or form. I once tried marking the log, a chap on the squadrons, and the wing commander came and tore me off a strip, the group captain, no, the squadron leader on the squadron, ‘You shouldn’t be marking my men. Give over’. And then they made the post a squadron leader post. Well, two months before, the corporal in charge of the map store had left after doing two years national service, and the only job I could see I could do was the map store CO. So I was flight lieutenant in charge of the map store for the last four months of my service and then came out in civilian life, where I had a totally different career and married Anne. And that’s the story of my life in the Air fFrce. I rest my case.
MH: You’ve had quite an extended career there. Well, extended in what you’ve done but squeezed into a short period of time with the RAF. I’ll go back, take you all the way back if I may to your father, and what his experience was and the way that, did he infer on you any, any, the way that he was trained or was that something you found out afterwards from him? Did he give you any stories regarding his training in the early, early years of the RAF?
JBP: The most infuriating part about it is, that my father had one photograph of three trainees on his course at Old Sarum airfield, but he’d sent home many letters and many photographs to his parents, and they hadn’t kept any of them. We have one letter dated the 1st, the 2nd of January 1919 when he’s trying to impress his mother by what he’s doing, and he calls himself the second in command of the navigation empire. He says, ‘It’s the officer here’, and he says, ‘ and I’m there to do the odd jobs that need doing when he’s making a presentation, but as we’re not doing presentations at the moment, you can see I’ve not much to do, but we discovered the other day that the coke burning stove in the hut causes an upward draft. We had a brilliant idea that we would make hot air balloons and fly them, but they didn’t work so we made a windmill, and the windmill went round on the current so we painted it in RAF colours and had it suspended, so that it would go around all the time. If brass hats came in we would just say we’re checking that the draft, that the stove doesn’t need filling up at all’, and he went on like this, pulling his mother’s leg and, ‘Look at the headed notepaper’. Old Sarum. It’s embossed, not just your printed stuff, yeah. Because my grandmother was a bit of a social climber. Victorian governess type. No, the research I’d done about my father’s training and the training of pilots in the First World War threw up some very startling facts. Fourteen thousand four hundred aircrew were killed in the First World War. Eight thousand of those aircrew were killed in training accidents before they ever got to the front. In other words, our training system killed more of our aviators than the enemy. After the war, when they looked at the records, the German Air Force had twenty five percent of the casualties as the British Air Force up to 1917. It’s shocking. Ok, it was a new world, aviation. The Germans and the French were the major aviators before the First World War. Our generals were, they could only see as far as the cavalry, and they didn’t show any enthusiasm for anything to do with flying. They found out very quickly in the First World War that flying was very important, because the French and the Germans had them, and the English didn’t, so until they got themselves sorted out, which took a year or so, they were under represented and the reconnaissance done by the British was good. It convinced the commanders in the field that they were worth having. Particularly when they had these big pushes like the Somme, and then the pilots had to fly contact patrols, otherwise they had to keep in contact with the front line to be able to see how close the Germans were and whether they could machine gun them out of their positions, but of course, when you’re flying that close to the front line and somebody’s lobbing shells from your side and from their side, the chances of a shell hitting you is not remote so many of the aviators killed. The figures don’t match up to the Army, but then the number of flyers engaged compared with the number of the Army soldiers engaged was quite different as well, but the losses were very high. And the training of aircrew was a problem, because when the war started, we only had, I think it was a hundred and eighty qualified pilots in the whole of Britain, and training was hit and miss. It started off with, in about 1909 that if you wanted to learn how to be a pilot, you got on to this kind of flimsy box kite thing. There was one seat and that was for the pilot. So, the pilot would sit on the seat with the controls in front of him. No dual controls, just one set of controls. Then the trainee would get in through the barrage of spars and things that are holding the aircraft together, and he would be invited to sit behind the pilot so his knees were touching the pilot’s sides and his hands were touching his shoulders, and then to feel the movements the pilot was making, and then the pilot, the instructor, would get out and say, ‘Now you try. I don’t want you to make any turns. Just go up forwards and down forwards’, and it’s surprising how many people crashed like that. You see, the engines of the aircraft weren’t powerful enough. They just take the aircraft up off the ground, but the flying speed forwards and the stalling speeds when they dropped out of the ground were probably three or four miles an hour different, and they didn’t have a kind of speedo to see how fast they were flying. They had very primitive instruments. Couldn’t fly in a wind over five miles an hour ‘cause they’d go backwards. It slowly improved but we were totally reliant on the French. We had to buy, for the bulk of the war, we bought French engines, French aircraft until we started developing our own in 1915 but the war had been going on a year then and it was a very slow progress, and there were great periods when the Germans had the upper, they had the control over the air over the front lines and that was horrible for the soldiers, and they, they found a way of firing through the propeller. That was the big thing. So you aimed the aircraft and fire through the propeller and shoot down the enemy aircraft. And the Germans had an aircraft which wasn’t very successful but it was a good gun platform, and it was called an Eindecker, and these Eindeckers used to go up and our pilots didn’t think they could shoot at anybody, you know, nobody couldn’t shoot anybody down, certainly not through the propeller, and then the Eindecker got into the position where it could shoot the British aircraft down and shot them down in droves. We eventually found an aircraft that could fight the Eindecker. It had three guns facing forwards, called a Pusher biplane, and it had three, three guns facing forwards but the observer had to take great risks with his own life to fire one of the guns, ‘cause he had to balance on the edge of the cockpit to stand up to this gun to fire at the back of the aircraft and there were no training manuals. People were posted to be instructors like the Army does, you know. ‘Right boy, you’re not volunteering but you’ll be an instructor now. You’re now posted as an instructor to ‘blah blah blah’. Go and instruct’. You don’t tell them how. So that you’d think you had just come out of flying training. Hopefully, he had a good pilot to instruct him but many of them weren’t. A lot of the pilots came out of the front line with shattered nerves. Do I fly at all? So when they were made into instructors, unfortunately they used to send people off far too early in their training, so many of them got killed because they shouldn’t have been flying alone, but one of the, the reason was that the instructor was trying to avoid flying, and then you got pilots sent back from the front who were a threat to the squadron if they were going out on a reconnaissance, and they got sent back and made into instructors. In fact, they’d make anyone into instructors if they could, and the instructors privately called their pupils Huns, because they were as liable to kill them as much as the Germans. And then, in 1917, a chap who’d been in the, been flying as a pilot and then as a squadron commander, he went to Trenchard and said, ‘I think we can organise flying training so it’s more useful’. The kind of flying training that we were giving to people was basic training, but it had nothing to do with flying in war. So, we didn’t teach people manoeuvres that are dangerous. Many of the instructors wouldn’t know how to do it anyway. The ones who were straight to instructing from training school and this chap had the novel idea of training people to fly and fight at the same time, so all the training was to do that, if there were any risky manoeuvres, then people had to go through these over again and again with the instructor until he had mastered it, because shying away from not mastering something wasn’t on. And fortunately, he’d been in the post a year at Gosport when my father joined the Air Force, and by that time it was organised along the lines that he pioneered. Great man. So my father got proper training. The aircraft were equipped with dual controls. They had a tube that they could blow the whistle by the other pilot’s ear and you could talk through the tube, and that was called a Gosport Tube, and altogether more time was given to training people before they were sent out, because in periods when the Germans had the control of the skies, they were shooting down our aircraft and we were losing pilots like mad, so the front line commanders were asking for more pilots and the training programme couldn’t produce them, and it wasn’t until 1917 that Trenchard wrote a letter, which Haig signed, sent to the cabinet, war cabinet and they increased the aircraft squadrons from forty to a hundred, and specialist units were created. But a lot of the pilots, a lot of the instructors, had to be trained to instruct in this new way. So you started by training, nobody had been training instructors to instruct until that point, and everything happened in the final year, and I was glad that my father went into the Air Force when he did, ‘cause if he hadn’t have done I might not be here. That’s a long answer to a short question.
MH: What did your father do when he came out of the RAF?
JBP: Well the first thing he did was to be diagnosed with tuberculosis in his left leg, and he required six months treatment for that, and fortunately they were able to cure it but he always had a weakness in his left leg. Then he had another eighteen months looking for a job because, when he went, went in the Air Force, he’d been apprenticed to be an engineer, engineering draughtsman but he’d not finished his course, so he applied for something like that, but he’d not finished and other people had and they got the job. But eventually, in 1921, he got a job and he worked for the same firm from the age of twenty one to the age of seventy four. Same firm. It changed ownership three times. Each time the business was failing and somebody bought it out, but it was a good record. He saw good times and bad times. One of the good times was, he went with a friend, Jack Webster, on holiday at Towyn in Wales, and Jack had married a girl called Mary Haye, who was the elder sister of Florence Haye who was a zoology and botany graduate from the Liverpool University, and she was the only female taking that degree, all the rest were fellas. So she was kind of in advance of her time but she’d not had a boyfriend even though she was twenty six by now, because if you got married between the wars, you had to give up teaching and she liked teaching so she gave up men, until she met my father and they got married in 1929, but there were one or two moments. Mother’s family was a working class family. Did all the shopping, Gibbet Street in Halifax, and Florence’s dad who was a thimble maker by trade, but it was mechanised in the war years so they weren’t made by hand any more so he was unemployed at the end of the war, and had a very rich great uncle called Uncle Joe Allen and he had a posh house at Maidenhead, and he had the franchise for importing into Africa the products of a certain Mr Ford for the whole of Africa, and he gave my grandfather a job in the Gold Coast, Lagos, importing Ford vehicles, and my granddad told us of an occasion when the local chieftain decided he wanted a Ford car so he went along and explained it all to him, and couldn’t help noticing that the chief was looking very disappointed and very upset. So he asked him what the matter was and he said, ‘Well you sent me a picture of this car and where’s the lady that goes with it?’[laughs] Anyway, the Haye family didn’t drive cars at all so my mother was out with my father in his Austin 7 and they were having a row as they were driving along. She didn’t, not knowing what she was doing, she switched off the ignition. The only time he hit her.
[Ringtone tune. Reminder for medication]
JBP: My pills. I hope they appreciate the nice music [pause]. There was a pause while he took his pills.
MH: Yeah. Yeah.
JBP: Who has not put his pills out this morning?
MH: What we’ll do is, we’ll temporary pause the interview at this time so Mr Payne can have his pills because they’re more important to be honest. So we’ll pause this for a second.
[machine paused]
MH: Welcome back, this is a continuation of the interview with Mr Payne. The time now is 13:04. Mr Payne had some medication to take so we decided to pause at that time to give him due time to do that and he’s happy to continue, which I’m very grateful to him for. We were just finding out about your father and what he had done after his days with the newly combined Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Flying Corps, a bit about his training that he’d done and then subsequent to that that he’d stayed with the same company for a phenomenal amount of time. What was it that he was doing for that company?
JBP: He was an engineering draughtsman, which was what he was being trained for, been training, but he was joining a company called Hall and Sons in Rotherham who were struggling with the changing conditions in industry and commerce, because it was about that time that the big recession started in about 1925 or so and they were having to multitask, so my father found himself the only draughtsman but also expected to go out and make calls on people as a salesman, but in doing that he found he’d got a capacity for being a salesman and by the time the company, Hall’s, was sold to British Automatic Refrigerators Limited, my father was a full time salesman in Bradford for them, and as the recession deepened, so he had to give up his car, and he was walking around selling freezer units to butchers because they had to install freezer equipment in their shops in order to keep the meat fresh. About 1932, 1929 they got married, in 1930, my mother gave birth to a still born child at six months, simply because of an infection she caught, and in 1932 I came along and brightened their lives and my father sent a card to my mother a month before I was born, ‘Whoops mum, soon be hitting the high spots with you. John Payne’, with a little ditty on the back of it as well. He’d got a nice quiet sense of humour. My mother was one of six girls and they all liked Raymond, as he was called, and he got on well with his mother-in-law as well. In fact, he got on with most people, he was very even tempered. He’d got a nice sense of humour and was very reliable. Everybody found him very reliable which was one of the reasons for his success as a salesman because as I found it certain, if you were honest with people, it’s very highly valued and so it should be.
MH: So you come along in 1932.
JBP: Yeah. My sister Anne came along in 1935. my sister Margaret in ’38, but my brother Robert decided to wait out the festivities of the war and came along when peace was declared. The only trouble was that my mother, who had gone back to teaching during the war as her war work on the Monday, she had an interview with the headmaster who said, ‘I’m delighted to tell you, Mrs Payne, that the teacher who went to the war from here, the biology teacher, is not coming back to Sheffield, so you can work full time at the job you love’. She was very pleased, went out and rang my father to tell him the news, went to the doctor’s on Friday and guess what. ‘We’ve done some tests Mrs Payne, and you’re having a baby in August’. So she, you know, she’d done her bit and my father called the baby ARP, because he didn’t taken any air raid precautions. So he was called Anthony Robert Payne [laughs]. Now Robert was a common name in the family, Robert. But like my father, another thing about my father, he couldn’t go into military service because of his deafness and his TB hip so he joined the air raid wardens, known as the ARP, and he went to the first meeting with the group. What do we call you? Now my dad hated Raymond, because it was a family name, and he hated Henry which was his other name, so he says, ‘Call me George’, so ever after, whenever it suited dad, ‘Hello George,’ we knew he was an air raid warden in the war. He also, not a religious man but a very, very sincere Christian. In the time when the evacuation of Dunkirk was taking place, he was in hospital having been diagnosed with having gallstones, and in those days, it meant an operation and the aftercare was botched and he got an abscess on his wound, and the surgeon came in and told mum and dad that if it burst inwards, that was it. End of story. If it burst outwards, there was a good chance of recovery, so they had three weeks with this hanging over their head, and dad, being a regular church goer anyway, he and mum were praying about it, and so was the extended family on both sides, and one day dad was by himself in the, in his cubicle in the ward and he had a sense of a presence with him, and he got the sense of words kind of appearing in his mind, ‘You’re going to be alright. Don’t worry’. And he didn’t, but the impact it had on him afterwards, he started regular bible study, he became a preacher in the Plymouth Brethren, and he was a very popular preacher. He did an awful lot of appointments by request. Took a number of weddings in their tradition and funerals. He preferred the weddings. They had adult baptisms, you had to be converted and then baptised, so as a sixteen year old, I had to get into this water with this old man. The only consolation was the girls had to do that and they looked lovely with their dresses clinging to them [laughs]. But he used to bring people home from the morning service, and he’d bring people home who were on their own and he called the lame ducks. And my mother had a spell in a psychiatric hospital in her fifties and she went to Middlewood, and she met a couple of ladies there and there were nothing wrong with them. They’d just been put in a mental hospital and left and become institutionalised. So my mum, when she got discharged from hospital, she said to the psychiatrist, would it be possible to take these two ladies out occasionally. Just they seem very subdued. So he said yeah, and later, about four months later, he said, ‘Mrs Payne you’ve made a tremendous difference to these ladies. They’re coming alive’, and mother always said, they kept coming to her house till they died, but she said isn’t it awful that people can be locked away in our civilised society and, of course, after that the legislation they brought in to close mental hospitals, because so many people were put in there, you know, put in there for having a baby out of wedlock, or because their father was wealthy and didn’t want them around. Shocking it was. So he really lived out his life of faith and I wouldn’t say there were any of us who are as good as he was. I’d like to be but I wouldn’t, I’m not.
MH: Did he, or did he carry on any sort of passion towards flying? Did he fly much after?
JBP: On the -
MH: Did he have the opportunity to?
JBP: On his eightieth birthday I took him down to Old Sarum airfield where the Shuttleworth Collection is based. Have you heard of them? Of course you have, yeah. And they were flying the Avro 504K which was the training aircraft he used, and I took him down there because that was the day when the flying displays were being done by the Avro, and he really liked that. And then we saw an oil painting in the shop, and I bought it, and he had it in his bedroom till he died and then it went to my grandson, who has got it over his bed now. So the link’s being continued although Nicholas has just got a degree in geology, so I can’t see him going to fly.
MH: But your passion came alive when you went into your father’s bureau.
JBP: Yeah.
MH: It touched you then.
JBP: That’s right.
MH: The bug, as such. As some people call it.
JBP: Yeah.
MH: From a photograph.
JBP: We all get touched by bugs, don’t we?
MH: We do.
JBP: Passion.
MH: Passions.
JBP: Passion. Yes.
MH: But your passion, then, continued through.
JBP: Yes. I didn’t, my long term aim was to fly. I tell you what were a hell of a culture shock and that was going on my honeymoon. Not, not the interesting bit, but the first time that Anne had flown, and we were taking off at three in the morning, in the pitch dark, and we came across the Mediterranean coast on our way to Rome. at first light, and that was magic. The only thing that wasn’t magic was buying some bloody tickets when I’d been paid for flying [unclear]. I did feel that. [laughs]
MH: So you joined the RAF in ‘51.
JBP: Yeah. National serviceman. The number of 2530371, and I was an aircrew Cadet.
MH: Just to make sure that I’ve written that, 2530371.
JBP: Yes.
MH: And that service number made -
JBP: National service number.
MH: National service.
JBP: The regulars were 414, first three letters.
MH: Ok. Did that then go, that also then picked up your national service number or did it become completely different? Your regular service number.
JBP: No. I kept the national service number.
MH: But it had a prefix then of 414.
JBP: No 414 was the one that was issued at Padgate.
MH: Ok.
JBP: Other access camps might have had different numbers, I don’t know, I only know Padgate. I was a national service man until the 14th of November 1951 when I applied for a permanent commission, a four year commission with four years on the reserve, which I extended when the direct commission system came in which, I think, they extended to a twelve year commission with an option of coming out after eight years. I went on to the direct commission before Suez and I took the four, the eight year option after Suez.
MH: What recollections, or what impressions when you were at RAF Digby learning first, learning first how to fly on Tiger Moths?
JBP: Oh, that was magic. Without a doubt the best flights I ever did, even though I was a Canberra navigator, the most exciting flights were Tiger Moth flights. There was the Chipmunk came in to replace the Tiger Moth. I used to love flying the Chipmunk, but flying in an open cockpit is something, something else. Something completely wonderful. And you can do so much over a small area because you’re flying quite slow relative to jets. You can hover almost. You can keep inside the airfield perimeter and just do your -
MH: Yeah.
JBP: Your stuff. I liked everything about the Air Force till Suez.
MH: Suez was the turning point.
JBP: Yeah [pause]. It was the start of this book I suppose. If I go back I could, I could tenuously link it to get it out of my system. By the time it was happening I wanted to go, and if we’re going to, I didn’t want the war to start. I wanted it to be done diplomatically like I said in the song, but I was quite committed to go into action if necessary. I wasn’t suddenly questioning whether I should go or not. My attitude was, well I’ve been paid flying pay for five years, they’re entitled to my service up front, and once it started, you just wanted to get it finished as soon as possible [laughs]. But I think there is a report on the bombing. I’ve been trying to get to the National Archives, I’ve been trying to get a report on the, there was a survey done of the bombing results on the airfields, and I’ve read fragments of other people’s books on the subject, which makes me believe that this does exist, but I couldn’t find a way of getting to it ‘cause I’m not very good at those websites. I’m sure there was a report done and they took nine major airfields and we didn’t close one of them. In all the bombs, we dropped and we didn’t close one of them. An enormous number of bombs and a lot of them dropped outside the airfield perimeter and that’s the shocking thing.
MH: You can reflect in some ways looking back just over a decade back to when Bomber Command first started out. The bombing missions to Germany and such like.
JBP: Yes.
MH: The accuracy there that was portrayed.
JBP: In 1941 a report came out and it showed that aircraft bombing with direct reckoning and star sights, which were the only two things they had at night, nine out of ten bombs dropped were more than five miles away from their target. Only one bomb out of ten was within five miles of the target and these were five hundred pound bombs. They weren’t a thousand pounders. And the area of devastation was only about a hundred yards. So the safest place to be was the target.
MH: Yeah. It’s strange to think of it like that, but that is, that’s a correct statement.
JBP: Yeah.
MH: Yeah. But it’s interesting, though, that, as you said in part one, that the bombsight that was used by the World War Two Bomber Command bomb aimers was the same then, just over a decade later, in the jet era, in the Canberra.
JBP: Yeah. And the forces against, the forces acting on the bomb and on the aircraft had greater, one of the examples is astral, astral navigation, using the stars. Now it all started with ships at ground level or at sea level, and bringing down the star sight on to the horizon to get the elevation of the star, to then be able to draw a great circle line, which on a short distance is a straight line to get a fix but you don’t have an actual horizon in an aircraft so you’ve got to put something in, so they found with low speeds, you could put a bubble in, and the bubble is acted on by the forces of gravity and where as a sea, seafarers could take two or three sights and that would be enough, we used the bubble sextant we had to take sixty sights, all automatic and they averaged out sixty sights of this star and then you got on the tables, and plotted this on your chart and you looked for three stars so that they crossed at a hundred and twenty degrees, a hundred and twenty degrees, a hundred and twenty degrees and your probable position was inside this ‘cocked hat’ as they called it. I was taught that in basic air navigation training. I used it once when I was at Lichfield on a night exercise, and I used it once on the staff navigator’s course when we were looking at Coastal Command and Transport Command and the way they navigated. Never used it otherwise. And I went to, from St Mawgan to Gibraltar on a staff nav course and I was navigating by lines of pressure, with the aircraft being steered by the gyro not a compass. I tried to understand that because I’ve got the notes down there and I tried to understand it now, and at eighty three, I just can’t understand it [laughs], at twenty four I was navigating by it and got there. Yes. The equipment lagged way behind the aircraft. That was the problem we had, we always had. Nowadays, the way they take modern star sights I’ve not been trained so I don’t know them, but the early ‘50s was, 1952 was the biggest size of the Air Force in war or in peace. That was the most resources there but a lot of those the jet engines made everything redundant, and we had a lot of other aircraft.
MH: It’s my understanding that, yeah, because I think Bomber Command still had things like the, well the Americans called the Superfortress, but we called it the Washington.
JBP: Yeah. That’s right.
MH: Which was still around -
JBP: Well 15 Squadron had Washingtons before it had Canberras.
MH: So, I mean, if you think of the size of the Superfortress, you know, the Washington compared with the Canberra, quite a fundamental change.
JBP: It is.
MH: In aircraft type, etcetera.
JBP: And when the yfirst displayed at Farnborough by Beamont, on behalf of English Electric, the way that he flew it was like a fighter, and some old fuddy duddies in the air ministry said, ‘You don’t fly a bomber like that. It’s a light bomber not a heavy bomber’, and of course, the heavy bombers did spectacularly well. The Vulcan, the Valiant and the Victor. They really were agile aircraft, but when you got to those speeds, the G forces that you can vector a G force into the horizontal and vertical. The G forces were far greater on equipment in the aircraft, and the T2 bombsight we used in the Canberra was a modification of the Mark 14, which as you rightly said was designed and built in 1940, after the Bomber Command said you don’t want to lose any more crews, but if you wanted an accurate bombsight, you had to fly straight and level for so long and you can get shot down while you’re doing it. You go for a bit of evasion and then you accept an average error of four hundred yards, so what blanket bombing was, was seeking to knock out the factories, seeking to kill the workers who worked in those factories, because they were in the zone. Just pass the zone with enough bombers to allow for breakages on the way there and a certain number of bombs, the probability is, you covered every point of the carpet, but you kill civilians and that was a deliberate policy before Bomber Harris took charge of Bomber Command. He just carried it out. He gets blamed for it but it was Churchill that was the prime instigator.
MH: I’ll step you back in time if I may.
JBP: Yeah.
MH: Back to your favourite aircraft being the Canberra. Could you take me through, or take the people that are going to listen to this later on, through right the way from mission start to mission end? What would have been your role and what you did, what you wore, because I remember you saying when you got up to a very high level of forty eight thousand feet, you found yourself very cold.
JBP: Yeah.
MH: And reflecting upon that bombers during the World War Two, of course, had problems with freezing guns and that sort of thing, that they couldn’t then operate to defend themselves, so it’s the similar sort of scenario there, with the freezing element.
JBP: Yeah.
MH: But then the crews in World War Two, of course, wore the sheepskin clothing, etcetera, that was designed to keep them warm and the leather helmet, etcetera. If you could take us through what your, how you, your day would have gone from mission start to mission end.
JBP: Right. Yes, I can do that. I’ll think of a particular mission. I was flying an exercise, a Bomber Command exercise, testing out capabilities of ships at sea and aircraft finding them. I’m stationed at Honington, near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, a member of 15 Squadron. My pilot is Flight Lieutenant John Garstin. The nav plotter is Flying Officer Jock Logan and the navigator observer is myself [pause]. We have a meal and then we’re taken by RAF vehicle lorry or bus or Land Rover to the briefing room, collecting on our way, the parachutes which are the type which you sit on [pause]. We go to the, entering the briefing room we go to get our equipment out of the store, which is where we keep it. The first thing that I put on is some thermal underpants, stretching down to just below my knee and a thermal top. The next item of clothing I put on, if its winter, it’s a woollen cover for the body and the arms. If it’s summer, probably nothing particularly special. A thick pair of socks, because it’s amazing how cold you get in your feet and extremities, so you need a thick pair of socks, woolly socks and flying boots which are designed so that if you get shot down over enemy territory you can cut off the, the bit of a boot that looks like a flying boot and you’re left with a pair of reasonably serviceable shoes, which look a bit like shoes for escape and evasion. Having got yourself dressed in that gear, you then put on your flying overall. In my day they weren’t the colours they are today, it was a kind of grey blue with the squadron badge on the pocket and the rank on the shoulders, on little bits of material that can be slid on and off and used elsewhere. The next item of clothing is a pressure vest. Now a pressure vest, the function of the pressure vest is if the, what do they call it, we were pressurised down to a certain level for operational work. If we were flying at forty thousand feet, then the cabin pressure is pressurised to make the inside of the cabin twenty five thousand feet, so flying at twenty five thousand feet, if you’ve got an explosive decompression at that artificial height, you quickly go to forty thousand and this is where the pressure vest kicks in. The moment there’s any change of pressure, the pressure vest inflates and the inflation is to guard against damage being done to your breathing. It’s connected up with the oxygen system which is fed to you under pressure anyway, and there’s a clip on here, the oxygen mask attaches it to there, attaches to your helmet. Your helmet, strangely enough is not made of thick material, it’s made of a cotton. It’s washable cotton with the earpieces in and the, the nose I say, the nose of the thing fitting over you like that. You couldn’t operate at high levels without oxygen. You’re flying at forty thousand feet, there’s no way you can do without your oxygen. You’ve got to be taking your oxygen in otherwise you will start hallucinating, and as an observer, I had a little bottle of oxygen for when I went forward to the nose, or came back from the nose, I wasn’t on the mains supply system I had my own bottle, so I had to make sure I got that. Over the pressure vest I’d got what is popularly known as the Mae West, which is the bright yellow jacket with inflatable front like the famous actress. When you’re flying, you fly encased in your pressure vest, and on top of the pressure vest, no, your flying suit is underneath your pressure vest. That’s right. Switch on to the oxygen. I’ve got to look at the bomb bay and check that the bombs that we are going to drop are the ones that have been specified at the briefing, and I check that any settings that have to be made before take-off are made. I can set the bomb pattern inside the aircraft. It’s next to where I sit. It’s just here. And if you’re down in the nose, and you’ve got to suddenly set a pattern to come back, crawl back, set it, crawl forward. In other words, the aircraft was very cluttered as you saw. Because of the extra navigator and the extra bank seat on the original plans, all the space that would be available to a single nav isn’t available, because that’s put aside for the observer, and because of the observer the pilot seat instead of being centred under that plastic dome is to one side, so tall pilots kind of get a bit bent. They’re flying this way and this is crushing their head over like that, and they often have a bone dome on up on their helmet, so that the result is flying like that and not being able to see very well that way, and you can’t see behind anyway. No mirrors. There should have been a radar called yellow putter, but yellow putter proved to be unworkable in anything like operational conditions. It just didn’t work, so they scrapped it. We never had it on my squadron. We weren’t experimental, we were just routine main force. Dogsbodies. Having got all our equipment and our helmets, making sure that we have the right oxygen mask because we fly T2 bombers, we fly T4 dual control training aircraft and they provide one T4 training aircraft per squadron, so that we always have something to do CO’s checks and things like that in. But when you fly in the T4, you don’t have a pressure vest ‘cause the aircraft doesn’t go to that height. It only goes to twenty five thousand. You don’t do long trips so there’s only room for one navigator, because the two pilots have to have got to have bank seats. You’re mainly flying local simulations so you don’t have wing tip tanks, so you can do high speed runs in one of those, which is rather fun. Go to maximum four hundred and fifty knots, liked doing those, and occasionally we’d do full load take off, when we’d put six one thousand pound bombs on board and the pilot could feel the change in the trim, both taking off and landing. That was important that we did those regularly, ‘cause you’d be flying with twenty five pound practice bombs, they don’t make much difference to the handling of the aircraft, but six thousand pounds of bombs makes a big difference. You don’t do fancy aerobatics with six thousand pounds bombs on either. We then go into briefing. The briefing would be in terms of first of all, telling us what our target is and how we are to approach the target, what formation we are going to fly, the turning points and the times we’ve got to be at the various turning points. The emergency alternatives to our own airfield if we come back and we’re clamped up with fog or things like that. They would tell us where the enemy, for the purpose of the exercise, where the enemy are. That’s reported. Where they were steaming, which part of the North Sea we should be looking for and generally giving us data about the meteorological conditions, both on the way to the target and at the target. We always treat winds given to us by Met offices as a bit sceptical because they were seldom rarely right, and one of the jobs of the plotter is the navigator observer, he works the radar and gets the fixes every four minutes and then the plotter takes those fixes off my chart, and puts it on his chart and uses it to calculate variations in wind, which would call for a variation in course, and then you [unclear] travel at that time, at the back point, the pin point. You’ve got to hit it at the right time and we prided ourselves of getting there within six seconds, whereas the standard that was set which was easy with Gee. Now, when it came to dropping bombs, there were two briefings. The first briefing is if we were dropping twenty five pound practice bombs, one at a time, on the target. We could drop eight of those in two hours. The reason being that there is more than one aircraft using the bombing range at the same time. People on the ground have receivers so they can hear what the pilot says, so if you’re on your bombing run, your pilot switched on to transmit at the end of the bombing run, and you can hear the nav observer saying, ‘Steady. Steady. Steady Right. Right. Steady. Steady. Steady. Steady. Bombs gone’. And the pilot would echo, ‘Bombs gone’. And the people on the ground would then know, in so many seconds, a puff of smoke would show and we’d know where the bomb landed, and it was up to the people in the bomb proof shelters to get these bearings, pass them to a central control point by telephone. They would plot the three positions and get the fix of where the bomb actually hit and its relation to the target, so it could be 2 o’clock, a hundred yards. Mine laying was five hundred yards. That was visual bombing. GH bombing. I told you about Gee to get fixes, say where the aircraft position is, well GH uses the same equipment and the oscilloscope in the aircraft, but in this case, the master station, not the one that transmits the original signal, it’s the aircraft that puts the signal and it gets two replies and one gives you a course to steer to go over the target, pre-computers on the ground and the other gives you four points that you would check off one, two, three, four and when you tick off number four, you drop your bomb, so flying along in an arc, like that, and these lines have changed at right angles to that line, so you can navigate saying, ‘Right. Steady. Steady. Steady’, like you can with a visual bombing, but radar bombing at forty thousand feet is a lot more accurate, because with radar, you don’t have to see the target with your eyes. Visual bombing you’ve got to see the target with your eyes and often, if you are that high, the target is over the hill so you can’t see it. There are practical limitations with the visual bombsights.
MH: You mentioned Gee.
JBP: Yeah.
MH: Was it the same sort of Gee system that the navigators would have had to rely on during Bomber Command in World War Two?
JBP: Definitely.
MH: The same, the same system, it hadn’t changed or had it been -
JBP: No, Gee had had its life, because the nice thing about Gee was that you kept the security of the aircraft, your own aircraft. An aircraft that transmits signals can be homed on to. The Germans could create a radar which could home on to the transmitters from, say, with aircraft with H2S, H2S bombing system was a radar bombing system where the sea was black, the land was light green and built up areas are bottle green. Now that was transmitting a signal ever millisecond or so and an enemy fighter could home in on that signal and blast it. And missiles, of course, are even more effective at homing into signals like that. So what was nice about Gee was that it was a passive system. The aircraft didn’t transmit anything. It just took a signal from a master station and then when they came in, two signals from the slave station and with the oscilloscope it could be a calculated reading, and you go to the chart, plot those two readings and that gives the position of the aircraft. Now you could, we practiced a thing called GH homings, Gee homings [unclear], and that was used extensively in Bomber Command when we were using the Gee systems in the mid-40s, because you could pre-determine from your chart what signals you needed to see to be in a certain position at a certain time.
MH: Right.
JBP: So you’d put these points that you wanted to put down and then you’d go back on the arc of the signals to where you wanted to start tracking on to that. So say you were, went to Berlin, massive big target so it doesn’t really matter where you hit, but if you got a line going through the target, another line telling you when you got to the target, like a homing back to base, you can actually fly a course using Gee, a bit more complicated than GH but you could do that from 1942 onwards, ‘cause GH came in in 1944 and there was no doubt that, by the time I joined the Air Force, visual bombing was in decline, except for the Canberra, because they couldn’t miniaturise the H2S radar enough to fit into the Canberras size of aircraft, and what advantage we had and this, for many years, people don’t realise this the Canberra was a wonderful high altitude aircraft. You’re talking about it going, it had world records for fifty seven thousand feet at one stage, but an aircraft that could fly at that height and manoeuvre is very rare and the fighters with swept back wings couldn’t do that. The MIG15s found, always found Canberras a headache because when you tried to formate on it, you couldn’t get near it and if you tried to outmanoeuvre it, the Canberra was far better because of the big wing section between the engines but I felt very happy flying in Canberras. It was a good aircraft, just as the Mosquito had been before it because it was a replacement for the Mosquito.
MH: And did as many roles.
JBP: Yeah. And it was the only aircraft that served fifty six years operationally in the RAF. No other aircraft has gone beyond fifty years. I’d like to say it was because of myself you know [laughs]
MH: What would you say was your happiest time or your happiest moment or your happiest reflection in the RAF?
JBP: It sounds silly. We were only at Cottesmore for nine months, but there was a couple from Sheffield who joined the squadron two months after I did, and the husband was called Alf. Alf Bentley and his wife was Joan Bentley and they were quite a bit younger than me. In fact, they were the youngest married couple on the squadron. I think he was just, Alf was just on his twenty, just over twenty when he came to the squadron, and they had a son in ‘54 and twins in 1956. No. They were both born the same. Yes, Steve was born in January and the twins came in Christmas of the following year. They had three in ten months and I’m godfather to the eldest, and at the time that Steven was born, they had a sixteen foot caravan on the caravan site, and we had the main gate for RAF Cottesmore and next to that was the wooden huts for junior officers, ‘cause they didn’t have a properly built mess and we were all close together and the station similar, so there’s three groups. So the pattern we got into was that myself and Harry Tomkinson and Bob Haines, Bob flew as a navigation plotter in Pete Dyson and Alf Bentley’s crew, and we’d go up in the evenings to their caravan, and sometimes we go to the station cinema, and sometimes just play card games and board games, and of all my moments in the Air Force, the best moments were eating soft biscuits that Joan were trying to get rid of, and playing, playing monopoly and laughing like anything with Steven sleeping away. The day I came out of the cinema, I got a post here playing cricket at Usworth, and knocked a tooth out -
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Interview with Brian Payne
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Mark Hunt
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2015-06-08
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Type
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APayneJB150608
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01:51:04 audio recording
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Second generation
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Cambridgeshire
Cyprus
Greece
North Africa
Egypt
Libya
Libya--Tobruk
England--Duxford (Cambridgeshire)
Description
An account of the resource
John Payne was born in 1932 and went into the Royal Air Force as part of his National Service, becoming a Navigator on the Canberra aircraft with 15 Squadron. His father went into the combined service in the First World War, and was training to be a pilot when the war ended in 1918. This prompted his desire to fly. John tells of his enjoyment of flying the Tiger Moth aircraft during his training at RAF Digby, and his experiences of his many travels to RAF stations.
He spent some time in Greece, taking part in intruder exercises, and also recalls his time spent near Tobruk and tells of his experiences including visiting a German war memorial. John participated in the Suez Canal crisis, and details his operations in Cyprus and Egypt, and the problems that this created from a navigational point of view. He tells about his meetings with Flight Lieutenant John Garstin and also Wing Commander Nath, the most decorated pilot of the Indian Air Force and the part they played in his life. John flew the T2 Canberra named Willie Howe 725 now on display at Duxford.
Contributor
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Vivienne Tincombe
Temporal Coverage
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1956
1957
15 Squadron
aircrew
faith
Gee
memorial
navigator
RAF Bassingbourn
RAF Digby
Tiger Moth
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/882/11709/PHorshamES1602.2.jpg
67e67ad73fa2fc212dac0e588fd3a172
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/882/11709/ASymondsHorshamE170105.2.mp3
7d055b8f4144ed6db659e469c9e75ac0
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Title
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Horsham, Eric
Eric Symonds Horsham
E S Horsham
Description
An account of the resource
14 items. An oral history interview with Eric Horsham (b. 1923), 9 photographs, and his memoirs. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 102 Squadron from RAF Pocklington.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Eric Horsham and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-01-05
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
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Horsham, ES
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Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 5th of January 2017 and I’m with Eric Horsham down in Warminster and he was a flight engineer. And he is going to talk about his experiences in life but particularly with the RAF. So, Eric what are you earliest recollections of life?
ESH: Well, every year we went off to Devon for a holiday at relations because my people came from Plymouth and Devonport and this was held good right up until my teenage years. But early memories really, I suppose began at the age of about, serious memories, seven when we heard a very strange noise on one occasion and we all rushed out to see what it was. And do you know what? It was the R101 which was on its way to London and of course guided by the River Thames because that’s where we lived. In Plumstead. So it was logical. In fact the best view from Plumstead was the Ford Motor Works which had four big white chimneys and so that was a landmark. And following on from there it wasn’t until I was [pause] well I suppose fourteen really because that’s when I left school and they said, ‘Well, there’s a couple of jobs and one is — would you like to be a messenger in the Royal Ordnance factory?’ Which was right adjacent to Plumstead at Woolwich, you see and also the headquarters of the Royal Engineers. So that’s what I did for six months because it was destined that I should take the Railway Clerical Examination and join the rest of the family working on the railway. So that’s subsequent to that they sent me to train as a booking clerk. But I didn’t show up very brightly so they said, ‘No. We’ll send you to a goods depot.’ Which was rather like being banished, you know [laughs] because, can I be humorous at this point and say, well yes I was sent to a depot call Nine Hills which was in Vauxhall near Waterloo and on one side I had the Brand’s Essence and Pickle factory churning out pickle. And looking the other way we had horses because everything was delivered, delivered by horses, and drays at that. And on the other side we had the gaslight and coke company pushing out fumes so that was my early memory on the railway and then a friend of mine said [pause] well I told the friend of mine in the railway business that I was very unhappy there. So, indeed the friend said, ‘Well, we’ll try and rectify that,’ and apparently I didn’t shine as a booking clerk either. So they sent me to the estate office of the Southern Railway which was way out in the country at Chislehurst, but I digress because previous to — I mean we, talking about the year 1937. As you’ll appreciate if I was ’23 — born ‘23. ‘33, ‘37 that’s thirteen or fourteen years and 1939 came along. We can verify those dates and we had to join anything organised. All young people. So, but I think maybe I’m a bit previous to that because I went along to the Air Defence Cadet Corps. This would be somewhere about 1937 at least. So from there of course we went on to the Air Training Corps which was very much in evidence at Woolwich because we were, had the run of the Woolwich Polytechnic, and the chief there was indeed given the rank of wing commander in the Air Training Corps. Wing Commander Halliwell. So, that’s where I first got my, sort of my aircraft experience and of course it was a very good base for workshop practice. We all started off wanting to be flight — to be aircraft fitters. Fitters and turners. And the very basic things that we did were of course in connection with Tiger Moths where you really had the history of aircraft from very early days, and we had to learn all about turn buckles and things which kept the wings in place. But of course as time went by, here we are in ’39 and we were getting heavy bombers coming in, and if you’d, you had to decide, you know, really what you wanted to do because you were going to be called up for sure. And state a preference. So of course I did. And that was to be a flight engineer. Now, as an aside to this, engineers in the Air Force — flying, got twelve shillings a day. Now, you, you know seven twelves is eighty four. That’s four pound forty a week which is not to be, not to be sniffed at. But of course we also had to join something anyway. So, off I went to, to be called up but unfortunately there was a problem because I’d had a medical earlier for call up and the doctor discovered that one leg, ankle or calf, was slightly different to the other one. And of course yes it would be so because when I was born it was in a splint up until a year, eighteen months which straightened it out but it never did quite catch up with the other leg. Anyway, they said, ‘No. You’re grade three. We don’t want you.’ So off I went back to the estate office and soldiered on. Filing I think was our main job then because the railway had a vast estate. However, ok, come twelve months I was getting pretty fed up so I went up to the local recruiting office and said, ‘You know, I’m available. And I’m partly trained as an engineer. I want to join the Air Force,’ and they said, ‘Well that’s alright. You’re in the Air Training Corps. You should be alright.’ So they sent me off to Cardington and, for a medical. Went to Henlow actually. Adjacent. Just down the road from Cardington. Saw the top brass and he said, ‘Well, jump up and down there,’ and so I did. And he said, ‘There’s nothing wrong with you, off you go.’ So back to an interview at Cardington. The very, very modern method of identifying people. You had all these puzzles in a book, and you went through the book. A hundred puzzles and things like a bit of algebra, you know. And I knew a little bit. Anyway, I got the question right and I was the only one in that class who got it. So the squadron leader who was interviewing, and he was loaded with gongs, of course to a young man I couldn’t take my eyes of these gongs. Anyway, he put me through all the paces and he had a civilian officer too, with him, in the interview. And in his room he had every kind of aircraft and I was to — aircraft recognition. So I did very well at that because we were well trained in the Air Training Corps. So off I went then back to civilian life and then a little while later got called up for Aircrew Reception Centre at Lord’s. So we had a, we were very honoured because we had to be kitted out in the Long Room which was famous as you know. We had drill on the famous turf. Now, that lasted about three weeks by which time we were fully kitted up and said, ‘Right. Off to Torquay you go.’ We thought that was jolly good because Torquay was a lovely holiday centre wasn’t it? Anyway, we did, I did eight weeks there altogether. And we learned administration and the law of the RAF and the time came when they said, well, you know, off to the squadron — no. Off to the big training centre you go. And I remember I slept the night on Bristol Temple Meads Station because that was it. We were going to St Athan in Wales. And the train service being what it was we did arrive at St Athan with two kit bags by the time we got there. And humped them all the way up to the camp which we thought rather naughty. Anyway, we went through twenty six weeks, I think it was, of training throughout every facet of aircraft construction and the essential things that one would have needed to know. Like you had to be au fait with a very complicated system of petrol tanks. Now, each wing of a Halifax had six tanks. And this had to be in flying whittled down from, so that your main petrol was in the mid-section, in tanks one and three. Funny enough on the test training board they said, ‘No, you really ought to have another think about this. Go back and think for another week.’ So, then I passed out and they put a little white flash in my cap and they gave me papers for the Number 1652 Conversion Unit which was that Marston Moor.
[Telephone ringing. Recording paused]
CB: So we’re just re-starting now with St Athan and the rest of the things that you were doing in training there.
ESH: Yes. I’ll go straight into leaving St Athan.
CB: What else did you do in St Athan? Hydraulics. What else?
ESH: Is that running?
CB: Yes.
ESH: Well, yes, you had your petrol system. You had the other power that was likely to be in aircraft which were accumulators. Now, not as you would think an electricity accumulator but this was liquid in a cylinder. Oil actually I think it was. And air was pumped in giving it a pressure and on selecting undercarriage down the accumulator would push it down. This is in the case of a Halifax which was either hydraulic or pneumatic. So the way to get services to operate was by his accumulator. But not only that of course because you did have [pause] now let me think. You had the port inner engine on a Halifax is the one that supplies power to your services and —
CB: Electrical power.
ESH: Yes. Some of it would have been electrical power.
CB: But also hydraulic.
ESH: And hydraulics had to be learned. Flaps were hydraulic. The other services control are foot and pedals by the pilot on the fin and rudder. And the elevators — well they would be hydraulic you see running a pipeline out. And flaps for instance. Fairly high pressure, well two and a half pounds I think were the standard pressure in the system but it was enough to push a big flap down against the airstream. And so electrics — you had to be au fait with the electrical services, and therefore you had to mug up on Ohm’s Law if you like in order to appreciate the power that you could get from electric motors. So, and then of course you had to know the different gauges of the stressed skin of the alclad which was a compound of the aluminium NG7. You see, the mind gets very hazy when it comes to the complete structure but you were able, by the end of six months, to walk through a mock-up of an aircraft with your eyes closed. You could have bandaged the flight engineer. He was the one who moved around and you were perfectly au fait with where the main spar came across so you could sort of jump over that. And of course the controls for your petrol were underneath the, what’s called the rest position which was a little sort of bunk for resting people. We didn’t go to sleep there actually but it was very useful. And then in the front of the aircraft of course you had the pilot with the wireless op immediately underneath him. And the navigator and the bombardier in the nose proper. So they, we were pretty well genned up by the time we left there. We could go anywhere blind folded within the air craft there and operate switches without thinking about it. So then they said, ‘Right. Here’s, here’s your ticket.’ You’re on your on your way,’ to a place called Pocklington — no. Sorry. Marston Moor. The sight of the famous battle actually was just down the road. And this was number 1652 Conversion Unit where all the crews got together as and made up as crews. Now, I hadn’t met our crew before then but we were very late. The mid-upper gunners and the flight engineers only met the crew, the other crew of four who’d come along from EFTS and their various ‘dromes where they had been instructed, to make up a crew. And it was strange because we assembled in the hall and the flight engineers and the gunners — mid-upper gunners, would be sitting in chairs and then in came the existing crews because they’d been flying Wellingtons which only required five people. And then — how do you find a pilot? They said, ‘Join up with somebody,’ so eventually, I think we were down to about two flight engineers and a chappie came along and said, ‘I need a flight engineer. You’ll be my flight engineer won’t you?’ And it turned out that he was a very very competent pilot. His name actually was, he was a Pilot Officer Francis then, who came from a village near where we are now called Stoke St Michael near Shepton Mallet. Anyway, he was quite stern. He always said that he’d seen our records but I don’t think he had. Anyway, he brought the crew along and said, ‘This is our flight engineer. Do you think he’ll be alright?’ So that was it. That was our crew. And so then we started training on the next day on circuits and bumps because this aircraft was totally new to our pilot. And while we’re on the subject of crew we had a very important chap in the crew who is of course the navigator. Now, we had actually in retrospect, having had thirty odd ops to prove himself, and we wouldn’t be here now if it hadn’t have been for Oscar Shirley, who was our navigator, because you could turn him upside down. You could have umpteen course changes. He knew exactly where he was. Because it could be very, I mean I heard of crews who had navigators that weren’t too good and that was curtains. However, we won’t dwell on that. But, and while we’re on crew our bombardier was fresh from the first few months of a teacher training course. He was called Johnny Morris but not to be confused with the comedian. And Alan Shepherd was our wireless operator. Now, Alan Shepherd came from Ringwood, off a smallholding. Wonderful chap really. Did a lot of good work after the war. Who else have we got to account for? Oh rear gunner. Yes. Rear gunner, another Londoner. I’m just desperately trying to remember his name. You wouldn’t believe it would you? [pause] I’ll remember it in a moment. We’ll come back to that. Now, who haven’t we accounted for? Mid-upper gunner. Jimmy Finney from Hull. Lovely lad who later got shot up on one operation and had to pack it in.
CB: And your bomb aimer?
ESH: Ron Alderton was the name of the rear gunner by the way. He is still with us as far as I know but when I phoned him the other day he said, ‘I’m losing my marbles. I can’t come and see you.’ So, there we were. Crew set up. And then of course we all had our bicycles with us. Off in the van and off we went to — I think we went by train from Green Hammerton to York. And then York out to Pocklington, and the station yard was just gravel in those days. And then of course we walked over to the ‘drome which was quite close. Each of us had two kit bags and a bicycle. But we knew we were going to Pocklington and it didn’t have a very savoury sort of record. In fact they said, ‘Now you’re here you’ll be lucky if you last three weeks.’ Which was a throwback from — 1943 was a desperate year and here we are in January or February was it of ’44, at the Conversion Unit. And Pocklington had, sorry not the Conversion Unit. Pocklington — the actual RAF station and there was definitely a pervading sort of sense that this was a bit dodgy, you know. However, we were led into operations in around about, just before D-Day. We’d done all our circuits and bumps and cross country’s and they let us down very gently on short trips to France. I mean the first trip we did was to a place called [unclear] which was a P-plane place. P planes were coming in thick and fast so Churchill had said to our boss Air Chief Marshall Harris, ‘Look get your lads on this. I want it stamped out.’ Because they knew the 6th of June was coming up. So we continued to do that until right through until well after D-Day. To various places which you wouldn’t be able to find on the map because they don’t give, you won’t find them as places like Foret de Dieppe. Which is unheard of, I mean, but there you are. And then we started ops didn’t we? And of course our accent was on night bombing. Can you imagine having a sheet of aluminium stood up against the wall and you gathered up in your hand and [pause] gravel? Now, you threw the gravel at the aluminium. Now that’s just what it’s like when you’re being shot. If you’re near a shot. Because all the shrapnel comes and hits the aircraft like that and that is getting just a bit too close for comfort. However, they were nights. Now, what you don’t, what you can’t see you don’t worry about do you? Even though it was seven or eight hours sometimes. Or five or six to the Ruhr. Because we were concentrating on the Ruhr. I mean Essen after we’d been there and some of the other lads had been there previously there wasn’t one brick standing on another. And that’s where Krupps the armament works were ruined, you know — finished. Because we were mainly at that time after [pause] I mean our targets were decided by the Ministry of Economic Warfare. And they said, ‘Right. Wipe out Germany’s oil and that will end the war.’ So that’s what we did. We went to all sorts of obscure places trying, in bulk, to wipe out an oil plant. Because, I mean, you’re looking at a complex in the middle of a small area of a village. Now it took a lot of aircraft to plaster it so we did a lot of this up and down the Ruhr. I mean there were so many places I won’t bore you with that. But that’s what we did. But also we went to one or two further places like Brunswick. Way across east to Berlin. And then Hanover, Soest, Osnabruck and they were very well defended. And of course the night fighters hadn’t quite been been nullified as they were a little later. So we had, I suppose a charmed existence. And one of the deadly things the Germans did was to position a gun at a fixed angle — called a shrage gun and it would come out and go straight for the port inner. Once you got the port inner — well that’s where your services came from. And there’s no way really you could put a fire out. You’d try by diving [pause] but no really we had a charmed existence I suppose. And then D-Day came along and in preparation for that the squadron was busy but we didn’t actually get over Normandy until, I think it was July the 18th 1944 when it was, there were troop concentrations around Cannes. Now, if you remember Montgomery couldn’t shift them and everyone was looking to him and saying, you know, ‘You’re going to be a failure aren’t you? You can’t. You’re army can’t do it.’ So they whistled up the Air Force east of Cannes where Tigers tanks had dug in in expectation of a bombing raid. and of course we were there 5 o’clock in the morning and it soon became obscured by dust and smoke. And really it was pretty terrible for the Germans I’m sure because they staggered out of their bunkers and that, having been bombed by I think it was a thousand aircraft. Not all at once but over a period of about half an hour. Your concentration was so great yes you could time them and of course this was, in effect, an army cooperation. We had to be very careful because the army had to lay down a yellow barrier of flares with a given margin which they decided was safe so — and I do remember on that occasion I think as we were coming — as we were going out on that raid as you’ll realise Cannes isn’t that far from England. They were coming back. So, quite amazing you know to see these aircraft coming back and you hadn’t got there. Now, this was daylight of course because they switched us from night after a time because we went on to daylight because of course if you can see something it should be, you should be more accurate. Now, we did go on right through the summer. We went to one P-plane place seven days running. Foret de Dieppe. If you can find it on the map. Because one operation was preceded by Mosquito. Now the Mosquito could — it was planned he would be on a fixed from England on the exact spot. So we were trundling away there getting towards — and the secret was when he dropped his bombs everyone else would do theirs. And of course unfortunately we got up near the target and one aircraft opened its bomb doors and dropped the bombs and of course everybody else did the same. So really that was — the idea was good but it didn’t work in practice. Whether the Air Ministry would like you to know that I don’t know. But yes, it was so. So, we were largely on P-plane bases but then we went on, as I say, to daylight. Oil installations. Because at that time it was really beginning to show that the Germans couldn’t really put enough in the field because they hadn’t got the petrol. So, mainly of course we were up at the Ruhr at places like Gelsenkirchen where there were oil installations and that more or less saw the summer out. But one operation did stand out for us and that was army cooperation with the Americans who were trying to push into the Ruhr and we hadn’t yet, they hadn’t yet done it but there were three towns. Julich, Duren and Eschweiler, and I think they are adjacent to the [pause] now what was the name of the forest?
CB: Ardennes.
ESH: The Ardennes, yes. Indeed. The Ardennes and these Germans had all their batteries concentrated in that area and they could dig in these Tiger tanks and they were very difficult. I mean they were very difficult to move. And the crews also were dug in and ready to come into action as soon as the raid had passed over. Anyway, we went through the target and on our way out and we must have wandered. At that time of course to nullify guns you dropped out metallic strip, Window, which really foxed the German radar. And they were pretty good on this radar. And we did wander around to one side on the way out. Out of radar — out of the Window cover and you could see. I was lucky I had a little dome and I could look out as a flight engineer to the rear and you could see these black dots coming up, but you didn’t know whether that one was going to follow that one but it did. And there was an almighty bang and so skipper Francis knew what that was so immediately put it into a dive. Now we were about fifteen thousand feet I think and we ended up diving and ended up at eight thousand feet hoping that the Germans wouldn’t be able to follow us down but the place was full of smoke and cordite. The smell of cordite. If you’ve opened up a firework or let it off you’ll smell cordite and that’s what, that’s what was filling up the aircraft. So you couldn’t communicate. Everyone had gone deaf so you had to wait for your hearing to come back. But being a flight engineer I was able to walk around because we were at level flight by that time. Previous to that we’d been pinned in our stations. The G-effect being such. And so the first thing I saw — the aircraft looked like a pepper pot on one side, the starboard side, and daylight was streaming out. No flaps. And unfortunately Jim Finney in the mid-upper turret was pointing to his leg and the shrapnel had gone through at the thigh which rendered him, his control of his foot etcetera to be nullified. So wireless op and bombardier got him out of the turret and laid him down in the fuselage, bandaged him up and they cut his trousers first in order to find out where the where he’s bleeding. And they did a good job on him because you know if a chap’s losing blood he’s losing life blood. So, anyway, the skipper said to navigator, ‘Give me a course for home.’ He gave him a course irrespective of what we were flying over and he pointed the nose in the right direction and off we went and we were soon back. I suppose at — oh yes it was awkward because there was a mist coming up and a fog but we were pointed towards Orfordness and the aerodrome there which had FIDO. Fog Dispersal [pause] Fog Incandescent Dispersal Organisation. So we were able to fly around once firing off all the red flares that we had so they should know down below that we hadn’t got radio, we hadn’t got brakes. But it’s a long runway and it was called [pause] There were two — one was at Carnaby further up the coast. This was Woodbridge. Straight in off the sea straight on the ‘drome. So it was getting pretty misty and it was closing in. November is a bad month isn’t it? Anyway, we got down didn’t we? And we managed to take up the full length of the runway, ended up on the grass at the end. But nevertheless we were off out of trouble. And along came, well they knew full well that this aircraft was damaged. Couldn’t talk to us. So they sent out the wagon and dear Jim was soon in hospital. And we, along with a couple, quite a few dozen others descended on the cookhouse for a supper, you know. Which we did eventually get because they didn’t expected all these people to come in 5 o’clock in the afternoon. And so what do you do? We’re down at Orfordness there in the east coast of Essex. They gave us tickets back to London and then back to York which was an excuse for everybody to spend the night in London. But I was lucky because I could get an electric train just down to Woolwich as it were and back home. We never got pulled up. None of us had hats. Well, I think, I think the skipper did because he was very particular about carrying his nice peak cap, you know. However — yeah, so we, but that’s only one of about six different aircraft that we had on the tour. Some of the numbers are in the logbook. But where we had different problems — for instance on one occasion we had a seagull in the engine nacelle which put that out of action. So of course you didn’t use that aeroplane the next day. We had so many we could have a new one every day if necessary. As I say, we had about seven. We got the undercart. That went down alright otherwise we wouldn’t be here would we? But it could be things like that which would be, could be very dodgy. And we eventually finished our tour on oil installations. Let’s see [pause] towards the end. Towards the end. Towards the [pause] October. October. Through Christmas. Probably about January or February of ‘45 and that was the end of our tour. And we had done twenty daylights and about thirteen night trips which clocked up something like four hundred, five hundred hours flying. Full stop.
CB: We’ll stop there for a —
[recording paused]
CB: So we’re just, we’re just doing a recap now which is on the damage on the aircraft.
ESH: Yes.
CB: So starting at the point of the big explosion. Then what happened and what was the effect?
ESH: Well I hope I can remember.
CB: That’s alright.
[pause]
ESH: Well we left the target area and unfortunately we may have erred to one side of the Window cover which of course blocks out their radar and nullifies their accuracy. But nevertheless they caught us up and in a flash there was an almighty bang and our hearing disappeared straight away and the skipper put it into a dive, And down we went. Down. Down. Down. Something like eight thousand feet I suppose before we levelled out and that was a relief but we were then, I was then able, as a flight engineer to move around and observe any damage and by jingo there was. Looking out the port side — the starboard side the flaps had disappeared. One important, very important thing. The whole side of the aircraft was peppered and daylight was, it was more or less a window. And our mid-upper gunner, now our hearing had come back and our visibility was quite goon— pointed to his leg and indeed he had caught, been caught by shrapnel right through his thigh from his turret. So that very shortly after our wireless operator and our bombardier came out and got him out of the turret and cut his trouser and stopped the flow of his blood. And we realised it was very urgent to get back to England because, fortunately our four engines are still turning over in spite of losing some major control of the aircraft, so on arriving at Woodbridge which was a mighty long ‘drome a mighty long runway and very wide too we had to circle. We had to tell the ground what was happening. And so there we were flying, running off red verey lights in case there were other aircraft in the circuit, but there was no issue. We did one. One circuit around the flying control and straight in to the funnel of the runway. Without — without radio we felt pretty helpless. The fog had closed in on the aerodrome now at this time but he was an A1 skipper and as I say one of his things that he was so good at was flying blind, he could fly in any condition. He got us down and we got Jimmy into the transport and away to the nearest hospital.
[pause]
CB: Was there any fire on the aircraft?
ESH: No. Fortunately we didn’t have fire. Which is a pretty terrible thing.
CB: So you had no, no hydraulics and you had no electrics. How did you get the undercarriage down?
ESH: Well, it’s heavy, it’s a very heavy undercarriage. Massive wheels on a Halifax. Six foot high nearly. If I remember rightly the hydraulics had gone which serves flaps, bomb doors, undercarriage and, actually what happened is [pause] there is another precaution because if your —
[pause]
CB: You could wind it down could you?
ESH: No. There was a precaution against it falling down which is called withdrawing the uplocks. This is a job that the flight engineer had to do. He would go down to what the rest position which is where our mid-upper gunner was. And there are two D rings. One each side protruding from the fuselage. The cable obviously comes through the back of the wing because the undercarriage would have been beneath the wing, and it was a simple system. Ok. You pulled the D ring which pulled a cable which released a sort of a gate bolt. This bolt, if you can imagine a gate bolt, held up the undercarriage. So the undercarriage would automatically fall down. So that’s obviously what the, as flight engineer, I did on approaching. We were fortunate in as much as that was all intact. I mean if the aircraft had lost its undercarriage earlier you not only would it have caused a lot more loss of fuel flying with an undercarriage down, total drag. But in this case no. The uplocks worked. Irrespective of any hydraulic system. And of course your warning lights came on here and there.
CB: Ok.
ESH: We covered that have we?
CB: You have. Yeah.
ESH: So therefore we got — we were on the ground, Jimmy’s off to hospital and we are left to go and find our supper again with another hundred bods as we used to call ourselves. The next morning we were given a pass to go back to Pocklington via London so everyone had a night in London if they couldn’t get home. We all seemed to arrive the next morning for the 10 o’clock up to King’s Cross, up to York and that was the end of that sticky situation.
CB: When you had a night in London where did you stay?
ESH: Well I was able to go back. Once we got to London I was able to go back to Plumstead to my folks, and one or two of the other crew had friends that they could call on. Or relations. In fact Skipper Francis had some relations down in Slough way. Now, Ron Alderton, the rear gunner, had Canadian friends temporary and he did a night of the rounds of whatever pubs he could find and night clubs. He had quite a roaring time. I mean we didn’t need to get a train before 11 o’clock from Kings Cross to get back to York. So, on the train back we were, you know, reminiscing. And I always remember I’d tried to write out something for the, for the skipper at the time when all our hearing had gone and it was an absolute shambles. Unfortunately, you couldn’t hear anything and I found I couldn’t even spell the word fuselage. What I should have done was “Jim hit.” Two words would have conveyed that but instead of that — in the event you do not act logically and you would find that you had difficulty in getting to grips with language. You could move about and you knew exactly what you should do but you couldn’t think it through. But we were all in the same boat weren’t we? We all lost our hearing for quite a time.
CB: So you —
ESH: But we got back. That was the thing.
CB: You experienced the initial shock. When did the secondary shock hit you and what was that like?
ESH: Well, we had a night’s sleep, as you will appreciate, in London and I suppose we were rehearsing the events in the train for five hours. But we well appreciated that we were very lucky. But I don’t think at that time that that sort of event had too much effect on a crew. We were all together weren’t we? Jimmy was unfortunate but he wasn’t killed. That would have been a terrible disaster. So therefore I think we’d already been used to five years of war. I mean I’m talking about ’39 onwards, you’ve already had four years and you became inured to stress, in effect. So although we went back over the ground again but we were as a crew, we were complete. We were very lucky.
CB: How long before jimmy rejoined you?
ESH: Jimmy, unfortunately was off to hospital in Oswestry and he was ruled out forever more as a flyer and we received then a young gentleman from Scotland called Onderson. He was very broad and I think mostly we didn’t call him Ian, I think we just called him Jock and he was quite happy with that. And he finished up something like five or six operations with us. He became one of us obviously.
[pause]
CB: Now, you were saying that you did thirty. In your tour there were thirty ops, twenty of them were daylight. How many of those were to do with the V weapons and what happened?
ESH: Well, as we said the V weapons and the P-planes. The V weapon was of course outside our control. It’s a rocket and you don’t hear it coming, you don’t know it’s left the ground even. And if you were anywhere near it then it could destroy half a dozen houses at one time. So we were mainly concentrating on P plane sites because you could flatten them. Until they put them on lorries and then of course you couldn’t find them. So, yes.
CB: So you were, you were in daylight but how easy or difficult was it to find the V1 initially and then V2 sites?
ESH: Well, I don’t think that we could ever find — the V1 for instance was secreted in the middle of a forest and certainly fighters could eventually have a go because they could see them and once we’d identified, or the Air Ministry had identified the location they knew what they were looking for on lorries. They would shoot them up but of course V2 was purely a mobile rocket. But once it was off it was off and it would perform a perambular and no one knew it had gone and no one knew it was coming. And there was just a terrible explosion and five houses could be — disappear.
CB: But the V1 sites, as you said, in forests — how effective would you say your endeavours were in dealing with those?
ESH: Well you want the truth. A question like where would you find the P- plane sites in a forest? All we had to go on really was what came back from our agents by wireless. That there was this activity in a certain place which the Air Ministry would identify, or the sight would be identified and it would be marked on our maps, as I say, as a very obscure village in Pas-de-Calais. The only thing we could do was mass bombing. In fact I don’t remember a site which wasn’t bombed on each occasion with less than three hundred aircraft. So that you hoped that within that aiming point you would destroy it. And I think we did a lot but not all.
CB: Saturation bombing.
ESH: Yes. That was the idea. Saturation bombing [pause] Stop.
CB: Ok.
[recording paused]
CB: Now, some of your endeavours at bombing these V1 sites perhaps were more effective than others. Was there one site you went to several times?
ESH: What? A V1?
CB: Yeah. In Dieppe.
ESH: Yeah. Foret de Dieppe. Did I not mention earlier?
CB: No. So, just, just cover that can you? The fact you went several times.
ESH: Oh yes indeed.
CB: Why did you go to that several times?
ESH: Yes. In order to mitigate this nuisance of the V2, V1s of which many thousands were being aimed at England at the time on a fixed track. One morning, in fact five or six mornings continuously we searched out a fixed ramp in a forest called Foret de Nieppe. Which of course is in the Pas-de-Calais, if you can find it. And it took thousands of tonnes, must have done, to obliterate that site. But it was, it wasn’t able to fire off these V1s in rapid succession because, you know the Germans were very thorough and got it to a high state of proficiency but we did concentrate for many weeks and months on finishing off these P-planes because it was aimed at civilian population.
CB: How many times did you actually see V1s flying towards Britain on your way to the target?
ESH: Well fighter pilots did of course but not, not us.
CB: You were too high up, were you, to see them?
ESH: Yes. I mean they didn’t, they came in at about two thousand feet so I can’t say I saw one. But I saw the damage and I experienced a V2 standing on Albany Park Station which was on the, what’s called the Dartford loop line. Bexley Heath, Barnehurst and down there. And I was standing on the station and this thing dropped a quarter of a mile away and I had to ask the station staff what that was. I mean, you know, I didn’t see it. If I’d have gone along I’d have seen a row of houses demolished but that. No.
CB: And what was their reaction to your question?
ESH: Who?
CB: The railway people.
ESH: Well he sort of said, ‘Where have you been?’ Because it was — this is not live is it? Well he wondered where I’d been not to know that London was being plastered with P-planes bombs. That sounded by the way like a common 6oo cc motorcycle engine.
CB: And you weren’t able to tell them what you were doing to counter this. You weren’t able to explain what you were doing, to the people in London.
ESH: No. Well they could see —
CB: Bombing.
ESH: They could see I was in uniform.
CB: Yes.
ESH: But they were so busy with their ordinary lives that I was just one of two million servicemen. It didn’t rate more highly than that.
CB: Right. Ok.
ESH: Pause?
CB: Yeah.
[recording paused]
CB: So what other events were noteworthy.
ESH: Ah well, now what comes to mind straightaway is on the way in to a target to see an actual aircraft hit. And you must remember this has got a full bomb load of what ten [pause] what had we got — five twenty thousand pounds of TNT going up as well as the fire bombs, and it’s the most horrifying experience. But I do remember that occasion when — and the skipper was quick to point out that the Germans did send up what they called Scarecrows. But I’m sure this would be more than that because the whole sky around that aircraft was just bits, black bits in the sky. Now, you see a Scarecrow couldn’t put up that much material could it? I don’t think so. I think this was a very salutary experience but you didn’t dwell on it because, well, you know, it could be happening at night time and you never knew anything about it.
CB: So we’re talking about night time now are we?
ESH: No. Night time, other than someone standing and throwing grit at your aeroplane that was the only indication you would have had that there were some shells very close by, but you see what the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve. Although you might feel the effect of it, especially if you’d another aircraft in front of you you’d be perhaps very difficult as a pilot to maintain your position because you’re right in his slipstream. And there’s a slipstream of four engines just in front of you. I mean there were so many aircraft in the sky that it’s a wonder and in fact we lost a lot of aircraft because of collision. Indeed we did if the truth is known. No, there’s a bit of variation. We also had some trips with mine laying. Now, what happens? Mine laying. Well we had a chap from the navy came up and showed us exactly what’s going to happen because these things are quite weighty. I think they weighed about a matter of hundred weights and I think the maximum we could carry would be two. But there would be a whole squadron perhaps, or a lot of aircraft from other stations, all on the same business, and so off we went out across the North Sea and in to the Baltic. We had to pass over an island called Bornholm. Now, how far it is into the Baltic I don’t know, not very far perhaps because we were after this shipping route between Swedish oil coming down to feed the German factories. But I do remember dear old Bornholm put up some ack-ack you know [laughs] as though they could catch us with it. One little gun you know. It was a bit of humour in a not too humorous event. But that made a change from flying over the Ruhr because actually the first time I saw the Ruhr at night, well you’d never believe it. We came into the south of Ruhr and there was a bank of searchlights for the next fifty miles. Up and curving around. And, you know, when the chaps had said you’ve got to avoid searchlights I can understand because once you get pinned or —
[Mobile ring tone. Recording paused]
CB: So we’re talking about in the Ruhr and the way they would have, the place was defended.
ESH: Yes. Right.
CB: And how they were able, in the dark to track where people were going.
ESH: Well if I describe the scene.
CB: Yeah.
ESH: The first time you saw these early night trips that we did it took a bit of getting used to. And the first time I saw searchlights. Now, if you can imagine Kiel up in North Germany. Right around and come down through the rest of the Ruhr down to [pause] what town would be the south of the Ruhr?
CB: Stuttgart. Stuttgart.
ESH: Stuttgart. And Nuremberg. That is something like fifty miles isn’t it? Or more.
CB: More.
ESH: A solid ring of thousands of searchlights, it was like day. And it curved actually from the north right down. Facing England to the south. Stuttgart. Nuremberg. And even further south than that I think. A solid — banks of hundreds. And if, if you got near one they had one particular, in groups, they had one particular searchlight which was extra powerful and it used to show up blue, and, well we did get coned on one occasion. We were lucky because very often you couldn’t get out of it. There were so many and they could sort of follow your track and there was this master searchlight and everybody else was following. And what we did, we managed to get out by just diving and weaving. And I suppose we lost a few hundred feet and you had to make that up because you had a flight plan. You know, you didn’t depart from that flight plan. You just didn’t go off on your own doing your own thing. That was certain, certain tragedy that would be because you had whole squadrons of night fighters still and they were still able to fly. Although, they couldn’t do the training because they hadn’t got the petrol, so the petrol bombardment was beginning to show. I mean we’re talking now about mid-’45 aren’t we, you see? Sorry —
CB: ’44.
ESH: ’44. From ’44 to the end of ’44 it was gradually having an effect on German oil production, synthetic oil. And of course being as they were small patches they were very difficult to find. I mean, you might have one oil refinery and its ten miles from the nearest town. Now, you’ve got to be very accurate to get anything delivered to that site and — if you could get there, you know. But of course the German fighter production was going down so fast that I think we had a charmed existence from nineteen — from June ‘45 really to, or September ’45 to the end of [pause] ’44 to the end of ’44. I mean we were very busy D-Day time for the next three months, and then it sort of slackened off because you were limited to what you could do in the way of army cooperation. In fact the army didn’t want the Air Force to take full credit for having liberated Germany. So [pause] but raids were still being, operations were still being carried out by the squadron right through to mid-‘45. Or ‘til D-Day.
CB: You talked about the intensity of searchlights. What effect did that have on the air bomber’s ability to identify the target?
ESH: Well, searchlights. Yes. But you had visual and of course later in — from D-Day onwards the squadrons were equipped with H2S which was radar with the ability to show up features on the ground. To be able to distinguish between water and land. Now, if an oil refinery was situated just off a river that aiming point would certainly be able to be calculated and it left an aiming point for a whole squadron of aircraft marked by Pathfinders. You didn’t go on your own. It was, at that time, after D-Day, everything was Pathfinders and they would blaze the trail and you’d have a Master Bomber and he would come through your RT. I remember one occasion when the Main Force was given a name so it would come out rather like this. ‘Widow 1, Widow 1 to Main Force. Bomb the red TIs.’ And then a minute later, ‘Widow 1 to Main Force. Bomb the yellow TIs.’ Because of bomb creep.
CB: TI being target indicator.
ESH: Target indicator. Yes. So you had a whole spectrum of colours. Red. Green. Blue. Yellow. And they could be changed rapidly by RT from the master bomber to the main force so that he kept, you kept pace with bomb creep and you became more effective with that. In fact very effective in the end. I mean such people as Wing Commander Cheshire as he was then would be up the front there giving the, giving that RT direction.
CB: Would you like to just explain what is bomb creep? Bomb creep. What is it?
ESH: Bomb creep. Yes. What happens is that [pause] it creeps back rather than on to the target. How it happens — I suppose if you’ve got a conflagration then bombardiers could think that that was where you should be aiming. So a lot of aircraft, I mean, don’t forget there are five hundred aircraft on this job so that some of them would think that was the target. But, so the Master Bomber had to keep reminding people that it was creeping back and it shouldn’t do. He’s got to go on to his new target indicators. And he changed the colour of course. So you knew what to look for. Otherwise your bomb load was nullified.
CB: Ok.
ESH: Go on to [pause]
CB: Yeah go on. So we’ll stop there for a mo.
ESH: Yeah then —
[recording paused]
ESH: I said Cora’s mum and dad yes.
CB: Yes. On a slightly lighter note clearly as a crew you had your, and personally you had your social side. So what did the crew do, and what did you do individually?
ESH: Well, that’s what I did individually and didn’t take any part in any social activities with the crew.
CB: Right. So what did you do?
ESH: I didn’t go drinking, you see.
CB: No. So what did you do?
ESH: I spent most of my time in York.
CB: Right. And what did you find there?
ESH: This family.
CB: Right.
ESH: And I was made like a son.
CB: Were you?
ESH: So I didn’t — we all went as a family to the theatre one evening and we saw the famous lady who had just started acting. She was in, “Last of the Summer Wine.” Very famous. You chaps have got memories haven’t you?
CB: We’ll latch on to her later. So, but but the family —
ESH: I’d better jot her name down while I think of it.
CB: Ok. Yeah. So you —
ESH: Thora Hird.
CB: Yeah. So the family was in York. What did the father do?
ESH: He was invalided. He couldn’t do anything because of the start of silicosis.
CB: Right, but what was his trade?
ESH: That was — he was in charge. He had his own firm of plasterers.
CB: Right.
ESH: So I’ll go on to that. I’ll just make a quick note, Thora Hird.
CB: And they had a son and a daughter.
ESH: Yeah. Yeah. Famous restaurant in the middle of York. Still there.
CB: But you’d go to that as well would you?
ESH: Yeah. I’ve got it. Yes.
CB: Go on.
ESH: Ok.
CB: Yeah.
ESH: Live?
CB: Yes.
ESH: We were talking about the social life on the squadron. Well, as I say I think I was eighteen when I, nineteen when I arrived there, and went out into York and I met this delightful young lady called Cora. And she said, ‘Well, if I’m going out with you my people want to see you.’ So I went along and they became my mum and dad for that time. And her dad was a, had a plastering firm but he was suffering then from, I think, the start of silicosis and he couldn’t work but nevertheless they went out of their way to look after me, and of course the extra attraction was of course la belle Cora. And at that time there was a show going in York and who should be a young actress was Thora Hird. But I don’t think she remembers that herself now, bless her. She’s passed on hasn’t she? But Mr Parker’s claim to fame as a plasterer was the ceilings, for instance, in Betty’s Bar. Now Betty’s Bar is very well known in York and it’s still there. And if you go down into the basement you will find a mirror which is now cut up into three parts. And pretty well every famous flyer has got his signature on the glass having done with a diamond ring. And they’re all there. I think you’ll find Group Captain Cheshire left his mark there. And quite a lot of others passed through but they’re all on this mirror. So that’s down in the basement of Betty’s Bar. It’s worth going down to see. There’s history galore down there. So they looked after me like a mother and father, not withstanding the fact they had a son in the Middle East. With the 8th Army I think it was. But of course being really a dangerous occupation I had no business stringing this girl along. I mean I was her first boyfriend and you know the effect that has on young ladies. So, the crew were very good. They didn’t question me as to where I was spending all this time you see. Which brings us to —
CB: How you broke it off.
ESH: How we —?
CB: Broke it off.
ESH: Oh yes. I mean, we used to have, our famous perambulation was around the wall of York. And, you know it took quite a time so, and broke her heart I’m sure, but it had to finish. It would had been too traumatic otherwise. And we were then left to finish our tour which, there again was mainly oil installations. But come September of ’44 the CO called us all into the briefing room and said, ‘Now we’re all going to France tomorrow. We are bringing petrol to the army.’ The army was fighting at Eindhoven and so they said, ‘You are going to be loaded up with petrol,’ which they did. Each aircraft. Two hundred and fifty, five gallon cans stacked along the fuselage and tied in so they didn’t bounce around. Off we went to a German field which they’d laid out what’s called Sommerfield tracking to stop an aircraft or aircraft and vehicles bogging down in a puddle. So that was rather jolly. I mean there we were — flew a hundred feet all the way. And really that’s one of the nicest things to do, you know. Flying low level where we’d see haystacks with pigs on top because Jerry had pulled the plug on the dyke. Very naughty of course but you know it really devastated thousands of acres. And we had to fly over that into Brussels. Well into an area of Brussels called Melsbroek which was just a grass field. And it was very enjoyable. We landed there and fresh air and went to the village and do you know what? There were grapes growing on the trees. Oh grapes. Well, I mean who wants to leave there? Anyway, this so happens, you know that we tried to get off the next day, I’m sure it was the next day. So soon you could be accused of organising this. But we oiled up the plugs trying to get out of a big puddle and there’s no way you’re going to get out of it because what the wheels do and they’re big, they just churn a great gap, pit in the soil. So therefore that was, we were stuck there until you get a fitter out with a set of plugs to put it right, and I think all four engines were oiled up. Anyway, that meant that we had three days in Brussels. So what did we do? The first day we piled into a local tram and went into Brussels where we stayed at the Gare de Nord Hotel. And I was the only one who had any money [laughs] you know, because they said now any money you’ve got to change it. You’ve got to, sorry we had to change it for the currency that was wartime currency. And so of course our money was soon gone staying at hotels. And we went in to one, oh yes we, I must tell you a little story here. We went in to one hotel and up to the second floor and it was a night club with an amphitheatre and a stage and events, you know. Acts taking place. But on the way up the staircase in a corner there were two six foot six American sergeants and they had a lovely carton of cigarettes, a big carton. And they were presumably flogging them off. I mean if they could get another carton like that they’d make a fortune because there were no cigarettes in Europe. In fact, people would give you their gold watch for a packet of cigarettes but that — now our rear gunner being a sort of international type said, ‘No,’ we must find, he’d come from Canada on, he was trained for something else in Canada because he talked about Montreal. And he said, ‘We must see an exhibition.’ And actually it wasn’t what I fancied but anyway we didn’t get that far because there was no exhibition. So we met this old boy in the road and Ron says, ‘Exhibition?’ So, he didn’t speak French perfectly. The chap was quite happy. This old boy. ‘Come with me. Come with me.’ And off we went with this chap down the main thoroughfare and down some back entrances, back places, back roads, alleyways to a pub. And this pub was run by this aged lady who sat at the high stool and dished up what went, passed as beer. And there were us. We were all sitting around on stool, a continuous stool like in a queue. And I mean, you know, it was alright. A bit of light fare. And the skipper was there of course and he hadn’t taken his hat off that time. And in comes all th ese girls in bathing costumes. I mean, to eighteen year olds you know this is seventh heaven isn’t it? What’s next then? And they were sitting on our knees and some of them very shapely. And the skipper suddenly caught on, he said ‘Right. Here’s the gun. Out you lot.’ And we had to leave because it was a brothel wasn’t it? And he wasn’t, he wasn’t having his crew sullied by such goings on. So, that was, that was Brussels for me.
CB: So you got two black eyes and you couldn’t hear anything either.
ESH: [laughs] So. No. We had to make apologies to these young ladies and disappear. We would have liked to pass on perhaps a bar of chocolate.
CB: Of course.
ESH: But we didn’t go prepared. But it’s a pity. But Ron did — he went to a private family that night. I don’t know what the attraction was but anyway he did — no. Johnny Morris this is, ex schoolteacher. He obviously thought about it because he brought a bag of coffee back next time and made arrangements for it to be delivered to a particular curie. A priest at the local church who he had met somehow. But that’s the best we could do really. Normally you went in with your two hundred and fifty gallons. The army came up with a truck, unloaded [pause] and there we went off again. The next day with another load. So we were really kept busy bringing in something like two thousand gallons at a time for the army to use up at Eindhoven. Because they were six hundred miles from the port at that stage and just couldn’t keep going, you know. I thought I saw somebody moving out there but maybe I’m wrong.
CB: So did you carry, did you then later deliver any other kind of goods or was it only petrol?
ESH: Only petrol. But I believe later. Very soon. Our squadrons were engaged on dropping supplies to Amsterdam and it made a great impression on our Dutch friends.
CB: That was food. Operation Manna.
ESH: Yes.
CB: Yes.
ESH: We weren’t engaged on that but rather carried on with the last few trips into Europe.
CB: So when you come to the end of your tour what happened then to the crew?
ESH: Ah yes. Well, do you know on the aerodrome was an experimental department run by a squadron leader. And they, one of the problems with the Halifax was coring of the oil in the oil tank. Super cooling. And it was called coring. And every effort was being made, well funny enough in my tour I never came, never had the problem. I dare say we never flew in an icing. What you call an icing.
CB: Weather condition.
ESH: Yeah. You get icing conditions at certain heights and if you stayed in it it was very bad for the oil coolers but we managed to keep out of that. But a lot of experimental work was being done because a lot of the aircraft did — was affected. And so they, we worked for the experimental department there which was set up at Pocklington. Going on cross country’s with modified aircraft that in effect would fly through anything up to Scotland and back in the hope that we would be able to pinpoint the procedures to cure it. But unfortunately we had an aircraft, an aircraft engine go over speed for some reason so that rather folded up at that time.
CB: Which kind of engine was that?
ESH: Well, Halifax — a Bristol Hercules 100. That was the latest. But coring was a very difficult thing. So of course what was happening was that everyone was now asking us to be re-mustered. There was nothing for us to do except hang around. So —
CB: Was there an option of going on another tour?
ESH: Oh yes, that was always an option, yes indeed. But — and a lot of the chaps did but I think I was more anxious to go back to civilian life. But I was ‘Duration of Present Emergency.’ Or I was D of P E.
CB: Yeah.
ESH: And of course they were not giving out any commissions at that time. So there wouldn’t have been a lot of future in staying so I applied to be re-mustered.
CB: And what happened?
ESH: And then left Pocklington.
CB: Ok.
ESH: Being posted to whatever came up in the Air Ministry I suppose. And off we went then re-mustering at a famous station for the army in north Cornwall — north [pause] Catterick. Now, there was a little RAF station for re-mustering at Catterick in an ex-mine working. Anyway, my number came up eventually but in the meantime we were sent on indefinite leave. Now, I didn’t want to have to pay to go to the skipper’s wedding because train fare was quite expensive. But I gave his address on my 48. My seven day pass as it were. Or indefinite leave. The consequence of that will be explained a bit later.
CB: Right.
ESH: But from there I got a letter a little later being posted to the Isle of Man as an airfield controller. But it just so happened that my papers actually never got to my home. They got to the skipper’s address. Now, you can have a bit of a laugh if you’ve been in the service because this was six weeks later, or rather that was alright but it was the last seven days. I was absent without leave. But I turned up. I was on my way to the Isle of Man. Well, I got to the Isle of Man alright. Yes. And having got to the Isle of Man you got off at Douglas and, you know, looked at the local restaurant. Two eggs, steak and chips, that’s marvellous. Have some of that. So immediately dived in and had a good nosh as we used to say. And then you got a little local narrow gauge train up to the Isle of Man up to the north. Because I was going to be stationed at a little place called Jurby which was a good hopping off point for anybody going to or coming from Reykjavic. Which, I would then put three searchlights up to guide them in. But it was more disastrous from my point of view because what could the CO do? He has a chap seven days adrift. The first — I went to the guardroom and he said, ‘We’ve been looking for you. You’re seven days adrift.’ So, go up before the CO. Very nice chap. By the way first of all you have to be vetted by the station WO and he actually said, ‘Do you know I’m awfully sorry to have to do this but you’re up before the CO tomorrow.’ So, you march in, in the usual way with the, you know, left right left right left. Turn right. ‘So young man. What do you want to do? A court martial or do you want my punishment?’ ‘Well your punishment sir. Thank you.’ ‘Right. Seven days loss of pay.’ And do you know what? You can imagine the scene can’t you? Pay parade. And you announce yourself before the cashier’s table, ‘1869854 Horsham. Sir.’ And he would say, ‘Three and sixpence.’ This went on for weeks at three and six pence a week it takes quite a time to get to four pounds forty. Seven days pay you see. You can clue that if you like but its [pause] but indeed I think because we had a chap at High Wycombe and he was called Air Chief Marshall Sir Arthur Harris and of course they did think twice before they shoved the book at one of Bomber Harris’s boys. And I think I was saved by that because it’s a heinous crime in the air force to be AWOL anywhere. Anyway, we carry on from there because I enjoyed the time on the Isle of Man. Being in charge of the airfield. Not a lot went on but we did [pause] we were a home for stray aircraft and of course the station was very busy training the rest of The Empire Air Scheme for training navigators. And we would use, or they would use Ansons. So of course we had a squadron of Ansons to fulfil the contract. And of course my job, one of the jobs, mine and my crew — I had a crew by then of Scots lads that were setting up a parking area with glim lamps every day, because they were doing night flying, and these glim lights were fuelled by accumulators and shone a red light. And you had to put them in a certain order because then the aircraft on the way back knew where they were to park. And they used to get it in the neck if they ran over a glim lamp. Other than that when we wasn’t flying we were all in flying control and we used to do a shift where we had two and a half days off. They still do that in the police force apparently, here. Afternoon, next morning or night, off the next day and the next day and the following morning. So that enabled you to go and see the local sights. Peel Castle on the Isle of Man. And of course we did get busy aircraft and they would come in some awful times from Reykjavik and sometimes I was, what did they call it? Duty officer? Duty. Yeah. Duty officer. And I had to find them accommodation so I had to lay the law down. Pull rank on whoever was in charge of the blanket store so that these chaps had a night’s sleep and could get, we would — the cookhouse would provide a supper for them. That broke up your time. So, in effect, eventually they sent us back to the mainland. To top — I was stationed at Topcliffe which was an ex-Canadian station and underneath every table and ever chair was chewing gum [laughs] That’s how I remember the Canadians. But there was no flying going on which was a shame because we [pause] I was only thinking these chaps had applied for discharge and therefore I was in charge of an airfield with no aircraft. We kept the grass nice and tidy. But as I say we could go into, no, we couldn’t go in to Topcliffe for two eggs, steak and chips. It was unheard of. But what you could do is you could go to a local village called Topwith . Now, there are two brewers in Tadcaster. One is Sam Smith and one is John Smith. Now, you’ll know John Smith because his beer is everywhere but what we ought to have down here is Sam Smith’s which was thick and black. And it was as black as your coat. Black as night and it was the next best thing today to Mackesons. But you could get quite squeamish, not squeamish — quite drunk on it. So then you met up with a lot of other interesting aircrew and you absorbed their experiences, and then gradually, one by one, they disappeared. As I did one day. On the 2nd of January 1947, in the bleak midwinter. It was very bleak down south anyway and there had been a lot of snow around. One interesting side now, talking about cold. We were very cold in Pocklington so we could burn, burn bicycle tyres in the hut. But old Jim said, ‘Do you know what,’ Jim Finney that was then [pause] now wait a minute I’m wrong. Jim has already had that shrapnel in his leg. But anyway, there was another member in the crew. It must have been Alan Shepherd, the wireless op. He said, ‘I know. There’s a bottle of petrol over there.’ And somewhere someone had left a bottle of petrol. And it was a hundred octane. So he said, ‘Stick it in the stove to get it nice and warm.’ And it did. It blew the whole thing apart [laughs] Which wasn’t very clever was it? Anyway, we’ve left. We’re at Topcliffe aren’t we? And then, sooner or later, ok the 7th of January or thereabouts I found myself out on my ear having been discharged at, somewhere near Preston. And we asked for a taxi and do you know that’s the only time in my life so far that I ever have driven in a Rolls Royce. There was a very famous place near Preston. If it wasn’t Preston it was Southport where there was a big demob place. Anyway, that’s where we ended up, in a taxi going to Preston Station. And home on indefinite leave still. Well, no a fortnight wasn’t it then? Fourteen days and that was it finished. Now, the thing is then going back to the old firm. Now, I found myself in the railway estate office before long but they didn’t really want me I don’t think. They said, ‘You can go up to Victoria Station and go to the archives.’ Temporarily. So that was a fill-in job. Going back through papers going back to 1900 where people had to pay for a sort of fly privilege to bring a pony and trap on to the station property and they had to enter into an agreement. Time goes by awfully quickly doesn’t it when you’re demobbed? So I stuck with the estates office for [pause] until 1957. And I didn’t seem to be going anywhere much so I went out into the big bad commercial world. And went to a builder’s merchants called Roberts Adlard who were quite famous in the southern counties. Their headquarters were Southampton. I had this friend of mine who was a rep and that’s how I got there. But, and mind you I’d left London so it was a big change to go to work in Rochester Cathedral, Rochester, the ancient town on the Medway. Rochester Cathedral. Yes. And this builder’s merchants wasn’t going anywhere so Horsham said to himself, ‘Look. Hadn’t you better find a job with a pension?’ So I had experience in the estate office which was very similar to the housing department of Rochester City Council. And applied and got the job as a rent collector of all things. Going around collecting. They had five thousand houses all broken up in to thirty different schemes or so. So that enabled a transition from that to a more permanent sphere. And of course the only way you can get up the scale in local government is either by passing a lot of examinations or becoming a professional man, like, I don’t know, an accountant which is a good solid five years work. But no there we were at Rochester with several other ex-service people especially from the navy, being next to Chatham. And so we said, you know, ‘What about a rise?’ They said, ‘Oh no. No. No. We can’t give you that but if you take a certain examination there will be money in it for you.’ So the one I took was the simple one. It was the clerical division of local government. That is talking about local and central government. Writing an essay etcetera. And after six months we took the exam and we all passed. So we thought go and see the governor again now. A different kind of governor. And for passing the examination I think — I was paid five ninety in those days. So he said, ‘Yes. Well, you can go up to five ninety five.’ A five pound a year increase. So we’ve got to do better than this. So you had lists of jobs you see, circulated. And the next port of call was Maidstone Borough Council as a senior rentable assistant in charge of five rent collectors and proving the books every weekend. Now Rochester City was a purely written system. Now I got to Maidstone and it was all done by a machine called a Powers - Samas punch card accounting. And a dreadful business because my collectors used to go out with a run off. The rent for various properties. And they would put X Y Z here and they wouldn’t put anything on their sheet. So, immediately you were what –? Two pound fifty out. I used to be there at half past nine, 10 o’clock at night on a Friday balancing the books because you had, in effect, over thirty different schemes so you had to sit down and balance these schemes to find out where the error was. Which was good training wasn’t it?
CB: Amazing. Yes.
ESH: I remember the deputy who we worked under. You never saw the treasurer. He was the high and mighty. The holy of holies. But I saw the treasurer on one occasion. He said, ‘Horsham,’ he said, ‘How is it that you spent all this overtime?’ Four hours on a Friday night, you know. I said, ‘Well you know. The chaps put one thing on the sheet and then put another in the book.’ He said, ‘Horsham you really should consider the propriety of asking for overtime.’ It’s not much of a thing to a chap who’s just put four hours extra sweating his guts out. Anyway, that’s another aside isn’t it? Next thing is of course to get promotion isn’t it? And where did I go from there? Yes. I applied for a job in the County Council’s office, in the planning department. Which is where I ended up in 1978. Yeah. 1978. And then took a sort of early retirement.
CB: How old? How old were you when you took early retirement?
ESH: In ‘78. I was born in 1923.
CB: Oh right.
ESH: ’23.
CB: Fifty five.
ESH: Just short of sixty. Oh there’s a bit more to come isn’t there?
CB: Go on then.
ESH: Yeah. Well then [pause] I go back, to retrack a little bit. Going back to my days at Maidstone Borough. Wasn’t getting much anywhere and a friend of mine, who lived adjacent to us said, ‘Why don’t you come into the poultry business with me?’ He said, ‘We could then step the production.’ Because he was, he was managing single handed two thousand layers. So we promptly put some new housing up and I put all my wealth into it and we ended up with eight thousand head of poultry. Not quite as big as JB Eastwood who came along and said, ‘Look you chaps. I don’t care, I’ve got millions of birds. And I don’t care if I only get a farthing a head. I shall still make a profit.’ Which was quite true but it was disastrous for us because we couldn’t compete with that although we did very well. I mean we had a neighbour a few miles away and he was able to keep five thousand which was less than we had. And he could work in the mornings and take all the afternoons off and play golf. That’s what he did. We thought that’s a good idea. But we were saddled with our eight thousand and with fowl pest in the offing if we didn’t look after it then we’d be sunk. Nobody else was going to look after it. So you put in a fairly, a fairly full day. Eight till five minimum. But it was very good experience because it sort of taught me that come what may I could always get a job because you’ve got some skills. Especially you’d be very valuable to a poultry farmer if you could go in and say, ‘I can go in and look after ten thousand.’ He’d say, ‘Well, you know, I’m like Mr JB Eastwood. I’ve got millions.’ But nevertheless it was the same principal. So we didn’t make a fortune but we didn’t lose our shirt. I say we being collective. And then what did I do next? Well, I went back to the old firm didn’t I? Back to local government. Into the planning department this time, of the County Council. And my draughtsmanship experience came in very handy because we dealt with maps all day long. And so in 1974 I got the most marvellous job because the ministries were all on to local governments and County Councils to find out how many, what land have you got. You don’t even know what you’ve got to build houses on. And he said, ‘Well Horsham. The job’s yours. And we will depict it on a twenty five hundred scale ordnance survey sheets,’ which was a bit better than what you get on your deeds, you know. You could even show a rainwater pipe on a twenty five hundred scale. And Kent had forty seven, forty eight District Councils which I had to visit one after the other because if you didn’t carry the local authority with you you’d be sunk. They hated County Council. And they hated them because they put extra on their rates didn’t they? So that was a very enjoyable job. So thirty nine, forty, forty one, forty two [pause] No. What do I say? 1974 — 5 — 6 — 7 - 8. It took four years to do but at the end of the time we could show in the planning department that we had fifty two thousand units of accommodation each housing three people. That was your capacity then but of course a lot of it was land that you wouldn’t want to release straight away. I mean there was something like fifteen, twenty acres at Folkestone on the golf course. I know because I lived looking over these lovely green fields but you couldn’t release it all at once but that was my job.
CB: And you enjoyed it.
ESH: I enjoyed that. I never — it’s a time when I was glad to go to work because it was so, it was my job and it was interesting and I had to fulfil this promise made to the governor that it would be finished in a certain time, you know. And then we, we retired officially.
CB: When?
ESH: In 1978. 1978. Yes. Yes and went off to live in Cornwall for seven years. Froze the pension which was the thing to do. So I froze mine for another eight years so I had to go and get a job to keep the wolf from the door.
CB: Yeah.
ESH: Which I did. In Cornwall.
CB: Doing what?
ESH: Well, I saw an advert in the paper to the effect that, “Handyman wanted,” and they gave the telephone number and it turned to be at what was the Ritz Cinema which is now a bingo hall. And the idea was that I was going to look after all the maintenance. Well, it was rather nice to do something different if you’ve done the other jobs for forty years, you know. So I did that for two or three years. The firm was called Mecca. You’ll know Mecca. They’ve got them everywhere of course. All your Ritz cinemas now have gone to bingo halls. I had to do many things. Change all the lights and there was a lot of lighting. Also you had an emergency system on what was it? Ten volt accumulators which you had to cut in if your mains failed you had your own generator as well. So you had that system and you had emergency lighting if all else failed. So I enjoyed that job really.
CB: ‘Til when?
ESH: About three years later. Right up until about 1981. In that time my and a crew of two or three lads we painted the whole of the inside of the cinema including the ceiling. Which pleased the powers that be because they said, ‘Well done Horsham. We will send you to Tenerife for a fortnight for you to recover,’ [laughs] So that was something that came out of the blue. Yes. You see every year they have competitions and whoever wins the competition probably wins a place to summer holiday. And this time it was Tenerife. So there were about a hundred of us went off to Tenerife. All found, you know. Very nice indeed. Now, you wouldn’t get bonuses like that in local government of course. Since then I haven’t done much of anything have I?
CB: Throughout this time you were —
ESH: Hmmn?
CB: Throughout this time you were supported by this lovely lady. Ellen.
ESH: Yes.
CB: Where did you meet her?
ESH: I met her the first day I went to work for the railway. She was going on the same train. There is a station south of London called New Cross. So that people from further down went up to New Cross on the train and then down to where the estate office was evacuated. It was at Chislehurst. Now there was a big house at Chislehurst called [Sidcup?]. And it was on an elevated position and there’s the railway coming up and there’s the tunnel. Elmstead Woods Tunnel. So that’s, I met her in the train and she was busy there with her needles and you know sticking her little fingers stuck up like that click click click. And so that’s how it started. Her and her friend actually. Her friend was called Winnie Glover and I suppose she thought, ‘Well, she’s done alright for herself,’ [laughs] And that’s, we’ve been going ever since.
CB: When did you marry?
ESH: 25th of May 1946.
CB: And how many children have you had?
ESH: Two girls.
CB: So one’s called Gillian.
ESH: One’s Gillian. Yes.
CB: Yeah.
ESH: And she trained and became a teacher and married a headmaster. And then she went, they went off to Hong Kong and taught for seven years. And now she lives in an old mill on the Vienne River just outside Chauvigny. Whereas Alison trained as a nurse here and she trained in Weymouth and Dorchester and then went on to the hospital at Warminster. Hence the reason that we’ve came somewhere near her in old age.
CB: And she married a —
ESH: She married a —
CB: A doctor?
ESH: A sergeant in the MOD police. A young sergeant who is now or rather shocking really some year ago he went in one Monday morning and they said, and he has twenty five years’ experience as a policeman and by that time as I say, he was a sergeant. No. She didn’t marry a sergeant then but he became a sergeant. And they said, ‘We don’t want you anymore.’ Made him redundant, just like that. So, but funnily enough he still works as an instructor for the police. Driver. He trains their drivers and that’s what he’s doing today. Alison’s just finishing up her last eighteen months as a nurse.
CB: Well I think many many thanks, Eric.
ESH: Pardon?
CB: Many thanks, Eric for two and a half hours of interview. And absolutely fascinating.
ESH: Well it’s one man’s experience isn’t it?
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 Eric Horsham
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
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
2017-01-05
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ASymondsHorshamE170105, PHorshamES1602
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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02:07:40 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Eric Horsham was born in East London in 1923. Leaving school at 14 he was a messenger at the Royal Ordnance Factory before working for the railways. In 1937 he joined the Air Training Corps and learned about aircraft maintenance. On his first attempt to join the Royal Air Force he failed the medical but a year later was accepted for flight engineer training.
Eric describes his basic training in London and Torbay then recollects his technical training at RAF St. Athan. He then went to 1652 Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Marston Moor and joined his Halifax crew. In 1944 they were posted to 102 Squadron at RAF Pocklington where there were told that they wouldn't last three weeks.
Eric and his crew carried out a vast range of strategic bombings including daylight operations on V-1 sites, night operations on The Ruhr and Essen, night and daylight operations to oil targets, minelaying in the Baltic. They also provided tactical support in support of Allied troops near Caen and in the Ardennes, where they were badly damaged by a fighter and the mid-upper gunner received serious injuries. After landing at RAF Woodbridge in fog using FIDO he was hospitalised and did not fly again. The crew also supplied petrol to troops in Belgium, enjoying the low-level flying on these trips
Eric describes the sound of shrapnel hitting the aircraft, recalls a bomber exploding in flight, but dismisses the Scarecrow theory. He describes the use of Schräge Musik against the bombers; how search lights in the Ruhr operated, the use of H2S and how the master bomber controlled the rest of the formation.
At the end of his tour Eric remustered and was posted at RAF Jurby as airfield controller. From there he went to RAF Topcliffe and was demobbed in January 1947. Eric went back to the railways for ten years before working in local government. He retired in 1978, moving to Cornwall. While at RAF Pocklington he dated Cora noting that her parents made feel like a son. But he then ended the relationship because, with his own life in such jeopardy, he thought it was unfair on her. After the war he married Ellen, who he had met when starting his first job with the railways.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Andy Fitter
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--London
England--Bedfordshire
England--Devon
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Isle of Man
Wales
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
France
France--Ardennes
France--Caen
France--Pas-de-Calais
France--Nieppe Forest
Germany
Germany--Essen
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Denmark
Denmark--Bornholm
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1923
1937
1939
1940
1944-01
1944-02
1944-07-25
1944-09
1945
1946-05-25
1947-01-02
1957
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1981
102 Squadron
1652 HCU
Absent Without Leave
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bomb aimer
bombing
crewing up
demobilisation
FIDO
flight engineer
forced landing
H2S
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
love and romance
Master Bomber
military living conditions
mine laying
Mosquito
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Pathfinders
pilot
radar
RAF Pocklington
RAF St Athan
RAF Topcliffe
RAF Woodbridge
recruitment
runway
searchlight
tactical support for Normandy troops
target indicator
training
V-1
V-2
V-weapon
Wellington
Window
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1141/11697/AStapleyVA160802.1.mp3
342968355055f3de6511be564331e0d9
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
Stapley, Victor
Victor Arthur Stapley
V A Stapley
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Wing Commander Victor Stapley OBE, DFC (b. 1922, 1801888, 175092 Royal Air Force), his log book and a portrait. He served in the RAF from 1941 to 1977. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 166 squadron. Post war he served in Singapore, Malta, and at Christmas Island.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Victor Stapley 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
2016-08-02
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Stapley, VA
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is Tuesday the 2nd of August 2016. I’m with Wing Commander Victor Stapley in Dersingham near Kings Lynn to talk about his times in the RAF. What are your earliest recollections Victor?
VS: Well I, I was born in Ilford in Essex. And my first recollections would be going to school very close to myself and a very large recreation ground, which I rather liked, and that came into my life very much later on. I was at — my, my father was an accountant with Brettles in London, at Wood Street, next to St Pauls and it was bombed. Fortunately St Pauls escaped, so he left there and went to another firm in East London, Old Street, where he was also an accountant, and I come back to the school days when I remember playing cricket at quite a young age and liking it very much, and all sport, and I ended up as captain of the school, chief, head prefect and playing cricket for the school, and soccer and playing cricket for my town boys, Ilford and Essex and London boys, and being very sad when I left school at fifteen and had no more cricket, because there was a wide gap between schoolboy cricket and professional cricket, and I was just getting involved with Ilford Town cricket when war was declared in 1939 [pause]. I left school at the age of fifteen. I was at a, a central modern school where we left at fifteen, and grammar schools left at fifteen as well, and I joined the [unclear] tobacco company, who marketed [unclear]cigarettes and [unclear] cork tip [unclear] I should think about a hundred different patent names of cigarettes and that’s how I was, I could say weaned on cigarettes, which was a very bad thing, and wasn’t able to throw off cigarettes until about 1965 when I, I took everything off my desk at North Luffenham, when I was CO of the radar station there, and just put them away and stopped smoking there and then. That was the best thing I did, I think, medically for myself. Coming back to [unclear] was a management trainee and went through home orders, home selling, secretaries department, export selling which I loved very much, and as the slightly older chaps left, so I was being trained quickly on this, that and the other as they left, and I then became, I rose to assistant shipping manager and I remember vividly trying, travelling from where my family had moved to. It’s a point I’ve just missed out, come back in a moment. I was at Romford in those days, travelling up to Liverpool Street and of course, we had many raids, air raids and we stopped, the trains stopped and all this sort of thing, and we, we had some near misses. I used to then walk up the back exit of Liverpool Street, over the bridge heading for Moorgate and Finsbury Square, where [unclear] tobacco company had 15-51. Now how the devil I remember that, that was the actual address 15-51. It was a long industrial complex and offices at the end, which were very plush and, and I remember vividly coming across firemen sleeping in doorways, their hoses all over the roads, and brick bat everywhere and quite a calamity, and being shipping, assistant shipping , shipping manager, my task was to marry orders to shipping space I could obtain, and it was very, very difficult to obtain this shipping space, and I found that when I got in the office, all the telephones were out of order so I had to collect lots of coins for the post, the actual boxes on the street. It was a hard job to find one that worked, and I eventually did, and that’s the way I managed to contact shipping brokers, and find out whether I could find space. Dash back to the office, call a meeting with the factory manager in order to say what orders I wanted doing within twenty-four hours, to get them to the docks and off into the shipping space that I’d booked in advance. Yes, I mentioned earlier that I, I travelled from Romford, I say I didn’t really cover the move that we had from Ilford to Romford, and it was most notable because we moved to a bungalow at Romford only a week before war was declared, on the 3rd of September thirty-nine, and I remember laying lino down in, in the bathroom that very morning. I was on my hands and knees when Chamberlain declared war at eleven hundred hours so that’s how I was travelling from Ilford, from Romford instead of Ilford. It was on the same line of course, in, in Essex. The obvious reason why it was shortage of shipping space, was because of the Atlantic convoys, and the submarines having a devastating effect on, on our supplies both ways, exports and imports. So that was a real problem that lasted quite a long time. Well of course, it was five years, wasn’t it, the overall war. It was during this time that I went to the ministry to volunteer for the Royal Air Force as a flyer, and my whole idea was that I think I’d rather prefer to be blown up in the air, and not know much about it, rather than being crippled on the ground. I didn’t fancy infantry work or submarines underwater, although I had a relation that was a, on the single sub, submarines and I thought he was a very brave chap as you can imagine. So that’s the reason I went there and they accepted me as pilot navigator, but then we go on from there. Nothing happened, wasn’t called, wondering what’s going to, happening, why not, and unbeknown to me, and it didn’t come out until I was in the Air Force, I found out what had happened. That my firm, without consulting me, had made me a reserved occupation, applied to retain me beyond my call up time and, so that’s the reason why I was just wondering what the devil was going on. But eventually I got a letter which said that they’d got many people now ready to start training as pilot or navigator, but they had a real urgent need for flight engineers, because the actual problem was to do with the fuel consumption, and management of the fuel consumption, and lots of pilots falling foul of this and running out of fuel. And we lost quite a number and they were thinking, also of the building up, they’d already planned to build up with as many four engine bomber aircraft as possible, like the, not only the Lancaster, the Halifax, the Sterling and so on, the different marks of these. And so I thought, well I’ve been waiting and waiting and I, I volunteered, I said yes. So I think that hastened my being brought, taken in by the Air Force and I had to go, I was one of the early boys, so I had to go through the training of ground mechanic and straight onto a ground fitter and then out, out onto squadrons doing maintenance work in hangars, on Mustangs with 2 Squadron at Sawbridgeworth. The years I’m not too sure about, but on from there to [pause], onto Gravesend and, where we still had Mustangs and the, the engines were American Allison inline engines. Similar design to the Merlin but nowhere near as good. We had so much trouble with those [laughs] because when we did an engine change, that’s obviously what I was on being a fitter, we’d do all the covering up and everything else, and then we’d fire them up, and there was misfiring on this cylinder, that cylinder, you know, and it was a hard job to find out which were misfiring, which cylinder was misfiring. So what we did then was to pack up, have a, and go off for a cup of tea and go back when it was dark and restart, we could see from the exhaust which was misfiring, etcetera. There was all that trouble, and changing the whole magneto, and all the wiring and plugs and so forth. Sometimes that didn’t work. Anyway we managed to get it done in the end. The magneto drop was huge in comparison. The acceptable magneto drop was huge in comparison with the Merlin. Anyway we — after all this, we’d then double check on the oil filter, because so many times we took it off and found white metal in the oil filter. So that meant that we had to change the whole caboodle again, the whole engine and, and restart again so it was a terrible business and their, their supercharger was no good and they, they were good for ground strafing and all that sort of thing, up to about ten thousand feet, but they were no good above that because of supercharger being very, very inefficient. So directly, and that what happened then, of course, was after I’d left them that, they’d fit them with Rolls Royce engines and they made all the difference and turned them into a good aircraft. By then I’d been called on training for a flight mechanic, and also to go straight onto as a fitter. So I was at Blackpool for a time, running up and down the sands at 6am in the morning to get fit, and did a mechanics course, and then short leave and then onto Innsworth for the fitter training. So then, that’s going back up to the running, following that, out into the field to as a fitter. Eventually I go to St Athan for the flight engineers finishing course and passed that, and was recommended for commissioning, straight on from there to a heavy conversion unit, where I linked up with the crew at Lindholme, and because I got married at that stage, I was the last flight engineer to arrive. All the others had been sorted out their crews and there was only one crew left and that was Wiggins, Albert Wiggins, a Royal Australian Air Force ex-farmer from Torquay, near the gold mining area in Victoria and I found him a good stalwart, you couldn’t — he was steady as you would expect with a farmer, nothing would phase him, and we had a, an Australian navigator, Jack Sparks from Melbourne, he may have been from Canberra earlier on because he was a civil servant. So anyway he, he was a great one as well so we had a, a jolly good crew. The mid upper gunner was only just about eighteen, and just beginning to shave. He was a Manchester, very slow talking lad, again didn’t get excited so he was just the right type you wanted for a gunner, but the rear gunner was a chap named Fraser, a Scotsman, and we had a hard job to cool him off all the time, he wanted to jabber, jabber, jabber and he was the complete opposite of the Manchester lad in the mid upper turret and the wireless operator was a chap named Bell, and he was the son of a couple of variety people on the stage in some musical capacity and he was a wonderful pianist, absolutely wonderful and a delight to be with. Well after we’d finished and going on to cover, meanwhile it was the same case, after we’d finished their first eight operations, after that you went on a five days leave, and poor old Bell failed to come back because he was stuck with some disease, and so we never saw him again, and the next thing is, he’s been sent to another squadron as their new wireless operator with some other crew and we, of course had another one given to us who was a very nice fella, and I think he, was Trotter, and I think that later on, he went onto a second tour and unfortunately never came back from one of them, and his name his listed in the Lincoln Cathedral. So now, coming onto the operations, our first operations. Our first two were to Stuttgart and they, we thought they were quite nasty operations. Well of course, we would do, I suppose, being the first ones but they were in essence. Their defences, we decided in the end, overall defences of their major areas in Germany were a jolly sight better than over London. We thought London was pretty good but we were nowhere near. So we always took quite a beating in the sense, in, in the — in the feel that you had for the place, that you would likely get a real big banger on your wings or something. The predicted flak was so very good, directly you, you were coned. You had to dive and climb, and turn yourself upside down, so to speak, in order to get out. You were lucky if you got out. That early part you then had predicted flak, with big red balls coming quite close to your wings and that, so you had to move fast and that was — Stuttgart was one of those where searchlights and defences were very good. So the first two ops were Stuttgart. We didn’t think very much of them and Frankfurt was about the same, we had two operations there, so that was four of them. [pause]
CB: Right.
VS: Yes. The next operation which filled us with dismay because of what we’d heard about the actual target, and that was Berlin, and it was the last of the, the big bangs, you might say, against Berlin because prior to that there had been lots of operations on Berlin, night after night, whenever the weather was suitable, and this to my mind was the last one, we weren’t to know that but it was one of the last of this stretch of operations and that, that was a tough one. Because unfortunately our, our navigator was disconnected from his oxygen supply, unbeknown to us, until he was calling his projector all the names under the sun, ‘where is it, where is it, [banging on table] where is it?’ You heard this on the intercom and, ‘what’s the matter, Jack?’ So I said to the bomb aimer, ‘check his oxygen is connected please, Jack, erm, Pilly’. That’s Ted, Ted Pilly, the bomb aimer, ‘check that he’s connected’. He came back, ‘he is’, twice I asked and in the end, I got fed up with it and went back myself and found it wasn’t connected and that’s why he was all over the place. So we were slightly off track because of that, and we got into a little bit of trouble with the flak, er, in some other area on route, and then we saw the TIs go down and we went heading straight for them. It was like driving into Piccadilly Circus lit up at night. You were completely lit up, that’s how we felt and that’s what it looked like. Whether that was individual coning, I wouldn’t be able to say, because the impression I had with it — my pilot and myself, I was helping him with the actual controls, and we were diving and climbing all over the place. Thinking we were in individual searchlights, but we, we never got out of them but we got away with it, straightened up, levelled up and got on the heading that the bomb aimer wanted. Dropped our bombs on the target and that was when we experienced the [unclear] for the first time, I think it was, as master bomber and, and got away. We had various interludes going there and coming back, of fighters having a go at us, but we managed to dive and get out of that, so we were very lucky. Lucky and well trained, I think, and disciplined. And then, of course, we had the Ruhr, so we had a taste of all these places very quickly, spread over the first seven or eight operations, and that was to Essen, and that was happy valley, and amazing the actual Ack Ack searchlights. Ack Ack in particular and, but there you are we, we got through that and went on the worst one of all and that was Nuremberg, and it was a moonlight night, which we didn’t like as you can imagine. We had nowhere, no cloud to get into and cover ourselves, so we were open targets and unfortunately, in addition to that, apparently the — for some reason or other, luck or intelligence slipup, their fighters rendezvoused in our track. We wondered what was going on because it — reaching German territory, territory it was silent, no guns, nothing, no searchlights and then suddenly - boom, boom - four Lancaster’s around us, our friends [pause]. And we logged at twenty-five, twenty-five in the early part of the run to Nuremberg over Germany [coughs], and we had to give up recording to keep the intercom open. We had one or two advances by fighters, but we managed to get away somehow or other by diving into contrails. We hoped there wasn’t a hard centre, and we had that sort of thing for about two thirds of the run to Nuremberg, and then it’s all quiet, and we got to Dornburg and we bombed and it was all quiet, and came back, two or three fighter episodes and managed to get away with it. And came back and landed, and we were all discussing it with the intelligence boys and that, and debriefing, and they asked me how many I reckoned, and I said, ‘well we saw twenty-five, and on that basis, I think you’ve got to multiply it by four’, and it came out I understand, the following day, ninety-six, ninety-six other aircraft were shot down [long pause]. After that raid on Nuremberg, we were all pleased to go on holiday for about five days and, and come back in the early days of April, where we resumed operations. We then went on Achern, which we had to abandon for some reason or other. I think we were recalled. I’ve got it, mission abandoned and I’ve got no reason, I’m pretty sure that we got recalled on that. Things went on and then we went on Cologne and that was quite a target as well [coughs], all lit up, and we had one or two attacks but not very many. We got away with it again, thank goodness, and the following one was Düsseldorf where, of course, that was back to the Ruhr and that was a shocker and, er, but we managed to bomb our target and come back safely. A few days off and we then went on mining in the Baltic. Where we took off and had to fly, as we got close to Denmark islands, we had to drop down to a hundred feet to go under the radar cover, which was quite a dangerous thing to do because of obstructions that you could hit, so we had to be wide awake. And came out, of course, heading for Sweden and we just touched on the coast of Sweden because navigational point, and they were very unkind by firing up a few tracer, but they were too low. They couldn’t get us and we went, went off from that on a, on a timed course, er, to a point where we dropped our mines and came back in a similar way but avoiding Sweden this time. Coming straight over Denmark and at a very low level still, so that we didn’t disturb anyone, except perhaps a few farmers and villagers and got back but they were rather dangerous. We all had to take our turn at mining and that — quite a number of chaps that didn’t come back from those efforts. We were then again on Essen, in the Ruhr, and that was a similar one, story to the others. You always got fighters and searchlights and Ack Ack and so forth, but never the same as Berlin and the, the Stuttgarts that we had. A few other things and then we had ammunition dump at Rouen, R, O, U, E,N and that was quite an experience. We were told to fly fairly low [coughs] to make sure we got the target but not too low so you got the effects of the actual target blowing up under your belly. So we were about four thousand feet and we got the target all right, because we felt it, and we got the rumbles, but came back safely, thank goodness [pause]. We’re now in the beginning of the bombing of France, so leading up to D-Day on the 6th of June. [bleep]
CB: So, we’re just talking about how, in the early days of the war, a flight engineer wasn’t an established position and how they came to adapt the training from people who were trained as ground engineers, riggers or whatever, to then fly as flight engineers, because the Lancasters and Stirlings and Halifaxes didn’t really come along till forty-two. So you were part of this transition weren’t you?
VS: I was yes. Yes, I was invited to, to join at the early stage. There weren’t all that number of flight engineers like me [coughs], because when I got to St Athan on the flight engineers finishing course, I’m pretty sure the, all ready, we had at St Athan the start of direct entry training which, which was something like eight months.
CB: That means people who hadn’t, that worked on the ground first?
VS: That’s right. They were direct entry and so they had to adapt everything and, and not take things for granted that they had in, in previous training. They weren’t so well trained, there’s no doubt about that, they weren’t so well trained but they filled a, a need and quickly. We, we couldn’t wait for, to go through all the training that we went through. Quite sure of that. Yes, I don’t, I don’t think. I think that my squadron was first formed in the early part of forty-three, maybe late forty-two, I think. Anyway the first Lancs didn’t arrive there until forty-three that’s for sure. They had a few Manchesters [clears throat]. One of the interesting things is, of course, the, the chaps that flew Wellingtons. They, they thought the Wellington was absolutely terrific. It was. It would take a hell of a bat, battering. The, it wasn’t a firm alloy construction and so it was fabric and it could take a lot to shoot it up. Holes didn’t make any difference to it [laughs] [unclear] the, the vital part that was the hit ,you know, of the actual aircraft and I knew two chaps that are now dead, now that died this, this year. One is a fellow at Fakenham, who is in the heavy transport business and got another place up north and he flew Wellingtons, a lovely fellow who has just died, but the other one ,that I, you know, is the, now what’s, oh dear, it’s the fella that flew the ultra giro in the bomb fields.
CB: Oh, Barnes Wallis, Barnes Wallis?
VS: No, no.
CB: No, no, no, Wing Commander Wallis?
VS: No.
CB: Wasn’t it?
VS: It was — no.
CB: Not Barnes Wallis but Wing Commander Wallis?
VS: Yes, yes. What’s his Christian name?
CB: I can’t remember. Barnes Wallis did the —
VS: I entertained him twice.
CB: Did you?
VS: Yes and his wife was a Stapley.
CB: Oh.
VS: And so we had something in common, but then we didn’t. When we checked on everything, there was no connection at all.
CB: Oh right.
VS: But I think there must be because she, she came from down south in Southampton. Test, test area, Testwood. But Ken Wallis.
CB: Ken Wallis. That’s it.
VS: And I entertained him twice as president of the RAFA, we have two dinners a year and I entertained him this year, I think it was.
CB: Did you?
VS: Yes, or late last year, it was as recent as that. He was a terrific engineer, you know. He brought along, on one occasion, something he’d actually [unclear] made himself. Terrific, absolutely terrific. He was, for a long time [coughs], he was at Boscombe Down on the research side. And I think, I think it’s actually dreadful that he wasn’t acknowledged, wasn’t made a Sir or something like that, cause he was so good for the Air Force and the country. Lovely fella. But he, he’s got a museum at Dereham.
CB: Oh, has he?
VS: Um, um.
CB: My mistake, Barnes Wallis designed the Wellington.
VS: You put me off there. That shot me down, took me a fortnight to get to Kent.
CB: Well you did well, but Barnes Wallis designed the Wellington with its geodetic construction.
VS: Well Barnes Wallis was the one that —
CB: With the bombs.
VS: That’s right and, and there’s — he’s, he’s number two, we had his wife up here, she died. She was, she was a friend of a lot of us. Yeah. Yes. Are you gonna switch off now?
CB: OK.
VS: Switch on now something else has come to me.
CB: OK.
VS: This springs to mind that on my eightieth birthday, the family were very keen to take me out somewhere. It was going to be a surprise. So I was thinking, where the devil are they going to take me. So we set off in about three cars and we head for Lincolnshire, so directly I was going to Lincolnshire. I thought there’s only one place and that is to the two farmers that have got a Lanc at, at Kirkby.
CB: East Kirkby.
VS: Yes, Kirkby, sorry.
CB: Yes.
VS: East Kirkby. They were both alive then, one’s since died and their brother, there’s another brother who was a flight engineer and died. And they opened specially for my gang on a Sunday afternoon, weekend. It was jolly good.
CB: Fantastic.
VS: And they, the thing that I remember, one of two things, um, was the, they’d still got the control tower and I, I was most amused to find that, that the toilet was still there and it was the most clean toilet I’d ever seen in my life. It was lovely to see. Ought to be on exhibition [laughs] but they do a good job.
CB: Yeah.
VS: But unfortunately, of course, they, they, it was a runway in, in war time but they’d cleared one part of it about a third of it for farming and I think they regretted it when they got this Lanc because then that stopped them taking off.
CB: Um.
VS: They did get eventually a, a certificate of air worthiness from the Civil Aviation Authority which would have allowed them to take off and, er all they could do was taxi and give the people a thrill that way. But it was a lovely little area there.
CB: Yeah. This is the former Scampton Gate Guardian and, um, they were —
VS: Oh, it was that one was it?
CB: They restored the aircraft and they call it “Just Jane”.
VS: Yes.
CB: And there is some film of them doing high speed taxi runs with the tail up for a film, a little while ago.
VS: Yeah, well the runway that’s left must be a fair, fair length.
CB: It is.
VS: For them to get the tail up.
CB: Yeah. But it’s an amazingly restored site.
VS: They want to make sure their breaks are good in order to pull up if short [laughs]
CB: Yeah.
VS: Otherwise they’ll be, be into, into the potato patch [laughs]
CB: Or their chickens [laughs]
VS: Oh dear, dear, dear.
CB: We’re restarting on some of the points from early on. So you’re talking about south of the river?
VS: Yes, I was very friendly with a caretakers son at my old school and we used to go to each other’s houses at weekends [coughs], and this was the early part of the war and at night time, at the weekend, we used to go down to the underground cellars of the school and we used to play bridge, and I shall never forget that when the sirens went, so we had to get up and keep our eyes open outside in case some incendiaries fell, and sure enough they did and one, one or two lodged in the roof of the school. They weren’t causing much damage and [coughs] the caretaker dived for his bucket and Stirrup pump, and there he was trying to get a spurt of water, two storeys up into the roof [laughs], with a Stirrup pump, that’s all he had waiting for the fire service to come. That’s a silly, a silly story really, absolutely barmy, but I enjoyed those times underground and at the weekend, because you felt reasonably safe and we were playing bridge and I love bridge, it was fine, absolutely great. What was the other thing?
CB: So, tell us about the land mines.
VS: Oh yes. So this chaps sisters married this fella, I got to know him quite well and they went to live south, south of the river, and I can’t tell you any more than that, but anyway he was on ARP duty and there, there was a parachute coming down and something dangling on the end, and he was running towards it because he thought it was a chap on the end of the parachute that had bailed out. He suddenly realised that it wasn’t and he ran for his dear life, and this was a land mine, he got away with it. He was quite close really, well, he must have been for him to be able to identify it in darkness. There’s another story about those. The, when I was reminiscing with someone recently, yes, it was my son, he’d gone on the internet and he, you can get a record of all the land mines that were dropped in Barking and Ilford, and a terrific number, so lots of places were absolutely flattened really. There was total destruction within a mile radius and then surface, surface blasts you know these were taking out windows and everything else. Very, very destructive. They were a shocker. People were sometimes the, the youngsters talk about the V Bombs and so forth, what were they?
CB: Well the V-1 was the flying bomb.
VS: Yeah, yeah, yeah and that’s just a bang wasn’t it? That’s all you knew?
CB: Well, the land mine was destructive because it exploded above ground level, so that had a huge blast effect.
VS: That’s right.
CB: The V-1, because it came in at a shallow angle, that also had a big blast effect. The V-2, because it landed vertically, had less blast but a bigger hole.
VS: Um, um. Yes. Lots of people were, were worried about these [coughs] at our cottage we didn’t worry too much about that, we’d seen enough.
CB: Yeah.
VS: We either got it or we didn’t [laughs]
CB: Of that era, because the land mines you are talking about the early part. Which areas were hit most by land mines?
VS: Barking, no doubt. I’ve got the map of the, the landings.
CB: Right.
VS: They, they were definitely hit the most, the second a very close second was Ilford. It just shows you that it wasn’t only us that had a problem of hitting targets from above. The inaccuracy of bombing. They were trying to bomb the docks. There’s no doubt about that. Mind you, I think they didn’t mind them going astray, eventually became a target didn’t it. All built up areas became the target, but in the early days, they were trying to hit the docks and they hit Barking and Ilford.
CB: So going back to Ilford, and the family being there, and the sanitary arrangements.
VS: [laughs] well, that was an outside toilet, it was, that’s — I was brought up in this three bed roomed house with outside toilet, which wasn’t very convenient to say the least, but we, we moved out to Romford on the 3rd September and I think I told this story. And thank goodness we did, because later on we found out that Henley Road at Ilford was bombed, and flattened and so we wouldn’t be here, perhaps but you never know we might have been out shopping and got away with it [laughs] [coughs], they expanded their, their targets.
CB: The Germans did?
VS: Yes, Germans. Expanded their targets to cover well, well populated areas because they’d failed, they’d tried hitting aerodromes and the Air Force generally and they didn’t succeed. They tried hitting the docks accurately and they didn’t really put us out of business, fortunately, and they widened their targets then. Anybody was fair game as far as they were concerned. So they started that in a big way and then later on the, the public started accusing Bomber Harris of doing a deadly thing and killing people, the population, this big town and city, etcetera, etcetera [telephone rings].
CB: Your phones are calling you.
VS: I can hear it. Ok.
CB: So we’ve been talking about a variety of things. One is we’ve covered the Nuremberg raid, which was a very heavy loss rate, but in general, what was the loss rate and how many planes would you put up at a time?
VS: I remember that our maximum we put up was about twenty-two and, like on the Cologne raid and Nuremberg raid and Berlin. But some of the others we dropped, I should say to about fourteen, eighteen something like that. Of course, then they had the individual mining, one aircraft off and or two aircraft off and so forth, the odd little titbit on the side. But the main efforts I should think we averaged something like eighteen, sixteen, eighteen.
CB: And the loss rate?
VS: No more than, I remember, than about four. Which people thought at that time was heavy but it wasn’t really, when you think in terms of Nuremberg, where I think we only had about eight hundred of it, it wasn’t a thousand bomber raid like the Cologne special one, where we put everything in, including the kitchen sink, and Wimpys and so forth, even Ansons I think, in order to make a bit of a publicity stunt out of it, a thousand and no, four was quite good, I reckon.
CB: Right.
VS: Considering what we were doing.
CB: So we’ve just moved a bit earlier on to bombing France in anticipation of D-Day . So after Roeun, where did you go?
VS: [shuffling of papers] Oh yes. That was the, the ammunition dump and [pause] we went to Leon, that’s right, which was quite an easy one. The one thing [laughs], we were on fighter affiliation afterwards, none of our operation. just a bit of fun. Then we went to another dump at Aubinges, I don’t remember much about that, except that we had to be very careful we didn’t blow ourselves up by being too low. Nothing in particular. But then we had one which was Margny-lès-Compiègne, and lots been written about that and it’s a bit of a mixture. Because we had, we had Lancs on it, Halifaxes on it, Mosquitos on it, and I think basically there could have been two targets. One was the ammunition dump, and the story goes that the Panzers were there with their tanks and we only had that opportunity that night to try and flatten them, and that’s where the Lancs came in. So we were briefed to orbit a, a marker, and running on that track to the target. We didn’t like that, experienced people like us, by then we were quite experienced, we didn’t like orbiting anything, you were asking for trouble from the fighters to get it, they’re not silly and sure enough they did, and we, we breezed off and orbited elsewhere so we got away with that operation, and we did apparently do a good job, and the locals, later on, after the war, came out loud and clear that they were so glad that we managed to do that. But the other side of it, I think, was another target, and I never got down to the brass tacks of this, maybe all your experiences, you might be able to come up with the answer. But I think that the Mosquitoes were on a separate target, though mighty close in the same town or whatever it was at Margny-lès-Compiègne, and a books been written about this, and I haven’t got that and I don’t know how to go about finding out any more. Martin Cook or something like that I think, has written a book about it [coughs] and that is, it was a prison [coughs] and a lot of our chaps were prisoned there and something was going to happen there and they were likely to be marched off or get shot for some reason or other [coughs]. Pardon me. So it was decided to attack, and they had to be very careful what we were doing with the — what these Mosquitos was doing was to try and break the outside crust of the building to give the prisoners a chance of escaping, and I think a lot had been written about this, which I don’t know.
CB: That’s the Amiens raid.
VS: That’s the Amiens?
CB: Yes, with Pickard. Yes.
VS: Oh, was it?
CB: Yeah. It was a different —
VS: It was a different raid. Right.
CB: Yes.
VS: Oh, oh. I don’t know where I got tied up with that one. But [coughs]
CB: But there might have been something similar.
VS: Um.
CB: What was your next operation?
VS: So where we went from there was off Dunkirk for some reason. All these were fairly easy jobs, and then the next one was Hasselt, how you pronounce that, I don’t know, and then we went mining again in the Ulm, quite a lengthy run. And next one was Aachen, got no recollection for that. So it was reasonably straight forward. So then we, I think we had a rest and then we really got sucked into the real preparation for D-Day [coughs]. We were on Calais, which is just slipping in on the coast, and then Boulogne, and then on the night of the fifth, in other words D-Day, coming up after midnight we were charged with trying to put out of action, the big gun emplacement at Le Havre. And the wonderful thing there to talk about is coming back from Le Havre, the early hours of the morning, and seeing all this flotilla, this mass of shipping and boats and galore all over the channel. I, I only hope that they, they took some aerial views of all this because it was absolutely fantastic [coughs], and we passed Channel Islands on our starboard side, and really could see all this mass heading for the French coast, and you can bet we were wishing them well, and we came home to hear the confirmation, of course, on radio. So we got back onto the mainland that morning, without a shadow of doubt as you all know, and then from then on it was really straight forward as we were concerned. Small little ops. Achery, I’ve got no recollection of anything terrible there. Gelsenkirchen was one [unclear] was another one that was one of the bigger ops, I think. Then there was a place Bernapre - b, e, r, n, a, p, r, e - and Domleger, Domleger, which was the first daylight raid that we did. And then there was another one at, where is it, Gissey, Gissey-le-Vieil, Gissey-le-Vieil a daylight one. And I think that [pause] was the last one that we did. All very quiet been —. Oh there was one more, oh I said that, we went back to Domleger, Domleger. On the 2nd of July and that was our end.
CB: OK. So what did you do after that? So you’ve ended ops but you didn’t do thirty for some reason.
VS: No, no because —
CB: So why didn’t you do thirty?
VS: Well the reason for that was rather funny. You mention people having a hoot because the pilot and myself we, we shared a room, and we’d come back from an op, and the following morning there we are in our, doing our abolitions as they called it in those days, and he said to me, he said ‘you’ve got spots all over your back’, and I said, ‘thank you very much and I’ve got one up on you at last’, and so off, he said, ‘you’d better go and see the docs with that’. Which I did [coughs], and he laughed his head off, the squadron doc, I said, ‘well, what the devil are you laughing about, doc’, ‘you’ve got German measles’, ‘oh my god, all the boys are going to have a laugh about that one’, which they did. So I was packed up, with my small kit, to go to the isolation hospital at Scunthorpe. So along comes a five hundred weight truck, just the ambulance, and a WAAF driver, and I said, ‘have you ever had German measles before’, and she said, ‘no’, and I said, ‘well, I’ve got it, but do you mind taking a chance so I can sit in front, I don’t want to sit in the back there, it’s a bit uncomfortable’, so I sat in front and as we were driving down the main street of Scunthorpe, the crews had been stood down, and I recognised a few and they recognised me, so we were waving to one another as I went to Scunthorpe isolation hospital and when I was there, it was a bit of a hoot. I had ten days there, my crew did two ops. That’s how I lost the two on them. And thankfully, I joined up with them again when I got back. But I was there about ten or eleven days [coughs], and my, I was, I had a room of my own, very nice set up, to the right of the entrance and the, the toilet was to the left of the entrance. So I had to go past the entrance to the toilet, coming back, there’s another room, of course, opposite the toilet, and there was a young lady sitting up in bed, I naturally went there to have a chat, and I was sitting on the corner of the bed chatting, and along came the matron, ‘oh you shouldn’t be here, you should be in isolation in your room’ [laughs], so that was a big hoot. The next thing is, I’m allowed out, of course it was just an infection. So I felt good enough, and they said, ‘if you feel good enough, would you like to come and make four at tennis’. I said ‘yes, fine’. So I went off and played tennis. I’d run out of cigarettes and the matron throws down twenty packet to the court where I was, and we carried on playing and had a good game. I went back, had a shower, sat up in bed and there I was, eating dinner. Very good dinner, and along came the doc, who said ‘I’ve come to see whether you’re fit enough to go back to your squadron’. I said, ‘well, I reckon having played tennis and eaten a good meal and sitting up in bed like this, I should say yes, can I go tomorrow morning?’ ‘Yes’. So off I went, found out the crew were on leave, waiting for me to come back to them and so I went off about two days, came back and we finished our operations. That was the story there.
CB: Amazing how many people actually had their careers disrupted by disease. So, we’ve had a scarlet fever man on the, on the, caught it on a boat going to Canada, somebody else with something similar because, of course, there weren’t the antibiotics or —
VS: No, no.
CB: Or other cleanliness steps.
VS: As a youngster I remember vividly I, I, I got, get fed up with the, the look of anything red. Why? Because my brother caught diphtheria, and in those days, they used to come to your home and pick up all the mattresses and, I don’t know, some, some heat treatment and they came back, but they baked them, that’s right, baked them, the mattresses, they were no good, it wasn’t worthwhile. Hopeless, so that was one lot of red blankets that coming to the door, and the next thing is, he gets, he gets through that, next thing is, he gets scarlet fever, so again, all the blankets and bedding and that were all baked and they were useless when they came back, and then he, he was ill again and he could barely swallow and, I’ve forgotten the term, but it was the throat, it was closing, he could hardly breath and the doctor was still saying, ‘you can’t get, you can’t have diphtheria twice, mum, you can’t’. He was determined to stick to this right to the end, of course, he put scarlet fever, it was diphtheria though, which was the worst of the two things, between that and scarlet fever. He took a long time to recover, he was on the critical list for a long time. So that’s why I don’t like red, red things.
CB: Amazing. Stop there a mo.
VS: Oh, ok, well —
CB: So —
VS: And sorry, then I, I was allowed to go, yes, so now, right.
CB: So recuperating.
VS: Yes, so we’re back now in, in Kirmington, having been released from the isolation hospital, to find the, the crew are on a short leave waiting for me to come back to join them. So I was off for two days, so I came back at the same time as they did, and we were back on operations. So we, we’ve finished the operations now, haven’t we?
CB: Well, we just got to you being German measles, so
VS: Yes I know but we, prior to that —
CB: Did you go back to operations, yes, prior to that.
VS: Prior to that we did finish.
CB: Yeah.
VS: We did finish on the 2nd of July.
CB: Right
VS: It was one, where are we.
CB: That’s because you became ill.
VS: Yes. On the 2nd of July we finished up with a daylight operations for a second time on Domleger.
CB: Yeah.
VS: OK. So that was the end of our tour. So off, off we went and I came back a day later than the crew, only to find to my dismay that the, the crew had left the previous day and they’d had pictures around the aircraft and all this, with the ground crew and so forth, and I was missing and wasn’t in that, so I didn’t see them off, but, of course I, I managed to link up again at the OA, but later on, I linked up with them, but not before staying on, being kept on at, at Kirmington as the flight engineer leader. Attending briefings, main briefings and at night time, on operations, joining up with the ground engineer in the control tower, well before start up time for operations. Start up of the Lanc engines out in dispersals, directly that happened, of course, we got the odd call from dispersal that, one, they were having trouble starting up somewhere or other in this dispersal, that dispersal, so the engineer and myself flew out in the five hundred weight truck and I got in the cockpit and he got on the starter machine, the acc - acc.
CB: Trolley acc.
VS: Trolley acc, that’s right, and most times we succeeded. I gave it a good thorough thumping and tried all sorts of things, and eventually got it going. I found that very, very interesting and rewarding really. I enjoyed that period. How long it lasted, I’m not too sure. I should think, maybe, six weeks, two months, two months I would think, and I found that jolly good because I didn’t get much sleep those nights obviously, it wasn’t worthwhile getting into bed, you know, and so I went to the Mess and had a jug, and then went to my room and just sat in a chair, and then went back to the Mess and sat in the chair, and then I knew it was time to receive them back again. I used to de-brief all the flight engineers, it was very, very interesting indeed. One of the things that had to be watched very closely with new crews, although I’m sure that they had this belted into their brains much earlier, but we didn’t, we couldn’t afford to guess that they had retained the, or realised the importance. We, we went onto from SU carburettors to [pause], oh dear.
CB: Bendix?
VS: You’ve got it, which was jet injection and so you had an idle cut off switch. The American design was a lever [unclear] where you revved up an engine, you tried to start an engine, sorry, and you turned and you had it in cold, cold position, the mixture control, it went up from nil to auto rich, try and catch it and it was that type of idle cut off that was on a switch in a Lanc. It was tied to the pneumatic system, break system and the, these idle cut off switches, they didn’t operate unless you had a minimum of eighty pounds per square inch pressure on, on the gauge, the pneumatic gauge with covered your breaks. So if you, you could start the engines with the idle cut off switches in the off position when the break pressure was less than eighty, and then when you got up to eighty plus, the engines would just stop. The idle cut off switch was off, so we had to make sure that the newcomers had that firmly in their mind, because that was a shocker if that happened. And such things like that, anything I got up in briefing and made sure that they knew.
CB: Now on a raid, the flight engineers had to keep a log, so when you did the de-brief, what did you do with the log?
VS: Well let’s put it this way. We didn’t have to keep a log, not just on the raid. All we had to do was to keep a log of our fuel consumption, that’s all, so that we didn’t get into trouble. So we were no more responsible for the keeping of a log of what happened on the raid than any other member of the crew. So it was general, we didn’t log everything in black and white. The chap that had the option of doing that sort of thing was, of course, the chap sitting at the desk, the navigator, and I remember the navigator thinking he’d come out and have a look at the, what it was like to be over a target on one operation. He came out in the front, behind me and had a look, came out from behind the curtain, had a good look, frightened him to death and he went back again and he never came back again [laughs], he never came out of his curtain on any of the following raids. It was laughable. He saw the funny side of it, of course, but so from then on, he was in his little shroud.
CB: We, we’re talking about what you did after operations, but actually, that’s back on it and another question, what, how often did the gunners have to fire their guns in defence of the aircraft?
VS: Oh, that’s a hard one. Many times, many times they gave a spurt, whether that primed off the fight or not, I don’t know. You, you had to remember that when a fighter gets into a bomber stream, he can have a poop at one, he misses, carries on, he finds somebody else and has a poop at them. In other words, they don’t have to go back on themselves. If you, if you just two or three, then perhaps they do or they think they’ve really got you running, you know, their winning, they’ve got, they’ve maimed you slightly and might comeback. I couldn’t answer it.
CB: How much did you know about scarecrows?
VS: Oh, we didn’t worry about them. We realised that they were scarecrows and not the real thing. I don’t know whether they, a few entangled your props with one, I don’t know. I don’t think they were dangerous at all. Have you got reason to believe they were?
CB: No, no. I’m talking about the, the description of the big explosions that the RAF turned scarecrow.
VS: They, they weren’t big explosions they, they were skeletons to frighten you.
CB: Oh right.
VS: You know, like, like, like just the bones of a human being.
CB: Right.
VS: That type of thing, just floating in, in the air.
CB: Right.
VS: I, I don’t know what happened if you got near them.
CB: Did you see any other bombers exploding?
VS: Oh yes, I already related that in the Nuremberg raid, of course.
CB: So, twenty-five you saw shot down?
VS: Twenty-five we recorded.
CB: But how many ¬–
VS: But we saw others after that.
CB: Yes.
VS: But we didn’t record them, so I, I guess afterwards if we were on a track where only about a quarter or a third of the actual outward bound track and lost – we saw twenty, twenty-five explode, it had to be three or four times that number.
CB: I was differentiating between shot down and actually exploding.
VS: These were exploding, these twenty-five.
CB: Right. So do you know why they exploded rather than just go down?
VS: Well I, I, I’ve got an idea because of what’s been written since in intelligence side that the fighters were colliding with something what they call some music or other.
CB: Schrage Musik.
VS: Yes, which is neither here nor there. It was an upward firing gun and they came underneath the bomber and that’s why we were rocking to and fro, so our mid upper gunner had a chance of seeing underneath. Besides the rear gunner.
CB: Oh right, right. Um. So we’re after the war, back to that and you’re, no sorry, after your operations, still in the war, you’re debriefing the engineers.
VS: Yes, yes.
CB: What sort of things would come up there that would be worthy of note after an operation?
VS: Nothing very much. The real, information that came up was given by the pilot and the, the gunners that were seeing everything. The, it was left to them mainly. The engineer came up with one or two things which, with regard, not regard to the operation itself, it was management of the aircraft that he would deal with and stick to that and only come up and talk about other things that the others hadn’t seen or –
CB: You mentioned earlier that one of the tasks of engineers was to manage the fuel consumption.
VS: Yes.
CB: So how critical was it to rebalance the tanks during a raid?
VS: I don’t think it, it was really critical, I don’t think it was really critical.
CB: Because there was a sequence?
VS: I would call it a routine thing to balance the tanks and to – we took off with all pumps on, on the tanks, so that if there was something wrong with one tank, the other one would still be pressurising the fuel system [clears throat], we started off with number one tanks with all pumps on, the others as well, and then we eventually went over to two, and we started on one, it was rather important because the overloading from the siphoning off and that goes on in the system, went into one of the tanks, number one I think it was. So we went onto that initially, and then went onto two and then from then on, as we got down on, on the two, we brought the others coming in so that they were in the centre of the aircraft more, instead of on the wings.
CB: So number one tank is where?
VS: They’re the two close either side of the fuselage.
CB: Right. So the numbers go up.
VS: No two, and then three.
CB: So the numbers go up as you go further out in the wing?
VS: Yes, that’s right and its two thousand one hundred and fifty-four gallons.
CB: In total?
VS: Maximum.
CB: Right.
VS: So obviously, dependent on your bomb load, so dependent on how much in fuel you had. The – all that weight for take-off initially, was about sixty-three thousand net, including everything, and that went up to about sixty-five with the mark 3s, I think. Eventually of course, we pushed and pushed and went up to about seventy thousand with the big bomb.
CB: How did the calculation for fuel requirements emerge? Who, who did the calculation on the fuel needed for loading for a raid?
VS: That was done by the, by the operations side of your, before take-off. The intelligence came through and they knew where the target was, then they worked out the distance, how long it would take and so forth, and so they knew, and a reserve of about two hundred gallons for diversion or something like that.
CB: OK.
VS: That determined the actual – how many gallons.
CB: So as the station flight engineer, did you do the calculation for the crews?
VS: No, no, wasn’t asked to, it was all done through the operations side and the ground engineers.
CB: Right. So after doing that, so you finished operations, you’re the, the man at the station, as the station flight engineer. How long did that go on?
VS: For about two months I should think about two months.
CB: OK.
VS: No more, and then I was posted to the heavy conversion, conversion unit at Blyton, where I took up instruction duties which I found not very rewarding, because I didn’t have much to do. The, there were many other instructors there, and as far as I was concerned, they were doing a reasonable job and I was really there to pass the time away, I felt.
CB: Yes.
VS: And it proved that way because they then sent me on a flight engineers leaders course at St Athan, and I found that a very good course because it was bordering on ground engineers training. It was very, very detailed and we, we had physical fitness half way through the, each day and it was about a two month course, and we had to detail, in drawings and words, something like two engines, two carburettors, two cooling systems, two oil systems and all this sort of thing and it was very, very good indeed. And I came out with an A, an A2, not an A1, so I just missed out on eighty percent. I was about seventy-eight point five or something which annoyed me [laughs] intensely, because I always think that I am experienced in marking papers and a lot depends on just how you feel at the time, you know, you, you can’t be accurate.
CB: Right.
VS: It’s impossible.
CB: OK
VS: I think you may be inaccurate by about two or three percent, if not five. Anyway, so then they posted me back there permanently, instructing on the flight engineers course, overall course of training and by then, they were well organised on the type training, it was straight through about eight, eight months.
CB: OK. So after eight months then what did you do?
VS: Well during that eight months what happened was, the war ended.
CB: Um hm.
VS: And the, the squadron leader, the engineer in charge of that training was posted, left the flight lieutenant and the flight lieutenant engineer was posted, and then I was in charge of type training as a flying officer. That lasted about two months but I got the shock of my life when I realised that there I was, in charge of training with Lancs, Halifaxes, Liberators, Sunderlands, Stirlings, at least that number if not more, and I ended up in the hospital with bronchitis because I’d frozen to death in the hangers in winter. This was all after the war and I remember that we were down – people had bread supplies one day because I was in hospital, and it was a time when we were flying – dropping food to the Dutch.
CB: Operation Manna?
VS: Yes, that’s right. And [coughs] what happened then was a visit, my pilot found out where I was and came to see me in the hospital. And there I was in bed and saying he wanted me to join him, flying to and fro to Australia, taking people back to Australia, would I join him. And I said yes, ‘I’ll, I’ll go with that’, but what happened was, my wife was expecting a child and I had to pull out and so that was me more or less finished, and the training finished. Oh, I remember before the training finished, we had surplus pilots coming through for engineer training, especially Canadians. Canadian pilots came to us for engineer training, and that was the last bit that was going on. The last little do that was going on before we closed down the actual training there. From then on, I was asked if I would like to stay in the Air Force and then I said no, but I knew what would happen if I’d said yes, I would have gone straight onto admin and been a flight commander or something, which didn’t appeal to me one bit. So I just left it and left it and then decided that I’d like to stay on, that was rather too late for the people that really knew me, so it took me some time before I managed to get a PC. But I transferred to the air traffic control branch, aircraft control branch as we called it, GD Aircraft Control, to stay with aircraft, sort of thing, and went out to Singapore and I was a joint sort of worker, operations room for HQ Malaya at Changi, at Block 36, and was in the operations room there and their job was air traffic control centre and operations, and we were briefing on radio as Spitfires and so forth, were flying north attacking [pause] the communists in the jungle. So I went out, first of all, when I went there I went up to north, to Kuala Lumpur, to meet up with the advanced headquarters and I was going to be in touch with telecommunications, getting the information that they required from the actual jungle, from the Army patrols asking for assistance. And that was interesting stuff and learnt a lot on that, and we were, the responsibility, I had a number of aircraft go in the sea. A number, I say, just a few. So we had search and rescue to do as well. We’d get out all the maps so we would see and [unclear] touch for search and rescue, and came away after about three years there, and went onto radar training, ground control approach radar at RAF Whitton and from then on, I really was in my element of, back really, in touch with aircraft and talking them down in bad weather and that was rewarding when you knew that if you didn’t do it, then they would be in real trouble. And [clears throat] from there, I was in charge of the, I was at, sent to Marham, with a new type GCA called CPN4 in, arghh, now, what year? Fifty, fifty-two. About fifty-three I went up to Marham with the new CPN4 GCA, and I was there until late fifty, fifty-six, fifty-six, that’s right. And during that time, we had a, a real terrible tragedy in the Air Force, we had the fighter leaders course at a neighbouring station, just ten miles from us at West Raynham, fighter leaders course and it came out quite clearly, behind the scenes, that their motto was, the last chap in, into dispersals, was the winner. In other words and also, unless you ran out of petrol by the time you got to dispersal, you were a chicken, sort of thing, and that was their motto. The last drop, it was actually crazy and that’s what happened to them one day, when they had, they put up eight aircraft, eight Hunters, and during that time my CPN4 GCA was ordered to go to West Raynham, and for their old, old the original, old fashioned and less efficient radar, GCA MPN1 was ordered back to me, so it was a swap and because the CNC had ordered the – he didn’t want his fighters by the squadrons without the best GCA, never mind about the fact that we, at Marham, were the master diversion airfield and took in, eventually it was turned round and realised what a mistake that was, but it was too late. Because they — what happened was that CPN4 GCA needed a contract with OTA Engineering at Kings Lynn to rebore them and keep them in decent condition. They’re a higher revving diesel electric generator sets because you couldn’t use mains, UK mains. It was American equipment requiring sixty cycles instead of fifty cycles.
CB: Yeah.
VS: And so, you had to run with the diesel electric generator sets until somebody came up with transformers and so they went, the equipment at, was now at Raynham, needed to go in for an overhaul, because they were wearing out again and on that day, they didn’t have a GCA, and they the weather was clamping, said to be clamping, but they still allowed them to go up and actually do their exercise in the water beach area. And then they came back and manning the control tower was acting wing commander flying, wing commander flying proper was out shopping with his wife, and he eventually ordered them to be let down [clears throat], knowing that Marham must be clamping exactly the same as Raynham, they were only ten miles away. Cloud was nearly on the deck and it was by the time the actual happening occurred [clears throat], and so he allowed them to come down, which is absolutely the worst thing you could do, unless you are sure of being able to land them because they didn’t have enough fuel to go anywhere else. So they let down and they were all diverted to Marham, ten miles away, with PEs around the airfield at Marham, going out to ten miles. So we couldn’t see the aircraft, whereas the other air, GCA, he could raise the antenna to get rid of the ground returns and still see the aircraft and we could have done something about it. But even then, it would have been too late, because as these were let down and in touch with Marham, Marham was sending them down wind for the GCA and they were running out of fuel, and four went in. The squadron leader on the course from Hong Kong with thirteen way in, underneath the cloud about twelve miles away on runway 24, and he went in to the deck and four others managed to, well should have been, three others managed to just stick their nose down and hope that they would see the ground before they hit the ground, and they managed to get in, and the others bailed out and that was the calamity of the day. And, of course, the board of enquiry came along very quickly, all group captains and the air vice marshal president [clears throat], I was OC to GCA and fortunately for me, which gave me a freehand, I wasn’t on duty, so I was confronted with this very quickly after it happening, and I was in a married quarter on the station [coughs], and Scottie the SATCO was a good one as well, and we told the truth as we saw it from Marham’s view point, even then. The following morning, I had a group captain come along from the board of enquiry before they actually left, having a look at our radar and that, and wanted to know what I thought of things. Pretty pictures made of the radar to take to the board of enquiry when I was interviewed, and I remember being asked [laughs] the question, and I was in the middle of answering it and one of the group captains didn’t like my answer, he asked the president whether he could change the wording of the question and he allowed him to do so and they said, would you carry on, and I said, ‘no way sir, the question’s been changed, the answer is totally different and so I wish the record to be expunged’, and so he agreed. The group captain said, ‘no, no, no’. Thank goodness the president was can, canny and realised what was happening and it was expunged and the truth was told, and a few people got black marks on that one but it, it was terrible, terrible management, terrible story for the Air Force.
CB: The, the squadron commander, the squadron leader, he stayed in his aircraft did he, he didn’t get out?
VS: Oh no, that’s right he went straight in, ‘cause he was floating underneath and when you make the mistake at that speed, if you touch the deck, you’re in.
CB: But he didn’t bang out, because he didn’t have a zero zero seat?
VS: No.
CB: And what happened to the planes that – where they did eject?
VS: They, they got away with it.
CB: The aircraft didn’t hit anything?
VS: No, fields, that’s right. Funnily enough, it turned out that, sorry, it’s ok, thank you, it turned out as, my pilot, Wiggins, had a daughter, or a sister, no a sister, had a sister who was married to a naval fleet air arm, funnily enough, strangely enough, she was married to the fleet air arm pilot that was on this course, the fighter leaders course and he was one of those that bailed out over Marham, and he told me in this house, when he visited for the first time, that he had no alternative to stick his nose down and hover as much as he could, and being directed to pull up rather sharply, which he did when he could see the ground. He was very nearly going in and he pulled up, screamed up high, ran out of fuel, bailed out, he got away with it.
CB: Amazing.
VS: He’s still alive now, at Chelmsford. Another story.
CB: Yes.
VS: Terrible story for the Air Force. I think it, I don’t think that will be on record [laughs]
CB: What happened in the aftermath of that?
VS: Well, one or two people had black marks, didn’t they?
CB: I was, I was thinking on equipment. Did they get proper equipment for both airfields then?
VS: Sorry.
CB: Did they get proper equipment for both airfields then?
VS: Oh yes.
CB: ‘Cause, if it had, if Marham had still got its CPN4, they could of got in on a GCA.
VS: No.
CB: Oh they couldn’t?
VS: No. The old one might have done, but their fuel was so short that they were running out as they were coming into Marham strip range. As I said to you, one was going down wind and he ran out so maybe the odd one or two on a thimble full of petrol might have been taken in, because with the CPN4, he would raise the antenna and obliterate a lot of the PEs, enough to see the aircraft to be able to take them into your precision talk down.
CB: The PEs being the ground returns?
VS: That right.
CB: Right. OK. We’ll pause there for a mo.
VS: You going to leave that in? Now, where are we?
CB: Right, so we’ve just done about the disaster at Marham. So what happened after that?
VS: Well.
CB: Where did you go?
VS: Soon after that, that’s right, we had, we had the Suez do.
CB: 1956.
VS: Fifty-six. And there I was on duty at night time, on the radar at Marham, got a phone call from Bomber Command, oh dear, great friend of mine, the names gone, anyway, they said ‘Vic, you’re urgently required at Malta, because no one knows quite how to fix the new MPN11 GCA that’s been delivered and been sited, but they’re not too sure about whether it’s been sited correctly and frightened that it might well break down, because its closer to the runway than the minimum distance laid down in the manual’ [coughs]. And so there I am, at one o’clock in the morning, in the married quarter, delving into my camphor chest for my car key and that, at eight o’clock, I was in a dispersal quite close to my married quarter in a Canberra, heading for Malta. Landed there at twelve o’clock, met up with my dear old SATCO, who’d been sent out earlier on, and he showed me around and had a quick, quick half and a sandwich and went out with CO Wright, checking the siting and the reflectors on the touchdown point approach and so on. And so managed to satisfy myself on one or two things, and it was a silly old type of war because civil aircraft was still landing and taking off there. The airlines and I talked a number of those down to prove that everything was ok and was able to report to the, dear old station commander at Marham, who was out there as the, the actual sortie commander, lovely fella, forgotten his name now. Anyway [clears throat], so went back to the Mess and had a meal, and off go seventy, four engine, no seventy aircraft, about forty, forty Avro Canberras and a smaller number of Valiants. Right. Valiants were just coming into use at RAF Marham at that stage. Thank you. And never the twain shall meet on the let down system, one catches up the other because they are not the same speeds for letdown. Anyway –
CB: This is the first of the V Bombers?
VS: Yes. So the seventy came back from a hit on Cairo and there again, Cairo was still open to civil aircraft. What a crazy war that was. Anyway, they came back and there was an absolute terrible thunder storm, and Scottie had devised a scheme, which was good, and he worked it good. He was the actual marshaller on radio and he was on a different frequency to me, on this three position GCA, and so I had two chaps that are detailed for actually marshalling and sequencing them, separating them and feeding into my own talk down, and he was fortunate that the actual returns, cloud returns, on our search part of our radar were in such a position that it helped. It didn’t hinder too much because that one was catching up with another, they went round the cloud and that showing on the search screen and that marshalling and then managed to sequence them very well, it worked very well . Forty went down the chute to me, Scottie put forty down to me and thirty to Hal Far, the naval base there and forty, they had a CPN4 GCA, so they were ok as well, and they all come, got down. But they were jolly lucky because the control tower didn’t see the aircraft until they were, just before landing.
CB: This is at Luqa? This is at Luqa?
VS: At Luqa.
CB: Yes. Right, we’ll pause there for a mo.
VS: [unclear] we were good, and -
CB: At Marham?
VS: Yes, at Marham. We were there, the weather was blooming awful and that night was our ball, the officers Mess ball and so I knew that we wouldn’t be very popular, the situation at Marham wouldn’t be very popular to have to get the admin side and all that all sorted out before two loads of aircraft with passengers, full of passengers.
CB: Civilian aircraft, yeah.
VS: Yes, civilian aircraft. So getting the customs in and that, and transport and all this sort of a thing, with a ball coming up and it was laughable afterwards, but it was serious stuff and the thing I had to impress on both pilots, and they took this very well, was that we were [pause] we, we were aviation red they called it, our airfield was, the — Marham was occupied by the Americans for a time. Then we took it back again and we had a funnel of aviation red lights, a funnel. In the meantime, others had progressed to other approach lighting and that lighting was said to line and bar, so I had to impress on these two airline pilots, if you see a light, don’t dive for it.
CB: When you —
VS: They’re either left of you or right of you, dependent where you are in relation to the centre line. It is not centre line and bar, it’s a funnel, a funnel of lights, they’d be either side of you and that’s where you want them, so don’t start diving for your lights because you’d be going away and in trouble. So follow my instruction, so I did that in the briefing I had before, and they took it and I talked them right down to touch down, but not very popular with the administrators [laughing] and all those, although all had a good laugh in the end. With all the passengers to deal with.
CB: So Marham was actually a master airfield, which it still is.
VS: Definitely, yeah.
CB: Was it used for any other airline emergencies?
VS: Well, yes, no doubt but I don’t recall them, not in my time. That’s the one I recall.
CB: Yes.
VS: Obviously, yes.
CB: When was that? It was in the fifties again?
VS: Yeah.
CB: Before fifty-six?
VS: I, I reckon that was, I had — in a married quarter at Marham and my wife caught TB, and she went into a sanatorium in [pause] fifty-four, fifty-five, she was there for fifteen months and it was quite a, a traumatic fifteen months, because I had two young children. So my mother and father came up from Worthing, who were quite old then, to keep house and I had a batman and given extra help and it worked very well indeed, and so I had worked extra shifts during the week day in order to have weekends off to get to see the wife. Now where is this leading? You asked me what?
CB: No, it was just when that was? So we know that.
VS: When that was, yes.
CB: Yes.
VS: So that was, that must have been around about early part of fifty-six
CB: OK.
VS: Because it was soon after that that I was whipped out to Malta.
CB: Because Suez was fifty-six. After that where, where were you posted?
VS: Oh excuse me, I’ve got cramp. Where did I go? I went somewhere that I wasn’t very happy about, but because I was GD, general duties, they’d never had one on, on, the, the calibration flight for radar and they wanted me to be the first one. So I was there for about a year, flying around in [unclear] and Canberra’s and being dropped off and jumping into radar positions and control towers and whatever, checking out their radar efficiency.
CB: Where was your parent unit?
VS: Watton, sorry.
CB: Watton, yes.
VS: Watton and — so I had, I was asked later on by air vice marshal [coughs] in charge of Task Force Grapple in London, how many hours flying I had had in the last year, and when I told him three hundred and seventy hours, he very nearly fell off his chair [laughs], and that was through chasing round in aircraft, calibrating radars and so I was a year on that and I was promoted, and I joined Task Force Grapple as a GATCO SATCO, and I was then in the underground vaults where Churchill was at Whitehall, we didn’t see daylight until we came up again during the day. Ferreting through files and what happened with previous testing , nuclear testing, I forget which went on and mainly in Australia before then, but there was one, one other, one initial operation that on Christmas Island called X-ray, in late, late, late, late, late fifty-seven or was it fifty-eight, I don’t know [pause] no, late fifty-seven because it was January fifty-eight, no hang on, hang on, fifty-six, fifty-seven, yes it was it was January fifty-eight when I joined them, that’s right, when I joined Task Force Grapple in London as SATCO GATCO. And I — going through files and that, and I was there for two or three days and along came the security officer, I think it was more like ten days, and asked if I’d been passed for top secret documents. I said, ‘no, no’, and there I was, with top secret documents in front of me. And so I thought that, that was a terrific check, you know, that says — Have you ever gone through that?
CB: Positive vetting?
VS: Yes, yes.
CB: Yeah.
VS: That, it, it’s just about three, three sheets together isn’t it? Lead to another, now if you’ve said something here and its put in another way, the other side, it shows up that you’ve told an untruth or —
CB: Yeah, yeah that you’re a fraud.
VS: Or a mistake. Yes, that’s right. It’s a very important check, there’s no doubt about that. Of course, there are some tricky people that will get away with it.
CB: Yeah
VS: But that was quite an experience because I had to ferret out what was there, all there on the air traffic control side, and did I need anything else, and if you wanted something to be sent out there for the first operation, which was for me Yankee, which was the first actual H-bomb test.
CB: Right
VS: The others were not H-bomb. And that was called Yankee, the 1st of April, so I had to get out there fairly early, but I had to get myself briefed, self briefed in London headquarters. Once out there, what did I need, and if I needed anything, get it on the ship because it would cost a fortune to send it out by air. It’s halfway round world, ten thousand miles. And so this went on and I, I went out there. I suppose from about February, March, I should think, late Feb, and gave me time to sort it, myself out from then on, on air traffic control before the first big one.
CB: We’re talking about nuclear weapon testing, Operation Grapple.
VS: That’s right, that’s right. Yeah [clears throat]. Oh I call him Dave. Air vice marshal was the chief in charge of that and he was the one that very nearly fell off his seat when he asked me the question, how many miles, how many air miles have you got in, and I said three hundred and seventy odd hours [unclear], three hundred and seventy hours and he fell off his chair. He— later on I met quite briefly at some special event attended by the Queen on parade. At, at Marham, I wasn’t there, I was, I think I was retired. Anyway, yes I was, I was retired but Grandy was there in a wheelchair, poor old chap, yes he was, he wasn’t too good. Anyway coming, coming back now.
CB: So we’ve gone through Grapple, then where did you go?
VS: Grapple, it would be, I, it was then, arghh, came back to London we were asked to say, yes we had Yankee and we had Mike, and Mike had two air drops and two balloon drops and that was the end. We came back, the Prime Minister had said we’re stopping all nuclear testing, that’s from the 1st of April, the 1st of October fifty, fifty-eight, that’s right. And so we came back, we all [unclear] in the specialisation to write a paper saying what should happen to our equipment we left there, bearing in mind, we might go, want to go back later but not at the moment and all that sort of thing. So myself and the group, navigation officer finished that and they were happy for us, just whilst, bide our time till we were posted. So where shall we go, Hank and myself. I said well what about the Parliament, I’ve never been in, in Parliament and I want to see something. So we went in and we asked a policeman what to do to get in, and he said, well you go over there, you fill up a [unclear] chit and if your member of Parliament is in the house, they’ll come out and take you in to the, this thing, the Strangers Gallery. So this we did and I said to Hank,’ I don’t know my MP, for goodness sake, I’ve got a house in [unclear] I don’t know the MP’, I said, ‘well what, what are you going to put down’, he said. Well it was the big chubby lady MP, I’ll think of it in a moment, she was a follower of amateur boxing and that sort of thing, funny remembering that.
PP: Bessie Braddock.
VS: That’s right, Bessie Braddock. You, we give him a clue and he comes up with the answers, there you are. And so Bessie Braddock came out and took us into this thing. I’m in Committee I’ve got to go, all of us are in Committee I’ve got to go an I’ll come back later on. And she did, dear old soul, anyway whilst we were there, in came Churchill, chubby faced, red complexion and of course, it was his latter few years, near his death really.
CB: Um.
VS: It was lovely to see. Lovely to see. And so what happened then? Yes. So then, ‘cause I was well known as being the radar boy I was posted to [pause] posted to the CNATS, National Air Traffic Services which was combined joint civil military headquarters for the whole base.
CB: West Drayton?
VS: No, no at [pause] London, London, Shell House at The Strand, just at the back near Charing Cross Station.
CB: OK.
VS: And I was [clears throat] C Ops 4, one down from a group captain, in charge of all the radar, area radar organisations. Now I think I’ve got that wrong. I knew there was something wrong. Before I went there, that, that comes out that later on. From the Task Force Grapple, I went on the area radar trials at London Airport, which was pre setting up an area radar service for air traffic control right across the whole of the UK, and it was radar that was used by 11 Group to control the aircraft on flights, flight paths over London for the Queen and various special occasions, and we, we took [coughs] this radar and did trials to, the whole essence behind it was that Group Captain Robinson, who was one of the leading lights of the air traffic control, managed to get a D Pack agreement with civil aviation that we could take aircraft through airways structure in this county on radar, maintaining a certain separation, without reference to civil controllers and that was a break through because that was essential, because at that time, the airways structure dropped, it increased their top limit of an airway became twenty-five thousand instead of eleven thousand and it was due to the introduction of the Comet. They raised the height of the airways.
CB: Right.
VS: And so our fighters couldn’t get through quickly unless something was done and done quickly. Because my experience showed that the GCI controllers were jolly good at looking, bringing two aircraft together, but they weren’t at separating them, they weren’t very good at that and they, they didn’t really keep an accurate line, on a, of the whereabouts of airways, they were very rough on radar on that one, between you and I.
CB: Um.
VS: Anyway that’s what proved that my trials. I was then sent down to Sopley to set up a radar service, that’s near Christchurch in Bournemouth, and the old GCI station which was still operating, so I had to pinch radar consoles from the GCI, they were all very reasonable about it and eventually took over the whole station and modified it to my requirements, and at the same time one was being, had been taken over at Hack Green near, in Cheshire and, of course, the, the [unclear] of radar on London airport, which was the start of things trials that was Heathrow, so we had three area radars covering the Southern part of the airways structures.
CB: Um.
VS: As good start. And I was taking aircraft off from [pause], what was the beacon and, in France and the French coast and was taking them off Comets, taking them off from there and straightening and aligning them. That was one of the first indications of, to our people that it was worthwhile. And taking the aircraft through airways and they could see how good that was.
CB: And the airways were amber 1 and amber 25?
VS: That right, green 1, amber 1.
CB: Amber 25?
VS: Yeah.
CB: OK.
VS: So that expanded all over the country.
CB: Right. Then what?
VS: So I left, I left, left there, I was posted to Heckle at NATO, which was field headquarters for the area radar field system at Stanmore, and a big country house outside Stanmore, RAF Stanmore [coughs], and there I was, the operations man and planning, helping to plan radar units throughout the country. In other words, taking old GCI sites or getting in on the sites already there whilst they were still operating and we took over three type eighty-two radar stations at Lindholme, Watton and North Luffenham.
CB: North Luffenham.
VS: Yeah. And so that was the situation. It was then that no one had my experience, so I was goaded to going to Singapore in Christmas of [coughs]of sixty-three and — to the, as CO of the air traffic control centre and building into that an 80CRU, in other words a radar unit, area radar unit and helping the civil aviation authority, the chief to set up and join me, in the radar consoles and set up in an operations, joint operations room. That took me something like eighteen months, and I came back as a wing commander and posted to take over one of the units I’d planned, mainly at North Luffenham.
CB: That was your last posting was it?
VS: No [laughs] then [coughs] I was posted to national air traffic services, that I went into too early with you, at Shell, Shell House, Shell Mex House no Shell House, The Strand and I was there as the C Ops 4 in charge of the military side of area radar and, and then I was posted back to NATO for a short period and then back again to C Ops 4 at, that’s now retired.
CB: When did you retire?
VS: It was really, well officially, early seventy-seven.
CB: OK. I think we’ve done really well. Thank you very much.
VS: [laughs]
CB: That’s really good, getting up to your retirement, but when was it first possible to keep tabs on the movements of aircraft over the whole of the UK on radar?
VS: Radar in a limited form was just a matter of thrashing on a screen to the layman. That was what [unclear] had in wartime during the Battle of Britain. It then became a precision, a cathode ray tube on which targets were shown, as blips that moved. And, so you can say that the first time that came in wasn’t for air traffic control it was for GCI, Ground Control approach.
CB: Interception.
VS: Interception rather. So it wasn’t until around about [long pause] the seventies, sixty-eight onwards or something like that.
CB: Um.
VS: That we, at ATCR, ATCRU, air traffic control side had access to some of the GCI radars for air traffic control purposes. It was only then that we really had, say three quarters of cover of the, the UK.
CB: I was thinking of when was it possible from the military perspective?
VS: Um.
CB: To watch the whole of the country?
VS: Never, never. And we’ve never had that and it’s possible we’re not completely covered now, we’re not far off it, we’re not far off it. We, we set up, set up a unit at Bishops Court in Northern Ireland, to try and cover over that side, the western side, but there’s always an area where you can’t see much.
CB: Um.
VS: There always is, there always will be with radar.
CB: OK. [bleep] We’re just going to do a few extra items for Wing Commander Stapley of Dersingham about his civilian activities after leaving the RAF.
VS: Quickly, I hope.
CB: So after you retired, Victor, from the Royal Air Force, you’ve done a lot of other things so what are they?
VS: Well I was taking stock to see the best thing for me to do and I thought in terms of, do I stay at Penn where I was living, which was a nice village but if I do, what do I do and I thought I’d be living on the golf course. And I thought that’s no good, I’d just taken up golf and I didn’t like it all very much and I always said I wouldn’t take up golf until I’d stopped playing cricket and of course, it was too late to take up golf. So I decided to move away, and we had the daughter down in Colchester and the son up at Newcastle, so we worked our way north from Colchester and came up with a house at the village of Ringstead, and that was in mid seventy-seven. And took over this old house and I was working on it when the, I was approached by the local representative of the council, would I put up at the next election of April seventy-nine for the District Council, not the Parish Council but that it included to be on the Parish Council as well, but the main thing was the West Norfolk Council was a District Council. And I thought, well that’s interesting because basically, I’d been a bit of a politician for a long, long time now, I’d been on NATs twice and having to go to see the Secretary of State for different things to do with military money, and I thought, well, yes, I think that’s a good thing, I’ll have a go. I was in the middle of replenishing, renewing various things on this country mansion, but I still took it up and I won and I, it was in the days of Thatcher taking office as well on the, in April seventy-nine and within a couple of years, I was chairman of housing, I was chairman of housing for about eight years out of the twelve years I was on the Council. I ended up as mayor of West Norfolk in my last year of 1990 to ninety-one, April to April, and retired as West Norfolk, West Norfolk mayor, mayor of West Norfolk. I then left the Council within months they made me a, an honorary alderman of the borough and here I have and had another decoration to a certain extent, I’m allowed to do different things within the borough, but that doesn’t mean a thing. Like a freedom of the borough. The aldermen were extinct, made extinct a long time ago. It’s just an honorary rank of appreciation. Now where did we go? From there, during my period on the Council, I had a doctor approach me from Heacham, I was councillor voted in, in the Heacham District here in Norfolk, and he approached me with regard to setting up a hospice. That was in 1983, whilst I was still on the council, he wanted my help. What I could do for him on the council. This I did, I joined him and I worked from eighty-three to ninety, no 2004, twenty-one years or something like that, as a Director of the hospice and Vice Chairman, I couldn’t take on the chairmanship because I had too much on my plate with other work things. I managed to get somebody to take over as chairman and we worked well together. Then I, when I left the council, also I had one or two organisations coming to me for, would I take over as this or that and the other, and one of course, that was dear to my heart was the chair, President of the local RAF Association, RAFA, Royal Air Force Association and I still am President and every year, I lay on a dinner in April and another dinner in September, and preside over the Battle of Britain memorial services at Tower Gardens in Kings Lynn, and various other aspects like that. The one for the [pause] Burma Star Association, they became extinct here as a branch and we took over that responsibility from them. We promised to do that, we still do that and of course, remembrance services and everything remembrance and such like. In addition being an honorary alderman, I get invited to all functions on the civic side, which are very nice to attend and see everybody again at each year and that is just about it, other than the RAFA. I preside over two dinners a year and also every other year, I lay on a big band concert, RAF the big band at the Corn Exchange at Kings Lynn. And that’s just about it.
CB: I don’t know how you have time to have your meals.
VS: I’ve finished [laughs]
CB: [laughs] Thank you very much indeed.
VS: You’ve, you’ve taken it all way.
CB: Wing Commander Stapley.
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 Victor Stapley
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-02
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AStapleyVA160802
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
02:20:10 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Essex
England--Yorkshire
England--Norfolk
England--Rutland
France
France--Le Havre
Germany
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Stuttgart
Christmas Island
Egypt
Malta
Singapore
Malaysia
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1956
1957
1944-03-30
1944-03-31
1944-06-05
1944-06-06
Description
An account of the resource
Victor Stapley was born in Ilford in Essex, where he was fond of playing cricket. He left school at fifteen and worked at a tobacco company. Then Victor became a shipping manager, a job in which he had to book shipping spaces whilst not having any telephones in his office. He joined the Royal Air Force at the start of the Second World War. After his training Victor became an engineer and went to work on the Mustangs of 2 Squadron based at RAF Sawbridgeworth. He tells of his first experiences with the Allison engine and Rolls Royce Merlin engines. After completing a flight mechanic course and becoming a fitter, he remustered as a flight engineer He crewed up at the Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Lindholme.
Victor completed 28 operations, including Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Cologne, Essen and Frankfurt, but he missed out on his 30 operations when he contracted rubella. He tells of his experiences on his operations, and supporting the D-Day operations when he and his crew were sent to attack the gun emplacement at Le Havre. He mentions how he saw all the ships heading for the beaches. Victor also recalls being put in charge of training with Lancasters, Halifaxes, Sunderlands and Stirlings, before heading out to Malaya to work on supporting the Army.
He served during the Suez Crisis helping with issues concerning radar. Back home he served at multiple stations before becoming commanding officer at RAF North Luffenham. He mentions an incident at RAF Marham and joining Task Force Grapple which was involved with nuclear testing.
Victor retired in 1977 and then he became a parish councillor for West Norfolk Council, before becoming mayor of West Norfolk from 1990 to 1991. At the local Royal Air Force Association he takes part in events helping to organise the acts of Remembrance every year.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Vivienne Tincombe
aircrew
B-24
bombing
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944)
crewing up
fitter engine
flight engineer
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
mechanics engine
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
P-51
radar
RAF Lindholme
RAF Marham
RAF North Luffenham
RAF St Athan
Stirling
Sunderland
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1343/22177/LTyrieJSB87636v1.1.pdf
2593c27faef4f15089ccae84e95bc4f2
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
Tyrie, Jim
Tyrie, JSB
Description
An account of the resource
34 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Jim Tyrie (1919 - 1993, 87636 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, photographs, correspondence and prisoner of war log as well as a photograph album. He flew operations as a pilot with 77 Squadron before being shot down in April 1941.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Brian Taylor 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
2019-06-01
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
Tyrie, JSB
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Jim Tyrie's flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Flying log book for J S B Tyrie covering the period from 1 July 1939 to 9 August 1959. Detailing his flying training and operations flown Following which he was shot down 9 April 1941 and became a prisoner of war. Returning to flying duties 25 May 1945 to 27 October 1964 detailing his duties as instructor and with 90 squadron. Also included his flying in various aircraft including his airline flying. He was stationed at RAF Perth, RAF Hatfield, RAF Cranwell, RAF Abingdon, RAF Stanton Harcourt, RAF Topcliffe, RAF Wheaton Aston, RAF Seighford, RAF Perton, RAF Moreton, RAF Finningly, RAF Lindholme, RAF Wyton, RAF Shallufa, RAF Khormakser, RAF Hendon, RAF Gatow, RAF Shawbury, RAF Worksop, RAF Wunstorf, RAF Bruugen, RAF Chivenor, RAF Akrotiri, RAF Nicosia, RAF Sopley, RAF Watton and RAF Bishops Court. Aircraft flown in were, Tiger Moth, Oxford, Whitley, Wellington, Dakota, Lancaster, Vengeance, Anson, Lincoln, Proctor, York, Viking, Valetta, Auster, Meteor, Varsity, Prentice, Canberra, Vampire, Whirlwind, Hunter, Shackleton, Viscount, Brittania and Hastings. He flew 7 operations with 77 squadron. Targets were St Nazaire, Hamburg, Berlin, Brest and Kiel. His first or second pilots on operations were Pilot Officer Bagnall and Sergeant Lee.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LTyrieJSB87636v1
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Cyprus
Cyprus--Nicosia
Egypt
Egypt--Suez Canal
France
France--Brest
France--Saint-Nazaire
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Niederkrüchten
Germany--Wunstorf
Great Britain
England--Berkshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Devon
England--Gloucestershire
England--Hampshire
England--Hertfordshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--London
England--Norfolk
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Shropshire
England--Staffordshire
England--West Midlands
England--Yorkshire
Northern Ireland--Down (County)
Scotland--Perth
Yemen (Republic)
Yemen (Republic)--Aden
North Africa
Great Britain
Cyprus--Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1941-03-10
1941-03-11
1941-03-12
1941-03-13
1941-03-14
1941-03-23
1941-03-24
1941-04-03
1941-04-04
1941-04-07
1941-04-08
1941-04-09
10 OTU
21 OTU
77 Squadron
90 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
bombing
C-47
Flying Training School
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lincoln
Meteor
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
prisoner of war
Proctor
RAF Abingdon
RAF Bishops Court
RAF Chivenor
RAF Cranwell
RAF Finningley
RAF Hatfield
RAF Hendon
RAF Khormakser
RAF Lindholme
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Seighford
RAF Shallufa
RAF Shawbury
RAF Stanton Harcourt
RAF Topcliffe
RAF Watton
RAF Worksop
RAF Wyton
Shackleton
shot down
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
Whitley
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/551/23204/LLancasterJO103509v6.1.pdf
3b85568dbca5e03814e127c12ebe04c5
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Lancaster, Jo
John Oliver Lancaster
J O Lancaster
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lancaster, JO
Description
An account of the resource
17 items. Two oral history interviews with John Oliver 'Jo' Lancaster DFC (1919 - 2019, 948392, 103509 Royal Air Force), photographs and six of his log books. Jo Lancaster completed 54 operations as a pilot with in Wellingtons with 40 Squadron, and after a period of instructing, in Lancasters with 12 Squadron from RAF Wickenby. He became test pilot after the war and was the first person to use a Martin-Baker ejection seat in an emergency.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Jo Lancaster and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-18
2017-03-08
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Jo Lancaster’s pilots flying log book. Six
Description
An account of the resource
Pilots flying log book for J O Lancaster covering the period from 1 September 1956 to 31 August 1959. Detailing his test pilot flying with Sir W G Armstorng-Whitworth aircraft Ltd based at Coventry. Aircraft flown were Javelin, Meteor, Anson, Rapide, Hunter, Sea Hawk, Proctor, Dove, Tiger Moth, Auster, Shackleton, Argosy and Jet Provost.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MIke Connock
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LLancasterJO103509v6
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Coventry
England--Warwickshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1956
1957
1958
1959
aircrew
Anson
Meteor
pilot
Proctor
Shackleton
Tiger Moth
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1308/18718/LThompsonKG1238603v3.1.pdf
034f6d0c528946552e1d7d8ff808c089
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
Thompson, Keith G. Navigation logs
Description
An account of the resource
35 items. Keith Thompson's navigation logs to bombing operations to targets in France and Germany.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-07
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
Thompson, KG
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Keith Thompson's Astro Log Book
Description
An account of the resource
Sight log book covering Keith Thompson's flying career, from his training at RCAF Malton from October to December 1942 flying in the Anson then on to 30 OTU at RAF Hixon from July 1943 flying the Wellington and 1662 HCU at RAF Blyton, then onto operations on 101 Squadron RAF Ludford Magna flying in the Lancaster from November 1943 to May 1944. Post war he served in Coastal Command flying in the Shackleton, during 1956 and 1957 he did three trips to Christmas Island on Operation Grapple.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Keith Thompson
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Printed log book with handwritten observations
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
LThompsonKG1238603v3
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Canada
Ontario--Malton
Christmas Island
Ontario
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1956
1957
101 Squadron
1662 HCU
30 OTU
Anson
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Operational Training Unit
RAF Blyton
RAF Hixon
RAF Ludford Magna
RAF Shawbury
Shackleton
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1236/18905/LThompsonKG1238603v1.1.pdf
871bd909c7b25612385eece8ca7fbc06
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
Thompson, Keith G
K G Thompson
Description
An account of the resource
95 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Keith Thompson DFC (1238603 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, documents, photographs and training material as well as his navigation logs. He flew operations as a navigator with 101 and 199 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Mark S Thompson and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-07
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
Thompson, KG
Access Rights
Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies.
Permission granted for commercial projects
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Keith Thompson's flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Flying log book for Keith Thompson covering his two periods of service as a navigator from 23 August 1942 to 28 March 1946 and post war from 12 September 1950 to 27 April 1960. The entries cover his training in Canada, advanced training on his return to Britain, converting to the Lancaster and a first tour on 101 Squadron, his rest tour and then 12 operations on the Halifax with 199 Squadron undertaking Radio Counter Measure operations. His post war flying was initially as a bombing instructor and then with Coastal Command on the Shackleton. This period included three round trips to Christmas Island for operation 'Grapple'. Units served at include No 1 AOS at RCAF Malton, 15 AFTS at RAF Carlisle, No 4 AOS at RAF West Freugh, 28 OTU at RAF Wymswold, RAF Castle Donington and RAF Bircotes, 1662 HCU at RAF Blyton, 101 Squadron at RAF Ludford Magna, 30 OTU at RAF Hixon, 1659 HCU at RAF Topcliffe, 199 Squadron at RAF North Creake, 192 Squadron at RAF Foulsham, RWE at RAF Watton, RAF Shawbury, CGS at RAF Leconfield, 2 ANS at RAF Thorney Island, 6 ANS at RAF Lichfield, 236 OCU at RAF Kinloss, 206 Squadron at RAF St Eval and St Mawgan and Coastal Command Communication Flight at RAF Bovingdon. Aircraft in which flown, Anson in Canada Mk unknown, Mk 19 & 21, Tiger Moth, Wellington 1c, X and T10, Halifax II and III, Lancaster I and III, B17 Fortress, Valletta, Varsity, Shackleton I and II. His pilots on operations were Pilot Officer Corkill, Wing Commander Alexander and Pilot Officer Sharples. Operations carried out against Berlin, Frankfurt, Stettin, Leipzig, Stuttgart, Schweinfurt, Essen, Nurnburg, Aulnoye, Rouen, Koln, Bois de Maintenon, Lyon, Hasselt, Orleans, Duisburg, Brunswick, Aachen, Trappes on his first tour and was awarded the DFC. He did 12 RCM Operations on his second tour and two Cook's Tours. The log book has the usual comments about weather and unusual sightings and events.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LThompsonKG1238603v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
England--Leicestershire
England--Nottinghamshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Essen
France--Rouen
France--Lyon
Belgium--Hasselt
France--Orléans
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Aachen
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Cologne
Poland--Szczecin
Ontario--Malton
Poland
France
Ontario
Belgium
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Trevor Hardcastle
Cara Walmsley
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1943-08-11
1943-08-12
1943-12-02
1943-12-03
1943-12-20
1943-12-21
1943-12-24
1943-12-29
1944-01-02
1944-01-03
1944-01-05
1944-01-06
1944-01-20
1944-01-21
1944-01-27
1944-01-28
1944-01-30
1944-01-31
1944-02-15
1944-02-16
1944-02-19
1944-02-20
1944-02-21
1944-02-24
1944-02-25
1944-03-15
1944-03-16
1944-03-18
1944-03-19
1944-03-22
1944-03-23
1944-03-24
1944-03-25
1944-03-26
1944-03-27
1944-03-30
1944-03-31
1944-04-10
1944-04-11
1944-04-18
1944-04-19
1944-04-20
1944-04-21
1944-04-30
1944-05-01
1944-05-02
1944-05-11
1944-05-12
1944-05-19
1944-05-20
1944-05-21
1944-05-22
1944-05-23
1944-05-24
1944-05-25
1944-05-28
1944-05-31
1944-06-01
1945-02-28
1945-03-01
1945-03-07
1945-03-08
1945-03-09
1945-03-14
1945-03-15
1945-03-16
1945-03-17
1945-03-20
1945-03-23
1945-03-24
1945-03-27
1945-04-04
1945-04-22
1945-04-23
1945-04-24
1945-05-15
1945-06-22
1945-09-03
1945-09-06
101 Squadron
1659 HCU
1662 HCU
192 Squadron
199 Squadron
28 OTU
30 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
B-17
bombing
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
Cook’s tour
Distinguished Flying Cross
Flying Training School
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Halifax Mk 3
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
navigator
Operational Training Unit
RAF Blyton
RAF Castle Donington
RAF Foulsham
RAF Hixon
RAF Kinloss
RAF Leconfield
RAF Lichfield
RAF Ludford Magna
RAF North Creake
RAF Shawbury
RAF St Eval
RAF St Mawgan
RAF Thorney Island
RAF Topcliffe
RAF Watton
RAF Wellesbourne Mountford
RAF West Freugh
RAF Wymeswold
Shackleton
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2052/42817/LSouterKP129001v2.1.pdf
c7ebd8222a05857b8636cf7b6f36949e
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
Souter, Kenneth Place
K P Souter
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-07-10
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Souter, KP
Description
An account of the resource
30 items. An oral history interview with Kenneth Souter (b. 1919, 129001 Royal Air Force), his log books and photographs. He flew operations as a fighter pilot with 73 Squadron in North Africa and as a test pilot. After the war he flew Lancasters during the filming of The Dam Busters film in 1954.
The collection was catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Ken Souter's pilot's flying log book. Two
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LSouterKP129001v2
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Description
An account of the resource
Pilot's flying log book. Two, for Ken Souter. Covering the period from 27 March 1951 to 24 March 1958. Detailing his flying training, flying duties with 83 and 150 Squadron and operations flown. He was stationed at 230 Operational Conversion Unit RAF Scampton, 83 and 150 Squadron RAF Hemswell, RAF Changi, No.4 Flying Training School RAF Worksop, Bomber Command Bombing School RAF Lindholme, 231 Operational Conversion Unit RAF Bassingbourn and 61 Squadron RAF Upwood. Aircraft flown in were Lincoln, Anson, Chipmunk, Tiger Moth, Oxford, Lancaster, Meteor, Varsity, Wellington, Consul, Vampire, Valetta, Devon, Canberra, and Beverley. He flew 13 daylight operations with 83 squadron during the Malayan emergency. Targets are unidentified. He also flew several low level flights for the making of The Dam Busters film.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Singapore
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Yorkshire
Singapore
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1951
1952
1953
1953-09-05
1953-09-08
1953-09-21
1953-11-18
1953-11-22
1953-11-24
1953-11-26
1953-11-29
1953-12-07
1953-12-08
1953-12-09
1953-12-23
1954
1954-01-01
1955
1956
1957
1958
150 Squadron
61 Squadron
83 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
Lancaster
Lincoln
Meteor
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Bassingbourn
RAF Hemswell
RAF Lindholme
RAF Scampton
RAF Upwood
RAF Worksop
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington