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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1722/28904/AYeandleBA181229.2.mp3
2ab0b8438e291265ab84c6488aa0d64c
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Title
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Yeandle, Bertram Arthur
B A Yeandle
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-12-29
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Yeandle, BA
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. An oral history interview with Sergeant Bertram Arthur Yeandle (b.1921, 573365 Royal Air Force) and photographs. He served as an engine / airframe fitter with 179 and 23 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Professor Susan Yeandle and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: My name is Chris Brockbank, and today is the 29th of December 2018, and we’re in Filton, Bristol talking to Bert Yeandle about his life and times. Bert, what are your earliest recollections of life?
BY: Well, I went to school, junior school in North Petherton, and one of the interesting things about the school, I- In those days the 11+ was rather limited. There were almost forty children in my class, it were one girl and one boy, passed the scholarship and taken to the local, to the local secondary school, you know the high school sort of thing. One was, one was the postmaster's son, the other one was the local labour exchange’s daughter, so that- I- You can put that how you want it but I fancied there was a little bit of a twist somewhere.
CB: And what did you parents do?
BY: My, my mother left- Was born in 19- 1880 in about- She went to school in- She was born in Woodstock, or a place called Glympton near Woodstock in Oxfordshire, and she, she- I don’t quite know much about her schooldays but I remember she told me that she had to pay to go to school, even council school, I think they paid six pence a week they had to pay, had to take this sort of little silver sixpence to school. Anyway, eventually she left home and became a cook, and I suppose her training was through her mother, who had been that sort of thing, and she went to work at Puriton just outside Bridgewater, to the home of a reverend doctor, who had five boys, and she cooked in those days and that must’ve been about, about 1893 or something around- I think she’d be about- Well say she was about sixteen from, yeah ninety-six or seven. She was born in 19-1880 that’s be nineteen, sixteen sort of thing, about twenty-six, maybe a bit younger but that’s immaterial, and then she stayed there and my father, he was a tailor, a bespoke tailor, and he followed the trade until, it was- Until the tailoring trade was swamped by the, by the, the Jewish sort of tailors that came the Montague Burtons and the, fifty-shilling tailors and all these sorts of things, and they swamped the bespoke tailors, and there was a lot of unemployment. Anyways, father managed on, things were rather tough in the thirties for me, because father only had three, three weeks- Three days of employment by a firm of tailors in Bridgewater, three days a week and he used to do jobbing, you know, people knock at the door and say, ‘Shorten my trousers’ or, ‘Lengthen the sleeves,’ all that sort of thing, and that’s how he survived until, about 1935, he became a relieving officer- a temporary relieving officer and registrar in Bridgewater and North Petherton district, and he did- He stayed with that situation until he, until he died. He did join up in 1918, in a tailor division, I don’t know a lot about that but he, he, he didn’t- He wasn’t called up before that because there was a lot of uniforms that had to be made in the fourteen, eighteen war, they were knocked up very quickly and, so he was employed in that and eventually called him up in early parts of 1918, I think or something like that. So, he didn’t, he didn’t- he didn’t know much about it. I had one brother, my brother, he joined the RAF soon after me and he went to the, overseas, the force in France straight away. What did they call them, the?
CB: The BEF.
BY: BEF, British Ex- Yep.
CB: Expeditionary.
BY: And he stayed with them till evacuation.
CB: Right.
BY: Evacuation in May, and he didn’t come across with the boats with the masses, he travelled on a petrol bowser with a few other fellows, south of Dunkirk and came across by some boat further down Brest, or somewhere down that end, he got safely home that was that. He was- While he was there in, with the BEF he was a despatch rider and a part-time policemen sort of thing. I can tell you more about him.
CB: Ok, so-
BY: And he, he demobbed just when ’45, you know, sort of.
CB: Right, so back to your early days at school
BY: Yep
CB: Did you enjoy school? What were your-
BY: I think I did yes.
CB: - particular interests?
BY: One important thing was, half way through my school, my junior school, when I was about nine or ten, our headmaster was seriously ill, and he was taken off teaching and a temporary master came to us, who lived in Cleveland, he came down from Cleveland to take over the management, and he brought with him an Oxford University graduate, who taught his boys to play rugby, and he, he took us out and trained us, and of course North Petherton was a hot bed of rugby from 182- 1875, I think. So, they’ve had a history right through the war, all the time and still operating now, and not the same strength but there we are. So, that’s one of my earliest things, and then as father’s financial position got a little better, being in a better job, you know, more- as an assistant registrar and all that sort of thing, he sent me to a commercial school in Bridgewater, at which I, I- As you know, it specialised in bookkeeping, short-hand and I had the option of either learning French or learning Euclid and as it was, I thought Euclid sounded, well a useful sort of thing and I studied Euclid. You know what that is? A sort of offset, the sort of explanation of why something happened, why two parallel lines never meet, you know, all this sort of thing. So that went on, until I left school and, as I said, went to, work as a junior clerk in the Bristol- Bridgewater gas company. All the towns had their own private sort of organisation in those days right, and then from there on I- My, my cousin introduced me to the, to the strong points of being an apprentice, and how good it would be, and he felt certain, even though I went to a commercial school and one of the papers that we had to, we had to take to assess at Halton. You know that do you? There was three papers, English, science and, and general studies. Well, science was a problem and when I got the exam, temporary exam papers and then applied to be an apprentice, I got the temporary redundant sort of thing to see what it was, and I thought what have we here. So, I got tuition privately from a scout-master who was a teacher and he managed to struggle me through, and I passed and I was four-hundred-and-seventy-fourth out of nine-hundred-and-ten so. So, in those days, it- The pecking order was such that as you- The higher you were up the more first chance you had for the trade you turned in. So, a lot of the- you know the top ten, they went for wireless operator, mechanic, or fitter armourer or fitter two or wireless and electronic, that was the four trades of work and it worked out according to your pecking order. So, I, I was more or less, got what I wanted, and I was trained. I went to Halton and after a while, I think eighteen months they decided that they would- It was getting rather over bodied by more apprentices than they could cope with, all of us the same situation was such in Cosford, and we transferred to Cosford, and I finished my apprenticeship at Cosford, and passed out of Cosford. In about the first or second of April- March- January rather, joined Bomber Command at Harwell, that’s roughly, any more questions?
CB: Harwell in Oxfordshire?
BY: Berkshire.
CB: Berkshire it was then, now in Oxfordshire, yes.
BY: It had no, it had no runway, all the air- All the Wellingtons took off, and we, we had about, about eighteen Wellingtons and an Anson and an Oxford. These other two were for local commute, you know, flitting from one station to the other, passing a sort of good word between each station, and- Where are we now? And then
CB: So what sort of date-
BY: I started to work straight away.
CB: Yep, on what?
BY: On Wellingtons.
CB: Yes, but what-
BY: The first job I got- In those days it was- You got the normal sort of daily routine inspection, you got the thirty-hour, you got the sixty-hour and you got the a hundred-and-twenty hour inspection of aircraft, and being a fitter2 E, engines were my speciality, so I was put with another experienced young man, and we had to take an engine out of, out of the Wellington and put a new one in, that was my first job, and then it went on from there and then, you know, various- But I must say at this stage that it was quite interesting, as we came to the hangar every morning, in the middle distance were the Berkshire Downs and invariably every day you’d see a white patch in there, which is a crashed aircraft. Burnt up by the cadmin[?], you know, what the structure was made out, you know, ‘cause they were flying at twenty-hours and twenty-five hours, no experience at all, and then in 19- They had to get airmen in the air, in ’40, some survived that were better than others but- And that was- But, as time ran on there as normal daily work and we obviously, that the RAF, or Bomber Command as every other command, very conscious of the, of the sabotage which was occurring out in airfields and things like that, and there was guards placed in the insert and outs of the hangar in the first six months of 1940, you know, for- We just didn’t know what was happening, or they didn’t know, and eventually we run up to, to Dunkirk. Now as soon as Dunkirk was sort of settled, within about- When all the ones that were able, were home to their homes or their units and such like, there was that fear of paratroopers. So, we had set up in various teams of about twenty, and we had to man the airfield at an hour before dawn, till two hours after dawn armed with fifty rounds of ammunition, waiting for the parachutes to come. Fortunately, they never came. So- But we’re there waiting and being a lad of nineteen, you know, you had that fear of- You’re out- ‘Cause differing at nineteen, and one of us twenty-five and thirty and go on doesn’t it, and you know, I thought it would be a good job have a shot at these people dangling down with a canopy above ‘em, but it never happened, and then that eased off and we’re on Wellingtons, carrying on ‘cause I think we had about seventeen or eighteen there, and as I told you before we- Our job was in the early stages of March, April, May, May sort of thing was bombing, was nickel bombing or leaflets, propaganda, you know, distribute all over Berlin and all other places like that, and I wish I’d salvaged a couple and got them now, they were interesting to see but we just flung them in the dustbin as it was, you know, you’re- And that was it until, until it came- Now where are we now? I’ve lost my self a little bit.
CB: Just stop a minute.
BY: In, I’d never heard of it before, the Flight Sergeant Warrant Officer in charge of the hangar, who was the boss and you know, you know that sort of, the power they had, you know, they’d do this that and other, you can’t do this, you can’t do that, you must do this, you know, that sort of business, and he was, he was a West Indian, and in those days, you know, when you met a coloured man, you- It was unusual, and he was a boss there, and he was the boss all the time I was there. I don’t- What it- Where he ended up, I don’t know, but he was very efficient. There’s no doubt about that. So that’s-
CB: How did he get on with the-
BY: I think he got on very well, we, we respected him, you didn’t- You respected authority in those days but we were, we were sort of brought up at Halton to sort of respect authority, you know, and-
CB: So, you arrived at the airfield, what did they do as soon as you arrived?
BY: Well I mean we’d already gone through the fundamentals of- Medicals and all that sort at Halton, you know, we’d had a very good briefing there, we’d learnt a lot about air force law, and drill ‘cause we- Friday afternoons was the drill, Monday- Wednesday afternoons was sports afternoon, Friday afternoons was ceremonial drill, and in between we were taken to a study room to read- to study, or be read the air force law to us, what we should do and what we shouldn’t do, and of course we got the King’s Shilling at the time.
CB: At Harwell?
BY: At Harwell, yeah.
CB: So, you arrive, it’s one of the expansion period air fields-
BY: Oh, it was yeah
CB: -so it’s well set up-
BY: Well, I don’t know whether you- You’re aware of this but Lord Trenchard in 19- When he was the head of the metropolitan police, he looks at the Air Force and he said, ‘We’re all behind, we’re backward,’ compared to the Germans and all- ‘We’ve got to get a force of grammar school boys,’ and especially grammar, ‘who’ll take an examination, Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and fit them and train them to be the ground force of the RAF regardless’.
CB: Yep.
BY: Regardless at the time, you know, what- But there was quite a few people that applied for aircrew at that time and then after about- And I applied but I was, I was a bit late in applying, and at that time the Air Ministry said, ‘Right no more ground crew, we’re not going to spend money training you people for two-and-a-half, three years, and send you off flying and lose you in, in no time’. So, they focused- I don’t quite know what they- How they focussed their attacks on getting more aircrew into Bomber Command and Fighter Command and all the communication and, you know, air sea rescue and all this sort of thing. Not air sea rescue, command control they called it, not air sea rescue, command control.
CB: Coastal Command?
BY: Yeah, Coastal Command, yes.
CB: Well, it was expanding fast.
BY: Yeah, and so he, he emphasised that we gotta get- We’re having an entry of every two months- Every two year, every May- Twice a year.
CB: Yes
BY: Twice a year.
CB: Into Halton?
BY: Into Halton, and Halton was getting a bit overloaded it was four big squadrons there then and we- Then they formed us into five squadron, and we- Then they took us to Cosford, but we had the same standard of education and we all had to go and get the same trade test as well. We had to go to- In those days we had to get a trade test as well so, before you passed out into your squadrons or whatever, and a good job- A good majority of us, you know, had to what they called the warning of going overseas, and I went overseas on the 1st of January- Well I, I left home, left my father and mother on the 1st of January 1941.
CB: Right. Can we just go back to the Halton bit?
BY: Yep
CB: Because it’s quite important here, I think. What was the routine? You’re young, you’re sixteen, you join the air force and you’re in a barrack block-
BY: Yes, indeed.
CB: -with a dormitory, so how many people in the dormitory?
BY: About thirty, and being a clerk before I joined up, most had come straight from school.
CB: Yes
BY: I was the, room clerk so I had to take a name, address and next of kin and all that. So that was my job which in a way was a better job than doing the ablutions or, you know, dust under the bed and, you know, that sort of thing, centre floor. So that was my job and that was the first thing we did at when we got- We had be registered and then what information, detail went to the office and all that sort of thing. Of course, we- All letters home had to be censored, and it started on from there.
CB: Was there censorship before the war?
BY: No, no, not to my knowledge.
CB: Right. When you, when you got up in the morning, what time of day was that?
BY: Six-thirty.
CB: Ok, then what?
BY: Six-thirty, and breakfast was half-past seven to half-past eight all properly dressed, no nonsense. Three mornings a week, we had to get up at six and that was for PT. Not very strenuous but get some fresh air and running out, loosening your limbs from lying in bed. Our bed time, for the first year, was nine-thirty, we had to be in bed by nine-thirty and lights out at ten o’ clock. It was no smoking until you were eighteen, and then you only smoked in certain parts. Lights out, as I say and as the next year went on until we left, you carried on the same routine. I think the- I think we could, light’s out was at ten o’ clock, but we still carried on a routine of breakfast, to the hangar, orderly dressed, if you didn’t- If you weren't orderly dressed- I mean I was caught once wearing a pair of red socks, somebody saw me, took my name and I was jankers, you know what that is?
CB: Yes, so you, well you’d better explain- What are jankers?
BY: [Laughs] Well jankers, first of all you had to report to the guard room, with your best blue on at six o’ clock, at night, and a nine o’ clock. You were inspected by the, by the orderly officer or the sergeant, and which then were detailed to the severity of your crime, into the cookhouse to scrub the floor or, do any duties that were necessary there, and that’s really what it worked out to be. So you were punished, you either got three days or seven days. If you were a really naughty boy and done something really serious you might be sent out to a, a sort of home where they vetted you and gave you a suitable punishment. I remember one situation, I can recall where we took an engine out of- Took a pega- ‘Cause the Pegasus and in-lines used in the Wellington at that time, as a sort of spare. What they could get hold of really, suitable, and this fellow, he had to drain the oil obviously, and he disconnected the oil and the engine, under the coupling to the and shot it out, and shot off the, oil of the tank which was remaining in the petrol tank, I think it was about thirty gallons of oil in this petrol tank and the-
CB: Oil tank, yeah.
BY: And instead of just screwing the thing up, he poked a bit of rag in first of all and screwed it up, eventually the aircraft crashed because the next person undid the union, connected up to the engine, are you with me?
CB: He didn’t know that there was a rag in there.
BY: He didn’t know that there was a rag in there, and that obstructed the flow, and the aircraft crashed because there was a seizure on the engine and he was sent up to field punishment camp.
CB: What happened to the crew?
BY: The crew, I believe were killed. I wouldn’t like to say for definite on that, the aircraft definitely crashed.
CB: A thing like that’s very serious, so to what extent would the- At what point would a court-martial be convened for that sort of thing?
BY: Well, you’d go there- I expect- I don’t know whether, whether it was tantamount to a court-martial, I think it is. If you were sent to the- What is it, what was I, called the name? The home?
CB: The punishment.
BY: The punishment home, if you were sent there the odds are that you would take a service court-martial.
CB: Right.
BY: And every time you were a minor punishment, like I just mentioned what I did with my socks or, you know, I- You had to go in front the CO, and wait in a corridor ten minutes and let him get his breath and you’d get your breath back, and you march in and salute him and all that sort of thing and, the charge was there, with the corporal and sergeant that had found you, that sort of thing, you know, that sort of thing. But, you know, it taught us discipline, and it taught us how to- You know, you got to draw the line sometime, you can’t do what you like, you were treated well, the food was very good in wartime and right up to- Food was very good. Our education, we had twenty-five hours at workshop and fifteen hours in schools, and I always remember the first, the first day at school- We were presented with, the unification of- The one before, oh I don’t, I can’t think of the name, but it was quite severe. I was out of touch really, and I- We sat in, in a order in the schools, alphabetically, so the fellow sat beside me was a brighter boy than I was and he was a good lad and he used to help me a little bit with my sort of, you know, sneaking across a piece of paper and the answer to one of the things. Unification of something, what is it? What is that, a receive before, before algebra? Anyway, it was quite severe and, our history was about the air force, how it was formed, what the blue means and all that sort of thing and the various stations around the company and the general studies was about the various historical, which would affect the air force. We had a good sort of grounding there.
CB: So when did you actually join the apprentice scheme at Halton? It was ’37 entry, when was that?
BY: January ’38.
CB: Right.
BY: I had to report in January ’38. I took the examination in Weston-Super-Mare, in I suppose about- I think it was about September, something like that.
CB: Yeah, and then the course finished after how many years?
BY: Well, the course finished just under two years, we didn’t do the three years because the situation was such that they wanted to cram as much in as they possibly could, you know, we used a few more hours and with a little bit more private study and all that sort of thing. So-But on balance the boys that stayed at Halton, or the ones at Cosford finished at the same time, with the same ability.
CB: Yeah
BY: Group one, we were group one tradesmen, a Fitter2. At this stage, after the war, I with about, about seven or eight-hundred other ones, got converted. You see I was qualified at that time- When I passed out, I was qualified to do any job, to do with the engines, aircraft engines, take the prop off, all that sort of thing, hydraulics and various numatics, and such like. The other tradesmen had their sort of- We never touched any armaments or that was their job, and the wires, nothing to do with that sort of thing.
CB: So you were technically an engine fitter?
BY: And then after the war, I did one year's course to convert me to the air frame side of it, so consequently when I left- We had this course at Locking, RAF Locking in Weston-Super-Mare and when I left that one, I was qualified to do anything on any aircraft you see. That was very handy for the airport because during my time at Halton- At Harwell, there were always visiting aircraft coming in, and if you were a duty flight you had to see to them and deal to them, see what they wanted and see them off. Usually, the crew stayed in the mess or the officers mess or the sergeants mess, that night and off they went for somewhere else. So that was our responsibility, to deal with any visiting aircraft.
CB: And what extra training did you get while you were at Harwell on modern aircraft? Was the Wellington-
BY: We studied, we studied the in-line engine and we studied the radial engine at Halton.
CB: Yes.
BY: In fact we started off studying Morris motors engine.
CB: Did you?
BY: That was our first job, you know, when they introduced us to the internal combustion engines. So, they started off that and we learnt what, you know, what- How tappets worked and the valves and- I mean I didn’t have a clue when I, when I came, sort of thing, but you soon pick it up don’t you?
CB: Well, it was good training wasn’t it?
BY: Oh absolutely, ‘cause I would- And even Geoff will tell you the same thing, the best time of his life was at- In the boy’s service, you know, the apprentice service.
CB: Now talking about that, we talked about you being in a room in the barrack block, thirty people. Was there a corporal in a room at the end in his own?
BY: Oh yes, yes.
CB: So how did that work, there’s a single room at the end with a corporal in it?
BY: Yes, I can remember his name, Corporal Ratcliffe his name was, he was our corporal in boy’s service. He was a very nice chap, he was a sergeant apprentice.
CB: Oh
BY: And he- In one of the earlier entries obviously.
CB: Yes, yeah.
BY: And he was- Well he just kept order, you know, if we lost anything it was up to him to sort it out, and any real complaints we went to him and he would carry the complaint on to, you know, his senior sort of thing.
CB: Yeah, so he controlled the room.
BY: He did control it, but, every morning the orderly sergeant came in at half-past six and shouted, if anyone was in bed, they didn’t stay in bed very long.
CB: So, you get up and you wash, what do you do about the beds?
BY: Oh, it’s most important, folded up your blanket, two blankets and a sheet, a pair of sheets, folded up neatly, stacked up- Our beds were Macdonald[?] beds, sort of-
CB: Two billows deep?
BY: Yeah, close them up to a sort of a sitting distance, sort of thing, from that, from that distance down to there, and you had to pack your, your blankets and your alternate levels and make it look tidy, and your pyjamas on there. The-
CB: Then there was a-
BY: Then the laundry business. We had two avenues for our laundry, the laundry was our boiler suits, ‘cause we all wore boiler- And do you know, we had to wear a tie then, in the hangar room all the time, collar and tie, it's crazy isn’t it? But we had to wear it, if you see anything on the pictures, you see- So we had a [unclear] avenue, a special bag with our names, that was most important, you had to get your names on all your equipment, and then for the other bag, for your- What you called you domestic, was your towels, I think we had two lots, two towels a week and shirts, collars and detachable-
CB: Detachable collar, yes.
BY: Socks, and basic things in that thing, and your sheets. Oh, the sheets went in another basket that’s right, they went into another basket.
CB: How many pairs of sheets did you get a week?
BY: Oh we used to get- I think we got clean sheets, real clean sheets every fortnight.
CB: Right, yeah.
BY: I think that’s what we had to do. So, that was an alternative sort of, pack your bag with washing.
CB: So, there was an inspection of the beds, and the blankets every morning?
BY: The orderly officer came round every morning, while we were on parade. We- And to go to the hangar we paraded at half-past eight in our lines, you had to answer your call- Answer, it was a roll call, and then we- In the boys service we had to march to our schools or our workshop but when we got to the squadron, to 148 Squadron I was on, we just more or less- We just walked to the hangar, and the Warrant Officer he knew who was who sort of thing, he knew who was missing and then, and then in those days we had a restroom, we’d a break and restroom in which we had a chap who wasn’t an apprentice and he was responsible for making the tea and, he had an avenue of going out and getting tea- What we called tea and wads for us, and he made us feel- And we had to pay him, I don’t know, pay a tuppence a week or something like that, he made a living out of that, sort of thing, subsidises his letter income, and the money we got, in the boys service, was a shilling a day. Right, and we could allocate four shillings of that to the post office, to the post office or any other form that your parents wish you. So that’s the sort of- When we went on holiday, our end of term, which was about twelve or fourteen weeks, we would get instead of picking up three shillings at the pay table, we would pick up about ten, eleven pounds just, you know, to satisfy, to go and-
CB: A lot of money in those days.
BY: It was a lot of money, but didn’t seem to last for long ‘cause we had to find our own soap, our own toothpaste, our own chocolate and toothbrushes to [unclear], but the [unclear], hairbrushes, combs you had to find ‘cause they were always being lost, or, you know, that sort of thing, so we made this- And then there quite a little bit of trading going on, you know, if you got broke say you’ll borrow a shilling for one sixpence to return, sort of thing [chuckles] it’s funny really. Mind you, all this is- I’m trying to talk- Remember eighty years ago, you know.
CB: Exactly. Now on that, because this is so different from today-
BY: Oh I don’t- I-
CB: When you went to eat, where did you eat? This is at Halton, where did you eat?
BY: In the cookhouse, what we called the cookhouse.
CB: Right, how big was that?
BY: Oh quite a big place, but it had to, to accommodate sort of each squadron.
CB: And the squadron was how many people?
BY: Hundred-and-twenty, hundred-and-fifty, that sort of thing. I might be inaccurate by that, these numbers, my mind might forget little-
CB: And the menu was-
BY: The menu was very good
CB: - was fixed or, choice?
BY: We had a good breakfast, a good lunch and at tea-time we had cake, and bread and butter and jam, and syrup was always on the table. It- When I got to the squadron, I’d been put on night flying, the night flying duties were as such, you did a day- We’ll say night flying was on Monday night, you got to the hangar Monday morning, you would do your job, you’d be working on the aircraft which is flying that night, and every aircraft that fly that night had to have night flying test. So aircraft had to fly in the afternoon, late afternoon and the pilot would check it and do- He didn’t- They only did a sort of large circuit and all that sort of thing, and if it's come back it was all right, if it’s a small item, it was put right and then you were called according to the time of day, I mean night flying would start- This time of year it would start about 7 o’ clock, and [unclear] the pilots would do- Or the air [unclear] would do two sorties. Three hours, come back, refuel and another three hours, maybe two hours, it depends on what the circumstances were. So, I mean, you know, that was a night flying programme. I know I'm a bit disjointed but you can all sort this, when you read it I'm sure. And then on occasion- This is interesting, when you were on night flying duty, or in duty crew, you had to see any aircraft in and sometimes they came in at night and they would land in between two rows of flare paths, and the flare path, no electrics, it was like a paraffin watering can with wick coming out the spout [chuckles] yes, you’re smiling, this is true though, and the line I think was about twenty
CB: This is paraffin?
BY: Paraffin, and the aircraft would land in between that, and it was a tedious job you had to go, you know, you might- We didn’t have a vehicle to do everything, mostly the vehicles were for driving the petrol bowsers about, so you couldn’t do that, but to go to one end of the airfield to the other you had to walk, or bicycle, or whatever, and- So we had to put these flare paths out then, when it was daylight, they all had to come in, it would be twiched[?] and checked- Make sure they’re serviceable for the next night, it was everything. But, it’s a bit hazardous sometimes, if one had blown over or something like that, and you were told by the flying control to go out and see to that, take another one out, and, you know the RT wasn’t all that clever, and if you had to land with something, you know at that time- Pretty precarious.
CB: So how was the communication on the airport- field? Was it- ‘Cause there was no radio so was it done by flash light?
BY: Yep
CB: Or morse code?
BY: Aldis lamp
CB: Yeah, aldis lamp?
BY: It- The aircraft would come in and flash the green light if it’s ok, and you would reply with that. If, wasn’t- If you weren’t ready, it was a red light and they’d have to go round and come again, sort of thing like- That was the basic sort of thing. Where are we now?
CB: So as you’re onto that, what communication did you actually have with the aircrew themselves?
BY: Very good. They were, you know, more or less you were- Your aircraft was his aircraft and his aircraft were yours and, you know, you saw him off, he knew you and that sort of thing.
CB: Were you normally in communication, ‘cause there are five or six people on the Wellington, so were you talking to the pilot?
BY: Oh yes, well mainly- We talked to the pilot and the navigator and they would come up, but mainly the pilot because he’d know the condition of the engine, if there was anything wrong or if there was a mag drop or no oil pressure or, or the heating was not, not good, it was overheating sort of thing, and-The armourers, if it was, if it was- Had to be armed they, they trolleyed in with their weapons and opened the bomb doors and, did that sort of thing, so it- We all had- It was very organised and there was the petrol bowsers- for starting up, you’d plug in, you know, and make sure the battery was charged there, that sort of thing. The trolley acc’s, we used to call pushed them out there.
CB: Yeah, so the trolley acc is a trolley accumulator to start the engine isn’t it?
BY: Yeah, and at night-time you got into a routine and when you saw the aircraft come in you had two lights sort of thing, you’d wave them in sort of thing. In those days the connection between the ground crew and aircrew was very good, extremely good- Well they- You were responsible for their safety and they were responsible, you know, for the safety in flying, you know.
CB: You had responsibility for certain aircraft only, not all of them?
BY: Well, it depended Chris, you know, how long we, you know- What the situation was, every day is different.
CB: Yep.
BY: So that takes us up to- And then our first bombing on this aircraft- On this airfield. I was in the cockpit and I remember quite vividly what I was doing. I was adjusting the controls to the elevators from the cockpit, and I was- And suddenly there was a- The air warden siren went and I could just see bombers going down the, sort of runway line dropping sort of bombs, not very big, they didn’t do much damage. But after that they decided this was dangerous, we’re gonna- One of these days it’s gonna hit the hangar, they’re either going to bomb the hangar or they’re going to bomb headquarters. So every night at the end of the day we were bussed out to a village called East Hendred, which was the home of the race horse stables, ‘cause that was a hot race- Newbury and all that areas, and we lived in stables there for quite a long while. Right until the end, until I went overseas, and all we had in these stables- But we, we were fed by bus to the, to the unit, come- You know, we had our meal in the evening before we left, and we were taken down for our breakfast in the morning, sort of thing. But, the heating in the- All we had in the stables was two beds and blankets, as I told you, two blankets and sheets- No we didn’t have sheets, we had blankets, just blankets, and in the corner was a sort of shelf which they used to put the hay, stack the hay in and we used to put our bits and pieces in there or, and we had no heating except valor heating, valor stoves do you remember the valor stoves? You remember them Chris, don’t you?
CB: Oh yes, yeah.
BY: And that would heat our water to have a good wash and shave at night.
CB: You just put it on top?
BY: Yeah, and it was only two of us to a stable, so it was enough on a big bowl to wipe our, and then we wandered off in the evening to the village- East Hendred is a place, you’ll see it on a map now, it was a very-
CB: I know it well.
BY: You know it well?
CB: Yeah, yeah.
BY: And it was a stables, the owner was a man called Bell, Dr Bell I think, he owned a string- And another thing, we used to see the horses go across in the very early hours of the morning being led off in the downs, you know, in the distance. Nowhere near the airport, but it was a good country to live in really.
CB: What about the social life?
BY: The social life wasn’t very much, really, well we had a NAAFI, and we used to go in there and we could- There was a couple billiard tables and that sort of thing, we played billiards quite often. You just took your turn with it, dartboards, crib boards and table skittles, all that sort of thing, and we were after a while allowed to go out in the village and have a drink and all that sort of thing. It, you know- All blackout mind, severe blackout, it was quite fun at times but you know where you are, you know.
CB: But the local towns were not exactly on the doorstep, so the nearest one was Abingdon really, so did you get to Abingdon?
BY: No, it was good, you know, looking back now. I can think quite a lot about it now. But this carried on more or less, you know, until we were called for- What were they called? Advanced order for overseas, and they told us, it was about November that we were going overseas. So we had some warning to tell our parents and all that sort of thing.
CB: Is this 1940, ’40?
BY: This is the end of 1940, December 1940.
CB: Right.
BY: And then we set off, and when we went off there, we went to Hednesford, and we assembled at Hednesford. When we, when we had our date to ride- Mine was the 25th of January, and it was at the other entry, or the other group was 18th of January, so they took it in two- There was too many to- It was eight-hundred, to many to manage straight away so that's how we worked it out. We had assembly at Hednesford, and then we were entrained to Didcot, and when we got to Didcot we sort of- There was a coach to take us to Halton.
CB: What was your most memorable recollection, would you say, of being in Bomber Command at Harwell?
BY: Well, my servicing of aircraft there, the general tidying up of the- After an aircraft came back from their sorties, they were tidied up, got a lot of these pamphlets, these nickel sort of things hanging around-
CB: Yes, it was called nickelling wasn’t it?
BY: Yeah, and they were dated, you know, each- I think they were re-written every- Or printed about every fortnight or something like that.
CB: In your recollection how did the crew react to dropping leaflets instead of bombs?
BY: Well, I don’t know, most of them were not all that experienced, because after a while a bomber got introduced to the fifteen- It became the fifteen OTU Operational Training Unit, and that sort of combined, the activity of Bomber Command and Training Command under the umbrella of Bomber Command.
CB: Yeah, to increase their effectiveness they formed the Operational Training Unit.
BY: That’s right yeah. Well, they were so concerned, the Air Ministry were so concerned about the number of pilots they were losing and crews in respect of Bomber Command and every other aircraft, they were losing aircraft very quickly. Thank goodness there was such thing as University Air Force Squadrons, you know, all the squadrons and they supplied, and the pilots that were trained mostly through gliding before the war, they were very much, they filled the gap.
CB: They were so desperate for aircrew but they couldn’t fill the gaps.
BY: Absolutely, and of course- And then when, then- We’ll go on now- Shall we leave now and go onto the-
CB: Yes, let’s just go back to Halton, let’s just go back to the Halton bit because this actually is fundamental to your whole career isn’t it?
BY: Oh it is, it was. It was the making of me.
CB: Yes, so we talked about the, the mechanics of getting up in the morning and the disciplined aspects but you had breakfast which was until eight-thirty.
BY: Well, we had to be on parade at eight-thirty.
CB: Eight-thirty parade, so how long was the parade?
BY: And you had to be buttons cleaned, hat badge clean, you know, and, sort of thing, I mean a lot of that was done the night before, if you’re not careful.
CB: Yeah, yeah, and were you good at spit and polish on your toecaps?
BY: Oh yeah, well, well they were clean, they- We didn’t come up to the army guards, that sort of thing, but they had to be clean, you know, and haircuts, short-haircut. I mean there’s one story about- I don’t know how true this is, a Warrant Officer used to walk around the bill with a pair of clippers in his hand and if he saw a chap with long hair, he’d just run a little avenue at the back of his head, and he’d have to go-
CB: On one side only.
BY: And there was the camp barber, of course.
CB: Yep.
BY: He was a civilian. There was also a place where you could get your shoes [unclear], but didn’t very often get your shoes ‘cause they were good quality boots. We had boots first of all.
CB: Did you have to-
BY: Hurt my feet first of all, but you soldiered on sort of thing.
CB: So, the parade would last how long in the morning?
BY: Oh now, very quickly. The order was, the orderly officer and the orderly sergeant would be posted at the end of the square, with the [unclear] and reveille would be sounded there and then, and then the flag would be hoisted to its position, and then (I was telling the boys about this the other night) the orderly officer would call the parade to attention, that was a whole wing parade that was, quite a lot of boys there, apprentices, and then they would say ‘Fall out the Roman Catholics and Jews,’ and they had- And we all had to go, or whoever it was, in that denomination and get on with this- We had to go to the back of the square and face the opposite direction, while the padre appeared, said a prayer and that was it, sort of thing, and then this would last for a few minutes and then we were called back, and we’d have to sort of about turn, march back sensibly and take our position in the ranks and- And at any time, if you weren’t on the parade and when- At night-time, I think it was about an hour before dark, the last post was sounded, and you had to stand still if you were in sight of it. You didn’t have to salute or did you have to? No, you didn’t- Had to stand still. I mean this is the sort of thing- Can you imagine a sixteen-year-old now wanting to do that sort of thing? They’d laugh you all the way down the road, wouldn’t they? I mean we did it normally.
CB: Yeah, part of the discipline
BY: And felt proud, you know, we all did it together. We’d talk, you know- There was an awful lot of gossip, and we’d play cards, and things like that in the barrack room, but we didn’t play- But in the NAAFI, it was quite a- There was a games room in which there was plenty of, you know-
CB: Quite a hum?
BY: Oh yeah.
CB: And what could you drink in the NAAFI?
BY: Ah, now, only tea and coffee, tea and cocoa, tea and cocoa and, and-
CB: No beers?
BY: No beers, not to my knowledge, not in the boys service.
CB: ‘Cause of the age we’re talking about?
BY: Yeah, the boys service-
CB: Under eighteen.
BY: Or no smoking, you might nip away to the drying room, have a crafty cigarette, but if you were caught you were in, you were-
CB: In for jankers really?
BY: Jankers, with a yellow band round your arm.
CB: Clear identity.
BY: Clear identity.
CB: What about Sunday’s then? Church parade?
BY: Sunday’s, yes, church parade and we all had to- Every Sunday was church parade and we went to ours- Sometimes they had to march to Albrighton when we were at Cosford or, I don’t know where we went at Halton, oh I think there was a, there was two churches at Halton and we had the services there, but it was a quiet day sort of thing. The rest of the day you could do what you like, go back to your billet, go to bed or- And look, you had to attend your meals at a certain time or you didn’t get any. It was usually I think from twelve to half-past-one or something like that, and I always remember at tea time we always had a nice slice of beef and a slice of ham, and there was cakes on the table and there was bread and butter and there was jam, you know, not marmite, I don’t think things like that, but there was syrup, treacle we used to call it, sort of thing.
CB: Yeah, and would you have a dinner later?
BY: No, no. That- not on a Sunday that was the end, but we had a dinner at six o’ clock, so that was our last thing.
CB: So you had tea time and then dinner?
BY: Yes, yeah.
CB: In the weekday.
BY: Yep, weekday yeah. Sunday’s was exception really but we didn’t, you know, I suppose that depended on the, sort of, the manpower of the cooks and people there. They had to have time off and-
CB: And how did you get on with the local population when you went out of the camp?
BY: Oh very well, we had to- When you went out you had to wear a uniform, so you knew who you were and it was a long time before you could go out in mufti sort of thing. I think on the whole, it was, really seemed good. They knew, they knew- I mean the local population they knew what had gone on sort of thing. In Didcot, you know, in the shops they knew who you were and all this sort of thing.
CB: Yeah, so when you’re on station then, so when you were in Harwell, going out then that wasn’t the same sort of restriction ‘cause a) you are adult and b) you are part of the RAF?
BY: That’s right, that’s right, yeah. You had- You could smoke then if you wanted to, and- I can’t remember. Yes, I think we could go into a pub, I think. I don’t- I’m not certain about that, I won’t say one thing or the other.
CB: But you had to be in uniform whatever?
BY: Yes, yeah. In those days.
CB: Yeah, so what was the competition for social events with aircrew?
BY: Oh, there was inter-squadron football, rugby, hockey, cross-country, you know, all that sort of thing, on a Wednesday afternoon, and on Friday afternoons, ceremonial drill, and the bagpipes had their ribbons, they were all dressed up and a band drummer and there was a separate barrack room for the band. If you were in the band, you lived there. You were still in the [unclear] squadron but, domestically you lived there mainly for practicing for- The noise, trumpets and all the various instruments they had, it would be enclosed in that barrack, you wouldn’t disturb the others, and we had rooms for private sort of study, where you could go if you were- Hadn’t done very well in your subjects and you were- Had to smarten up and all that sort of thing.
CB: So at Hal-
BY: We had a very good library and-
CB: That’s at Har- At Halton?
BY: Yeah.
CB: At Harwell-
BY: I can’t remember much about- It was a working town there. You had to get down to it you know-
CB: Harwell is twenty-four-seven isn’t it?
BY: Absolutely.
CB: Because it’s wartime, every day is the working day. So how did you get a day off, was it sometimes- Was it on a rota or what?
BY: I think we get a weekend now and again on a rota sort of thing.
CB: Because flying would carry on at the weekend as well as daytime, weekday.
BY: That’s right yeah, and it was easy- And in those days you could go outside the camp and somebody would pick you up, I mean you would hitch hike from Harwell down to, down to Bridgewater and- Quite easily. You might have eight or nine [unclear] and people would- Who were driving they- It was the exception if you had a vehicle, a trade vehicle, it would stop and pick you up, there was no compulsory, all that sort of thing.
CB: So what we’re talking about, you were nineteen when you- At Harwell, and then-
BY: Well, I was twenty-one, I had my twentieth birthday I think when I was at Harwell.
CB: Still at Harwell?
BY: Yeah
CB: Yeah.
BY: So in the time when we to field the- load our rifles with fifty rounds of ammunition hoping to shoot a parachutist down, you know, somewhere round my birthday sort of thing.
CB: So what sort of training had you had for shooting?
BY: Oh, we used to go- We had to- You had a training place where you got- You could practice two-hundred-yards and five-hundred-yards. But that was well-managed and you had to be very careful-
CB: That was off the airfield?
BY: Oh yes, yeah, and of course, all the guns at the time were kept in the armoury, we never had any guns in the billets or anything, firearms and all that sort of thing, it were all in the armoury and that was pretty well guarded, you had to go in and sign for the gun or whatever, the number and-
CB: When the war started, often aircraft were put away in the hangars at night, what happened at Harwell?
BY: Well, in most places, in Halton- Well mainly talking about Harwell, places we had a sort of open-ended sort of shelter, built of sandbags for the aircraft to go in just in case there was a- [unclear] shrapnel or whatever, damage and, but one or two was damaged and we lost one or two at Harwell, obviously, aircraft. But latter on in my- After the war days I mean, we lost very few planes, most of the pilots were very, very accomplished and very [unclear] because they survived the war and a lot of them had got glider training.
CB: Oh, glider training. Let’s just pause there for a bit. So, Air Force Law, how much did you get of that? At Halton?
BY: Well, you had confidentiality of any activities that were on the camp, like bombing raids, or things like that, never, I suppose it was violated so many times but that was the rule. Air Force Law, what to wear, the history- It was a book about that thick, it was the air force bible sort of thing, and it went right through from the early days of the amalgamation of the-
CB: The Royal Flying Corps
BY: -the army, the naval and-
CB: The Naval Air Service-
BY: - and the Air Force as in those- 1918 when it was started properly and it was a book and all that- It was read to us and we could ask questions and, it’s a difficult question being asked of law. There were rules and regulations which, kept the service as a service sort of thing. I can’t stipulate exactly what they were but I mean, they were rules such as that.
CB: Well, we had the original Official Secrets Act?
BY: Yes, that’s right.
CB: How was that described to you?
BY: Well, that was read to us.
CB: Right.
BY: And there was a notice up on every barrack room entry and all that sort of thing, and beside that was a fire bucket, two fire buckets, one was sand- Or two with sand, ready to put out any fire and a sort of a fire extinguisher on a hook beside in the barrack rooms. So that was, that was one of the laws of things about safety. The laws of safety, the laws of sort of discipline, there was laws of confidentiality, cleanliness and, you know- And of course the other thing that we had quite frequently was VD inspections. You had to stand in a line, drop your trousers and they would- The Medical Officer would come round and check all that sort of thing, you know, and that- I don’t think that mattered too much when we were in the boys service but when we got into Bomber Command that was in- Well that was the natural because, I don’t know if you read any of the book of Bomber Command, they- A lot of them were terribly-
CB: Infected?
BY: Well, I’ve got a book in there it’s, I’ve forgotten what his name is but it’s one of the most in-depth sorts of stories that you can read about what happened in Bomber Command, the crews- The couldn’t care less once they, you know, they focused on their job at question. Their lives at- Anything else was-
CB: Life expectancy was so short.
BY: Yeah. They didn’t know whether they were coming back or not, they were coming back it was jolly good but if they didn’t, you know- And of course they were all young men a lot of them were all, twenty-two, my cousin was only twenty-two.
CB: And the term station bicycle, was running in those days?
BY: Is that- Yes oh yes, well sort of thing, I know what you mean, I know exactly what you mean.
CB: What about security, where-
BY: Oh security, you got in trouble if you broke out. You had to be in at all levels, in the boys service you had to be in by, I think it was ten o’ clock at night. You had to be in your billet by ten o’ clock.
CB: Well, part of the legal aspect, was also related to a comment you made earlier about sabotage, so what was the issue with sabotage and who were these saboteurs, potentially?
BY: Well, the German aircraft, the German prisoner of wars that were already captured and were in camps in England and wherever, and they all wore a special uniform, of big yellow patch on their elbow and something. They would recognise them quite easily, sort of thing, but- And they did a lot of good work because they were put to work you see, building walls and things like that, and all sorts of things. But I think the main worry about the whole service aspect was, the shortage of food because you see, I haven’t spoken to you about this but my trip on the troop ship was- I can tell you quite a bit about that but the, the U-boats- that were shot down, or sunk rather in the North Atlantic in February, March was amazing, and they were carrying food from Canada, from America, from South Africa, from anywhere, the West Indies, wherever they could get food to England, and, you know, that’s why the drive for dig for victory, you know that slogan? You know, that- Everybody had- I mean sports field, stadiums were ripped up and turned into allotments-
CB: And on the airfield itself, there was a vegetable growing patch was there? And also-
BY: No I can’t remember one really, the only thing I remember was a tremendous sort of- On every camp was petrol dump and that was guarded and surrounded and, you know, all- Every security was made to maintain that, sort of thing.
CB: And the coal dump?
BY: Oh yeah, yeah. I’ll get the boys get another cup-
CB: Ok we’ll stop there. When we were talking about law earlier, there’s Civil Law and Air Force Law but the concentration was really on Air Force Law, to what extent did you learn about Civil Law as well?
BY: Well, I feel that, if you committed a crime and the crime reached a certain level it would have to be tried by Civil Law as well, and- Does that help?
CB: Yeah. It was just putting things into context wasn’t it?
BY: Yes, I mean- May I put it another way, that the Air Force, or the services are not solely responsible for the law of the land.
CB: No
BY: It assists obviously, and they guide and the sort of, you know, they do all the speed work for it, but at the end of the day it’s the same as all laws- I mean it seems that, that [unclear] does, all goes through but they don’t always take note of stuff ‘cause they don’t know, they don’t understand it, I mean she’s been at that game for- What is she now? Sixty-nine, she’s been on it thirty years.
CB: Your daughter?
BY: Yes.
CB: But in the air force context, then it's always stressed is it not that the ultimate sanction they have is the courts-martial?
BY: Correct, yes that’s right.
CB: We’ll stop there for a mo.
BY: The war, only as- When they were in captive, not how they were kept, and what conditions they met led up to them being captive for what they were doing, sort of thing, I can’t say any more than that.
CB: Where were they housed? When you were at Harwell, where were they housed?
BY: To be quite honest I can’t tell you, I didn’t see- I saw more of them later on in the service life.
CB: Yeah.
BY: When I came back from overseas, I was- Because they didn’t get out- They didn’t get home straight away, sort of thing, they, on their own.
CB: No, but in the early stages then we’ve got aircrew who’d been shot down and that sort of thing.
BY: I think the majority of the prisoner of wars didn’t want anything- They were quite happy, they were fed well, they, you know, they had communication to- That’s another thing, we didn’t have any communications you see, nothing at all it was no- There was no- Or might be how today, I mean, things happen so quickly now.
CB: Yeah.
BY: Don’t they and I mean-
CB: Were your parents allowed to know where you were serving in the RAF?
BY: Oh yes, oh yeah, they knew where I was staying but they didn’t know anything about- ‘Cause the only information that I had with them was by- We used, what they called aerograph[?], it was a sort of a, I don’t know how it worked but I presume it was telephone- By telephone to some paper company in England and sort of transgressed that way.
CB: This is when you were abroad?
BY: Oh yeah.
CB: But when you were at home, that is to say at Harwell-
BY: Well at Harwell, I came home quite- Several days- Several weekends, that was several weekend- I suppose I came home- I was there best part of a year and I suppose I came home about three times that year. So I had some idea- Did we have our tea? Fair minded answer he could’ve given me.
CB: Yes, the parents supported you but they- Indirectly.
BY: Yeah, at Halton they- I think they wrote to the padre and found out how I was getting on, so- But mind you, on the first day when we went to Halton there was quite a few went back by train the next morning. I don’t want to live in-
CB: I can believe it, yeah.
BY: I don’t want to live in a situation like this.
CB: Yeah, even though it’s- Well in peacetime they had the choice.
BY: Oh yeah, yeah.
CB: Yeah, when I joined a man left after one night ‘cause he couldn’t stand being in a dormitory. When the war started-
BY: I wonder what he would’ve been like in the stable?
CB: Oh, nightmare.
BY: Oswald Bell, that’s the man, Oswald Bell he was the owner of a fleet of horses in that part, East Hendred and-
CB: When the war started in September ’39 you were still at Cosford, when did the control of letters start?
BY: Oh when I went overseas.
CB: Right. Not when you were in the UK?
BY: No, I don’t think so, I can’t remember so. But, I mean, I had the- In those days you could ring up home I think, but once you got abroad that was it sort of thing.
CB: Yeah.
BY: Do you want me to tell you a little bit about troop ship life?
CB: We do, so where did you embark?
BY: From Liverpool, and we went- I told you we assembled at Hednesford and we all marched to- ‘Cause in those days there was a railway station right on the quayside at Liverpool. I think well, I don’t know where the dock was, or, well it doesn’t matter what the name of the dock was, but we all assembled there and we all looked up and we said (there was about fifteen-hundred of us) ‘Are we sailing that thing?’. It was an eight or nine-thousand pound boat, used to be hauling before the war, before the Air Ministry got hold of it, was hauling sort of meat from south of- Argentina to Britain ‘cause we had a lot of meat from Argentina before the war, you know, and anyway, we looked at that thing and we turned round, then were down at the gangplank an’ we were marched up there, and there was not- It was amazing, well it beggars belief, that to house twelve to fifteen-hundred men, there was about five toilets, there was no proper mess decks where we could sit down and have our meals. It was a shambles, and, fortunately we had one officer- We had beside tradesmen, this fifteen-hundred tradesmen we had three balloon squadrons there, it was- There were not very many in the squadron but the leader of the balloon squadron was a, was an officer called Garry Marsh, he was a film star, he made several films if you go through the film industry you’ll see his name and he was Bill [unclear] and all these sort of things, and he stood by us and he said, ‘This is not on,’ he said, and he allowed us, or encouraged us to walk down the gangplank and walk of the ship, and we all walked off the ship down the- Nearly everybody walked off, and there was a crowd on the quayside and here and there, there was an embarkation officer who’s duty was to, to deal with the shipping of troops onto the boats and they were prancing around with their revolvers hanging round their neck. There was a- This lasted for about three or four hours and they decided, the Air Ministry in their wisdom (and I do say wisdom) decided- So they sent us back on the train again to a place called- I can’t think of the name of it- In, not very far, about twenty miles away in Lancashire and they kept us there for a fortnight while the people, carpenters, you know, various people, sorted out the mess. The boat was left to be expected, to sail around the world in, sort of thing, and eventually we, we were housed- Next time we were marshalled up, and we were- I think there were soldiers there, so making sure that we didn’t start running. Now go up the gangplank, went up the gangplank, we’d been to- No Hednesford, was it Macclesfield, anyway we’ll say it was Macclesfield, it doesn’t matter the name of the place. We were there a fortnight, and the air force law was tramped down to us, what we should’ve done, it was, it was, you know, to mutiny- It was a mutinous act and all that, without, you know, despite what the circumstances were. I mean it was a non-starter right from the go of it, the- Anyway, when we went back the second time, we were made certain we went up the gangplank, and the gangplank was pulled up very quickly and it parked out about three-hundred yards off the shore, so we couldn’t get back, and this was in first week in January- First week of February, I think. But before the Captain of the boat had orders to move off and join the convoy the other side of- We went over the top of Ireland into the Atlantic, North Atlantic. When the Captain of the- I mean a small sort of powered lighter / launcher came on with an MP, the local MP, and a Minister of Health or something like that to see it was fit for us to go, and he must’ve said ‘Yes,’ and off we went. Anyway, we got clear and went to the high seas on the North Atlantic, cold, windy, wet, oh miserable it was. I can always remember it, and there were four ships there, four troop ships waiting to go, ranked on the horizon by three or four capital naval ships, HMS- I forget- Three- Two of them were dreadnought and other one was cruisers, you know, that sort of thing, and they- And once we got away from the shore every day the controller of the naval boats would indicate to the Captain of each troop ship where we had to sail, how we had to- And we were sailing, one day we were going east, one day we were going west, it was like a [unclear]. They knew where the submarines were, they knew where the activity of the U-boats were, especially at night, and it took us fifteen days to get from Liverpool to Sierra Leone, Freetown in Sierra Leone. It’s not called Sierra Leone now is it, what’s it called now?
CB: It is called Sierra Leone.
BY: Is it?
CB: Yeah, yeah.
BY: And, and during that time we were- We all slept in hammocks, shoulder to shoulder, [unclear] you know, and of course when the boat rolled, you were- You can, well I don’t need to explain, you can imagine can’t you? People close to- head high. And that’s how we carried on. But as soon as we- And we weren’t allowed ashore, I suppose they thought, ‘This is a [unclear] lot, we’re not gonna let these people get ashore,’ they- We were anchored off about half-a-mile away from shore at Freetown, and- While some sort of, operation or conference carried on, we don’t know what, but what we do know is what we saw, was little boats coming out, young lads about fifteen or sixteen kind of boys, local boys- Boats were full of oranges, lemons, bananas, grapes and- What their technique was, you see, they came up to the boat, they were allowed to come up to the boat and they had, they had another basket which they would attach to a rope, they’d fling the basket up to somebody leaning over the taffrail, catch onto it, put their money in, sixpence or a shilling, and what you got for a shilling was amazing, sort of thing, and then you’d send the empty basket down carefully, with the money in, and then they would put the goods in it, up it’d come again and- And that carried on for best part of a couple of days. So we were getting stuff from these people unofficially, but we were happy to pay for it. I think, I think the most you paid was a shilling or half a crown or- I think some people who had money- But that was the end of- But then we carried on then, it was all peaceful then to go down to the Cape, there were massive boats, there was bunting flying off the ships all- There was no restriction of the- You weren’t allowed to smoke in the North Atlantic in the first fifteen days, I think it was a little bit more then fifteen- It was fifteen days we didn’t see land, and through the zig-zagging sort of direction which we came from to avoid the enemy, and at night you see we used to hear the depth charges going.
CB: Oh did you?
BY: Yeah, every night there were depth charges and submarine gunning for, you know, all that sort of thing, and fortunately we were lucky but a boat before us, in- Was sunk down and about thee-hundred went down, you know, you didn’t hear much about it, well the public didn’t know much about it. But- And the waves were cold, and the waves and the boats were going up like that, you see pictures of it now but- They were up to twenty feet sometimes-
CB: Were they really? Yeah.
BY: You know and-
CB: Not comfortable.
BY: That wasn’t comfortable that, but I think most of us were frightened, we were really frightened because we were there- We were defenceless, we didn’t have any armours, arms, we were just on that boat, and we had the handicap of what was flung at us by the, by the German naval people. But-
CB: So what did you do all day on the ship?
BY: Well we had- There was lots of little, all the- They made certain that we- There was quite a few people and the cookhouse was on a wire cage on the deck, open deck. This is hard to believe, you wouldn’t think- but- and I might be able to show you some of the information on- And then there was guards for spotting periscopes, or spotting any enemy ship which might’ve drifted into that way or any happening on the [unclear], on conditions of weather and if there was a- So we were occupied by doing sort of duties all the time, not all the time because there was a lot of- We could sit down in the mess decks down under and play cards or play games or draughts or whatever, chess or whatever. We passed the time away like that, and then eventually we got to Durban and we were allowed ashore there. We were there for a week, so we could leave the boat from twelve o’ clock mid-day to twelve o’ clock in the morning, to twelve o’clock at night, have to go back to the ship, back to our hammocks and all that sort of thing. But, in the meantime there was a scheme in Durban, and I think this applied to a lot of the South African sides, course the apartheid was very strong at that time, very much strong, and these English people or, we’ll call them white South African, they sort of encouraged- And I was going along with two fellows, two RAF fellows and two army chaps and they said, ‘Can we take you somewhere to give you a meal?’ and oh, you know, yes we could see there was some, you know- No, no restrictions there so were went with them, then we went to their house for the day, for the evening and they took us back to the boat at night and that sort of scheme, and that carried on for about five or six days, and they contacted to our parents, they wrote to our parents as civilians-to-civilians. So our parents knew roughly that we were all right as far as Durban was concerned, and then it was all back up through the Mozambique Channel, to the Suez Canal and we alighted at Port Suez, and then all stand- Hang around there for days and days, we didn’t get any money for a while, you know how it is. Everything was done alphabetically, and I was a ‘Y’ so I had to wait for my money till the second day or something, something like that, and then eventually it all- They already- There was some former thingy gone on, they had some workshops built there, they didn’t have the equipment all together or they, they- Some other boats must’ve brought in- But we had machine tools and things, and very soon after about a fortnight, three weeks, we started servicing Allison engines, twelve cylinder American engines which were fitted to-
CB: To Kittyhawk's?
BY: Kittyhawk's, Tomahawks. Tomahawks were the first one, then the Kittyhawk's, and also there were three sections, there was the Allison section which was the inline section, there was the Cyclone section which was a radial and the Pratt & Whitney section was also, Pratt & Whitney. So these three sorts of lines working at top speed, twelve-hour shifts to service them. A lot of them were coming in, in packages- The Americans sent them over to Takoradi somehow and they used to come through Deversoir back to where we were in Kasfareet just couple of miles outside the Suez Canal so, and there was plenty of workers, plenty of things to assemble and fit, and they all had to be tested as well so. Some were assembled by- If an aircraft came in with an engine to be changed, well the engine would be taken out and a new one would be put in and that sort of thing, and- So there was plenty of activity there, and this activity went on at the height of the war in the desert war, and they had several sort of Commander-in-Chief, who weren’t very good until Montgomery came along, he sorted all that out. He was a queer man really, I mean he would- He lived by himself in a tent with his batman and didn’t associate with anyone else but he was, he was a very keen operator, he knew and- Nearest we get to- Got to the line was about ten miles away at [unclear], they came down to us. So, it could’ve been a, a nasty episode and then that carried on, carried on and things got easier, lots of activity in the desert, sometimes some of us had to go into the desert to do a job and back again sort of thing, and then eventually we, we landed, or we’d driven by truck in a convoy of about hundred vehicles along to coast road of North Africa to Tripoli. Now a lot of people say there’s only- There’s two Tripoli’s, there’s Tripoli in Palestine or that part of the world, there’s another Tripoli in North Africa, and we went to the one in North Africa, which was quite well equipped because Mussolini spent a lot of time and he, his- He had some good thing about him, Mussolini, he colonised a lot of North Africa and he got work for the tribesman there and he got their, he got their side [unclear]- Anyway, it come to the point- It was three factories there, there was a Alfa Romeo factory, there was a- What was the other one? Well-known name, car factory, and we took over one of the car factories, and that was well equipped with everything we wanted and then we eventually transferred to Centaurus engines assembly centre- Which we then had cooperation with Bomber Command because they were flying and a lot of our work was down to 87 Squadron, I think it was, Beaufighters. You know, we- And then I was there a little while and then they flew us back again to Naples, and then come across again in a troop ship, another open ship over there, or a smaller ship and we carried on and then by that time, the British Army had conquered North Africa and then we’re talking about now 1942, ‘43 sort of thing, and then they moved across to Naples then, basically, and we settled in Naples and we did the same work there in Naples and- I was there at Naples for about eighteen months doing the same sort of work, you know, and- Enjoyed life ‘cause it was a bit easier and we had, we had better sort of living conditions in Italy, and I stayed there till Easter ‘45. So, I left my mother and father at the 1st of January 1941, and I never saw them again, I never spoke to them again till Easter ‘45. That’s a long time, now if you were married, you only stayed three years but I stayed four years and- Four years plus, and of course I should’ve come home on a bit- I got injured playing sport sort of thing, so I had to take- It was one troop used to go back in the 1940s to England every year, every month see, one troop out a month, so I had to stay back another month, not that I worried really ‘cause I was quite happy there and I had a nice little house, room overlooking the bay of Naples and could see Sorrento in- Sorrento were in far away and Capri were in high- You could see- It was a wonderful place to stay, so these are the plus sides of things, you know.
CB: How much work did you get done?
BY: Oh a lot of work, we had to work hard there. I mean ‘cause of continuous work coming in from the western desert-
CB: Is this damage, or servicing?
BY: Oh yes, damage some damage and some, quite ridiculous. I remember one case an aircraft was flown in, and the people that dealt it did very well, it was a piece of shrapnel, or bullet or something, gone through one side of the, one of the cylinders, and it went right through outside and out the other side and some clever fellow, he sort of made the two holes, rounded them either side, he poked a piece of tube in right the way through and then he drove two wooden spits into either side, and that aircraft flew back.
CB: Did it really?
BY: Yeah, it’s amazing that, I mean the pilot took a chance but he succeeded because the circulation of fluid in the twelve engines. But they were they were cheaper and easier to assemble then the Rolls Royce were, they weren’t so complicated. But- Where do we go from here?
CB: Right, so how long did you stay out there? So, we’re talking about getting into Naples then the Italian surrender-
BY: I got into Naples on October ’43, and I stayed there to Easter ’45, and we stayed in a vacated- What do they call them? Where people go mad. An asylum, it was quite a big hospital and we turned that into a proper workshop, where we could service aircraft and send them out, and all that sort of thing, any small items had to be done and- I think spares were the problem ‘cause they had to come from the UK. But they eventually did get because-
CB: Which of the aircraft-
BY: At that time, I think just about- I’m not quite certain what the date was when it- When the Mediterranean was cleared for English shipping to come through. I think it was ’44, I think. Or would it be, sometime when they were- When the invasion of Europe was, sometime-
CB: Well, they invaded Southern France after D-Day, so that meant that the Mediterranean was reasonably-
BY: I’m not certain about those facts Chris, but-
CB: What aircraft are you servicing now?
BY: For Beaufighters.
CB: Right, still Beaufighters.
BY: Yep, Beaufighters. They were the main things, ‘cause we were in sections so all our work was done- I was working on Allisons all the time see.
CB: And are these Coastal Command by now or are they Bomber Command- Middle East Air Force?
BY: They were Bomber Command, they were Bomber Command, well-
CB: Middle East Air Force?
BY: I’m not certain about that ‘cause they policed the Mediterranean for a long time.
CB: Were they rocket firing or, were they bomb dropping?
BY: They were bomb dropping and rocket firing yeah, but some of the, some of the very well-known pilots were killed in that, in that place because when the Mediterranean came under the control of the allies, parts of southern, the southern side of that below Israelia, Heliopolis[?] and all these places were still sort of under the jurisdiction of the Germans really, but that was soon cleared up and-
CB: The Vichy French?
BY: Yeah, that’s right yeah. But eventually it sorted itself out and-
CB: But in Italy, you were in the Naples area, but how far north did you go from Naples?
BY: Not very far.
CB: Right, and then where did you go from Naples?
BY: Naples, I went back to North Africa for a while, when the Centaurus came in because a team of Bristol aeroplane specialists came over to give us indication of the servicing, the stripping and the, you know, general of the Centaurus, which was a sleeve valve engine, and-
CB: Though, retro fitted to the Beaufighters were they?
BY: I don’t know are they? Yes, I think there were and I don’t know what other aircraft the fitted to, Buccaneers or something like that.
CB: No, no that’s a post-war-
BY: But while we were at sea coming or going out or- We would often see these pre-war, sort of aircraft flying around, you know. It’s quite amazing.
CB: So then, when did you return to the UK?
BY: As I said, April, Easter ‘45. I then went there to St Eval in Cornwall and 179 Squadron and they had, what’s the name- But their job was- And as we were at St Eval, war ended, European war ended.
CB: Ok.
BY: And the job was for- Our job was to go to every, every- The Atlantic or any of the waterways and direct the, any German vessels or whatever to enter English ports, and that was our job and, I was only there about two months and then, I was posted to Accrington in North of England, Northumberland on 213 Squadron then we went- That was a night fighter squadron, then- From then on my last four years in the Air Force was in night fighters, and that was-
CB: Were these nights fighter or were they interdictors who went in the bomber stream?
BY: They were all Mosquitos, latterly we had the Jet Age came in just as I was leaving, and that was an Armstrong Whitley fighter. You don’t hear much of ‘em but that’s what we had first of all, I’ve got a picture of them somewhere but-
Other: A jet plane?
BY: Hm?
Other: A jet plane?
BY: Oh yes.
CB: I’ll just stop there a bit.
BY: -14 Squadron-
CB: Which was at Accrington was it?
BY: No, no, this is at Coltishall.
CB: Oh Coltishall, ok.
BY: Which is now closed, near Norwich.
CB: Yep.
BY: I had a call to go the officers mess, and when I got there, it was the Squadron Leader there, a VR, volunteer reserve on- He’d come to visit the CO, it was a- Well they were doing a sort of volunteer’s activity on the weekends in those days, and I- And he called me and he said to me, he said, ‘I understand you’re,’ this is what he said to me, ‘I understand you’re leaving the Air Force in the next month or so.’ I said, ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’m now married and I want to raise a family and I feel that if I raise a family in, you know, civilian life it might be more advantageous.’ Anyway, I said, ‘My wife is a school-teacher in Bristol and, good school and, I don’t want to upset her sort of way of life’. ‘Oh that’s fair enough,’ he said, he said and he said, any-rate, he asked me a few questions then he said, ‘I you like-,’ he gave me a card, he said, ‘You come and see so and so on such and such a date, we’ll find something for you,’ so I said, ‘Oh what have you got in mind?’ ‘Oh,” he said, ‘We’re building up our sales unit.’ So I said to him straight away, ‘Well I don’t want to go on selling things,’ I said, ‘That’s not me,’ I said, ‘I’d rather, I joined the Air Force to learn about mechanics and sort of how to use my hands and how to use machine tools and, all the other things that go with that sort of life.’
CB: Yeah.
BY: So he said, ‘Well I tell you what,’ he said, ‘If you were still wanting to carry on and be turner, or slotter or,’ you know, all these sorts of things, he said, ‘We’re starting a small shop.’ And there was seven of us, not a very big shop it was, but we were there on our own, just the seven of us and we had quite a few machine tools in there, everything from presses to sort of, everything which was needed to do anything in the engineering, more or less, on a small scale [unclear], and, ‘Would you like to join that?’ I said, ‘Well that sounds, that sounds more my line.’ So I started there, I stayed there with them till I retired. But the beautiful thing about- Everyday- Now what we were doing, basically, the technicians in those days, I mean, in the drawing office, people were drawing, they were tracing and all that sort of- Well nowadays they don’t do that at all it’s all done electronic as you well know. What they were doing, the drawers would come to us with an idea to make something, to design something ‘cause this is unguided weapons ‘cause there was a lot of hard work in the early days of weapons to make certain everything was, you know, spot on and weight and all that sort of thing. So we used to get [unclear] of drawings come in to do that, some on ordinary paper, some on blueprints, mostly in blueprints and then you would, you know, study them, or and that was it. Some jobs would take a day, some days two days, sometimes a fortnight sort of thing, and every job was different, and some of this work it was the pre, what’s the word, before something goes into designing?
Other: Prototype?
BY: Hm?
Other: Prototype?
BY: Prototype, that’s the name. Before the prototype, we were getting everything before the prototype. Now in that case it was a lot of, well that’s not what we want or, that didn’t sort of suit us or that didn’t work out when it was tested, and we had a big cellar underneath and we’d just drop it underneath and wait for the next idea to come from them. So it was- I stayed with them because I found it interesting.
CB: What was the company?
BY: Bristol Air, Guided Weapons Department, and I stayed doing that, people say, ’Well you should’ve gone, you should apply for this and apply for that and gone or.’ I’m a believer in job satisfaction rather than job achievement, maybe I'm old fashioned, maybe I'm wrong, but here I am.
CB: Didn’t do you any harm did it?
BY: No.
CB: And you enjoyed the work?
BY: I enjoyed the work and I found it interesting.
CB: And you rose up in the-
BY: Well, I mean, I mean, your ability, and what is more you see, people are always coming down to us and saying, ‘Something’s wrong with my motorbike, I want a new bush or something,’ you know, and we would turn out a new bush for him or that sort of thing and he would give us half a crown or whatever. You know, I miss all that, and to make things for myself you know, odd times but my- But really and truly, all the time I was with them I was occupied all the day long.
CB: And you enjoyed it?
BY: Yeah.
CB: Now you’ve got three children, where did you meet your wife?
BY: I met my wife, first of all, her father’s a farmer and mother- She’s the youngest of seven children so, how can I put it? She was- She used to come home from Bristol to a place called Othery, which is not very far away, near Langport, you’ve heard of Langport, near Langport, to the farm, and help her mother every Friday or Saturday. She’d come round Friday evening and stay to Sunday night, go back to school on Monday morning, and at the same time I was at Locking, on this one year's course, fitter one's course.
CB: Yep, Weston-Super-Mare
BY: And we used to go up by train, she went back by train and we met on the station, I happened- In the old days the corridor trains, you know, you sort of meet and talk to people and- I used to see her several Sunday nights and then I wrote to her, she wrote to me I don’t quite know and it all started from there, and we got married this was 1948 sometime, ‘cause that was the year I was at Locking and then 1949 September we were married, and she was still teaching and then we bought this house, how much do you think I gave for this house?
CB: When?
BY: 19- I was what? 19- In 1951, I was thirty, it must’ve been about 1956 I bought it.
CB: Crikey
BY: 1956.
CB: Well less than-
Other: Thousand?
BY: Hmm?
Other: Thousand?
BY: Two-thousand- No.
CB: Was it?
BY: I bought it for two-thousand-and-fifty, it’s now worth-
CB: A bit more?
BY: A bit more, a lot more.
CB: Yeah, what do you reckon it’s worth now?
BY: Well, the house next door is empty, my neighbour next door she died not very long ago, couple of months ago and she’d lived there for sixty years.
CB: Gosh.
BY: And her house sold I think for three-eighty, three-hundred-and-eighty-thousand.
Other: [Chuckles]
CB: Amazing.
BY: I mean it’s ridiculous really.
CB: Yeah.
BY: And maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but I'll tell you this. I came out of the Air Force with a thousand quid in my pocket. My wife, I used to send to my wife my Marriage Allowance ‘cause I was married for eighteen months. So she had about over a thousand. I was about five-hundred pounds short for buying the house so I went to the bank manager and he lent it to me and about three months we cleared our loan, I never had a mortgage on this house other than-
CB: Amazing.
BY: And I, you know, I think of my young boys there- Two of them living in London, well you know what it’s like.
CB: Yeah,
BY: It’s frightening
CB: Absolutely, nothing for a million.
BY: Nothing at all, and I tell them what they’re going to do I think, ‘cause one, John, that’s the one that his wife, or his partner really, she’s an Executive, she’s a bright girl, she’s in the Save The Children organisation. Good job with them earning good money, I don’t know what she’s earning but they’re thinking about- At the present moment they’re living in London and paying rent and I said to them, you know, ‘It’s better to buy somewhere, and pay your mortgage, because you have got something at the end of it, whereas you paying rent is just money down the drain’.
CB: That’s right, yeah.
BY: And John is working in London, he works for England’s Rugby Union
CB: Oh, does he?
BY: That’s John, so they’re all- But they’ve all got jobs and they’re coping alright and David’s retired but he’s got his own business he goes, ‘course he was well known in a lot of the people in London, reporters and the Editor of the Financial Times quite well, you know, ‘cause he was a spokesman for Engineer Employers Federation-
CB: Oh yeah, got around a bit.
BY: And he said to me, when he found out David retired ‘cause David he’s got MS as well.
CB: Yes, nasty.
BY: Doesn’t walk very well, and this chap said, you know, he said ‘You want to start a business on your own, just going round chairing meetings’ and that’s what he does.
CB: Oh does he really?
BY: He chairs meetings, goes round- So he must be good at it.
CB: Yeah, how intriguing.
BY: You gotta be firm when you’re a Chairman, not let them, let the sort of syllabus wander on and wander on, you’ll be there all night otherwise, but that’s what he’s doing now, and he does- He’s his own boss he can go when he likes and he lives in, in Southampton, goes up to London quite frequently and most of these businesses down in London ‘cause he said to me, ‘I know more people in London then I do in Southhampton,’ but-
CB: We’ve covered a lot of things and early one you mentioned a passion for rugby? So what’s happened to your rugby life?
BY: Well, my rugby life, first of all started off learning- I come from a rugby village but, and I played quite a bit in the services, I was always in the station team and then I played in that- I tell you what, I’ve got a cap in there with a tassel on it, because there was a competition between the eight Commands; Fighter, Bomber, Tech Training, Flying Training, [unclear], what’s the [unclear].
CB: And Coastal?
BY: Coastal Command, it was quite- And they all have got a big command, there were a lot of men in the Air Force in those days in- This is 19- 1942 I think- No, no 1950 something and, so I- We had- They saw I was capable so they selected me out from Coltishall and I went with others and we assembled at Uxbridge as a Command side, and we played this competition against all the other Commands and we won it outright you see, and we had a hell of a time when we won ‘cause we were invited to Bentley Priory, and had a big- I think there was about, eight or nine officers and there was one All-Black was a player, there was one current in National playing in the side- So there, you know- They all knew what it’s all about sort of thing and we had a wonderful time and I’ve got a few photographs, you’ve seen one or two there and I’ve got a cap, they sent me a cap with the excuse, ‘We’re short of money, normally our caps are made of velvet but I’m sorry,’ but they got it printed on there, I’ll show you in a minute before you go.
CB: So when-
BY: And in between I played for Bridgewater and Albion, and I’ve played for Weston-Super-Mare, I’ve played for Devonport Services, I guested for Norwich and Lowestoft when I was over at Coltishall and so, you know, I’ve been around a little bit. Fortunately, I’m still here Chris, to tell the tale.
CB: Really good, yeah. Well Bert Yeandle, thank you very much for a most interesting conversation-
BY: Well I hope I’ve been- I hope it makes sense for your-
CB: I think it will fit really well, thank you.
BY: Do you? Really?
CB: We do, absolutely, thank you.
BY: Mostly-
CB: Your engines?
BY: Well the first engine I worked was a trainee engine, was a Morris Motors car, yep, that was in training, but then we came out I worked on Centaur, Pegasus, Merlins, Griffins, what’s the other ones?
CB: Derwent?
BY: Derwent, yes.
CB: Jet?
BY: I’m not very, I haven’t seen a lot of Jet engines because when I came out of the Air Force, I went into guided weapons you see, so that was the slight-
CB: So you were really a rockets man as well?
BY: Yeah.
Other: In terms of beauty, which would you say was the most beautiful engine you’ve worked on?
BY: Oh, the Rolls Royce, no doubt about it. It’s the most efficient, yeah, and I’ve worked- A lot of aircraft I’ve worked on, all sort of aircraft you know, Spitfires and Hurricanes, a little bit of Hurricanes, and Mosquitos are the aircraft I spent a lot of time on, and Wellingtons early on. They were not very good, you know, Wellingtons. Well in hindsight they’re not very- They were at the time, I mean, industry moves on, technicians move on and development moves on but I mean, an awful lot of aircraft that were built that were rubbish really and now when you compare with what there is at the latter part of the prop jets. See I came over, I flew over from Belfast to East Midlands just now, came over on a prop jet.
CB: Oh, did you?
BY: Hundred people on it, so they still use them, not that I- Fleebye-
CB: Flybe.
BY: Flybe, but I like to fly with [unclear] the one, yeah. Well-
CB: Thank you.
BY: I should’ve liked to of given you a cooked meal.
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 Bertram Arthur Yeandle
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-12-29
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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01:53:57 Audio Recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AYeandleBA181229
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Egypt
Great Britain
Italy
Libya
North Africa
Egypt--Suez Canal
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Cornwall (County)
England--Norfolk
England--Somerset
England--Oxford
England--Shropshire
Italy--Naples
Libya--Tripoli
England--Oxfordshire
Description
An account of the resource
After leaving school, Bertram Yeandle joined the RAF apprentice scheme and trained as an engine fitter at RAF Halton. After completing his apprenticeship at RAF Cosford, he was posted to 148 Squadron, RAF Harwell, where he serviced Wellingtons. In January 1941, Yeandle was posted overseas. He describes his journey via Sierra Leone and Durban and servicing Allison engines near the Suez Canal. He then travelled to Tripoli, North Africa, where he serviced Centaurus engines for Beaufighters. In 1943, he was posted to Naples, Italy, and service aircraft there until Easter 1945. Finally, Yeandle describes his post-war life, including meeting his wife, competing in an RAF rugby competition, and working in weapon development after leaving the air force.
Contributor
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Tilly Foster
Jean Massie
Temporal Coverage
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1940
1941
1942
148 Squadron
Anson
Beaufighter
fitter engine
ground crew
ground personnel
hangar
Oxford
RAF Coltishall
RAF Cosford
RAF Halton
RAF Harwell
RAF Locking
RAF St Eval
sport
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/942/11301/AMacraeWM161116.1.mp3
84f04c8bc5c17a43471fbbf8d7624df3
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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Macrae, Bill
W M Macrae
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Bill Macrae (1913 - 2019, 3031774, Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 104 Squadron in North Africa and Italy.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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
2016-11-16
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Macrae, WM
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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JH: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre in Lincolnshire, UK and it’s part of the Oral History Programme. I’m the interviewer. I’m John Horsburgh and today I’m interviewing Bill Macrae. Bill was a pilot and he served with 104 Squadron RAF and he was flying Wellington bombers. And he was part of the Desert Air Force. North Africa and Italy campaigns. So, it’s a very interesting story. The interview is at Bill’s home in Chatswood in New South Wales and today is the 16th of November 2016. So, good afternoon Bill. I’m very pleased to be interviewing you for this. Why don’t we start at the start? The, your date of birth and where you were born and we’ll take it from there.
BM: I was born on the 14th of January 1913 at a place called Coraki which is up the far north coast near Lismore. On a farm. And my earliest memory was of the end of the First World War when late one evening a man came galloping down the main road singing out, “The war is over. The war is over.” And I remember very well also when all the soldiers came back where they put on a big return party at the local showground. And I remember there one of them picked me up and threw me up in the air and I boasted about that ever since. That’s the first time I was ever airborne. After that I went to a local school. About ten pupils in it I think, and teaching was rather elementary I suppose but we got the basics. And from there we moved to another farm up at Kyogle which is about, a town about thirty miles further north. And I was there until we came to Sydney in about 1923 and I went to school in Sydney. And at that time in 1926 or ‘7 the Depression came along and that’s one of my main regrets in life that my father lost his money and he had to go back to the bush and start again. And I had to get a job which I was very fortunate. I had an old uncle who had been in the Bank of New South Wales and he got me a job there. And none of my friends had a job. And people don’t realise how dire the straits of everyone else was in the workforce. I think unemployment was about twenty, twenty five percent. And in those day there were very few women working. But I remember the, I started work in Sydney in March 1929 in a two storey building in George Street with a wooden wire cage lift with a bit of rope used as a thing to lower it up and down. And I worked there for about three or four or five years and in 1937 the bank decided to send me to London for three years. Which was one of the greatest breaks I’ve had in life. And the general manager of the bank was Sir Alfred Davidson and he had the idea I think that the, a lot of young fellows in the bank were hillbillies. It would be a good thing if they had a bit of overseas experience. So he sent quite a few of us over there which I think was a very expensive exercise and which rather got him out of favour with the directors. He was wasting money on us really because we went over there completely unsupervised and we sort of had a tourist time. Not having to do much hard work.
JH: Meanwhile Bill was there a sense that there was trouble? When you went over there there was trouble brewing in Germany?
BM: Oh yes. Yes. Yes. I realised that the, there would be a war and I decided at that stage to learn a bit of German. So I went along at night to learn German. And I got to the stage I could understood Hitler’s ravings. And I also went over to Germany on holidays in 1939 and lived with a German family in Munich. And I gathered there that the Germans were right behind Hitler because he gave them hope. As the lady of the house where I was boarding said, ‘Well, he gave us hope,’ and said, ‘Otherwise we were completely —’ the biggest mistake of the war was the Germans were treated very harshly in the Treaty of Versailles. And they were a very proud race and they had no future. And she said, ‘Hitler gave us a future,’ she said, ‘We didn’t agree with him. And we didn’t like Goering. We thought he was a joke. But he gave our kids Hitler Youth ideology.’ Which was very, very good. The young Germans really impressed me. I mean as a tourist they’d see, if you asked them anywhere they’d not only point it out to you but they’d go with you. And very, very well mannered. And the Hitler Youth I think were completely mislead and indoctrinated by Hitler which was very, very unfortunate. But I liked the young Germans and I loved their singing. I loved their music. And I loved their general method of morality which was very high. Which I’m afraid at that time in England you had the shocker yobbos and the young people there didn’t impress you as opposed to the young Germans. At any rate I backed the wrong horse. I got back to England and a bit later on of course war broke out in September ’39. And I was very sympathetic to the German cause and I very easily could have become indoctrinated by the German ideals I think. At any rate. I decided that war might be over by Christmas so I thought I’d better sort of do something about it. I went along to Australia House and I was very fortunate there to have met a military man. Captain Pollard. He later became quite a good, he later got a knighthood and he later became a general but at that stage he was just a captain in the army.
JH: An Australian.
BM: And he said to me —
JH: Australian army or British army?
BM: Australian army.
JH: Australian army. Yeah.
BM: He was attached temporarily on a course with the British army.
JH: Yes.
BM: At any rate he said there was no Australian army starting up in London, ‘You’ll have to go back to Australia.’ And he said, ‘But I can get you into the, New Zealand has started a little army. Either that or the British army.’ At any rate I said, ‘You’d better make it the British army,’ because New Zealanders didn’t like Australians very much in those days. And, I don’t know. I don’t think that persists but then I think they regarded us as the descendants of convicts [laughs] They thought they were a bit superior to Australians I think. So, I decided not to join the New Zealand Army. They started an anti-tank regiment there and I saw them in training later on. But I was very amazed then within a matter of two weeks I suddenly got a notice, call up notice to report to Woolwich. The headquarters of the artillery and to join an officer training course for the artillery which, back to when I’d left Australia as I said if I’d ever join the British army and become an officer was completely out of my mind. But at any rate I joined the British Army. Trained with them at Aldershot. South of London there. And graduated as a lieutenant, Royal Artillery in March 1940 and was posted back to Woolwich to go to France. And at that stage we sat at Woolwich for about a month and that was when the Germans attacked in France. And that’s when the Germans sort of over ran the British Army in France.
JH: So you could have ended up on the beach.
BM: Yeah. So I never —
JH: Yeah.
BM: I never got to France. Which was a bit fortunate. But I got posted to a British artillery regiment between Canterbury and Dover. And I was down there during the Battle of Britain and wonderful front line seats of the battles that raged overhead in the air. And that gave me a yearning to get into the air force I’m afraid. And a notice came around in the artillery regiment. They’d decided to start up a thing called a flying OP. Operational Post training for directing gunfire from the air. Then I put my name in and as a result of that I got posted to an air force station at Woodley.
JH: Woodley.
BM: Which was west of London. I remember —
JH: Was that an —
BM: On the day that I —
JH: Yeah.
BM: That day up there it took me all day to get through London. It had been damaged by bombing. But I got to Woodley about dusk. And as I was walking across the aerodrome to go to the mess hut there which was an inn on the edge of the aerodrome a Hurricane was circling around at zero feet. And it finally landed and almost ran into a hedge. And I hurried across and the pilot clambered out and a very strange language, ‘Where am I? Where am I?’ And he was a Pole. He’d been up fighting the Germans and got lost. And as a result of that he stayed with us that night.
JH: Yes.
BM: You can imagine. We heard his whole life story.
JH: Yes.
BM: And he was really angry with the Germans. Really, really angry. And his history was that he’d been in the Polish Air Force and they were knocked out of the war more or less overnight. First when war was first declared.
JH: Well they had cavalry charges, didn’t they?
BM: And he went down. Got out through Italy.
JH: Yes.
BM: To Gibraltar. Then got up back to England. And he trained then with the RAF. And I might say they were a gallant mob the Polish aircrew. Very gallant.
JH: Yes.
BM: They were I’d say better lot of aeroplanes and I remember my rear gunner who had earlier on been posted to a Polish fighter squadron as a gunner in a Boulton Paul Defiant, that was a single engine fighter with a turret just behind the pilot. And he said the pilot there said, ‘If you don’t shoot them down I’ll ram them.’ And he said, ‘He meant it.’ At any rate the rear gunner was very happy to train with a timid pilot like me, I think.
JH: So, Bill, just, just run me through the type of aircraft you flew during training. Did you start with the, for example Tiger Moth?
BM: I trained on a single engine Miles Magister. I remember the first couple of flights very well because it was December then and there was a frost on the ground. You could see the River Thames below. You could see a village there with smoke coming up and you could see Windsor Castle in the background. I said to the, I was flying at the time, he was sitting in front and you communicated by a speaking tube.
JH: Yes.
BM: And I said to him, ‘What a marvellous sight this is.’ I was completely wrapped up in the view. He said, ‘I’ve got it,’ he took over the ruddy plane and put into a dive. Straight down to the village below and said, he said, ‘Do you see that church down there? Do you see the graveyard? If you don’t watch your airspeed that’s where you’ll finish up.’ [laughs] That’s when I found the number one in flying is your airspeed. You’ve got to watch it. Watch it. Watch it. Coming in to land. Taking off. All the time.
JH: Yeah. Yeah.
BM: That was my first. And that was the approach I used when I was instructing people flying. That’s the approach I used with them too later on.
JH: It sounds like a very good tip you got there. It stood you in good stead.
BM: At any rate I didn’t, didn’t, wasn’t posted back then to my original place. I was posted back to Woolwich. And I sat there for a couple of weeks. At that stage there were quite a few air raids on London.
JH: Yes.
BM: And I remember there was an unexploded bomb landed on the Woolwich College. We were all evacuated while they dealt with it. They dealt with it by boring a hole in it both sides with a drill clamped to the thing. And then they squirted water in to sort of do the — get rid of the explosive. I remember that quite well.
JH: Yes.
BM: But then I got a posted from there down to the mouth of the Thames to Shoeburyness which was a medium and heavy artillery training regiment. And I trained people there.
JH: Yes.
BM: And got very friendly with the colonel in charge of the place and I told him how I’d love to get in to the bloody air force. I’d already done some flying.
JH: Yes.
BM: And he said, ‘Well, I’ve got a friend at the war house.’
JH: Yeah.
BM: And he said, ‘If you like I’ll give you a letter of introduction to him.’ And he gave me a couple of days off to go up to the war house which had been evacuated to Cheltenham.
JH: Yes.
BM: And he was there. A series of big huts. They kept all the army records there.
JH: Yes.
BM: But at any rate I went up there and I went out and I met the major man. His friend. And as a result of that I got a transfer to the air force.
JH: That’s marvellous. So did you then —
BM: I must say —
JH: Go to an OTU? Officer training unit in the air force.
BM: No. That was [pause] they sent me to another Elementary Flying Course.
JH: Oh yes. Of course.
BM: Yeah.
JH: Yeah.
BM: But I might say the reason I was popular with the man at Shoeburyness was, well it was on the shore there it was set right the tide would go out over the sand and mud flats as far as the eye could see and then the tide would come in lapping. And I realised no one had been fishing there for years. And there was a boat shed there with a little rowing boat.
JH: Yes.
BM: I got the rowing boat out at the right tide. I went out and I caught flounder by the dozen.
JH: Good Lord.
BM: I was feeding the bloody mess with fish. Rationing was on but not very severe.
JH: Yeah.
BM: I was very popular with the CO as a result of it. That’s how I got into the air force [laughs]
JH: That’s an amazing —
BM: That’s when I got posted to a —
JH: Amazing story. Yeah.
BM: Posted from the place by the sea to, to a college at Cambridge.
JH: Cambridge.
BM: Another. Yes.
JH: In Cambridge or —
BM: In Cambridge. Yeah.
JH: Oh right. Yeah.
BM: Not the airfield.
JH: Yeah.
BM: It was an initial training place where they were marching people around who had just joined the air force.
JH: Yes. A bit of square bashing.
BM: I explained to the man in charge and as a result of that he got me moved from there after a couple of weeks.
JH: Yeah.
BM: But it was a very pleasant interlude. I joined with the elders at the dining mess and I had a very pleasant couple of weeks at Cambridge.
JH: Yes.
BM: Went punting on the Backs and it was very pleasant. At any rate I got posted then to another Elementary Flying School at Peterborough.
JH: Yes.
BM: I went there for another couple of months and from there I was posted to the next stage which was Flying Training School. Elementary to begin with. Then you went to a flying training. If you were going in to bombers you went over, the training place was twin engine planes which — that’s where I got posted.
JH: Yes.
BM: Cranwell had twin-engined Oxfords.
JH: Yes.
BM: Airspeed Oxfords. Which is a very pleasant aeroplane to fly.
JH: Yes.
BM: And I trained on that and a couple of things there that come to mind. When I arrived in 1941, about a week before Whittle’s jet had been flying there for the first time. It was the talk of the station. Highly secret of course. You were told not on any account to mention this but I heard all about it but I actually didn’t see it flying. But that’s where it first flew. It was housed in a hangar away at the far end of the aerodrome and guarded by civilian police apparently. They wouldn’t trust the air force guards for the secrecy angle.
JH: Yes.
BM: But at any rate it took a couple of years for that to be developed. If you read Whittle’s book I think they got the Rover people to start trying to develop it. They didn’t do much and then they handed it over to Rolls Royce and it got going within about twelve months after that. But of course the Germans had a jet flying in 1938 and they had the same experience. They realised that it would take a couple of years to develop and Hitler decided to adapt the scientific wing when it was flying because it would take a couple of years before it could. But as it turned out it took about three years before the Germans were able to develop it. And it took the British about three years too.
JH: So it became operational during.
BM: Before they got [unclear] Yes. Yes.
JH: I didn’t know that. It’s interesting.
BM: But that was one of the highlights of my flying training. Another highlight was I wore the King’s uniform there. The main building at Cranwell, a very long building with a big tower in the middle and a small tower on the two wings either side. We were in the cinema one night and suddenly the whole building shook. Someone said, ‘Oh, we’ve been bombed,’ but we hadn’t been bombed. An old Whitley on night flying had landed and hit one of the little towers at the end of the long building. And the building was on fire. And we all raced out of course and they said, ‘Get the pictures out.’ In the corridors there they had a lot of very valuable pictures which had been evacuated from the National Gallery in London.
JH: Some old Masters.
BM: Yes. Priceless pictures. We carted the pictures from that wing of the building and in the main entrance to the building was the King’s uniform in a glass case. Well, the glass case, we got that open and after the fire was put out we each wore the King’s uniform and saluted each other [laughs]
JH: Well deserved.
BM: But the only survivor of the crash was the rear gunner. The rest of the crew bought it. And the Whitley of course was completely burned out.
JH: Yes. So, Bill, at this stage were you earmarked as a pilot or —
BM: Yes.
JH: Could have been a navigator.
BM: You were earmarked when you went to Cranwell as a bomber pilot. Twin engine training.
JH: Yeah. So you passed all the aptitude and —
BM: Oh yes. Yes. Yes.
JH: You were heading in that direction.
BM: Yeah.
JH: Yeah.
BM: And you did a bit of night flying there but you more or less did about fifty or sixty hour a day flying.
JH: Yes.
BM: Instructing. And then you did about ten hours night flying.
JH: Yes.
BM: Which wasn’t a lot.
JH: Yes.
BM: And you didn’t know much about night flying really. And another thing at Cranwell when I was there when they were experimenting with a flare path called sodium flares. Which were a flare path for these I don’t know what sodium meant but there was a thing where you put on goggles and you could see the flares, but you had dark glasses. You couldn’t see anything else. But they never, I had a couple of hours trying to learn night flying on that.
JH: Yes.
BM: But it was abandoned because the main problem as I saw it your goggles fogged up.
JH: Yes.
BM: You were sweating with. And if you tried to land looking —
JH: Yes.
BM: Seeing the flarepath ready for, you were sweating profusely and your goggles fogged up very quickly.
JH: Yes.
BM: But at any rate —
JH: Yes.
BM: I got passed out of that without much trouble.
JH: Yes.
BM: And I was still then in the army. Still wearing the army uniform.
JH: Really.
BM: And I had the job of marching the bloody cadet trainees around. But as a result I was, dined with the officers.
JH: Yes.
BM: And got to know the chief flying instructor very well. And he was going to get me posted on to Stirlings. They were the buzz thing then. An enormous aircraft.
JH: Yes.
BM: Just coming in to service and everyone thought that, you know the war winner. As it turned out the Stirlings were a dead loss.
JH: They were short lived weren’t they?
BM: Short lived.
JH: Yeah.
BM: They took them off operations.
JH: Yeah.
BM: Put them on glider towing and on training. And as an operational plane they had no height. I think they could only get above about twelve thousand feet.
JH: Yes.
BM: They were slow and cumbersome and the losses were very heavy.
JH: Yes. Yes.
BM: At any rate from there I got posted to an operational training place. Fortunately it wasn’t a Stirling one.
JH: Where was that?
BM: It was a Wellington one.
JH: Where was that?
BM: At Harwell.
JH: Harwell. Yes. In Essex.
BM: About fifty miles west of London I suppose.
JH: Yes. Harwell.
BM: Very pleasant. It was a grass. No fixed firm runway. It had been a peacetime station. And very pleasant place.
JH: Yeah.
BM: A very pleasant place to live.
JH: Yes.
BM: And the countryside was very pleasant indeed. From there you crewed up. You got your crew there.
JH: You crewed. Tell me about your, your crewing up. How did that happen?
BM: Just put in a big assembly room. They put about a half dozen pilots, about a dozen front gunners, a dozen rear gunners and a dozen navigators, a dozen wireless operators. They let you sort yourselves out and you formed your own crew. I don’t know how. But it wasn’t a very efficient system I think. But I got lumbered — no I wasn’t lumbered. But we got together with a very good navigator. Had been a student, a university student. He was good. We’d got a very good wireless operator. He’d been a boy apprentice in the air force. He was the only sort of skilled member of our crew I’d say. And the two gunners. Front gunner, he was a lorry driver but very little education. But the rear gunner was a very decent English chap. He was well educated and had been working as a welder and his family were, and a reserved occupation but he’d joined up and his family were very annoyed with him for joining the air force. He’d joined up and he’d got posted as a gunner to a Polish squadron where he served for a while and then he got posted to our crowd. That was our crew. They were all English.
JH: Yes.
BM: Yeah.
JH: Would I, would I be right in thinking you were the most senior?
BM: I was the most senior.
JH: In terms of age.
BM: Yes.
JH: Yeah
BM: Both in age. They were all about nineteen or twenty.
JH: Yes.
BM: And I was known as the old man. And we had a second pilot too but —
JH: Yeah.
BM: He was a bit dumb I’m afraid.
JH: Yes.
BM: He was the only chap in the crew that I was a bit worried about. The second pilot.
JH: Your co-pilot. Yeah.
BM: Yes. Yes. Yes.
JH: Was he also the flight engineer in a, on a Wellington?
BM: No. That was later.
JH: Yes. Ok.
BM: That happened when you went to four engines.
JH: Right. Yeah.
BM: But —
JH: Yes.
BM: We trained there and as I say we did day flying. Day flying was very pleasant.
JH: Yeah.
BM: The syllabus was you did five day cross-country flights.
JH: Yes.
BM: And the first one you went with an instructor. The next —
JH: Yes.
BM: Four you did on your own. But you flew across to Northern Ireland, up the west of England. Up the coast.
JH: Yes.
BM: Up around the top of Scotland and down the east coast of England.
JH: Yes.
BM: When the weather was good — very pleasant.
JH: Yes.
BM: And at that early stage of the war you weren’t that well supervised. Later on you had to fly strictly according to time and had to log everything in.
JH: Yes.
BM: You couldn’t deviate or fly low as you could in the days we did.
JH: Yes.
BM: I remember I got a very, very bad sort of introduction to flying with the first cross-country. I went with an operational pilot. He’d just come off operations.
JH: Yeah.
BM: And I remember we flew across the north of Wales there at Northfleet and I remember horses bolting sheds and he said, ‘Make sure if you’re low flying,’ the advice he gave me, ‘Reel in your trailing aerial.’ The wireless op had let out a trailing aerial which was trailing behind about fifty or a hundred feet of wire with lead weights on it to keep it below.
JH: Yes.
BM: He said, ‘If you fly low and you break tiles on a roof with your trailing aerial,’ he said, ‘You’re gone,’ he said, ‘You’re court martialled.’ Low flying was a court martial offence.
JH: Yes.
BM: Quite rightly. It was completely stupid.
JH: Yes.
BM: That was a very, very bad example to give the crew.
JH: Yeah.
BM: Because I’m very sure we saw the result of that at night when you came off the day flying and had a drink with the rest of the crew who’d been flying. I remember one crew reckoned, ‘Oh our pilot flew that low over the sea he was able to stir up the water with his prop tips.’ And a couple of days later they were never heard of again. I’m very sure he hit the water. I don’t know.
JH: Yes.
BM: But that —
JH: Yeah.
BM: A very very bad example.
JH: Yeah.
BM: But quite rightly low flying was a court martial offence.
JH: Yes.
BM: And if you got court martialled and got sent to the Glasshouse it was very hard.
JH: Yeah. You —
BM: Very hard.
JH: Yes. You obviously paid heed to that.
BM: Yeah. Yeah.
JH: Part of your training operations, of your training flights did you do any of these nickel raids?
BM: No. We didn’t do. We didn’t do any nickels.
JH: In Europe where they were dropping pamphlets and that kind of thing
BM: Almost did. I think the weather was bad.
JH: Yes.
BM: That’s why we didn’t get sent on it.
JH: Yes.
BM: But I remember we, we dropped live bombs at that early stage of the war.
JH: Yes.
BM: Later on you only dropped twelve and a half pound practice bombs.
JH: Yes.
BM: We dropped about half a dozen fifty pound bombs.
JH: Yes.
BM: Out in the Bristol Channel.
JH: Yes.
BM: Now, I remember well the take off with that. It was very calm day and they said, grass aerodrome and they were doubtful whether we should go.
JH: Yes.
BM: And the engines were de-rated a bit on the Wellingtons and there was a line of trees at the other end of the aerodrome. At any rate they finally said, ‘Make sure you get off, lift off early and run up your aircraft back to the hedge at the far end of the field.’ At any rate we had no trouble in getting off the ground.
JH: Yes.
BM: No trouble clearing the tree.
JH: Yes.
BM: Then we weren’t climbing. I suddenly realised I hadn’t raised the bloody undercarriage. That’s when I found out — I thought the second pilot should have picked that up.
JH: Yes.
BM: He should have known that.
JH: Ok. Yeah.
BM: And he should have been checking on everything.
JH: Yeah.
BM: But a couple of other things like that happened without, I never really trusted him.
JH: Yes. Ok. Shall we talk about how you were posted to, to Malta.
BM: Yeah.
JH: Would that fit in now?
BM: Well, then we were —
JH: Yeah.
BM: Finished our training there after our night flying.
JH: Yeah.
BM: We just missed out on that thousand bomber raid. We were only half way through our night flying. And that thousand bomber, about a third of the planes there were Training Command. About four or five went from our place.
JH: Yes.
BM: Flown by an operational pilot and instructor with a pupil crew. But the pupil crew were almost finished their night flying.
JH: Yes.
BM: Which we hadn’t done.
JH: Yeah.
BM: So as a result of that I missed that raid.
JH: Can you remember the — I’ll note the date of that? Can you remember the year and date of that bomber, thousand bomber raid?
BM: It was [pause] April. April or May. 1942.
JH: ’42.
BM: Yeah.
JH: Yeah.
BM: Very good propaganda value.
Other: Hitler’s birthday.
JH: Yes.
BM: But then when we finished our training we expected to be posted then to an operational squadron in England. But at that stage Rommel had broken through and was hammering on the gates of Cairo. And they suddenly decided to send a couple of Wellington squadrons out to Cairo. And they gave us a brand new aircraft. And that was the most pleasant flying I’ve ever had. The aircraft was a highly secret one with radar aerials all over it.
JH: Are they the Stickleback?
BM: Stickleback ones.
JH: That’s it. I’ve read about them.
BM: The Mark 8s.
JH: Mark 8.
BM: Mark 8. It was to pick up submarines. Or ships at night. We didn’t know how to operate the radar but at any rate they —
JH: Yeah.
BM: We spent twelve hours flying in the new aircraft. We flew all around England in the brand new aircraft. Very pleasant.
JH: Yes.
BM: And then we got the final word to go to Malta. And we flew down to Portreath down near the south, South West area of London there. The station right on the coast.
JH: In Cornwall.
BM: Cornwall. Yes.
JH: Cornwall. Yes.
BM: Yes.
JH: Yeah.
BM: We took off from there and they told us to keep well out to sea. Not to get anywhere near the French coast. And to come in late in the day. We took off about seven in the morning I think.
JH: Yes.
BM: And we had no trouble at all. We didn’t sight anything. We kept relatively low. About the best cruising height was about six thousand feet.
JH: Yes.
BM: Which we were at. And the only danger would have been to run into a German aircraft patrol which was very very remote.
JH: Yes. Did you have any fighter escort going out?
BM: No. No. No.
JH: For a while?
BM: We just kept out to sea.
JH: Yeah. So what was the flying time to — it was —
BM: We got there about —
JH: To Malta wasn’t it?
BM: About, yeah about ten hours.
JH: Ten hours. Yeah.
BM: Yeah.
JH: Yeah.
BM: We came in close to the coast of Portugal about three in the afternoon.
JH: Yes.
BM: And we hugged the coast there down to the big bay there where the Battle of Trafalgar took place.
JH: Yes.
BM: And from there suddenly we saw the Rock of Gibraltar looming out of the afternoon sun.
JH: Yes.
BM: And there we had a, a very frightening incident happened.
JH: Really?
BM: I called up the pilots to, ‘Come up and have a look and see the result of your labour,’ and called up the navigator.
JH: Yes.
BM: He came out of his office. And he came up and he was leaning over my shoulder looking out at the Rock of Gibraltar. He put his hand down and turned on the full bloody flaps. Which I didn’t realise.
JH: By mistake.
BM: Suddenly the aircraft’s speed fell away. I didn’t know what had happened. And I had to put the bloody nose down and open the throttles. And I was thinking about getting the, I thought something had gone wrong with the engines or —
JH: Yeah.
BM: I didn’t understand.
JH: Yeah. Loss of airspeed.
BM: I had to tell the wireless operator to send out an SOS. So I was getting prepared to land in the bloody sea and I don’t know how but it occurred to me that the flaps were down. I didn’t realise. I put them up.
JH: Yes. Yeah
BM: Came around and landed [laughs]
JH: Exchanged a few pleasantries no doubt.
BM: So I had a complete sweat. Yeah.
JH: So —
BM: At any rate we spent the night in Gibraltar. Very pleasant. And didn’t get any sleep that night.
JH: Yes.
BM: Didn’t get much sleep the night before in England of course either. And we spent the night there they were blasting into the rock. We were in a Nissen hut at the base of the rock and the blasting was going on all night. And they were also practicing deck landings next door.
JH: Yeah.
BM: So we didn’t get a lot of sleep that night either.
JH: Yeah.
BM: But we took off for Malta the next day at 4 o’clock. Four in the afternoon.
JH: Yeah.
BM: And another aircraft. We decided, a friend of mine had also landed and two of us flew together in formation for a while.
JH: Yes.
BM: On the way to Malta. And suddenly he turned and went back and I didn’t find out ‘til much later in the war.
JH: Yeah.
BM: What had happened. Someone had opened the hatch above the pilot which opened it. You couldn’t close it in flight.
JH: Yeah.
BM: Someone apparently had. I don’t know the second pilot had grabbed the lever there.
JH: Yeah.
BM: The hatch had come open to he had to go back and start afresh. And he didn’t arrive in Malta until we’d left the next day.
JH: Yes.
BM: And I found out later the big danger with landing at Malta too was that the man in charge in Malta was, could keep you there and he could hand your aircraft over to someone else.
JH: Yeah.
BM: And he could keep you there to do operations from Malta which were very unfriendly of course.
JH: Yes.
BM: So Malta was a place you didn’t want to stay at. At any rate we got to Malta about ten or eleven at night and they’d warned us that, before we left that, be careful. You’re not very far from Sicily there.
JH: Yeah.
BM: Which was German controlled. And the wireless operator would have to contact Malta and get a thing called a QDM. That’s a direction.
JH: Yeah.
BM: To fly to Malta. So we’d check up. It was just about a thousand miles journey.
JH: Yeah.
BM: He had to, that wireless operator had to check up that you were at Malta. And they said be careful the Germans could send you a message directing you to Sicily.
JH: Yes.
BM: At any right the flight there was very pleasant. We were flying at about six thousand feet.
JH: Yes.
BM: And my heart sank when we were about half an hour from Malta and the whole of the sea below clouded over. And they’d told us when we got to Malta they’d put a couple of searchlights when we got there about ten or eleven at night. And when we got to Malta the whole place was clouded over and I was circling around for about five minutes ‘til I finally saw the searchlights through the cloud. And I came down and the, there was high ground in Malta. About eight hundred feet I think.
JH: Yeah.
BM: And got under the cloud at about a thousand feet and there was the runway. I came around and landed there and very gratefully. And the landing wasn’t bad which I was very much afraid of. And we taxied around. We were met by the ground crew. They were in military uniform. Not the air force blue. I thought, God we’re at the wrong [laughs] we’re at the German aerodrome but it wasn’t of course. But they were mainly interested if we had any sandwiches left which we had, and any, or and any cigarettes. I’d taken the trouble of buying a thousand cigarettes when I left to hand out when we got to Malta. And I told them that in Gibraltar, would I take more cigarettes? They said no the crew that takes those generally doesn’t get to Malta. Apparently there was a bit of a hoodoo about anyone carting stuff to Malta.
JH: Yes.
BM: Bad luck evidently.
JH: Bad luck.
BM: So, I only took about a thousand cigarettes to give to the mess when we got there.
JH: Yes. Yeah.
BM: There’s a, we got to the air, they told us, ‘When we get there on no account,’ they said, ‘Your path on the aerodrome is at daybreak but don’t leave the aerodrome unattended err your aircraft unattended. You might find all your parachutes have disappeared if you do.’ They said, ‘We haven’t got guards on the aerodrome.’ Guards were on, they had bay, sort of shelters for the aeroplanes off the aerodrome. Horse shoe shaped construction of sandbags. Well, you taxied your aeroplane off and they pushed it into these shelters. And they said, ‘Stay with the aircraft. Get someone to stay with the aerodrome err the aeroplane until daybreak and then they’ll come out and you’ll have to taxi into a shelter.’ But navigator and I then went in to have a bit to eat at the mess there and when we got there, there was a bloody party going on. Incredible thing. And all the pilots and we were welcomed in because we’d just arrived in our flying suits. They came around. The pilots were all fighter pilots and the reason they were there was a crew in a Beaufort that day had been shot down and been taken prisoner on a Greek island and it had been there for about a week and the Germans, an Italian seaplane called to pick them up to fly them back to Italy. And when they were in the air the three people from, the captives overcame the bloody guards in the aeroplane and made it fly to Malta. And we saw it in the harbour the next day. A float plane. And that was the party.
JH: What a story.
BM: Yeah. I think the pilot, the captive pilot was a South African. And there was an Australian among them. And there were two or three others. But they were having this party. And the story goes with one of them said, evidently when they were captives the food there was much better at Malta. One said, ‘The food there was good. We must do this again.’
JH: Yeah. I like that.
BM: But we saw the plane the next day.
JH: Yeah.
BM: In the harbour there. But it was pure bloody Hollywood. The whole thing.
JH: Yeah. So, what, what was it like on, on Malta? Was Malta, was the feeling of this is an outpost. Heavily defended.
BM: Yeah. We were only there. We stayed the night then. We went back to the aeroplane and slept in it. In the plane. At daybreak then taxied in to the shelter.
JH: Because you were heading for Egypt wasn’t it?
BM: We were heading for Egypt.
JH: Yes.
BM: We were only there a stop off. For a refuel stop. So they came and collected us at daybreak and very foolishly we spent the bloody day bloody sightseeing around the Malta instead of having a sleep.
JH: Yes.
BM: Bloody crazy.
JH: Yes.
BM: But it was too good an opportunity. We actually got a taxi there which was a horse drawn vehicle. And there were two or three air raids during the day. You could hear the machine guns going up in the air and this fellow driving around in this horse drawn taxi. But at any rate we reported back to the aerodrome about 4 o’clock and they briefed us then and said, ‘Well, the weather’s good. Nothing to worry about there. The only danger is units of the Italian fleet might be somewhere on your route when you fly from here to Cairo.’ And it was just as we get a thousand miles from Cairo, a thousand from Gib. At any rate we, they said come back, and just get aboard the aircraft and taxi it out.
JH: Yeah.
BM: Wait at the end of the runway. Just before dark. And on, if there’s an air raid comes along get off the ground straight away but otherwise stand by waiting there. And if you see us flash a green get on the runway and take off straight away. We sat on the plane there and suddenly three people turned up and said, ‘We’re your passengers.’ Two of them were two Dutch seamen.
JH: Yes.
BM: And a lieutenant from submarines which were based in Malta.
JH: Yes.
BM: They were passengers to go back with us to Cairo.
JH: Yes.
BM: At any rate we were sitting there waiting and suddenly the bloody air raid siren went. And people in the control place flashed green at us to get going and —
JH: And you were on the tarmac.
BM: I was waiting at the edge of the, the edge of the runway there.
JH: Yeah.
BM: And I taxied on. At that moment two Beaufighters which had been in sandbagged shelters nearby they came out at high speed and turned on to the runway, took off and climbed at about forty five degrees
JH: Yeah.
BM: They were night fighters apparently. But any rate I got on the runway and I thought I’d do a thing that I tried to, I opened up too quickly and if you’re not careful you swing on take-off.
JH: Yeah.
BM: You’ve got to often open one throttle before the others.
JH: Yes.
BM: And I swung right off the bloody runway and I had to turn back, taxi back and start again. In the meantime the fellow was flashing a green light at me to get going. I got off the next time without any trouble. We flew out to sea. They said, ‘Fly out to sea at five hundred feet before you set course.’ You could see that air raid in progress. Quite a sight. Cannons firing and searchlights and —
JH: Yes.
BM: Oh dear.
JH: What were they targeting? The Germans.
BM: We then set course for Malta and the main problem was keeping awake.
JH: Yeah.
BM: And part of the time I had the second pilot flying. Him I was, I didn’t trust him much. So I had to try and stay awake. I remember standing up a lot of the time. And with hindsight what I should have done, bloody crazy was called up this flight lieutenant fellow to stand by to see we didn’t go to sleep.
JH: Yeah.
BM: We had a bit of a scare once when we, there was a bit of moon and there was some shadows on the ocean. We thought this is the Italian fleet.
JH: Yes.
BM: But it wasn’t.
JH: Yes.
BM: But then we didn’t have, there was no wind apparently the whole journey. I think the navigator said he was on the one course the whole way.
JH: Yes. So that air space between Malta and Egypt. Was that controlled by the Germans to a large extent?
BM: Yes. It was. The Italians.
JH: Yeah. The Italians. Yeah.
BM: The Italian fleet were in charge more or less. But they weren’t. It wasn’t the Italian fleet. They were knocked out largely by the Swordfish aircraft in that air raid.
JH: Yes.
BM: They knocked out half the bloody Italian fleet. I’ve forgotten the name of the place. The Italian port they raided. But that was the old Swordfish from an aircraft carrier. At any rate nothing happened then until we were about just at daybreak. We were about a hundred miles from Cairo and I spotted a submarine on the ocean ahead of us. You could see it in the path of light from the sun which was just appearing then and I suddenly thought it might be a bloody submarine —
JH: Friendly or otherwise.
BM: In trouble or something. It shouldn’t be on the surface. Why was it on the surface? And as we dropped near it started flashing a very fast Morse code as the Naval people did then. Flashing a message at us. I couldn’t, it was too fast for me so I called the wireless operator up, ‘Better come up and read their message they’re flashing.’ And I had visions of this crippled submarine wanting help and I thought well we’ll send a distress beacon. Tell them they’re here. But the message they sent us was, ‘Good morning.’ [laughs] From that we went on and landed in Cairo. And at that stage I was completely half drunk with fatigue. I remember when I got out of the aircraft I sat down on the ground and went to sleep. I woke up and on the ground you see beside me a fellow with a revolver around his waist, a cowboy hat on and flying boots on. It was an American fighter pilot who’d been ferrying an aircraft across Africa from the west coast of Africa. That’s the only way they got aircraft there. They took it by plane to the west of Africa then.
JH: Yes.
BM: And they flew them across Africa.
JH: Yeah.
BM: And he’d flown a, I think a, oh a fighter plane across. They flew across in formation.
JH: Yes.
BM: With an escort. But any rate from there we got down to. They woke me up and said, ‘Would you fly the aircraft down to the Suez Canal,’ which very foolishly I said yes. And I took off again and flew down to, down to the squadron. 148 Squadron. Based on the Canal.
JH: Yes.
BM: And that’s where we began operations.
JH: 104
BM: No. 148.
JH: Oh 148.
BM: 148.
JH: Yeah. Ok. Yeah. 148.
BM: Yeah.
JH: Yeah. So that’s, that’s where you started off.
BM: Yes. Yes. Yes.
JH: Yeah.
BM: And the target then was Tobruk. Tobruk was the only sort of port on the African coast which was giving supplies to the Germans who were on the outskirts of Cairo by then. At Alemein. And we were, our main target was Tobruk.
JH: Yes
BM: So far as they —
JH: Which was in German hands at that time
BM: The Germans were —
JH: Yeah
BM: Bringing in to Tobruk. Yeah.
JH: Yes. Yes. So you were targeting the supply ships coming in.
BM: Coming into Tobruk. Yeah.
JH: All the defences.
BM: The war was there too.
JH: Yeah.
BM: Yeah.
JH: Yes.
BM: To begin with I think we did about eight trips to Tobruk.
JH: Yes.
BM: Which was quite a distance. It was about six or seven hours flight.
JH: So your, tell me about your first operation. Was that one of these Tobruk raids?
BM: Yes. I remember that very well. Went as a second pilot to an experienced pilot. Flight Lieutenant Moore was our pilot.
JH: Yeah. You were the dickie.
BM: An experienced pilot.
JH: You say the dickie is it? You were the dickie.
BM: Yeah. I was second pilot. Yes.
JH: Yes. Ok.
BM: Very pleasant. You had no responsibility. You just sat there and watched everything. And when we got to Tobruk they had quite a few — they had about a dozen anti-aircraft guns there.
JH: Yeah.
BM: Which started firing at you when you got near there.
JH: Bill, tell me was this a daylight raid or night raid.
BM: Night raid. All night.
JH: All night.
BM: All night.
JH: Yeah. Yeah.
BM: At any rate I remember he was the fella who, he did the bombing run. The navigator was the bomb aimer then in those days. Navigator bomb aimer. He was down in the bomb bay to drop the bombs but the, this second, this instructor pilot he directed the run in. You know, ‘Right. Right. Left. Left. Centre.’ And then he said to the bomb aimer —
[telephone ringing]
BM: Hello. Hello. Hello. Just hold on a minute. Just tell them it’s my phone. See what they want. I can’t. I’ve got hearing aids in.
JH: Oh. Hello. This is John Horsburgh here. I’m actually interviewing Bill at the moment. Can I take a message? Yes. Yes. I’m interviewing him now. Yeah. Can I take your number and he’ll call you back? [delete] ok I’ll get, I’ll get Mr McRae to call you back.
BM: Tell him I’ll call him back
JH: Ok. Thank you, Justin.
BM: Thanks.
JH: We were, we were talking about your first operation.
BM: My first bombing run.
JH: Yeah. Your first bombing run. Yeah
BM: He called up the pilot and said, ‘I’ve done this trip three or four few times. Let me. Let me drop the bombs.’ So instead of letting the bloody navigator direct us onto the target he put the plane into a dive and roared across Tobruk at high speed, pulled the bomb toggle and dropped all the bombs in one thing.
JH: The whole lot. The whole string.
BM: The whole lot. Yeah.
JH: Yeah.
BM: Which was completely against all our instruction in training. And that sort of thing you never thought of doing. But at any rate when we got back we got debriefed at the debriefing we didn’t mention this. Had we done so he might have been in big trouble I think.
JH: Yes. Yes.
BM: But you were graded LMF if you did that sort of thing.
JH: Yes.
BM: But the navigator was very upset about it. So was I [laughs] But that was my first bombing. I did another trip with another crew another night but they did the right thing.
JH: Yes.
BM: We got caught in the searchlights that night too which was very unpleasant. But that was my first experience of a bombing raid. Which we didn’t report to the authorities.
JH: Just between you and I this is [laughs] Ok.
BM: Yeah.
JH: Yes.
BM: Yeah. Don’t mention it [laughs]
JH: No. We won’t [laughs] Tell me about the first operation when you were actually in control of the plane on the bomb run.
[phone ringing]
JH: Shall I? Hello, Bill McRae’s phone. John Horsborough. I’m actually interviewing Bill at the moment. Yeah. Yes. Will do. Ok. Righto. Ok. Bye.
BM: Who’s that?
JH: Jeannie.
BM: Oh right.
JH: Coffee tomorrow.
BM: Yeah.
JH: Anyway, back to your first operation. You’re in control.
BM: Oh yes. Yes.
JH: Yeah.
BM: I remember that quite well because we were based on the Suez Canal and one of the things you had to be careful of you could see a ship almost at the end of the runway going across the desert. The Canal was at the far end of the runway. And you’d just see a ship there sailing across the desert. You had to be careful taking off that there weren’t any ships going through the canal because when you took off you didn’t get any height. You’d be flying for about two or three miles I’d say. You climbed very slowly. And you climbed towards, turned towards Tobruk and you climbed up as high as you could get which in those with those, planes it was about ten or twelve thousand feet. And I remember we, getting up along the coast of North Africa the navigator went down below to check the position, map reading the coast and he called me up and said, ‘Mac,’ he said, ‘We’re flying over a convoy. There are balloons down below.’ I said, ‘This is bloody crazy. There are no balloons here.’ I banked around and had a look and there were four things that looked like balloons. They were puffs of anti-aircraft fire.
JH: Heading your way.
BM: They were firing at us but about a thousand feet below us [laughs] So we immediately changed course. At any rate the, quite a lot of flak. Quite a lot of searchlights at Tobruk. The thing I remember about the searchlights they would all go out and there would be one would suddenly come on alone. A blue searchlight. And about five seconds later all the searchlights would concentrate on one plane and they’d hold that plane for quite a while.
JH: It’s coning it isn’t it? Yeah.
BM: But it didn’t come on to us. We rode it out. Do a normal bombing run. And you took photographs when you dropped your bombs too.
JH: Yes.
BM: You held course for about, I think ten or fifteen seconds till the bombs exploded and the camera took a photograph of where your bombs went.
JH: Yes.
BM: But we were bombing the wharves mainly.
JH: Yes.
BM: I don’t know whether. I don’t know whether there was anything there to bomb really.
JH: I think you told me. I think it was you told me you actually took part in the battle of El Alemein.
BM: Yes.
JH: Targeting German supply ships.
BM: Yeah.
JH: Would that be right?
BM: Well, after we were on the Canal we moved up to Kilo Forty which was forty kilos on the road from Cairo to Alexandria. Just a desert aerodrome. And from there we more or less supported the army.
JH: Yes.
BM: Bombing German airfields behind the lines.
JH: Yes.
BM: And bombing army targets which were marked by aircraft from Alexandria. Fleet Air Arm aircraft dropping flares. I don’t know how they got they got in on the act.
JH: Yes.
BM: But they’d dropped flares for us to bomb on.
JH: Yes.
BM: We did half a dozen trips on that before El Alemein.
JH: Yes.
BM: And on El Alemein night we did two bombing runs. One at about eleven at night and one about two in the morning because we were not that far from the battle front. You could hear the barrage start up at about 10 o’clock. On the 23rd of October I think it was.
JH: It’s —
BM: After El Alemein of course old Montgomery was successful but I always thought he, he was too cautious by half because he knew all the German plans because Rommel had been sending messages back to Hitler. He was short of petrol. He was short of reinforcements and pleading with Hitler to send reinforcements by way of aircraft or I think the Germans were supplying their fighters, called JU52s bringing aircraft fuel in. That’s how short of fuel they were.
JH: Yes.
BM: But Hitler of course said, ‘Don’t surrender. Fight to the last man.’ But Rommel fortunately decided that was bloody silly because he got quite a few Germans out of Africa. He retreated. Very skilfully retreated. And I think Montgomery should have thrown everything at the Germans because he had a couple of people from that Enigma machine with him relaying messages that Rommel was sending to Hitler. How desperate he was for supplies.
JH: Yes.
BM: And how desperate he was to sort of get reinforcements. But Rommel didn’t move. He had sort of absolute overpowering authority.
JH: Yes.
BM: We had about seven to one air superiority.
JH: Yes
BM: I reckon Rommel should have thrown us during the daytime. He could have had about three or four to one fighter superiority and he had about three to one, he had about seven to one bomber superiority.
JH: So, that was the feeling among the squadron that the 8th Army didn’t follow through enough.
BM: Yes. I reckon he should have. He should have thrown everything into the battle.
JH: Yes.
BM: And he would have knocked Rommel out and he would have captured an awful lot of Germans.
JH: Yes.
BM: Anyway, he was successful so —
JH: Yes. I, I read somewhere that the Desert Air Force got involved in this concept of close air support. The actual air force involving with the infantry. In fact they were forward.
BM: Ah yes.
JH: Forward scouts passing on information to, to the air force.
BM: Yeah.
JH: And I read that the desert was where the, this close air support was really initiated.
BM: Yeah. Yeah.
JH: Did you have any experience of that?
BM: No. I was a bit disappointed there. I thought we should have been kept in touch with what was going on with the army. We never were.
JH: Yeah That’s interesting with your army background.
BM: I think —
JH: Artillery background.
BM: Yes.
JH: Yeah.
BM: I thought there was a bit of, probably ill feeling between the air force and the army. I don’t know. I could be wrong there. But they sort of fought their own war as it were.
JH: Yes.
BM: At any rate we followed up the army there when the army retreated. The Germans retreated. We followed up and we got as far as Tobruk. And we were dropping bombs on the retreating Germans and then we suddenly got a move to. I think — six planes will proceed forthwith to Halfway House. By that stage we were up behind Tobruk.
JH: So you were leap frogging.
BM: Leap frogging. Yes
JH: The base as, as the front moved
BM: When the Germans were retreating we were following. Yeah.
JH: Westwards. Yeah.
BM: And there wasn’t, when the message came to have six planes would proceed to Halfway House no one knew and I had to send a message back to find Halfway House from Malta. This was about a thousand miles from Gibraltar and a thousand miles from Cairo. It was known to the Navy as Halfway House.
JH: Yes.
BM: So the middle of the afternoon we got the message we were, had to take off at dark with two ground, two supplies of ground crew. Half a dozen ground crew staff.
JH: Yes.
BM: As passengers. So we, immediately we were headed for Malta.
JH: And how long were you based in Malta then?
BM: Well, it took about four hours to get there.
JH: Yeah.
BM: I remember well when we were nearing Malta there was a bloody line of lights appeared.
JH: Yes.
BM: I thought, God, we’ve gone to Italy or Sicily or somewhere. I called up the wireless, I said get an QDM. That’s a course to steer [unclear] and it was correct. We were. A convoy had gotten in a couple of ships and all the lights were on on the wharves. That’s the lights we were seeing. And we got to Malta and one of our planes landing hit a, one of the sand bagged bays near the beginning of the runway and went up in flames. We landed with this bloody thing flaming beside us. And we taxied in and found out that I think the pilot got out of it, I think. I think he lost his legs. But he was about the only one that survived, I think. But at any rate we operated from Malta then for a couple of months. That was early December then.
JH: Yes.
BM: 1942
JH: And were you operating from Malta as far as Sicily from there?
BM: Yes. Sicily was, Sicily was a main target. And North Africa. Retreating Germans. Tripoli.
JH: Yes.
BM: And Sfax and Sous. They were in Tunisia.
JH: Yes.
BM: The Germans were retreating there.
JH: Yes.
BM: Sending ships to pick them up. Yeah.
JH: Yes. So, yeah so Tunisia I believe you were on some important raids to Tunisia and Palermo. Is that correct?
BM: That’s correct. Yes, yeah.
JH: Yes. Do you want to mention a couple of those?
BM: Yes. I remember Palermo quite well because we didn’t take off at a scheduled time. Take off was delayed because there was bad weather and the trouble at Malta they had no weather reporting process so they could never predict the weather. You know the weather was a bit doubtful. Anyway we took off. We found the target all right. I was amazed at the, the, not much flak went up as we were coming out. Normally —
JH: Yeah.
BM: When you come up to a target. You see the guns firing.
JH: Yes.
BM: But there were no guns firing as we got up to the target.
JH: Yeah.
BM: When they started shooting. And we found out later there were only two aircraft got there. The rest got a recall. The others were all recalled because of bad weather. So we were the only two aircraft that got to the target.
JH: You didn’t get the message.
BM: We didn’t get the message. No [laughs] At any rate we were flying back we had trouble with the bad weather getting back.
JH: Yeah.
BM: I remember that well. Went into a storm or something.
JH: Yeah.
BM: Because they couldn’t forecast the weather then.
JH: Yeah.
BM: That was the trouble. And apparently the weather was very changeable because the Alps weather and the desert weather meet —
JH: Yes.
BM: Over the Mediterranean there.
JH: Yes.
BM: And you got very very severe turbulence.
JH: Yes.
BM: And you got a lot of static electricity.
JH: Yeah.
BM: Laying on the guns.
JH: Really?
BM: Yeah. Well, we survived Malta.
JH: Yes. Was it that raid to Palermo, I think you told me before both engines cut out for some reason. You lost your engines.
BM: Ah yes. Yes. Yeah.
JH: What happened there?
BM: There we were, actually it was another raid on Sicily that we had trouble with. Engine trouble. Had a thing with when we were bombing Sicily it was after we got, we came back to Cairo and they gave us one last raid. We suddenly got a message in Cairo. Take off at midnight. Return to Cairo. Which we did. And when we were there I found I’d done my tour of operations but a couple of the crew hadn’t finished and needed one more raid. And we were a bit lucky because we got the last raid was dropping supplies to people in Crete. At the western end of Crete a lot of people had escaped during the German invasion and there was a rebel force there fighting the Germans in the mountains. Very mountainous country and they came out at mid-day and loaded our aircraft with big metal containers about six feet long in the bomb bay and gave us a place to drop them at the western end of Crete. And we took off about dusk and got to Crete and they also gave us bundles of newspapers and said, ‘When you’ve dropped the bombs fly to the other side of Crete. The northern side where all the towns are.’ There were no towns in the western end.
JH: Yeah.
BM: It’s all mountainous, ‘And drop out these newspapers.’ Propaganda. German propaganda. Against the Germans for the Cretian, the Cretian people. At any rate we dropped the bombs, flew around Crete and flying along the northern side couldn’t see any land for a while and it was there that we found that we’d gone too far north.
JH: Yes.
BM: We saw a lot of bloody islands below and we knew that Crete was somewhere to the south so we went there and when we suddenly hit Crete they started firing guns at us. So you can imagine the newspapers were delivered very rapidly [laughs]
JH: Yeah.
BM: And we climbed straight away to ten thousand feet.
JH: Yeah.
BM: There were mountains in Crete up to eight thousand feet.
JH: Yes.
BM: At the western end. But we dropped the newspapers and went home. And that was our last operation.
JH: Yes. So at that stage it was the operations were coming to an end there. Did you have any idea what lay ahead of, of you and your crew? Was it going back to the UK or —
BM: No. We didn’t know.
JH: Or Italy.
BM: We went back and sat in Cairo for a couple of weeks.
JH: Yeah.
BM: And they suddenly told us to get aboard an aircraft and flew us down to Khartoum. Flying boat. And then we got another DC3 from there across the whole of Africa to the west coast of Africa.
JH: So where were you going? What was the plan?
BM: Back to England.
JH: Back to England.
BM: Yeah.
JH: Ok. Yeah.
BM: We got to —
JH: Yeah
BM: I think Takoradi, that was the place on the west coast of Africa. We sat there for about a week.
JH: That’s in Ghana I think.
BM: It was a small.
JH: Yeah.
BM: Coastal vehicle took us up to Freetown which is a main port in West Africa there.
JH: Yes.
BM: Where we got aboard [pause] what was the name of the boat? The Mauritania. An ocean liner.
JH: Yes.
BM: Bound for Liverpool. We went back unescorted. It went at high speed.
JH: Yes.
BM: It went about thirty eight knots I think. And went out in to the mid-Atlantic.
JH: With a convoy? Or —
BM: No. Alone.
JH: Solo.
BM: Just travelling at high speed. And altering course apparently every five minutes. Yeah. Zig-zagging.
JH: Zig-zagging.
BM: Went to Liverpool. So, and from there got a plane back to London.
JH: Yes. And some well-earned leave. Did you have any leave time?
BM: Went on leave there. Yes.
JH: Yeah.
BM: Yes.
JH: Yeah.
BM: Yeah. And from there got posted. Got a posting on to Training Command up in Lossiemouth. To an Operational Training Unit to instruct bomber crews.
JH: Yes.
BM: And I sat there until the, more or less the end of the war instructing people.
JH: What — is this 1944?
BM: This would be —
JH: Coming into Lossiemouth.
BM: 1943.
JH: 1943.
BM: Yeah.
JH: Yeah.
BM: It was there I found that I’d been awarded a DFC for flying in Africa and Alemein and so on.
JH: So you completed a tour.
BM: Completed a tour.
JH: And the DFC.
BM: DFC. Yes
JH: Yeah. Yeah. And your rank at that stage. Flight.
BM: I was a flight lieutenant.
JH: Yeah. Yeah.
BM: By that stage.
JH: Yes. So —
BM: And then, I was instructing there. I got posted down to the Empire Central Flying School at Hullavington in England.
JH: At where? Sorry?
BM: Empire Central Flying School.
JH: Yes.
BM: At Hullavington. Which was the main training place for bomber crews. I got trained to instruct bomber crews there. Then I went back and got on very well with the man in charge of the place at Lossiemouth wasn’t it?
JH: Yes.
BM: The instructing place. And he was the man I think that got me the Air Force Cross. I got an Air Force Cross for my instructing.
JH: Oh really. Yeah.
BM: We were the operational training instructing French crews.
JH: Yes.
BM: And as a result of that I got the French Legion d’honneur from there.
JH: Yes. I was there. I saw you. I was there when you were awarded.
BM: I tell the story how I got the AFC. When we were at Lossiemouth a bit of a surf would come in there at the right time of year. In Midsummer. The water was reasonably warm but we boys would get down for a swim in the river like this here.
JH: Yeah.
BM: And there’s a couple of reefs nearby. And I was able to catch a few waves. I’m no expert surfer but I was outstanding apparently. There were three or four English blokes. I was the talk of bloody the station, ‘You should have seen him.’ I could do a slow roll on a wave as it was coming. I could do a roll and come down right side up.
JH: Yeah.
BM: But they thought this was incredible. And the news of this got to the group captain in charge of the place and he said, ‘Well I believe that the reefs along the shore there, I believe there are lobsters there which are ready to be caught and no one has been near the place for years because mines had been laid thereabouts.’ He said, ‘We’ll go along one afternoon and might be able to get a lobster.’ So a crowd of us went along. The group captain in his car with three other fellas and myself wading around these reefs. And I was the only one that caught a bloody lobster. I moved down and threw it up on the shore. And after we got out and were drying ourselves the boys said, ‘What do you do with a lobster?’ We’ll cook it —? I said, ‘Oh no.’ I knew the group captain lived off the station. I said, ‘You have it sir.’ And the boys said, ‘You’ll get on. You’ll get on.’ And I reckon that’s how I might have got my bloody AFC [laughs]
JH: How you got your gong. Yeah. Well, what a change from operations.
BM: Yeah.
JH: Being up there.
BM: Yes.
JH: So, what happened to the rest of the crew Bill?
BM: Eh
JH: What happened to the rest of your crew?
BM: The rest of the crew. I kept in touch with the navigator. He got posted up instructing to Lossiemouth too. Lossiemouth there were three stations there. They had the main station and there were two satellite stations. I was in charge of one of the satellite stations.
JH: Yes.
BM: For a while.
JH: Yes.
BM: He was with the main station instructing other navigators.
JH: Yes.
BM: And by that time in England Gee, an operational aid had come into being.
JH: Yes.
BM: Which had more or less done away with the old plotting thing.
JH: Yes.
BM: Navigators could get a fix by operating a Gee set. Well, he was instructing on that.
JH: Yes. And was it Lancasters phasing in?
BM: No. No.
JH: And the Wellingtons phasing out at that stage?
BM: Still Wellingtons.
JH: Still Wellingtons.
BM: After they’d finished their training with us crews were posted down to England to a Conversion Unit.
JH: Conversion.
BM: On four engines.
JH: Yes.
BM: Where they spent about twelve hours I think.
JH: Yeah.
BM: And there they would pick up a mid-upper gunner and an engineer.
JH: Crew. A crew of seven. Yeah.
BM: Yeah. They had a four engine aircraft then.
JH: Yeah
BM: A four engine bomber. But with us they were still on twin engines. Which was a bit not the base.
JH: Yes. Yes. So that was, that was for you an enjoyable period.
BM: No. It wasn’t enjoyable.
JH: Or not. Or were you wanting to get back into action?
BM: It was really trying, instructing. You didn’t get a lot of sleep. You were either instructing or you were in charge of night flying. And I’ve got a good after dinner story when instructing the French. The early French were really magnificent pilots. They’d been in the French Air Force.
JH: Yes.
BM: One of them in particular had been flying with the French civil lines. And they at that stage had an airline over to, I think West Africa where they landed somewhere in mid-Atlantic. Well, one of the pilots they were training had been on that cross bloody Atlantic flight. But you couldn’t teach him anything of course. I was very —
JH: So he knew a bit about navigation obviously.
BM: I was very sort of hesitant about correcting him. He could have taught me a lot. I’m sure of that.
JH: Yeah.
BM: But the French crews. I remember the, there was an intelligence officer at every station.
JH: Yes.
BM: And there was a head of intelligence man. I suppose based at Edinburgh who would tour around visiting the stations and he came around to visit our stations. And French crews on the station would receive every couple of weeks a cask of wine sent up by General de Gaulle from London which could be issued gratis to the French aircrews. At any rate this head navigation intelligence man came visiting us and called in for lunch. And he was a First World War man. Allegedly related to the Queen. First World War medals. He liked his whisky which we gave him for lunch.
JH: Yeah.
BM: And the bloody French crews [unclear] insisted he have some French wine too. After dinner you went and got your own coffee at the coffee thing at the entrance and he was getting his cup of coffee and he tripped over and fell and sat on the coffee cup. And he had to have half a dozen stitches put in his backside
Other: Dear. Dinnertime.
BM: It’s time. I’d better not have dinner.
Other: You don’t want to go down for dinner?
BM: No. I won’t worry about it.
JH: Bill, we can, we can probably start winding it up a bit and if so you can have your dinner.
BM: Yes. Yes.
JH: Would you —
Other: You can have [unclear] as well I think.
BM: Give me five minutes.
Other: Ok darling.
BM: Can I have five minutes?
Other: Yeah darling.
JH: Yes. Ok.
Other: Sure.
JH: Yeah.
BM: This man’s interviewing me. How I won the war [laughs]
Other: Yeah darling. Yeah.
JH: Yeah. Yeah. But you read about the training squadrons. There were quite a few casualties.
BM: Yes. Yes.
JH: Did you have experience of that at Lossiemouth?
BM: Oh yeah. We had the, we had the odd crash.
JH: Yes.
BM: And we found in the, at the station there we were the people who found that something was happening with the Wellingtons. They were developing cracks in the main spar. And we had three mysterious crashes. Now remember I was the man who discovered one of the French aircrews who crashed when they, just after they left at night. They left the east coast of Scotland and disappeared. I found the crash the next day. Cracks developed in the main spar due to heavy landings. And they were all ex-operational aircraft which in avoiding fighters and anti-aircraft fire they’d far exceed authorised speed limits. Every aircraft had a mark on the altimeter not to exceed. Well —
JH: Yeah.
BM: You’d bloody well exceed that if you got into trouble
JH: Yeah.
BM: Instead going down at three hundred miles an hour they’d be going down at three fifty and that cracked the main spar.
JH: Yes.
BM: And they developed with heavy landings. And when the training crews were doing fighter affiliation you taught them to do very steep manoeuvres.
JH: Yes.
BM: To avoid fighters. You had an aircraft acting as a fighter chasing you. That was part of your training. And we had a couple of mysterious crashes. There was nothing left when they hit the ground. But one fell into the sea and they were able to get the wreckage.
JH: Yeah.
BM: And there they discovered the cracks. I think that was one of the main reasons —
JH: Yeah.
BM: That I got a bit of a notoriety through one of the people who was discovered this crack. They grounded the Wellingtons for two or three days and strengthened the main spars.
JH: That sounds like quite a breakthrough finding that problem.
BM: Yes. It was. Yes.
JH: No doubt saved no end of lives.
BM: That would have been the reason. Heavy landings by pupils.
JH: Yes.
BM: And giving them this manoeuvre. The corkscrew manoeuvre we taught them.
JH: Yes. Yes.
BM: But after that that more or less ended my career.
JH: Yes. So, just, just to finish off. What about you were there for VE day in the UK.
BM: Yeah.
JH: Then you went back to the bank?
BM: Yeah.
JH: Or did you continue with the air force after the war for a while.
BM: I continued for about six months.
JH: Yes.
BM: The bank had no staff.
JH: Yes.
BM: They all waited to be called up.
JH: Yes.
BM: As a result they didn’t get the — I got released straight away.
JH: Yes.
BM: Having joined early. But the bank staff — we had no bloody staff
JH: Yes.
BM: And I went. I was working all sorts of bloody hours.
JH: Yes.
BM: 10 o’clock at night. I was one of the few bloody staff in London office.
JH: My father, after the war left, left the RAF. In to Barclays working long hours like you did.
BM: Yes. Yes.
JH: But there were no staff.
BM: That’s right.
JH: Now, what about family? Family life.
BM: I married my wife halfway through the war.
JH: Yes. Yes.
BM: I didn’t shoot my line about how I got my DFC. In Edinburgh.
JH: Yes.
BM: I went along to get it at the Holyrood House.
JH: Yeah.
BM: The palace there, with the [pause] And when I went I asked the girl at the desk, ‘How do I get to the Palace?’ She said, ‘You can catch a tram.’ A tram or — I got a tram and the girl came up and said, ‘There’s the Palace sir.’ It was a picture show. That’s my afternoon story.
JH: Yes.
BM: How I got my medal.
JH: Ok.
BM: I went back to Holyrood and got my medal.
JH: Yes.
BM: And that was it.
JH: Yes. Yeah. So, so you continue with the bank.
BM: Yeah.
JH: Until you retired. Did you retire?
BM: Till I retired. I retired early.
JH: Yes.
BM: Banking never pleased me anymore.
JH: Yes. Yeah.
BM: I retired as soon as I could. Aged fifty five.
JH: Yeah. Now, you could have stayed in the UK but what brought you back here?
BM: I think mainly [pause] I don’t know really. I had to retire somewhere.
JH: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
BM: And this was one of the good places to retire.
JH: Yes. Yeah. Did you go back to New England or you came back to Sydney?
BM: I came back to Sydney.
JH: Yes. Yeah.
BM: And I went around. I finished up managing all of Sydney.
JH: Yes.
BM: And I retired from there more or less.
JH: Yes. Yeah. And I know you’ve kept in touch with veterans. You’re involved in the —
BM: Oh yeah. Yeah.
JH: Bomber Command Association and I saw you in London.
BM: Yeah.
JH: For the opening of the Memorial by the Queen.
BM: That’s right.
JH: That very hot day. You remember.
BM: Yeah. Yeah.
JH: And I’ve seen you at lots of functions.
BM: But I’m not a great medal man. I don’t believe in medals. I’ve got a couple of medals but I think I’ve always said people who got medals, should have got them are no longer with us.
JH: Yes.
BM: And I knew, during my training at Lossiemouth I knew there, fellow pilots, two VCs, very well.
JH: Yes.
BM: They went back on their second tour. Bazalgette and Palmer.
JH: Yes.
BM: Both won VCs. Posthumous of course.
JH: Yes. Yeah.
BM: But I, when I went to London for the 2012 thing I met Sir Peter Squire.
JH: Yes.
BM: I’ve got his picture over there.
JH: Yeah.
BM: Have a look at it. And that —
JH: Yeah.
BM: And that friend advising about the Legion d’honneur. I had a long talk with him when I met him at the meeting after the celebration for the monument thing. And someone wrote him a letter. I had a long talk to him. And I flattered myself he might have remembered me. I told a friend, they sent him a message I got a Legion d’Honneur and he wrote me a response. Have a look at his picture and the letter he wrote me over there.
JH: I’ll have a look afterwards.
BM: Yeah. Have a look.
JH: Yeah. Yeah.
BM: At any rate don’t mention my medals [laughs]
JH: Well, Bill —
BM: I told, I think I must have struck a sympathetic ear because he got the same medals as I have.
JH: Yes.
BM: And he got his through Falklands. His DFC. And I think he had a bit of, he thought a bloody World War Two bomber pilot was you know big time.
JH: Yes.
BM: I think he had a bit of an inferiority about his Falklands DFC.
JH: Yes.
BM: I don’t know. But I think that’s why we had a very very long talk.
JH: Yes.
BM: About — and he agreed with me about the medals.
JH: Yes.
BM: I said well I don’t know why they worried about it. I just went where I was told.
JH: Yeah.
BM: Nothing very special about it. We did what we had to do.
JH: Yes.
BM: But no reason to give us medals. And the fellas who should have got them of course got killed.
JH: Yes.
BM: And I don’t like capitalising on that.
JH: Yes.
BM: But at any rate see the letter he wrote me at the back.
JH: I’m going to have a look at that.
BM: I was quite, quite frazzled by it. Quite frazzled.
JH: Yes.
BM: And I think it might have been he might have remembered. I don’t know. But he would have met thousands of people.
JH: Bill —
BM: He was a very friendly gentleman.
JH: Yes.
BM: As I say we sort of had empathy together.
JH: I’ll have a look at that.
BM: Yeah.
JH: Bill, why don’t we wind it up. Thank you very much for the time and I feel really privileged to be the one interviewing you today. It’s a great story. It really is.
BM: Oh no.
JH: It is a good story. And so —
BM: Sheer luck.
JH: Thank you very much.
BM: Bomber Command was luck.
JH: Yes.
BM: I realised early on you were expendable. You realised that. After training you were very keen.
JH: Yes.
BM: Training you wanted to dash into it. When you got into it you realised you were bloody well expendable. You’ve only got someone to say, ‘There’s the target. Go for it.’ And you were gone.
JH: But your airspeed lesson. Dive bombing the church graveyard probably stood you in good stead.
BM: Training it did. You taught people that. Taught it.
JH: Thank you very much, Bill.
BM: Oh no. My pleasure. Sorry to have bored you.
JH: Not at all.
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 Bill Macrae
Creator
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John Horsburgh
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
2016-11-16
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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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AMacraeWM161116
Conforms To
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Pending review
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Format
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01:26:12 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
British Army
Description
An account of the resource
Bill McRae’s earliest memories were of the end of the First World War. He worked for a major bank during the Depression and was fortunate to be amongst a group of Australians who were sent to work in London. He volunteered at Australia House and was posted to the British Army for officer training during the summer of 1940. He later transferred to the RAF and after training as a pilot at RAF Cranwell was posted on to Malta and Cairo for the Middle East campaign. He later returned to the UK as an instructor at RAF Lossiemouth.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
New South Wales
Egypt
Egypt--Cairo
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Scotland--Lossiemouth
Greece
Greece--Crete
Libya
Libya--Tobruk
Italy
Italy--Sicily
Malta
North Africa
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
148 Squadron
aircrew
crash
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
fear
Flying Training School
Gee
Initial Training Wing
Magister
Operational Training Unit
pilot
RAF Cranwell
RAF Harwell
RAF Lossiemouth
searchlight
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/924/11167/ALeithJM170112.1.mp3
58862b6cf0fd639127eb573cee163a3e
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
Leith, James McKenzie
J M Leith
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flying Officer James Leith (b. 1924 186914 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a rear gunner with 429, 624 and 148 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by James Leith and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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
2017-01-12
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Leith, JM
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BW: This is Brian Wright interviewing Flying Officer James McKenzie Leith at 2.30 on Thursday 12th of January 2017 at in his home in Fulwood, near Preston, Lancashire. So, Jim, if that’s alright to call you Jim, just for the record please would you confirm your date of birth and where you were born please.
JML: 21 5 ‘24. Bathville, Bathgate.
BW: And that’s near —
JML: Scotland.
BW: Glasgow, Scotland.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Yeah. What was your family life like? You had mother and father at home. Did you have brothers and sisters?
JML: Yeah. Two brothers.
BW: And were they —
JML: And two sisters.
BW: And were you the youngest or were you right in the middle or the eldest?
JML: Middle. Yeah.
BW: And what was your home life like in Glasgow or Bathvale? Was it a nice little village, you’d say?
JML: Yeah. A very good village because my grandfather was the local policeman.
BW: And where did you go to school?
JML: Bathgate.
BW: And did you stay in Bathgate throughout your school years?
JML: Yeah.
BW: And —
JML: I left school at fourteen.
BW: At the standard age.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And what did you then go on to do?
JML: I went working at the local swimming pool. Learning the people on a course of course first to get trained. Then learn people how to swim.
BW: And so you —
JML: Came it came in very handy later on I can assure you.
BW: So you were a swimming instructor in that respect.
JML: Yeah. Well, I was training to be a swimming instructor. Yeah.
BW: Ok. And how long were you doing that for?
JML: Probably two years. Yeah.
BW: And after that did you remain at the swimming pool or did you go on to another job? Did you take a job elsewhere?
JML: I went in the forces. Into the forces after. From being there. The swimming, the trainee swimming instructor.
BW: So you’d have been only sixteen.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And did you join the RAF first or was, did you join another branch?
JML: Well, I was in the Air Training Corps etcetera. Yeah. Stayed with them for, I don’t know. Quite, quite some time. The ATC as it was called.
BW: And were you always interested in joining the RAF then?
JML: Oh yes.
BW: As a young boy.
JML: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: What attracted you to it?
JML: I don’t know. I just, I just liked it. My brother was in the army. My elder brother. He was in the army. And my sister who was older than me as well, only just, was a trainee nurse. So next in the, on the list was Jamie. And I, and as I say I went the ATC and I was quite happy we got into the RAF when the time came. Yeah.
BW: And what specifically did you intend to do in the RAF? Were you initially trying to be a pilot or or —
JML: No.
BW: In the [unclear] or something.
JML: I was just going to be in the RAF and leave it to them. Definitely.
BW: And so you joined before war actually broke out.
JML: I went in the —
BW: Because you were only [pause] Or was it just as war had started? It was ’24, and you were sixteen. Yes. So it would be 1940, wouldn’t it? So war would have started while you were —
JML: Oh yeah.
BW: Just joining up.
JML: Definitely. Yeah.
BW: So, was the, was the onset of war something that compelled you to volunteer more than the interest or was it just everything came together?
JML: Yeah. In general, I joined the ATC. The Air Training Corps. I joined that and eventually got in to the RAF.
BW: And where did you sign on? In Glasgow?
JML: Edinburgh.
BW: Edinburgh.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And what happened from there? Where did they send you for training? Do you recall?
JML: London, funnily enough. From one capital to the other. London.
BW: Do you know whereabouts at all? Or not?
JML: No. Don’t ask me that. No.
BW: Ok.
JML: No.
BW: And so you, did you apply at that time to be aircrew or did you once in the Air Force stick at a ground trade or as a mechanic or something or did you want to go as aircrew?
JML: Aircrew.
BW: From the start.
JML: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Do you recall where you did your aircrew training? Your gunnery training.
JML: Yes. Let me see now. That was under [unclear] Stormy Down, Cardiff.
BW: Stormy Down.
JML: Yeah. Stormy Down.
BW: Ok. Yeah.
JML: Have you heard of that one?
BW: Yeah.
JML: Yeah. Stormy Down. Yeah.
BW: And as an air gunner what aspects of your training can you, can you recall that you had to do?
JML: Well, being in the aircrew and training at Stormy Down I just automatically seemed to slot in and become an air gunner. And we used to fly out over the Bristol Channel towing, towing a drogue behind an aircraft and the air gunner flying in Whitleys.
BW: Whitleys.
JML: A Whitley. I think it was a Whitley if I remember rightly. And the rear gunner there shooting at a drogue as it went along to try and pass the test that your eyesight was good etcetera and you could see alright. Yeah. That more or less was it, I think. Probably there about, I would think at least two months. Maybe even more. Training. Yeah.
BW: And did you do any ground training with the guns at all?
JML: Very little. Very little during the period when we were at Stormy Down because it was all mostly in the air. Firing from the ground came later somewhere else but I’m trying to think where it was but I can’t think at the moment. On a beach somewhere. Somewhere in Yorkshire. Probably at Bridlington.
BW: So from Stormy Down you moved up to Bridlington to do some further gunnery training.
JML: Air gun training, yeah. Definitely.
BW: Ok. And then Dalton and Lyneham —
JML: That’s right.
BW: I believe.
JML: Yeah. That’s, that’s further training there. We went on to aircraft.
BW: And at this stage did you crew up with the guys that you were going to —
JML: No.
BW: Follow through with training?
JML: We just went with anybody.
BW: Ok.
JML: Because most of them were training as well. Yeah.
BW: And from your training as a gunner which seems to have finished at Lyneham do you recall what happened after that? Did you go to a Conversion Unit?
JML: Where did I go from Lyneham? [pause] Yeah. Yeah. We moved on to —where did I move on to? A Conversion Unit. Bloody hell.
BW: That’s alright. If it’s, if it’s escaped your memory don’t worry. But I’m just curious if you met your first crew at the Conversion Unit or whether you met them when you got to your squadron.
JML: That was it. It was a right mixture at the time [pause] Yeah. We crewed up at, yeah. We more or less became a crew eventually at the Conversion Unit.
BW: And can you recall who your fellow crewmates were?
JML: Yes. The first original ones were, there were the three Canadians. The pilot, flight sergeant [pause] now then. Charlie Bois. C H A R L I E B O I S. I think that was how you spelt it.
BW: Ok.
JML: Charlie Bois. And the navigator was Jim Cameron.
BW: Jim.
JML: Jim.
BW: Yeah.
JML: Cameron.
BW: Cameron. Ok.
JML: Canadian. The bomb aimer was Joe Senecal. S E N E C A L. Now then.
[pause]
BW: You have a wireless operator and a couple of gunners in there.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Of which one, one is you.
JML: I’m trying to think of the [pause] I think what was he called? I’m thinking about the flight engineer [pause] Well, I think it was George Messenger. Because he was with us a long time so George was probably there then.
BW: Ok.
JML: Mickey Neville, wireless operator.
BW: Davy Lambert, gunner, along with me. That should be seven, I think.
JML: Yeah. That’s right.
BW: Yeah.
JML: So Davy would be the mid-upper.
BW: That’s him. Yeah.
JML: And where were you based with 429? Do you recall?
BW: Yeah. This is all in my head and it’s just all rumbled up. I’ll get it. I’ll get it in a minute.
[pause]
JML: It’s a bugger, isn’t it?
BW: Do you think it was in Yorkshire?
JML: Oh aye. I never moved until I went abroad. I was there all the time.
BW: There were a couple of bases. One at East Moor and the other at Leeming.
JML: Leeming. That came up. That. Leeming. Leeming Bar it was called in them days.
BW: And what was your accommodation like there? Your barracks.
JML: Oh good. Yeah. More or less nissen huts. Yeah.
BW: And what were your arrangements? Were you all in there as a crew or were you all in there as gunners?
JML: Different. Different. Yeah. The crew, the crews were in the mess together. Not there, not in Bomber Command where I was, no. It was just a mixture.
BW: And did you socialise together as a crew?
JML: Oh, just so so because as I say we were, this was a Canadian squadron so they more or less, they more or less kept together and the RAF lads like myself and Mickey Neville and that. So, we did. We did socialise I suppose. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Because we were always at the at the sergeant’s mess was the sergeant’s mess and everybody mixed in there. Sergeants. Officers went to their own mess. But our crew of course at the time were all either a sergeant or flight sergeant apart from Jim Cameron, the navigator. He was a flying officer. Canadian. So he was the odd one out.
BW: How did you get on as a crew?
JML: Very good. Yeah. Really good. Yeah. Definitely.
BW: How did you all meet? Were you all put in to a large room together to sort yourselves out or, or not?
JML: No, you just, it was actually, probably two. Two to a room at the time. Aye. And at the time, at that time, apart from Jim Cameron, the navigator who was a flying officer all the rest of us were either sergeants or flight sergeants. And of course we were all more or less all together all the time.
BW: Did you get the opportunity to go off base and socialise? To go in to the nearest town?
JML: Oh yeah. Definitely.
BW: Have a few beers.
JML: Yeah aye. I mean, we were quite, quite the [pause] the Canadian lads probably kept together more than with the RAF lads. We more or less kept to ourselves. Mickey Neville and Davy Lambert etcetera. When I think about it now. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.
BW: Why do you think that was? Was there, was it a cultural thing?
JML: No. It was just —
BW: Or just circumstance.
JML: Yeah. No, no reason why not. Yeah.
BW: So thinking now about your operations and what you were going to do describe for us how you would be briefed. What sort of things would lead up to the start of a mission and what would you do yourself when you got to the aircraft?
JML: Well, briefing used to take place probably very late afternoon. Depending, depending on the take-off time. And of course each, each section had their own briefing. Apart from when all the crew members were together at the main briefing. Then after the main briefing the sergeants, gunners etcetera went to the gunnery officer. The navigators went to their. So in actual fact the main briefing would take place with all the crew members together at one time. Then after you had been told etcetera where you were going the officer in charge said the gunners or the wireless operator and that would call more or less their own briefing and give you information about what they thought you should do when you got on board the plane. And that was what I can remember anyway. It’s hard to remember. It is.
BW: I know. So, thinking now, at this point you’ve been briefed on your operation and you’re presumably driven out to the aircraft at dispersal. What would you do as a crew from being dropped off? What sort of, did you have any good luck rituals or checks that you would do when you got into your position in the aircraft?
JML: No. No. Not really. When you got on board of course like there was seven of you. Three or four, four at the front approximately. You all take your positions etcetera. Mid-upper gunner of course is middle turret. The rear gunner, myself, in the rear. And then the skipper would call up to make sure you were all in your position and you’d checked everything and you were quite happy. That you were ready to go. He did that with all the crew.
BW: And how did it feel when the engines started and you were on your way sort of thing?
JML: Well —
BW: Taxiing out.
JML: That didn’t seem to bother. It was just like taking off again, you know. The only thing that was going to be a bit different when you crossed the Channel but other than that it was just straight forward. Yeah.
BW: And I believe you had an eventful first sortie. You’d been briefed to go. First operation. You’d been briefed to raid Stuttgart.
JML: Stuttgart. Yeah.
BW: And describe for me what had happened when you’d taken off.
JML: Oh, we’d had an uneventful trip. No trouble at all. Across the Channel, over France etcetera heading towards Germany. We had no bother at all. Occasional flashes of flak somewhere but other than that there was no bother at all until we got near the target area and then it started to brighten up a bit if that’s the right word. We didn’t see any night fighters. Plenty of flak. And then when we got to the target area the flak was very strong and there, unfortunately we were hit and the pilot had to turn off one of the engines because that was hit very badly. And so we’d three engines, so we [pause] he just dropped the bombs where we were which was somewhere near the target and turned around and headed for home. But by that time he’d decided to take drastic action and he cut off the engine altogether so we were flying on three engines and headed for the target. Well, away from the target to get back to England which was a good trip all the way actually. No problems at all apart from the plane seemed to be losing a bit of height etcetera. But other than that we had no trouble at all getting back to the coast. By that time we were, I think we might have been struggling regarding fuel because the pilot had asked the navigator to find out the nearest aerodrome as we were crossing the Channel which he did. And we headed, headed for that particular, that particular aerodrome. I cannot, I can’t think of the damned name of it now. But that’s where we headed for but, and we got there and got permission to land. And the pilot made an attempt to land but as he made the attempt to land another aircraft which I think was a Lancaster was underneath us so we opened up the engines and headed back out over the sea. And unfortunately, I don’t know what happened but a minute or so after we’d attempted to land the pilot was shouting, ‘We’re going down. We’re going down.’ And a few seconds later, I’m still in the rear turret, the plane hit the sea and it, I think it broke up mid-way along, mid-way along the thing but by that time I’d only just got out the turret and was thrown up. Thrown up the plane. I don’t know if I was semi- conscious or not but I found myself in the middle of the aircraft and presence of mind, I don’t know why I stood up. I was standing in the middle of the aircraft. Well, there was a handle and that handle released the dinghy. I probably didn’t realise it at the time. So I pulled the handle anyway and could see the actual dinghy come out the wing and inflate itself automatically. Of course that didn’t bother me because I mean having been used to water in civilian life I wasn’t bothered at all. So, I mean, I scrambled out. I scrambled out the plane somehow and managed to keep pulling on the dinghy to get the dinghy right out. And Davy Lambert, the other gunner had climbed on the wing of the plane and between us we got the dinghy going and Davy got in the dinghy. And then we, I was still sitting on the, on the wing and then I got in to the water itself and started to shout out names etcetera to find out where everybody was like. And eventually we all got in to the dinghy. I was last in because I was quite happy in the water. I wasn’t bothered. Water didn’t bother me. We got them all in to the dinghy and fortunately they, on the land they knew that the plane had gone into the sea somewhere and an air sea rescue launch picked us up within the hour. So it was very very quick. Quick. A very, very quick hour. But everybody was alright. Nobody, nobody was injured even though the, even though the plane was in a mess and as I say we were picked up within the hour so that was it. Our first trip. Brilliant.
BW: And this was November 26/27, 1943.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And presumably you’d come back at night.
JML: Pardon?
BW: You’re still night time.
JML: That happened —
BW: So this has all happened in the dark and the cold.
JML: 4 o’clock in the morning it was. Approximately.
BW: So, it’s pitch black.
JML: Oh yeah.
BW: And freezing cold water.
JML: It was bloody cold. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But as I said water didn’t bother me so I was alright, you know. I was more interested in what was happening to the rest of crew if they couldn’t swim. As it happened most of them could swim so [pause] And the plane hadn’t really broken up like I thought it might have done. So the wing was still there with it. With the, where the dinghy was. And we were all quite, well, I wouldn’t say quite happy in the dinghy but at least we were all in the dinghy and very quickly picked up by the air sea rescue lads. Pitch dark mind you. But we were making enough noise for them to find us. But it was no bother.
BW: And so I’m assuming that the rescue launch was using a searchlight to sweep the sea to look for you.
JML: Sea. Right.
BW: And it was only from signalling or shouting while you were in the dinghy that they could try and locate you.
JML: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because we’d no lights or anything. No. Nothing at all.
BW: Amazing.
JML: Yeah.
BW: So, what happened when you got on board and were taken back to base? Were, were you debriefed at all any further or —
JML: Well, we, as I said it was right down south. I can’t. I can’t remember any debriefing to tell you the truth. I can’t remember any bit of it because obviously we’d landed at this place down south when we should have been up in Yorkshire. So, we stopped there anyway. I think we stopped there. A little bit of a stop there that day and I think it was the next day [pause] that’s right. We were only there a day and then we were, made our way back to Leeming in Yorkshire. By train of course. Got the train in to, got the train into London and then we headed back home over to, to Leeming. Yeah. I think that was it anyway. Near enough.
BW: And did any of the senior officers wonder where you’d been?
JML: They knew. They must have got notified like that, over what, I can’t remember the registration. It doesn’t matter. There were [pause] no. I’m just trying to — anyway, they knew anyway that something had happened to us and that we were alright. And I can always remember that I had it and I can’t find it. I think it was, I think it was 6 Group, I think, if I remember rightly. The Canadians. 6 Group. And when the, when the Group paper came out the next day or a couple of days later I can see the headline now. It had it across it. The headline of the paper was well [pause] all the Canadian squadrons had a name. We were, we were the Bison Squadron. And on the headlines of the paper in red, “Bison boys launched on maiden trip.” That was the first trip we had done and in the paper that was the headline. And it gave a, what had actually happened to us, you know and what annoys me is I have an old typewriter upstairs and up to a few years ago I’d got the newspaper itself. I got the front page of it from wherever it was like. We all got one I suppose. I kept that for years. That’s what I was trying to find. And on the old typewriter upstairs I made a typed copy of it. Of what it said. I can’t find it. So that that was our only trip with Bomber Command.
BW: But you became a member of the Goldfish Club as a result.
JML: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Did you get a badge?
JML: It’s there. It’s the yellow one. The smallest.
BW: So this is like a what we now say is a credit card sized.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Piece of card that says on it Goldfish Club Membership Card 1942 with the emblem on and details you as, “Sergeant J McK Leith. James McKenzie Leith qualified as a member of the Goldfish Club by escaping death by the use of emergency equipment on 27th November 1943.” Fantastic. And the design of this card, it says is based on the unique waterproof card issued during World War Two.
JML: Yeah. I can’t remember who sponsored that. I can’t think of his name. One of the richest men in Britain.
BW: I can only think the Duke of Westminster but there’d be others of course.
JML: I can’t remember his name.
BW: The sig.
JML: We got though —
BW: The signature on it is Charles Robertson.
JML: Aye. He’s the one organised the thing, isn’t he?
BW: Robertson.
JML: You got a payment you know from it. This chap I’m talking about.
BW: Right.
JML: You got, you got seven days leave after you ditched and you got paid by whoever it was that started this Goldfish thing. What was he called? Bloody hell. Anyway, he was one of the, he was one of the richest men anyway and he, I think you got seven days leave and you got seven days pay which he paid. That’s if I remember right properly. I don’t know if you’ve heard that before or not.
BW: I haven’t but I’m sure you’re right.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And so you arrived back at Leeming and you’re all dried and back to normal.
JML: Oh yeah. Not, not long back to normal.
BW: And what happened? What happened next?
JML: Oh dear [pause]
BW: Did you continue any other operations or sorties with the Bison Squadron?
JML: They decided, when I say they decided, they got there the squadron commander, a wing commander at the top decided that the pilot Charlie Bois, he was called [pause] it was, that’s right we were still fit to fly the Halifax. He wasn’t very tall, wasn’t Charlie Bois. Fairly small. That’s the pilot I’m talking about. And anyway, they decided that he was still alright for flying. But about a month later we, we were we had some time off actually flying. And then we got [pause] It would be about a month before we were picked to go on another. Another bombing raid. I can’t remember the date. The details. But the [pause] got on the plane at the dispersal point and somehow or other as we left the dispersal point, by the way this is, we were still into November December and it’s gone dark of course at four or 5 o’clock like, you know. And somehow or other at Leeming there was two squadrons. We were the Bison Squadron and the other squadron was the Lion Squadron. I can’t remember the number of it but it was the Lion Squadron. And on this particular day we were going on this other flight which would have been our second flight. As we taxied at our dispersal point an aircraft from the Lion Squadron coming down the [pause] I can’t describe it.
[pause]
Now, this aircraft from the Lion Squadron coming around the perimeter track, and we coming, coming out of our own dispersal point and this aircraft from the, the Lion Squadron hit our aircraft as we left the dispersal point. Very [pause] really damaged the planes and mind you we all scrambled out and we were all right. And the lads from the Lion Squadron they were alright as well. But the two aircraft were a right mess. So that, that flight was cancelled completely. And after that I don’t exactly know what happened but that Charlie, as I said he wasn’t a very big bloke he was taken off flying bombers. I don’t know who decided it, but somebody decided he’d be better flying lighter aircraft so he was taken off the squadron and what happened to him after that I’ve got no idea. But the RAF lads that was myself, the mid-upper gunner, the wireless operator and, no that’s, that’s right. We three RAF lads were sent to another unit and I think it was Dishforth. Dishforth. Either Dishforth or Driffield, one or the other to await being crewed up with another pilot, navigator, bomb aimer. That’s it. Yeah. Now then, as I say it was either Dishforth or Driffield but it doesn’t matter. That was another Conversion Unit and we went there in, we were now in to December. I don’t know why but for some unknown reason we three, Mickey Neville, Davy Lambert and myself were at that unit for oh a long, long time. I think they’d forgotten about us. But eventually [pause] I’m just trying to imagine how we got crewed up again. I can see it all but [pause] Anyway, we got crewed up again but I just can’t remember. I can remember the pilot. Pilot Officer Proud. P R O U D. Another Canadian. And I think we must have still kept the three other Canadians as well. But thankfully time was flying past.
JML: You must have been in the unit well into the spring of ’44.
BW: This is what I’m trying to remember. I’m trying to remember exactly how it came about. As I say we got this, this bloke called Pilot Officer Proud. I’ll never forget his name. I was just trying to remember where. [pause] Anyway, to cut a long story short Pilot Officer Proud hadn’t flown on any operations at all. So we went to Linton on Ouse. Does that ring a bell?
BW: Yes. That’s in Yorkshire.
JML: Yeah. That’s right. We teamed up with Pilot Officer Proud. That’s it. More or less with the same, the same crew as previously apart from the pilot. But the crew stopped the same. Right. I’m trying to think of is it, did I say Dishforth?
BW: You said it was, it was either at Dishforth or Driffield. And I think there was a Conversion Unit at Dishforth. But you then moved from there once you’ve met your new pilot to Linton, Linton on Ouse. So it sounds like you’ve been assigned a new pilot and are ready to be transferred to a new squadron.
JML: I’m trying to think which one it was actually. 429 Squadron. 429 624148. What you find in there? 429.
BW: After December ’43 at Dishforth it was 426 Squadron for the remainder of the war. And then at Linton.
JML: Linton on Ouse.
BW: 426 must have moved from there. From Dishforth to Linton as well. So if you’ve gone from those two airfields it’s possible you’ve been with 426.
JML: I’ve got them here.
[recording paused]
BW: So you met and crewed up with Pilot Officer Proud again.
JML: Correct.
BW: And he was from 408 Squadron. That’s what you’re saying.
JML: No. That’s where we got him but he hadn’t flown on any operational trips when we crewed up with him. We’d only done one but he hadn’t done any at all. Right. Now, he went on an operation as a second pilot with 408 Squadron. Now, where they were going I don’t know but they never came back. It was lost with all the crew including Pilot Officer Proud. So we never flew any operations at all with Pilot Officer Proud unfortunately. I had a hectic time for a bit. Flying.
[pause]
JML: Now, why have I put that there?
BW: So, Pilot Officer Proud went up on an a operation as a —
JML: Second pilot.
BW: Second pilot and never came back.
JML: Yeah.
BW: You then returned to Dishforth. To the holding unit.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And your new pilot who you met was — ?
JML: Must be Lawrence.
BW: Lawrence.
JML: Toft. T O F T.
BW: And was he an officer?
JML: No. Not then he wasn’t. He was a flight sergeant.
BW: Flight sergeant. Ok. And so you’ve now got, you personally have moved onto your third crew.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Now. And what happened with Toft? You called him Tofty. Is that right?
JML: Lawrence.
BW: Lawrence.
JML: Or Lawrie. Yeah.
BW: Did you do much training with him?
JML: No. Because he had already done three trips I think with, back to the, what did they call the squadron earlier when we ditched in the sea. He came from that squadron.
BW: 429 Bison.
JML: 429. Yeah. And we went to Dishforth, wasn’t it?
BW: Yes.
JML: What, what, when was that? What?
BW: That would be spring 1944.
JML: What was that with?
BW: So you were there several months between the holding posts.
JML: I went with him.
BW: And it was a while because you thought they’d forgotten about you all. And you then would have been assigned your crew roughly Spring 1944.
JML: Yeah. As I say we got Tofty. That’s right. Then we went [pause] Yeah. We got Tofty.
BW: How would you describe him? What sort of a person was he?
JML: Very clever. I did try to think. Mickey Neville, Davy Lambert, myself. That’s the three of us. I’m just trying to fit in the other. He was actually Canadian that one.
[recording paused]
BW: So your crew now.
JML: Yeah.
BW: If I read these names out to you. Flight Sergeant A J Toft.
JML: That’s right.
BW: Flight Sergeant Johnston.
JML: Johnston. Yeah.
BW: Sergeant T S Jones.
JML: That’s him.
BW: Sergeant G H Messenger.
JML: George.
BW: That’s George Messenger.
JML: George Messenger.
BW: Sergeant Mickey Neville.
JML: Mickey Neville.
BW: M R Neville.
JML: David Lambert. Yeah.
BW: And sergeant D P —
JML: That’s the one I couldn’t remember. He’s Canadian the [pause] I’ve lost him again. Jones. Tommy Jones is it?
BW: Yeah.
JML: Tommy Jones.
BW: Yeah. Jones. T S Jones.
JML: Bomb aimer. Yeah. That’s the one, that’s what I’ve been trying to think about.
BW: And he was your bomb aimer.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And he was Canadian.
JML: Right. Yeah.
BW: And what sort of a guy was he?
JML: Very queer but can’t account for that. Not queer, queer.
BW: Quirky perhaps or unusual.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And so what was going to be your next mission with them?
JML: We went abroad.
BW: You were sent abroad to 624 Squadron. Is this right? To Libya.
JML: Hmmn?
BW: Did you go to Libya? You say you went abroad.
JML: That’s right.
BW: You were posted to 624 Squadron.
JML: Blida.
BW: Blida, Algeria.
JML: Yeah. B L I D A. Blida.
BW: And this is now special duties.
JML: That’s right. I just couldn’t think of that bloody bloke’s name. Jones. Tommy Jones. Anyhow.
BW: And how did you end up as a crew being posted there? Did you volunteer or were you picked?
JML: Just, were just sent. Yeah.
BW: And what was that base like? What was Algeria like?
JML: It was actually quite good. In fact, very good actually.
BW: Did you fly out there or did you —
JML: Oh yeah.
BW: Travel by ship.
JML: We took a brand new Halifax out to that place. Different to the one that we had but they changed the tail on it. Made it a square tail instead of that way and it was a new one. Brand new. We picked it up at a place called, Hurn is it? Hurn, near Bournemouth. Yeah. We took that with us.
BW: So was this a brand new Mark 5?
JML: Yeah. It would be. Yeah.
BW: Mark 5 Halifax.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And you flew it from Bourne.
JML: That’s it.
BW: To Blida.
JML: To Blida.
BW: Blida.
JML: Yeah. So we got on to special duties instead of Bomber Command.
BW: And what sort of things were you doing on special duties? Do you remember what sort of operations you were tasked with?
JML: Yeah. Either dropping agents or dropping supplies to the French in Southern France.
BW: Did you get to talk to any of the agents at all?
JML: Not allowed. No.
BW: What were your briefings like at this stage then? When you, when you joined this brand new squad, well for you it was a brand new squadron, what were your briefings like now as regards preparation for a mission? What were you told about it?
JML: Well, briefings briefly consist of whether you were dropping agents or dropping supplies and that was more or less, and of course whether you were going to Southern France or anywhere you were going. But at no time were you allowed to have a conversation with any passenger that you were taking because it was all top secret. And that was more or less the briefing. Yeah.
BW: Were you able to find out anything about the agents that you were tasked with dropping or the cargo that you would carry as supplies? Was any of that ever made known to you?
JML: No. No.
BW: So —
JML: Definitely not.
BW: So if the pilot ever knew he wasn’t even able to discuss it with you as crew. If the pilot knew he wasn’t able to discuss it with you as crew then.
JML: No. Definitely not.
BW: And what were these operations like in comparison to the couple that you had flown with Bomber Command? Was there a difference for you as a gunner? Were you, did you feel it was a better environment or less hostile for example or what?
JML: A lot less hostile because —
[pause]
BW: How was it being in the rear of this Halifax this time? Were there, were the missions quieter in that you didn’t fly over heavily defended targets? Is that right?
JML: Yeah, yeah, yeah the, the flights from Blida in North Africa mostly went to Southern France and of course you flew most of them over water of course and once you reached the coast you then had to find where the agents were and nine times out of ten they were in the, in the mountains. And the mountains were the biggest, the biggest drawback we had.
BW: And you were still flying at night on these missions.
JML: They were all night. Night. Yeah. All night missions. Yeah.
BW: And from 624 you moved on to 148 Squadron.
JML: [unclear] Yeah. 148.
BW: Which would be, which would be flying from Italy.
JML: Brindisi.
BW: And doing the same sort of work.
JML: Exactly the same, dropping supplies or agents, yeah.
BW: And from Italy you presumably saw out the rest of your service with 148 Squadron. At what stage were you sent back to the UK?
JML: I’m trying to think how long we stopped in there. We flew back to, to Cairo [pause] to await transport to the UK. And that was it.
BW: And was that 1945? Or would it be after do you think?
JML: No. No. I’m trying to think when we, 1944 we were flying, was that 1945? Would it be ’45 or was it late nineteen — ? Oh, it must have been ’45. ‘44 we flew out of from England, did the tour. Yeah.
BW: And how long did you stay in the RAF after the war?
JML: Not so long. I can’t think when I came out.
BW: Would it be 1946—
JML: ’46, I think.
BW: When you were repatriated and left at, in 1947. Discharged on 28th of September 1948.
JML: As long as that did I wait?
BW: You’ve come back to Wheaton or Kirkham.
JML: Kirkham.
BW: In 1946.
JML: That’s it, yeah.
BW: And that’s when you met a WAAF.
JML: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: What was her name?
JML: Hmmn?
BW: What was her name?
JML: Margaret Iddon. You want her surname.
BW: Your, your girlfriend at the time. In 1946. What was her name?
JML: Margaret. You want her, do you want her —
BW: What —
JML: You want her surname as well. That’s it. Margaret Iddon. I D D O N. Oh well, no, I’m getting confused. Sawford. Sorry. S A W F O R D I think. Sawford. That’s, that’s your mum’s name isn’t it, Margaret?
Other: Yeah. I knew you’d mentioned Iddon and I thought well I’m not in on this.
JML: It’s amazing how I get confused Margaret.
Other: Never mind.
BW: And what happened after? After you were demobbed?
JML: I went working for [pause] as a salesman for Jackson, the tailor.
BW: And how long were you there?
JML: A long time. ‘Til maybe about, probably 1965 or ’66. More or less to retirement, near enough.
BW: And what do you think of the commemorations taking place at the moment Bomber Command? It’s been a while since the veterans have been commemorated but now they’re being honoured, if you like for their service. What do you think?
JML: Well, yeah because we were having this place what’s it called again? I’ve forgotten the name.
BW: Lincoln or Hyde Park. The Memorial at Hyde Park.
JML: Well, I think that’s the [pause] that one at the Arboretum. Is it the Arboretum?
BW: Oh, yes the National.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Memorial Arboretum at Stafford.
JML: Yeah. I’ve been going there for the last ten years on and off. Obviously we’ve got, we’ve got a spot there.
BW: Are you glad the veterans of Bomber Command are being remembered?
JML: I suppose so. Yeah. Because I mean they [pause] I’m just trying to think if there’s a proper thing.
BW: There’s a Memorial in London.
JML: Yeah. Yeah. I got an invite to that but I didn’t go.
BW: And there’s now this Centre in Lincoln.
JML: Yeah. The only other one I know about is this one at the Arboretum which is where the Special Duties have their place.
BW: Alright. Well, that’s, that’s all the questions I have for you, Jim.
JML: Thank God for that.
BW: Thank you very much for your time.
JML: Yeah. Well, I’m sorry I can’t give you as much as I wanted to do, you know.
BW: That’s alright. Thank you very much.
JML: I’m trying to remember things, you know.
[recording paused]
BW: So, this is Brian Wright interviewing Flying Officer Jim McKenzie Leith on the afternoon of Thursday the 12th of January 2017 at his home at Fulwood, Preston in Lancashire. Now, Jim you’ve kindly told me that you were born the 21st of May in 1924 in Bathville near Glasgow and you were the middle brother of five. You had two brothers and two sisters. And that you left school at fourteen and you had been a member of the Air Training Corps prior to joining the RAF in 1940. And following your initial training as airman and then trade training as an air gunner you joined 429 Canadian Squadron in Yorkshire based at RAF Leeming. And you described for me your first sortie when you were returning from a raid on Stuttgart on the 27th of November 1943 and were forced to ditch in the, in the Channel. And you recovered from that. After a period of time on holding squadrons at Dishforth you were then sent to Bilda, sorry Blida.
JML: Blida.
BW: Blida, in Algeria in 1944. And you were first on 624 Squadron and this is a special duty squadron that I’d like to ask you about. You flew a brand new Halifax out. And how did it feel to join this new squadron? Were you aware of the sort of things you were going to do when you arrived in Algeria?
JML: No idea. No idea at all.
BW: And when do you recall your first operations with this squadron? What sort of things did you have to do?
[pause]
BW: You were dropping supplies and agents in to Southern France, weren’t you?
JML: Yeah. Definitely.
BW: You couldn’t talk to these guys who you were flying.
JML: No. Well, we mostly dropped supplies. Very seldom did we drop agents. Just occasionally. But the briefing etcetera was quite plain enough as you were flying, flying across water all the time ‘til you got to Southern France. And then you had to find out the position where the agents were but mostly they were in the, in the mountains and so the thing was to make sure that you got your position right because if you didn’t, depending on the weather would you be able to make your drop or not because most of Southern France there was mountains all around where the agents were in secrecy waiting on supplies coming etcetera.
BW: And do you recall what the pilot had to do or you as a crew had to do on the approach to the drop zone?
JML: It was very important actually approaching there because obviously there was different signals. We did signal which we would flash to the ground and if we were in the right position we got a flash back from the ground. But it had to be matched up with the letter or number or whatever it was you were expecting because obviously there was plenty of Germans around on the ground as well and they got the message that we were sending down which was the letter of the day. Which of course changed by the way at different places. And of course the Germans would try and find out and flash a letter back hoping that it was the same as the one we were expecting and we would drop the goods. But nine times out of ten of course the letter we got flashed back was the right letter. But occasionally there were times when you got a different letter. And of course you knew right away that it was the wrong area and you would definitely not drop any ammunition or anything else, or agents depending what you were dropping that particular day.
BW: And were there occasions when you didn’t get the right signal?
JML: Oh, definitely. You’d get the wrong, the wrong letter of the day, you just ignored it.
BW: And did you experience any ground fire let’s say from the Germans? Were they, did they attempt to shoot at you if they thought you were going to approach?
JML: Very very, very occasionally.
BW: And did you have to fire your guns back at them?
JML: Very seldom. Very, very seldom.
BW: And do you recall what sort of height you would be when this was taking place? Were you at low level? Or were you —
JML: The drop, the drop zones were very, very difficult because as I said nine times out of ten they were in the mountains and depending on the weather etcetera it was very difficult to judge the height of the mountains. And especially in the Pyrenees where most of the agents were in hiding. Very very difficult.
BW: And on the times when you had to drop agents by parachute were you able to speak with them at all?
JML: No, nobody was allowed to talk to any of the agents in the area. In the plane or out the plane. It was taboo. Not allowed.
BW: And so you never knew the names of the people you were —
JML: Definitely not.
BW: You had on board.
JML: No.
BW: I understand some of the agents were occasionally dropped in handcuffs because they had potentially been in prison. One veteran from 624 told me of an incident where that happened. Did that ever take place with you at all? No.
JML: Definitely not. No.
BW: And what were the facilities like at Blida?
JML: The what?
BW: What were the facilities like at Blida?
JML: Oh, quite, quite good. Quite good. Some of them had tents. But we and our crew were very fortunate. We’d quite a good billet. A nice wooden billet.
[pause]
BW: How long were you with 624 Squadron? Do you recall?
JML: I would say three months. Three months. Maybe four.
BW: And you and your crew had been posted to the squadron from your previous unit in England. So none of you had volunteered for special duties.
JML: No. No.
BW: You were just posted as a part of a routine squadron.
JML: Definitely.
BW: Were you given any extra money? Were you paid any extra for these?
JML: No.
BW: Operations. No.
JML: No.
BW: And were you trained or given any briefings on resistance to interrogation if you were forced to land or were captured in France?
JML: No.
BW: After your service with 624 you moved on to another special duties squadron, 148.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Where were they based?
JML: Brindisi.
BW: In Italy.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And you were, where were you flying missions to in in Europe from this base?
JML: All the [unclear] countries, Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece. All around All around the Balkans.
BW: And the same question I suppose. Were you ever able to learn anything of what these operations involved in terms of supplies? The type of supplies you were dropping or agents.
JML: Not really. No. The only time we were advised on ammunition etcetera was special operations to Poland, and Warsaw where the uprising was taking place and they needed, they needed ammunition of any description.
BW: Can you tell me what you understood of the operation that was briefed to you about this? What were you told about flying to Poland on this particular occasion? This would be August 1944.
JML: Yeah. Well, the uprising was taking place but, but they were fighting a losing battle because of the number of Germans that were actually occupying Warsaw at the time. And the [pause] they were very short, the Polish Resistance regarding food and ammunition etcetera. So it was very, very difficult.
BW: And do you recall how many flights you had to make in support of the Poles in Warsaw?
JML: I think we made four trips in all to Poland itself especially during the month of August forty — it would be ’44, would it?
BW: That’s right.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And was it noticeably heavier in the aircraft because of the load you were carrying or —
JML: No. No. Definitely not.
BW: How would they carry out this sort of drop? Were the supplies positioned in the bomb bay?
JML: Yeah. Normal. Yeah. Carried them instead of bombs. And in the interior. The interior of the plane as well. Yeah. It was very, not much room at all in the plane because it was always packed with either kit bags or [pause] well, and it depended how much we could take apart from what was in the bomb bay.
BW: And your pilot was a Lawrence Toft.
JML: Ahum.
BW: What do you recall of him?
JML: Lawrence was a very, very quiet fella. Very quiet. But what he did say it made you think that he knew what he was doing and he had great faith in the rest of his crew because his crew had great faith in him.
BW: And did you feel on these missions that it was any more dangerous than what you would have done flying over Germany?
JML: The trips to Poland, especially to Warsaw were very difficult because we were flying in to a city and flying in very low to make sure that what we were carrying dropped in the right spot because if they weren’t dropped in the right spot the Germans could get to them before the Polish partisans. Very difficult.
BW: And over the city you would be getting signals from the rooftops instead of —
JML: Yeah.
BW: Of the country.
JML: And we were flying very, very, very low. About three hundred feet above the city. And most of the partisans at that particular time in Warsaw were more or less short of ammunition, short of food, more or less short of everything.
BW: And I believe there were enemy troops positioned on the roofs of the city.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Firing at you as you approached. Is that correct?
JML: Oh definitely.
BW: What do you recall of your sight of the city when you were flying over it? What kind of things could you see?
JML: There’s lots of parts as well. The city itself in parts was just a mass of flames. Some parts of it wasn’t but most of it, and there was a lot of activity. You could see the gun flashes and I think most of them were from the Germans fighting the partisans on the ground. There wasn’t much activity in the air. Quite a bit sometimes but mostly it was on the ground.
BW: And was your target Napoleon Square?
JML: That was it, the centre of Poland.
BW: And so the three or four trips that you made were they over a week or over a couple of days or —
JML: A week. Yeah. A week to ten days, definitely. Some, some were right into the heart of Poland. The city itself. A couple of them were on the way in. Where the partisans were doing their best.
BW: Did you see any other supply aircraft at the time?
JML: No.
BW: Were you flying —
JML: No.
BW: With other aircraft from your same squadron?
JML: There were other aircraft supposed to be there like we were there but I never saw any other planes.
BW: And were you ever, was the aircraft you were in ever hit by ground fire at all? Do you recall any of that?
JML: Oh yes. Hit by the flak. But only very light. Yeah.
BW: Did any of it come near you?
JML: No.
BW: And were any of your fellow crewmen hit at all or injured?
JML: No. There was no hits, no injuries fortunately. Yeah.
BW: So you came back from these operations pretty well unscathed.
JML: More or less. Yeah.
BW: And there were no issues with the aircraft when you landed. Nothing had been disrupted.
JML: Oh yeah.
BW: With the undercarriage for example.
JML: Oh yeah. Yeah. There was marks and that on the plane that had been hit by anti-aircraft fire etcetera but nothing, nothing serious.
BW: Could you feel it when the aircraft was hit?
JML: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: And what was that like?
JML: That was only light. Very [pause] how can I can’t describe it? It was very very light anti-aircraft fire.
BW: Presumably like machine guns or rifle fire and things like that. And were you debriefed in the sense were you given information about how successful the drops had been at all?
JML: Oh yes. Yeah. Definitely.
BW: And what sort of things were you told?
JML: As regards the drops etcetera the actual drops that were done were very successful. There was quite, quite a number of aircraft took part in these special drops. I think in one night, I think it was sometime in August, the squadron did lose over a, over the two nights I think they lost four aircraft. Which were either shot down on their way in or shot down on their way back but they lost four.
BW: Did you know any of these crews?
JML: No.
BW: Were you able to befriend or did you get to know any of the other crews while you were stationed at Brindisi?
JML: Not really. We more or less stuck to ourselves, you know. When you’ve got seven of a crew, you know we were all quite friendly.
BW: And were there any other squadrons based with you at Brindisi at the time?
JML: Not, not on Brindisi. There was a [pause] there was a Polish squadron there as well but there wasn’t there wasn’t many of them. Just a few. I can’t remember the number of it but they were based at Brindisi the same as we were.
BW: Were they flying Halifaxes like you?
JML: Yeah.
BW: It must have been quite important for them to be flying supplies into their own, into their own country.
JML: Oh, very much so. Yeah.
BW: After the uprising had finished were you continuing to fly with 148 or did you stop at that point?
JML: No. No. We started, carried on. Back to dropping supplies into Northern Italy where the partisans were and also still supplying Yugoslavia, Greece, Albania which were still occupied by the, by the Germans.
BW: Did you ever land in these places to offload supplies or not?
JML: No. We had, had two or four small aircraft which were stationed at Brindisi and they would. They would fly in to take a couple of secret agents in and land on a bit of land where they could get out and then the small aircraft would take off again and come back to Brindisi.
BW: Were they Lysanders?
JML: Yeah.
BW: The small ones.
JML: That’s the ones.
BW: Did you ever speak with any of the pilots there?
JML: No.
BW: Or crew.
JML: No. No. It was very hush hush.
BW: And once you’d flown these missions and I think it went up until the end of ’44 when the squadron ceased what happened then?
JML: I think just before the end of the, around about Christmas time etcetera we, we were told that we had now done x number of hours which was a tour of operations completed and we as a crew we were being stood down. And we were being sent down to Cairo for a rest period.
BW: How long were you there? In Cairo? Do you know?
JML: Oh, I’ve no idea. Probably a couple of months or so, I think.
BW: What are your memories of your time with the squadron in 1944 and in Cairo when you were off duty?
JML: Yeah. There was four of the crew were still together and myself, Davy Lambert, Mickey Neville and Larry Toft. We, we four were together in Cairo. What as I say happened to the other, the other three I don’t really know.
BW: Because your other three were Canadians, weren’t they? You had Flight Sergeant Toft who was your pilot.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Flight Sergeant Johnstone.
JML: Yeah. He was a Scotsman. Yeah.
BW: Sergeant Jones. Tommy Jones —
JML: Yeah.
BW: Was Canadian. Sergeant George Messenger.
JML: He was a, yeah engineer.
BW: And as you say Sergeant Mickey Neville and —
JML: Davy Lambert.
BW: Davy Lambert.
JML: Jock Johnson, the Scotsman he’s, he stopped with the squadron. Why I don’t know but Jock stopped there. And I’m trying to think what [pause] oh, and George Messenger. He stopped with the squadron. That’s the two isn’t it? They would have stopped with the squadron but they wouldn’t be allowed to fly for a certain amount of time because they’d to have what they called a rest. A rest before they started on their second tour. But other than that I lost. I lost. What Jock Johnston or what George Messenger did I’ve no idea. We other four were kept at Cairo for quite some time. And then Lawrence, the pilot was told that he was going to start flying Dakotas. So we didn’t really know whether he was very happy about it but that’s, that left three of us. And we three were posted home. We had to stop in Cairo ‘til we got information to pick up a ship and prepare to, prepare to sail home.
BW: And would that be 1945 when you —
JML: ’44. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. That would be January/February. That’s it, yeah. Definitely.
BW: And do you recall where you were sent to? Where you arrived back in the UK?
JML: I think we landed at Liverpool. Definitely.
BW: And from there I understand you were posted to Kirkham camp near Blackpool.
JML: That’s right. Eventually. Yeah.
BW: And what happened while you were there?
JML: Just, that was, that was the, while we were there the war finished completely. And it became a demob centre.
BW: And you stayed in Lancashire because you met a young woman.
JML: Stayed there awaiting to get demobbed. Yeah.
BW: But you then met a young woman.
JML: Yeah. Aye. Margaret. Yeah.
BW: And so your relationship with her continued and you were married.
JML: Yeah.
BW: But only after a very short time. How long?
JML: I don’t know. Probably six months or something like that. Time I was there we got married. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: And you didn’t fancy staying with the RAF.
JML: No.
BW: And what, when you left did you go on to do then?
JML: I worked for the — what did that come under?
BW: Were you a salesman?
JML: Yeah. I was a salesman but I’m trying to think what I did. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, I became a salesman. I worked for the Burton Group. That’s the best way to put it down. As a salesman.
BW: And did you ever go back to Scotland? Did you ever consider resettling to Scotland?
JML: No. No.
BW: And so you’ve lived and worked in the Blackpool and Preston area for the rest of you time after the war.
JML: Yeah. Until retiring. Until retiring. Yeah. Definitely.
BW: And do you still attend the reunions for your squadron? Do you meet up with your friends?
JML: Aye, we have done until the last twelve months or so but I’m afraid that we’re only got down to two or three. That’s all. They’re the ones that used to go to [pause] what’s it called? The aerodrome.
BW: Elvington? Elvington?
JML: No.
BW: Was it an airfield near here?
JML: No. I’m talking about —
BW: Or the Arboretum.
JML: Not the Arboretum. No. Bloody hell, it’s wild, deary, deary dear. Down near, down near Wolverhampton that’s still going. What’s that big aerodrome?
BW: Cosford. Cosford?
JML: No.
BW: Near Wolverhampton. No.
JML: No. It’s still going there. The aerodrome’s still going. They all land there now. Everything lands there. That’s silly that I can’t remember that. Deary dear.
[recording paused]
JML: Did we say Brize Norton before?
BW: Yeah. At Brize Norton.
JML: Their number is 4624 so they adopted us.
BW: I see.
JML: And the [pause] and they used to go there every twelve months for a reunion.
BW: Until they decided it was —
JML: Well, it got —
BW: Elevated to an operational base and higher security status so it prevented you going.
JML: Stopped us going. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Right.
JML: And your latest award was the Legion d’Honneur. Is that correct? You received the medal from France.
BW: Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh aye. Yeah. That’s on there somewhere.
JML: When did you receive that. Was it last year?
BW: I got it through the post but you could have it presented so when we ended the trip to [pause] oh bloody hell.
Other: The Arboretum.
JML: What’s it called? The bloody place where we got it.
Other: The Arboretum.
BW: Where?
Other: The Arboretum.
JML: The Arboretum. Aye. Yeah.
BW: So you had a little presentation while you were there.
JML: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Good.
JML: There was only two of us. You could have it presented or you could have it sent. But Joe, you know, this [unclear] it was his idea that while we were going to the Arboretum that we would have it done then but you didn’t need to do that. You’d just said you’d have it like and you’d get it. The only one I’ve spoken to that got his medal was Stanley. He lives right down south. He was a dispatcher as well you know and he had his presented by the local [pause]
BW: And was he on your squadron as well?
JML: Oh aye.
BW: But you never met him while you were serving in Italy or Algeria.
JML: No. I didn’t know him. No.
BW: Ok. That’s all the questions I have for you Jim. So, thank you very much for your time.
JML: It’s alright.
BW: For your recollections.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Very much appreciated.
JML: We had a good trip to France didn’t we?
Other: Yes. We did. Yeah.
JML: Bob and I and Margaret.
Other: Yeah. Yeah.
JML: Somebody wrote, it must have been some paper. I don’t know which one it was. Wanted to meet somebody from the RAF and that that had done a drop in this place in France. Somebody from, was an ex, I think it was an ex-RAF man himself. Buck. A Frenchman of course. So, Stanley, the one I was talking about, the wing commander’s wife of what do they call it, squadron.
Other: [unclear]
JML: At Blida, somehow or other got in touch with us. The person who had put this advert on to me. Anyway, she and her husband and the one I just mentioned, Stanley were trying to find out who actually made the, made the drop. Anyway, we couldn’t find out because as we said it was top secret unless you knew the special names and that etcetera. But anyway they decided to go so Bob and I and Margaret plus Sally Ann and her husband and Stanley went to France to this village.
Other: Sigoyer, it was called.
JML: Sigoyer, that’s right love, you know. It was unbelievable. You’d thought we’d won the war, won the war on our own wouldn’t you. The way they looked after us.
Other: Yeah. They did very good.
JML: It was brilliant. That was three years ago now since we been there.
Other: Maybe more. Four now.
JML: Pardon?
Other: Maybe four.
JML: Maybe four. Yeah.
Other: They took us they took you to one of the canisters that had been dropped.
JML: Oh, aye. Definitely. Yeah.
Other: To the Resistance.
JML: Yeah. It was, it was a good trip was that. Yeah.
Other: The mayor of Gap and all the fire, firemen and all the services from the, from the town and the village. All came out and sang and they had a commemorative service.
JML: Took us in a truck. Another truck.
Other: [unclear]
JML: Another truck or what they called it, didn’t they? Up the mountain.
Other: Yeah.
JML: To where the actual drop was done.
Other: Yeah.
JML: Where the men used to hide. Yeah. It was very interesting.
BW: I bet you’d have rather been in the aircraft though than on the ground with the Resistance though, wouldn’t you?
JML: Oh. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. The, the girl that received the message, this, talking 1943 probably ‘43 maybe ’44. The BBC used to send messages out in code, and this woman who was the owner of the hotel, wasn’t she love? The daughter it was. My age now. But when she was, I think she was either fourteen, fifteen she picked the message up on the BBC that there was going to be a drop. It’s all in code you see. A certain a night, you know. So she was there, this lady. Told us all about it, didn’t she? Can’t remember what the code was. It doesn’t matter.
Other: I think it was something like the leg has fallen off the chair.
JML: Oh, that was it. Aye. It was code anyway.
Other: Something like that.
JML: Yeah. And it was ready for picking up or something like that. That was the code for that area.
Other: It’s a bit like something off, “Allo. Allo.”
JML: Yeah.
BW: Do you recall the lady’s name?
JML: Oh, no. No. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: So that’s, that would be a very unique experience to have met somebody who you dropped supplies to.
JML: Oh aye. I mean they took us in this four wheeled drive thing up the mountain as far as you could go. We had to walk the rest of the way and showed us exactly where the drop was made. And we were high up of course but in the valley below the mountain there were some caves and that’s where all the stuff was hidden away from the Germans. It was very interesting. Really interesting. Yeah.
BW: And they managed to survive in conditions like that?
JML: Yeah.
BW: Under occupation.
JML: Yeah. You’d have thought we won the war on our own the way they treated us. They were fantastic. Bob and Margaret still keep in touch with the school teacher. Get a card from her every now and again. Yeah. Oh, they really made a right good do of it.
BW: Brilliant.
JML: But the [pause] when we went to the France as a group, the special duties, they made a big song and dance about it. It was good. It was quite a [pause] there must have been about a dozen. A dozen or more went on the thing, but Brize Norton, the aerodrome, they supplied a guard of honour. Quite a, quite a guard of honour. And that was, that was well, the village itself were alright. They gave us all a medal of some description. I don’t know what it was. From the village. And we got the — what do you call it?
Other: Freedom of the town.
JML: Freedom of the town as well, you know. Gave us a medal for the freedom of the town. I’d like, I’d like to have gone back there as well but I’m getting too old for that sort of thing. Travelling. Old age catches up. Yeah.
BW: Right. As, I say that’s, that’s all the questions I have for you, Jim. So thank you very much again for your time.
JML: I’m sorry I couldn’t find —
BW: That’s alright.
JML: More of the stuff I thought I’d kept for you to see.
BW: That’s alright. Thank you.
[recording paused]
JML: And we just got on, we got on the river. And we just flew low following the river. We knew the river went into Warsaw after we’d made our way across [pause] what are the bloody mountains called? On the way in to Warsaw. After that it was very very, well, all hilly and that but somebody told us, one of the Warsaw blokes said, ‘Just get as low as you can on the river itself,’ which is the Vistula, ‘And that will take you right into the heart of Warsaw.’ So, well Laurie the pilot, as soon as we had crossed the mountains just put the nose down and got as low as he could and followed the river right into the heart of Warsaw. Yeah.
BW: So this was how you found the target?
JML: Yeah.
BW: I think, are they the Tatra Mountains because one of them, are they the Tatra Mountains in Poland. I think. But anyway, you come over the mountains, drop the nose, drop the aircraft down to presumably —
JML: River height.
BW: Fifty or a hundred or less.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And then after a certain distance because of course you’re following the river a little bit you see the outskirts of the town and you count the first of a series of bridges up the river.
JML: That was us. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Do you recall how many bridges? Was it three? Four?
JML: I think it was the third bridge but I’m not very sure you know. Yeah.
BW: Find the third bridge and turn left.
JML: And then that was the heart. That was the heart of the city. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: So, you, as the pilot was flying in obviously straight and level over the river he’s going to have to climb to make the turn over the, over the bridge. Otherwise he’s going to dip the wing into the river, isn’t he? So —
JML: Yeah. Well, what Lawrence did he, he knew what he had to do his job so what he did instead of dropping the parcels etcetera, etcetera, etcetera he didn’t. He carried on a bit further up the river because he knew where his target was. And when he turned around to drop the stuff in he knew then, what he told us about, he was on his way home. If he dropped the things on his way in it would have meant he would have to turn and then turn around and head for home. But Lawrence didn’t. He carried on, came back to the target area, flew over the target area, dropped what he had to do and he was on his way home then and I could, that’s what I said, I’m in, I’m in the rear turret as we were leaving and it was just a mass of flames. The city itself. I could just see it, you know. Yeah. But that’s what he did and that was, that was why we got away with it, you know because a lot of them got, when they got in got shot down unfortunately over the target area.
BW: So this is because the Germans or even the let’s say pro-German forces and possibly even the Russians knew which route the supply aircraft would come in.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And so Lawrie was avoiding that.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Flying further up the river.
JML: Just went straight on. Yeah.
BW: Made the turn over the city.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Instead of over the river.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And came straight over the target, made the drop and was straight out.
JML: On his way out.
BW: As opposed to having to turn over the target.
JML: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: That’s a smart move.
JML: It was a smart move. Definitely. Yeah. But there was a lot of politics involved in that part. The story goes that, well it’s in writing that Stalin wouldn’t allow the RAF planes to land in Russia. So whether that’s right or not I don’t know but that’s the story. That’s the story anyway and that’s why they lost so many bloody aircraft. Instead of being able to just go in, drop the bombs, turn into Russia and drop. Go on Margaret.
BW: And that was the profile you flew each time on those drops was instead of following the expected route you fly further up the river and make the turn later.
JML: That’s what Lawrence did, anyway. Yeah [pause] She’s off again. Aye.
BW: And even though it was at night you were able to see vividly the flames and flashes over the city.
JML: Terrible. Yeah. Yeah. Terrible. Well, we were flying that low, you know. I mean in Bomber Command you’re twenty thousand feet in the air. Fifteen thousand feet in the air. We were just above the drop. I think it was three hundred feet. I think it was. Either three hundred or four hundred feet and then we dropped the, dropped the stuff. Yeah.
BW: Right. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with James McKenzie Leith
Creator
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Brian Wright
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-01-12
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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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ALeithJM170112
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Pending review
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02:11:41 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
James McKenzie Leith was a swimming instructor before he joined the RAF. He trained as a gunner and was posted to 429 Squadron at RAF Leeming. On their first operation their aeroplane was damaged and they attempted an emergency landing but this was interrupted and they ditched in the sea. James deployed the dinghy and directed the crew to safety. He became a member of the Goldfish Club. His second pilot went on his second dickie trip and was killed in action. They got another new pilot and were deployed to 624 Squadron on Special Duties and then on 148 Squadron also on Special Duties dropping supplies and agents into occupied areas. When dropping supplies during the Warsaw Uprising James had a very close view of the burning city.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Algeria
Egypt
France
Great Britain
Italy
Poland
North Africa
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Algeria--Blida
Egypt--Cairo
England--Yorkshire
Italy--Brindisi
Poland--Warsaw
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1942
1943-11-27
1944
1945-08
1944-09
1945
148 Squadron
429 Squadron
624 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
ditching
Goldfish Club
Halifax
RAF Dishforth
RAF Leeming
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Stormy Down
Resistance
training
Warsaw airlift (4 August - 28 September 1944)
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/330/3490/ASolinD170220.1.mp3
72bf807187c9aefe4305a0b3bcca21db
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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Solin, Donald
D Solin
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Donald Solin (427265 Royal Australian Air Force)
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
2017-02-20
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Solin, D
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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JM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, the interviewer is Jean Macartney, the interviewee is Air Commodore Retired Donald Solin. The interview is taking place at Don’s home in Carrara, Queensland, on 20th February 2017, also present is Don’s friend Helena. Don let’s start at the beginning I believe you were born in Perth in 1924.
DS: Yes.
JM: Yes. And does that mean that you lived in Perth for your early years of?
DS: Until I was eighteen.
JM: Eighteen.
DS: And the day I turned eighteen I was conscripted of course into the RAF as everyone else was I think, and I ended up in well it was a crowd called, and there was a you know stopping, stopping the bombs, no bombs, you know. Anyway, er, we were tying explosives around bridges you know [unclear] that was our main watch that happened, concerns about the Japanese invasion and then we wouldn’t explode them, we would rush off somewhere and say yes they had exploded and after that we would go back untie them all again for tomorrow. Now that went on for several months and it didn’t appeal to me very much because I would always wanting to fly. So I pulled all the strings I knew which were not many, I had no one in particular to help me but anyway we made it finally. In the meantime being in the Air Force, er not very at there was an idea where we took twenty-one lessons prior to joining aircrew, and I started on a session of lessons, and for one way and another of course I then became switched over after a lot of trouble from the Army, and I then became an AC2.
JM: Right. Let’s just pause there for a moment.
DS: Yes.
JM: And go back before you were eighteen and you were conscripted, your schooling was in Perth so you —
DS: Ah t was all over the country.
JM: It was all over the country.
DS: Yes, all over Western Australia.
JM: What because your family were travelling or?
DS: Well mother had been, ‘cos she was a district nurse and she had been divorced for very good reason and there were two small children living with grandparents and I was one of those, been looked after very, very well, we lived in Donborough, and we had all the delights of being able to fish and swim every day, and go rabbit shooting, and fox hunting and god knows what, and it was all very good. So that was brilliant in-between until we got a bit older, not much doing, very little, so I had a lot of catch up to do of course as soon as we go on to these twenty-one lessons from the Air Force, and it introduced me to things like algebra, geometry, and trigonometry, which I hadn’t really done much more than hear about average schools don’t cover too much, I finished it but boys one year you can’t catch up too much, so anyway that was it.
JM: So that was like equivalent to an intermediate certificate?
DS: Yes I believe it was Union [?] University, Western Australia.
JM: Right.
DS: That was hard as I went back I was very good really but nonetheless so there was plenty of catch up work.
JM: And so you that would have been sixteen you finished sort of that schooling?
DS: Er, I finished schooling at fourteen.
JM: Fourteen.
DS: And left school then.
JM: At fourteen okay. So between fourteen and eighteen when you were conscripted what sort of things did you do?
DS: Nobody asked me that for a long time, but I, I got a job, any type of job all I wanted to do was to work and get a few dollars. Now I got a job with Harris [?] Centre the big hardware people in Western Australia and they were, they covered a whole lot of things and you could do everything from broom sweeping to filling bottles and I did all that, it was all right, l had a, they were a good crowd, very good. But that was it then that covered two years at least may be three out of the four, anyway and then —
JM: And was that in Perth?
DS: Yes, yes. And then I did something else for a pharmacist for some time until the day I was eighteen.
JM: And had your mother come back to Perth at this stage and you were living with her or were you had the grandparents moved in to?
DS: Yes she was back from er, I don’t know, I’ve forgotten. I think the last, her last country post was Greenwood [?] she was the matron at the hospital there, and I lived there for a while until the local [unclear] you can’t do that because the maternity ward is just so close to where you were sleeping and what’s going on there is not good for growing boys, something in that order so they said right oh well you’re out. So some very nice English lady who already had three children more than, more than she could manage was good enough to take me in. So that was it whilst we were in the country we were staying with this and finally we got together with mother in Perth for say about twelve months before the call up date.
JM: That’s call up, so you had your call up and sort of then from the time, well I think you did your initial training, in June 1942 at Clontarf, so that would make you twenty, a bit over twenty, about twenty and a half so then you were in the Army for about two years?
DS: Oh no, no, no.
JM: No, not that long?
DS: Probably.
JM: Right okay.
DS: I was only the Army for about three or four months.
JM: Oh okay, right.
DS: Not that that matters, and then we were in the course of doing these lessons from the Air Force the crowd that gave you lessons, I’ve forgotten, er but I’m not sure about the time but anyway —
JM: No, no, I think it was my actual, I’ve got an arrow in the wrong place I can see where I’ve made the mistake so that’s okay. So then you did your initial training at Clontarf and then did your pilot training —
DS: At Cunderdin
JM: Yes, that was when you were in to Tiger Moths.
DS: Yes we were on Tigers but then you did the solo bit.
JM: Yes.
DS: In time yes.
JM: So how long before you went solo?
DS: Six months, quarter hours I think it was something like that.
JM: And how was your experience first, of your first solo flight?
DS: Oh well, course all of you, you know, all of you are as proud as punch you can’t think of anything else really, er, but we were mostly very happy about that, but then it was only a matter of another weeks or a month or so we went off that job and of course on to —
JM: Avro Ansons? Ansons, Avro Ansons?
DS: Oh Ansons, yes, and of course they were very reliable you, you could make a dozen mistakes you know and they would still be in the air, but, er —
JM: Which was a little different to the Tiger Moth situation?
DS: Oh yes, oh well the Tigers you had do give them some respect because they were so gentle but really that’s about it the way you had to treat them and once you get used to that you’re right, gentle [unclear]. They used to say there was a saying, gentle treat them like a woman, and so that’s what we tried to do and that was successful. So we went on the job and that was another four months graduating [unclear] with hundreds and thousands of others, and then it was only a matter of days or may be weeks and we got the posting and of course the posting was to the UK. And well there was via Laporte.
JM: Freemantle.
DS: I went to Melbourne.
JM: So Freemantle to Melbourne.
DS: Melbourne.
JM: And then Melbourne to —
DS: Sydney by train.
JM: Oh okay right.
DS: And then there was an amalgamation of bodies and they got on, we went on The Matson Line.
JM: Right.
DS: The Matsonia [?]
JM: Right, so when would this have been?
DS: It was about the middle of ‘43.
JM: The middle of ’43.
DS: And, er, wended our way to the US and across the US, in the normal way, and then —
JM: Across to New York obviously.
DS: Yes, sometime in New York big camp [unclear] there, enormous place a small city in itself and then finally we got on a boat to England, that was the Queen Mary.
JM: Right the Mary, yes.
DS: All very nice that was the first of the [unclear] that could go unaccompanied by a whole of plethora of ships because they were fast, it was fast enough —
JM: To out speed the German U-Boats and all the rest of it?
DS: Subs.
JM: So did you land in Scotland, land in Scotland?
DS: Yes, yes, and finally ended up on the south coast.
JM: To Brighton?
DS: Brighton.
JM: Yes.
DS: Where there was a whole load of us and er, not much time there and then we were off to a whole load of different training, we’d go do this course, that course.
JM: You do your affiliation in a sort of is that where you first started flying Wellingtons?
DS: Er, Wellingtons was the first large aircraft yes, yes.
JM: So it was a conversion from your Avro Anson to your Wellingtons?
DS: The Wellingtons was the next. Did that, and it was a nice old aircraft really you know and of course it was the mainsail of Bomber Command early in the piece [unclear] you know a first class bomber. Always did stay as a bomber but of course less and less significance, anyway —
JM: And from that conversion course did you then get, is that when you were posted to 149?
DS: Oh no, no, no, oh crickey you can’t get away with that, there was half a dozen courses in-between, one on stars you know meteorology, another on beam landing systems, and another on some other, oh there was a whole load a plethora of reasons that we had to do another week here, or a week there, always in a tent it was winter, and anyway—
JM: In a tent did you say?
DS: Mostly in a tent somewhere?
JM: So you didn’t even have the Nissen hut?
DS: Oh yes, we lived in, we had our permanent time there, but when you’re posted off to a course somewhere you know you’re a week away from it.
JM: Right, so if this is approaching the end of ’43 you’re coming into the winter?
DS: Yes, I, I, I [unclear] a little bit because we had to have someone on patrol every night you know with the heater in the middle of the, of the unit you know there was thirty-six bodies I think in the, in the tin shed that we were in, but they were nice units but just made to put beds in after all, and we, but we had this fire in the middle and that was very useful, very useful. Anyway so it was only then a matter of getting another posting to another place and we then converted onto the next step up.
JM: Then the Halifaxes or Stirlings?
DS: Stirlings.
JM: Stirlings right.
DS: Stirling was the first four engine that we had and we loved it.
JM: How did you, what sort of differences would you feel you experienced between flying the Stirlings and the Wellingtons, anything stand out for you?
DS: Not really no.
JM: Only major difference is four engines versus two obviously —
DS: You just had to get your fingers over the fourth thing you know make sure that you had it covered, I remember having initial problems with it you know not my fingers but obviously it, it becomes easier, no trouble at all, so that was it amen, you finally get a post.
JM: Posting.
DS: A post, at we got ours at 149 Squadron, but, just out of London, north of London, and but ah her we go, we were quite happy to go, go off in a Stirling really but they had mainly Halifaxes and Lancasters there so, they’d only just getting the Lancs so what happened the first thing we did was oh you can’t fly that you’ve got to do a course first. In the usual way so we did our course on the Lancasters and about the last day or the second last day a posting came through from whoever does the postings in the UK to say your crowd, your crew 82 special duties.
JM: Right. Just before we go to that you by this time had a crew.
DS: Oh yes.
JM: So where did you crew up?
DS: Before we got in the four engine aircraft.
JM: So
DS: That was after the Stirling, after er, —
JM: At —
DS: After the Wellingtons.
JM: After the Wellingtons.
DS: After the Wellingtons yes, that was about crewing up time.
JM: That was crewing time. So who what sort of crew did you have, did you have a mixed, mixed crew then if it was 149?
DS: They were mixed.
JM: Oh no you weren’t actually on 149.
DS: We went into a, the expert way in which it’s done, your shoved into a room like so many cattle, and said, ‘Right everyone’s got to make their own crew, pick their own bodies, seven, seven each, and that’s it.’ Very scientific of course. So how much, how do you know who the hell unless you know people, and as a pilot you, you only learnt people’s names and friendships since you’d been on the course, so it’s the luck of the draw really right from day one. But of course that’s the whole of the Air Force then became Bomber Command is a story of the luck of the draw and if you’re really lucky you’ll be all right, [unclear] bad luck. So anyway we crewed up all Western Australians and that was my scientific method of ticking the box, a perverse, quite a perverse crowd, navigator for example who was subsequently killed in an accident we had in Italy, er, he was a great [unclear] of a person he was over twenty-eight most of us were still eighteen or —
JM: Twenty, I think you probably would have been about —
DS: Nineteen twenty.
JM: Nineteen twenty by this stage.
DS: So whatever it was, you weren’t all that old. Anyway you crew up and you ask what, what was the crew, I mean there was a bomb aimer from Sydney who had done nothing much but drift in his life but a nice guy, and then the wireless operator who, whose still alive we became you know real, real close, he’s the only member of the crew that’s still around other than myself, so and then we’d got an English engineer who had according to him had all kinds of experience in a Rolls Royce factory but in fact I think in practice had very little experience but a nice bloke but he was a womaniser and loved drinking, but you know all full crews had that I guess, [unclear] anyway that was it that was our crew.
JM: That was your crew. So you’re together you did your concluding together for Wellingtons sorry Stirlings and then you get the you’re about to start on Lancasters when your told you’re going off to, so you didn’t actually do any operations, do any ops?
DS: No less. No, I did no operations at all in England.
JM: In England right.
DS: As it happened at the time well it was something to do with someone who [unclear] because the timing was right it was just at the end of our conversion course. Obviously they didn’t want another crew although the squadron had have a number of losses but, er, and that was it. I would they made to go on oh you’re content for a week here, the posting [unclear] about a week second time down to somewhere in the South of England, we were then flying Stirlings and we had to press a button, right here we go it’s a brand new aircraft no hours on the clock. [unclear] you’ve got to give it every check possible, it’s yours, it’s yours if there’s any complaints feel free but give it now because it’s then yours, so we did just that.
JM: And this is a Stirling?
DS: Yes. Talk about it performing perfectly the whole time, we wouldn’t have given it back anyway so [laughs] there was no way, and that was the aircraft we took away with us.
JM: Right.
DS: Another week or so later they said, ‘Right you’re off to across Africa.’ We didn’t know you know we just got a posting that’s all, so we were posted to Radar Salem, North Africa [?] and we stopped there for the night and thought oh you know we’re on our way certain we were going to the Far East because they were very short, the Japs were getting the better part of the war there, so we reckoned we were on our way. But no it wasn’t that at all we got a posting to North Africa and another part of North Africa if you’d like to call it that, BNA, British North African Forces. And so we go to Algiers it was a place called Blida, big aircraft, a big Air Force base just outside of Algiers the capital, and they said, ‘Right oh you get this ops here.’ And we, we were in, we were actually posted to 624 Squadron that was our first post and we flew several on to [unclear], Africa South, but just across the Mediterranean from there. That was about the time there was a big upheaval when we, we lowered, took over, captured or freed up whatever, a lot of, held up ships, French, French warships, that were valuable to the allies but were being held up and put away the German fleet. Anyway so we thought oh we’re here for ages, but no we were there about four or five, six maybe six days, not sure, and a signal came through this time saying we’re going to the Far East, but no we’re going to Italy then.
JM: Right just before we get off to Italy, in those four, five, six trips, did you drop any bombs at all, were you just surveillance or what?
DS: All bodies.
JM: Sorry?
DS: We dropped bodies.
JM: Bodies right. Were they Special Forces or something?
DS: A whole lot of activity going on particularly in Southern France.
JM: So they were what Special Forces that you were dropping or?
DS: Oh yes, well we were in, of course still 624 Squadron was a part of the Special Forces, Special Bomber Command Forces. And then when we, we moved over to when we got the posting to Italy we found out that was Brindisi and that was Brindisi 148 Squadron which was still of course RAF, actually it was all RAF [unclear]. We had any, we had a mishap and [unclear], on take-off on one trip apart from that it was [unclear] aircraft.
JM: So how did you go with any particular damage to the airplane or?
DS: Well the aircraft was in pretty [unclear] shape I’m not too sure whether they could fix it up or not because we didn’t stay long enough to see what and you asked blokes about it, ‘Oh no, oh no, never heard of it.’ Anyway.
JM: So that was the most —
DS: That was the excitement.
JM: The excitement in those half a dozen or handful of trips, yep.
DS: Brindisi we got to.
JM: Got to Brindisi —
DS: Brindisi yes. We had, there was a Polish flight, really nice squadron on the other side of the airbase, we were on this side, whichever side you were looking at. They were operate, they operated absolutely separately from us and I have to say they were fearless, there were lots of days that we couldn’t fly because of the weather because of the distance, it didn’t worry the Poles they were always flying, and particularly a bit later on we had four trips towards Poland, er, we weren’t allowed to go fortuitously or otherwise a week or so before we got there, maybe it was that week, we were helping, we were trying to help the Poles, when the Russians were approaching and of course they had the German Panzer there, then they had the Russians coming that way. They appealed to every squadron everywhere, commanders in chief the lot, we want all the assistance we can get, anyway it was quite a game, half a dozen [unclear] as many as they had planes for about five hundred or more were lost over wasn’t over Warsaw but it was I would say the battle for Warsaw.
JM: But you weren’t on that particular mission?
DS: No, no, oh no fortunately, once again luck of the draw, and they said cancelled all, all, all those trips to Warsaw, Poland, but there were plenty of others till we [unclear]. We never ever had a prime aim or you’ve got to do this or you’ve got to do that. We just —
JM: Mission by mission basically.
DS: We were on call.
JM: Yes, yes, for whatever they decided they wanted to be the next target.
DS: One of the big thing was, or one of the big things if not the biggest, Tito of course was commander of the forces over the, over the war, and Tito was a very vigorous fighter, we weren’t too sure whether he, which side he was on but we were supposed to be helping him and each second or third crew were surprised you know we used to call it [unclear] with the Luftwaffe quite [unclear]. There were all kinds of things they introduced I remember a land mine in those days of course these things were about this round all big heavy —
JM: A couple of feet wide?
DS: Oh anyway all the holes in aircraft that you get in and out are square you see so we had to cut a big round hole to accommodate these, course we had —
JM: So these were the bombs that —
DS: Oh we didn’t drop them as bombs —
JM: You didn’t drop them —
DS: We dropped them as for TJ [?] forces when we dropped those kind of things, that was quite a frequent player because arms and ammunition actually were always short for on the other side. Mind you we didn’t know too much of what was going on, they very rarely opened up to say we’re going to do this, or you are going to do that, or you’re going somewhere, but you never ever well very rarely ever knew there was no fixed place. Mainly the trips at night when we were dropping bodies were in the dark and mostly on a hillside that was hard to find always of course, but that, that was all part of the, part of the act of course.
JM: And what, and you still had your initial crew?
DS: Oh yes, yes.
JM: That you’d crewed up with —
DS: Yeah we had —
JM: That would have been 14 —
DS: 148 —
JM: Stages there, so that crew had come through from all each of these different stages, you still had the same crew?
DS: And we were all together except the navigator who we lost on the, oh what trip it was but it was on 26th December ’44, would have been ’44 or ’43?
JM: Probably ’43 I’d say.
DS: No.
JM: No ’44.
DS: And we crashed, I should never have ever really, this is off the record of course, but I should never ever have going forward we lost an engine on take-off, so many times it’s easy to turn back your excused you know so it’s just to press on, this was an occasion I thought we’d press on you know the old story, press on regardless —
JM: And you were taking off from?
DS: Italy.
JM: From Brindisi?
DS: Brindisi. When we got to about the Slavic Coast, the north coast it became pretty evident our engines were overheating and the engineer said, ‘Oh we can’t go anymore.’ Because dropping stuff we have to go low and then you’ve gotta, so it got to the stage that we thought we’ve gotta go back, and we went back cut across to Italy and we looked for a nice soft landing spot of course and we picked a fairly good spot it was a grape growing place in, a place called San Pico [?] if I remember rightly, and unfortunately you, you don’t know the aircraft but the Halifax was, we were flying [unclear] the navigator used to be way beyond the front and you had to climb two flights of stairs to go up, and at, on that particular flight we were loaded to the hilt, there were extra clothes and food it was Christmas time you know, and er, he just couldn’t get up the stairs he had the certain navigation equipment that he should have done this with but struggling up to get the stairs and sooner or later of course you know he the props flew off, the right, the right hand motor had been what do you call it not seized up, but it had been cut off because —
JM: Feathered?
DS: It was propeller, it had been feathered [unclear] but it had been freewheeling there’s a word for it special [unclear] anyway. So as soon as the prop hit the ground the bits just flew off and fortunately the pilot was just about that far in front of where the props fly off so it missed you know who, but unfortunately the navigator was right in the road and it cocked him, so I don’t know what number trip it was but we, that was, we flew on for months after that you know borrowed a navigator. You’ll have to excuse me I’ve got to go to the toilet frequently.
JM: We’re just resuming now we’re picking up on December ’44, so where you had —
DS: We did a number of very interesting trips following that —
JM: Following that —
DS: The most interesting one was when we took four very brave characters to the Hitler’s retreat[?] up in the mountains, of course we came from Southern Italy just a bit to the left, our big concern, biggest concern in getting there and getting back there was, there was a squadron of Messerschmitt 362 had moved into somewhere near Trieste, and of course we had the option of our own of doing our own navigation you know we were well away from this crowd, so we dodged them without any trouble, then we had to find this virtually a torchlight, and I said, ‘oh no trouble.’ We’ll follow the mountains close to the mountain peak of course and they were all mountain peaks [laughs] heck of a place. So anyway we finally estimated what we reckoned what was right, confirmed by the blokes we were carrying because the method of identification was pretty raw really, but that’s the problem we were happy when they was off, snow and it was desolate you know but very close to his headquarters, we flew around a long time looking for the place but anyway we’d done what we were doing for months no too keen on that trip at all but anyway —
JM: And they dropped successfully?
DS: Oh yes, yes, the drop was. Unfortunately we never or very rare ever heard back from the blokes as whether it was successful or otherwise. But obviously some of the operations were captured before the blokes got to the ground, because the, they’d been the fellas down there had been captured by the Germans and they were using the signals you see, but you know that’s war and I guess happens all the time. Anyway so that took us up till about they declared armistice in Europe and then of course we thought well we’ll get a week have a little rest and peace and quiet, but the next important job was flying all the oddbods all over the place back to Europe, and of course that was a very joyful task, but we didn’t partake because the next day or the day after another signal came through all Australians have got to be returned they wanted everybody in a hurry so that was it, and then we boarded the first ship, or a number of aircraft ready we’d got over to Egypt and we were on the banks of the river there, The Nile, for months, months, and then the war finally ended whilst we were there, they dropped the big bomb —
JM: Hiroshima?
DS: Hiroshima, that was it, end of story.
JM: And when you were in Egypt there you were just —
DS: Doing nothing.
JM: Doing nothing just waiting?
DS: Waiting, waiting, waiting.
JM: Okay backtracking to Brindisi again, you obviously because it was such a long period of time a long posting do you have any recollection of how many ops you did altogether?
DS: We did forty.
JM: Forty ops?
DS: Forty trips yes.
JM: Okay from Brindisi?
DS: No, no all told, our log books recorded, I don’t have mine I lost it mine years and years ago, Rod Harrison said we logged forty trips.
JM: Right, right. A fair reasonable number would have been while you were at Brindisi?
DS: Oh yes, yes.
JM: So what sort of things did you do in your down time during ops?
DS: I’m afraid we probably drunk too much red wine but I’m ashamed to say, but there wasn’t too much to do —
JM: That’s the point —
DS: And you had to fill in the day and every now and again of course they did say the weather was so terrible, but the Poles can fly but you can’t, so we got four days off we’d say right we’re off to, the favourite place was Pollina[?] in Sicily but that wasn’t very far away from Mount Etna, a road goes through from Pollina [?] up to, to the mountain, and you know it’s a story really but we got hemmed in there was the biggest snow of all time there were hemmed in just as we’d kind of settled in ready to come back [unclear] very little time.
JM: So what you’d driven up —
DS: Oh no, no, oh you’d get to the, the accommodation was in Pollina [?] a little place by the coast and then you would scrounge your way up there was plenty of vehicles going all the time Italian vehicles, so we got up there without any trouble it was the getting back of course we had to have a quick lessons in skiing, and you know we were trying all the time to do a bit of this and of course falling off most of the time but—
JM: So where did you get the skis from?
DS: Oh they loaned us to, they said, ‘Right you’re quite welcome to them just hand them into whatever centre it was back in the Pollina [?]. So I think one or two of them were badly bruised but we didn’t break anything except didn’t break any bones really they were badly bruised, lucky because when you can’t steer properly you’re bound to hit a tree and things like that, anyway we were much better skiers at the end of the time because it was a hell of a long way from up top down to where the road, where the snow stopped, a long way, unbelievable.
JM: Did you have any sense of time, sort of was it four hours, five hours, or any sense of timing at all?
DS: Really lots of time.
JM: And how did you sort of navigate, how did you know where —
DS: Ah well you know but it’s —
JM: You followed the road I presume?
DS: Yes, well more tried to follow the road but you knew if the road was east to west you knew that it was basically east to west or whatever it was, so that was one of our special trips, mind you we did quite a number of others. I don’t think we ever told the story, we were going north, north to Naples but anyway that’s another the story, but we were particular keen about Malta [unclear] never done this, never done that, there was a thousand rogues and vagabonds there, every street corner was covered with them, and of course if you were stupid enough to be out after dark you were asking for trouble, anyway we, we probably had a few drinks one day or every day I guess, but we it was after dark and we were still out and of course we got the greatest lashing of all time the whole crew.
JM: The whole crew?
DS: No there were only five of us there I think five out of the seven, the two other were too smart to come with us but probably a good idea of what was going to go off, but anyway —
JM: So how did you get to Malta?
DS: Ah, that’s another story. We had a, I’ve forgot the name of the type of [unclear] kind of a major repair very close to us, they fixed all kinds of aircraft from all over the place, so if they had anything that was flyable that we thought we could, that I thought we could fly we flew, so we had this water repair and we could [unclear] there was supposed to be —
JM: Another type?
DS: Another type, yes, that’s right. And we just squeezed in should never have had quite that many but anyway I was, I thought I could fly this in and so we did, I got it down there but very glad to leave it to someone else to fly it back because I don’t think I could have done it again but, and there were all kinds of other trips we could do.
JM: So just going back to you flew, so you got this aircraft it —
DS: Yes. Borrowed it.
JM: Borrowed it, flew over to Malta, had a bit of a day or so in Malta and then you in the evening you copped a bashing, and how did you —
DS: Get home?
JM: Get home then?
DS: I’m not too sure but we finally made it, there were some reprimands of course [laughs] but fortunately it didn’t extend beyond that, mind you they wanted, they wanted crews to fly, so they couldn’t, they couldn’t kind of send us off and say right you can go somewhere, but that was, it wasn’t our biggest adventure really, but these are the things that you know, all the aircrew, or nearly all aircrew were up to it one way or the other.
JM: No that’s right and of course the difference being with you being over there in Brindisi was very different to squadrons back in the UK —
DS: Oh yes.
JM: When they had leave they could go to London or wherever it was, but as you say sort of very much almost left to your own devices at Brindisi.
DS: We were entirely, entirely. Eventually it was rare when well Rome particularly was always a magnet to go up and you know you had to have your photograph taken in —
JM: For the —
DS: In all the places that were old and historic and that was all good fun but —
JM: So how many times do you think you would have gone to Rome?
DS: Oh several, several times.
JM: Any particular incidents stand out then?
DS: No, no real nasty incidents, we were stuck on the road sometimes, all you could see were Indians, and you know you think —
JM: How did you get to Rome?
DS: Always vehicles going, coming and going all the time, sometimes took an aircraft halfway if it was down for servicing or going back again, there was always a you know, never really anything exciting happened other than the historical photographs outside this place and that place, and of course seeing it, ah that’s right I forgot to mention our, our historic visit was the day we visited Rome and we had a special trip, an invitation from one of the padres that were training, under training here and they were quite a few of them a good number of Australians’. And anyway so we had this invite, special invite, a couple of cartons of cigarettes you know to do all this, so but we did it, and we had this personal interview with the Pope and received his blessing.
JM: Goodness me.
DS: That was a, we thought it wasn’t a big deal, but everyone else thought it was a big deal after, but it was exciting, and you can remember things you try to have a good look and see the big ring on his finger all that.
JM: So that was what a ten minute —
DS: Oh that was, we had an audience —
JM: An audience?
DS: There was a great crowd out the and we sat out there, he had a thing like this right up at the front, and at that stage he used to stand, I’ve read about it since, he’s now down on the floor level for some reason they cut out this special groove, ‘cos they were all first to get the blessings if there’s any blessings left [unclear] they on the floor, but anyway that was you know so at the time, but otherwise it was all pretty average, pretty ordinary you know, all we wanted to do really was to get home, and but we then spent four at least four months over in Egypt waiting for a ship before we got home, that was the time the bomb was dropped, the big one. We got home as peaceful civilians you might say.
JM: And when you were flying did you have any lucky charms, or any of the crew have any lucky charms, or have any suspicions that you used to that they following that anyone followed, ‘cos some I know that having talked to a few other chaps that you know other chaps did have lucky charms, and did certain things in a certain routine that you know never varied, I mean obviously the usual checks and all the rest of it.
DS: We were a pretty ordinary crew really, a pretty ordinary crowd. One of our, well it wasn’t a problem but for social aspects all the rest of the crew were under twenty-one years of age and we had these two blokes were twenty-eight and they were quite elderly.
JM: By comparison yes.
DS: Yes, so that, that upset some of them, well it didn’t upset them but it, it was divisive in as much as they didn’t all want to come with us, but mostly we drank too much anyway, nearly all the time if we could get booze but you couldn’t get good beer anywhere.
JM: Not in Italy I wouldn’t have thought.
DS: So you just drank what there was.
JM: What there was?
DS: So to cut a long story short, mother was very pleased to see us get back, she was down at the ship there so [laughs]
JM: I’ll say. And I didn’t check before did you have any brothers or sisters?
DS: I had a sister who joined the Air Force about the same time as I did and she became a radio operator and they used to be stuck up in the bush up around Jordan [?] or out north from Jordan [?] in the bush there, where the [unclear] that was it she —
JM: No it’s just that so for your mum there was only the one that she had to worry about coming back, returning from overseas, yes.
DS: Yes.
JM: So that was in you came back and then you ultimately were discharged in February 1946, is that right?
DS: Yes, that would be.
JM: Is that right?
DS: Yes. Had a week or two after we got back not very long, anyway.
JM: And then what did you do for the next few years?
DS: Well, they were very, very busy years, because when I was in the desert waiting for the ship we bought a store at Mingenew[?], do you know west at all?
JM: Not really that area no.
DS: You’ve gotta know Mingenew relatively speaking, it’s not the most salubrious town around, a typical country town, wheat and sheep, but all the good properties all the nice houses are way up in the [unclear] not many around town except the pub and our store that was good whilst it was there. I was there for not long a year or so but it was everything was rationed you know, milk, you were around at that stage or were you?
JM: Not quite no.
DS: But everything was rationed, I mean cigarettes and booze were most wanted, hard to get but you know, you couldn’t buy extra milk or cream or butter, a whole range of stuff, it was very difficult to even think that we were like life could have been like that, but anyway that didn’t last for long. I trained to be a schoolteacher, quite stupidly, god knows how I got the thing in that you know, but anyway so we left the store round there and a fortune with it for an academic career. And we were going fine, I was I did the teacher’s course and it was only two years.
JM: At Perth? Was this at Perth?
DS: At Perth yes. Became a I forgot what they call it something psychological and so and so expert you know, I only had about five minutes of training on the course. Anyway that was, that was good until and I was gonna, oh mother was happy with that, she said, ‘You’ve got a job for life son you’ll never get the sack, oh there’s permanent holidays’. Anyway so I was busy teaching, I had because of my training you know I did ended up as a special class of kids, children, and some of them had an IQ as low as fifty-five and that’s a if you know IQ’s that’s getting down a bit, nice you know, lovely children and all that but you know I was happy to stay doing this every day of the week. Ah in the meantime I’ve bought another store [unclear] you’re good at this and I thought should be a supplies store, and my wife said oh I’ll look after the store through the day and we had a manager in as well, he used to drink all, a fair drop, it was hard to get of course, and everything was sailing along beautifully for the first several months but until one day two big burly strong fellas came in and they were from the union the teacher’s union, and of course they said, ‘Oh we understand that you’re not in the you know, you haven’t joined the teacher’s union.’ And I said, ‘No that would be right I haven’t.’ They said, ‘Oh you’ve got to join the union otherwise you can’t stay, you can’t be a teacher you’ve got to be in the union.’ And I said, ‘Well, you serious about that?’ So I said, ‘Okay well.’ That was a very big silence and there we are I went off to the headmaster and that finished that job. [laughs] So no more, no more academic career for me.
JM: What, what sort of years was this, this was about ’48, well you said you did about two years training so are we up to about —
DS: No, no, no, not two years training.
JM: Teacher training I thought you said.
DS: Oh yes, yes that’s right yes.
JM: So are we up to about ’49?
DS: Well, what, two years on top of what after the discharge, would have been about right, I needed another six months to get a leaving certificate as well.
JM: Right.
DS: To allow me to do it.
JM: Do the two years.
DS: So there’s two and a half years, busy years, between drinking and, and school work, there was no spare time, oh and of course I got married in the meantime.
JM: I was going to say you mentioned your wife there, so we, I was going to find out, fit that in as well, when you got married and how, when you met your wife?
DS: Well, we met in the usual way, before I left we were both in the surf club.
JM: Which surf club?
DS: City Beach.
JM: City Beach.
DS: City of Perth, and it was you know, things were very rough and ready out there, we had a, although we had a nice, nice big shed for dressing and undressing, and we had a nice big heavy surf boat, which, which it took about eighteen blokes to just get off the ground, but we had to walk across the sandy beach you know to get it back up to the surf club. Anyway, that was, that was the recreation side, but I met Julie used to come along with several other elderly sisters, two elderly sisters and another one or two girls, and you know in the usual way we got to talking, a bit of this, a bit of that, and we decided it mightn’t be a bad idea all the rest of ‘em had said they were getting married, doing this and doing that. So we said that would be a good idea, but not till we got, not till I got back from overseas. So we did just that, got back from overseas and a couple of months later I still hadn’t turned twenty-one so it was pretty quick but it was all fixed, and she was very good she looked after the shop while I was still teaching, and then she took over the ladies section up at, when I bought the big place up at Mingenew [?], and of course you know very handy to have a wife, who suffered the most. [laughs] Very handy. Anyway you know and then the Korean War hit.
JM: So then yes, so what you decided to give teaching away?
DS: I gave it away, I packed up
JM: Yes you gave it away after that —
DS: And it wasn’t short, no it was about that time I started to get letters from Air Force Headquarters, and so they, they decided that things were getting serious again and we were needed to re-arm and the Air Force of course had let everyone go, a lot had gone [unclear], so the first thing they wanted was old aircrew back particularly, oh of course we were still on the active reserves so wanted to see you back, so that took some months of wangling and selling my business and you know cleaning up. And then you don’t have a house to go to, Air Force then had very limited accommodation, so you had wherever you went you had to buy your own house and you know self-accommodate, so we did that of course, you just get by. And then of course they said all of you we’d like you to stay and they gave you, you get up as your old rank was flight officer. So you go back as that and then, I don’t know whether that’s when I got a new number was it? Perhaps it was 051723. Anyway, so that was it, it was just a nice long career in the Air Force.
JM: But well yes. So you were still based in Perth at that time?
DS: Oh yes, that lasted about five minutes.
JM: And from there?
DS: Melbourne.
JM: You moved to Melbourne yep. And that how long were you in Melbourne roughly?
DS: A very short time.
JM: A very short time.
DS: So then you, you needed experience of course.
JM: Because at this point you’re not flying?
DS: No.
JM: Your in —
DS: I was doing a bit of flying but there were too many old war time pilots that had gone back and they were very, very jealous of their careers and they didn’t want any extra crew around, so they said, ‘Oh you better do this, you better do that, become a teacher you’ve got the qualifications.’ So I said, ‘No, no, no I don’t want to do that.’ And I took the job as equipment officer and, I, all I know about it, all the girls used to hand stuff over the counter, when you wanted clothing and stuff you know, I thought that’s what the equipment officer, that’s what they do. So of course, it is what they do, it’s a very small part of it of course, so that was my view of it. So we did this there was really no appreciation of time you know you get [unclear] So we got, till we got up to Canberra, and of course once you’re there you’re stuck there, you know it doesn’t matter what you do or say or where you wanna go. Oh we had a couple of years in the States.
JM: Okay, what sort of, heading up a base or something?
DS: No, no, no, they didn’t want too many strangers, too much for them. There was the nicest, kindest people in the world as long as you didn’t cast any shadow on the mishap or the US generally, well no, no trouble, I mean we enjoyed the place it was all very nice. So we had two years ensconced to the Air Force base, and I was the chief missiles man quite a new sidewinder missiles they’ve still got some a very basic missile but very, very effective.
JM: So what you were looking after their —
DS: Well looking after our interests or trying to.
JM: Or trying to.
DS: Yes. And that was an Air Force base where they’ve got a lot of [unclear] and we they were kind enough to lend me a, an F100 which was very modern aircraft and the gentleman with me the pilot he’d got a flare for me you know and it worked, and we saw it work it was all good fun.
JM: So that would have been a very different flying experience to your Stirlings and your Lancasters?
DS: Oh yes, a world apart, world apart, but mind you Bomber Command was Bomber Command and they had nothing better anywhere, and the States never got, never got up to the bombing raids because they were, their aircraft weren’t specifically built for that particular job whereas our aircraft were, and they might have been clumsy to get around them because there was bits of stuff sitting out the floor here you know, but they were essentially for carrying bombs, the more they could fit on the better, and they did just that. Well —
JM: And, except when they were used for transferring all the at the end of the war, after the war had concluded and were transporting all the troops back from, from Europe back to England, of course then it was a fairly difficult exercise trying to get the chaps you know I believe they just packed in and sat on top of their parachutes.
DS: Well in some parts in others they only had a handful of blokes.
JM: So how many, you did a few of those —
DS: No, no, I was ensconced in Egypt by then.
JM: Yes, yes, in Egypt by then.
DS: But my friends, who one was a Kiwi, another a great Englishman, and we were in close contact with and they had some terribly exciting trips to all parts of Europe picking up two blokes here and three blokes there for different reasons why there were only two or three there, and of course there were other sad scenes too where they got a lot of others, but anyway that was and I, we weren’t there, I missed out on all that I’d have loved to have been there, but so endeth the —
JM: So then, we were just talking about that flight you know comparing that flight for you in that F100 —
DS: Oh yes, yes. F100.
JM: Compared to the experience in —
DS: Oh, chalk and cheese.
JM: Chalk and cheese, yes that’s right. Again that’s more or less the fighter pilot which again you know as we said, we’re talking specifically designed for bombers, for bombing raids.
DS: Yes.
JM: So that’s a major, major difference there and then. So what sort of roles did you ultimately do in Canberra?
DS: Oh well, briefly I’d have to say pen pushing, there was a lot of politicking and inter-action with the department you know the crowd that were close to defence and —
JM: Defence affairs?
DS: No, no, defence affairs, there were well I should, I should be able to spout it off but I can’t, anyway that, there was a lot of as we got sent on a course, lot of politics.
JM: Foreign affairs?
DS: No, Air Force Headquarters.
JM: Oh Air Force Headquarters.
DS: You know you always had to be a bit careful of which side of the camp you know, we got a very nasty senior civilian in the Department of Defence, he was the first of the Defence Ministers that was oh rough, and gruff and anti-services, so there used to be this constant battle all the time you know to get, to get to do this to do that, now of course many years later there well and truly integrated, were into their department as well as they’re are with us and hopefully things work differently now sometimes they do, but anyway that’s not for me to say. But I enjoyed it every minute, the last couple of years when I was Air Commodore the last year anyway when I was briefly in charge of our branch, er, I used to be at work at seven in the morning, half past seven, but purely there was a load of stuff to do always, always working, always behind, but I always had my dilly bag and maybe a carrier bag, I’m afraid I wasn’t not much of a nightlife at home because had to do the books, the Air Force books every night, anyway that’s another matter, but I enjoyed it anyhow.
JM: Which Air Force books were those, which Air Force books?
DS: Oh, the books, the books, er, well our own branch in particular because we had thousands of blokes in the branch, but you so far away from most of them you only know the names of all those that are up close and we did it, we had a an Air Vice Marshall who was actually senior to me and he was posted to Defence so it didn’t leave too many others round our way, but that didn’t matter, we enjoyed, I enjoyed life, and going to the mess and having a few grogs, but not half as many as I drank as a younger bloke, not half as many.
JM: No.
DS: So it got to be different anyway.
JM: Oh that’s right, that’s right. And of course as well I mean you were going home to your wife and all the rest of it so that’s a totally different situation.
DS: Yeah well we flew over from Perth with, er, we only had one child at that stage, and he’s since dead, died, what we did bring over was a big cattle dog, I’d been, one of the blokes had come back from the Kimberley’s and he was a drover and he bought it origin magnificent countryman good family, he said, ‘There.’ But cattle, on the cattle side I can speak for exactly [unclear] crossed with a dingo, but he said, ‘He’s a faithful animal.’ So we had this, I called it “Aspetari, Aspetari Peter” so that was his name [laughs] not quite an ordinary dog’s name.
JM: Not quite.
DS: My navigator we used to in the end we used to call him, the navigator that replaced poor old Fred, we used to call him Aspertari which is Italian for going slow, or a derivation of that anyway. Anyway so we brought our big dog over, he used to bite anyone he could, oh he was always heeling and very, very rarely would he break anyone’s skin, but I bought a lot of socks for people, he used to grab it and anchor it you see, grab a bit of sock with it, there all good stories.
JM: That’s right yeah.
DS: All good stories.
JM: So when you, so you retired in what?
DS: Ah, it would have been, it was either ’80, ‘4 or ‘6, or ‘8, it was one of those multiples, I’m gonna say the middle one about ’86.
JM: About ’86.
DS: Yes, it’s very close to that anyway. So I didn’t need to retire I could have they wanted someone to take over the support command and then post another bloke into my job, so I went home and told the bad news to Julie my wife and she said, ‘Oh love, I just don’t wanna move again, I, we’ve been from there, to there, to there.’ So then we bought three or four houses along the road, none of them very good but good enough to live in for the time being, and that we’d, she’d had enough and I wasn’t far behind so I didn’t take much convincing so I threw it in. But you know there comes a time for everything.
JM: That’s right. And did you stay in Canberra then?
DS: Oh no, the day, oh we left the house and oh we came straight up to the Gold Coast that’s right. I bought a block of flats pretty clapped out they were but all they needed was a little bit of —
JM: TLC?
DS: Oh perhaps a lot of TLC.
JM: Okay.
DS: But anyway, that was, the story is they were right next to the Grand Hotel, you don’t know the Grand?
JM: Not really, where, which part are we talking about?
DS: On the coast, on the Gold Coast, at Labrador.
JM: Labrador, right okay.
DS: There’s this much water between us and the ocean.
JM: Goodness me.
DS: The road up there, anyway, I didn’t, we didn’t realise at the time what an asset it was but of course I don’t know why you know you get the urge when you’re younger and for some reason you want to do something else. Anyway this crowd came up from I don’t know Canberra probably and offered a price and it meant I made a few dollars, and I was silly enough to sell it, mind you the wife had worked too hard there and I wasn’t too keen about that either but, and so, I was stupid enough then to buy I think we bought some more flats but they, they weren’t as good, oh anyway that’s another story. I bought two more blocks of in Main Beach and they did become very valuable, but by that time I’d gone, we had a house a very comfortable place but you know there you are.
JM: Yes, by this stage a few years had passed by —
DS: To get away from the Air Force too, you can’t go to any of the, we went to the reunions till they finally wore out.
JM: Yes.
DS: But there’s a limit, there weren’t that many bods around here, but —
JM: So in terms of then maintaining contact you said that your wireless operator is still alive?
DS: Oh yes.
JM: And what was his name?
DS: Rod Harrison.
JM: And whereabouts is Rod?
DS: He lives in, um, oh, it’s 19 —
JM: No just the, Queensland, New South Wales?
DS: Oh sorry he’s in Perth still.
JM: Oh he’s in Perth okay right.
DS: Yeah, when we were younger and fitter we used to visit each other of course, his wife died at the end of the century and my wife died nine years ago, so we’d been on our own, he was foolish enough to remarry at the age of eighty-four but you know that’s life.
JM: And what sort of contact, you said made reference to a couple of other chaps that you’ve spoken to, a Kiwi chap and another chap are they Bomber Command people were they?
DS: Yes the Kiwi blokes gone he was with us in 14, 148 Squadron, yes he died, and the other guy I can’t remember.
JM: Can’t remember that’s okay that’s fine.
DS: It was bad enough remembering, you know ’cos I’ve been in the RSL for years and years and years, but even there the old timers have all gone and I’m the eldest member there certainly the only ex Bomber Command, so nobody knows anything about it, nobody cares, that’s my how I get the message, and it wouldn’t matter if you walked in with the VC tomorrow it wouldn’t upset any of them. Anyway that’s enough.
JM: So that’s —
DS: I’ll come back to one or two reasons, the luck of the draw and if your just lucky, and postings come up and they protect you, I mean I was protected with going to a special unit, how you’re picked for it, God knows and he won’t tell us, so you can never find out, but these things just happen that’s it.
JM: And it was good, it was good for you too that you were able to take your whole crew with you at the same time which makes a big difference because having that core of people around you to come back to, and when you came back, I mean obviously as you say they’ve all passed away now bar Rod but did you keep in contact with the initial ones?
DS: Oh except our engineer, the old Englishman and even nice correspondence didn’t elect any, he was that kind of a character.
JM: He just didn’t want to maintain contact with you?
DS: No, but he was a happy-go-lucky engineer. So, but you know that’s life, I’m very fortunate to be around I suppose although there are many bloody days I think that’s a misfortune, one of them is that I’ve gotta go to the toilet all the time, and I’ve gotta go again.
JM: You’ve got to go again. Well, is there any other particular things at this point that you wanted to bring up?
DS: No.
JM: Well we’ve covered a tremendous amount of territory there Don and I very much appreciate your, your candidness and —
DS: Well nothing to hide, nothing to –
JM: No, no, no, just being able to sit and reminisce that’s so important and I’ll thank you for it. Thank you
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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ASolinD170220
Title
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Interview with Donald Solin
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
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eng
Format
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01:32:13 audio recording
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Pending review
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Jean Macartney
Date
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2017-02-20
Description
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Donald Solin grew up in Perth, Western Australia and worked in a store before joining the Air Force. He served in Europe and North Africa. and flew 40 operations as a pilot with 624 Squadron, a special duties squadron dropping supplies and agents into occupied Europe. He was demobilised in 1946 with the rank of Flying Officer. He rejoined the Royal Australian Air Force during the Korean War and eventually retired with the rank of Air Commodore.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Algeria
Australia
Italy
Italy--Brindisi
Italy--Mount Etna
North Africa
Contributor
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Jackie Simpson
148 Squadron
149 Squadron
624 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
crash
crewing up
Halifax
love and romance
pilot
Special Operations Executive
Stirling
Tiger Moth
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/310/3467/PNoyeR1501.2.jpg
2653db561dc3c7ee26ea68bcaca8b1ef
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/310/3467/ANoyeR151022.1.mp3
be6dc302b639364c57f551e47bc43bba
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
Noye, Rupert
Rupert Newstead Noye
Rupert N Noye
Rupert Noye
R N Noye
R Noye
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history with Rupert Newstead Noye DFC (1923 -2021, 1332761 Royal Air Force).
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-22
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Noye, R
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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RN: My name is Rupert Noye. I was born in February 1923. When the war started I was, er, sixteen and in 1940, when Churchill formed the LDV, I volunteered for that. We were renamed later Home Guard and it came in useful when I eventually went into the Air Force because we had learned a lot of rifle drill, marching, things like that. And in, after just a few days after my eighteenth birthday I volunteered for the Air Force as a wireless operator air gunner. I was accepted in April ‘41 but then put on deferred service and eventually called up in September ‘41 and, er, went to Blackpool on a s— a radio course, failed it miserably and re-mustered to air gunner. We were posted to Hendon then and at Hendon for about six months and then I was posted onto Scotland to take the gunnery course. After gunnery course we did OTU on Whitleys at Abingdon. When that course was finished we were posted to St [unclear] attached to Coastal Command, where we were doing sweeps over the Atlantic and the Bay of Biscay, and one day we did actually see a submarine and attacked it but we never knew of any definite result. After that we were posted on to Wellingtons, went to Harwell to convert from Whitleys, and we were then to posted 166 Squadron at Kirmington and our pilot disappeared one day and we had another pilot, an Australian, starting his second tour. He was very, very good and, er, we finished our first tour at Kirmington when they converted to Lancasters in September ‘43 and I was posted to Operational Training Unit as an instructor. I was recalled in April ’44 to 12 Squadron at Wickenby to replace a rear gunner who had been injured and they, the crew, had already volunteered to join the Pathfinder Force so I went along with them. We went to Upwood and started operating with Pathfinder Force. You had to do so many marker trips before you got your Pathfinder badge and, er, but due to an incident of — we, the crew was broken up. I stayed at Upwood as a spare gunner and during that time I flew with quite a few different pilots and eventually finished up, er, in about September ‘44 with, er, Tony Hiscock. He was what we called a blind marker. He bombed on radar or dropped the flares on radar and we did quite a few, well we did about nineteen trips together, and the last one was over Hamburg, a big daylight raid just before the end of the — 31st March actually, 1945. After that we were all made redundant, went to various stations and different jobs and I volunteered to stay in the Air Force for another three years and eventually was posted back to Upwood on 148 squadron, again on Lancasters, and I stayed there until I was demobbed in 1949. That’s about it. I was very lucky during my time in Bomber Command. I did three tours of ops and was only once was attacked by a fighter. That was on the 5th of January 1945. We were coming back from Hanover and I saw [bell rings] a fighter, a single engine fighter, approaching from starboard side. I told the skipper and he started to corkscrew but the aircraft did fire at us and we were damaged in the tailplane and the wing. The damage to the wing disabled my turret completely because of the hydraulics were damaged and the — but there was no real serious damage. We got back to base quite happily but we did lose about three hundred-odd gallons of petrol. Then in March ‘45 I was again rather lucky and I was awarded the DFC and Tony Hiscock, the pilot I flew with, he was awarded a bar to his and, er, he was a very good pilot and we got on very well together as a crew, which was one of the biggest things you needed, to be a happy crew. I think that’s about enough. When you flew with Bomber Command you were in a crew and the crew — you were trained as crew and you got, generally speaking, you got on very well together and at times, er, when me as a rear gunner would have given instructions to the pilot, having seen possibly an enemy aircraft, instruct the pilot to dive or corkscrew and he would do that without any hesitatation, although I must say we were — that I was lucky in my time that we didn’t have many times when that was necessary but the crew, the crewing up system was a bit haphazard. When you reported to OTU you were all at one time, a varying number of pilots, wireless operators, navigators, bomb aimers and gunners were put in a big hangar or big room and told to crew up, which seemed very haphazard, but the system seemed to work. Later on, if you went on heavies as a crew, you went to a Heavy, Heavy Conversion Unit and got a mid-upper gunner and a flight engineer and, er, I never had that because as I joined from a place of rest to a place as a rear gunner. I think that’s about it. We got up to about to, er, on our training and we went into these Defiants and the — firstly you couldn’t, not allowed to work the turret until the pilot says so, and so he said, ‘OK.’ So, I turned the turret round and you have to raise the guns first, turn round and looked at the tailplane and there’s this little tiny tailplane behind you and you think, ‘That’s all that’s holding us up.’ [slight laugh] But it wasn’t, we had wings built the right way round and a good engine [slight laugh] but it was funny really because I mean that was the first time the vast majority of us had ever flown when we were on training because, I mean, you didn’t fly much in those days unless you paid five bob ride with Jack Cobham when he came round to a local airfield and you could go and have a short trip for five bob or seven and six or something. Alan Cobham that was. He started off doing refuelling in mid-air didn’t he, er, down in Dorset? But funny ‘cause when we were at Blackpool we went to the Pleasure Gardens there had they had what they used to call in those days the scenic railway and got on this thing and then down in almost vertical swoops and up the other side. And I think that was designed to put you off flying. [laugh]
MJ: Did it?
RN: It didn’t. No, Not really. Not when you got on a bit on bigger aircraft with the rest of the crew, you were alight, you were quite happy because you couldn’t do much with a Whitley [slight laugh]. It was quite good fun.
MJ: People don’t realise it was good fun.
RN: Well, it was as you steadily, as you, after you crewed up and got steadily got to know a bit more about the rest of the crew because, er, that pilot we lost when we got on the squadron because I think he went LMF. And — but he was married and had a young daughter. He was a Welshman and later on the wireless operator went LMF. There must have been something wrong with us because the navigator and the bomb aimer and myself finished the tour eventually on, on Wellingtons. But we had a nice picture of the Queen, didn’t we, for our 60th wedding anniversary? And I must get a frame for that. Put it up. But it’s a nice picture.
MJ: That’s the point. It’s — that’s how it works. That’s how you remember things.
RN: On Pathfinders, um, they were all volunteers from various squadrons but we used to have talks on the squadrons from, er, Hamish Mahaddie who was one of Don Bennett’s leading men and he used to come round trying to talk people into joining PFF and, um, he must have been very successful because they were never short of volunteers.
MJ: Did — what sort of training did you have to do for that?
RN: Well, when we went to PFF you went to Warboys because Warboys was the Navigation Training Unit for Pathfinders and you went there and you did so much, about a week or ten days’ course there, training, mainly training for navigators and then you were sent to the squadron and did the ops and marking as the time came [background noises]. You didn’t mark straight away because you were, weren’t considered experienced enough or trained up to the, the standard that they wanted.
MJ: Did you have to go with another crew then?
RN: No, you had instructor pilots that went with you mainly but, of course, all the navigators’ logs were sort of checked by the navigation officers after you came back from every trip whether it was training or an actual operation. [background noises throughout sentence]
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command I’d like to thank Rupert Noye DFC for his recording on the date of — I forget what it is now, 26th? 27th, ah —
RN: 31st is Saturday.
MJ: I’ve got — I’ll see this is on and stays on. 27th of October 2015. Once again, I thank you again and even though I got the date wrong. Thank you.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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ANoyeR151022
Title
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Interview with Rupert Noye
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.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:12:40 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending OH summary
Creator
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Mick Jeffery
Date
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2015-10-22
Description
An account of the resource
Rupert Noye completed two tours of operations as a rear gunner with 166 and 156 Squadrons.
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
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
Contributor
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Christine Kavanagh
12 Squadron
148 Squadron
156 Squadron
166 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
civil defence
crewing up
Defiant
Distinguished Flying Cross
Home Guard
Lancaster
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Abingdon
RAF Harwell
RAF Hendon
RAF Kirmington
RAF Upwood
RAF Warboys
RAF Wickenby
submarine
training
Wellington
Whitley