1
25
5
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1186/11758/PWatsonC1704.1.jpg
cf1ce61de2dfa140b6b4109391b34f14
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1186/11758/AWatsonC170628.2.mp3
f97648ac89c80e5091c56c9c1787f1e1
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
Watson, Clifford
C Watson
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. Two oral history interviews with Flying Officer Clifford Watson DFC (1922 - 2018, 1384956, 188489 Royal Air Force), a memoir, his service and release book, and a scrapbook containing photographs and documents. He flew operations as an air gunner with 150 and 227 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Clifford Watson and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-06-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Watson, C
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 28th of June 2017 and I am with Clifford Watson at Fenstanton near Huntingdon to talk about his life and times in the RAF. So, what were your first recollections of life, Cliff?
CW: I was born in Barnoldswick, 1922 about three years after my father returned from the war, he opened a radio shop and was building radios and he was getting kits of radios from Pye in Cambridge and I went to the local infant school which was about fifty yards away from the shop. Two years later, my sister joined me there, that’s about the age of ten, my family moved to Keighley in Yorkshire, my father was engineer and manager of the radio relay system. Three years later we moved to Norwich where he established another radio relay firm rather, few years there we moved to London. Went to school at the age of ten, I was at the local elementary school in Norwich. At the age of thirteen, I went to the Norwich junior technical school and two years later to Unthank college in Norwich which a very different curriculum. I hated English literature there but I got a credit in the school’s certificate, by reading, another book overnight and I took the exam with a different book from the one I’ve been studying, I’d read it overnight and I got a credit. When I left the college at sixteen, I was, I was then, what’s the word? I was then with a firm of accountants in St Paul’s Churchyard and when I used to look out, yes, the war had just started and I used to look out through the window into that churchyard, there were a number of graves there and on one of them there was a double cross and it said neath this SOD, is another SOD, Adolf Hitler, it didn’t actually say SOD of course, it said it, yes, well, then the Blitz started and the family firm was in real trouble cause all the engineers had been called up, well, most of them, so I abandoned accountancy and went and helped the family firm in Battersea, I’d been there just a few months when four ladies came for a job, one of whom was a lady of eighteen and Hilda became my future wife, right from now.
CB: I stop, I stop for a minute. Just going back from your school days, what were the things you excelled at there?
CW: Well, at the elementary school, the age of thirteen, I wanted to get to the Norwich junior Tech but I needed recommendation for that, I had to do something and show that I was capable. My father got me a kit of parts for a radio, agreed it was a simple radio, it was from a [unclear] by Telecom, [unclear], I built the radio and gave a talk on it, demonstrating the thing working and I drew the circuit on the blackboard as I went along, told them how it worked, and that secured me a recommendation for the tech but there of course it was all physics, chemistry, mechanics and so on and two years there onto Unthank college, very different, I had, I carried on with tuition, with tuition in chemistry, physics I enjoyed, maths I enjoyed and all went well, that gave me five credits which gave me access to training as an accountant.
CB: Ok. You were talking a bit earlier about the shortage of engineers because they’ve been called up, so, your father tried to engage ladies, how did that go?
CW: Well, my father at that time was in Abyssinia and there was a manager there with little technical knowledge and instead of being a foreman with about six wiremen, there was me and four fourteen year old schoolboys and we were working on overhead lines, I was working about fifteen hours a day, I was earning, yes, fifty shillings a, yes, fifty shillings a week, at the end of the Blitz, well, almost the end of the Blitz, I’d had enough, and I thought the manager was, oh, I, one evening I was, I filled in my paperwork for the day, I put it in the secretary’s tray and there was an official looking document with my name on it and the manager was trying to, it was case it was the Ministry of Labour to get Clifford Watson exempt from callup. And I was furious, I tore the thing up, the next day, instead of going to work in overalls, I went in my best suit, well, my one and only suit and that’s when I went up town [unclear] made a beeline first for the Fleet Air Arm and things worked from there.
CB: So, when you went to, when you tried for the Fleet Air Arm, what happened? You went to the recruiting office.
CW: Well, I couldn’t get further than the door at the Fleet Air Arm.
CB: What did the man say?
CW: Can I help you, lad? That’s when I put on my Yorkshire accent [laughs] which wasn’t difficult at the time. The following, about a week later, I went to industrial house and there was very young [unclear] there, there’s a fairly big hall, half a dozen doors, each leading into a fairly small office and in each place there was I think five Lieutenant and a sergeant, when I went in, we were given a form which I filled in and I was given a card with a number on it and it was the number above the door or two numbers in fact, the doors were numbered and there was another number, when that number comes up on that [unclear] or those two numbers come up, you go through that door and I was interviewed by the officer and the sergeant and they said, this is a very, very preliminary interview, just want to give you some idea of how things go, and they asked a few questions: What did your father do? What do you do? Why do you want to join the RAF? And so on. Ok, there was an interview, there were about fifty people waiting and it was very pleasant, very pleasant too, they said, alright, we wish you luck, and you should hear from us within a few weeks. So I went back home, letter came, report to some place near Euston and I went there, we had three one-hour written papers and then an interview and a medical. At the interview I remember two questions, one was, which is colder, minus 40 Fahrenheit or minus 40 Centigrade? I pretended to work it out, I said, same thing, same temperature, well, I knew the answer, I didn’t need to work it out, but I pretended to do. Right, he said you’re, you know, in a flimsy belt, you’re half a mile offshore, a breeze is trying to take you, what was it [unclear] get it right, the breeze is trying to take you inshore, the tide is taking you out of shore, so in practice you stay put, you’re infested with alligators, all sorts of, animals in the sea but you’ve got to get ashore, what do you do? I said, I think the answer you want is that I lower the boat in the sea, increase the tide, the effect of the tide and reduce the windage, I think that’s your answer but I don’t like it and he laughed, yeah, he did laugh, he said, quite right. That was the two questions. [laughs] After that, that was about the interview, we already had the three written papers and there was nothing there particularly tricky and then there was a medical, half a dozen or so medical people, we went to each one and everything seemed alright, said, right, good show, we’ll let you know and I had a letter, a few weeks later, telling me to where to report but before I reported, I was to see a dentist for one filling and, two fillings and one extinct
CB: extraction
CW: One extraction. I did that and two fillings and one extraction at a cost of three shillings. Imagine today. Anyhow, I don’t question. And that was it. Eventually I was told where to report, meanwhile two other chaps locally had found that I was joining, I joined the RAF, so had they and the three of us got together and we travelled to Newquay together and in fact to Rhodesia together but years later, the one, the first one became captain of a Stirling and disappeared on his first trip. The other one, like me, came off the pilot’s course, I nearly said failed but I don’t agree with that term, I came off the pilot’s course with the other fellow and then carried on. He became a rear-gunner of a Stirling and they were shot up on all three trips which he did, different crew each time, first trip he ditched in the sea, two, he plus two survived, second trip they had to bail out, he and one other survived, third trip, they landed tail heavy, the turret came adrift with him in it, the aircraft bounced, blew up, killing everyone on board and Tommy woke up in hospital, that was there, carry on. [unclear] Whilst in Rhodesia, we were seven weeks at sea getting to Rhodesia, oh, getting to Durban and in Durban we had no money, we’d handed all the English currency in and they were to exchange it for local currency when we got to were [unclear] we were going and on the main track in Durban with no money and outside a Barclay’s bank was a rotary insignature, insignia and it said, Durban welcomes local visiting Rotarians, well, I wasn’t a Rotarian but my father was, I went in, could I see the manager please? I had an introduction card from Battersea Rotary. Let’s see the manager, please, well, the three of us walked in, saw the manager and I said, I’d like to borrow a couple of quid and send it back to you when we get to wherever it is we’re going. He reached into a drawer and gave each of us an envelope with the equivalent of ten pounds in each, he said, that with a compliment to a Rotary, don’t try to send it back, he said, you’re in Africa now, that was it.
CB: We’ll stop there just for a moment. Just quickly before we go on to your, more details of your flying training, Clifford, you mentioned the fact that you were interested in joining the Navy, as Fleet Air Arms, so-
CW: The reason, the reason I went to the Navy was the first one, all I wanted to do was fly and Fleet Air Arm needs pilots, it said, and as you’d heard, I got no further than the door, Fleet Air Arm pilots don’t work, that’s it, and I did, and that was the end of my naval experience. All I wanted to do was fly, that’s all, fighter pilot of course, but that didn’t matter, if anybody had said you prefer bombers or fighters, we’d seen plenty of fighters, it would have been fighters.
CB: There was a glamour in being a fighter pilot
CW: Mh?
CB: There was a glamour in being a fighter pilot at that time.
CW: Oh, everybody, all the boys wanted to be
CB: But, after being rejected
CW: Well, having seen bombers going down in flames and fighters getting away with it, fine, naturally they wanted to be fighter pilots
CB: Yeah. So, the effect of the rejection of the navy man, made you do what?
CW: So, the?
CB: The effect of talking with the man from the navy, that, what was the effect of that on you? You went home and then what?
CW: It didn’t worry me, except that I had this ridge across my nose, and I thought there’s no point in going into the RAF medical with a ridge on my nose
CB: From your glasses
CW: But, from the, yes, from the bridge as, but that disappeared, was only just a mark, so I left my glasses off and it made no difference, I passed the medical alright, in fact, quite often during the war I did wear glasses and I wore them flying in place of the goggles. The goggles were there but didn’t really need them, cause I did wear glasses, I remember a briefing one day and I put the glasses on and one of the officers was looking at that [laughs], a rear gunner wearing glasses? Oh, dear me! They made no difference,
CB: Just going to your experience in Rhodesia, so you did pilot training, how many hours did you do?
CW: Oh, I did eight hours flying with five different instructors and then, in six weeks, and a day or two before the end of six weeks, I got in a further three hours with a sergeant pilot who claimed to have been a Hurricane pilot in North Africa which we didn’t believe, so at eleven hours they were still, let’s get it right, yes, after six weeks, out of the course of fifty, there were still thirty on the course, only fifteen of whom had gone solo and I was one of the other fifteen who hadn’t and that fifteen had to see a fly test and everybody was scrubbed, everyone failed. Well, of that fifteen, twelve of us notified a grievance, we went through the grievance procedure, why had we failed? Why had I failed? And the CO pretended to look up his notebook, Watson you failed on two counts, a, you did wheel landings instead of three pointers, secondly you took off and climbed at half throttle. Well, I said, firstly, I landed exactly as I was instructed and secondly, if it took off and climbed at half throttle, I prefer a miracle and we could all do with one of them, I spoke twice out there, I remember and that was it, there was no appeal, everybody was taken off for some silly reason. A year later, Wing Commander Powell, Speedy Powell, who was in charge of all flying training became our group captain in North Africa and I was about to tell him it was a scam when he told me, he said, no, you didn’t fail, he said, they were just not in a SFTS, he says, to cope with the numbers from EFTS and there were hundreds of you waiting after EFTS to go to SFTS, so they established an air gunner training school and observer training school at Moffat near Gwelo. We were given the option of an observer course and they said, there’ll be a little, there could be a delay in getting on to the observer course, maybe a week or two delay, well, we’d already met people the previous night who’d been there for six months waiting for the thing, so they were not, they were dishonest, there was only one thing to do, and that was re-muster to air gunner and we, there were forty five of us on the course, there’s a picture of that with all those chaps in there.
CB: So, you became an air gunner
CW: Yes, it was an, I think it was an eight weeks course
CB: And where was that held?
CW: That was at Gwelo, aerodrome was called Moffat, at Gwelo near Marandellas in Rhodesia, I spent quite a lot of time on the farm at Marandellas, where there was a little girl called Wendy and I remember repairing a puncture on her bicycle, we had to do something in return for the hospitality. Everybody seemed to pass the air gunner course, I won’t comment too much on that [laughs]
CB: So, did you get your brevet at the end of that course or did you get it later?
CW: Oh, at the end of the course
CB: Then what?
CW: Yes, the two instructors there, they weren’t even qualified air gunners [laughs], I should delete that,
CB: What did you do the training on for air gunnery?
CW: They were Anson aircraft and Anson aircraft, yes, and there was a scarf ring with a Vickers gas operated guns and the only firing we did was on the beam at a drill [unclear] by a Miles Magister, Miles Master, which was, she was
CB: So, how did you get on with it?
CW: Oh, it’s rather, on the way back, we came via Cape Town and whilst we were in the transit camp the three of us went to, went to, oh my Gosh, I can’t recall the name, Muizenberg yes, we were in the beach in Muizenberg and a lady came to us about ten o’clock, she said, look, chaps, what are you doing for lunch? So, well, we’re not [laughs] see that big house over there? Come and see me there half past eleven, come and have lunch with us and we did, at the door ask for Mrs Macbeth. Ask for Mrs Macbeth, right, we duly went to the door and I asked for Mrs Shakespeare [laughs] Many, many years later I was on the [unclear] talking to an amateur in South Africa, I told him where I was and he said he was in Muizenberg and I said, I remember Muizenberg and I told him about that, he said, that place is now a guest house and that’s where I stay and that’s where I’m speaking from, not only that, but he said, whereabouts are you in Mbeya? And I told him, and I said, I’m in what’s the boys quarters at the back of the transferring station in the back of the cottage there in the boys quarters and he said, have a look through the, can you see the back door of the cottage? And I bent down, Yes, yeah, he said, is there a hole in the door, about a foot off the floor, in the middle? Yeah. He said, if you’d been down and looked through that hole, you’ll see a mark on the wall back, there’s a passageway, a mark on the wall. Have a look and I did, and it’d been, it had been plastered over, he said, that’s where my gun went off when I was careless, he was stationed there during the war. And, now, there were two coincidences, million to one, millions to one, infinitely to one, he was told about Mrs Shakespeare and we’d, he’d sat in the same seat during the war. Amazing. [unclear], Rhodesia was a wonderful place.
CB: And the local families, when you had time off, when you had time off from training, what did the local families do?
CW: Oh, on the farm? Oh, they were farmers, we tried to help out on farm, I did a bit of wiring whilst I was there, a lot of wires on pylons and they were in a bit of a state and I did a bit of tidying up there, I remember that
CB: Did they feed you?
CW: Oh yes, yes, was wonderful, Marandellas, that was. Yes, we were entertained quite royally in Rhodesia.
CB: So, we were talking about your holding point at Cape Town when that, what happened there? From Cape Town what happened?
CW: Well, from Cape Town we got on the boat and came back. It was a passenger liner, we’d gone out to Durban in the Mooltan, that was a cargo ship and we were down in, on the bottom deck, about three decks below, coming back we were on the Empress of Bermuda and there were people on it from the Middle East and quite a few Italian prisoners and we came back straight ten days, straight line ten days, the U-boats didn’t stand a chance, going out we had a terrific escort and must have been a dozen ships in that convoy, a dozen navy ships, coming back we were on our own and in a straight line [laughs]
CB: Cause it was fast
CW: It was fast, yes
CB: So, where did you dock?
CW: Where did we dock? Yes, Greenock, came back to Greenock, we had to carry our own kit bag, get our kit bag off the ship, we had full pack, a suitcase, and in fact we had two kit bags and we had to hang them over, one was for the flying kit, which was exactly as it was when we left, we didn’t even open the stuff, we didn’t need it in Rhodesia
CB: Because of the warmth.
CW: Mh?
CB: Because it was so warm.
CW: Yeah. We were and we lined up on the dock with all our kit and our red cap came along and recalled us to attention, right turn, double march, we just stood there with mouths open, double march, with all that clobber? there were no trollies, anything like that, we had to walk. I think we went straight to a train, I think the train is coming to the dock, I’ve got that picture, got on the train and we went back to West Kirby on the wirral. And that was it. From there, train down to Brighton and from, actually managed my pay book said I was, air gunner UT wireless op, which is what I said I wanted to do and he said, well, you can have the wireless op course if you wish, but it means going back to where they say, and you lose your tapes and you go back to where they say, forget that, he said, apply for another pilot’s course when you’ve done a couple of tours. Yes, oh yes, we were at Brighton, I was at Brighton for three weeks in a hotel, we would go in one direction, couple of miles and we’d have a lecture, then a few miles more and do a bit of swimming and that sort of thing, somewhere else do a bit of drill, bit of PT here there, just filling in time which all we wanted to do was get on. [pause] and we were posted straight to OTUs and I went to Finningley near Doncaster and that’s when I skivved off for Christmas and went to see my mother and got caught up in the time, was called out. Doncaster, there was an ENSA concert whilst we were there and the posters gave the impression that it was a real variety concert and they made it very clear, once you are in, you stay in, you don’t come out [unclear], you stay in, watch it, ok, it wasn’t a variety concert, it was an orchestra playing there, all playing classical music which was not really our kettle of fish. The only other ENSA concert I saw was at Kairouan when the Queen Mary came up, you know, the flat top thing, the Queen Mary came and there was a double grand piano on the back and a trailer where the pianist lived, it was Rawicz and Landauer and that was very good, I just sat there on my notebooks watching the, this on the piano and that was a real, they played stuff which appealed to us.
CB: Just to clarify the point, the Queen Mary is an aircraft recovery trailer.
CW: Yes, it was a big flat top carrying anything, tanks, aircraft
CB: So, you appreciated the music
CW: Yes, yes, it was good, was very good, but they were the only two ENSA concerts I saw
CB: So how long were you at the OTU?
CW: That’s a good point, about three months
CB: And you, what were you flying there?
CW: That was Wimpeys. Some Wimpey 1 Cs and then Wimpy 3s, mostly 3s.
CB: And from there where did you go?
CW: I gotta think.
CB: So, after the OTU you went to an HCU.
CW: No, no, we were on Wimpys. From 25 OTU Finningley we went to 30 OU, 30 OTU at Hickson, in Stafford and there we did more cross countries and whilst there we did three trips to France and then we were, then we joined, we went from there, we were there about three months, we went to 150 Squadron at Snaith. We didn’t do any flying from Snaith, one flight from Snaith was being detached overseas, they didn’t say where, we went to, one flight has to go, to go overseas, the other flight stays over Germany, so if you’d both give a preference of what you want to do and we opted to stay over Germany which meant of course that we went overseas. Our entire crew had trained overseas and we wanted to stay in England for a while but, no, from there we went back to West Kirby, back to West Kirby and we boarded a big, boarded a ship and on the deck there was some very big crates and the address Murmansk, it had been partly painted out, the name partly painted out. I said, Crickey, surely enough, we found later that they’d written Murmansk and partly rubbed it out so that the enemy looking at that thought we were going to Murmansk but that’s, that was what they said but we didn’t. We then from there down the Clyde, into the Med, then we went to Algiers, the troop ship just ahead of us was torpedoed and staggered into [unclear] and all the air gunners were on the deck of our troop ship, one air gunners, we’ve never seen the Oerlikon guns before, anyhow, that was it, and we disembarked in Algiers and in Algiers, yes, from Algiers we were stationed thirty miles south at Blida and there was a cargo ship unloading bombs and the bombs were put on ordinary bomb trolleys and trundled with tractors all the way to Blida and Blida is a very busy place, the Americans were there with all sorts of funny aircraft and we operated from Blida on Wimpys.
CB: Ok, we will stop there for a minute. Two, three disappointments in the RAF, yeah.
CW: No, two
CB: Two
CW: One was coming off the pilot’s course
CB: Yeah.
CW: [unclear] on 227 Squadron I was, the gunnery leader disappeared after a couple of weeks and I was a warrant officer then and I became acting gunnery leader and I stayed that way for six months as a flying officer doing the job and the wing commander commented on that and the adjutant oh, Cliff hadn’t done the gunnery leader course, so he said, better do the gunnery leader course. Couple of weeks later, I went up to Yorkshire somewhere and on the course thirty of us arrived to do it, we were given a test on arrival, we arrived on Sunday afternoon, Monday morning we all had a test and at the end of that we were divided into two flights, A and B, fifteen in each, I was in B flight and B flight was told to assemble in the hut next door, in the next hut, we did that, and we were each, we are not recording?
CB: Yeah, it’s ok.
CW: No, not.
CB: You don’t want to?
CW: No.
CB: No, ok. So you had a trip from Sir Archibald Sinclair. What did he say?
CW: Well, Archibald Sinclair thought we would be pleased at coming back through Sicily, Italy, France and so on, we weren’t amused but at Kairouan our diet was bully beef and biscuits. Each morning one member of the crew would go to the mess tent, collect two tins of bully and if we wanted, a few biscuits but they were big biscuits about six inches in diameter, but we used to go into the [unclear] city and I saw, we saw there once, oh, we had a Volkswagen there, a Volkswagen which had been abandoned, we shouldn’t really have gone anywhere near it, we were in big trouble for doing that, anyhow we went to this Volkswagen and one of the chaps fixed it, we more or less pinched the petrol, hundred octane petrol which didn’t do the engine any good and we used that at Kairouan, eventually it was confiscated by the military police, anyway in Kairouan, in
CB: Kairouan
CW: In Kairouan there was a vegetable stall in the market and there were some watermelons and we were admiring those, and the chap invited me to take one so I took it and gave it to him, he cut it up and we enjoyed this watermelon, it was lovely, I thought we could do with some of these back on camp, I bought two hundred of them [laughs] and oddly enough we could afford two hundred between us and we gave them in at the mess tent, some went over to the officer’s mess but when it came to use these watermelons, they were not watermelons at all, they were marrows, that didn’t matter to much because we stuffed them with bully beef, well the cooks did, how on earth, we loaded those watermelons into the Volkswagen but they turned out to be marrows we got there so, how that happened we don’t know, we just can’t understand. But, that was Kairouan, it was from Kairouan we saw this armada of Dakotas and gliders and they were going to Sicily and of course, soon after that we took off. A very interesting operations from, in North Africa, we felt we were dealing there with the Germans, with the military as apart from civilians, bombing them from four or five miles up, we were right down there with them, was a better feeling somehow, we felt we were a little bit nearer.
CB: What were your targets?
CW: Well, there’s a list of them here. In North Africa, all in North Africa, oh no, there’s a page full here.
CB: Ok.
CW: Tunis, Monserrato, Decimomannu, Tunis, Tunis again, Bizerta, Trapani and then there Villa Credo, Palermo, Napoli, Cagliari, Rome, Alghero, Castelvetrano, Chieti or something, Borezzo, Pantelleria, Sardinia, Sardinia, Sicily, Pantelleria, Napoli, Pantelleria, Pantelleria, that was in one night, twice to Pantelleria that night, Siracuse, Pantelleria, Messina, Napoli, Siracuse, Rome, Salerno, Bari, San Giovanni, Messina, Trapani.
CB: So, we are talking about largely mainland bombing, are we, what’s the balance between daylight and night bombing?
CW: This was all night bombing.
CB: All night bombing. Right.
CW: All night bombing.
CB: And how did you conduct the operations? Were you in a bomber’s stream or
CW: No.
CB: Were you in formation? Just as a gaggle.
CW: We’d take off one after the other independent to navigation all on the same route, ETA time on bombing, all the same, but operating independently, at maximum effort there, there were only twenty-six of us
CB: Right, how did you keep a sufficient spatial distance?
CW: What, from the others?
CB: Yeah.
CW: I didn’t even see them.
CB: Right. And you were all set the same height to operate from, were you?
CW: Yeah. Yes, yeah.
CB: And you, the speed was dictated in advance?
CW: Same, was the same, maximum economic cruising speed, it was the same for everybody.
CB: What would that be?
CW: I don’t know, it wasn’t my problem.
CB: No.
CW: One sixty-five knots. And, you can’t quote that, I’m not sure. I was the rear gunner.
CB: Right. Of course, yeah. So, in an operation, after dropping the bombs, you made your own way back
CW: Yes
CB: How easy was it to find the airfield that you started off from?
CW: Well, if, the navigator was pretty good, it was all dead reckoning now, there were no navigational leads at all or no electronic aids, then the navigator had a drift sight, I had a drift sight in the rear turret, I could, coming back over the sea, could drop a flame float, put the guns on that and of course, with the wind on the side and so on, we’re crabbing along, relative to the ground, the nose is not going straight forward, it’s on the
CB: You’d forward the deflection.
CW: There was a deflection
CB: To the navigator.
CW: And I could measure that deflection on the thing at the side and I would tell the navigator, we got sort of three degrees starboard drift or whatever and he would plot that, he could also measure the drift on his drift sight, and it was good, and of course, you hit the North Africa coast, and can see it and fly along if [unclear], if you’re too far east when you hit it but there were no other aids.
CB: So, the role of the gunner is to defend the aircraft. How many times were you attacked by German or Italian aircraft?
CW: No German aircraft, we saw a couple of Italian aircraft, one came up and we looked at it and looked as how it was, be a bit offensive, I fired at the bloke but he cleared off, we’d no trouble in North Africa. We got a bit closer to the enemy attacking, we were supposed to be strategic air force, that was the title but a lot of our work was tactical
CB: Supporting the army
CW: Supporting the army, attacking trains
CB: Yeah
CW: And so on. Low level stuff
CB: When you say, low level, what height are we talking about?
CW: Three hundred feet. Attacking a train at three hundred feet, there’d be three of us, we did two trips like that on the railway line from Suez up to Tunis, a German troop train on there, there’d be three of us, one aircraft would go directly above and bomb it and invariably stop it, stop the train. We would come upon the right, two hundred yards and strafing it, the train was stopped, the Jerries got off at the other side and they tried to get away a bit and that’s when the other fellow came in, number three, blazing with the front turret, and one beam gun and that was it, the three of us would carry on, turn round and then it depends what had to be done then, we didn’t want to derail, we didn’t try to derail the train, anything like that
CB: No, cause you needed the line
CW: We wanted the line for the army
CB: Army did, yeah, so
CW: One of the last things, in Tunis the Germans were evacuating from Bizerte, Bizerte?
CB: Yeah.
CW: Yes. And we was attacking the troop ships, we cut it down, well, I don’t know if it was us or one of them, anyway one of us caught a direct hit on a troop ship, which turned back and beached. And about a thousand British soldiers got off it. Three of them were killed, three British soldiers were killed by us but that was, that ship was full of POWs and it should have been lit up, by international law it should have been well illuminated
CB: Like a hospital ship
CW: But it wasn’t, there were no lights and there was nothing to tell us there were British on board, as far as we were concerned it was a German.
CB: Yeah.
CW: Anyhow, it beached, three thousand troops got off it and we met some of them in Tunis and we weren’t very popular
CB: No
CW: Because we’d killed three of their chaps but they didn’t think [unclear] the rest of us had done lucky [unclear] to be here, they did a good job and they didn’t think so
CB: Cause the Germans were evacuating with ships but also aircraft, so, did you have any role in trying to intercept the aircraft that were escaping? They had the big transport planes, the Arado
CW: We didn’t see any German aircraft, having said that I, I’ve got a vague idea we did once, there were two, one night we were on the way to Italy and at briefing they gave us position of a U-boat reported on, reported, a U-boat in that position and briefing officer, he said, if you see it, make it crash-dive, said, don’t try to bomb it, cause you won’t hit it, I wonder [unclear], speak for yourself, mate [laughs] just divert off normal track to that U-boat, if you see it, make it crash-dive, do a couple of circuits when you get to that spot and try and do that and we saw it and we went for it but we didn’t see it crash-dive but it, when we saw it, the bomb aimer saw the shape, it was just submerged, and he saw this cigar shape, we went down on it, and it’s big trouble when we got back. Can’t you tell a U-boat from a Royal Navy submarine? [laughs] How could we?
CB: No. No way. It’s a good thing you didn’t hit it then, with your bombs.
CW: The bloke was right. Don’t try to bomb it, you won’t hit it.
CB: No, Yeah. On that topic
CW: Speaking of submarines
CB: On that topic of U-boats, the U-boat base was at La Spezia in North West Italy, did you bomb La Spezia?
CW: I don’t think so. I don’t recall the name, no, it’s not here, we were told there was a refueling base, U-boat refueling at Alghero, refueling base, there’s a, oh dear, what do you call it?
CB: A long jetty
CW: A long jetty out, U-boat refuel at the end of the jetty and the oil is trundled down there, if there’s no U-boat there destroy the jetty, but try not to damage the town, strafe it but don’t, no, no bombs, use them on the jetty, and we did and we strafed the town but there was no U-boat there. It was an innocent fishing village but we were told that the U-boat refueling
CB: And this is before the Italian surrender of course, isn’t it?
CW: Oh yes, yes.
CB: In 1943. Yeah. Ok, so you, what else did you do during your tour?
CW: In Africa? Well, it was interesting, but we felt we were part of the war there. Between Sicily and mainland there are ferries going all the time and we bombed both terminals, we put [unclear] to the [unclear], to the, and we hit those terminals.
CB: You’d be flying at a higher level for that, what level would you be flying at?
CW: Six thousand feet was our normal bombing height. We were halfway there on Sunday, that was at three thousand feet.
CB: Were you? What sort of flak did you encounter?
CW: On Italy? A bit of light flak, that was all. On Rome, probably however six thousand and that was supposed to be an open city, we weren’t supposed to fight.
CB: What were you bombing? What were you bombing in Rome?
CW: On Rome, on the city, we dropped leaflets,
CB: Ah.
CW: Then we bombed the marshalling yards then down the Tiber to the Lido di Roma, seaplane base and we bombed that, we didn’t see any seaplanes, but we bombed the, we hit the hangars.
CB: So, what level of accuracy would you say you normally achieved?
CW: I would say pretty good, it wasn’t carpet bombing anywhere, we had, it was pinpoint bombing. Mind you, there were only twenty-six of us, maximum twenty-six.
CB: How many did you lose?
CW: We did lose one or two, we lost five percent, it was twenty-odd when maybe one wouldn’t get back, the losses were the same as over Europe, on average, which I know that’s surprising, probably for different reasons.
CB: So, you came to the end of your tours, then what?
CW: When we finished in, when we finished at Kairouan, we went on the Queen Mary up to Tunis, we had a spot of leave on one occasion, just after Tunis was liberated, or just after Jerry was kicked out, we went up to Tunis, there were several canteens and that’s where the bomb aimer ran into trouble, there were five of us, the canteen was crowded and four blokes got up just as we sort of got near the table, they got up and we sat down but there were five of us, so then the bomb aimer saw a spare chair a few yards away, picked it up, place was crowded, he put it over his head and walked towards our table and some happy soldier looked up, saw the chair hovering over his head, it went round and it gave such a [unclear], knocked him out, well, almost knocked him out, knocked him down, silly devil with a chair over his head.
CB: Yeah.
CW: And the red caps came and he was arrested and put in jail and the, was in at the police station and we moved from where we were staying to a hotel next to the police station, at 49 Rue De Serbie, I remember that address and Chadderton was in jail, was in prison, well we went into [unclear], the canteens were all crowded but there was another we came to, officers only, so, our tapes were just on one arm, on an elastic band, off with the tapes, off with the hat, and we went in, into the, into this posh hotel and sat there having a beer. About half an hour later, the bomb aimer, he almost turned white. I looked round and Speedy Powell was there, our group captain [laughs]. And of course, we got an [unclear], hello chaps, I didn’t realize you chaps were all commissioned [laughs], what are you drinking? [laughs] I thought, oh Crickey, we are in trouble here, so, I like to see a bit of initiative, jolly good, very good show, chaps [laughs], he spoke like that, Speedy Powell [laughs].
CB: How were you notified about
CW: He said, I’m going back, when you’re going back to Kairouan, he said, couple of days? He said, I’m going back tomorrow, give you a lift if you like and he did, he took us back to Kairouan. But first of all, we went to that prison, to the police station and he got Chadderton out, 49 Rue De Serbie, that’s where we were.
CB: So, you got back to camp, then what?
CW: Well, we got back and our tour was nearly finished, whilst at Blida we’d sleep, it was a question of crew but one aircraft per crew, you stuck to the same aircraft, that was yours whilst you’re here, well, there was no vacancy at the when we got there, we’d a spare week waiting for the aircraft and we went to a place called Setif on the coast, a big hotel there and we stayed in that hotel at RAF expense for a week, that was good. And the rooms were already occupied and there was real French entertainment, you see what I mean [laughs], that was, that shouldn’t have been really, anyhow sorry I digress.
CB: That’s alright. So, how did you know that you were at the end of your tour?
CW: We’d done two tours, we’d done, I think it was fifty four trips there, we could have come back after thirty five, it was normally thirty over Europe and thirty-five in the Med but we could opt to stay and do, carry on, which I preferred, and we did fifty-five, in fact we did more than that because a trip under three hours and there are quite a few, well, there are several, a trip under three hours only counted as a half [laughs], so you’d do trips to, well, like those trips to Pantelleria and Lampedusa just under three hours, but it was, you only, was credited with a half, and again you see, if you can’t take a joke, shouldn’t have joined [laughs], there was a Luftwaffe base on Lampedusa and we didn’t know it, we didn’t see it, we were bombing the harbour.
CB: So, did nobody attack the airfield?
CW: No, we didn’t do, I don’t think, I don’t know, we knew there was one, we were not told of any airfield, our job was the harbour
CB: So, you reached the end of the tour, what happened then?
CW: Well, we went on the Queen Mary to Tunis, then
CB: From Tunis, yeah
CW: And then in lorries to Algiers onto a troop ship and back to England, back to Greenock.
CB: What was it like on the troop ship?
CW: I’m just trying to think, yes, well, it was full of troops, I don’t think there were any Germans aboard
CB: Prisoners?
CW: I don’t, don’t remember much about it, the first troop ship coming back that was Empress of Bermuda, what was that airport we got from?
US: Bengasi?
CW: Down the road
US: Where are we?
CW: Mh?
US: Where are we?
CW: Monarch
US: Stansted?
CW: Monarch of Bermuda, that was, I think that was the, it was on that trip Monarch of Bermuda and they’re luxury airliners
CB: Right
CW: Luxury liners
CB: Yeah
CW: And it was good
CB: As a warrant officer, what facilities did you have? Sharing a room or four to a room?
CW: Oh, it didn’t make any difference,
CB: Right.
CW: Rank didn’t really mean very much and the skipper was the squadron leader, the only time we called him sir was if we had to, if there was any VIP nearby then, we might call him sir, otherwise it was Chess, his name was Chester, squadron leader Chester, he never did an OTU, he was- we’re on this thing.
CB: Yeah, go on. We’re stopping for a moment. We’ve restarted as you arrived in Greenock, what happened then?
CW: Well, we’ve come back from
CB: From Tunis. So, you’ve returned from North Africa to Greenock at the end of your two tours.
CW: Yes, from there we went by train down to Brighton, and of course and there it felt it split up and I was posted to, yes, I was posted to 84 OTU and second day I was there I was given a schedule of duties, lecture on the Browning gun, lecture on combat manoeuvre, the corkscrew and so on and I had this schedule, I said, I don’t like this, I haven’t done a course on the Browning gun, I’ve been using one for two tours but I’ve never done a course on it, what’s this corkscrew business? You’ve never heard of the corkscrew? No, what is it? The corkscrew, yes, on a bottle, well, I became an instructor on the corkscrew after I’d had some instruction and combat tactics, what can you do except move and fight it out, he said, what you need is an air gunner course, yes, I said, by all means, ok, I’ve done the job but that doesn’t make me a good instructor, no, I’m not instructing, so they gave me eight sprog air gunner trainees, to shepherd, I became a course shepherd and in doing that, I gradually picked up what really goes on and the corkscrew, you know about the corkscrew
CB: Yeah.
CW: I’d love to do another one [laughs], well, eventually we had, there was a complete crew and we went to Winthorpe and converted to Stirlings and on Stirlings we did a week of circuits and bumps and then cross-countries and then the first cross-country we went North towards Scotland to a bomb site, a bombing range rather, did an exercise there and on the way, or maybe the way back over Yorkshire, you’ll be attacked by a Hurricane, we need a good picture, make sure your guns are on safe and get a good picture of the Hurricane. We were attacked and the rear gunner hadn’t the vaguest idea, he said, weave skipper, weave, he was yelling, weave, it’s coming, it’s nearer and I thought, what the hell is that? He got no idea and the aircraft came from down starboard quarter, came right at us and then came in again and same again from the port quarter, nothing happened, and it came in, I was mid upper by that [unclear], it came in from the beam on the starboard and I gave, well by then was a textbook type of commentary winding up its corkscrew starboard go and nothing happened and the aircraft went underneath, came up on the quarter, more textbook but corkscrew port go, and that time we went dump up [unclear] up board, up starboard, down starboard, that was obviously the screen pilot the instructor.
CB: Ah.
CW: That was good. When, then, he said, on the way back, we’re going down on a raft off the Lincolnshire coast, we’re supposed to fire, strafe that raft but that’s what you’re supposed to do but don’t do that, there’ll be, there are seals on the raft, they live there, I knew that, they’ve been there dozens of times, just give a short burst in midair, fire at the moon, fire as it were , we did that and I just fired a short burst with one gun [laughs], cause they had to be cleaned afterwards, I fired a short burst, the rear gunner didn’t, ok, rear gunner, says the screen pilot, oh, no sir, the guns are faulty, I felt, Christ, was sort of physiology is that? They weren’t US, they were faulty, mid upper gunner, have a look, go and fix him. I went back to the rear turret, opened the flimsy door, and [unclear] pushed him aside, the guns weren’t even cocked, I said, where is your cocking toggle? He said, he didn’t understand, he didn’t know what a cocking toggle was, well, his hat was there, his fancy hat, remember that hat was there but took [unclear] the cockpit, number three gun I saw the thing, cause it was on safe, so I took the safety catch off and I yelled at him, now pull the trigger, botch the trigger, pull it, and he did, he nearly fell off the seat, he would have done if he hadn’t been tied down, said, now do the same as that to the other three, they’re the other two guns, cause one was a camera gun, and he hadn’t the vaguest idea so I did the same to the number four gun, fired that and he just, he hadn’t a clue, and ok but we’d fired from the rear turret. Next morning, the gunnery leader when I booked in as it were, he showed me a report from the screen pilot, do you agree with this? And it was that the rear gunner, he doubted if the rear gunner had had any operational training, did I agree? I said, not only I agree, I don’t believe he went to gunnery school, if he did, he didn’t learn anything literally and that’s what he wanted to know. I said, I’d like to see his logbook, well, it was the end of the month and the logbooks were in the flight office so I went to get them and I got them for the whole crew and I looked at this fellow’s logbook, he’d done no flying at all except at Winthorpe circuits and bumps, and the odd cross-country, that cross-country would have entered but there was nothing there except circuits and bumps but in the back was a certificate that he’d completed the air gunner course, very sad. Anyhow, we got rid of him, I said, he’s finished, that fellow, he’s not flying in my rear turret. I developed a little problem; would you mind if I?
CB: We’ll stop
CW: Nip up there for a second?
CB: So, you find the gunnery school
CW: Is that off?
CB: It’s on now, yeah, right
CW: Rear gunner had the faintest idea and he was sent to Eastchurch, he’d finished
CB: Now
CW: Now on the grapevine, all the information everybody seemed to know what was going on and the chap, the warrant officer on the clay pigeon shooting asked me what was happening, and in fact I didn’t know but he said, look, I want to join a crew and in fact he did, he joined our crew but he was a mid-upper gunner and I said, that’s fine, show me, you can have the mid-upper, I’ll have the rear, if they gunnery leader will agree and he did and the skipper agreed and we acquired a very good mid-upper gunner. Pete Foolkes, Pete Foolkes who eventually went to Canada, and stayed in and joined the Canadian Air Force, nice bloke.
CB: So that’s how you got into mid-upper, sorry, rear gunner, that’s how you became a rear gunner.
CW: I’ve always been a rear gunner.
CB: Yeah, quite.
CW: It was just that
CB: On the Stirling.
CW: I preferred the rear turret.
CB: Did you feel more comfortable with four guns?
CW: [laughs] That’s quite right, the mid upper did just have two, didn’t he, did?
CB: Yeah.
CW: I wasn’t too familiar with the mid-upper, I think you’re right, it’s bound to be [laughs].
CB: There was only space for two. There was only space for two guns.
CW: Yeah. Yes, yeah.
CB: So, you were at the OTU, after the OTU where did you go?
CW: Oh, OTU, right I’m with it again, we that was
CB: Winthorpe
CW: That was a conversion course
CB: Yes
CW: After an OTU.
CB: Alright, a conversion course
CW: A conversion course at Winthorpe
CB: Yes
CW: Well, from there, we went to Bardney
CB: Yeah.
CW: The skipper was promoted to squadron leader and he became flight commander, of A flight and A flight it worked in, with I think it was up at 9 squadron for a few weeks, I did the odd trips with, I think the first two trips from Bardney as part of 9 Squadron really at [unclear], from there we went to Strubby, did a couple from there and then on to Balderton, where the Americans had just left Balderton we moved in and B flight was already at Balderton. We then became a complete squadron of two flights and we operated from there, first trip was on Bergen, I did six trips with that squadron leader, first trip was on Bergen, and we were told to be a very careful run on a specific point in the docks, whatever’s there at that point, if anything, that’s the point to hit, be very careful and we went to the East and coming back, westerly course over Bergen, on the bombing run and there was an awful bang, a bit, wing went down, nose went down, we went down and the skipper, he was trying to hold back on the control column, nothing much was happening and we were going down and it was the navigator who went forward, crawled forward and turned it tail heavy, turned the elevator back and we came out and we came out at three thousand feet. What the bang was we’ve no idea, there was no damage anywhere but of course, the bomb doors were open and we came out at three thousand feet but we came out of it on quite a steep climb and we climbed up to eight thousand and the bomb aimer woke up, say skipper, can you go round again, we still got the goddam bomb [laughs] and Ted was the navigator, [unclear], oh, we are going round again and he pulled the jettison toggle and the bomb rolled [unclear], the bomb just went in the sea, complete waste of time the whole thing and we then came back and landed at Milltown and [unclear] Bergen.
CB: Where is Milltown in Scotland?
CW: Oh, Bergen, 28th of October 1944. Squadron leader Chester.
CB: So, this is with 9 Squadron.
CW: Oh no, no, that was all in the [unclear] of 227.
CB: Oh it was, right.
CW: Bergen, the next one was another fiasco to Walcheren. Walcheren, that was on the Zuiderzee and we were to bomb the sea wall, bomb the, not the sea wall, the, what it was called?
CB: The dikes.
CW: Dike, we were to bomb the dike and ahead of us, mind you, I’m in the rear, I didn’t see all this, there was another Lanc ahead and he went across the dike, stick the bombs right across and of course they all went in the sea, it only needed one bomb on the dike but they all went in the sea and our skipper, I can understand him, he thought, well what a ruddy silly way to destroy the dike, we were in the destruction business afterall, so we went round to the east and came in and went over the dike and dropped a whole stick of bombs all the way along the dike and destroyed it for half a mile, all they wanted us to do was make a hole in it so the water could come through, that’s what we were supposed to do, dug a hole in it and we were actually briefed to bomb a gun emplacement but that gun emplacement was already under water and the barrels were sticking out, there was no point in bombing that, we’d no secondary target so we decided, the skipper decided to do the job that he thought the others were going to do and we destroyed that wall for half a mile and it took, what was it? The pioneer corps I think it was, the pioneer corps took six months after the war to repair it and the skipper was in real trouble for doing that but that was a second trip on there. Next one was an ordinary trip to Hamburg and then Harburg which was a subsidiate, well, in the suburbs of Hamburg, that was long after the destruction of Hamburg, Heindbark, oh, that was a dam, Politz [laughs], Politz, a night raid of course, they were all night raids, Politz on the Baltic, night raid and the navigator, five minutes to Politz but everything was quiet, but by that time there should have been some action ahead, and two minutes to Politz, bomb doors open, ok, bomb doors open, and we, everybody thought, well, we are running up on Politz and we were over Politz and was absolute dead quiet, everything was quiet and then it started twenty miles to the south, fireworks below, twenty miles south and, oh Crickey, we’re twenty miles north of the target, and both the skipper, both the navigator and bomb aimer said, we are over Politz, we’re over the coast, but down there’s not over the coast, we are, we are over Politz, and the skipper wouldn’t have it, everybody is bombing there, we’ll join them and we did, and we destroyed an awful lot of good agricultural land. It was Pathfinder force, no, we weren’t using 5 Group Pathfinders, it was 8 Group Pathfinders, they put the markers down in the wrong place and that agricultural land was in a hell of a mess [laughs]
CB: [unclear]
CW: Many years later, I was talking to the air traffic controller in Nairobi, I was in charge of the con centre at night and we were having a little natter, and he mentioned the, he said, he told me, one night, when everybody bombed twenty miles south where they should have done, and I said, that was Politz was it? Politz! Yes, yeah! We were there at the same time and didn’t know it of course. But the interesting things like that you, happen, Politz, Houffalize, Houffalize, oh, that was the Falaise gap, yes, that’s when Jerry broke through, the Falaise gap, and it was very foggy, there was a film made with that raid, which was a lot of rubbish.
CB: Cause we are talking about France now in July ’44
CW: Yes, well, this was December ’44, Houffalize
CB: That’s not Falaise, is it?
CW: Mh?
CB: That’s not Falaise?
CW: Houffalize.
CB: Houffalize, right. Yeah.
CW: Wasn’t that the Falaise gap?
CB: No.
CW: Well, what was Houffalize?
CB: This is after Arnhem you are talking about now?
CB: [unclear] check it out. Yeah.
CW: Karlsruhe then Politz, Rositz, this is, can’t read that, these were spare boat trips, our skipper had finished by then
CB: Right.
CW: He did six and
CB: Where did he go?
CW: He went on a board of, no, he went on a summary of evidence, he was helpless, in fact at a reunion, many years later, the wing commander said, Chester was the biggest disaster that our squadron had, oh, he wouldn’t have said that if he didn’t mean it
CB: No.
CW: He got rid of him.
CB: Who was he replaced by?
CW: He was replaced with wing commander Balme, BALME, wing commander Balme, although he didn’t take up the point position of flight commander but he was there as a supernumerary, he did the job but didn’t sort of get recognition as a flight commander because he was more senior, I saw him in hospital in Nairobi, wing commander Balme.
CB: So, how many more ops did you do after that change?
CW: I did exactly twenty.
CB: Twenty, did you? Twenty more? Twenty in total? Ok.
CW: I was crazy to do with seventy-six, that was the number of ops, but I counted the halves as whole ones.
CB: Yeah.
CW: I don’t accept that it was half,
CB: It was a [unclear].
CW: Half a tour because
CB: Half an op. So, what caused the end of the twenty? Was it?
CW: Had finished D-Day.
CB: Right. No, ended the war, VE Day
CW: VE Day, sorry, VE Day.
CB: Yeah. So, from VE Day
CW: D-Day occurred when I was at OTU as instructor
CB: Yes
CW: VE Day, D Day, then we went to Molbice, Leipzig,
CB: Leipzig, yeah.
CW: With flight lieutenant Hobson to Leipzig, seven hours, Lutgendorf and Leipzig again, I went to Leipzig three times in all, twice on our own behalf and once with the Yanks [laughs]. Because we diverted to Norwich on one occasion, on one of those occasions, to, and Norwich, not Norwich airport as I knew it then but Horsham St Faith which became Norwich airport
CB: Which became Norwich airport, yeah.
CW: And that’s where I got the idea of a washing machine, that’s a different thing, and in Norwich, what a weird hang-up, I don’t know, not mentioned that have I?
CB: No
CW: No. We diverted to Norwich, and we were resting in a lounge, and very early morning a top sergeant came in, he said, say bud, who’s the headman? I said, him, woke up, what’s the problem? He said, we can’t get the overload tank off. Oh, don’t worry about that, the fighter engineer overload tank, we didn’t know what a tank, yeah, sure, it’s downgrade thing, and the bomb aimer woke up, I did describe it. Crikey that’s odd, that’s a four thousand pounder, no, don’t make bombs that big, that’s a four thousand pound bomb, what do you want, leave it! What are you doing? Anyhow, the skipper sent the flight engineer and the bomb aimer out to go out to look, they tried to take it off, it was, and the tannoy blared everybody to evacuate a mile from the Lancaster [laughs], oh dear, while we were three days in Norwich, which I’d welcomed because I’ve been to school there and I went to see an old girlfriend, Joyce, used to go to school with Joyce, and I went to see her in number one Chester Street and the warrant officer came to the door, I met Joyce and it was good, and he was flying Lysanders, anyhow and a crew came up from Balderton and moved the, took the bomb off [laughs]
CB: That’s why you were there so long because they hadn’t got anybody to move the bomb.
CW: No, they wouldn’t, they, the thing was on its own, they wouldn’t go near it after that.
CB: No
CW: But our own chaps came and shifted it
CB: Cause it would have been fused at that point, would it?
CW: No, it couldn’t have been, it wouldn’t have been.
CB: No. So, when you went on a, when you went
CW: The bomb aimer should have checked when we landed, make sure it’s got, in fact he should have checked before we landed,
CB: Before you landed, yeah.
CW: After we supposed we had dropped it, he should check
CB: So, thinking of fusing, when you got airborne with a full load, at what point were the bombs fused, ready for dropping?
CW: On the bombing run.
CB: Cause what I meant was that this bomb, if all the other bombs went, why would this one not be fused? So, there was a pin extraction job to do.
CW: [unclear] that’s a good point
CB: Cause the hang-up and the fusing are not related.
CW: I haven’t given thought to that one, I wouldn’t think it was fused, I don’t think it could have been
CB: I can’t see how it couldn’t have been, if you’ve dropped all the other bombs, but I don’t know of course, cause I wasn’t there.
CW: I think we bombed, I think we bombed out now, with the [unclear] if they were not fused, could be done,
CB: Yeah, the answer is I don’t know, something worth looking at but I would have thought that the fusing would’ve taken place in a, some time before release, all of them together, that’s what I meant
CW: Normally
CB: But had you dropped
CW: minutes to when you start the serious
CB: On the running
CW: left, left, steady business, yeah
CB: But on that particular op, did you drop bombs in earnest?
CW: I don’t remember, but I think we did
CB: Rather than dispose of them at sea?
CW: I’m not sure which raid it was actually was on
CB: Anyway, so, we’ve got to VE Day, what happened then?
CW: We got to VE Day
CB: You all stood down
CW: Oh, the war was about to end, isn’t it?
CB: Yeah.
CW: But Leipzig was the last raid,
CB: So, did you take part in Operation Manna to supply the Dutch civilians?
CW: No.
CB: And did you?
CW: [clears throat] long after the war I went to a reunion and there was a fellow there, he said he’d been shot down three months before the end of the war, he’d been shot down, he was looked after by a German family who was, didn’t like it. He was released, he left the family and joined when the Americans got close he joined the Americans and they got him back to Mildenhall by air and from there he hitchhiked back to Balderton, this is what he said, got back to Balderton and he said he arrived just in time to take part in Operation Manna and to bring prisoners back from Germany. And I listened to all this, he was a gunner, an air gunner, well, I didn’t recognize the bloke which that was not conclusive, I said, who was your skipper? Oh, he said, I didn’t have a permanent skipper, I did all the spare boat trips, remember Mcgilleyfrey, gunnery leader? Yeah, I said, who could forget? Mcgilleyfrey, I said, yeah, he said, who could forget old gilley. I said, remember Cliff Watson? No. I said, I was acting gunnery leader over that period, Mcgilleyfrey I’ve just invented, 5 group did not take part in Operation Manna, and what was the other point? And we didn’t bring prisoners, neither did we bring prisoners back from Germany, we didn’t take part in that and they came back from Belgium in any case, not Germany. I’d like to see your logbook, oh, he said, I’ll go and get it, he went out to his car and we never saw him again, but there’s lots of things like that going on. The navigator was at a reunion and he, there was a chap giving a talk on his experience in Malta, and one of the, he said, one of the chaps there was in Malta and he said that bloke’s talking an absolute load of rubbish, nothing of what he said actually happened. And I said, I was there, he’s challenged him, and he was on a lecture tour all over the place, lecturing on all this had happened to him in Malta and all a lot of nonsense
CB: Amazing.
CW: I worked with a chap in Nairobi like that, oh, he’d been everywhere, he’d flown Sunderlands from Belfast down to Southampton, from the factory in Belfast to Southampton, he’d been torpedoed in the Pacific, he’d done everything, he was working as a radio officer in Nairobi and we kept a card index system of his [unclear] [laughs]. It was a medical book, not a word of truth in any of it, he had on his briefcase, Slate VC, and he created the impression and deliberately set about to do so the impression that he had a VC, his name was Vivien Charles Slate, the VC was his initials, Slate VC, Vivien Charles [laughs] and everybody thought he had a VC, except some of us who knew better, oh, he’d flown everything, he wasn’t even a pilot, he’d been a pilot, a wireless op, he’d done it all, in actual fact he’d done nothing, he was a traffic control assistant, ok, might have done a good job, but [unclear] done [laughs], Slate VC
CB: Just quickly for background, the repatriation was Operation Exodus, just for the tape. That’s been fascinating, so I’m gonna stop the tape now. Thank you very much because you’ve had a good run and we’ll pick up the other bits later. Thank you very much indeed, Clifford.
CW: Oh, it’s a pleasure.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Clifford Watson. One
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-06-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWatsonC170628, PWatsonC1704
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:57:17 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Clifford Watson at first wanted to join the navy because of a high demand in pilots. After being rejected, he joined the RAF and was sent to Rhodesia for pilot training, but then remustered to become an air gunner. He flew seventy-six ops in total. Was posted to North Africa and recounts various episodes: targeting enemy trains; flying operations over Italy; the accidental targeting of a ship full of British prisoners of war during the German evacuation of North Africa. Flew to Bergen with 9 Squadron and operations targeting dams in Holland. Recounts an operation to Politz on the Baltic, where they bombed the wrong target.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Peter Schulze
Steph Jackson
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Norway
Poland
South Africa
Netherlands
Tunisia--Qayrawān
Zimbabwe
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
Netherlands--Walcheren
Norway--Bergen
Poland--Police (Województwo Zachodniopomorskie)
North Africa
Tunisia
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944-10-28
227 Squadron
25 OTU
30 OTU
84 OTU
9 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
entertainment
Operational Training Unit
RAF Balderton
RAF Bardney
RAF Finningley
RAF Hixon
RAF Strubby
RAF Winthorpe
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/817/10800/PFawcettK1701.2.jpg
687b0968eb23c82bd9e8d7d593d8a53b
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/817/10800/AFawcettK170926.2.mp3
0e974eecf09d6a19823e3903c4fcb309
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
Fawcett, Ken
K Fawcett
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Ken Fawcett. He flew operations as an air gunner with 617 and 227 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Fawcett, K
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DK: This is David Kavanagh for the International Bomber Command Centre interviewing Mr Kenneth Fawcett at his home on the 26th of September 2017. I’ll just put that there. What I’ll do is if I —
KF: Switch it on and off.
DK: Yeah. I can switch it on and off.
KF: Yeah.
DK: And if I’m looking down I’m just making sure it’s still working. Ok. Ok, what [pause] just having a look at the, at your bits here I’m just wondering if we could go back a bit and just ask you what were you doing immediately before the war?
KF: I was working with the Post Office.
DK: Right. So what made you then want to join the RAF?
KF: Because I didn’t want to be called up to the Army or the Navy. Is this on?
DK: Yes. Yeah.
KF: Sorry.
DK: No. That’s ok. That’s ok.
KF: During the wartime you were called up at eighteen. If you didn’t make any preference beforehand you were posted to either, you could go in the Bevan boys which were the miners.
DK: The miners. Yeah.
KF: You could go in the Army, the Navy or the Air Force. If you volunteered for any particular job then you could take that as, in your choice. So a number of us, six of us went off to the Recruiting Centre and made our choices. Three of us joined the RAF as aircrew. Two joined the Navy. And one joined the Army.
DK: And were these six, were they your friends then were they?
KF: They were all my working colleagues.
DK: Working colleagues from, from the Post Office.
KF: From the Post Office.
DK: Right.
KF: And we were then, having made our choices we were left to be called up eventually as we got nearer to eighteen.
DK: And then what happened then? Did you have to go off for your initial training somewhere? Or —
KF: Well, you were called up eventually.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And then you were posted to, I joined up at the Lords Cricket Ground in London.
DK: Yes. Yeah. I know it well.
KF: Do you?
DK: Yeah.
KF: That was an ACRC Recruiting Centre.
DK: Alright.
KF: And you went down there and you were billeted in the empty luxury flats in the area.
DK: Right.
KF: And we dined at the zoo restaurant.
DK: Right. Yes. Yeah.
KF: In Regent’s Park.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And then from there you went on through the courses.
DK: So what was it like then? Was this, would this have been the first time you’d left home or —
KF: Yes. Yeah.
DK: So after your initial at Lords Cricket Ground where did you go on to after that?
KF: You were then sent to 17 ITW at Bridlington.
DK: Right.
KF: Which was like a, an introduction to the, you did the square bashing.
DK: Square bashing.
KF: And kitting out and one thing and another.
DK: What did you think of the square bashing?
KF: Came naturally because I’d already done two and a half years in the Home Guard.
DK: Oh right. Ok.
KF: So that was, I joined the Home Guard when I was sixteen. And at seventeen, eighteen and, seventeen, eighteen and a half you were called up.
DK: Right. And what year would that have been?
KF: ’43.
DK: ’43. Yeah.
KF: September ’43.
DK: So, after Bridlington where did you go on to then?
KF: After Bridlington went to Northern Ireland.
DK: Oh right.
KF: Which was the Air Gunnery School.
DK: Right.
KF: And —
DK: So, by this time they’d already decided what trade you were going to be in.
KF: No. That was decided for you at, at the Doncaster Recruiting Centre.
DK: Right.
KF: I had to go for PNB. Pilot, navigator, bomb aimer.
DK: Right.
KF: And then while I was waiting for call up I realised or I found out that to become a pilot was a two year course and being ’43 and being eighteen and naive I wrote to them and asked them for to reassign me to the shortest course which was air gunnery.
DK: Right.
KF: Because at that time I had ambition to get in the war.
DK: Yeah.
KF: Stupidly. But so they did and of course I got called up to go to a Gunnery School.
DK: Right.
KF: So Northern Ireland. Bishop’s Court —
DK: Right.
KF: Was an Air Gunnery School with Ansons.
DK: Right. So, when you got to the Ansons then would that have been the first time you’d actually —
KF: Flown.
DK: Actually flown.
KF: Fascinating really. Because what they did was they took seven pupils up in an Anson and I was fortunate to get the co-pilot’s seat.
DK: Right.
KF: And in the Anson the pilot said, ‘There’s a handle down by the side of your seat.’ You know it do you? And he said, ‘You wind it up and you watch the lights and when they turn green we’ve got them locked.’
DK: Can you remember how many times you had to turn the —
KF: About a hundred. And of course I’m down here winding this and looking at the lights and by the time we I looked up we were about a thousand feet up in the air. So I never saw my first —
DK: Take-off.
KF: Take-off.
DK: Oh no.
KF: But it was interesting.
DK: So, what did you think of the Anson then? Was that [unclear]
KF: It was, it was interesting because it was my first flying and funnily enough I, we used to get kitted out with a flying suit and parachute and I said to the instructor one day, ‘You never bring a parachute. Why is that?’ He said, ‘I’ll tell you, son,’ he said, ‘If you jumped out at this height you’d never survive.’ So we were always down time taking parachutes. But that was only an aside, you know.
DK: So what would you, at the Gunnery School then were you introduced to the gun? The guns you were going to be using before the first flight.
KF: Yeah. You had to learn all the parts of the gun.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And you had to be able to strip a gun down and reassemble it.
DK: So, can you remember what type of weapons they were?
KF: It was a Browning 303.
DK: Yeah.
KF: Air cooled. And the Anson had a gun turret on.
DK: Right.
KF: And you took your turn in the gun turret and the ammunition belt had been tipped. The bullets had been tipped with paint of different colours.
DK: Right.
KF: So that you may be designated the blue tips. And when you fired at a drogue that was being flown by another aircraft, when the drogue was taken to the ground and counting the holes in the drogue the blue paints would show up and you’d be credited with those hits.
DK: Yeah. Was it something that came naturally to you?
KF: Well, being in the Home Guard for two years I’d been firing Bren guns and Thompson sub-machine guns and throwing grenades and, and anti-tank mortars. So, you know at sixteen and seventeen we were playing soldiers anyway.
DK: Yeah.
KF: So with ammunition and firing it became second nature.
DK: So, after the Gunnery School then where did you go on to next?
KF: That’s what I got this for.
DK: Ah. Say for the tape that’s your force’s logbook —
KF: Sorry.
DK: That’s ok.
KF: Bridlington. Oh yes. Bridgnorth. 1650 Conversion. No. Number 1, Elementary Air Gunnery School at Bridgnorth in Shropshire.
DK: Right. So that was more advanced.
KF: That was more advanced training. More square bashing. More fatigues and what have you.
DK: Right. And what aircraft were based there? Was that —
KF: No. There was no flying there.
DK: Oh right. Ok. So it was purely just gunnery training.
KF: In fact, I think I’ve got these the wrong way around. It was London, Bridlington, Bridgnorth and then [pause] yeah. I haven’t got them in order. 12 Air Gunnery School. 17 OTU. That was at Silverstone. So, yeah. We did Bridgnorth and then [pause] That’s right. Bridgnorth and then Silverstone.
DK: Right.
KF: 17 OTU.
DK: Right. So, Bridgnorth first. Then Silverstone.
KF: Yeah.
DK: And that was 17 Operational Training Unit.
KF: Right.
DK: Right. And, and is that where you would have met your crew then? All the rest of your crew.
KF: We were taken to a station in the Midlands. I forget the name of the one. And you were taken into an assembly room and there were twenty pilots, twenty navigators, forty gunners because there are two gunners to a crew.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And twenty wireless operators. And the pilots were told to wander around and go to each trade and select a member of a crew. If a pilot approached you and asked you and you didn’t like the look of him you could say no. If you liked him you’d say yes and then he would go on to find a wireless operator or the, whatever crew he hadn’t yet selected.
DK: And this was all mixed together regardless of rank.
KF: Yeah. Completely.
DK: And just by trade.
KF: And you were entirely free to say yes or no to the guy.
DK: How did you think that worked? Because it’s quite unusual in the military. It seems a very relaxed way of —
KF: Oh, it was. It was unique to the military. Instead of being told you would do this or that you were given the choice because I think in the sense that if your life was on the line and you didn’t like the guy you were going to have to live with you were given the option of declining. Although face to face it’s a first instinct. If you sort of, it’s an attitude when you first meet somebody.
DK: Yes.
KF: You have a feeling.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And this fella came along in dark blue because the Australians were, were in dark blue uniform whereas we were in light blue. And he came along and asked if I cared to join his crew. I looked at him and he had his Australian colleague with him who was the wireless operator and I just thought oh it’s different. ‘Yeah. Ok.’
DK: Ok. Just for the tape can you remember their names?
KF: Yeah. Ken Allen.
DK: Ken Allen was the pilot.
KF: Was the pilot.
DK: Yeah. And —
KF: And he was from Melbourne in Australia.
DK: And the wireless operator?
KF: And the wireless operator was a Bill Eudey.
DK: Right.
KF: He was Australian. He was from Melbourne.
DK: Right.
KF: And the pilot at that time was a flight sergeant.
DK: Right.
KF: He subsequently got promoted to commissioned rank.
DK: Right. And can you remember the name of the second gunner that joined your crew?
KF: Yeah. Mike Clegg. Mike Clegg from [pause] Rotherham.
DK: Right.
KF: In Yorkshire.
DK: We’re missing one. Is the other one the navigator?
KF: The navigator was a guy from London. But subsequently we lost him because he couldn’t keep up with the training.
DK: Oh. Ok.
KF: So we had a different navigator when we eventually went on to ops.
DK: And can you remember his name?
KF: His name was —
DK: We can come back to it. It’s alright.
KF: Yeah. I’m looking. Where’s the photograph?
DK: Is he there?
KF: No. That’s, that’s have you got this to switch off or not?
DK: Yeah. I can pause it. It’s ok.
[recording paused]
DK: Right. So looking at the photograph here from right to left.
KF: Mike Clegg.
DK: Mike Clegg. Yeah.
KF: That was the navigator.
DK: Yeah.
KF: He was from Preston. That was the flight engineer. Ken Mepham from Manchester.
DK: Ken.
KF: Mepham.
DK: Mepham. Yeah.
KF: That was the second bomb aimer because that first bomb aimer Kirk Kent.
DK: Right.
KF: Had a nervous breakdown during the course of the ops.
DK: Oh. Ok.
KF: So he came back with the photograph.
DK: Right.
KF: But he was on our twenty seventh op.
DK: Right.
KF: So he did twenty six and then he did twenty seven to thirty six. That was Bill Eudey, the Australian wireless operator.
DK: Right.
KF: Ground crew. Ground crew. Ground crew. And myself.
DK: And who’s that down there?
KF: That’s the pilot.
DK: That’s the pilot. And the pilot’s name?
KF: Ken Allen.
DK: Ken Allen. So these are two bomb aimers then. That one and that one
KF: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: And he had a nervous breakdown.
KF: That’s right.
DK: Right.
KF: He was on the train going home on leave. He was on the train and had a collapse on the train. So he was off then for several weeks.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And then we finished our tour while he was having hospital treatment.
DK: Right. With, with the replacement bomb aimer.
KF: With, yeah.
DK: Right. Ok. So if I could just take you back to the Operational Training Unit then. Number 17.
KF: 17 OTU.
DK: 17 OTU.
KF: Silverstone.
DK: So what type of aircraft were you training on then?
KF: Wellingtons. Twin engine Wellingtons.
DK: And what did you think of the Wellington as a, as an aircraft?
KF: We went from Silverstone. We were there for a week and then we were sent to Turweston, which was the satellite airfield where there were also Wellingtons. On the morning we arrived, about 11 o’clock we went to the mess. We had lunch. We came out and we were going up to the flights and it was in a lane and we heard a Wellington landing. So we went to a gap in the hedge, watched the Wellington land and take off again on circuits and bumps.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And sadly the pilot pulled the plane up too steeply, stalled and crashed. So our first sight of a Wellington was one coming down on its tail and all eleven onboard were killed.
DK: That was —
KF: So we, we looked at the pilot and thought how clever is he?
DK: That must have made you all a bit nervous about what was to come.
KF: Well, you didn’t get nervous really. You just simply thought well, but that was the first we’d saw of the Wellington. You know.
DK: Yeah.
KF: Anyway, we, we eventually did some of the training there. Then we were sent back to Silverstone to complete the training.
DK: Right.
KF: So each trade was working with the pilot as a student pilot.
DK: Right.
KF: With a trainee, with a instructor alongside.
DK: So you’d have the instructor pilot, your pilot as trainee and the rest of the crew there.
KF: That’s right.
DK: So had you decided which gun position you were going to take?
KF: Well, on the, on the Wellington there was only a rear turret.
DK: Right.
KF: There was no mid-upper turret. And we weren’t particularly designated to any particular one. So throughout the tour we used to switch.
DK: Right.
KF: Sometimes I’d go in the mid upper turret. Sometimes I’d go in the rear turret.
DK: So this training then at the OTU that was mostly circuit and bumps.
KF: That’s right.
DK: Cross country.
KF: Yeah. Yeah. It was mostly really for bomb aiming when the Wellington would fly over the predetermined bombing range on the, on the coast. Used to fly out to the coast at Lincoln.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And near the Wash somewhere. And the bomb aimer would then drop the practice bombs and he would get a qualification depending how good he was.
DK: And at this point can you remember were you beginning to feel confident with your crew? Or were you beginning to gel and —
KF: Oh yes. You got on very well. If you hadn’t got on well you would apply for a move.
DK: Right.
KF: But no. We all got on fine and eventually you did everything as a crew. When you went to the pub you all went together. And when you went for a meal you all went together. Basically.
DK: Yeah.
KF: But your crew because your lives depended on each other you became quite associated with one another.
DK: So after the OTU then where did you go on to then?
KF: Lanc Finishing School.
DK: Right.
KF: Where the pilot was particularly trained to switch from twin engine to four engine.
DK: And would that be the point when your flight engineer joined you?
KF: That’s right.
DK: Yeah.
KF: No. Sorry. There was, before the Lanc Finishing School there was an OT.
DK: It was at the Heavy Conversion Unit.
KF: That’s right. Yeah. Convert. Conversion Unit.
DK: Can you remember which Heavy Conversion Unit it was?
KF: Wigsley, Wigsley.
DK: Wigsley. Yeah.
KF: Yeah. And —
DK: And was that —
KF: That was the conversion from twin engine to four engine.
DK: Right.
KF: And then from there we went to the Lanc Finishing School to give the pilot training from radial engine to Lancaster.
DK: So, at the Heavy Conversion Unit what four engine bombers —
KF: Stirling.
DK: Stirlings. Right. Ok. And what did you think of the Stirling?
KF: Well, not being the pilot particularly, we were passengers.
DK: Yeah.
KF: So each aircraft didn’t matter to us particularly.
DK: Yeah.
KF: As gunners.
DK: And on the Stirling did you train in the mid-upper and the rear turret?
KF: Yeah. There was the mid upper and rear.
DK: Yeah. So after the Heavy Conversion Unit on Stirlings you then went to the Lancaster Finishing School.
KF: The Lanc Finishing School.
DK: For the pilot. For the Lancaster.
KF: That’s right. For the pilot to convert.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And I’m not sure what stage, before Lanc Finishing School or after you were posted to a particular group.
DK: Right.
KF: And we were fortunate in the sense that we were posted 5 Group which was considered the elite group of the Bomber Command.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
KF: Because 5 Group was at Grantham.
DK: Yeah.
KF: With —
DK: Ralph Cochrane.
KF: That’s right. Yeah.
DK: Yeah
KF: Yeah.
DK: So you were quite pleased about that then, were you? Did they —
KF: Oh yes. Yeah.
KF: Yeah.
DK: Because to be sent on the Lancaster as opposed to the Halifax.
DK: Yeah.
KF: Because you know the Halifax was slower and it was more vulnerable. So to get on to Lancasters we were quite happy.
DK: And then your first squadron was?
KF: First?
DK: Your first squadron.
KF: 619 Squadron.
DK: Yeah.
KF: At Dunholme Lodge.
DK: Dunholme Lodge.
KF: Just outside Lincoln.
DK: Yeah.
KF: It’s now a school. I think.
DK: Yeah. I actually drove through there quite recently.
KF: Did you?
DK: it’s all farms now.
KF: Is it?
DK: The airfield’s long gone. Right. So this was your first operational squadron then?
KF: 619 was. Yes.
DK: 619, at Dunholme Lodge. And did you like the squadron as you joined? Was it —
KF: It was very basic.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And you were in Nissen huts, and there was sufficient beds in one Nissen hut for two crews. And one crew would have one end of the room.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And the other crew would have the other end of the room and you just simply got on with each other. But sadly, very often the crew in the other end of the hut would go missing so another crew would come in. And that was the [pause] you just shrugged and —
DK: Yeah.
KF: Tough. Sort of thing.
DK: So on your first operational squadron then can you remember much about your first operation?
KF: My first operation I was called to operate with another crew.
DK: Right.
KF: Yeah. One of their gunners had gone sick so I was called up to make up their crew.
DK: Yeah. Would you mind if I close the door? There’s a bit of drilling going on outside.
KF: Is there? Yeah.
DK: Yeah. It’s picking up on the [unclear] is that alright?
[pause]
DK: That’s it. Somebody had a, somebody had a drill going.
KF: Did they?
DK: Yeah. Sorry. So your first operation then you flew with another crew.
KF: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
KF: It was a daylight op to Le Havre submarine pens.
DK: Right. And at, so as an extra gunner then where did you actually sit because you couldn’t obviously both get in the turret. Did you just sort of swap places with him?
KF: At what stage?
DK: Well, you’re with another crew at this point.
KF: Yeah, but their gunner had gone sick so I was sitting in his turret.
DK: Oh, sorry. Oh, sorry. I thought you meant —
KF: He wasn’t flying. He wasn’t flying so I took his place.
DK: You were a replacement gunner.
KF: I was a replacement gunner.
DK: So how did that make you feel then? Flying out with a different crew then on your first operation?
KF: You just got on with them. You just simply fitted in and they accepted you and you accepted them. There was no, no embarrassment at all.
DK: Yeah. So when was your first operation then with your actual crew? Was that the next one?
KF: The next one was a daylight to Brest. That was a, so throughout the whole tour I had always done one more than they had —
DK: Right.
KF: You know, I was one ahead of them. It was interesting because when I came back, ‘What was it like? What was it like?’ And of course when you flew from Lincoln to Le Havre this was in September and of course D-Day was in June.
DK: Yeah.
KF: So you flew over the Channel and saw the battleships shelling the French coast.
DK: Right.
KF: It was quite spectacular because it was daylight.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And of course Le Havre was a short hop over France so you weren’t in too much of a, you got the odd ack ack but nothing special.
DK: So as your operations have progressed then can you remember the different targets you were sent too?
KF: Oh yeah. Yeah. I remember them all really.
DK: Yeah.
KF: Not necessarily in order but the first, the third operation was a night one to Munchen Gladbach.
DK: Right. So that would have been your first time over Germany then.
KF: This was the first time over Germany and of course it was spectacular because it was night time and you saw all the fires and the explosions and it was all like a bit of a firework display. In fact, I called the navigator and I said, ‘Terry,’ Terry Fellowes, that was the navigator —
DK: Terry Fellowes. Right.
KF: Terry Fellowes.
DK: Terry Fellowes. The navigator, yeah.
KF: And he was always in, the navigator worked in a curtained off area.
DK: Yeah.
KF: With lights on.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And the lights had to be shielded from outside to save giving your position away. So he looked out and he blamed me after that. He said, ‘I wish I’d never looked out,’ he said. And he said throughout the rest of the tour he never did look out.
DK: Look out.
KF: But of course as gunners we were seeing everything, you see.
DK: Yeah. So, as a, as a gunner then this might sound a silly question but what was your actual role as part of that crew? What was your job?
KF: Your main basic job was a lookout. Particularly in the dark because you’d have seven or eight hundred aircraft all flying along in the dark with no lights on and you particularly had to have good night vision.
DK: Yeah.
KF: Because you could see, you might be flying along for a while and suddenly see some sparks and when you looked up you discerned another aircraft only fifty, sixty feet away. So you’d then call the pilot up. Warn him that there was another aircraft to the port or starboard. Wherever. And he would veer away slightly and you would sit, then you would tell him yes ok you were out of range. And of course you were looking out for enemy aircraft. The difference in the dark sky is very minimal between seeing something and not seeing something.
DK: Yeah.
KF: So you had to have good night vision to see a black shadow against a slightly less black background. And then you had to recognise the shape. And if the shape was an enemy aircraft you’d got to decide whether to move away or attack or whatever. If he was doing no harm you left him alone because he had a bigger gun than you did.
DK: Right. So the intention would be you wouldn’t want to draw attention to yourself if you saw an enemy aircraft and he wasn’t behind you.
KF: If he wasn’t, if he wasn’t aware of your presence you kept schtum because if you fired your gun every fifth round of the belt was an incendiary. And it was an incendiary to aid you to know why you were firing. But at the same time it gave your position away.
DK: Yeah.
KF: So that if you fired when you didn’t need to and then the enemy aircraft could say, ‘Hello. I didn’t know you were there. I’ll go for you.’ So you kept quiet. If he saw you and you attacked, he attacked then you’d call the pilot up and call him to veer and corkscrew port or starboard. If the aircraft was coming in from the starboard you dived in to him.
DK: Right.
KF: If he was diving from the port you dived in to him. And the pilot, you’d call the pilot up and just simply shout quickly, ‘Corkscrew. Starboard. Go.’ And the pilot never stopped to ask. He just went.
DK: Right.
KF: And then he did a corkscrew. You know what a corkscrew is?
DK: Yeah. I do.
KF: And he’d do the corkscrew until you felt you’d got rid of him and then he would get back on to course. And the navigator then would curse and swear at you because everything had gone up in the air. His plan, maps and pencils and everything else shot up in the air.
DK: Yeah. So, you were actually attacked by German aircraft.
KF: Oh, you could. Yeah. On several occasions.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
KF: So you, you simply got out of the way because they had cannons which had a six hundred yard range.
DK: Yeah.
KF: We had 303s which had a three hundred yard range. So if you fired at him he could stay further away and hit you and you couldn’t reach him.
DK: Did any of these German attacks ever damage the aircraft or did you always always manage to —
KF: Not, not to, well I say not to our knowledge. We sometimes came back and there was holes in the aircraft. Whether they were shrapnel or bullet holes you never really discerned.
DK: Yeah.
KF: The ground staff would have known because they were having to repair them. But when you got out of after coming back from a raid there were very often holes in the aircraft from either bullets or shrapnel.
DK: Right. But you never came back severely damaged though.
KF: Not severely damaged.
DK: No.
KF: But the amazing thing to me was that seven of us in an aircraft. We came back with holes in the aircraft but none of them ever hit anybody. Not one of the aircraft, not one of the crew was hit with any bit or injured.
DK: Right. So how many operations did you do with 619?
KF: We did nine with 619.
DK: Right.
KF: And then they wanted to form a new squadron so they took the best or the experienced crews from 619 and they also took the experienced half the crew, half the squadron and the other half was taken from a squadron at Bardney and they were sent to Strubby. And then from Strubby we went down to Balderton where we formed 227 Squadron. And then from ten ‘til thirty six we did at Balderton.
DK: Right. So you did thirty six operations altogether.
KF: Well, a tour was thirty.
DK: Right.
KF: And every four weeks of flying you were sent on ten days leave. So we thought right if we do twenty eight we’ll go on leave for ten days, come back, do two and we’ll get to our next leave. So we were being clever to get two lots of leave in quick succession.
DK: Yeah.
KF: When we came back from the twenty eight ops thinking we’d two to do and we arrived back on station and we were told that they had increased the tour from thirty to thirty five because of the bad weather down the training line was stopping new crews coming up the line. So we had seven to do.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And sadly when you went to the flight and looked at the casualty board while we’d been away somebody had done thirty one and shot down. Thirty two, shot down. If they had finished their tour at thirty they would have survived.
DK: They’d have survived.
KF: So there was a bit of an ironic situation.
DK: How did that, can you remember how that made you feel at the time?
KF: Well, you’re invincible at eighteen. Anybody else was going to.
DK: Yeah.
KF: When you saw an aircraft being shot down over target you just simply said, ‘Well not me. Tough mate.’ You know.
DK: So you did, so the rest of your crew did thirty five but you did the —
KF: I did the odd one.
DK: Extra one at thirty six, yeah.
KF: What I didn’t realise until much later was that I could have called off at thirty five but I carried on with my crew without question.
DK: So, could, could you talk through sort of what an operation would be like. A night time one. Presumably they got you up quite late during the day and then you’d, would you do a sort of training mission during the day with the aircraft? Or —
KF: Yes. You did what they called the pre-flight test.
DK: Right.
KF: You would, the morning would [pause] in the morning the pilot would go to the flights and look at the Battle Order. If he was on and the aircraft he was designated to then we would go out to that aircraft and make sure everything was in working order and then he would do a pre-flight test of about ten minutes, fifteen minutes. Check that it was, sounded all right. The radio operator would contact base and make sure —
DK: Yeah.
KF: The radio was working. And we would just make sure the guns were, were working. We didn’t actually fire them but you made sure that the mechanism was working. And then you landed. Then you went to a meal. Then you would come back and get briefed. And then you would go to the aircraft and wait for take-off and then when the green light went up you took off.
DK: What was it like at the briefings though when you saw what your target was going to be? Was it —
KF: Well, you went in to, all the buildings were Nissen huts.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And this was the biggest style of Nissen hut. And you went in and it was seated. Benches and chairs. And you were looking at the stage and the whole of the back of the stage was covered with a big curtain. And when the CO and the briefing crew came along you stood up to attention. The guy, the CO told you, ‘Sit down.’ And then the curtains were drawn back. And then you would see the whole map of Europe and a tape would be from base to the target.
DK: Right.
KF: During the course of the day you established from the ground crew how much petrol they were putting in. If it was a little, a small amount they could put more bombs. If it was a long target, a long range target it reduced the amount of bombs you could take because there was more petrol.
DK: Petrol.
KF: So if the petrol load was high you knew it was a long way.
DK: Yeah.
KF: If the petrol load was low you knew it was a shorter one.
DK: Yeah.
KF: So when you looked at the map you have a preconceived idea that it was going to be a long one or a short one.
DK: Yeah.
KF: If it was long one it was obviously going to be in to, in to Germany. One particular one was Gdynia. Which was in Poland.
DK: And that was your longest.
KF: Ten and a half hours that one.
DK: Ten and a half hours.
KF: Five hours out and five hours back. And but if it was a short one it would be something like Le Havre or Brest or —
DK: Yeah.
KF: Any of the occupied countries. You know.
DK: So before, you had a pre-flight meal presumably before you went.
KF: Well, you just had a normal meal.
DK: Yeah.
KF: But as aircrew you were privileged in that you could have as much milk as you liked.
DK: Right.
KF: Where, I’m talking, that’s surprising but milk was in short supply at the time. So being privileged you could drink as much milk as you liked. You could eat, you could ask for anything you wanted from catering.
DK: Yeah.
KF: That was available.
DK: So basically you get the green light and off you go. For take-off then where were you? Were you in the turret or were you in the —
KF: You were in the turret.
DK: Right.
KF: But you had to centralise them and, and not swivel them because that would unbalance the aircraft.
DK: Yeah.
KF: When you were taking off. The pilot could feel you if you were swinging the guns about. So you sat with your guns centralised.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And you just took off down the runway and got airborne. Once you were airborne then you could swivel your turrets.
DK: Yeah. And what was that like though? Being sort of dragged backwards as it were.
KF: Didn’t really, didn’t I don’t think there was anything. It’s just like sitting on the train backwards.
DK: So you would be in the turret for the entire time.
KF: Oh yeah. You never. It wasn’t wise to leave the turret.
DK: Yeah.
KF: So you stayed in it. But if you were over friendly territory there was in the aircraft there was what they called an elsan which was a chemical toilet. And if needed to go to the loo you could go.
DK: Yeah.
KF: But being in a flying suit as the gunner you had four layers of clothing on.
DK: Yeah.
KF: So you would, you made sure you didn’t need to go to the loo.
DK: Yeah.
KF: You made sure before you put your suit on.
DK: Yeah.
KF: That you’d drained yourself.
DK: Did you have electrical heated suits?
KF: Yeah.
DK: You did. Yeah. And were they any good because I’ve heard different stories.
KF: Oh yes. They were good. No. They were good.
DK: Yeah.
KF: In fact, sometimes they would, I remember once getting my foot slipper was getting too hot and there were studs at the back of the heel fitting on to the suit, and I just disconnected it.
DK: Yeah. What was it like being in the rear turret then? Was it, because you are cut off from the rest of the crew. Was it a little, a little lonely there? Or were you —
KF: Well, you could always call up on, on the intercom. You never felt. I mean the rear turret was behind the tail so you were hanging over the back and you could see the tail struts were out here somewhere.
DK: Yeah.
KF: You’re out in space really. You’re in a, in a Perspex dome.
DK: And do you remember much about as you reached the target and the bombs dropping and what happened to the aircraft then?
KF: Oh yeah. I mean the pilot, the navigator in particular, to get seven hundred aircraft over the target they were all give a different direction to come in so that they weren’t all falling over one another. So every aircraft would come in at a certain time at a certain angle to make sure that they all dropped over the target but they were all zigzagging about. So you would be [pause] the navigator would tell the pilot what course to fly. He would fly the course. Then eventually he would see the target because it had already been marked by the Pathfinders.
DK: Yeah.
KF: Or it was already in flames anyway. So as you approached the target on the heading that you had already been given, no, the navigator had been given. At the height the bomb aimer would be laying on the front nose looking through the bombsight and as he got closer to the target he would direct the pilot. The navigator would fall out of the equation and the bomb aimer would take over and tell the pilot, ‘Left. Left. Steady. Right. Steady.’ Got him on. And then when the pilot, when the bomb aimer was over the target he would press the tit, shout, ‘Bombs gone,’ and the aircraft would lift up. You could feel it. But what you had to do as gunners you had to make sure that the guy above you wasn’t directly above you dropping on — several aircraft got lost on targets by other aircrew dropping their bombs on the aircraft below.
DK: So, as, as the bomb run was happening you were looking up there and there and there right up to —
KF: Well, you were looking left, right and centre. And if you, two aircraft on the route from base to the target some aircraft would be two minutes later than they should have been or two minutes earlier. So there would always be a little bit of congestion over the target.
DK: Yeah.
KF: The worst thing that could happen when you were over the target was not being able to drop the bombs and then you were shouted, ‘Bomb bays closed. Go around again.’ So you had to go around again whilst everybody is shooting at you. Because the guy above you was going to drop his bombs on you.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And so you would tell the pilot and he would drop back a bit and then the guy above you would drop his bombs past you. But sometimes because the guy above didn’t want to go around again he wouldn’t care that you were underneath him.
DK: Yeah.
KF: He would drop them and hope they didn’t hit you. But that was one of the hard facts of life.
DK: So you dropped your bombs on target. You were heading for home now.
KF: After you’ve dropped your bombs the bomb aimer and the pilot had to continue for another thirty seconds on a straight and level course to allow the flash, photo flash to trigger over the target and it took a photograph of where the bomb aimer had dropped his bombs.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And then after thirty seconds of level you could fall off and then the navigator would give the pilot a course to set for home.
DK: Yeah. So you’re setting back for home then. How, how are you feeling as you approached the airfield? Was it a sense of — ?
KF: Well, you left the target but you still had to be alert.
DK: Yeah.
KF: Because when if an enemy aircraft was above you he could see you silhouetted against the flames below.
DK: Right.
KF: So he could come down on you when he, and what he would often do was go under you. There was a bit of a fallacy that the rear gunner is in the most endangered position.
DK: Right.
KF: Not necessarily so because an enemy aircraft depending on which angle he’s coming at you isn’t necessarily going to kill the rear gunner first.
DK: Right.
KF: He could come in from the side and as you possibly well know there was what they called schrage musik. And the enemy aircraft had a gun —
DK: Yeah.
KF: At an angle. And he would come underneath you and fire into the wing.
DK: Yeah.
KF: Where the petrol tanks were. And the first you knew of it was where the wing took off. You know. And so periodically you would get the pilot to tilt over so you could look underneath and then look underneath again.
DK: You never saw anybody coming up to shoot you from below then when you [unclear]
KF: No. No. No
DK: No. I guess, yeah, so when you got back home then what was the feeling as you got back off an operation?
KF: You were only relieved when the wheels touched down. You were always looking out for, at one time, particularly during the end of the war a lot of the German aircraft used to follow the bomber crews in when their airfield was lit up and they were landing on the runway. When they were wheels down and flaps down.
DK: Yeah.
KF: They were at their most vulnerable because they couldn’t manoeuvre and the enemy pilot who’d followed him in would then shoot him down and several aircraft sadly were lost —
DK: Right.
KF: On the approach to the runway. So you never gave up until you actually wheeled down.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And hit the runway.
DK: Yeah. Is it ok if I have a look at the old logbook? [pause] I just wondered if I have a look at the various operations there.
KF: Red were night ops.
DK: Red for night ops. Yeah.
KF: Green were daylights.
DK: So that —
KF: And black was flying.
DK: This is just for the recording. So that’s the Lancaster Finishing School.
KF: That’s right.
DK: Syerston. So then 619 squadron. So that’s Allen. Your —
KF: Flight Sergeant Allen.
DK: Your pilot. So, that’s the first operation was to Brest. Wasn’t it?
KF: Yeah
DK: So with a different pilot. Franks.
KF: That’s right.
DK: Yeah. [unclear]
KF: And then the next one was Le Havre. Was it Le Havre?
[pause]
DK: I’ve got Darmstadt.
KF: Sorry?
DK: Darmstadt.
KF: No, that’s, there’s another one.
DK: Oh, here we go. Le Havre.
KF: Later on. That’s it.
DK: Gun positions.
KF: That’s right.
DK: Yeah. So the Brest operation was on the 2nd of September.
KF: That’s right.
DK: Then Le Havre.
KF: That was the first one with my crew.
DK: The first one with your crew. 10th of September. And then the 11th of September your first night operation to Darmstadt.
KF: Darmstadt. That’s right.
DK: So there’s Darmstadt. Munchen Gladbach.
KF: And then Munchen Gladbach.
DK: So most, most of the German cities here aren’t there? Ops to Bergen. Was that —
KF: Norway.
DK: Norway. Right.
KF: Norway.
DK: So that’s with, that was Balderton. So you joined Balderton with 227 Squadron in October ’44. [pause] So there’s a Dortmund Ems canal.
KF: Yeah.
DK: So that was two operations there then.
KF: Oh, we went there several times.
DK: Several times. Right.
KF: The idea was you, there was a high point between Dortmund and Ems.
DK: Right.
KF: And the idea was to break the banks, drain the canal and none of the barges could travel from Dortmund to Ems.
DK: Right.
KF: With material for the war production. So they kept going back and of course when they built the, when they repaired the dam and the water went back in again you went back again and burst it again.
DK: Right.
KF: So that’s why we kept going back to the Dortmund Ems Canal.
DK: You went there on the 4th of November. Then again the 6th of November.
KF: Went back three or four times I think.
DK: Yeah. Then Munich, 27th of November.
KF: Three times to Munich.
DK: Three times Munich. There’s a recall there I see. The Urft Dam.
KF: Urft Dam. Yeah.
DK: U R F T Dam. Yeah.
KF: Gdynia.
DK: Gdynia.
KF: That was Poland.
DK: Yeah. So Gdynia was on the 18th of December. Oh. So you did Munich on the 17th of December. And then Gdynia the next day. The 18th of December.
KF: Yeah. Two long ones. Because Munich was right down in the far end of Germany.
DK: Then the 30th of December there’s ops to I’ll spell this out for the recording H O U F F.
KF: Houffalize.
DK: ALIZE. Houffalize. The Dortmund Ems Canal again on January the 1st.
KF: Yeah.
DK: So, Houffalize again.
KF: You see, Royan. That one is a coastal town in France.
DK: Right.
KF: And when the D-Day landing took place they went down. The Americans went down the peninsula and Royan was in a German garrison but because the Americans went down so fast they were —
DK: Cut off.
KF: Cut off.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And the French were complaining that the Germans were going out in to the countryside and rustling for food and one thing and another so they asked for, and the garrison was too big for the French Resistance to take on so they asked us to go down and —
DK: Bomb them.
KF: Bomb them. But the point I’m getting around to is that the briefing by the meteorological officer was completely wrong, and when. Because it was only a pocket in France and the country around about was already occupied by us —
DK: Yeah.
KF: We didn’t do a deviation. We went straight to the target. The wind speed given by the meteorological officer was wrong and there was a huge tailwind which got us there early. And we flew over Royan about six or seven minutes early for the bomb aiming, for the bombing and there were no markers down so we didn’t know where we were. So when we’d over shot the target we had to turn around and come back because it was fatal because every other aircraft was still coming.
DK: Yeah.
KF: So there was and we lost several aircraft in crashes.
DK: Collisions.
KF: Albeit there was very little anti- aircraft.
DK: So that was Royan. R O Y A N. And that’s January the 4th.
KF: Yeah.
DK: Yeah. In France.
KF: Well, if we’re going back one if you look back at December [pause] December we were out on New Year’s Eve. December 31st. 30th.
DK: No. That’s the 18th there.
KF: Sorry?
DK: 30th. Yeah.
KF: That was the, that was—
DK: Houffalize.
KF: The [pause] when the Germans broke through. You know the Battle of the Bulge.
DK: Oh, the Battle of the Bulge. Oh right. Ok.
KF: That was the Battle of the Bulge.
DK: Right. So that’s —
KF: And what date was that?
DK: 30th of December.
KF: That’s right.
DK: Houffalize.
KF: The night before the New Year. Night before New Year.
DK: Yeah. Yeah. So Politz.
KF: Politz.
DK: Politz on —
KF: That was in Czechoslovakia.
DK: Yeah. So Politz again there. Dresden on the 13th of February.
KF: Yeah.
DK: Do you remember, do you remember much about that?
KF: The famous Dresden raid.
DK: Do you remember much about that operation?
KF: Nothing special. Just another one. It was only afterwards that we, I mean that was this is what really appalled me. If you remember Harris. Bomber Harris, you know.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
KF: You know. He got no credit for doing what he did because after the war everybody was saying, ‘Look at the damage you’ve done. Oh terrible.’ So even right up until when was the Battle of Britain, not the Battle — the Bomber Command Memorial.
DK: Yeah.
KF: Seventy odd years later.
DK: Yeah. 2012 that was. Yeah.
KF: And what I’m saying is really nobody gave you credit for what you did.
DK: No.
KF: And in fact, I’ve an opinion. I’ve a theory that we did Germany a favour in a, in a odd way. When we knocked everything out of Germany I mean we flew over Germany after the war to look at the damage and it was, you might have seen photographs yourself.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
KF: They had nothing. So they had to renew everything with new equipment to get back on their feet. And we gave them thousands. And America did. To save them going over to the Russian sphere.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
KF: We pumped millions of pounds into Germany. They got all completely new equipment.
DK: Yeah.
KF: New factories. New houses. New, new buildings.
DK: That’s it.
KF: We’re coming back to all our old clapped out aeroplanes and trains.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And infrastructure. And Germany then went to be a very renowned engineering country.
DK: Yeah. It was the West German economic miracle wasn’t it?
KF: That’s right.
DK: But of course it was financed by the Americans and Volkswagen. Yeah.
KF: Volkswagen. Volkswagen was saved by the British Army.
DK: That’s right. Yeah.
KF: They ran it for several years after the war.
DK: Yeah. True. So then —
KF: But people forget that.
DK: Yeah.
KF: I mean Germany today in my opinion is ruling Europe.
DK: Yeah.
KF: By economic means. Whereas it tried to do it —
DK: Militarily.
KF: By military means.
DK: Yeah. So just going on then into March ’45. So you’d then got, I see the Dortmund Ems again. March the 3rd. Harburg on the 7th of March. And a place near Leipzig on the 20th of March. So, would that have been your last operation then?
KF: What was that one.
DK: Leipzig, Poland.
KF: No. That was —
DK: Bohlen.
KF: What date was that?
DK: March the 20th.
KF: No. Bohlen was the last one.
DK: Yeah. Bohlen. Yeah.
KF: Oh. Near Leipzig.
DK: Yeah.
KF: Bohlen. That was the last one.
DK: So your last operation then March the 20th.
KF: Yeah.
DK: Bohlen near Leipzig.
KF: That was their thirty fifth. My thirty sixth.
DK: Right. So that’s B O H L E N.
KF: That’s right.
DK: Yeah. So the war’s come to the end then and did, did you [pause] what happened to your crew then? Did they all split up?
KF: When we finished operations. The two gunners. Myself and my other mate we were sent back to Silverstone as instructors. What you [pause] if the war had lasted longer if you did thirty ops then you did six months rest. And at that six months you were sent to a training base to train up the crews coming up the line. And then you went back for another thirty. And then you could opt out altogether or volunteer for more.
DK: Yeah.
KF: But being, being the end of the war we were at Silverstone as instructors when VE day came up.
DK: Was there any plans that you might go out to the Pacific afterwards?
KF: We were then sent to Cranwell with a view to training for Tiger Force.
DK: Yeah.
KF: But fortunately while we were at Cranwell VJ day came up.
DK: Were the atomic bombs a bit of a relief?
KF: So, oh yeah. Funnily enough there was always a fear that dropping in, dropping over Europe if you were shot down.
DK: Yes.
KF: And you could get out if you could out. Dropping out over Germany and either trying to get back through the escape channels or getting captured didn’t bear the same risks or fears that if you dropped over Borneo.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And going, thinking of going out to Japan.
DK: Get caught by the Japanese.
KF: Or the Japanese theatre you kept thinking of the bloody jungles and dropping in the trees and God knows what, you know.
DK: So did you manage to keep in touch with your crew after the war?
KF: Sadly no. It’s always with hindsight.
DK: Yeah.
KF: I suppose some crews did keep in touch but life was so quick and so you moved so quickly that we, we dispersed.
DK: Right.
KF: And didn’t keep in touch. But years later I got in on my computer and I found what they were called in Australia the Odd Bods Organisation. Have you heard of it?
DK: No. I haven’t. No. No.
KF: The odd bods. There was a lot of Australian crews, members and they flew from RAF stations. Some of them went to an Australian, purely Australian squadron.
DK: Yeah.
KF: So when they went back to Australia after the war those who weren’t in the Australian squadron formed a group called the Odd Bods.
DK: Right. Right.
KF: They were the odd crew members —
DK: Yeah.
KF: In the British. And I got through to them and I found in their website a Roll of Honour and saw Flying Officer Allen.
DK: Oh right.
KF: Who had died. As a civilian of course.
DK: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
KF: Years after this is. So I got in touch with the secretary on the computer and asked him if I could get in touch with his widow.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And I said I also knew Bill Eudey who was the wireless operator.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
KF: So he said, ‘Oh, he’s also died.’ So he said, ‘Yes, I’ll get in touch with the widows to see whether they’re happy for you to communicate with you. And they came back and said yes.
DK: Oh good.
KF: So I got in touch with them both. One was on the computer.
DK: Yeah.
KF: One wasn’t.
DK: Yeah.
KF: The pilot’s wife wasn’t computer literate so I kept in touch with her by correspondence.
DK: Yeah.
KF: But sadly since she’s died.
DK: Right.
KF: The wireless operator’s widow I speak to every morning on, every Saturday morning on Skype.
DK: Oh excellent. That’s —
KF: We have a chat you know.
DK: Yeah. There’s some good aspects to new technology isn’t there?
KF: That’s right. Yeah. The flight engineer when you got to the OC, OC [pause] whatever. Conversion Unit.
DK: Yeah.
KF: That’s when you picked up the engineer.
DK: Right.
KF: So we picked up an engineer. A flight engineer from Manchester.
DK: At the Heavy Conversion Unit.
KF: At the Heavy Conversion Unit.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And he eventually moved to Australia.
DK: Right.
KF: So I tried to get in touch with him. But he had died.
DK: Right.
KF: And these are all about ten years ago.
DK: Yeah. Oh, that’s a shame.
KF: So I’ve got in touch with his widow. But then she’s since died. You know.
DK: Yeah.
KF: This is what time does. We all go off the end at the end.
DK: Eventually. So all these years later looking back at your time in RAF Bomber Command how do you feel about that period of your life now? Looking back on it.
KF: How do I feel?
DK: [unclear]
KF: I suppose really being one of the fifty percent that lived you know you feel relieved that you, as I said earlier none of us got wounded at all.
DK: Yeah.
KF: So we were lucky in that sense and to survive as well was also another bonus, you know. But you see people began to get this attitude of we were cruel. We were [pause] so they didn’t want to know you. They don’t say directly but there was that undercurrent.
DK: Yeah.
KF: That you did. I mean the RAF Bomber Command was the only arm of the services that fought throughout the whole of the war.
DK: Yeah.
KF: The Navy never went out of bay, err out of port unless they had to.
DK: Yeah.
KF: The Army got defeated at Dunkirk and had two years where they were completely reforming.
DK: Yeah.
KF: So the RAF Bomber Command were the only group that kept the war going.
DK: Yeah.
KF: When everybody else was marking time.
DK: Yeah. That’s very true. Ok. I’ve just got one final question. I know I asked you this before but for the recording could we, could we just go through the crew again. Is that alright?
KF: Sorry. There’s one.
DK: Have you got one with the names?
KF: I’ve got one with all the names on. Let me go upstairs again.
DK: Are you ok doing? Are you sure? Is that alright?
KF: I’m trying to think where I put it.
DK: It might still be on the table. Put that on there again. So left, so left to right that’s Charlie Clegg.
KF: Yeah.
DK: Terry.
KF: Terry.
DK: Fellowes.
KF: Fellowes.
DK: Then it’s the rigger there presumably.
KF: That’s right.
DK: Harry Reeves. The rigger.
KF: Yeah. Harry Reeves.
DK: Then Charlie Tudor, flight mechanic.
KF: That’s right.
DK: Then Sergeant Ken —
KF: Mepham.
DK: Mepham. That’s M E P H A M.
KF: That’s right.
DK: He was the flight engineer.
KF: Yeah.
DK: Then Jack Barton.
KF: Yeah.
DK: The second bomb aimer.
KF: That’s right.
DK: Yeah. Then Pilot Officer Bill —
KF: Eudey.
DK: Eudey.
KF: E U D E Y.
DK: E U D E Y. Then Corporal Scotty Scott.
KF: Yeah.
DK: Who was a fitter. Flight Sergeant Ken Fawcett.
KF: Yeah.
DK: Which is your good self.
KF: That’s right.
DK: You’re listed there as the mid-upper gunner. Yeah.
KF: That’s right. Well, the gunner. We used to do both.
DK: Yeah. And then Flight Sergeant Kirk Kent.
KF: That’s right.
DK: And then kneeling is —
KF: Flying Officer Allen.
DK: Flying Officer Ken Allen.
KF: Ken Allen.
DK: The pilot. So just going back to Kirk Kent did you ever find out anything more about him as his, when he was ill or —
KF: No. No. Things are [pause] wartime you didn’t take the same personal interest in, you simply they were there or they weren’t there.
DK: Yeah.
KF: Whilst he was in hospital we were flying operationally so we didn’t have time to bother.
DK: Right.
KF: How he was or who he was or where he was.
DK: Right. Ok. And —
KF: Movements were so fleeting.
DK: Yeah.
KF: You just came and went. People. You didn’t, you didn’t get —
DK: On that point, just one final thing as a crew did you all used to socialise outside?
KF: Oh yeah.
DK: What did you do then? Do you go to the pubs and —
KF: Yeah. You go down the pub together.
DK: Yeah.
KF: You wouldn’t necessarily all go together.
DK: No.
KF: At Balderton the air, the air [pause] the station.
DK: Yeah.
KF: The runways and all that were over the A1.
DK: Right.
KF: The living quarters were about a half a mile away down a country lane. What they used to do was to disperse everything so that if there was an attack on it everything wouldn’t go together.
DK: Yeah.
KF: So that if the living quarters was always away and the mess and everything else was away.
DK: Yeah.
KF: So you would get from the, you would simply walk or sometimes you could get a station bicycle.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And you’d cycle from one place to another. The living quarters were down a country lane which if you went down about a mile down the road was in to Balderton village.
DK: Right.
KF: Where the pub was.
DK: Right.
KF: And that was either you went to the mess or you went to the pub.
[recording paused]
DK: Well, thanks very much for that. That’s been absolutely marvellous. It’s been just over an hour.
KF: I don’t know whether it’s me or what but when I did the Duxford one they said it would only take about a quarter of an hour.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And when we ended up it was about an hour and a bit.
DK: An hour and a bit, yeah. Well, this one’s an hour and a bit so that sounds about right. Ok. Well, thanks very much for that. I’ll switch off now.
[recording paused]
KF: Flying fortresses were coming back from the daylight.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And the air was full of Maydays. They didn’t have separate navigators on every aircraft. They had a lead navigator and a back-up navigator and when they turned everybody turned.
DK: Yeah.
KF: But when they came back in dusk and it was getting dark they were panicking because they couldn’t, they didn’t have navigators to get them home.
DK: They hadn’t navigated in the dark.
KF: That’s right.
DK: What did you feel about the Americans then? Were you sort of in awe of them? Of what they were doing. Or think they were daft.
KF: Only in awe in the sense that going out one night when they were coming back they were flying a slightly, you could see them in the dark and dusk you know.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And there was holes, and the tails were flying off, wings were hanging off, engines were hanging off. And I mean they took an awful lot of hammering but that was partly their own fault because they simply wouldn’t. They didn’t. You see we were individual and we could fly. We could turn off target. Off course.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And get back on course because the navigator knew what he was doing.
DK: Yeah.
KF: But when they came off course very often they were isolated and they were picked off.
DK: Yeah. Yeah. So you preferred the way the British did it then. At, at night.
KF: And when you see most of the documentaries they were always showing daylight raids by American Fortresses.
DK: Yeah.
KF: As if the Bomber Command didn’t exist.
DK: Yeah.
KF: Because everything that the bombers, the did the Americans did was in daylight.
DK: And they could film it.
KF: So the cameras could film it.
DK: Yeah.
KF: But at night time there wasn’t a lot of material.
DK: No. Did you, did you ever meet any of the American aircrew at all?
KF: No. But mind you I will admit that when some of our aircrew parachuted over an American airfield or crash landed on an American airfield in an emergency —
DK: Yeah.
KF: They usually come back loaded with, they were taken to the PX store.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And they were give free hand to take what they wanted.
DK: Oh right.
KF: So the guys used to come back with a load of goodies that we’d never seen for years.
DK: They were very generous then, were they?
KF: Oh yeah. Yeah.
[recording paused]
KF: But they were funny because they couldn’t discern very often when an aircrew crashed anywhere near the American field. They were apprehended.
DK: Oh right.
KF: And treated as if they were Germans.
DK: Right.
KF: Because the Americans didn’t always recognise an RAF. They had to convince them. And then they would allow them to ring the squadron.
DK: Yeah.
KF: And call for the transport to come and bring them. Once they realised they were British then they treated them.
DK: Yeah.
KF: With generosity. But they very often used to because the German Air Force blue was similar to ours.
DK: Right. Right. So they had to be wary to start with.
KF: But the Americans were quite naive you know.
DK: Well, you’d think they wouldn’t make that mistake wouldn’t 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
A name given to the resource
Interview with Ken Fawcett
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Kavanagh
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AFawcettK170926, PFawcettK1701
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:06:22 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Description
An account of the resource
Ken Fawcett worked for the Post Office and served in the Home Guard for two and a half years having signed up at sixteen. He joined the Royal Air Force at Lords Cricket Ground in September 1943. He initially requested pilot training but realising the duration of training Ken transferred to air gunner which enabled him to join a squadron much sooner. Ken trained at No1 Elementary Air Gunnery School at RAF Bridgenorth and No 12 Air Gunnery School at RAF Bishops Court in Northern Ireland. He recalled gun turret training in Anson aircraft using ammunition tipped with coloured paint so that his accuracy firing at towed target drogues could be assessed. Following gunnery training Ken transferred to No 17 Operational Training Unit at RAF Syerston flying Wellingtons, he recalled his first sight of a Wellington was a training flight stalling on takeoff and crashing with the loss of all crew members. No 1654 Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Wigsley brought four engine training in Stirling and Lancaster aircraft in preparation to joining 619 Squadron in 5 Group. Ken’s Crew included: Pilot Ken Alan and Wireless Operator Bill Eudey from Australia, Bomb Aimers Kirk Kent and Jack Barton, Gunner Charlie Clegg, Flight Engineer Ken Mepham and Navigator Terry Fellows. On completion of nine operations with 619 Squadron at RAF Dunholme Lodge his crew were transferred to 227 Squadron at RAF Balderton, they completed both daylight and night operations and Ken recalled seeing capital ships shelling the French coast during the D Day invasion. He described a typical operation from pre-flight test to returning to base and how they would quiz the ground crew as to how much fuel was loaded, this gave an indication of the duration of the operation that evening before the official crew briefing. Ken gives a vivid insight into the role of the rear gunner as a lookout scanning the darkness for both friendly and enemy aircraft, trying to discern dark shadows against a dark sky or sparks from an aircraft’s exhaust. The danger from collisions or another aircraft dropping its bombs from above was ever present. Opening fire he described as a last resort given the range of the enemy fighter’s cannons were twice that of his .303 machine guns, so stealth he stated was the best policy. On completion of 36 operations Ken was transferred to No 17 Operational Training Unit at RAF Syerston as an instructor and then to RAF Cranwell in preparation to join Tiger Force in the Far East. VJ Day led to the cancellation of Tiger Force before he completed his training.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jim Sheach
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Shropshire
France--Le Havre
Germany--Darmstadt
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Northern Ireland--Down (County)
Great Britain
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-09
1944
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
1654 HCU
17 OTU
227 Squadron
619 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
bomb struck
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
civil defence
Cook’s tour
crash
ground personnel
Heavy Conversion Unit
Home Guard
Lancaster
military service conditions
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Balderton
RAF Bishops Court
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Cranwell
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF Silverstone
RAF Syerston
RAF Wigsley
Stirling
take-off crash
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/706/10104/ABellGW161221.1.mp3
9f6081f87bc9ed1ae80c509b7527e12c
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
Bell, Gerald Walter
G W Bell
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Corporal Gerald Bell (b. 1921, 185210 Royal Air Force). He served as ground personnel.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-12-21
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bell, GW
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 21st of December 2016 and I am with Gerald Bell in Weston near Towcester in Northamptonshire and Gerald worked on the ground throughout the war and we are going to talk about his life and times. So, what’s the first thing you remember about life, Gerald?
GB: Going to school I suppose.
CB: Ok.
GB: At five. Yes.
CB: And where is that?
GB: Hickling. School.
CB: Which was near where? Hickling?
GB: [unclear]
CB: In Norfolk.
GB: Yes.
CB: Yes, in Norfolk. Ok. And what did your father do?
GB: He was getting people.
CB: And how many children?
GB: [unclear]
CB: Did he really? Balance, mixed balance between boys and girls or?
GB: Six girls and four boys.
CB: And where you in the pecking order?
GB: Number seven.
CB: Right [laughs]. And mother had a fulltime job?
GB: Yeah.
CB: Looking after you.
GB: Yeah.
CB: So, you went to Hickling school. The primary school. Where did you go for the secondary education?
GB: Never had a secondary education.
CB: Didn’t you?
GB: Left school at fourteen.
CB: Right, ok, and then what did you do?
GB: Me first job was, worked on a poultry farm. That was until I was sixteen.
CB: Yeah.
GB: Then me wages went up and they sacked me [laughs], oh yes, yes, that was quite normal those days. Rather than pay you cause [unclear] I suppose.
CB: Yeah, so then what did you do?
GB: Then I went on the farm. I was the yardman, I did the milking, feed the cattle and the pigs, did the milking.
CB: And how long did you do that for?
GB: Just trying to think.
CB: Well, the war came in 1939, by which time you were eighteen.
GB: I was working, oh, I left the farm
CB: Yeah
GB: Because the governor died
CB: Oh!
GB: And everything was sold off of course and I got a job on a food farm and I was there until I was called up, that was in 1940.
CB: What kind of fruit was it growing?
GB: Well, all sorts. Yeah.
CB: So, when you were called up, where did you go for your attestation?
GB: At Cardington.
CB: After that?
GB: I went back to work of course, I was called up to Stockton
CB: Yeah.
GB: And there I did me basic training, I can’t remember the name of the
CB: This is on the east coast near Whitby.
GB: No, further up
CB: Further up than that. Ok.
GB: Yes, that
CB: Scarborough.
GB: No, no, further up. It’s that place that had the iron things shut, [unclear]
CB: Shutten, no, that’s north west.
GB: Further up.
CB: Yes, up near Middlesbrough. OK, well, we’ll come back to that, yeah.
GB: It’s a seaside
CB: Seaside place.
GB: Yeah.
CB: Yes.
GB: Quite well known.
CB: Ok.
GB: It I [unclear] think of it.
CB: Need a map. [laughs] right. How long were you there doing that training?
GB: About six weeks, I think. Then I went to Finningley
CB: Did you?
GB: Yes.
CB: Right. So, you are now, what rank are you?
GB: Ordinary AC plonk.
CB: Yeah, AC plonk. Right. And what did you do at Finningley?
GB: Any general duties.
CB: So, you were a general duties ground staff
GB: Yes, yes.
CB: So, what would that entail?
GB: Any job that wanted doing, cleaning up, anything.
CB: All outside or was some of it office work or what was it?
GB: No, no, it was all outside.
CB: Ok.
GB: Yeah.
CB: So, what sort of places would needed to be cleaned up?
GB: Anywhere, the [unclear] or anything like that, you know, anything, general duties,
CB: Ok. So, if there was a fuel spill outside, would you have to go and clean up the fuel spill [unclear] aircraft?
GB: No.
CB: No, you wouldn’t. Was there any gardening to do?
GB: No. [unclear] garden in those days.
CB: No. So, what other things could you remember that you did there?
GB: No, nothing special, really.
CB: And how long were you at Finningley?
GB: I transferred to Balderton, yes, and I suppose I was there about twelve months.
CB: Ok.
GB: And I got posting, overseas posting.
CB: Right.
GB: Yes.
CB: So, before we do that, what did you do at Balderton?
GB: Same thing, general duties. Yes. Nothing special.
CB: Who was, who were you reporting to in that case?
GB: [unclear] in charge, that’s all.
CB: Which section would that be?
GB: I was [unclear] to general duties
CB: The general duties section
GB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So, did you enjoy being at Balderton or was it boring?
GB: Nothing was boring, no, because I lived in the village, I been far away so everything was new
CB: Yes.
GB: Yes.
CB: So, the bright lights you came to
GB: Yes.
CB: So, what did you do in your time off?
GB: Chasing the women
CB: Did you really?
GB: And drinking of course [laughs], yes.
CB: Was that confined to the station or were you
GB: No, [unclear]
CB: Yeah? How did you travel around from the station to
GB: They had lorries.
CB: Yeah. What was the nearest big town?
GB: Doncaster, yes.
CB: So, that had lots of service people in it?
GB: Oh, quite a few, yes.
CB: Yes.
GB: Lots of people from Finningley went to Doncaster.
CB: Yeah. What sort of time did you have there?
GB: Oh, enjoyed myself of course.
CB: What was the main activity when you went out, apart from drinking and, dancing did you do?
GB: Not a lot of dancing,
CB: No?
GB: I don’t think.
CB: Cinema?
GB: Yes.
CB: So, the lorry would take you and then collect you, bring you back at a certain time.
GB: Yes, yes.
CB: If you missed the lorry, then what?
GB: You had to get back on your own.
CB: How did you do that?
GB: Yeah, walk back [laughs].
CB: How long did that take?
GB: [unclear] Couple of hours, something like that, yes. You had to creep in the camp without anyone knowing [laughs].
CB: What was security like on an airfield?
GB: Pretty good, you used to have to lift up the barbwire and get underneath.
CB: Did you?
GB: Oh yeah [laughs], To get in.
CB: How many times did you get caught?
GB: I didn’t get caught [laughs].
CB: But some people did.
GB: Oh yes, yes.
CB: And then what happened?
GB: I don’t know, I supposed they went before the [unclear] and that was that. Well, you didn’t get away with anything if they caught you.
CB: Who was the person on the station you feared most?
GB: Oh, I suppose, the SWO.
CB: Yes, Station warrant officer.
GB: Yeah.
CB: He had a lot of power, did he?
GB: Yeah [laughs]. Keep out of his way.
CB: Why were people worried about him?
GB: I don’t know, I suppose everybody looked up at him, didn’t they? Yeah.
CB: Even the junior officers were worried
GB: Yes, yes.
CB: So, on the station, what sort of entertainment was there there?
GB: Oh, there was quite a few of the, what was it, not naafi, I forget the name of the people that used to do the
CB: The WVS, was it?
GB: No, it wasn’t, no, it was the [unclear], I suppose they were actors, not professionals.
CB: Oh, ENSA, yes.
GB: Yes. That’s right.
CB: ENSA, yes.
GB: ENSA, yes.
CB: They came and did performances.
GB: Yes.
CB: Where would they do that on the station?
GB: I was just trying to think, it must be one of the hangars.
CB: Ah, right.
GB: Yes. Yes, yes, we didn’t have anywhere else to go, in the winter we used to do roller-skating in the hangars.
CB: Right. How popular was that?
GB: Oh, that was very popular.
CB: So, how did people keep fit during their service in the RAF in the war?
GB: Cause they got us fit when we did the training sort of thing and we never bothered after that really.
CB: And when you were off duty, then you ate in the airmen’s mess, did you?
GB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. And what was the food like?
GB: Not bad, I suppose, yes, yeah. Yes, never heard any complaints.
CB: And to what extent did you link up with the aircrew?
GB: Not much, not really,
CB: What was
GB: Only if we were on guard duty and they come up [laughs]
CB: How often did you have to do guard duty?
GB: I don’t know. One fortnight, something like that.
CB: So, the guard be on a shift system, what were the shifts for that? Certain number of hours on and then and a certain number of hours off.
GB: Yes. Yeah, I think it be about two on and four off, something like that, yeah.
CB: Yeah. So, did you manage to arrest any aircrew who were trying to get in late?
GB: We wouldn’t arrest anyone [laughs], we knew the most of them anyway.
CB: Yeah. But to be effective you had firearms, didn’t you?
GB: Yes, yeah.
CB: And did you have live ammunition?
GB: No.
CB: So, did that have any restriction on the deterrent?
GB: I suppose they knew as well as we knew.
CB: Yeah, yeah. And so Finningley and Balderton, were both Bomber Command organisations, what was going on at those airfields?
GB: What was it, they were just previous to the [unclear] on the bomb.
CB: Yeah.
GB: So,
CB: So they had the operational training unit
GB: Yes, right.
CB: At Balderton, yeah.
GB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
GB: And Finningley.
CB: And Finningley, right, ok. So, what were the planes that they were flying to do that? Do you remember?
GB: I think they were mostly Wellingtons.
CB: Right, yeah. And what were their flying hours day and night,
GB: Yes,
CB: Did they, both day and night? Was it?
GB: Yes.
CB. And what about accidents from the training?
GB: Yes, a few.
CB: Were they? What sort of things went wrong?
GB: I don’t know, they never really let on what has happened to them.
CB: Right. Did any happen on the airfields?
GB: No, no, no,
CB: So when you got, you finished at Balderton, what time of year was that?
GB: I can’t remember all.
CB: So, that’s 1941 anyway.
GB: Yeah.
CB: So, you then posted overseas. Where did you go?
GB: We had to go to, oh, blimey.
CB: Did they have an assembly point in Britain before you embarked? Because you had to
GB: I’m just trying to think where we went to, to meet up sort of thing
CB: Yeah.
GB: The whole lot of us, was always [unclear] about fifty of us, on, blimey, I can’t think of the name of the place.
CB: Where is it near?
GB: On the south coast.
CB: Ah, right.
GB: Where they used to control the aircraft.
CB: On the radar stations?
GB: Yeah.
CB: Right.
GB: The main one. But I can’t remember.
CB: But it was on the coast.
GB: Nearly on the coast, yes.
CB: Yeah. And then everybody assembled, who were all these people, were they mixtures of ground and air crew or what were they?
GB: They weren’t aircrew at all, these were all
CB: All ground crew.
GB: All ground.
CB: All ground personnel.
GB: Yeah.
CB: So, when you were assembled, then where did you go?
GB: You had to go down to Sidforth for training with the army, the Dorset, was it Dorset?
CB: Yeah.
GB: We had training there.
CB: What type of training were you having?
GB: Army training sort of thing, yeah, we were getting fit and all that sort of thing, yeah, yes.
CB: Yeah. A lot of marching?
GB: Yeah, yeah, quite a good bit of marching.
CB: And then live firing of ammunition?
GB: No, no, we never had any firing at all.
CB: What were they training you up for to do?
GB: They were training us for the, we went to [unclear], it was the 893 AMES Air Ministry Experimental Station, that’s right.
CB: Oh, what did that do then?
GB: That was a mobile radar.
CB: Whereabout?
GB: We did that down in Dorset, there was one there.
CB: Ah, there was one there, was it?
GB: Yeah.
CB: So, were you effectively part of a defence, like airfield defence, is that, was that the job?
GB: No, we had separate people on our course that were for defence
CB: RAF regiment, yes. Right.
GB: RAF regiment sort of thing, yes. Anyway, we went from there to up to Scotland to get on the boat for North Africa.
CB: Right. Where was that? Glasgow?
GB: I think it was Glasgow.
CB: And where did you sail to?
GB: Algiers. On the way there the ship being [unclear] broke down, so we had to leave the convoy and they sailed on, they got it started again, woke up one morning and we were on our own. But we could see the destroyer over the far distance [unclear] far behind that, looked after us, that sort of thing. But we caught up eventually.
CB: Did you?
GB: Yeah.
CB: What went wrong with the ship then?
GB: I don’t know, they didn’t say much, you don’t know, you hear all sorts of things. They said the gaffer or the ship captain got recommendation for getting it going again.
CB: Was this an old holiday liner or was it a special troop ship?
GB: No, [unclear], it was a special troop ship.
CB: Right. How many people on the ship?
GB: Don’t know, I wouldn’t know, there’s no end of them.
CB: Did you get a bunk or a hammock?
GB: Hammock, yeah.
CB: What time of year was this? In the winter or the summer or?
GB: I couldn’t tell you. I can’t even remember the date of the invasion there.
CB: No. North Africa.
GB: Yeah.
CB: 1942.
GB: Yeah.
CB: Ok, so you got to Algeria,
GB: Yes.
CB: Then what?
GB: We had to, wait our turn to get into the port and all that sort of thing cause there was quite a lot there of course, all the Americans were there as well and we had to put up in the, built up a marquee in the zoological gardens in Algeria until we got our kit cause we had to wait about a week or two before we got it.
CB: Then?
GB: Eventually we got our kit, got on the road and we went as far as, into Tunisia I think, I’m just trying to think of the name of the place, Setif, but I don’t think it’s that name now, they’ve changed them, cause they were all French names, weren’t they? Now they’ve changed them all
CB: Right. This was in the back of a truck.
GB: Yes.
CB: How come, where was that?
GB: I got used to that sort of thing. They asked for volunteers to drive them
CB: But you could drive.
GB: I never, I could drive but I never volunteered, cause it was too dodgy,
CB: In what way?
GB: [unclear] you know,part road and all sorts of things. Anyway, we got as far as Setif and whether the Germans had made a push, we had to come back quick, I suppose because they were afraid that we’d get captured and they get all our stuff, cause I don’t think there was any other [unclear] like us about those days.
CB: You were all RAF people, weren’t you?
GB: Yes.
CB: How many, roughly?
GB: Roughly I suppose fifty or sixty.
CB: Yeah, the same fifty, yeah.
GB: Yeah, yeah. Cause we had to offer a day and night sort of thing. Anyway, we went back to Algiers and put up the stuff there, yes, we [unclear] from there.
CB: What were you doing in that time?
GB: You know the aerial, I suppose that
CB: For the radar.
GB: Yeah. Those days to move the aerial you had to turn the handle, that was my job, turn the handle at the aerial.
CB: Was this a constant movement as a sweep?
GB: Oh yes, yes, backwards and forwards, they had a barrel in there where all the kit was and they’d ring it, you carry on, when they ring it again, you turn it back sort of thing and you had to keep doing that until they got the two, I suppose the two planes together sort of thing, yeah. It was quite, you know.
CB: You got quite strong in your muscles, did you, arm muscles. What sort of, how did that work on the shifts for that?
GB: We had three shifts, three eight-hour shifts. And you, you know, you did all the [unclear] shift sort of thing.
CB: So, when you weren’t winding the thing round, what were you doing?
GB: It was a full-time job really.
CB: Oh, it was.
GB: Yeah.
CB: Day and night if there were three shifts.
GB: Yeah.
CB: So, what happened next? Was this a portable radar?
GB: I suppose really that was the first mobile radar there was.
CB: Yeah.
GB: Yes.
CB: So
GB: I think the Yanks used to come and visit. You know, [unclear] men come and visit to see what it was all about. But I got [unclear] well, I’d say mood, I got a bad chill and we didn’t have a doctor, we only had a first aid man
CB: Medical orderly
GB: Medical, yeah, and the thought I got pleurisy, cause they [unclear] me into hospital and of course none of the hospital would take because none of them had got the separate
CB: They needed an isolation room to take you
GB: Yes, I think I went nearly [unclear] for a year. Come back to all years now they, I managed to find one
CB: And what had you got? What were you suffering from?
GB: I don’t know, I was there for about a month
CB: Clearly more than a cold.
GB: I don’t think that it was anything more than a cold.
CB: Where did you go next? Back towards Tunisia?
GB: No, no, while I was away, while I was in hospital, they moved, I think they went to Sicily and I don’t know whether it was right or not but I was told that the ship that they were on got bombed, what happened I don’t know after that. But I went back to the, oh, [unclear] forward maintenancy unit.
CB: Ok. What happened there?
GB: Well, we followed the army, you know, into Tunisia.
CB: Yeah.
GB: Until they packed up and I went back to Algiers and finished the tour there.
CB: Doing what?
GB: General duties again.
CB: In, same place in Algeria, was it?
GB: Yes, with the
CB: But you had no radar by then because it had been moved, had it?
GB: Oh yes, they took, the whole lot went.
CB: How busy were you kept during general duties when they took you back to, when they kept you in Algeria? Were you busy or not?
GB: I think I spent most of my time on the sergeant’s mess, being in charge of the sergeant’s mess.
CB: And you had
GB: And we had Italian prisoners there doing [unclear] so we didn’t have to work.
CB: Ah right. So, what rank were you by now?
GB: LAC.
CB: LAC in the sergeant’s mess. So, what were your job then with the Italian prisoners?
GB: To see that they did the work, that was all.
CB: Who spoke Italian?
GB: No one [laughs]
CB: Nobody. So how did you communicate?
GB: I don’t know, we made them understand sort of thing, yeah, [unclear] supposed of you [unclear], no, no, no
CB: And were they willing workers or?
GB: There were some who were a bit dodgy but most of them, you had to watch them though
CB: Why?
GB: They’d nick anything, yeah, I remember one chap I caught, he got the tablecloth wrapped round him, so I discharged [unclear] [laughs]
CB: So, apart from nicking tablecloths, what else did they pinch?
GB: [unclear] as well because you couldn’t, you never had a clue really
CB: Yeah. So, when are we here now, what’s the date we are talking about now, when you are looking after the Italians?
GB: It must have been, I must have been there three years then. I was there three and a half years altogether
CB: Were you?
GB: Yeah. So that’d be towards the end of when I was there. When I got me demobbed from there.
CB: Oh, did you? So, the war was finished, the war finished, did
GB: No, I didn’t. I didn’t get me demobbed from there, we came home, now I went to Leicester East,
CB: Yeah.
GB: They were getting prepared for the victory parade and they had all the cars and lorries and that to do all ready for the victory parade.
CB: So, this is May 1945.
GB: Yes.
CB: So, what did they get you to do?
GB: I was working in the SWO’s office
CB: Were you? And what would you do in there with him?
GB: Paperwork, I suppose, mostly, yeah.
CB: So, how long were you at Leicester East?
GB: Until I was demobbed there.
CB: Yeah. You were demobbed from there?
GB: Yeah.
CB: And when was that?
GB: I haven’t a clue, really. Anyway, I got my demob and I went home, I got another three months leave, you know, two or three months, I don’t know how long it was and there was nothing there for me to do. I could have me job back but I didn’t want it, so I re-joined again and when I re-joined, I got a job, I got a job that they asked me if I wanted, it was behind the bar at the officer’s mess, at the record’s office, Gloucester.
CB: Are ye?
GB: We were stationed at
CB: Innsworth
GB: That’s right, yeah. I was in there for, cause I signed up for four years
CB: Ah, right.
GB: But, the end of the four years, they delayed releases for twelve months, I counted the, what war was on?
CB: The Korean war.
GB: Was it Korea? Yes, that’s right, yeah, they delayed the release so I had to do five years
CB: What rank were you at this stage?
GB: Corporal.
CB: Did you come back in as a corporal?
GB: Yeah.
CB: You left as a corporal, did you, at demob?
GB: No, no, I didn’t,
CB: Ah.
GB: No, I come back as a corporal, yeah.
CB: Right.
GB: And that’s where I met my better half. She was in the officer’s mess service.
CB: At Innsworth?
GB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So you were both behind the bar or what was she doing?
GB: No, she was in the officer’s.
CB: In the administration, was she?
GB: That’s right, yeah.
CB: So, when are we talking about now, 1951?
GB: A bit before that.
CB: ‘50.
GB: Yes, a bit before then, yes. Because I got married, she left the forces and I got married in 1948.
CB: Oh. When you were still in.
GB: I was still in, yes.
CB: Yeah. Ok, so then what?
GB: I was there for five years.
CB: Yeah. But, what about accommodation? Did they give you a quarter or what did they do, they didn’t have any quarters.
GB: They didn’t have any quarters.
CB: No.
GB: The wife stopped at her home.
CB: At. Which was where?
GB: At Eaton, in Wragby, it’s not far from here
CB: Wragby
GB: In Eaton
CB: Yeah. Right.
GB: It’s about five miles from here. Yeah.
GB: Yeah.
CB: Ok. So, you just go and see her at weekends.
GB: Yes, every other weekend I was off, come and see her.
CB: Right, so, how did you manage to travel around? What was the transport arrangement in those days?
GB: Trains, yeah.
CB: Did you get a travel warrant or did you?
GB: Yes, yes.
CB: Cause you were underage, were you? Under twenty-five. No, you weren’t, no. So, you payed for your own travel.
GB: Yeah.
CB: Ok, so you came, you did your full five years because of the extension of one year,
GB: Yeah.
CB: What did you do after that? You didn’t sign on again,
GB: No.
CB: So you went to civilian life.
GB: Well, we got the club, worked in a club at, blimey.
CB: What sort of club?
GB: Working men’s club.
CB: Working men’s, right. Cause your experience behind the bar
GB: Yeah
CB: They found that useful, did they?
GB: Yes.
CB: Right. Whereabouts in the country was that?
GB: I’m just trying and think now, blimey, Jonathan, where was
CB: Was it round here?
GB: No, no, no. You worked with the Oxford, what’s the name? [unclear]
US: [unclear] Green.
GB: No, I don’t think.
CB: Not the place, I tell you.
US: Place or [unclear] company.
CB: I tell you what, let’s do it a different way, you demobbed originally from Leicester East, when you did your four years and added one to make five years, you were demobbed, where were you demobbed from? Cause you were at Innsworth, so, where were you demobbed?
GB: I can’t remember, to be honest.
CB: So I’m thinking that perhaps the demobbed point guided you to certain jobs.
GB: No, no, no.
CB: How did you find this job?
GB: Well, I looked in the, I used to take the daily paper for the pubs.
CB: Oh, right.
GB: So, I found the job. Oh, yeah.
CB: Yeah. So, how long did you work there?
GB: I was there about three years before I got a better job.
CB: Yeah, which was what?
GB: There was another club at Maidstone in Kent.
CB: Maidstone, right.
GB: Yes.
CB: What was that club?
GB: It was originally a liberal club but I think that [unclear] anyone could join
CB: Right. And how long did you work there?
GB: I suppose I was there about four years.
CB: Then what?
GB: Then the wife was expecting so we had to get out and I got a job at Morton in Surrey. Bar manager.
CB: What sort of accommodation did you have? Did they provide accommodation with these jobs or did you have to rent outside?
GB: Well, I first, the pub, the club at Maidstone had a, above the club was house
CB: A flat.
GB: Yeah. But, when I went to Morton, they offered me accommodation, you know, temporary sort of thing until I found somewhere myself, which I did.
CB: Did you buy a house, or did you rent one or what did you do?
GB: No, I bought it,
CB: Right.
GB: [unclear], you know.
CB: Was that your first house?
GB: Yeah.
CB: Yes. So, what sort of job was it, as the manager?
GB: It’s a busy job, cause it’s a big pub. Had a ballroom, you know, they used to do midday lunches and all that sort of thing, parties at night.
CB: How long did you keep going on that job?
GB: Oh, until the boss retired, they had a new pub built down in, blimey, here we go again. On the Thames, what sort of [unclear] I can’t think of the name.
CB: Lots of places on the Thames.
GB: Yeah.
CB: So, how many years do you think you were at Morton roughly? How many years were you there or when did you move [unclear]?
GB: Oh, not long, I wasn’t there very long.
CB: Oh, weren’t you?
GB: Yeah, no.
CB: So, you sold the house and moved somewhere else.
GB: I fell out with the boss, the wife got yellow jaundice and she had to go to hospital and the boss said, I got four children then, you’d have to put the kids in a home, and I said, sod that, I’m not going to put my kids in a home, so I packed the job in and we came over to her, place in Eaton, temporarily and I got a job at Plessey’s in Towcester.
CB: Ah, right. You sold the house at Morton and bought one up here, did you?
GB: Oh yes, yes,
CB: In Eaton.
GB: I sold that and I went to, I can’t think of the name of the [unclear] place, no good at [unclear]
CB: Yeah, ok. And Eadon spelled EYDON. Right? And then you joined Plessey. So, what did you do at Plessey?
GB: Making computers or parts of them
CB: Yeah?
GB: Yeah.
CB: What was your role?
GB: Pardon?
CB: What was your job?
GB: On the machines, machines [unclear], we were operating the machines
CB: So, what were the machines doing, making printed circuits or assembling them?
GB: No, making the
CB: Switch gear?
GB: Making the small, they were like small, very small [unclear] of different, I don’t know what sort, different minerals, they were ground and punched together sort of thing and we had to test them.
CB: Right.
GB: See if they were [unclear] or the machines tested them, we had to run the machines, all massive amount [unclear] into millions
CB: Ah really?
GB: Yeah. Some of them you had to have the telescope to see what was going on, on in the machines sort of thing.
CB: Yeah. So what
GB: I was there about, I was there until Plessey packed up and I had to, I got a job on making rolling tubes, steel tubes
CB: Oh yeah? In Northampton or
GB: No, in Towcester
CB: In Towcester.
GB: Yes. And I stopped there until I retired.
CB: What age did you retire?
GB: Sixty-five.
CB: Right. And when did you move to Weston?
GB: It was before I got my job at Plessey’s.
CB: Oh, was it?
GB: Yeah. It’ll be fifty years ago next month.
CB: That you moved here. This house here, next door?
GB: Yeah.
CB: Then in retirement what did you do?
GB: In the garden [laughs].
CB: Cause you’ve got quite a bit of land. Did you do it all by hand or did you have a rotavator or?
GB: I’ve got a rotavator
CB: Right. And what was your specialty in growing?
GB: [unclear] [laughs] no, all sorts.
CB: Did you have a favourite?
GB: Not really.
CB: Plant or fruit?
GB: No, no.
CB: And after a bit, that got a bit too much, so you got somebody else to do it, did you?
GB: No, no, I’m still doing it.
CB: Oh, you’re still doing it?
GB: Yeah.
CB: Fantastic and you’re ninety-five.
GB: I had to get someone this last summer to do it because I couldn’t do anything. I was so bad that they took me round to see different houses, they wanted to rehome me.
CB: Oh, did they?
GB: Yeah, [unclear] always that sort of thing that I pulled through.
CB: Your hands are not up to it any longer.
GB: No.
CB: No.
CB: Right. Sounds like you’ve done it brilliantly well
GB: [unclear] do it, yeah.
CB: Yeah, amazingly active. That’s what kept you going. So, the final question, what, to what do you attribute your long life at ninety-five?
GB: Just luck, that’s all. Cause my wife was a better woman than I was. And she went quicker. Yes.
CB: Yeah. After the children grew up, did she work herself?
GB: Yes, she did a bit of work, yes, she was at, here we go again, blimey
CB: What sort of job did she do?
GB: Office work.
CB: But she wasn’t also at Plessey with you?
GB: No.
CB: She was somewhere else.
GB: Yes, yes.
CB: Ok. And she died in 2000, sixteen years ago.
GB: Yeah.
CB: Well, Gerald, thank you very much indeed. That was most interesting and the different things. What would you say, actually there is another question, what would you say was the most memorable thing in your role in the RAF? Something that stands out.
GB: I suppose, really was the invasion of Algiers, really. See the working to get us cracking sort of thing.
CB: Good, thank you. [file missing] So, what we didn’t do, what we didn’t do, Gerald, was to find out your return journey from Africa, where you set off from and where you landed and what happened to you.
GB: I haven’t a clue, really.
US: You told me, I remember talking to [unclear]
GB: Coming home, oh yes.
CB: Yes, coming home, which route did you take and what happened?
GB: We travelled by boat from Algiers to Naples, then we’ve come from Naples all up Italy through Switzerland to France, France to [unclear] coast and we landed at, blimey, here we go again,
CB: Newhaven.
GB: Newhaven, yes.
CB: And what was that experience like?
GB: A bit rough [laughs]
CB: Was it? In what way, did it stop at the start or did it?
GB: No, yes, roughly didn’t stop at all sort of thing [laughs]
CB: How did they look after you, was a troop train with, it wasn’t just RAF, was it?
GB: Different stages
CB: Right
GB: They had stops at different stages but
CB: Was it the same train all the time or did you switch?
GB: As far as I know because they changed engines, I don’t know.
CB: So how many days did that take?
GB: It was a fortnight.
CB: So, where did you sleep?
GB: On the train, of course. We will be going night and day sort of thing.
CB: And what about eating?
GB: We used to stop to eating, there were different places, they got, you know, they’d organised places to stop
CB: So, what did they do, pull the train off the main line, into a siding, so that you could eat, where they had some kind of military kitchen?
GB: I suppose that’s what it was, I can’t remember really, I suppose [unclear] more than we rather than things that were going on really.
US: I wondered on that journey you were going through Europe that had been bombed and was war torn, I just wonder what you saw and whether you were surprised at what you saw because you’d been where you were all the time.
GB: Not really, no.
US. And the train kept going, it wasn’t the trains were bombed or destroyed.
GB: Well, it was a bit dodgy, going over the river Po, I think it was, in Italy, it was a bit shaky there, that was the only thing that I remember, really.
US: Were you looking out on ruins at the cities and things?
GB: Not really, no, no,
US: What about France, did that look intact?
GB: No, no, I can’t remember anything but
CB: A fortnight’s a long time to have on a train, what did you with yourselves all that time? Apart from sitting there. Did you play cards? Did you?
GB: No, I never have played cards
CB: Just talked or slept.
GB: Or, oh yeah.
US: Do you remember what your feeling about England was when you got back? Did it look different or did it feel different at all or?
GB: Oh, it felt lovely coming back, how green it was after been out in North Africa, yeah.
CB: And being a country boy, you particularly appreciated that
GB: Yeah, yeah
CB: So, when you got back, then did you go, you can’t have gone straight to Leicester East, where did you go before you went to Leicester East?
GB: [unclear]
CB: What I’m saying is did they have a reception centre for the whole train?
GB: I’m sorry I really can’t remember.
CB: We’ll stop again there, thank you. [file missing] so, when you got back to Britain, and you had the opportunity to see family, how did you feel having been away for so long?
GB: I don’t know, I suppose I expected, I saw what I expected, nothing different really.
US: Were you, when you got home, were you excited or were you very tired or?
GB: No, I don’t think so, no.
US: And were your family asking you a lot about what you’d seen? No?
GB: No, they weren’t that interested, really, I suppose they’d had all the others come back and they heard it all sort of thing, cause all me three brothers, all were in the forces, they’d all come back alright,
CB: That was good.
GB: Yeah.
CB: And did you compare notes with them?
GB: One didn’t want to know anything about it, that was the one that joined the navy, he [unclear] he was with, he was on the HMS Howe I think it was [unclear] in the Far East, he didn’t think much of that. The other brother that was in the [unclear], he went missing and mom had a letter saying he was missing, he turned up alright and he’d never, I’d never heard him say a word about the army or anything, he never mentioned it, the other, the oldest brother was [unclear] on the army service corps, he was full of it, anywhere he went, you know, he enjoyed it sort of thing, he was [unclear] on of those
US: Was there a celebration that you got home safely?
GB: No, no, I didn’t stop at home that long, really
US: Were you already thinking about what you wanted to do with the rest of your life?
GB: I know I wasn’t go to stop at home, [unclear], no. Trouble is, I’d heard so many things from different chaps, how they’d got on, what sort of jobs they’d had, I thought, I must have some of that [laughs]
CB: And then after the war, how often did you speak about the war to other people?
GB: Not a lot, I don’t have much to say about it anyway.
US: Do you, when you look back at the whole of your life, is that, that chapter, the war years, is that very memorable, is that quite a big part of your experience? No?
GB: I forget that, yeah.
CB: So what was the
GB: I really think it was a waste really
CB: A waste of your [unclear] life?
US: Was it not an important part of your life?
GB: No.
US: [unclear]
CB: What would you say was the worst experience you had, during your military service?
GB: I don’t think I had any, of worst experiences, I was just, [unclear] to muddle through sort of thing.
CB: I was thinking, when you got to, you moved from Algeria along the coast to Tunisia, then found the Germans were actually coming back,
GB: Yeah.
CB: How did you feel about that, did that seem dangerous or did they not get close enough to you to?
GB: I don’t think, they didn’t get, they wouldn’t let [unclear] to us
CB: Because of what you’d got
GB: Because what we’d got
CB: You’ve got this radar, yeah.
GB: Yeah.
US: I’ve got one last question, is did you make friends in the RAF that you kept afterwards? Did you keep up with people?
GB: Not for long really, just for a little while, we got, you know, [unclear] the other sort of thing but it soon fell through, yeah.
CB: A number of people in their initial training found friends for life. You didn’t do that, but did you get a good friend who started with your initial training and then moved on with you during their [unclear] service?
GB: No, no, I met several that had done, I’d done the training with, you know, various times sort of thing
CB: Yeah
GB: Trouble is you never knew when you were moving so you couldn’t make too many friends.
US: Ok. I just wondered whether there was ever a moment for you, perhaps at the start, where you knew you were going off fighting for king and country and that meant something to you and was important to you?
GB: No, I’m afraid not, no. No, as I say, I never was ambitious.
US: Did you agree that the war needed to be fought to stop Hitler?
GB: Oh, well, yes, yes, yes.
US: And you agreed that you needed to be part of that, you needed to join up to be part of that fight?
GB: I was trained up, [unclear] called up, yeah, no, I wouldn’t have volunteered, I don’t think.
US: And were you with a lot of people who felt the same way that you were there because you had to be, not because you believed in it?
GB: Yeah, I think a lot of people, yeah, I think a lot of people missed doing what they liked to do sort of thing didn’t understand of doing what they had to do
US: When it came in your life at the start of what would otherwise have been the beginning of your working life
GB: Yeah
US: It got in the way
GB: Yeah. Well, there wasn’t really, even before the war, there wasn’t much to look forward to in that, you know, in that of the country, so, I suppose, really, I was glad it brought me out of it, yes.
CB: What it did was take you out of Norfolk, put you into another part of the country
GB: Yes.
CB: And you’ve always been happy in this area presumably
GB: Yes, yeah, yes. Yes, I’ve been lucky really, I’ve had four good boys, I had a good wife, can’t ask for much more really
CB: Well, no, I think [unclear], extremely good. Did your wife and you speak about the war at all?
GB: No, not really, no, no, I don’t suppose we ever sat and had a talk about it, no.
US: Do you have any idea what her war was like?
GB: Well, I don’t think she moved around much, no.
US: Did she make good friends with the people she worked with?
GB: Oh yes, yes, she is much more friendly than what I am, [unclear]
US: And did she keep those friends after the war?
GB: Yes, I suppose she did, yeah, much more than what I did, mostly because they were all round here sort of thing and she was round here.
CB: Right.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Gerald Walter Bell
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-12-21
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABellGW161221
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:09:10 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Gerald Bell worked on a poultry farm before being called up in the RAF, where he served as ground personnel. He remembers his training at RAF Finningley and RAF Balderton. Tells of his posting to North Africa in 1942, where he initially was working on a mobile radar station. After falling sick and spending a month in hospital, he went back to Algeria, where he was in charge of the sergeant’s mess and had to look after a group of Italian prisoners.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Algeria
Great Britain
North Africa
Tunisia
Algeria--Algiers
England--Dorset
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Yorkshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1945
ground personnel
prisoner of war
radar
RAF Balderton
RAF Finningley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/684/9230/PBaileyM1701.2.jpg
5eb5be45c88f8f16a2f3cd11e46d6ed8
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/684/9230/ABaileyM170815.2.mp3
6ec78b2cfec112f431e19ee3bbcc279f
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
Bailey, Maurice
M Bailey
Bill Bailey
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Maurice 'Bill' Bailey (-2020). He flew a tour of operations as a flight engineer with 227 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-08-15
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bailey, M
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DK: Do my best, right, so this is David Kavanagh for the International Bomber Command Centre interviewing Maurice Bailey at his home on the fifth, is that fifteenth? Fifteenth of August 2017 with [unclear] Bailey. I’ll just put that down there.
MB: Yes.
DK: Just put that there, so, it’s catching you rather than me. If I keep looking down, I’m just making sure it’s working.
MB: Ok.
DK: Yes, I have been caught out when the batteries have suddenly stopped. Ok, so, what I want to ask you first, Maurice, what were you doing before the war?
MB: Very good question, you’ll have to bear with me because my memory’s not good. I left school at fourteen in those days, my mother and father were separated, I can vaguely remember my father and his name was William Bailey and I don’t know whether it was a result of that but although my name is Maurice, spelled MAURICE, I was always everywhere known as Bill, Bill Bailey, so everyone that you may talk to, at any time will always know me as Bill rather than Maurice and I left school at fourteen, I first went to work in a machine factory called Sylvesters and I worked on a circular saw, just for interest [laughs] first thing [unclear] I got my hand [unclear], I was damn lucky that I didn’t lose it but I spent some time, it was rather nasty, you know, it was months rather than days or weeks properly healing [unclear] before I could use my hand [clears throat] excuse me, fortunately my mother was a skilled nurse, and she used to insist on me doing hand exercises several times a day, you know, I’m quite sure it’s due to the mother’s insistence that my arm is quite normal now but when, as I grew older I was, I always remember I went to an ordinary school, [unclear] school, and one day the teacher called us all out into the playground and you must come out boys and look at this, that is known as an aeroplane, you know, I know it sounds silly but you never saw one in those days, I distinctly, I’m not begin dramatic about this, I distinctly remember and I would be, I don’t know how old, ten, probably somewhere like that and I said to one of my mates, one day I’m gonna be flying one of those, and of course they all laughed at me, you know, there’s nobody that comes to school like this will never get to fly, well, of course I went to work, I left school at fourteen years old
DK: Whereabouts was this that you went to school? Where was home this time?
MB: It, home was in, I remember distinctly 19 [unclear] road
DK: And which town was at this time?
MB: That was in the Potteries area
DK: Right.
MB: And there was
US: Was it Tunstall [unclear] Maurice?
MB: Yeah, I was gonna say, you may remember the landmarks as you drive on the main road, there’s Mow Cop, Mow Cop Castle but I was actually born on the other side, that would be south east of Mow Cop, at a place called Biddulph. I don’t remember [unclear] I was born and my mother, my father was a naughty lad, he used to drink a lot and I never met him until years later when I was older, you know and working but my mother had this habit of having, money was very tight, coins and she put things on the table [unclear] when the milkman comes and you know, sixpence for a loaf of bread or whatever and me father used to come apparently and take the top coins off each one so he could go out for a pint, he was not a very nice man and what’s that [unclear]?
US: [unclear] to it
MB: Oh, I can’t really see it very well, but anyway that was roughly how I was brought up as a young lad, my mother and father split up and my mother went to live with her parents, my grandfather, their names were Whitehurst and Arthur Whitehurst, my grandfather was I suppose what we now describe as an over the top Christian, damn was a naughty word, swearing, I distinctly remember him coming to me, there were fields opposite to where we lived and of course as young kids we’re always playing in the fields football and what have it, and I can’t remember exactly what I said but it was either buggar or bloody, you know and he stood and I can remember to this day now the horrified expression on his face, he said to me, I have never heard anybody in our language, in our family use such language, get in the house! And I wasn’t allowed out for, oh, a week or so after that and, you know, and I’d only said, either damn or buggar or something, I mean if you’d heard me later when I was in the RAF, for goodness’ sake, what he would have said! [laughs]
DK: Did you see, find the RAF a bit of a release from that [unclear]?
MB: Very much so, yeah. I mean
DK: Yeah. So, you’d seen this plane at school, was that, how did you then up in the RAF?
MB: I remember saying to my school chums
US: If you read that [unclear]
MB: Darling, I can’t see very well but it’s ok I can remember, I remember very clearly at school saying to my mates, when the aircraft came out over, in fact it was all new then that the teacher said quick boys and girls come out into the playground and look, there’s an aircraft going over and as I looked up [unclear] I don’t know what it was single engine thing and spoke to one of my mates and I can’t remember the actual words but they said something like, more or less, how they managed to keep up there without you know, falling out of the sky, I said yeah but one day I shall fly and they all laughed [unclear] school go up there and flying and I said, well, we’ll see
DK: So, how long after that was it that you then joined the RAF?
MB: Well, in those days you left school at fourteen and I must have been thirteen-ish, something like that and I went to work in the machine shop at a place called Sylvesters in Tunstall, which was the nearest town
DK: Yeah.
MB: And it was ok because I was working on machines, you know, which suited me, I mean, I liked, I was always dismantling things and reassembling them and that sort of thing
DK: Is that what made you, is that how you became a flight engineer?
MB: Oh, I think so, yes.
DK: Yeah.
MB: But I always remember this instance when we came out and the teacher said, that’s called an aeroplane, you know, and I turned to one of my mates and I said, I shall fly one of those one day, and they all laughed, [unclear] daft
DK: Ca you remember joining the RAF at seventeen?
MB: Yes, seventeen and a quarter I think I was something like that
DK: Did you go into the recruitment office?
MB: Yes, I went to, I can’t remember the exact words, I mean, I knew that I would be like everybody that was healthy called up anyway and I thought I ain’t going in the army or the navy, I’m going in the RAF and I want to fly
DK: So that was your reason for joining the RAF?
MB: Oh absolutely
DK: To avoid the army and navy
MB: OH yes!
DK: And hoped to fly
MB: Yes. And at that time, I must have been seventeen and I was working and as I said in an engineering firm called Sylvesters
DK: Do you remember much about the early training in the RAF?
MB: Oh yes, I can remember it clearly.
DK: Was there a lot of square bashing?
MB: Oh yes, a lot of that and
DK: Can you recall where your initial training took place?
MB: The squadron was at RAF Balderton,
DK: Alright.
MB: Where’s Valery? Oh, she’s gone. She’s very good, she got notes about this, it’ll come to me in a
DK: Yeah, yeah.
MB: Where did I go? It was in London when I joined up
DK: Was it at Lord’s Cricket Ground?
MB: It was near there
DK: Yeah, yeah.
MB: Yes.
DK: So it was Lord’s Cricket Ground initially?
MB: Yes, it was.
DK: Yeah, yeah.
MB: I’ve got notes of all this somewhere or Valery has, and I know it was, I think a three week’s course when you first joined up, literally to teach you to salute and march and stamp to attention and
DK: Right.
MB: If you’ll forgive the King’s English, all this bullshit, you know
DK: You did like that then, all the
MB: Oh no, nobody really but I mean, I was so keen on flying that I would have done anything, I would have stood on me hands for a couple of weeks just as long as I could get
DK: Can you recall how you became a flight engineer then?
MB: Yes. You went through a series of exams and tests, bear in mind that I came from, I was a very, very much a poor working-class family,
DK: Yeah, yeah.
MB: You know, there’s no, I couldn’t dress that one, no matter how I tried but having said that, I was so determined that I wanted to go flying and all my mates and the teachers said there is no one that comes from this sort of school and flies
DK: Can you recall what the training involved, to be a flight engineer?
MB: Yes, oh yes.
DK: What did you have to do?
MB: Well, first of all, there were certain tests when you went and joined up and said I want to be aircrew, what do you want to be? And of course everybody wanted to be a pilot, well, they said to me, you can’t be a pilot, you haven’t had a good enough education and there were various things and anyway they said, there’s a list longer than your arm of lads that all want to be pilots, you will never be a pilot.
DK: Did you never consider being an air gunner or
MB: Well, I, my next set of questions was well, what can I be? And they said, all the things that meant I would be ground staff and I said, I shall never join the RAF to be ground staff, I shall wait until I am conscripted and if it’s the army, it’s the army, and if it’s the navy, it’s the navy, if I can’t go in the Air Force flying, I don’t go in.
DK: So, you were very determined on that
MB: Absolutely.
DK: Yeah.
MB: In respect of my lovely wife, at that stage I used to use a lot of bad language and I emphasized it by using that, you can, I’ll leave it to your imagination
DK: So, can you remember the first time you got in an aircraft?
MB: Yes, I do, very clearly.
DK: Where was that then?
MB: That would be, well, let me just think through now, the squadron was at Balderton, I’ve got this written down somewhere
US: It’s in your hand
MB: Well, is this? Oh, [unclear].
DK: And it says, you went to the heavy conversion unit at Syerston.
MB: Yes.
DK: Yeah.
MB: Yes, it was before I went to Syerston, it’ll come to me
DK: So, yeah, ok.
MB: And but there was, when you joined up so to speak, there was a reception centre, everybody went there and it was there that you were categorised and I clearly remember they kept trying to push you into situations that they were short of gunners and so forth and then I’m sure you will forgive me but there was lots of bad language used in those days and I clearly remember saying I ain’t going to be an f-ing gunner or anything else, I’m going to fly and be a pilot and I remember this person saying to me, don’t speak to me like that, he says, otherwise you won’t be anything, I said, alright, I won’t be anything, I’ll go, and he laughed and called me up, you know, and he said, hang on, you can, you just calm down a bit, he said, there are several things that you can be and be trained in aircrew, and of course the first thing he said, is gunner, I said, I’m not going to be a gunner and I said, I’m not going to be a front gunner, a mid-upper gunner or a rear gunner, oh, he said, you seem to know a lot about aircraft, I said, I read nothing else but aircraft, that’s why I’m going to fly one and he thought a bit and he said, well, how good are you at maths? You know, and I said, well, you must have results, I’ve done the entrance test and he lifted it up and he said you’re quite good, I see, he said, well, there’s a possibility you could be a navigator but he said, I very much doubt it, he said, everyone wants to be a pilot, so he said, you won’t be a pilot, so I said, well, what else is there? He says, well, the next best thing up front, he says, there is the front gunner but the next thing is the flight engineer, he said, and that to me stands out, he said, because he said, you’d be an engineer [unclear]
DK: I’m just having a look at your logbook here and it says you did the flight engineering school at St Athans
MB: That’s right
DK: Yeah. With number 4 SOTT, School of Technical Training
MB: Yes, that’s correct
DK: And that was on the Lancasters there?
MB: It was, no it was mainly on
DK: On Stirlings
MB: Stirlings, yes.
DK: Yes.
MB: Yes.
DK: So,
MB: I know, I clearly remember the Lancaster landed, for some reason it must have been running short of fuel and I was that keen, you know, I was looking around it sort of thing and the skipper had gone back to it, something, some reason rather and he was a nice chap and he spoke to and he said, what do you been training for? You know, and I said, well, aircrew, I said, but they are trying to push all on to being gunners and he said, why don’t you consider applying to be a flight engineer?
DK: I’ll just embarrass you know, it’s got your examination results, flight engineer’s course, and you got 66.9 percent.
MB: Yes. Yes.
DK: And it’s stamped PASSED
MB: Yes.
DK: You passed that.
MB: Yes.
DK: Yeah. So that was 9th of August 19444.
MB: That’s about right, yes.
DK: So then you’ve got on to the Heavy Conversion Unit?
MB: Yes.
DK: And that was on Stirlings.
MB: Stirlings, that’s right.
DK: Yes. So what did you think of the Stirlings as an aeroplane?
MB: Not much. They were, most of them were radial engines and they were well known for being faulty, very seldom did any of them go on ops and come back with all four engines still running. And I remember thinking like, well, I’ve got to fly on one of those, I’ll fly on one because I want to fly and of course we were trained on Stirlings and I flew for a while on Stirlings.
DK: So, the aircraft didn’t give you much confidence.
MB: No.
DK: No. Were you busy then as a flight engineer on a Stirling? Did you have a lot to do?
MB: Oh yes, it was difficult because whereas in a Lanc, the Lancaster you were upfront whereas the pilot and the flight engineer and in fact and I don’t say this boastfully but the engineer, particularly if he knew what he was doing, did most of the flying.
DK: Yeah.
MB: You know, pilots usually, as was the case with my skipper, they were heavy drinkers and they would always go back and sit in the navigation compartment, the navigator could keep his eye on the course and all the rest of it, the engineer which in [unclear], would sit on the controls which would be in, what they call it when it’s all automatic?
DK: Yeah
MB: Anyway, it would be on automatic control
DK: Yeah, autopilot
MB: Autopilot, that’s right
DK: George,
MB: Auto, that’s right, yeah
DK: George’s the autopilot
MB: Yeah, that’s right, yeah,
DK: That’s it
MB: And the skipper used to, when he got to know me, I mean, was a long while before we became friends because he was an out and out snob, he came from a very wealthy family and he expected everybody to stand to attention and call him sir
DK: Shall I mention his name? Is it Flight [unclear] Mike
MB: Mike
DK: Aughton,
MB: Aughton, that’s right, he was a nice bloke actually
DK: That what we won’t record it [laughs]
MB: Yes, but I always remember
DK: Was there a big class difference then in the RAF?
MB: Oh, very much so
DK: Yeah
MB: Oh yes, I mean, I was very much working-class lad, you know, but Butch, the
US: Bomb aimer
DK: Bomb aimer
MB: The bomb aimer, you see, the pilot, bomb aimer and navigator were all trained very similarly, and they all had that same level of education and [unclear] if you like
DK: So were they a bit of clique?
MB: Very much so
DK: Yeah.
MB: And I mean it was very unusual for any of those three not to be a commissioned officer and for me to be upfront was the expression because as a flight engineer, you were really like a second pilot, for me to be upfront just as a, in that time, a flight sergeant I was and later on warrant officer, warrant officer heist non commission rank and it suited me fine because you were held in quite high esteem in the sergeant’s mess where we dined and I did my tour as catering officer, you know, in my off period, and the girls that did the cooking, I don’t mean this conceitedly but they took to like me because they knew I was an ordinary working-class lad and I used to live like a lord and I was offered a commission later on and I thought, no, I don’t pay any fees for this, I eat better than the officers, you know, so I am staying as a warrant officer, which I did,
DK: Just for the benefit of the recording, I’m just gonna read something from the logbook here, it says, after St Athans, you were at 1661 Conversion Unit
MB: Correct
DK: That’s with the Stirlings
MB: Yes
DK: And then you went to number 5 Lancaster Finishing School
MB: Correct
DK: So that’s where you first flew on the Lancaster at finishing school
MB: That’s right, yes
DK: Yeah. And that’s presumably where you met your pilot?
MB: That’s where we crewed up, yes
DK: Right. At number 5 Lancaster Finishing School
MB: Yes
DK: So, that’s where you first met Michael [unclear]
MB: Michael [unclear], yes, and
DK: And then after that, you then gone to 227 Squadron at Balderton
MB: That’s right. It was worth noting then that it was very clear that Mike, the skipper, he wanted all officers in his crew, he was a real snob and to me I think then I was a flight sergeant oh god, you know fancy having enough flight sergeant in your crew and particularly sitting upfront the second pilot and the bomb aimer Butch, he was quite unusual in those days, he actually had a car and he had a problem starting it and he came to me, they all called me Bill, and he said, Bill, he said, you used to work in a garage? And yeah, I said, yeah, he said, I’ve having trouble starting my car, he said, do you think you can give me some idea of what’s wrong with it? And of course, I went and had a look at it and I said, yeah, all the valves have had it, once, all the valves grinding, and you put on some new valves, God, he says, that’s gonna cost me a fortune, isn’t it? I said, no, I can do that for you [unclear], he said, what, you can actually take the [unclear]? You know he couldn’t believe it but in fact I ended up virtually stripping the engine, I put new bearings in, new valves, ground it all up and of course at the end of it he’d got a nice engine, a nice running car and wherever we went, you know, he used to tell the story about, oh, our engineer Bill [unclear] but so I made a good friend of Butch and I always remember, I don’t know what the situation was but Mike the skipper just wasn’t nice to me, he hated this idea of a non-commissioned bloke sitting upfront with him
DK: Was he a good pilot?
MB: Was very good, oh yeah, was very skilled, you didn’t get to fly on operations on the Lanc as a pilot unless you were really and if you did, and you weren’t very good, you didn’t last long
DK: So, how many operations did you actually do then?
US: Twenty-seven wasn’t it?
MB: Twenty, what?
US: You always told me it was twenty-seven.
MB: Twenty-seven, that’s’ right. Yes, twenty-seven operations.
DK: In your logbook here I think, it refers to what must be your first operation, the 6th of November 1944
MB: [unclear]
DK: To Gravenhorst?
MB: Ah, Gravenhorst
DK: Gravenhorst, I’ll just spell that for the record, GRAVENHORST
MB: Yes, that’s right
DK: Do you remember much about your first operation?
MB: Yeah, I don’t remember details but I remember feeling for the want of that expression excited I mean, bearing in mind we’ve done lots of training exercises and take offs and landings and my skipper, Mike [unclear], he’d never been anywhere but at school and university, he just wasn’t with it, you know, with one of the lads.
DK: So this was the whole crew’s first operation then?
MB: Yes.
DK: Yeah.
MB: Oh yes. And Butch the bomb aimer as I said had a car and I actually almost reconditioned the engine and of course as far as Butch was concerned
DK: You [unclear]
MB: I was brilliant
DK: So, what was it like flying at night? I mean, these are night operations so you’re being shot at and are they quite scary or?
MB: Yeah, but bear in mind, I mean, you are young and daft and that’s what you wanted to do but also you’re very, very busy and yeah I mean as a flight engineer particularly you couldn’t leave your situation, imagine the dashboard full of instruments and most, this sound very [unclear] but most people including engineers although they’d been trained as flight engineers they hadn’t had my background, I’d worked in garages and what [unclear] and I had stripped engines, there’s no problem and rebuilt them
Dk: So, your role is then to look after, make sure the engines are running properly
MB: Oh yes
DK: Presumably the fuel as well
MB: Oh yes, yeah, flight engineer is responsible for making sure that the engines, you know the settings for revs? Oh, my brain, I have an onset of Alzheimer, I have difficult remembering sometimes
DK: So you’re, you’re making sure the engines are running ok
MB: Absolutely
DK: Yeah
MB: And, you know, you can tell from temperature gauges
DK. Yeah, alright
MB: Oil pressures and whathaveye if things are working correctly and my skipper as an example had been trained on Halifaxes I think they were and the engines are quite different and he was quite used to operating plus two pounds of boosts, a Lancaster operates on plus four, after take-off when you are getting full power which is twenty pounds a boost you, when you know that your air speed is climbing even though your altitude is climbing, you can afford to throttle back and make the engines take it easy a bit, you know, some people bang the throttles open, you know, and they bugger the engines up in, you know, quite a few operations, where I very quickly got a reputation that our aircraft wanted very little doing to it rather than, you know, regular servicing and
DK: So, did your pilot put them on the wrong setting then?
MB: He hadn’t a clue, he was as thick as [unclear], he was really was, a nice bloke and the point that I am leading up to tell you, he wanted all commissioned officers and I was only a flight sergeant I think at that time and he went to the flight engineer leader whose name was Tuffy Coulston, I’ll never forget him, Tuffy couldn’t complete a sentence of more than about four or five words without the f word in it and when my skipper came to him and he said what flight engineers have you got that are commissioned officers? He said, you’re Aughton’s crew, aren’t you? He said, you’ve got Bill Bailey, haven’t you? He said, yes, that’s right, and I won’t use the actual word he used in respect on my wife, yes, what’s the matter with him? He said, you’re the world’s biggest, you can guess what, you’ve got the best engineer on the squadron, he said, do you realise that he had the first self-service garage in the UK and he opened his own repair shop in a property which he actually built himself, which I did. He said, and he was the only bloke that ever made that service station work at a profit because everybody used to come to fill up the petrol so they could book in to be serviced at his garage
DK: Just taking you back a little bit, when you used to take-off, did you actually have to do anything to help the pilot?
MB: Oh yes, yeah
DK: What did you, what was your role then?
MB: Well, in a Lancaster, the pilot, I’m sitting at the controls now
DK: Yeah
MB: And the pilot’s on my left, here, slightly higher than me with the joystick as we called it
DK: Yeah
MB: In the middle are the throttles, [unclear] levers, [unclear] levers
DK: Yeah
MB: And all the dials that tell you the temperature changing and the four engines of course, so you’ve got four of everything, temperature, boost control
DK: Yeah
MB: Oil pressure and all that sort of thing and what, unless you’d been properly trained or I mean as in my own case, I’d been working as an engineer before I went in the RAF, you’ve got to know what you were doing to know what all those readings meant and if one engine was showing high temperatures, low oil pressure, you know, there’s problems
DK: Did you ever loose an engine?
MB: Oh yes, yes, getting back
DK: And what would you do? You had to shut it down
MB: Feather it, you called it, yeah, turn the propellers in line of flight so that it stopped revolving and
DK: Did that happen on a number of occasions?
MB: Yes, the worst of all was fortunately we were at a very high altitude over twenty thousand feet, I can’t remember exactly, if I looked at my logbook I’d probably remember the actual operation and we really got hammered, you know, and I knew that we’d been hit in two of the engines, both outer port and starboard outer engines, but I didn’t, we called it feather them, you know, stop them, yeah, feathering means turning into line of flight to stop the propellers revolving. I kept them running, watching the temperature and oil pressure and everything until we got out of the target area and then I shut them down
DK: So you were flying on two engines then
MB. Flying on two and then the third one packed up and it looked very much it was going to be a case of bail out and by that time, I mean, my skipper had been, he simply didn’t like me, he was a snob and he wanted all commissioned officers, you see and I said to him, if you want to get back alive, you know, those two outer engines have got to be feathered, the port inner, which was one of the remaining engines, is the next one to pack up, so go easy on it, but whatever we’ve got to do is keep your altitude as high as you possibly can until you get in [unclear] to stalling and then let it slowly, nose down which will help the speed you see. Which we did and of course we got back.
DK: So, you must have covered some distance then on the [unclear]
MB: Oh yes, I mean, I thought we would have been very fortunate if we didn’t have to do a crash landing in the fields somewhere.
DK: Did you get back to Balderton or?
MB: We got back to our own base, yes.
DK: Got back to your own base.
MB: And in fact, I’ve thought about this many, many times, I told the skipper, by that time, he’d got used to the idea that at least engineering wise I did know what I was talking about, I said, look, keep the altitude as high as you can, obviously you’ve got to keep the nose down to keep your airspeed to that situation that we were under control but try your best so that when we come in to land, I’ll start the other inner engine up but be aware it will pack up, if you’re not very, very careful but at least then with a bit of luck we’ll be able to land on two engines. I said we’ve got to, we’ve already called up, you know, an emergency landing and that meant instead of going on the circuit, you made right for the landing point and they stopped all other aircraft and you just went in and I can’t remember, I think it was Balderton where we landed but I can’t be sure, that I was able to calculate because that was my job, you know, that would be very, very fortunate
DK: Can you recall what it was that damaged the engines? Was it
MB: Oh, we’d been hit
DK: By flak
MB: Oh yes, yeah. And in most incidents the real problem is if, first if the cooling goes and you can’t keep it cool not by any other means then that means the oil pressure rises that means [unclear] so the engines will cease up and we were down to two engines then and I said to the skipper, keep the height, by that time at least he would listen to me, maintain your altitude, level and speed, you’ve got to keep speed enough to keep airborne obviously but don’t be tempted to let the nose go down to get your speed up because you’re gonna need it otherwise we crashed and you will need the altitude in order to bail out once we’re under our own, over our own territory, I mean you can’t bail out over less than two thousand feet
DK: No
MB: And so it was a dodgy thing, I mean, they, the bomb aimer Frank was doing his calculations we are just about keeping off altitude that we can bail out and he was all for bailing out, Frank [unclear] aircraft’s no good, that’s when you please yourself I’d rather walk out.
DK: Did the pilot give you the option to bail out or?
MB: Oh no.
DK: No, you stick with it.
MB: No. By that time the skipper was more [unclear] to me, at first he wanted all commissioned officers and everybody else, he was a snob
DK: Did he thank you when you got back?
MB: Not, no, they never did, not in so many words, no, but I think he said words like you did a good job there, Bill, you know, but we did alright really but I mean I always remember after you’re so busy you don’t think, we came in on a, we called up and went for emergency landing to wherever it was and that meant you don’t join the circuit you’re navigator plots a course which brings you right on to the entrance to the landing spot so that you’re all in line with the runway loosing altitude all the time and we’ve all thought you know we’re gonna go in far too low, we ‘re not gonna make it, we’ll land in a field or something, anyway at last we saw the airfield and we were on the right course we’d got a damn good navigator, Len and I said to skipper you gotta take your chance now, I’ll open the last engine, you know, try and climb and then if one packs up, at least you can put your nose down and keep the airspeed and it didn’t pack up but, you know, we went
DK: Looking back on that operation, do you think you were quite lucky?
MB: Oh, very much.
DK: Yeah
MB: [unclear] as soon as we got to the UK coast bailed out, but we didn’t, we landed
DK: Do you think that was the worst incident that happened to you?
MB: Oh, to me? Yeah, definitely.
DK: Yeah. Can you recall ever being attacked by any German fighters?
MB: Oh yes, many times. Well, so many times, probably eight or nine times.
DK: So, what happened when the German fighters were attacking?
MB: Well, you’ve got, the bomb aimer is also, he operates the front gun
DK: Yeah
MB: Which is not much good because I mean obviously at the front, if an aircraft comes to attack you from the front our speed would be something like one seventy, the fighter would be at least two hundred so there is a closing speed of nearly four hundred miles an hour you know they’re gone whereas if they’re on your tail which is very dangerous they can keep out of sight till the last minute, keep a slight [unclear] just dive down on you, quick [mimics machine gun fire] and you’ve had it. But we got good gunners, mid-upper and rear
DK: So how did you avoid being attacked then?
MB: Well, there was a point at which, you see, when you are, when gunners are shooting, I think it was every fourth or fifth bullet that came out, is
DK: Tracer
MB: Tracer, so you can see it, you see and you can aim better by following where your tracer’s going but the trick was avoid the temptation to shoot unless you’d got something to shoot at and you’re pretty sure you might hit it you know
DK: Was that to avoid drawing attention to yourself then?
MB: Oh yes, as soon as you started using those guns other aircraft I mean, German aircraft could lock on to you, if they got no tracers and no nothing apart from only perhaps glowing from your engines at the back they’ve got nothing to lock on to, you know, and your best bet was where they would expect you to dive would be to roll and climb, they’d be rolling the opposite way and diving on you so then, you know, there would be a separation speed of anything up to six hundred miles an hour, you’re gone before the chance to turn round and find you or they’d find some other poor soul
DK: So these emergency roles did the pilot do this quite often whne [unclear] being attacked?
MB: Oh yes, yes.
DK: So he’d take the orders from the gunners to roll the aircraft
MB: Yes, yes.
DK: And was it part of your role to also look out for fighter or
MB: Yes, yes
DK: So, can you recall ever actually seeing any?
MB: Oh, very, very often I mean but I did actual operational flights you normally did thirty in a tour I did twenty seven and [unclear] looking back, and this is not being dramatic, you know, I mean, looking back I was very fortunate I would say out of twenty odd flights, at least ten of them were very, very fortunate that we got back but in fact we got back every time, except the last one, I mean, literally when we landed, the aircraft fell to pieces.
DK: Is this from Leipzig?
MB: I think it was
DK: Yeah, your last operation here, I just read this out, it was the tenth of April, that would be 1945
MB: That’s right
DK: So, it was to Leipzig
MB: Leipzig, that’s it.
DK: So, this was your twenty seventh operation
MB: Yes
DK: So, did something go wrong then?
MB: Well, go wrong, yes, I mean, engines were overheating, I mean, we lost far too much of what you should ask of Merlin engines you know, I think, two had packed up altogether and we’d been flying on one gradually losing altitude which was ok we were back over the UK then and we’d, the navigator worked out that we would be down to about two thousand feet which would put us on the circuit and we could ask for emergency landing and go straight in on the what we called funnel the approach to the
DK: Do you know, can you recall now why you didn’t do the thirty operations, it was just twenty-seven? Cause you didn’t fly after that.
MB: Yeah, it was close to the end of the war.
DK: You simply because the war ended.
MB: Yeah. Well, almost but I mean, it was regarded, I mean, they had an attitude or a system where, they knew the war was going to end within weeks, days sort of thing and the blokes that had done [unclear] over fifteen operational flights must have done a lot of training and were very experienced and it wasn’t fair, some of the new boys had done very little, they could take a few risks and we could take it easy, so, I mean, it was unusual, I had done [unclear] twenty seven and it was unusual that I was still on operations
DK: So, all these years later, looking back on your time in Bomber Command, how do you feel about it now?
MB: I wouldn’t go flying
DK. Really?
MB: Oh no, very, very, I mean, anybody that did more than about ten or fifteen ops and was still alive was very, very lucky, and I’m talking numbers, I mean, there was lots of us that did survive obviously, but there’s a lot more that didn’t. I mean and you got quite, sound horrible, we used to say, when you landed, are we all in lad whoever was doing the, forget what’s it called, the counting effectively, and they’d say, yes, it’s just two more but we know one of them coming back because they’d had some message roll that was going down and they did say things like who was that? I always remember this one, Frank Butcher, oh I never like, excuse me darling, never did like that bastard, you know
DK: Yeah
MB: But we didn’t mean it, that’s the way we spoke
US: It was a way of kind of hardening yourself I think
MB: Yes
US: Against the reality
MB: Yeah.
US: Because you’d know that it could be you the next time
MB: Oh absolutely. Yes, I, I mean the lads, my lads were then other colleagues that flew, not just our air folks, they’d come in and everybody knew me as Bill, Bill Bailey, how many ops have you done Bill? And I’d say like towards the end, twenty-five, twenty six, whatever it was, oh, you are as good as bloody dead, mate, you know, can I have your, you know, your best blue uniform? Can I, you know, that was the way they used to joke, you see, we never thought [unclear] about it.
DK: Did you stay in touch with your crew after the war?
MB: For a short time, but not for long, there was one, I think that was Butch wasn’t it? did I meet him when I knew you?
US: We met them at the RAF Balderton [unclear]
MB: Oh, that’s right, yes,
US: Not Butch
MB: No, it was one of
US: His son and grandson we met
MB: Grandson, that’s right, yes. But it was at that time when Valery was just referring to I suddenly realised, you know, just how fortunate I was, you know
US: Say as well Maurice, you’ve always told me that when you had two friends and you joined up together although they went in different squadrons, you were the only one out of you three who came back
MB: Out of the three, yes
DK: So there was three of you, all friends and the other two died
MB: The other two got killed, yeah.
DK: Ok, I’ll stop you there, I’m conscious we’ve been going for a little while and well fifty minutes but thanks very much for that, that’s
MB: Pleasure
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Maurice Bailey
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Kavanagh
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-07-15
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABaileyM170815, PBaileyM1701
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:48:44 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Maurice Bailey left school at fourteen and went to work in an engineering firm. Tells of how he always wanted to become a pilot, since he saw an aeroplane for the first time at school. After being discouraged from becoming a pilot by the RAF recruiters, he then trained for a flight engineering role. He flew twenty-seven operations with 227 Squadron at RAF Balderton. Describes his role and his duties as a flight engineer. Remembers carrying out an emergency landing with only two engines working. Flew his first operation to Gravenhorst on the 6th of November 1944 and his last operation on the 10th of April 1945 to Leipzig.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
England--Nottinghamshire
Germany--Hörstel
Germany--Leipzig
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-11-06
1945-04-10
227 Squadron
aircrew
crash
flight engineer
Lancaster
RAF Balderton
Stirling
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/357/5519/PGrimesS1502.2.jpg
2f8c2b7688ba7d1fbece6737ceb4d3a8
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/357/5519/AGrimesS151121.2.mp3
3cd700983bd130668fad69444d64890e
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
Grimes, Syd
Syd Grimes
S V Grimes
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Pilot Officer Sydney Grimes (173865, 1271597 Royal Air Force) a photograph, and his logbook. After training as a wireless operator/ air gunner he completed a tour on 106 Squadron at RAF Syerston. After a period as an instructor he joined 617 Squadron for his second tour where he took part in the attacks on the Tirpitz.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Syd Grimes and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-21
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Grimes, SV
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
SJ: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is myself Sue Johnstone and the interviewee is Sid Grimes. The interview is taking place at Mr Grimes’ home in Mildenhall in Suffolk on the 21st of November 2015.
AG: I was born in a little village called Great Wakering near Southend on Sea, five miles from Southend on Sea and I lived there until I joined the Air Force. I was educated at the village school and also for part of the time at Southend Municipal College. When war broke out I was seventeen and eh my father was a Thames bargeman. I didn’t particularly want to go in the Navy although he would have preferred me to. My my brother went in the Navy, I didn’t want to go in the Army and I thought if I go in the Air Force and volunteered as a wireless operator. At that time I was working for EK Cole Ltd,Echo Radio and I thought if I knew something about the technology of radio I would be doing a more interesting job than as a clerk. So I joined the Air Force. I wasn’t accepted for training immediately because there was a real backlog of training. But I volunteered for wireless operator aircrew and I was called up in 1940. I trained at Blackpool, Yatesbury, Eventon,Madeley and all sorts of places as wireless operator. Eventually I ended up as a sergeant wireless operator at Cottesmore in Rutland. ‘Is this alright?’
SJ: This is absolutely fine, this is fantastic.
AG: Eh, I then met my first pilot a man called Stevens, a Welshman always known as Steve eh and the four others of the crew, so. And eh we trained on Wellingtons until he was eh, he was,treated as a bomber pilot then. We then moved to a conversion unit where we flew Manchesters and Lancasters. Having passed out then we went to a place called Syerston near Newark. Now this 106 Squadron was Guy Gibsons’ Squadron, but he must have known that I was coming because he left the two days before. [laughs] No I don’t know if it was two days but a few days before. So I joined 617 Squadron [think he meant 106] and by that time we had picked up a mid upper gunner and a flight engineer, to the Wellington crew so we were now seven. And I did a tour with 106 Squadron until September 1943. Now that was almost entirely the Battle of the Ruhr. but it did include places like Hamburg and Berlin, one or two other places just outside the Ruhr. So having completed a tour of operations which was a real dodgy period. We had some very heavy losses in the Battle of the Ruhr. In fact my crew was only the second one to finish a tour while I was there. And a lot of people came and went fairly quickly so. I do not know how many losses 617, 106 Squadron had in that period. But we were only the second one to finish. I then went to a place called Balderton just outside Newark which was eh, the residue of the Five Lancaster Finishing School, Five Group Lancaster Finishing School. And eh an interesting thing happened to me there because we hadn’t got any pupils to train then, they were coming in a couple of weeks time and we were getting the place ready. A wing commander arrived, Wing Commander Leonard Cheshire and eh he had been operating in Four Group up in Yorkshire on Halifax’s. And when he came to take over 617 Squadron the AOC said, ‘you had better go and learn to fly a Lancaster.’ So he eh hummed and had and said. ‘Well I have been flying Halifaxs for two years.’ But he said ‘No you go and learn it.’ So he came, he hadn’t got a clue so I went with him and four others. And we became, and I am very proud to tell you, I have in my log book. Four times I flew with him while he learnt to fly a Lancaster. [laugh]. I then went from there to the permanent base for Five Lancaster School of eh, Lancaster Group, School at Syerston again. And I stayed there instructing until I done a foolish thing. I was engaged to be married and I saw in orders that there was a course for RT speech unit, at Stanmore. And I thought if I went to Stanmore, Iris was nursing at Leightonstone, Whipps Cross Hospital, Leightonstone. I would undoubtedly get a couple of days before I reported back. So I did this RT speech course, but I was quite good at it actually and of the six of us I got chosen to form this RT speech unit.
SJ: Brilliant.
AG: At Scampton, so I went there and very foolishly I had to do the same lecture four times a day seven days a week.
SJ: How’s that?
AG: And I met a man called Barney Gumbley, a New Zealander and we sat chat. Chatting in the mess one day and he said. ‘I am going back on ops, are you interested?’ I said. ‘Can we go tomorrow?’ [laugh]. So he said. ‘Well I have got an interview for Pathfinders and an interview for 617 have you any preference?’ I said was, Pathfinders was Eight Group and eh I quite like Five Group, I like the people in it. So I said ‘I’d rather go to 617.’ He said ‘It is a good job you said that, for the rest of us want to go there too.’ [laugh]. Anyway about ten days later I got a phone call to say. ‘There is a van picking you up at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.’ I said. ‘Where are we going?’ He said. ‘We are going to Woodhall Spa to joing 617 Squadron.’ So of I went in this van and eh the mess, the Officers Mess, was eh ‘oh dear, oh dear’ I can’t think of it.
SJ: What Woodhall Spa?
AG: At Woodhall Spa, it was the Officers Mess eh.
SJ: Was it the Petwood?
AG: Petwood.
SJ: Petwood Hotel.
AG: Petwood hotel and eh it dropped me there and I reported at the desk which had, [unclear] which had got a WAAF on it. And she said ‘Oh yes we’ve got a room for you.’ So of I went to this room, Barney Gumley was told I was here but he was up at the flight which was about a mile and a half away. He came down and introduced me to the rest of the crew, but no one thought about booking me in.[laugh]. And I did the two ops to the Tirpitz at Tromso before they suddenly realised I wasn’t on the squadron. [laugh] By that time I had done two trips.
SJ: Then they checked you in.
AG: They checked me in they thought I had better be legitimate. So I, I was with 617 from the September ’44 through ‘til April 1945. We had been flying the Barnes Wallis Tall Boy bomb which was 12000 pounds. And then he came up with a much bigger invention, the Grand Slam which was 22000 pounds. In order to accommodate the big bomb they had to take the bomb doors off, and they took the mid upper turret off, and they took all the armour plating out. They really did a modified Lancaster which only took a crew of five. Took all the wireless equipment out except for a VHF transmitter,RT. So I was surplus so I said to the flight commander. ‘ I have only got three more trips to do can I fly in the astrodome as a fighter observer or something like that?’ He said. ‘Under no circumstances, we are trying to find reasons for loosing weight.’ And he said. ‘You want to go and fly.’ He wouldn’t let me and the crew got shot down on the very next trip. So they got hit by and anti aircraft shell on the port wing and it shot it completely away. So they were on the bombing run at that time which was the dicey part of the trip. Because eh, the special bomb sight that we had, we had to fly straight and level. It was gyroscopically controlled, so you had to fly very accurately with height, speed and all the outside temperatures. And all that kind of thing which you fed in to this computer. So they was, the squadron flew in what was called a gaggle. A geese gaggle you know? The way that they fly in the sky.
SJ: A formation.
AG: A formation, and that gaggle when you were stepped sideways and up and down in a very large box. It was designed so that the whole squadron, twenty of us could bomb without impeding each other, all on the same bombing run. You were actually converging you see, so all the bombs had gone before you actually hit each other. It was a very clever little devise and this anti aircraft shell shot their port wing off so that it. It just spiralled in [unclear], and it was spiralling so quickly, if anybody was still alive in the aircraft eh they couldn’t have got out anyway. And of course the bomb went off as soon as it hit the ground. Because as they were on the bombing run the bomb aimer had already fused it.
SJ: Eh, you don’t remember which aircraft it was?
AG: Yes it is in, I flew with them. ‘Just sit down my dear.’ You can put it off for a bit.
SJ: I was going to pause it for a second.
AG: YZL, PD117 The number of the aircraft was PD117.[pause]
SJ: That looks like a well looked through log book.
AG: Just to prove Wing Commander Cheshire.
SJ: Yes that’s where he had gone to. That is local flying that was part of his training. [laugh]
AG: That’s right, I always say that he was my pupil.
SJ: [laugh] that’s brilliant. So what happened next, you were moved to 617 you were there for a six months.
AG: Yes and I done seventeen trips.
SJ: Seventeen trips.
AG: I got three more to do.[pause] ‘I will just have a cough sweet.’
SJ: That is no problem, that’s fine.
AG: [pause while uwrapping sweet] ‘Will you stay for some lunch?’
SJ: Oh, might do if that’s all right, yeah.
AG: I have got a beef casserole.
SJ: Lovely, that sounds fantastic.
AG: Right, I will heat it up in a minute.
SJ: [Laughs]
AG: ‘Sorry, I was, what was I saying —.
SJ: You were saying about 617 Squadron when you left.
AG: Yes I went to 9 Squadron who was the other squadron that had the tallboys, they didn’t have the grand slam, so that they still needed wireless operators. So I went over to 9 Squadron about three weeks before the end of the war. After we, I then had to make a decision, I was asked did I want to go to the far east against Japan. By that time I was married.
SJ: When did you get married?
AG: I got married the month before I joined 617, Iris never knew I had volunteered to go back.
SJ: Did you ever tell her.
AG: I have since, she was indignant. [laugh]. But I always said she was in a more dangerous situation as a nurse in Whipps Cross Hospital near the docks.
SJ: Was she always a nurse then?
AG: I didn’t say how I met her, did I?
SJ: You didn’t no.
AG: Can I digress?
SJ: Yes that will be fantastic to know.
AG: She was born in Woodford. But before the war they moved down to a little village called Rochford just outside Southend. And she wanted to be a nurse but they wouldn’t take her until she was seventeen. So she came to Echo as a copy typist. I was one of the senior, not senior clerks but I was, I was fairly well up. I had been there three years. And I met her and I liked the look of her and so after I went in the Air Force I kept in touch with her. And you know, I’d spent about no more than about ten days in her company, up to the time we got married. Because when I came on leave we always went to see a London show but that was about the only time we could get of. ’Forgive me sucking the sweet.’
SJ: Oh no it’s fine, not to worry.
AG: And that is how I met her. So I decided I didn’t want to go to the Far East I thought that having done about forty six trips, I didn’t , the neck had gone out too far. So I got posted to 50 Squadron at a place called Sturgate which was up near, in North Lincolnshire. And we were then flying; first of all we were flying prisoners of war from Brussels to England, in the Lancasters. We used to take, I think it was twenty or twenty four depending on what kit they got in the Lancaster fuselage sitting on the floor But they didn’t mind that as long as they were coming to England. After we got all the POWs back we then started bringing people back from leave from Italy. And we used to fly to Naples and pick up about twenty Air Force or Army people at a place call Pernicano, which is just outside Naples. Eh after a time they decided that was going to stop because shipping was available to bring them back in larger quantities anyway. And the Mediterranean was open so they stopped doing it. So I then got posted to do a code and cipher course down at a place called Compton Bassett near Calne in Wiltshire. And having passed that course I got posted to Germany ostensibly to be the CO of a small mobile signals unit. Which was one officer, one sergeant, one corporal and about ten men. When I got there I was told it was based at a place called Stade[?] between Cookshaven and Haverg. So I arrived at Stade[?] and the CO said. ‘Oh I am glad to see you’ he said. ‘I lost my adjutant about two weeks ago you are my new adjutant.’ I said. ‘No I have a mobile signals regiment.’ He said. ‘No I closed that down yesterday and you are my new adjutant.’ But I said. ‘I know something about flying but I know nothing about anything else.’ He said. ‘I’ll teach you.’[laugh] and he became a very good friend of mine. We did all sorts of things together, we got up very early in the morning sometimes at dawn and went and shoot deer. Quite unofficial we hadn’t got a license from the Military Government or anything and it ended up in a very humorous story. We had this, there weren’t very many of us, these base signals on your radar unit, refurbished these units to be sent round to the aerodromes and various places including Berlin. So there were only about fifteen of us I suppose. And we were having dinner or preparing to have dinner one night and we had got deer for dinner. This happened, Military Government people and ourselves we didn’t mingle sociably ‘cause there was nothing else. So they arrived about four o’clock and didn’t look like moving. So the CO said to me ‘What do we do?’ I said ‘Well as they are the guests of our mess this evening you had better invite them to dinner. And as they are our guests they won’t be able to do anything about it.’ So they sat down to dinner with us and ate deer. And they did let us know that they were aware of it. I think they had been told off, they had a [unclear] [laugh]. Well that, I ended up demobilised in August 1946 and I got reinstatement rights if I went back to Echo, but I was offered a short service commission of two years. But if I had taken that it would have meant in all probability the Air Force would have been reducing in size so much that I would have then been demobilised. And I wouldn’t have had reinstatement rights, having been in what was the regular Air Force for two years. So eh I went back to Echo. And so as I say I didn’t know anything about being an adjutant and certainly nothing about earning my living in civvy street. But I was fortunate, the man who interviewed me was the deputy chief accountant of EK Cole Ltd. And he knew because I had told him that I was keen on cricket because he was interviewing me in depth. He said ‘That’s a good thing I am a life member of Lancashire.’ So he took me on his staff and he taught me accountancy. I did take a correspondence course was meeker compared with what he told me. So I was never able to be a chartered accountant because I didn’t take articles. I was earning my living, by that time I was increasing my family.
SJ: How many children have you got?
AG: I’ve got three, two of them became nurses and one, the boy went into insurance.
SJ: You had two girls and a boy.
AG: I am proud of them all.
SJ: Oh yeah I don’t blame you.
AG: So I was in the deputy chief accountants department. Then he got promoted to be the chief accountant and then he became promoted to eh; financial secretary and accountant to a number of subsidiaries. So as he went up my situation went up with him.
SJ: You went up as well, did you enjoy that?
AG: I couldn’t have been an accountant in a professional office because that would have been dull. That would have been checking, checking, checking, checking. What I liked about being in industry, I was always in a place that was making things and you could go there and see it all happening. It was accountancy, it was very important accountancy, but eh —.
SJ: Very different from your RAF days though?
AG: Yes very much so. I was an active member of the 617 Squadron Association and we went to a number of reunions in Canada, Australia, New Zealand eh France as a unit, we’ve gone and made friends wherever we went. I haven’t been to the last couple number of places because Iris became, eh unreliable, she was unsteady. I couldn’t take her onto aircraft and coaches and things like that. She came to, she came to Australia and New Zealand and to Canada but the —, When we went to France and Germany and the Netherlands we went by coach and ferry, she hates flying.
SJ: [laughs]
AG: ‘Now where have I got to?’ Eventually we got taken over, first by Pye from Cambridge and then Phillips who are Dutch of course. But the British office was at Croydon and eh I became the financial accountant, financial director in a number of subsidiaries around the group. But I ended up, I always wanted to be somewhere near Southend because my parents were still alive. And I owed a lot to my parents, I didn’t want to move right out of their orbit. And I then went to Canvey Island to a components factory. First of all as the financial director and then as the managing director. And from there I went back to Southend as the eh; managing director of Echo Instruments which made instrumentation for industry. Then I retired.
SJ: How long have you been retired now?
AG: I retired when I was, I retired finally when I was sixty three. I first retired at sixty one when I left Canvey. And I only had been retired for about three months when my boss at Cambridge rang me up and said. ‘I am in trouble, can you help me?’ I said. ‘Well, help you in what sense?’ He said. ‘Can you come back and do a job looking after a subsidiary until I find a, a permanent managing director?’ So I did and I stayed two years.
SJ: [laugh] Why not?
AG: But it was a good period for me because I was drawing full pension and then I was drawing full salary so it made a nest egg for me when I did retire.
SJ: So it was worth it then?
AG: Yes; well I stayed in Shoeburyness just outside Southend until twelve years ago. But one of my daughters lived in West Row which is just to the West of Milden Hall and another one lived in Barton Mills.
SJ: I was going to ask why you moved up this way?
AG: Well my son was in Kent and the journey from Shoeburyness up to here was one hundred and ten miles. And when I got to eighty I decided that that was too far. So we moved up here to a place just the other side of Mildenhall, Brickcone Hall[?] and eh, it was too large but we loved it. And then Iris had trouble keeping her balance, damaged her hip. So I decided we had to be on the same floor so we moved here. Which was a retirement bungalow which suited us down to the ground.
SJ: And it is a lovely complex, it really is nice.
AG: It is, I sit here and we have mallard ducks and swans on the river and I watch them and they come and look at me and squawk.
SJ: [laugh] And you sit and look at them?
AG: I try, I do, if Iris was here with me I’d love it. But she is only two miles away.
SJ: That is not far. How long has she been in the care home?
AG: Since January, so eleven months. But she is happy there and she is safe. You see I had her home here at first after she came out of hospital eh, but I couldn’t look after her during the day and the night. And I was getting totally exhausted because every time she moved I woke up. So we decided that my savings would go to the wall and I would put her in the care home. And she is in a lovely little care home. She is well cared for and she is safe, so —.
SJ: Does she like it there?
AG: At first she missed us all because she saw the family every day. Well now I go in about five days out of the seven and the two girls go once. Because Rosalind is a practice nurse in Bury so ,
SJ: That is not far away?
AG: No. And she is married to a Canadian who eh and they go backwards and forwards. I think they have a permanent passage booked on aircraft [laugh]. And eh Jill has got four sons and five grandsons, my great grandsons, so we are largely together. And my son comes up —.
SJ: He is the link end.
AG: Yes. He comes up for a week about every six weeks, because he has retired now.
SJ: Has he got any family?
AG: No; he married a lady who was seven years older than him and it never happened, so —.
SJ: That is quite a big family you got then, grandkids and great grandkids.
AG: Yes, I am a very lucky man. Having survived the war I look round and think, ‘This family wouldn’t have survived if I had bought it.’
SJ: I know, yeah.
AG: Well they might have done, Iris might have married someone else, but.
SJ: It would have been different though.
AG: They wouldn’t have had my genes.
SJ: No exactly [laugh]
AG: I’ll heat the —.
SJ: I shall put this on pause shall I?
AG: Since I retired, lived in Shoeburyness, Mildenhall and here there has been a resurgent of interest in 617. And also strangely in Pye Cambridge. And I have been recruited, to say to do this kind of interview for Pye Cambridge. Because they are making a record of the activities of Pye in Cambridge, because it has been there ever since it was formed.
SJ: So they are getting a history together of that part of Pye?
AG: There is a historical museum which is bringing all these records together. So they are doing what you are doing and making recordings and eh —.
SJ: It is great it needs doing. I mean how do you feel about the project? How do you feel about the Bomber Command Archive project?
AG: Lets say this. After I have had a session like this or with John Nichol . Or with other things the squadron seems to send to me. Eh, like the Cambridge stamp centre and signing things happened. Undoubtedly I have a disturbed couple of nights. Because it has brought it all back. But then the family encourage me and I totally accept the fact, if people like me didn’t say what this was like. The written word is not necessarily understood. But I think if they hear peoples voice as you are doing now, it might stop wars happening. I thank my lucky stars, that my son didn’t ever have to go through the trauma of a six years war. It was, don’t get me wrong. I think it was necessary. Hitler wouldn’t have got stopped in any other way. And I think in a way Hitler getting stopped, Mussolini and Stalin also got stopped. Because the consequences of the nuclear bomb was so dreadful that it stopped. And I don’t think there would have been a nuclear bomb if it hadn’t have been for the war, ‘cause the money would not have been found.
SJ: Yeah.
AG: Do I sound too serious?
SJ: No. I completely agree with you. Lessons need to be learnt from the past, don’t they?
AG: I think those of us who went through it. Have kind of a duty to make sure these subsequent generations knew what it was like.
SJ: Do you feel this generation and future generations will understand how it was?
AG: It’s difficult to say. But John Nichol tells me his book had a huge print and he has sold a lot of copies. So that if it get put into houses and families and people must have been buying it to read at home. It didn’t all go to libraries.
SJ: No not at all.
AG: The younger people eh, might well have learnt from it. And the BBC have done a number of programmes about the Air Force and the war in general. The Navy, all those aspects have been fired[?] some of it must have sunk in.
SJ: Yes you would like to think so.
AG: Yeah. And I think we have a duty to make sure that it became available. But it is not something that I enjoy.
SJ: Yes I completely understand, yeah.
AG: Because, well my family were fortunate. My brother was in the Navy, he was on the Arctic Convoys on HMS London, and eh —.
SJ: What was your brothers’ name?
AG: Kenneth, Kenneth George. And he, he went in the Navy. Largely because of my father I think. My father was Thames Bargeman. There’s Thames barges on the wall.
SJ: Yeah, I noticed them when I came in, yeah.
AG: My father was a Freeman of the River Thames. And he was on Thames barges and then on Thames tugs.
SJ: Did your father have military background?
AG: No, in the First World War he was a barge captain. And he, he used to load ammunition at Woolwich Arsenal, and take it over to France to a place called St Valerie.
SJ: He had a very important job.
AG: He used to take it across the channel. Through all those minefields and what have you.
SJ: Very risky.
AG: Yes it was. And at the end of the war he was presented with the Maritime Medal.
SJ: Oh brilliant.
AG: But you know the chances that he took as a civilian. He should have got much more than that.
SJ: I know. What was you fathers name?
AG: George, George David. He lived until he was ninety four, the last six years with us at Shoebury.
SJ: You mentioned your brother. Did you have any more brothers or sisters?
AG: No just the brother. My mother had twins which were still born, my brother and I —. They really were, they were extremely poor in a sense. Because in the shipping slump of 1931, 32 the barges were laid up all over the East Coast. And he just got on care and maintenance pay which was hardly anything. And with that he was trying to run himself on the barge, tied up to a buoy and the family at home. So his savings gradually went. So he had to, he had a break down eventually about 1934. And he stayed on the water in a sense because he became the hand in an oyster dredger on the river Roch at Rochford. And he did that eh, about eight months in the year. Then he was unemployed for the rest of the year. So he dispersed his savings looking after his family really. So I did have a very big moral obligation to my parents who were the salt of the earth.
SJ: Yes they sound like they were, which was great. I think that generation they were, weren’t they?
AG: They were family minded.
SJ: They were mm.
AG: They, [pause] I don’t think they bought themselves a Christmas present. Where my brother and I always had one.
SJ: Yeah, what were your family Christmases like?
AG: The family, my father had one, two, three. Three daughters, three sisters and two brothers. And one of the aunts was a school teacher and she took a fatherly interest. So silly isn’t it, she was an aunt, she couldn’t take a fatherly interest [laugh]. An aunt interest in my brother and I. And he won an open scholarship, a total scholarship to Clarks College when he was thirteen.
SJ: Oh brilliant.
AG: It was the only one on offer in the whole of the area, and he won it. He went to Clarks College. By the time I got to and I was four years younger. By the time I got to the age when I was sitting exams. They couldn’t afford for me to be another drain on the family finances. So eh, I went to work at Ecko.
SJ: How old were you when you started there?
AG: I was fourteen.
SJ: Fourteen mmm. How did you feel about working, starting work so young?
AG: It was the common thing.
SJ: It was mmm.
AG: I was on the, I was at the village and I stayed at the village. I was only at the municipal college for a short time and I was working and doing it evenings. But the village, I was almost. Hardly any of us did further education but my family believed in it. So I did further education and my brother was good example to me that he had won an open scholarship.
SJ: That was brilliant.
AG: But the village had a tradition of going to work at fourteen.
SJ: Yeah. But they did didn’t they? I mean they is eighteen now when they leave school. It is a big difference these days.
AG: But I would say this about the great working school; it was first class. And they had dedicated people. We had two Welshmen who were school masters there and they gave up their Saturdays for sport. They never let us go to a fixture without one of them being there. You know it was —. After school they’d, we would go into the playground and get a matting wicket and play cricket. And they always did it in a —. I look at teachers these days and I think to myself. ‘You should have lived with those people, you would have learned an awful lot.’ They believed in the welfare of their students. Where as now they seem to want —. [Interruption]. ‘Come in.’ [shout]
SJ: Shall I put this on?
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Syd Grimes
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AGrimesS151121
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sue Johnstone
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-21
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:54:01 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Sydney Grimes grew up near Southend and joined the RAF as a wireless operator in 1940. He flew a total of 41 operations - 24 operations with 106 Squadron and 17 operations with 617 Squadron. He then served on 9 Squadron at RAF Bardney for 2 months and 50 Squadron at RAF Sturgate for 3 months, where he assisted on the return of prisoners of war in Operation Dodge. After demobilisation he returned to his old company and retired as the managing director.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Rutland
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1943
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Hugh Donnelly
Richard James
106 Squadron
50 Squadron
617 Squadron
9 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
crewing up
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Manchester
Operation Catechism (12 November 1944)
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
RAF Balderton
RAF Bardney
RAF Compton Bassett
RAF Cottesmore
RAF Scampton
RAF Sturgate
RAF Syerston
RAF Woodhall Spa
Tallboy
Tirpitz
training
wireless operator