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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1875/46447/SHarriganD[Ser -DoB]v180002.mp3
9e1a59f8b5d86e0f3686b1aabcb7d54a
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-06-19
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire
Description
An account of the resource
34 items. Interviews with veterans recorded by Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire.<br /><br />Interview with Bertie Salvage <br />Three part interview with Dougie Marsh <br />Interview with Terry Hodson <br />Interview with Stan Waite Interview with John Langston<br />Interview with Nelson Nix <br />Two part interview with Bob Panton <br />Interview with Basil Fish <br />Interview with Ernest Groeger <br />Interview with Wilf Keyte <br />Interview with Reginald John Herring <br />Interview with Kathleen Reid <br />Interview with Allan Holmes <br />Interview with John Tomlinson <br />Interview with Cliff Thorpe and Roy Smith <br />Interview with Peter Scoley <br />Interview with Kenneth Ivan Duddell <br />Interview with Christopher Francis Allison <br />Interview with Bernard Bell <br />Interview with George Arthur Bell <br />Interview with George William Taplin <br />Interview with Richard Moore <br />Interview with Kenneth Edgar Neve <br />Interview with Annie Mary Blood <br />Interview with Dennis Brader <br />Interview with Les Stedman <br />Interview with Anthony Edward Mason <br />Interview with Anne Morgan Rose Harcombe<br />
<p>The following interviews have been moved to the relevant collections.<br /><span>Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46454">Kathleen Reid</a></span><br />Interview with Wing Commander <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46467">Kenneth Cook DFC</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46456">Colin Cole</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/46464">Charles Avey</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46470">John Bell</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46459">Les Rutherford</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46460">James Douglas Hudson</a></p>
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Interviewer: We’ll start again.
PS: Right.
Interviewer: It’s the 25th of January and I’m here at Westmoor Farm and I’m talking to Peter Scoley who is the sort of founder and landlord of the friends of Metheringham Airfield. Peter, you’ve been in this area for a very long time. Like all your life. Is that right?
PS: More or less. We came to Martin Moor in 1937.
Interviewer: Gosh.
PS: And, but we had to leave of course when the aerodrome was built. That was in 1943. And then Zena and I came back here to live in 1968 so most of my life with a little chunk in the 40s and 50s.
Interviewer: And a bit missing. When you had to leave where did you go to?
PS: We went to another farm at Bracebridge Heath at the north end of Waddington aerodrome a quarter of a mile or so, between a quarter and a half a mile from the end of the northern end of the main runway. And so we were entertained nightly by Lancasters taking off and landing at Waddington.
Interviewer: Right. So, so I mean you wouldn’t have been very old then. About eight years old.
PS: Ahum.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: Yeah.
Interviewer: So would you have seen action from Metheringham itself or didn’t you get down as far as here?
PS: No, I never saw Metheringham operations. I only saw it built but not operational. Though on occasion because we had this barn here still operational during the war.
Other: As a farm.
PS: As a farm. Father visited weekly because my uncle really looked after it but my father came here every week and it was on some of those occasions when I was on holiday from school that we saw things like the FIDO operating and the odd aeroplane going in the circuit and so on. But —
Interviewer: Were you allowed to stay up late enough to [laughs] —
PS: [laughs] No.
Interviewer: To see FIDO operating.
PS: The FIDO that I saw operating was actually during the daylight hours. One very foggy day, I can’t remember now whether it was the Christmas holidays or the April holidays. I think it might have been Christmas holidays actually in 1944 it was operating during the day.
Interviewer: Was that a test run or did they actually need it?
PS: I don’t think so. I think it was, I think it was operating because air ambulances were coming in from Europe with American wounded on.
Interviewer: Peter, excuse me.
PS: For Nocton Hospital.
Interviewer: It’s absolutely stone cold. Can you get the girls to come back collect it and warmed up for us.
PS: Righto, duck.
Interviewer: Shall we?
PS: Can you, can you pause?
Interviewer: Yes.
[recording paused]
Interviewer: Stopped it so [pause] So they were running FIDO during the day.
PS: Are we on now?
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: Oh right. Yes. I can remember. I can remember it very clearly because on that particular day father was bringing a battery to Smalley’s, the motor engineers of Martin for recharging. In those days if you, if you remember the wireless sets we had weren’t plugged in to the electrics because we didn’t have any but there were on big glass batteries filled with acid that was re, that were recharged every week. And we were coming down to Martin to have this battery charged. To get there of course we had to come through Metheringham Aerodrome. Now, the road was closed but because father had this farm here he had a pass to come through so we came up to the main gate and he showed the pass and we were waved through. But he was warned at the sentry post, guardroom that the FIDO was running and there was a guard on the road, to take directions from him. So further up the road we came across this guard with a 303 rifle and a fixed bayonet and in front of us we’d seen a lorry disappearing into the fog past this chap with a bayonet and father stopped and said, ‘Is it safe to go through?’ And so the guard said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘That lorry has just gone through,’ he said, ‘So I think you can.’ So off we went and the roar as we went through was terrific and the flames as I recall were not the same as you see on the films and pictures of FIDO working which tend to show a very low flame.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: Very close to the ground. The flames that I remember, don’t forget I was eight, nine years old were much higher than that. They were more like eight to ten feet high and they were blue and with a yellowish tinge.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: And the roar was fantastic and the heat terrific. But anyway —
[recording paused]
PS: Switch on then. So we drove through and went off down to Martin to get the batteries recharged. Mission successful.
Interviewer: Yes. It is interesting what you say because all the pictures or almost all the pictures of FIDO are taken at night so the only bit you see is the yellow part of the of the flame and no one every talks about the noise. They only talk about the flames and the fumes and everything like that.
PS: That is my recollection of it.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: Don’t forget as I say I was eight nine years old.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: And that is my memory.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: Fickle though it might but with a picture that I have of FIDO is quite different from that shown in the books.
Interviewer: Yes. Well, that’s, that’s quite amazing. So what was going on at Waddington? I presume that you had a much closer view of, of events there.
PS: Not really. I suppose because one was only at home during school holidays though obviously during those weeks you got the aircraft flying overhead every night taking off on operations. And being only half a mile or so from the end of the north, north south runway at Waddington fully loaded Lancasters coming over twenty or thirty at a time and skimming the house by about sixty to a hundred feet the noise was rather shattering and if you were trying to get to sleep a fairly, you were given a fairly impossible job.
Interviewer: Did you ever get used to it?
PS: No. Never really got used to it. But you counted them out and you counted them back. The other thing that I recall from my bedroom window there was an air raid siren two hundred yards away on the AV Roe aircraft factory roof end and every now and again it would go off. And I don’t know whether anybody remembers air raid sirens these days but believe me in those days if it went off the heart raced a bit.
Interviewer: It is frightening.
PS: We, I was ill with measles at the time but in March of 1945 Bomber Command suffered the last intruder raids of the Luftwaffe when various night fighters flew over aerodromes in the UK and shot the place up and on two occasions that happened at Waddington. On one occasion the bomb dump was set on fire and we had shell cases littering through the trees. You could hear them hitting the trees and bullets whistling through the air. That was rather frightening and then they did in fact manage to set the Waddington bomb dump on fire one night. And the —
Interviewer: What were the bombs, were they exploding?
PS: No, they weren’t. No. Fortunately not.
Interviewer: Because they weren’t fused, were they?
PS: No, they hadn’t got that far.
Interviewer: No.
PS: But something was burning there.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: And various people from RAF Waddington came around to all the outlying houses, farms and everyone telling everyone to get out quick because if the bomb dump went off it would level a fair, it would level a fair area of land.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: And so mother explained that we couldn’t because my brother and I were in bed with measles and my father was in bed with flu. ‘Righto,’ said the officer. He said, ‘We’ll lay an ambulance on.’ As it turned out before the ambulance arrived they got the fire under control so it was all cancelled but it was a little bit of a hairy old do for an hour until things got under control.
Interviewer: Yes, I can imagine.
PS: Well, that was the nearest I got to the war.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: Because most of the time with being away at school, in the latter half of the war at anyrate, in Yorkshire we very rarely saw any aircraft up there and German aircraft in particular. But further south of course things were rather different.
Interviewer: Yes, I can imagine. Well, I grew up in London but I’m not quite old enough. It’s strange because I have a memory of getting out of bed and lifting the edge of a blackout curtain and looking out and seeing searchlights panning the sky. Now, it couldn’t have been the Blitz because I wasn’t around in the Blitz.
PS: No.
Interviewer: So I’m not quite sure what this memory was.
PS: Well, don’t forget there was a little Blitz in 1944.
Interviewer: Ah, well it could have been something like that. Yes. Yes. I didn’t think much about it. It just looked like all pretty lights in the sky you know.
PS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Obviously, obviously very young. Now, you are now with your connections to the Metheringham Airfield and considered by lots of us as, as a chief archivist.
PS: God. Yeah.
Interviewer: You must have the odd story to tell. Things that were related to you or, or something like that.
PS: Oh God. Now, my mind’s gone a blank.
Interviewer: Of the —
PS: Yeah.
[recording paused]
PS: Yeah. Yeah, well perhaps for a start we could talk about the origins of the, of the Visitor Centre because they were not simple. Zena and I had thought, had been wondering for a long time about a Memorial to the Bomber Command people here during the war but we could never really think of anything that we could do. We didn’t particularly want, just want to put a Memorial slab or stone. We wanted something a bit different but nothing occurred. In any case at that time we were both busy with our own lives. Me in farming and Zena with local government. But it just so happened one day that Zena was at a meeting with North Kesteven District Council officials at a time when — [beeping noise] I think I can —
Interviewer: Ok.
[recording paused]
PS: So anyway, Zena was at this meeting with the North Kesteven District Council at a time when they were having to rethink the financial aspects of local government because agriculture which up ‘til then had been the mainstay of rural life was ceasing because of the end of the Cold War was ceasing to be as important as it had been hitherto. And so the local authorities were having to reassess businesses and tourism and all sorts of other things that were happening in their areas in order to get revenue for the county. One of the things that the Tourism Department at Sleaford was concerned with was the wartime aviation and they were creating what became known as the Airfield Trail which it was hoped would attract tourists into the area to go around and visit all these old aerodromes which by then were becoming of national interest. So during the conversation Zena happened to mention that we had got some old wartime, World War Two buildings on the farm and would they be interested. They said they would. They’d come and have a look which eventually they did and it was decided that one of the buildings in particular would be a good place to have what at that time was going to be known as a Memorial Room. The council would renovate part of it in which the exhibition would be and then the place would be open for people to visit when they were in the area. At that time nothing more was planned. It, coincidentally one of our neighbours on the other side of the airfield had built a Memorial to 106 Squadron which in 1992 was dedicated at a squadron reunion.
Interviewer: Was this the one that is actually on the airfield site?
PS: Yes.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: When it was dedicated and we talked to the squadron about our plans they showed interest and asked to be invited to the dedication of the Memorial Room when it was opened. And we said yes. In the meantime, John Pye who had done the other Memorial said would it be appropriate for him to build another Memorial outside the Memorial Room? So we thought it was a good idea and which he did. That was in 1993 and in July of ’93 at the squadron reunion they came here for the dedication of the new Memorial and —
Interviewer: Partial opening.
PS: Yeah [pause] Ok? Yeah. So anyway, the squadron arrived in July of 1993 for the dedication of the second Memorial.
Interviewer: When you say the squadron you mean the Squadron Association?
PS: The Squadron Association.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: Yeah. And had a look at the half-finished Memorial Room and there was a preliminary suggestion that it mightn’t be a bad idea if we were willing for it to be also the Squadron Museum. So anyway, we all went away and thought about that. We had to think about this. They, and they came back again in October of that year when the Memorial Room was finished and opened for a month for local people to come and have a look and we had an official opening with the chairman of the North Kesteven District Council and a little ceremony and we closed again for the winter at the end of the month. During the winter we had a general meeting when the Friends of Metheringham Airfield was set up. The title was, as I recall was suggested by our number one member who has only just died a week or two back. Ron Mitchell. And we’ve been the Friends of Metheringham Airfield ever since and the committee was formed and it went on from there. The following summer in July when the squadron came down for their reunion, or the Association came down for their reunion they of course visited the Centre and we had a little party there. And one of the squadron members had a quiet think and thought it would be a good idea if we renovated the end room. Well, we hadn’t got any money to do that at the time so nothing much happened. But it just so happened that the poor chap died that winter. Then we found out that he had left us two hundred pounds in his will for to help with renovations at the Centre. And so we renovated the end rooms and they’re now called the Carey Powell Room.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: In memory of our benefactor who’d in fact had been a rear gunner here. He was a two tour rear gunner which was a very rare bird indeed.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: In World War Two.
Interviewer: It certainly was.
PS: And a very nice man and a great supporter. So we were very pleased to, to name the room after him and to keep his name alive. So the, the museum has sort of developed from the there. The next job we did was to clear out the old gymnasium which had become redundant as far as the farm buildings were concerned and so, we cleaned it out and freshened it up. And since then we’ve had all our meetings and things in there. The lectures we started in the Centre in 1994 as it happened. I think Jim Shortland gave the first one and I believe we had about seventy people in there at the time. But gradually as time went on numbers increased and the centre wasn’t big enough and so we moved across to the school room, what is now the school room and a gymnasium until that became too small when we started having the lectures and things in the main room in the gymnasium. And that basically is an outline in how we first started and has carried on to this day with under the guidance of a group of very dedicated volunteers. We are now a charity and which has been helpful with the financial aspects of the friends and we hope that interest will survive because we believe that the memory of Bomber Command people deserves it. There may be controversy over what Bomber Command did during the world war but one can’t get away from the fact that fifty five thousand men, young men, young boys lost their lives serving their country and that is the main thing as far as we’re concerned in preserving the memory of 106 Squadron.
Interviewer: That’s, that’s really the core purpose of the organisation, isn’t it? That it’s totally wrong and mercifully I think the country is now decades too late beginning to realise it totally wrong to blame brave volunteer —
PS: Yes.
Interviewer: Service personnel.
PS: Yes.
Interviewer: For the mistakes, perceived or real of their political masters.
PS: Absolutely. It’s been most unfair and again well we’ll not mention any politics in this but we know the guilty ones.
Interviewer: I’ll not mention any names. Well, Peter, I think we’ve come to the end of the session now and thank you ever so much for talking to us and I’m sure that your name won’t exactly be in lights but your voice might well be coming out of peoples computers. Thank you.
PS: [laughs] 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 Peter Scoley
1008-Scoley, E Peter G
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SHarriganD[Ser#-DoB]v18
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
1992
1993
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
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
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Format
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00:23:19 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Pending OH summary. Allocated C Campbell
Creator
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Jeff Williams
This Interview was recorded by Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Description
An account of the resource
Peter Scoley was born on a farm which became RAF Metheringham during the war. After the war Peter and his wife were fundamental in creating a museum on the site.
106 Squadron
bombing
FIDO
Lancaster
memorial
perception of bombing war
RAF Metheringham
RAF Waddington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2258/40606/PZoltySP2201.2.jpg
f6c0d58c6584b9e158ebadab445286aa
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2258/40606/AZoltySP220804.2.mp3
d723f8bd89964b7a42f51931b288e357
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
Zolty, Peter
Solomon Peter Zolty
S P Zolty
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Solomon Peter Zolty (1922 - 2022). He flew operations as a navigator with 106 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-08-04
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Zolty, SP
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HB: Right. This is an interview between Harry Bartlett and Peter Zolty. Peter was a navigator with 106 Squadron in Bomber Command, 5 Group and the interview is taking place at his residence, current residence and it’s the 4th of August and it’s, I wonder what the time is?
Other: 10.47.
HB: It’s 10.45.
PZ: That’s the day, the day when the war broke out didn’t it? 4th of August it was.
HB: Something like that. Yeah.
PZ: I think. Or something like that anyway.
HB: So, can I first —
PZ: Ask me —
HB: Can I first of all thank you Peter for agreeing to be interviewed. It’s important we get your story recorded. What I’d like to do if possible is to start with where you were born and where you sort of went to school and got your first job.
PZ: I was born in, well in Birmingham. In Erdington actually. Lindridge Road, Erdington and we lived then in Speedwell Road and that’s where, that’s where I grew up. I went, there was a Jewish School there in Birmingham. There still is actually but it’s not in the same place and I went there. And I also went to Five Ways School which was at Five Ways in Birmingham but I was removed from there because of misbehaviour [laughs] So that’s all I can really say about that. After that I went to Handsworth Junior Technical School and I never, I never went to university. I never got to that standard.
HB: Did you get any qualifications at the Technical School?
PZ: No. I didn’t. I don’t have any qualifications at all.
HB: Right.
PZ: Other than TBE. Taught By Experience.
HB: I like that. So what, what age were you when you left school, Peter?
PZ: Pardon?
HB: What age were you when you left school?
PZ: When I left school? I must have been about fifteen.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Handsworth Junior Technical School that was.
HB: And did you get, did you get work straight away?
PZ: Yeah. I got a job as a laboratory assistant at, I think it was at Birmingham University in the Chemistry, in the Chemistry Department as far as I can remember. Nothing, nothing very special. You know, first jobs were always fifteen shillings a week in those days.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. So, but you obviously moved on from, from the University.
PZ: Pardon?
HB: You moved on from the University.
PZ: Only, I was only a lab assistant anyway.
HB: Yeah. Where did you, where were you in the ‘30s? 1930s. When it was coming up to the war.
PZ: Oh, I lived at home in Speedwell Road, Birmingham.
HB: Yeah. And were you, were you working somewhere else then as you were coming up to the war starting?
PZ: I’m trying, I’m just trying to think. I can’t remember if I had a job before that.
HB: Was it, would you have got a job at Lucas?
PZ: No. No. Not straight away.
HB: No.
PZ: I was a laboratory assistant. Oh, I was a laboratory assistant to some —
HB: Yeah.
PZ: To some bloke. I can’t remember his name now but he said I was, he said I was useless. I didn’t turn up to time on [laughs] mostly but anyway —
HB: But you managed to move on.
PZ: I managed that —
HB: And eventually —
PZ: Well, my father was at Lucas and he got me a job at Lucas.
HB: Right. What were you doing at Lucas?
PZ: I was, I was in the tool drawing office first.
HB: Oh.
PZ: I later graduated to machine tools.
HB: Right.
PZ: And I worked my way through various levels of machine tool design and various complicated machine tools. I used to, I used to design them.
HB: Right. Right. Very important work then.
PZ: Hmmn?
HB: Important work.
PZ: Yeah. I did try training as a pilot but I think God, God decided I wasn’t a pilot.
HB: Did, how did you, how did you come to join the RAF?
PZ: Well, I always wanted to fly so I, I went along to the Recruiting Office and signed on and things just seemed to hang about so I went and asked my immediate boss if anything had been done to prevent me from going on to do other things. And he said no it hadn’t. Well, I said, ‘Well, if I’m worth keeping on I’m worth another five shillings a week.’ But he said I wasn’t [laughs] and so I, I joined the Air Force and said I wanted to be a pilot. I went over to Canada on the Empire, Empire Air Training School. I got so far but they decided that I wasn’t a pilot so I remustered as a navigator. I remember sending a cable to my mother at home what had happened and I trained as a navigator then.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: And —
HB: Which, which school? Can you remember which school you went to in Canada?
PZ: Handsworth Junior Technical —
HB: No, sorry the —
PZ: I went to Five Ways first of all. A grammar school.
HB: Yeah. No, the, the —
PZ: And then I got in a bit of trouble there.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Because I pinched another boy’s, I pinched another boy’s book.
HB: Right. No. I was thinking, I was thinking of the RAF training school in Canada.
PZ: Oh.
HB: Can you —
PZ: The Empire Air Training Scheme. That was at [pause] I think it was, yes I think it was London, Ontario as far as I can remember.
HB: Yeah. Yeah, that yeah that’s great. So you started off as a pilot.
PZ: No. I started off with the intention of being a pilot.
HB: Oh, right. Yeah.
PZ: And they decided eventually that there I was washed out. I wasn’t good enough.
HB: Right.
PZ: And I wouldn’t argue with that. I made a, made a bit of a mess of one or two landings which I shouldn’t do and lost height on turns which I shouldn’t do so I remustered as a navigator.
HB: Right.
PZ: And that I was perfectly capable of doing. I mean modern airliners the pilots don’t navigate they’re just told which direction to fly in.
HB: So you’re the most important man in the aircraft then.
PZ: Eh?
HB: You’re the most important man in the aircraft.
PZ: In a sense I suppose so. Yes.
HB: Yeah. So —
PZ: But the flights used to last up to about thirteen hours sometimes with the same pilot. Nowadays I gather they have to change pilots after about eight hours or something like that.
HB: Yeah. So you went to Canada.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: Did you finish your navigation training in Canada?
PZ: Yes. Yes.
HB: You did.
PZ: And then came back here to [pause] what was the name of the place? I can’t remember the name —
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Of the station we were at and and crewing up was a scrappy sort of business. You just, we were, we used to do cross country runs which meant running around the perimeter of the aeroplane, of the airfield. And as we were running around one bloke said he was a pilot and so I said, ‘Well, I’m a navigator’ and that way we crewed up.
HB: Oh right. So you were just sort of a bit of a runaround.
PZ: It’s a bit of an ad hoc.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Yes, being —
HB: So they didn’t put you all in a big hangar and say, ‘Go and sort yourselves out.’
PZ: Oh no. No. They —
HB: No.
PZ: We did more or less sort ourselves out.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. What was the name of your pilot? Can you remember?
PZ: Yes, it was Daniel. Maurice Daniel. He went on to become a group captain and the air attaché in Washington but I don’t know whether he’s still alive.
HB: Right.
PZ: He finished up with the DFC because any crew which finished a tour of operations the captain got the DFC.
HB: Yeah. You see I’ve got it down until I saw your logbook I’ve got it down that you were with 106 Squadron.
PZ: That’s right.
HB: But you actually started —
PZ: I started with 49 Squadron.
HB: With 49 Squadron. Yeah.
PZ: But that was a 49.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
PZ: Yeah, that was just one of those things that happened. I was only with 49 Squadron for a short time and then went to 106 Squadron which I served a complete tour of operations.
HB: Yeah. You flew, you flew your first, it looks like you flew your first proper night time operation in August ’44 with Flying Officer Daniel to Kӧnigsberg.
PZ: Where?
HB: Kӧnigsberg. That was your first operation.
PZ: We went there two nights in a row actually where I was thinking of casually about it sometimes and the flight to Kӧnigsberg was thirteen hours each way. Nowadays pilots are only allowed to do eight hours.
HB: Yeah. That was, so that was a very long, a very long operation.
PZ: It was a long operation. We did it two nights in succession actually.
HB: Yeah. And that was your first one.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: How did you feel after you’d done your first operation and landed?
PZ: Relieved.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: There was always, because, because first of all there was always before going there was an operational meal in the Mess which was always bacon and eggs and on coming back there was another operational meal which was all bacon and eggs. And I remember the, we wore soft leather flying helmets in those days and you took it off and the relief in getting a good scratch [laughs] You can’t imagine it.
HB: So [laughs] Yeah. So the helmet was an interference with you.
PZ: Yes, soft leather.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Not the bone domes that they are now.
HB: Yeah. So obviously your religion is Jewish.
PZ: Yes.
HB: How did you, how did you go on about eating?
PZ: About what?
HB: About eating your operational —
PZ: Yes.
HB: Eggs and bacon?
PZ: Oh, the local minister was a Dr Cohen. A Jewish minister who was a giant among British Jewry and he said, ‘If we found that we were unable to follow the dietary laws we would not be committing any sort of a sin’ and he gave, he gave us the all clear really. Because more often than not the operational meal would be egg and bacon.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. And just, that just sort of begs the question, Peter. A lot, a lot of Jewish aircrew were given the opportunity to fly under a different name and have a different religion put on their dog tags.
PZ: I never came across that funnily enough.
HB: No.
PZ: No. Never.
HB: So nobody actually suggested it to you. You just carried on as you were.
PZ: No, I just carried on.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: And crewing up we used to go for, just to keep fit to run the circuit around the outskirts of the airfield and it was a casual attitude. I was running around once and one bloke said he was a pilot and I said, ‘Well, I’m a navigator.’ Boom we were a crew.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Can you remember any of your other crew that flew with you?
PZ: Yeah. There was, there was Danny. Maurice Daniel who went on to become a group captain. There was Fred Berry. Nicknamed. Already had a child so we nicknamed him Logan. Ken King was from Gloucester was the flight engineer. Peter Whaight, W H A I G H T, was the mid-upper gunner and John Keating from Ireland was the rear gunner. He went back home to Ireland. Pete Whaight went home to Middlesex and Johnny Keating went to Ireland and went to jail we heard. And that’s it.
HB: Did you, did you keep in touch with them after the war?
PZ: No. I didn’t actually.
HB: Right. Right. I just sort of while you were talking I was just having a quick look through your logbook which obviously you started in August ’44 and you’re flying. You’re flying operations virtually every three or four days.
PZ: Yes. Usually two days in a row and then odd nights it was night bombing.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Mostly night time and it was two nights in a row and then one night off. That would raise it roughly.
HB: Yeah. Because I noticed. I noticed in here you did a couple of, you did a couple of daytime operations.
PZ: Yes. We did.
HB: One to Boulogne and one to Le Havre.
PZ: Yeah, they were. I thought there was one to an island in Holland called Westkapelle. There may have been which I remember putting in the logbook.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: In brackets — very dicey [laughs] because there was, you know there was no danger in it at all. Usually, thought it wasn’t only my name. It wasn’t only bombing. We did minelaying in the Kattegat as well. The island between Denmark and Sweden.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Can you remember?
PZ: The actual water there. The sea.
HB: Yeah. What, can you remember what that was called in your book? In your logbook.
PZ: My what?
HB: Can you remember what those operations were called in your logbook?
PZ: They are. They were recorded in my logbook.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Yes.
HB: Yeah. So —
PZ: You’ve got my logbook there haven’t you?
HB: I just noted —
PZ: That is my logbook isn’t it?
HB: Yes, it is.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: It is and it’s quite interesting. You got an operation [pause] it’s just —
PZ: We did some mine laying once.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: I remember that.
HB: It says on in November 1944 you were attached to BDU.
PZ: Sorry?
HB: BDU for —
PZ: BDU.
HB: For LORAN training.
PZ: Sorry?
HB: For LORAN training.
PZ: LORAN.
HB: Yeah.
[recording paused]
HB: We just had a member of staff just step in for a minute. That’s all.
[personal talk about shower gel]
HB: Okay. Yes, it’s got, it’s got in your book attached to BDU for LORAN training in November ’44 and it’s got your pilot was a Flight Lieutenant French.
PZ: Flight lieutenant?
HB: French. And it says you went to Lyon. You flew to Lyon but you had an early return because the PI died.
PZ: I can’t remember that.
HB: No. I’m just, I’ve not seen PI died so I mean I presume that was probably a bit of kit. Something, some equipment in the aircraft. But it —
PZ: I don’t know.
HB: Yeah. It just says, “Early return. PI died.” So —
PZ: Oh, it’s something instrument that is.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. So what was the other one? Sorry.
PZ: The wireless operator was a Fred Berry.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: We called him Logan.
HB: Yeah. That’s a good one that one. You went, you then went back obviously you were only there for a, for a month. You went back to 106.
PZ: Yeah. And once we, once we’d completed a set of operations like that I become an instructor.
HB: Yeah. Yeah, I noticed that. I was going to ask you actually because you did a daylight raid which has, which has been recorded quite a lot in January ’45 against the Dortmund Ems Canal.
PZ: That’s right. Yes.
HB: Can you, can you remember much about that one? That operation.
PZ: Not really. We were probably trying to burst the banks of the canals or something like that but I don’t really remember it now.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: I served in two squadrons as I said. 49 and 106.
HB: Yeah. I think that was when you were flying with 106 and you did, that was your twentieth operation. How would, how would you be feeling then about twenty operations in.
PZ: Oh they were then said to be thirty operations was one tour. But when we got to twenty six we found we’d got another four on top of that. Thirty four. Because we were a very mixed squadron. We had Australian, South African who were, they were, they were army rather than Air Force and the Australians wore the dark blue uniform. Not the dark RAF blue. But yeah, we all mixed together perfectly well.
HB: Yeah. So was everybody in your crew from the United Kingdom or did you —
PZ: No. The bomb aimer was from Canada.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: The wireless operator was from England somewhere. The rear gunner was from Ireland. When he went back home afterwards he got sent to jail we heard. And the mid-upper gunner was from somewhere in Middlesex.
HB: Right. So you’d got a Canadian in the crew.
PZ: Oh yeah. Joe [Howey] was a Canadian.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: He went back home and married his childhood sweetheart.
HB: Oh right. Did you go to the wedding?
PZ: No. It was in Canada.
HB: Right. Yeah. So, so you’re doing, you’re back to doing operations sort of every two or three days into 1945.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: What did, did you have any involvement in the D-Day?
PZ: No, but we —
HB: Sorry, the crossing the Rhine going into Germany.
PZ: Not particularly. No.
HB: No.
PZ: Not that I remember anyway.
HB: Right. Right. Where are we? Yeah. You got one, you’ve got one here where you flew to Czechoslovakia.
PZ: To where?
HB: To Czechoslovakia. A place called [Bruckes]
PZ: Called?
HB: Bruckes.
PZ: I don’t remember the name to be perfectly honest.
HB: No.
PZ: But if it’s there we must have done it.
HB: Yeah. That’s alright. That’s not a problem. So just tell me a little bit about what you, once you’ve got an operation and you’ve been called in to be briefed. You know, that you’re going to go and fly that night.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: Or whatever.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: What was, what was the process Peter that you went through?
PZ: Well, the navigators were briefed with forecasts about the weather and talk about the target and all the rest of it and that was it. But then we did a, we had a talk from the Met man telling us what the weather was expected to be like and that was the extent of briefing quite frankly.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: But as I say we flew operations of up to thirteen or fourteen hours which they don’t do today.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: As civilian pilots.
HB: Yeah. Did you, what equipment did you have to help you do your navigation?
PZ: There was something called Gee. G E E, which relied, it was passive in that it relied on joining up two, two timed signals on the ground and it relied on the difference between them and that told you exactly. It gave you a point on where you were. And there was something we called H2S which didn’t mean anything at all other than the fact that it was a signal generated from the nose of the aircraft. But it was never used because the Germans could hold, could home in on that and just pick you off as it were.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: But we, we finished a whole chain of tours. A whole chain of trips. About thirty four roughly and with one tiny little hole in the side of the, inside of the, on the side of the aircraft. ZNU-Uncle it was.
HB: ZN.
PZ: ZNU-Uncle.
HB: Yeah. You’ve, yeah you’ve —
PZ: [PB] 284.
HB: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I’ve got that one.
PZ: Yes. And H2S relied on us, a signal sent out from the aircraft which was not, which was not done very much because the Germans could home in on it.
HB: Yeah. Did, did when you had a hole in the aircraft was that from flak or was it from some other —
PZ: We think it might have been an odd bit of flak.
HB: Yeah. So —
PZ: Only a little triangular hole. No real damage.
HB: So when you set off from —
PZ: It was Metheringham.
HB: Metheringham.
PZ: And Fiskerton previously. I think it was.
HB: Yeah. When you set off from Metherington [sic]
PZ: Yeah.
HB: You were sort of —
PZ: Yeah.
HB: Your pilot would climb you up.
PZ: We all cornered in. We all hove to over Reading so that we then, that we then flew together as a complete, as a block. As a bunch giving some mutual defence.
HB: Yeah. Yeah, and that, so that was so you sort of gathered up at Metheringham and then made your way gradually to Reading.
PZ: Reading. And then we all flew together.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: It made you know allowing for instrument error and so on but it was one big bunch of aircraft flying at the same time then.
HB: Yeah. Did you, did you ever, did you get attacked by night fighters or anything like that?
PZ: No. The only time I was frightened it was a psychological thing and that was when there was another Lancaster flying directly above us with his bomb doors open and I was truly frightened by that until he moved away apparently from us.
HB: I think you were right to be frightened.
PZ: What might have happened.
HB: Yeah. So, so that would be on the bomb run coming in to your target.
PZ: Yeah. We did one or two easy ones I’d say like some over Holland and the Zuiderzee and that sort of thing which were, which were a doddle. And we did mine laying as well on the coast on the sea between Denmark and Sweden.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Did you have, I didn’t notice in here if you ever did a operation to Wessel [pause] Wessel.
PZ: Zeebrugge?
HB: Wessel.
PZ: Sorry?
HB: Wessel.
PZ: Doesn’t ring a bell. I’m sorry.
HB: No. It’s, it’s alright it’s just one. I haven’t noticed it in your book but it’s one that the squadron was in. One that the squadron was involved in. That was, that was getting across the Rhine into Germany.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: That was the bombing just in advance —
PZ: Yeah.
HB: Of that.
PZ: I remember because we had South African members of the squadron as well. They were, they were part of the army. The South African army. It wasn’t the Air Force at all.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: And they used to put [unclear] about bigger and better operations and so on. Captain [Pecci] was the officer that particular one. And that was it.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: We had a feeling that other people get shot down we don’t. That was, and that was how you protected yourself in a way.
HB: And so obviously you had a lot of faith in your pilot as well.
PZ: Absolutely. He was very good. I say he, he was flying he was promoted to group captain and he went to, he went off to Washington DC to be the air attaché. I don’t think he’s still alive now.
HB: No. No. The, one of the things we mentioned Metheringham when you were stationed at Metheringham.
PZ: Yes.
HB: Metheringham is quite famous.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: Because they they did some experimental stuff there didn’t they for when you were coming back?
PZ: Yeah. We were at Metheringham and Fiskerton.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Two stages we flew from.
HB: Yeah. Metheringham. Didn’t that have these the thing for when when it got foggy?
PZ: Sorry.
HB: When it got foggy. When you were coming back in fog didn’t Metheringham have that experimental system?
PZ: Oh, FIDO. Fog Intense Dispersal Of. If it was on —
HB: Yeah.
PZ: If there was any fog they were along across. One alongside and one along each side of the runway and they got fuel burning in those and it generated enough local heat to lift the, to lift the fog so you could just see down. And we had a special arrangement of, for 5 Group aircraft who would get into what they called the funnels. That’s coming in towards where you were landing and the pilot just, I used to call out to the pilot you know first of all height and direction and then later on funnels as we got down on the ground.
HB: So you were still involved in the, in the landing process.
PZ: In that. In that sense, yes.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
PZ: We had, there were the, an instrument called Gee. G E E. Never ever knew what it stood for but it was a means. It was an aid to navigation.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: And you could, you could use that to guide the aircraft.
HB: Did you ever land using, when they were using FIDO?
PZ: I think we were, we were once. We were diverted. Diverted to Croft up in Yorkshire just once.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: That was presumably because of the landing conditions at Metheringham.
HB: Yeah. And you said at, you said a little while ago that when you came to the end of your tour and yeah you did thirty four, thirty five ops, when you came to the end of your tour you went to operational training.
PZ: Yeah. Just to become an instructor. That was all that it was.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: And we, when we and that was what it was. We instructed future navigators or future crews.
HB: Can you remember where? Where you went to?
PZ: I’m not absolutely sure but it might have been a place called Fiskerton but I’m not certain.
HB: Well, I’ve got in your book here it says 6th of April ’45. On the 6th of April 1945 you were posted to Number 29 Operational Training Unit at Bruntingthorpe.
PZ: Oh yeah.
HB: In Leicestershire.
PZ: That was in north, that’s in East Anglia as well.
HB: Yeah. Leicestershire. South Leicestershire.
PZ: Yes. I can’t really. I can’t really remember that. I remember when there were supposed to be thirty tours in an operational life.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: And we were sitting in the Mess one night after having done twenty six and I said, ‘Only four to go.’ And one, then they suddenly announced over the tannoy another four operations to go on top of that. And I remember one of the South Africans guys saying what we want is bigger and better tours.
HB: Which I don’t think you wanted did you? By then.
PZ: No. No way.
HB: Yeah. So what, the whole experience of flying on operations. What sort of effect did it have on you Peter?
PZ: I I can remember at the time, I mean we used to get leave fairly regularly and we were at some relation’s house in Birmingham somewhere and I remember sitting at a table like this. That was the only visible evidence ever.
HB: Drumming your fingers.
PZ: Yes. Yes.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: And when we stopped flying that stopped as well.
HB: So, so that was something you.
PZ: It was a bit of nerves I suppose.
HB: Yeah. Where you just drummed your fingers on on your hand on the table.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: Yeah. So what, what do you think? What do you think your contribution was in Bomber Command then?
PZ: My contribution?
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Well, we tried to be as accurate as we could. Can’t do more. We weren’t the Dambusters and, but we did, we did, well we dropped quite large bombs in to one or two canals which threw them out of action and flooded the countryside underneath at the same time.
HB: Do you think what you did had a, had a big effect on the war itself?
PZ: I suppose it must have done. We liked to think it did anyway.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. And so coming up to the end of the war you’re in 1945 coming up in to ‘46.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: When did you leave the RAF? Can you remember Peter?
PZ: Yeah. Well, I remember going for [pause] the crew split up and that was that and I remember going for a training course on photography and then I became photographic officer in Italy for about a year. Then I came out after that.
HB: Did you? And what, what was your process for finishing? How did they manage your coming out?
PZ: Oh, it was just being photographic officer in Italy was just a piece of cake really.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Just decided go out. And I was very disappointed that they didn’t fly us home. We came home by train. Called Medloc Mediterranean location overseas. It was. It was —
HB: Yeah.
PZ: We came out and that was that.
HB: Can you remember where you went to be demobbed? Where you got your suit and your trilby hat?
PZ: I can’t actually.
HB: No. That’s fine. That’s fine. I know most of the guys I speak to talk about the demob being a little bit of a, almost a bit of a joke.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: Well, I was demobbed. I went back to work with Lucas’ where I’d been before.
PZ: Yeah. Had they kept your job open for you?
HB: Oh yes. They were, they were under obligation in those days from the government to give people back their jobs once they came back from military service.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: And you were still a single man then.
PZ: I’d, I had a pretty good job in Lucas then. I was, and you know I served out my time and then I opted for early retirement.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just going back to when you were at Metheringham when you were flying operations what did you do for entertainment?
PZ: We used to go to the local pub and have a sing song. That was the main thing.
HB: Did you ever have any shows at the, at the airfield.
PZ: No. No. No. It was self-provided so to speak.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Usually the singing of dirty songs.
HB: Yeah. And, and did you go to the local dances?
PZ: Yes. I couldn’t dance.
HB: Oh, so you didn’t get the opportunity to mix with the young ladies then.
PZ: No. Not really. No.
HB: Oh dear. Right. So, when you look back on your time now, you know you’re a hundred years old now, Peter. You don’t look it I have to say but you’re a hundred years old. You look back on that time of your life. What, what do you think it contributed to your later life?
PZ: Well, it made me thankful to be alive I suppose. That’s the main thing.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Yeah. And I’ve got a, and I have a family now as well. I lost my wife about ten years ago.
HB: Oh right.
PZ: We were married for what, fifty two years. But you know the Jewish community everybody knows everybody and that and, and my wife came from that community and we had Natalie.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. That’s lovely. Well, I think Peter we’ve sort of come towards a bit of a natural end to the interview and I just want to say thank you very much.
PZ: Oh, you’re welcome.
HB: You know, your contribution is there now forever.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: You know, and people can look into and listen to your interview and they can look into your logbooks and they can do it all on the computer nowadays.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: You know, but it is looked after by Lincoln University.
PZ: It’s only recently I gave my grandson my logbook. That’s a fact.
HB: Yeah. Well, I’m going to stop the interview now Peter. It’s [pause] well we’re nearly on forty minutes so we’ve done quite well and can I thank you on behalf of the Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive.
PZ: Yes.
HB: And thank you personally.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s really been interesting.
PZ: Eventually I did go to the Memorial. The Memorial at Erewash in North Midlands. In Staffordshire I think it is.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Where there was a, there was a Memorial specifically mentioned Bomber Command and I remember going there. And I remember also a group of four of us were in, in London by Marble Arch.
HB: Green Park.
PZ: The arch.
HB: Green Park.
PZ: Green Park. There was a Memorial there and we had, we had the photograph taken there.
HB: Yeah. That’s, that’s the one that the Bomber Command veterans helped to get off the ground. It was —
PZ: I remember standing there while a photograph was taken.
HB: Yeah. That’s lovely. Well thank you, Peter.
PZ: Oh, you’re welcome.
HB: Thank you for that.
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 Peter Zolty
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Harry Bartlett
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-08-04
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
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00:39:07 Audio Recording
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AZoltySP220804, PZoltySP2201
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
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eng
Description
An account of the resource
Peter was born in Erdington, Birmingham. He joined the RAF and was trained at the Empire Air Training School in Canada. He re-mustered as a navigator and was with 49 Squadron for a short time. Peter then joined 106 Squadron and did a tour of 34 operations. Members of his crew included: Maurice Daniel (pilot), Fred Berry, Ken King (flight engineer), Peter Whaight (mid upper gunner) and John Keating (rear gunner). Flights could be 13 hours each way. It was a mixed squadron with different nationalities. Dr Cohen, the local Jewish minister, gave him a dispensation from following Jewish dietary laws. Apart from bombing operations, Peter also did some mine laying on the sea between Denmark and Sweden. As a navigator, he received relatively scant briefings on the weather forecast and targets. Peter describes his navigation aids, and aircraft gathering at RAF Metheringham before flying as a group to Reading. Peter benefited from the Fog Investigation and Dispersal Operation (FIDO) at RAF Metheringham. In 1945 he was posted to an Operational Training Unit and became an instructor. Towards the end of the war, he was a photographic officer in Italy for a year and then left the RAF. He returned to his job at Lucas.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Leicestershire
Canada
Italy
106 Squadron
29 OTU
49 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
briefing
crewing up
faith
fear
FIDO
military living conditions
military service conditions
mine laying
navigator
Operational Training Unit
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Fiskerton
RAF Metheringham
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2223/39869/ABuxtonAG220823.1.mp3
5d29db5ab6d80c540b94f6fe7e7beacc
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
Buxton, Alan George
A G Buxton
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Pilot Officer Alan Buxton (- 2023, Royal Australian Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator in 617 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-08-23
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Buxton, AG
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JH: Hello. This is John Horsburgh. I’m here today in Northern Sydney. It’s the 23rd of August 2022 and I have the pleasure of interviewing Alan Buxton here for the IBCC Archives. Good afternoon, Alan.
AB: Good afternoon, John.
JH: Thanks. Thanks for making the time and we’ve just had a brief chat and I think we’re in for an interesting interview here. Why don’t we start off Alan by telling me where you hail from, a bit about your childhood and maybe a bit about your parents?
AB: Yes.
JH: Let’s start. Let’s start there.
AB: I was born in Parramatta on the 4th of December 1920.
JH: You’re an Eels supporter then, are you? Parramatta Eels.
AB: Well, I should be but I —
JH: Yeah.
AB: I’m not all that, you know feisty about different teams you know.
JH: Yes.
AB: Having a favourite team and that sort of thing.
JH: Yes. So did you grow up in Parramatta?
AB: I grew up, yeah my, my, my grandfather owned the Royal Hotel on the corner of Church Street and the Great Western Highway and my father worked in the hotel when he left school. He went to King’s School at Parramatta and he worked for his dad and we lived in Campbell Street, Parramatta. That wasn’t that far away from the —
JH: Yeah.
AB: From the hotel. And my other grandfather, my mother’s father he was the, he was close by at the hotel and he was a produce merchant.
JH: Yes.
AB: His name was William Walter Webb. I, I attended when I was five years of age Parramatta Public School. A little primary school and when I did start there the custom was in those days you had to write with your right hand. If you didn’t write with your right, if you picked up the pen or your slate pencil thing with your left hand teachers would come along and rap you over your knuckles with a ruler. But my mother was a bit sharp and she got a doctor’s letter to stay that I was a left hander and I wasn’t to be made to write right handed. And she produced that to the headmaster and I never ever got a hit on the knuckles because of that letter that my mother submitted to the Head. Lived in Parramatta until I was about six years of age and my dad, we moved to central Concord when my dad got a job as a vacuum salesman. The Electrolux. And he used to go around to the various houses selling Electrolux machines to, you know the various housewives which was pretty good. He was doing very well. It was quite a, you know it was an innovation and he made, he was quite comfortable. He decided he would open up a [unclear] shop.
JH: What’s that?
AB: Well, it’s now they call them a delicatessen.
JH: Oh yes, okay.
AB: And that, this was in Concord West.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And —
JH: Which is now Homebush I think.
AB: Hmmn?
JH: Near Homebush.
AB: Yeah. That’s right.
JH: Yes. I know.
AB: We were going quite, it was going quite well until the depression started and when people then didn’t have the money to be able to buy delicacies from a [unclear] shop or to have afternoon tea or morning teas at the tables because money was so tight and he went broke. And that was when in 1930 and we had a tough time during the depression years. Dad didn’t have, have a job and eventually the war started and then my dad joined up as soon as war started. Joined up the Army again after having served in the First World War.
JH: In the First World War. Yes.
AB: And he put his age back. He was, in 1939 he was forty two.
JH: Yes.
AB: And he said he was thirty four because you had, in those days you had to be over eighteen and under thirty five to get into the Army. When my dad joined up I thought to myself well I’ll join up too. So I, I went and oh prior to that I had seen an advertisement in the paper that the RAF were requiring volunteers for aircrew and there was a five year training course. So I applied for that and I got interviewed. I did tests. English, maths and I managed to pass all those subjects but when I got to the medical they knocked me back. They said, ‘You’re not fit for flying duties.’ Which was the requirement in those days.
JH: Not because you were left handed I hope.
AB: It wasn’t because I was left-handed. They told me that I, my depth perception wasn’t good enough. I wouldn’t be able to land the aircraft safely. So that was before the war started. It was around about, around about the, towards the end of 1938, early ’39. And then when war started I got a call up by the RAAF and I went through the same rigmarole. Did the tests and the result was I wasn’t fit for flying duties.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Which was the requirement in those days. In the early days. So I said to them, they said, ‘Well, you can come in as ground crew and you might be able to remuster.’ And I said, ‘Oh no. I won’t do that.’ I said, ‘I’ll join the Army instead.’
JH: Yes.
AB: So I went in to the Army.
JH: So Alan what did your father say when he, he found out that you’d joined the Army? Did he know about it?
AB: Well, I I put my age up from nineteen to twenty one and of course you didn’t have to produce your father’s mother’s written permission to join you see. So —
JH: Yeah.
AB: So, he was a bit upset about that but he said, ‘Well, what am I going to do with you son?’ He said, ‘If they put you in the infantry I’m going to tell them how old you are.’ He’s remembering the infantry of the —
JH: First World War.
AB : First World War. How crook it was. Anyhow, when I was inducted into the Survey Regiment he thought well that’s a good idea.
JH: Yes.
AB: You’re not going to be stuck in the in the trenches. He was thinking that’s what it was going to be like. And I, I trained in various camps in Australia. Eventually we went to the Middle East.
JH: By ship I presume.
AB: Hmmn?
JH: By ship.
AB: Oh yes. We —
JH: Yes.
AB: I went [laughs] by yeah by, we went to the Middle East by the first trip that the Queen Elizabeth had done as a troop ship.
JH: Yes.
AB: And when we entered, when, as you enter the ship’s doorway on the side of the ship we were handed a card. Each person got a card and on the card was where you were to be quartered and I got a card which says A deck and then a cabin number.
JH: Yes.
AB: When we eventually found out where this was we went up and got in to, inside this cabin and we had this magnificent cabin my mate, Alan [Sear] and myself and it was a luxurious cabin. We had beds. We had our own toilets and showers, a bathroom in this lovely, this lovely cabin. Anyhow, we went in there and started to unload our our kitbags et cetera and a door opened and in comes Captain Reynolds. Our captain. He said, ‘Oh, you two chaps,’ he said, ‘Repack your goods.’ He said, ‘I’m taking over this cabin.’ So —
JH: It sounded too good to be true in other words.
AB: Hmmn?
JH: It sounded too good to be true.
AB: True. Yeah, he was going to take over.
JH: JH: Yeah.
AB: So we talked amongst ourselves and said, ‘We don’t like the idea of that.’ I said, ‘Why does he get to do that?’ So we went up and found the, the ship’s purser and we told the purser who [pause] what had happened and he, he got upset. He said, ‘I decide where you go. You were given that that cabin.’ He said, ‘You’re going to stay in that cabin.’ And he, he over the loudspeaker he called Captain Reynolds into his office and told Captain Reynolds off and Captain Reynolds he was called along with a lot of other officers down to the bowels of the ship and we were in this lovely cabin on A deck. We were a bit fortunate there on our trip to the Middle East.
JH: So did that involve going up through the Suez Canal?
AB: Yes. We went up —
JH: Yes.
AB: Went up through the Suez Canal and then we, when we got to Port Tewfik we got off the ship and transferred to, to rail and we went by train into Palestine and at a campsite called Hill 95 not very far away from Gaza.
JH: Yes.
AB: We did more training there which was tough because it was so hot during the daytime and we had to do all these route marches all over the place. You know all over the sand and hills.
JH: In the footsteps of the Light Horse.
AB: All that lot. Yes. Like that.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And it was tough going but we as I said we had to [fatten our [unclear] stick our legs up] et cetera and build ourselves up and and then when the, it was in July 1941 they started the problem of going in and fighting the Vichy French. Clearing them out of Lebanon and Syria.
JH: Yes.
AB: And we joined that push and we stayed there up around the top of Syria near near the Turkish border around Homs and Aleppo and those places. We stayed up there until we were, we had to come back to Australia because the Japanese came into the war.
JH: Yes.
AB: And we got we left the Middle East in February and we got back to Australia in April.
JH: Was that ’42?
AB: ’42.
JH: 1942. Or ’41.
AB: Yeah. ’42 that was.
JH: ’42. Yeah.
AB: Then we trained in, went up to Queensland and trained to go to the jungles area up to Papua New Guinea and at that particular time the Air Force was interviewing people from the returned soldiers from the Middle East to ask them whether they’d like to transfer to the Air Force into aircrew.
JH: From what you said before I think you jumped at that didn’t you?
AB: Anyhow, a couple of us were down in Brisbane on leave and we found out all about this so we, we went to one of those offices where there were recruiting the people like [unclear] airmen and we were, went in and did the exams and then again to see whether we were good enough to get into the Air Force as aircrew and they knocked me back. I passed all the exams but when it came to the medical then I was, it was the doctors were checking me over and they, he said, ‘Well, we can’t take you. You’ve got a hernia.’ I said, ‘What’s a hernia?’ He said, ‘Well, you see that lump down there.’ He pointed to a lump down in the groin area. He said, ‘That’s a hernia and we could not have you flying with a hernia.’ So I said, I said, ‘How the hell am I to get into the Air Force? I want to get in, get in there in the early days.’ And so the chap said to me there, he said, ‘Well, the best thing you could do is when you get back to camp you go to the RAP.’ That’s the Regimental Aid Post, ‘Bend yourself over, clutch your groin and tell them you’re in awful pain.’ So I did a bit of good acting. I did that and they whipped me straight in to the hospital. Ipswich. At Ipswich.
JH: Ipswich. Yeah.
AB: The place there. And they operated on me and fixed me up. And when I came out of hospital I was sent down to a convalescent hospital down in Brisbane. And then once I got myself fit fit again I went down to the Air Force people again in Brisbane and I said, ‘Here I am. I haven’t got a hernia anymore.’ So they inspected me. He said, ‘Right,’ he says, ‘We’ll drag you out of the Army.’ So I went out of the Army on the 24th of November ’42 and I went to the Air Force on the 25th of November ’42. I was happy as a larry then.
JH: I bet you were.
AB: I was happy to get into the Air Force and we trained at, at Bradfield Park. That’s where I went to.
JH: Yes.
AB: We were posted to Bradfield Park. We had to do a rookie’s course, you know doing marching around the parade ground and rifle drill, you know with shoulder arms and all this sort of business. Slow arms you know. Blokes roaring out at us. Of course, we were being an ex-soldier we didn’t like this at all you know. Pretty grim. Anyway, we had to put up with it and eventually we were posted to Bradfield Park. We were there, we were already there. We were transferred across to the aircrew section and we were straightaway did our exams there. Once we passed those we then went to, they sent us to Canada and we went to a town in Canada called Edmonton which was number 2 AOS. Air Observer’s School. We, we did our training there and we, when we passed out I was fortunate enough along with four other chaps to be given a commission off course and I became a pilot officer after finishing that course. Then we went. They sent us across to England.
JH: Yes.
AB: And then again there was more training. Sextant training at an AFU, Advanced Flying Unit at Wigtown.
JH: Wigtown in Scotland.
AB: In Scotland.
JH: Yeah.
AB: That was a funny old place because we didn’t understand the people in the town and they didn’t understand us.
JH: Yeah. So, Alan when, when did you arrive in in Scotland? This would be I’m guessing the end of —
AB: Let me think.
JH: During early ’43.
AB: Yeah. It was, it was in [pause] No. ’43. No, I was still training in Canada then.
JH: Okay.
AB: Til, til we got, we got to England early ’44.
JH: Early ’44.
AB: It would be January ’44.
JH: Yeah. Yeah. And you had to run the gauntlet of the U-boats.
AB: Oh yeah.
JH: From Canada.
AB: Yeah. Yeah.
JH: To Scotland. Yeah.
AB: Yeah. They were, you know luckily we were, got through okay.
JH: Yes.
AB: By the time we got to Southampton it was a great sigh of relief that we were still around and they sent us up to, over to Brighton where we stayed for a short while. We were given our vouchers to go to, up to London to get measured up for our officer’s uniforms. And then we got posted to AFU at Wigtown in Scotland.
JH: Yes.
AB: After that we came down and went to our Operational Training Unit at Lichfield and that is where we crewed up.
JH: Yes. I’m always interested in, on how the crewing up happened.
AB: It was very surprising. We were, the whole of the intake with all these trainees and we had to go down to to a big hangar. We went in there and there were all these blokes in there. All these fellas getting around. Sergeants and pilot officers and et cetera and other blokes you know. Flight lieutenants. And we were then, we were told we had to crew up and that was a bit of a sort of sort of a thing. How are we going to do that? You know. So anyhow, a fellow came out. A pilot came across to me. Saw me standing there and he said, ‘My name’s Howard Gavin.’ He said, ‘How would you like to be my navigator?’ I looked him over and I said, ‘I certainly would.’ It turned out that he had already done his first tour of operations in the Middle East on on an Australian squadron, you know. Flying Wellingtons. And I imagined we were going to train on Wellingtons I thought well, this is a good idea. I’ll say yes. So then we went around and he went up looking for his bomb aimer and then at each bloke you know. That’s how we crewed up. It was fine.
JH: So, tell me were you looking for the badge they wore?
AB: Oh yes. The pilot. We were looking for —
JH: Yeah.
AB: We were looking to see you know if you were a navigator or whether you were —
JH: Yeah.
AB: A wireless air gunner.
JH: Yes.
AB: Or a tail gunner. A gunner.
JH: Okay. So how long did this, this process take? This crewing up.
AB: Oh, about an hour.
JH: Okay. I had the impression it kind of lasted for half a day [laughs]
AB: Oh, it didn’t take that long.
JH: Okay. Yeah.
AB: Well, my, no.
JH: Yeah.
AB: It might have happened like that for some people.
JH: Yes. Yeah.
AB: We were just a bit, a bit lucky.
JH: Yeah. So once you’d crewed up, you got your crew you then left the hangar.
AB: That’s right.
JH: To go and get a cup of coffee or something.
AB: We went.
JH: And get to know each other. Yeah.
AB: Have afternoon tea.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And you went to the, went to the mess hall of course and had a beer.
JH: Yes.
AB: And the, for our bomb aimer he couldn’t come with us because we were where the officers were and he was, he was a sergeant. So he went, he went off to the sergeant’s mess.
JH: Yes.
AB: So it was a bit, you know. A bit cruel.
JH: Yes. So, then you, then you, so you had your crew and then you were waiting to see where you were going to be posted. To which squadron.
AB: No, not then. That would be at at that place at the OTU.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And you trained there and you did your training.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And then you, in Wellingtons. Then when you finished that training course you went to the Heavy Conversion Unit.
JH: Yeah.
AB: At Winthorpe. That’s where I had all the problem with the with the aircraft. One of our final trips under the instruction of an English flying instructor.
JH: Tell me what happened.
AB: And that’s where, well we went across, this was in 24th of September, forty⸻, ’44. We were doing our, we did many trips night flying, daylight flying in the, in the Stirling and we’d been over to the coast of Holland and we came, this was actually night time.
JH: In a Stirling.
AB: In a Stirling. And we had to fly this course and eventually we, as we came back towards base in England which was at, at Winthorpe.
JH: Winthorpe.
AB: The engine started to catch on fire. So they feathered one and then another one would go out.
JH: This was over the North Sea still.
AB: Over the North Sea. Yeah.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And we were proceeding along there and then the next one went. So we had one engine and the skipper, the instructor, he was a flight lieutenant he said, ‘We’re going to have to ditch.’ Well, we knew what ditching meant. It wasn’t too pleasant because the chances were pretty slim of you surviving. The North Sea’s pretty cold and you had to make sure you got out and your lifeboat pumped up. You know. They pumped them up.
JH: If you were going to ditch was the wireless operator able to give their position or were they not allowed to give your position if you were going to ditch?
AB: Well, I’d already told the skipper.
JH: Yeah.
AB: That where we were when he —
JH: Yeah.
AB: Gave the instruction and I said to him, ‘We’re not that far away from the coast of England.’
JH: Yes.
AB: ‘And I think we’ll be able to get there, be able to land, turn around and aim the plane out towards the sea.’
JH: Yes.
AB: And we were able to do it ourselves. I looked at where we were at the time. I took a fix and we were on the Gee box and you could get a very accurate fix.
JH: Yeah. Because you wouldn’t want to —
AB: He did.
JH: Want to land on a beach would you? Yeah.
AB: He took notice of what I said.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And we, he took it back over the coast. We made the coast of England. Went for a little while, a few minutes and then turned around a hundred and eighty degrees and gave the order to bale out.
JH: What height were you then?
AB: Two thousand feet.
JH: Yeah.
AB: That was where we had trouble deciding how to get out of the hatch [laughs] both the bomb aimer and myself and eventually I talked the bomb aimer into going first. Which he did do and he was unable to tumble out because of the hatch way and he went out feet first, dropped down and went facing, facing the front of the aircraft and the slipstream got him and smashed his head into the hatchway.
JH: He recovered enough to pull his rip cord.
AB: Yeah. Yeah.
JH: Yeah.
AB: He did do.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And then I decided because he went forward and split the front of his head open.
JH: Yeah. He went out feet first.
AB: He went out feet first.
JH: Yeah.
AB: So I decided I’m not going to get my head smashed like that when I bale. I’ll face the back of the plane to drop out.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Feet first. And of course, the slipstream got me as well and knocked me out in the back of the head. The back of my head was split open and I was unconscious until I heard a voice telling me to open the rip, pull the rip cord. The D ring. The D ring. Pull the D ring which I did do and I had the parachute opened up and I had two swings and I got laid down beautifully right into a potato patch.
JH: How high do you think you were when you, when you jumped out?
AB: About a thousand feet.
JH: Yeah, and but this voice you heard. Tell me about that.
AB: It’s, I heard this voice telling me to [pause] and later on I was, I was on leave down in Okehampton at a couple’s place, an elderly couple and she was a Medium. And we decided to be entertained by joining in the using you know the glass for the table.
JH: A séance. Yeah.
AB: A, yeah.
JH: Yeah.
AB: They were playing around with that glass on the table which was incredible. You could feel the electricity current there. It was a very strange feeling. Powerful it was. And we were sending messages and then we sent a message to ask my grandfather whether he was around. And eventually we had, a couple of days later we had a séance where she went into a trance and when she went into the trance she changed her position. She she spread her legs like that, put her hands on her knees like that and that’s how my grandfather always sat and I asked him to speak. I wanted to talk to him.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And he told me that he was with me a short while ago when I got out of the aircraft. Now, they didn’t know that. They had no knowledge of anything of that nature of what happened.
JH: Yeah. Was she speaking in his voice?
AB: She changed her voice. She changed her voice into a different tone tone altogether. Yeah.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Yeah, she she sort of changed her voice into a man’s voice.
JH: Yes. Yeah. So it, yeah so it was his voice you heard.
AB: Yeah. Yeah. It was amazing. It was absolutely amazing.
JH: Yeah.
AB: That was incredible.
JH: I bet you’ve thought about that a lot.
AB: I have.
JH: Yeah.
AB: I did. I’ve told a lot of people about it too.
JH: Yes.
AB: Whether it, whether they think I’m stupid or not I don’t know.
JH: Yeah.
AB: But I, I was I was impressed by it.
JH: I know my father he, he really believed in that. That kind of thing.
AB: Yeah.
JH: Wow. So let’s, let’s wind forward Alan. Tell me about your first operation. What was that like?
AB: The first operation. Yes. Well, we, when we finally finished with our Lancaster Finishing School we got posted to 617 Squadron.
JH: A famous squadron.
AB: That’s the one. Yeah. We were very lucky. We were the only ones posted there.
JH: Yes.
AB: And we managed to do very well in our flying. We all got high marks as I said so they sent us to this.
JH: The elite.
AB: Yeah. Sent us to this this squadron and at the time Willie Tait, JB Tait, they used to call him Willie. He was the CO.
JH: Yeah.
AB: A very famous man.
JH: Yes. Of course.
AB: He had four DSOs, two DFCs and a mention in despatches. That was his first award in, and that was when he was in a Fairey Battle. Who would want to be in one of those? Our first operation was very early in in November ’44.
JH: ’44. Yes. Got that.
AB: And it was to the, bomb the Urft Dam. The Urft, U R F T I think it was.
JH: Oh.
AB: U R F T. Urft.
JH: Yeah. Where was that located?
AB: That’s in Germany.
JH: Yeah.
AB: We were, when we got there it was ten tenths cloud. We couldn’t see the target. These, these were daylights and of course we couldn’t see the target. We weren’t allowed to drop our bomb. We had a Tallboy on board, the twelve thousand pound Tallboy and we had to bring that back to base.
JH: So you didn’t have a bouncing type bomb.
AB: No, it was a Tallboy.
JH: Yeah. Okay.
AB: A Tallboy was a terrific machine. It, it used to spin around and had tail fins on it. It would turn around and keep straight and keep keep at an angle you know when it left the aircraft and go, it was a concrete piercing bomb. It would go through the concrete and then explode as it got through. It was a brilliant bomb designed by Barnes Wallis.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And so then we went back and did the Urft Dam again. Again it was ten tenths cloud. So we weren’t too happy because we hadn’t had to drop that bomb. Had to bring it back again.
JH: So you —
AB: And no.
JH: Could you still log it as an operation even though —
AB: Oh yes. Yes.
JH: Yes. It did count. Yeah.
AB: It counted.
JH: Yeah. Yeah.
AB: Each time you took off and made the trip it would be counted. Yeah.
JH: And let me ask how many aircraft in that operation?
AB: We had about twenty two.
JH: Twenty two. Yeah. Any support?
AB: No.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Just on our own.
JH: Yeah.
AB: We never had any support.
JH: Yeah.
AB: 617 was, sometimes you’d fly with 9 Squadron.
JH: Yeah.
AB: That would have made a bigger target but a few times they went with a bit, we went after the Tirpitz. 9 going with 617 up there.
JH: Did they link up with the Pathfinders on that sort of raid?
AB: We never had Pathfinders.
JH: Yeah.
AB: We were we were our own Pathfinders.
JH: Yeah.
AB: We didn’t need, didn’t have them.
JH: Yeah.
AB: A Pathfinder.
JH: So did you go back a third time?
AB: No.
JH: Yeah.
AB: They decided that they wouldn’t waste our time.
JH: Okay. What about your next operation?
AB: Oh dear.
JH: Can you remember that?
AB: No. Oh.
JH: That would have been a bombing. Another bombing run.
AB: Yeah. Where yes ah that’s right. We went to Ijmuiden.
JH: Oh.
AB: In Holland.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Ijmuiden. And we, we attacked E-boat pens and submarine pens there.
JH: God. Successful?
AB: Yes. Very.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Yeah. Oh, the bombs were good.
JH: Yeah.
AB: They went through the concrete supports.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And blew up inside you know.
JH: Yeah.
AB: But then, then we went to another one in Holland the same sort of thing. Poortershaven.
JH: Poortershaven.
JH: Poortershaven.
AB: In Holland. Yeah.
AB: Another one.
JH: Another, another port. Yeah.
AB: The same sort of thing.
JH: Yeah.
AB: E-boat pens and submarine pens. Later on, many years later it was in the ‘90s I got a letter from an historian who was at, he was at Poortershaven and he he told us you know in the letter he said there had been intelligence that told them to get the Dutch out of out of the way and warned them. Get the Dutch out of the way as they were going to come over and bomb.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Yeah. And this bloke said, and he said, ‘We commend you. Not one Dutchman got killed.’
JH: That’s amazing.
AB: Yeah. Yeah.
JH: Yeah. That’s incredible attacking those pens because they were real fortresses weren’t they?
AB: Oh yeah. Yeah. They were.
JH: Yeah.
AB: We went up to Bergen as well. Before we went to Bergen they, a group of commandos, Englishmen, red beret blokes came out to our squadron and they were, they trained with us. We were going to drop them. Drop them in the fjord and they had these fabled boats and then they were supposed to be going ashore and attacking the heavy water plants. You know the heavy water plants they had built outside Bergen?
JH: Yes.
AB: The Germans had that.
JH: Yes.
AB: But they decided it was just too risky. They didn’t go ahead with that but we went up and bombed the E-boat submarine pens up there as well. The Germans had them up there as well.
JH: Was this daylight or at night time?
AB: No, we we always left at night time.
JH: Yes.
AB: To get there in the daytime.
JH: Okay.
AB: Because we had to visually sight our target.
JH: Well, you were flying up the fjords I guess towards the target.
AB: But, we, we went up to Lossiemouth to refuel up there.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And then we went off to, flew out to Bergen. We flew just above the deck low flying to get under the radar.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And we then when we got up near Bergen we made height and dropped our bombs on the E-boat —
JH: Yeah.
AB: And submarine pens up there.
JH: By then it was morning. You could see.
AB: Oh yeah.
JH: Yeah. Yeah.
AB: Yeah.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Yeah. You always, you were trying to get to your target in daylight.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Yeah, because you had to sight your target and take your photographs.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And if you, if you, if you didn’t drop your bombs where you should do you when you, it meant that when you the next day or when you got back you’d be up doing practice bombing in the Wash.
JH: Yeah. Good incentive.
AB: Hmmn?
JH: Good incentive to be on target.
AB: Yeah, oh yes.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Good. They were very [pause] and we we we did another one which was quite interesting.
JH: Yes.
AB: Berchtesgaden.
JH: I know that place. I’ve been there.
AB: Been there. Yeah. I know, I’ve been there too. I’ve been there on the ground as well. The, that was on ANZAC Day ’45 and our target was the the big shaft. The air shaft.
JH: Yes. Where the lift is going up.
AB: There wasn’t any lift then. That’s where they put it. And we would put our bomb down that shaft. Well, we flew around that for about twenty five minutes and could not find the shaft. And later on, years later when I went to Berchtesgaden.
JH: Yeah.
AB: I walked up beyond the, out to go up in the lift.
JH: You go up in the lift.
AB: Yeah.
JH: And then you can walk.
AB: And then I walked —
JH: Yeah.
AB: Up the hill a bit. Up the mountain.
JH: Yes.
AB: Looked back on where it was all snowy. All snow. And I said no wonder we couldn’t see it because they had, they had camouflage nets and a cover over the top of the shaft. That’s why we couldn’t find it. So we had to bring our bomb back to England again.
JH: Yeah.
AB: On that occasion.
JH: Yes.
AB: That was the last operation that that was done by 617 in Europe.
JH: That was the last. I believe that was the last Bomber Command operation in the second world war. I’m not too quite sure but that may be so. I read that somewhere.
AB: We led, we led, 617 Squadron led a big main force group. Main force. And about four hundred planes came after us. We had the honour of being the first there to⸻
JH: To Berchtesgaden. Yeah.
AB: Different crews had different targets and they were all targeting where these Nazis had their, a resource they used to go down on.
JH: Yeah.
AB: To spend leave in. Yeah. And then main force followed after we we got there and dropped a few more bombs.
JH: Yeah.
AB: On Berchtesgaden. It’s a beautiful town. But later on when I went and saw it.
JH: Yes.
AB: In 1980 it was, you wouldn’t have known it had been, it had been bombed at all.
JH: Yes.
AB: That was happening all around you. I went back to different places where we, where the place had been bombed heavily and they’d reconstructed it so good.
JH: Yes.
AB: Amazing. They did did a remarkable job of reconstructing.
JH: I was there maybe four years ago and I noticed there was absolutely no Nazi insignia anywhere. Even when they were carved in stone. It’s all been removed.
AB: it’s been removed.
JH: Yes.
AB: Yeah.
JH: Yeah. Okay. Well, last operation. So what happened then? You stayed on in the UK.
AB: What they were doing then the Australian, the RAAF people over there decided they would send a squadron out to Okinawa to bomb Japan. So myself and a couple of other members of our crew volunteered to go, to go out to to Okinawa and the squadron was 467 Squadron and that was, that was located in in Metheringham. And that was an enormous contrast to our location in Woodhall Spa while we were on 617 Squadron. The officer’s mess was the magnificent Petwood Hotel.
JH: I’ve been there. The Guy Gibson Bar.
AB: Yeah. That’s right.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Yeah, that was, we were upstairs. Our quarters were upstairs and they had a not not far from the bar was a billiard room. Is that still there?
JH: I’m not quite sure.
AB: They had a billiard room and my wireless operator and myself we were we didn’t drink but we played snooker in there in our spare time between when we went flying.
JH: Yes.
AB: The rest of the crew would get on at the grog but we, being teetotallers we we played snooker all the time and we got quite good at it actually.
JH: And you cleaned them up.
AB: You see when we got there we got good. Yeah. I took to it quite well.
JH: What a lovely place that is.
AB: It’s a beautiful spot isn’t it?
JH: Yeah.
AB: Yeah. They were I’ve got pictures of it on the computer.
JH: I’d like to go back there.
AB: When I went back to England in ’91 and did did a tour of England. Hired a car and drove all over England and Scotland and Wales. I did not go back to Woodhall Spa. I don’t know why I didn’t go back to show Marie, my wife.
JH: You didn’t want to go back or —
AB: I just for some reason or other it didn’t occur to me.
JH: Yeah.
AB: To go back and have a look at it. I can remember it quite clearly. I remember where we slept and who was in the room with us. We had, there were six of us. Six of us in a very big big room. It had a big balcony and there was a couple of blokes slept out on the balcony. It had a roof over it of course. And there were my pilot and myself and there were four English. Well, English men there.
JH: So, so in your crew in 617 how many Australians in the crew?
AB: Six.
JH: Six. One English.
AB: And one English.
JH: Yeah.
AB: An English flight engineer.
JH: Now, Alan so did you get to Japan in the end?
AB: Ah now.
JH: Yes, sorry.
AB: We we we again trained heavily.
JH: Yeah.
AB: On 467 Squadron and incidentally we were quartered in Nissen huts which was quite a contrast [laughs] to the Petwood Hotel. We didn’t have any, didn’t have any priority about good quarters whether you were an officer or not. We were and we had our final embarkation leave and they dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima. Then they dropped the next one on Nagasaki. We were, then we were stood down and that was, that’s what was in, that was in —
JH: That was a shock for you.
AB: That was in August I think.
JH: Just as well you weren’t over in that area.
AB: Well, in a way yes because probably might not have been here to tell the tale. It was, it was quite in a way we were a little bit sad but then also overjoyed.
JH: Yes.
AB: You know, we were sort of really keen to go and do something to those Japs.
JH: Yeah.
AB: We’d been reading and hearing a lot about what the Japs were doing.
JH: But that meant starting about going home.
AB: Yeah. Well, we left. We came home on the Athlone Castle and we got home around about February ’46. During the war when I came out of the Middle East I got married. I married my sweetheart and, and while I was away in Canada she gave birth to a son. [unclear] it was quite a, I didn’t realise at the time that when I got married that I was going to have a son.
JH: Yes.
AB: While the war was still on.
JH: When you were in [pause] when you were in Canada.
AB: I was in Canada. Yeah.
JH: Yes.
AB: Edmonton. That was on the 3rd of November ’43.
JH: So you hadn’t seen much of him at all.
AB: Hadn’t seen him at all until he was, until February ’46.
JH: Yes.
AB: He didn’t know who I was.
JH: Gosh. Yeah.
AB: I was a stranger. Took a while to get for him to know who I was, you know.
JH: Yes.
AB: Took a long long while.
JH: Yes.
AB: It was a real bad period really.
JH: Yeah.
AB: I I used to get quite annoyed about it, you know.
JH: Yes.
AB: He’d go to his grandfather all the time.
JH: Yes. Yeah.
AB: He wouldn’t come near me.
JH: Yes.
AB: Yeah. But anyhow after the war the war ended we ended up having another three children. Another son in 1948. Then a daughter in ’49.
JH: Yes.
AB: And then another daughter in ’52. So we had —
JH: Four in the family.
AB: Four in the family.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Two boys and two girls and one of the boys is, both boys, the eldest boy when he was about nineteen he joined the the Army.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And he did twenty one years in the Army. He was in Malaya, Borneo and Vietnam and he was, the youngest boy when he turned, I don’t know what it was he had his name pulled out the barrel to go to Vietnam. They had a —
JH: Yes, I know.
AB: Birthday barrel.
JH: Yes.
AB: Yeah. He went to Vietnam and unfortunately he he passed away when he was sixty three. He had cancer.
JH: Oh.
AB: Caused by his term in Vietnam. The Agent Orange. The Yanks dropped all this.
JH: Yes, I know.
AB: You know, Agent Orange and he he eventually he got this cancer and passed away in 2011. And the other boy and he was actually in the infantry. A young fella.
JH: Yes.
AB: The eldest boy had been in there for twenty one years. He was in the signals. So quite a bit of difference. He was mainly around the base area.
JH: Yes. So he wasn’t exposed.
AB: He wasn’t exposed.
JH: To the Agent Orange. Yeah.
AB: He wasn’t exposed as much as his brother was.
JH: Yeah. Well, that’s amazing that this you’ve got three generations in your family in the Army.
AB: Yes. Dad. Dad in both wars. The two boys. My sisters. Both sisters in the Women’s Army. Both my sisters.
JH: The Buxton’s have done their bit. More than done their bit, Alan.
AB: We’ve had a lot of experience in the Services. Yeah.
JH: You must be very proud of them all. Yeah.
AB: Very much so.
JH: Yeah. Yes. And you were telling me before eventually you found your feet career wise and joined Shell.
AB: That’s right and I worked there.
JH: And was that in Sydney or did you have to go —
AB: No. Sydney.
JH: To Melbourne.
AB: I was in the head, in the Sydney office. And then when they decided to build, or enlarge the refinery that John Fell owned in the Clyde. Clyde Refinery —
JH: Yes.
AB: I was transferred out to Clyde Refinery in ‘19⸻ I moved up. I was living at Narrabeen at the time.
JH: Yes.
AB: And I moved up to Eastwick and I got a transfer, a company transfer which was good.
JH: Were you with Shell all your, all your working career.
AB: No, before, before the war I was with Australian [Soaps] for a living.
JH: Yes. Okay.
AB: We can still see it’s Alexandria.
JH: Alexandria. Yes. You see, I know Alexandria well. Yeah.
AB: Well, I was with them until [laughs] and I was I was actually had the honour of being the first bloke to join the Services and when, when I was going out the gate the managing director Mr Harrison, a lovely old Scotsman he came out to me and he handed me an envelope. He said and wished me good luck and when I opened that envelope up he’d given me a ten pound note. I mean I was only getting one pound seventeen and sixpence a week and I ended up with a ten pound note. I thought I was made [laughs] Ten pound.
AB: It would have seemed like the lottery. Yeah.
JH: At the time because when, you know.
AB: Yeah.
JH: My pay was six pence a week.
AB: What a gesture.
JH: Hmmn?
AB: What a gesture.
JH: Oh, I thought it was wonderful. Yeah.
AB: Yeah. Have you still got the ten pound note?
JH: No.
AB: Okay [laughs]
JH: I spent that.
AB: Of course.
JH: I needed it. I didn’t have any —
JH: Yeah.
AB: Any money. Any money much in those days.
JH: Yeah. Well, Alan I can’t get over this interview. It’s really amazing. It’s quite a story. I need to have a lie down, a cup of tea and digest it all.
AB: Do you want a cup of tea now?
JH: Oh, now that sounds a great idea. I didn’t say that [laughs]
AB: Oh, I’ll see what I can.
JH: But yeah, I wouldn’t mind a cup.
AB: I’ll see if I can —
JH: So shall we, shall we wind it up and —
AB: Okay. Go on.
JH: So, I really would like to thank you for, for doing the interview. So, this is for the IBCC.
AB: Yeah.
JH: Veterans Interview Project and I think that that so that interview your your family can, can go in and listen to it or if anyone visits Lincolnshire they can go and listen to it.
AB: Oh right.
JH: The Bomber Command Centre there is quite something. I was there at the opening. And so Alan thanks very much.
AB: I get the information. You know these lads that found the plane, Stuart [McRory] and his brother Bruce on the work that has been done to restoring the Lancaster Just Jane.
JH: Yes.
AB: You know.
JH: Yes. Yeah.
JH: I’ve seen it.
AB: You’ve seen it.
JH: Yeah.
AB: They’re doing that restoration. It’s going on. It’s been going for years with this restoration.
JH: Yeah. Yeah.
AB: They use it. Normally it’s only used for taxi runs.
JH: Yes.
AB: Stuart, Stuart and his brother Bruce they’ve done the taxi ride. They charge fifty pounds to do the taxi ride up and down the runway.
JH: Fantastic. Yeah.
AB: Yeah. And —
JH: Well, on that note Alan I’m going to wind up here. Thanks very much.
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 Alan George Buxton
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
John Horsburgh
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-08-23
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:06:36 Audio Recording
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABuxtonAG220823
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943-11-03
1944-01
1944-09-24
1944-11
1945-04-25
1946-02
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Norway
Queensland
Alberta--Edmonton
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
Germany--Berchtesgaden
Norway--Bergen
Queensland--Brisbane
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Australian Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Description
An account of the resource
Alan was born in Parramatta, Sydney, in Australia. After going to the Middle East with the army, he returned to Australia, when Japan entered the war, and transferred to the RAF in November 1942.
Alan was posted to Bradfield Park for training and then to No. 2 Air Observers’ School in Edmonton, Canada. He was given a commission as a pilot officer and went to the Advanced Flying Unit at RAF Wigtown in Scotland, followed by the Operational Training Unit at RAF Lichfield. Alan describes the process of crewing up. He trained on Wellingtons and then went to the Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Winthorpe. Alan describes the night they had to parachute from their Stirling after a trip to the coast of Holland.
After Lancaster Finishing School, Alan was posted to 617 Squadron where the Commanding Officer was J B “Willie” Tait. His first operation in November 1944 was to bomb the Urft Dam in Germany but it was too cloudy to release the 12,000 lb Tallboy bomb on board. A second attempt was also unsuccessful. Alan then refers to two operations in the Netherlands where U-boat pens were bombed. Bergen was another operation. On 25 April 1945, their target was Berchtesgaden, their last operation leading a Main Force Group of 400 aircraft.
Alan then went to 467 Squadron at RAF Metheringham. After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they were no longer required to go to Okanawa. Alan returned to Australia in February 1946 and joined Shell company in Sidney.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
467 Squadron
617 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Observers School
aircrew
bale out
bombing
crewing up
Gee
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster Finishing School
love and romance
mess
military living conditions
navigator
observer
Operational Training Unit
RAF Lichfield
RAF Metheringham
RAF Wigtown
RAF Winthorpe
RAF Woodhall Spa
Stirling
submarine
superstition
Tallboy
training
Wellington
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2215/39609/PBurnsDR2206.2.jpg
c6da9dba0490cb19c50b40d6b4787ba1
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2215/39609/AUsherJ220428.1.mp3
526e84be7d98d934079057dd408f9ccd
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
Burns, Bob
Denis Robert Burns
D R Burns
Description
An account of the resource
23 items. Collection concerns Warrant Officer Bob Burns (1525609 RAFVR) he flew operations as a navigator with 106 Squadron and became a prisoner of war when his aircraft, Lancaster ND853 was shot down 27 April 1944. Collection includes an oral history interview with John Usher about Bob Burns, photographs, documents, various memoirs of his last operation and captivity. It also contains recordings of his saxophone being played.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Usher and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-04-07
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Burns, DR
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BW: This is Brian Wright interviewing John Usher at his home in Morecambe Lancashire. It’s quarter past two in the afternoon on Thursday the 28th of April 2022. We’re here to talk about Bob Burns’ story. Bob was a flight sergeant in the RAF but if you could just start off John, please with giving us a little summary of how you knew Bob. What your relation was to him.
JU: Well, I’m John Usher. My, my wife, my wife’s sister was married to Bob so in all the years we went on holidays a lot together most years. So we had quite a close relationship with Bob and his family.
BW: And he had quite a story to tell from his experiences in the RAF in the Second World War. Can you elaborate for us a little bit more about Bob’s background before we go on to his RAF service. Do you know when and where he was born? What his family life was like?
JU: Well, as I understand Bob was born in Sheffield. Went to Sheffield, well a grammar school in Sheffield and he then worked. He had one or two jobs before volunteering for the RAF. One was in a factory in Sheffield. But following that he had, he played, he was a semi-professional musician and played in a local dance band so I think that was his, one of his main sources of income before joining the RAF.
BW: Do you know what instrument he played?
JU: He played the saxophone and the clarinet.
BW: And you say he would go into the dance halls with the band and earn some money playing.
JU: He had, he had a regular, a regular job with one of the local dance bands.
BW: And did he ever talk about why he was interested in joining the RAF? What prompted him to join at all?
JU: Well, I think like a lot of young people in those days he was very keen to do his bit so to speak so he had always been keen on flying. I think he’d, whilst he hadn’t been a cadet he’d been to various shows and anything to do with flying. He seemed to have got himself involved.
BW: So he’d had an interest through his youth and childhood perhaps in aeroplanes and flying and that.
JU: He was very much so. Yes.
BW: And he went in to training at Padgate in Warrington when he joined the RAF. Did, did he tell you much about the training he went through at all?
JU: Not a lot. I just know that part of his training, when he first enlisted the initial aircrew tests were done at Lord’s I think it was. Lord’s Cricket Ground which, he was very interested in cricket. Probably, being a Yorkshireman you have to be interested in cricket I would think. But I don’t know if from a playing point of view. Mainly from a watching point of view but he was, he knew a lot about cricket. Whatever he was interested in he always tended to know a lot about it. He was one of those sort of people.
BW: Do you know roughly when he joined up? Would it be ’41? ‘42?
JU: It was [pause] just bear with me [pause] 1940 he joined up.
BW: So that’s —
JU: I don’t know what date in ’40.
BW: So that’s quite early on.
JU: That, well I say it was called deferred service. He applied to join up and then he had to sit back and wait before they called. They called you. In fact, he didn’t start doing any real training until 1942.
BW: Okay.
JU: And then it was basic training. Once he’d been accepted for aircrew he did training out in Canada 1942 to ‘43 which a lot of aircrew did of course because you weren’t likely to be shot down by anyone in Canada I don’t think [laughs] and it was a good environment for training.
BW: When did he join the squadron because he went on —
JU: He came back home for flying training. The full squadron training in 1943. And then he was posted then to Number 5 Group in ’44 which was where his story really begins.
BW: And he was by this stage a flight sergeant navigator wasn’t he? And —
JU: He was. By [pause] yes.
BW: And he joined 106 Squadron based at Metheringham.
JU: That’s right.
BW: Did he mention any of the guys that he trained with or how he’d come to crew up at all with with the guys he started flying with?
JU: Yes. There was. As aircrews did in those days they seemed to appear, go to a station to select. The aircrew selected their own crews basically. The pilot would see someone he liked and, or who he probably met in the mess over one or two days and liked him so they would get together. They would talk about if there was anyone available that could be selected. And through that process they finished up, finished up with between them selecting their bomb aimer, two, a mid-upper and a rear gunner and the radio operator. Two of the crew were Canadians. I’m not sure of their names now.
BW: One was Harold Brad.
JU: Harold Brad. That’s right.
BW: Another, Bill Stevens.
JU: Bill. That’s right. The crew themselves had quite mixed experiences. One of them, I’m not sure which one had been a gardener on a royal estate somewhere. I don’t know which one it was. Which was quite interesting.
BW: Well, from what I can see Percy Dore was the wireless operator and he was from Sandringham so it’s quite possible.
JU: That’s right. I think he was the one who’d been —
BW: He was the royal gardener.
JU: Who’d been the gardener.
BW: Did Bob ever mention what it had been like in the early days before his fateful flight? Did he mention any of the early raids that he’d been on or —
JU: Not a lot. Not a lot about them because before he was shot down he’d been on, the invasion had started in France by that I think and there were more or less a lot of the early raids were in France but he did have one or two over Germany.
BW: Did he ever say much about those? Did he say how they were?
JU: They were pretty well, the raid before he was shot down over Schweinfurt he’d been on a raid to [pause] I’ll look at my notes. No. The ones I’d done I think [pause] Right. On the 25th of April which was just the day before I think he went to Schweinfurt he’d just returned from a ten hour bombing raid over Munich. But to get there he’d gone over, over via Italy and across. That’s why it was such a long raid. And on the return back they were running out of fuel and had to land at an airfield on the south coast having been down the south as well because of fuel and then fly back. Came back to Metheringham the following morning to be told they were on another raid that following evening. The same evening. So there was very little time between the two raids.
BW: And 106 Squadron had been Guy Gibson’s former squadron before he left to form the Dambusters. Did Bob mention any influences within the squadron from Gibson’s time? Were any guys still around from that time?
JU: Well, he’d made that very very strict was Gibson and so it was. Bob was very surprised how strict it was because Bomber Command was said to be a little bit relaxed because of the of the job they were doing. So they were given a bit more free time but Bob found he was in the first oh forty eight hours he was in the air for nearly thirty of it and when they weren’t flying they were still doing dinghy drill, parachute training, all sorts of flying drills on the ground. And he reckons it was because of these drills that later in life it probably saved his life. His quick reaction to certain, to the circumstances which he met with later.
BW: So you mentioned that his fateful trip was to Schweinfurt on the 26th and 27th of April which is almost exactly seventy four years to the day I think. Is that right? Eighty four. Have I got that right? No. We’re very nearly on the, on the anniversary of that particular raid in ’44.
JU: Yes. Yeah.
BW: Seventy eight. My maths is there now. Seventy eight years. The raid itself was quite disastrous in a way for the, for the squadron. There were a number of losses but just talk us through what Bob’s experiences were. What Bob’s experiences of that was. What he’d, what he’d told you. What, what happened?
JU: Well, I got the impression from Bob that it was one of those raids that I wouldn’t say it went wrong but there were problems from the start in that they were taken on a route which supposed, was supposed to be clear which it was clear of ack ack and that sort of thing but it took them, took them very close to German fighter squadrons on the ground. So they had one or two interceptions en route with with fighters. Not that they were hit or anything but that was one aspect. The main aspect I think was that the forecast winds were entirely the opposite direction to the ones that they came across so that they were delayed. They were about an hour late arriving at Schweinfurt which apart from the obvious problems like that are that the, it was quite a large bomber raid. There was quite a lot of bombers on this raid from other squadrons and you were all supposed to be going obviously going on different heights and if you’re not spot on time you run the risk of being bombed from above by other ones who were on time releasing their bombs. So I think that that was one of the main problems. Bob referred to it that when he finally arrived it was like flying in to hell. There was fires down below. There was smoke being released now we know by the Germans as a camouflage. There were flares going off to identify the particular bombing targets and so all in all as I say he referred it to as like flying into hell. It was one of those experiences that it’s hard to imagine in our everyday civilian life now.
BW: And this was only his seventh operation wasn’t it?
JU: It was, yes.
BW: Not long into his tour and you mentioned the night fighter units that they, or the airfields that they flew past to get to the target and it was a night fighter that shot them down wasn’t it?
JU: It was. Yes.
BW: Did he talk about what had happened in the aircraft at that, at that point?
JU: Well, when they, when they released their bombs over Schweinfurt almost instantly after that they were, they were hit by a night fighter and at the same time the rear gunner shouted out, ‘I’ve got the bastard. He’s going down.’ So he, it was a tit for tat or appeared to be a tit for tat situation. So following, following that almost immediately after that because they were hit the pilot told them to, the aircrew all to bale out because they were going down. So they started to make their way to the various exits. Either the front ones for the front crew or the rear door. Now, Bob had always been told by this navigator training although the RAF recommended that the navigator goes out of the front he was advised if he can get over the main spar which is an obstacle in itself. Bob said you had to be a trained athlete to get over the main spar if you got over the main spar. He got over there and he was making his way towards the rear door when the plane went into a spin and the centrifugal force pinned virtually all the aircrew to the floor and I think Bob had resigned himself to, you know how could he possibly get out of this so that’s the end of it when there was sudden enormous an explosion and he was blown up through the roof of the aircraft. The aircraft must have just cut in half. So he went up through the roof which knocked him unconscious but this was he reckoned at three thousand feet and but the cold night air soon brought him around and this is where all the training which you referred to earlier kicked into practice because he was he automatically pushed the ‘chute away from him, pulled the rip cord and he drifted gently down in to a ploughed field in in Germany.
BW: And was he alright on landing? Did he injure himself at all or —
JU: Well, he’d gone out through the roof of the aircraft which he knew had given him a nasty bang on his, on his thigh. Inside his thigh. But when he felt around when he’d landed in the airfield he didn’t feel any pain but he could feel there was a lot of blood in his thigh. And so what happened really at that stage was he, you’re trained or told you must bury your parachute. Bury it or hide it. Hide the parachute so that the enemy don’t know that you have landed et cetera and were still alive. So that’s what he proceeded to do. He buried his parachute and then took stock of himself. He did make one comment about it. He said he looked up into the air just to see the last of the bombers heading back to England and then he just said out quite loudly, he said, ‘Lucky buggers. They’re going home now and I’m stuck in this bloody ploughed field in Germany.’ So that was his reaction on landing in the ploughed field.
BW: Did he know at that stage whether anybody else had got out from the aircraft?
JU: No. He’d no idea. He hadn’t a clue at that stage. In fact, he didn’t find out until the end. Until the end when he came back. When he was released from a prisoner of war camp what had happened.
BW: So Bob’s on his own in the, in this field in Germany in the middle of the night and he’s bleeding from his leg. What happens then?
JU: Well, as I say, he said he didn’t, he didn’t feel any pain and he could hear this, this clanking of engine, railway engines in the nearby well, marshalling yard as we know them as and they were always taught in the, back home that if there was any, if if you want to escape try and get away by train if at all possible. So Bob thought well obviously he is here now to follow the noise and make for this marshalling yard and see if I can find a train and get away from the, from the site as soon as possible. So that was his objectives but it didn’t quite turn out how the training back in England had said it would because he was making his way across the marshalling yard amongst the trains when suddenly all the lights went on and he found himself looking at about I don’t know ten or a dozen rifles pointed at him because in England apparently railway stations weren’t guarded. Certainly not. Whereas in Germany every station and depending on how, what priority it was, depending on how many guards there were so this must have been quite an important one because as I say he was looking down at ten rifles pointing at him.
BW: So he’s then obviously captured. Did he go straight to a camp or was he taken to hospital? What? What happened?
JU: Well, once the guards realised that it had turned out that his wound was obviously bleeding a lot so it was becoming more obvious and a bit of pain so the guards took him to a local hospital which was run by nuns oddly enough. And they more or less patched him up and he spent a couple of days while they sorted him out and following that he was taken to a military hospital and I don’t think, well it was while he was there or en route that he was then taken for interrogation by the German [pause] the German Army or security people which apparently one member was part of the SSS but asking the usual questions about what were the squadron numbers and one thing and another.
BW: So he was interrogated.
JU: He was.
BW: First.
JU: He was for quite a few days. In fact, he was, he was in a solitary cell for quite a few days during his interrogation.
BW: Did he say what that sort of experience was like?
JU: Well, not very good because he did, he didn’t shave and there was very little facility to wash so at the end of his spell there he was quite dishevelled and in fact some of the photographs we have of him tend to show him as being not the Bob Burns that we know anyway.
BW: So, from solitary what happened to him then? Was he presumably he was taken then to his first imprisonment camp.
JU: No. He went, after the solitary he went to a major hospital. He was, he was there for a few months really while his leg recovered and when it had recovered sufficiently for him to go to, then to a prisoner of war camp they made the necessary arrangements and he was to go to Stalag Luft 7. The Luft being ones which were run by the German Air Force really where he seemed apparently to get better treatment than the general prisoner of war camps. So he was, along with three other prisoners, three of them were taken by two guards but en route they had to change. Change stations. I’m not sure of the place but where they changed stations was that particular town had been bombed the night before. So the local people on hearing that there was some RAF prisoners of war in the local station being transported to a prisoner of war camp all as you can understand headed for the station to register what they thought about that at all. Now, it was quite an interesting situation here because the station was probably about oh fifty, a hundred feet up in the air from the road and at the back of the station it was quite open dropping down to the road below. Now while they stood on the station with the three guards a lot of the local people suddenly arrived on the scene knowing they were there and they were shuffling along the platform obviously with the objective of trying to force the prisoners of war off, off the platform down on to the road below. And the guards seemed to have no control over this so one of the guards quite quick thinking in a way suddenly handed his rifle to Bob because Bob was about six foot four I think so he was quite a towering bloke. And the German propaganda was that the British flyers were horrendous people really. They would, you know murder their own mothers if they had to. So they had quite a reputation so as soon as Bob was handed the rifle the crowd shuffling down the platform they all, they disappeared. So they could carry on with their journey. Also the guards, what reason you think , why would the guard possibly hand the rifle to Bob. One of the theories was that if, it was obviously frowned upon if guards didn’t deliver their prisoners intact and if not one of the punishments was that they would be sent to the front line. They were sent to fight the Russians which none of the German guards wanted to find themselves in that situation. So you can understand why he did this. And then of course Bob handed him back the rifle and things carried on as normal.
BW: So literally a lucky escape for him at that point.
JU: Yeah.
BW: And his first camp I think was at Stalag Luft 7 as you say in Silesia. Did he talk much about what life was like in the camp there? Did he describe any conditions there?
JU: The conditions as I gather were, were quite good. There was a lot of sport. A lot of games played a lot of cards, things like that. But Bob hadn’t been there long when one day there was this delivery. These crates arrived from the Red Cross and amongst them was quite a lot of musical instruments. They were all very good quality musical instruments and going through them Bob found that there was a saxophone and clarinet which were his speciality if you like. They were the instruments he used to play back home in the, in the brass bands. So Bob acquired the saxophone and the clarinet and then there was no sheet music or anything of course but he then trawled around to find out how, what musicians were also in the camp and he set up his own orchestra if you like. I think it was about a ten or twelve piece orchestra I understand. In fact, there is a photograph that will show that. So a lot of Bob’s time was spent writing music for the different musical instruments to play in the dance band. And I don’t think really they hadn’t been there many weeks I don’t think before they had to break camp so to speak.
BW: The, the only other member of the crew to survive was Jack Pickstone. Did Bob come across him in the same camp or did he find out what happened to him?
JU: He never ever saw Pickstone again. Never came across him even when he, when he was demobbed back into civvy street. Pickstone did survive and, but he never ever came across him even though he tried to find him he never, he never, never met up with him again. And the rest of the crew of course were all killed. There was only Bob and Pickstone. He didn’t and he didn’t discover that until he was demobbed. What had, what had happened.
BW: I believe Stalag Luft 7 was quite a large camp for American airmen too. Did Bob mention any interaction with the Americans at the time? Did he —
JU: No. No. The only [pause] not that I can —
BW: They kept to themselves.
JU: No. I don’t think he mentioned anything about the Americans. The only thing he mentioned about the Americans was when, from the camp near Berlin when they were finally released by the Russians. The Russians handed them over to the Americans. That was his main contact with the Americans.
BW: So just going back to his time in Stalag Luft 7 he’s got to that stage where he’s I suppose settled to life in the camp and he’s writing and performing music for and with the band and then at the turn of 1945 the camps as you say were broken in that the Germans decided to move prisoners west and north in his case to retreat from the Russians.
JU: Yes. Yeah.
BW: And this involved a, quite an arduous journey for him. Did, did Bob talk much about that and what did you learn about that?
JU: Oh, it was an horrendous journey because on a particular date they were all paraded at about 5 o’clock in the morning because the Russians were advancing and quite quickly. It was decided they would move the prisoners from Stalag Luft 7 to a camp near, near to Berlin which was oh something like a hundred and, about a hundred and fifty miles. Something like that. And because there was no transport all the transport was required to move German troops to the Russian Front it was decided they would have to walk. At this as I understand was the most horrendous journey imaginable. The day they set off was the middle of the hardest winter they’d had on record. So it was hard frost, snowing and around fifteen hundred prisoners were moved out of camp. This the first one started moving out about I think three or 4 o’clock in the morning and the last ones didn’t leave the camp until mid-afternoon so the line of prisoners moving out must have been well, amazing when you think of the time period taken to move them with enough rations for about two weeks which the Germans had on trolleys or trucks, what have you. But the prisoners were just marching with what they could carry and in Bob’s case having acquired this saxophone and clarinet which he said was very good quality, he said better quality then the one he had at home he said he decided he was going to keep this whatever happened. So he carried this through this horrendous weather across [unclear] into Germany. By the time they got to, well they used to sleep in barns or whatever the Germans could acquire during the, during the journey. I suppose they would have an advanced party go ahead and select a farm or buildings where they could accommodate this crowd. One or two prisoners would disappear on the route but they were mainly people like the Pole, ex-Polish aircrew who had been prisoners of war because they were travelling through their own countryside so to speak. So they could disappear and they could find people to talk to and hide them or look after them. That sort of thing. So one interesting anecdote about the journey was there is always a humorous aspect to these sort of things I expect was that on this particular time every now and again they would stop for one or two nights at these farms whatever they’d taken over. They had taken over, and this was on a two night stay and the German commander paraded them the following morning to say that the previous night the farmer reported that half of his chickens had disappeared from the hen house and if anyone was caught they would be shot. No messing. Just couldn’t do things like that. So that was said. So they then stayed on as I say another night and the commander paraded them again the following morning to say that the farmer now reported all of his chickens had disappeared [laughs] and the hen house where they were housed obviously being used for fuel on the fires. So nothing more was said and on they went. But the journey because of the weather conditions and very little food apparently was horrendous and by the time they progressed more and more they had dysentery, frostbite and by the time they moved on things were getting worse and worse. And finally they ground to a halt after roughly about a hundred miles and still about forty or fifty miles from their destination and were then taken the rest. Those who were still able to stand while they were taken by train to Luckenwalde I think it was. A prisoner of war camp near to the edge of Berlin. Any of the prisoners that obviously a lot were taken ill en route and it would appear that they were dropped off at local hospitals or somewhere where they could be taken to a local hospital if their injuries were considered serious enough. But very few, I haven’t seen a record of how many died but how many did die en route but they were in a terrible condition by the time they arrived at the other end. But Bob was still hanging on to this saxophone and clarinet which apparently had dropped from his fingers many times on the route because of the cold and but good for him he finally brought his saxophone and clarinet back home to the UK and he used it again. Well for the rest of his, for the rest of his life really.
BW: And it’s testament to his resilience really because going back to his experience in the Lancaster. He’d been shot down and the aircraft had exploded. He ended up with a bad wound to his right leg.
JU: He did.
BW: And then although he’s recovered it was still giving him pain wasn’t it so he —
JU: Well, right ‘til, right ‘til he died he still had problems with his leg.
BW: And he’d undertaken that walk while still in effect in recovery.
JU: Oh yes. It hadn’t healed. It still reared a bit. Reared a little bit occasionally, I think.
BW: So when they get to Luckenwalde what happened then? This was the camp you mentioned near Berlin. How long were they there do you think?
JU: I think two or three weeks because it was, the conditions there as Bob said, he said, they weren’t much better than on the walk. There was very, there was hardly any food and it was grossly overcrowded because there were prisoners coming in from all over the place. So the Russians finally arrived when they were in there and well the German guards had disappeared overnight and the Russians moved in. Took over. And then the Russians finally handed them over to the Americans and arrangements were made to send them back home to the UK.
BW: That seems fairly straightforward. Did [pause] did Bob have any issues returning to this country. Was it a quite a straightforward process when he got with the Americans?
JU: I think the process of getting out of Germany as far as I know seemed to be reasonably straightforward. It was a case of getting on planes and getting them to where the different prisoners of war were wanting to head for.
BW: So he would have arrived back in England in probably mid-1945 then. Presumably just as the war is about to end or possibly had ended. What happened to him from there? Did he talk about, you mentioned that he had gone on to any [pause] work again in the UK.
JU: I think he was sent on two, they were all sent on two weeks leave and then I don’t think they did a lot of serious, well serious flying after that. At the end of the 1946 Bob and I had been promoted to warrant officer and at the end of 1946 he returned home. He returned back to his musical career. But it wasn’t what he wanted to do long term I don’t think so he then retrained as a civil engineer. A job that he continued to do until his final retirement in South Devon along with his wife Ann and two sons Peter and Tim. He carried on playing his treasured saxophone. Not so much the clarinet but certainly the saxophone with all its memories. He used to play for families and friends and on special occasions really until he died aged ninety-five in 2015. But —
BW: But he'd been back to Germany hadn’t he? And he’d had a couple of meetings at least with people involved with his, with his own personal experience because he I think he met the pilot who shot him down didn’t he?
JU: No, not the pilot. What happened in 1990 I think it was Bob returned to the site at Arnstein. Arnstein, where he’d been shot down and he met with the residents who had been children at the time of his crash so could tell him a bit about it. And strangely enough he received a very warm welcome and was treated to official lunches by the mayors of Arnstein and Schweinfurt which he found quite embarrassing. Now when the Lancaster crashed the local pastor arranged for the dead crew to be buried in the local church which was very brave of the pastor because Hitler’s decree oh Hitler said that Allied airmen should not have a Christian burial and yet we have photographs showing the flowers and everything on his grave in the German town that he’d just been bombing so to speak. After the war the graves, the crew were reburied in a military cemetery at Durnbach. Now on this same visit to meet with the families who’d been bombed so to speak he met with a German researcher who was seeking information about a German Junkers or a JU88 night fighter pilot called Hauptman Walter Bernschein who had been shot down over Arnhem, over Arnstein sorry during the raid and he thought was probably the pilot who had shot down Bob’s Lancaster. Now, this pilot of course was also killed so it’s supposition but he seems reasonably certain from the fighter pilots that were shot down that he was the one that had shot down Bob’s Lancaster. But that’s meeting with the family who had been witness to the event.
BW: Yeah. As you say the other crew members were all, were all killed with the exception of Jack Pickstone. Did Bob ever get to meet any of the family related to any of the other crew members? Did he get to know them at all or was it just those return trips that he’d made to Germany where he’d met the people from the —
JU: No, he met with [pause] he met up with Bishop the pilot quite a lot. And later, later on when they started to form squadron reunions and what have you but I think Bishop was the only one that I can recall. He might have met up with others that I don’t know about but he was a big man in going to the squadron reunions and he went on to one big reunion in Canada in one year and it was very well organised. Almost a national reunion of for such a lot of aircrew were trained in Canada of course weren’t they?
BW: And he was, he was surprised to have been met by the mayors of this, of the towns that he’d actually been attacking or well Arnstein where he’d crashed but also —
JU: Yeah.
BW: Schweinfurt. That must have been quite a surprise to be received favourably let’s say in those terms.
JU: Yeah. I think we’ve got to appreciate that a lot of people and also Germans had lost their families hadn’t they on bombing raids over England and I think that to one extent is probably why the Luftwaffe set up their own prisoner of war camps. As a, to reciprocate what was going on with their crew hopefully over in England. So I think, I don’t know I can only assume that the feeling wasn’t so much against the aircrew as by then as against Hitler and the, and the Nazis so there probably was a little a little bit of sympathy towards the Allies.
BW: I think that’s, that’s all the questions I have. You’ve summarised Bob’s career and experiences very well. I don’t think there are any other questions unless there’s anything else that you may have recalled during the [pause] our discussion that you wanted to add about.
JU: No.
BW: No.
JU: I think that’s pretty well, well covered it. No. I think in Bob’s case it was almost out of the frying pan into the fire wasn’t it? Having been shot down he then after a few months he finds he has to do a hundred mile walk in the middle of the worst winter on record which —
BW: I guess, I guess he must have been pleased that although it took a number of years for the Bomber Command servicemen to be remembered did he mention anything about the Memorial or the plans to commemorate Bomber Command veterans?
JU: Well, I think, I think he was like most Bomber Command. He felt that Churchill and Bomber Harris, more Bomber Harris I think seemed to abandon them in a way. I think what I find is disappointing is that I’ve been to the Memorial in London to Bomber Command which shows the crew and the inscription of Churchill’s speech which fair enough speaks about how the fighter pilots saved the country but nobody goes on to the rest of the speech which says that it was the bomber crew who enabled us to win the war. And that, that bit of it seems to have disappeared from a lot of with all that goes on now I know people talk about you know how especially with the Ukraine business and the civilians being killed and the number that we killed when we were bombing German cities but I think you’ll agree that was a completely different situation. But no I think like the bomber crews I think they were disappointed in what recognition that they got after the war and I think it’s still there that really. I think it’s still felt whatever. You know there was no war medal for people and that sort of thing as I understand it.
BW: Yeah. It was just a clasp.
JU: Just a Memorial was put up.
BW: Great. Thank you very much.
JU: Okay.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with John Usher about Bob Burns
Creator
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Brian Wright
Date
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2022-04-28
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Format
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00:48:26 Audio Recording
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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AUsherJ220428, PBurnsDR1806
Coverage
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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Second generation
Description
An account of the resource
Bob Burns trained as a navigator and was posted to 106 Squadron at RAF Metheringham. His aircraft came under attack from a night fighter and the centrifugal force pinned the crew down and making escape impossible.
Suddenly the aircraft broke in to two and Bob was blown out of the aircraft. He managed to activate his parachute and land but had injured his leg. He was caught and became a prisoner of war.
He narrowly avoided losing his life to an angry crowd of locals at a train station as the German guard gave him his rifle and he was able to hold the crowd at bay, until they were able to catch the train. He gave the rifle back to the guard.
Bob was a musician and played the saxophone and clarinet. One day the Red Cross delivered a selection of musical instruments to Stalag Luft 7 where he was being held, and amongst the instruments there was a saxophone and clarinet, both of which he played. He wrote arrangements for the camp bands and orchestra playing both instruments. He took part in the long march taking his saxophone with him.
After the war he worked as a civil engineer and continued to play his saxophone.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Luckenwalde
Germany--Schweinfurt
Poland--Tychowo
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
106 Squadron
bale out
bombing
entertainment
Ju 88
Lancaster
lynching
perception of bombing war
prisoner of war
RAF Metheringham
Red Cross
shot down
Stalag Luft 7
the long march
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1124/11616/ASimmsL160807.2.mp3
d03ad22f9baad15ec57a6d9bef25f216
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Simms, Lester
L Simms
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Lester Simms (1924 - 2017, 1812002 Royal Air Force). He was posted to 106 Squadron at RAF Metheringham as ground personnel before he was posted to Rhodesia to be trained as a pilot.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-07
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Simms, L
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GC: This is an interview being conducted on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive, my name is Gemma Clapton, the interviewee today is Lester Simms of 106 Squadron.
LS: Yes.
GC: Er, the interview is being conducted at [place omitted], on the 7th August 2012, 2016. I’d like to say thank you very much for letting me be here today.
LS: Right.
GC: Erm, can you just tell me a bit about life before the war and how you joined up, please?
LS: Er yes, I really had quite an interesting life, before it even started. I had the most terrible childhood, with two parents that should never have had, erm, should never have had children [laughs]. You want this too?
GC: Yes.
LS: With parents who should never have children. My mother was from a Welsh mining family, erm, Neath in Glamorgan, in South Wales, and my father was from a very rich family. He’d had public school education, it was a clash of different — I saw two different sides of life entirely before I even went into the RAF, erm, and one day, my father, who was a born Australian, just disappeared. I didn’t know what had happened, do you know when you’re young, you don’t know what’s going on, you take everything for granted as though this is what happens to everybody, but suddenly, my father disappeared. As it turned out, he upped left my, his wife, my mother and two, two boys and went back to Australia. Now what that period was, I have no idea. All I know is that some years later, we were living at a place called Nailsea in Bristol with my mother, my mother was a nurse, erm, I won’t tell you the bad side of my mother because I don’t think it should go down in writing.
GC: Okay
LS: But she was actually a nurse and an absolutely dreadful mother, erm, my brother and I were left alone at seven, eight or nine years old, I can’t remember how long it was, and we went to the ordinary common or garden, what were in those days known as elementary or council schools and I even can remember being ashamed of my mother, because I didn’t want the other children to see her, that’s how my young life was. But, suddenly [emphasis] one day, it must have been some years after my father had left home and gone back to Australia where he was born, erm, there was a knock on the door where we lived near Bristol, and my father just grabbed me by the collar, chucked me in his car and I never saw my mother again [pause]. In fact, I think ‘til I came out of the Air Force, I never saw my mother at all, so what happened, er, to my brother, I never did know. So what happened then was, I spent — my father was very itinerant, he moved all over the UK doing what he wanted to do, which was buying and selling motor cars, worked for some different companies, but I, I was all over, all over Britain, not going to school properly, with my father. He had a sister who was actually a multi-millionaire. One day I was told that I was going to a different school, so I was taken to Harrods, in London, completely kitted out, with things that I’d never seen in my life before, you know, a big trunk, and everything that, and sent to a public school, erm, Imperial Service College Windsor, which was the most dramatic thing for anybody to experience. There were, in fact, I remember, there were two Russian princes there, the Romanovs, what happened to them, I don’t know but, of course, the Romanovs all got, erm, killed in the revolution, but it was a school for, it was a school for ex-Army officers’ sons, Imperial Service College Windsor, which was next door to Eton in fact. Although it wasn’t Eton, but it was a very, if you like to say, a posh school, erm, this was very difficult for me to, to accept. You can imagine going to a school where they come, people would come from very rich stock and I’ve come from seeing what I saw and what I knew. My father was always, he was always, a sort of influence, influential, affluent sort of person, he was somebody who everybody would look up to, because he, he was six foot four tall, he’d been to two public schools, erm, he was also a, a cricketer, county cricketer and [pause] It was so, I suppose really and truly, I forgot my mother and took my father’s side in it. But anyway, to get on from there, I left that school in 19, in 19, I think I left the school, the war had already started, in 1939, and we moved with my father to a little cottage at Weybridge in Surrey, where funnily enough, Weybridge was, was the home of, erm, one of the aircraft manufacturing companies, and I was, actually on September 3rd 1939, I was at this cottage in Weybridge which was, maybe as the crow flies, or as the ‘plane would fly, maybe just a few minutes from Brooklands, which was an aircraft factory. On that day, it later turned out, I saw this German aircraft come down over my house and heard the machine gun going, and apparently, the aircraft workers, it was lunchtime, were all outside eating their lunches in the sunshine and many of them were shot up by this. It was a Heinkel bomber. I didn’t know anything about this, all I can remember was that aircraft with crosses on it, which I’d seen come right over my house, then heard the machine gun fire that’s why I never knew anything else, but that was at Weybridge. And then, from there onwards, I’d actually gone to school, so I’ve done it a little bit backwards, but sorry. Somehow then my, my brother appeared, I don’t know how, why or from where, I don’t know, my brother appeared on the scene and, erm, we were together for a while. Some of which, what happened, I can’t remember the, what happened in the interim years, to be honest with you, all I know is that when I was exactly 17 years old it went through anyway. I was with my father, I never saw my mother still, erm, it went through those years, and when I was 17 years old, which you can work out from the times there [laughs]
GC: Um
LS: I was born in 24, 17 — 1941, I volunteered for, I’d decided I wanted to be a pilot, my ambition, because I’d already got myself a motorcycle and I loved riding motorbikes, which I did up to about ten years ago actually, erm, I decided that I wanted to be a pilot. So I went along to the Air Force volunteer place, volunteered and said I wanted to be a pilot, they said alright, and in, I suppose [coughs], sorry, I suppose at the beginning of 1942, it must have been at the beginning of 1942, erm, they sent me to a place called Cardington in Bedfordshire, which was an RAF, it was the main barrage balloon centre of London, of Britain. It was, erm, I’ve forgotten, it was a Royal Air Force place, it had a certain flight num —squadron number, which I’ve forgotten. But, the RAF were using it as an aircrew recruiting centre for potential, potential pupils for aircrew. That was the pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, so I volunteered as a pilot. Everybody volunteers to be a pilot but it’s not so easy to get a pilot grading, you’ve got to, and I know for one thing, you’ll read in all the annals of the Air Force that, er, being a little bit of a snob, going to a public school, going to a university, got you into the flying in the Air Force and they wanted this kind of person in there so they could go and get killed pretty quickly. As it turned out, of course. But you did need to be, and the reason that, I know one of the reasons that I was selected for pilot training was as a result of the interview and the medicals I had. I was sent away, erm, oh sorry I missed a bit at the end of all this, ‘cause I’m going back a long time, so I don’t think I’m doing too badly at the moment [laughs]
GC: [laughs]
LS: [pause] I passed everything, I passed the medical, I passed the IQ test, everything else that you need, and you have to be something a little bit special to be a pilot, you have to have something about you to be a pilot, so, and I passed everything. So suddenly I was called in for the final interview there, at Cardington, I was called into the office, and a group of bigwigs was sat there with the scrambled eggs on the hat, as we use to call it. The top RAF officers had the gold on top of their hat, and they said, ‘Right, well, you have passed, you have passed your flying training, but unfortunately, you’re not old enough. We didn’t properly look at your age and you volunteered when you were 17, and you can’t come in until you’re 17 and a half’, so I had to wait six months. So I said, ‘Oh, what shall I do in six months?’ So they said, ‘Well, we’d recommend that in view of your interest in aircraft and flying, that you find an aircraft factory and see if you can work there’. Well, by strange coincidence, sorry, I’ll just turn this off now, by strange coincidence, I lived at Kingston on Thames. Now Kingston on Thames was the headquarters of Hawker Aircraft Company Limited, and I went along there seeking a job, explained to them who I was, and what I was doing there, and I was waiting to go for my pilot training, and I’d been recommended by the RAF to find someone like them. They welcomed me with open arms and they put me in the experimental department of Hawker Aircraft, and leading that was, leading that department, was a man called Sydney Camm. He’s one of the most famous aircraft designers in Britain, he designed the Hurricane, the Typhoon. I never actually saw Sydney Camm, but his office was there and I just worked under one of the top engineers there, and we did all sorts of interesting things, erm, mostly I was just a ‘gimme’, ‘gimme this’ or ‘gimme that’, and wherever I went [laughs] his name was Wrigglesworth, that’s all I remember about him, but one [bird clock chimes], very interesting thing, which was [bird clock chimes], which was very much, sorry, it’s a bird clock. [bird clock chimes]
GC: [laughs]
LS: [laughs] one very interesting thing that we did [bird clock chimes], which maybe you would like to perhaps record down there [bird clock chimes], is that we fitted the first, we fitted the first, we had the job to fit a Hawker Hurricane, with the first fifty millimetre canons underneath there. I went to a place called Manston, which is another famous bomber command, fighter command station. We went to Manston to do this [background noises], oh he’s ok [laughs], that’s alright, I’ll just have a drink. [pouring drink]
GC: Carry on.
LS: So, erm, I’m not quite sure now where I got to.
GC: The guns.
LS: As I say we, one of the, the most interesting job was — ‘cause the German fighters always had better armament than the British fighters though the Hurricane and the Spitfire only had relatively simple guns, and indeed Lancaster bombers only had the same guns that we used in rifles by the army, 303s. But they needed, they needed canons, which was what the German fighters had, so that we could, so that our aircraft could blow the German aircraft out of the war with canons rather than just bullets and so that’s why we fitted, what happened after that, I don’t know. All I know is underneath this Hurricane, we fitted two fifty millimetre cannons and that was the most important job I did there. But eventually in 1940, in September 1942, funny how I can remember the date, I was called to the Euston House in London and attested there, signed in as aircrew, and that started my career in the Air Force. Now, if you read any books on what happened to aircrew, initially, we all, even, there were grades of aircrew, there was PNBs, that was pilot, navigator, bomb aimer. They were the senior grades, but afterwards came wireless operators, erm, flight engineers, air gunners, all those people who were on a Lancaster, well there was seven on a crew on a Lancaster. So you had wireless operator, flight engineers and two air gunners and navigator. Sorry, the navigators were part of us, PNB was pilot, navigator, bomb aimer, but the rest were all the other grades that we used in flying, that’s, as I say flight engineers, bomb, flight engineers, erm, radio operators and air gunners. Anyway, so [pause] I was attested then we went, all of us, all aircrew, went to St Johns Wood in London, which was Lords cricket ground, and they’d taken over all around Lords cricket ground, some people were actually stationed on Lords cricket ground and were using the facilities there to introduce people, initially introduce people to the Royal Air Force. But I know we stayed in a block of modern flats and we went through absolute hell there. I mean, we were treated more like prisoners of war than people who had volunteered to give our lives, by stupid ex-ground staff training people, to train us in, in all the other things like marching and all stupid things [bell rings]
GS: [chuckles]
LS: Last thing you need when you’re up in the air.
GS: Yes.
LS: Right, so from there, this is the more interesting part now, I think we are probably coming to, sorry about this, you’ve got to get used to these darn things [background noises], otherwise I’d completely lose my breath through no oxygen [laughs]
GS: It’s alright.
LS: Then you, all you’ve got is a gasp [laughs]
GS: [Laughs]
Unknown: [Laughs]
LS: [Laughs] right, so then we spent, I’m not sure how long, probably a month or something, there being introduced. Right, so then at my time, you’ve then come to 1943. Now at that time, right up to that time, within a short time after that, probably within eighteen months, you’d be trained as a pilot and you’d be actual operational duties against the enemy, flying, flying to Germany and such. Wherever, wherever it was taken. I had actually, I missed a little bit, towards the middle of my flying training, they asked, ‘Did you want to be a fighter pilot or a bomber pilot?’ Well I never wanted aerobatics, I was never very, I didn’t, wasn’t enthusiastic about turning upside down and flying at ten thousand feet into a spin and then recovering. You wouldn’t have to do that with a heavy aircraft. So I choose bombers and that’s why, I went the second part of my flying course was SFTS, which was the senior flying training school. I would have gone on a different aircraft in a different, erm, different squadron if I’d chosen to be fighter command. That was even, in the same place in Rhodesia where I went to. Oh, course we haven’t got to that yet have we.
GC: [laughter]
LS: [laughs] Okay.
GC: He’s just trying to keep me on my toes.
Unknown: Yes [laughs]
LS: You could put this on the comedy hour!
Everyone: [Laughter]
LS: Okay so right. So then they had to know what to do with us, because the courses for pilots, for pilots was probably just, flying alone, was probably a year. But, as I said, the South Africa, Canada, Australia and Rhodesia were the main ones and we all had to wait for a course to be available. So what they did with us then, which happened to most aircrew, there was a place called Heaton Park in Manchester, which is very famous, erm, in the Manchester, it’s still going strong, Heaton Park. But we were sent to Heaton Park in Manchester, it was an aircrew holding centre, so they held us there until we could have a, a position to train as pilots or whatever else we were going to train as. But they couldn’t hold too many of us there, so when, I presume, when it became saturation point, they sent us, groups of us out to operational stations or to training then, you are then away from training aircraft, you’re then fully, fully occupied with operational aircraft. Which as far as I was concerned, would be Stirlings, Halifax, Lancasters or, erm, or those three. So, I dunno, we were there a few weeks at Heaton Park before they sent me out to my first posting, which was a temporary posting, prior to going to my flying training. And that was 106 Squadron, that was the Lancaster squadron at Metheringham. Now 106 Squadron was very closely associated, because it was next door, with 617 Squadron, which everybody knows is the Dambusters [pause], and 9 Squadron, which was another famous RAF, at Bardney they were. And from there, to a certain extent, I learnt what it was all about, although it should have frightened me, but it didn’t. Erm, I saw aircraft coming back being shot up, what I never knew was, I mean, we could lose three or four aircraft, it was only, it was only about twenty-two aircraft on each of these squadrons, but suddenly one or two would be missing. We were never told that, and incidentally neither were the other aircrew members of other aircraft, that their pals had been missed, they would have just missed them in the mess, maybe in the billets where they were staying, not, not see them anymore.
GC: Um
LS: Then people used to come in and take all their belongings and then they were sent back, all their belongings were sent back to their parents. So, I did learn a lot there. But what I did was, being a bit of a pub lad, erm, I palled up with one of the crews. Now they all went down to the local pub at Martin, which was right next to the airfield at Metheringham where I was, 106 Squadron at Metheringham we’re talking about now, I think you, that’s where I am, but next door was a village called Martin. Now in the normal way the aircraft, the airfield would have been called, it was taken over from farmland, the aircraft would have been called Martin, but it didn’t have a railway station, but Metheringham, which is the next [unclear] village, so they called it RAF Metheringham, but it wasn’t Metheringham at all, of course. But anyway, we come to the pub at Martin, which was The Royal Oak at Martin. I palled up with one of the crews, who’s, it’s a funny thing really, of course, I knew what they were doing, but I never realised that they were out to kill themselves, you know. ‘Cause I would meet up with Vic, his picture’s there actually [background noise], his picture’s there and I finally, because of doing what I was doing with 106 Squadron reunion and with the, erm, dealing with parental enquiries, anything that came to me, which is what I’ve been doing, I managed to find out he came from Barnsley, and I managed to find out actually, I found out his family. One of the, one of the daughters of his aunt sent me that picture and the aunt, who’s now well into her nineties, when she found out, ‘cause they didn’t know what happened. All they got was a letter to say that he’d been killed, erm, and where he was buried. He was buried actually in Durnbach, in a cemetery in Germany, we’ll come to that in a minute. But anyway, erm, I palled up with this crew and the interesting thing was, of course, when you were sent, I think there were six of us, sent out to this, this aircrew, just to get rid of us. Remember Heaton Park wanted us out of the way so they dispatched us, the first place was there, and then, of course, when you arrived there, you never had a job to do. You got no trade, you were waiting to be trained as pilots so they just gave us odd jobs, and some of the jobs were quite interesting. Of course, based at RAF Metheringham, was a system called FIDO, fog intensive dispersal of, which was, because in the winter, an aircraft couldn’t actually land at some of the airfields because fog would prevent the landings. So they, they created this thing, which was the whole length of the runway, the main runway, was a pipe surrounded, big iron, I don’t know exactly what it was, but big iron things like that and when an aircraft was coming in to land, it was petrol, they used ordinary petroleum, ordinary petroleum and they’d set it alight and the fog would go, because this massive, apparently it burned so many gallons of petrol in such a short time, but it would allow the aircraft to see the runway and land, and I can remember so often, so why I’m telling you this was, they said, ‘Well what are we going to do with you people?’ The commanding officer, so they gave us jobs, and one of them was to repair holes in the aircraft, sorry, not in the aircraft, in the runway, erm, and that was an interesting job, all kinds of interesting this time. I was one, the only one of my group ever who could drive, ‘cause I learnt to drive ‘cause my father always had cars and I learnt to drive when I was probably ten or eleven.
GC: [Laughs]
LS: So I could drive, so I was always the driver wherever I was and a driver was needed, I was always the driver. But anyway, so we used to go out to the airfield and we even had a concrete mixer, a mixer so we could fill the holes, we did all that. One or two adventures, I don’t think we need go into stupid things that happened, but, and then one day, this might be of interest ‘cause it’s quite funny, erm, two of us were appointed to paint the inside, which was called distempering in those days, that was the white stuff, it’s called emulsion now, but, but even private houses used, for the ceilings, it was called distemper. And they gave us this distemper and we first had to do the toilet, the men’s toilet and then afterwards we had to do the ceiling in the headquarters. Well the first thing that happened was, I had just finished distempering the men’s toilet, well the most famous, erm, squadron leader at Metheringham was Group Captain McKechnie and I was just finishing off in the men’s toilet, and the group captain walked in for a jimmy riddle, and he looked at me and he said, ‘What’s your name?’ I said, ‘Simms, Sir’, he said, ‘Looks a lot better Simms, well done’. And he sat there having a jimmy riddle and in the middle of his jimmy riddle he turned his head round at me, he said, ‘It smells better too Simms.’
GC: [Laughs]
LS: That was the group captain and he’s quite famous, I mean nobody knows[laughter], so anyway, that was the first, well the second thing that happened, the next day two of us were appointed to paint the ceilings, so we had two stepladders and then a plank going across the top. So, erm, we managed this, but one of the lads was at the other end and I was at this end. What I hadn’t realised was, he was on the other side of the ladder, with the distemper.
GC: [laughs]
LS: So I said, ‘I won’t be a minute’. [laughs] I got down, the ladder went up in the air, the whole bucket of distemper went everywhere [emphasis], we had to clear the whole, sorry, I remember it being absolutely hell. He was covered in whitewash ‘cause he’d gone right down in the middle of it [laughter], so that was the most interesting thing that happened there. But, getting to the more interesting points, I was posted away from there and as far as I knew, Vic was still there. I did on one occasion, I said, ‘Vic’, he was the rear gunner by the way, Vic, the one you’ve seen in the photograph, I said, ‘Vic, could you get me on a trip one day?’ I mean of all the stupid things to do, it shows, shows you the people like me didn’t appreciate what we were going to do in the future. I said, ‘Could you get me on one of these trips?’ He said, ‘I’ll ask the captain’. so I met him in the pub some nights afterwards, he said, ‘Oh’, he said, ‘You’re not allowed to come with us, it’s forbidden’. So, of course, I didn’t go and as it so happens he, I’ve worked it out afterwards, he came back off that trip anyway, but I disappeared, suddenly you were told you’re going somewhere else and I was taken away from there, I think probably after three months at Metheringham. But ingrained into my mind was an attachment, because it was the only real operational station I was sent to while I was waiting to go for my flying training, and 106 Squadron means a great deal to me, and that’s why I’ve run the reunions for the last four years, because the man who did it, died suddenly. His wife phoned me up, she said, ‘He just died in a chair’. And he wasn’t very old and he wasn’t ex-RAF, but his brother was and his nephew was, erm, and this is why I’m doing the job that he was, which he’d done for seven or eight years. But suddenly, he died and I sort of took it over, running the reunion, which I did for four years and also, erm, any enquiries that came in from 106 Squadron. We have a publication, Tom, I wonder if you, um, just this pile on the right, there’s some magazines under there, RAF magazines, just one of those. No, not that one, the printed ones [background noises], are they there? There’s a few of them there, just one of those. Yes, thanks. That’s our 106 Squadron publication, which comes out every three months, and you can see I’m there as the contact there.
GC: Yes. Um.
LS: So this is what I do, what I still do, although I don’t run the reunion side of it anymore. Running reunions is like trying to herd cats [laughter], it’s impossible. It is. Because you tell them when the reunion is and, ‘Oh, I can’t do that date’. Well I can’t change, so you just have to try to get people early enough, and if you do it too early, of course, they forget [laughter]. Anyway our reunions, which are very interesting, were held at the Petwood Hotel, which was the officer’s mess of the Dambusters, as you probably know, a very famous place, so every year, for the last ten years, we’ve had our reunion at the Petwood, which brings back fantastic memories. We’d go there on the Sunday, always at the beginning of July, and we’d stay there ‘til the Thursday morning, but on the Tuesday, Conningsby is where the Lancaster is, and the Lancaster flew over for us every year. The last two years it hasn’t flown because the engines been, one of the engines has been kaput, so we haven’t had it fly over. This time I wasn’t able to go because of this breathing problem which was in July, and so they had a Spitfire, ‘cause there’s Spitfires and Hurricanes based there, what’s left of them, are based there. As well as the operational crew, if the prime minister presses the button and Air Force are needed, that’s where they are, at Conningsby, you probably know that.
GC: Um
LS: But it’s true, they’re all ready to go if anything happens. But anyway, so, erm, the Lancaster is based there, this is where I’ve [unclear], but most people know that anyway. But it’s still, it’s still kaput. But so that’s it really, so I finished, not saying goodbye to Vic, but while I was out doing my flying training and sometime afterwards, out in, when I was out in Rhodesia, I got a letter to say that the crew had been lost over Stuttgart, erm, the only aircraft of our squadron that was lost that night. It was August the twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth, over Stuttgart and I think, pretty certain it was shot down by German fighters. But the only one of ours, there were actually two hundred and fifty aircraft that took part that night but we had only got, we had nineteen, we had eighteen went out and, er, one didn’t come back and that was Vic’s, so I got that letter when I was out in Rhodesia, erm, to say that they’d been lost. Of course, reading a lot of books on Bomber Command, which I have been doing, in fact I think I am reading too many [laughs], I think I’m reading too many, erm, that I’ve found out a lot more about what happened, and, anyway. So, ok, so I will quickly now go back, then I was sent back to Heaton Park without knowing, Vic was still flying when I left, his crew were going, in fact he was killed, actually, I’m not sure when I actually left there, so I must have left there some, I’ve got a feeling it was September, went back to Heaton Park and then from there I went to a Halifax, the same thing again, they’d take us in there, hold us for a few days then send us out to another, just to get rid of us, while we’re waiting. So I went to another, to a Halifax conversion unit, because probably aircrew, when they change aircraft, they have to go to a conversion unit. So the Halifax was the other big bomber and that was one at Selby in Yorkshire. Nothing particularly interesting happened there, I think I was probably there for the same period as I was at Metheringham, one or two months. We were just there, I can’t even remember what we did, then I came back again, into Heaton Park, for the last time, but then was sent out to a flying boat squadron, in north of Scotland, Mill Town, Sunderland base. When we got there, there was six of us again and they said, ‘Right, we want a volunteer’. So I volunteer for anything. So, ‘We want a volunteer’. So they said, ‘Are any of you drivers?’ I said, ‘Yes, I’m a driver’, and they said, ‘Right, we want a volunteer to drive the, to drive the crash, erm, the crash vehicle’. So, well I didn’t realise at the time, of course, what it entailed but so I volunteered to drive this crash vehicle. It was a crash on the airfield or anywhere else in the vicinity, you went out, and tried to help, erm, and that was fine, I can’t remember what else we did, all I know, that I always had this crash thing, the crash vehicle, near me. Fact, we used to take it down the pub at nights [laughter], ‘cause we were on the radio, we used to go down the pub [laughs]. I remember one night, I’m trying to turn round, knocked somebody’s fence down [laughter] in this crash car. You couldn’t see out the back, it was a big thing. But anyway, one night, we’ve been out, we got the message on the radio, there’s been a crash at a place called Lhanbryde in Scotland, and we found it very quickly and they said it was a Wellington and it had crashed, and I saw things there that were absolutely dreadful. Just mangled bodies, and the people had already got there, ambulance people had already got there, erm, and I could see things that I, well, there was a young woman alongside me and I put my arm around her, I said, ‘Are you alright?’ She said, ‘I’m a nurse’, she said [laughs] So, anyway, I saw things there which you would have thought would have put someone like me, there was only two of us on this crash thing by the way, I don’t know what the others were doing, I don’t know I’ve forgotten, but I remember, I couldn’t eat anything for about three or four days after seeing what I saw, what I’d seen, it was pretty dreadful. But anyway, back into Heaton Park and then the next thing, something very interesting happened, really. I was due to go to America, for the flying school in America, I got the most tremendous dose of flu’ and the medical officer, I was due to go to America the next day and he said, ‘You can’t go anywhere, look at you’. I was steaming. He said, ‘Stay here, you can go on the next —’ so I actually went to Rhodesia, which actually was much more easy going than America was. It was much easier for me, for my flying training to go and, I’ve got the flying in my book there, but there’s nothing there that’ll tell you anything. It’s just my log, my hours, there’s no, you know, you’ll come across, you’ve probably already come across, aircrew members that did trips, you see their log books where they flew that night and the results, but I haven’t got any of that, because I didn’t do any operational training. So then, so that’s what actually happened, erm, I went out to Rhodesia, we, I won’t go into that, but there was something like three thousand people killed in flying training accidents, so I had two near squeaks, erm, which I got out of, obviously ‘cause I’m here. But flying things, once the instructor sent me up in an aircraft that had been declared kaput and he’d forgotten to record it. I took off, and the next thing, the screen’s gone black in front of me and I realised I had to get down quickly, but I mean on take-off, that’s the worst time for any aircraft to have a problem, because you just go straight in, but luckily the engine kept going, I went round and landed. And another time it was spinning and it wouldn’t come out of the spin. I had to induce the spin and then recover, but luckily on that particular day, erm, instead of flying at night for practice, what they did, so we didn’t, the instructors, the airfield and everybody didn’t have to acclimatise themselves for night flying, erm, what they did with a twin engine trainer, sorry, a twin seat trainer, you would have a hood over you, so you’d go up in daylight but as far as you were concerned, in the back seat, it was night, so they did our night flying training with the hood. So I had to recover from a spin at night, so I had to put it in the spin, which is quite easy to do that, you stall the engines so the aircraft goes like that, and then you have to, and then it goes around and around. So you do this at ten thousand feet, erm, and the instructor sitting in the front said, ‘Right, now put her in a spin’. So I did and it wouldn’t come out, it would not come out. When you’re in a spin, you put the joy stick right forward and full opposite rudder against, if you’re going to the right, you rudder, I’d done all that, it would not come out of a spin. So I was going, I often wondered, would I jump, but I knew then that I would jump, so I’ve put the night flying hood back, and the main hood back, so then out in the open air and we’re still going round, and all of a sudden, the instructor shouted out, I remember so clearly what he shouted, ‘I’ve got her, I’ve got her!’ he shouted out [laughs], and all of a sudden, he only did what I’d done so how he did it, I’ll never know, maybe he put a bit of engine on or something, but it wasn’t going to recover. So that was the only exciting part really, and when I nearly had it. There were other little things happen, but that happens when you’re training to fly an aircraft anyway. So that was it so, at the end of, that was on single engine, you never would go into a spin with twin engine aircraft, because we probably wouldn’t come out. So you just had to learn, it’s all about controls of the aircraft, that’s why you did all these things under any circumstances, really. So that was the end of my flying training there and that’s when, at the end of, we were due to get our wings, now we come to the end bit there [pause], they called us all, there was a hundred and twenty started on the course, there was sixty of us left, they said, ‘Right well, we don’t need pilots anymore, you’ve got a choice. Sign on for three years with four years on the RAF reserve’. So you go back into civvy life, but you’d be available for call up any time. Well I wanted to come back to the UK, which, in a way, was a shame, because at that posh school that I went to, Imperial Service College Windsor, erm, there was another guy, one of the pupils there was a Rhodesian and when we got to Rhodesia, first thing I did was looked in the telephone book and there was a Watman, one only in the telephone book. It was his parents and they looked after us so well. But he, John’s father, was the president of the Royal Tobacco Company of South Africa and he offered me a job with my own aircraft as a site manager, going all round the airfields, all round South Africa, as a manager. I didn’t, I should have done it, but I didn’t. So I would have had the chance to have stayed out there, but I didn’t, anyway, war went on and maybe I would have had to come back. So I just came back and I was demobilised, I came out of the Air Force then, and then, as I said earlier, which is written in that thing that you’ve got, erm I didn’t know what to do with myself. My father was an officer in the Army, he came out of the Army, he’d got, my father had got no sense of economics, in spite of the wealth of his family, he’d got no sense of economics at all. We often never had anything, not even food sometimes when he was around, ‘cause he gambled all his money away, he was a gambler. But he decided, he’d got dreams about when he came out of the Army, he was going to open a filling station and have at the back, chickens and animals and things, this was his sort of dream. But he’d got no sense of economics whatsoever and, luckily for me, I’ve got a pretty good sense of economics, and I could see things were going wrong. I tried working with him, um, but it didn’t work. So I thought, what the hell can I do with myself now, as I never really had a proper home with him, because it was his home, and that wasn’t a home at all. He had a girlfriend who I hated, but anyway [laughs], so I decided maybe I would go back in the Air Force and see. So I went back in the Air Force, I told you earlier, they didn’t want aircrew anymore, so, they offered me motor transport, so I said, ‘OK, I’ll take it’. So I joined on a short term contract of about two years, I think it was, erm, to go back into the Air Force again, I thought, well, then that gives me time, I was still very young, I was only nineteen I think, time to make my mind up and do things properly again in the UK. But erm, so when I was sent to my first MT division, again they said, ‘We’re looking for volunteers’ [laughs], so I said, ‘What for?’ They said, ‘No’. They said to me, ‘Would you volunteer for something?’ I said, ‘What’s it for?’ He said, ‘Bomb disposal’. So I said, ‘OK’. So I volunteered for bomb disposal, and I had that two years that I was in there, on bomb disposal, because the RAF were responsible for all enemy bombs on RAF territory, erm, all enemy bombs on RAF territory and all Allied bombs, jettisoned bombs, as the bomber’s coming in and it’s got to land, it sometimes would jettison it’s bombs on farmland, so, we were responsible for those, getting those up. And also, if the Germans had dropped bombs on our airfield, we were responsible for, and that’s what I did. And there were one or two adventures there which I don’t think I should bore you with [laughs]. What? Yes? Oh. [laughs]
GC: [Laughs]
LS: Well, erm, funnily enough the most interesting thing that happened at a place called Farnham, erm, yes I think it was called Farnham, place called Warren Wood, which was near Elsingham, I think it’s called, it’s on the road to Norwich, was a huge American Army bomb disposal dump there. The Americans had gone and left all their equipment there. Well, there was a lot of stuff left there, and we had to dispose of all that. The only danger, gosh it was dangerous, digging up bombs, when we got down to a bomb, the local press would come and look at us, down the hole with this bloody great bomb, standing there [laughs], but there was no danger really [laughter]. The danger was, was that the Americans used a bomb called a composition B bomb, which went off without a fuse, erm, and we had to deal with those. And what was done with bomb disposal, you would get the bombs, you would find, when I was based at Waterbeach near Cambridge, erm, we had Lakenheath nearby, which was a big area, so we could take these bombs up to the airfield there and instead of blowing them up, what you did was, you put like a metal saw on the top, which circulated, so you strapped it down and then from a remote control, you drilled a hole in this bomb and if it went off, it just blew the equipment away, erm, but then once the hole is there and the adhesive was inside, we just steamed it out. It was, we were at some very interesting places and it was the one place again where I was very lucky not to be killed, er, because, I’m not too sure this should be written, but amongst the bomb disposal people that was with us, there was about ten of us I think, now again, I could drive, so I was the driver, so I was always flicking around getting the food and stuff, but I also had to do the bomb, I had to do the bomb duties as well. Just because you were the driver meant you had an extra job, you didn’t get extra pay for that, but you had the extra job of being the driver, so I had time to walk around this site, and it was a big, it was a big wooded area. Well one day, I’m walking around, and funnily enough, a dog had befriended us, so I got very pally with this dog and I used to take it for walks. Where it came from, I never did know [laughter], and I was walking this dog one day in a direction which I think I’d never been before, and all of a sudden, I came across this big metal hut, which was called a nissen hut, they were round things, and I opened the door and it was full of stuff in there, all cases and cases of ammunition [pause]. Well now I’m coming to the bit which I shouldn’t tell you about, but we had one of our members, he was a cockney from Walthamstow, and during that time, women couldn’t get nylon, but a lot of the parachutes were made of nylon and we had these cases of these, they were called fragmentation bombs, they were about that size and when they hit the ground they fragmentated, the pieces went all everywhere and killed everybody but they came down slowly on these ‘chutes and they were nylon. So this cockney bloke, he’d learnt how to pull these ‘chutes out and cut them off [laughs], without them going off. So he got me cutting, pulling them out [laughter], and then he went off to London with boxes full of these bloody ‘chutes and sold them and came back with some money [laughter].
GC: [laughs]
LS: Well one day, this is where it happened, when I was walking the dog and I came across this building, I went inside there and there were these big [emphasis] things stacked up in one of the racks at the bottom, well, they were about that length and about that round and hanging out of one was part of a huge parachute. I thought, my God, I’m in here.
GC: [laughs]
LS: So of course, I pulled it out, and as I pulled it out, I heard the fuse go. So I ran like hell [emphasis] outside and the next thing, the bloody thing exploded, and the fire inside was just, all bullets were going off everywhere and we got a crash crew, two, and they were both bloody Irishmen [laughs], they were both Irishmen they were running this thing, and I ran all the way to this crash crew and got them out, and I said ‘Quick, there’s been an explosion’. They wouldn’t go anywhere near it. Well of course, I was the guilty party, so [laughs], so I grabbed the hose off them, went right up to the door with all these bullets, I didn’t feel anything, I didn’t feel fright, and I’m trying to squirt the hose in there, and there’s all these bullets going off. Had it been, what it was, there were two, when you, when the Lancasters went in, but these would have been from American Flying Fortresses, ‘cause it was an American base, you illuminate the target at night, A, if it’s a photograph that you wanted, it was the photo flash bomb that went off instantly, and the cameras were already aligned in the aircraft, so it took a picture either of the target or the damage that you’d done. That was the photo flash bomb, that was a big flash. But the photo flood bomb was on a parachute and that went off, but all it did was shoot the parachute out so that the bomb came down and was taking pictures on the way down. So they actually could take the, still, you know, it would be, sorry [unclear], otherwise my voice goes, might be a good thing [laughter]. So luckily for me, well, these two Irishmen, they still wouldn’t come anywhere near it, they were in the truck and I pulled the lead from the truck, anyway I went back to base, I never did see that spot again. But one day, two very official gentlemen came down to us while we were in Bomb Disposal, they were from the Air Ministry, they wanted to interview me. So, of course, I couldn’t tell them the true story, that I was helping this bloke go to London with this–– [laughter], I couldn’t tell them, so I denied it. Do you know, they interviewed me for two or three days, they came back and they said ‘Do you know why we’re back? Because we don’t think, we don’t know why, but we think you’re not telling the truth. Because there was no lives involved, and yet why did you risk your life to go and put the fire out?’ And they said ‘Why did you do it?’ And, in the end they, do you know, they came back two or three times, can’t remember how many times, but in the end, I said ‘Look, ok, there’s this guy here who’s got a market in London––’ and I told them the story [laughs]. No! No, I didn’t, no, I didn’t! Sorry [laughter], I never told them that, I couldn’t tell them that. I said ‘What had happened was I’d actually pulled the, I’d set it off accidentally’. I said ‘I did, I set it off accidentally’. So I was severely admonished, I never got any punishment at all, it would just go down as a severe admonishment, but, of course, had I told them the truth, which is wrong, I didn’t tell them the truth, it’s out there now [laughter], if two people arrive tomorrow, I’m going [laughter]. No, they really had a go at me, but anyway. Funny how Bomb Disposal was fun because you’re always on your own, you never, we had one officer and one sergeant, they promoted me to corporal because I was, had done what I’d done anyway, so I got some promotion, finished up as a corporal, at my second stage in the RAF. Erm, and there was probably six of us, I can’t remember how many, but certainly one of them was this guy from Walthamstow [laughs], was a right cockney. We used to come back with a few bob [laughter], and that was it really, I was eventually demobbed and that was the end of it.
GC: As I say, can you tell us a bit about Rhodesia, I know you trained out there. What was Rhodesia like at that time?
LS: Well, of course, Rhodesia in those days was very British. I mean, our nearest town was Bulawayo, we called it Bullafoo, I forgot my tea [sound of drinking]
GC: We’re alright as long as the house doesn’t fall down
LS: Um?
Unknown: What’s going on?
LS: I don’t know. I thought she was after Bailey. Oh, is it on?
GC: It’s alright
LS: Oh. So very British there, so Bulawayo, there were mostly black people, the local people in Bulawayo. But the first place I was at was Bulawayo, and then, when I changed onto the second grade of flying, it was called Salisbury, which was the capital of Rhodesia at that time. It’s now called Cranbourne, sorry, here comes my whistle in my chest––
GC: We’ll stop soon.
LS: Erm, it was called Salisbury. So I was actually stationed there. Would you pass me those, those, no the older books, next, no next one, yes both of them will do, Tom, thanks. So I was actually out in Rhodesia [book pages turning] when, these are personal photographs as well as the RAF photographs, I don’t think there’s anything to interest you. But look, there’s Salisbury on VE Day where I was. I’m told these photographs are worth a lot of money because nobody would have got those.
GC: Um
LS: So I was actually there when VE was declared, victory was declared, so we got involved in the celebrations in Salisbury, erm, and I remember buying those from somewhere or other.
GC: They look like, erm, they look really Colonial don’t they ‘cause––
LS: Yes.
GC: ––They are really.
LS: Oh, very much so.
GC: Yeah
LS: Well Rhodesia was very British, the whole of South Africa was, apart from the Dutch, the Dutch side of South Africa. There was the Dutch side, and then the British side, and the Dutch were very strong, of course, in South Africa and they still are. Lot of the South African people have got Dutch sounding names, but there were a lot of British, erm, British people there.
GC: Right.
LS: Erm, there were Dutch communities and British communities. But really, so it was mostly black people, the man who, the black man who looked after me was actually a Zulu, of course, they’re just a tribe, the Zulus, but he was a lovely man. He was a man who I could ask to do things when I was doing my flying at EFTS, which is the first one. erm, and he was, as I say, a Zulu, but I can’t really tell you a lot else about Rhodesia. It was very wild. You know, an amazing thing happened, I’m in hospital, about last Tuesday, and suddenly one of these black nurses came, she did something, I can’t remember, because I’ve got injections all over me where they were sticking these needles all over me, and all of a sudden, I saw Mombai written on her thing. I said ‘Are you from Mombai?’ so she said, ‘Yes’, I said ‘In Rhodesia?’ she said ‘Yes’. Now Mombai wasn’t even a village. Was there a problem?
GC: No.
LS: Oh, oh, this is while I was in hospital. I said, ‘I can’t believe this’, I said, ‘Are you from Mombai?’ she said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Well, before your time, probably your parents’ time, there was an airfield very near to Mombai and we used to take off the aircraft and at night, when I took off, you could see the native fires burning, ‘cause they lived in huts. You know, you could actually see the fires burning, but incredibly, the chances of me meeting somebody from Mombai was incredible, wasn’t even a village there, it was just called Mombai.
GC: Wow.
LS: The nearest place we used to go to was Bulawayo, which was seventeen miles away. I used to walk that a few times too, I never had a bike, we used to walk it at night.
GC: Is there anything else you can think about, erm, when you was back in England at Metherington, any other stories of your crew or your ground crew, or…
LS: Well, erm, probably is, it’s just a question of remembering, because my time was so varied, more than most people. Erm, I didn’t know many of the ground crew, erm, I think most I know, I mean Bomber Command, they had their own ground crew for each aircraft, you know, and at our reunion we used to have some ground crew members came back, but I think the last one died last year. He was a very interesting man, he was an armourer and he would arm the planes. I used to hear stories from him, but I never met any, even when I was on the operational stations, I didn’t meet any ground crew really. They were probably there, I was only interested in other aircrew and so there’s not really a lot I can tell you, erm, I’d have to go deep into my deep down brain [laughs]
GC: Well I’ll tell you what, I’d like to say thank you very much
LS: Alright
GC: I’d like to say thank you to Lester, to Holly, to Tom and to Bailey, erm, and it’s been a pleasure to meet you this morning. Thank you very much.
LS: OK, you’re very welcome.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Lester Simms
Creator
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Gemma Clapton
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-07
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ASimmsL160807
Format
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01:00:18 audio recording
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Zimbabwe
England--Lincolnshire
Zimbabwe--Bulawayo
Zimbabwe--Harare
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
Description
An account of the resource
Lester tells of his tough early childhood, and his first experience of seeing a Heinkel bomber flying over his home in Surrey to attack the Brooklands Aircraft Factory. He tells of how he worked in the experimental department of Hawker Aircraft Company, a department lead by Sydney Camm, who designed the Hurricane and the Typhoon. Lester also tells of helping to fit cannons under a Hurricane fighter. Lester joined the Royal Air Force at the age of 17 and a half, hoping to become a pilot. He was posted to 106 Squadron at RAF Metheringham, which was a Lancaster station, but he also worked with Halifaxes and Wellington Bombers. Whilst he was waiting for his pilot course - which eventually took place in Africa - he worked with the FIDO system, and his jobs also included filling holes in the runway and painting. Ernest also tells of his time as a crash vehicle driver, in the motor transport unit and his time working in bomb disposal. Ernest also involves himself in 106 Squadron reunions and correspondence, a job that he is very proud to be doing.
Contributor
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Vivienne Tincombe
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
106 Squadron
aircrew
bomb disposal
crash
FIDO
final resting place
ground personnel
Halifax
Hurricane
Lancaster
pilot
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Metheringham
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1087/11545/ARaineyDC180607.2.mp3
e4e0f9a91379454954ba0c8402533130
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Rainey, Donald
Donald C Rainey
D C Rainey
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Donald Rainey (b.1928). He grew up in Scopwick near Lincoln and witnessed three crashes.
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
2018-06-07
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Rainey, DC
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MC: This interview is being conducted on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Mike Connock and the interviewee is Donald Rainey. The interview is taking place at the home of Mr Rainey’s daughter, Mrs Barker in North Hykeham, Lincoln on the 7th of June 2018. Also in attendance is Mrs Wendy Barker.
[recording paused]
WB: Go.
MC: Well, thanks for doing the interview, Don. What I want to start off with is right from the beginning. You asked me how far back I want to go. When and where were you born?
DR: Cranwell Air Force, Air Reserve because my, my mother’s sister husband was a big wig in Cranwell. Teaching through all the war.
MC: So you were born there.
DR: And that’s how I was born there but I lived at Scopwick.
MC: When was that?
DR: At the Royal Oak.
MC: When was that that you were born?
DR: 1927.
MC: ’27.
DR: Yeah. That makes me old.
MC: Yeah. No [laughs] There’s a few of you still around. So what did your parents do?
DR: They lived in the pub. The Royal Oak at Scopwick.
MC: Oh, did they?
DR: Yeah. And in that pub in the war we had George Formby’s wife for ENSA. And she stopped at our pub for about four days entertaining the troops. Beryl they called her, didn’t they? Beryl. George Formby’s wife. Beryl. And she stayed at the Royal Oak at Scopwick in the war entertaining the troops in Digby. In the aerodromes.
MC: So you went to school in Scopwick.
DR: Yeah.
MC: Yeah. What was school —
DR: I left in 1942.
MC: What were schooldays like in those days?
DR: Useless.
MC: Did you enjoy school?
DR: Yeah.
MC: Oh, you did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so tell me so when war broke out how old were you? That would be ’26. Be fourteen.
DR: About just before the war.
MC: Twelve. Thirteen. Twelve or thirteen.
DR: Yeah.
MC: Yeah.
DR: I left school at fourteen. Had to do and go to —
MC: Yeah. Yeah. A lot did.
DR: And I went to engine, apprentice engineering. British Crop Driers.
MC: You did well.
DR: Yeah. I got a job straight away.
MC: Yeah. You did in those days.
DR: A fitter, maintenance fitter. Seven years apprentice it was in them days.
MC: Yeah. So, you did a full apprenticeship, did you?
DR: Yeah. Seven years.
MC: So when you were, so when war broke out you were, you were still in Scopwick.
DR: Yeah.
MC: Yeah. So tell me some of the stories about Scopwick then and what you saw.
DR: Saw? All the Air Force. In our pub at Scopwick after the first war they extended it because we’d got that many customers. Air force. Airmen and WAAFs from Digby aerodrome, you know.
MC: So you mentioned about this Lancaster you saw.
DR: Yeah.
MC: Doing fighter affiliation.
DR: That was, that was the one. That was in the, at the end of the war, wasn’t it? It was the 11th of March 1945 it crashed. And it got hit with that Spitfire and it chopped the back end clean off. And that landed at, near Scopwick Station. The tail end did.
MC: Where did the rest of it go then?
DR: The back of the Ash Holt Woods between Blankney and Scopwick. Outside the main road between Blankney and Scopwick. And they was all killed.
MC: Did you have a lot to do with the RAF at the time?
DR: No. I didn’t go to, I didn’t go in the war.
MC: Yeah.
DR: Because I was a bit too one life, and I’d done, and I was doing an apprentice. They didn’t call you up —
MC: No. I just wondered whether you met any of them on a regular basis?
DR: Oh, I did. In the Air Force.
MC: Up until —
DR: The pilots from Digby.
MC: Yeah.
DR: Definitely we did.
MC: Yeah.
DR: They used to come over our pub swooping when they come back.
WB: Dad used to play the piano accordion in the pub.
DR: Aye. In the pub.
MC: Your dad did.
DR: I did.
WB: No. You did.
MC: You did. You played the piano accordion.
DR: I was taught. Yeah. I was taught music.
MC: Who taught you to play music? Music then?
DR: A firm in Lincoln it was them days.
MC: Oh right.
DR: And then I used to play in the pub. Aye.
MC: You weren’t very old then.
DR: I weren’t. I were seventeen. Eighteen. I was eighteen then.
MC: Yeah. So that would be, yeah towards the back end of the war then.
DR: Yeah.
MC: Yeah. So were you —
DR: And that —
MC: So, and any other instances that you remember from that time?
DR: About the beginning of the war Waddington, I don’t know if anybody knows this there used to be a red flashing light at Waddington Aerodrome. And what they did they used to stop that at night and they used to have a decoy and pull it between Scopwick, on the [Mere?] Lane on a Saturday night for a decoy for the Germans. Not. You know, we used to see it.
MC: That’s, that’s interesting.
DR: That’s true that is. A big decoy. And they used to have that flashing at night and to deflect the Germans didn’t it for they’d think it was the Waddington area.
MC: Yeah.
WB: They said they would bomb the fields then instead of the camp. Yeah.
DR: Aye. They did.
MC: Yeah.
DR: That was another thing they did.
MC: So what about this fuel leak then you were telling me.
DR: Oh, that was, that was after that was. After the war.
MC: Oh was it?
DR: When the Vulcans was there.
MC: Oh right.
DR: But between that a Vulcan, one of them was trying to land at Waddington. Something wrong with it. Three or four of them. No. Three jumped out and one man’s parachute, and he dropped at Dunston Pillar and it killed him. Did you ever know that? Then the pilot got the Vulcan landed. But others, some of them jumped out but one didn’t and he dropped in at Dunston Pillar in my firm’s land.
MC: Yeah.
DR: He got killed.
MC: So what about the war time? I mean, you mentioned about this Lancaster. Were there any others?
DR: Oh scores of Spitfires crashing. Ever so many. At Scopwick village cemetery there’s seventy some odd burial graves there.
MC: And they were all —
DR: Memorial.
MC: And that’s all people killed.
DR: Yeah. All Canadians. All Digby was all Canadian Air Force.
MC: Yeah.
DR: And the bloody, the Germans used to keep bombing that every other night. Air raids that they used to bomb the airfields so the Spitfires couldn’t land. So what they did they took a hundred some acres of Parker’s land, made a dummy airfield so they could land there. Then they took all the WAAFs to Blankney Hall. Did you know that? Did you know? To do the plotting at Blankney hall because they bombed Digby no end of times and got so, you know a few got killed there.
MC: Yeah. So they moved them to Digby Hall.
DR: Yeah. To Blankney Hall.
MC: Blankney Hall.
DR: Then they got it set fire and burned down, about near the end of the war that was at Blankney. Blankney Hall. Aye.
MC: So what about you know you talked about the Lancaster and the Spitfires. Any any other incidents that you can remember?
DR: Aye. On Easter Monday when they bombed Digby they were shooting with bloody guns after this bloody German plane and they got it down. And they’re buried at Scopwick. These Germans.
MC: Oh right. Yeah.
DR: Aye. I can remember that. It was a long time ago though isn’t it? Just let me have a look at —
[recording paused]
DR: That you get from planes.
MC: When you were a boy you used to collect it.
DR: After the, after, in the war it was. You see we’d nothing else to do as I say. And another thing they had at, night at Scopwick there used to be a big beck if it’s still there and it was the blackout, wasn’t it? They used to come out of the pub. Kept on falling in the bloody beck. No idea. I can remember that.
WB: They’d obviously had one or two too many.
MC: So where did you go to pick this ammunition up? Did you go —
DR: Well, where the planes crashed.
MC: Oh right [unclear]
DR: They used to leave no end. They used to leave no end and there was another one crashed. I reckon there was some. I think it came from Metheringham. It crashed at Scopwick in, near Scopwick Railway Station and I reckon the graves were still there. That’s near when we, just before you get over to Scopwick Station to come to Timberland around the back there and one crashed there. A Lancaster. And I reckoned that was from Metheringham ones I reckon.
MC: Oh aye. Yes.
DR: Yeah. We was always going to go to that but we didn’t go because it was blazing like hell that. Because we were on our bikes. Do you know what I mean? [unclear] There was nowt else to do then but. And then with the bloody, if you were in the old fields, them days we used to be out with say bird, or nesting, and the bloody Germans would come over you at head height, in case they machine gunned you. Planes, up at Digby. They were trying to keep Digby down because it was a fighter station, wasn’t it?
MC: Yeah. Yeah. It was.
DR: And then when we worked at Temple Grange that’s there, we could see Digby. And I see thirty Flying Fortresses land in Digby. Aye. Because they couldn’t get down in Norfolk because of the dense fog. And they were there. Thirty. As I say some of them Yanks used to come to our pub. It’s all in this book. If you ever got that book it’s in there about it.
MC: Is that the, “Slightly Below the Glide Path.”
DR: Aye. It’s in there about —
MC: About Digby.
DR: Digby.
MC: Yeah.
DR: And the funerals. There’s a Memorial. I was brought up massive funerals there was at Scopwick. Military, you know. [pause] My grandad took that Scopwick pub in 1864. Them days. And he had a bit of a land holder there and they had the pub. That was his pub in them days. And they had a farmyard at the back of it. A lot of land. You know. Olden days wasn’t it? That’s what happened. Then we had three, he had three daughters. My mother and two more and they all married service people. The three of them. And my father, by 1926 he come up from Somerset and he was a fitter at Digby working on the double wingers. Engines. Aeroplanes. Just before the war. Not those double they had before the war. Scopwick Puff or something. Double wing planes used to be at Digby just before the war. That’s how my dad met my mother in Scopwick pub, you see.
MC: He came up from Somerset.
DR: Yeah. He lived at somerset. He would, he would be eighteen I think when he came up there. Somehow he got. I don’t know how he got there. He joined, working on the air, the old aeroplanes.
MC: Yeah.
DR: The olden days. That’s how he got to that area you see.
MC: It would be interesting to know what aeroplanes they were. You said —
DR: Scopwick Pup, wasn’t it?
MC: Oh, Sopwith Pup.
DR: Aye. That were them.
MC: That’s it. Yeah.
DR: That was at Digby. Just before the war. Aye.
MC: Goodness me. That was [pause] yeah. They were a popular aircraft in the First World War.
DR: Yeah. That would be 1927/26 because I was born ‘27 28 and he was, met my mother in the pub, you see. She was only eighteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. In them days that was a sin weren’t it [laughs]
[recording paused]
DR: Name. I forget his —
MC: No. No. It’s ok. You say there was another fighter pilot buried at Scopwick.
DR: One of them. And after the war they came and took his body up in the middle of the night. And then they come up with four bodies in a lorry and parked in my grandad’s yard, barn yard for the night. And they got, and his name and his photo’s in here in this flight book. I forget what they called him. They took him back to Belgium. His body.
MC: Oh right.
DR: And there’s a plaque at Scopwick where they dug him up from. Aye. That were after the war that was. And I know that.
WB: Because I suppose people would want their families home wouldn’t they? If at all possible. Yeah.
DR: Aye. Was full of Air Force.
MC: Yeah. So what were the nearest air bases to you then? So there was Digby.
DR: Digby. There was a bomber one was Metheringham.
MC: Metheringham.
DR: And then, then Waddington.
MC: Waddington. Then of course Digby.
DR: Then there was another one at Coleby Grange. That one. That was all interlinked with Digby.
MC: Yeah. So you were pretty well surrounded by them.
DR: Yeah. Every night around us bombers going off and off and off.
MC: Yeah. Did you used to watch them at night?
DR: Yeah. The noise. They used to pan around don’t they? To get up.
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
DR: Aye. But the Germans was all after Digby.
MC: Yeah.
DR: So they couldn’t, the fighters couldn’t get back down. And they did that [unclear] you know, the emergency landing strip.
MC: Yeah.
DR: Aye.
[recording paused]
MC: So you used Scopwick house for.
DR: Big house.
MC: Yeah.
DR: And the Air Force commandeered it and made it into a hospital for Digby Aerodrome.
MC: Did you ever get a chance to visit any of these places?
DR: Yeah. We used to go there every Monday night at Digby, Scopwick. You’d have a film show for all the patients in this big house. Aye. From Digby Air Force. Aye. That’s right.
MC: Yeah.
DR: That was another thing they did.
MC: So they allowed you in.
DR: Yeah. They —
MC: As the public as well as the —
DR: Yeah.
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
DR: Because I used to know them coming down the pub.
MC: Yeah. Of course you did.
DR: Said it was me.
MC: Yeah.
DR: Then after the war we had a gang of Germans in a big building there. Prisoners at Scopwick. No end of them.
MC: Did you meet any of them?
DR: Aye. One was a nasty sod and he was a Nazi. He had a tattoo on his arm. The other ones weren’t but there was one nasty one there. Yeah.
MC: You didn’t make friends with them then.
DR: No. They weren’t. We met them after the war. They were working on the land for Parker’s that I worked for then.
[recording paused]
DR: Aye.
MC: Entertainment.
DR: Yeah. George Formby’s wife. Beryl.
MC: Yeah.
DR: She came and she stayed at our pub for four days and she was entertaining the troops out at Waddington, at Digby and Metheringham.
MC: She was.
DR: Yeah. George. Beryl, they called her. George Formby’s wife. She worked for ENSA.
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
WB: Mensa.
MC: No. ENSA.
WB: Oh, was it ENSA?
DR: Aye.
MC: Yeah.
DR: Aye.
MC: Yeah.
DR: Toured around in a big car she was in them days. Aye. Beryl.
MC: I never knew that.
DR: It’s true that is.
MC: Yeah. So you used to have bed and breakfast in your pub.
DR: Yeah. Well, we had, there was six bedrooms in our pub. And they knocked, knocked the lot, the end off after the war because they reckoned it was too dangerous with the narrow road going up to Sleaford. So you can see where the end piece was chopped off. The kitchens and all that bit. Aye. But I’ll tell you they put an extension on our pub after, in the war because there were that many customers.
MC: Yeah. Because it’s still there.
DR: Yeah. You go in there and you’d see. You go in the front door, turn left. There’s like a long bar. The tap we used, there used to be a tap room we called it in them days for the roughs, and the posh would be in the, then they built another L shape on the back. In the gardens.
MC: Did they have any memorabilia in there of the RAF at all?
DR: My mother and father was the last person I was in there. I don’t know whether — it’s changed hands four or five times since.
MC: Yeah.
DR: So, I don’t know now. And every, every Saturday night at Scopwick they used to packed in the village hall dance. All in a big dance in a wooden hut. Packed it was. Every Saturday. You used to have to shut down while about 11 o’clock them days, didn’t they? Not allowed on Sunday.
MC: No.
DR: No entertainment.
MC: That’s what it was like. Yeah. So it was packed with airmen was it?
DR: Airmen. WAAFs. I mean, I mean, and I was they used to come down on bikes from Digby. Leave their bloody bikes. No one cared did they? And my dad in his own car would take them back home to Digby. Some of them. That was about a mile wasn’t it to walk from Digby aerodrome down to Scopwick. That was the nearest pub from Digby aerodrome.
MC: So it must have been popular.
DR: It was. There were any more in them days. Then we got short of beer. It was rationed a bit.
MC: Was it?
DR: Yeah. In them days. Yeah. In the end.
MC: You must have been popular if you ran out of beer.
DR: True. That was true that was. Aye.
[recording paused]
DR: Put it on?
MC: Yeah. Do you want to —
DR: All the fighter pilots all had a revolver with them, flying. Did you know?
MC: Yeah.
DR: Because we were all given the bloody gun. That’s true that is [unclear] because I was on about guns and that. Flaffing about.
MC: You talked about rationing. So what was food like?
DR: We was alright because my grandad had a farm. We had pigs.
MC: I was going to ask.
DR: Chickens. And all the apple trees and pear trees up in the back gardens you see because my grandad had that farm. Part of it. So we weren’t, we were lucky.
MC: Yeah. So you had plenty to eat. Did you used to share it around?
DR: A little bit. Aye.
MC: Were you a big family then?
DR: No. No. I was the only one.
MC: Oh, were you?
DR: Yeah. And my, my mother’s sister she only had one. That’s all there was. There was only two of us. I’ve only got one more cousin. But there’s a few more down Somerset from my dad’s relatives down, but we don’t see them now.
MC: No.
DR: We’ve lost them.
MC: So you hid, you were given the gun were you?
DR: Aye.
MC: And you had to hide it.
DR: I chopped it up at our works and I chucked it in the bin.
MC: Oh, did you? Oh, you didn’t keep it.
DR: No.
MC: It was a bit dangerous wasn’t it?
DR: Yeah.
MC: Yeah.
WB: Yeah.
DR: What I did I had an air rifle. A 22 air rifle. I was training to be a lathe worker, tap work, and I turned a twenty two barrel round and pressed it on inside the roller and all the firing pins were a rim fire. For twenty two cartridges [makes noise] True that is.
MC: That’s the advantages of being an engineer.
DR: Yeah. Trained up lathe work. See.
MC: Yeah. Who was it your worked for?
DR: Blankney Estates. Parker’s.
MC: Oh right.
DR: Did you hear of them?
MC: Yeah. They had their own engineering workshop.
DR: Yeah. They did. We had forty thousand acres of land in the finish.
MC: Yeah.
DR: We started off with British Crop Driers. Then they split it. But it was too big for one workshop to do all the lot and we had a new workshop built at Blankney for the bottom half of [pause] Aye. They took the Londesborough Estate didn’t they? All that lot. Took everything. Even my grandad’s land. They came up from Norfolk just before the war from the Queen. He used to farm the Queen’s Estate at Sandringham.
MC: Oh right.
DR: And they all come up to this area of Lincolnshire. They took the lot. All the Lincolnshire Showground. All up there. North Carlton. That belonged to Parker’s.
[recording paused]
DR: The fighter pilots. There were no end of them and when they’d been out on a raid they used to come back over Scopwick. Oour pub. Zoom.
MC: Yeah.
DR: Around the back.
MC: So going up the Memorial Spire that reminds you. Reminded you of them.
DR: Yeah. But the Memorial at Scopwick is still missing, you know.
MC: Yeah.
DR: The big one.
MC: Yeah.
DR: All that lot in there. But the, but the military funerals used to come, every. How many were there? About seventy buried in Scopwick.
MC: Yeah. You said.
DR: Massive funerals there in the Air Force.
[recording paused]
MC: So what did the WAAFs do?
DR: I say, they used to come down and swim in Scopwick Beck. We was dam, the, where the farmer was at bottom end of Scopwick he used to bank the beck up so the water’s deep and they used to on a Sunday or a Saturday they used to be down there in the summer swimming in Scopwick Beck.
MC: So, this was the WAAFs.
DR: Yeah. Anybody could. No end. In the summer. That’s true. That’s another thing. It’s unbelievable. It used to be about six foot deep at least. They used to be jumping in and diving in. Scopwick Beck.
WB: Well, the water would be lovely then, wouldn’t it?
DR: Yeah. That was another thing that used to happen.
[recording paused]
DR: The first thing I drove was lease and lend after the war. But our firm had about five or six Yankee jeeps running about the farms. That was the first vehicle I drove across the fields. Left hand drive Yankee jeeps. Classed as a lease and lend. Lease and lend, wasn’t it?
MC: Yeah.
DR: Aye.
[recording paused]
MC: You had to, you left school and then you had to work then.
DR: If you didn’t go to Grammar School at fourteen you had to go to work. When you was, and if your birthday was in November but you had to go to school until Christmas. You couldn’t leave school on your [pause] you finished at the end.
MC: At the end of the term.
DR: End of the term. That’s it. And I worked, it was Parker’s in them days. They’d come up from Norfolk.
MC: How long was your apprenticeship?
DR: Seven years.
MC: Seven years.
DR: Seven years. We used to go down Monks Road once a week. The old place. It’s still there for the, we learned to lathe and weld, acetylene weld and all that in the war. Petrol was rationed.
MC: Yeah.
DR: Farmers used to get extra.
[recording paused]
MC: So you were saying they used to, going back to this shooting. They used to come and practice their shooting.
DR: Yeah. In Scopwick pit.
MC: Had they dug the pit?
DR: The big pit. Then they dug a big trench at the end where they sunk the boards up, and blokes used to be in this pit, in the pit in the back of the board marking the board where the bullets had gone. Practicing. And we were at the top of end of Scopwick watching them. Every Sunday they used to come down. Shooting at that pit. And that’s still to this day you can see where that other pit was dug. In Scopwick.
MC: So this was Army as well as Air Force.
DR: Yeah. And the Air Force. Practicing.
MC: Yeah.
DR: Aye. With rifles and machine guns. So that that was another thing they used to do at Scopwick. And that’s there to this day. You can say if they ever got in Scopwick pit where they dug the pit so the men could be under the bullet with the [makes noise] flying all over. That was another incident there you see.
MC: Come down. This is a flax factory.
DR: The flax factory on the Metheringham Heath Lane. Because the Germans used to try bombing that because at the end the, where that lane is was Coleby Grange.
MC: Oh yeah.
DR: Flying field there.
MC: So they’d probably been trying to bomb Coleby Grange.
DR: Yeah. Aye.
MC: And got the flax factory instead.
DR: Aye. Aye. They built, they built an air raid shelter right round the side of it. That was another lot of works in the war. An anti-aircraft gun on the road side there there was. Down Meg Heath Lane. You can see the stand was, where it was on defending the area.
MC: Were there a lot of anti-aircraft guns around that area?
DR: Yeah. Rowston Hill Top. Have you heard of that? And just past Digby area. Another anti-aircraft gun centre there. Parker’s land again. Near Rowston Hall that was.
MC: So you didn’t see any German aircraft brought down?
DR: Not brought, I see them shooting that one Easter morning when they bombed Digby and it killed, it killed some WAAFs as well that bomb. Aye. A few got killed and they were shooting. Then the guns stopped and the fighters come chasing them because they can’t shoot with the fighters after them. And the shrapnel was dropping because we were outside our pub watching. ‘They said come in. There’s shrapnel.’ From the shells bursting dropping down. There’s no end if you stop and think what happened. But the best bits is when the WAAFs would come out the pub and drop in the beck because it was black out [laughs] Oh, airmen did as well. Not only WAAFs.
MC: Yeah. Because it was dark.
DR: It was dark innit [laughs]
MC: Yeah.
DR: And it was deep in them days. Still there to this day the beck is. And that’s where they used to swim. Right at the bottom. Half a mile further down because it got deep because it only started at the top end of Scopwick that beck did. Out the ground. Come building up from where it started. And when my uncle come he was a warrant officer at Cranwell. When he used to come to the Scopwick pub he had to take his uniform off because everybody were saluting him. All [laughs] it was a right bloody game it was. He used to come because he married my mother’s sister you see.
WB: Was that Dorothy?
DR: Dorothy. Yeah. And he finished a wing commander at Halton at the end of war. Finished the post. Left after the war. He’s passed away now. He came —
MC: So, what did he do in the war?
DR: He was, trained pilots at Cranwell. Teaching people to fly.
MC: Oh he was a flying instructor.
DR: Aye. He was. That’s how I got born at Cranwell. In their hospital. Through my dad being in the forces. Fighters at Digby. A mechanic what he was.
MC: So your dad was in the forces then you say.
DR: He was at the beginning of the war. Yeah.
MC: Yeah.
DR: Then he come out after the war.
MC: Yeah.
DR: Took the pub over because my grandad sold that pub to a firm called Soames Brewery but he kept all the land and the farm. Then my dad went as landlord of the pub.
MC: Yeah.
DR: All through, all through the war. He’d seen my mother. That’s how it worked. And my grandad died on the day the war broke. Brought on 1939, weren’t it? Aye. So my granny really brought me up because the pub was full. We had two bar women every night in the pub.
MC: Busy in those days.
DR: Oh God. It was. It was unbelievable. Nowhere else for them to go. Some of the Yanks came from them Flying Fortresses used to come down to Scopwick. So there was thirty planes then. There was ten people in each plane. They had to get that lot mended because it was that dense fog. They couldn’t land in Norfolk. Because we could see it from Temple Grange. It was across from Digby. All them bloody planes that day, one day when I went to work. I was working up there in them days. All them. They had a job to get off again. Had to wait for the wind. Certain day, when they got them out the, and I tell you the fighters was landing on another piece what they’d emergency landed.
MC: So you, you stayed with Parker’s throughout.
DR: All my life.
MC: My goodness.
DR: Forty five, fifty years.
MC: Goodness me.
DR: I had a good job.
MC: I was going to ask you what you did after the war but that’s, it’s what you did after the war.
DR: That’s true that is. And I stayed on for four, for four years at, for six months a year keeping on while they trained me up you see. I’d keep going you see because they used to do peas for Bird’s Eye at Grimsby. And what they did them days they used to send a student out all day and night clocking all the lorries out every two hours. Because they had to have around about fresh peas every two hours. And they used to say if that that lorry aint got his load of peas up for to go to Grimsby he still had to go after the time. Because they’d tell you’d they’d been well two hours from the frozen and that was true that was but they used to clock you. This person used to clock the lorries out. You couldn’t stop on if you hadn’t been broke down. Make your load up. You had to be off. He did.
MC: Goodness me.
DR: And that lot, them lorries them days there was the only one allowed to drive off with the hours running because it was perishable goods. Peas weren’t they? You couldn’t stop when you’d done your hours. They were exempt that was. Perishable goods.
[recording paused]
DR: In Mannheim was Lanz. In the war they flattened Mannheim. The British did. You know. Bombing them. And after the war it rebuilt up and it went to John Deere. And that’s where all the John Deere’s come in this country come from. Mannheim. And they land at Langar. Have you heard of Langar? Near Nottingham. Aerodrome. And that’s their, that’s the dropping point. All stuff come to Langar. Then it’s distributed. What I’m getting at we were send to Langar twice a year to keep up with all the trends in John Deere’s, new coming in. They was training us there in the new technology of John Deere’s at Langar.
MC: So John Deere’s equipment used to come from Mannheim.
DR: Yeah. To England. That was the manufacturing factory there at Mannheim. It used to be Lanz. And it got, and if you wanted a tractor John Deeres got the Lanz symbol on. Are you on there? But the Americans they sell them. They have them in America. They get dropped off. But in England it all goes to Langar. All John Deere stuff. And our firm had an agency. Parker’s at Metheringham they were. Then it went to Louth. Louth Tractors. Have you ever heard of that? Well, that belonged to our firm, because you had to get out of the ranges to get another one up. Another one at Dyke. Have you ever heard of it? Near Bourne. Dyke. There’s an agent’s shop there as well. That was our lot.
MC: Well, thank you very much, Don. I’ve got a fair bit there. It’s nice. And thank you very much for taking the time to, to be interviewed.
WB: Yeah.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Donald Rainey
Creator
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Mike Connock
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-06-07
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ARaineyDC180607
Conforms To
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Pending review
Format
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00:34:53 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Description
An account of the resource
Donald Rainey was born in 1927 and he lived with his family at the Royal Oak in Scopwick. Donald remembers George Formby’s wife, Beryl staying at the pub for four days in the war whilst entertaining the troops at Digby. Got a job as an apprentice engineer at British Crop Driers, as a maintenance fitter. Donald describes life in Scopwick during the war. Scopwick was surrounded by RAF stations and Donald describes the pub and meeting servicemen there. Donald remembers aircraft being shot down. Donald describes the pub as always busy as there was nowhere else for servicemen to go.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Benjamin Turner
Temporal Coverage
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1945-03-11
childhood in wartime
crash
ground personnel
prisoner of war
RAF Blankney Hall
RAF Digby
RAF Metheringham
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1052/11430/POatleyK1701.2.jpg
be795ca0b07853007aa77c562bfeb00c
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1052/11430/AOatleyK170321.1.mp3
9f337a41a3840e6e82e8841355f9d0a1
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Oatley, Ken
K Oatley
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Ken Oatley (b. 1922). He flew operations as a navigator with 627 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-05-21
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Oatley, K
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DK: I’ll just introduce myself, so, this is, this is David Kavanagh introduce, interviewing Ken Oatley at his home [file missing] borne, 21st of March 2017. So, I’ll just put that down there.
KO: Surely.
DK: Hang on, If I keep looking down I’m just making sure it’s still working
KO: Still functioning,
DK: Still functioning, yeah. It’s, it can be a bit temperamental at times, that looks, that looks ok. [unclear] that. I’ll just like to ask so first of all, what were you doing before the war?
KO: I was going to be a professional violinist.
DK: Really?
KO: My father, I won a scholarship to the Royal Academy when I was fifteen,
DK: Right.
KO: But I had no one to live with in London so I had to put it off for another year, then I had to take an examination that year to get the exhibition the year after that which actually brought me up too far close to the war and, even then, I had a year to go before I could get into the Air Force so I joined the Home Guard, did my duties as far as I could from then, and at that time, it was the 13th of September I think of ’39 that I was in headquarters and the phone rang and call out all the home guard, we’re anticipating the invasion immediately, so that passed over of course and October came and I thought, well, really it’s time and I just was old enough then to volunteer so I volunteered for aircrew in October of 1940.
DK: [unclear] back to me, when you were in the Home Guard, what were your sort of roles then? What were you actually doing, were you guarding anything or?
KO: No, I was in headquarters most of the time, but I had to take out messages or anything that required, you know, but I was there nights and so forth.
DK: So were you mostly young men there waiting to be called up or sort of [unclear]?
KO: No, no, they were all a lot much older than me.
DK: Alright. Alright, so you applied then to the Air Force, so
KO: Mh.
DK: It was always your intention then to,
KO: I always wanted to fly.
DK: Alright. Yeah, so did you actually go into pilot training then?
KO: Yes, in, I started flying in April of ’41, it was April so, anyway. And did the usual six weeks at Blackpool and then waiting for a course to come around they sent me to Northern Ireland guarding an auxiliary airfield there against the IRA and then in Maytime they sent me over then to Scone, that Scone, there was at, oh God! This is, my memory is, north of, in Scotland,
DK: Ah, ok.
KO: On the east coast top, anyhow that was the biggest town north. We were there prepared to go down to ITW then at Scarborough, by, by June then I was flying from Sealand on the wirrell
DK: What type of aircraft were you flying?
KO: Tiger Moths.
DK: Ah!
KO: Which I did, I loved flying and I had the aptitude for it and I really thoroughly enjoyed my time there, it was wonderful.
DK: What did you think of the Tiger Moth?
KO: Oh, I liked it very much and I, our last hour or two that we had on the course, my friend and I, we were supposed to be going out for three quarters of an hour flight at night in the evening, come back and report and then go back and do another three quarters of an hour so I said to my mate, well, this is a bit of a waste of time, I’ll meet you over the river Dee and we’ll have a dogfight, which we did. When time came to, to come back to report in, he disappeared and I thought, well, I don’t know where the heck I am [laughs], we wandered about somewhat for three quarters of an hour so I had, eventually I had to give up and I saw a farm with smoke coming out of the chimney and I decided, well, that looks alright so I made a forced landing into this field, knocking out a host of surveyors posts on the way down and a ditch that was half way across which I hadn’t noticed. Anyhow I landed there and a motorcyclist came in and I got out and spread my map on his handle bars and asked him where I was and he gave to, I was in the middle of Lancashire so I flew back and,
DK: You’ve gone that far south?
KO: Yes. So, anyway, I was up for the wing code the next morning,
DK: Were you able to take off out the field then?
KO: Yeah, I did, half the field
DK: Yeah, so that was
KO: It was,
DK: Damaged the aircraft?
KO: No, no, it was a bit dodgy, there was a wood at the end of the field and I just caught the width to the corner of it and I managed to get through, anyway we landed there and the next morning I was up in front of the CO and charged which it was going to be a court martial but he let me go on [unclear] cause I was the first one to solo [unclear] thirties so I thought, you know, I’m made for this and so I was taken off the Spitfight posting and ended up in Canada flying Oxfords. We were on the Oxfords for some while and then there was, Bennett was just do the Pathfinders setup and he had no navigators, only map readers really, observers, don’t tell him I [unclear], but he had no navigators so he took five pilots off of every pilots course in Canada, brought us home to do the Middle course on the navigators, then go onto flying,
DK: So, you were actually on a pilot’s course in Canada.
KO: Yeah, yeah.
DK: Got called off by Bennett,
KO: Yeah,
DK: Because he needed navigators,
KO: Yeah,
DK: How did you feel about that at the time?
KO: Not very happy, I must admit, but anyway.
DK: How were you chosen, was it almost a lottery or?
KO: Well, I don’t know, I think probably I wasn’t landing them very well. I came down [unclear], the approach was hundred percent, I touched down on the wheels, nice and quietly, as soon as the tailwheel had dropped, which off the runway we’d had, my instructor never once told me that I should be doing three point landings, never mentioned, then when the CFI took me up, I did the same thing and he then asked my instructor whether he’d taught me three point landings, of course he said, oh yes, of course he has, and so I was one of the five that got tucked out.
DK: So, it might have been poor training on the trainer’s part, not I suppose, [unclear]
KO: Well, I mean, it seems simple enough, things say you should be doing three-point landings. I landed quietly and smoothly, you know, and,
DK: And this would have been the Oxford, would it?
KO: Yeah, yes. Anyhow I came back home, nearly torpedoed on the way home.
DK: Can you remember which ship you came back on?
KO: [unclear] Dam and just out of Halifax I was on my sway hammock and there was an enormous bang, I thought, my God, we’d been torpedoed, and I bet, I was four flights down and I bet I was, tops of that before anybody else [laughs]. However, there happened to be a torpedo, a destroyer had come alongside and for no apparent reason, and he happened just to take the torpedo and the thing was sunk with all hands and we just carried on, there was fire
DK: You can’t remember the name of the destroyer that was lost?
KO: No, no, no.
DK: No. Did you actually see it go down or?
KO: No,
DK: No.
KO: But we were told.
DK: Yeah.
KO: But you see, we were in two passengers, well, one was obviously a passenger ship and we were in a sort of half and half but there were five hundred aircrew on board ships, then we had several destroyers flying around us all the way back across the Atlantic. It took three weeks coming home cause we went all over the place and got back to England and put me on the navigation course which we did one course at Grand Hotel, oh, Eastbourne,
DK: Right. Yep, yep.
KO: Six weeks and then we were sent off on a ship again, I thought, we are going back to Canada again, which I didn’t like cause I got engaged to a girl in Canada while I was out there. Anyway, we went to South Africa and I was, from start to finish it was nearly eight months, wasted out of my flying time, going down there, doing the course and coming back again and we spent three weeks at Clairwood race course in tents. Then they moved us to East London and we were there for another six weeks and while we were there I met somebody there quite out of the blue, he asked me what we did, what our hobbies were, said well, I played the violin, oh, he said, I know somebody who’d be interested in you so he took me up the road to this gentleman and he said, would you like to play me something? So I played him one of the better class pieces that I used to perform and he said, would you like to play with the municipal orchestra on Sunday? This was Thursday, so I did that and did that the following month, so that was the virtually, the last time I played the violin at all, really.
DK: So you never played it since then?
KO: No, not really, no.
DK: No, no.
KO: So, anyway we got back and messed about for ages and I did,
DK: How did you feel when all this was going on, you were going to South Africa [unclear] was there a certain amount of frustration or?
KO: Yes I, you know, it was very enjoyable,
DK: Yeah.
KO: But it wasn’t what I wanted to do. Anyway we got back and there was so many aircrew trained here messing about Bournemouth was full of them all the time, they didn’t know what to do with us, anyhow we ended up at Harrogate, we were sent off on a commander course to start with at Whitley Bay, six weeks and then they sent me up to Scone to sit in the back seat of a Tiger Moth with a [unclear] recently qualified pilot in front and I was another six weeks messing about there, well, that was barely started the navigation course properly so I don’t think I was gonna get there.
DK: Was navigation something you took to easily, was it?
KO: Oh yes, I was, no worries about that, and then I was onto OTU and from what I understand I was, uhm, was the top of the class in both flying and ground subjects and,
DK: Can you remember which OTU it was you went to?
KO: I can never remember the name of it, was north of Oxford.
DK: Right. Is not in there, in the logbook.
KO: It would be, I suppose. It’s more likely in the back of my pilot’s, pack of pilot’s
DK: That one.
KO: But in the back,
DK: Oh, right, ok. So, what year are we talking about now then? It’s,
KO: That’ll be ’42.
DK: ’42, alright. So that’s the Oxford, so that’s ’41, ’74, you are still flying in ’74.
KO. Oh that’s, that’s flying here.
DK: Right.
KO: It’ll be very, very close to, no, but it wouldn’t be in there, yes, on the back, on the back page, I got all the
DK: Ah, right.
KO: All the,
DK: Ah, right, ok, so ’40,
KO: In, here, up here.
DK: [unclear] ’43.
KO: And here.
DK: 16.
KO: 16.
DK: Ah, right, so, I’ll just say this for the benefit of the tape so it’s 16 OTU Upper Hayford. So you were there from the 10th of August 1943,
KO: Yeah,
DK: Yeah.
KO: Then we went onto Scampton and then to Swinderby.
DK: And that was,
KO: On Stirlings
DK: 16
KO: We did Wellingtons at
DK: 16 OTU
KO: 16 OTU,
DK: Yeah,
KO: And then we went on the Stirlings
DK: And that was at Swinderby
KO: Yes and then the Lancs
DK: Right, so, at 1660 Conversion Unit, Swinderby, that was the Stirlings.
KO: Yes.
DK: Yeah, and then at Syerston,
KO: Yes,
Dk: That was 5 Lancaster finishing school.
KO: Yes.
DK: So, at Upper Hayford was the Wellingtons?
KO: Yes.
DK: Yes, so what was your feeling about the Wellington then as an aircraft?
KO: Oh, fine and my pilot that I had there, although he hadn’t all that many arrows in, he was fine and we got on very well, our crew was first class and everything we did, we were quite well appraised for.
DK: So how did your crew get together then?
KO: Oh, we all, they put us in a hangar and said, I’m sorry, sort yourselves out, so to speak, you know.
DK: You just found yourselves a pilot,
KO: Yes, from
DK: Do you think that worked well?
KO: Yes, it did in our case.
DK: Yeah.
KO: I had an excellent crew and I was very sorry that we went on from there to Metheringham,
DK: Right.
KO: With Gibson squadron.
DK: 106 Squadron.
KO: And my pilot went on a Second Dickey trip with his, with a crew that were on their last operation,
DK: Right.
KO: And failed to return. So, we were sent back to Scampton again in to be recrewed. If they’d given us another pilot, which would have been more sensible, they split the whole crew up as far as I can [unclear] gave us another crew of odd bodies that they had and he wasn’t too bad, he wasn’t as good as my other pilot, you know, they were a little bit lumpy, but see my trouble was, my navigator’s seat was well back from the front and as I remember it seems I had a little office of my own now, the only,
DK: This was the Wellington,
KO: Stirling.
DK: Stirling, right, ok.
KO: And my only chance of talking to the pilot was on the intercom.
DK: Right.
KO: So I never was anywhere near him. It was when we got on to Syerston to the Lancaster, I was sitting right behind him as you realised and he had the most dreadful body odour that you could ever imagine, it really was out of this world,
DK: Oh dear,
KO: And so I took the crew up to the wing commander after we’d just sort of finished the early stages with the Lanc and I said, I can’t fly with this bloke, we all agreed, nearly court martialled, I [unclear] go for, go for a [unclear] you know and anyway we sent back to Scampton again and,
DK: So, you’ve gone back to Scampton for a third time.
KO: Yes, yes.
DK: Alright. When you, just going back to 106, you never met Gibson then, did you?
KO: No.
DK: I, just for the, slightly confusing that for the tape, just for the benefit of the tape, what I’ll say here is where you were, so initially it was Upper Hayford with 16 OTU from the 10th of August 1943, then it was Scampton 15th of December ’43, then 1660 Conversion Unit at Swinderby from the 8th of February ’44 on Stirlings,
KO: Yes.
DK: Then 5 Lancaster finishing school at Syerston,
KO: Yes.
DK: from 28th of March ’44, obviously on Lancasters, then 106 Squadron your pilot went missing as a Second Dickey, so back to Scampton again, then Swinderby,
KO: Yes.
DK: Then 5 Lancaster finishing school, Syerston again,
KO: Yes.
DK: Then back to Scampton because it’s problems with the pilot,
KO: Yes. On 106.
DK: On 106, and then on, I’ve got here, then onto 627, so that was, that’s the next question,
KO: Yes, yeah.
DK: Yeah, ok. So, you’ve complained about your pilot then and what happened then?
KO: Oh, they didn’t do him any harm or anything, I’m just, my memory gets so bad at times, other times I can go with, like, you know, what was the question?
DK: It was, you’re back at Scampton and you complained about the pilot, cause of the body odour,
KO: Yes.
DK: So what happened then?
KO: Well, straight away I was sent to Woodhall Spa from there.
DK: Right, ok. And that’s with 627 Squadron.
KO: 627 Squadron, yes.
DK: Yeah, ok. So, what were you flying at 627 then?
KO: Mosquitoes.
DK: Yeah. What did you think about the Mosquito?
KO: Oh, marvellous.
DK: Yeah.
KO: Yes, I, never complaints about the Mosquito.
DK: Was it a bit of a shock when you’ve gone from four engine bombers?
KO: It was lovely.
DK: Yeah. So you,
KO: Oh. Beautiful.
DK: So you never flew any operations on the four engine bombers?
KO: No, not again, no, no, no. It was all on the Mosquitoes from there on.
DK: Alright.
KO: And then of course the first, the move from Metheringham to Woodhall Spa was like chalk and cheese, you know, [unclear] it, well, every moment we, there we enjoyed the flying and the operational side of it and,
DK: Yeah.
KO: It was just something once in a lifetime, you know.
DK: What was Woodhall Spa like as an airfield then?
KO: It was big enough for what we wanted cause they were flying 617 from there as well so they had to cover the twenty thousand pound bomb weight on runways cause it was just a small camp, on the outside there was no main buildings to it at all, we were very much countryfied.
DK: Did you go to the Petwood Hotel at all?
KO: No, that was 617’s privilege that was,
DK: Ah, right.
KO: We were in the Nissen huts.
DK: [laughs] oh, ok.
KO: Which was a bit of a comedown.
DK: Did you get to know anyone of the 617 crew?
KO: I did but I can’t remember the names now. [laughs] Funnily enough, one of the well known ones that flew with Gibson on the dams, I went into the sergeants mess one day and he was playing cards with a table full of crews there for 617 and he said, can you lend me a pound? So, I lend him the pound, never expecting to get it back again, when I came out of the Air Force about four years after that, I happened to be standing in front of my restaurant in Northampton and who should come in? This chap I’d lent the pound to. So, I caught him and I got me pound back on it [laughs].
DK: [unclear] oh excellent, [laughs], well he did owe it to you.
KO: Yeah, having done the dams raid he was lucky to.
DK: Yeah. So, you can’t remember who that was then now?
KO: I, a flash came into my head, I got an idea whose name, was Monroe, was it?
DK: Les Monroe? Yeah, Les Monroe.
KO: Yeah.
DK: The New Zealander?
KO: Yeah.
DK: Yeah, yeah. He owed you a pound [laughs].
KO: Yeah. He just walked in the shop, not knowing I was there.
DK: Yeah.
KO: I just recognized, I said, hey you.
DK: I actually met Les a couple of times when he came over to UK, last few years. So, you’re now on a Mosquito squadron, so what was your actual role then as 627 Squadron, what were you?
KO: We were at 99 percent for marking, for main force.
DK: Right.
KO: And we were the only squadron that did what we did. We were way ahead of everybody else, and we had to dive, we introduced dive bomb marking which was not heard of before 627 Squadron was formed. But they started off the first two or three months joining in with the, flying backwards and forwards to Berlin in those days and then when we moved up with 617 Squadron, we started doing what we did, that was our thing, and that was flying ahead of main force and being there three minutes before the actual time we needed to be there because that was ten minutes between, let me try to explain it a different way, the flares, the target was illuminated by one or two squadrons of Lancasters from our station to drop thousands of luminating shares over the target area and five of us went out separately to the target and stood off until the first markers went down illuminating, lights went down and on the, dead on the spot, they were there ten minutes before the time for bombing and we went in, in that ten minutes under the flares, dive bombed the marker onto the target for about, well, anything from three, two, three hundred feet, from fifteen hundred feet and it was purely up to the pilot because he dropped the bomb, the had a china graph pencil mark on his windscreen and he, that was his only guide he had to drop his markers, and they used to put that according to how they saw it in height and that sort of thing that needed to be very careful and then we would drop off the markers at about two hundred feet, something like that.
DK: Two hundred feet.
KO: Well, we, we flew round Dresden at three or four hundred feet, probably five hundred feet for nearly ten minutes.
DK: Yeah, yeah. So, the illuminators went in first,
KO: Yes.
DK: They illuminated the target area.
KO: Yes.
DK: So you could then see where to drop your
KO: That’s right.
DK: drop your indicators by
KO: Yes.
DK: [unclear] moving on the target.
KO: Yes.
DK: And then the main force came in.
KO: After that, yes.
DK: Yeah. So, how was that controlled then? Was it?
KO: Just on timing.
DK: Literally on timing, so there’s no one there.
KO: No, no, no, no, we had to be there three minutes before the, ten minutes if you like,
DK: Right, yeah.
KO: Thirteen minutes, three minutes we had to get in our track in to go in and do our dive in.
DK: Right.
KO: That was just for error, for coming from, over from Holland down to Dresden, we had that little margin of difference, so at ten to the target, the Lancasters then came in, they had ten minutes to bomb on the markers that we had laid.
DK: So, can, just stepping back one bit, can you remember where your first operation was to then?
KO: Uhm, Bremen.
DK: Bremen. And how many operations did you actually do then?
KO: I, we did twenty-two operations altogether.
DK: Twenty-two.
KO: They were spread over a little bit but, see we only did, we had enough crews that we only did one every five.
DK: Right.
KO. We had thirty crew, thirty crew men on the, for fifteen aircraft and we only ever sent five aircraft out on an operation, so we had, there was, sort of,
DK: It’s quite a long period between flight then,
KO: Yeah, yes.
DK: So, can you remember when the tour started and when it ended, how long it was for, roughly?
KO: The first tour?
DK: Yeah.
KO: I’m having a particular bad day today, I don’t know why it is, but, oh Jesus! [laughs] I’m lost.
DK: Is it, will it be recorded in here anywhere?
KO: Yes, it was about, the middle, the middle of June-July of forty
DK: ’44.
KO: ’44.
DK: Ok, here we go, yeah, so, that’s 627 Squadron
KO: Yes.
DK: At Woodhall Spa.
KO: Yes.
DK: So, on the 25th of July
KO: Yes.
DK: ’44, so that’s all practice
KO: Yes. Our night operations were in red.
DK: Right.
KO: So, we did, only did one in every three.
DK: Ok, that way we’ll, so, that’s all practice so, uhm, cross country, practice.
KO: We practiced at least five times for every operation we did.
DK: Alright. Ok, so we got off ways to see if we got Gladbach, that’s Monchen Gladbach presumably.
KO: So, that was where Gibson got lost,
DK: Right, alright, ok.
KO: So, that was his own fault.
DK: [laughs] We’ll come back to that in a minute. Ok, [unclear]
KO: Yes, I think we did four in one week, which was an exceptional.
DK: Right.
KO: My first op was a day run to L’Isle-de-Adam, a bomb dump north of Paris. We had a fairly leisurely time as you can see.
DK: I see there is an awful lot of practice between the actual raids, isn’t it?
KO: Yeah, it was about five, one in five. Really, what brought that about was we had to have the aircraft on for that night, and they had to have a morning test before,
DK: Right.
KO: And we used the test to go and do a bombing run on the sands at
DK: [unclear]
KO: [unclear], yeah.
DK: So, navigation then and timing clearly needs to be very accurate.
KO: Yes.
DK: Yeah.
KO: But we didn’t do anything really, we flew, normal thing was that we flew out to Holland and turned from just over the coast of Holland, turned down to the, wherever we were going, from there it was, we had no troubles [unclear], we went more or less our own way, we knew what time we had to be there and that but.
DK: So, I think this is your first operation the 6th of October ’44 to Bremen.
KO: That was the first time when we used our dive bomb technique.
DK: Right, ok.
KO: It was, they didn’t know really what it was gonna be like and they told the CO that he wasn’t to go on that operation.
DK: Oh, alright. So, then you got the Mittelland Canal on the 6th of November ’44.
KO: They were easy.
DK: So, it’s got bolted flares over [unclear]. And then you’ve got, 21st of November the Dortmund-Ems Canal.
KO: Mhm, there were two or three of those.
DK: And then I’ve got here the 13th of December ’44, the Cologne and Emden ships cruisers.
KO: Yes, that was in, that was in the Oslofjord, but they moved them by the time we got up there and it was a wasted trip.
DK: So, this is [unclear] called off by marker one.
KO: Yes, well.
DK: So, it was a
KO: I can, this, as I was saying to my friend today, I’ve worried about that ever since and I cannot understand because I was absolutely dead on track all the way up there, I said the only thing I can excuse myself in is that the pilot was running ten miles an hour, he was on three hundred and twenty instead of three hundred and thirty and he would jump down my throat if I suggested that but I couldn’t find no other reason for being late cause we were dead on course for everything.
DK: Yeah, [unclear] this, that’s [unclear].
KO: That’s, that was stacked down for a purpose. Probably made a mess of it so.
DK: So, then we got 14th of January ’45 and it’s oil refinery at Mersberg. So, that’s and it’s got here two times one thousands, so that’s two one thousand pound bombs.
KO: Yeah.
DK: And the red target indicators. So that’s [unclear] what you’ve dropped and. So, then it’s 2nd of February ’45 Karlsruhe. It says target obscured by cloud. Sky marking only.
KO: Yes.
DK: So then, 2nd of Feb, Dortmund.
KO: Dortmund.
DK: It says one target marked.
KO: I’m doing well, aren’t I? [laughs]
DK: And then, 8th of Feb, Politz-Stettin, oil refinery. Stettin oil refinery, yeah. And then the 13th of Feb ’45, ops Dresden. Marker two. And then backed up, one one thousand pounder, red TI. So, just talking about that then, what actually happened on the Dresden raid? Was..
KO: Well, the, there was a trade wind blowing to start with and normally, starting off from home, we would climb to the operating height, going out and we would take a fix every three minutes and find an average wind which we would calculate to fly us on from there to Dresden. But this MIG wasn’t working particularly well and when we got to the turning point, it was a question of hops and choices to how you carried on from there. So I part guessed well I could [unclear] what I’d got already to choose from and then I realised that the thing that we had installed in the aircraft which I’d never used before, I’d never been instructed on because it was introduced while I was on leave, I thought, well, I’ll give it a go and see if I hadn’t have the charts with me and so, I took him, took him down on that, bearing as it was, there was a line running straight through Dresden that I could put up on the machine, that was terrible cause on a Gee box you had to two stroves running like that, but on this particular case, when I went on to the LORAN, it was like that and right across the thing as you couldn’t tell which was which, you had to take a guess at it and fortunately I guessed right and I didn’t navigate all the way down there. I just kept on one line and then I could, guide him down along this line all the way down to Dresden and then there was a one, there was another line crossing the second line there which went through Dresden and as soon as I kept switching backwards and forwards to that, and when that line came up, I said, right-oh Jock, we’re here now. We were three minutes early and doing the right one turn, another one [unclear] the arrival and then the main force came, we had the, the uhm, the squadrons that were dropping in there, illuminating flares came in at ten to eleven and we were just on the edge of the city, sitting there, waiting for them. We had to put those down and then we went in and dived in and we were just, just about to call out marker two, tally-ho, and number one tally-ho didn’t just in front of us so we had to go round again and
DK: So you, so marker one got his markers in first
KO: He was the flight commander anyway,
DK: Right, ok.
KO: So, couldn’t, he couldn’t
DK: Right. So, your markers then were the second to go.
KO: Yes.
DK: Right.
KO: Btu we were the most accurate.
DK: Right.
KO: On that.
DK: And how low would you’ve been when you dropped the markers?
KO: About three hundred feet.
DK: As low as that.
KO: Well, we were so low, that as we flew away from there, my pilot was looking back to see if he could see where they’d dropped and I had a shout at him because we were just gonna hit the spires of the cathedral, so I had to pull him up on that one. And then we just circled around Dresden for three or four minutes at five hundred feet and then we came home.
DK: And did you see much of the main force bombing then in that five minutes?
KO: They just started to bomb,
DK: Right.
KO: And I think they let a couple of four hundred, four thousand pounders off as we weren’t all that high and we could feel the, [unclear] get out quick now
DK: I just, for the benefit of the tape, I just read what it says here, so, 13th of Feb ’45, you took off at 2000 as, Mosquito F, so your pilot was flying officer Walker and your navigator so it says, ops Dresden, marker two, which you mentioned backed up, so is that meaning you backed up marker one?
KO: Yes.
DK: Yeah.
KO: Well, we got in, it was a football stadium
DK: Right.
KO: We got our marker in the football stadium.
DK: Alright, ok.
KO: And the others were in a bunch, nearly [unclear] a hundred yards,
DK: Yeah.
KO: Way but,
DK: So, your second ones down was actually the more accurate and then it’s got one thousand, so you got a thousand-pound bomb and red
KO: They were a thousand-pound flares.
DK: Oh sorry, so you dropped one-thousand-pound red target indicators
KO: Yeah, yeah.
DK: Sorry, yeah, so one thousand red target indicator. And you
KO: And the others all backed up after that.
DK: Yeah. So, you arrived back at 0540?
KO: I know my, my history today to you doesn’t sound very much but on my claim for a commission, my squadron commander and the camp squadron commander both put down that we were the best crews, one of the best crews of the squadron.
DK: Oh!
KO: We did do well, I mean, we felt that we, if we dropped our markers that was bloody well close on it and of course the last operation we did was at Tonsberg oil refinery at the
DK: Right.
KO: The, first up towards Oslo and
DK: So, were all the operations with Walker?
KO: Yeah.
DK: Yeah. And was he a good pilot?
KO: He was a good pilot and he was good at dropping the bombs too. We were the best on that one as well. But, I know it sounds terrible, our successes and that sort of thing but sometimes they went right and sometimes they didn’t and sometimes if our radar wasn’t working up to scratch, we
DK: So, when you were briefed for Dresden then, it was just an ordinary briefing
KO: Yes.
DK: And an ordinary target.
KO: Yes. When I was allocated onto a new job I’d only been on the squadron about six weeks, two months when I was sent to RAF Wyton 1409 Met Flight
DK: Right.
KO: For a two week crash course on wind reporting then I found myself that we were doing a big operation in south Germany and we had to stop at Manston to refuel and my job then was to decide two hundred miles from the target whether it was gonna be satisfactory for the main force to continue on to attack the target and if I didn’t think it was gonna be satisfactory, my job was to call them out and send them home.
DK: So, you’ve gone out and checked the weather in effect then.
KO: No, that was all we were supposed to be doing,
DK: Yeah.
KO: But fortunately the fog came down and we were, the thing was called off. It was never reinstated again but I think that somebody up a loft had said, well, this is a bloody silly idea in the first place.
DK: That, was that with 1409 Met Flight?
KO: Oh, that was where I was sent for those two-week crash course.
DK: Right, ok. Ok, so you’ve done the training at 1409 Met course.
KO: What there was there of it.
DK: Yeah. So, you, did you get?
KO: I was
DK: Did you get back to Manston then or?
KO: Oh yeah, yes, well we uhm, I think we came in that night, I think we came into, probably into Woodbridge.
DK: Alright. Cause there’s one here you’ve been here the 12th of October ’44, it says from Manston, yeah. You went to Manston the day before. So that idea of going out early and
KO: Cause we used the wing tanks up, you see, we needed all the petrol that we could carry to get there and back so we’d use the wing tanks up going down to Manston until we had to refuel then and while that was being done, we were a little bit early, the fog came down and the whole thing was scrubbed.
DK: Alright. That’s what it’s saying here that you remained at Manston. Yeah. So, just going on here then, 16th of March ’45, Wurzburg, ops to Wurzburg.
KO: Wurzburg.
DK: Yeah, so you’re marker two. So, one thousand [unclear] red target indicator, one one thousand yellow target indicators,
KO: That’s what we carried.
DK: Right. But we carried a red, yellow and a green, as the Germans had a funny act of if the red ones went down they’d light another red one up somewhere away from it, you see, to distract it, so we’d have to go back in again and drop the green beside the red or whatever and
DK: Is this when you’ve got the master bomber’s there then that were telling
KO: Yeah, the master bomber’s up there.
DK: Yeah. So he’s then telling who, the rest of the main force who, which coloured markers to bomb. Has he mentioned you on the same operation that Gibson was lost on
KO: Yeah, yes.
DK: You didn’t know him cause he flew a 627 Mosquito force [unclear], didn’t he?
KO: Yes, yes.
DK: You didn’t meet him there then?
KO: I’ve met him on several occasions but, you know, not sort of personally, we were, [unclear] had social occasion or on one occasion he tried to, he came into our little bar, as you can imagine, we were in Nissen huts and they were all posh in and they came down to our officer’s mess and we, that was an airman’s hut actually, the whole mess, and the kitchen that was all part of it but we had no bar arrangements or that, so we had a builder of one of the boys in the squadron, so he built the bar and built a fire in there for us so we could have an officer’s drinking area. And one night my pilot and three Australians were in there having a drink and the door opened and Gibson appears and nobody sort of moved and he came, don’t you normally stand to attention and when a senior officer comes in? And they looked at each other, said, no, no, no. So, anyway, he created such a fuss, they grabbed hold of him, took him outside, took his trousers off and told him not to come in again. The next morning, there was an officer’s parade which he officiated, went down the line and of course the Australians all six foot something in their dark uniforms and my pilot who was a real dural Scotsman,
DK: This was Walker, was it?
KO: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
KO: He was standing at the end of the line and he got him and he put him in the glasshouse for three weeks. So, he didn’t remain very popular with our crowd.
DK: Alright.
KO: So I was flying odd bits with anybody who was needing it, the navigator, flew all that three weeks when he was
DK: Well that, I mean, that meant you had another pilot you had to fly with then that. So you, you weren’t too pleased about that then?
KO: Well, we didn’t [unclear]
DK: Alright, ok. They were just
KO: I might have gone on a night flying test.
DK: Alright, so you didn’t do any operations while he was in [unclear]
KO: No, I mean, I had a very, very nice round of it really, I mean, some of the ops we did, we, yeah, you had to have your head on and I was, I was considered to be one of the better navigators although it didn’t sound like it. You know, you don’t know the circumstances of how things go.
DK: So, what was it like then if you were, you know, you are flying the Mosquito there, you’re over enemy territory, what does it feel like, it’s very dark and you’re being shot at?
KO: Well, we weren’t being shot at, that was just the point you see. Everybody else, the main force went out on allocated circuit. We went out, there was only five of us, we went out and more or less did it the way we thought we would, we didn’t stick to any plan as long as we were there sort of three minutes before the flares went down
DK: Right
KO: Thirteen minutes before the bombers came in. So rise up and up and when cross sort of thing on the machine I said right-oh, Jock, we’re here now and three minutes early, do a right one turn, wind off three minutes and that should bring us on time, that moment in time, the flares started to come down and we turned to going to find the thing and the number one saw it just as, we were just, there’s a story in my book there, he pressed the [unclear] just at the same time my pilot was just going to so we had to go off and go round again. And that happened several times and on one, where we had to bomb Wesel, because the commanders had taken over, they crossed the river there and they were outside of Wesel, we had to mark Wesel and we went, there was five of us, we went in and we had to put our markers on the, uhm, the, what’s, I don’t know what you call it, uhm, on the stone part of the pier sort of thing
DK: Alright, ok.
KO: On the river
DK: Yeah.
KO: And both our pilots [unclear] at the same time, both pressed the button, that cut out transmission then we couldn’t hear anything else. We went in, they went in, and we went in, dropped our markers at the same time and they landed in the same, virtually the same place at the same time so how far we were apart where we dived in there, we couldn’t have been more than twenty feet apart, never saw them and they didn’t see us.
DK: I’m just reading there from your logbook, so, that’s the 23rd of March ’45 and it’s ops to Wesel, army support. And you’ve marked with a thousand-pound red target indicator. So, you both dropped at exactly the same time.
KO: And exactly the same spot.
DK: Onto a pier.
KO: Yeah.
DK: On the river.
KO: Yeah. We didn’t realise what had happened until we got back.
DK: So then just going on here, I’m just reading this out for the recorder here, so, you then got the 10 of April ’45 ops the marshalling yard near Leipzig. So, backed up number two, thousand-pound red target indicator, carrying a thousand-pound yellow target indicator.
KO: Yes.
DK: So that probably would have been your last operation then, would it or?
KO: [unclear] read, read.
DK: Oh, ok.
KO: I know that [laughs] I found out that since that my sister married a family in Northampton, they’re apparently of Jewish extraction and they came down to the grandfather had had property in East Germany,
DK: Oh, right.
KO: And nobody knew where it was or anything and it wasn’t until after the war that they set the wheels rolling and apparently there’s two blocks of very luxury apartments and we’d blown one block up and so they only got reparations for the one, who’d been getting the rent for the other one [unclear] up until that time nobody came to the fore.
DK: Oh, hang on, there’s another op here, so, uhm, so Norway, so 25th of April ’45 Tonsberg, Norway.
KO: Yes, that’s the last one I did.
DK: That’s the last one, yes, so [unclear]. So at that point the war’s ended, how did you feel then?
KO: Well, that was about the first or second op I did from commissioning.
DK: Right. So you were commissioned at this point. Yeah.
KO: But I didn’t, I didn’t bother, we didn’t know what was going to happen to us though, where we were going to go, and what happened, what happened then lot of the Ozzies were sent home and we brought in some new people because there was the Far East war and we were going to take part in that and so we were going out there to mark for 5 Group, was only 5 Group that was going out there and we were the Pathfinder Force for 5 Group but we weren’t going to do our dive bomb marking there, somebody got the bright idea of using H2S and we would fly over the target two thousand feet straight and level for two minutes and drop our markers out. You know, that was a ridiculous idea, we wouldn’t even know where the bloody markers had gone and we would’ve much rather continue what we were doing previously and knowing where it was but.
DK: This would’ve been part of Tiger Force then.
KO: Yes, this was Tiger Force and we were supposed to be leading it.
DK: So, the atomic bomb’s dropped then, how did you feel that you weren’t now having to go out to the Far East?
KO: I was a bit disappointed in some respect because I rather looked forward to the exploratory flight out there really but on the other hand, see, there was a five hundred miles from Okinawa to the landfall in Japan,
DK: Yeah.
KO: And we didn’t have that great deal of overlap of petrol to do that, so we were waiting for Mark 40 Mosquitoes to come, which were pressurized and we were flying at forty thousand feet out, taking the trade wind to blow us there, then we go down and do our marking role for drop our markers whatever to do there and then we were gonna come back at sea level because the trade wind would,
DK: Yeah, yeah.
KO: Well that was what the theory was anyway, that would blow us back, blow us there and blow us back. Which we weren’t particularly thrilled with the idea.
DK: Oh, I can imagine.
KO: As you can imagine, sort of being dropped in the sea in the middle of the Pacific there.
DK: [unclear] Get blown back [laughs].
KO: [laughs] No, some people spark ideas, I don’t know.
DK: So the war’s ended then, what were you
KO: Yeah.
DK: You carried on [unclear]
KO: What happened then was, I was supposed to be leaving the [unclear] and they started sending the Ozzies back then because the war was,
DK: Yeah.
KO: Virtually finished then and they started importing a few other crews to come in, to go on the Okinawa job and [unclear] I was gonna say now, I lost the thread or something.
DK: So, the war’s ended, you’re [unclear] not going.
KO: Yes, so a lot of the new boys that they’d brought in were dispersed amongst other stations and so forth and we were just left to [unclear] we were the only crews that were taken out of the squadron and sent firstly to Feltwell and then, I can never remember the other airfield and then ended up at Marham,
DK: Right.
KO: On a bombing development unit. Now we were supposed to think up different ways of attack for future things, well, that was a waste of time really but that was all we were doing. All the rest of the them, down the squadron as it was left, cause they’d imported a lot of aircrew, and sent the Ozzies back, and they were sent to uhm, 19th Squadron, something like that,
DK: Right.
KO: And within months it was, they were all released from it.
DK: And what happened to yourself, then you, did you leave the RAF at that point?
KO: I was still on bombing development unit.
DK: Right.
KO: We just, from there we just five crews of us there.
DK: Yeah.
KO: And I stayed on till June and I was then pat to hand in me notice so to speak.
DK: So that would have been June 1946.
KO: Yeah.
DK: Yeah, yeah, you’re at Marham. So, you’ve left the Air Force in ’46 then. Yeah. So, what did you after that then?
KO: Well, it’s a bit of a long story really, I wanted to, I wanted to get engaged to one of the WAAFs in the squadron who was a parachute packer.
DK: Right.
KO: And I wanted to get engaged, this was at Christmas time, and I went home that weekend, took a photograph and my father said, no, you’re not marrying that girl. So, I sort of, I [unclear] a little bit, he said, no, you’re not going to marry that girl, if you do, he said, we shall sell the business up, we shall go back to America cause my parents were American born.
DK: Alright, ok.
KO: So, I said very briefly, well, that’s what you want to do, that’s what you left to do. Anyhow, they didn’t go back, the father bought a bungalow outside the town and I left myself thinking that this was the route I was going to take, that he changed his mind about being awkward and he bought two limited companies in Northampton and when I came out to take on the businesses which was a great help to me because I only had one other option which was to stay in the Air Force.
DK: Yeah.
KO: But that wasn’t very good because they really didn’t want anybody else in the, in there but that’s. So where I went and I was in Northampton then for five or six years working on the family business and then we divided up from there into the different companies and so forth.
DK: [unclear] The family business actually involve?
KO: A restaurant and bakeries.
DK: Oh, alright, ok. So, so looking back now, after all these years, several years, how do you feel about your time in the Air Force?
KO: I mean, for good or bad?
DK: Both [laughs]
KO: I thoroughly enjoyed it.
DK: Alright.
KO: No, it was a great experience, I learned a lot really from it, you know, and I wouldn’t have missed a day of my experiences there I mean [unclear] fly in the Air Force, when I came home and joined the local flying club and I was flying several hundred hours [unclear].
DK: So you did eventually get your private pilot’s license, then.
KO: I got my private pilot license, yes.
DK: Yeah. And, one other question I’ve got, did you know anything about the controversy of 627 Squadron moving from Bennett’s 8 Group to
KO: Oh, it was a bit of an argy bargy about that.
DK: Yeah.
KO: But, no, that’s what, what came away and that’s what we accepted.
DK: So, when you initially joined 627, you were part of 8 Group, were you, under Bennett.
KO: Yes. And 6
DK: And then moved to 5 Group under Cochrane.
KO: Yes. And 617 Squadron were on the same station with us.
DK: Right.
KO: So, it was quite a nice association really.
DK: Yeah. And you got on well with 617 Squadron.
KO: Oh yes.
DK: Yeah, yeah.
KO: Was a really good arrangement really.
DK: So, that controversy then, you just accepted you were going to another group.
KO: Well, that was all you could do really.
DK: Yeah.
KO: Hadn’t got a great deal of option [laughs].
DK: Ok. Well, absolutely marvelous.
KO: I’m sorry I’ve been so
DJK: You’ve been absolutely wonderful, brilliant, don’t worry, it’s useful having the logbook here cause we’ve gone through the various
KO: My memory seems to be worse at times than others and
DK: You’ve been absolutely marvelous, no, it’s been good
KO: Good. It’s been absolute rubbish from my point of view.
DK: That’s been good. Right, I’ll turn that off now.
KO: Ok.
DK: Ok, thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Ken Oatley
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Kavanagh
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-03-21
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AOatleyK170321, POatleyK1701
Format
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01:03:33 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Description
An account of the resource
Initially too young to enlist at the outbreak of war, Ken Oatley served in the Home Guard until he was able to enlist in October 1940, when after initial training he undertook pilot training. After basic flying training he went onto Canada training on Oxfords. It was whilst there Donald Bennett was forming the Pathfinder Force. Five pilot trainees were taken from each course to retrain as navigators and Ken was selected for transfer. Eventually posted to 627 Squadron at RAF Woodhall Spa on Mosquito aircraft, Ken flew a total of 22 operations. He describes how 627 Squadron operated within Bomber Command operations, explaining how their role was to arrive and illuminate the designated targets for the following bombers. This included the operation on Dresden in February 1945. At the end of the war, Ken served with the Bomb Development Unit at RAF Marham, before being demobbed in 1946.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Peter Schulze
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-10
1945-02
1946
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Great Britain
England--Norfolk
Germany
Germany--Dresden
England--Lincolnshire
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
106 Squadron
16 OTU
1660 HCU
617 Squadron
627 Squadron
aircrew
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
civil defence
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
Heavy Conversion Unit
Home Guard
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Master Bomber
Mosquito
navigator
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
RAF Manston
RAF Marham
RAF Metheringham
RAF Scampton
RAF Sealand
RAF Swinderby
RAF Syerston
RAF Upper Heyford
RAF Woodhall Spa
Stirling
target indicator
Tiger force
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1046/11424/ANeedleR171004.1.mp3
039babd17b2f945723e0be063c79ba99
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
Needle, Ronald
R Needle
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Ronald Needle (1925- 2019). He served as a rear gunner with 106 Squadron before his Lancaster crashed in France.
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
2017-09-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Needle, R
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Right, this is Gary Rushbrooke for the Bomber Command Association. I’m with Mr Ron Needle in Bourneville, Birmingham on the 4th of October 2017.
GR: So Ron, you were just telling me you were born in Birmingham.
RN: That’s right, yes, er I had a happy childhood because I was one of eleven children, but at one time there were ten of us living in the slums back to back house in Ladywood, Birmingham, and it was a two-bedroomed house with ten children and a pair of mum and dad. So you can imagine. [laugh]
GR: Where did, where did you come in the eleven, oldest, youngest?
RN: No, the fourth, fourth oldest
GR: Fourth oldest.
RN: Fourth oldest. But um, we, you know, there was no electric, no televisions, no telephones, no fridges, you, you had to go up the back yard to go to the boiler and take your turn to do your washing but then when I was twelve we moved to Northfield and er course it was such a contrast to house nothing but back to back houses and in Northfield there was gardens and a brook, and I called it God’s Country and to this day, and I’ve always lived near here, and luckily in Bourneville which is mainly Cadbury’s er you know I’ve lived here since I was twelve, that eighty year, I’ve lived here.
GR: Eighty years.
RN: Eighty years in this area. And um, luckily I had a damn good father.
GR: I was going to say what did your parents do, I mean.
RN: Well my father was er a postman sorter at Birmingham main post office and he was also President of the Post Office Union. But he was well respected because, unlike, dare I say, unlike today, my father looked after the men who were in the right. If a man was in the wrong whether he was a union member or not, then they had to be responsible. He would not stick up for a man who was in the wrong and I find that very different today.
GR: Yeah.
RN: So, but he was a wonderful father. He worked his damn socks off to keep us, and I’ve got nothing but respect for him. But then when I was fourteen I was staying in the gar, I was in the garden at Northfield during the war, and I saw a German plane climb very low and it was obviously a reconnaissance plane. It didn’t try to shoot at us but I obviously guessed he’d taken photographs of the Austin Aero and the factory there at Longbridge
GR: Yes.
RN: So that made me determined to join aircrew. So when I was
GR: So you was about four-fourteen when war broke out.
RN: War broke out, yes
GR: Ah yeah.
RN: And when I was seventeen I was working on the Stirling bombers and of course it was a
GR: When you say working what did you?
RN: I was a fitter.
GR: Right
RN: I was a fitter on the Stirling bomber, but then they decided it was out of date and we were all made redundant, and I went down to the Labour Exchange because at that time
GR: So when you say, sorry, so when you say
RN: It’s all right, No, on you go
GR: When you was working on the Stirling, was that, you weren’t in the RAF then
RN: Oh no, no, I was a civilian,
GR: Doing
RN: Civilian, helping to fit the sheets around the aircraft, the iron up sheets.
GR: So you was actually working in one of the factories
RN: Oh yes,
GR: Making
RN: Stirling bombers
GR: Stirling bombers.
RN: And then when we was made redundant I went to Selly Oak Labour Exchange and the man said ‘Oh, you’ve got to work down the mines’ and I said, ‘I don’t want that’ [emphasis] and he said, ‘Well it’s that or the Forces’. I said, ‘Well that’s what I want – the Forces’, and lo and behold, he found me a nice little job, in Birmingham. And then when I was seventeen and a half, and had to sign up, my Manager said ‘Ron, we’re doing specialist work, so don’t sign’ he said, ‘and you won’t have to go in the Forces.’ I said, ‘Yes, sir. I’ll go sir’. But when I went to the RAF recruiting office I volunteered [laugh] straight away for aircrew and then I became an air gunner and a rear gunner.
GR: So, obviously, you yeah you signed up, they called you up.
RN: They called me up. I started off at St John’s Wood.
GR: Yeah.
RN: I’d just had my
GR: Lord’s cricket ground.
RN: That’s right. I’d just had my hair cut but the two NCOs said ‘Get your hair cut airman’ [laugh]. So although I’d had my hair cut it didn’t meet the RAF standards. [laugh] I’ll always remember that. What interested me more than anything in the RAF [cough] was there was a Canadian who was, liked to gamble, and I didn’t, I couldn’t afford to gamble to be honest, but I always remember, er he lost a lot of money, and he turned round and said to the lad who owe, who won the money, it’s double or quits, and he kept doing it till he won. And from that moment on, I’ve never [emphasis] bet on cards.
GR: Ah.
RN: Because I thought that was a nasty thing to do. He kept up.
GR: Yeah.
RN: Anyway, um
GR: Having said that, I’m sitting next to a pack of cards!
RN: Yeah, I play crib!
GR: Okay, yes. [laugh]
RN: I play crib [cough]. And then um,
GR: So what was the training like?
RN: The training was good, er,
GR: What did you want to be when you joined?
RN: I wanted to be a rear gunner.
GR: So that was a bit fair
RN: I um, I mentioned it right away, mind you I er, I’d only had an elementary education, but I did well at school to be truthful, erm, but um, no I wanted to be an air gunner. And when I went to Stormy Downs in South Wales on the gunnery course er I met up with a chap who we agreed he would be the mid upper gunner and I would be the rear gunner, but [laugh] when we, er, finished our course, they asked us if we give our names to who we wanted to go with, which we did. But, when we got to the OTU they’d split us all up, and I can understand that now, they split us all up so although you’d put your name down to go with someone, then you wasn’t with him at all it was a stranger. But luckily I was with a chappie who agreed to be the mid upper gunner, I the rear gunner, and we got crewed up ah, and a strange thing happened, we were on training exercises and the navigator would call out, ‘Righto Skipper, change course to 163’, and the pilot would say: ‘I’ll [emphasis] tell you when I’ve to change course’. And then the bomb aimer would say, ‘Righto skipper, ready for bombing’, ‘I’ll [emphasis] tell you when you’re ready for bombing’. So when we landed, the crew
GR: This is, this is all at training
RN: Yes, we decided that we didn’t want to fly with the pilot. So we saw the Squadron Leader and in charge of the camp and we were, we told him our fears, our problem and we had another pilot come, named Jim Scott, from Scotland! Lovely man, and he saved my life, twice. Because once we were training, as funny enough a Stirling bomber, and we flew into cumulus cloud. Well, some clouds have got very strong winds, updrafts of wind, and we got caught in the updraught of wind and the plane went out of control! The pilot managed to regain control but the plane was shaking and I thought it was going to fall to bits. So we managed to land on an emergency landing. But, [emphasis] the next day three of the crew, the mid upper gunner, the wireless operator and the navigator backed out of flying. So we had to have three new members.
GR And how did you feel about that?
RN Well, I told myself, I wasn’t, funny enough, I never ever [emphasis] thought I was going to die, I must have been crazy. But I thought, how can I give up flying and my parents would be ashamed of me and that was I suppose the real reason why I carried on, but I don’t know whether that’s the truth or not because
GR [Cough] So them three that decided they didn’t want to fly were they just taken away from training or what?
RN Yes, I don’t know what happened ‘em,
GR: They just disappeared.
RN: I did find out, and I’m not going to give details because it’s a man.
GR: No, no. Yes,
RN: But my daughter did find out that the mid upper gunner er lived to be in his eighties,
GR: Right.
RN: But I never got in touch with him.
GR: No.
RN: Never got in touch with him, but er as I say, I won’t mention names.
GR: No, no, no.
RN: But then as I say, er we did eleven ops, one of which was er Munich.
GR: Tell me about your first op.
RN: Oh, the first op
GR: Cause that was the first, because obviously then you’d you’d done your training and then you were sent to 106 Squadron.
RN: Yes that’s right.
GR: Where were they based?
RN: Er Metheringham in Lincoln
GR: Metheringham, so. Right
RN: Metheringham so,
RN: Metheringham
GR: Tell us how you felt about that, going to Metheringham.
RN: Oh, I felt delighted. In fact when we walked into the Nissen Hut you know there was nice beds there, with sheets and two fires, and Jim, and er, the wireless operator turned round and said “Looks everybody’s flak happy [laugh] one of the crew, one of the crew who was in there, said you’d be bloody flak happy if we’ve been shot at and I always remember that but anyway it was, I was happy, I was doing what I wanted to do. I don’t say I wasn’t frightened, I was scared, because I’m going to be truthful, on one occasion, we were briefed to go to to Berlin and I knew at that time it was a very very bad operation.
GR: Yeah.
RN: Because of the losses that we knew about, but when he turned round, the Squadron Leader turned round, and said we were going to Berlin, a big cheer went up. I didn’t cheer, because I was really afraid. I was, I was frightened. The first time I was ever frightened of going on an operation. But we went out to the planes, ready for take off and then a message came through ‘Return to the briefing room.’ And when we went back to the briefing room, the Squadron Leader said, ‘Sorry chaps the operation is cancelled,’ and the cheer that went up then.
GR: You cheered then.
RN: I did, yes. I did.
GR: [Laugh] So what was your first operation, where can you remember where that was
RN: Yes I think it was the Dortmund Ems canal
GR: Oh right
RN: And er. we went there two or three times because it was obviously a way for the Germans to move the troops and materials.
GR: Yes
RN: Armaments But I always remember it because it was very cloudy, and we had to come under the clouds to bomb, and when we dropped the bombs, a few seconds later when they landed, the aircraft shook [laugh] because we was that low.
GR: You were low down
RN: Low down. But that was the one that er, but as I say I said to my granddaughter oh ‘bout twelve months ago, I know it sounds crazy but never once did I think I was going to die, never. The thought never entered my head. I was afraid, you know. I, whenever the bomb aimer said ‘bombs away’, I was always thinking good, now we can go home!
GR: Let’s go back
RN: Yeah. But um, I went on a few ops, you know, we went to Norway, France marshalling yards, um, Aalburg, just outside of Hamburg, um, Munich twice, but on the second time we went to Munich, er, we dropped our bombs, and I wasn’t too concerned because the first time there wasn’t much flak, no enemy fighters, and er when the bomb aimer said ‘bombs away‘ I thought ‘great we’re going home now,’ but suddenly the plane went out of control and what had happened, we’d nearly collided with one of our own aircraft. The plane went out of control so much so that the crew tried to bail out and ditched the escape hatch. And of course, being January,
GR: So out of the plane was out of control.
RN: Yes. I was
GR: Was it spiralling down or
RN: Spiralling down, well, yes,
GR: Yes.
RN: Spiralling down, but luckily the pilot, a wonderful pilot, managed to regain control. But
GR: But nobody had bailed out?
RN: Nobody had bailed out, but the escape hatch had gone and icy cold air was coming into the aircraft so, he immediately called me up and said would I vacate my turret and give my gloves to the navigator so that he could plot a course, to near Paris, for the emergency aerodrome. But then I was sitting in the back
GR: Was the aircraft flyable then?
RN: Oh yes,
GR: It was okay
RN: Oh yes, the only thing wrong with the aircraft, we were flying blind and the esc and no escape hatch. Because icy air was flying in,
GR: Right
RN: The machine. And then the pilot called up the mid upper gunner and said er ‘Mid upper gunner, can you see the deck yet?’
GR: So where were you, sorry Ron, so where, so you’ve come out your turret
RN: I’d come out my turret
GR: Where were you sat or what were you doing?
RN: That’s it, I was sat on the Elsan! [laugh] OK Margaret.
[Other] – I’ll just put this away [whisper] sorry, sorry see you next week
RN: See you next week.
[Other]: Bye.
GR: Right.
NR: Yes. We were, you know, in the area of [pause] still near the German border.
GR: Yes, er sorry we’ve just interrupted but. So, you’ve come out of the rear turret
RN: Yeah, so I’m sat on the Elsan at the back,
GR: Yes.
RN: Plugged in the intercom and was waiting to hear what was going on, and then the the pilot called up the mid upper gunner and said ‘Mid upper gunner can you see the deck yet?’ And without any panic, the mid upper gunner said ‘Yes skipper, it’s right below us.’ The skipper’s response was, ‘It can’t be, [emphasis] we’re at four thousand feet.’ But we weren’t. The altimeter must have been giving a false reading, because suddenly I felt myself being pushed forward and went unconscious for hours. When I came to, the plane was on fire, and I’d, I’d been unconscious for hours but I managed to, dis - my harness had saved my life so I managed to press the button, release my harness, fell to the floor, but I’d broke my leg, punctured my lung and dislocated my right arm.
GR: So what had happened?
NR: Well I’d obviously it’d I had pull I’d gone forward and hitting the mid upper turret but my harness had got caught on the fuselage and pulled me back.
GR: So I know you told me earlier, but basically the plane, the Lancaster, you all thought you were at four thousand feet, but you were at ground level and it crashed.
NR: It crashed in a forest.
GR: Crashed straight in.
RN: In on a hill in occupied allied occupied France.
GR: Right.
NR: Near the German border.
GR: Yeah.
RN: And er I lay there for hours because this was just turned eight o’clock at night. Day broke the next morning, I was still lying there waiting for people to come, and then I heard bells ringing from a church.
GR: So you’re inside the aircraft.
NR: Yeah.
GR: Yes.
NR: No, managed to get out of the aircraft.
GR: Oh sorry.
NR: I open the door, crawled out of the aircraft.
GR: Was there anybody with you?
NR: No no I was on my own.
GR: Right.
RN: All on my own, because Harry he he was saved because said he had a feeling we were going to crash and he held on to the spar, you know near the Perspex astrodome.
GR: Yes.
RN: And that melted actually melted on to him and he got out, he was badly burnt but luckily only on skin deep and he escaped early because he wasn’t unconscious. So I didn’t know he was alive and he didn’t know I was alive and then,
GR: And at the time, I know you’ve already told me, but the rest of the crew were killed.
RN: Five of the crew were killed.
GR: But you didn’t know this at that time.
RN: No no.
GR: So, you, you’ve come round, you’re in the aircraft, sorry, you’re outside, you didn’t know where you was, what’d happened.
RN: No. And then it, suddenly I heard bells ringing from a church. So I thought, sounds near, so I crawled out of the forest in the direction of the bells, and lay by a tree on a, in a field, and I shouted for help and within minutes I saw three people running towards me, one of who I found out later was the bell ringer. So I was taken to the Mayor’s house, who who looked after me, till the ambulance came and again, luckily for me, there was a hospital three mile away at a place called Commercery in France with American personnel running the hospital. They looked after me, and gave me doses of penicillin but er, because I got gangrene, that’s what, well it turned to gangrene
GR: So your right leg .
RN: Yeah, my right leg.
GR: Which had broke, frostbite, gangrene had set in.
RN: Yeah, so they took half me foot away.
GR: While you were still in at the
RN: Still in France yeah,
GR: Right.
RN: We’d gone. Then we they sent me back to England on a hospital train and then when I got to England I went to a place, RAF Hospital in Swindon and eventually I had to have my leg off below the knee but and it was okay, So luckily. [emphasis] Again, I repeat this word luck, because I think life is all about luck.
GR: Yes.
RN: I was lucky I was,
GR: When did you actually find out that the rest of the crew hadn’t made it?
RN: Oh at when I was in the American hospital.
GR: Yeah.
RN: And, cause that was when they told me that Harry was safe, he’d, he’d escaped, and er as I say he crawled out on to the aircraft body and er he found his way to a sheep hut in the middle of the village and er someone came with a pitchfork, thought he was a German. But he made them realise he was he was English, and they looked after him, same as me. I was well looked after. The French looked after me. I’ve got nothing but admiration, in fact I became good friends, as I say 43 years afterwards my brother-in-law turned round and said ‘Ron, come on, we’re going to find this village where you crashed.’ And I remember going to the village, asking a young lady who happened to be Andre’s daughter-in-law if she could speak English. She said a little, but she didn’t understand. But again I was lucky, she took me to a hou- bungalow two hundred yards away cause it was only a little village, and the woman there could speak perfect English, in fact she was an interpreter for the American Armed Forces during the war. [laugh] So again became good friends and she sent her husband Guy, er who was a prisoner of war in Germany, to deliver it, who spoke to Andre and a few minutes later Andre came up in his truck and er when he saw me he put his arms round me and hugged me, made a fuss of me, and he when he went up to his house. This is important, he went to his larder and he brought out a cake tin which he’d made from the Lancaster bomber, the salvage, the bomber. So Reg, my brother-in-law had it engraved with 106 Squadron, 5 Group, Metheringham, details of the crash and we took it back to Andre. When Andre saw it he claimed it, went to the larder and brought out another cake tin, and gave me that, so Reg, my brother-in-law, had it engraved in French, so we then we done a swap. So Andre had erm a cake tin which was engraved with the French details and I had a one with in English.
GR: Have you still got it?
RN: Well, my daughter’s got it over in Bedford.
GR: Oh that’s lovely.
RN: O yes, oh yes, she’s got it alright.
GR: So going back to the hospital erm, this would be round about March, April, May 1945?
RN: Correct.
GR: Yeah.
RN: Yeah that’s right.
GR: How long was you in hospital for in England?
RN: Well, on and off um because of the different, the gangrene, taking a long time, er it was about 5 months.
GR: Right.
RN: But it was er way into November [emphasis] before I had an artificial leg. But um, well I was lucky, I managed to run and dance and play golf.
GR: So I, I presume then you were released from the RAF.
RN: Yes, yes.
GR: Yes.
RN: And I did say, I’ve gotta get, one thing about being old you can tell the truth, I do remember telling well the, some of the officers who came to interview, that I didn’t want to fly again, and I didn’t. It was true, I didn’t want to fly again. Erm you know, because of what had happened to me. But er nothing was said or done. I was discharged, on a discharge.
GR: What did you do after the war Ron?
RN: Well I was, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Bendix washing machine?
GR: Yes.
RN: But I the firm I worked for was making washing machines.
GR: As an engineer, or
RN: No I went as a progress clerk.
GR: Right.
RN: And again, it was the happiest days of my life. I can still remember nearly all the part numbers of the panels, the motors and all the integral parts even now, and I loved it and again, I suppose I was lucky because one week we didn’t reach the target and my manager turned round to the superintendent and asked him to fiddle the records to say that we had achieved the target. [Cough] But my superintendent turned round and said ‘Right our Ron, we’ll give him the, what he wants but I’m going to send one to the Chairman and the others with the correct details.’ Now, I know I’m right, I know in my heart I’m right. I didn’t like that, I thought, you know, you can’t, you can’t give the Chairman the correct details and the manager the wrong details. So I did tell the manager and er I wasn’t ashamed of it, I told him what what had happened and he turned round to the super and he says ‘I’m accepting what you said, we’ll just issue the right details.’ So, I was pleased about that. But I tell you that little story because, I’m sure he recommended me to be promoted to the buying office.
GR: Ah right.
RN: So er and then I was asked to take over the stores which I did. And I enjoyed it, but er the happiest job I ever had without a doubt was as progress clerk. It wasn’t you know, was well paid, but um I was just happy doing it.
GR: Yes. And I, I have to ask because you were waiting for me at the door when I came up and I didn’t know you had a, obviously a false leg, it’s not been a hindrance to you, or?
RN: Well, only in later life
GR: Yeah.
RN: Only twelve months ago.
GR: Well you look well when I came, Ron. [laugh]
RN: Well, that’s the medication
GR: Yeah
NR: The medication is great oh its er
GR: But since the war, the last sixty seventy years it’s not stopped you doing anything?
RN: No, no.
GR No.
RN It’s only in the last couple of three years
GR Yeah
RN But er I started to lose me balance which you do when you’re old.
GR: Which you do as you get older.
RN: when you get old.
GR: Yeah.
RN: But other than that, great.
GR: Oh that’s good, that’s good. And I know you mentioned Harry, who was the other survivor.
RN: Yes.
GR: And I know he passed away a few years ago.
RN: Well, Harry er he married a girl from Barrow-in-Furness. He came from Brighton and er they decided to emigrate, so they adopted a child and went to New Zealand. Unfortunately his wife, Winnie died, in New Zealand, so he came back, to England. So I, I met him at Southampton, and er driving back to Birmingham and then I drove him to Barrow to er see his sister-in-law, but then the next thing I knew, a few months later, he married a girl in Sheffield and er I was in we was we was in touch all the while and er eventually unfortunately, his wife died and then um because of our age, Harry died.
GR: Yeah. What was Harry’s surname?
RN: Stunnell, Harry Stunnell.
GR: Stunnell.
RN: Yeah, he’s mentioned in the book of course, but er we were good friends, We were obviously we got something special happen to us, which bonded us together.
GE: Were the crew, were the other five members of the crew buried in France?
RN: Yes indeed.
GR: Yes.
RN: In fact I’ve been to the cemetery.
GR: That I was going to ask if you’d been.
RN: Yeah, oh yes, I’m glad you asked that Gary because the name of the cemetery was C H O L O Y and in fact I though it was [sounded] shaloy but in French it’s [sounded] Shalois. Shalois. But, er yes. Andre the er bell ringer, two or three times, he took me to the cemetery and I saw all the graves of the crew and others, and I even met the gardener who’s main job was to look after the cemetery and er you know yes, it was nice, it was nice to er, to see it.
GR: Like you’ve said, you’ve said a couple of times I think, because you didn’t know you were going to crash, cause obviously crews er the pilot said get ready to crash land.
RN: That’s right.
GR: Brace yourself.
RN: That’s right
GR: The pilots looking for somewhere to land, this came completely out the blue.
RN: Oh yes,
GR: You knew you were in a bit of trouble but didn’t realise you were that low.
RN: And of course, the pilot was going by his instruments.
GR: Yeah, And he wouldn’t have known nothing.
RN: Yeah so at least on my consolation is, that they died within seconds.
GR: Yeah.
RN No Didn’t suffer no, so, that I know that sounds bad.
GR Suffer. No, no it’s not bad at all it’s erm.
RN Well that’s briefly the life I had. I was married er I had a lovely wife.
GR: Married after the war I presume?
RN: Yes um, I was married at the end of er November in 45 and I had two daughters and a son and the two daughters even today spoil me rotten.
GR: And so they should [laugh]
RN: Well, [laugh] unfortunately my son died with cancer, but um no, I’ve had a good life, I’ve keep using this word lucky, but well I have been a lucky person, I have been a lucky person, and still am.
GR: Yeah. Lucky, but good. Good yeah. Ron has kindly donated his book “Saved by the Bell”, erm, which the the University can use to take bits out etc, I’ll just switch off. That was lovely thank you Ron.
RN: I have sent one to the University of Lincoln.
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 Ronald Needle
Creator
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Gary Rushbrooke
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-04
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ANeedleR171004
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:30:37 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Ron Needle, from Birmingham, flew operation as a rear gunner on 106 Squadron Lancasters at Metheringham. Operations included Norway, Dortmund Ems Canal and Munich; he was one of two survivors after his aircraft crashed in France. Ron was aided by local villagers in Choloy and treated by American doctors. Repatriated to England, his lower leg had to be amputated and he was discharged from the RAF. Ron married and had three children. He returned to France, visiting the villagers who helped him and the graves of his crew.
Contributor
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Anne-Marie Watson
Spatial Coverage
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France
Germany
Great Britain
England--Birmingham
England--Lincolnshire
France--Meurthe-et-Moselle
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
England--Warwickshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
106 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
crash
crewing up
fear
final resting place
heirloom
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
military living conditions
Operational Training Unit
RAF Metheringham
Stirling
training
-
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/903/11143/PJonesMH1602.2.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/903/11143/AJonesMH160422.1.mp3
d49d041dc66e4b40ec69f26d7b270c99
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
Jones, Mervyn
Mervyn Henry Jones
M H Jones
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Mervyn Jones (1600670, Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a wireless operator with 106 and 218 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-22
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Jones, MH
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is Mervyn Jones. The interview is taking place at Mr Jones’ home in Farnham in Surrey on Friday the 22nd of April 2016. Ok. Mr Jones if we could start off with you saying a bit about your early life.
MJ: I was born in Abercynon. A small mining village at the junction of the Aberdare and Merthyr valleys. My father was a miner. Like most miners in those days there was very little money available and we were quite poor but we lived and enjoyed ourselves. My father wasn’t very keen on seeing his children being brought up in a mining village. First of all he went to Burnham on Sea or Highbridge to work on the farm there but decided that farming was not going to be very much better than mining from his children’s point of view. So he was given a lift whilst he was aiming to go to Poplar where he was told there was a lot of work. He got as far as Uxbridge and when he asked for directions to Poplar he was, he was then asked, ‘What are you going up there for?’ He said, ‘Work.’ And the individual he was talking to said, ‘Well, don’t go there. Go to Slough.’ So, he said, ‘Never heard of the place. Where is it?’ So, they told him and he and the friend he was with they went to Slough and spent the, spent the night on a, sleeping on a bale of straw in the cattle market only to be woken up at about 5 o’clock in the morning by all the cattle coming in. That was in about August. Dad got work and he managed to get a house to rent. And the rest of the family that’s my mother, my brother and two sisters travelled up in December 1935 and we lived, lived in Slough and around for quite a number of years after that. In 1939 I became employed by a firm of solicitors in Slough as the office boy. Duties were not too onerous but I was given various books to study with a view to making a career in the law.
[recording pause]
MJ: One little backdrop. In 1937 having read various newspapers about football teams I decided that I would go to the Arsenal ground and see a football match. I told my parents I was staying on this particular Saturday with a school friend when in point of fact I travelled up to Paddington and then on to Highbury. Saw a wonderful football match and I’ve been an Arsenal supporter ever since. That was in 1937 [pause] Come 1941 I volunteered, or went to join the air force realizing that I was in fact twelve months too young. So I told them my birth was 24th of January 1924 instead of 1925. And fortunately for me no, nobody really queried it. And I was duly signed in and in April 1942 I was told to report to Padgate. The [pause] my father had signed all the forms for me to join. He believed that I wouldn’t pass the medical but whether they were rather lax or not I don’t know but —
DM: Why did he think that?
MJ: Well, all the, all the Jones’ family suffer with ear trouble and although in those days it wasn’t too bad I still had trouble from time to time. I think it stemmed from when I, when I was a very small child every time I was teething I got ear infections. And it’s effectively the same thing throughout the whole of my life. If I get a cold I get an ear infection. Sometimes in both which is rather embarrassing. The — I reported to Padgate where I was kitted out and so on and then we went on to Blackpool. The radio school there. And having completed that course went on to Yatesbury where I was very pleased to pass out as top of the course which surprised me and surprised the family as well. We went from there to Peterborough and a little satellite drome called Sibson. We were supposed to be there to do repairs, or repairs to the radios in the Harvards that were used for training but for the whole time that we were there we didn’t see a radio. Didn’t see anything at all. All we did was guard duty and run of the mill stuff. But we went back to Yatesbury and finished off the course where again I managed to be top of the course. From Yatesbury we went to Stormy Down in South Wales for a gunnery course where lo and behold I came top of that course as well. I won’t tell you the whole secret of it but a lot, a lot of people were pulling my leg about the fact that the warrant officer in charge of both radio school and then the gunnery school was a personal friend of the family [laughs] So, I rather suspect that my successes were partly, must be partly down to him. I didn’t think I was that brilliant. I thought I wasn’t a bad wireless operator. We went from there to various sites. Cark and Cartmel for flying in Ansons. And then on to Market Harborough where we were flying in Wellingtons. Mark 1 with Pegasus engines. Totally underpowered clapped out old things that from time to time ploughed into the ground and killed all the crew. Whether we were lucky or not I don’t know. I think I must have been because we had no problems at all. We, we crewed up there with a pilot, Ginger Durrant. A navigator called Jones who unfortunately got us lost on a couple of occasions and got shifted out of the [pause] shifted out of our crew. And myself. We then, we finished training there and were sent to Swinderby to convert on to Stirlings which I was never enamoured with. But having done the conversion course we were then sent to Syerston to convert on to Lancs. Which we duly did. And then got posted to Scampton for about three weeks. And from Scampton we went to Metheringham. We went there at the end of February 1944. We got there and two days later it snowed and it stayed snowy. No flying for about two weeks. Then we did the usual familiarisation before we were ready to go on ops. It wasn’t until the 20th of March that we, we did our first trip which was to Frankfurt. And we had bombed and we were flying straight and level to take photographs and we were suddenly coned in searchlights which was quite an alarming experience. One minute it’s pitch black. The next minute you’re absolutely flooded with light. Anyway, the skipper put the aircraft in a very steep dive and threw it all over the sky and after a while and it’s difficult to judge how long it took, it might only have been a few minutes. It might have been a few seconds. But anyway we were suddenly in the dark again. And the thing that fascinated us was there was no anti-aircraft fire. There had been all the time that we were travelling but whilst we were in the searchlights there was nothing. And we came to the conclusion that searchlights were holding us so that night fighters could come up and attack. But anyway they didn’t and we got away with it. We got back on course. Came home with no problems at all. The second op was a major disaster. We were briefed to go to Berlin and it was the last of the raids of the [pause] I think they called it the war against Berlin but whatever it was it was the last of the main force flights to that city. Well, we took off and we got part way, about half way across the North Sea and the skipper doing the usual checking with everybody. Making sure they were ok. Called up the [pause] mid-upper gunner and got no reply. So the usual thing, if anybody wants anything done they call the wireless operator. So they called me, ‘Go and see what’s wrong with Wally.’ So, I went down there and shone a torch in to see what had happened. Wally was well away. He was flaked out and his oxygen tube was flapping in the breeze. How long he’d been like that we had no idea. Presumably from take-off. But anyway we dropped down to about eight thousand feet and kept going. And the engineer and I tried to get him out of the turret. At first we lifted him up with his bottom, unhooked the seat and with that we couldn’t hold him, the weight of him, he slipped down and was totally wedged. Feet in the front. His head over the guns. And his bottom sticking out of the turret. And it took us an hour to get him out. We strapped him in the rest bed, plugged him in to oxygen and the intercom. And by then we were well over the Baltic so we climbed up to operational height and turned to go due, almost due south to Berlin. This was the raid where the Air Ministry was forecasting the winds of sixty miles an hour. And our navigator said, ‘It’s more than that. It’s more like ninety.’ And in fact that’s what it was. So when we turned to go to Berlin we shot down from the Baltic to Berlin in no time at all. Realising that we were going at a fair, fair old lick he decided that when we, when we got to the target if it was marked we would, we would drop our bombs on the first run so we didn’t have to go around into wind which would reduce the ground speed considerably and making us a sitting duck for night fighters. Anyway, we went through Berlin and we dropped the bombs, got back on course to go home. No problems at all other than Wally. Anyway, we got, we got fairly close to England and got a message we were diverted to Wing in North Bucks so changed course and then the engineer, his nickname was Podge, he said we’d got trouble with the hydraulics. So, when we got over England we, I was given the task of pumping down the undercarriage to make sure we could land in reasonable fashion. I did that and Podge indicated to all of us that we, we would be able to land on wheels but we would have only a limited amount of flap and possibly no brakes at all. So anyway we, we got permission to land at Wing. We came in and landed and we landed on the almost on the perimeter track to try to make sure we had enough runway to be able to stop. But we didn’t. We just went off the end of the runway and pranged the thing. And when we got out we were told by the ground crew that, at Wing, the aircraft was a write off. Which turned out to be not quite true. It was very badly damaged but it was eventually brought back to Metheringham and they took about two and a half, three months to repair it. So we were taken back the following day by another crew, interviewed and so on and that’s the last we heard of it. But the one thing that we had discussed on the way back we would not say anything at all in debriefing or any, anywhere or anytime afterwards about what happened to Wally. Because if we did he would undoubtably be grounded and we didn’t fancy going through the rigmarole of having another replacement as we’d had a replacement navigator with Jones having been thrown out. We had a rather large individual given to us as our new navigator. A fellow called Jim Pittaway who was quite a bulky fellow and naturally he was called Slim. I use these nicknames because when we were flying we used those nicknames. We never called each other pilot or skipper or wireless operator or gunner or whatever. It was always nicknames. The, the bomb aimer was Buck. His name was Buchanan. The pilot was Ginger. The engineer was Podge. The navigator was Slim. I was Taff. The mid-upper gunner was Wally. And lo and behold the rear gunner was Keith [laughs] because nobody could think of a suitable nickname for him. Anyway, we, we had two little dodge it flights for the first experience. The remarkable thing was that apart from a few flak holes in the rest of our ops we had no problems at all. It was uncanny really that we did another thirty three ops and we had no difficulties of any description. It was quite remarkable. When I say that there were two occasions when we had to abort for an engine trouble but you know, that that happens to everybody. The — can we, for a moment?
[recording paused]
MJ: We did thirty five ops because quite, quite a few of them were at one stage described as a third of an op. Mainly the occasions when we went to France instead of Germany. After, after our fourth trip, the fourth one in fact was that infamous Nuremberg raid, after our fourth trip we were given Able as our aircraft. And we did twenty eight out of our thirty five in that aircraft which is, was a squadron record for that particular aircraft which completed a hundred and eleven ops [pause] The painting up here was given to me last year as the sole surviving member of our crew in recognition of our twenty eight ops in that one aircraft. The nearest to us — I think there were two or perhaps three that did eleven but that was the gap. Eleven to twenty eight. It was quite a record.
DM: Did you keep in touch with the crew after the war?
MJ: I did with the pilot. With Ginger but not the others. I initially made contact with them but it just faded away. So I thought oh well perhaps they’ve got their own lives to live. They didn’t, perhaps they don’t want to live in the past. But it was only Ginger that I kept in touch with and it was fortunate that he was in touch with the rest of the crew and passed on information about them from time to time.
DM: When you were on ops what were the off, what was the off duty periods like? Did you all associate together as a crew or — ?
MJ: Yeah.
DM: Were you all NCOs or —
MJ: Until, until we got to the squadron we were all NCOs. And then Ginger was commissioned. But the rest of stayed as sergeants, flight sergeants and ultimately warrant officers. A lot of our raids as I said were over France. And we operated twice on D-Day. First time was about 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning. And then we went back again 11, 12, 1 o’clock for a second op. And then after that it was communications and occasionally German reinforcements. You know, tank squadrons. That sort of thing. They also did a lot of communications. Railway junction sand bridges and so on. There were also a couple of doodlebug depots. One in particular that we went to twice in forty eight hours was a place called Saint Leu-d’Esserent which was a storage place for these doodlebugs. We operated that particular night with 617. We went in at, the base that we had was 617 at Woodhall Spa, 83 and 97 Pathfinder Squadrons at Coningsby and 106 at Metheringham. That was base. We flew several times with 617 but that Saint Leu-d’Esserent was a bit of a shocker really. The storage was actually built into the side of a mountain and we were briefed to bomb the approach roads and railways. 617 in the first raid had other duties. I don’t know exactly what. But certainly on the second one they had these earthquake bombs and dropped these on top of the, not on the, right at the top but up the mountain and blew the whole thing to pieces. It was, I gather never repaired after that. The trouble was from our point of view that on the first raid there were two aircraft lost. On the second raid there were five. Which was the second time that the squadron lost five aircraft. The other occasion was [pause] I can’t remember the name of the place we went to but it was the night that 106 Squadron got its first or perhaps I might say the second Victoria Cross. I say second because Gibson was the officer commanding when 106 was at Syerston. And from there of course he went on to the Dambusters and that’s when he got the VC. We finished our ops in July.
DM: ’44.
MJ: ’44. The last raid was a bit of a nightmare from the weather point of view. We flew from Lincoln down to the middle of France to Givors. And for most of the journey we were in a thunder storm and lightning flashing everywhere and so we had to switch all the electronics off. We didn’t want them blowing up and starting a fire. We were about a quarter of an hour short of Givors when the clouds stopped. Beautiful evening. We duly bombed, turned around, came back and flew all the way back in the same thunderstorm. Very uncomfortable journey. Well, I then finished. Well, we all finished our tour. Ginger, because he’d done the second dickie trip had done thirty six. The rest of us with the exception of Slim, the navigator who missed one op because he had tonsillitis, he did thirty four. The rest of us did thirty five. I was then posted back to Market Harborough instructing. Something which frankly I hated. You get in the aircraft with a trainee wireless operator and he was told to operate. If he had any trouble come to me. Well, I must have been lucky or very unlucky depending on which way you look at it. I was never asked to do anything. So all I did was sit on my parachute on the floor opposite the wireless operator and toured around the country in these clapped out old Wellingtons. Didn’t like it at all. And I made several attempts to persuade the CO to send me back to a squadron but he wouldn’t have it. Anyway, at the end of, end of six months I was posted. Sent to 218 Squadron in Chedburgh in 3 Group which, the squadron had only fairly recently converted on to Lancasters. That prior to that they were still flying in Stirlings. Anyway, we, I did three more ops and the war ended. So I was a little frustrated because I thought there was a good chance of being able to complete a second tour. Anyway, that was that. The end of thirty — thirty eight ops. We then had the Manna ops. Flying and dropping food in Holland. I did four of those. Then I did seven Exodus trips bringing back British mainly prisoners of war. Flying them from Juvisy to Hurn, outside Bournemouth. And then back to Chedburgh. And then I did one ferrying a Lancaster to Abu Sueir which is near Port Said in Egypt. The idea was the aircraft were then being sent out to the Far East. We only did one. It was, it was a glorified holiday. We were stationed then [pause] I had a pilot called Lofting, a navigator called Andrews and an engineer who was called Conant. He proudly announced that his father who lived at Cottesmore where there was a ‘drome anyway, his, his father was the MP for Rutland. But he, he — no I won’t go on that. We’d, we were stationed at [pause] I’ve forgotten the name of the aerodrome now. Near Newquay anyway. Sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself. We were stationed at Dunkeswell near Honiton and we flew from there to St Mawgan which is near Newquay. From St Mawgan we were briefed to fly to Abu Sueir. Stopping first at Tripoli. Unfortunately on the very short journey from Dunkeswell to St Mawgan the port inner packed up and the radio failed. So there we were at this VIP station where all anybody flying across the Atlantic especially the big wigs landed there and were treated with food that was by our standards out of this world. And we were given the same food, the same treatment as the VIPs. I could have stayed there for the rest of the war actually. It was rather nice. Anyway, we, they brought in a new engine. Fitted that. And repaired the wireless. Or so they thought. We took off heading for Tripoli. Got half way across the Med and the engines started playing up again and the wireless packed up. So we decided the nearest ‘drome was an American one at Tunis so we logged in there. Contacted Tripoli. Told them what had happened. And we, we spent about a week in Tunis doing all the things that we couldn’t do back home. Again living with American breakfast and Tunisian food for lunch and dinner. Went to the cinema a couple of times. On the first occasion Conant lit up a cigarette and you could see the smoke going up as the beam of the film was on the screen. Then all of a sudden we were [laughs] I think there must have been about four people, these ushers or usherettes or whatever they were shining torches at us and old Conant put his cigarette out rather smartly [laughs]. Smoking was banned in cinemas out there. Anyway, we eventually got as far as Tripoli just in time for Christmas. We had a very hilarious time there. And then we flew on to Abu Sueir. Left the aircraft and travelled into Cairo by train. A very slow journey but quite comfortable. And they must have thought we were thirsty people because every five minutes they were coming around with kettles full of tea. Very weak tea. Tons of milk in it. What sort of milk I wouldn’t know but I suspect it was goat. Anyway, we went, we went to Cairo and spent New Year’s there and flew back in a Dakota on New Year’s Day. From Cairo to Luqa in Malta. No. To El Adem in the desert, Luqa on Malta, Nice and then home. And we took off at 4 o’clock in the afternoon of the 1st and arrived at Hurn about mid-day on the 2nd. A boring journey. There was nothing to do. There were no magazines to read. It was just a case of shut your eyes and let things go by. Anyway, we got back and we were told we were to take another aircraft out there. And we did familiarisation on, but two lots of circuits and bumps and that was the last of my flying in the air force. And I got sent to various stations after that. No flying. Ended up in the demob office getting everybody ready to go home except me [laughs] which was a bit frustrating at times. But anyway in August of 1946 [pause] That’s right. August ’46 I was demobbed. Sent down to Wembley, kitted out with a suit and a hat and shoes and what have you and went home. And I was officially given leave as everybody was. I made contact with a firm that I used to work for and yes they would take me back as a junior clerk at the princely sum of three guineas a week which was a bit of a come down considering that I was getting about seven pounds a week in the air force. All my friends who had been in the army or the navy they were all demobbed at the same time and they all, I think all except one worked in Mars on the Slough Trading Estate. And they, they were earning far far more than I was. That didn’t worry me. I was looking to the future and I kept on studying. Unfortunately, I was told after a while that I should pack it up. I had two illnesses that were causing or had caused a lot of problems. One of them I had what the doctor described as the finest dose of shingles that he’d seen in all his career. So I decided that’s it. You’re not going to qualify as a solicitor. You’ll be for the rest of your days, as I was at that moment a solicitor’s managing clerk. Now described as a legal executive. And I held that job until I retired in 1989. I came back as I say in ’46 and in ’47 I met a young lady that in 1948 I married and she’s sitting over there. We will be celebrating our sixty eighth wedding anniversary on the 17th of July this year. We had one daughter. You might have seen when you came in. One grandson sitting there. And I’ve one great grandson who is coming up to two.
DM: When you, when you look back on your days in the air force what’s the sort of abiding memory? You know. Is it one of pleasure or fear or what?
[pause]
MJ: I enjoyed my time in the air force except for that period when I was instructing. Or supposed to be instructing. From the point of view of entertainment, pleasure and so on particularly when we were at Metheringham it was a case of into Lincoln, have a couple of beers, go to the cinema. Things like that. I always made, I made a promise to my father that I would, I would keep him informed as to how I was getting on with various ops. And rather a primitive idea every time we did, I did an op, I wrote and said I’d been in to Lincoln to see a film. And I named the film thinking that, you know if the censors people opened it and read the letter that they might think it was genuine. It wasn’t. Anyway, I [pause] I did this the whole time and he kept the letters. And it wasn’t until oh many many years afterwards [pause] the 1980s I think it was my brother was doing some decorating, came across the letters, decided he didn’t want them and threw them out. And I was a bit annoyed actually because some of them were quite interesting letters from the point of view of what we were doing but without disclosing any trade secrets. Anyway, it was something that happened and you know I was annoyed with him at first but oh well that’s it. We, we, as a crew we kept to ourselves very very much. I can’t remember where it was. I think it was at Swinderby. A couple of crews were assembled and they were given a talk by a flight lieutenant who had done two tours. It was a general talk about life on, on the squadron. One of the things that he said that stuck in the minds of all of us was, ‘Don’t become too friendly with other crews because if you do and they get shot down you will feel a lot of embarrassment, a lot of sympathy. It could upset you quite considerably that these friends of yours had just disappeared.’ So we talked about it afterwards and decided well we’d keep ourselves to ourselves. I mean we didn’t snub anybody but when we went anywhere it was not as a whole crew. It was sort of, ‘I’m going in to Lincoln tonight, Wally. Interested?’ ‘Yeah. Ok.’ And off we’d go. And the same with the others. They would do that. It didn’t happen quite the same way when I was at 218 Squadron. That was quite different. I enjoyed it there but there wasn’t the friendship with the crew. Partly I think because they had been shot down. The pilot was killed. The wireless op, his parachute was damaged so he jumped out holding on to the navigator. But as soon as the parachute opened [pause] the navigator and the parachute went up and I’m afraid the wireless op went down and he got killed. And I was there replacing him. The pilot we had, also a replacement, back on his second tour. And the navigator. He didn’t want to fly anymore. But he was just given a ground job and that was that.
DM: Did you have any superstitions? Any routines? Anything you had to do before you flew? Or —
MJ: No. The only thing that we did we had a doll which was given to Keith by his girlfriend. And it was then handed to me so that I could on every trip strap it up to the pole that was by the side of my radio. Tied it up the top. And it did thirty five ops and then when we parted I gave the doll back to to Keith so he could return it to his girlfriend. I met a WAAF as everybody did at some stage or other. Chatting with her she produced a little green sort of leatherette dog. Only a tiny little thing, ‘Take it on ops with you.’ So we took it on ops for the second one which I described to you. To Berlin. And that’s the only op the dog did [laughs] We, I I don’t think, oh I can’t speak very well for the others but I don’t think I was ever scared. When we, when we were coned in searchlights I was worried then. I remember not panicking but thinking, ‘God, we must get out of this otherwise we’ll get the chop.’ You know. And there was nothing any of us could do except rely on Ginger which we always said he was a very good pilot and by God the way he threw that Lanc about that night was unbelievable. I thought he was going to loop the loop at one stage. He was a very very good pilot.
DM: You mentioned the ear problem. Did that ever give you problems when you were flying? You obviously didn’t miss any ops because of it but —
MJ: What I had trouble with in flying was sinus. I wasn’t going to report sick. No way. If I couldn’t hear I couldn’t hear. That was it. You know. But seriously I didn’t like the idea of reporting sick. Missing ops and then becoming a spare bod. Flying with any Dick, Tom and Harry that was short of a wireless op. I didn’t fancy that at all. We had two little incidents where we more or less did the wrong thing. Buchanan went into the kitchen at the mess one night and leaned back, put his hand down on the red hot stove and on his left hand, which was fortunate he had an enormous blister on the palm of his hand. He just took a, stuck a bandage around it, wore a glove and kept on flying. And on one op, having ground tested everything we got out of the aircraft and waited for the signal to rev up and go. And I was getting out of the, getting out of the Lanc after doing what was necessary, caught my foot on the stepladder that we used to come out of the — get in and out of the Lanc. I just fell flat on my face from the top step down and I ripped my hand, the right hand. It was badly swollen but I wasn’t going to go sick. No way. But other than that and Slim having a couple of days in hospital when he had tonsillitis or flu or something apart from that nobody had any problems at all. Going back to [pause] the second trip to Berlin, in all the time that we were together after that nobody ever mentioned Wally’s oxygen. There’s no record of it anywhere. We just didn’t. Didn’t want to change despite his silly mistake of not connecting it up properly. You know. You get to know people and you trust them. And we did trust Wally. Even after that incident. He, he was quite a good gunner. But they never had to fly like Keith. Never had to fire his guns in anger. In all the trips that we did we never fired guns.
DM: Did you have any thoughts after the war about the way Bomber Command were viewed in the aftermath? You know. This sort of almost disconnect with with what had happened.
MJ: No. I thought about it and I thought we were doing the right thing. The Germans had bombed every capital in Europe. Quite indiscriminate bombing. They came over to this country and bombed London and Coventry and Portsmouth and so on. Quite indiscriminate. They started it and we finished it and it, that was it. Now people say they very much regret the fact that they dropped these bombs and killed civilians. But I haven’t heard any German saying he’s sorry for having killed people in London. I look at it on the basis it was an all out war. If we didn’t win then we would be finished as a country. We would. Life, if you were allowed to live it would have been hell. It was something we just had to do and did it. I never regretted it at all. The one thing that does upset me is every time they talk about Bomber Command they talk about the last big raid. And it’s quite silly really because what happened was the same as happened in Hamburg when they bombed that. Nobody could forecast that there was going to be sudden strong winds fanning flames and so on. The same thing happened in — I don’t remember the name of the town [pause]. Right at the end of the war. [pause] I’m being told over there.
Other: [unclear]
MJ: Hmmn?
Other 2: I should know and I can’t remember.
Other: Dresden.
Other 2: Dresden.
MJ: Dresden. Yeah. I read a number of books in recent years about Dresden. Some were very anti the Bomber Command for having bombed it and more or less destroyed it. But there was one that I read, I can’t remember the name of the author but it gave a very very good account of why Dresden should have been bombed. At that stage even if there was no reason to have bombed it before Dresden was the railway junction at the southern part of the Eastern Front. And millions of German soldiers, armaments, tanks you name it all passed through Dresden to get to the southern Eastern Front. There were no very big factories in Dresden but there were hundreds of small factories. Some operating in garages and sheds and things like that. All producing items which were then transported to main depot and fitted as part of radar and so on and so forth. So from that point of view there was, as the book quite firmly came down to the fact that Dresden should have been bombed before. And it was, there was a request from the Russians to to bomb that town in order A — to stop the manufacture of armaments. Radar bits and so on. And B to stop the German army sending troops through that depot. I I [pause] I don’t think it was the wrong thing. In fact it was necessary in my opinion. That. I’ve never regretted dropping bombs on Germany for the simple reason it’s not just tit for tat because we dropped a damned sight more bombs on them then they did on us. And with a regime like the Nazis they just had to do that to get rid of them. You know. I had no regrets at all. I may be a bit exceptional in that. I don’t know. But it annoys me when people who have been on ops suddenly say that they’re terribly sorry for what they did. I don’t think they should say that. I don’t think they should even think it. It was something that just had to be done.
[recording paused]
MJ: A little earlier I was talking about not being too friendly with other crews. Other personnel. We generally kept to that. Not snubbing anybody or or so on but we didn’t become friendly. When I joined up I was sent to Oxford for medical examination and [pause] I was standing next to a young chap who told me he’d come from Portsmouth. And everywhere I went he went. And we started talking. When I was told to report to Padgate I was walking through the gates and who should be standing or walking next to me but this fellow. A chappie called Bill Sizer. And he told me that his, his father and his uncle were colour sergeants in the Marines and they didn’t take kindly to the fact that he’d joined the air force. Well, Bill and I did all our training together right up to and including Market Harborough at OTU. And then he and his crew were sent straight to Syerston to convert on to Lancasters whilst as I said before we went to Swinderby to convert on to Stirlings and then on to Lancs. So that he was a month or so in front of us. He was posted to Waddington first and then they moved to Fiskerton with 49 Squadron I think it was. Yes. 49. And in June of ’44 I was outside our billet writing a letter home and Ginger came along and said he’d got some bad news. That Dickinson and his crew, Dickinson was the pilot, Dickinson and his crew which included Bill Sizer had been shot down and were still missing. Or treated as missing and eventually they found out that in fact that they were all killed in the south of France. When he told me that initially my first thought was that lieutenant is going to be proved right because I was very upset. He was the only person that I really became friendly with in the whole time apart from the crew that I became friendly with during the whole time that I was in the air force. I think it shook everybody in our crew because strangely enough all, all the members trained together. The two pilots trained out in America. The two bomb aimers, both Canadians, they trained together in, in Canada. Engineers trained together. The wireless ops trained together. The two gunners trained together. And the only difference was the navigators. Jones had trained at the same time as Dickinson’s navigator but not Slim. But that upset me more than anything and I realised then that this flight lieutenant was absolutely right. We talked about it for, you know, one night in the billet. Ginger said something like, ‘Forget it. But don’t forget them.’ And left it at that. And we did. We didn’t mention it at all after that. You know, it was a sad situation but it happens to everybody.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Mervyn Jones
Creator
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David Meanwell
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-04-22
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AJonesMH160422
PJonesMH1601
PJonesMH1602
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Pending review
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01:11:36 audio recording
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
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Mervyn Jones is a miners son from Wales. His father wanted a different life to that of a miner for his son and the family moved away to Slough where was plenty of work. Mervyn had always had trouble with his ears and so his father assumed he wouldn’t pass his medical although he signed all the forms giving his permission for Mervyn to enlist. In fact Mervyn lied about his age to enlist and was indeed successful in his application. A WAAF gave him a little green leatherette dog to take on ops. On this particular op the mid-upper gunner passed out through lack of oxygen, the predicted winds were wrong and so they had to rearrange their flight plan and on return they lost hydraulic power. It was the last time the dog went on ops. The crew were advised about not getting too involved with other crews and the reason for this became obvious when one crew they were all friendly with were killed in action.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
France
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Suffolk
Germany--Berlin
Temporal Coverage
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1944-02
106 Squadron
218 Squadron
617 Squadron
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
bombing of the Creil/St Leu d’Esserent V-1 storage areas (4/5 July 1944)
Lancaster
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Metheringham
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Swinderby
RAF Yatesbury
searchlight
Stirling
superstition
training
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/843/10837/AGrayG160223.1.mp3
6e92d75aba3a539003690416ab8919c3
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Gray, Gilbert
Gilbert A Gray
G A Gray
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with GIlbert Gray (- 2023, 1823011 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer with 106 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-02-12
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Gray, G
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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GG: Up in Dunfermline, and that was within a stone’s throw, roughly three miles of ‘Bristle which is now the site of Dalgety Bay in the east.
Unknown: [Muffled speech]
BB: OK.
GG: And there was a constant stream of aircraft, and of course one. There was Hurricanes, Wellingtons, Martlets and so on. So I, In 1939 I entered, but War was declared on September the third, a few days. Nothing terribly much had been happening in the War, so the school reopened on October the 16th that day we heard strange noises in the sky and this was, in fact, the first raid on the mainland of Britain by Heinkels. At school I joined the Air Training Corps and had my very first flight at Donibristle, in a Swordfish, the open cockpit of a Swordfish. And after I left school I joined the Royal Observer Corps and served in the centre in Dunfermline. And we plotted all kinds of aircraft, from all sorts of aerodromes that existed in central Scotland. And we used to watch the track of what we called ‘Weather Willy’ over the North Sea. A German aircraft I presume collecting weather information. At eighteen and a half of course I enlisted. I was determined to be a pilot but I was told ‘We have too many pilots, they’re training all over the world, but if you want to go in right away you can go as an air gunner or a flight engineer.’ I chose flight engineer and in the middle of March I was off to Aircrew Recruiting Centre in London, the first time I had ever been away from home by myself. And there we were. We had our first introduction to discipline and that sort of thing, although I had been well served in the Air Training Corps because much of it I already knew. From ACRC we were soon sent up to Bridlington, to Initial Training Wing where we learned more of marching and aircraft recognition and weather, meteorology and that sort of thing. From there we were sent to flight engineers’ training at No 4 School of Technical Training at St Athan in South Wales. A course which last roughly six months or so in the course of which, well first part given over to instruction and various things mechanical, until the time came for us to be allocated to particular aircraft training. And I was fortunate enough to be selected to go on Lancasters and completed the training. And we marched past when we graduated with our sparkling new sergeant’s stripes. We got rid of our white cadets’ outfits and our caps and we had, of course, a flight engineer brevet to sew on so the needles were flying that night before the graduation. From there it was I think November 1943 or thereabouts, we were then sent to aircrew commanders school, so called at Scampton, the aerodrome from which the Dambusters flew on their great attack on the dams. Incidentally, I seem to remember as a boy, it must have been in 1942 when I was interested in aircraft, I heard a strange noise approaching from roughly the south, and lo and behold over the treetops came a vic of three Lancasters. And they rode over our house, virtually treetop height, and I can only believe that that was the Dambusters in one of their training flights before the Dambusters raid. Aircrew Commanders’ School, we had various physical training. We were kitted out there too, but at Christmas 1943 we were sent home for a short leave, after which I was posted to 1654 Heavy Conversion Unit at Wigsley, just outside Lincoln. And after some ground training there I flew for the first time in a Stirling which was a training aircraft there, dual controlled Stirlings. First flight February 23rd 1944. I was now in Bomber County. Well first flights in the Stirling were not all that exciting because I was very airsick. I had been crewed up with a Flying Officer Walters but I required medication so I was removed from that crew and had medical treatment and when I was deemed fit enough I joined Sergeant Brown’s crew. It was unusual for a pilot at that stage, to be simply a sergeant. However, Peter was an excellent pilot. I flew first with him on March the 3rd in 1944. And at this conversion unit we completed our eighteen exercises day and night, cross country’s, bombing practice and so on. Our bombing practice of course took place at Wainfleet on the Wash. No 5 Lanc finishing school came next where we met the Lancaster. And of course we were just amazed at its versatility after the fairly clumsy Stirling. And the thing I remember was that, I rather think our pilot, our instructor pilot was showing off a bit because we flew solo over the Wash, so we were leaving a wash literally behind us. And lifted the wing over Skegness pier, that sort of thing. But it was only a very short course only a few days really. I think about four days and of course we had been trained in three engine flying and that sort of thing because there was always a danger of losing an engine. Our short stay at Syerston led us to 106 Squadron based at Metheringham and one of the crews in No 54 base which as one then learned later was a rather, what one might call a crack [unclear] base which had Pathfinder squadrons. It had 617 Squadron and Mosquito as well. Unknown to us, we had been posted there five days after a rather disastrous attack as far as the squadron was concerned on I think it was, Schweinfurt, when five crews had been lost. And as we now know on one, in one of the aircraft was Warrant Officer Jackson, and we all know of his remarkable exploit resulting in the awarding of the Victoria Cross. Well we were one of the five crews moved to the squadron to replace the five crews that were lost on that night. A few days later having been acclimatised to the Lanc on the squadron and the various squadron procedures we were sent across to Coningsby to the 54 Base headquarters to pick up a brand new Lancaster straight from the factory. LL953 which was labelled with the squadron letters ZNC-Charlie. And that was on May the 4th in 1944. After a few exercises of getting used to, again squadron procedures and so on we were sent on our first operation on the 7th of May, a few days later. We were sent to a huge ammunition factory cum ammunition dump in the middle of France. Twelve of us were part of an attack of, I think fifty seven aircraft all together, but 106 sent twelve. Eight of us came back. We didn’t really realise it but very much in hindsight one realises that this was now really the beginning of the softening up process for the invasion that was due in June. We were beginning to take out targets which would cripple the enemy and protect the Normandy landing areas. As I say we lost four aircraft that night. Well in May 1997, fifty three years later I attended a memorial celebration at a tiny village called [?] the village where one of our crews had crashed that night. And this village wanted to remember these airmen, the seven airmen, by raising or by raising a memorial in their cemetery and by holding really a day long celebration. Fifty three years later in France the people wished to remember those lads. Those seven lads who were killed. Well two nights later and we begin to realise that we’re in a pretty hectic period we were sent to [?] which was on the outskirts of Paris and which was a big mechanical factory of, mainly of I believe of tanks and that sort of thing. This was a time when the authorities began to say ‘Well, these are easy trips to France compared with those who went to Berlin and other hotspots and so they decided that each operation now would be worth one third of an operation. Which meant that crews normally restricted to about thirty four would now be asked to do three times as many operations. However, about this time there was an attack on a military camp in Belgium at Burg airport and there was a very heavy loss of aircraft. I think if I remember correctly over forty aircraft where shot down in that attack. So, the authorities quickly changed their minds and realised this was a different situation because we were now operating within the fighter belts which were just as dangerous as the anti-aircraft resorts. We were sent, as I say we were really now in the, the leading up to the invasion, although we didn’t know it, so we were attacking railways as well. We were sent to Tours unfortunately our receiver went u/s and we had to be, had to turn back. But again on the 31st of May connected with the invasion we were sent to attack coastal batteries at Messe. But again we had trouble with our hydraulics and after attacking we were diverted to another aerodrome, to Chipping Warden, where we could land safely. But along came then D-Day. Just another operation as far as we were concerned. And we attacked the batteries at [?], which were on the American sector, where the Americans rangers had a dreadful time. But we, I remember, took off at two in the morning so we were there something like two hours before the attack on the ground took place. And we were flying on, it was a very cloudy morning, we were really flying between two layers of cloud we were at about ten thousand feet but we got a glimpse of their markers marking the aiming point and we attacked, I think successfully. But we soon went into cloud again. However, there we were out of the cloud at one point and four Fokker Wolf’s appeared. Fokker Wolf’s which was the German hotshot fighter.
BB: The 190’s?
GG: The 190 and two of them attacked and we saw their red tracers.
BB: Tracers.
GG: Coming towards us seemingly very, very slowly and when they reached us, [whooshing sound], past they went, luckily they missed us and our rear gunner was yelling ‘Get into the cloud, get into the cloud.’ And that we did and we got away safely. The next night on that, indeed on that very night, we were sent back to Caen where we were attacking the bridges, really quite low, about three thousand feet or so when we attacked, a lot of fighters about, and indeed we were attacked again by a Junkers 188 and we got some slight damage, the Perspex on the [unclear] above our heads in the cabin splintered and we got little cuts but nothing very much. So, we lost two aircraft that night, including our flight commander, Squadron Leader Sprawson, I remember. Anyway, that was really the invasion hotting up. The next few nights were very busy. 8th, 10th, 12th, 14th, 15th all evening attacks. Railways in Renne, railway junctions, Orleans. Ten of us from our squadron were sent to attack the railways south of Orleans, attack it, we attacked it for about thirty miles from one thousand feet and some of us, some of the crews were a bit more audacious, and went down to seven hundred. So, there was always a danger of being damaged by your own bombs. However, we did it and we tore up this railway line for about, as I say, thirty miles or so. Next night the same at Poitiers, more railways, Aunay-sur-Odon. On the 14th the armies were held up and there was a big concentration of troops gathered at this particular place, Aunay-sur-Odon, and we, it was a very heavy attack and we bombed I think from about seven thousand feet and the place was obliterated. This was part of the job of helping the armies to get through. Chateauroux fuel dumps, lots of fighters were out that night. And so it went on. We had done how many ops? About ten or so and it was time to be checked out by the wing commander. So, he took us up for an air test to see that we were behaving and performing well. And the aircraft we flew was AJG-George, held on our squadron. Which was the aircraft, that was, these were the letters of the aircraft which Wing Commander Gibson used in the bombing of the dams. He, of course, had been in the previous year, commander of 106 Squadron. However, at this time flying bombs came on the scene and London was being attacked and the South East of England was being attacked so some of our attacks now were switched to them.
BB: The V1 sites?
GG: The V1 sites [unclear] on the 18th of June. It was really quite difficult. The weather at this particular time was a hindrance I remember. But for these attacks, some which were to be made in daylight, our aircraft had their markings changed. The aircraft marking on the side of the aircraft, on 106 at any rate, was done in white. White letters, and on the tail fin it was repainted white with a green stripe, I presume so that different squadrons could be recognised. 21st of June, we’re back to the city. To the attacking of German industry, particularly the oil industry in Gelsenkirchen or a place called [unclear]. It was a terrifying night, because as we approached the target, I think I said in a letter back home I describe it as a red carpet set out for us. But it was a funny red carpet because it was a very dangerous one. This was the anti-aircraft fire over the target. But we had to turn towards it and go into it. Luckily, we got through it unharmed although our bomb aimer that spotted something had seemed ominous because he had noticed in front of us three successive anti-aircraft fire shells bursting in front of us in line with us. And he told the pilot ‘Look I think we’re being predicted here.’ The Germans could do that by fixing onto you and predicting your track. He says ‘I think we should turn a little bit to port.’ A few minutes later Wally at the back reported anti-aircraft explosion just where we probably had been. So, in that respect I suppose we were lucky, but on the way home, and as I now know, dead on track having done their attack. As we crossed the [unclear] Sea on the way home two of our aircraft were shot down by a night fighter. Of course, you or I back home you don’t know what’s happened to them. But many, many years, forty or fifty years later, I now know what happened to them because of links with a friend in the Netherlands. All that time later, from 1944 to 19, 2014 there came to be a message from the Netherlands from one, a gentleman called Beyard, who is an aircraft researcher. And he sent me an email containing a photograph of an electric motor. And it had come from a school who were doing a project because obviously the aircraft which had crashed nearby, in fact the two aircraft crashed very close to each other. The aircraft had been excavated, and the school now had possession of an electric motor. Where was it placed on the machine, on the aircraft? Now, I had to think now where would it be? But I was able to say well it had probably served various lighting, for example, in the aircraft and various bits and pieces of apparatus. And this developed into a real project, in fact a real memorial celebration in this village of [?] I think it was called. The school arranged this. I was invited by Herr Beyard to be connected with it because he had, in his research, tried to track down relatives of the crew but he couldn’t find anyone and the only one he could find who took part in that attack on that night was myself. And so, to cut a long story short I sent an article to them to be used in the ceremony and it was translated into Dutch and Mr Beyard recited it at the ceremony which was a very large, turned out to be a very large ceremony I think. And at the end of it the school children released balloons, and each had a tag with the name of a crew member. And as he said in his message to me, ‘We had an easterly wind that day and we do hope that some of these balloons reached Britain.’
BB: Did they?
GG: Oh, I really don’t know. By coincidence, not far away at the military ceremony at [?] the pilot, this particular pilot who was remembered by the school was Bellingham and his crew. Not far away the other crew that were shot down, pilot Jim Brodie who came from Paisley actually, he had a similar ceremony at [?] ceremony on the 1st of May I understand. All that time later and the crews are still remembered because the Dutch have a, seem to have an affinity with Bomber Command because they had such a wretched time. And rather than shout at the aeroplanes they were cheering the aeroplanes as they, as they passed over. Well, soon after we were back to flying bomb sites. And then in the middle of June we started formation flying. On three days we were formation flying, now that was really scary because we weren’t used to flying in formation and so close, flying in a vic you were turning to port for example the aircraft above you would start to slide in towards you. And we just weren’t.
BB: The risk was high then?
GG: We just were not used to this. And it transpires and Bomber Harris relates it in his book, that it was deemed by Dolittle of the Americans and himself that the time had come for a massive air attack by the Americans and ourselves on Berlin. Yes, on Berlin. And everything was set up and ready to go until Harris said ‘Now are all our fighters in place?’ Because we had to depend on fighter cover from the Americans. Our particular armament was pea shooters by comparison with the enemy fighters. And he discovered that there weren’t sufficient fighters to protect us. So, the effort was called off. So, I think that was a lucky escape because we had already been given our position under the main formation we were to lead a vic of three underneath the main formation.
BB: So the bomb risk must have been quite high?
GG: Maybe. So that was a relief to be relieved of that, although our neighbouring squadron 97 Squadron were on the same training, and two of their aircraft actually collided on formation flying and carried with them very senior members of the squadron. 29 of June we went on our very first daylight raid. Now that was very scary. But it was encouraging because I think we were flying quite high but this was a flying bomb area that we going to attack but we could see the Spitfires gliding above. Could see the sunlight sparkling off their canopies and so on which was a little cheering. We had a week’s leave after that. We shared, normally shared a Nissen hut with another crew. When we returned from leave their beds were empty, their cupboards were empty, because they had been shot down. While we had been on leave in two attacks on [?] which was a very large base for V weapons, we had lost from the squadron no fewer than seven aircraft. Two in the first attack, and five in the second, all by fighters. So ,it was quite a gloomy squadron that we returned to. It’s funny, many, many years later through squadron records and correspondence we discovered what happened to the crews. And I was particularly friendly with one in particular because he came, was a Scots lad, he was an engineer and came from Dysart, Kirkcaldy. And by coincidence my Father who was the local newspaper correspondent for the People’s Journal interviewed him because he had escaped. He had been protected by the French, and had finally got home and was back home and my Father interviewed him in Kirkcaldy. And I got in correspondence with his wife. Finally tracked her down. And she mentioned that on that particular night, Chick as she called him, Chick Swindley, had been on leave and was going back to the squadron. And he’d walked down the street from the house, he had turned and come back to her. And he said ‘Look don’t worry, because I’m going to be shot down but I’ll be OK.’ Now how’s that for premonition? And he was shot down, but he escaped. [?] was a very expensive thing. Back to railways, now there that was a long seven and a half hour trip. Now people tend to think we’re under attack all the time but in my letter home after that trip I described it as the most boring trip because nothing happened. We just flew there, dropped our bombs and flew back again. On the 17th we were, the Army had been held up at Caen, had difficulty in breaking through. So we were called upon, the air forces were called upon, to mount a huge attack on the Caen area to see if we could help the Army get through. We were given a particular target on the [?] , on the outskirts of Caen. And in fact I think we were, as I said in my letter home, we were supposed to bomb that particular morning but on that exercise there was something like four thousand five hundred aircraft involved. Huge heavy bombers and other areas roundabout Caen were attacked and well it was a pretty dreadful night, or day, for troops on the ground, imagine the German troops. On the target a few days later, to Kiel, to attack the naval establishments there. That meant a long trip to, well not a terribly long trip, about five hours probably. Low first of all over the North Sea, and then climb to bombing height and then we attacked Kiel. Two nights later, the 24th, we went to Stuttgart. Now it was one of the German industrial cities which had been difficult to attack because it lies in a valley on the River Neckar but we were tasked there and this was the first of a series of three raids I understand on the city. That night the flak, heavy anti-aircraft fire met us but we carried out our attack, seven and a half hours, nearly eight hours in the air. The following day we were operating in daylight, Sancerre, again helping the Army it was an airfield and signals centre. The following night [?], now that was a really long trip. Right across France, [?] being just south of Lyon. And apparently the Marquis were active in that area and we were sent to try and do something for them and we attacked the railway establishments there. We took off in a thunderstorm, we flew in a thunderstorm all the way there, thunderstorms, in heavy rain, the electricity was sparking between the guns on the aircraft.
BB: St Elmo’s fire?
GG: St Elmo’s fire. Because of the rain, and we had windscreen wipers, the electricity was dancing there and the pilot therefore we were, we were all being blinded by the flashes of lightning. And the pilot had to fly with his head below the screen so that he could see his instruments. That was a tough, a tough flight, a tiring flight, a very long flight. The following night we were out again, this time back to Stuttgart, and that night was a bad night, because thirty-nine Lancs were shot down that night and we came within an ace of being one of them because just after we dropped our bombs our rear gunner, who had a little instrument called ‘fish pond’, miniature television, little screen, and he noticed something that shouldn’t have been there, a little spot and he of course told us and not only that but our navigator, having heard us talk about the heavy flak the last time we were there had come out of his seat and was in the astrodome above looking out saying ‘Where, where, where’s all this heavy flak you were talking about?’ We said ‘Oh, that’s because the fighters are about.’ And sure enough, he apparently told me in a message later. He looked out of the port side of the aircraft and there was a fighter flying beside us. And [makes whooshing sound] just with that, a noise like that. Another aircraft that had come down from above us and had given us a burst. The fuselage behind me was like a pepper pot. The, as we discover later, as we were flying home and as daylight began to appear great shards of metal and we were very lucky, not one of us was hurt. But had it been a yard further forward on the aircraft I wouldn’t be here today. So that was Stuttgart. We got, we managed to get home. The pilot let me take over for a little while, as a flight engineer was able to do. And as daylight broke we saw the mess that the wings were in. But as we came home and were coming into land it was my job to check the under carriage, make sure it was down, it was locked, the tyres looked OK, and they certainly looked OK to me. But when we touched down, they must have, the one on the starboard side must have deflated and we swung off the runway. We had FIDO at Metheringham, which was fuel laden pipes along each side. Luckily we didn’t get involved with them, but that was a scary night. Then after I think many of our trips were concerned with flying bomb bases and we were then flying more frequently in daylight. I am listing, August the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th were all daylight, day after day. And then we switched later on in August, 6th of August we went to U boat pens at Lorient, and there again I think one or two aircraft where shot down in daylight, but we were flying with 617, they carried the very heavy bombs and we supported them on the U boat pens, but U boat pens were so well protected by many feet of concrete that it’s doubtful much damage was done.
BB: Were they using tall boys or grand slam?
GG: Now I couldn’t tell you.
BB: Big bombs?
GG: It would be the big ones, yes, yes. Again, oil storage tanks. We were coming to near the end of our tour we were getting a bit shaky, wondering if we were going to make it. We’d done what thirty-three? And we came to number thirty-four which was to be our last one. And it was a glorious autumn day, August the 11th and we were sent to Bordeaux, again to U boat pens. Four of us from our squadron wer sent ahead, about ten minutes ahead to calculate the winds and the altitude because the winds that the navigator, what the bomb aimer would be given at the start of our operation, might have changed and especially at that height so it had to be accurate so that the bomb aimers of the aircraft that were behind us could set their instruments properly. So, we then, we did that job and we came back and joined the main force and attacked the U boat pens. We carried that day the biggest bombs I think. No not the, they were rather different from the usual bombs we carried which were normally about five and a half tonnes. But these were, I think if I remember right, four armoured piercing thousand pound bombs in the most beautiful shapes. For this raid they attached ribbons to the ends so they could be watched as they were going down but I gather it wasn’t much of a success. Anyway we bombed these, did our job and got home safely. We were of course circling over the German airbase down below us wondering if a Messerschmidt was going to come up and visit us or not. But no, we were left alone and we got home safely and was the end of our, of our tour. Strangely enough a few years ago I was looking at the leisure section in the Sunday Times and there was an article on holidays in Bordeaux. And the visitors were advised to visit the Sous-Marine Bas, submarine base, which is now a leisure complex. [laughter] So we obviously didn’t do terribly much damage. So, there were are. That’s us finished on the squadron. A few days later we were dispersed. Now I had been with that crew only since February, February to August the 11th, but we had become so closely knit that these are the most important, some of the most important months of my life, and memory as many will know and conversation [laughs]. However, I was posted then to 1660 Heavy Conversion Unit back to Stirlings at Swinderby. Eventually we did the normal exercises, cross countries and all sorts of things, circuits and bumps. And eventually on the 2nd of March the Stirling was taken out of commission and they were stripped and, flown down, as we discover later to Woburn. We flew in a vic of three. The first one had its own equipment available of course, the other two were stripped down to the bare necessities and we landed in a clearing, as I remember, in a wood at Woburn which was quite near to another establishment where the aircraft were dismantled, destroyed. So, on that particular, on the 2nd of March 1945 the Lancasters appeared again to be used for the training. And we of course were delighted to see the first one arrive. It landed, taxied across, stopped outside the office and out popped a young lady. One of the Air Transport Auxiliaries had flown the Lancaster in and so until the end of the War we flew Lancasters. The War of course ended in August, was it?
BB: Yes.
GG: August ‘45. A month later on September the 15th it was decided to open military establishments to the public. Swinderby was one of them and it was decided to put on a show by the Lancaster which consisted of a sort of circuit of the aerodrome and a mock bombing run, and Squadron Leader Scorer took me as his flight engineer off in a vic of three. Imagine what we felt like all the crowd of people there and us in our flying gear. Anyway, we took off. But before we took off the pilot and I changed seats so that he could control the trio of us. And we took off with me in the pilot’s seat and him in my seat because we had dual controls on these instructional aircraft. So, we took off and we did a nice leisurely round of the airfield and then we did the mock bombing run you see down low over the airfield and then a coloured Very light was fired and we went up like the Red Arrows and as we went up we changed over again so that he could land in his proper seat. Now I think that that was the predecessor of what we now call Battle of Britain Day.
BB: Yes.
AG: The very first Battle of Britain Day. At that time too it was just, there were a number of trips to take ground crew on trips over Germany.
BB: Cooks tours?
GG: To see the kind of things that we had been doing and we called them as you say ‘Cooks Tours’ and it consisted of taking them down over the River Moselle, very low flying of course over the twists of the River Moselle, up to the Rhine, Cologne and so on and that way. And I can remember the first time we were there, I suppose we had about four ground crew in various parts of the aircraft but as we passed over the Hohenzollen Bridge in Cologne there was an explosion in the river which I presume was them trying to clear the mess that had been made during the War. So, we did a couple of these which were very pleasant. And that was really the end of my flying, I only flew I think once in the Lancaster after that and then we were then declared redundant. Air crew became redundant. I was sent to, first of all to Burn, and then up to Catterick where we were re-mustered, offered different jobs. And I chose equipment accounts which sounded quite a useful thing to do. So, I was sent over to Lancashire for a few weeks training and then I was to be posted overseas, and it was to be India. So we were sent down to Orpington to await our flight in one of the coldest November periods I have ever known. In a Nissen hut where the, where the fire wouldn’t work, [chuckles] chimney was blocked or something but it was a terrible time. But eventually we flew from there in a Liberator, stripped down Liberator. I was lucky. By that time I was a warrant officer so I got a privileged seat up at the back where there were two large windows of the Liberator where as the ‘odds and sods’ the other airman were in the old bomb bay in sort of canvas seats. Pretty uncomfortable. First stop was Castle Benito in North Africa. Onto Cairo West where the aircraft broke down so we were beside the pyramids for about a week, which was quite interesting. On to Shiba in Iraq and from there an overnight stop where I met a Glasgow lady in the canteen I remember. [chuckles] She was one of the WS ladies and onto Manipur in India. And there again we were, it was decided where we were to be posted to. And I was to be taken to [Habadi?] which is down near Madras, now Chennai and we converted to a Dakota. And we flapped our wings, crossed to Phuna first stop and then across to [?] which is not far from Madras. I spent a year working with accounts in an office, great opportunities of course we had so much spare time and I played a lot of football. And I played for the area team, played cricket with the station team, that sort of thing. Lot of swimming. It was a huge military establishment with the army, the Royal Works were with us and the navy and ourselves. So, it was a very interesting period in many, many ways. And served me in good stead later on as a teacher of geography.
BB: That’s excellent.
GG: Yes. However, in. Yes, I was there for about a year. I was brought back, we came back in the Britannic, twenty six thousand tons, back through the Red Sea, Suez Canal, Mediterranean in a terrible storm. We picked up a band at the Canal Zone, a military band, and they played on the after deck and we came up the Bay of Biscay watching the gannets and the flying fish and that sort of thing. Great experience but when we got to Liverpool we couldn’t see the side of the river because it was foggy in early November. Funnily enough, well I had a leave of course when I got home, but I was posted back for a few months before my demob back to Swinderby of all places. But we had become very aware of a change. I suppose a reversion to the old ways of the regular air force, petty discipline. I can remember I noticed airman are not allowed to walk past the Officers’ Mess at such and such a time. Things like that. And in the office there was an elderly flight sergeant who was in charge where I was working. And he was a grumpy old guy [chuckles] and by that time, oh I forgot to mention while I was in India, and by that time I was a warrant officer, the Labour government had come into power after the War in 1946, and they introduced a new pay code for the services. And while I was a warrant officer the new pay code designated me as Aircrew 2 and I had to divest myself of the warrant officer’s badge and substitute sergeant’s stripes.
BB: The gratitude of a grateful nation.
GG: Exactly, exactly. Not only that but our pay for various reasons was reduced slightly, so I was a bit annoyed. It was very degrading, literally. Anyway, yes I was in this office with the grumpy old flight sergeant and my time for demob came. February the 7th 1947. And in the office where I worked there was a German prisoner of war, with this big circle, coloured circle on the back. And as I was leaving, the very last person to wish me good luck was Wolfgang. And I thought well doesn’t that tell a story? The futility of war?
BB: Yes, it does yes.
GG: Yes. So, it was a good way to end.
BB: Yes.
GG: And after a little leave I managed to get into university. I wanted to do a normal degree but I was told ‘Your qualifications from school are too good.’ [laughs] so I had to, I was offered an honours degree in English, Mathematics or Geography.
BB: Good choice.
GG: To my delight. So, that’s my story.
BB: Thank you very much. A very interesting and lovely story to hear. More importantly you survived the War to be with us today.
G: That’s right.
BB: Today, that’s wonderful. Thank you very much indeed, thank you.
GG: A privilege to do it and I’ve enjoyed doing it because it has taken me back to various documents, some that I have written myself just to refresh my mind and perhaps get a new flavour of the thing altogether and when I add to that the career that I’ve had and the family that I’ve got, well, I’ve been richly blessed.
BB: You managed to avoid the Grim Reaper and that’s the main thing.
GG: Yes, yes.
BB: And you’ve published some of your accounts in your books. The Saltire Aircrew Association also has your stories up.
GG: Oh yes, yes.
BB: Jack was, I’m very pleased that Jack put me in touch.
GG: Yes.
BB: Thank you very much indeed.
GG: And I’ve met you, it’s been a real pleasure.
BB: Thank you very much, I’m honoured, thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Gilbert Gray
Creator
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Bruce Blanche
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-02-12
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AGrayG160223
Format
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00:57:10 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
France
Netherlands
India
France--Aunay-sur-Odon
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944-02-23
1944-03-03
1944-05-04
1944-06-14
1944-06-15
Description
An account of the resource
Gilbert Gray grew up in Dunfermline, joining the Air Training Corps before enlisting in the Royal Air Force as a flight engineer in 1940, aged 18 years. He trained at RAF St Athan in Wales, graduated as a sergeant and was posted onto Lancasters. He completed his training on 1654 Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Wigsley and No. 5 Lancaster Finishing School at RAF Syerston before arriving at 106 Squadron, RAF Metheringham, in May 1944. He describes his first operation, to an ammunition factory in France and then the hectic pre and post D-Day activity in June 1944. He talks about surviving attacks by Fw 190s, predicted Flak, the phenomena of St. Elmo’s Fire, and landing with a burst mainwheel tyre. He also speaks about coming back off leave to find empty beds and of a friend’s premonition of survival after being shot down. Gilbert tells of the crew’s nerves as they approached the last operation of their tour and the wrench of splitting up the closely-knit crew afterwards. Posted to 1660 HCU he saw the Lancasters replace Stirlings for training and took part in the first post-war air show at RAF Swinderby. Remustering to an administration role, Gilbert was posted to India and spent a leisurely year playing lots of sport before returning to Britain to work with a ‘grumpy’ flight sergeant until his demobilsation in February 1947. He also recounts how, in 2014, he helped a Dutch school identify a part from a crashed Lancaster and wrote a speech for a Lancaster crew memorial service, held in Holland.
Contributor
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Andy Fitter
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
106 Squadron
1654 HCU
1660 HCU
617 Squadron
Air Transport Auxiliary
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
Cook’s tour
crash
fear
FIDO
flight engineer
Fw 190
Heavy Conversion Unit
Ju 88
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
memorial
military discipline
military ethos
military service conditions
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
RAF Metheringham
RAF Scampton
RAF St Athan
RAF Swinderby
RAF Syerston
RAF Wigsley
sport
Stirling
superstition
tactical support for Normandy troops
training
V-1
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/865/10825/AGillRA-JT170930.2.mp3
ee2bdb54a700a6de722a519acf341d1e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Hazeldene, Peter
Peter Vere Hazeldene
P V Hazeldene
Description
An account of the resource
19 items. An oral history interview with Rachel and John Gill about their father, Peter Hazeldene DFC (b. 1922, 553414 Royal Air Force) and 16 other items including log book, memoirs, medals and photographs. He flew operations as an air gunner with 106 and 57 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Rachel and John Gill and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-03-07
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Hazeldene, PV
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 30th of September 2017. I’m in North Hykeham with Terry and Rachel Gill and we’re going to talk about Pete Hazeldene, Hazeldene, who was Rachel’s father, and his experiences in the RAF. So we start talking to Rachel. What do you know about dad in his earliest life?
RG: Well, I know he was the eldest child of seven and he was born in Barry Island. Dad always loved the sea and I think this is, was because he was born near the sea. He had diphtheria as a very small boy and was in an Isolation Hospital. He was a member of the choir, sang in the choir and an altar boy. And then they moved to, to Cardiff. Dad enjoyed life. He loved camp. He loved to go and take, with his friend take his tent to the bottom of Caerphilly Hill. And —
CB: What did his father do?
RG: Oh, Grandpa was in a drawing office in Cardiff. Grandma stayed at home with all these children. Dad left school around about fifteen and was an errand boy for a jewellers but his love of the Air Force started when he saw a poster in a window offering to see the world from a different angle. And that’s when dad decided he would join the Air Force. Grandpa was against it because he wanted him to join the Welsh Regiment but dad was adamant and away he went. I’m not quite sure if grandpa signed his forms or whether it was Grandma. Dad joined the Air Force and came as a boy entrant to Cranwell.
CB: So this is 1939. Beginning of ’39.
RG: Yes.
CB: Although he’d showed his interest in 1938.
RG: Yes. Yes.
CB: Right.
RG: He was, he did the training in Cranwell as a, what did he do? Wireless operator.
CB: Just stop there a mo.
RG: Yeah.
[recording paused]
CB: Doing technical training.
TG: Technical training.
RG: Oh right. Yeah.
TG: With a —
[recording paused]
CB: So, tell us a bit more about him leaving home.
RG: It was quite an adventure coming to Lincolnshire for dad because it was his very first time he’d left home and his very first time he’d actually been out of Cardiff. Out of Wales. And he got here as a sixteen year old and he never left Lincolnshire all his life.
CB: So, we’re going to get Terry to talk about the technicalities here because he came to Cranwell as a boy entrant in the days when they were doing that sort of training at Cranwell. So what do we know about that?
TG: Well, from what he told us and from the books we have that he wrote at the time, his technical notes, he was being trained on radio and electrical theory. And at that time of course he was too young to join aircrew but when the war did break out he did volunteer for bomber crew and he was accepted for that. He was sent from Cranwell to a Gunnery School at Upper Heyford and he trained on wireless op, as a wireless operator and he was trained in Morse Code. Subsequent to that training he joined or was posted to 106 Squadron at RAF Finningley.
CB: I think as a wireless operator/air gunner then he went to an outpost somewhere to be trained in gunnery.
TG: Yes. He went West Freugh.
CB: West Freugh.
TG: Freugh. Yes.
CB: In Scotland.
TG: Yes. His first flight was from West Freugh in March I think it was. 1940.
CB: Right.
TG: According to his log book.
CB: So he would have just been eighteen then.
TG: He would. Yes. He’d just turned eighteen a couple of months before. And obviously he was successful and then was sent to Finningley.
CB: Right. Just stop there a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: We’re just going to go back to the Cranwell experience because he’s away from home and there are things there that are different —
RG: Yes.
CB: From being in Wales. So —
RG: Very different. His mum was a very good cook and there was always very good portions for the family but at Cranwell the portions were very small and obviously it didn’t meet dad’s appetite. So the only thing that he could fill up on was cabbage. Dad hated cabbage but he learned that, you know if he wanted to feel full cabbage was the way forward and eventually got to like it and grew them. Yeah.
CB: Extraordinary. But he was being trained in ground radio and electrical activities so most likely he then did some work on the ground.
TG: He did. I understand it was at Abingdon to start with before he was posted to Finningley.
CB: Before he did his gunnery course.
TG: Before his gunnery course. Yes.
CB: Yes. So while he was at Abingdon he, it sounds as though it was when he was there that he volunteered for aircrew.
TG: That’s right. He, after, he then attended a gunnery course and was posted to Finningley where he then flew as a wireless operator and air gunner with 106 Squadron.
CB: What aircraft were they flying?
RG: Hampdens.
TG: They were Hampdens at the time.
CB: Right.
TG: And he later, he was posted with 106 Squadron to Coningsby. And he did thirty operations with 106 Squadron. One of his pilots was a chap called Bob Wareing who on one particular raid they attacked the Schnarhorst and the Gneisenau in Brest and they were successful in putting that ship out of action. And the Scharnhorst. And for that raid I understand that his pilot was awarded the DFC and Peter was mentioned in dispatches. At the end of his thirty raids, thirty operations he, he was posted to Polebrook and seconded to the Americans. But I should add that whilst he was Finningley of course they used to occasionally listen to Lord Haw Haw who correctly broadcast that the clock in the sergeant’s mess was ten minutes slow. Which he often used to laugh about, didn’t he? Your father. That he was correct in Lord Haw Haw. But whilst he was at Polebrook with the Americans he flew in their B17s and he taught them wireless operations and Morse Code. And he flew quite on a few, on a few training exercises with them. One particular rather unsavoury incident took place when he took the class out, of Americans to a pub one night. Amongst them was a black crew.
RG: American.
TG: American crewman. And while in the pub the American military police came in and dragged the black lad out, beat him up and dragged him away because he was in the wrong sort of pub. They say. Your father couldn’t really understand it could he? Peter couldn’t. Pete couldn’t understand that. They charged, the barman charged your dad sixpence. Peter, Pete was charged sixpence because in the melee they broke a beer glass. But he, he never forgot that incident and he couldn’t really rationalise it. It was not what he had expected so to speak. On another occasion he told us that the flight engineer went berserk on the aircraft and in order to subdue him Peter had to, or Pete had to knock him out with an ammo box. I understand there was, and he was grounded for LMF afterwards. Not Pete. The flight engineer.
CB: The American. American flight engineer.
TG: No. No.
RG: No, this was —
TG: This was while he was at Finningley.
RG: Yeah.
CB: Oh, Finningley. Oh, right.
TG: Yeah. Sorry. I’m getting things out of order aren’t I, a little bit?
CB: Yeah. Right.
TG: Slightly. Doesn’t matter.
CB: Ok. So this is 106 Squadron.
TG: As far as I remember it was 106.
CB: At Finningley.
TG: Yes. On another occasion that they went on a couple of gardening missions which was obviously dropping the mines. But they’d got one on board still after this operation and they ventured into France to see whether they could drop this mine somewhere else. And they didn’t take much notice of it but a light aircraft gun opened fire on them and as far as they were aware nothing had happened but when they landed the rear gunner was dead and the thing was awash with blood. His area. And they could never get rid of that blood off that aircraft however much they washed it.
CB: We’ll stop there.
RG: Yes, I—
[recording paused]
CB: So, just going back to the gardening bit.
TG: Gardening of course was dropping mines into the sea and to do that one had to fly very low otherwise the mines would break up. So when they flew in over the land they would also be very low and in range of the, the light anti-aircraft gun that obviously caught the rear gunner.
CB: What sort of anecdotes did he have about training and what was going on there? So, on the airfield.
TG: Well, he did tell me on more than one occasion that he recalled two acts that appeared to be of sabotage when he was, I think training as a gunner. On one occasion he said, on one evening or one night five aircraft who weren’t parked together caught fire almost simultaneously. On another occasion he was on board an aircraft which, as it took off and it had taken off only managed to travel just over the perimeter of the airfield when they crash landed in to a field and the aircraft caught fire. They all managed to get out although Peter said he was burned a little bit. Such was the mark of the man. But when the aircraft was examined because it had failed to gain height the chain that operated the elevators had a, had a bolt inserted in to stop it from operating fully. What became of any enquiry into that he didn’t know and I don’t know. So that was a couple of sort of sad incidents, or suspicious incidents that he, he mentioned to us.
CB: What affect did the loss of the rear gunner have on the rest of the crew?
TG: He never said because —
RG: Dad passed out.
TG: Your father passed out, I think. Peter —
RG: At the sight of the blood.
TG: Pete passed out at the sight of the blood when they landed. But as I’ve already indicated that however much they tried to clean that aircraft the stains of that blood remained. But I rather think that was with 106 Squadron.
CB: And that would need a replacement. So how did the replacement fit in to the crew? Do we know about that?
TG: Peter never said. He didn’t elaborate too much on that side of the operations. He never really mentioned the losses he witnessed when he was on the raids. Although we do know that those losses and what happened haunted him for the rest of his life.
CB: Because this is the early part of the war we’re talking about here.
TG: Yes.
CB: So the Americans came in in ’42.
TG: Yes.
CB: That’s why they were getting help. So what else did he tell you about dealing with the Americans? Working with the Americans.
RG: One story was that dad had been on, I can’t tell you where he’d been on the raid but he was flying back and the aircraft had got minor damage and they couldn’t make it back to East Kirkby. So they had to fly and land lower down the country. Was it lower? Or upper? Well, he landed —
TG: South.
RG: Yes. And dad was doing the Morse Code. The colours of the day and who they were etcetera and he flew over an American base and they opened fire on them. And dad was firing away, not firing away, he was doing his Morse Code. Who he was and the aircraft. And eventually after they’d fired at them, eventually the penny dropped who they were and they landed. They were escorted. The crew were escorted by gunpoint to a higher level. Dad and his crew should have been in the officer’s mess but they weren’t. They were separated. Eventually the aircraft was made airworthy and they took off. And being as they were a whole load of young lads they raided the stores and filled it with toilet rolls. Filled the bomb bay with toilet rolls. They should have flown off and come home to East Kirkby but no. Young lads as they were the pilot did a turn around and as they flew over the airfield the bomb bays opened, the toilet rolls flew out and dad tapped away, you historically say, ‘You crapped on us [laughs] Here’s the bumph to go with it.’ When they got back to East Kirkby they thought oh my goodness we’re all going to be in trouble but nothing was ever said. So, yes. That was, and dad didn’t have a great love of the Americans.
CB: This is, this is later in the war we’re talking about here.
RG: Yes. Later. Yes.
CB: But it’s prompted by the earlier point about being at Polebrook.
RG: Yes.
TG: So —
RG: The Americans. Yeah.
CB: What else do we know about when he was there?
TG: After thirty operations which Peter thankfully survived he volunteered and was, as I say an instructor, went as an instructor to the US Air Force at Polebrook. Teaching them Morse Code and wireless operations procedure and I think we’ve already mentioned about this business about going to the pub haven’t we?
CB: Yes.
TG: Shall I read —
CB: What other, what other experiences did he have with them?
TG: Well, they, they used to fly all over the country of course but Peter at that time, I’m not sure if that time he was probably married to Olive which we’ll come to later but, who was at Spalding in South Lincolnshire and he used to persuade the Americans to land at Sutton Bridge which was only about fifteen miles from Spalding, when he’d been on a trip with them. And he’d disembark from the aircraft and he’d cadge a lift one way or another into Spalding to see Olive. So he was using them as a rather an expensive taxi but it served his purpose very well.
RG: Mum and dad met when dad was visiting a crew member who’d got badly burned in an aircraft and, I don’t think it was one of dad’s crew but it was a fellow RAF man. And he was at Stamford Hospital and I think they went on a motorbike, two of them to see, to visit this friend and they stopped back at Spalding obviously for a beer or two. And they went to the Greyhound down Broad Street in Spalding and my mum was, Olive was the bar maid there. And obviously there was some attraction and dad kept visiting. Yeah. But that’s where they first met. And if he hadn’t have wanted a beer and pulled in they would never have met. And mum and dad were married in April 1942.
CB: So, how did they keep contact during the war?
RG: I think it was dad visiting home. They lived at, with my nan in Little London which is very close to Spalding. I think it was just a question of dad coming and visiting and letters. That sort of thing. Yes.
CB: Ok. So at the end of his posting to Polebrook to assist the Americans.
TG: Yes.
CB: How long was that posting there? Do we know?
TG: Well, he, he volunteered for a second tour and he was posted in 1943. In November 1943 if I recall correctly to Husbands Bosworth where he trained with a [pause] with his second crew. A rookie crew.
CB: That was an OTU.
TG: Yes.
CB: 14 OTU. Yeah.
TG: But from February 1941 he’d been at Coningsby just to go back. He did his thirty raids. Then to Polebrook. And then by November ’43 he, he, he, he went to Husbands Bosworth and there he was crewed up with, as I say the new crew who were under training and the pilot was, flight well then he was flight lieutenant then, but a chap called J B P Spencer who was nicknamed Tuesday for reasons that Peter could never discover. Tuesday was from Durham and from quite a well to do family. They and the rest of the crew after they’d finished training were posted to East Kirkby in the run up basically to D-Day.
CB: And then what was the Squadron number there?
TG: It was 57 Squadron.
CB: Right.
TG: At East Kirkby at the time.
CB: Flying?
TG: Lancasters then.
CB: Well, normally there would be a link of a Heavy Conversion Unit between the OTU and the Squadron but it’s possible they didn’t have them operating at that time. When did he go to East Kirkby?
TG: In March 1944.
CB: Ok.
TG: That’s from memory but —
CB: Stop there briefly.
TG: I’m sure it is.
[recording paused]
CB: So we’re chopping and changing a bit but let’s just go back to Finningley.
RG: [unclear]
CB: So what, what, yes what anecdotes do we have about dad flying in Finningley?
RG: Well, I haven’t any recollection of dad talking about it at the time of that he was in there but later on life I and my husband went on holiday and we flew. It was then Robin Hood Airport and we flew from Finningley as it was and dad said oh, well his pilot, Spencer was rubbish at flying. Flying a plane. He would just throw it in to the sky and when he landed he would equally do the same. It was always a hit and miss affair whether they actually got down ok. Dad said that Finningley had got a crosswind and you had to fly, land it sort of diagonal. I didn’t believe him really but off we went on this holiday. And when we came back the wind was that strong that we basically had to fly as dad had said that his Spencer did. But it was typical. We landed and we were home. But yes. So Finningley has never got any better over the years. Or is it the pilots?
CB: Or is it the crosswind?
RG: Crosswind. Well, yes I suppose it’s how, how the airfield is. Mind you they don’t call them airfields now, do they?
CB: Well, it’s an airport now.
RG: An airport. Yeah. But to me they’ll be aerodromes.
CB: Home of the Vulcan. Yes.
RG: Yes. Yes. That’s right. Yeah.
CB: Right.
[recording paused]
CB: Ok.
TG: Right. From the OTU at Husbands Bosworth and at Market Harborough Pete then was posted to the HCU at Wigsley where they flew Stirlings. And then on to Syerston where he —
CB: Lancaster Flying School.
TG: Well, the —
CB: Finishing School.
TG: The Lancaster Finishing School, I beg your pardon at Syerston where I think they’d also pick up the engineer, would they not?
CB: They would have done that at Wigsley.
TG: Yeah. Sorry at Wigsley.
CB: Yes. But he doesn’t mention that in his tour because it’s expanding the crew to the final seventh man.
TG: I see. He never, he never mentioned much about some details.
CB: No. Then he went on to his second operational Squadron which was?
TG: 57 Squadron.
CB: Yeah.
TG: Where —
CB: That was, where was that?
TG: East Kirkby.
CB: Right.
TG: And that was in April 1944.
CB: Right. We’ll stop there for a mo. Thank you.
[recording paused]
TG: The attrition rate was very very high.
CB: So he joined 57 Squadron in 1944.
TG: Yes.
CB: Early part of ’44. Didn’t he?
TG: With Tuesday Spencer as his pilot. And the rest of the crew, Clarke, West, Hughes-Games, and Grice and George I think his name was. And they flew twenty five missions and I think they were very intense at the time. The enemy fire and such. But they managed to survive it but at the end of the twenty five raids Peter was told by the commanding officer he could not continue to fly. He’d had, he needed a rest and he was stood down. And he went for about ten days leave and when he came back he discovered that the rest of his crew were dead or at least missing. And it transpired that they’d been shot down on the 31st of August 1944 after a raid on the railway yards at Joigny La Roche. About a hundred and twenty kilometres south west I think of Paris. And when he arrived back on base he was summoned to the station commander’s office where he was introduced to Tuesday Spencer’s parents who wanted to meet him as the friend of their late son. And —
RG: Twenty.
TG: Sorry?
RG: The lad was twenty.
TG: He was only twenty years old was Tuesday. And Pete was only a little bit more and they gave Peter five pounds to spend on a good night out.
RG: No. They sent him to mark his commission and his DFC five pounds.
TG: Of the —
RG: Because of their, yes that’s in here. Yeah.
TG: Yeah. And instead of spending it on drink because probably his first inclination would be to do he and Olive decided to spend this money on a pair of candlesticks in memory of the crew. And those candlesticks are still with Rachel’s elder sister. Pride of place on the mantelpiece no doubt. In memory of them. What happened to that crew was that from research we’ve carried out and what Peter was told at the time that the aircraft at least blew up returning from the raid. As far as we can work out. And from, again from records we obtained from the Public Record Office at Kew Hughey, Hughey Hughes-Games was the first to parachute out of the plane followed by Sergeant Grice who Peter didn’t know but was acting as Pete’s replacement while he was stood down. And the Germans later said a third parachute caught fire on the way down but no other men escaped the plane. And the Lanc which was called Q for Queenie ND954 burned out on the ground. Hughes-Games it transpired was taken prisoner of war as was Sergeant Grice and the rest of the crew were killed. And they’re buried at Banneville-La-Campagne near Caen. I might have pronounced that incorrectly. Sadly, Hughes-Games who was interviewed by the Red Cross and from some of the information I’ve given to you about it catching fire and whatever came from him he contracted meningitis and died in, Stalag 3 was it? And is buried in Poland. The rest of the crew as I say are buried near Caen. And I took Peter back there and we’ve been back to their graves several times. Sergeant Grice survived as a prisoner of war and I think he ended up back at home and he lived to be in his mid-eighties in Shropshire. But we never met him and Peter didn’t know him. So that was really the last of his memories of 57 Squadron and the loss of that crew. He did commence a third tour. Incidentally, the crew he lost at 57 Squadron were on their thirty first raid. And it’s commonly thought that thirty was the limit but temporarily it was lifted to thirty five around that time I understand. And sadly on their thirty first raid when they died.
RG: The only plane on that day to be lost from East Kirkby.
TG: On the 31st of July that raid went, basically things were a lot easier for the bombers at that time and it was the only aircraft lost on that raid, on that day from East Kirkby.
CB: How did he feel about the loss of his crew?
TG: Peter never spoke much about the experience he had until he retired from his business when he was about seventy. And I discussed it at great length with him and I took him as I say back to France, down to Kew, to Runnymede, St Martin in the Fields. All the Memorials because he started to open up but he never gave much detail about the bad side of it. He mentioned the crew had been killed and he was quite matter of fact about it but that was the surface.
RG: Say now about dad’s nightmares all his life.
TG: But subconsciously we know that he, he was greatly affected by, by his experiences. You’ve got to bear in mind that he, his flying hours exceeded a thousand. A thousand hours in these, in these terrible conditions. I mean they weren’t sitting back. They were bitterly cold, frightened to death and as he often told us more ammunition was wasted on the Morning/Evening Star than shooting at other aircraft because they were quite obviously tense and wound up. But when I met him and he was in his mid-forties then occasionally if we were staying there we would hear him in the middle of the night when he was asleep.
RG: [unclear]
TG: And also at our house in later life if he was ill he would start up talking to his skipper on the radio in his sleep. In talking almost as if it was happening. These episodes of talking to the skipper and warning him about approaching aircraft or, ‘Let’s get out of here,’ didn’t last for a few minutes. They would last for hours in, in the night. Where he would, he would start off and then ten minutes later he’d had another instruction to the skipper, the pilot to warn him of approaching aircraft. And this was when Peter was seventy five or eighty years old. This was forty years later. And it was obviously imprinted on his subconscious indelibly and whilst to talk to him it didn’t affect him if he talked about it a lot at a function when he was later in life because as I say he didn’t disclose much at all of, of the worst side of things but it was obviously there underneath. And if he, if he’d been talking to you now like I’m talking to you tonight he would have been flying again. In his sleep.
RG: In the mornings he would say, ‘Oh, my goodness. I’ve been flying all night. All night.’ Right up until he was in hospital and Helen went to see him, my sister and just before he died he was still flying.
CB: So, who used to go and see him in the night?
TG: We —
RG: Me. Usually me. Or when he was with mum, mum would.
TG: Mum.
RG: Yeah. But when he, after my mum died and he would be here with us it would be me.
TG: But he was ok the next day as a rule. The one thing I noticed about him and maybe many, many other bomber crew he didn’t have any friends from those days. Like some of the army chaps. Simply because there were none left. They had all been killed. All his crew had been killed hadn’t they? I think he stayed in touch with Bob Wareing briefly.
RG: Yes.
TG: Until he died. And about [unclear]
RG: He stayed, he stayed friends with a lot of the RAF people.
TG: But they’d not flown with him.
RG: Through his association with the Royal Observer Corps and the RAF Association.
TG: And the British Legion.
RG: And the British Legion. And also he was a member of Fenland Airfield and he loved to go and spend time down there.
TG: But he never knew or could talk to anyone who flew with him.
RG: Except —
TG: On those raids.
RG: Except —
TG: Except on one occasion at the —
RG: Metheringham.
TG: Metheringham. The reunion which was held, held every year of 106 Squadron he bumped into —
RG: Well, he nearly didn’t go.
TG: He nearly didn’t go. He was very ill. Quite ill at the time and it was not that long before Pete’s death. But we took him to Metheringham, to the old airfield and he bumped into a chap and they got talking and it transpired that on the Scharnhorst raid this chap remembered it clearly and had been in another aircraft on that same raid. And he remembered some talk of Peter shooting down an enemy aircraft. But Peter, Pete always said he thought, they thought he had originally but he never claimed it was him, did he?
RG: But he, this gentleman knew the formation. He said, ‘And your pilot pulled out of formation to go in again.’ And it was just listening to these two old gentlemen who were well into their eighties talking as though they were there that present moment. But for two old age people to be there just by chance on that reunion was amazing. Terry has that on video because we’d just got a new video camera. Yeah.
TG: That’s with IBC, they’ve got the copy of that. Well, we’ve got it here.
RG: Yes.
TG: But I video’d that conversation and it’s now been —
CB: Brilliant.
RG: Yeah.
CB: So we’re really talking about 106 Squadron when they were flying Hampdens.
RG: From Metheringham Airfield.
CB: From Metheringham.
RG: This one. Yes.
TG: He’s written Coningsby but it was definitely —
CB: Metheringham.
TG: Well, it was a satellite wasn’t it?
CB: Yes.
TG: He flew from there. He met, he once, he met Gibson once or twice and knew him. He wasn’t a very popular man, was he? Gibson.
CB: No.
TG: Very officious. But it’s not on there is it? Is that switched off?
CB: Yeah. No. No. It isn’t. We’ll stop there just for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: The matter of how to speak about these things was difficult for most war veterans. Aircrew particularly. Perhaps because of the high losses. But then there’s the effect on the families. So he’s speaking in his sleep in these times.
RG: Yeah.
CB: What affect did that have on you?
RG: Well, I was mainly concerned for Dad’s well-being really and I would go and chat to him. Although he was asleep his eyes would be open and he didn’t really know I was there. But obviously he did and then he would calm and then in the morning he would say, ‘Rachel, I’ve been flying all night.’ And I would say, ‘Yes, dad. I know.’ But he’d no recollection of me being there. But it was, it was quite upsetting to hear that he was, and he was talking and as though you know he was there, ‘Skip, they’re coming in at — ’ so and so, you know, ‘Do we fire now?’ And it was just as though he was there. But obviously, you know it was affecting his mind. And right up until the minute, well not the minute but the day before he died he was still flying. Yeah. It was —
TG: He was eighty one when he died.
RG: But as a child Dad the war was not spoken to about a lot but on the days when Dad would be slightly not well I was told that I’d got to behave because he wasn’t very well. And that was the reason. But yeah. But in the night he didn’t seem to be agitated by it. It was just as though it was happening and he was coping with it.
CB: So it’s no shouting.
RG: No.
CB: It’s just a conversation.
RG: Yes. Yeah. As though —
CB: As though he’s on the intercom.
RG: Yeah.
TG: As calm as you and I now. Controlled. And so and so’s happening, Skip.
RG: Just as though they were getting on with the job.
TG: A normal tone of voice as if and then an hour later or ten minutes later he’d give an update of some sort. ‘Let’s get the bloody [pause] out of here skipper.’ And that was it.
CB: Because he was acting as a lookout.
RG: Yes.
TG: Well, yes.
RG: Yes.
TG: Oh yes.
CB: As a child though you were told that he was, it was a bad day. So what did you feel as a child when you, he had these episodes?
RG: I just took it, I just took it as, as I’ve got, behave myself. I think I was a bit of reckless child but you know I just got to behave myself and that was it [pause] But no, he was, no. Just my dad.
CB: But he was always calm in what he was doing. It was —
RG: Just turn that off a minute.
CB: Yeah. Sure.
[recording paused]
CB: So how did your mother handle this?
RG: Well, very calmly I think. Dad would on, on what I now know was his sort of bad days he would be prone to picking arguments and probably doing a bit of shouting which was quite unusual for dad because he was quite a calm person. But in, you know he would be probably be shouting at mum but I just sort of took it as I’d just got to behave myself and that would be it. But mum always, when dad was like this was always very sort of calm, and well I suppose she was talking him down a bit. But it was never mentioned why he was like it and I just thought oh well other people’s dads shout and that, you know and that was it. But as a general rule he was such a calm sort of person. Took everything in his stride really. But on these occasions that, that used to happen. Yeah.
CB: To what extent do you think over the years he had spoken to your mother about his experiences?
RG: I don’t really know. I wouldn’t. I would imagine not a lot. It was, I wouldn’t, I never overheard them talking about anything but then I wouldn’t always be there but, no it was usually, if dad spoke about anything it wasn’t how it affected him. It was usually telling a tale of what he’d been up to. What raid he’d been on and different aspects of what they, you know, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t the horrors. It was more of the good bits. You know. Tearing about on a motorbike and that sort of thing as you would expect lads of that age to be doing.
TG: And he was only twenty or so.
CB: Yeah.
TG: When all this was —
CB: Yes.
TG: You know, that was the average age of these —
CB: Sure. Oh yes. Absolutely. So she was in the Spalding area.
RG: All the time. Yes.
CB: Surrounded by Air Force. They were married in the war.
RG: Yes.
CB: She continued did she in her bar work?
RG: Yes. She was a nanny and, to a family who had four children and they kept the Greyhound. So in the day mum would be looking after the children. Helping with that sort of thing. And then she would as and when she was required she would be the bar. The bar girl. Yes. So she stayed with the family. Well, they’re godparents to me and later John one of the sons went into partnership with my dad as a nurseryman and, but mum didn’t live always at the Greyhound. She lived with her parents in Little London. And then when my sister Helen was born she, she was with nan and then mum would be continuing to work and home as normal mum’s do. Yeah.
CB: The reason I ask the question is because to some extent she was programmed to the losses and the stoic reaction of the other crews.
RG: Yes. Yes. I don’t honestly know whether it was all talked about but no doubt it would be you know mentioned. You know. Particularly the loss of all the crew. The last, last one.
TG: I’ve mentioned Tuesday and then of course she had the incident with the DFC. Your mum was disappointed.
CB: So what was that?
RG: Well, dad was awarded the DFC. And mum saved all the coupons and my nan, all the coupons for a new outfit. Coat. A new coat was, I think she had it made and, and you know all ready to go to London, to the Palace and then the king was very poorly so of course it, they couldn’t go. And the DFC was given to dad by his commanding officer over the counter more or less at East Kirkby. And it was very, very disappointing for mum not to be going on that.
CB: I can imagine. Yes.
TG: The king did write. We’ve still got the letter of course.
RG: Oh yes. We, yeah.
CB: Not the same as having it —
RG: No. But no —
CB: Conferred on you.
RG: Well, in those days where they lived, a little village. Oh, you know. Olive Hazeldene. She’s going to the Palace, you know. And a new coat was got. You know it’s just, well, it was one of those things isn’t it? The poor old king.
CB: Well, people didn’t travel much in those days so —
RG: No.
CB: It was a major —
RG: It was a big thing.
CB: Task.
RG: Yes.
CB: We’ll pause there for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: You were, so let’s just catch up on here.
RG: Do you know, I’m really, I’m really a very strong character but when I start crying I cry for days. Mr Panton, we were talking to him, oh I forgot what I was going to say. We were talking to him one day about dad.
CB: Just to that in to context the airfield was bought by the Panton’s for their chicken farm.
RG: Yes.
CB: And then they bought what is now called, “Just Jane.”
RG: Yes. Yeah. From Scampton. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So you were saying though that before that happened.
RG: No.
CB: We used to go there.
RG: No. No.
RG: Yeah. We used to go.
TG: Go back to the beginning.
CB: Dad would just go in.
RG: We used to go there, but we never used to speak to anybody because we were like trespassers trespassing and but we used to go and just like look and that was it and you know we girls would probably play hide and seek and that would be it.
CB: On the airfield.
RG: On the airfield. Yes. And then when after dad died we got the Memorial cabinet set up. We were talking to Mr Fred Panton one day and he was saying, and I said my dad would never come in the Lancaster. And he said that they had, when they started doing the taxi runs they had this gentleman who booked himself on one of the flights as they called it. He would come early, have a bit of lunch and sit there and then he would be ready, his flight would be ready, they would call him but he just couldn’t bring himself to get on it. And he said he did it numerous times. Not just the once. Numerous times. Where he really wanted to go on the taxi run but couldn’t bring himself to. And he was, like dad had flown from there.
CB: What do you think was the origin of that reaction?
RG: I would imagine that it would be bringing back all the horrors of, of going. You know, on these raids.
CB: In your case was it your father’s reaction of the loss of the crew without him being there?
RG: He never actually said anything about it but no if I mentioned, ‘Oh, shall we go on one of those taxi runs?’ ‘No. I don’t think so Rachel.’ And that was it but he did [pause] he got a tree planted just around the corner from the mess and in memory and he had a plaque put for his crew. You carry on. Oh dear.
CB: We’ll stop a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: Even though —
RG: Even though dad never actually said how he felt about his crew he did have a tree, bought a tree, a big flowering cherry, had the tree planted and he had a plaque with the all the names of his crew and why we put it there. And now we’ve got, and now we’ve got one by the side of it for dad.
CB: This is a really emotional and emotive activity and task to follow up. But taking the bombing war itself what was his attitude towards bombing in general?
RG: He just, he just, he didn’t do too much commenting on it but I got the feeling that dad was given a task to do and they just went and did it. And didn’t give a great deal, no I was going to say a great deal of thought to what they were doing but obviously they were. But they were just following orders I think. That’s, but he didn’t, dad didn’t say too much. He was a very private sort of fella. Yeah.
CB: Terry, what do you think?
TG: Well, he told me that it was a job that had to be done and he did as he was told and he kept at it. It was the only way. Bearing in mind at the time the only people that were taking the war to Germany was Bomber Command. And he, I asked him sometimes why they’d not been recognised and he just said that’s just how it was. He wasn’t, he got to the stage where he wasn’t, he wasn’t bothered that there was no particular medal for Bomber Command in the war. We all know the political sensitivities about that but that was the way it was. He had a job to do, he said and he did it to the best he could. And he said he was just very, very lucky to have survived.
CB: We talked about his DFC. His navigator also had a DFC. Doesn’t look as though the pilot had a DFC. But what was the, his 57 Squadron pilot because his 106 had two DFCs didn’t he? Wareing.
TG: I think Bob Wareing, 106 Squadron had a DFC and probably a DFC and bar. Peter eventually got his. He said he got it because he was lucky to be alive. But read the citation. Continually went into some of the worst and most heavily defended targets. Sorry. You asked me what?
CB: Yeah. I was going to say what was the reason that, given for his receiving the DFC? Because it was a particular point.
TG: It was a non-immediate award.
CB: Right.
TG: And it was I think the citation and it’s around somewhere was continued enthusiasm and leadership going in to some of the, as I say the worst defended targets repeatedly again and again and again. When he was eventually put forward for it and he received it in 1944. Yes, it was 1944.
CB: Ok.
[recording paused]
TG: It was, it was some years or quite a long time after I had married Rachel that he even mentioned he’d got it. It wasn’t something that was a big thing with him.
RG: As a child dad was a member of the Royal Observer Corps. He was chief, Observer Corps at the post at Maxey, and on ceremonial occasions, on marches and Remembrance Sundays the medals always came out. So he was very proud of them, but as to talk about it that would be a different matter. But on an occasion where other members of the Royal Observer Corps and the British Legion and all that he would wear them with pride. Yeah.
CB: Now, his 57 Squadron tour finished at twenty five ops for him.
TG: Yes.
CB: What did he do after that?
TG: Well, he, he, he started a third tour at Syerston. From Syerston on Lancasters. But he did a few operational tours before the war finished.
CB: Which Squadron was that?
TG: I can’t remember.
CB: It doesn’t matter. But he was on operations. Not training.
TG: No. He was on operations. We see from his logbook he made at least one or two trips to Berlin. Four or five days after Germany surrendered.
CB: Oh right.
TG: And that was the end of his operational duties but I think he stayed on for another eighteen months or so before finally leaving the RAF.
CB: What, what — how did he come to be in the Observer Corps?
RG: My Uncle Bert. He was my godfather. He was a member of the Royal Observer Corps and dad went. Followed him sort of thing. Yeah. Got the Queen’s Silver Jubilee for services to the Royal Observer Corps. And he was chief observer at the Maxey post.
CB: Which is where exactly?
TG: Just outside of Peterborough. Between Peterborough and —
RG: Yeah. Market Deeping.
TG: Until, until it was disbanded.
RG: Yes.
TG: He, he stayed ‘til the end.
RG: He did all the talks on the, you know when the bomb, what was going off. I used to go with him on those talks. We talked to all sorts of organisations. I was in charge of the slides. You know. To show them. I felt as if I knew everything about it. Yes.
TG: I did talk to him about D-Day. I asked him if he’d been on an operation leading up to D-Day and in fact as his logbook proves he was. 5 Group went and bombed on the evening of the 5th of June 1944. Maisy Grandcamp and that area there. I asked him what he thought about it and what he knew about it. When he went on that raid he had no idea it was D-Day. He didn’t know it was D-Day and neither did anybody else but the top brass. As you probably know. And he said he thought it was funny because as he flew over the Channel, he thought on his screen there was a lot of Window. The silver.
CB: Radar jamming.
TG: The radar jamming stuff that was flying around but it, they did the raid and they got back and he went back and went to bed. And then when he woke up the next morning they told him it was D-Day and what he’d seen on his screen wasn’t Window. It was the boats. It was, it was the invasion fleet going. And that was the first he knew it was D-Day because of the secrecy of everything.
CB: This was on his H2S radar.
TG: Yes.
CB: He was seeing it.
TG: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
TG: But that’s, but that’s his recollection of that. But he remembered some, some raids and he’d tell me briefly about them. I think once they, shortly after D-Day they were detailed to attack Caen. The Germans there, and bomb at a certain point. But between taking off and getting this message our side, I think Canadians advanced further and I think there was quite a lot of allied troops killed by our own side in that raid. You probably know more about it than I do. Similarly we talked about the Scharnhorst earlier. That was a raid he told me that went slightly wrong. The plan had been, I think it was Poleglase was the station commander who led them in. But the plan had been for bombers to go in early at high level and get the bombs, the ships guns pointing upwards when Pete’s group would come in low and give them a good hiding. But I think the timing went wrong and they were waiting for them and hence the first three aircraft were shot out of the sky and then Wareing took that detour inland and came and got them from the other way. But these are the things that are probably not documented anywhere else.
CB: Now, the other major ship of course, capital ship was the Bismarck.
TG: Yes.
CB: So to what did he, extent did he have an involvement with that?
TG: He told us and it came to light after a chance conversation forty or fifty years later. Forty years later. With a chap in the Mail Cart pub at Spalding. But Pete told us that they knew where the Bismarck was heading but they didn’t quite know where it was as I understood it. So they went off to lay some mines in the Bay of Biscay and they were talked down as to where they should plant these mines by some of the Naval vessels. And that is what they did. And obviously a short time later the Bismarck was sunk by other means. But the chap in the, in the pub years later it transpired was on one of our Naval vessels and he was a wireless operator talking with the RAF and giving them instructions. So it was probably that Peter actually had spoken to this man before but never met him in entirely different circumstances than over a pint in the Mail Cart.
RG: Steward and Patteson’s.
TG: Yeah. So Steward and Patteson’s was a, that was another. Pete. Pete knew his beers. He knew them like no man I’ve ever met. And he could drink probably more than any man I’ve ever met [laughs] But when I first met him he used to take me to the Dun Cow at Spalding. Well at Cowbit. And he had this Steward and Patteson was one of the local brewers and Pete with his favourite pint but they used to grow barley in Norfolk for the beer, and they used to grow barley in Lincolnshire on the other side of the River Nene. And Pete could tell from the drink which side of the river the barley had been grown. Now, whether he was shooting the line.
RG: He would be.
TG: Which I’m sure he was but people believed him. So there you go. That’s, that’s the man. He was a very tall man, you know. About six foot two, wasn’t he? Very gentle. And he could speak equally to Prince Phillip or the Queen who he met a time or two.
RG: Garden parties.
TG: Or to the local drunk on his bike going past his nursery. Couldn’t he?
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
TG: Couldn’t he? He was at ease with anybody.
CB: And talking of nurseries. After the war how did he come to take up horticulture?
RG: Well, he went to work for Nell Brothers. Horticulturalists in Spalding. And he went as worker there. And then he went to Swanley Horticultural College and did a course on growing and all that sort of thing. And then he came back home. And then one of the Prestons, John Preston was of school leaving age and he thought he might like a career in horticulture. Growing type things. His father was loosely connected. And so they set up the nursery. They rented the land from Uncle Bert and they set up the business of Redmile Nurseries. John was the young lad and my dad was the expert as it were. And they worked there ‘til dad retired. You know. Quite a successful. Growing tomatoes, lettuce. The land had a bit of wheat on. They did lot of potato chitting. Cut flowers in the greenhouses. They expanded a little bit but that’s it. That’s where dad worked.
TG: He spent all his, his remainder of his working life.
RG: Yes.
TG: The Preston family that Rachel mentioned are the same ones that Olive was nanny too.
RG: Yeah.
TG: And who owned the Greyhound at Spalding.
RG: Yes.
TG: And in fact, John, his partner only died last week. He was eighty five.
CB: Ok.
[recording paused]
CB: Do you want to just say that again.
RG: Yeah. Dad grew all sorts of veg and things like that. Tomatoes and lettuce. But he absolutely hated tomatoes. It was quite funny really. You grow them, you know and yeah. But he hated them.
CB: What was the origin of that?
RG: I’ve absolutely no idea really but yeah. Yeah. It’s [pause] yeah.
TG: But his —
RG: But we never ate tomatoes like they do in supermarkets now. Red. They’d always got to be firm and orange and they’d always got to be of a certain size. Other things like you have beef tomatoes and things nowadays they just went on the skip. It had got to be if I can remember pink, or pink and white. That was the grade of the tomatoes.
TG: If they were red they weren’t fit to eat.
RG: No. They were thrown out. They were only for frying.
TG: But of course Rachel does the garden. That’s been inherited from her dad I think.
CB: Looks smashing.
TG: Well, your other sister is a horticulturist.
RG: Yes. Helen is horticultural.
TG: In a big way big way down in Spalding.
RG: Yes. Yeah.
TG: Yes.
CB: Stop there again.
[recording paused]
RG: And they went on their honeymoon. The Preston’s had a bungalow at Surfleet Reservoir. And mum and dad went down there. I suppose it was all the time they’d got. They went down there for the honeymoon to the bungalow at Surfleet Reservoir. It’s where the river comes in and there’s a, there’s a sluice gate before it goes out into the sea. Surfleet Reservoir. In the day it was quite a nice little place to be. Yeah, and that’s where they went on their honeymoon.
TG: About three miles from home.
RG: Yes. Well, why not?
CB: Might have got recalled.
TG: Well, yes.
RG: Well, that’s always a possibility isn’t it?
TG: That was it. But —
CB: Stop there.
[recording paused]
CB: So, did you go back to France quite often? Where the crew were buried.
TG: Rachel and, Rachel and I went on holiday in France quite often and always drive. One time when we were coming back we went to Normandy where my father fought and went to some of the cemeteries at Omaha and others. And at the time I think I managed it was sort of pre-internet days really. But I managed to find where Peter’s crew were buried from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and on the way back we travelled to Banneville and to the Commonwealth and found Tuesday Spencer and Weston Clark and Anderson. Their grave. And we came back on the Tuesday and Peter had never set foot abroad. He’d left his mark. By golly he had in France and in Germany from high, from on high and I mentioned I’d been and I didn’t know really how to put it because I didn’t know how it would affect him emotionally. And I said we’d been and found the graves and he did say, ‘I’d like to go.’ So this was on the Tuesday. On the Saturday we jumped in his Rover and I went back to France with him and we had the whale of a time. We had a whale of a time. We not only visited. We visited some hostelries there and we visited Pointe du Hoc and Omaha, and I took him to the graves and he stood beside them and he signed the book. He was very quiet but he was completely controlled and he was able to speak quite easily of them. And so he did and we’ve got photographs of the graves and Peter with them.
CB: So what did he talk about?
TG: When he was there? He would talk about Tuesday. He was, I think the closest because he didn’t know anything much about other crews and that was fairly [pause] fairly part of the course wasn’t it? He knew his own crew but Tuesday had a motor bike and he’d got a girlfriend. I think he was having trouble with this girlfriend and I think Pete used to advise him a little bit on the, on procedure and protocols and things like that. But I think he also used to take Pete to Spalding to see Olive and that sort of thing and have a few pints.
RG: Dad put in here that he socialised an awful lot with Tuesday. He had a little bit more money than dad and if they went somewhere, probably go to London and he would put them up and I think dad quite liked that idea.
TG: That happened once. They made a forced landing somewhere down south and Tuesday had the money and he put the whole crew up in a hotel in London. And Pete was quite happy to participate. He put his back in to that evening I think [laughs]. Really put his back into so, and enjoyed that wouldn’t he? But having said that and between meeting him and Tuesday dying was only eleven months or so wasn’t it? So they were, they were, they were friends but they, they must have known that, well what was going through their minds having looked around you didn’t make plans for the future necessarily.
CB: No. You said he was asked to speak to Tuesday’s parents.
TG: Yes.
CB: What did he think about that?
TG: He described it as it was, didn’t he? He, he, they wanted to speak to him and he was summoned to the office. The station commander. When he returned after ten days or so. And they really wanted to talk to him about Tuesday and how he’d found him because obviously they knew or they had been told that Pete was his best friend while he was down there. I think all he could tell them was —
RG: How it was really.
TG: How it was. And when he’d last seen him and that sort of thing. He didn’t express any emotion at all.
RG: No.
TG: To me. He never expressed any emotion. He just told it how it was and that was all his experiences. The only clue you got to the effect was as we mentioned was the night.
RG: Nightmares. Yeah.
TG: The nightmares if you like to call it that. When he was flying at night. That was the only time he, you would know that there was anything amiss. That he’d been affected. He would talk about his drink. The drinking sessions and the good times. He’d talk about not being able to remember because they’d had just to blot it out. But the middle bit. The bit where it happened he, he didn’t go into any detail other than the funny bits usually. And occasionally obviously the rear gunner being hit. But he was, he was baled out twice. Wasn’t he?
CB: So why did he have to bale out of the aircraft?
TG: I think the aircraft made it back to the UK, in England both times. I think on one occasion he landed in a field and it was foggy. And I’m sure he told me that there was somebody had reported this fellow had come out of an aircraft and a police car was, was on the road and he was the other side of the hedge. And I think they thought he was a German or something to start with because he was running down this hedge side with the police opposite until they could sort of meet up and he identified himself. He did get some shrapnel in the backside once. Didn’t he?
RG: Yes. I think mum used to have it in her sewing box. I don’t know if it’s still there [laughs]
TG: It’s probably —
RG: Yeah. I don’t, I don’t think it is now. Yeah. You always, when I was a kid that, ‘Oh, no. That came out of dad’s, dad’s bottom,’ like, you know [laughs]
TG: It had gone through the seat.
RG: Yeah.
TG: Wherever he was.
RG: And when he landed in the tree I think he ripped his leg. But that’s the only injury he got. Yeah.
TG: I think he landed in Norfolk on one occasion if not both. Then struggling back.
RG: The thing is though when you’re growing up you hear, and later on you hear these things and because you’re so engrossed with living —
CB: Yeah.
RG: You don’t take it on board. And then all of a sudden when you get older and you get interested in these sorts of things you think oh, I wish I’d learned more. I wish I knew more about my granddad because he was in the First World War and he, I just knew that he was a horseman but I didn’t know whether he rode a horse. I didn’t know what he did, but he was, he looked after the horse —
TG: A blacksmith.
RG: No. He wasn’t a blacksmith. He looked after the horses that pulled the big guns. You see, I didn’t know any of that.
CB: No.
RG: You know. I didn’t. I mean, ok apart from a picture at my nan’s of him in uniform I wouldn’t have thought. It wasn’t until later on that I’ve got some spoons and knives and things in there stamped with numbers. And they are my granddads and my great uncle’s that they took to the war with them.
TG: They’d be stamped and issued to them, wouldn’t they?
RG: With their, with their service numbers.
CB: No.
RG: I didn’t know. You know, I didn’t know any of that.
CB: No.
RG: And then of course when you get interested it’s too late because everybody’s gone then. Isn’t it?
TG: You see, we’d been across there a lot. Both to the Normandy and to Ypres and the Somme. I nearly lived there. Certainly, if you look behind you when you’re upstairs you’ll see books. I’ve got the 57 Squadron book. The, “57 Squadron at War,” which is very difficult to get a hold of now. I’ve got it. I’ve got it upstairs there but, when I go around to some of these places I mean I often go or used to go to Sleaford and one other, and Norfolk where they’re doing all these re-enactments and you think gosh these are really, because I’m really into these things as you probably gathered. And I start talking to these and they’re all dressed and they, when you actually talk to them they know very little. They want to get dressed up and do battle. They’ve never been to Normandy. They’ve never been to those. They don’t know about, they just want to get dressed up and look you know. They don’t get into it.
CB: They’re actors.
RG: Yes.
TG: Yes. But they’re just enthusiast who want to get dressed up and think it’s fun.
RG: I went.
TG: It annoys me. That they should go and look at those cemeteries, you know. And they’ve never been. I said, ‘What do you think to Omaha?’ ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘Omaha.’ You know. Or, or, or Tyne Cot, or Passchendaele or some of these, you know.
RG: I challenged one at Metheringham Open Day one day. He was there and he had DFC things on, you know.
TG: He was dressed up.
RG: He was an officer and he’d got the DFC. You know, the ribbons.
TG: He was a postman. He’d never been in a —
RG: I said to him, ‘Oh, you’ve got, I see you’ve got a DFC there,’ you know. He did not know what I was talking about. I said, ‘That, that ribbon there. That’s a DFC.’ ‘Is it?’
TG: Yeah.
RG: And I thought, what are we doing here? You know. Yeah.
TG: If they’re going to do that they want to know more than I do.
RG: Yeah.
TG: And my dad was there and he, you know he was reported killed, missing in action to my mum on the 18th of June 1944. Fortunately, in the same post she got a letter from him. He was in Carlisle Hospital with a great lump of shrapnel in him. At Ranville, at Ranville, just up from, from Pegasus Bridge. He’d been smashed up. But as I say after three or four months he was fit enough to go back. That’s where he got this.
RG: I don’t know.
TG: He lived ‘til he was ninety six my father. Red beret and airborne.
RG: Yeah.
TG: And all this sort of thing.
RG: Before he died it was the, was it the seventieth anniversary or something. VE. VE Day.
TG: The week before he died.
RG: Yeah.
TG: My dad was in a home here. My mum died a few years before. And he managed to reach the seventieth anniversary of D-Day.
RG: Yeah. And at the home they did a big, a big thing. It was a Care Centre there. And they did a meal and everything like that.
TG: They got him dressed up with his medals.
RG: And he went and it was, it was a good day. He wasn’t quite sure where he was.
TG: It was his last Friday or Saturday on earth.
RG: Yeah, but he, yeah it was —
TG: He died the following Thursday.
RG: But he’d got his red beret on. And he’d got his medals up and he’d got the photograph sat on his knee all day. Clutched. Of him when he was a young man.
TG: A young man in uniform.
RG: And that. Yeah.
TG: And you couldn’t get it off him.
RG: No.
TG: He had it like this.
RG: He clutched it all day.
TG: He died the following Thursday.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Oh right.
TG: Two years, three ago.
RG: Yeah.
TG: Two and a half years ago now.
RG: But, you know a lot, a lot of people don’t know what you’re talking about when you say these things.
CB: They don’t. No.
RG: No.
TG: No.
RG: I mean, this film I haven’t been to see it. Terry went with some lads in the family.
TG: I went to see “Dunkirk.”
RG: Dunkirk. And I listened to a report on the radio and they, was it the radio? No. Wireless. Whatever you call it, you know. And they said that it’s been made because a lot of people don’t know what they’re talking about.
TG: They don’t know the difference between Dunkirk and D-Day.
RG: And people when they were interviewed them, and they said, ‘Do you know about Dunkirk?’ ‘No.’ You know. And I think to myself, oh dear. It is a shame.
TG: But they don’t know why they’re here.
RG: No.
TG: We, I’m ashamed to say that one of our friends we used to go to France and Germany a lot. Just jump in the car and book a ferry and go down the Moselle or whatever. Last time we went to Lille and Bruges. We ended up right on the coast at Dunkirk waiting for a ferry, I think we came back from Dunkirk.
RG: Oh, I can’t remember.
TG: But we came to the very end where there’s still some guns there. I don’t know if you’ve been on that coast. There’s still some German guns there. And Sheila, who is just a few months older than you and we’re talking Dunkirk and she said, she turned and said to me, ‘Is this where they all came up on to the beaches then? And the invasion.’ And I think, they weren’t going that way. I mean she’s seventy. I mean, I just think how can you go through life —
RG: Yeah, but don’t you think though like I’ve —
TG: Without knowing that it happened hundreds of miles away. D-Day. And they were coming — we were going up there.
RG: But I’ve grown up with Lancaster bombers. I’ve grown up with them, you know. And my girls they’ve grown up with them as well through granddad. And this is how we’ve been. And all, aircraft in the sky, ‘Oh look. There goes the Dakota,’ or whatever. I’ve grown up like that. But a lot of people just don’t know what you’re talking about. I know a few years ago I was at work and it was, it was a nice day and we were in the canteen and we’d got the windows open. And we sat there having coffee and I said, ‘Oh, listen. Oh, there goes the Lancaster.’ No one looked. They looked gone out at me as if I was speaking a foreign language. I said, ‘Listen. Can’t you hear the engines?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘It’s a bomber. It’s going over.’ ‘What are you talking about Rachel?’ I said, ‘It’s the Lancaster.’ I said, ‘It’ll be going back to Coningsby and do its circuit around the Cathedral.’ And they had no idea what I was talking about. Now, that is sad isn’t it? Yeah.
TG: The other thing your dad didn’t like to see and it must have affected him. I sometimes wonder about why he said it, is every time he saw an old airfield in Lincolnshire and he saw the control tower standing derelict he would say, ‘I wish they would pull them down.’ He said, ‘I wish they’d pull them all down.’ I think it was a reminder. He didn’t, he didn’t like to see them. Did he?
RG: No. Not derelict anyway. No.
TG: I mean, I didn’t know —
RG: He was ok at East Kirkby. You know, because it’s all been restored.
CB: It’s restored. Yeah.
RG: Yeah. But he always went to East Kirkby just for a ride. You know, ‘I’m just going to ride.’ Woodhall Spa. East Kirkby. That way on. But yeah. There we go.
CB: Just going back to the, your parents in the war people took very different views as to whether they should marry or not. So why was it that your parents married essentially in the middle of the war?
RG: Just turn that off a minute.
[recording paused]
RG: Wouldn’t like to hear that. She, you know. Why mum and dad got married in the war. I think they, you know had a good relationship. Romance blossomed and I think the idea was well, why shouldn’t we get married? You know. In those days it was the way forward regardless of how long they had got together. I don’t think that entered into it. So, yes. They, they married. Yes.
CB: And we talked about their links and because they were physically not next to each other while the flying —
RG: Yes.
CB: Was going on. So that covers that matter. Thank you.
RG: Yeah.
[recording paused]
CB: So, Terry. On your case.
TG: My dad was in the army and he was on the beaches at D-Day and wounded just after. But they married in 1941 and my dad was on a few days leave and they had a special licence. They decided to get married on the Wednesday night and the ceremony took place at the church on the Saturday. And everything was pretty quick in those days although I was three or four years coming along and the eldest of five brothers. They caught up for it later on, didn’t they? But he survived the war. My father.
RG: And they were married for nearly seventy years.
TG: Nearly seventy years.
CB: You had a long and auspicious career in the police force and to what extent did you come across policemen who’d been in the war and did they talk about it?
TG: Well, only early on did I come across it and only for a short period because the chaps on the patrol car with me were much, much older and had served.
RG: Lofty had, hadn’t he?
TG: There was one chap who was, I remember distinctly. Never had a cigarette out of his hand. And he’d been on the Northwest Frontier, was it? As a stretcher bearer and drummer boy. And he told me a few tales.
CB: In India.
TG: Sorry? In India. Yes.
CB: In India. Yes.
TG: And his skin was still leathery. They called him Lofty. A wonderful character. But he didn’t go too much into, into his experiences and I didn’t see many others who were old enough.
RG: And Vic’s dad. Was he in the war?
TG: Yes, but he didn’t serve with —
RG: No. No.
TG: Vic’s dad. No. I met one or two people. One chap had been, he’d worked in an office in Lincoln and he was, you’d call him an insignificant little chap and he wasn’t very noisy. He kept quiet but when he spoke everybody listened because he’d been on the, in the Navy, I think the Merchant Navy and been torpedoed twice and survived. That sort of thing. I think Alf Dixon who was the office man at Spalding when I joined had been torpedoed in, in the Navy. But I was only nineteen when I joined. And I mean I had school masters who had been, all of them had been in the war. One had lost his leg. The deputy headmaster. That’s a thing.
CB: And what about the felons that you dealt with? Had any of those been guided by the forces originally?
TG: No. No. They, young as I was most of them and they just jumped on to the one side of the fence while I’d fallen on the other at the time. I was on the law enforcement side. But no it didn’t.
CB: So, going back to the war itself you talked about the experience of one of the crewmen and being [pause] we were talking about, touching on LMF.
TG: Oh yes. Yes.
CB: So, what was that dimension as far as Pete was concerned? What his knowledge.
TG: The man was out of control. He said he was. He just had him, you know he was shell shocked was probably —
RG: Flak happy.
TG: Flak happy was, was the word. He’d gone flak happy. Completely flak happy and gone berserk on the aircraft. Endangering it. As I said, Pete said he hit him with a ammo box and knocked him out. And then he was charged. Probably court martialled. I don’t know for LMF. In these days you’d have probably got a handsome sum in compensation for all the stress he’d been put through. But that’s as far as it went. I don’t think Pete came across it. Or if he did he didn’t mention anything about that at all. Even if he was stressed. I mean obviously what he said they were terribly stressed. You wouldn’t go out and get blind drunk to forget what you’d just seen, done and been through like they did. It was the only release they had. The only release. They above all went from relative safety to the most terrible danger in a very short time. Whereas no other arm, arm of the armed forces experienced that, did they? They were, either they were out there fighting at a fairly consistent level, I know it went up and down but the bomber crews and I suppose the fighter pilots as well went from sitting at home in a pub in England or with a girlfriend and hours later being subject to the most horrendous barrage and being attacked from above and below. And it was a huge contrast for them.
RG: And the frequency of the flying and the raids. If you look at dad’s logbook it sort of says you know, he’s made up the logbook and its flying such and such and where they’ve gone. Good long way away. Then they’re back. And then it’s not five minutes or so before they’re off again, you know. And they would be going at 9 o’clock and 10 o’clock at night. Flying. Night flying. Coming back. Then afternoons. And there wasn’t a good long rest period in the middle so they, they would be tired out, you know. Head wise as well as body. Physical. Yeah.
TG: Sometimes a crew would be lost and of course their uniforms would, and everything they’d left in their billet was moved and their beds made up for the next crew to replace them. The next crew would come. And then before they went to bed they’d probably gone on a raid and be lost and they’d never use the beds that were made up for them. I mean. As you know. This was the —
RG: I don’t think modern society can understand what a lot of they had to put up with that and go through really. I know there’s different things. Different aspects now. But they just had to get on with it in those days. Well, from what I can understand.
CB: You touched on a point indirectly which is that the socialising of the crew and in this particular case Tuesday’s crew was mixed airmen of sergeants and officers.
TG: And, and —
CB: So, how did that work?
TG: There was I think there was pretty well classless. I think those, those divisions were not, Peter never, Pete never mentioned anything of that nature. The only thing he objected to was when they were marched off at gunpoint by the Americans at this base and they were all put in the sergeant’s mess when he said he should have been in the officer’s mess. But they were questioned and all sorts. That’s the only time he ever, but I think he had taken umbridge at the Americans attitude rather than anything else because Pete had no thoughts for what anybody’s background was. He’d treat everybody the same.
RG: No. Absolutely.
TG: Whether he was a prince or a pauper. Quite literally. And he spoke to all people from all of those classes and you could be with him and he could hold a conversation with anybody from any background but he never ever —
RG: Never judged anybody.
TG: He never judged anybody.
RG: No.
TG: And he never sort of said, ‘I’ve got the DFC,’ and everything. He never got, it never got entered into conversation.
RG: He was just a nice chap.
TG: He was just a nice sociable chap who liked a pint after a hard days work at the nursery. And sometimes in later life he’d go down to the Mail Cart on the bus wouldn’t he because of the road safety. But one of the funny things I’ll tell you about Pete when I was first was going out with Rachel. I think I was first married.
RG: I think we were married.
TG: I think we were married. And Pete and your, and Harold.
RG: And his friend George Samsby.
TG: And George Samsby.
RG: And some, one other.
TG: They were a right drinking group.
RG: Oh dear.
TG: And they all used to go to the Dun Cow at Cowbit. Now, me and my mate who was quite a lot older than me were in a patrol car one night and it was about one in the morning coming back into Spalding along Cowbit Bank. And I could see some of the cars outside the well-lit pub because closing time was about ten thirty and this was 1am. The lights are still on. There were a few cars outside amongst which was your dad’s.
RG: Harold’s.
TG: Your brother in law’s and George Samsby’s and my co-driver, he said, ‘Look at that pub. Let’s go and raid it.’ I, I was appalled that these, you know, he says, ‘They’re all drinking.’ So I said, ‘I’m sorry, Brian. I can’t Brian, I can’t.’ He said, ‘Why not?’ I said, ‘Because I’m at court in the morning. If I get tied up with that lot I’m going to be here ‘til 4 or 5 o’clock.’ I didn’t mention whose cars they were because I could see it in the paper that, “PC arrests whole family illegally drinking.”
RG: Oh dear [laughs]
TG: Dear me. In the local pub. And I could imagine quite a rift, you know and I’d have to go and give evidence against him and then bail him out.
RG: Oh dear.
TG: But he was wonderful company. He was wonderful. He were wonderful company your dad was. Wasn’t he? He was. He used to work like anything. But when they used to be at Maxey they used to get an allowance to cut the grass at the Royal Observer Corps Post. To pay somebody to do it. Well, they didn’t. They kept the money and cut it themselves. So every year they had a right old booze up and a dinner to which we went with the money for the grass cutting. Resourceful to the last. Wasn’t he? Yes.
RG: He used to have these, you know exercises and they’d you know pretend that there was going to be a —
TG: Nuclear war.
RG: Nuclear war, you know. And away dad would go there. And the first thing that went down into the post as they called it was the beer laughs] It went down, you know. The beer.
TG: That was because they were underground weren’t they?
RG: Yeah.
CB: They wouldn’t want to get it contaminated by radiation would they?
RG: Absolutely not.
TG: It didn’t matter about anything else but they’d be locked down there for a few days, wouldn’t they?
RG: Yes.
TG: With the luncheon, didn’t they? The luncheon meat and —
RG: I felt as though I knew everything about the Royal Observer Corps.
CB: What would you think Pete would have said was his most memorable experience in the war?
RG: Golly. That is a question. In the war.
TG: Well, only the things that he’d mentioned really because he didn’t go into that much detail. He mentioned the Scharnhorst thing because they lost those aircraft and they put it out of action for about a month. The loss of his crew, and those things we’ve already highlighted.
RG: I think he would probably have said it would be his mother in law’s cooked breakfast because when he was at home on leave nan, my nan would always make sure that he got the eggs and he got the bacon and had a good, you know a good breakfast. But I can’t think of anything on the raid side or operations that dad would talk about more than another.
TG: He just, he just did it.
RG: Yeah. I think the loss of his crew. He talked about that a bit but, yeah. No.
TG: It was a, it was a period in his life that —
RG: He just did.
TG: They did. And when it was over he wanted to put it behind him.
CB: Yes.
TG: And what he did subsequently was in complete and utter contrast. Wasn’t it? Growing plants and, and selling them. It wasn’t a noisy machine driven —
CB: Destructive force.
TG: Destructive force. It was a constructive effort.
RG: But all his hobbies and things were RAF connected. Yeah.
TG: They —
RG: Yeah. He had a great love of flying and things.
TG: He liked, liked flying. As I say. The Holbeach Club and his wireless op. His amateur radio and obviously the ROC, RAFA and all this sort of thing.
RG: My sister. My younger sister. She —
TG: There are three of them.
RG: Three of us.
TG: We’ll not mention Jane.
RG: Jane. She lived in Bath and she’d just bought this house and they were having it converted. Fantastic place it was and she wanted dad to see it. Now, dad was a very, very sick man and she wanted us to go. And I said, ‘Dad won’t survive a road trip or a train trip.’
TG: He had a heart attack when he was about seventy eight, so.
RG: Yeah. I said, ‘Dad won’t survive that, Jane. It’ll just absolutely knock him out.’ So she chartered a helicopter to come and fetch us.
TG: [unclear] anyway.
RG: Yeah. But dad was absolutely in his element. He, we set of from Fenland Airfield. Right. You know. Little Fen.
TG: In this helicopter.
RG: All his mates were watching him and this chappy in the uniform and off we went.
TG: To Bath.
RG: Terry and I went to Bath.
TG: With your dad.
RG: Yeah. With dad. And dad sat in the front like this. And as we got, we went over where Prince Charles lives. Highgrove, and that. And when we got —
TG: Highgrove. Yes.
RG: When we got near somewhere or other there was two Hercules in the sky. Now, helicopters fly quite low.
TG: It was over the —
CB: This is Lyneham.
TG: No.
RG: No.
TG: No. The one that was closest.
RG: No.
TG: Fairford.
RG: Where the —
TG: Fairford. It was closed at the time.
CB: Because —
RG: Yeah. Because they were converting for the —
CB: Americans. Yes.
RG: Yeah. Two helicopters, two Hercules were coming like this and we’d got, we were all sat in the back. Got these headsets on and I said, ‘Oh, oh look at those Hercules across there. Look at those.’ You know. We were coming like this. These two Hercules were coming like that. And I thought to myself I don’t know but we’re just a little bit too close to those. So I said to the pilot about these. I said, ‘Oh they’re a bit close to us, aren’t they?’ He went, ‘Silence in the cabin.’ Closed me. So then he kept saying to the radar people and whatever.
CB: Control room. Yes.
RG: Yeah. Control room. He kept saying such and such, ‘This is Echo Tango Lima 546,’ or whatever we were, ‘We are a Jet Ranger. We have five people on board. We are flying from Fenland Airfield in Lincolnshire to a private landing spot in Bath. We are a Jet Ranger. We have five — ’ And I kept thinking and I kept thinking, I kept thinking you keep telling them. And he kept saying it, repeating and the control place said you are de, de, de, der like this. And he kept saying and, ‘Yes. We are a Jet Ranger.’ And he kept repeating it. ‘We are a Jet Ranger.’ And then the call sign like that. I thought, yes you tell them who we are because when we hit there’s not going to be anything left of our Jet Ranger. And then all of a sudden this voice said whatever the call sign. ‘You are a Jet Ranger. You are flying — ’ you know repeated everything. He said, ‘Yes. We are.’ And the next minute our little helicopter, well it wasn’t a little one, we went down like this. We went right down like that. I thought I don’t like this, we’re going down, and these Hercules literally went over the top. And when we got calmed down the captain said, ‘Phew.’ And what it was the call sign of us was very similar to one of those Hercules and they’d got us muddled up.
CB: Oh.
RG: But do you know dad sat in the front and dad said something, ‘Well, Skip. That was a good, good shout.’ Or something like that.
TG: Good show.
RG: Good show. Yeah. And the fella said, ‘I bet you’ve had more experiences than that one.’ And dad said, ‘Yeah. But not as exciting,’ or something like that. But oh dear. But, yeah.
CB: Crikey.
RG: Dad was laid up for quite a few weeks after that one. Oh, you haven’t been recording me have you?
[recording paused]
RG: And he obviously had —
CB: So Terry I just want to go back to what talked about the parents of Tuesday coming down to see Pete. What do you think they were looking for?
TG: Well, Durham is a couple of hundred miles away from East Kirkby at least. And travel wouldn’t be very easy at that time. And they were there waiting for Peter when he returned from his, his short period of rest. Expressly having requested to see him. And there must have been a terrible gap in their yearning to find out more about their son in his last days and to speak to his closest friend of that time. His drinking mate. His flying mate. And Pete was able to fill them in. How they were. What his attitude was. What his spirits were like. Right up until the last time he saw him which was obviously some time after his own parents. The fact that they went out to dinner with Pete when they were down there, the fact that the station commander had accepted them on to the base because it wouldn’t be easy for civilians to get on there at that time must have been a great —
RG: And the five pounds.
TG: Must have been a great comfort to them. And having then travelled home. Probably having had to stay down in Lincolnshire for a day or two. To post him the five pounds in recognition of both the comfort he’d brought to them and also for his recent commission, Pete’s commission, clearly shows to me that the effort that they put in the, that it’s the terrible desire to fill in the gaps in their son’s life as much as they could was for closure.
RG: And dad had done it.
TG: And Pete had fulfilled that and filled that gap as much as he possibly could. He brought them closure. And hopefully they went away, well clearly were much happier than they had have been. But to have lost him without any of this detail would have, they would have always wondered. And it wouldn’t have been an easy journey for them to make because they didn’t know what they were going to hear really.
[recording paused]
CB: So what did he particularly appreciate when he was on his trips?
TG: Coming home. He said, he said that often coming home particularly coming home they’d waste a huge amount of ammunition shooting at the Morning or the Evening Star. Whichever time of day Venus was up. When they were very tense and they thought maybe there were fighters waiting for them to land. But one of the loveliest sights he said was the landscape below. England was always greener and he knew he was in England just from the colour, the density of the green rather than on the continent. He didn’t look out for the Cathedral as, as a lot of crews did. Boston Stump was the, was, was more visible than the Cathedral when they came home.
CB: The Lincoln Cathedral.
TG: Than Lincoln Cathedral. But he particularly loved the greenery. That’s more than anything else he loved to see the green green grass of home as they say. And it was greener than over the water.
CB: Thank you.
[recording paused]
CB: I want to take you both together.
RG: Oh dear.
CB: And where shall we do it because it’s nice here. Or we can for it outside?
TG: You can do it outside. Or wherever you like.
RG: Yeah. Do it where you like.
CB: Well, we just have the picture with you.
RG: Yeah.
CB: Just hold it between you. It’ll be nice to do it outside wouldn’t it?
RG: I’ll put a bit of lipstick on I think.
TG: She’s got to do her hair.
CB: That’s good. Let me in the meantime just write my email address on there.
TG: I’ll try and send you three and four at a time. Or whatever.
CB: Whatever. Yeah.
TG: Yeah. I’ll just get my shoes on.
CB: Ok.
[pause]
RG: Yes. It would be quite appropriate to be in our garden.
CB: Well, I think so.
RG: Dad and I spent an awful lot of time on it.
CB: Did you? Yes. I think it looks super. Well, I’m looking to move. To downsize my house.
RG: Oh yes. I don’t —
CB: Thank you.
RG: What was I going to say? I think we ought to downsize.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Rachel and John Gill
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-30
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AGillRA-JT170930
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:38:47 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Second generation
Description
An account of the resource
Peter Hazeldene joined the RAF from Wales when he saw a poster to see the world from a different perspective. He trained as a wireless operator and during training suspected a couple of incidents of sabotage on the base. Peter was posted to 106 Squadron at RAF Finningley. On a mining operation they were hit by anti-aircraft fire. It was only when they returned to base they realised the rear gunner was dead and his turret was awash with blood. On another occasion the flight engineer apparently went berserk and Peter had to subdue him by hitting him with an ammunition box. After his first tour of operations Peter was seconded to the Americans at Polebrook as an instructor. He then was posted to RAF East Kirkby with 57 Squadron. While he was on leave he returned to find his crew were dead or missing. The parents of his pilot travelled to East Kirkby to meet him and come to terms with the death of their son. He started a third tour at RAF Syerston and completed several operations before the war ended. After the stress of operations Peter suffered terrible flashbacks and nightmares for the rest of his life.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Great Britain
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1944-06-05
1944-06-06
106 Squadron
57 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
B-17
bale out
bombing
bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944)
crash
Distinguished Flying Cross
final resting place
Gneisenau
H2S
Hampden
Heavy Conversion Unit
heirloom
killed in action
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
memorial
mine laying
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Cranwell
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Finningley
RAF Husbands Bosworth
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Metheringham
RAF Polebrook
RAF Syerston
RAF Upper Heyford
RAF West Freugh
RAF Wigsley
Royal Observer Corps
Scharnhorst
Stirling
take-off crash
training
wireless operator / air gunner
-
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/832/10823/AGardnerHS171101.2.mp3
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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
Gardner, Harold Stanley
H S Gardner
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Harold Gardner (1923 - 2022, 1801381, 2606144 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator with 106 and 189 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-01
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Gardner, HS
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is Hal Gardner. The interview is taking place at Mr Gardner’s home in Saltdean, Sussex on the 1st of May 2017. Hal, could you say a bit about where you were born and your early life?
[recording paused]
DM: I’ll just make a correction to the date we are recording. It’s the 1st of November 2017. Thank you. Ok Hal, so if you could talk a bit about your, where you were born and growing up.
HG: I was born in Brighton. I’m a Brightonian and my father got a house after we’d had a flat initially because my mother, we, I had a sister of course a bit younger than myself and we started living in Brighton at Bevendean. Initially I went to school at St John’s School in Brighton until I was about eleven and then I sat the Eleven Plus Examination. Didn’t quite make the Grammar School but I had to sit again and I was an in between person and they put me in to the Brighton Intermediate School close to St Peter’s Church. That was my starting back to school. A very good school. I learned quite a lot. Good masters, good school and I progressed up to about fourteen when suddenly when I was on holiday, my father was in the Brighton and Hove General Worthing Gas Company in those days said he wanted to get me in to the Gas Company. And I had a few tears. I said, but I was fourteen then I wanted to be in the bank. He said, ‘Well, I think this is going to be what I think for you.’ And he, what he basically, sent me right from Hampshire on a coach on my own to sit this examination in Brighton and which I passed with a lot of other guys and I think there was about twenty at the time. And I was taken as an apprentice on Brighton and Hove And Worthing Gas Company in 1937. I wasn’t happy in the circumstances because I didn’t want to be in the Gas Company. But however, I got on with it and we were taught the trade, suppliers of gas, of how to make pipes fitted. How to make metres fitted. All the things you would know and I progressed from them up ‘til when I was about seventeen going with a skilled fitter to learn the trade. At seventeen I was called suddenly for no reason. I still do not know the reason. I was called by the, Ray Hanson, technical manager and he said, in his office, he said, ‘Gardner,’ he says, ‘We’re going to put you in the showroom.’ Now if you think that was around about 1940 just about the war time I couldn’t understand why they picked me because there was about fifteen all doing the same trade. Why they wanted me to go in the showroom. Never answered that unless they thought perhaps I was smarter I don’t know. Anyway, I was put in this showroom at Church Street which is still there these days although it’s a café now. And I went there first and when I got there I was quite surprised because apart from me in the showroom there were other more senior men and that was for selling gas cookers, selling gas fires. It was a totally different thing than I ever thought about. Anyway, I progressed quite well in there and I liked it. And suddenly of course about that year 1940 which was, that was in, we had the Battle of Britain then if I remember and what happened then was the government abandoned the Air Defence Cadet Corps and brought in the Air Training Corps that year I think. So I knew I was getting that I was seventeen that I probably would want to be called up because I was in Brighton and could see all the Spitfires. And that was with a lot of other guys. We just wanted, we thought this is something we could do. Fly a Spitfire. And so I had two, a couple of months I think in the Air Cadets and then I volunteered for training in the Royal Air Force. Now, to fly in the Royal Air Force in those days you had to volunteer. You could not be called up. So, I mean we were all or the ones that also went along we were all excited. What we were all thinking, so many of the lads of my age then thought yeah, a Spitfire. I mean it’s still a wonderful aircraft. And so we, we, you know we were accepted on the Air Force as air crew on a PNB scheme which is a pilot, navigator, bomb aimer scheme and I think it was, let me see I was eighteen. I think about 1941 I was called up and went to St John’s Wood in London with a lot of other Air Cadets and there we had basic training. One of the first thing I noticed too was in their uniform, in their glengarry hats we had a white flash which denoted that we were aircrew and had volunteered. So, of course it gave us a bit of an uplift of that and we thought we were the cats whiskers you know. Anyway, so I went then and got basic training in London. Sent to ITW, Initial Training Wing in Newquay and learned all the basics of navigation. A bit about flying. A bit about all aspects of the Air Force and as we were going to be aircrew the ones that were going to be pilots or wanted to be pilots were sent to Sywell in Nottingham after we’d passed the exams in Newquay. And we all did about one trip I think in a Tiger Moth and from that very trip they then sent me back to Manchester. Heaton Park where there was hundreds of air crew. All of us waiting to be posted somewhere for flying. Either in Canada or in South Africa. Those were the two main things. I was given the chance and went to Canada. And we were sent to Glasgow and got on a ship there. That was Queen Elizabeth Two. No. When is, that can’t be the Queen Elizabeth. I think the Queen Mary. It was the biggest ship in those times and there was about six of us in the cabin. We thought we were great then because going across to Canada in that escorted by Spitfires I mean we were quite happy. And then we got to Canada just about Christmas. On December the 19th 1942 that would be. December ’42. We got to Canada but we started actually in Canada in to the New Year of ’43 so really started operating as a Cadet about, I think it was January ’43 in a place called Bowden near Calgary. I spent about three months there flying like with the other chaps. I could take off and land with a, with an instructor with me but I just couldn’t get the feel of the aircraft. I mean if you learned to drive you know and you’re on the ground and you want to stop, you want to do something and change you would stop but of course when you’re flying you’ve got to think of exactly what you were doing. It wasn’t me and I had to check with the chief flying instructor who said, ‘Look —’ He said, ‘Well, you’re not doing too bad.’ So I said, ‘What options have I got?’ He said, ‘Well, you got either navigator or bombardier.’ So I said, ‘I think I’ll take a navigator.’ Now, having said this I was still green. I really didn’t know what the syllabus was until I was posted to an Air Observer’s School in Edmonton, Canada. A very nice place run by the Canadians and met another, a lot of Englishmen and we were on a course for flying. Hadn’t been in there long when I fell, we were playing basketball and I fell and broke a wrist and that put me back and I couldn’t get back to that same course. So they put me on to a course of Australians and New Zealanders. I couldn’t have done better. They were a great bunch. I like the Australians and New Zealanders. Anyway, I I worked on that particular course with them until we’d done enough training and enough ground work and enough flying and then we had the exams and I did quite well. I had about eight, I’ve got my logbook, I did eighty percent on ground work and seventy three percent on flying. Now, why I say that is because when all those courses went, were finalised two got commissions in each course. As a parallel course with ours the Australians and the New Zealanders there was a Canadian course and everything, everybody got seventy percent and they got, they got commissioned. And I was upset in a way because I didn’t get it purely because on my course there were two Australian officers who were ground staff and had transferred to flying and their, their marks were below us. Below mine. However, because of the way the situation was I didn’t get one. We already got two commissioned so I was disappointed. Anyway, forget that. I got on with the job and it was a difficult job. One I’d never, I mean I didn’t have the schooling perhaps than a lot of others. I wasn’t Grammar School and I wasn’t university but I worked hard and it was, it was a wonderful position. It was demanding, interesting. And of course, I come back. I graduated as you can see me there. Directly I got to this country I was posted to Dumfries to fly Anson aircraft as a navigator in this country and get used to some of the weather conditions we would, I would expect in flying in this country. I had a week there and then after that I was posted to I think it was initial, I think it was an OTU, no. Not an OTU. Let me see. I can’t quite remember what that was. Anyway, it was a group where we met all other categories. We met pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, air gunners, wireless operators and we were all put in a big hangar style of place and we had to choose our own crews. Now, we were all amazed and I understand it went through for a long time this way. You know, we’re sitting around. We’re all looking and thinking how do we do this as pilots? And people went from one to the other. ‘Have you got a pilot?’ ‘Have you got a navigator?’ ‘Have you got a bomb aimer?’ Have you got this? Anyway, an Australian, strangely enough came to me. Not the one that I’d been training with and he said, ‘Would you, have you got a pilot?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Would you like to come with me?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ Quite happy because I’ve also got, I’ve also got an Australian wireless operator.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s great.’ Anyway, we picked up, we picked up a Scottish bombardier and we picked up a Welsh rear gunner and another man and we became a crew and that’s how it was done. The whole situation, all these dozens of aircrew got their categories, got their brevies etcetera and we had to make our own and it worked marvellous. Very few of the core, the crews that formulated themselves because I’ve spoken to obviously veterans over the years since and nearly everybody was satisfied. Occasionally an odd one had to be changed though for whatever reason. I don’t know. So there we were. We got through and we were then a crew. We were then posted to an Operational Training Unit and I think that was Bruntingthorpe in Leicester as a crew. And there we picked up, we started flying together on Wellingtons which is, which is a twin engine aircraft which was quite famous in those days. A Wellington was a very good aircraft. They were well constructed. We were quite happy and we were sent off from there. I’ve got them in the book how many, any flights we had flying around England in the dark. And let’s be certain of that. England was in the dark. Oh, you saw a few lights here and there but nothing like when you get up in an airport these days when you can’t see the airport for lights and when you get up there you can see the next place you’re going to almost. So that was up to me being a navigator. And of course, the other crew go through their motions and what they had to do. Those early days of course it was really a navigator and pilot had to work very closely. Anyway, after a certain number of trips our pilot was checked and we went on then to a four engine aircraft which was a Stirling because we had to then pick up an engineer. They gave us an engineer. We didn’t pick him ourselves. And he came to us as our skipper had to learn more about the four-engine aircraft and we all did our, I mean I as navigator and the rest of the crew went with him and we did so many hours then until he was proficient and the, and the engineer was proficient. And we were then sent on to what was called then an LFS. A Lanc Finishing School. And I think, I’m trying to think where that was. Lanc Finishing School. It’s probably in my diary. We can look at that later on. And there it was all to do with the pilot learning the Lancaster which of course we had heard about and of course, and as we know from now and we did after a while it was the best aircraft going at the time. But it was just one of those, it was another aircraft and we, we all did our turn in that and whatever we were doing as navigator. The others of course although they appeared to be solitary there was so much for them to do in their jobs when they, when we were on operations. It was a crew effort. So that, we ended Lanc Finishing School and then the first thing we, then when we were all ready we were posted to 106 Squadron, Metheringham. And that’s when I started my operations.
DM: So, can you remember roughly when that was?
HG: Yes.
DM: What year at least?
HG: Shall I get my logbook out?
[recording paused]
HG: 106.
DM: Right so —
HG: At Metheringham.
DM: So you arrived at Metheringham, February ’45.
HG: ’45, yeah.
DM: On 106 Squadron.
HG: That’s it. Yes.
DM: Ok. And what happened then?
HG: Well, it was a question of they were going through all of the things they needed to do before they sent you on operation. What we basically did was, initially was a radar cross country for me specifically I think, as navigator. And then we had formation flying in March. Then we had practice bombing in March. And then we had our first operation on the 5th of March ’45 to Bohlem. B O H L E M. Bohlem Oil Refinery in Germany. On the 6th of March, the next day, ’45 we went to Sassnitz, in the Baltic to attack shipping. On the 7th of March ’45 we were in Harburg. We went to Harburg which was south of Hamburg and that was for an oil refinery. And all those were night trips. All of them were night trips to start with.
DM: Do you have any memories of the first trip? Any impressions of how it felt and what your feelings were?
HG: Well, I think I was, let me start with the Bohlem. I had a problem when we started flying. I’d better go back to [pause] let’s start before we start flying. What happened in all squadrons there was, you were called to a briefing room probably about mid-day when all the crews were assembled in the briefing room. And then you got on the platform there would be a big board and there would be a map and there would be a curtain across it you see. And then the CO or whoever was going to give the briefing, and also the Met officer and the navigator, senior navigation officer would come on and then they’d pull the sheet apart and there would be the lines going to, the tracks going to the places we were going to bomb and either the experienced men would say, ‘Oh, that’s not bad.’ Or, ‘God,’ you know. This sort of action you know. And being new we just had to sit and watch. Now, in those briefing things on 106 Squadron if you’re going from one place to another and altering courses to get to this place in Germany or wherever we’re going it needed the tracks. The tracks between one place or another before you, there was a track here and a track there. Alteration course. Normally in, we understood that the navigator would have to draw it all out and work it all out. However, that’s, that particular squadron the senior officer, navigation officer did all the plot, all the plotting, the initial ones of where we were supposed to go and we all had the same. From my memory we all had the same navigation log to start with. So in other words we always, if we’d have all done it individually we’d have had similar answers but to me it was so obvious that if we got one person who was doing it and that was the senior man we all started on the basis line. So anyway, so we got our logs all ready and they started talking about the Met that was going this, that and the other and what possibly we might meet with. Certain parts of Germany with ack ack or fighters and all the other information that one would get. And then after that we would go back and have breakfast or whatever you would like to call it. Tea. We had something to eat. And then that would start in the afternoon about two and after we’d had something to eat we’d get out to the, and of course it would be dark. As you know it was dark because it was, it was February and March. We would then be taken out by, we’d get our parachute harness, our parachute. We’d take them with us and of course with the navigator he had a green bag and all our stuff was in the green bag. That’s the stuff we had to work the navigation out on. And we’d be taken out to the aircraft, wherever, in the dark and of course everything was dark and we would wait by the aircraft for a certain time and the pilot would say, ‘Let’s get in there.’ We’d get in and everybody would start. I think it was the port engine, directly we got in the port engine because that’s the other equipment in the aircraft especially for the navigator. You would start checking. Now that, we would then have a special time for getting or going ready for going around the runway. Getting around the rest of the aerodrome to the runway we were going to take off with and we’d all be waiting anything up to about fifteen aircraft all loaded with high explosives and other bombs etcetera with us. And we’d get around and I think we were probably something like about six or seven in front of us and what was happening on the runway that’s in use, the one we’re going on there would be a caravan and an officer. A lit up caravan and an officer there to let each aircraft go. He’d flash his green light. So we should go off one at a time. Now if I say we’d go off I’d better explain that when you got ready to take off what would happen is the engineer would open up the throttles against the brakes of the, the pilot would have his foot on the brakes and on the steering columns and then the, when he was given the ok the engineer would push, push the, all the throttles open and the pilot would take command then with, with his [pause] with his [pause] —
DM: Control.
HG: Controls.
DM: The steering wheel. Control.
HG: Controls. Yes.
DM: Yes.
HG: Anyway, what then? Then the navigator helps. We did our laps. We helped the pilot. What I used to do was to read the, on my where I was sitting I had an air speed indicator and I could read the airspeed off for him so he didn’t. He got all his attention on taking off and I’d read the airspeed going from say about sixty, sixty five, seventy, eighty, eighty five and ninety, ninety five and Roy my pilot said, he didn’t say, by the way I was called Stan in the Air Force. I’ll tell you that in a moment and he’d say, ‘Stan, it’s ok now.’ And we’d take off around about a hundred. A hundred miles per hour on the, on the air speed indicator. Now, you take off in the dark and from that time onwards you virtually don’t see anybody. You’re working on your, on your chart and also your log. Everything you’ve got down. You start off with, everybody starts on the same course but of course slightly different times because of taking off. And you’d climb to a certain premeditated height which probably from memory is around about eighteen thousand feet. We didn’t, we didn’t fly any lower than that from memory. I think we had been up to nearly twenty thousand. About eighteen thousand from my memory seems to be the operations that we did anyway. And then you would go through and of course what happens then each navigator is responsible apart from the initial stuff that we all had to start with. You then, you’re hitting winds and things and of course the aircraft gets off the course a bit. And what you, the navigator is doing all the time is checking. Checking the course by, what we had was a Gee box to get fixes. Now, I’ll explain the Gee box. Basically, it was, as far as I remember it was probably it was a round green, a green [pause]
DM: Screen.
HG: Screen. A green screen with two datum lines in white going across this and on the top, I think it was two on the top, or one at the top was a station, two at the bottom, they were British stations broadcasting. No, no figures on that. Nothing. Just the screen. As you know of course I mean we hadn’t seen screens before and there was no televisions or anything and they’re the sort of screens we get now but there were screens and these two datum lines and points were where the British stations were broadcasting. They would send their signals. Now, to get a fix on that quite from memory first of all you had to use a switch and then those, those things would vanish and then you would get two blips, I think from memory on, on the lines away from each other. You’d use another switch. Got the blips together like that. Push the switch and that gave you a fix. Still no numbers. Nothing on it. Just the figures. The movements of these little things on the screen. Then to get the fix you pushed another switch and you’d go on then to another datum point. We had a line going like that and then one there, one there, one there and another big one there, one there and the same on the bottom. But on part of that there would be another small thing marked and that small thing told the navigator because you knew what all those figures were going through there because otherwise the Germans would know them. If they put them through they’d have broadcast the job. So we had to know what these figures were. Well, once we got to the end of this scene we had about four figures and we had then to go to, not the plotting chart but another chart that was all over England and the continent with lines going all like that way and all around this way and that way. And you had to find the figures you’d worked out on this screen on that particular map which gave you then a latitude and longitude which you then transferred on to your plotting chart which gave you a fix. And that fix was relative to the track you were supposed to be making this certain, this try. And you might be lucky and right on it but generally speaking it was a little off that and you checked again five or ten minutes later. You had to keep on checking, working these things out all the time to see that what you’re, that what you’re getting by radio is matching what you’ve already drawn in. And occasionally of course winds change and you’d find suddenly while these fixes you’re given are more or less parallel with your track suddenly you see one go out and you know full well then you’ve got to change your wind. Anyway, so you saw that and then you went back on and got to go back all through to get another fix to see where that is. And from that fix you then had to work out the new wind. A wind direction. And I’m not quite certain now [laughs] I used, we had a Dalton computer and from memory we drew things on this plastic thing and, and moved the slide around. Things like that. I can’t really remember exactly how I did that but anyway we got, we then got another check on that, on that wind and on the course we were, on the course we were flying. We had to alter then to make good that original line which was the track. We had to alter course to that once we worked something else out and we’d give that to the pilot. I can’t remember saying, ‘Navigator to pilot,’ which was always the thing we should do. I think, I think we called each other Christian names basically. You know, it was Roy. I mean we were perfectly happy with that. And so we flew then and very rarely did we see, occasionally you saw if someone went down in flames. You might have have seen something but and you would note it in your log but we didn’t see much I must admit. I don’t think we had initially any air attacks. However, we did go out and get through a lot of flak. There was a lot of flak and when that happened all I could remember was that it used to come up, it used to come up slow and then when going past the aircraft you just can’t believe it. It’s gone like that. And so all the time you’re getting nearer to the target and you may have had, apart from the first track you were doing and keeping log on, your course on that. Then you would get another movement to alter course to get towards the target. Perhaps a short one or another short one just to get into the target. So there was quite a lot of alterations of courses which the navigator has to deal with with the pilot. And so the navigator is busy all the time which I was grateful. I must admit I’d never done navigation before and it was, it was difficult. It was. But it was interesting, it was because when you work these things out and they, and most of them that you worked out were pretty reasonably accurate you realise you’d done a good job. And all the trips I had with the, with my crew touch wood we didn’t get lost and it was all in the dark and we come back that way. When we reached the target my state of operations of course things had changed in the way the some of the bombings were taken. We had what was called a master bomber. Bomb aimer, and he would be a very good crew and he’d be flying lower than us and he’d have to direct the aircraft coming in on to certain flares that may be dropping from other aircraft. ‘Bomb on the green flares,’ or something like that. Or other factors came into that which he’d give instructions to the pilot as to what they should do and what they shouldn’t do. And then sometimes at the end he may have, may say to you, ‘Main stream finish. Stop bombing and return home.’ Or something like this and then you, you’d find all your tracks going and the tracks coming back weren’t the same. You had to go a different way so you couldn’t, well I wouldn’t say you couldn’t, you couldn’t cheat anyway with navigation. You’ve got to do each one as you come. And then you get back after an operation and there again we were lucky, of course. One or two didn’t come back but when we got back to the aerodrome, also when you think that we’re it’s an aerodrome in a field in Lincolnshire and all these others coming back. We get back and find if we were, if we were perhaps about on time we’d give instructions to the pilot. You get the instructions to land. On the other hand if we were perhaps a bit late and perhaps you were a new crew we’d be given instruction from the, the control tower. I think our aircraft was M for Mabel. Mabel. I think we had some other name for it. Anyway, you would fly Angels 9 and so we had to keep up at nine thousand feet going around in circle to there and we were given a number until our number was called so we would go in and land. That’s how they got rid of so many aircraft coming. They couldn’t all come in at one time. And that was the end of an operation and from then onwards obviously we were picked up in the aerodrome and taken to debriefing with intelligence officers. And I can always remember that because we’d get a drink of coffee or whatever it was and cigarettes. Well, of course all the boys go. I didn’t smoke. Someone else. I took them for somebody else. No. I never smoked. I didn’t like smoking. I never did. That was great. And so that was the end of one operation. So we’ll have a breather?
DM: So up ‘til now I think I’m right in saying your operations had been at night but you then started to do some daylight raids. What was the first one of those?
HG: Well, the first one I’ve got in there is the Essen raid which was an extremely big raid. We did, we didn’t really know that until we got there because I’ve got it here marked one thousand. But as we’ve seen from the, there was, there was actually one thousand and seventy nine aircraft which was the biggest one, a thousand bomber raids in the war. But the point was that there had been thousand bomber raids way back in ’62. This was the biggest one.
DM: ’42. Back in ’42.
HG: ’42. Yes. What did I say?
DM: ’62.
HG: Yeah. ’42. There had been thousand but then they weren’t using necessarily bomber squadrons. They were using OTUs, Operational Training Units to make them up. When Bomber Harris decided he’d have a thousand bomber raid he had to, had to scrape the aircraft from all over the country. But these other, this last one of course there were seven hundred and fifty Lancasters, two ninety three Halifaxes and thirty six Mosquitoes of all bomber groups. This was the largest number of aircraft sent to a target so far in the war. Three Lancasters were lost. We lost three on that raid. I remember in particular I think one of our squadron got, he didn’t get shot down, I think that’s when I saw one from there, the gunner, the rear gunner a big cookie which was a tremendous big explosive bomb dropped from above and knocked off. I think knocked off the tail of one of the other squadrons. That’s how one of them was lost that way. It was not, it wasn’t shot down by the Germans. But it does say there was three gone. I don’t know what the other reasons were. Four thousand six hundred and sixty one tonnes of bombs were dropped. The accurate, was accurate and this [grey blue] virtually paralysed Essen until the American troops entered the city sometime later. Essen’s recording system produced no proper reports but eight hundred and ninety seven people were said to have been killed which is not too happy for them but there we are. That was war. I know. So that was the biggest daylight and we did have a daylight again close to that to Dortmund the next day. That was another daylight but I’ve got nothing, I can’t remember anything about that one except it's in the log. Five hours thirty. And then we did go to the, 27th of March, getting to the end of March went to Farge marshalling yards. I can’t remember much. I can’t remember that one at all. So that then I think [pause – pages turning] and then we did have one very last night flight again. Nearly nine hours. Eight forty five and we went to Pilsen in Czechoslovakia. And I did see a note here we were diverted Harwell. I think that one when we came back we got diverted when we come back to England because I remember we were coming back in daylight in the end and I remember standing up and had a look back and all the, all the Lancs were coming all at different [laughs] behind us. Anyway, as far as I can remember then and then we left. Of course, we left, we left Coningsby, well thinking about it we left via [pause] we left Metheringham shortly afterwards.
DM: Were you told why you were leaving?
HG: No.
DM: You were told to go.
HG: And that’s what staggers me. All I can think of quite simply only since not then. Since other things have cropped up through life that at that particular time we did know about there was going to be a Tiger Squadron because they were going to attack Japan and I understand 106 was the squadron I found out afterwards was one squadron they wanted to go to Japan. Now, having said that because we had two Australians and I can’t remember whether they said anything. They may have said well they didn’t want, they didn’t want to go. At least to volunteer. This was going to be volunteer stuff and I think they wanted to get back to Australia and I can only think that was the one reason for to just send us off at the very end to just do one raid with a squadron we knew nothing about. I digress quickly here because only last week a public relations lady that deals with us veterans said an Australian wanted to phone me because I was on 189 Squadron and he wanted to know something about the squadron. And I said, ‘Well, yes. I was on it for one month and I can’t remember. I can only just remember that raid.’ And I mean we were there almost, and I mean one month was nothing. I couldn’t remember much about that.
DM: So you were sent to Bardney, changed a squadron, did one raid.
HG: Oh, yeah one thing, yes. I did one. When we were coming from Bardney I still remember my Australian pilot, he’d been commissioned. He was, he was a flying officer now and I remember him he going on all the courses and he had all our reports with him and he said I’d been recommended for a commission then. So I knew full well really that I should have had it. Personally it was only one of these things, unfortunate things, not because I didn’t deserve it because that’s how the system worked. There was two officers already in the course and they wouldn’t give any more. That’s how, you know that’s, so that was, I wasn’t very happy. And someone else, I saw another chap who was on the course originally said and I met him another somewhere along the line flying somewhere because of course between these sort of bombing raids of course we used to do trips. I’d take a squadron leader to somewhere. To another, you know nothing with my crew. He wanted a navigator and I’d do that for him and take him somewhere where he wanted. And so it’s all sorts of other things you know. Different things happened.
DM: Earlier on you said that you were called Stan.
HG: Yeah.
DM: When you were in the air. Why was that?
HG: Well, I go back to what we talked when I said I didn’t like my name Harold [laughs] I didn’t like it then and so I told the crew, you know, ‘I’m Stan.’ And so that’s how I, that’s right ‘til the end of the war. And so that was that. I don’t know what my mum thought about. I don’t think she worried very much. My father was in the First World War. He got in in 1914 and he got away with that but he died quite young. He had a, he wasn’t, he got shot in his finger I think but he other troubles. He died when he was about fifty nine I think. I’m sorry about that because I’d have liked him to have seen that I got through because he was still alive when I got back and I always remember he never asked me anything much [laughs] I don’t know why. At least I can’t remember if they asked me anything. I wasn’t such a jawbag then. I didn’t say so very much. Anyway, I just remember I came home to my mother and my sister and that was it, you know.
DM: So the war ended.
HG: Yes.
DM: You didn’t go to Japan because —
HG: No.
DM: I don’t think anybody did in the end.
HG: No. They didn’t. No. That was all gone.
DM: You didn’t go to India or anything like that.
HG: No. I didn’t.
DM: No.
HG: No. I —
DM: Did you make any, what did you do in the immediate aftermath of the war before you were demobbed? Can you remember?
HG: I don’t think there was anything in here. Wait a minute.
DM: Pause that a minute.
[recording paused]
DM: As a navigator on a Lancaster you were in your cubicle so you hadn’t got a view of what was going on outside. That’s, that’s right, isn’t it?
That’s right. You wouldn’t call it a cubicle. I’ll show you in a moment.
DM: Yeah.
On the wall I’ve got in the hall.
DM: Right. But anyway you couldn’t see —
HG: No. I couldn’t.
DM: What was going on.
HG: I was, I was, I was facing that way to the port engine with, well I’ve got my legs to here.
DM: Right. So looking out over the left hand side basically.
HG: Yeah. Well, my face was that way because all the stuff was in front of me. I’ll show you. I’ll show it to you in the hall. Yeah. Carry on.
DM: So did you ever get to sort of pop up in to the astrodome or or have a look out through the cockpit and see what was going on?
HG: I didn’t go up on the astrodome. I did go into the cockpit occasionally just to have a look around and got back quick. I think it was, I think it was over Essen when I looked out there because I looked down and we were bombing Essen through cloud. We had what they called Oboe which was I think the markers, I don’t know what, I think it was called Oboe and we had to bomb through cloud. All I could see down in Essen and I can always remember that. Looked down and it well it would have been eighteen thousand twenty thousand feet. Whatever. And it was just one, one mass of smoke. Couldn’t see Essen. I don’t know whether it was covered in anyway tremendous mile of well obviously it was you know we were, bombed in there. It was, that’s all I remember. Other times when we were flying friendly stuff and we had to go for another aerodrome to drop something or take somebody I can often remember going up the front with the pilot you know. We could set them on course and give them the course and know exactly what that was. Well obviously, I could know what we were going to do given the first course and go back and check on the next course if I wanted to stay up there with him and have a look around. We [laughs] I can always remember too the bomb aimer going up to the front there, having an argument, and he was Scottish with Roy. They saw a plane. They was just flying in England and he saw it and they were arguing whether it was above us or below us. Little things like that, you know. Crew stuff like that. And also we come back from, we were flying over England once going from east to west and I registered three hundred miles an hour which was, a Lanc did about a hundred fifty. We did. And in those days three hundred miles an hour was like a, almost like a Spitfire. But it was quite good. I remember that. And also we came back from coming back in the dark somewhere again on an ordinary trip and we had to do in Lancasters it was all part of the training for the pilot and his crew and everything else. You had to do certain things. Fly here. Fly there. And coming back I remembered we lost an engine over England. We lost an engine. We would come back on three engines but really nothing, no problem there because a Lanc could fly on one or two I think. They were quite good. And you see I have to look, I look back because I’ve met so many veterans and I know the sort of number of ops they’ve done and I know full well John Nichol who was after the war an officer used to fly I forget what they [pause] Tornadoes, something like that. When we bombed Iraq, you know. Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein and he called, he called the people who bombed before ’44, that was when D-Day occurred those that bombed after that were, what did he call them now? Tail End Charlies. Now, that was the term, terminology the, I think the fighters used that. The chap that used to have with fighters going into, more or less going into action they’d have a chap flying all into the back of them like this. Connected you know. And he was a Tail End Charlie to just protect their back to see what was coming along. There are so many, so many things you know that that happened and you hear of all sorts of things. And I know full well that that, I mean we came, I mean in that it took me all that time to get on operations and for the rest of the crew and it all really started because of failing as a pilot. I wasted half a dozen months in Canada. Well, not to say wasted like. Canada was a nice place. I wasted six months there trying to be a pilot and never did and so if I’d have got gone straight to a navigator I would much on squadron fire quicker and I might not be here. There’s an, there’s an awful luck I feel about it. Even so, even that’s one at Essen. We still lose. Apparently, I’ve got something even from the times I was flying from from roughly from January whatever it is up to when we ever finished flying we still lost, Bomber Command still lost about seven hundred aircraft. All of the other squadrons and so many other squadrons we were still, still lost a lot of guys. So we, you know, I think all of us at my stage of the game think we are really lucky but the other guys, some of the ones I’ve been we met. I mean they all know full well, I know full well first of all they were good pilots or crews, they were good crews. The training we had was good. There’s no doubt about it. The training we had was good. I mean to teach me navigation which I only went to an ordinary school wasn’t easy but it had to be the fact you wanted to do it. You had to do. And so to that end Bomber Command and ever since then you know I’ve been with veterans who have done a lot more and there’s no question there’s any difference between because I didn’t do as much. It’s not my fault. I had a longer time. No. It would have been more difficult. Put it that way.
DM: So before you came out you did some non-flying things.
HG: Yes.
DM: I think. What did you do?
HG: Well, there were basically, they were filling in time I think. Well, waiting for the Australians to go home and we look at them. Let me see. 18 Squadron, Bardney. That’s the funny thing. Twice I’ve got that for Fulbeck. Each one after the, after the last bombing raid in the war at night time. Six and a half hours. It wasn’t very far to Norway. Fighter affiliation. High level bombing. We used to do high level bombing. There was a place in, somewhere near the east coast where we used to take the aircraft, all of us and used to do practice bombs. And I always remember too one of those practice bombs we, our bomb aimer of course he, and by the way let’s get back. I’ve never mentioned the bomb aimer because he’d got his own particular job. However, in that squadron they did, we did have the bomb aimer sit with the navigator at times because the screen I told you originally because of those things up above the Germans used to put more and more of them. So he’d sit with me and make certain what was happening. If there was any others. And of course, we had also, I haven’t mentioned that, perhaps I should have done its come to me now and I’ll show you on the passage in a minute. Other side there was another screen. We had, underneath the aircraft we’d got a bulge and that was I forget the equipment there but that was giving us a picture in my, where I was operating from showed the contours of the land. In other words when you, if you went over Brighton you’d see the sea line and that sort going around to over to Dover and that sort of thing. It gave a picture and we could, I can’t remember how we did that we could get a fix off that to get a put on our charts. I can’t quite remember exactly that one. That’s another thing you know. And of course, the high level bombing. Well, that’s this. They’re filling up time here. Look at this. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven or eight there and I mean they sent the Australians home. Map reading. I’d done a lot of map reading. I mean we’d been doing high level bombing. Bassingham. That was another one. Only one hour forty. Just trips to waste time I think. Air to sea firing which we, oh yes. I can remember that. And we went over the North Sea and of course all this has to be combined with other, other squadrons who were close by and but of course you were given times of course for this and I always remember air to sea firing. Well, I don’t think my gunners ever had to fire in anger from memory. But when we were in this air to sea firing they were allowed to go. We had to attack something in the North Sea that was floating. I can’t remember. They all had, the rear gunner had a go and the mid-upper had to have a go. It was almost laughable because we killed ourselves laughing because the pilots, from memory I think even he said he offered them, I think even in those days five pound or something and no one missed them laughs] Formation flying. Yeah. Well, one hour five minutes on the 7th of April. January, February, March, April, May. Now, I’ve got something I might just mention about —
DM: So, before you left the Royal Air Force —
HG: Yes.
DM: I think you were sent to Cardington.
HG: That’s right. Yes.
DM: What did you do there?
HG: Well, I was put in charge of, apparently a lot of recruits were put there. Aircrew recruits and all wanted of course to fly and I had roughly about I think twenty or thirty in one, one block of the place there at Cardington and I had to look after them. Its strange there because one of the young men his, he was there and I think my wife knew him strangely enough but he was only just trying to join the Air Force and it was a lost cause really. I don’t think he, because I, well I did know about him. The next time I saw him he was playing for Brighton Football Club. And so I was just, it was what was it really? It was just something for me to do. And that’s like when we, I said my gunner and my bomb aimer went to, I think East Africa to learn to drive. They were giving us all odd jobs. I can’t possibly because they, they couldn’t get all of us demobbed there were so many of us. I mean Army, Navy, Air Force and I think they just pushed us around a bit until they had a chance to, to get us on to some place and get a demob suit and send us off. I wish there was a stalling arrangement by the government because of the number they wanted to get rid of. So, so it was, it was quite simple and I mean I could travel home from there and I quite enjoyed doing a job like that. I think I’d probably got a few raspberries from some of the younger ones. It was just a time waster really. I did, I mean I know it was Air Force and I was, obviously I wanted to get out of it now. I didn’t want to because these young chaps wanted to fly of course. What happened to them I don’t know. It was just a question again of something to pass. Being warrant officer, you know to look after them. See if they behaved themselves, I suppose.
DM: And when did you actually leave the Air Force? What date?
HG: Well —
DM: Effectively. So —
HG: That I don’t know. I would say it was, wait a minute [pause] I would say it was, yeah effectively discharged on the 25th of November 1946.
DM: Right.
HG: That would be it. The other one is, is when I got enlisted in the Royal Air Force Reserve in 1949 or whatever it was.
DM: What did you do after you left the Air Force?
HG: Well, I went straight back to my business. British, no it wasn’t British Gas. It was still Brighton, no. let me see. Let me try and think. I think it was —
DM: I think it was ’48 when it was nationalised.
HG: Yeah. So it would still be at Brighton And Hove General Gas Company and I went back and from memory I went back straight into the showroom. They put me straight back in the showroom. I’m just trying, I’m still trying to remember that. I can’t believe anything else other than show. I certainly, I can’t remember anything else other than the showroom. Yes. Yeah. I’m sure I went straight back into the showroom trying to get used to the equipment and all the things that happened even though I was only a few years away. See how the gas cooking and fires etcetera had progressed and, and shortly after that and I don’t know how many months it was the Gas Company advertised they wanted representatives to go in to meet people. To go around to premises to get gas. And I got out of the showroom then and I applied for that and I got as a representative. At the same time funnily enough there was several others, another two Air Force chaps I think both were ground staff chaps went the same, did the same thing and we became representatives from British Gas and were given an area to introduce gas to people and see builders. See what we could do with them. And I started that and I went on for a long long time as an ordinary representative which I enjoyed. In those early days of course we had to come, I had to come out as far as this place. It wasn’t as built up. Saltdean wasn’t as built up as it is now and in fact myself and one of the senior officers in British Gas, an older man than me we managed, there wasn’t much gas in this area and we managed to get there was supply right over the side and we had to get it right down the middle of Saltdean and once we started that and I was doing a lot with customers, builders to selling gas because what was happening in the world or in Britain was everything was going to be electric. They wanted all everything was going to be electric. They didn’t win. The gas took over and then we had oil coming in which we had to fight them to get and they had these old boilers to start with and we then we managed to get over the oil business because people had this oil in tanks in their gardens and that became problems and they were dirty things and and we were on the up. Gas was on the up. On the up. What was I saying then? It was, it was getting a hold. The representatives and all of us were, we weren’t all aircrew. One or two were and others were one or two Army and that sort of thing and we were doing our best to sell. We did a good job and we got a hold on and the gas built up from them days when we started that and then I used to come out here. And we used to have to go by bus in those days. We had to get by bus all smartly dressed. Smart dress. And if you wanted to get back in the office you had to find a phone box you see and walk to it [laughs] and put your four pence in. But then it was becoming good then. I become a senior in that department and then afterwards I wanted to get on better so I transferred to our commercial department which gave me instead of domestic houses I was dealing with places like hotels and police stations and all the big commercial buildings etcetera and also for restaurants and cafés. All the stuff where we were getting more money in of course. And I had that for some time and of course by that time we were given cars, or at least we bought cars and they’d paid us money for them. And then I wanted to get on further than that. I saw what I was doing as a commercial representative and then I applied with all the other commercial reps, some were Air Force, some were whatever they were. All were similar ages and we all wanted this job. I wanted to be, I wanted to be a management and I applied for management and I become an assistant manager. I always remember the, I had an appointment in London and there was several other guys there. I didn’t know them other than they were Londoners and we had to have an interview and one chap came out. He wanted me to talk about whatever they wanted me to talk about. I can’t remember that. And I said, and he said, ‘I’m giving up.’ I thought, giving up? I’m not giving up. So I went in to this when I had my interview. I can’t remember what it was but I had to talk about something and, and it also reminded me because when I got my commission as a PO, pilot officer and I think that was when after the war I had to address a lot of other officers and I had to stand on the front and talk about something or other. So so I suppose that’s when my talking started. In the business of gas and I did alright. I got the, I was an assistant, assistant industrial commercial sales manager and I enjoyed that. I enjoyed that right to the end and I retired in this place.
DM: Looking back did you enjoy your days in Bomber Command?
HG: Yes. Now, I sometimes mention that often with people I enjoy the navigator. I said, no that’s the wrong thing. Let’s be honest I was bloody frightened at times. I mean, no. Let’s put it this way I liked it because I was involved. I was doing something. I could, I could not have been a gunner but I couldn’t have sat there in my young days just sitting there and it was difficult for them. Especially for nine hours you’re sitting there watching the dark all the time. Very difficult. I had to work. Great. I liked and I still like working. I still, I’m now in my age now that, well I do a lot of work. I do have help but I still, touch wood I can still walk. I press myself. I think I’ve done that right all the time. I’m not wanting to be, I don’t think I’ve ever been lazy. Put it this way. And so to that end I’ve been lucky but yeah navigator, well any aircrew there was a worry you know. The times when everybody was silent because they were worrying about this and that and I mean I was silent because it was my, me doing of course navigating and touch wood I did all right. I was assessed afterwards as average. Now that’s great because one has to think that all there were some great aircrew. I know that some of the flights they were great and some of the navigators were great but of course the pilots were even so and they were extremely good, extremely good individuals of course. I couldn’t match with them. But there were so many of us were average and did average things except and went a lot on bombs and of course lost a lot of lives and all of us it was dangerous. But when you were doing that you hear things but you’ve got you’ve got a mind on what you’re doing here. So it was great to be involved and working. Now, you know it wasn’t enjoyable but it was worthwhile.
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 Harold Stanley Gardner
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Meanwell
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-01
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
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AGardnerHS171101, PGardnerHS1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:03:36 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Harold Gardner was a navigator on 106 Squadron based at RAF Metheringham during the final months of World War 2. Known throughout his RAF career as Stan, he was born in Brighton. In 1937 when 14-years-old, his father arranged employment for him with the Brighton Gas Company. Enthralled watching Spitfires flying over the South Coast, Stan volunteered for pilot, navigator, bomb aimer training in 1941 with the RAF. After initial training he was deployed to Canada for pilot training. Although advancing on the course to take-off and landing solo, Stan was uncomfortable in the pilot role and he requested a move to navigator training. After graduating, he returned to the UK and following progression though Operational Training Unit and Lancaster Finishing School, Stan was posted to 106 Squadron in February 1945, with his first operation on the 5th March. He provides a detailed account of the procedure's navigators followed to ensure the aircraft remained on course, including constantly plotting their position and corrections from varying winds. Following the end of hostilities, Stan found himself posted to RAF Cardington in charge of aircrew recruits before being demobilised in 1946, when he returned to his career in the gas industry.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-12-19
1945-03-05
1945-03-07
1945-03-27
1946-11-25
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Alberta--Calgary
England--Bedfordshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Brighton
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Essen
Germany--Hamburg
106 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
demobilisation
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
military service conditions
navigator
Operational Training Unit
RAF Cardington
RAF Metheringham
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/783/9337/AHarveyH180914.2.mp3
bba4bd39453a961b7beb6e9a98fe56b2
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
Harvey, Harold
H Harvey
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Harold Harvey (b. 1923). He lived in Lincolnshire during the war.
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
2018-09-14
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
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Harvey, H
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MS: First of all, I’m going to start off with some formal stuff. It is exactly 10.21 and it’s Friday the 14th of September 2018, and I’m sitting with Harold Harvey who wants to be known as Harold. Yeah?
HH: Correct.
MS: Ok. And you’re going to be interviewed by me. By me, for the purposes of the International Bomber Command, University of Lincoln, IBCC and Lincoln Digital Archives. You’ve agreed to be interviewed. There are no other persons present because you’ve consented to be interviewed without anybody here but I’ve made it clear to you that, and we’ve got a very nice cup of coffee at the moment, if anybody, if you ever need a comfort break or anything like that because I understand you’ve had an operation recently you just stop the interview and you go and have your comfort break any time you get tired etcetera. Now, are you happy to be interviewed?
HH: Yes. I’m quite happy with that. In fact, I’m pleased to do it.
MS: Thank you very much. That’s very kind. One nice thing about this is that when the interview has been dealt with and transcribed at the, at Riseholme, you will get a copy of the interview. I’ll also go through some other stuff at the end of the interview as well.
HH: That will be very nice and useful for my family.
MS: It will be.
HH: In the future. Yes.
MS: Yeah.
HH: Yes.
MS: Right. So, basically what do you want to tell me?
HH: Well, my very early memories go back to before the war related to the war, and I might not have got the year exactly right but I’m going back to 1938.
MS: Smashing.
HH: And there was an airship came up the line of the Witham very, very slowly one mid-afternoon which created quite a bit of interest to the people in the village because you didn’t see much flying in those days except birds. So, anything like that was, was of interest.
MS: I need to interrupt you for two seconds because I realise I’ve forgotten to say something and you’ve reminded me of it. We’re actually sitting in your house in the moment which [deleted].
HH: Washingborough.
MS: Washingborough. Right. So that’s what you’re describing. You’ve seen this from Washingborough.
HH: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
MS: I apologise. Carry on.
HH: And living where I did, we, we were only several yards from the Witham. The length of a field from the Witham, and apparently what came out after that was that it had, it was a German, it was a German airship. It had entered the Witham at the Wash at Boston, and it was plotting a route for the enemy aircraft to come in when they, if at that time if the war broke out against us it was plotting a route for enemy aircraft to come and bomb our cities in the Midlands and the North. The Midlands and the North. That’s important because Lincoln Cathedral was a landmark for the German aircraft apparently, and we could tell from where we was at Washingborough whether they were heading north, Manchester, Sheffield that area, or down south Nottingham, Birmingham or the Midlands. That was my very first impression of anything related to what might have been hostilities.
MS: What age were you at this time?
HH: I would be, I would be, well I would be six. I would be six then because the year, seven when the war eventually broke out. It was in September wasn’t it when the war broke out, and I remember it very well being announced over the radio set in the house, actually next door to where we are now. That house next door to where we are now with my sister and my mum and dad. It come on. It is with great regret that we have to announce that we are with hostilities with Germany or words to that effect. We’d given them an ultimatum and we’ve had no reply so we’ve no alternative but to declare war, you see. Go to war.
MS: Who was with you when you heard the declaration? [pause] Who was with you in the room when you heard the declaration?
HH: My mother and father and my sister. My elder sister.
MS: What was the, what was the reaction in the room?
HH: Well, silence. It, it didn’t particularly disturb me because I was obviously too young to really understood what it all meant, but looking back I can see my father’s face. Very much of concern on his face. And however, that was on a Sunday morning, and on that very evening at dusk or just after dusk the sirens sounded that told us that in the event of any aircraft coming over, enemy aircraft coming the sirens would sound from the factories, which they did. And I can always remember my father said, ‘Right. We’ve got to take shelter,’ and he put us under the, under the big old wooden table that we had like it. But nothing happened of course. I think it was just something to get everybody going. That was my first, that was my first memories of, of, of the Second World War. But then there was a period then when we didn’t notice. We didn’t notice that anything was happening. Nothing happened around here. We could hear, occasionally hear on the radio where something had happened. Mainly down south. Enemy aircraft had been spotted, or they’d been over but then, but then the enemy bombing started, you see.
MS: Yeah.
HH: And things begun to heat up a bit, but then that wasn’t until well in, well in to the 1940, you see. Again, it didn’t affect us at all, because it wasn’t significant around here. But then it seemed when I say all of a sudden things started to happen quickly in as much as there was a lot of movement. Aircraft started to appear. I can’t quite remember the early ones, but they were taking it seriously and, and, and they realised they had to do something to counteract, because the Germans were then coming over in a little bit more force with their more, far more modern bombers and they were modern bombers in those days, the. You know, the Messerschmitt 110s and the Heinkels and all the things like that and of course the fighters, the Messerschmitt 109s and things like that. And airfields. Airfields started to appear in Lincoln. Fiskerton. It was our first sighting of any sort of activity rather than action. Activity. And apparently what they used to do they used to go around and select a site and get the bulldozers and get cracking and then could tell the farmers that they was occupying the fields to the dismay of a lot of the landowners of course.
MS: Right.
HH: At Fiskerton, and we could see it because it was just on the hill rise looking over the Witham from us. Oh, I’ll say a mile and a half away. And although main, the main airfield part of the airfield was sort of behind trees and hedges the, the main runway which went northeast southwest it appeared, and we could see the aircraft on the airfield when they were at that end of the airfield. And, and of course then by the time they’d got that I think we were going, getting on to ’42 now. 1942, and, and, and the planes started to appear. Before that we had seen planes like, well the Manchester was the forerunner of the Lancaster. It seemed to be the one. And the Wellingtons and the Whitleys, and the Hampdens. Aeroplanes like that were appearing from bases like Waddington and Scampton which were already established bases. I understand that even bases like Coningsby was really not, it was in the early part of the war when it started. Obviously Cranwell.
MS: Oh yeah.
HH: But it was a training base. Mainly a training base. It was one of the first round here going back, I think I’m right to say 1918 or something like that. 1921, it was when it was commissioned to the RAF. Anyway, I might be wrong with my facts there but yeah it was when the airfields started to get in to Lincolnshire. And then there was Fiskerton. We were very interested in Fiskerton because we could see it. But then we got to know there was one being built at Bardney. One being constructed at Metheringham. There was, there was the three satellite ones at, well Coleby was a fighter airfield which came along a bit later. But then you go around to Skellingthorpe and, and then you come across to the satellite ones at, at, at Scampton which was Dunholme Lodge and Ingham although it was a bit further away but the aircraft started to get more intense. And even though Fiskerton was a mile and a half or so away building, well not building work but we saw work around here because they used to put a ring of lights around the airfields. And circular lights, what the aircraft were supposed to let, showed them where their airfield was and tried to keep within those bounds, because when they got really busy the aircraft, the sky was full of aircraft and the ring lights, the outer circle lights from Scampton came across the field I’m looking at now.
MS: Really?
HH: Right. Yeah. They weren’t too near. There was one near the bottom of the field. The cable was buried under the ground. Then another wooden pole stuck up with another light on near the road, just a few yards down from where we’re sitting now with another light on. That went all the way around the airfield.
MS: Really?
HH: And the light, and when when, when they got started taking off seriously for the raids these lights would come on and we would know then that they, ok, watch out the engines are warming up. There’s going, soon going to be a bit of action.
MS: So literally just down the road from here, there was one of the lights for Fiskerton.
HH: Yes. Yes. Only, only [pause] yeah, a hundred yards down the road.
MS: Ok.
HH: But and, and the next one was just past where those trees are. Well, it’s no good me saying that there but near the, just this side the Witham.
MS: Yeah.
HH: But still, but still in this field what I’m looking at now straight across. I’m looking north now from my house.
MS: We don’t, we don’t realise how close we are to Fiskerton, sitting on the other side of the river.
HH: No. No. Fiskerton was our nearest aircraft soi, our, our nearest airfield so we, we was always interested in, in what was going on and any action that they would send. They would send anything ten to fifteen aircraft up on a raid when they were busy.
MS: Yeah.
HH: And my father and I, as I say we lived next door to where we are now. We would stand. He used to have a saying, ‘Boy, now boy, we’ll have to go out and see if there’s anything happening tonight.’ And we’d go out, see if any of the aircraft was warming up, which we could hear, and we would stand against our gate on the Fen Road here and, and watch them take off night after night after night. That was when they had got started doing the major raids.
MS: Yeah.
HH: On Germany. The most outstanding one that I can remember experience was the, well the famous Dambuster raids. Now, that night my father had been out. It was obviously a May night so it was a pleasant night and he kept saying, ‘There’s nothing happening tonight boy,’ he says, ‘There’s nothing warming up.’ And then about 9 o’clock or just before we could hear Scampton, and Scampton even though it’s what seven, seven, six seven mile away as the, well I was going to say —
MS: As the crow flies.
HH: As the crow flies. As the Lancasters fly.
MS: Yeah.
HH: Yeah. We can hear them, hear them very easy. Still can the Red Arrows and people like, aeroplanes like that and he come in and he says, ‘They’re warming up at Scampton,’ he says, ‘But there’s only them. There’s only them warming up.’ Anyway, we waited, and about twenty past nineish they started to take off and we, we counted eighteen take off. We could hear each aircraft take off. It was as plain, in fact we could see them because it was a May night, and it hadn’t obviously got dark and we could see them circling. But apparently, I think there was, well nineteen aircraft, but that doesn’t matter. We counted eighteen, you know as close as that, and I always remember my father he said, he said, ‘We shall have to listen to the wireless.’ Not a radio. ‘We shall have to listen to the wireless in the morning.’ He says, ‘There’s something a bit special on tonight.’ And of course, then it came out that, that the dams had been breached like.
MS: On the Ruhr.
HH: But previous, just previous to that, there was these aircraft flying about, Lancasters with a peculiar shape underneath them, and they were carrying the dummy, the dummy bouncing bombs, and of course we didn’t know what they were, in. The bomb bays had been reconstructed hadn’t they to, to carry these —
MS: They put a ridge on.
HH: To carry these bombs you see.
MS: That’s right.
HH: But then of course it all came to light then after that what it was all about. So that, and that was possibly the one that sticks in my memory the most and [pause] seventy. No. Eighty four. No. When, when was it that the when the, when the Memorial Service was at Scampton?
MS: I don’t know.
HH: Seventy years after it was [pause] well it, it would be four years ago, wouldn’t it?
MS: Yeah.
HH: And and, and they had this service at exactly the same time on the airfield as what they took off and I stood in the very same spot that night again and it all went through my mind. Yes. Seventy years on. So that’s how it was indelibly printed in my mind. The, possibly the, the other raid that stands out that the RAF did was the first one thousand bomber raid on Cologne. Now, again that was a, either a spring, it was light nights anyway, and, and it was in the days before we had got to many of the big aircraft so there was, anything that could fly was in the air that night. All the old Whitleys with the nose down. They always looked as though they was flying with the nose down the Whitleys. And the Wellingtons, they were a bit more pleasant aircraft to look at in shape. And the Hampdens and I don’t know if the Manchesters was involved in that one or not, but there weren’t too many of the, I don’t know think there was Lancs in the Cologne. I might be wrong there but there was a lot of the older aircraft involved in the, in the Cologne. I think that was just over a thousand bombers but it was classed as the first one thousand bomber raid and I remember it. We stood and the sky was, at one time well just full of aircraft. Full of it. It didn’t matter where you looked there was aircraft and, you know. That stands out in my mind as well. And then of course we never knew where they were going of course but the next day —
MS: You know they were going east.
HH: Well, yeah. Yeah. We, we knew they were going to Germany.
MS: Yeah.
HH: But I mean we didn’t know what the target was, and but then next morning they would say so many of our aircraft attacked the German city of Cologne and so many of our aircraft are missing. They never said how many aircrew were missing, which you times that. Well, as the raids went on later on with the Lancs you timed that by seven but that’s by the by.
MS: Yeah.
HH: But those are vivid memories. Vivid memories that I have of, of, of the aircraft taking off and the airfields around here. So, yeah, it does stand out in my mind very vividly.
MS: Ok. Did you, you were going to school during this time no doubt.
HH: Oh yeah. Yeah. I was Washingborough School for a start but when, when we’d got to well it would be the middle of the war’ish, for some reason or other we were, a lot of us were transferred from Washingborough School to what was St Andrews School in Lincoln then. There was a school near, down near the football ground, which later became Bishop King.
MS: Right.
HH: Which of course it isn’t there now. There is a Bishop King School there but it’s, they completely rebuilt school on the site of South Park.
MS: Yeah.
HH: But that’s where I went and of course we had, I can remember the air raid shelters that were built in the streets, in the cities. The brick air raid shelter. They actually built them in the streets you see. As they did, I suppose in all the town and cities.
MS: What? Sitting proud above the pavement.
HH: Oh yeah. Brick buildings. Brick buildings.
MS: As shelters.
HH: Air raid shelters. Yeah. Yeah. And when the air raid warning, the people just came out the houses and just went into these shelters. They had a very heavy concrete roof on them you see but even then they wouldn’t stand a direct hit and some, not in Lincoln, but in some of the places if the shelter got hit everybody was killed in it you see.
MS: Did you see? Did, sorry go on.
HH: Yeah. But we, we had, we had four or five of these brick shelters built at the end of our playground at, at school and we used to, and gas masks and all of a sudden, a bell used to sound and it used to be a practice. Practice. We used to have to put our gas masks on in little tins, get these gasmasks. Put them on and go, not run, we used to go in orderly fashion to go in to the air raid shelter. Practice to get in as quick as we could, you see. So that was, that was another thing that we used to have to do, yeah. You were going to ask me a question.
MS: No. You’ve covered it.
HH: Yeah. And —
MS: I was just going to ask you what sort of things you did.
HH: Well, I’ve gone on a bit quicker with the aircraft then I’ve got my notes down. My very, very first experience of enemy action was quite a frightening one, although I suppose I’ve maybe become more frightened of it in recent years than what I did at the time, and it was the 5th of November. Now, again I can’t remember the exact year but it was very early on in the war but my recollection is it was either a Messerschmitt 109 which was, I think they were single seater fighter.
MS: They were.
HH: Or a 110 which I think they had two in. They were more of a fighter bomber.
MS: Yeah.
HH: But it was dusk. Dusk. We’d come home from school obviously, my sister and I. Guy Fawkes night, the 5th of November, and in those days we used to go to the neighbours, ‘Please can you remember — ’and either get tuppence or threepence from them if you was lucky. And my mother says, ‘Right, we’ll, we’ll, I’ll go with you just down the road. We’re not going far because it will soon be dark and you never know what’s about.’ [laughs]
MS: No.
HH: All that sort of thing. And we’d only got, we’d been to one house. I think we’d got threepence from it each. Old money I’m talking about.
MS: The old.
HH: Not three P. The old twelve-sided threepenny bit.
MS: That’s right.
HH: Yeah. And, and we had just come out of the first house and was going out to the next and this enemy aircraft come quite low. We spotted it at, at the distance as soon as you could see it. It was very low, coming right up the line of the road, and I think it saw us but I think it only frightened us because it could have cleaned us up. And when it got within distance it fired. Da da da da da da. Fired at us and we could hear the, we were on the path this side of the road and we could hear the bullets going in the hedge the other side of the road and of course, it had gone.
MS: Really.
HH: Yeah. Yeah. So, we were fired. When I say we were fired at, I think, I still think to this day that that pilot saw us and he was having in his mind a little joke with us. You know. Because he could have cleaned us up like nobody’s business, couldn’t he? But of course, we only got threepence a piece that year because we [did a turtle] and come back like so, but that’s my very early —
MS: Was it worth threepence?
HH: And from then on.
MS: Yeah.
HH: I realised that there was danger involved. That there was danger involved. But that’s, that’s the nearest we got I think to enemy, enemy bullets like.
MS: Can I ask you a question? You know those bullets went in the hedge. Did you go looking for any bits or anything?
HH: No. No.
MS: No.
HH: Because, well we, well they’ll still be there somewhere but how far would they go in? And I don’t, don’t even know what size they would be like.
MS: No.
HH: They would only be small. Well, bullets I suppose. They wouldn’t be shells as such because they didn’t explode like. But yeah, I’ll always remember. They rattled. They rattled in that hedge that’s always been there in my lifetime. We could hear them hitting the hedge all right and of course the noise from the, from the da da da da da ever so quick like. But that, that, that was the nearest we got to being shot at during the war.
MS: What was your mother’s reaction?
HH: Well, petrified because she, she realised what could have happened where, well I didn’t particularly. They just fired at us and that was it like. But —
MS: You were still a school child.
HH: We could have all been dead.
MS: Yeah.
HH: And, and I think if that, I still think to this day if that German pilot hadn’t have been human we would have been.
MS: Yeah.
HH: But he was human and if I’m right what I’m thinking I’m grateful to him. Anyway, carrying on, after that we did come across quite a lot of firing because, and machine gunning because when the aircraft were coming back after the raids they would be followed in by, they’d get mixed up with especially, especially the Messerschmitts, when the Messerschmitt 109s got going like, and they would sort of get behind them, and they couldn’t always detect that they was mixed up with enemy aircraft in those days you see.
MS: Yeah.
HH: And occasionally you would, you would get one, one of our planes fired on by a Messerschmitt you see. And then of course you would hear him dive off and he would be gone somewhere else. This would be the early hours of the morning when they was coming back and things like that, because obviously the lights were on. They would have the tip lights on.
MS: Yeah.
HH: Wing tip lights on. And these circular lights which I’ve been talking about. They would be on as well and there would be certain lights on at the airfield. So, it wasn’t completely dark but so it was easy for, for some of these aircraft just to come in and make a nuisance of themselves and occasionally they would. I can’t remember any specific incidents of them shooting aircraft down but they did get them. They did get some like in different parts of the places.
MS: There was one in Waddington.
HH: Yeah.
MS: Wasn’t there?
HH: Yeah. Yeah.
MS: And at Whisby I think.
HH: Apparently, the story goes that one actually followed one of our planes in and went along the runway and fired at him and then took off again on the runway. Whether that’s right or not, but of course you heard all sorts of stories. Yeah. But crashes, of course. We, we got a few crashes, and the biggest, and it did frighten me this one. It was the Christmas, and, and I can’t remember the exact year and I can’t find a proper detailed account of it except 1942, but were the Lancasters flying in 1942?
MS: Do you know, I don’t know exactly.
HH: No.
MS: But I suspect they were.
HH: That’s, that’s what confuses me because I’ve got it in a book where two Lancasters crashed and it tallies with what happened. One from number 9 Squadron which was based at Bardney. I can’t remember the other squadron but I think it was, it was a Waddington aircraft and they collided just slightly south of Washingborough village and one crashed, well, in the parish of Heighington just west of Heighington village and south of Washingborough village. Apparently, the aircraft, one of the aircraft it, it blew up in mid-air and I’m not sure where. They would be a big lump of it come down even though it did blow up but my memory of that was, it was the Christmas. It was the Sunday before. It was the Sunday night before Christmas as Christmas was on the Wednesday that year. Now, if it was, I think it was maybe ’43, but I’ve seen it in the book where it was ’42 but it was early, middle of the war when the raids were —
MS: Yeah.
HH: When the, when our bombers were doing the heavy raids like. And my father and my mother and my sister and I we were walking up past the school at Washingborough. School Lane. And we were going to meet my grandma and grandad which lived in the village. This would be quarter past five time because there was a Carol Service on at the Chapel that evening and we were all going to it. But anyway, while we were going up the aircraft were taking off which, ’Oh, look at that one dad,’ and, ‘Look at that one dad.’ And all of a sudden — bang. There was this hell of an explosion and there was bits of burning aircraft, well, all over the place for, well maybe a mile each way around us like. It just blew up. Full stop. And my memory of that is one of the aircraft, its wing had just come off and the aircraft spiralled down. The Lanc, they were two Lancasters, and it spiralled down, and I could nearly put a stake in, in where it landed. I can tell you within a few yards of where it actually crashed in, in the field.
MS: Where? Where was that from here? How far away?
HH: A mile.
MS: Yeah.
HH: No more than a mile.
MS: What roughly, what time was this? Roughly what time was this in the evening?
HH: This would be then, well half past five time. Yeah. Half past five time. 5.30. And it had been down a few minutes when, well when I say its bomb load there was a massive explosion. Whether it’s his petrol tanks or its bomb load but it was it was quite, quite a big explosion to what we people were used to.
MS: Yeah.
HH: And we, my dad and I, my mother and my sister had gone on to my grandmother’s because they were frightened but my dad and I were stood watching it. We couldn’t actually see it because there was a little bit of a dip but the plume of black smoke come up and of course the sky was alight with the fire and things like that, and this explosion occurred. Enough for us. We could feel, we could feel the impact of the movement of air. Now, when we came, eventually came back home the Carol Service anyway was cancelled that night because it had just simply upset everybody in the village because as you can imagine people realised that fourteen souls had perished literally in a flash.
MS: Yeah.
HH: But when we came home, back to where, next door to where I’m living now the windows, our front windows which is on the opposite side to where the plane had crashed had been blown in. The glass was in, in the room.
MS: Right.
HH: And the theory, the theory that we were told was that it was a curvature of the way the blast goes and it was sucking it back or something. I don’t understand it but that’s what we were told. But whatever it was the glass was inside the room where we would have thought it would have been the ones facing the crash that would have been. But it wasn’t. That was the mysterious part about it.
MS: Explosions.
HH: So that, that was and I’ve, I’ve spoken a time or two to people but I can’t seem to get through. I would like some sort of a monument put on that gate.
MS: For those guys.
HH: But of course, it would all have to be researched properly and stuff like that to get the proper —
MS: Is it, is it just a field where they landed? It didn’t land on houses. It landed in a field.
HH: No. No. It was an open field.
MS: That was lucky.
HH: The only damage that was done was where bits of the property as had bits come down and the explosion. Yeah. It was in open fields. The nearest, well the nearest houses would only be a couple of hundred yards away. I don’t quite know what happened to them but it didn’t blow them down or anything like that.
MS: So just to try and establish roughly where it was, right. We’re sitting in Washingborough at the moment so it was on the south side of Washingborough.
HH: It was on the south side. It was almost equidistant between Washingborough and Branston.
MS: Right.
HH: Well, no more than, no more than a half a mile, less than half a mile west of Heighington.
MS: Right.
HH: So that would give you a good location on a map.
MS: Yeah. And did you go and have a look at the site of that crash at all?
HH: We went as far as we could because, but the road that went down past it was closed for a week because there was all sorts of —
MS: Yeah.
HH: Well, still, still things exploding. Ammunition and things like that, you see. But it, it was, well I don’t know. It just seemed to pass I suppose. Any salvaging they could find they did it and there was quite a bit of activity down there with RAF, you know. People down there and clearing things up and things like that and then the road was opened and you just got on with the rest of the war in those days.
MS: Yeah.
HH: But I did hear. I did hear a story where the farmer that it belonged to had sheep in the field at the time and he got permission, he got permission to go look see what had happened to his field either the next day, or a couple of days later. Which of course there I think somebody from the RAF escorted him down there and the story goes that although he was a very country hard sort of a farmer man, nothing bothered him, he hadn’t been in the field much when he saw a fella’s leg, and he passed out.
MS: Right.
HH: Now, how true that story is I don’t know but I have heard, I’ve heard several people say that they picked parts of bodies up so that was the extent of the —
MS: Yeah.
HH: Hand. Hand. Somebody had found an hand or something like that and it, like I say, you just that as a boy my age that was part of life in those days that things happened like that. Of course, I’ve come to terms with it more since. Realised the seriousness of it. But every Christmas now, and on the Sunday evening before Christmas it comes back to me and I think now somewhere in the world because there might have been Canadians on it, people like that somewhere in the world there’s a relative thinking, it’s so many years tonight since. Maybe still got a sister left, a daughter. My uncle, since he got killed. They wouldn’t know where he had been killed but I remember that. Every Christmas I remember. That’s how implanted it is on my mind. Things like that.
MS: Yeah.
HH: Yeah.
MS: You’re remembering. That’s one thing.
HH: Sorry?
MS: You’re remembering. That’s good.
HH: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because while this is not relevant to what we’re talking about, I have an uncle who I’m named after, Uncle Harold. He was killed in the First World War at [Pernes] on the 8th of August 1918. So it was a hundred years a week or two back since he lost his life, and my eldest daughter which lives at Cherry Willingham her and I went. His name’s on the War Memorial at Potterhanworth, so her and I went out and put a memorial plaque on there and a thing in the churchyard. So, there’s certainly people, the point I’m saying that is there’s, there’s people about now that still remember relatives from the First World War, isn’t there? Very much so.
MS: There are.
HH: A lot of them.
MS: That’s right.
HH: Daughters and, and, granddaughters, and nephews and nieces. Yeah. If I, if I have a nephew, as a nephew can remember my uncle from the First World War there’s certainly plenty from the Second World War.
MS: Oh yeah.
HH: Yeah. But, yeah that’s, other things I can remember from the bombing point of view was we had some bombs dropped near us one, well it was, it was 9 o’clock one evening. I can’t remember what month it was but it was dark so it would obviously be in the back end of the winter months not far from where we are now and there was three explosions. Quite loud explosions. Not enough to do any damage. And again, I could take you. I could, I could simply put a stake in where that bomb landed because as you know when something explodes and turns all the subsoil up and that it’s never quite the same colour again. That’s, that’s why from years ago you can find out where places have been built on. There’s been excavations.
MS: That’s true.
HH: And things like that. But there were certainly two this side the river. Two bombs dropped this side the river and the other dropped, we’re not quite sure where. It must have been possibly got across the river. But the aircraft apparently was travelling from the south towards the north and the theory, I don’t know how true these facts are. Well, they’re maybe not facts. They’re just what people were saying at the time, that the enemy aircraft spotted the, possibly spotted a train which the railway line was still there. Bardney railway line was still there and, and the fire that if, if the fellow opened the fire box to stoke they could see the fire. Or, or any light related and if they saw any lights, they would just drop his bombs. That’s the theory of that. There was no other reason to drop bombs but then again, they was in the field and they didn’t do any harm.
MS: So, where we’re sitting now on Fen Road and the case of the recorder, we are literally a field away from the river, aren’t we?
HH: Yes.
MS: So, it’s fallen between this house and the river.
HH: Yeah. But it’s a half a mile down the road, to the east of where we’re —
MS: Right.
HH: Sitting now.
MS: Towards the Bardney direction.
HH: Yes. In the Bardney direction.
MS: I see. And, and, the point you’re making is, is that the, it’s really in open countryside, so that’s —
HH: Very much so.
MS: So that’s why you, you talked about the railway.
HH: Yeah.
MS: I understand it fully.
HH: Yeah. And again, it didn’t do any damage at all. But of course, another significant night when there was, was when the landmines, two landmines [coughs] excuse me, were dropped at Waddington. Now, one hit the village. Now, again the story goes that it hit the church, or dropped very very close to the church and whilst it did quite extensive damage in the village they say if it had dropped in a more open part of the village it could have destroyed the village. It was that intense.
MS: Really?
HH: And it completely collapsed the church and it fell, it fell in such a way that it didn’t scatter the, it didn’t scatter the stones very much at all, and I’ve seen a picture that was taken from the air. It was just, the debris was just laid on the ground in the shape of the church, of a cross. Like a church is with a, yeah, that. But that, but the, the other landmine it, it dropped on the camp at Waddington. On the airfield, and it was, in those days apparently there was a lot of WAAFs at Waddington parachute packing, administration and all that sort of thing. Whatever the WAAFs did. And, and if you had a friend that was in aircrew you watched them take off from a distance and then you went to the NAAFI and waited ‘til them coming back which obviously a camp like Waddington there was quite a lot of people involved. And they were in the NAAFI Club waiting for them to come back and this landmine hit the NAAFI. Killed the lot of them. And the, the manageress of the NAAFI, I suppose that’s the right term at that time was a lady called Miss Raven, and after the war there was a, a club built there and they called it the Raven Club and apparently that’s why they called it the Raven Club.
MS: I used to be there and I didn’t know that was the reason for the name. Yeah.
HH: Really? Well, that’s the story I’ve heard.
MS: Oh right.
HH: And, but what was significant to me as a boy was my father was then in, in the building trade.
MS: Yeah.
HH: He used to be. And him with quite a lot more was sent up to Waddington. And he was one that was sent on the camp to clear the mess up from the NAAFI.
MS: Yeah.
HH: The next day. And I always remember him coming home quite late into the evening and he couldn’t eat his tea because he’d been pulling young women’s bodies out. And he was literally sick. It had upset him to that extent, and I always remember him saying, ‘You know somebody’s lost some lovely daughters last night.’ That, that sticks in my memory quite vividly because it did upset my father that did. Another occasion he had to clear up bomb damage was, the Nurses Home at Lincoln County Hospital was hit one Sunday afternoon by a single bomb and it killed, it killed one of the, one of the matrons that was in at the time. I don’t think it killed anybody else but one of the matrons. She got killed. And the, and the next day him and a lot more of the men from William Wright’s as he worked for in those days, they had the job of going to, well if you call tidying the mess up as you, you do. You just don’t leave it. Clearing it all up and reinstating it the best way they could like. So, he was involved in quite a bit of that work and he did work, he did work at Scampton, Waddington Aerodrome for long periods putting dispersals points in for the Lancasters to sit on. You know what I mean by that.
MS: I do. I’ve sat on one myself.
HH: Yeah [laughs]
MS: Yeah.
HH: And he did that. He worked a lot there. And then when the war had finished he was still working there and, and him and another fella had the job of taking some of the blackouting sheets down from out the hangars and apparently they’d screwed these boards up, or whatever they were with black Japan screws. And I can always remember my dad had a great big tin of these black Japan screws that he brought home and I’ve of course, and I’ve still maybe some in my shed. I know I had at one time because I used to hoard stuff what my dad had had, and when he died I put stuff, but they was in the tins, and some of the tins I couldn’t get the lid off because they had rusted on, so they had to go. But I had, I certainly had black Japan screws from Waddington Aerodrome and used them.
MS: Yeah.
HH: For quite a while. Little stories like that.
MS: Yeah.
HH: You know.
MS: Connections.
HH: Beautiful little stories.
MS: Yeah.
HH: There’s one story that I’m going to tell you about but not too much detail and it’s about the Dambusters and Guy Gibson.
MS: Yeah.
HH: Because where he was billeted the people, well it’ll be the grandchildren I suppose now still live at the place and I don’t think they want it banded about too much that Guy Gibson was there during the Dambuster raid. So I’m just going to say I was at a place where the wing commander was stationed during his time while he was training for the raids at Scampton because as, as most of us know 617 Squadron wasn’t a Scampton based squadron. They was Woodhall weren’t they?
MS: Sure.
HH: They was at Scampton because of the dams and it was convenient for them to exercise and practice and what not from there and Gibson, Gibson, Guy, the wing commander, I’ll be respectful to him, he was based at this place in, well in Brattleby. I’ll go no further than that and I worked, I worked on that property after the war, 1947 when I got started to work. And I’ve handled and walked on the same places as the wing commander. And we were clearing. Clearing quite a bit of stuff out because the, the lady where he was, where we was billeted the lady was living in the house at the same time. A biggish house it was and if Guy Gibson’s, if the wing commander’s name was mentioned she said, ‘Don’t mention that name to me. I hated the fellow. I couldn’t bear him. He’s, he’s ruined my property,’ because he had, he has carved his initials or his name on all sorts of places in the house in the oak. On the oak panelling, on the architraves and things like that. Guy Gibson. All over the place it was carved. On window frames —
MS: Really?
HH: Because we know he was eccentric, wasn’t he?
MS: Yeah, he was. He was a vandal [laughs].
HH: Now, there was a, there was a rod reared up on one of the staircases. A rod with a brass hook on top what you used to use for opening windows. You know the type of thing I mean.
MS: Yeah.
HH: And I, I picked up and this the lady was there and, and I says, ‘Gibson’s name is on it.’ ‘Get rid of it, Put it on the bonfire. Put it on the bonfire.’ Which we did. I wish thousands of times I’d said to her, ‘Can I take it?’ You know what I mean?
MS: Yes.
HH: I was handling stuff.
MS: You’re always wise afterwards.
HH: I was burning stuff that the wing commander, ok if somebody would have said to me, ‘Can you prove it was him?’ Which I couldn’t, but I knew it was. But that was the connection.
MS: Yeah.
HH: Indirect connection I had with Guy Gibson. And also, she told me a story, this lady’s told me this story. She was very eccentric as well and she used to play the church organ. And, and she sometimes used to go in to the church any time during the hours of darkness. Anytime. 3 o’clock in the morning.
MS: Yeah.
HH: Something like that, and have a tune on this organ and she, she says, she says, ‘Guy Gibson wasn’t as brave,’ and this is how she used to talk to him, he wasn’t, ‘Gibson,’ she used to address him as. ‘He wasn’t as brave as they made him out to be. I frightened him. I frightened the life out of him.’ And she’d tell me a nice little story. He came, he came home a couple of nights off the practice raids and there was music in the church at Brattleby, and curiosity got the better of him. And he came home, again being on the practice 3 o’clock in the morning according to her timing she said and his curiosity got the better of him and he couldn’t understand why the music was playing at that time and he came, she says, ‘I heard the doors go at the back and I peeped around.’ She said, ‘It was me playing the organ. Me playing the organ.’ she said, ‘I see Gibson and I thought to myself oh get off, get off back to bed. It’s time you was in bed.’ That sort of talk, you see, she says and the next morning, ‘He spoke to me,’ he says, ‘I think you’ve a ghost in your church.’ He says, ‘I peeped in last night, I could hear the music and there was a figure there in a white robe.’ She was in her bed gear, a white robe playing the organ. She said, ‘I never let on. I never let on.’ Isn’t it a lovely story that?
MS: Oh yes.
HH: Yeah. But that’s my, as you like indirect, indirect connection with Guy Gibson so I don’t feel all that far apart from him. I’ve walked on the ground where he’s walked you see.
MS: And you’ve handled something he’s vandalised [laughs]
HH: And I’ve handed things he’s handled. Yeah. Yeah. Much to the disliking of the person whose property it was, you see. Things like that. Yeah. So, and then as the, well as the war progressed of course, round here we got a small unit, a small Army unit with a searchlight in the field at the back of where the school is now. And then, and one anti-aircraft gun. And apparently the searchlight was quite a strong one. I don’t know. They, they used to seem to say that these searchlights worked in groups and they sort of had a leader one and it was a very, very powerful searchlight, and I can remember you know, if, if there was a raid if, if there was enemy aircraft about the sky would then get lit up with these searchlights, and I’ve seen a few, few enemy aircraft in the beam. They had a job to get out of them hadn’t they because one light would.
MS: Yeah.
HH: They would have several lights on them, you see.
MS: Yeah, coned.
HH: There were, well I, I should think you’ll know what, seen searchlights haven’t you, and they’re very powerful beams straight up you know.
MS: Yeah.
HH: Aren’t they? Wonderful lights. They all had their own generators of course. Yeah. But they were a wonderful thing during the war searchlights was. And yeah, some of the, some of the lads that was in the Army in Washingborough in fact one of them, one of the, one of lads, he married a Washingborough girl and he stayed here after the war and he used to run the football team which I played for like. And things like that and, but yeah it, it, was all things come back to your mind. You see and of course as, as the airfields got around here even from Fiskerton, some of the airmen would, they would come over the ferry. There was a ferry at Fiskerton, down Five Mile Lane.
MS: Yeah.
HH: Which is straight up a set, where the airfield was. They would come over that and they would go to either Heighington to the pubs or come up here. And they would, they’d come trotting up to the pub, four or five or more of them, or some of them on bikes, you see. They would come on bikes to the pubs and things like that, and here you would, well I, I wasn’t in the pubs at that time but used to have a chat to them if they had time as they were going past and things like that, you see.
MS: Many Americans?
HH: We didn’t see, the Americans were mainly at Waddington. The Fortresses. So, we didn’t come into contact with, with the Americans. Not, not, not here. No. But of course, when they came over and started to do their bombing they was mainly the daylight lads you see. So, when our aircraft had come back and got settled down then during the morning the big Americans, the B47s, the Flying Fortresses as they called them they would, they would start taking off. So there was always loads and loads of action, and then as the time went on and we were beginning to get a real grip on the war, and we was preparing for Arnhem in particular. There was airborne squadron based at [pause] oh, Leadenham. That’s not quite the right name.
MS: Metheringham.
HH: No. Not Metheringham. One of the airfields up between Leadenham and Navenby on the top, and Wellingore area.
MS: Yeah.
HH: And, and out there. And the Americans that come over there as well, and they were practicing with the Dakotas and the gliders you see. And, and all, all we knew was that these Dakotas started to appear and then they would be pulling the gliders because they’d take off, you know they didn’t leave it while the actual time, they was practicing with them and things and we’d see these aircraft flying all over the place pulling, pulling another aeroplane as we used to call it like in those days. Of course, we, we didn’t know what was going on of course, because things was kept secret naturally. They had to be, didn’t they?
MS: Yeah.
HH: And we just had to wait ‘til, and then, and then all of a sudden it just went quiet, and then within a couple of days we heard that, you know there had been a major parachute landing at Arnhem of course. And then a similar thing happened pre D-Day. You see, although we didn’t see quite so much action —
MS: Are you ok?
HH: Round here pre D-Day because it was mainly down the south with the little boats and things like that but we did see a lot of the action that was being practiced with the, with the paratroopers and the aircraft pre D-Day.
MS: Can I ask you a question? I just saw you stand up then. Are you comfortable? Do you need to carry on or do you want a break?
HH: No. I’m alright. I’m alright.
MS: Are you sure?
HH: Yeah. Yeah. I’m thinking about your time as well.
MS: No. You’re ok. I just want to make sure you’re ok.
HH: And, and then of course as the, as the war went on and, and the raids got far more intense it, it became all Lancaster around here then. We, we had a fright. A fright one night. I remember it vividly. FIDO.
MS: Ah, FIDO.
HH: FIDO. Fiskerton. FIDO.
MS: Yeah.
HH: And we didn’t know what had happened but apparently they’d put these strips of pipes either side of the runway at, at Fiskerton, the main runway at Fiskerton and filled them full of petrol and they were apparently testing them. It was early evening, but obviously dark. Winter’s night, and we were looking out for anything that might be of interest to watch and it flared up from one length of the airfield to the other. We couldn’t work it out. Why is the airfield on fire? And people were obviously ringing the services up and things like that and they, they knew about it of course but we, we never got any feedback. Well, we hadn’t a phone ourselves. We just didn’t know what was happening. But then it eventually came out that it was for, you know when the weather was bad to enable the —
MS: For nights.
HH: Because previous to that there had been one particularly bad night when they’d gone on a raid and the weather had closed in before they got back, and the fog had clamped down. And, and they, Lincolnshire was covered in, in, in this fog and they couldn’t find the airfields and there was quite a lot crashed that night. And even though they tried to talk them down they weren’t really successful. I think they had to abort to some of the airfields where it was clearer.
MS: Yeah.
HH: Mainly down south and things like that. But that was a bad night and that obviously provoked them into doing things to try and enable them but then, yeah. Fiskerton. If it was a bad night they was to light FIDO and we used to get loads of aircraft coming in. Loads of them coming in of course from the other airfields around about. Why they chose Fiskerton and not one of the bigger airfields like when there was Scampton, but that was so be it. That’s what they did like. And after, after the war the firm I worked for apparently, they were two inch diameter pipes with little holes drilled in them at intervals for the petrol to squirt out. Perfect for scaffolding. Steel pipes perfect for scaffolding. The firm I worked for, William Wright’s had the job of dismantling it. They cut them up in to sections and kept it and I used a lot of it for scaffolding.
MS: Really?
HH: For years after that, yeah.
MS: How big was the —
HH: Before the light scaffolding came into use.
MS: Yeah. How big were the holes?
HH: Well, no more than a, well I’m going to say well I’m going to say in old money maybe an eighth of an inch maybe.
MS: Ok.
HH: Maybe not even that.
MS: So, it was pressurised.
HH: Oh yeah. It was pressurised and squirted you see.
MS: Yeah.
HH: And they must have got a heck a lot of, I don’t know how they got pressurised you know, to get from. Maybe be boosted you see.
MS: Yeah.
HH: Things like that. But it was equal. Equal flames either side the runway for the length of the runway and apparently it used, it used a lot of petrol. In fact, I think I’ve read where one night it used eighteen thousand gallons of petrol in one night.
MS: Wow.
HH: Which, but then I mean if you’re going to save a few Lancasters from crashing it pays for itself because petrol wouldn’t have been ever so expensive in them days, would it?
MS: No.
HH: I suppose.
MS: It would be rare though. You’d, you know —
HH: Well, yeah. I, I mean what sort of petrol were used. Whether, different grades, but I shouldn’t suppose they would use the same stuff as they put in the bombers because it was a bit specialised I would have thought.
MS: I genuinely don’t know.
HH: No. I don’t know, but that’s what they used apparently. Petrol. And all things, I mean I don’t know the details why they used that, or why they couldn’t use say diesel or something but they didn’t according to the readings, and but as I say that’s my connection. We, we had things that was used in the war. And —
MS: Made use, you what do they call it? Upcycling.
HH: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
MS: Yeah.
HH: And, and also using stuff as well, you’ll probably laugh at this but it’s a fact, when aircraft crashed like the one I mentioned down the sheep wash, you could find bits of aircraft all over the place. Of course, where these houses are now was all open fields and we used to walk about with my dogs picking a rabbit up for dinner because it was, always made a good dinner rabbit did in them days, you see. And you would pick bits of aircraft up like bits of fuselage, and if it was not too big to carry it home you would bring it home, and if it was reasonably straight and things like that and, and of course we kept pigs as most people did in these villages in Lincolnshire at those times and we used to get rats gnawing through the boards and things like that, and if we had any bits of rotten boards around the bottom, we would nail a bit of Lancaster around. Things like that. Never thought any more of it, like you know. And, and another —
MS: Have you still got any left?
HH: No. Unfortunately, no. No. That’s where I made a mistake. If I’d have been, I know, I know as you’ve just said it’s wise in hindsight, I regret that I’d not kept a more detailed. If I’d kept a diary.
MS: Yeah.
HH: A daily diary right from the days when I could start to write it would have been extremely interesting now. Not just for the war but the rest of my life. But I didn’t. Full stop. All I’ve got is what stored in my mind you see. I had, I had loads and loads of books during the war, and magazines used to come out. But I got rid of them all and again I regret. I regret that now, you see. And, but yeah, it was a good say, you could also pick pieces of, well we called it Perspex, but it was like the stuff round the windscreens and things but you could, you could, you could hot your poker in the fire because we had open fires and pokers in them days, just simply push it through like. Then you could smooth it off a bit, and then cut it out and make a ring of it. Loads of, loads of the gals in the village used to ring, ring something what they’d made out of aircraft. We used to call it Perspex. I don’t know if that was the right name but what had been blown out the sky. Yeah. All sorts of things lying around. Ok, it became dangerous to pick stuff up because then the Germans started dropping, well dummies. Dummy bombs, didn’t they? Grimsby for instance. They dropped, they dropped stuff on there one night and they looked like pens and things, and if you picked them up they exploded. Blew your hand off.
MS: [unclear] yeah.
HH: Which a lot of people —
MS: Yeah.
HH: And especially kids got, well they got injured for life with picking these. Picking these things up. So you had to be very careful what you picked up. Another thing that used to be banded about a lot was occasionally a German aircraft would come over dropping leaflets, propaganda leaflets telling us how well they was, going on and how bad our army was doing abroad and how the cities was thriving in Germany and how our cities was getting bombed that we didn’t hear about, and you know, put doubts in your mind. Again, I should have saved some of that. And then, and then our own aircraft. Was it our own aircraft used to come and drop this foil, strips of foil?
MS: Chaff. Chaff they used to call it.
HH: Did you call it?
MS: Chaff and Windows.
HH: Yeah. Window. Window.
MS: Window. Yeah.
HH: Silver paper strips if you like.
MS: That’s it.
HH: Stronger than that to, well, it used to interfere with the radios didn’t it?
MS: Yeah.
HH: And things like that. What was it ours that did that?
MS: We, we used it. Definitely. I don’t know if the Germans did.
HH: No. No. No.
MS: But it was to fool night fighters.
HH: There was a reason. But we used to pick that up. It used to be all over the place sometimes. Blowing all over the place it did like. Yeah. And then of course, Stenigot. They had their, was it a ray [pause] was it radar in them days? System with the big dishes on.
MS: Yeah.
HH: The dishes are still there but they’re laid in the field at Stenigot. I don’t know if you’ve —
MS: Are they? Oh, right.
HH: Unless they’ve been moved over the last year or two. They might have been.
MS: Oh yeah. Well.
HH: But they were taken down and they were laid there for ages and in fact there was only a bit on the television one night this week about Stenigot, and the radar station there because they found that they’d taken a drone over it and found places where there was underground stuff that they didn’t know about.
MS: Right. You’ve got me interested.
HH: But that’s the by the by —
MS: It’s all interesting but that’s of particular interest to me. Yeah.
HH: Oh right. Yeah. And then, and then as I say I’ve, I’ve done the glider. Oh, and as the war went on we, we, and especially leading up to D-Day for some, some reason or other leading up to D-Day we got a lot of Army activity round here. Convoys. There would be convoys and they’d be going past for, for at least half an hour, you know. A lot of trucks.
MS: Yeah.
HH: And, and sometimes they would come past in the dark. I think they was practising. I think they was mainly practice before they took off down south to get on the boats, and apparently the trucks, of course you didn’t have anybody that had cars or vehicles. You didn’t have headlights on them of course. Well, you did but they was very very well camouflaged and you could only see a little bit of road. But these convoys they didn’t. They didn’t, they had a spotlight. You maybe know this. On the front of the —
MS: No.
HH: On the front of the wagon when they were in convoys they had a light underneath, we’ll say underneath the front wheels and on the back of the vehicle in front there would be a white disc underneath and, and the idea was that light you just followed that white disc so from the air you could, in theory you couldn’t see anything.
MS: How clever.
HH: Yeah. It was clever.
MS: I had no idea.
HH: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
MS: Right.
HH: That was the Army that was.
MS: Yeah. The Air Force must have thought of it [yeah]
H: Well, of course they would [laughs] Yeah. Like they did with the dams.
MS: Yeah.
HH: When, when the commander was at the Palladium watching that. That was that original story. Whether it was true or not some people are denying that now. But anyway, it worked, didn’t it?
MS: Yeah.
HH: I would have liked to have seen. I always wanted to visit the dams but I don’t think I shall get across to them now. But generally speaking that’s how it was. And then as I got, I left school at fourteen I was the last group of pupils to leave at fourteen. Then it went up to fifteen, school leaving age and of course it’s gone up to well some of them are thirty now before they leave [laughs] And I left at fourteen and I worked. I was waiting to go in to the building trade, but couldn’t get in straight away and whilst I was waiting I went and got a job down on a farm at Branston Booths.
MS: Just down the road.
HH: Yeah. Which would be significant in a minute I’m telling you too. Now, Branston Booths, it’s all wide-open country in those Fens and, and this would be, well 1947 that would be, I think. When I left school. ’47. No, it might have been even earlier than that. ’46. Fourteen. Yeah. It would be. Yeah. It was, it was earlier than that because the prisoners of war. The German prisoners of war were still here, and there was a German prisoner of war camp at, well it was Potterhanworth but it was nearer Branston Booths than Potterhanworth.
MS: Yeah.
HH: Right. And they used to come out and work on the farms the prisoners did, and I worked with them with the other fellas of course and obviously they were, well to us they were Germans but they were decent chaps. They were a lot of them poor fellas had no family left. They had nowhere to go back to because we’d cleaned their properties out like but having said that they never, they never come across, they worked with us as ordinary people. You know what I mean?
MS: Yes.
HH: Never come across that they were our enemy or vice versa, but we worked down in the fields at, at Branston Booths. Now, during the war there was a dummy airfield there.
MS: Yeah.
HH: And a dummy airfield probably you’ll know was just something to distract any planes that were coming over that were looking for targets.
MS: Yeah.
HH: And there was a, when I say a dugout it was partly in the ground and a bit of a construction and the rest of it was buried in the soil that they’d dug out. And apparently it was manned by about three or four people at a time and they would construct these well, from the air they looked like aircraft and they would place them at strategical points in these fields. And also, if there was an enemy aircraft about, they would discreetly, accidentally light one of them up. And, and, and many and many a time my dad and I, we’ve said, ‘Oh, they’re bombing the Booths tonight. They would see these and you could hear, because they would be maybe two aircraft, maybe one aircraft come up later on in the war just to annoy us like.
MS: Yeah.
HH: When we’d got the better of them. But they, they would just be looking for anything to drop the bombs anywhere. Anyway, you would hear them circle and you could nearly feel what, what the pilots and the aircrew were, oh there’s a light down there. Right. Oh, an aircraft. You know, you could read their mind. They would circle down and then you could hear the bombs. They would drop the bombs like and then and then these, these people that were manning it they had, they had a method of lighting some fires which made it look as though they had been doing. Oh, and they would blast the hell out of it until the bomb bay was empty you see and, but they might, I oftens wonder how many bombs there are in those fields that didn’t actually explode because —
MS: It's very soft.
HH: The ground is very soft down there, and they’d go down but I’ve never heard of any incidents.
MS: Yeah.
HH: Or anybody finding them but they wouldn’t plough as deep as that like. But that was, that was a dummy airfield and I’ve worked on that and I’ve worked with the, with the German prisoners of war. And I worked with one later on, later on he had stopped here because he’d nowhere to go back, but he was, he was a Nazi. Nazi. Self-confessed Nazi and he was a nasty man, and he used to delight in telling us the story he was in the building trade with us but he used to have a way of telling stories to upset us. Even way after the war on how he had raped women and how he had tortured people and horrible stories like that and I refused to work with him. I said, ‘No. I’m not working with a character like that.’ I said, ‘It shouldn’t be allowed.’ But, and the foreman he kept him from me like but I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t work with him because he was one of these he’d been in the Nazi youth and he’d had it imprinted in his mind that if you wasn’t a true German. You was —
MS: Nobody.
HH: You was vermin.
MS: Yeah.
HH: To them, anybody else was vermin that wasn’t a German, and we were to him and yet we were giving him a job. But I, I wouldn’t tolerate him.
MS: When was this? What years was this?
HH: This would be, this would be later on. 19 — this would be, oh after I was married. ’57 time. 1957.
MS: Really? As late as that.
HH: Yeah. And of course, he was still there and he never got it out of his mind you see. And yet our people, well I suppose from a human rights point of view they didn’t have to drop to the level that he was suppose if you look at it like that and they employed him. But he was a nasty character. I’d never trust him. I always thought if he got you on his own and he could do something nasty like. That’s how I felt about him, and [pause] But another connection, well just coming back to, to the action during the war and following the flight of that airship which I mentioned early.
MS: Oh yeah.
HH: The infamous Coventry raid when Coventry was —
MS: Oh yeah.
HH: And it was.
MS: Flattened.
HH: Terrible. That was, that was the, I think that was the first major raid of any consequence. London had, London had got it but they’d done the docks and that, hadn’t they in London mainly. But they had, they had gone for residential in Coventry a lot as well and, and when they bombed Coventry it was, it provoked us into doing something more drastic over there didn’t it? In to Germany. And it was a moonlight night, and again my dad and I were against at the gate and a he said, a lot of aircraft started coming up this route, and they were enemy aircraft. We could see them. A moonlight night. We could see the crosses on them, and the Swastikas and things like that and not, not all that high. They weren’t particularly low but they were well visible.
MS: Yeah. Sure.
HH: And they were coming up. I don’t know for how long but it seemed ages in to the night. Of course, we didn’t know where they were going except when they got to Lincoln they were heading more south rather than north and my dad said, ‘The Midlands are getting it tonight lad.’ He said, ‘Somebody down there. Again, we shall have to listen to the wireless in the morning.’ And of course, it was poor old Coventry. But there was wave after wave of enemy aircraft that night unopposed. None of our fighters about at all because there was far too many of them because it was early on in the war and we hadn’t, we hadn’t got going. What fighters there was, was down, mainly down south you see. We just hadn’t enough to stop them, and yeah it was a strange experience that, seeing all these enemy aircraft. I know, a comment that my father made which, well you could say it was selfish if you like but he says, ‘I’m pleased it’s not Lincoln. I’m pleased they’re going over Lincoln.’ You know. But someone else was copping it wasn’t it?
MS: Yeah.
HH: But, and, and, and when, when they used to, Hull got bombed quite badly. Do you know we could see the reflection of the fires?
MS: From here.
HH: Absolutely due north from here. We could see the glow in the sky. The sky, on a really dark night you know you could see the glow in the sky of, of and we used to say, ‘Oh, Hull’s getting it tonight,’ you know when they got some of the bad raids. Yeah. Yeah. And, and things like that. So, yeah and we could, we could tell. The Coventry was the, was the biggest raid that we saw, but quite often in those early years of the war when they were bombing our cities, you know that’s the route they would take coming over the Wash. Of course, there was, well when I say they were coming in from France they was coming, I mean if they were coming from France they’d maybe come over the south. But the theory was for the Coventry raid that they’d come in one way and out the other way. Back to France you see. You know. Did a circle because they mainly bombed it from France because France was occupied by that time, wasn’t it?
MS: Yeah.
HH: And it’s not far from France is it? But that’s how it was. That’s how I remember the raids. And Lincoln. Lincoln did get attacked but nothing to the extent that the cities were bombed. The figures were, again I don’t know how accurate this is but the figures were that there was forty aircraft sent to bomb the factories in Lincoln because we had quite an industrial city at one time. Not compared with Sheffield or anything like that but it was an industrial city and the, the figures that I’ve read was that there was forty aircraft set off to bomb the factories in Lincoln but by that time we had got sufficient aircraft and, and stuff to counter them and there was only seven got through. But they did, well they did enough damage, but didn’t do too much damage. If they dropped one bomb they’d done too much damage. There was one or two houses destroyed. Which I could take you to some now that’s been rebuilt and things like that.
MS: Dixon Street.
HH: Dixon Street’s a classic. Yeah. Another in Avondale Street off Monks Road.
MS: Yeah.
HH: Places like that and, and there was, there was some incendiaries, or I think they called them phosphorous bombs. They’re like an incendiary but you put the fire out. Then when they dried out, they flare out again or something. And that dropped into one of the shops in Silver Street and they had two or three days where they was trying to control it like, and things like that. But nothing ever so major if you know what I mean compared with, with other things. Only the isolated, if, if, if an aircraft come over and he had a few bombs left, he would maybe just drop one somewhere and things like that but, oh quite often in Lincolnshire, you know the beggars they would pick a, excuse me they would pick a farm out. Pick a farmhouse out and drop a bomb on a farmhouse. Several farms was, was destroyed like that but just to destroy morale.
MS: Yeah. Good idea.
HH: That’s what it got doing the latter part of the war which was, which was nasty that was you know because they didn’t contribute very little to the war except to the food you see which was irrelevant really, putting one farm out, was it? And then you didn’t destroy the fields.
MS: No. Somebody was still working them.
HH: But as I say it was to do with destroying morale you see, wasn’t it? Obviously, during the war, if an aircraft come over you just wondered what it was going to do to you because another comical, well not comical but peculiar incidents that happened in Washingborough, it came where they invented these barrage balloons. Barrage balloons. And they used to launch these barrage balloons. I don’t think they was ever very effective really because the aircraft went above them or shot them down, didn’t they? And they would occasionally break loose, because they were mostly mounted on a lorry.
MS: Yeah.
HH: And then just let up on this coil, and apparently one broke loose somewhere just, I don’t know where it broke loose but it was trailing its cable, and it was one in a million but the cable came right across the church at Washingborough and it took the flagpole off. Damaged the flagpole, and I think it dropped it. But this cable come across the church and trailed across the village and that was, you know not enemy damage. It was —
MS: Collateral.
HH: It was friendly damage that one, as they call it. Yeah. But little incidents like that you see. And, and then as I, I’d have a [unclear] but then I left school at fourteen and went down to work as I’ve just told you then. Then I got in the building trade and we was engaged, my first job was engaged on, on building, rebuilding two pair of houses in Highfield Avenue, Lincoln which a Lancaster from, I don’t know whether it was Swinderby or, one if the bases. Or Wigsley. Where it had come from and it didn’t get up and it crashed. Took the top off one pair of houses and crashed in to the one the other side of the street and it killed, there was fatalities there. In fact, it was only in the paper about it recently and I’ve got it here. That, that was it. That was it. Oh, it says ten killed there. Well, it would be the crew as well you see, wasn’t it?
MS: There was a young girl killed.
HH: Yeah. Yeah. That one. And I worked, that was my first job working rebuilding those houses that had been knocked down during the war at Highfield Avenue. Yeah. And, and, and another job that I’m proud of that I’ve done related to the war was I, me and another fella erected a War Graves Commission Memorial Cross in Scampton Churchyard.
MS: Right.
HH: There’s a, there’s a stone cross in Scampton Churchyard, and I and another fella erected that while I was an apprentice and of course as you know there are quite a lot of war graves in Scampton Churchyard. But I often look at that Memorial. Well, I always looked at it when I went past like, so yes. I’ve had my connections indirectly with what’s gone on. Well, if you live in Lincolnshire, you really can’t help but have some sort of direct.
MS: You also had a direct connection as well. Being fired on was direct.
HH: I know. I know. I know.
MS: You could call it a direct.
HH: Well, yeah. Yeah. That was the nearest we had come. And, and of course I’ve worked on not many of the airfields but I’ve worked at Waddington quite a bit and I’ve worked at Scampton. And then when Dunholme Lodge had finished it was changed. They took the buildings over for some agricultural purposes, for analysing seeds and things like and we did quite a bit of work on, on, on Dunholme Lodge like. But apart from that I’ve not really been connected with any of the other airfields around here. Although having said that I go past them a lot because I’ve a habit. I have a friend that I go out with and she’s quite interested in this sort of thing. She’s not quite as old as me. Having said that there aren’t many people that are these days but that’s by the by.
MS: There’s more and more actually. We’re all living longer.
HH: We like, she’s interested, even though she’s not a Lincolnshire lady she came up here thirty years ago but she’s very intrigued in what happened with the airfields during the war.
MS: Yeah.
HH: And we’ll, we’ll, I’ll take her past airfields, having a look at airfields and if, if we’re about we’ll, we’ll suss out where there’s a Memorial to an airfield. There’s one very discreetly on the roadside for Kelstern Airfield, which it’s no longer there. You wouldn’t know it was there unless you knew where to look and, and an old map was pointing it out but they were very nicely, there’s a crossroads there, and they very nicely put a War Memorial on these crossroads and it’s nicely looked after to this day and we go and have a look at that sometimes. And there’s another one at Metheringham. We often come across Metheringham Airfield.
MS: Yeah.
HH: Because it’s still very much the runways and the perimeter track there. The main runway’s still there and we’ll, we’ll go to Ruskington and our favourite ride back from Ruskington Garden Centre is to come through the ford at Kirkby Green, and then we’ll drop off and come, come across Metheringham Airfield. Drop as though we’re going into Martin and then cut in to the airfield. Come around the peri track, and we nearly always stop and look at the Memorial which is on our right as we’re travelling up. Lovely Memorial. And again, its well maintained.
MS: Is that by a T-junction. Is the Memorial by a T-junction or a crossroads?
HH: No. It’s, it’s halfway down the eastern side of the peri track.
MS: Right.
HH: On, on the eastern side of the peritrack.
MS: I’m with you.
HH: And it’s a very nicely constructed Memorial, and it was 106 Squadron I think at Metheringham. They were there nearly all the time I think at Metheringham. Again, I can remember that airfield being constructed because I had an uncle, my mother’s brother lived down Blankney Fen, well, at the top end of Blankney Fen and he was only a field away where he lived at a farm. Only a field away from the airfield. And we went over in the holidays once. We used to bike. Bike from here to Metheringham, well, Blankney and went over on our cycles, and he says, ‘Oh,’ he says, we heard all this machinery, he said, ‘Yes, they tell me they’re building an aerodrome up there,’ as they used to call it in those days. An aerodrome. Anyway, we had a walk across these fields and all the diggers was there and they was all laying the runways out.
MS: It didn’t take them long.
HH: I can remember that being constructed, you see.
MS: Yeah.
HH: And, and its, very evident that a lot of it is still there. The peritrack. A lot of the peritrack, and the main runway which is the road from Blankney Fen up to the road joining Walcot and Metheringham.
MS: Oh.
HH: Yeah. And we, my friend and I will get, will get on the end of this runway and ok it’s just a tarmac strip down the middle of the runway but it’s still the same width. Still. They’ve not taking the concrete up and I’ll sometimes say, ‘Right. I’ll rev my engines up. Get ready for take-off. Don’t worry about seat belts because the Lancaster didn’t have them like. Just make sure where your parachute is.’ Joking. I know you shouldn’t joke but that’s what we did.
MS: No. Of course, you can joke.
HH: You see, and then we’ll go and I’ll say, ‘Right. We would be leaving the ground,’ and I used to say now if we was, if we was unlucky that was the last time we touched the ground.’ It all comes back to you, doesn’t it?
MS: It makes you think.
HH: Yeah. Yeah. And of course, there’s the famous ghost stories isn’t there of the airfields? Have you read any?
MS: Go on then.
HH: Oh, there’s loads of ghost stories and, and there’s a brilliant one about Metheringham. And of course, I mean it wasn’t all gloom and doom on the airfields. They used to have a bit of a knees up now and again didn’t they? In the NAAFIs and —
MS: Oh yeah.
HH: And the messes and things like that. And, and if they was having a dance on the airfield they would, there would be buses running from Lincoln just, just with girls in going to the dance with the, you know for the airmen to dance. But there was this particular story that this airman got friendly with a girl from Woodhall, and even her address where she lived at Woodhall has been published. It’s only what I’ve read this is but a lot of people talked about it as well and she, he used to fetch her up from Woodhall on his motorbike. Right. And they’d been up to a bit of a knees up one night and I don’t know whether it was icy or what it was but they got travelling and he didn’t, he hadn’t got off, he hadn’t got off the airfield and his bike went from under him and it resulted in, it killed her anyway. It killed his girlfriend. But the story is that that girl where the incident happened has been seen by quite a few different people since. And a lot of people, well a lot, a few people that’s talked about it. They’d been going along this runway that I’ve talked about and I’ve been looking for them but you don’t see them if you look for them, do you? This this body will appear and it’ll be thumbing. People’s actually pulled up to speak to this girl and then she’s disappeared and and several different people have said it’s the same description from all the people that have seen her.
MS: What airfield’s that?
HH: Metheringham.
MS: Metheringham Airfield.
HH: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve got a series of books on, “Ghost Stations,” they’re called. A series of about six of them. I’ve got about four or five of them anyway, and all these stories. Nearly all the stations have got stories of they can hear, they can hear Lancaster engines at certain times during the night and things like that.
MS: There’s one, that’s supposed to be true of Fiskerton, isn’t it?
HH: Yeah. Yeah. Fiskerton. There’s one at Fiskerton where a jeep runs up the runways. A vehicle with airmen in at a certain time and a certain day. And also there’s another one from [pause] not Redbourne. What’s the one near Redbourne Airfield? Redbourne. Near Redbourne where they, where they go parachute jumping from there now but the —
MS: Not Langar. It’s not Langar, is it?
HH: No. No. But Hibaldstow.
MS: Oh, Hibaldstow, Redbourne.
HH: Hibaldstow is the one.
MS: Yeah. Yeah.
HH: Somebody bought the control tower there. Converted it into a residence, of course as several did but, and they, doorways altered, doorways bricked up and things like that. But the people that went to live in there they started to see airmen fully clothed. Fully clothed airmen. They would, they would come out where the doorways was bricked up.
MS: Where they were.
HH: Where they were. And reappear. And it didn’t put them off. They accepted it. Yeah. Things like that. And of course, the pub at, the pub one of the pubs at Welton, that’s a classic that is because there’s an aircrew. There’s an aircrew been known to go in there and they’ve even conversed with them, people have. Even people like religious men and parsons and things like that. And, and they’ve conversed with them and it’s a crew that went off one night and of course got shot down but the souls came back as you might say. So how true they are or what you have your own mind on that. I’ve an open mind on that sort of thing because I’ve never really witnessed anything to prove that there is such a thing but I don’t disbelieve it because there’s so many people and people far more educated than I am that talk about these things. So there must be something in it you see. And then of course there’s the one, the famous one at Hemswell as well where they can hear somebody drops a spanner during the night. Where they would be working on an aircraft in the hangar and then all of a sudden somebody has dropped a spanner and you know how that would rattle in a hangar at night.
MS: Yeah.
HH: And lights will come on. Lights will come on and they never have fathomed out the reason why the lights come on in the hangars at Hemswell at nights. Whether they still do or what I don’t know. But that’s the aftermath of the war in Lincolnshire, isn’t it?
MS: It is. Now then, we are coming towards the end.
HH: Yeah. We are indeed coming towards the end.
MS: And it’s, I’m right in saying that after the war you went into the building trade and also then you were conscripted.
HH: Yes, I was in the building trade. I learned my trade as an apprenticeship. Apprenticeships were seven years at that time so I was deferred until I was twenty one. If you wasn’t in a, in a trade you went in at eighteen but if you was in a trade you were deferred until you were twenty one, so I went in when I was twenty one. 4th of August 1953. I joined up at RAF Cardington in Bedfordshire, was kitted out there and then we went off up to Wilmslow to do our square bashing as we call it. And then we went down to a place called Church Lawford. Well, you know where Wilmslow is in Cheshire I suppose, being a Manchester man.
MS: Well, I was born in Cheshire as it was then.
HH: Oh right. I’ll come back to that then later.
MS: Yeah.
HH: And then I went down to a place called Church Lawford. An ex, an ex-flying station, for trade training which was just basic training to, one of the comical things down there what I’ve never really understood why they wasted time doing this, they taught us how to use a pick. Now, you can either use a pick or you can’t, and if you hit your foot with it you know you were using it wrong and you learned from there. But they taught us how to use a pick. There’s an RAF way of using a pick.
MS: Is that right?
HH: Yes.
MS: I had no idea.
HH: Yeah. But there you go [laughs] they had to do something.
MS: I shall have to ask you about it afterwards.
HH: They had to do something to use the time up. But then while we were there, we were waiting for postings, you see.
MS: Are you still comfortable?
HH: Well as comfortable as —
MS: Well, listen we’ll give —
HH: I’m alright. I’m alright.
MS: Give it a couple more minutes and then that’ll be it alright.
HH: I’ll finish. Yeah. I’ll finish. Then we, we got our postings and we, we, we got a posting. They said, ‘Right, you’re going to be posted abroad to the Canal Zone in Egypt.’ That’s, that’s all we knew. So, one day we had to be, there was oh I don’t know how many of us there was that went that particular day. About twenty of us I should think and we, we had to go for our injections.
MS: Yeah.
HH: And we had to go from Church Lawford to, which is near, between Coventry and Rugby. But we had to go to, is it Cosforth at Wolverhampton?
MS: Cosford.
HH: Cosford. Wolverhampton.
MS: Cosford. RAF Cosford. Yeah.
HH: Yeah. Yeah. We had to go there and they, they didn’t give us, they didn’t give us a pack. They gave us money to buy stuff on the train because they took us down to the station at Rugby. Put us on a train there to Wolverhampton and then from, I think we had to change at Wolverhampton to go to the Cosford but they said, ‘You can get your food on the train,’ and they gave us a shilling. We had to line up the morning before we went, before the officer. He had his little desk out. Salute him. ‘247 Harvey, sir.’ You know. ‘Here’s your shilling.’ I’ve still got that shilling. 1953 on it.
MS: You’ve got it.
HH: I don’t, I can’t, I can’t lay my hands on it now. In fact, I might have even given my granddaughter it, but I didn’t spend it.
MS: What was your service number?
HH: It was 2700.
MS: Yeah.
HH: 247.
MS: Ok. Was there a letter before it or was that just it?
HH: No. No. That was it.
MS: Yeah.
HH: Just simply 2700. At that time it was AC. AC2, Harvey. I rose to the ranks of LAC [laughs] If I’d stayed in I could have possibly got two stripes but I wasn’t interested in staying in. I sometimes, I wish I had have done but that’s by the by. And then from, from where had we got to? Oh yeah. Church Lawford. Then one day they said, ‘Right. You’re going up to Lytham St Anne’s,’ which was a, I forgot the name now where you all waited for your, for your postings.
MS: Up in Lancashire.
HH: Yeah. Up in Lancashire. Yeah. Not far from Blackpool. We had a few nights up there, and then away we went off to Egypt and landed at a place called Fayid which was the main air base. Everything landed at Fayid in Egypt and then we was bumped off to a camp called El Amiriya and I spent nineteen months on this camp at El Amiriya and we used to, we used to go around different parts of the Canal Zone doing whatever wanted doing on married quarters at other camps or, I was posted three. Oh, no. We used to come back at night, I think. Yeah. Yeah. We used to come back at night. A bit further down the Canal Zone there was a camp with all Kenyan people on. Very, very dark people. And they had just had, they had just had water put on to the camp. Piped water so there was stop taps at various places. Myself and another lad, we had a job going and building brick pits and putting a top on where these stop taps was. Now that, that was quite a nice job that was. We was there three weeks. Now, when we got there there was an Army captain, British Army captain in charge of the camp but he wasn’t resident. There the highest rank was, well you would say a warrant officer was in the, if it, if it was a RAF man. Non commissioned. That’s the highest non-commissioned, isn’t it? Am I right?
MS: Yes.
HH: Yeah. And, and he dined in the sergeant’s mess, and he had three sergeants. Six sergeants. Three either side of him. Now, they invited us to dine for lunch and, and breaks to, to dine with them but we sat at each side at the end of these three, and this, this head of the camp he was a tribesman back in Kenya. He’d got facial markings.
MS: The scars.
HH: Scars. Yeah. But he couldn’t speak English, but they had the Canal Zone interpreter that he went to any meetings, big meetings relayed in English and them. He went to the meetings, in to, so we used to speak through him. Wonderful fellow. We became quite friendly with him.
MS: Yeah.
HH: Friendly to the point where he said to us one day, ‘Have you any leave left?’ ‘Yeah. We haven’t used any of it yet.’ ‘See your commanding officer if you can get a fortnight’s leave. I’ll take you to Nairobi where I live and I’ll show you a little bit of Kenya.’
MS: Did you go there?
HH: No. We, we made an appointment with our commanding officer. In fact, he’d been in touch with him this, this sergeant had. And he was very accommodating our commanding officer and he says, ‘Yeah.’ He says, ‘I know what you’ve come for airmen.’ He says, ‘But I cannot grant you permission to go there,’ he says, ‘Because it’s not a recognised leave destination.’ He says, ‘We have our own leave destinations like if you want to go off on leave you go to Famagusta in Cyprus. Somewhere like that,’ he says, ‘And if anything happens to you there,’ he says, ‘I’m responsible for you and I’ve let you go somewhere, if you like out of bounds.’ So, he says ‘I can’t grant you.’ So, we never got unfortunately.
MS: Right.
HH: But that was, that would have been a good experience that would, wouldn’t it?
MS: It would.
HH: And then, I was there, and I stayed there until we was demobbed. I come home on a, I come home on a, on a troop ship. There was sixteen RAF lads on this troop ship, and we came home with the Yorkshire and Lancashire Regiment that had been out there and they filled the ship except for sixteen berths. And I happened to be coming and I filled one of those berths. Lovely. A trip through the Med in August. What can you, eleven days it took us.
MS: What a way to finish your service.
HH: We docked. We docked at what do you come to first? Malta. We docked at Malta, and we docked at Gibraltar. The captain even let us ashore at Gib. At Gib. Yeah. And we had enough hours to go up the Rock.
MS: Did you not go off at Malta?
HH: No.
MS: Really?
HH: Because we only stopped for sort of refuelling and taking supplies and we hadn’t enough time. But there was all these maybe you’ve experienced, as soon as you pull into a dock with a big ship like that, all these little boats come around and try and flog you things and doing all sorts of things if you throw them a coin down. Lovely experience.
MS: It is actually. Listen. We’re going to draw a line under this.
HH: Yeah. Well, I’ve quite enjoyed that. I hope I’ve been some use and not bored you too much.
MS: Well, you have not bored me. I’ve learned a lot and before we go into the technical stuff. It’s not technical stuff, I’ve got to thank you. I don’t mean I’ve got to thank you. I am thanking you. Right. It’s been, it’s been fantastic. I’ve been listening to what you’ve experienced. I didn’t expect to meet anybody who’d been actually fired on by machine gun when they were a child. And the rest of it together is gold. It’s wonderful.
HH: Yeah.
MS: I did say earlier you’ll, you will get a copy of this interview.
HH: Yeah. Lovely. I would appreciate that.
MS: You will.
HH: Yeah.
MS: Can I just take you through some stuff that’s sort of, it’s not legal, it’s, but it’s important I take you through it. First of all, you’ve consented to take part in the interview, and in a minute you’re going to sign that you consented —
HH: All right
MS: To take part.
HH: All right.
MS: And do you agree that your name, not your personal details can be publicly associated with the interview?
HH: Yes, of course.
MS: Ok. I’ll tick that off.
HH: Of course.
MS: Yeah. The rest. Any personal details like your address and stuff like that will be stored totally privately.
HH: Yes.
MS: Do you grant me permission to take your photograph?
HH: Yes.
MS: Thank you.
HH: Yes.
MS: Right. That will be on line for the IBCC Archives.
HH: Oh right. Yeah.
MS: It’s being made up at the moment. Before I go, I’ll give you a link for your daughters to look, and eventually your picture and your interview will appear on that Digital Archive.
HH: Yeah.
MS: So, anybody anywhere in the world can actually get hold of it.
HH: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
MS: And you agree to the interview being made available online
HH: Yes.
MS: On the computer. Ok. Yeah.
HH: Yeah.
MS: The Archive is basically going to look after your material. It’s an important Archive.
HH: Yeah.
MS: Which is going forward into the future. I’m just paraphrasing what’s here now and it will go to all available media.
HH: All right.
MS: And it’s for educational purposes and historical purposes.
HH: Very good.
MS: So, on behalf of the Archive I’m thanking you for that. Now, if you’re happy that what I’ve said is right would you mind signing where I’ve put a cross there?
HH: I will. I’ll sign that. Yeah.
MS: Thank you, sir. Oh sorry. Up there. That’s it. I’m now going to end the interview at eight minutes past twelve. We’ve done well. That’s nearly two hours.
HH: Thank you very much indeed.
MS: You’re more than welcome.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Harold Harvey
Creator
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Michael Sheehan
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-09-14
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHarveyH180914
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:47:36 audio recording
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Coverage
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Civilian
Language
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eng
Description
An account of the resource
Harold Harvey was a child in Washingborough during the Second World War. He witnessed the construction of airfields around his home and could hear and observe the aircraft departing on operations. One November evening he and his mother and sister were walking along a road and were strafed by a German aircraft. One evening when he and his family were preparing to attend a Carol Concert, they witnessed a Lancaster crash to the ground and explode. He describes how the sky was often full of aircraft and he and his father would watch the activity. On many occasions Harold witnessed the massed German aircraft as they headed to bomb British cities. Harold also saw the testing of FIDO when it was first installed in RAF Fiskerton. Harold also recalls how when the RAF stations were closed after the war, the sites were adapted to other uses.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1942
1943
1947
bombing
childhood in wartime
crash
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
home front
Lancaster
RAF Fiskerton
RAF Metheringham
RAF Scampton
RAF Waddington
searchlight
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/586/8855/PHorryMA1601.2.jpg
a3a6378973a7fbef9b4fe5ac6856674f
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/586/8855/AHorryM160819.2.mp3
0682cfe82dfdf58654793dcb33e77860
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
Horry, Margaret
M Horry
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Horry, MA
Description
An account of the resource
20 items. An oral history interview with Margaret Horry, and her brother, Gordon Prescott's log book (1582098 Royal Air Force), documents and family photographs. She discusses her brothers' and husband's service during the war. Gordon Prescott flew operations as a wireless operator / air gunner with 12 Squadron and was lost without trace 7 January 1945. <br /><br />Additional information on Gordon Prescott is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/119000/">IBCC Losses Database.</a><br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Margaret Horry and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-19
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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RP: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre the interviewer is Rob Pickles the interviewee is Margaret Horry the interview is taking place in Mrs Horry’s home in Exmouth Devon on the 19th August 2016, Nina Pickles is also present. Good morning Margaret thank you for allowing me into your home for this interview could I start by asking you to tell us a little bit about yourself and your experiences in the Second World War.
MH: Well I was born in Spalding, parents had a sweet shop and Gordon lived at home, Bob left home when he was seventeen so I can’t really remember him at home, Gordon worked for Spalding Free Press desperate to get into the RAF in fact he had his own Morse Code Morse Sender Key and he used to send messages to the young man next door so obviously he wanted to be a wireless op so eventually he went off and my first memories are hearing wave after wave of Lancs, Wellingtons et cetera going across the back of our house out on ops one night mother said ‘I wonder how many will come back?’ and of course one night Gordon didn’t come back he flew with 12th Squadron from Wickenby next day eighth, ninth of January knock at the back door little telegram boy we had them in those days with a small envelope father took it in mother went to him they sat at the they sat at the dining table opened the envelope silence they told me and I left them I said ‘I’m going for a walk’ father said ‘don’t tell anybody’ [tearful] and so I left them to their silent tears and walked for miles tears streaming down my face I remember um the Wizard of Oz film Somewhere Over The Rainbow so I thought one day I’ll meet Gordon at the end of the rainbow so perhaps it won’t be so long [very emotional] we didn’t hear anything other than he was missing. Forty six I think presumed killed then all his aftermath came father didn’t reply got a reminder from Inland Revenue [laughs] so that was Gordon gone. Next RAF connection of course was my husband he was ten years nearly ten years older than I like all of them he didn’t talk really about what he’d done had a small connection with 9th Squadron although he didn’t do so many ops with them did an awful lot with 106 out of Metheringham had one bad raid he did say think it was St. Leu d’Esserent only two got back typical RAF he said ‘we had an enormous breakfast ‘cos they’d catered for more to get home’, he flew all the time with Bill Williams who was then flight lieutenant then squadron leader so they moved to Bardney lots of practice then off to Russia for Tirpitz their plane was US so they didn’t actually bomb the Tirpitz from there but that’s where he got his DFM for um helping the navigator because conditions weather were dreadful I had to smile to myself when I saw the citation because tell him to go somewhere two miles away and he’d get lost so [laughs] it was a bit odd seeing he spent such a long time helping to get to Russia, he was the only crew member to stay on for ops, Bill Williams had two children, the others were married and Bill was older, so he went to Singapore with 50 Squadron for tyber force [sic] they were going to bomb precision bomb Japan but of course they dropped the atom bomb so they didn’t but I think seeing the state of the POW’s which they were bringing home particularly those in Changi stayed with him really all his life we had a friend who had been a POW and they became great friends at the golf club each respected each other I think so what next. Arthur had another brother older than him who was a regular he joined in ‘35 having been a footman in London I can’t imagine Frank as a footman at all [laughs] but he joined up and was at Mildenhall and he was in 9 Squadron he was a gunner he won the DFM for in the citation shooting down two German aircraft took part in the Heligoland fiasco as it became known he did probably a whole tour with 9 before leaving, he used to come to see us after he’d left the RAF ‘cos he didn’t come home until 1954 he had been flying in Scotland towards the end of the war instructing ferrying naval people all around the place, took part in the Berlin airlift, friends with Freddie Laker but fortunately didn’t invest with him [laughs], came out of the RAF in ‘54 then took his civil pilot’s licence which is not bad going for somebody who left school when he was fourteen.
RP: That’s very [unclear] so who did he fly for as a civilian?
MH: I don’t know one time he was flying from Bournemouth to Paris didn’t like that ‘no sooner take off then you land’ he said.
RP: [Laughs]
MH: Then at one time he was carrying oil pipes in Iraq et cetera when they were laying oil then he was with Bahamas Airways and he stayed in the Bahamas.
RP: I wonder why [laughs].
MH: He got into property development and came back owned a house in the Isle of Man obviously for tax purposes ‘cos he died in ’80, 82.
RP: But?
MH: So left an awful lot of money [laughs].
RP: Yes so a long flying career though.
MH: Yes.
RP: So to go back to Frank on 9 Squadron you said he did the full tour which a lot of people never did did he ever feel himself lucky to have done the full tour did he ever talk about that?
MH: No, I think he had the same attitude as Arthur that’s not going to happen to them if you think it you will and Gordon was always doubtful I always remember Arthur saying ‘that’s no good if you think it you’ll go’.
RP: So what you said Gordon had always wanted to join the RAF what provoked the RAF was there no RAF history in the family?
MH: No no none at all.
RP: He just decided that was for him. Did Arthur ever say why he picked the RAF and not the army.
MH: I think he did because of Frank.
RP: He just followed in his brother’s footsteps?
MH: Yes he not idolised Frank but um huge connection between them they were very similar Frank never married but always had a bevy of model type girls [laughs] surround him we were very very fon fond of him he’d just turn up at the house I remember one day in Cambridge I’d cleaned the house from top to bottom everything dumped in the kitchen, I had a six month old and a four year old, and there was Frank he was very particular but he didn’t mind the kitchen being a mess, or Sheffield picks up the phone ‘I’m at the station Margaret think I’ll get a taxi’ he just arrived.
RP: But because you liked him you didn’t mind?
MH: No.
RP: So did he ever look back at his RAF career or was it something just in the past?
MH: No.
RP: He never.
MH: No.
RP: He never spoke about Bomber Command?
MH: No.
RP: I just wondered the two of them how they felt when they didn’t get did they ever mention not getting a medal at the end of the war ‘cos that’s always been a sticking point hasn’t it?
MH: Yes um Arthur thought it was very unfair fighter boys got recognised bombers were vilified and everybody brings Dresden but Hamburg got it first and what about bombing all the Germans bombing neutral Rotterdam um it was not fair and Harris took that’s what upset Arthur all the other navy army chiefs were recognised Harris wasn’t that hurt, he’d met Harris he never said what raid they were going on but Harris came and addressed the squadron finishing by saying ‘goodbye lads don’t suppose I shall see many of you again’ but I don’t know which which raid it was [laughs].
RP: Yes.
MH: And when they came back and oh another thing that annoyed him 9 bombed the salt pan which 617 didn’t ‘cos only one got through the captain of that one of 617 feels peeved ‘cos he’s never mentioned so did moan.
RP: Yes.
MH: And he was never mentioned and of course the programme on the radio um about the dams they never mention the salt that 617 didn’t damage and never mention 9 had to go with Tallboy but they dropped the level of water increased the width of the dam there were twenty four ack-ack guns and balloons the report was that it was simple raid but Arthur did talk about that and he thought it was a bit dicey take, no, no Winko had a hit, Arthur had a hit, and of course it wasn’t breached.
RP: No it’s a very solid dam unfortunately ‘cos it’s earth it’s earth and stone, so -
MH: Yes.
RP: It’s very hard to damage.
MH: They increased stones.
RP: You mentioned before that Arthur was injured on one raid what what happened there?
MH: Yes. Um it’s in one report from.
RP: He was hit by shrapnel?
MH: Shrapnel he was bombing well in bombing position shrapnel came through hit him in the chest so he called ‘skipper I’ve been hit’ so Pretty Johns the flight engineer came down to him pulled his jacket et cetera and pulled out this red hot piece of metal all my dear husband could say was ‘you clot I only got this shirt out of stores this morning’ [laughs].
RP: How badly was he injured? [laughs]
MH: Um oh a plaster the next night nothing happened he still did had the scar from it.
RP: So it wasn’t as deep as you imagine it was just a piercing rather than a a sort of.
MH: Yes hmm hmm
RP: Intrusion?
MH: Penetrated.
RP: Still it can’t have been very nice.
MH: But he swears having been in bombing position a voice called out ‘Chucky’ which was a schoolboy nickname the voice was Mr. Headman Hamilton a teacher so Arthur thought naturally he turned to see where this voice was coming from if he hadn’t have turned shrapnel would have hit him straight in the face and killed him.
RP: And he never really knew where the voice came from?
MH: No and nobody knew the nickname ‘Chucky’ when it left school that was it so very very strange.
RP: How strange is that.
MH: [laughs] very definite about that he was.
RP: Did Arthur ever sort of give you an opinion which he squadron he preferred that he was on did he have a favourite?
MH: Well I think 9 he
RP: Because the two of them served on 9 Squadron didn’t they at different times?
MH: Yes don’t know why so he said he did less with 9 then 106 but um didn’t say much apart from that time when only two got back and the whole village was in mourning he said, we’ve been to Metheringham um quite eerie.
RP: Was there is there a cemetery at Metheringham I think there is in the village a small cemetery?
MH: No there’s a little memorial garden there and if you come out go a mile down the road you get to the second runway.
RP: Oh right.
MH: At the side of that there’s a little garden and a plaque in the seat and there’s a runway straight in front of you and I sat there got a most peculiar feeling.
RP: Yes yes ‘cos people have taken off from there.
MH: Yes yes.
RP: The ghosts, but yes I think 9 Squadron has had quite a reputation, what did he think of the Lancaster did he ever give you his opinion of the aircraft as such?
MH: Devil to get in to down to where he had to go to his office as he called it but fantastic I mean they got home on two engines they got shot up lots of times as Ron Harvey said ‘it’s quite strange to see bullets going from through the fuselage from one side to the other’ [laughs].
RP: And not be in the way.
MH: It was yes, one raid they were chased by Messerschmitt and they’re being shot up Bill dived over the sea and a little Scottish voice came over ‘skipper if you don’t get up soon I’ll get wet feet’ [laughs] and that was um um Sandy rear gunner.
RP: Oh yes but I suppose Arthur was in the bomb aimer position he’d have the best view really of the ground?
MH: I I yes I think.
RP: He sort of was very close [laughs]?
MH: Well forgot [unclear] Harvey navigator who holds forth quite bit but as Arthur said he [emphasis] didn’t see anything I think that’s what got through to Arthur being a bomb aimer he saw more than anybody, skipper, he and rear gunner would see the most of the damage they were doing, what was coming at them, the flak, the fighters, so those two positions were I think the nastiest in terms of what they could see.
RP: But when he and Frank met up did they ever discuss their experience?
MH: No.
RP: They never sort of looked back at all?
MH: No.
RP: Did they go and see the Dambusters film [laughs].
MH: No! It was strange one night there was a film on not Dambusters ‘cos we didn’t watch that but another one and what else Danger by Moonlight?
RP: No, “Ill Met by Moonlight” it’s a different one is that.
MH: It was a black and white.
RP: An Elstree black and white probably.
MH: And it was on the television and it was a raid, bomb aimer featured, skipper, Arthur sat there and suddenly said ‘we don’t want to watch that do we?’ so no switched off it was getting to him.
RP: Yes yes ‘cos it’s taken a long long time to get people to talk about it.
MH: Yes.
RP: Because we didn’t understand the horror of it all and the feelings they had in losing so many of their friends.
MH: Yes.
RP: I think er that’s one thing. Can we go back to yourself then can you remember when the war finally ended where you were and what you were doing?
MH: Oh still in Spalding at High School um I think the day I took the entrance exam to Spalding High School went to a wedding reception held in the sergeants mess when RSM Lord of the Parachute Regiment got married to a Spalding girl that of course was before Arnhem because I don’t know which regiment John was in but they were confined to barracks so often before long it got to be a joke but eventually they went and of course it was a bit of a disaster, quite a lot had married Spalding girls, Spalding felt it dreadfully, John Lord went on he was very famous with the Parachute Regiment for organising the POW Camp even the Camp CO knocked on his door and he when he came home he was RSM at Sandhurst but I remember that because they were camped on playing fields at the Grammar School.
RP: Oh were they.
MH: But Spalding I did go out at night, mother and father didn’t, lots of people, lots of ATS girls, Polish officers and some men from somewhere all celebrating, but then of course there was still Japan several people still had sons, husbands who were hear it on the news if they were alive and of course the war having ended in ‘45 it just seemed to go on and on because of rationing, I don’t know when it was ’43, ‘44 we were bombed our wonderful department store which was all white and gilt and Father Christmas used to stand on the balcony that was totally demolished, and we did go in the shelter that night our shop was the end of what had been a row of cottages with a single roof right along a reed and slate roof and we were at the beginning another shop on the corner an incendiary dropped on right through the roof so course we would all have gone up but it landed in the toilet pan [laughs] and went out [laughs].
RP: Oh right [laughs] oh that’s a good place to go precision bombing.
MH: And fifty yards away um Penningtons Carpet window back entrance that was totally demolished so it got very near to whether we’d got a home to go to.
RP: How many times did you have actually go down into the shelter during the war then?
MH: Oh twice.
RP: Just the twice?
MH: It was it didn’t go down it was next door to the Police Station which is still there it looks like a castle two turrets and that was the Police Station and the air raid shelter down the side it was an oblong brick built flat roofed shelter [laughs].
RP: Not ideal then.
MH: No, just across the road from it was the Liberal Club built eighteen hundred something that was totally demolished, at school we had the rounded shelters so we had air raid drill and this would be beginning of the war when I was at infants it was smelly [laughs] I remember that and er I know once or twice perhaps they were perhaps they were trying to bomb the guns and searchlights stations because something must have got near because mother and I sat underneath the oak dining table, which I’ve now got, which had a bar across the middle underneath which one could sit on, and er no we did go in the shelter twice.
RP: So you mentioned about all the siblings and Arthur and Frank all the family did they all survive the ones that were in the various forces they all came home?
MH: Yes yes there was I mean Arthur was Bomber Command, Frank was Bomber Command, Fred was Coastal Command for a long time in the Azores he was a warrant officer and got the DFC, George the eldest joined the army in 1935 in tanks he was in Egypt when I think due for leave when war was declared.
RP: Oh dear.
MH: Went right through Alamein, Italy.
RP: And survived.
MH: And survived.
RP: He did well if he was in the Tank Regiment.
MH: Yes.
RP: He did very well.
MH: He was the well not glorified but the one the officers liked to have the eternal experienced sergeant.
RP: Yes [laughs].
MH: He you know he had a mention in dispatches because a tank what he called had a brew up hit so he got his crew out they were being machine gunned from the top of a dune and he told them all to crawl towards the machine gun ‘cos trajectory they were under it which took some thinking.
RP: Yes yes not the sort of thing you’d want to crawl to.
MH: He was a very very had a very dry sense of humour.
RP: It’s good that they all survived I think we’ve covered most of their careers um is there anything else you think we need to know about Bomber Command that you might have missed a quick recollection I think we’ve got a lot of we’ve certainly got a lot of um memorabilia to look at and er I think that’s been so interesting I’m sorry that the emotion of it got to you but I can understand how sad it must be the memories are still there for your brother but I think he would be pleased that we are still remembering him.
MH: Yes.
RP: And I think and this he would be pleased.
MH: This is it he felt neglected.
RP: And I think Frank and Arthur and all the others would be pleased that at last.
MH: Yes.
RP: Maybe too late for them but
MH: And it’s being passed on.
RP: That’s right.
MH: A friend said ‘oh but that was so long ago’ Arthur used to say that ‘oh that was in the past’ um but my friend said ‘oh but that’s history’ I said ‘yes and history must not be forgotten’.
RP: And must not be repeated even.
MH: No.
RP: Anyway Margaret I’d just like to say thank you for that and it’s been lovely talking to you.
MH: Thank you.
RP: Thank you for agreeing to invite us here thank you very much.
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 Margaret Horry
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rod Pickles
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-19
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHorryM160819, PHorryMA1601
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:37:00 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Margaret Horry was born in Spalding. She remembers aircraft taking off going on operations, and retells wartime stories of her relatives. Arthur served in Bomber Command as a bomb aimer. Frank was also in Bomber Command. He joined the Royal Air Force as an air gunner at RAF Mildenhall (9 Squadron), gained a Distinguished Flying Medal, and served until 1954. After that he worked for Bahamas Airways. Fred served in Coastal Command, was stationed at the Azores as a warrant officer, and was eventually awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
George joined the Army in 1935 in a tank regiment, serving in Egypt at Al El-Alamein, and in Italy. He was also mentioned in dispatches.
Gordon worked for the Spalding Free Press, in his free time he was a keen radio amateur wishing to become wireless operator. He joined the Royal Air Force and served with 12 Squadron at RAF Wickenby. Margaret reminisces receiving a telegram claiming he was missing, the subsequent notification of death and the whole family grieving. Margaret’s husband Arthur, was ten years her senior - he served in the Royal Air Force with 9 Squadron and 106 Squadron from RAF Metheringham. He took part in an operation to Saint-Leu-d'Esserent with Flight Lieutenant Bill Williams, then was posted to RAF Bardney practising for Tirpitz operations. Gained his Distinguished Flying Medal, he went to Singapore with 50 Squadron as part of the Tiger Force. He married Margaret after the war. Margaret also elaborates on the bombing of Dresden and discusses lack of recognition for Bomber command veterans.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Suffolk
Azores
Norway
Singapore
Egypt
France
France--Creil
Italy
North Africa
Egypt--Alamayn
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
British Army
Civilian
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Carolyn Emery
106 Squadron
12 Squadron
50 Squadron
9 Squadron
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Flying Medal
grief
killed in action
memorial
perception of bombing war
RAF Bardney
RAF Metheringham
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Wickenby
Tirpitz
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/579/8848/PHarrisonJ1501.2.jpg
1a57ff0e3dad9384f62bb7cde4f22cfe
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/579/8848/AHarrisonJ150809.2.mp3
d8bd795575540901698a5de69ed45289
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
Harrison, John
J Harrison
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Harrison, J
Description
An account of the resource
11 items. An oral history interview with John Harrison (1924 - 2017), his log book, correspondence, documents and photographs. He flew operations as a mid-upper gunner with 106 Squadron from RAF Metheringham before being shot down and becoming a prisoner of war.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by John Harrison and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
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.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-09
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: OK, try again. So this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, the interviewer is Annie Moody and the interviewee is John Harrison and the interview is taking place at Mr Harrison’s home in Birstall in Yorkshire on the 9th of August 2015. So, to start with if you just tell me a little about where, well tell me where you were born and a little bit about your childhood and school and when you left.
JH: Well I was born at a little village called Collingham in North Yorkshire, it’s just near Wetherby. And I lived there until I went to, eventually I passed an exam and I went to Harrogate Grammar School and I was at Harrogate Grammar School until, I got my school certificate and then I was sixteen and didn’t know what to do. Anyhow I had an auntie who was a big noise in the Civil Service, pardon?
AM: Me too.
JH: Yeah and she said ‘I’ll see if I can fix you up with a temporary job in the Civil Service in Harrogate ‘cause they were in Harrogate at the time. And so I ended up going in the Civil Service in a branch called E20 in the Civil Service in Harrogate at {unclear} Hotel I think it was. And they dealt with all enquiries and everything regarding barrage balloons and everything, must have been supplies you know, supplies and all that. And I stayed there until I was eighteen. And then of course when I was, I knew I was going to get called up at eighteen and I got called up at eighteen and caught the train down to London and I went to the Lords’ Cricket Ground where we all had to go. And I was there for a while and then from there I got shunted all over the place. [Sighs] I forget where I went next, oh, I ended up at Dalcross in Scotland which was an RAF place, it’s now the airport for Inverness.
AM: Right.
JH: And I was there, and I did my gunnery training there, and eventually – {rustling of paper}
AM: We’re just having a look at John’s logbook.
JH: I passed out as an air, sergeant air gunner, on the 17th of July 1943 at No2 Air Gunnery School which was at Dalcross. And then I went to, No2 Air Gunnery School that was it yeah, and then I was, I joined, I picked up a pilot, Flying Officer Clements, and I don’t know what happened to him because we did three, I did three trips with him, the last one was a leaflet raid to Le Mans and after that I never saw him again, so I don’t know what happened to him. But then I picked up, I went to gunnery school at Skellingthorpe and then I came to 1660 Conversion Unit at Swinderby, and there I picked up me pilot, Flying Officer Leggatt.
AM: When you say you picked up your pilot, what was that like then, how did that work?
JH: Well, we as far as I remember, we went into this room and they were milling around, pilots, looking for air gunners, and air gunners –anyhow eventually I got talking to this chap, Flying Officer Leggatt, and I went on his crew. He was a smashing bloke and we got on quite well together and we stayed together. Then we finished 1660 Conversion Unit which was at Halifax, er at Swinderby.
AM: So that was conversion to the four engined bombers?
JH: Yeah, yeah. Then we went onto the serious stuff, reported to 106 Squadron.
AM: 106 Squadron?
JH: Metheringham, and the first operation we did was to Frankfurt am Main and that was on ED593Y and that was the one that I was telling you about.
AM: That later on, what was it like, that first operation can you remember?
JH: Well I don’t know, yes, actually that one was very quiet, it was to Frankfurt and we, it was only five hours thirty-five minutes and we got with no problems, you know we got there, bombed the target, came back, landed.
AM: Were you a rear gunner or a mid-upper?
JH: I started off as a mid-upper gunner.
AM: OK.
JH: But then we um, until we got to, and then the next trip was to Berlin. And this was the one where we had the problems with two engines u/s, flight engineer was killed and the wireless op was injured.
AM: So which operation was this, how many had you done before that one?
JH: Berlin.
AM: Yeah.
JH: That was in this aircraft ED593Y which was on its seventy-third operation, we decided it had had enough. [laughs] We landed at, we decided that, we didn’t know whether we were going to bail out or what by the side door. So, we decided to make a dash for it and we come to Coltishall, and we landed at Coltishall in Norfolk and we were told afterwards, we’d no wireless, no nothing, everything was dead and all we did was fire in, was fire in the colours of the day through the front window and you know they told us there was twelve aircraft in various stages of distress waiting to land and suddenly this Lancaster, no lights, no nothing just fired the colours of the day, wheels down obviously coming in regardless. And we came in and we got half way down, and this is perfectly true, we got half way down the runway and we ran out of fuel. Now how lucky can you get you know? We stayed there the night and the following morning Group Captain McKechnie who was the CO of 106 Squadron, and he had the George Cross by the way, he came down and picked us up and took us back.
AM: Right, just drove down and got you?
JH: Yeah.
AM: Drove down or flew down?
JH: Flew down.
AM: He flew down?
JH: Flew down and then after that we went to Berlin. One, two, three, four, five, six to Berlin and then we hit trouble [laughs].
AM: Did you ever fire your gun?
JH: Yeah.
AM: Did you ever have to fire your gun?
JH: Oh yeah, yeah I’ve got bits and pieces in here [rustling of pages]. ‘One combat, enemy aircraft not identified’, [rustling] ‘Three engagements that were in Berlin. Three engagements, one Junkers 88 claimed as damage’.
AM: What did it actually feel like then firing your guns?
JH: Well [laughs] you know it was just what I was there for really. It was a treat to have a go at somebody [laughs]. It, that was when this aircraft we were flying was on its seventy-third trip.
AM: That was the one where you got shot up?
JH: Where we landed at Coltishall and it was parked up and then the next morning. Pardon?
AM: I’m telling Gary to shush {laughter} with his pages.
JH: And then the next morning we came down to get our stuff out of it and it was parked up there and there was about six or seven Yanks all looking you know, and they’d been brought down. They said ‘Sure you must be very, very sad to lose this old girl?’ you know ‘cause it was there with the seventy-three bombs on it you know? And I said ‘No we’re not really’ [laughter] and they couldn’t understand why we weren’t crying our eyes out because we’d lost it.
AM: Did they give you bacon and eggs, like they do on the British bases?
JH: Yeah, yeah oh aye.
AM: So they got bacon and eggs as well?
JH: Yeah, but Group Captain McKechnie came down and picked us up and took us back. Now then he had the George Cross, Gp Captain Mckechnie. There was an aircraft on fire, he went inside and pulled the pilot out.
AM: Right.
JH: I don’t know a right lot about it but it he did [rustling] and then –
AM: So then you got a new ‘plane?
JH: Yeah, and we were Berlin, Berlin. ‘One combat enemy aircraft identified,’ Berlin, Berlin and that time we had to land at Bardney, at Bardney.
AM: What was the flying time to Berlin?
JH: To Berlin? Eight hours roughly.
AM: About eight hours?
JH: Yeah, it varied, seven hours or eight hours and then the last one.
AM: What were you actually bombing, can you remember in Berlin, what were your targets?
JH: Targets? Berlin [laughs].
AM: Berlin, just Berlin?
JH: No they had a, it’s funny that because they you know, we were approaching the target and the bloody bomber aimer was fiddling about with his stuff you know, I kept thinking to myself ‘For God’s sake get the bloody bombs’ [laughs] but he. I went to Berlin again and then 19th of April it was, I was, we were going to Leipzig and we got shot down and the, we were, we couldn’t get the rear door open to go through you know, and the mid-upper gunner and the rear gunner used to go out through the rear door and we couldn’t get it open. So, he rang the pilot up and he said we were on fire like. And he said ‘I’ll hold it as long as I can’ so he shot up to front and I went out and he was still there and he went like that. And I went out and I landed right on the side of a lake, and I saw in the middle of the lake there was a great bang and a crash and what have you and obviously the aircraft had gone right into the lake and the pilot when he bailed out, this lake was frozen over. Well it was, I landed fortunately on the edge of the lake and so I was able to get my stuff off, but he landed right in the middle of the lake and he went under where the ice was broken and he drowned. And they told us next morning, they said ‘Your pilot was drowned, he couldn’t get back out of the aircraft’. He was a marvellous lad you know? It made me sick to think, but that’s how it ended, and he um –
AM: Did the rest of you manage to bail out OK though?
JH: Yeah, all of us, all of us got out. And I don’t know what happened to them. I was taken the next day, there was about six of us. It was a German air RAF, German bomber station which we’d landed near and they came and took us and shoved us in the cells. And then the next morning, there was six of us, and they put us in a {unclear} and they said ‘We’re taking you to Berlin ‘cause you’ll have to go from Berlin to Frankfurt to Dulag Luft to the interrogation centre’.
AM: OK.
JH: And he said ‘When you get into Berlin keep your heads down’ he said ‘Because it’s in a hell of a state’ and he said ‘You’re the ones that have done it’ and you know we actually saw one poor RAF bloke hanging from a bloody lamp standard. The Germans had got him you know? I suppose you could understand it.
AM: The civilians had got him then and hung him?
JH: Yeah, he was hanging, swinging in the breeze, I mean Berlin was in a hell of a state. It was just, I saw London, but London was nothing compared with Berlin. It was absolutely flattened, I mean we’d been bombing it every night for about seven or eight nights, with four thousand-pound clusters and all the rest of it. So, we were taken to Frankfurt and we were interrogated there and –
AM: What was that like being interrogated?
JH: Well it wasn’t too bad really because we had a, he was quite a civvy bloke he was. He said, he asked us what aircraft we flew. We said ‘You’ll know won’t you?’ And he did of course. He said ‘Well of course we do, you were in a Lancaster weren’t you?’ I said ‘Yes’ and he said it crashed into {unclear}, I said ‘Yes’. And he said ‘Well,’ he said ‘I don’t think there’s a right lot that you can tell us that we don’t know’ and he said ‘Right you’ll be taken, and we were taken by. [sighs] What were we in? Railway truck, and we were taken up to Konigsberg, right on the north coast, Stalag Luft 6.
AM: Right.
JH: And we were there, we were taken there, and then from there we were taken down to Turan in Poland and then from there we were taken across to oh, place in Germany, not while some three or four miles from Belsen it was, because we were frightened to bloody death when we found out.
AM: I’ll bet.
JH: I forget the name of the airfield. Fallingbostel I think it was and from there one morning they came in and they said ‘Right whatever you can get and carry, you’re going, moving’. And we were marched out and we marched northwards towards the, you know back, I thought we were going back to the bloody place we’d been before. Anyhow.
AM: Did you know why they wanted you to start marching?
JH: No they didn’t tell you, they just, but obviously we found out after later that the Americans and the British were coming and they weren’t far away from there. Anyhow we got about half way along there and we, there quite a few hundred of us with an odd German, a guard, and we’re marching on the edge of this wood and four Typhoons, you know British Typhoons came down circled and I thought ‘Those buggers are going to come at us’. They turned around, the first one came in and he opened up on us with bloody cannons. And they killed, I think it was eighty, eighty, I think eighty of us were killed with that. And I, my best pal was killed as well and I had a job. We’d been pals a long time and he came from Leeds and I had the bloody awful job of going to see his wife.
AM: Afterwards?
JH: Afterwards, and telling her what had happened you know?
AM: What did you think when the Typhoon came over then, why did you think it was, it was shooting?
JH: Because there were four of ‘em and they were going past and obviously they circled and wouldn’t land. The leader came down and he had a right good look at us and it was obvious that they were going to have a go at us. You know they thought we must be Germans, I don’t know why. And it’s funny, after the war I ran into, well I joined the Aircrew Association and one of these pilots was in it. I got talking to him and I said ‘Why on earth did you shoot us?’ He said well ‘They were Germans’. I said ‘Aye but there was only an odd German here and there’. I said ‘It was obvious to anybody that we were –’ and they came and the first one came in with his cannons and I dived in a muddy ditch [laughs] and he, the second one came, and then I found out afterwards a brave soul at the back of the column had got out and started waving a white sheet. So, they stopped and obviously the bloke came and had a look at us and went like that and off they went.
AM: Waggled his wings and went?
JH: I think you’ll find sixty or eighty of us were killed.
AM: It was quite a lot, yeah.
JH: As I say because I had to go to see, I’d been with him all the time.
AM: Yeah.
JH: So she ought to know.
AM: After that had happened what did you all do, did you all have to just carry on marching?
JH: No. We were on a farm and suddenly in the morning we woke up and all the bloody Germans had gone. And there was the, forget which unit it was, German, English unit, I think it was the Wiltshire Regiment or something were there and they said ‘Well look we’ve a German unit surrendering here any moment now, they’ll have a staff car’. So, he says ‘Can any of you drive? My mate says ‘Yes I can’ and there was four, he says ‘Right you four’ he says ‘Kick the bloody German out of the car,’ he says you know ‘he’ll be there with his –’. It was a staff car. He said ‘If there’s any trouble’ he said ‘Shoot the buggers’ [laughs].
AM: Did you have anything to shoot them with?
JH: [Laughs] They would have given us one. [laughs] We got this staff car, lovely staff car and we got a white sheet from the farm and put it over the bonnet and put a red cross over it. And they gave us enough petrol and food {gave us all the wine?] to get us into Northern France and off we went, and there was a camp there. And they came one morning and said ‘Right twenty of you’ so I said ‘What’s up?’ They said ‘The British aircraft are coming in and they’re going to take you home’ you know? And I went onto the airfield and I nearly fell over. I saw the registration number which was ZN, which was 106 Squadron, which was my squadron. And they were from Metheringham, and so I said to them, I said ‘You’re from Metheringham aren’t you?’ and they said ‘Yeah how do you know?’ ‘Because I used to be there’. And they said ‘Hang on’ and they got, I think it was twenty they took each aircraft, and they got ‘em in and they took me on the lads upstairs into where the pilot and that was, and they said ‘He used to be one of us’. So, I was sat on the thing there and it was a VE day. I’ll always remember it because I was listening to Churchill doing his speech, sat in my little chair. And we landed at, on the south coast. Forget the name of the place now, I forget the name, on the south coast. And the WAAF’s came and took us two at a time, and they took us into the delousing centre, [laughs] got us deloused. And then they took us to this RAF place where we were issued with new uniforms and everything. And I had shrapnel in this left big toe and I’d had it all the time since I was shot down and when we got tidied up, they took us up to this RAF place near Birmingham somewhere, don’t ask me where it was. The Sister there, I said ‘I’ll have to go and you know report with this’ I said, you know it were really bad. So, my mates were all dressed and I lost them again ‘cause they were off and I had to go into hospital. And the Sister said ‘Well’ she said ‘It’s a bit of a mess is this, you’ll be a few days’ she said. She got chatting to me, she said ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ I said ‘Well I had, I said ‘I hope I still have’. She said ‘Do you have a telephone number for her?’ I said ‘Yes, she works at the, in Leeds’. It was National Savings, Leeds. So, she gave me half a crown, she said ‘There’s a telephone there go and give her a ring’. And I rang her and I said ‘Can I speak to Miss Joan Prince please’ and they said ‘Yes’. And she came on and she said ‘Hello’. I said ‘It’s John’ she said ‘John who?’ I said ‘How do you mean?’ she said ‘John where are you?’ I said ‘I’m in hospital’ I said ‘It’s nowt serious’ but I said ‘Will you let me Mother and Father know?’ ‘cause she knew their telephone number and the {unclear] wanted to know. She said ‘Yeah I’ll let them know’ and then I was there until they said ‘Right you can go’ you know? And they put me on a train from Birmingham to Leeds. When I got to Leeds about seven o’clock at night I went into the station where there was a, what did they call them?
AM: A café?
JH: No. Records things you know? Military police.
AM: Oh yeah, right.
JH: And I walked in and said ‘I suppose it’s too bloody late to catch the bus or train to Collingham or Wetherby?’ And they said ‘Yeah, you’re right there lad’ he said ‘what are you?’ So I said ‘I’ve been a prisoner of war, I’m just coming back’. ‘Oh’ he said ‘I do wish they’d ruddy well tell us’ he said ‘We have people who will come and pick you up’ and he rang round and he said ‘Right’ he said ‘What did you say your name was?’ I said ‘Harrison’ , ‘Oh, this man I’m talking to knows your father, [laughs] so he says he’ll come and pick you up’. And he came to Leeds City station, picked me up and took me back to Collingham. Me Mother came running down steps, nearly fell over ‘em, ‘cause you know I’d been a prisoner two and a half years, and that was the end of it.
AM: And that was that?
JH: Yeah.
AM: Did you marry Joan?
JH: Pardon?
AM: Did you marry her? There she is.
JH: There she is.
AM: Lovely.
JH: She was a twin and her twin brother was on Bomber Command the same time as I was and he was shot down off the Dutch coast about six weeks before I was. And Joan’s Mother got a letter from the squadron about, and she recognised the Typhoon’s letters straight away you know? And she kept it for three or four days before she let Joan have it just to say that you know, I had been shot down.
AM: That you were a prisoner?
JH: So that was it.
AM: That was that. What did you do after the war John?
JH: I became a policeman [laughs].
AM: Oh right, you didn’t go back to the Civil Service then?
JH: No, no, no. I was kicking my heels doing nothing and I saw this advert for Police and I went and I got, joined Yorkshire, West Riding Police Force, and did thirty years in that.
AM: Thirty years?
JH: And I have a medal from them, from the, are you in a hurry?
AM: No you can show me in a minute. I’m going to switch this off now though, that was excellent thank you.
JH: Yeah. The camps made their own radio and they used to, a bloke used to come around every night or whatever it was and he used to read out what had happened in the world that day. If the Germans had ever found it we would have bloody been shot, but they didn’t find it.
AM: So you even knew about Belsen, what was happening?
JH: Oh aye, we got all the news. They used to come around, he used to come, I don’t know, they had a radio. Don’t ask me how it was or anything ‘cause they wouldn’t have told you but they had a radio, they’d made it themselves. And they used to listen to BBC and they used to take all the news down and then they used to go around various camps and that you know? And they used to come in and a bloke used to stand outside the door to make sure if there were any Jerries about, and then he used to read us the news so we knew what was going off. Marvellous organisation [laughs].
AM: What else did you do in the prisoner of war camps, did you do the shows and stuff like that?
JH: Oh aye, there was shows. I didn’t get involved in any of them, I weren’t good enough, I weren’t good enough to be girl. [laughs].
AM: What did you actually do then to occupy your time?
JH: Well I actually did a course on education.
AM: Oh right.
JH: You know like a GCE thing? And that was, you know, you got by.
AM: What about all the people building tunnels and stuff?
JH: Oh yeah we had them. You see they, there was one tunnel built from our camp and it, eventually they got, they caught them. And then the bloody Gestapo, there was about fifty of them, and they brought them into this wood at the side, just at the side of the camp, and they shot ‘em. Just mowed them down like that.
AM: Which camp was that John?
JH: That was Stalag Luft 6 we were in I think at the time.
AM: 6?
JH: No.
AM: Or 3?
JH: Anyhow, no we weren’t three. I forget, we’d been in Poland, they’d brought us back in ruddy trucks. It was right near Belsen it was and Stalag? I don’t know.
Unknown: You were in Stalag Luft 6. Yeah.
JH: 6? Yeah, Stalag Luft 6.
GR: It was the prisoners from Belsen that were machined gunned.
AM: Right.
JH: You didn’t argue with them ‘cause they’d shoot you as soon as look at you.
Unknown: Yeah.
JH: At back end of war.
GR: And by that time during 1944 it was getting so bad and they were treating you as terror fliers and this, that and the other. Even the German civilians would kill.
AM: Yeah, well like the man.
JH: Let’s face it I’ve been to Berlin two or three times since the war. My son went into the RAF, and he was in RAF Intelligence, and he spoke about five languages, still does I suppose. And he was based in Berlin and he used to go into this big tower, and whatever he took into that tower he left. He couldn’t bring anything out with him at all and they used to listen into bloody Germans and Russians and God know what. He’d come back to this country to take another language and his wife had gone with a friend to do some shopping, I forget where it was now, and a lorry turned the wrong way on a corner and it hit the car. I never thought [unclear] his wife would live, she was in a right state. Anyhow she did live and she still walks with a limp and that.
AM: Right.
JH: But that killed him going back to Berlin you know?
AM: Is that the son who lives in Lincoln?
JH: Yeah, he lives at –
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with John Harrison
Creator
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Annie Moody
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-08-09
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHarrisonJ150809
Conforms To
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Pending review
Description
An account of the resource
John Harrison grew up in Yorkshire and worked in the Civil Service before joining the Royal Air Force at 18. After training, he flew operations as a mid-upper gunner with 106 Squadron from RAF Metheringham before being shot down over Leipzig and becoming a prisoner of war. Following a short period of hospitalisation, he married his wartime sweetheart Joan. After the war he served with the Yorkshire police.
Contributor
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Dawn Studd
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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France
Germany
Great Britain
Lithuania
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Leipzig
Lithuania--Šilutė
Temporal Coverage
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1943
1944
1945
Format
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00:35:40 audio recording
106 Squadron
1660 HCU
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
bale out
bombing
Dulag Luft
fear
Heavy Conversion Unit
Ju 88
Lancaster
lynching
Operation Exodus (1945)
prisoner of war
RAF Dalcross
RAF Metheringham
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Swinderby
shot down
Stalag Luft 6
strafing
training
Typhoon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/483/8366/PBullockWEJ1601.1.jpg
e627ecce44c4059c1c2fa2c19bc04d9e
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/483/8366/ABullockWEJ151030.1.mp3
bd718c14898350813bae5fe77b18d09f
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Bullock, William
William Edward James Bullock
W E J Bullock
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Bullock, WEJ
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant William Bullock (1916 - 2017, 566069 Royal Air Force) and a memoir. He served in Egypt and Iraq before serving as an engineering officer at RAF East Kirkby and Coningsby.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by William Bullock and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Anna Hoyles [AH]. The interviewee is William Bullock [WB]. The interview is taking place at Mr Bullocks home in Horncastle, Lincolnshire on 30th October 2015.
[noise]
WB : What?
PH: You can start now.
WB: Well, What? I was born in Marshfield.
PH: Yeah.
WB: Yeah in Gloucestershire, September 30th 1916, That’s right. And after two or three years we moved into Bath, and eventually I got a scholarship to the secondary school, and, in 1932 I took the entrance exam for the RAF apprentices, and I got through alright. When I went to Holton as an apprentice for three years and I passed out in 1935, and went to Altarum[?]. It was an ex-naval Air Station, way back, and we kept time with the ships bell in the guard room [chuckle]. in the guard room. Anyway, in February ’37, well, we got posted to Egypt for Florin[?] Training School and when the war started we moved from Egypt to Havaneer[?] in Iraq. And in, I think it was in May, May ’41 the Iraqis were trying to get us out of their country and let the Germans in, and they surrounded the camp and they shelled us and bombed us for five days, day and night, bombs and shells. And, anyway, we gave a good account of ourselves and when we killed a lot of them, and in the end they decided to pack up and go. Then in, well, about May I came home, and I went to Cranwell on a Coastal Command Station, and anyways, was there for about eight months. Then I got moved to Wigsley which was is a Bomber Command training unit, training pilots for Lancasters and whatnot. And, ow, I think that would be May, May ’41 was it? I, I decided to take commission and I was commissioned as an engineer officer and I moved around various places. I did a year at East Kirkby as the Technical Adjutant doing all the paperwork and whatnot. And, anyway, I did a year there, and then I moved to Metheringham, 106 Squadron, and anyway I was there, they, they worked me fairly hard and the engineer, the group engineer came down and he said ‘Right, I want to move you Coningsby, to pathfinder squadrons, forty Lancasters. Do you think you can cope?’ I said: ‘I’ll do my best sir.’ He said ‘Right, get there on Monday. You can be a Flight Lieutenant on Friday.’ Anyway, I got there and I worked hard for, oh, three, four months and always kept me forty Lancasters going. And well then, of course, the war packed up. The Japs, the Germans packed init, and I moved to Strubby we were’re living in tents and we were waiting to go to Okinawa to bomb Japs. And then the Japs packed in, so we moved, I was there for a bit and then I we got moved, got posted to a unit over by Chester, 54 RUP. And I moved in, I reported in to senior officer. And I said: ‘RUP?’ He said: ‘Yeah.’ I said: ‘ Well, RUP? R U Repair Unit, P what’s planned.’ He said: ‘Oh bulldozers, excavators and that sort of stuff.’ ‘Oh, I’m an aircraft engineer, I’m going back to Strubby.’ He said: ‘You’re bloody well not. You’re gonna Singapore next Wednesday.’ [chuckle] Anyway, we got, I got a fortnight leave before I went to Singapore and in that time I did quick and got married to Mary. Dashed into Lincoln, got a licence from the Bishops, whatever-he-was. And we got married, got married on the Wednesday and on the Saturday recalled from leave and the next Wednesday Singapore [laugh]. And got out there but the unit I was with they never really did get never got off the ground because we, we were supposed to be repairing all sorts of, you know, bull- bulldozers, and excavators and all that sort of stuff [belch] but the machinery never turned up and in the end, in the end they more-or-less disbanded the outfit and they kept me on and all the airfield construction plants, masses of bulldozers and cranes and all that sort of stuff, they said: ‘Right now transfer that to Air Ministry Works Department, the civvy lot’, so I spent all the this time getting this stuff transferred. And then the unit at Hong Kong closed down and all their stuff came down to Singapore by ship. And they said: ‘You will collect it from the docks and take it up to Changi. And it was hard work. Anyway, we managed it, we got it there. And in the meantime, we were living in tents. But anyway, I did me spell there then, and oh what, I decided to relinquish my commission and come home. I weren’t all that happy, so I packed up and came home, and I went back in the ranks as a flight sergeant, and I soon became a warrant officer and I did, oh, I did a spell at Waddington and Hemswell home on and Spalding Moor, and then got moved to Germany, up at Sylt, up on the north Frisian Islands. And I broke[?] there for a couple of years, and came back and went Shrewsbury I’we did six very nice years at Shrewsbury, very nice years at Shrewsbury and then I got moved again up to Lynton-on-Ouse and blow-me-down if they didn’t send me back to Germany [laugh]. At this time we went to Cologne, just on the Zeiderhorf on the outskirts of Cologne. It was very nice and Mary came out and joined me there [sup on tea] and had a couple of very nice years in Germany. And then when we came back, where’d I go? Where’d I go from [pause] I can’t think where I came back to [pause], not sure really. Sure, I can’t remember. Turn that thing off.
[restart of recording]
WB : I can’t remember, what was it year? Anyway, in Germany, I was up at Sylt and there was six of us. It was in the Cold War time, so called. And there was six of us trained on this Enigma machine and, you know, it was quite the thing and one day I got there and they said: ‘Your best blue is, in the back of that van is one of our Enigma machines and it’s got to go headquarters at Buckleburg [?], 200 mile away.’ And they said: ‘You are taking it.’ I said: ‘Oh.’ He said: ‘Your orders are get it there and if you need this, don’t hesitate to use it.’ And they gave me a revolver and a box of ammunition. They said: ‘You have to use it, use it, but that must be got there!’ Anyway, we got it there, no bother, and coming back the following morning the battery packed up. We called into an RAF camp, they didn’t want to know us. A bit later on we met a RAF, an Army camp and called in there and said: ‘Can you help me?’. They said: ‘Yeah.’ Gave me a new battery and then a bit further on the throttle control spring on the engine broke and we couldn’t control it so and I didn’t know what to do and we came to a very nice old lady’s shop, and I said: ‘Stop.’ And I had a flash of inspiration and I went in the lady’s shop and I said: ‘I want some elastic that wide please, so she said there, and I said ‘It’s for my car.’ And we went out and wound it round and round and round these two stops for the throttle spring and we drove 200 miles on a piece of elastic. [chuckle] Anyways, that was in Sylt, then what -
PH: Bill, what, why don’t you tell the story about Old Sarum [?] when you went up with your boss and nearly clocked the cathedral?
WB: Oh yes, that was at Old Sarum. I went up flying with the boss in an open-seater aircraft and it was foggy and it was about 400 feet and the boss said: ‘I’ll come down to 400 feet and we’ll see if we can follow the railway back down to the town’. And we were down there in the fog and I looked and I was I was ‘Look! Look!’ and we were heading straight for the cathedral. The spire was sticking out through the fog and we were going straight for it, and we managed, and somehow we missed it. That was, that was that one. And then another time, we were flying and it, it you were in the back cockpit, you had a harness with a chain going down to the floor to hold you in, and a cable rather, and we were going along and we hit an air pocket and the plane went down and I was out! and the chain tightened and I went ‘Bomp’ and pulled me back down again. [chuckle] So that was two I’d missed.
AH: Could you, could you tell me a bit more about when you were in Iraq?
WB: Iraq?
PH : You were twenty-one, weren’t you?
WB: Yeah, yeah somewhere around there, yes, it was hot there. It was a hundred and, it got to an hundred and thirty in the summer, really hot. And when these, [unclear] and when they were bombing and shelling us, it went on day-and-night for five nights and you slept under your bed and you ‘whee’ [emphasis], you hear the head of shells going over and that one’s going for the bomb dump, and ‘whee’ and anyway we did it for five days and they packed up, and then we went on normal and we heard a different noise. And we said: ‘That’s something different’, and we looked up and there’s three German bombers coming down. And we said: ‘Where the heck have did they come from?’ And the Germans had come into Mosul, it was about a couple of hundred miles up and they came down bombing us. They came at eight in the morning, and four in the afternoon, regular as clockwork, the Germans bombing and, machine guns, anyway. We shot one or two down and in the end they, they packed up, then we followed them back to Mosul and then got them when they landed, with, with our the Hurricanes. We, we got them on the floor and they packed up, so that was peace. And, anyway decided come home. And –
PH: You actually popped a few shots with your gun didn’t you?
WB: Yes. There was a man diving at me with his plane and I managed to get me Lewis loose gun on him, but he didn’t hit me and I didn’t hit him. And we came home and [sup of tea] [loud thump] we came down, we were in Bombay for a couple of weeks waiting for a ship and then we came over to Mombasa and then we came round to Durban, and we had a couple of, eight, weeks in Durban living out in tents on the runway and then we got down to Cape Town and I managed to get ashore and go up Table Mountain. And you go halfway up in the bus to the land and then you got a cable railway for a mile [shudder]. And we got up there, and had a walk round, that was very good. And coming home, we got up to Lagos and I’m afraid I went down with Malaria, and I was in the ships hospital for about a couple of weeks with very, very bad malaria. Didn’t do me any good. And eventually we got home.
PH: Weren’t they going to chuck you overboard?
WB: Well, yes. They, I, I, I met the orderly who dealt with me sometime, I met him in Boston. And he said: ‘When you came in’, he said, ‘you were pale blue and we didn’t think you’d last the night out. So we said we’d chalk you up for over the side in the morning.’ But, anyway they treated me with MNB243 tablets, you know, anti-malaria and no doubt, they brought me round when I was still having quinine six months later to get straightened up with it. Oh.
[restart of recording]
WB: Yeah we’re in Egypt 1937 at Abusir about sixty miles away from Cairo up near the Suez Canal and we had sand yachts there and we used to have races out in the desert. And in ’37 they decided to see if they could get to Cairo. And there were seven yachts and twelve men and a dog and we set off from Abusir and we went across the desert for five days heading for Heliopolis, just outside Cairo, and we got there alright and the, the station commander landed one day, he said: ‘Where are you on the map?’ They said: ‘We don’t have a map, Sir.’ He said: ‘How do know where you are?’ And the leader amongst us, he said: ‘Well, over there,’ he said ‘you can see the Suez hills.’ ‘Yes I can see them.’ he said ‘Towards the end there’s gap.’ And he said: ‘Yes.’ ‘We’re heading for that gap in the Suez Hills.’ And we hit the gap and went down, down to Cairo. Had five nice days in Cairo, out to the Pyramids and all the rest of it. And we came back another way and got back in four days, and it was quite an exciting trip, and we’re were the only people who’ve ever done it. And we had a sailing boat down on the - we were twelve miles away from the bit of lakes on the Suez Canal. We had a sailing boat there and the air was quite nice, you go sailing.
PH: What about when the CO spotted you first?
WB: Eh?
PH: When the CO spotted you arriving over the desert?
WB: Well he came down, landed, he came down more or less, you know two or three times -
PH: But, but he didn’t believe that he could see sails, could he?
WB: Oh yes, we, one night we were camped and we’d seen a plane going on down the bombing raids during the day, and anyway we bedded down for the night and we saw lots of flares going up in the distance. And some of our blokes they walked over to see these flares and there was an army camp there, just based. And they took the CO, and said: ‘What, what are you lot doing?’ And they said: ‘Well we’re the sand yachts. [unclear] He said: ‘Sand yachts! All day long I’ve seen bloody sails, and I said I knew there was no sea over there.’ And they said: ‘What, what’s all these flares?’ I said: ‘There time expired pyrotechnics, I think we’re just getting rid of them.’ So, anyway he wasn’t very pleased. [chuckle] But then anyway. He said: ‘I and been seeing all these sails and I knew full well there was no sea over there.‘ [chuckle] Oh, well anyway, we had a nice time in Cairo. Quite nice town. Err, what else? [sigh]
AH : What was is like coming back to Britain?
WB : Pardon?
AH : What was it like coming back to Britain?
WB : Coming back home?
AH : Yeah.
WB : Cold. [laugh] Yeah. We came, we came round Durban and Cape Town, and we just came out of Cape Town and we had, there was two, two troop ships and we had a couple of naval battles with us, and a cruiser and a couple of destroyers, and we were coming out somewhere and they said [?] ‘All hands on deck, put your lifebelts. Lifebelts on.’ So we all got on deck, and one of the destroyers it came near, and there must have been a German submarine down below and he threw depths charges up. And [intake of breath] their ship came up out of the water and we thought it’s never going down. 22,000 tonnes of ship, and we thought it was never going to a stop. But anyway, the sub didn’t get us, whether we got him or not; we, we got on home [sigh]. And we came in round the Atlantic, we c. Came into Liverpool. The night we lay there [inaudible] ladies[?], we were up on a transit camp at West Kirby, outside Liverpool and we were there and they came and bombed Liverpool. [chuckle] Oh dear. [sigh] And then when we were down at Kirkby there; a plane it took off and an engine failed, so it decided to come back. So he came back and he turned round and he came back and he, he force landed. He crash landed. And he was sitting there and he was rocking on a 4,000lb bomb. [chuckle] And we took it in turns to go in, they got the crew out, there was one man in the bomb bay. He was still, his head had gone through a partition. And we took it in turns to cut through to get him out. And we were there, and there, there were a couple of WAAFs who worked for me in the plump bay and they were outside, hugging each other. ‘Oh, Mr Bullock’s in there.’ And I said: ‘Well, if the bomb had gone off you wouldn’t have stood much chance would ya?’ [chuckle] Anyway, it didn’t go off. We got them out. [deep sigh]
AH: And what was your job role at Kirk-?
WB : Pardon?
AH : What, what did you do as what [sorry]
PH : What was your job at East Kirkby?
WB : I was, I was what they call the Technical Adjutant. I did all the paperwork and books and things and returns and all sorts of stuff, that kept me busy for a year.
PH : Did you have to clear the beds in the mornings after the raids?
WB : Pardon?
PH: Did you have to clear the personal possessions away?
WB : Oh yeah. Oh well, when the, yeah when the if any got missing on raids, yeah you had to go round and collect the kit, and I, I collected the kits of, I think, of 120 people while I was there. And we just collected it all up, put in a bag and took it to what they called ‘The Committee of Adjustment’ who sorted everything out, and actually down in East Kirkby now there’s a memorial and there’s a very nice poem, very nice poem at East Kirkby to that we lost a thousand men in three years. Yeah, that was pretty good. A thousand men in three years. [sigh]
PH : What about the plane that came in upside down?
WB : Oh yes. We, we heard a terrific roar and when we got out, there was a plane up there and, and it was coming down and one engine was on fire, and it was heading down and eventually crashed and blew up, and there was one man, they got him out, they took him away on a stretcher and he [unclear] [chuckle] And anyway we said: ‘Well what about this engine on fire?’ They said: ‘No, it wasn’t that engine, the other one.’ They said ‘when you saw him it, it was upside down.’ And he went in, oh, dear oh dear, six, six of them killed. [sigh] Yeah. I got a job there, I had to keep, keep a good supply of engines and propellers, and the engines, they had to, Rolls Royce, Glasgow they dealt with them, and, if, you know, I had a lorry load and a rear Corporal in Boston called Tom caught on, and I said: ‘Tommy, I’ve got a load for Glasgow.’ He said: ‘Right, send your lorry.’ And he sent me lorry and trailer to deliver with a load of all these engines. And up and off they went to Glasgow. And came back with another load. But the, the more powerful Rolls Royce engines, the Merlins they went to Derby, Nightingale Road, Derby. So, so we sent them there, and oh – yeah, err. Now what else?
PH : What about the Tirpitz?
WB : The Tirpitz? Oh well, erm. Yes, the erm, this [stutter] the group engineer he came to me at East Kirkby and there were the more powerful Merlins, 34s. He said: ‘I want all your 34s with the broad propellers in sets. He says ; ‘It’s nothing to do with you what I want them for,’ but he said: ‘Get me in sets of four and when you get a set let me know.’ So, so I’m getting them all, got all me, changed all the, the little engines, but took the big ones out. Got them all rolled up and anyway, he came and he took them, and they went to 9 Squadron at Bardney, and it was for bombing the Tirpitz. Yeah, so at least we had a hand in that. [sigh] Oh yes, when this, when this one crashed and landed and a big piece of the airplane, it went through the guardroom, and there was a man, a man in the guardroom locked up on punishment. And this piece of metal, huge leg that went across and through the wall in the Nissan hut, over a bed and out the other side. And the following morning the padre he was around, he saw it, he said: ‘No matter where the evil doeth, the wrath of the Lord shall seek him out.’ [long chuckle] Oh dear, oh well at, yeah, Metheringham, we had what they called FIDO and it was pipes down each side of the runway, all the way down, with little holes in and when it was really foggy, they’d fiddle with the flares all down each side of the runway, and we had it once and it burnt big holes in the fog. And they landed, and an American landed but he had to come for some, he came in, and in a a fighter plane, and he went down and he slewed off the runway, he hit all my FIDO pipes, went back on again, and when he got to Traffic Control, he said: ‘It’s a mighty good thing you got there for keeping people on the runway. [chuckle] Yeah, Gibson, Guy Gibson, he was, when he’d done his job he came to us at East Kirkby for a rest. And he wasn’t a nice man. Very unpopular man. ‘Don’t call me Guy. Call me Dam Buster.’ But his dam, his bomb didn’t hit the dam, it missed it. Oh, he wasn’t a very nice man at all. And in the end, he accidently got shot down by one of our own bombers. Yeah, they mistook him for a German and they shot him down.
PH : Didn’t, didn’t some Canadian guy clock him one?
WB : Yeah, yeah he was getting a bit too familiar with, when they went to Canada, he was getting a bit too familiar with some blokes wife. A great big Dutch man, so he just went up and he dropped him. ‘THUNK!’ He said: ‘Leave my wife alone.’ [chuckle] He wasn’t a popular man at all. [long sup of tea.]
AH : And how did you feel about where -? How was morale?
WB : [still supping on tea] About what?
AH : How was morale when you were at East Kirkby?
WB : Oh all right. Yeah I did, I did me year on paperwork [laugh].
PH : Did, didn’t you, get to advise somebody at the Battle of Britain Flight about how to get a propeller prop off?
WB : You what?
PH : You advised somebody at the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight how to get the propeller off because they were struggling to get the nuts off.
WB – Don’t get that –
PH : You got two awards for doing inventions, didn’t you?
WB : Oh, oh the thing the thing for taking propellers apart. Yeah [sniff sigh] Yes, when, yes that’s when I was at Waddington, and the big four bladed propellers on the, now then, they were Lincolns, not Lanc- Lincolns. You get the pulling them apart, and you shovel a big ring in and you had a big lever and pulled it, pulled it, pulled it. And, oh, it took men all day trying to get these damn things out and I said: ‘No.’ So I invented the little, a little gadget, a little tube about that long with a big nut and bolt in it and I put it in between the two blades and tightened it up, pushed them out two at a time. No bother. And I got a £15 reward from Bomber Command for inventing it. Yeah, yeah. Oh, and I did something else, I did somewhere else. Yeah, at, you took the cylinders off jet engines and you put them in some horrible acid stuff and soaked them to get the carbon off, and you had to heat it with big immersion heaters, and it was in this wooden box, and it took all day to heat it, and it didn’t get anywhere, so I thought, no. So, when, when new batteries came for the aeroplanes, they were in big polystyrene packs, and I collected all these sheets of polystyrene about a foot wide and about three feet long and glued them all around this container, and it heated it up quickly, and kept it warm. No both rugger, and the Air Ministry gave me £5 for thinking of it, for saving electricity. [chuckle] Yeah. - Oh, a thousand bomber raid, well I didn’t get mixed up with any of them. The first one, we were at Wigsley, we sent our planes to Swinderby, we operated there, a thousand bombers –
PH : How did it actually work?
WB : Eh?
PH : How did it actually work? How did you get a thousand bombers up at the same time?
WB : Well, eh, I they were all over the place, weren’t on they? Just came up. [deep sniff and sigh]
PH : When you were at school you used a tray, sand tray.
WB : Yeah, yeah when we were in the infants school. We had a little tray with sand, you wrote in it with our fingers and they did the same in Mereman [?] Fen. I was talking to a man once said: ‘We had these little trays with sand now, you do it with your fingers.’ And then eventually you got slate and you had a piece of rag pinned to your jersey to rub the slate out [laughter and sigh]. The things we did.
AH : Can you tell me more about Coningsby?
WB : Pardon?
AH : When you were at Coningsby.
WB : Well, that was in ’45. Yeah, I had 40 Lancasters to look after. Make sure they were there at the right time, otherwise if you didn’t, you’re chucked you out. Anyway, I always got them there right. No bother.
PH : You were part of Pathfinders, weren’t they?
WB : Eh?
PH : Were they Pathfinder Squadrons?
WB : Pathfinder, yeah. The ones who went in early and dropped flares for the others to bomb. They had them at Coningsby, yeah. And I had to keep 40 of them ready, all the time. No bother.
PH : How did you manage to do it in the winter?
WB : Well, you just did. Mostly they didn’t give you a lot of trouble. You didn’t get a lot of trouble. But in the winter, it if it, if it was bad out, you sprayed the wings with the de-icing stuff, to get [unclear], to get the ice off, and the propellers. You had to get the ice off before they could go or otherwise it was they were, you know, heavy and all the rest of it. Had to get this ice going. [sigh] Yeah. [long pause]
AH : What was it like being in Germany?
WB : Pardon?
AH : What was it like being in Germany after they’ve been bombed? And then you...
WB : It was all right in Germany, they, they weren’t hostile at all. They were just mixed up, ordinary people. It wasn’t their fault we bombed them and they bombed us. But Hamburg, was a bit of a mess. Nice town Hamburg. Yeah. Yeah, we had a nice holiday in Hamburg. We went down to, oh, Ruhpolding, had a nice holiday there. And then we went down, we went down as far as Venice once on holiday. It was very good. We went down on, went down in the bus to, right in the corner of Germany and then we got a bus down to Venice. Four, four, five days in Venice. And we were way up in the mountains, and over, about a mile away there were two or three big American lorries. They were letting big black balloons up, and they were going up and over. And the bus driver stopped and everybody was looking, and I said: ‘I know [emphasis], I know what they are.’ I used to take The Reader’s Digest and there’d been an article in there about this lot, and when the wind blew in a certain direction over from Germany to Czechoslovakia, they used to let these big black balloons up full of leaflets and they would drift over to Czechoslovakia and drop all the leaflets down. So I told, there’s a man there who spoke English and I said: ‘I know what they are.’ And I told him. ‘Oh’ And they said: ‘Oh, the Englishman, he knows.’ [chuckle] They was alright. We had a nice holiday in Venice. You did, didn’t you?
PH: Yes. What was your nickname in the RAF? Was it Abdul?
WB : Abdul. Yeah, they called me Abdul. ‘Cos when we, I was always out in the sun. I was the colour of that table. And, when we got to, we went from Egypt, they moved us to Iraq, and got there, and of course, they all called me Abdul. And we had a, one of the locals, he looked after the bungalow, kept things clean, made the bed and all the rest of it. He said to me one day, I wonder. He says: ‘Why you in Royal Egypt? You Egyptian?’ I said: ‘I’m not a bloody Egyptian. I’m an Englishman.’ He said: ‘You black, why they call you Abdul!’ [loud cough]. And I never convinced him I was Englishman. Never. Oh dear, dear, dear. Oh, we had fun. Better out now [unclear].
PH : Did you have much entertainment off the base, at the village halls?
WB : No. [door bell and distant voices.] Father he joined the army as a bugler boy, and in the war he was called up to Air Ministry, and they said: ‘We want to put you in charge of, of a training squadron, you know a transport, a training squadron, and we’ll up you to squadron leader.’ And the man who was dealing with, he said: ‘You were my bugler boy when you joined the Army, weren’t ya?’ [laughter] Anyway, dad, he did very well as squadron leader. Yeah, he worked hard. [sigh] Did 41 years all together in the army, RFC and Army and Air Force. He was number 150 in the RFC. Very senior. Still not the first day and his brother was number 700, he joined up the next day. [chuckle] My brother did 22 years, my sister did four and a half in the Army and then she, she was civil servant with the, with the Navy in the Admiralty. And she, she was the personal private secretary to the Director Technical Polaris. Very, very important job and but if any of her admirals where going anywhere, she had to arrange all the transport, the right flags and, this, that and the other. And, and one of them one day said: ‘We’ve never seen you at one of our launches. You know when they launch one of the Polaris.’ She said: ‘I’ve never been invited.’ He said: ‘You will come to the next one.’ So the next launching, they laid a staff car on for Betty, picked her up, took her to the station, first class travel up to Barrow, entertained her, put her in a hotel, staff car took her out to the launching, came back, and when, when she left they, they gave her a carriage clock, and on the side of it was something-or-other : To Miss Betty Bullock [coughing] Aminu Ensis[?] to make the war work to seven admirals, and there were all these admirals names, and that was, that was good. She did a very good job with these admirals. Seven. Twenty-one years she was an admiral’s secretary. They took her out to a nice posh dinner and saw her off well. So we did our share. I did 34 years. My brother did 22 years. My dad did 41. And my sister did, oh heavens only knows how many. [sigh] Yeah.
AH : What did your dad do in the First World War?
WB : Pardon?
AH : What did your dad do in the First World War?
WB :` Oh, he was in the Flying Corps. Yeah, he was an Engineer Officer with the Flying Corps – Number 1 5 0. They did all sorts of things.
PH : What sort of planes would he be working on?
WB : [growls] Well, I know De Havilland something or other. Bristol fighters, Sopwith Camels and all sorts of thing. There was one there that had a rotary engine and instead of the engine being still and everything going round, the crankshaft was bolted and the engine went round it. No, no rotary. The engine went round [stutters]. You wouldn’t imagine it, would you? Anyway it did.
PH : What year did you join the RAF?
WB : I joined up in ’32 and I came out in ’66. Yeah. I went everywhere from AC1 to flight lieutenant and back again. [Long sniff] Oh, I wasn’t all that happy with being a flight lieutenant, I don’t know, I, anyway I ditched my commission and I went back and I was a warrant officer for about 13 years, and I was much happier as a warrant officer. You didn’t have big mess bills and expenses at all. You, you were well off. [coughing] No, I usually had jobs in charge of workshops and it was a real, you know, nice job. Workshop jobs. Where the work was. [coughing and long pause].
AH : What did you do after the war? After you left the RAF, sorry?
WB : I came out the year I went down to Horncastle Rural District Council and the rating department, collected money and all this that and other. And then did that for about eight years. And then when this reorganising took place, I got moved to East Lindsey District Council, and oh, oh I don’t know I did paperwork all the time. Yeah.
PH : It wasn’t particularly a cosy job at times though. You got followed, didn’t you, one time –
WB : Eh?
PH : You got followed because you got money in the car. Didn’t –
WB : Oh. no, I didn’t get stopped.
PH : No, but didn’t somebody follow you all day.
WB : Well, that were coming back from Wragby. Somebody once said to me: ‘I used to collect rent at Wragby and you got several hundred pound in your bag.’ And somebody once said to me. No, no it was me wife, she was in the dentist was down the dentist in the town there, and they were talking this and said: ‘You know when that rent collector goes over the level crossing at 4 o’clock’, they said, ‘He’s got an awful lot of money in that bag.’ And Mary told me, she said: ‘Oh.’ Anyway, the next time I came out when I went over the level crossing, and there was a car, there was a van there. I thought: Oh. So I put my foot down and came back about 70 mile per hour and I told the boss and he said: ‘Right, so from then on, someone was seen to see me in the afternoon and take a big bag off me with most of the money. So they didn’t, I didn’t have all that money to people to pinch off me, but I wasn’t very happy with people following me. ‘Cos they said: ‘If every you’re attacked, just let the money go, don’t argue.’ I said: ‘No, not if I been collecting it, bugger it. I’m not let them have it.’ [chuckles] So, anyway, we didn’t have any more bother. But it makes you wonder, don’t it?
[long pause]
PH : You seen a lot of changes in aircraft design, haven’t you?
WB: Yeah [sniff] yeah. The one, the one before the Lancaster was a Manchester. It had two, two big engines, 3,000 horsepower engines. Two. There were, the, the Merlins two like that and the [unclear] Vulcan and it had [stuttering] X’s. Vulture, anyway they were the two big cross engines and it only had a single tail rudder. The old Manchester it was useless as an aeroplane. It was slow and it was cumbersome. It didn’t carry much big load. Anyway, they soon turned it into a Lancaster, and it was a marvellous aeroplane. Marvellous aeroplane. They made 700, 7,000 odd in the war. Yeah, it was the best plane that came out of the war. [inaudible]
PH : What’s the one after the Lancaster?
WB : Lincoln. A bit, bit, bit bigger. Four bladed props against the Lancasters three. Yeah, I think it had bigger, didn’t have a Griffin engine, I think the Lincoln. A bigger engine. And it was a big aeroplane. It was East, erh, Waddington. [pause] Yes [long pause]
AH : Is there anything else you’d like to say?
WB : Pardon?
AH : Is there anything else you’d like to say?
WB : Do what?
PH : Is there anything else you’d like to say?
WB : Well I don’t think so, I can’t think of much. No, no not much to do with the RAF. There are things not to do.
AH : How do you feel about the way Bomber Command was treated after the war?
WB : Does she what?
PH : How do you feel that Bomber Command was treated after the war?
WB : Well...
PH : ... with Bomber Harris.
WB : Bomber Harris, they didn’t treat him well. They - everybody got a knighthood, but not, not Bomber. They, they, they ignored him. They didn’t treat him right. He did a good job, Bomber Harris. They said he was brutal, but he only did his job. He just said: ‘If you can’t get the factories, get the people that who work in them.’ Well, fair enough, but you can’t blame him for that. He got these bombers going. No, he wasn’t treated well, Bomber Harris – ha [long sigh] There’s a man just died, Marshall of the Royal Air Force, Sir Michael Beetham. And he was down at East Kirkby, and John Chatterton, he had to test pilots, and he said: ‘I remember this bloke Michael Beetham coming through, and he was too good, he said he had, had to rate him above average, cos he’s way above average.’ And he finished up Marshall of the Royal Air Force, Sir Michael Beetham. And I met him, nice man, met him down at East Kirkby. Yeah. And there were two ex-apprentices, got cadetship and went to Cranwell. They both finished up as Air Marshalls. Yeah. Some did well, very well.
PH : What, what were you days at Houlton like?
WB : Eh?
PH : What were your days at Houlton like?
WB : All right.
PH : What were you know as?
WB : Oh, Trenchard Sprouts [chuckle] Yeah. Oh, it was a good life, yeah, yeah it was a good life. You worked hard, but they trained you well. But they always said: ‘If a bloke was ever trained at Houlton, he could walk straight into a job at Rolls Royce. That was that Houlton training, you can go straight to Rolls Royce as a workman. [sniff and sigh] Yeah. Three years. Jolly good.
PH : Who was Trenchard?
WB : Eh?
PH : Who was Trenchard?
WB : Well, he was a General in the First War and then he, he started the, more-or-less, started the Air Force, as such, Flying Corps. General Lieutenant, General Sir whatever his name Trenchard, and he started the apprentice scheme, the apprentice’s scheme; hence the name Trenchard Sprouts. He was a good man, Trenchard. Not a big man. Yes he started the RAF. [loud crash and bang] Ohi.
AH : Well, thank you very much.
WB : Pardon?
AH : Thank you.
PH : Yeah, well call that -
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 William Bullock
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Anna Hoyles
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
2015-10-30
Format
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00:57:49 audio recording
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ABullockWEJ151030, PBullockWEJ1601
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Description
An account of the resource
William Bullock was born in Marshfield in Gloucestershire in September 1916 and joined the Royal Air Force as an apprentice in 1932. He was posted to Egypt for training - after serving in the Middle East he joined Bomber Command as an engineer. After serving at RAF East Kirkby, William moved to 106 Squadron at RAF Metheringham before joining Pathfinders at RAF Conningsby, looking after and maintaining 40 Lancasters. William was in charge of moving aircraft around from location to location and tells about his role as a technical adjutant and supplying Merlin engines for the attack on the Tirpitz. He also describes his technical innovations and of his meeting with Guy Gibson. William tells about his post war family and service life, with details on his posting in Sylt, Germany where he saw the extent of bombing damage. He also elaborates on Hugh Trenchard, Michael Beetham, and Arthur Harris.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Germany
Germany--Sylt
Egypt
Egypt--Cairo
North Africa
Iraq
Iraq--Mosul
106 Squadron
bombing
FIDO
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
ground crew
ground personnel
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Lancaster
Pathfinders
RAF Coningsby
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Metheringham
Tirpitz
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/183/3632/PWoodC1601.1.jpg
e6b2e00e8424a1959078b6e0bbf67556
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/183/3632/AWoodC160325.2.mp3
46024566658ed36fd321770c6bf3a020
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
Wood, Colin
Description
An account of the resource
15 items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Colin Wood (1922 - 2021, 1451225 Royal Air Force), his log book, service record and seven photographs including pictures of some of his crew. Colin Wood trained in Canada and flew operations as a navigator with 106 Squadron from RAF Metheringham. His crew were:
428289 - Andy A Anderson, pilot
1593692 - D Evans, flight engineer
1451225 - Colin Wood, navigator
1564707 - G H McElhone, bomb aimer
1873924 - P Thomas Tobin, wireless operator
1584474 - Vernon R Grogan, mid upper gunner
1595586 - R O Day, rear gunner.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Colin Wood 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
2016-03-25
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
Wood, C
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GR: Right. This is Gary Rushbrooke for the International Bomber Command Centre. I’m with Warrant Officer Colin Wood, a navigator on 106 and 83 Squadrons and we’re at his home in Sheffield on Friday the 25th of March. Colin, I know we’re in Sheffield. Are you from Sheffield originally?
CW: Oh yes.
GR: Yeah. Born, born locally.
CW: Born and bred.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: Brothers. Sisters.
CW: Yeah. Brother. He was in the air force. He was down as a pilot, to train as a pilot and then they were short of coppersmiths and they commandeered him to be a coppersmith. So, but he finished up on training as a pilot in South Africa. So he got something. By the time he’d done he’d more or less run out of time.
GR: Right. Yeah.
CW: Too late.
GR: Any other brothers or sisters or just that?
CW: No.
GR: And what did, what did your mum and dad do? Were they —
CW: They were, they worked in the steelworks. Well, not my mother [laughs]
GR: No. Yeah.
CW: And, yeah.
GR: So, yeah. So you went to school in Sheffield.
CW: Yes.
GR: And I think you were telling me earlier on before we switched the recorder on that when you decided to join the RAF or volunteered was it, was there five? Five members of your class.
CW: Yes. Yes. The local school. Sharrow Lane School. And we had the top boy in Sheffield. I should mention that.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And he became a pilot and unfortunately he was the only who was [pause] didn’t manage it.
GR: He didn’t get back. Did you decide, did you know all the, did you know each other?
CW: Oh yeah. Yeah.
GR: And had you all got together and said —
CW: No. No. Everybody was diff, everybody by themselves decided. Well, you was either the army or navy and I didn’t fancy. I used to play as a kid at being a wounded soldier. After the First World War.
GR: Right.
CW: And so I thought I don’t fancy that very much. I think if, if I happen to be lucky and a natural pilot I could take, I could take my turn as a natural pilot.
GR: Yeah.
CW: So I thought I’ll have a go at that. And that more or less decided that.
GR: Right. So what year would this be?
CW: Eh?
GR: When your class.
CW: When I, when I went to volunteer in the local Sheffield reception area it would be ’41.
GR: 19 yeah and —
CW: And then I went somewhere down south and met up again with some officers who quizzed me and all that. Then they gave me two shilling. Which was the king’s two shilling which in the First World War was one shilling.
GR: Was the king’s shilling. Yeah.
CW: And we got a rise to two shilling and, and then I was sent home then and I was [pause] they said they’d nowhere to train us. So that was it. I just had to wait ‘til, ‘til there was room to train us.
GR: Yeah. How long did you spend at home?
CW: I was, well probably six months while they found somewhere to train us.
GR: And what, what would you have been doing? Did you go back to school or —
CW: No. I went back to work.
GR: You went back, oh right. So we’ll backtrack. So when you said there’s five members of your class.
CW: Oh yes.
GR: They’d all left the class.
CW: Oh yeah.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
CW: It was just that we were all together and as it happened we all joined up separately.
GR: Yeah. So what work was you doing?
CW: Plumbing.
GR: Plumbing.
CW: Yeah.
GR: Oh so you weren’t in Sheffield’s steel industry like your dad.
CW: No. No.
GR: No.
CW: I didn’t fancy being inside like that. No.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Sooner be outside somewhere.
GR: Because what age would you have left school?
CW: Fourteen.
GR: Fourteen. And then gone into a plumbing apprenticeship or —
CW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Exactly.
GR: And then as war broke out would you have been eighteen to volunteer or — ?
CW: The call up age when I was eighteen was nineteen. So at nineteen I would have been called up anyway.
GR: Yes.
CW: So I was eighteen and I knew I could take my pick and and choice. So that’s why I volunteered. Well, other things. But I decided to. To join up. Yeah.
GR: So at eighteen you could volunteer.
CW: Yes.
GR: And if you’d have said, and if this is just something just to clarify actually for a lot of people. So at eighteen obviously the Royal Air Force and I think the Submarine Service were voluntary.
CW: Yeah. Yeah.
GR: So, at the age of eighteen you could have volunteered for any of them two. Plus —
CW: Yeah.
GR: The army.
CW: Yeah.
GR: So if you wanted to go into the army at eighteen you could have said, ‘I want to go,’ and if you hadn’t have volunteered at the age of eighteen when you got to nineteen, on your nineteenth birthday you would have been called up. Is that right?
CW: No. Because the air force at the time said you belong to us.
GR: Yeah.
CW: You can’t go in the Merchant Navy.
GR: No. What I mean is if you hadn’t have volunteered.
CW: Yeah.
GR: For the RAF.
CW: Oh, I’d have been —
GR: So if you’d have done nothing.
CW: Yeah. Yeah.
GR: At the age of nineteen.
CW: I’d have been called up.
GR: Conscription.
CW: Yeah.
GR: In World War Two.
CW: Yeah.
GR: And you would have been said, right.
CW: Yeah.
GR: You’re off to the army. You’re off to the navy. Or whatever.
CW: Exactly. Yeah.
GR: I’ve got it. Yeah. So, volunteered for the Royal Air Force.
CW: Yeah.
GR: But then you waited six months. Went back and did some work.
CW: Yeah.
GR: And then what happened? What was, what —?
CW: Well –
GR: When you were finally called up for training.
CW: Yes. I was sent to, with a railway warrant to Lord’s Cricket Ground where I think the others, everybody went there.
GR: That’s right.
CW: To London.
GR: Yes. Yeah.
CW: Yeah. And lived in a big posh house there.
GR: Very nice. Wouldn’t do that these days would we down there?
CW: No.
GR: And I think, was it like two weeks of square bashing and something or —
CW: We were there about a month.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And then I went to south coast. ITW.
GR: Yeah.
CW: I remember it now.
GR: Yeah. Training centre. And did you know at the time where you was going to be doing your training?
CW: No. No. No. I didn’t know what I was going to be. There were like four or five trades.
GR: Yeah.
CW: That, we were never in any way directed to one or the other. We all did the same training at ITW.
GR: Right. Yeah. Initial. Yeah. Initial training.
CW: Yeah.
GR: What, what did you want to be? Had you got — pilot?
CW: Yes.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: So after ITW did they then come to you and say —
CW: No. They estimated what kind of — I did fly a plane after I’d done ITW. I went to learn to fly a plane.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Which was a Tiger Moth. Which was the only way to travel really. It’s wonderful.
GR: I bet.
CW: And loop the loop and falling leaf and all that. It was lovely. And, you know at that age.
GR: Yeah.
CW: To just do that. And anyway after, they assessed us I suppose at that time. What I was like handling a plane and taking off and landing.
GR: Yeah.
CW: I suppose they put a mark down to what I was doing. How I was doing. And then I went back just [pause] I forget, I went to a holding unit in Manchester. A park there. Heaton Park.
GR: Heaton Park. Yeah.
CW: And I stayed there. Then I was sent to another place near Birmingham and playing at football and somebody broke my leg [laughs] So that put me in hospital for a while. And then, but then I got three weeks sick leave which was the usual and then, and then I still had to hang about until, until I was sent off to Canada. I went back to Heaton Park and from Heaton Park, Liverpool.
GR: Yeah.
CW: In the world’s worst boat. French ship called the Louis Pasteur, which pitched and tossed and never went flat.
GR: Oh dear.
CW: And everybody on board, including the captain I think, was sick.
GR: How did you feel about the fact that you would be doing your training in Canada?
CW: Well. We didn’t get to Canada because they’d got some, not a disease but some ailment in the camp we should have gone to so that, so the Americans in three or four days we got time arranged for us to go to one of their camps in Massachusetts. So we landed at New York and then disembarked from the Louis Pasteur, went across the river in a, in a ferry for some reason to get ready to go to north of, in America.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And somebody started singing there, “On Ilkley Moor bar t’at,” and everybody joined in. They were Welsh and Irish.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And everything. So I don’t know what Americans thought when they heard all the Yorkshire language being spoke. So then we went to near Massachusetts. Camp Myles Standish, who was a famous, was he an Indian fighter or something?
GR: Don’t know.
CW: Yeah.
GR: I don’t know.
CW: Yeah. And they called this camp after him.
GR: After him. Yeah.
CW: And so we spent three or four weeks there. And then we moved then onto the place we should have gone to in Canada. I can’t, I can’t remember where it was now.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And then I went out to Rivers. Canadian Number 1 Navigation School. Just about a hundred mile west of Winnipeg.
GR: Yeah. I’m just looking in Colin’s logbook and it’s number, yeah Number 1 Canadian Navigation School, Rivers, Manitoba. And I think your first flight there was on July the 8th 1943.
CW: Was it?
GR: Yeah. Duty — first navigator. Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: So obviously you settled in Canada and from what I’ve spoke to other gentleman obviously training in Canada with no food shortages and —
CW: Exactly. Yeah.
GR: Was good.
CW: Yes. Good.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: How long did training last?
CW: Five months.
GR: Yeah.
CW: So —
GR: As, as, yeah navigation.
CW: I must say the last day was the best of all because some wise guy said while we’re going to be here five months. Every month payday, every payday we should all put money in a kitty and have a big booze up when it, when it’s all over and have a big meal.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Which we did.
GR: Well, I presume there was no shortages.
CW: No.
GR: No. No.
CW: No.
GR: So freshly qualified as a navigator when did you actually return to the UK?
CW: I’ll tell you when. It was, the middle day was the 28th of November across the, seven days across the Atlantic because it was my twenty first birthday [laughs]
GR: I see.
CW: And I was in this hammock.
GR: So you spent, spent your twenty first birthday.
CW: Yeah. In —
GR: On the North Atlantic
CW: Exactly. In the middle of the Atlantic. Hoping there were no submarines about.
GR: What ship were you on? Do you remember the ship coming back?
CW: Yeah. The Mauritania.
GR: Oh. The Mauritania.
CW: Yeah. Beautiful.
GR: Famous ship. Yes. Yeah.
CW: Yeah. Nobody sick there.
GR: No.
CW: Beautiful. Yeah.
GR: Because I think at one time that held a record for crossing the Atlantic. It was quite a fast ship wasn’t it?
CW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah. Big ship.
CW: Yes.
GR: Yeah. So I was going to say. So back to England and I’m just looking in your logbook and around February 1944 you were in Scotland.
CW: Yes.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Yeah. Near Stranraer.
GR: Yeah.
CW: I forget what —
GR: Yeah.
CW: I don’t know what you called it now.
GR: Can’t pronounce it to be honest. West Freugh.
CW: West Freugh. Freugh.
GR: West Freugh.
CW: West Freugh.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: So this was for further training.
CW: Yes.
GR: Yeah.
CW: We were flying still on [pause] bloody hell I’ve forgotten was what plane it was.
GR: Ansons.
CW: Ansons. That’s right. Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: You hadn’t crewed up by then had you?
CW: No.
GR: This was all.
CW: No. No.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
CW: No. No.
GR: Just further training. And progressing into April you were then at 29 OTU.
CW: Yeah. I’m not sure where that was. Oh. Bitteswell.
GR: Bitteswell.
CW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
CW: And there were about four. Four different places. Why they didn’t do it there. We kept moving on to other places.
GR: Yes.
CW: But there we are.
GR: And with a regular crew by then or —
CW: No.
GR: No. You were still —
CW: No. No. We, we’d never seen anybody who wasn’t training as a navigator at that time.
GR: Right.
CW: And then eventually we were taken in to a big hangar. Which happened to everybody. And they said they were, I don’t remember the number now but same number of pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, rear gunners, wireless ops.
GR: And just told you to get on with it.
CW: And they said, ‘When you come out you’ll all be in a crew.’
GR: Tell me a bit about that then.
CW: Well, I don’t know. I finished up with an Australian pilot. A super, super guy.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Well they all were actually.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Aussies. I liked them.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And yes. And we picked up as I say a wireless op.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And rear gunner.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And bomb aimer.
GR: Bomb aimer. Mid-upper.
CW: He was a Scot.
GR: Yeah. Can you remember all the nationalities then? How many Australians were there? Just the pilot or —
CW: Just the pilot. Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Yeah. Yes. He was a super bloke really.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: And that was, was that Flying Officer Anderson?
CW: Well, he was sergeant. A flight sergeant then.
GR: Flight sergeant then.
CW: Yeah.
GR: Yes. So crewed up.
CW: Yeah.
GR: What happened next?
CW: And then we went training. Still training.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Still training. Can’t remember where we went to really.
GR: Would it have been Heavy Conversion Unit?
CW: Yeah.
GR: To convert on to the four-engine bombers. Syerston.
CW: No. I think we went somewhere before that.
GR: Yeah.
CW: That was to go on to Stirlings.
GR: Winthorpe.
CW: Winthorpe was still training on —
GR: Yeah.
CW: Ansons I think.
GR: Yeah. Just checking the logbook.
CW: Oh Halifax.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Halifaxes.
GR: Stirlings.
CW: Oh. Was it?
GR: Yeah.
CW: But first was Halifaxes.
GR: Right.
CW: Which were still twin-engine for the pilot so he didn’t need the other two crew members.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
CW: The flight engineer. He didn’t really need him because he was quite used to two engines anyway.
GR: Yeah.
CW: But when he stepped up to the next.
GR: That.
CW: Four engine.
GR: Yeah.
CW: He needed help to look after feeding in of petrol.
GR: And obviously that’s what Winthorpe would have been.
CW: Yeah.
GR: Because you were on Stirlings by then.
CW: Yes. That’s right. Yeah.
GR: And Flight Sergeant Anderson was a pilot officer by then.
CW: Yes. Yeah. He stepped up. Yeah. Deserved it. Yeah.
GR: And then obviously after, yeah Heavy Conversion Unit, you did I think it’s about a week at 5 LFS at Syerston.
CW: Oh.
GR: Just a week there. On Lancasters.
CW: Oh yeah.
GR: At Number 5 Lancaster Finishing School.
CW: That’s right.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: When did you find out which operational base you would go to? How did that come about?
CW: They just said, ‘You’re going to 106 at Metheringham.’
GR: Yeah. So —
CW: And we went and there were two other crews landed at about the same day I think.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And we were all put in the same Nissen hut.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And we wondered, I wondered how we were all going to go on. If we were going to be as lucky as them or what. And then both, all three pilots made a flight with an experienced crew.
GR: Yes.
CW: And one of them, one of the other two pilots did not come back. So then we expected a new pilot to arrive to take over this old crew but they didn’t. They just took them and the disappeared. Took them off the station altogether.
GR: Right.
CW: Which, it was a bit surprising but I suppose that’s how they did it.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And then we thought well who’d be first because our pilot was Albert Andrew Anderson and duly first on anything but he wasn’t.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And this other crew went and they never came back.
GR: So they went on the first operation.
CW: Yes.
GR: And didn’t come back.
CW: Yeah. The pilot came back from his original flight.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And he took his own crew and then we never heard again.
GR: So, of the three crews that landed.
CW: Yeah before a month was out we were —
GR: Just you.
CW: Yeah.
GR: Just you. Ok. And I am looking at your logbook again. You, you did your first training flight at Metheringham on the 12th of September and within two weeks you were flying on your first operation.
CW: Well, I’ve not really looked into that.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah. I’m just looking at the logbook again.
CW: Oh. Ok.
GR: 12th of September.
CW: Yeah.
GR: You’d arrived at Metheringham. Well, less than two weeks. The 23rd of September.
CW: Yeah.
GR: You were off to the Dortmund Ems Canal.
CW: Yeah.
GR: So what was the first operation like if you don’t mind me asking? You know, you’d done your training.
CW: Yes. Well we knew what we were in for because we’d experienced what had happened to others.
GR: Yeah.
CW: So we just hoped and prayed. Yeah.
GR: Because as a navigator did you go to a pre-op meeting?
CW: No.
GR: You didn’t have to plan the route out or anything like that?
CW: No.
GR: No.
CW: No.
GR: Right.
CW: No. I think everyone was, it’s wherever in Bomber Command I think the same happened. A briefing.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And a big screen across the, a big atlas or a map.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Or a chart probably. And a red line zigzagging across. Zigzagged because they didn’t want Germans to dead reckon ahead on our first track and say oh they must be going in that direction.
GR: Sounds like it. Yeah.
CW: So we dodged.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Dodged different. It made a bit more hard work.
GR: Yeah.
CW: But not much.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And so that’s how we set off on each flight.
GR: Yeah. And what was the first one like? You said, yeah you just prayed and hoped.
CW: Well.
GR: And did it go off alright at the Dortmund Ems because obviously the Dortmund ems canal over the years was a well-known target.
CW: Well I went five times in all. So, yeah but but I don’t think we ever did any damage to be honest. It was such a massive.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Thing. And I think 617 Squadron eventually dropped one of theirs.
GR: Big Tallboy.
CW: Yes
GR: Grand Slam
CW: Yeah.
GR: Bombs.
CW: Down. Just where it wanted to be. Right alongside it.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Which uprooted everything. Which was a big route for everything made in the Ruhr to get to the north coast.
GR: Yeah.
CW: To go on this canal.
GR: On the canal. Yeah.
CW: So if we could knock it out then they would be sending things by road.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And rail. Which took longer and cost more.
GR: I think Bomber Command first started bombing the Dortmund Ems Canal in 1940.
CW: Yeah. Well, there wasn’t, that meant they weren’t able to damage.
GR: No.
CW: That concrete was such that, you know, one bomb.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Just wouldn’t matter.
GR: And then you’d done within four days you’d done two more ops to Karlsruhe and Kaiserslautern.
CW: Yeah.
GR: And then —
CW: Yeah.
GR: Running into October 1944 I notice you went to the submarine pens at Bergen.
CW: Yeah. In Norway. Yes.
GR: Yeah.
CW: To try and help the navy really.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Damage the submarines if possible.
GR: Yeah. And I think again that was another one that 617 with their big bombs —
CW: Yeah.
GR: Went to —
CW: Were able to do.
GR: After you. Yeah. So how did the operations go? Oh yeah. I’m just looking again. Dortmund Ems. Dortmund Ems.
CW: Yeah. Well, actually apart from being there it was quite a good one for, for us because it was a short one.
GR: Yeah.
CW: It was just, only just the other side of Holland.
GR: Yes.
CW: And so you weren’t shattered or anything.
GR: Yeah.
CW: By a long distance or anything.
GR: Yeah. Yes. Because I’m looking again in the logbook and the Dortmund Ems Canal Roundtrip was four hours fifteen minutes.
CW: Yeah. That’s pretty good.
GR: Unlike on the 22nd of November you went to Trondheim and you were in the air eleven hours twenty five minutes.
CW: Yeah. Trondheim. Yeah.
GR: Yeah. So —
CW: Well that’s, on saying that well I think that I told you that the Met men got the wind velocity wrong. Totally wrong. It turned out to be, on my first check after ten minutes when you take a radar fix you could work out a wind velocity which to me, it was to me a hundred mile an hour and I think they had forecast twenty or twenty five or something like that. And we were a bit, a little bit worried and we then realised our wireless operator got a message saying the time to be there had been brought forward because they’d heard, someone must have phoned, called them up. Breaking radio silence really which I’d never heard of and to tell them that we were going to be there maybe an hour too soon. With the wind velocity being so high and we were not accounting for it. We were thinking we were going to be in twenty mile an hour.
GR: And you were in —
CW: And we were in a hundred so, so they brought it forward so it didn’t make any difference of getting there.
GR: So in theory, I don’t know, the cruising speed of a Lancaster.
CW: Yeah.
GR: Normally two hundred miles an hour.
CW: I think somebody went wrong totally because the main bomb aimer eventually you couldn’t mark the target. The Germans set up smoke flares.
GR: Yes.
CW: And, and I think that when they tried to mark the target the wind was so much that these were carried away and they were never left long enough on the ground to be able to say come in and bomb.
GR: Yeah.
CW: So they said, ‘Sorry,’ but he said, ‘Sorry boys, just return to base. Return to base.’
GR: Right.
CW: So on the way back we, we were travelling at eighty mile an hour instead of our usual one eighty because of the head wind.
GR: Yeah. So you got, you got to the target quickly but it took a long time to get back home.
CW: Exactly. Yeah.
GR: Yeah. So —
CW: Yeah. But we went, we were then because I think petrol was going very low and we were detailed to go to Lossiemouth.
GR: Right. Diverted on the way back.
CW: Yes.
GR: Yeah. Yeah. I’m just checking again. Yeah. So moving on into early, early 1945 you were called up for Pathfinder duty.
CW: Yeah.
GR: How did that come about if you don’t mind asking?
CW: I think we got lucky.
GR: You got lucky. Taken off operations.
CW: No. I mean, no, I mean we got lucky by getting to the targets on time which was vital really.
GR: Yeah.
CW: So to start with the bomber when dropping bombs we got I think a three or four minute allowance but Pathfinders was one minute.
GR: Yeah.
CW: So you’d sort of got to work a bit harder to get there.
GR: Yeah.
CW: On time.
GR: So, I know they did a bit of extra training didn’t they?
CW: Yes.
GR: Which you had. Yeah.
CW: We went to [pause] I forget.
GR: Yeah. And it doesn’t make a note. Oh Coningsby. 83 Squadron, Pathfinder Force, Coningsby.
CW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. So a couple of months and then you were back on operations and it looks as though you went to Leipzig on your first Pathfinder trip.
CW: Oh.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: So did you find the two squadrons different or, I mean I presume you’ve still got the same crew.
CW: Oh yeah.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
CW: Same crew. Yeah.
GR: So just flying the same plane.
CW: Yeah.
GR: But from a different base.
CW: Yeah. Just —
GR: Yeah.
CW: Different base. Well, we linked with 97 Squadron. So we were like one squadron really I think.
GR: Yeah.
CW: We both went into the briefing. Both squadrons. And however many, however many planes that were sent.
GR: Yeah.
CW: So we were like one big squadron but but no we weren’t.
GR: Yeah.
CW: We were two separate squadrons but we worked as one.
GR: As a — yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: Any extra pressure being the Pathfinder navigator?
CW: No. I just did —
GR: Because the Pathfinders, I presume the Pathfinders went in first to mark.
CW: Yeah.
GR: The target.
CW: No.
GR: Then bomb.
CW: We dropped flares —
GR: Yeah.
CW: That hung in the sky whilst Mosquitoes guys who didn’t have as much radar didn’t, I don’t think they had any radar so they weren’t sure to get there because they didn’t have room for radar I think. And so if they saw our flares going down they could be, they could easily get within like ten mile of the target. So they’d soon see the flares and they could be on the job straight away and marking out for the main force coming probably nine minutes later.
GR: Yeah. That’s good. And then that’s going towards the end of the war. Where were you? Where were you when the war finished?
CW: Still at Coningsby.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: And I think you’d flown your last operation on the, or your last bombing operation on the 18th of April.
CW: Was it?
GR: Yeah.
CW: Oh.
GR: Yeah. So and then in May you did a couple of prisoner of war pickups. Operation Exodus.
CW: Yes. Yeah. We were glad to be able to do that.
GR: Yeah. A lot of crews have said that.
CW: It was the first time they said you can’t take your parachutes with you. Not that we were bothered about that.
GR: Yeah.
CW: But no parachutes for them. Prisoners of war just released. Probably I think there were sixteen came in and sat just down the fuselage. Anywhere they could really.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
CW: And then the pilot would ask them up and we were like over the sea, or the North Sea or whatever and just had a look.
GR: Yeah.
CW: What it was like. And then they would just sit down there. Back in the fuselage.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And we’d land them at some place.
GR: Dunsford.
CW: Yeah.
GR: Dunsford. Yeah.
CW: And —
GR: My father in law who’d been a prisoner of war for five years. He flew back on a Lancaster.
CW: Oh.
GR: It could have been you.
CW: It well could have been. Aye. Yeah.
GR: Yeah. He’d been captured at Dunkirk. And flew back.
CW: Oh blimey. That was early enough wasn’t it?
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
CW: To be captured.
GR: So, and then the last entry in the logbook in May which is absolutely fantastic. 31st of May. A tour of German cities.
CW: Yeah. We took a guy with a camera.
GR: Right.
CW: And he took photographs and he gave us some. One or two each.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And they were [pause] oh it was just shocking to look down really and thought we’d done all that.
GR: Yes. Because obviously I’m looking and it was obviously in daylight. Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: So no. Proof of, proof of what Bomber Command did and the success of Bomber Command.
CW: Yes.
GR: And so —
CW: Yeah.
GR: So, how else did, how long did you stay in the RAF for Colin?
CW: I think it were about five years in all.
GR: Oh yeah. So you weren’t —
CW: I didn’t stay on. No.
GR: Well, most of them, most people would have come out 1946 but if you stayed a bit longer. I’m looking. So [pause] so demobbed. Back home to Sheffield.
CW: That’s right.
GR: And what did you do with the rest of your life?
CW: Well, I can, I can put it on camera now that one of the flights in there.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Was a cross country flight and my wife and I had got married. I was only twenty one and we got married and she came to Coningsby. She went to the cobblers and he put her up to sleep in his house and his shop, and then one day I said, ‘Well I shan’t be seeing you tonight because we’ve got this flight on.’ And she said, ‘Well, why can’t I come? [laughs] I said, ‘Not really.’ But anyway, she did. So we smuggled.
GR: You smuggled your wife on to a Lancaster.
CW: Yeah. And then she, and then we took off. Yeah. And then she said, Andy, said to her, the pilot said when we were coming back when the exercise was over kind of, he said, ‘What, was it, what did you think? Was it —’ She said, ‘Well it wasn’t very exciting was it?’ So he said to the gunner, he said, ‘Give me a corkscrew.’ Which he did. And she just went aaaahhh. So I switched the microphone on and they all heard her.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And then when we came back and we got in the van to come back and there was one, well what can I say? A typical, ‘Hello there, how are you and all that darling,’ and he saw her get in the van, and he said ‘Oh. And where have you come from?’ So she said, ‘Oh I’ve been flying.’ He said, ‘Oh jolly good show. Jolly good show.’ He really thought, yeah.
GR: Yeah.
CW: So —
GR: So you were demobbed from the RAF. You and your wife back to Sheffield.
CW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah. Did you go back to plumbing or —
CW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah. And that was the end of the wartime experiences.
CW: Yeah. That’s the war. Yeah.
GR: Ok. Thank you. Thank you Colin.
CW: Ok.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Colin Wood
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Gary Rushbrooke
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:35:06 audio recording
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
AWoodC160325
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
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-25
Description
An account of the resource
Colin Wood grew up in Sheffield and worked as a plumber until he volunteered for the RAF. He trained in Canada and flew operations as a navigator with 106 Squadron from RAF Metheringham. On arrival at the station his pilot and three others made their flight with an experienced crew but only the pilot returned. Colin and his crew were later posted to 83 Squadron Pathfinders.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1943-07-08
1944-02
1945
106 Squadron
83 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Cook’s tour
crewing up
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
navigator
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Bitteswell
RAF Coningsby
RAF Metheringham
RAF Syerston
RAF West Freugh
training
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/220/3360/PCalmanJG1605.1.jpg
fc5e694a8db58d59cb334a757eeada88
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/220/3360/ACalmanJG160915.2.mp3
b3127dd21bfb824f5342e20bb728eb42
Dublin Core
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Title
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Calman, James
James Calman
J Calman
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. Collection concerns John Calman (1922 - 2017, 412900 Royal Australian Air Force) and contains an oral history interview and two photographs.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by John Calman and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-09-15
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Calman, JG
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Jean MaCartney and the interviewee is James, or Jim Calman. The interview is taking place at Mr Calman’s home here in Arncliffe on the 15th of September 2016. Okay, Jim let’s start at the beginning. Julie mentioned that you were born in 1922, um let’s just find out a little bit about your family.
JC: Well, I was one of five children —
JM: One of five children right —
JC: I was born in New Zealand —
JM: Oh, okay.
JC: And my mother was New Zealand and my father was Australian.
JM: Ah, ha.
JC: And er, he went to New Zealand and married her and had five children, I was one of them, the youngest. Er —
JM: Ah ha. When did you come to Australia?
JC: I was five years old, yeah, I was five years old —
JM: Mm hmm.
JC: What year would that be? 1927, 27, yes.
JM: And did you come to Sydney or New South Wales?
JC: Yes, came to Sydney. And we lived in Waller [?] Street, Kingsford. Um, I don’t know what else to say what er —
JM: That’s all right. You were there, and that’s where you enlisted, from was it?
JC: What’s that?
JM: Was that were you enlisted, joined up from?
JC: No, I joined, enlisted in err, Woolloomooloo, Woolloomooloo, under the Empire Air Training Scheme.
JM: Right.
JC: Menzies started it, the Empire Air Training Scheme, and that was in August 1941.
JM: Right.
JC: And I was discharged in April 1946. I had four years and eight months service and I was in England for three and a half years and I was er — when we arrived in England at a personnel reception centre called Bournemouth, they assembled us all in a big room and asked us what we wanted to do. And, I, I was an above average pilot and, and I wanted to go on to single engines, on the Spitfires, they were the gunners of the day and I said I wanted to go on the single engines and they put, sent me to a single engine aerodrome, as a, as a trainee to learn to be a pilot instructor and they left me there all the war, until the last six months, when they posted me to a squadron, 106 Squadron at Metheringham, to, to, do my Operational Training Unit and, and, get trained for combat duty. There you are.
JC: Let’s just back track a little bit there, um, you were — where, did you do some initial training in Australia before you went to —
JM: Yes, yes, I got my wings —
JC: You got your wings —
JM: Yes, at Service Flying Training School, at Bundaberg, number eight SFTS. I was an above average pilot there, and that’s why I wanted to go, you know, to get on to single engines, I fancied myself and I had Spitfires in mind, because they were the go at that time, but, but—
JM: Just interrupting you there, just a minute, just to back track a little bit further, you — was it the thought of the Spitfire what made you want to join the air force instead of say, the army or the navy?
JC: I wasn’t aware of it at that time, I don’t think, of the Spitfire. I wasn’t aware of it.
JM: What led you the air force other than say the army or the navy?
JC: I went, I went down to Woolloomooloo to join the navy. but they wouldn’t accept me, they weren’t recruiting.
JM: [laughs]
JC: So, so I bailed out and got into the Empire Air Training Scheme, and they sent me to Summers {?} Initial Training School and then they sent me to Elementary Flying Training School, on Tiger Moths at Mascot Aerodrome and then they sent me to Bundaberg, on Ansons to my service flying training, and I got my wings there, and I was above average and that gave me the desire to get with the select bomber crews, you know, because I was above average and err, they were forming the Pathfinder force. You’ve heard of the Pathfinder force?
JM: I certainly have.
JC: They would lead the bombers to the targets. What was happening, is the bombers were going in and, and they would see the target there and they would drop their bombs a little bit short to get home, out safely, and then the next one would see their fires from the bombs and they would drop theirs, and they kept getting shorter and shorter and they didn’t get to the targets. So, they introduced a scheme where you had to photograph the target when you dropped your bombs to, to prove that you went there, instead of just flying up and down the North Sea and spending petrol and time, you know?
Err, so that was err —
JM: So, when you were in the Spitfire pilot training —
JC: No, no, I was, I, I, they didn’t send me to Spitfires.
JM: Oh, okay, sorry.
JC: They sent me to Tiger Moths, to teach me to be a pilot instructor.
JM: Right.
JC: Then they left me there for three and a half years. And I spent a lot of hours there. {Stutters}, what happened was, they were sending air crew to Canada for, for elementary training, er, and, a lot of them were getting scrubbed, they weren’t good enough to be pilots, and to save the expense, they stopped that method of sending them to Canada, they started what they call a grading scheme. That meant that every member of air crew got eight hours flying, to see if they had pilot ability, and that’s where they sent me, and I was there all the war until the last six months.
JM: And where, which —
JC: Southam, Southam and Anstey. I don’t know if you know them.
JM: Um, they’re not ringing any bells with me at the moment, but that doesn’t matter.
JC: And, and I did most of my time at Perth, up in Scotland.
JM: I know Perth.
JC: You know Perth?
JM: Yes, yes.
JC: It was a lovely aerodrome. It was beautiful food, lovely food.
JM: Yeah, yeah.
JC: And um –
JM: You would have had a nice time up in Perth.
JC: Yes, I did. Yes, the girls were good, and I was young, and in uniform {laughs}.
JM: That’s exactly right.
JC: So, they just left me there, right up until the last six months of the war and then they sent me to 106 Squadron at Metheringham, and, and because I was an above average pilot, they would train me to, to, become a Pathfinder. Metheringham were training Pathfinders, so training crews to be Pathfinders, because they were the pick of the crew. You know? And err, I just stayed there until the last six months, when they posted me to 106 Squadron Metheringham. They sent me to Bruntingthorpe, which was an Operational Training Unit, and then they sent me to, that was on Wellingtons. And then they sent me to do a course at Swinderby on Short Stirlings. That was what they called the heavy conversions. Four engines, instead of two in the Wellington. And then they sent me to a place called Syerston, which was a Lancaster finishing school. I did twelve hours there, err, to get doctrined to the Lancaster, and then they sent me to Metheringham, operations. Now I only did three operations, because my navigator was a barrister in real life and he was engaged a lot of time in defending aircraftmen who were involved in misdemeanours. He was defending them, and he wasn’t available as our navigator, to join the crew, and we just sat by and we only did three trips and we should have done seven, or eight, or nine. You know? So, so, that’s the story.
JM: And of those three trips, that was over Germany or France?
JC: Yeah, Germany and France. One of them was a place called, [?} Rheinau, where the Germans were on that side of the Rhine river and the allies were on this side and they were fighting each other across the river. And that was me first trip. And, what happened there as that they were fighting so close together, they didn’t use any flares, they kept it all in darkness, so they wouldn’t expose each other, and when I did, err, my next trip, we used flares and it lit everything up and as a result I kept holding back, thinking I was too close to the target and, um, eventually they called the raid off. The Pathfinders called the raid off and I still had me bombs on board. I thought, I’m not taking these home, so I dropped them after the raid was called off, because I was so close with the flares, that I wasn’t used to it, and that’s it. And then then next trip we went up to the err, Oslofjords up in Norway where the Germans were refuelling submarines, and we dropped our bombs there at sixteen thousand feet. That was in Tonsberg, Oslofjords in Norway. And I applied for the Atlantic Star, a campaign medal, because that was in the Atlantic Ocean, and they knocked me back. Have we still got the record of that Elizabeth [?}
Other: Keep talking about what you did, and your trips and we will continue….
JC: We’ve still got that? That’s good. And the third trip was a place called Lutzkendorf [?} or something. Did you tell the lady about my er, log books getting burned?
Other: Yes.
JC: I had two. I was doing that much flying at this grading school, teaching air crew to be pilots that I filled up my first log book and was well into the second one. I had a business at Tempe, I come in one morning and me workshop was a place of ashes. I don’t know what caused the fire, whether it was spontaneous combustion. I had a lot of paint and thinners there you know, or whether someone purposely lit it. I never found out. But I lost everything —
JM: You lost everything.
JC: Yeah, yeah. Me log books, and me wife’s sewing machine, and all my personal possessions, and I just haven’t got me log books.
JM: Very frustrating. Especially as you did so much flying. Those logs you get a lot of detail, there’s a lot of pages in those log books.
JC: I was well into the second one.
JM: Well you certainly did a lot of flying.
JC: I was flying about eight hours a day teaching —
JC: Yeah.
JM: Teaching air crew to be pilots, yeah. They adopted a grading scheme, I think I mentioned it, where every air crew got a chance to fly eighty hours, instead of going all the way to Canada and getting scrubbed and wasting all that money.
JM: Did you meet any um, air crew that um, that, what shall we say, went on to become famous, or notable, were you every aware of any —
JC: No, all my crew were English except the navigator —
JM: Right.
JC: And I had no contact with them after the war. The wireless operator came out and he looked up the phone book and he Calman isn’t a very common name, and he struck it, and he rang up a cousin of mine who was called Calman and he said ‘try this number and you’ll probably get him’ and he rang me up and he said ‘this is Des Bibby, your wireless operator’ and he came out to visit me, and we had a few outings, we went to South Sydney Juniors for lunch and, you know, we had a reconciliation. It was very nice. I don’t know whether he got the Atlantic Star for going to Tonsberg in Norway. Do you think he might of?
JM: I have, you know, I have no idea, I would have to look that through. But no, that was, so um, — other flights that you did besides — we did two, we didn’t do the third one, what was your third one?
JC: It was to Lutzkendorf [?}
JM: Oh, Lutzkendorf [?} my apologies.
JC: That was where we stayed over the target, the raid was called off.
JM: Yes. that’s right, my apologies, yes. Now that, um, with events after the war, you didn’t — were like a lot of other Australians that you were the only one or two members of the crews, so that when you all came back you really didn’t have an association or a —
JC: No.
JM: Or a squadron to relate to.
JC: No, I only saw Bibby the wireless operator because he came out as I just told you,
JM: Mmm, so you didn’t maintain, you didn’t hear from any other Australians when you, from all the other pilots that went through, you said they were all English, you didn’t have any Australians or any other overseas crew, urm, that were doing training, that, that you were doing?
JC: I wasn’t aware of them. —
JM: Were they all English?
JC: I was at Perth for about three years, or two and a half years. Yeah.
JM: Well that’s urm, means that you had quite a different experience to quite a lot of other people.
JC: I did yeah. Yes, yes. I think the fact that my navigator was engaged with legal duties kept me alive. We weren’t doing the —
[Someone enters the room.]
JC: She’s there for sing along. Don’t want to sing along.
JM: So, so your navigator was he was an Australian, did you ever —
JC: He got killed. He hit a tree, and he got — my carer David Levenham [?} traced him through and found out that he, he, drove into a tree and got killed. We were trying to track him down, you know, and that was the result we got.
JM: How, that was what, how long —
JC: After the war, yes.
JM: What, he had been back to Australia and —
JC: Yes. Yes, he was resuming his duties as a barrister.
JM: So, let me think, you were um, twenty-two, so forty-two, twenty-two, so you were twenty-two, twenty-three when you were —
JC: I was twenty-four when I got discharged, yes. So, had those experiences when I was twenty-one, twenty-two. I had my twenty-first birthday in England at Bournmouth.
JM: How — did you go by ship, did you?
JC: Yes.
JM: So {indistinct}
JC: Yes, we went via the Suez Canal —
JM: The Suez Canal.
JC: No, we went around the Cape, the Cape, yeah. To Durban, we went to Durban and then to Capetown, and then up to Freetown, near Casablanca —
JM: Yeah —
JC: And then on to England by boat.
JM: By boat, yes. That would have been a nice experience —
JC: Yes.
JM: A bit of a holiday, in a way.
JC: Took a couple of months to do I think.
JM: Yeah, yeah. So, what about the return journey. Was that similar?
JC: We came back through the Suez Canal and we went to Bombay.
JM: Right.
JC: And er, and er, Freemantle and then they sent us up by train from Melbourne. And I met me parents met me off the train. That was in forty-six.
JM: And that would have been, you would have been happy to be home again.
JC: Yes, yes. I was, yeah. I didn’t know quite what to do with me self, having been in the Air Force for so long, and all the decisions were made for me.
JM: Yeah. So, what –
JC: What I should have done, I had all this flying experience as instructor, I should have gone out to Mascot, to Bankstown, where they had flying schools, and I should have employed by one of them as a pilot instructor, because I was very good at it.
JM: And you didn’t — maybe you felt that you could have done that, but what did you do instead?
JC: I got, got into the car business. I had a thing about MG’s, sports cars, and started a sports car yard and I had that for quite a while until the fire burnt the bloody place down.
JM: That’s very, very, very sad, very sad. Do you want to —
Other: You mentioned that you were sick of being in the planes, once you got back from the Air Force.
JC: Well, I didn’t enjoy flying much. You had oxygen at about fifteen thousand feet, you had this on and you had earphones. And you know, it was a bit uncomfortable. It wasn’t like a ride in a Sunday afternoon motor car.
JM: No, it was very, I mean, you only have to have a look at a lot of the pictures, to see with them, they had the big um —
JC: {Someone else comes into the room}. Thank you love.
JM: Jackets, and the big boots —
JC: Yeah, err, yeah. Jilly’s {?} got it there, haven’t you?
JM: The gear that you had that was needed to sort of —
JC: To keep warm —
JM: To keep warm, that’s right, very different situation.
JC: We had special flying boots —
JM: That’s right —
JC: They had a zipper there, so if you got into enemy territory, you just undid the zipper and they became ordinary shoes, so the Germans wouldn’t know who you were. Yeah.
JM: Right.
JC: Escape boots they called them.
JM: Well, fortunately, you didn’t have to —
JC: No, I did not.
JM: [?]
JC: I think due to the navigator being engaged with his legal duties, we didn’t do as many operations as we should have, that kept me alive, I think [laughs].
JM: Well, that’s the other side of it, because there was an enormous amount of loss of life —
JC: Oh, wasn’t there. Fifty percent wasn’t it?
JM: Injury and all the rest of it. In fact, the Australians ended up, some of the highest —
JC: Yes —
JM: Proportionally was the highest rate of injury and death.
JC: I used to go to London on leave, and I’d see aircrew with no nose, just two nostrils, like a pig, been burnt by fire. Bloody terrible.
JM: So, when, when you, how did — how many times would you have gone to London?
JC: Oh, quite a while. I was in favour of, of the manager of the Strand Palace Hotel, and where ordinary people were restricted to five days there because of the congestion, he let me stay on, you know, and er, and the girls used to come down from Nottingham and Doncaster, where they worked in factories and they’d leave in five days and new batch would come in you know. It was very convenient [laughs].
JM: So, the manager of the Strand Hotel was, became a good friend?
JC: Yes, he did, I forget his name, but he gave me privileges there yeah.
JM: Did you keep any contact with him after the war?
JC: No, no I did not, I did not. I was a lousy letter writer. My mum had to write to Fairburn, the minister for air, to find out if I was still alive, because I didn’t correspond with her. I was just bad at letter writing. I er. Just didn’t have any desire to do it.
JM: Oh, well. Each, each person has their own little —
JC: {laughs} and idiosyncrasies {laughs}
JM: And interests, and interest, that, that, err. So, how did you find London, did you have lots to do, when you — did you have any official—
JC: I used to go to the show, you know, err, they had the ‘Dancing Year’ on, I forget the actor that was in it. And they had the Windmill Theatre which never closed. You had the girls that were naked on stage. They were allowed to be naked if they didn’t move, you know. And we used to get in there and jump across the seats to get the front row view [laughs]. The Windmill Theatre.
JM: Many —
JC: Have you heard of it?
JM: I have heard of it. Many happy times, I think probably, were spent, by many service men that were there —
JC: Yeah.
JM: I’m sure. And what other sights did you used to —
JC: Well, well er, they used to take Australian air crew to visit people you know. To accommodate them in their homes, and I was sent to a place called Lyme Regis, near Cornwall to a Doctor Cook’s residence. He used to go out doing his daily chores, and he would come back with something good like a chicken or a pheasant, you know, it was very good there, I was there for about a fortnight, yes. Lyme Regis was the name of the place. South of England, near Cornwall yeah.
JM: Very good. That would have shown you a bit of country life.
JC: Yes, and I also, also put me uniform in dock and went to Ireland for five days, as a civilian, because they were neutral, as you know, and you weren’t allowed to be in uniform in Ireland. And er, I went over there, and I, I met quite, few people, one particular fellow, Bill Willis, was his name, he was, he stayed there after the first world war, and er, he opened a restaurant called the Green Rooster, and I went in there one day to have something to eat, and he came up and he said, ‘there’s a smell of Australians about here’, he recognised my Australian accent and he made a friend of me. He took me home to his place, and taught me to drink Irish Whiskey and he, he took me to Beldoyle race course, where the held the Irish sweepstakes, you know. He befriended me very much did Bill Willis. Yeah. I haven’t seen him. I didn’t contact him, no.
JM: Well, that’s a bit of a variety of experiences.
JC: Yeah, they used to burn peat there to keep warm. In winter, peat, P E A T.
JM: That’s right. Absolutely. What other sorts of places did you go to?
JC: Mostly London. Mostly London.
JM: Mostly London. Always staying at the Strand?
JC: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Always stayed at the Strand cos’ I was okay with this manager. He used to play golf, and I was a golfer, and err, you know, we got on well together.
JM: So, did you have a few rounds somewhere?
JC: Er, I think so. I can’t remember, vaguely. There used to be a place called Chingwood, Chinkwood, and I used to go out there and practice, you know, practice. You weren’t allowed, er, there were wheat fields, besides the course, and er, they wanted them protected, you weren’t allowed to go in there, but I used to jump the bloody fence and go in there and find balls, golf balls, yeah. Chingwood, yeah.
JM: I’m sure there would have been a few balls in the —
JC- Yeah, yeah —
JM: Wheat paddock.
JC: You weren’t allowed to go in there.
JM: Alright, interesting. Perhaps we stop a minute, while you have your cup of coffee there.
JC: Are you going to have something?
JM: No, I’m fine, fine. {recording ceases], Okay, so we’ll pick up now —
JC: Well, I was a flying instructor, a pilot instructor at Southam, Southam, in Warwickshire and I was teaching er, air crew to be pilots, and on this occasion, I was a bit bored, you know, taking off and landing, and I lost a bit of concentration, and the aircraft took off and it didn’t get airborne, instead of the air flow going around the wings, it was all jumbled and they called it an incipient spin off the deck and the bloody thing landed, and the exhaust pipe was a long one and it was red hot, being an exhaust pipe and the plane caught on fire. The pupil and I scrambled out of it with a few blisters through the heat, and that was the only injury that we had, and er, the bloody aircraft was damaged, completely burnt out.
JM: I was going to say —
JC: Er, I got bored, and lost concentration. I shouldn’t have done it, I was responsible, I was the instructor and he was the pupil, and he agreed to keep flying with me after all, you know, he might have said ‘I don’t want to go with him anymore’, but he agreed to keep flying with me. That’s the story, is that the one you want?
JM: Uh huh. Good, that’s very good.
JC: I think I was very lucky to, to, not to get hurt, you know, with the aircraft catching on fire.
JM: Yes, indeed. And what, um, — when you came back to Australia and you err, um, had your MG’s and all the rest of it, where you selling them or?
JC: Yes, I had a car yard, MG’s and Austin Healeys, all sports cars, Jaguars, yeah.
JM: How, how long did you have that?
JC: For about five years I think? Yes.
JM: And after that?
JC: Well then, then, I, I, moved up the road a bit, that was at 600 Prince’s Highway. I had another car yard, just up the road at 614. The Good Guys have bought the land now, and they’re going to start a store there although I see they’re going to be taken over the Good Guys, by err, someone else.
JM: [?] hi fi.
JC: Yeah, hi fi, yeah. Err, what am I getting at?
Other: So, what did you do after the car yard?
JM: So, you had the second car yard. How long did you have the second car yard for?
JC: About four years, five years. I built a shed there. I built a great big workshop. Forty feet by twenty feet. I built it meself.
JM: Goodness.
JC: And I rented it from the council for twenty dollars a week, and I was there there until the fire came and destroyed it all.
JM: And what, what did you do after that?
JC: I, I went to TAFE and I did a course on spray painting and panel beating. And, er, I was pretty good there, they made me a part time instructor, on er, colour matching, and spray painting. I forget his name now, the boss man that got me the job, Jim, Jim Devlin, that was his name, Devlin. He was the boss of the spray painting joint, and I was casual instructor there, you know. Yeah.
JM: How long did you do that for?
JC: Er [pause], was that, er, did I, just escapes me at the minute, escapes me. I think I did that until I got called up from pilot instructing to operational training. I think, yeah.
JM: Right, so um, you mentioned, when we weren’t recording there, about your great interest in golf, when did you start playing golf?
JC: When I was ten I was a caddy.
JM: Ten?
JC: Yes, I was a caddy. Yes, I used to caddy at the Australian Golf Club.
JM: Oh, okay.
JC: We used to get forty er, four shillings a round we used to get four shillings a round. Two shillings, they’d give you a ticket, a caddy’s ticket for two shillings, and then you’d get a tip off the, off the golfer you were caddying for, for another two shillings, you used to get four shillings. And I used to do four rounds at the weekend, and I’d get sixteen shillings, and I’d help me mother, you know, with it, with her problems, her financial problems, and I was self-dependant, you know.
JM: That was sixteen shillings for a weekends work, would have been very good money.
JC: Yes, it was, yeah, it was yeah. And you’d find the odd golf ball, and you’d probably get a shilling for that, yeah, [laughs].
JM: How long, did you keep that up all the way through until you went off to the war, or did you only do that for a, until —
JC: I, I got a job, I got a job, at er, at er, Johnson and Johnson.
JM: Oh yes.
JC: Out at Botany. They gave me a job there in the speciality department where they used to make band aids. and cotton wool and all that stuff that Johnson and Johnson made, and I left from there to the war, that’s right. They gave me a send-off there. And then I, I went to er, and then I went to Bruntingthorpe on Wellingtons, and then I carried on my, my, war service, to Heavy Conversion Unit, on Short Stirlings,, they had four engines. We picked up our navigator there, we didn’t have a navigator until we got there. And, er we picked him up, he used to be helpful. He used to help you take the aircraft off you know. You used to have four throttles in the Lancaster. They had them like that, and you’d steer, you’d steer the aircraft by, by the throttles. If you wanted to go that way, you’d give it a bit of that throttle you see, and if you wanted to go that way, you give it a bit of that throttle, until, you’d be kicking the rudders all the time to get speed up, and after a while the rudders became effective, and then you didn’t have to steer it by the throttles any more, you steered it by the rudder, to keep it straight, and the —
JM: That’s a lot of coordination of hands and feet —
JC: Yeah.
JM: No wonder you’re good at golf.
JC: That’s right, yeah. I did a coordination test, when I was at er, Initial Training School. They put you in a seat, a cockpit seat and they gave you a green light, and they had a red light, and they used to move the light about and you used to have to chase it with the green light, to test your coordination. I did that at OTU and I think that helped me be categorised as a pilot. That was a great thing, you know. They could have made me a rear gunner or a ruddy, mid upper gunner. I wouldn’t have liked that at all. And er, and, they made me a pilot and I went to Mascot then, because it was close to home, I lived at Paddington at the time. Yeah.
JM: That means that you had a lot of different experiences, what with one thing and another.
JC: Yeah, yeah. I was lucky to escape the fire without getting burnt.
JM: Yes, and I guess probably, I guess when you were at 106 Squadron, you there would have been a fair few crews that went away and never came back to, even though you only did three actual flights yourself —
JC: Combat flights, yeah, I did many other flights, training flights on Lancasters.
JM: Yes, that’s right yes, but um —
JC: Three combatant flights —
JM: In the six months that you were there though, there would have been crews that went off and didn’t —
JC: Come back. Yeah, there were, yeah.
JM: And did you meet any other Australians there, not on your own crew, but did you have much contact with any other um —
JC: Er, no, I was never much of a socialiser. I don’t think so no.
JM: No, that’s okay. That’s fine.
JC: We had a runway there, err, called the err, Drem. It was powered by petrol. They used to burn petrol to warm up the air and lift off the fog. Drem, Drem.
JM: I heard about that. It was a very foggy place apparently.
JC: We had that at Metheringham. I got to know the bloke that controlled the petrol that burnt it. And I had a little motor car, a little er, eight horse power Ford, and I used to get petrol off him you know.
JM: Right.
JC: Because you weren’t allowed to have petrol then. You’d be driving along the street and the authorities would pull you up and they would put a litmus test in your tank to test if you were using government petrol or, or, or your own, you know, and you had to be aware of that.
JM: And, what, what happened if they didn’t like what they found?
JC: Well, well, they never found that with me, because I, I had this petrol that I got off the bloke that ran the Drem. Er, flight path.
JM: You didn’t have any problems, that was good, but er, having the car would have made life —
JC: Yeah, we used to go everywhere in that car.
JM: Yeah.
JC: When we became redundant because the boats were loaded with bringing home prisoners of war, and they got the priority for the shipping space, and we were made redundant for about three months. I was hanging around er, England, you know, until about April, after the war, and in that time, I managed to go around and visit all the good golf courses, Carnoustie, and Gleneagles and St Andrews, in this little Ford motor car.
JM: Did you actually play?
JC: I met a New Zealand navigator and he went with me. We went as a twosome, you know. He used to play golf also, yeah.
JM: And did you play any of those courses?
JC: Yeah. I played, yes, St Andrews, Gleneagles, Carnoustie, Rosemount, yeah, all those good courses.
JM: So, did you manage to get some sticks, or did you just hire the sticks at the clubs when you were playing?
JC: Er, I think I had a set of sticks. Henry Cotton, have you heard of Henry Cotton?
JM: A long time ago.
JC: Yeah, yeah, I think I had a set of those, and er, yeah. Oh, I played at Hoylake, Hoylake, that’s Royal Liverpool, that’s quite and, oh, and Waltham Heath, that’s an A grade course there, yeah. All the time we were redundant waiting for the prisoners of war to get out of the way so that we’d get a ship to come home, yeah.
JM: Well, er, that was a big bonus for you.
JC: Yeah. It was, it was, yeah.
JM: And of courses those courses are very different to playing back here.
JC: Yes, they are, they have beautiful, natural grass.
JM: Yes, indeed. That’s er a terrific um set of memories that you’ve got that we’ve been able to have the —
JC: You’d think they will be able to recognise my pilot instruction time for three years and hundreds of flying hours and give me an award do you think?
JM: I’m not completely across all of the requirements so I can’t really comment,
JC: Well, the AFC the Air Force Cross is an administrative award, it’s not a combat award. It’s not like the
DFC, the distinguished flying cross, it’s for administration, for non-combat activity that’s what I —
JM: I’m sorry, I’m not across that, but I can certainly make some enquiries, and see, what, there are others who are more familiar with that sort of stuff that can point us in the right direction in that regard.
JC: Okay, yeah. Good, thank you love.
JM: [Talking to someone else in the room}. Before I go, to get that medal.
JC: It’s a decoration, its not a campaign medal, the AFC, it’s a decoration.
JM: Well, I will talk to certain people, that we can um, um, see what we can find out.
JC: Okay, right oh, love.
JM: As I say, I’m sorry —
JC: Because I was three years instructing, you know, they ought to give me some recognition for that I think.
JC: That’s a long time to be, there must have been an awful lot of pilots that would have gone through
your —
JC: Yeah.
JM: Your instructions —
JC: That’s right yes. I filled almost a second log book.
JM: Right, that’s exactly right so err, we can err, I’ll, as I say I’ll speak to some people who I know will know more about that sort of thing than I certainly do.
JC: Right, okay, thank you.
JM: Is there any other areas that come to mind that we haven’t come across, that, that we haven’t covered that you wanted to mention?
JC: Er.
JM: I guess not having had any real contact with any real service personnel you probably um, probably haven’t talked a lot in the past about your time —
JC: No, even on Anzac Day. I used to go there and march with the Pathfinders, because I was trained to support the Pathfinders, to mark that targets and I had an affiliation with them, I thought, and I er, I only marched a couple of times. We used to have a reunion at the err, at the Imperial Services Club. It was taken over by er that club, err, the Royal Automobile Club yeah.
JM: Yes.
JC: I was a member there yes.
Other: Now Dad goes to {?} and marches there. You know [?}. I would love him to meet up with someone else who is doing similar but there doesn’t seem to be anybody —
JM: No, but on the er in the broader picture there is Bomber Command, especially with Pathfinder and sort of 106. 106 is part and parcel of Bomber Command.
JC: Yes.
JM: So that overall Bomber Command is that overarching link there.
JC: Yeah.
Other: And do they have gatherings?
JM: Yes, they do, Annette is the lady you spoke to. She is the secretary of the group.
Other: I would love to know if there was a function I could take him to.
JM: There will be something coming up.
Other: Yeah.
JM: Well, indeed. As I said, I will certainly mention —
Other: Yeah, okay.
JM: Well, I think we have covered a lot of ground. Thank you very much for your time Jim.
JC: You have been very patient Jenny,
JM: No, not at all. We are very happy to get your memories.
JC: I hope I’ve made the picture clear.
JM: Absolutely, your level of recall of detail has been very impressive.
JC: Good.
Dublin Core
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ACalmanJG160915
PCalmanJG1605
Title
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Interview with James Calman
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
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00:47:04 audio recording
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Jean Macartney
Date
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2016-09-15
Description
An account of the resource
Jim was born in New Zealand but grew up in Australia. He enlisted in Woolloomooloo under the Empire Air Training Scheme. He was sent to the Initial Training School in Somers and then went to the Elementary Flying Training School on Tiger Moths at the Mascot aerodrome. Jim then went on to the Service Flying Training School on Ansons at Bundaberg and became a pilot.
Jim arrived at a personnel reception centre in Bournemouth. He was sent to become a pilot instructor at a single engine aerodrome on Tiger Moths. They had started a grading scheme for pilots who would do 80 flying hours, as an alternative to going to Canada. He spent time in Southam, Ansty and Perth. They wanted to train crews to become Pathfinders. Jim was sent to RAF Bruntingthorpe, an Operational Training Unit, on Wellingtons, followed by a heavy conversion course at RAF Swinderby on Stirlings. He went to the Lancaster Finishing School at RAF Syerston. For the last six months, Jim was posted to 106 Squadron at RAF Metheringham to train as a Pathfinder pilot. He did operations to Rheinau; Tønsberg, Oslofjord; and, Lutzkendorf. Jim describes how and where he spent his leave and discusses the Drem Lighting System at RAF Metheringham.
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
Great Britain
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
Germany--Mannheim
Norway--Tønsberg
Atlantic Ocean--Oslofjorden
Germany--Halle an der Saale
Contributor
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Jan Hargrave
Sally Coulter
106 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
entertainment
Lancaster
Pathfinders
pilot
RAF Metheringham
RAF Swinderby
RAF Syerston
Stirling
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/218/3358/PBruhnKC1601.2.jpg
b0c77fbb6618767952dab43db30881d6
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/218/3358/ABruhnCK160430.2.mp3
321d7a40559b9dbb0b3d5005882da99b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Bruhn, Clarence Keith
Clarence Keith Bruhn
Clarence K Bruhn
Clarence Bruhn
Keith Bruhn
C K Bruhn
C Bruhn
Description
An account of the resource
Nine items. An oral history interview with Flying Officer Clarence Keith Bruhn (437927 Royal Australian Air Force) documents, photographs and his log book. He flew operations as a navigator with 463 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Keith Bruhn and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-04-30
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Bruhn, CK
Access Rights
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AP: This interview for the International Bomber Command Centre is with Keith Bruhn who was a 463 Squadron navigator during the Second World War. It’s the 30th of April 2016. My name’s Adam Purcell. We’re in Novar Gardens in the suburbs of Adelaide. That’s, that’s the spiel. Let’s begin. Can you tell me something Keith of your early life? What you were doing growing up and how you came to join the air force?
CKB: Well, I attended Unley High School and quite a few, the other, you know in older classes had been joining the air force. So when the, when I turned eighteen, I left high school at seventeen and studied accountancy for the interim before joining up and then having turned eighteen they sent you a letter that you had to report to so and so and so. So I thought — oh I will. There was quite a few of the blokes I knew were joining the air force so I decided that rather than join the army they were supposed to travel on their stomachs weren’t they? The army or something. And the navy had a girlfriend in every port and I didn’t think I could handle that [laughs]. Anyway, and also a few of the people in our area we lived at Hawthorn and you’re a Melbournite are you?
AP: I am.
CKB: Yeah. So you wouldn’t know our Hawthorn. You’d know your Hawthorn. Anyway, I decided to join the air force. I think I was about seventeen and a half then. I applied and we did, went along to the [pause] you know went along at night school to study a bit in preparation. And then the call up came and we, I was picked to go to Somers. You know Somers? Down there on the Mornington Peninsula is it?. Yeah. That’s where we did our ITS. From then we, well at the selection committee I sort of thought everyone wanted to be a pilot so I thought if you were refused that you sort of automatically became a air gunner or, or a wireless operator perhaps. And I was pretty good at maths so I decided I think I’d like to be a navigator. So I mentioned that to the selection committee and I was made a navigator. So that worked out all right. [laughs] From ITS at Somers we went down to the Air Observer’s School at Mount Gambier. That would have been probably three or four months. You don’t really want to know what happened at some of these? It might take —
AP: Oh definitely — tell me everything. Tell me the whole story.
CKB: Anyway. Oh nothing much. Yeah. Well, well actually I can remember one thing at Mount Gambier. The staff pilots at a lot of these places were a bit [pause] what did they used to call it? Well, they were daredevils anyway. Some of them. Anyway, we were on a navigation trip somewhere up to Northern Victoria there where we had a do, write down what we saw, you know. And coming home this pilot decided he’d give, there were three or four navigators. There was an Avro Anson and he decided to give us all a bit of a thrill. So we came back via the Glenelg River and he came down to below tree top height. I can still remember there were ducks flying all over the place and I thought [laughs] and anyway that was — I can still remember that because I think that would have been our probably first or second flight in a — and we thought ooohh you know.
AP: First or second flight ever you mean?
CKB: Well, yes in the air force anyway. I had been. That’s another story I won’t —
AP: That’s alright.
CKB: We won’t go into —
AP: I’ll ask about that later.
CKB: I had flown before and yeah it would have been probably — I can’t exactly remember. First, second or third flight. So that was a story at Mount Gambier. From there we went to — there was a Bombing and Gunnery School at Port Pirie and that’s where we got our wings. That was [pause] oh end of ’43. Yeah. 1943. From there we ended up, we went over to Melbourne and we were stationed on the MCG. Now, I’m going to brag here. That was sort of a holding place where you moved on from and the curator there decided he’d prepare a pitch for us and we got a bit of sort of scratch team together. I think we, everyone bowled one over and batted one over. And I thought well the cricket pitch was a crossways on the MCG. As you probably know. And that’s the shortest boundary. And I thought I reckon I can hit a six on this. So first ball I had a swing and missed, I think. And I think it was the second ball I managed to collect. It just cleared the fence. So I can brag and say I hit a six on the MCG.
AP: Excellent.
CKB: Anyway, the next ball I had another swing and got clean bowled I think. So that was a bit of fun there.
AP: Where at the MCG did you actually stay?
CKB: Yes.
AP: [unclear]
CKB: That was a staging camp before you moved on. You know.
AP: So while you were, while you were at this staging camp where did you sleep? Like where was your accommodation?
CKB: [laughs] Under the grandstand. Yeah. They had you know a big open area as you went up through the, yeah, and they just had stretchers there and I don’t know how many. It would have been a hundred. A hundred, I suppose, of us. And the, and the bars we all had. Where the bars were set up that was our mess and I think we were there probably a fortnight. And then we had entrained we had no, oh the funny part about it was we were issued with tropical gear. Uniforms. As well as a normal winter uniform. And then we were entrained and headed north. So we thought oh we were issued with tropical uniforms so we thought we were going up somewhere up New Guinea or somewhere. Or the islands or somewhere. So we ended up in Sydney and once again went to the staging area camp. At Bradfield Park I think it was. For probably a week again and hopped on a train up, further up north and ended up in Brisbane at Indooroopilly I think it was. There was a camp. A tented camp there. Stayed there a week and still wondering. We didn’t know any idea where we were going. No one told you anything. So there, we were there for probably a week and the next minute we were told that we’d get all our gear together. We were heading for a boat. So we ended up down, I can’t remember whether it was a victory ship or a [pause] what was the other ships they made? Anyway it was a Yankee. American boat. And there were a lot of Americans, injured Americans were going back to the US. So about a hundred of us logged on there with about a few hundred American servicemen who had been injured. And a story — we took off. The story about that. There was one bloke. An American. I remember this. He couldn’t go down to the mess. He had, he was missing both legs and one arm. So the whole journey they set him up on the deck and he sat there the whole journey. They brought food to him and he played [pause] what are they? Craps I think they call it. And he just sat there with the dice and that’s what he did the whole journey. The poor beggar. And I can still remember that. Anyway, so we ended up, we still didn’t know, well we sort of knew, because each day they had a map on the side of the boat and we could guess how many miles, daily miles they did. They showed us where we were going so that would have taken, I don’t know, probably about a week or a fortnight. So we ended up in San Francisco. And then over there we went to another staging camp where all the Americans went before they were choofed off to the Pacific. Angel Island I think it was called. In the San Francisco Bay. And an interesting thing there, Angel Island was there and as we caught the ferry in to San Francisco we passed Alcatraz. That was a bit of an interesting point. So we were there about a week and then entrained. Headed off [pause] well we knew we were going eastwards. You can’t go westwards. Yeah. Well, that was Pullman carriages. This was all knew to us, you know. The negroes were, they’d pull our beds down at night and I mean these sort of things didn’t happen in Australia. That was all new to eighteen year olds, you know. And that was quite enjoyable I suppose because these negroes attendants were happy blokes. They were very, you know, laughing all the time and carry on. So eventually we went, well on the way I woke up one morning and looked out the window of the train and, ‘You are now passing,’ — it was all snow outside, ‘You are now passing the highest railway point in America.’ I think it was fourteen thousand feet. I think it was. Over the Rockies. That was just a thing you notice. And we ended up in Chicago, in these cattle yards because there were trains going all over America during the war and you had to stop sometimes. We’d stop overnight, and it we could hardly sleep because the cattle bellowed all night. You could hear this bellowing of cattle right in the middle of the stockyards. So then we eventually ended up in New York. Crossed the river to another staging camp I suppose it was. And we stayed there another week and had a few days in New York. We were looked after. I think they were Jewish people. We stayed a few nights and had breakfast. And that was the first time I’d ever heard of, ‘How would you like your eggs? Sunny side up?’ [laughs] That’s the first time, the first time I’d ever heard that expression. So we were there a couple of nights and then went back to the camp a few more nights and then back again. And we were, I can remember looking across the other side of the river where the liners were and there were big boats everywhere. We still didn’t know what boat we were going on. Anyway, it turned out to be the Queen Elizabeth so — I don’t know whether you know the story. When that was built it was never fixed out as a liner. The war came so they made it, turned it into a troop ship virtually. So there were about a hundred of us and seventeen thousand Americans got on board. And, you know on the trip over to England we never saw one American. We saw where they slept. You know, like the decks. And on the side of the decks — one, two, three, I think there were about four layers of stretchers and I don’t know how many decks would have been on there. There would have been six or seven and you know, there was about two hundred yards. So they were up and gone and they had their stations to go to during the day. By the time we, we were camped in, I don’t know there were rooms. What they would have been I don’t know, and there were about a dozen of us in each of these. In sort of decks too. And the meal times were twenty four hour meal times. You had your time to go down to the meal. It was just twenty four hours of serving meals to serve everyone. So eventually we ended up in [pause] Gourock. That’s the Glasgow port and got off the boat there and a bit of a story there. We all lined up on the railway station and there were Scottish — I think they were church, some church ladies. Guild or whatever they were called were serving morning tea or whatever it was. They were asking us what we’d like, and we couldn’t understand a word they were saying in their broad [laughs] Scotch accent. Like, you know, ‘Do you want milk in your tea?’ Or things like that. It took a while. Mind you going back, going through or go back to San Francisco it was almost the same story. Their accents were, I can remember we went into a restaurant, had a meal and there were three or four of us and this gum chewing waitress came along. ‘Where are you all from?’ And we said, ‘Australia.’ She stood there. It was ticking over. ‘Oh where’s that state?’ As much as to say, you know what, in America, what? That’s just a side thing. Yeah. Well I’m back to Glasgow and the next minute we’re down at Brighton. Well, originally, before us they used to go to Bournemouth but that got a bit dangerous apparently. They were bombing that before we got there. So we went to Brighton for about a week or two. Then we, by this time we got over there the attrition rate had dropped fairly well and there was a bit of a backlog of, you know, so they chooked us off to an aerodrome just outside Guildford. A grass aerodrome for the pilots and navigators to get used to the countryside. We flew Tiger Moths. Map reading and all this sort of thing in Tiger Moths. And I even learned, being a navigator, to fly a Tiger Moth because there were English pilots learning to be instructors they, so I got to take off and land, but I didn’t do solo or anything like that. That was a bit of fun. We used to take off, you know a couple of hour journeys every now and then and that was for another week or two I guess that was. Now, where did we go next? Oh we went up to Navigation School up in Scotland. Can’t think what that was called. Anyway, up on the west side of, west coast of Scotland and when we went on leave we could catch a bus up the west coast up, and we used to do a pub crawl. We’d drop off at every town, have a couple of drinks and then catch the next bus up to the next [laughs] and there were about six towns, so I think we had a pint or two in each. Not that that was much because English beer wasn’t like our beer, so. I mean they’re the sort of things, I mean, oh I’ll get back to the fun side of it before we got in to the nitty gritty. You know, you, well you had to have a lot of fun. At this stage we didn’t know what was ahead of us anyway. So that’s what we used to do up there. And then we went to the Operational Training Unit at Lichfield. That’s right. Yeah. We were getting nearer and nearer now to operations on Wellington bombers. And while we’re there we did quite a few, dropping Window raids, to get us used to, you know the Window. Yeah. We’d go out over the English Channel and into France a bit and drop these before the other bombers. To confuse the enemy I suppose. We did quite a few of those and then later on we did a few in Wellingtons. A few decoy raids further into France to get us all used to it. And finally we did our OTU and finished that. Then we were posted to a Conversion Unit for pilots. A lot of the pilots had only been flying twin engines, so they had to convert to four engines. So we converted there to Lancasters then, and I don’t know how long we were there. Probably a month but that was mostly for the pilots anyway and the navigators didn’t do much really there. So eventually from there we got posted to Waddington. This is early February ’45 so we were getting, you know, within three months to the end of the war virtually. That’s how long. It took us almost a year by the time we arrived in England to get to a squadron. So we were there a while before. Then we did our first op. And then the last op which was the third to last op that the squadron did on April, oh it must have been April the 16th I think it was — we were shot down over Stuttgart I think it was. Anyway, I’ve got the report of that raid here. That’s the [pause] that’s our report. That great big report there. I’ve looked through all the reports and we got the biggest mention. I don’t know whether that means anything. But we — this was after D Day so the emergency ‘drome that night was Juvincourt. That was just north east of Paris a bit. Or near Reims. So we headed for there and we had trouble maintaining height so we dropped all the bombs. Everything we could drop. We still couldn’t actually — we were shot at twice and the first time we were shot at as far as the powers can be can — would all what we said and what clues they had they worked out that an aircraft from Skellingthorpe was the ones that had shot at us. So we were virtually, well they suggested that we were probably shot at from friendly fire and that put an engine out. But about another quarter of an hour later we were shot at with one of those upward firing ME210s, I think they were. Anyway, that was a quarter of an hour later. That put another engine out. We were down to two engines at this stage. So we were on, we were going to bomb a roller bearing works at Pilsen in Czechoslovakia. So we only really got to Stuttgart. And that’s where we were shot at. So the pilot was down to two engines and he couldn’t maintain height so he decided we’d turn around and head for Juvincourt. So all the navigation aids were gone so all we were back to was the P6. The pilot’s P6 compass. That was the only aids we had as far as [unclear] I thought I’d look approximately where we were, and I thought I’d get the directions to Juvincourt and I looked at my star maps and I found a star that was approximately on the course we were supposed to take. So I said to the pilot, ‘Well head for that star and get your course on the compass.’ And I had my fingers crossed. Anyway, blow me down, about, oh I don’t know how long it took us but we eventually got to Juvincourt. They said they could see. This was about 6 o’clock in the morning I think. ‘We can see the lights. The lights of the runway.’ So I thought thank goodness for that because there was no way we would have made even the English Channel. We were losing height all the time. Anyway, we were down to about seventeen hundred feet at this time and the pilot, he had his left rudder roped up because he couldn’t, something had broken, you know. Had broken. But he had to do a right hand turn in order to land, I think it was and he found he couldn’t do it. And according to, I’ve just read it before but I’ve forgotten a lot of it. I can’t remember which— the right wing, or [pause] was still on fire. And near where one of the tanks and the pilot, there was flames, and he said, ‘She’s going to go up any minute. The whole thing.’ So we all, he told us to get out smartly. So we all managed to jump out. I’m the last one out. I looked at the pilot. I said, ‘Are you ok?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I’m ok.’ So I went. And he got out and busted his leg a bit. Eventually we all, we all ended up headed for the [pause] most of us landed within oh, I don’t know, 5ks of the Juvincourt I think. And I remember coming down. We were, I looked down, I could see, oh before this we were supposed to count to three before we pulled our rip cord. I counted to one and a half I think and pulled mine and anyway my chute opened and I was floating down. I looked down and there was a canal and I thought this will be good I’m going to land right in the middle of the canal. And we were told that if we want to move we pull on something. I’ve forgotten what you do but I pulled the rip cord somehow and managed to miss the canal by about fifty yards anyway. But in the meantime I’m doing this there was a bit of ground mist and you couldn’t really see the ground and I’m sort of doing this. And the next minute whoop we’d hit the I’d hit the ground [laughs] and being no wind that’s the worst, that’s the worst landing you can make. If there’s a breeze you can almost run with the [laughs] anyway I remember my kneecaps went past my ears I think. So we got down and eventually everyone dribbled, dribbled in. The pilot — he’d done his leg in. The flight engineer — he was a nervous wreck I think. They had to sedate him. He ended up in hospital. I can remember going to see him. They’d sedated him because he was a shaking mess. It affected him a fair bit apparently. Oh, what happened we were about five Ks from the aerodrome and this was 6 o’clock in the morning and they were all warming up to go and do their strafing or whatever they did and I headed for the noise and I’m walking along. Out of the corner of my eye I see a negro standing there. About six foot six tall with a carbine in his hand. He was on guard duty you know. There was an American transport company on the outskirts of the aerodrome. And I thought I’d better go over to him otherwise I might get a [unclear]. So I went over and introduced myself, ‘I’ve just been shot down. I’m an Australian.’ And he looked at me. I think he thought now is it Austrian or what? Anyway, I said, ‘Oh will you take me to someone in charge?’ Yeah. So we walked along and I noticed he kept walking a bit behind me. He wasn’t quite sure who I was, and he had this carbine sort of [pause] Anyway, he eventually got back to the camp, where they were all camped and he took me to the officers where they were having breakfast and here they were. You know they hadn’t that long gone, probably a few months they’d taken over the airfield and here were all these Americans sitting down to bacon and eggs. You have it. Where probably the English were having bully beef or something. And he said, ‘Oh you’d like some breakfast.’ And I said, ‘No.’ I was a bit churned up myself, you know with all this going on, and I said, ‘No, I’m not —' And eventually they took us to this aerodrome. There was an RAF representative there. Like I said all the crew eventually dribbled in from wherever they’d landed. I think one of— the mid upper gunner had landed in a tree I think, so he’d had a bit of fun. But most of us were not too badly hurt. So we were there a couple of days and there was a flight sergeant in charge of whatever — for the RAF there and he took us, drove us to where the aircraft had crashed. And apparently it had come down reasonably level like this, right across a Frenchman’s potato patch. And apparently, according to this flight sergeant he wasn’t very happy. There was a great swathe of, you know, he’d only, he’d probably only just planted it all. No it was up. What I remember they were up about that high. But there were bits and pieces lying everywhere. Bits of my maps lying everywhere. And there was no sign of any engines or anything. They’d apparently dug in to the ground because it was fairly soft, the ground I think. So that was alright. So the next the next thing this bloke took us on a Cook’s Tour around the area and there was a village, I forget the name of it and he was, he had a girlfriend whose father owned one of the — what do they call these drinking places. Bars. The French call their bars. I don’t know. I forget. Anyway, he took us there. The French owner was very happy to see us and he went down the stairs and came up with a clay pot of Cognac. Cognac. And he said, ‘Oh we kept this down here especially, you know for when the war was over,’ sort of thing. I thought, I remember afterwards saying to myself I bet the Germans had a bit of that too. Who knows? You don’t know. But I think but this flight sergeant was on with the daughter. Oh and another thing that happened. Parachutes. I hope the powers that be aren’t listening. I’ll be up for a charge or something. He went around to collect all the parachutes and we were supposed to bring them [pause] well supposed to bring them back. Anyway, we eventually found ours and this flight sergeant, he was on a good thing. He knew all the [lerks?] he was, he said, ‘Leave it with me. I can —,’ You don’t have to, you know, I forget the words he said but he ended up with it but what he was doing was making money out of. They were making shirts or whatever out of these. So I had to claim that I couldn’t find my parachute. Which some of the others did too and they couldn’t find their parachutes so that was all right. But he was on this, he was on a good thing this bloke. And another thing he took us down to, we were about twenty k’s from Reims which was Eisenhower’s headquarters. General Eisenhower’s headquarters. So we went for a trip down there. And that that’s where I first came into contact with their, what we call them [unclear] They were just toilets, you know, in a park. All they were, were for men, all they were sort of a grill sort of thing. You could see their feet underneath and a bit of a trough and [laughs] in the middle. We’d never struck anything like that before. So eventually we ended back at the aerodrome and I think it was about three days later they came and came and got us from a squadron in a Lancaster. Took us back home. And by the time we’d reported all the accident and all the, whatever went on we went on leave for about ten days I think it was. By this time the war was nearly over so we didn’t do any more trips. The war finished. And all those who’d done their tours, probably they were alright. All those who hadn’t finished a tour — we went on to Tiger Force. Changed from 463 to 467 Squadron. So we were there. We shifted to Metheringham which was only about ten k’s from Waddington. One thing about that — I had a photo. I don’t know what happened to it. When we shifted all the ground staff had bicycles that they used to drive around and there were about twenty of them. So when we shifted they put all their bikes in the bomb bay. And I had a photo of the bomb bay full of bicycles. And it was only a five minute trip virtually. By the time you’d taken off you were there. So we shifted our Tiger Force training there for — by that we were on so called embarkation leave in August. In August. I think they knew the war was going to end. We went down to Newquay in, in Devon I think it is. Newquay. The Australians, it was good surf down there. All the Australians used to go down there to surf. So we ended up down there and the war with Japan finished so we did the town over that night. I can remember one chap had a motor vehicle and we were, there was about a dozen of us hanging from a motor vehicle screaming up and down the main street of Newquay. And the locals must have thought we were all nuts because their war had been over for six months and they thought what’s going on here? I can still remember that. But we were due to transfer — what they called them — long range Lancasters. That was the pre-runner of the, I forget the name. Lincoln bomber. That’ right. Yeah. And we were due to fly them out to Okinawa. Or not Okinawa. There was an island fifty miles, fifty k’s east of Okinawa that the RAF were going to operate from and the Americans were going to operate from Okinawa. That was the story anyway. I think that’s right. But thankfully that never happen. I wasn’t looking forward to bombing Japan. I think it would have been a different story to bombing Germany if you’d baled out. I don’t think that would have been much fun. So that’s probably my story in the air force I suppose. Eventually we went back down to Brighton waiting for the boats. Which boat to. This was about October ’45. I can remember there was one bloke. He liked to do seances. He liked to get us all together to work out what boat we were going to go home on. So we had the seance. There were only about four boats I think, operating, and he knew the names of them all. So here we were with this and he’d been putting our hands towards whichever side [laughs] if you believe in seance. But he was dinkum about them. He sort of — but no. We had a quite I think we were there for about a month waiting for a boat and we used to go up and play a few golf links up east of Brighton. We used to go up there and play golf. That was good fun for about a month. And eventually we got on the Athlone Castle which was a South African boat, headed off through the Mediterranean. Through the Suez. Ended up in Bombay where we picked up [pause] there was quite a few, you know servicemen coming in from Burma and all around. One of them was Vic Richardson. Do you know Vic Richardson? Vic Richardson the cricketer.
AP: Yeah.
CKB: The Chappell brothers’ uncle.
AP: Oh.
CKB: [laughs] Yeah. He was one of them. We knew Vic very well reasonably well. We lived near him at Hawthorn. He was one bloke who came on board. An interesting thing in Bombay those days all the beggars from I don’t know how far around in India knew that all these boats were coming in with servicemen. And they’d apparently come into Bombay, and anyway we had a day to go and look around Bombay. But we had to walk of course, and it was about a two kilometre walk I suppose, and I reckon it took us two or three hours to walk through this wall to wall beggars that were lining the road with their hands out like this. But eventually we got back to I suppose was the main part of Bombay. But we had an hour or two there and then we decided we’d go back a different way. So we took some back streets and I can remember the bloke’s everywhere you went there were these little droppings everywhere apparently. All over the — there was a park area and apparently, they just used to go over to the park area. Do their business. In various stages of the dryness, some were quite dry [laughs] and that was another shock that you know, you don’t see that every day of the year. So that was an interesting little episode there. Eventually we got back to Perth. This was about December the [pause] about four days before Christmas I think we arrived in Perth. And a few of the, got rid of a few of the chaps, were offloaded in Perth. We had Christmas Day in the great Australian Bight heading for Melbourne. We didn’t call in to Adelaide. There weren’t enough getting off I don’t think. Called in to Melbourne and we were home. Then I had to catch the Melbourne Express back here. So virtually when you think about I had an around the world trip. Went, went that way and came home that way. So, you know, you think about it we were eighteen year olds who probably hadn’t been out of the state or, you know. It was all, sort of, you know, something to do. It was an experience. And I mean it had its moments but I often think three years in the air force I reckon I aged ten years. You know. With that experience. So in the end went on leave when we got back. Eventually we were called in to find out what was going to happen. Wanted to keep in the air force. ‘Do you want to stay in the air force?’ ‘No. No I don’t want to stay in the air force,’ [laughs] and then we were demobbed so, and that was the end. Oh going back to when the war ended over in England it’s a funny feeling that there was a mixture of [pause] a mixture of relief and disappointment if you know what I mean. You’re doing something and all of a sudden you’re not doing it. And I can remember, I suppose all the others were the same but at least we had, we continued on in the Tiger Force so it wasn’t so bad. But I can remember even when we got in to the Tiger Force I thought do we have to be doing this. Everything was dropped. But it was an interesting time doing Tiger Force because it was very relaxed and most of the time we played cricket or, or football. I can remember we’d got one football match arranged but they didn’t get enough for AFL type football so there were probably a third of them were rugby players. I can still remember going for the ball and the next minute whoosh [laughs] these blokes came at you and you’re flat on the ground [laughs]. That was, that was, I mean you can imagine a game of football. A mixture of rugby and Australian rules. Crazy. Oh dear. Yeah. And then we played quite a few cricket matches. What’s the name of the RAF station? Their headquarters virtually. Down there. I forget the name of it now. Two or three times we went down there and played matches. But in between we went on training. Mostly the training was, all they did was, navigation wise because we were going to go overseas. Mostly away from where we were to be stationed. We took off from Metheringham. Went straight out the Bay of Biscay for approximately the same time it would have taken us from the island to Japan. About four hours I think it was. Only using dead reckoning navigation and you had to fly back doing the same thing and hope that you were near where your base was because that’s what it was going to be like where we were going. So that’s all our training consisted of virtually and [pause] but that’s about it I think.
AP: Alright. We might go and fill in a few gaps.
CKB: Yeah.
AP: If you’re alright with that.
CKB: Yeah.
AP: Going back to the beginning where were you when you first heard the war had been declared and what did you think at that time?
CKB: 1939, I was in [pause] ’37 — third year at high school, Unley High School. Yeah. I can remember it. When was that? September wasn’t it? Was it September?
AP: Yes, September the 3rd
CKB: Yeah. I can remember it. I can even remember sort of discussing, you know, discussing it with your fellow pupils, but I don’t know. I think it’s sort of we might have said, ‘Oh well,’ and the funny thing about that was, leading up to the war, just going back with my name. I can remember the history teacher. I got praise for being a very good speller. And he said, ‘Oh you’ll, where did your parents come from?’ And I’m sitting there and war’s imminent. My mother I think came from East Prussia somewhere. My father’s, no, not he. They didn’t come but their parents came. And my father’s parents came from somewhere in North Berlin. Mecklenburg. There I am sitting in this class where [pause] but, you know there were a lot of people of German, German names in the war. When you think of it half the Americans were of German descent. So I mean I could have been, we could have been bombing some of my people I’m related to or something way back or something. But I mean that’s war. I mean I had no compunction in joining up. You’re living here. I was Australian. My parents were Australian. So I mean you’re that. Yeah as far, as far as that goes, at school, I can’t remember. We just talked about it I suppose. But I can’t ever remember like the teachers saying much about it. You just went on with school. That was ’39. ’40. I was leaving. ’41 leaving honours. Yeah. Life just seemed to go on when we were kids. But I knew then, you know, as I said the ones ahead of us like David Lester was two years. He went to Unley High too. He was two years ahead of me. We knew he’d joined up and there were a few others that were already joined up in the air force. Yes. One of those things.
AP: Can you remember much about the actual process of enlisting?
CKB: Sorry?
AP: Can you remember much about the actual process of enlisting? So where you had to go to do the interviews or to sign up. Or the actual process.
CKB: Oh well that’s a bit of a story. When I, you had a form to fill out when I enlisted, and I listed — I knew my mother had diabetes. Somehow I’d written down that both parents had had diabetes and when I went for my medical without even — they just, because both parents I’d put down. They didn’t even carry on with the interview. And then I thought [pause] no. No. No that’s not right. I think they, I think I did take a urine sample. Gave them a urine sample. But they didn’t even bother with it, they just, because I’d put down both parents and I was rejected. Course I was a bit disappointed so I complained about it. They said, but they said both your parents. ‘No,’ I said, ‘No.’ There was only my mother. I had to talk a bit, fairly well out of that. I eventually talked them into having a urine sample and that was clear. So I was alright. So I nearly didn’t make it because of that. But like I said I was only about seventeen and a half then I think. And then a couple of nights a weeks we had to go to the teacher’s college to these lectures and the funny thing about it one of the lecturers was our physics teacher at Unley High. So we just carried on, you know. Virtually they were just talking about what flying was about and the navigation side of it and I mean it wasn’t — but there were a lot of, probably lads who weren’t as educated as I was perhaps or had probably had only done kind of intermediate grade or something like that. So I suppose they just had to, probably needed more [pause] you know a little bit more training but that was for about six months. I can remember we used to go in, I used to go in with — I don’t know whether you’ve ever heard of Bonds tours. No. You wouldn’t. He was on the air board actually Bert Bond. And they lived just up the road from us and Max Bond who joined up with me he, he his father was Bert Bond who owned this, and he was on the Air Board and he — I’m getting back to my first flight now. While we were waiting to be called up there was, on South Road there was what they called Castle Plaza Shopping Centre. It was named after, there was a castle, a castle like residence there and a bit up the road was a box thorn covered paddock and Bert had carved out a bit of an airstrip there and he had a Fairchild. He’d imported a Fairchild plane out. And so when we used to, every weekend when the first trip, Max said, ‘Oh come on, we’ll, my father’s going to go up for a bit. He’s going to shoot up some friends we know in the Adelaide Hills.’ I thought oh, shoot up? That’s a bit of a worry this shooting up business. So anyway, we hopped in and away we went, and I’m a bit apprehensive about the shooting up business. And anyway all he did was a few tight circles and waggled his wings and that’s all it was [laughs] I sort of imagined that he was going to go down and that sort of carry on. So we did that two or three times. That was my first trip in an aircraft. So I had been in an aircraft before I actually joined up. But I’ve even got a photo of that aircraft. It’s now over in Temora.
AP: Oh fantastic.
CKB: It had been kept here for quite a few years. And then it was a bit of a wreck I think apparently. And this bloke [pause] Temora is a [pause] what is it? It’s a sort of, I think they have — I’m not sure. Anyway, it ended up over there and they put a new engine in it and it’s flying. So that after how long? Seventy years. Yeah. I can show you if you’re interested.
AP: Oh yeah.
CKB: I can show you that. I think it’s, I think it’s in here somewhere.
AP: I’d like to have a look at that.
[pause]
CKB: It’s the first time I’ve looked at some of this stuff for a while.
[pause]
CKB: This is some of the stuff that happened while we were over in London for that Memorial a couple of years ago.
[pause]
AP: You can have a closer search through it in a little while perhaps.
[pause]
KB: Hey? I’m sure it was in.
[pause]
CKB: Oh well maybe it wasn’t. No. Can’t see it.
AP: That’s alright.
[pause]
CKB: Yeah. Oh well. Yeah. I’ve got all this stuff about that Memorial. That Annette had sent over.
AP: Oh yes. Yeah. That’s what this whole project’s for.
CKB: Yeah.
AP: Yeah. She’s making the initial approach to people.
CKB: Yeah.
AP: So can you tell me something of, as an Australian in England, particularly a young Australian in England, what did you think of wartime restrictions of the civilian population of just generally life in England?
CKB: Well, it took us, yeah well see the point is there were no restrictions on us like there were the local population. We were eating food that they wouldn’t, wouldn’t see so much of especially when we were flying on ops. We used to get, you know, like fresh eggs and things like that which the local population — but I mean there were restrictions here when we left so that side of it, you know like meat rationing and whatever, but I don’t know we seemed to take it. Going into London you’d see all the buildings sandbagged up. I mean by the time we’d sort of got over there anyway all the mess from the blitz had virtually been cleaned up. There were, there were like empty blocks overgrown with grass and things like that. But I know when we first arrived in Brighton there were still a few odd raids coming over. We could hear the crump crump of the bombs in London from down at Brighton. And occasionally an odd plane or two would fly over. A German plane and things like that but most times we were on, on the camps you know, and we, it’s only when we were on leave that you’d mix with the — apart from going to the local pub perhaps wherever we were stationed. I don’t know. We just sort of took it all in our stride I suppose. I can’t [pause] I think we were [pause] we as far as I was concerned what I liked most wherever we were was just hopping on a bike and going to a local pub or something and having a pint or two or something like that. And we were, we were only eighteen. When we were at home we weren’t allowed to drink so I mean these things were all, you know, that’s what I’m saying. Aging, you know from eighteen you’re doing all these worldly things sort of that you wouldn’t have done if you were at home and there wasn’t a war on and things like that. So, no, there was part of growing up during wartime I suppose. No. In a sense it was all, you know, exciting. I suppose it was to other, you know, eighteen, nineteen, twenty year olds but like I said once you got to the squadron you sort of [pause] you knew that there was always a few who didn’t get back. But by the time we got there it was a lot better than whereas they were losing perhaps anything from five to ten percent a raid they’d only lose the odd plane occasionally towards the end of the war. But we were unlucky. I mean the last weeks of the war, you know but I don’t know how far, with all this going on that we mightn’t have made it. It was pretty iffy there for a while. But it was over my head to a certain extent because I was too busy navigating if you know, that was one reason why I even picked being a navigator. I thought well at least you had, you were working all the time and you’re not, you know, whereas if you’re an air gunner you’re sitting there and you’re looking around you. You’re doing your job but you know. And the wireless operator — the same thing. He had his job, but it wasn’t all the time but a pilot was. His job was, you know, full on. And my job was to, head down and make sure you’re, you’re getting there alright and you but even the navigation later on was totally different to the navigation earlier in the war. What they used to do they’d just say you’re going to bomb somewhere and the navigators or each individual plane used to work out how they were going to get there. You know, they just, but in my time, it was all, you know you had your times were strictly put down that you took off at a certain time. You timed that point was you had to reach by a certain time over target was that time. Not that you could always do it dead on time, but it was all strict because there were that many planes in the air. You could take anything from five hundred to six hundred planes flying to the one target it had to be regulated to a certain extent. But early in the war it was just Rafferty’s rules. They had no idea and the navigation aids weren’t available like they had later on.
AP: Apart from the last one that you’ve already told me about do any of your other operations stick out in your memory in particular?
CKB: Now, we [pause] when we before we did this raid our only operations were virtually limited to even leaflet dropping raids over Holland to get used to — this raid was virtually our first.
AP: Was it? Wow.
CKB: Yeah [laughs] Well, first full raid. Yeah. But we’d, even at OTU we’d done quite a few. We were lucky we didn’t have to do it when they called a thousand bombing raid earlier. They brought them in from training just to build the numbers up. But we didn’t take part in any of those, thankfully. We took part in Window dropping raids to get you used to get you flying in to France and that. No. We were, I was lucky. Who knows if I’d got there another month or two earlier I mightn’t be here now. I mightn’t have got back. So I mean that was what the war — we had a bloke who, I forget his name [pause] put it all on computer. Every raid that 463 and 467 did and there were some, some did their full thirty trips without one incident. You know, they went over, didn’t strike any fighters they, you know they went through the searchlights. A bit of anti-aircraft fire and but they didn’t report in these, didn’t report. They just went, came back, nothing happened. And yet you get someone else. See, what happened — I think once the, once, by the time we’d flown much of France had been, so all the fighters that the Germans had spread over France were concentrated in a smaller area. So even though they might have been a smaller, smaller lot but they were more concentrated so in effect it wasn’t getting any easier I would imagine and they were starting to get desperate I suppose. So that’s what happened. But I mean that was all experience. And even that, when I think back of it you know I — you did everything automatically. You’d think just jumping out of the plane like that. I mean you just, don’t — no panic. We’d been trained what to do so I mean you just do it. But I mean just how close you were to I can remember looking down when the upward firing things came up. There was a big hole in there and there was a big hole up there. Well that hole was only that far from [pause] sort of thing. And I also remember looking down when the pilot was trying to land the floor of the aircraft was awash with glycol fuel which was the fuel for the hydraulics. And I sort of thought then well, even with the you can probably put the wheels down, but would they lock properly, or —? So I mean all these things. If he tried to land and the undercarriage might have collapsed and who knows what. So you don’t sort of think. We did the best thing by jumping out of the aircraft because a lot of things [pause] as a matter of fact in my own mind I thought we should have jumped earlier. What was being fed to me. What was going on I thought well I think we should be [laughs] —
AP: Getting out.
CKB: Getting out. Now I mean, my biggest fear was what if we get to the — we’re losing height and what if we get to the English Channel. That was my biggest fear was crossing the English Channel. I didn’t want to [laughs] even ditching is not a nice thing but having to bale out over water I thought, I think we were better off. But anyway, but I mean the pilot, that’s their decision as to what to do so —
AP: How far inside the allied lines was Juvincourt?
CKB: Sorry?
AP: How far inside the allied lines was Juvincourt? Like how far away was the front line at this point. Or were you already well and truly over nominally friendly territory for like for a while before the aircraft crashed?
CKB: Probably — I’m just trying to think. Juvincourt. I think they’d got to the Rhine. So virtually nearly all of France was [pause] by this, oh yeah well it would have been I think. Yeah. I think [pause] I can’t — I don’t really know. You see the Americans were mostly down south. The British were doing the push mostly up north. I know, Montgomery, he wanted to, he got to the Rhine and he wanted to push into Northern Germany. He wanted to but the Americans held him back. They said no. But they were doing mostly their push. You see what, I think what happened they were trying to beat the Russians, or do.
AP: Right.
CKB: Trying to get as much territory before the Russians. I mean that — there was a lot of funny business went on behind closed doors when you think of it which has come out after the war that you didn’t know then. You knew nothing then about what was going on. But you get the feeling that it was all to do with they knew Russia was, you know, coming over. Yeah it was it’s like the bombing of [pause] you know that last raid they did in February.
AP: Dresden.
CKB: Dresden yeah. Apparently, that was only because Russia, they were forced into it because Russia wanting it to happen apparently. I mean really when you think in hindsight but you don’t know. They could have stopped bombing months before the end of the war. But you don’t know do you? It’s easy in hindsight to work these things out but, and even the good that the bombing did there’s big arguments over that. Whether they did any, shortened the war or what it did. You know, killed so many civilians and all this going, you know but they forget that the Germans did the same to England. So I mean they started out by bombing the wharves but then it gradually [pause] It’s like the, when we used to go on leave in London there was a place in Gloucester Road that was for the Australians to go and stay. It was about a four storey building I think. Anyway, in the event of air raids you’re supposed to go down. There were cellars down below. We used to go out on to the roof to watch when the V1s were coming across. The doodlebugs. And we’d have bets as to where, where they were going to land. You’d see the flash. You’d hear the sound of like chaff cutters coming over, you know. And it would be probably half a dozen a night you’d see. And we’d have bets. Is it going to go there? Is it going to there? And we’d sit up there. That was the poor beggars are underneath the when we dropped. That would be a frightening thing. You’d hear this noise coming over and then they’d cut off and you’d think where was that going to land? But yeah, I never saw any damage from those because they were very – it wasn’t like a bombing raid. They were spread out all over the, you know. It wasn’t sort of like a very accurate sort of —
AP: Fairly, fairly localised as well because there was only one. One sort of small bomb load dropped in one spot. That’s it.
CKB: Yeah.
AP: You could be in the next street and not know.
CKB: Could have been. Yeah. I mean the accuracy of it wasn’t very, very great. I mean they couldn’t pinpoint a target in any way. They just put enough fuel in to cover a certain distance and then it cut out.
AP: Did you encounter any V2s that you know of?
CKB: No. No. No, we were, I don’t think I was ever in London when, they were sort of, after the V1s weren’t they? I can’t [pause] no I don’t think we, I don’t think we went down to London on leave when they were I don’t think they were that many of them anyway. They’d attack there fairly heavy and the fighter bombers they really got stuck into the you know where they took off from. They knew quite a few of the places. They could pick them out where they were, but they didn’t do anywhere near the damage that they thought they were going to do. Thankfully. But I know they had thousands of them ready to go. I mean Hitler thought he could win the war with those.
AP: We’re talking about London. What sort of things did you do on leave in London. What did you do to relax I guess?
CKB: Well, it was, as far as I was concerned we used to, two or three of us always used to get together and it depended who you went with. What their ideas were. Mostly it was just taking in the sights of London and like I suppose we — there was a lot of, you know, we’d call in to a pub and have a few beers. By this time a lot of the places were opening too. Like places, you know, there were cinemas. Cinemas. More of them were opening. I can remember going to a few shows. I can’t quite remember what they were now. But I remember one thing in England. They were allowed to smoke inside their cinemas and I can remember we went somewhere — you could hardly see what was going on. Getting back to that — when we landed in Fremantle in Perth coming home. That night a lot of them went to the pictures. As soon as they got in they lit up. I wasn’t smoking at this time. I used to smoke a bit. Only because we were issued, virtually issued with them. They lit up and they were smartly told to put their cigarettes out. Yeah. I can remember they used to smoke. Well everyone in those days over in England used to smoke. It was, it was, I don’t know, like I said, I remember trying. We used to get issued with so many cigarettes. They were mostly American origin, you know. Lucky Strikes or whatever they were. And I thought — I got one of these cheroots. These big cigars. I thought I’d try those, and I forget where we were. Anyway, I lit up and laid down on the bunk and smoked for about, smoked half of it I think for about ten minutes and I thought it’s alright so I stubbed it out. Went to get up off the bunk and fell over. They were, you know these great, they were about that thick these, you know these big cheroots that the Yanks used to suck on. Because I wasn’t, I didn’t, no I didn’t used to smoke before I joined the air force at all. It was only the fact that I occasionally I’d [pause] even when we were issued with them. I used to have, when we were on leave mostly I used to take a packet of cigarettes with me. It never got to me.
AP: So if you didn’t smoke them what did you do with them?
CKB: Pardon?
AP: What did you do with them if you didn’t smoke them?
CKB: Gave them to someone else I suppose.
AP: I’ve heard, I’ve heard about other people using them as a sort of a currency.
CKB: Yes. Yes. I believe that. Oh yeah. That would have happened I’m sure.
AP: Put a packet on the bar and the drink would for free all night.
CKB: Yeah. Yes. That would happen. But there were a lot of things I didn’t get into. Like that. I mean, I remember when we went on leave there would always be a packet of contraceptive on your bed before you went out. Half the blokes used to blow them up on the train and hang them out the window [laughs] and let them go. But some of them, it’s a funny thing what I can remember. It was always the unmarried ones who used to brag about what they used to do and it was the married ones that kept very silent. So, I don’t know what they got up to. I don’t know [laughs] The married ones were married back home not the ones that were married [laughs]
AP: Yeah.
CKB: No. I wasn’t, I wasn’t in the least interested in the female side of things. I was more interested in being over there in England and you know, taking in the, you know the country itself. Yeah. And when we’d go on leave we’d go all over the shop. I think we saw more of England than most the locals would have seen.
AP: In the same way that when they come over here and see more of Australia than I’ve ever seen.
CKB: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: [unclear] years. Very much so.
CKB: Yeah.
AP: Alright. Getting towards the end of my list here how did you find re-adjusting to civilian life after three years of being in the air force?
CKB: Yeah. I think I found it a bit hard. Mainly because I hadn’t thought about it much if you know what I mean. I thought, ‘What am I going to do now?’ So what I did was — nothing. You know, I had a, we got back in January. New Year’s Eve pretty well. And I just relaxed for a couple of weeks and then two or three weeks and sat about not thinking about much and then my sister was working in the office of Yalumba Wines and they needed — I was studying accountancy and I was going to three nights a week that’s what I was studying at the School of Mines or whatever it is. And, you know relaxing. That was at night time study. And my sister said, oh we need a office, or virtually an accountant, to keep the girls in check. There were about four typists and receptionists. So I thought oh well I’ll go there. So, I ended up there for about four years. In Yalumba Wines. And my wife, Margaret was the receptionist so that’s where I met her. So we got married and then yeah, I got into that job and still kept studying accountancy. And I gave that job up. I thought couldn’t see much future there so I thought I’d give the banks a go so, to get a bit of experience in banking. So I joined the Commercial Bank for about three or four years I think I was there and anyway in this meantime we had farming property up, just up north at Saddleworth and it had share farmers on it. So the share farming agreement had finished so in the end I decided I would go up there and do the farm, on the farm because I would have been involved in it anyway once dad, he got to old so we decided to go up there and we were up there for thirty years. Retired. We’ve been down, retired for thirty years now. My years have been in thirty years. Thirty years living in the city. Had the war. Thirty years up in the farm. And thirty years retired virtually so that’s I’ve had a fairly varied life I suppose which I enjoy. And I can’t envision working in one job. I was probably after the war you were, I think a lot were like that. A bit unsettled. They probably couldn’t settle down to one, you know. Your whole lifetime doing one jobs. I like to vary things. Even on the farm when we were up there I liked to do things in a different way just to find out if they worked better. You know, it’s something like that. Try something different. Didn’t always work out but it was —
AP: So you’ve told me that the three years that you spent in Bomber Command you felt you aged almost ten years. What’s the legacy, do you think, of Bomber Command? For you personally and overall. And how do you want to see it remembered?
CKB: So [pause] what was that again?
AP: So what, what’s the legacy of Bomber Command, both for your personally and overall?.
CKB: Well I know it’s going to — see even I can remember when there used to be I’m going to talk about Adelaide there used to be Bomber Command dinners besides squadron dinners. As a matter of fact I went to Bomber Command dinners before I went to squadron dinners but then we moved to the country and that sort of stopped but the — I can remember at one of the Bomber Command dinners there was someone, they got someone from the air force to talk about like there’s no longer Bomber Command. It’s, you know, that’s gone. That’s finished. ‘There’s no longer bombers that are, you know doing what you chaps did,’ but I think it’s like as we all pass on what will happen to it? It’ll all just go won’t it? It’ll disappear.
AP: I hope it doesn’t disappear entirely which is one reason why we’re here collecting these interviews now, I can assure you.
CKB: Yeah. I’m just thinking that it’s a good thing that Annette and that lot. She does a good job I think to keep it running over in New South Wales isn’t it? Is she’s in Sydney.
AP: Yeah.
CKB: So I think, you see it’s a bit like the RSL. I know that the Vietnam lot it’s all the Vietnam war now rather than the Second World War of course but it would be nice to, you know, as far as I’m concerned get involved in it as much as we can but like I said age but if it’s going to keep going in any form it’s up to younger people though isn’t it? Like you, you know. So if that’s the case — good. Yeah. I’d like to see it you know kept in front of peoples. You take Anzac Day there. They’re thrashing that and that was a mistake. And I don’t know whether Bomber Command was a mistake like some like to say it shouldn’t have happened the way it did but it would be interesting to know what the outcome of the Second World War would have been in Europe if it hadn’t been for Bomber Command. I mean Fighter Command they probably saved Britain in 1940 sort of thing. The fighters. Oh well it’s, c’est la guerre. It’s part of the war. No. I’d like to see it carry on in some form and I’m sort of on the younger edge of [pause] there will be a lot more gone before I’m, I’m the younger group of them and the majority of them will be in their middle nineties now. I’m only ninety one.
AP: Only ninety one.
CKB: Yeah [laughs] and I consider myself reasonably fit but I have my problems. My old legs give out occasionally. My back gives out occasionally. But I, you know, getting back to the war like I said how luck played a part in Bomber Command. Like I said there were blokes did a whole tour without one incident and I can’t understand why that can happen. We, we’ve got in 463 Squadron Peter Giles used to come along to our meetings and, I forget — oh it was a Berlin raid. That’s right. And they were I don’t know whether it was flak or what happened, but the plane exploded, and he was blown out of the rear gun [pause] he can’t even remember putting his parachute on. Anyway, he, he ended up on the ground. His parachute had opened. He ended up in a snowdrift. It was in January or February I think. He was the only one who got out of that and he just died a couple of years ago. He was in one of the Stalags out east and they were released when the Russians were coming. And he, he would have a story to tell because even when they were released and there were hordes of them were moving west and in the middle of winter. And they were even strafed by our own planes because they thought that they were all the enemy sort of, you know. And he would have had a story to tell. And they hardly had anything to eat. They started off with guards with them. Eventually they, as the Russians kept coming and they just disappeared, and they were on their own. Just eventually made it back to [pause] I don’t know whether it was the American lines or somewhere. I know of quite a few instances where planes had blown up and they had no idea what happened. You know.
AP: Yeah. Luck is —
CKB: Luck comes into it an awful lot.
AP: One of my interview subjects wrote a book about his war service. He was actually a liberator pilot, but he called it the survival of the fortunate.
CKB: Oh yeah.
AP: For exactly that reason. He managed to avoid Bomber Command. That was one piece of good luck. There were a couple of others that happened. So, yeah, very much.
CKB: Yeah.
AP: And there was joy that people in the same raid, same operation who had completely different experiences on that raid.
CKB: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: Some ran into heavy flak and fighters and some floated through.
CKB: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: So –
CKB: Yeah, it’s got nothing to do with how a good a crew you are or what —
AP: Might have something to do with that. But –
CKB: It’s just, yeah. Oh there’s lots of stories of, you know the books I read that spare crews had gone and one chap’s even done two tours so he was a high ranking bloke thought he’d like to do one more trip or something and that’s the end of him. I mean how long do you test your luck anyway?
AP: Yeah.
CKB: If I’d one tour I don’t think I’d be worried too much about volunteering to another. I’d think my luck had swung my way for long enough.
AP: Yeah [laughs]
CKB: Yeah. Oh I can remember even at OTU we had a few close calls that weren’t that bad but, you know. I was surprised. I was reading somewhere where how many were killed in training. It was tens of thousands in aircrew. I mean your luck’s there all the time but once you start flying but when you think it’s an unusual thing to be doing anyway up there, and you’re reliant on your ground crew as well. How good they do their job with the aircraft and all that. As a matter of fact they’ve got probably they should be complemented more probably than the people who flew the planes. I don’t know. The ground crew. The jobs they did to keep the planes flying. When you consider the state that some of the planes used to come back in. They’d fix them up. Keep going. I know there would have been a lot of accidents through, you know, people killed through bad things that happened on the ground. Ground staff. Ground crew. But that’s just part of it. That’s another thing where luck comes into it I guess. It’s all. I suppose it’s the same with any, whether you’re in the army or the navy. The same thing. Luck comes into it. You take the navy. The Atlantic. Coming over where the U-boats were, or [pause] luck came in there a fair bit too. Yeah. It was all — luck came into it. I mean you go back and whatever happened previously your time frame of what you were doing where you were determined what happened in the future doesn’t it? If this hadn’t happened or that hadn’t happened, what would have happened? It would have been totally different. So that’s — yeah.
AP: Very nice. Alright. Do we have any, any final thoughts?
CKB: I don’t know. I think. I just hope oh one thing I think is that they go on about the atomic bomb but I’m sure if it wasn’t for the atomic bomb there would have been another world war with Russia or whoever. I think that’s the only thing that stopped it. The threat of the atomic bomb. I know it’s a bad thing but I think it stopped, you know, a world wide war. I mean who’d want to start an atomic bomb war or an atomic war. The whole world would be wiped out. I think they’re used, countries only use it for their own to stop, you know they used it as a blackmail threat, ‘If you do this I’ll do that,’ or something like that and stop these little things from growing into big things I guess. And that’s my thought on the atomic bomb anyway. Well, what is it now? Hydrogen bombs is it or —? I mean who wants to load themselves up. In that you know that’d be a stupid thing to do I mean. Any country now that — the only trouble with that is if it gets into the hands of a crazy person that’s where a threat could be that they don’t care what they do. They just go ahead and — don’t know [laughs]
AP: Absolutely. Certainly saved you guys from Tiger Force as well.
CKB: Sorry?
AP: Certainly saved you guys from Tiger Force.
CKB: Yeah.
AP: Right.
CKB: Yeah. I think it is I don’t often talk that much about it at all but it’s good to talk about it I suppose.
AP: I’m very glad you have for the benefit.
CKB: I was a bit worried about whether I’d have anything interesting to say.
AP: Plenty of interesting. I think we’d got about five minutes in and I went oh that’s interesting already.
CKB: Yeah [laughs] but as far as the war goes you’ll find David Lester’s a lot more probably interesting. I don’t know what he state of health is now. I think he’d probably still alright. He can remember most things. Frank as I said he’s his eyesight’s his main worry.
[background chat with visitor]
AP: I think we’re just about to finish off here with the recording so thank you very much.
CKB: Yeah. No. That’s fine. Yeah.
AP: It’s been an absolute pleasure.
CKB: Yeah. Good yeah.
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/.
Identifier
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ABruhnCK160430
PBruhnKC1601
Title
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Interview with Clarence Keith Bruhn
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
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01:48:55 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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Adam Purcell
Date
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2016-04-30
Description
An account of the resource
Clarence Keith Bruhn's parents were of German descent. He grew up in Australia and joined the Royal Australian Air Force. After training, he flew operations as a navigator with 463 Squadron. On one operation his aircraft was hit by friendly fire from another Lancaster and by a Me 210 with upward firing guns. He navigated the captain to Juvincourt and baled out over liberated territory.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
France
Great Britain
United States
England--Lincolnshire
France--Juvincourt-et-Damary
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
463 Squadron
467 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bombing
entertainment
Lancaster
military living conditions
navigator
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Lichfield
RAF Metheringham
RAF Waddington
recruitment
shot down
Tiger force
training
V-1
V-weapon
Wellington
Window