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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1064/46017/PParkeRG2303.2.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1064/46017/AParkeRG230330.2.mp3
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Title
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Parke, Ray
Ray G Parke
R G Parke
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Warrant Officer Ray Parke (b. 1925, Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer with 218 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-10-19
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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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Parke, RG
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DW: If you want to grab a cup of tea soon.
RP: Yeah.
DW: They’re really quite good here so —
DK: Ok.
DW: If I just leave that will be for that reason.
DK: Ok. So, if I just introduce myself it’s David Kavanagh for the International Bomber Command Centre interviewing Ray Parke on the, where are we? The 30th of March 2023 and with me is Samantha [Podmore].
SP: That’s right.
DK: And Dale Wiseman. So, I’ll put that there. If you just, just speak normally. If I keep looking down I’m just making sure that the recording device is working.
RP: Hmm.
DK: Now the first thing I wanted to ask you. I understand in the last few weeks you went to Duxford.
RP: Yes.
DK: How, how was that?
RP: I was just telling Samantha today it was a wonderful trip. I had been to Duxford many many years ago but that was a marvellous day.
DK: And I see here on the photo here you went aboard the Lancaster there.
RP: That’s right. Not many people are allowed to do that.
DK: Did they, did they make a bit of a fuss of you at the museum?
RP: Not half, didn’t they? Yes. They did. Yeah.
DK: So, so what, was that your first time back on a Lancaster then?
RP: I’ve been to the one at East Kirkby.
DK: Right.
RP: Obviously a bit longer ago. Yeah. Yeah. But that was the earliest. Yeah.
DK: And, and what was it like going on board?
RP: I found it difficult to recognise. I couldn’t work out behind the main spar there was a great dip down.
DK: Right.
RP: Where the bomb bay is. I’m not sure that was on the same on my plane.
DK: So you couldn’t remember the dip there.
RP: No.
DK: They did let you go up the front then did they?
RP: No. No. No.
DK: No.
RP: No.
DK: Because it’s a bit, a bit difficult getting over the main spar.
RP: That’s right. Yes. Well it always was during the war [laughs] to get up.
DK: So did it kind of bring back sort of memories for you then?
RP: Oh yes. Of course, that and the East Kirkby were the times I’ve been back on a Lancaster. Yes.
DK: And, and, and hopefully they were, they were very good to you there then?
RP: Yes. First class treatment. Yes.
DK: Because when I saw you a few years ago I didn’t really know about Miles Tripp and it’s only recently I read the book and I was wondering had you, had you read his previous book?
RP: Yes. Yes.
DK: “Facing the Windsock.”
RP: Yes. And that, that preceded –
DK: Yeah.
RP: “The Eighth Passenger.”
DK: And what did you think of, of his book?
RP: Yeah.
DK: His first one.
RP: It’s a long time since I read it. I enjoyed it. Yes.
DK: Because people aren’t mentioned in it are they? You’re –
RP: No. No.
DK: Probably in it.
RP: No.
DK: Did you –
RP: No. That was a bit more fictional that one.
DK: Right. Did you recognise yourself then in any of it then at all?
RP: Well, I can’t remember now. No.
DK: Because I hadn’t realised Miles Tripp, he went on to become a crime writer.
RP: Yes, indeed. He was the chairman of the Crime Writer’s Association.
DK: Oh. Ok. Because how, how did you, how did you get on with Miles on your –?
RP: That was a love hate relationship. I was a country boy and he was a public schoolboy [laughs]
DK: And was it, was he good as a bomb aimer though was he? Or —?
RP: Oh yes. He was well trained. Yes. Yeah.
DK: Because reading –
RP: He started off, he’d trained to be a pilot of course at first in Canada but then he had to change and then of course the observers got more or less redundant didn’t they and they had to become bomb aimers.
DK: And that, that’s how. What about yourself? How did you become the flight engineer then?
RP: When I joined the Air Force I, my first interview was at St Athans and they said, ‘What do you want to be?’ I said, ‘Well, I want to be in the aircrew.’ So I said I would be a, ‘I’ll be a gunner.’ They said, ‘You can’t. You’re too fat.’ So –
DK: Charming.
RP: I said, ‘Well, I’ll do signals then.’ ‘Oh no. That’s too complicated for me.’ You see. ‘Well, there’s flight engineer.’ I said, ‘Yes. Alright.’ Fine to that. So he said, ‘What do you know about engines?’ No. I was eighteen year old. I’d never had a motorbike or anything like that. And he said, ‘Well, describe a cotter pin.’ So I described one on a bicycle and he said, ‘Alright. You’re in.’ [laughs]
DK: Because I find it quite remarkable that you’d completed forty operations before you were twenty.
RP: Yes.
DK: So that, that was in a very short space of time.
RP: Yes.
DK: So the period you had with your crew on operations and training was actually quite —
RP: Very intense it was.
DK: Intense.
RP: We lived in each other’s pockets all the time. We were together. All the time together except when the pilot became a commissioned officer and then devolved to the Officer’s Mess but apart from that all the time.
DK: Because reading, “The Eighth Passenger,” Miles seemed to go to great lengths to get in touch with you all after the war.
RP: That’s right. Yes.
DK: How did you feel when he got in touch with you all some years later?
RP: Completely surprised. I mean we all swore when we left at the end of the war we, that we would keep in touch and see each other but we never did. And then of course he finally turned up and did that.
DK: Yeah. Did, did he write to you then? Because there was a newspaper campaign wasn’t there or —
RP: No. His story was that one of our crew, George Bell, the wireless operator was a police inspector at Henley.
DK: Ah.
RP: And somehow or other Mike must have met him and he said, ‘Well, I live in Norwich. I’ll see if I can find a man called Ray Parke.’ And later on the local evening news said, ‘Where is Ray Parke?’ And of course, that started it up and they traced me and he came back and then we had an interview in the garden and wrote the book together.
DK: So he came to see you at your, your home then.
RP: Yes. Yes. And that I was confusing that with [unclear]
DK: Oh.
RP: It was much earlier than that.
DK: That, that was a few years later.
RP: Yes. Yeah.
DK: So what, what was it like seeing Miles after all those years?
RP: Well, by that time of course we were best of friends.
DK: Oh. I was going to say —
RP: And he’s a very clever chap and he is a barrister. Yes.
DK: Did you get that he, he writes in his book that he met the crew individually. Did you all ever meet up again as a whole crew?
RP: Yes. Yes. We all met up in Bury St Edmunds and we were interviewed by German TV.
DK: Oh right.
RP: And that was the last time I saw the whole crew together.
DK: Can you remember roughly what year that would have been?
RP: No. I can’t. No.
DW: I have —
RP: I’ve no idea.
DW: Ray, has got a photograph of that.
RP: Have I?
DW: Which we, I can get sent to you.
RP: Have I got a photograph of that?
DW: You have. Yeah. Yeah, because you all look a bit older.
[laughter]
DW: Yeah.
RP: Ah yes. You’re, you’re probably thinking of another one in Thetford.
DW: Oh, there was another. So there was another. Oh sorry. I thought it was just one occasion.
RP: Well, that was a weekend when I remember it was Harry McCalla and Les Walker and myself but I think that was just a few —
DW: Oh, I thought. Well, alright. I’ll check my library.
RP: Yeah.
DK: So, you’re, you’re, can you remember the name of your pilot —
RP: Do I?
DK: The pilot. The name of your pilot?
RP: George Klenner.
DK: And, and did he come over from Australia to meet you all?
RP: He did indeed. Yes. And he showed us his Distinguished Flying Cross.
DK: Oh right. So what, what was it like meeting them all again in later years?
RP: That was very good. I was still at work actually and I had sort of to leave work early to get down to Bury, Bury St Edmunds to meet them up and they, by the time I’d arrived they were all sitting around a dinner table.
DK: They’d started without you had they?
RP: That’s right.
DK: But your, your, so your relationship with Miles got a lot better then after that would you say?
RP: That’s right. It was all sort of cat and dog.
DK: Yeah.
RP: Initially.
DK: Yeah.
RP: But —
DK: What, one of the interesting things I find is your rear gunner Harry was from Jamaica.
RP: Jamaica.
DK: I’ve, I’ve actually been working on a project for the museum at East Kirkby of aircrew who served in the Caribbean or came from the Caribbean or West Indies.
RP: That’s right, I’ve read one or two cases about that in the paper. Yes.
DK: Yeah. How did you get on with, with Harry because he must have been —
RP: Harry was a fine gentleman. He was the oldest member of the crew and he really was a very nice chap.
DK: Did you find it difficult at all? The fact he was come from the Caribbean and was living in or serving in England I should say.
RP: I never. No one said anything about that.
DK: No. But he, I see in the book that he remained in London.
RP: That’s right.
DK: He didn’t, he didn’t actually go back.
RP: And he worked at the Battersea Power Station. Engineer I think. And married a Swiss girl.
DK: Oh right.
RP: I went up to see him a couple of times. We wrote. We corresponded together.
DK: There’s, in the book there’s claims that he was a bit of a clairvoyant. He knew what your target was going to be.
RP: Yes. Yes. And that rather upset him I’m afraid. It was quite uncanny. You know, we would say jokily, ‘Where do you think we’re going today?’ And he would say something which was not very far off you know. And then afterward people used to say, ‘Well, how did he know that?’ Of course, the poor chap didn’t really know.
DW: So there was no truth in it then.
RP: No.
DW: No truth in the idea that he knew.
RP: Well, that did happen. Yes.
DW: Yeah, there was –
RP: Yeah. And he would call us a lot of rotters or something.
DK: So just going back a little bit we were talking last time all those years ago about your operations. You’d done thirty and it’s a bit strange that you ended up doing forty. How did, how did that actually come about?
RP: Yes. It was just in Christmas 1944, the Battle of the Bulge and the order came around that if by a certain date in December you had completed less than twenty five trips you would be obliged to carry on and do another five trips to thirty five. So we said well bugger that [laughs] and we put in for some leave and got some leave [laughs] and but then we come back and had to do it. And we went on and then as we were approaching thirty five, around about thirty three, ‘Sorry chaps, the situation hasn’t changed. We’re still short of pilots. Still short of aircraft. Forty trips.’ [pause] And very quickly after that we completed the extra five in a very few days and we did the forty trips and the day or so after we arrived back they said, ‘The order is rescinded and they’ve gone back to thirty.’ There was a story about that.
DW: Wrong place. Wrong time.
SP: Yeah.
RP: Did you ever read that article called, “Beware of the Vicar,”?
DK: No. No.
RP: Our commanding officer. Well, we didn’t like him very much and he wasn’t very popular and everybody called him the vicar. And I only learned just a month or six weeks ago this story. I’d never heard it before but it seemed that he and his flight commander, a man named John Bishop, a squadron leader fell out because he thought the CO was treating his younger aircrew too hard. You see we were flying between thirty five and forty trips in about a week. You know, quite close together and —
SP: Thirty to forty [unclear]
RP: I didn’t know but suddenly that –
DW: Yeah, that is quick [unclear]
SP: Wow.
RP: Well, I’m saying perhaps a fortnight. Yeah. And I didn’t know that and I didn’t know but I’ve now found out that that squadron leader was posted away with his crew and they did go on to complete their thirty five trips as it was to them with another squadron. But the CO never recognised him in any way as a distinguished pilot. Many many flights. And neither he nor his crew got a [unclear]
DK: Ah.
RP: No. And then it occurred to me by reading that story well that must have been going on at the time I was there. You know. As I say seventy years later I found that out.
DK: Wow. Because your, your pilot got the DFC didn’t he?
RP: Yes.
DK: And George Bell the DFM.
RP: Yes. And Les Walker got the DFM. Yeah.
DK: But nothing for your good self?
RP: Hmmn?
DK: No, no, nothing for your good self.
RP: No. No. Or our two gunners or –
DW: What did you get a few years ago, Ray? Your grandson sorted out.
RP: Oh, I got the French Legion of Honour.
DK: Oh right. Oh wow.
RP: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: That’s the top. Top French award. That’s recognition from the French isn’t it?
RP: Yes. Yes.
DK: Yeah.
RP: That’s my photograph.
DK: Wow. Well, that’s, that’s nice to be acknowledged by our —
RP: Yeah.
DK: By our allies, isn’t it.
DW: So he now has that pinned with the others don’t you?
DK: Yeah.
RP: That’s right.
DW: You’ve got your roll now haven’t you. You’ve got your roll now haven’t you?
RP: Yeah.
DW: Well done.
DK: You would say just a little bit about your, your fortieth trip because I think it was a bit special wasn’t it?
RP: Yes. It was special and not [pause] the CO in the previous week came up to the pilot and said, ‘Look. You’re coming up to your fortieth trip. I’ll try and pick out a nice easy one for you.’ And so we thought oh good. That would be a good idea. But when we got on the occasion of the briefing for that trip we went in and we saw the big red line going right across Europe into Essen. Now, that was one of the worst. That was one of the heaviest defended places in Germany apart from Berlin and we’d had lots of trouble there in, on the flights and so we thought rather a dirty trick and he said, ‘Well, I’m sorry. They changed the target at the last minute and you had to go.’ But in the event we got there and got to bombing and he said, ‘Now when you come back,’ he said, ‘I want you to be on your best behaviour because I’ve got lots of people who want to meet you.’ And he said, ‘I want a good return.’ We used to hate flying in formation but, I’m sorry [pause] coming back I looked at the back of the aircraft and there was the whole squadron in tight formation following [little old me] [unclear] I had to finish looking at that.
DK: That was, that was quite, quite, must have been quite spectacular for you then. A bit of, a bit of acknowledgement.
RP: So the pilot said well [unclear] this pilot and instead of we got the message pancake. Instead of pancake he went around again because we were on a different aircraft that day and our flight crew was standing on the dispersal for our normal aircraft and that crew used to see us off every day. Coming, every day we came back. So he deliberately flew over that crew. [unclear] And then we landed and there was all the big wigs. MPs with medals and ribbons and all sorts of things.
DK: That must, that must have been quite a moment for you.
RP: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: Ok.
DW: That’s when you had the photograph taken in the book isn’t it?
RP: That’s right. Yeah.
DW: Yeah. Of the crew.
RP: Yeah.
DW: That was taken at that point I understand.
RP: That was taken to the News Chronicle. Yeah.
DW: It was literally spot on to —
DK: Well, that one there.
DW: Yeah.
RP: Yeah. Another one. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
DK: You haven’t changed much [laughs]
[pause]
DK: Just going back to Miles’ book again he says, says your pilot was, was quite good at doing a lot of low flying.
RP: Yes. We managed to stop a bus and get the people to run off. We upset a football match. We knocked two old ladies off a bike and so we all, ‘Come on, Dig. You have to stop this. You can’t keep go on like that.’ But he still did that one on the last trip. Yeah.
DK: Was he, was he a good pilot then? Was he?
RP: He was a good, and the funny thing was if ever we’d had a bad trip or something a bit rough particularly Harry, the rear gunner he would say, ‘Dig, that was your best landing. Soft as a feather.’ [laughs] Yeah. There’s always a first [laughs] yeah.
DK: Ok. I’m going to just turn of that for a moment so you can just have a bit of a rest. Just get your thoughts together.
[recording paused]
RP: I was just thinking now how old I would have been but I can’t just work it out for a minute.
DK: Let’s see —
SP: How old are you now, Ray?
RP: Well, I shall be ninety eight next week or next week after.
SP: Ninety?
RP: Ninety eight.
DK: Ninety eight.
SP: Ninety eight next week.
RP: No, a week after. Early in April.
SP: You are in April aren’t you?
RP: Hmmn?
SP: April.
RP: Yeah.
SP: Yeah.
RP: Yeah.
DK: So it was four, five, seven years ago then wasn’t it? Five. Six. Seven. So you’d have been ninety one.
RP: Ninety one. Yeah.
DK: When you, a mere youngster.
RP: Retired dear [laughs]
DK: So talking about after the war what, what was your career after the war then? What did you end up doing?
RP: Learning. Learning a trade. I became a lawyer and that took up most of my time and I did the same job for forty odd years.
DK: Can you remember the name of the company?
RP: Norwich Union.
DK: Oh, right. Oh ok. So your, your whole life has been around Norwich then.
RP: Yes. Yes.
DK: Has it?
RP: Yeah. One of the trips I did with Dale we went to see some cadets in Norwich and one of my office colleagues was there.
DK: Was he?
DW: He was. Yeah.
DK: Oh right.
RP: [I’ve written that down here]
DW: His name was Ray as well, wasn’t it?
RP: Yeah.
DW: Yeah.
RP: Ray Fisher. Yeah.
DW: Yeah.
DK: Presumably you hadn’t seen him for a while then.
RP: No. No.
DK: Oh.
RP: Well, we just didn’t know what. ‘Is that him?’ And he was looking at me, ‘Is that him?’ You know. And it was.
DW: And you went to that ATC as well, didn’t you?
RP: Yes.
DW: Years ago.
RP: Yes, I did. I went and joined an ATC. Yeah.
DW: Yeah.
DK: So you’ve been getting out and about then. You’ve been to Duxford ATC.
RP: Yes.
DK: Did you, did you do a Remembrance Service?
RP: Yes. Oh yes. They always treated me like a prince.
DK: Good.
RP: I was in a wheelchair and in front of the, leading all the procession.
DW: And you went to Thorpe St Andrew church where you used to go didn’t you?
RP: That’s right. Yeah. Where I was in the choir.
DW: He used to be in the choir at Thorpe St Andrew church so because Ray used to live on the same road as the church but —
DK: Yeah.
DW: But probably a good sort of good fifteen minute walk didn’t you?
RP: Yeah. Yeah.
DW: From the church. So you see he was our guest for the day and you’ll be the guest again this year, Ray. So it will be [unclear] We head towards November the 12th this year. Right. Even, even the vicar made a fuss of you.
RP: Yes [laughs] and I understand that was unusual [laughs]
DK: Talking of the low flying I think its how he mentions your return to St Eval. Do you remember that?
RP: Yes. I do indeed.
DK: What, what actually happened then? Can you tell a little bit about that?
RP: We’d been to Saarbrücken and we lost an engine but somehow or other we carried on and bombed and came away after the target. But because we’d lost an engine we’d been losing height and everybody was leaving us behind so we were more or less on our own and halfway through France an American Mustang came and settled down right inside and escorted us back to the coast. But by this time we’d had a message. East Anglia is closed. Every plane, it was quite a large raid was diverted to elsewhere and we were diverted to a place called St Eval.
DK: Is it, it’s in Devon isn’t it?
RP: Cornwall.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
RP: Just on the peninsula down there.
DK: Yeah.
RP: Not far from St Ives. But there was a strong wind blowing and we were drifting almost back out in to the Atlantic. But we just pressed on and everybody was all standing up in the cockpit peering out, you know. Can we see land? And eventually we could see these cliffs coming up and well we did just manage to scrape over but forty aircraft were trying to get in at the same time.
DK: Wow.
RP: So you can imagine what that was like. It took us four times to go around. Every time we were ordered to pancake somebody would come in underneath and get in first so we’d go around again. That meant I had to halt the engines and all this. Everything. And four times that happened and the last time he said ‘Well, I’m coming in. Anything’s going to happen you can do what you like.’ So they said, ‘Pancake.’ And we did pancake and we landed there.
DK: So a bit of a, a bit of relief when you got down then.
RP: Oh yeah. That was. That was a big relief yeah. It was one of those things when you land everything goes quiet. The engine switches off and you sit there [breathing] you know. Like that. And then you come around and it’s all finished now. But I will always remember that.
DK: It must have been a real relief when you got back.
RP: Yes. Yeah.
DK: Ok. Well, I’ll just stop there Ray so you can have a —
[recording paused]
SP: And how did you get back from St Eval and Dishforth?
RP: Well, you spent a few days down there and somebody came. We had to leave the plane behind.
SP: Right.
RP: So it was two or three days later somebody came and picked us up and brought us back.
SP: Ok. So you got to see a bit of the UK as well. Not just Norfolk.
RP: Not really. You know you’re sort of on the airport and you can’t go out. You can’t do anything.
SP: Ok.
DK: And did you and your crew socialise much? Did you go to pubs and —
RP: Oh yes. Yes. We, we got on well with the manager of the Woolpack at a village close to Bury St Edmunds. So much so that he used to save the beer for us to the chagrin of his real customers [laughs] and they didn’t like it because they were giving us their beer.
DK: I think, I think you deserved the beer.
RP: Yeah.
[recording paused]
RP: We were novices and the first trip turned out to be to Duisburg in Germany and they said this is going to be a thousand bomber raid. So of course we had to jump in and we took off and then we had to call around to pick up other aircraft.
DK: Yeah.
RP: For this thousand raid and collect them and then go on to France. And so we got halfway across France and, and somebody got up and looked in the astrodome and they said, ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I thought there was supposed to be a thousand bombers about here.’ And we couldn’t see a thing. And there we were. Eighteen year old lost in Germany in the darkest, in the middle of the war. But we managed to get around and finished it and came back.
DK: Was that a bit of a —
[pause]
DK: I don’t like to use the word but was that a bit of an error by the navigator? I mean he obviously —
RP: Yes. Yes.
DK: Knew and —
RP: That and what he, I think he complained about being given the wrong winds.
DK: Right.
RP: Yeah. But he was [lower] Actually, he was the second navigator. The first one had to be changed and this Les turned out to be an excellent chap in the end. But on his first trip obviously he managed to get lost.
DK: Well, if he’d been given the wrong winds it’s not actually his fault.
RP: That’s right.
DK: Is it?
RP: No.
DK: It’s —
RP: No. No.
DK: He was just acting in good faith.
RP: So there was me. Eighteen years old. Never been further than London and there I was lost in the middle of Germany.
DK: I guess, I guess you sort of grow up quickly then don’t you? It’s —
RP: Yes.
DK: I could imagine eighteen year olds now doing what you did.
RP: Well, of course I was the baby of the crew. Seventeen and a half and it was all a bit of an adventure really.
SP: You mentioned the Woolpack just now. The pub. I think I might have found it, Ray.
DK: Oh, is it still there?
SP: It might still be there.
RP: What’s the name of the village?
DK: Is it in Chedburgh.
SP: No. It’s, the name of the village is Fornham St Martin.
RP: Pardon?
SP: Fornham St Martin.
RP: No.
SP: Not that one. Oh.
DW: Are you full time then for the Bomber Command? Or what’s, what’s the set up?
DK: Oh I only doing these when, when they when ask me to.
SP: It’s the one you brought up. The Woolpack near Bury St Edmunds. Is that —
DW: So are you like actually, are you employed then or or —
[recording paused]
DK: So, what, what’s it like seeing your name in print?
RP: Well, ever since the book of course, yeah.
DK: So you, you’re used to this then. Fame. Fame in a book.
RP: Well, I do due to these people.
DK: So, your friend David Dowe then.
RP: Yes.
DK: Can you say a little bit about him.
RP: Yes. We went to school together and he was about a couple of months older than me and you know just the usual pals. School pals. And then suddenly off he went to the Air Force and I learned later that he went to train as a flight engineer and was flying the Lancasters and so I started to follow and just followed him on. Yeah.
DW: There was a very special Remembrance last year that you could, you could honour him for the first time wasn’t it, Ray?
RP: That’s right. And I mean —
DW: You were able to —
RP: Met some of his family.
DK: Oh right.
DW: Yeah. Yeah, we had one or two events. We had a book launch.
DK: Yeah.
DW: And you met Ray, David’s niece, didn’t you?
RP: Yeah.
DK: So he, he was lost on operations was he?
RP: Yes. He was with an Australian crew I think. They all survived except one person. I think one survived didn’t he?
DW: One person survived.
RP: Yeah.
DW: And the Germans picked him up and he was a prisoner of war.
RP: Yes. Yeah.
DW: Yeah.
RP: So it was sort of through him that you didn’t fancy the Army or the Navy then.
RP: No. Well, we were the Brylcreem boys you see and that was the thing to do for a seventeen year old.
DK: Did the, did the girls like the uniform?
RP: Oh, not half. Talking about that when I was stationed at Methwold the girls used to come up for the dances in the Mess and we got pally with some of them in our crew and they each bought us a silk scarf. And I had that for years and years. Flew with that all over the place. Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
RP: I’ve forgotten the girl’s name.
DK: Have you still got the scarf though?
RP: Not now.
DK: No. You haven’t.
RP: My wife didn’t know what, knew what that was probably [laughs] She liked it.
DW: Tell, tell them about the flight when you went over Thorpe St Andrew and you came over quite low in a Lancaster.
RP: Yeah. We, I think we were [pause] at this pre-squadron and we were just doing a cross country or something and we’d been up to Leeds because George, someone in his family had just got married and so we flew down, down this back passage [laughs] passage and of course they didn’t know what it was and so we carried on and came back to Norwich and I swear I could see my mother’s linen lying in the garden.
SP: He was that low you could see your mother’s washing.
RP: Yeah.
SP: On the line.
RP: I bet that woke a few people up.
SP: I bet it did.
RP: But it couldn’t, couldn’t have been that low really I suppose but —
DW: Because Ray your mum and dad used to run a fish stall, didn’t they?
RP: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.
DW: Where they used to work.
DK: You didn’t, you didn’t fancy going into the family business then.
RP: I, I said to my dad, ‘Shall I come in?’ ‘No. No. No,’ he said. He wouldn’t like that. So I went off separately.
DW: Your brother worked in it didn’t he?
RP: Yes. Yes. Yeah.
DW: Your brother worked in the —
RP: Had his own shops and things. Yeah.
DK: Ok. Well, I don’t want to tire you out too much.
RP: That’s alright.
DK: But can I just ask obviously a few years have gone on since I last saw you but how do you now look back on those years? How do you think about that?
RP: Well, I was there. I’d done it. I really don’t think too much about it. I just realise how lucky I am that I’m still here sort of thing.
DK: Yeah.
RP: And I’ve done nothing more than many hundreds of thousands of people did exactly the same thing.
DK: Oh, there was one other thing I was wanting to ask you. You, you were at one point flying Stirlings weren’t you?
RP: Yes. Yeah.
DK: What, what did you think of the Stirlings?
RP: A big, more like tanks [laughs] and we managed to write one off at West Wratting.
DK: What happened there? Was it —
RP: We’d been on a cross country flight and I got lost as usual. Anyway, on the way back Dig, the pilot said, ‘I’ve got a date to see a WAAF tonight.’ So he hurried up and tried to shortcut this. There was a shortcut and the answer is that he misjudged the land, the runway and he overshot in the end and of course there was a ditch at the end of the runway and of course the Stirling’s wheels stopped in a ditch [laughs] while the Stirling went on.
DK: Was there, was there much damage?
RP: Written off.
DK: Oh right.
SP: [laughs] Yes.
RP: It was a court martial in affect. We got away with it.
DK: Must have been, must have been quite, quite terrifying as you were trying to get out of the thing was it? Or —
RP: I suppose so. Yeah.
DK: Yeah. You moved pretty quickly did you?
RP: Not half.
DK: And Wellingtons as well. I think you were on Wellingtons as well.
RP: I flew in Wellingtons. Yes. Just for a short while because there was only two engines so there was nothing much for me to do.
DK: As a flight engineer then was it a bit complicated with the Stirling you had to do?
RP: Yes. They were different engines for a start and different, well different petrol, different everything. Petrol tank system was completely different and you weren’t even, you didn’t used to sit next to the pilot on a Stirling. You had your own little cubicle.
DK: Oh right. That must have been a bit awkward then. A bit difficult if you’re not near the pilot.
RP: Well, he was just around the corner. I was not far away.
DK: So the positioning for the flight engineer was better on the Lancaster then.
RP: Oh yes. You had got a whole seat sitting alongside each other. The pilot would be there and my hand would be on the accelerator going up there like that.
DK: Ok then. I’ll, I’ll stop you there because —
[recording paused]
RP: That’s, and used to run them on the aircraft field.
SP: Three motorbikes on an aircraft field.
RP: Yeah.
SP: Between the seven of you to get out and about.
RP: Yeah. And poor old Mike Tripp used to live in the Angel Hotel at Bury St Edmunds with his girlfriend and if ever we were put on that alert somebody would have to get in touch with him, ‘Mike. Mike get back quickly.’ And he tried to get back one day and he slipped on the ice with his motorbike and that crashed and that was no good. But somehow or other he got back just in time. Two or three days later there was a policeman coming up the drive. ‘Is your name Miles Tripp? I’ve got your motorbike.’ [laughs] Yeah.
SP: So then you went down to two bikes did you? Is that?
RP: Yeah.
DK: So, RAF Chedburgh itself what, what was the airfield like?
RP: Well, there’s a picture up there.
DK: Yeah.
RP: Yeah.
DK: Was it, was it a bit not much there or —
RP: Not much there. No.
DK: So where were you billeted then? Was it in a Nissen hut or something?
RP: Around about in a, in a Nissen hut. Yes. Yeah.
DK: And that was, what was it the whole crew in one Nissen hut?
RP: At that time, yes. Yeah.
SP: That’s why it was fairly intense living then and working.
RP: Yes, and Mike, Mike Tripp was in charge of the supplies of coal for the tortoise stove and we used to store the coal [laughs] the coal under his bed. He was the scruffiest airman you could ever see.
DK: Was the, was the coal sort of —
RP: Yeah.
DK: Pinched from different places?
RP: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
DW: Squirrelled.
DK: Squirrelled. Yeah.
SP: Squirreled away.
DK: So did it get rather cold in these Nissen huts then?
RP: Yes. Yeah. But the worst thing is when you’d come home and go to bed and get up in the morning and then the rest of the beds are empty.
DK: Yeah. [pause] Have you, have you been back to the airfield at all? Or —
RP: Yes. We had that main, that reunion I said at Bury St Edmund. That was around about Chedburgh. We went to Chedburgh.
DK: Right.
RP: For that. Yeah.
DK: So your whole crew went back to the airfield then.
RP: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
DK: That must, that must have brought back a few memories for you.
RP: Yes. That’s right. Yeah. I never saw any of them again after that. Well, only Harry and Mike. Yeah. Paul Songest became an antiques dealer in Cornwall.
SP: Not near St Eval though.
RP: No. I don’t know quite know where. Where it was.
DK: Ok. Well, I’m going to switch this off now. I did put it back on again while you weren’t looking.
[recording paused]
DW: The planes in the sky.
SP: Very noisy.
DK: But as I say Ken, Ken Oatley, I interviewed him. He’s, he’s just turned a hundred and one.
RP: Well, he looks very well [laughs] If I look like that at a hundred and one I shan’t mind.
DK: So he, he was on he was on the Dresden raid with you. He’d have been ahead in the Mosquitoes. He was a navigator.
RP: Yes.
DK: On Mosquitoes.
RP: Yes. Yes. [pause] Actually Miles Tripp got, got in trouble for that. I never really did fully understand but he did. He deliberately missed the target.
DK: He mentions that in his book actually.
RP: Yes.
DK: He says —
RP: Yeah.
DK: He did. Were you aware of that at the time?
RP: No. No. No.
DK: Because he says in his book he didn’t get any confirmation from the Master Bomber.
RP: That’s right.
DK: And he said had he been ordered to he would have followed orders.
RP: He would have done. Yes.
DK: But as he didn’t get the order he —
RP: Yes. Yeah.
DK: Because did you ever talk about that raid at all afterwards?
RP: Well, if we did I really can’t remember it. But I’m sure we must have been done. Of course, that was horrendous. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.
[pause]
DK: Because you said you appeared on German TV was it?
RP: Well, I never saw the programme.
DK: I’ve been trying to look for that to see if it’s on. On the internet somewhere.
RP: I remember the man coming over. Again, that was in Bury St Edmunds he interviewed us.
DK: Because the only reason I mentioned it Ken Oatley mentioned to me that he appeared on a German TV programme as well. So I’m wondering if you both appeared on the same TV programme in Germany.
RP: Well, I never saw anything of it at all.
DK: I’ll have to, I’ll have to check on that.
RP: Yeah.
DK: See if you’re on the big screen. Well, hopefully if you get your flypast you’re going to have Ray there with you.
RP: Yeah. That would be great wouldn’t it.
DW: Well, it’s he’ll need, he’ll need to be there.
DK: All the, all the staff are coming.
DW: He’s, he’s got a team. He’s got a team around him with two.
SP: An entourage.
DK: Oh right.
DW: Ray and seven others at Duxford. Samantha wasn’t even there.
SP: No.
DW: So that would have been eight.
SP: Yeah.
DW: And he’s got this full team haven’t you?
DK: A team of, a team of sherpas.
DW: Yeah, well just —
SP: I don’t know about that. Groupies I think.
DK: Groupies. Ah. How do you feel when you see the Lancaster flying again?
RP: It gives us shivers and that.
DK: Really.
RP: I don’t know whether you, you hear it first don’t you?
DK: Yeah. No. I do have a claim to fame. I have flown on one so I know what it’s like.
RP: Yeah.
DK: I flew on the Canadian one when it came over to the UK in 2014.
RP: That’s the one they’ve got at East Kirkby, is it?
DK: No. It’s back in Canada now.
RP: Oh right. Yeah.
DK: But the thing I remember when you’re on board is the noise.
RP: Yes.
DK: How did you feel after an operation of seven or eight hours. How?
RP: Well, as I say when you land yeah and you sit there for two or three minutes and don’t move. That was a good [laughs] a good moment that.
DK: I couldn’t, I couldn’t believe the noise it was making as you were inside and it’s flying along.
RP: That’s right. Yeah.
DK: But you’ve got that for —
RP: You’ve got your earphones on.
DK: But you liked the Lancaster then did you?
RP: Oh yes. That was our favourite. HAA-Able.
DW: The one at Duxford is a Canadian one.
DK: Yes.
DW: It is Canadian made. Yeah. It is. So that could be why it’s slightly different.
DK: Could be. Yeah.
DW: There could have just been a slight difference.
RP: Yeah. I I thought on that photograph that seems slightly different to me.
DW: Yeah.
RP: Well, I didn’t recognise the, the aileron controls on that one. That seemed to be quite a substantial bar control and build. I just remember a lot of wires.
DK: Oh.
DW: Well, they had taken a lot of the wiring out.
RP: Yes. That —
DW: A lot of the wiring is missing. So that would, all you’ve got really is the shell.
DK: It is the Canadians did a lot of modifications to them post war so —
RP: Yeah.
DK: You might be looking at post war modifications.
DW: Well, I think that was ’45 ’46 plane. Stuff like that if I’m correct. So it wasn’t —
DK: Do you think even now you could do the job of a flight engineer on a Lancaster or not?
RP: I would just have to sit there and let the pilot take off.
DK: Would you, would you know what to look for in the dials or for the engines?
RP: I had my own little panel down there.
DK: So it was, it was a better set up then the Stirlings then.
RP: I was, I’m talking about low flying. I was bending down reading my gauges and I looked out and there was a tree above me.
DK: Wow.
RP: Oh dear. We made him stop that in the end.
DK: He must, he must have been quite an expert pilot.
RP: He was [unclear] when he chose me for, to join the aircrew you know how you were all put in a hangar and you’d get told and I found myself sitting and waiting and nothing happened. I thought I’d had it and then suddenly this great tall Aussie stood in front of me, ‘Hiya Cobber. Is your name Ray Parke?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ ‘You’re on top of the list are you?’ ‘Yes, that’s me.’ ‘You’re in. Come with me.’ [laughs] Yeah.
DK: He was, it was a good choice though was it? Or [unclear]
RP: Oh, he was a lovely chap, yeah. A lovely chap.
DK: Did you presumably that was the first time you’d met an Australian. Did you find them culturally —
RP: Yes.
DK: A bit different. Or —
RP: That was the first time I met an Australian. Yes.
DK: What did you think of them when you met the Aussies?
RP: Well, brash. Yes. I liked them. I got along well with them. Yeah.
DK: They obviously made good pilots as well.
RP: Yes. He turned out to be a good pilot. He had to learn like the rest of us.
DK: He, he, he didn’t carry on flying after the war then.
RP: Not that I know of. He became a general manager, General Motors manager in Australia. Adelaide I think or something. Yeah.
DK: You never got the chance to go out to Australia to see him then.
RP: Not to see him. I have been to Australia but —
DK: Alright. Ok. We’ll stop there.
DW: That’s lovely. Well —
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 Ray Parke. Two
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Kavanagh
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2023-03-30
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Format
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00:46:45 Audio Recording
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Pending review
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
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AParkeRG230330, PParkeRG2303
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
England--Bury St. Edmunds
England--Cornwall (County)
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
England--Norwich
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Saarbrücken
Wales--Glamorgan
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Ray Parke trained as a flight engineer. During a training flight the pilot wanted to get back to base as soon as possible because he had a date but they were flying a Stirling. The pilot made an error on landing and the wheel stayed in the ditch and the Stirling kept going. The aircraft was a write off. Ray and his crew went on to join 218 Squadron at RAF Chedburgh. He completed forty operations before he was twenty. On their fortieth trip the CO said he would let them have a easy trip for the last one but it turned out to be Essen because it was changed at the last minute. On their first trip they got lost because the navigator had been given the wrong winds. On one operation they had a damaged engine and were losing height when a Mustang appeared and escorted them to the coast. Discusses the Eighth Passenger and Faith is a Windsock, the books his bomb aimer Miles Tripp wrote, and their crew reunion. Goes on to talk about his tour of operations, the bombing of Dresden and low flying.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-12
1945-02-13
1945-02-14
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
218 Squadron
African heritage
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
entertainment
flight engineer
Lancaster
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Methwold
RAF St Athan
RAF St Eval
Stirling
superstition
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1171/11740/PMortensenJC1803.2.jpg
2902abff131d5b25fa39163e7da37336
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1171/11740/AMortensenJC180917.1.mp3
54eab7ebac5dce038fc42a6a53cfc8f2
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
Mortensen, James Christian
J C Mortensen
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Warrant Officer James Mortensen (1924, 2209575 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a wireless operator with 149 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-09-17
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
Mortensen, JC
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 Warrant Officer James Mortensen of 149 Squadron, at 2.30 on Monday 17th September 2018 at his home in Leyland, near Preston. First questions if you don’t mind James, if you would just confirm your service number for us and your date of birth please.
JM: Double two o nine five seven five. [Laughs]
BW: You never forget that, do you?
JM: You never forget it. [Laughs]
BW: And what was your date of birth?
JM: 27th 12th 1924.
BW: Which makes you currently 93.
JM: Correct.
BW: Where were you born and where did you grow up, you mentioned -?
JM: Liverpool.
BW: Liverpool. Whereabouts in Liverpool, actually in the centre?
JM: Aigburch, Liverpool 17.
BW: Okay, and Aigburch, that’s an unusual spelling, isn’t it. A u g -
JM: A i g b u r c h.
BW: And along with your mum and dad did you have any brothers and sisters?
JM: Yes, I had two sisters and a brother.
BW: And were you in between, or were you the older brother?
JM: Yeah, I was third, [laughs] I had two older sisters and a younger brother.
BW: And what was home life like in Aigburch, was it quite a nice area?
JM: It was very good, my father was a detective in the police.
BW: What did your mum do?
JM: She just stayed at home [laughs].
JM: Unfortunately, she died in 1937. Very, very young. [Pause]
BW: So you would have not been so old yourself, about nine.
JM: About thirteen, fourteen that’s all.
BW: Thirteen, okay. And whereabouts did you go to school?
JM: St Anne’s Church of England School.
BW: Was that the, was that your first one, was it a primary school or - ?
JM: It was a primary school, yes. And it was, it was a church school right through, from five to fourteen.
BW: And you stayed there, as you say, until you were fourteen. I saw a school report that said you had a special aptitude for Maths and English, is that right?
JM: Yeah.
BW: Were they your favourite subjects then?
JM: Yes, [laughs] maths still is.
BW: Do you think you have a technical background, or a logical sort of brain to-?
JM: I can always remember phone numbers. When I pick up the phone I can ring up anybody and I never look at the, I know the numbers. [laughs]
BW: And you came top of the class in your last examination.
JM: Yeah.
BW: So was that, I think they called it high school certificate, is that right?
JM: Yeah.
BW: So in your year, you were top of that year.
JM: Had my mother been alive, I’d have gone to university. But dad decided otherwise. He was a self made man, he was a detective sergeant and he reckoned that all his children should be the same.
BW: What would you have liked to study at university had you been able to go, did you have plans?
JM: I don’t know, I never considered, I might be, I’d have got there.
BW: I just wondered if you’d had plans –
JM: No.
BW: Or particular focus on things to study.
JM: I was always very keen on maths, probably would have been something to do with that.
BW: And when war broke out you would have been about fifteen years old then, wouldn’t you?
JM: Yeah, I was in the ATC.
BW: And that only started in 1941 didn’t it.
JM: Yeah, number 7 Squadron, 7F squadron, the Founder squadron. That was in Liverpool.
BW: Did you join in 1941, or did you -?
JM: I can’t remember when I joined.
BW: Okay.
JM: I’d got up to NCO or some sort, I remember that, but which I don’t know.
BW: Did you manage to get any flying?
JM: Oh yes, and also we did gliding. That was great [laughs].
BW: So was it –
JM: RAF Sealand we went for that.
BW: Okay.That’s in North Wales.
JM: Yeah, North Wales, Cheshire, Cheshire.
BW: Was it the flying that attracted you to join the Air Force or was there some other aspect to training?
JM: It was flying, flying.
BW: And did you have intentions to become a pilot at this stage?
JM: I went in as a PNB, you know, pilot, navigator, bomb aimer; and when we got the, we went down to Bridgenorth when we, when I was joined up. We went to London first, you know for the ordinary thing at Lords cricket ground, and then I was moved to Bridgenorth. A lot of us decided then what we were going to do. And I went as PNB, and they said well you can go as a PNB but there’s a hell of a waiting list, and you’ve got to go to America or Canada. And he said, ‘it’s a long course,’ he said, ‘of course you can go as a rear gunner right away,’ I said, ‘No thank you’. [laughs]. And he said, ‘well we’ve got a radio school going, as a wireless operator.’ He had a course. I said I fancied that, so I went on that. If I’d gone on the PNB course to America I would have had to wait about eight months, and then it’s about another eight or ten months flying, so it rewarded me well.
BW: So what year was when it you joined up then?
JM: ‘43.
BW: In June I think it was, so you’d have been eighteen.
JM: Yes.
BW: And that was, at that time the minimum age for joining wasn’t it, the earliest point at which you could join.
JM: I’m not sure.
BW: Were you, you said you left school at fourteen,
JM: Yes.
BW: Were you employed between fourteen and eighteen?
JM: Yes, I worked in an office first, as an office clerk, doing the postage stamp et cetera, and then I went into Roots aircraft, building Halifaxes.
BW: And what were, what was your trade when you were building Halifaxes?
BW: Well I got up to like a leading hand, in charge of, they were all of women then, very few men and I was in charge, I was only about eighteen, seventeen whatever it was, and I was in charge of older women, because at that time they wouldn’t let women be in charge [chuckle].
BW: And what kind of things were you instructing?
JM: I was doing the interior of the Halifax, you know the riveting all round. You’d hold the gun inside while somebody outside -
BW: So you had to be quite, exactly the right position.
JM: Yeah, well you went along in a row, and you went from one to another and if you missed it hard luck! [laughs]
BW: And did you enjoy the work?
JM: Oh yes, it were very good.
BW: Was, sometimes these shifts I understood would have been pretty long and very long working hours, did you ever get a chance for a social life in between at all, or-?
JM: Oh yes, we used to go out and enjoy ourselves, a crowd of us. [chuckle]
BW: So you, you joined up in 1943, and you decided to go to be a wireless operator.
JM: Yeah.
BW: And that was simply really because of the shorter waiting list and training time, wasn’t it?
JM: Yeah.
BW: How did you find the training for that profession?
JM: It was excellent. It was RAF Madley in Hereford.
BW: And how long were you there?
JM: About eleven months, it was a long course.
BW: Can you describe what sort of things you were doing during that time?
JM: Yes. We started off learning the morse code, and eventually you had to get up to a certain speed, I got up to thirty two words per minute sending and twenty eight receiving which was not right at the top, and then we learnt all about the TR1154 55 which was the radio transmitter receiver we used in the Lancs. And we had to strip them, well they stripped them down and we had to put them back together eventually when we’d learned all about the valves, they were valves then of course. [chuckle] We used to take the condenser out, or put a dud one in or a dud valve and you had to come in and sort it out.
BW: Presumably this was not just so that you could maintain the radio let’s say in daylight hours in the aircraft, taken out, potentially you would have had to look at a problem with the set in the aircraft at night as well.
JM: Yeah.
BW: Were you training in fairly realistic conditions, in the sense would they turn the lights off to try and recreate night conditions or anything like that?
JM: No.
BW: Just for practice -
JM: Not that I can remember.
BW: Okay. I believe you began your training from then on Wellingtons, your sort of aircrew training.
JM: Yeah.
BW: Do you recall where that was?
JM: It’s all in me log books this. I can’t remember them all.
BW: Okay.
JM: We had Blenheims as well.
BW: So you learnt on Blenheims too?
JM: But on the radio school we were in Percival Proctors.
BW: Okay.
JM: And Avro Ansons and then the flight things for the radio. We were taught it on the ground first and then we used to go two or three in, in an aircraft and take over.
BW: And what kind of exercises were you doing in the aircraft.
JM: Only air to ground communications, morse code and everything.
BW: How did you find that compared to doing it on the ground, any different?
JM: It were very good, very interesting. [Laughs]
BW: What were your assessments like on that, did you, you said you came pretty well near the top on the sending and receiving in Morse Code, was that the same in the air, did you find that, those easy?
JM: Well yeah about the same. [pause]
BW: I believe you met your pilot who would become your, let’s say your, your regular crew pilot while you were flying Wellingtons.
JM: Yeah.
BW: Was that Sergeant Heady?
JM: Addy.
BW: Addy.
JM: A d d y.
BW: And what was, what was he like?
JM: He was fine.
BW: Did you get on pretty well?
JM: Big, tall chap, he lived in Torquay actually. [pause] He was a sergeant then of course. Then eventually all Bomber Command pilots were commissioned.
BW: And so he, he obviously was potentially one of the last remaining NCO pilots, wasn’t he?
JM: Yes, he must have been because it was March when I got to the squadron, ’45 so only few months before, er after a, the war ended.
BW: And from Wellingtons you went on to Lancasters and I believe you started at 16 68 Heavy Conversion Unit.
JM: Yeah, Bottesford, yeah.
BW: Is that Norfolk?
JM: No, I don’t think it is.
BW: South Lincolnshire?
JM: South Lincolnshire I think, Bottesford.
BW: And how did you meet the rest of your crew? ‘Cause you’d meet at the Conversion Unit or thereabouts before going on to the operational squadron?
JM: Well when we met the skipper there were other people, other navigators and bomb aimers there and we all sort of got together.
BW: Did you, some crews met in a hangar, was that your experience?
JM: I can’t remember that. [Laughs]
BW: You just sort of met them -
JM: It’s seventy years ago [laughs].
BW: Do you recall once you got to Methwold in, was it Methwold?
JM: Yep.
BW: In Norfolk, and 149 Squadron, East India Squadron. Do you recall the rest of the crew?
JM: Oh, I know the crew very well, yes.
BW: Do you know what their names and roles were at all?
JM: Oh yes, I kept in touch with three of them.
BW: Who were they?
JM: I kept in touch with the pilot, we used to send Christmas cards to each other every year till about three years ago, then it stopped, I’ve heard nothing since. The navigator died of pneumonia many years ago. The rear gunner, I kept in touch with him and his wife wrote me to saying he’d died. The navigator died of pneumonia I think it was, oh many years ago. So there’s only the bomb aimer and the mid upper gunner that I didn’t know anything about, and I still don’t.
BW: Do you recall their names at all?
JM: Yeah, Bob Simpson the bomb aimer he was from North, up Northumberland, and Barney the gunner, the top, no, mid upper gunner he was from London. Whether they are still alive I don’t know, but they are the only two I don’t know about.
BW: Do you recall who the rear gunner was at all?
JM: Alf Fawcett.
BW: Alf Fawcett.
JM: F a w c e double t. I kept in touch with him and then it was his wife who rang, or phone, sent a letter to me saying he had died, many years ago.
BW: And when you joined were the rest of them all NCOs, were they all sergeant aircrew like you or were any of them -?
JM: All except for the flight engineer, he was the older one of the lot. He remustered from ground crew. So he was like the father of us all, he kept, kept an eye on us. We had a father figure amongst the crew.
BW: And who, do you recall his name, who he was?
JM: Oh gawd, it’ll come back to me, I can’t think of it all but.
BW: No worries. And you said you, said earlier, that you flew with a reduced crew and there was only two gunners.
JM: We only ever had two gunners – a mid upper and a rear gunner.
BW: Okay.
JM: We never had a front gunner, the bomb aimer used to do that. And if we had a mid under, I used to do the mid-under. [pause]
BW: What was, what were the facilities like on the base at Methwold? Do you recall? Did you all share the same accommodation or were you in the sergeants mess, or -?
JM: We had a sergeants mess, but then, it was, they had six wings, and every wing had a dance. So six nights a week we were dancing. [Laughter] and we used to bring in the civvies from Hereford, on the bus, which the WAAFs hated.
BW: So there was, there was quite a good social life through there.
JM: Oh yes. Brilliant social life. And at Methwold, they didn’t have a cinema in Methwold and we had one on the camp so we used to bring the girls in to watch any films and things. It was a very sleepy little village.
BW: Was it quite close by?
JM: Yeah, couple, two or three mile, that’s all.
BW: So you could walk in to town.
JM: Oh well, you wouldn’t walk it, but you could get there handy, you know.
BW: Okay. Did you ever socialise off, off base as well, did you go into Methwold for drinks or anything like that, or did you just stay there?
JM: Yes, they were very good actually, because. My wife has been dead over twenty years now, but when she was alive we decided we’d have a, we had a caravan, I used to tow a caravan, and we stayed in Norfolk, so we went to Methwold, and as we drove into Methwold, right opposite at the junction we came to, was a café, and I said to my wife, I said: ‘That used to be a pub.’ She said, ‘It’s a café,’ so I said anyway let’s go and have a cup of tea. So we went and had a cup of tea, and I said to the lady, this looks very, very like a pub we used to drink in, and she said come with me and she took me through a little side door, and in the back was the bar we used to drink in.
BW: Did it bring back a lot of memories?
JM: Oh yes.
BW: Did you share many of those memories with your wife at the time?
JM: Oh yes, they were very good, some of them [chuckle].
BW: So just thinking now in terms of your sort of operational duties. Can you describe a typical operation, how you prepared for it?
JM: Well the first thing we did, we used to go down to the wireless operator briefing, they’d give us the call signs and everything else we needed to know, and emergency come-backs and things, and then we all used to go to the main briefing and then we found out where we were going.
BW: And how long would the main briefing sort of take?
JM: It would be half an hour, to an hour you know, on the Berlin one, explaining everything you know. It was quite a long flight.
BW: Hmm. Berlin was a notoriously difficult target, how did you feel –
JM: That was our last one.
BW: Yeah. How did you feel when it came up on your list again?
JM: Um, I don’t know, at twenty years of age you’re not frightened, [chuckle] you should be, and I think half the time you felt it was an adventure, off we go again.
BW: So once the briefing had finished, what kinds of things would happen then? What would you be doing in order to join the aircraft?
JM: You’d get all your equipment together, the order they do things and then you needed helmets and then out to the aircraft.
BW: And would you be bused out there?
JM: Oh yeah, well either bused or in a open, or a closed in, what do you call, lorry.
BW: Yeah. A truck with a canvas back sort of thing.
JM: Yeah, yeah.
BW: And did you or any of the crew have any superstitions or particular rituals for getting on board? I mean some crews did, but it was particular to them. Did you have any?
JM: Nothing I can think of, the rear gunner used to wave to a WAAF friend he used have, as we drove down, taxied round the perimeter, she’d you know come out and wave to him and that was about it.
BW: So you would all get on the aircraft then, ready to start the operation.
JM: Yeah.
BW: What kind of checks or preparations would you make at that point?
JM: Well we’d have to set the transmitter receiver up for the frequencies we were going to use, because every hour we got a group message, any agency could come in between, but every hour they got a group message, and you had to set up for that and everything. If you went in a different aircraft, because you never always flew in the same one, somebody else would have a different call sign so you’d have to put your own in.
BW: And did it take long at all to, to get ready, were you fairly quick and efficient at doing it?
JM: Yes as soon as possible so as you could sit down. [Chuckle]
BW: And as you sort of taxied out would the pilot be calling the crew for checks or anything like that, would he - ?
JM: He would just make sure we were all in position and then he’d took over with the control tower.
BW: So right at the, I suppose, start of a, an operation then, [cough] how did it feel if you think back to your first operation, and you having done all that training in the lead up to it, do you recall how it felt to go on your first op, over Germany?
JM: I think they all felt the same, we went either to the Ruhr or Berlin, but they all felt the same. At twenty years of age you weren’t bothered.
BW: There were no butterflies in the stomach or anything like that?
JM: Well, I suppose there must have been, but it wasn’t really in fear, I always knew I was coming back. ‘Cause I always made arrangements where I was going the next night. Mind, it didn’t always work out that way.
BW: And being so close to the end of the war because this was around March.
JM: Yes, March ’45. Yeah.
BW: 1945. Did you feel at any point prior to that an eagerness to get on to operations before the war ended, or -?
JM: Oh yes, we wanted to go, I mean we did three or four, and then we had a mess up and we were sent to Feltwell on the bombing course.
BW: And was there any reason given for that, being sent on the course?
JM: Well yes, [chuckle] a difference between the pilot and the navigator, and where to bomb.
BW: And do you think that was a mis-identified target or -?
JM: Yeah.
BW: Okay.
JM: When we came back, because there was a camera on board of course. And they photographed where we bombed and we were sent from Methwold to Feltwell which only a couple of mile away, and we did a fortnight bombing practice.
BW: Were those the only repercussions from the incident?
JM: Yeah. That’s all that I knew. I don’t know what happened to the pilot, have no idea. But they still stayed with us.
BW: So they certainly weren’t separated or anything like that.
JM: No.
BW: Were there any particular incidents from other raids that you went on? You flew in total four operational sorties, two during the day and two at night. Were there any particular incidents that stood out from those?
JM: Only one, when we were attacked by a night fighter. That was fun, well it wasn’t fun then but, but the mid upper started on him and the rear gunner and then I had a mid under and I had a go but I don’t think we hit him. But it must have been about, well a month later, we got a DFM sent to the squadron, only one. I don’t know who got it, I’ve no idea, it shouldn’t have been shared between the crew. somebody got it I don’t know who, could have been anyone.
BW: So potentially that might, might have been over, over Berlin, on your last sortie.
JM: It could well have been.
BW: Were there any other, there were no other, no other incidents, you only mentioned the one.
JM: No, I saw a few Halifaxes and Lancs hit and go down, but we were never hit or anything, so, just that one, the night fighter came down, over, he never hit us, he just went just past us and went underneath and that was it.
BW: And you mention your role was dual role as a mid-under gunner as well. Can you describe what that entailed?
JM: Well, it was very, very, very few aircraft had a mid-under turret. Most of the time they didn’t. They was just all flat prone. But if we were on an aircraft that had a mid-under I used to use it, that’s all. It was very seld,I think I only used it once, I think.
BW: And what sort of –
JM: Because most of them didn’t have them.
BW: What sort of gun were you firing?
JM: The 303, four 303s or two, I can’t remember now. They were 303s I know.
BW: And how were you positioned in the aircraft, clearly you’d be sat on the floor.
JM: Yes.
BW: But were you just, was there any kind of seating for you to be in as there was for other gunners?
JM: No, not really. You sort of bent down sort of thing, you know, on the loo seat we had. But then only happened once so, all the other aircraft didn’t have mid-unders.
BW: And were you given any gunnery training?
JM: Oh I did some gunnery training, yes,
BW: And was yours –
JM: ‘Cause I went in as a WOP/AG first, then half way through they changed it to the S brevet for Signals, so WOP/AG finished and the Signallers took over.
BW: And were you, was yours the only aircraft on the squadron with the mid-under gunner or were there any, any others?
JM: We didn’t have a mid-under gunner.
BW: Or any of them –
JM: It was the wireless op that did it. [laughs]
BW: Yeah, but were, were there any other aircraft on the squadron, on your squadron, that had that facility?
JM: Some of them, I never went through them all, but some I flew had, I think there was two had it, all the rest didn’t. Cause there were very, very few of them had them.
BW: Interesting this.
JM: Because they were old ones. Because they were the early mark one Lancs that had the mid under.
BW: Okay. And were you, from your position in the aircraft, you are fairly enclosed, were you able at any stage able to see the targets you were flying over at all?
JM: I had a window alongside me.
BW: So you had a reasonable view.
JM: I had a wonderful view, [laughter]. It was only when, apart from the pilot and the bomb aimer in the front, this was the only window, it was smashing and I could look out and see what was happening.
BW: Do you recall what it was like flying over the targets during the day as opposed to during the night, was it any significant difference for you?
JM: You were more vulnerable during the day, you could be seen easier of course, but we never had any problems at all, apart from that once. Which was like a trip going out and coming back, dropping your bombs and coming back. We were very lucky.
BW: Fairly straight forward then, wasn’t it?
JM: Yeah. Fifty percent luck.
BW: And I believe you were also involved in, or your flights after the Berlin raid and after the surrender, involved POW repatriation.
JM: Yes.
BW: You had one around May.
JM: Yeah, brought Italian prisoners, our prisoners from Italy, brought them back and also dropped food supplies to the people in Holland, got a photograph there of it.
BW: Can you describe those kind of sorties? They are quite different.
JM: It was wonderful actually, because we were flying over, we had to fly pretty low to drop them, and there were thousands of people round the, wherever we were dropping them, and we were frightened of hitting them, so that’s the point, they were so, because the minute the stuff dropped they were on them, because they were short of food.
BW: And when you say it’s very low level, would you say it’s below two hundred and fifty feet, something like that?
JM: Oh no, I wouldn’t think so.
BW: Slightly above.
JM: Probably about a thousand feet.
BW: Thousand. Okay.
JM: But, we couldn’t be too high or when they dropped you didn’t want to damage anything. You didn’t drop from a big height. We’d have messed some.
BW: Did they, do you recall how they delivered the food packages? Was it a case of just opening the bomb bay doors or did they go out the side, the sort of the crew door or anything like that?
JM: We used to throw them out the doors mainly ‘cause you couldn’t put them in the bomb bay really.
BW: What sort of size packages are we talking about do you think?
JM: Oh, I can’t remember, but they ended up on a short parachute down there, but the minute they landed they were on.
BW: So I guess they were kind of um, boxes that you could lift and -.
JM: I think there’s a photograph there isn’t there, that one.
BW: Yes, so these show, this photograph happens to show a Lancaster with its bomb bay doors open.
JM: There must have been some went down from there.
BW: And that, looking at that, the people on the ground obviously seem pretty happy to see you. Was that something, does that photograph look pretty familiar to you, was that the kind of thing you would see?
JM: Yeah, they were all waiting, we had to be very careful we miss them.
BW: Did you fly many of those, or was it just the one?
JM: Must have been a couple that’s all. We also took the top brass over the bombing areas after the war. They wanted to see what damage had been done to Berlin and places like that, I forget the name now, there was a special name for it. But top brass used to come and fly with us, so that they could see what had happened and went back again.
BW: Did you have to give up your seat for any of them so they could have a look out the window?
JM: No, I had to stay there in case there was a call. [Laughs]
BW: And just thinking about the POW flights, what can you recall of those?
JM: Oh, that was unbelievable, they were really, down and out and we took cigarettes and chocolate with us and gave it them, they were pleased as anything, you know. More Brits we brought back, from Italy.
BW: How many do you think you, you managed to fit in the aircraft?
JM: I can’t remember that.
BW: Because it was quite tight those.
JM: But they, they made room for them, you know. But they were very, very, very [emphasis] grateful for being brought back.
BW: And were they all RAF POWs? The Army?
JM: No, no, the Army, Navy, not Navy, Army and RAF mainly.
BW: And did they look like they’d had a rough time at all or were they - ?
JM: They didn’t look very happy, well they did happy when we got there.
BW: You flew both Wellingtons and Lancasters. Did you have a preference having flown either, was there any – ?
JM: Oh, the Lancaster.
BW: Particular characteristics?
JM: The Lancaster definitely, much better. Also flew in a mosquito.
BW: Have you: what was that like?
JM: Well, it was queer how it happened. I was a Warrant Officer then, I believe, or a flight sergeant, one of them, and I was in the office and this bloke came, was a pilot, he came in and he said, ‘Are you busy?’ I said, ‘Not too busy why?’ He said ‘I’m going up for a flight’ he said, ‘I need someone with me.’ Okay, fair enough. Told them, say where I was going, I went out there was a Mosquito, [laugh] terrific.
BW: Do you recall where you went?
JM: No, we were just flying round generally but, terrific aircraft.
BW: It wasn’t at low level was it, was it er - ?
JM: Just bits and pieces.
BW: Really.
JM: Oh no, the only low level was in the air display down in London, that was er, murder. We all went down for Battle of Britain day and the Lancs were going to do a low level fly past and the pilot was Squadron Leader, I’ve forgotten his surname now, but he said, I was going with him, only two of us, I had to act as flight engineer as well. He said okay. We got there and it was pouring rain so we all went to the pub, then the sun came out and they decided to go ahead with the operation. Did a four engine fly over, then a three engine, then a two engine. He said, ‘do you fancy a single?’ I said ‘you can go to hell!’ [Laugh] And then on the way back he said, ‘I’m knackered’ he said, ‘you can fly it back,’ so I flew it back, only straight and level obviously, keep the height and that’s all. And then woke him up when we got near the drome.
BW: You had no issues flying it, or taking, taking control or anything?
JM: Hmm?
BW: You had no issues taking control or anything it was very easy to fly?
JM: Well we used to take turns apiece the crew, pilot used to come out and, not on ops obviously, but low, on cross country flying we used to take, he’d to say come and have a go I’m having a rest and we’d all take turns. [Laughs]
BW: How did it feel to fly?
JM: It was fine.
BW: That’s quite something, to be just given a go on a Lancaster.
JM: Mind you, don’t forget there was a flight engineer sitting alongside you and he’s a pilot as well.
BW: True. Were there any other incidents, or sorties that were particularly memorable for you?
JM: No, I don’t think so, only the low level one we did, over East Anglia, about five of us in formation. Oh god, cows and sheep running riot.
BW: So there were five –
JM: They had permission to do that of course.
BW: So there were five Lancasters, in -
JM: Formation.
BW: Were you fairly close formation?
JM: No, not too close.
BW: So fairly loose formation, and presumably shaped like an arrowhead, one lead and two either side.
JM: Yes, from what I can remember. Oh, it was great.
BW: What sort of height were you for that?
JM: I can’t remember that, it was quite low.
BW: And you were over East Anglia.
JM: Yes.
BW: At that point. Did you go over the beach?
JM: Over the sea as well.
BW: Excellent. And who was your CO? You mentioned, you mentioned him before, when you went down to display, who was your CO on that?
JM: Group Captain, I can’t remember his name now, but he was a smashing bloke. And when we went out on day trips and things, instead of him coming in the car he come in the truck with us. He was a real down to earth bloke, you know, very nice.
BW: There was a Wing Commander Cholton in charge of the squadron at the time. I don’t suppose he, his name rings any bells does it?
JM: No.
BW: No. Okay. So after the war ended and you’ve had these, er additional sort of sorties, what sort of things happened to you after that?
JM: Well I was asked to stay on, sign on and stay on. And I had, had three months of church parades, drills, no flying, and I got bored to tears and said oh gawd this isn’t for me so I came out. But I was offered a commission if I stayed on, but I didn’t, perhaps it was a mistake, I don’t know, I’d have got a lovely pension by now. [laughs]
BW: So at that stage you were a Warrant Officer.
JM: Yes.
BW: And sort of, potentially you’d been asked to consider going up to officer but declined it, and so this would be, your, your service in the RAF ended in –
JM: ’47.
BW: February 1947.
JM: It would be the end of ’46.
BW: And you asked –
JM: I wasn’t the only one, I think they asked quite a few to stay on, but I was one of them. After having, as I said, a few months of no flying, ‘cause we hardly ever went up after the war finished, apart from these special ones, and there was that and loads of church parades every Sunday, and parades during the week, no, I thought I couldn’t stick four more of this. But afterwards I thought maybe I should have done.
BW: And were you still based at Methwold during that time?
JM: No, I was up at Kings Lynn. Marham. RAF Marham.
BW: And so eventually in ’47 you asked to be demobbed, and what happened to you then, what, what course did your life take after that?
JM: Well, I was sent to Burtonwood, that’s where we got demobbed, and I got me suit [chuckle] and then I went home.
BW: So Burtonwood’s not too far from Liverpool, really.
JM: No.
BW: Near Warrington.
JM: Yeah, Warrington. That’s where we got demobbed, at Burtonwood.
BW: And did you go back to the family home in Aigburch?
JM: Oh no, my father had remarried then and moved to Hunts Cross, which was a [posh voice] superior area of Liverpool, so they say.
BW: [Cough] And was he still in the police force at that time?
JM: Yep.
BW: So presumably he had been promoted from -
JM: He’d made it to Detective Sergeant, yeah. And then he remarried of course, and we won’t go into further details, and I left home. [chuckle] He [emphasis] was all right.
BW: And where, okay, So, um –
JM: I went into digs then.
BW: And were you still in the Liverpool area, on your own?
JM: Oh yes.
BW: And what did you do for employment after that, after coming out the RAF?
JM: My uncle was in the aircraft industry and I went into Roots and they were making Lancasters, Halifaxes then. No, start again, [mutter] can’t remember, oh, um, what the heck did I do then? [Pause] I went to the British School of Motoring, as a driving instructor.
BW: And how long were you there?
JM: About fourteen months, because someone said to us there was a firm opening up at Speke, where they made Ford cars and they wanted delivery drivers. So, I had a pupil, I said ‘you’re going for a nice long ride today, we’re going out to Speke!’ And we went out to Speke, I went to see the manager and he signed me up right away, well, being an instructor. And a couple of weeks later I was delivering new cars and Fords, all over the country. Single cars. Then eventually I drove the car transporters.
BW: How long did that last?
JM: Oh gawd, twenty odd years, I was there a long time. I retired from there actually.
BW: And what –
JM: I’ve been retired since 1997.
BW: And what sort of things have occupied your time since? I mean obviously you spent time with your wife, as you say, before she died two years ago, sadly.
JM: We had, well we had a series of caravans in the Lake District. We loved the Lake District and still do, and we had a caravan near Keswick, so we used to spend nearly every weekend up at Keswick. Used to go for long walks and it was great.
BW: Very nice part of the world.
JM: Oh, I love Keswick.
BW: And, just thinking about the sort of commemoration and recognition given to Bomber Command and the veterans since, have you been to the Bomber Command Centre in Lincoln? Alright. Okay, but you’ve been to East Kirkby and to Coningsby and so on.
JM: I went to Madley once, that’s all. I’ve been to Lincoln.
BW: And did you go to the unveiling of the memorial in Green Park?
JM: No, no, I went to the Cathedral, because they’ve got all the information in the Cathedral there.
BW: And what are your thoughts about the recognition that’s been given to bomber crew since?
JM: I think it’s about time, I mean we did lose fifty percent.
BW: Yeah, the 125,000 crew that’s –
JM: Yes, that’s a lot of crew.
BW: And lost 55,000 plus.
JM: Yeah.
BW: And were there any additional or other memorable incidents that you can recall from your service at all?
JM: No, not really.
BW: Do you think we’ve covered everything?
JM: Apart from one when I could have died, [chuckle] that was our own fault. We went out to a night do, in Hereford, a dance, and the last bus was eleven something and it was about twenty to twelve, and the, what do you call it? the SPs came up to me, said, Warrant he said, ‘I am going to give you a chance, there’s twenty minutes to go till midnight, if you are still here at midnight we’re booking you.’ So, we stayed didn’t we, and we got booked. But anyway we came out, there were no buses, and it was about eight mile back to the camp, about one o’clock in the morning and we were all walking along, horrible snowing and all, it was a horrible night, and lucky a, one of the transports came along, with food things, we got a lift back in that. God knows how we’d have got back otherwise. [Laugh] Course we got seven days for that, didn’t we.
BW: Was that the only time you spent in –
JM: CB, yes. [Laugh]
BW: And when you married, what, what happened? You had, obviously a son, Dave and -
JM: Got another son in America, Andrew, and a daughter in the Wirral. My son’s coming over from America in November.
BW: So you’ve had a pretty good post war life really, haven’t you?
JM: I’ve a very enjoyable life.
BW: Yeah. You enjoyed your RAF service and you’ve enjoyed your time since.
JM: Yes.
BW: Good. Well, that’s all the questions I have for you, James, so -
JM: Good!
BW: Thank you very much for your time and the information you’ve given to the IBCC.
JM: If you want any other stuff, there’s photographs there maybe, if you want them, and the, just make sure they’re working.
BW: So would you –
JM: Short burst on each, front and rear, and you know, that was it, as I say it was only once I think, only once or twice at the most, I ever had [emphasis] a mid under, most of the time I didn’t. There were very few Lancs had them.
BW: And you, you’d never fired your guns in anger had you?
JM: Only once. That was once.
BW: Just the, when you saw that night fighter.
JM: Yeah. Whether we hit it or not I’ve no idea. But we got a DFM to the squadron afterwards. I don’t know who got it. They said we were going to draw lots to get it, never heard any more about it.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with James Christian Mortensen
Creator
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Brian Wright
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
2018-09-17
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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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AMortensenJC180917, PMortensenJC1803
Conforms To
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Pending review
Format
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00:49:17 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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Great Britain
England--Herefordshire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
Description
An account of the resource
Born on 27 December 1924 in Aigburth Liverpool, James was 15 when war broke out in Europe. He intended to join as a pilot, navigator, bomber aimer in 1943 but due to shorter waiting list and training time he trained to become a wireless operator at RAF Madley. James mentions that he trained in older medium bomber such as Blenheims and Wellingtons, and mentions how he met his regular pilot, Sgt Aedy. He qualified for heavy bombers at RAF Bottesford, on Lancasters, before being assigned to 149 Squadron 'West Indies' at RAF Methwold.
James says that a separate briefing was held for wireless operators to inform them of callsigns and code words to be used before the main briefing. James was also the mid-under gun operator when the aircraft required one. James’ crew only flew four operations over Berlin being near the end of the war; he mentions a mis-identified target incident and an attack by a night fighter. James’ account also details being involved in the Operation Dodge and Operation Manna, as well as recalling a time that he was invited to fly in a Mosquito which he described as ‘a terrific aircraft’. James continue to serve until 1947 until he de-mobilised due to his ‘dislike of a lack of flying’. James retired from active service as a warrant officer. He would work as a delivery driver until retiring in 1997. James recalls that he kept in contact with three members of his crew until 2015.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Alex Joy
Anne-Marie Watson
Steph Jackson
149 Squadron
aircrew
Blenheim
bombing
Distinguished Flying Medal
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
military ethos
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Mosquito
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
RAF Bottesford
RAF Feltwell
RAF Madley
RAF Methwold
training
Wellington
wireless operator
wireless operator / air gunner
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1154/11712/AThomasPG180302.1.mp3
5f48a36e221c6e96879ffcba1c0006cb
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Title
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Thomas, Peter
P Thomas
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Peter Thomas (b. 1923, 1524026 Royal Air Force) and his log book. He flew operations as a navigator with 149 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Peter Thomas and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-03-02
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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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Thomas, PG
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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MC: The interview is being conducted on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre. The Interviewer Is Mike Connock and the interviewee is Peter Thomas. The interview is taking place at Mr Thomas’ home at [buzz] Lincoln on Friday the 2nd of March 2018. Also in attendance is Peter Selby and Catherine Selby. Ok. Peter, what I’d like to start with is just to start with just tell me a bit about when and where you were born.
PT: Oh, I was born 26 Glenfield Road, Nelson. Are you picking that up?
MC: Yeah. That’s fine.
PT: Yeah. That’s where I was born. Nelson.
MC: When was that?
PT: 26 Glenfield Road, Nelson. There’s a lot of twenty sixes in my life and I regard them as being of good fortune. So I was born at 26 Glenfield Road, Nelson.
MC: In Lancashire.
PT: Lancashire.
MC: Yeah. What, what did your parents do?
PT: My father was a furniture manager and my mother stayed at home and she had three sons to look after. You know going to work and playing football and taking dirty washing to her, you know [laughs] from football because it was a slushy, a bit of a slushy pitch.
MC: What do you remember about your schooldays then, Peter?
PT: Oh, I liked, in contrast to my younger brother who didn’t like it I loved the school. It was Nelson Secondary School and it was just, I don’t know. I should have brought a photograph of it but it was just off the off the, off Walton Lane and it was on Oxford Road. So From Glenfield Road you went there, there and on Oxford Road and there behold. And in recent times, it was built in 1927 and the headmaster was a very strict man. He was. He was mad on getting people through. He was only interested in getting through, people through matriculation as it was then. So, I went there at in 1934 and I was about eleven.
MC: Yeah. And how old were you when you left school?
PT: When I left school?
MC: How old were you?
PT: 1940.
MC: Were you sixteen?
PT: Yeah. Sixteen or seventeen. Yeah.
MC: So what was your first job then when you left school? What did you do after you left school?
PT: When I was, I always had a, had a flair for writing. Not clever stuff. Just writing. Copy anything. And I went for a job at the Marsden Building Society but just when that came up there was another one in the Treasurer’s Department and I thought oh that’s my, that’s what I want. So I went to, I had an interview, borrowed my brother’s overcoat because it was a very small one and got through this interview and I think it was fortuitous that this interview the chap I interviewed or the gentleman I interviewed was Harry Crabtree and he was the, he was one of the old school treasurers. He’d got to the stage when he was back, he was a deputy treasurer but he was conveniently bypassed from the treasurer [Hyram] Reed who was a Geordie. Very clever man and he bypassed Harry Crabtree and came around to Steve Dyson. He was, he was the chief accountant and Steve [pause] was to do with [pause] Steve but there’s a funny little story about Harry Crabtree. He said, I was a junior at that time and he said, ‘Are you busy, Peter?’ And I said, ‘Well, no more than usual.’ Because I worked behind the counter and I also did another job which was ancillary to the ledgers that were being prepared and, ‘No,’ I said, ‘What do you want?’ ‘Just come into my office.’ So I got in to his office and the whole floor was covered with disused envelopes and he had a, he had a pile of new envelopes, new stick ons and we spent the afternoon sticking these temporary covers on these envelopes which was a bit strange for a deputy treasurer. But he was, I think they gave him, I think the only job that he got was I think he did loans. Something like that. Something that was really not, not responsible. The main man was [Hyram] Reed who came from the northeast. He was a Geordie and he was a clever man. And Steve Dyson, he was the chief accountant.
MC: So you worked there until you got, the you joined the —
PT: Eh?
MC: You worked there ‘til you joined the Air Force did you?
PT: Yes. Yes. I did.
MC: When did you join?
PT: I was there ‘til 1943.
MC: How old were you then?
PT: I was twenty then.
MC: Twenty.
PT: Yeah.
MC: So you —
PT: Well, I was born in 1923. So twenty. Yeah.
MC: So you joined the Air Force at twenty.
PT: I joined in nineteen [pause] Well, I joined in 1943 and I had to wait to go in. I wasn’t called up ‘til twelve months after.
MC: You were called up were you?
PT: Yeah. Well, I’d, I’d actually joined when I was about eighteen or nineteen. I can’t just remember the date.
MC: So, did you volunteer for aircrew then?
PT: Oh yes. Well, I’d had a little hiatus as it were and I, my, my friend was joining the Navy and I thought I’d have a go at the Fleet Air Arm and of course I didn’t get accepted because the gentlemen, there were these guys with the old, you know they were old sweats of, of the Navy. And they had bother with the, and one of them produced two, two aircraft and he said, ‘What’s this?’ and ‘What’s this?’ And I didn’t know because the gentleman in Nelson who was crazy to go in the Air Force and be a navigator he was a newly appointed headmaster at [unclear] Senior School. And because I wasn’t able to stay at the Primary School I’d been sent down and there was only me that went there. I can’t know why. But I went down to this Senior School, and I did twelve months and conveniently failed the scholarship again so, to go to the Grammar School. So anyway, I sat an entrance exam to the Grammar School and I was top of that school. Of that class. There were thirty and Francis Myers who was the temporary headmaster said, ‘Peter Thomas.’ So I stood up and he said, ‘You did rather well in arithmetic. We’ve got a place for you in the scholarship class.’ So having failed the scholarship exam twice I finished up in this scholarship class and it was very interesting, you know. Of course, it swelled my head a bit. Consequently, at the first exam at Christmas I was twenty nine out of thirty. That really shook me so after that I was never out of ten. I was always usually in the first five or six in the class in the exams and we were going to sit, we should have been able to sit for the [pause] for the school whatever exam it was but the, they introduced a remove over a year where we had to wait another year. So instead of it being a four year to, to matriculation if that’s the right word we had to wait ‘til, they called it five remove and I was in, in that situation with, with a lot of brainy fellas actually.
MC: That’s why you finished up at —
PT: In fact, there was only one fella —
MC: Yeah.
PT: In that class who managed to get in to the A Section and he was studying to be a doctor and he was KS Oate, of [unclear] Road, Nelson.
MC: My word.
PT: Yeah.
MC: What a memory.
PT: Sorry.
MC: Yeah. So what you, so you joined the Air Force say in ’43. Where did you first go when you joined up?
PT: Well, when I joined up I went to RAF Waddington and I think it was RAF Waddington I got, that’s when I —
MC: No. You did your basic. Where did you do your basic training?
PT: I went, I went to London to do to be accepted because you had the eye tests and hearing and eyes and curiously my friend who’d rode a motorbike he, when we came back I said, ‘How did you go on Milton?’ And he said, and he said, ‘They failed me.’ He said, ‘They failed me on eyes.’ He said, ‘I’ve, was riding my motorbike without goggles. I’ve altered the focal length of my eyes.’ So he was, so he said, ‘I’m going to be a despatch rider in the Army.’ He said, ‘I’ve finished with the Air Force.’ And he went back to his uncle who had a bakery and curiously enough he never got called up. He just worked in this bakery and he, he owned it eventually and that was that was my friend Milton Fothergill.
MC: Yeah. But you went to London and that was —
PT: I went to London.
MC: Aircrew Reception Centre.
PT: Pardon?
MC: Aircrew Reception Centre.
PT: Yes.
MC: Yeah.
PT: I went to London. And then from London I went to Paignton. That was ITW. ITW at Paignton. I was there four or five months and from there when I’d passed out of there we didn’t, we were at the Singer Estate and we did running and sport. And we had a fellow called Chang and he was a, he was a guy who wanted to drive you to kingdom come in running through this Singer Estate. And there was also a boxing ring you know but I didn’t get involved with that I can assure you. No. I’m not a boxer. Anyway, from, from Paignton we moved to [pause] I moved to Cambridge and I did four, twelve hours flying on Tiger Moths but I was, I was a bit unlucky. The first two hours the chap was an Australian pilot. A trainer. A teacher and he said ‘Oh, we’re not going to have any bother with you are we?’ And he came the next day and he said, he said, ‘I’ve been posted.’ He said, ‘I’m so sorry.’ So then we got another chap who [pause] who’d have been in an accident so he wasn’t very, I weren’t very happy with him. But in the meantime, a Manchester policeman called Charlie Kent grumbled about his position, his situation, so they gave him, they gave him my, they gave him, I got his trainer you see. And so as a result of that I didn’t get selected as pilot. When I got to Manchester and there was a big auditorium of combination of Nissen huts I suppose. I don’t know. It was a big hangar type of place and I was in there and my 026 was called out and they said, do you know they called out my name, my number 026 and I’ve a lot of stories on 026. Anyway, they said, ‘Yeah. Straight navigator.’ So I, well they didn’t say that but I knew that when he said what he’d intimated. That I wouldn’t be a pilot. I’d be a navigator. So that was alright. I mean I didn’t know what was what at the time.
MC: Did you, did you have to do any aptitude tests for navigator or did they just say you’re a navigator?
PT: No. They didn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t go up for, I went from Manchester to, I went from Manchester and I finished up in Liverpool to go on a ship to Canada. And when I was on this ship, I mention it in passing because we were still avoiding submarines. Still avoiding submarines and as we were going south during the day he got one of the, one of the chaps got burned and he was the, we were going down to the Azores where it was sunny. And then we came up the Atlantic coast past America, you know. New York and right and came into Halifax so that’s where I started my initial training. In Halifax.
MC: Obviously avoiding the submarines in the North Atlantic.
PT: Yeah. And avoided that. Yes. And I went to, I went on a train from Halifax to Moncton and that was a Receiving Centre. And I met a chap who lived up the street from me and he was Naval uniform and I said, ‘What are you doing here, Harold?’ I can’t remember his last name. He was called Harold anyway. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I’m, I’ve trained as a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm.’ So where I’d failed the interview for Fleet Air Arm he, who couldn’t pass his scholarship could. He had a job getting in to, he couldn’t get into the Grammar School. Anyway, he passed, passed for Fleet Air Arm. Anyway, and he’d done flying you know and he went back to England and I don’t think he, I think you won’t believe this but he’d failed on ship recognition. So, so he didn’t get much further in the, I think he finished up on trainers. You know. Link trainers. You know the sort of [pause] he was. He became a teacher.
MC: On link trainers.
PT: In that respect. And he were. He was a teacher anyway and he finished up a teacher. I mean they weren’t the brightest some teachers were they?
MC: Yeah [laughs]
PT: Anyway.
MC: So your navigator’s training started at Malton, Ontario.
PT: Basically yes. I mean we had a long journey from, from Halifax to, to Moncton and then on again through, through Montreal overnight down to, we arrived on the 1st of January nineteen forty something. ’43.
MC: ’44.
PT: ‘44. We arrived at Toronto and we were wondering around in this place and it were, it was the Town Hall. There were no, there were books and files and I don’t why, how we managed to get in and somebody eventually appeared and there’d been a notice of arrival and we got a gash meal you know. And then, then of course we were filtered out to, it was Malton. It wasn’t Toronto International then. It was Malton Airport and we, we were stationed there and that’s where I did my first flying.
MC: What aircraft was that in?
PT: Pardon?
MC: What aircraft was that in?
PT: Avro Anson.
MC: Oh, the Anson.
PT: Yeah.
MC: Yeah.
PT: Yeah. And I did all the flying in Canada on Avro Ansons and I passed everything there. I used to get, I used to get, ‘Ahh Monsieur Thomas.’ That was a Polish, [Weselovski], and [Denowski] and they all wanted to fly with Peter Thomas because they knew I could do it because I’d had so much training with this Mr Brooks at the Senior School In Nelson and he, he trained me on navigation and I never, I never had any trouble with any problems in navigation because I got such a grounding in navigation. And of course, I passed out in Canada as a, as a navigator.
MC: What rank were you then?
PT: I was an LAC but my friend who I met on the ship going out he happened to be on the same walking around the ship at night with, with rifles supposedly on guard you know and we finished up together as friends. And when it came to the exams I was about fourth. Fourth on the course and he was seventeen. But he knew a general in Ottawa didn’t he? So, so that made it rather difficult for me. So he got the commission and I got three stripes. So I came back a sergeant and he came back an officer and he was very generous. He said, ‘You know they’ve robbed you haven’t they Peter?’ They knew, he knew what the game was you know because he’d been, he’d had a forty hour pass, forty hour leave and he’d gone up to see this general in Ottawa. So he, you know the wheels had turned you know and his father was Sir Arthur Smout who’d done, who was doing business on armaments with Paul Revere Incorporated who had a vast building in New York because subsequently David Smout as he was called, we were subsequently invited to have a weekend at New York. So we went overnight on the train to New York and David rang the, the Paul Revere Incorporated and we went around this level of where they were so that it, they showed us New York from four points you see.
MC: Brilliant.
PT: And then at dinnertime we went to the [pause] to the Columbia. I think it was the Columbia. It was a restaurant you know. I’ve forgotten the name of the restaurant. Anyway, it don’t matter and we had our meal with these and then these two gentlemen said, ‘Well, we play Bridge at Saturday afternoon.’ Him and his deputy. So he said, ‘We’ll see you at teatime at this address.’ It was on 5th Avenue. So they bundled me and David off to, to the Rockettes. You know, the famous American Rockettes. The girls who were dancing and stuff. And then there was other items and then they finished up with, with somebody called Doris Day, I think it was in, “Up in Arms.” Yeah. And we watched that. And then of course we, we appeared in these drab Air Force uniforms because all Americans were in if they were in khaki it was serge. There were none of this rough stuff and we were in these rough and we were introduced at 5th Avenue, at this address of this president and we were introduced as Lieutenant Thomas and Smout [laughs] And of course we were LACs weren’t we? Anyway, we didn’t tell them did we? And during that meal David managed to spill his ice cream and I I had a little argument about, with the other chappie, he was, of course they were very strict Conservatives and I was, I’d come from Nelson and Nelson was a [laughs] well you couldn’t be any stronger labour than Nelson. It was a really [pause] yeah. So then from there if you just let me finish, then from there when we, when I’d finished at —
MC: When you finished in Canada.
PT: In Toronto. I had the chance. I had the choice of going up to Montreal or, I’d seen a dance band. Louis Armstrong on the shores of Lake Ontario and, and that week that I was to go I had the choice to see to go and see Duke Ellington who was my, he was one of the great jazz musicians. Have you ever heard of him? Eh? Yeah.
MC: Indeed. Yeah.
PT: Anyway, I went to, I went to Montreal and I met a chap who was a writer in the Navy. A writer is a clerk I think, and this was Bill Farmer, he was, he became a solicitor but he was in the Navy and he was a writer and we met up and we had, well we had at least a day together and then I was left on my own. And then I met a nice lady from [pause] she was, she was a French lady. She spoke, because when I rang her up she said, ‘Oui?’ She didn’t say yes. She said, ‘Oui.’ And she spoke French of course and she spoke English as well so it didn’t matter. And then from there we went back. I went back to Toronto. I did my flying from Malton Airport. Malton Airport was, became Toronto International. Big stuff you know. Toronto International.
MC: So having finished your flying, your navigator training in Canada you then got shipped back to the UK.
PT: Yes.
MC: And where did you come to?
PT: And then when we had, we were in the, we were in a Dutch boat and we got a, the bells all ringing and it all went boom boom boom. We were in the middle of the Atlantic and quite frankly I was shit scared you know [laughs] and we had to appear on deck with our life jackets on like this and we were all lined up like that. And it were just an exercise to see if you could do it if it actually happened. So anyway, we arrived at Gourock in Scotland and we were then posted to Pannal Ash College which was just a holding place. We didn’t do any lessons there. But there was a, it was a, Pannal Ash College was it was probably a private school and they had a swimming pool outside which was, it had sort of been a temporary dugout and the water ran in and it ran out at the other end and the only way you could get in, you could get in at the top but the only way you could get out was at the bottom and it were freezing this water because it was a river you see. Anyway, we, that passed and we from there —
MC: So, there wasn’t any flying there.
PT: No. No flying there. No. No. I think, I think we went up to Millom and did, did some flying from there. And that was when we were flying from Chicken Rock and up to the, up to all the islands of Scotland. Did a lot, quite a bit of flying up there.
MC: And that was in Ansons again, was it? Oh right.
PT: Pardon?
MC: That was in the Avro Anson again. Avro Anson.
PT: Yes. The same as in Canada. And then we moved down from there to Husbands Bosworth.
MC: Was that —
PT: That was a —
MC: That was the Operational Training Unit.
PT: Yes. OT. Yes, it was. Yeah. And there we, we had this incident of not arriving. We were, we were flying on a, on a course and the engine, flight engineer who I think at that time was still the mid-upper gunner but he was looking after the petrol tanks, you know, switching the tanks. And he said, he said, ‘I think, I think we’ve got a problem here skipper with the, with the petrol. Supply of petrol.’ So they started then looking for somewhere to land. And they got, they got a position line from, from the wireless operator the Welshman, Peter [Hoare] and they went, they got this, they got this position line to Leicester. Leicester way. Leicestershire. Leicester. But before that happened the skipper noticed a landing place and it was, it was, it was a grass landing arrangement. It was [pause] I’ve just forgotten the name. I think, is it there?
MC: When was that? Was that while you were at Husbands Bosworth?
PT: When we came back to England that was.
MC: Yeah. It was.
PT: That was when we were [coughs] we were on a, on a —
MC: Was that at Millom?
PT: Pardon?
MC: Was that at Millom or Husbands Bosworth?
PT: That was —
MC: When you were at the OTU.
PT: That was, that was after Millom, I think.
MC: Yeah. The OTU.
PT: Yeah. And that’s when John spotted this landing. It was grass you see. It was a grass landing and they were training pilots because I met a chap there. He knew me from the Grammar School and we had a few days there and they were enjoyable and then we were carted back in a wagon to where we were you know.
MC: Because it mentioned that you force landed.
PT: Yes.
MC: At Penkridge.
PT: Yes. That’s right.
MC: Penkridge.
PT: Forced landing in this grass landing and we just of course it wasn’t it wasn’t designed for Wellington bombers it were designed for Tiger Moths you know. It wasn’t designed for [laughs] for landing these bigger aircraft and he just landed. And he’d had trouble landing this Wellington when we were at, when we were training on the Wellington. He had a devil of a job landing these Wellingtons. Yeah.
MC: Yeah. I was just about to ask you what aircraft.
PT: And —
MC: And you’ve just answered that. Yeah.
PT: The story goes that he used to just, he used to sing, “Johnny’s Hero,” when he were, when he were coming in to land you know. Anyway, we got through that and he landed and they just pushed the wheels over of this fence and that was it. We, we were carted back to the base with, to where we had come from with, in a van. In a wagon, you know. And the, they sent a chap to fly this Wellington to get it out of this grass landing affair. Of course, they landed in a, they landed in, they landed in a Morris Oxford, in an Oxford. There was an aircraft called an Oxford. It was comparable to the Anson.
MC: I know it.
PT: This Oxford, it had a little accident and landed so that was [other voices not part of interview] But finished with Wellingtons. We moved up to Lancasters. To convert on to Lancasters.
MC: Oh, it was a Conversion Unit. Yeah.
PT: Yeah. That was Woolfox Lodge and that’s where, that’s where I really was. I think about it even today one morning I was sat in the navigation room and there was a blue serge uniform. He was an officer and, and I didn’t really know this face but I knew the morning after when he wasn’t there that he was killed the day after. They came. This crew were regarded as being the best crew in the, in the intake. There were eight. I think they were either six or eight crews in the intake.
MC: Yeah. Can we just go back slightly? Obviously, you’ve gone to the Conversion Unit. When did you crew up?
PT: When what?
MC: When did your crew get together?
PT: Oh, did it, yes. When we moved from Millom where we’d done this Avro Anson flying we went to —
PT: Then you went to the OTU.
MC: Pardon?
PT: When you went to the OTU.
MC: OTU at —
PT: Husbands Bosworth.
MC: Husbands Bosworth.
PT: Yes. Is that when crewed up with them?
MC: Was that at Husbands Bosworth?
PT: Yeah. You’re not recording now.
MC: Yes. I am.
PT: Especially —
MC: Is that when you crewed up?
PT: Yes.
MC: Yeah. Yeah. But that would have been a five man crew there.
PT: I often tell the story about my younger brother who was always a tendency to knock me, you know. And being knocked with the elder brother and knocked with the younger brother because I was the middle one and he, I’m trying to think. Well, he’d be surprised who chose the pilot because there’s a story about who chose the pilot. Because I’m in the NAAFI queue or some queue and I’d been [he's left the door open] We moved from Millom to Husbands Bosworth and that’s where we crewed up. And we were in this queue and somebody tapped me on the shoulder and he said, ‘Look,’ he said, ‘We’re looking for a navigator. We’ve got, we’ve got an air gunner and a mid-upper gunner and a wireless operator and a bomb aimer,’ he said. ‘But we haven’t got a navigator.’ And, ‘Would you like to join us?’ They knew I was a navigator. ‘Would you like to join us?’ And that. ‘Yes. I’m happy to join you if you think I’m suitable.’ And from there we chose the pilot. The pilot was called Dennis Johns and he was a, he’d been a public school lad but he was, he wasn’t, he didn’t strike me as being a very well educated man but he, he was, he was alright.
MC: Was he a good pilot?
PT: Sometimes we wondered. I wondered. They wondered about me with navigation. I wondered about him. But I have to say yes he was a brilliant pilot because we finished [laughs] We finished.
MC: You arrived at Husbands Bosworth. Yeah.
PT: And there’s, that’s where we crewed up.
MC: Yeah. You said.
PT: And we chose, we eventually chose this Johns for a pilot. We chose him. My younger brother would have essentially have said the pilot chooses the crew but no it wasn’t like that. It was always different to what he thought because he was, I was not knocked with, I had two brothers. An elder brother and the younger brother and I used to get knocked from both sides so —
MC: I remember you saying. Yeah.
PT: But —
MC: Yeah. So you went on the, on to the —
PT: I won though you know because they’re both dead [laughs]
MC: [laughs] Bless you. So you went to the Conversion Unit on to Lancasters.
PT: I went up to the, yes and this is where there was a tragedy. I don’t, I didn’t mention it.
MC: Yeah.
PT: There was a tragedy because they were, they were reckoned to be the best crew.
MC: Ah, you said. Yeah. Yeah.
PT: And —
MC: His uniform was there.
PT: And they were coming back from a diversionary sweepstake. No bombs. No. No. The war had nearly finished and they were coming back and they lost an engine and then they flew a bit further and they lost another engine. And then as they were coming in to land they had to just turn like that and he lost another engine. He went like that and they were all killed. And he was the chap that was sat next to me the morning before and he was, and I think, I think many a time about that that family losing that boy.
MC: Yeah.
PT: Because he was an officer. I probably wouldn’t have bothered if he’d been a sergeant like I was [laughs] Stamina.
MC: So, so when you finished at the Conversion Unit —
PT: Yeah.
MC: You were then posted to your first, your squadron.
PT: Yes.
MC: What squadron was that?
PT: 149.
MC: And where was that?
PT: Methwold.
MC: Methwold. So you —
PT: Methwold was a satellite of, I think it was a satellite of Mildenhall.
CS: You’re on the Mildenhall Register, aren’t you?
PT: Yeah. Yeah.
MC: Yes. And that was obviously with the same crew. Johns.
PT: Oh yes. Yeah.
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
PT: We were on. We were, we were crewed up together for about two years and then in the middle of 1946 I would say, you know. After we was, we were together from nineteen forty —
MC: Yeah. The story, I think goes while you were there about the Astro compass. Can you —
PT: Oh yeah. Well, that was on the operation.
MC: Oh, was it? Which operation was that?
PT: The Kiel.
MC: Oh Kiel. Yeah.
PT: Yeah. Kiel. Yeah. I should have kept my mouth shut but I didn’t as usual. Big mouth. No. I put this, I put this Astro compass . It was a disastrous operation. We got to the to the Danish coast and I warned the skipper. I warned him. I said, ‘We’re much too early. We’re at least twenty minutes. Fifteen twenty minutes too early. We should be doglegging.’ And of course, there’s a risk when you dog leg that these oncoming on stream can be, you can —
MC: Collisions.
PT: Go in to one.
MC: Yeah.
PT: So he didn’t want to do that. He said, ‘We’ll go in with the first wave.’ Typical Johns you know. And anyway we, I think when we, I think we were so early that when I got the message from what was being said that the main target was under the wing when we, when we got through so we missed that. So we turned around and we turned back to come back and this is where there was such lack of brains. We should have made allowances for all the time that we’d lost when we should have gone back up over the North Sea and got away from any impending German fighters because as we were flying the rear gunner said, ‘Port go.’ And Johns just put his wing [psst] and we lost about twelve thousand feet in no time. When we pulled out of this operation we were about six thousand feet, or six hundred feet. I’m not quite sure but I know, I know it were, it was a bit dangerous.
MC: So where does the Astro compass come into this story?
PT: Well, when, when we, I don’t know if it was before or after but when we were flying along and we were, we were trying to find out where we were the astrocompass it does not give you a fix but it gives you a position line. So when you put the astrocompass in the right way around, the first time I put it in the wrong way around but I mean that was so what? You were under a lot of stress then you know. I turned it around and put it in the right way and I said, ‘We’re going in a westerly direction skipper. You’ve no need to worry.’ And I asked him. I said, ‘Is your P4 compass working?’ He said, ‘Yes, but it’s better that you give me the position line,’ because the P4 compass it’s a bit dodgy really. It’s not, not too reliable. Anyway, we ploughed on and ploughed on and we, we had this incident with a fighter, with a German fighter when he said, ‘Port go.’ That meant go and Johns —
MC: Corkscrew.
PT: Responded to Cherokee. He was called, our rear gunner was called Cherokee and he came from Dumbarton. Yeah. Are you recording all this? Very good. And he came from Dumbarton and he was only a little fella but he were a good rear gunner. He spotted this one that was approaching us and went [psst]. We lost a lot of time. I think double quick time and never saw that guy. Now, possibly he thought well the war’s over why, why risk myself? Because he could have got shot down you know. We never saw him again and we kept ploughing on and ploughing on and then, then we, we flew as somebody said it’s a, we’re flying over a big lake and I knew what that was. It was the Zuiderzee as I knew it. And we got through the Zuiderzee and by that time, I’ve forgotten to mention that all through this operation the Gee box which gave you a fix, it gave you a position line and, and both. With the Gee box it was, it gave you a fix. You got these two posters.
MC: Yeah. Height and —
PT: The B Posts and the C Post and when you lined them up you locked the machine and it gave you a reading. And you had a special Gee box map which told you your, you read off the numbers and you got where you were.
MC: Yeah.
PT: And of course, it’s a lot. We was trusted. A bit stressful, you know.
MC: Well, the navigator. Yeah. Right. Of course.
PT: Yeah. Anyway, we got through this Zuiderzee.
PS: But they were jamming you, Peter weren’t, they were jamming you.
PT: Got through the Zuiderzee.
CS: At night. At night.
[recording paused]
MC: Yeah, but —
PT: Somebody else. And he said, ‘It hasn’t been so good, sir’. He said, ‘You’re first back,’ he said, ‘And don’t worry about anything,’ he said, ‘Because they’ve been all over the sky this operation.’ He said, ‘It’s been a real shocker,’ he said. ‘So you’ve done very well.’ And when I signed my, I signed it you know he said, ‘And that’s,’ he said, ‘When you get to Civvy Street,’ he said, ‘That’s signature is worth two thousand pounds.’
CS: Dad. When, when you did, when you dropped height when you’d seen the German fighter.
PT: Yeah.
CS: Isn’t that when all your —
PT: Oh yeah.
CS: Instruments went up in the air.
PT: When he, when he went like that.
CS: When you dived.
PT: He went. You flew up in the air and landed on the floor and dropped me down on my hands and knees trying to find these instruments you know. Pencil and that you know. Bits of stuff that you use you know.
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
PT: There was I think it was about as big as that book and it gave you, you set it up and it was a, it was like a mini computer.
MC: Yeah. I know what you mean. Yeah.
PT: You know what I mean.
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
PT: You know what —
MC: Navigation computer. Yeah.
PT: Eh?
MC: Your navigation computer.
PT: Yeah.
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
PT: Yeah.
MC: So the story also about the [unclear] navigator who was, whose Lanc crashed when he came back from a diversion raid.
PT: Yeah, and then crashed.
MC: What happened there?
PT: Well, they went —
CS: That’s the one that [failed]
PS: You had that.
MC: Oh, that is the same one is it. Yeah. It is.
PT: They went, they went they went on a diversionary sweep and as they were coming back they lost an engine. They were at Woolfox Lodge.
MC: Yes. That’s the one you were telling me about. Yeah.
PT: They lost an engine.
MC: Yeah.
PT: And then they lost another engine.
MC: Yeah.
PT: And —
MC: Yeah. You’ve told me about that. He flipped over his back.
PT: Over.
MC: Yeah.
PT: And they were all killed.
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
PT: And that was the chap that was sat next to me the morning before and I knew who he was.
MC: Yeah.
PT: I didn’t know him personally but I know, I knew who he belonged to. So that was very sad. I’ve been thinking about him over the last —
MC: Bless you.
PT: Yeah.
MC: Yeah.
PT: Terrible.
MC: So —
PT: Terrible loss to that family.
MC: Yeah.
PT: I think about it even today after all seventy or eighty years. Yeah. Terrible.
MC: Yeah. Do you want to have a break?
[recording paused]
PT: Worked at weekends. He was a subset. a sub editor on the —
CS: Was it the Thompson’s Newspapers up in Dundee?
PT: This is ET Thompson’s.
MC: Jock Fraser you say.
PT: Eh?
MC: Jock Fraser.
PT: Yeah. Jock Fraser. Yeah. It’s his dad.
CS: Was it his dad?
MC: What did he do on your crew?
PT: He was the bomb aimer.
CS: Was he not eighteen months ago dad?
PT: He —
CS: About eighteen months ago.
PT: Yeah. Is it eighteen months?
CS: Yeah. Something like that.
PT: Yeah.
CS: I mean he must have been well in his nineties too.
PT: Yeah.
CS: Yeah.
PT: He was the, I think, I think if you were reckoning brain power he was the, he was a very clever chap really. Good with words you know. If he wrote a letter he didn’t write pages. He wrote all that was necessary in one page and he were, he were clever you know on words. You know, he was, he was a good friend.
MC: So, tell me about this losing the engine.
PT: Pardon?
MC: You lost an engine during —
PT: Yeah.
MC: Coming back on.
PT: What happened was that after the war it were three group. Certainly 149 we were designated to photograph up to the Russian demarcation line. So sometimes we went down towards Switzerland and we were supposed designating —
CS: Designated.
PT: Different areas which we were trying to photographing but we’d a lot of trouble coming, going and coming because of the cloud formation. You couldn’t photograph if there were cloud formation. [unclear] Catherine’s mentioned. One morning we were at 9 o’clock we were at off, off the Norwegian coast and we were just, just about to either come back because there was not, we hadn’t got the too much cloud or some reason and we turned around. As we turned around as we were flying we lost an engine. So no problem we were coming back on three. So I wanted to go to the nearest landfall which was the Orkneys. Johns, Johns of course said, ‘No,’ he said, ‘We’re alright. Straight back to Cromer.’ Cromer which was the landfall into our base you see.
CS: Do you mean Cromer?
MC: Cromer. Yeah. I know. I realise what he meant.
CS: Yeah.
PT: Now in the Fleet Air Arm the navigator is the captain. Did you know that?
MC: Yeah. You told me.
CS: Maybe he wished —
PT: I’ve just told you now.
CS: Maybe he wished he’d been the captain that day.
MC: Then.
PT: I’ve told you now haven’t I?
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
PT: I hadn’t told you before, had I?
MC: No. You hadn’t. No. I was thinking something when you said about the pilots. So yeah. So you made, you wanted to come back to nearest landfall but he decided to come —
PT: Yeah. Yeah.
MC: Come back to base.
PT: ‘No,’ he said, ‘We’ll be alright. We’ve got three.’ Well, that one that that this guy was with me.
MC: There was always the chance you’d lose an another one wasn’t there?
PT: Yeah. They lost three didn’t they?
MC: Yeah. Yeah. You didn’t want that happening to you.
PT: They lost three and lost their lives.
MC: Yeah. You were making, so why did he need to get back to base?
PT: And that same night [pause] Say what were you going to say.
MC: No. Why did he want to get back to base and not land up north?
PT: Perhaps he had a girlfriend that night. I don’t know.
CS: Well, my dad, my dad thought it was a girlfriend.
PT: He had a girlfriend in London. We could have had a trip to, there’s a place on the Norwegian coast. Now that name is just I haven’t got that name.
CS: Bergen?
PT: Eh?
CS: Bergen. Stavanger. Bergen.
PT: No. Not Bergen. No.
CS: Stavanger.
PT: Eh?
CS: Stavanger.
PT: Stavanger. No. No.
PS: Trondheim?
PT: Anyway —
CS: Trondheim.
MC: Trondheim probably.
CS: Trondheim. Trondheim.
PT: No. No.
PS: Tromso.
PT: Anyway, the thing was —
CS: What did you say? Trondheim. What was the other one?
PS: Tromso.
CS: Tromso.
PT: Eh?
CS: Tromso.
PT: No. I don’t know. I’ll have to look it up. That, that opportunity to go there and stay there.
CS: Right.
PT: It could have been dangerous but it was an opportunity to be based in Norway. Or Sweden.
CS: Do you mean, do you mean when you lost your engine to go and fly back to Norway.
PS: No.
CS: You don’t mean that do you?
PS: No.
PT: Say that again.
CS: I said you don’t mean when you lost an engine to go back to flying to Norway to land do you?
PT: No.
CS: No. You don’t mean that do you?
PT: There was no question of going back. No.
CS: No. No. No.
PT: The [pause] no there was no question and we never thought about that.
CS: No.
PT: Possibly we could have done if we’d thought about it but you don’t always thing about these things when —
CS: No.
PT: When you’re stressed.
CS: No.
MC: So did you, did you, I mean you did a raid on Kiel but after that it was did you fly any ops bringing prisoners of war back and —
PT: Yes.
MC: Operation Exodus.
PT: Did one of those.
MC: Operation Exodus.
PT: And I did two dropping food over Holland.
MC: Oh, Operation Manna. Yeah.
PT: Manna. Yeah.
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
PT: There was a badge for that too.
MC: Yeah. I believe so.
PT: I never got that.
MC: I believe so. Yeah.
PT: A friend of mine who’s now deceased he got that badge. He, he was keen on badges and stuff like that. I couldn’t be bothered. Then when we were, when we were on, when we were at Methwold we were, we were wearing the 1939/45 badge. And then, and some others which would, I can’t just remember and they told us that we couldn’t wear that badge. You couldn’t wear that and that’s when Fraser said. ‘Well, if we can’t wear that badge, we joined up in 1943 and it’s 1946 if we can’t wear that badge well we won’t wear any of them.’ And he just he just washed his hands of it. Fred. And we just fed up with it and he gave the, gave the medals that he had, he gave them to his kids to play with he were that fed up.
CS: Yeah.
PT: But I I don’t know.
CS: So what were you, there was a badge you were given and then —
MC: Was this —
CS: And then the Ministry of Defence took it back off them didn’t they?
MC: Yeah. Yeah. It was a medal. He was on about, yeah you’ve got it down here. Peter.
CS: It’s amazing actually isn’t it that he did it?
PT: That’s Peter’s stuff.
MC: Yeah, it is. I just [pause] So when did you, I mean when did you fly over Niagara Falls?
PT: Oh, that was in Canada.
MC: Oh, while you were in Canada where it was.
PT: You can’t fly over —
MC: Not from the UK you can’t.
PT: You can’t. You can’t fly over Niagara Falls in Norway. It’s in Canada.
CS: It’s because he was based, he was based in Toronto.
PT: No. I was on a trip in Canada.
MC: I thought you’d gone back over there.
PT: Toronto to Hamilton and I was with this Flight Lieutenant [Bowen] who was, he was sort of, ‘I’ll go with, I’ll go with LAC Thomas today for a change.’ It was designed to see that everybody was being, was working according to plan. And he was with me that particular day and when we got towards Hamilton he he just. none of the civilian pilots on the shore and I don’t know what they were saying but he turned and we went to, we went to, and he turned and we went to Niagara falls. So we flew around and saw Niagara Falls from height. So when we were around the crew reunion do at, at the, at the hotel in, in Toronto. I just forget the name of the, in the big hotel and of course there were these menu things and Flight Lieutenant [Bowen] he was signing them, you know. Flight Lieutenant Bowen put his name. “Flight Lieutenant Bowen. Remember Niagara.” You know. That was that.
MC: Good memories.
PT: Super.
MC: Good memories.
PT: Super. Yeah. Wonderful.
MC: Yeah. Yeah. So if we come back to, at 149 Squadron you flew Operation Exodus. Exodus and Manna. You flew on Manna. Were you quite low flying on Operation Manna, weren’t you?
PT: What?
MC: You were low. Flying low on Operation Manna supply drops.
PT: I didn’t know this. The don’t tell you about losses you know. I mean when we were at Woolfox Lodge and that one kite crashed on the runway nobody knew about it. Only that that same night some fighter bombers came over and shot two more of our intake. I’ve never mentioned that before.
MC: No.
PT: But that’s what happened.
MC: Yeah.
PT: We lost, we lost three crews out of our intake and I think there were eight. Eight crews. Eight sixes. There were six in a crew you see until we got the flight engineer and we didn’t get the flight engineer until we got to squadron.
MC: Yeah.
PS: I think where you were going with that Pete was that some aircraft were lost in Operation Manna.
PT: You said that.
PS: Yeah.
PT: It’s him that has [pause] it’s him that started all this nonsense. He fired us up and fired me up and —
PS: We got you the book about —
MC: Yeah, when I’ve talked to odd people, Dutch people I talked to Dutch people and they tell me about waving to the aircraft because they were so low.
PT: Yes. They did that with me when we went to, when we dropped food over Holland they had a big wide circle with Germans. They were starving too. With Germans and Dutch all around this and of course as we were dropping these boxes of margarine and whatever they’d be rushing in. But we weren’t, we were bothered about that because if you don’t get off the ground, if you don’t get off the, out of that situation and I remember being stood behind the pilot and a lady came out of a [pause] roof like and waving this Union Jack. That was good, wasn’t it?
MC: Yeah. You were low enough to see it all.
PT: Yeah.
MC: Yeah.
PT: Never seen [pause] No. No.
MC: Yeah. So I think they were very —
PT: But do you know —
MC: They were very pleased to see you.
PT: Do you know, Mike. Is your name Mike? Yeah. I remembered your name. Mike. We went to a camp in nineteen, I just don’t know when it was. We were avid campers my wife and, well we had no alternative with children. We did a lot of camping and we got to a site near Riez. That’s the major town there. Riez. When you go to Riez you go about fifteen kilometres and you get to this Lak de St Croix and this lake was formed, it’s a, it’s a barrier supplying water to Marseilles and it was, it was the gorges of Verdun. Not the north one. The south one. There’s two gorges. There’s two gorges. There’s this one gorge and that one is in the south and he comes down and they started filling this barrier that they’d made, the French and it took them five years to fill. And when we got there in 1978 it were just about filling up. Yeah. Yeah. And they were swimming in it and paddling in it and of course the big thing was wind surfing so big head Peter went. I had a windsurfer off John Claude. He was the guy you know and I didn’t I fall off it [laughs] but we learned and my wife was a better windsurfer than me because the Dufour wing board, it was a little bit light for me. I weighed fifteen stone. I really needed a heavier [unclear] as he said. John Claude said, ‘You need a [unclear] Peter.’
PS: But Peter there was a Dutch —
PT: But we made friends with them you know.
PS: There was a Dutch connection at St Le Croix. The Dutch connection.
PT: Yeah.
PS: There was. That’s your story isn’t it? The Dutch were there.
MC: The Dutch.
PT: Oh, a lot of Dutch people there. Do you know you can’t believe this that we went to that camp for ten years and I never [laughs] I must have been as thick as two short planks I never ever, never mentioned that I’d ever been in an aircraft. That I’d ever been RAF navigator, you know. Which was a big big thing.
MC: To the Dutch it was.
PT: A big thing when you dropped food to them.
MC: Yeah. It is. Very much to the Dutch.
PT: And they were never mentioned.
MC: Yeah. They you are.
PT: Never mentioned that.
MC: They have got great affection for the RAF.
PT: I’ll give you, if I can get your address you can write to them and tell them you’ve interviewed Peter Thomas.
MC: I see, I see you also did a Cook’s Tour.
PT: Pardon?
MC: You also did a Cook’s Tour.
PT: Did a —?
MC: A Cook’s Tour of the Ruhr.
PT: Oh afterwards. Yeah.
MC: Yeah.
PT: That was —
MC: Yeah. You went all over.
PT: Yeah. That was, when we did that Cook’s Tour we took about a dozen blokes in the ground crew you know. And that was a dangerous operation you know. Somebody, I don’t know who it was but they were, it came through the grapevine that somebody pulled a ripcord or something and we lost an aircraft, you know. When you pull a ripcord and it puts a boat on the wing. And that, now when you’re flying you don’t want boats on your wing do you [laughs]
MC: So, tell me what —
PT: There were, there were some, these were Army blokes who should have just, they should have just been like that ‘til we got there and somebody pulled the rip. So they said. I wasn’t in that aircraft.
MC: Fortunately. Yeah. So you mentioned in your logbook review. What was, what was the review? What was that. The review. It’s got review Norway. Review Switzerland. Review Med and Nice. Southern France.
[pause]
CS: Dad, you need your reading glasses.
PT: A map of Norway there. We landed at Woodbridge.
MC: Oh yeah.
PT: That was a big airfield to land. A big aerodrome. That was an emergency landing there that we did that.
MC: Yeah.
PT: We did a lot of things that you forget about you know. I mean that one. The biggest when —
CS: Why did you —
PT: When you think about Johns and his flying when you landed on that grass runway at Penkridge that was superb. And that —
MC: He did a good job.
PT: You never bothered about landing after that. No.
MC: Yeah. No, I was just wondering what it meant by review.
CS: Dad. Dad, why did you an emergency landing?
MC: Yeah. Because you did some photographs. Took some photographs, didn’t you?
PT: Yeah. Yeah.
MC: Yeah.
PT: Well, we went to Switzerland. Switzerland and the Mediterranean at Nice. Southern France.
MC: Yeah. You said about your emergency landing. I’ll come back to what you were saying earlier because you said you made the emergency landing because you lost an engine, didn’t you? Was that it?
PT: That was in Norway.
MC: Yeah. When you were coming back from Norway.
PT: When we, when we got to Norway.
MC: That’s right. You did do that. Yeah.
PT: We were just about to start the photo and we lost this engine.
MC: Yeah.
PT: And I wanted to come back via John O’Groats.
MC: Yeah. Yeah, we did talk about that. Yeah.
CS: You talked about it.
MC: Yeah. I thought that was the one that —
PT: ‘Oh no,’ he said ‘Give us a course back to Cromer. We’ll go straight back over the —’ Of course, we’d three engines and when you’ve got three engines you should be doing something about it. Now that firm that lost their lives was the best crew. They came back from the northern, north coast of Germany who lost two engines and then they turned.
MC: Yeah.
PT: To land. You know you have to, you bank don’t you to —
MC: Yeah.
PT: They did that and lost another engine.
MC: Swept on his back.
PT: They went over and they were all killed.
MC: Yeah.
PT: And that chap was, that chap was the serge uniform that I was aware of when they were sat next to me. I don’t know his name but I’ve thought about him many a time. I’ve thought about him since I’ve been holed up here.
MC: You also mentioned in your logbook about different operation names like [Sinkum.]
PT: [Sinkum.] That were dropping bombs over. [Sinkum.]
That was getting rid of —
They were getting rid of —
MC: Yeah.
PT: These, what was the —
MC: Incendiaries. The bombs.
PT: Yes. When they bombed they dropped these —
MC: Mines. Oh no. They wouldn’t be the mines.
PT: They dropped these. Made fires.
MC: Incendiary bombs.
PT: Yeah.
MC: Yeah.
PT: We dropped those.
MC: Dispose of them. Yeah.
PT: To get rid of them over —
MC: Over the North Sea. Yeah.
PT: Over the Welsh Coast. Over the water of the Welsh Coast.
MC: Give them to the Welsh.
PT: You what?
[recording paused.
MC: So, you enjoyed your time in the RAF did you?
PT: I did what?
MC: You enjoyed your time in the RAF.
PT: I enjoyed everything that I’ve ever done except being too close to Peter Selby [laughs] If you say the wrong thing to him and for goodness sake don’t point to him [yeah] I didn’t point. I thought about that.
MC: So when did you come. When did you —
PT: He’s my best friend and when I want any advice I go to him and usually he provides me with the right advice. Not enough money but advice.
MC: So when, so when did you finish?
PT: He’s been great hasn’t he Catherine?
MC: Yeah.
PT: He’s been great.
MC: When did you finish with the RAF? Let me see.
PT: 1946.
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
PT: No. I think. No, it might have been early ’47.
MC: ’46. No. This is crashing in a Mosquito. This is a new one.
PT: Yeah. I had a crash in a Mosquito.
MC: Did you? Where was that from? Where were you flying from on that?
PT: That was from [pause]
MC: Were you at Methwold then?
PT: Eh?
MC: Were you at Methwold then?
PT: Feltwell.
MC: Oh Feltwell.
PT: No. No. I wasn’t at Feltwell.
MC: Methwold.
PT: Can I have a look at the book? [pause] The navigator, and somebody said, ‘We’ve a, we’ve a flight test going on in a Mosquito. Have you somebody you could send who wants an air trip?’ and I said, ‘No. There’s nobody here. I’m the duty navigator and there’s nobody here.’ And he said, ‘Oh well, that don’t matter. Do you want to go?’ And I said, ‘Oh, yeah. I’ll have a go.’ So I went in this Mosquito and this chap had, he’d got a, he’d done well in over the Mediterranean. He had, he had an award for what he’d done in ground, the ground loop to an aircraft. Not a Mosquito. It was a two engine job. I’ve forgotten the name of it and you could, you could ground loop it like that and you got away with it. But he didn’t. He tried to do that when we were landing this Mosquito and it just shot into this field you know and cut, just cut my arm. I was next to him of course and he was up with the lid and out. Being first out. Of course, it didn’t fortunately set on fire and then the group captain came around and had a word with me and said, ‘Are you alright, laddie,’ sort of business. ‘Yes sir.’ [laughs]
MC: But nobody was really hurt.
PT: No. No. No.
MC: No.
PT: But he got a, he got a black a black mark on his logbook. He got —
MC: Was —
PT: I don’t know just what he got but he was —
MC: Was the aircraft a write off?
PT: Oh well. It was pretty well buggered [laughs] Well, the, it was, a Mosquito was essentially a plywood affair.
MC: Yeah.
PT: And in the accident it broke the fuselage here and it cut my arm here. Only a slight cut and of course he went around all the camp. [unclear] accompanying the navigator to the pilot he had, you know you’d have thought they’d have had my arm off you know. Yeah. Very interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah we were lucky then. And that taught me not to do any more reserve flights you know [laughs] So I didn’t, I don’t think I flew —
MC: So you were station navigation officer at that time or —
PT: Pardon?
MC: You were station navigation, navigating man.
PT: Yeah. Yeah.
MC: At that time.
PT: For a bit, yes. At that place.
MC: What rank were you then?
PT: Pardon?
MC: What rank were you then?
PT: Well, I was, it was two years from being a sergeant in Canada. That was in about the 19th of June. Nineteen, nineteen —
MC: It would be ‘46 would it?
PT: What time was, have I made a note to you when we were finishing in Canada? Nineteen.
MC: You have. Yeah, 1944 wasn’t it?
PT: Yeah. 1944. Yeah. That’s when we finished in Canada.
MC: Yeah. You were a sergeant then.
PT: I was sergeant when I got, not until I got back to —
MC: To the UK.
PT: No. That’s right.
MC: So what rank were you when you finished in the Air Force?
PT: When I finished? A warrant officer.
MC: Oh, you did make warrant officer.
PT: Yeah.
MC: Yeah.
PT: I made a mistake. I should have, I should have had a uniform you know but being tight fisted I thought well I won’t be needing that when I go in Civvy Street but I wish I’d have got it now. There was a serge one, you know.
MC: Yeah.
PT: It was an officer type uniform.
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
PT: You know. Is this my tea?
CS: Yeah. I just topped it up. They might be able to supply him with one if he goes to this awards do, do you think. Mike?
[recording paused]
PT: Friendly with a girl you know.
Other: Can I interrupt for two seconds. I need to find out what he wants for his tea.
[recording paused]
MC: I’ve paused it. Right. It’s paused anyway.
CS: What do you want for tea, dad?
PT: What do I want for tea?
CS: That’s ok.
[recording paused]
MC: So you went back to work. Did you find it a bit calm, mundane after. After flying? So, this was —
PT: He was a nice bloke.
MC: So this was a souvenir from your 92 navigator’s course.
PT: Yeah.
MC: Yeah.
PT: I should be on that somewhere.
PS: LAC Thomas. You’re on the list there. LAC Thomas.
CS: Has he told you about going to New York?
PS: Yes.
MC: Yeah.
PT: No. I haven’t told. No.
CS: Oh, haven’t you talked about —
MC: Yeah.
PT: This chap that I met on the boat going to Canada he was, we were on the ship, on board ship and he finished up in the next bed to me and we got, we got quite, well we were friends. We only lost that friendship when he got a commission and the other fellow was from St Austell in Cornwall and unfortunately he was lost on a, on a [pause] on a Mosquito. When he came back instead of I did the same thing I volunteered. I made application to go on Mosquitoes rather than Lancasters because I thought it would be safer you see. Anyway, I didn’t. I think they were choosing officers and I was only a sergeant. So I missed it but this fella got it and he was lost on a —
MC: Yeah.
PT: He was lost on a trip on a Mosquito with a Canadian, a South African pilot who came over when we went for a tour with my Javelin. The first car I bought. We called at this cottage. We made enquiries at St Austell and the man said, ‘Oh, it’s my wife. On the roadside. It’s a cottage. Go and knock on the door and it’ll be you.’ And when we went into this room it was just like a mausoleum. There were all these things from, from him being in the Air Force and [pause] sad. His mother lost her only son.
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
PT: And it was sad.
MC: So, did you find it, going back to when you came out the Air Force was it difficult? Was it difficult to settle back into civilian life after four years of flying?
PT: Not for me. No.
MC: No. What did you think about the job that Bomber Command did?
PT: What Bomber Command did?
MC: Yeah. During the war.
PT: Well, like the guy who was running it. Harris. He was called Harris, wasn’t he?
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
PT: Harris.
MC: Bomber Harris.
PT: He said if we just keep bombing them a bit longer they would [laughs] they’ll give up.
MC: Yeah.
PT: We lost a lot of lives that we could have avoided but you see they’d have been Bomber Command lives. So, I don’t know. I don’t know. I were glad I didn’t —
MC: What about Churchill?
PT: Pardon?
MC: How did, did you get much about what Churchill was doing and Churchill was —
PT: Not then. No.
MC: No. Yeah. Yeah.
PT: People didn’t. They didn’t tell people. You know, when that, when that aircraft crashed upside down you know we got, we didn’t get to know that. We just got to know that it was lost. Somebody else told us something else.
MC: Yeah. So, I mean, post-war Bomber Command wasn’t recognised probably for want of a better word as it should have been. How did you feel about that?
PT: I think it was, I think we were underestimated.
MC: Did you get the clasp? Did you get the Bomber Command clasp?
PT: No.
MC: You didn’t send for the clasp.
PT: No. I haven’t anything.
CS: Have you applied for that?
PT: Have I got a clasp?
PS: No. No. You didn’t get the clasp.
PT: No.
PS: You had —
CS: He’s made enquiries.
PS: Yeah. Nothing’s about —
CS: He hasn’t made —
[recording paused]
PT: He, if there are any clasps —
MC: If you what? Sorry, what was his name?
PT: Pardon?
MC: What was his name? Victor.
PT: Victor Tytherington.
MC: Oh right.
PT: Have you heard that name?
MC: No.
PT: No. Well, he, he was a navigator late on and he went and he trained in South Africa and he, there was various, there was a Manna clasp for dropping food over Holland. There was something for that. I haven’t anything for any of them.
PS: So we —
PT: Sorry.
PS: I could fill in the gap.
[recording paused]
PT: A tour of ops on Bomber Command. You know, like joining Methwold. If that job had have gone on, it finished of course but if it had gone on you’d have to do thirty ops before you’d finished your tour.
MC: A full tour was thirty. Yeah.
PT: Thirty. Thirty two. I don’t just know. I know there was a gunner in Todmorden and he did about eighty odd in a, as a gunner. Henry he were called. There were a few in Todmorden you know. Just navigators and stuff you know but we never bothered. Got to do. I had enough to do with this bakehouse that I got shuffled into with my dad.
MC: You were in Todmorden?
PT: Pardon?
MC: You lived in Todmorden.
PT: Todmorden.
MC: Yeah.
CS: [unclear]
PT: I was fifty years in Todmorden.
CS: Yeah. He was born in Nelson.
MC: I used to work up that way. How long were you a baker then?
PT: When I came out of the Air Force I had the, aircrew they had the chance of going to university. That was the first mistake I made.
CS: You could have gone.
PT: Me and my wife, no matter now said, ‘Well, you were that busy trying to get your end away.’ [laughs]
CS: But also you said you could have gone into BOAC.
PT: With her.
MC: Yeah. Did you consider BOAC?
PT: Pardon?
MC: Did you consider BOAC? British Overseas Air —
PT: When I was, when I was at Methwold, yes. I could have gone on BOA, BOAC. I was asked to go with having this Reserved Occupation in the Treasury Department I turned it down but I’m not sorry about that. I never felt sorry about that really.
CS: But you also thought, he said they wouldn’t need navigators. That’s why he didn’t want to go to BOAC.
PT: When I left, when I left the squadron and the outfit, when they brought the crew up I don’t know where Johns went but Fraser, the bomb aimer he joined another crew and, but I went. I went north and I did an instructor’s course and I was, when I was, when I was on that test flight I was supposed to be an instructor at this aerodrome. The aerodrome. There’s that many around there. There’s, it could be North Luffenham. There’s a lot of different ones. Cottesmore. Woolfox Lodge.
MC: Yeah.
PT: That was tragic when they lost that one you know. That were just poor bloody maintenance. There was, there was a little amusing incident. I was in a, we were in a NAAFI queue and you know the ATS people? They deliver aircraft. Well, a person had. We were sort of in this queue for the NAAFI and over to our left a person not known at the time man or woman walked and had a helmet on and they were, the ATS people they used to deliver any sort of aircraft. Spitfires, Hurricanes, Lancasters, Halifaxes. Any one they could fly them. And on this particular occasion there was a queue like of the pilots you know, and they were sort of saying, ‘Great job that,’ you know. And suddenly this great job [laughs] pulled her helmet off and she were a woman and all the pilots that were in this queue you know and we said [laughs].
[recording paused]
PT: I think when I, when I got the, when I got back into the Grammar School stream through sheer luck really I think that’s when I enjoyed it. And my brother, younger brother he hated the Grammar School but I liked it and I liked this teacher, Mr Fowles and Miss Graham and all different people. I loved it. Yeah.
CS: His younger brother was six and a half years younger.
PT: I didn’t do particularly well because I was always going out with this girl or that girl. I had a girl from when I was at Grammar School [laughs] yeah.
CS: His, his —
MC: A bit of a lad were you?
CS: His young brother, his younger brother —
PT: A lad yeah.
CS: Was in the military police.
PT: Yeah.
CS: So he was there in Germany when they had the trials you know for the —
MC: Oh yeah, Nuremberg —
CS: Yeah. That’s right.
PT: I probably missed a lot out really.
CS: So what are you going to tell us about the ATA?
PT: Not a —
MC: Yes. It was ATA, wasn’t it? Yeah. Air Transport Auxiliary I think it was. Yeah. I mean they were good pilots some of them.
PT: Pardon?
MC: They were good pilots some of them.
PT: Oh yeah. They had to pilot anything. They would jump into a Spitfire or a Lancaster. They were good.
MC: Yeah. Well thanks very much for your interview, Peter.
PS: Shall I put that —
MC: Thank you very much.
PT: You know all these crew members? Pilot, navigator, bomb aimer.
CS: Gunner.
PT: Mid-upper gunner, rear gunner, wireless operator. If you want to, if you want to contact them for any information unfortunately they’ve all gone. They’re dead.
MC: You’re the last one.
PT: So you can’t. You can’t. You can’t say, ‘Is it right what Peter Thomas said?’ I’m the last one.
MC: I believe every word you said Peter.
PT: I mean they were, they had their moments, you know. I mean Peter’s told me things about dropping food over Holland when I never thought anything about it but they were, they lost aircraft there hadn’t they Peter?
PS: Yes. According to the book on Operation Manna.
MC: Yeah. They lost three.
PS: Three Lancasters on that.
PT: And I did —
PS: They collided I think.
CS: Collided.
PT: I did two. It did two to the Hague. To the Hague.
MC: Yeah.
PT: And, and we I don’t know just which. I tell you what we did one to Juvencourt.
MC: Oh yeah.
PT: And we brought, we stayed overnight and then we brought a lot of ex-prisoners. British boys who were prisoners. Prisoners of war.
MC: Yeah.
PT: That was, that’s tragic.
MC: Yeah. Juvencourt.
PT: When you hear of one being lost through stupid pulling at a rip cord and you know you can’t believe how daft people are.
MC: There were a few aircraft lost when the prisoners were brought back.
PT: Anyway, it didn’t affect me.
MC: No.
PT: We only did the one and one’s enough. Well, when we were at Juvencourt we went, we went drinking. These French [robbing] us you know with this cheap wine you know and I can’t, I can’t understand why I finished up on my own and I finished up in an American camp and this, this American said, ‘Oh sure. We’ve got a place for you boy.’ I went and I slept in this American camp and I wasn’t, I were on my own you know. I don’t know where any, we’d been drinking this wine. I didn’t know where the hell I was and this American said, ‘You follow me and I’ll finish you.’ That sort of talk you know. I thought that were wonderful. I really, I enjoyed the Grammar School. You see at the Grammar School in 1940 I’d been there then about four or five years and a lot of the boys they’d been called up and I lost a very good mentor of Harry Marsden who was lost on a ship in, opposite St Nazaire. He was, they battened him down and he was lost. Harry Marsden. He was my mentor. He was the cricket captain. The head of the school. The football captain. If you mentioned Harry Marsden he was in it, you know and we lost him.
MC: He was in everything.
PT: 1942 he was killed. He was killed on this ship. It was an, it was a British warship. I forget the name of the ship and it was outside St Nazaire and it got sunk and they battened it. They saved a lot and they didn’t get, they didn’t get Harry out. He was, he was battened down and that was sad you know when we were going on to another course you know. I mean when we got back from Canada we were at [pause] we were at Millom. Well, we were at Pannal Ash College and they sent us up to Millom and we went back flying on Avro Ansons.
MC: Yeah. So you brought plenty of —
PT: Chicken Rock and up to the islands and back, you know.
MC: You brought plenty of stuff back.
PT: Then we went to, then we were posted to —
MC: Husbands Bosworth.
PT: Husbands Bosworth. Husbands Bosworth, yeah. And that’s where we crewed up and we were on Lancasters.
MC: Yeah.
PT: No. Not Lancasters. Wellingtons. And that’s when we went and converted on to —
MC: Lancasters.
PT: Lancasters. Yeah.
MC: Yeah. So when you came back from Canada you brought a load of stuff back with you from Canada. Cigarettes and stuff like that.
PT: When I came back from, when I was in Moncton they said, we had a, we had a kit bag. A Canadian. And a Canadian kit bag and they said, ‘If you want to get the maximum amount on board ship,’ he said, ‘You’ll have to buy a Canadian, not a Canadian one but a special one they had for erks like me. And it were a bag. It stood about that high and of course you didn’t need the others but I had that many cigarettes and stuff and bottles of cream for my mother that I put this this big kit bag and I had a pack. What did they call it? Like a —
MC: A rucksack.
PT: Knapsack. Yeah.
MC: Yeah.
PT: And I put this big one, I got somebody to lift it up and it lifted on like this and it were, it were about like this you know and when we got to the ship, when we got to the ship you know I was just hoping that we would have just gone up one step and on to the ship you know. And we went up this gantry you know. Up and up and up with this and when I was [laughs] when I got to where I was supposed to be I were absolutely knackered with this. With this big kit bag you know full of cigarettes and bottles of cream for my mother and stuff like that. Yeah. I enjoyed that. There were moments when you were a bit fed up you know and I mean I got walloped with a master who was, he also hit me but he’d been reported in a magazine that he’d hit a girl the same way. He just, for some, I didn’t know what I’d done wrong and he just whacked me across the face and Geoffrey my younger brother said, ‘He did the same to me.’ And then in this magazine, “Reunion,” this girl said she got whacked with him. He were a bully. He was a bully.
CS: Dad —
[recording paused]
MC: So I’ll just finish up by saying thank you for the interview anyway Peter. It’s much enjoyable. I’m, I thank you very much for doing the interview.
PT: Yeah.
MC: It’s been very good. Very entertaining.
PT: It was good, was it?
MC: Yeah.
PT: Yeah.
MC: Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Peter Thomas
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mike Connock
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
2018-03-02
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
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AThomasPG180302
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:33:14 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Leicestershire
England--Devon
England--Harrogate
England--London
England--Norfolk
England--Rutland
England--Yorkshire
Scotland
Canada
Ontario
Ontario--Toronto
New Brunswick
New Brunswick--Moncton
North America--Niagara Falls
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1945
Description
An account of the resource
Peter was born in Nelson, Lancashire and had two brothers. He was sixteen when he left school in 1940 and got a job until joining the Royal Air Force in 1943. He went to London Air Crew Reception Centre before going to Initial Training Wing at RAF Paignton. He then moved to Cambridge where he spent time on Tiger Moths. He was told he would be a navigator and from there he went to Liverpool to sail to Canada and start his training before going to Moncton receiving centre and then on to Toronto. On one occasion Peter flew over Niagara Falls. After training Peter got shipped back to Great Britain, arriving in Scotland before going to Pannal Ash College. He then moved to the operational training unit at RAF Husbands Bosworth where crews were formed. The crew went to the Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Woolfox Lodge to train on Lancasters with 149 Squadron. They were then posted to RAF Methwold. When training on Wellingtons they had to make an emergency landing due to loss of an engine. He also recalled a trip in a Mosquito when the pilot crashed the aircraft but no one was injured. The crew was sometimes designated to take aerial photographs and was also involved with Operation Exodus and Operation Manna. Peter was demobbed as a warrant officer. After the war Peter and his family did a lot of camping. He said he had enjoyed everything he had done in life. Peter thought that Bomber Command did not received the recognition it deserves.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Julie Williams
149 Squadron
aircrew
crash
crewing up
forced landing
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Mosquito
navigator
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
RAF Husbands Bosworth
RAF Methwold
RAF Paignton
RAF Woolfox Lodge
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1118/11609/ASeckerFE170815.1.mp3
47cfe21bac4401a2c3fc946d0008bae1
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
Secker, Frances Elizabeth
F E Secker
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Frances Elizabeth Secker (b. 1923). She lived near RAF Feltwell 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
2017-08-15
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Secker, FE
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DB: I’m talking today to Frances Elizabeth Secker, who lives in Feltwell, on the 15th of August 2017 and it is currently 14:45 hours. Elizabeth, I know you’ve lived in Feltwell all your life and you were here during the World War Two. Can you tell me a little bit how you interacted with the Bomber Command boys on Feltwell station?
FES: Well, I got on well with all the boys on Feltwell station, had quite a few friends, yes, yeah, a lot of them through a friend of mine and I got introduced to them, yes. We’d go to the dances at the gym, we’d go to the cinema in the camp, yes, uhm. Then I met a lot of the airmen, the New Zealand airmen coming to the fish shop where I worked, quite young, yes, and what I can really remember about them was they had egg and chips quite a lot but not when I get the time, quite often three [laughs], yes, so sometimes they had to be cooked in the chip pan because they wanted so many. There’s two eating rooms there and I was the person that waited the tables quite a lot, yeah, all very friendly, yeah, nice people to work for, yes. I had a few boyfriends, in the Air Force here [laughs]. [file missing] The actual uhm New Zealanders flew from Methwold, didn’t’ they? Yeah, the first one, yeah, flying from here I suppose but I think the actual first one that flew in Feltwell was a Harrow, yeah, is that right? Yeah. I was at school, yes, and we had the Wellingtons after that, uhm was it the Venturas? Yeah. I don’t, the Lancasters flew from Methwold, I think, didn’t they? They didn’t fly from Feltwell, yeah. Yes, I can remember that, remember when one or two of them crashed round, yeah. Another thing I can remember is seeing the, the [unclear] be New Zealanders a lot, a lot, I think, going off to Methwold, sometimes in an open truck, sometimes in a coach, and I was working at the fish shop, they would quite often stop at the post office next door for some reason [laughs], yes [laughs], yeah, yeah [unclear] she met them she met them, I know she did Charlie, they went into the shop and she get a date, she would say, [laughs], so yeah and then we went out with a couple of officers, [unclear] different ones but really they were more casual dates, yeah, just, you know, at the gym we met quite a lot of them, yeah, and dances on camp yeah and I can remember cycling to Methwold uhm where they had dances in the Nissen huts, yeah, we went there, cycled there, [laughs] yeah. Another thing I can certainly remember is watching the funerals, yes, [unclear] yeah, which is very sad, yeah. And I went to, uhm when they unveiled the memorial for them, went to that, yeah, and when they, this is recently in, the one by St Mary’s, I went to that when they put that there, yeah, went to their little service, yes, yes, very friendly, yeah, we did have a very nice time although it was wartime, yeah, we did, yeah, ok. Well, he took us to Brandon fair we cycled, my friend Pam and me, Pam, he asked me for the next date, so we went on [unclear] but he was stationed, he came here in ’47, to, was it, a flying training school, he was, uhm, I didn’t know really, I didn’t know him then, and actually I never saw his logbook so anything until after he died, uhm, never talked about that much really, apart from talking about his, the crew he was with but yeah, I never saw his logbook so I knew [clears throat] that he said once they crashed at Mepal was when he had his first cigarette [laughs], yes, yeah, yes uhm. So, he was here from ’47 till ’50, then he came out, air traffic control and that was at Methwold, yeah, yeah. About things up here, in the mess his friends, yes, one there, he wasn’t in the forces, I don’t quite know what his position was but he kept a few hens and turned a bit laugh and say, he came into the mess at breakfast time and said, my hens are not laying very much and Joe Bowman would come in and say, would you cook, this egg for me? I think it was [unclear] [laughs] so that’s why his hens weren’t laying much for him, yeah, lots of fun times really, yes, he had some. Charlie’s a big sportsman, yes, he played for station, yeah, and the one time he played for Yarmouth but when he was in the Air Force he played different stations, yeah, a big sportsman, football, this I’m talking about, yeah, yeah, well, any other sport he was interested into, yeah, yeah. Yes, new Zealander the pilot, two Canadians, yeah, they were British, Charlie and his crew, Charlie was the rear gunner, Flight Lieutenant Keen was the pilot a new Zealander, Flight Lieutenant Brown Canadian, Flight Lieutenant King Canadian, Flight Sergeant Spilsbury, Sergeant Elms and Sergeant Smith were British. I think, his skipper, as he called him, thought quite a lot of Charlie, made quite a fuss of him, although they couldn’t eat in the same mess, they were quite friendly, yes. They’d done thirty-one tours, yes and then that was it for them, were very lucky, yeah, to survive, yeah, [unclear]. Charlie kept in touch with the Canadians, Flight Lieutenant Brown and Flight Lieutenant King for a while, yeah, heard all about their lives and what they’d done after they’ve come out of the service, yeah, yes. Charlie came to Feltwell in ’47 with the, uhm, training [unclear], flight training, for that he was air control at Feltwell and Methwold, yes, stayed in the Air Force until 1950 from when he took a job with Pearl Insurance, ok, that was Charlie’s bit [laughs] [unclear] uhm, yeah, not the land army as such but land work in the Fens, near the village, where we cycled to work, everywhere we had to cycle if we needed to go anywhere at that time [laughs] yes. And work, uhm, we picked potatoes [laughs], planted potatoes but by machine, we picked potatoes by hand what else did we do? We do celery, bit in the harvest fields, yes, at that time, yeah and no cow, yeah, no, no cow, horses there, at that time till we got to practice machine, yeah. Yes, I’d done that for until mum [unclear] died I stayed home, yeah, I then went back to fish and chips [laughs], yeah, till I retired almost, yeah, different ones, yeah, [unclear]. Yes, Charlie would talk about Queenie, Q for Queenie, apparently his favourite aircraft. One thing he talked about was when they crashed at Mepal, he had his first cigarette [laughs], yes, he never talked much about the operations, unless he saw something about Germany on the television and he would say, I think I know where that is [laughs], and that was all he’d say about. His logbook I never saw until after he died. So that was Q for Queenie, his favourite aircraft. Going back to the fish shop, they were packed, it was packed in those days, two eating rooms full and the actual shop, there was no queue, everybody trying to get in front [laughs], calling out what they would like, very happy times although it was wartime, yeah, yeah. Yes, I think that they had fish too, yeah, but I remember that, I used to go with Mrs [unclear] the shop to, have you heard of Wearham? Little village? Yeah, used to go there and get these trays of eggs, yes, because I suppose having the shop, they could get them, couldn’t they? And yeah, I don’t know whether they got them on the campus match, anyway they left their eggs and chips, [laughs] and fish and chips [laughs], yeah, and that was it, egg and chips and fish and chips, and bread and butter [laughs], yeah. I don’t think we’d done fish, we’d done cups of tea, no, I think it was just fish and chips, and egg and chips and frittles [laughs], no, I think we were too busy really, we working and then, yeah, then on the corner, uhm, just by the camp gates on the right hand side, I think it was The Sally Ann if I remember rightly, the one, yeah, yeah, then there was The Blade, I think that was open at the time, I think they’d done, they’d done food there, yeah, looks, yeah, shop, yeah, cause it’s not a shop anymore, my lifelong friend from schooldays, her mum and dad had a shop, she went into the ATS, her mum died suddenly so she came home, and helped her dad in the shop, a grocery shop, this was where she met a lot of the airmen [laughs], this is where we made, made up our friends, most of them, at the time [laughs], mostly casual but Pam married Ted King, he was a, stationed at Feltwell, Pam met him and married him and she was quite young, and they were quite young, yeah, and from then on she travelled with him, yes, so they went a lot of different places in the country, yeah, we always stayed friends, great friends until she died last year, at the beginning of this year, actually, yeah, yeah, Pam and Ted, I’m friendly with her daughter, 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
A name given to the resource
Interview with Frances Elizabeth Secker
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Denise Boneham
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-08-15
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ASeckerFE170815
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:20:07 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Norfolk
Germany
Description
An account of the resource
Frances Elizabeth Secker is a lifelong resident of Feltwell. She was still at school when RAF Feltwell opened in 1937, and she remembers the Harrow being the first aircraft to arrive, followed by Wellingtons.
Elizabeth has clear memories of attending dances and the cinema at both RAF Feltwell and RAF Methwold, along with her friend Pam. She was employed as a waitress in the local fish and chip shop, which brought her into direct contact with the New Zealand airmen stationed at nearby RAF Methwold. The airmen’s love of egg and chips is a particularly fond memory. She had several boyfriends, but nothing too serious. Open trucks and coaches full of aircrew being transported to and from RAF Methwold is another memory that has stayed with her.
She didn’t meet her husband to be until 1947 after he was posted to RAF Methwold to retrain in air traffic control. They met when she cycled with her friend to Brandon fair. Charlie had been a rear gunner. His crew was made up of a New Zealand pilot, Flight Lieutenant Keen, two Canadians, Flight Lieutenants Brown and King, along with Flight Sergeants Spillsby, Elms and Smith. The crew were a close-knit unit and they carried out 31 operation, and remained in contact long after the war. He spoke fondly about his favourite aircraft, Q for Queenie, but he did not talk about his operations. Elizabeth only discovered his log book after Charlie’s death. His only comment about his experiences came when an item on Germany made the news, and he would indicate that he knew where the location was. She does remember Charlie told her he had his first cigarette after the aircraft crashed at RAF Mepal. Charlie demobbed in 1950 and was then employed by Peal Assurance.
Elizabeth also worked on the land. Planting potatoes by machine, but picking by hand. She also helped at harvest time. Cycling to the fields where all the heavy work was carried out by horses.
Her friend Pam married Ted King. She was quite young, and although Pam and Ted moved around, they remained in contact throughout their lives until Pam passed away. Elizabeth worked at the chip shop throughout her life until her retirement.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Peter Schulze
Temporal Coverage
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1937
1947
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
aircrew
bombing
crash
Harrow
love and romance
perception of bombing war
pilot
RAF Feltwell
RAF Mepal
RAF Methwold
Wellington
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1113/11603/PSaunstonFR1701.1.jpg
ca99bc450ba7136ba5c937a1abc3cc8f
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1113/11603/ASaunstonFR170522.2.mp3
a4ce3e36837e8676e9a26f29cb7f3ed4
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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Saunston, Frank
Frank R Saunston
F R Saunston
Description
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An oral history interview with Frank Stanston (b. 1925). He helped to pack supplies for Operation Manna.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-05-22
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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Saunston, FR
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DK: So, this is David Kavanagh for the International Bomber Command Centre talking to Frank Staunton at his home on the 22nd of May. That’s ok.
US: I’ll show you these afterwards.
DK: Yeah, I can have a look now, that’s ok. I’ve got the recording going so, I’ll just leave that there. Alright, oh, ok. So, that’s from the Dutch, isn’t it?
US: Yeah.
DK: That’s the Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands
US: Yes
DK: That’s a contribution to Manna and then Operation Manna there. So, that’s the Manna Association, isn’t it?
US: Yes. It has something to do with Lincoln?
DK: Yes, oh yes, yes, all aspects of Bomber Command, the groundcrews,
US: Yes
DK: The bombing campaign and the Operation Manna and that sort of thing
US: Oh, just I didn’t realise the date was on it till just now.
DK: Yeah
US: The 20th of April to the 8th of May 1945.
DK: [unclear], isn’t it?
US: Yeah, yeah and that came with
DK: The medal as well. Ok.
US: Yes, and he got the medal and he had to wear that one [unclear] on parade
DK: Right, ok.
US: Yeah, yeah.
FS: Fifty years afterwards
DK: Better, better late than never
FS: Pardon?
DK: Better late than never.
US: Yes was quite [unclear] in that case
DK: Lovely, lovely [unclear] medal, isn’t it?
US: Yeah, that is lovely.
DK: Yeah
US: [unclear]
FS: [unclear] now, that’s the only one in 149 Squadron and 662 cause anybody’s got one
DK: Really?
FS: Yeah, cause I’ve been on the Mildenhall register
DK: Right
FS: And the man at the Mildenhall register didn’t know anything about it and I told him what it was for and he said, well, nobody else has got one
DK: Ah, right. Can I just ask, to start with, what were you doing immediately before the war?
FS: Sorry?
DK: What were you doing immediately before the war?
FS: I’ll start from the beginning.
DK: Yes, sure, please, yes
FS: When I left school, I left school in August 1939 and I had various jobs before I got a job as a garden assistant at [unclear] and while I was there the local ATC started on the 14th of May 1941 I joined the local squadron 1406 [unclear] Holbeach when it was formed I was interested in going into the Air Force and so I volunteered to join the RAF in 1942 and I went and had a medical and passed the medical and they said they would call me when they needed me and so I had to wait until I think it was about November 1943 when they said, we’ll call you up on and sent me a date of the 12th of January 1944 and so I joined the RAF and I went down to ACRC in London and did all the kitting and all the main and drilling and that sort of thing but because I was a local boy and I didn’t go to grammar school, my education wasn’t quite the standard that was required, so they sent me on a training course at Liverpool to 19, number 19 PACT it was called, Pre Air Crew Training Course where we spent six months in the Liverpool College of Commerce and at Liverpool [unclear] Street Technical College and together with the training, initial training, drilling and all that sort of thing, that lasted six months. After six months we went back down to St John’s Wood where we was reassessed, well, I was down to pilot, navigator, bomb aimer but they, the actual medical side to do with the pilot side of it was that my legs weren’t long enough. So, because, they said my legs weren’t long enough and they didn’t want any navigators and they got no call for bomb aimers, would I take a second job and as and because I had a very good aptitude I was selected to become an air gunner but they didn’t want any air gunners, so they sent us on a course, training course down at Babbacombe, Paignton and Torquay and after we’ve been down there for three months they said, well, they couldn’t really feed, they couldn’t really afford to feed us, they needed people in other jobs, would we take another job? So, we said, yeah, well, what are they? And they said, well, you can go clerk GD, general duties or you can become a transport driver because we are short of vehicle drivers so I said, I wanna go for that one , cause I thought, I might as well ride the [unclear] [laughs]. Anyway we went on the course down at Melksham in Wiltshire and it lasted eight weeks and in eight weeks’ time, you had to learn to drive all the vehicles that the RAF had and my last job was to drive the Queen Mary which was sixty some odd foot long. I left there and was posted to Peplow in Shropshire where we used to start the tractors for the WAAFs in the morning cause Peplow at that time was training glider pilots for Arnhem and D-Day and because we were doing this course, we stayed with them until that course ended and when it ended they transferred me down to Methwold in Norfolk and that was on Bomber Command where 149 and 622 Squadron were based and it was while I was there, I had the job of forklift driver in the bomb dump and we used to load the bombs onto the trolleys and we used to load the trolleys in a train to take round to the aircraft to bomb up and a Lancaster bomber squadron [unclear] when it comes to feeding them [unclear] about twenty two bombs of some kind or canisters of some kind or one big bomb which was one odd thing but anyway we were doing that and one day we had a senior officer coming down to the squadron and a fortnight later we had this thing come through that we, apparently we’re going to send food to people who were starving in Holland called Operation Manna and it was on that job that I did actually did load and did suggest some ways of the stuff landing on the ground because you wrap a sack of flour in its own right, you drop a sack of flour and it hits the ground, it bursts, it throws it out [unclear] fan shape and it’s no more good to anybody so that was decided how was we going to drop it and so we had this talk about it and we said, well, if you put that bag in a bigger bag, a clothing woven one, the bigger bag would catch the contents and so we put this ordinary sack of flour, a standard sack of flour, it’s about sixteen stone I think or fourteen stone into a railway sack as we call them which were big and used to carry corn on the railway and stick them up and that and we dropped, at the second drop we did with that it did burst open but the contents inside was all in, you know, thrown about and they found that it would be difficult to salvage all the contents without losing all [unclear] in the fabric material so we said, what else can we do? So, I said, well, the best thing I can think of is if you get that bag of flour in a railway sack which is about twice its size and then you put it in the bigger one which is bigger still which the farmers locally called [unclear] bags because [unclear] from the local factory was sent out to the farms in these huge sacks so if you put it in that one and you stitch it up in that one and you roll it up in that one when it came down the weight of the flour at the front would cause the thing to open up and the back end would flap and because it’s flapping, it retarded the fall and we tried that and it worked.
DK: It worked.
FS: Yeah.
DK: And these were being dropped out the Lancasters, were they?
FS: Pardon?
DK: They were being dropped out of Lancasters.
FS: Lancasters, Stirlings as well.
DK: Stirlings as well.
FS: Yeah
DK: Right.
FS: But they dropped them out the Lancasters and then the other thing was they always [unclear] get them in the Lancaster so someone came up on this big thing, I don’t know who made them but they came to us in a lorry load and they called them panniers
DK: Yeah
FS: A pannier would fix into the bomb bay, either side, yeah, and then you could shut the doors and that was all enclosed and so that was decided on, so we did two drops for panniers and that was quite successful. What I wouldn’t say is to drop things at two hundred and plus miles an hour you don’t get the results you think you gonna get, because a large can of corned beef dropped at two hundred miles an hour on the airfield [unclear], it would go in the ground as a big can of corned beef and go down about two foot in the ground because it was [unclear], it would come up on top and when it come on [unclear], it was fat as your book. Absolutely but it [unclear] burst the can
DK: Alright.
FS: No, so they decided it wouldn’t matter which way it dropped, it would still be usable.
DK: The contents were still ok?
FS: Yes, inside, yes. And that what I had and then when I came out the RAF, I mean, finished me course as an air gunner, I mean, done the jobs at Methwold and at the [unclear] base, I went to, went to the, finalized me course and I finished up as an air gunner on Sunderland flying boats.
DK: Alright.
FS: Yeah. So that’s my life story.
DK: Do you know which squadron you were with, with the Sunderlands?
FS: Pardon?
DK: Do you know which squadron it was with the Sunderlands?
FS: Scotland?
DK: The Sunderlands.
FS: Yes
DK: At which squadron?
FS: I wasn’t with the squadron.
DK: Ah, right, ok.
FS: I was with a ferry unit
DK: Ferry unit, right, ok.
FS: Yeah. I was, I went to, squadron, [unclear] RAF [unclear] in Scotland
DK: Right
FS: Or [unclear] if you like and we were based on a distillery
DK: Oh right [laughs]
FS: Yes. Very nice,
DK: Very nice
FS: Anyway, I did, I joined the course a crew and there was ten of us in a crew and we did [unclear] because by that time the war had finished and
DK: The war had ended, right. So you
FS: There was still [unclear] submarines still out there even then but we used to do patrol out over the Atlantic at places like Rockpool, I went to Iceland, went to [unclear] in the Shetlands, places like that, while I was there and then when we came back we were going to go to Singapore and the crew had slept in our billet with us two days before they took off and went and we were due to go the next day down to [unclear] to get equipped for the temperature, you know, shorts and all that sort of thing and we were going off in to Singapore but the crew that went down the day before were taking off and we were taking off at about quarter past two in the morning and the crew that went down the day before they took off and on the takeoff they lost an engine and they were fully loaded and you got two thousand four hundred and forty eight gallons of fuel on board and they lost an engine and so they told them to climb up as well as they could and on the way up they lost another engine and they got up to about four to five thousand feet and they told him to jettison this fuel and turn in a certain direction but unfortunately the people who were telling them about what to do didn’t realize that there was a two way wind, at the height that they were the wind was blowing in one direction and at a lower level it was blowing in the other direction and so what happened? They told them they had to turn and when they turned they came back in and they came back in to the vapor cloud and it blew up in mid-air completely, nothing left of it, yeah and so our trip, we were going down the [unclear] and we were on the fly path taking off when it was withdrawn.
DK: Alright.
FS: And it was withdrawn,
US: [unclear] thirsty.
FS: And it was
DK: I can stop there for a minute. Yep, there we go,
FS: Anyway, we got our, our trip was aborted and on the station for just over two weeks and they came up with to report they caught us that morning and I went along and they said, now, you aren’t going to Singapore, he said, because you have knowledge of agriculture, of food growing, that job is more important than you becoming an air gunner on a course in Singapore so he said, because it’s paying so much money to America for the food we need to grow our own where we can, so you can go back into agriculture to provide food so they sent me as on class B2 as a reserve and I stayed on that until it was abandoned and I came back home and the family had moved from where we used to live to Sutton St James, father had got us from [unclear] at Sutton St James and so at that point I got a job working for my father on his four acre holding and that was my life.
DK: You had a story about a V1. Yeah, there was a story about a V1?
FS: Oh yeah
DK: Yeah, so could you tell us that story?
FS: When I was back in August having finished a course at Liverpool, we were stationed or billeted in Viceroy Court which is just off the edge of Regent’s Park, very [unclear] block of flats but we did only use the bottom two floors to sleep and it was [unclear] of us in one room with an opening of eighteen inches by nine as the only means of air in the room, there were no doors on, all the doors had been taken out and we’d been having our usual daily exercises in the park, Regent’s Park across the way and we came back in from there and get to change back from PT gear into ordinary dress and we did that on the top floor and cause at that time the air raid warning went all clear at eight o’clock in the morning and at one minute past it went warning again and the doodlebugs started coming over after eight o’clock and we were there getting changed from PT gear into ordinary dress and we heard one coming so we went down on the balcony outside and funnily enough after a few seconds its engine stopped and we knew that when the engine stopped it was about to come down somewhere and there it was, coming through the clouds, straight through our block of flats.
DK: Did you actually see it, coming down?
FS: Oh yeah
DK: Yes, yes
FS: Coming straight for us, ah, well, we all went mad, we, I got down two flights of stairs in the toilet, there’s no doors on the toilet and it was no water in the toilet but I got flat on me chest in the toilet and got one he had covered up but I didn’t get me right here covered and then it went off and then I really funny things cause you got two thousand pounds of TNT going off, makes quite a bang and that was that, anyway we finally got down and they went, now what happened and so apparently this doodlebug coming down instead of coming directly at us as it was, it turned and it ran into the Canal Bank, where the Grand Union Canal is at that point and it ran into the bank outside [unclear] which he lived and it exploded but all the blast went upwards into the air and so the damage to our block of flats wasn’t all that bad, you could put your arms through the wall and shake with the people in the next room but that was apparently because it was a single frame building and it’s only the solid part
DK: [unclear], yeah
FS: That was fractured, yeah and then they sent us down, they sent us up the road to check on the people because mainly all the people in those flats were either relatives of or families of people, forces people working in London
DK: Right, ok.
FS: And so they sent us down to the one that was nearest to where the thing fell and to go and have a look at it was unusual really because we went inside and there was, we met a man in the hall way and he said where did they go? And I said, where did who go? He said, them gang, that gang of blokes, I said, what gang of blokes? He said, well, they come in here and then they [unclear] a big bang, he said, it was, he said, and somebody’s been pinched our wardrobe, I said, what? He said, somebody’s pinched our wardrobe, I said, no, I don’t think so, anyway we arrived, he took us up to where it was and he said, it stood there, against the wall and it’s not here anymore, that gang of blokes took it, I said, I didn’t see any gang of blokes, anyway he was quite, quite confused, quite think about it when a knock came on the door and a woman from two, not the next flat to his but the next flat, she came and she said, I don’t want that! I said, you don’t want what? She said, I don’t want that wardrobe in my house, it’s not my kind of furniture and I said what wardrobe? She said, well, them blokes came and they put a wardrobe against my wall. So, what he meant was the [unclear] of the building must have opened up and the wardrobe went through two rooms and rested against the wall.
DK: Yeah, so it crashed down.
FS: Yeah
DK: So, no men never actually stole it then?
FS: Pardon?
DK: No men actually stole it.
FS: There wasn’t anybody there.
DK: No, it’d gone through the
FS: It’d gone through
DK: Floors. Yeah, strange.
FS: Yeah. So, the whole of the building must have opened up and shut up again. Yeah.
DK: Yeah. Strange.
FS: Yeah.
DK: And can I just confirm, whereabouts in London was this?
FS: It’s on the edge of Regent’s Park
DK: On the edge of Regent’s Park, ok.
FS: I’m not sure what road, not sure what road is in. If I got a map
DK: That’s ok, in Regent’s Park it’s ok. Know roughly where it was
FS: Pardon?
DK: That’s ok, Regent’s Park, I know where that is.
FS: Yeah, I can show you exactly where it is. I got a map of London.
DK: Yeah. That’s ok. I got an idea in my head where the canal is.
FS: Yeah
DK: Yeah. Can I just ask, just going back to your time working in the bomb dumps
FS: Yeah
DK: Did you used to actually load the bombs into the aircraft?
FS: I only loaded them onto the trolley.
DK: Onto the trolleys.
FS: But I loaded out to load the food into the aircraft.
DK: The food into the aircraft
FS: Yeah
DK: So, you had a tractor then, was it?
FS: A forklift
DK: Forklift, and you loaded them down
FS: It was electric
DK: Right
FS: Forklift
DK: Yeah
FS: Didn’t have an engine, is an electric one
DK: Right
FS: He used to plug it in, charge it up overnight if you weren’t using it or when between times, when you got so long between before you load in more stuff
DK: And then, the trollies then went out to the aircraft
FS: As a bomb train, we called it,
DK: Bomb train, yeah
FS: Yeah, cause one lady took my bomb train one night and she had a John Brown, a, yeah John
DK: A tractor, a John Brown tractor
FS: Yeah, she had a John Brown tractor and they were quite big things, quite powerful and they were quite fast if they wanted and she decided to take my bomb train in a hurry and she overturned it and she overturned it on the runway and the bombs came off the trolleys
DK: Right
FS: And then there was a big discussion as to what they were going to do with them and they said, well, the only thing you can do with them is go drop them in the sea and the disposal ground
DK: Right. So, they couldn’t be reused again.
FS: There’s delayed action
DK: Right, ok.
FS: Delayed action bombs and because they had fell off the trolleys, they started the action working, which cut the time down as to about three to four hours
DK: So you had three to four hours to dispose of them.
FS: Yeah
DK: Yeah
FS: Anyway, they had to call the crews out of bed, they were gonna take them on a trip the next day and load them all up on the aircraft which I did several of them on the aircraft and they flew them off to the dropping zone in the North Sea, it’s just off Dogger Bank somewhere and as the aircraft came back and landed, you could hear the bombs who went off in land and there a thousand pound bombs and they’re quite [unclear] yeah
DK: So, were quite a few of the tractor drivers women then?
FS: Pardon?
DK: Were quite a few of the tractor drivers women?
FS: OH, Quite a lot of them were
DK: Yeah
FS: Quite a lot of them
DK: She wasn’t hurt then, was she, when she rolled it?
FS: Pardon?
DK: Was she hurt when they rolled it? Was she hurt?
FS: She had trapped [unclear] it turned over.
DK: Just the bomb trolley?
FS: Just the bomb trolley.
DK: Right, ok. She was ok then?
FS: Started from the back and the [unclear] went up, yeah.
DK: So she was ok.
FS: Pardon? She was ok
DK: She was ok.
FS: She was ok.
DK: Can you recall what types of bombs you used to pick up?
FS: Pardon?
DK: Can you recall which types of bombs, the types of bombs that you, you picked up with the trolley?
FS: Types?
DK: Types, yeah.
FS: Well, you see, the means of dropping bombs is [unclear] for years and the types of bombs we were dropping were thousand pounders, the American one was the [unclear] on with the top, keep some of them cause they were known to explode and they contained Torpex which is the same stuff as they put in torpedoes and it makes a big bang and it does a lot of damage, we load probably twenty two, twenty one or twenty two of them on an aircraft and that was allowed, they used to take a thousand pound bombs
DK: So, it’s about twenty-one, twenty-two thousand pound bombs
FS: Yeah
DK: Yeah. And were there any bigger bombs you
FS: Bigger ones? Oh, we had four thousand pounders which were [unclear] three section, two section canister at the front end is like a big barrel and the back end was empty and it was nose and tail fuse and three fuses in the nose and three in the tail which unwound when they left the aircraft the safety pin pulled out the fusing thing unwound and fell away and that let the fuse ignite and go to the front and when it hit the ground it went off [unclear] you had the two section one with the tail and you had the three section one
DK: So, they would have been eight thousand pounds and twelve thousand pounds
FS: That’s right, yeah
DK: Right, yeah
FS: And they had these special ones which had dropped on the submarine pens at Brest, but we never handled them, they were done by a couple of chaps with a huge forklift thing that could carry them cause we couldn’t carry them, they were too heavy for us
DK: And were many of the loads incendiary bombs as well?
FS: Incendiary?
DK: Yeah
FS: OH, yeah, yeah [laughs]. You wouldn’t believe it, seven thousand or eight, would ye? The [unclear] the ordinary stick incendiary bombs, there was ninety of those in a canister
DK: Right
FS: They came to us in boxes, right, and we had a canister carrier which took four of those
DK: Right, so that’s four times ninety
FS: Four times ninety
DK: Right
FS: And you only did with those, got a crowbar very carefully took the lid off the box and then you put the fuse in back over and you did all that with them upright and then they took them out [unclear] over come in the aircraft, you could have twenty of those or twenty four, twenty one of those at a time, we reckoned about seven thousand at that time of Dresden and Cologne where we sent a lot of fire bombs and the next after they come up with a load of high explosive and so on and that turned the course of that two weeks we unloaded or offloaded a T3 hangar which is about probably four hundred foot long or twenty seven line, we emptied it in a fortnight
DK: All full of incendiaries?
FS: All incendiaries. Yeah. And the bigger canisters of incendiaries was worked a different way, they were shaped like a bomb and had a copper nose to them and the copper nose had four nozzles facing outwards and when it hit the ground, it exploded but it didn’t explode and blow itself to pieces, but it started off as a fire from these nozzles, sort of high pressured gas burning and they would drop on the ground unless they lay flat on the ground they would turn themselves upright and set fire to everything around them but this was like [unclear] settling well flame sort of thing and there were some which [unclear] and they did quite [unclear] canisters and fused them up yeah.
DK: So, how long would it take to load up a whole squadron of aircraft?
FS: Pardon?
DK: How long would it take
FS: About a day
DK: About a day.
FS: Yeah
DK: So, you’d be out there early morning right through the day
FS: After [unclear]
DK: Yeah [unclear], they took off
FS: Yeah
DK: Yeah
FS: Yeah.
DK: So, it’s a day’s work to load up a whole squadron.
FS: Pardon?
DK: A day’s work to load up a whole squadron.
FS: It [unclear] just a day, you do it again tomorrow
DK: Yeah
FS: Every day the same.
DK: Yeah, yeah.
FS: I think in some cases I only had about three hours sleep at night, probably only about three hours sleep at night.
DK: So, I think that’s very interesting information there, thanks very much for your time. I was just going to ask, what do you think now about your time in the RAF?
FS: What do I think about it?
DK: What do you think about it now.
FS: I wish I’d stayed there. I wish I’d stayed there actually, but I didn’t have that choice more or less, I always say they thought that my job as food production was better serving the country than my career in the RAF was
DK: Yeah. So, you had no choice, you had to come out
FS: I had to, yeah, yeah, I had to come out because I had knowledge of food production, that was the answer
DK: Very, food is very important though, food is very important
FS: Oh yeah, well, when you work out how much they were paying for a boat load of food for America, you can understand why they wanted to stop him [unclear] it and reround it when they could and as I say, I think they most probably, most probably it was a good thing for the country and they wouldn’t be feeding me, would they? I was feeding them.
DK: OK then, I will stop there but thanks very much for that, that’s more or less, that’s, thanks very much for your time. I’ll stop there.
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 Frank Saunston
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Kavanagh
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-05-22
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.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ASaunstonFR170522, PSaunstonFR1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:40:17 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Frank Saunston joined the ATC in 1941 and then the RAF in 1942. He worked as a transport driver at RAF Peplow and then as a forklift driver at RAF Methwold on the bomb dump. Describes his role and his duties and gives details regarding the bombs used. He took part in Operation Manna and tells of how the food was packed and dropped over Holland. Finished up as an air gunner on Sunderland flying boats. Witnessed a V1 dropping on the block of flats where he was stationed near Regent’s Park in London and gives a detailed account of the event. Remembers an aircraft accident when he was posted to Scotland. Tells of how he wanted to stay longer in the RAF but was told to go back to work in food production, where his knowledge of agriculture would have been more useful.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Netherlands
England--Norfolk
England--Shropshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
149 Squadron
622 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing up
ground personnel
incendiary device
Lancaster
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
RAF Methwold
RAF Peplow
service vehicle
Sunderland
tractor
training
V-1
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1064/11520/AParkeRG161019.1.mp3
a6c231d8feaa86fb5a16ca4352d65ea2
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
Parke, Ray
Ray G Parke
R G Parke
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Warrant Officer Ray Parke (b. 1925, Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer with 218 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-10-19
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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Parke, RG
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DK: David Kavanagh, International Bomber Command Centre, interviewing Raymond, Ray Parke at his home, 19th October 2016. [unclear] Very much.
US: Ok.
RP: Alright, I’ve just looked at me logbook. [unclear] Unfortunately most of the story was written down here,
DK: Oh! [laughs]
RP: He was my navigator.
DK: Oh, ok.
RP: And this is the crew.
DK: If I just put that down there, is that ok? Let’s hope it’s not too [unclear]
RP: Yes, yes. [unclear]
DK: Ah, so which one are you then? Right, ok. So that was your crew then, was it?
RP: That’s right, yes.
DK: You name, still name them all?
RP: OH yes. George Klenner, the skipper, Australian, George Bell, wireless operator, Les Walker, navigator, Paul Songest, mid upper, Paul McCalla, rear gunner, and Miles Tripp, bomb aimer.
US: You’re the only one left now [laughs].
RP: I’m the only one left now. They’ve all gone.
DK: So what’s the name of the rear gunner, sorry?
RP: That’s Miles Tripp.
DK: Miles Tripp, yes. So, he’s written that book.
RP: That’s right, yes, and that’s just the story of how he phoned us all up and then recalled the various trips we did.
US: Yes.
DK: Oh, ok.
US: He came [unclear]
DK: Were they all British then your crew?
RP: No, Jamaican and Australian, the rest of them were British, yes, yeah.
DK: That’s quite unusual, Jamaican.
RP: We didn’t get on awfully well, I’m a Norfolk dumpling and he’s a Londoner [laughs] and so and that was quite a laugh at the end, but
DK: Bit of change at the end.
RP: Yeah. [laughs]
US: Excuse me.
RP: That’s the same picture are more or less [unclear].
DK: Alright, ok.
RP: These pictures were taken from you see, this is a news chronicle.
DK: Right, so, just for the benefit of the tape here, so the book’s called the eight passenger,
RP: That’s right, yeah.
DK: A flight of recollection and discovery by Miles Tripp, ok.
RP: Yes, yeah. And I think they got a picture of the Lancaster here somewhere, no, that’s not there, there is something else, no, that’s not there, this newspaper photograph that was taken they day we landed from our fortieth and we were agreed by all the big buicks from number 3 group because we were the only crew in 3 group to complete forty operations in one tour,
DK: Wow!
RP: You know how they extended the tour a couple of times and as soon as we landed they said went back to [unclear] [laughs]
DK: So you did forty operations altogether.
RP: Yes, yeah.
DK: And was that all with 218 Squadron?
RP: Yes, yes.
DK: Ok. Can I just ask then, we are sort of going back a bit, what were you doing immediately before the war?
RP: Before the war, we both worked on the railway.
US: Yeah, you were
RP: She was on the LNER station Norwich and I was on the MGN at Norwich.
US: That’s how we met.
RP: That’s how we met.
US: [unclear]
RP: And I was the messenger and you the [unclear] and so we got together in that way.
DK: Ok. If I keep looking down I’m just checking that the tape’s ok, if that’s alright.
RP: Oh yes.
DK: Yes. [laughs] Sorry, I should have said. So what, so how many years were you working on the railway then?
RP: 1939 till 1943.
US: I 1939 to 1949.
RP: yeah.
US: [unclear]
RP: Yes. So I joined the RAF in 1943, September, you know, the usual thing, ACRC, London, and went through
DK: Just stepping back a bit, what made you want to join the RAF then, was as opposed to the army or navy?
RP: My best friend at school was a man named David [unclear] he was about three or four months older than me and he joined up first, he became a flight engineer and so I wanted to become a flight engineer. But first of all, when I enrolled, you can see, I was rather a different shape, and so they said, well, you are too big to be an air gunner, would you like to be a wireless operator? I said, no, not particularly, and so remustered to become a flight engineer and the test for that, I said, do you anything about engines? I said, no, can you describe for me a cotter pin? Yes, I said, and I described one on a bicycle, oh, that will do, you’re in.
DK: So based on that they decided you could be a flight engineer.
RP: That’s right, yes, yes.
DK: So, what was your initial training, then, as you joined the RAF?
RP: I was just working as a messenger on the railway
DK: Yes, yes. So, once you were in the RAF, what was your training then?
RP: The usual thing, we joined up and then go to ACRC, ITW, OTU, and then St Athans and then engineering instruction at St Athans and from there
DK: You remember which operational training unit you were with?
RP: Yes, there’s an OTU, I can’t remember whether it is 17, yes, yeah. But with the flight engineer, you don’t join the crew until, more or less at our stage, the other five trained separately on smaller aircraft and when they go on to a larger four-engine aircraft [unclear] engineer joins. And that’s the usual procedure then that you’re all put together in a big hall and you are told to get together and sort yourselves out a crew.
DK: Did you think that worked cause it’s rather unusual way of getting the crews together, getting
RP: It seems to work, in my case I was standing by the wall like a wallflower and he came across me and said
DK: Is that your pilot came over
RP: Yes, he said, are you Ray Park? I said, yes. He said, is that you at the top of the list? At first, I said, yes, alright you’re in [laughs]. And from there we did the training, initial training and started along the squadron, 218 Squadron, at Methwold near Norfolk in September ’44 and at that stage I was about eighteen and a half and by the time I was just under twenty I had finished forty operations. So I was one of the youngest at that time.
DK: So can you remember vividly your first operation?
RP: Yes, I can tell you,
DK: [unclear]
RP: It was to Duisburg and it was one of the first thousand bomber operations and ironically our fortieth was another thousand bomber operation. Duisburg, that’s the [unclear] and the [unclear]
DK: Ok, fine. So your first operation then was the fourteenth of October?
RP: That’s right. Yes. [unclear]
DK: That’ll be ok, we’re still picking up. So, fourteenth of October, so the pilots, flying officer
RP: Flying officer Klenner. It was a daytime operation at first and then within the same twenty-four hours a second one, to Duisburg.
DK: Alright, so daytime operation, fourteenth of October to Duisburg and then the same night
RP: Same night
DK: Same night, Duisburg again
RP: Yeah, back to Duisburg, and they were thousand bomber raids and that was our introduction
DK: So your next operations then are, is that the nineteenth of October to Stuttgart.
RP: Yes, a place called Stuttgart.
DK: So twenty fifth of October, Essen.
RP: That’s right.
DK: And then twenty ninth of October, West Kapelle.
RP: West Kapelle, yeah.
DK: And then,
RP: And then, Cologne.
DK: Thirteenth of October, Cologne.
RP: Cologne, yes.
DK: So there’s a lot of operations all in a short space of time.
RP: Yes, in the German part called the Ruhr. Essen, Cologne and places like that and they were the hotspots.
DK: So then it’s November then, so, fourth of November.
RP: November, yes.
DK: Solingen.
RP: Solingen.
DK: Fifth of November, Solingen again. So, twenty third of November, Gelsenkirchen. Twenty six of November, Fulda. Twenty seventh of November, Cologne again. Twenty ninth of November
RP: Cause it’s difficult to remember the individual ones, [unclear] some of them in here. The most tight one as far as I am concerned was Dresden, that was, very [unclear] choice but that was much later on.
DK: So just, as your role as a flight engineer then, what were your duties on the
RP: Flight engineer was really the second pilot, you sit alongside the pilot and mine, your main job is to look after the engines and keep the fuel running and anything that’s needed in, I’ll show you a picture of the engineer’s panel, that was my domain, you see, with all the [unclear] and then I had to help with take-off and landing, undercarriage and on the flaps, and bomb, what they called?
DK: Bomb doors.
RP: Bomb doors, yeah. And as the pilot takes off, so my hand comes up behind him and takes over with the throttles and likewise coming back, wheels down with the [unclear] bomb doors open, that sort of thing.
DK: So what were you actually trained on then? Was it sort of training at the OTU on the Lancasters as well or?
RP: Yes, I did a short while on two engines at Wellingtons and then Stirlings, there’s the first four-engine bomber and I did the initial training on that and at that time I joined up with the rest of the crew and then we all went over and converted onto Lancasters and it was Lancasters for the rest of the time.
DK: So what was your thoughts of the Lancasters then as an aircraft?
RP: Marvellous, yes, wonderful.
DK: So most of these raids were into Germany, aren’t they?
RP: Yes, the only one that wasn’t in Germany was to a place called West Kapelle, in Holland, all the rest were Germany.
DK: So were there any occasions when you, the aircraft was damaged at all [unclear]
RP: Yes, this one here and you’ll see, we were diverted to Dishforth I think, somewhere from Scarborough and we had to, we lost an engine over the target and we couldn’t maintain height and we were coming down slowly but not enough power to maintain our course and a Mustang came along [unclear] and escorting us back across the Channel. And we landed at St Eval in Cornwall and we had to leave the plane behind then because it was too badly damaged.
DK: So had that been hit by flak or [unclear]?
RP: Yes, which had caused damage to the engine which made unsearchable [unclear]
DK: What were your thoughts when you saw a Mustang flying alongside?
RP: Was jolly relieved but I mean, he came down on us, I think he was American, and as we got to St Eval as we were going round he just gave us a two fingers and off he went, we never did know who he was [unclear] at all.
DK: Were you ever attacked by German fighters or?
RP: Oh yes, there were several cases where we were damaged by fighters but most damage was by flak, actually. We were quite fortunate there’s one occasion when the windscreen was smashed and a piece of shrapnel came right through my strap, you know, we had the straps on, but we never did find it,
DK: So it was forty altogether then?
RP: Yes, I’ll tell you the story about the last trip. The commanding officer of our squadron wasn’t very popular and we used to call him ‘The Vicar’, although he’s very experienced pilot, perhaps I shouldn’t say all this.
DK: No, it’s ok [laughs]. What goes public we’ll decide afterwards.
RP: I see. Anyway he said at briefing, “Today chaps it’s Flight Lieutenant Klenner’s last trip and when you get back, you’ll have to be on your best behaviour because we are expecting some visitor and also being the fortieth operation, Klenner will be leading the squadron.” Well, we always used to hate flying in ‘Vic’ formation nobody would ever do it. Anyway we went to the last trip to Essen [unclear] but as soon as we left the target the whole squadron formated (sic) up in ‘Vics’, never ever done it before [unclear]. Something I will never ever forget. I’ll remember that.
DK: So how come you ended up doing forty operations then when the tour was, I think, thirty and then 25?
RP: At the end of 1944 was the Battle of the Bulge, when the German forces broke back through the American sector and we were short of aircrews, the message came through, “We are short of aircrews and aircraft, you will have to do another five operations”. So, we moaned and groaned about it. Anyway, we can’t do anything about it. Carried on did the 35, the same thing happened, “Sorry, we are still short you’ll have to go on and do forty.”
“Oh! No!” Leslie says and he applied to leave straight away, some leave, anyway he came back and then do the other last 5 to forty and the day we got back from that, they rescinded the order, and it went back to normal.
DK: You/d done 40 by then.
RP: Yeah.
DK: So your last operation was March 11th to Essen.
RP: That’s right.
US: [unclear]
RP: Yeah, Duisburg
US: [unclear]
DK: I’ll tell you, I’ll just turn the recorder off for a moment cause.
RP: Witten was another place which was pretty hairy but apart from telling you that with the flak bursts and the [unclear] dodging about when you are flying over the target this is little more light and say and just
DK: So just going back to your training a little bit and when you were flying the Stirlings, what was your thought about those aircraft?
RP: They were awkward, slow aircraft, they wouldn’t fly very high and in fact we [unclear] one off in the, what was that, west [unclear], there was a short runway and I think George was trying to get down to meet his WAAF friend in no time and instead of going round again, he shortcut and we landed in a ditch and whipped the wheels right off. But that’s the only real time [unclear]
DK: What about the Wellingtons before that
RP: The Wellingtons was really, as far as I was, only to get used to flying and, it was just about a couple of weeks [unclear].
DK: So you are quite pleased you never did any operations in the Stirlings?
RP: Oh yes, yes, well, they were getting, this time, you see, was getting on towards the end of 1944 and they were getting a bit obsolete.
DK: Yeah.
RP: Yeah. As far as the flight engineer training, that was mostly done at St Athans in Wales, yeah, and well, it was quite separate from, they were all flight engineers down there, that’s what you’d learn.
DK: So what form of training did it, cause you obviously said you weren’t from an engineering background, was it really quite basic to start with?
RP: It was a matter of lectures mostly and studying the
DK: That’s the flight engineer’s notes for Lancaster aircraft.
RP: Yes. That’s mostly ground training, getting used to the engines and the equipment and pictures in the aircraft
DK: So just [unclear], that was your number there then.
RP: Yes.
DK: 300
RP: 5095, yes.
DK: So, number one hundred entry St Athan.
RP: Yes.
DK: So this book is issued by [unclear], is it?
RP: Yes, yes.
DK: The tanks.
RP: We spend some time at the Avro factory in Manchester and you see, we learned all these things, [unclear] and all that sort of things, were all the procedures.
DK: So that’s the drill before taxiing.
RP: Yes.
DK: Drill [unclear] action immediately before take-off. Do you think you could still do that now?
RP: No. I can’t even, I can’t read, when I read them, I can’t even remember them, no.
DK: This is quite a, quite detailed, isn’t it, with your cutaways,
RP: Yes, it was a six month course, I think,
DK: So, you’d be standing in the cockpit there then.
RP: Yes, that’s right. Right next to the pilot.
DK: So, did you, I’ve always wondered what the arrangement was there in the Lancaster because did you actually have a seat or were you standing?
RP: There was a little [unclear] a small deck chair type of thing and it was clipped onto the side of the aircraft and then you bring it over and clip it by the undercarriage and just clip on and just like a small deckchair
DK: So just a piece of canvas, basically.
RP: Piece of canvas, yeah, yeah.
DK: So, how long were you sitting on that for then? Longest operation?
RP: You don’t sit very long, there was always something to do, keep an eye on the engines and anything else. And another thing, cause if the bomb aimer was working with the navigator, he would be behind me as well, there wouldn’t be too much space. And also if we were carrying what we call a dicky pilot, he would want to sit in my seat.
DK: So, how often did you carry the second pilot then?
RP: Oh, three or four times, I suppose, yeah. But we had one occasion where he was rather a bit blusterous, young officer type and before we took off, he questioned us all as to what we did on the aircraft so we all [unclear] him and coming back Diggs, the engineer said, the pilot said, he always had an occasion to fly low when he could, well, he frightened the life out of this dicky pilot coming back and so much so that I think he walked away and didn’t speak to us anymore [laughs].
DK: So what rank was your pilot then, was he
RP: Well, he finished up as a flight lieutenant but when we all first joined he was a sergeant.
DK: Right. How did that work then with the pilot being a sergeant and then still having officers around him?
RP: Well, in our case that tended to split the crew up a little bit when he became an officer but it was an occasion when he tried to smuggle himself into the sergeants mess for a dance and of course the CO caught him [laughs].
DK: I suppose that was a bit difficult when you couldn’t sort of socialize together.
RP: Yeah, well, he was a typical Ozzie so he didn’t [unclear] for anybody.
DK: I just make sure the tape is ok. So, can I have another look at the logbook?
RP: Yeah.
DK: Most of your operations, were they in the same Lancaster or [unclear]
RP: [unclear]
DK: J
RP: Yes, J.
DK: J, A.
RP: J, A most of them were in A. And
DK: And that’s what there’s a picture of in the book.
RP: Yes, yeah. And the last one was K King. This is the navigator’s logbook, not navigator’s, bomb aimer’s.
DK: Alright. So that was your bomb aimers.
RP: Yes, yes. That shows all his training and
DK: Oh, alright, so he’s, so Tripp then was with the Royal Canadian Airforce.
RP: I don’t know, he was trained in Canada but he [unclear]
DK: I see, alright, ok. And it’s him who has written the book.
RP: He, I think he’d must have become a pilot but he didn’t make it so he was finished as a bomb aimer.
DK: So I just ask then about February the thirteenth, you got Dresden.
RP: Dresden.
DK: And then the other raids were to Chemnitz.
RP: That’s right. Dresden was about the longest trip we had, does it tell there how many hours they were?
DK: Nine hours thirty.
RP: Nine hours. And it was the most horrendous fires, seeing the target, it was a fire we could see from miles away and the town was well on fire by the time we arrived there.
DK: So you were in the second wave.
RP: Yes, we were tours at the end of the time but I mean apart from, it is difficult to remember but I don’t recall any [unclear] problems I mean there were times when we were all glad to get out as a way we dropped the bombs and stick our nose down and get away as quick as we could and then the same night we went back to the next door place
DK: Chemnitz.
RP: Chemnitz.
DK: So Chemnitz on the full trip.
RP: Yes. And that was when the Russians were breaking through at Chemnitz into Germany and there was a lot of controversy about too much damage being done.
DK: Was anything mentioned about Dresden at the briefing beforehand?
RP: No, just that we are, all our understanding was that the Russians were making a breakthrough and that was to aid them by making ways to help them through.
DK: So you could see the city alight.
RP: Yes, cause that was mostly an incendiary raid and they were sort of all mostly wooden houses I think and it was a huge raid and the Americans they had about three or four that apart from these two trips they would, the Americans were doing two or three times a day as well.
DK: So can you remember what your load would have been there, would that have been incendiaries?
RP: [unclear]
DK: February the 13th 1945.
RP: Dresden, it doesn’t say.
DK: It doesn’t say, no.
RP: [unclear], I’m sorry, no record. That really wasn’t my department, you see, the bomb aimer was in charge of all that.
DK: So, could you perhaps talk through what a normal day in a raid would take place, when you get up in the mornings and
RP: Yes, that would be the normal, call in the morning in time for breakfast and in the normal way after breakfast you would go to your department, the flight engineer’s department and take what orders you were given and when you gonna test your aircraft or anything, special instructions, and then you would look at the board to see what the crews were on duty for the night and then if your name was on the list you know what time to be prepared and you go and get yourself ready for the briefing and there would be a separate briefing for the pilots and the bomb aimers and navigators and then the general briefing for the rest of us. And then there’d be a question of going to the take-off with the rest of the crew, take your equipment on check on the aircraft, previously they would have perhaps done half an hour flight to check everything was in order and in the time of take-off, my job then was to assist with the take-off sitting alongside the pilot and when the green light comes on to take-off, take off the power as we took off we had one aircraft’s called K King used to swing very, very badly and sort of question of pushing one side up more than the other so to keep the aircraft straight but then we would be taking off and the navigator would take over and find your course, you would climb to height and then you joined the rest of the stream. The first trip we did to Duisburg, we were told, was as to be a thousand bomber raid, we went all through the procedure, we took off and after a while Les, the navigator said to the pilot, turn on to such and such a course and we will join the rest of the stream, so he turned on to the course and then after a little while a voice comes from the back of the plane, that’s Harry in the rear turret, this is a very funny thousand bomber raid, I can’t see a soul up here and there wasn’t another aircraft anyway. And so we pressed on and pressed on and after a while the pilot shouted, what’s, what are those few dots up there end? And there was a crew, rest of the stream [unclear] so we managed to catch them up. Our first trip over Germany found us half way opposed to the target on our own [laughs]. And then there would be the, you know, the bombing run [unclear], the bomb aimer would take over and you’re to give the pilot instructions where to go and after the bomb doors are opened and he would then do his run up, left, left, right, right and then bomb’s gone, door’s shut, door’s up and then the navigator would say, course number so and so and so and you’d turn around and come back, by this time there’s when you’re getting all the flak and the disturbance and little puffs of smoke coming up around about and the bomb’s going down from the planes above and all that sort of thing. And generally when you get clear of the target half an hour just a go for the odd fighter and then after another couple of hours you’re getting towards the coast and generally speaking you were clear and back to land.
DK: So what was your feelings once you got back?
RP: Relieved, we would all sit down and when you land, you sort of [unclear] and you sit down [unclear] before you move to get out the aircraft.
DK: So what’s the debriefing then?
RP: Then you go to the debriefing and you’d have to report on what [unclear] the target and the weather and if the results and all that sort of thing, bomb damage and opposition and it was the aircrew breakfast, eggs and bacon.
DK: I bet you looked forward to that [laughs]
RP: Yes, yes.
DK: So did you, after you’ve done your operations and, did you and the crew tend to stick together and [unclear]
RP: Yes, we did, yes.
DK: Any pubs you went to?
RP: Yes, the one at Chedburgh was called The Greyhound, I used to drink them dry
US: [unclear]
RP: Yes, and then, actually we didn’t, we didn’t go out too much, there wasn’t a lot of time, we are talking about cramming in forty operations between September and 11th of March.
DK: I was gonna say yes, it’s very busy at that period.
RP: Yes.
DK: So your aircraft then was one of the, I noticed in the book, the G-H markings?
RP: Yes.
DK: So was that for daylight operations then? The G-H radar?
RP: Yes, yeah, and as you said, you had the marking on the tail, oh, it’s not on that one, and then you had two followers when you dropped your bombs, they dropped their bombs, that’s because we bombed through cloud, you see.
DK: So that’s the G-H leader with the markings on the tail, they were bombing when you did.
RP: That’s right, yes.
DK: You see the two aircraft following.
RP: Yes, yeah.
DK: So after your forty operations then, what happened to you then?
RP: I became an instructor at a school to teach other people to be instructors, that was at Silverstone, which now of course is a racetrack.
DK: And was that on Lancasters as well?
RP: That was on Lancasters, yes. After the fortieth operation when we all broke up and went our separate ways, I swear I just can’t remember several weeks, you know, what I did, where I went, or did anything.
DK: You think that was perhaps down to stress and
RP: Just stress and relief, yes, but as I say, I was still less than twenty years old, was the youngest of the crew.
DK: So, did you stay in touch with your crew then after that
RP: Yes, we had several reunions that we did and on one occasion we did something like this for a German television program but I never did get to see it.
DK: Ah, alright. Was it ever shown?
RP: It was shown, yes, I heard people have seen it but I didn’t see it myself.
DK: I’ve just turned that off again. So, the Dresden raid.
RP: [unclear] anything try to find it, can you? Here we are, this is Dresden, [unclear] in another book but anyway on the Dresden raid there was a lot of controversy about unnecessary damage and Miles Tripp said quite openly that he deliberately missed the target because he thought there was just too much, I thought that was in here, somewhere.
DK: Page 79, sir. Dresden raid, bombing of Dresden.
RP: [unclear] that must have been another book, anyway he got in trouble about that, he said that he felt unhappy about the raid and he dropped his bombs a long way away from the target, I thought it was in here somewhere, but nobody ever proved that
DK: I see if I can see this, [sneezes] excuse me, chapter ten, chapter nine mentions
RP: That’s right.
DK: Yeah.
RP: Well, you see, we, Harry the Jamaican, seemed to be able to forecast where we were going before anybody knew anything about it and it, you know, with these Jamaican people, they sometimes are a bit of a sort of clairvoyant and people used to remark, how is it you know, Harry, where we are going? I don’t know, he says, I’m just guessing at but they got to the stage where they tried to test him on it and they went to check where the stream was going and then came back to ask Harry where he thought we were going and then he realised that they were testing him and he wasn’t very happy about it. And, it’s all in here, somewhere.
DK: Do you think he’d have his premonitions or?
RP: No, I think [unclear], I’m sure it’s in here somewhere, yes, something but it was one of those rare mornings in November when the sky is completely blue and there is a false warmth in the air as though spring managed to bypass winter. Harry and I strolled for a small pine wood near the briefing room, kicking stones with our flying boots, without any [unclear], without any preamble he said, last night I dreamed of standing by a tombstone of an old friend, someone who’d been killed in an air crash when I was in Canada, it hadn’t been long before he appeared and held out his hand to greet me I don’t like that sort of dream and there was another occasion when he virtually refused to fly, he wouldn’t get in the plane and as it happened, he, the trip was cancelled but he got the premonition in his line that he wouldn’t fly that particular night and they tried to test him but that wasn’t very successful.
DK: [unclear] Dresden took off at 21.40, [unclear] Dresden.
RP: I’m sure he said somewhere about
DK: Yeah.
RP: [unclear]
DK: He said. There’s, page 85, he says, I told Dig to turn to starboard to the south of the city, he swung the aircraft away from the heart of the inferno and when we were just beyond the fringe of the fires, I pressed the bomb release, I hoped the load would fall in open country and page 85.
RP: Yes.
DK: I couldn’t forget what we’ve been told at briefing, all the old newsreel of the German dive-bombing. Here.
RP: Yeah.
DK: So when you got back then, was it questioned where you’d bombed then?
RP: No, this, this all came up later on, I think. that’s right, he said that when we got to the target there was no, no markers and he said, there was no sign from the master bomber and there were no flares marking the target.
DK: So how do you look back on that now, then?
RP: No, that’s all gone, yeah. In retrospect, it was at this point I became something like mercenary, just a night trip, the quiver of outrage at the briefing for Dresden dropping the bombs clear of the, in the hope that they would fall harmlessly in fields was a last gesture to an ideal of common humanity. To be honest, I’m not sure which I find more distasteful, actually the idea of bombing refugees or the idea that the Allies were bombing refugees it was all right but when the Germans bombed refugees it was all wrong.
DK: So that’s from, it’s just for the recording, that’s a quote from Miles Tripp book, page 89.
RP: That’s right, page 89, yeah.
DK: So he obviously had even then concerns, didn’t he? Did he, did you sort of talk about it after the war at all or as you say, it was just
RP: Well, I suppose half a dozen times we met after the war
US: Oh yes, yeah.
RP: So, that wasn’t really the occasion to, talk about that sort of thing.
DK: No, no.
US: Then we went down to see him
RP: Yes, yes.
DK: So, whereabouts was he living then?
RP: Barnet
US: Histon, Hertfordshire.
RP: Hartfield.
US: Hartfield, yes.
DK: So, has he passed away quite recently or?
RP: It was a few years ago, at that time when we were flying he’s, he was going with a WAAF in the control tower and I think they got married, didn’t he, eventually but and at normal times we had, he used to, during the times we weren’t flying, he’d go to stay at the Angel hotel, where his lady friend but there were times where we had to rush out and get him back in time and we had two or three old motorbikes in the crew then, we used to run on a hundred octane and we had to chase him and bring him back.
US: It’s going back then
DK: Ok, well that’s, [unclear] oh, thanks very much for that, that’s very good. So was there a big fuss made of the fortieth operation?
RP: Oh yes, yeah, and the annoying thing was that, when the squadron was disbanded shortly after the war, everything was destroyed, I’ve never been able to find anything of the squadron records of 218.
DK: No?
RP: And I’ve never found anything about people happen to do more than thirty operations.
DK: Yeah. I mean, it is unusual but, I’ve met people who have done like sixty or more operations in two tours.
RP: That’s right yeah.
DK: Not seen [unclear] like that.
RP: But the thing about this is in less than six months.
DK: Yeah.
RP: [unclear]
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 Ray Parke. One
Creator
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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
2016-10-19
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.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AParkeRG161019
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:46:13 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
Ray Parke worked on the railway before joining the RAF in 1943. Remembers flying forty operations as a flight engineer with 218 Squadron by the time he was twenty. Tells about operations on Essen and the Ruhr. Discusses the Dresden operation, giving a vivid first-hand account of it; tells of how Miles Tripp, the bomb aimer, expressed doubts about the operation and tried to drop the bombload away from the target. Remembers his first operation on Duisburg and the last one, both being thousand bomber attacks. Tells of his crew members: Harry McCalla, the Jamaican rear gunner, who was rumoured to possess clairvoyant abilities. Mentions becoming an instructor at RAF Silverstone, after his fortieth operation.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
England--Northamptonshire
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Chemnitz
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Essen
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Solingen
Germany--Stuttgart
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945-02-13
1945-02-14
218 Squadron
African heritage
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
displaced person
flight engineer
Gee
Lancaster
military service conditions
Operational Training Unit
P-51
perception of bombing war
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Methwold
RAF Silverstone
RAF St Athan
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1029/11401/AMearsCE170921.2.mp3
edf2f184d73bf03b40c1c7f7b746d032
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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Mears, Charles
Charles E Mears
C E Mears
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Charles Mears DFC (1923 - 2017). He flew operations as a pilot with 218 Squadron.
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
2017-09-21
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Mears, CE
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Alistair Montgomery, Monty, and the interviewee is Flight Lieutenant Charles Mears, Distinguished Flying Cross. The interview is taking place at Charlie’s home in West Kilbride and his son in law, Jim Ferguson is present. Charles, good afternoon. Tell me a little bit about your family background and where you lived.
CM: Yeah.
AM: Prior to joining the Royal Air Force.
CM: Yes. Well, I was born in Manchester. My parents had an off licence and grocers in a place called Hulme. H U L M E.
AM: Right.
CM: And I I was born on the 9th of December 1923. And my father was a Scot. He was born in Edinburgh but emigrated to Canada. And he joined the, during the First World War he joined the Canadian Army with his brother George and they were both in France and they met my mother’s brother in France. And my mother’s brother invited them over to their home in England and at that time they were in Manchester because my grandfather was a tunneller and he built the first, well he didn’t personally but he was the foreman ganger on the first tunnel under the Clyde. And they’d moved to Manchester because in the Victorian era they were building all the sewers in, in Manchester. And my Uncle Jack, which is my father’s brother he was also a tunneller and in fact I think they were in the tunnelling company in the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. And they obviously, that’s where my father met my mother in England and that’s why I’m here. And we lived there. I went to school at Princess Road School which was just famous for, for footballers really. And then the war broke out in in 1939. Oh, I wanted to go in the Royal Air Force and I wasn’t, my schooling wasn’t, it was only an elementary school so that I needed, I needed to have experience in English, maths and science. So I went to night school as we called it, evening school if you like, for three years with a view to going in to the Royal Air Force as an aircraft apprentice at Halton. But of course the war broke out in 1939 and me and my pal, which was a Welsh boy were determined to, to join something. And we first of all went to join the Navy and I didn’t know much about it and I said to John, my friend, ‘Well, what do I do? What do I say we go in as the Navy?’ He said, ‘Well tell them you want to be an artificer’s mate.’ I said, ‘What the hell is that?’ So he said, ‘Well, I don’t know but tell them you want to be.’ So, anyway we joined up and they gave us a form for my father to fill in because I was fifteen when the war broke out. Anyway, cutting a long story short my father threw it in the fire and said, ‘You’re not joining the Navy.’ I think because he’d been in the Army in the First World War and told me stories where he never had his boots off for three months and horrible things about the war. Anyway, we then said, John my pal, said, ‘Well, we’ve got to join something.’ So we’ll join the, we’ll join the LDV which it was then. The Local Defence Volunteers. That was before the, before the Home Guard. And he said that, ‘But they’ll ask you. You’ll have to have some experience of shooting.’ So, he said, ‘Tell them you’ve, you’ve experience of rabbit shooting,’ he said, ‘Because I used to shoot.’ He came from Wales and he said, ‘I’ve done a bit of rabbit shooting.’ So we went to this place and I said, when they asked me I said, ‘Well, rabbit shooting.’ So, they said, ‘Well, where are the bloody rabbits in Hulme?’ And so we got kicked out of that. So we said, ‘Well, we’ll join the Army. We’ll join the cadets.’ So there was a place called Hardwick Green Barracks in, in Manchester. So we, we went there and there was a big door and a little door going in to the big door. And I opened this little door and there was a line-up of lads with just a cap on, with a peak cap, all with one rifle stood in a line and must have been a sergeant or somebody shouting all sorts of things at them. So I closed the door and I said to John, ‘We’re not doing that. I don’t like the look of that at all.’ So he said, ‘Well we’ve got to join something.’ He said, ‘The only thing left is the Air Force.’ So he said, ‘But the Air Force don’t have a cadet force.’ The Army did and the Navy did but the Air Force didn’t. So he said, ‘But they’ve got what they called the ADCC,’ which was the Air Defence Cadet Corps. So he said, ‘We can join that.’ He said, ‘The only trouble is you have to buy your own uniform.’ he said, ‘And it’s, it’s five pounds.’ Or four pounds fifty. I forget now which. Well, that was equivalent to a man’s wage in those days because where I was working, ‘cause I started work at fourteen that was in fact I remember them taking a guy out to a for a drink who’d just managed to be awarded five pounds a week. So anyway, surprise surprise my father said, ‘Well, that’s alright. I’ll pay for it.’ So we bought this uniform and I joined the ADCC. Well, that in in due course became 1941 ATC Squadron. That was, as far as I know the first ATC squadron there was. And during that time the, the three officers used to come periodically and interview people to go in for the forces. To go in the Air Force. Well, you could be, you could be called up at, at eighteen then. That means conscripted when you were eighteen. But you could, you couldn’t be, you couldn’t be conscripted into aircrew. You had to be a volunteer. Anyway, I didn’t know anything about this. I knew you had to be conscripted because my brother was three years older than me and he’d been conscripted in to the army. So these people, I used to be, I used to march the cadets in to see the officers for this selection board and they said why aren’t, have you, ‘We haven’t seen you sergeant.’ I was a sergeant then in the ATC. So I said, ‘Well, I’m not old enough, sir.’ They said, ‘Well, we’ll do it now anyway.’ Anyway, they interviewed me and then about, it must have been a few weeks afterwards surprise surprise I got papers, a travel warrant to go up to Cardigan. So I went up to Cardigan and went through various tests. And then I was taken into a room and swore my allegiance to King and country. That was in October ’41 and I was in the Air Force. So, so they couldn’t call you up until you were eighteen and a quarter so, so I was duly called up and went to ACRC Air Crew Receiving Centre in London. And from there you did a few, you did various things. Got your uniform and what have you. But we went to, we were ACRC in, for us, for me was at Lord’s Cricket Ground and they, the first of all you went into the place and, and they said, they asked you where you, what’s your name and address and what school did you go to and what newspapers did you read. And I made what I later realised in later life a mistake because I said, which was true Princess Road Elementary School. Well, that wasn’t the answer really that I should have given. I should have said a High School or something. And they, they sort of sized your gas mask that you’d kept very religiously all, well from being fifteen from the time war broke out until 1941 you’d sort of treasured this thing and guarded it with your life. It was taken off you and thrown into a heap. This was, oh I don’t know, a mile high of all gas masks. And then a guy weighed you up for a uniform and he seemed to be able to just look at you and weigh up what, what you required by just a glance and he gave you this uniform and underwear and the rest of your kit and off you went. And we were put into, which are now we know are quite expensive flats in St John’s Wood. And you had little few exams and if you passed them alright you went to ITW. Yes. Initial Training Wing. And if you didn’t you went to Brighton for more maths instructions. And funnily enough I wasn’t. We’d never done algebra or those things at school so, and one of the things we were asked was transposition of formula which is what it was called. So I said to a colleague I’d joined up with, Bernard Hall, I said, and he was a university boy from Hawarden. Hawarden, I think you pronounce it. In Cheshire. And he said, ‘Don’t worry, Chesa. I’ll show you what to do.’ So he showed me and anyway, I must have passed. But strangely enough he mustn’t have passed because he was sent to Brighton for extra maths and I went to ITW at Cambridge at what was then New Clare College.
AM: Right.
CM: And then, then from there we did twelve weeks at ITW and then I was posted to Manchester to, like a big holding centre where they put all the people waiting for, for movement. Funnily enough it was a place that my, my father in law had been, it transpired later on, had been to in the First World War. Anyway, I was there for I think about a couple of months at which time I was billeted out. Lived at home at the off licence and grocers I told you about. And then one day we were told would you, asked, ‘Would you like to go to Communion because we’re going, possibly going overseas?’ So I said, ‘Yes. I would,’ because I’d always been brought up to, to go to church. I went to Communion and then we were marched to the railway station at Heaton Park and we were put on the train up to eventually ended up at Gourock in, well not very far from where you live. And we were put off the train in to I think it was called a lighter and I don’t know how we, we obviously arrived at the side of this huge piece of steel it looked with just a big hole in it. And we got off in to it and went up this beautiful staircase. And later on because of a plaque that was on the wall we found out that it was the Queen Mary and apparently the, we were on the way to going to America. And on its trip before this one we went on it had cut through a destroyer and the bow was all stove in and filled with concrete. And anyway we sailed. I think it took about three or four days and the weather was very rough. We went well north because the Queen Mary didn’t have a, it was considered too fast for the U- boats so we didn’t have any escort at all and we ended up in, in Boston Harbour. And then we got off at Boston and were put on the train and went up to Moncton in Canada which is in New Brunswick. And I just wondered how far it was from Montreal because I thought perhaps I could visit some of my relatives if I knew where they were. Anyway, we were in Moncton for only possibly a couple of months I think ‘til November because I think because we were in, we were in an Armistice Day Parade in Moncton. And then we, we got on a train in Moncton and then —
AM: So what were you doing in Moncton? Were you doing any more training?
CM: No. I didn’t do anything.
AM: Right.
CM: We just did a bit of marching and that was it. And I know a fellow used to come around who was a bit of, he used to come in the morning and shout out, “Hands off cocks and put on socks, any sick laymen’s lazy,’ and then you reported sick. I remember that. And we put on this train in Moncton and we were apparently going down to Florida for, to join 5 BFTS, British Flying Training School. And I think navigators went to, to Rivers in Manitoba but we were on this. And we went down through New York first and we were got off the train in New York and we were invited and taken to the Stage Door Canteen which was a famous place where apparently all the troops went. And the main, main artist on at the Stage Door Canteen was Larry Adler at that time. The well-known harmonica player. And a lady took my name and address at the door and said, ‘We’ll send a card. We’ll send a card to your mother and let her know how you are.’ Well, later on. Many, many years later my sister I have a well I had a brother and I still have a sister but she’s thirteen years younger than me. My brother was well was three years older than me. He’s dead now. Been dead some time. And my mother had the, still had the card from that they’d sent. And it was a Jewish lady who’d sent it and said, “We’ve seen your son and he’s alright,” and that. That was the first word she’d had of me. So she was very pleased to get that.
AM: Oh aye.
CM: Yeah. So then we never got off the train after that. We went down through, through Georgia and I marvelled at the, I mean America was so vast and we were miles and miles of peanut stacks in Georgia and things. The first stop we came to in Florida was a place called Sebring, which I believe was where the five hundred miles road races are or something. Sebring. And they greeted us with a silver band and two big sacks of oranges. And we hadn’t seen oranges or anything, you know for a long time. So that was nice. And then we arrived at Clewiston which is right at the bottom of Lake Okeechobee which is the big lake in, not very far. And went up to, we went to, came to our camp and we couldn’t believe our eyes when we arrived there and saw this big swimming pool and all the billets were all like little apartments were around the swimming pool. And I was, we were put in, apparently it was Course 12 and it was the first course that had Americans with us. Apparently the, we heard that the Americans had decided that our navigation was probably superior to theirs so they trained, because they’d all trained with us they were Army or Air Force armaments instructors but the American instructors and your ground duties were American. The Meteorological fella was a fella from New York who used to talk about the turning and turning of the, of the clouds for the, in the cumulus and cumulo nimbus. And they were, most of the Americans were already or some of them, there were seven. The course was a hundred. A hundred people total and seventeen were Americans and eighty three of us were British boys. So they, and they’d come from, from some sort of university to, to 5 BFTS because they used to talk about, they had lots of sayings which when you’ve seen American fellas on the television they’re marching left right and singing their songs and this but they said, superiors used to say to them, ‘Stand to attention. How many wrinkles have you got under your chin?’ And when you were on the tables for your lunch they’d say, ‘Pass the salt and don’t short stop it.’ They meant you couldn’t, if you were a junior then you couldn’t stop the salt being passed down. It had to go from one to the other so, so they had what they called a, they appointed one cadet from, from, from the British side and one from the American side to be what they classed as a senior under officer and he was like the commandant of you, and any complaints and so on he was the one who had to direct it to the authorities. And they called it the honour system. And they used to say, well the Americans have got the honour and the, and the British have got the system because we didn’t take any notice much of things that were going on. And I had four, well not I, we had four Americans in our billet and they astounded us at first because they all had different smelly stuff, you know. Sprays and stuff. Well, we didn’t have any of that. We had, we used to perhaps a bar of carbolic soap or something. But they had all squeeze under your arm and whatever. Anyway, we were chatting around and they said, the two boys I was with were a fella called Harold Wilkin and Jack Hough. And Jack Hough was an elderly bloke. He was married. Well, elderly to me because I was eighteen. I don’t know, he was twenty something. And Harry used to, I found the, some of the ground subjects quite difficult because I hadn’t been that well educated and Jack used to, I had the top bunk and he had the bunk underneath me and he didn’t seem to do any studying. He said, ‘You do all the studying. I’ll be alright.’ And then he’d, he’d try and copy off me if he could. So, but it was, it was unbelievable to have this beautiful swimming pool. Anyway, we were there until, and I, they said, the boys said, ‘Well, the first thing to do is Palm Beach can’t be far away.’ Well, Palm Beach to me the words were just something you heard on, on the films as we called it, you know. Or the pictures. But they said, ‘Well, so we’ll hitch a ride to Palm Beach.’ Well, we, we did one weekend. When the first weekend came up we, we thought we’ll hitch a ride. Well, it turned out to be ninety miles to Palm Beach. And so we saw a truck coming by and it had all melons on the back and there was a couple of what we used to then say coloured fellas driving it and we, we gave them the thumbs as you did when you were hitching and got on the back of this wagon. And we eventually got to Palm Beach. What we thought was Palm Beach. But we were expecting to see the water and the beach but there wasn’t. There was just this strip of water and nothing. Well, apparently that is a place. The water at, is not Palm Beach when you’re there. Its West Palm Beach. Palm Beach is across the strip of water which they called Lake Worth. It isn’t a lake but it’s a strip of water and a bridge over to, to the other side which is Palm Beach proper. The proper beach. So, anyway we, we asked somebody at, the Americans have a thing called the PX which is the equivalent of like our YMCA. So we went into this PX and asked them and they said, ‘No. Well, if you want Palm Beach you’ll have to go across the, across the Lake Worth.’ So we stayed. We said, ‘Well, where can we stay?’ They said, ‘Well, there’s a nice little inn just, just around the corner.’ So we stayed there the night and the next morning we went across this bridge and we noticed like black men peddling these like big bassinette affairs, carrying a couple of white people over the bridge. Apparently this is how they, they travelled around. And we got to the end of the road and it was a road called Coronation Road and we went down to the bottom. There was a little picket fence. And then we saw this lovely beach and then the ocean. So we climbed over and we settled ourselves on the beach and lo and behold there were there were which I now know were coconut trees on and some coconuts husks. Well, I now know they were coconuts husks on the, on the ground and these trees. So I said, ‘Oh, look at those.’ They said, ‘Yes. We’ll bag those up.’ And so I said, ‘What are they?’ He said, ‘They’re coconuts.’ So I said, ‘Coconuts?’ Well, the only coconuts I’d seen were the ones that are on a coconut shy. So they said, ‘Oh no. That’s the coconut’s inside those. We’ll show you what to do.’ And they broke open this thing so I learned now the coconut was inside the shell. I didn’t know that. So we settled down there and had a swim and then suddenly a black fella arrived out of the, and came along the beach and said, ‘I’m afraid you can’t stay here. You’re on private land.’ So I said, ‘Private land?’ He said, ‘Yes. This belongs to, to Waikiki,’ which was, he said, ‘But I’ll have a word with the mistress and see what she says.’ So anyway, this lady came down and her name eventually we found out was Mrs Nesmith. N E S M I T H. And she said, ‘Oh, where are you?’ And we explained and of course she knew nothing about the British boys at 5 BFTS or anything else. So she said, ‘Oh, come up,’ and she said, ‘You can change in our, in our bath house here,’ she said, ‘And then come in.’ So we chatted to her and she said, ‘What are you going to do?’ I said, ‘Well, we’ll get, hitch, hitch a ride back.’ She said, ‘Well, no. You can stay the night’. She said, ‘We can fix you up alright,’ she said, ‘I’ll give you some of Isla’s pyjamas.’ Well, Isla must have, well is her husband and apparently he had been a banker but there were a lot of private banks prior to the big crash of whenever it was. And a lot of these little banks had all gone bust so they’d, they’d taken to be estate agents and they had this big, big house called Waikiki and they said, ‘You can stay here,’ and she gave me this thing. Nice pyjamas. And she said, ‘Well, if you get a chance you can come here anytime and just, just help yourself.’ So anyway, cutting a long story this lady befriended and treated me almost like my mother. She was elderly and I was, well seemed elderly she was probably fiftyish and I was, I mean I was only eighteen so she really treated me very well. And she eventually she actually set up a Cadet Club at Clewiston and she also arranged, she said, ‘Well, I want to arrange for you to meet some, some girls and some of the wealthy people of Palm Beach.’ Well, I thought well if you’re not wealthy I don’t know what is because they each had a car. She had an Oldsmobile and he had a Plymouth and they had this lovely place. Well, that actually that was one of their letting places. That wasn’t their, their home. Their home was at I think 206 Pendleton Avenue if I remember rightly. And eventually me, Harold Wilkin and Jack Hough were the first people she’d ever befriended and as I say she, she eventually set up a Cadet Club in Clewiston and she also befriended over two thousand RAF boys. And she was awarded the, I think I’ve put it in the papers there. I think it was the King’s, the Kings Medal for, not for bravery. For something. And she was given it as an honour on a battleship in, in Miami. But she were a fantastic lady and, and she actually after, after that part of the war she still corresponded with me and my parents and, well mostly my mother and my little sister and sent us all sorts of, I think the first Christmas cake we’d had, and was a really wonderful lady. But funnily enough we, we didn’t want to chance hitchhiking back because we had to be in camp by 23.59 you know. Like a minute to midnight on such and such a day. So we decided to go on the bus. And they said, ‘Well, you can get a bus straight to Clewiston from here.’ This is, this is where, she showed us where the bus stop was and we were standing there and some black people came and stood behind us. And apparently, we found that the black people couldn’t get on the bus until all the whites were on and they couldn’t sit with you. They had to stand or they could sit on a seat with them but they couldn’t sit. And there was a pregnant lady who stood by the side of me and I, I got up and said, ‘Sit down.’ So she said, ‘No. I can’t.’ I said, ‘Just sit down.’ And anyway, apparently, I didn’t know but apparently when I don’t know who did it, whether it was somebody on the bus or one of the driver or what but I was hauled before the coals the following day and said, ‘You’re a guest of the American nation at the moment and irrespective of whatever your feelings are you will obey what they do.’ So I said, ‘Well, what’s the matter?’ He said, ‘They’re just not allowed to be with you.’ And when you went to a cinema they went in one part of the cinema, the coloured people as I call them, I apologise if I’m using the wrong expression but to be honest I’m at a stage where I don’t know really. It’s a different world to me. I don’t mean any disrespect to, to any nation but I just, just instinct with me. So it was, I mean in those days apparently there was, was just complete segregation. They weren’t allowed to. The black or coloured or whatever you call them people were not allowed to mix with you. And even when if you were fishing anywhere, they and you actually, I remember catching some, I think it was cat fish or something and I asked the fella who was showing me the fishing, I said, ‘Can you eat these?’ And he said, ‘Niggers do.’ Well, I mean it’s just a completely different world altogether, but in 1942 that seemed to be the way things were but anyway —
AM: What was the, what was the flying like at Clewiston?
CM: The flying?
AM: The flying.
CM: Well, the flying was strange because we were, we were in Stearmans which were open cockpits, twin wing aircraft and, and it was on a grass airfield and at night when we were doing night flying you had to wear snake boots because there were, there were rattlesnakes in the grass. And in fact Milton Steuer, one of the American boys who who had come to join us he was like a famous literary person because he could, he wrote like a brochure afterwards of, of our course, Course 12 called, “Listening Out.” And he, he had a, he had a what I then learned afterwards he had a prize Harley Davidson motorbike. Absolutely beautiful thing. Most of the boys. The American boys all had, some had their wives with them and some had their motorcars and everything. And they, they had the uniforms made weeks and weeks before the graduation. They were all commissioned. And beautiful material. You know, pink trousers and olive green tops. Really lovely stuff. And they, so he shot one of these rattlesnakes and we had, he skinned it and we used to have the skin on the, on the barrack room wall. And Mrs Nesmith arranged for us to go on a deep sea fishing trip with one of the guests of one of her houses and we, we were fortunate. It was a beautiful yacht where there were two seats at the back where you sat with these big rods doing the fishing. And we caught what we called, it was a sailfish but it’s like a swordfish and it had a bill that was about, well the whole thing, the whole, I don’t know whether Jim sent you a picture of it and it was on and it was over seven foot long.
Other: A Marlin.
CM: Yeah. Well, we call it a sailfish. And it had, it had this bill and they used to put the bill on the wall of the billet as well. And you flew a pennant if you’d caught one of these. And this fella whose yacht we were on said, ‘Damn me,’ he said, ‘I’ve been fishing twenty years and I’ve never caught one of these,’ and he said, ‘Here you are your first trip and you catch one.’ So that was, that was a thing I remember. So then when, when you graduated oh well you did your Wings exam as they called it. That was your final examination and I didn’t know whether I’d done any good or not because I studied like hell but I was at a disadvantage from the beginning because some of the boys, one boy in particular used to, well when he went to the examination he had three different bottles of ink and used different colours to write the answers in. And I think he became top of I don’t know how many people but I had a trouble with, with meteorology at first. I couldn’t. I mean like if I’d had, and I had the misfortune to have one of these strange minds who made fun of everything and like Buys Ballot’s Law. I learned that and it’s like stand with your back to the wind and low pressure’s on your left hand. Well, I, I joked with this so often I actually put in in the answer in the first one. I put, “Stand with your back to the wind and the wind’s behind you.” And the Met Officer, Harold C Cowleyshaw his name was. A real New Yorker. And he said, ‘I suppose you think that’s funny.’ So I said, ‘Well, I didn’t,’ I said, ‘It’s like Newton’s law of motion.’ He said, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘A body is at rest and it continues at rest until it moves.’ So he said, ‘Oh, get off.’ So, but these things happen and you make these mistakes. But I was, Mrs Nesmith had said, ‘Well, you boys can come to, to me at Christmas,’ she said, ‘But one of you will have to do the cooking,’ she said, ‘Because Ida,’ that was her servant, who was a a black servant, ‘Goes to Canada in, in the summer because, and normally I go,’ she said, ‘Because it’s too hot in Florida. And also the termites come and they have to treat them. Anyway,’ she said, ‘I’m not going.’ So, she said, ‘One of you will have to. Not you son.’ She wouldn’t let me do a thing. So I must have been looking miserable. She said, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m sweating on, on my exams.’ She said, ‘Oh, I’m not having that,’ and picked up the phone and phoned the station and asked for the CO and wants to know how I’ve done. So she came back and said, ‘Nothing to worry about. You’re fifty fourth.’ So I said, ‘Well, that’s better than being a hundred.’ [laughs] So, so that was alright. But, but she was a lovely lady and that’s my, my highlight of being with 5 BFTS. Well, then I, we trained up and I got bitten by a horsefly on the leg the day of the passing out parade when you got your wings and I had to go into a hospital and so I missed the graduation dinner. And then when we got on the train they arranged for an orderly to come on at every halt to come and drain my leg from this horsefly bite which was quite, quite a nasty thing. And we trained up back to Moncton and then we were on the Louis Pasteur which was one of the ships that were plying backwards and forwards to, to England. And we came, came into Liverpool and I was posted up to Fraserburgh for a conversion on to twin engine aircraft because what had happened is the Battle of Britain had finished. And therefore although we’d actually trained and learned all the fighter manoeuvres in fact two of our boys were killed on simulation of tight turns for fighters, and there was a few accidents of boys getting in to a stall because you had to be tighter and tighter and tighter. So they said. And you did it with fighter affiliation you do, you call the exercises. And they all, they nearly all the boys are buried at a place called Arcadia and the people of Arcadia where they, we went to a few of the funerals of the lads who were killed and the people of Arcadia looked after their graves ever since, and they’ve done a fantastic job. And 5 BFTS have sent them paintings of, of the Stearman and the Harvard together as an acknowledgement of the help they’ve given us. And the 5 BFTS was, Association was formed and it went on for well it only finished not last year it would be the year before. We had a letter we no longer had to give subscriptions. He said they’ll still, they’ll use the money sending out the, the yearly bulletin until the money run out and then the last one out was [unclear] That was it because they, I mean I’m, I’ll be ninety four in December so nearly all of them are no longer with us. But yeah. It was. So I was posted to Fraserburgh. Which was a shock because I’d never been to Scotland. Only once. Although my father was a Scot. My mum and dad with them having the shop never had a holiday together and he brought me up in 1934 to Glasgow to the Empire Exhibition which was in 1934 at Bellahouston Park. And that’s the only time I’d been to Scotland. He went to see two friends. One was in Cathcart I think and, where my father had lived. And the other one was in what I first of all said Milngavie but he soon corrected me and said Milngavie see. So, but Fraserburgh when we came up in ’43 they had to feed us by air. It was, the winter was that bad. And, and the dances which I thought we would be going to an ordinary dance there you didn’t get a ticket you put your arm through and they stamped it, “Paid,” with a, with a indelible stamp on. And every, every dance was a Eightsome Reel. And I could neither dance, I couldn’t, well I could dance. I couldn’t dance the Eightsome Reel. And I couldn’t understand a word the girls were saying. And in fact, this morning I was singing they’ve, they’ve got a song which everybody knew but me and they said at the end, ‘Well, what song would you like to have now?’ So I said, ‘Well, any song you like as long [laughs] as long as it’s in bloody English.’ Anyway, that’s by the way because the only songs I’ve got are, are Scottish songs were ones my father told me but they were either by Will Fyffe or —
AM: Harry Lauder.
CM: Harry Lauder but —
AM: So what was the flying like there?
CM: It was alright. Fraserburgh was, we did and I loved the, the Airspeed Oxford. It was a lovely little aeroplane. And we went to different places along the coast. Dallachy and one or two others on BABS flights or SBA flights. Did those. And, and did all the night flying all around.
AM: Because the weather must have been quite a factor.
CM: Oh, it was dreadful. Dreadful weather. But then from there I was posted to Hooton Park which is now the —
AM: Yeah.
CM: Vauxhall Motor plant. And I was there for about seven months on, on ASV. That’s Anti-Surface Vessel training with, they were wireless operators who were being trained to, in the Liverpool Bay to look for U-boats and you flew from from Hooton Park anywhere between our coast, our west coast out as far as the Isle of Man and around about. And fortunately because you, I mean you didn’t know where the hell you were going and I could navigate in, I’d only navigated in, in America and that’s where all the loads of north and south are and the, my instructor seemed to, he seemed to, he said to me he could tell where he was by the colour of the soil. But I don’t think he, that was the main thing because he used to fly quite low and we’d fly around the water towers, and all the water towers have their name on them so I think [laughs] he was reading the name. But I found the navigation was, was fairly I could do that alright but in in Scotland or England it’s not quite the same.
AM: No.
CM: So, we did that and then I was at Hooton Park as I say for about seven months and what I found that I’d fly around because you didn’t know where you were going. They just guided where they went and they were looking for whatever the instructor was teaching them. So then if the time was up which I think was about an hour or an hour and a half I used to fly, fly east until I hit the coast. If I could see Blackpool Tower it was alright. And then I’d, I’d turn right and there were two rivers. There was the River Mersey and the River Dee. So, I knew it was the second one and then fortunately there was a railway line. It isn’t there now. But there was a railway line that went right from like from West Kirby right the way through to Hooton so I just followed the railway line and went in. So that was easy enough to find. It was a bit disconcerting sometimes if, if there was a clamp on and the visibility was quite low. But then I was posted from there to, to OTU. Operational Training Unit at Desborough on Wellingtons. So we did, did fifty hours on Wellingtons and one of the, they used to have if they had a thousand bomber raid or whatever they, they seconded, all training units as well flew. Generally with aircraft that were not exactly top notch because they’d been used for training for a long time. And they obviously had a number of what they called nickel raids which are dropping leaflets instead. And either the Germans couldn’t read them telling them to give up like but either they didn’t read English or they didn’t take much notice. And I, I went to Brest for my nickel raid and it was one of the worst trips I had. It’s because that’s where the U-boat pens were and it was very very well defended. And when we came back we were diverted because it was fog bound and we were diverted to Boscombe Downs which was a grass airfield. And I remember you’d, when you land you open the bomb doors first to see if there’s any hang-ups presumably. And when I opened the bomb doors of course all the shower of leaflets fell out which is — so I had the boys scampering all over trying to pick up all these leaflets and I realised afterwards they really needn’t have bothered. They didn’t worry about a few. I mean they wasn’t the English people weren’t worried about them anyway. So, but that fortunately I found afterwards that actually counted as an operation anyway so, which I was glad it did because it was a pretty hairy target, Brest. So, then from, from that I went to Shepherds Grove I think it was called in in Suffolk for a Heavy Conversion Unit on to Stirlings and then from Shepherds Grove we went to, to Feltwell which was a Lancaster Finishing School.
AM: And was that where you crewed up?
CM: No. No. You crewed up at OTU. But the crewing up was a strange thing because I’d, I was coming from, from I think it was from Dishforth to, to [pause] I don’t know if it was Dishforth to Feltwell but as I got off the station, out of the train on to the platform this young navigator came up to me and said, ‘Are you crewed up, serg?’ Because I was a sergeant then. Either a sergeant or a flight sergeant, I forget because I’d been a sergeant over twelve months. And then, so I said, ‘No, I don’t think so.’ He said, ‘Well, can I be your navigator?’ I said, ‘Yeah,’ I mean I said, ‘Yes, certainly.’ So I’d already got then one crew member and then we went in and when you go to a station you have to go to, to all sorts of departments you know. Well, you’d know. Well, you did then. You went to the sick quarters and went to the bike shed and God knows where. So I went to the sick quarters and I’m sitting there waiting to see somebody and then a gaggle of blokes came in and slumped on a form of chairs and [unclear] and all these blokes were sort of lolling asleep and this one fella was quite awake. And apparently they were a load of bomb aimers who’d come from Morpeth I think where they’d been doing, it was a Radio School, I think. And a fellow who everybody called Dick, and I called him Dick once I’d been introduced to him he, he came. He was only a livewire. Well I’d found out then later that they’d all just come from, all the way from, from Morpeth in the North East so they were tired. But he seemed quite chirpy. And I found much later on in life that his name wasn’t Dick. His name was actually Bob but his surname was Turpin see. So he was Dick. Like everybody who was White was Chalky White. Anyway, I thought, I said, ‘Are you crewed up?’ So he said, ‘No.’ So I said, well he was what we called a flying A, A haul because he wasn’t a, he wasn’t a navigator he was an observer. And he was both a gunner, a wireless operator and navigator as well. So he was the best of all works. And eventually he was one I, I became closest to and I actually taught him enough to get the Lancaster down because I thought it was, was stupid for say if I got shot or killed and there’s all the crew, I mean. You know they didn’t know anything so, so he could at least put it, I don’t say it would be a good landing but he could put it down. So that was he was fixed. That was, the navigator was fixed. And Bob was, or Dick was fixed and he was a sort of back up navigator if I needed it and he said, ‘Have you got any gunners?’ So I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Well, I’ve got two Geordie gunners,’ he said, ‘And one of them wants to be a rear gunner,’ he said, ‘Which is unusual. So,’ he said, ‘Should I ask them’? So I said, ‘Yes. Fine.’ So then I got the two gunners. So I was fixed up apart from the wireless operator. Well, we were going to, I forget which station we were at now but I was passing the, where the wireless op was being, where the wireless operators were being trained and this circle of people were there around this one bloke and they were all laughing their socks off. And I thought well he’s a livewire whoever it is in the middle so I said I’ll have him. Well, I didn’t realise they weren’t laughing with him so much as laughing at him because he was, he was the most well intentioned bloke but he really wasn’t that well clued up because twice he [pause] well once on the Wellington he nearly gassed us all to death because he, it was his responsibility to turn the ground and flight switch on to flight when, on the Wellington when you took off and he’d forgotten. And suddenly the cockpit filled with fumes you see. And it was only Dick who said, ‘You bloody well haven’t switched the thing on,’ see. So the battery was going. And he also, he when the wireless wasn’t working once he stripped it all down. He said, ‘I’ll fix it.’ Well, he couldn’t put it back together again, so [pause] But, and he and the navigator who was we called Titch because he was only five foot one and he had a, a motorbike and used to, we used to joke, if you see the a bike coming along and there’s nobody on it that’s Titch. So that was, that was quite funny. So then I was fully crewed up and they truthfully were, were a good bunch of lads. And my rear gunner could turn his hand to anything if, he used to do all my sewing for me. Darn my socks. And whenever I got any increase in rank or what he’d sew it on. And if you lost anything he would get you another one. He would acquire one from somewhere [laughs] Whether it was a bicycle or, or a gas mask or whatever it was he would get it. ‘Don’t worry about it, skipper. I’ll see to it,’ he’d say. That’s right. But they were really a good bunch of lads. And that was it. I was fully crewed up. But apparently what they did they was, if you read the stories they shoved everybody in a hangar and they had to sort theirselves out. Well, that didn’t work for me. Mine came like I told you and I never had any trouble. And the only thing was you didn’t, you didn’t want your crew flying, flying with anybody else. You just, but they all, one of the snags was one and it’s funny how I, how I got my commission I think because at Ched, I didn’t, from Feltwell LF Lancaster Finishing School we went straight to the squadron which was at Methwold which was in Norfolk. And that was the first time I ever realised they were on ops because prior to then you just wanted to get on the squadron you know. You desperately want to get on the squadron. But when we drove through the gates because it’s only a few miles from Feltwell to Methwold there were ambulances pulled up at the outside. They’d been to, I think to Homberg they’d been to and they were lifting some of the people out and putting them in the ambulances. They’d been shot. They’d had a particularly bad trip and of course I would see it at the time but funnily enough it was strange because after I’d done this, when I’d seen these, all the bomb aimers and got crewed up you went to the bedding store, that was the last place you went to to get your blanket. Well, your three blankets and two sheets. And the fella looked at me and said and must have been when I spoke, he said ‘You’re a Mancunian, aren’t you?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘So am I.’ He said, ‘Now, don’t worry son,’ he said, ‘I’ve seen hundreds go through here,’ he said, ‘And I can tell you now you’ll be alright.’ You’ll see things through. So I don’t know why he’d sort of gave me and the strangest thing out. I’ve told this story many times. Later on. H came from Blackley. As we called it Blackley as it’s spelled. A lot of people call it Blackley who don’t know Manchester, Blackley and we corresponded with each other for only by Christmas card but for must have been twenty odd years until the Christmas cards stopped and presumably he’d gone. But when I was back in civilian life my wife and I were walking down Cannon Street in Manchester and there was a ladder up against the wall and I was just going, I said to my wife, ‘Don’t walk under the ladder. We’ll walk on the outside,’ were just walking round the outside and then suddenly somebody pushed, pushed us both to one side and a coping stone fell off the roof and crashed right down by the side of us. And I turned around and looked at the, who’d pushed us out the way and who should it be but Wilf Brennan. The fella who had seen me at the, at the station and said I’d be alright. And I thought, well what a coincidence you know. Just, but he must have I mean obviously he was quite a bit older than me. Well, nearly everybody was. So that was that. And then we’d only done one op from, from Methwold when the whole squadron was posted to Chedburgh and I found out it was what they call a GH squadron. Which was mostly daylights because we had, we were fitted with Gee which was, which was a radar scheme to, but it was only, it was only accessible as far as the Ruhr. That’s the farthest distance it had and and I was, the way the aircraft were were differentiated was they had two yellow bars on the fins of the, of the Lancaster. And I used to take off from, from Chedburgh and rendezvous over Ipswich and we would either communicate through the Aldis lamp or with, on the RT for, to give your call sign and they would formate on me. So we’d fly all the way to the target in what we called vics of three. I would be the leader and one on either side and it was formation flying all the way until you dropped your bombs and then, then virtually they were supposed to fly back with you but frankly it was every man for himself after that. Didn’t work. We didn’t do that at night but daylights and the, I mean I did I did twenty two day trips. I only did I think about eleven nights and then a nickel raid and that. I think I did thirty six altogether. But I think the trouble with the night flying was the searchlights because you, with GH the thing was it was only accurate if you flew straight and level for about forty miles going into the target and the navigator used to complain bitterly if you, you went off slightly off course because he’s, he’s sat behind his curtain thing and once or twice we had words because I’d say, ‘Get the bloody hell, get your head out and have a look,’ I said, ‘And you’ll see why I’m diverting a bit.’ ‘Cause as you would know you always say you don’t just say left or right you always say left left and then right to differentiate between the two so he can’t mistake what you’re saying. But you’ve got to be forty miles absolutely straight and level and not deviate so that the thing is accurate. And the trouble is you’re susceptible to fighters on daylights. The FW190 was the one we were worried about. Daylight it was. Night time it was searchlights because we were briefed that the ordinary searchlight wasn’t too bad but then they had what they called the master beam and if that, if that got you in his sights then all the beams came on you. They must have coordinated somehow and you had I think they had, you had, they had sixteen seconds in which to replot the actual position you were in from the time the searchlight, master searchlight got on you. So you had to be quick. But what I developed over the, over the time which wasn’t particularly brave but I used to ask the, I asked the two gunners, the mid-upper and the rear gunner, I said, ‘Look out for another Lancaster or Halifax or Stirling or whatever you can and if you see one let me know.’ And I used to dive over the top of it if I could with the idea being that if the searchlight was following me and if I went over the top of him the light would be on him for a short period of time and then if I was able to get out of the way very quickly hopefully they’d have lost me and be on somebody else. And I for daylights I used to tell the lads, the gunners, I said, ‘If you see what you think is a FW 190 or a Stuka or whatever it is,’ I said, ‘Don’t fire at it in case one of three things. A — he might not have seen us. B — he might have seen us but be like me and want to stay alive so he doesn’t want to get shot down.’ And I said, ‘Those are two things you must take into account because I said there’s no point in drawing attention to yourself,’ you see. And our, my mid-upper gunner was at first on the first three trips were, very first three night trips were very gung ho. He wanted to go down and have a go at the searchlights. But I politely told him I don’t think that’s on. Not in those words.
AM: And did you ever have to do a corkscrew at night? Or —
CM: No. Yes, I did. On the really shakiest trip I had was I’d gone to a place, well I didn’t get there. I was going to Dessau which is about, I think it’s about a hundred miles southwest of Berlin. And it was a night trip and we were, I was going there and suddenly the port outer had a runaway prop and I tried to feather it and it didn’t feather. And then to my consternation it burst into flames. So I thought, oh shit. What the hell am I going to do? So I, you had in the Lanc you had what they called four graviner buttons. One for each engine. So I pressed the graviner button and it, it didn’t seem to to put the thing out. So I thought oh I’ll have to do something. So I resorted to a manoeuvre I’d learned early on in, in my flying days, sideslipped. So I, I sideslipped it left to try and, I thought one of two things. It would either help to extinguish the flames or else it will increase the, the chance. I don’t know which. But fortunately it went out but the trouble is the prop hadn’t, hadn’t feathered and it was windmilling like the clappers. And obviously immediately I lost, I started to lose height because I was at, I’d started at twenty, about twenty one thousand feet and it just started to drop like a stone so I said to, to Bob, or Dick as he was, I said, ‘Just jettison.’ So he jettisoned and that sort of arrested the fall for a bit but I didn’t regain control until about I must have been about nine thousand feet and I said, we had piles of Window stacked in the back which we were supposed to shovel out. So I, I got the boys shovelling this stuff out as fast as they could. And I’ve read many books since where what we thought we was, was helping to jam their, their radar, in point of fact was doing just the opposite. They were, it was helping them more than not. So then I was, said to Titch, ‘Well, just give me a course as far as you can. As near as you can to, to get to base.’ I said, ‘But you’re better not to go in to base because I haven’t got any hydraulics. So you’d better go in to Woodbridge,’ which was the nearest. There was Woodbridge, Manston or Carnaby were the three emergency. But I don’t have to describe those to you. You know what they are. Three runways of different calibres. So there was a battle line and then the bomb line and they’re two different lines because you had to be sure you were over the bomb line before you dropped any bombs because of your own troops being in the way. Anyway, Titch said to me, ‘You’re alright now, Skip. You’re over the, over the sea. You can let down.’ Because I was over nine thousand feet and I was struggling to, to hold the thing because as you can see I’m only five foot and my, I’d got as maximum trim as I could on but it was still a struggle for me. So he said, ‘Ok, you let down now.’ Well, when I came out of the cloud instead of being over the sea I was met by a load of tracer and very heavy anti-aircraft fire. So I, I did a corkscrew as you say which was not, it’s not very pleasant for the crew. Not very pleasant for me. But it seemed to, seemed to do the trick and we sailed on over the North Sea and then, then I don’t know whether what aircraft there are now, whether they [unclear] but on the Lanc you had what they called a star wheel which is the trimmer which, which altered the trim. A little piece of strip on the back of the elevators to, to for fine tuning and I’d got it obviously full, full on for, for, from my left leg. And I had on, because it was cold as well because the boys, actually you were you were given Kapok suits first and then, then on top of the Kapok which is like a thermal material. It’s called Kapok in those days. Then you had, you had your underwear first. Your silk underwear. And then your Kapok suit and then like a gabardine suit. This is what you had on your what they called you flying kit. But as far as I was concerned certainly my crew and every other crew I’d know didn’t, didn’t wear that stuff. The gunners.
AM: Yeah.
CM: Actually, especially the rear gunner they wore electrically heated suit. A bottom and a top which the boys said didn’t always work. Either the top of it or the bottom worked. But we just wore our thermal underwear, well not, it wasn’t thermal then. It was silk worn in two layers. And then your ordinary battledress with a fisherman’s, what I called a fisherman’s sweater and fisherman’s socks and then, then your escape boots which which had a little section in the side where you could put a, which was a pseudo strip of Wrigleys chewing gum. A long strip but it contained a hacksaw blade. And I had every single button on my uniform was a compass. If you took the top off the button then there was a little like pin on it and you could put it on the top of the thing and there was a little yellow dash which pointed to north. That was on every button. And I also had, because I was friendly with the, one of the intelligence officers and I had the cigarettes, not a tobacco pouch which you broke open the lining and it had a silk map of Europe with Spain and so on. And I had pipes that either unscrewed and there was a compass inside one end of the pipe or pencils that you could break and there was a compass inside that. I said, ‘If the Jerry’s ever get me I’ll run a [unclear] over the stuff’ [laughs], but I had every, every aid there was and our plan was, which wasn’t very good, Titch, the navigator had done a little German at school so we were all too, if we were to bale out we were to all get together which is being possibly impossible anyway and he would be able to talk his way out. He’d be able to talk his way out. I don’t think he would.
AM: Yeah.
CM: But that was the plan. So, as I say we, we had all this so coming in to land obviously as you start to throttle back then you have to take the trim off. But with three gloves on I got my fingers stuck in the bloody star wheel see. So I’m sweating cobs that I’ve got to get my hand out of this so I could get both hands on the stick. And anyway we got in alright and just ran to the end. And I’d, you were issued with what we called wakey-wakey tablets which were Benzedrine, I understand. And I never used them. The boys used them a lot for forty eight hour leaves. They used to use them and then they could stay awake all night and you know get pissed as a rat and stay in London or whatever. But I never used them but this time I thought well I’d better take these wakey-wakey tablets because it was, it’s a long way back from, from Dessau to, to base. And it must have been about four hours I think. I know it was a long way. So I’d taken these bloody tablets and the affect it had on me. That was the only time I ever used them but you sort of wanted to go to sleep but you couldn’t. And you had to go into the Watch Office first and sign your name on something. I said, ‘I’m afraid I can’t. I can’t sign anything.’ I didn’t, I just didn’t couldn’t do. I don’t know why. I just couldn’t write. Anyway, I went in and it seemed to be alright. And that’s, that’s the worst trip I’d, I’d had. I’d had one or two bits of scrapes but that was that was the one that was the worst one for me. And —
AM: What about the losses on the squadron? Did it affect the crew or you?
CM: Well, no. What happened is, you didn’t. They were, we used to refer to it as getting the chop and what happened when there were no number thirteens on anything. On the lockers or anything. And if, if a crew got the chop, if you were all, I don’t know how many of us there were in the nissen hut but there wasn’t just our crew. There was another crew. Or at least one crew and if they got the chop they didn’t fill those beds until another intake came in. And the, I don’t know whether he thought it was the right word but the, the normal way of things was if there was a girl on the station who’d gone with somebody let’s say a pilot from another crew and had got the chop she became a chop girl. So that was taboo. You didn’t, you didn’t go out with her at all. And there was one poor girl I, I know. This was on Wellingtons. Not not before I got on Lancs but she had lost. This had happened to her twice and so she said, ‘I’m not going out with anymore aircrew fellas.’ And she went out with a ground staff sergeant and he walked into a pillar. I mean, and superstitions were absolutely rife. I mean my, my crew Dick always wore a pair of his wife’s cami knickers as they called them in those days. Which was like coms, but with, with three little buttons which fastened on the crotch. And he always wore those. And his wife Mary because he was the only one married in the crew and she travelled with him wherever she, wherever we went and played the piano which was good. So she was, you know friendly with every one of us. Well, she gave me a scarf. It was a paisley scarf. A lovely one. And Dick came to my home sometimes when, when we were on leave and more often than not I came up to Blyth because it was a better atmosphere. And so I’d ask my mother to wash this scarf which of course it got dirty after, you know. So she said, ‘I haven’t seen this before. Whose is it?’ I said, ‘That’s Mary’s.’ So, she said, ‘That’s, that’s Dick’s wife isn’t it?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ She said, ‘You’ve no right to be wearing some other man’s wife thing.’ I mean that’s my mother all over. So I said, ‘Well, I do and that’s it. So if you don’t mind just wash the bloody thing.’ Well, that was him. Now, my, my flight engineer always wore a white towelling shirt. And he never washed it. But he always wore a white towelling shirt. And my mid-upper gunner always carried a kukri in his flying boot. You know a big kukri. And I think it was the, I think he was the rear gunner who had a rabbit’s foot. And you found, I don’t know whether it was just coincidence or what but one of the fellas, fella I remember his name, Marley because he had a Riley car as well. A Riley sports car. He went and he lost his life on take-off on one operation and they found his rabbit’s foot in his locker and they said, ‘There you are,’ you see, they said, ‘He didn’t bloody well take it.’ Well, we also had a stuffed cat. Which was not a real cat but it was a stuffed cat called the Mini the Moocher and we always had it tied to the, the stem of the loop aerial. In the Lancaster there’s a little bubble behind the pilot’s cockpit where the loop stands. And Mini the Moocher was strapped to that. And when you used to take off you’d come along the peritrack, all lined up taxiing and then they’d signal you to go on to the runway and you’d sit on the end of the runway and there was the dispatcher’s hut and they would shine an Aldis lamp with a green for you to go. And always at the side of the runway there would be the padre, and the CO, and possibly two or three WAAFs and maybe one or two of the ground crew. And you would sit there until you got the green and then you’d open the tap and off you’d go. Well, one day we had, we’d forgotten Mini the Moocher and suddenly one of the ground staff came peddling up like the clappers and waved to us and stopped so we could, we could have Mini the Moocher and strap it to the thing. Yeah. They were very superstitious. But you do. I mean when you think about it now it didn’t make the slightest difference but it did in your mind, you know. So that was that so —
AM: You mentioned going home to see your mother when you went home to Manchester.
CM: Yeah.
AM: During the war.
CM: Yeah.
AM: What was it like for you? An operational pilot.
CM: Well, my mother didn’t know I was on ops. Only the boy I told you about John, John Fowkes the Welsh boy who’d been with me, who’d been with me throughout. He had joined the Air Force and he was in Bomber Command but he was actually at, at Mildenhall which was only a few miles from Chedburgh and he, he used to come over and see me. Well, his parents were greengrocers. Nearly all my friends when I was at school were the son of street corner something or other. Greengrocers or chip shop or butchers or whatever so, and he was on ops and he was before me. I didn’t know this but he was on a squadron and his mother had met my mother on some occasion and she told him. Oh yeah. ‘I see your Charles is doing the same as John.’ Well, she didn’t know see. So the next time I came on leave she gave me a pile of stamped postcards all ready to post. And she said, ‘Now, we hear on the radio,’ she said, which they did. They’d say ‘Last night our aircraft bombed — ’ whatever. Frankfurt. And so many of our aircraft of are missing or they all returned safely or whatever happened. Or Lord Haw Haw would tell them. So she gave me all these cards and she said, ‘Now, post them to me as soon as you get back so I know you’re alright.’ So I said, ‘Ok.’ So what I used to do is I used to tell her I was safe and that before I went and posted it, you see so she didn’t worry about anything. And if I wasn’t, I wasn’t so that’s [pause] But the first time as I say she’d ever heard from me for all the months before was that card she had from the Jewish lady in New York. So she didn’t know. But what we used to do is when we came up to Blyth which they were much, beer was, was rationed completely and Mary was also loved by everybody because she could play the piano see. So she came because she was with Bob, Dick and she would, she would play the piano and we’d sing. Have a sing song. And when, when we came to Blyth the one song that we all used to stand in a circle and we’d sing was, “With someone like you,” altogether, “A pal good and true, I’d like to leave it all behind.” You know the song. And I introduced the same thing at home so we all had a, had that song and a bit of a, possibly a bit of a weep together like I’m doing now and but there was songs seemed to have a, you know a special something about them.
AM: Resonance.
CM: But that’s, that’s how it was and —
AM: Tell me about the day the war ended.
CM: Well, we were on [pause] what happened when, I finished early on in April. The war finished in April, May. VE day was promulgated I think on the 8th of May. But we finished in April. I forget what date it was now. I’ve got it here somewhere. I did, I did my last op on [pause] this incidentally I don’t think. You can have a look at it. This is when I came back from any of the ops there was always a cutting, or not always, generally a cutting in the newspaper. Like this stop press news, “Our bombers new route. Daily Sketch correspondent. People in the north east saw for the first time last night something which the south has seen many times before. The organised might of Bomber Command proceeding on a mission. The concentration of aircraft was the biggest ever seen over the north east.” And this was Kiel.
AM: God.
CM: We sank the, and I used to write, I used to write what I’d thought about the trip. And they used to put the bomb load in. The one five hundred medium capacity. “Another master bomber effort and very impressive. A good way out at two thousand feet. Really good. The target itself was beautifully marked and though the flak was intense it was well below our height. Searchlight gave us persistently little trouble. I’m pretty sure it was a grand prang.” That’s the word we used. “The only thing that marred the trip was the long delay in getting us down.” And then this was where we sank the, the I think that was the Admiral Scheer.
AM: The Admiral Scheer.
CM: Yeah. So that’s, that’s I’ve got a record there of every trip I did so that it starts right at the very front page with the details of the Lancaster. I don’t know whether you’ve —
[recording paused]
AM: What did you do after the war, Charles?
CM: Well, as I said to you at the beginning after the war when I was on the Berlin Airlift they had, they had a, they had a lot of small aircraft. Freddie Laker had some of his aircraft and Blackburn Aircraft Corporation had a lot of aircraft and they were I don’t know how it I was seconded or whatever to help the war. To help the Berlin Airlift. And I met a pilot. We were actually talking over the intercom and he recognised my voice and I spoke to him and I met him at, we used to go to a place called Bad Nenndorf for r&r because the, it was quite a strain on the Airlift because we were flying twenty four hours a day seven days a week and we didn’t, we didn’t always get back to the billets to go to sleep. You slept in the watch office. So you had to go to a place for a bit of rest. And we often used to meet up there and I met with a bloke called Takoradi Taylor who was called Takoradi Taylor because he’d been in Takoradi before the war with the Air Force and he, I’ll show you later on. But I used to play a lot of golf when I first retired and we were playing at Haydock one day. We had, with the veterans you went to different, different Golf Clubs to play in the Veteran’s Association and I walked out on the tee and there was this fella with, and there was this bag he’d got and he looked as if it was made of sort of snakeskin and I said, ‘That’s a wonderful bag.’ So he said, ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘My brother got it for me,’ he said, ‘From Takoradi.’ So I said, ‘Oh, that’s a name that rings a cord,’ I said, ‘I knew a bloke on the Berlin Airlift. Takoradi Taylor,’ I said, ‘But unfortunately,’ I said, and he, I said, ‘That’s the first time I’ve heard that word Takoradi for a long time,’ I said, ‘But unfortunately,’ I said, ‘He flew for a firm called Flight Refuelling,’ which was one of Cobham’s people. And I said, ‘Unfortunately, they were,’ I said, ‘He was a friend of mine and I last met him at Bad Nenndorf and he recognised me from, we were at OTUs together. At Operational training Unit.’ So, I said, ‘I hadn’t seen him from that day,’ I said, ‘And I met him at Bad Nenndorf and I said, I said to him, ‘Well, we must have a drink together.’ So he said, ‘Yes, so he said I’m flying back now with the boys,’ he said, ‘All the, all the pilots from Flight Refuelling are flying home to Tarrant Rushton,’ which is near Southampton, he said and, ‘That’s where, where I’m going for my rest. But when I get back I’ll give you a buzz and we’ll get together.’ And I said, ‘Fine.’ Well, apparently the whole of them. All the pilots flew into a problem at Tarrant Rushton. Whether they flew straight into the ground or what but they were all killed. And so we never did get together but I told, we had a magazine at the Golf Club and I told them this story which went in, you know. So that was that. But what I’m saying is when we were talking over the intercom and I talked to this fella called Des Martin who lived on the Wirral and afterwards we got together. He’d been at Clewiston with me on 5 BFTS. So he was flying for Blackburn Aircraft Corporation and he said, and he said he was getting a hundred and twenty pounds a week, you see. Well, I was a flight lieutenant in the Air Force. I was getting sixty pounds a month. So he said, ‘Well, you’re stupid to stay,’ he said, ‘You’re doing the same bloody job.’ He said, ‘Just apply for your, you’ve just to apply to them and,’ he said, ‘You’ve got all the qualifications. You’ve been flying the route for God knows how long,’ he said. ‘You’ll have no trouble,’ So I did but they said, ‘Well, what you need is a course at Tarrant err at Hamble. Well, by the time I got my compassionate release because I told you Margie was ill the course had finished. And you had to have a hundred and twenty hours on type which I couldn’t afford you see. So instead of going to fly, I hadn’t decided to emigrate then I thought well I’ll see what they have to offer me. I’d worked before. I’d worked for a firm call Lec Transport and I was happy but it was only a mediocre job. So I went to what they called the Appointments Bureau which was supposedly for officers. Like the Employment Exchange but a bit of higher up. He said, Mr Green was the fellas name, so he said, ‘What’s your name?’ So I said. He said, ‘Well, you’ve got a good war record son,’ because he had my details, he said, ‘But the war’s over.’ I mean, I knew that. So, he said, ‘And what I can offer you, I can, I can fix you up with a job down the mines or, or I can fix you up with, with you can go into a cotton mill.’ So, I said, ‘I’ll find my own job.’ So my brother had, he was in, he worked for Milner’s Safe Company and he had been selling steel furniture which Milner’s sold to different firms in Manchester. And one of the firms was an office equipment company which had furniture and adding machines and calculators and typewriters. So he said well, ‘I’m sure he’d give you a job.’ So, so I I went to see him and he said, ‘Have you got a briefcase?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ So he said, ‘Well, I’ll show you what these machines are. Typewriters and so on. He gave me a little bit of instruction on how to use them and he gave me a load of leaflets. He said, ‘Well, just go out and sell some of these.’ Well, cutting a story short I did that for about, I don’t know, maybe twelve months. Hated it because well after being an officer and being used to eating off linen and all nice things it was a shock to, to come to what was reality. And anyway I, I stuck at it and eventually became the sales manager and then I became the general manager and then he was the director of the company and then he made me a director as well. And then I’d, we had a fall out which I don’t need to go into but it was, it was a case of misinformation in various areas. And I’d met a fellow who was in a similar line of business. He had a stationer’s shop in amongst other things in Liverpool and he’d always said, ‘If you ever think of changing your job give me a bell.’ We got on well together. So I did and I started work with him and they were [pause] he didn’t want me for stationery. He wanted me for a new branch of his firm which was called Industrial Stapling and Packaging. So I eventually got to be the admin manager of this company and we were taken over by a firm called Ofrex who manufacture stapling machines and tackers and all sorts of different machines. And when they took us over they also had a stapling machine called, stapling company called IS & P Industrial Stapling and Packaging which was based in Aylesbury. So the head of the company, the director and the only director of the company said it was silly having two companies. One in Liverpool and one in Aylesbury. So he decided to merge the two into two called British Industrial Fastenings. And he took the whole thing down to Aylesbury. So, they, they obviously wanted me to go to Aylesbury. Well, I had a word with the managing director of the company down in Aylesbury and he wouldn’t meet my terms. I said to him, ‘I, first of all I want a house equivalent of the bungalow I’ve got here. And I want pay equivalent to the sales manager’s because,’ I said, ‘I’m the manager of the whole of the thing.’ Anyway, he wouldn’t meet my requirements so I said, ‘Alright. Well, I’m not coming.’ So I saw my boss back in Liverpool and he said, ‘Well, don’t worry Charles.’ Now, we’d started to buy some machinery and some strapping which was plastic strapping from a company in America. So he said, ‘Get your ass over to America and learn all you can about all the machines and how they make the strap and everything and then come back and see what you can do here.’ So I went over there for about three weeks and I had to learn about all the different machines and how they made this what was then polypropylene strapping. And cutting up a long story short I, I took a twenty year lease on a building which belonged to the Coal Board in, in, in Ellesmere Port on the other side, on the Wirral. And I arranged for the, for the factory, the extruder and the drawer stands and all the rest of it and we set up this company called, we just called it Laughton’s [unclear] Strap. That’s the name of the strap the Americans were making.
AM: Right.
CM: But we started. I said, ‘Well, we won’t make money being the last in line. We have to manufacture the straps.’ So we bought these extruders and we bought all this stuff and I had to take a twenty year lease out on this place in Ellesmere Port. But anyway we set it up. Within, within twelve months we were, we had a turnover just over a million quid. And it went from strength to strength and we eventually we then were taken over by Gallagher’s which not only had tobacco companies like Benson and Hedges and so on. They also had, they owned Dolland and Aitchison, the opticians. They owned Prestige Pans and a lot of other companies. But they in turn were taken over by the fourth largest tobacco company in the world called American Brands who then got themselves into litigation about cancer. So they decided, this was after I’d retired. I retired in ’86, but after I’d retired they decided they weren’t going to get into this litigation about cancer so they sold everything back to Galla. Well not, they sold it to Gallagher’s. And Gallagher’s and American Brands not only owned the tobacco side which was Lucky Strike and God knows what. They also owned Pinkerton’s, the security people, they also owned Titelist Golf Balls they also owned Jim Beam Whisky. And what they did is they sold all their tobacco business to Gallagher’s and Gallagher’s sold all their stuff off to, back to American Brands and, and everything but so then American Brands to divest themselves of all the tobacco stuff and they sold out to a firm called Acco Europe. Which is probably one of the biggest firms. They first of all started out in what I call continuous stationery which is if you look at machines going it prints all sorts of loads of different stationery. So that’s who the company belongs to. But Laughton’s was a business on its own which didn’t fit in to anything so it’s now gone kapput. It no longer exists.
AM: Right.
CM: So, but that’s the way it was. But I, I was appointed to the board on that company as well because I had a number of quite good ideas. One of which has come to fruition but not with me. But I, I dreamt up the idea of a thing called, ‘Call and Collect.’ Which was people phoned up the company, and on the phone with our computers which I’d put in. Then you keyed in what they wanted. You had to have a code and all that which was very different from these days when everything’s [unclear] and I bought a place next door which had a big door at one end and a big door at the other end. I had different stalls put up and we put a lot of our stock which was the main big seller down in this, this warehouse. And the idea was for people to phone up. This would be processed and they would be picked by people and then the car from the company would drive in one end, load it up and drive out the other. But it didn’t take off at all. But this Click and Collect at Tescos and God knows where.
AM: Yeah.
CM: But it just didn’t work.
AM: Did you, after the war Charles keep in touch with any of your crew members?
CM: Bob, or Dick. Yes. I did. We used to, they used to come and stop at my house and I used to go up to Blyth and stay with them. We, we stayed together for right until Bob died. He’d be about seventy one or seventy two.
AM: Right.
CM: And then Mary, his wife died. And I still, I still keep in touch with their daughter. And one of the boys I was with at ITW, Initial Training Wing, the one who I told you how I met the wife when she was dancing around. Well, I kept in touch with the daughter for quite a years when they didn’t know he was killed or what. He was just missing. So I kept in touch with her. She died and her husband saw some of the correspondence so he asked if he could keep in touch with me. He still keeps, well he stayed in touch with me until he died. And then his daughter found this correspondence so she’s still in correspondence with me today. And my sister who I told you he thought the world of she always puts a cross on in the arrangements for us in the Arboretum in Staffordshire somewhere. Yeah. So I do. My, my other crew. My Bomber Command crew I kept in touch with them until they, they all passed, so there’s no — as far as I know my mid-upper gunner went as a tea planter in Ceylon and I lost touch with him. And the flight engineer. I wrote to him. He’s from Glasgow. I had a couple or three letters from him and then that died off. And Freddie Collins, the wireless op I’ve never heard or seen anything from, from the day we went on break up leave. And my navigator I told you got killed on his first trip. So that accounts for the crew and the, the other crew that I kept in touch with was the York crew. But they’re dead now so I don’t keep it going. I can’t keep in touch with them. So, there’s, there’s virtually nobody left.
AM: So is there anything else that you’d like to tell me of your time in Bomber Command?
CM: No. I don’t think so. As far as, as far as I know. I mean if there’s anything you think of and I’ll try and tell you. I mean all I can say to you that it was a traumatic time but at the same time I made friends that I, I was, I’d been never been closer to anybody in my life. Just one of those things and, and it taught me an awful lot. The Air Force really [pause] the Air Force in general, it made me feel that I want something better out of life than I was, was having. And I mean the very fact that I got commissioned was, was quite an uplift for me really. I never, I mean I never dreamed that I was ever that, I was never university type. But at the same time it also taught me that as far as I can tell I’m good at what I do. And I’ve been fortunate in that the two private companies I worked for were individuals who were able to, there must be many many people who are working for firms that just either it’s so remote that they don’t see anybody. But these two fellas were, they owned the company. And like there’s one guy now phones me, has phoned me religiously every month since I’ve known him. Forty odd years. And he has a, he has a, he owns a huge paint factory. Got factories all over the world and a multi-millionaire. But he phoned me only a few days ago just to see how I was. And never, never fails. And he said, ‘We’ve been friends for so long,’ and he, he hasn’t got a ha’pence of side on him at all. I mean, you wouldn’t know. I mean when, when I took him out for a meal at Formby we just went to an ordinary meal place and he said, which I can hear him saying, he was a real Lancashire lad, he said, ‘Anybody having pudding?’ I mean and they all seemed, and given the chance I’m pretty certain whatever I’d have done I’ve made a success of it.
AM: Yeah.
CM: It’s just worked out that way. And I’ve been, I’ve said in all my papers I have been very, very lucky. I had a, had a wonderful childhood. And I can truthfully say I never had a day when I got up and said, ‘I don’t want to go to work today.’ I’ve always been happy in what I’m doing. And I think it’s, it reflects really what you are and to the people that you meet you know. And even all the girls who come. The carers. I get on like a house on fire with them. I mean. And I say to them, which is true I don’t know how anybody can criticise the —
[recording paused]
AM: Charles Mears. Flight Lieutenant Charles Mears, Distinguished Flying Cross, thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Charles Mears
Creator
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Alastair Montgomery
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-09-21
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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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AMearsCE170921
Format
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02:12:50 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
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Charles left school with no formal qualifications and was undertaking further education when the Second World War commenced. Being too young to enlist, he joined the Air Defence Cadet Corps and - upon reaching 18 - he eventually was able to join. He was detached to the United States for training. Upon boarding the Queen Mary, he was aware of damage to the ships bow which had been repaired with concrete. Training was carried out at No. 5 British Flying Training School in Florida. Mixing with Americans, he experienced things like deodorant. Charles also came across discrimination: having given his seat on a bus to a pregnant black lady, he was interviewed and told that being a guest of America, he must respect the American way of life. Upon return to the UK, he was posted to RAF Fraserburgh to convert onto Oxford, followed by anti-surface vessel training which involved flying trainee wireless operators over the Irish Sea. After several months, Charles was posted to the Wellington operational training unit at RAF Desborough. Whilst here, he was involved in a leaflet drop over Brest. Following conversion to Lancasters, Charles was posted to a squadron operating Gee H radar. This was mainly daylight operations. On these sorties, it was necessary to fly straight and level for 40 miles to the target, which led to many arguments between him and his navigator. At RAF Methwold he saw a row of ambulances taking injured aircrew away after a particularly bad operation. On one occasion he had to make an emergency landing at Woodbridge. He was told by the navigator he was over the sea and since he was struggling to control the aircraft he dropped below the cloud straight into a barrage of anti-aircraft fire. He performed a corkscrew manoeuvre and managed to get out of trouble and successfully land at Woodbridge. On the only occasion he took the wakey-wakey pills he found them so disorientating he couldn’t even sign off the aircraft on landing and although he desperately wanted to sleep he just could not. Superstition was rife amongst the crews. He describes his experience as traumatic but worthwhile. He met so many friends that he has remained in contact with throughout his life.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
United States
Florida
Great Britain
England--Northamptonshire
Scotland--Aberdeenshire
France
France--Brest
Atlantic Ocean--Irish Sea
England--Norfolk
England--Suffolk
Atlantic Ocean--Irish Sea
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1942
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
218 Squadron
5 BFTS
African heritage
aircrew
bombing
British Flying Training School Program
crewing up
Gee
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
military ethos
navigator
Oxford
pilot
propaganda
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Desborough
RAF Feltwell
RAF Fraserburgh
RAF Methwold
RAF Shepherds Grove
RAF Woodbridge
searchlight
superstition
training
Wellington
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Title
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Kent, Anthony William
A W Kent
Description
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A oral history interview with Flying Officer Anthony 'Tony' Kent (1923 -2021, 189184 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator with 149 Squadron from RAF Methwold.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-02-02
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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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Kent, AW
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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NM: Good morning. My name is Nigel Moore. It’s Thursday the 2nd of February 2017. I’m with Tony Kent in his house XXXXX Ruislip, Middlesex. So Tony, tell me a little bit about your childhood, growing up and where you went to school.
AK: It goes back really. I was born over in Wood Green and a lot of my education was split up between Wood Green and Leicester because my father had a summer job there and then we came back to Wood Green or later Eltham. A similar sort of thing until finally we settled in Eltham and my education was, I finished up in a central, central school at Ruislip er at Eltham but I sat for competitive student apprentice situation and took that up on the Monday after war was declared on the Sunday. Now, as the student, the apprenticeship was based at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich it soon became clear that I was not going to get a good machine education operating in the Arsenal and then going to the Woolwich Polytechnic for further studies. It was soon clear that I was sent out to a drawing office in the country and I was out there for some time and decided, after about eighteen months that that was not for me. I did not want to spend my life as a design draughtsman because that’s where I was heading. Design draughtsmanship. And I, it was a protected industry but I managed to be one of the last people of that ilk who managed to get out and I volunteered for the RAF. My RAF training, in the main, we were sent, initial training was in Scarborough and then eventually I was taken out on [pause] on the sea, troop transport carrier, to South Africa where I trained as a navigator at East London. And I was there for about a year and then was brought, brought back to England and started. And we crewed up at Stradishall where, as I expect you probably know, they put a whole heap of crew members in there. Pilots, air gunners etcetera etcetera. And a pilot went around asking people would they like, would we like, to join his crew. And Alan, my pilot, was from Adelaide. Australian. And we had two Scottish gunners and a Geordie engineer and one other. So from then on we went on to, Alan went on to training on the twin engine Wellington at Stradishall. Switched to Stirlings. And joined, well and then joined the 149 Squadron who we’d volunteered for, or at least asked for because they were known as a special squadron and their work was dropping supplies and agents into Europe. Well we were with those Stirling, a Stirling squadron and we did three operations from there. Bomb laying, mine laying, sorry. Mine laying. Then we were given the Lancs and we were operating from Methwold. Previously we’d been operating from, I call it Feltwell but there was 146 something Grove I’ve got the name but thirty of my operations were with Lancs at Methwold. Mainly daylight. We were then after a while, I could give you dates, we were equipped with GH and I think we were probably the first squadron to get it. Have you heard of GH?
NM: No. Tell me about it.
AK: Well GH was, was like a satnav of the sky. Germany, or Europe was covered in a sort of range of criss-crossing lines. Whether you’d call them radio waves or not and with using that equipment I could navigate with it obviously but when we first had it we had mainly daylights and in the daylight operations we would have two other Lancs formate with us and we would lead them in. I would navigate when we got near the run-in to the target. I would then take over the run-in and instructing Alan and I had previously set up the setting of the point at which the bombs would be released. Pre-calculated at the briefing and we would run down one of these lines, there’s a better word, run down one of these lines and my aircraft would be seen as a blob running down. As we got near the target a blob would appear on one of the crossing points and as we got near that I would order the bomb doors open. Two other aircraft would then do the same thing. As we got to this particular point of bomb release I’d press the bomb tit. First bombs went. The other two aircraft released their bombs so we were going as triple, triple bombing range. The beauty of it from our point of view was that we could bomb through ten tenths cloud. We didn’t need to see the target with this thing at all which was quite a benefit because it was very difficult for the German fighter pilots to get up through ten tenths cloud and find their way back home. So we, that was our, that was most of the work we did once we had the GH was daylight and leading in to other aircraft. We did that until we finished our operations virtually. We didn’t always do this. Sometimes we did night operations in a gaggle. Not leading anybody in but that, that we, as I say we did thirty operations in the Lanc and three in the Stirlings. Then after that we weren’t wanted bomber crew and I switched to Transport Command. From Transport Command and the experience I got there I came and joined British European Airways and spent the rest of my life with the airline. British Airways. Finished up as a senior man. Senior planning manager at Heathrow.
NM: Ok. Ok. Fascinating. Fascinating.
AK: Now, there were one or two, shall we say, interesting points during all these operations. One of them — we had to move to Woodbridge. It was a very very fierce winter and we were, we positioned to Woodbridge which was a massive great airfield right on the coast. On one of these daylight operations from there we we turned and taxied. Oh. As, as the bombs were released it was the bomb aimer or engineer’s job to go down the fuselage to check at each button that the bombs had gone and we taxied in to our station, bomb doors open. Ground crew flat on their faces because a bomb had dropped out flat, fortunately. What had happened was it looked as if it had released but it was so frozen up that it stayed there but it looked as if it had gone and of course eventually it did drop down into, in to the bomb bay. That was one interesting thing. Our very last trip we, it was quite a long one but, when we, we’d been briefed and we were in the aircraft and I was testing the GH screen it was snow-flaking. I was getting a lot of interference. Snow-flaking. So I called the ground staff and they switched one. I still was getting snow-flaking on it. And this took up so much time that I realised that even if we took off with this and saw how it was in the air, which was a suggestion from the squadron, I couldn’t make the rendezvous point to turn on to the route and across Europe. So I asked could I be allowed to navigate over, across London and I was given permission to navigate across London and make the turning point and join up with the rest of the gaggle at night. That trip was, was quite exciting in a way because when we came back the — we couldn’t land. We were diverted to St Mawgan’s because of weather. Right across down to Newquay and Alan, we landed safely and got to the end of the runway and the engines cut. We’d run out of fuel. It was as close as that. Alan never, didn’t say a word at the time but he must have been having his fingers crossed. But that, that was quite a trip. We did have other, one other but it wasn’t on an operation. We were doing bomb training using Ely Cathedral as a, as a bombing target. And that was, you know, the bomb aimer was in control of that and when he thought he’d got it right he pressed, pressed the button for a photograph and that was checked to see how accurate he was. Now we were supposed to be at eight thousand feet for this and there was a Polish crew who were supposed to be at twelve thousand but they weren’t. And Alan, in the split second, saw them coming straight at us. They went, he put the nose down, they went over the top of us and their propeller screwed through our port tail. Hell of a bang. I didn’t. There was a hell of a bang and then there was a silence in the aircraft until I said, ‘What the hell was that?’ And then Alan called down to the rear gunner and said to Jock, ‘How are you? Are you alright?’ And he, ‘Yes Skip. ’ God knows what, how he’d, what he was feeling. But because of the damage to the tail plane Alan, I had to give Alan a course for home obviously and he had to steer home using the ailerons on the, on the wings. We landed safely but the Polish crew crash landed and there was very careful checking of the logs as to what height were we at, what height were they at. Well fortunately my log was written out. Eight thousand feet. So that was the nearest we got, ever got, to not making it.
NM: And that was, they were over, over England. Let me take you back. When you decided to leave your apprenticeship.
AK: Yes.
NM: Why did you choose the RAF as opposed to the army or the navy?
AK: I wanted to be a pilot.
NM: You wanted to be a pilot. Ok.
AK: Yes. As it happened I went, I did go on the testing and did some training on the Tiger Moths and quite a lot of others as well. And then they called out all the names they wanted for pilots and Tony Kent’s name was the first one as a navigator. I missed being a pilot by one. Probably saved my life. [laughs]
NM: So, but did they choose navigator for you or did you, did you volunteer to become a navigator after your —?
AK: I volunteered for the air force.
NM: Yeah.
AK: Hoping to be a pilot.
NM: Right. But how did you, when you, when you weren’t selected as a pilot did they then say you are going to be a navigator?
AK: I was already in the air force then.
NM: Yeah but —
AK: Sworn in.
NM: But as a navigator or a flight engineer? How did you become a navigator as opposed to any other crew member?
AK: Because that was the next one on the list. They then did all the pilots. Then they called out how many navigators they wanted.
NM: Right.
AK: The rest were air gunners and that sort of thing.
NM: So they selected you —
AK: There wasn’t any choice.
NM: Right.
AK: Yeah.
NM: And how did you feel about that at the time?
AK: Not, not too bad actually. Not too bad. I was a little disappointed obviously ‘cause you know the pilot was the thing if you wanted to be in the air force but as it turned out it was, it was a very interesting job. In fact you were, as a navigator you worked damned hard and I think it seemed to suit me. I’m not so sure whether I would have been a good pilot or not. I had, hadn’t really got the feel for it. When I was training I never really felt that I’d got good control of the aircraft. I mean, yes I put it in to spins and stalled and that kind of thing. I could do all that. It was the actual landing and assessment of the height of the aircraft over the runway as I was going in. I did, I did that two or three times reasonably well but obviously not well enough to make the top. Top list. And I was, I just took it. I just took it and that was it. I was going to be a navigator.
NM: Did you actually get to fly solo as a pilot?
AK: No.
NM: During your training?
AK: No. No. I asked to but they said no. [laughs] I asked if I, I asked if I could go. I would have been prepared to go solo but they weren’t prepared to let me [laughs]. When I first met Alan he he said — he showed me a picture of a great heap in the middle of a field. He said, ‘I did that.’ He’d crash landed his Tiger Moth. I thought that was a pretty good [invitation] to a bloke who was going to be your pilot. Yeah. But in fact he was a very very good pilot and when he went back to Adelaide he became part of a display team. Aerobatics etcetera. Yeah. We stayed, we were very great friends, we stayed. We went out. Being in British Airways I could get out to Australia and my brother emigrated to Australia and so, and Alan was in Adelaide. We visited two or three times but he, unfortunately he and Sammy the wireless operator have both died of cancer through being heavy smokers. Some years ago now.
[pause]
AK: I don’t know whether I skipped too briefly over the —
NM: We can go back. That’s fine.
MS: Tony told me that he had to record in the flight which might be like up to six hours or something. Every six minutes he had to re-plot the course so he had to be not —
AK: The longest flight we did was just over seven hours to a place near Leipzig and every six minutes was hard work for seven hours believe me.
NM: Yes. It must be.
[pause]
NM: Your training. Navigation training in South Africa. You say you were there for about a year.
AK: Yes.
NM: What was?
AK: We were flying Ansons piloted by the South African pilots who weren’t that very enthusiastic about us. I think they were the Dutch South Africans.
NM: Right.
AK: Because they weren’t particularly friendly but you just got on and did your navigating really. That was, of course the Anson was a very slow plundering aircraft and I mean, if you couldn’t navigate that you, you were hard up. My log shows me as an average navigator but my instructor told me that I came third out of about two hundred. Average. You had to be average. You could hardly be anything else because you had no, you hadn’t really been tested in a proper service in wartime.
[pause]
AK: I’m trying to think how much I can tell you. I had two pals joined up with me. One of them, it was very tragic, one got blown out of the sky with flak hitting the bomb bay and the other one it was almost the end of the war and you know the Netherlands had the sea wall blasted and they were going in dropping at low level. Dropping supplies, and the engines cut and went in. I don’t. I never found out the facts because his father didn’t want to talk to me about it. He was so upset. He was the only son. And when I went to see him he said, ‘Tony, I can’t talk to you. ’ He was that upset. To go that way of all ways, you know when you’re doing something like that.
NM: Yeah. Humanitarian effort at the end. So you came back from South Africa and you went to Stradishall where you flew.
AK: Yeah we crewed up.
NM: You crewed up.
AK: And then went to Stradishall.
NM: So when you crewed up, you described it already but who chose who? Did you?
AK: The pilot chose his crew.
NM: Ok.
AK: He just went around. He just came up to me and said, ‘Would you like to be, would you like to join me as my navigator?’ And I just said, ‘Yes. Sure.’ Anyway, he seemed perfectly alright and how do you say no? [laughs]
NM: That’s right.
AK: But, yes. It turned out to be a nice combination. We were good friends.
[pause]
NM: From a navigator’s perspective how do you compare the Wellington and the Stirling and the Lancaster?
AK: Wellington was a good aircraft and we didn’t have that much, we didn’t have many hours flying hours with it before we were converted. The Stirling was a menace. Fine for the navigator. Lovely big office. But I expect you’ve probably heard the Stirling had a very high undercarriage and on take-off there was tremendous torque and it wasn’t unusual for the aircraft to take off at forty five degrees to the runway with the torque. And our first operation, with mines on board went, was over the top of a hangar. It was really that bad. When all my, when the tour was over and I was going out to what is now Karachi. What did we go out on? A Stirling. And one or two of us looked at each other and sure enough we went out at about forty five degrees off the runway. It was a menace from that point of view and you were forbidden to be, the front gunner was forbidden to be in that aircraft as it was landing and taking off but particularly landing. Yeah. I did it. It was quite an experience. [laughs]
NM: And how about the Lancaster?
AK: But the Lanc — I mean, you know, you can’t say enough about the Lanc. It was great from my point of view. It as a navigator it was everything, you know, it had everything I needed and as it said it really was the, turned the war in our favour undoubtedly. That aircraft. Massive rate of loss initially on the air raids. I was a little bit later. Missed the worst of it but still lost two pals at the same time and one or two on the squadron but the fact that we could operate over cloud in daylight was quite something. Strangely enough my senior, one of my senior manager in British Airways was a squadron leader. Spitfire pilot. And we became good friends and decided one day we’d have a look at our logbooks and it turned out his squadron escorted us on daylights three times. Yeah. It’s a small world.
NM: Small world. So how would you compare navigating daylight raids versus night raids?
AK: It didn’t make much difference to me. Daylights of course at least I could see, put my head out and see things around us but that wasn’t always clever because it wasn’t funny to see you running into the target with a lot of grey puffs of smoke right over the target we were running into. But no. Mainly you just had to keep your head down and work all the time until, you know. I signed my log off and waited for Alan to touch down. You really had no, no break from it at all. Day or, day or night.
NM: So as a crew who decided to join 149 squadron? Was it, was it Alan the Skipper or was it all of you together?
AK: Well Alan had heard that this was a special squadron and volunteered for it. Yeah. As I say our understanding was it was for dropping people and supplies into Europe. Well we didn’t do that at all. We, of the three operations we did with the Stirling they were all mine laying. The most exciting ones. We did one laying, a timed, we did a timed one from the coast and laid mines in front of the maintenance, submarine maintenance base in the Bay of Biscay. Another one was a low level run in to Brest. Again, dropping, dropping mines. I think, I think that was a night operation. In fact I’m almost sure it was because I seem to remember the flak.
[Pause. Pages turning]
AK: That’s right.
[Pause. Pages turning]
AK: [Can’t find it?] [pause] Yeah. It was night. Four hour thirty job. Four mines we dropped in. Yeah.
NM: So you were initially flying from Feltwell were you before you moved to Methwold?
AK: Methwold. Yes. Initially we, and then, and then we switched to Methwold with the Lancs. Yeah.
NM: So what was the feeling on the squadron when you converted to Lancasters from Stirlings?
AK: Hurray [laughs]. As far as I was concerned — hurray. Yes it was and as I say the Stirling was a lumbering great thing and it was just once we got used to the Lanc we just realised just what a, what a super aircraft they were.
NM: So what was station life like at Methwold? Can you —?
AK: Very good. Very nice atmosphere. We always got our eggs and chips after, after a trip [laughs] and I think it was a dash of rum in our tea as we were being debriefed. There was one, this is a side story altogether. Our squadron. I know we weren’t on it, were targeted. Were sent out to hit a rocket launching site on the French coast. Near Calais I think it was. That proved unsuccessful because that was covered in ten tenths. They couldn’t do it. They were told to return home but jettison the bombs in to The Channel and on the debriefing a rear gunner said that he had seen a light aircraft going into the sea. That was the day that Glen Miller went missing and that was, I would say that’s, that was more or less certainly his aircraft that went in and the pilot should not have been there. He’d been given a different route and he was not, not on that route.
NM: So do you think he was brought down by a jettisoned bomb? Do you think he was hit by a bomb that had been jettisoned? Or —
AK: Must have been. Must have been.
NM: Ok. Interesting.
AK: But an awful lot of bombs were going down at that time in a smallish area. But as I say we were not on that operation. No. When, when we had this mid-air collision of course Alan did a mayday —mayday and this was at night obviously and when he, you know, he landed, they had everything, everything ready for us running alongside us as we landed but we were ok and you know that that was great. They looked after us and debriefed us very carefully on that one.
NM: So what about when you were off duty as a crew? Did you socialise together or where did you go from the station off duty?
AK: Yes. Not a lot but [pause] but Alan, Alan came home with me on leave and we went, we were invited to go to [pause], oh dear. The Wall’s Ice Cream people. Office in Acton where they make ice cream. Pork pies and things like that. Oh dear. My father was aid to the chief executive and we had been invited for a tour to see all the pigs coming in one end and the pies coming out the other sort of thing which is quite an experience to see a big pig being tossed around up in a [pause], and having all the hair come off and cleaned up and you know. I remember I’ve got a vision of that thing happening. Oh dear. At this, at my age this happens to me sometimes. A name won’t come up. It will later on when I’m not thinking about it. So that was, you know, that was one way we socialised and Alan and I were so good friends he actually named his son Tony. Anthony. Yeah. Sammy. Yeah we used to go out. Both of us liked going to ballrooms. Wherever we went we went to the local ballrooms of course. That’s where you met the girls in those days and Sammy and I would go to ballrooms wherever we were. Very much so. Yeah. We were mid-way between Kings Lynn and Cambridge and most of the time if I was on my own I went up to Kings Lynn. Met some, met somebody very nice there who used to be a chauffeur to a bigwig and she turned up at the squadron in this car which was quite sensational [laughs] for us to go off to a dance or something like that. She was very nice. And very strange coincidence when I was at Maripur Airport at Karachi I learned to drive at night on a lorry and the fellow who taught me we started talking and I’m talking about Kings Lynn and I said I said had a very nice partner there. Dot. He said, ‘I know Dot. I know Dot. I know who you’re talking about. ’ Yeah. Amazing.
NM: Great. So were you, were you all commissioned as air crew?
AK: Yes. I was commissioned. Yes.
NM: But the rest of the —
AK: Early on in the squadron. Yeah.
NM: Right. And what about the rest of the crew? Were they all commissioned?
AK: Alan of course was. No. The others. Oh yes — Sammy. Sammy. He also was, the wireless operator, he was commissioned too. The gunners were not.
NM: Right. So on the squadron.
AK: And the engineer.
NM: You had, you were in separate messes and accommodation.
AK: Yes.
NM: Yeah.
AK: Yeah.
[pause]
NM: So of the thirty operations, thirty three operations that you flew, which were the most memorable?
AK: The last one. The one where I had to ask permission to fly across London where we had to divert right across country to St Mawgan’s and ran out of petrol. That was, that’s fairly memorable that one. There was one where we were under the guidance of the master pilot up top and then the bomb aimer was running this one and flares had been dropped by the bloke upstairs and he was saying, ‘I want, right, down the side of the yellow flares. Down the side of the red flares,’ and we were working on the [assumption?] they were dropping and flattening this particular town, or small town which was being used as a maintenance base by the Germans and looking back at that was just a massive circle of flame when we left it. I can still see that one. Yeah. There were pictures of the damage. Mainly, we were mainly, most of them were in the bomb, in the Ruhr area. And you know picture the Ruhr at that time. There wasn’t a roof on anything with the photographs we saw of our targets. Absolutely frightening for them. You knew you were killing civilians but you were also trying to block railroad junctions and ball bearing factories and things like that. We always had a particular target. We were told it was this, that or the other but the last one was as I say very memorable. Most of them as far as I was concerned were sort of routine. We, we got pierced with flak now and again but remember I had my head down working like mad. Only, I could only look out in the daylight at any one point in time to see what was going and as I say it was quite disturbing when you was doing a run up, run up on the target to see the air full of, full of smoke puffs where the exploding anti-aircraft but even that towards the end became less and less. They just hadn’t got the equipment any more. Yeah. But mostly it was, as far as I was concerned just routine, head down and get on with it.
NM: So what happened to the crew at the end of your tour?
AK: Well, Alan of course went back to Adelaide. He was an architect. He built his own home, beautiful home at the back of Adelaide so when you sat in his dining room at night you looked down right across Adelaide and out to the sea. It was lovely. Sammy. His bank manager told him, ‘Sammy. Buy leather’ And of course he came from the Leicester area so Sammy did and he started off with two small operatives making uppers with the leather that he acquired and then went on. He finished up with a factory and making an awful lot of money. Lovely home. Had his own — he had two cars. The very flash one which he didn’t use to go in to work. He had an old, oldish car to go in to work so he didn’t upset his workers. And as I say he had his own horse. But again he died. He died of cancer and we went up for his funeral and his wife had had an oil painting done of Sammy and he was sitting in an arm chair, hand over one side. What was in it? A cigarette. Alan went the same way but I didn’t see him in his last year or two. I hadn’t gone out to. He said, ‘Tony, I’m going to beat this.’ I said, ‘I’m sure you are Alan. ’ But he didn’t. He didn’t beat it and that was ten, fifteen years ago. Both of them. I count myself lucky. I really do. I count myself lucky in every way.
NM: So you went into Transport Command at the end of your —
AK: Yeah.
NM: End of your tour. As a navigator?
AK: No. I was offered it. I applied to BOAC and BEA. BOAC offered me a position as a navigator but I decided there wasn’t a great future. I was offered a five year extension of commission in the RAF but I turned that down. I thought what am I going to do at the end of five years? Everybody else would have got established. So I turned that down. I turned down the BOAC offer because I was pretty sure that with modern developments navigators weren’t going to be required for very long. I think that was, that’s how it turned out. So I went into BEA line and I started work in [pause] at Northolt Airport in the [load?] control office. I answered a vacancy and went up to BEA Line House. Their head office. And into their planning department there. And then of course when we merged and went to Heathrow at a big office there again I applied. I applied for the Manage, Manager Australia became available. Advertised. My brother was in Australia. Alan was in Australia. My father was in New Zealand having remarried a New Zealand lady. I thought I wouldn’t mind that job but I was warned that it was already fixed and so it proved but I gave and I know, although I say it, I did give a very good interview. So much so that they offered me a senior manager’s position as a result of my having applied for Manager Australia. I was given a senior planning. I was called Planning Product Manager for South and East Europe. And that was quite a nice job because that meant I was liaising and negotiating with all the, let’s say, starting from the Netherlands. The Dutch, the Belgian, the French, the Portuguese, Gibraltar Airways. Italian, Greek, Turkish, Maltese, Cyprus and Israel. They were my, if you like, that was my group and I had a team of blokes working with me. Obviously I didn’t, but I did a lot of travelling meeting these airlines. We used to meet once before each season. Just sit down and decide what we thought the traffic was going to be. How much it would grow. And then we would share the capacity between us. We would have a partnership. What they called a pool partnership. So that meant I had a lot of contacts in airlines and if I wanted flight tickets for so and so no problem at all. Just rang up. Equally they wanted it back again but that was a nice liaison and we got on well and it was a very interesting job as you can imagine. Sort of having all, having all those contacts and travelling in some very nice countries. I left. I actually took an early retirement because my wife Jean had contracted MS and at the time they were downsizing and Roy Watts, who was Chief Executive, I had worked directly for Roy Watts at one time and I sent a message out to him saying, ‘If you could give me as good a deal for the people you don’t want I’d like to go,’ and I got away. I came out with a handshake, a good pension and for two years I applied for, I signed on and got the dole for two years. Everybody did. Pilots used to turn up in their blooming great cars to collect their dole money. [laughs] They dropped that but so that I never looked back. I think that was the best thing I ever did was take early retirement. I was fifty seven when I retired. I’d been with them thirty three years and I’ve been retired thirty four.
NM: Yeah.
AK: Thirty four coming up thirty five. Yeah. As I say I count myself very very lucky. The twists and turns of my life. Getting out from my student apprenticeship to go in to the air force. Surviving the air force and getting into Transport Command. All the twists and turns of my life which proved to be very lucky for me. And I mean the worse things that’s happened to me is I had to have a pacemaker because I blacked out a couple of times. I think if I’d blacked out a third time I wouldn’t be here talking to you now.
NM: Ok.
AK: But a section of my heart wasn’t working properly so and that’s been fine. Margaret has proved a very good friend and companion. Yeah. We’re partners at Bridge and long walks and visits aren’t we Margaret? We do things together a lot.
MS: He’s amazing. He goes to the gym. His neighbour says he’s mental. He goes over to the gym, Ruislip gym, two or three times a week. On all the machines. I tell you. He’s amazing. He goes walking across the fields to the coffee place in Ruislip, and stuff.
AK: Well it is the safest way to exercise.
MS: Just amazing.
NM: Keeping active. Good. Good.
AK: I still say I’m lucky.
NM: Yeah.
AK: But er I’ve got two very nice daughters who take, ring up and keep contact. Nice contact. They’re happily married and I’m very happy about that. First marriage for one of them wasn’t so good but from that two nice grandsons but she’s remarried now and very happy too. So that’s nice. To know that they’re ok and doing well. And I want to stay here as long as I can because I can cope on my own. It’s very, it’s not the way I would have liked it but Jean because she had MS lost control of things and I’ve had a lift. This house had to be absolutely suitable for having a lift installed and if you went in to this house you wouldn’t know there was a lift. It’s in the corner. An L shaped kitchen and it’s in the far corner and the carers could wheel Jean in and take her up. Bring her down again. Now that occasionally has proved very useful to me. A — I never carry heavy things up and down stairs. The lift does that for me and I had a knee operation a year or two ago. Again the lift got me up and down. So I’m not moving. This has got, this has got the right sort of facilities for me. No.
NM: Do you keep in touch with the RAF at all through Associations or reunions?
AK: No. No. I’m not a bloke for doing that sort of thing. I didn’t apply for my medals at all until my daughters said, ‘Dad we’d like them.’ And the reason I hadn’t is I was so cheesed off with the attitude towards the air force. There was no Air Force Bomber Command medal. And also they seemed ashamed of the air force. They shouldn’t have been ashamed of the people who had carried out their orders. If you had to be ashamed of anybody it was the people who picked the targets that caused the feeling. I think the politicians were ashamed and they didn’t want to make a fuss of the air force. Anyway, in the end I did send for my medals. They’re in boxes upstairs. And then I applied again when they finally did something for Bomber Command and now I’ve got a metal strip across my medals saying Bomber Command but as I say they’re all in boxes upstairs. I’m not a bloke for walking around with medals and going on marches and that kind of thing. Celebration. So I’ve not kept in touch at all.
NM: So when, when you look back in your time in Bomber Command what are your, what are your main reflections as you look back on your time in Bomber Command?
AK: Well [pause] it is as I said just now it is each twist and turn unplanned. I hadn’t a — when I left initially when I was sixteen I hadn’t have the faintest idea what I wanted to do until this chance came up. I saw this, you know application for student entry apprentice and I sat for it and passed. And I say from that it so happened I started on the day after war started and the apprenticeship tuition was not developing the way I wanted, that suited me at all. So I got out. One twist of my life. Well second twist because I went for this. I hadn’t the faintest idea of what I wanted to do. I thought well I might as well go on and see how I do. Then there’s the twist of having had enough of that. Not wanting to be behind a draughting board, drawing board the rest of my life. Getting out of the air force. Possibly not being a pilot but a navigator might well have saved my life. I spent a year out in South Africa. Very pleasant. Came back and crewed up and got away with what I’d been telling you, telling you about. The life there. And then the twist at the end of it of deciding that there’s got to be a future in civil aviation so applying for Transport Command. From there I was in to British European Airways before my demob leave had finished ‘cause they were recruiting heavily at the time and because of my experience of running a unit out in Maripur that got me straight in. And that was my career for the rest of my life. So, you know, twists and turns. I keep saying to myself and anybody who asks I have been very lucky.
MS: One thing you haven’t yet confessed is what you didn’t confess when you first applied to the RAF which you told me about which was that as a child you suffered very badly from any sort of travel sickness to the extent that you were sick if you went on a bus and, and really really suffered and that when you applied to the RAF you did not mention, you weren’t asked about it and so you didn’t mention it and as you’ve told me you were always sick on every flight. It became routine.
AK: Nearly every flight. Nearly every flight I was airsick. Sometimes during the flight but more often than not when we were coming in to land. The aircraft was getting warmer. It was under manual control now instead of George. And very often I would be airsick before we touched down and the ground crew made comments about this when we took them all out to dinner at the end of our tour. We took them all out for a meal and a thank you and they passed remark about somebody always leaving, leaving a bag for them to clear out of the aircraft. But fortunately I was young and fit enough that I could be sick and get back and carry on working but had the aircraft er had the air force known I suffered from air sickness I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t have made it. Yeah.
NM: So what did the rest of the crew —?
AK: I’m still suffering from travel sickness even now. It wasn’t long. I can’t stand coaches and I have been, I have been sick quite recently on a coach. It still, still bothers me a little. I mean, I can drive all over the place and not be ill and if I’m in the front seat of a car no problem as a passenger but coaches, buses, and the Tube sometimes. The stop start of the Tube it it’s a bit jerky during the journey and a long journey. We went up to town recently on the Piccadilly Line. When I came home, when I came back I was headachy and really feeling a bit sick but I wasn’t but I get very hot, starting to sweat and I know that’s a sure sign that if I don’t get off the bus or whatever I’m going to be ill. Yeah. But it didn’t affect my ability as a navigator. Fortunately, as I say, I could be ill and just get straight back and carry on working.
NM: And the rest of the crew were fine when they realised they had an air sick navigator were they?
AK: Pardon?
NM: The rest of your crew were fine with you when they realised they’ got an air sick navigator. Were they?
AK: It was too late then. We were all crewed up. But it didn’t bother them at all. No. They weren’t bothered. It was the ground crew that were bothered. They had to. It was always in a bag.
NM: Yeah.
AK: I mean they never had to clean the aircraft from that point of view so it was alright. I always made sure I always had a bag with me so I could be ok from that point of view. Yeah. But as a child I couldn’t go two stations on the tube. Dreadful. My father told me it was all in the mind but it actually it wasn’t all in the mind [laughs]. Far from it. I don’t know what. I can’t think of anything in particular. Margaret. I talked a lot to Margaret about it and she made a lot of notes. I don’t think there’s really anything that I haven’t mentioned.
MS: I just find it really interesting reading the logbook. Every detail. Exactly how many bombs. What weight on ever mission. Very detailed.
AK: Yes I’ve always recorded the bomb load. Yeah. Have you seen one of these?
NM: Yeah. I’ve seen one. But I’d love to look at yours at some point.
AK: Yeah. I did that for my own interest. I think the biggest bomb we carried was a four hundred towards the end. Oh yeah here’s one. When we went to Homberg. One four thousand and fourteen five hundreds. So that was a fair load. That, the, I think yeah we carried a four thousand. Both times to Homberg. We bombed that two days running. I don’t know what we were after on that one. Can’t remember.
MS: I found it interesting when Tony was explaining what “gardening” meant and “vegetables” and things like that but there’s one reference. A few references to something. What was it ASR.
AK: Oh yes.
MS: And you couldn’t remember what it was and we looked it up online and it was Air Supply Research and that was in the Stirlings over the North Sea.
AK: But that would be one of the drops.
MS: Right. But I think at that time they were looking to find ways of dropping equipment and possibly agents and so on and it was, there was a lot of practices over the North Sea.
NM: Ok.
AK: Funnily enough the last three trips we did were all with one four thousand and fourteen five hundreds. They were — the last one was Osterfeld on that section there. Oh no. No. We did a lot more. A lot more using four thousand. I hadn’t realised how many times. [pause] Yeah. Six one thousands, six five hundreds, four two fifties. Where was that too? [Warwinkle?] wherever that is. Same load to Cologne. One four thousand, six one thousands Bonn. Yeah. It was all, most, the majority was around the Ruhr by daylight.
NM: By daylight. That’s where your Gee could work best isn’t it?
AK: GH. Yeah.
NM: Yeah.
AK: Yeah.
NM: What was the first? What was the longest raid? The furthest east you got. Did you get beyond Gee range?
AK: That long one. I can’t remember.
MS: Was it Leipzig?
AK: I think I would most certainly would have had it. Just let’s have a look at that. Merzenberg which is brackets Leipzig.
[pause]
NM: That’s a long way east isn’t it?
AK: I’m trying to see when I had GH come in? I think I had GH by then? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah I had GH then. I’m sure that would be ok.
NM: Yeah. Ok. Thank you very much.
AK: Ok. Well I hope it’s of interest.
NM: Absolutely.
AK: Nothing in particular, you know. Not like the bombing — bombing dams and things like that but it was still dodgy at times.
NM: Absolutely.
AK: You just got on with it though. We were all daft and stupid [laughs] It was never going to happen to us sort of thing and you just got on with it. It was sickening in the way as I say I lost, lost two pals. Yeah. But that was life.
NM: Well I appreciate you talking to us this way. It’s been very helpful.
AK: Yeah.
NM: So the interview will get transcribed.
AK: Yeah. I’m sure.
NM: And it will —
AK: Edit that down.
NM: And it will, it will go in to the digital archives of the —
AK: Go to?
NM: The digital archives of the Centre that’s being built now in Lincoln now. It’s being opened later this year in fact.
AK: Oh yeah.
NM: In fact there was an opening of the, there’s a Spire which is the same height as the length of the Lancaster wing.
AK: Where’s this?
NM: This is up near Lincoln.
AK: Oh yes.
NM: And there is going to be a Commemoration Centre, a museum and an Education Centre.
AK: Yeah. Yeah, I’m a bit chuffed about that. I mean to commemorate the Lincoln squadrons. What about the others?
NM: But this is for the whole of Bomber Command.
AK: Norfolk and area.
NM: This is going to be for the whole of Bomber Command. So it happens to be in Lincoln because Lincolnshire obviously —
AK: I thought it was just a Lincoln memorial.
NM: It started off I think as a Lincoln memorial but it’s now, it’s now called the International Bomber Command Centre.
AK: Oh. Hooray for that.
NM: And the Memorial Walls have got the names of all fifty five thousand five hundred and seventy three names of those that were killed in Bomber Command.
AK: Oh so I shall see my friend’s name up there.
NM: Your friend will be there. That’s right. And the Spire was opened.
AK: Oh I didn’t know that. That’s news. I was really cheesed off when they talked about a memorial for Lincoln. What about us?
NM: Yeah. That was a hundred and twenty five thousand in total wasn’t there all the way from Yorkshire through to where you are? I’ve got a leaflet which I can give you about the Centre.
AK: Sorry?
NM: I’ve got a leaflet I can give you about the Centre.
AK: Oh can you. Oh great.
NM: Ok.
AK: Of course it wasn’t long ago that we had that memorial up in Regent’s Park.
NM: Green.
MS: Green Park.
NM: Green Park.
AK: Yeah. I have seen it and I think it’s good. Great. But it took a long time to come didn’t it?
NM: It did. That’s right. I have seen it too. It’s —
AK: I’m still not, I’m still not wearing my medals.
NM: Fair enough. Absolutely.
AK: The girls can have those.
NM: But when the Centre’s opened later this year you might be able to find the opportunity to go and have a look.
AK: Yes. Well we’re going up that way, or planning to aren’t we? Possibly when your brother comes over.
MS: Yeah.
AK: That way. Going north.
MS: Yeah but I don’t think that will be via this.
NM: Yeah.
MS: And it’s later in the year. You reckon maybe the autumn or —
NM: Something like that I think. I’m not quite sure of the date myself but yeah. It’s being built as we speak.
MS: Really.
NM: Yeah. Yeah. The Spire was opened last October and there was a big event and veterans were invited back and this tall Spire was opened.
MS: Oh really.
NM: Yeah. Oh yeah.
MS: Wow.
NM: So now you’re on their database. They know about you now and they will get this.
AK: Oh God.
NM: They will get this recording.
AK: Will I see any of this? Will I have a copy of anything?
NM: If you want a copy of the interview then absolutely they will make one available to you.
AK: Ok.
NM: Would you like that?
AK: Yeah. But the whole thing will come out what? As a book?
NM: The. Well no this is going in to the digital archives of the museum.
AK: Oh I see.
NM: So people when they go to this museum.
AK: Yeah.
NM: And the Education Centre and for research as well if they come across the story of 149 squadron - Tony Kent. They may be able to then listen through headphones.
AK: Oh. I see.
NM: To some of the interview we have just conducted.
AK: Right.
NM: Hear your story directly. And you’re entitled to a copy of this on a disc so if you or Margaret.
MS: I think Tony’s daughter’s would be really —
NM: Daughters.
MS: Really thrilled to have a, they’ve been on at him for quite a while to sort of try and extract information from him [laughs]
NM: So this is, this is ideal.
MS: I think they will be really really happy with that.
NM: Ideal. Yeah. Ok. So once again thank you very much. Much appreciated.
AK: Pleasure. Well I hope it was good enough for you.
NM: It, well I can tell you it absolutely was. Fascinating to listen to. Thank you very much.
[Recording paused]
AK: Hanging down out of the aircraft and Alan coming home he would get right down very low until Sammy couldn’t carry on with his wireless. All of a sudden it went blank and what he’d done he’d flown down so close to the sea that the aerial had gone in to the sea. That was one trick he had. But another one was very naughty actually. He was flying low and he went over the hedges just, and over the top of a Flying Fortress as the crew were getting on it and they were, two or three of them threw themselves off the wing as he came over the edge of the airfield and there was this. How he didn’t get done for that I really don’t know because actually they could have broken their legs, back or anything, jumping off the wing but they did. They just jumped as this Lanc came over the hedges of their property. Don’t know if it was Lakenheath but it was coming in from the coast at low level. Yeah. When we finished our tour and came back from St Mawgan again Alan did his low level run across the airfield with Sammy the wireless operator firing off verey cartridges on the way and, ‘A trifle over the top old man,’ [laughs] came from the control. But when I told you that I had that snowing effect on GH screen. When we landed the senior bloke in the maintenance bay he said, ‘That was pretty good,’ he said, ‘But did you realise that your starboard inner was not firing properly?’ And I think that was causing trouble.
NM: Oh.
AK: That it wasn’t firing cleanly and that’s why I was getting snow effect.
NM: Interference.
AK: But when we got up in the air it settled down. But he could tell that one engine wasn’t, wasn’t running quite true. Yeah. But that was what caused me to think there was a fault in the GH set but it wasn’t. Fortunately as I say when we got into the air it cleared but we got permission to fly across London. Probably the only Lanc that’s ever flown across the middle of London. But it was ok. We joined up with the gaggle. Night time gaggle was murder really. In a way. I’m quite sure that we lost a few aircraft because you’re not flying in formation. You’re flying along a track. You and a, you and a few dozen other aircraft. And our wing commander came back with a five hundred pound through his tail. And I’m quite sure that one or two aircraft must have been hit and blown out doing that ‘cause you just did not know. The only way you knew you were anywhere near aircraft was when you got a bump from the slipstream of the aircraft ahead of you.
NM: Yeah.
AK: Because there were no lights on at all. It wasn’t, it wasn’t the cleverest way to go but it was probably the safest to go but no lights on but you just didn’t know who was around you. Where they were. When you were running over the target dropping your bombs and there might have been somebody just about a hundred feet above you also doing the same thing. And I’m quite sure it happened. I’m sure it happened. Well as I say if the wing commander can come back. You see if I can come back with a five hundred pounder what else is happening? You know. That was a bit dodgy.
NM: So did Alan always come back low level?
AK: As often as he — yeah. Very often. Not always but he did like his low level flying. Yeah. And he loved to upset Sammy with getting the aerial going into the sea. Yeah. He liked his low level. But that was very naughty going across an airfield. I don’t think Alan realised he was going across an airfield until he went over the hedge kind of thing and there they were all gearing up to go on a, on a raid. He was very very lucky I think. He could, he could have been in serious trouble.
NM: Can I just take a look at the logbook please? Can I look at the logbook?
AK: Yeah. Sure.
NM: Lovely. Thank you. Because another thing the Centre would like to do if you’re willing is if I can put down on the list that you have this, you have this logbook.
AK: Yes.
NM: And they will arrange for it to be scanned and digitised to go part, as part of the content of the centre. If you’re agreeable to that.
AK: You want to take it away.
NM: No. No. No. No.
AK: Oh.
NM: I won’t take it away. What I’ll do is I’ll let them know that you’ve got the logbook and then if you’re happy they will contact you.
AK: No reason why not.
NM: Someone will come and scan it. They have scanning to quite a high standard.
MS: Do they?
NM: They have people to do this and they trained people to do this.
MS: Oh really. It’s so different now isn’t it with the museums. Everything being digitised. I mean you know like fifty years ago that particular log book would have probably been on display.
NM: Yes. Behind a glass case.
MS: And now you’re saying, so what they’re saying Tony they scan it. Like photograph the whole thing and you will retain the logbook but they will have this, this record which is sort of in digital form.
NM: Correct.
MS: Presumably on screen in the museum. Would it be, Nigel? So you can look at the logbook on screen.
NM: I assume. Absolutely.
MS: Yeah.
NM: Yeah. It will be online.
MS: It will be on screen. Like on a computer thing.
AK: Well they won’t screen everything because training’s not very interesting. Only the ops.
NM: No. No. They will scan.
AK: Scan the whole thing.
NM: The whole thing because they’re looking at the total story around Bomber Command. The people, the training, the aircraft, the operations, people’s story, people who are affected by the bombing as well as those who took part in it. Ground crew. All the, all the, so it’s, and I’ve got the leaflet here. I can —
AK: When we were going out to South Africa we went out from Greenock in convoys but the sea was so rough and we had to go so slow because we had to. The convoy went as fast as the slowest ship. Propellers were coming out of the water.
NM: It was that rough.
AK: It was. I didn’t get off my back. As a travel, somebody who couldn’t travel well.
NM: Oh dear.
AK: I did not get off my back. We were down on hammocks. You know, deep in the blasted ship and I just didn’t eat or move for about three days. I was very ill.
MS: Bay of Biscay is notorious anyway.
AK: I got my sea legs eventually and enjoyed the sunshine on the way down. Down to, well we went to Cape Town. Well we went to Freetown first. Gibraltar, Freetown, Cape Town. That was the run.
MS: Freetown. My dad was based in Freetown. He was in West Africa quite a lot I remember and Freetown was one of the places and then there was Liberia.
AK: For all I was seasick.
MS: And a lot of that stuff.
AK: And you can be so sick that in the end it hurts and it hurts like hell if you have to go on too long. When we, when we went into Gibraltar they came out and turned into the Mediterranean at night. Waited till night, turned and then came out and down the Atlantic to Cape Town.
MS: To look as if it was crossing into the Mediterranean and then came out.
AK: Yeah. So people watching from the shore would think that we’d gone into the Mediterranean and then with everything, all the lights turned off etcetera they turned around and went out and down to Freetown. All trying to deceive.
NM: Yeah.
AK: There was a time when the destroyers who were escorting us they were letting off depth charges way out on our starboard side at one time but we didn’t have any, didn’t strike any trouble. But as I say I got my sea legs. That’s where I started playing Bridge. They let us sit up on deck stripped to the waist in the tropical sunshine. No wonder my skin suffered a bit. Definitely overcooked.
MS: ‘Cause there were so many American bases weren’t there in was it Norfolk, Suffolk or East Anglia?
AK: Well Lakenheath was the big one. Lakenheath was the big one.
MS: Was it? Right.
AK: That wasn’t very far from us.
MS: Because Nigel you were Bushey. Lincoln’s Field in Bushey, that was, wasn’t that where they organised the Berlin Airlift from?
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 Anthony William Kent
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Nigel Moore
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-02-02
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AKentAW170202, PKentAW1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:18:10 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
South Africa
England--Norfolk
South Africa--Cape Town
Description
An account of the resource
Anthony Kent was born in Wood Green, London, and his family settled in Eltham. Tony started an apprenticeship with Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, at the start of the war and worked as an apprentice draughtsman for eighteen months before volunteering for the RAF. After initial training, he sailed to South Africa to train as a navigator. He completed his training at RAF Stradishall, initially flying Wellingtons, then Stirlings, before joining 149 Squadron at RAF Feltwell where his first operation was mine laying at the Bay of Biscay. After his third mine laying operation, they converted to Lancasters at RAF Methwold. Tony recalls returning to the station after an operation and a bomb dropping to the ground when the doors opened, as it had frozen in place, causing the ground crew to dive to the floor. He describes the nearest they came to ‘not making it’ when a Polish aircraft collided with the tailplane during a training exercise. They landed safely but the Polish aircraft crashed. He describes the use of Gee and Gee-H, and the perils of bombing while aircraft above dropped bombs at the same time. On his last operation, the aircraft was late leaving due to a fault, so Tony requested permission to fly across London and catch up with the bomber stream. This was granted and he believes it was the only Lancaster permitted to do so. As they returned, they were diverted to RAF St Mawgan and as the aircraft reached the end of the runway, all four engines stopped because they had run out of fuel. After completing thirty operations (mostly during daylight) he was transferred to Transport Command, and after the war worked for British European Airways.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Nick Cornwell-Smith
149 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
Gee
Lancaster
memorial
mid-air collision
mine laying
navigator
perception of bombing war
RAF Feltwell
RAF Methwold
RAF Stradishall
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/879/11119/AHolmesWC151105.2.mp3
151a6f9e54b2b296f3999e5dd631e5f1
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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Holmes, William
William Cyril Holmes
W C Holmes
Description
An account of the resource
Ten items. An oral history interview with Flying Officer William Holmes DFC (b. 1921, 131013, 176554 Royal Air Force), his logbook, a memoir by his bomb aimer, official documents, Guinea Pig Club memorabilia, photographs of him and his crew and a memoir of his time training in Canada. He was a Stirling pilot on 149 Squadron in 1944. He flew 17 operations before crashing his aircraft at RAF Thorney Island 18 June 1944 and subsequently becoming a member of the Guinea Pig Club.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by William and Bill Holmes and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-05
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Holmes, WC
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: Ok, Bill, we’re starting to record now.
WH: Well, I’m astonished to be asked to do this because I certainly didn’t do anything very different than thousands of others. I was born in Banbury, two-up, two-down, which is the reason that I am sitting where I am now. My daughter many years ago came with me to see where I was born and she said: “Daddy, you didn’t live there!” I said, come off it, Louise, that’s why you live where you are now because I was determined to get out of it and I did. And now, every time I come through my gate it pleases me, I look at the house but it’s a bit ridiculous in some ways because it [unclear] onto the back of the village shop. But, as far as I’m concerned, it is detached. When I get to insurance companies asking me, is it semi? Well, technically it is but not what they are thinking of. And it’s a stupid way to buy a business but we walked down the gravelled drive and I said, oh yes, I could live here and I could see the possibilities except that I hadn’t got a lot of money. In fact I’ll correct that, I hadn’t got anybody [laughs] and I could see the potentials that I could develop, which I did. And I know there’s two shops, three or four flats and it’s my pension fund. So, I’ve achieved my aims, in some ways. But my father and mother were marvellous to me, they, I’m, I still got my mother’s photograph by my bedside cabinet. I, unfortunately when I left England after re-joining the RAF I went out on the town and I was, I think the word is drunk, and when I left her I was still drunk in the morning and I never saw her again, I was abroad and she died. So, it, yes it was a tragedy to me, for one of those things. Now, during the war which is all vivid to me although it’s seventy years, I don’t know, long time ago but it’s still vivid and as much I can remember every other highlights. I crashed my last aircraft, I crashed landing, wheels up and unfortunately I say, killed my navigator, he burned to death. But he shouldn’t have done because I got them all in crash positions but there we are one of those things. Now, most people, or lots of people have never heard of a club that I belong to, the Guinea Pig Club, which was founded by fighter pilots early in the war under a famous, when you get old you forget words, skin,
CB: Plastic surgeon? Plastic surgeon?
WH: Excellent! Plastic surgery. And the story goes, and it always makes me laugh, early in the war, it was mostly fighter pilots that he was treating, I reportedly, reputably, he came and looked and said, this lot won’t drink water, we were all dehydrated, he said, bring on the beer. And as far as I know, it was one of the, if not the only hospital that had a barrel of beer at the end of the war. And it achieved its object because we did drink it. But going back to earlier in the war, I didn’t particularly want to fly, I hadn’t even thought of it, it was beyond my ken and early in the war there was, as far as I can remember, a very large photograph, I say photograph, poster, with, change your overalls for a flying suit and I thought, ah, well I was a reserved occupation so I went off and tried to join the air force and they sent me home, they said, oh no, you’re in a reserved occupation, you go back to work, we don’t want you but eventually I think they ran out of pilots [laughs] and I was accepted and but for that accepted I would never have seen the things I did see. Trained in Canada, learned to fly on Tiger Moths, and Boeing-Stearmans and flew alongside the Rockies actually, a marvellous experience, one that I would have never been able to achieve on my own. But it’s all still vivid to me. I can remember looking at the first Wellington coming off, Ansons, and Airspeed Oxfords and I thought, oh my God, how am I going to get on with that? But fortunately it’s about one of the few accolades, I don’t know where that’s the right word, I did get above average on my instructors comments, that was learning the basics to fly it but then when I went to a squadron and looked at the Stirling, which most people haven’t heard of, was the forerunner of the four-engine bombers and it was huge but, like everything else, you take it in your stride. But as I say the highlights are still quite vivid to me and we were shot up quite badly, petrol, fuel, running down the fuselage and we were all drunk on it, lots of people don’t realize you get drunk on the fumes but I did some way foolish things. But alright we all do in our life. Only a few weeks ago I pranged my wife’s car, I didn’t let her see it, I put it away and took it off for repairs before she did see it because for some time I have been saying, do not swing out through our gate, approach it cautiously and obviously I didn’t. However, that’s life. And what else can we say about the war? I’m quite proud of my distinguished flying cross. Lots were awarded at the end of the tour but there was another category, a [unclear] awards which were for the particular sortie and I’m quite proud of it. I think rightly so but I don’t like people think, well he’s boasting which I don’t intend to but I am still proud of it. But, as I say, still all, [phone rings] ah, interrupted by the phone.
CB: [unclear]
WH: [unclear]
CB: We’re restarting now after the telephone. Ok.
WH: Well, at risk of repeating myself, I’ll say again, I’m very proud of my DFC but it was astonishing to me, just a country boy, I didn’t think anything happened like that to me and this particular raid was on the U-boat pens at Brest, which, the main force couldn’t penetrate the pens with high explosive and the only other answer, the navy admiral’s etcetera told us was, right, mine the entrances, this will prevent the submarines from, U-boats from getting in and out and demoralising their mine-sweeping crews because the mines were set at different, at different settings. Harry, my second pilot, my bomb aimer explained in his letter to me, in his memories that they emphasized, do not ever consider, again I’ve lost a word, jettison, good, these mines because we didn’t want them to dissect, I don’t know if that’s right, take them to pieces, in other words, and find an answer to them but Harry wrote, my second pilot wrote and explained it all, which possibly went over my head at the briefing, can’t remember that seventy years ago. But, but for the war I would never have gone to Canada which was a marvellous experience, Estevan, out in Saskatchewan, sometimes in the winter under two or three feet of snow and the local drug store used to look after a lot of our lads and I became great friends with a man and his wife and eventually after the war they came over and stayed with us. The hospitality of the Canadians was marvellous, really, they were very kind to us and of course, we were flying in safe conditions which in England with its weather problems, the conditions for flying in Canada were very different. I remember looking out one day, a hell of a lot of snow, and I said, ah, good day off. Oh no, when we looked out they were rolling steam rollers down the runways, a different kind of snow, not wet, dry and it packed out. We didn’t get a day off, we just flew off the top of it. But when I realised the size of the hangars of the snow and one was topping the hangars, and I thought, God this is some snowstorm. But a marvellous experience. I went out on, I don’t know if the boat is the right word, it certainly wasn’t a liner, I think a banana boat, and it was sunk in Halifax harbour, the second trip after I’d landed and I thought, well that was lucky. Luck, it’s, I’ve always said that better to be born lucky than rich, I’ve always thought that I am lucky anyway in many ways. But coming back to decorations when the CO sent for me I was on leave on D-Day and I thought, oh dear, what have I done? And he told me about the decoration and I couldn’t believe it. I got outside, tapped on his door again and he said, yes, what is it? I said, well, with respect, sir, would you tell me all that again because I haven’t taken it on board and he laughed and did, Wing Commander Pickford. But we had one advantage because he was on the same course Wellingtons and we called him Pick and when I saw him on the squadron walking down the road I said, hello Pick, and oh my God, he is a wing commander. How to win friends and [unclear] people but all a very useful experience and I think altered my life totally and after the war, long after, I was asked would I like to go on a NATO exercise and I thought, well, what does this entail? And it was a trip to Germany and I’ve got to be honest about this, there were quite a few of us reservists and we got together and my sergeant of my section said, are you interested in this? I said, no, not really. Well, he said, go on, have a trip up the Rhine, he said, if anybody asks for you, I’ll say, oh yes, I’ve just seen him he’s just, I said, do you think that will work? Oh yes, he said. And there was about a dozen of us we sailed from Cologne up to Koblenz past the Lorelei, a wonderful trip, which I’d like to do again on the boats with accommodation, but again something I would never have the opportunity to do but for the Royal Air Force and I suppose the war. People have said to me, well, you know, you chaps talking about the war, I said, hang on, it was a very big slice out of our life. It was times when we were scared out of our wits. I’ve heard lots of people that say, oh no, I wasn’t frightened. Well, I’ll be totally honest, I think all of us were scared, you didn’t know, you took off, you didn’t know whether you were gonna come back or not. And there was a standing joke, the flying meal we always got and the joke was if you don’t come back, can I have your egg? And we also got a rum ration but it was after operations, I would have preferred the rum ration first but it’s all very real to me and I presume always will as long as I got my memories yes. I have done something like this before, there was a local historian asked and we did the question and I answered set up which I will give to Chris and he may play it. I am so confused with modern methods of listening to CDs. My club, the RAF association club, pulled my leg frequently. How the hell did you ever fly aeroplanes, you can’t do your car radio and your mobile phones are mystery to you and I just laughed that one off. But whether Chris will want to play this small CD, cause I haven’t found out, I had to play it back, I had forgotten what it said now, but as Chris pointed out to me, short of occasions like this recording stuff eventually will all be lost because inevitably we shall all die and it’ll be gone. So I’m quite grateful, I’m quite proud to be asked but astonished because I didn’t do anything special. Thousands of lads did just the same as I did and it always makes me laugh when people say, oh yes, I knew somebody in the RAF, did you know? When we are talking of thousands of people, it’s ridiculous things as I say. However I think I’ve come to the end of my reminiscence. I’ve no doubt and I thought this time I think of all sorts of things I should’ve said. I do this frequently, think of the smart answer long after the event. I think, well, I should’ve said that but I didn’t.
CB: It’s ok Bill because we are going to do some questions in a minute.
WH: I’m sorry.
CB: Restart. So we are starting again now.
WH: Yeah. Ok.
CB: With the Brest raid.
WH: Well, we were briefed by [unclear] admirals and I thought we’d got, there was more gold blade on their arms and my second pilot, Harry Stannus, who wrote a brief history which was very interesting actually and he emphasized that under no circumstances were we to jettison any of the bombs that we didn’t complete, of mines I should’ve said, that we didn’t complete the sorting. So, out we went but the thing that Harry in fact I did take on board, it was emphasized, the mines had to be dropped precisely from three and a half thousand feet, not very high and in fact too damn low on a bombing run at a three and a half thousand feet over a heavily, a highly defended target was, I was gonna say, suicide but they hit us with everything, small arms and Harry, lying prone in the front of the aircraft, had the best view of everything. In fact he was blinded by searchlights, couldn’t see the dropping point and he said, go on skipper, go round again and I often think that Harry should’ve got some recognition because at that point a bomb aimer had control of the aircraft. He could see what was required and as I said, he said, go round again, skipper, and this happened so many times that I was throwing the aircraft about because of the ammunitions coming up we were hit, but not vitally but we were peppered with all sorts of holes when we got back. But the one thing we didn’t reckon on was fuel tanks. Losing highly toxic fumes down the fuselage and we were, drunk is the only word I can think of, intoxicated sounds a bit better and we all did some very foolish things. And one I shall never forget, we’d lost two port engines from anti-aircraft fire and had a runaway starboard outer and foolishly I attempted a left hand circuit which was madness but I can only blame toxic fumes, well, that’s my story and I stuck with it but instead of landing as I intended on the runway, of course left hand against two port dead engines was stupid. And of course instead of landing where I intended, wheels up, crash landing, we crossed the runway and of course soaked with fuel, up she went. And I can remember again Harry pushing me out, he got very badly burned himself because of the delay in getting himself out and pushing me out, but I can remember vividly, stupidly I’d lost my flying boots and I thought, well, the grass is wet, and it was very wet and I headed with the rest of us, we all, well, we didn’t all get out. The navigator burned to death unfortunately, but the rest of us and we thought, well, the ammunition was going off, and I thought, right, let’s get the hell out of this, but the time we got to sick quarters, just to bring a note of hilarity into things, one of the staff brought a damn great pair of scissors, approached me, and I was insistent that he didn’t cut off my brand new [unclear], didn’t make any difference, he just cut away. But we then became McIndoe, Sir Archibald McIndoe, the plastic surgeon, he used to go round squadrons, picking the people that he wanted to treat and he took the whole crew and I, I don’t know whether you have heard of the Guinea Pig Club, nothing to do with guinea pigs but applicable only to aircrew who had been burned on operations. Nobody wants to join because the only way you can join is to be burned on operations against whatever enemy. So it’s highly selective but dwindling now. We’re all dying. Well, some of us. Unfortunately, our dinners, our annual dinners have now ceased, for obvious reasons, because we are scattered all over the country and all over the world, there’s lots of Czechs, Poles, Americans, all sorts of people but it’s getting too difficult now to organise an annual dinner but Prince Phillip is our president. Used to come round and talk to all of us and he, he was very interesting actually, but he, he is a very ordinary, I say very ordinary, perhaps that’s the wrong expression, but he’s like you and me, very nice chap to talk to and the last time I set eyes on him was at a reception in Banbury town hall and he came with the queen some years ago and I thought, well, on this occasion I will wear my Guinea Pig tie. And from some yards away, he looked over and he said, they’re finished? I said, no, they’re not, Sir. I’m still here. And that concluded the occasion. I can’t think of anything else that I can think of, other than it changed my life totally.
CB: So you, going back to the mine dropping,
WH: Yes?
CB: How many times did you go round?
WH: Yes. Well totally, five times, that was in, out, in, out. I’ve got documents from the Royal Air Force, I can’t remember what the document is now but emphasizing that there were five approaches in all and presumably why I got a [unclear] for it but Harry should have got one. I didn’t know that I could recommend anyone because a previous trip I did write to my CO about one other member of my crew, Tommy Smith, who’d done a previous trip with the same, a previous tour with the same squadron and many years after at one of our dinners he said, thank you Bill, I said, what for? He said, the letter you wrote, he said, I got a DFM, I said, oh, I didn’t think I was able to recommend anyone, but I think possibly I should have recommended Harry for his, for his part in this raid at Brest. The thing that is the most important to me I mean main force we were bombing from ten, fifteen, twenty thousand feet but three and a half thousand feet at what we called straighten level which it had to be for the mines, apparently the mines, I am told, would break up if they weren’t dropped precisely at three and a half thousand feet. But I presume that’s why I got a [unclear] but as I said, it’s all changed my life totally, in fact so much so, after the war, in another job I was assistant adjutant, which I hadn’t been trained for and I used to bash out one finger typewriter letters for jobs and I took the Telegraph and I’ve been taking the Daily Telegraph ever since because it had more jobs than the others. And when I’d applied and got questionnaires, what school did you go to, where, I don’t know, oh dear. Well, I got a county, Oxfordshire county council scholarship which it was called at that time and I used to have to write on the questionnaires, I got this scholarship and this enabled me to apply for a pilot’s course, I think they only took, well, not only, probably school boys but they wanted people with some intelligence and it usually got me an interview and I’ve always said, well, if I can get an interview, I can get a job which is a bit naughty I suppose. But in a fact it worked, and it did, it got me interviews so I shall be forever grateful to the Royal Air Force and I don’t think I would ever have been commissioned other than thousands of us that were because all the American pilots were all commissioned, not so the Royal Air Force, lots of us sergeants, flight sergeants, yeah, I think I’ve run out of reminiscence now.
CB: Ok, we will take a break there for a bit. So, Bill was in a reserved occupation, when he left school,
WH: Yes.
CB: So, what age did you leave school?
WH: Well, despite the scholarship I wasn’t very happy. In fact, I was very unhappy. I saw this as an escape from school as well, I didn’t go on till I was sixteen. But it they considered the, the authorities considered it was a vital job to be captain
CB: [unclear]
WH: [unclear] as I said, on troop training, train on all sorts of things, that was an experience in itself and again something that I remember quite well. Only, the only thing I did remember having left hospital bandaged up, desperate to come home and I was walking down the high street in Banbury and met some chappie with also a cleaner and he said, oh, how are you doing then, Bill? I said, oh, getting by. His reply astonished me. Well, is your own bloody fault, you didn’t have to go. Which upset me and annoyed me. But, if we’d all felt like that, we’d have had a very thin Air Force. But, as I said, it changed my life totally. And when I was recommissioned, going back in the service in ’50, that meant more to me in many ways than routinely being commissioned during the war. I always remember the interview for commissioning and I expected to have my life probed in depth but nothing of the kind happened, I went in and I don’t know if it was an air marshal or what, saluted them, all I got was, ah, good morning flight sergeant, did you train in Canada? I said, yes, I did, sir. Did you like it? I said, oh yes. Nothing about my schooling or suitability or anything and I finished a two or three minute interview and I couldn’t believe it and I came out and the adjutant said, oh, you’ve seen the air marshal? I said, yes, well that’s it, he said, you’re commissioned. I couldn’t believe it. And then I went back to the squadron and the CO said, well, you’d better take a day off, go and get a uniform. So we, I took the crew with me and we went to Cambridge and went into one of the outfitters specializing in uniforms and a little lad behind, well a little old man behind the counter said, ah, here we are sir, your fits you well, what sort of a hat, a cap do you want? I said, how do you mean, what sort of [unclear] or operational? I said, [unclear], he said, very correct but operational battered and. I said, oh, and he threw it on the floor along a lot of dust and came up with a cap that looked like a German officers. And therein lays another tale. I asked first time I was conscious and hospitalized, have you got my hat? It became a standing joke, Bill’s hat. I said, well where is it? He said, I don’t know where it is. Obviously burnt with the aircraft. But, that was a minor thing. At that time, aircrew could go up to London and you could get uniforms, overcoats, caps, all sorts of kits from people that had been killed or left behind them and rekitted, people that had lost of. And I came away with an overcoat and an operational cap. I wish I’d kept it. Never mind, Well, I hope we’ve got enough material. The only thing you, who’s gonna be listening to this [unclear]? I did but there was I believe, and I can’t remember whether I dreamed it up or whether it was fact. I understand there was an Air Ministry order, AMO, air crews, repeat air crews will not urinate against tail wheels. Well, apprehension before taking off, I won’t say scared, apprehension cause you didn’t know what was gonna happen. Everybody relieved themselves against tailwheels, whether that rotted them or not I don’t know. Quite a thought. Whether that AMO ever existed or not I’m not sure.
CB: What other, what other little tales have you got?
WH: Yeah. He didn’t say to me Chalky White, our navigator, he said he was, I won’t use the expression it’s rude, he was scared, I said Harry, he wasn’t the only one who was scared. But nobody wanted to let on that they was scared to other people. But it to be scared frightened, it has, I’m trying to think of an expression I wanted, it was contagious, it made other people scared. I can remember one of my crew and I won’t remember, I won’t name him, he said, oh no, not again, I got my log to fill in. I told him what he could do with his log. I said, Harry, we’re on, no, not Harry, this is an operation. So and so did you log, I don’t care what you do with it but he was sticking to the book. I said, well, rules are not written in stone, they are for guidance. But we didn’t realise until long after that he was twice our age so I could understand it, he got a wife and children and we were, nineteen, twenty, twenty one, no such responsibilities. But all, still to me [unclear], all very real, vivid. Hopefully, somebody listen to this. It may have conveyed some of the thoughts and fears that we suffered. My rear gunner was a Canadian and day off he’d go to bed in full Irvin jacket, which was a beautiful flying jacket, sheepskin. Same trousers, and he’d go to bed all day. I said, oh God, I want to live life not I don’t want to [unclear], I got lots of time to sleep. It used to astonish me. But one other story it was my rear gunner, he, I said, no I don’t want my rum, oh, I’ll drink it, skipper, and that got me into a lot of trouble because, he used to dish out the Wakey-Wakey pills and he, how, was I going to say.
CB: These are Benzedrine.
WH: Old age, you forget things, mid-sentence and you stop and you think, what the hell was I going to say?
CB: These are
WH: I’m sure it’s not only me, I’m sure it happens to other people. However, whoever listens to it perhaps it will bring a little, well.
CB: So how well did the crew [unclear]?
WH: The navigator who died unfortunately, his brother came to see me in hospital and he said, look Billy, it wasn’t your fault, it was one of those things. But, now what were we talking about?
CB: The crew.
WH: Oh yes. Well, the flight engineer, as I said, was, well to us, he was in his forties so I could understand his reactions were different to us youngsters. But quite frankly at nineteen, twenty, twenty one, whatever, to be in charge of a damn great aircraft, when I think back, [unclear] how the hell did I do that? But [unclear] we all drew [unclear]. The Air Force used to boast, there’s nothing clever about flying, we can teach your grandmother to fly, you’re not special, but you gotta solo in so many hours and if you’re not we are wasting our time. But of course soloing, the first time you’re let loose on an aircraft and no instructor, they didn’t warn you, you went out on a normal, as you thought, a normal instruction flight and you got in and then the [unclear] just got out casually and said, well, that’s it, take it off, you’re away. And I, depends on many factors, the size of the aircraft I suppose, but the Boeing-Stearman, was a proper aircraft as opposed to a Tiger Moth and it was fully aerobatic and it was or had been a fighter in the Spanish War. But to be sent off on your own, but you, you just did things that you’d been taught and hoped for the best. They used to say, all these aircraft [unclear], I said, no, they don’t, not to me they don’t anyway. But I could. I’m going to boast now I could. Grease, I say grease. I could put a Sterling down fairly accurately with comments from my rear gunner saying, skipper is like a ten gallon drum back here, no five gallon drum. I said, what do you mean? It’s bouncing up and down. I said, no. A little later I said, you’re improving. It’s only a five gallon drum now. And he did say, or sometime after on a training trip, I don’t know how it came up but he said, well, all you’re doing is sit up there. I said, you’re what? I said, come on [unclear] you come up here. I put him in the second pilot’s seat. I said, there’s the course, just the fear, just the fact that he’d never being trying to do anything like this whatsoever, the sweat was rolling off him and I said, there’s nothing to it, all you gotta do is sit there. Don’t ever tell me I’m just sitting there. But he always criticised my landings although we all, I say all, I remember if ever I had a senior officer sitting in a second pilot’s seat it made me nervous and I could drop on him from fifty feet and one I can remember, the CO said, oh don’t worry Holmes, I’d do one myself, we all do. Inevitable. Well, mark [unclear], some pilots are better than others. But again, it’s quite something to be an [unclear] pilot and I don’t know where I saw it but I am convinced I’ve seen it that the award of a brevet, a pair of wings, is considered a decoration. Now, I’ve seen that somewhere but where I don’t know. I still got mine, original wings somewhere, sitting there, I can’t bring myself to get rid of stuff. Hence the trouble with my wife with all the stuff I spread. I shifted everything in a hurry off the kitchen table when I knew she was coming home. Well, we transferred to
CB: Initial Training we are talking about.
WH: Stearmans which was a proper aircraft, not bits of wire and. But I, yes I enjoyed it cause there was no interruptions from enemy aircraft and not in Canada, good weather, not a lot of cloud, and it was, well, it made life a lot easier but as I said before, when it snowed, it snowed, believe you me, but there is two kinds of snow, wet and dry and they just steamrolled, I say steam, they rolled in away. Over the top, and we just flew off over the top of it, no difference, whatsoever. But a marvellous experience, one I’d never have had otherwise. The only thing I didn’t really like was going there being batten down under hatches and we went over on a ship called the Letitia and we were batten down under hatches a three destroyer escort at the height of the U-boat war, which was a bit scary. I used to sleep on top of a hatch. I thought, well, I want to get out of here if it’s gonna happen, but, oh, well it didn’t. Obviously it didn’t cause I [unclear] sit here, sitting here [unclear] away. OTU, shipping warden, I stood amongst dozens of other aircrew, pilots, waiting for information, [unclear], sergeant Holmes, yeah, that’s me, shipping warden. I started to laugh, she said, what’s funny? I said that’s seven miles from my home, [unclear] just right. Having said that, when I did ask for a posting near my home, the second time ran, [unclear]. I said that’s nowhere near my home, for God’s sake. OTU, ship warden. Wellingtons, old Wellingtons, they’d done a tour, they weren’t the best. We weren’t getting new aircraft. So there was a [unclear] of [unclear] really make mistakes, and we all made them. We used to night cross countries, hoping the navigator got it right. On one of the cross country night exercises I, no, it must have been daylight not night, I hadn’t got a clue, I went as a training navigator, I wasn’t the best, I said, oh my God where are we, what are we up to? And the wireless operator was giving me fixes, so many minutes, hours, away to be of any use and the pilot flying the aircraft said, where are we? I looked down, I said, Ireland. What do you mean Ireland? I said, well, it’s green, it’s down there. Well, where are we? I said, well, I just told you. No, I want to know on the map. I said, I haven’t got a clue. Well, hand over. So I handed over to another pilot, he said, where are we? I said, Ireland. Yeah, but where? I said, well I saw a [unclear]. How the hell we get back, I don’t know. [laughs] But as a navigator I’d make a very good bricklayer. I was, I used to keep a thought in my mind, flying reciprocal, which was the opposite of what we were going out, if we were going out just in the hope that I’d be going in the right direction, not farther into Germany. But I often think I should have be interned in Switzerland because I was downed near into Switzerland, try to think where the hell that was. And I said, oh no, we are going home.
CB: We’ll come back to that. So, from the OTU you went to the HCU, conversion unit.
WH: Heavy conversion unit, yes. And
CB: Where was that?
WH: As I said, it was a huge aircraft.
CB: But, where was it?
WH: Wratting Common, I think.
CB: Yes.
WH: Yes.
CB: And that’s when you went to the Stirling?
WH: Sorry?
CB: Stirling.
WH: Stirling. Yes, yes. And it was huge. I, well I look at that photograph and I realise how huge it was. A bit fearsome when you just went over for the first time but alright, you just got on with it. Did as you were told. That’s the one thing I regret, I’ve no photographs of me at all, with the, because we were said, cameras weren’t allowed and so obeyed but lots of people didn’t cause they got photographs leaning out of aircraft. Perhaps I was daft not to but I regret that, I’d loved to have had a picture of me. I did ask, now wait a minute, who did I ask? Someone wrote to me. Ah yes, [unclear], saying he was, well you know what he was saying, and I put in my letter to him, if you have any photographs and he said he was looking for something in particular, I’m sure he’s got photographs and if he has of my wrecked aircraft I want to see what it looked like afterwards. But I went down and did ask many years, well, some years ago now, I said, oh I’ll go and see the adjutant and ask, has he got any photographs, he said, when, I said, ’44, God no [laughs]. I said, oh, I thought you took photographs of everything. Oh well, we did but we haven’t got any here but as I said all a long time ago. Memories that will never leave me, well, hopefully. And I never dreamed as a small boy that I’d ever be doing anything like this. But for the war I wouldn’t have done. Wait a minute, Squadron 149, yeah, 3 Group, 149, 3 Group, Lakenheath and then Methwold, Suffolk. Don’t ever want to see Suffolk again, really. Not the most, well, we did
CB: At the HCU.
WH: We did, what we called a Second Dicky, a second pilot trip and I do remember one thing. Afterwards I thought, oh my God, we were over the target and I don’t know how close but an aircraft when across in front of and I thought, my God I thought we had it. I can’t even remember the target now. But it was, there was a lot of railway marshalling yards and stuff to, targets that were, well opening up for the second front. But when I left hospital, we drove up, I couldn’t remember, couldn’t believe the amount of, well, it was the build-up for the D-Day obviously, I was on leave D-Day. But we came up from East Grinstead and there were thousands and thousands of cars and lorries and I didn’t know what was going on. But obviously it was the build-up for D-Day. Wouldn’t have missed any of it, wouldn’t, couldn’t do it again. Not a very nice day, is it? Remember most.
CB: Operation [unclear]
WH: Long, lonely flights dropping supplies to the Maquis, low level, five hundred feet, when we, yeah, one, on one occasion we couldn’t find a dropping zone and I think it must have been an airfield we crossed, they shot us to hell. I lost control of the throttles, I’m trying to think how and why but we landed back home. I don’t know why I didn’t really get, it didn’t occur to me to go up and see what damage they had done to the aircraft and I don’t know why, lots of people did but I didn’t. You just start to be alive. It was, it was always in your mind, because you came down and there another name was gone and that was it. When you start to think, a bit brutal, [unclear], oh dear, but question and answer like this is, well, somebody will hear it one day.
CB: How did you find the dropping zones for the Maquis?
WH: Ah, that was always a mystery to me, the navigator, how the hell he found them, he’d find a clearing or something, he’d have the coordinates of roughly where they were, obviously there was information coming to and fro but it’s never mentioned anywhere but it was vital to the second front, no, that’s not true, to the, it was vital to the underground, the Maquis. I don’t’ think they would have resisted [or existed?] without the help that they got from us but the people I most admire are the ones who took out light air craft, Lysanders and landed and dropped people, that must have bene a bit hairy.
CB: Did you deliver people as well?
WH: Sorry?
CB: Did you deliver people?
WH: No. Never, no. No, never, it was supplies, I still got a, I still got a container somewhere, I don’t know where it is. I can remember my sergeant saying, how many? I got lots of boxes, what the hell? I said, well, I came over with a suitcase, I said, but I’m going back with a wife and two children. I said, I’ve accumulated all this [unclear] of stuff and I, now I think they’ve been chopped off most of them and probably burnt but it’s, I wish this sort of thing had been available to my father cause I would loved to have known, what did he do to get a military medal?
CB: What did he do as a job?
WH: Well, I don’t know, he was just [unclear] Great Western Railway, no, I.
CB: In Banbury.
WH: Yeah. Honestly, don’t know. I knew, ah, I used to write his letters for him to the union because he got an industrial disease, dermatitis, caused by coal dust and oil apparently. And I used to write his letters. We were fighting a case and he wasn’t a scholar of any kind. I always remember someone saying, I saw your dad riding his bike, he said, he jumped off and his legs [unclear], it always tickles me, running alongside it. But I had a lovely home actually, they were, well, just ordinary people but cause they’ve [unclear] come from different background entirely I mean. I remember saying to her years ago, well, talking about cars, I said, we only had a Lancia? I said, Lancia, I haven’t got a pair of bloody roller-skates. But a different background entirely. And I think when we eloped at the vicar of, oh God, what was the name of the place? Didn’t want to marry us, and I think he looked to the documents and saw that Yvonne was from a different background than me and then we, ah, the vicar of Tottenham [?], Guilford and he said, oh, don’t worry, he said, nobody came to my wedding. And the chap who painted that came, he and his, he married a WAAF, I know, [unclear] something to say.
CB: So when was it that you got married?
WH: When? ’49. Which is, how many years ago?
CB: Yeah, it’s quite a long time.
WH: ’49. Fifty, well, fifty, sixty years. Yeah.
CB: Where did you meet Yvonne?
WH: Where did I meet? Well, Chalky my navigator and I had the same musical taste, can’t stand pop, well, didn’t exist then. But Yvonne had a beautiful control to her voice and she was heard in the town hall in Banbury singing, Doctor Leslie Woodgate, BBC, and he insisted that she go to the Guildhall School of Music on the Embankment. And they said yes, seven years, oh I wanna get married. Well, don’t stop singing. But she did have a beautiful voice. I heard her in the town hall. I know that my redeemer liveth, I remember it very well. But she did have a very, it really was a beautiful voice. I wish I could sing. Talent, you’ve either got or you haven’t. I got the blame for that too, cause I left the car at Hanger Lane, I didn’t wanna drive in to the Embankment. And when we came back, she rang up her folk from the, from Hanger Lane, and I got the blame for turning her down. Because she, I think she could’ve gone a long way. But I was fascinated. However. We all have different talents, well, some of haven’t got any, and I haven’t, I can’t, I can’t draw. I can’t [unclear]. Oddly enough the children are all artistic or they were. But I haven’t got a single party trick, I can’t even whistle [laughs].
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with William Holmes
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Chris Brockbank
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2015-11-05
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
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AHolmesWC151105
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Pending review
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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Great Britain
England--Sussex
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1944-06-18
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01:12:57 audio recording
Description
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William Holmes remembers his time as a pilot in the RAF. Gives a vivid and graphic account of the dramatic crash-landing which left him badly injured and brought him to join the Guinea Pig Club. Remembers various episodes of his operational life: training in Canada; flying Stirlings and Boeing-Stearmans; targeting U-boat pens in Brest; dropping supplies for the Maquis; being awarded a DFC. Mentions Wakey-Wakey pills.
149 Squadron
3 Group
aircrew
bombing
crash
Distinguished Flying Cross
fear
forced landing
Guinea Pig Club
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
McIndoe, Archibald (1900-1960)
mine laying
navigator
Operational Training Unit
pilot
promotion
RAF Lakenheath
RAF Methwold
RAF Thorney Island
RAF Wratting Common
RCAF Bowden
RCAF Estevan
Resistance
Stearman
Stirling
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/639/8909/AShepherdFH150525.1.mp3
031fe9ea01628bf8d20dbf0d41146e6a
Dublin Core
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Shepherd, Frederick Harold
F H Shepherd
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Shepherd, FH
Description
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An oral history interview with Frederick Harold Shepherd (b. 1921, 152660 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 2018 and 15 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
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2015-05-25
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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.
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 Claire Bennett the interviewee is Mr. Frederick Shepherd, the interview is taking place at Mr. Shepherd’s home near Kings Lynn on 25th May 2015.
CB: Good Morning Frederick
AS: Good Morning
CB: Perhaps you could start by saying your date and place of birth please
FS: The date of my birth was 8th March 1921 and I was born at Saint Mary’s Hospital in Manchester
CB: Do you remember very much of your early life
FS: That’s either very detailed or very shallow, I was, put it this way, I was the first child of my mother and father, and my next brother, Douglas, was born in 1926, and my second brother, Ronald was born in 1934, at the moment all my family have departed this world so I am the only one left in the Shepherd family.
CB: And your early life until you joined the air
FS: I was schooled in Manchester and on leaving school I joined the company of South American Shipping Association and stayed with them until I went to the Air Force when I was twenty years of age.
CB: What made you join the Air Force
FS: Er, basic inclination was to fly and in that connection I applied to join the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm but I was assured that entry into the Fleet Air Arm was via the Royal Marines, and no one would give me any indication of the gap period between joining and possibly being transferred to the Naval Airforce so I immediately applied to join the Royal Airforce.
CB: And this would have been 1941 something like that
FS: 1941 yes
CB: So where was your first posting to
FS: Ah, I need to qualify that a little bit, I was accepted by the Royal Air Force, er, took physical and mental examinations at Cardington, er, was sent home on deferred entry and I went to Manchester and Salford University for extra schooling on mathematics, geometry, Royal Air Force Law and the Morse Code technique, and that covered the period of time ‘twixt me being accepted and actually being invited to join in London at my, at um er, for the entrance into the Royal Air Force proper.
CB: How long would that have taken about
FS: Twelve months, the training took twelve months
CB: Right, and then
FS: I went into London for initial training, and then to Newquay for what they called ITW that was the initial training wing, before being selected to go into flying which I did immediately I left Newquay I went into basic flying at place called Clyffe Pypard which is in Wiltshire. I’m curious by the by are we being recorded now?
CB: Yes we are
FS: That happened to be the initial training school for flying happened to be a private training school and one or two of the previous employers at the school were still there until young ex flyers that’s not Bomber Command but Fighter Command came to do the training and they were young men of nineteen, twenty, twenty one, and the next part I would not like recorded its purely of interest but not I don’t think it is for the record, I mean these sorry
CB: Would you like me to pause it
FS: Yes, just for your [pause]. So I was taken under the wing metaphorically of a young man who was nineteen/twenty years of age who obviously shown how good he was a flyer and then been sent on to this training base and I found him excellent as a flyer but virtually useless as a trainer because he had no tolerance of my ineptitude for flying [slight laugh] at all and he got all these various flying techniques slow rolls, shuffles, turns and all the rest of them and I was just clinging to the side of the aircraft hoping I wouldn’t fall out [laughs].
CB: What aircraft were you in
FS: Tiger Moths [laughs]
CB: Tiger Moths I see
FS: You’d sit there next to him doing slow rolls and you’d catch everything that was coming out the cigarette ends and everything else that was in there would hit you in the face you know and you weren’t supposed to hold the sides of the aircraft you were supposed to have your hand on the joystick and I didn’t, that’s all part of the fun [laughs], er um, from then what happened next, er yes, I had um, I was taken off all training because playing rugby I had a scratch on my right eye across the pupil and there was a danger that I might not be able to fly at all, so I was admitted to the hospital at Swindon and I was there for a while and finally I was released unconditionally the repair had been affected as far as my eyes but meanwhile I was taken off the training for weeks on end and I wondered whether I was going to go back again but I did, but of course I lost all the people I was with they were well on their way to Canada, shall we go on now?
CB: Yes yes please
FS: From then we were all posted, all prepared for despatch to Canada because they had set up this empire [?] air training scheme which was part in Canada and the other part in Port Elizabeth in South Africa where all this training for all all aspects of flying all duties were going to be covered and we were sent up to a waiting station in Manchester a placed called Heaton Park where the maximum holding of manpower was for two odd thousand and it built up to ten thousand and we had individuals who actually were finding homes to stay in in proximity to Heaton Park this was all because of the big problems in the Atlantic we were going to be sent off by the Queen Elizabeth first boat and because of the submarines and so forth they were diverted they were slowing everything down for obvious reasons and it came to a point there was a terrific overflow from Manchester and they sent a company of us down to the south coast just to deposit us for a while we had only been there for four days and the Germans had obviously been advised and they sent across a fleet and we had a lot of casualties because they caught one flight coming back from training exercise and we had suspected that when we heard the roar of these aircraft that they were English aircraft when in actual fact they were German aircraft who were attacking us and from there that we had only been there for three days and that night or following morning at about two o’clock in the morning we all paraded we went right along the full length of the promenade on both sides of the promenade to the railway station onto a train and we didn’t get off the train until we got off at Harrogate, and from then on we were there for a short period of time despatched to Scotland and for one night only and then onto the Elizabeth the following day and away to Canada.
CB: How long did it take to get to Canada
FS: Four and a half days.
CB: What were the conditions like on board
FS: What with twenty thousand, we ate twice a day and we heard about when we were going to eat and whatever when we got on the boat by having these tickets and mine said two o’clock in the afternoon and two o’clock in the morning and from two o’clock until six o’clock afternoon and evening I was on special guard duty for the whole trip and we were allotted that sort of guard duty from two until six two until six.
CB: And what did that involve
FS: Parading all round the ship like in the daytime, not so much from two am in the morning until six am in the morning round the decks and that was the job its not everybody who had that sort of assignment but when I got on board I was given that ticket which advised me that I was one of twenty one in the bridal suite and that I had these duties from two until six two until six [laughs].
CB: Were you on your own in this bridal suite
FS: No [emphasis] twenty one I was one of twenty one in the bridal suite.
CB: In the bridal suite
FS: Oh yes, seven three tier bunks.
CB: Oh I see
FS: Great fun [laughs].
CB: So you got to Canada docked at Canada
FS: No no we went into New York, we went into New York and then a train travel [?] the likes of which I had never experienced before on the train for about three days off to Canada and we ate and slept we slept on the luggage racks which you could pull down for luggage but we had to sleep on them we couldn’t sleep at all we went up to Canada a place called Moncton which was the assembly point at the beginning of our trip to Canada we went to several stations in Canada for different aspects of training of course.
CB: So from Moncton you went to
FS: Er, one two three four different stations and then the last station was a place called Ancienne Lorette which was outside Quebec City and from there the majority of them were six of us were commissioned out of the thirty six on the flight six of us all went to Prince Andrews Island for this GR training and the rest of them either went straight away into operations in the Far East, as one or two of my friends and colleagues did and the rest of us went to Prince Edward Island for six weeks and then came home and that was it, we were there for about fifteen months all told.
CB: And you were being trained on
FS: All aspects
CB: And you settled for and you ended up where
FS: I had nothing to do with it you were directed I came back here one of the after that they differentiated with you between your badges I got an observer badge fully qualified afterwards that changed to either air gunner or BA which is bomb aimer or N for navigator they split it.
CB: Just to go back to Canada a minute what was the accommodation and the food like from what you had been used to in the UK
FS: No comparison vastly superior because they had no restrictions there in actual fact and that meant either in the camp or going out into the town for dinner I mean the prices were very realistic and the food was superb because it was free choice so when we went into Quebec City itself in actual fact you could dine for silly prices and you had fantastic meals and that’s what it was.
CB: What aircraft did you learn on
FS: Mainly Ansons, mainly Ansons and we had one or two gunnery [?] trips on Beaufighters which I haven’t mentioned before Ansons and Beaufighter
CB: What did you feel about your time in Canada was it happy memories
FS: Oh it was superb long time we had we worked eight days and then had a day off that was the standard eight days and one day off until we arrived in Prince Edward Island surprise surprise there was a weekend we finished work and we had Friday and Sunday off we used to go oyster fishing off Prince Edward Island [laughs].
CB: What were your other recreations apart from oyster fishing
FS: Gymnasium and squash that was about it and walking of course did a tremendous walking lovely particularly from Quebec one amusing incident we a bunch of us went into Quebec to the cinema and when we came out at the end of the show there had been a five foot fall of snow which meant we couldn’t even get out of the entrance of the theatre there so we ultimately got out and one of us went into the the hotel there which I have got a photograpgh of and booked a room and twelve of us occupied the room for the night then we got back to camp the following day the camp was about fourteen miles so I mean it was either snow shoes or horse drawn sleds took us back the following day but that was one of the amusing incidents.
CB: So happy times in Canada
FS: Oh absolutely in the main yes great fun and then coincidence I suppose we came back on the Elizabeth again
CB: Same sort of routines
FS: Yes not quite as cramped [laughs]
CB: How did you feel going across the Atlantic I mean were you frightened you were going to be torpedoed
FS: I don’t think it entered any of our minds at all we changed course getting slightly technical we changed course every seven minutes on that boat which you could realise in actual fact if you were up on the bridge because you could see this in the water purely as a safeguard and we diverted as well south and then turned back again up into New York.
CB: You were you part of a convoy
FS: Oh no, oh no nothing could keep up with that boat that’s why it was superior to the submarines they ain’t got that speed so we got away with it just changing course every seven minutes which is standard procedure and it can be set up by equipment in those days so every day of courseyou can see it so later on in the day you can see where you are crossing because you had left a stream there purely to indicate you changing course and that was entirely automatic until we got into New York and we were only there for a short time but there again talk about hospitality when we got off the boat we were given a little bunch of cards with names and addresses on and [?] please give us a telephone call and it would be an automatic invite to their houses if they were in proximity to where you were and we used to go out while we were there until everything was ready or the onto the train and up into Canada but that was a very nice experience went to big shows called Sons of Fun at the gardens there and they made fun of us course but it was all lighthearted stuff yes but we were one of the early contingents obviously across there into the states and they made a fuss of us while we were there which we accommodated very well and they did it in Canada in Canada the same arrangement the first Christmas we were there two of us David and I went to stay at a family they called them Driscolls and they lived in Montreal they had three children and we were invited there to stay there as long as we want over Christmas they took us up in the mountains up to the top and had Christmas dinner up in the Laurentian Mountains as part of there hospitality suite it was really good.
CB: Wonderful
FS: Oh yes it was no it was and they were also wonderful they used to send parcels to my family in Manchester the Driscoll’s Mr and Mrs Driscoll used to send parcels to my family in Manchester and saying jumping ahead a lot now on our way back from South America when we landed in Washington on VJ Day imagine what that was like and then we flew on to Montreal and when in Montreal I phoned the Driscolls you’ll never guess within ten minutes they said you’re not staying at the Windsor Hotel they picked me up and took me home I had to have five [unclear] with them of course and that was an indication of the hospitality I phoned them and within minutes they were there with the car and I renewed acquaintance with them after several years in Montreal.
CB: How wonderful
FS: More about that later
CB: So you arrived back in Liverpool
FS: Um, no we arrived back in Scotland.
CB: And then what was the next stage of your
FS: Down to down to Harrogate and then on to – down to Harrogate posting to Dumfries where I did an extensive course of specialised bombing for Pathfinders not that was any indication that we were going to [unclear] but that was specialised in training in Dumfries with a Polish pilot by the by very good we used to do specialised bomb dropping as required in these aircraft which I suppose was a Wellington and then down to, er um, down to pick up my crew, yes that’s where I met Mcfarlane and the rest of my crew before we went into mess halls.
CB: And where did you do your crewing up
FS: At um – Chipping Warden near Banbury.
CB: Right
FS: Yes because then in actual fact we were [unclear] break of through Wellington so before that in actual fact we crewed up at this place called Chipping Warden that was Banbury that was a sub station for Banbury we did our crewing up and then went to Chipping Warden and then started flying on Wellingtons purely training didn’t do any operational flying from there I tell a lie we did one operational flight that was on VJ night we flew over France dropping thousands of leaflets.
CB: Would you like to explain the crewing up
FS: Yes certainly we would assemble there was no assembly you just went into a huge hangar and you just wondered around I suppose so that was in the main the captain of the aircraft and in my case that was Squadron Leader McFarlane and he had met one person of the crew at the railway station at Littleport and on the railway station before they got there the two of them had decided that Captain McFarlane would have this other fella and then we got into this hangar and we wondered around and picked up and are you crewed up would you like to join us and we gathered up the crew the two gunners, and then wireless operator the bomb aimers as was then the navigator and the captain and that’s how we formed up and from there we went on to Wellingtons and then Stirlings and then on to Lancasters.
CB: So you first OTU operational training unit
FS: That was at Chipping Warden yes
CB: And your first training your did you know your first training was it leaflets
FS: First training or first flight the first operational flight
CB: Yes
FS: Was on VJ night and on landing night when we dropped thousands leaflets over France
CB: Right
FS: Then from then onwards we went on to Methwold and then Mildenhall ah I am telling lies we went to – Chedburgh that was on to Stirlings no we did no that’s right we went onto Stirlings but before we did any operational flights on Stirlings we transferred to Lancasters so went to Lancaster Finishing School LFS which was at a place called Feltwell just down the road from here.
CB: What date would this have been
FS: I’ll have to check with my
CB: Roughly
FS: Forty end Forty Three beginning Forty Four as near as makes no difference.
CB: So you went from flying on Wellingtons
FS: Yes only the one trip
CB: Only one trip on Wellingtons
FS: Then we went on flying Stirlings but we never did operational flying then we went on to Lancaster Finishing School at Feltwell and then on to operations at Methwold.
CB: What did you make of flying in the Stirling
FS: We didn’t but we had no choice I mean as far as we were concerned when we went training on Stirlings that was the aircraft we were going to fly in operations it so happened coincidentally happily that the Lancaster was coming in and replacing the Stirlings and whateverother aircraft we got and that was going to be the aircraft in this part of the country as opposed to Halifaxes in the Lincolnshire area which was a different group as you realise here we were 3 Group Lincolnshire were that’s what 4 Group glorious place.
CB: So we are now on to now in Lancasters
FS: Right operational flying the usual now what details would you like then I would have to refer to my flying log book.
CB: Certainly lets know some of the targets you went to.
FS: Shall I get my book
CB: Yes that’s fine, Frederick if we could talk about your start the start of your Bomber Command experiences in the Lancaster, so could you tell us about well your first operation.
FS: Yes now lets just have a look and be precise that’s Lancaster Finishing School 208 Squadron Methwold operation was destination was Boulogne can’t imagine what that was about um daylight visit to Boulogne doesn’t mention anything about bombing at all, um then there was a four and a half flight to Dusseldorf that was a straightforward bombing exercise now that would be the one [unclear] Calais [unclear] Duisburg bomb target so it must have been that trip to Dusseldorf when we came back the following morning that we noticed several technical people were busy standing underneath our aircraft gazing up underneath the right the starboard wing of which there was a hole between the second and third petrol tanks [laughs].
CB: And that had been caused by
FS: That had been caused by a bomb being dropped from one of our aircraft above which had gone straight away through between the two tanks without exploding which it should have done on impact.
CB: Incredible
FS: Absolutely absolutely incredible and then we did several trips and – that’s [unclear] that transfer date [pause] ah there we are yes the transfer date to Mildenhall see how many trips we did there, Stuttgart Essen Volks[?]
CB: So you are bombing the major cities now
FS: Yes that’s up to about October forty four
CB: Were you involved in any of the Berlin raids
FS: No not one no scheduled for but cancelled what had happened in actual fact, [coughs] pardon me oh sorry lets go back please to Methwold again because that was I had been talking about our first bombing raid when we actually arrived at Methwold as a crew the previous night they had sent out twelve Lancaster aircraft and five came back which is a heavy loss for one station and we became part of the quite pathetic exercise of moving into accommodation which had previously been occupied by friends of ours and you know when anybody is lost they have a special committee set up particularly with officers and these officers were doing all their duty work and we were moving in the following day so it wasn’t a very good start as far as we were concerned but still we obviously we accommodated it but that was a heavy loss they sustained that night and then the this was the first operational operational job we came back and found that incident the following morning in our aircraft yes so going on now what more
CB: So you went from Methwold to
FS: So we went from Methwold to Mildenhall I’ll tell you about why there had been a loss at Mildenhall there was a vacancy for a new squadron commander and they appointed my captain Squadron Leader McFarlane and they agreed which was unusual they agreed for him to take his full crew so we all went so we were all transferred our affections to Mildenhall and then onwards
CB: And this was with 218 Squadron
FS: From 218 to 15
CB: Right [unclear]
FS: And here we are 15 Squadron at Mildenhall and when there was a loss our captain was a squadron leader so when there was a loss of a senior officer the group captain no it wasn’t a wing commander over they appointed our captain McFarlane to take over from him as a wing commander so he lost his crew for obvious reasons and that crew was taken over by a Squadron Leader Percy and at that point I was appointed I was taken out of the crew and appointed as bombing leader for 15 Squadron and I also I became squadron adjutant at the same time reporting again to my previous captain McFarlane so I was taken out of my crew at that time.
CB: What does being adjutant involve at that time
FS: All the clerical work on top of which I was the leader of the bombing section so I was actually the bombing leader which you had to have in every squadron he’s the guy who goes to all the early meetings to take advice for onward transmission to the people of what was going to happen that night so that was so I had those two jobs I had still when I was so I was then whipped out of my crew and another individual appointed to the crew which was then being handled by Squadron Leader Percy who had taken over from McFarlane so I lost my crew because of my other involvements and I stayed in that situation until surprise surprise I was advised that I had been selected to accompany Harris now the reason how they did that they obviously they wanted an aircraft and I will show the aircraft that had been modified afterwards they wanted what was I going to say, how they chose who was going to do what they chose 15 Squadron because it was the oldest squadron in the air force to do these flights for Harris and having chosen the aircraft from 15 Squadron they took out the leaders from each department bombing section navigation section [unclear] section and those leaders all were part of the crew that’s the crew I have got in the photograph next door so from that point onwards I was involved in away to Africa America Canada and everything and left the crew behind.
CB: So your operational life stopped
FS: It stopped
CB: How did you feel about seeing your crew going off and having been given these new duties
FS: Well I was immensely proud because I mean it was quite an assignment we were going to go on we had no idea at that time we’d only got the shadow of what was going on we knew he’d been invited I’m talking about Harris because he’d been in Africa before he came to England he was been in South Africa he’d been invited to various places and the South er the Brazilian Government had invited somebody out there to commemorate the arrival of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force which had gone to Italy and not fired a shot and got back home again and they declared a national holiday [laughs] and coincidentally we were due to be arriving in Rio de Janeiro before they arrived back and that was what that was all about.
CB: There must have been a terrific sense of comradery on you know when you were flying with your crew that you had been with such a long time.
FS: [laughs] of course yes but it had to be severed the initial severance was when I was appointed the bombing leader which immediately took me out because only on rare occasions I had one or two rare occasions when a particular crew would be short of a bomber for one reason or another and I stepped right into their jobs that was quite harrowing to be a foreigner so to speak with a crew because you get used to your crew their attitude their application and even their reaction to situations but to go with another crew I found that quite tough going yes I flew with a Canadian crew on one occasion and they’d had several very rough experiences with I’ll mention one a decapitated bomb aimer came back in the aircraft and there were others now the crew in relation to my crew which were far more disciplined but with respect they hadn’t gone through the sort of operation now that crew with whom I flew on their twenty second operation were very little discipline there at all I think they were very concerned about what had happened on their previous operations they bailed out and they had done lots of other things and I flew with them as the air bomber for them and I found that the disciplines were very sadly lacking which was reflected on the chattering that goes on over the telephone the intercom which was fairly evident but still that is by the by and you ride that situation which I did.
CB: Did you just fly the one operation with them
FS: Yes yes yes just the one
CB: And did your crew your original crew did they survive the war
FS: Yes they did yes yes yes they did, no they did yes in spite of all the losses yes yes
CB: So you are now given these new duties and the next thing you hear is that you are going to be flying with Harris
FS: Right
CB: And when did you first see him when did you first meet him
FS: At the first place before we were going to, let’s get the dates – where I finished up [flicking through pages of flying log] – it all started in July Forty Five.
CB: Oh so
FS: Yes July Forty Five it started that’s when I met up with Wing Commander Calder a scots ex dambuster and he came down and I started flying with him as a co-navigator and then that was just before the trip started now the actual trip do you want to go on to when the trip started.
CB: Well if we can go back to Calder what would had been your you know your trip tours after the war in July Forty Five what were you doing with Calder.
FS: He was the captain of the aircraft taking Harris around the world.
CB: I see
FS: Yes.
CB: Right so
FS: Calder was ex bomber no ex Dambuster Squadron yes that’s Wing Commander Calder double DSO double DSC no seriously he was only twenty one brilliant.
CB: Yes so he was the pilot
FS: Yes he was the pilot
CB: So you would be the
FS: I flew with two navigators on this
CB: So you were the navigator on this because obviously we weren’t this wasn’t any hostile flying involved.
FS: None at all
CB: It was just
FS: Hardly, hardly
CB: It was just taking Harris around
FS: Yes quite literally and all that went with it.
CB: So what did you make of Bomber Harris
FS: I found him most of all to if I used the term a gentle person obviously a very strict disciplinarian but in actual fact on a personal basis on the occasion when I was talking to him he was much a very relaxed bearing in mind with what he had to contend as I mentioned before it wasn’t an easy life for him at all he had to virtually fight for possession for his own force and he had the big people in government who were contesting him in many instances I could name names but there is no point until he finally bearing in mind as I mentioned before the junior service the first being the navy the second being the army were very much the junior service and he didn’t find he’d get his own way at all in spite of the plans he had laid and the proposal view put before the big people like Portal and others who didn’t entirely agree with him that getting behind the German war machine by tackling in reducing to ruins their equipment factories that were providing the aircraft and all the aircraft parts was what he wanted to get at he didn’t find it easy until apparently he did get his own way and that’s when the war then moved to the German armoured factories which was part of the beginning of the end so to speak so the rest of that in actual fact is devoted to flying we did the whole of Africa and then started off we should have gone we went to a little aerodrome in the South of France for refuelling then we should have gone to Crete but we got to Crete and they said on no condition that you land because we have got a fever that is sweeping through Crete which could be dangerous so we didn’t drop off at Crete at all our next port of call was Egypt and then we went right the way down Africa staying at various places until we got to Cape Town.
CB: What was the purpose of Harris’ travels
FS: There was really no purpose these were just invitations from these people overseas to express their appreciation of what he’d done for Bomber Command and in the longer term what he had done in the country in terms of accelerating the close of the war and I suppose a thank you for the fifty five thousand who died during the war because this came out in all his little addresses that he gave in actual fact he was conscious of that fifty five thousand he dropped it in quite loosely everywhere so that was the trip and we came back only for a short period of time and then went on to the South American trip flying down the west coast of Africa to a place called Bathurst and then flying across from Bathurst to North Brazil and down to Rio de Janeiro and then all the way back calling in at various places British Guyana etcetera etcetera etcetera up over Florida and landing on VJ Day in Washington for the big celebrations which we joined in and at that time met big people like General Arnold and General Eaker with whom he Harris had been negotiating years before for the Americans to come into the European war instead of devoting their care and attention to the Japanese which was arguably their main drive force in actual fact he was one of the individuals we had dispatched to America to talk it over and in fact these two individuals were present when we landed in Washington so it was quite a gathering quite a gathering yes.
CB: Do you know if Harris knew that they were going to drop the atomic bomb in August
FS: Oh yes
CB: He knew so was it timed that he would be in Washington at that
FS: No
CB: No
FS: He didn’t we did our trip across South America Rio de Janeiro Sao Paulo addressed the British community in Sao Paulo this is where the fifty five thousand came up again and purely by coincidence I met a young man there an Englishman who had completed his course at [unclear] university when I went there and he had transferred his affections to the equivalent of our administration organisation and he had joined that in Sao Paulo and as he mentioned he said if you ever thinking about coming over here do get in contact with me and we will see what we could do this was in Sao Paulo South America and we had that closeness in that part of our education of being in the same place at slightly different times we got round to discussion this and he said well wait a minute I was there too when were you there and I realised I had gone there when he’d left in Manchester quite astounding yes quite astounding [laugh] we kept in a bit of correspondence for a while but I had no intention of going to South America in actual fact at that time well by that time I had left [unclear] and was working in Mareham I had met the lady who was going to be my future wife who’d had a little girl whose husband had died and any thoughts of going out of England had gone she came from Kings Lynn in actual fact.
CB: So how long was this flight with Harris
FS: Oh right –
CB: Right Frederick so you have started with going around Africa and so on in July Forty Five and you actually came back in August Forty Five so do you look on that time as a pleasurable month did you enjoy doing what you did with Harris
FS: Oh fantastic I mean these places I had never visited before I’d never been to Africa before and we I say we just went to these various places in Africa stopping for two or three days and at each place from Cairo to Cayga [?] I mean as far as I was concerned that was fantastic we did all these wonderful things in the Sahara into the jungle at night time you name it we did it of all the places to stay in Nairobi we stayed at the Norfolk Hotel in that location and to things like seeing all the African workers sitting on the steps making things like I’ve got those forks knives and forks actually making them and selling them to us in actual that was a new experience going out on night time safaris going out on night time sing songs in the jungle and all that sort of thing we did going to moth and butterfly museums quite absolutely incredible.
CB: Did Harris join you for any recreations
FS: No, for some but mostly he was at a much higher level than we were and were concerned with our I mean we went to Mombasa we went down we did the big things like going down a gold mine for instance going down a gold mine and you go down a gold mine instead of going straight down there you go about seventy five degrees and six of you go down at a time two two two and you go down at a fantastic speed at about that angle that was the Wanderer Gold Mine and I’ve still got specimens I joke not I’ve got specimens of gold that they gave us at the gold mine fifty sixty years ago I’ve still got them I don’t know what they are worth but these are specimens inside that you see petrite [?] it’s called inside the petrite[?] is pure gold.
CB: Gold that would be worth now these days
FS: Oh bound to I might take it to see that fellow who does gold in Lynn he’d say oh thank you I’ll have this bit its worth a couple of pounds couple of pounds sorry I joke but no it showed I had a fantastic experience in those places we went to a place in Bathurst on the West Coast of Africa from which we flew to South America and we went they took us down to a cellar where the native bunch were all sitting on the floor making filigree and we could buy it and we could buy it for ridiculous prices I mean low low prices and we all bought our specimen as few of but actually to sit there and watch it being made that was a fantastic experience that followed not quite such a fantastic experience when we were landing in Bathurst a place called Halfdie [?] which has taken its name from the fact that they had a plague which wiped out fifty percent of it and thereafter named it Halfdie [?] and the last few hundred yards in we encountered a terrific sandstorm and we couldn’t see a thing out of the aircraft it was kind of landing by instinct and we got out of the aircraft and it was torrenting down and we were absolutely saturated and they persuaded us to strip off and put clothes on and they put all our clothes on to fast heaters so we went in there was a crisp uniform standing up in the corner which you had to break to get it on [laughs] like this crack crack crack it was quite ridiculous and we had a function an important function that night and there was our stuff we had to wear everything shirt vest and pants was rock hard [laughs].
CB: I assume Harris’ stuff wasn’t
FS: No he had six spare uniforms in his luggage that was incredible we had that photo they had just taken all our clothes away and woosh we’ll dry these for you [laughs]
CB: Now after the war if we can just conclude with Harris he didn’t wasn’t treated very well
FS: No no he wasn’t
CB: Nor was Bomber Command for that matter
FS: No no no
CB: Did you have sympathy with Harris at this time about how he was treated
FS: Oh yes I think we all did I yes I suppose even then the realisation of what sort of if I can put the wording in the battering he had to get his own way and the fact and even the fact that it was proven beyond any doubt that what that the plans he had put forward and etcetera which had met so much opposition at one time and then finally he got his own way and got the power behind his throne that he wanted to do what he wanted to do with Germany in spite of [unclear] and all that I suppose we all had a tremendous amount of sympathy and a tremendous amount of respect for his dogmatic approach in actual fact to get not his own way for words sake for getting his own way for the benefit which would be derived in him getting permission to do what he wanted to do and the result was the war came to an end so I suppose at that time we thought a great deal of him.
CB: And did you all think you know a great deal of him during the war when he was he had this programme
FS: Yes that was the general the general sentiment yes he didn’t mean admire he wouldn’t expect to meet any opposition at that it was patently obviously what we had to do and one was certainly not send the trained crews to handle the Atlantic war in spite of how vital that was I mean we talking about hundreds of thousands and when you look at the figures of what was going down ‘twixt and ‘tween American and where they were delivering the goods to place like Archangel and Murmansk North of Russia and then there was all those goods coming through Russia into the European war in spite of all that and the tremendous demands which were made upon him by as I say the Navy to send to have some trained forces so they could handle the Atlantic war well of course that wasn’t realistic in anyway there was nothing that we were doing in Germany to identify with anything to do with the Atlantic war that was something quite different admittedly they wanted the aircraft and unless they could have the aircraft and they could have the armaments to be able to drop bombs on submarines which was a bit wild gesture anyway that might have been might have made a contribution towards the more positive influence of all the shipping that was coming across the Atlantic than it did because we wouldn’t I remember the speeches in parliament by Churchill ex hundreds and thousands and thousands of tons of zinc had gone down and then the humanitarian aspect of how many they had lost at sea I don’t suppose any of us could identify that with sending trained Royal Air Force crews into the Navy to do what you know one of the things you were supposed to do to have a fleet of aircraft over the Atlantic dropping bombs on U-boats bearing in mind we had U-boats out there trying to blow the air out of the Germans anyway but that was I suppose that could have taken a different more important role entirely had that shipping gone down a more I mean with these vital elements that were arriving from America in Russia well it was a contributory factor obviously and hundreds of thousand tons going down in the Atlantic meant nothing at all to that building up that war coming down from Russia through Germany etcetera so we had a great deal of respect for him and he was a person who you had a great deal of respect for anyway not because of his position and his number of stripes in actual fact his dogged determination to get his own way for the benefit of not he for the benefit of the war.
CB: Well
FS: Sorry to interrupt but this came out in his speeches that he gave overseas in South America and the particular one we all attended in in Rio to the British contingent he was quite emotional about [unclear] the losses that had been sustained doing what he wanted to do.
CB: Of course Churchill after the war distanced himself from Harris.
FS: Oh yes yes
CB: His strategy and Bomber Command what do you feel about that
FS: We had a very strong feeling extremely strong feelings the war was over then we could say but wait a minute we succeeded but it wasn’t that easy in actual feel there was a tremendous amount of ‘oppo’ of course a lot was caused by the Dresden business that manifested itself too I remember that we haven’t touched on it yet Joy and I were specially invited to the memorial service the unveiling service for the house you’ve got all the details for that
CB: Yes
FS: Because I’ve got all the details just digressing for a moment only because of my association close association for a short period of time I had special dispensation to attend the church we had seats you had to pay for them but we had seats reserved at the church for the unveiling ceremony which was the Queen Mother of course.
CB: Yes
FS: And that was sorry to be digressing just for a moment and when we got the invitation it was a question of where it was so forth how you get there so forth and I said ‘oh there’s no point taking a car there’s thousands going there’ having a contact at The Savoy I phoned my contact and got a reservation in their garage for my car and again realised you come out The Savoy turn right and there’s the church so Joy and I went up there I was in full regalia medals and all chat chat chat[?] and went in there and had breakfast in The Savoy [laughs] there were people coming up and whats going on oh yes we’ve got something special going on down the road and then walked out the front and walked out and there was the church and we had reserved seats that was packed to capacity as of course the Queen Mother was there of course she performed the unveiling ceremony and again there was a terrific uproar in the background on her lefthandside at the back it was subdued but in actual fact it started off being very very rowdy and she continued on with her little citation for the opening and it came very interesting from Joy and I point of view my group captain from Mildenhall was then the chairman of the Bomber Command Association and his duty on that particular day was to escort the Queen Mother round and into the law courts where we were having [unclear] or teas coffee whatever I mean so he took and upside in his wheelchair was Cheshire so we could shake hands with Cheshire that’s purely by the by and we got inside and we wondering how difficult this is you’ve got two hands a cup in one hand a plate in the other one said help yourself and we were in this sort of situation and a voice boomed out it was my group captain ‘Shepherd would you bring your good lady over’ and we were introduced to the Queen Mother as spontaneous as that no preparation at all so Joy went across and was presented on the spot that was a lovely instance and that was my group captain.
CB: Yes
FS: From Mildenhall so where have we got to as far as your concerned
CB: I know that you were involved even on a slight degree with Operation Manna
FS: Oh yes on experimentation that’s right
CB: So how did you come to be involved in that
FS: There wasn’t much and I signed on for an extra six months no I’m getting things out of timing I came back to Mildenhall and everybody had gone all the bodies had gone all disappeared and there was [unclear] bombing leader who would need a bombing leader after the war [?]
CB: This is April Forty Five Right
FS: That’s absolutely right and I had come back I had finished full of my trips overseas America and everything else and that was excitement at the tail end of when we arrived in Washington of course it was madness and from there we flew up to Duval which is Montreal in the Lancaster of course in preparatory for coming home and we flew off from there and landed in Newfoundland and took off for the trip back to Prestwick which the navigator and I the two of us that was going to be an entirely star navigation back home as an experiment two three thousand miles so we dropped all the mechanics we concentrated on star shooting with our cameras and moon charts and we got a freak tuning from Prestwick two thousand three hundred miles from Prestwick so that pointer came there and we had a beam it up so that we could tell exactly where we were coming over the county it was fine we had a fire on the outboard engine on the starboard side of the aircraft a fire no problem just press the button to extinguish it, press the button to extinguish it, nothing happened so we had a fire in the starboard engine so the only think that Calder could do we were probably about twelve fourteen thousand feet high was to put the aircraft into a very steep dive and it worked it blew the fire out the engine so on investigation we found that when we dropped into Duval for final check up they had not put the fuses back into the system so [sighs] it was a toss up shall we turn back into Newfoundland rather than risk anything and that’s where they confirmed there were no fuses in the fire system whatsoever so we thought we’d choose this got airborne and came back to Prestwick [laughs heartily] but these things what happen we could have gone down there and had no well they wouldn’t know well they would have had a rough idea of where we’d gone down but fat lot of good that does [laughs] well yes that was the spot yes you can see it no can’t see any bubbles a simple thing like that happen yes and that was on the return flight. So back now Manna
CB: Right Manna
FS: So when I came back to Mildenhall there was no job for yours truly but they had a vacancy up the road in Mareham in the experimental unit for Manna and not much alternative I had my service to do and I wanted a job so I was posted in actual fact to take over this Manna thing now that involved researched into a sort of canister that we were handling that had to go on board laden with goods and lifted up into the bomb bay and writing up a report and making recommendations and so forth and on one could be tragic as far as I was concerned we got everything ready we got a pannier fixed inbetween these two containers with whatever to make weight and upstairs one of the armament people was controlling the hoist and halfway up the hoist gives way and I am standing with my hands on the edge of the thing and I took my hand and the whole of the thing crashed down into the pannier it would have just taken it off at the wrist and we looked at the hoisting gear it was clearly marked ‘US’ and they had used it oh there was a terrific stink because the person actually totally responsible was the person doing the mechanical winding upstairs was clearly marked anyway but that’s the time I could have easily lost my two wrists so I continued on my balance on my extra six months writing up reports and so forth and then I left the Air Force.
CB: So for Operation Manna the supplies couldn’t be dropped by parachute so they were in these cannisters.
FS: Yes they were an oblong framework and supported with release gear [unclear] by the pound in actual fact these are the continued developments experiments if you like that we were conducting and it was changing fairly rapidly what was being called for because we were getting reports back from Holland and Belgium on how things were landing and what sort of degree of damage occurred etcetera and what was the ideal height for dropping and they were putting up these tremendous haystacks I suppose you could call in actual fact them to cushion the thing and they worked then I came away from the operation so they built these fields with twenty foot haystacks totally soft so they cushioned everything so the percentage of damage incurred by the contents was minimalised and that was when I came away came out.
CB: So you really finished with the war with Operation Manna and taking Harris out two positive ways to finish the war.
FS: Oh very much no question about that I assure you
CB: Rather than finishing it off on a bombing mission
FS: Yes yes absolutely
CB: And how did you feel when you you know
FS: Well tail end of course the humanitarian thing came in and it was the most simple thing in the world in Kings Lynn at the Dukes Head throughout the war every weekend every Saturday evening throughout the war they had an officers invitation dance at the Dukes Head Hotel and they meant officers and it was at one of these occasions at the officers dance I went along there and surprise surprise I met Joy who was on about her second time out having lost her husband who was a bomber pilot university bomber pilot straight from university straight in.
CB: They had their own squadrons didn’t they
FS: Absolutely yes he did complete his first tour of thirty trips came out unscathed was sent to train pilots who were going to be involved in the dropping of a bridge too far sort of thing he did all his training and he was called back to do his second tour of operation and on his second trip on his second tour went down coming back from Cologne and left Joy with a little girl she was then three and I met her and got married.
CB: What did you do after the war
FS: I worked for a company called Nestle on the sales side and I became responsible for recruitment and training and development for the whole organisation I was with them for thirty years wonderful company international of course head office in a lovely place called Vevay in Switzerland on the banks of the lake and I was with them for
CB: Did you live out there
FS: No went but no lived in England moved about England when Nestle moved their head office into Croydon and had this twenty two storey block the first one they had seen in Croydon and they occupied the whole of the building because they brought in all the associated companies into one building the associated companies being the likes of Kieler, Crosse & Blackwell, Toblerone, Findus all the associated companies which were dotted around that all came into the head office twenty two storey block in Croydon so I was there until I retired and then I started work.
CB: How would you sum up your time in the Second World War and Bomber Command
FS: Well it’s tough I mean apart from being revolutionary of course which it is to my mind I don’t know what would have happened if I had stayed with the South American Shipping Association which was involved obviously in shipping goods to South America and that came to an[unclear] end at the start of the war because you couldn’t expect boats to go out there so there was no job so that’s a bypass so answering your question because it’s obviously so revolutionary and so different to what it would have been and I couldn’t imagine what I would have done had I not gone into the Air Force well I suppose life would have been fairly steady progressing with an organisation and at some stage deciding I wasn’t going far enough fast enough and getting out but I mean that was wiped off by going into the Royal Air Force.
CB: So you obviously had to volunteer so did you
FS: Ah you can’t go into the Air Force Royal Air Force without being a volunteer.
CB: No
FS: As you know
CB: Yes
FS: So I had to volunteer I had to go into the Air Force after I had tried to go into the Navy fortunately the Air Force they said yes please thank you rather than the Navy did no no no [laughs].
CB: So well a time really of excitement danger new experiences
FS: A mixture of all of those I mean the new experiences were embodied in the African trips and so forth and at the end when we were coming home from Africa we spent some time in Greece in Italy on the way back so it was really a very comprehensive trip and whilst we down in particularly Rio de Janeiro that was absolutely fantastic I mean you have seen pictures of it Copacabana Beach but we went out to place called Quichaninnia [?] about seventy miles out we had never ever I had never in my life seen a hotel like that out there it had its own everything I mean I mentioned things seventy pianos for a concert seventy pianos indoor and outdoor ballroom indoor and outdoor swimming pools and it was situated actually on the banks of a river so you could get out at night time and go right the way up the river which were all lit from this Quichaninnia [?] Hotel all lit right up into the hills fantastic place.
CB: So these are all experiences that you wouldn’t have had.
FS: I could have afforded it we were honorary members of everything when we arrived there golfing club swimming club the lot they’d opened everything and across the bay from the statue you know it’s the English quarter and that was fantastic a bit of England on the opposite shores of Rio de Janeiro.
CB: Wonderful it’s been fantastic and interesting to hear all your experiences so thank you very much Frederick.
FS: It has if it identifies with what you are looking for fine yes.
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 Frederick Harold Shepherd
Creator
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Clare Bennett
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-05-25
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AShepherdFH150525
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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01:11:50 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
Frederick joined the Royal Air Forcein 1941. After going to Cardington, he was given deferred entry and studied for a year at university. He was invited to London for initial training, followed by the Initial Training Wing at RAF Newquay. He did basic flying in Tiger Moths at RAF Clyffe Pypard before going for 15 months to different stations in Canada. He trained mainly on Ansons.
On his return, he went to Harrogate and was then posted to RAF Dumfries where he did a specialised bomb dropping course for Pathfinders. Frederick crewed up at RAF Chipping Warden and trained on Wellingtons. He did one operation, dropping leaflets over France.
Frederick then went onto Stirlings at RAF Chedburgh before Lancasters at the Lancaster Finishing School at RAF Feltwell. He carried out several operations with 218 Squadron at RAF Methwold. Frederick then moved with his captain to RAF Mildenhall when the latter was promoted. He carried out several operations on major cities. Frederick was appointed as bombing leader for 15 Squadron as well as the squadron adjutant.
Frederick was chosen to accompany Arthur Harris, flying with Charles Calder as a co-navigator. The crew were all section leaders. Frederick describes Harris’s personality and the leadership challenges he faced, expressing his sympathy and respect. Having refuelled in the south of France, they went through Africa and on to South America and the United States, arriving in Washington on VJ Day.
Frederick signed on for another six months and went to RAF Marham in the experimental unit for Manna before leaving the RAF.
Contributor
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Sally Coulter
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cornwall (County)
England--Manchester
England--Norfolk
England--Northamptonshire
England--Suffolk
England--Wiltshire
Scotland--Dumfries and Galloway
United States
Washington (D.C.)
Canada
France
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1945-08-14
15 Squadron
218 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bomb aimer
bomb struck
Flying Training School
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
propaganda
RAF Chipping Warden
RAF Clyffe Pypard
RAF Dumfries
RAF Feltwell
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Marham
RAF Methwold
RAF Mildenhall
Stirling
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/598/8867/ALimerFW151210.2.mp3
7a453c946d3036ebfd5c0a7f7301c24c
Dublin Core
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Title
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Limer, Frederick
Frederick W Limer
F W Limer
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Limer, F
Description
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An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Frederick Limer (Royal Air Force). He flew operations a as a bomb aimer with 149 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
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2015-12-10
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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.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AS: Okay that’s fine I think it’s working now. So this is Andrew Sadler interviewing Freddie Limer for the Bomber Command Archive on Thursday, 9th December, 2015, at his home in Epping. Thank you for speaking to us Freddie. Can I ask you to start off with how it was that you came to join the Royal Air Force?
FL: At the beginning of the war I was a management trainee, after a short while the company decided to discharge the, all the trainees when the war broke out, and I was er, on reporting to the Labour Exchange I was sent to work in a factory, and during my experience in the factory I learned how to weld, both arc and acetylene welding. And that company was a long way from my home so I decided to ask the Ministry of Labour if I could transfer, so I transferred to another company, an engineering company which was close to my home. There I was taught, eventually I was taught how to inspect taps and dies, it was on that job that I eventually decided that having learnt that the whole of the company, but more particularly inspectors of taps and dies [laughs], were reserved and couldn’t volunteer other than for special services. I enquired of the local recruiting station what these special services were, they listed, submarines in the Royal Navy, Tanks in the Royal Tank Regiment, as my brother was already a lieutenant in there I said, ‘To hell with that I didn’t want him as my commanding officer.’ Or aircrew in the Royal Air Force. I decided that I’d volunteer for aircrew in the Royal Air Force, as I had been left school by then quite a bit my maths was a bit weak so when I was eventually assigned a job in the Royal Air Force if was a, a wireless operator/gunner, and I reported eventually to Blackpool. I did a course at Blackpool and as during the period of my acceptance in the Air Force and my call up, I decided that I should try and swot up on my maths which I knew were weak at the time of my original enlistment. So at Blackpool once I’d got half the way through the wireless course I enquired and was allowed to apply for a reassignment. They gave me then a, a list of questions and mostly mathematical that I had to fill in which fortunately I was successful. They then posted me from Blackpool to Lord’s Cricket Ground in London, where the assembly there was the, er, full of pilot aircrew. After a, a few days there, fortunately it was close to my home, so I used to nip home from time to time, but after a few days there I was then posted to No. 12 ITW at St. Andrews. Did the course on the at St. Andrews and towards the end of the course the government had introduced a new system where each of the cadets coming through ITW’s had to take a twelve hour flying test with Tiger Moths. We were assigned to go to Scone in Scotland, only a comparatively short distance from St. Andrews. It was a grass runway, my two colleagues, the three of us used to go together. My two colleagues passed with flying colours, one of them soloed in four hours and the other soloed in seven, and they were obviously destined to be pilots in the Royal Air Force. Unfortunately I, on my solo, I had a slight mishap, I might point out that the aerodrome was a grass runway, they used to have these things cutting the grass with dirty great poles sticking up in the air with flags on, well one of them actually didn’t have a flag on when I finished my solo. So needless to say I, that terminated my possibility of becoming a pilot. I then was sent to a small unit which [telephone ringing].
AS: Okay there we go were on, sorry do carry on.
FL: I was then transferred back to Reception Centre in Heaton Park, Manchester. I was there for a few weeks before I was transported to Liverpool where we boarded the Queen Mary and were destined for New York, destined for Moncton the Reception Centre in Canada for all RAF aircrew, I was apparently going to be an observer. On our way over in the Queen Mary we’d learned that there were a few ships that we thought most unusual but we thought the Queen Mary would be used to travel over fast on its own, but there was in fact a cruiser some distance away, and further away there was a small ship that we thought might have been, er, a destroyer or something like that. Sure enough when we got to America one of the colleagues observed coming out of the one of the rear windows, rear doors rather, Winston Churchill, it apparently there was also the rest of the War Cabinet and this was of course when they were having a meeting with the President of the United States. From our point of view we learned that there was an epidemic at Moncton in Canada where we were supposed to go, therefore we were transported to Taunton, in Massachusetts in America onto an American Army Air Force Base. And we were told that we might be there for a few days, a few weeks, we didn’t know. However, it was a bit of a godsend going there because it was the first time most of us had ever tasted a T-bone steak, and in UK at that time the T-bone steak size was the equivalent of family’s month’s ration, it was enormous, most of us made ourselves very ill eating these. However, we didn’t do very much there other than give drill demonstrations to the Americans, then the epidemic was cleared in Canada and we went to Moncton. At Moncton as usual of course in the Air Force there’s a dirty great pile of people there and we were there for a number of weeks. One of the interesting features about Moncton was that having been there a long time they had then developed a, a, number of the blokes had developed a little variety show and they used to give this show approximately once a week. To our surprise when we first went to our first show the compere and comedian of this show was Jimmy Edwards, he was obviously destined for Canada for his pilot training. However, after that we were all posted off to our various stations. I was posted to a 31 Navigational School, er, and that was on, on, on Lake Erie, and completing the 31 Navigational School course which was basically navigation and other ancillary qualifications we were then posted to another station, Fingal, which was a bombing and gunnery station. At Fingal we, although I was only an intermediary as far as examination results from the navigation and the other qualifications, when we did the course at Fingal I was top of the class, or top of the course on bombing. The bombing was in fact a single target that you approached at different heights, and dropped single bombs and then the assessment was the pattern that you had created. For becoming the best bomb aimer on the course I was awarded a little, tiny little medal which is referred to as a pickle barrel which showed a bomb dropping into a barrel, I still have the, the little medal today. From there we were posted back to Moncton, from Moncton we were then transported to a port on the coast, Canadian coast and boarded a ship called the “Louis Pasteur”. The journey back on the “Louis Pasteur” was in fact a nightmare by comparison with our first class journey on the “Queen Mary”. I think everybody on that ship was sick, and we came back in hammocks from there, contrary to the lovely quarters we had had on the “Queen Mary”.
AS: So there we go.
FL: From the “Louis Pasteur” we were transferred once more to a holding unit, and I and others went on to Staverton to start our courses, but we were informed that our observer badge did not qualify, had being phased out, and that we had to select from our qualifications as an observer one of the requirements of a seven crew aircraft, i.e. Stirlings, Lancasters, and Halifaxes. And as I had qualified pretty high up in bombing I decided to become a bomb aimer. From there I, from Staverton doing courses on map reading and various other activities connected with bomb aiming. Unfortunately on one of the exercises we were obliged to descend rather rapidly because the pilot had received instructions that was enemy aircraft in the area. His descent caused my right to ear to split and I was therefore, when we landed I was in considerable pain, and I went into hospital and was there for ten days before they allowed me to come out, and then they indicated that there would be a short gap before I’d be allowed to fly again. The short gap elapsed and I then was transferred to a unit where all the aircrew of various categories were assembled, it was in RAF language a dirty big hangar which there were pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, gunners, the only missing person was the engineer, he arrived at a later stage in our training. From there we went, we, we assembled, and we were all NCO’s at the time, I was a little senior because I had been in the Air Force a little bit longer than most of them, and hearing the pilot also was senior, so within a short period of time we were made up to flight sergeants. During our crewing up and our training we did the usual courses in together, this exercise was in fact having to go onto twin engines as he had only been, most of his training had been on single engines. He, we did this together and part of this twin engine training was in fact part of an OTU, but on Wellington 10’s, we did that and we did, strangely enough we did two operations where they were supposed to be diversions, and we dropped window, after we’d done that we then, Ian then had, had to take various courses in converting to four engines. We went to a station, we were all together, went to a station where he was converted onto Stirlings, and from Stirlings we then proceeded, all of us at the same time were doing our various training and exercises so forth in the crew, and by then of course we had added to our crew an engineer. Engineers at that time were very junior they course was round about six to eight months, and within six to eight months were, they were crewed up and some of them were on the squadron, other crew members were of course much longer periods of time dependent on who they were. From there we proceeded to be assigned a squadron and we were assigned 149 Squadron which was in fact a satellite, of Mildenhall which was called Methwold. Ian was then converted onto Lancasters from the Stirlings, the pilot was converted on Lancasters to Stirlings, and the rest of us were of course at the same time doing various exercises of our own particular trades. After we’d completed the initial work on the Lancaster we were then assigned to operations and we started on our operations. The first one being over to a place in France and unfortunately the weather closed in on our return to Methwold and we were diverted to St. Eval in Cornwall, this was quite a harrowing experience for the pilot and the navigator, but the pilot came through with flying colours and eventually we landed at St. Eval and we had roughly about fifteen minutes fuel in our tanks. We stayed there overnight then returned to our base at Methwold. Have a break.
AS: So while we’ve been paused Freddie has shown me his log book and his first operation that he’s just described was on 11th January, 1945, and the operation was to bomb Krefeld [spells it out], and the second operation on 13th January, was to Saarbrucken [spells it out], and it was diverted to St Eval [spells it out]. Okay thank you very much. Shall we restart?
FL: Er, from, where were we, we’d just done our first operation.
AS: Yes to Krefeld, yes that’s how we, yes.
FL: Okay. All the other ops are in there.
AS: Oh yes. Good.
FL: Okay? Restart?
AS: Yep, yes we’re ready to go. So do you want to tell me about any other of your operations?
FL: One of the operations that was in fact somewhat hairy was the operation up for Dresden, later on in our number of ops, and there our navigational aids went wrong and we were virtually lost, we were however buzzed by a German aircraft which we learned later was a 262 one of Germany’s new jet fighters. It, we however got free of that, but then Ian the pilot who observed certain water marks, water areas that he considered were way, way off our track, and he suggested the navigator that we should now turn course north and go back to base, at the same time Ian and I, the pilot, discussed what we were going to do about the bomb load. We had observed the pair of us that we were over quite a large area of what we considered to be forest land or open fields, so it was decided that we jettison our bombs but that I should make them safe, we did so, and the bombs were released safe. We then proceeded on our course north as Ian had suggested and low and behold within about thirty minutes I observed that there was a city in front of us, or approximately in front of us, eventually the navigational aids having restarted Joe the navigator indicated that the possibility was that it was Paris, and sure enough it was Paris. From there the navigational aids appeared to come back to normal, we then set course and arrived back at base in due time, needless to say the interrogation of our crew particularly the navigator, and myself, and Ian the pilot, was pretty considerable in view of the fact that we had to, (a) not reach our target, and (b) jettison our bomb load. This was however accepted and nothing further was heard on this particular incident.
AS: And from your log here that would have been on 13th February, 1945, you’ve noted here to Dresden, and the pilot Ian, was Flight Sergeant Sturgess?
FL: Flight Sergeant Sturgess yes.
AS: So really you were, you really started with your first mission in January 1945, this was quite close to the end of the war?
FL: Oh yes, oh yes indeed, oh yes indeed. That’s my because I volunteered in 1941 the er, and my training had taken some time, the crewing up etcetera it was December ’44 because, before we arrived on the squadron, and our first operations were in January of that year, lots of the familiarity of the change of aircraft onto a Lancaster, and consequently our tour was conducted pretty late in the war.
AS: Yes, your in your log book here it’s Christmas Eve 1944, 24th December, with pilot, Flight Officer McKey, and your remarks are, ‘you were checking the circuit’.
FL: Well he was in fact instructing Ian broadly speaking on the use of the Lancaster aircraft from the Stirlings that we were that Ian had been trained on up to that stage.
AS: Yes, and you’ve got here that the flight was fifteen minutes, and then, and then there’s another flight the same day with Flight Sergeant Sturgess as the pilot, circuits and landings, twenty minutes.
FL: Yes, yes, well that’s familiarity with the Lancaster you see. Which from then on of course we, also in my operations you will observe in my log book that we did two food drops over some open ground outside The Hague.
AS: Oh right.
FL: And that was a particularly interesting feature because I was responsible for checking out the food drop, and for the food in the bomb bays as all bomb aimers were, and on the second trip I decided to obtain a little plastic bag and filled this with this stuff that I got from the NAAFI, as well as I’d put my flying rations in there, when I dropped the food on the second trip I dropped this little plastic bag with it with my little parachute that I’d put on with one of my handkerchiefs. It’s interesting on that particular point that after the war my mother received a letter from a lady thanking her for the little gift dropped. [laughs] Excuse me I’m going to cry. Little gift that she had hand dropped during the war and although the food was rather spoilt, most of it was spoilt there were some elements of the food that were edible.
AS: Oh how nice. [laughs]
FL: That letter incidentally I took back from my mother, I gave it and talked about it to one of my sisters, who had a Dutch friend after the war, and she accepted the letter, and that letter I’m given to understand is in the war time section of the Dutch Museum in —
AS: So when, I see here you’ve got one of the operations marked here as “Cooks Tour” would that have been the dropping of the food?
FL: No, no, no. At, when operations were in fact, bombing operations were ceased by the RAF, some squadrons, ours happened to be what is known as a GH Squadron.
AS: Yes.
FL: Which was an extended version of G which could in fact navigate with greater accuracy, we then were assigned to do what were known as line overlaps, photographs of certain areas of Germany. Oh yes, this at the time was in fact classified as being secret.
AS: And looking at your log here in April ’45 it would appear that you only did two operations, one was Kiel, and you put the “Admiral Scheer” sunk so presumably that would have been against a ship?
FL: On that particular operation that you refer to, Kiel, I [phone ringing]
AS: You were just about to tell me about the operation to Kiel.
FL: One of my operations I flew with a crew other than my own, it was an Australian pilot, the rest of the crew were British, but the destination was Kiel Harbour, and we were given the target of the “Admiral Scheer” which was docked there with other battleships, and we carried only one bomb, it was a twelve thousand pounder, and we were given to understand it was for the armour piercing. Several of us in squadron had this, this particular bomb, and several of us claimed that we had dropped our bomb on the “Admiral Scheer” and sunk it because we learned later that the “Admiral Sheer” was sunk, and as there were about thirty odd aircraft there and they were all bombing the same targets it was doubtful whether any one of us could claim individually that we were the person who sunk the “Admiral Scheer”, but we all did. [laughs]
AS: Yes, so, and I’ve just found in your log here that on 3rd and 8th May 1945 were the dates where you’ve put here special operation to The Hague, food, two hours twenty-five, and two hours fifteen minutes each flight.
FL: They, they were conducted, the bombing height was two hundred feet, which was pretty low in a Lanc, and we weren’t sure whether of course the Germans were going to shoot us or not at that time, fortunately none of us on our squadron had any mishap at all on that particular operation.
AS: And then you’ve got —
FL: Other operations that we did what were known as line overlaps, these were photographs taken in sequence over what was known as a square search, where the aircraft proceeded over one course and reversed over the next adjacent course and photographs were taken of those and they were referred to as line overlaps, the cameras were operated by myself on the instructions of the navigator as and when to start. I did a few of those operations, but they I think were confined to a couple of squadrons in 3 Group. At the end of the war of course the ground crews were all very interested in what was happening or what had happened so we did an operation or two what we referred to as “Cooks Tours”, taking ground staff piled into the aircraft to observe what had happened to some of the near targets on the Ruhr. One or two of them were females, and they were, it’s a little bit uncomfortable of course in a Lancaster for people trying to observe, and there were some very near misses where people trod on the wrong thing but they went off successfully. Another interesting feature on one of the operations that we did, when we proceeded from the perimeter track round the main track to get to the runway the gunners used to have to, on each operation, test the traverse of their turrets and their guns, the rear turret in particular and the mid-upper, but on one occasion the rear gunner had what is known as a runaway, the strange thing about that was he had the runaway when we were passing the guard room and he was reprimanded for this for carelessness but no further action was taken. Another incident when we first arrived at the aerodrome on proceeding to the guard room to sign in, we observed that behind the main counter of the guard room there were a long line of coffins, and when our little mid-upper gunner, Titch Holmes, saw these, he screamed out, ‘Bloody hell.’ And we thought that that was quite appropriate considering that we’d just arrived on the squadron. [laughs] That’s one or two of the incidents on the squadron which. After the war I was appointed by the squadron commander as the designated rather as the bomb aimer to go to Royal Air Force Bomb Ballistics Unit at Martlesham Heath. I was in fact on selection appointed to this and I then served from May 1946 until August 1948, during that time the operation, the operations at that time were secret but I should imagine now the secrecy of that itself not particularly important, but our role there, I was the only bomb aimer on that unit. There were several pilots and we, our role was to fly from Martlesham Heath to Woodbridge at Woodbridge, as most bomber command people will know was the emergency aerodrome for bomber command and had a runway which was exceptionally long, and it was said that light aircraft could take off on the width of the runway. Most of our loads then were the single bombs as a general rule and they were loaded at Woodbridge, we took off from there and flew through Orford Ness, over Orford Ness we were then guided by radar, they informed us what height they wanted us to travel, what speed, and therefore we had to release the bombs on their instigation, they then tracked the bombs which then landed on the marshes at Orford Ness and we then proceeded back to base to reload or merely rest. The aircraft we used for that operation were Lancasters for the heavier bombs and altitudes up to about fourteen, fifteen, sixteen thousand feet, and then we had the Mosquito which we used for high altitude up to thirty-two thousand feed, this was the first time that I had been involved in a Mosquito, and as you know the Mosquito only has a two man crew and therefore I was obliged to bring in the fact that I had been trained as a navigator as well as a bomb aimer. We did several trips like in the Mosquito, as well as the Lancaster, and eventually we had finished or what appeared to have been finished our operations with that unit. It took approximately eighteen to twenty months to do this and after that we then rested from that type of activity. The station at Martlesham Heath was in fact a peace time aerodrome, mainly dealt with experimental, but in war time the Americans used it, and we released it from the Americans when we took over the Bomb Ballistics Unit. We spent most of our time, I think the airmen spent most of their time clearing the gum from underneath all the tables and chairs in the various messes. The mess at Martlesham Heath, the officer’s mess was a delightful place, there were of course only about eighteen serving RAF officers there but we had quite a number of boffins, scientists who were in fact members of the mess, and I had the unfortunate duty of being assigned the catering officer of the mess and I took that like a duck to water, and also I had a colleague there called Reg Kindred, who was the adjutant of BLEU [?], he was minus his left leg, he was a pilot and had been shot down over France in a Manchester a twin engine aircraft that was doomed to failure. He was repatriated to the UK by the Germans on the grounds that he would not be able to fly again, and this was truly the case because he then became an adjutant and he and I were buddies on RAF station.
AS: Good.
FL: I had one or two interesting duties when I was at Martlesham, as I previously said I was made assigned catering officer of the officer’s mess, when my colleague Reg Kindred left he er, he was the bar officer I had to take on that role as well, which I did with relish. I was responsible for getting beer and what have you from the various breweries, we used to get beer from Cobbolds in Epping in Ipswich and we always used to get other beers, but Cobbold’s beer at the time you used to get as much as you liked, all we had to do was order it and they used to send little trucks along with it, ‘cos it was generally known in the mess as “Cobbold’s piss”, ‘cos it was so weak, in those days some of the beer was very weak, but we used to get beer from Fremlins, which is a delightful beer but that was very rationed, and there was a great deal of hard work done as to who had more Fremlins than had more Cobbold’s. [laughs]
AS: So when you were dropping bombs on Orford Ness what was the point of that?
FL: The point of that was Orford Ness was in fact a peace time experimental station and they were in fact tracking the bombs to test various faculties about them.
AS: Right.
FL: Their speed of acceleration, accuracy of other elements of it, but broadly speaking that was, with all the bombs they were testing the accuracy of the bombs in their release from an aircraft at a given speed to given height as to how accurate their trajectory was in hitting the target that they had assigned.
AS: Oh right, so all your entries in your log in 1947 were obviously just really you’ve got lots of entries saying bombing and then the number of feet.
FL: Yeah, well at the time you see we were restricted because it was comparatively secret then, we were restricted as to stating too much fact in there, and also we were restricted in stating the bombs that we were using, but on one occasion when we were dropping a twelve thousand pounder we’d picked it up from Woodbridge it dropped off as we were taking off, and the aircraft rose like a god almighty rocket and we were obliged not to put that into our log book, ‘cos it was felt that it was put in there it had to be recorded and the airmen who were responsible for fitting that would be court martialled, and we were kindly advised not to put it in our log book. But you might find in my log book that I have slipped in one of them when we dropped a twelve thousand pounder, twelve thousand pounds in there.
AS: Oh right.
FL: But as a rule we didn’t state the bombs that we were dropping, that was the general rule not to do so, but we dropped practically every type of bomb, other of course than the “Cookie”, the four thousand pounder which I think nobody arrived what it’s trajectory was it arrived on the target sometimes I think or somewhere near the target, but each bomb load that the RAF carried or bomber command carried invariably carried a “Cookie” which was in full of course high explosive.
AS: And you’ve got entrances in here for June ’46, photography and radar runs, and training programmes, air tests, and then you’ve got ferrying ex-prisoners of war in May ‘45?
FL: Yes, it was, it was after the war between my leaving the squadron, or rather not leaving the squadron, the end of my time in the squadron, the crews then were being split up. The senior pilots like mine was in fact transported away somewhere else or released, and the junior pilots then took over and we were assigned to a, a, collect POW’s from, POW’s that had been in the bag for a long time from France, from [unclear], and also we collected about eighteen, seventeen or eighteen of those at a time, we didn’t carry the gunners at all, we had an engineer and I was the marshall of the, the bomb aimer as I was, was the marshall ensuring that the men were properly placed inside the aircraft so that they didn’t in fact cause too much possibility of damage or, or accident. There was one accident I understand but one squadron to that, er, aircraft crashed and there were some fatalities in that, but we didn’t have any of that possibility. Later on as well as collecting POW’s from Europe we also went out to Fermignano[?] in Italy to collect POW’s from there, but we only did the one trip because we found it was far too uncomfortable for soldiers in the main to be housed in an aircraft like the Lancaster for such a long journey, and I think that was discontinued as it was felt it was far better for them to be transported by boat, although it took longer, it was far more safe and comfortable to do that, we only did the one trip from Fermignano [?] which is Naples of course. But when we were there of course we were there for three or four days because the weather had closed in and some of us had the opportunity of being escorted up Vesuvius, and that was quite an experience rather hot underfoot, but, but it was quite enlightening.
AS: How long were you in the RAF after the war finished?
FL: From the end of the war up to 19 November 1948.
AS: Oh gosh.
FL: Which was quite a while, I haven’t worked it out precisely, but that was the period of time. Because I was at Martlesham from June ’46 until August ’48.
AS: How many operational sorties did you do altogether then there?
FL: Actual operations over Germany, only twenty-two.
AS: Twenty-two that’s still quite a lot.
FL: Well the tour was thirty you see.
AS: Yes.
FL: But the, my tour was made up of the operations that our squadron did, line overlaps the photographic thing because there was still the possibility then of possible accident, or possible enemy fire, but although the war was over. Even when we dropped this food over Holland and we were warned then that there were still some Germany people who were a little bit trigger happy, I think one or two aircraft did in fact experience single bullet hitting their aircraft, we didn’t at all we had very comfortable two trips.
AS: When you finally demobbed from the RAF how did you fit back into civilian life?
FL: Very slowly and I immediately decided that I should get back into earning my income because my gratuity from the RAF we all felt was rather paltry, I think I received two hundred and eighty-seven pounds, and if you want to find that two hundred and eighty-seven pounds you’ll find it at the Valentine Pub in Ilford [laughs] with the other chaps that were being demobbed at the time, mainly RAF some Naval, there were about eight of us used to go to the Valentine and we had regular visits to the Valentine Pub and eventually we were running out of cash we then all were obliged to start thinking about earning a respectable income because we were then placed on the dole as it was called in those days. But I decided to take a refresher course with a company in Holborn on sales and marketing and that was around about six weeks, after that I decided on information that I had received to visit the Officers Re-employment Unit just outside Victoria Station, and I was fortunate enough to be able to get in touch with a company called Bakelite, where once more fortunately the sales manager there was an ex major in the Army and I found that the, the eight salesmen eventually they took on were all ex-service, either warrant officers, officers, warrant officers and sergeants, no other ranks were part of the his crew of trainee representatives, some of them had already been there before me and were in fact quite senior. But I, the course I then had to take was to, I was placed in the Wearite [?] division of Bakelite which is the plastic with the decorative plastic division, and then I was assigned to go to Victoria report there, and from there I was sent to Ware in Hertfordshire where I did a six week course in what laminated plastics were all about and what Wearite [?] was all about, and I enjoyed that very much because it was in the factory learning lots of skills that I’ve never ever thought that I would experience. I eventually we, from there I was then transferred back to the London office and there I was given an area that I was to cover as a, as they termed us technical representative, because we weren’t salesmen we were trying to get people to become distributors of the product, we didn’t sell direct to anybody, and also to train people in precisely how to use the laminated plastics at the time.
AS: After you left the RAF did you keep in touch with your comrades in your crew?
FL: I didn’t keep in touch with any of the comrades in the crew because we dispersed, it wasn’t until about a year later when I was, nearly two years later when I was married and living in my present house that somebody had phoned my parents’ home in Barkingside and asked whether Fred Limer was there and they indicated that he had died. The people who lived in that house got in touch with me and let me know what had happened, and I said, ‘Well the person who died of course was my father and whoever you informed you have informed him that I was dead.’ However, they fortunately they had taken the individuals telephone number and name, they passed it on to me and it happened to be my pilot, Ian Sturgess, so I got the telephone number and decided I’d phone him up. [laughs] I phoned Ian and when he came on the phone I said, ‘Ian Sturgess, this is Freddie Limer raised from the dead.’ I heard him go, I heard him go. He was then managing a farm, he was a farmer, managing a farm, anyway we had a long conversation and then eventually I went down to see him in where he was managing this farm and then we continued our association together, and as I had then become a member of the Bomber Command Association, I used to go to their functions a number of times a year, and Ian was not a member of any of this, I invited Ian twice a year to come to the AV, the AGM and also the Autumn meeting and they were luncheons and things and I used to meet Ian on those occasions, when I first met him on those occasions he indicated that he thought that I had not changed a bit, and I felt exactly the same thing about him, we were both lying of course [laughs] we’d got very much older. And I saw Ian for a long time after that and eventually I was informed by Elizabeth his wife that he had fallen and had fractured his hip and he was very unwell and he had in fact died and that arrangements were made for his funeral etcetera but it was strictly private family affair, but they were holding a wake and a reception and that I would, if I would like to come, and my wife the, and daughter would be delighted to see us. Later on when I gave an article to the local paper and gave them a photograph of our crew, I was, the reporter whom I knew, reported about the food dropping exercise and the picture was noted by a young person living in Lowton [?] a nearby town, and she said that one of the crew as her father, which happened to be Joe Siddell [?] the navigator.
AS: Oh gosh.
FL: So she told her father about it and Joe came along and saw me, so we had a long chat. I’ve seen him since he now can’t drive apparently he had a prang with his motorcar but he lives not too far away from Elizabeth, Ian Sturgess the pilot’s widow, not too far away from there. And from time to time I get in touch with him on the phone. So they’re the only two members of the crew, I did learn that Dagwood, or rather Wilfred Oxford, the engineer, had in fact died, but I haven’t heard anything about the gunners. I beg your pardon, I had heard about Bill Buckle, the wireless operator, he was a villain on the squadron, he was a woman chaser, but he eventually, according to Joe Siddell, the navigator, he moved out to Australia, because he’d gone out with some people that he’d learned on the squadron, known on the squadron, and was now living in Australia with his family and was quite prosperous. But other than that the other crew members, oh I beg your pardon once again, I heard from Titch Holmes, the gunners, the mid-upper gunner’s son phoned me one time, he phoned me because he’d seen in the press about my MBE and he wondered whether his father could come and see me, but I learned from Ian that Titch had been to see him but he was, um, Ian didn’t like, like him too much because he was trying to sponge money out of him, and I thought when the son phoned up and asked if he could see me, I said, ‘Well it would be inconvenient for him, for me to see him.’ So I never did see Titch. I wasn’t very keen on Titch he was a little miner about the size of two happeth of pennies, but he was as strong as an ox, and he frequently got into scraps in the, in the pubs when we used to go and have drinks together, and one time he took a swipe, took a swipe at me, fortunately I got out of the way of it, but as boxing was in fact my main hobby. But no apart from that, members of the crew, it’s only because I’ve been thinking about it and reflecting on it that I remember these incidences of remembering these, these people. But as I say after the war I did this course, sales and marketing, joined Bakelite, rose to be the manager of the, after about ten years rose to be the manager of the Midlands area, decided because I couldn’t have the financial arrangements with them without moving house etcetera, I decided to leave Bakelite because I’d been offered a directorship in one of my customers’ companies and they’d offered me a quarter of the shares of the company, but they were wanting me to manage the company for them, and manage the sales and marketing in general, which I did for about ten years. Eventually the, we were paid, paid the same salary each and also the same bonuses each but eventually they the other three decided that they wanted to retire, and they retired we agreed to sell the company, but I had to agree with them because they would have outvoted me to a young couple, well one of them wasn’t all that young but he was a qualified accountant. But the other three left but they asked me if I would be prepared to stay with the company for about twelve months and would pay the same salary that I receiving now and bonuses but they would also put a respectable amount of money into my pension fund which it sounded attractive so I stayed with them for that period of time. In fact it went further than a year, and eventually I left when they decided that they were moving to a much larger factory and became a much larger company, the company is called Decraplastics, it’s pretty large now, much larger than it would have been with my three colleagues and I. I left them and I came, decided that I would get involved locally with activities in my town of Epping. I was in a pub once talking to a friend, and I said, and I talked to him about the fact that I thought that having lived in Epping for a quite while it’s about time I got interested in doing some activities or others. He said, ‘Well interesting, I’ll, er.’ Next day I received a phone call from a friend of his saying ‘I understand —‘ From then on I did in fact decide to become a councillor, and in 1965 I was elected as a councillor on the Epping Urban Council, and found on the council that the activities the council did were activities which I, I, I, I found I had a lot of interest in. Some of them [?] and I was made chairman of the housing committee, I took like that, to that like a duck to water, thoroughly enthralled by it, and I was chairman for a few years and decided that having revamped the whole idea of the council house both the waiting lists etcetera, we decided that we would commit people with the financial resources to do so to buy their council houses, and in mid 1960’s we decided to do this. At the same time people also wanted to, I decided that people who were under occupying their council houses, like on investigation we found that there were couples who were in three bedroom houses, there were elderly in accommodation most unsuitable for them, there were some single persons in three bedroom accommodation which was very wasteful considering we had a quite sizeable housing waiting list. So we then set about planning to build and did build housing suitable for the elderly, apartments in the main, that were managed by a manager or a warden or whatever you want to call it, and that they would be transferred there, we found that some of them didn’t have the resources to [coughs] to finance their removal so we assisted in that direction. There were several buildings that we eventually built to house these people and a lot of the houses one they were then vacated for and we cleared off our housing list, at that time was somewhere in the region of about four hundred, we cleared the whole lot off and a lot of people started buying their council houses. Which then of course a reorganisation took place in 1973, and I was then the having been the chairman of the council twice, I was the senior councillor who led the team in the reorganisation set up which four other three other local authorities were involved and we, we it was decided the way we would set up what was then became a new district council. The new district council then had a population of one hundred and twenty thousand, from the fact that we had started off with our council having about fifteen thousand was somewhere in the region of an enlargement.
AS: When you were selling off the properties what was the rationale behind that?
FL: Mainly because a lot of the people that were living in there had indicated that they didn’t want to move because they had jolly nice neighbours, they’d spent quite a lot of their own money building up there houses and they felt they would like to stay there. We inspected a lot of houses to try and verify this, added to which I was fortunate enough to have a councillor that had been retired who also was a past schoolmaster who kindly agreed to get a team of people, half a dozen people [coughs], ex councillors etcetera to do an investigation of the houses for me to get a clearer picture of who lived in the houses, what their attitudes were broadly speaking etcetera, and this was the picture that we got was the considerable under occupation, a fair amount of people who had lived in their homes and felt they didn’t want to move because they’d spent a lot of money improving them etcetera, they would like to buy them if they could. It was on these grounds that, I would say persuade the council that we should sell the houses to the tenants. Wasn’t all that many, I mean it was a fair number, but the urban council only had council houses of about twelve hundred or more, and then beg your pardon, twelve thousand or more, and the task wasn’t a great task being a salesman by trade or by occupation broadly I found this exercise to be rather fulfilling and of course my colleagues realised that [coughs] I knew what I was talking about. Anyway that went through fairly successfully and I say right up to reorganisation.
AS: And this was something that you decided at the council rather than part of the Conservative policy.
FL: Oh no, no, no, no. I wasn’t interested in Conservative. Although I’m by political indic, indication a Conservative I’m just about a Conservative, just about a Conservative. On many of the, I was totally opposed to nationalisation that what swung me in favour of being a Conservative because the Labour Party at the time of course were very, very much in favour of nationalisation. But it’s with that I strong, I didn’t have strong political attitude because I wasn’t really a politician when I first became a councillor.
AS: Were you standing on behalf of a Party or?
FL: I was standing on behalf of the Conservative Party, that’s broadly speaking why we got in, because at that time the swing was towards Conservatism in the district and we swept at that, within two years we swept all of the Labour and Liberal, as they were in those days Liberal not Liberal Democrats, Liberals off the council so the twelve of us at that time were all Conservative, when I was then became the senior councillor. But as I say when reorganisation took place in 1973 urban councils then were abolished, town councils were created, which my group myself created Epping Town Council, but we also became part of creating, six of us became part of creating the Epping Forest District Council which had fifty-seven, fifty-seven councillors, but unfortunately of course we only had six, therefore we were for the first couple of years not even considered until they found out that some of us knew what we talking about and from my point of view they knew what I was talking about when I talked about housing so I was persuaded, I persuaded them to let me become chairman of the housing committee. After I’d been chairman of the housing committee and started my usual process of right to buy continuation we started drawing in, buying in houses that were in our area that belonged to other councils, Walthamstow, Waltham Abbey, there were some there, they were GLC council houses in here, we bought all of those out and brought them back into our own fold in the Epping Forest District. I initiated broadly speaking the policy in relation to that and then of course after having done that as I say I was invited by the World of Property Housing Association to join them if I would care to. I did join them and then became a member of that particular organisation which after about twelve months decided to, to extend their activities and alter their name to Sanctuary Housing Association which is well known today. They made me, or persuaded me to become chairman of Essex Committee, then they persuaded me to become chairman of the Hertfordshire Committee, then they joined those committees together and asked me to be chairman of both the committees, the joint committees. Later they invited me to become member of central council which I, all of this is voluntary in my particular case.
AS: Yes.
FL: And costing me.
AS: Yes.
FL: Apart from the fact I got travelling expenses and when I was away for a long time I had lunch and all the other things catered for, but that’s all, I wasn’t paid. I was opposed to payment at that time [coughs]. Anyway the procedure with Sanctuary was more or less similar to my procedure in the council, I became vice-chairman of the council of the association, appointed also manager of a group that were responsible for the development of Shadwell Basin [?] because there was a large piece of ground on there owned by the housing association and they wanted to develop it, and we developed that into a large block of flats, beside on one side of the basin they were about eight detached houses. The detached houses were sold, the flats initially were let but a lot of people once more wanted to buy them and there was no objection if they wanted to pay the right price which Sanctuary agreed to do. Then on the other side of Sanctuary there was another piece of ground there that we developed that and there we confined it to rental, but we confined the rental to nurses, firemen, policemen, and one or two of the other, doctors as well, who wished to be locally located, a lot of those were rented together and there were roundabout I think about two hundred, say two hundred, two hundred, I think it was two hundred and ten, and they were all let, but eventually of course a lot of those people wanted to buy them and eventually they started buying them as well.
AS: I think that one of the problems in London is that properties have become so valuable that they cease to becomes, they’re very much investment opportunities.
FL: Yes. Oh with Sanctuary I then as I say I became vice-chairman of the central council and by then I’d been with Sanctuary about ten years, eight, ten years and they wanted to persuade me to take on the duties of the chairman which I refused, but I did accept the duties of the chairman of the special projects committee, and that was the most gratifying committee that I found. And today Sanctuary is the largest Housing Association in the country and also I’m pleased to say that they are doing a lot of care facilities for people and in a nice good way, and also a lot of, um, they started letting people buy some of their houses but I don’t think they were enthusiastic about it, which I didn’t push, but ultimately of course I was getting on a bit and decided when I was seventy-nine that I’d had enough and I discussed with the chief executive and the treasurer, two very good friends of mine by then, that I was going to retire. They regretted it but understood, and I graciously after persuasion by some of the members of the committee I understand gave me a crate of my favourite red wine when I retired, which I so enjoyed, and I did leave Sanctuary regrettably but I think it was inevitable, and I’m pleased to say that as time as gone by, I’m still in touch because I’m still a member and still life president although that role is a non-entity really, but unfortunately most of the council members are now paid. The chief executive and treasurer have got salaries that I think are higher that the Prime Minister’s but that is I’m afraid life now that people are paid these monies in order to, the organisation to attract the most skilled people they’ve got lawyers, managers, what have you on their committees, so that they are in fact as I say the most financially balanced housing association in the country but, and the chief executive I understand recently awarded a CBE,. which in the past being slightly socialistic he wasn’t inclined to want, but I think the grade of CBE I think attracted him a little bit more than an M or an O and I think that, that I believe changed his mind. I’m still in touch with David and treasurer, not very much, I occasionally get acquainted with their activities but I’m gradually receding into the background, I’m still filling in an annual little return about what activities that are going on and what I think of them and the people that are on the central council which I’ve got no jurisdiction over at all so it’s just a question of fill the paper in and sign it I do that annually. They used to send me a catalogue, a diary at one time, but they don’t anymore which I regret very much because it was a damn good one. [laughs] But there you are it’s closing down at the age now of ninety-four given up most of my activities when I was eighty, I regret to say that when I retired from the Epping Forest District Council, having been disgustingly fit most of my life I then bumped up against one or two health problems which am fortunate enough to have skilled doctors, and skilled practitioners, specialists in our local hospital whom I became very friendly with and they were very, very accommodating, and I have been cured of most of those activities the only thing that I do now is take quite a number of pills and I never walk fast these days in case I rattle. [laughs]
AS: Thank you very much Freddie I’m very grateful for the opportunity to hear your story.
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 Frederick Limer
Creator
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Andrew Sadler
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-12-10
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ALimerFW151210
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
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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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01:36:40 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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Great Britain
England--Lancashire
England--Gloucestershire
England--Norfolk
England--Suffolk
England--Blackpool
Scotland--Fife
Scotland--St. Andrews
Canada
New Brunswick
New Brunswick--Moncton
France
France--Juvincourt-et-Damary
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Krefeld
Italy
Italy--Pomigliano d'Arco
Netherlands
Netherlands--Hague
Germany--Saarbrücken
Description
An account of the resource
Freddie Frederick volunteered for the Royal Air Force and did a course in Blackpool. He was posted to No. 12 Initial Training Wing at St Andrew, although was unsuccessful in his flying test. Freddie was then trained at RCAF Moncton in Canada and posted to 31 Navigational School on Lake Erie. He came top in a bombing course at RCAF Fingal.
From Canada, Freddie went to RAF Staverton where he became a bomb aimer. He transferred to a unit where he crewed up and was made a flight sergeant. Further courses were taken on twin engine and four engine aircraft. In December 1944, Freddie was assigned to 149 Squadron at RAF Methwold, a satellite of RAF Mildenhall, where they converted onto Lancasters.
Freddie describes operations to Krefeld, Saarbrücken, Dresden and Kiel. He also was involved in two food drops to The Hague. They became known as Gee-H Squadron for their greater navigation accuracy. They did classified work doing line overlaps: photographs in sequence of certain areas in Germany. Freddie also refers to Cook’s Tours at the end of the war. He was involved in flying back prisoners of war from Juvincourt in France and Pomigliano in Italy.
After the war, Freddie was appointed bomb aimer at the RAF Bomb Ballistics Unit at RAF Martlesham Heath whose operations were secret. They flew in Lancasters and Mosquitos through Orford Ness, a peacetime experimental station, which tested the accuracy of a wide number of bombs.
After Freddie’s career in the plastics industry, he became a local councillor and chairman of the council. His housing work continued with various governance roles for a housing association.
Contributor
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Sally Coulter
149 Squadron
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Cook’s tour
crewing up
Gee
guard room
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
mess
Mosquito
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
RAF Martlesham Heath
RAF Methwold
RAF Staverton
RCAF Fingal
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/540/8780/AGilbertAC161013.2.mp3
d34798a44bdedb497b506541d0fc1232
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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Gilbert, Alexander Charles
A C Gilbert
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Gilbert, AC
Description
An account of the resource
21 items. An oral history interview with Squadron Leader Alexander Charles Gilbert DFC (b. 1921, 1336682, 186764 Royal Air Force) his log book, documents and photographs. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 9, 514 and 159 Squadrons. He was Awarded the Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur in 2020.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Alexander Gilbert and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
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2016-01-13
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.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 13th of October 2016 and we’re with Squadron Leader Alexander Gilbert DFC at Cheddington near Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire, and we’re going to talk about his career in the RAF, which was a long one. What do you remember in the earliest recollections then Alex?
AG: What do you mean? Going way, right back?
CB: Right from when you were really young.
AG: Ah, well, my father was a Hansom cab driver in London.
CB: Oh right.
AG: He joined the Army at the outbreak of World War One and served right through. And because he’d been a Hansom cab driver and knew all about horses they, he was assigned to what they called the Rough Riders, looking after horses, taking them across the Channel to France, and training horses and occasionally going down to Spain to purchase more horses and mules that were brought back for service in France. And at the end of the war, he was at this, this re-mount depot as it was called, at Swaythling in Southampton and he stayed there, and of course, he was married at the time. And from there, what could we say? I started school aged five, and I went to an elementary school and I left at fourteen, and then I was training or trying to become something in the art world, and I attended art school in Southampton. And then in November 1940, I volunteered to join the RAF and was called forward for service on the 7th of April 1941 and despatched to Uxbridge, where I spent three or four days being interviewed and processed, sworn in, all that sort of thing, and then assigned to a trade, and I was told I was to be trained as a Flight Mechanic Air Frames. From there, along with others, I proceeded to Blackpool where I carried out my recruit training on Blackpool sands, accommodated in one of the well-known Blackpool boarding houses. The training, as I remember it, lasted about four, four or five weeks. Recruit training and then we were moved to nearby Kirkham to, to carry out the trade training. The flight mechanics course lasted, as I remember, about eight, eight to ten weeks. At the end of the course, we had a final examination and the top third who passed out were retained to carry on to do a fitter’s course. I was in the top third so I stayed behind and completed the two courses, and at the end of it, I was a Group One Tradesman, Fitter 2A as they called them. I then had my, my first posting which was to what had been Exeter Airport, which was now a station that was occupied by a Spitfire squadron. I was only there about four weeks when the squadron was moved to an airfield near London. The air, the air, the ground crew were not required because the airfield that they’d gone to, already had ground crew, so we were dispersed and posted to various stations and I was posted to Calshot. Calshot was a very dreary place, it hadn’t changed, I don’t think, since World War One. The accommodation was pretty grim, I always remember the beds we had were iron plated, sort of, you know bedsteads. Very, very uncomfortable. The working hours, we worked, weekdays, every day, eight hours a day. We also worked weekends, Saturday mornings and Sunday mornings. We had the afternoons off at weekends, but because Calshot was rather isolated, there wasn’t anywhere to go anyway. So altogether it was a place that I, I really did not like at all. Anyway, apart from the work that we had to do, we also did guard duty at night along the Calshot foreshore, because there was the talk at the time about invasion and all this business, so we, we did these guard duties as well as our normal work. A very cold and uncomfortable place in winter time I can assure you, on the Calshot foreshore, very uncomfortable indeed. In early 1942, it was about March I suppose, a letter was pinned on the notice board. It said that the aircraft industry was expanding and there was a shortage of skilled tradesmen. RAF fitters were invited to volunteer for a short secondment to the aircraft industry. I thought to myself this is a way of getting away from Calshot so I volunteered. I didn’t really know what I was getting into actually. They told me I, yeah, I was to report to an office in Oxford, which I did. When I arrived there they said you will be working at the Cowley Motor Works. It was no longer a motor works of course, they were turning out parts for Lancaster aircraft, and they said, ‘You will work on permanent nightshift’. You start at 8 o’clock in the evening and you worked until 6 o’clock the next morning, with an hour’s break at night, and that was the routine. They gave me an address to go to where I would be accommodated. It was a house in the backstreets of Oxford that was owned by a young couple in their early thirties I suppose, and it was obvious from the start that they resented having a lodger, so there was no welcome at all. The woman took me up to what was to be my room, which had a bed, a table and a chair and that was it. It was a very depressing place altogether. I spent the night there, and the next morning, I had the same reception from this couple, not a friendly attitude at all, so I waited till they’d gone to work, packed my small bag and went back to the office I’d first reported to. The woman I saw, I explained to her about this place and I said, ‘I’m not going to stay there’, I said, ‘I am not going to stay in that place. Can you give me a new address? Another address to go to?’ So she said, ‘Yes, I’ll do that’. She said, ‘Here’s an address in Cowley’. I went there, a very nice street, the house very nice. Nice, nice couple, middle aged couple. The husband worked as a chef at the Randolph Hotel in Oxford. She showed me to my room, very pleasant and comfortable, so that’s where I was whilst I worked at Cowley. The next day I reported to the Cowley Works to start work. The chap I saw said, ‘You will be working with a team of four’, there was already four there, ‘You’ll be, you’ll be number five, working with this team producing spars for the fuselage of Lancaster aircraft’. The four chaps turned out all to be Welshmen, they all came from the same place. They all knew one another well and I was taken into the team and we all got on quite well. That was it for the next five months or so. Then in early September, I received a letter to say that I was to be recalled and to report to Scampton, RAF Scampton, which I duly did, and on arrival at Scampton, I was told I was posted to 49 Bomber Squadron to work on Lancaster aircraft. I worked, I was on, on 49 Squadron through the winter of ’42/43, then in early ’43, I suppose it was about March time, a further letter appeared on a noticeboard to say that more and more four engine bomber squadrons were being formed, and there was a requirement for flight engineers, so I volunteered. At the time, there was no flight engineer training course and they said you would receive your training at the Rolls Royce works at Derby, and you would do a two week course on the Merlin engine and that would be it, which I did. After that, I was promoted to the rank of sergeant, given my flight engineer brevet, and then moved to Morton Hall where I would be crewed up. I got to Morton Hall and found that there were crews already there. There was the pilot, navigator, bomb aimer, wireless operator and the two air gunners and now they wanted a flight engineer. The way we were crewed up was the other engineers and myself were put in to a hut and told to line up along one wall. The pilots then came in and lined themselves up on the opposite wall, and the procedure was that the pilot would look across at the engineers, look at one that he thought would, would be ok and ask him, and I was approached by a chap called Colin Payne who said to me, ‘How would you like to join my crew?’ And I said, ‘Yes please. I would’, because I liked the look of him, and then he took me outside to introduce me to the other crew members and that was it. We were then moved to Winthorpe to do our conversion course on the Lancaster, which we did, and from there, we had our first operational posting and we were posted to 9 Squadron at Bardney. While we were there, we did ten operations, including the three to Hamburg [pause]. At the time the squadrons, the Stirling squadrons in 3 Group were being converted to Lancasters, and new squadrons were starting to be formed. We were told that a new squadron was being formed at Foulsham, and was to be called 514 Squadron. It appears that they wanted two or three experienced crews to start the squadron off and then new crews would be added. So we duly reported to Foulsham where we did four operations with the newly formed 514 Squadron. The last of the four operations was to Berlin and when we were briefed, we were told that when we completed the operation, ‘You will not be returning to Foulsham. You will fly straight to Waterbeach’, which was to be the home of 514 Squadron, which was a rather odd thing to do because we had our belongings and all that sort of thing, and in, somebody wrote up afterwards what this was all about and there’s the letter there. Is that the one? The top one. “Get on your bike” or something, it says.
CB: “Posted via Berlin. Take [take] your bike”.
AG: That’s it. “Take your bike”, yeah. Yeah. I mean, this was the thing which you normally, they would never allow you to take anything.
CB: No.
AG: But we took all our stuff with us to Berlin and then to Waterbeach.
CB: Because you were moving airfield.
AG: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so that was that. So we arrived at Waterbeach, whilst we were at Waterbeach, we did another ten operations. So, so far we’d done ten at Bardney, ten at Waterbeach and I had done, and the four at Foulsham, a total of twenty four. The crew actually had done twenty five, there was one operation that I couldn’t go on because I had developed a nasty quinsy in my throat, and I couldn’t fly for three or four days, so I did one less operation than the rest of the crew. However, when they’d done twenty five and I’d done twenty four, we were then told that you had completed your first tour. Now this was five short of the normal thirty operations. The reason for this, I don’t know, whether it was because of the fourteen operations we’d done with 514 Squadron, ten of them had been to Berlin. Ten. Whether it was because of that, I don’t know but they said, ‘You have completed your first tour’ [pause]. The crew were then dispersed, of course, and posted to various training units. I stayed with Colin and we were posted as instructors to Number 3 LFS at Feltwell [pause], where we were until the, towards the end of the year. Well, we were, this was 1944, Colin said to me, ‘How would you like to go back on operations?’ I said, ‘Well I don’t mind’, so he said, ‘We will be posted to 149 Squadron at Methwold’, he said, ‘And I’ll try and contact some of the old crew members and ask them to join us’. He managed to contact the wireless operator and the rear gunner, and they duly arrived to join us at Methwold. We then picked up a new navigator, a new bomb aimer and a new gunner to replace the Australian. The Australian, by the way, was given a choice, having completed a tour of operations, either to stay in England or to go home to Australia, and he elected to go home. Now, among the operations we did with 149, we did the Dresden operation. We went to Dresden and we also did two Manna operations, dropping food. In our case, we dropped food to people in Rotterdam and The Hague [pause], and that was shortly before the war ended. At the end of the war, we started to get demobbed. I had been offered a four year extension, I didn’t know what I was going to do, by the way. I was married by that time, and my wife Dorothy had been a WAAF MT driver at Waterbeach. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, and as I was offered this four year extension of service, I thought, I’ll take it and then make up my mind later about my future career or whatever. Anyway, I took the four year extension of service, stayed with the squadron until it was disbanded in January 1948, but during that time we did various exercises. We had a three, three, three or four day detachment to Trondheim in Norway, we did a trip to Juvincourt to bring back these chaps who’d been in the Army and been prisoners of war. We had an attachment to Gatow in Berlin, we did a tour of Germany by air, looking at some of the stations that we had bombed, some of the towns that we had bombed to see what it all looked like, and we had this trip to Pomigliano in Italy, and we had this two week detachment in the Canal Zone [pause]. And then, when the squadron was finally disbanded, there was no requirement, of course, for flight engineers, bomb aimers, air gunners or anything like that. The only aircrew they wanted to retain, were pilots and navigators, so I was transferred from the GD branch to the secretarial branch [pause]. I had two short, short postings, one to Watton and one to Bletchley Park which, at that time was the headquarters of Central Signals Area. You weren’t allowed in the house at that time, everything was all locked up and no one ever spoke about what, what was done at Bletchley during the war. No one ever said a word about it. One of the jobs I had to do whilst I was at Bletchley was opening the mail that came in, and one morning I opened the mail, opened this post gram, and found that I was posted to Hong Kong and I was posted to 367 Signals Unit, which was a Y station on Hong Kong Island. I travelled to Hong Kong by way of Singapore, on the troop ship Orbita, which took some five weeks to get to Singapore. I spent three of four days in Singapore and then boarded a Dakota aircraft to get to Hong Kong. We stopped on the way at Saigon to refuel and have something to eat, and the whole trip took eight and a half hours in this Dakota, and then arrived in Hong Kong. At the time, it was at the time that Chairman Mao was winning the war in China and people were flooding in to Hong Kong. Rich Chinese people who could afford anything, and any spare accommodation in Hong Kong was taken up by these people. So in our case, we were, I was occupied in the mess at Kai Tak, and it was a question of applying to get my wife to come and join me, which would take some time, and you just went on the married quarters waiting list, and again there were very few married quarters in Hong Kong, so you just had to wait a long time to get one. Anyway, my wife arrived in September with our newly born young girl, Janet, my daughter, and we were accommodated, like a lot of others, in one room in a hotel. Not, again, not very comfortable, waiting to be allocated a married quarter, but anyway, things in this hotel, it was hot, humid, again terribly uncomfortable, and every day I used to buy the China News, news, newspaper and see if there was any sort of accommodation being advertised. One day I bought the paper, and there was an advert in there which said there was an English family who worked in Hong Kong going home on leave, and their flat would be available. Offers were asked for, so I wrote, I sat down and wrote a letter which brought tears to the eyes of anyone who read it, and posted it off to this man called Alex MacLeod, who owned this flat. A couple of days later, he rang me up at the hotel and he said could I come over and have a chat with him and his wife, so Dorothy and I went across to the island, because our hotel was located in Kowloon on the mainland, and he took me up to the flat, introduced me to Joan, his wife, and after a short conversation they said, ‘We’re going to offer you the flat’. So we moved out of the hotel and into this flat, which we occupied for about two months whilst they were away in England. When they were due back, strangely enough, I rose to the top of the married quarters list and was offered a married quarter, so we moved in to the quarter and there we stayed until I completed my tour in Hong Kong in September 1953 [pause].
CB: We’ll just pause there for a mo.
AG: Do you want to go on there because we were now –?
CB: Yeah. Give you a –
[Recording paused]
CB: Ok.
AG: Right.
CB: So you’re in Hong Kong.
AG: In Hong Kong, completed nearly three years in Hong Kong, and when I came home, I was posted to 3513 FCU, Fighter Control Unit in Devonport as adjutant of the unit. We had an operational outstation at Hope Cove with a small staff at Hope Cove and [pause], I’m trying to get my thoughts right here. I completed a tour at 3513 and was then posted to 24 Group on the P staff. This was in Lincolnshire and –
CB: So what was P staff?
AG: P staff. P2 was Postings –
CB: Right.
AG: Postings of officers [pause]. I’d been there a short time and it was decided that the P staffs at Groups headquarters would be, would be closed down and they were no longer required, and so I was then posted to our headquarters, Technical Training Command at Brampton, again on the P staff [pause]. And whilst I was there my, I was then granted a permanent commission on the general list [pause]. From then I had various postings, I had two and a half years at SHAEF headquarters in Fontainebleau in France.
CB: What did you do there?
AG: I was the adjutant of the RAF support unit. Each of the nationalities at Fontainebleau, there were the British, the Americans, Canadians, French of course, they each had their own support staff and I was the adjutant of the RAF support staff [pause]. After that, my next posting was as recruiting officer at Brighton [pause], from there, I was posted to Headquarters Transport Command at Upavon, where I was the P1 staff officer responsible for courts martial boards of enquiry and all that sort of thing. I was there for only a few months when I was promoted to Squadron Leader and posted to the record office at Barnwood in Gloucester, where I was on the staff of the air commodore, the AOC [pause]. I did just over two years there and then I was posted to Aden on a twelve month unaccompanied tour of Aden. Whilst I was in Aden, they had a peculiar arrangement in Aden at the time. It was nearing the time when we were planning to get out of Aden anyway, to leave it and they had what they called continuity posts, which was a posting of two and a half years where you could be accompanied by your wife and family. A non-continuity post was a twelve month unaccompanied tour post which I, which I was in. Again, Aden, a dreadful place, we should have got out of Aden years ago but it wasn’t until 1967 that we finally left. I completed the twelve month unaccompanied tour, and on arrival back at the UK, was posted to Headquarters Strike Command at High Wycombe where I was on the aug staff [pause]. From there, I was posted to the Air Ministry on the staff of the director of manning. I did three and a half years at Adastral House in Holborn, which was part of the Air Ministry at the time. Nearing the end of my service, I had a final posting to Stanmore Park, where I was the deputy CO of Stanmore Park and that was my final posting, having then completed thirty five years in the service [pause]. Knowing that I was to be, leave the service in the October 1976, I had already started to formulate what I was going to do when I left the service, and I had applied for a job with the University of Buckingham, which I got. They had an offshoot of the University at Chalfont St Giles. By this time, of course, we’d bought this house in Cheddington, and the journey between here and Chalfont St Giles was twenty two miles. Anyway, which I had to do every day but I thought, well I’d got the job, and it seemed quite a good job looking after the admin side of the University of Buckingham at Chalfont. I had been interviewed for the job along with three others. They’d had a large number of applications to get this job, but anyway, there was three others and myself who were interviewed for this job. We spent a day at Chalfont, the morning we spent touring the place, and in the afternoon, the interviews were carried out, and the interview for each one of us lasted about three quarters of an hour or so, and we sat there then waiting to see who’d got the job, and at the end of the afternoon, the Vice Chancellor came in and said, ‘We’ve decided to give the job to Squadron Leader Gilbert’. So I thought, right. That was it. Now, this was before I had left the service. He said, ‘We will keep the job open for you until you leave the service in October’ [pause]. Shortly before I retired, I was in my office at, at Stanmore Park and I had a phone call from the Air Ministry, and they said, ‘We notice that you live near Halton’, they said, ‘Would you be interested in a retired officer job at Halton? The job would be for ten years after you leave the service and’, they said, ‘You’ll have to be interviewed of course, at Headquarters Air Cadets’. And I said, ‘Well, I’ll go there. I’m quite interested to find out what it’s all about’. So I, I went to Headquarters Air Cadets for this interview along, along with a number of others, and again at the end of the afternoon, the group captain, who was in charge of the interview board, came and said, ‘We’ve decided to offer the job to Squadron Leader Gilbert’. So I thought, right, I’ve got two jobs now. I’ve got the offer of a job at Halton and the job at Chalfont St Giles, and I thought, well to be very honest, Halton is quite close here, I would know all the routine of the service. I would still be in uniform as a squadron leader at Halton for ten years secure, secure employment, so I thought, well I will have to try, try and take this job. So I rang the Vice Chancellor at Chalfont and said, ‘Could I come down and see you?’ Which I did. I went down to him and explained what it was all about and I said, ‘To be quite honest, this job at Halton, I really know all about it. I know the routine of the service, it’s quite near my home and I feel that really, I ought to take this job’. He said, ‘I quite understand’, he said, ‘We will find somebody else’, and he said, ‘I wish you the best of luck’. So I started at Halton. I was the wing admin officer of Herts and Bucks Wing, Air Training Corps, and my job was taking care of all the ATC squadrons in Hertfordshire and in Bucks, and I completed that job for ten years. And that, I think, is the end of it.
CB: You decided to retire completely at age sixty five.
AG: At sixty five, I thought I have done enough. I have never been unemployed and I thought I’d, I’d done quite enough and that’s it.
CB: Very good. Let’s have a break.
[Recording paused]
CB: Geoff, thanks, sorry Alex. Thanks very much for all that stuff. What I want to do is run through some individual items. One of the things we touched on was Manna.
AG: Yeah.
CB: Now, this is quite important in a lot of ways, so could you just tell us how did you get involved in that and what, what happened and how did you feel?
AG: Well on the, towards the end of the war, we were told that the people in Holland were starving and a lot were dying. In fact, I was told eventually that twenty thousand Dutch people died of starvation, so we were told that we were to take part in what we was called Operation Manna. The word comes, you probably know –
CB: From heaven.
AG: The word comes from the bible, and when the Israelites and Moses were driven out of Egypt, they were starving and Moses prayed for them to get food, and it appears that a heavy dew descended on the land. This dew was sweet tasting and the Israelites were able to eat this stuff and so survive. And that is where, and Moses said, ‘This is Manna from heaven’, and that’s the way it came about. We did two food drops, one to Rotterdam, one to the Hague, flew to Holland with bomb bay laden with food and as we came in, in to the park at low level and dropped the food the people who’d gathered there all started shouting and cheering and all the rest of it. It was a sight that I will always remember, and it made us feel that we’d done something that was really worthwhile and that is the Manna story as far as I’m concerned.
CB: Then when you got back? So, you then got back and then what?
AG: Well got back and as I say, we did the two, two trips and then we just carried on with normal squadron duties.
CB: Right.
AG: But this happened, people don’t seem to realise that these drops took place while the war was still on. The Germans had agreed that they would not interfere with the Operation Manna.
CB: And what height and speed did you do this?
AG: We came in about five hundred feet, and the food was all in sacks on a wooden sort of arrangement. A pallet as they called it, a wooden pallet, and the food was all in sacks and the pallet was just dropped on to the park.
CB: A moving experience.
AG: Yeah. Very much so. Very much so. Never forget these people.
CB: No.
AG: Who were all so pleased to see us.
CB: And after the war did you ever go to Holland?
AG: No. No. No. Oh I went, when I was at Fontainebleau.
CB: Oh you did?
AG: I used to go, go up there occasionally. Oh yes. Yeah.
CB: Right.
AG: Yeah.
CB: Thank you.
[Recording paused]
CB: Now we’re just going on to your role as a flight engineer, because the flight engineer’s activities were actually quite busy. If we start with take-off, could you describe the take-off process and how the flight engineer gets involved in that, and what he does?
AG: Well at take-off, we go down the runway, the pilot takes the aircraft in to the air, and as he does so, the flight engineer gets the undercarriage up and adjusts the flaps, and that’s, that’s about it until you’re up. And er –
CB: But in fact, you take over the throttles at an early stage, so can you just describe that?
AG: And, and, yes, once you’re airborne at flying height, then you adjust the throttles to whatever speed, you know, the pilot wants, and the bombing height of course was between eighteen and twenty thousand feet each time. And that was it. Most of the trips took about four and a half to five hours, but of course, a trip like Dresden, we were airborne for eight and a half hours, and we went in across Germany but when we came out, we went north and flew over Denmark and came home, home that way.
CB: Right. So when you’re flying as an engineer, what do you do?
AG: Well, you’re doing really the log more than anything and anything else the pilots wants you to do, but normally, I mean, the whole crew would settle down really, and you were just airborne hoping you wouldn’t be attacked by a night fighter.
CB: Yeah. So when you fill in the log, what are you filling in and with what frequency?
AG: The frequency was about every half hour or so and you would put in what you thought was the fuel consumption at the time.
CB: So how –
AG: That sort of thing. Yes.
CB: How do you work out the transfer of fuel and what do you do?
AG: Yes. Well, you know that you’re on, say, a particular tank for a certain time and that it was time to transfer or refill that tank or whatever and you would do. It didn’t happen all that often of course, I forget now how many, how many petrol tanks there were on the Lancaster, I think it was two to three at each wing, something like that. I forget those details now, it’s too long ago and regrettably, all the booklets I had on the Lancaster I kept for many years, but with all my travels, eventually they were all discarded.
CB: I’ve got a pilot –
AG: Regrettably.
CB: I’ve got a –
AG: My daughter always swears at me, she says, ‘you should have kept all that stuff, Dad’.
CB: Yeah.
AG: You should have kept it all. Well I know that is true now but hindsight is all very well, isn’t it?
CB: Well perhaps it wasn’t so important then. I’ve got a –
AG: That’s right. Yeah.
CB: I’ve got a pilot’s notes, I’ll lend it to you.
AG: That’s right. Yeah. Well I had all the notes on the Lancaster, I could tell you all about it.
CB: Yeah.
AG: Yes. Yeah.
CB: Now, why are you moving fuel?
AG: Because of weight, weight really, to get an evenly balanced aircraft.
CB: So you –
AG: That’s the only, only reason I can recall.
CB: So you’re moving it from the outer tanks to the inner ones, are you?
AG: That’s right, something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So we finish the sortie and you’re coming in to land. What does the, what’s the tasks, the role of the flight engineer?
AG: Well once we’re on the circuit and we were called in, then it was undercarriage down and just standing by the pilot, and that was it really, making any engine adjustment as we came in. That was all. Yeah.
CB: So back on the stage of taking off, at what point and how do you balance the engines? Synchronise the engines.
AG: Once you’d got to a certain height.
CB: Right.
AG: Once you’d got to a certain height, yeah. Yeah.
CB: And the purpose of that is?
AG: Well you stayed on that, on that engine arrangement whilst, you know, whilst you were in flight. You could have been on that for some time.
CB: But –
AG: Some time without any change. You weren’t constantly changing. I mean, let’s be honest about it, with these operations, a lot of the time, a lot of the crew were doing nothing. Nothing. I mean the bomb aimer, he was doing nothing down in the front. The ones who were working the hardest were the pilot and the navigator. The wireless operator wasn’t allowed to transmit whilst you were over Germany, and the two gunners were just sat there, hoping that the aircraft wouldn’t be attacked. So there were long periods of inactivity let’s say, on the part of a lot of the crew.
CB: So you did a complete tour and other sorties as well.
AG: Yeah.
CB: How reliable was the aircraft and what sort of snags did you come up against?
AG: The aircraft was very reliable because your ground crew were the same people. You had the same engine fitter, the same air frame chap and the same armourer who looked after your aircraft. So after an operation, normally, you would go down to the flight lines, and they would say, ‘We’ve checked everything over. Will you give it an air test?’ So just Colin and I would clamber aboard the aircraft, go up for about twenty minutes, make sure that everything was working all right and land, and that was the air test after they’d serviced the aircraft, and that used to happen practically every time. Yeah.
CB: Now going back to the beginning of your career, in volunteering to join the forces, there was basically an option between the Army, the Navy and the Air Force. What prompted you to make the decision you did?
AG: I just didn’t want to join the Army or the Navy, and I thought I want to join, join the Air Force and that was it.
CB: To what extent did the Air Forces activities in the early part of the war, inspire people of your age? So, Battle of Britain, that sort of thing?
AG: Oh well, yes. You see our home was in Southampton, and out of interest, while I was training on that flight mechanics course at Kirkham, I had a phone call from my sister who said, ‘Last night, our house was destroyed’. It was bombed. She said, ‘We’re all alright, Dad and Mum because we were in an air raid shelter nearby, a service shelter and so we’re all alright’. And when I was in, told my flight commander, he said, ‘So you’re family are ok, are they? Nobody’s injured. No?’ I said, ‘No’. He said, ‘Then we can’t spare you any time off to go home’, so that was that. But in Southampton, before I joined the Air Force of course, the Battle of Britain was going on. The first RAF fighter pilot to get the VC got it over Southampton.
CB: Nicholson.
AG: Nicholson. And he was the first one and I saw him come down.
CB: Did you really?
AG: And he landed near where I lived, yeah, and it was all that sort of thing that inspired one. Oh yes, you know, join the RAF. That’s, that’s, that’s the place to join.
CB: Exciting.
AG: Exciting. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, just across the water, the Itchen, was the Supermarine Works.
CB: In the Isle of Wight.
AG: Was the first place to build the Spitfire aircraft, because the Spitfire, when the trials took place before the war, took place at Eastleigh Airport near Southampton.
CB: Yeah.
AG: Yeah. So, and of course, the man who invented the Spitfire, RJ Mitchell, lived in Southampton at the time. In fact, there’s the plaque on the house now where he lived.
CB: What was the reaction of your parents to the destruction of their home?
AG: Ahh well, they, it was just one of the, I mean, this was happening all the time during the war and they rapidly found a place nearby. A house that they rented for the rest of the war.
CB: But they’d owned their own home before.
AG: No, it was a council house.
CB: Oh, was it? Right.
AG: It was a council, yes, it was a council house, and so that was that. So they rented this place whilst the war was on, and after the war, they rebuilt the council house where they’d lived and they went back to the same spot in a new house.
CB: Did they really?
AG: Yeah.
CB: And what about your sister’s reaction?
AG: [laughs] Well, well, you know it was all sorts of things. Strange things happening during the war and you just accepted it and, you see, you know in Southampton, I forget how many people were killed, between four and five hundred in air raids, and well this was what was going on. People, you know, in those days really didn’t complain as much as they complain today.
CB: Your sister is older than you or younger?
AG: Older.
CB: Older.
AG: Older. Yes.
CB: So did she have -?
AG: She, she, she, she, she was married and they lived in rooms in Southampton, because again, this question of accommodation, you know, wasn’t easy. Yes. And they lived in two rooms in Southampton.
CB: Was there a requirement by the government that people should give up space for people to live with them, because of the shortage of housing, or how did it work?
AG: I didn’t ever hear that was actually pressed all that much. No, no I didn’t, I didn’t. The only other thing I, I remember about the house being destroyed, was some of my belongings in it of course, and there was a compensation scheme and I got sixteen pounds compensation for the loss of my belongings in that.
CB: Right.
AG: When, when that happened.
CB: How did you feel about that?
AG: Sixteen. Well I thought, this isn’t much but in those days, again, sixteen pounds wasn’t bad.
CB: No.
AG: Wasn’t bad, no, so that was it.
CB: Changing now to when you joined the RAF and started your technical training.
AG: Yeah.
CB: How did that go? How was it set out, mapped out as a course and what did you do in the course?
AG: Well it, for each subject that you were taught, they had corporals as instructors, and you just attended this classroom and on a particular day or week they, you were, well they would talk about air frames or, or whatever. Yeah. I can’t, to be honest, I can’t remember a great deal about that.
CB: No.
AG: It was just that you attended class every day and that was it. Yes. Yeah.
CB: And then you went on to the more advanced operate, as a mechanics course.
AG: Yes. The –
CB: So how different was that?
AG: The fitter’s course was more advanced.
CB: Right.
AG: Yes, and again the detail, after seventy five years, I cannot remember.
CB: No.
AG: But we did this advanced fitter’s course and that lasted another six weeks or so, so altogether I was at Kirkham –
CB: Yeah.
AG: You know, for quite some time, doing the two courses.
CB: Yeah. Now when you were at Calshot then, on the board, a notice appeared saying they were looking for aircrew, what prompted you to –?
AG: No. At Calshot, they were looking for people to volunteer to work in the aircraft industry.
CB: Ah, that was the aircraft industry.
AG: That was the aircraft industry.
CB: Right. Ok.
AG: That’s right. Yes.
CB: So what prompted you to do that?
AG: Well I saw it as a way of getting out of Calshot.
CB: Yes.
AG: To be quite honest, I thought I’ll get away from this dreary place but I didn’t realise what I was getting in to, because the work in the aircraft industry was jolly hard. And long hours, long hours. I mean, 8 o’clock in the evening till 6 o’clock the next morning with an hour’s break in the middle of the night, and that was –
[phone ringing]
AG: Ah –
CB: Stop for a mo.
[Recording paused]
AG: Is that yours?
CB: No, it’s yours.
AG: That was, that was, that was as I said, I didn’t –
CB: This was at Cowley.
AG: I didn’t know what I‘d let myself in for.
CB: No.
AG: But if I’d, if I’d have known, I probably wouldn’t have volunteered.
CB: Yes.
AG: But however yeah, well it was because it was long hours.
CB: Yeah.
AG: And it was every night of the week except one. We had one night off at the end of the week.
CB: So, so what exactly were you making that was part of the Lancaster?
AG: These spars for the fuselage.
CB: Right.
AG: Yeah.
CB: So they’re effectively the circles of structure that hold the –
AG: That’s right.
CB: Skin together.
AG: Yeah. That hold the skin together. That’s it.
CB: Right.
AG: That was, yeah, yeah, along with these four Welshmen.
CB: But you got on well together so that was good.
AG: Oh we got along well together. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So then you mentioned that you were recalled by the RAF to go back to a, to the front line as it were.
AG: Yeah.
CB: And you went to 49 Squadron. What did you do?
AG: Well I went to Scampton first.
CB: Scampton. What did you do there?
AG: Which was the base station.
CB: Yeah.
AG: As they called it.
CB: Ok.
AG: Yeah.
CB: Scampton so –
AG: One of the satellites was 49 Bomber Squadron.
CB: Right.
AG: And that’s where I went and –
CB: Doing what?
AG: Working on Lancasters.
CB: Right. What sort of things were you doing on the Lancaster?
AG: Well anything that needed doing to the fuselage or whatever, yeah, anything.
CB: How did the ground crews on the front line squadrons react to damage to the aircraft from flak and so on?
AG: Well, again, people just got on with it, you know. If there was damage, you just repaired it and that was it. Yeah.
CB: How did, how did you put patches on?
AG: Oh well with, with rivets or whatever, but again, getting into the detail of all this now, Chris, I’m afraid I can’t –
CB: That’s ok.
AG: I can’t remember it all.
CB: It’s ok. It’s simply that on some planes that had fabric.
AG: Oh yes, yeah, but certainly –
CB: So that I’m drawing a –
AG: But certainly not the –
CB: Differentiation.
AG: Lancaster.
CB: No.
AG: No.
CB: No.
AG: No.
CB: Ok. So there you are, working on the ground as a rigger.
AG: As a fitter.
CB: Fitter –
AG: Fitter.
CB: I should say.
AG: Fitter. Fitter Group 1 tradesman. Yes.
CB: Group 1 tradesman, and at that point, another letter appears inviting you to –
AG: At that point, another letter appears calling for volunteers.
CB: Yeah.
AG: To become flight engineers.
CB: What attracted you to that prospect?
AG: Well, I thought, well that sounds alright. Yeah. Yeah. I’ll give that a go. So I volunteered and as I say, after a very short interview, they said, ‘Right. There is no training course at the moment, at the present time for flight engineers, but you will do a two week training course at the Rolls Royce Works at Derby’, and that’s where I went.
CB: And that’s where you did your engine training.
AG: And I did on the Merlin engine. Price. Predominantly they talked about the Merlin engine.
CB: Yeah.
AG: And the engine handling characteristics and all this sort of thing. Yeah. That was quite good there, Derby, I mean two weeks wasn’t a long time really. It wasn’t a long training course, was it?
CB: No.
AG: But at the end of it, they said, ‘You’re now a sergeant, here’s your brevet’, and that’s it and, ‘You will be assigned to a crew’.
CB: So this officer selects you at the Heavy Conversion Unit did he?
AG: At, at the squadron.
CB: Yeah.
AG: At the squadron.
CB: At the squadron.
AG: You were just, you had this short interview.
CB: Straight to the squadron.
AG: A very short interview.
CB: ‘Cause they didn’t have a –
AG: Yes.
CB: Heavy Conversion Unit then.
AG: No. No.
CB: No.
AG: A short interview.
CB: Right.
AG: Whilst you were on the squadron
CB: Yeah.
AG: And then they said, ‘Right. You’re, yeah, we’ll take you as a flight engineer, and you’ll do your training at Derby’.
CB: Yeah.
AG: And that was it.
CB: So you join the squadron, you get in the aircraft. Now how do you feel about your situation?
AG: Once we’d started operations you mean?
CB: Yes.
AG: Ah. I think if you speak to anyone who’s done operations during the war, the first operation, you weren’t worried at all about it because you didn’t know anything about it, and off you went and you quickly, you quickly found out what it was all about, and it was thereafter that you felt a bit twingy at times. Yes. But not on the first operation because you didn’t know anything about it, about operations but thereafter, well. And of course, the whole thing about operations was luck. It was nothing to do with skill or anything else, it was pure luck if you got through a tour of operations. On 514, we were the first crew to complete a tour of operations. The first one.
CB: Right. Thank you.
[Recording paused]
AG: We were very lucky as I say.
CB: So, on, on operations then, these can last anything up to eight hours.
AG: Yeah.
CB: You did a whole tour and more.
AG: Yeah.
CB: So how would you describe the sort, the operations you went on? Were they eventful or quiet or what were they?
AG: No. The, to start with, the operations on Hamburg if you remember, there were three operations over a period of four days and we did three of the, we did all three of the four.
CB: Right.
AG: And after the first one, then a couple of days later, or perhaps it was the next night we went out again, but according to the logbook, you can see by the logbook, when you were a hundred miles away, you saw the light in the air, and that was Hamburg burning, and then you got near and you did your sortie and you did it. And then, as I say, we did three to Hamburg, three, three trips to Hamburg. Certainly you remember that well enough and –
CB: What was the reaction of the crew to that?
AG: Well, you know, they [laughs], we just thought, well there you are. In fact, in the logbook too, there’s the piece of paper which is a “News of the World” report who interviewed us. In the logbook.
CB: Yes.
AG: In the back there.
CB: Yeah.
AG: Somewhere. And that was after one of the Berlin trips, and I said to them, I said to this reporter at the time, ‘After the war, I’d like to go to Berlin and tour around to see what it looks like’, and it’s in the newspaper report.
CB: Right. So was it just a curiosity or –?
AG: Curiosity.
CB: Yeah.
CB: Yes. Yeah.
CB: To know how it had worked.
AG: That’s right.
CB: This, this article says, “Blood red pall –
AG: Yeah.
CB: Over the heart of Nazi Germany”. Right.
AG: Yeah.
CB: Ok.
AG: Yeah.
CB: And did you get attacked on any occasions or how did that work?
AG: No. No. Never, never got attacked. Never. No.
CB: So the gunners were keeping an eye out.
AG: The gunner was keeping an eye out, yeah, poor old Twinny in the, in the, the rear gunner, he often used to get off the aircraft with frost on his moustache. He was the only one who had a moustache and he had the frost on the moustache. It must have been pretty, pretty grim for him.
CB: Yeah.
AG: Yeah. Especially when the flight was eight, eight, we, as I say, the longest flight was the Dresden one. That was eight and a half hours, but then there was the Nuremberg one which was quite a long flight, and the Munich one was a very long flight. So there were quite, quite a few long flights where poor old Twinny was freezing in the back.
CB: The Nurem –
AG: There was supposed to be some sort of heating but it’s quite often it wasn’t working. It didn’t work anyway. There you are.
CB: The Nuremberg one was clear weather and the loss rate was very high. What do you remember particularly about that?
AG: I remember that very, a great deal, the loss rate of aircraft was nearly a hundred. Nearly a hundred aircraft and so you’ll, you know, well there again, I thought, good God, you know. What are we doing, doing this? But there you are, but that was, that was the worst night of the war for the, for Bomber Command. Yeah.
CB: In what way did you feel –?
AG: Well because of the, the loss rate.
CB: Did you see bombers go down? Other bombers.
AG: At times, at times, at times you did, ‘cause over the target, you were sort of going in there about eighteen, eighteen to twenty thousand feet, but the German night fighters would fly above you and drop what they called candle flares, and these things slowly floated down and lit up the whole area.
CB: With a view to enabling them to see.
AG: With a view, with a view to them picking out the aircraft to attack.
CB: Right.
AG: And you were lucky that you weren’t attacked. Yeah. And again, the bombing run was the hair raising bit, because you came in and you had to go straight and level over the target so the bomb aimer could put his sights right and drop the bombs, but that again, was the hair raising bit, that bit where you had to go the same height for about three or four minutes.
CB: And then –
AG: Over the target.
CB: After the bomb release you still had to go straight and level.
AG: After the –
CB: To take the picture.
AG: Yeah. That’s right and then of course you got out as quickly as you could. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Always one way? Predictably always left or always right or what was it?
AG: Not always one way. Normally straight out and away, but I know the thought at the time was let’s get the hell out of here but again, you had to do your job.
CB: Yeah.
AG: And do that bombing run correctly.
CB: Yes. So you talked about Munich, what was partic, apart from the distance, what was particularly memorable about that.
AG: Again, I can’t, well, well no, I don’t. We just went to Munich, did the operation and that was it. Yeah.
CB: And then you mentioned Dresden. What’s memorable about Dresden?
AG: Dresden, I remember Dresden quite well because there was a lot of cloud over Dresden. A lot of cloud.
CB: At your height.
AG: At, at, at yes, well and below us, cloud below us. Yes, cloud below us. I do remember that quite, quite well, but again, we did the bombing run and of course, as you say, as you know with the bombing run, you were aiming your bombs at the Pathfinder markers.
CB: Yes.
AG: Yes. You know.
CB: Were they clearly visible?
AG: Yes. The red or the green markers and you were told at the briefing which ones to go for.
CB: Ah, right.
AG: To aim the bombs at.
CB: And on occasions did the, depending on where you were in the bombing stream, did the markers become obliterated by the fires and the smoke?
AG: Oh yes, yes, well they, yeah, that could happen quite easily. Yes, oh yes. The Pathfinders could drop the markers but then the fires would overcome them. Yes. That –
CB: And did they re-mark?
AG: No. Well, you heard of tales that they remarked, you know. You heard of Guy Gibson and how brave he was at doing this, and they used to hover around the target for some time but there you are. Yeah.
CB: So thinking of the war in total, what was the most memorable point in your perspective?
AG: Memorable points about the war. To start with getting away from Calshot was quite memorable I must say, working at the Cowley works was quite memorable. The Manna operation was, I suppose, one of the most memorable because to see the way that those people reacted when you dropped the food. I guess that was one of the most memorable.
CB: Their appreciation.
AG: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the way, the way they all responded when the thing hit the ground, you could tell. There was cheering and shouting and all waving their arms and all this business. Yeah.
CB: And –
AG: I remember that very well.
CB: Yes.
AG: Yeah.
CB: So when you got back from a sortie, there was always a de-brief. What was the de-brief after Manna flights?
AG: Well nothing very much, they just wanted to know whether the thing had gone, you know, because there wasn’t any hindrance as there would have been on an operation, a proper bombing operation. I mean, everything was there, quiet and you just came in to the park quietly and you did your drop. There was no interference from anybody. As I say the Germans had agreed that they would not interfere with Manna.
CB: And did you make the drop of the food at a reduced speed or the normal speed?
AG: No. At reduced speed, reduced speed. Yeah.
CB: To what?
AG: Yeah. Well I forget, but we reduced it so we were above stalling height, you know. To make the drop. If you were flying in too fast, you might, you might not drop it on the park, you might drop it on somebody’s house, so you reduced the speed coming in. Definitely, yes. Above stalling height.
CB: Good. Thank you.
[Recording paused]
AG: I forget where we’d been.
CB: Now one of the challenges in the bombing war was getting back to the airfield.
AG: That’s it.
CB: And the British weather with fog.
AG: Yeah.
CB: Was a pain.
AG: Yeah.
CB: So how did you deal with that?
AG: Yeah. Yeah. Well as I say, we were, we were, we were quite fortunate really but there was one time when we came back and there was this fog, and it was a question of, this fog was going to hang around for some time so FIDO came into operation each side of the runway, you know, these flames and things, so we landed that way. It only happened once.
CB: So it was a popular airfield that day.
AG: Yes [laughs]. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Because not many airfields had Fido, did they?
AG: No. No. No. No. FIDO.
CB: Right.
AG: Yeah.
[Recording paused]
CB: I forgot to ask you Alex, whether you had any links and what they were with the American Air Force or Army Air Force as it was.
AG: No.
CB: In those days.
AG: Nothing. Never. No.
CB: But their aircraft –
AG: No links whatsoever.
CB: No.
AG: No.
CB: But their aircraft, the Flying Fortress. What did you do there?
AG: What? Well he just took us up.
CB: So, so you went somewhere where you, what did you do? You flew somewhere.
AG: We flew to this base.
CB: Yeah.
AG: This American Flying Fortress base, met Colonel Jumper, the commanding officer and he, he gave us a flight in the Flying Fortress.
CB: So what was that like?
AG: Oh that, that was alright. Of course, he didn’t do anything drastic, we just went up and just flew, flew around for a while.
CB: Yes.
AG: Yeah. But we walked through, through the aircraft. Examined it, you know. Those, at the rear of the flying fortress each side, they had these machine guns, didn’t they?
CB: Yeah.
AG: Yes. Looked at all that and it was just a day out really.
CB: In terms of its sophistication and crew comfort compared with the RAF aircraft, what was that like?
AG: Oh I think that, I think we were slightly more comfortable than the flying fortress and the flying fortress crew, I forget how many there were, but I think –
CB: Eleven.
AG: There were about eight or nine of them.
CB: Yeah.
AG: Yeah. In this what was regarded, compared to a Lancaster, was a smallish aircraft.
CB: Yeah.
AG: Yeah but they had all these gunners on –
CB: Yeah.
AG: On the Fortress didn’t they?
CB: Yeah.
AG: Yeah.
CB: That’s why the bomb load wasn’t very big.
AG: That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As I say, there we are.
CB: Right.
AG: I’m trying to think of any other highlights.
CB: Well.
[Recording paused]
CB: That’s it.
AG: In about April 1945, the rear gunner and I were called in and we were told that we had also been awarded the DFC because of the number of operations. The ten trips to Berlin and all this business.
CB: Yeah.
AG: So that’s the way we got it. It was regrettable I thought, that the wireless operator didn’t get it for some reason. I don’t know why.
CB: No.
AG: But it was just the rear gunner and myself.
CB: So the pilot and the navigator already had –
AG: The pilot –
CB: The DFC.
AG: They already had it, yeah. At the end of the tour.
CB: Yeah.
AG: They had got the DFC.
CB: Right.
AG: The pilot and the navigator only. But in the April ’45, the rear gunner and myself also got it.
CB: Right. Ok. And bomb aimer, nothing either.
AG: The bomb aimer. Well, the bomb aimer, at the end of the first tour, as I say, was regarded as the old man of the tour.
CB: Yeah.
AG: He was aged thirty two. Once he went off to this training unit, having completed the tour, we never heard of him again.
CB: No.
AG: Stan Young, his name was.
CB: Right.
AG: Stan Young. The pilot was called Colin Payne.
CB: Yeah.
AG: The navigator was Ken Armstrong. Now that’s another strange story about Ken Armstrong. At the end of our first tour of operations, Ken went off to a training unit, but then I don’t know if you know this, they started training people to work on British Airways after the war, but they already started recruiting them whilst the war was still on. And he, he applied for this and was recruited to go on the staff of British Airways before the war ended, and after the war, he ended up at Hurn Airport near Bournemouth where he operated from with British Airways. Ken then rose up in British Airways, and British Airways eventually did away with navigators and just kept pilots and, strangely enough, flight engineers. They were the only two crew members. And Ken, they kept two navigators back at British Airways headquarters at Heathrow, and he became quite a star navigator with British Airways, and whenever there was a royal flight, even though they had all the navigation aids, they always took a navigator with them, and he went on a number of royal flights and he ended up with the MVO, Member of the Victorian Order. And he became quite well known in British, they all knew Ken Armstrong because he was one of the two navigators left in British Airways, because they didn’t want navigators anymore with all, with all the navigation aids on board. But he, he did become quite well known. Yes. I mean my wife’s husband, Clive, ‘Oh yes’, he said, ‘Ken Armstrong. We all knew Ken Armstrong’.
CB: Your daughter’s husband.
AG: Yes.
CB: 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 Alexander Charles Gilbert
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-10-13
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AGilbertAC161013
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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
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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01:22:03 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Alexander Gilbert, DFC, joined the Royal Air Force in November 1940, and was called forward for service on the 7th April 1941, rising to the rank of Squadron Leader. Alex had a very long and varied career for the Royal Air Force.
Upon his call up, he was trained as a Flight Engineer Air Frames where he passed in the top third of his class. He became a Group One Tradesman, Fitter 2A. He was posted to Calshot and then spent time working at Cowley Motor Works, manufacturing spars for the fuselage of Lancasters before being recalled and sent to Scampton.
He served with 49 Bomber Squadron before taking a Flight Engineers course and working on Merlin engines at Rolls Royce Works in Derby.
Alex was transferred to 9 Squadron at Bardney where he completed 10 operations, including 3 to Hamburg, then helped form 514 Squadron where he flew on missions to Berlin, and completed 14 operations. He became an instructor at No. 31 LFS at Feltwell, before returning to Operations at 149 Squadron in Methwold.
149 Squadron were involved in the Dresden operation and did 2 trips in Operation Manna, dropping supplies to Rotterdam and The Hague.
Alex had various other postings and completed 35 years’ service in the Royal Air Force, retiring at the age of 65.
Contributor
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Vivienne Tincombe
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
149 Squadron
49 Squadron
514 Squadron
9 Squadron
aircrew
B-17
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
Cook’s tour
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
fitter airframe
flight engineer
ground crew
Lancaster
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
RAF Bardney
RAF Calshot
RAF Feltwell
RAF Foulsham
RAF Halton
RAF Kirkham
RAF Methwold
RAF Morton Hall
RAF Scampton
RAF Waterbeach
RAF Winthorpe
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/462/8344/AAdamsT160616.2.mp3
f9bd5882560371415b633ba85a023cb1
Dublin Core
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Title
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Adams, Tony
Antony Hill Adams
A H Adams
T Adams
Antony H Adams
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Adams, T
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Tony Adams
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-16
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DG: OK we're all set to go, I'll just have to, this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, my name is Donald Gould and I'm interviewing Tony Adams at his place in Lingfield, a suburb of Sydney. The interview is taking place on Thursday 16th June 2016. Can you tell me your name please Tony?
AA: My name is Anthony Adams, I'm known as Tony Adams.
DG: And how old are you Tony?
AA: I'm ninety two.
DG: What, where were you born?
AA: I was born in Roseville one of the northside suburbs of Sydney.
DG: And what did your parents do?
AA: My father was an engineer and my mother was home duties mainly except during the Depression, she had to earn extra money and she did what they called Batik work, B,A,T,I,K it was dyeing clothes and so on.
DG: A bit unusual in those, in those days batik?
AA: Um.
DG: Yeah, and where did you go to school?
AA: At Roseville public school, and then after that I went to Sydney Grammar.
DG: And what, what, how old were you when you left school?
AA: I left school a few weeks after World War II began I was fifteen years of age.
DG: And what did you do, after, after when you finished school, what did you do after that?
AA: I studied accountancy, I went full time to a, a college, an accountancy college for one year and then I got a job as a junior clerk in a, in a company in the wholesale chemist area and I was there 'til I turned eighteen and then I went into the army, before, before the air force.
DG: OK so you were, you were, in Sydney when the War broke out?
AA: Yes.
DG: And why did you, why did you, what prompted you to join the air force?
AA: Well really two reasons, I'd heard all the stories of the first, first War and the terrible conditions and how soldiers, Australia diggers, had died and I was a very squeamish boy and I thought if I'm going to die I'm going to die quickly.
DG: [Laughs].
AA: But I really didn't think I was going to die you didn't put your name down for that reason, a lot of my friends where I lived were going into the air force and sounded more exciting than being in the army or the navy, [chuckles].
DG: And where, where did you enlist?
AA: Er, right here in Sydney at Willoughby actually.
DG: And what, what training did you, did they give you? What did they select you to do?
AA: Are we talking about the army or the navy?
DG: Oh no, that would be the air force.
AA: Oh well, after six months in the army I got my transfer to the R, double A, F and after initial training, rookie training, I was selected to be, to wireless training, radio training and I spent six months at Parkes in New South Wales doing that and having completed that course I then was sent to Port Pirie in South Australia for six weeks doing flying training there, air gunnery flying training and at that stage I got my wing so I was ready to, I graduated.
DG: You mentioned, you mentioned the army, how did you, how did you come to be in the army first?
AA: Well it was conscription in those days in Australia.
DG: Ah right.
AA: And you had to, you had to, as soon as you turned eighteen, you had to go into the service, aircrew R, double A, F aircrew you were all volunteers, but anyway it was I was called up into the Army within a few weeks of turning eighteen.
DG: And you asked to go to the air force and you did?
AA: I, I previously put my name down for the air force and, but there was a waiting list in a way and the Army grabbed me before the air force did.
DG: And what, you'd completed that training and when did you go overseas?
AA: Um, June 1943, 15th of June actually, I'm pretty good on dates [laughs] and that was by ship, an American troop ship across the Pacific to San Francisco, I was a sergeant then and then they transferred us onto a train at San Francisco, a troop train and a very, a very palatial troop train too 'cause we had a porter on each carriage who made up our beds.
DG: Oh boy.
AA: And shone our shoes even though we hardly got out of the train [chuckles] but anyway we went right across the other side of the US to a huge US army camp which was really for embarkation of American troops.
DG: Where was that?
AA: And it was.
DG: Can you remember where it?
AA: It was called Taunton, Massachusetts, nearest, near Providence and not far from Boston.
DG: Right. And then were you, you were only there a short time before you?
AA: About three or four weeks I think, yes.
DG: Right. And then, and then you embarked to Britain?
AA: Yes on the Queen Mary. The Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth were going backwards and forwards to Scotland to the Clyde mainly with American troops building up prior to D-Day it was the year before though but the ship I went on, the voyage I went on as it happens I found out was the one when they carried the most number of troops onboard, there was about nearly fifteen thousand troops and a thousand crew.
DG: Oh crikey. And so you'd have been in Britain around by June, July, August or something in '43?
AA: 1st of August.
DG: 1st of August?
AA: Bank holiday. [Laughter].
DG: Right and when you got to Britain what did, where did they, where did they send you for further training?
AA: [Unclear] We were in a contingent of three hundred Australia and New Zealand airmen, we picked up the New Zealand airmen over Auckland on the way over across the Pacific and we landed in Scotland in the Clyde, and by train down to Brighton Sussex, south of England and the Australian and New Zealand air force had taken over the two big hotels in Brighton, the Grand and the Metropole, and we, they'd ripped the luxury hotels to bits and crammed us in there.
DG: And how long, how long were you there?
AA: Um, I think only perhaps six weeks, four or six weeks or something.
DG: Right, and what, what happened to you after that?
AA: I and about nineteen others Australians, who had to be, were going to be wireless operators in Bomber Command, were sent to do a further course flying on Avro Anson's at a place called West Freugh, F,R,E,U,G,H near Stranraer Scotland on the west coast and we'd do further training there, 'cause when we arrived there in England they said 'oh the radios that you used in Australia, trained on in Australia, no we use the Marconi sets here you've got to have further training'.
DG: Oh right.
AA: So we used to fly out from there over Northern Ireland and down to, down to Wales, England and I think we were there for perhaps two, perhaps two to three months.
DG: And then what happened to you after?
AA: Well then.
DG: You did that further training?
AA: We passed all the tests there and we were then sent, or some of us, we were spread out
to different places to what they called an operational training unit, OTU, and the one I was sent to and I think only one other of that course of twenty went to the same OTU which was in Bedfordshire.
DG: Which one of that? What number was that?
AA: It was called Wing, the village of Wing but nothing to do with air force.
DG: Right yeah.
AA: And we flew from the satellites round there called Little Horwood, H,O, R W, double O, D. And it was interesting that Little Horwood was about a twenty minute bike ride from Bletchley or Bletchley Park.
DG: Oh golly.
AA: And I knew a girl who worked at Bletchley Park I met her there and she was my girlfriend for the duration of the war while I was there.
DG: Did you know anything about Bletchley Park and what was going on over there?
AA: We had no idea what went on we knew there was a lot of, we saw in the local pob, pub, The Park Hotel at Bletchley, we'd see all these officers navy officers, air force and army officers but in those days you really didn't make any enquiries.
DG: Were you aware that it was something pretty Top Secret or was it just another, another?
AA: Yes, we believed it was Secret.
DG: Yes, yes. And then when did you go to a squadron after that?
AA: At that stage, that is where you formed up in your crew.
DG: Right.
AA: And through a process within a day you arrived there, the I think it was the CO came and gathered us all together and said, and there were about twenty pilots, twenty wireless operators, twenty navigators, twenty gunners, 'right oh you fellas you've got about three or four days to form yourselves up into a crew' and I did see a fella that I, I didn't know him except of course there were Canadians, New Zealanders, English men, Australians, I didn't know anybody except the fella that I went with and I looked and then after a day I saw a fella called John Faile[?] who was a year or two years ahead of me at Sydney Grammar. And I went, and he was a pilot, and I went up to him, 'Johnny do you remember me?' and he said 'oh yes Sydney Grammar?' and he said 'yeah you were the opening bowler in the third eleven weren't you?' [laughter] and he was the star from the first eleven but I said ' have you got a wireless op?' and he said 'look', he said, 'I was only just been yesterday talking to an English fellow and he, ah I've asked him to be my wireless op and he was somebody else [unclear] so I asked him, he said he'd come back to me later on today, I think so' he said 'I'd love to have you but I' said 'I'm but I'm perhaps committed to have this chap'. And anyway he did come back to me later and said McKay[?] the other fella is going to come with me, the English chap, luckily I didn't, it was luck there because a few weeks after D-Day that crew was shot down and all killed.
DG: Oh.
AA: Over France. But nobody else would ask me it was mainly the pilots were going round asking people and I was a bit of a wallflower [DG laughs] one Australian pilot did say, came to me and approached me, would I be interested and and I said 'yes, I'm not crewed up, thank you very much, would love to be in your crew' all our unit was Australian and quickly in talking to each other we said you know, 'oh where do you live?' he lived in Sydney and I lived in Sydney and 'where do you live Wal?' and he said 'Greenfield' and 'where do you live Tony?' 'Roseville', the next suburb but I didn't know him and we then formed up into a crew and in due course we acquired another gunner and a, and a flight engineer but we were a crew of four Australians and three English men.
DG: And presumably the flight engineer would have been English?
AA: Yes, the flight engineer was English.
DG: Yeah, yeah.
AA: And the two gunners were English.
DG: Oh right. And were you sent to a squadron after that once you paired up?
AA: No the next step was because we were going to be on four engine bombers mainly for the pilot at the OTU we were flying Wellington bombers, a twin engine bomber, so we had to do, went to a place called Stradishall, which was called a conversion unit, it was mainly for the pilots to learn to fly a four engine as against a twin engine bomber, and at that stage we then got an extra gunner, a mid upper gunner, and a flight engineer.
DG: And ah did you, what happened after that, after that conversion?
AA: Well we're ready to go to a squadron then.
DG: Right.
AA: But prior to that they went in training in case we got shot down, we went to a, what is called I think, a battle course, that was for a couple of weeks where we were instructed on all the procedures if we did get shot down how to get back, how to evade capture and things like that.
DG: Right.
AA: And we did exercises in relation to that.
DG: And what happened after, once you'd finished that?
AA: When we finished that, and that was at a place called Methwold, we were ready to go to a squadron and we went from there to Lakenheath which was an RAF establishment it was pre-war I think and we were there within a few days of arriving there we did our first operation.
DG: Can you remember what, when that would have been that you, you first joined the squadron?
AA: Ah.
DG: Any idea when that would have been?
AA: Yeah it was May 1944.
DG: Right. So that's [unclear] nearly a year after you'd got to the UK.
AA: Yeah that's right.
DG: A little time after.
AA: Yes.
DG: And what was the, what was the daily life like at the base? Just your daily routines and life in general how did you find that?
AA: Well, they would post up if you were flying on operations that night or later that day they'd post up in the operations room all the crews and that were to fly at that time, all their names and give you the instructions as to the time of briefings, the navigator and the pilots used to have a briefing first and then the rest of the crew would come in for an hour or two later to the main briefing and so that was what happened, they told you the time the meals were going to be, the time of the transport to your aircraft, because of course there were aircraft dispersed right round the aerodrome and your aircraft, you were allocated an aircraft, ours happened to be C Charlie and er [unclear] what [unclear] make of aircraft or sometimes they'd switch them around but anyway ours was C Charlie, we had our own ground crew at the dispersal and I think there were five in the ground crew crew and we'd be transported out there during the day if it was going to be a night operation we'd be going out and checking our equipment that sort of thing.
DG: And what, and what would happen then if you, if you were flying that night , after you'd checked the aircraft out and what would happen? Presumably you'd be going on a mission after your evening meal or would you or?
AA: Yes, yes but later on we did more daylight operations than than night operations. That was our, because that was our squadron. Now I haven't told you the aircraft we were then flying when we first joined the squadron was Stirlings.
DG: Right.
AA: And the Stirlings at this stage of the War had been taken off the bombing of German targets. The Lancasters and the Halifaxes were the ones being used for that sort of operations, the Stirlings couldn't get the height and didn't have the speed so the, we were what, we were called a Special Duties Squadron, and as soon as we got there it was realised, we realised, were told [emphatic] it was very secret what we were doing. It was in all Bomber Command squadrons to a degree but ours was more secret [laughs].
DG: Right.
AA: And because the operations we were doing that were so secret was supplying the French Resistance movement with supplies.
DG: Ah right.
AA: And we weren't allowed to keep a diary.
DG: Um.
AA: Actually our mail, outward mail, was censored I think, and so that was the sort of thing. So we were doing that sort of operation and, and dropping mines at the entrances of the ports there where they had the German, the German fleet, submarines and warships who were attacking the Atlantic convoys would try to keep them hulled into those ports.
DG: You were dropping the supplies to the French Resistance, obviously that was in France?
AA: Yes.
DG: Have you any, do you know what parts of France that you were doing it?
AA: Yes, we didn't do that many of them.
DG: Um.
AA: Erm, about in the area of Dijon.
DG: Right.
AA: I do remember one town called Digoin. Which was not far from Dijon, D, I, G, O, I, N. To, would you like me to go on and tell you a bit what the operation was [chuckles].
DG: Yes, certainly, yes.
AA: Because they were rather, you know?
DG: Yes, yes.
AA: Um we had to find a clearing in the forest, we only flew on very bright moon light nights because we flew at very low altitude under the German radar.
DG: You had all the co-ordinates and everything and you had to find that little spot?
AA: Yes.
DG: Yes.
AA: And the navigator and the bomb aimer had to be, co-operate very much. The bomb aimer would lie down in his, in his part there and would map read with a torch and say, 'tell the navigator we are over this river' or [unclear] 'tell', and then when I said Degoinge I remember they would go to a small town and then be given, at a certain speed, in a certain direction, to find that clearing in the forest. Um, going out there OK you find the thing, the place, no bigger than a football field.
DG: You're obviously at a fairly low altitude to be able to find them?
AA: We were flying at five hundred feet.
DG: Would that avoid radar at that height?
AA: Yes.
DG: Oh right, OK.
AA: Five hundred feet, you'd perhaps go, anyway we had loaded in the bomb bay canisters of supplies.
DG: What were they made of?
AA: Well we were never told but it was arms, ammunition.
DG: No, no but the canisters. What were the?
AA: Oh metal and they had a parachute.
DG: Oh right, OK, yeah yeah.
AA: And the bomb aimer to had to identify that we were dropping at the right place, to the right people they had to flash to us on the torch the letter of the day, the agreed letter of the day in Morse Code and then they would then the French men, or French women too I guess ,would put out flares and we would do a, virtually a bombing run, probably at a thousand feet or lower and the canisters then would get released and float down, full moon, and they'd come out with horses and carts from under the trees and load these canisters onto their trucks and onto their carts and disappear back into, into the trees.
DG: And how many canisters might you have?
AA: Oh, I couldn't really tell you.
DG: No, no that's absolutely, that doesn't matter.
AA: Yes.
DG: And what, and um, did you ever meet with any resistance when you were doing those? Any flak or fighters or did you get a pretty free run run having been flying in such clear weather?
AA: Pretty, yes pretty free, I think it was entirely free as I can tell you about one occasion.
DG: Um.
AA: As as I said I was, I looked after the radio and before we took off we all checked our equipment and I'd go out my radio was working perfectly. Then, er we took off they had what they called a group broadcast, we were in Bomber Command's No3 group, there was a number of squadrons in that group most of them going and bombing German targets. But we had this different sort of operation and you had to, my job was, every half hour on the hour and half hour listen in to a group broadcast where instructions may be given, to some of us or all of us, such things as you're diverted to another aerodrome because there's fog over yours where you're going back to or all sorts of things. Um, especially for those on the bombing German targets the wind direction had been changed and things like that. But anyway, we'd been going a while we were probably over the coast of France by this stage and my radio went absolutely dead and I reported it to the skipper, I said 'my radio's out of action' and he said 'alright just let me know when it's fixed ', it wasn't something that would stop us proceeding on this operation and I was quite a good operator but I was hopeless at fixing things and my wife will bear you out, I've never fixed anything in my life [laughter] but anyway I fiddled around in those days radios had valves before transistors [laughs].
DG: Yes, yes.
AA: And I was pushing and pulling and I couldn't get it to work and so I, somehow then the next half hour broadcast was coming up and I'm getting a bit frantic, I pushed it in and just as I pushed it in came, a message came through it started to work for the group cast, the message was for our aircraft, our call sign or one of them.
DG: Oh dear.
AA: You recognise your voice as it's called out, well you recognised your call sign just as clearly.
DG: Yeah, yeah.
AA: Um, this, the message was return to base. I said to Wal the Skipper, in the aircraft you didn't go on first names, or very rarely 'Wireless Operator to Pilot I've just received a message, return to base' and he said 'what's the trouble are all the Force going back?' 'I don't know, just me, just us 'he said 'are you sure?' so well I was a bit er, radio reception at five hundred feet is not that good.
DG: No.
AA: But I'm sure. He said ' Tony you're in trouble [chuckles] if you've got this wrong', and anyway he took my word for it so back we went and landed probably midnight or 1am, I can't remember and a British major who we sort of knew who co-ordinated these sort of operations on our base he came out to our aircraft and we said 'what's up major?' and he said 'well after you got took off and got to the other side we got, we got' I remember his words, 'we got word from the other side, a message from the other side, that the Frenchmen there had been captured and they had installed 3 [unclear] and 2 Bofor's guns awaiting your arrival'.
DG: Oh right. And you might have gone into that if your radio hadn't come back on the line again?
AA: I wouldn't have been talking to you now.
DG: No.
AA: If I hadn't got that message [unclear].
DG: Unbelievable,
AA: My radio was.
DG: Before, just getting backtracking a little bit, you mentioned the airfield you were at, I don't know whether I asked you your squadron number that you were in?
AA: It was RAF Squadron 149.
DG: RAF 149. And what field were you flying from at this stage?
AA: Ah, it would have been Methwold.
DG: OK, OK, and you did a number of these operations dropping?
AA: Not very many.
DG: Right.
AA: Er, one of the first ones we did was with the CO, our pilot was second pilot on this occasion so he could learn the ropes a bit, I think we only did about six of them.
DG: So you did those and dropping the mines.
AA: Dropping the mines.
DG: Did you have any interesting situations with those missions?
AA: Well, no they er only one and this was after D-Day and we were dropping mines at the entrance to Bordeaux which is on the west coast of France, the river there Bordeaux's on is called the Gironde, G, I, R, O, N, D, E, Gironde, it has a very wide estuary or mouth and we had to drop the mines there for the entrance, and we did that again at low level because it was after D-Day we weren't allowed to cut across France. We had to, came from Methwold up near Cambridge, we went right down to Lands' End and then went down the west coast of France, dropped our mines and then had to go back the same way, not cutting across France at all and we're coming up the coast after we'd dropped our mines, suddenly I'm standing in what is called the astrodome which is a perspex bubble on top of a fuselage, where I'm, if I'm not having a radio duty I'm keeping a watch out for anything and suddenly I see fazer coming up towards us from a light machine gun and I understand it was a flagship.
DG: Oh.
AA: Anchored off the coast and I would swear that those bullets [unclear] were going for our rear turret, but we weren't hit at all.
DG: And what was the reason for going, not going over France, going around after D-Day because of the hostilities was that?
AA: Yes, that's right.
DG: You wanted to keep out of the way?
AA: The anti aircraft were all around so that's what we did.
DG: Yes, yes.
AA: And by this stage because we had to, I then started getting messages, radio messages on Morse Code that our, Methwold and round there was fog bound I think, or the weather anyway and they kept sending us a different message to divert to another aerodrome, and then they'd say 'no don't go to that one' but finally we landed a Coastal Command base in North Devon called Shivenor, or Chivenor, and sat there the night, rest of the night and went home the following day.
DG: And after your operations what did you, there were some fellows who had problems with nerves and they were accused of having a lack of moral fibre. How did you, how did you feel about these fellows?
AA: Well I, I never struck, all the time I was there I never knew anybody that, didn't hear anybody, I'd heard that some had sort of been just quietly removed.
DG: Right.
AA: I, I didn't have any direct contact with anybody like that.
DG: And when you, how, how did you feel, how were your, how were your nerves, you knew you were going to fly a mission, how did you, how did you feel?
AA: Um, usually it's not going to happen to me.
DG: Right [laughter].
AA: And I must say the times we were flying the casualty rate was not as high as it had been, I can't say I'm a very brave person but it didn't, wasn't too upset. There was only, we haven't got on to the stage yet of when we, the Squadron converted over to Lancasters.
DG: Right.
AA: And we were then bombing German targets more.
DG: Right.
AA: Er, about three nights in a week, in one week, we had daylight, I think daylight, we had to go to a place called Honsberg in the Rhur Valley and, near Dusseldorf, and the anti aircraft fire was very bad [laughs] terrific.
DG: Right.
AA: And I saw aircraft shot down and so on and when I we went to briefing that day they looked up on the map on the big map of Europe on the wall it was Honsberg again, oh gosh and I think I was very, very touchy then that day, is this going to be my last flight? But generally speaking you just had a job to do it didn't, I wasn't terribly concerned.
DG: How did you feel once you were in the air, did that?
AA: Well you had your job to do and.
DG: Did that change your mind?
AA: I was fairly calm but if you saw, as we did on one occasion, an aircraft flying right alongside us, got anti aircraft fire in seconds it hit the wing and the blazing fuel from the wing spread backwards in seconds and the tail plane was alight and they circled away, we didn't see any parachutes, it would have crashed. That was a New Zealand squadron aircraft we, I found out in recent years.
DG: So you were, you were dropping the supplies from the Stirlings?
AA: Yes.
DG: Right, and er then you went to Lancasters, you got Lancasters?
AA: Yes.
DG: And ah you mentioned that that mission, what other missions did you, did you fly in the Lancasters? This is after D-Day is it did you say?
AA: Yes well we were still on Stirlings right through 'til September which was three months after D-Day.
DG: September '44 yes?
AA: September 1944. We were bombing in Stirlings we did some bombing raids on German targets [clears throat] Le Havre, the Canadians had the Germans troops surrounded in Le Havre and we were bombing the troops virtually, they the Germans had set up flying bomb bases or launching sites on the coast in France, lobbing them towards London and things..
DG: Oh yes.
AA: And we were bombing those sites, I think that was the main things we were doing on the Stirlings besides and doing minor operations of St Malo and other other ports.
DG: And what, what missions did you do in the Lancasters?
AA: Well they were virtually, they were all bombing of industrial targets in, in Ruhr Valley, Cologne, Essen, Bonn [coughs] more in daylight than er [coughs], excuse me, than at night time actually.
DG: Now when you were bombing, bombing these targets there would of course there would always have been civilians somewhere around, how did you, how did you feel when you were bombing these, that there were no doubt somewhere along the lines civilians were going to get killed.
AA: I virtually never even thought about it. We were given a target.
DG: Yeah.
AA: I don't know if it ever really crossed my mind very much. Er, just as a quick example, when I, I mentioned that I was, my virtually first job after the, when I left school or did, started doing accountancy training was with a chartered accountant only for a few months, and he was an auditor, and I'd go with him to the various places, companies to be audited. One of them was called Babcock and Wilcocks, at Regent Park in Sydney, and I'd go out there, didn't have a clue really what I was doing but I had a green pen to tick things, and what was some three years later this was when we were on the Lancaster Squadron, Lancasters we went to briefing, it would have been in November 1944 some three years later. 'Gentlemen your target for tonight is the Babcock and Wilcocks works at Oberhausen [strong laughter] but we were given a target.
DG: Yes.
AA: Now our squadron or most of the squadrons in No3 Group Bomber Command at this stage were, usual targets were bombing synthetic oil plants.
DG: Oh right yeah, yeah.
AA: And so that's what we were doing right through to the very last one we did..
DG: How many missions did you complete?
AA: Thirty six.
DG: Thirty six. So you did your, did your [unclear].
AA: [Unclear].
DG: Was that classified as, at one stage I think there were certain, there were certain, certain targets that weren't considered as dangerous as the others so you had to complete more, more missions to complete your tour, was that had you completed a tour?
AA: Yes.
DG: Yes.
AA: When we joined the squadron and were flying Stirlings [unclear] the standard was thirty. But then at some stage later, and I can't quite remember when, they said 'no you've got to do thirty five', and so eventually I did thirty five but one, I can't remember which one it was, we did what was called an air sea rescue mission, we went looking in the North Sea for RAF crews shot down during the night ditching. I think that may have been the one that we, they said 'oh you're near the coast' or something, I don't know and so they added on officially I did thirty six [laughs].
DG: Oh golly. And so then that pretty much, once you, that's pretty much the end of the War at that stage?
AA: Er, we did our last operation on the 6th of December 1944, that's five, five months before the end of the War.
DG: Right.
AA: Er yes.
DG: And did you, you've talked about a few things that happened, was there anything else any other particularly interesting things that you, that come to mind, that you might have been involved in?
AA: No er, [pauses] no really it was, I didn't realise until recently, I was looking at my log book, you imagine RAF Bomber Command is flying out every night and the US Army Air Force were flying and bombing sometimes the same targets by day.
DG: Right.
AA; But on adding up in my log book we, on Lancasters, we only did six at night and about, I don't know, fifteen or twenty or something in daylight.
DG: Right, right.
AA: Yes.
DG: And so what, when the, that was in November '44 you flew your last mission?
AA: 6th of December.
DG: Of December?
AA: Celebrating the pilot's 27th birthday.
DG: And what happened, what happened then, after you'd flown your last mission the War was still going on though?
AA: Oh yes, yes. Well at this stage they had aircrew too many aircrew really and I and other Australians but not only other Australians the majority, the flight engineer also came with me to a non flying station up at the north of Scotland near Nairn, where they were, we had various tests, what are we going to do with these people next sort of thing. And so we had aptitude tests and so on and it was once thought that I might become a wireless operator on a Walrus amphibian plane based in Northern in France to fly out and rescue people who were shot down in the sea but that didn't eventuate. And then I was, er said 'you won't be required as aircrew you'll probably be an intelligence officer'. And then we were virtually on leave on and off and really we were then based back at Brighton and word came through 'all you Australians are going to get sent home'. So I think it was at the end of April, around about the 20th of April 1945 I was on the ship on the way home, and Anzac Day 1944 er we were somewhere been going a few days.
DG: 45?
AA; And Anzac Day and I've still got the menu, I was in the Officers' Mess in this troopship, the New Amsterdam, I've got the menu that Anzac Day.
DG: Anzac Day 1945?
AA: Yes.
DG: On the, on the way home? Oh great.
AA: And then 2 weeks later it was VE Day and we were still on the water on the way home.
DG: Right.
AA: And a week or two after that we arrived in Fremantle for just a day refuelling and then round to Sydney and.
DG: What happened to you after the War?
AA: Oh well I was discharged well actually I [unclear] to the service, others got the discharge, I was transferred to R, double A,F reserve so theoretically they could call me up at any time I think [laughter] but anyway we'll call it discharge, and that was of course the War was going on against Japan, atomic bombs were dropped and Japan surrendered and within two or three weeks of War against Japan ending I was discharged from the air force.
DG: Right.
AA: And quickly back to my accountancy studies, I was half way through, I finished those and then started working as a commercial accountant in various, various companies throughout my mostly in accounting jobs had about four different companies I think I worked for, three or four, some well known companies, mainly it was Grace Brothers, and the final one was Brambles where I ended up for the last ten years as company secretary until I retired on my 60th birthday in 1984.
DG: And when, when and where, did you meet your wife, sometime after you came back?
AA: Yes, that was, I was, I was down on the south coast over a long weekend, the October weekend down to a seaside resort called Austinmer down near Woolongong, and I was there with a few of my mates and she was there with a few of her girls at the same guest house and we met on the beach and I asked her if she'd come out with me after we, after we got back to Sydney and within six weeks we were engaged.
DG: Right.
AA: [laughs].
DG: And you're still married? Great.
AA: Been married for sixty seven years.
DG: Did you, how many children did you have?
AA: A son and daughter.
DG: Oh great,great. And after, after um after you got back from the War how were fellows that came back from Bomber Command treated, how did you feel you were being treated?
AA: I think, I've heard a lot of stories where they said, you know, 'why were you over there, we were fighting it out here and the Japanese', I never heard a single thing [unclear] who come back from Vietnam being shunned and so on but er, I never got that impression they were, we were welcomed back and got a good job and which I think we had we were, we were, I don't know, I think we all well slotted into whatever we were doing before.
DG: Yeah.
AA: All my mates in the Bank, and they went back to the Bank, and.
DG: Do you still keep in touch with some of the fellows from your time in Engl[and], your time in Bomber Command?
AA: Er yes just a few.
DG: Yes.
AA: Just a few most of them have passed on really but.
DG: Do you ever?
AA: The navigator of our crew was Australian, he and I are the only two surviving members of the crew now.
DG: You and your navigator?
AA: Yeah.
DG: Right.
AA: Well I think that's er, that brings us pretty well up to date. Thanks very much for talking to me Tony I much appreciate it. Thank you.
AA: Right. Cup of tea now?
DG: Thank you.
AA: Or coffee would you prefer?
DG: Coffee but that's.
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 Tony Adams
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Donald Gould
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2016-06-16
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00:56:07 audio recording
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AAdamsT160616
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Pending review
Type
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Sound
Description
An account of the resource
Tony Adams grew up in Australia and was studying accountancy when he was conscripted into the army at the age of 18. He later transferred to the Air Force. He trained as a wireless operator and was sent overseas to the UK in June 1943. After training he flew 36 operations in Stirlings and Lancasters with 149 Squadron stationed at RAF Methwold. After the war, he completed his accountancy training before retiring as Company Secretary for Brambles in 1984.
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Dawn Studd
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
France
Germany
Great Britain
England--Norfolk
United States
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
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1943
1944
1945
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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.
149 Squadron
3 Group
air sea rescue
aircrew
Anson
bombing
crewing up
Lancaster
mine laying
RAF Lakenheath
RAF Methwold
RAF West Freugh
Resistance
Special Operations Executive
Stirling
training
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/237/3381/PCooperJ1602.1.jpg
6f8734ad672efbc8cddbda087ea8bff8
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/237/3381/ACooperJ160727.2.mp3
edac21553fa5ecd239dc7b655036871d
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
Cooper, John
John Cooper
J Cooper
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with John Cooper (b. 1924, 1827988 Royal Air Force).
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-07-27
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Cooper, J
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DM.This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre the interviewer is David Meanwell the interviewee is John Cooper. The interview is taking place at Mr Coopers home in Sandhurst in Berkshire on the twenty seventh of July 2016. Now John perhaps you could tell me a little about where you were born and your early life.
JC. Alright well, I was born at Sheringham and I lived there for ten years and then we moved to Aylsham just half way between Sheringham and Norfolk and when I left the Grammar School at North Walsham I went into the bank for about a year and eh by that time eh the war was on and I went up to Norwich and volunteered for Aircrew and they put me eh down as under training, PNB which is Pilot, Navigator, Bomb Aimer and eh I think about nine months later I eh think it was I was, I was called, I went into the Air Force in October 1943. I did my eh Initial Training Wing at Aberystwyth and I then went to eh Cliffe Pypard to do my grading school and if I can remember rightly I was one out of eight I think it was out of the fifty who were told we were going for Pilot training. Eh a lot of the eh others went as Bomb Aimers because with the bigger aeroplanes coming in there was quite a demand for them. I had to wait quite a long time before anything turned up, I was at Heaton Park at Manchester, the Aircrew Reception Centre for roughly nine months, waiting around to go to the next stage of training but eventually to my delight I went up to Greenock where we went on the Queen Mary and off we went to eh New York. From New York we then went on a train up to New Brunswick in Canada and eh to be kitted out because we found we were going to a flying school at Miami, we thought marvellous. Miami nice warm sunshine, lots of girls marvellous, but it was Miami, Oklahoma right in the middle of America as far from the sea as you could possibly get in any direction and eh anyway we spent about four days on the train going to Miami and eh that was to Number Three British Flying Training School. It was so hot, it really was but it was really nice. Our course, our school had eh PT19 Cornells as a primary trainer, all the others had eh Steermans but our school had, had PT19s. We did about seventy or eighty hours on those and then eh we started on the Harvard and eh almost near the end of the Harvard course the eh the Atom Bombs had been dropped on Japan and suddenly without warning the school closed. We had about ten hours to go I think to eh, we done some of the flying tests, we had done some of the wings exams. We were about an ace from graduating and the Americans said, “what a pity that we got to stop, couldn’t we just carry on those few extra days?” but no we couldn’t. So we were very downhearted about that and eventually we went back to New York by train, had about a weeks leave there and came home on the Aquitania back to the UK. We landed at Southampton and we went up to Morecambe which was a holding unit and nobody really seemed to know what to do with us and eh [unreadable] we were sent to and eh that was a hive of activity with thousands of redundant aircrew and us as well and cadets who hadn’t graduated. We had to wait around there for weeks and weeks and weeks and we were given the choice of signing on for three years in the Air Force and finishing our training if we wanted to do that or probably waiting for a couple of years for our demob number to come up. So I opted to stay in the Air Force and went to Church Lawford eventually and eh joined a course half way through because we had already done a couple of hundred hours flying you see, and eh so we graduated from there. Having done that we still had to wait around for the next op, because at that time with all the redundancies and this that and the other the Air Force wasn’t sure what to do with all those people. But eventually I went to Finningley to eh a Wellington School and did a course on the, on the Wellington. And eh by this time it was nineteen eh, oh I can’t remember oh about nineteen forty seven I suppose. From there I went to Lindholme to eh the OCU Lancaster OCU and eh and trained on the Lancaster which was lovely getting my hands on, it really was. Having done that I was eh posted to 101 Squadron at Binbrook, they didn’t have the Lancaster they got rid of theirs and they got the Lincoln which of course was the bigger version as you probably know. The engines were bigger, the wing span was about twenty foot bigger altogether a bigger aeroplane but it was much the same inside. And then so I, I started out I was a Sergeant Pilot then and eh. The crewing up at Lindholme, just going back a bit, the way of doing it, we were just shoved in a room with assorted eh categories and told to sort yourself out into a Crew. Which eventually we did and eh, and eh Binbrook here we come “I will just stop for a minute.” I joined 101 Squadron at Binbrook in nineteen forty eight incredibly over five years since I first joined the Air Force. About four and a half years since I joined ACRC. No fault of mine then eh, but we operated just as it had been during the war going round Europe, lots of practise bombing, we used to go to Helgoland to drop my bombs and eh and cross countries. Sort of things we did, I remember one day we, we did a long cross country over, into the North Atlantic and we decided to make Rockall our target, you know that tiny little island in the middle of nowhere and we got there. It is the tip of a volcano I think and eh I flew around the thing and I couldn’t believe it my Navigator didn’t even come out and have a look at it. I just couldn’t understand that, it’s strange really. But eh we went to Egypt in October of eh, of eh that year to Shallufa for a months training. During that visit I was one of a pair that flew down to Khartoum for a couple of nights, so I dropped my first four thousand pound Cookie part of a ten thousand pound bomb load on the range which I think woke the whole city up really. Coming back again I, I, we landed at Castleton Heath there the same as we had done going out to there and I had to land at Isteris near Marseilles with and engine snag and I was there for about four days before coming back to Lyneham. I happen to, to the customs as we were going back to Binbrook on November the Fifth fireworks night. So I took the liberty of going back to Binbrook at fairly low level watching all the fireworks on the way up. In November the Squadron was given a new task on top of everything else, the Bomber Command Meteorological Flight it meant all out aircraft had to have special instruments fitted plus an additional crew member, a Met Observer, he was usually a retrained a redundant Pilot and we eh had about twelve special routes around the British Isles, mainly over the Atlantic, South West approaches to gather met data to be transmitted to the, to the Air Ministry. I did the first one the Squadron was called on to do, it meant being called at Oh five hundred hours and me getting in touch. I was still a Sergeant Pilot and I had to contact One Group to be briefed on the days route and then with the Navigator and Met Observer getting everything organised for a take off at eight o clock on the dot we made a game of that, on the dot. The first one was out over the Atlantic, heights varied from a hundred feet to eighteen thousand feet, doing box climbs and descents. The second one I did on the eighth of December nineteen forty eight was a bit more interesting. As usual eight o clock take off from Binbrook but just off Hartland Point the port engine, port inner engine which meant a return to base at Binbrook. I was a bit cross when I was told I would have to take the reserve aircraft, instead of the relief crew who of course hadn’t been briefed but orders are orders as they say, so of we went and eh and we spent about thirteen hours in the air that day. At least the whole crew and I got a special commendation for that from the AOC of Number One Group. Em they were called Pamper those eh, those weather flights, I, I flew twenty one of them all together by the time we had them. They made life interesting in a way because they were often flown through really lousey weather regardless having got airbourne at eight o clock having, without having any idea where you might finish up on the day and eh and sometimes we were the only aircraft in the Air Force airborne as far as we could make out, apart from the other met flight place, in Northern Ireland, what do you call it, I forget what it is called now eh. On my fifteenth Pamper there was a special for the next day because eh a couple of the Squadrons were going out to Egypt for some sort of exercise. We had to go into the Bay of Biscay to check up on, on the weather and eh we had a lightning strike climbing up through the innocuous little cloud. There was a great big bang which blew an enormous hole in one wing tip and also blew the radios including the intercom and the Wireless Op was transmitting directly to the Air Ministry at the time. I suppose he is lucky not to have been hurt when the trailing aerial blew. When we wound it in there was only about twelve feet out of two hundred and fifty feet of it left. Anyway eh I diverted into Bordeaux it was a bit of an excuse to go into France you know and we went in I went in there, not on the radio two hours later and so I taxied in. [Pause] Right well eh I think I said I had passed it all to the UK. Apparently a general alert had been put out because of the abrupt stoppage of the message due to the lightning strike. We were able to get the aircraft fixed overnight. There were half a dozen French Navy Lancasters there and they had common equipment with us even one of two [unreadable] radio crystals. I eh paid Heligoland for night position nineteen fortynine[unreadable] to drop maybe five hundred pound bombs plus incendiary clusters and we also started doing quite a bit of formation flying that mid summer. I used to fly in the number three position that’s on the left hand side of the Leader. To [unreadable] Newcastle, the daily express joke, Gatwick, the AOCs departure, Birmingham, Battle of Britain fly past and eh that was the day we did a low level beat up of twenty one airfields that day, that was really hard, hard work. Really tight over the airfield and open up a little bit, just have a slight rest and get in tight again. I got a lovely photograph that I can show you over Odiham that day. My Brother saw it on the Aldershot News and then he wrote to them and they sent that for a couple of coppers which was really nice. A week later something quite nasty happened. I was one of about thirty Lincolns approaching Newark Power Station on a, on a night exercise when two of them in front of me collided and eh they sort of burst into flames and crashed with no survivors at all and I and several others switched on our navigation lights and suddenly the sky was ablaze with lights. They all switched off, I think it probably felt safer in the dark I, I had the job of taking some camera men around to take some air to ground photographs the next day of the crash site, not very nice. Eh in December nineteen forty nine the World was changing. Our aircraft used for Pamper flights were fitted with lots of filters on the nose and on the fourth of December I was called to do a series of special Pampers. The aircraft were fitted with two four hundred gallon tanks in the bomb bay giving a total fuel capacity of four thousand four hundred gallons. My brief was to fly as far North as possible before turning back, nobody told me why at the time. I found out much later it was thought that the Russians had exploded an Atomic Bomb and that was the reason for the filters. So much for my family prospects. [laugh]. That Sunday morning again at eight o clock I roared across the hangers and domestic site at very low level just to wake everybody up as we flew away and off we went. The target was Jan Mayen Island the one above the Arctic Circle. The fuel was measured carefully on the way North to ensure that there would always be enough to get back to base. We saw Jan Mayen below us visually and on the H2S Radar so the plotted winds must have been ok and could be used on the way home. Also there was enough fuel in the aircraft, there was a good reserve of margin. It was decided to route via the Faroes on the way back, it was marginally further, they would provide a good check point. About one hours from starting south what appeared to be a coast line showed on the H2S on the starboard side which I thought was rather odd. Then after about an other hour what looked like heavy clouds from a distance began to look like mountains which indeed they were. They were certainly not the Faroes because I had seen them on earlier Pampers and we realised later on that the coastline had been the edge of the Greenland Ice Cap. Using Consul help to navigate was not good because due to an oxygen lack I was down to about ten thousand feed and the Wop could not raise any stations as we were in some sort of a radio mush. I thought it was Iceland and tried calling Reykyavick on 121.5 the Emergency Frequency but to no avail. I told the Navigator that I was turning onto a South Easterly heading, if it was Iceland we would be heading roughly towards Scotland, if not then who knows. Roughly one hour later we crossed a coastland from land to sea, which suggested Iceland. By this time the two bomb bay tanks had long been used up. My Flight Engineer was monitoring the fuel and getting the revs down as far as he dared to maximise our range and the airspeed lowered by about thirty knots. At last the Wop managed to contact Number One Group, told them of our plight and they arranged for the Royal Naval Air Station at Lossiemouth to open up especially for us. That is if we could reach them because it was a Sunday as I had previously said. We crossed into North West Scotland on a lovely clear night by then but we were all freezing cold having sat in temperatures of around minus forty degrees, minus forty centigrade is not the same as minus forty Fahrenheit so that was about seventy two degrees of frost at least. I did manage to land at Lossiemouth after two attempts in a heavy snow shower and fourteen hours in the air. When the aircraft was checked the next day before refuelling, the form seven hundred the aircraft log, said no measurable fuel in the aircraft. Back at Binbrook the next day the Wingco flying Hamish Mahaddie talked to me about it and the Nav section went into a big hudle and came to the conclusion that we must have run into a Jetstream which in those days nobody heard very much of. Anyway five days later I did another one and turned round at the Faroes because eh we didn’t have to go so far. I diverted into Middleton St George on that. On the sixteenth another one returned from fifty seven north having jettisoned six hundred gallons of fuel. The final twenty first Pamper to the Faroes and back on the twentieth of December. I certainly had my share of cold weather operations and the forth of December nineteen forty nine as certainly a day for me to remember ever more. Anyway I went from a freezing December to a red hot February nineteen fifty I spent that month again in Shallufa, Egypt staging both there and back by Castle Benetto, did a lot of fighter affil and air to air gunnery. Some air to ground gunnery, very low level and dropped some five hundred pound bombs on the target we had at Habbaniya, Iraq and back to the UK. It was the same old routine apart from a lot of formation flying fly past at Woodford, Number One Group Headquarters over Bawtry. The Kings birthday flypast over Buckingham Palace on the eighth of June. My very last time flying a Lincoln in the leading vic of sixty aircraft over Farnborough for the RAF display on the seventh of July. All together I flew eight hundred and eighty hours on Lancs and Lincolns but eh I was pleased to finish on a high note. Mind you not only was it was announced in the London Gazette that I had been awarded the Air Force Medal but I was also on my way to the OCTU at Kirton Lindsey so eh, and I was commissioned on my twenty first birthday which caused a lot of who, ha when filling in forms, “you put the same date, have you done it right?”[laugh]. I had applied to go to the Central Flying School on an Instructors course but after OCTU I was posted to Marham to the B29 they called them the Washington in the RAF but two weeks into the intensive Ground School came a big dilemma for me. The chance to go to CFS came up and I was given twenty four hours to decide. I plumped for CFS I was posted to Oakington in Cambridgeshire about twenty hours refresher flying on the Harvard and started on the CFS course at Little Rissington on the twenty eighth of December although the snow was thick on the ground. A really intensive course especially the class room theory and once or twice I thought have I done the right thing having given up the B29 for this. I flew about ninety hours just learning to be an Instructor, quite a lot of that time with a fellow student practicing the patter. There were thirty of us on the course I was pleased to finish with five others, I think it was five with a B1 category. The rest passed out with a B2 and I was posted to 3 FTS in Norfolk and eh so I went up there in a lovely old white SS Jaguar with another guy who was posted there. I left my motor bike at, at, at Rissie at CFS and went back for it later. It was quite nice to be back in our home county again but it turned out I did do the right thing because a young WAAF Officer turned up in the Mess one day and mine were two of many eyes that followed her round the room. Em We got married actually on the eighteenth of March nineteen fifty three and we lived in a caravan near Methwold our satellite airfield, there were no married quarters for newly weds. And eh the flying was quite intense, there were four students at the beginning of each course and before going solo on the Harvard each student has to do four periods of stalling and spinning apart from general handling and circuits and bumps which meant for me at least forty, four forty five minutes sorties each day for the first two or three weeks. But eh this gradually changed, the students went solo, you know sort of fifty fifty and eh that went on for about five months I suppose. Formation flying, instrument flying, aerobatics, low flying, gunnery, night flying, you name it we did it. And em after five months it all started again with a new course and eh there was occasionally the odd diversion. RAF Lakenheath eh was only five miles from Feltwell. I once, I remember when the eh large American eh B36s were there. I had the chance to low down, low run down the runway out of a GCA approach and eh and have a really good look at them really.
DM. Did you have any frightening moments with your students, did they ever put the wind up you?
JC. I suppose one or two things but you never really thought anything of it really, yes. With a student you had to let them correct their mistakes if they possibly could. It’s no good grabbing it and doing, sometimes if they were having a job getting out of the spin or something like that you had to stick it as long as you could, telling them or encouraging them to get out of the, but you had to watch it like a hawk. It was really interesting I really enjoyed that, yeah. I used to take my wife sometimes in the Harvard she was, she was in the WAAF of course. In formation flying she used to sometimes come along in. in the back, yeah. I did, what? about eleven hundred hours in the couple of years I was at Feltwell. Em eight hundred and eighty of them amazing same figure as the earlier one isn’t it, but it is right, eight hundred and eighty of instructional hours and I was upgraded to an A2 Category. Towards the end of my time there I didn’t have eh so many students of my own, I often had to do a lot of check rides on them. Often we were washing them out and I didn’t like having to do that very much. You know it, it’s I know it sounds daft but it is a bit upsetting in a way to, to see these lads suddenly to be told they are scrubbed. Anyway in August nineteen fifty three I was posted to eh Number 6 FTS eh at Tern Hill in Shropshire to start the very first course on the, the eh Piston Provost which was of course our new side by side trainer. Eh, before collecting our new aeroplanes from the Percival Factory at Luton which was a grass airfield in those days. I spent the first month on the Harvard helping to acclimatise newly graduated Pilots from Canada which is the English way of operating in particular coping with our weather. I should have heeded my own words because one day four of us were taken by Harvard to Luton to collect our brand new Provosts. We were all quite experienced, there was quite a bit of flying between us. A cold front was coming down the Country which we had to fly through going back to Tern Hill. All four aircraft were non radio, ‘cause they didn’t have the right crystals but we all wanted to get back so we set off in a loose gaggle and then we the rain and boy oh boy was it heavy. Everything sort of disappeared, the ground, the other aeroplanes you know. Nobody could talk to us, we were non radio and so I found the A5 I think it was, it may have been the A6 below me showing up, quite low really. I stuck over the road, at least there were no tall masts or whatever over the middle of the road and about, I don’t know, twenty minutes later we flew out of the, out of the rain and you could see for thousands of miles. A beautiful, I looked round for the other guys and we jiggle around one or two sort of in different positions from what we had been in. Anyway we all, all got back to Tern Hill and when we got on the ground we all looked at each other and thought “silly beggars,” you know. But there was nothing, all married you know and it was one of those silly things I thought “fools really” but em, but em. There used to be an article in the Aeroplane called I learned about flying from that and eh. It may have been in Flight magazine I can’t remember and that episode would have been my contribution really. Anyway doing my time at Tern Hill I managed to get a month at 12 FTS Weston [unreadable] to fly the Meteor for about fourteen hours which was quite nice and eh going in that up to about sort of forty thousand feet and that was quite a different world really, it was great fun. Then em I volunteered for something, they wanted a Flight Commander at 61 Group Con Flight at Kenley. You had to be a Flight Lieutenant, an A2 Instructor, a front rating examiner and I filled the bill on all three counts and there was I only got about six months left before joining the RAF, before leaving the RAF. I applied and was accepted. The Flight had three Ansons two Oxfords, three Austers, six Chipmunks and the Anson 12s, mainly for flying ATC Cadets around and the Anson 19 was for the AOC to be ferried around in. The Austers were for instrument checks on young Army Officers for the fairly new Army Air Corps in these days of course.The Chipmunks were for the use of mainly Senior Officers at Air Ministry to keep their currency to do Instrument Ratings with me. I was able to fly all over the country including one trip to Balne near Cologne in Germany in the Anson. My first instrument rating test technically was on Air Vice Marshall Mclvoy he practised on the Anson for a week, did a good test and eh, not like some of the Air Ministry Bods who just want to come and have a little go. And eh But eh all things, all good things come to an end I left the RAF in nineteen fifty five to start a new career having flown roughly three thousand hours. “I’m taking a lot from this of course but cutting a lot out.” Right I became an Air Traffic Control Officer in eh nineteen fifty six with a lengthy course at the Air Training College at Hurn Airport. I served initially at Croydon and then at Black Bush and eh, well in those days all, all your ATCOs Civil Air ATCOs were all Pilots or eh Navigators and sort of working with kindred spirits which was quite nice. After a year I was posted to the Southern Air Traffic Centre on the North Side of Heathrow and after a three year gap I got airbourne again in the jump seat of a Viscount to Copenhagen and to also one in Paris. I did a Radar course at Hurn, I em also got a Cockpit flight in a DC6 from Blackbush and a chance to fly the Decca Navigator from Croydon and also on their Ambassador from Heathrow on a Decca Demo flight. I spent another twenty five years as an ATCO at eh Southern Centre at Heathrow and later at West Drayton and during that time I flew in the cockpit of many different types of airliner. Different airlines all over Europe and the Middle East visiting other Air Traffic agencies including a cockpit ride in a Trans World 747 to eh, to Long Island, New York to the Air Traffic Centre there which was nice. I also had a supersonic flight in Concorde as it was being worked by the RAF up to fifty five thousand feet and Mach 2.2 over the North Sea and down to land on the inaugural Edinburgh Shuttle, super Shuttle and I just had to pay a normal fare for that, fifty five pounds I think it was. [laugh]. Another rather special flight in nineteen seventy seven I was in a Sandringham Flying Boat from Calshot and the Captain of that with reputed forty thousand flying hours, was named Blair, he was the husband em of the film actress Maureen O’Hara. He was later killed in one of his own aeroplanes, a Goose crash landed in the sea and had an engine failure. I can’t remember when it was, but all of the passengers survived that and he was killed yeah a bit unfortunate. But anyway in nineteen sixty two when the trial of the air experience flights were performed by the RAF I applied to join but it was far too late because most of the Auxiliary Air Force guys had switched over when that was closed down. 6 AEF at White Waltham had a waiting list of fifty odd people and I was told that my only real chance to fly was as supernumary pilot if I was commissioned in the RAF VR Training Branch. So I joined the local Air Training Corp at Camberley as a Civilian Instructor and after about two years a vacancy arose and I was commissioned as a Flying Officer in the eh the VR Training Branch. That was amusing I had to be interviewed by the eh girl out of the Camberley Council to see if I was a suitable chap to be commissioned in the VR having been commissioned, so I thought that was rather amusing having been commissioned. Anyway em the day after my commission came through In fact the next day I was knocking on the door of 6 AEF COs Office again and I was accepted and began flying in a Chipmunk usually two hour sorties with four cadets and I had the best of both worlds of course, a job I liked and eh being able to fly the cadets at weekends and CCF cadets on weekdays more or less. Little did I know, did I put that I would be flying them around till nineteen eighty nine, nineteen eighty nine. I usually did an Eastern and Summer Camp at various RAF Stations and often managed to get my hands on various other types usually jets and some helicopters. My very first supersonic flight before Concord was in a two seat Hunter T7 and at Brawdy one of my ex students from Feltwell was CO of the Hawk Squadron so that was really good for me. 6 AEF moved to Abingdon in September nineteen seventy three, I did a Summer Camp at Odiham in the summer of nineteen seventy four and running it was an old chum of mine from my course at Miami Oklahoma he was a Squadron Leader then he was the boss of No 2 AEF at Hamble and he suggested I would move, I would like to move there em, despite it being a much longer journey I, I did so after another camp at West Raynham where, where incidentally I flew in a Canberra in a low level exercise over the North Sea, we just missed eh a Luftwaffe Phantom [laugh] after about a fortnight at Hamble I was made deputy Flight Commander which meant I was paid as a Flight Lieutenant which was good em. We used to go and fly the cadets at Herne, Goodwood, Lea on Sollent, Benbridge and Sandown on the Isle of Wight and it was just nice. Er one day just after take off at Shoreham the engine blew up just as I was crossing the beach at eight hundred feet. I done the fastest one hundred and eighty turn in history and managed to force land at Shoreham at eh, at eh Shoreham and one of the pots had eh blown completely. In early December nineteen eighty the AEF moved to Hurn so it was now a hundred and sixty mile round trip from home eh but eh that was really good and I stayed at Hurn well until I, I finished with the RAF. I eh most of my Summer Camps over the years were at Coltishall close to where I used to live in Aylesham. On two or three occasions young Squadron Pilots came up to me at various places saying “ are you John Cooper? I remember you, I flew with you when I was a cadet” which was quite nice to be remembered like that, yeah. And eh, eh I remember one day em at St Mawgan in Cornwall, I used to camp in nineteen eighty five, I happened to mention on the third trip of the four I was going t do, I would be flying my five thousandth cadet and eh after landing on the third trip I was told by AirTraffic to taxi in and switch of because the Station Commander wanted to see me. I thought “goodness what have I been up to” Anyway the Airman who marshalled me in was wearing huge, six foot five rubber gloves, you remember Kenny Everett the kind he used to wear, marshalling me in wearing those and I thought “that is a bit odd” As I climbed out of the aeroplane, the Chipmunk, the Group Captain and a few others walked over smiling with a tray and a bottle of champagne and some glasses to celebrate the occasion [laugh]. I was sorry I could not fly again that day because of the drinking and eh in nineteen eighty six we done a Summer Camp with the AEF at Wildenrath in Germany, I bumped into eh this friend of mine Norman Geery who I trained with in America who had been this Flight Commander and he was, he was, he had retired from the AEF he was working as a Staff Officer, so eh. I, I flew over seven thousand cadets so eh in one hundred and ten different Chipmunks you know, that’s quite a lot really isn’t it? And I, I did about three thousand seven hundred hours in the Chipmunk and not too bad for a eh spare time. The one with my name stencilled on the side, eh WK630 I did one hundred and fifty hours in that one aeroplane and it is based up a little airfield in Norfolk again about five or six miles from where I used to live. I’ve met, I’ve met the owner in fact I met them a couple of months ago as well or the new owners, Shuttleworth when they had the seventieth anniversary of the Chipmunk. So eh who knows I might get a ride in that. I had visited my old Flying School in Miami, Oklahoma in nineteen eighty two we had a reunion there, the first one which was quite nice and eh we also had on in ninety seven, nineteen eighty seven and Frances came to me to that one so that was eh. I met my old Instructor on that one and he was living in Tulsa in Oklahoma. And eh so Frances and I went to see him and he said I was the first of his he had ever met since, since the end of the war yeah, so he was quite an old boy by then but that was very nice, yeah. I’ve kept my flying license going for quite a long time now after that, I had a share in a Cessna 172 at Black Bush and used to take the family occasionally and this that and the other and eh, I done what, six thousand nine hundred hours roughly in all sorts of different what about forty five different types but eh it’s slowed down now. My license has expired now but I had a real of on eh, on the I don’t know, this might be of interest, on the twenty ninth of June two thousand and three I was with a friend of mine in his Chipmunk on a three day rally organised by the Moth Club. There was a Tiger Moth taking part and I met the owner, told him his very same one that I had first flown at Grayingham School on the 14th of April nineteen forty four. He gave me a flight in his aeroplane on the 14th of April two thousand and four exactly sixty years to the very day that I first flew it. Now if you go forward ten years and again on the 14th of April two thousand fourteen exactly seventy days to the very day I first flew it, I flew it again. That’s a bit unusual isn’t it? Yeah, yeah and he said, he said well I haven’t booked in for the next ten, we will start with five[laugh] I shall be a bit creaky by then, yeah. So really that’s my, my.
DM. When did you, going right back to the beginning, why did you decide to join the Air Force as opposed to going into another branch of the Forces?
JC. Never entered my head, never entered my head well you see I didn’t really mention this, when the eh Air Training Corps started in nineteen forty one a flight of it was formed in Aylesham near where I lived and the CO was the local Headmaster and eh I was one of the founder members and eh I used to keep a log of all the aeroplanes I seen flying over the top of it and eh. I’ve got here there were Spitfires, Hurricanes, Aerocobras, Typhoons there were twin engined Whirlwinds which were quite rare and the Bombers going out in the darkness, Wellingtons, Hampdens and Whitleys at that stage and the Blenheims at Alton airfield about three miles away. When we, when we got our uniforms you see, I, I was made the first NCO of the Flight with the lofty rank of Corporal and eh one, one Sunday I cycled to Alton Airfield two miles away with a friend of mine also in the ATC, somehow we talked ourselves, talked ourselves into a flight, into a flight in a Lockheed Hudson for thirty five minutes you see. That was the first of March nineteen forty two. And from there on nothing else seemed to matter, every Sunday practically I used to cycle to various airfields to cadge flights. On May forty two on the third, tenth, seventeenth and thirty first I had flights in the Bostons’ of 88 Squadron at Athellridge, Athellridge after the war became home to the Mathews Turkey Organisation [Laugh] em. I flew mostly in the rear gun position in the Boston. One day I was in the nose doing about two hundred and sixty knots across the airfield about fifty feet, really exciting. So it went on like that until nineteen forty two in Bostons in June, July, August I flew in them. I had a flight in a Beaufighter at Alton and I had to stand by a door just behind the Pilot.Summer camp at Coltishall an Oxford, a Domini and a real one off the gun turret of a Boulton Paul Defiant which eh that was a really good one. Eh, the Bostons disappeared from Athellridge So I turned my attention to Matlass a little grass airfield, satellite of Coltishall about seven miles from Aylesham, in those days security seemed almost non existent, just rolled up in our uniforms to go flying. I did practically every weekend in Miles Magisters to do aerobatics and in a Hawk [unreadable] to do drogue towing for Spitfires mostly also in Lysanders also towing for Spitfires as things were. Whirlwinds, the Beaufighter and then the Bostons turned up again at Alton two miles from home. It was game on again and eh when they disappeared 21 Squadron Venturas turned up and eh they were. Incidentally when the Bostons were there I was on the Airfield on the day of Operation Oyster that was the famous raid on eh on the Phillips works at Eindhoven. I was standing on the airfield watching the Wingco flying there with Pele Fry coming in, belly land his Boston on the grass, great holes in it and that eh. And then when the em, oh, by now it was obvious the war had been going on for some time, I went to the recruiting centre in Norwich and put my name down for Aircrew which I think I mentioned at the beginning of this thing. I was asked if I would like to join as a Wop or Airgunner then I could get into the aeroplane, Air Force more quickly and then I could remuster. But I said no “I really want to be a Pilot” so that was em, that was em nine months deferred service, started before I was actually called up. In the meantime I still went, used to go flying in a Mitchell in February, March at Folsham Airfield and I also flew in a Lancaster MK 11 there the one with the radial engines which was a bit different. Eh and when the Venturas’ turned up at 21 at eh Alton I flew with them practically every Sunday in nineteen forty three, formation flying, fighter afill, practise bombing. So based at quite a famous building Brickley Hall it was a National Trust place, that was where the, that was where the Officers, Officers Mess there it was really quite grand for them, but the grounds are still open. My Mother often used to walk to Brickley it was only a mile and a half from home. One Sunday she say a Ventura go whizzing across the lake and eh she said, I remember her saying “I could read the letters on the side” I said “ what were they” She said “I can’t remember I think they were such and such” I said “they were because I was in it” [laugh] Yes I had one, not near, I wasn’t in it be eh 21 Squadron had one or two Mitchells for conversion purposes, I had a flight with the Flight Commander doing a liaison thing with the Home Guard. I was going to fly in another one all day, walking out and the same Flight Commander changed his mind saying as a new crew I could go on a later trip. And I am jolly glad he did say that because, I watched the aeroplane taxi out and take of but it was only just airborne and went through the far hedge and hit a Ventura on the other side on dispersal and never got above a hundred feet and about a mile away it crashed and there was only one survivor from that. So I am very glad he, he stopped me going on that. So my long deferred service ended on the eight of November nineteen forty three when I was called up and went to Lords Cricket Ground with thousands of others and eh. I am saying all this part [laugh] Yeah [pause] I was at ACRC for longer than the usual months indoctrination to get in the RAF. Of course in the rush to get down the stairs one day from the top of a block of flats we were in in St Johns Wood I was knocked over and got Concussion and woke up in the Sick Quarters of Abbey Lodge in Regents Park. I was recoursed but eventually went to eventually went to No 6 ITW in Aberystwyth in, in nineteen forty four. Em the usual pretty tough course because of terrible weather the eh winter time we were pretty soaked all the time. There was one soaking I really hated, one day we marched up the hill to the University swimming baths where we were dressed in full RAF flying kit, including boots, helmet, may west, parachute had to climb up to the top board and eh jump in the water and eh somehow clamber into a dinghy yeah. But I didn’t like that.
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Interview with John Cooper
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David Meanwell
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2016-07-27
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Mr Cooper joined the Royal Air Force in October 1943 and trained in the United States. The war in Europe was over by the time he returned to England. He remained in the Royal Air Force until he retired as a Flight Commander and became an Air Traffic Control Officer.
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Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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Great Britain
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Atlantic Ocean--Rockall Bank
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1943
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Hugh Donnelly
101 Squadron
3 BFTS
aircrew
British Flying Training School Program
Cornell
Harvard
Lancaster
Lincoln
Meteor
pilot
RAF Binbrook
RAF Feltwell
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Methwold
training
Wellington
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/204/3339/ABatemanJT160802.2.mp3
ed973811a2b5c581c1c4ee9acd8d25e7
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Bateman, James Thomas
James Thomas Bateman
James Bateman
James T Bateman
J T Bateman
J Bateman
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One interview with James Thomas Bateman (423042 Royal Australian Air Force).
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2016-08-02
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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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Bateman, JT
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This interview is for the International Bomber Command Centre the interviewer is Barry Jackson the interview is Jim Bateman the interview is taking place at Mr Batemans home in Marsfield, Sydney, Australia on the 2nd of August 2016.
JB. My name is James Bateman I joined the Air Force in June 1942 and eventually having been trained in Canada went to England and joined 149 Squadron where I served as a Navigation Officer and completed a tour lasting from May 1944 to December 1944.
BJ. Jim what made you volunteer for Bomber Command?
JB. I think it was purely adventure, I was very young, I was seventeen and a half at the time when I actually joined and em yes I looked forward to something exciting.
BJ. Were you made aware of the high casualty rate.
JB. No we were not.
BJ. Once you completed you training or you went back to Bradfield Park where did you go, you mentioned Canada?
JB. Yes after being at Tammora and not succeeding as a Trainee Pilot I was posted back to Bradfield Park, I waited embarkation and travelled to Canada, Edmonton where I was in the eh 2 AOS at Edmonton and did my training there as an Air Navigator and eh Then after that, having a wonderful leave in New York going to England where eh eventually going through advanced training flying course to understand the topography of the English countryside and that eh finished up at the OUT at Wing where I formed a Crew.
BJ. And how did you crew up eh how did you choose your crew how did you make that thing which is pretty important of course.
JB. Well crewing up was something that was completely, quite unexpected it was just herded us all into a large hanger, Pilots, Navigators, Bomb Aimers, Wireless Operators and we were told to find ourselves a Crew. Well luckily the Pilot I chose I trained with him at Bradwell Park well nearly twelve months before and I knew him, not that well and that was the start of our Crew.
BJ. I’ve got a question, what happened to the people that were left over in the Crewing side of things, was there anyone left over?
JB. I can’t remember
BJ. What were your thoughts on that first Operational Mission?
JB. The first Operational Mission was really quite a simple one, we did mining across the North Sea off the Dutch, the Islands of Holland and eh very uneventful but that was just to introduce us to the em Operational Experience but the first real Operation was a Resistance trip to supply the Resistance eh deep down in France and eh to our chagrin we found we had the Wing Commander going to fly with us. So we had him, him on duty and eh and all I can say is that the Bomb Aimer and I we did a fine job and got to the place where we were going to drop the eh packages but unfortunately nobody turned up and em after flying about six or seven times from the starting point to the small plot of land eh, the Wing Commander with us said “well you had better go home boys” and eh, that’s what we did. Then they sent us back to the same place the next night, so we got there and dropped out packages and did our job.
BJ. Well, well, how many ops did you take part in ?
JB. I did thirty, but the Crew did thirty five.It was due to the fact that I had a spell in Hospital at one stage, I had my appendice removed and to my great disappointment also was sick on the last trip. I had a bad attack of tonsillitis, they put me in Hospital and little did I know they were going to fly that night. Luckily they came back and we were tour expired and eh got away with doing five less than anybody else.
BJ. Eh and what happened then, how old were you then?
JB. I was still twenty.
BJ. Can you remember your last Op before you obviously got sick?
JB. It, it would have been to a eh place eh eh Oberhausen to do an attack on eh, eh Oil Refineries they were converting coal to oil and that was our task on a GH Operation which we were the Leaders.
BJ Ok and you never had any close calls with Flak or Night Fighters or anything like that.
JB. Oh we had a bad time, our first trip when we converted to Lancasters to a place called Duisburg and on that occasion due to inexperience with the aircraft we arrived at the Target. I as Navigator had the responsibility to put the Master Switch on so that the Electronics worked the Bomb Bay and fired the bombs. Unfortunately when we get to the target which was very quiet, nothing happened because I hadn’t switched the Master Switch on. Our Skipper who was a very conscientious man did a round again trip. In that round again trip everything happened there was searchlights, flack the whole thing, then having to work our way back into the Bomber Stream which was about six hundred bombers that night. So we were very fortunate to survive all that.
BJ. I reckon. What were the two aircraft that you done your Operations in, the Stirling and the Lancaster what are the pros and cons for each one of them and obviously ?
JB. Oh well as being a Navigator the Stirling was an ideal aircraft, had very comfortable appointments and eh for a Navigator. It was very stable and eh I think the Pilot liked flying the Stirling but when he got the Lancaster that changed his opinion all together, it was a superior aircraft in all ways and eh all that I can say is that I would fly in a Lancaster anytime.
BJ. Yeah, yeah you must, the maximum altitude of a Stirling was how high, how high was the maximum ceiling?
JB. Oh about twelve thousand feet, but you see when we were operating on a Special Duty job we were flying at five hundred feet, so it didn’t matter. With the Lancaster we were up at nineteen, twenty thousand and that was what we did.
BJ. Yeah yeah and during eh my previous interviews the eh Gentlemen that I talked to spoke about their eh last thoughts as they were taxiing out joining the stream. There was a very light I believe eh there was a light eh there was a lady that used to give you a green or red signal eh. Did you have any thoughts or were you just concentration on your work.
JB. No the Navigator he was busy at that time eh, working out what the Pilot had to do, what height to fly so he didn’t have much time to think about if it was going to be good or bad. The Gunners on the other hand were sitting with plenty of time on their hands. As far as I am concerned I was busy and that helped me all through the Operation, I was busy.
BJ. Yeah, yeah well that was a good way to be and what were the conditions like at the em Base that em you were at and eh did you have a good social life was the food good.
JB. [laugh] Well you see we were at a Wartime Airfield. Little did we know that sometime before after we finished our Con Unit training, to fill in the time they sent us on what they called a Battle Course. The Battle Course was held at Methwold and eventually well we didn’t think much about it, it wasn’t very comfortable and it didn’t have any atmosphere at all. Then they sent us from 149 Squadron at Lakenheath to 149 Squadron at Methwold so we were back at the same place and it wasn’t [laugh]a very inspiring choice. The point was a Squadron that had a great tradition, Middleton who had won his Victoria Cross there. So there was a very strong feeling of Family in the place. So that made up for War time discomfort.
BJ. Did you, that’s an interesting point because you had Australian, you had English I assume you had all the Commonwealth countries gathered around you had New Zealand, Canadians, South Africans did you all have different groups did you all just rib each other or did you ?
JB. Well speaking about our Crew we were all quite, very close, we had three Australians and three Englishmen and em, we got on well together and the em, atmosphere at the Squadron was good and em we used to go out to the local pubs and, and have social eh, interaction like that. So we didn’t really mix that well with other Crews,we knew them of course, I was a Navigator and got to know other Navigators and em really a lot of the people we didn’t get to know at all.
BJ. That Crew you really got to know really well,there was no outliers?
JB. No, we were very close, there was one occasion we had a bit of a problem, I had a problem with our Engineer and er I don’t think I should go into that sufficiently to say it was all patched up. It was a silly dispute and eh eventually travelling to England after the War I called twice to see our Engineer and his Family and we got on well.
BJ. Yeah but as I said to you before I knew you in my eh eh the Navigator and Pilot are very important but as a whole crew there are seven of you.
JB. All I can say about that is that we had a very good Skipper who had a very good affinity for us. All, all over the times between the end of the War and now and until Wal Crow died we were always going out together, always, as a Crew and the Wireless Operator who is still alive, we see each other as much as we can. So it was a very strong bonding that we had and that was typical of Bomber Command I would say.
BJ. And I loved the way the Crew were formed, my and you can probably tell me a bit more
JB. The skipper used to talk about “my Navigator” something would happen and he would say “I want my Navigator to know about that,” And I I later on in my life I joined a Probus Club with him and he was forever praising the little things I done. I was a Tourist, Tour Officer and he would always ring up next day and say that that was a good outing, you did very well Jim,that was his way, he was wonderful.
BJ. And of course and he had the Crew ah eh, he sounded eh like he had the Crew eh.
JB. Oh right behind him, he was considered very highly by the Squadron, he won a DFC and for my sins I won one too.
BJ. There you go, that’s what its all about eh there are another couple of questions here and I will ask about after the War. Did you have any thoughts of the Targets you flew over and the Civilians, possible Civilians.
JB. All I can say about that without going into the dispute with our Engineer, which was to do with that type of thing eh. When we did the GH Targets, bombing the Oil Refinery that to me is what I wanted to do, I wanted to do things that didn’t involve places, area bombing, bombing cities. I can’t say I was all that happy about that and that is the reason we had a bit of a dispute. He was an Engineer and previous to becoming and Air Engineer he was on a Squadron on Malta, on a Fighter Squadron and the Luftwaffe used to come over from Sicily every hour on the hour and shoot the place up. He had, he had very little respect for Germans as such. So our first trip with the Lancaster was to Duisburg on our return after settling down in our hut he said “I think we killed lots of Germans today” I said “I don’t think we did that Stan I said “I think we were bombing this” and one thing led to another and I gave him a fat lip.
BJ.Lets not beat about the bush.
JB.It wasn’t very good for a Crew at three o’clock in the morning to be doing things like that, anyway we got over that. I must say from my experience I was happier doing that other type of bombing.
BJ.Was there any trip that you would say was worse than the other or did one stand out as probably the worst mission you had ever done? Eventually when you were allocated that trip was oh no Christ what are doing?
JB I would say the Duisburg trip.
BJ.And why was that.
JB.It was putting us at the reality of bombing what a well defended target was, what you could expect and just wondered if every trip was going to be the same.
BJ.And when you finished, when you completed the thirty missions and obviously you had to visit the Hospital em when were you, where and when were you demobbed?
JB.No,no because of my training on the GH equipment it was decided to set up a small school at Feltwell nearby.
BJ.GH what did that stand for?
JB.Yes
BJ.What did that stand for?
JB.GH it was using the Gee Box system with the uses of the Oboe technology.
BJ.What happened after that then, you went back to training people?
JB.I was at Feltwell with a small group who were training new Crews eh on the, the GH System. Just prior to the War ending I was transferred to a Squadron where I was nominally called the GH Officer.
BJ. There you go.
JB. For a very short time.
BJ. Eh when the War finished eh where did you go, did you go back to your former work or did you.
JB. I must say eh I eventually came back and was disoriented like we all were. We had been used to a different way of life for some few years and settling wasn’t easy. I went back to my old job as a clerk in this motor body company and er. Eventually after a short time I was talking to a friend who told me Qantas were recruiting aircrew. So I reported to Qantas and I was employed as an Air Navigator on Qantas Airways.
BJ. For how long?
JB. Not for very long, just on two years until a decision was made by the eh Department of Air that all Navigators should produce first class licenses. Being a Wartime Navigator I was given automatically a second class license. Which involved sitting exams on very difficulty subjects and Qantas provided the opportunity for us by setting up a small school situation with a a a lecturer. All the Wartime Navigators were given time and for three weeks we attended classes to prepare us for these exams. Unfortunately for me I found that getting Maths to work out the various problems associated, I found I just couldn’t formulate equations in my mind resulting in the fact that I failed the exam and was told I couldn’t fly with Qantas at that time. Qantas offered me a job, they were a very small company then, they weren’t very big as an er Air Traffic Officer. Well I decided that was not a good idea and for a while I was getting married and I didn’t have a job [laugh].n
BJ. No problem we can sort that out. So how old were you then you must have been in your early twenties wern’t you?
JB. Twenty One. So eh [laugh] what happened next eh I lived at a place called Lidcolme, Lidcolme Jensen Australia Limited had their factory. They were makers of swimwear as everybody would know and sportswear. Anyway it occurred to me they might have some kind of job for people like me. So one day I went over there and asked to see the er office manager and er which I did and asked him about jobs available. He said “no unfortunately, but maybe the sales department do” He arranged for me to see the sales manager who said “we are just thinking about employing more salesmen and deciding what to do and we will let you know.” Well I was married still had no job, but then just after Christmas in 1947 eh, I eh, was told I had a position with Jensen as a Salesman and that became my career for the next twenty five years and I have a watch on my wrist as a token of their respect which is still going very well.
BJ. How good is that? Excellent and there is a whole load of discussion after the War. One of the things I wanted your opinion on is, what do you think of what you did during the War, Bomber Command and the legacy you left, the sacrifices you made and what that said to future generations,they younger generation today. Is it something that should be strictly remembered eh reminded of, the sacrifices that you, you people made in those years?
JB. Yes, I suppose immediately after the War like most of us we just wanted to get on with life and and not think too much what it was all about.Because eh, you had to bring up children and a living. I did start going to ANZAC marches with other Aircrew friends and they were always more or less eh, jolly occasions, not really thinking of the War much at all. As time went bye and maturity set in, it gave me like a lot of others, the opportunity to think what it was. Now being a member of the Bomber Command Committee, mixing with Bomber Command Boys that are still with us eh, and knowing why we were em there. I have come to the conclusion that Bomber Command was a very necessary weapon for the Allies to have. After all they had nothing else going for some time until D Day and the Russians were able to do what they did. So we carried the War on against Hitler and the Nazi’s and I prefer to think of the enemy as not Germans but Nazi’s and Hitler. The German people and I, I, have become friendly with some, they were possibly in the same situation as us. They needed to be released from the awful eh [unreadable] of the Nazi policy which was a totally violent and eh, non human organisation. So I’d answer the question, I think it was necessary for us to go to War. We had to stop Hitler and the Nazi’s and whatever we did to do that, had to be done.
BJ. When did you learn of the atrocities that were.
JB. And off course the War finished and the reality of what took place in Eastern Europe, that was more so the reason for us to have done what we did. The fact that our boys lost so many, after all Australians lost 3500 killed, prisoners of war as well and eh eh, wounded eh altogether 10500 Aircrew out of 52000 Aircrew. Em the losses were terrific and all that I can say is that we were fortunate that our time of Operations was a relatively easier and eh healthier, healthier time.
BJ. Do you, do you, were there many of your colleagues, friends and associates that didn’t settle down after the War. I had Uncles that couldn’t settle down after the Adventure that had to go and do something else Adventurous, like train for the Korean War for example.
JB. Well Aircrew were pretty sensible people eh. One of the members we lost track of and it took a long time to find him eh it turned out eh an English Boy and he turned up we found out as a warder in a prison. But we couldn’t, he had sort of moved away from us, I don’t know why but. Eventually he was caught up in our family because our Skipper had to go to England quite often with his business. So he was able to contact a man called Harry Sue and eh we got together again writing letters to each other. But he was one of the first of the Crew to leave us, he died rather early considering em and eh. Otherwise where it comes to other people I don’t think that Aircrew as such went through the same kind of trauma as other soldiers did. ‘cause after all, even though we saw some of the, some boys seen some of the worst things you could ever see, their Crew being wounded and things of that kind. We weren’t like Soldiers fighting and killing people. What we did we killed people no doubt, but they were at length, they were away, they were down there, so it didn’t it didn’t feel the same. I think looking back on the War and, and being close with old wartime colleagues em you realise what we did and how important it was.
BJ. For sure, and in that strain did you ever get any criticism either subtle or otherwise for what you did during the War?
JB. No, no we never had that happen to us but some would have, yeah some would have. Some were accused of being eh, Jap dodgers, going to England and doing what they did in Bomber Command. They certainly would have been dodging the Japs, so that was bad. We never experienced that, as I say eh. As a Crew we respected each other and the duties we had and that kept us above all that other noise that was going on. Its rather sad that the War finished when it did with the Leaders being so critical about what Bomber Command did and I refer now to Winston Churchill, he never in his Victory Address mentioned Bomber Command, it was left completely out. Because of legal questions his relationship with the Russians etc he joined the forces of criticism of what we achieved. We didn’t, didn’t have to destroy all those cities in Germany. It wasn’t necessary. We realised it was, because how else would the Germans have realised what, what, what they were up against.
BJ. A different era, the same argument could be about Japan, their dropping bombs.The bombs that they dropped on Tokyo in January plus the two Atomic Bombs. The same thing could be applied it was a job that needed to be done.
JB. I think it’s a em a case of em Politicians with there attitude em about what is possible and what is not possible, they change their mind very readily when they find they have opposition. And Churchill unfortunately despite all the wonderful things that he did in, in Bomber Commands opinion he let them down. We never receive a particular decoration for being in Bomber Command although there was a decoration called Aircrew Europe but that was on a limited basis reflecting the most difficult time of Bomber Command and from nineteen, middle of forty four on you could not qualify for that you qualified before that. We were given the France and Germany Star which was given to every Soldier eh, you know. So there was no distinction. Through all these years there has been a lot of lobbying to try and rectify that and what has happened is that they have issued a small bronze em, ah, em [slight pause] addition to our medals specifying Bomber Command. That is what they have done.
BJ. I was surprised that there wasn’t a Bomber Command medal.
JB. It was all to do with what was taking place politically. Once the Russians had occupied their area in East Germany they started to make all kinds of em unfortunate statements about what had happened there. For instance in Dresden they originally said that something like over 100,000 people were killed. That wasn’t so, after much research the situation wasn’t good but the number was nothing like that, it was 2500. Dresden after all was one of the cities that Churchill himself had designated as important for the Russians to have eliminated as, as opposition as they came through. That was decided six months before, so Dresden was always a fait accompli. The facts are that Dresden had many Wartime factories that produced all kinds of important instruments. So and it was a very big rail centre for the transferring of Troops into the East. So it was certainly a very important target and unfortunately for the people in Dresden the East German Nazi’s did not protect them. They did not have any air raid centres, the only air raid centre of any use was occupied by the Gael Lighter the German Political Boss of Dresden, he survived. It certainly was a tragedy that Dresden was damaged to such an extent. However I have had the fortune to be in Dresden three or four times and I have seen what has happened, it has been completely rebuilt. There are certain things that will never be rebuilt and not change, for example most of the buildings were made from a local sandstone and the horrific fires that came on the night of the bombing burnt into the stone and those stones are still black, they can’t remove it. And, but Dresden has returned to a very charming and beautiful city.
BJ. Do you think eh ah, certain authorities have done enough to recognise Bomber Command, I know they have opened up the Bomber Command Centre in Green Park. Do you think that has gone some way to recognising what you did?
JB. I think the Air Force people do eh, they, they have made great efforts to rehabil,rehabilitate Air Crew. Em,[unreadable] affairs have been good we are based on the standards of veterans, eh, I don’t think we are singled out particularly but er we are given a lot of eh, wonderful support. Em, I don’t think with Australia being involved with the Japanese threat, that the fact that Bomber Command operated in England against Germany etc eh made much impression on the general eh population of Austalia, I don’t think so.
BJ. In those days communication wasn’t as rapid as it now so they wouldn’t have known.
JB. However having said that I must say whenever I have marched on ANZAC day the amount of em, wonderful em, acclamation that comes from the,the crowd watching is a marvellous thing. They recognise a lot of them, because there has been many documentaries showing Bomber Command. If you go to Canberra to the War Memorial there is a wonderful display there of a, a bomber G for George, being attacked at night, a simulated attack if you wish. I think that has brought a lot to peoples minds.
BJ. No it’s a wonderful, I think it is better than anything I have seen in England it’s fabulous.
JB. I feel that Australia with the great respect and eh and eh care. I would have no, no criticism.
BJ. Are you feeling all right, do you want to have a break or?
JB. Yeah I’m alright or do you want a cup of tea?
BJ. Yeah we might do that.
JB. You sit here I’ll make it.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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ABatemanJT160802
Title
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Interview with James Thomas Bateman
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:39:41 audio recording
Creator
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Barry Jackson
Date
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2016-08-02
Description
An account of the resource
Aged 17, James volunteered for aircrew in June 1942 purely for the adventure as he was looking for something exiting. He trained in Canada as a navigator and after a wonderful leave in New York returned to England for advanced flying training. on completion he was posted to 149 Squadron flying Stirlings at RAF Lakenheath.
On one of his operations he arrived over France to drop supplies to the French resistance but, in the absence of a reception committee, returned home and successfully repeated the trip the next night.
After converting to Lancasters, his first trip was to Duisburg but he forgot to operate the bombing master switch which meant they had to go around again and work their way back into the main bomber stream. James considers himself very fortunate to have survived that episode.
He speaks warmly of his crew but admitted that on the morality of mass bombing he had a dispute with his engineer and actually came to blows.
In December 1944, he completed his 30th operation to the Oberhausen oil refinery but became ill with tonsillitis and hospitalised. On recovery he spent time at RAF Feltnell training new crews on the Gee-H navigation system.
James was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross and after demob spent time as a clerk before joining Quantas Airways as an air navigation officer. Unfortunately the training was too complex for him and he left to pursue a career as a salesman for 25 years.
James speaks at length of his strong feelings on the importance of the role that Bomber Command carried out, which was not recognised by the leaders, and considers that the enemy were not the German people but the Nazis.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Norfolk
England--Suffolk
France
Canada
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Germany--Duisburg
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Hugh Donnelly
Terry Holmes
149 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
crewing up
Gee
Lancaster
memorial
navigator
perception of bombing war
RAF Feltwell
RAF Lakenheath
RAF Methwold
Resistance
Stirling