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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1875/46447/SHarriganD[Ser -DoB]v180002.mp3
9e1a59f8b5d86e0f3686b1aabcb7d54a
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-06-19
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire
Description
An account of the resource
34 items. Interviews with veterans recorded by Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire.<br /><br />Interview with Bertie Salvage <br />Three part interview with Dougie Marsh <br />Interview with Terry Hodson <br />Interview with Stan Waite Interview with John Langston<br />Interview with Nelson Nix <br />Two part interview with Bob Panton <br />Interview with Basil Fish <br />Interview with Ernest Groeger <br />Interview with Wilf Keyte <br />Interview with Reginald John Herring <br />Interview with Kathleen Reid <br />Interview with Allan Holmes <br />Interview with John Tomlinson <br />Interview with Cliff Thorpe and Roy Smith <br />Interview with Peter Scoley <br />Interview with Kenneth Ivan Duddell <br />Interview with Christopher Francis Allison <br />Interview with Bernard Bell <br />Interview with George Arthur Bell <br />Interview with George William Taplin <br />Interview with Richard Moore <br />Interview with Kenneth Edgar Neve <br />Interview with Annie Mary Blood <br />Interview with Dennis Brader <br />Interview with Les Stedman <br />Interview with Anthony Edward Mason <br />Interview with Anne Morgan Rose Harcombe<br />
<p>The following interviews have been moved to the relevant collections.<br /><span>Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46454">Kathleen Reid</a></span><br />Interview with Wing Commander <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46467">Kenneth Cook DFC</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46456">Colin Cole</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/46464">Charles Avey</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46470">John Bell</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46459">Les Rutherford</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46460">James Douglas Hudson</a></p>
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Interviewer: We’ll start again.
PS: Right.
Interviewer: It’s the 25th of January and I’m here at Westmoor Farm and I’m talking to Peter Scoley who is the sort of founder and landlord of the friends of Metheringham Airfield. Peter, you’ve been in this area for a very long time. Like all your life. Is that right?
PS: More or less. We came to Martin Moor in 1937.
Interviewer: Gosh.
PS: And, but we had to leave of course when the aerodrome was built. That was in 1943. And then Zena and I came back here to live in 1968 so most of my life with a little chunk in the 40s and 50s.
Interviewer: And a bit missing. When you had to leave where did you go to?
PS: We went to another farm at Bracebridge Heath at the north end of Waddington aerodrome a quarter of a mile or so, between a quarter and a half a mile from the end of the northern end of the main runway. And so we were entertained nightly by Lancasters taking off and landing at Waddington.
Interviewer: Right. So, so I mean you wouldn’t have been very old then. About eight years old.
PS: Ahum.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: Yeah.
Interviewer: So would you have seen action from Metheringham itself or didn’t you get down as far as here?
PS: No, I never saw Metheringham operations. I only saw it built but not operational. Though on occasion because we had this barn here still operational during the war.
Other: As a farm.
PS: As a farm. Father visited weekly because my uncle really looked after it but my father came here every week and it was on some of those occasions when I was on holiday from school that we saw things like the FIDO operating and the odd aeroplane going in the circuit and so on. But —
Interviewer: Were you allowed to stay up late enough to [laughs] —
PS: [laughs] No.
Interviewer: To see FIDO operating.
PS: The FIDO that I saw operating was actually during the daylight hours. One very foggy day, I can’t remember now whether it was the Christmas holidays or the April holidays. I think it might have been Christmas holidays actually in 1944 it was operating during the day.
Interviewer: Was that a test run or did they actually need it?
PS: I don’t think so. I think it was, I think it was operating because air ambulances were coming in from Europe with American wounded on.
Interviewer: Peter, excuse me.
PS: For Nocton Hospital.
Interviewer: It’s absolutely stone cold. Can you get the girls to come back collect it and warmed up for us.
PS: Righto, duck.
Interviewer: Shall we?
PS: Can you, can you pause?
Interviewer: Yes.
[recording paused]
Interviewer: Stopped it so [pause] So they were running FIDO during the day.
PS: Are we on now?
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: Oh right. Yes. I can remember. I can remember it very clearly because on that particular day father was bringing a battery to Smalley’s, the motor engineers of Martin for recharging. In those days if you, if you remember the wireless sets we had weren’t plugged in to the electrics because we didn’t have any but there were on big glass batteries filled with acid that was re, that were recharged every week. And we were coming down to Martin to have this battery charged. To get there of course we had to come through Metheringham Aerodrome. Now, the road was closed but because father had this farm here he had a pass to come through so we came up to the main gate and he showed the pass and we were waved through. But he was warned at the sentry post, guardroom that the FIDO was running and there was a guard on the road, to take directions from him. So further up the road we came across this guard with a 303 rifle and a fixed bayonet and in front of us we’d seen a lorry disappearing into the fog past this chap with a bayonet and father stopped and said, ‘Is it safe to go through?’ And so the guard said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘That lorry has just gone through,’ he said, ‘So I think you can.’ So off we went and the roar as we went through was terrific and the flames as I recall were not the same as you see on the films and pictures of FIDO working which tend to show a very low flame.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: Very close to the ground. The flames that I remember, don’t forget I was eight, nine years old were much higher than that. They were more like eight to ten feet high and they were blue and with a yellowish tinge.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: And the roar was fantastic and the heat terrific. But anyway —
[recording paused]
PS: Switch on then. So we drove through and went off down to Martin to get the batteries recharged. Mission successful.
Interviewer: Yes. It is interesting what you say because all the pictures or almost all the pictures of FIDO are taken at night so the only bit you see is the yellow part of the of the flame and no one every talks about the noise. They only talk about the flames and the fumes and everything like that.
PS: That is my recollection of it.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: Don’t forget as I say I was eight nine years old.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: And that is my memory.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: Fickle though it might but with a picture that I have of FIDO is quite different from that shown in the books.
Interviewer: Yes. Well, that’s, that’s quite amazing. So what was going on at Waddington? I presume that you had a much closer view of, of events there.
PS: Not really. I suppose because one was only at home during school holidays though obviously during those weeks you got the aircraft flying overhead every night taking off on operations. And being only half a mile or so from the end of the north, north south runway at Waddington fully loaded Lancasters coming over twenty or thirty at a time and skimming the house by about sixty to a hundred feet the noise was rather shattering and if you were trying to get to sleep a fairly, you were given a fairly impossible job.
Interviewer: Did you ever get used to it?
PS: No. Never really got used to it. But you counted them out and you counted them back. The other thing that I recall from my bedroom window there was an air raid siren two hundred yards away on the AV Roe aircraft factory roof end and every now and again it would go off. And I don’t know whether anybody remembers air raid sirens these days but believe me in those days if it went off the heart raced a bit.
Interviewer: It is frightening.
PS: We, I was ill with measles at the time but in March of 1945 Bomber Command suffered the last intruder raids of the Luftwaffe when various night fighters flew over aerodromes in the UK and shot the place up and on two occasions that happened at Waddington. On one occasion the bomb dump was set on fire and we had shell cases littering through the trees. You could hear them hitting the trees and bullets whistling through the air. That was rather frightening and then they did in fact manage to set the Waddington bomb dump on fire one night. And the —
Interviewer: What were the bombs, were they exploding?
PS: No, they weren’t. No. Fortunately not.
Interviewer: Because they weren’t fused, were they?
PS: No, they hadn’t got that far.
Interviewer: No.
PS: But something was burning there.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: And various people from RAF Waddington came around to all the outlying houses, farms and everyone telling everyone to get out quick because if the bomb dump went off it would level a fair, it would level a fair area of land.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: And so mother explained that we couldn’t because my brother and I were in bed with measles and my father was in bed with flu. ‘Righto,’ said the officer. He said, ‘We’ll lay an ambulance on.’ As it turned out before the ambulance arrived they got the fire under control so it was all cancelled but it was a little bit of a hairy old do for an hour until things got under control.
Interviewer: Yes, I can imagine.
PS: Well, that was the nearest I got to the war.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: Because most of the time with being away at school, in the latter half of the war at anyrate, in Yorkshire we very rarely saw any aircraft up there and German aircraft in particular. But further south of course things were rather different.
Interviewer: Yes, I can imagine. Well, I grew up in London but I’m not quite old enough. It’s strange because I have a memory of getting out of bed and lifting the edge of a blackout curtain and looking out and seeing searchlights panning the sky. Now, it couldn’t have been the Blitz because I wasn’t around in the Blitz.
PS: No.
Interviewer: So I’m not quite sure what this memory was.
PS: Well, don’t forget there was a little Blitz in 1944.
Interviewer: Ah, well it could have been something like that. Yes. Yes. I didn’t think much about it. It just looked like all pretty lights in the sky you know.
PS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Obviously, obviously very young. Now, you are now with your connections to the Metheringham Airfield and considered by lots of us as, as a chief archivist.
PS: God. Yeah.
Interviewer: You must have the odd story to tell. Things that were related to you or, or something like that.
PS: Oh God. Now, my mind’s gone a blank.
Interviewer: Of the —
PS: Yeah.
[recording paused]
PS: Yeah. Yeah, well perhaps for a start we could talk about the origins of the, of the Visitor Centre because they were not simple. Zena and I had thought, had been wondering for a long time about a Memorial to the Bomber Command people here during the war but we could never really think of anything that we could do. We didn’t particularly want, just want to put a Memorial slab or stone. We wanted something a bit different but nothing occurred. In any case at that time we were both busy with our own lives. Me in farming and Zena with local government. But it just so happened one day that Zena was at a meeting with North Kesteven District Council officials at a time when — [beeping noise] I think I can —
Interviewer: Ok.
[recording paused]
PS: So anyway, Zena was at this meeting with the North Kesteven District Council at a time when they were having to rethink the financial aspects of local government because agriculture which up ‘til then had been the mainstay of rural life was ceasing because of the end of the Cold War was ceasing to be as important as it had been hitherto. And so the local authorities were having to reassess businesses and tourism and all sorts of other things that were happening in their areas in order to get revenue for the county. One of the things that the Tourism Department at Sleaford was concerned with was the wartime aviation and they were creating what became known as the Airfield Trail which it was hoped would attract tourists into the area to go around and visit all these old aerodromes which by then were becoming of national interest. So during the conversation Zena happened to mention that we had got some old wartime, World War Two buildings on the farm and would they be interested. They said they would. They’d come and have a look which eventually they did and it was decided that one of the buildings in particular would be a good place to have what at that time was going to be known as a Memorial Room. The council would renovate part of it in which the exhibition would be and then the place would be open for people to visit when they were in the area. At that time nothing more was planned. It, coincidentally one of our neighbours on the other side of the airfield had built a Memorial to 106 Squadron which in 1992 was dedicated at a squadron reunion.
Interviewer: Was this the one that is actually on the airfield site?
PS: Yes.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: When it was dedicated and we talked to the squadron about our plans they showed interest and asked to be invited to the dedication of the Memorial Room when it was opened. And we said yes. In the meantime, John Pye who had done the other Memorial said would it be appropriate for him to build another Memorial outside the Memorial Room? So we thought it was a good idea and which he did. That was in 1993 and in July of ’93 at the squadron reunion they came here for the dedication of the new Memorial and —
Interviewer: Partial opening.
PS: Yeah [pause] Ok? Yeah. So anyway, the squadron arrived in July of 1993 for the dedication of the second Memorial.
Interviewer: When you say the squadron you mean the Squadron Association?
PS: The Squadron Association.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: Yeah. And had a look at the half-finished Memorial Room and there was a preliminary suggestion that it mightn’t be a bad idea if we were willing for it to be also the Squadron Museum. So anyway, we all went away and thought about that. We had to think about this. They, and they came back again in October of that year when the Memorial Room was finished and opened for a month for local people to come and have a look and we had an official opening with the chairman of the North Kesteven District Council and a little ceremony and we closed again for the winter at the end of the month. During the winter we had a general meeting when the Friends of Metheringham Airfield was set up. The title was, as I recall was suggested by our number one member who has only just died a week or two back. Ron Mitchell. And we’ve been the Friends of Metheringham Airfield ever since and the committee was formed and it went on from there. The following summer in July when the squadron came down for their reunion, or the Association came down for their reunion they of course visited the Centre and we had a little party there. And one of the squadron members had a quiet think and thought it would be a good idea if we renovated the end room. Well, we hadn’t got any money to do that at the time so nothing much happened. But it just so happened that the poor chap died that winter. Then we found out that he had left us two hundred pounds in his will for to help with renovations at the Centre. And so we renovated the end rooms and they’re now called the Carey Powell Room.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: In memory of our benefactor who’d in fact had been a rear gunner here. He was a two tour rear gunner which was a very rare bird indeed.
Interviewer: Yes.
PS: In World War Two.
Interviewer: It certainly was.
PS: And a very nice man and a great supporter. So we were very pleased to, to name the room after him and to keep his name alive. So the, the museum has sort of developed from the there. The next job we did was to clear out the old gymnasium which had become redundant as far as the farm buildings were concerned and so, we cleaned it out and freshened it up. And since then we’ve had all our meetings and things in there. The lectures we started in the Centre in 1994 as it happened. I think Jim Shortland gave the first one and I believe we had about seventy people in there at the time. But gradually as time went on numbers increased and the centre wasn’t big enough and so we moved across to the school room, what is now the school room and a gymnasium until that became too small when we started having the lectures and things in the main room in the gymnasium. And that basically is an outline in how we first started and has carried on to this day with under the guidance of a group of very dedicated volunteers. We are now a charity and which has been helpful with the financial aspects of the friends and we hope that interest will survive because we believe that the memory of Bomber Command people deserves it. There may be controversy over what Bomber Command did during the world war but one can’t get away from the fact that fifty five thousand men, young men, young boys lost their lives serving their country and that is the main thing as far as we’re concerned in preserving the memory of 106 Squadron.
Interviewer: That’s, that’s really the core purpose of the organisation, isn’t it? That it’s totally wrong and mercifully I think the country is now decades too late beginning to realise it totally wrong to blame brave volunteer —
PS: Yes.
Interviewer: Service personnel.
PS: Yes.
Interviewer: For the mistakes, perceived or real of their political masters.
PS: Absolutely. It’s been most unfair and again well we’ll not mention any politics in this but we know the guilty ones.
Interviewer: I’ll not mention any names. Well, Peter, I think we’ve come to the end of the session now and thank you ever so much for talking to us and I’m sure that your name won’t exactly be in lights but your voice might well be coming out of peoples computers. Thank you.
PS: [laughs] Right.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Peter Scoley
1008-Scoley, E Peter G
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SHarriganD[Ser#-DoB]v18
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
1992
1993
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Format
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00:23:19 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Pending OH summary. Allocated C Campbell
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jeff Williams
This Interview was recorded by Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Description
An account of the resource
Peter Scoley was born on a farm which became RAF Metheringham during the war. After the war Peter and his wife were fundamental in creating a museum on the site.
106 Squadron
bombing
FIDO
Lancaster
memorial
perception of bombing war
RAF Metheringham
RAF Waddington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1875/46434/SHarriganD[Ser -DoB]v030002.MP3
3c775849a6ea16bffcf1f3136d1c9dd9
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
Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-06-19
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire
Description
An account of the resource
34 items. Interviews with veterans recorded by Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire.<br /><br />Interview with Bertie Salvage <br />Three part interview with Dougie Marsh <br />Interview with Terry Hodson <br />Interview with Stan Waite Interview with John Langston<br />Interview with Nelson Nix <br />Two part interview with Bob Panton <br />Interview with Basil Fish <br />Interview with Ernest Groeger <br />Interview with Wilf Keyte <br />Interview with Reginald John Herring <br />Interview with Kathleen Reid <br />Interview with Allan Holmes <br />Interview with John Tomlinson <br />Interview with Cliff Thorpe and Roy Smith <br />Interview with Peter Scoley <br />Interview with Kenneth Ivan Duddell <br />Interview with Christopher Francis Allison <br />Interview with Bernard Bell <br />Interview with George Arthur Bell <br />Interview with George William Taplin <br />Interview with Richard Moore <br />Interview with Kenneth Edgar Neve <br />Interview with Annie Mary Blood <br />Interview with Dennis Brader <br />Interview with Les Stedman <br />Interview with Anthony Edward Mason <br />Interview with Anne Morgan Rose Harcombe<br />
<p>The following interviews have been moved to the relevant collections.<br /><span>Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46454">Kathleen Reid</a></span><br />Interview with Wing Commander <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46467">Kenneth Cook DFC</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46456">Colin Cole</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/46464">Charles Avey</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46470">John Bell</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46459">Les Rutherford</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46460">James Douglas Hudson</a></p>
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Interviewer: Hello. Hello. Hello. This is a recording made at the house of Anthony Edward Mason. We’re here to record his childhood memories as he remembers them whilst living in the neighbourhood of RAF Waddington during the war. So then, Tony, really what can you recollect from your earliest years?
AM: Well, I can [pause] just these big planes coming in. Coming in to land and taking off at night and coming in to land and, and going up to, yeah we were very near to the edge of the dispersal point. To going up to the dispersal point on a nice day I suppose to look at the planes and, and occasionally being lifted over the, over the fence and put into the planes and shown around. And you know the thing I really remember is the, is the wing. You know where the wings came across the fuselage it was like a big mountain to me to climb over and, and that, that was a bit that stuck in my mind. And yeah, we got shown around the cockpits and the gunnery parts and things like that.
Interviewer: How old were you at this time?
AM: I was, I would be about seven then. I was five I think when the war started. I’d be about seven. Seven or eight then I think and, oh, here’s the boss coming and you know we didn’t go every day or anything like that but we had —
Interviewer: Oh, yeah. You were looking in the cockpit.
AM: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know we just, you know we just, we [pause] I don’t know what. What, whether they were British personnel or not. I can’t remember whether they were British personnel. I understand that they were Australian but I’m not sure and and that was, you know that was part of what we used to do. And then there was another incident when a plane coming in to land and I seem to remember had been damaged in bombing and coming in to land and damaged and crashed in a field just short of the runway and, and caught fire and burned out. And later on when it was all cold and cleared up and what have you my brother went up with some friends of his to see the crash site and found, found some coins, burned coins and brought those home and he was showing them to my father. And he just said, ‘Oh, give them to me and I’ll put them in my pocket and shine them up for you,’ like really. And that was just that’s always been a standard joke that really.
Interviewer: I know you were young then. Did you find the war exciting as a child? Was there a lot of activity?
AM: I don’t think we did. There was a lot of activity. A lot of air activity but I don’t, I can’t remember ever finding it exciting. It was we were there in among it and, and you know it was that. It was mostly in the, you know latish on in the evening or you know early evening or later in the evening when they were taking off and they were coming back in in sort of breakfast time. In the morning seemed to be when they were coming back in to land and the rest of the, in the daytime it always was quite quiet rightly. And this is what we found out when we went to, to look at these planes at the dispersal point was that there was a lot of work going on doing repairs, patching repairs and you know bomb loading and things like that which we saw like those and, but I can’t ever remember it you know being excited about it. It was. And then there wasn’t so much news about. We didn’t know what was, we didn’t know where they were going or what was happening or whatever like. There wasn’t like there is now. You know, television news before it happens basically. There was, there was no news. There was very little news. We had a newspaper but there was very little news in the papers. And so actually we didn’t know unless something happened quite close to us. We didn’t know really what was happening like really.
Interviewer: Your parents, did you ever notice them being anxious at any time? Or were they concerned?
AM: Well, they were. They were always concerned when the planes were coming in because they were coming over the house. You know, it was like, you know when I went out to see this this German, well I assume it was a German plane coming over in the morning and my mother’s first instinct was to throw me under the kitchen table basically because I mean they knew. They knew a lot more than I knew what was likely to happen like really. And —
Interviewer: Yeah. Do you want to tell us a bit more about the German aircraft then?
AM: Well, you know that, that, you know, it really has stuck in my memory about it because I must have been, I must have gone outside to get my cycle out to go to school or whatever and, and it came. I looked up. It came. I heard this plane overhead and looked up and it was quite low. It was only just above the house I thought and it was, it was firing shots. They looked to me they looked like pretty lights coming out of the thing like really and, and then I just said to my mum, ‘Come and look at it. Come and look at this like.’ And she just put me under the table basically and —
Interviewer: Head for cover.
AM: Yeah. That’s it. And but you know we didn’t hear anything about that at all like really and oh, we didn’t, we didn’t hear anything about the plane that had crashed at the time. We knew it had crashed because we, we must have seen the fire, I think.
Interviewer: Yeah.
AM: But, but that was, that was sort of late. That was quite early morning I think when that came in and crashed like really.
Interviewer: Yeah.
AM: So we didn’t hear it.
Interviewer: Right. Your father, he worked up at —
AM: He worked at Dean’s Farm. Dean’s. He was, Patrick Dean he was, he was a gentleman really. I mean, it was, the Mere Hall was, was the absolute bees knees like really. It was the only big place anywhere near, you know. There was Branston, Bracebridge Heath but it was only, and everything went off there. They used to have little concerts in the, in the concert room and the concert room I think was above the garage. And the church, yeah we used to go to church and the church was in the Hall in this concert room. I think it was all one room and everything, everything that happened at the Mere was there like really and my dad was the groom. He was a groom. You know, he’d been through the First World War and I think [pause] I never found a lot about that but we, we formed the opinion since that he was taking horses to the Front and things like that. Nothing was ever said about that. Not at any time. And he was a groom for Patrick Dean.
Interviewer: I understand also he joined the Home Guard, didn’t he?
AM: Yeah. He was in the Home Guard. Yeah. We had quite a few laughs with the Home Guard like from what I can remember really because they used to, at Branston. I think the Home Guard branch was at Branston and he I mean he used to cycle down there on a Saturday morning. They used to have a, have a, you know a bit of a mock battle and things like that. A training scheme. And sometimes we we all used to go down and watch if it was a nice day and we did have a few laughs with that. He was, he was, he was just a member of the Home Guard, I think.
Interviewer: Yeah.
AM: I don’t think he was anything special like really.
Interviewer: Yeah.
AM: But I don’t think they had rifles or anything. I can’t remember seeing rifles or anything like that. They never had anything to fire like.
Interviewer: Using pitchforks.
AM: Yeah. Probably so. Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah.
AM: But in the, you know during the war he was, he had to work on the farm like. He was, he wasn’t mechanical at all and I think he, they taught him to drive a tractor to do the ploughing and things like that and, and at the end of the war I think you know at the end of the war he just threw the licence away like.
Interviewer: Brilliant.
AM: He wasn’t, he wasn’t mechanically minded at all and he was a groom all of his life. Right up to he died. He died in 1956. I did my National Service in 1954 to ’56 and, you know then I came back.
Interviewer: Yeah.
AM: From, I was in Libya for fourteen months. And I came back from Libya and he was ill then like and he died.
Interviewer: Oh dear.
AM: In that year. Yeah.
Interviewer: One of the things that obviously a lot of children remember is your thoughts about the rationing.
AM: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: How did that affect you?
AM: Well, I mean it did. Well, it did affect us in many ways, you know and we’ve said this many times that it didn’t affect us as much as it affected other people because from, from right from my early memories we always kept a pig every year and killed the pig and so we had a lot of pig meat and things like that. If they’d got, a lot off it had got to be eaten in a fortnight or at the most three weeks because there was no freezer or anything like that so a lot of, you know they used to salt, we used to salt a lot of the meat down. But the sort of you know the pork pies and sausages and we always made pork pies, sausages. Pigs fries. All sorts of things like that. But they had got to be eaten fresh basically like. So we always had, we always did have meat and we always, certainly in private houses that I’d lived in with my dad, my parents we always had a big garden and and basically we were self-sufficient in vegetables and everything. We always kept a few chickens at home and things like that.
Interviewer: That’s the bit your mum told me.
[pause]
AM: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. My mum stopped having sugar. Having sugar in her tea like and things like that you know. That, that made the difference. I don’t think it made a difference to us but it did to her and I suppose to my dad really.
Interviewer: You didn’t miss sweets or anything like that then.
AM: No. Well, I think, well I mean when we, you know we were nowhere. There was, there was, yeah there was we were nowhere near shops anyway you know. I’d just you know we used to get odd coppers. I used to go to school at Branston and we got, we used to get, you know coppers for sweets I think at Branston because I can remember once going to the Post Office at Branston which was the other side of the road from the school and I went. I must have got some money from somewhere to go and get some sweets. I went and bought a pot of sweets and went straight across the road into school and left my bike in the Post Office yard. Came out of school and thought I’d lost my bike. So we had a big search around then to find the bike like really. But you know so we must have. But we didn’t, I mean we didn’t have, it wasn’t the amount of sweets there is now you know to get anyway like really.
Interviewer: Yeah.
AM: And same with crisps and things like that. I mean we, we used to have bags of broken crisps. I think they were a penny. A halfpenny or a penny I think they were but they were all the really broken bits like really. I mean we, it was, it was a hard life for my family really. For my parents anyway because you know they weren’t very well paid in those jobs like really. But it was a job he liked and you know he never, I mean he never had, I can’t ever remember him ever going anywhere for a holiday and you know but that was his life. The horses were his life like really. And I, I mean I worked with him. Later on a I worked with him. I finished up. We’ll stop a bit. Yeah.
[recording paused]
AM: At the end of the war, at the end of the war you know we sort of, once, once the restrictions had been removed and things like that my dad decided that he would, he would like a move like really and he moved to Welbourn. Just nicely outside of Lincoln really. To another groom’s job there but he only stayed there for about a year and then he moved to Aisthorpe to, they were both doctors we worked for at Aisthorpe and he had about seven or eight years there I think and and taught me a lot. Taught me a lot of all my, I mean was, I did all my, I was did a lot riding. In fact, I worked in a racing stable for a short time up here at Waltham. Just up the road here to Waltham. And he taught me to ride and —
Interviewer: Right. So I mean obviously when the war finished and it was very difficult for society to get back into what it was before the war did you notice then that things happened like the social events at the Hall etcetera?
AM: No. We didn’t.
Interviewer: The hunting.
AM: No. There was very little social. Yeah. There was very little social events at the Hall. If they had a concert, if they got somebody to come and do a concert, you know it was very very rare like really. And the only, you know I mean my dad didn’t go to church. My mum used to take us to church on a Sunday. I think it was Sunday afternoons we used to go but some, some of the family was expected to go I think when they were in private service. Things like really you had to do as you were told when you were in private service. Moreso than other work like really but, but I didn’t, I can’t think that I noticed any real difference but I mean it was a totally different world. We got to Welbourn there was more social life at Welbourn that we’d ever known like really. And —
Interviewer: So you got back to school. You were going to school.
AM: Yeah. Yeah. I went to —
Interviewer: And —
AM: I went to school at Welbourn.
Interviewer: That must have been routine was it during your time there really?
AM: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: Just the everyday sort of thing.
AM: Yeah. Yeah. That’s it. I mean you know there was yeah there were shops. There were was shops in Welbourn and things like that you know. A baker’s shop and there was a [pause] during the, during the war when we were at the Mere most of our provisions came either through a visiting Co-op or something like that coming and taking an order one week and bringing it the next week. Or the paper. We used to have our paper delivered and he would you know if we wanted something out of Lincoln he came from Bracebridge Heath I think but he would get. I can remember wanting a pocket knife and it must have been my birthday or something like that and he brought this pocket knife. You know, my mum was giving him the money and he brought the pocket knife and that, you know. There wasn’t the ease to get things in those days that there is now like really. Everything had got to be organized and for quite a long while after the war finished it was like that really. When we lived at Aisthorpe I think they used to come around taking orders like really.
AM: Well, thanks very much.
Interviewer: Ok.
AM: That’s been absolutely wonderful.
Interviewer: Are you sure? Yeah. Yeah.
AM: Just to reminisce back.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: To the childhood in the war.
Interviewer: Yeah.
AM: If you wanted all that you could have asked —
Interviewer: We’d like to thank you for that anyway. Right. Thank you very much.
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Title
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Interview with Anthony Edward Mason
1001-Mason, Anthony Edward-World War II
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SHarriganD[Ser#-DoB]v03
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
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Civilian
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eng
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Sound
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00:16:48 audio recording
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Pending OH summary. Allocated C Campbell
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Dave Harrigan
This Interview was recorded by Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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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.
Description
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Anthony Mason grew up in the area around RAF Waddington and recalls some of the activity there during the war.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
childhood in wartime
crash
RAF Waddington
strafing
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2487/42972/ATeasdaleA221220.2.mp3
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Teasdale, Audrey
Audrey Pitts
Description
An account of the resource
21 items. An oral history interview with Audrey Teasdale (b. 1923, 2135963 Royal Air Force) and photographs. She served as a WAAF in the officers' mess at RAF Waddington.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Audrey Teasdale and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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2022-12-20
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IBCC Digital Archive
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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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Teasdale, A
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AT: Er, from my own point of view I, you know, after the exam had gone before I got my act together and so none of us really managed a qualification, but we were all very well educated. And my Harry, er my two eldest brothers, they both worked in the Coal Board, as I said, my father was a colliery manager and Fred was in administration with the local authority. My Tom, the middle brother, he finished up as a company secretary for the Coal Board. We did all our study after school, y'know, we did it all off our own bats and erm...
BW: So was it night school that you went to?
AT: Night school and as we progressed, you'll see what I did, y'know but er, so it was night school and it was, y'know, interesting things and, you know, getting on with life generally and we had this encouragement from home and...
BW: You say your Mother was Victorian, she worked in service.
AT: In service yes, yes...
BW: Whereabouts did she work, was it a grand house or something?
AT: Yes, she's worked, yes, cos there's photograph there, I think, with one of the people she was with. Oh no, yeah, yeah. She worked with gentry but she also, at one point, worked at the girls grammar school in Wakefield. Yes but lovely lady.
BW: And what age were you when you left school?
AT: 14.
BW: Which was standard at that time.
AT: Standard, yes. And, do you want to know my occupation from then on?
BW: Yeah, what did you go on to do?
AT: My first occupation, I used to walk to the station, which was a mile away, then get a train to Leeds. And I worked for a firm called Barrens and it was a tailoring firm and I worked in their offices and it all related to production and y'know, what they were using and the sort of stuff that went on to the actual finished product and that sort of thing. So I did clerical work with them and I followed on where I got a job in Wakefield. I worked with a jeweler, a very top shop jewelers, you know, it was Appleyard's, in a terrific arcade, terrific shop. So I went there and then from there I was always sort of in the retail business and I went to work at the Co-op, ha! And I worked in the furnishing department where I was first assistant and I did all the erm, now then, the word, you know when they can't afford to pay...
BW: Debt.
AT: Er, actually making out the agreements for them to sign, you know, when they'd got x number of years to pay it in, y'know, that sort of thing. The name just escapes me.
BW: Repayments?
AT: Er, yeah, it was, it was, y'know, basically the lay out of what they'd bought, the interest to be paid and, and the period that they were going to pay it in. Yes, and that was it, all official and then they made the payments to the [unclear] and I did that and I was first assistant for sales.
01:08:24
BW: How long were you doing that job for?
AT: Oh it was, y’know, it was sort of between the jobs, you know, between that and my service really and er, yeah, and I did sort of clerical work and I actually went into the WAAF from there.
BW: Do you remember where you were, where your family was, when war was declared?
AT: At home. Yes, yes, er my youngest brother, the two boys - the elder brothers, they obviously were in the Coal Board, working in the Coal Board, and of course, were exempt. Fred, the youngest one, was in administration with the local authority and of course, he was conscripted. And he was in the Green Howard Regiment and stationed in Northern Ireland. But he never went abroad. A great brother and we used to, when I was in the WAAF, we used to write to each other and he kept in touch with home, and y’know, we'd always continue, you know, keeping in touch.
BW: So how old were you then when war was dec... when war broke out?
AT: About 23 and it broke out in '39...
BW: So you [unclear].
AT: Yes and then I went to, went to, I was conscripted and then I actually went into the WAAF 15th December 1942.
BW: So, what sort of choice did you have? You mentioned you were conscripted, how did that work, particularly for women because we think of men as being primarily conscripted but...
AT: Yes. I sort of could have gone the fire brigade, which didn't appeal at all [laughs]. Land Army but I think what did it [laughs] I was out one day and I saw this advert [laughs] "Join the WAAF and work with the men who fly", and I thought, 'That's for Audrey' [laughs]. So that's what I did.
BW: OK
AT: And of course, I could have been anything then, I could have been a balloon operator - barrage balloon, doing anything, really. But basically, all my time I was in the officer's mess and my, all my work was generally clerical and y’know, relating to the crews and different things.
BW: So you decided to join the WAAF. Did you, ah, it may be perhaps too detailed but I'm just interested to understand did you have to go into the air force recruitment office to complete that or was it different, did you go in to sign up?
AT: Er, I remember, you made the decision to go and then of course it just took place after that. I remember going down to, I can't remember where it was but I was interviewed and it was discussed and yeah. That's very vague to me but I do remember that.
BW: I was going to ask you about your interview and whether there was a particular test that you sat for example, maths or English or anything like that?
AT: No, no qualifications. Basically it was the things you were interested in.
BW: And how long between you being conscripted did it take for you to actually get into training?
AT: More or less immediately.
BW: Right.
AT: Yes, I remember I, it was, 15th December '42 and I went, I think, to Innesworth in Gloucester, where I was kitted out then that didn't take long and then I came back to Morecambe to do my square bashing and I was there about a fortnight. We lived, I lived in billets in the West End of Morecambe and that was very funny.
BW: How long did you spend there?
AT: Just a fortnight. It was a training and it was so funny because obviously it was winter, it was December, it was icy. We had a flight sergeant who did a thing and I'll be [laughs], quite [unclear] what he said but we couldn't stand up and he said, "What do you want me to do? Whistle the bloody skater's waltz?" [laughs]. And the other thing that was interesting about the square bashing was, they'd horses on the promenade and there was poo all over the place and you were marching away merrily and if you got your foot in that everybody got it from behind. You used to be absolutely blathered sometimes. But, that was quite an experience, the icing and the horse poo [laughter].
BW: And I believe you would have your passing out parade on Morecambe prom, is that right?
AT: Yes, yes...yeah.
BW: And it must have been pretty close to Christmas when you passed out of your fortnight's training.
AT: Yes, yes...yeah.
BW: Or just past.
AT: Yes, yeah. I can't remember that but I do know I went from there to Lindholme, Doncaster. I didn't stay there very long. I don't know, really and there was a lot of army personnel there at that time. And I don't know what the purpose of that. I wasn't there that very long and then I got a posting to Waddington. And when I got to Waddington, my time at Waddington, I was actually with 9 Squadron, which was English, 44 Squadron, which was Rhodesian and 467 and 463 which were Australian and I sort of did my service there. And from the first day, you know, I sort of worked in the officer's mess and I did lots of clerical work relating to that. Occasionally I did waitressing and I always used to get the job of the VIPs who would have a special room and I would serve them. Like Wing Commander Nettleton VC. I met him. And lots of personalities, you know, they came through. You know, met a lot of people.
BW: You mentioned Wing Commander Nettleton.
AT: Yes.
BW: He led, I think, the raid on Augsburg, which was quite a famous raid.
AT; Yes.
BW: What were your recollections of him? Did you meet him often?
AT: Lovely man. And he married a WAAF officer. Yeah and I remember service tea for them when they came, when she came. Yeah, yeah.
BW: So you were on the base, there, at Waddington, in the officer's mess, were you there pretty much all of the time, were all your duties conducted in...?
AT: In the officer's mess, yes. I did, sort of, I used to get the, the battle orders, if you'd like to call them that and I knew the crews, where they were going and they used to get a special meal when they were going on a flight cos it was often a nine hour flight and I used to, you know, make sure that they got their flight [meal], you know. They all passed through the desk and I checked that they were there and that they should get this meal, and what have you and, so that was that and of course, when they came back and...
BW: So, because the orders were going through your desk as an admin clerk, you would probably know where they were going before they did.
AT: Yeah, yeah.
BW: And was it you that put the orders up on the board each night?
AT: No, no. I was just responsible for the crews, the crews that, you know, who was going through. And this was another funny thing, they were so funny, the life they were living and you know, it was a case of eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we, we'd be...they were so, so, you know. And so respectful that it wasn't like it is today, it was, the changes in men's [sic] because they'd so much. I think probably in the early days of the war, when the WAAFs and sort of, army, you know they got the women in, I think probably in the early days they got a lot of the rough but at the time that I was going in, in '42, we got the greatest respect. And they, the crews, knew exactly who was who and what was what and...you understand what I am saying? And, yes, they made an effort. But what I was saying, they were so funny cos, I remember one time, [they were returning] and I was sat at my desk and I looked up at this officer and he smelt beautiful [laughs] and you know, for one moment, I thought, "Anything I can help you with?" and I said, "Have you been flying, Sir?" He says, "No, I've been for a walk in the park!" [laughter]. Yes, so, needless to say, he hadn't but he'd obviously managed to shower and smell beautiful [chuckles].
BW: So, where were you, yourself, billeted?
AT: I were in the Waafery [sic], a beautiful house, I don't know if it's still there, a beautiful old building on the left as you went into the 'drome. Do you know the Waafery? I might have a photograph somewhere.
BW: That was the name of it - The Waafery?
AT: Yes, yeah, yeah. And there was, we used lovely bedrooms and I think I may remember, I was on the ground floor and there was three of us in most bedrooms and, there was a night when someone got through the window on the ground floor - he was obviously looking for a WAAF but [laughs] it wasn't one of us three [laughs]. So, yeah, I lived in there.
BW: So, did you make good friends with the other WAAFs there?
AT: Yes, very good, yes. I've got pictures of them. Yes, really good friendships. And all the staff I worked with, really, because there was the cooking staff and y’know, and everything that went with...and I used to go to some beautiful functions, you know, the officers used to have at The Bulls Head and I mean, the food wasn't a problem, y’know, you got beautiful food and everything and we were just on duty, basically, to see if everything was all going alright.
BW: So it wasn't just your room mates you got on well with, you got on well with the other...
AT: I got on well with the crews and everyone, hmm. Yes, there were, I mean, the English, y’know, were very much the stiff upper lip type and a little bit more serious, 'Yes sir and no sir, three bags full, sir', sort of thing but the, er, Rhodesian and the, y’know, Australian they were so laid back, you know. I mean, we didn't, we couldn't have hair on our shoulders and we were not supposed to fraternise with the officers but, you know, they were so completely different to our officers. Nevertheless, our officers were still very nice.
BW: So, the officer's mess wasn't segregated between squadrons presumably, it was a large - was it a large mess for all of them?
AT: It was a large mess and of course, you had your sergeant's mess and your other ranks, yeah but you know, if I, on my first day arriving back on camp I was in the other rank but I spent my...
BW: So what would a typical day look like?
AT: In what respect?
BW: Well, what would you, would you sort of be up maybe six in the morning and into work for eight or what? And would you spend, say, half the day in the office and the other time at mealtimes on shift? How would it work for you?
AT: No, it wasn’t.. I don't remember it being too specific because you had flights at different times and you know, it varied.
BW: So you were just required to serve meals at particular...?
AT: Times, yeah. And operational meals were separate of course, at a different time of the day but I don't even remember what sort of a shift I worked, you know, the hours I worked or anything. But it was all very normal to me, you know, nothing outrageous.
BW: So it seemed fairly regular hours and then would you have evenings off, most evenings?
AT: Oh yes, yes. Yes, you'd nothing after a meal was served, really. And, of course, at that time I could have been somewhere else, i.e. they weren't all going on operations, yeah.
BW: You mentioned, erm, serving meals to crews who would be out on the night raids, on the missions into Germany and occupied territory, did you ever get to hear what their targets were, did you get a sense of where they were going or was it only when they came back?
AT: Only when they came back, really, yes, yes and you know, it wasn't, that was unpleasant, really because we knew them so well and you know so many went for a burton and, you know their life span wasn't very long, was it? For a, y’know, a newly qualified pilot who would probably be 19 or 20, you know, going on their first ops and lifespan were about a fortnight, wasn't it.
BW: So, when the crew lists were up and there was a raid on for that night, would you be serving them their meal around lunchtime or mid afternoon?
AT: Well the night raids it would be going on, you know, towards you know and have the time to check in, you know, that sort of thing.
BW: Yeah. I was just thinking, because they'd have to allow, you know, you sort of work back from when they would have to be over the target and they've got to go to briefing
AT: Yes and they got to go to briefing, yes, all that, yeah. But, I didn't particularly clock all that because I worked to a timetable.
BW: And when you got the time off on the evenings, what kind of things were you able to do, socially?
AT: There were always something, I mixed with people then and you know, we used to get to dances in the sergeant's mess and there was sport, I used to play tennis and we were always going down to the local pub and celebrating something, y’know, someone had done their first trip or finished a tour of ops or it was somebody's 21st birthday or, y’know, something. We'd a nice social life and we used to go to the villages nearer and we had bikes and we used to cycle to the other villages and go to the village dances and we did a lot of dancing, ha! [chuckling].
BW: Did you get into Lincoln, itself?
AT: Yes. Now, at the weekends, we were allowed to wear civilian clothes and y’know, when we went dancing and there's an officer there in a crew, who, we won [chuckles], we won a jitterbugging competition [unclear]. You know, it was lovely, there was a lovely spirit, lovely. We'd lots of things to do, really.
BW: So who would you socialise more with because you were working in the officer's mess, dances in the sergeant's mess, so would you mix more with officers or with NCOs or with other ranks?
AT: I think I probably mixed more with the officers but I still enjoyed the company of the sergeant's mess so, or the other ranks, if it comes to that. But, Brian Fallon, one of the officers, actually come [sic] and spent a leave at my home in West Yorkshire. You know, I had a lot of contact with them and I suppose I was more inclined to have...but nevertheless, I did, er. I've got a thing there, somewhere, where it was an invitation to the last dance of the 467 Squadron or something like that, you know.
BW: And was Waddington where you stayed throughout your WAAF service?
AT: No, when, oh... nine squadron went to Bardney and the Rhodesian squadron moved on and so the last few years I was with 467 and 463 and er. What was the question there?
BW: Did you stay at Waddington or did you move on elsewhere?
AT: Ah, yeah, I went to, when I left Waddington, cos it was at the end of the war, I went down to Silverstone in Northants and that was, you know, there wasn't a great deal to do. It was almost like a civilian thing because we were preparing to be demobbed. But there again, we had a nice carry on, I remember being introduced to greyhound racing [chuckles], when I was in Silverstone. Now then, what was the name of the place, it begins a 'B'... Anyway, I can't remember it. And we used to go to this, and there was a chappie who worked with the greyhounds and the first race you could guarantee a 'cert' and he used to mark our cards for us [laughter]. I always remember thinking, "Oh, if I had only had just put my wedge on it..." but I didn't, I just put my pittance cos it was so little.
BW: So what did you get paid?
AT: I can't remember, but I do remember, at one point, I got an increase and instead of saluting and saying "963" I said, "Thank you!" [laughs]. I was so delighted! Not very popular! [laughter]
BW: So Silverstone was quite different to being at Waddington. You must have been at Waddington, probably, 18 months - two years, easily?
AT: Two years yes. I spent very little time at Lindholme.
BW: Were there particular raids or events that you remember at Waddington? Because the squadrons took part in them during that time but I wonder if anything came out through the talk with the squadrons or [unclear]
AT: No, no. I remember the experience, various experiences, because I remember seeing the greatest bonfire of my life when I was at Waddington because I was watching them come back and I was stood next to a WAAF officer, she was watching as well and they German, the Messerschmidt followed them back and they strafed the 'drome and they didn't hit a Lancaster bomber but beyond, which offices, was the incendiary dump and they hit that and poosh! You can imagine, the place was lit up, it was amazing. That was an experience. Different things happened, you know.
BW: When people look at photos and some film footage they would see, as the bombers took off, people gathered at the halt point waving them off...
AT: Yes, I personally and others, used to go and walk on the perimeter track and we were living very dangerous cos of the 1000 lb bombs but we used to go and wave them off cos, you know, we knew the crews and where they were going. We used to go onto the perimeter track.
BW: And did you watch them come back?
AT: Well, no, no because that could have been early hours, you know, whatever. Basically, we went to see them off.
BW: And, it might sound a daft question but, were you attached to a particular aircraft, did you recognise particular aircraft or did you just generally go and wave everybody off?
AT: Yes, yes, we knew the crews and different things and, of course, as you'll be aware, Hitler said that no enemy plane would ever fly over the German territory but at Waddington, we reach a hundred trips and I've got some classified photographs of the bombers, y'know and 'S' for Sugar, obviously there'd been more than one crew that did the hundred trips but that particular 'S' for Sugar did the hundredth trip [sic].
BW: Did you ever - you were obviously good friends with the pilots and crew - did you ever get shown around a Lancaster, did you ever get inside one?
AT: Yes, I've been inside one, yes.
BW: Did they ever take you flying on one?
AT: I never took, actually, after the war, the WAAFs, we could go to do a parachute jump and what have you and, it got off the ground and then I think there was an incident and the WAAFs panicked and it stopped. Yes, so we'd that opportunity. But I've obviously been in and I've sat in every seat, I've even been in the bomb aimer's part [chuckles], y'know. So I knew the aircraft very well.
BW: And at the time you were there they were mainly flying Lancasters, did you, did they fly anything else, were there other aircraft that came onto the base that you could go and see?
AT: No. Of course the Spitfire pilots were escorts, you know, for the bombers. A lot of Canadians and Polish people flew the Spitfires but generally, it was strictly Lancasters. I mean, you mentioned the Stirling, you know, I didn't see anything of those. Of course, I was around when there was all the talk about the Dambusters and Barnes Wallis and the bouncing bomb and, I didn't, I actually, I didn't personally meet, I wasn't personally introduced but, Gibson came to the 'drome at one point. So I was around when all this was happening.
BW: So when you heard about the dams raid, what was the atmosphere like, how did you feel when you heard about it?
AT: The Dambusters? Oh it was amazing because there was an awful lot of work went into it, you know, a lot of tests and then for them to actually crack it and flood everything I felt it was amazing. I mean, it was a serious business, I always say it was an experience I wouldn't have liked to have missed but there was a lot of sadness and, you know er and I mean, like its happening in Ukraine now but I mean we flattened Stuttgart and Berlin and y' know, but its all, but that was on targets, wasn't it, it wasn't on civilians but nevertheless, they got involved in it, didn't they? So there were lots of civilians.
BW: Did you hear about these raids when crews came back? What was the atmosphere like in the mess, I mean you'd served some of these guys before they went out. What happened when, you know, the crews perhaps didn't come back?
AT: Well, obviously, there were the sadness, you know, because people had got to...and there's crews, you know and of course, a lot of the...I knew a friend, actually, who flew and, he erm, they got shot down and, for a while I didn't personally get to know whether...anything but I did keep in touch with Peter's parents, he lived in Watford and I remember the number, Bushy Heath, 1428 [laughs]. And it was Peter Kimber and I think, actually they'd a hairdressing business in London and I think, family must still be running that. But for my 21st birthday he bought me a Mason & Pearson hair brush [laughs], which was very expensive for me then. [laughter]. Yeah, erm, no, they'd obviously, they'd, you know, the crews were all gelled together, you know, and, but er... [siren]
BW: Sorry about that. So, yeah, you said the crews were all gelled together.
AT: Yes, yes, and there wasn't a morbid, nothing morbid about it. It was a job, it was a duty and y'know, they got on with it.
BW: Did you...I'm just trying to picture the scene in the mess when the crews come back for their first meal after a raid and obviously you, as catering staff or general staff, you're serving in the mess, you'd be laying the places...
AT: I wouldn't be there when they came in, I'd not necessarily be there but there was no, nothing morbid or...I mean, they weren't throwing a party but y'know, it was a job.
BW; And you'd only find out later, of course, whether...
AT: The crews that had gone missing hadn't got back. You checked in everybody who was coming back, y'know but of course, the others...[unclear].
BW: And you mentioned earlier that fraternising with the aircrew, whether officers or other ranks, wasn't allowed but obviously it went on. Did you or your friends, your friends in particular, end up in serious relationships?
AT: No, no. I had, mine were friendships, y'know, I had some great friendships but, no, I came home and married someone from the village [chuckles]. But, y'know, I enjoyed the time and I had some respect for people and, yeah. I mean Brian Fallon came home but, well, we just, y'know, it was a friendship and we just, I was giving him the opportunity to come and have a civilian life, if you like, at my home.
00:32:38
BW: How did your parents feel about you being in the WAAF and on an operational base?
AT: My Mum was very worried initially but obviously, no objections to the decisions I made. But, obviously, I'd never been away from home, y'know and it was a big thing to do really, wasn't it?
BE: And did you, yourself, get leave, periodically?
AT: Oh yes, yes, it was about every six or eight weeks, leave, yeah, yeah. And yes, y'know, my parents always liked to see me. But my brother, Fred, my youngest brother, the one in Northern Ireland with the Green Howards, he used to write to me and of course he knew everything and the people I were meeting, and what have you and he wrote a letter to my mother and he says, "Mum," he says, "Audrey's life must be mangled something rotten." cos I was always telling him of someone, y'know, a friend, who had gone for a burton, y'know.
BW: And you were talking about Scampton, before we began recording, it had a reputation as a jinx base?
AT: Yes, we used to feel that, the jinx, because, yes, there was always some incident on take-off or something, y'know, we at Waddington always regarded it as a jinx. It was just, just happening there. And of course it was Lancaster bombers then.
BW: And were then any other bases that had a similar reputation or others that had a particularly strong reputation?
AT: No, Scampton was the only name that I remember ever being connected with anything like that, y'know, just felt that there was something...y'know? I never watched anything that weren't always airborne, y'know, they got off and they were away.
BW: And have you ever seen the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight since, have you seen the Lancaster fly, since?
AT: No.
BW: I was just curious if you'd seen it and whether it provoked any particular memories when you saw it fly. But if you've not seen it...
AT: I've only ever seen in parades like, in anything to do with London and armistice and what have you. In fact I, while I've been here, I've got back into art and doing things and for Remembrance Day I did a wall in the dining room and I had the Lancaster bomber and I had poppies coming out of the rear, just for...
BW: And that was just for the painting...
AT: Just for the painting, yes, yeah, yeah. Just for, y'know, for remembering. And we did a lovely wall this time, didn't we, for the armistice.
BW: So, you moved down to Silverstone in Northants, after Waddington and I'm assuming this would be around early '45, cos you said you were demobbed from there.
AT: Yes, it was about August-ish [sic] time, somewhere round about then.
BW: They started flying POWs back from Germany and Continental Europe, did you get to meet any POWs, did you see the Lancasters bringing them back at all?
AT: No, no, I was aware of, y'know, we had prisoners of war, they were actually on the camp, doing jobs, y'know, we had Germans, Italians, erm. I remember those two nationalities specifically, the prisoners were working on the camp.
BW: That's really interesting because I've not heard of that before. I've heard of, obviously, enemy POWs being held in the UK but not that they were working on RAF bases.
AT: Yeah, yeah, well I'm sure I'm right. Yeah.
BW: And what kind of things would they be doing?
AT: Nothing terribly important, they couldn't get themselves into trouble.
BW: Presumably they were just labouring.
AT: General labouring, I'd put it down like that. But I learned a few words of [chuckles] "Bellagambi" [belle gambe] was going round quite a lot.
Ann: Nice legs! [laughter].
AT: Nice legs! [laughter].
BW: That was from the Italian POWs.
AT: The Italians, yes, yeah [chuckles], yeah, yes. No, they were definitely on the camp because I can't imagine where else I'd have met any of them...[chuckling]. Are you learning something, Ann?
Ann: Oh yes, absolutely.
BW: So were you, I'm assuming you must have been at Silverstone when the war ended, when the news came through, what was the atmosphere like at that point?
AT: Well, of course, VE Day, I would be, that was first, wasn't it? And then of course we had Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor, didn't we, and that brought it global and America came into it, didn't it? So that was the latest one to go...wasn't it the latest..?
BW: Well, I was thinking about the end of the war and you mentioned VE Day and then there'd be VJ Day in the August, as you were saying.
AT: Yes.
BW: What was the atmosphere like on the base when the news of the war's end came?
AT: Do you know, I don't remember.
BW: I just wondered if you might have had parties or celebrations or anything...
AT: No... no.
BW: Maybe you had extra leave?
AT: No...no...no.
Ann: Do you need your glasses on, Mum, if you're looking at photos? Your reading glasses?
AT: No, that was Matt O'Leary, an Aussie.
BW: So, we were just looking at that photo of the rear gunner but it's inscribed 'All My Love, Ken' but it's not someone who rings a bell with you?
AT: No, ha! I must have been drunk! [laughter]. I don't think so.
Ann: You have had lucid moments, Mum, about him! [laughter]
AT: I do recognise the face but do y'know, that's someone, he escapes me. I know this gentleman here, this is Terry King.
BW: Terry King?
AT: Terry King, yeah. He's the one where he's lent me his jacket when it was cold. I think he was a navigator [laughs].
BW: You wouldn't happen to know which squadron?
AT: It would be 467 or 463.
BW: OK, but he was definitely an Aussie?
AT: Definitely an Aussie.
Ann: And definitely Terry King? It's just remarkable, isn't it, remembering that, Mum. There was Matt O'Leary as well.
AT: Matt, Matt O'Leary. He's there and I think the big photograph...
BW: Which would be this one of seven aircrew in front of a Lancaster.
AT: [Pauses]. Look at the other two, can we?
Ann: Which one could have tempted you to live in Australia, Mum?, Was it Matt O'Leary, you did mention you could have been living in Australia.
AT: Mmm. I thought I had one of Matt with a crew.
BW: Erm.
Ann: I think you were looking at that one, Mum, excuse me, just let me [unclear] him at bottom right, yeah.
BW: So that's the four guys on the bottom right.
AT: That's him there, look and he's an Aussie. It was one weekend and we were dancing in Lincoln and we won a jitterbutty [sic], it wasn't the one where they threw you over the hedge, y'know, it was clever footwork [laughs].
BW: So was it a village dance?
AT: No, it was in the city centre.
BW: OK. And was it, were there a lot of RAF aircrew taking part?
AT: No, it was civilian and a mixture, yeah, yeah. But we cracked it!
BW: And you came top?
AT: We won it, yes, yeah.
BW: So, just as a general question, how easy was it to learn to dance in those days, because it seems everybody did it as a social activity but where did you learn?
AT: I danced with my three bothers from being that high because there was ten years between myself and the eldest and, you know, we used to go to the village dances and I could always go to village dances cos the others would always bring me home safely. So I've danced all my life, really. I love dancing.
BW: And it just happened that you paired up this particular...
AT: Yes, we were friends, y'know and we'd gone into Lincoln to the dance and, that was it.
BW: It was a spur of the moment thing, presumably.
AT: Not a spur of the moment, we'd intended going into Lincoln, which a lot of us did do.
BW: So this photo shows a Lancaster crew, seven guys in front of a Lancaster.
AT: And do you know, I don't know any names on there, I can't...
BW: No, there's none on the back, it just says.
AT: No, these were classified, I got, y'know, the pictures...
BW: But it says 'The crew of S for Sugar'.
AT: S for Sugar, yeah.
BW: So that, presumably, is the crew with 100 missions...
AT: A thousand... with... the missions, the last crew to crew it, presumably. Y'know, to get the hundred trips. There's one of the photographs, it shows quite clearly, doesn't it, that 'no enemy plane will ever...'
BW: Which is this one, there's a crowd in front of the aircraft.
AT: Yeah, yeah, that's, y'know, obviously, other ranks and whoever else was there.
BW: Do you remember that occasion?
AT: No, no, I wasn't among that but that was the... of course...I got the photographs.
BW: This particular one's a Lancaster being, what they called, 'being bombed up' also is S for Sugar.
AT: Yes, yeah.
BW: Did you ever get to see the crews bombing aircraft up?
AT: No, No.
BW; There are a couple of photos here, with friends, which one is you and who are the others?
AT: That's me, in the middle.
BW; OK. And who...?
AT: Do y'know, their name escapes me, I can't remember.
BW: And this one also shows you but this time you are on the right and there are a couple of names on the back. Do you recall those?
AT: I don't really, no, I don't.
BW: No problem.
AT: It was a long time ago and but, you know, we were friends.
BW: Do you know where they were taken? Were they taken during training or it looks like they might have been taken...
AT: Er, it was at Waddington, it was Waddington, it looks like first post thing.
BW: OK, did you keep in touch with your friends after the war at all?
AT: No, no. No, I y'know, got on with life again [laughs].
BW: And we were talking about the Australian crews earlier and obviously Matt was a good friend who you won the competition with, do you know if he survived the war?
AT: I don't know, no.
BW: OK.
AT: Obviously it'd be sometime in that period, y'know, the period, he was there most of the time I was there. But I don't know...Peter, Kimber, when I rang his Mum, she said, y'know, I sort of asked had she'd heard anything and she said, "I've heard this morning, he's been made a prisoner of war." So, obviously he survived and he would get home. That was another, y'know, just friendship.
BW: But you didn't hear anymore from Peter? You didn't hear where he was or what had happened to him?
AT: No. Nothing at all.
BW: How did you feel when you got the news, were you relieved?
AT: I was so pleased that, at least, he was safe cos he could have been blasted into eternity, couldn't he? Yes, I was very pleased and pleased for his Mum.
BW: were the rest of his crew captured?
AT: The concern was Peter, y'know, I was enquiring about him and she told me she was absolutely delighted, yes.
BW: And you were never tempted to move to Australia, having got to know some of these Australians. Did they ever try and tempt you with them?
AT: No, actually, there was one thing: a lot of them they [were] staunch Roman Catholics. Y'know, I thought it was one thing, leaving your country but also, being Church of England and being brought up in that way. But it didn't really, there was no one who meant that much to me, to do that, cos you've got to love and care to take that step, haven't you? And when I met my husband, that was it and I'd just 15 years of super marriage and y'know, short-lived but I didn't work during that period and, we weren't like ships that passed in the night. So, we'd a good life Ann, hadn't we?
Ann: Yes.
AT: And we just had the one daughter.
BW: You said earlier that you'd left the WAAF in August, around August '45.
AT: Yes.
BW: What happened next? You'd worked and had experience in administration, you'd worked at admin in the WAAF, what happened after you left?
AT: I came back...I think I went back to the Co-op, I had a decent position there. Er, do you know, I don't think I did anything then. And then I met Norman and y'know and the next thing was marriage.
BW: When was that, when did you meet?
AT: Er, well, he lived in the same village and I'd been friends with his sister, y'know, she'd been a good friend for many years. But, suddenly that was it. So, you know, obviously, that was after the war and... What year did I get married, Ann, was it '53?
Ann: 53.
AT: 53. And you were born in 56, weren't you? Yeah. But I never worked once I got married, I never worked. And then, of course, my husband died young, at the age of 39. You've spoken about this, have you, Ann?
Ann: Only briefly.
AT?: Yes, yes. It was tragic really, a minor operation and he got an infection in the hospital and the drug they had used damaged a kidney. And I travelled to Leeds with him from Wakefield, left Ann in the care of the nurses at the hospital and he died between Leeds and Wakefield, er Wakefield and Leeds. And I had to wait ten days for a post mortem, because the coroner wasn't happy but at that time the medical profession were very much round each other and it was brought in 'misadventure'. So that was it. So, about six months after that I hadn't the confidence to pick up a telephone. I was devastated, wasn't I, in a mess and you witnessed it, didn't you, unfortunately. When Norman died, Ann had just turned 12 months at grammar school, obviously very clever and y'know, Norman and I had plans and we saw great things in the future and so, in my mind, I just wanted to bring my daughter up, see her through university and I never had to decide [unclear] beyond her age of 18, when she could manage her money. It was a very sad time.
0:12:09
BW: And you just had that short time between, finishing with the WAAF and working in the Co-op where you went back to and then married life.
AT: Yes, yes, and, so when Norman died I had to get my act together and y'know, go out to work. So the first job I took, I got, was with the county council and it's statistics, erm...sorry, and I worked with the county, the fact that I needed to work and keep a roof over our heads, y'know and money, I wasn't averse to any change or anything I was asked to do, so consequently, over the time, I built up a, y'know, a lot of information about various things and then, I got involved with the director, who used to be appointed as a Guardian ad Litem in care related proceedings at the court either relating to children in care y'know, where there was a conflict of interests and er, and er, children who had probably been placed for adoption, and the putative father, y'know, was objecting. So I worked with the director getting reports to the director, it came to me, did all the documentation and I made sure that the social workers got out and saw every respondent that had the right to be seen and heard, regarding those proceedings. So I'd got that experience with the Guardian ad Litem and then, years later, the social service - they amalgamated the children's department and the county and [they] became Social Services and later, in '75, it's a long way ago, in't it? [The 19]75 Act the local authority said that the, all the...the government said that the Local Authorities had to become adoption agencies. So I had all this knowledge about, already, about adoption so I got all the White Papers from HMSO regarding the adoptions and proceedings and what the government expected and I studied it all and I got an interview for the post on the board of directors and I got the job. And one of the directors said, "I wish I knew as much as Audrey about the Children Act," [laughs]. And that's the sort of thing, I was saying, my brothers and I, that's what we've done, we've progressed but it's been our effort, you know. So that was it and I thoroughly enjoyed it cos it was so interesting, y'know we approved prospective adopters and we accepted children for adoption and lots of babies and some of the mums could only tell, all they knew about the father was, they could only tell you the colour. You know, they'd known these were one night stands and things - all very interesting. And of course we arranged placements and y'know, all the time we never had a problem and we got some really good placements. And then after, it came into force at 18 they could have knowledge of the prospective adopters so I did Section 26 counselling, which meant interviewing the mum because we didn't let anyone turn up on anybody's doorstep saying, "You're my Mum."or anything like that. We made sure that they, the natural mother, was happy with the decision that we were making and all that. I worked with professional people, y'know, solicitors, police and everybody, but thoroughly enjoyed it. And got a nice side of it, going to the pediatricians with babies [chuckles] and I did that till I retired and I could have stayed longer but my grandson was, [to Ann] you were pregnant, and I thought, " Oh, Norman's missed so much and I'm not going to miss these babies so I retired at 64. I had the ability to carry on but I didn't.
BW: And, just to, I suppose, come back to the RAF and Bomber Command, you've been to the IBCC at Lincoln, how do you feel, seeing that?
Ann: That was me.
BW: Oh, I beg your pardon.
AT: What was that?
Ann: You know I went down to the International Bomber Command Centre?
AT: Yes, you went, didn't you, yes. I've not been but I'd love to but I don't think I could make it down there.
Ann: No, they've offered to entertain [you] but no.
AT: Yeah but I've read the book. [to Ann] You got the book, didn't you. And I refresh my memory with it. Yes, yeah, it's very, very impressive, very impressive and it's amazing what they've done with the grounds. I was looking for the Waafery, [laughs] but I guess they've demolished it but it was a beautiful building. There was another nice thing in the village, I don't know the name of it, it was a nice pub, where we went, but there was a man in but it was only like a shed but he used to make jam and lemon curd tarts and we used to go and buy [laughs] them from this man in the village. Lovely time really.
BW: So, knowing about the memorial, how do you feel about there being a memorial to the crews of Bomber Command?
AT: I think it's wonderful, I don't think they should ever be forgotten. No. I think it's wonderful, I love the way they've got the walls with all the names, and the gardens, I think it's beautiful. And I think they deserve remembering, y'know, they've given their lives, and young lives.
BW: Cos, the guys were largely only around the same age as you were at the time, weren't they? The chaps in the RAF, the aircrew, they were only around your age.
AT: They were, yes, yes, very young, yes. That was the sad thing, it was so much in life going, y'know.
BW: Whereas you say, I think you summed it up well, you wouldn't have wanted to have missed the experience...
AT: Oh no, no, not for a moment. And I've often thought about it, haven't I?
Ann: Yeah.
AT: Yeah, I did not [unclear] it's an opportunity I wouldn't have missed. It was really good.
Ann: I think it's affected Mum's outlook on so many things because I think, for my Mum's age group and generation, you've got a very rounded, cosmopolitan attitude towards people of all nationalities and I think that's quite impressive.
AT: Hmm.
BW: And through all the things we've talked about this afternoon, are there any other aspects or recollections that you want to add from your time in the WAAF?
AT: No, I don't think so, I think I've covered it. You know I enjoyed the life, enjoyed the company of the people and the various things. Do you know, I'm 99 [unclear] but not very long ago I was, he was speaking to me on the phone and he said, "Mum, do you ever regret any of the decisions you've made in your life?" and I said "No, and I'd make them all again, all the same." Because, since my husband died I had this tunnel vision and it was family and I wanted to see Ann where, y'know [unclear] but then, you see, grandchildren came and then that was another life line and I've just, I had so much happiness with Ann and the children so I've not really wanted anything else. And strangely enough, when I came to this home and it was my decision but we chatted it over, didn't we, because Ann gave me 24/7 care when I came out of hospital, which was a near death experience and she gave that care and I could see what was happening and I, I mean, I had a good life, born into the right family, met the man I loved, enjoyed 15 good years and y'know, I wanted Ann to enjoy her children so I made the decision to come in here. But when, about the same time I met a man, he was upright and mobile but he'd had an accident, his wife had died and he'd scalded himself and he'd come in for respite care, initially and he was a professor of politics but he was such an interesting man I had a friendship with him while he was here, which was about five or six months, wasn't it Ann?
Ann: Yep.
AT: And it was a nice, good friendly relationship but he died just before Christmas but that was nice, y'see. But that's life, isn't it?
BW: Well, I've no other questions and you've answered everything very thoroughly and clearly so, thank you very much for your time.
AT: Yeah, thank you! Cos you been very tolerant and we haven't interrupted you very much, have we?
BW: Not at all.
[Audrey laughs]
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 Audrey Teasdale
Creator
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Brian Wright
Date
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2022-12-20
Language
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eng
Format
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01:12:25 Audio Recording
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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ATeasdaleA221220, PTeasdaleA22020002, PTeasdaleA22020003, PTeasdaleA22020004, PTeasdaleA22020005
Temporal Coverage
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1942-12-15
1945-08
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lancashire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Northamptonshire
England--Yorkshire
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Type
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Sound
Description
An account of the resource
Audrey left school at 14 and began work as a clerical assistant for a tailoring firm in Leeds, then moving into furniture sales.
Audrey was 23 when the war started and was conscripted on 15 December 1942 electing to join the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. After her kitting out at RAF Innesworth she did some basic training at RAF Morecambe, then posted to RAF Lindholme and eventually to RAF Waddington where she worked as an administrator in the officer's mess. At that time there were four squadrons on the station: 9, 44, 463 and 467 Squadrons.
Audrey's duties in the officer's mess included checking the crews against the battle orders to ensure only crews flying that night got the special pre-flight meal and waiting on tables for VIP dinners, including Wing Commander Nettleton VC. She describes her friendships with the other staff and especially with bomber crews, mostly nice and respectful. Audrey and others would gather on the perimeter track to see them off. She and many others were billeted in a beautiful old building, known as "The Waafery”. Audrey describes her busy social life, dancing at many venues and winning jitterbug competitions. Remembers being called ‘belle gambe’ [beautiful legs] by Italian prisoners of war.
Audrey also describes the events of one night when an enemy fighter followed the aircraft home and strafed the airfield, hitting the incendiary dump, which exploded.
After the war, Audrey eventually worked for the local authority’s adoption service after the tragic death of her husband at a young age.
Contributor
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Sally Coulter
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Title
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Carby, Hazel
Hazel V Carby
H V Carby
Description
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An oral history interview with Professor Hazel Carby. Her father Carl Carby was born in Jamaica and served as a navigator in RAF Coastal Command and later RAF Bomber Command.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2021-03-15
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Carby, HV
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Transcription
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HH: Ok. So, today’s the 15th of March 2021. I’m Heather Hughes sitting in Lincolnshire and I’m talking to Professor Hazel Carby who’s agreed to be interviewed for the IBCC Digital Archive because her father, Carl Carby served first of all in RAF Coastal Command, and then in RAF Bomber Command. So, Hazel, thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. I discovered about your dad through having read your incredibly moving and wonderful memoir, “Imperial Intimacies,” and I’m sure that there will be a lot of times that you want to refer to, to the, to the book and that’s absolutely fine. Maybe it’s going to encourage listeners to, to pick up that book and read it as well because it is indeed a very wonderful and moving account. If we could start off this is an interview partly about your dad and partly about you and, and your, your experience of growing up knowing in the knowledge that he had come all the way from Jamaica to serve in the Second World War, which is partly what brought him to Britain and gave him a basis on which to, to stay in this country for the rest of his, for the rest of his life. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit first about him and then we’re going to talk about you and your family. But tell us a little bit about where your dad was born and brought up.
HC: Yeah. My father was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1921. He was raised by his, by his grandmother and you know, Kingston, well Jamaica in general was although it was a source of wealth for the UK, the population living there at the time were incredibly poorly paid. Starvation wages they used to, they used to call it. So, you know he had a very, like other Jamaicans in the city it was, he lived in a very poor area. Then in fact during, you know, during the ‘30s there were the starvation wages marches where people were actually begging to be sent into the penitentiary because there at least they would have been fed. They were starving and so because of the starvation there was, there were a lot of health problems. Jamaica was being run directly by, it was a Crown colony it was being run directly by the Colonial Office, by the UK Government, but it didn’t have you know the emerging health system that was being put in place in the UK in Jamaica. And companies like, you know Tate and Lyle who were reaping enormous profits did not put any of that money into, into wages. In fact, there was a big strike in the ‘30s. They wanted a dollar a day [laughs] they thought they’d been promised and they couldn’t even get that. So, you know, people talk about emancipation after enslavement but it was, it was another form of sort of, you know of, of indenture really, actually if you, if you want to call it that. So when my father was quite, quite young he had to, he actually had to leave school. His father, his father deserted the family. My father actually grew up with his grandmother but the fact the rest of the family weren’t far away. My grandmother was very young when she had him but anyway his father left, and my father had to leave school and, and go and earn money to take care of school fees and other sorts of things for the rest of the family. And of course healthcare wasn’t free or whatever so he was, he really became the financial provider for the rest. For the rest of the family. He worked in, as a, as a clerk in, in the back room of a of a store. I think he had originally started by cleaning up and then worked to evening, went to evening classes. And it was clear that he must have received the patronage of, of the owner of the, of the store because I’m pretty sure that he must have put in a word for my father to get him into, you know the college and to do some, well he ended up becoming a book keeper so he was doing math and English and things like that. He was clearly, my father was clearly very bright so he did well from that point of view. So —
HH: But he also, obviously he, he somehow perceived education and qualifications as, as very important in terms of improving himself.
HC: They were key. They were absolutely key for him. Education. He would tell me that he was, he was very very upset when he’d had to leave school to go and earn money to support the rest of the, of the family and he had clearly had encouragement, you know from, in particular one of, one of his uncles who was a sort of, I don’t know a sort of a self-educated polymath really. He had taught himself various languages or whatever and so and I think you know my, I think my grandmother had been a very ambitious woman but her, you know her husband had died in the Jamaica earthquake of 1907 so they, you know they lost their, their wage earner then. And the British government was very paternalistic in terms of the quote unquote their support. They were quite eager to support [pause] well, white survivors. But you know the white, sort of plantation class if you like from the earthquake but they had some very, very stringent requirements about support after the earthquake and you know operated on terms like the worthy. The worthy people. I mean who was worthy depended a lot on class and skin colour and, and the usual, you know divisions that imperial governance imposed. So it was a very, very hard life. When the war began the RAF was not actually accepting black recruits, and the recruits, the white recruits from Jamaica who did join up I think actually had to travel to England. So they, they, you know you had to be, you had to have money to do that. But in 1942 when those policies changed actually there was a training scheme that started up and my father had to take exams to enter this training scheme and pass, and it clearly was, it’s a terrible thing to say about war actually but I think my father looked at it as an opportunity, you know to, to earn money. And during the war there were very very strict embargoes on, on trade and imports. Things like clothes and food —
HH: Yeah.
HC: Had become, you know very, very expensive. And he got, you know he would tell me that he, he was given two suits of uniform and things. That actually it’s that’s not actually not a petty thing.
HH: No.
HC: When, when you can’t afford clothes. Do you see what I’m trying to say?
HH: Yeah.
HC: So and it was also an opportunity I think for him to, to use his education and he’d always believed in the British sort of education, you know, system. The courses he was doing at college were from the Royal Society for the Arts and stuff they were, and those were the examinations he’d taken. So he was very proud of that sort of success. So anyway so he was, he was among the first recruits from Jamaica to aircrew.
HH: Amazing.
HC: He passed the exams for aircrew and they were transported from Jamaica to, by boat to New York where actually they were, they were given a long lecture on the sort of racial, racialised codes of the US and how they should behave. And then they were transported to Canada by rail and in those days actually Canadian Railways did have a, did have a line down to New York. So after, after a very long journey he ended up in Moncton in Canada which was a very, very large Commonwealth air training unit and so there were people there from all over the world. From South Africa, Australia, New Zealand. One of the things I discovered in terms of the absences in RAF history is that you look at all these histories that you can obtain of the Commonwealth Air Training Scheme, the Commonwealth Air Training Plan and you can’t find any reference to those being recruited from what I think of as the black colonies. You know there are records of the South Africans, the Australians, the New Zealanders, the Canadians and in fact even the US volunteers who, who went up there. But you try and find the sort of Trinidadians and those from Barbados and those from Jamaica like my father, and they are not part of the official history at all.
HH: No.
HC: And in the, in the National Archives at Kew it took a long, long time to figure out that actually they did the various, I’m trying to think of the name. The various sort of squadron leaders. I don’t think they were called a squadron but the various leaders of the different units. Moncton was huge. I mean this, this was like enormous. So I could actually sort of eventually figure out which of those units he was part of, and I also realised that they kept daily logs. There was someone on each unit who kept daily logs. And it was only by going through and scrutinising these daily logs that I was actually able to actually find his arrival with others from the Caribbean, because the ship had been going to various islands and picking up RAF volunteers because it was all volunteers.
HH: Yeah.
HC: It wasn’t a conscription. And in fact, Canada is a, is a lot better with its records actually and very, very helpful. I actually went to Moncton and the librarians there were extraordinarily helpful. I mean they really were, you know incredible. So Canada has a very different attitude towards these histories it seems to me than even the British government do now. And the Canadian people, I mean my father always told me that the Canadian people were extremely generous. I mean, they would invite, you know, crew to their homes and he would be sent food even, they obviously kept in touch with him because they would send him hampers of food from Canada.
HH: Oh, is that when he arrived in the UK?
HC: From Canada.
HH: Oh gosh.
HC: From Canada. Yeah. So, and the other thing you know my father told me about being there at Moncton, and I have sort of maps of the whole way that the, you know the various units were laid out. It’s quite an extraordinary thing. But the other thing that he remembered. I mean the first one was, he was very proud of being in the RAF obviously and there was this story of clothes. But he was also totally amazed at the food. I mean you’re talking about someone where food had, had not, you know been easy to come by their entire life.
HH: Yeah.
HC: And there was just all this. I remember him telling me stories. As much as you could eat. He couldn’t believe that there was food as much as, as much as you could eat.
HH: Yeah.
HC: So, so as I say it’s a terrible thing to say about war but coming from the poverty that he did come from I think he did think that this was an opportunity. He didn’t hesitate. He believed in [pause] I’m not sure that he believed in imperial rule but he, you know he believed in British education system, whatever and he was prepared. He was loyal. He absolutely thought he was, you know, he was very loyal to the sort of British ideals of fair play and things he’d actually grown up in. Well, he’d been educated into. Even though he hadn’t been the recipient —
HH: Yeah.
HC: Of this fair play and this justice. He did believe.
HH: Well, it was a sort of ideal that he thought probably like so many other people who served from the colonies that it was an ideal that the, and what the war was being fought for.
HC: Yes. And I think also for his generation because in the 1930s the protests, and the rebellions had been so powerful that in fact if it hadn’t been for the war breaking out in ’39 there was already a huge influential movement for independence actually.
HH: Interesting.
HC: For the, for the realisation of these ideals by really achieving emancipation at last.
HH: Yeah.
HC: And a sort of freedom. And I think my father did think, you know and I heard him, you know tell stories about this. That they really were fighting for these ideals against, you know a tyranny represented by the forces of, of Nazism and fascism. So, he had, you know those motivations were propelling a young man to be prepared to risk his life.
HH: Yeah.
HC: So —
HH: So he, he’s trained in Canada. In Moncton. Does he go anywhere else in Canada?
HC: He actually starts training in Jamaica.
HH: Oh, he started training in Jamaica. Ok.
HC: In the camps they set up. They had a training thing there and that continued in Moncton while he was waiting for the convoy. That’s really why he was there. It was a huge transportation hub. So in addition to, you know training pilots and doing was they also actually were transporting people to the UK in these massive convoys. And when the convoy that he was going to be on was ready he was transferred with everybody who was going to be on that convoy to New Brunswick. And that convoy, I think he must have been in Moncton I think I worked out for maybe six to eight weeks.
HH: Ah huh.
HC: I forget the exact dates now. I’m pretty sure they’re in the book but anyway. Yeah. So then he was, they were then transported by convoy. And also in the British archives I’ve put together some of my father’s stories about the convoy being attacked. With information I actually found how to look up all the history of all the convoys.
HH: Gosh.
HC: Going across the North Atlantic. It was quite an extraordinary. It was, I don’t know, working through these military records is interesting. You have to sort of figure out. It takes a long time to figure out exactly how they work and I had to actually learn all the different coding systems which, which I did. But I put together my father’s memories of being attacked. The convoy being attacked, and which ships had actually been. He would tell me stories about, you know as he, as he said the crew that, that were lost. Not in his ship but in the, in the ships around it. Anyway, I put together his stories about remembering this torpedo attack and ships being destroyed with convoy records.
HH: Interesting.
HC: And that’s when I discovered that actually his convoy was being used as a, as a decoy because they had actually discovered how the German coding system was working, but they didn’t want the Germans to knew that they knew about the coding system. So they basically, you know they divided the convoy up and they sent them directly to, you know to a, you know to a submarine group, toward a submarine group and when the submarine group attacked they destroyed the submarine group. But some of the convoy actually also was destroyed. But I was, I also became very interested in, I don’t know, what it must have been like in the bows of those ships, you know, and how sound travels underwater faster than in the air and trying to imagine what it was, what it was like. And I found some record in, in Jamaica —
HH: Gosh.
HC: Of people who had you know they’d been interviewed about being in convoys and those quarters and what it was like so I assembled various records from from various archives trying to sort of re-imagine that because my father did not provide those sorts of details. He never talked about being scared.
HH: No. Interesting.
HC: Or what it was really like in the bow of those ships. Do you see what I mean? And he said that it wasn’t actually until they, they arrived in the UK that they realised what ships had been and it was always like, these people had been lost. I mean they weren’t, you know the language of, of avoidance was quite profound. I think you, you know, you managed to survive being part of a war machine by also a sort of language that really didn’t acknowledge that people were dying around you.
HH: Yeah.
HC: I suppose.
HH: Yeah.
HC: Quite horrible deaths. So it was just, it was, it was trying to sort of discover the details of these stories that my father didn’t want to tell me if you like. To really start to understand how, how you actually have to survive as part of a war machine. Although he did tell me that when they arrived at RAF Bridgenorth, he and the other recruits, there were a couple, there were other recruits with him from the Caribbean. You know, how those sort of black volunteers were treated really very, very badly you know. There was, there’s an example I include in the book of the racism that they suffered when they were introduced in excruciating detail to what a toilet was, and what a shower was and how you washed yourself and kept yourself clean. I mean extremely, extremely sort of demeaning.
HH: Yeah. Yeah.
HC: So, he never, he never explicitly said and he never really sort of said oh they were a racist bunch of whatevers. He wasn’t that sort of person. He was very, very reserved. But he did, and he in fact he actually wrote that in the letter about in, in detail, because he knew I was working on the book. That was something, you know —
HH: Fascinating
HC: He chose to, he chose to tell me just as an indication of basically how they were regarded by, you know by the UK.
HH: Yeah. Which was which they wouldn’t have dreamed of telling white recruits.
HC: No. No.
HH: So, yeah. So, yeah, I mean I think that there are probably, when one stands back from some of this there are two kinds of racism to deal with here. One is what is now called but wasn’t then I guess structural racism, and the other was casual. You know, it just depended who you came in to contact with, you know. And, and you know it seems as if there are both of these kinds kind of, there are interplays and interactions and some people get, get really caught up in, in terrible situations and others tend to sort of escape the worst of it, it seems to me in terms of the, the memoirs that I’ve read and the interviews that we’ve, that we’ve done and but, but there are definitely these two different sorts of, of discrimination going on at the time I think. Even though the RAF was officially had lost its colour bar by then it wasn’t quite like that.
HC: You know, I think there’s a way in which the racism is deeply entrenched. It is, it is institutionalised in that.
HH: Yeah.
HC: You know, because they actually needed more person power because of the exigencies of, of war I don’t think it meant that they actually really respected these volunteers from India, from the, from what came to be known, you know the black Commonwealth if you like. [laughs] You know, needing, needing fodder for war doesn’t necessarily mean that you regard everyone who’s volunteering with any sort of, you know equity.
HH: Yeah.
HC: So —
HH: Yeah.
HC: I mean I think you know he did he really, he went into Coastal Command. He was a navigator and radio operator he’d been trained as. And he really clearly felt that was an important role. I mean they, they were also looking for wolf, they were looking for the wolfpacks of the sort that actually had attacked his convoy.
HH: Yeah. Yeah.
HC: You know. They were also doing a lot of which actually my father found very interesting. The sort of scientific study of weather patterns and things, you know.
HH: Yeah.
HC: Various other operations and he clearly, he clearly really liked that. I think he felt he was learning a lot as well as actually playing an important —
HH: Indeed. Yeah.
HC: Role. My son actually found in a museum I think in Edinburgh in a display case, because he sent me photographs of the suits that they wore in Coastal Command because it was unbelievably cold. It wasn’t like these planes were heated but the suits were. And so my son sent me that it was it was really very interesting in these like bulky seats I was trying to sort of, you know imagine.
HH: Yeah.
HC: What it must have been like in Coastal Command. But the other thing I would say is that it was clear that I think there’s a, you know there’s a, there’s also a vulnerability being in these planes. Whether actually it’s in Coastal Command or later in Bomber Command that is shared and that the, because of what they’re going through aircrew become extremely dependant on each other. And it was clear that he felt the bonds that he was forming with other people as crew not as black, not as white, you know, not as brown were forming bonds that he hadn’t ever experienced before in Jamaica.
HH: Interesting.
HC: You know, where the class skin colour system was extremely rigid, and no one would ever have experienced any, any sort of, any equality between the various —
HH: Yeah.
HC: Skin class demarcations and separations. It was clear there was something over and above that happening between aircrew. I mean this is not something I can experience for myself.
HH: No.
HC: But it was clear in his, in his language that there was a real closeness —
HH: Yeah.
HC: And interdependency among this various aircrews in, in spite of, and I suppose also because of the dangers they —
HH: Yeah.
HC: They were facing together.
HH: In that sense, I mean it’s an interesting point that it would probably have been novel for all of them to experience that kind of closeness across various colour bars at that time in history in those crews.
HC: Yes. And I think, you know it was also clearly very, you know, fraternal. Just something happening between and among men. It was also I think what started me thinking about this was because I had an uncle. The next, my father’s next brother down who was also in the RAF.
HH: Oh right.
HC: Yeah. But he was in, he was ground crew and this was not something that my Uncle Dudley experienced.
HH: No.
HC: He was, he was far more vocal about the daily insults.
HH: Interesting.
HC: You know and the racism that they all faced, and my uncle was, he was the one who used to tell the stories about how, although my father was clearly involved in this sometimes but he, he, my uncle was the one who would actually come out with the stories about how often they had had to fight. Get involved in fights in alliance with black Americans.
HH: Oh wow.
HC: Against the white military police, US military police who would invade dance halls. Who would attack and, and arrest, you know black Americans if they were seen with white British women and that sort of thing. And there was, it was clear that there was a lot of alliances and resistances.
HH: That’s, that’s so fascinating. It’s —
HC: Among the sort of the black British and the black US forces.
HH: That’s really fascinating.
HC: In the policing, the policing of social places.
HH: That’s really —
HC: You know, all these contestations that would happen in pubs or dance halls were a real —
HH: Huge things dance halls.
HC: Right. Yeah. So but it was but yes it was basically a unified front against the US military police.
HH: That’s really fascinating, Hazel. Do you know where your Uncle Dudley served?
HC: No. He died when I was a child.
HH: It’s probably, it’s probably would have been somewhere in East Anglia which is where most of the African American airmen were based. Yes. That’s very fascinating.
HC: Yes. It wasn’t, it wasn’t just airmen.
HH: Oh, so it was, yeah —
HC: It was —
HH: No, it was, it was GIs as well.
HC: Oh yeah. It was GIs too.
HH: Yeah. Ok.
HC: Yeah. And, and because the, you know, because the various parts of the country practiced this, you know this social segregation.
HH: Yeah.
HC: The, the days where, you know white Americans had leave as opposed to black Americans and that sort of thing. It was happening all over the country.
HH: Ok.
HC: There were, I think it was a hundred and thirty thousand.
HH: Oh, it was huge.
HC: Black US sort of maintenance forces.
HH: Yes.
HC: Just in the West Country alone.
HH: Yeah. I mean it was huge.
HC: I mean these places were huge.
HH: Yeah.
HC: Yeah.
HH: What’s interesting, you know it’s an interesting point just that your, your uncle was also in the RAF like your father because —
HC: So was my grandfather.
HH: Oh really. Amazing. Gosh. So, that’s quite a history. Family history. Yeah. So, your, your father as far as I can work out from —
HC: That I should also my father’s father.
HH: Yeah. Your father’s father.
HC: He was brought from Jamaica.
HH: So your father’s father was Wilfred. Is that right?
HC: Yeah. And he also served.
HH: Amazing. Gosh. Incredible. So your father served for most of the war as far as I can tell from, from your account in the book, in Coastal Command and then quite late in the war he joins Bomber Command. Is that right?
HC: Well, he, he must, no he must have left. I’m not sure how long he was in Coastal Command actually.
HH: Ok.
HC: Because when he met my mother that was at a dance in Worcestershire, and they were married by 1944.
HH: Ok.
HC: So I think after Coastal Command he was actually based from what I can remember, he would talk about Herefordshire.
HH: Ok.
HC: Before then he was, before he was then transferred to RAF Waddington in, in Lincolnshire.
HH: Ok.
HC: And you see I would need the actual official RAF records.
HH: Yeah, well we can get that.
HC: To confirm those dates.
HH: Because it’s going to be really fascinating to see that.
HC: Yeah.
HH: But he, I mean he clearly sort of comes to Waddington. Your mother lives in Lincoln, and he flies a number of operations from Waddington. And he mentioned to you I think that he had flown on an operation to bomb Essen.
HC: Essen. There were two operations he would talk about. One, one was Essen. That was because I was really, really pushing him because I was, you know I was a very [pause] I was, you know, I spent a lot of my college life protesting outside of the American Embassy against the Vietnam War. So, we had conversations about war where we were very much on, sort of opposite sides, I think. My father trying to argue that, not that always but sometimes it was necessary and it was because of, it was because of the bombing, it was because of the atrocities basically that the US forces were perpetrating from the air in Vietnam that prompted me as a student. So you’re talking about, you know ’67/68 to attempt to confront my father about aerial warfare.
HH: So interesting.
HC: And I also had learned enough by then as a student and remember as someone who was fighting their own battles at that time to be recognised as black and British which is a whole other story. But I had by that time also read enough to understand that actually aerial warfare and bombing was, you know was started, it was practiced first against the colonies by the British. This is the history of the aerial warfare so, you know I was trying to push him to talk about the contradictions as someone who had grown up in a British colony about them participating in, you know the British war machine. And that’s, that’s when Essen came out but the only stories, the only things he would talk about in relation to Essen was that their targets were, you know industrial. This was part of fighting against the German war machine. He wouldn’t talk about civilian casualties.
HH: No.
HC: And I don’t know in some ways that he could really afford —
HH: No.
HC: To, to sort of revisit all of that.
HH: No.
HC: The only other operation that he talked about that he was actually extremely proud of that was I think also launched from RAF Waddington was a rescue mission to Italy. I think, if I’m remembering correctly it was actually perhaps a bomber. I’m not sure but anyway, a crew had had to bale out, or a plane had crashed or something in Northern Italy and they went and they actually did manage to rescue the crew.
HH: Gosh.
HC: But that, you know those were the, he wanted to talk about what he did in Coastal Command. He wanted to talk about rescuing people.
HH: Interesting.
HC: He didn’t want to talk about what he left. What he left behind him in Essen.
HH: Yeah.
HC: He did talk about the terrible losses of rear gunners.
HH: Yeah.
HC: Because they were the most vulnerable.
HH: Vulnerable.
HC: He would, he would talk about how terrible that was actually, and he would tell me. He told me one story about a rear gunner when they got back. They must have landed in RAF Waddington at some point and, and left to go in the barracks but the rear gunner must have been asleep or something because he woke up. The plane was silent and he leapt out of the plane and pulled his parachute because he thought the plane was going down because [laughs] I don’t know. There was some, he would tell amusing stories and he would tell stories about I don’t know the officers serving them at Christmas and that sort of thing. He would tell stories about his promotions as he became a non-commissioned officer, but he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t talk about Essen other than —
HH: Yeah.
HC: Those targets were purely —
HH: Yeah.
HC: Industrial.
HH: I mean, I think that that’s quite —
HC: I knew better.
HH: Yeah. I think it’s quite a common form of defence really in, in a way for those aircrew partly because they were facing such enormous dangers themselves in the air.
HC: Yeah. Yeah.
HH: But I think what’s so strikingly unusual about your particular story is that it’s very very rare for a daughter to have had these conversations with her father. It’s usually sons and the fathers have never really spoken to daughters. So, I mean, I find that really an interesting part of your story is that it is just so unusual that it was because of your own, because of your own sort of political involvement as a student that sort in a way created a bridge to talk about these things with your father.
HC: Yes. I think that’s true.
HH: Yeah. So I mean your, your at the, at the end of the war your father applied to undertake further training ostensibly as a preparation for returning to Jamaica.
HC: Yeah. Well, the British, ok the Colonial Office and the Foreign Office were playing very different roles actually in relation to all the people they had recruited from the colonies. Not talking about just RAF people. Even just military people but the Honduran foresters working in Scotland. All the people working in the factories in Liverpool producing armaments etcetera. And this goes back to the sort of racism that we were talking about. The institutionalised racism. The Foreign Office and the Home Office were extremely keen on getting everyone to commit to returning to their home colonies at the end of the war. The Home Office was terrified of having a black population after the war. They were terrified of the threat to Britishness particularly. I mean this is not unrelated to the fear of, of black men and white women having children but anyway they had to make, people had to sign these forms. Make these promises that they were all going back. The Colonial Office, and I’ve been through all these minutes it’s quite strange. The Colonial Office were much more wary. What they didn’t do, they didn’t, the Colonial Office really understood how close for example the Caribbean had come to outright rebellion before the war. They also, the Colonial Office also understood that there were generations now of people who had become educated and who were committed to movements for independence. For decolonisation. The Colonial Office understood that there were political, political consequences for how black recruits of all sorts, all the different peoples and this is brown too. I mean this is, you talk about India, you’re talking about all of the colonial world. They were very concerned that this idea of having to be repatriated was in fact not made public and they had to be, they had to be there to be very cautious of doing this because they were very, very wary of, as they used to say all the time of causing unrest in the colonies. So you have the sort of Home Office and the Foreign Office, the sort of protect Britishness, protect whiteness. Protect Britain as a sort of ongoing white nation, right and the sort of interests of the Colonial Office which was actually just keeping everything peaceful and not firing up those sorts of people who were in fact serving in the military who were going to go back and become leaders of their colonies and lead these movements. So, they were always aware of that, of that tension. But anyway, so because my father had served, like other people who had served he did qualify if his education had been interrupted, he did qualify for actually taking courses. So my mother had, when they married my mother had had to leave the Civil Service because she couldn’t be a married woman in the Civil Service. So yes she had moved to Lincoln, but my father’s courses were going to be in London so he was still serving in the RAF but he was on secondment. And these are all the records that you can find in the Colonial Office papers in, in Kew because the Colonial Office were, had all these people under constant surveillance actually, and it was very interesting when you see all these records, you know together. In fact, there are a lot of these records are of people who went. Who returned to their, to their countries and led, you know resistance movements and decolonised or whatever.
HH: Fascinating.
HC: So the Colonial Office were not wrong about, about that. So, so he was still serving in the RAF but he was on secondment and he wanted to do an accountancy course. He wanted to become an accountant. Yeah. So then I looked up all those, you know records and then you come across I suppose rather a different form of sort of racism. A more sort of paternalistic form of racism because the Colonial Office were, you know very aware of what people were, people were facing when it came to sort of finding jobs and they were also aware that you know my father had married a white woman and all this sort of thing and then was having a child. So they kept scrupulous, scrupulous records. But yes, he was supposed to return back like all the others. He was supposed to go back to his home country. There wasn’t anything to go back to of course, like, you know, my father would tell me this. So —
HH: But he applied for a, he applied to leave the RAF and to stay in the UK then.
HC: No. He, he was in, he was in the RAF all the time he was taking the courses.
HH: Yeah.
HC: He was in the RAF until I think 1947.
HH: Ok.
HC: Yeah. And then he was discharged. I mean, I can double check those dates but I think it’s —
HH: No. But the thing is that he, he somehow, he was able to make a case for staying here.
HC: Yeah.
HH: Yeah.
HC: Yeah. He did actually have to go. He was, one of his, after he’d finished with the courses he was sent to Jamaica actually.
HH: Oh, really?
HC: So, yes he was. Ok. So they had, they had a way of sort of demobbing people in fazes and so he went back with a ship full of people who had been demobbed. In charge of them really, you know. So yeah he was and then, and then he, he came back. I was already [pause] I’m just trying to think. I was already on the way when he did that.
HH: Ok.
HC: Because that was the summer of ’47 and he was, so he was still serving in the RAF, and I was born January ’48 and he returned that Fall so he must have been discharged in the Fall of —
HH: Ok.
HC: Or the Autumn, sorry of ’47.
HH: Ok.
HC: After he, after he’d taken the returning servicemen back to Jamaica.
HH: Ok. That’s interesting. Most veterans in the post-war period found that it was a badge of pride and it helped them to get on in the world to, to be able to say that they had served in the war. Particularly I think that was the case for the RAF. Did that work in that way for your father?
HC: No. No. The opposite actually. I mean my parents couldn’t, you know they found it hard to find anywhere to live together. Actually, they couldn’t for a long time so no [pause] There’s a lot of stories during the war, you know of how all people from across the empire were welcomed. You know, when they were in uniform and fighting. Once the war stopped the country didn’t want those, those brown bodies at all. At all. They did not. The racism was extraordinary. Wouldn’t rent houses to them. Wouldn’t rent any sort of accommodation. So it wasn’t until they could, my, my mother had some savings, it wasn’t until they could actually put down a small deposit on actually what was a bomb damaged house. We could, we could only live on the ground floor, that they could, and that was in Streatham that they could actually be, you know together.
HH: Together.
HC: My mother was completely vilified. And I was. You know, half cast children. It was, it was, it was a racist nightmare actually.
HH: Yeah. I mean, I think —
HC: What they lived through. Both. All of us. All three of us.
HH: Yeah.
HC: And there was immediate historic amnesia actually about any of these, of any of these people from across the empire from India, from Africa, from the Caribbean, fighting.
HH: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you talk so movingly or you write, sorry so movingly in your book about that question sort of which kind of framed your early life. This question where are you from? Yes, but where are you from? Yes, but where are you from? Did your father have that as well after the war?
HC: Oh yeah. All the time. My father. Ok. My father had that all the time. I mean I didn’t realise he was going through the same thing when I was a young child. When my parents retired and moved from London they moved up to York. My brother lived up there. He’d been up there for years. He’d, he’d gone. Moved up there for, for a job. And it started all over again. My father used to tell me how, and he used to try and put it in the politest terms that the neighbours as he was saying trying to be polite would ask him all these questions about Jamaica. He had not been to Jamaica since 1947 and he’d lived in, in the UK since 1943. But it wouldn’t occur to them to ask him anything about the UK. They thought he must [pause] you know. So, this sort of sense of being totally other haunted him his entire life.
HH: Yeah.
HC: And it was actually as a, you know the racism takes different forms at different moments, and after sort of Margaret Thatcher’s encouragement of the extreme right in the UK. The formation. The British National Party, the sort of real rise of fascism that my father was actually attacked. You know, as an, as an older person by fourteen year olds who, who had swastikas carved into their skin. I mean they stoned him at a bus stop when he got off coming back from work one night. So the, ‘Where are you from?’ that I was experiencing initially was part of that post-World War Two reaction against black migration in to the UK. I mean the UK was on its knees right after the war.
HH: Yeah.
HC: It needed, it needed people to run the National Health System.
HH: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
HC: It needed a workforce but that didn’t mean that it was, that it was welcoming.
HH: Welcoming.
HC: And in fact, you know, people from the European, what they called European displaced people were actually offered all sorts of support with accommodations and encouragement that actually people from the Caribbean didn’t get.
HH: Yeah.
HC: Because it was imagined that people from Europe displaced by the war who were regarded as white could integrate and become British. It was never imagined that people from the black colonies could become integrated. Could really become British.
HH: Yeah.
HC: They were seen as a threat to British character and, and values. So then, you know when I was being asked, you know, ‘Where are you from?’ It was, it was a denial that I could have possibly have been born in Britain.
HH: Or belonged here in any way.
HC: I was actually quite upset, you know.
HH: Yeah. Tell me there’s, there’s an incident that you describe in your book about, in school when you were at school and you stood up in front of your class to tell your class about how your father had been in RAF.
HC: It was, it took a long time as a child to understand that the stories I was being told at home about family history which is also, you know history were very different from the stories I was being told at school under that label. Quote unquote, history. So, yes in Primary School we were all asked to stand up and describe what our fathers had done during the war. And I remember vividly the boy who stood up before me, you know talking about Egypt and sand and dust and flies. I mean his, I think, you know his father was driving tanks across the desert. And so then I was next and, and stood up and said, ‘Well, my father was in the RAF,’ and was immediately shut up by the teacher and told that I had to sit down. And then we were all given a lecture about the consequences of lying. It was terrifying actually. It was terrifying. I mean I grew up, there was a photograph on our piano of my father in his RAF uniform and so it’s this, along with this question of, ‘Where are you from?’ Which I realised, it took a long time to realise, really wasn’t actually a question of geography. It was actually a sort of racial fiction. I was asked to account for myself in ways that a child cannot possibly account of myself. And if I said I was born in Britain that was even worse frankly because then I was this aberration. The story of being as thought of as a liar by my teacher was, as I say in the book my first introduction actually to, to British history, and so that’s that sense of Britain actually mobilising a global war machine was completely replaced by the Churchillian, ‘We stood on our own. We were entirely on our own.’
HH: Yeah.
HC: The other thing I learned about this that the teachers said, was not only that there were no black people fighting during the war they could not possibly have been in the RAF. The crème de la crème she said of the British fighting machine. So there was also, it came when I had to say, what I was trying to say my history, what my father did completely contradicted in some people’s minds the sort of mythology of the RAF as this incredibly prestigious elite fighting force.
HH: Yeah. Yeah.
HC: So —
HH: Your, your, did, did you ever get to visit Jamaica with your father?
HC: No.
HH: So when was your first visit to Jamaica?
HC: My first visit to Jamaica was in the early ‘70s actually. I went with my mother. So, my father was the eldest in his family actually, which was why he was raised by his grandmother and looked after the rest of the family. But after the war, now his next brother down was already also in England because he’d been in the RAF and did some training and stayed and married. They felt a real responsibility for the rest of their family. The next brother down, my Uncle Duston was in, migrated to the United States without papers after the war, and he volunteered to fight in Korea, because if you agreed to fight in Korea you got US citizenship. Now, together what they basically did was to pool their money and to get everybody out of Jamaica one by one. I told you that life in Jamaica was extremely hard and the poverty, you know, the poverty was intense. I don’t. Our family wasn’t part of the Jamaican elite.
HH: No.
HC: My uncle told me actually, he said the phrase to describe our family was no shoes poor. That’s what you said if you went to school without, without shoes. But anyway, so that their response, their basic responsibility was to the rest of the family and one by one in fact everybody did then move to the US.
HH: Gosh.
HC: Because, well the UK, you know became completely antagonistic.
HH: Yeah.
HC: Any further migration from the Caribbean.
HH: So there wasn’t, so, so by the 70s perhaps there wasn’t the same sort of family connection to go back to if, if —
HC: No. There wasn’t.
HH: Yeah.
HC: They were out by then.
HH: Yeah.
HC: They were out. No. They were out by the —
HH: Yeah.
HC: They were out by the early 60s.
HH: Yeah.
HC: You know, including my grandmother. Now, so when I came to the United States in 1969 I met them all.
HH: Ok.
HC: So, and there was, there was a large, you know family over here. I met my Uncle Duston who was then still in the, well he had visited. I mean some people had visited the UK.
HH: Ok.
HC: Before that. But I met them all. I met all my cousins. So, yeah and we are in fact it’s, extremely close.
HH: Ok, so I mean —
HC: The whole [unclear] generation so.
HH: That’s, that’s, that’s incredible.
HC: But we’re all very close to each other but not sort of like in Jamaica.
HH: Yeah, so, so — but —
HC: Jamaica’s a very, Jamaica’s a very difficult place actually. It was a very difficult place to visit.
HH: Yeah.
HC: Because if you were slotted in to the tourist label, the inequalities were extremely difficult to face. So most of the visits that I’ve been since, since then they’ve all been all sort of basic research visits.
HH: Yeah.
HC: Yeah. To the, you know the University of Jamaica or to archives or, you know whatever.
HH: Yeah.
HC: We have done some family visits but not to the hot tourist spots. There’s a, there’s a sort of Jamaica run, you know eco place that we stay at in Portland but we keep very very, we keep a very big distance from the European run and US run tourist economies because basically they are just a gigantic sucking sound of money out of Jamaica.
HH: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
HC: They’re all there tax free. They built these huge hotels tax free.
HH: Yeah.
HC: Various European countries and the US.
HH: Yeah.
HC: So it’s a very, you have to make sure that when you go you only stay in, in Jamaican run places.
HH: Yeah. So I mean, I imagine that, that, that many of your research trips to Jamaica were connected to your own exploration of your family history and roots in this incredible reflection that is in your book. Your latest book. I think it’s your latest. Have you published another one since? So I’m talking about, “Imperial Intimacies.”
HC: No. I’m working on it.
HH: So it’s about, “Imperial Intimacies,” that we, that we’re chatting here and you talked, you mentioned Portland there, so it seems an appropriate moment to raise that and the burning question I have is to what extent your father was aware of how close to his ancestors origins he really was when he was at Waddington.
HC: He wasn’t aware at all.
HH: I mean, I just find that, I find, I find the geographic connection completely overwhelming.
HC: So, my father used to tell me stories of how his grandmother every summer took him from Kingston over to the north coast to Portland, to a place called Swift River and everyone there was called Carby. So you grow up with these stories. You know, you grow up with the photographs. With all these sorts of things. As a child I don’t know that I made an awful lot of sense of it but in the National Archives at Kew it started to make sense. I actually did find the slave register for this particular Jamaican plantation run by a Carby. So, in 1815 actually the British government decided it was going to count every enslaved person in its entire empire. It actually instituted it in 1816 and then the first one is 1817 and this is all preparatory to emancipation that happened gradually between 1834 and 1838. So I imagined it was when I found this register of these enslaved people which is actually a very difficult and painful moment. I imagine that what I was going to be doing was to track from the people on this plantation through anyone else I could find in Swift River through all sorts of parish records which is actually extremely painstaking and difficult. I imagined I was going to track all the way up there to my father and that was, that was the street that I was following. But I did become increasingly interested in this person called Lilly Carby who actually ran the plantation. For a while I was trying to look for a woman because of the name Lilly which was a mistake. But after a lot of digging and a lot of time I actually tracked Lilly Carby to Coleby In Lincolnshire and to, you know these, these hand written parish records, Lincolnshire parish records and found the entire family. And what was bizarre about it actually, I realised that this was absolutely exactly the right family not just because of the Carby name and the Lilly name, but because everybody in Lilly Carby’s family in Coleby, he took all their names and he, he gave them to his enslaved quote unquote property, so there were these two sets of records of the same name and it took me a long time to get my head around that. Why he would do that. He also called the plantation Lincoln, and it was a coffee plantation. So, anyway, so then I, you know did a lot of research about Lincolnshire history to track his entire history, and to track the history, I came across this record in the Lincolnshire archives about how, you know Lincoln, Lincolnshire emptied out of young, of young men and I realised in fact what had happened of course it was actually all about the sort of the militia they established because they worried about fighting the French on the coasts and then in fact scooping everybody up into the British Army, the revolutionary, the Napoleonic wars, the huge shipping of all these people to, to Jamaica. So, you know I sort of went off on this huge tangent in terms of British military history and it took a while for the penny to drop actually that the story that my father used to tell me about RAF Waddington was that this is really the same place and as a navigator you know he was using the lights on the, you know that’s, that’s what they would use.
HH: Yeah.
HC: Flying back via [unclear]
HH: I mean it is extraordinary that I mean because Lilly Carby himself I mean, think goes to Jamaica in sort of 1788/89 you —
HC: With his cousins.
HH: With his cousins. And then you know he either gets a discharge for which there’s no record or he deserts. He sort of finds his way into ownership as you’ve traced so incredibly in your book. He finds his way in to the ownership of this plantation up on the North coast at Portland. He calls it Lincoln. He names these enslaved people after members of his family. He has three children. Two of them by a freed person of colour, woman of colour Mary Ivy, and one by an enslaved woman called Bridget which was his mother’s name. And that child is called Matthew and that is a direct descendant of yours and your father’s.
HC: Ok. No. Yeah, the mother wasn’t Bridget. Matthew actually, so Lilly Carby before becoming a plantation owner served on other plantations.
HH: Yeah. Ok.
HC: That’s the track. And so, the Matthew Carby was actually from another plantation.
HH: Yeah.
HC: Which was one of the sugar plantations. I mean those are, those are sort of three that I know of. But I mean —
HH: There might have been others.
HC: White men raped at will.
HH: Yeah. Yeah.
HC: So who knows how many.
HH: Yeah. So they were the three you were able to trace.
HC: To trace. Yes. And the problem about military records, British military records is they keep meticulous records of officers but if you’re, if you’re not an officer its very very difficult to find records.
HH: Ok.
HC: So I found records of the cousins who returned to the UK because, through the Chelsea Pension Records.
HH: Ah huh.
HC: Because he qualified for a pension.
HH: Ok.
HC: So, but clearly that’s what happened. He either and you can look at the history of the people who deserted or were discharged because of illnesses. He could have been discharged because he was ill.
HH: Yeah. Ok. Yeah.
HC: But there was massive, I mean because the death rate.
HH: I know.
HC: In the West Indies was absolutely huge.
HH: Huge.
HC: The desertion rate was huge. And the discharge because of ill health was very big. So I mean, so it’s you know it’s, it’s speculation but it’s clearly, that’s clearly what happened and he must have, the unit he was part of went and was based around the other side of the island. I mean they were there. Yes. There was the revolutionary Napoleonic Wars but the British Army was primarily there to put down to stop rebellion and put down rebellions on, on the plantations.
HH: Yeah. To safeguard planter interests basically.
HC: Yeah. So, he met, he met planters. He went to work on sugar plantations there and then he started himself off. You know, I found the wool. I found land records and he was actually, purchased some land from one of the people he had originally been working for on their plantation. So it was, you know it was adjacent to one of the sugar plantations but it was a further up, you know in the hills and he started a coffee plantation and bought people.
HH: And, and, and the sort of detective work that you undertook to trace back is really just a remarkable story of its own.
HC: Well, it took a long time and this is the thing about my father never really knowing. So, you know, late in his eighties my father he had a number of, of illnesses including a sort of motor neurone disease but he also started to get sort of dementia. So by the time I was, and I would, I would visit him every time before I went came down to visit Coleby or do anything in the Lincolnshire Archives, but it was actually really sort of difficult and explain to him about these connections that I’d made. So I would try and start to talk about it and then he would talk about RAF Waddington. I mean, to the very end he could recite his RAF number and he would start to talk about it but he couldn’t really understand the connections I was, I was making. But it was, it was clear that it was the best decision I ever made to try and track the slave owner down.
HH: Yeah. I mean it is.
HC: It was clear that it was. I mean, it was an unbelievable amount of work and that’s why it did take so many years.
HH: Yeah.
HC: And my father was deteriorating during all those years so it was, it was tragic.
HH: I mean there is just something so incredible that, that he should end up his, this war service coming to the UK to serve the allied sort of, in the allied war effort and he was that close to his origins. There is something just so extraordinary about that and I know it’s to some extent —
HC: Well, these stories are connected by war.
HH: Yeah. Yeah.
HC: Because the person who becomes the slave owner.
HH: Yeah.
HC: Goes out there because of war and the other reason for telling it is because I really wanted it to be about ordinary stories and ordinary people. You know people in, in Britain think that these stories about enslavement somehow only involved aristocrats.
HH: Yeah.
HC: Bu, you know, this there were ordinary white men all over the Caribbean.
HH: Yeah.
HC: Who became slave owners.
HH: Can I, I’m sorry to do this to you Hazel but I want to quote one sentence from your book which is just, you know it should cause us to stop and think a lot about our practice and I think it is causing us to stop and think a lot, “Links to colonial exploitation and oppression to Atlantic slavery and imperial wars are not the exception. They are, they are our quotidian past.”
HC: Yeah.
HH: And the thing about that statement is that why has it all been forgotten then?
HC: Indeed. That’s the question the book, you know, poses. This historical amnesia. I mean, if you think about it Lilly’s parents in Coleby, in Lincolnshire Bridget and William had grandchildren. Black grandchildren in Jamaica. As did many ordinary people in Britain but we don’t call them family stories do we? See, this is the point of the book, “The Imperial Intimacies.” These are extremely intimate entangled relationships, but somehow the history of the colonies are somehow seen as other. You know what I mean? That’s a completely separate history. So when black people were serving in Britain or were living in Britain were sort of like, ‘Well, where have you come from?’ As if there were actually no relationships between the metropole and the colonies. When I was, you know when I became politically active in the UK in my late teenage years and as a student you know we used to say, ‘We’re here because you were there.’ But the you were there part of the story is the sort of the sense of responsibility. The sense of how these histories are intricately tied to each other is the one that we have to recover. That’s the stories we have to recover. We’re not alien. We haven’t come from somewhere other or completely different. My father thought, you know, my father was raised as British. He had a British education. He went to [unclear] He wasn’t an other. He wasn’t an alien. So if we don’t, if we erase these histories we will never understand how closely tied we all are to each other.
HH: Hazel, you know that seems to be a very profound point to make and one on which perhaps we should conclude this interview because it has been, just so, such an incredible privilege to hear you recounting these stories and I know some of them remain painful but we are just so grateful that. That you’ve been able to do this for our Archive. Thank you so much.
HC: You’re very welcome.
HH: And I’ve stopped recording.
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 Hazel Carby
Creator
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Heather Hughes
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2021-03-15
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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01:21:41 Audio Recording
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ACarbyHV210315-01
PCarbyHV2101
Conforms To
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Pending review
Coverage
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Second generation
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Jamaica
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Essen
New Brunswick--Moncton
New Brunswick
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1947
Description
An account of the resource
Hazel Carby discusses her father Carl's early life in Jamaica, his experiences training in Canada and serving as aircrew in the RAF, and how he and his family were treated in London in the post war period.
She also discusses her research into her family's history and the connections between the Carby family, Coleby in Lincolnshire and slavery in the Caribbean, for her book, Imperial Intimacies.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Language
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eng
African heritage
aircrew
bombing
demobilisation
navigator
perception of bombing war
RAF Waddington
recruitment
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/728/24862/PBrowningDJ1601.2.jpg
a9c58bb31d10b774e30abf2e361e3ba5
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/728/24862/ABrowningDJ[Date]-01.mp3
7a921373e3dcea8dc6375af2f29d04a1
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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Browning, Don
Donald James Browning
D J Browning
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Flying Officer Don Browning (1923 - 2020, Royal Australian Air Force). He flew operations as a wireless operator with 463 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Don Browning and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-06-13
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.
Identifier
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Browning, DJ
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DB: No. I think it must have been the raid to Mont Candon. There was two planes collided and all the crew were lost in those two planes. They collided. Went down together. Both of those people in those planes were on course with us at Conversion Unit. So, it was quite a nasty initiation to go on to the squadron and have those mates from our conversion course all go down in that crash.
JH: Before you did that operation did you do any pamphlet flights? Dropping, what do you call them? Nickel raids.
DB: Yes. We did a nickel raid whilst we were at the OTU and that was done [pause] we went to Chartres in France. And we flew, we did that in a Wellington bomber and on our way back we were supposed to change our tanks over. This was the navigator’s job to do this but he wasn’t able to turn the cock. And he asked me to have a go at it and I couldn’t do it even though I had a spanner. I couldn’t shift the thing. And as a result of that we were running short of fuel. And I can remember Alan was calling up on Darkie requesting a landing ‘drome in the south of England as we were coming back but no response. We were near Boscombe Down. Anyway, I said, ‘Oh well look, they’re not answering you. I’ll zero feed my transmitter into their frequency and they’ll damn well answer you then,’ which I did. And of course immediately he came up requesting landing lights for Boscombe Down. Eventually we got them put on and we landed. That was an experimental ‘drome and they didn’t want us to stay that night. Stay overnight. And it was already dark of course as you can imagine and they rushed out to us to see what was wrong. And they, they fixed the petrol so we were able to, or gave us more petrol and fixed up the cocks so we could move it. And then when Alan ran the motors up, we got a magneto drop and he wouldn’t take the plane off so we stayed the night there. They were very very anxious to get rid of us the next morning. They didn’t want us to see what was going on at this experimental ‘drome. But they had, at that time they had Lancasters with twenty millimetre cannons in the rear turret which was something which was quite new to us because we only had Browning machine guns. And the name just expresses how good they were. Being Brownings. They were good.
JH: Of course.
DB: However —
JH: Did they, that’s an interesting point — did they, did they adopt the cannon?
DB: No. I think there was some aircraft that had the cannons later in the war. And they flew, I’m not sure whether they were for the ones that had the Black Widow turret which was a sort of a blacked out turret and operated on a radar system and the gunner used to just have to put the blip on the, on the line sort of thing and pull the trigger. And they got, I don’t know about ninety eight percent accuracy. But they couldn’t establish what the planes were. So they were, that was 100 Group. And they used to fly at a different height to us when on operations.
JH: Before you, you mentioned an operation to Calais as perhaps one of the most dangerous raids you were involved in. Perhaps you could talk about that a little bit.
DB: Well, Calais was the shortest book, the shortest trip in my logbook and everyone joked about it saying that you can hardly call that an operation because it wasn’t, you know considered to be very deep penetration into enemy territory. I’m just looking in my logbook trying to find out the date I actually did that. [pause]
JH: So there was a kind of a ranking system in the operations. Calais versus Berlin.
DB: Well, when we were briefed for this I must mention that. We were briefed to take off at [pause] around at around about dawn. We were actually to go down and bomb a gun site which was near the walls. This gun site was apparently holding up Omar Bradley from going into Calais and he had requested this as an army cooperation job. And the weather was absolutely appalling. We were briefed for that early take off. That didn’t happen. They took us back to the mess for breakfast. Then they took us back to the aircraft. We sat there until lunchtime waiting for the green to take off but nothing doing and eventually I think we went back and had lunch. Then we went out to the aircraft and we sat there until we took off eventually. Which was — let me see if I can see this. [pause] I have it here. I can tell you exactly when it was. Calais. Calais. Calais. Calais. Where are you? [pause] [unclear] see that. Here we are. I’ve got it. Strangely enough it was operation number thirteen in my logbook. Calais. We dropped our bombs from nineteen hundred feet. It was on the 24th of August 1944 and it was described as a, ‘Death or glory,’ raid by the intelligence officer who said, ‘You must drop your bombs from,’ I think it was originally ten thousand feet, ‘But you’ll go no lower than two thousand.’ I think it, I think it was no lower than twelve hundred he said but we actually dropped down to nineteen hundred feet. And on this raid there was a complete muck up of the radio. The thing was confused and there was a recall because the weather was so appalling and — but a lot of the aircraft did not receive this recall. And the time that we’d taken off was 17.30 in the afternoon. That was five thirty. So, it was when we got down to Calais it was very appalling weather still but we were able to make visual contact with where those guns were. But our bomb aimer being a meticulous character as he was made us do a second run around going into the target. And, ‘Go around again,’ said Paul. He wasn’t terribly popular as a matter of fact because as soon as we made, moved to go around we had this light flak coming up at us six at a time. Red dots. And they seemed to follow us around the circuit that we were flying. Anyway, we had to drop the bombs and our bombs dropped right on the gun sights. But on that raid we lost eight aircraft. There was fifteen aircraft went in to bomb. Seven Lancs and one Halifax were shot down. And one of my friends that I have mentioned before who’d been at Kodak House was one of the few that got out of his aircraft. His name was Doug. Doug. Doug Michelmore. I couldn’t think of his name. He was involved in the accountancy field that I also had been involved in. Anyway, he spent his time in the headquarters there. Down under the ground in German headquarters. He’d gone down in his parachute, saw all the stakes in the water and so forth and left his harness on. Thought, ‘That will give me some protection.’ But the Germans were standing on the shore with guns trained on him. They didn’t attempt to help him or anything. But anyway he got out eventually, out of the water and they put him in German headquarters. And the British kept shelling and we were dropping bombs and so Doug wasn’t terribly happy there he said. But the Germans, the younger officers were drinking a large quantity of Cognac which they had stored there and they offered him drinks so he thought, ‘ Well, I’d better drink this because the way this is going I’m going to be killed anyway so,’ he said, ‘ I got a bit high on the Cognac too.’ But he told me all this when he came back about three weeks or a month after this particular raid. I saw him in the mess. And I said, ‘How are you, Doug?’ And he said, ‘Well, not too good at all’ he said, ‘My nerves are shot.’ He said, ‘I’m waiting to go home. They’re going to take me home.’ And I said, ‘Well, how are you generally?’ He said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘The trouble is if anyone passes wind rather loudly I’m running for an air raid shelter.’ That was a story that I thought was rather amusing.
JH: So that raid, was that just 463 or 463 467 combined?
DB: I think there would have been some group, other aircraft from 5 Group. I don’t know but I know and I mentioned previously about the radio connection. We, they picked the frequency right near the BBC frequency and the only thing we heard as we were lining up to run in on to that target was the, the anthem being played. “God Save the King.” And you can imagine what the crew, what the mid-upper had to say about that when they had the red dollops of flak come up around him. But anyway he was a funny guy this fellow but he used to sing this song, he’s “Going to Buy a Paper Doll to Call His Own.” [unclear] and Alan Stutter made the comment, he said, ‘I had the idea that the mid-upper gunner was singing his favourite song.’ Anyway —
JH: Well, that, that was heavy losses in that raid.
DB: I think that was possibly one of those raids which was described as a death or glory raid so they accepted it as a full operation.
JH: They got it right didn’t they? You were telling me before you were involved in a few operations targeting the canals in Germany.
DB: Yes.
JH: And I think you played some havoc in that department. The Dortmund Ems Canal for example.
DB: We, we regularly visited the Dortmund Ems Canal. I think about once a month we would go there. I’m just looking to see whether I [pause] The first raid I did on Dortmund Ems I think was [pause] the 23rd of September and we strafed that canal down and let all the water out. And it was the raid before the Calais one that we did that. And we used to go after that about once a month but not necessarily to the same spot and we would smash the canal up again. The last raid that I did on Dortmund Ems Canal I think was on the 21st of the 11th ’44 when I’d done the 4th of the 11th ’44. Each of these raids were taken on different parts of the canal and they were usually about, oh about a six hour duration. It was a target that was a special target from the 5 Group aircraft particularly. And I think that was the 1st of January ’45 which was a daylight on Dortmund Ems Canal and yes that’s six hours fourteen. I think a guy got the VC on that particular raid. Then we did it again on the 20th of February ’45. So it was a regular target for 463 and 467.
JH: Were those canal systems heavily defended?
DB: Very heavily defended. Yes. But we had quite heavy losses on them.
JH: Don, perhaps you can talk a little bit about not so much the operations but tell me something about your leave from Waddington. I understand you’d go down to London and probably the Boomerang Club. And you were telling me before about some fairly wild mess parties.
DB: Yes. I remember. I think it was the night that Bill Brill, who was the CO of 467 squadron received his DSO. I’m not certain on that but it was a pretty wild mess party on that occasion. But of course some of the guys insisted on carrying .45 revolvers. I think. I never was involved in it but we had one fella who was playing around with his gun in his flying boots. A pilot as a matter of fact. And he was, they were sitting out the aircraft waiting to take off. Waiting for the green from the control tower. And the bomb aimer was asleep in his compartment [laughs] Anyway, the next thing he knew the ground crew were coming through putting the [unclear] on the plane. And he woke up and he said, ‘What’s happened?’ The ground staff crew said to him, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Has it been scrubbed?’ He said, ‘No,’ he said, ‘Your pilot’s gone and shot himself.’ He’d put, he put a shot straight through his foot. And that was one. One occasion but we had another one in the mess where a bloke came in singing out the pistol packing mamma and put six shots across the ceiling. That wasn’t very well received by the RAF people up there. They thought it was a bit rough. But the Australians were a pretty wild mob anyway.
JH: And what about the famous pyramid of chairs?
DB: Well, they yes they used to make these pyramids of chairs. On another occasion they made a pyramid in the anteroom of the mess and they set it up on four mini type glasses, a table and then the lounge suite. And then eventually, it was a fairly high ceiling because this was a peacetime ‘drome they’d, I think on one occasion they even had a motorbike up there. But they then all climbed up with their cigarette lighters. Wrote their names across the ceiling in the mess and of course the CO didn’t like that either. Made them all get up and scrub the things off. Yes. We had some wild parties. But I think that you know they had to let their hair down some way because you know, we were never sure whether they were going to be there to make the next one anyway.
JH: Well, Don you actually did thirty seven operations which is well above the odds.
DB: Yes.
JH: Well above the average.
DB: I did one. My spare bod that I did was on a raid I flew with another crew. A Flying Officer Roe. And I was, my crew were off. I don’t know what was wrong. Some of them were sick or something and they were off duty because we were down on personnel. And anyway I did a trip to Karlsruhe I think with Roe and the following night we were briefed to go to Königsberg which was probably the longest raid of the war. Right over in East Prussia. And I said, well I was briefed to go again with Roe but I said well look, ‘My crew are now on stream. I’d sooner fly with my own crew.’ So, I went with Alan and our crew. Our crew happened to be one from Nick the Nazi Neutraliser but I don’t think Nick was on that Konigsberg raid but that was the plane we used to fly. But anyway the —
JH: That was, that was the nose art you’re talking about.
DB: That was the nose art.
JH: On your Lancaster.
DB: A great big picture of the devil on the front of it. Anyway, and then we had all bombs there for the number of trips that we’d done. Nick was actually did ninety six trips and we had hoped to fly that on a hundred but because it was lost in an exercise of fighter affiliation with a Hurricane. And the whole of the crew of the Lanc and the fighter plane, the Hurricane were all killed. That was a great disappointment. We had hoped to fly it, as I say on the hundred.
JH: What a warhorse. A hundred.
DB: Yeah.
JH: That would have been.
DB: Just going back to this Konigsberg raid. That was on the 29th of August and it was a trip of ten hours thirty two. Well now, I flew that with my crew but the signals officer took my place in Roe’s crew and they went west so there it was a case of not being in the right place at the right time unfortunately. Just bad luck.
JH: Don, talk us through, well VE day and and the trip home because I’d like to talk about the Bomber Command Commemoration Day Foundation. How that was set up. But yeah talk us through your, your return after the end of the war.
DB: Well, I came home on the Dominion Monarch which was quite a comfortable ship. And the captain, but I can’t remember what his name was but I always remember he used to, he was never whenever I looked at the bridge he was there. He was a man with a great big beard and you could practically see the relief on his face when we went in to the harbour at Christchurch. Going into the harbour of Christchurch in New Zealand. I’m trying to think of the name of the [pause] — Lyttelton. The port of Lyttelton. That was the port of Christchurch in New Zealand. And when the pilot came on board you could practically look and see the look of well, relief I suppose for want of another word on his face. He hadn’t overcharged for the pilot having made the trip out from the UK. We were, it was a very very long trip. We got on the boat at Liverpool. We pulled up and took on fuel and water at Suez. In the Canal. We went, they wouldn’t let us off the ship at all. And we were, we were in, we were moored the night in the Bitter Lake. Right out in mid-stream so no way you could swim [laughs] ashore and have a look at anything. And then we took off. We went the rest of the way through the canal and we left England on the 31st of August ’45 and I didn’t arrive back ‘til the 14th of November ’45. No. Wait a minute. That can’t be right because I, that was the day I was discharged. Well, it was certainly the end of October. That’s right. I went from Brighton up to Liverpool and I left on the 31st of August ’45. I’ve got in my book here that I was discharged on the 14th of the 11th ’45. I don’t know what date we got back but I know it was a heck of a long trip. And I had a, well I don’t know I think I had [unclear] down to Brighton.
JH: So, so back to Sydney. Back to family. And what about a job? What prospects did you have?
DB: Well, I eventually didn’t have a — I’d worked for the auditors and so forth but there were a lot of people that had been involved there and they said well they didn’t know whether they could employ me or not but I was a sort of a stand-by. So, I applied to take on accountancy and I did that under the Repatriation Scheme. Following that I was I was employed at Australian General Electric for quite a while. I was in charge of power machinery up there. Doing their costing. That was out at the Warburton Works. After that I’d taken over a business with another air force friend of mine. We had a hardware business which we ran for a while. And when that was more or less experience for me because I became involved with the retail trade which was my family business and I was there until that was eventually sold put it that way. Actually, I sold that to my cousin and the thing was eventually sold.
JH: And by then you’d met Pat.
DB: After that.
JH: Marriage.
DB: I wasn’t married then. I was married at twenty seven. I was twenty seven when I was married and we had three. Three children and —
JH: And now some grandchildren.
DB: I , I, following, well during the time that I was involved in the retail game I bought a farm and I was running a farm more or less as a, well a tax. A tax dodge I suppose in one respect. But farm properties enjoyed plenty of depreciation and so forth. And I did that until I retired.
JH: All quite legal we should add.
DB: Eh?
JH: All quite legal.
DB: Yeah. All quite legal. Yeah. Certainly it was legal.
JH: Yeah.
DB: As indicated.
JH: So, why don’t I see if I can get you to reflect on what you thought of the treatment of Bomber Command post-war and you know, your feelings on the area bombing strategy that was adopted.
DB: Well, now let me think about this because I became very much involved with the reunions of the 463 467 Association which was formed following our return. I think it started probably ’46. It might have been ’47. I can’t actually recall. I do recall marching in the Anzac Day of 1946 but I went in to find our mob but couldn’t find them and I marched with a group called, “The Desert Harassers.” Another friend of mine who happened to be, he was in Coastal Command but we couldn’t find either of our group and so that’s who we marched with on that first Anzac march. Eventually we had, 463 and 467 had numerous interstate reunions. In fact they also had one reunion in 1975 which went over to the UK and subsequently went off to Germany and so forth. Met some of the fighter pilots who’d shot them down and that shot planes down and whatnot. But it became quite a strong Association. We, we included our wives in this. That became the mainspring of the success of the Association. And during the course of this Rollo Kingsford Smith who was our first CO of 463 Squadron he had been instrumental in sort of trying to arrange commemorations for, for the people that had been lost on Bomber Command. Because following the cessation of the war they had been no particular recognition of Bomber Command as such. In fact we were more or less ostracised and considered by lots of people to be murderers because we actually bombed women and children in some of our targets. Now, this must be considered as a two way event because the Jerries came over to Britain and did exactly the same thing. They killed women and children. And so let’s face it it’s war and that’s what war is all about. We only did what we were instructed to do and so for a long while there was great antipathy towards Bomber Command. Well, Rollo had to write, during the course of his command of 463 lots and lots and lots of condolence notes. Now, he said to me, ‘Look. I would like to see some commemoration for all those people that were lost and, and the work that was done by those in Bomber Command. And I think there should be a Commemoration Day. And there should be some recognition.’ Well now Rollo was involved in the Bomber Command Memorial in Canberra.
JH: This was about 2005.
DB: That’s what —
JH: Don.
DB: Yes. With [unclear]
JH: Yes.
DB: And they were part of a committee that had, that really finished up with the Bomber Command Memorial being installed and opened in 2005. In fact Geoff actually did the opening, I think at that event. Now, from that point on Rollo had asked me for a donation and several others. And 463 and 467 came to the party to a certain extent and I remember Hugh MacLeod who wasn’t actually on our squadron but used to enjoy Anzac Day with us he put in a substantial donation towards this Bomber Command Memorial as did Rollo and myself and others. Anyway, Rollo said he wanted more of a Commemoration Day. And we saw an article that was written by Roxy MacLennan in the Air Force Association paper about there should be recognition of the Bomber Command and so forth. We decided, or Rollo decided to call a meeting. And he asked me to arrange to have a meeting with people at his home in Exeter. This we arranged and we made an approach to the War Memorial as to what, what the best way to go about getting some recognition of Bomber Command. Now, Steve Gower who was then the Director of the War Memorial suggested that if we were to do this it should be made through the Air Force Association or our Squadron Associations. So, this was the approach that was made. We went to Canberra. Ross Pearson and myself. I got hold of Ross Pearson because Ross was, was a wireless operator who I knew and he was a friend of both my navigator and my pilot and, but he did a legal course after the war. And I thought well he was the bloke to do something about this. So, so he joined this committee or suggested this committee and he said, ‘We’ll go to Canberra and front up in front of the Association,’ which was the national body down in Canberra and demand that we get this day. And if they’re not going to do something about it then we will. But we went to Canberra and Canberra accepted that. The national body did accept the fact that the Bomber Command Day would be possible and it should be done at the Bomber Command Memorial which had already been established in 2005. So, our first event was in 2008 and it’s now 2016 so it’s the ninth event that has just been concluded.
JH: And it’s gathered momentum, Don.
DB: And it gave momentum really for the establishment of the Memorial in London.
JH: Yes.
DB: Which is a wonderful Memorial which I had the pleasure, unfortunately Rollo had passed on and didn’t have the pleasure of going to see it. It is a marvellous Memorial and anyone who had the opportunity to go to England, to London should make it a number one visit.
JH: Maybe to finish off we could, we could mention that this Bomber Command Commemoration Day is not just Canberra any more.
DB: Oh no. That’s right. It’s now, well initially that’s the way we approached it. We wanted it commemorated in all States on the same day. Not only in all States. We made contact with New Zealand and Canada and both of those countries had accepted. We didn’t get acceptance in South Africa but we got acceptance in those other countries including England. And the first one in England was conducted at the Bomber Command —
JH: Memorial.
DB: Memorial. No. I’m sorry. It was at the Bomber Harris Memorial.
JH: Bomber Harris.
DB: Which stands outside St Clement Danes. And that was conducted by a navigator, Paul Wilkinson. And following Paul Wilkinson’s passing his son who was a lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy and a neurosurgeon has carried on the laying of wreaths on that Memorial and will do for, I think probably until next year. That will be, I think the end of it. And we’ve supported it every year since its inception in 2012. And we laid a wreath every year since then.
JH: Don, you must be very proud of what’s happened with that as one of the instigators so I think we’ll, we’ll finish off. I’d like to thank Don for this interview. It’s an amazing story. Amazing history of Bomber Command service. Thank you very much, Don.
DB: Right. Well now, I’d like to hear that back because I probably have made some mistakes in that. I don’t know.
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Title
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Interview with Don Browning. Two
Description
An account of the resource
Don Browning was posted to 463 Squadron at RAF Waddington. On one operation two aircraft collided and Don lost friends he had undertaken training with. On an operation to Calais the weather was very poor and the attack aborted but not all aircraft received the recall including Don’s. On that operation eight of the fifteen aircraft was lost. The Australian crews were noted for their exuberant behaviour in the mess including building pyramids of chairs and shooting at the ceiling. On one occasion a crew was waiting at dispersal when the ground crew started working on the plane. When the bomb aimer asked was it scrubbed the ground crew said no, their pilot had just accidentally shot himself.
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John Horsburgh
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IBCC Digital Archive
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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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00:41:43 Audio Recording
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ABrowningDJ[Date]-01, PBrowningDJ1601
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Pending review
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Julie Williams
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eng
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Sound
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
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France
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Egypt--Suez Canal
Egypt--Suez Canal
North Africa
Egypt
Date
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2016-06-13
463 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
coping mechanism
Lancaster
memorial
military living conditions
military service conditions
perception of bombing war
RAF Waddington
wireless operator
-
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7fdbcf2e8591da39d9bec6c5cb887d77
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1286/20097/ASutherlandD191211.1.mp3
aaf42e489f40275ed15b16ed9b7f62ba
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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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Sutherland, Don
D Sutherland
Sutherland, Donald
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Don Sutherland (1919 - 2022). He was conscientious objector during the war and worked on a farm in Lincolnshire.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2019-05-17
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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.
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Sutherland, D
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DE: So, this is Dan Ellin. I’m interviewing Don Sutherland at his home in Lincoln. It’s the 11th of December 2019 and this is for the IBCC Digital Archive. So, Don, I’ll just put that there. You were, you were talking about your father and, and his work in, in the First World War. What is it you, you think that made the first and the Second World War so, so different?
DS: Well, the first, the First World War I think could easily have been avoided. Certainly, in comparison with the Second World War which the way things had developed in Germany it was quite inevitable that it would lead to so many countries becoming involved and, and there was certainly much more of a drive from the Germany who had become the enemy so to speak. And it became so inevitable that it should lead to war because the way Hitlerism originated and developed its prime intention was, was to make them masters of the, of a huge area which would, would, would together lead to quite a different sort of civilisation really.
DE: So why was it that you chose not to fight?
DS: It’s a very good question because it, it was something which in, in Newcastle where I I was brought up and first, first worked for, I’d say half a dozen years the fact was that we had this annual thing going on in the, in the town moor there where all sorts of meetings were held. And this was an opportunity which the, the Pacifist people used to talk about alternatives to war and it was through a meeting that took place there just before the war began more or less, a year before the war began that gave me any ideas about, about the history of war and what you might say the inevitability of war and that there was a possibility that the idea of war was something that was a historical fact that people had learned to accept as being inevitable and that there was no possibility of any objective. Any alternative to, to war. And when the idea came to me that you could refuse to accept war as being inevitable and that certain people had made that part of their life to devote themselves to propagating that, that purpose in life to oppose war rather than to accept it as an inevitable thing. And until, until, until that time in in nineteen, was it 1939 it began — ?
DE: Yes.
DS: That, and it began in such a sort of a mixed way from what, what was done in Germany and then the surrounding countries in a gradual way. And of course, we went to war. Germany didn’t declare war on Germany, on England as you know but we became involved because of promises we’d made to, to support the country that Germany had invaded.
DE: Yes. Poland. Yes.
DS: Yes. That was, that was the reason we went to war because Germany had never actually declared war on us and so I, there was a feeling of sort of, a ridiculous feeling I think that, that Britain wasn’t really interested. And they had no idea or I should say we had no idea that, that war was inevitable and would involve us as it involved all the other countries. And in the way, the way Hitler had little by little, and country after country become such a powerful set of people by using the most violent means which were completely foreign to us really. Germany had a set up a system which was, was quite unique and he was able to engage so many different people and, and use so many terrible methods gradually to dominate the areas which led to such a huge powerful and of course this was partly too with the, with the help of the other people with similar ideas who had already set up in Italy to, to dominate other countries. And it just became such a powerful theatre for war I suppose. It’s, it seems so foreign to us to understand how it could happen because we, we find now that that the so-called enemy is as much a friend as, as anybody else. And, and in fact is leading the way to try and keep people together and not to have one nation dominating another.
DE: So, I mean we spoke about this in the other interview when I was here a few months ago. So, we have on tape the process that you went through and the tribunal you went to. I’d like to ask you a bit more about your time on the farm in Lincolnshire. I wasn’t quite sure. Was it, where was it at? The farm.
DS: Well, there were two. Two farms, communities in, both in Lincolnshire. In Lincolnshire. And also there were similar types of communities involved in other parts of the UK. But I think the place at Holton Beckering which was the first place I went to was a set up by various prominent Pacifists. Pacifist people who centred in London and one, one section there by advertisement if you like to call it one way and, and by interviewing individuals set up, set up a very organised and financed thing. So that was, that was, that was at [pause] at Holton and it involved two separate farms. And I think that came more or less at the same time as two individuals, using their own finances set up a separate place right next door to it and I I joined first this main big one and I was interviewed in London to go, to go to that one because one of the, one of the the conshys who was a Quaker in [pause] where, where I lived and I went, I went and stayed with him when that community had started. So that was my first. It was just like a holiday there. I hitchhiked there and then when I happened, it turned out that I got the sack from work that’s where I applied to go. In the first place they said no. I didn’t, they didn’t, they interviewed me in London and took one look at me and said he, he’ll never make a farm worker. And then later on the same year when I, when I got the sack from my job I, I wrote. I wrote to them again and when I, one of the executive members of the committee came and talked, talked in Newcastle and I told him I’d lost my job and I’d already applied to them and been refused. It was a possibility that they might reconsider it you see.
DE: Yeah.
DS: Well, I got a reply straight away nearly. ‘Yes. We’ll take you.’ They’d set this place up and they were short of men you see and so they decided that they would take me. So, I went there straight away and joined. Joined one of the places which was adjoining but it was not, the other place was supposed to be the main place because they had the very highly skilled bloke, a local chap who was the, the boss, plus a local ex-farmer who was a Pacifist. And I worked there for two and a half years and that covered the time of the war because I didn’t start until 1941. I I was employed at work as I got complete exemption.
DE: Right. Ok.
DS: And then when, when the end of the war I I was somehow out of touch with, with, with what had happened to the first community because the fact that we, we had, I then moved on to the, the other one because the second community was just run by these two men and they were in charge so to speak. But not in charge in a dominant way but they, they’d financed it you see so it was completely independent from the first community I belonged. And, and that’s that first community slowly died off so to speak. I’m not quite sure exactly what happened because I was so much attached to the, to the new community and unfortunately it didn’t stand ground on its, on its own. Key people left who had been quite important in keeping it together and eventually it, it ended up in in the hands of two people who were, who were financially dominant. But we, those who wanted to were carried on, carried on as ordinary farm workers but, but we still felt it was a community. Very much so actually and so, I was working there for about twenty five years and then because of my health didn’t seem strong enough for the job I was doing I I changed my work and the house I was living in. We were able to buy it. So, although I was living in the area I had no direct attachment to the community. Although I was still attached to some of the people who were working there.
DE: And what was, what was life like in the community? What was, what was the sort of every, every day like? Or what was it like across the seasons?
DS: Well, we, we had married and unmarried helpers and we had, certainly in the, in the section that I lived and there were, there were in, in the second community we had, had separate houses but they were more or less adjoining. And the married couple were in charge and they sort of looked after us and we were just like a part of a family the rest of us. But it slowly, it slowly disintegrated unfortunately but we had young, quite young children there with us. But as I say that, that, that community lasted a lot longer than the much larger first one which was more or less organised in London. So, it was quite sad really. We had a, we had a very large farm. A farm with a very good quality flock of pedigree sheep.
DE: So, what was, could you describe what a typical day would have been like?
DS: Well, a lot of the work I did and of course on the farm it varied according to the time of the year what you had to do.
DE: Of course. Yes.
DS: And so, in the wintertime I would be working chop, chopping the hedges down, keeping them in track, digging out the ditches and that sort of thing. And in the early days it was all so run by human labour. We didn’t have many, many tools at all really to use. It was only latterly that we developed to a size where we became much more mechanised. So it was, it was quite tough work but we got used to it. I mean, I never dreamed that I would become so used to hard work. I just, it wasn’t in my, my training at all and so it was a completely new life for me as it was for most of them really and the thing was that this, this place where I belonged, the second place there was quite a tendency for the people there to, to have an upbringing in art and three of them or four, four altogether I think were, had already been training to get degrees in art. So, when they finished work for the day, farm work they would then go, go to their room at night and spend another few hours working at what was really their, their chosen ambition. So they, they were quite quick to leave when they had the opportunity to do so and that’s what they ended up doing.
DE: And what did, what did you do in the evenings?
DS: I think we just sat and talked most of the time. I I had a little cottage to myself. I don’t know what it was built for originally but it was big enough to, to have a bed in it and so I suppose I read a lot and —
JS: There wasn’t any electricity was there?
DS: No. Not at first. Not at first. But —
JS: So, you read with candles or oil lights?
[pause]
DS: Yes.
JS: I remember when Uncle Bill, which was my mum’s brother said when you worked with the horses you would throw the windows open wide very early in the morning and wake everybody up.
DS: [laughs] Yeah. We, yes, well yes. My favourite job was wagoning. Driving. Driving horses. But we had to get up quite early to give them their food because they were not, they were not as well looked after as they [pause] A lot of people would have their horses in stables overnight. Particularly in winter time but our horses were kept out in the open air right through the winter. So, we had to go out and they would reluctantly come with us so they could get fed properly before we put them to work in the day. And then later on they would have to go back outside again so it was a bit of a rough life for them but they were used to it.
JS: And you’d harness them up to the plough.
DS: Pardon?
JS: Did they go with the plough or did they just pull carts?
DS: No. We did have, we had tractors as well and the really heavy work was done by tractors. But when the land was prepared for sowing and it had to be worked down to get the right, the right place for the, for the seed to grow that was, a lot of that work was done by horses.
JS: So that was harrowing and —
DS: Yes. Keeping, keeping it clean. Clean and that sort of thing and of course in those days, those days too we didn’t have, we didn’t use a lot of manure. The, we would keep, keep the ground clean by dragging, dragging harrows over the ground to keep it clean. And, and then we’d also go over it by hand with, with hoes as well to clean the land. It was very much manual.
DE: Yeah.
DS: And hand, and hand working in the early days. And it was some time before we, before we had the combine harvesters.
DE: So very very very hard work.
DS: I couldn’t, I couldn’t believe when I when I saw the first combine harvester that they would find a method of harvesting without using the old fashioned way of, of using a plough system.
DE: I know, I know some farms used prisoners of war to help. Did, did you have any of that?
DS: Yes. Well, first of all because when the war, the war ended in two different stages because first of all we, we stopped being at war with, with —
DE: Germany.
DS: No.
JS: Italy.
DS: Another country.
DE: The Italians.
DS: Yes. That’s right. Yes. But Italy, you see that war finished first you see and so they were released from the, from the prisoner of war camps in the country and, and were allowed to go home before the Germans and the Germans were kept behind for three years after the war finished. They weren’t allowed to go home because there were so many troops, British troops still involved in in the countries that we were at war with. They were kept there and so we were short of people and employed the Germans for two or three years after the war finished. And we had four. Four working for us. Three, three were people who we got on well with and the other we thought he was a lazy beggar which he probably was and two of the others were they had both been teachers or heads of schools, junior schools in Germany and on the section of the farms that I belonged to we had one who we got to know very well. He had, his wife had one child who he’d never seen, this child and so the father was looking forward to be allowed home so that he could see his first, first baby. And we later, I later on went over to Germany and stayed with them.
JS: And his children came to stay with us, didn’t they?
DE: And then the, the son came over and stayed with us on more than one occasion and, and I still get Christmas cards from him but he —
JS: And they did a play didn’t they? The Holton Players. They put on a play.
DE: I wanted to talk about that a bit. Yes.
DS: Yes. Yes. They, they put on a play at Holton. This was where, this was where they were kept. At the ex-Army base there. And they had liberty during the day. They, they would walk around and have complete liberty but they weren’t allowed to go home so it must have been pretty tough for them. I think some of them must have tried [laughs] tried to escape but others felt that they were probably much better off where they were than going back to Germany because Germany was in a pretty raw state when the war finished. It was not a, not a very pleasant place to be because they were starving. A lot of them were. Because the, Germany treated the people so badly. It’s all so forgotten now, isn’t it?
JS: And the Holton Players you, they, they were the pre-the Broadbent Theatre weren’t they because they did plays in the Nissen hut that then got burned down.
DS: That’s right. But that was, that was a little time afterwards really.
JS: In the ‘50s.
DS: I’m not quite sure what, what year it was because the place we, the place we used at first was part of the place which the German prisoners of war had lived in. So it was a little time before the Players got, the Players got together and it was, it was some of the people in the, in the original community that I belonged to who were extremely good at theatre work and —
JS: Phil Walshaw. Her aunt was Sybil Thorndike.
DS: Yes.
JS: And she’d been to RADA for a year before she had to leave.
DS: Yes. Well, several people who, who were very experienced at theatre work.
JS: And Roy Broadbent, who was the father of Jim Broadbent he was a big part of the theatre wasn’t he?
DS: Yes. But it was, it was when he left, he left the community that I joined second of all. It’s when he left that I, that there were vacancies and they were getting the extra people in that I joined from the first, the first community.
JS: So, you went to Bleasby then?
DS: That’s right. Yes.
JS: With Dick Cornwallis and Robert Walshaw.
DS: Yes, but Walshaw wasn’t there. Walshaw had been there and left because he had the opportunity of joining a farm right in the southwest of England and it didn’t work out. And after I’d joined that second community he wrote to us asking if he could come [laughs] Come back. And we decided that he, that he could. He was welcome to come back.
JS: And his son still lives on the farm. He’s farmed it.
DS: Pardon?
JS: Chris is still, still lives on the farm and he’s farmed it hasn’t he?
DS: Yes. He has. Yes, well he lives on the farm but he doesn’t really do much.
JS: Any more.
DS: Work. It’s been passed, passed over for use by somebody who, who just developed a huge dairy farm.
DE: So, the communities were, were quite democratic. You sort of had votes about whether people could join or not.
DS: That’s right. Yes. The first, the first was. Was, we had we had a rough say in what happened but the second we were, we were all classed as equal people although we knew that the money was in the hands of mostly two people who eventually took it over and we were, we were told we could stay on with the terms which we could agree to. Which I did for quite a time.
DE: Yeah.
DS: Until I got this other job.
DE: So, if we can just go back a little bit to during the war you said that there were, there were Italian and then German POWs that sometimes worked alongside you. Did you have anything to do with any of the people from RAF Wickenby which was quite close I believe?
DS: No. What happened was that you had different groups of people among the Pacifists. Some were used to a different type of living and some were in the habit of going to pubs and some weren’t. Some were quite reversed and religious and you know they became preachers locally. Part time of course. And, and some of the others and they mostly came from the second community that I belonged to but some of them moved in to the, in to the other one which had developed into a, a varied group with different ideas and just fizzled away gradually. So, I didn’t have much, much contact with the err I never went to, to any of the of the pub gatherings which the others, others did and they really became much more in touch with the airmen and got on reasonably well with them apparently. But I never, I never saw that side of it at all because the aerodrome, you know the aerodrome disappeared soon after the war finished.
DE: How did you feel about being so close to, to the aerodrome?
DS: Well, it was more the Bleasby, the Bleasby farm that was really close and parts of it, gradually more was taken off the farm to be used by the Air Force. So because I I belonged to the community which was further away I didn’t see very, very much of the Air Force really.
DE: Ok.
DS: No.
JS: But you’d hear the aeroplanes.
DS: Oh yes. Yes. Of course, they took off at night time mostly and where they took off, and the direction they were going on the way to Germany would be, they would not pass where I was staying you see. So we didn’t see as much of them as you, as you might, might think really. We would hear them but not see them necessarily. And as far as I know there was not much bombing took place in Lincoln itself and very little where, where we were. I don’t know why but that seemed to be the case. There wasn’t much bombing took place but there were quite a lot of aerodromes all, all over Lincoln that, that did get, did get bombed. It was quite a, apart from the armament places which were one of the main places and the bombings that were done purely for the sake of killing as many people as possible which took part in London and other big cities. And that was sort of quite a long way from this area you see.
DE: Yeah.
DS: They just went for, for the big cities. I don’t think that Lincoln, you see we didn’t see much of Lincoln. We would never think of going in to Lincoln. There was no way of getting there. No, no coaches to take us.
JS: You worked very long hours, didn’t you?
DS: Pardon?
JS: You worked very long hours on the farm.
DS: Very?
JS: Long hours.
DS: Well, we had double summertime then. We had, we had, we had, so, so in the wintertime we we we were using the hours that we now use in summertime. So we changed, changed our clocks at the usual time but we were an hour ahead, an hour earlier in starting our summertime.
JS: And then you had to lock up the chickens later, didn’t it? I remember.
DS: It was midnight.
JS: Because you worked with the poultry later on. And that was your job.
DS: Yes.
JS: But pea harvest was quite something wasn’t it?
DS: Oh yes. Yes. That was, that was hard work. We used to have special things which we, we had props that we put up in the field and when we, when we cut the hay the [pause] would you call it hay? I don’t know. My memory.
JS: The pea stalks.
DS: Yes. We put, and take them into big round sheds so that the wind would get through and dry them all out more quickly than if you just left them on the ground. So that was all hand work. It was all hand work early on so, it made me stronger I suppose. Not that, I’ve never been big. I’ve never been, never weighed ten stone but I’ve, I’ve managed. It was a great experience really. It was a fine life. A fine life working together really. So, it was, it was a blessing to me really. But then I was also in the position of being in a safe, comparatively safe situation whereas so many of my friends at work had gone into the different forces in time and one in particular who was, hadn’t been married very long but was very tempted to register as a, as a conshy. He decided to join up and not long after he’d joined up he was killed. And I don’t, still don’t know how many of my friends at work came back. [pause] Unless this is something which people haven’t experienced they won’t, won’t understand. What war does to people. And why some people still think war is the answer.
DE: And you continue to campaign against war. I noticed on your door you have have an anti-war —
DS: Yes. Oh yes. Yes. I hope people will take the message but we leave it to other people now to do our dirty work [pause] And it tends to be romanticised.
DE: Can you tell me some of the ways that you’ve protested against war and tried to spread the message?
DS: Well, we, we still go down to the RAF and spread propaganda there.
JS: You’ve flown kites there haven’t you in solidarity with the Afghani kite flyers at Waddington, haven’t you?
DS: Yes. Yes. We go to Waddington.
JS: And you went to the different peace camps. You went to Molesworth.
DS: I don’t go anywhere now really.
JS: But you went to Faslane as well, didn’t you? When you went to the Quaker conference a few years ago in Scotland.
DS: Oh yes. Yes. My daughter, my daughter took us on a nice holiday in Scotland last year and the group fairly recently set up, we’d been to the performances. Have you been to any of the performances?
DE: I haven’t. I didn’t know about them until it was, it was too late. But can you tell me a bit about them?
DS: Well, it was, it was because this, this chappy who was I think the oldest member of the group who came to the area and met some of the original people in the community and since he, since in the few years that he’s been the area we’ve now only got one friend. One. One friend and there’s not just myself and one friend left who belonged but when he came there were two more alive who, who had belonged to the community. And so that’s how he’s been able to get all the information that’s gone in to the creation of this, this play which he’s written.
JS: Some of the other children from the community, one was a journalist and she’d done a lot of recordings. Sarah Farley who, who I grew up with and also one of the Makins did also some interviews. He wrote about it. So, Ian Sharp used these memories as well as interviewing you and Arthur Adams and Phil Farley to make the play.
DS: Well, I, it’s a little uncertain at the moment as to, as to whether there will be another production but I’ll be sure and let you know.
DE: That would be wonderful because it, it was, it was shown at the Edinburgh Fringe and it was shown at the Broadbent Theatre as well, wasn’t it? It was put on there.
DS: It’s been several times at the Broadbent Theatre and that’s where its likely to be shown again.
JS: And recently it’s been on at Quaker meeting houses. And this autumn we went a fortnight ago, didn’t we to Doncaster meeting, the Quaker meeting house which was the last performance.
DS: Yeah. It’s been held at various Quaker meeting houses.
JS: The meeting would have known about it.
DS: Not with, not with the large attendances as we might have had.
JS: In Chesterfield there was a very good turnout. A lot of the people from CND were there and one of the men was ex-RAF that we spoke to that’s a big part of CND because when we were children you belonged to CND and we used to protest didn’t we then?
DS: Yes.
JS: Carried placards and that was how you carried on campaigning for peace.
DS: Yes. I don’t know to what extent young people are interested in peace making. What do, what do you think? Do you think they take a real interest in peace making?
DE: I think it’s because to a lot of people wars today are, are quite far away. They’re quite removed and they don’t have the real experience. I think that’s probably the problem. It’s something that happens to other people who it’s too easy to forget about. I don’t know. What, what do you think?
DS: Yes. I agree with you but I’m not so much in touch with people as you probably are and I might see one, one side of it.
JS: Well, when we’re in a recession the rise of nationalism is always worrying, isn’t it? You know, like in Germany the war started because of recession and when you get a current situation that’s very much saying you know people from other countries aren’t welcome even though they, our country wouldn’t function without them it’s, it can make people fearful that that people from other countries are enemies rather than just our neighbours.
DS: Yes. I, I’m very disappointed with the general attitude of people in the UK now that we should think about ourselves and not about the world as a whole. And we’re all so interdependent. I think it’s only now when we, it’s been revealed to us the dangers of not working together. And yet we’ve still got people fighting one another. Actually, wasting the parts that are valuable.
JS: Well, the politics and the economics of war where countries sell arms to countries that are then used against them is totally absurd.
[pause]
DS: I I don’t know much about it but you’ve probably heard the report of what, when we’ve had meetings at Bomber Command. Have, have you, do you, do you get a note of what’s happening there as far as our meetings there go?
DE: Sometimes I do. Yes. I think mostly its Heather gets involved with those. Those things. But yeah, I know there have been several meetings because we’re thinking about changing parts of the exhibition up there.
DS: Well, it’s the room upstairs which is, the idea is to develop that more isn’t it?
DE: That’s correct. Yes. Yeah. I mean that part of the, that gallery at the Bomber Command Centre has tried to tell the story about how the war has been remembered and how that feeds in to wars and conflicts today.
DS: Yes.
DE: I’d just, I’d just would like to have a go at it and try and make it a bit better.
JS: I mean the title to me is so to me alienating of the place that —
DS: Well, you haven’t been to it, have you?
JS: No. No. But if it was combined with, with something that was promoting peace as well.
DE: Well, that’s what we’re trying to do —
JS: Yes.
DE: In part of it and we have tried quite, well, you’d, you’d have to go judge how successfully but we’ve not tried to glorify war.
JS: No. No.
DE: We’ve tried to show it from all perspectives and we’ve tried to show the shared suffering and sacrifice —
JS: Yeah. Absolutely.
DE: Of people in the air, on the ground and on both sides.
JS: It’s not about who’s right and wrong.
DE: No.
JS: It’s not a, you know —
DE: No.
JS: It’s not a divisive thing, is it? It’s —
DS: It’s unfortunate that my, my, I had my stroke, stroke it’s affected my memory so much that I can’t express myself as well as I would have liked to.
JS: But for a hundred years old you don’t too badly.
DS: A hundred years [laughs] years young you mean.
JS: And we had, we had three versions of the play to celebrate your hundredth anniversary, didn’t we? There were special performances where you had, where the play was adapted. It’s been a changing thing but it’s —
DS: It’s not been very well lately.
JS: The theme of it became more climate. The threat now of climate changes.
DE: Right.
JS: So, it’s like it’s a changing movement towards what is most close to, to causing harm to populations.
DS: Yes. And you’ve got, you’ve got countries which are a long way from here much much bigger than us and it must be extremely difficult for those people to feel they’ve got any say in in what happens. [pause] Whereas I don’t know how, how much the countries in the, in the UK area and a bit further away from us how much feeling we have of any sort of control of what the future is going to be. Are we just dragged along by some invisible force? Out of control. Is there a meaningful, meaningful force bringing us along in the right direction or are we at the mercy of something the invisible which is hiding us from the right direction? [pause]
DS: What difference do you think the election will make or could make?
DE: I I have no idea. No.
DS: I’m very disturbed at the number of people who don’t use their vote to say where they want to go. And I think that’s the most disappointing thing about the present day that people don’t feel how vital it is that we have a say in what, in what future we’re going to have.
DE: Yeah. I think, I think I’m going to pause it there.
[recording paused]
JS: Well, we got a knock on our door one winter night by Malcolm Bates who wanted to re-establish the theatre. He was an adopted son of a Lincolnshire family. So, they started rehearsing didn’t they at Faldingworth and did, “Oliver.” You were in “Oliver.”
DS: Yes.
JS: And Helen was in Oliver, my sister and a lot of the community people were in it as well as others.
DS: But it was in the big sort of big building which was used for accommodation for the for the conshies working at the other area of Lincoln. That was, that was where some of the first meetings and the cinema items items were done in the, in the early days because there were several people who had been used to performing as actors or actresses. So we were very fortunate that we had these people who were quite experienced and very very able and were able to draw other people in who hadn’t actually belonged to the community but were interested in plays that it was able to be, to to fill up and then to have our own theatre which was the generosity of one particular person that we got, got the place when prices were not so high as they, as they’ve become now that we were able to to get this which is still on the go. How long it’ll last for I don’t know because I think all the original people now must have died because it’s a long time since it began. They used to have a theatre at, at the [unclear] at least theatre company at at the main place. [pause] Well, I’ll be very interested in hearing what ideas you have about developing the complex. I, I’ve never actually got as far, so far as going through all the list of deaths shown at the Memorial.
DE: There’s only a few people who have because there are, there’s fifty seven thousand names there so.
DS: I know, but I mean I know the names of all the people who, you know, the full names of all the people who, who were with me when I worked and who, who were called up. And I know some of them went into the Air Force so I might have a record as to whether any of them were killed or not. But then there must be, if there’s a complete list of, of soldiers and other types of people. I don’t I don’t know what that would be. How much room it would take up to put all the names of the various soldiers who were killed. It would be a huge list wouldn’t it because I would, I would think there were probably more of other different types of soldiers than the Air Force.
DE: Yes. I don’t know if they’re all collected in one place actually physically but the Commonwealth War Graves Commission would have —
DS: Yes.
DE: All the names available on the internet. Right. I I think I’m going to, I’m going stop the recording there so I will just say that also present in the room, the other voice on the recording was Don’s daughter Janet Sutherland. Thank you very much, Don. That was absolutely wonderful. Thank you.
DS: My pleasure.
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Interview with Don Sutherland. Two
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Dan Ellin
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2019-12-11
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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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Sound
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ASutherlandD191211, PSutherlandD1901
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Pending review
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01:07:34 audio recording
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eng
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Civilian
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Lincoln
Description
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Don was brought up in Newcastle, where he worked for a number of years. He attended a meeting a year before the war began, about alternatives to war and that war didn’t have to be accepted as inevitable. Don joined a community which organised work on a farm in Lincolnshire. After two years he transferred to another similar community, where he remained for about 25 years. Everyone was classed as equal and could vote on who could join this community. Don described everyday life in the community and farm work throughout the seasons. His favourite job was looking after and driving the horses. He worked with poultry for a while and also remembered the pea harvest. RAF Wickenby was one of the nearest airfields to the commune. They had four German prisoners of war working with them, one of whom kept in touch with Don after the war. Don campaigned against war and would sometimes go to the RAF Waddington with anti-war propaganda. A play had been produced about the pacifists, which was shown at the Broadbent Theatre and also at Quaker Meeting Houses.
Contributor
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Sue Smith
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1941
animal
entertainment
faith
home front
perception of bombing war
prisoner of war
RAF Waddington
RAF Wickenby
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1289/17295/AAlexanderPM190524.1.mp3
2b1d905d7de3c337bf17dc5edeee0137
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Alexander, Pauline
Pauline Maie Alexander
P M Alexander
Pauline Maie Kipling
P M Kipling
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Pauline Alexander (b. 1923) who served as Women’s Auxiliary Air Force member. This collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2019-05-24
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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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Alexander, PM
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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JH: My name is Judy Hodson and I am interviewing Pauline Alexander for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We are at Pauline’s home and it is the 24th of May 2019. Thank you, Pauline for agreeing to talk to me today. Pauline, can you tell me your date of birth and where you were born?
PA: 9.12.23. I was born in Kensington, christened in St Pancras. And I only lived there for a few months before we moved to Leaden Roding in Essex, a little village owing to mum’s health. We lived there for five years and then moved to Chelmsford.
JH: And how many family were with you at that time? What —
PA: Well, all my brothers. I was the youngest of all of them. And we moved to Chelmsford, and my brother Bernard worked at, after we left, after he left school he worked at Marconi’s at Baddow. My brother Guy was a printer. My brother Bob joined the Air Force as a boy entrant armourer, and my brother Peter went in to the, my dad’s business.
JH: Which was, what was that?
PA: Surgical instrument making and repairing. That was in London so he travelled up to town every day. They travelled up to town every day. But as far as childhood was concerned we had a wonderful childhood. We all got on very well together.
JH: Did they spoil you being the baby?
PA: I was always told I was spoiled. And even when I said I wanted to join the WAAF, my dad didn’t want me to go, but mum said, but my mum said, ‘It will do her the world of good. She’s getting too spoiled.’
JH: And where did you go to school then? I know you had moves.
PA: I went to Kings. I went to the village school in Leaden Roding for a few months when I was four, but from there we went to Kings Road School in Chelmsford which was a very good school.
JH: And all the family —
PA: I wasn’t, I wasn’t too keen on schooling I must admit. But —
JH: You did it [laughs]
PA: I did it [laughs] along with everybody else. My brothers were the brainy ones.
JH: Were they?
PA: Bernard was at Baddow Research which was, they were known as the boffins but as it said in the book he, he volunteered in, for the Air Force on a five year stint which was —
JH: What year was that?
PA: 1938, when, when the scare was. And that’s when Peter volunteered for the, and Guy both volunteered for the Territorials. Peter had to get permission to volunteer because he wasn’t quite old enough to go then. And of course, when war was declared they naturally had to go. I mean, Bernard was in a Reserved Occupation. Baddow Research.
JH: Yeah.
PA: But these things happen.
JH: Did you actually go to work from school? Or —
PA: I didn’t.
JH: No.
PA: I stayed at home, and I used to do the shopping and everything, but then for the 1938 Essex Show I helped in the office there just sending out all the tickets for, you know the applications for to show. And then when that finished Miss Cotting, an accountant who lived opposite us in Chelmsford at the time, she offered me a job there. So it was from there that I went into the WAAF when it, it was either joining the Forces or going in the factory and I thought —
JH: So that was what attracted you to, to going into the WAAF.
PA: Yes. Yes.
JH: Yeah. And what age were you?
PA: Well, I was seventeen and a half when I volunteered. Eighteen when I, near enough when I went. Yes.
JH: And where was that based at?
PA: When I first went I had to report to Romford recruitment there and then we were sent to Gloucester to get kitted out and everything. From there we went to Morecambe for a month’s training on the front, and we, we always assembled in what used to be Woolworths there then. Woolworths had moved out from their building and it was taken over by the RAF recruitment, and we did all our square bashing and everything there for a month. And then I was posted to Waddington.
JH: What year would that be then by the time you —
PA: 1942, and I was in flying, flying control for a short while but that was very harrowing booking the aircraft in and out. And I worked with two civilian people doing that. They’d obviously been there since before the war and they were retained. And then I, from there I went to the WAAF admin office in the WAAF headquarters, where I was billeted anyway and I had an accident with my leg. The MPs came one night to say that there was a light showing from one of the bedrooms and went, we went outside to see which room it was and he’d parked his bicycle in front of the thing and I caught my leg on the, his hubcap on his bike and I was in sick bay for a month. I had a haematoma. There’s the scar there and another one down there.
JH: Gosh.
PA: And that wasn’t operated on for a week so I had a black leg. That was —
JH: Serious, wasn’t it?
PA: It was, and we had an awful job with it because the MO came to see me after a week and he said, ‘Have you eaten? Had your tea?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘I’ll be back in an hour and —’ he said, ‘I’ll operate.’ And we used to have to press like that, and we had the kidney bowl and they used to, oh blood it was all congealed.
JH: Gosh.
PA: And I came out of sick bay and I was on a month’s sick leave for that.
JH: Where did you, where did you go? Did you go home?
PA: Went home. Yes. But I had to report to the Chelmsford and Essex Hospital every few days for dressings and that. And then when I went back to camp I was moved to Skellingthorpe. And —
JH: What duties? What duties did you have?
PA: I was only clerical duties. But there the office I worked in was doing the Committee of Adjustments for the aircrews that were lost, and that was a bit of an eye opener, and that ended up in a court martial for one of the [pause] they were, they were, didn’t send all the personal possessions back that should have gone. And that ended up in a court martial there for one of them but he wasn’t the real culprit. As usual one takes the can for somebody a bit [pause] And that, that combination I had a terrible argument with one of them because they were talking about it one day, you know. They used to hive off the stuff, and I would say something about you know the parents and that. They said, ‘What are you worried about?’ And I said, ‘Well, I happen to have lost a brother. Aircrew.’ I said, ‘And I know the rubbish my mother was sent.’
JH: Right. Which brother was that?
PA: That was from my brother, Bernard.
JH: Bernard.
PA: He’d only just had his twenty first birthday. Birthday. And I mean naturally you had some very nice presents but, ‘Oh, he must have taken them on ops with him.’ So, you know.
JH: You had experience then really.
PA: Yes, and but you live and learn these things. It was all part of parcel of Service life.
JH: Did you have a lot of friends, you know amongst your colleagues, actual close friends or —
PA: I’ve never made real close friends. We were a close knit family, and I suppose I played, I played cricket, football and everything, always with the boys. I was with the boys. They always took care of me so, and I remember one night I had been to night school for shorthand typing and I was on my way home. It was around about 8 o’clock and I was walking along Duke Street, and my brother and his friends were coming the other way. He said, ‘What are you doing out this time of night?’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve just been —’ He said, ‘Home,’ he said, ‘And I shall ask mum what time you got home.’ [laughs]
JH: Very protective.
PA: They were. Very protective. I couldn’t have wished for better brothers.
JH: And what was it like —
PA: And I’ve never, I still remember them as they were.
JH: And when you had your leave at Chelmsford or your sick leave and that. What was it like living there at that time because that was wartime wasn’t it?
PA: Quite harrowing.
JH: Yeah.
PA: With all the bombing. Not necessarily Chelmsford but all around Chelmsford.
JH: Did you have any near misses near you or —
PA: Oh yes. We had the landmines at the bottom of the Avenues which I suppose about, well less than a mile away from, much less and they were aiming for Hoffmann’s really which was ball bearing factory. And the ceilings came down. Windows out. Fortunately, we had a very sturdy table. A big table and we used to sit under the table. But after that my dad got an Anderson, a shelter. Indoor shelter so mum could go in the shelter after that.
JH: So you felt safer.
PA: Yes. Yes.
JH: Yeah, for everyone.
PA: Well, the trouble was you see dad worked up in London. When he was in London he worried about mum at home. When he was at home he worried about the business in London.
JH: Did the business survive through the war in the end?
PA: Well, whilst my dad was alive, yes.
JH: Yes.
PA: But when he died the business went you see. It was a good, the good will of the business that was more or less, so we lost not only the business but all my brothers as well, my brothers and my dad as well. And that was before National Insurance and everything. So dad hadn’t made a will. Mum wasn’t allowed to touch anything from the business for six months. And then after that she had, she paid in to National Insurance for fourteen years so that she could get a pension when, she lived on her capital for fourteen years. So —
JH: What year did your dad die?
PA: ’43. So we, the family didn’t have a very [pause] my mum and dad didn’t have a very [pause] until war it was heavenly, but [pause] but as my mother said, she was very sardonic, ‘Oh well,’ she says, ‘At least I’ve got all my money back.’ So —
JH: She had to go on didn’t she so —
PA: Yeah. And somebody said to her one day about after the two boys had been killed, you know, ‘Aren’t you bitter about it?’ And she said, ‘What’s the point?’ She said, ‘They were doing exactly the same. Bombing.’ And she said, ‘They were somebody’s son as well.’ You don’t necessarily do it because you want to. It was them or us. [pause] But getting back to Skellingthorpe and Waddington I enjoyed my, if you can call it that [pause] I never went to any of the sergeant’s mess dances or anything. I never, I didn’t drink for a start so, and as I say with the boys, aircrew I didn’t want to get involved. So I never went to any of the sergeant’s mess dances or anything like that so, but we had some very nice music evenings, and our own entertainment, and we did our job what we had to do. That was it.
JH: And how long did you serve?
PA: From ’42 to ’46. I was demobbed in ’46. When I went to Stradishall on a compassionate posting after my brother Peter had been killed I was home for a month then. Yeah. I suppose you could call it stress but in those days they called it a breakdown if you like. And then I had the compassionate posting to Stradishall but to be nearer home but it took me as long as to get from Stradishall to Chelmsford as it did from Lincoln to Chelmsford, because it was from Haverhill to — [pause] Oh, I can’t think of the name now, the other side of Kelvedon. In between Kelvedon and Colchester. It was a little single line so we shuffled backwards and forwards but the most harrowing thing there was there were only two coaches on the trains, and one coach went to Bury St Edmunds, branched off to Bury St Edmunds and the other one went to Haverhill. I got on the wrong coach one night and I ended up in Clare in Suffolk and I had to walk from Clare to Haverhill and from Haverhill to Stradishall and I never passed a soul. Pitch black.
JH: It must have been very scary.
PA: I’d never been so relieved to get back to camp as I was that night.
JH: How many miles do you think it was?
PA: Altogether about ten miles.
JH: That’s a lot on your own, isn’t it?
PA: Yes. Yes. But another thing I can say, the whole time I was in the Forces at aerodromes we never had an air raid. I don’t remember an air raid. Waddington had been bombed before I’d gone there. But I mean there were a lot of scares from aircraft not taking off, you know. The take off was aborted, and they were, the bomb load was, all that sort of thing.
JH: Did you ever feel that you were in real danger?
PA: We didn’t think about it. We just, alright it just took it as well, life.
JH: Gosh.
PA: I can’t say I enjoyed it, my Service life as such. It was an experience which I think Service life does a lot of people a lot of good. They see life from a different angle even though it was wartime.
JH: Were you influenced by your brothers having gone before you?
PA: Yes, definitely.
JH: So, how many brothers did you lose altogether?
PA: Three.
JH: And their names were?
PA: Bernard, Guy and Peter.
JH: You had one brother survived the war.
PA: One brother survived. Yes. And he was the regular, and an armament officer. And there’s a picture of him somewhere sitting on a bomb along with all his mates, all smoking.
JH: And his name was —?
PA: That was Robert.
JH: Robert. So what did you do after you’d got demobbed? What happened to you?
PA: I went to work at Marconi’s. Which was a very reputable firm.
JH: Yes.
PA: And then I met my husband. Well, I knew my husband at school but never any contact in those days. I met him at a RAFA dance. And we met in the March, we were engaged in the May and married in the September.
JH: What year was that then?
PA: ’47.
JH: And what did he do? What was his job?
PA: Well, he was a regular.
JH: Of course, yeah.
PA: He was a wireless mechanic, and do all that sort of thing and when he came out of the Air Force he worked at Marconi’s, and then I was expecting Peter and I left and he joined near enough. And —
JH: So how many children did you have?
PA: Peter and Maureen.
JH: Peter and Maureen.
[pause]
PA: She, by the way isn’t my cat.
JH: Oh, right [laughs] No?
PA: She’s Angela’s cat. Not mine [laughs]
[recording paused]
PA: That was Kate Kipling and she was, worked in munitions at Perivale in the First World War. And the inspectors came around one day and tapped one of the bombs they were, and it exploded and she was seriously wounded. She had scars all down, shrapnel scars all down her back and down her arms, in her head. And when she had no end of operations for the removal of shrapnel, and when she started to go deaf she went for a hearing test and he said, ‘We’re getting an awful lot of interference. A lot of rattling going on.’ And mum said, ‘Yeah. Well, that would be shrapnel, still in her —’
JH: And what age was that? How old would she have been then do you think?
PA: Well, between her forties and fifties. Well, thirties and fifties. Yeah.
JH: So did she work after the war then?
PA: No.
JH: No.
PA: No. She married my dad and had five children.
JH: Course.
PA: All under the age of six.
JH: But by the end of the war there was yourself, one brother and your mum left.
PA: Yes. Yeah. Start the war with seven and end up with three.
JH: Was your mum bitter about the war then with —
PA: Over some things. She was bitter when the Memorial Window was inaugurated at the church in [Broomfield], which is that little church up there where my brother Peter is buried. She went to the inauguration and she was shown her seat at the back. All the dignatories at the front of course, and she wasn’t even acknowledged and she was bitter about that which is quite understandable.
JH: Yes.
PA: But then that’s the way things worked. The mayor and everybody else was more important.
JH: She was obviously very proud of her sons wasn’t she, you know.
PA: Very proud. She was a very proud person and my brother Guy was married for a few months before he was killed and his wife remarried, but she always said and her cousin also always said, ‘Your mother was a lady.’ She was very, she was very upright. Very, what my mother said was law as far as we were all concerned. She could do, you know her word was [pause] when during the war, she worked, she was a member of the Red Cross and also she used to work for charities. Different, you know whist drives and all that sort of thing. She was a member of the Women’s Institute and, as well and my dad was an air raid warden when he was at home. And there again, think what people may my dad, he had a coronary thrombosis. He played golf in the afternoon with his doctor and he was taken ill during the evening and Doctor Henry came and he gave him some tablets, a tablet and he said to mum, ‘He should make it through ‘til the morning.’ But he didn’t. He died during the night and because there was an air raid, an air raid on my mum she washed him down, and then went downstairs and knitted furiously until it was light, and the air raid was over and she went over to the warden’s post and told them what had happened. That was my mother.
JH: Very strong.
PA: Very strong.
JH: And how old was she when she died then?
PA: When she died, a hundred and five.
JH: Did she marry again?
PA: No. No. My father thought the world of her, and so did we all as children. And when we lived in Primrose Hill we lived next door to a Mr and Mrs Young, and Mrs Young said when she heard that five children were moving in next door she said she had reservations. But when we moved out she said she could never have wished for better neighbours. I used to go shopping for her on a Saturday morning. Only across the road to the little shop opposite that, there used to be little shops in people’s front rooms in those days and I, I used to get her a few bits of shopping for sixpence.
JH: It’s amazing what you could get for sixpence in those days.
PA: Exactly. That was a lot of money. My mum, she always boasted with her first wage packet when she started work, she went to Goodwood Races with her sister Nell and she said, ‘We won sixpence.’ In those days. That was before the First World War. They won sixpence.
JH: A lot of money.
PA: A lot of money. Yes. Because they lived at, she was born in Midhurst in Sussex and of course that’s not too far from Goodwood Racecourse [pause] Yes. We had a wonderful childhood until the war.
JH: And what did you do, you know after the war and your family life with your children growing up?
PA: Well, Peter and Maureen always say they had a wonderful, the freedom they had, like we did. We used to have a bottle of drink and some sandwiches and just disappear for the day down the park or —
JH: Was that Chelmsford area at that time?
PA: That was at Chelmsford. Yes. They were born in Chelmsford. Maureen never, didn’t leave Chelmsford until she met her first husband and she moved to Milton Keynes, and she’s still in Milton Keynes. Different houses but [laughs] different husband.
JH: Did you have any hobbies through you know your married life that you both enjoyed? Did you?
PA: Not really. Hubby, he was a Mason eventually for quite a number of years. And we had a big garden like this, and —
JH: You enjoyed your garden.
PA: We enjoyed the garden. Yes. We enjoyed going out on our bikes and stopping for a drink, and Peter used to be on the little saddle on the front of, on the —
JH: On the front of the bike.
PA: On the bar.
JH: Yeah.
PA: At the front of the bike. And Maureen used to be on a little carrier on the back of my bike until we could afford a car. And if we couldn’t afford anything in those days we didn’t have it. Not like today.
JH: What was your first car? Do you remember now?
PA: An old Morris. Yeah. But my, my mum and dad had a car anyway. That was a Rover. And my brother Guy, oh Bernard had it. We took, drove the car up to Dishforth to my brother Bernard’s unit. He had the car up there during the war because we couldn’t get the petrol for it anyway [beeping noise] Excuse me, that’s my hearing aid squeaking. And then when he went missing one of the aircrew from, lived at Ingatestone which wasn’t very far from, about five miles from Chelmsford. He brought the car back for us. And then when Guy was stationed at Waterbeach in Cambridgeshire he had the car there. And when I was at Wadding ton he came up to visit me.
JH: Did you drive at all?
PA: No.
JH: No. Never?
PA: No.
JH: No.
PA: No. I mean all my brothers drove. I would have learned to drive but, and after we bought a car for how we drove a car he said about driving. He said, ‘What’s the point?’ He said, ‘I can drive you wherever you want.’ And then Maureen and Peter both learned to drive. No need. So I never learned. Angie, my daughter in law doesn’t drive. She lived in London. Not far from West Ham football. Well, opposite West Ham Football Stadium, and they never had a car. Peter did persuade her to start learning to drive when he worked away for just over a week. She was having two or three hour lessons at a time. You know, one of those quick things. But as soon as he went home she gave it up. She didn’t like driving.
JH: So have you all been —
PA: She’s terrified of the motorways.
JH: Oh, right. So —
PA: So she would never have driven on motorways anyhow.
JH: So has the family been football supporters over the years?
PA: Oh, West Ham. And next door but one neighbour —
JH: Yeah.
PA: In Chelmsford to hubby and I, their uncle he came from London and he was a West Ham supporter and he took Peter when he was ten up to watch West Ham and we’ve been West Ham supporters ever since. Hence even Ross, West Ham mug even now. But the irony of it all was that my husband’s cousin, his daughter married Geoff Hurst. My husband went to their wedding naturally, so, and of course he was West Ham.
JH: Big, big football connection going through the family.
PA: There is. My brother in law, John he played for Chelmsford City for fifteen years. They were a great footballing family as well. Played football. And as I say with four brothers I was brought up with football, cricket. Guy was more in to tennis with Peggy his wife. They played a lot of tennis but, but you know it was all very sporty.
[recording paused]
JH: Ok. So, we were just going to talk about when you actually started work again.
PA: Yes.
JH: After you had your children.
PA: I joined Marconi’s again for the second time, and I worked in the registry there, and I became deputy boss and we, we used to deal with every, all aspects of the division. We vetted all the post that came in for orders and enquiries and everything, and I used to, payday all the payslips for the division came up to the registry, and I used to sort them all out into rooms and we delivered all the pay slips to everybody. They were pleased to see us that day [laughs] And also all the requirements, letter-heading and all the, for the typists for —
JH: The stationery was it, the stationery cupboard.
PA: The stationery.
JH: Yeah.
PA: Used to order the stationery for the whole division. Get all the personal cards printed for all the sales and engineers on their trips abroad and everything. So it was a wide scope of things, and when I, when I retired apparently my card went around all. I got over a hundred pound when I retired, which I thought was very, very generous of everybody.
JH: Very well thought of.
PA: I did my best. I was very trying at times. I still am, and always will be I expect. But that’s all part and parcel of life. My son, and son in law whenever I was, ‘Are you behaving yourself?’ [laughs] Yeah.
JH: Well, that’s lovely.
PA: Well, when you’ve lived on your own for so many years you are very independent. You have your own ways and means of doing things. It may not be the best way but it’s what you’re used to.
JH: Yeah, ok. Right. Well, I can only really say thank you Pauline for allowing me to record this interview today.
PA: Well, thank you for coming.
JH: It’s a pleasure.
PA: I certainly didn’t expect it.
JH: Well, it’s been a real pleasure. Thank you very much. Thank you.
PA: Thank you, dear.
[recording paused]
JH: We’re just having further anecdotes from Pauline regarding an episode when she was serving as a WAAF.
PA: Ok. I remember when I was at Waddington and in flying control. One day one of the officers decided to go for a little flip in his Oxford aircraft and he was, he was on the runway waiting to take off and a Lancaster revved up and he completely somersaulted, much to the amusement of everyone in flying control. No harm done. He saw the funny side of it as well.
JH: That’s very good. And you were also saying about your husband. When he was serving he, he actually went in to, up to Scotland didn’t he at some point?
PA: My husband. Yes. He was up at Leuchars but he was with air sea rescue at Lowestoft during, Felixstowe rather during part of his service and that was very harrowing. Going out and rescuing the aircrews that had ditched in the sea.
JH: A lot of losses I presume.
PA: A lot of losses, yes. And he did say they picked up one survivor once and they just had to drop him straight back in the thing. He was cut in half. Terrible injuries some of them. My brother Guy he, all his crew came to his wedding and so of course we knew them quite well. But when Guy came home on, Guy came home on leave once, and when he went back he wrote a letter to his cousin and he said, ‘I’ve been lucky so far.’ And the next night he, he went on ops with another crew and that’s when he didn’t come back. But that’s the way. They, his crew they, they were lovely load of, but within next to no time they’d all gone except one because they all had to split up you see when Guy, Guy’s pilot as well he’d gone as a second pilot with another crew, and he didn’t come back, but he did escape. He wasn’t captured and he did get back to this country but he was a Canadian and they sent him back to Canada.
JH: And what were they flying?
PA: Stirlings. And George, one of Guys original crew, he finished his tour of ops and he went as a trainer and collided in mid-air and was killed. I went to his funeral.
JH: A very sad time.
PA: You know it’s [pause] and they talk about mental sickness these days. They don’t know the meaning of it. Of stress and strain. But then again of course it’s encouraged these days.
JH: Did it affect your husband do you think over the years. Do you think from his experiences —
PA: I don’t think so. He didn’t enjoy India. He was out in India for a while. He didn’t like India and India didn’t like him. He came back with ulcers. But Bob went to Africa. I could have gone to Egypt, but I can’t stand the heat so it wouldn’t have done me any good. I mean you had to volunteer to go, and my mother said, ‘Why ever didn’t you go?’ She said, ‘It would have been a wonderful experience.’ I said, ‘Yes. I know.’ Knowing me I can’t, I just couldn’t have. Guy went to Canada to train and he loved it over there and he said although it’s bitterly cold it’s a different, it’s a dry cold. Not the damp cold over here and he, if he’d have survive he’d have loved to have gone back. But at Stradishall I worked with a Canadian corporal, a girl, a female corporal from, as I say she was Canadian. She got frostbite over here. Damp cold. Completely different to Canada. Yeah. Amazing isn’t it?
[pause]
PA: There were some very happy times, there were some very sad times when I was at Waddington and Skellingthorpe in the Wing Commander Nettleton era, and the Dambusters. All that sort of thing. They were at Scampton, and from Waddington you could see the aircraft all taking off from Scampton as well. It was a wonderful sight, but —
JH: Consequences.
PA: Yes, exactly. I know I was out, my brother Bernard was home on leave once and we were going out to visit, see some friends of mine. This was before I joined up of course. The air raid warning went. You could hear the guns going and the bombs dropping and he said, ‘Hadn’t we better go home?’ I said, ‘Good heavens, no.’ I said, ‘That’s at Romford.’ And, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘And to think I do that.’ He was an observer as they were called in those days and then they became navigators you see. Bernard was an observer, his twin brother was a navigator, but the same thing.
JH: They were very brave, weren’t they?
PA: Hmmn?
JH: They were very brave and strong to keep going back.
PA: Well, to think they did that night after night. How harrowing that must have been. And what would those youngsters of today make of it? But then it’s been encouraged. You mustn’t smack them, they’re not, I know my two have had a few hidings. I’ve had a few hidings and I deserved it and so did they. Maureen when she came out at, she was still at school when I first started work, and when we got home one night she’d put the potatoes on, on full gas and she’d gone swimming. Yes, she didn’t do that again.
JH: Wow.
PA: But that’s what we did.
[pause]
PA: It was nothing for her to have a meal. She was only thirteen but it was nothing for her to have a meal ready for her dad and I when we got home from work.
JH: That’s brilliant.
PA: Oh yes. My dad was useless at sort of odd jobs. Mum did the decorating and that sort of thing and gardening. Mum did the gardening. It hurt my dad’s back, but a round of golf did it the world of good. Mum always had help though. She always had somebody come in a couple of times a week to do the heavy work as it was called, and the sheets and all the boy’s shirts and everything went to the laundry, she didn’t have to do any of that.
JH: Well, that’s you know, that’s very very interesting to hear all these experiences and how life was then and —
PA: Yeah.
JH: It’s, yeah no thank you very much for sharing with us. So it’s —
PA: Well, thank you for coming.
JH: Yeah.
PA: Well, I had such a wonderful reception when I went to Bomber Command. I just couldn’t believe it.
JH: That’s lovely.
PA: Right from the moment, I just happened to have my Veterans badge on my jacket and they said, ‘Oh, you’re a veteran.’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Oh, we’ll have to reimburse you then.’ Well, of course Maureen had paid anyway. But every, they couldn’t have looked after me any better, and you know the walk up to the plinth, don’t you?
JH: Yes.
PA: It started to rain. I was in my in a, pardon me, in a wheelchair but they came running up in the rain with a plastic cape for me to put on and another plastic cover over my legs.
JH: Good.
PA: And also they said, ‘Oh, about the canteen. ‘You have whatever you like. It’s free.’ And then the lady, she said, ‘Oh, can I have a, can I take a photo of you?’ And she took a photograph of Maureen and I in the foyer just before we left.
PA: That’s lovely.
JH: As far as I was concerned preferential treatment I’d had.
PA: I’m glad you had a good experience.
JH: It was a fantastic experience. It was the last thing I expected.
PA: Good. Well, thank you again very much for your time today.
JH: My pleasure.
PA: 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 Pauline Alexander
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Judy Hodgson
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
2019-05-24
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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AAlexanderPM190524, PAlexanderPM1901
Format
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01:09:41 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
During the war, Pauline's siblings Bernard, Guy, Robert and Peter served in the air force and army, her mother volunteered for the Red Cross, and her father volunteered as an air raid warden. Inspired by her brothers, Alexander joined Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in 1942 and completed clerical duties at RAF Waddington, RAF Skellingthorpe, and RAF Stradishall, before being demobilised in 1946. Although she did not necessarily enjoy her service, she notes that it was a life-shaping experience. Alexander also recounts the harrowing wartime experiences of her family members, including the deaths of her father and three brothers, and how her mother coped with their losses. Finally, she recalls her postwar life including working for the Marconi Company, meeting her husband, and raising their two children.
Contributor
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Tilly Foster
Julie Williams
Coverage
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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Essex
England--Lincolnshire
England--Suffolk
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
Language
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eng
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Air Raid Precautions
civil defence
coping mechanism
ground personnel
home front
military discipline
military ethos
military living conditions
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Stradishall
RAF Waddington
Red Cross
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1193/11766/AWhiteEJ161027.2.mp3
3926b8da0bcdd604b2a2db30b9c6032f
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
White, Ernest James
E J White
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Squadron Leader Ernest James White (Royal Air Force). He flew operations as an air gunner with 9, 61 and 97 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-10-27
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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White, EJ
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DK: Right. So it’s turned up. So, it’s David Kavanagh on the 27th of October 2016 interviewing Mr James White at his home. I’ll just put that there. If I keep looking over I’m just checking to make sure it’s going.
JW: It’s very neat.
DK: It is isn’t it. Ok.
JW: It’s picking us both up is it?
DK: It should be picking us both up. Yeah.
JW: That’s alright then.
DK: Just to make sure.
JW: Well I want to tell you about, I’m going bang in to the middle. We can go back to the beginning later on.
DK: Yeah. Ok.
JW: This one sets the scene for the whole lot really.
DK: Ok.
JW: Now, how far shall I go back? I’d better give you a run. First of all I was posted to 44 Squadron at Waddington first of all. I was only there four days and they, they posted me to Syerston. 61 Squadron. I was, I did about six ops with them and then they posted me to Woodhall Spa, 97 Squadron. I did a few there. Then I got crewed-up with Bob Fletcher. And then one day sitting in the crew room the squadron commander comes in, got attention, he says, ‘Right. I’ve got an announcement to make. Every one of you have been, have volunteered for Pathfinder duties. We’re going to move down to Bourn in Cambridge.’
DK: Right.
JW: That was great that was. So the thing was as a, as we were now in 8 Group different rules applied apparently. Don Bennett.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Was quite a force to be reckoned with, you know.
DK: Yeah.
JW: He did. He had a hell of a time with Sir Arthur from what I’ve read. Any rate, what happened was I’d done about sixteen operations altogether with odd crews before I was crewed-up. Then we moved down to Cambridge. Now, in Pathfinder force there is the normal tour is thirty operations. Which you know of course don’t you?
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: Well, when I got to my twenty ninth the crew, the target was Hamburg actually, coming back I said to the pilot, I said, ‘Look,’ I said, ‘This is my last trip and it’s your last trip next time.’ He said, ‘Yeah. We’re all going next time.’ I said, ‘Right, I’m going to volunteer to do another one so we all go together.’ This you’ll understand is the spirit of crew.
DK: Yeah.
JW: At that time you see. It’s madness really, you know. It really is madness.
DK: Yeah.
JW: To volunteer for an extra one. It was accepted. So I stayed on. And then they brought out this business of, in 8 Group if you’re in the Pathfinder force every operation you did counted as two. So instead of doing thirty you did, you did fifteen. Ok.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: Right. I’m on my fifteenth now. I’m taking on now. Now this, sorry that was the crews at hand over. Right. Coming back I said to Bob, I said, ‘I’m really due to finish but I’ll stay on. I’ll volunteer.’ He said, ‘You can’t.’ I said, ‘Why not?’ He said, ‘Because the gunnery leader has taken you off the crew list already.’ Before we’d even, before we took off you’re off. ‘He knew this was your last one and he’s put himself in your place. So he’s going to fly in your place.’ I was only a flight sergeant at that time and you don’t argue with a squadron leader do you?
DK: No.
JW: So off I went. Well, I did go off actually. I went home actually. I came back. The next morning I got to Cambridge station, came out the station and I saw an RAF truck there. I said, ‘That’s funny. What’s he doing there? I’ll get a lift back into camp.’ So I went there. It was our favourite driver there. I said, ‘What are you doing here?’ He said, ‘I’ve come to meet you.’ Well that’s very odd. I don’t get that privilege. That sort of privilege.
DK: No.
JW: I said, ‘Why? He said, ‘Well, I’ve got some bad news for you. The crew didn’t come back last night.’
DK: Oh God.
JW: Because the gunnery leader insisted in flying in my place.
DK: Yeah.
JW: He’s the one who got killed. Not me. Now, that’s very strange.
DK: It is.
JW: Now, I’ve gone over this over and over again. I dream about it sometimes. I fantasise on it. The thing was, you see my position was right on top of the aircraft. Mid-upper gunner there. It so happened that I was the only member of the crew that had an anti-glare panel because I got kitted out somewhere else apart from them. Now, what happened, I saw, I saw the captain afterwards, after the war when he came out of the prisoner of war camp. He survived and he told me exactly what happened. He said they got caught in the master searchlight. You’ve heard of this I expect, have you?
DK: Yeah.
JW: Light blue and, you know and they got coned. Now, he’s, he’s an extraordinary pilot that man was. Extraordinary. And he got out of it. He flew out of it. Right. Quite incredible. Now, the thing is he told me that fighter that got them came down from above because he was going down you see. He’d come down like, which is extraordinary unusual because they usually come from underneath.
DK: Yeah.
JW: We are told that. We are told at the briefing they attack from underneath. They introduced that technique. The Luftwaffe at the time. So I’m sitting there in this. Now, I’ve got the anti-glare so when the searchlight caught us, kept down. I can still see. They can’t.
DK: Yeah.
JW: They were all blinded. They couldn’t see. Couldn’t see a thing. Couldn’t see the dials on the dash board. But the pilot, as I say he was brilliant. A brilliant pilot he was and he got them out of it but when he got to the, he got out of it, the searchlights, right, but when he got to the bottom he’d lost so much height he’s got to get back up again.
DK: Yeah.
JW: So he starts climbing like this and that’s when the fighter pounced on them. Now, I’m sitting on top. Anti-glare. I can see.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Now had I been there instead of this other chap. Would I have seen that fighter?
DK: Yeah.
JW: Because we had quite a good crew. Well, an excellent crew actually and if I’d said to the pilot, ‘Dive to starboard,’ he would have gone down pfft. Down. He wouldn’t have been shot down probably. We don’t know that.
DK: No.
JW: We can’t tell that.
DK: Is it, is it something, were all the crew killed or [pause] yeah.
JW: But it does haunt you. It does. It is. I know just how close I was.
DK: Yeah.
JW: See. Having volunteered to do the bloody job he took me off. He wouldn’t, he wouldn’t accept my offer. He went on it himself.
DK: Yeah.
JW: And he got, he got immediate. He was killed instantly by the fighter. And the navigator and the other gunner, the rear gunner they were all killed.
DK: Right.
JW: The other four escaped with parachute.
DK: Oh right.
JW: And became prisoners of war.
DK: Right. So, so four survived and three were killed.
JW: And I’ve seen them. Well, I haven’t see Jack Beesley. I’ve got a picture of him there. I’ll show you in a minute. And the engineer. But I’ve been in touch with the wireless operator for a long time but when they were in the prisoner of war camp I knew his wife because I used to visit. They live at Grantham.
DK: Right.
JW: Now, I was in Scotland at the time so I was, I did as many journeys as I could down to London. Getting off at Grantham.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Go and see them. Getting on the train and carrying on you see. That was very handy.
DK: Yeah.
JW: So I kept that up for a long time. in fact, when, after the war when I was stationed in Germany at Munchen Gladbach I invited them out and they came out and spent a fortnight in Germany with me.
DK: Oh right. That’s nice.
JW: With his, with his two children.
DK: Yeah.
JW: So we had a close contact. That was our crew you see. You’ve probably heard stories like this before.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: But this was absolutely true. Hang on a minute. Just a minute.
DK: What I’ll do, I’ll just stop there. I’m —
JW: Ok.
[recording paused]
DK: Put that back up there. Ok.
JW: You’ll be interested in this.
DK: Ok. Ah.
JW: Now, after the war, as soon as the war was over the RAF sent, sent Lancasters over to Germany to bring back the released prisoners of war.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Now, that’s one of our Lancasters at 97 Squadron.
DK: Right.
JW: That, that was our bomb aimer Jack Beesley.
DK: Oh right.
JW: I don’t know who the other chaps are. I don’t remember the other chaps.
DK: Yeah.
JW: But from that picture I personally get a really strong feeling they were the men I knew.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Not the RAF today. These are the ones we knew. That, that encapsulates the spirit.
DK: Right.
JW: You’ve got there.
DK: Just for the benefit of the recording — so this is Lancaster PB422 of 97 Squadron.
JW: That’s right.
DK: And the person there is your —
JW: Jack Beesley.
DK: Jack Beesley. And he was your bomb aimer and that’s when he was returning.
JW: That’s right.
DK: As a POW.
JW: Yes. Yes.
DK: So I see there, the POWs have put various bits of graffiti on the aircraft.
JW: That’s [laughs] very typical I’m afraid. We, we were an irresponsible lot you know. Really.
DK: Did you go on any of the trips to pick up the prisoners?
JW: Sorry?
DK: Did you go on any of the trips to pick up the prisoners of war?
JW: Not me. No. I was out of Bomber Command.
DK: Oh right.
JW: I was in Training Command at the time.
DK: Ok. That’s a great photo isn’t it?
JW: Yeah. It’s a good one that.
DK: I always find photos like this where you see prisoners of war their faces always look very drawn. Very —
JW: Yeah.
DK: You can see he looks very, even there looks a bit tense.
JW: Actually I was told before they came home that he’d got religion while there.
DK: Right.
JW: It was the strain, you know. Things like that.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: But I think, I think he probably got out of it at that time.
DK: That’s alright.
JW: The relief of being released.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Released from prisoner of war camp must have been enormous mustn’t it?
DK: It must have been. Yeah.
JW: Something I never experienced of course.
DK: Yeah.
JW: But they’re the chaps, these here, they’re the typical of what the, what the crews were in in Bomber Command days. In the war you know.
DK: They look so young.
JW: Yeah. Aren’t they? Yeah.
DK: I’m assuming he’s the pilot then who’s flown him back.
JW: Yeah.
DK: He’s shaking hands. That one.
JW: Yeah. It’s amazing isn’t it?
DK: Yeah.
JW: I think that’s a very good picture.
DK: Lovely picture that.
JW: Tells us an awful lot doesn’t it?
DK: Yeah. What, what another thing I wanted to ask just stepping back a bit and that was just for interest what were you actually doing before the war?
JW: What was I doing before the war?
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: Not much. I was a wages clerk with the Co-op.
DK: Oh right. Ok.
JW: CWS Headquarters in London.
DK: Yeah. So what, what made you want you join the Air Force then?
JW: Well, it’s a long long story really. It started way back when I was, when I was a young lad. I had an uncle that lived at Mill Hill which is high ground overlooking Hendon Airfield.
DK: Yeah.
JW: And his house was on a bit there and I used to love going there because I used to see what was going on in the airfield down there. I think that’s where it started. But later on I got around to making models. I made a, I made a flying model of a Hurricane.
DK: Oh right.
JW: Out of balsa wood and things like that, you know.
DK: Yeah.
JW: And it was always with me I think. Going back. Not overwhelming or anything like that at all but an interest. And, as a matter of fact, just after I left school at fifteen [pause] a bit older than that I was working at CWS, that’s right. I was in London. I went, I went to the Air Ministry which those days was down [pause] You don’t — no, you wouldn’t know the Stoll Theatre, would you? It’s gone.
DK: No. No. No.
JW: Demolished. It’s not where it is now. It wasn’t in Whitehall. It was down this road, down there, down the end there. I forget the name of it. I think it was called High Holborn come to think of it.
DK: High Holborn. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
JW: Anyway, I went there and asked about entry into the boy scheme at Halton. Commonly known as the Halton Brats.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: And they gave me some books and papers and things to study for the entrance to them. Took them away. Got home then. Within a week or two war was declared and of course the scheme was stopped.
DK: Oh right.
JW: So I never got to it. The thing is had that not happened, if I’d gone to there and become a wireless operator what would I have been today? [laughs]
DK: Yeah.
JW: The fate plays some funny tricks doesn’t it?
DK: Yes. Yeah. So the war started then and presumably you were then called up. And then —
JW: Well, I didn’t get called up actually.
DK: Oh right. Ok.
JW: What happened was that [pause] I’m trying to think of a reason but there was no reason. I just, I was up in London. I was working in London. So I took the afternoon off and went to the Joint Recruiting Centre at Edgeware.
DK: Right. Yeah.
JW: I went down there to Edgeware. But my people at the Co-op, they were very understanding. In fact I was one of the last of the males in the office left. All been called up, you see. I went up there to join the Navy.
DK: Oh right.
JW: Because my father was in the Royal Marines you see.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: So it was the natural thing to do. Now, this house was a requisitioned house and I remember it very clearly in my mind now. It was a long, you open the front door and there was a long passage down there. I walked down the passage. On the left hand side was the Navy office. On the right hand side was the RAF. I was just stepping over the threshold of the Navy one to join the Navy and there was this petty officer in front of a group of chaps there. He was bawling his heads off at them. That’s not my scene. So I turned around quickly and went in the other one. So that’s how I came to join the Air Force.
DK: It’s sort of fate again isn’t it? If it hadn’t have been —
JW: And they took my details down, sent me home and said, ‘Well, we’ll get in touch with you,’ and they did. They sent me a railway warrant to go to Oxford and I went, the Oxford Selection Board. I was down as training for a pilot. We all trained, all go for a pilot because nobody ever gets there. But we all go for a pilot. I went there, had a selection and they basically whittled it down, got me down as a wireless operator which was roughly what I was going to do in the original. So they said right, now I’ll give you another paper and said — oh I was sworn in. So I’m now a member. This is June 1941. Sent me home. Said, ‘We’ll call you forward.’ They did. They called me forward to report at Padgate up in Lancashire on December the 24th. Christmas. Christmas Eve [laughs]
DK: Oh dear.
JW: Any rate, I’d got the railway warrant so I got on the train. It was the first time I’d been on one of these trains and, I’d never done this before. In the compartment there was a couple there with their daughter. I remember that girl. Yeah. I never, I can’t remember her name. And of course those days there was no, not much catering on the trains. You took your own with you. They had their parcels and I had my parcel and we the three of us got together there and we, you know had a nice journey up there during which the lady said, said, ‘Are you going to Padgate?’ I said, ‘Yes’ She said, ‘Well, that’s not all that far from where we live.’ What’s the name of the place? It was a double barrelled name. I’ve forgotten it now. It’s quite a big place. She says, she wrote the address down and gave it to me. I put it in my pocket. She said, ‘If you can get off at Christmas come to us and you can come and stay with us over Christmas.’ I said, ‘Oh right,’ I thought. I got to Padgate and went through all the things there. Kit. I drew my uniform the morning, the next morning and then had to go to the tailors for alterations like they do. And then the corporal came out and bawled his head off and said, ‘Any of you chaps here live within fifty miles of here, can get home without using public transport you can have a weekend pass. Put your hands up.’ Up went my hand [laughs] I’m a bugger, you know really [laughs] He said, ‘Where?’ I said, ‘Newton le Willows.’ That was it. Newton le Willows. Newton le Willows. ‘Oh yeah, that’s alright.’ He said, ‘Right, he said, ‘Well, go to the guardroom at about 4 o’clock and pick up your pass. You go to, go to the tailors. I’ve given the tailor, I shall be giving the tailor priority for your uniform to be done. So you can go and get that first. When you get the uniform put it on.’ Went to the guardroom. It was dark by this time. Got to the guardroom. Got my pass. I walked out through the gate and there was a bus stop there. I said, ah good. A bus pulled up. He said, ‘Where are you going?’ I said ‘Warrington.’ Warrington. ‘Well you’re going the wrong way. It’s that way. We’re going that way.’ Oh. They put me on the right bus. I got to Warrington. I asked the way. They got me on a bus to Newton le Willows and they said, ‘Where do you want?’ I said, ‘Well I’ve got Newton le Willows.’ There was a woman sitting in front of me. Yeah. She turned around, she said. ‘Let me have a look at that. See if I can find it. Oh I know them.’ she said. ‘I’ll put you off at the right place.’ ‘Oh thank you.’ Got off there. Went to the front door. Knocked on the door. There was a pause. There was lot of furniture being moved around and everything. I wasn’t used to this at all. They said, ‘Come around the other side,’ but they, they entered their house through the side instead of in the front door.
DK: Yeah.
JW: That’s reserved for weddings and funerals. I spent the Christmas, I spent Christmas with them.
DK: Oh right.
JW: They gave me a couple of presents. A jar of Brylcreem.
DK: Yeah.
JW: And a packet of razor blades [laughs]
DK: Wonderful.
JW: [laughs] The great shame is because so many things were happening fast.
DK: Yeah.
JW: It skipped my mind. I should have written and thanked them for the way. I should have done that.
DK: Yeah.
JW: And it’s my sorrow that I didn’t.
DK: Yeah.
JW: I should have done. It’s very sad that was but then people were used to that sort of thing in wartime. And after, I was off to Blackpool in no time at all. Doing drill on the streets. God. [laughs] That’s another, that’s nothing to do with 97 Squadron. Nothing to do with Bomber Command at all. Oh dear.
DK: So at Blackpool then was that all the square bashing going on down there?
JW: That’s right, yeah. Yeah.
DK: Is that something you enjoyed or —
JW: I didn’t mind it at all really.
DK: No.
JW: You know the Air Force fitted around my shoulders like it was made for me. I never had any doubt whatsoever at any time.
DK: Yeah.
JW: And I’ve been very lucky. Well, what is luck and what is otherwise? It’s hard to say sometimes isn’t it?
DK: It certainly is. So from Blackpool then can you remember where you went on to after that?
JW: Well, they sent me down to Bournemouth [laughs]
DK: Oh.
JW: With seven other chaps. A holding unit. Now, at Bournemouth was Number 3 PRC personnel something. Reception. Personnel Reception Committee, Centre. This was, this was formed for the Empire Training Scheme. The chaps that had gone to Canada for training. They came back, a lot of them were already commissioned when they came back. They were commissioned before they came back.
DK: Yeah.
JW: So they sent them to Bournemouth to hold there until they could allocate them to whatever squadron. Where they were going to, you see. But I was there with these other chaps and we were just airman. Erks. I had a great time there actually. Oh yeah. I started life in the Air Force as an officer’s batman would you believe? [laughs]
DK: Really.
JW: It’s a good thing. I saw it from the beginning. I got a lot, a lot of experience I got there. Oh yes I did. Any rate from there they called me up one day on parade and they said report to so and so I went to the clothing section and they kitted me out with all the flying gear but it was all recycled from chaps that had been shot down and their families had sent their uniforms up. There was all stuff there and I got all the old stuff. I had Gosport tubing, you know. Before they had microphones. And, oh dear, and they gave me an extra kit bag. So I’ve got two kit bags now. From there they sent me to London. To a centre. Viceroy Court it was called. It was across the road from the entrance to the London Zoo.
DK: Right.
JW: And the London Zoo Restaurant was requisitioned for the RAF meals there. We were there, I was there for about two, only two, two or three days there. Then I, then they sorted me out and I was off to training at Morpeth.
DK: Right.
JW: Number 4 Gunnery School at Morpeth.
DK: So, at this point it was already, it had already been decided you were training as a gunner then.
JW: Well, when I went, when I was at Padgate we had tests there.
DK: Right.
JW: I got through the written test easy. But when it came to simulation and they give you earphones and they said, ‘We’re going to send a series of Morse signals,’ beep beep and another one beep beep. ‘Now, all you’ve got to do is mark on that sheet there whether they were the same or different.’
DK: Right.
JW: I buggered that one up [laughs] ‘We can’t put you for training for wireless operator because your Morse is not good enough.’ Fair enough. ‘So you’ve got two options. You can either re-muster to an air gunner or you can go home because you’re a volunteer.’
DK: Right.
JW: I hadn’t gone all that way to go home. That was ridiculous.
DK: Yeah.
JW: So I said, ‘Right. I can be an air gunner.’ They said, ‘Righto.’ So off I go to Blackpool with all the other ground staff members to do the initial training which was quite an experience but not something you’d be interested in.
DK: No. Yeah.
JW: It’s not your, I’ll not take your time up. Eventually I went down to Bournemouth as I said and then went up to London. And then I went to Morpeth. Air Gunnery School. It so happened my uncle lived in Morpeth. That was handy [laughs] Anyway, we finished that training.
DK: So, if we just step back a bit. What was your training as a gunner? How did they train gunners?
JW: Well, we had, it was, it was a grass airfield.
DK: Right.
JW: It was a temporary thing there and the aircraft we had there nobody’s ever heard of them. They were called a Blackburn Botha.
DK: Yeah.
JW: It was a swine and in the middle of winter and they, they were started with the, what they called a Coffman cartridge. A cartridge they put in the engine to fire it.
DK: Yeah
JW: And the damn thing wouldn’t start, you know. We had a hell of a bloody time but we got through that all right. And —
DK: So were you actually on, on the aircraft.
JW: Oh yes.
DK: Firing at targets.
JW: Oh yeah. We had target practice.
DK: Right.
JW: We had a Lysander. We were towing a drogue.
DK: Right.
JW: Way back there. And they told you mustn’t touch the guns until that Lysander’s passed. You see, you aim the drogue [laughs] They counted the holes after to see what score you got. So anyway, I got through there quite well apparently. Oh yes. From there along with another, a little cockney chap called George Dillon who we chummed up quite well. He was quite a lad he was. And we, both of us, this is where the strangeness comes in. We were both posted together to 44 Squadron at Waddington but we were given a weekend off. Now, a third chap, he came into this in that he was getting married that weekend. On this weekend leave. He invited us to his wedding. He lived in South London near where George lived. So I said, ‘Oh ok. I’ll come with you.’ I went. We went there. I don’t remember too much about the party. I don’t know. I must have slept, slept in the house there with them. I don’t remember. It was a bit vague. I think, I think I was a bit punch drunk at the time. I was in uniform at the time.
DK: It must have been a good party.
JW: White flash in the. Under training. Anyway, we were both posted to Waddington. We arrived, we got the train up on Monday to Lincoln and, ‘What do we do now? Just a minute.’ So I went to see the station master. ‘Can I use your phone?’ [laughs] Cheeky bugger wasn’t I? I rang the station. ‘I said MT section?’ Oh yes. I said, ‘You’ve got two people here at the station want transport to Waddington.’ ‘Right. We’ll send a truck down for you.’ They sent this little canvas covered 500 weight truck down and we went in there. Now, we got our tapes on now. I was a sergeant now you know. And went to the officer’s err sergeant’s mess. In our innocence and ignorance we both walked in to the sergeant’s mess. It so happened that the station warrant officer whose king on the station. He’s the station commander’s right hand man. He’s a very important man. He was sitting on a chair in the entrance there as we walked in and he bawled us out straight away. ‘Out.’ ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘You don’t go in your sergeant’s mess with your hat on.’ First black [laughs] At any rate, the next morning we were going to see the squadron commander. That’s that chap who was in the daylight raid on [pause] the only daylight raid the Lancasters ever did.
DK: Yeah. Nettleton.
JW: Diesel works. What’s the name of the place?
DK: Yeah. The MAN diesel works.
JW: He got quite famous actually.
DK: Is it Nettleton, wasn’t it?
JW: Nettleton. You’re right. Absolutely. I could never remember his name. Walked into his office and he had his cronies around him there. He had just got the VC. He was as happy in the clouds of course. Walked in. He said, ‘Right,’ he said, ‘New arrivals.’ I said, ‘Yes sir. Could we have some leave please.’ [laughs] That was a thing I should have, ‘We haven’t had any leave since we finished training.’ He said, ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ I said, ‘Oh. Oh is that why we’re here.’ He didn’t like me one little bit. Two days later I was posted [laughs] along with George. George, he was with me. We went to Syerston. 61 Squadron. That was a different kettle of fish altogether. Group Captain Walker, Gus Walker, he was the station commander.
DK: Yeah.
JW: He was a splendid chap. He’s what is known as an airman’s officer.
DK: Right.
JW: He’s with the lads. And I was there for a few months. Went there in September and I left there [pause] around about, around about Christmas time to go to Woodhall Spa. But we were wheeled in front of the station commander, Gus Walker. He was a very nice chap. He got off, up from his desk. Walked over to meet us.
DK: That’s nice.
JW: You don’t get that very often.
DK: No.
JW: That’s Gus. That set the scene.
DK: Because he lost an arm later on didn’t he? He was.
JW: I’m coming to that.
DK: Oh right.
JW: I was there.
DK: Oh right. Oh Christ.
JW: Yeah. Yes.
DK: So just stepping back a bit at 44 Squadron you hadn’t flown any operations at this point.
JW: No.
DK: So you’re now at 61.
JW: Yeah.
DK: And is this where your first operations took place?
JW: And I’ll never forget it.
DK: Right. Ok.
JW: It was Munich.
DK: Right.
JW: And I was terrified. Absolutely petrified. You see, try and imagine this you see. I was, I was what was called a spare and it filled any gap in a crew when a chap dropped out for some reason or other.
DK: Oh right. So you weren’t allocated an actual crew at this point.
JW: No.
DK: No.
JW: At any rate I was in the crew room there and my name wasn’t on the list to fly so, fair enough. And this chap came to me, he said, ‘Oh, you’re a spare.’ I said, ‘That’s right.’ ‘Well come with us to do a night flying test.’ Oh I don’t mind doing that. So I got my parachute. My parachute and the harness. Went out to the aircraft. We had a little run around Lincoln and that. Lovely. I was getting out the aircraft to get my stuff, he said, ‘I shouldn’t bother taking it out. You’ll be alright for tonight.’ ‘What?’ [laughs] I didn’t know their names. They didn’t know me even. There we are. I’m a stranger sitting there all on my own. My first op. And as far as I was concerned every, every ack-ack gun in Germany was stationed at Munich and firing at me personally. It was murder.
DK: And your position then is as the mid-upper gunner.
JW: Yeah. I did have a spell in the rear turret. I didn’t like it in the rear turret.
DK: No. So as a mid-upper gunner then, just for the tape, what, what’s your actual role there? Are you sort of a spare pair of eyes? Are you there making sure that everything was safe and ok? Looking out for dangers.
JW: Yeah. Well I suppose you could say, as it happened, only because it’s happened that way all I was, was an observer. I didn’t fired a bullet. In forty five operations I never fired a bullet. I never saw a German fighter. I never saw anybody. It’s pitch dark up there you know.
DK: Yeah.
JW: You know, you know. Your only enemy was your fatigue and the thing was trying to keep awake. It was terrible trying to keep awake and I evolved a method where I would count shooting stars. You’d be surprised how many shooting stars you get.
DK: Right.
JW: I used to count them and that kept me awake. Oh dear me. We had a flask of coffee along with our pack there we picked up in the sergeant’s mess. And one night, I remember true as I sit here, it was winter. That was bloody cold. Forty degrees below zero and a bit draughty too. Although I was in a Perspex bowl like thing where the joins are the wind finds it, finds a crack.
DK: Yeah.
JW: And you get this pfft on the back of your neck. It’s not pleasant. Pretty hard. Anyway, I got this flask. We were coming back actually by tradition nobody opened that flask until we were on the way back. I don’t know why. It was one of those things. Took this out, put the cup down like that, got the cork out, picked up the cup, went to pour it out. In that short time it had frozen solid in the flask.
DK: Oh.
JW: Hard to believe isn’t it?
DK: Yeah. That’s how cold it was.
JW: By the same token we were eventually issued with a new flying suit called a [pause] I forget what it was called. It was a Kapot lining and electric wiring all through it and it had a plug on the end. And you plugged it in to a socket in the turret so you’d got electric, heating. Luxury. Oh it was wonderful.
DK: I’ve heard different things about those. Sometimes they didn’t work and sometimes you got too hot.
JW: Ah, you’re right.
DK: Couldn’t get them just right.
JW: Well, course you put that on before you went out to the aircraft.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Now this would cover the whole of your body and at the bottom, on the heel, there were two press studs and you had a slipper that was also electrically heated and it plugged in. Ok. Just the heel there. Now, when you’re walking, you know, you move. You move your heel don’t you?
DK: Yeah.
JW: I found that out afterwards of course. What had happened was by walking with it, it had disturbed the wiring.
DK: Right.
JW: I don’t mean broke it. It shorted out anyway.
DK: Yeah.
JW: And it started burning my heel. I mean, I couldn’t stand that so I had to switch it off. And when I switched it off I froze.
DK: Oh dear.
JW: It wasn’t a pleasant night [laughs]
DK: So at 97 then, can you remember how many operations you did from there?
JW: With 97?
DK: For example.
JW: Well, including the Woodhall Spa one.
DK: Although, oh have I jumped ahead. Hang on. Oh 61 sorry. How many operations did you do at 61? At Syerston.
JW: Oh about six.
DK: Six.
JW: Yeah.
DK: And you were going to mention about Gus and losing his arm.
JW: I did a few more at Woodhall Spa before I joined the crew.
DK: Right.
JW: I was in a crew room one day like you normally do. I hadn’t got a crew. I hadn’t got a job. I was just joined the mob there.
DK: Yeah.
JW: And this flying officer walked up to me. I recognised his name because his name got around. He was on his second tour. He’d already done thirty and got the DFM.
DK: Yeah. Can you remember his name just for the —
JW: Yes. The name Fletcher.
DK: Fletcher.
JW: Bob Fletcher.
DK: Bob Fletcher.
JW: Robert Fletcher. Bob Fletcher.
DK: Right.
JW: He was a brilliant pilot. He really was. He was greatly underrated by the, by the authorities. He should have, he should have made quite advanced steps. He should have done. He was brilliant.
DK: So he, that was your first crew then was it?
JW: My first crew.
DK: You were no longer an extra bod.
JW: Yeah.
DK: Right.
JW: He came over to me and said, ‘I’m forming up a crew here. Would you like, would you like to join me?’ I said, ‘Oh yes, I would.’ With a reputation like he’s got. Dead cert. Ok. But it happens you see I was, once they had to do thirty and I was already one, one ahead of them by doing these other trips you see.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: Not that that mattered at the time. And then one day the squadron commander came into the crew room and said, ‘You chaps are all volunteers for Pathfinders.’ Oh thank you. So off we went to Cambridge. There’s a story about that. But if you want that I’ll give it to you but it’s nothing to do with flying.
DK: Can I, can I just go back one bit.
JW: Yes.
DK: At, I don’t know, I made a note of this. Where were we? [pause] It was at 61. You were at Syerston weren’t you?
JW: Syerston.
DK: And you mentioned about Gus Walker. His accident.
JW: Yes.
DK: And you said you were actually there when he —
JW: Yeah.
DK: What can you just tell us about that?
JW: Oh yes. I was going to tell you about that wasn’t I? I was there at the time. That’s right. Actually I was on leave when it actually happened but I got the full story first hand.
DK: Right.
JW: What happened was — bombing up the aircraft there was a slight hitch. One of the bombs fell off on to the ground. It burst into flames because it was one of those. It was an incendiary. And the word was sent to the flying control tower saying that there were no, there are no explosives on the aircraft. They said, ‘Incendiary.’ So the fire brigade went out there and that sort of thing. And it happened that Gus Walker was up in the tower at the time. The news came through. Straight away he said, ‘They’ve made a mistake. There is explosives on the aircraft.’ He dived down and got in his staff car and tore down to the aircraft and pulling the chaps out, ‘Get out, get out, get out of the way,’ he said, ‘It’s going to go off.’ And it did go off. And that’s when he lost his arm. Now, he went to hospital of course. At Nottingham. And a number of the ground staff were also badly injured. Some were killed, some were injured. They went into another ward of course. Now, the officer’s mess got together and funded a huge basket of fruit and things like that and sent it to him. When he, when he got to the hospital he said, ‘No.’ he said, ‘Take that down to the ward to the airmen.’ He is an airman’s officer. He was.
DK: Yeah.
JW: He was a great chap.
DK: Yeah. So you’ve, you’ve then gone to Woodhall Spa. After Syerston was it Woodhall Spa did you say?
JW: Yeah.
DK: And that’s where you met Bob Fletcher.
JW: That’s right.
DK: And so how many operations did you do with Bob and the crew there?
JW: I must check. I’ll look that up.
DK: Ok.
[pause]
JW: Won’t take a minute.
DK: No worries.
[recording paused]
JW: Let’s see. Where are we? 97 Squadron. Woodhall Spa.
DK: Ok.
JW: One, two, three, four, five, six. No, that wasn’t. No. Five.
DK: Five.
JW: That, that was at Bourn. The last trip I did at Woodhall Spa was to Spezia.
DK: Right.
JW: That was ten and a quarter hours.
DK: Oh. That’s a long time.
JW: Now, I’m going to tell you a story now. Are you ready for this one?
DK: Yeah. Go on then.
JW: Well, this was a long stretch to Spezia. It’s about half way down the west coast of Italy. It was an important submarine base at that time and we were tasked to go down there at the request of the Navy. Obviously, because of the submarine menace.
DK: Can I just close the window because there’s some sound coming?
JW: Of course.
DK: Through there. It might be affecting the, the old recording a bit.
[pause]
DK: Just that there’s some sound coming through. Sorry.
JW: That’s alright.
DK: You were on your way to Italy.
JW: Yes. We got half way across the alps. In fact I remember seeing Mont Blanc in the distance. Over there. It was still, we were above it so we were alright. And doing my usual searches like what my job was, it was a clear night and I saw this stream coming out of one of the engines there. What the hell is that? So I reported it. I said, ‘This is peculiar.’ There was a pregnant pause then and the engineer, the engineer Joe, he was brilliant too. We were all brilliant. Anyway, he came through to us, ‘I’m sorry lads. I’m sorry. I’ve made a mistake.’ He was then doing his usual converting the [pause] not converting [pause] moving fuel from the outer.
DK: Changing.
JW: To the empty inner.
DK: Right.
JW: Had been used up.
DK: Right.
JW: Unfortunately he picked the wrong one and the one he was putting it in was already full. So the petrol he was pumping in to it was just going straight out the overflow. And that’s what I could see. This stream. All this stream down there.
DK: So it was petrol.
JW: We lost about two hundred gallons of fuel.
DK: Oh no.
JW: Which we could ill afford to lose on a trip to Spezia.
DK: Yeah.
JW: So it was, there was a little bit of, up in the front in what we called the office while they were working out what they’re going to do. And Bob said, Bob made the decision of course, as he should do being the pilot. Carry on. We’ll take our chances. Now, the rest of us knew that we were going to come down in the drink somewhere. We hadn’t got enough to get back home. We came back over the Bay of Biscay actually. We did our job. We bombed the bloody place. Coming back, and old Joe as an engineer he was absolutely brilliant. He was. He was good. A lot older than the rest of us. He was like a grandfather to us. Joe. I can’t think of his other name. Oh wait a minute. I’ve got it here. [pause] He’s not on here. That’s funny. That’s very strange.
DK: There’s some names on the back there. He’s not, not there is he?
JW: Ah.
DK: As the —
[pause]
JW: No. This is a different crew.
DK: Oh.
JW: I was flying with a different crew there. No. No. I thought he was bound to be on there. No. I’m afraid I don’t remember his name now. I’ve got it somewhere.
DK: Yeah.
JW: But I can’t put my finger on it at the moment. No. Sorry, I can’t help with that.
DK: No. But he was a good flight engineer then was he?
JW: Flight engineer.
DK: Yeah.
JW: But he’d be dead by now. I mean —
DK: Yeah.
JW: I’m ninety four so, and I was only a kid to him. Time has taken its toll. That’s the original logbook.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Which is a disgrace so I copied it into another one.
DK: Ah.
JW: This is cleaned up, this is. I cleaned it up. Oh that’s old Bennett.
DK: Yes. So just going back to your trip to Italy. You’ve lost two hundred gallons.
JW: Yeah.
DK: You’ve obviously made it back to the UK.
JW: We did.
DK: You did. So —
JW: Without getting our feet wet.
DK: Yeah. So that was really down to the flight engineer then. Managing.
JW: Oh absolutely.
DK: Managing the petrol.
JW: He was brilliant.
DK: Down to the last.
JW: How the hell he managed to. He must have been, he must have been feeding petrol vapour into the engines.
DK: Yeah.
JW: I don’t know. He was very good. He saved us all. But that’s our crew you see. We were like that.
DK: So, from, so you’re with 97 Squadron at Woodhall Spa and then you said you’d then gone to the Pathfinders.
JW: Yeah.
DK: And you were basically told to go there. You were just ordered there. So no, no volunteering or anything.
JW: That’s right. Yeah.
DK: And you’d gone to Bourn at that point.
JW: Well, yes. The mathematics is a bit hard to explain really but as we were getting towards the end of my time — oh yes. I forgot to mention this. One of the concessions we had in Pathfinder force was we were allowed to count each trip as two . So a full tour would be fifteen and not thirty.
DK: Right.
JW: That saved my life didn’t it? And that’s how I came to finish early.
DK: So you did forty five operations altogether.
JW: Forty five.
DK: Forty five. Yeah.
JW: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: And were you with the same pilot? Fletcher. At Bourn.
JW: Oh yes.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Bob Fletcher. Yeah I picked him up. I’ve got it in here somewhere. I picked him up actually — let’s see now. A lot of rubbish in here. Flying officer. He was a flying officer at the time. Here we are. Oh yes. I had three trips with a crew but they had just about finished. They had, they had done twenty seven. They needed three more to do.
DK: Right.
JW: They did the three and they finished. So once again I was back in the pool.
DK: Right.
JW: Lennox was his name.
DK: And that was 97 again was it?
JW: Yeah. So I picked up Bob Fletcher. The first trip with him was St Nazaire. That was the target.
DK: Have you got a date for that?
JW: On the 2nd of April 1943.
DK: Right.
JW: Yeah. We dropped, we dropped eleven one thousand pound bombs. Eleven. Oh well, that’s what it says there. Who am I to argue? Yeah. And thereafter we were in, in the thick of it with all the others. Bob, quite rightly got promoted to flight lieutenant around about [ pause] let’s have a look. God, they took a long time promoting him didn’t they? He should have got it. Well I’m blowed. I never knew it took that long.
DK: That long. Longer than you thought.
JW: He’s still flying officer.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Yeah. He’s still flying officer. Well I’m blowed. Yeah. I don’t understand this.
DK: It’s a bit later on than you thought.
JW: Unless I missed it. Ah I’ve got it. The first time he flew as a flight lieutenant was the 27th of August ’43.
DK: Right.
JW: That’s right. And the target was Nuremberg. We dropped one four thousand pound bomb, three one thousand pound bombs and five target indicator marks. Markers. A little story about that really. PFF wasn’t the original title promoted. When [pause] who was promoting it? I think Sir Arthur Harris. That’s right. Or was it? No. it was Churchill I think. Churchill promoted the idea. Sir Arthur was against it because he didn’t want to have an elite corps. He said, ‘No. They’re all good. It’s not right.’ But he did give in and they formed the new group called 8 Group. And then the controversy got worse when Donald whats-his-name.
DK: Bennet.
JW: Yeah. He was a brilliant navigator. He had it in his fingertips there. And the Air Ministry promoted him above all the other air marshalls. Made him an air vice marshall in one leap like that and it upset the apple cart quite a bit you know. He wasn’t popular by any means. They all, they all admit he was brilliant. He was very clever. But they couldn’t get along with him at all.
DK: No. No.
JW: But that’s how the story goes. A bit beyond me of course.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Yeah.
DK: As, in the Pathfinder force then what was the, just for this really, what was the sort of role of the Pathfinders as opposed to the main force? What did they —
JW: Ah yes. Yeah. Well the evolution of this was quite interesting. They, the original title was Target Finding Force. They didn’t like that. They said, ‘No. No. The others are just as good. So then they accepted they marked the route to get there.
DK: Right.
JW: Which was just as important as actually getting, I mean if you could find the place in the first place, you know. So it was named Pathfinder force. We were doing the course out. We dropped the markers along like.
DK: Right.
JW: And it was arranged by careful timing that the whole of the force doing target finding, there was our squadron and 35 squadron at Graveley and there was another squadron at Wyton who timed. Each aircraft had a specific time to be there.
DK: Right.
JW: So that he dropped his target and it burned for a few minutes but it’s going to go out. So the next one that comes along he tops it up.
DK: Yeah.
JW: So that. Very clever.
DK: Yeah.
JW: It worked.
DK: Did your aircraft then act as an initial marker? Or were you backing up or dropping the flares along the route?
JW: Well, we were all backers up really.
DK: Right.
JW: I suppose. But I mean it varied. It depended on the plans. The plans were all worked out at headquarters.
DK: Right.
JW: We were just given the orders you see.
DK: Right.
JW: We didn’t actually have to find the target. We didn’t need to look far. You could see the bloody thing there. I mean, the Mosquitoes in Pathfinder force, they were using a new secret arrangement called Oboe. Two transmitting stations sent out a beam like that. Right. Ok. And the aircraft followed it in. If they veered too much to one side they got a beep. And another one. They kept on track there. And then they gave a signal. This one here would be to keep them on track. This one here would tell him when to drop the bombs.
DK: Right.
JW: And it was extremely successful but of course they’re just flares went down. Parachute flares. Things like that. Then the rest would come along in an orderly way as far as we could make it. Just kept it going. In fact quite often when we, when we arrived there they’d been bombing for the last half hour. I mean it was well ablaze you know. There it is. But then of course the defences were alerted by that time. Oh dear it would get hot some times. Bloody Hell it did.
DK: So you never got attacked by a fighter then at any time.
JW: No.
DK: But was your aircraft hit by flak?
JW: I would have welcomed one because I was so bloody bored sitting there.
DK: Was your aircraft hit by flak at all on occasion?
JW: We got away with it.
DK: Yeah.
JW: It was bloody amazing how we got away with it but we did until that last trip when I wasn’t on it.
DK: And was that Fletcher’s crew that went?
JW: It’s, it’s an incredible story really when you think about it. When you leave here and you’re going home think about it.
DK: Yeah.
JW: I mean, the chances of that happening were so remote. I shall never forget it of course. Where are we now?
DK: Where are we now? That’s straightforward. So —
JW: Do you want some amusing stories now do you?
DK: Just one other question before we move on.
JW: Yes. Go ahead.
DK: It’s as you’ve landed and you’ve come back and the operations finished. How did you feel as you landed on the way back?
JW: How did we feel? We were bloody pleased. I’ll tell you one thing to correct. There’s a very good film. Commercial film. What’s it called? “Night Bombers,” I think it’s called.
DK: Oh yes. Yes. Yes.
JW: And at the end, at the tail end of that film the crew landed and they’re getting out of the aircraft and the voiceover said the first thing they do is to light up a cigarette.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Balls. The first thing you did was go down to the back end of the aircraft and pee up against the tail wheel. You’ve had nine hours without going to the [laughs] I don’t know if anybody’s ever told you this but there is a chemical toilet, elsan toilet.
DK: Elsan.
JW: In the aircraft.
DK: Yeah. Yeah. You never used that then?
JW: Of course not. It’s bloody silly. Can you imagine? There we are. Pitch dark. We had to have our oxygen mask on. Full clothing on.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Fumbling around trying to get — oh it’s ridiculous. They even had a separate can of fluid to top it up, there was.
DK: No.
JW: And after the war when they used the Lancasters to take the ground crew out to, on a sightseeing] to see what we’d done during the war.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Including taking the WAAFs as well. Because the WAAFs were there they put a screen around the [knocking on door] Come in. [pause] They put a screen around the toilet.
Other: Sorry to disturb you. Are you keeping an eye on the time?
DK: Oh. Alright we’ll come down. Ok.
Other: No problem. See you in a few minutes.
JW: I’ve told them to come. You’re having lunch.
DK: Yeah. Oh excellent. Oh great.
JW: I’ve forgotten what it is. Mine is pork bake. I don’t know what the bake is but I know what the pork is. I don’t know what the bake is though. And what’s the other one? I’ve taken the one anyway.
DK: Yeah. Ok. Shall, shall we pause there then?
[recording paused]
DK: I’ll tell you why. Because that was going to be my next, next question really was —
JW: Yes ok. You go ahead. Fire away.
DK: How you look back on that now and what do you miss about that period?
JW: Yeah. Well it’s, it’s very difficult to answer because it’s, there are so many aspects involved you see. I had two [pause] three, three separate careers really. First of all aircrew which was one life. Then when I finished, when they took me off aircrew I was on Training Command. That’s another life. And then eventually I was made redundant from supply because they were running down. And, being interviewed by a squadron leader I was, I don’t know if it’s got it on there but I was sent to an RAF station. We didn’t have any aircraft. What was the name? Somewhere in Leicestershire. Oh God what was the name of it?
DK: Bruntingthorpe.
JW: That’s it.
DK: Yeah.
JW: That’s where the jet engine was developed.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: That’s right. I was sent there as another holding unit and in the interview he said, ‘What skills have you got?’ I said, ‘Nothing really. I never got around to doing skills.’ So he said what is your hobbies and things?’ I said, ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’m very keen on, on the railway organisation.’ He said, ‘Are you?’ I said, ‘Yeah. I’ve got a copy of the Bradshaws timetable. The old original one.’ You know, a big one like this. The chaps knew I had this and if they had wanted to go somewhere they used to come to me and say, ‘Would you plot the route for me?’ And I used to go through it. It is a work of art going through that book. It was.
DK: Yeah.
JW: And later LNER, LMS, Great Western.
DK: Yeah.
JW: That sort of thing, you know. He said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Well look, I’ll tell you what. I’m going down to London this weekend and I’ll pop into the Air Ministry and speak to the Movements chaps there and see if they can find you a slot.’ Now, I took that with a pinch of salt. I mean how am I going to? How shall I be that lucky? So, I said, ‘All right.’ And nothing happened for about a month and then I was called forward, out again. The chap said I’d got to report to the order room. I went, ‘Alright.’ And he said, ‘You’re posted to Euston Station.’ ‘To Euston?’ ‘Yeah.’ He gave me all the documents and off I went. Got to Euston station there and I asked to speak to the chap in charge. He didn’t know anything about this posting at all. He said, ‘I don’t know anything about it, at all. Maybe it’s our admin people over the road. I did. They didn’t know anything either so they rang up the movers in the Air Ministry. They said, ‘We’ve got this guy here,’ and I heard one side of the conversation. They must have said, ‘What’s he like?’ He said, ‘Oh, he looks alright.’ Oh thank you. They said, ‘Right, tell him, tell him to go to Victoria station. Report to flight lieutenant,’ what was his name, Orange. ‘Flight Lieutenant Orange.’ Ok. I went there and he was a nice chap. He was auxiliary.
DK: Right.
JW: Not in the full RAF.
DK: Yeah.
JW: And he had a lot of experience just lately of young officers, young aircrew officers no more use for them.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Because they were running down and they went there and just sort of abused the situation. Did nothing, you know. Sort of went off and things like that. And he said and he was quite amazed when I asked him, ‘Can I do this?’ Can I do the other? I said, ‘I’d better go and see the station master, hadn’t I?’ He said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Well, it’s normal isn’t it?’ I was treating it as an RAF station. I went to see him. I wish I could remember his name. He was a typical, typical station manager. Pin striped trousers.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Bowler hat and [laughs] and we got on famously because we were chatting about things a bit, you know. At any rate a few days later I met him on the forecourt. I was wandering around. I did a lot of wandering around picking up information you know.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: He said, ‘I’m coming down. I’m going to see off the Golden Arrow,’ he said, as his job, a Prestige. Two. There were two Prestige trains in Victoria. One was the Golden Arrow. It went to Dover and then across to Paris. And the other one was the night sleeper. It went and left about 7 o’clock and the whole train was shipped across.
DK: Right.
JW: It was. So you, and it was all first class, Pullman and that.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Now both trains because they were Prestige trains he thought it was his business to go and see them off and he took me along with him. And I thought that was lovely. A very nice gesture. I enjoyed that. He said, ‘What are you doing here any rate at 7 o’clock in the evening?’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve got nothing better to do.’ He said, ok. ‘Cause I, I was living with my family. My mother’s family.
DK: Yeah.
JW: At Enfield which is about twelve miles north of London. Yeah. There was nothing for me to do. So he said, ‘That’s great,’ and we got talking about things. One thing and another. We got along famously and then one day I do my usual walking over the concourse there and there was a hell of a bloody great queue to get tickets from the ticket office there and I spotted an RAF uniform in there. He had a collar on. A white collar on. I thought I’d better have a look at this. So I went across, and I said, ‘Excuse me sir.’ And I introduced myself. I had a red armband on you know. ‘Can I help you?’ He said, ‘Well I think you can,’ he said, ‘I’m the chaplain to the senior chaplain of the RAF and he’s going on a, he wants to go on a tour of Europe to visit all the RAF stations in the occupation zone.’ The occupation days that was you see.
DK: Yeah.
JW: He said, I’ve got, I’ve, got to get, ‘I’ve got to get — he sent me to do all the bookings. Get all the tickets and that sort of thing,’ he said. I said, ‘Well you’re in the wrong bloody queue aren’t you at any rate? That’s for inland routes. Come with me.’ I took him around to the other station where the continental booking office was. I don’t know if you remember this in Victoria. They had two different booking offices.
DK: I do actually. Yes. Yes.
JW: Yeah.
DK: Yes.
JW: Well we were in the original one. Our office. RTO’s office. And they had been moved to the back of the refreshment bar there at the end of the concourse. And I took him around the back, knocked on the door and who should open the door but this ex-ATS girl who was on the staff with us there. And she got a job with the railway in the booking office. That was jolly nice. And we had a little chat and I said, ‘Look I’ve got a padre here who wants this, that and the other,’ I said, ‘Can I leave him with you?’ She said, ‘Oh leave him with me.’ So he left and I walked on. Some little while later. I think a month later or something, I think I had a call from this, his name was Dagger, Reverend Dagger.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: And he said, he wanted to thank me very much. ‘You saved my bacon,’ or whatever he was saying. He said, ‘It all went swimmingly. That girl was wonderful. She knew her onions. She knew her railways anyway.’ She fixed him up with everything. The lot. He went off with a bundle and off he went. The chief had a lovely tour around there and that was that. That was fine. A good job. A good job I had done. It had its ramifications later on. I’d met my wife in the meantime in Jersey.
DK: Yeah.
JW: At the West Park Pavilion dance place there. It so happened by sheer coincidence she, my wife had previously been in hospital with some fever. What’s it called?
DK: Scarlet fever or, scarlet fever.
JW: You’re right. Scarlet fever. And she recovered now but her aunt lived in Jersey with her husband who was a Jersey man. And she invited her, my wife, to go over to stay with them a little while to recuperate.
DK: Yeah.
JW: So they set off. Her, her younger brother Derek who was a tall chap.
DK: Yeah.
JW: And her best girlfriend across the road. Audrey. The three of them. How the hell they managed to go through all the rigmarole of travel to get to Jersey but they did it. And any rate the first night I was there I’d been over, I went over previously in February just to have a look at the place. And I was very pleased with what I saw and I thought this is a place for a holiday. Soon as I got back I had a chat to my roommate there. He was an army officer. I said, ‘We ought to go and have a holiday there you know.’ He said, ‘Right.’ So we arranged to have our leave at the same time. I took him down to Paddington. There’s another route from Paddington to Weymouth.
DK: Yeah.
JW: We went that way.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Took him there. I said, ‘Do you know, I’m going to take you to the Palais,’ because servicemen always do that. The way you meet girls was at dances, you know. And I took him along there. When we got there it was, we were a bit early and the band was just coming on with their instruments and things and there was hardly anybody there. But I noticed at the far end, up that end there were three people sitting there. Two girls and a chap. I thought, as all servicemen do, look around for what they called an available bit, you know [laughs] And I thought she’s nice. I like that. So as soon as the band got themselves together and struck up for the first dance I walked across in uniform. The full, the full regalia. And I remember clearly for the first time in my life I was full of confidence. I don’t know how it happened. I felt, it was the uniform I think. I always felt good in uniform. I strode across with all the confidence in the world. ‘May I have this dance please.’ She said, ‘Oh yes.’ Got on the floor and she was light as anything. She was a beautiful dancer. I thought, you know, I can’t, I’ve got to say something. You’ve got to have a conversation haven’t you when you’re dancing?
DK: Yeah.
JW: So I said to her the usual thing, ‘Are you a local girl?’ ‘Oh No. No. No. I’m here on a holiday.’ ‘Oh, are you? Where are you from?’ She said, ‘Nottingham.’ ‘Oh, that’s my favourite city.’ And it was.
DK: Yeah.
JW: I loved it. I was telling the truth, I loved it because I was at Syerston you remember. That was their watering hole.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Nottingham. And I said look I’ve got my mate down the bottom there and we’ve got a jug of claret cup which is what they do there. Instead of having drinks they give you a big glass jug and they mix it up. Half of it is claret and half is lemonade.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Top it up.
DK: Yeah.
JW: And they serve it up with glasses there and you just help yourself when you want it. Not a bad idea. I said, ‘We’ve got a claret cup already.’ I said, ‘Can I ask you who are those people? Who is that chap?’ ‘That’s my brother.’ Oh that was, I’ve heard that before. Anyway, I said, ‘Well come down and join us.’ She brought them down shared a nice little foursome there, you know. It was quite jolly. A nice evening. And we all disappeared and afterwards and I saw her home. St Aubin. She lived in St Aubin, that’s right. Up there. I made a date for the following day and she turned up at the weighbridge there and I didn’t, I hadn’t planned anything. It was unusual. I’m a great planner and I hadn’t. I don’t know why. Anyway I said, ‘Let’s get on a bus and have a ride,’ So we got on a bus, took her back to where she was at St Aubin. We got on another there took us down to a little bay which I’d discovered. There was a big bay called St Ouen’s. Huge thing. And the island’s prestige hotel called L’Horizon. The Horizon. L’Horizon it was called.
DK: Yeah.
JW: It was a good five star hotel. Very good. Very top class you know. Now, as that bay goes around when it gets to this side here instead of going around there it ended in another little bay called Ouaisne. And we had a bus. Went from St Aubin to this place. We went down there and sat on the sand there. Had a little cuddle. Sat reading and things like that and on the point as this little bay went around the corner there was no beach but there was a whole pile of rocks been worn smooth by the water over the years. And I loved walking over them, climbing over them, you know. So I had a little walk around, came back and said, ‘Its nice around there you know. Do you want to have a look?’ And she’s a game girl. She always was. She came with me. We were climbing over these rocks. We found a little spot there. There was one big shiny smooth slab there slightly inclined. Well that’s just the job isn’t it? So we got on there and had a cuddle on there and spent the whole afternoon there. And I took her to the back as the tide was coming in. We just got around the corner before the tide cut us off actually and got on the bus back in. And I made a date for the next day. This went on for a fortnight.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Every afternoon bar one I took her out. We were getting thicker and thicker and thicker you know. She was lovely. And very, well the only way I can explain is it was compatible if you know what I mean.
DK: Yes.
JW: I felt at home and at ease.
DK: At ease. Yeah. That’s important though anyway.
JW: Yeah.
DK: Feeling at ease.
JW: Going back to the bus at weighbridge and she sat there and I sat here and I was getting very embarrassed because she kept looking around and gazing at me all the time. I’m not used to this. Then we got talking. I asked her how old she was. She said she was sixteen. Oh my God. I’m cradle snatching.
DK: So how old were you at the time then?
JW: I was twenty five at the time.
DK: Oh ok.
JW: A bit too old for a sixteen year old. And she was messing up. She was pulling my leg. She wasn’t. She was twenty actually.
DK: Oh that’s ok then.
JW: Yeah. But it made my heart sink you know. Particularly with this gazing at me all the time. I thought oh bloody hell. I’m not used to this. Anyway, we got around that alright. Then we got settled in very nicely. Now, when it came to the end of the holiday she had to go back because she was booked to go back on the boat on the, on the Saturday. Butch and I were going back on Sunday. The day after. So I had my last afternoon with her on the Friday before. Instead of catching the bus back I said, ‘Let’s walk around the point and have a look around there.’ We walked around the point. We found another little bay, a little bay there and there was a little island there all on its own with trees and everything on it. I said, ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. This is lovely.’ I said, ‘I’ve got the urge to swim in the skinny.’ So I took my things off. I said, ‘Are you coming?’ She said, ‘No. No. I’ll stay here and read.’ I said, ‘Ok.’ So I went in and I was swimming around. Lovely. And I came out. The sun was shining and I was warming up. She was laying there and I laid down beside her. Now the rest of it is a bit personal.
DK: Say no more.
JW: Except to say that we only cuddled. Nothing else.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Absolutely.
DK: Yeah.
JW: I don’t know what got over me that times.
[recording paused]
DK: So its back on again. It’s been off. Don’t worry.
JW: Well, he successfully baled out.
DK: So if I could just recap there. So Wally Layne was the wireless operator.
JW: That’s right.
DK: And —
JW: He was a warrant officer at the time.
DK: He was a warrant officer.
JW: Yeah.
DK: And he baled out.
JW: Right. Well he survived the parachute jump alright and he started what they call evading. It was our duty to evade if you could and he spent a week. All he had was the escape kit that we were all issued with.
DK: Yeah.
JW: It had things like a tube of condensed milk, some chewing gum. Bits. And vitamin tablets. Things like that to help us. And what he could pick up on the way wasn’t very much. I think he said turnips he managed to get hold of. Anyway, after a week he was so weakened by this that he decided he’d had enough. He was a prisoner of war. He staggered out in to the street and fell in to the arms of the first person he could find who happened to be a policeman. The policeman invited him to the hospitality of a prisoner of war camp. And when he got to the prisoner of war camp he got to the gate going in, from what he was telling me, he got to the camp and the first person he saw there was our previous navigator who’d been shot down in another plane. They laughed their bloody heads off [laughs]
DK: So can I ask who survived the shooting down then? The wireless operator, Wally and the pilot?
JW: Yeah.
DK: Fletcher. And there was two others who survived the —
JW: The bomb aimer.
DK: The bomb aimer.
JW: That’s that chap.
DK: Yeah. Can you remember his name?
JW: Jack [pause] bloody hell.
DK: I think we’ve got it.
JW: I think it’s somewhere on there.
DK: I think we’ve got it on there. The bomb aimer. Because he’s the one on the photo.
JW: Yeah.
DK: And who else survived?
JW: Yeah. I can’t think.
DK: So the wireless operator, pilot.
JW: And the engineer.
DK: And the flight engineer.
JW: That was Joe. And I can’t think of his surname.
DK: Joe. Right.
JW: Joe. The older chap. He was like the father to us. We were all a lot younger than him.
DK: So the rear gunner, the mid-upper gunner.
JW: The rear gunner was killed instantly. The mid-upper gunner who was the chap who took my place, he was killed instantly.
DK: Can you remember the name of the rear gunner?
JW: And our replacement navigator. He was killed also. That just left the four of them.
DK: Right. So the rear gunner, mid upper gunner and the navigator were killed.
JW: And the navigator.
DK: Yeah. Can you remember the name of the rear gunner?
JW: Yeah. Harry Page.
DK: Harry Page. And the navigator. What’s his name? It doesn’t matter.
JW: He wasn’t with us. He wasn’t one of the original crew. He was a replacement.
DK: Right.
JW: Our proper navigator had been taken away from us and put into another crew. Took one particular operation and was shot down. So we lost him.
DK: Right.
JW: So they gave us a new navigator. I should know that name. I’ve got it somewhere.
DK: It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. And I notice you were at Kinloss in October, November ’43. Is that when the plane crashed with the cadets on board?
JW: Yeah.
DK: So, we didn’t actually record that unfortunately. You couldn’t tell the story again could you? So you’re on a Armstrong, was it a Whitley?
JW: Yeah.
DK: A Whitley.
JW: Armstrong Whitley. That’s it.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Terrible plane. Oh terrible. Used to fly like that [laughs] In point of fact it was so bloody slow and underpowered.
DK: Yeah.
JW: That as I said that runway went out to sea. If we’d got an inshore wind like this the chap up here would do this for a lark, he’d put the throttle right back. Almost stall. And he would hover like that. The wind [laughs] Oh no.
DK: So how many, how many air cadets were on board? How many air cadets were on board at the time?
JW: Oh I don’t know. It was all shrouded in memory. I can’t remember. I’m guessing. I think there was some female cadets. Did they have female cadets?
DK: Probably didn’t.
JW: There must have been. But I don’t remember. I should say about four. Four or five.
DK: And you came down in the sea there.
JW: In the sea.
DK: Yeah
JW: Yeah. Landed in the sea. Wheels up. As I say the water was only four feet deep.
DK: So the dinghy came out by itself then.
JW: The dinghy came out on its own. We grabbed the dinghy, put all the kids in and pushed it ashore [laughs] When I think about it was bloody funny you know. It wasn’t very funny at the time but there we are. Oh dear me. It’s a story that nobody believes of course. Oh dear. Although, It’s funny enough though a few years back I took my son up to Scotland as I told you. And one of the, one of the reasons was that I’d made arrangements to take him to Kinloss to see the airfield here I flew from.
DK: Right.
JW: And we got off the train at Forres . The station at Kinloss had been closed. RAF Kinloss had its own railway station on this line. This was the main line from Inverness to Aberdeen.
DK: Yeah.
JW: We used to have a little station there called Kinloss and there was a footpath we used to walk across, over the fence and we were in the airfield. It was very handy. Getting back late, you know [laughs] At any rate where was I? Oh yeah. Kinloss. I forget. I’ve lost my trend. Jack Beesley, that was the chap’s name. Beesley. Jack Beesley.
DK: And he was the —
JW: Got it?
DK: He was the —
JW: He was the bomb aimer.
DK: He was the bomb aimer and he survived.
JW: Yes.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Yeah. He did.
DK: So, after the war then, did you stay in touch with any of the four surviving crew at all?
JW: Sorry?
DK: Did you, did you stay in touch with the, with your crew after the war?
JW: No.
DK: No.
JW: Because we went our ways. We were all over the place. Joe came somewhere up near Bolton. Somewhere like that. And another one came from Birmingham. Who was that? [pause] Harry Page came from Bristol.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Wally Layne, Grantham. Bob Fletcher, he was at Burton on Trent. He was at Burton on Trent. Who have I missed?
DK: Wally, Bob.
JW: I came, I came from Enfield, Middlesex. That’s a touch, I’ve got a touch of Cockney in me you know [laughs] I spent most, a lot of my pre, nearly all my pre-RAF days working in London. At the headquarters there of the Co-op.
DK: Right.
JW: The London Headquarters.
DK: Yeah.
JW: In Leman Street.
DK: Yeah.
JW: East 1.
DK: Just, just looking at your operations here I notice you’ve got “Target award.” Is that because you were the most on target or — ?
JW: Recall is it?
DK: Target award.
JW: Oh target award. Oh yes. I’ll show you that.
DK: Oh right. Ok.
JW: Are they in this? Are they in this book or are they in that book?
DK: So you got one of those for Milan, Nuremberg.
JW: That’s quite true. Yeah.
DK: Spezia, Italy.
JW: But not with Bob Fletcher. It was other crews.
DK: Right. Because that was, they were with 97 Squadron.
JW: Yeah. Let’s see what I’ve got here. I’ve got all rubbish here, haven’t I?
DK: Oh that’s a Nuremberg one.
JW: There’s another one.
DK: Right. So —
JW: Do you want another one?
DK: So that’s the target award for Spezia on the 13th and 14th of April 1943.
JW: Yeah. Some things are repeated, of course. I don’t know. Some —
DK: This one then. That’s Fletcher. That’s with the Fletcher crew.
JW: Yeah.
DK: Yeah. So then Milan 14th to 15th of Feb 1943 — target award. And Nuremberg 25th of the 2nd 1943. So the pilot then was Lennox.
JW: Lennox, that’s it. I flew.
DK: Yeah.
JW: The three trips I did with him. His last three before he finished his thirty ops.
DK: So these target awards then were, were they they based on how close you got to the target?
JW: Photographs.
DK: Photographs.
JW: When you dropped your bombs, when they dropped the bombs though they also dropped a flare chute.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Not a chute, a flare thing, you know which is due, which is timed to detonate at a certain level. And as it detonated it lit up the target and it showed where you drop the bomb.
DK: Right.
JW: But it’s a bit hard to get that really because you’d got cloud to think of and all sorts of things to think about. So, it wasn’t, it wasn’t all that easy. We weren’t, we weren’t conscious of it of course at the time.
DK: So just for the recording here the Spezia one on the 13th and 14th of April.
JW: Yeah.
DK: The pilot’s Fletcher and you get Sergeant Mason, Flight Sergeant Robertson, Flight Sergeant that would be Wally Layne. Sergeant White, yourself. Pilot officer Bale and the Sub Lieutenant Lett. Was he Royal Navy then?
JW: [pause] Yeah. [pause] Ok. Shall I put them back in the —
DK: Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.
JW: This you might be interested in. Look at it that way.
DK: There you go.
JW: That’s a bomb. Oh you’ve twisted it around.
DK: A bomb bay.
JW: No re-gain.
DK: That way.
JW: That way. That’s it. That’s the four thousand pound bomb.
DK: Bomb.
JW: That’s right.
JW: And those are incendiaries.
JW: That’s right. A hell of a load isn’t it?
DK: Yeah.
JW: That aircraft, the Lancaster was really, really a winner you know. It was, it was a great boost for AV Roe.
DK: That was going to be my next question actually.
JW: Yeah.
DK: What did you think of the Lancaster then?
JW: Marvellous. Yes. She was a, she was, it was quite a comfortable aircraft really. Flying this is. Mind you, where we were, the rear turret was a bugger and I steered clear of that. Some bright bloody bugger up at headquarters got the idea that if you remove the Perspex in front they can see better. He has to put goggles on to make up for it so where’s the saving? All you got was cold. As you know when you push something through the air you get a backdraft.
DK: Yeah.
JW: You get it in a car isn’t it?
DK: Yeah.
JW: Well you’ve got a gale blowing in there and it’s bitter cold. It really is bitter. Your saliva which drips down from your mask, that freezes and it can block the tube.
DK: So how many times did you fly in the rear turret then?
JW: I can have a look.
DK: Yeah. Ok. But you were mostly —
JW: As little as possible I can tell you.
DK: As little as possible. So it was mostly the mid-upper turret.
JW: Well, you see, in the early days I didn’t have much clout as the saying goes. But as I got more and more experienced in things and surviving, our crew had got a reputation on the squadron of being the lucky people. We were lucky. No doubt about that. They couldn’t understand how we escaped so much. We did. And I’ll tell you Bob, he didn’t cut corners. I’ll swear to any bible you like we went to the target and he went to the bloody target and he dropped his bombs on the target. That’s how we got the target awards. And he came back. Now, he was a good chap. Now, you want to know, what am I looking at?
DK: How many times you flew in the rear turret.
JW: Oh yeah [pause, pages turning] It’s here somewhere. Ah yes. There’s [pause] well that was a training flight. 8th of October of ’42. Now then. Mid-upper. Mid-upper. Mid-upper. Here we are. Conversion course at somewhere or other. I was rear gunner all of those. That’s right. We didn’t have a mid-upper there. That was, we were doing a conversion. The stupidity, the apparent stupidity, let’s put it that way, of what goes on in wartime among the passing things down. You know. Well, there we were at Syerston flying with a crew and suddenly we were sent to Swinderby, just up the road for a conversion course to four engine, four engine aircraft. What the hell did they think we were flying in any case? I mean it’s so ruddy stupid it’s hard to believe. There we are. I’ve got it here.
DK: So at the OTU and Heavy Conversion Unit was that all Lancasters?
JW: Yeah. Somebody had got their wires crossed I expect.
DK: Yeah. Was it? Was it Lancasters at the OTU and the Heavy Conversion Unit?
JW: Yeah. Here we are. I did some. Sergeant Goodwin, as a rear gunner and also, that’s right — one, two I did a lot of training flights. Only one operation.
DK: Oh right. So only one operation in the rear turret.
JW: There’s some more there.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Another one there. Mine laying. A lot, a lot of exercises went on. Kept us busy didn’t it? Rear gunner. All these are rear gunner. Oh yes. Here we are. Gardening. They called it gardening. Sowing the mines, you know.
DK: The mines.
JW: Essen. Berlin. Dusseldorf. Two at Dusseldorf.
DK: And that was in the rear turret.
JW: Yeah. These are all rear gunner. I did more than I thought.
DK: Ah.
JW: Hamburg.
DK: For the recording that’s, you were at the Baltic mining on the 14th of December ’42 and the 9th of January ’43. And then Essen the 11th of January ’43.
JW: Yeah.
DK: Berlin 16th of January. Dusseldorf 23rd of January.
JW: The 14th of, the 14th of February.
DK: Yeah.
JW: ’43. I joined 97 Squadron.
DK: Yeah. So Dusseldorf again 27th of January.
JW: Yeah.
DK: And Hamburg 30th of January.
JW: That’s right.
DK: 1943. And —
JW: They were all rear gunners they were.
DK: They were all rear gunner. Right.
JW: I didn’t know, I didn’t know I managed all that. Good gracious.
DK: So that’s at least one, two, three, four, five, six times. You were rear gunner more often than you thought.
JW: There’s still some rear gunners here. Lennox. It’s got to come to an end soon. Ah [pause] ah my first flight with Bob Fletcher. I even put his decoration in. DFM.
DK: And what date was that?
JW: That was the 30th of March ‘43
DK: Right. So that was a training flight was it?
JW: That’s my, that’s my first flight with him. That was the mid-upper gun. I exercised my seniority. I’m going in the top turret thank you. And old Harry Page was stuck with the other one. He didn’t mind. He’s a tough old bird he was old. Old Harry was. No. That’s all, that’s all it was. No more.
DK: So all your operations then up to the 30th of March were in the rear turret.
JW: I didn’t like it one little bit.
DK: And just here 24th of July 1943 was Hamburg and the first use of Window. Was that the dropping out of the, the reflective flares? The reflective paper then? Window.
[pause]
JW: Window. Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
JW: That’s the strips of metal.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: But that, right I’ll tell you now a little story. Not a story but the fact. There was one anti-fighter device which didn’t get its proper recognition. It was a thing called Tinsel. All this was, it was a, it was the cheapest piece of equipment you could ever bother to think and it was the most effective. And it was ignored. That’s higher up. All this was was a microphone that was attached to one of the inner engines and the wire, and the cable went through the wing into the cockpit and down to the wireless operator’s position. And it coupled to his Morse code.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Now, on briefing all the wireless operators were given a wave band to listen out on. Right. And that’s all the squadrons all doing it. And what you had to do, what they had to do was to listen out, when they weren’t doing something else, listen out. As soon as they heard a German voice — on the key.
DK: Yeah.
JW: It transmitted this awful noise from the engine. There were a few sore ears down there I wonder. But it never got recognised as an effective. It probably sounded a bit too simple probably. All it was was a microphone, a bit of adhesive tape and wire.
DK: And wire. Yeah.
JW: A shame you know because, because the wireless operators got used to it and they started using it for their own purposes and they would tap messages to each other because you can’t broadcast when you’re flying.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Because they can pick you up. But if you’re transmitting this bloody noise the people, they can’t hear you, you see.
DK: Yeah.
JW: And come in, ‘I’ve heard from Joe and,’ so and so and so. ‘Oh really.’ [laughs] [pause] We saw Nettleton go down.
DK: Really.
JW: We didn’t know at the time it was him. We were coming back from one of the Italian jobs. Milan or Turin and he came back over the Bay of Biscay. That way to avoid coming over France. Daylight by now because it’s a long trip. Broad daylight and I was flying there and occasionally, it was very interesting flying along on your own. You think, on your own. And suddenly another one there, another one there, another one there they were popping up and people in the same stream going down. You know. Very interesting. And I was looking down there and I saw this one down a bit low there and flying like that and suddenly his nose dipped down like that. He went straight in the water. I noted the time. And when I reported this back at interrogation afterwards I found out it was Nettleton. So nobody knows why he went down.
DK: Yeah. Is it, is it possible to check your logbooks? I just —
JW: Sorry?
DK: The aircraft P Peter. Does it have the serial number in your logbook by any chance?
[pause]
DK: 1943.
[pause]
JW: I’ve got a lot of rubbish in here.
DK: Did you, did you make a note of the serial numbers?
JW: Yes.
DK: I’m just. P Peter.
JW: Here we are. JA 708.
DK: Ok. And that was operation to Hanover on the —
JW: Hanover. Yeah.
DK: 22nd of September.
JW: That’s right.
DK: 1943.
JW: Yeah. My last trip that was.
DK: And then the following night. Hanover again when the aircraft was lost.
JW: The following. Ah. Now then, another little story coming up. Now here we go. They flew off without me. A bloke in my place. And the target was Mannheim.
DK: Oh Mannheim. Ok.
JW: It was. But they never found it. They never hit it. Now I had a letter many many years later from the editor of the local newspaper of a small town which lies in between Mannheim and Ludwigshafen.
DK: Right.
JW: They’re both inland ports.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: About in the middle. And I can’t remember the name of it. He wrote to me. He said he’d heard of my survival and he’d like a little more information because he said for the anniversary of that particular night they were going to put some show on or something.
DK: Ok.
JW: And he wanted to get all the information I think he could out of it. There wasn’t much I could tell him because I wasn’t there. He appreciated that. But he did send me a diagram of the town centre which was completely obliterated. They got the lot down there. It was the wrong target. Great shame wasn’t it?
DK: Yeah.
JW: These things happen don’t they, in wartime doesn’t it?
DK: So which town was this then that —
JW: Well I don’t know. I can’t remember the name of it.
DK: Right. Ok.
JW: It begins with the letter K I remember.
DK: So the target was Mannheim but they —
JW: They should have bombed Mannheim but the Pathfinders had made a mistake. They targeted this little town instead.
DK: Yeah.
JW: And this little town got the lot. Seven hundred Lancasters dropping bombs on them.
DK: And that was the 23rd of September 1943.
JW: Completely obliterated the whole town centre he tells me.
DK: And that was, just for the recording here the 23rd of September 1943. Yeah.
JW: Is it, he had a title. He was a professor of something or other.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Editor of the local newspaper.
DK: Yeah. Ok. Ok well let’s stop the recording there. I’m sure you are.
[recording paused]
DK: So it’s recording now so —
JW: Ok.
DK: Consider what you’re saying. So 97 Squadron then. What do you —
JW: Right. Woodhall Spa.
DK: Yeah. Ok.
JW: Right. Well it so happens that our parent station was Coningsby. [But you didn’t really notice that?] And they were so close that the drem circuit, which is a ring of lights around the airfield.
DK: Yeah.
JW: And they crossed there. Think of this. They’re going that way around like that and down like that. This one’s going the same way like that. But when they get there they’re in opposite directions. We thought that’s a bit hairy. Fortunately there was no flying at Coningsby. They were busy putting a hard —
DK: Runway.
JW: Runways down. Putting hard runways down. But we were so close to Coningsby really. All our, all our admin work was done at Coningsby. Now, I went back to Coningsby twice. The first time was we’d all subscribed. In the Association not the Squadron Association, we subscribed to a stained glass window to commemorate the squadron. And that was being placed in the chapel on the station. The RAF station there. A proper do on a Sunday morning there. Even got one bloke there playing the bugle. He couldn’t play it to save his soul [laughs] but never mind. It was a gesture. We got that done. I guess, I got another, another instance where I broke my thoughts about the future. A lot of the chaps there with me were wearing the DFM. Which means they were airmen. Not officers. That’s just, just a little aside. At the general meetings each year the first time I went I shared a table with a couple there. Two couples in fact. A big table. Yeah. They were original people from the squadron in wartime days and come to think of it they weren’t particularly happy about being there. They thought, I got the impression they thought it was a waste of time but I didn’t say anything at the time naturally. But it added to my thoughts about the whole thing you know. And when I was first approached by Ann Savage who was this WAAF, ex-WAAF who was acting as secretary she, I don’t know how she found me but she got me and talked me into joining. Before joining I rang my pilot Bob Fletcher at home and I asked him for his, his opinion. He said, ‘Don’t touch them with a barge pole.’ He wouldn’t have it. No. Out. Oh dear. But pressure was put on me to join and I thought well I do owe something. I mean you must know by now how lucky I’ve been. I do know something. So I, I gave in and I went along to that. The next AGM and reunion. The other reunion there’s a misname. It wasn’t a reunion at all. It was an AGM really. There was so few people there who were actually on the squadron during the wartime days. Now, that’s what I call a reunion. Me meeting old friends there.
DK: Yeah.
JW: I knew nobody. And nobody knew me. These two couples at the table there they weren’t particularly happy about it all. The next year I went again. I didn’t see them again. They never turned up again. I noticed a few others that I remembered were there. They didn’t come again. The third time I went nobody came there who was on the squadron during the wartime days. Completely out. And going back to that business I said about, about the youngsters there this particular organisation now is devolved into just a club for the young people. And I try to influence them a bit. The chairman was a retired wing commander. Bomb aimer. Ken Cook. And he and the secretary were together like that and they had some sort of interest in the hotel. The Admiral Rodney. Admiral Rodney in the middle of Lincoln? Oh well [laughs] And Hornchurch is, it’s a sink town. It’s dreadful. They’ve got a little stream that runs through the town there. It’s only a little stream but you get all the rubbish in there. Bedsteads and trollies and all sorts of things. It’s a dreadful place. It had a Woolworth’s there.
DK: Yeah.
JW: And it hadn’t been changed since the wartime days. It had ordinary floorboards. No lino or carpet. Oh God. Oh no. No. I said, I thought came into my mind this is not going to attract anybody.
DK: Yeah.
JW: You’d have one say never again and I tried to steer them away. I thought Lincoln would be the ideal place.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Lincoln was the centre of Lancaster country you know. We all know that. Everybody. It’s always written up on it and they wouldn’t listen because this hotel. They got hat and glove with the proprietor of the hotel I think. They took over the hotel and allocated the bedrooms and things like that. No. That’s not the future at all. Any rate, the wing commander, he wrote to the other members of the committee misinterpreting exactly, misinterpreting entirely what I had wrote to him. He said I was trying to tell them to buy a sack of Kevin’s books and dish them out as rewards or something like that.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Not at all. That wasn’t it at all. I was talking about the location of the place. So I bowed out. I said it’s not worth it. It’s not worth worrying about. Except for Kevin. He stayed on. He became the secretary. Acting secretary shall I say. I don’t get much from him these days. He’s very busy. Like all of us when you retire you start getting busy.
DK: Yeah.
JW: But there you are he keeps on saying I’ll come and see but it’s a long way to come from Peterborough just to take you out to lunch isn’t it?
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: And I haven’t got a house now to offer hospitality. He stayed with us before when I had a house at East [unclear] but that’s gone now.
DK: When you were based at Woodhall Spa did you use the Petwood Hotel?
JW: Yeah.
DK: At all. Was that, was that somewhere you used to go to then as the mess?
JW: Well the last time we went I took my wife with me. A bit of luck once again. Just my lucky streak. And somebody from the hotel staff, somebody in authority, they said, ‘Oh we’ll change your room for you.’ We had some sort of little room. They gave us a lovely room. Private bathroom. The lot. It was well done you know.
DK: Yeah.
JW: And it so happened that after the meeting and all the fun and games and things like that, people drifting away that more or less left Kevin and his lady and me and my wife and one or two others there drifting away. And we were taken, my wife and I were taken with Kevin up to this room and people were going back to their room, passing. Raising an eyebrow. They knew this was a good room. We got the plum. So that’s it. That’s it. Time to quit. Any rate I wished them the best but when you come to think of it though when they first asked me to join that’s over twenty years after the war. It’s a bit late to start a reunion isn’t it? Twenty years after the event isn’t it?
JW: It is. It is a little bit.
And then Bob saying don’t touch them with a bargepole. I don’t know why. I don’t know what his objection was but he wouldn’t have anything to do with it. Yeah. It was a bit downmarket I must admit.
What? The Petwood?
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 Ernest James White
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
2016-10-27
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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AWhiteEJ161027
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:42:38 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
James White worked as a wages clerk for the Co-op before volunteering for the Air Force. He had intended to join the navy but he saw some recruits being shouted at so he turned around and crossed the corridor to join the RAF. He had always had an interesting in flying because his uncle lived near Hendon Airfield and he had enjoyed watching the aircraft as well as making models. When he had completed his final operation as a gunner with 97 Squadron his crew still had one to do and so he volunteered to join them. The gunnery leader refused his offer and he went on the operation himself. The crew failed to return from that operation and the surviving members became prisoners of war.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
France--Saint-Nazaire
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Nuremberg
Italy--La Spezia
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1943
44 Squadron
61 Squadron
8 Group
97 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
Botha
Cook’s tour
Lancaster
Lysander
memorial
military service conditions
Oboe
Pathfinders
RAF Bourn
RAF Graveley
RAF Morpeth
RAF Syerston
RAF Waddington
RAF Woodbridge
RAF Woodhall Spa
sanitation
searchlight
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1191/11764/AWeirA180328.2.mp3
430469e505edba02b7e7aae9c4e28636
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
Weir, Archie
Archibald Weir
A Weir
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with archibald 'Archie' Weir (1922 - 2018, 1562624 Royal Air Force). He flew operations with 61 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
2018-03-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Weir, A
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HB: This is an interview between Harry Bartlett from International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive and Mr Archibald Weir [buzzzzzzzzzz] Linton, Derbyshire. Archie’s service number —
AW: 156 —
HB: Is 1 —
AW: 1562624.
HB: 1562624. After seventy five years that’s not a bad memory. And Archie served with 61 Squadron at some, at one point during his service.
AW: That’s right.
HB: Before we get in to the war Archie where were you born?
AW: Glenbuck in Ayrshire.
HB: Sorry?
AW: Glenbuck in Ayrshire.
HB: In Ayrshire. Oh right. Right.
Other: Glenbuck.
HB: Glenbuck. Yeah. Right. And did you go to school up there?
AW: Hmmn?
HB: Did you go to school up there before the war?
AW: Yeah.
HB: Yeah. And how old were you when, when the war was going to start?
AW: Seventeen, I think.
HB: About seventeen.
AW: Yeah.
HB: And did you, did you join up straightaway?
AW: Yeah.
HB: So, so what when did you, when did you go to the RAF to join up? Can you remember? It doesn’t matter if you can’t. it’s —
AW: No.
HB: That’s not, that’s not really important.
Other: Yeah. He did. He did sign up at the beginning.
HB: So, so whereabouts did you go to join the RAF, Archie?
[pause]
HB: Was that, was that in Scotland somewhere?
AW: Yes.
HB: Yeah. So, so you joined up in Scotland.
AW: Yeah.
HB: And they obviously sent you somewhere. Where did you go to get trained?
[pause]
AW: For a, for a while I was trained in Ayrshire.
HB: You trained, trained in Ayrshire originally.
AW: Yeah.
HB: Yeah. And then did you, did you go abroad?
AW: Yes.
HB: Whereabouts did you go abroad for training? I bet it was hot.
AW: Yes.
HB: Somewhere in South Africa?
[pause]
HB: So, when you first went to South Africa did you go to train? What did you actually go to train as?
AW: A bomb aimer.
HB: A bomb aimer. Right. You, you didn’t start off as a pilot.
AW: No.
HB: No. You started. You went as a bomb aimer. Right. Because I’ve got your, you very kindly got out your South African, “Air Force Observer’s and Air Gunner’s Log Book.” And of course, the observers were the bomb aimers, weren’t they? Yeah, and we’ve got here 1943. November 1943.
AW: Yeah.
HB: And we’ve got you going on air experience. So, can you remember what kind of aircraft you were in there, Archie?
[pause]
HB: I’ve got a note right at the front here that says you did some practice in Oxfords and Ansons. So, so you obviously had a bit of a fly in them.
AW: Yeah.
HB: What, what, can you remember what it was like?
AW: The Air Force. The Air Force.
HB: Sorry, Archie. I didn’t quite catch that.
AW: It was the Air Force.
HB: Yeah. What was it like flying for the first time in, in these aircraft?
AW: It was in the, basically in the Command.
HB: Yeah. In Bomber Command.
AW: Yeah.
HB: Yeah. But did, I mean did you enjoy the flying?
AW: Oh aye.
HB: Yes. Very good. And can you remember how long you were in South Africa training?
AW: Say that again. Sorry.
HB: Can you remember how long you were in South Africa training?
[pause]
AW: I think it was about six months.
HB: Right. About, about six months. I’ve got you in your book. I’ve got you transferring in March 1945 to LFS Syerston. Was that, was that flying? Actually flying the aircraft at the local LFS. Flying School at RAF Syerston. Because I’ve got you down here you’re in Lancaster.
AW: Yeah.
HB: With a Flying Officer Anderson. Do you remember him at all?
[pause]
HB: I’ve got, I’ve got you going out on the 10th of March 1945 doing your familiarisation exercises. Can you remember what they were like?
AW: Circuits and landings really.
HB: Circuits and landings. Right. And then it sounds a little bit hairy this one. On March the 11th three engine flying and corkscrew. What was, what was that about Archie?
AW: [pause] I think it was part of the procedure as far as corkscrew was concerned.
HB: Right. So if, so were you flying the plane to do the corkscrew or was that the pilot?
AW: I think it was a bit of each, I think.
HB: A bit of each. Yeah. I think everybody did a bit of each didn’t they? Now, we’ve got you doing your exercises here. And then we’ve got you going to 61 Squadron at Skellingthorpe.
AW: Yeah.
HB: Skellingthrope. Skellingthorpe.
AW: Skellingthorpe.
HB: And that’s the 16th of March 1945 and we’ve got some of your operations in here. So, we’ve got you with —
AW: [Cromberg]
HB: [Cromberg.] Yeah. That’s it. Spot on. The pilot. And you are the observer. The bomb aimer. So we’ve got you doing your fighter affiliation and your cross country exercises and then we’ve got the 22nd of March 1945 with [Cromberg]
AW: Yeah.
HB: And you went to Bremen. That was your first operation. Can you remember what your first operation was like?
[pause]
HB: I’ve got, because I haven’t got anything here. You were flying for four hours and fifty minutes. Does that help? No. And that was a day time operation. And you’ve got a note in your book here, Archie. Thousand pound AMC. Can you remember what AMC was for? [pause] Would that be something to do with the bomb? The actual bomb or the bomb load because you’ve got fourteen. Fourteen thousand pound AMC. So, I don’t know what AMC is. No? It don’t matter. And then we’ve got you going to the 23rd blimey, so, you did a day operation on the 22nd of March to Bremen and then on the 23rd you did a night operation to Wessel. Yeah. Can you remember anything about them? No. Because you did, I mean you did four operations in five days, Archie. That was a lot.
Other: If you can remember anything dad if you tell him.
HB: Yeah.
Other: It would be good.
HB: Yeah.
Other: If there’s anything you can remember please tell him. It would be really, it’s really important.
HB: Yeah.
Other: People want to know what you’re saying.
HB: Yeah. You don’t —
Other: It won’t —
HB: There’s us talking. It, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what you say it’s your, it’s what you want to say about it about your time.
Other: But it would be really important. It’s really good for people to understand dad.
HB: Yeah.
Other: Your, your time in a plane. How it felt. How it was for you in your plane and what you saw and how it was for you. It’s time to tell everybody. You’ve not told anyone in seventy five years anything. It’s time to tell. Please. Tell us what’s going on. Tell us how it was so people can understand how it was for you as a young man in that plane. Tell us how it was.
HB: Yeah. We weren’t there Archie. We don’t know what it was like. It must have been frightening and you must have seen some pretty nasty things.
AW: Oh aye.
HB: Did you, did you have the same crew all the way through?
AW: Yeah.
HB: Yeah. And what, what was it like mixing with the crew?
AW: No problem.
HB: Yeah. How did you all get together Archie in the first place? As a crew.
AW: It was at [pause] oh, we were in to, what was it called?
HB: Into a —
AW: In to a school. A flying school.
HB: In the flying school. Yeah. And did you all sort of mix around until you found each other?
AW: More or less. Yeah.
HB: Yeah. Who, who [pause] Did you pal up with someone or did someone come and get you?
AW: We were all put together and there we were formed in to a squad.
HB: Right. Yeah. So you, so you became a crew at the flying school.
AW: Yeah.
HB: Yeah. And you stuck with that crew all the way through then.
AW: Yeah.
HB: Because some, some crews towards the end of the war, some crews got broken up because some went off because some had done more operations than the others but others, I mean sometimes they were wounded or killed. You know. Were, were, was your crew one of the lucky crews and you saw it right through to the end?
AW: Yeah.
HB: Yeah. Can you remember who your crew were? What their names were?
AW: Jack [Cromberg] was the pilot.
[pause]
HB: The pilot. Yeah. Can you remember your navigator?
AW: Hmmn?
HB: Can you remember your navigator?
[pause]
Other: I’ve got the, I’ve got that photo handy. It’s alright. I’ll get it. I’ve got it on my —
HB: I’ll Perhaps just have a look at this photo with you Archie and we’ll see. See who you can remember. I’m bound to knock that tea off. I’m bound to. I’ll put it there. It always happens. Right. Here we’ve got your photo Archie and we’ve got you. That’s you. Yeah?
AW: Yeah.
HB: That’s, so we know that you’re the third from the right. So, which one was Jack?
AW: Jack Cromberg.
HB: Yeah. We’ll go along the line. You just tell me when you, when I get to him.
[pause]
HB: No. Do you think Jack, do you think Jack might be the one with the officer’s cap on?
AW: Yes.
HB: In the middle there next to you.
AW: Yeah. Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
Other: Do you want your glasses on, dad?
HB: Do you want your glasses? Would that be easier?
Other: They’re just behind you on that. On that, on that —
HB: Got it.
Other: That’s it, mate.
HB: Here we go. Is that going to be easier?
Other: I’ll get the picture a bit bigger.
HB: How’s that?
AW: Yeah.
HB: Is that better? Oh, I can see you now [laughs] There you go. We think that’s Jack.
AW: Yeah.
HB: And that’s you. So, Jack’s fourth from the right and you’re third from the right. See, they’re all very helpful. They’ve all got their Mae West on.
AW: Yeah.
HB: So it covers up the badge on their Jacket so we don’t know who’s who. Do you recognise any of them?
[pause]
HB: It doesn’t matter if you don’t. it’s not, it’s not vital.
AW: Wasn’t that [unclear]
HB: And who?
AW: Hmmn?
HB: Who was the other one you said?
AW: Me.
HB: That’s you.
AW: Yeah.
HB: That’s Jack.
AW: Yeah.
HB: Any of the others? [pause] We’ll perhaps leave that for a minute and then we’ll just, we’ll just come back to that. Yeah. Because it looks even though it’s 1945 out of your log book it looks like you’re virtually flying, you know every other day really.
AW: Yeah.
HB: Who have we got signing this? [pause] We’ve got somebody called Fadden. Fadden. Was he the CO from 61 Squadron?
Other: Yeah?
HB: Squadron leader.
AW: Yeah.
HB: Aye. And we’ve got you going on, got you going on another day time raid to Farge. Farge. That was in the daytime.
Other: If you want to go back to that picture I’ve got one you can see.
HB: You can just scroll it along. Yeah. How’s that? Is that better? Is that clearer? Right. So, if we find. We think that’s Jack [Cromberg] Yeah.
AW: Yes.
HB: Oh, hang on. That’s you.
AW: Yes.
HB: Laughing. So, we’ve got these two lads on the end. On the right hand side. So, can you remember what, who they were?
AW: Were they gunners?
HB: Sorry?
AW: Were they, were they the gunners?
HB: That’s what I say. Really helpful. They’ve got their Mae Wests on so we can’t see what their, what their badge says. He’s a sergeant. And he’s definitely a flight sergeant. So, I don’t know. They could have been gunners. If we go the other way we’ve got these three lads. Can you see them? What’s he got on his arm? He’s, he’s got a sergeant’s chevrons on but I can’t see their [pause] No. I can’t see their arms. He might actually be an officer because he’s got nothing on his arms. But again helpful. You’ve all got your hands in your pockets [laughs] So, let’s have a look at him. We’ve got any ideas about him?
[pause]
HB: What about them two? No? [pause] It doesn’t matter Archie. It’s not, it’s not vital. It’s not. That’s not vital. Right. What have we got here? We’ve got one here. [Komotau?] [Komotau?] You flew to [Komotau?]. That’s, that’s a long one. That’s eight hours. That was a night one and you got diverted to Stoney Cross. Can you remember that one? That flight.
AW: We got diverted.
HB: You got diverted. Yeah. What would that be for do you think? Might it be weather?
AW: Maybe.
HB: Right. So, we come to the end of April and Fadden’s signed it again. And then we’ve got May 1945 you’re mainly doing training but then you’ve got an interesting one here. On the 30th of May with Jack [Cromberg]. You’re doing a Cook’s Tour. Heligoland, Bremerhaven, Bremen, Hanover, Mittelland Canal, Munster and Wessel. What was a Cook’s Tour, Archie?
AW: When we, a Cook’s Tour was basically [pause] it was when you were letting them know what you were up to.
HB: So you, what? Did you have other people in the aircraft as well? What sort of people did you have in the aircraft?
AW: All your crew.
HB: The aircrew. Any guests? [pause] You didn’t sneak a couple of WAAFs on there did you?
AW: No.
HB: Did you have any of the ground crew? Any of your ground crew go with you?
AW: No.
HB: On the Cook’s Tour.
AW: No.
HB: No.
AW: No.
Other: You can tell us. You’re not, you won’t be in trouble. You won’t get in trouble now.
HB: I’m just going to pause this for a second.
[pause]
HB: Right. We’ve just turned the tape recorder back on just while I finish my tea without spilling it. Now, we’ve got one here that’s a bit intriguing. I’ve never seen this in anybody’s log before, Archie and this is July the 3rd 1945 and it’s got Lancaster T-Tango or T-Tommy. Your pilot is Flight Lieutenant Shand and you’ve got written next to it, “post mortem.” Can you think what that would be about?
[pause]
HB: No? Were you doing some training then? In July 1945 were you doing a bit of training?
[pause]
HB: Right. I think what we’ll do Archie we’ll just pause, just pause this for a minute.
[recording paused]
If I keep talking to you. Right. I’ve just started the tape up again while we’ve just been having a look through the logbook. So, you were in Wellingtons flying out of 26 OTU on Course Number 54 and towards the end of that you’re flying in Wellingtons and that’s where you seem to have teamed up with Jack [Cromberg].
AW: Yeah.
HB: Yeah. What, can you remember the first flight you did with Jack?
[pause]
HB: Because it looks to me, it looks to me like you got together with Jack quite early on at Wing.
AW: Yeah.
HB: At the at the OTU. Yes. It’s, and that’s pretty well all in Wellingtons with the OTU. Right. A flight and C flight. And then, ah you went, you went to Langar.
AW: Yeah.
HB: Do you remember being at Langar? What was that?
AW: That was conversion.
HB: Conversion.
AW: Yeah.
HB: So that’s the Heavy Conversion. Right. There’s [pause] Jack’s disappeared for a minute there and then you’ve got the first few flights in a Halifax. Halifax 2, Mark 2 and that’s with somebody called Thackeray. Flying Officer Thackeray. That’s right at the end of ’44. December ’44. Does that ring any bells with him? Was he, he must have been instantly forgettable [laughs] And then you do a lot, a lot of that training there with Jack [Cromberg]
AW: Yeah.
HB: And that takes you all the way through January 1945 and you’re still in Halifaxes. Ah right. Yeah. So you go, you go February the 1st you’re in Halifaxes still at Wing. At Langar, sorry. At Langar. And then you go to Number 5, LFS at Syerston and that’s in March 1945. So I would think you went on leave for a bit, didn’t you?
AW: [I wouldn’t know]
HB: No [laughs] Some of those leaves were worth forgetting weren’t they? It no good you smiling. I know. I know. Right. Yeah. And you, and you’re with Jack at Syerston. You’re then posted out March 16th to Skellingthorpe at, at 61 Squadron. Yeah. Yeah. That’s quite a, quite a lot of activity that in a short space of time, Archie. Did you, did you have much of a social life when you were in there at Skellingthorpe?
[pause]
HB: Did they have dances on the station or did you have to go off the station to go to a dance?
AW: Off the station.
HB: Yeah. And where was your favourite place to go?
[pause]
HB: Did you, did you sort of go into Lincoln a bit or did you stay? Did you stay local?
AW: We stayed local.
HB: You stayed. Yeah. Yeah. Just stayed local to the field. Yeah. Yeah. When, when you were coming towards the end of the war when the actual operations had finished where, where did you go towards the end? Did you go to demob or did you go to training?
AW: [unclear] I think we had, when I finished the tour.
HB: Yeah. When you finished your tour. Yeah. Yeah. Because you stopped flying operations. Sorry. You flew your last operation on the 18th of April 1945 to Komotau. Komotau. Komotau, I think it is. Which was a long one. Eight hours thirty five minutes that one and that was it. And then you seemed to do lots of training then but I didn’t know. Can you remember where you went to be demobbed?
[pause]
HB: The, the last, I was just looking for the last entry in here because it’s got you still, you were still with 61 Squadron Waddington in 1946.
Other: Was that when you were on Lincolns? Were you training on Lincolns, dad?
HB: No. That’s, that’s all Lancaster stuff.
Other: Or was that —
HB: And you’re still, you’re still doing lots and lots of training. Cross countries, bullseye. Do you remember bullseye? The bullseye exercise? What was, what was that one? Remind me. I can’t remember.
[pause]
HB: Right. Well, we seem to have come to the end of it. The end of the book. Yeah, I see you ended up in the decompression chamber doing your training. Do you remember that? Going in the decompression chamber? Where they lower the air pressure and you had to put your oxygen mask on because one or two have said it was a bit frightening. Well, I think that’s, that’s the back end of your, your logbook, Archie. So, what, when we come to the end of the war what did you do after the war when you finished?
[pause]
HB: Did you, did you go back up to Scotland? [pause] Yeah.
AW: Yeah.
HB: And did you, did you have a job in Scotland before you joined and did you go back to your job?
AW: Yeah.
HB: And what was, what sort of work were you doing, Archie?
[pause]
HB: It don’t, it don’t matter if you, if you can’t remember. And when, when it was all, when it was all finished and you went home what’s, what’s, what are the things that stick in your mind about your time in Bomber Command? What do you remember about Bomber Command? What do you think the best bits were?
[pause]
AW: It was a, it was a different life.
HB: A different life. Yeah. Yeah. Very different. Yeah. And, and a bit sad at times as well.
AW: Yeah.
HB: Yeah. What do you think? What do you think was your saddest time there with them?
[pause]
AW: I don’t think there was a sad day. I think it was. I don’t mean it wasn’t sad.
[pause]
HB: What, what did you think of the job that you’d done?
AW: We had very little choice.
HB: Yeah.
AW: We were down there and that was it. [We had to be there]
HB: Yeah. I think I’ll stop the interview now Archie. Thanks ever so much for that.
[recording paused]
HB: How did you get out to South Africa, Archie? Can you remember?
AW: How?
HB: How did you get to South Africa?
Other: Am I interfering? Should I get out your way?
HB: No. No. No. No. Not at all. Yeah, I was just asking Archie how he got to South Africa. If he can remember how he got to South Africa. Did you go on a boat? Were there many of you?
Other: Tell him.
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 Archie Weir
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Harry Bartlett
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
2018-03-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWeirA180328
Format
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00:40:36 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
Description
An account of the resource
Archie was born in Ayreshire. He was about 17 when he joined, then went to South Africa to train as a bomb aimer. In February 1943 Archie worked on Halifax Mk 2 before being transferred to Lancaster finishing school at RAF Syerston. In November 1943 he also flew in Oxford and Anson aircraft. In 1944 he trained on Wellingtons and Halifax aircraft, and in March 1945 he went to the Lancaster Finishing School at RAF Syerston on familiarisation flights and circuits and landings. The crew served with 61 Squadron at RAF Skellingthorpe from 16 March 1945; on 22 March he did his first operation to Bremen. Their last one was on 18 April 1945 to Komotau in Czechoslovakia. He also flew on some Cook’s Tour trips over former targets in Germany.. Archie was posted to RAF Waddington in 1946, before returning to his job in Scotland.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Lincolnshire
South Africa
Germany
Germany--Bremen
Scotland
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-02
1943-11
1945-03-10
1945-03-16
1945-03-22
1945-04-18
1945-05-30
1945-07-03
1946
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Julie Williams
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
61 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
bomb aimer
bombing
Cook’s tour
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
observer
Oxford
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Syerston
RAF Waddington
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1184/11756/PWalkerT1801.2.jpg
3bec429e6a3c10cbcf95719caeca006b
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1184/11756/AWalkerT180717.1.mp3
647343f166349c426f4abedf8de8703c
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
Walker, Tom
T Walker
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Flight Sergeant Tom Walker (b. 1925, 1590544 Royal Air Force) and a photograph. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 462 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-07-17
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
Walker, T
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GR: This, so this is Gary Rushbrooke for the International Bomber Command Centre 17th of July 2018. I’m with Tom Walker and his son [buzz] And Tom, if you can just tell us a little bit about your early life. I know we’re in Rotherham. Was you born in Rotherham?
TW: No. I was born in Stainforth, near Doncaster.
GR: Near Doncaster.
TW: Yeah.
GR: So fairly local.
TW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah. Brothers and sisters?
TW: I’ve got, one sister was in the ATS. The other one, she was a qualified nurse and she was a sister in Barnsley Hospital. She joined the Army and went over on D-Day 3.
GR: Right.
TW: And she went right to, to Germany to until they got to Germany. When they got to Germany they flew her back over here and flew her out to Burma.
GR: Right.
TW: And she ended up as a major.
Other: Matron of Bombay Hospital.
TW: Bombay Military Hospital.
GR: Oh right. Were your sisters older than you? Or —
TW: Oh yeah. I were the youngest of the lot. Yeah.
GR: You, you were the youngest.
TW: Two brothers and father worked down Hatfield main pit.
GR: Right. That’s what your dad did, did he? He worked in the pit.
TW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah. Did you go to school around here? Locally to Doncaster?
TW: Me.
GR: Yeah.
TW: Yeah. I was in the ATC.
GR: Yeah.
TW: When I were fourteen. And after a couple of months I started going to the technical college at night.
GR: Right.
TW: So it got me fit you know. I could do maths and everything perfect.
GR: Yeah. So you left school at fourteen did you?
TW: Pardon?
GR: Did you leave school at fourteen?
TW: Yeah. Yeah. And —
GR: And is that when you started going to technical college?
TW: Yeah. I was in the, I was in ATS.
GR: Yeah.
TW: No.
GR: ATC.
TW: Cadets.
GR: Air Training Cadets.
TW: Yeah. I got in them. And my mates were already in the Navy or the Army. So I said to my dad, ‘ I want to go in the Fleet Air Arm,’ because I’d got an uncle who was a manager in Portsmouth and I wanted to go in the Fleet Air Arm. And this guy said, ‘Oh yeah,’ because I was six foot then and boxing and he said, ‘Ideal. What we want.’ He said, ‘Now, where do you work?’ I said, ‘I’m a tool setter.’ He said, ‘You can’t go in.’ So, he said, ‘You can’t do anything about it. You can’t go in.’ So, I went back home to Stainforth and I never spoke to my father for a month. So he, eventually he said, ‘All right. Go on. Go.’ So that started it all.
GR: So you volunteered.
TW: Yeah.
GR: To go in to the RAF.
TW: Yeah.
GR: And did they, did you go to a recruiting office or —
TW: Yes. I went to [pause] that were in Sheffield and then when, when I went to another office for AT, for flying. And they said, ‘You’ll be three months before you can get in because of the places.’ And they give me a job in a [pause] making twenty five pounder shells.
GR: Oh right.
TW: And it was a catastrophe because women were chasing me. So —
GR: So there was you and about three or four hundred women in a factory.
TW: More than that. Anyway, I only stood it one week on nights. During the day they couldn’t touch me. But I went back to this office that they were making me, giving me a job and I went out on to building Sandtoft Aerodrome.
GR: Oh right. Yes. I know it.
TW: Yeah. And that was well paid for because I was getting paid a man’s wage and lodging allowance.
GR: That’s good. Yeah. Yeah.
TW: And then I’d been working all day. We got on the lorry to go back to Stainforth. I got off. I saw my mother down the, down the street. My papers had come.
GR: Oh yeah.
TW: And when I went she were crying.
GR: And this would be what? 1943?
TW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah. Can you remember where you first went to, to start your training?
TW: Well, as I say I was in the AT.
GR: ATC.
TW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
TW: I was in there and the bloke who run it had been a fighter pilot in the First War and he was, he were brilliant.
GR: Yeah.
Other: You had to go to London then didn’t you?
TW: Yeah. I went to London. ACRC. Aircrew Receiving Centre at London.
GR: St John’s Wood.
TW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
TW: [Softley] Hall.
GR: Yeah.
TW: And it were a beautiful place.
GR: Yeah.
TW: And there were twenty in each room and this particular night we got in bed and there were two big, big rooms and then there were a corridor with sand, water and doings pump.
GR: Ah, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Other: Stirrup pump. Stirrup pump.
GR: Stirrup pump.
TW: Aye. We, we’d just got in bed and these two blokes came in with water. Sprayed all our beds and us. So —
GR: That was your welcome.
TW: They were a big, big Geordie lad, farmer and me. I chased them and I hit this bloke. Knocked him out because all our beds were wet.
GR: Yeah.
TW: So, 9 o’clock in the morning I had to go and see the CO. And came out he was area bomber err —
Other: Boxing.
TW: Boxing.
GR: Right. And you were a boxer.
TW: And I, yeah. The bloke said this bloke he were a [pause] he said, ‘Oh, no. Go on. Clear off.
GR: Clear off.
TW: And it was next, that were next to London Zoo.
GR: London Zoo. Yes. Yeah.
TW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah. Didn’t you used to get your meals in the zoo? Did you have to go across to the zoo?
TW: Pardon?
GR: Did you go across to the zoo?
TW: Oh yeah.
GR: Because that’s where you had your meals there. Didn’t you?
TW: That’s right. Yeah.
GR: Yeah. Yeah. So —
TW: All there was all the lions there and everything making a noise.
GR: Yeah. Yeah. I think most chaps have said, you know.
TW: We could walk to the west, west end in London.
GR: Yes.
TW: From [Softley] Hall.
GR: Yes.
TW: That were brilliant.
GR: Yeah.
TW: Because it was like going from Stainforth to somewhere or something to —
GR: First time away in the big city.
TW: [unclear]
GR: Yeah.
TW: Yeah. And on the next street to where it was there were some old ladies with Rolls Royces all [unclear] Not, not NAAFI. This other —
Other: Women’s Institute, was it?
TW: Yeah. And we used to go in there and there were a table about like that big.
Other: Just hang on a sec.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
TW: And there was piles of all the shows in London.
GR: Yeah.
TW: All in piles all around.
GR: Very good.
TW: I’m going to get —
GR: Yeah.
[recording paused]
GR: So, after St Johns Wood where did you [pause] where did you end up after you had started your training?
TW: I went, got to Rotherham.
GR: Yeah.
TW: I was five months there. Then I went to Scotland.
Other: St Andrews.
TW: Yeah.
Other: Where the golf course is.
TW: The worst place I’ve ever been in my life. It was winter.
GR: Snow, wet and windy.
TW: Not a, not a, not no heating at all. And oh. Ah but at night you couldn’t even get in the cinemas or anywhere else because there were a Navy place there. And all the dancing was reels.
GR: Oh right. Yeah.
TW: I was glad to go away from there. Then I went down to London. To London again. And I did three months at Newquay. And then I started.
Other: Were it St Austell, were it? That one.
TW: Yeah.
Other: St Austell.
GR: Yeah.
TW: And then I went to start training at Riccall.
GR: At Riccall.
TW: Near Selby.
GR: Yeah. I’ve a friend who lives there at the moment. Did you know what you wanted to be? You know when you joined up.
TW: Yeah. Well —
GR: Did you want to be a pilot? Was you —
TW: I wanted to be a pilot.
GR: Right.
TW: And what happened was when I was on this ITW.
GR: Yeah.
TW: Initial Training Wing. They came to us and they said, ‘What do you want to be?’ ‘Pilot.’ So they said, ‘You’ll have to go a few weeks and go to America or Canada.’ And everybody had built up —
GR: Oh yeah. I’ll have some of that. Yeah.
TW: And then they came to, they came in to it one morning when we were on parade. They said, ‘There’s a surplus of pilots.’
GR: Yeah.
TW: Pilots, bomb aimer and navigator.’ So, I said what was there? And they said flight engineer. No. No. Glider pilots or doings [pause] or a gunner.
GR: Yeah. Air gunner.
TW: Flight engineer.
GR: Yeah. You went for flight engineer.
TW: I did about eight or nine months training from that and every, every week you had exam.
GR: Yeah.
TW: And if you didn’t pass it you go back again. And I were lucky. I got right through.
GR: Yeah. And that was at Riccall.
TW: Riccall.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
TW: No. No.
GR: Sorry.
TW: They were at, what was that one at —
GR: It don’t matter.
TW: Seaside. Anyway.
Other: What’s that dad? What’s that?
TW: Oh that place, at [pause] Not Newquay. The other place.
Other: St Austell.
GR: St Austell.
TW: No. Anyway, it don’t matter.
GR: Don’t matter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
TW: And then I got passed out, you know.
GR: Yeah.
TW: And I went and then went straight up. Had nine days leave and then I went to Riccall and we had to go in this building and pick out a pilot. A squad. The rest of the crew.
GR: They crewed up. Yeah.
TW: Yeah.
GR: So, and you were telling me earlier that you ended up with an Australian crew.
TW: Yeah.
GR: So was that crew already formed? And then they got —
TW: Apart from a flight engineer. Yeah.
GR: So, they came. Did they come and get you or did you get them?
TW: Yeah. Yeah. They came to me.
GR: Good.
TW: And then we started training at Riccall. Bombing.
GR: Heavy Conversion Unit.
TW: No. Yeah.
GR: Yeah. Heavy Conversion Unit.
TW: Yeah.
GR: HCU. Yeah.
TW: That was for them. It wasn’t me.
GR: Right.
TW: Because they had been on Wellingtons and things like that.
GR: Yes. Yeah.
TW: Anyway, we did all day training. And then night training. And then we went down to Foulsham.
GR: Foulsham. Yeah.
TW: Yeah. And one of, one of the things I told you before about the end of the war the last bombing raid we did was and they told us normally you used to go back to England about twelve thousand feet.
GR: Yeah.
TW: Don’t bother. You can go down low. So we went on this raid and then went to the Dutch Coast and we [pause] to the coast. About five minutes after the plane went right back like that. Bloody balloon on a ship.
GR: You were too low. So that was your last bombing raid of your war. What was your first one?
TW: Actually it was from Riccall because when you’d finished —
GR: Yeah.
TW: You went on one.
GR: Right.
TW: I think it was just in to Germany. Just in to German.
GR: Yeah.
TW: Unless it was German.
Other: Which was that one where where you had to go to that other airfield and Douglas Bader told you to get off the airfield?
TW: Oh well. We’d been on the southern side bombing.
GR: Yeah.
TW: You know, there was topside further north for Germany. Other one we’d been over France or somewhere. Come back and we went to Tangmere. That’s the thing. Landed Tangmere.
GR: Tangmere.
TW: Because there was thick fog.
GR: Yes.
TW: Right. So —
GR: Tangmere was a fighter base wasn’t it?
TW: That’s right. So, they took, they took us to a Naval barracks overnight and then go back and there were about seventy planes on this. German, American and the whole lot. Right.
GR: Yeah. All coming to Tangmere because of the fog.
TW: They had all gone and I was trying to get all the engines running. And what I did I got up inside the nacelle where the wheel, the big wheel went in. There were a pump inside it and I got up, got up into it and this bloke comes around and said, ‘What are you doing on my bloody airfield?’ And when I got out it were Bader. I’m on the route to taking off. I’ve roped all the lads in.
GR: Good stuff. Yeah.
TW: But I loved it, you know.
GR: Yeah.
TW: And, and I’ll tell you something that wasn’t about flying. The wireless operator was an older man and he’d been a gold digger and all sorts. A real character and he were my best mate. And we’d been in the sergeant’s mess having a drink and darts and I said to him, his mate came, an old mate of his came and he said, I said, ‘I’ll go and have a shower and get in bed then.’ So I’d not been in bed a while and ‘Tom. Tom.’ What is? What? He was at the side of my bed. No skin on his face. And what he’d done him and his mate had won, won two bottles of whisky and he’s, he’d drunk the whisky himself and he’d crawled because there were [pause] where all the Nissen huts were, were all rough concrete and everything.
GR: Yeah.
TW: He crawled all the way back and said what are we going to do about it? So we took him down to hospital, err hospital. Knocking on side and [unclear] doing.
GR: Yeah.
TW: And if he’d have been, if he’d have been an Englishman and an English thing they’d have let him off but they said, ‘No we’re going to. He’s going to get in trouble.’ So, ‘No. We’ll take him back and look after him.’ So we took him back and put him in bed and put a rope around him. And he were four and a half days living on oxo and bread.
GR: Probably taught him a lesson. Yeah.
TW: But he was such a character.
GR: Yeah.
TW: A typical Aussie.
GR: You obviously started on Halifaxes. Did you fly in any other aircraft or —
TW: Yeah. Yeah.
GR: Because when you first went to 426 squadron were they with —
TW: 462.
GR: Sorry, 462.
TW: Yeah. I went straight there. But when I came home to get married.
GR: Yeah.
TW: Three weeks before the war ended. When we came back after nine days it was all over the camp our plane had blown up because there were two crews for one. One plane.
GR: Oh right.
TW: One kite.
Other: You should have flown but you didn’t because you got married and the plane went —
TW: No. I said, while we were at the wedding and all that that plane has gone and got blown up on the end of the runway.
GR: With the crew inside.
TW: Yeah.
GR: Did the crew perish?
TW: Yeah.
GR: Right. Why was there, why would there have been two crews to the one plane?
TW: Well, you’d got to arm mostly every night.
GR: Right.
TW: Because a bomber, Lancasters were going out every night and we had to do it over a time. But there was two squadrons on Foulsham
GR: Yeah.
TW: 192.
Other: 162. 462 were it?
TW: No. No. 192. That crew. And they had Halifaxes like us doing the same thing. But they’d got Mosquitoes.
GR: Right.
TW: And when we went out they used to go up with us.
GR: Yeah.
TW: And they’d take off about twenty minutes, twenty five minutes later and they helped us to save us because it were that. The Germans wanted all of us killed on this 100 Group.
GR: Yeah, because 100 group were special operations.
TW: That’s right.
GR: Jamming German radar.
TW: What we had, we had a Canadian who could speak German as a woman or a man. And then he’d jam their radio.
GR: Yeah.
TW: So they didn’t know where they were going. But we went out with main force. Right.
GR: Yeah.
TW: On the route and then so far, so far along we’d turn off. Turn away. And then with this bloke who had special, dropping Window out so that they didn’t know which was the main. Which was the main stream.
GR: Yeah.
Other: You got a lot more leave didn’t you because you were on special?
TW: Yeah. We got —
Other: Special ops.
TW: Yeah. We got every month and Bomber Command got five, five weeks. Six weeks.
GR: Yeah. How many operations? Can you remember how many operations you actually flew, Tom?
TW: I was on nine from there.
GR: Yeah.
TW: One from Foulsham. From —
Other: Didn’t it work out —
TW: From Riccall.
Other: Didn’t it work out at thirteen you did —
TW: Yeah.
Other: But you said when you looked at the book other day you’d done more than that.
TW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
Other: You’d done more in the book than you’d realised.
TW: Well, that’s right. That was the main thing anyway. Not nine.
GR: Yeah. And did you have any close encounters with the Germans while you were flying?
TW: No.
GR: Because they, they could actually track your aircraft because of the radar emissions you were giving couldn’t they?
TW: No.
GR: No.
TW: No.
GR: Because I thought they targeted 100 Group.
Other: You were deliberately doing it so they’d follow you didn’t they?
TW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
Other: Yeah. So —
TW: To get away from main force.
GR: Yeah.
TW: Because there were that many blokes getting killed. Probably hundreds and hundreds a day because there were —
GR: Oh, there were. Yeah.
TW: About three hundred to about six hundred Lancasters.
GR: But because of that I thought the Germans actually targeted your squadron.
TW: Oh they tried to. Tried to —
GR: Yeah. They tried to get you more than.
TW: Yeah. Yes.
GR: Yeah.
TW: It was —
GR: Did they ever come close?
TW: Oh yeah.
GR: Yeah.
TW: And the rear gunner were the best man I’ve ever known. He was brilliant.
GR: Right.
TW: Mid-upper gunner were frightened. He said if, of course when we were all going on the target where we were going to go. Me, the two gunners had got I had to, I could see out. Out of the plane.
GR: Yeah.
TW: And we were all watching all the time for them but he told me, ‘I’m frightened.’ So turned out that sometimes I had to go up in the turret. But they were right nice blokes.
GR: Yeah.
TW: Unbelievable living under them conditions.
GR: Yeah. Did they all survive?
TW: Pardon?
GR: Did they all survive the war?
TW: Did I —
GR: No. Did they all survive?
TW: Oh.
GR: Yeah.
TW: They with me. Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
TW: Yeah.
GR: And did they all go back to Aus, as soon as the war finished 8th of May ’45.
TW: What they did was they took the crews about four or five days. No. About say eight days afterwards.
GR: Yeah.
TW: They went straight back.
GR: They went straight back home didn’t they?
TW: Yeah. And the pilot, he were a gem.
Other: You went straight out to Germany then didn’t you?
TW: Yeah. And then —
GR: So I was just going to say so what happened to you? You’ve flown with these chaps. Then all of a sudden you’re on your own.
TW: Yeah. But he came to me. You know. Said how good I’d been with him.
GR: Yeah.
TW: Because you could get a lot of trouble with an aircraft, I’ll tell you that. In the war. But my job was that busy you’d no chance of being [pause] you know. You were that busy you weren’t bothered about what was happening.
GR: What else was going on because you had too much to do.
TW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
TW: Because what you did I’d got a small paper like a cardboard computer that we’d got and you, when you, when you took off you had four engines.
GR: Yeah.
TW: Like when you got up to about ten thousand feet started back. Well, I’d already known what we’d done then and then after that every time that we changed petrol tanks I had to go to work it out where it goes. But what it was there was twelve tanks right. In the wings mostly. In the wings. And [pause] what was I going to say?
GR: You had to control the flow of fuel.
TW: Yes. That’s right.
GR: To all, to all the tanks.
TW: That’s right. But I’d got to control it right through until the next day. Well, what they did they filled the planes up to the top with fuel. Two thousand gallons.
GR: Two thousand.
TW: Right. And if you’d gone over fifty it makes a difference. Jankers. You were on jankers.
GR: Oh right.
TW: Well, I never went over thirty so —
GR: You were alright.
TW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
TW: But it is complicated when you can fly that plane on one tank or four. Four on one tank and two over but what it is when you took off with a full load when you got up to altitude that you want you had to start getting rid of the outer ones.
GR: Right. I was going to ask you.
TW: So that all the way through like that because [pause] Oh, I’ve just forgotten my thought.
Other: When you land you’ve got petrol’s on the inside or the outside.
TW: Well, that was done but no.
GR: You certainly had to have the weight dispersed evenly.
TW: I just forget.
GR: It doesn’t matter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But yes as flight engineers you had to control the flow of fuel.
TW: Yeah. Well, there was, there was —
GR: Do all this and do all that.
TW: The pilot or me could say no. We’re not going. You know. And engines had been in for servicing. The plane we had and when we, when we got out I thought chuffing hell, there’s something wrong here. We were getting hot. The engines. The engines were getting hot. So I worked it out and the radial engines, engines like that and they’ve got one of nine there and nine there. Pistons. And there’s a gill around. The rear one is cooler than the rear ones.
GR: Yeah.
TW: And this thing was getting boiling hot and I —
GR: It’s your job to sort it out.
TW: Yeah. Well, I rang the doings up and said it’s the gills. What they’d done they must have took the engine out and put it back on and it hadn’t been graded with these gills.
GR: Yeah.
TW: But put [unclear] back. Back of thing and we’d go about thirty, forty doings and I said to him, ‘You’ll have to slack back. Drop back.’ And we were going slow. Slower and slower and then when we turned around to come they were alright.
GR: Right.
TW: But it was, they were done, and when we came that one from Riccall we went on that raid and when we come back the, the lights for the wheels coming down wasn’t bloody working and we were flying around the doings.
Other: The airfield.
TW: And they were there looking out of the office windows to see if they’d come down.
GR: To see. Yeah.
TW: So, we did it for long enough and then I said, ‘No. Go on. Go to —’ I even went down to the back wheel, I said [pause] anyway we landed and everybody were like that.
GR: The wheels had come down.
TW: Yeah.
GR: Just the lights that weren’t working.
TW: Oh yeah.
GR: Yeah. So why did they send you out to Germany, Tom?
TW: Pardon?
GR: At the end of the war you went out to Germany.
TW: What I did, they all went back and I went to Catterick and to say whether I wanted to stop in the RAF or come out and I said come out. So I went and I was a transport manager. And I just, I went to where’s the Dambusters?
GR: Scampton.
TW: I were there for about, about three months.
GR: Right.
TW: And then they said you’ll have to go to Germany. So went to Germany. Well, I went down to London and then we went up to Hull. And it was just starting to snow and we got on a boat on the doings and when we were going [pause] not going this was this a, this was a major. Once we get out of the, out of the —
GR: Out of the harbour.
Other: Harbour.
TW: The harbour.
GR: Yeah.
TW: Ten. I think it were ten doings.
Other: Force ten gale wasn’t it? Or something.
TW: Yeah.
GR: Oh right.
TW: If you went on the deck to go for a meal or anything the bloody snow was going like that. Anyway, we got to Cuxhaven and there were a foot of ice on the harbour.
GR: Bloody hell.
TW: And they took us to a place to sleep. No heating at all. And it was just a bunk. Wood bunks with straw in.
GR: Right.
TW: So I were there about five days and then I went or got to go to Northern Germany and it were 4 o’clock in the morning when we set off and then they stopped the train so far, about probably a hundred mile to put water in the train. And while we’re, while we’re sat there where did they go? Some little kids with aprons on with pockets chocky full of money.
GR: They were like begging. Yeah
TW: Police come down. Their police with coshers. How many were killed?
GR: Killed?
TW: Police.
GR: Yeah.
TW: Hitting these little girls and boys with bloody bayonets. With the soldiers
Other: Who killed the police then?
TW: Pardon?
Other: Who killed the police?
TW: I’m not telling you.
Other: Oh.
TW: It was. And then when we got to Hamburg.
GR: Yeah.
TW: At Hamburg on the boat there were a lot of national doings.
Other: National what?
GR: German.
TW: No. It was England. They’d, been, they’d got called up didn’t they? National. There were a name for them anyway.
Other: Conscientious objectors.
TW: No. No. No. No. We got there and I got off and I were going to go to Brunswick so [pause] and these lads because if you went to Berlin you had to take a rifle and fifty bullets.
GR: Right.
TW: That was so it couldn’t be done by taking us in bulk and Russians pinching the bloody everything.
GR: The Russians. Yeah. Because the Russians were in Berlin weren’t they?
TW: Yeah. So I said to these, these young lads that were only eighteen you know, they were frightened to death. I said if you, if they pull that door open what you are in, they were like goods thing.
GR: Yeah.
TW: And you know, ‘Shoot them.’ And they said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Shoot the buggers else they’ll shoot you.’
GR: Yeah.
TW: And then I went on to Brunswick and I were there five months.
GR: Right. What, what was you doing in Brunswick, Tom?
TW: Pardon?
GR: What was you doing in Brunswick?
TW: Oh. Motor transport
GR: Motor transport. Oh right. Yeah.
TW: Mostly I used to do airfield because it were a little airfield on this. And I used to have to get up in a morning and there’d be a little aeroplane coming and I’d run down and this bloke come out and he were top bloke in the Army.
GR: Oh right.
TW: British Army. And he said, ‘Why haven’t you got a tie on?’ And I said, ‘I’ve just got out of bed.’ But if you’d gone there and saw that place. There were no housing, coal, electricity, water, food. They was eating all cats and dogs. Horses. Everything. Brunswick, there was just one building in the middle and it was run by these Jewish people and you could go in there. A little orchestra playing. You could go in there and say I want to phone home tomorrow. If you went back there were a phone.
GR: Yeah.
TW: Yeah. Yeah.
GR: And did you get to see any other German cities?
TW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
TW: Hamburg were flatted. Hanover were flattened. Berlin were bloody flattened. There was only one place open. Not touched. A place called Celle –
GR: Right.
TW: With a C.
GR: Yeah.
TW: Celle with a C. And there was a [unclear] on it and there were a platform and he were on a white horse directing traffic.
GR: Yeah.
TW: And [unclear] That was the worst place. They landed the airborne. We landed airborne. British.
GR: Yes.
TW: And that was the same. Only one building and it were, they used it as a garage. As a petrol.
GR: It must have took them years to recover.
TW: Oh.
GR: Yeah.
TW: Everything were flat.
GR: Yeah.
TW: And we were living in where these scientists had been. We were living in there at —
GR: Rightly or wrongly it was a job to be done though.
TW: Yeah.
GR: You know. You were there, you were there to bomb it.
TW: And this, this old lady looked after three. Three rooms. Three different blokes. And used to play hell with me [laughs] I’d say, ‘Who’s won the bloody war?’ But she were going to go but I made sure she got some food.
GR: She got food.
TW: She got that.
GR: Yeah.
TW: Aye. She used to come to my room at 5 o’clock and then they’d send it from our cookhouse to do doings for me.
GR: To do. So, she knew what she knew. Anywhere after Germany? Did you get reposted or —
TW: No. I stopped there.
GR: Yeah.
TW: And came back to England and got demobbed.
GR: Demobbed.
TW: My wife was ready for a baby so —
GR: Right. And you’d got married just before the end.
TW: Three weeks before the war ended.
GR: Before the end of the war. Yeah.
TW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah. What did you do after the war, Tom? So demobbed.
TW: I got demobbed. I went on a, on a building site and I went in a steelworks where it were all running up and down with red hot steel. And then I went on to open cast coal.
GR: This was back in Yorkshire. Back near Doncaster.
TW: No.
GR: No.
TW: This was at Wentworth.
GR: Wentworth.
TW: Wentworth in [unclear]
GR: Right.
Other: He drove.
TW: Best job. Best job.
Other: The big thing on, outcrop thing he drove. What do they call it? [unclear]
TW: I could drive any of them.
GR: Yeah.
TW: And I think I were there, I were there quite a while. Used to get paid and you were on a bonus all the time. So what you did, what the firm did, they gave us a national doings so I could go to the Post Office.
Other: Savings. A savings thing was it?
TW: No. You could just take this form down to the Post Office and you would get your wage and open.
Other: Bonus.
TW: No. No. What it was is if your wage went about something they’d give you these things.
GR: They’d give you extra.
TW: That’s right. When you could get it. I was ten or twelve hours days and nights. Well, the money I earned was unbelievable. And I did that for about four. I think it were about four years and then I went in to the steelworks.
GR: Right.
TW: And I went right to the top.
GR: Steelworks in Sheffield or —
TW: At Rotherham.
GR: Rotherham. That’s —
Other: Rotherham. Strip mills at Brinsworth.
GR: Strip. Yeah. Yeah.
Other: He went in with a Roller for years.
TW: I ran it for years and everything was happy.
GR: Yeah.
TW: And I’d got a lovely wife.
GR: Yeah.
TW: Up there.
GR: Oh yeah. On the wall.
Other: Where were you when you took my mum up in the plane?
TW: Yeah. Don’t tell anybody. They’ll prosecute me.
GR: They won’t.
TW: At Lindholme.
GR: Lindholme. Yeah.
TW: I was at Lindholme. Transport there for about six weeks and she rolled up from my mother’s, our house and I said, ‘I’ve got a little job for you,’ and I went and asked him, and the bloke said, ‘Oh, get in.
GR: What were, what plane did you take her up in?
TW: Lancaster.
GR: Oh, you took her up in the Lancaster. Who was the pilot?
TW: Eh?
GR: Who was the pilot?
TW: It was a training. Training.
GR: Oh right. Yeah. Yeah.
TW: Aye, but wait a minute do you know where Lindholme is?
GR: That’s now the prison, isn’t it?
TW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah. And at the end of the war it was, it was for Italian and German prisoners of war wasn’t it?
TW: No.
GR: No.
TW: What I’m talking about was if he were there I didn’t see it.
GR: Right.
TW: A bloke walking about with his parachute.
Other: Lindholme ghost.
TW: A ghost.
Other: Lindholme has a ghost.
TW: Ghost.
GR: Oh right. Yeah.
TW: Everybody, every bloody newspapers and all what but they were people on that said they’d seen him.
GR: They’d seen him but you didn’t. You didn’t see him.
TW: Oh, no. No.
GR: No. No.
TW: But it was in the Telegraph and Star and —
GR: Oh right.
TW: They were calling me but what it was is the peat bogs where he, where he crashed his Wellington [pause] But I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the Air Force and everything.
GR: I think everybody I’ve ever spoke to.
TW: Yeah.
GR: Have said yeah war is a bad thing but their time in the RAF —
TW: The funny thing was when I first got to Lindholme I were walking down this road and this bloke said, ‘Do you mind? Are you going to salute me or what?’ I said, ‘What about these here?’ Well, he had —
Other: Stripes.
GR: Stripes, yeah.
TW: No. No. No. I’d got about five medals.
GR: So you were both in uniform.
TW: Aye. Yeah. And he said, ‘I’ll have you charged.’
Other: Weren’t you a higher rank then him then?
TW: He was a first, no he was a first doings but he’d come from school straight in.
GR: Right.
TW: And he said, ‘I’ll report you.’ I said, ‘You bloody report me,’ I said, ‘While you’ve been in bed I’ve been bloody bombing Germany.’
GR: Right.
TW: You know.
GR: What rank did you finish up as, Tom?
TW: I should have been warrant officer.
GR: Yeah.
TW: But it didn’t come through.
GR: Right. Because and also right at the end of the war I think all those who had become warrant officer they knocked them back.
TW: Yeah.
GR: To flight sergeants, didn’t they?
TW: Yeah.
GR: So, yeah. But —
TW: I was lucky as I say it was nearly the end of the war.
GR: Yeah.
TW: But I was only that age.
GR: That’s it. You can only join up when you can join up.
TW: Yeah.
Other: You got banned from your boxing as well didn’t you because they said it had cost too much to train you.
TW: Oh aye. I did. I’d gone up. My mother one day, no. I’d got home from school and I went to go down this road and this kid whalloped me one. He were about fourteen or fifteen and I were about ten. So my mother said, I were crying, she said, ‘Get off out and go and hit him. Hit him on his nose.’ So I did do and when my dad came, my dad were on nights regularly in the pit and he came around and said, ‘Who was was it?’ I’d gone and hit him. This bloke. This lad. Anyway, when my dad got up after he’d had his sleep he said, ‘Come on. We’re going down to our Teddie’s.’ And he were heavyweight pit man.
GR: Right. Boxer. Yeah.
TW: Aye. And they were three [pause] three wrestlers and three boxers and they’d got a ring in —
GR: Yeah.
TW: In a barn. And they were bloody lightning. I’ll tell you that. And I did that from fourteen, I think it was when I started that. Fourteen. And then I went into the RAF I started a boxing with different teams like.
GR: Yeah.
TW: And when I got halfway through last five month of —
GR: Training.
TW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
TW: They said, ‘You can’t box anymore because it’s costing too much to train you for your job.’
GR: Right. And you were beating everybody up. It was probably costing the RAF. All the people you were fighting.
TW: Aye, but one of the best one I ever had we were boxing against American Golden Gloves.
GR: Oh right.
TW: Bloody thing and during the day I’d already been in, there were a decompression chamber you used to have to sit in. Four on that side and four on this and they’d take the masks off that side, then pull all the air out of it.
Other: So you passed out.
TW: That’s right.
GR: Yeah.
TW: Until that one passed out and then you would have, they’d have to give you, you’d have to get to the other side. They made me do it twice and I were mad because I’d been training for this —
Other: You were boxing that night weren’t you or something and they made you go in the decompression chamber for some tests.
TW: Yeah. Anyway —
GR: The day before.
TW: I flattened him. He were only a young bloke.
GR: Yeah.
TW: Americans loved the RAF. Their Air Force.
GR: Yeah. Why? Well, I know they did but, you know.
TW: I’d got, I’d got leave and we was going to Kiel Canal and Lancasters dropped six ton bomb. Six ton bombs.
GR: Right. Yeah.
TW: Doings. And just we were just going to leave this bloke shouted me. He said, ‘Come here and have a look.’ You could see it laid on its side. This big, big battleship in water. Pilots clothes on, floating on —
Other: All the sailors clothes were on the side or the other,
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
TW: So I got on a train and there were some American doing and he said flipping heck he said, this bloke said, ‘You had a right night last night.’
GR: Last night. Yeah.
TW: So Lancasters shelled it definitely and then when I got, when I got home to Rotherham he didn’t like me, her old man so —
Other: That’s father in law.
TW: Yeah. He put wireless on and it said, “RAF bombers last night — ’ No. I told him and then it come on the news.
GR: Oh right.
Other: And he didn’t believe you when you said you turned that boat over.
TW: Yeah.
Other: What were it called? Can you —
TW: Von.
Other: Von Scheer were it?
TW: No. Von.
GR: There was the Scheer
TW: Von Scheer. That were it.
GR: Yeah. the Scheer which is S C H E E R. The Scheer.
TW: Yeah.
GR: Was bombed later.
TW: Yeah. That was the one. It were laid over in Kiel. Kiel.
Other: They bombed it and tipped it over didn’t it?
TW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah. There was the Von Hipper and the Scheer.
TW: Yeah.
GR: It would have been the Scheer then if you —
TW: We shot the, where they sank it.
GR: They sank the Tirpitz. The Tirpitz was sunk in November ’44.
TW: No.
GR: No.
Other: Bismarck.
TW: Before that.
GR: Oh, the Bismarck was the —
TW: Bismarck.
GR: Yeah. That was the Fleet Air Arm in 1941.
TW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
TW: That was, that was the same Von Scheer that turned over.
GR: Right.
TW: But in, in Hamburg Harbour there were a submarine had been blown out of the water onto the bloody quayside.
GR: You were doing a good job. The RAF did.
Other: They did all that lot and then helped —
TW: The RAF saved the world
Other: Helped to pay to rebuild Germany and now Germany want to rule it all again.
GR: Yeah.
TW: Yeah. The RAF saved the world but if the Battle had Britain had failed —
GR: Yeah.
TW: They’d have got our Navy which was the biggest in the world.
GR: Yeah.
TW: Army. And Air Force.
GR: The fighter pilots did it in 1940 and then Bomber Command —
TW: Yeah.
GR: For the next four. Four and a half, five years.
TW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
TW: Fifty five thousand men were killed.
GR: They were.
TW: In Bomber Command.
GR: Yeah. It was the highest casualty rate in the war.
TW: Biggest in the world.
GR: Apart from the German U-boat arm.
TW: Yeah.
GR: So, I’ll just put that down. That’s not bad.
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 Tom Walker
Creator
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Gary Rushbrooke
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-07-17
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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AWalkerT180717, PWalkerT1801
Format
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00:49:46 audio recording
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
British Army
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Tom was born in Stainforth, near Doncaster. His father and two brothers were miners. One of his sisters was in the Auxiliary Territorial Service and the other was a qualified nurse; she became a sister in Barnsley Hospital until she joined the Army. She then went to Germany and eventually to Burma before being made a major at Bombay hospital. Tom left school at fourteen and joined the Air Training Corps. A few months later he went to night school at the technical college, gained qualifications and went to work as a tool setter before volunteering for the Royal Air Force. He went to recruit in Sheffield and was given a job making 25lb shells. In about 1943 he received his call-up papers, and was posted at Rotherham, St. Andrews, London, Newquay and then to training at RAF Riccall as flight engineer. His Australian crew was at the Heavy Conversion Unit with 462 Squadron, then carried out carrying out nine operations. Tom married the week before the war ended and while on holiday his plane blew up on the runway, killing all the crew. At the end of the war Tom became a transport manager at RAF Scampton for about three months before being sent to northern Germany. He stayed at Braunschweig for five months on motor transport at a small airport. On returning to England he was demobbed and worked on a building site before moving to the steel works at Rotherham.
Contributor
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Sue Smith
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Burma
India
India--Mumbai
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
England--London
England--Newquay
England--Rotherham
England--Sheffield
Germany
Germany--Braunschweig
Scotland--Fife
Scotland--St. Andrews
England--Cornwall (County)
Temporal Coverage
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1943
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
100 Group
462 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
crash
flight engineer
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
love and romance
RAF Foulsham
RAF Riccall
RAF Waddington
training
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1170/11739/AGoodwinWJ170607.2.mp3
e3c8203b31a0ff85ab7d6725b4be77a1
Dublin Core
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Title
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Goodwin, Wal
Walter James Goodwin
W J Goodwin
Description
An account of the resource
Seven items. An oral history interview with Walter Goodwin (b. 1921, 419914 Royal Australian Air Force) as well as his log book, a story about visit to Cape Town, certificates, flying operation guide for Haverfordwest and photographs. He flew as a pilot with 463 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Walter Goodwin and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-06-07
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Goodwin, WJ
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AP: This interview for the International Bomber Command Centre is with Wal Goodwin who was a pilot with 463 Squadron on Lancasters. The interview is taking place at Wal’s place at the Basin in Melbourne, in Victoria. My name’s Adam Purcell and it is the 7th June 2017. Wal, we might start at the beginning if you don’t mind. Tell me something about you early life. How you grew up and what you were doing before the war.
WG: Oh. Well, my father was a farmer and we had conscription and I put in, in the Army for quite a while and then they decided because I was a Reserved Occupation they kicked me out, which I didn’t complain about. Not that I had any complaints out there either because they knew I had a driver’s licence so I had the, quite often had the job of seeing, driving the CO around in a beautiful new [unclear] [laughs] which was much better than doing route marches. But after I got back, about three months later I enlisted in the Air Force. But I had to wait to be called up and there were a lot of things that we had to learn because there was so many subjects we had to know which were way above whatever I had done. There was maths. And I was very lucky in one respect. There was a Post Office fellow, a guy that worked in the Post Office down in Boronia and he taught me Morse Code which was a great thing because a lot of the fellas were scrubbed because they couldn’t handle Morse Code. You had to be able to take and send twenty six words a minute and there was no way of faking it. You had to get it accurate and if you weren’t accurate you were out. And I was a bit lucky with the maths side of it. I did a correspondence course for, for the three months I was waiting and so that got me back on track but it was way above what I had done, learned at state schools. So that was a help. And then when you went to Bradfield Park, the initial training course at Bradfield Park was really nothing to do with flying. Although there was a lot of ground work and all the subjects we had to learn as well and there were, which were only be about a hundred guys on the intake I was on and they all wanted to be pilots but there would only be fifteen I think that qualified to go on to elementary flying. So I was posted to Narrandera to do elementary flying and I was a bit lucky there because if you couldn’t go solo in in six hours you were scrubbed. Anyone could learn to fly but there’s a time limit on it and if you couldn’t do it in six months, six hours you were out. Well, I was a bit lucky really because one of my mates [Salle Colewall] for some reason he couldn’t fly and he was filling in his time at that stage in the office. And when I was younger I used to get quinsies which were an abscess on the tonsil which are pretty painful things and I was home on leave from Narrandera one night and going back and I felt this quinsy coming on. So I went straight to this doctor and they put me into the hospital in Wagga Wagga and took my tonsils out which took me off course for about six or eight weeks I suppose. Quite a while. And part of the recuperation we were sent to a farm at a place out of Wagga at a place called Mangoplah where Charlie Harper had a farm. And it was quite an experience because there again because I had a driving licence. Mangoplah was quite a few miles out of Wagga but they used to go in to Wagga Wagga for their shopping and they got me to drive their Ford truck and the roads were all corrugated and I’d never met corrugated roads before and I, going, driving slowly. And a lady said, ‘The only way to handle these roads is go like hell.’ [laughs] So I tried and it worked. But I was there for probably five or six weeks recuperating and when I got back to Narrandera because I hadn’t had any flying experience in that time and according to my records I wasn’t there. But that’s when [Salle?] came in handy because he was in the office and said, ‘He couldn’t be because he was in, in hospital.’ So I was back on course again with a different instructor and I can remember he told me to do a slow roll and I told him I’d never been taught how to do it and he told me I was a bit of an [embarrassment ] But I proved to him I hadn’t because I went in that way and came out [unclear] [laughs] So I finally finished my course in Narrandera and then we were posted to Point Cook to Airspeed Oxfords and that was quite an experience flying a twin-engined Oxford after a Tiger Moth. Tiger Moths, you could, you could do anything in a Tiger Moth so a very very safe plane. But there was a couple of guys who were scrubbed from there as well. One guy was about to take off and the CO was taking me out for a test and suddenly he said, ‘Taking over.’ And he taught me so much in that five minutes that I never forgot. He turned the thing around, right around. So actually down and put the plane down right alongside the chap who was about to take off. He was taking off with, they had a little luggage compartment in there, just behind the cockpit and that was open. He was flying, taking off without opening and he never flew again. And another one he was a bit unlucky in a way, he landed downwind which another thing you recommend because Tiger Moths didn’t have any brakes and he got, before he went in to the drain at the end of the runway he managed to stop. He got out and turned this thing around and took off the other way. But the CO happened to see that so he never flew again either. There were all sorts of reasons why they were scrubbed. Anyhow, flying Airspeed Oxfords was quite an experience. The, my instructor was, he used to fly air ambulances in Sydney in peacetime and everything he’d tell you was just like taking candy from a baby which it was eventually. We, we learned an awful lot on the Airspeed Oxfords. They were, I was lucky really when you had, you didn’t have a choice but we got either posted to Ansons or the Oxfords and I’m glad I had the Oxford because they had hydraulics whereas the Ansons you had to wind everything up and down. And they were very safe plane but the Oxford had a few quirks about them. If you had a dent in the cowling that would put up the stalling rate by quite a few kilometres an hour but I managed to get through it all alright. And then we had to do a cross country flight up to, oh it was around almost to Ballarat and then back down again but you had to find your own way. It was common knowledge. Everyone that had done the course before would tell you when you did that all you do was follow the line. There’s a [unclear] plantation with a ring fence. You follow that down and you go straight [laughs] on to Point Cook. That was a big help but one fella did low flying down Geelong Road and he got a bit low down and took the tips off the propellers. He didn’t fly again either [laughs] But from there I was posted to embarkation depot in Melbourne. We started out at the Melbourne Showground and while I was there I got the mumps so, I missed the [unclear] By the time I was cleared of the mumps all the guys that I’d trained with they’d already been posted. I don’t know where they went. A lot of them went to England but not all of them. I never kept track of it after that. And then we moved from the Showground to the Exhibition Buildings for a few months and from there we went to the Cricket Ground which was quite an experience staying at the Cricket Ground. And eventually we went. We were posted. We went on a Dutch ship, the Niew Amsterdam which was a pretty big ship and we went from there and then we stopped off at South Africa and Durban for about four weeks because they took on about five hundred Italian prisoners of war and about the same number of Polish women. Girl refugees which were going to England so they had to change the ship over so everyone was segregated and of course it was quite an experience. Pretty well uneventful until we got up to Freetown and they took on supplies and one silly guy decided to buy a monkey. I don’t know what he was going to do with it but fortunately they found out before we sailed that he had a monkey so they, that was the end of his monkey. We went unescorted all the way because it was a pretty fast ship and it did a zigzag course which took a bit of getting used to but they reckoned that way you to go so submarines wouldn’t be able to get it. So we finished up in Scotland and went by train from there down to Brighton on the, right on the English Channel. And the first night we were there they had, there was an Englishman who had just defected to the Germans. His name was Lord Haw Haw and he used to do a radio broadcast every night in English to the English people and that the intelligence was pretty accurate because he heard that there was a group of Australians had arrived in Brighton that night and they were going to give them a warm welcome. So we had a quite a lot, a lot of planes going over and they dropped bombs where we were in Brighton and one of them was shot down and it crashed just a couple of streets away from the hotel we were staying at. And for me we, there were so many pilots around. There was. They didn’t know what to do with them so they sent us back to a private airfield flying Tiger Moths again. And from Tiger Moths we had one guy [Danny Maddox] was his, he was a civilian who ran this, this Tiger Moth station and they were all civilians and one of the guys [Danny Maddox] decided, he had a girlfriend and he decided he was going to go and see her in the daytime when he was flying. The only trouble was he tried to land at an airfield, in a wheatfield and he tipped it up. So, he rang the CO, told him he'd crashed a plane and the CO said, ‘Is it flyable?’ He said, ‘Oh, if you send a couple of guys out to stand it on its wheels it’ll be alright.’ [laughs] From there we did a, what they called a BAT course. That’s where you, a beam approach. You did everything by radio. You couldn’t see the instruments. You had to do everything on your instruments of course. It was quite, quite an experience. I really enjoyed it but it taught me a lot about instruments though. At Narrandera we used to do what they called a link trainer which was just, they all called them the horror box because if you could do it they were like a simulator you could do anything in the things but you never crashed. And quite often at night time I’d go back and do another course on on the link trainer because it was, I think that helped me a lot but this instrument flying one was really something. But we found flying in England was a lot easier, especially at night time than it was in Australia because in Australia at night time all you had were flares down the side of the runway and you had to come in until you virtually lined the flares up all in one line. I mean, you, that was it. You landed. But over there they had the control lights. If you were too low it’d be red. If you were on course it’d be green. If you got too high it’d be yellow. So, you come in on this its green and they had a, you had to come in at a separated speed and you had to lose height at certain times otherwise they had what they called the outer marker beacon and then an inner marker beacon and then a cone of silence and you had to be about fifty feet when you came over the cone of silence and you had to pull everything back and you’re on the runway. Which was really good. But from there I got sent on a [pause] down to a place called Haverfordwest in South Wales on flying control duty in the, in the control tower where it was getting, and it was quite funny really too. They had a radio channel that was monitored twenty four hours a day. It was called Darkie and if anyone got in to trouble they’d press Darkie and they, they would be directed to the nearest airfield. Well, this night there was a fella calling up for Darkie and we couldn’t get him. He’d got the, had the transmitter down all the time because we couldn’t get him. But it’s a funny thing I’ve often wondered about that. I reckoned he just must have just gone off into the night and crashed. But in reading a report from a, in a book that I got a bit after the war this guy he was doing his OTU at, in Scotland and the navigator should have been able to tell him where they went, where they were but the navigator had no idea. It was night time and it was cloud and the navigator didn’t know where they were, the pilot didn’t know where they were and they just kept on flying and eventually he was very lucky because the clouds broke up and underneath him was the Isle of Man and he was able to land on the Isle of Man. But in report he was, he was afraid he was going to be scrubbed because of that but in the report it said the navigator was the one who really got the blast. But he said to him as a navigator he wasn’t very good but as a pilot he was proficient. Well, I was there for another couple of weeks and this was after the D-Day landings and there were planes flying backwards and forwards across the Channel and the Navy was shooting at everything that came in sight. So they put me on a destroyer at Milford Haven as aircraft identification and they were taking a convoy of ships up the Channel to Cherbourg or what was known as a Mulberry Harbour. That was a harbour that was built up in Scotland [coughs] Built up in Scotland and it was, it was a huge thing. It was about a mile long. How they did it. We got there without any problems and we were on the way back to Milford Haven when the admiral was on board the destroyer I was on and he got a call to go to Portsmouth and I was, I’ll never forget it, I was on the catwalk on this destroyer when it turned around and I was up to my knees in water. Anyhow, we got to Portsmouth. Portsmouth, and from there got posted back to Haverfordwest and then the next day I was sent to Moreton in Marsh for OTU. That’s where I first met my crew. They put a whole load of us pilots and all the guys in a big room and we had to pick a crew. We’d nothing. We knew nothing about them at all except that they’d done their course and must have been proficient in whatever it was they were. I was very lucky. I managed to get a crew which we all got on very well with. Yeah. And the only one that I didn’t get was the flight engineer. He, they sent me a flight engineer and he came from Newcastle but he was quite a nice guy too. But we never had any problems. We just, we all got along very well with and we finished our OTU. The only thing was there’s something that I’d forgotten about until a couple of years ago when my rear gunner and mid-upper gunner reminded me that I’d, we were flying at seventeen thousand feet and suddenly started coming down, losing height and I can never, couldn’t get it back and we were coming down down down, getting lower all the time and everything was working as it should have been. I’d forgotten about it because, but when we got down to about six thousand feet I told them to prepare to jump out and when we got to about six thousand feet I was able to hold it at six thousand feet. So we finished the flight at six thousand feet but I reported it as an unserviceable plane, told them what the problem was but the next day we were posted to Winthorpe to the Lancaster. So I never really found out what the problem was. The only thing I can think of is that you had a constant speed propellers but [pause] you took off in fine pitch and then you put in a course pitch and from then on they took over and the only thing I can think of is that for some reason they changed over to fine pitch which would give you, you wouldn’t be able to climb very far on fine pitch. But that’s the only thing I can think of. I’d forgotten about it until just a few years ago when my rear gunner told me he always wanted to do a parachute jump. And he did two parachute jumps down at Wollongong but he said he was never so glad as the night I cancelled the order to jump ship. Now, I never, to this day I really don’t know what caused that. But then we went to Winthorpe. That’s where I met a guy that took me on a conversion course or an initiation course on Lancasters told me that he was very glad I was flying Lancasters and I never had any trouble. But the funny thing was there was an Englishman on the same course and he’d had no problem landing the Wellingtons and yet he reckoned he couldn’t land a Lancaster which doesn’t make any sense. I think he just didn’t want to go any further but I don’t know what happened to him. They took him out one day to an airfield that wasn’t used very much and they had him doing landings all day but I don’t know what happened after that. So from Winthorpe we were posted to 463 Squadron and [pause] I was, we were still on training at that stage and I can only remember they used to have a spoof raid which they called them, where the main course, main flight, the bombers would take off but this other lot would, one or two planes would take off a few minutes earlier and go on a different course and they’d throw out these strips of aluminium which they reflected on the German radar as planes that they didn’t know. And the idea was to get their planes up in the air somewhere away from where they, the main force was going. But the night war ended over in Europe we were flying on and all of a sudden all the lights came up all over the ground so I asked the wireless operator what was going on and he’d been listening to music so he didn’t know. Then he rang back and told me that the war was over and we had been recalled an hour earlier [laughs]. So we went back to base and I called up for permission to land which you have to do and of course and no one answered me. So I flew down over the control tower and never got any result from anyone. So I took a chance on what the wind was doing, what direction it was coming because we couldn’t see very much and when we landed we called up for transport to get us to go from dispersal back to the control tower and nothing happened. No one answered so we had to load all our gear for quite a long walk back to the control tower. And when we got back there all the guys were very much inebriated or had [laughs] had a little bit too much to drink. But it was quite a relief really to know that the war was over down there. And then we did several they called them Cook’s Tours. We took mostly WAAFs who had been in the offices around the place on these Cook’s Tours over Europe and showed them the bomb damage and all that sort of stuff and then that’s where instrument flying came in very handy because we were flying in cloud for oh, probably an hour. And it sounds silly but you, you swear blind your bum was six foot, six inches off your seat. You could really reckon you were upside down but you, that’s where I, you had to be convinced that the instruments are working. One of them might get out but not all them. And I finally got out of the cloud and when we came back I landed and the CO happened to be in the control tower and he, he said, ‘The pilot of that plane report to control tower immediately.’ I thought what the heck have I done? And he said, ‘That’s the best, best landing that I’ve ever seen.’ From there we did, we were supposed to go down to Italy to bring the prisoners of war home but it turned out that they had, in Italy they were all grass runways. So they didn’t have any concrete runways and they’d had a lot of rain there and the Lancasters that had gone down were all bogged. So we never went down there but the war was still going in, in the Pacific and the whole squadron were posted to, to go to Coningsby to do a conversion on to Lincolns. But the war ended over in Europe before, in the Pacific before we started on that so the next things happened pretty quickly from there on. That’s a photograph taken there of our squadron after the war. But we, we never actually got to Coningsby. I was posted back to Brighton and within three weeks we were on our way home. So that’s about it.
AP: There’s your quick story. Can we go back and fill in some gaps?
WG: Yeah.
AP: How old were you when you actually enlisted?
WG: Pardon?
AP: How old were you when you, when you actually joined the Air Force?
WG: 1942, I joined.
AP: So, how, how old were you at that point?
WG: Twenty one.
AP: Twenty one. Oh, of course because you had been a farmer.
WG: Yeah.
AP: The farm wasn’t a Reserved Occupation. That’s what —
WG: Yeah.
AP: Yeah. Ok. That makes sense. Where were you when, when war was declared? What can you remember of that time? What were you doing? What were your thoughts?
WG: Well, that was [pause] well the Japs came in to the war when I was out at Seymour in the Army. So that would be, well ’41/42. ’41 I think it was. So, I would have been in the Army up there at that stage and as I said I enlisted in the Air Force in about six, would have been when I was called up would have been about three months later.
AP: What can you remember of 1939?
WG: Well, that would be, in those days I was just a farmer.
AP: Did you suspect when, when you became aware that war was on did you suspect that you would be involved at some point? What were your thoughts about that?
WG: No. To this day I don’t know why I enlisted in the Air Force [laughs] It was just something. I’ve no idea why I did that. Anyway, I decided I had to do something and I wasn’t really crash hot on being in the Army so I decided the Air Force would be better. You know. I had no idea. It’s funny because my younger brother enlisted in the Air Force just before I did. It’s funny how people, what their ideas are because she told him he could enlist in the Air Force as long as he was a rear gunner which was the most unrealistic thing [laughs] I mean, that’s the last job you’d want. But —
AP: So your brother did serve with Bomber Command as well? But did he —
WG: No. He was a fighter pilot.
AP: Fighter pilot. Ok.
WG: Yeah.
AP: Can you tell me much about the process of enlistment? What did you have to do? Did you have to do interviews and any extra training or anything? Any medical exams before you enlisted?
WG: We all had a medical exam and that was about it. And then we were called up and were put on a train and we turned up to Sydney and, where we did as I’ve said I didn’t do anything, learn anything really about flying except the theory of flight. That was about the only thing. But we had to pass in meteorology and so many [pause] There was about fifteen or twenty subjects we had to study. Law and administration and, as I said before Morse Code. That included aldis lamps and semaphore which was all part of it. I can’t remember the rest of the things. We had to be able to take a Bren gun apart and put it back together with your eyes closed which is quite a thing to do. But I don’t think there was anything. We did a lot marches in, in Sydney while we were there. Never did any marches in Melbourne.
AP: So, you mean like a march down the city street.
WG: Yeah.
AP: As a recruiting thing or just to get from A to B or —
WG: Oh no. It was just something they just decided to do. I don’t know why they did it but we did two or three. Three I think in Sydney. Marching down the street in Sydney.
AP: What did the local population think of that? Do you know?
WG: Oh, there was always a crowd of people out to watch it. But I don’t really know what they thought about it because we weren’t privy to that.
AP: Was it, was it a serious thing or was it like a joyful thing or, what was the mood on a march like that?
WG: Well, no one complained about it. It was just something we did. At one stage after we, when we were in England we were posted up at [pause] north of England and they had a lot of what they called six weeks wonders. There was a guy trained in administration but they didn’t know how to handle anyone. And I can remember at one stage that we were all marching, we still had to do marches and we were marching past a, I can’t remember [pause] it was, if it was for some reason the guys just kept dropping off. This fellow was in front leading the marching and by the time he got back to base there was only half a dozen guys behind him. And the day we were passing out up there unbeknownst to the, the officer in charge they all decided they would silent hop. Normally when you stopped you banged your foot down like that. It was something that always happened and this day when he called out, ‘Halt,’ there wasn’t a sound behind him. He spun around. Everyone was there, which rather surprised him. He thought he’d lost them all [laughs] While we was there this chap came in in a Lancaster and it was probably one of the worst landings I think you’d ever see. He touched down and up and down and up and, and when he finally got it down there a big roar went up. And I remember the last flight I did in England was at a [pause] I don’t know why I had to, I don’t know why I was there but there was a chap, Johnnie Blair. He was senior to me. I was only a flying officer and he was a flight lieutenant and I had to go along as his second pilot for some reason. This is what they called a gaggle where everyone just flew in a heap at night time and it was the worst flying I’d ever seen. I was tempted to take over many times but I thought well, he’s, he’s my senior, it wouldn’t go down too well. But we got back alright and I never saw him again. That was just a few days before we were posted to Brighton and the funny thing is he joined, he was a pilot with TAA in those days and this was quite a few years after the war and I was up at Mildura and I was there having a meal and this guy come in and he looked. He came over straight away to apologise. He recognised me even though he was a civilian pilot and this was quite a few years after. He reckoned he didn’t know he was going to fly that night and he had too much to drink [laughs] But he remembered that years afterwards.
AP: Oh dear. That’s great. Ok. Well, we’re talking about flying. Tell me about your first solo.
WG: Oh, it was uneventful. I did everything. No drama at all. That was on Tiger Moths. We had a lot of funny experiences because the airfield at Narrandera, they had a satellite field a few miles away where we flew. And I can remember one day these, the pilots used to get really cheesed off with it because they didn’t want to be instructors on Tiger Moths and this guy undid his straps on his parachute and walked out on the wing and sat there on the wing. The Tiger Moths, you could fly them with your hands out at the side really. They were, I don’t think any Tiger Moths crashed while I was up there. I think if you crashed you’d have to have done something silly. They were, they were a reliable plane. Yeah. I don’t think I had any dramas. When we were at Point Cook we had what they called a crash mate. There were, there were two of you and one guy would do his hour or whatever flying or whatever he had to do and then they’d change over. Well, my crash mate, his first solo flight was from Werribee and they’d, and he was coming in to land at the same time as another plane and they were both killed. So that wasn’t a very good experience. We didn’t know what happened to him. We only found out afterwards. So that taught me to make sure you knew everything that was going on around about you. Which reminds me, when you were coming in to land you always had to call up for permission to join a circuit and you always had to go downwind, crosswind and then put it, come back downwind and this guy he was supposed to meet his girlfriend that night and he decided to come straight in. I could see him coming and I thought well I’m not getting off the runway for him and he had to land on the grass alongside, just behind me. And unfortunately for him the CO happened to be in flying control and saw that. He didn’t go out that night. He was a bit of a rat bag but he was still flying a couple of years ago. He was flying, delivering newspapers down to, well down as far as Eden. Dropping them off. So, he was still flying so he must have been able to fly all right.
AP: Didn’t set him back too much. What can you tell me about Narrandera? The airfield. How did you live there? What sort of things did you do on a typical day?
WG: Well, I was lucky in one way. My cousin had trained at Narrandera and my brother had as well and they got to know a Mrs Andrews who was the wife of the doctor and we could go and spend a weekend when you couldn’t go and come home and get back in time for anything. So we, quite often we’d spend a weekend with the Andrews family which was quite good. Otherwise, we just stayed on the station.
AP: What was a day like? When you were learning to fly on a Tiger Moth what sort of things did you do on a typical day? How, how did it run?
WG: Well, as I said earlier quite often I’d spend time on the link trainer. Apart from that there wasn’t much else to do. I didn’t have any social habits. Really, really nothing in Narrandera itself. The town was very very small.
AP: Ok. Can you describe a link trainer?
WG: Pardon?
AP: Can you describe a link trainer? What did it —
WG: Well, it was like a big box and had all the instruments the same as a plane would have. You were completely enclosed in this thing and you could do anything. You could put it in a spin and whatever and, but you couldn’t hurt yourself. So the one thing we had if you did anything wrong you’re not going to hurt yourself.
AP: Very good. What about Point Cook? What was that like as an airfield to fly from?
WG: Oh, it was quite good actually. It was wintertime when I was down there and at that stage I was importing Vultee Vengeance planes which they came boxed and they were assembled down there and the pilots had taken [unclear] do a circuit to make sure they were flying alright. And I can remember one day I was walking behind one when he decided to rev it up and I was blown over and down the runway on my backside. But it was, it was only the bare necessities at an airfield. Nothing special about it. But they didn’t, they didn’t have concrete runways. They were all grass which meant you could fly in any direction but there was nothing special about it.
AP: You said you stayed at the MCG for a little while. That would have been something of an experience I imagine.
WG: Well, it was. A lot of things in the Air Force disappear and they did a stock take of things while we were there and it’s amazing how people would get off with things from the store room which, you’re not supposed to go to the storeroom only if you need another uniform or shoes or something. And it was amazing the amount of stuff that was missing. Which reminds me of another time we were between sometimes it must have been after [pause] no, it would have been before we started OTU. We were at a place called Burton and it had a coal dump at the back and they had a whole lot of fire buckets and things like that and one of the guys used to take the fire bucket into the town and sell them. And he sold buckets full of coal as well. They never caught him [laughs] And I remember he had a verey pistols and a cartridge you would fire if you were in distress or something land or something and there was a big flare at the end of it and one day I had one and I was trying to light it with a cigarette lighter and I was keeping well away from it because I knew that it was going to if it, if it lit it was going to go off. Well, two of my mates [unclear] and Bob Hines decided to take over and they were crouching over the top of it when it went off and they lost all their eyebrows and half their hair and everything else. They weren’t going to go to the doctor. They went to the chemist down the street.
AP: Yeah. Ok. So, when you get to England you said there was something like the first night there was a a Germans attacked.
WG: Yeah.
AP: What were your general thoughts about wartime England? What were your general impressions?
WG: Well, we had been through London in daylight and they had big barrage balloons up in the air and all the damage that had been done so you didn’t feel any sorrow for anything that happened over in Germany because London was pretty badly bombed. But we didn’t know that at the time it just it wasn’t until the next day we knew that the plane had been shot down. We, we knew the Bofors guns. They had Bofors guns all along the, the promenade so we, when we heard them going off but that’s about all there was to it. They didn’t last very long.
AP: What did you think of the civilian population and how they were handling things? Did you —
WG: Oh, it was amazing how they handled it really. A lot of them used to sleep at night under the railway stations in the Underground. London got a, it had done a lot of damage to the buildings and the houses but there were so many people who were spending their nights in, in the underground railway stations. Hundreds of them. They did that week after week. And it was funny when the what they called the buzz bombs they were just a little two stroke engine and a bomb and wings and they’d fly over until they ran out of fuel and then they’d crash. Well, the Hurricanes used to fly alongside them and tip their wing up and turn them out to sea so they crashed out to sea. So they didn’t do that much damage after they realised what they were. But then when the V-2s came along that was a different story because you couldn’t do anything about them. You didn’t know they were there until [pause] and I reckoned we were pretty lucky because we were at the Victoria Station and were about to get into a taxi when this woman for some reason wanted a taxi in a hurry so we said, ‘Take ours. Take it.’ And a V bomb came over just a few seconds later and I reckon we would have been just about where it was. So, as I said lucky we didn’t get that. But there was nothing they could do about them. They were just going too fast.
AP: You said something about a beam approach course.
WG: Eh?
AP: You mentioned something about a beam approach course [coughs] Excuse me, that you did earlier.
WG: Yes.
AP: Flying the beam. How did you do that? Can you remember the process of it?
WG: Well, it was set up for landing when there was a fog on for some reason. Before that they had what they called, well they still had what they called FIDO where they had pipes of oil down the side of the runway and they’d light them. Well, this took over from that and you’d have to find where the runway was for a start but they had different signals for, one side would be dit dit dit and the other side would be da da da but when you, you got on the where it was quiet you knew that’s where the runway was. So you did your circuit around, and you had to have everything accurate. Your rate of descent had to be right any you had to be at a certain distance there. The marker beacon, you had to be seven hundred and fifty feet and your rate of descent had to be accurate or you had a gauge telling you what that was and then had an inner marker which was a different sound again and then, and then a cone of silence which everything went off and you just pulled back on this control tower and you were there which made it very simple.
AP: How often were they used in anger so to speak? I know you trained on them. Did you ever —
WG: No.
AP: Do you know of anyone who —
WG: No. I never knew of anyone that used them.
AP: You have to wonder the point don’t you?
WG: Well, London used to get fogs and —
AP: Yeah.
WG: Their Meteorology was very very good except for one night I remember we were supposed to do a cross country flight and we had to take off north and then we had to come back over the airfield and then and we had to be at about twenty thousand feet. And it, the Met told us that it would be a windspeed of about fifteen or twenty knots but they got it completely wrong because it was over two hundred knots and I can remember it took us over half an hour to fly across the airfield and, and it went on and on and on. I could still see that there was one plane up there and one down just below me and one was just going veering away so I had to make sure I stayed in the middle and hoped to hell they didn’t change. Well, after about an hour I decided that we were never going to be able to finish. We didn’t have fuel enough to get back again so I aborted and went back and the CO told me off ‘til the next morning when the planes were all over the country and they’d all ran out of fuel so he decided I did the right thing which I think I did anyhow.
AP: Was what aircraft were you flying at that point?
WG: Lancaster.
AP: That was a Lancaster [unclear] Cool. Alright, turning to thoughts of leave. You would have got leave in England fairly often. What did you do?
WG: Well, there was [pause] quite often I wouldn’t go on leave. But when I was, before I got a commission there was a what was known as a Victoria Leagues Club where other ranks could go in Vauxhall Bridge Road. It was the Duchess, the Duchess of Devonshire was a patron and you’d pay about two shillings for a bed and your breakfast. But it was only for other ranks and there was, the person who really ran it was an Australian Red Cross girl, Virginia [Herman] and I got to know her very well and quite often I just spent half a day helping her in the office because there was a lot of office work that I could do to help her. But then I got, we got an invitation to, for an evening at the Duchess of Devonshire’s residence in Knightsbridge and so I think that was the Red Cross girl organised it for me and I went out there and that’s, and the present Queen Elizabeth happened to be there. She was in the Land Army. Just an ordinary girl in those days and we had a dance with her and Princess Margaret. Quite a nice night. Something I can remember which not everyone’s had.
AP: That’s quite a good claim to fame actually. I like that one.
WG: But once I became commissioned I wasn’t supposed to go to the Victoria League Club but I kept my old uniform and if I was going on leave I’d go down there because you get sick of London. There’s not a lot you could do there. I wasn’t a great one for going and getting drunk or anything like that. But it’s funny because my wireless operator was a funny little guy. He was only very very little but he was walking down the street in London and there was a couple of New Zealand guys trying to break in to a car. They reckoned they’d lost their keys so Shorty said, ‘Oh, I can get in there for you.’ Just then the police came along and grabbed him [laughs] So he was arrested, spent the night in jail. There was an American guy in there as well and as he was going before the judge he put something in Shorty’s pocket. He didn’t know what it was but when he, he finally, the judge believed what he said and when he put his hand in his pocket there was a brand new watch. So he sold that and got his uniform cleaned.
AP: Ok. Characters. What was your first impression of the Lancaster when you first saw one? What did you think?
WG: I think. Well, I thought it was a marvellous plane. I didn’t realise how good they were but one night we were supposed to go, take off early in the day and went in flying and like the day before, it was summertime and for some reason when we were coming in to try to land everything was just a blur of lights. I’ll never forget it. It was just a blur of lights and the instructor said, he he aborted it, the whole lot and said, ‘The student is showing signs of fatigue.’ But the next night no problem. I don’t know what it was. There was something about it because we had never any trouble flying at night with landing. But with the Wellingtons they were a different story. They were a sleeve valve engine on them and if you throttled back quickly the, it would backfire and the carburettor catch alight. Well, in the daytime you didn’t see it but in the night time you did see it and the only thing to do when that happened you opened the throttles and it sucked it all out. And this guy, I was supposed to take off after him on his first solo flight at night and he’d throttled back and see this sheet of flame they reckoned [he was surrounded going in]. The poor old instructor said, ‘I think we’ll have to shoot him down.’ [laughs] But after four attempts he did come down and landed all right. He took a chance on it but you don’t really see the flame in the day time but at the night time it’s very very visible. It’s something you just have to watch out for.
AP: So the Wellington was a challenging aeroplane then in some ways.
WG: Not really. A lot of people didn’t like them. One of my mates he had to have a certain length leg to be able to put on the full rudder when one engine gave out and he was too short. He started off flying Wirraways in Australia but he, his legs were too short and he couldn’t. He couldn’t handle them. He tried to join Oxfords at Point Cook and did all the things that I did, the beam approach and all that until he got to OTU where he couldn’t, couldn’t handle the Wellington. But they were a very good plane really and they were the first plane that bombed Berlin so, but the only thing I, trouble I had was when I lost height with them. But I never had any trouble landing them ever.
AP: There’s one thing I’m really interested in as well. You said you were at Haverfordwest, I think.
WG: Yeah.
AP: At Haverfordwest. Flying control.
WG: Yeah.
AP: Declaration. I’m an air traffic controller. I’m very interested in your experiences there.
WG: Oh. Well, they were really flying looking for U-boats and that sort of thing and I can remember one day when a Halifax came in. Yeah. A Halifax. And it had been shot up and they’d landed. The undercarriage was blown away. I never, I didn’t think anyone could get out a plane that fast. The whole crew were out. They landed on the grass and the whole crew were out but the plane was still going off down the runway. You can do it if you wanted to. But otherwise it was pretty uneventful. One of the things that I will never forget though was I had to do a couple of nights on pundit duty. Every airfield had a call sign and this pundit duty was an alternator. It had a big diesel engine and it was roaring all night and this thing was going. It was clacking out the three figures for the, to identify the airfield. So, I never got much sleep that time.
AP: So —
WG: There wasn’t much to do though. It was just to make sure that it was alright. Everything didn’t stop. Another time I was on the [pause] controlling on the runway and the guys were supposed to end up being flying, shooting bullets and they had to clear them again before they came in but he didn’t. He was clearing his guns on the runway. Everyone was diving for cover.
AP: So what did the runway control duty involve? What did you actually have to do there?
WG: Well, the control duty was only really if anyone was taking off you had to give them a green light or not. Whichever way. It depended if something was, an obstruction on the runway which could well be they had to stop anyone landing. So you either gave them a green light or a red light.
AP: That was like an aldis.
WG: Yeah.
AP: Yeah. Ok.
WG: And the only thing wrong with the Lancasters if you had to stop before taking off they’d overheat because they depended on the air flowing through to keep them cool. If that happened you had to turn around the other way and rev them up until they cooled down again otherwise they’d blow all their oil out, coolant out which wouldn’t be a good thing.
AP: No. No. Not at all. And did you do much in the watch tower there as well? The control tower.
WG: I was in the control tower for about three weeks. That was before I went on the Navy excursion and after that I was posted to OTU.
AP: So, what can you remember about that control tower? What did it look like?
WG: Oh, it was just up in the air. It was a view windows all the way around and you could see everything that was going on all the way around you.
AP: Who else was in there?
WG: Pardon?
AP: Who else was in the tower?
WG: Oh, who was qualified. Yeah. We were, we were only doing what we were told to do because we didn’t know anything really about it.
AP: What, so what sort of things were you actually doing?
WG: I don’t remember doing anything very special. That night when the chap was calling up Darkie I was on the radio trying to get him but couldn’t do it. That’s the sort of thing we did.
AP: So just an extra pair of hands to fill in.
WG: Yeah.
AP: Get the coffee or whatever [laughs]
WG: Yeah.
AP: Alright. Cool. What did you think as the only Air Force officer on a Navy vessel? That would have been a bit odd.
WG: Pardon?
AP: When, when you were with the Navy what was the —
WG: Oh, I was the most popular guy in the Navy because they gave them a tot, a tot of rum every night and I didn’t drink the stuff. So I was the most popular fella. They all wanted my tot of rum.
AP: And were you, you were just sort of on the bridge there or —
WG: No. No. We, we was just there and if we were needed they’d call up. We didn’t have anything.
AP: Any duties as such.
WG: We didn’t have to do anything.
AP: Yeah. Ok. Alright. We might move on to Waddington. You weren’t there for very long I gather.
WG: Waddington?
AP: At Waddington. Yeah.
WG: No. I wasn’t at Waddington at all.
AP: Ah. Ok.
WG: 463 had been at Waddington but then they turned, they moved to oh what’s the name of the place there? Skellingthorpe.
AP: Skellingthorpe. Alright.
WG: Yeah.
AP: Tell me about Skellingthorpe.
WG: Very basic. Everything was very basic. Waddington was more of a permanent airfield whereas Skellingthorpe was just one that he been built during, just as for the war.
AP: How did you live there?
WG: Oh, we had all the amenities we needed. Had a mess hut. For a long time they used to have what they called high tea. I thought that was a main meal but I found out after that wasn’t a main meal. Once you became a commissioned officer you lived in a different world. You had a, I had a room to myself with a batwoman that came in to do all, all your necessary. Take your laundry or whatever. And they paid her a little bit extra for their meals but their meals were one hundred percent better than the ordinary troops got and one night a week we had a, what was called a dining in night. We had to be there in dress uniform and the CO shouted everyone a glass of port. I missed that for quite a while because I didn’t realise that the high tea wasn’t a main meal although it could well have been.
AP: So —
WG: The meals were much much better than the troops had.
AP: What was a high tea? What was the high tea?
WG: Pardon?
AP: What was the high tea? What did it involve?
WG: Oh, well it was a meal really. You could, could exist on that without any problems. But it was just called high tea. You had a normal meal. Your normal meal.
AP: What was, what other things happened in the mess? Did you get up to any high jinks there or —
WG: Not really. They had a bar but I wasn’t one that did a lot of drinking anyhow. Otherwise, it was just, one experience I’ll never forget was when I was orderly officer you had to go around the camp with the military police. They’d go around with you and they set me up because I was new on the station and there was, you had to check all the lights were all out by 10 o’clock and everyone was supposed to be in bed by 10 o’clock. But we came to this hut where there was a fair bit of noise going on so I opened the door and looked in. There was, this was the WAAFs quarters and this WAAF standing there with nothing on. Just the standard equipment [laughs] I couldn’t get out of there fast enough but the MPs knew what it was. They just set me up.
AP: Very good. Very good. Alright, so the war ended you said when you were on your first essential operation wasn’t it? Was that, did I understand that correctly?
WG: It wasn’t. That was a training flight.
AP: Yeah. Ok.
WG: [unclear] the training flight when Johnnie was listening to music. That was when it ended in Europe. That ended, was the night after when I was with Johnnie Blair and I was his second pilot.
AP: Yeah. And so then at that stage you, so you didn’t actually fly in any operations. Is that, that correct?
WG: No. We were still listed as learning.
AP: Ok.
WG: Yeah.
AP: At that point. Yeah. Alright. Alright. So, someone I, well you’re the first person I’ve spoken to who’s told me about a Cook’s Tour. Can you tell me more about it?
WG: Oh, Cook’s Tour. Yeah. There were a lot of ground staff on every station you were on, and they, they could be radio operators and all sorts of things but they were all WAAFs and we took them. There were two different routes. You flew over a fair bit of Germany, Munich and you crossed to Holland. And I could still remember something that I’ll, I thought I wish I hadn’t done it but we flew down low over the train on the [unclear] line and we flew down low. There was a train and it stopped and everyone [laughs] everyone piled out. Then we waved our wings at them and they all waved back [laughs] That’s something. I shouldn’t have done that.
AP: Wow. So, when you got back to Australia did you have a bit of time or a bit of trouble adjusting back to civilian life again when you got there?
WG: Oh, a lot of trouble. Yeah. Yeah.
AP: What sorts of things happened?
WG: I can still remember the day I was demobbed. I went in there as a flying officer and they made a point of telling me, ‘You’re mister from now on.’ I’d have liked to have stayed in the Air Force really but the way things were at home it just wasn’t practicable. But it took a lot of adjusting to civvy life again.
AP: What did you do after the war?
WG: Oh, my father still had a market garden. We planted an orchard with my brother, an older brother and we had an orchard and grew flowers and I used to do the marketing. Go to Victoria Market in the middle of the night about three, three times a week selling the produce. Couldn’t do it now. It’s a different world. But the old Victoria Market was quite an experience. I remember there was one chap down there he used to have flowers and his name was Eden and he sort of lost his marbles. He went around one day how long you’d be coming in to the market and telling him oh you’ve been here too long, writing me out a cheque. I don’t think anyone ever cashed his cheque. But that, I did a lot of the marketing before during the war before I joined up and it was pretty difficult driving with your headlights blacked out. Headlights were just a slit across and it was pretty hard on a dark night or wet night to see where you were going. I managed to make it all right. Didn’t have any crashes. But I’m glad I’m not doing it now.
AP: We might just jump back a few years again then as well. Most people that I’ve interviewed before the war if they joined up a little bit later they were still at school or something like that but you were actually working.
WG: Yeah.
AP: So as a civilian in Australia how did the war have an effect on your life in the first few years?
WG: Oh, it was just hard settling down to having to make your own decisions about everything because you had to earn a living which in the Air Force it was all [unclear] out. Yesh. Apart from that it was just something you had to get used to.
AP: So, my final question when you look back on your Air Force service what does it mean to you and what does Bomber Command mean and how should it be remembered?
WG: Oh, you’re talking about something I’m glad I did. I’m really, I was pretty proud of what I managed to achieve in the Air Force. I think someone had a guardian angel on my shoulder because if we’d been three months earlier I probably wouldn’t be here now because three months earlier Bomber Command were, their attrition rate was almost one hundred percent. And so we were very lucky. Ron, my mid-upper gunner I didn’t know until after the war that he started off trying to fly Tiger Moths and he couldn’t make it. I don’t know what it was but if he was doing anything he’d always turn to the left. If he was driving a car and he didn’t know where he was he would always turn to the left. And it must have been something to do with that because I never knew anything about that but he finished up a mid-upper gunner. He’s still going too. Shorty was a bit of a troublemaker. We, quite often, we had the living quarters and the mess hut were a long way away from the flight things and we used to all have push bikes and Shorty didn’t have a push bike so he would just take the first one he could find around the place. I can remember when first we got to Winthorpe we didn’t know where, we went into the town, Newark. It was only a few miles down the road. Then there was an, the Air Force had their buses take people into town and bring them back at night and we got back pretty late at night and we thought we knew where we were going and we were, it turned out we were walking through the CO’s tulip patch and the adjutant came out and the CO it was and I could see the moonlight shining on the brass around his hat and I saluted him and did everything right. And he said, ‘Do you know who you’re talking to?’ I said, ‘The commanding officer.’ And Alan Short said ‘Oh, what of it. Have a cigarette.’ And he said to report to the adjutant next morning at 10 o’clock. We thought we know [unclear] he doesn’t know who the hell we are. He knew who we were alright and we went in front of the adjutant the next morning and they called us. We were having lectures and they told us to go and report to the adjutant. They told us off a treat and they reckoned Alan Short was going to be sent home straight away and I said, ‘Well, if he’s going I’m going too.’ After giving us a good dressing down he said ‘Jolly good show.’ [unclear] So that was the end of that and the next day I got my commission.
AP: Oh really. Everything changed.
WG: There was lots of little things happened. Shorty used to, I had an electric iron when I, before I got a commission we all lived in the same hut and he, he’d break in to the butcher’s shop on the way at night time and bring out a steak out or something and cook it on my electric iron [laughs] Do that time and time again. One night the MPs were after him and he was a bit of a ratbag in lots of ways because they’d be looking for him and he’d sing out, ‘Hey, over here.’ And by the time they got there was somewhere else [laughs]. They never caught him. And he, I remember one night he went to the kitchen and he brought back, a lot of the kitchen staff they wore clogs, wooden clogs and he brought these clogs in. So I grabbed him by the curly hair and told him to take them back straight away. Well, he did take them back because they’d be wanting them the next morning because the kitchen, the floors would get wet and normal shoes would slip whereas the clogs they wouldn’t. One Christmas I remember they had a big Christmas dinner and out on this side of the runway they had a big kegs of beer. So, there were a couple of the guys went around to the field, found one that was pretty full so they took it back to the hut and they were drinking beer out of anything at all until Kenneth, the navigator got sick of it and he threw a slipper to the light and put the light out.
[pause]
AP: Any final thoughts?
[pause]
AP: No. Right. Thank you very much, Wal. It’s been an absolute pleasure.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Wal Goodwin
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Adam Purcell
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
2017-06-07
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
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AGoodwinWJ170607, PGoodwinWJ1701
Format
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01:31:39 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Australian Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Wal Goodwin grew up near Melbourne, was conscripted in the Australian Army but was discharged due to his father’s reserved farming occupation. He later volunteered for the Australian Air Force and received his initial training of meteorology, Morse code and semaphore in Sydney, plus basic combat training – including dismantling and reassembling a Bren gun blindfolded. He recalls a march through crowded streets of Sydney. Wal took flying training at Narrandera by Link Trainer and then Tiger Moth but stopped due to tonsillitis. Further training was undertaken at Point Cook on Oxfords. Next, he awaited embarkation to England at the Showground and Melbourne Cricket Ground. Delays ensued, contracting mumps and then, after departing Australia, Italian prisoners of war and Polish female refugees were added to the sailing vessel at Durban, South Africa. In London, Wal saw barrage balloons and the destruction of the Blitz. In Brighton, Wal listened to an accurate broadcast by Lord Haw Haw and undertook an instrument flying course. He assisted in the control tower at Haverfordwest, then transferred to Milford Haven for aircraft identification. Wal’s destroyer accompanied a convoy to Cherbourg following D-Day. Wal crewed up at RAF Moreton in Marsh and converted to Lancasters at RAF Winthorpe before being posted to 463 Squadron. He completed a decoy operation when the war ended. Unable to contact RAF Skellingthorpe, they landed unassisted and returned to a party at the control tower. Wal was invited to a function at the Duchess of Devonshire’s residence in Knightsbridge where he danced with Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. He remembers flying Cooks Tours. On return to Australia, Wal missed comradeship and struggled to adjust to civilian life; working on the family farm despite hoping to remain in the Air Force.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Victoria
Victoria--Melbourne
New South Wales
New South Wales--Narrandera
New South Wales--Sydney
Great Britain
England--Brighton
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Sussex
Wales--Haverfordwest
Wales--Milford Haven
Wales--Pembrokeshire
France
France--Cherbourg
South Africa
South Africa--Durban
Victoria--Point Cook
Victoria
England--Gloucestershire
New South Wales--Wagga Wagga
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
463 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
Cook’s tour
displaced person
Elizabeth II, Queen of Great Britain (1926 - 2022)
Lancaster
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
prisoner of war
propaganda
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Waddington
RAF Winthorpe
Tiger Moth
training
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1166/11731/ATrappSV160405.1.mp3
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Trapp, Sylvia
Sylvia Vera Trapp
S V Trapp
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. An oral history interview with Sylvia Trapp (nee Needham) (b. 1922, 488420 Royal Air Force) and four photographs. She served as a wireless operator in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force at RAF Waddington.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Sylvia Trapp and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2016-04-05
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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.
Identifier
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Trapp, SV
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AM: Ok, so today is Tuesday the 5th of April and this is Annie Moody for the International Bomber Command Centre and today I am with Sylvia Trapp and we are at Sylvia’s home in Mansfield. And Sylvia was a WAAF so we are going to get Sylvia’s story now. And just to start, no, go.
ST: I wasn’t Trapp until the end of the war.
AM: Right, I’ll get your maiden, well, right, you tell me then if we start off with your maiden name.
ST: Needham.
AM: Leedham.
ST: Needham.
AM: Needham. Needham. Ok. And we’ve already got your date of birth so we know that you are ninety four.
ST: Ninety four.
AM: Ninety four and can you tell me where you were born, Sylvia?
ST: I was born in Mansfield, 216 Victoria Street. Mansfield.
AM: Right, there we are. What did your parents do?
ST: My dad was a miner. My mum, before she was married, worked at the Lawn Mills.
AM: Right. And what, did you have brothers or sisters?
ST: I’ve got, I had two brothers and two sisters. My brother, John Thomas was the oldest, and he worked at Hermitage Hosiery factory, on Hermitage Lane. And my next brother Fred, he worked, he was a butcher, [unclear] the butcher on Regents Street and my sister Eirene she worked at the Hermitage Hosiery factory and me, I worked, oh, I went, Hosiery Mills, I was in the sales office [unclear]. But before, the war started, I worked at the Quartex, up Sutton Road, a big hosiery mills that was owned by Germans. And when the war started, they turned it into a munition place.
AM: Right.
ST: And that’s where I worked, yeah.
Am: Where did you go to school?
ST: I went to Moor Lane School and then up to High Oakham School.
AM: And how old would you be when you left?
ST: How old, fifteen when I left.
AM: Fifteen?
ST: Yeah.
AM: Right.
ST: Then I went to work at the hosiery mills.
AM: Yeah. What did you do there?
ST: I was in the quality control.
AM: Right. Checking the stockings.
ST: No, jumpers.
AM: Oh, it was jumpers. Alright.
ST: And I didn’t tell you, the Germans, when the munition came to the Quartex, the Germans were taken away, the boss was taken away and they were on the way to being deported to Canada and the boat was sunk by a U-boat. So after that
AM: But you were there from being fifteen?
ST: I’m trying to think, I
AM: Cause
ST: Yes, I worked at the Quartex from being fifteen. Then when I grew up to twenty I, my brothers had been called up, Tom went first, then Fred, then my sister went and she went into the Air Force and I asked if I could go into the Air Force and they wouldn’t let me. But I did. They wouldn’t let me join my sister where she was, they kept us apart and I went into the Air Force and we had to meet, we had to meet this officer on Nottingham Station and there was about ten of us, all met on the station and they took us down to Innsworth in Gloucester and then we did the basic training and we had to sit these written exams, and everybody was being allocated and then he told me to stand on one side and there was about six of us had to stand on one side, and we kept wandering, what on earth are we going to do? Anyway he came to us and he says, I’ve chosen you because I think I can rely on you. As you know, we are losing men and they are getting very short, and I’m going to put you onto a man’s job, he says, and I put my faith in you, that you will be able to do it. Then we were allocated to, I was sent to Bottesford, was sent to Bottesford and we, no, no, that’s wrong, I was, we were sent to Compton Bassett and we learned all about radio, how to send messages and code words and things like that and we did about five weeks there and then went up to Blackpool to learn the Morse code and I was there from, I can’t remember how long I was there but we learned the Morse code and how to print, you know, the messages and what have ye and after that I was sent to Bottesford and from Bottesford I stayed there for a while and then I was moved to Waddington.
US: You know Bottesford, was that the Bomber Command base? Were you actually on a base?
ST: Yeah. Isn’t it a base now?
US: Bottesford, no, it’s just fields. So, you were actually sent to Bottesford?
ST: Yes.
US: As a wireless
ST: Wireless operator.
US: Operator.
ST: Yeah. You know, Bottesford is not on the map now, then?
US: Well, Bottesford is on the map, but it’s not a Bomber Command base, it’s not an RAF base anymore.
ST: Oh, ok.
US: So, what happened when you got to Bottesford, obviously there were Lancasters or Stirling bombers flying from there.
ST: Ah, there were Stirling, yeah.
US: Stirling. Yeah.
ST: There weren’t Lancasters and then we were sent to Waddington and I think that was, was that an Australian base? I can’t remember. There were Australians.
US: 44 Squadron. Yeah. There could have been Australians there.
ST: Anyway I was there and
AM: Can I ask you about the training. You know when you said you did the training, and first on the radios and the Morse code, what was it like doing that?
ST: Oh, you know, I was a bit, I was really scared going into the Air Force. I’ve never been away from home before in my life and anyway, it was, no, I thought I was determined to prove to him that I could do it so I
AM: I’m on this job.
ST: Yeah. Yeah, I thought, if they can do it, we can do it, sort of thing.
AM: So, what was it like, how did you start to learn how to, the wireless?
ST: Wait, that was down in Compton Bassett.
AM: Compton Bassett, yeah.
ST: Yeah, no, we had classes, we had to march to classes, used to play these [unclear] marches, you know, we marched to class and but they were mixed classes, mixed, and yeah, we, they taught us how to sort radios out and
AM: What do you mean by sort them out? You mean, built them into bits and put them back together?
ST: Yeah, if there was any wires lose to solder them on, you know, we were taught all that and then, I think I can’t remember how long we were there but it must have been weeks. And then once we were able to do that, they sent us up to Blackpool and
AM: Where did you stay in Blackpool? In digs?
ST: Private digs, you know, like boarding houses and she was very strict, we had to be in at ten o’clock at night. Well, you know the ballroom where we used to go dancing and what [unclear] and there was every nationality in the world, out of Europe and everywhere and so
AM: What did you get up to then?
ST: So, we used to take it in turns to, if anybody didn’t go they would unlatch the window down, one of the windows so we would get into the window [laughs] and, yeah, she was very strict she was. But I guess she had to be, you know
AM: Were you all girls in your boarding house?
ST: Yeah, we were all girls. Yes.
AM: What was it, what was the ball dancing like then?
ST: Oh, it was marvellous, you had that many partners when you were dancing, you know. You never did a dance with one person, you were excused and then next one.
AM: They cut in all the time.
ST: Oh, we had a lovely time there, yeah.
AM: What did you, did you have to go in uniform or could you put a dress on?
ST: No, I went in uniform.
AM: In uniform. Smart girls in uniform.
ST: Yeah. I don’t think, I don’t think we were allowed to go in
AM: I don’t know
ST: I can’t remember that. Or perhaps I didn’t have any [layghs]
AM: Maybe not. Did you have to do marching up and down the front? I know the men did.
ST: Yeah, that’s right, yeah. [unclear] uniform. Yeah, we had a great time there.
AM: And you said this was the first time you had been away from home as well.
ST: Yeah. When I was down in Gloucester, I wasn’t the only one who cried all time [laughs] but you could hear everybody crying. You know, cause I suppose we all lived in the same boat and. But then, after Blackpool, I really enjoyed that and I, when we passed our, we had to sit these exams and pass them and
AM: Was it, when you said sitting the exams, was it a written exam or did you have to literally put a radio together and
ST: Oh, we did that, yes. After we’d been taught, we did that, yes. We had to do that. It sort of got into me then, you know, I knew I’d got to do this sort of thing though. That was great.
AM: Did anybody not manage it? Could you not
ST: Yeah, yeah, quite a lot, yeah.
AM: So what happened to them?
ST: They were put to other jobs. Maybe in the cook house or driving or something like that. Yeah, they [unclear] dropped down, yeah. After we, when we got to Blackpool, we learned the Morse, you know, it was, we were there way to go at eight o’clock in the morning, we’d have Morse all day, it was headphones on and in fact when we used to go home on the train, every time I passed a station, I’d been doing it in Morse. I must admit, I began to enjoy life after that, yeah. And then, after, Bottesford, I guess, then Waddington, and then, oh, I know, then I was in the air traffic control, you know, in the air traffic [unclear]
AM: At Waddington.
ST: And there was Canadians, they were all Canadians and the sergeant Canadian in charge said to me one day, I’d like you to come with me, as you are going to learn something new today so we went into this great, this hangar, you know how big hangars are, and they’d fixed up, there was sort of a line, oh, on the floor was a big map of Newark and Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire and the rivers were all in like silver foil and the bush, the trees, they’d made like little trees, so that you looked at the land from up there sort of thing and they’d got this wire going along and this machine, supposed to be the aircraft I should think
AM: In the air.
ST: And as it went over the, they were able to see what they were bombing, if you know, you could [unclear]
AM: Like a bird’s-eye view.
ST: Yes. That’s right, yeah. And that was interesting but there were all aircrew and me and this sergeant, I was, I think I was scared, you know, petrified, cause he asked me to switch something on and I couldn’t move, where is it? I forgot. And, because he’d showed me but I forgot and then this nice young Scottish man came and he did it for me.
AM: I’ll see about the Scottish man in a minute. Just, let’s go back to the beginning of Waddington. How did, so you’ve done your radio training, you’ve done your Morse training, how did they then decide where they were going to send you? Did you just, were you just told where you were going?
ST: We were just told, yeah.
AM: So you were told Waddington.
ST: Yeah.
AM: How did you get to Waddington then?
ST: Do you know, I can’t remember.
AM: No?
ST: I guess they took as there, yeah.
AM: Yeah? And what was it like when you got there? What did you think when you saw it? How did it look like?
ST: Strange. We had to go up a spiral staircase to, you know, up into the air traffic control [unclear].
US: So you operated out of the control tower?
ST: Yeah.
US: Were you actually talking to the bomber crews?
ST: No, no, no. They, as I say, they are all Canadians and
AM: Yeah, describe what you actually did in the tower.
ST: What we did, I just sat at this table with earphones on and received messages and sent messages.
AM: Received them from where? From whom?
ST: From the aircraft.
AM: From the aircraft.
US: So you didn’t [unclear] Morse code?
AM: So you’re receiving the message in Morse
ST: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: And you’re translating it and
ST: I didn’t translate it, I just passed it on.
AM: No. You just passed it on. By radio.
ST: Well, to the sergeant in the room. The sergeant and officers in the room. Mostly it was the sergeant that dealt with us and
US: So the aircraft would send a message back to Waddington in Morse
ST: I would take it down
US: So and the radio operator in the plane is tapping out a message in Morse, which you receive and then it’s passed on to be deciphered. So [unclear] plane
AM: So, did you know what the messages were saying or did you not have time to even think about that?
ST: Not a clue
AM: How long were your shifts? What were the shifts like?
ST: Eight till four. Four till midnight. Midnight till eight.
AM: And what were your digs like?
ST: Oh, we were in a hut, there was about, I don’t’ know, about ten of us I think in this hut, yeah.
AM: All girls.
ST: We had our own bed space and our little cabinet, you know. Yeah.
AM: And what about eating. Where did you eat? Did you eat with the men or were you kept separate?
ST: We were quite good, we were separate, you know when all the ground crew went in, we went separate and we seemed to get nicer meals [laughs].
AM: How many of you would there be in comparison to the men? Ish.
ST: Gosh, well, up in the air traffic control there were just two of us and about six men.
AM: Right.
ST: And I never met anybody else after that, you know, we just, unless you went to the dance at night, when I was on the right shift, we would go to the dance.
AM: Right. Where was the dance?
ST: In the
AM: On the base.
ST: On the base. Yes.
AM: On the base. So, I imagine there were a lot more men than women at the dance.
ST: Oh, hundreds more, yeah.
AM: What was that like?
ST: [unclear] Four of us to the whole base sort of thing.
AM: What was that?
ST: There was the cooks [unclear] everybody.
AM: Yeah. I bet you danced off your feet, weren’t you?
ST: Well, it was lovely, yeah.
AM: It was lovely [laughs].
ST: I had never been to a dancing. [laughs]
AM: And you mentioned to me that you’d actually been in an aircraft, what
ST: We used to climb in to see if, when they came back, if we had to go and check the radio, see that it was [unclear]
AM: When you say we, you girls from the control tower.
ST: Yes. We went, yeah.
AM: So, what was that like then, climbing into a plane [unclear]?
ST: There were no steps, you know, we had, I don’t how I got in, I used to hang onto things that somebody had thrown in [laughs]. I was only about seven stone seven when, you know, I was only little and I could never manage up there. Anyway it was fun and we had fun.
AM: You had fun. So tell me about this Scottish person then.
ST: Oh well, yeah.
AM: From the beginning.
ST: Oh well, we were, oh I told you, we watched this thing work and take pictures
AM: Ok, the bird’s-eye view of the map
ST: And then we were dismissed and we went to the naffy and the sergeant went into the naffy and then this nice young airman came in and said, come and sit with me, would you like a coffee? And I said yes please and he says, come and sit over here with me and that was the beginning of romance [laughs], yeah. We went on the bus into Lincoln and he proposed to me and I bought a ring there and everything. We went to the jewellers and there were no rings there for me, only about three earrings in the whole shop [laughs] but there were a lot
AM: How long did this romance last before you were married? Because he would be going on operations all this time.
ST: Oh yeah.
US: What was his name, Sylvia?
ST: I only knew him six months before
AM: What was his name?
ST: But we were married [unclear] for our fiftieth wedding anniversary. We went to New Zealand and
AM: What was his name?
ST: Harold
AM: Harold
ST: Harold James Trapp. Yeah.
AM: So what was it like then, when you first met him and he got you a coffee and then you went straight to the jewellers, but it must have been a bit in between when you went to dances and stuff like that? What was it like when he was going off on operations?
ST: Ah, not very good.
AM: No?
ST: You used to pray that they came back.
US: Can you remember what squadron he flew with?
ST: [unclear]
US: What did he do on the plane? Was he?
ST: He was a bomb aimer.
US: Bomb aimer.
AM: Was the bomb aimer. But he obviously came through it. If you were married for fifty years.
ST: Yeah. Thank goodness, yeah.
AM: Watched him go out and watched him come back.
ST: Yeah. We used to wait, [unclear] we used to wait for him coming back, yeah [unclear]
AM: So, when did you get married? Did you get married during the war or?
ST: December the 4th 1945.
AM: Alright, so just after the end.
ST: Yeah. 1945, yeah.
AM: How long did you stay in the WAAFs for?
ST: Well, the year after we got married I was expecting [laughs] so I came home. Our daughter was born.
AM: You must have lots of other stories, things that have happened. Come on, let’s hear some of them.
ST: [laughs] well, another thing. They used to, there was a firm from Mansfield that repaired the runways, kept the runways in track. Well, Mansfield was my hometown, so, I got talking to and, I can’t remember, it must be when they went at four o’clock at night, when I was eight till four and I used to get a lift home and then come back with him next morning and [laughs]
AM: Were you allowed to do that or was that a secret?
ST: I don’t think so, no, they didn’t know [laughs]. No, they didn’t know. But it was handy, you know, it was quite handy, I knew they [unclear] went straight to Mansfield, came back the next day and my friend, oh, I had a friend in the hut named Pearl and she used to look after my, you know, if come round
AM: She just [unclear]
ST: She was just standing in for me [laughs]
AM: [laughs] Did you do, another WAAF I talked to, Bassie, she talked to me about everybody about the WAAFs doing each other’s hair and makeup and stuff. Did you do that or were you not into?
ST: I didn’t do it, I didn’t use, you know, we just rolled our hair up and we had to roll it up
AM: Yeah, and [unclear]
ST: Grips [unclear] cause [unclear] straight, you know,
AM: Roll [unclear]
ST: I think [unclear] a lot of makeup in those days. No, I wasn’t into that.
AM: No, Bassie definitely [unclear]
ST: Pearl and I, we used to, perhaps go for a walk, she came from Coalville in Leicester and we were really good friends straight away, you know, and
AM: Was she a radio operator as well?
ST: Yeah.
AM: Yeah.
ST: Yeah. But she was sent to a different place after a while, she was sent to
AM: Were you ad Waddington the whole time?
ST: Yeah.
AM: Yeah. You stayed at Waddington. So you get to know lots of the men and obviously you had [unclear] you get to know lots of the different.
ST: Yeah, yeah, but, you know.
AM: Did you go out with him and his crew?
ST: No, no.
AM: Did you not?
ST: No, I didn’t, no. Cause I say, I kept nipping home to my mum [laughs]
AM: What did your mum and dad thing about having two dancers in one?
ST: My dad died, [unclear] he died, that’s why I kept going home.
AM: Ok.
ST: She liked it when [unclear] but she used to do my washing [unclear] the next time I did [laughs]
US: What happened to your two brothers? You said you had two brothers. Did they?
ST: Oh Gosh, the oldest brother was stationed, he went to India, he went to India, but my
US: In the Royal Air Force.
ST: No, in the army.
US: He was in the army.
ST: He wasn’t fighting, he was
AM: Engineers?
ST: Yeah.
AM: Royal engineers?
ST: And then my younger brother, we never saw him for five years. He just got married because like the dough and he went into the army, he was put into the Essex regiment and he was sent abroad and we never saw him again for five years, never came home, he was in the Eight Army.
US: Right.
ST: And never saw him, he was so different when he came back. Nobody waving [unclear], when he came back he was bald and spoke a different, you know, sort of a different accent.
AM: A different accent. They both did come home, though.
ST: They came back, yeah and she had a baby while he was away. He’d never seen his dad for five years. Never didn’t even
AM: When you said he was away for five years I thought you were going to say he was a prisoner of war. But he wasn’t. He was just far away in the army.
ST: He was in the Eight Army. They just moved them place to place.
US: In the desert, probably in the western desert and then Italy and [unclear]
ST: Yeah. You see
AM: Too far to come back.
ST: Professionals you know, they wouldn’t let them come back, they kept using them until
AM: Yeah.
US: Your sister, was your sister?
ST: My sister? She went near Sheffield and she was a parachute packer [laughs], she was ok, yeah. When she got married, her husband [unclear] and he was sent to Norway fighting, they were fighting in Norway, their regiment, yeah.
AM: Crickey!
ST: So, I don’t know how my mum, I don’t know how she [unclear]
AM: [unclear] especially If your dad had died, early in the war did your dad die? Or did he die before that?
ST: ’36 he died.
AM: So before the war
ST: 1942
AM: But you said he was a miner.
ST: Kidney, kidney trouble.
AM: Yeah.
US: So it was good that your mum had you in Waddington
ST: Yeah,
US: [unclear]
ST: [unclear] that’s why I kept going home
AM: Well to [unclear] four children away,
ST: Yeah.
AM: This was unheard of before the war
ST: Yes it was and she tried to get me to stay at home, she tried to get me out of it and I wouldn’t listen to her.
AM: No.
ST: And then I tried to go with my sister and they wouldn’t let me [unclear]
AM: They wouldn’t let you do that. But all in all you sound like you enjoyed most of it.
ST: Oh, I did, I did. [unclear] different, if I hadn’t gone I was really very shy and never mixed much but that did me good going in the Air Force, it really did, yeah. And I spread my wings, you know, I’ve been everywhere now, so.
AM: Tell me a little bit about what, you met Harold and Harold was in the, a bomb aimer and obviously you got married in 1945 and then you had your [unclear] by having your daughter and what did Harold do at the end? Cause how long was it before he was demobbed?
ST: What was it, he was before he demobbed [unclear]
AM: Yeah, how long, because quite a lot of them went for another [unclear], weren’t they, before demobbing.
ST: He didn’t come out till ’47 because they were bringing VIPs back from Far East, you know. Yeah, they were bringing
AM: Where did you live then, if he was still in the RAF? While he was still there in ’46 and ’47?
ST: Where?
US: Did you go back to your mum’s or?
ST: I went to my mum’s.
AM: You went back to your mum’s.
ST: And then I went up to Scotland to live cause he worked for the electricity board and they were building a big hydroelectric scheme on Loch Lomond and so we moved round to, lived on Loch Lomond side for about three years. And then it was very lonely [unclear] so I wanted to come home to my mum so we got a transfer down to Mansfield, yeah. So
AM: Right. And then, because you were telling me you’ve lived all over the world, how did you end up?
ST: Yeah, the same crew as Harold was Joe Bradshaw, he was a flight engineer, and he was an Irishman, my husband was Scottish and they were buddies, you know, friends, and in fact he was my daughters godfather when she was born but he went back to Ireland, then he went to Canada, he emigrated to Canada and he met a lady there and got married in Canada. And then he worked for a car industry or something and he got a chance for a job down in San Diego in America so he was always saying, why don’t you come over here, this is the land of opportunity, so we did [Laughs]. We, first of all, my daughter went over for a holiday and she met a young man while she was there and she was a schoolteacher she had got [unclear] and she wrote and said, mum, I’m getting married and she came back, gave a notice and went back. So, then we went over to see her in San Diego and a younger daughter and her husband went as well so he liked it in San Diego, so he got, Joe got him a job in San Diego so they went over to San Diego, so I was living, we were living in a little [unclear] there and [unclear] my husband retired, he was sixty five and he said, we may as well go, so we packed up and went. So we were all in San Diego which is, have you ever been there?
AM: No.
ST: Paradise there. I don’t know why I left. And daughter and husband lost his job in San Diego and his mum lived in Burbank near Los Angeles so they went back and then my youngest daughter, he wasn’t getting very much money and he was offered a better job in New Jersey so they went over to New Jersey and we were left in San Diego so then we moved up further up California to Simi Valley, where that’s where my oldest daughter was, up at Simi Valley and we bought a house there and we live there and I’m twenty six years there.
AM: Wonderful. In retirement.
ST: In retirement. It was wonderful.
AM: You sound like you’ve had a lovely life.
ST: Yes, I have.
AM: You have a lovely life.
ST: And it’s while we were in San Diego that it was our fiftieth wedding anniversary and I said to my daughter, we don’t want any, we don’t want a party because all the family is in England. I said, we are going away, we are going by ourselves and we are going on a tour around New Zealand, cause we are doing bus tours, you know. So, we went and booked and we went, well, on December the fourth, that was our wedding anniversary. We got on, this coach, we were on the same bus and there were people from all over, you know, South Africa, Holland, everywhere, on this coach and we got on and everybody started singing happy anniversary to us [laughs]. So I said to the bus driver, how did you know? Cause we never said anything. And he says, a little bird told me that. So I think we went to see those hot things
AM: Springs.
ST: Yeah, hot springs and we went to see them and when we got back and went into the hotel and dinner, dinner was late that night he said, so went down for dinner. When we got into the dining room, it was decorated [unclear] happy anniversary.
AM: Wonderful.
ST: My daughter, my oldest daughter had sent a fax over, cause there were faxes then
AM: Yeah. The emails now, but faxes then.
ST: Sent a fax to the hotel. I don’t know if she sent money but there was the biggest wedding cake, three tier wedding cake and you just couldn’t believe it, [unclear] I just wanted a quiet
AM: A quite wedding
ST: We didn’t want to, no. [file missing] And I hadn’t asked for leave and I got two weeks at the same time and married December the fourth and we travelled, my mum and my sister and me, we travelled up to Glasgow by train which was full of troops, all, you know. It took as about eleven hours to get to Glasgow but when we got to Glasgow we’ve got to get to Gourock to get the ferry over, so we got to Gourock, it was dark, pitch black, not a thing and ferries had stopped running because it was gale, the gale blowing and I thought, what do we do now? So we stood there in the dark and I just didn’t know what to do and this American came over and he said, where are you heading for? I said, Dunoon. He says, I’ll take you. And there was in the Clyde of Dunoon there was a big submarine base, you know, American submarines and some of the crews had gone into Glasgow for a night out and he was, got the liberty boat waiting to take him home [laughs]. He says, I’ll take you across, well, there’s my mum, me and my sister and the gale blowing and we are going up and down, my mother was ever so sick, she says, I’ll never come here again, never again, she said. Anyway, got to Dunoon, and he got a car, they were allowed petrol, you know, and he came and met me, I phoned him and he came and met me. And then I got into trouble for not going to look for a hotel but we couldn’t see, it was pitch black, you know and anyway. Got married on the Tuesday and on the, on the Tuesday, maybe next day, Harold had booked a sleeper down to London, cause Harold’s sister had married a sailor and was living in Portsmouth. So we got on this sleeper and we went down to London but we had two bunks, one on top and then [unclear] me, if two army officers, they come in and [laughs]
AM: So that was your honeymoon.
ST: That was my honeymoon night. I got two army officers, my husband up there and me down here. Anyway we got to his sister’s and my leave was off so I sit down, I’m not going back, I’m not going back, I said. So he says, you’ll have to go back, I said, no, I’m not, you know. Anyway, we got a phone call from his mum and then [unclear] police had gone up to Dunoon for me [laughs]. So, I thought, well, I better go back, I said, I’ll get my husband in trouble, you know, you’ll get worse trouble [unclear]
AM: You were still in at this point.
ST: So, he took me back, he took me, we went back and I thought, oh God, I’m going to go to prison or something [laughs]. Anyway, I went in and it was, commanding officer was a woman and she came round and she put an arm round my shoulder and she says, you know, my dear, I would have done exactly the same [laughs].
AM: Brilliant.
ST: So, apart from having military police after me, I really [unclear] [laughs].
AM: [laughs], so, but all the way up to Dunoon?
ST: Yeah.
AM: Which is a long way [unclear] west coast of Scotland. And all the way back to Portsmouth.
ST: Yeah.
AM: Crickey! I knew there were stories in you.
ST: [laughs] you didn’t care in those days, did you? It could have been his last leave.
AM: He’d gone through the war, yeah, and he was still flying.
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 Sylvia Trapp
Creator
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Annie Moody
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-05
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ATrappSV160405
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:38:17 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Sylvia was born in Mansfield where her father was a miner and her mother had worked at Lawns Mills. She had two brothers and a sister. Sylvia was 15 when she left school to work at the hosiery mills and recalls the German manager being deported. She joined the WAAF and completed basic training at RAF Innesworth. Away from home for the first time, she cried a lot.
She was selected for wireless training and trained at RAF Compton Bassett and Blackpool, where she used to go dancing. As a wireless operator Sylvia was posted to RAF Bottesford and then RAF Waddington, working shifts in the Air Traffic Control tower. She also had to check the aircraft radios.
Sylvia's accommodation hut had ten beds and on many evenings, she was able to get a lift home to Mansfield and back with a contractor. At RAF Waddington, she met and fell in love with Harold, a bomb aimer and says it was hard to watch him depart on operations. But he survived and they married when the war ended and they had two daughters.
In 1947 the family moved to Scotland for three years but Sylvia found it very lonely so Harold transferred to Mansfield.
Harold's flight engineer emigrated to North America after the war and was always suggesting they do the same. Sylvia's daughters both went first and then, when Harold retired, he and Sylvia went to California
Sylvia says they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in New Zealand and then recalls how she had spent her honeymoon on a train to Glasgow with two army men, before travelling all the way down to Portsmouth, where she became absent without leave. Worried that she might be imprisoned, she returned to RAF Waddington where her WAAF commanding officer took sympathy on her.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Andy Fitter
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Gloucestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Wiltshire
England--Mansfield
Scotland
Scotland--Loch Lomond
United States
California
California--San Diego
California--Simi Valley
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1945-12-04
1946
1947
Absent Without Leave
aircrew
ground personnel
love and romance
military living conditions
military service conditions
RAF Bottesford
RAF Compton Bassett
RAF Innesworth
RAF Waddington
training
wireless operator
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1158/11717/PThorpJF1601.2.jpg
ff1f3350206f6261bc6dec0c3a9ef84c
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1158/11717/AThorpJF160412.1.mp3
fd9fa4392a3c236f3815a3bff1903dc9
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
Thorp, John Foster
J F Thorp
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer John Foster Thorp (1924 - 2018, 1623333 Royal Air Force), a list of his operations, a page from a log book and notes on 467 Squadron and Lancaster R5868. He flew completed a tour of operations as a rear gunner with 467 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-12
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Thorp, JF
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 John Foster Thorp of 467 Squadron at his home in Bamford, Rochdale at half past one on Tuesday the 12th April 2016. Also present with us are his eldest son Derek and his wife Betty. Warrant Officer Foster, excuse me, Warrant Officer Thorp if you can just describe for us please your family set up. Where you were born and grew up? How many people in your family? Please.
JT: Yes. I was born in Manchester and I grew up in Manchester. In Higher Blackley mainly. And I was there until I was eighteen years of age at which point I went into the RAF.
BW: Was there only you in the family? Did you have any brothers and sisters?
JT: I have. I had one sister. She’s now deceased. But no brothers. No.
BW: And where did you, whereabouts did you go to school?
JT: I went to the local school first until I was fourteen. Sorry. The local school until I was ten. And then I went to North Manchester Grammar School, Chain Bar, Moston. And I left there in September 1939 when the war broke out and the school was evacuated but my father wouldn’t let me be evacuated.
BW: And so you stayed in —
JT: So I stayed at home. And when I became seventeen years of age I joined the local Home Guard which gave me some insight into military training.
BW: And did your sister remain at home at the same, same time? She wasn’t evacuated either or did, did she leave?
JT: She was in a different school.
BW: I see.
JT: So — yeah.
BW: And what prompted you to join the Home Guard at first? Why? Why them?
JT: Just to be military I suppose and wear a uniform. My father was in the ’14/’18 war, in the army and he told me, ‘Don’t go in the army,’ he said, ‘When you’re eighteen.’ So I, I had visions like most eighteen year olds of flying a Spitfire. So, I went to the RAF station, RAF recruiting office in Manchester and volunteered for pilot training. I was accepted. I eventually had to go to Cardington in Bedfordshire to have the aircrew medical and written examination. And then I was waiting then. I was on deferred service until I became a full age for military service. That’s turning eighteen. And, when was it? September 1942 I was called up to the RAF. And they, they had a general course for pilots, navigators and bomb aimers. They called it the PNB Scheme. And you took a general course in navigation, elementary navigation, meteorology, signalling, Morse code and RAF law. And other odds. Engines. Engines. And I did that initial training at Scarborough, Yorkshire.
BW: How long were you there?
JT: About four months I think it was. And then from there I went up to Scone in Scotland, near Perth, where there was a flying, flying school.
[recording interrupted]
BW: So, just to pick up we were, we were saying that you joined the Home Guard and been selected for pilot training and that you’d then completed your initial training and been posted back to Heaton Park. Coincidentally just a mile away from where your parents actually lived.
JT: Yeah.
BW: And your home was in Manchester. So, you were waiting there for your name to come up on a, on a list to either be sent out to Canada, South Africa or where ever.
JT: Further training. Yes. That’s right. And while I was at Heaton Park we used to have a morning parade and a roll call to make sure nobody had buzzed off home with being so frustrated waiting at the, at the — [pause] And so, one morning at the morning parade the person in charge of us said a course had been started for air gunners. And if anybody would like to volunteer to go on to this course then report to the office. So, like a lot of others, they wanted three hundred volunteers and they got over two hundred for these. You see, the point was that Lancasters, Stirlings, Halifaxes carried two gunners and they needed, so they needed more gunners than that. Than any other trade. And so I went and volunteered for air gunner and I was posted to Andreas in the Isle of Man. And there was one of two, one of three airfield on the Isle of Man. There was Andreas was the gunnery school, Jurby was bomb aimer’s and the Royal Navy had taken over Douglas Airport for their, training their Fleet Air Arm people.
BW: Where? What was the first base called?
JT: Andreas.
BW: Andreas?
JT: Andreas. A N D R E A S.
BW: Ok. And that was specifically for air gunnery was it?
JT: Air gunnery training. Yes. Yes. Used to go up on an, in an Avro Anson which had an upper turret and about six of you would go up with the pilot and then an aircraft would come along towing a drogue and you fired from the turret at this drogue. And then when they dropped the drogue on the airfield when you’d finished the exercise they counted the number of holes. And there was six of us firing at it so they divided it by six and that was your score. So, whether you’d hit it or whether you peppered it, you know.
BW: Yeah.
JT: That was the way they worked it.
BW: Nowadays they use, they use coloured paint on the, on the bullets but they didn’t then.
JT: No. No.
BW: They just — right.
JT: So —
BW: This is interesting because at this time in your life you’ve joined the Home Guard. You volunteered for pilot training. You’d been accepted as a pilot.
JT: Yeah.
BW: As you say in your view you were going to fly Spitfires.
JT: I wanted to.
BW: What, what changed in your mind to go for air gunner? What, why the change from pilot?
JT: Frustration.
BW: Simple as that.
JT: Frustration. Not making progress. And that was what it really was. And the same with a lot of other people. And so I passed out on the basis of the number of shots in the, in the drogue. I passed out as an air gunner. As a, they gave me the rank of sergeant and the wing. I got my AG wing. And I was then posted to Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire which was a base where pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, radio operators and so on came there and they formed into crews. And what happened with the pilot this was the, of course the skipper of the crew and he used to be wondering around with a piece of paper and a pencil and he’d go up to a person and say, ‘Have you got a crew yet?’ ‘No sir.’ ‘Would you like to go in my crew?’ Well, an Australian, an Australian flying officer. Flying officer rank pilot said to me, ‘Would you like to join my crew?’ So, I said, ‘Yes. Yes.’ He seemed a nice fellow and I said, ‘I’ll join your crew.’ So he said, ‘First of all, before you definitely decide,’ he said, ‘I’m on retraining because I had a crash and my bomb aimer was killed. We were flying in a Wellington and one engine cut out’. The Wellington didn’t fly very well on one engine and that’s why he crashed. And so I said to him, ‘Well,’ I said, ‘Everybody is allowed one crash.’ So, I said, ‘I’ll join you.’ And I never regretted it. He was a smashing fellow. He was about, I think he was thirty years of age. Which was getting old in flying ranks you know, really. And he said, ‘Come on then. Now you’ve joined me,’ he said, ‘What’s your name?’ So I said, ‘John.’ ‘Right, Johnny.’ And I was Johnny from then on, ‘And, I’ll introduce you to the, I’ll introduce you to the crew. The other members of the crew,’ he said, ‘I’ve been looking for a rear gunner,’ he said, ‘And that’s the final one I wanted.’ So, I said, ‘Ok.’ And there was Herby Phillips the navigator, Canadian. Eric Clem was the mid-upper gunner. Poor Eric never, he didn’t last the war. He was killed. And then there was [pause] do you want the names if I can remember them? There’s Herby Phillips —
BW: Yeah.
JT: Who was the navigator. Canadian.
BW: Eric Clem was the Aussie.
JT: Pardon?
BW: Eric Clem was an Aussie. Is that right?
JT: Eric Clem was an Aussie. Yes. Eric. Yes.
DT: He was your mate wasn’t he?
JT: Pardon?
DT: Eric was your mate.
JT: Can you throw me that red book? That red book off there please.
DT: Yeah.
JT: I made a list of it the other day and — thank you very much.
BW: Was your pilot called MacLaughlin?
JT: David MacLaughlin was the pilot and when he introduced himself he said, ‘My name is David MacLaughlin,’ he said, ‘While we’re flying you call me skipper. But all other times it’s Mac.’ Showing the lack of rank. Not pulling rank you see. So, anyhow, oh dear. I damaged it [pages turning]
DT: Do you want to carry on talking dad?
JT: Here we are.
DT: And I’ll have a look for you.
JT: There we are, Derek.
DT: You’ve got it.
JT: David MacLaughlin pilot. Aussie. Herbert Phillips — navigator. He was Canadian Air Force. The bomb aimer I could never, I can’t remember his name. He was rather a fellow who didn’t mix very well.
BW: Was it Craven? Does that sound familiar? Craven.
JT: Yeah. It does. George Craven was it? Have you got a list of them somewhere? [laughs] Albert Smith, the radio operator. He was from the northeast of England. Reg Hodgkinson was the engineer. He was, he was from Warrington. Eric Clem was the mid-upper gunner. Australian. And myself then. Rear gunner.
DT: Didn’t you start out with another mid-upper?
JT: Pardon?
DT: You started out with another mid-upper gunner didn’t you but he wasn’t able to — ?
JT: Well, we had one. A Canadian. But he couldn’t, he couldn’t stand altitude flying. He used to pass out if he got up to altitude. So that’s when —
BW: And so you swapped him, did you?
JT: Pardon?
BW: You swapped him, did you?
JT: We swapped him. Yeah. Yeah.
DT: It was, was it his skull? His skull hadn’t closed up properly.
JT: That’s right. Yeah.
DT: And there was a hole in the middle of his skull. And when he went up to altitude he passed out. So he was —
JT: Medical problem.
DT: Medical. Yeah.
BW: Wow.
JT: He was a Canadian.
BW: And George Craven. Was he an Aussie or was he, was he British?
JT: George Craven. He was an Aussie. Yeah. But Eric Clem, I said he didn’t last the war. He, he’d done, he did twenty ops with us. Twenty trips with us. Eric. And then he was taken ill with tonsillitis. Went into the sick bay and when he came out he didn’t re-join our crew. And he joined another crew and went, he went to Stuttgart and didn’t, they didn’t come back. He was my room-mate actually. We shared a room. He was a very special little chap. He was twenty nine years of age which was getting on for aircrew really.
BW: Where did you live with the crew? Were you in a Nissen hut or were you in married quarters on the station?
JT: At Waddington? Waddington. Well, it was, was a peacetime base so they had proper built up accommodation over the sergeant’s mess. There’s accommodation for sergeants and like I say I shared a room with Eric until he was killed.
BW: And at this time, you, you’ve met the crew at Upper Heyford and you then were posted as a crew to 467 Squadron at Waddington.
JT: Well, well at first we were at Upper Heyford. We were flying Wellingtons in training. Crew getting, crew getting used to being a crew. Crew training.
BW: What did you think of Wellingtons?
JT: They were alright. Good solid aircraft. Yes. A bit heavy and all that but we didn’t fly in them operationally. It was purely cross-country flying. Bombing practice and things like that. Just straight general training. And then we went from there to Stirlings to swap on to four-engined mark types. Be on four engines then. And that’s where we picked up a navigator - flight engineer. And then from Stirlings we went on to Lancasters. Just a short session. Conversion on to Lancasters and then from there to Waddington.
BW: And do you recall the Conversion Unit where you flew Lancasters?
JT: Was it Wigsley? Was it Wigsley? I’m not sure. I thought it was Wigsley. We went around a bit. No. That was Stirlings. Not Syerston were it? [pages turning]
BW: But as you say you weren’t flying operations at this time. You were just learning to work together as a crew.
JT: To knit together as a crew. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody was still being trained to some extent. Syerston.
BW: I see.
JT: Syerston. That’s where we converted on to Lancasters.
BW: And how long was your course there? How long was your course there? Do you know?
JT: Syerston? Was about a fortnight. Three weeks. It was purely getting used to that type. I mean we’d converted from Wellingtons on to Stirlings for multi-engine. Four engines. And then we’d gone from Stirlings then on to Lancaster conversion because Lancasters were in short supply, you know. Being they were building up the Lancaster force on Bomber Command.
BW: So, so what time, what sort of stage of the war was this? Was this ’41, ’42? Or —
JT: That was in April 1944. That was before D-Day that was of course.
BW: And how did you rate the Stirling aircraft? How did you find them?
JT: It was fairly solid but it was a bit cumbersome. Lumbered along you know. And the thing that struck me really was I was, I was airborne before everybody else because it was quite a long fuselage. They put the tail up to keep the nose down while, while they’re going down the runway and I’m up in the air and everybody else is down on the ground.
BW: And so when you moved then to Waddington to join 467 and start on Lancasters what was your, your impression then? What was the feeling between you and the crew about getting on to Lancasters? Was it like moving from a biplane to a Spitfire? Or was it —
JT: No. From my point of view it was always the same because it was just a turret. Flying in a turret, you see. More and more different for the pilot really and the engineer and that. But from my point of view I just sat in the turret there.
BW: Did the aircraft itself feel different? Lancasters are notoriously cramped.
JT: Yes. It was a comfortable aircraft to fly in. Yes.
BW: You found it comfortable.
JT: Yeah. Found it comfortable. Yes.
BW: And you joined in April ’44. I suppose a similar time of year to what we’re in now but this is in the run up to D-Day which we know now.
JT: Yeah.
BW: Did you sense anything about the coming invasion? Invasion.
JT: No. Not really. What happened, there was a tannoy, you know. The tannoy loudspeaker system around the airfield and there was a tannoy message went out, ‘Will all crews of 467 Squadron report to the briefing room.’ That was one afternoon. And the commanding officer of the squadron told us that, they didn’t say it was D-Day of course because it was still secret then so much but he said, ‘You may be called for an early morning flight. Operation. So, get in to, get, get to bed early tonight and make sure you fully sleep.’ Slept like you see. And about 3 o’clock in the morning there was a hammering on the door and [unclear] much shouting on the corridor. People were being sent to waken all the crews up. And Eric and I got up, got dressed went down to the mess. Had a meal. The usual meal of bacon and egg and all that kind of thing. And, and then from there out to briefing and then we went out to the aircraft. And the thing we noticed as we were going out to the aircraft was they’d painted black and white stripes underneath the wings for recognition purposes. And we, we took off on D-Day morning about, I think it was about 3 or, about 3 o’clock in the morning or something like that. June the 6th [pause pages turning] D-Day. Excuse me. A bit slow.
BW: That’s alright.
DT: You’d done a few ops before then hadn’t you dad?
JT: Pardon?
DT: You’d done a few ops before then hadn’t you?
JT: What? Before D-Day?
DT: D-Day wasn’t your first.
JT: Oh, we’d only done a few before D-Day. Yeah. 2.40. Take off 2.40. St Pierre du Mont in France. That was 2.40 in the morning. And D-Day was quite a thing with us because we went, we went out at like I say 3 o’clock in the morning and as we were flying over, coming back, flying over the Channel — over the Channel there was a vast armada of ships going out. They were going to the landings. And I was going to say about them [pause] anyhow [pause] we flew back, we flew back to our base and they told us then that the D-Day landings, the landings had taken place. And, and again in the afternoon he said you’d be wanted again this evening for a flight. And that was midnight. Now, this was an interesting day. At midnight on D-day. And we took off and of course the Germans always anticipated that the invasion would take place from Dover to Calais. The shortest distance. And they’d stationed a lot of armour and troops south of Calais ready to repel the invasion but it came — it never came. And, so, we, we were detailed on that night of D-Day to bomb some railway, railway tracks. To stop this armour and these troops being transferred from south of Calais, taken over to, to Normandy to, to attack the British forces you see. Anyhow, as we rolled out about, just about midnight almost. Queued up to go on to the runway and then eventually our turn came. We went on the runway. We started, charged up the runway. We were about three quarters of the way along and heard a very loud bang like an explosion. Mac, Mac, in his Aussie twang said, ‘What the bloody hell was that?’ [laughs] And of course nobody knew. Anyway, he pulled it off the ground. We were about three quarters of the way down the runway so we couldn’t, couldn’t stop. We were too far. So, he pulled it off the ground and we carried on and after a few minutes he said there was no, whatever it was it hadn’t affected our controls. So, and the flight engineer said the engine readings are normal. So, Mac said, ‘Ok. We’ll carry on.’ And we carried on, we bombed and we started back and as we crossed the south coast Mac radioed to base and told them we’d got this. Oh no, sorry, before we got to there, as we got to the Channel Mac said, ‘We’d better check the undercarriage,’ and as the wheel went down a big black object flew past my turret. And the engineer looked out. He said, ‘We’ve lost our starboard tyre.’ That big bang was a tyre bursting as we were taking off. So Skip, Mac radioed base at Waddington and told them that we were having this problem. And another thing was as we were heading down towards, towards Waddington we got a constant speed unit in the propeller, in the propeller was, went faulty and we had to shut an engine down. So we were on three engines then. Anyhow, that was on the way to Woodbridge in Suffolk where there was an emergency landing place with a big runway and such. They were kitted out with ambulances and fire engines and all sorts there ready for emergency landings. And so I thought well how was Mac going to get this down, you know, with only one wheel? Anyhow, he went in. He kept this wing up with the dovetail, with the bad wheel and he landed on one wheel and the tail wheel and rolled down the runway and gradually, as we lost speed this wing dropped and the hub that was left after the tyre had gone, the hub hit the ground and we spun around and off the field. Off the strip on to the grass at the side. So, it was a marvellous bit of flying really. To fly a big aircraft like that on one wheel. Yes. So that was D-Day night.
BW: And so you didn’t, you didn’t get out to the target in France? You had to divert before you got there. Is that right? Or did you —
JT: Yeah. No. No. We got to the target. We bombed.
BW: You got to the target. Bombed the target.
JT: And on the way back but we didn’t, we didn’t know what the problem was then. It was only when we started on the way back and we started thinking about what was it? This noise and all that. And Mac put the wheels down and the engineer told us that we’d lost our starboard tyre. So, that was when we first knew about it.
BW: And did you get to find out how successful your attack on the target had been after all that?
JT: Sorry?
BW: Did the, did you get to find out how successful your attack on the target had been after all that?
JT: No. We never did. No. You’d usually get an aiming point photo. They had this, the camera and it was geared up with the bomb, bomb release and it switched, switched on when the, when your bombs had landed. And it should show your bombs. The effect of your bombs. A little camera.
BW: And this aircraft you were flying in at the time, I believe it was S Sugar. Is that right?
JT: Pardon?
BW: I believe the aircraft you were flying in at the time was S Sugar. Is that right?
JT: No. We flew in S for Sugar on our first operational flight.
BW: Just your first one.
JT: First one. June. 28th of May I think it was.
BW: Yeah.
JT: It was S for Sugar.
BT: Handy that log book, isn’t it?
JT: Hmmn?
BT: Handy that log book.
JT: Yes.
BT: Are you looking for something?
JT: July. May. June. What were we talking about? It’s got a W. It wasn’t W. That’s [pause]
BW: Yeah. So that, that’s your first, your first trip.
JT: Well, that was a special exercise, that was a —
BW: But then after that the aircraft you were in on D-Day wasn’t S Sugar then was it? It was, it was another one.
JT: Not D-Day. No.
BW: But that first one you flew in went on to be a well-known Lancaster didn’t it?
JT: It is. It’s, I’ll tell you something about that a bit more [pause] Oh yeah. There. 28th of the May. S for Sugar. 28th of May that.
BW: That’s it. Yeah. Bombing Cherbourg.
JT: Cherbourg. That’s it. So, actually it wasn’t our first. Yes. It was, it would be our first op that. First op because that was a special exercise. That was a special exercise when we flew in it. It was something to do with the radar check on something. And that’s our first trip. That was S for Sugar. Divert a little.
BW: And these are photos that you’ve got of the aircraft in the RAF Museum at Hendon. Is that right?
JT: These. No. No. No, these are Derek’s.
DT: My daughter.
JT: Two grandsons.
DT: My daughter and her husband and my grandsons went down to Hendon.
BW: I see.
DT: A few —
JT: Went down there and —
DT: Well, a few months ago and they took a load of photographs because of my dad’s association with it. They made a little booklet up for him and —
BW: Right.
JT: They allowed them, they allowed them in the prohibited area didn’t they?
DT: Yeah. They did. Yeah.
BW: Yeah. Well, that’s good of them.
JT: There they are.
BW: Yeah. That’s them in front of your turret.
JT: Yeah.
BW: And have you been to the same aircraft in Hendon? Have you seen it yourself?
JT: Well, I’ve been there a couple of times. Yes, and introduced myself. And they sent a young lad, a young chap with us who was on the section and he said he could he could take you to the aircraft. He took us down there and he undid the door and let us climb in. He said, ‘I can’t,’ he said, ‘I don’t know a lot about it,’ he said, ‘Because I’ve only just come on this section. So, I can’t tell you a lot about the Lancaster.’ I said, ‘Well I’ll tell you shall I?’ [laughs]
DT: Is that when you said it didn’t smell the same?
JT: Pardon?
DT: It didn’t smell the same.
JT: No. No. That was one thing that struck me was the smell. And then I realised a long time afterwards that there was no fuel in it, you see. It was an exhibition piece. There was no fuel in it for precautions. Safety precautions. So the aircraft didn’t smell the same [laughs]
BW: And when you were going on ops it presumably had a heavy smell of fuel in it.
JT: Oh yes. Yeah. Well, it always did when you were going on ops or not, you know. You could always smell the aircraft. Yeah.
BW: And when you were preparing for these early trips what sort of things did you have to do? What, what were you doing yourself to prepare for the, for the operations?
JT: Well, of course you had, you had your meal first and you were waited on by WAAFs. They volunteered to wait on us. A courtesy measure, you know for the lads that were going on ops. And anyhow then you went to, along to the, one of the hangars and they got to give you your flying rations. Which were boiled, a packet of boiled sweets, packets of chewing gum and [pause] what else was there? Boiled sweets, chewing gum, oh a block of chocolate. And depending on how, how long the flight was going to be depended on when you got two bags of chocolate [laughs] And then you went and picked up your parachute. You’d already picked up your flying gear from your locker and you picked up your parachute from the parachute store. And then you’d go out to the crew bus and they’d take you out to the aircraft. And that was the only preparation we did really. Picking up stuff we needed. Yeah.
BW: Did you attend the briefing with the rest of the crew?
JT: Oh yes. Yes. Oh yes. They had a long table. A long, you know, a collapsible table and benches, seat, chairs. And each crew used to gather around a table and the navigator usually had a map in front of him and he was already working on a flight plan. Yeah.
BW: And when you see it in films, where they unveil a map on a wall, was that the same kind of thing or different?
JT: Yes. Yes. Sometimes. I mean, once everybody was in they shut the door, the blinds were down and everything and then there was a map on the wall with a tape, a red tape going from your base down to where ever the target was. And the squadron commander would give, first give a chat about what the target was for and why it was picked for a target. What was being done there. Aircraft production or bombs or whatever. And then of course the Met officer. The meteorological officer would then give the weather report for the flight. What it was expected to be like over the target. Clear or not and, and what it would be like when you came back. And diversions. Possibly diversions if, if your airfield was fogged out. Of course Lincolnshire. You got quite a bit of mist in Lincolnshire. And you had to perhaps plan to be away from home when you come back.
BW: Most of your targets at this time are over France in preparation for D-Day. Did you get to fly over Germany at all?
JT: Oh yes. Yes. I’ve never logged precisely how many of each. Each way. But —
BW: Was there a difference in the operation between targets in France and Germany? Did you, did you feel one was more dangerous than the other? Or one was easier than the other?
JT: Well, Germany was obviously — particularly in what they called the Ruhr Valley. That, that was a bad place to go. And I can’t think what we used to call it now but I mean we were at Cherbourg, France which is only just on the coast you see. It isn’t so bad. We did one flight to Königsberg on the Baltic and the actual time was ten hours or something like that. So, it was a long flight. Down Stuttgart. That was where Eric was killed. But this wasn’t, he wasn’t on this flight. That was a eight hour. Eight hours. You notice, you notice the writing changes because Mac, the pilot’s, captain, the crew captain used to collect all the logbooks for his crew and he used to mess about with the logbook, you see. And Mac said to me, ‘You’re not putting enough information on. I’ll keep your logbook for you in the future.’ And that’s why. Why the writing changes.
BW: I see. So —
JT: I just used to put Ops — [unclear] Ops — St Pierre du Mont and then, but Mac put all sorts of, these sort of things down,
BW: What has he put on that one?
JT: Which one?
BW: What has he put on this one?
JT: “Ops Rennes. Landed at Skellingthorpe. Diversion was unsuitable.” Skellingthorpe was next door to our base. Next door to Waddington. There was Skellingthorpe, Bardney and Waddington were in a little group. That says, “Landed at Skellingthorpe.” It must have been fog. So, we were diverted there. I think we did about a third were German and the remainder were France because it would be about D-Day. Around about D-Day of course when we were very much involved in things. Königsberg, East Prussia. Ten hour fifty.
BW: And on such long trips like that how did you keep yourself occupied?
JT: Keeping my eyes open [laughs]. That was important. Yeah. Keep a look out you know. At night time of course. I remember one instance we were on a daylight operation actually. We were flying along and we were coming back and another aircraft just in front of us like that and I saw a Junkers 88. A fighter, German fighter, the 188 which had radar on the nose. And we were flying along and I saw this 188 so I told the skipper like, I said, ‘Junkers 88 starboard quarter. Starboard quarter level.’ So far, such a range. I forgot what it was now and so he said, ‘Keep your eye on it.’ Anyhow, the mid-upper gunner said, ‘I think he’s creeping up on this other Lancaster. And they don’t seem aware that he’s there. He’s coming up on them.’ I said, ‘Shall I fire a burst at him?’ So, the bomb aimer was a bit, you know. The bomb aimer said, George, he said, ‘No. No,’ he said, ‘Don’t you fire at him,’ he said, ‘He may come and turn on to us.’ I said, ‘Well we can’t sit here and watch. And watch him shoot that fellow down can we?’ I said, ‘Let’s give him a warning shot.’ And that’s what I did. Skipper said, ‘Yes. Go ahead.’ So, I gave a warning shot at this Junkers 88. And then the rear gunner of this other aircraft then opened up. And our mid-upper opened and he just dived away. The 88. And so then it was where had he gone to? Had he come around or was he coming around the other side. Where was he? Was he going to be a bit spiteful at us depriving him of his target? But we got away with it.
BW: And the other aircraft remained unscathed as well.
JT: Oh yes. Yeah. Yes.
BW: And when you fired that burst what, what sort of guns are you firing? Are they the 303s or did they change to the .5s at this time?
JT: The 303 Brownings. Four. Four 303 Brownings. And they were [pause] Yeah.
BW: How did you rate them? Did you find them effective weapons?
JT: Yes. Yes. I mean when I fired at this 88 I could see my bullets striking his [pause] they had the port. The port engines. They call it covers. Striking the cowlings on the, on the starboard. On the port engine. But how effective it was I don’t know. It didn’t shoot him down.
BW: But it winged him.
JT: Yes. It frightened him off perhaps.
BW: And was that the only time that you fired your guns at a target?
JT: No.
BW: Or did you get opportunity to use them on other occasions?
JT: Well, had one or two pops off at different ones. But we weren’t, we weren’t really, I wouldn’t say attacked. We were never attacked by a fighter. I got the impression if you fired at them and showed them that you were awake they went off. They weren’t interested. Yeah.
BW: So, just coming back to the start of a mission. When you get in to the aircraft to get into your turret what sort of actions are you going through then? What do you do to settle yourself into the turret?
JT: Well, just get in. Check the gunsight is lit up and of course plug into your intercom so that you’re in communication with the skipper and others. Couple up to the oxygen system. And you’re sitting on, in the latter part you were sitting on a parachute as a cushion of course.
BW: A seat pack.
JT: Yeah. A pilot, a pilot’s type pack they called it. Meaning the other one is the observer pack they called it. That was the one with the chest. Chest pack.
BW: But when you were carrying your ‘chute you had the seat pack. You, you sat on your chute. You didn’t stow it.
JT: Sat on it. Yes. Sat on the parachute. That was an advantage being in the rear turret really because if you had to bale out you turned the turret on the beam so that you were facing that way as you were going along this way say. Open the doors behind you, uncouple your, your plugs and pick your knees up and roll out backwards. And you sit on your parachute. So it was an easy place to get out of. Safest place. Safer than the mid-upper. I wouldn’t have liked sitting on the mid-upper turret.
BW: Did you ever, you never swapped positions?
JT: No. No.
BW: Or flew in that position at all.
JT: I didn’t want to.
BW: You stayed purely rear turret.
JT: No. As a mid-upper he’d got to come down out of from his turret. Down the roof of the bomb bay. Down on to the back. Back end. And then turn to the door, open the door. And if the aeroplane was going like that that, you know it was a bit of a job.
BW: But you never had to bale out.
JT: Oh no. No. I got it planned in my mind. I knew just what I would do.
BW: And what did you, what was your plan if you had to bale out?
JT: To bale out? Well like I say —
BW: You would turn the turret around and bale out but did you, did your plan extend to what you would do on the ground once you were down there?
JT: No. Well, some of the lectures you had were on escape procedures and all that kind of thing. To try and get what they called a home run. You’ve been aware of all this haven’t you? What’s your connection with the RAF?
BW: Me personally? I, I had a couple of years in pilot training in the mid-80s but it was, well for me personally, I was nineteen, twenty years old and, you know flying a jet at that age was ultimately not something I was cut out for so, you know, I left. But in the same manner that that you were briefed on escape and evasion procedures we had as well. And we had exercises in the country about things, you know. You were briefed on what you could expect. And of course flying over enemy territory you had escape kit as well, didn’t you? You had things like silk handkerchiefs with maps on them.
JT: Oh yeah. Yes.
BW: Compass in buttons and things like that.
JT: That’s right. A compass. Two buttons. Two buttons. You’d cut them off and one had a little pin in it like that in the middle and a dimple in the top one and that was, made a little compass in those. Yes.
BW: Thankfully you never had to use them.
JT: No.
BW: You had a good pilot who got you back every time.
JT: Oh yes. Got me back. Oh yes. He was a good pilot.
BW: You said you got on pretty well as a crew altogether.
JT: Hmmn?
BW: You said you got on pretty well as a crew altogether.
JT: Oh yeah. Yes. We got on.
BW: But did you socialise together after the operations?
JT: Not really. No. No. Didn’t [pause] That’s one thing I regretted really. That we didn’t have a sort of a get together after. When we’d finished. Mac was awarded a DFC and when he was going he came to me one day he said, ‘I’m going down to London,’ he said, ‘And he didn’t say about his DFC but I found out afterwards.’ He said, ‘I’m going down to London,’ he said, ‘And they’re flying me down there,’ he said, ‘I believe you’re going to — ’ what is it called? Near Market Harborough. He said, ‘I believe you’re going to,’ so and so, ‘Can we drop you off there?’ So, I said, ‘Oh yes. If you don’t mind.’ So, I got my two kit bags and my other pack and all that and he said, he said, ‘I’m in a hurry,’ he said, ‘So, as quickly as you can.’ And I never got time to say anything to the other lads before I went. And I thought afterwards, you know, it was a bit rotten after flying together all that time.
BW: And so that sounds as though it was the end of your tour when that happened. Is that right?
JT: End of the —
BW: Was it the end of your tour when that happened?
JT: Oh yes. Yes. See they stipulated that you were required to do thirty five ops. The squadron’s commander decided how many trips you had to do to complete what they called a tour of operations. And different squadrons had different numbers. Some had thirty. Some had thirty five and ours was thirty five. Mac, when the crew first arrived on the squadron from training the pilots of course had no operational experience so, they used to send them on a trip or two trips if possible with an experienced crew. And to get, see what, what the Pathfinders approach to things, you know. Over the target and that. And the, I was going to say [pause] anyhow I never got the chance to say goodbye to anybody or exchange addresses or anything. So completely lost touch with them. That was it.
DT: That’s why you did thirty three ops wasn’t it?
JT: Pardon?
DT: That’s why you did thirty three operations and not thirty five.
JT: Oh well, we did thirty three.
DT: Because Mac had done two.
JT: Out of thirty five. Well, Mac did two of these experience trips so we needed thirty five. They said that’s it. So we only did thirty three.
BW: And you, you didn’t go on to serve with another crew. You stopped at that point and finished altogether.
JT: That was it, yeah. Yeah.
BW: And in your log there are some targets that you attacked at the end of June which were V-1 sites. Do you recall what was briefed about those at all? Were they static sites or just storage areas or —
JT: Well, there was Peenemunde of course which was attacked. That was where the Germans were concentrating their rocket activities. But no it was at a targets, you know. You were given a target and that was it. You go and do the job. It’s rather strange you know because our last trip was, was to Mönchengladbach in Germany. And we bombed there one night. That last one and that was it. And 1956 I think it was, our swim, we belonged to a swimming club, the boys and Betty and myself belonged to a swimming club in Manchester. And one of the boys had been in the army at Mönchengladbach and he had formed a friendship with youngsters in the swimming club there [unclear] himself. And he formed this friendship and then the club, their club decided to come over to England and have a joint swimming competition with our club. And it was from Mönchengladbach. And they asked us to, would our members accommodate some youngsters? So we said we’d have two boys. Having three sons of our own. And Heinz and Hans Peter. Hans Peter has died since but Heinz and his wife Sabina, we’re still in touch with them. We’ve been over a few times. They’ve been over here. And I’m walking around Mönchengladbach and think well I bombed this place a few years ago, you know.
DT: Didn’t they take you to a hill dad?
JT: Pardon?
DT: They took you to a hill that was built out of rubble.
JT: Oh yes. Yes. At the back of Sabina and Heinz house there’s this mound. Big mound grassed over and a path leading up so you go up and seats and a garden on the top. A memorial garden. And Sabina said to me one time, she said, her English was very good. She said, ‘Do you know what this is, John?’ I said, ‘What? No.’ So she said, ‘This is rubble from when they were bombed during the war.’ So, I said, ‘Oh dear,’ you know. I didn’t tell her we’d made it, we helped to contribute to it because they were a smashing couple. Yeah.
BW: Did you ever get to see any of the V-1s that you were attacking the ground —
JT: No.
BW: Targets for.
JT: No.
BW: It was just another —
JT: Another target.
BW: Another target.
JT: Yeah.
BW: There were a couple of times where you flew in support of allied troops. One was over Caen and the other was over Königsberg. Did you get to see any of the troops on the ground or were you too high for that?
JT: Oh, too, we would be too high. Yes. Yes.
BW: Your CO, I believe was a Wing Commander Brill.
JT: Brill. Yes. Yes.
BW: What do you recall of him? He was Australian, wasn’t he?
JT: Australian. Yes. Wing Commander Brill. Yes. Deegdon was the flight commander. A fellow called Deegdon.
BW: Deedon?
JT: Flight commander.
BW: And which flight were you in on your squadron?
JT: I can’t remember.
BW: Ok.
JT: No. I can’t remember. He was Australian. Deegdon. I’m not sure whether Brill was killed later in a flying accident. I seem to remember.
BW: Your last trip in your log is to, is it Rheydt. R H E Y D T is that?
JT: Rheydt. Rheydt. Yeah.
BW: Rheydt.
JT: Yeah.
BW: And there was a notable incident on the, on that that raid. Do you recall what it was?
JT: To Rheydt. That was Mönchengladbach. Rheydt. Mönchengladbach.
BW: And who was the master bomber?
JT: Oh yes. Gibson. Guy Gibson. He was killed on that raid. Yeah.
BW: Was there any information given to you about what had happened to him?
JT: No. No. No. I don’t recall. Guy Gibson. Yeah. Wait a minute, yes. Just a minute. I saw, I could tell you something on that. As we were coming back over Holland, we were coming back over Holland and I saw, looking down I saw this twin-engined aircraft on fire. Flying on fire. And it was obviously under control because I thought it was trying to force land. And I saw it hit the ground and burst into flames. And when we got back to base they told us Guy Gibson hadn’t reported back. And I never connected the two facts of seeing this twin-engined, this twin-engined aircraft on fire. I never connected that with him at that time and it was a long time after that that it really hit home that it, there was a possibility.
BW: Because he was in a Mosquito.
JT: A Mosquito. That’s right. Yeah.
BW: And killed over Holland.
JT: Yeah.
BW: It was said that he was heard giving the crews on that raid a pat on the back before turning for home. Was that something that you recall and was it something that was broadcast to crews? Were you able to hear something like that or, or not?
JT: Well, we would have heard. We would perhaps would have heard it over the intercom but I don’t recall anything of that. No.
BW: Were messages broadcast between aircraft that you could hear on the intercom as well or was that only between the wireless operators on each aircraft? Could you? Could you hear exchanges on any raids with other aircraft?
JT: No. I don’t think there was never much communication between aircraft. The master bomber used to, used to communicate with the crews and you know, call in. You were in a flight. You were a wave. You know, you were wave one, two or three. You were told that when you were being briefed. You would be on such a wave. And timings were based on that and [pause] but the master bomber would, if the target, if the aiming of the target, you know, they dropped a marker to, as an aiming point. If it wasn’t accurate they’d say add two or three seconds or something like that to, for overshoot. If the targets, if the flare drops there and the target’s there and you’re coming this way he’d say three. Add three. And you’ve got your bombsight goes through, through the marker and then you’ve got the one, two, three - bang. Drop yours.
BW: Yeah. So, if the marker has fallen short of the target.
JT: Short of the target.
BW: And you’re heading in the direction of the marker you then add three seconds in order to hit the target.
JT: That’s right. To do that.
BW: And when the master bomber was giving you those kind of instructions could you as crew members hear that on the intercom?
JT: Oh yes. We’d hear that. Yes.
BW: And were there occasions when you recognised master bombers perhaps? Like Gibson. Had you heard him before?
JT: Not really. You knew who the master bomber was. And Willie Tait was another one. Willie Tait. Guy Gibson. One or two. One or two were a bit unpopular because they made a cock up of it sometimes. Some of these master bombers.
BW: And did you get to meet Gibson or —
JT: I saw him once. When I was at the Isle of Man. When I was in training. And there was a squadron was walking along, marching along to a lecture and the chappy who was in charge of us said, ‘Oh, here comes the CO.’ And they were coming, a group of about four or five people. Officers. And of course eyes right, you know. That kind of thing. And one of them was Guy Gibson. Yeah. And it was after the dams raid so he was known, you know, and that. And that was at, that was at Andreas. Want to see if it is in the logbook? I’ve got his logbook here. A copy.
BW: How did you come by that?
JT: I forget now. Somebody gave it me.
BW: And what was, this was after the dams but what was his reputation?
JT: I couldn’t really say. Supposed to be umpty, a bit huffy sometimes, you know. This is when I was at Andreas. It would be somewhere about [pause pages turning] Trying to pinpoint when Gibson was [pause] he had a friend on the camp. Some other officer. And he’d come to visit him and he’d flown in to —
BW: I see.
JT: Andreas. To see his friend. That would be August ’43.
BW: Right.
JT: It was round about that time but if it’s in his logbook I don’t know.
BW: Yeah. The log here that you’ve got a copy of says September 16th 1944. This is a copy of Gibson’s own logbook. It says his last recorded trip was in a Lightning. Which would be a P38.
JT: Yeah.
BW: From Langford Lodge. So, prior to that he’d been flying Oxfords but interspersed with Lightnings and Mosquitoes. So —
JT: It doesn’t say his destination does it?
BW: Langford Lodge. To and from Langford Lodge. That’s all. But —
JT: No. I mean I wouldn’t have —
BW: It seems he’s not been long on that op. On those, on that tour. But when you were out over the targets of these places particularly over, over Germany what was, what was the area like? I mean, were you able to see much or was there frequently heavy cloud or were you able to see a lot out of the —
JT: Well, you could see a lot. You could see the, you could see the fires and things like that. And we were too high to see, see much you know. You couldn’t see people or anything like that.
[pause]
BW: You’d done, in total thirty three ops in just over four months which was pretty consistent flying really. Did you want to continue and carry on and do another tour?
JT: Well, I did. I went from operational flying on to instructing at OTU. Operational Training Unit. And then one of the pilots [pause] I’m trying to think which one it was [pause] One of the pilot instructors said to me one day, ‘I’m getting a crew together to go back on ops. Do you want to come with me?’ So, I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll come with you.’ So, and, well that must have been before, before June. June ’46 was it? ’45. Anyhow, he said, I said, ‘Alright, I’ll come with you.’ So, we went into the training and while we were in training we went to, we went to 100 Squadron for training and [pause] just casting my mind back and it developed then that the war was over. So, there was no point in us completing. And then he decided to cut down squadron strength and of course we were all old stages more or less — due for early de-mob. We were the first lots to be de-mobbed. So, so they made us redundant. Our crew. And, and then I was told I was going to 9 Squadron. At Waddington strangely enough. Back to Waddington. Of course, 9 Squadron was an old First World War squadron. Number 9. Oh and a chappy, Pete Langdon, he was the, he was the deputy commander of the squadron. And that’s when we went out to India. I went and reported to the 9 Squadron adjutant when I arrived. I was posted as a single, as an individual rather than with a crew. And I went in to the adjutant and he said, ‘Hello John, how are you?’ and he was, he’d been one of the instructors with me instructing. And so he said, ‘Did you come to join us?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘We’re going out to Hong Kong.’ So, I said, ‘Oh, I’ll come with you. I’ll join you on that.’ And anyhow, we finished up at Salbani in India. Which was a different place altogether.
BW: And what was it like out there?
JT: Pardon?
BW: What was it like out there?
JT: What? Salbani. Well, just, just out in the wilds. Out in the wilds really. There was, there was the airfield. The airfield, the railway station and that was about all.
BW: Did you get much time off? Off duty? Were you able to go off base into the nearby town?
JT: No. No. Didn’t go off. The nearest place was Calcutta. I went there twice. I went on the train and went twice. I got nose bleed and, I broke my nose when I was a kid you see and it used to bleed sometimes. They said it was the heat causing the rise in blood pressure. I went sick and they sent me to Calcutta to see the ear, nose and throat specialist. I went twice.
BW: How long were you out in India for?
JT: About four months. Yeah. Be four month. Yeah. January to April. January the 2nd we took off. Should have gone on the 1st but the weather wasn’t suitable. Flew to [pause] North Africa and then along over the desert to Karachi. Sorry. To Egypt. Egypt. Egypt to [pause] oh my mind’s going. From Egypt to —
BW: Would you fly to —
JT: Karachi. North Africa.
DT: You went to Italy first didn’t you?
JT: Pardon?
DT: Didn’t you go to Italy first?
JT: I went to Italy. I went to Italy on, that was Operation Dodge.
DT: Oh yeah. Yeah.
JT: Dodge they called it. The flying troops back. Flying the 8th Army chaps back. In fact, there’s a picture of them in. This aircraft was included in it.
BT: Are you warm enough love?
BW: I’m fine thank you, yes.
BT: Are you warm enough David?
DT: I’m fine, love. Yeah. No problem.
BW: Yeah. So they did. They did. Yeah, they did repatriate soldiers and POWs in Lancasters. Yeah. Operation Exodus.
JT: This wasn’t prisoners. This was the 8th Army.
BW: 8th Army. So, that’s an original photo of S Sugar with, as you say troops from the 8th Army about to board. And what were you? Were you still flying Lancasters out in India or were you flying something different?
JT: Oh yes. Lancasters. Yeah. Yeah. Glad. Yeah.
BW: And when you, when you returned back to the UK what, what happened then?
JT: Well, I got married. Didn’t we? [laughs] Yeah. 1946.
BW: And where had you both met?
JT: Hmmn?
BW: Where had you both met? Where did you meet each other?
JT: Oh, we grew up together. Lived in the same road, didn’t we?
BT: Lived on the same road.
JT: Yeah.
BW: So, you’d known each other for years before you joined up.
JT: Oh yeah.
DT: You lived at, what was it mum? You lived number 65.
BT: What?
DT: You lived at number 65 and dad lived at 57.
BT: 57.
JT: That’s right.
BT: So he knew all about me.
DT: And didn’t mess about.
BW: So he knew what he was getting in to.
BT: What love?
BW: He knew what he was letting himself in for.
BT: Oh, he knew what he was taking on. Yeah.
DT: There was no messing about because that was my mum’s dad.
BT: That was my dad. A policeman.
JT: A copper.
BW: I see.
DT: That was, that’s my grandad.
JT: She’s like her father.
BW: Yeah.
DT: He was a big man.
BT: Yeah.
JT: Thirty years. Thirty years in the police.
BT: Lovely fellow wasn’t he John? Really nice.
JT: Oh yeah.
BW: He looks like he, he’d had service too. Did he serve in the Second War or was he in the First?
JT: No. Well he’d got the defence —
BT: A policeman.
JT: He’d got, the policeman and ambulanceman and fireman all got the defence medal didn’t they?
BW: Alright. Thank you.
BT: He used to take the kids at that time you used to take the kids across, you know from, from the school to the other side of the road and they all used to run just so to take hold of his hand.
DT: He was huge. He was about — how tall was he? Six foot something.
BT: Six foot seven.
BW: Wow.
BT: Something like that.
DT: He was the police, the police tug of war team. He was the anchorman.
BW: I should hope so.
BT: Got some lovely presents. Some lovely prizes. Cups and things, you know.
BW: So, when you returned from India you got married and then you were demobbed.
JT: I was demobbed in, soon enough. I enrolled at St John’s Wood. Lord’s Cricket Ground, St John’s Wood. I was de-mobbed at Wembley Stadium.
DT: Didn’t you go on Lincolns dad?
JT: Pardon?
DT: Didn’t you go on to Lincolns?
JT: Ah yes. We went on to Lincolns for a short while. Yes.
BW: And where were you flying those from?
JT: Lincolns? [pause] Binbrook was it? Or Lindholme? Lindholme. Number 9 Squadron attached to Lindholme for —
BW: So, you wouldn’t have been months then doing that. Once you came back from India you wouldn’t be many months with 9 Squadron would you?
JT: Yes. I were with 9 Squadron until the end of the war. Until I was demobbed rather. When we were on Lincolns. I were demobbed from the 9 Squadron.
BW: I see.
JT: At Binbrook. Binbrook. When we came back from India.
BW: Once you left the RAF what did you go on to do then?
JT: I went, I worked for the CWS before. In Manchester. The Coop headquarters in Manchester. I worked for them before I went in the RAF and when I came out of course they had to give me my job back. And I went, I was in the sales accounts department.
BW: For the Co-op.
JT: For the Co-op. Yes. In their head office there and the chappy who was made the boss. The boss retired, the manager of the department. He’d stayed on extra years during the war and of course when peace came he, he opted for his retirement. And the chap who took over as boss, he’d married one of the CWS director’s daughters. So, of course he was a squadron leader in the RAF and when he came back he, they gave him, the boss gave him the bosses job when the boss retired. They gave him his job. And he said to me one day, I mean he had a bit of a soft spot for being ex-RAF as well. He said to me, he said, ‘There’s a vacancy in the taxation department,’ he said, ‘Are you interested?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘It will pay better than this department.’ So, I said, ‘Oh yeah. Certainly.’ So I got the job in taxation. Company tax work. And very interesting it was. Cut and thrust with the Inland Revenue you know and sending, we used to do audits for various Co-op societies and I used to do the tax work then. So, what they had to pay in tax from the profits or how money we got back from them for the losses and such. You know. And I finished up as managing the department at one time. And then they merged. They merged with the auditors and you’ve heard of KPMG have you?
BW: Accountants.
JT: On London Road. And they merged with them so I was just about due for retiring then so I got out. And I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the work. Interesting.
BW: I can think of a few people who’d be, who’d be asking for your skills. I can think of a few people who would be asking for your skills these days.
JT: Oh yeah.
BW: Somebody who lives at number 10 I think.
DT: Yours was company tax wasn’t it? You were company tax. Not personal tax.
BW: Yeah.
JT: Company tax. Not individuals. It was company tax. Yes.
DT: But you used to fill my tax forms in and you’d say, ‘Cross that out. Cross that out. Sign. Tick that, tick that, tick that. Sign that,’ he said, ‘That’ll be thirty guineas.’
[pause]
DT: You managed to fly Lancasters as well didn’t you dad?
JT: Pardon?
DT: You managed to fly Lancasters.
JT: Oh, I did fly a Lancaster once. Yeah.
DT: Yeah.
BW: How did you manage that?
JT: Well, we had a pilot who decided that it would be a good idea if different crew members interchanged. So, he said, ‘Here John,’ he said, ‘Fly this.’ I said, ‘Oh aye. Go on.’ I got in the pilot’s seat. Flew it. But just straight and level stuff, more or less, you know.
DT: He wanted to make sure you got home.
JT: Hmmn?
DT: He wanted to make sure he got home in case, if he was hurt.
JT: Well, no this was after.
DT: That was after was it?
JT: After all. Yeah.
DT: Oh, I thought it was —
JT: No. Mac didn’t. No. Mac was, Mac was the pilot.
DT: Yeah.
JT: He was in charge.
DT: Oh right.
BW: Was he pretty strict about that sort of thing?
JT: Yeah. He were a good pilot.
BW: There’s a photo here of your CO and the Duke of Gloucester. Duke of Gloucester’s on the left there.
JT: He became —
BW: And your CO —
JT: Yeah. He was at, he was made the Governor General of Australia wasn’t he. So he came to an Australian squadron to say, when he went to Australia there he could genuinely, could say, ‘I’ve met the lads in England,’ you know. That kind of thing. Yeah.
BW: Do you recall that visit taking place? It would be about the time you were on.
JT: No. No.
BW: Waddington.
JT: I do remember actually. We were told he was coming but I, we’d been on operation that previous night and I said, I’m not getting up to go and see him [laughs] Yes.
BW: There was a couple of Australian crewmen in that photo too.
JT: Yeah. Wing Commander Brill. Yeah.
BW: Did you happen to know them? The other, the other crewmen. They’re named.
JT: No. I don’t. Where did you get this from? Got secret information. Got me here.
BW: That’s from the Australian War Museum that particular photo. But you shared that that base at Waddington with 463 Squadron as well didn’t you?
JT: 463 and 467. That’s right. Yes. Yeah.
BW: And did you get to mix with them at all from the other?
JT: Not really. You didn’t really know. You know there was just a mass of fellows and you didn’t know whether they were 463 or 467. The only, the only near association and strangely enough it was, that was through Derek. That mate of yours who [pause] they formed [pause] what do you call it? Oh God. What’s his name? His father. Johnson.
DT: Johnson. Max Johnson.
JT: Johnson. Johnson. That’s right.
DT: Peter Johnson. Max Johnson was his father and Max Johnson was on 467 Squadron wasn’t he?
JT: That’s right, yeah.
DT: Yeah. And he’s actually listed as one of the pilots of POS at the time.
JT: Yeah.
DT: Yeah.
JT: That’s right. Yeah.
DT: Another coincidence, Brian. I worked for a company. I worked in the chemical research department and I was seconded to a university in Australia to do a research project over there. I was there for two months I think it was. My wife and my daughter came with us and and in the department there was, I was talking to some of the lads in the lab and in the research area and I was saying, ‘Oh, my dad was in the Royal Australian Air Force.’ And they said, ‘Oh you want to come and see Doc Pete. A fellow called Peter Brownall.’ And they said he was on Lancasters during the war. So, they took me along to see this elderly university lecturer and we got talking. A really nice guy you know. And he says, he says what squadron were you with? I said, ‘What squadron were you with?’ So he said 467. I said, ‘Oh that was my dad’s squadron. 467.’ But he was slightly after my dad and I think he was just there, he was there just as the war finished. He’d done his training and he got on to the squadron but 467 then was at Metheringham. And so he was absolutely hacked off because the war had ended and he hadn’t been able to —
BW: Yeah.
DT: Go on operations.
BW: Participate.
DT: So, he was flown, he flew back then to Australian and took up his post as, I think a botany lecturer. Some sort of science lecturer, you know.
BW: Yeah.
DT: So I was talking to him and it was interesting. And there was a not a DVD but a tape of that time. This was 1994. A tape had been produced about, called, “The Lancaster at war,” and I told him about this. So, when I got home I searched out a copy of it and posted it off for him. And I got a really nice letter back you know, thanking me for this. And he said he’d had to go out and buy a tape player and people had been coming around and he’d been, you know he’d been showing this Lancaster thing, Lancaster tape to all his, all his pals. But he was a nice chap. And do you remember that cartoon that he gave me? And it was —
[recording paused]
BW: Last, I think, section to, to cover. Since your retirement and since you left the RAF how does it feel to see Bomber Command being commemorated after all this time? There’s now the Hyde Park Memorial and there’s the Spire in Lincoln?
JT: It should be. It should be.
BW: Have you been to the unveiling of the Memorial Spire in Lincoln?
JT: No. No.
BW: Did you go last year?
JT: No. No.
BW: So, you —
JT: I don’t think that should have been built in London. It should have been built in Lincoln.
BW: Well, the Memorial in Green Park was unveiled a few years ago but they are, they have unveiled a Memorial Spire at Canwick Hill which is what the Bomber Command Centre are responsible for. Have you, have you seen that? Have you been?
JT: No.
BW: No.
JT: I haven’t. No.
BW: But it’s in, and certainly I’m sure you’d agree it’s in the right place. You know, it’s —
JT: Oh, it is. Yeah.
BW: So, there’s a spire which is the height of a Lancaster’s wingspan and it has memorial walls made of steel situated around it. And that’s where the Centre will be built. The Chadwick Centre which will house the digital archive which, you know, this information is going to go into. But you can —
JT: I don’t know if I’ll ever get over to Lincoln now.
BW: Well if you do it’s, it’s worth seeing.
JT: Yeah.
BW: They had a, they had a beautiful unveiling ceremony last year and a flypast. Unfortunately, the Lancaster couldn’t make it but they got the Vulcan instead. And that was, that was really special. If you do get the chance do go and have a look. So, are you, are you glad these sort of commemorations for Bomber Command are coming about now?
JT: Sorry?
BW: Are you glad these sorts of commemorations for Bomber Command are coming about?
JT: Oh yeah. I am glad. Yes. There’s, because there are so many uniques in the army and so on, and navy and they were specifically honoured. And Bomber Command, I think people regarded them as dirty words because of bombing civilians. I think that’s been a failing really.
[recording paused while John leaves the room for a moment]
JT: A while later. A few years later I went to see him. He said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘The firm’s selling up. They’re merging with someone else,’ he said, ‘I’m retiring.’ So, he said, ‘Good luck,’ and all that. So, anyhow a few days later a partner from the firm came with a parcel and he gave me that. Gave me that picture. And I rang this chappy up to thank him for sending it and he said, ‘Well, it belongs to you more than it belongs to me,’ he said, ‘You did some good work for us,’ and all that and so —
BW: And that’s —
JT: He gave it me.
BW: And that’s how you acquired the picture.
JT: That’s how it came. Yeah.
BW: And so you’ve always, you’ve always got that association now with.
JT: [unclear] yeah.
BW: POS and you know.
JT: Yeah.
BT: That was good of them wasn’t it?
BW: And it’s, you know, on permanent display now in the RAF Museum.
JT: Yeah.
BW: So, that’s brilliant. So, when you, when you look back over your career in the RAF has it given you good memories, and?
JT: Oh yes. I’ve got good memories. Some good mates, and you know it was, it’s alright. It’ll be alright. Yes. I never regretted going. Yeah.
BW: We’ll move on to other things like the photographs and whatever. So, you know, for the, for the audio anyway I’ll leave it there for now. So, thank you very much for your time. For the interview. And for giving the information to the International Bomber Command Centre. 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 John Foster Thorp
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brian Wright
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-12
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AThorpJF160412, PThorpJF1601
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:38:37 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
John Thorp was born and raised in Manchester where he attended North Manchester Grammar School. At seventeen he joined the Home Guard. When he was eighteen he volunteered for the RAF with dreams of becoming a pilot. While waiting at Heaton Park to transfer to further training overseas he became increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress. When invited to volunteer to train as a gunner he decided to accept because he wanted to progress. After training he was posted with his crew to 467 Squadron at RAF Waddington. Returning from the operation on D-Day he saw the massed armada waiting to sail to the landing grounds in Normandy. On take-off to an operation there was a loud bang heard throughout the aircraft. When they returned from the target they tested the undercarriage and the wheel flew past John’s turret. They had to effect an emergency landing at Woodbridge and the pilot completed a remarkable landing.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
India
England--Lincolnshire
England--Suffolk
Germany--Mönchengladbach
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1942
1944
1944-06-05
1944-06-06
467 Squadron
9 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944)
civil defence
crewing up
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
Home Guard
Ju 88
Lancaster
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operation Dodge (1945)
RAF Binbrook
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Upper Heyford
RAF Waddington
RAF Woodbridge
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1138/11694/AStaffordF180705.2.mp3
a24006c6be1c463a77708a715d03dc1e
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
Stafford, Frank
F Stafford
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Sergeant Frank Stafford (1924 - 2019, 1591661 Royal Air Force).
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Frank Stafford and Tony Ward and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-01-30
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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Stafford, F
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
PS: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Patricia Selby and the interview is Frank Stafford. The interview is taking place at Mr Stafford’s home on the 5th of July at 11 am. Mr Stafford what’s your date of birth?
FS: 10th of June 1924.
PS: And where were you born?
FS: In Creswell, Derbyshire.
PS: And can you remember a lot about your childhood? Did you live in a village? Did you live in a town?
FS: Yeah.
PS: You lived in a village.
FS: I lived in a small mining village. Yeah.
PS: So what sort of things did you get up to?
FS: Oh dear.
PS: You went, did you go to school in the same village?
FS: Yes. It’s the village school. Everybody went to the one school. Boys and girls.
PS: Did you stay in the same village for your high school?
FS: Yes.
PS: What age were you when you left school?
FS: Sixteen. Fifteen. Sixteen, I think.
PS: Were they enjoyable times at school?
FS: Yes. It certainly opened my eyes to a different world at Grammar School.
PS: You had the Grammar. Did you have to travel far to the Grammar School?
FS: Yes. About ten miles away. We had a special bus took us there.
PS: When you left the Grammar School did you go straight to work?
FS: Yes. My parents were very poor. So going to work I did a repayment for all they’d done for me.
PS: What sort of work did you do?
FS: Well, I was in the Inland Revenue.
PS: Was the Inland Revenue office quite a way away from where you lived or —
FS: That was in Doncaster. About three miles away.
PS: And how did you travel there each day?
FS: On a bicycle. We walked or used a bicycle in those days.
PS: Did you enjoy that work?
FS: Yes. Very good.
PS: What did it entail?
FS: Inland revenue work? Income tax. Purchase tax. All just work.
PS: How many years did you do that for?
FS: Well, when I was eighteen I volunteered for the RAF. When I was eighteen. And there was quite a queue apparently waiting. And then I waited about I don’t know nearly twelve months before I was called up.
PS: Right. And what did you do when you were first called up?
FS: I went to London and did all the training. Physical training. Be prepared to train as a pilot or whatever.
PS: Did they send you to a special place for extra training to be a pilot or whatever?
FS: Yes. Yes. We were about half way through the course when somebody came in. An officer came in and said, ‘It looks like the war’s going to be over before you’re fully trained. So,’ he said, ‘All the training for pilots —’ and what not, ‘Is cancelled. And we’re looking at, all we want is volunteers for air gunner.’ Air gunners. ‘So you can either enlist, re-enlist for an air gunner or go on the ground crew.’ And all the class wanted to stay in aircrew. So we retrained as air gunners.
PS: Where did you do that training?
FS: All over the place.
PS: You can’t remember anywhere specific?
FS: Well, there was a lot of places we went to. I finished at Morpeth in Northumberland when I was finally given my air gunner’s badge and what not.
PS: Did you have a choice about which gun you were going to be put on?
FS: No. No choice at all. I was just allocated rear gunner and that was it.
PS: How long did the training take? Can you remember?
FS: Yeah. I finished training December.
PS: And when did you start it?
FS: Just after May, I suppose.
PS: Quite a long stint really.
FS: It was. It was quite thorough.
PS: Yeah. What did you think about it? Did you know you were going to be a rear gunner at that time or at the end of your training?
FS: No. I told you. The officer came in the class. The training for pilot, navigator —
PS: Yes. But —
FS: Or bomb aimer.
PS: But you became a rear gunner from what I understand from your daughter.
FS: Yeah.
PS: When did you know you were going to be a rear gunner out of the other gunners?
FS: When we had the crew. When we picked the crew. They said, ‘You’re a rear gunner. You’re a mid-upper gunner,’ and what not.
PS: Right. So you were then sent off to a squadron. Or whatever.
FS: Yeah. Then we started training as a crew.
PS: Oh right. So where was that? Can you remember?
FS: Several places. Not just one place. I finished up at Waddington anyway. Training a lot from there.
PS: Can you remember what squadron you were in?
FS: Hang on a sec.
[pause – pages turning]
FS: 576 squadron. That’s at Fiskerton. I went to several places, I know.
PS: Yeah. Were they all English crew?
FS: Yeah.
[pause]
PS: Is that your logbook?
FS: Hmmn. 61 Squadron, Waddington. That’s where I ended up.
PS: So you changed squadrons. You sort of moved about a bit.
FS: Yes.
PS: Was that difficult when you got to know a group of people and then they shipped you along to another plane?
FS: Well, we always flew as a crew.
PS: Yes. Did the crews move or did they —
FS: No. We were training most of the time in Lancasters.
PS: Yes.
[pause]
FS: Went to different places. Different.
[pause]
FS: Yeah.
PS: So what happened when you finished your training? They sent you on.
FS: Went to Bomber Command.
PS: Yes.
FS: And then we [pause] They gave us about three days leave. And when we went back we were operational then. Given an operation to bomb Germany. And then peace was declared.
PS: So did you actually get to go to bomb Germany?
FS: No.
PS: You didn’t.
FS: No. We were all ready to go.
PS: Yeah.
FS: And it was cancelled. All.
PS: The war came to an end.
FS: Yeah.
PS: You were very lucky, weren’t you?
FS: Yeah. I didn’t realised how lucky I was really.
PS: No.
FS: I never thought about anything else but flying.
PS: No. You trained in the back of an aircraft.
FS: Yeah.
PS: How did that feel?
FS: I got used to it. Didn’t mind at all.
PS: I’ve seen how you got in and out and what chances were if you had to get out quickly. They weren’t easy. Did you know that?
FS: There weren’t. Yes. We knew all about that. Yes. But never, never even thought about it really. I was twenty years old. Twenty, twenty one.
PS: Yeah.
FS: Just never thought about it.
PS: So you were never in the position of losing crew. Losing part of your squadron or anything like that.
FS: No. We had a good crew. We all liked each other and got on very well together. And all being young we couldn’t see any danger at all.
PS: Do you think you would have seen danger if you’d actually gone on a run?
FS: Oh yeah. They were, that’s the first thing they did was to shoot and kill the rear gunner. We knew that. Realised that. But you don’t think about it. Well, we didn’t anyway.
PS: Yes. I can see what you mean. You were young. But it was a very young crew wasn’t it?
FS: Very young. Yeah. Yeah. It’s all wrong now. Looking back it’s all wrong. I mean [pause] I saw the, I was in London when the Doodlebugs were coming over and fighting in the air and it was wasn’t very good. But again, you don’t, it seems up there out of the way. Didn’t seem to affect you very much. But of course it did.
PS: So you don’t think it had any, well obviously it did leave you some lasting effects but nothing too nasty really. Do you think? Or do you think it did?
FS: No. No.
PS: So the war came to an end. Did they just demob you then or —
FS: No. We carried on. We converted to Lincolns. Training again in that, and then after a while I broke my wrist. So that was the end of me flying. So I ended up in Pay Corps. And finally got discharged.
PS: So there were some really nasty damage to your wrist.
FS: Yeah. It was in plaster. So that was it.
PS: Yeah. Interesting.
FS: Very condensed.
PS: Yes. But do you keep up, did you keep up with any of your crew afterwards?
FS: No.
PS: No.
FS: No. I think I was the first to be demobbed I think. The crew stayed together.
PS: Did they continue flying after you’d gone into the Pay Corps for any length of time?
FS: Yes. As I say they converted to Lincolns. And they trained in them.
PS: And what did they do after they’d trained in those?
FS: I don’t know.
PS: Do you know? [laughs]
FS: I’ve no idea. I suppose they carried on or got discharged or demobbed, I suppose.
PS: So what did you do after you were demobbed?
FS: I came back to the Civil Service. Inland Revenue.
PS: Did you go back to where you were working before?
FS: Yeah.
PS: Or where did you go?
FS: Yeah. In Doncaster. Yeah.
PS: And you did that all the rest of your working life?
FS: No. The Air Force made me very restless. And then I transferred to Customs and Excise.
PS: Oh right.
FS: And I stayed in Custom and Excise until I retired.
PS: I should think Customs and Excise was more exciting. More interesting.
FS: I suppose so. Yeah. But I was very restless. I couldn’t settle down.
PS: I think that’s understandable. So you moved about from Doncaster did you?
FS: I moved a lot. Yeah. I moved all over the country.
PS: Nice.
FS: Sheffield. London. Harwich. Kings Lynn. Letchworth. Northampton and —
PS: You did get around.
FS: Yes. You see, I was very restless.
PS: Did you settle down eventually or you stayed restless?
FS: I suppose I settled down eventually. Yeah. [pause] Yeah.
PS: So now looking back what sort of effect do you think being in the RAF made to you? As it obviously made your restless but —
FS: Well, I saw a bit of the world anyway. Italy. Malta. And I flew over Germany. We took some VIPs over Germany to show them the damage that had been done by all the bombing. It was terrible.
PS: Yeah.
FS: It was shocking.
PS: That was, was that before, still while you were in the RAF?
FS: That’s when I was in the RAF then.
PS: Yeah.
FS: We just used it as a, to show different people what it was like in Germany.
PS: Yeah.
FS: And it was terrible.
PS: Did you have to do many of those trips?
FS: No. Not many. But we did a few. We brought back some Army people. Bring them back to England.
PS: So, what did you think about it at the time or immediately afterwards?
FS: I didn’t think about it at all.
PS: It was, when did you start thinking about it?
FS: When did I start thinking about it? [pause] I don’t think ever. I just accepted it.
PS: Yeah. It’s just looking back now.
FS: Yeah.
PS: Being asked to recall it it’s —
FS: It’s terrible. Yeah. I’m against all wars. They’re all terrible.
PS: Yep. When you were in the RAF what sort of things did you do to relax when you weren’t training or in flight?
FS: Sleep. Used to fly at any time. Day or night. You couldn’t get enough sleep. [pause] But we were well looked after I must say. There was always a meal when we came back from flying. A meal ready for us. There used to be a meal and then back to bed and wait for the next flying.
PS: These trips you did after. You know, when you were taking the people up to have a look. They were quite long were they? They were quite long trips were they not?
FS: Yes. I mean —
PS: So, so —
FS: Fly to Germany and around to Germany. Quite long trips. Yes.
PS: So you’d need something to eat when you came back.
FS: I forget.
PS: Did you take stuff with you to eat or was there stuff on the plane to eat?
FS: No. Never. No. Well, normally we used to fly about twelve thousand feet and go and have, we had oxygen masks on so we couldn’t.
PS: No.
FS: I told you. We didn’t eat.
[pause]
PS: Anything else you want to tell me?
FS: Hmmn?
PS: Anything else you want to tell me?
FS: Not really. It was a phase. I think I was very lucky. I didn’t realise how lucky I was. Perhaps was a little bit disappointed we didn’t go on a bombing raid but I’m glad we didn’t. So it was mostly training all the time. After we trained on Lancasters. Then we trained on Lincolns. And then I just came out.
PS: When you took these VIPs to have a look at Germany after things were finished what you, were you, you weren’t still sitting on a gun were you? Or were you?
FS: Oh yeah.
PS: You were.
FS: We always flew with a full crew. We had to.
PS: Oh, I see.
FS: So if if the pilot was learning something it would be a full crew. Same with the navigator, the wireless operator. Full crew. Always.
PS: So you did get a sort of sense of what it was like. I mean, no one was firing at you I know but being in the back like that.
FS: I saw what was going on. Yeah.
PS: Yes.
FS: Yeah.
PS: Yes.
FS: I had a good view. So that’s about it I reckon.
PS: Well, you’ve done very well. Thank you very much indeed. I’m quite happy to sit here if you want to try and think of anything else. But that is fine as far as I’m concerned.
FS: No.
PS: Ok.
FS: As I say it’s a long time ago.
PS: Yeah.
FS: A different world. I’m anti-war and I can’t [pause] I don’t understand people who wanted to fight and threaten and whatnot. I just don’t understand it.
PS: No.
FS: Yeah.
PS: Well, thank you very much indeed. I’m very grateful for letting me come. 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 Frank Stafford
Creator
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Patricia Selby
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-07-05
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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
Identifier
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AStaffordF180705
Format
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00:29:19 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
Frank Stafford grew up in a small mining village in Creswell, Derbyshire. After leaving school at 16, he went to work for the Inland Revenue, from here at the age of 18, he volunteered for the Royal Air Force. He was sent to London to begin physical training and then onto various other places for further training to be part of a Lancaster air crew. Fortunately the training was cancelled as the war would be coming to an end. Frank could either volunteer as an air gunner or join the ground crew, or enlist. He remained with the air crew and finished his training in RAF Morpeth. He joined 576 Squadron, went onto join 61 Squadron, and eventually became operational. The first operation to Germany was cancelled with declaration of peace. Frank was transferred to train on the Lincoln. After breaking his wrist, he could no longer fly, and was discharged.
Contributor
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Jennie Mitchell
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
England--London
England--Lincolnshire
England--Northumberland
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
576 Squadron
61 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Cook’s tour
Lancaster
Lincoln
RAF Fiskerton
RAF Morpeth
RAF Waddington
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1121/11612/PShakesbyFN1801.2.jpg
3d522f64f0b7c49430a9c1da120cc987
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1121/11612/AShakesbyFN180822.1.mp3
e604bfe604acb62ad2038ee02c983aa9
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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Shakesby, Norman
Francis Norman Shakesby
F N Shakesby
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Francis Shakesby (b.1924, 2207370 Royal Air Force). He worked on H2S and Gee as a member of ground personnel with 582 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
2018-08-22
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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Shakesby, FN
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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IP: This is Ian Price and I’m interviewing Norman Shakesby today, the 22nd of August 2018, for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We’re at [beep], Kendal. Also present is Pam Barker, a good friend of Norman’s. Norman, thanks ever so much for agreeing to talk to me today, it’s- I’m really looking forward to it. It is 10:37 in the morning, and we’ll start the interview now. I think, just to start off, can you- You were born on the 17th of May 1924, but you- Can you tell me where you were born and where you went to school?
NS: Barton-upon-Humber[?] if you know where it is? Where my life was dominated from the first [unclear] four years by the New Holland Pier where you went over on the river- On the train river Humber to Hull. Great excitement, when they built the- It’s a beautiful bridge but it’s taken all the excitement out of it. Don’t you want to- What was it next?
IP: Where did you go to school?
NS: Oh yes, well I attended my infant school for about one year and then we moved to Lincoln, and I went to the Lincoln St Giles junior school, took the, took the [unclear] scholarship and attended The City School of Lincoln.
IP: Ok, and were you an only child or did you have brothers and sisters?
NS: No, I have a sister who is younger, four years, and a brother who is older by four years.
IP: Ok, and what did you- I presume your mother sort of looked after you children and looked after the house, and what did your father do?
NS: Well, he came out of the army, I can- Yes, his grandfather had a- And I've got to explain how he came to have it. His family- Grandfather, was- And his Grandfather’s brother, ran a drapery shop in Hull and they sold mainly to the, to the seamen and they had a strike and they went bust, so they lost their- All the money. So, my father decided, he would follow his father, who was- Worked as a traveller for [unclear] Hopper, Hopper’s Bicycles. I’ve got them- I’ve got a catalogue about them, and he followed on, his father had retired, and he did all the Midlands and learnt how to drive by sitting at his side for miles and miles in the school holidays and, so that he- And then when he- The foreigners took over, and he lost his job. Well, it narrowed his area so much, he couldn’t have made, you know, he couldn’t make ends meet. So, he went into the brewery trading, he- When we got a- We got a pub. We got this public house in Lincoln, well just outside Lincoln, and then he got a pub right in the middle of Lincoln, and if you go now- This is an interesting thing, if you now go to Lincoln and walk down the high street, and you get to Barclay’s bank and you stop and look above where they usually look, you’ve got to look up in the air and at the top of that building it says Black Swan, and the one on the left window was my, my brother’s wind- Bedroom and his father and his mother, my mother on the other, and then when the war broke out they say it’s why he was gone, he was on the reserve list, and he was called in at Dunkirk and I still to this day remember him telling- Coming in, he said, ‘I’ve got to go, I just had the phone call and they said pin cushion or some ridiculous thing, that means that invasion is imminent and I've got to go and report immediately’, and they sent him up to Durham, to, to take on the role of keeping all the civilians in an orderly fashion if they’re evacuating.
IP: Ah right, so his, his reserve service was as a result of him having served during the First World War.
NS: Yes, yeah.
IP: So, what did he do during the First World War then?
NS: He was in the- First of all in the Hull friends which, you know, and then he, he was in the front- In line for about, oh about six months and they came down the line and said, ‘Would anybody like to volunteer going to the air?’, you know, he thought that’s a better thing than being on the Western Front. So, he said, ‘Yeah, ok’, and he came home and then he sort of spent a few months over here training to be an observer, which is at the front of the aircraft [unclear] on the- The pilot is behind him, and behind the pilot is the engine, and behind the engine is a propeller, propels hence, propeller and that was his- And then he was shot down and that ended it all.
IP: He flew FE2b’s I think didn’t he, yeah-
NS: Yes.
IP: So, so he was shot down about 1916, 1917 we think?
NS: Yes, the year before and then in 1918 armistice. Yes, he was- He did- Yes, I think it was just over a year. But it, it ruined his- He couldn’t bare to be in a shut door, room, you know, it does something to him. But one or two of his stories were interesting, how they had a- This is irrelevant, they had- One of the lads was very feminine and they got to work and back then they’d make all sorts of things with experts in the prisoner of war camp, and they would fit him out as an officer in the German army, and the block house had a partition in the middle of wood, and the German’s were one side, English the other side, and they took a panel out when the Germans changed at lunch time and put it back, and then they waited for the opportunity, they got him out as an officer, a German officer, ‘Yes it’s today, go quick’, out with the panel, and they’d also got this fella dressed up as a woman and the other one was a German officer. The two of them scrambled out, straight out through the main door towards the main gates, and they got to the gates and saluted, got a salute from the gate and they walked off, hundred yard or so down the road and he was watching them go, he thought there was- The pair of shoes that he’d got on, they would- ‘Halt’, caught him [chuckles]. It was an amazing story, so close, so close to getting-
IP: And, and his experience in World War Two then, did he stay in Durham? Did he- Was that- He was, he was just in the UK I presume?
NS: My mother was dying slowly with TB, so he put in for- Once he’d been there a week, they sent him home because he was forty-something, a lot of his- And he was very quiet and concerned, a lot of his oppos or friends, you know, the level- They’d done the same thing, signed in, they went to Middle East [emphasis] and forty-five or so. Well, he came out and he was, you know, discharged, so went back to the pub.
IP: Ah right. So, we’ll, we’ll step back a bit then to just before the war, you were- You would’ve started, what I might call grammar school, I know it wasn’t called a grammar school but this- Did you say it was the-
NS: City School.
IP: City School in Lincoln. So, you would’ve started there about 1935 I suppose, something like that, would that be right? Born in 1924, started when you were eleven?
NS: Yes.
IP: Ish, roughly.
NS: I’m trying to work it out.
IP: It doesn’t matter precisely. So you were, you were at City School when the war broke out?
NS: What happened, and it’s rather relevant in a way to what went later, Lincoln had a system whereby you can take your scholarship a year early, the bright lads, and then you could- When you got in- I got maths, so I started at ten, not eleven or what [unclear] and then as you get to the first year and second year, they pick out the top ones, who go straight through without ever a middle one. So, you did- Taking the-
IP: School certificate, was it? Yeah.
NS: A year before you should, and that mean- Can I tell you why it was awkward? Because, when the war broke out, I was nearly getting- We lost all our teachers, we ended- I was taking like languages, we ended with two teachers who- And they were both called up because they were interpreters, you see, and because of that it- We reached a position where everything was collapsing at Dunkirk, absolutely pandemonium, and we, we were told there was nothing terribly- Headmaster said, ‘I don’t think the universities are going to be functioning because everything, you know, and everything’, he said, ‘You better get something, get a job and now’. So, the two of us, there were only two doing languages, the- And I never knew what happened to the other physics people, whether they were kept on, but we were more or less, ‘You better go’, and so we both decided to go into a bank. So, at sixteen, I was whipped off to Alford because Barclays worked on the basis that you couldn’t work in your hometown, you might know that you earned too much and have a living, you know. Whereas my friend went into NatWest, and they let him stay home. I had to go into digs, so at sixteen I [unclear], she’s a lovely lady looked- There were two juniors, and she took us in both, [unclear] till I was called up. So that- And I was away from home, my brother had got- Qualified as a pharmacist and been called up, but it was, you know, plenty of sergeants and things, you only got a good payment. When I was called up, it was [chuckles]- Hadn’t got anything, there were no, no, you know, exams or an A to show for it, but I’ve-
IP: So, how did, how did you find working for Barclays then? Did you enjoy that?
NS: I did actually, yes, and I had to get there and it was the Tuesday of Dunkirk and that was the last to be- Took them out of the sea then, and there was no trans- Very little transport, I got a bus within three miles of Alford, sun and sun, you know, lovely day with a big suitcase tramping along and a fella came along in a milk float [chuckle]. He said, ‘Where are you going?’, I said, ‘I’m going to Alford’, he said, ‘Hop on’ [chuckles]. So, the horse went trotting along and I sat at the side of him. We got there and there was this very forbidding win- A big white door and it said Barclays, so I went round, I pushed a big spring and it went behind be bang [emphasis], you know. This little tubby fella came up behind the counter, he said, ‘Good Morning, can I help you?’ and I said, ‘I’m the new junior’, ‘Where the hell have you been? Dunkirk?’ [laughs]. I can remember that as clear [chuckles].
IP: Good stuff. So, so you were- Must’ve been at Barclays for a couple of years I guess then before?
NS: Oh yes.
IP: Yeah.
NS: And, I took ten of the- Six of the ten bankers' exams and in the last year at, what was I? Sixteen, seventeen by that time, seventeen yes. The- We’d lost our chief clerk, we’d lost the other junior, only in one junior and [unclear] curious one- We had ladies, two ladies and it was years later, she was, I’ve forgotten- She lived in a big house in the village and invited me one night to tea. She was about three year, four years older than me, invited me to a dinner and we played [unclear] tennis, and met her years later. I was listening to the radio in bed, and they said, ‘This is’- And I cannot remember her name, and ‘We’ll tell you how she came to be in Africa’, and she was the [unclear] right-hand woman, and it was because she had to be kicked out because they were saying she was, you know, telling him not what- What not to do, when he shouldn’t’ve been doing, and I thought, I’ll write a letter to the BBC and tell her I'm here, you know, to see her. He put it off, I then went to look for her and she had died. Anyway, that covered me the earlier times.
IP: Yeah, so you mentioned you were called up to the RAF, you didn’t volunteer, it was- You just got you papers?
NS: Yes, but while I was in the air force- While I was in the bank, I joined the ATC for Alford and I was a flight sergeant. I mean, that’s my flight sergeant’s uniform, and so, when I joined the air force, I made sure I got into the air force by doing ATC. They took people who were outstanding, took them into the radar and radio station, that’s how I got into it and they said- Curiously enough at any one time in the- [unclear] would you want to hear what, how, where, when?
IP: Yeah, well we’ll get onto that ‘cause I'm- The first thing that struck me about it was, I mean it sounds like you were quite well educated and that sort of stuff, so I was wondering why you didn’t end up as an officer? Do you know how that-
NS: Yeah, because a technician- I mean I was a- Totally without any knowledge of- Because the first thing they did do, we did six months in Leeds college of Technoloy to do all the radio and stuff, and then they took the top two to go into radar, and the top two, me being one of them, we went down to London, we were digs in the, what do you call? The prom place.
PB: [Whispers] Royal Albert Hall.
NS: The?
PB: Royal Albert Hall.
IP: Royal-
NS: Can’t hear [chuckles]
IP: Royal Albert Hall.
NS: Oh yes, Albert, just round the corner from Albert Hall is Albert Court and it’s a very posh- They said the [unclear] or somebody [unclear] had had it, so they covered everything with plywood and we were in there, and we prayed[?] the outside, which was at the time the front of one of the- The London, you know, university, and we- Say we went into 3 Squadron because we had a fellow army officer who’d come to make [unclear] in London and you had to say, ‘A Squadron, B, C Squadron’, and turn, where? ‘Left turn’, down Vickery and Grand Exhibition Road, what’s by all retired [unclear], how it is there, and you wheeled left at the V&A and there were laboratories with the V&A, and I came out as the top two in that, with the- Having done Gee and we didn’t- We’d done a bit of H2S at that point, and we did- How long was it there? About six months.
IP: So, you just- Sorry to nip back again. So, you were called up to the RAF in November- Was it December ‘42, wasn’t it? That’s right, and did you go straight to Leeds from there, or did you do basic training first, you did sort of square bashing?
NS: We went in- Yes, we went into [unclear]
IP: Into where sorry?
NS: We went in the west coast area there was an RAF training camp there.
IP: Ok, alright.
NS: So, we did that, and then we went up to Redcar
IP: Oh yeah, yeah.
NS: And a little aside that, years later I was teaching in Redcar new college and I was standing- Having a dinner at the [unclear] hotel and the last time I'd been there, I'd been standing out while the officers tell you to [unclear] [chuckles]. Anyway-
IP: How did you find- How did you find the basic training and stuff? The square bashing and all that sort of stuff?
NS: Oh rubbish. We got off very lightly because we were ATC cadets.
IP: So, you knew how to do drill, and you knew how to make-
NS: You were taught how to- In half an hour we had to- You know, what it- To arms, ‘Shoulder, arms’-
IP: Rifle drill, yeah.
NS: And they said, ‘Right’- One of the other corporals, ‘You’re gonna do it with the flag tonight’. Pull the flag down and that sort of thing, back to the hotel [chuckles] well it’s like Dad’s Army, we’re actually in fits, even he was laughing [unclear] [laughs].
IP: So, you did- So, you did that sort of basic training and then from there, from Redcar I guess, you went to Leeds to do your mechanic training. But, do you know how they selected you to be a, a mechanic? I mean, presumably you could’ve gone off to any training?
NS: Yes-
IP: Cooks, bottlewashers-
NS: Well, the only thing I knew, is they said, ‘You were a bank clerk, we found them very, you know, very good at this bank clerks’, I don’t know why-
IP: Maths and stuff maybe, I guess, I don’t know.
NS: I couldn’t say why it changed to-
IP: Ok, alright, alright. So, to Leeds, down to the Albert Hall, London. Do you remember how long you were in Leeds doing your-
NS: Yeah, six months.
IP: Six months, and that, that was- Sorry, just to- Sorry. So, that was- Was that radar mechanic training, or was it-
NS: No.
IP: It was just mechanical training?
NS: Yeah.
IP: And then they streamed you to radar, the top two as you say. So you were the top two of that, you then went to your radar mechanic training in London and you were the top two of that course.
NS: I was-
IP: Yeah.
NS: And I can tell you why I was never a corporal as well, which I should’ve been.
IP: Oh, we’ll come back to that maybe. But- So, right, so-
NS: [Unclear] say this about that-
IP: Yeah.
NS: The- We’d been [unclear] and- Oh I’ll tell you. In [unclear], we had a theatre with two rollers chairs- Stairs either side and you go up this one and you shove the needle in you and then take the needle our, or take the fridge out and the needle in and you walked across the stage and they’d put the next one on tight up to the other one [chuckles], and I had a fellow who’s six foot three in front of me and he started going like that [laughs] and jumped out of the [unclear].
IP: Went down like a sack of spuds, yeah.
NS: Right, so that’s the only reason that I was in the bank clerk, I suppose I’d got the fact that I'd done some extra work at the bank with- Banking, you know, banking law, nothing to do with it, but, we’re all- And the thing that struck me it was being push here, push there and we were in digs in Redcar and I'll never forget the porridge it was burnt every morning [chuckles] and- But we then ended in nice digs in Leeds, lovely widow and she looked after the two of us and we’d all [unclear] what’d be known [unclear] and we walked in the first morning, we sat in anticipation and this [unclear] walked in and said, ‘Good morning gentlemen, take a seat’ [laughs]. Gentleman [emphasis] [laughs] oh, what a change, yes.
IP: So, just trying to get this back where we are now. So, we’ve gone- Done your basic training, did you go to Redcar before you went to Leeds then, or after?
NS: Yes.
IP: Ok, so it was Redcar first, then Leeds and then you went down to London, The Albert Hall, and did your radar mechanic training there, came in the top two of your course there and then- So what- And how did you- I mean, did you enjoy- Did you enjoy it, was it, was it- How did you find that phase of being down in London and the training down there and what have you?
NS: In all the wave forms and things that we learnt, it’s fascinating [emphasis] and I really did enjoy that, yeah.
IP: Had you- So when you’d been growing up, I mean, had you, had you done any sort of electrical, electronics or electrical stuff-
NS: No, nothing.
IP: - sort of crystal radios or any of that sort of stuff?
NS: No, well they had a whiskers, you know the old, [unclear] whiskers [chuckles] those little- Yes, and- But, nothing further than that. I’d no, I'd no mechanical background.
IP: Oh right.
NS: No.
IP: Yeah.
NS: But it- They’d got a good volunteer [unclear] and I mean, they picked somebody who they- I did, I did very well.
IP: It sounds that way. So, what happened then after you left? Did you say you were about six months, you think in London?
NS: Yeah.
IP: So now we must be into 1943, I guess, something like that, or maybe, or maybe later than that I don’t know, do you remember?
NS: No, not- It wasn’t as long as that I don’t think.
IP: Ok.
NS: And then it was posted to Gransden Lodge.
IP: Right.
NS: Canadians.
IP: Yes.
NS: That was lovely.
IP: Yeah, 405 Squadron. So- And you were posted onto the squadron? You weren’t stationed personally?
NS: No, no.
IP: You were on the squadron-
NS: There were two of us, two Englishmen among the- All the rest were Canadian radar mechanics, because we hadn’t got them at that time
IP: Ah, right.
NS: I assumed that we were still training them, you know, but- And then, I wish I'd taken the names because there was just a gang, you know [laughs]. In fact, when I went to- I’ll tell you in a minute if you want to know why I moved to-
IP: Little Staughton?
NS: Yes, Little Staughton. What was I leading up to there? Oh yes, I'm in Little Staughton and Christmas I cycled over because it’s was only about eight miles and I had my Christmas with the whole gang in Gransden Lodge.
IP: Ah, ok. So, right- Just, just going back. So, I get the impression you were happy to be a radar mechanic, I mean you said you enjoyed it, you said you found it fascinating. So, and I supposed compared to some things you could’ve ended up doing, it was great.
NS: It was a, a marvellous piece of equipment.
IP: Yeah.
NS: And you’ll see I've got a [unclear] on the inside, and when I came out, I was then mending people’s televisions, but you see then you went all this funny business and that, nothing like mine, you see, [unclear] red tube and things.
IP: And so, you joined the squadron, 405 Squadron, it was- Well, your section, the radar mechanic section, how big- How many people were there in the section then? Do you remember, roughly?
NS: Um-
IP: I mean, are we talking ten? Fifteen?
NS: Well there was about the same as on that photograph which is at Little Staughton, it’ll be about fourteen in this I suppose
IP: Ok, alright, so- But, two of you were Brits and the other, the other twelve were Canadian, and how do you, how did you find them? Were they friendly? Were they a friendly lot?
NS: Oh yes, they would- Yes, marvellous [chuckles] and they used to, you know, mock limeys and that sort of thing, but they were great fellas. The [unclear] particularly a man called Moon Mullin, and he had shock of hair like an Indian and he was a real rover. They couldn’t touch them you see, because as soon as you got one step from the safe it said ‘Private [emphasis], no entry’.
IP: Ah yes, yes, so behind closed doors sort of thing, yeah, yeah.
NS: Yeah, we did no mucking about, flying drill or anything like that, we just looked after our own [unclear] you know, along that and that was [unclear].
IP: Ah, and did you feel that you were part of 405 Squadron? Were-
NS: Yes, I was very sorry to leave it and it wasn’t to my- Actually, I can tell you later, it wasn’t to my- It’s tied up with the corporal, it wasn’t my- It wasn’t to my best and it was all because the radar officer found out- When I went there, I went there as an AC1 and within two, three weeks he’d made me a LAC because I was so good, and they then wanted to form a new squadron at Great Staughton, or Little Staughton [unclear] and they’d taken the half from one English one and half from the other English one, but they needed the officer and they took the officer who was English, with the Canadian and he had- He said then, he said, ‘We want one more’, so he came to me and he said, ‘I’m going to move to- And I’m taking you with me’. I thought, well I'm gonna be alright here, he’d look after me. Did he hell [emphasis]. I got there, and of course, what happened was that after a few weeks it came to the idea of this new squadron getting there, getting there informa- Getting their [unclear] better, you know, going up to corporals, and they were- And I thought, well, the two- They’d already got theirs, two from one half and the other two, so no [unclear], and that was it, and nobody said anything, and I thought oh that’s a bit [unclear] and it dawned on me why. This half, ‘Oh we want this man’, this half, ‘We want this man’, and ‘I want this fella’, no way mate, you haven’t got any supporters there, and then didn’t have- That was my first time that I wasn’t made a corporal [chuckles] which I should’ve been because I was in- You know, he took me with him because he thought I was good [emphasis].
IP: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
NS: But, anyway I didn’t want the job, because at the [unclear] I start off by doing DI’s every morning in the cold-
IP: Daily inspections? Yes.
NS: [Unclear] and then I got into the- When I got to Great Staughton, I was put on the bench doing- We didn’t do Magnetron, I didn’t- Never got- Didn’t know how it worked but that was obviously a big secret. But I did the H2S and the Gee, putting the faults right on them. I always remember, I loved that, it’s like a detective model. You go through all the, the [chuckles]-
IP: The diagnosis?
NS: Yes, the- You’d got a big, a big book of all the info- The brown [unclear] that goes to that, and that- And you used an oscilloscope because you got a wave form, that’s [unclear] wave forms for television, they go quickly down and then slowly, quickly down because you’re putting it into the devalves[?] and you’re making it move, the dots, so you get that- It’s- It makes it move round on the screen and when I got to the other- Great Staughton they said, ‘Well you know quite a lot about H2S so we’ll do it on the Benson[?]’ and I was doing it one morning and I couldn’t find this damn fault and I thought, oh it’s lunchtime so I got on my bicycle, because you all had bikes then, and I'm cycling and I think, oh I didn’t try that one, I'll have to go, ‘Norman put your hat on’ [shouts] [laughs]. I’m trying to [unclear] a bloody war on, and you’re telling, put my hat on [chuckles].
IP: Have to get your priorities right.
NS: [Laughs]
IP: Hats are everything.
NS: [Unclear] a bit.
IP: Right, so just, just going back to- Was it 405 Squadron- Were they already on the pathfinder force when you joined them then?
NS: Oh yes.
IP: So- And was, was that one reason- Because you were top of your course were you particularly selected for the pathfinder force do you think? Or, or did it not quite work that way, or don’t you know?
NS: Well, I mean the thing was you went to Gransden Lodge and it was pathfinders and I don’t know whether I was chosen- I don’t know where the others went, you know, [unclear].
IP: Yeah, yeah, ok, yeah. Did you, did you understand at the time what the pathfinders were all about? Did you understand how the, how the bomber offensive was working kind of thing?
NS: Yeah, oh yes.
IP: So you, so you were- I mean this is, this is the whole thing that interests me of this whole- Being part of the squadron and understanding what was going on ‘cause as an LAC you might reasonably not know exactly what they were doing and what was required. Somebody turns up with a broken H2S-
NS: LAC is the highest technical thing you can get to.
IP: Right.
NS: So you’re bound to know, you know.
IP: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you were well treated on, on the squadron?
NS: Oh yes, yeah.
IP: What did you, did you have any thoughts at the time about what the bomber crews were doing? About what they were going off to do, did you think about it at all?
NS: Oh yes.
IP: And what were your thoughts?
NS: Very, very traumatic, you know, and we used to see them off at that time it was like metrology[?] mare[?], eighteen aircraft one behind the other, and I'll tell you the story what I did- Happened to me on that line [chuckles] if you’re interested?
IP: Yeah, go on then?
NS: And- But- And we- At the front of it, it had the caravan with a dome and the red light and green light and they’re there in case a fault starts before they get off, so you can see them off, and then you see them back, and that was it.
IP: Yeah, so you used to watch them come in?
NS: And that’s three you’ve got.
IP: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you get to know the crews quite- Or
NS: No.
IP: I mean-
NS: Not a click.
IP: You didn’t meet the navigators or anything like that who are dealing with the equipment?
NS: Well, I did because I was put in charge of what was like a big toy. It was a huge tank- Well a tank, ten foot by ten foot, full of water with a little scanner and underwater you can have it at a pay low frequency, so it’s a mock-up of the H2S in- Underwater, and you had the controls at the side and they had to- Before they got their little badge, extra pay, they had to pass the test I gave them to get to Berlin underwater [chuckles] which is fascinating
IP: Yeah.
NS: I always thought it would do lovely for the kids, pathetic, this little thing buzzing under water, and had this arose because you asked me something-
IP: ‘Cause I was asking you how well, how well you got to know the navigators and that-
NS: So I did get to know some of them and one particular one, they were in- This was at- I didn’t do it at Great Staughton, I did it at Gransden Lodge and one I’d got friendly with and he- And his brother was also in aircrew, so there was another there and we all went out for a drink at times, and to put it short, we saw them right through to the end.
NS: Yeah.
IP: And we counted it [unclear].
NS: Yeah, no that’s ok, that’s I- I understand. So, you said you- That you went to see the Lancasters off and that sort of stuff, and that must’ve been eighteen I think you said on the squadron, that must’ve been quite- I mean it must’ve been really impressive seeing eighteen, eighteen Lancaster-
NS: Yes, they stopped it very quickly because one night [unclear] all 8 Group into [unclear] he was there from senior, saw them all there and went down the line, so they stopped it very fast.
IP: A German intru-
NS: Bomber.
IP: Oh bomber, or an intruder- Well, doesn’t matter really, does it but-
NS: Yes, it was a foreign air, aircraft. So now they used to wait to be pulled off the outlined positions, one at a time. But it used- It was quite a, you know, quite an occasion. Everybody was there, all the ground crew were seeing them off and it was quite a- Quite emotional.
IP: And did you have to deal with anything with the aircraft at that stage then, or?
NS: We would’ve done if there’d been an error because they’d run all aircrafts, all their instruments are put in through it as while they were waiting and if there were- No I didn’t- Never had one- That was my servicing during the day [chuckles].
IP: So you have to- So if there was a problem with the H2S or, or, well Gee, you had to jump on board the aircraft and try and do a quick, a quick fix?
NS: Oh, we had more that, we had to jump on anyway because the Germans had got the Gee and it’s a very accurate piece of information in this, in this country it was at one end of the runway to the other, and we didn’t want this happening so they decided we’ll delay the actual frequency until the last minute. So, it was- We had about ten boxes all with a different set-up and each one had another ten, so there was a hundred choice and that was only put in twenty minutes before take-off, and job of radar mechanic was to put them in the back of the van, get the [unclear] WAAF to drive at the end, starting and went jump in the first one, up to the eye[?], over the back, [unclear] room, ‘'scuse me’, get to the next [imitates vehicle]. Eighteen, one after the other and you’ve got seventy-two machineries in front of you, propellers [imitates propeller] noise and this particular- Next one, next one I got to, seventeen, eighteen, eighteen [imitates vehicle] right up to the front and the wireless op was there with his headset round his neck and I'm just screwing it up and hear- And on his, on his- In the earphones, ‘Are you ready for take-off [unclear]’ [imitates aircraft engine] and we were swinging onto the, ‘Me, me’ [chuckles]. So, ‘We’ve got a foreigner, stop, stop’. So, I had to say, ‘I’ll just finish this’, ‘Ok, cheers’. Go down into the mid-upper, ‘'scuse me, could you open the [unclear] door?’. ‘Cause I couldn’t open it from the inside, never had done that, I could open it from the outside. He’d have to get out- I delayed them ten minutes while I [chuckles] I don’t know whose fault it was. I mean I was going at a noble pace standard every time before, I think they were a bit ready that, bit-
IP: A bit keen to go?
NS: Yeah.
IP: So you nearly got a free ticket to Hamburg or Cologne or Berlin or wherever?
NS: On 405 Squadron they had brothers and such and occasionally they used to take the brother with them, very illegal.
IP: I know, I know that passengers used to go occasionally, and there’s some really sad stories of course about bombers being shot down with passengers on board who shouldn’t, who shouldn’t have been there really.
NS: They could shoot them.
IP: Yeah.
NS: Because Hitler’s spies.
IP: Mhmm.
NS: That’s why I-
IP: So you, so you didn’t- You never went on a, on a trip? Would you have liked to?
NS: No.
IP: No.
NS: I’m not a- I couldn’t have stood it. I used to think, how do those lads do it day after day? And I came to the conclusion the only thing that kept them going was the comradery between the crew. You can’t tell anybody now, so you keep going but- I know it's a bad day today but this could be a bright, summers afternoon and they climb in that bloody aircraft and go out and come back two having gun- Not coming back and then you got to go again two days later and it goes on and on for forty of them.
IP: Yeah, yeah.
NS: Which is amazing.
IP: Yeah, absolutely incredible, yeah, I take my hat off to them.
NS: I used to say to people, just before you start criticising them, just put yourself in their position
IP: Yeah.
NS: In the army, you have [unclear] bloody army and a fired battle and people getting blown to bits and then you pulled help and you have a rest. Those lads go every morning knowing they’re going, by the afternoon they’ll be off, maybe two days rest or what, you know, and I, you know, I admire them to the fullest.
IP: Mhmm, yeah, couldn’t agree more. Right, so we’ll- That’s, that’s- I think you’ve provided some really interesting information there. You moved onto 582 Squadron at RAF Little Staughton which is near Great Staughton I know that much. Was that- But you were working the bay then weren’t you, so you had less interaction with the aircraft and the crews I suppose but you were still doing the diagnostic stuff. Was, was that much of a change then, being on 582 after 405? Did you- I mean, it sounds like you missed 405 because you said went back for their Christmas dinner?
NS: Yes, yes.
IP: But, but was it a big change going to 582 or?
NS: Well, yes, I didn’t want to go but it [unclear] you know, orders is orders and he was gonna take me with him.
IP: That’s right.
NS: But of course, I- If I'd have stayed in 405, I’d have been a corporal. It was very sad that he was trying to do something good and it didn’t work that way, well I could’ve- And an interesting thing, I mean to prove it, we had to be on duty, one every night, one- And I was in this- I was in there and I walked into the office, looked around and there was a waste paper basket and pulled it out, it’s torn up and said ‘LAC Shakesby corporal’. So it’d got to the point actually putting it forward and they’d killed it
IP: Mhmm.
NS: And I went right through until [chuckles]- I can tell you that- I won’t tell you, but I can have so many- Every time- I had four other times when I just didn’t- Just missed it, and the last time was when I was being demobbed. The officer on- At Waddington, when I went to sign and get it signed off, he said, ‘You know, you’ve got an awfully good record here Shakesby’, he said, ‘You know, you should’ve been made a corporal’, I said, ‘Well, it’s just the way’, he said, ‘I’ll- Going to put it- I’ll put it in for you, I’m going on leave for three weeks’, and I was demobbed by the time he got back [chuckles], so it’s- Such is the world.
IP: Yeah.
NS: But it would’ve been nice because my wife, my wife would’ve got more money and I’d have got a bit more kudos.
IP: So you were married by then?
NS: Yes.
IP: When did you get married then?
NS: Pardon?
IP: When did you get married?
NS: 1946.
IP: Oh, I see, oh ok, so this was- Right, not during the war then, it was after the war that you got married. Ok, alright well-
NS: Yes, it was actually almost VE Day, V- No, no- Let me go-
IP: How did you meet your wife?
NS: I was- She was a girl in the digs we’re in in Leeds.
IP: Ah, ok. Right, so you kept in the touch all the time as you were moving round the air force and then- Oh ok, then you got married, wow. Yeah, ok.
NS: Too early, but [chuckles]-
IP: You did what you do don’t you?
NS: I got [unclear] I've got two boys.
IP: So, that kind of ties into my next- What was going to be my next question actually, which was how- What did you do for social life when you’re on the squadrons then? What, what social life did you have?
NS: Mainly in- The British Legion had a bar on the, on the drome and they had a special bitter and we used to end up there playing dominos and what not and every time, every few weeks or when- You had a day off and there was a bus to Cambridge and I well remember having been drinking the night before and getting on the bus the next morning and I was trying to keep upright [chuckles].
IP: Bit worse for wear?
NS: Yes.
IP: Ah yes, nothing changes. So, so it was- And, so you’re going to Cambridge with your mates and that sort of stuff and- So you’re going to Cambridge with your mates and what have you?
NS: Well, normally I usually was on my own, you were the only one off from there-
IP: Ah yes, yes of course, yeah, yeah, ok, and did you get any leave? What did you do- I suppose you’d have gone to see your girlfriend or whatever-
NS: Yes, we usually had weekends towards the end of- Later time until the, as I say, the bomb dropped in Japan and they- We all- Had to be sent back and they didn’t know what to do with us, so they sent us to the Middle East as- With the radio mines, and then because I got- I’m now jumping very quickly-
IP: Well, I was just gonna say. So, you, you did your time on 582 Squadron, I think- Yeah, we’ll cut that sort of stuff. So, you did your time on 582 Squadron and then were you on 582- So VE Day happened, were you still on 582 then?
NS: Yes, yeah.
IP: You got married around about that time as it happened, did you get- Where did you go- Did you go back to Leeds to get married or?
NS: Yeah.
IP: Ok, was she a Leeds girl then I take it?
NS: Yes.
IP: Ah right, ok, and- So, VE Day came, you were still kept in the air force ‘cause obviously they couldn’t demob everyone immediately and the Japanese war was still going on anyway, and then they dropped the bomb- So- But you weren’t up to then- ‘Cause I know numbers of the bomber command squadrons were, were ready to go to the Far East and some of them were converted to transport squadrons as well-
NS: Yeah, we, we were ready to go, we got the clearing and we were starting to, to convert onto Lincolns.
IP: As, as a transport squadron or as a bomber?
NS: Yeah.
IP: Ok, as a transport squadron.
NS: Well I thought- We thought as a bomber.
IP: Oh I see, ok, yeah, yeah. So- Right- Ah that’s interesting. So, so you’re waiting for that but then as you say, the bomb- The atom bomb was dropped-
NS: Fortunately, fortunately, weren’t looking forward to that bit [unclear]
IP: Yes- What- I suppose, just going back to VE Day, can you remember the- I mean this is just one of those general things if you were around at the time. Can you remember when the news came through that the war had ended?
NS: Yes, I think I- It was a morning I remember on the radio, and there was [laughs] great hilarity from everybody on the [unclear] as we can well imagine.
IP: Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say what was your reaction? What did you think about it?
NS: Oh, we wanted to go, it was an adventure [unclear]
IP: Yeah.
NS: [Unclear] we’d been- I’d been in the air force a length of time by then.
IP: Yeah. So, you were ready to go home?
NS: I was.
IP: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So- But as it turned out then, 582 was pointed out to go out to the Far East and- I mean from your reaction it sounds like you didn’t want to do that but-
NS: We were dispersed all over and we were sent out to the Middle East, and I was spent with- Two of us, two- Where a ground [unclear] team was operating for the Middle East and we had eight Nissen huts on this barren- Well it’s- I think there’s a photograph of it actually, and we, we went on AS[?] and then did a bit of overhauling then, and we got all the messages on the [unclear] screen in [unclear] morse code and I’d been there- And we used to go from there to Castel Benito, fifteen- Well you’ve seen them haven’t you, fifteen hairpin bends to get down to the flat plane and then the- It’s still an airport for Tripoli and they had two tents for us and we’d arrive this, you know, fairly dirty [unclear] and the white things on the [unclear] and you’d say, ‘AMES’, ‘Oh, that bloody lot’ [chuckles], air ministry experimenting, and they had two, two tents for us and we fed there and we stayed the day and then we went back, and then a day went with nobody and then the next one went and back, and we were doing this about [unclear]- About three months, it said, ‘Shut down, these are your orders, close [unclear] shut it off’. So, [unclear] won’t shut it off, we just carried on going down, nobody did a thing. We had two months where nobody did anything but play monopoly and go [laughs]- We had a- And there was a little village, we went through it to get to the set, there was one photograph showing the Nissen huts and they had little tin cans, the [unclear] smoke and they used to stop us and swap cigarettes for eggs, so we’d get eggs and then go, come back [unclear], and in that village there were two Italians, one was the electrician, he had an engine that he’d start by doing this [imitates engine] and they had electric lights but it went off at ten o’clock because that was the orders, and the other one was a bar and we used to go down to the bar, nobody else went except us and there’d be all liqueurs on, we used to drink our way down them [chuckles] and they had a little girl and she taught me to say [sings a tune]- Can’t I’ve forgotten the words now.
IP: The Italian national anthem it sounds like, was that the one? I don’t know but- So- Right- Because I was thinking you must’ve been desperate to get home but it sounds like you were having quite a good time in the Middle East really.
NS: Well, it wasn’t- Mixed feeling, I mean ok, I could’ve done without it. Then they sent us back to Cairo and they said to put us on then this, this- Well, dismantling these radar, because the- We’d only been the few, the rest were still doing that. So- And we had our tents in a little enclosure and guards at the gate, so and then we’d get garries[?] to go into the treble 1MU, that’s the- That’s the- What we did, called it, and I got there on my own, having flown and I thought well [unclear] I'll go on parade. ‘Airmen, get your hair cut, get that shined up’, and I thought bloody hell mate I haven’t been- And all the lads round me were eighteen and I was twenty-two, you know, and I knew the ropes a bit, ‘Oh righto, sir’, and I found out then that the guards at the gate were from some foreign, foreign empire, maybe- I’ve forgotten which one it was then, but they went off duty at ten to seven and the British got in- On at seven o’clock, gap of ten minutes, so I used to go out at five to [chuckles] because by that time [unclear] I had a severe stomach dysentery, or not as bad as that but when I came out the fella said, ‘You feeling better?’, I said, ‘Yes’, ‘cause he was being in the hospital. ‘Have your bowels moved today?’, ‘Yes’, ‘How many times?’, ‘Twenty-four’ [chuckles] and the toilets were the other end, you know [chuckles] that’s your fault from doing- Getting it. So, he said, ‘Would you like to do a misemployed?’, he said ‘You won't get any pay and you’re still on tread with 1MU, but there’s a hotel, Regina, which looks after all the posts in the Middle East, they have three offices in descending ranks, wing commander all this, and several women who [unclear] and I have to decide, the person is going is a corporal and he’s being demobbed, would you like to take his job?’. I said, ‘Yeah, that sounds ok’. So, I used to walk out every morning- This is why I got [unclear] going out early before the- And arrive at the hotel, and it was quite pleasant [unclear] the three offices used to have a bit of a [unclear] and then I'd watch the girls and, and- So when we- All the correspondence came through me, and this [unclear] oh, airmen with whatever they called it release over, under, sixty, home. Oh, I'm fifty-eight. The wing commander came in he said, ‘I see you’ve read that Shakesby’, I said, ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Well, we’re going to make you a corporal and we’ll keep you’, and I thought, like hell you will [chuckles]. So, ‘Yes, thank you sir’. This is the next time I didn’t get it.
IP: Yeah, yeah.
NS: So I got on the bicycle and I biked out to treble 1MU, it was about four miles and went to the dis office and knocked [knocks], ‘Yes’, ‘Hello corporal, you’ll be wanting to see me soon’, ‘Why? What’, I said, ‘Well this, you know, people, I'm due for the re-pat’, ‘Oh god, we don’t know, it’s not’, I said, ‘I know it’s true because I've seen the-’. I said, ‘But, just remember I belong to this unit, not that hotel, I'm fifty-eight’, ‘No’ he said ‘I’ve got- Ok’.
IP: When you say you’re 58, what, what do you mean?
NS: That’s a number.
IP: What, as in your service number, or-?
NS: Just a number relating to your- Time you’ve been in.
IP: Right, gotcha, ok, yep.
NS: Well and the- Fifty-eight was- And it was up to sixty, you see. So, he said, ‘We’ll look after you’. So, I went back and several weeks went by, [unclear] to get moving, got to organise transport and everything to get the fifty to home, and then it came through, LAC Shakesby report back to M- 71 MU and [chuckles]- I still remember that face of that officer, ‘Oh’, he said ‘I see you are’, I said ‘Yes sir’ [chuckles].
IP: On the way.
NS; He said, ‘Pity we were going to make you a corporal’, I said, ‘Yeah, well I know which I prefer’ [chuckles]
IP: And that was you- So you were demobbed once you got back to the UK then?
NS: No.
IP: Oh.
NS: No. I had then- How long was it before I was demobbed. That was a different thing from being demobbed, it was just they were using it for this particular group who’d been sent overseas knowing nothing what else to do with them. You know, I can’t remember-
IP: So when you went back to the UK, where did you go to then?
NS: Waddington.
IP: Right.
NS: And I lived in the Black Swan, every night, I was there when I went to get my signatures [unclear] office and said, ‘Are you arriving or leaving?’, I said, ‘I’m leaving sir’, ‘I don’t remember seeing you’, so you know. Of course, the radar officer knew because I'd said to him- My parents lived down the road, he said, ‘I’ll get the sleeping out pass for-But I'm going on a- I’ve got to come back, I'll be back several weeks’, and of course it was just over weeks, I just went home and came back again. I thought that if I'd been in [unclear] too long.
IP: Knew how to keep your head down.
NS: I mean [unclear] looked around they were all bogs, you know, and- And he said to me, he said- And he was looking at that, he said, ‘This is an excellent report’, he said, ‘Why are you still not a corporal’, I said, ‘Well, there’s a story’ [chuckles].
IP: Yeah, ok. So- But Waddington was your last base?
NS: Yes.
IP: And then you were demobbed?
NS: Yes.
IP: Was that a good day?
NS: Yes [chuckles] the only thing was that, it had been all this snow and ice, which took me off my bicycle every morning and evening. They sent me to the west coast to be demobbed and there wasn’t a snow flake over here, they hadn’t had any snow, and by the time I got back we were flooded out, we couldn’t get into the village, the snow melted all this stuff and, and that was-
IP: And where, where did you go? Once you were demobbed, where did you go then? What, what happened? Where did you go to live and what did you do for work?
NS: This is when I went to the west coast to be signed off and-
IP: Yep, yeah, and given your suit-
NS: And then went back and they said ‘Cheerio’ on-
IP: But, where did you go? Did you go back to Lincoln? ‘Cause your wife presumably was still up- Was she still in Leeds at the time?
NS: No, she was living in Hykeham, where my parents were.
IP: Ok, right.
NS: So, yes I just walked out and I'd got my civvies over in the west coast, sent back on the rail pass, said- Went to see the radar office who said, ‘Well thank you, cheers’, pity about that, pity you were on gone leave, I might’ve been a corporal but never mind.
IP: And what did, what did you do work wise then? Once you left the RAF, what happened about that?
NS: My father was, being the pub, was great friends with a fellow who was one of the officers in the Russen Hornsby, they build- Built electric motors for the mines, and he said I could get a- And I had a- I applied then for the- I went to see my headmaster and he said, ‘Well, would you like to take up teaching?’, I said, ‘Yes’, he said, ‘Well there’s an emergency scheme for anybody who wants to, you’ve got the right- You’ve got matriculation’, he said, ‘But one thing, they’ll offer you twelve months’, he said, ‘Don’t- Go for the full time one which is still being used by everybody normally because it then, I think the others might be down paraded a bit by not being the full course’, and he said, ‘Apply to Leeds’. So, I applied to Leeds and I had to wait a year, and I was then working in this chaser in the, what you call them, [unclear]- Anyway they built these, this-
IP: Mhmm.
NS: And my job was to go around the stem[?] all and they had a- They had a foundry[?], they had a machine shop and they had, what’s the others? Anyway, there were three different processes and they used to get stuck with the bits at one of them, these can’t go ahead until that goes, so my job was to go and hurry it up you see.
IP: Trouble-shooter?
NS: Yes and just before I left, I found out where they kept all their information for each of the [unclear] each one of them in a Kardex system and if you looked at this Kardex system it shows what the- The number of the machine and where it was. Well, when the oddbod, boss at my office went to the weekly- Say, ‘Why aren’t we getting on with this?’, and they’d say, ‘Well, we can’t get, can’t get the thing out of the machine shop’, ‘Oh well’. So, I thought I’ll check this, so I went- Nobody stopped me and I pulled out, where is it? Oh, it’s in, it’s in the [unclear] oh, boilers, the boiler shop. So, I went back to my boss, I said, ‘That one, it’s in the boiler shop’, So he went [chuckles] to the next meeting, ‘It’s in the boiler shop’, ‘What, how did you find that out?’, and I thought this is a ridiculous English industry, they told [unclear] from where they want- Don’t want to be caught napping, that they deliberately don’t let people know what they should know.
IP: Yeah.
NS: Anyway, I thought I'm leaving after a fortnight, so I got a bad name, I can tell you, ‘Don’t do that mate, don’t tell them where we are, let them find out’, I said, ‘I have found out’, he said, ‘Well you’re out of orders, you can’t go in that place, it’s not your’- [Chuckles]
IP: So-
NS: Is this irrelevant? I don’t know-
IP: No, no, no it’s- No, it’s not at all. But you went to Leeds from there to do, to do teacher training?
NS: Yes.
IP: Whereabouts in Leeds were you doing that then?
NS: Brickett and-
IP: On Briggate?
NS: Yeah- No, not Briggate. It’s the-
PB: Beckett..
NS: Beckett.
IP: Oh, Becket college.
NS: Yes.
IP: Ah right, which is now- Which became Leeds polytechnic and is now-
NS: Well, it was polytechnic [unclear] when we were there-
IP: University of Leeds or Metropolitan or something, yeah.
NS: And the- I was there, the second [unclear] and they just had one more, there were three intakes of the men- And the girls were the- From school and so here was the men's dormitory and there was the girl's dormitory with the various names and there’s as [unclear] used to say, ‘There are two-hundred men chasing two-hundred women across the quad’ [chuckles] ‘cause we were behind them on the rotation and they were eighteen and we were almost twenty-six. It’s a bit- I mean I, I was [unclear] with my wife, I was true to her and, and because we’d got a baby by that time anyway.
IP: Oh right, ok.
NS: And- But the others had a whale of a time, the single men.
IP: Yeah, yeah, and was your wife back in Hykeham still-
NS: Leeds.
IP: In- Oh, she, she went with you to Leeds?
NS: Yes.
IP: Yeah, so what- How long did the teacher training last then?
NS: Two years.
IP: Ok and what were you, what were you going to teach?
NS: Well, it was all- They were all primary.
IP: Ah right, yeah, ok.
NS: And I'd got matriculation and, on the way back one day when we were going back to our own houses, there was a- One of the other fellows he said, ‘I’ve just appealed to London University for a degree’. Well, I didn’t want to do- I mean I'd been doing it ten years and [unclear] a reunion [unclear] and that’s- I was trying to [unclear]- Yes, we had a reunion and I'll put in for the training he said. Oh, so I wrote to the London University of course I wanted- I remembered that fellow on the Leeds, where we- In our training, ‘Good Morning Gentlemen’, I thought that’s fair fee for me, I want to be further education me, and- So I wrote to the London and they said, ‘Well you’ve got a matriculation so you get interview’, and of course there was no financial aid, I had to pay the lot and I had to do it at home. So, I did a- With a [unclear] two children and my wife, sorry I'm going to be working all night and I did it nearly every night for five years.
IP: To do a degree course from home? Distanced learning.
NS: Yes.
IP: I didn’t know they did that in those days
NS: It was- Well it’s- It’s called private and I've got the list of all- And there is a whole lot of people who were doing it at home.
IP: Oh right, ok.
NS: Then.
IP: Oh, what was your degree course in then?
NS: Mine was- I was in second- I was in economics
IP: Oh right, goodness, ok. So, and you were at that- You were teaching at that stage I presume?
NS: Yes-
IP: Which-
NS: In a small village which was- It was the only one left in Bedfordshire which went from five to fifteen and I used to take the juniors and all of the group for music. I got on quite well. I could play the piano roughly and I had to play for the hymns, and I had to take the- All the ones for music and, and I quite enjoyed it because I got them first of all in the juniors with- The music man came to see me he said, ‘You’re doing very well here’, he said, ‘Would you like to have a set of percussions, [unclear] for the juniors?’, said, ‘Yes’. So, we got tambourines and all sorts of things and a record player and they used to- And it- I taught them [chuckles] I taught them on tables because they used to say, ‘You’re the violins, you’re the flutes’, and I put the radio on and say, ‘Right [hums a tune] one, two, four, two, four, three, four’, and if it was a wet Sunday, a wet half-time, you know-
IP: Yeah.
NS: Playground. They’d say, ‘We’ll stay in, can we do the music?’ and they loved it.
IP: Yeah.
NS: And they learnt their tables by god.
IP: Which village in Bedfordshire was it, can you remember?
NS: Yes. Riseley.
IP: Oh, ok.
NS: It’s just off the main road.
IP: Yeah.
NS: Down, Bedford.
IP: Right.
NS: And it’s one of the best years in my life, but for my wife as well. That village was fantastic[emphasis]. We had a drama group, I'm into drama, we had [unclear] drama group with no end- We used to win trophies and we had the vicar who was- He used to say, ‘Oh Mr Shakesby, [unclear] bring Mr Shakesby a cup of tea’, and he could do everything [unclear] of comedy and the other fellow was a- He’d been Bedford, Bedford, what do you call it? Anyway, Bedford Modern. I don’t know whether you know, it’s a public school?
IP: I’ve heard of it.
NS: Yeah, and he- And his father was a big farmer but he’d been robbed by [unclear] and went- During the war, somebody had done him down and they were down in quite poor circumstances. They lived in a little cottage and when my wife and I went for tea they had a little girl who had look of [unclear] said- And her coat of arms, she was an Irish professional tennis player and Godfrey, he was mad about drama and he and I- Because he used to get the artistic side and I was the [unclear]- I’ll, I'll produce this one, and used to go to London, when the, what’s it [unclear] all the musicals, and he’d come back with the music and put different words to them, quite illegal, and we had a very good pianist and we used to do these and, and I've got all the photographs of them [chuckles] and he used to say, ‘Hello [emphasis] Norman’, and the people who had- The- In Bedford there was a factory which made chalks for the schools.
IP: Ok.
NS: And they used to come- They were also from Bedford Modern in their schooldays, and they used to come to the village and Godfrey was there and he’d say, ‘Hello [emphasis]’ [laughs]. Anyway, that’s not RAF [chuckles].
IP: No, no, that’s alright, but going back to the RAF, did you find it hard to adjust after the war? After you left the RAF then, or did you just slip into being a civilian again no trouble?
NS: I found it very easy.
IP: Very easy?
NS: Very easy.
IP: Yeah, you just put it all behind you and cracked on sort of thing? Oh ok. But what were your thoughts at the time about- ‘Cause obviously, by then Bomber Command people had turned their backs on what had gone on during the war pretty much, did you have any thoughts at the time about that? Or, or were you not concerned greatly?
NS: Sorry about?
IP: About how, how the world- Or how the country was starting to look on the bomber offensive and that sort of stuff and trying to forget all about that stuff.
NS: I wasn’t very happy, you know, and when it got worse and worse, when they had this old thing built and somebody knocked it down and, you know, in one of the parks and I thought, oh this- You know, but you can’t do anything can you? So- But I always had a great admiration for those lads and I pushed it whenever I could and say, ‘Hey, just a minute you saying that, just think this, they go on, you know, this eight, ten-mile- Ten hour and then they come back and have a cup of tea and go to bed and then they’ve got to go again in two days' time’. My friend, I met him up at Great Staughton, we’d been on- He was the other one of the two, and he came and he was on, on Mosquitos with what you call it, the Oboe and that was much easier. They used to be setting off at eleven at night, ours would’ve been in the air by eight, by then [chuckles] and they were back home and, [unclear] by night fighters, so if you want to go on ops, go on-
IP: Mosquiots.
NS: He was a little fellow and, and the radar, the Oboe was in the front and it was a thing like the front of a car, the lid lifted up and then he went- And one day he was in there, in the seat and somebody came along and pushed it and shut it up and the thing took off [chuckles]. I met him after and he was- He said, ‘I didn’t want that again’. He said, ‘Somebody came and shoved it, next thing I knew we were rumbling down the runway’, and the pilot came back because he felt there was a big weight on the front, something wrong with his aircraft, he wasn’t going on ops he was doing, you know, what are they called? When they do this-
IP: Yeah, just a, an engine test or whatever it-
NS: [Unclear] and lifted up the-
IP: Was he in the nose of the aircraft then?
NS: Sorry?
IP: He was stuck in the nose of the aircraft?
NS: Yes, yeah, you know, just room for a little fella in there, he was [unclear] like this and he’s sort of leaning over there and this [chuckles]-
IP: Good grief.
NS: Another funny story.
IP: Yeah, yeah ‘cause there are two VC’s won at 582 Squadron during the time you were there, but I don’t know if you would’ve- If you would’ve known about that, there was a South African captain won a, won a Victoria Cross and a chap flying in a Mosquito won one as well but- But that doesn’t ring any bells? I don’t know whether that news would’ve percolated down or not. ok. So, so you- Did you spend your whole working life as a teacher then? Was that how you- That was your career as it were?
NS: Yes, I got my degree, I got a job in a- Well I got a job in Bedford College because there was a job offering for business to them, accounts, accounting, which is my- One of my- And it was night- They had a night team there and a night school with- That with the adults and that [unclear]. The only thing was, the nasty part [unclear] was that I had to hand the [unclear], you know, apprentices and the plumbers on, what you call, general studies.
IP: Oh yeah, yeah.
NS: Absolutely back breaking, ‘Well what are we doing this here for ey mate?’ [chuckles] and I stuck it for a year and I couldn’t do it any more than that so- But I got into it, I got into FE, that’s my thing.
IP: Right.
NS: And so I went to Redcar, which was a new college and-
IP: And what did you teach there, at Redcar?
NS: Business studies, what I've just said.
IP: Yeah.
NS: And, commerce and all that side.
IP: Yes, yes.
NS: And I had a fantastic principal Joe Dunning and the- Is this irrelevant? [Chuckles]
IP: It’s all relevant.
NS: He- The- Redcar had been opened for one year for the engineers, business side and the general degree and A-level, O-levels were starting that time and there was five of us for the whole of the, that side and I remember sitting at the five with the head of the department [unclear] are we going to get anybody? ‘Cause we’d seen nobody yet, you know. When I left four years later, there were thirty-two [unclear] staff, from five and Joe [unclear]- I won’t go into that but that’s my sadness about missing- I found out only just recently that Joe Dunning had been here before he died.
IP: In- What, in Natland? Or in-
NS: Yes.
IP: Good heavens above.
NS: And I'd been in the same place, I desperately would’ve met him.
PB: And seen him.
IP: Yeah of course.
NS: ‘Cause I went to see him at one time, we went up Glasgow, ‘cause we went to Glasgow and I went onto the iPad and a glowing report of him in [unclear] he sorted all their technical colleges out and they’d given him this award and that award and he’d died in, well 2010 wasn't it? Or 5.
PB: Yeah, while we were here, yeah.
NS: And, it said- And his wife had retired to Penrith and there was an overlap of three, three-
PB: Years we were here.
NS: [Unclear] years, when we were both alive and he was- And he died by the time I got there. So- What some six weeks ago, I said I'd go and see the wife.
PB: Yeah we did, we met his wife.
NS: Delighted.
IP: Yes, yes, I bet, yeah.
NS: Of course, I got a programme because in my- I was only there for two years and that was because I fell out with a man in- Anyway, doesn’t matter. But- What, what he did, he’d seen one of my productions at Saltburn, so he’d been down to London and it was the Union of the Australia, New Zealand were having a technical week and then he went down to London, came back with- Full of [unclear] with Galileo and he said, ‘That’s what we’ll do with this, Galileo, and you are Galileo’. I’ve got the programme [chuckles] I’ve got it out there, and so I took part as Galileo and it was nice because after I'd seen his wife, his widow, she said [unclear] money, she said, ‘She remembers you in the, in the, that play’, I thought if you saw it, you should be ‘cause it’s a magnificent performance [chuckles].
IP: Did you, just- I think we’ll round it off- Oh blimey we’ve been going for a long time actually. Did you, did you keep in touch with any squadron members? I mean 405, they’re all Canadians so they would’ve gone off back to Canada I suppose, wouldn’t they, so you didn’t keep in touch with anyone after the war?
NS: No, no, no.
IP: Ok.
NS: No I lost touch with them all.
IP: Yeah.
NS: Once we came over from oversea because I kept meeting new, new bobs of people. I mean when we got to Tripoli with a ground [unclear] chain, that when we left there, we went to different places and then never met them again.
IP: Sure, ok.
NS: So I haven’t got a- Nobody.
IP: Well, we’ve been going for nearly an hour and a half-
NS: I know.
IP: -Norman, so I think, I think to save your strength we’ll call it- I’d just like to say, it’s fascinating listening to you, I mean I'm sure we could talk for hours more, but, but I think we’ll call a stop there, it’s been great. Thank you ever so much, I do appreciate it.
NS: Well, I’ve enjoyed it, it’s nice to talk about yourself.
IP: Exactly, exactly.
NS: You see, it’s the drama, dramatic in me [chuckles].
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 Norman Shakesby
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ian Price
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
2018-08-22
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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AShakesbyFN180822, PShakesbyFN1801
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:20:01 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Norman Shakesby was a radar mechanic on 405 and 582 Squadrons. Born in 1924, he was studying languages at The City School in Lincoln at the outbreak of the Second World War. His language teachers were quickly called up to act as interpreters, so on the advice of the headmaster, Norman left school and found employment as a junior bank clerk. He became a member of the Air Training Corps when it was formed, which paved the way for him to enlist in the RAF in November 1942. Having completed his basic training, Norman attended the Leeds College of Technology studying radio, from where he was selected to specialise in radar. Further training followed and he became proficient on both H2S and Gee radar. Posted onto 405 Canadian Squadron, Norman maintained the equipment on the aircraft. This also involved boarding aircraft before take-off to set the selected frequency for that operation. Care had to be taken with impatient crews, to ensure he wasn’t a reluctant passenger on operations. He had the greatest respect for the aircrew and witnessed the euphoria of them completing operations before going through the same emotions again a few days later. In 1944, a posting to 582 Squadron gave Norman a change, servicing equipment in a bay carrying out more detailed rectification. Following the ending of the war, a posting to the Middle East saw him complete his military service before returning to RAF Waddington and demobilisation. After meeting his old headmaster, he followed a career in teaching, initially employed as a primary school teacher at Riseley, Bedfordshire, before completing his degree and becoming involved in further education.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ian Whapplington
Tilly Foster
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Libya
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
Libya--Tripoli
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
405 Squadron
582 Squadron
Gee
ground personnel
H2S
radar
RAF Gransden Lodge
RAF Little Staughton
RAF Waddington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1102/11561/ARogersH150409.1.mp3
dbd0ef512560ca7e34fc539235de3d90
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
Rogers, Hugh
H Rogers
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Hugh Rogers (Royal Air Force). He was a film cameraman with 463 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
2015-04-09
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.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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Rogers, H
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AP: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Andrew Panton. The interviewee is Hugh Rogers. Mr. Rogers was one of the film cameramen on board a specially modified Lancaster from 463 Squadron Royal Australian Air Force that filmed the sinking of the Tirpitz on November the 12th 1944. The interview is taking place at [file missing], Bristol on the 9th of April 2015.
HR: I recall two memorable days seventy years ago, the eleventh and the twelfth of November 1944. On the morning of the eleventh I was instructed to report to headquarters at Bomber Command at High Wycombe. That surprised me because people like me didn’t go to the headquarters at Bomber Command and also I’d only recently been posted to the film production unit which I now served. In the event two cameramen reported at headquarters, the first Flight Lieutenant Loftus as a Canadian Airforce and secondly myself Flying Officer Rogers RAF of the film unit. We were briefed standing at a small, very small table in a very large room. We were both members of the number one film production unit RAF at that time. We were told at this briefing that we were to bomb the giant German battleship Tirpitz moored in the Arctic and that we were to join the main force of Lancasters at the RAF base in Lossiemouth, Scotland. We were briefed on the very precise route to be taken to reach the Arctic base of the Tirpitz. It was explained to us that following the bombing, the main force would fly west and return to Scotland. The camera Lancaster, which we should be flying, would fly south and return directly to Waddington. So the film could be transported to London by road, processed and as soon as possible, the pictures distributed. The propaganda value was important to the Allies and it was thought would be devastating to the German population morale. Late on the ninth or the eleventh, our Australian pilot, Flight Lieutenant Buckham completed the first part of the operation, flying Lancaster HD399 to RAF Lossiemouth, which is near Inverness, Scotland. HD399 was a Lancaster of the Australian Squadron 463 manned by an all-Australian crew and [unclear] us two cameramen. The aircraft had been modified for our special requirement, the first turret had, the front turret had the guns removed which were replaced with a mounted IMO 200-foot camera. In the fuselage area the mid upper turret with guns had been removed and the fuselage repaired so that the two areas in the fuselage were then available for the second cameraman. The opened panel at the rear of the bomb bay gave a vertical sighting and the second sight on the door edge to the starboard side of the fuselage, the top half of which opened at the time of filming hence required an electrical heated inner suit, I learned that the temperature at my station was minus nineteen ten Centigrade and confirmed my view that I had drawn the short straw. To sustain our fifteen hour flight we did not have a Tallboy bomb loaded but there was a large red fuel tank fitted in the space above the bomb bay. It contained about eighty tons of fuel which I rested on during the flight, my abiding [unclear] memory of the short time in Lossiemouth was to, was being in a badly-lit barnlike room with Wing Commander Tait giving his last remarks to the nineteen pilots on 617 Squadron. We were all standing in the group around Tait, I was standing at the back, he emphasized the importance of the prescribed course which had been designed to avoid detection by the enemy. Over the North Sea the course was to be at fifteen hundred feet and this was to be maintained until the Norwegian coast was approached. So in the early hours of Sunday the eleventh of November, there was a shattering noise as the engine started up in preparation for the three [unclear] take off. The course was to be across, north-east across the North Sea. Round about seven o’clock in the morning we changed course directly east, when we approached the snow covered mountains of Norway. We had been flying at about eight, fifteen hundred feet across the North Sea but the height was then maintained to cover the mountains and we flew direct west into Sweden. Where we turned north so that we could follow the boundary between Norway and Sweden at an altitude which would not expose us to the German radar. We, once we had crossed the mountains, we then reduced the altitude to a reasonably low level. We then had to fly north all along the route between Norway and Sweden until we reached the assembly point at Lake Tornea Trask east of Narvik, some one hundred miles from Tromso. In those Northern latitudes the daylight comes late and I remember, as it got daylight, climbing over the central spire of the aircraft and going into the cockpit. Now, I was very impressed looking out of the cockpit but even at that early hour I could see the path that we were to take, all the lakes were covered by small, lenticular clouds, these saucer like clouds could have been used by the observer to mark his route north to Narvik, that was another of my abiding memories, when all the aircraft had reached the lake Tait fired vary lights at which point all the aircraft then assembled into a battle station and followed Tait on the route to Tromso. As all the aircraft were assembling into position over the lake, we had all gained height to twelve thousand feet, at this height we were able to cross the mountain into the fjord where the Tirpitz was moored. Now, as we crossed the mountain, we were some twenty miles from the Tirpitz, it was a mere small speck at that distance, and of course it was in reverse, we were small specks to the Tirpitz. Now, we know later that it caused consternation on the Tirpitz, not expecting us they suddenly realised that they should call for help and this they immediately did apparently, so I learned later but there was no response to their call, to the call for help from the Messerschmitts. Soon after we were spotted by the Tirpitz they assembled their gun positions and their enormous guns, fifteen inch guns which fired shells of one ton, took a few seconds to get to elevation but in that time they realised that we were too high for the big guns firing one ton shells could reach us but the shells were fall exploding ahead of us and slightly below us. Now in our film Lancaster they were close enough to cause some vibration and movement to the plane, now we had to hold the camera steady in spite of that movement, I think we achieved this, as we got closer to the Tirpitz the ack-ack, small ack-ack guns started and actually it got presumed, because of the panic on board the ship they were not too accurate. As the operation developed John Loftus, lucky chap, was in the front turret and he was able from the front turret to swing the turret round and track the first Tallboys being delivered, being dropped from the aircraft. I couldn’t see that but I was able then to go from the side position and film the first, first few bombs exploding around the ship. As I was working through that open space over the door, I could feel myself getting colder but I wasn’t distracted from what I was doing but I could see the ship being hit, I could see the steam and the smoke coming up and I could see especially I remember at the time it impressed me, that what had happened to the guns on the island when Tallboy landed on the island on the starboard side of the operation. After the last aircraft had gone, I remember walking up or crawling up to the cockpit and looking out of the cockpit and the pilot had dived to the starboard to the right and he was about five thousand feet at the time he’d finished and we could see all the smoke and steam and then he immediately turned on a course which we left because we were going back to Waddington and the rest of the force had gone west of Scotland, but much to our surprise, as we started our course to Waddington, the rear gunner shouted out to the skipper, that he could see the Tirpitz turning over so we turned, the skipper, the pilot turned the aircraft to the starboard so we could see but the pilot was on the other side, sitting on the other side, he couldn’t see it so in order to see it, he dipped the starboard wing and again lowered his altitude and we could see in the distance that by that time [unclear] the smoke and the steam seemed to have gone or there was a haze over the aircraft and you could see that it was upside down. Now, I can’t remember how quickly it was done but the pilot knew that as a squadron Messerschmitts we didn’t know the Germans had been informed by radar but it was time to get out so from that time on we kept on our course back to Waddington. So after that unforgettable operation we headed south across the seas, Norwegian sea, The North Sea and down to Waddington. After a flight of close on fifteen hours where we were met by General [unclear] who collected the film as soon as possible but he was taking it to London to be processed and that was on the Prime Minister, I believe on the Prime Minister’s instruction to get the film out developed as soon as possible for propaganda reasons and also he thought the Prime Minister expected it to devastate the morale of the German people because Hitler had always told them that the Tirpitz was unsinkable. And once again 617 Squadron and 9 Squadron had proved Hitler wrong.
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 Hugh Rogers
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Andrew Panton
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-04-09
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ARogersH150409
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:13:45 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Hugh Rogers was a cameraman during the war and remembers filming the sinking of the Tirpitz in November 1944. Gives a vivid and detailed account of the operation, describing the briefing, the technical modifications to the aircraft and the unfolding of the events.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Norway
England--Lincolnshire
Norway--Tromsø
Scotland--Moray
Scotland--Lossiemouth
Norway--Narvik
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-11-12
463 Squadron
617 Squadron
9 Squadron
aircrew
Lancaster
Operation Catechism (12 November 1944)
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Waddington
Tallboy
Tirpitz
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1085/11543/PPritchardA1701.2.jpg
665f37b1fc773d7c481a87e32db937c5
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1085/11543/APritchardC170823.1.mp3
3aaf3d7ce542de333a9bec8d84eec5cd
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
Pritchard, Arthur
A Pritchard
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. An oral history interview with Carolyn Pritchard about her father, Arthur Pritchard (2206806 Royal air Force) documents and photographs. He flew operations as a flight engineer with with 463, 467 and 97 Squadron until he was shot down. He was hidden by the French Resistance until the liberation of Paris.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Carolyn Pritchard and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-08-23
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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Pritchard, A
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
SP: This is Susanne Pescott and I’m interviewing Carolyn Pritchard today for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We’re at Carolyn’s home and it is the 23rd of August 2017. So, first of all thank you Carolyn for agreeing to be interviewed today. So, first of all do you just want to tell me about your father and what he did before the war?
CP: Yes. As he joined up on his, on his eighteenth birthday he didn’t have, after leaving school he worked for a baker’s delivering bread and that’s it really. And then he joined up.
SP: Yeah.
CP: On his eighteenth birthday.
SP: Did he ever say why he wanted to join the RAF?
CP: No. No. No. He didn’t. He didn’t mention why.
SP: Ok. So he went into the RAF and do you know what, where he went first of all? What he did?
CP: Yes. He was, he joined up on his eighteenth birthday and he was, he did his training at St Athans in South Wales. He passed out as flight sergeant and was posted to RAF Winthorpe in Lincoln where he was introduced to his Australian crew as flight engineer. And that was on the 29th of February 1944. He joined the 463 Squadron. That was the Australian squadron in RAF Waddington. They did seventeen sorties while they were in Waddington and they were Germany, over Germany, France. And on the 9th no, sorry it was the 7th of May 1944, the pilot officer Bryan Giddings and crew, that was dad’s crew, they posted, they were posted to 97 Squadron. That was the Pathfinders and that was at RAF Coningsby. They completed another three missions. Seeing action in D-Day. On their twenty first sortie, that was the 9th 10th of June 1944, on a night raid over a railway junction at Etampes, that’s south of Paris, Pilot Officer Giddings and crew failed to return. Right. I don’t know how much —
[recording pause]
CP: After releasing flares over the target the Lancaster ND764 was hit by flak and they were then attacked from below by a night fighter. Many many years later when he was able to relate his story to me he recollected the moment the aircraft was hit. The inner or outer port side engine was on fire. He wasn’t sure which one it was. The suicidal height at which they were flying, the noise, the smoke in the cabin and unable to communicate amongst each other, the cramped conditions in the cockpit, no place to wear your parachute. He always stored it on the floor. Frantically searching for it, the rush of cold air from the open back door. That was the navigator jumping out. Then he trying to prise, prise open the escape hatch at the front. Every second was wasted. Making survival impossible. The whole episode could not have lasted more than a few minutes and before he realised it was a doomed machine he, he had jumped out.
SP: So, how Carolyn, when he told you that, how did you feel when he was relaying the story?
CP: Well, a couple of years later we’d gone back to RAF Coningsby to see the Lancaster and we were able to go on board. And I could then visualise because the Lancaster wasn’t aircrew friendly at all. It was so small and cramped. And I felt so sorry for the mid-upper gunner. Where he was positioned would have been impossible for him to get out. And the tail end Charlie was, he was in this small little cockpit and again that would have been impossible for him to get out and the aeroplane was going down so fast. And eventually when they did find the bodies they were found in, in the aircraft. Yes. The three of them.
SP: So three —
CP: Were, yes it was the bomb aimer, the mid-upper gunner was, he couldn’t get out and the rear gunner which was the tail end Charlie. They are the three that couldn’t get out. The pilot had jumped out when the plane was very very low but his pilot, his parachute didn’t open. And also the wireless operator. No. I’m muddling up now. It was the navigator. The wireless operator had jumped out already and it was the navigator that had jumped out without a parachute and he was found with the whistle in his mouth. So he’d obviously survived the crash but I don’t know how long and was trying to attract attention. Yes.
SP: And how was your father when he was talking about the story?
CP: He was, he’d put the whole episode really at the back of his mind all the years we were growing up. Even though he used to talk about them. The crew.
[recording paused]
SP: So Carolyn, obviously it’s quite emotional talking about your father and the crew there so can you just talk me through what happened then after he’d got out of the plane.
CP: Yes. Because the aircraft was on fire and it was so low he’d baled out and he’d sprained his ankle. So he was hobbling around the French countryside with a damaged ankle and famously asking villagers for the way to the coast. He was trying to get back to the coast. Eventually he’d arrived at a small village, Egly and entered the local church. He’d seen a local man at the altar and [pause] and told him in broken English that he was Welsh. That he was an RAF airman. The French man couldn’t speak English and what he did he took, he gave dad a glass of water and then he took him to a café opposite the church. On entering the café dad waved a hundred franc note from his RAF kit and ordered champagne for everybody in the, in the café. There was panic as the Germans were in the village and he was hastily ushered to the back room. A young teenage boy from the village was brought in. He could speak a little English and he asked dad to explain what had happened. Dad said that his aircraft had been shot at and that he’d baled out and, but he was really uncertain with the rest of the crew and he kept asking and asking how they were. So that they could check his identity with London they hid dad in a small air raid shelter underground and if they, if he hadn’t checked out right I think they would have just left him there. Once the ok came from London the local leader of the French Resistance was summoned and put him in the care of Monsieur George Danton and his family. They risked being shot if caught hiding a British airman and he was given a new identity, well an identity and civilian clothing. His ID was a deaf and dumb Frenchman. And a bicycle. He was moved from safe house to safe house until eventually he ended up in Paris. In Antony in Paris. He was always instructed to follow a parcel tied to the back of Mr Danton’s cycle. Not Mr Danton himself. And once they had arrived at Mr Danton’s house in Paris Mr Danton went into the building without the parcel. The parcel was still left on the bicycle and a few minutes later came out, picked up the parcel, took it into the house and then dad followed. And that was the time that they could embrace each other because they knew then that they were in a safe house.
SP: So, Carolyn obviously dad’s now in the safe house. Did he talk about what life was like in the safe house?
CP: Yes. He did. He kept a diary while he was there. Life was very mundane. And there was little food. Jam and bread kind of thing. And now and again they used to try and get a cigarette for him because he was absolutely desperate for cigarettes. And then they tried to teach him. They tried to teach him a couple of French words to just to get about and whenever it was a bit safe for them to go out Mr Danton used to take him to the, some of the airfields where the German, the Germans had their weapons and aircraft and say to dad, ‘You make sure that you remember this. That when you get back to the UK and you’re debriefed that you can tell them where things are.’ That kind of thing. Yes. Yes.
SP: So, how did he actually get back to — obviously he was in a safe house.
CP: Yes.
SP: How did he get back in to the UK?
CP: He was, he was in the safe house for over two months. And then there was the liberation of Paris on the August the 24th. Right.
[recording paused]
CP: Yes. On or about the 23rd of June they tried to get dad back to the, to the UK. They were expecting a Lysander aircraft to land on, on a landing strip but they tried a couple of times but it was, they felt it was too dangerous because the Germans were still, still around. So they had to, it was just too risky so they had to abort. They tried to get him out there but eventually he hitched a lift with a war correspondent for the Sunday Pictorial. A Rex North. And they eventually got to Paris. On the way there they were, he was given a bottle of champagne which I’ve, we’ve still got today actually in the house. Undrinkable. Yes. And eventually on the 24th of August he flew back in a Dakota to the French, from the French coast to Hendon. And at that time, after that he was debriefed. He had to go down to London to be debriefed to what he’d seen. And, and that was it.
SP: Did he talk at all about the debriefing? Did he say that was like or —
CP: No. He didn’t. He remembered. He had a marvellous memory. He’d remembered everything he’d seen while he was in Paris trying to help. Trying to help while he was back. No. He didn’t actually. No, he didn’t.
SP: And what happened after the debrief? Did he, what happened to him after that?
CP: Well he, he’d, he was allowed home. One thing. One thing that struck me when I was, I had always been speaking to him over the years was how he didn’t get any counselling and everything. There were so many people killed and he kept asking, ‘What’s happened to the crew? What’s happened to the crew?’ And they didn’t know. Even the crew, years and years later after speaking to the crew’s families they hadn’t known for years, well months, what had happened to them. And he was allowed to go home. Which, he came back to our little village here and, and that was it. He had a couple of weeks here and then he was posted to Scotland as an air traffic controller. So that was the end of his war. Yes. And where he met my mother.
SP: Right.
CP: She was in the RAF as well. She was a WAAF. Yes.
SP: So, obviously they met up in Scotland and then —
CP: Yes. They did. Yes. Yes. They met up in Scotland.
SP: And came back to live in Wales.
CP: Eventually, they did. Yes. They, they got married and always lived in this little village. Yeah. My mother was from Liverpool. Yes. Yeah.
SP: And then what did your father do after the war?
CP: He worked in construction. Working for big machinery. He was offered a career in the RAF as [pause] I think in Canada. They wanted him to be trained in Canada but he wasn’t interested anymore after going through such harrowing experience during the war. He didn’t want anything to do with flying. Yes. So he took a different career.
SP: What about you? How did it affect you growing up with your father’s stories? Was it —
CP: Well, it did. He always, he always, he hid a lot. He always talked about the boys.
[recording paused]]
CP: Yes. Always talked about the boys to our families. And as we were growing up we knew about them even though we had never met them. And when my sister Shirley and her husband had got married they had gone to Europe on their honeymoon and thought they would try and trace first of all the French Resistance families to try and get back in touch again. Which they did. They managed to, to get in touch with the French Resistance. That was in 1977. I think it was 1977. And eventually my dad went over for the first time in 1977 to meet the families of the French Resistance. And ever since, all his life he kept in touch with them. They either came to our little village here to see him or he’d gone back to see them. All always visiting the boy’s graves. By that time he’d known that they perished and they knew exactly where they’d been buried and the stories. The harrowing stories that followed. Yeah. So we did know the boys. And he used to come up with some funny stories about them. Like if he had a date with a WAAF they’d all go to the pictures together [laughs] Yeah.
[recording paused]
CP: Yes. He used to talk, like I said about the boys. One was an avid reader. Always had a book. Even when they went on, on their ops at night and the pilot used to have to say, ‘Put that light off,’ because he had this tiny little light in his, he was a upper-gunner. Just in case he attracted the Germans. And I think the rear gunner used to write poetry. I’m sure dad said he did. They were well educated. Very very well educated men. I think they taught my father a lot because first of all they couldn’t understand him when he joined the crew because he was Welsh speaking all his life. Had a very big accent. Welsh accent. Could hardly speak English to be honest. Yes. And they taught him a lot of culture. Yes. Took him to London on their time off when they had time off. And a few of them used to come to our little village when they, because they couldn’t go back to Australia obviously when they had time off and they used to come to the village here. My dad’s family had met them. Yes. Lovely men.
SP: And you kept in touch you say, with the Resistance.
CP: Oh yes.
SP: Did you keep in touch with the Australian families as well?
CP: Families, as well. Yes. And that, well he hadn’t really because I’m one of eight so during, during his time while we were growing up he had a lot on his hands [laughs] So he, he didn’t have time but as we grew up and we knew about the boys I used to try and say, ‘Oh, do you remember where they came from, dad?’ And all that. Anyway, I think it was in 2004. I think it was 2004 there was a knock on the front door and a man handed my father a letter and left. So he read the letter and it was a member of the crew. It was the Webb family. And they had found out my father, where my father lived, managed to get somebody that was connected to the 97 Squadron website, Ron Evans, to deliver, who lived in Wales, to deliver a letter to dad introducing themselves. Saying that if he didn’t want to get in touch, you know, keep in touch or get in touch with them that was ok. But my father was absolutely thrilled he had their address. They lived in Sydney so, and then we, I was on the internet then so I was able to email them and say yes of course. I think it was 2006 they came over from Australia and spent six weeks in Wales with us here. And that was very nice. And then the McGill family, that was the upper gunner, they came over in, I think it was just over two years ago and we went to the Bomber Command Spire. The unveiling of the Spire. They came and we were in touch and we’re still in touch with them all. Yes. We’re still in touch with the Australians. Lovely people. Send Christmas cards every year. Have letters from them. Yes. Unfortunately, part of, well the Giddings family they’ve, they’ve died. We’ve lost touch there. The Clements family the same. But the Seales we still speak to. The Webbs and the McGills. Yes.
SP: And how important is that to you to keep that contact going?
CP: Oh, it’s very important. Yes. The boys. Memories are still, still there. And actually the, actually both families the McGills and the Webbs we actually went over to France on different occasions to stay with the Dantons and to visit the graves. Yeah. So that they could see where they were. Yeah.
SP: So, we were talking about your father earlier. You mentioned on the day of the final flight.
CP: Oh yes.
SP: For the whole crew.
CP: Yes.
SP: They had certain superstitions. It didn’t feel quite right that day. Do you just want to share that story?
CP: Yes. Yes. They used to, well they used to, you know just before they taxied off for the mission they used to wee on the front wheel. But that particular night three or four WAAFs had come down to the air, airfield to wave them off so they couldn’t carry out the weeing. So that was the night that the plane was shot down so my father felt that if only they’d wee’d. Yeah.
SP: Did you talk about that? Saying that was a superstition that they had.
CP: They all, yes. They always carried it, they did that every time they went on a mission. Yes. But not that particular night. Yes.
SP: Just chatting, is there anything else you feel you want to say about that you haven’t had the chance to say about your father or any, the impact on the family or anything like that?
CP: Well, I think, I think going back to when they used to come back from their missions and then they were always, they always were given a big breakfast. And they’d be sitting there with their cigarettes obviously. And they used to call, they used to have tablets, uppers and downers I think but he never used to touch them. But the coldness of when they used to go into the mess and the fact that their locker had been cleared and as if they had never existed. You know, the crews that had never returned. I just felt that that was very sad and he always used to feel that was very sad. Yes. And the fact that he didn’t know, while he was in France, he didn’t know what had happened to the rest of the crew and he’d asked and asked and nobody knew and it was months later that he did find out and that was so, so sad for him. Yeah. Because they were best of friends. Did everything together.
SP: That’s ok. Alright. Well, I just want to —
CP: Yeah.
SP: Thank you Carolyn very much for sharing those stories and obviously the impact on you as well.
CP: Yes.
SP: So, on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre thank you very much.
CP: Oh, you’re welcome. 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 Carolyn Pritchard
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Susanne Pescott
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
2017-08-23
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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
APritchardC170823, PPritchardA1701
Format
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00:26:53 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Second generation
Description
An account of the resource
Carolyns father, Arthur, joined the Royal Air Force on his 18th birthday. Following his training as a flight engineer, was posted to RAF Winthorpe. He was allocated to a crew consisting entirely of Australians. In February 1944 the crew were posted onto Lancaster aircraft of 463 Squadron at RAF Waddington. On the 7th May 1944, they were posted to 97 Squadron at RAF Coningsby. It was from RAF Coningsby on their 21st operation on board ND 764, they were shot down 30 miles south of Paris. Carolyn describes in detail the events, from the aircraft being damaged by anti-aircraft fire and then being attacked by a Luftwaffe fighter, to the escape from the aircraft and subsequent contact with French civilians who sheltered him up to his return to the UK after the liberation of Paris in August 1944. Following his return, Arthur was granted three weeks leave. He did not return to flying, instead he retrained and became an air traffic controller. He was posted to Scotland, and it was here he met his future wife. In the 1970’s, whilst on a holiday in Europe, her sister managed to establish contact with members of the French Resistance who had sheltered Arthur. In 1977 Arthur was able to visit them and the graves of his fellow crew who did not survive and remained in contact for the remainder of his life. Carolyn recalls her father describing a superstition the crew used to carry out before each opeion. Each crew member would urinate on the aircraft wheels before boarding. Several members of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force came to wave them off on their last opeion and discretion meant they were unable to carry out their routine.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Great Britain
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Lincolnshire
France--Paris
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-02
1944-05-07
1944-08
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
463 Squadron
97 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bale out
bombing
evading
final resting place
flight engineer
ground personnel
Lancaster
Pathfinders
RAF Coningsby
RAF Waddington
RAF Winthorpe
Resistance
shot down
superstition
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1071/11528/APerryJE160115.1.mp3
b6c636650aae4fb0f573af0c56f4d4b1
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
Perry, Jack
John E Perry
J E Perry
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Jack Perry (b. 1920, 617795, Royal Air Force). He served as ground crew with 83 Squadron at RAF Scampton but also flew three operations as an air gunner.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-01-15
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
Perry, JE
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
NM: So this is, this is Nigel Moore. It’s the 15th of January 2016. I’m at the home of Mr John Perry in [deleted ] Welwyn Garden City. So, tell me a little bit about your childhood and growing up before you joined the air force.
JP: Very interesting. Yeah. Well, I was born in Wimbledon 1920 and never saw my father because he died before I was registered. My mother died when I was six years old and I went to live with one of her younger sisters in Poplar. All I remember about that was being dressed in a grey suit with a bag. Going to school at Queen’s Road, Wimbledon and passing the Royal Arsenal Co-op where they had all the carts garaged there. That apparently was where my father worked after he came out of the army. And I got, as I say one morning I went to say goodbye to my mother in bed. She was in bed. I just went back and saw my granny coming and I said, ‘Mummy won’t speak to me.’ I went on my way to school. And she’d died of consumption. Apparently my father had died with it before that. Put his down to a result of first war gas according to my cousin later on. She was a bit older than me. Now, I remember my mother’s funeral. We were, my brother and myself and my cousin Winnie. And my mother’s younger sister, Auntie Mabel had a pram. And we weren’t allowed to go to the burial or the funeral so we were on the kerb outside the house. As I say after that I just know I went to one Auntie, Jessie in Poplar. And my brother, who was three years older than me went to Auntie Ethel in Romford. And that’s Winnie’s mother. My cousin. I can’t remember much about it except that we lived in a bungalow on a newly erected square of bungalows. And my mother or my father were either caretakers there. That’s my auntie I should say. I remember the 1926 strike. All the marchers in their peaked caps and corduroy trousers tied at the knees marching. And then apparently my uncle he worked in the docks. East India Docks. Whatever he was. A caretaker or something or other. But anyway, I just remember doing one of two things with my auntie like giving me a bunch of wooden skewers to go and get some sausages from the butcher. And climbing up the iron railings in the tenement buildings that were there empty. The next thing I knew I was in a Church Home. And I remember the morning there I was standing in the room with all the rest of the children that were there and I know I wet myself and I had to go before the head man there. He was in his surplice and that. And I can’t remember much about it except that he had this board on the desk and he give me a hit with it. A Cribbage board it was as I know now. Now all I remember is that I used to be taken from there to school with a young school teacher. Used to take me on the bus every morning to school. Then after that I remember going to, in hospital for me adenoids and tonsillectomy. They were done and I got scarlet fever develop whilst in the hospital. And they took me across the bridge from the hospital to the workhouse and I was in the workhouse there for two weeks in bed, I remember with scarlet fever. And then a lovely old gentleman, I shall always remember him with his beard and that, came and took me away from there to a place at Fairlight, at Hampton Hill in Middlesex. All I can remember about that is that we used to sit around in the evening and he’d play this big phonograph. He’d got a big, with tubular discs. He used to play that in the evening. I remember then from there I was boarded out to a footballer in Hamptons. I don’t know where it was actually but, and all I know is that he and his wife they’d got two daughters and he used to take me with him to the football every, when he went training and playing. He used to sit me in the stands. I’m not sure now, I know they wore blue jerseys. Whether it was the original Wimbledon or whether it was Chelsea. But after a few times there I was taken back into care because, I don’t know the reason why but I was picked up with this social worker in a big browny red Talbot motor and taken to New Malden in Surrey. Children’s Home. There because I was born in Surrey so I was their responsibility. I remember that. When I apparently showed signs of bad temper or something or other they used to put me in the gas cupboard under the stairs and shut the door until I stamped it out and screamed at them. And then I remember I ran away from there, from this New Malden and I got as far as Teddington I think and I was picked up by the police and returned. I was about nine then, I think so [pause] Then I was boarded out again from there. Oh, when, I was labelled uncontrollable what they used to do, one of them, the masters of the house was as a punishment he used to take me down to the shed in the garden where they had a boxing ring rigged up. Put me in there with an older fella to knock me about a bit. To punish me it was. But as I say I loved it all because I loved fighting. And then I got boarded out again to other people. And I was going to New Malden Council School then. And it was somebody in New Malden. She’d already got two boy boarders. One of them was already working. And there again she used to put me in the cupboard under the stairs. And that was full of quart beer bottles. They were drinkers. Both of them. Her and her husband. I didn’t last long there. They took me back to this Children’s Home in New Malden. And then I remember I just started to go from council school to the newly built central, the first one, secondary modern school. West Malden Central School. I was put in to a 1b because I was only ten and the starting age was eleven. But this 1b was full of children that had qualified through exams. I was still only eleven. And when I passed the certificate for going to grammar school but at that time, going to grammar school everything you had had to be paid for so being a council boy nobody would do it so I, I didn’t go. I remember I picked up again then to go to, oh as I say when I first went to New Malden Children’s Homes and I was there, first day registered my, met my registrar there. When I was asked my name I said, ‘Jack.’ I was called Jackie. He said, ‘No such name. The name is John.’ So from then, that time on I became John all through until I was still in the air force. I was still as John. But I deviate. I was picked up at this Children’s Home in West Malden by a man and woman. They had, at that time a Vauxhall racing car. There was only fourteen of them built. And I was in the dickie seat at the back and I was taken in that car with them up to Shropshire in the West of England School of Handicrafts. I was eleven then. Because I was a little bit more intelligent or advanced then some of the other inmates there because most of them were cripples or parental rejects for fits and all that sort of thing. And they just started taking people from council homes too. And I was one of them there. Because I was a bit more intelligent I was asked or told to be companion to their only son, Tom Parker. And that’s how it stood. He was, had a governess. And I think I was just in there. I remember, as I grow older I did quite a lot of things. I know I was about fourteen I think, one of the masters who was a Territorial Army lieutenant he got me interested in the military. And I passed an exam to go to the Royal Ordnance Corps. Boy entrant. Gosport. And I was on my way there. Had to go to report to the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry Barracks. And I got to the barracks and he wasn’t there with me, this guy. He’d gone or something. But at the [pause] registrar or whatever they call them in there and they said, ‘We want your parent or your guardian to sign this,’ and I’d got nobody. So, they called up Petton Hall and they came and fetched me back again. And I carried on and I remember doing a lot of carpentry work and also helping rebuild a lorry with a, renewing the engine and that. And then, but they were pumping their own electricity there with a big Crossley gas engine. And I got I had to do that in the morning. It was fed by an anthracite boiler with a drip feed to supply the gas. I did that and then they had a, they started building the stables into another home for people and I got put on to help the electrician there. The electrician, plumber and brick layer from outside and each one had an apprentice if you can call them that. And I had to apprentice an electrician then. That’s where I learned my trade. There until I was eighteen. Another one of the masters got me thinking about going and I remember I went and I caught a train and went to Birmingham. To Snow Hill Station. Come out and there was the RAF recruiting office. I went in there and did the entrance exam. And then I joined the air force at the age of eighteen. I went down to West Drayton. At West Drayton I was kitted out and had my hair cut and the king’s shilling and then I went to Uxbridge for the initial training. Three months. That was drills and things like that. I remember I was good at football. We were playing a match between the squadrons. Flights or what there. And then a Fulham scout was there watching me and I think about half time he left because I finished up on the ground most of the time, being small. Then one of the PTI instructors was a RAF boxing guy and he used to take me down to the boxing ring and have, showed us about because I loved it. The boxing. Until one time I was boxing against a Halton apprentice. Seventeen year old apprentice. And he gave me two pokes and I was on the floor. I thought that’s me finished. I went from there to Henlow camp for electrical training and, and that I was there about eight to ten months. I remember seeing on the flying field there the monoplane and I thought that’s new. And it was a Hurricane that was under test. And that’s the first of the Hurricanes then before they started going. Anyway, I, come the July 1939 all my entry were posted. We hadn’t finished the course or anything but to various sections then. As I say, in this entry that apart from people and an AMIE chappy and another one that’s national, national certificate. Another one who had been an electrician in the theatres. So we were all posted to different places. I went up to Scampton. And I remember going there and joining 83 bomber squadron. That [pause] and initially I was put into a bell tent because accommodation wasn’t ready for months. Apparently they were just starting to receive the Hampden aircraft squadron. They already had one electrician there with the squadron and he’d probably been some time with them. They couldn’t find work for me so I was sent over to work in the battery charging room with a civilian operator there they had. And then I remember the day that war broke out then. September the 4th. They had this tannoy message over there. I was just walking in the, between meals and things and they said, ‘The next time you hear this you have to all go down in the shelters.’ I don’t know what happened after that. I know it was a sunny day. And I just remember that they had another electrician posted to them and he was sent to the battery room and I was taken out of the battery room to the maintenance hangar. And I was there for a bit. We had, I made friends with another Southern Irish chappy that had joined up for the war and then he was my friend then. And I remember he’d done a minor service on a, on a Hampden aircraft and he’d gone on leave and he hadn’t signed up for it. So I, I was told have a look and see or sign for it by the NCO in charge. I checked it over and signed it up. They took it out for engine runs and when they went to start it, it caught fire. And then I know one of them came from Farnborough to inspect it and check what may have happened. And the guy that came was an electrician, Jimmy Phillips that had been on the course with me at Henlow. As I say, he’d been a National Certificate holder so he got on all right. And what they found was that when they pressed the button to start the engine up with the ground plugged in that the relay, something like that, had arced between the things and they’d sparked and caught fire. Anyway, of course they had to, Handley Page sort all that out and put rubber sleeves on so that it couldn’t happen again. And I remember that both Paddy and I were sent out. That more aircraft had come and we were designated to flights. About ten or twelve aircraft in each flight. I was in B flight and then service them. Daily servicing, DIs and sign up for the 700s so that they could fly. I remember that on one occasion I, the, the bombsight selector was showing that a fault, amber light, a fault on something. An earth on the system. And I remember it took me about forty eight hours to trace that right back to where it was, and it was a tail wheel microswitch had frozen solid and causing the short. So Handley Page had to send a work crew out to sort that out and they had a gel mixture in all microswitches exposed to the weather. And then I remember being on duty crew which we used to do. And in the first instance the first duty crew I think I had to go out with the flashing beacon to some distant part of Lincoln. And that was an all night job. Brought it back in the day time. Another time, duty crew, we had just had all the runway lit up with glim lamps that were battery operated lamps for the flare path and goose necks with paraffin and the chance lights, one at each end of the flare path. And we’d just got them all lit up for the aircraft returning from a bombing raid when a Junkers 88 joined the circuit and strafed the runway. It was a pretty sight with green and yellow and tracer bullets. A couple of our returning aircraft gave chase. I don’t know what happened to them or him. And then, oh and so one night when we were, Paddy and I were out and we came, we were on the way back to camp and we came back the top of the airfield way with a mini cab. I can’t remember why. But we were just off the aircraft, airfield and this aeroplane, one of ours, crash landed. Out of, out of the aerodrome precincts in the field. I remember Paddy and I stopped the car and ran over to help them out. And we were the first people there. The ambulance came and everybody was alright. I think that there was a burning thing. Then the ambulance brought us back to camp and took us right back to the Red Cross. Their place because they’d take the passengers to be checked over. I don’t remember much else there [unclear]
NM: You, you mentioned you had three, three flights as a —
JP: Oh yeah. I’ll come to that.
NM: As an unofficial gunner. How, how did that —
JP: I’m coming to that. That was at Scampton with the squadron. Just after the war broke out a DRO was posted up for tradesmen to volunteer for air gunners. To sit in. And three of us from the squadron or flight, or anyway in the billet, volunteered and as I say I was very pleased to. We had a week’s training with the armoury sergeant who was the first air force person I’d seen in khaki. He was a sergeant obviously and he showed us how to strip the guns down, rebuild them, oil them. The Vickers K gun. And then took us out for target practice. And I remember it was stupid it was nothing to do with guns, K-guns or anything like that was a Hispano Suiza, a big gun. And firing at a Messerschmitt 109 target board. And then when we’d done that we were, I personally was given a crew place. And we were designated to go to Kiel and it was a paper, just paper delivery. We were told not to fire the guns unless fired upon or the pilot told us to. Otherwise we were just there to make weight. We did one trip there and another trip with the same purpose to Wilhelmshaven. And then a third trip was a camera study of the pens. The submarine pens at Wilhelmshaven. We were, we were told that we’d got to be registered and, but we were going to have a medical test before we went to do the air to air firing at North Coates. And then when I was having the medical, I remember it was in the barrack room then, the guy just said no and, ‘You’ve failed your medical for eyesight.’ Never did tell me what it was. It was just an eyesight test. So I never qualified. I know one of the other people, he did. I was very proud of the squadron because the 83 Squadron was commanded by Wing Commander Snaith of the Schneider Trophy. Renowned I think. And I used to follow that when I was a kid. And the aircraft. That was, that was alright until I got posted away and found myself up at Turnhouse in Scotland and there I was put on the, into an office. K4 area. I was, I had to be interviewed by the group captain of the Turnhouse. And then we, he had us go to him and swear to secrecy. It was the Duke of Hamilton was the group captain I remember. Anyway, I found myself out in the civilian lodgings on the decoy sites just being built up in Edinburgh area. I was there on this decoy site. The first one at east of Kinleith, which was at the foot of the Braids Hill. The decoy site was on Braids Hills just outside Edinburgh. And all I’d do there was check the circuitry of the fires and the diesel machines and everything there. And then I had to train ACHs and I was posted to a site at Millerhill and made area electrician. So I had a dispatch driver with a sidecar to go around the other sites checking the batteries and the, checking out the circuitry. The, the flight lieutenant in charge of the unit K4, all said, everything we had a code word — Starfish. If you were ever approached by anybody, Secret Service police or anything like that you just had to say, ‘Starfish,’ and you’d go on your way. It was a secret code. Anyway, he said that, ‘You’re doing the area electrician. I’m going to get you promoted.’ I said, ‘Well, I’m a Group 2 tradesman. I’m as far as I can go.’ And he, he got in touch with Colonel Butcher, MOD and he applied to the Air Ministry to get me in. The Air Ministry apparently turned back and said, ‘Unfit for NCO material.’ And I could only ever assume that that was because I’d passed my eye test to be aircrew. Because they’d already made then aircrew all had to be NCOs when I was there. In my flights I was just given a sergeant’s stripes during the flight as protection in case you were taken prisoner. And that applied to all the wireless operators. They were only Group 2 tradesmen as well. And then, as I say, but I was so proud of 83 Squadron. I was very disappointed when I left them because already they’d had John Hannah a VC. And to my knowledge they had done the first two bombing raids to Italy which was a two way and they lost a lot of aircraft on that. And then part of the hundred bomber attack on Berlin, I think it was. And of course Handley Page were adapting these aircraft for all sorts of things. 83 Squadron and 49 which was the other squadron at Scampton they had Barry Learoyd as a VC for his antics on a raid on the dams which was unsuccessful but he stayed there and watched everybody drop off their bombs apparently. And he was the leader. But then they had adapted for mine laying and everything what they did. Anyway, I digress again there. When I, when I had this promotion turned down the, my senior officer there said, ‘Well, we’ll send you for Group 1 training,’ which had just started up in electrics. Group 1. And I was sent back to Turnhouse waiting for permission there and he said, ‘We’ll get you there and ask to have you back again.’ Anyway, something happened at Turnhouse. I was in the cubbyhole. I was working on a microswitch again there. That was the first place I saw WAAFs working on Spitfires. Laying on the tail planes while they revved them up. Wonderful. Anyway, a posting came for somebody else there and they were posted and they they didn’t take the posting because they were compassionate posting to Turnhouse for reasons of family or something like that. So I was put on there and I was promised that the posting would follow me through. But that’s how I got on to the glider units. First and foremost I had to go to a place called Lasham to start up a Heavy Glider Maintenance Unit. And I remember I had to pick up some of my belongings from the civilian billet and I missed the 10 o’clock train out of Edinburgh to London in the morning. I had to wait until 10 o’clock at night to get another one and of course consequently I’d missed all my connections. I got down to Hook and I had to go from there to RAF Odiham. I used public transport to get there and the transport arranged to pick me up there had gone back. And I was three days at Odiham. They said, in the cook’s hut, of course it could be anytime and they were people that were early risers and that, the cooks. So, anyway I did get to Lasham and I was there, I think two weeks. I know Christmas time was on there. The aerodrome wasn’t ready. Nowhere near for reception. And all we had were Nissen huts. I remember me and another of my colleagues we took up an option of going to Polk’s Photographic Works Christmas party. And I remember coming out of that to get my transport back from that and being set upon by two Royal Marines. And then a Royal Canadian military policeman come and banged them up and carted me off to their billets. And I was there overnight. And they took me back to Tarrant Rushton in the morning and, not Tarrant Rushton. Lasham. And they immediately sent me to the Red Cross place to be checked over for any broken bones or severe bruising. That’s how I spent my Christmas. Then we were taken by bus to Hurn Airport where we started forming this Heavy Glider Maintenance Unit. We didn’t have much to do with the gliders at the time. All we were doing were wiring up the tow ropes for the intercom with don 8 wires. And then we were, I think it was the [pause] mostly to do with the Army Airborne Div. Training their pilots and that. Anyway, we, we were all bundled off up to West Kirby in Liverpool and kitted out with khaki wear and given a sten gun and ammunition. Put on a boat. And that was in Liverpool and we went from Liverpool up to the Clyde to join a convoy and we were, we were on the Duchess of York, the liner. And I remember my accommodation there was on a table. They did have hammocks but I couldn’t get in them. And we went there. This convoy sailed to North Africa. I remember going there. A two man submarine came up there. It was a Russian two man submarine waving their arms to us. Anyway, we were docked at Algiers. And you’ve never seen a most unruly rabble. Everybody just straggling one after the other. We finished up with all our gear and arms and ammunition at a transit camp there and just asked who you were and they sent you to a portion of the transit camp. And we were there overnight and then we were put on a train. Three day journey to go over to Morocco. Or the borders of Morocco. To a French Foreign Legion base. And we were there. And then we were, five of us were taken in the group captain’s Wellington bomber, it was an unarmed Wellington bomber. And flown from there over to Tunisia. I remember you could see the, going over the Atlas Mountains and the shepherds and that. On top of the hills and that. That low. Anyway, we got to this Kairouan in there. That’s where we formed the unit prior to the invasion of Sicily I think. But that, that was, I don’t know how the gliders got there or anything. Or the Halifaxes that towed them. They must have, they were all unarmed and they must have flown out but anyway there was quite a number of them and a few Wacos. And the Americans had Wacos and Dakotas. And then, then they did the invasion and talk as if some of the Americans even dropped their gliders at Malta. Anyway, and then there was a question there of retrieving a Halifax that was down. We went over with another Halifax. I wasn’t even with the Halifax squadron. I was a glider person. But I think I was senior electrician or something like that. Anyway, we got there. The mafia were guarding it and said give us forty eight hours and then we’d have to burn it. Anyway, but they got it back. Then of course we came back again on the Samaria back after there. And we were finished up at Netheravon in Wiltshire. And from there we went on disembarkation leave. I’d still got my sten gun and bullets. I thought, well I don’t want to take these home so I dumped them outside the armoury door. Everybody else had got rid of theirs somehow or other. Anyway, when we came back to Netheravon we were flown in the gliders there to Tarrant Rushton. That’s [pause] I didn’t like that trip at all. It was horrible. I was boiling hot and sick. I was glad to get out of it. I thought of the poor devils that had to go and fight in this afterwards. Anyway, there we did a lot at Tarrant Rushton training the airborne pilots and we took delivery of the heavier glider, Hamilcars and they took tanks and tank crews. Minor small tanks. And then, and then the night before the invasion of, on D-Day we were all lined up with these gliders and the Hamilcars again. And then they were, didn’t know what they were going to do but I remember seeing the Ox and Bucks Regiment marching on to the parade grounds. And then they all queued up ready and the Halifaxes lined up to take off. And then at [pause] I remember sitting on a Horsa glider. I was doing the intercom connection lot into the glider. Had a bit of trouble with it and I went over to talk to the pilot and asked him to check it out. I looked around and a load of kids with a rifle stuck between their legs. Only seventeen and eighteen. It made me feel absolutely sick. They must be sending these somewhere. Only kids. Anyway, about 11 o’clock at night there was this armada of lit up aircraft flying over and our lot just had to join them. They were apparently going to establish a bridgehead subject to the seaborne landings. Very nice. And then of course later on we had the airborne there. They did Arnhem. That was after but I wasn’t involved in the crossing of the Rhine at all. I was in hospital then. Anyway, that’s where I finished my time. At Tarrant Rushton. All I got as a thank you was thirty six pound I think for pay. Reserve payment and thirty six pound gratuity. And I just recently had a Legion of Honour from the French nation saying thank you for deliverance. Lovely. I’ve got a written notice. Somebody said thank you. Made me so proud. That’s about it. Except that I got married and that and had a family. And then of course —
NM: That’s quite some story. That’s quite some story. So, you stayed at Tarrant Rushton after D-Day.
JP: Yeah. Yeah.
NM: Right through to —
JP: Right through to —
NM: The end of the war.
JP: VE. VE yeah.
NM: And then you were demobbed.
JP: I were demobbed in March 1946. We’ve got it all down here somewhere [unclear] [pause] my service record is a bit haphazard. And that’s 83 Squadron. 1941.
NM: Ok. I’ll look at those in a minute can I?
JP: Yeah.
NM: So, so after the war what happened? Tell me after the war.
JP: Well —
NM: After your demob.
JP: I was very lucky. I, I got [pause] we were in, my wife and I and the eldest son were in digs in Wimborne. I looked for work. I got a job with Asian company in Bournemouth. Electrician. But on an air force recommendation that they wouldn’t take me on as a skilled man. They took me on as a man mate. I got four pound ten a week I think. That was six months. But I was put with a sixty year old man and I became his hands and that. I was with them, I can’t remember, a few years but then I got a local job at [pause] one of the foreman that I was working with. Asian company on a building in Bournemouth. We did renovation of all the hotels that the Canadians and Americans had, ravaged I think it’s called [laughs] The word. And this time we were doing another job repairing a restaurant. And this guy started up a business with a friend in Wimborne. He asked me to go there with him. That’s where I worked for a bit doing council house erections and odd jobs around. I became a washing machine, Bendix engineer. Did all sorts of things. And then I went to an engineering firm. This was after we’d got our house. Council house in Wimborne. My neighbour, an engineering firm wanted an electrician and he said, ‘Come and do it with us.’ So I did. I went there and used to do the servicing of the machines. And then we had a little section where they started up doing cards. Soldering and that. Anyway, they went bust, and I started looking for jobs. I went to Tarrant Rushton where flight refuelling were starting up. Well they were still in operation. And I couldn’t get a job there. [unclear] around the bend. I finished up at de Havillands in Christchurch. I went there and they took me on straight away. And also I met friends of a, worked for Mace and Co were there in an experimental department. As I say we were the experimental. We were doing the 110 Sea Vixen eventually. And they were also doing the production of Venoms. Sea Venoms and that. So, now I did that. As I say I went to Hurn Airport and was working night shift on servicing aircraft. Flight testing. As I say I went from there on loan up to Hatfield when the Sea Vixen’s were transferred from Christchurch up to Hatfield. I was doing experimental there. I’ve got here [pause] We were doing the Nimrod. Servicing the Comet into a Nimrod. That was all on the secret as well. And then of course I went over to the flight test for the [pause] they were still doing the Comet 4s in the flight test there. [pause] I don’t know, I’ve forgotten the name of it now [pause] Before the 146 anyway.
NM: Trident.
JP: Trident. Yeah. I went to China on delivery. Aircraft to China. Couple of times which was very good. And we had a Christmas at the Chinese expense up in Peking. That was quite an experience. We went to see Mao Tse Tung laying in state. And believe it or not we marched right up to the front of the queue. Then of course I was, I transferred under pressure to go into the inspection department. And then I did very well there. As I say I finished up doing the final inspection for flight electrical. I don’t think, there’s nothing else to say.
NM: And that took you to retirement did it?
JP: Well, I took my pass, my retirement pay about a month I think. But I was stuck here at home mowing the lawns and that.
[recording paused]
JP: Alright?
NM: Yeah.
JP: Down south. I went and got a job down at Swallowfield Service Station serving the public with fuel and that. Did that for five years. And then they, actually they closed down because the tanks got, had to be filled up with concrete because they were serving up dirty fuel. But I was seventy then so I had to settle down in retirement. That’s my life.
NM: So when you look back at your time, your service during the Second World War what, what are your reflections?
JP: Well, the biggest and most is the neglect of what 83 Squadron and subsequently 49 and the other people did before the public noted. I mean of the Dambusters they seemed to have taken over and the others are forgotten. They hurt me. I know that Guy Gibson, the big man. He was a pilot officer at Scampton in 83 Squadron in the beginning of the war. I remember him coming back visiting when he was the big Pathfinder. I don’t know why he came back to visit. Whether he came back to visit Barry Learoyd who was then ADC of 83 Squadron, he transferred from 49 or he was just sussing out the place because he was taking it over. I wasn’t there long enough to find out. I did know that while I was there Waddington started taking delivery of the Manchester. And the thing was it was an utter failure. The wheels were too big or something. That was the forerunner of the Lancaster.
NM: So did you volunteer for going to Edinburgh and then the gliders or or were you posted?
JP: No. I was posted there. No. Actually, when I got posted to Edinburgh I was living with my wife in Lincoln. And she went home to give birth to my eldest son and I, I wasn’t able to go. I only had a forty eight hour pass to get married. And when she was giving birth to my son I wasn’t allowed any leave at all. Then I was posted up there. As I say, to the glider squadron. It was because the person that had been delegated to do the transfer, that was a compassionate posting to Turnhouse and as I was there waiting for a posting I was the one that got put on the [pause] I didn’t mind. Because they did say that the, going to Group 1 training, ‘And when you finished we’ll have you back again.’ There was a promise. Once I got to the glider unit I was no longer an electrician. I was a Terry of all means. I used to do the picketing. All we did with gliders was hump batteries backwards and forwards to the charging unit. And then we’d do all the picketing down at the aircraft. And latterly with the Hamilcar gliders I used to drive the track, tractor to tow the Hamilcars off, off the grass into the hardstand. That’s what my job was really. Just preparing them for the runway.
NM: Tell me a little bit more about the three unregistered operations you did to Kiel and Wilhelmshaven.
JP: Oh that.
NM: How did you feel about those raids?
JP: Well, I thought I was at last going to fly. And all the, at the time the, as I say the radio operators were the only air gunners that were there. And the, when the Hampdens, they’d got a seat for air gunners at the back they hadn’t got any trained air gunners. And they asked for volunteers and we had the course there but each time at the briefing we were told not to fire unless fired upon or attacked. Or unless the pilot told you to for any reason or other. We were just make weight. I know that the bomb aimer was the one that dropped the packages of leaflets. And also, I think on the last trip for the photography, I think he did the photographing from his position in the nose. But the only thing about it was that I remember we got caught in a searchlight. I thought when they said my eyesight was defective that it might be because the searchlight had affected it. But subsequently, years later I found out I’d got a lazy eye. So I’ve still got that.
NM: So, apart from the searchlights did the three trips pass without incident or were there —?
JP: No. No incident at all. Just a cold flight because we only had the helmet and the jacket. They would do, they of course used to start off in daylight to do their raids.
NM: So, these were daylight raids were they?
JP: Yeah.
NM: So what did you feel looking down across occupied France and Germany itself?
JP: Well, France wasn’t occupied then of course. I mean we’d only just declared war on them. Apparently the French Ministry had asked the British Ministry not to bomb Germany for fear of reprisals. So I believe. They were, all initially we were doing were bombing marshalling yards and shipping. I think that the biggest was, although I wasn’t involved with it at the time was Dresden. When that chief air vice marshall decided to throw caution to the wind and kill civilians as well. There’s others, that was a thousand bomber raid. But I was very sad to leave 83 Squadron. I was very proud to be a member of it. I do think that they, like the Dambusters were the super squadron.
NM: Have you kept in touch with 83 Squadron at all?
JP: No.
NM: Joining reunions or associations at all?
JP: No. No. Not at all. No. I [pause] my, when I was, I wasn’t even offered an extension because I only signed on for six years and no reserve in the first place. But then I did nearly eight years. As I say when I saw all those kids although they might have been trained I was just disgusted with the air force.
NM: Why?
JP: I just felt that we’d be sending them to die. Took me a long time to get over that. And then of course we heard the next day about the, the seaborne invasion.
NM: So your feelings about D-Day were mixed were they?
JP: Yeah. Very. I was proud to be part of the armada on that. Whatever it was for. We didn’t know. But as I say subsequently it come out it was to establish a bridgehead.
NM: So, how have you recently got involved with the Bomber Command Centre then? How did you hear about that again?
JP: I think my son Paul picked up on it on the computer.
NM: So tell me about your Legion d’Honneur from France. How did that come about?
JP: Oh my daughter. She lives in Sandy in Bedfordshire. She said the, the mayor, the mayor in the local paper put a notice. The French authorities, War Office wanted to contact all those that had taken part in D-Day. Apart from the official landers those that had helped in the behind to notify them because they were offering to reward them. And I, she told me, I wrote to the mayor there they put my name forward to the War Office and they sent it over to France and I thought they’d forgotten all about it because I wasn’t actually part of D-Day. Pre D-Day we were. There’s a lovely letter there. And believe it or not there was eight hundred of us applied. They said they, they would do the awards if we wanted it. That they would arrange it but they’d got so many to do that they couldn’t possibly do. They were very good.
NM: So how do you feel Bomber Command has been treated since the war?
JP: Well, I don’t know much about it really. Obviously they’re doing their stuff all over the place with the Vulcan and things like that and the involvement in the Falklands War.
NM: Do you think the veterans of World War Two have been fully recognised?
JP: Well, now they’re beginning to be. But not before. I mean, I myself, but I feel apart from me it’s a memory, they’re forgotten. [unclear] All those aircrew lost. No recognition. It’s only that somebody wanted to revive D-Day. Not D-Day but Dambusters. Brought them to light. Then after that then people started thinking about Bomber Command as a whole. Because there weren’t only Hampdens. There were Wellingtons, Whitleys. They were the heavy bomber of the day and of course when the initial landings in in France they were still, fighter planes were all mono, all biplanes. The only monoplane they had was the Fairey. Fairey Battle. Light bomber. All they had over in Dunkirk and that. Then of course the Hurricane was a major fighter plane in the Battle of Britain. And then Spitfires of course were the master aeroplane.
NM: Ok. Shall we, shall we leave it there? Or —
JP: Well, I, yeah. As I say the decoy. Always assumed that the Germans were never going to bomb Edinburgh anyway because Hitler decided that was where he was going to be his seat. But some of them down south. They really got wiped out. The decoy sites. It’s all hearsay.
NM: So, so during the interview you said your real name was Jack. Which of the two names do you prefer? Jack or John.
JP: Jack. That’s how I’m known now mostly. Except in official circles. As I say, my wife, how she did it she found my relatives. My brother and my Auntie Ethel and Uncle Edgar who I remembered when I was a boy with mother. I always used to go to the greenhouse with him. And still, when I saw him he’d still got at Aunt Ethel’s a greenhouse with tomatoes.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Jack (John) Perry
Creator
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Nigel Moore
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-01-15
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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APerryJE160115
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:26:55 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Dorset
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Description
An account of the resource
Jack (John) Perry was orphaned at the age of six. He lived with family, a Children’s Home and various foster homes. Named Jack by his parents he was forced to be known as John when in children's homes, a name he continued to use during his RAF service. He has since reverted to Jack. He volunteered for the RAF as soon as he was old enough just before the outbreak of war. He trained as an electrician and was posted to RAF Scampton. He flew three operations as a stand in air gunner but failed the medical to become air crew. He was present when a Ju 88 had intruded with the returning squadron and strafed the airfield. He was posted to RAF Turnhouse and then Tarrant Rushton with the glider squadron. After the war he went to work for de Havillands in their experimental section.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1941
49 Squadron
83 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
decoy site
ground personnel
Halifax
Hamilcar
Hampden
Horsa
Ju 88
Manchester
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
propaganda
RAF Scampton
RAF Tarrant Rushton
RAF Waddington
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fdabc281256a5511e83607203749a467
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1015/11304/ALeedhamHJL181212.1.mp3
eca92a44a63ba05981df7098454718ac
Dublin Core
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Title
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Leedham, Bob
Herbert John Lewis Leedham
H J L Leedham
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Squadron Leader Bob Leedham (b. 1922, 1183577, 160986 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 90 and 57 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-12-12
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Leedham, HJL
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HB: This is an interview between International Bomber Command Centre volunteer Harry Bartlett with Mr Herbert, Bob, Leedham, who lives at Ashbourne in Warwickshire. He joined the RAF in 1940, but we’ll no doubt will come to that shortly. Bob, if I can just ask you what were you doing on, in the few years before the war?
BL: My family, my father was a skilled carpenter, but on my mother’s side, she had three brothers all of which were very keen engineers and one of which was exceptionally keen and he worked for a local motor company and he was involved in motor bike racing at Donnington, mainly, and it was him that inspired me with a heavy engineering interest, and consequently when I left school, I was educated in Burton on Trent, the dear old brewing place, I finished up there, I was, won a scholarship to be educated at the main system, which was the central system and the grammar school and so on in Burton and I survived that. And on leaving I decided my real choice was to follow my uncles as it were, into the motor trade, which I did. And I was trained fairly quickly as an apprentice in the motor trade and of course when the war started most of them were already on the reserve and they were the first people to be called up. So myself and a couple of my colleagues of my age, and at that time we are talking about an age of seventeen, sixteen to seventeen, I had already passed my driving test and was driving of course and we were left to run the very large garage very quickly after all the others had been called up, and so it was hands on experience with a vengeance. We were left to run the garage and carry on operations and consequently even a relatively short time I had a good engineering background. However, when I got to seventeen and a half, all my mates that I knew and went to school with and so on had all got into the air force, they’d volunteered in some way or other. In fact some of them were actually called up and I knew that sooner or later I would be called up as soon as I got to the age of I think it was eighteen or nineteen and the chances were that I would maybe put in to the Army. Well I had no interest whatsoever of going into the Army. My first choice was always the air force. Unknown to my parents, at seventeen and a half, I went over to the Assembly Rooms in Derby to the recruiting centre and signed up to join, but I had to give my age as eighteen. They probably accepted this with tongue in cheek knowing that I’d lied a little bit about my age. However, I was accepted and instructed to come for a medical a couple of days later. Very amusing and perhaps interesting thing was, that bearing in mind I had been brought up in a relatively conservative sort of area in Burton on Trent as opposed to big cities and so on, so we were living in a relatively closed environment, despite the fact we were all qualified, and highly qualified tradesmen then. So I went over to have the medical. There was about twenty of us lined up. The doctor came in, he says, ‘right, take your shirts off boys, I’m going to check your hearts.’ So he went along, checking everyone, all the way along, and when he got to the end he says, ‘Right, put your shirts on boys,’ then waited a few minutes, said, ‘drop your trousers then.’ I thought ‘drop my trousers!’, bloody hell! I’d never been exposed to anyone in my life before, you know! And I feel that at that moment I changed from being a boy to a man. That’s the way I felt about it, I couldn’t believe, having to drop my trousers and expose myself even to a doctor. That was the sort of background we were brought up in of course, in those days. It’s totally different now of course. So really from then on the next few days I was down at Cardington for the, attestation and so forth and then I was allocated for training. So initially because of my engineering background the RAF at that time were quite short of experienced engineering people, and they’d set up training units and so on but, they were very good from a theory point of view but nothing in the way of hands on. So I was immediately shuffled into training as a fitter 2E. But I wasn’t happy that, I wanted to fly. So it didn’t last long, and I managed to wiggle my way in to ITW at Blackpool, and found myself on a pilot’s course.
HB: ITW?
BL: ITW: Initial Training Wing.
HB: Right.
BL: Which was at Blackpool in those days and that’s where they carried out the tests as to whether you were suitable to fly in an aircrew capacity. So I was accepted to fly an aircrew capacity to be decided specifically by the selection board’s requirements. And the next thing was, at that time the pilot training was being geared up dramatically. The original pilots in the air force at the start of the war and going right up to probably about the end of 1941, were pre-war pilots, mostly people who’d come from quite wealthy backgrounds who could afford to train them as pilots and by the end of 1941, these were the people that the air force had to rely on in the early days. When I look back historically on some of the situations, bombing raids and that sort of thing using obsolete aircraft like Lysanders and stuff like that, it was dreadful really and by the end of ’41 most of these boys had disappeared: they’d either been shot down, been killed, they crashed or were POWs. Result was that there was a colossal demand for fully trained new aircrew. This was done from a pilot’s point of view in Canada, or America, or Southern Rhodesia as it was then, which is now Zimbabwe, of course. Those were the three, main three areas where the pilots would train from about 1941 onwards. And they set up very, very good systems. But there was a difference between Rhodesia trained and particularly American trained. The American instructors were extremely, quite different to us: they were very hard, very dedicated and they set up a system for training pilots, that if you didn’t go solo in twelve hours, you were thrown off the course. You were downgraded to either a navigator or a bomb aimer or anyone else that had any sort of background which would be useful to the air force, in my case an engineering background. And when you consider, you know, people, ex bank managers if you like, and people from a whole variety of trades in civilian life, there they were, shipped over to America to train as pilots and expected to go solo in twelve hours. Just dreadful really. However, that was the way the system worked. It wasn’t quite so severe in Canada, but nevertheless it was similar to the American system but the ones trained in Southern Rhodesia of course, it was very much more realistic, and they didn’t stick to any specific hours to go solo and things like that you see. So the result was when finely trained aircrew of any category then came back to the UK, the usual routine was Initial Training Wing and then on to type training unit and so on and find a way into things like Wellingtons and Hampdens and Lemingtons, er Wellingtons and things like that.
HB: Can I just take you back a little bit Bob? [Cough] excuse me. When you joined up, you started your initial training as a fitter.
BL: Yup.
HB: But you then went for aircrew training.
BL: Yes.
HB: Did you go to train as a flight engineer, or did you go to train as a pilot?
BL: No, I went to train as a pilot initially.
HB: Right. And where did, which you, where did you actually go train as a pilot?
BL: I went to 32 SFTS in Carbery Manitoba, Canada.
HB: Canada, right.
BL: But I didn’t make the twelve hours solo so I was downgraded, the same as three quarters of them. There were very few, at that time anyway, who were competent enough after twelve hours to go solo. So it was a very hard path really. I came back to the UK, together with many others, who’d been diverted then in to training as a navigator or a bomb aimer or a gunner – I’d forgotten that one – and, but in my particular case the fact that I had the engineering background, which they wanted, they downgraded me to co-pilot and flight engineer. So predominantly I was trained as a full flight engineer, despite the fact I was accepted that on aircraft for instance like the Stirling I had to act as co-pilot as well. So I had to take link training and all that. I was never allowed to take off and land, but I was there to relieve the main pilot and to act as co-pilot duties. And that applied pretty well throughout: Stirlings, Lancasters, Halifaxes and so on. So we were always virtually the number two so far as the mechanical operation of the aircraft was concerned. As opposed to the gunners who had their job to do, bomb aimer had his job to do and the navigator. A number of the early bomb aimers of course were also trained as type of navigators but very few of them flew as navigators, they flew mainly as usually as bomb aimer come front gunner. There was always a front turret, gun turret on the Lancs and the Stirlings and Halifaxes, so the bomb aimers were expected to man the front turret and also act as the bomb aimer so far as the targets were concerned. And the navigators of course, they did the actual navigation guidance to the pilots.
HB: So you came back to England and you went to do your flight engineer training for aircrew.
BL: Yes. At St. Athan.
HB: At, St Athan, right. So at the end of that training, where did you sort of stand in the scheme of things?
BL: I was at training, already I’d had my link training as a co-pilot as well, before I went to St Athan, when I left St Athan, fully qualified, the next thing then was to join a crew on either Lancs, Stirlings or Halifaxes. In fact in my particular case I was posted to Stradishall which was a main training base for Stirlings and then the crew of seven were created. There was nothing directed, they put us all in hangar and between ourselves we had to get to know each other and put ourselves together as a seven man crew, which is how it happened. Once that’s established as a crew then your flight training started, which we did at Stradishall of course, on the Stirlings in our particular case.
HB: Where did your, is it all in this hangar, did somebody come to you or did you think oh I like the look of him, I’ll go with him? Or? How did it work? What were the mechanics of it?
BL: It’s a variety really. Our captain, our skipper, was an ex Birmingham policeman and personally, personality was absolutely first class, but he was a strict disciplinarian being ex-police, of course, and so he was highly respected despite the fact he was definitely one of us, but very highly respected. And we got to know him, chatting away and he said well, he says ‘I’ve just come from OTU from Wellingtons,’ he says, ‘I’ve got a navigator and I probably have a bomb aimer.’ He says, ‘I’m looking for a couple of gunners and a flight engineer co-pilot to get the seven man crew together,’ and so from then on it was a question of who you knew and whether you thought they were capable, and see whether they were already in a crew or not that was how we all created seven together. It was done quite amicably, in various reasons, various forms, whether you knew each other or you say well I know old so-and-so, he’s a bloody good navigator, try and get him on our crew, you know, and that sort of thing. So we finished up as a very tight crew and it so happened, subsequently, that when we were doing our ops on the squadron, the camaraderie within the seven man crew was very tight indeed. The result was we found that we had seven first class crew members. Everyone worked together, helped each other and that was the way it went on the Stirlings. Unfortunately the Stirlings of course had a very bad reputation subsequently. The reason for this was because in its early days, [cough] it was built pre-war of course, a long way pre-war, and was a very good four engined heavy bomber when it was produced, extremely good, but unfortunately it came under the influence of the political decisions, the politicians came along and said that aircraft’s got a wingspan of a hundred and sixteen feet! We won’t get it in to the hangars at Cardington, they’re only a hundred feet, you’ll have to take sixteen feet off the wings. So, reluctantly, they put pressure on the manufacturers and the Stirling was modified to have sixteen feet, either, eight feet either side taken off the wings. Not only that by doing that they had to alter the structure quite considerably and raise the undercarriage very high in order to cope with this. Disaster so far as performance’s concerned, the result was the Stirling was always very, very much – what shall I say - the underdog as far as the heavy bombers were concerned. Result was the highest we could ever get to bomb was about twelve thousand feet. The Lancs and the Halifaxes were up above at twenty two thousand and frequently if your time was slightly out we were bombed by their bombs from above us. Frequently happened, there was a lot of aircraft were lost that way. Just one of those things. So really, although at that stage, when you think that the Lanc didn’t come in to service till towards the end of ’42, so in the early days the Stirling was the only heavy bomber and he was restricted in its performance by this political intervention and consequently it had a reputation of being something of a, I won’t use, I want to use the words death traps, but Bomber Harris had his own ideas on this and he was fully aware of it. In fact as ‘43 went on we were doing the Ruhr bombing and then of course Hamburg and then the start of the Berlin offensive which was in the autumn of ’43, and at that stage our losses were running on average seven, eight percent, we had one occasion when our losses were seventeen [emphasis] percent. And it got to the stage where Bomber Harris, he couldn’t stand it any longer, he was at war with a lot of the politicians himself of course by his insistence that Germany had to be bombed in order to minimise their war effort, and consequently it’s on record in one of, I think it was Max Hastings’ book Bomber Command I think he mentioned it in there, the extract of a meeting that Harris had with Churchill in round about October, I think, or maybe November ’43, and he was thumping the table and he said to Churchill, he says, ‘if I send my boys out [thumping] to get lost any longer in these bloody death trips, death traps called Stirlings they’ll call me a murderer.’ He says, ‘what I want is Lancasters, Lancasters and more Lancasters.’ there was a hell of a row went on and Churchill didn’t say a word. But finally he leaned across and said you’ll have your Lancasters. And it was then that the production on Lancasters was even, set up considerably higher than what it was already.
H: So when [cough] -
BL: So really, just interrupting,
HB: No, no.
BL: so going back from our training at Stradishall as a crew were posted to 90 Squadron to a little place called Ridgewell which was in Cambridgeshire, and not terribly well known and we were the first people in. A couple of farms that had been demolished and replaced with an impromptu quickly built runway. There was no, shall we say buildings, which were you might say were suitable for an operational squadron. There was mud everywhere, conditions were foul. They put a series of nissen huts up for us to live in and also for headquarters and the conditions there were not terribly good at all. However, there we were in the spring of ’41, er ’43, expected to use that as a base to operate, operationally against the various targets which were set out. We were at Ridgewell I think for no longer than about three months, four months, something like that and we moved then to a place called, it was West Wickham when we moved there but it was renamed Wratting Common, and consequently conditions there were far better. Again, it wasn’t a wartime, it wasn’t a peacetime airfield, but it was a good airfield and conditions there were far better airfield than Ridgewell. I don’t quite know what happened to Ridgewell in the end, whether it survived or not. I shouldn’t think it did: it was foul. But nevertheless we went to Wratting Common and we continued to fly our ops from Wratting Common on 90 Squadron, until, as I say, the autumn when the squadron was destined to change from Stirlings into Lancs and consequently they were moved to just outside Mildenhall at Tuddenham.
HB: How many ops did you actually fly in Stirlings for your tour?
BL: On Stirlings alone I think we did about twenty one I think it was, on the Stirlings, before we went on Lancs. As I say during that particular time conditions using the Stirling were very difficult, to make an understatement. Our losses were constant and it was amazing really, I mean for instance there was a Canadian pilot called Geordie Young. He was the senior pilot on the squadron, he’d got a lot of experience, and they went off on their last trip, their thirtieth trip, and they got blown up over Dusseldorf on their very last trip and that was, had a very, what shall I say effect on morale on the squadron, because they were regarded you know, the top boys on the squadron. One of the problems, in those days throughout Bomber Command, not just 3 Group which was a Stirling Group, but all the other groups as well, is that when Don Bennett set up the 8 Group, Pathfinder Group, he got old Hamish Mahaddie who he took on as his recruitment boss to collect all the very best crews off the different squadrons he could get hold of, to go into Pathfinders, and of course there was a colossal amount of opposition to this from all the squadrons. No squadron commander wants to lose their best crews, and consequently there was a war going on particularly on 5 Group, with Cochrane was the AOC on 5 Group in those days, based at Swinderby and he was very, very strongly opposed to it. There was open warfare going on the whole time, and despite the fact that 5 Group at that time of course, was the elite group which contained all the 617 boys and various other specialist crews for specialist bombing trips and he obviously didn’t want to lose any of those. And consequently he managed to get some political background particularly from Arthur Harris two of the Pathfinder squadrons in 8 Group would be transferred back to 5 Group. So he eventually had his own Pathfinder boys. Of course then when Gibson set up 617, that was also again from selecting top quality experienced crews. In the early days that was, but before the Dambuster raid, but not so much later on when they were really struggling to get replacement crews from the various crews they’d lost. So really Bomber Harris, Arthur Harris, he was very much supporting the 5 Group people, it was his elite group in Bomber Command and he always gave it sort of first preference on everything. There’s one, a very amusing aspect came at a conference they were having at Swinderby when at the time Princess Margaret was having this affair with Fighter Command Townsend and there was all speculation in the press about whether she’d marry him or whether she’d marry somebody else, and so on, and at this particular meeting, this conference of crews at Swinderby, it was a bit of a hilarious topic and someone was saying, ‘well it’s unknown who she’s going to marry, but it won’t have any effect on us here in 5 Group.’ And somebody stood up and said, ‘well there’s one thing for certain, whoever she marries, it’s bound to be somebody from 5 Group!’ [Laughter]
HB: Yeah. Can I just take you back a little bit Bob.
BL: Yes of course.
HB: I just noticed in some of your notes, I know this is jumping right back, it says you [cough] were posted to Coastal Command, 86 Squadron and flew on Sunderlands.
BL: Yes. That was when I was on 86. We were, we did a detachment down to Gosport actually.
HB: Oh right.
BL: And then to St, St Athan, when the two battleships Gneisenau and the Scharnhorst were at Brest and they were trying to get up the channel to get away and consequently we went down there with 86 Squadron to carry out operations against the two battleships. But for some reason or other, some of the squadron was detached to, in Coastal Command, to a flying boat squadron, which was 10 Squadron based at Mountbatten, at Plymouth. I don’t quite know why this happened, it was only a very short time, but I was one of the people that went on the flying boats for about three months.
HB: So you were there as a co-pilot engineer?
BL: Yes, on the flying boats. And again, bearing in mind our engineering background was what they wanted more than anything because we had to get involved with the maintenance schedules and so on as well. So I only had three months, I didn’t like it at all. Flying boats was not for me, and that was the main reason I thought that there must be a better way that I enjoy so I volunteered while I was there for Bomber Command. That’s where I started into Bomber Command
HB: Right. It’s all right, I was just trying to get the sequence of events into some sort of order.
BL: That was really how the sequence went through. Of course in Bomber Command, very lucky with our crew to survive a tour on 90 Squadron.
HB: What were the operations, you know, you’re flying operations into the Ruhr in the Stirling, and you’ve very clearly explained the shortcomings of the Stirling. What was it, you know, what was, what were your experiences of those, those individual sort of operations?
BL: Well it varied actually. But the Ruhr targets at that time I can remember them vividly. Dortmund, Dusseldorf, Duisburg, Krefeldt, Essen. And Essen was the one everyone hated [emphasis] because at that time that was the home of Daimler Benz, Krups and all the munitions factories, and they had a ring right the way round Essen, three thousand anti aircraft guns and radar controlled searchlights and when you’re flying towards Essen and you looked ahead, you think, ‘Christ you’ve got to get through that to get to the target point,’ and usually at briefing when the curtain was finally pulled back - we were never told what the target was until the very last minute of course - and when the target was pulled back you see Essen area, ‘oh Christ, not Essen,’ you know. However, going from what I say, first five trips Essen, then we went on to Gelsenkirchen, Wuperthal, Mulein, Bochum, Cologne, Munchen Gladbach. Now in my history of 90 Squadron book, there’s various aspects of the work that we did, and there’s a typical battle order printed there as an example. And that was August the 26th I think it was, on Munchen Gladbach and we were on the battle order for that particular night. I think the squadron was putting up something like thirty two aircraft or something that night. There was eight hundred and fifty on the, the full main force. And at that time the procedure on ops on the squadrons was that you didn’t do, as a pilot or co-pilot or anything like that, you didn’t go out with your own crew until you’d done a familiar flight with an experienced crew as a supernumerary and it just so happens that on that battle order I had one under supervision and there was one other crew with another one under supervision. It was on the 31st of August ’43. And these two chaps, I had one of them under supervision, and another crew had the second one. Out of curiosity, in the back of the book there’s seven pages of casualties on the squadron, and when I looked for the names down, both these boys’ names were down on the casualties, one, bear in mind, was on the 22nd of September bear in mind that was just 22nd, twenty two days after we had taken them on the supervision. One of them went on the 22nd, the next night the second went on the 23rd. So they only survived twenty three days on the squadron. And that was typical, absolutely typical. We used to live in a long nissen hut, seven beds each side, two crews in there. Three times we had a new crew come in, and three times we’d wake up after an op the night before, about midday, be woken up by the military police going through the, collecting the bits and pieces, belongings of the other crew who had got the beds on opposite. Three times we had new crews come in and three times we lost them very quickly, in two cases within the first three ops, and consequently we had, as a crew, we had a reputation of being a Jonah crew and nobody would move in with us. [Laughter] But in all seriousness that was the way it happened, you know and we lost some very quickly and didn’t even get to know them. There we were, soldiering on and finally got to the stage as I say, when the Stirlings were taken out of service and deployed on other work, mainly glider towing and things like that. Then the Lancs took over as the Lancaster production of course, got higher and higher.
HB: What do you put down to, I don’t want to use the word success, your ability to have got through those twenty something operations?
BL: A lot of people would say you must have been one of the lucky ones. Yes, to a point. But we had a very good crew; highly [emphasis] dedicated crew to the individual job they had to do and it was, there were various aspects of the operation that needed high concentration and dedication to execute that. I mean our rear gunner, Eddie, he’s still alive now in New Zealand, and he had eyes like a bloody hawk; he could spot these fighters coming in and he would control the operation immediately if he saw a fighter, to the pilot at the front, saying, ‘corkscrew, corkscrew,’ and instead of flying at straight and level from a to b to a target on our particular crew, we would fly perhaps just for a minute or so, then start weaving like that, so that there was no chance of the fighters beaming on to us in, as if we’d been flying straight and level they had a much easier job of coming in to us, and under from mid or something like that, shoot us down. But by weaving like that, was one of the things which we did continually, it was uncomfortable but it was very safe. But apart from the anti aircraft of course, it certainly kept the fighters at bay from us and I mean I think three times we were attacked by fighters and three times we got away from them. Largely due to Eddie in the rear turret. Who shot one of them down actually.
HB: Did he?
BL: Yup, He opened up, he waited till he got it in his sights, and let fly and it blew up in front of him, or behind him should I say. So really that aspect of it is the thoroughness of the type of flying and the operation which was necessary, but on the other hand of course, where anti aircraft was concerned it’s a different story. We, in the Stirling we were in the middle of it, weaving through it and if you had a direct hit or a hit which say damaged the aircraft severely you could say right you were just bloody unlucky like Geordie Young on his thirtieth trip, and that sort of thing, so. The worst night of for Bomber Command for all losses was the Nuremburg flight, you may or may not have heard of this, but it was on the Nuremburg trip when the met people made a complete balls of the forecast. They were forecasting plenty of cloud so that you could fly comfortably in and out of cloud and the fighters couldn’t detect you quite so easily. But on this occasion the weather didn’t turn out as they predicted and consequently it was a full moon clear, crystal clear night and the result was that the main force – there was eight hundred and fifty aircraft on that particular target. This was in the autumn of ’44, I think it was, and that particular night we lost ninety four aircraft on that night, and when you think there were seven men in each aircraft. Work that one out. That was the worst night ever [emphasis] for Bomber Command.
HB: And your crew were on that.
BL: No. We weren’t on that.
HB: You weren’t on that one.
BL: It just so happened that we were on leave at the time so we weren’t on it. But that was, that’s the hard statistics of it.
HB: Because I was interested in the, in the thing you were saying about the Lancasters and the Halifaxes going at twenty two and you know, the Wellingtons, obviously the Wellingtons were at eighteen thousand and the poor old Stirling’s down at twelve.
BL: Yeah.
HB: I mean that must have, that must have influenced your pilot and your crew at that point, when you were on, when you were on the bigger raids.
BL: Well, yes, to a point, but you had to admit it was one of those things. I don’t think, it was only when we got to grips with the Stirling and training and so on and realised what effect the modifications had had on the performance of the aircraft. It was not easy to get off the ground with a full load on. For one thing the inertia of the engines meant that it was, always had this sort of pull to starboard, to the right, which you had to maintain correction on, and not only that but the fact that the undercarriage had been raised quite considerably, very high up. There’s a picture here will show: that was our aircraft and the one that saw us all the way through our tour, and it was so high up it that when this sort of inertia from the engines, it was very difficult to keep it straight down the runway. In fact there was numerous occasions when the aircraft just couldn’t control it with a full bomb load on and it crashed or something and numerous messy situations like that developed. But this is why as I say, I meant occasionally that when I went from Stirlings up into 5 Group, I was posted up to the elite group. How that happened was, that at that time the Lancs were coming on stream and 5 Group at Swinderby was the training base for the Lancs, but again they needed them on the squadron so rapidly that they were pushing the crews through probably too fast, not quite enough training. And the result was that a lot of the crews had been trained on the twin engined Wellingtons and stuff like that, which didn’t give them any [emphasis] experience on four engined stuff. So in the, when we finished a tour on Stirlings, it was decided then by the powers that be as it were – Harris and co – they’d put a few Stirlings up to be based at Swinderby to get, be engaged on the Lancaster training programme so that we could give them experience on another four engine aircraft which was more difficult to handle than what a Lancaster was, and consequently I was one of the eight crews that were, instructors that went up there and that’s how I got in to 5 Group, posted up there on the Stirlings. And I always remember when we got up there about 7 or 8 o’clock in the evening. So we parked the aircraft went over to the officers mess, went in the bar straight away for a drink of course, and we were standing there and there was another group of the instructors and so on and amongst them was Dave Shannon and Mickey Martin – ex 617 – and quite a number of others who’d survived and they were curious as to who we were. And finally old Dave Shannon, who was a big Australian as you probably know from 617, came across and said, ‘who are you blokes then and what are you doing here?’ ‘Oh we’ve brought some Stirlings up to give you some help in the training programmes here.’ ‘Stirlings!’ he says,’ bloody hell!’ He said, ‘have you done a tour on Stirlings?’ I said, ‘yes’. He rubbed his hand over here, says, ‘Well where are your VCs then boys?’ [Laughter] And that was their attitude towards us.
HB: Yes. That tells the tale.
BL: But there again, life’s about winners and losers isn’t it, you know. And what we had we had went out to do the best you can, and as I say, it’s sad really that our losses were consistently high.
HB: So when you’d done, you did, you know, when was you last operation that you did with the Stirling? Can you remember?
L: It was on, I think it was either Hannover or Stuttgart, it was not the Ruhr, north of the Ruhr, but that was my, our last op. We did two Berlins on the Stirling, surprisingly, and relatively quiet trips too, long trips but relatively quiet, for us anyway.
HB: What was your feeling on, you know, you’re going to do your thirtieth or your last tour on the Stirling? What was going through your mind then?
BL: I don’t really think there was any feeling about it. I mean on our crew there wasn’t any suggestion of any feeling of stress or concern or the fact that you might be, the crew expression was – you might get the chop. No, we were a very good competent crew. We operated very correctly and safely as far as we could and I think that had a, that was the predominant factor in the crew. I mean a lot of people today often say to me well what about all the stress and everything? I said well the simple answer was we couldn’t even spell the word. You know, I mean the stress wasn’t there, it was concern. Admittedly we had one occasion when our mid upper gunner, Mick, suddenly went down with something, tonsilitis or something and he couldn’t, he had to go sick and consequently they stopped him flying that night and we were doing an op that night, on, I’ve forgotten where it was now, somewhere in the Ruhr, so we had to have a mid upper gunner, spare mid upper gunner who apparently for some reason or other he’d lost the rest of his crew, he’d done no ops at all, but he was spare, so they said oh you’re joining Cawley’s crew tonight because the gunner’s gone sick so he came to us and was a dreadful situation. He was absolutely petrified of the thought of going on ops, and halfway towards, over the Dutch coast on the way to the target, he suddenly started firing off indiscriminately at what he thought were fighters but they were clouds. And of course it immediately was bloody dangerous because if fighters around they see tracer bullets going out they home in on us. And Charlie was absolutely crackers, he went mad. What the hell’s going on? Go back and have a look!’ And this bloke was sitting in his turret there, absolutely terrified and it happened again, at a very dangerous point, he suddenly started firing off. Anyway when we, we survived the op, we got back and we landed, the crew bus was there to take us back to the base for intelligence and debriefing and he never said a word, wouldn’t speak, he wouldn’t get on the bus, he walked back and of course when he was interviewed by the Station Commander he said, ‘what’s the problem?’ The medical people there saw the condition of him and the RAF had a very cruel aspect of dealing with situations like that. They immediately used to braid you, used to name you as Lack of Moral Fibre which was dreadful really. You were immediately stripped of your rank back to basic and sent off to a unit which was down at Brighton to deal with these people who were so called Lack of Moral Fibre and that went on your records throughout your, a very cruel way of looking at it really. But that happened to us on this particular flight and as I say amazing really, the bloke was just absolutely petrified. Couldn’t face up to what he was asked to do, despite the fact he’d gone through training and managed to survive to train to become a qualified gunner, but there we are. Just one of those things.
HB: What did you do when you got back from your last op?
BL: [Laughter] Well I normally drink a gin and tonic but I think I had something a bit stronger than that that night! No. we had a, all went down to the pub locally and had a nice evening and then we knew the next day we’d be posted out, we’d all be posted to different directions and it was a question then where everybody went. It just so happened that in my particular case I was posted, for a very short time, to a place called Wilfort Sludge which is on the A1, but from there of course this deal came up to send some Stirlings up to 5 Group, so I was then posted out of 3 Group into 5 Group. And previous to that I’d, before I finished my tour I’d been recommended for a commission so my commission had come through so I was, and that came through six months late, so I went straight in as a commissioned Flying Officer then and went to Swinderby then as an instructor and it was, the rest of the crew: Johnnie went up to, he was the captain, he went up to near High Ercall, which is up near, in Shropshire somewhere, near Whitchurch to start training Stirling crews up there to tow gliders in anticipation, of course, of the Arnhem offensives and so on, so he went up there on towing gliders. The two rear gunner, the two gears, er gunners, the mid upper gunner and the rear gunner, they were posted to somewhere on special duties. Where they thought they were going on rest they suddenly found they were on ops again, on the special duties, doing, dropping these Resistance guys in France and so on. Harry our wireless operator, the navigator by the way, suddenly when I went to Swinderby I found he was already there and I was sharing a room with him in the mess for a while. Unfortunately, he’s the son of a clergyman in Cornwall, highly religious, he used to spend all his time playing the organ in the local church where we were down the pub having a drink, but he had a heart attack right at the end of the war and died straight away. The bomb aimer, little Barry, little short bloke, he went on rest for a short time and then decided he’d go on a second tour, But got shot down on the third trip of his second tour, but he was lucky. He managed to bale out and he was a prisoner of war for about the last six months. But Harry, our wireless op, his previous job in life he was, worked in the Metropolitan Police, on the vice squad and he was absolutely obsessed on flying against the Germans on Bomber Command, absolutely [emphasis] obsessed. His one aim in life was successful bombing Germany and when we were tour expired and they say, sent out as instructors or rested and so on, and what they called screened as they said, screened from operations. He refused point blank he says, ‘No, I’m not going,’ he said, ‘I’m going to carry on.’ There’s a little bit of discussion with the commanding officer about it and the adjutant and so on, but anyway he got his way was posted on to a Special Duties squadron somewhere, and he carried on flying. He did seventy four ops in the end. And in the end he got shot down over Denmark I think, on one these special, highly secret operations on his seventy fourth. If you go back to Lincoln his name is on the, one of the what do they call it, the metal -
HB: The walls.
BL: The walls.
HB: wall 118.
BL: That’s what happened to all of us in the end. And as I say, the two gunners they survived, despite the fact they were amazed to find themselves on this resistance dropping and that sort of thing. So that was where we all finished up.
HB: So you ended up at Swinderby as the instructor on, you know, giving people experience on four engines.
BL: Yes. So, when I went to Swinderby I was instructing on Stirlings and Lancasters at the same time.
HB: Right. So how did you, how would you relate to the engineering side of the ground crew?
BL: Well, very closely indeed, in fact the whole crew did. I mean our ground crew was our survival in many respects and we respected them, we had a very good ground crew. They kept our aircraft serviceable against unprecedented odds at times. I mean there’s numerous occasions we’d come back with shrapnel holes down the fuselage and that sort of thing, and there was one occasion when there was, we had a near hit, this was Dusseldorf again funny enough, the intelligence people used to say well when the anti aircraft batteries are shooting at you, if you can’t hear on, if you can’t hear any noise you know you’re safe, but if you hear a bang you’ll know it’s very close. We heard this bloody great bang over Dusseldorf and that was very close and it finished up with Norm Minchin, the mid upper turret, with the perspex turret round his head, a piece of shrapnel came up and cut right through the back of the perspex and cut the back of his turret off, and he didn’t know it! Without touching him at all! It just cut through this Perspex and the back, and after we had left the target we were flying back home and he came on the intercom and said, ‘Christ it’s bloody cold up here, have you got some heating on?’ Didn’t even know it had happened! Of course when we got back to base not only that but there was a hole in the side of the aircraft you could damn near crawl through. So the maintenance people had a pretty big job, you know, to patch up all the holes on it. And that sort of thing, but the, yeah, the ground crew were very much part of the team, very important and we had a very good ground crew, very good.
HB: And when you got to Swinderby, you would, you would continue that relationship as you do in the training of the crews.
BL: Well not with the ground crew, not at Swinderby.
HB: Right.
BL: No, I mean we were, at Swinderby all we were concerned with was training the new crews coming through, and the ground crew was general ground crew, not to with, nothing to do with individual aircraft whereas on the squadron each aircraft had its own maintenance crew and its own flight crew and that was our particular aircraft which took us all the way through.
HB: Ah right, yeah.
BL: That finished up by the way, when we handed that over to another crew, actually I read historically in one of the books somewhere it was listed, I forget where the, I think it was the Bomber Command Diaries, every aircraft that was lost they gave indications where they were lost and where they were found and so on and our particular aircraft, the other crew that had it and it finished up in the Zuider Zee!
HB: Oh right.
BL: It was recovered eventually, by the Dutch people, who were, the Dutch people were doing the archive details and so on and there was actually some photographs of it being pulled out of the sea, they’re printed in the Daily Mail I think it was actually, so I couldn’t believe it when I saw this, when I saw the number on the side BF524, that was its serial number. WPNN and it was just being pulled out the water and you could just see the name, the number BF524 on the side of it. Couldn’t believe it. Recovered it and there’s a bloke, a very elderly gentleman, he’s a semi historian based at Alconbury and he’s very much a Stirling enthusiast and he’s got a workshop there full of all the bits and pieces of crashed Stirlings and so on and he works hand in glove with the, his counterparts in Holland and one of the major museums in Holland loan him parts of aircraft which he’s, he’s rebuilt a complete cockpit of a Stirling.
HB: Has he!
BL: At this. Yes, Andrew found this out and took me over there and we had a morning with him. I was intrigued and he’s got this bloody old shed there, old hangar I think it is, a small hangar, packed with all these bits and pieces of a Stirling and in the middle he’s got a cockpit he’s already built. And when we went over there he was sorting out an undercarriage and he was showing us that the Dutch archive people were loaning him stuff out of their museum which he photographed and copied and so on and sent it back to them. He said he had a very good rapport with them. Very interesting this guy. I can’t remember his name. Andrew knows it, but it was at Alconbury where he is based.
HB: Well I think, what we might do, Bob, is we might just have a break now because I’ve just gone to check the battery and we’ve now been talking for over an hour! So if we have a quick five minute break. I’m going to have to change the batteries anyway. So we’ll just stop the interview for the time being.
BL: Yeah. Okay, fine.
HB: Well we’ve had a comfort break and we’re just going to, we’ve had a battery change. So we’re just going to resume the interview -
BL: Oh these bloody things! I hate these!
HB: Just having a problem with a hearing aid battery at the moment. [Whistling]
BL: That’s better.
HB: So we should be go, on the run now. So we’re all settled now for our second part of our interview.
BL: Yes. What I was going to say was, when we were talking about the losses on the Stirlings, the turning point I think, was when it was decided, when Goebbels was boasting that the German fighters and defences were quite adequate against the RAF Bomber Command, he made statements saying that they’ll never touch Berlin or our second biggest city, Hamburg, they’re quite safe with our defences and so on, they’ll never touch them. And that was the challenge which Bomber Harris took up, and decided in conjunction with the naval people, who were very concerned because all these u-boats and subs were based at Hamburg and they were going out into the Atlantic to pick off the convoys and so on, and naval people said we’ve got to get rid of these u-boat pens at Hamburg. So Bomber Harris decided we’d obliterate Hamburg; it’s in July ’43. And at that time, as I was saying, particularly on the Stirlings, our losses were very high indeed and morale was very low and they introduced for the first time this metal foil thing called window. That was these patches of metal things which we discharged through the flare hatch at the back of the aircraft every twenty seconds I think it was, or every thirty seconds, something like that, and these packs, when they went out into the slipstream, developed into a big screen of metallic which completely killed the German radar defences and those, radar, the German defences were based, anti aircraft, were based on the radar picking up the aircraft or picking up the target with a blue, bright blue light, searchlight and once it picked you up, it then brought all the other normal searchlights into a cone and you were in the middle of it, and once you were coned like that, it was curtains it just picked you off then because they had you, and the whole secret of their success was this radar control and when we used this window for the first time it killed their radar. The result was, the first time it was used on Hamburg, it could have been used very early in 1943 but the politicians and defence people were so concerned they thought that if we use it early the Germans will follow this, copy it, and use it against us. So they were very reluctant, but it was only that when our losses got so high they had to introduce it. And our losses immediately on Hamburg dropped to one percent: fantastic! I we went to Hamburg, we did the four nights out of six: I did all four of ‘em. The fourth one was a disaster in that the first three were completely successful and I can remember it now, looking down, a whole wave of fire throughout, it just wiped this whole place out, just like that. The fourth night we went of course the met people again, they were predicting storms, but nothing like as severe as we found. The result was I think of, the storms were so bad, we were struck by lightning and St Elmo’s fire which is on the windscreen, and goes down the fuselage, all the compasses were knocked out and our radar and Gee box was knocked out. We hadn’t the faintest idea how we were, how to navigate back again and I think out of seven or eight hundred aircraft there’s only about twelve or fourteen actually reached the target. All the others had turned back because of the weather, and we were icing up very heavily and on the Stirlings the oil coolers were slung underneath the engines and you know what happens to diesel vehicles in cold weather, the fuel starts waxing and clogs up the carburettors, and the engines stop and that’s exactly what used to happen to us. These coolers which start icing in the middle, and what we call coring, and you had to keep hot air flow going through them in order to keep them serviceable. We suddenly found that we’d got two engines with, suffering from this icing and then there was chunks of ice coming off the wings, battering against the side of the fuselage like, dreadful we had to abandon short of the coast. We jettisoned our bombs into the sea and the only way we could navigate back to the UK was star navigation, and Cyril, our navigator, he was particularly good, he could take star shots with his, with his, my blinkin’ names, what my memory’s going.
HB: Sextant.
BL: Sextant, yes, with a sextant. And a combination of that and following the stars he managed to get us going back in the direction of the UK. When we finally hit the coast instead of being, coming over the coast over Essex or somewhere, we were in the north of Scotland, over the Hebrides and that’s where we came in and of course we immediately identified where we were and we were able to fly back down to, in fact we made an emergency landing ‘cause we were running a bit short of fuel, at Wattisham, in Suffolk. That was on the fourth trip, but the first three were so highly successful, we absolutely wiped the place out, and as I say the losses dropped right down to one percent because of using this window. The rise in morale then was just fantastic, you know after that. Of course sooner or later the Germans found that they could, they changed their system and they found that they could nullify this window by using different types of radar and so on, so it didn’t last, obviously, but we were able to use it for some months actually, and it was very good. We’re just having a new kitchen put in at the moment.
HB: Ah right. That explains the banging.
BL: And the other thing about the ops on the Stirling, in ’43 when our losses were so high, when you counted the number of ops you’re doing, the way it was calculated by Group headquarters, it was decided that because when they analysed the losses and how it was happening and so on, they came to a system of doing thirty ops in a tour and the total would depend entirely on the type of ops. For instance when 90 Squadron went to Tuddenham on Lancasters in the end of ’44, or half way through ’44, their main job - they did very, very little main force bombing – but ninety percent of the jobs of their work and I’ve got it all listed in my history book of 90 Squadron, was on either, was mainly on resistance work dropping resistance and equipment for low level intervention into Europe, dropping arms and equipment to the French and the Dutch resistance movements and so on, and consequently this was done individual very low level operations and the result was that the ops compared with ’43 were very easy and the losses were very low and consequently because, and the short ops as well, and because of this to count one trip as an op they had to do four trips to count as one on the tour, and consequently this system which was introduced before we finished, was that because of the severity of a lot of our ops on the Ruhr operation were so incredibly high losses and so very difficult that they allocated that some of the ops, because of their severity, would count, you had to do one op was counted as two on your tour, because of the severity of the operation and the high level of losses. So it wasn’t, it didn’t always follow that you did a straight forward thirty trips, you could have done say twenty five trips but they counted as thirty on your log book and the severity of the targets.
HB: Did you ever do mine-laying, gardening?
LB: Mining? Yes. Gardening as they called it. Yeah. We did two actually. One off Le Creusot and one other, I’ve forgotten what it was now. We did, our particular crew we only did two mining operations, those were, they were easy ones too.
HB: Yeah. So. You got to Swinderby. You’re doing the training there. How did you move forward from there? So that would be 1944.
BL: Well it was the end of, Christmas, yes Christmas time ’43 when I went to Swinderby, and most of ’44 and as I said earlier I was a fully qualified instructor on Lancs and Stirlings then and towards the end of ’44, I think it must have been round about September, October, something like that, some of the Lanc squadrons in 5 Group were having very heavy losses and the analysis of those losses, was in many cases put down to the fact that, to inexperience, training not sufficient for them, because they’d been rushed through very quickly because squadrons, with their losses, need quick replacements and so on. The result was that at East Kirkby 57 Squadron and 630 Squadron were both there at East Kirkby, and 57 particularly although they’d been engaged on very difficult targets their losses were astronomically high and a hell of a lot of them put down to pure inexperience. So myself and Dicky, we were both instructors at Swinderby, we were seconded to 57 Squadron for three months to set up a revised training unit there, which we did, to give the training, give the operational crews quite a bit more familiarisation and training and so on to try and cut these, some of these losses down. So I had that period there. And it was whilst I was at 57 and about to go back to Swinderby, ‘cause I was still on the strength at Swinderby despite the fact I’d been loaned to 57 at East Kirkby to do this training programme, 463 Squadron at Waddington, the Aussie squadron, had been suffering a few losses here and there, and the, one of the leaders of the squadron, the co-pilot and flight engineer leader there had been lost, so I was posted to 463 as his replacement and I was lucky to stay there until the end of the war.
HB: So that was back on to operations.
BL: So, yes, so I went back on to ops. Of course when I was at 463, because I was the boss of A flight, I was the leader, I didn’t have a crew, so I could only put myself on to do ops when there was a, somebody had gone sick or something you see, so I did them with any crew, and by extremely strange coincidence, I said to you about Essen earlier, my very first trip on my second tour here was a low level daylight on Essen. [Laugh] I couldn’t believe it! But I’ll tell you what, it was so bloody easy, it was so different to 1943. But, so I stayed there really, and at the end of the war as I said earlier, I went to Skellingthorpe, just outside Lincoln when Tiger Force was set up. I was posted on to Tiger Force.
HB: And Tiger Force was - ?
BL: That was the equivalent to 617 to go to Japan to do the [cough] vital targets into Japan, very similar to what 617 had been doing, because the adjacent to 617 Squadron was 9 Squadron. They were both based then at Woodhall Spa and Wing Commander Cheshire was the, was one of the commanding officers at 617 at that time, amongst others. But so when I went to 463 as I say, I was there till the end of the war then, and doing ops from there, and because I was the leader there the flight engineer leader on 463, I was posted to Skellingthorpe to join Tiger Force and I was promoted then at Tiger Force to be in charge of that particular section to go to Japan and we were half way through their training when the bomb was dropped of course and it all came to a halt then. Consequently I found myself in civil flying.
HB: Yeah. You did tell me before the interview started, you were, you were made an offer by the RAF before you -
BL: Yes, offered a, I was a substantive flight lieutenant then, and for a very short time I was an acting Squadron Leader but only for four weeks! [Laugh] Because it all ended then. But I was offered a extended seven year flying, extended flying committee, er, commission and given the choice. I didn’t know much about, well I didn’t know anything about civil flying. I didn’t even understand what BOAC meant until I got there.
HB: But you were originally offered Transport Command weren’t you.
BL: Yes.
HB: What was your view on that?
BL: But I turned that down. I turned that down flat. But there’s a very, there’s another, a very ironic twist that I’ll tell you about. So immediately because we were then seconded from the air force to BOAC we had to get civilian licences. We had to get civilian licences and then they decided what they were going to train us on, so we had to go through the basic theory and all that sort of stuff to get civilian licences and we were allocated I think it was about either fifty or a hundred block licence numbers in the very early days. Once we’d done type training on, at that time on Avros produced the very first post-war airliner called the Tudor and the first dozen Tudors were just being built and they were destined to go to BOAC to start up to date pressurised passenger aircraft. They were quite nice aircraft actually, very good. So since we’d just, we were the first people to be trained on the Tudors. So we did our training on the Tudors and when they were just about to start to take, BOAC to take delivery of the Tudors, for some reason there was a political change and instead of coming to BOAC, they went to British South [emphasis] American Airways, and at that time was run by the old 8 Group Pathfinder chief, Air Marshal Don Bennett, who was a real press on type. [Cough] Highly successful with Pathfinders of course and he was the boss at British South American. They’d previously been running some converted Lancasters into what they called Lancastrians before long distance flying in South America and so on, and they hadn’t got a particularly good record they’d lost three or four of them I think, for different reasons and so they took delivery of the Tudors. Tudor 1s these were, Mark 1s. And I did quite a bit of flying with the, on the Tudors on the South American routes, down to Bermuda, and the Caribbean and so on, and I was put in charge of training at BSA as well. And then, as things went on, we got as far as 1948 I think it was, ‘46’ 47’ ’48 I think it was, yes, ’47 ‘48. Suddenly the Berlin Airlift comes up, and from nowhere I suddenly found BSA, because of their Tudors, the air force was already in force on the Berlin Airlift using mainly Dakotas, the old C47s and they couldn’t cope with, couldn’t make it that economical to cope with the heavy loads that was necessary so they asked a lot of the civilian charter companies and so on, if they could provide crews and aircraft to come on to the Berlin airlift to increase the load factors, and British South American got one of the contracts to, with two Tudors, to go on the Berlin Airlift and I was one of them selected to go on the first one. So I found myself flying over to Wunstorf near Hannover where we were based, to fly on the Berlin Airlift these two Tudors between Wunstorf and Gatow, Berlin. And ironically, I think, when I think that three years before, when I did my last operational trip with 463, there we were still bombing and knocking hell out of ‘em; three years later, there I was at Wunstorf flying into Berlin to try and keep the so-and-so’s alive. Ironic really, they were three years the difference. Anyway, I stayed at Wunstorf for nearly a year, I think it was. I did nearly three hundred flights between Wunstorf and, there were only three of us on board.
HB: What sort of things were you taking in?
BL: Well when I first flew out there, we were taking huge packs of canned meat and stuff like spam and all that sort of stuff, corned beef, and all that, which was fairly easy to handle, in big cases and so on. And then the RAF were getting a bit uppity about what they were going to do and what they were carrying and bear in mind that the US air force was also on the operation with their C54s and Skymasters and so on, they were based at Schleswigland I think it is. I’ve got maps showing all the different air bases that we used over there but we always used Wunstorf and because we were larger aircraft, they decided that instead of carrying packs of food and so on, we suddenly found ourselves carrying coal, huge packs of coal, great big sealed bags of coal, about a hundredweight apiece. So we spent some months then, this coal at Berlin. Landing at Berlin was quite something. It was the ground force of people doing all the unloading and so on was predominantly very elderly German ladies, old grandmothers and mothers and so on, and it was sad to see them. They were dressed, whatever they could find to wear, and they used to come on board. They did all the work of loading and unloading, all the heavy work and they used to come on board to us carrying these lovely family heirlooms like Leica cameras and stuff like that to exchange. They were desperate for two things: cigarettes and coffee, and you could get anything for a couple of packs of coffee, in fact I got a lovely Leica camera in exchange for two bags of coffee at one stage. They used to come up, had it all laid out on the nav table there when they were unloading and they’d bring these heirlooms up and do deals with us. Anything we could, anything they wanted we could give it to them, you know. Children we gave cigret – we gave sweets and chocolate to the children. The children loved it. The Americans set up, at one stage, when they flew into Gatow, over the Frohnau beacon flying on to finals for landing, all the children used to sit round the lake underneath waving to the Americans going over and the Yanks were throwing out chocolate and sweets to them. At one stage they set up, got large handkerchiefs which they tied up sort of like a parachute, and tied these bags of sweets to them, were throwing them out and in dropping them out and the kids loved it. Absolutely fantastic.
HB: Amazing.
BL: But anyway, as I say, another aspect came up then, some time after been carrying the coal, which was a very dirty operation, dust and everything in the aircraft and they suddenly decided that what they wanted desperately in Berlin was medicinal, what do you call it? Two things they were short of, one was straight run gasoline and the other one was, oh dear me, some large amount of some sort of medicinal fluids. I’ve forgotten what they were now, what they were called. But these were in great big packs but the hospitals were desperate for them. So when it was decided that they’d fly the stuff in, it meant that the aircraft that were going to do this had to be modified with huge tanks in the back to carry it. And the air force said point blank they wouldn’t do it, they refused absolutely point blank to carry straight run gasoline in bloody great tanks down the back of the aircraft, they said its far too dangerous, so they refused point blank to do it. So the civilian contracts were asked to do it and we had then replaced our two Mark 1 Tudors with two Mark 5s which had been built and never been put into service but they were much larger and so our two Mark 5s were then equipped with these bloody great tanks for straight run gasoline and this medical stuff and so for the last few months we were flying that into Berlin.
BH: How did you feel about that?
BL: Oh dear me. Well it was just a bloody big laugh I thought, we thought. Bear in mind we’ve still got this enthusiasm from Bomber Command which we’d brought from the air force to the civilian and it was such a big change, you know, but to us it was more of a bloody big laugh than anything else. But anyway, we settled down to it and it was a good operation, it worked extremely well. When you are turning on to final approach into Gatow, Berlin, you came in over the lake on the outskirts of the city and the final beacon was at a place called Frohnau, Frohnau Beacon, you had to call over the beacon which was virtually the outer marker for final approach and the timing was so accurately it had to be done. The timing of aircraft over Frohnau was every twenty seconds between aircraft.
HB: Blimey.
BL: When you think there was a variety of aircraft, everything from small Bristol freighters to Dakotas and converted Lancs and Halifaxes and anything the charter people could lay their bloody hands on. They buy them for peanuts and take them out there to take part because the airlift they pay very big money and we were no exception with our Tudors and it’s an amazing operation really.
HB: So you went through the Berlin Airlift. Just one thing just I’m just quite curious about. You started off I think, on particular kinds of aircraft as a fitter.
BL: Yeah.
HB: What was, what was the system for re-training you when you went to different engines and different engine management systems?
BL: Well there were various training stations set up. I think the initial one for fitter 2Es, or 2As, that’s the difference between fitter rigger and fitter engines was at Kirkham, Lancashire and that was the number one training base, apart from Halton of course which is still there and still doing it today! And Halton of course was always the base of the so called Halton Brats as they call them. They go there as small, young apprentices and three year training straight away and they’re still doing that today. Yeah, they’re still churning out young lads from Halton.
HB: Right. So when you were working with the Stirling –
BL: Yeah.
HB: And then you go on Lancasters, obviously you’ve got Merlin engines, you’ve got Hercules engines, you’ve got all sorts, you’ve got air cooled, liquid cooled. You’ve got all these different engines.
BL: Yes.
HB: So was there an element of self training or was it all formalised?
BL: Well it was to us, to a point where we were fully trained and fully experienced with a lot of hours in on Stirlings when we went up to Swinderby, the 5 Group elite Group., but we hadn’t been trained on Lancs. So we had, it was virtually self-training on the Lancs there by virtue of working on them and flying on them and training every day. So that part of it, yes, was to a large extent I think we did, there were short courses laid on for us. I did one at Cosford for instance, and places like that, but generally speaking more than anything you were self taught, and as instructors you were expected to be experienced and knowledgeable on all the different aspects, so that was how it worked. But go back to the Berlin Airlift though, when that finished, I came back, by that time British South American, there was a lot of demands because they had a very poor safety record. We lost Star Tiger and we lost Star Ariel, both in the Caribbean. Those were Tudor 1s, from the first Tudors that we trained on. The first one was lost over the Bermuda Triangle as they call it, up at twenty thousand feet, no idea what happened to him; it just disappeared. And the second one was, had flown out of the Azores which at that time was a very difficult operation, flying over the south Atlantic from the Azores to South America and weather conditions and very poor nav and all rest of it was very prevalent round the Azores; very difficult route to operate.
HB: How many passengers did the Tudor 1 carry then?
BL: It varied, on whether, the Tudor 1s, I’ve just forgotten. I think up to about eighty or ninety passengers, something like that. The Tudor 5s were much larger but they didn’t actually go into passenger service after the Berlin Airlift. I don’t know what happened. They were scrapped I think, in the end. But anyway, as I say, because of the loss of the two Tudors and the BSA had lost quite a few Lancs so Don Bennett was criticised very heavily and finally he was forced to resign. So he was taken over by BSA who was then taken over by one of the old traditional north Atlantic BOAC captains, Gordon Storr his name, and it was Gordon Storr who I was with, on the, we were the first two Tudors at Wunstorf when the Airlift started and then shortly afterwards after Bennett had left, they decided BSA would be would up so what was left of it came back into, it came into BOAC. But that stage I was still being paid as a flight lieutenant substantive from the air force, seconded to BOAC so I was paid by BOAC who in turn seconded me to BSAA so I was paid by three companies, very interesting situation. But then of course, having come back to BOAC then, BOAC were operating Yorks and converted Halifaxes called Haltons, and, oh there was still a few Dakotas being used, but generally they were waiting for the next civil airliner which came from Handley Page called the Hermes and that was a very good aircraft. I liked the Hermes very much. Performance wise it hadn’t quite got good altitude performance as such, but it was a very easy aircraft to fly, very comfortable, it was designed specifically for the comfort of passengers and so on. And it was after then that the Comet 1 came in from De Havillands, the DH106, which was designed and built by DHs and was at least twenty years before its time. And then of course to us anyway, a huge attraction to get on the first jet aircraft into service. So in no time at all I was, I joined the Comet 1 fleet. We were flying, first of all flying down to Johannesburg and then it was extended to the Far East and out to even as far as Tokyo and Hong Kong and so on. Then of course you know the story that Xray Kilo blew up over Elba on its way between Rome and London. They were immediately grounded, no one could understand why it had, how it had happened. There was a huge inquiry and after ninety-odd modifications they decided that one of them must have been the reason so they put it back into service. And in no time at all they lost a second one which blew up over Naples Bay. That was flown by a South African crew who were on loan to BOAC. We’d also got French crews flying them, and it, so it was then decided that because two of them had blown up, they couldn’t leave them into service any longer. Unfortunately a third one went. The third one was out of Calcutta and that had just taken over from Calcutta and was flying through heavy cloud and they put that down to the fact that it flew into a cunim cloud and the stresses were so great the aircraft just broke up. So then they were grounded completely and when Farnborough rigged up the test rig there, and put a whole aircraft on this water test bed, and they found out exactly why it had happened. The general opinion from the public and in aviation generally was that the pressurisation caused the windows to blow out but that wasn’t true at all. The fault arose through bad engineering practice on the design of the hatches in the roof. The hatches which covered the radio communication, adf system and these two hatches were like that square like that. Engineering practice is that if you design something that’s a square and it’s put under pressure, you see that little crack there, where that join is -
HB: Showing me on the photograph frame.
BL: That little crack there.
HB: In the corner. [cough]
BL: If a crack occurs, it will always come from a corner, and find its way across and finally disintegrate and that’s precisely what happened to the Comet. It was bad engineering practice because if you round the corners those cracks wouldn’t occur. Simple [cough]. Again, in fairness to De Havillands, they produced some very fine fighter aircraft, put in their own engine, the Ghost 50 engine in them, Vampires and stuff like that but they had no experience ever of high altitude pressurised aircraft, and so they built them to what they considered would be strong enough and so on. But I’ve got a book upstairs which Andrew’s been reading, of the whole story, the whole official story of the enquiry and the way they found out all the reasons for it at Farnborough. The summing up at the end of it, when they said officially you know, that the initial fault was the adf hatches that disintegrated because of the bad engineering practice, how it was designed. The general feeling was that the aircraft was twenty years before its time but it simply wasn’t strong enough, because De Havillands, or anyone else for that matter, had experience enough to build them strong enough, when you think that at forty two thousand feet the pressurisation equivalent in the cabin was only eight thousand feet. That was the highest the cabin pressure was ever taken up to give passengers comfort without having to go on to oxygen. So the difference between eight thousand and forty two thousand across the structure of the aircraft was eight and a half pounds per square inch which is massive [emphasis] from the outside to the inside, and it has to be extremely strong, the sort of structure, in order to withstand these pressures. So you can imagine that it was not only not built strong enough, but of course the fault occurred on the hatches which caused it to blow up anyway. The first one that went, Xray Kilo, I had flown that on quite a number of occasions, got it in my log book in a number of places prior to it blowing up. I think previously I’d, we operated it from Tokyo to Hong Kong only the day before I think it was, before it blew up at Elba, but that aircraft had only done seventeen hundred hours. The second one that blew up over Naples had done just over two thousand hours and the one that disintegrated at Calcutta had done less than two thousand hours. They were all going at the, virtually the same time. That was another factor that the inquiry of course dug up, when they said that, Tom Butterworth I think it was, that because of lack of experience at DHs on high altitude stuff the aircraft simply wasn’t built strong enough. You’ve got to go back to Con Derry who was the chief test pilot at De Havillands a few years before when he was doing demonstrations at the Farnborough air show in a, I think it was a Vampire, he was doing very, very tight turns demonstrating and on one of those tight turns the bloody wings came off. He crashed into the crowd there and killed a few people, including himself. That was another example that under extreme stress conditions, that DHs aircraft wasn’t strong enough.
HB: Yes.
BL: So all those factors, you know. So result was that going back to the Comet days, I was involved very heavily with the whole Comet story because then it was decided that they’d have to, they’d build the new aircraft much stronger and up to date. The other thing was, by the way, that De Havillands had their own engines, the Ghost 50 which only produced five thousand pounds thrust, which was quite adequate for the fighters, but for a aircraft like the Comet 4 Ghost 50 engines, they insisted on putting their own engines in and all the experts said no, we needed Rolls Royce Merlin engines, or Avon engines they were, but they refused point blank, they said no, its our aircraft, we’ll put our own engines in and they simply weren’t strong enough. We couldn’t even do a safe level cruise at altitude, you had to do a five degree climb the whole time to get to top of descent, largely because by continuing to fly like that you’re reducing your fuel flow and consequently you had adequate fuel to start your descent. It was because of the consumption levels and the lack of real thrust on these DH engines, it was extremely [emphasis] critical on fuel, extremely [emphasis] critical. They devised this method of five degree climb. You had to fly, when you flight plan you fly backwards starting at top of descent instead of top of climb and things like that, you know. So anyway, when it was decided then they’d build the new Comet 4 much stronger and it would have Rolls Royce engines of much higher quality and it had Rolls Royce Conway engines. So, they’d, after the 1s, they built some Comet 2s, which were destined to go to the air force. But of course after the crashes they never even got airborne, never even delivered, they were just stuck there at Hatfield. So they decided that they’d have to carry out a two year test flying programme to make sure that everything that was being put into the Comet 4 had been well proved, correctly and properly using these two Mark 2s which were used as test beds. So they modified these two Mark 2s, strengthened them up and made sure they were adequate to do the work. They put the standard Conway engines on the inboards and then the new big 524 engines on the outboards which were destined to go into the new Comet 4. So they hadn’t got any crews to fly these at De Havilland, so they asked BOAC if BOAC could loan them I think it was six, was six crews to fly a two year test flying for De Havillands on these Comet 2s, 2Es as they called them. So I was one that went on to those, on to test flying. The first year we, every day we flew non-stop to Beirut from London and back, every day for a year. The aircraft hadn’t got a certificate of airworthiness, of course it was experimental, so there was only three of us allowed on board, no one, none of the boffins were allowed on so they got all the, all the usual test equipment and everything was loaded all the way down the fuselage and it was all fed up to the cockpit where we were and we used to have, they used to give us a list of things we had to check and write the results down, the results of this stuff as we flew, and we had to fly at thirty two thousand feet and record all this stuff for them which was really interesting. I loved it actually. It was a bloody good programme and extremely well paid as well! [Laugh]
HB: Right!
BL: So the first year we did London Beirut every day and the second year they decided we’d have to do the Arctic North Atlantic trials to make sure it was adequate for very low temperature conditions so then we started a programme going from London to Keflavik in Iceland and then across to Goose Bay and Gander in to the Maritimes and then back to London. So we did that for six months. That was a very interesting programme, I liked that part of it particularly. And then of course decided to try and get permission to fly into America. So the Americans were very keen on noise abatement and the Comet did make quite a bit of noise on take off of course, and so they said yes you can fly in to America but not land there, and not do take offs and landings. So then we had a period where we were flying out to different places around America using the new VOR navigation systems and so on, and then eventually politically we got permission to do landings over there and it was at that time then when a lot of the American airlines were looking very enviously at the jet Comet to replace traditional old fashioned piston engine aircraft and we did a series, we were doing a series of demonstration flights when, at the time when Pan American, the number one American outfit had just received, they’d just taken delivery of the first of the civilian Boeing 707s and they were pushing out a lot of typical American bullshit that they were going to be the very first pure jet passenger flight on the Atlantic, transatlantic ‘Fly American. Fly pure jet’, and all that, you know. Anyway, at the time we were down in Detroit doing some demonstration flights for United Airlines, they wanted to buy some of these Comets, so we were doing demonstration flights there. And it was there when we suddenly got a call to fly back to New York and, for some reason, and we found we got to New York we were going to do the first transatlantic flight the next day. We beat the Yanks by sixteen days! And when the Yanks had put all this, all the usual stuff in the papers, and they got the big banners out: ‘Fly Pan American the first jet flight across the Atlantic’ and so on. And after we beat them like that they had to change it all and where it said, ‘we are the first,’ they had to put in: ‘we are one of the first.’ They never bloody forgave us for it! Amazing story! [Laughter]
HB: Oh dear.
BL: But anyway, as I say I was very, very strongly involved in -
HB: How many people were on -
BL: - the whole Comet programme from start to finish.
HB: How many people were on that first trans-atlantic flight?
BL: I think we had about sixty, sixty passengers, something like that, yes. You’ve seen the menu of course.
HB: Yes, yes. Got a copy of the menu there [cough]
BL: We got back to London and it was a very historic occasion. They gave us immediate take off at New York and cleared all the flights from London to give us number one priority to land. BBC and everyone were all were there in force to welcome us, and it was headed by Eamon Andrews on BBC.
HB: Oh right. Yes.
BL: They got our wives there and so on waiting. There was two aircraft actually. We did the eastbound New York London and the other one went the other way, London New York and we crossed over at about twenty degrees west I think it was and acknowledged each other, but you know, two of them, one going one the other. And when we went through all the procedure at London old Eamon Andrews said, ‘We’ve got a coach here for you, we’re taking you up to,’ um to, I’ve forgot where the studios were now, I’ll think of it in a minute, ’taking you up to, see we want to put you on TV tonight.’ They’d decided to put us on that programme ‘What’s My Line?’ And old, the panel at that time dear old, oh my bloody memory’s going, bloke who was extremely well known on the BBC, was the chairman of the panel there. Anyway we went on TV and on this programme and all that sort of publicity and so on; it was really interesting. And then of course the following year I was picked to go to, one of the flight crew to go to Ottawa, Canada to pick up Duke of Edinburgh, Philip. We went in the Comet; he was very keen to fly in the Comet, so we went there to pick him up. He’d been there doing a series of talks and so on. The Queen was at Balmoral at the time so we were to pick him up at Ottawa and fly him back to Leuchars in Scotland, which is quite close to Balmoral, drop him off there. But anyway, we picked him up at Ottawa and we were just, hadn’t been airborne very long when a signal came through to say there’d, a big mining disaster had just occurred at Monckton in the Maritimes and would we divert to Monckton and so the Duke could just put in a quick royal visit, two hours royal visit to the disaster area. So we dropped him off at Monckton and then we flew down, further down to Gander and we waited at Gander for him to come, come back and then we brought him from Gander and flew him to Leuchars, dropped him off there. Oh it’s here somewhere I’ve got a picture of it. On board on the way back he was fascinated with the Comet 1, he loved to fly in the Comet, oh the Comet 4 I should say and on the way back he got a lot of individual special pictures of himself and he signed one each for us, and a handshake.
HB: Oh lovely.
BL: I thought she’d got it up here, it’s been on the wall here somewhere. She must have put it away. But it’s personally signed: Philip.
HB: Oh lovely.
BL: Which is, very has, carried a lot of weight, in the years to come. It’ll be worth a few bob I should think!
HB: So when did you actually stop flying Bob?
BL: Well, from then on, after the Comet programme, first BOAC decided to buy the Boeings so they ordered these new Boeing 707s from Boeing of course, from America and in January 1960 the first delivery of, or first Boeing 707 was ready for us to collect. And there was nobody trained on it or anything at that time of course, since we hadn’t got any Boeings. But in America the military version of the Boeing was the KC135 and they’d already built eight hundred of those, they’d all gone to the American air force and the American navy and so on. So having had that number built, all the bugs and problems had all been ironed out, needless to say, unlike so many of our aircraft you see. So it was a well [emphasis] tried and well proven aircraft before it even went into service. So in January ’60 I was, one of the, I was, been an instructor on Comets for some time I’d always been instructing quite a lot and so there’s four instructors, myself and three others were sent out to Seattle to get trained on the 707 and the first Boeing 707 to come off was number hundred and eleven off the line, the production line, so we were still quite a way behind other airlines. Anyway, when we got to Seattle we were trained by the Seattle test flight crew. At that time there’s no civilian aircraft, aerodromes rather, in the UK that could take the 707 except Heathrow and obviously you couldn’t use Heathrow for training but they could use it for service, not for training. Shannon hadn’t got a long enough runway at that time anyway, but they were building a new one. So there was nowhere in the UK where they could train us. So Boeings decided, got permission to use Tucson, Arizona. So Tex Johnson was there, er Tex, not Johnson, Tex Gannard, Tex Gannard was the Boeing Chief Test Pilot at that time and he decided that we’d, he’d take us down to Tucson and we’d set up a training base there and he would train us as instructors and so on, to stay on at Tucson to train the BOAC crews as they were sent out from the UK. So we stayed there to run the training unit [cough] and the crews had come from London, we trained them and they went back and then flew the aircraft in service. So we had a very nice six months so, Tucson and the trainer, super that was. But hard work. I’ll tell you what impressed me more than anything else when I went to Seattle, to Boeings: the difference between the British way of life in [coughing] workload, dedication and that sort of thing in the British aviation industry, was so different to that of the Americans. Soon found the Americans are far ahead of us in their dedication to the work they were doing. It was a bloody eye-opener, believe me. Hard work, but they knew how to do it and it was an absolute revelation to us. For instance when we were doing flight training unit details at London they’re usually about two and a half to three hours at the most, something like that, and then the time we went to Tucson the thing that surprised us was that the minimum flights times were five hours! [emphasis] Bloody long details, oh Christ, but that was typical of the Americans and the hard work they put in. They had three of the test pilots at Tucson with us and a fleet to train us and certify us as being fully trained instructors on Boeing aircraft. And I’ve got a certificate to say that.
HB: Yes. That’s grand.
BL: And anyway, BOAC then got a bit hot under the collar about the cost of running Tucson and all the British bases, so they got permission to use St Mawgan at St Athan, at Newquay. They got permission from the aircraft, from the air force for us to move from Tucson to Newquay and used St Mawgan for training from then on so I then moved, as I say, from Tucson to the Bristol Hotel in Newquay. And being a typical seaside resort, very popular, they didn’t want any weekend flying Saturdays and Sundays, there’s all sorts of objections from the local authority and so on, so it was a bit of a doddle down there.
HB: Good grief!
BL: So it was on the 707 where eventually that was my last flying for BOAC.
HB: I see. There’s a good few years in the air there Bob!
BL: Forty years.
HB: Can I just –
BL: The reason I retired in the end by the way, I was very close to retiring at that time, but I was on training at Shannon at the time on the Boeing fleet. We were doing our winter training at Shannon and one of the details we had to do was to demonstrate the capabilities of the aircraft at high, high speed characteristics of the 707. The normal cruising in the 707 was point eight one mach, but the “never exceed” was about point eight eight, which you should never exceed on a Boeing and we used to have to demonstrate though as you got somewhere near the point eight eight the flight control characteristics changed aerodynamically and you had to be aware of this to happen should you ever stray up there in flight. So we had to demonstrate this and we used to fly at forty odd thousand feet from Shannon across to five degree west in the Atlantic then back again doing these high speed runs and I was doing one of those with two students and we suddenly hit a bloody air pocket – bang! It threw us up in the air and down again, hit it really hard, couldn’t, didn’t even realise it was there just clear air turbulence, and I got thrown up on the ceiling and when I dropped down I dropped right across the arm of the co-pilot’s seat with my hip like that and it buggered up something in my hip and I couldn’t even walk off the aircraft carrying my briefcase. So I had to go sick straight away. I went through all the usual palavers of different Harley Street specialists and lord knows what and all they could tell you, ‘oh you’ve slipped a disc in your back,’ you know and all this. They threatened to send me off for a laminectomy operation, but the BOAC doctor at Heathrow who looked after the flight crews, he was ex-RAF and he was bloody good doctor, Doc civil and liked gossip here with the boys, and he really looked after us, one of us, you know.
HB: Very much so yes.
BL: He says, when finally I got to the end of my tether, I couldn’t clear this up, the bloody pain was there, could virtually, almost couldn’t walk and he says, ‘I tell you what,’ he said, ‘I’ll pull a few strings for you,’ he said, ‘you’re an ex RAF officer’ he says, ‘I’ll get you in to Hedley Court.’ So a couple of days later he says, ‘I’ve managed it, you’re going off to Hedley Court they’ll sort you out there.’ So I went off to Hedley Court which of course is very famous today because all these guys from Afghanistan are going in there for amputainees and that sort of thing you know, so I went into Hedley for three months. Within three days of being there they found out exactly what was wrong with me. What I’d done when I fell down like that over this arm, I’d stretched what they call the sacroiliac joint in my hip, it’d stretched it and bent it and that was the cause of all of the trouble.
HB: Good grief!
BL: And they found that after three days there! All these bloody Harley Street specialists I went to see kept telling me all I’d got was a bloody slipped disc. But the outcome was that I spent three months there and they cured it ninety nine percent. And when I finally got to, they wanted to discharge me I went to see the old Group Captain medical and he says, ‘Well,’ he says, ‘we’ve cleared it up for you,’ he says, ‘you’ll be all right,’ he says, ‘there might be the odd occasions when you get a recurrence but the only thing is,’ he says, ‘I’ll have to put a four hour restriction on your licence,’ and of course BOAC wouldn’t accept that because I was on a world wide contract so they said no we can’t accept that but you’re very close to retirement we’ll give you an immediate retirement on pension. So that’s really how I finished. But it didn’t end there.
HB: Oh right.
BL: Another little facet came. I’d been very interested in act, different aircraft accidents and accident investigation. I was on the accident committee for a few years before that, while I was still flying and somebody at BOAC obviously realised that I’d got experience on them and they said well we’ll keep you on but not in a flying capacity, would you like to become a CAA FIA flight accident investigator. I said yes, so they said right. So they sent me off to the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, to do the full official FIA accident inspector’s course so I had a couple of months over there, and did the course in the university and I qualified, graduated and got my little badge and everything, as an official accident investigator. So I came back to London and I went on two of the accidents actually, one of which was a Boeing which landed with a wing on fire at Heathrow after one of the engines had dropped off into the Staines reservoir. I’ve got a photograph of that landing, with the wing on fire, amongst this lot here somewhere.
HB: Good grief. Yeah.
BL: And anyway after that I found it was a bit boring and of course by that time I’d got a farm in Surrey and I’d got, we were milking a hundred and twenty five Jersey cows, and I’d got thirty thousand chickens, got five vans on the road delivering fresh eggs and cream around London and it was taking up so much time I thought well I haven’t got bloody time to go in so I finally decided I’d quit completely and carry on farming and that really was the end of it.
HB: Yeah, it does bring it to an end, doesn’t it really.
BL: So, quite a lot of various incidents in my career.
HB: Just a few, just a few. Just going back, I meant to actually ask you this ages ago. When you were on 463 Squadron -
BL: Yes.
HB: With the old, the Australians, that would be towards the end of ’45. Did you ever, when you were there on operations did you ever come across the German jet fighters?
BL: Er, no. Not, not the jets, no.
HB: No. All right.
BL: Incidentally, talking about that, of course, when Peenemunde came up, it just so happened, we didn’t, on the Stirlings by the way, the Stirlings from the squadron, I think we put about a dozen Stirlings up on the Peenemunde operation and we’d been briefed from weeks and weeks and weeks that something very special was coming up, no one knew what it was except it was something very special operation but it was tied in very closely to the right weather. It had to be absolutely perfect on weather forecast and of course it turned out it was Peenemunde. And it just so happened that when the Peenemunde trip came up we were on two weeks’ leave. So we missed it.
HB: Yeah. Right.
BL: But it was from then on of course we were very active on bombing these flying bomb sites in France and various parts of Europe. But we never came across any of the jet fighters at all. No definitely not.
HB: Right. Well I think. I think Bob, we’ve come to a natural sort of end, and I just thank you very much. Absolutely fascinating.
BL: Well I hope I haven’t bored you too much.
HB: Oh no! Well I haven’t gone to sleep! [Laughter] No absolutely fascinating, absolutely fascinating.
BL: I’ve been lucky really in a sense, that you know, had all these different variants, military and civilian, I’ve very lucky to be on you know, these special products, projects. Rather like the as I said, the two years I was test flying with De Havilland, that was really interesting.
HB: Yeah. I’m going to, one of the things I forgot to do at the beginning, I didn’t actually say at the beginning: it’s Wednesday the 12th of December 2018. I forgot about that at the beginning, I got a bit excited! So I’m going to terminate the interview Bob and get on with the paperwork. Thank you very much again.
BL: Yeah.
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Interview with Bob Leedham
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Harry Bartlett
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2018-12-12
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
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ALeedhamHJL181212, PLeedhamHJL1801
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Pending review
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02:16:46 audio recording
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Bob Leedham was a flight engineer who carried out twenty-one operations on Stirlings. At the outbreak of war Bob was an apprentice motor mechanic, and along with other apprentices, was left to operate the garage when all the engineers were called up. In 1940 he enlisted in the RAF and following initial training, Bob was selected for pilot training but did not achieve the requirement of flying solo within twelve hours. His engineering background meant he was posted to RAF St Athan and trained as a flight engineer. A posting to RAF Stradishall followed, and conversion to Stirling aircraft. Now part of a crew and posted to 90 Squadron at RAF Ridgewell, operational flying commenced. Bob suggests political interference restricted the performance of the aircraft resulting in a higher casualty rate amongst Stirling crews, and explains how the introduction of Window anti-radar equipment improved this. In Spring 1943 the squadron moved to RAF Wratting Common and in Autumn, converted to Lancasters. With more Lancasters coming into service, there was a lack of experience on four-engined aircraft, and some Stirling’s were deployed to RAF Swinderby for crew training. This move coincided with Bob obtaining his commission and he became an instructor on both Stirling and Lancasters. Late in 1944, Bob was back flying operations with 463 Squadron at RAF Waddington, where he was senior co-pilot/flight engineer. Following peace declaration in Europe, Bob joined Tiger Force in preparation for moving to Japan, but the war ended before this materialised. Bob began a post-war career in civil aviation, initially operating the Avro Tudor, and flying approximately three-hundred operations during the Berlin airlift. He also gives an account of the development of the DH 106 Comet and details the faults which resulted in the aircraft being grounded. While undertaking demonstrations in America, Bob was recalled to New York, where his crew discovered they were to operate the first civilian jet flight eastbound across the Atlantic. In 1960, Bob was one of four certified to instruct on the new generation of aircraft, the Boeing 707. An injury sustained from clear-air turbulence curtailed Bob’s flying career, and he progressed into the investigation of aircraft accidents.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Anne-Marie Watson
Spatial Coverage
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Azores
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Netherlands
United States
Zimbabwe
Arizona--Tucson
England--Burton upon Trent
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Essex
England--Hampshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Suffolk
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Essen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Peenemünde
India--Kolkata
Italy--Elba
Mediterranean Sea--Bay of Naples
New Brunswick--Moncton
Ontario--Ottawa
Scotland--Leuchars
Wales--Glamorgan
Washington (State)--Seattle
England--Cornwall (County)
Arizona
Ontario
New Brunswick
India
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Staffordshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1943
1944
10 Squadron
463 Squadron
5 Group
57 Squadron
617 Squadron
86 Squadron
90 Squadron
aircrew
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
C-47
flight engineer
Gneisenau
Halifax
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
Pathfinders
pilot
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921-2021)
radar
RAF Alconbury
RAF Halton
RAF Ridgewell
RAF St Athan
RAF St Mawgan
RAF Stradishall
RAF Swinderby
RAF Tuddenham
RAF Waddington
RAF Woodhall Spa
RAF Wratting Common
Scharnhorst
Stirling
Sunderland
Tiger force
training
Window
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/935/11292/ALunnLG171107.2.mp3
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Lunn, Leslie Grantham
L G Lunn
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Squadron Leader Leslie Lunn (b. 1923, 1317021, 157825 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 127 Squadron
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-11-07
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Lunn, LG
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 7th of November 2017 and we’re in Balsall Common near Coventry talking to Squadron Leader Leslie Lunn AFC about his life and times. So, Les, what are the earliest recollections you have of life.
LL: My sister [laughs] boxing me in, in the house and looking after me. Not allowing me to move. I wasn’t allowed to move [laughs] I was very very young then. After that I don’t know. I just, I just went to school and it was we went to school at Wembley and then at Watford. Then we moved from Watford down to Plymouth and I went to a school called Warren School and didn’t learn a thing because it, it was a totally incompetent and my father and mother decided that their son was an absolute idiot. And I sat the entrance exam to Plymouth, Plymouth College and somehow or other passed and I started and I did my education in Plymouth College. Finished it off at the age, I started about the age of thirteen and I, and I got my School Certificate eventually at eighteen. And then with the bombing raids on Plymouth my parents moved out to, out into the country and we lived at Cornwood in, in Devon. And I volunteered for the RAF from there. I had a bit of a row with me mum and in a huff I went into Plymouth and volunteered. And when I came back and told my mother she wouldn’t believe me [laughs] until my call up papers came [laughs] And then I was attested in Oxford and oh, I had to wait something like oh three or four months before I was attested and then I had to go. I’d never left home and I had to get up to London to Lord’s Cricket Ground to where we were all assembling and I went up by train and eventually got to Lord’s Cricket Ground where there was hundreds of us waiting and we sat there and waited and waited and waited all day and, or for the rest of the day and eventually they never got to me. The L’s. So we were billeted out in, oh I can’t remember now, and we had to go back again and we were eventually had a medical and all that sort of stuff and I was in the Air Force. And the reason why I came to, went in the Air Force was that my father was in the First World War and he was in, he was unfortunately eighteen when the war was declared and he joined the Norfolk Regiment and was in the trenches for nearly a year and he saw these funny little biplanes flying up above him and he decided that he was better up there then down in all this mud. So he volunteered too for aircrew and he was sent to back to England and became an observer. And I can’t, and he was posted then back to Germany as an, as an observer and he flew with a captain, I don’t know his name, in and I can’t remember, I think it was 14 Squadron. It could be. I don’t. I can’t really remember. And the life expectancy was somewhere in the matter of three weeks. Possibly three months. And my father somehow survived for the rest of the war. Three years. So he was a very, very lucky man. And he met my mother in, on one of his leaves because his, his father was a master tailor in, in Norwich, Mother was a typist in in the railway or something and he met her and they were married. And after the war pop couldn’t get a job so he joined the Black and Tans.
CB: Oh.
LL: Yeah. The Black and Tans, and went to Ireland with my mother and my sister then who was a baby and they spent some time in, in Ireland. And it wasn’t, it wasn’t very pleasant. And then pop came, then when they came back father became, worked for a firm called Blundell’s. And they did a hire purchase system. And father stayed with them for the rest of his career and he became the manager of a department store in Plymouth because we moved from Watford to Plymouth and and he retired from, from that particular job. And then during the Second World War he volunteered for is it AR? Not ARP. What was it?
CB: Yeah.
LL: Was it ARP?
CB: Yes. Yeah.
LL: And he had a uniform and there’s a photograph of us somewhere with me in my officer’s uniform and pop in his. And, and the reason why I suppose I joined the, I wanted to be a pilot and join the RAF was because of my father’s background really. Am I nattering too much?
CB: That’s really good. Keep going.
LL: Oh, I see [laughs] where do I go from there?
CB: Well, you were at ACRC so —
LL: Oh yes. I I volunteered and, and I was at ACRC. That’s right. ACRC. That’s right. ACRC. And from there I was sent to Paignton to do my ITW and we lived in a [tin barny] hotel on the front and I made friends. Three chaps. And we all four of us got together and eventually the postings came through and my three friends were posted to, on one of the drafts to America to do their pilot training. And I was left out. And I tried to get on the same tour but they said that I would be on the next one. So anyway I continued doing my training at the ITW and then I was posted to America and we had to go up to Manchester and had to be called from Manchester which was a reception area. We went by, up to Liverpool. I think it was Liverpool where we boarded a troopship called the Montcalm and I had the most awful journey to America, or Canada. It was, it was our troopship plus another troop ship and the weather got worse and worse and worse and we were escorted by those American, ex-American destroyers. Four funnel jobs.
CB: Yeah.
LL: Nasty old things. Anyway, the weather got so bad they turned back to England and left us and we had to go right up towards the Arctic Circle to avoid U-boats. And we landed eventually in Halifax. And the life on that boat was absolutely awful. I was eighteen, never left home and I had to suffer these. Everybody was being sick and the ship was riddled with cockroaches. All the food that was just dished out, we had to go down to the galley and collect it had cockroaches in it. You sliced the bread and you sliced through a cockroach. And consequently I hardly ate anything for the two weeks I think it was. Goodness knows how long I took to get to Canada. But we landed at Halifax eventually and at, I went to Moncton, Moncton, Canada. Where we were stayed for I don’t know what we did there but then we boarded a train and went all the way down to Montgomery in Georgia. Or was it —
CB: Alabama.
LL: Montgomery. That’s right. Montgomery, Georgia. And that was quite an adventurous journey. We stopped at New York and we had a, a walk around Grand Central Station, and oh it was, to be in America and all the food was was absolutely fantastic. And I started, and then we did what they called a conversion to American system of marching and I was, oh yes. I’ll go back. I actually was, my number of the course was number 42H. So ‘42 being the year and H was my graduation month I think. And anyway, we did drill and lectures and things like that. Then I was posted down to Arcadia, Florida where I started my primary training on Stearmans. And my instructor was Mr Ryan and he was a civilian and he had three or was it four students. And I was the only one to survive. The others didn’t make it. And I did sixty hours there. Then I went to Gunter Field, Montgomery, where I did my basic training on [pause] oh dear, Vultee13s I think they were called. Fixed undercarriage and wound the flaps down, that’s right [laughs] So anyway another, did another sixty hours there and then from there I went to [pause] Carlstrom? No. I can’t remember the name of the place. Was it Carlstrom Field? No. I did my advanced training anyway on Harvards and I graduated in August. I think it was August. It could have been early September but I’ve got it in my logbook anyway.
CB: Ok.
LL: And they’re on the table there. And somehow I became a natural pilot. On the advanced we went down to an airfield, Eglin Field in Florida and did air gunnery. That’s right. And I did quite well and that billed me in good stead because eventually when we got back to England and we were at Bournemouth we were all interviewed and they were building up Bomber Command all, all the time. And I should think out of the hundreds that were there the majority of them were pushed into Bomber Command. But at my interview I said I wanted Spitfires and I wanted Fighter Command. And fortunately I had a good gunnery score and that, on my records and I was posted to 129 Squadron on Spitfires. Much to my relief. And to fly a Spitfire was absolutely marvellous. And I was still, let me see at the end of the year oh, I had, gosh [pause] I left a bit. I’m sorry. I was posted to an OCU. That’s right. From Bournemouth I was posted to Grangemouth. Grangemouth in Scotland where I did my OCU and, on Spitfires. And from there I was posted to 129 Squadron at, it was at [pause] oh dear. Oh dear. Carlton? That was Carlstrom Field, I think. It was one of these wartime strips with Somerfield tracking and we lived in — no. I’m I’m sorry. Ignore that. Ignore that. Ignore that. Ignore that. That was sometime later. Ignore that. That’s right. I went to, I joined 129 Squadron at [pause] is there an airfield near Ringwood? Oh I can’t. I can’t remember.
CB: At Hurn.
LL: It will be in my logbook anyway. And the Squadron had actually gone to Hornchurch and so my 129 Squadron didn’t, wasn’t there. So I had to wait until they came back again and then of course I started, and I started my ops from, from there. And we did [pause] I was very green of course and they looked after me, I suppose. And then we were posted from that airfield. I can’t remember the name again, to Hornchurch where I operated from. I don’t know for how long, but we were on Spitty 5s to start off with at, at the airfield I can’t remember the name of. And we then converted on to Spit 9s when we were at Hornchurch and we did fighter patrols and I was nominated as, as I was a good Number 2 I used to fly Number 2 to the station commander and also the Squadron commander. And from there we, the war, the invasion, we prepared for the invasion and we were posted down to, this is where we went to, oh dear. Why? Why can’t I think of it? It was one of these wartime airfields and it was Sommerfield tracking and we lived in tents and life was a bit rough. Unfortunately they had a system where the pilots moved to the new station and took up the aircraft and they had the ground crew of those particular aircraft. And the the airfield was run by a Polish wing and Wold, no it wasn’t Woldzinski, but anyway we had two Polish Squadrons there and we, and we joined with our Spitfires at this particular place. But we had Polish ground crew. But we got rid of our Spitfires almost immediately and we got Mustangs and our serviceability went down very badly because they didn’t understand what we were talking about and we didn’t understand what they were talking about. The ground crew. And eventually we got British ground crew and everything was a little bit more satisfactory and we did patrols. We escorted Fortresses to, into Germany. We did a lot escort work. And most of our, a lot of our, when I was on on on Spitfires we escorted American bombers in France and into Germany and yes it was all all very, very well, I can’t say exciting really. It [pause] and I’m about bouncing around a bit. Does that matter?
CB: Fine. It’s fine.
LL: I’m bouncing around a bit. So anyway. The invasion. We were at this airfield, and oh yes we with, with the Mustang of course we could stay airborne for quite a long time and we, on these escorts to in to Germany with the Fortresses we were airborne in the Mustang for three hours, three and a half hours, maybe four hours some times. And when we got back on one particular trip it had a tremendous rain storm and all our tents had been flattened. All our bedding was soaking wet. And it was a bit of a mess actually. The whole airfield. And it took quite a while to sort of get ourselves sorted out. The other thing about it was that the Squadron commander made me the imprest holder and I had to go to base accounts and collect all the money and pay the troops and the officers the money they wanted. And the trouble was there was there was nowhere to put this money. I had no safe. I had, and I and I used to go on operations with my pockets full of, full of money because I had nowhere to put them. I couldn’t leave it in the tent. So eventually I saw the Squadron commander and I said, ‘This is ridiculous, sir. I can’t, I can’t cope.’ Anyway, he agreed and they got somebody in to, an officer, ground crew officer and he took over the imprest. So if I had been shot down in Germany I would have had lots of money [laughs] Oh dear. So anyway, from there we went to [pause] we were preparing to go over to, over to France. Oh yes. The invasion. We took, we started with the, the invasion started and we didn’t actually take part in the very first day. The 6th. We were, we were on standby and we were on, and I flew supporting the invasion on the, the second day and it was amazing to see. To fly over that beach head and the, and the number of ships in the harbour there. But the Navy was very very light fingered and they invariably fired at us. And to avoid this they introduced a system where we lowered our undercarriages, circled round to prove to them that we were British and then off we went again. But they still fired at us and they invariably got at least one aeroplane which was very, very upsetting. But the fact was that we were then doing ground, ground support and we were supporting the troops in, against the German tanks and doing a lot of ground work and we lost a lot of pilots through ground fire. And I’ve got all the names in my logbook if you want it. And then we were, the Doodlebugs started and we were diverted from the invasion to shoot down Doodlebugs. And we went to Dungeness, a little airfield in Dungeness with our Mustangs and we were given new Mustangs with a higher boost so that we had more speed to catch these Doodlebugs. And I met, I got one which blew up in front of me and bits of metal through all, from the doodlebug sort of passed over me and blackened all my windscreen. And I got two possibles. So, so I had a little bit of a success there. And then from there I was tour-ex and I was posted to Ingham on fighter affil duties. Can we stop there?
CB: We will.
[recording paused]
LL: Then we had the undercarriage down and circled around them. And that’s the whole Squadron you know, sort of doing it. They still fired at us. But it was the actual invasion supporting the troops and doing ground, ground attack work was more or less new to us. We did what they called from Hornchurch and, and, and the other airfields we used to do what they called ramrods.
CB: Yes.
LL: That was low level stuff and we sorted out trains and German cars and things like that. Interdiction I think they called it, didn’t they?
CB: Yeah.
LL: Keep on whirring. So anyway, Ingham.
CB: Just quickly, what was the armament you had on the Mustang?
LL: Sorry?
CB: What was the armament on the Mustang?
LL: .5s, .5s.
CB: Right.
LL: .5s.
CB: But on the Spitfire you had twenty millimetre cannon.
LL: We had. The early ones of course they had eight 303s and then we got two cannons and two 303s on each wing. No. One cannon and one, that’s right and also a couple of 303s and then they dispensed with the 303s altogether and we had two cannons per wing.
CB: How did you feel about that?
LL: Oh, jolly good. Jolly good. For ground attack work they were marvellous. And on these what they called ramrods.
CB: Just quickly on the V-1 Doodlebug.
LL: Yeah.
CB: So what was the technique that you were trained to pursue with them?
LL: Ah. Well they came in at around about two thousand feet, the Doodlebugs. And we had a sea patrol which was, and then and, and we, if you picked and we stayed at about three or four thousand feet above and so when we saw them we used to have to dive on them and with that extra speed we managed to keep up with them. And we then chased them and fired at them or we hadn’t, if we had missed them, they were still pressing on we had to stop because there was a gunnery belt, anti-aircraft belt and we had to stop and turn back otherwise we would have been fired at. And the gunners took over the Doodlebug from us.
CB: Yeah.
LL: And had a go at it. So it ran a pretty dicey journey.
CB: Sure.
LL: The old V-1s, really. So it, oh yes and one of one of the gunners when we were on this airfield the gunners actually shot, shot one down and winged it and it didn’t blow up. It actually sort of tipped over and headed for the ground and it came straight for us. And we scattered and, and, and it landed in the field just behind the airfield. And when I, we sort of came, I came to I was under the petrol bowser [laughs] Can you imagine it? I was under the bloody petrol bowser. Stupid thing. So, anyway it was from, it was quite exciting chasing the old Doodlebugs.
CB: The one you hit —
LL: Because they didn’t fire back at me you see [laughs]
CB: No. But what was the recommended technique for the approach?
LL: To dive down on them from height to get the speed.
CB: So was it a passing shot or did you actually dive and then come in from behind?
LL: Oh yes. Always from behind. You couldn’t get a deflection shot on them.
CB: Right.
LL: You had to fire on them from behind.
CB: So the one that you got. The kill you did. It blew up. You got a ton of explosive at the front going up.
LL: I must have stopped the engine which then slowed it down and I hadn’t realised that and of course I then closed in rather rapidly and then of course my cannon fire actually exploded it.
CB: Right.
LL: And it, and somebody else did this and they finished up with bits of the Doodlebug stuck in their wings.
CB: Yes. And they were, people were brought down by it as well.
LL: That’s right.
CB: So now you’ve gone through the blackness and your windscreen you said was covered in black. So what did you do then? You can’t lean out and wipe the windscreen.
LL: Somehow, somehow you can’t lean forward and clean the windscreen [laughs] somehow by looking out sideways I managed to get back and land it. Oh, I had engine failure on take-off at that airfield too.
CB: This is at Dungeness.
LL: Yeah. We had Packard Merlin engines and they suffered from internal coolant leaks. And I was leading a section off from there and all of a sudden I started losing power and all this smoke came out of the exhaust. And I had selected undercarriage up because I’d just left the ground and the, and that was it. The engine stopped and I finished up at the ditch at the end of the airfield. And my number two sort of pressed on, fortunately.
CB: So, in those circumstances the number two leads the flight.
LL: No. He had no other opportunity. He had to carry on actually. I don’t know what happened. Whether he landed again or not I can’t remember. I was more concerned about getting out the aircraft [laughs]
CB: So you said there were two probables. How did that occur?
LL: They, they were winged but they, but they and they went down, started going down and then they went into cloud and, and that was it. They, for some reason or other they didn’t give the, they didn’t award me them. They just gave me probables.
CB: Because they couldn’t link it directly to you. Is that it?
LL: They couldn’t link it directly to me. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. How did you feel about that?
LL: Well, had to accept it didn’t I?
CB: Not as sick as a parrot.
LL: So anyway where did we get to?
CB: Right. So you then went to Ingham.
LL: Ingham.
CB: In Lincolnshire.
LL: Oh yes, where we had Hurricanes and Spitfires. And I’d never done this sort of thing before and of course the daylight fighter affil was, was relatively easy. In fact, it was enjoyable. Really enjoyable doing quarter attacks on, and we used to meet the bomber above his airfield and then we used to, off we used to go and do the quarter attacks.
CB: This is the fighter affiliation.
LL: Fighter affil, yeah. And, and then of course we, I had to do it at night. Well, at night time I wasn’t very, I didn’t like night flying very much and, but I had to get used to it. And again we had to take off at night, find the bomber because he always used to be above the airfield and then he used to lead us off. Off somewhere. And then we used to do our quarter attacks at night time. We had infrared lights or lamps under each wing tip on the Spitfires and the Hurricanes so that the gunner can photograph us at night time and assess their abilities. And it was their responsibility to bring us back to base because we had no idea where we were going or where we were. And we, the trouble was that we daren’t lose the bomber because we had no navigation systems and we had no radio systems to get home. And it was their, the bombers responsibility to bring us back home again and when it was a lot of cloud around the bomber used to descend into cloud and we had to formate on this bomber in cloud. And the only ident, the only visual, visual of the bomber was the downward ident light. And you had to sort of fly more or less underneath it to keep in touch with it. And it was quite, quite frightening actually. And you daren’t lost it because you had, you had no idea when you broke, if you eventually broke cloud on your own where you were and there was no identification on the ground and and you were really were sort of lost in a way. But fortunately I managed to hang on to the bombers and I never had that, that situation at all. But it was. And then from Ingham we were, they decided that we would have to go to the bomber stations themselves and we went to Lindholme. The whole unit went up to Lindholme where we operated on fighter affil there. And then we saw Bomber Command operating at its, at its full [pause] I remember one night. Would they have had Halifaxes or Lancasters? I think. I can’t remember. But they took, one aircraft took off and crashed immediately after take-off and then the next aircraft took off and that did exactly the same thing. And instead of selecting undercarriage up the chappie must have, they think who operated the flaps must have brought the flaps up and the aircraft must have stalled and gone straight in. But it was a dreadful mess. It was something that sort of stuck in my mind. Anyway, one of the pilots who was posted on to Typhoons and he didn’t want to go and I wanted to get away from Bomber Command at the time. So I wanted to get back into Fighter Command so I volunteered to take his posting and I was accepted and I went down to Aston Down and converted on to Typhoons. And when I was there the war ended. And I had managed to scrounge trips on Tempests instead of Typhoons. I got on to Tempests which was more of a faster and better aircraft and from there I was declared redundant. And I went home on leave and I was recalled and when I got back I found that they wanted pilots on 222 Squadron in Germany flying Tempests and I was nominated. And I was, I think I said, ‘Thank goodness for that,’ and off I went to Germany to, oh dear what was the name of the damned airfield? Anyway, I joined 222 Squadron and on Tempests. And we, we just did ordinary training and flying and, and then we were sent back to England. I was only on, in Germany for a short period like three or four months and the Squadron was brought home and we were converted onto Meteors. And we went to Molesworth and we converted on to Meteors and they were Meteor 1s. And of course they were twin-engine and we, I had never flown twin engines before. None of the pilots had. And we were given dual in an Oxford. And this, the asymmetric training they gave us was the instructor, throttle back one engine and he said, ‘You push the rudder in the opposite side to keep it straight. Ok? And if you throttle back the other one you push the other rudder. Ok?’ And he said, ‘Now, you do it.’ And I do it. And then we went in and landed. And that was my asymmetric training [laughs] They didn’t show no, no approaches or anything and and consequently we had an awful lot of Meteor crashes because the, the engine, the fuel for some unearthly reason had, when they manufactured was getting water into it and the engines were, were, tended to stop. And unfortunately a lot of pilots had to do asymmetric landings and they had very little training and consequently they, they killed themselves approaching on one engine and it, it was, it was, it was amazing. The Meteor had a very, very high accident rate [pause] What did I do from there? Oh, yes. I can’t remember, [unclear] no. Meteors. Where did I operate? We went to Exeter. That’s right. Exeter, on Meteors. And of course that was quite close to my home which was in Plymouth. And I used to sort of nip home over the weekends quite easily. And I had a car then so I managed to get home quite easily. And then I was posted from 222 Squadron to 1 Squadron to convert them on to Meteors. They had Spitfire 21s. And I had the opportunity to fly Spitfire 21s and 22s with, some of them with contra rotating props so you went from Meteors to Spitfires again. And the Squadron commander brought me in one day and said, ‘How would you like to be posted overseas?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ He said, ‘You’re a bachelor and they want pilots in Italy, and how about it?’ So I said, ‘Oh, ok.’ And consequently I was posted to Italy. We went by train all the way across the continent on this military train and it took two days to get to Northern Italy. And it was Treviso. Treviso in Northern Italy. That’s right. Where we flew Mustangs. So, I’ve gone from jets back to piston engines. And we, and of course they were disbanding Squadrons left right and centre at the time and our Squadron was disbanded and I was sent up to a transit camp in Austria where we spent days doing nothing and waiting for a posting. And I assumed I was being posted home again but I was posted to the Middle East. And I [pause] and I eventually after a lot of journeys and trains and aircraft I managed to get via Malta to the Canal Zone, Egypt, where we lived in tents. And from there I was posted to Cyprus on to 213 Squadron. And I, and they were so short of pilots there was the Squadron commander, one flight commander and two pilots. That totalled the Squadron. And I turned up plus a couple of others and we sort of expanded the Squadron a bit. And then they were gradually, Cranwell had started up again and we eventually got some Cranwell students. Pilots posted in and we spent about nearly a year in good old Cyprus. We had a marvellous time in Cyprus. And then I was posted from there. We were sent to Khartoum. And that’s the first time I really saw the Sahara Desert and I was amazed at the extent of that desert. It was fantastic. And flying sort of single engine aircraft over this desert is, is quite, quite something really. And anyway we arrived at at Khartoum and we spent nearly a year there. And we were, from Khartoum we had, yes that’s right it was hot and awful and they had what they called an international front. A weather front called a haboub. And this had, it was high winds and it picked up the sand and it had rain and this black cloud was extended, used to move right across the ocean northwards and and sand was blown everywhere and it was, and it was the first time we’d seen rain. And it was quite, it turned the sand into sort of mud and what amazed me was that after two or three days of this sort of haboub and rain the, if you looked horizontally across the sand you could see it turning green. Grass was actually growing again in the sand. And then of course it didn’t last. It was then of course the heat and the sun killed it off again but that is there, and what amazed me was that it could actually grow and if you could cultivate it I suppose you could have, you know turn the desert into the grass. But anyway, we from Khartoum we were sent down to Mogadishu in —
CB: Somalia.
LL: Somalia. Where we lived very very primitively. It was a dreadful thing. The only toilet was a hole in the ground with a big trench in the ground with holes in it and you sort of had to sit over the hole. We had an air liaison officer, a Claude [Histead?] his name was and he was, he stayed with the Squadron all the way from Cyprus. And he stayed with us for ages. Anyway, he decided that he was, and of course there was a lot of flies over this thing and he decided that he was going to do something about it. So he got some petrol and poured it down into this hole, there were various holes and threw a match in and the whole thing went up in smoke including the [unclear] so it was left a dirty big hole and no small holes for us to sit in, over [laughs] But he got rid of the flies. Anyway, the AOC came down to see us I can remember and, and we thought we’d give him a decent lunch so I went into Mogadishu and I bought these chickens and gave them to the chef or the cook and we, he cooked them up and they served them. And boy those chickens must have been a hundred years old I think because they were so tough that we couldn’t even get a knife into them. And so that was the special dinner for the AOC was a complete washout and we finished up eating corned beef and what was it? What are those red things? Oh, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, we had a makeshift corned beef lunch much to the amusement of the AOC. So we spent time there and we were actually supporting the army in the unrest in that area. And we used to fly, we had long range tanks of course and we had to locate this army unit and we used to fly over them. And our presence helped to back up their system I suppose in keeping the natives quiet because there was a lot of unrest there. And we used to put on rocket demonstrations at [unclear] and do rocket demonstrations just to show them what was in store for them if they didn’t behave themselves. You can’t do that these days. But we had quite a while at Mogadishu and then from Mogadishu we went up to Aden and stayed at Aden for a while where 8 Squadron was. And then I got up to, posted, we were posted back up to the Canal Zone. And the first thing they told me I was required at Group Headquarters for an interview for a permanent commission. And of course I hadn’t got any kit and anyway I got the batman to press my KD and whatnot. Made myself reasonably respectable and reported to Group Headquarters where they kept me waiting all morning and then when I was ushered in I can’t remember what rank they were but they started asking me questions on political situations and things. And I said ‘Excuse me, sir. I haven’t seen a paper or heard a radio now for nearly two years. I have no idea what’s happening in the world so I cannot answer your questions.’ He looked at me as if I’d gone mad and I got, I must admit I got a little bit annoyed because you know he just couldn’t believe that I didn’t know what was going on in the rest of the world. You know, with Russia and what not. And consequently I was turned down. And when I got back to base, to Shallufa, that’s right, Shallufa we were stationed at, the station commander said, ‘How did it go?’ And I said, ‘Not very well.’ And then of course it came through that I’d, I had failed and he said, ‘Right. I’ll put you up again.’ So I was put up again and before I was actually summoned for another interview I was posted home tour-ex. That was after two and a half years. And as a matter of interest my overseas allowance then was two shillings a day, 10p now. That was not exactly [laughs] that was added to my salary and of course taxed as well. Can I go back a little bit? Back to Khartoum.
CB: Do.
LL: When I was, when I was at Khartoum I was sent home on a, on a course. Some, I don’t know I’ve forgotten what course it was now but anyway I took the opportunity and I thought it was jolly good. Anyway, I eventually got back to England again and I did the course, and I had a week’s leave and when I was coming back to report back to Air Ministry I got, we had first class tickets in those days. In my compartment there was a young lady and a young man and she was wearing, and it was a hot day and she was wearing a fur coat. And I said to her, ‘Are you cold?’ She said, ‘Yes. I’ve, we’ve just come home from Khartoum.’ I said, ‘Really? So have I.’ She said, ‘Oh, my daddy is a district commissioner in, in the Sudan.’ And then I told her what I thought of district commissioners because while we were stationed at Khartoum they would have nothing to do with us. We used to go to the Sudan Club where there was a swimming pool and when we used to go to the mess they completely ignored us and wouldn’t have anything to do with us because we were service. And I told her what I thought of district commissioners and I left the compartment. Found somewhere else to sit. So I didn’t think much of her. So, anyway where did I get to?
CB: So you went back on a course.
LL: Oh yes. On a course. And, and that was on the train journey —
CB: Yeah.
LL: To London. Then I had to go up to, oh some transit camp up in Lancashire somewhere and then I got, got on a troop ship and we went, I went back to the Middle East and I rejoined the Squadron in the Canal Zone. And then of course we got involved with the Israeli Egyptian war.
CB: Yeah. 1948.
LL: Yeah,1948. And these, I can remember the Egyptian Spitfires landing at Shallufa and they were in a dreadful state these aircraft, these aircraft. There were panels missing off them and they were, oh dreadful looking aircraft. They were completely and utterly neglected. Anyway, the highlight then that had happened was that 208 Squadron had red nosed Spitfires and I can’t remember what base they were on and four of them went missing one day. And they’d been shot down by the Israelis. And our Group Captain Anderson came over to us and while we were at Shallufa we used to do readiness. We used to do twenty fours hours on, and twenty fours off and we shared it with 6 Squadron. And we had just come off readiness and they had de-tensioned the BFMs which is the Belt Feed Mechanism. And anyway, the group captain came to see me and my Squadron commander was in, in Cairo at the time so I was looking after the Squadron. And he said, ‘Get your aircraft ready, Les and we’re going to go and find these bloody Spitfires.’ And anyway, we got airborne and 6 Squadron got airborne and we flew towards Israel and, well it wasn’t Israel in those days. It was —
CB: Palestine. Yeah.
LL: Palestine, wasn’t it? Palestine. And we saw these two Spitfires, red nosed Spitfires flying out to our left and so we assumed they were 208 Squadron and they came around and the next thing that happened is they were firing at us and they shot down my number two. We couldn’t believe it. And these bloody Israelis attacked us and shot down and killed my number two. [Tattersfield?] was his name. He’d only joined the Squadron a couple of months before. Anyway, it broke up and I somehow finished behind a Spitfire which was firing at one of my Tempests and I pressed the tit to shoot at him and of course the guns didn’t work because my BFMs had been de-tensioned. Anyway, he must have seen me. He broke up and disappeared. So I, in way saved the chap’s life in that second. When we got back to base we looked at his aircraft and there were bullet holes through the fuselage and hitting the back of the armour plating. You know, behind the seat. So he was jolly lucky. And gosh, our Group Captain Anderson was absolutely furious. He said, ‘I’m going to put rockets on these bloody aircraft. We’ll, show these bloody Israelis.’ Anyway, Group managed, somehow found out and they calmed him down and that was the end of that. But it was, it was quite a thing and it never appeared in the papers. I don’t know what would have happened if, if I had shot this bloody Spitfire down. So that was quite an excitement there.
CB: These, these Israelis were all ex-RAF pilots.
LL: Most of them. Yeah. So, anyway what had happened is that they had shot down these four pilots and fortunately all four pilots survived and they were taken prisoner. And [pause] and believe it or not I was given a book and I think it’s called, “Silent Witness,” or something like that. This is stories by RAF pilots that had not been printed or not known. And one of the stories is the, is by the pilot of one of these Spitfires that were shot down. And he recalls his adventures or what happened to him after he was shot down, and he also mentioned the fact that the Israelis actually shot down one of the Tempests. So, I had a double. It’s up, it’s up in the bedroom somewhere, this, this book.
CB: This double link for you.
LL: A double link. I was reading both sides.
CB: Yes.
LL: I found out both sides of the story. But the Israelis were not very nice at all. They were, they were, they were bombing people. They were putting wire across the road, you know and motorcyclists, despatch riders were, had been decapitated by this bloody wire. They blew up half, one of the wings of the headquarters. They, they, they got hold of some army colonel or major and imprisoned him in a tomb somewhere and eventually the services managed to find him again. They were doing all sorts of nasty things there. And they were also trying to get extra aircraft and they would bribe, we found out they would bribe us with money if we actually landed our aircraft into Israel. They would take us over. They would take us out to sea and put us in a dinghy and say [laughs] and say that we had, had engine failure over the Mediterranean and of course there was no sign of the aeroplane. But I don’t think anybody took [laughs] took that little adventure anyway. But that was a little bit of bribery on their part. So it was all very sort of what do you call it? Exciting, I suppose. Interesting.
CB: What did they do with these pilots they captured.
LL: They, they put them in prison actually. And, and I think they looked after them. They didn’t sort of torture them or anything like that. But I can’t remember how they got released. But they were released somehow or other. But I’d have to read the story again. I can’t honestly remember. So anyway, I was posted back to England and I took over a comm flight at Hawarden in north, near Chester, North Wales, where we had Ansons, Oxfords, and this AOC had a Spitfire, and we had a Harvard. And we used to fly ATC boys over the weekend and we, and we flew people from A to B as, as a communications flight. And I eventually got my permanent commission interview and I got my permanent commission there. So it was quite a long time after the war that I actually I got my commission. And the reason, and how I stayed in the Air Force was that there were at the end of the war they were offering, it was about a year after the end of the war they were getting short of pilots or something or the other and they were offering four year commissions. And I accepted the four years and I managed to get my permanent commission during that period of extended service as they called it. Extended service. From, I stayed there for, [pause] oh I don’t know whether I ought to mention it but all my, my friends used to ring me up when they were posted from A to B because they didn’t have cars in those days and I used to go across with the Proctor and pick them up and take them to their new airfield. And I used to charge them ten bob for the [laughs] for the pleasure of doing it. I didn’t keep it. I put it in this, in the, in the flight fund and, and at Christmas time we spent this money on a nice party for the ground crew and the pilots. It was called, “Lunn’s Airlines.” [laughs] I don’t know whether I should say that. Nobody knows that really. So, anyway from there I was posted down or sent down to Little Rissington for an interview to be an instructor. And I didn’t want to be an instructor, but they said you’re going to be an instructor. So I eventually got a posting to Little Rissington on the instructor’s course. And what we used to do there is you had dual with a, you know with a at Little Rissington a CFS instructor and then we used to fly mutual. You know, two pilots together. And believe it or not my co-pilot or confederate was an Israeli I was told and believe it or not his name was Captain Israel Stern. He had renamed himself Captain Israel Stern and I went up and saw the Squadron commander and I said, ‘I don’t want this man. I won’t fly with him,’ and I told him a bit of the story and he said ok and he gave me, they gave me somebody else. But it was amazing that I should be given this bloody man because I must admit I hated them. Anyway, I graduated funnily enough with a B1 instead of a B2 and I was sent up to [pause] outside of York. What was the name of the blasted airfield?
CB: Elvington?
LL: Who?
CB: Elvington.
LL: Elvington. No. No. It’s a prison now. Full Sutton. Full Sutton.
CB: Yeah.
LL: Full Sutton, and of course the Korean War had started.
CB: Yes. 1950.
LL: Yeah. It was the Korean War and they were calling up ex-RAF pilots back into the RAF and we, and Molesworth was opened up again. And it was a disused airfield and there were no facilities there. There were nissen huts and I had half a nissen hut, a bed and a wardrobe I think, or a cupboard or something to put my clothes in. And we all ate in the airmen’s one mess because there was no officer’s mess or sergeant’s mess or officer’s mess. So we all ate together. And we had to set to and open up this airfield and prepare to get aircraft. And we got Spitfires believe it or not, and Vampires and Meteors. And we did a conversion course of these pilots who were being called up. It was, it was quite a lot of, in fact a graduated CFS instructor spent a lot of his time initially in shuffling manure out of the air traffic control building [laughs] so they could get that place, the air traffic control building sort of back into operation again. It was a bit of a mess actually. But after a lot a lot of work we got this airfield going again and I became a flight commander there. And it was a lot of work. We used to start at 6 o’clock in the morning and we lived in nissen huts. And the officer’s mess was a nissen hut and [pause] oh yeah. We, we worked jolly hard actually and we worked weekends as well. And then from there after I can’t remember how long I was at Full Sutton but I spent a lot of time, and of course I did a lot of asymmetric flying there because we had to teach these students or ex-pilots asymmetric. And they used to shut down an engine in the air and then do a single engine landing. And then so many aircraft had accidents they decided it was rather silly to shut down the engine so we just throttled it back.
CB: This was on the Meteors.
LL: On the Meteors, yeah. And anyway, I was summoned to the station commander’s office one day and he said there was an air commodore, I think he’s one, he said, ‘He’s never flown in a jet and,’ and he said, ‘I want you to take him up on a trip.’ So I said, ‘Ok. Fair enough, sir.’ So we took him out to the aircraft and I briefed him and whatnot and set him in and we took off and I got, had an engine failure just as I left the ground. There was a bang and bingo the engine stopped and by God, I really had to work hard to keep that aircraft in the air. Anyway, we managed to slowly climb away and we came around and landed again. And the air commodore said, ‘Oh, asymmetric flying is easy in the Meteor isn’t it?’ [laughs] Little did he know that I was struggling. That I struggled. Anyway, that was one incident anyway. It was a very primitive airfield. Everything was very primitive and it’s now, it’s now an open prison. Full Sutton is. And what happened then? Oh yes. I was posted from there as flying wing adjutant down at CFS where I met Diana Broadhurst, she was a WAAF officer there.
CB: So, Harry’s daughter.
LL: And, and she used to come down to the office every other day and see me. And she said, ‘Look, Les, the WAAFs in the tower haven’t got a toilet. Can you organise a toilet for them?’ And I said, ‘Well, there’s nowhere in the air traffic building that we can put a lady’s toilet.’ Anyway, she used to pop down practically every other day on this subject and so we got to know each other quite well, and I married her [laughs] And she said, ‘You’ll have to ask my dad.’ And I said, ‘Oh.’ And he was CnC Bomber Command at the time. And so I had to go up with Diana to High Wycombe and I stayed with the CnC that weekend and I asked permission to, to marry his daughter. I can’t remember whether he said yes or no but he, the one thing he did say. That she was extremely loyal, and Diana [excuse me]
CB: It’s alright.
Other: It’s alright.
[pause]
CB: We’ll stop there just for a mo.
[recording paused]
LL: Yes. Oh, yes. We we got married at High Wycombe and her father Harry, Sir Harry went on this, the Vulcan was just coming in to service and they had three Vulcan 1s which they were, which they used for trials work and one of them they took out to the Middle East and then out to the Far East and Diana’s father went as co-pilot to Podge Howard, who was the captain. And they went all the way out to Australia and New Zealand and they came back again and they landed at, in North Africa somewhere. And they were scheduled to land at London Airport and the weather at London Airport was awful and they, and it was in the early days of London Airport and Broady, as they used to call him didn’t want to land at London Airport. And he said, ‘Waddington is open and clear. We’ll go up to Waddington.’ But they said, ‘The reception committee is at London Airport. You’ll have to land at London Airport.’ And Podge Howard said, ‘Ok. We’ll have one go and if we can’t make it we’ll divert to, up to Waddington.’ And you know the consequences, don’t you?
CB: Yeah. So do you want to just describe that?
LL: Anyway, what had happened is they were doing a talk down and of course they were doing a GCA.
CB: Yeah. Ground Control Approach.
LL: And you’re azimuth and elevation and you’re on the glide path or below the glide and you’re left or you’re right and you adjust to what you’re being told and the Vulcan 1 had its pitot head heaters, pitot head on the wing tips. So when you came in. we didn’t have flaps so when you were coming in on the approach the aircraft was at quite a high angle.
CB: Yes.
LL: And consequently you got disturbances in the pitot head which produced a two hundred foot error in the altimeter. Now, if you are being talked down it doesn’t matter what the altimeter is showing. You’re either on the glide path or you’re not on the glide path. The altimeter can read anything. If you are actually doing a talk down and they say you should now be passing through eight hundred feet you had to have a thousand feet on your altimeter to be at eight hundred feet.
CB: Yeah.
LL: So you had to add this two hundred feet on.
CB: Yeah.
LL: And they blamed this error into the actual cause of the accident. The trouble was the controller had not guided a jet aircraft in on a GCA before. It was his first attempt. And consequently it was much faster than the piston engine aircraft.
CB: Yeah. On his approach.
LL: On the approach. And they broke cloud and they were very low. And Broady looked up and the runway was at this angle instead of down there. Then they hit the ground and broke the undercarriage off or one of them and if, if Podge Howard had carried on and landed he would have slid and everybody would have been alright. But he attempted to overshoot. Anyway, he opened up to overshoot and somehow or other the undercarriage had hit the underside of the aircraft and knocked all the generators off, and the control systems were defunct. They wouldn’t work and the aircraft started to climb and roll. And Podge Howard said, ‘I’m going,’ and pulled his blind and shot out and Broady eventually yelled to the crew, the rear crew, ‘For God’s sake get out,’ and he was at an angle. You know, ninety degrees, and he operated his ejector seat and went out and landed and broke his, his feet or his, and his leg I think. Something to do with his feet anyway because he hit the ground rather hard. And of course his wife and other daughter Claire Broadhurst were in the tower waiting for him. And they have a controller at the side of the runway in the cabin and they came out and found Broady and they brought him into, into the cabin until they could get transport and take him in because he couldn’t walk. And of course they came out all in fire engines and what not and they thought that Broady had been killed because they couldn’t find him. And so for a while his wife thought she was a widow. But anyway they got transport out and they got Broady and they finished up in that military hospital. I forget where it was. And it was, and of course we’d only been married, what a couple of weeks and we were living in Peterborough and I was posted to 63 Squadron on Canberras and after the honeymoon, two weeks honeymoon I reported to, and of course to the Squadron and as I walked into the officer’s mess the Squadron Commander Wingco Charles was it, and his navigator met me and said, the first thing they said was, ‘Your father in law has crashed at London Airport.’ And I though God, I must get in touch with Diana. Anyway, I managed to get a hold of Diana but she had already been told by someone that her father was ok. But that was the beginning of our marriage really. Anyhow, I was on Canberras there and we lived in Peterborough and —
CB: Where were you stationed?
LL: At Upwood.
CB: Right.
LL: Oh, sorry. Didn’t I say? No, I was stationed at Upwood on Canberras. And then of course the, that Canal Zone fiasco.
CB: 1957.
LL: Nineteen, was that ’57? Occurred. And I think Broady must have, didn’t send 63 Squadron out. They sent, they sent the other Squadron because he thought it would be a bit unkind to send his son in law out after [laughs] I think. I’m only suppositioning this. And, and but he didn’t send me, my Squadron out. So anyway we were, I flew with my, the two navigators and one was the Squadron commander and he had asked for a mature pilot. And of course I flew these Canberras and it was, yeah we did detachments to Malta and that sort of thing. And then our daughter was born, Dorothea. And then I was posted after a while on to Vulcans and I was up at Waddington. Did the OCU and joined 617 Squadron. In the meantime we were, we had moved from Peterborough to, oh golly Moses [pause] A lovely thatched roof cottage aye, aye, aye. And that’s where Dorothea was born. Do you know I can’t remember the name of the place. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. And I did the OCU at Waddington. Then I was posted to Scampton. And they had one Vulcan that had been delivered and they were building the Squadron up of course. And, and I stayed with 617 Squadron for five years I think it was.
CB: Was that a long tour or two tours?
LL: Yeah. I did two tours with them, I asked. I asked to do a second tour and I was nominated as the Bomber Command demonstration pilot and I used to go off on Battle of Britain days and demonstrate the Vulcan. And I went to Canada and I did it over there. I went to Norway, Oslo and I demonstrated it there. And I was awarded the AFC. I assume for my abilities.
CB: What was the Vulcan —
LL: Sorry?
CB: What was the Vulcan like to fly?
LL: Oh, it was bloody marvellous. It was an absolutely wonderful aircraft. It really was. When I was in, doing this demonstration at in, in Norway they were celebrating so many years of powered flight. And the Americans were there with a, B not a 52. 47? Would it be a 47?
CB: Yeah.
LL: Yeah. I think it was a 47. And at the briefing they said, ‘All the spectators are at stands at,’ so and so side of the runway, ‘Could you, can you, would it be alright if you took off on runway — ’ so and so, ‘Which is slightly downwind. You’ll have about a five knot downwind. Will that be alright?’ And the Americans thought and thought and thought and they got their calculators out and what not. And I immediately said, ‘Of course I can. No problem at all. I can get airborne in four hundred yards.’ At a guess. And these Americans wouldn’t believe me and they actually paced out four hundred yards on the runway. And I thought, ‘You’ve got to get airborne boy.’ [laughs] And on the very first demo I taxied out and opened up full bore on all those lovely Olympus engines, released the breaks and I, at the right time I hauled back on the old pole and the old Vulcan lifted off the ground and up she went. And everybody amazed at this aircraft climbing away. And I actually appeared on Norway’s television. And after I’d landed, the Americans they were shaking their heads. Bloody marvellous. Bloody marvellous. So I felt, I felt very proud of the old Vulcan then. I really did.
CB: Well, the story was that the 47 would only get off the ground because of the curvature of the earth.
LL: They had rocket assisted take off.
CB: Oh did they?
LL: Most of the time. Yeah. When, yes we used to do lone rangers from Scampton and we used to go to America. To Omaha. The base there. And I can remember taking off from there on the return journey and I took off and as I say they called up and said, ‘Call passing five.’ I said, ‘Passing ten.’ And they said, there was a pause they said, ‘Call passing fifteen.’ I said, ‘Passing twenty.’ [laughs] They couldn’t believe that I was climbing up that fast, you know.
CB: Yeah.
LL: Because they were used to the old 47s. Again I felt very proud of the old Vulcan.
CB: This was the bombing competition.
LL: And of course there was the bombing competition as well. Yes.
CB: How did you get on with that?
LL: We did, we did very well actually. We, the Squadron came, were second. We didn’t, we never actually won it. We came second actually.
CB: Was it an annual event?
LL: Yes. Oh yes. On one particular trip we were doing we had taken off, at night of course and we were pressing on and my navigator, not Godfrey Salmond. Oh lord. Lord. Lord. Isn’t it amazing how you can’t remember things some times? Anyway, he had a habit of acting rather funnily when he got on board the aircraft. And a couple of times my navigator Arthur Wheatman said that whatever his name was, ‘Is sort of banging his head on the table.’ And I said, ‘What?’ Because I can’t see, you know in a Vulcan, you know. They’re back down there.
CB: Yeah.
LL: And I can’t, I can’t see them. I could see the navigator that side but I couldn’t see down there. And he said, ‘Oh, he’s ok now.’ Anyway, on this bombing competition we were on, on doing the navigation leg and Arthur called on the intercom and said, oh God, I wish I could remember his name, I have to look in my logbook, ‘He’s banging his head on the table again.’ And I said, ‘What do you mean? And he said, ‘He’s looking funny and he’s gone white and he’s banging his head on the table.’ And I thought, well I said, ‘Keep me informed.’ And after about five minutes he said, ‘He doesn’t look too good, skipper.’ So I said, ‘Ok I’ll have to cancel, and I’ll call base and return.’ Anyway, I cancelled the thing, called base and, and got back to Scampton and I asked for an ambulance to pick him up and they hauled him off into the sick quarters. And I went to see him later on and he was sitting up there perky as anything. Anyway, that was the end of him. We couldn’t take him anymore. I got a new AEO called Godfrey Salmond. Why can I remember his name and can’t remember the other chap? And so I got a new, a new AEO. And anyway they got special permission for me to do the, our trip again.
CB: Right.
LL: Normally if you return its part of the exercise. You’ve failed.
CB: Yeah.
LL: But because of the situation they allowed me then to do my portion of it again for 617 Squadron and we got, we were second.
CB: Was he the nav plotter or the nav radar?
LL: Who?
CB: The one who had the problem.
LL: Oh, the AEO.
CB: Oh, he was the AEO.
LL: Yes. I’m sorry. Didn’t I say?
CB: The air electronics officer.
LL: I didn’t say AEO.
CB: Yeah.
LL: That’s right. No. I had, we had a good crew. I had a good crew. And the wives got on well together. And, and Harry, our son was born at Scampton. And Harry is, now lives in Australia. He emigrated about ten years ago to Australia [pause] Oh, when Diana died he immediately came home. Both of them actually, and they looked after me.
CB: We’ll just pause there again.
[recording paused]
CB: Now, you spent your formative years you might say in the war on fighters. And then you transferred eventually to the Bomber Command force but particularly into Vulcans. I just wonder whether as there were some people who had flown Lancasters or Halifaxes or Stirlings in the war whether there was any link in their minds with the more modern arrangement with the V force.
LL: It never, I don’t think it ever occurred to them. It certainly didn’t come up in conversation anyway. It, they like Tommy Thompson he was one of the pilots on our Squadron who was a wartime bomber. And he used to, he did refer occasionally to incidents during the war but he was very, very remisent about it. He didn’t. Unless you particularly asked him he would never introduce the subject. All I know is that Tommy, we used to do these lone rangers and they bought, and he he went out to, I think it was [pause] I forget. It was out to Butterworth, that’s right. In Malaya. And they staged back and they got to North Africa and at the time they said that we should only do one stage a day. And anyway things were getting a bit tight for them so they decided to, when instead do two stages to get home. And they got airborne from North Africa and, and headed home. And the got airborne from North Africa and headed home. And when they got back to Scampton the Group headquarters summoned him up and said, ‘Why did you do two stages instead of one when it’s against orders.’ And anyway, anyway he, I think somebody some high ranking officer was asking him and he said, I know, ‘If you can’t trust me at this stage, I’ve flown in Bomber Command during the war, I’ve flown Lancasters, Lincolns, Canberras and now on this and I have an impeccable record. If you can’t trust my judgement now I’m leaving the Air Force.’ And he turned around and walked out and resigned his commission.
CB: Did he really?
LL: And, and he finished up by going out to Australia. And he took a Land Rover and drove all the way out to Australia [laughs] with his family. That was one incident. That’s all I can think of.
CB: Did, did many people in your experience in the RAF after the war discuss their experiences during the war of any type?
LL: Well, most of the pilots on my Squadron were, weren’t in the war. You know, like in 213 Squadron there were no — they were all ex-Cranwell cadets or pilots that graduated after the war and got commissions and things like that. No. I don’t think so.
CB: Going fast forward again then to the Vulcan. It was an extremely manoeuvrable aeroplane. Did you feel any link between your fighter days and flying the Vulcan?
LL: Well, when I was doing the demonstrations, yes [laughs] In fact I’ve got a book down there and didn’t even bother to put my name to it. I was referred to as the “Star of the Air Show.”
CB: And what did you do there?
LL: I did my demonstration. And we had rapid starter on the old, on the Vulcan and and it was, we had an electrical and then they had air pressure and they made it a rapid start on all four engines. And I had my crew chief to make me a plunger thing which I could press down on the starter buttons and get all four to go down together. And I taxied out at, at, in Paris and, and stopped the engines at the beginning of the runway and then I called for take-off. Or they told me it was ok to take off and I pressed the old buttons, this thing down and I took off and consequently again got the aircraft airborne you know very early and I had a minimal amount of fuel and I climbed up and got almost, and then I practically rolled her and in fact they said I did a half roll and then I carried on with my demonstration. And I was referred to as the star. “Star of the Paris Air Show.”
CB: Where was that? That was at the the [unclear] Show was it?
LL: That was —
CB: Orly.
LL: I can’t remember the name of the airfield in Paris we went to. Anyway, my crew were all married of course and and the wives came out and joined us. In fact, Diana came out with Stuart Macgregor. I think his name was Stuart McGregor and he was Broady’s AD, not ADC. He was something to do with, he was a Squadron leader anyway. He actually had, flew Diana out in one of the Bomber Command communication flight aircraft into, into and she joined me at the hotel in, in Paris.
CB: So in your demonstrations did you ever roll the Vulcan? Or at any time?
LL: No [laughs] I wanted to but I thought it would be a little bit too far-fetched in a way. I half rolled it but I never fully rolled it.
CB: So —
LL: So, of course my crew in the back were sitting there being thrown around.
CB: So, technically a half roll is being inverted is it?
LL: That’s right. Yes.
CB: Yes. And then taking it back.
LL: Yeah.
CB: And pulled through and turned.
LL: That’s right. That’s what I used to do at the top of the climb.
CB: Yeah.
LL: And pull around.
CB: And then turned back the right way on the way down.
LL: That’s right.
CB: So we’ve —
LL: I used to enjoy those, it and when I went to Canada it was their, some exhibition and I was introduced to a chap, a Canadian who, he told, he was a most interesting chap. He had spent his career flying. And he started flying a solo aircraft and out in the Arctic, Northern Canada and he used to take, deliver mail to these outposts in the Arctic and he used to sleep in the aeroplane because there was nowhere else to go. And to stop the aircraft oil system solidifying because of the intense cold he used to have a small burner thing underneath it. Underneath the engine to keep the engine sort of warm. And he did that for some years and then he bought a twin engine, and he became quite a rich man and he had, he used to spend six months down in Florida. In for the summer and then fly back up to Canada again for the Canadian summer. And, and I was allowed, or the AOC who was out in, in Canada with me as part of the ground effort allowed me, said that it was ok. This chap wanted to fly in a Vulcan. And he said, ‘Ok. You can take him up.’ So, anyway, on my demonstration he sat or stood on the ladder holding on to the back of the two ejector seats while I threw the aircraft around. And when I landed he said, ‘God, that was bloody marvellous, [laughs] That was bloody marvellous.’ And when we were due to come home he had this fruit farm, or I don’t know, but he had he brought this crate of peaches and he put them, we put them in the bomb bay and when I landed at Scampton, we got all these peaches, this crate out and we distributed amongst the fruit to the, to the ground crew. But he was a marvellous chap. And, oh yes, the ex-Squadron commander of 617 Squadron. The Canadian. And he was the first to drop that huge bomb. What weight was it?
CB: Oh, the twenty two thousand pound Grand Slam.
LL: Grand Slam, he was one of the first to drop that. He was the CO and he was in Canada and he contacted me and actually took us out a couple of times. In fact, we were invited to a hotel, to a big reception and he, this ex-Squadron commander and my crew had a table and it was dry, there was no drink. And anyway this, why can’t I think of his name?
CB: What, Shannon?
LL: Sorry?
CB: Shannon?
LL: Sorry?
CB: Shannon or did he not become a CO? One of the Dambusters was Shannon. He was an American.
LL: Yeah.
CB: Who became Canadian.
LL: No. He was a Canadian.
CB: Right.
LL: Not an American.
CB: Ok.
LL: No. He was a Canadian. Oh lord. I wish I could remember his. Because he looked after us and in fact I think he was invited and he in fact invited myself and my crew to this reception. And they had all these dignitaries on a top table and all these other small tables around in this big hotel. And anyway, anyway this ex-Squadron commander called a waiter over and said, ‘I want some drinks.’ And he said, ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ He said, ‘Get me some drinks.’ Anyway, we had wine with our dinner. And, and anyway. Oh dear, my navigator. He was —
LL: Right. We’ll just stop for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: So you all got your wine.
LL: We all got our wine. Anyway —
CB: Yeah.
LL: That naughty navigator or ours went around collecting napkins.
CB: Oh yes.
LL: And he tied them all up together, you know, into a great big — and he crawled to the next table and said, ‘Pass it on.’ You see. And this long stream of napkins headed its way up towards the top table. And I thought, oh God. Anyway, it started, it got to the top table and started to go across and then it stopped before it got to the dignitaries and of course our AOC was on the top table as well. And he, and next, next morning the AOC came to see me. Oh, I can’t remember the name of the bloody airfield, and said I was a very naughty boy. And when I got back to Scampton my squadron commander met me and said, ‘I understand you’ve been a rather naughty boy, Les.’ [laughs] but it was a good party. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
CB: Why was it a teetotal event? Was it a religious?
LL: I don’t know. It was a teetotal event. For some reason they had it was I forget what it was all about. I don’t, I don’t think I ever did know. But anyway this ex-Squadron commander got a little bit tiddly and when he was driving, he was driving us back home he stopped and said, ‘God, I can’t drive anymore. You drive Les.’ And of course, I [laughs] I drove his car back to, to base.
CB: Vancouver was an Air Show where they very much appreciated the Vulcan.
LL: Yes. That’s on, that’s on the further side.
CB: Yes.
LL: Yeah.
CB: So this was the Atlantic side.
LL: Oh yes. That’s the thing I had not mentioned and that was that we had a reunion when I was at Coolham. That’s right. Coolham. This airfield down south. And from there we had a reunion. Afterwards, that’s right. No. I’m getting a bit mixed up. Hang on a second. Anyway, the Squadron in that area had a reunion which also celebrated the invasion [of the day] and somebody organised all this and they got hold of this lady whose father, Skip Paine was her father and he was killed in a flying accident at Coolham. And she came over from Canada and we met and we became firm friends. And Christine and Rick, he’s to do with the theatre, they come to England and they come and see me and we talk and I keep in touch with them and and they’re very very good friends. Christine and Rick. And her father, she planted a tree in memory of her father when she came over once. Can I pop and see Sarah?
CB: Please do.
LL: Yeah.
[recording paused]
CB: You’ve talked about the tragic accident at Heathrow.
LL: Well, we used to do target study.
CB: Yes.
LL: And we had to do so many hours every week and we used to go in to a locked secret room in the operations block and study our targets. And I always think at the back of my mind that it was never going to happen. And I think we lived with that feeling that it’s not going to happen because it’s impossible. We can’t do this sort of thing. It would be ridiculous even to start it.
CB: This is nuclear war.
LL: Yeah. A nuclear war is out. Really out of the question and I think in our minds that people will eventually sort themselves out and it will all be cancelled. And I took a Blue Steel out to Australia in the Vulcan.
CB: Right.
LL: Because that was, I don’t know, a weapon.
CB: A stand-off weapon.
LL: A stand-off weapon.
CB: Yeah.
LL: And I was hoping that we would be able to fire it but they had, they took it off our aircraft and put it, and they did it themselves. The test people down there out in the —
CB: They didn’t drop it from a V bomber at all.
LL: No. Well, I don’t know what they did with it. They must have done trials on it. They must have dropped it from something.
CB: But a Canberra wasn’t big enough.
LL: And of course the navigator had to keep the Blue Steel working all the way out and of course he had a lot of work to do.
CB: Yeah.
LL: But when we got there a car turned up and I said, and they said, I said, ‘What’s this for?’ He said, ‘It’s been ordered for you.’ And I found out that that dear father in law of mine had been in touch with somebody out in Australia and ordered this, this car for me so I could use it to get around.
CB: Fantastic.
LL: That was, that was marvellous.
CB: This is, this is Woomera isn’t it? And Woomera is the middle of ruddy nowhere.
LL: Broady was, he was a fine chap actually and it’s, and that’s his picture up there when he was a wing commander.
CB: Oh yes.
LL: And there are all his medals.
CB: Yes.
LL: Behind you there. And those medals were sold. Somebody who was doing the history of Hornchurch, a chap called Mr Smith got in touch with Diana because he knew that her father was station commander at Hornchurch at one time. And he told her that the medals were at this particular auction, on an auction and I tried to stop it and I couldn’t. I just couldn’t get anybody to talk to me. Eventually I got hold of somebody after a lot of trying and I said I wanted the medals to be withdrawn. And they said, ‘You can’t do that. We can’t do that. A family member has put them up and they’re in the catalogue and they will be sold.’ I said that, ‘They are not to be sold. They are to stay in the family.’ But no, they wouldn’t listen and they were sold. So where Broady’s medals have gone I have no idea but I think they fetched something like thirty eight thousand pounds at the auction. And where that money went to I don’t know. But Diana’s half-sister Claire she was a rather spoiled girl. She dropped us completely and after her mother died she inherited everything. Diana hardly got anything at all. And she just dropped us. And we haven’t heard from her at all for donkeys years. But Harry, actually, when he, she’s living in Spain and Harry actually managed to get in touch with her by email to inform her that Diana had died but she didn’t even try to contact me or anything. So as far as I’m concerned Claire doesn’t exist. But Diana’s other sister Jill, she lives in Herefordshire and she’s been absolutely, she was absolutely marvellous and I keep in. I still keep in touch with her. And she’s very artistic and I’m celebrating my ninety fifth birthday in January and she is doing the invitations for me.
CB: Oh excellent.
LL: And it [pause] and I’m going to have that put on the front.
CB: Oh excellent.
LL: And this is the sort of invitation.
[pause]
CB: That’s jolly good. Yeah. With your picture on the front of it. That’s really good.
LL: Yeah. That’s right.
CB: With your Meteor behind.
LL: That’s right. Yeah.
CB: Is that a 1 or an 8?
LL: This is a Meteor 3.
CB: Oh, 3. Right. Just quickly you mentioned you never expected a nuclear war to happen. Did you believe in those days that you were making a substantial contribution as a deterrent?
LL: Yes. I’m pretty certain we did. I’m pretty certain we did. We did all this QRA, you know.
CB: Quick Reaction Alert.
LL: Quick Reaction. And we were also detached on to a peculiar airfield in Scotland so that if Scampton was bombed at all we would be up, you know away from it. And we did have, I had, Diana and I had discussed it and she said, ‘If anything does happen I’ll grab the kids and everything else and head for Herefordshire. If it does. If it does happen.’ So we had planned that sort of thing.
CB: Changing the topic to an earlier one which is the crew of a V bomber is five and three of the crew sit facing backwards. In the case of the Vulcan below the two pilots. Only the pilots have an ejector seat. What was the attitude of the crew to the inherent danger of such an arrangement for escape?
LL: They just, they just accepted it.
[telephone ringing]
LL: They just accepted it.
CB: Yeah.
[pause]
LL: I don’t think [pause] did we ever bale the rear crew out? Yes. I was watching the Vulcan take off once and as the nose lifted the whole nose wheel hydraulic system fell out and the nose wheel ran along the runway so he just had a stump. And I rushed back and rang air traffic and said, ‘For God’s sake get hold of that aircraft. He’s lost his nose wheel.’ And anyway they called him up and he came on around and they took and he flew low over the airfield and they said, yes, the nose wheel had disappeared. And then for some unearthly reason they sent him over to Waddington and they baled the rear crew out over Waddington. Why they didn’t do it over Scampton I don’t know. But a chap called Blackwell I think his name was, his ‘chute didn’t open properly and he was killed. But they naturally had to have the undercarriage up because the nose wheel was right behind the door. The whole structure. So if you slid down the door you hit, you would hit the the nose wheel. So therefore the undercarriage had to be retracted to bale the rear crew out.
CB: So, then what did they do? Did they do a —
LL: They, they, they had the undercarriage up, they opened the door and you had to have the speed somewhere below two hundred knots actually to —
CB: Yeah.
LL: For the door to open fully.
CB: Yes.
LL: One of the Vulcan crashes was that, on the Mark 1 and they grounded the Vulcan for a bit was that the a, that they had a single buzz bar for the generators, alternators. And one of the alternators back fired and knocked off all the other general alternators and this was on a long range to Canada.
CB: Oh.
LL: And they were over Canada when all this happened at forty thousand feet. And they always said that the batteries would operate the powered controls for ten minutes. Anyway, they had, believe it or not there was no means of resetting these alternators. So they couldn’t get them back on line again and so the aircraft was incapacitated really and it started to descend and it consequently got faster and faster and of course the co-pilot ejected and the captain didn’t. And they couldn’t get the rear crew out as far as I know.
CB: Because they couldn’t open the door.
LL: They were going too fast. And anyway, the co-pilot was, hadn’t got his Mae West on and he landed in Lake Michigan and was drowned.
CB: Jeez.
LL: And the aircraft crashed and the Vulcan was grounded. And then they split the buzz bar, so that if it happened again you’d only lose one side.
CB: Of power generation.
LL: Yeah. So that was the only time I can think of that you would want to get the rear crew out. But then of course the door wouldn’t, as it was over two hundred knots the door wouldn’t open properly. So —
CB: Now, after a bit then the nuclear deterrent was withdrawn and replaced by the Navy so low level flying was the order of the day.
LL: Yeah. It was quite exciting. Low level. But it wasn’t designed for that sort of thing. It, it didn’t absorb the, you know the disturbance or the bumps.
CB: The buffeting.
LL: It was an uncomfortable trip really. No. It’s the old Mark 2 of course we could get up to what forty thousand feet almost fifty thousand feet on the old Mark 2. It was a bloody marvellous aeroplane.
CB: Some people got over sixty.
LL: Yeah.
CB: Thousand.
LL: Yeah. I got a Canberra up to forty odd thousand feet [laughs]
CB: Just going back to your very earliest days there you are in America being taught by civilians. Are you treated as civilians yourselves in civilian clothes or was it RAF?
LL: We were in, we were the first British cadets to go in uniform after America had declared war. Before that they had to wear civvy clothes.
CB: And the instructors. Were they all —
LL: At, they had American sort of senior instructors but they had recruited civilians because they hadn’t got enough instructors with the expansion.
CB: Right.
LL: And so they employed the ordinary civil aviation instructors.
CB: And what was the general attitude of the American towards the British? The RAF.
LL: They were fine. Fine. We put up a bit of a black hole when we arrived because we arrived at Turner Field. That’s right, Turner Field on the very first day. We came down from Canada we finished at Montgomery at Turner Field and when we got off the train we all assembled, fell in and we were marched off and somebody struck up the tune, “As we go marching through Georgia.”
CB: Oh.
LL: And we all started singing, “As we go marching —” and the Americans were not very pleased [laughs] and [pause] in fact we had a mutiny there on my course. It was, they were in six months we did all the ground school and all the flying and sometimes we used to get up at 6 o’clock in the morning. Do ground school until lunchtime, flew all, flew all the afternoon and then did night flying. And then, alternatively it was flying. Get up, do flying in the morning ground school in the afternoon, night flying at night. So it was a lot of, a long, long day.
CB: So the mutiny was —
LL: I admire the Americans for their organisation. They expanded so quickly and they really, they really got cracking once they got, they declared war. They really did. Craig Field. That’s right. Craig Field. That’s where I went to. Did my advanced. Craig Field.
CB: And there you’re flying Harvards.
LL: Harvards. Yes.
CB: Or T6 Texan.
LL: Yeah. Oh, you remember I said I had these three friends at ITW.
CB: Yes.
LL: Well, all of them were killed during the war. None of them survived. I was the only one to survive.
CB: But was that on operations or were some killed in other ways?
LL: Well, one was killed on, on, in Bomber Command. Another one was on Mosquitoes and I don’t know what happened to him and the other one was on Tempests and they were off on a trip to France and he had engine failure over the Channel. And of course he tried to ditch the thing but with that great big intake in the front, you know —
CB: Yeah.
LL: It just immediately tipped up and it sank and he was killed. And in fact, I’ve got another, in that same book this chappy is talking about this particular incident of Neil. Neil was his name. Was it Neil? Anyway, that’s how I got confirmation that he [pause] so all three of them died.
CB: Yeah. You were talking about the losses in training. Were they a mixture of the instructors and the students or just the students?
LL: Well they had, we lost, again the course before me, where that would be 42 EFG F 42G they, we did a day/night cross country. We flew the, the, these were on basic training. I think it was the basic training. Anyway, we did a first leg down to Miami from from Montgomery. It would be the Vultee basic training aircraft and then they did a trip. Took off at night and flew a dog leg and back up to Gunter Field. And the Met forecast was completely and utterly wrong and they hit one of these ghastly tropical storms. And there was something like twenty odd aircraft. One aircraft managed to get back to base. We lost six pilots that night, were killed. And others force landed and survived. But that was a big blunder by the Met people. That was the course before me. And when I was at primary I think you were either born lucky or born unlucky and I certainly was born exceedingly lucky. But this chap was flying with his instructor and he hadn’t got his seat strap done up and they hit a bump and he left the cockpit and finished up sitting astride the fuselage in front of the rudder. Much to the amazement of the, of the instructor up front. But anyway the instructor managed to get the aircraft back again and landed and then the next, then a couple of days later he was testing the mags at the end of the runway, running the engine up and the engine just blew off. Just left the aircraft. Boom. And then believe it or not somebody landed on top of him and killed him. Now, that is what I call unlucky.
CB: Yeah. Extraordinary.
LL: Yeah. But the Americans were very good actually. We, we had no — the only leave we got was three days I think it was. After primary. And we registered at this military club and they were, Americans would come along and pick you up and take you off and entertain you and look after you. And two of my friends and I went to this club and these Americans [unclear] was their name, took us down to, this was in Florida, to their house and they had a private beach with cottages on it and they gave us a cottage and we lived in this cottage. The provided all the food and we had barbecues and they looked after us. And they wrote to my parents as well. So yes, they were very good actually.
CB: A very hospitable people the Americans.
LL: Very good.
CB: Right. We’ve done extremely well. Thank you very much and I think we need to have a pause because you need your lunch.
LL: [laughs] Yeah.
[recording paused]
CB: Did the, the turbine blades would come off at any time would they on the Meteors?
LL: Hmmn?
CB: The turbine blades you said separated.
LL: Yeah.
CB: Was that in flight as well as on the ground?
LL: Oh yes.
CB: And what was —
LL: Mostly in flight.
CB: What was the effect of that?
LL: Just a rumble really. A vibration.
CB: And then you had to shut down the engine quickly.
LL: You had to shut down the engine. Then you were faced with asymmetric which you hadn’t been trained for. That’s why you had so many fatalities.
CB: Yes.
LL: The thing is on an asymmetric, on the approach you have an approach speed and if you get low and of course as you, as you approach you’re throttling back and if you’re getting a bit low you open the throttles but you’ve got have to have sufficient rudder to offset the amount of asymmetric.
CB: Yeah.
LL: And eventually if you got too low and you got too, if you had too much power the aircraft would naturally, you’d got full rudder on but you would still divert from your heading. So you’re only faced with one thing and that is to dive and get a bit of speed up but then of course you haven’t got that height most times.
CB: Oh right.
LL: So you’re in, in a non-return situation.
CB: Was it realistic to go around again?
LL: Well, you wouldn’t be able to do because your rudder wouldn’t allow you to open up to full throttle.
CB: Right.
LL: All it would do was swing you around and eventually you’d —
CB: You’d topple it.
LL: Topple on to your back and that would be it.
CB: Right.
LL: You couldn’t go around again.
CB: Right.
LL: Because your speed was too low.
CB: Yeah, I see, right.
LL: You had an asymmetric speed of say one hundred and sixty five knots or something and you didn’t want to let it go below that.
CB: What was your touchdown speed normally?
LL: Well, as you approached the runway of course you could reduce that speed and it was the actual Meteor touchdown was something like ninety, ninety five knots.
CB: Oh was it?
LL: Something around about that.
CB: I’ve seen figures that suggest that the RAF lost four hundred and eighty pilots flying on Meteors.
LL: Yeah. And also they lost pilots because of the oxygen system. We had a couple of aircraft go in from altitude at Full Sutton and when they were doing that they couldn’t understand why. We assumed that they’d lost control and they’d gone into a spin and that was it. But in fact what had happened was when they were doing a service, a major service on one of the aircraft they had the oxygen system out and they was found that it wasn’t actually producing the oxygen that was required. There was something wrong with it. It had worn or was leaking or something like that and they checked all the other Meteors and they were all, they were faulty.
CB: Were they?
LL: And we were all flying Meteors with a faulty oxygen system [pause] And they were of course passing out from lack of oxygen at height. And then of course that was it.
CB: They wouldn’t recover.
LL: They wouldn’t recover in time to do, and they lost a lot of pilots that way.
CB: So we talked about you on Squadron in the Vulcan. And we haven’t got to the end of that.
LL: No.
CB: So, did, did you move to another Vulcan Squadron after 617?
LL: No.
CB: Or did you go to something else?
LL: I went straight from 617 to Boscombe Down.
CB: Right.
LL: And I joined the Transport Flight at Boscombe Down and I spent six years there. A most enjoyable six years.
CB: And what were you actually doing then?
LL: I was, well I was on the transport side actually.
CB: But was it experimental or were you delivering people?
LL: Well, it was experimental with the VC10 of course. And we had the Andover. And I’m not a test pilot. And the other pilots were in fact test pilots.
CB: Right.
LL: And so they were doing trials on cross wind landings and all that sort of stuff. And we did some overseas tropical trials. And what Boscombe normally do but you need a test pilot to qualify to do it?
CB: Yes.
LL: And I was not qualified. So I spent some time just flying. We had, we had a Beverley [laughs]
CB: Gosh.
LL: I took, and I took a Beverley all the way to Churchill in Northern Canada. We took [pause] we went from, from Boscombe Down to Iceland.
CB: Yeah.
LL: And then —
CB: Greenland.
LL: No. We didn’t. We were going to go to Greenland but there was a lovely low and they had, we got the navigator had found that we had if we went a little bit further south we’d have a lovely tail wind and the old Beverley was tanking along at a hundred and forty five knots. With a, you know fixed undercarriage four bloody great engines. And we went from there —
CB: It’s a flying brick.
LL: All the way to Goose Bay.
CB: Oh yeah. Labrador.
LL: Labrador. And then from Labrador we went to [pause] where was it? Near Toronto. An airfield near Toronto and then from Toronto up to Churchill. That was an amazing station. That really was.
CB: What were, what were you doing there? Delivering something?
LL: I was, I went there to collect the helicopter that was doing cold weather trials.
CB: Oh.
LL: And the helicopter was put in the back of the Beverley. And I had ground crew with me as well of course to keep us in service and, but I’ve never, of course the Aurora Borealis was in full swing when we were in Churchill. And it was amazing to see all this. And I could see icebergs in the in the gulf there. And the, and the whole station relied on this power station that provided electricity to keep the station going. And they had an emergency system that if ever that power station packed up that the Churchill itself would freeze. And consequently like the loos and all that sort of stuff would all be non-operative so they had an emergency escape. Evacuation system.
CB: Oh.
LL: But as far as I know it never happened. And they also had warnings that when the temperature was so low that they weren’t allowed to go out and most of the buildings were actually interconnected so you didn’t have to go outside.
CB: Too cold.
LL: To get to another building. And of course to get people to actually service there or work there they were, they were usually naughty boys who [laughs] who wanted to get away from it all. Like doctors. That’s what I was told anyway. But it was, it was quite an experience. And there from there, from Churchill I went all the way to the Azores and we landed. I had to refuel enroute. I forget where. Then we finished up at the Azores. And on the way to the Azores the engineer was, said, ‘Well, the revs have dropped slightly on number three,’ I think it was. And he said, ‘It’s still running ok.’ Anyway, when we landed he ran the engine up and it sort of, and there was hardly any mag drop. Or the mag drop was in limits anyway. Anyway, we took off the next day and this engine was still showing a bit funny but it was running reasonably smoothly, or smoothly and when we got back to Boscombe Down when they checked the engine and put it unserviceable they found that one of the cylinders, you know, a radial engine had actually become detached and it was actually bouncing up and down with the piston.
Other: Wow.
CB: Blimey.
LL: And it actually had dented the actual cowling.
CB: Gosh.
LL: And that engine kept going.
CB: Bristol Centaurus.
LL: Amazing, the old Centaurus, yes.
CB: So after Boscombe.
LL: Boscombe. Oh yes. I was sent up to Finningley to take over the Vulcan simulator. And I had to be checked out on the Vulcan again.
CB: On a flying one.
LL: Yeah. And we used to go there and I used to fly about once or twice a week.
CB: So, with the simulator did the crews go into that before they did flying in the OCU?
LL: Yes. Part of their training for their conversion.
CB: Yeah.
LL: Was to do the simulator.
CB: Right.
LL: And then they had to, when they were on the Squadron they had to do so many hours on the simulator every month.
CB: Right.
LL: And of course they came to me. Then we put in faults and all that sort of stuff.
CB: Yeah.
LL: And it was very, it was an analogue type simulator. It was nothing like what they have these days.
CB: Right.
LL: And the one I saw at Heathrow for an aircraft, I forget what it was, you know you could dial up Toronto or Singapore or various airfields and you could do your landings at, you know at those particular airfields. And when you took off it actually looked as if you took off. You know. There was a slight rumble and they’ve got airborne and the horizon and the cloud and all this sort of stuff and it was so realistic it was amazing. It put my simulator to shame.
CB: So how long did you do your tour at Finningley?
LL: I did —
CB: What age were you then?
LL: I retired there and I was coming up to tour-ex and I didn’t, and of course we bought the house and we were living in it and I applied to stay. So I actually did another tour. I did nearly ten years there.
CB: Did you really?
LL: I got a bit bored towards the end of course with it all. I tended to lose a bit of interest.
CB: Well, you’d been doing it in total for how many years? The Vulcan.
LL: Yeah. Anyway, the, I left the Air Force and then they decided that they would civilianise instructors on simulators, The Air Ministry. And as I was leaving the Air Force I thought I might as well become a civilian. And I had to go down to Air Ministry and had an interview and I got the job with the Civil Service as a simulator instructor. A civilian one. And I did that for a couple of years and then because the Vulcan was, the V force was disbanded and I lost my job. And that’s when I left for, a friend of ours put me, put me in touch with somebody or somebody was put in touch with me and came to see me and asked if I would like a job with a recorder with the Milk Marketing Board. And I said, ‘Anything to stop me being bored.’ And that’s how I started and I did ten years of that. And then Diana retired because she was a teacher.
CB: Right.
LL: At the Rossington School in Yorkshire. And she did twenty odd years teaching. When we were at Boscombe Down she just suddenly over one meal said, ‘I’ve enlisted in the teacher’s training course in Salisbury. I said, ‘What? You’ve done what?’ ‘She said, ‘I’m going to be a teacher.’ So, anyway when I was posted north she hadn’t finished her teacher’s training course. She had another term to go. So I got into a married quarter at Finningley and Diana stayed down at, in Salisbury. She stayed with a friend of ours, Geoff Boston and his family. And then she came up and got this job with, at Rossington School.
CB: Brilliant.
LL: You could hear Diana out. I used to go and pick her up sometimes. She had her own car but sometimes I used to go and pick her up. And I could, as I approached the school you could hear Diana’s voice telling the kids to shut up or do something or other. Using her sergeant major voice. One day when I was there and the kids had all gone out and I was back, still on the classroom I wrote on the board, “Silence in class,” in big letters. And the next morning when Diana came in, and the children she couldn’t understand why they were so quiet. You know. Sitting there all peaceful quiet. And then she turned to put the date on board and saw, “Silence in — [laughs] Oh dear. Lovely. Lovely.
CB: Can we do a fast backwards?
LL: Oh yes. Go. Yes.
CB: Most people flying with your seven thousand hours of experience have had the odd hiccup and we’ve talked about one or two things but when you were at Hornchurch what happened there as the most dramatic event at Hornchurch when you were taking off one day?
LL: At Hornchurch.
CB: So, two of you in Spitfires.
LL: Do you know I can’t [pause] Hornchurch.
CB: You mentioned earlier that at Hornchurch you’d had a bit of a dicey time taking off with your wingman.
LL: Oh yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, it was a grass airfield. Hornchurch was. We were over there. 129 Squadron and 222 Squadron were over here and Wing Commander Crawford Compton.
CB: Oh yes.
LL: Was the wing commander flying and he had a Spitfire which was the pride of Hornchurch. It was a special finish. And anyway that day we were called for operation and we used to take off in twelves. And Crawford Compton taxied out with 222 Squadron and lined up across the airfield and we came up and lined up behind us. And I was flying as number two to the CO. And I had my number two, number, number one to the CO, and I had my number two tucked in here and of course we had the other aircraft. And we saw the aircraft ahead of us 222 Squadron getting airborne. And [unclear] was my Squadron commander and he put his hand up and dropped his hand and we were off and I formated on him. Up came my tail to be confronted with a bloody Spitfire right in front of me, you know. And I slammed. I couldn’t turn left because I’d hit the CO. I couldn’t turn right because my number two would have gone straight into me. So I slammed the throttle closed and I couldn’t stop and I finished up on top of the Spitfire. I married it [laughs] And Crawford Compton saw me coming and he leapt out. Got out of the cockpit but he was still attached from his Mae West to his dinghy and so when he left, got out the cockpit he was held in, part in and part out by his connection and he actually physically broke it.
CB: Blimey.
LL: And then fell onto the ground as I hit, landed on top of his aircraft. And he tried afterwards to break that and he couldn’t. It was sheer bloody wilful powers.
CB: Yeah.
LL: That actually did it. And that morning he had said at briefing anybody who damages or [unclear] that Spitfire is posted out. And I’d got two. [laughs]
CB: What had happened to his Spitfire that caused you to catch him?
LL: Well, it was my prop chewed up all the tailplane and the fuselage and that sort of thing. And anyway, Crawford Compton came to see me afterwards and he said, he apologised to me. What had happened was that he had been running his engine on the Spitfire and consequently it was warmish or hottish before he got into it. And of course we started up and he taxied out and he was looking at his watch for take-off time and of course it got over heated. And he closed the throttle and shut down the engine and waved the rest of the Squadron on, and stayed put. Well, it was bloody obvious that the Squadron behind, somebody’s going, somethings going to happen. What he should have done was taxied out and to hell with the engine boiling and got out of the way. But he apologised for, and said that it was alright. And funny enough when we were married and at the reception committee at the CnC’s house old Crawford Compton was there. No, it wasn’t Crawford Compton. It was, I’ve got the wrong name. He was a New Zealander. Anyway, he came up and sort of was talking and I said to him, ‘I nearly killed you.’ And he looked at me and he said, ‘Hornchurch.’ I said, ‘Two Spitfires. Remember.’ ‘Oh, of course.’ [laughs] He was at, he was at our wedding reception. Crowley-Milling was the CO of 6 Squadron out in the Middle East. And he became quite a very senior officer. He became an air marshall or something.
CB: Yeah.
LL: And I met up with him again at Broady’s funeral. He was there.
CB: Yeah. He was a Battle of Britain man.
LL: That’s right.
CB: What would you say was your most memorable point during your service in the RAF?
LL: That’s a very difficult question. Getting my AFC at Buckingham palace, I think. Because I’m very much a royalist and to go to Buckingham Palace was really something. And Diana was with me and my mother.
CB: How did the day go?
LL: Unfortunately, Diana had a stinking headache when she came out and we were going to celebrate but all she wanted to do was to go to bed and rest. And so we were staying with a friend of hers and so the rest of the day was, had to be cancelled. But it was, you know I think getting, going to Buckingham Palace and getting the AFC was really a highlight in my life. And I appeared in, my name was in the Plymouth paper and what not.
CB: So how did the day progress? How did it start?
LL: What for AFC?
CB: Yes. Did you spend the night in London?
LL: Oh, yes.
CB: And then go.
LL: Yes.
CB: Or what did you do?
LL: We were living in Salisbury and we came up by train and we got a taxi. And I think we went straight to Buckingham Palace.
CB: You were a Squadron leader at that time.
LL: No, I was — was I? I suppose I must have been. Yes.
CB: And what was the procedure? You came to the front of Buckingham Palace.
LL: Yes. And then the ushers actually took us in and took us to this big hall and got the AFCs and those sort of minor medals were right at the end. All the knighthoods and things, you know were up front.
CB: Yeah.
LL: So I was right, right at the end.
CB: In your number 1 uniform.
LL: And the Prince. Yes. Oh, yes. Nicely pressed and presented. And Prince Phillip said, ‘What did you get your medals for?’ I said, ‘Well, I haven’t seen the citation, sir.’ In fact, I never did see the citation.
CB: oh.
LL: And I told him that I was the Bomber Command demonstration pilot and I performed in various places and countries. And he said, ‘Did you bend it? Did you bend it?’ Said Prince Phillip. I said, ‘No. I pulled the odd rivet, I think.’ And he grinned and that was it.
CB: So the procedure is that he pins on the AFC medal.
LL: Yes. That’s right.
CB: What did you do then?
LL: Oh I don’t know. I think we just left. There wasn’t a sort of reception or meal or drinks or anything like that. I think we, I think we left. Do you know I can’t recall. All I know was that Diana wanted to get away because she had this ghastly headache. It was a migraine of some sort.
CB: In the wartime what was the most exciting activity that you engaged in? Was it chasing the V-1s? Was it ground attack?
LL: I think it was ground attack. We, when I was on Mustangs at Coolham and the invasion started we had two five hundred bombs stuck underneath each.
CB: Did you?
LL: One under each wing and every time we went over there we bombed sort of bridges or targets, and various targets, and it was, it was quite hairy at times I can tell you. We’d got twelve aircraft sort of, you know milling around and doing things. You had to keep your eyes open.
CB: Did you have a designated target before you left or was it a target of opportunity?
LL: No. It was, we had to go to a certain area.
CB: Yes.
LL: And possibly bomb a certain bridge, and then it was freelance after that. But we knew where the front line was and all that sort of thing. And it was the old Typhoons that really braved the day. Of course, the old Tyffy was designed for ground attack and at Falaise Gap they really slaughtered —
CB: Yeah.
LL: The Germans there.
CB: With rocket firing.
LL: Yes. The introduction of rockets was really a step forwards.
CB: Yeah. The sixty pound warhead, rocket.
LL: When they said that Rommel was killed, you know.
CB: Wounded.
LL: I think it was, was it an accident?
CB: He was in his staff car, wasn’t he?
LL: Well, I thought it was me did it in a way because on one of these ramrods I was leading another Mustang and we came across this staff car with outriders and, and we attacked it. And the, and the occupants sort of dived for the ditches and that sort of thing and it looked like a senior officer as I shot over the top. So afterwards I thought I must have done it. But I hadn’t. It must have been some other senior officer. But on those ramrods. It was a target of opportunity if you see what I mean.
CB: Yeah. You weren’t called up by a forward air controller.
LL: Yeah. We went for trains and that sort of thing. Engines.
CB: How did you get trained to drop your five hundred pounds bombs?
LL: Sorry?
CB: How did you get trained to do your bomb dropping?
LL: Ah, there’s a thing, there’s a thing. When, before we went on to Mustangs or it could have been afterwards, anyway we went to an Armament Training Centre. Now, where I’ve no idea. I think it was North Wales. We did air gunnery and we did bombing. And the way you did bombing was using your gunsight. You know, diving down but generally speaking when you’re low level it, we just came up towards the target, hoped for the best, pressed the tit and both bombs went.
CB: But you needed to know —
LL: It was hit and miss. Very much a hit and miss but with the, if you dived down from any height you used your gunsight on a target and you had to get a, possibly a forty five degree angle.
CB: And would you put deflection on the gunsight?
LL: That’s right. And when I was in the Middle East with 213 Squadron I became an ace at rocket firing, I don’t know why.
[doorbell rings]
LL: Ah, that’ll be the gardener.
CB: Right, I’ll stop it there.
[recording paused]
CB: We talked a bit earlier about fighter affiliation and you being up at Ingham and it’s really the process of that that I wanted to know more about. So before the sortie, how did the briefing go when you ran a fighter affiliation?
LL: I was just told that the bomber would be over head at a certain time and then it was my responsibility to get airborne and meet it.
CB: Right.
LL: That’s about it.
CB: I was thinking in terms of once you’ve done it you can do it regularly. But what was the instruction for the fighter pilot? In terms of his actions —
LL: Had to do quarter attacks on it.
CB: Right. So that means —
LL: To give the gunner deflection —
CB: Yeah.
LL: Type practice.
CB: So would that be from the forward as well as the rear quarters?
LL: You mean the upper —
CB: When you’re coming away from —
LL: Well, whoever I suppose all positions were manned and I suppose they were all taking pictures of me.
CB: Yes. I was thinking of your attack on the bomber. So the bomber is flying along.
LL: Yeah.
CB: Would you be doing some attacks from the front quarter?
LL: No. I would up to the left and diving down on to them
CB: Right. Now, with fighters there is a fairly prescribed route that you take. You don’t go straight in, do you? It comes, you come in you come in on a curve. How does that work?
LL: Practice.
CB: But, but yes, so you work it out. Could you explain how you work it out what you need?
LL: Well, the thing is somehow, in daytime of course it’s easy.
CB: Yes.
LL: Because you can see the bomber and you do a quarter attack on to it as you would do on to, on to another fighter really.
CB: Yes.
LL: But at night time, of course to see the bomber invariably you had to be much closer before you actually started.
CB: Yeah.
LL: If you were got far away you lost sight of the bomber.
CB: Yeah. Just going back on this just to get some idea are you coming in in a sort of parabolic curve? So that means that it’s not entirely predictable but you are coming in instead of straight —
LL: Oh yes.
CB: In a curve.
LL: One varies one’s attack, so from partially below or from above. And that sort of thing.
CB: Right.
LL: Oh yes. You had to vary your, your attack.
CB: Yeah. And in the dark identify where the bomber is. What can you see of the bomber? Can you see the exhaust flashes?
LL: Not really. Not really. They had the downward ident and I think while we were actually doing the attack they had the nav lights on dim or something like that. We had a method of somehow seeing the bomber. You know, you are asking me something now I can’t honestly remember. All I know is I daren’t lose it.
CB: No. But you were in a, in a group doing this activity at Ingham. There was a unit.
LL: That’s right.
CB: So there were a number of you who were fighter pilots who’d finished a tour.
LL: In fact one or two were ex-bomber pilots.
CB: Oh.
LL: Who’d been transferred across. And they’d come from Lancasters to Spitfires.
CB: Really?
LL: In fact when I, that posting I told you about that I accepted it was one of the bomber pilots, ex-bomber pilots who was posted on to Typhoons and he didn’t want to do it, and I took his posting.
CB: So, as a, as a unit to what extent did you exchange views, ideas and experiences in attacking bombers?
LL: I don’t think we did, we did it just our own experience.
CB: Because you were all experienced. Normally you were experienced pilots.
LL: That’s right. We were all experienced.
CB: Yeah. And then in the dark you would follow the, if you were at Ingham then the bombers didn’t land at Ingham did they? So —
LL: Oh no.
CB: So did you land with the bomber and then move in the daytime back to Ingham?
LL: Well, Ingham was quite close to the Bomber Command station and sometimes, most times we flew up to the, say Lindholme or Sandtoft or someplace and met them above. Above. Above.
CB: Yeah. But you wouldn’t be able to see the airfields normally would you?
LL: No.
CB: Right. And did the bombers have their IFF switched on so people —
LL: Ah. If they did it certainly didn’t help us.
CB: No, but I was, what the reason I asked that is the Identification Friend or Foe is designed to make sure that other aircraft —
LL: Oh yes, yes.
CB: Night fighters particularly don’t shoot you.
LL: Well, we carried IFF enough.
CB: Yeah.
LL: On the fighter.
CB: As well.
LL: I’d forgotten about that.
CB: So yours would have been switched on.
LL: Yeah.
CB: Because you don’t want to get jumped by a bona fide night fighter.
LL: [laughs] Oh dear, yeah. Then of course when we moved from Ingham and we were actually posted to, to Lindholme we were actually on the airfield where they took off.
CB: Yeah.
LL: And so therefore we used to just take off and meet them up above. And I can remember once there was thick cloud and I climbed up and up and I came out the top and I hadn’t a clue where I was. I couldn’t find this bloody bomber. I milled around and I called him. We could talk to each other and I couldn’t find him. And so I eventually descended and fortunately I knew where I was.
CB: When you go under the cloud.
LL: Under the cloud. I came in and landed. Aborted.
CB: So —
LL: Couldn’t find the blasted man.
CB: So, you’re in the dark coming back to land. How do you know where the airfield is and what runway you’re on?
LL: Well, contact air traffic.
CB: And they would put up the landing lights, would they? Airfield lights.
LL: We had — yes.
CB: The lights on the runway.
LL: That’s right. They had lights on the runway. They had to have.
CB: I’m thinking of just as —
LL: Yeah.
CB: The RAF did interdiction into Germany to shoot down night fighters the Germans actually did the same. So you had an interesting contradiction here.
LL: Do you know I suppose they must have had some sort of lighting on the runways. I can’t honestly remember. I can’t honestly remember. And talking about landing. Going back right back to America. When we started night flying on Harvards the American way of landing a Harvard at night was to come in on the approach and when you touched down stuff the stick forward to stay on the ground. And I couldn’t do this. I was either too early or too late and consequently if you hit the ground and you were a bit late you started bouncing. And I couldn’t master this and I went, go around again with my instructor sort of in the back getting a bit sore and I said, ‘Can I land this thing the way I want to please, sir.’ And he said, ‘Alright.’ And I came in and landed three pointer as I would in the daytime. And I made a lovely smooth landing. And he said, ‘Oh, that was good. Do it again.’ So off we went again. Opened the throttle, round we went on the circuit and I came around and I did another beautiful three pointer again. He said, ‘Right. You can do that in future.’
CB: So, there was a logic to their process. Their own process. What was that?
LL: I don’t know, it was a stupid idea.
CB: A good way of bending your propeller.
LL: And the wheels actually touching the ground, instead of touching you had to stamp your stick forward to hold, to keep the thing on the ground and of course the tail came up in the air. Oh dear. It was the most awkward bloody movement. I didn’t like it, that’s why I couldn’t do it I suppose.
CB: Did it result in accidents with people cartwheeling?
LL: No idea why they did it. But they did teach me one thing, and that was to land in the dark with practically no runway lightings. They had these goosenecks.
CB: Yeah.
LL: On the runway.
CB: [unclear]
LL: And they only had two at the beginning and two at the end. Towards the end. And the rest of the runway was dark and we had to land on that. Now, that bore me in quite good stead because when I was at Coolham George Powell and myself were scrambled in the, in the evening to intercept some fighters and it was aborted or something. Anyway, it got dark or getting dark and George and I somehow got separated and they had told us to divert to Ford Airfield. And I didn’t get it because my radio had gone unserviceable. So anyway, I returned to Coolham in the dark and circled the airfield and I came in and landed on the airfield in the complete darkness. And my flight commander came out and said, ‘Christ, how did you do that. What did you do that for? You were supposed to land at Ford.’ I said, ‘Was I?’ But I landed at the airfield in the dark on this, the runway which was this Somerfield tracking.
CB: Because of your training. At Ingham did they have Somerfield tracking?
LL: No. It was just pure grass airfield.
CB: So, landing there with no identification of runway —
LL: That’s right.
CB: In the dark was a bit of a challenge was it?
LL: It was a challenge at night. Yes. They had, sort of the odd light sort of around the airfield to indicate where I think, where the peritrack was or something like that but it was it was just a grass airfield. We just landed on it.
CB: Right. A lot, a lot of airfields had drem lighting, so once you got on the drem pattern —
LL: It’s amazing what you can do from just pure experience.
CB: Yes. But the drem lighting system led you on to the airfield.
LL: Yeah.
CB: You didn’t get that.
LL: They didn’t have drem lighting.
CB: No. Right. Which was the aeroplane you enjoyed flying most?
LL: I liked the Mustang. It was a roomy cockpit you see and we had this big canopy and you could actually sort of look around and it was, it was nice to fly.
CB: Bubble canopy.
LL: Bubble canopy, yeah.
CB: Yeah.
LL: No. I think the Spit, the Mustang and the Vulcan were the aircraft I liked flying best. And we were caught out in thick fog once in the old Vulcan and, and the country had gone out and when we got back to base they were completely out and they diverted me to Waddington and they were just about as bad. And, and of course we had this ILS approach. And I actually started the approach with the ILS and I kept on going and I couldn’t see the airfield at all. I just kept on coming down and then I flew over a landing tee, you know which is at the beginning of the runway. And I actually got on to the runway and I touched down and I yelled to the co-pilot, ‘Stream.’ And we streamed the ‘chute and I slammed on the brakes because I really couldn’t see where I was going. But I landed and I actually stopped on the runway. Much to my amazement. And I had to shut down there because I couldn’t see the taxi the fog was so thick. How I got down I just don’t know. But the wingco flying, silly bastard. He came out in a vehicle and parked himself beside the runway when I was landing. I could have —
CB: Run him over.
LL: I could have run over him if I hadn’t got straight on the runway. Anyway, they towed, they had to tow my aircraft back into, because I couldn’t taxi it. And when you put your landing lights on of course it reflected on to the fog and it made it even worse.
CB: Yeah. So you landed without your landing lights.
LL: Yes. I think that was my hairiest landing I think I’ve ever done.
CB: What were you carrying at the time?
LL: What was I — ?
CB: What were you carrying at the time? Bomb load.
LL: Nothing.
CB: Right.
LL: I wasn’t carrying any bombs or anything. It was just purely a training flight. Any more?
CB: That’s it. Les Lunn, thank you for a most interesting talk today.
LL: I hope I haven’t bored 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 Leslie Grantham Lunn
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-11-07
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ALunnLG171107, PLunnLG1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
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03:00:37 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Fighter Command
Description
An account of the resource
Leslie Lunn joined the RAF and after his basic training did his flying training in America. In the UK he joined 129 Spitfire squadron after completing his training. The squadron later converted to Mustangs. His squadron covered the D-Day landings and was switched to dealing with the V1 flying bomb threat, and during these sorties he destroyed one V-1 and recorded two probables. He later took part in fighter affiliation duties working with Bomber Command. He converted onto the Typhoon and later the Tempest with 222 Squadron after moving back to Fighter Command. He joined 1 Squadron flying the new Meteor jet fighter. He was later posted via Italy and Austria to the Middle East serving in the Canal Zone. When he returned to the UK he joined 63 Squadron flying the Canberra, and later converting on to the Vulcan joining 617 Squadron. He also became the display pilot for the Vulcan. He was awarded the AFC by Prince Philip at Buckingham Palace.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
France
Germany
Great Britain
United States
England--Essex
England--Lincolnshire
England--London
208 Squadron
222 Squadron
63 Squadron
aircrew
Meteor
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
P-51
pilot
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921-2021)
RAF Hornchurch
RAF Ingham
RAF Shallufa
RAF Waddington
Spitfire
training
Typhoon
V-1
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/864/11106/PHaytonK1701.1.jpg
ef6b69d8536b3e5ebdb6b4231318428f
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/864/11106/AHaytonK171004.2.mp3
2342cec6176bee1aa281e272dd002da5
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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Hayton, Ken
K Hayton
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Ken Hayton about his father George Stanley 'Stan' Hayton (1912 - 1971). He served as a fitter at RAF Woodhall Spa and RAF Riccall.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2017-10-17
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Hayton, K
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JS: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Joyce Sharland. The interviewee is Ken Hayton. The interview is taking place at Mr Hayton’s home in Andover on the 17th of October 2017.
KH: Yes.
JS: Right. So, Mr Hayton, can you tell me about your father?
KH: My father was George Stanley Hayton. Always known as Stan. And before the war he was employed by Lloyds Bank. He was born in Durham City in two thousand and err now then let me get this right [pause] in 1912, and lived in the city all his life until his death in 1971. In, around about the early time, early days of 1940 he was given permission by the bank to join the Royal Air Force as a volunteer. Which he did. And I know that he did join as a volunteer because initially his uniform had the letters VR under the albatross on his shoulder flashes. It would be 1940 that he joined up because I have recollections as a small boy of going to Durham Station to see him off. I believe his initial training took place at RAF Padgate. And then after that was completed he went on to his trade training as a fitter armourer which I think took place at Lytham St Anne’s. I’m not sure about that but I think that’s where he went. Once that was completed he was posted to Bomber Command into 97 Squadron which was based at RAF Woodhall Spa in Lincolnshire. A satellite unit to RAF Coningsby. And he remained there right throughout the war or almost to the end of the war. And towards the end of the war he was posted to RAF Riccall in Yorkshire where he was involved in preparing all the redundant 303 Browning aircraft guns for storage in case they were ever needed to be called back into service. He was demobbed from RAF Waddington in around about the latter part of 1945. I do believe that he was offered a commission if he was prepared to stay in the Royal Air Force but his duty he felt was to the bank who had released him early. So he then was demobbed and joined Lloyds bank where he remained employed until he retired after having served forty years. During his service at Woodhall Spa he was involved in bombing up Lancasters for raids over the occupied territories and when 617 Squadron was due to take, take-off for the Dams raid 97 Squadron was moved back to the parent unit at Coningsby and 617 Squadron came in to Woodhall Spa. I can only think that that was done from a security point of view because it would be much easier to maintain security on a single Squadron station like Woodhall, rather than on the main base of 617 Squadron which was of course RAF Scampton. My father was involved in the bombing up of 617 Squadron for the Dams raid. And I only learned about this when after the war and the production of the film, “The Dambusters,” my father and I went to see it at the cinema in Durham. And on the way home we were discussing various things in the film and it came out that my dad had been involved with 617 Squadron. And when I asked him about the parts of the film which showed the aftermath of the raid on the countryside I said I wondered if that was anything like what had actually had happened and whether the filmers had got it anything accurate. And he said, ‘Yes. It was just like that.’ And immediately after that he said, ‘But don’t tell your mother I said that.’ I can only think that that comment was made because he had been taken over the Dams in one of the Mosquito reconnaissance aircraft which did the photo reconnaissance after the Dams raid. I’ve no proof of that but I can’t see any other reason for the comment which he made except that he was there. He had been very much involved in the bombing up of the aircraft and this I think was why he wanted to go and see the film because neither he nor I were great film goers. When he was at Woodhall there was an incident at a bomb dump near Snaith which is not too far away from Coningsby and Woodhall when a Lancaster came down on the edge of the bomb dump and my dad was involved in the clearing up operations. And I think that had an effect on him because we never ever had chops as a meat meal and he could never stand the smell of lamb being cooked. No other reason that I can think of for that reaction other than the involvement that he’d had in clearing up what obviously must have been carnage with the Lancaster coming down on the, on the edge of the bomb dump. At one time during the war my mother and my sister and myself went down to Woodhall Spa because my dad couldn’t get any leave. It was during a high pressure time I think of bombing raids and he wanted a pushbike. And being the elder of the two children I was given the responsibility of looking after the bike. I can remember feeling quite proud that I’d been given the responsibility of taking care of this bike all the way down from Durham to Woodhall Spa. During that journey we passed through York Station not long after it had been blitzed by the Luftwaffe and it really was in a very bad state on one side of the station. Of course the Luftwaffe went for York because it was a main railway junction during the war and if they could have disrupted the railways it would have had a marked effect on our war effort. The other effect I think that I learned about with on the family was when my father came home on the odd occasion that he could get home on leave he always changed out of uniform into civvies before he saw my sister because my sister was younger than I was and she thought that the RAF was a sort of box that my father was locked up in and the uniform always brought that home to her. But we can only think that that was one of the reasons that dad always got changed as soon as he came home. There was not a lot of other effect on us as a family except that once my father had joined up we moved out of the council house and went to live with my maternal grandparents in the city which overlooked the river and the Cathedral. And just thinking about that period in the early days of the war Durham City is what might be regarded at the centre of a hub of a wheel with the perimeter being on the three main rivers. The Tyne, the Wear and the Tees with the shipyards in Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough. And at the beginning of the war we used to get all the air raid warnings if enemy aircraft were coming in for any of those three places. But we never had anything over the city. And eventually we stopped getting air raid warnings unless the aircraft were heading inland. So we were very, very fortunate. Not so my wife who was a Sunderland girl and she lived through the various Blitzes in Sunderland and it had obviously an effect on her as a young girl. Much more so. And I didn’t realise until after we were married and we were talking about things that had happened during the war how fortunate we had been as a family because my maternal grandfather was a great gardener and had allotments which provided vegetables. And we also had an orchard at the back of the, at the back of the house so that we always had fruit. And he kept chickens in the orchard so we always had meat. And it made me realise, talking to my wife just how lucky we had been having all those facilities when I heard of the sort of things that she had had to put up with in Sunderland. So, you know there were many things that happened during the war which folks don’t realise. I mean that was only a distance of twelve miles between Durham City and Sunderland and yet such a difference in the effect on families that lived in, in those two places. My maternal grandfather had been a forge smith in Yorkshire and at the beginning of the First World War he was sent up to Durham to work in the forge there. And they sent him away from Yorkshire because the recruiting officers were fed up with him trying to join the forces and told him he was much more valuable making the armaments for the forces rather than him going out into Europe. So that was how the family from Yorkshire came to be based in Durham city and how my parents met. Because my paternal grandfather was trained as a pharmaceutical chemist and during the First World War he was stationed in Mesopotamia. I think as part of the Northumberland Fusiliers. But I’m not certain about that. He eventually moved into the motor trade and that was how I knew him all my life. The effect, I think on my mother wasn’t anything that I ever knew about or thought about. She had started training as a teacher before the war and of course like all women had to do something and once my sister got to school age she went back to teaching. So as a family we were still a fairly compact unit. Whilst we were living with my grandparents as I say we were in a house that overlooked the river and the Cathedral. And there has been for many many years the knowledge that if ever the Durham Cathedral were to come under attack for any reason whatsoever St Cuthbert who the Cathedral is dedicated to and who is buried in the Cathedral would save it. And of course Von Ribbentrop was determined to obliterate all the main Cathedrals in the United Kingdom if he could. And shortly after the raid which destroyed Coventry Cathedral we had an air raid warning in Durham and that was as I say by this time quite unusual. So we were due to go down into the cellar of the house which was our air raid shelter but looking out of the window there was the mist rising off the river. And of course the river is an ox bow around the central peninsula of the city on which stands the Cathedral and the castle. So this mist rose off the river and it’s always been said that that was St Cuthbert’s way of protecting the Cathedral. And certainly that mist blanketed the whole of the city and we could hear the German aircraft over the top of the city. It was definitely German aircraft because their engines weren’t synchronised like the English or British aircraft engines were. And they were over the, overhead going around and around. Nothing happened and eventually they flew off. The all clear went. And as the all clear went the mist descended back to the river. And I can vouch for that because as a youngster I saw it out of the windows of our house. My grandparent’s house. And it’s made a lasting impression as you can probably gather. I really don’t know that there’s much else that I can say apart from the fact that my own Royal Air Force service which was three years as a regular and two and a half years on the reserve and during that time the one thing that I was very proud to wear was my father’s cap badge. Sadly, I no longer have that. I have my own cap badge but I think my father’s cap badge must have gone back with my uniform when I had to return it to RAF Fenton which was my call up base when my two and a half years reserve service was ended. The only other thing of my father’s which I have apart from his ‘39 ‘45 Star and Defence Medal is a piece of metalwork which I know was part of one of his trade tests in which I think was part of the bomb release mechanism for a Lancaster. I can’t be sure about that but the trade test would be taken after he’d started working on Lancasters so I think it’s a fair assumption that that’s probably what it is. I don’t know that there’s much else that I can say.
JS: You said you recall going to the station to see your father off.
KH: Yeah.
JS: How old were you then?
KH: I’d be about seven.
JS: About seven. And you went with your mother and your sister?
KH: I don’t think my sister went. My sister would only be about three. Three and a half and so I don’t think she went. She would probably stay with my grandparents. But I, I can certainly recall going to the, going to the station in Durham and seeing, seeing dad off on the train. Little bits of things like that they do stick in your memory and you know it’s a bit like the [pause] the memories of the 9 o’clock news during the war. Alright, as a youngster you don’t appreciate everything that is being said but the things that stick in my mind are Big Ben, and my grandparents sitting in the lounge and everybody being quiet and listening to the news. It was a nightly ritual and you know its little things like that which, you know I think need to be kept in mind. And I think future generations need to know how important it was to us at home to know what was going on. And the only way we could get recent, decent reliable news was the BBC. And you know it was important to everyone I think and I’m quite certain that my family weren’t any different from countless other families throughout the country. At 9 o’clock every night the wireless was turned on and we had the news. There wasn’t all the current news from the battlefield and all the rest of it and I think it’s perhaps just as well. I think we get too much of this instantaneous news now and it doesn’t give people time to digest really what’s happening. Yeah. Instant gratification in a different form. Perhaps I’m being old fashioned.
JS: Did, as far as you’re aware did your mother ever receive letters from your father. Was he able? Could he write letters? Could he communicate? Make phone calls perhaps. Do you ever recall him making contact when he was away?
KH: I don’t recall any phone calls. I don’t think, in fact I don’t think we had a phone in the house so that wouldn’t have been possible. Letters I think possibly he did get able, he was able to send. I mean as he was based in this country I don’t think there was any problem in that respect. But it didn’t sort of register on me as a, as a youngster. I mean that’s not something that I would have been aware of I don’t think. The only things that I was aware of were, you know the pleasure of having him come home on leave on the occasions when he could get home. And as I say the occasion when we went down to Woodhall Spa and it would be during my school summer holidays. And the one, the one thing apart from the pushbike being my responsibility the one thing that I can remember of that little holiday from our point of view was seeing a Lancaster loop the loop. Which was totally out of order. And I believe talking to my father afterwards that that particular exercise had such a damaging affect on the airframe of the aircraft that it was written off and I believe the pilot was severely disciplined because obviously you don’t write off expensive aircraft. But it shouldn’t, it shouldn’t have happened but I can remember seeing it and was quite surprised. It was just one of those little things that come back to mind as you, as you think about what, what happened. And another thing that has just come back to my mind thinking about that was at the beginning of the war just after my father had joined up and before we moved in with my grandparents I can remember being taken into the shelter in the garden when there was an air raid warning and looking up into the night sky and seeing searchlights over towards Sunderland and seeing what was obviously an aerial dogfight because you could even at a distance of twelve miles you could see the tracer. And that, that’s something which has just come back to me since talking about seeing the Lancaster. We shouldn’t have been out of the shelter but, you know youngsters do things that they shouldn’t do even, even in wartime. Yeah.
JS: So, did life for you as a young lad, did it more or less go on as normal? You were going to school. You were helping around the house presumably, were you? Were any of your friends lives touched in a bad way by the war? Did any of them lose close relatives.
KH: No. Not that I can say. I mean, as youngsters we didn’t sort of discuss the, we didn’t discuss the war. It was something that was going on and we had the black out and there was no possibility of after school work or sports clubs or anything like that. They were all off limits. When school was over you went. You went home and you stayed at home. You couldn’t go and play out. Which we could once the war was over. But we didn’t [pause] I can’t recall sort of discussing or talking about the war as a youngster at school. Not even when I got to Grammar School just towards the end of the war. The only thing that was noticeable when I got to Grammar School was the fact that there were quite a number of older teachers there who had obviously stayed on beyond retirement because the young teachers had gone into the forces. And I was made well aware of that because both my, my uncle and my father had gone to the same Grammar School and some of the teachers that taught them taught me. Which was sometimes a little embarrassing because on occasions, I can remember one particular occasion in the physics laboratory when I’d been assisting in dealing with some electrical experiment which had a series of plug keys connecting wires up and one thing and another. And that master was one of the masters who had taught my father. And in operating one of these plug keys I’d managed to disconnect some of the, some of the wires. And the master just looked at me and just sort of tut tutted and said, ‘Your father would never have done that.’ Which you know, it was a little embarrassing at the time but you get on with it. But it was only things like that I think which made you realise that the war had had an effect. Then of course towards the end of my Grammar School career a number of the teachers who had been away on war service were coming back and the older ones took well-earned retirement. Not something which you would tend to think about until later on when you look back and you think, oh I wonder why that happened? And then as you get older yourself you realise why these things happened. It’s not, not something that you think about a lot but when you do think about it, it all comes back. Yeah.
JS: Do you have any recollection of the atmosphere on the day the war ended and the immediate aftermath of the war ending? Can you remember, were there were celebrations in your street? Can you remember your family saying anything or general air at school of relief?
KH: Not really. Again, it was something that yes there were celebrations in the city quite clearly. But as a youngster, bearing in mind what, I’d be only ten or eleven when the war ended. It wasn’t the sort of thing that you got involved in very much. It was, you weren’t old enough in those days. A ten year old or an eleven year old was still regarded as a child. Unlike nowadays where they tend to be treated as semi-adults. But so, yes there were celebrations and yes a sense of great relief and the hopes that everybody would come home safe. Which, you know was important but not something which as a youngster really impacted on you. I think obviously it would impact on my mother and my grandparents on both sides because not only was my father in, in the Royal Air Force but one of his younger, his youngest sister was also in in the WAAF. So that you know the family I think were a case of well, great relief when they both came home safe and sound. So yes there was a sense of relief and, but as a youngster it perhaps doesn’t penetrate the consciousness in quite the same way as it does as you’re older. But as a family my, we had sort of my paternal grandfather as I say was in Mesopotamia in the First World War. My uncle, my mother’s older brother had been in the Durham Light Infantry between the wars and strangely enough very much like his father he couldn’t go back in to the Army at the beginning of the Second World War because he’d become an employee of the Ministry of Agriculture which was a Reserved Occupation and although the Durham Light Infantry wanted him back he couldn’t go back. So he took it on himself to get involved with the Army Cadet Corps and he ran the Army Cadet Corps in the city for a number of years. Even after the war. Until I think he got to an age where he was voluntarily retired. But it was something which again we, we just took on board. It was part of parcel of, of what we were doing. In much the same way as my grandfather because he had allotments and whatnot could supply friends and family with, with fresh, fresh veg and so on. And also, I think, I know we used to sell apples from the door and presumably what was raised from those went to, went to charities or went to support the, probably went to support the Army Cadet Force I would think because my uncle was so involved in it. These are odd little things which you think about if, you know if you sit down and put your thinking cap on.
JS: And you said after your father was demobbed he came home in his demob suit.
KH: Oh. Yes. Of course all Service personnel got a demob suit. And the one thing that I do remember was that it was a brown suit which was most odd because going back into the bank I don’t think he would wear a brown suit in the bank. Not in those days. Banking was very much more formal than it is now. In fact, I think if my father was still alive and was still involved in banking he’d be horrified at some of the things that happen. One of those things. But yeah. The, the demob set up is a little bit different then I think from when I came out. I mean I had to sign the Official Secrets Act of course when I, when I signed on, and again I had to sign it again at the time I was demobbed. But I spent my three years at RAF Innsworth as part of the Record Office where I was working in the Stats Section until I was seconded to the Home Command Coronation Unit which in fact happened to be based at Innsworth. And we did all our training on one of the local airfields which I believe is now a civil airfield which was RAF Staverton at that time. And we eventually, having completed our training ended up in Kensington Gardens under canvas for the actual Coronation. And of course Coronation Day was a dreadful day weather wise but we were fortunate. Our section of the route lining force were in the Haymarket. And the Haymarket in London in those days was two way traffic and it had islands down the centre. And I was on the edge of the road in the middle of one of these islands and the royal coach came past my side of the island and the outriders that are normally alongside the coach during the procession because of the narrowness of the road had to go in front and behind. And as the coach passed me Phillip must have said something to Her Majesty and she turned to speak to him and I have a photographic memory of seeing her turn towards Phillip. So I had a full face view of the Queen on the day of her Coronation. Granted, around the barrel of a 303 but still something that one never forgets. And that, that night or that afternoon after we’d got back to Kensington Gardens I think it must be the only time that the Royal Air Force had issued the men with a rum ration. It had been such a dreadful day that we were all taken to the mess tent and dished out with a tot of rum. And that evening three of us went off into, into London because up ‘til that point we hadn’t been allowed out of Kensington gardens. But we went to look at the fireworks and we went down to Buckingham palace to see the royal family and their guests going off to the ball at Hampton court. And because we’d been trained in crowd control as part of our Coronation training we were able to link up with the police to control the crowds outside Buckingham Palace that night. And again something which I didn’t discover until I was married and talking to my wife about the Coronation in London and had discovered that she had been in London with her uncle and aunt and they had been at Buckingham palace on that night. Although obviously neither of us knew the other but we were both there at the same time. Strange coincidence. But we, after we’d seen some of the fireworks on the Embankment we were looking for a drink and all the pubs of course were packed out to the doors as you could imagine. And eventually we looked through the doors of one pub and somebody seeing three RAF uniforms it was like a tidal wave. The crowd opened up to the bar and we were given straight access to the bar and I don’t think we bought a drink for ourselves the rest of that night. One of those things where you know men in uniform in those days were regarded with consideration and there wasn’t any of the problems that sadly we have now where men are told not to wear uniform when they go into towns and so on. Which is, I think very, very sad because the armed forces now and then do a remarkable job in protecting what we have in a democratic country. And it’s sad that men in uniform have got to be told to, not to go in to towns in their, in their uniforms. Although I’ve got to see we do see some uniforms in Andover which we still, it’s not the garrison town that it once was but there are still quite a lot of Service personnel around and we do see some of them in town and nobody ever I’ve never come across anybody making any adverse comment on what I’ve seen in Andover. But I know it does happen in some places. Sad. Very sad.
JS: I expect your parents were hugely proud of you serving in the RAF. Did you ever speak to your father about your time there?
KH: Not, not specifically because the only thing was talking about the Coronation obviously because that was, that was something which you know happens once in a generation. But most of, most of the work that I was doing wasn’t something that you would, you would talk about. Alright you know I mentioned the Official Secrets Act and I was based in a section which dealt with personnel for all the RAF stations throughout the world by command. So you just didn’t talk about it because, well in those days there were so many different commands and obviously a lot more RAF bases throughout the world than there are now that it would have been impossible anyway to keep in mind what happened in any particular RAF camp in the Middle East, or the Far East or in Europe or wherever. But it, it would never have occurred to me to have discussed anything to do with that. It was something which wasn’t to be discussed even, even with my father. Yes. We’d talk about inconsequential things like guard duty and having, you know things like hearing the experiments with the after burners for jet engines which took place at a company called Rotol which was just up the road from RAF Innsworth. And also seeing some of the test flights of the, the RAF Javelin. The Gloster Javelin which was in its test flights was always supported by a Meteor. And seeing those two aircraft together made you realise how big the Javelin was. Because of course it was being built at Gloucester, in the factory on the outskirts of Gloucester which was not far from where the Record Office Unit was. So things like that. Yes. You could remember and you would talk about it. I would talk about with my father, you know because he’d obviously been involved with Lancasters and Manchesters, and I think it gave him a taste for flying because when he came out of the Royal Air Force he joined the Newcastle Aero Club and got his private pilot’s licence which, so that he flew Tiger Moths and Austers. And both my wife and I flew with him in the Tiger Moth. I can remember going to the Aero Club on one of their at home days when there had been all sorts of demonstrations and one thing and another and my dad had said to my wife, ‘Come on. I’ll take you up.’ And they went. They went up and flew out over, over the border country. Over North Northumberland and so on and it was, it was a very nice night.
SH: Very cold.
KH: And it was, yes. As my wife just said, very cold. And it must have been quite light up there but it was getting quite dark on the ground and I can remember the flight engineer who was a very, very good pilot himself standing on the grass outside, outside the hangars striking matches as my dad came down. That was, that was quite amusing. Yeah. So we maintained a contact with flying although I never had the opportunity or the time to get a pilot’s licence myself. But I do remember flying with my dad on several occasions when I was at home from university. Yeah. Yeah. Strange. Strange how things have a knock on effect because although my father’s uncle was one of the early members of the Newcastle Aero Club I don’t think there had been any thought of my dad getting involved until he came out of the Royal Air Force. One of those things. But yeah.
JS: You say you kept up that connection with flying. Did he keep up any connections in terms of any Associations? Did he meet up with people he’d served with? They were quite a fluid bunch as I imagine in various parts of the country.
KH: You see, I think there was only one person that he ever sort of had contact with after he came out of the forces. See the Royal Air Force is rather different from the Army, for example where in the Army you move as a regiment or as a section of a regiment. So that you have that connection with a bunch of chaps or girls who are together as a unit. In the Royal Air Force there’s a subtle difference between the aircrew and the ground crew. The aircrew will move with the Squadron. The ground crew tend to move as individuals between units because they, they are posted. And I know this from my RAF experience myself in the Record Office. They are posted as individuals to, to a unit. To an RAF station. They’re not posted to a Squadron like they were during the war. But even during the war as exemplified by the fact that although my dad was posted to 97 Squadron and was based at Woodhall Spa when 97 Squadron moved out it was only the 97 Squadron aircraft and aircrew that moved out. The ground crew remained there. And that’s how my father came to serve with 617. Because 617s ground crew would remain at Scampton. That’s the difference. So that you don’t have that sort of ongoing connection except as aircrew. I mean, you talk, if you talked to people who have been aircrew and we’ve got a near neighbour who was in the Royal Air Force and he still goes. He was a, he flew helicopters and various things. And he still has Squadron reunions. But I think that’s the difference. Understandable when you know how the, you know sort of how the system works. I don’t know about the Navy although my niece has just retired as a naval officer. I don’t know. They, they are sort of posted to ships more or less. So I think the navy and the Royal Air Force have a similar —
JS: System.
KH: A similar sort of system. Unlike, unlike the Army and probably the Royal Marines.
JS: And he didn’t discuss the war much?
KH: No.
JS: In the years that followed it. He went back to working at the bank as you said.
KH: Yes.
JS: Because he felt he owed them that because they had released him to go.
KH: Yes.
JS: And he stayed working in Durham.
KH: He stayed in Durham. He, he for a short while he was moved to Bishop Auckland which is about twelve, twelve or fifteen miles outside the city. He moved to Lloyds Bank there for a short while but didn’t move out of the city because it was within easy travelling distance. So, yes he remained at Lloyds Bank in Durham until he, until he retired. Yes. He became a sub manager at one of the sub branches of the city but it was a sub-branch in one of the mining villages. So it was not a case of having to move. So we, as a family we remained in the city and I only left the city when I joined the Royal Air Force myself and then when I went to university and then, you know that sort of broke the, broke the connection although after, after we were married because my wife and I were married in the city in our parish church and after having lived in the East Midlands we moved back to the North East but not to the city because I was then working in Newcastle. So it was only my parents who remained in in the city and they both remained there until they died.
JS: And you lost your father at quite a young age, didn’t you?
KH: My father. Yes. He died very very suddenly when he was only fifty nine. Which was a great shock. Particularly as, or within, within the previous fortnight he’d had a full flying medical and passed. Passed his full flying medical and then had a massive heart attack within a fortnight. So it was, that was quite a, quite a shock for all of us.
JS: For all of you. Yeah.
KH: And at that time my sister was in, was living in Australia because her husband was a civil engineer and he was working out there and so, she wasn’t here when he died.
JS: And your sister’s name you told me was Ann.
KH: My sister was Ann.
JS: Ann. Yeah. And your mother’s name for the record.
KH: My mother’s name was Hilda.
JS: Hilda. That’s right.
KH: Her maiden name was Lambeth. L A M B E T H. And that is my middle name.
JS: Ok. And she stayed in the city, did she?
KH: She stayed in the city. She remained in the family home that was bought. That they bought after the war when my father was demobbed and until she eventually went into Sherman House Hospital which was a Church of England Old People’s Home which was where she died after having, having had a series of strokes unfortunately.
JS: And you did give me the address of the family home at the time.
KH: The family home that was bought after the war was 24 Church Street Head. Church Street having been split into two sections, Church Street proper which ended where, just above St Oswald’s Church which was our parish church and the parish church. The infant school which was attached to the parish church that was sort of the dividing line. Up to that point it was Church Street and from there up to the crossroads at the top it was Church Street Head. One of those peculiar things that you get in cities where one street has two sections.
JS: Yeah.
KH: Yeah. It was, in those days it was basically on the outskirts of the city and just beyond the road that ran across at the crossroads there was the university. One of the university science colleges there. But beyond, but that was quite small. And beyond that were woods that, the woods which surround the city and a lot of that land was owned by the university because the majority of the land around Durham City was owned either by the university or the Cathedral, and all that land now is occupied by new colleges. There are one, two, three, four. At least four colleges now on the south side of the city. No five. Because there was a female college opened. That was the first one to be opened just after the war and it was opened by the Queen when she was Princess Elizabeth. So there are all those colleges now are built on what were woods and fields. It’s quite, quite an alteration. And I haven’t lived in the city since 1961, and, and I’m quite certain that there have been a lot more alterations since. Well, I knew the city obviously beyond ’61. I didn’t live in the city after ’61 but obviously my mother and father did. So until we moved south in 2000 I was in and out of, in and out of the city so I know what developments went, went on up to the beginning of the current century but what’s gone on in since then is anybody’s guess from my point of view. Obviously there must have been a lot more development but —
JS: Yeah.
KH: Not that I’m aware of.
JS: Places change don’t they? Yeah. Right. Well, that’s really comprehensive. Thank you very much for all that for your time in, and your patience in talking to me about that. Is there anything else that you can think that you would like us to say for the record given that it is a Digital Archive. Was there anything that you would like to say? Anything you can think of now or any comments that you would like to make?
KH: Not really. Except, the only thing that I would say is that I feel that it is vitally important that what the likes of my parents, my wife’s parents and their generation what they did for this country should never ever be forgotten. And the generations that come up it should be made quite clear to them why we are still a free country. And they should never assume that things will just drop into their lap. Everything that is worth anything has to be fought for and cherished. Those are the things that I think are sometimes lacking in the teachings now of the youngsters coming up like, like our granddaughter. I mean our two children when they were at school were taught a certain amount of history and in fact, it’s quite amusing. They came home on one occasion and we, we discovered that they were being taught the details of the ‘39/45 war as history. So we decided as parents that we weren’t just parents we were history. But you know, that was, that’s the lighter side of it. But I think seriously the current young generation I don’t think they’re taught the history. Not just what happened in two world wars although obviously they’re getting a lot about the First World War just at the moment but I think, you know some of the so called ancient history of this country on which a lot of our civil rights are founded. A lot, a lot of that doesn’t seem to be taught anymore and I think that is very sad. And I think, you know the education system needs to be looked at in that respect because we can’t afford to lose our history because that is part of our identity. Alright. I might be pontificating a bit but I do feel fairly strongly about it and I wouldn’t want to be called a Little Englander but you know I think we need to be proud of Great Britain and ‘great’ being the important part of it.
JS: I don’t think many people will disagree with you. I think that’s absolutely a fair point. Well, again thank you very much. Thank you for your time and your patience and thank you to Sybil as well, your wife who is here with us. And I very much appreciated you taking the time
KH: I’m only too pleased to have been able to do it because I think it’s important that those of us who lived through the war should leave a record of what, what happened so as far as they’re concerned. And you know sadly the people who actually fought the war for us are becoming few and far between now so it’s only the likes of us who are now getting sort of towards the end of our active life as you might say you know we’re the only ones who perhaps have a memory of it. And if those memories disappear a bit like the, some of the memories of the First World War which have just disappeared and only been found by archaeologists and things like that. Because there was no such things as digital recordings.
JS: No. No.
KH: Which is what we’ve got now.
JS: No. We’re fortunate to have the tools now at our disposal and that’s what the Digital Archive is all about.
KH: Yeah.
JS: Which is keeping those memories alive and keeping that message alive
KH: Yeah.
JS: So that, so what you’ve done for us today is really important.
KH: I’m pleased.
JS: So thank you very much both of you.
SH: It’s ok.
KH: Pleased to help.
JS: Thank you.
KH: Really pleased to help. Thanks
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Ken Hayton
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Joyce Sharland
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-04
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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AHaytonK171004, PHaytonK1701
Format
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00:59:30 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Second generation
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Durham (County)
England--Gloucestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Tyne and Wear
England--Yorkshire
England--Durham
England--London
England--Newcastle upon Tyne
England--Sunderland (Tyne and Wear)
Description
An account of the resource
Ken Hayton’s father, George Stanley Hayton (Stan), worked worked for Lloyds Bank. In 1940 Stan left his post to join the Royal Air Force; Ken recalled going to Durham station to see his father off, travelling to start basic training at RAF Padgate. Ken believes his father completed his training as a fitter armourer at RAF Lytham before joining 97 Squadron at RAF Woodhall Spa. When 617 Squadron replaced 97 Squadron, Ken remained and was involved in bombing up 617 Squadron aircraft ahead of the Dambuster operation. Stan was sent to help with the clear up of a Lancaster crash on land near a bomb dump and for the rest of his life he could not stand the smell of lamb being cooked. Towards the end of the war Stan was posted to RAF Riccall where he prepared redundant .303 browning aircraft guns for storage, he was finally demobbed from RAF Waddington in 1945 and returned to Lloyds Bank where he remained until retirement. After the war Stan trained for his private pilot license at Newcastle Aero Club and took both Ken and his mother flying in the club’s Tiger Moth.
Ken describes his schoolboy life in Durham, including leaving the Anderson Shelter one evening and watching searchlights scanning the sky over Sunderland. One bombing on Durham was shortly after Coventry had been bombed: the mist rose from the river and shrouded the city, with local folklore being St Cuthbert protecting the Cathedral. During his father’s service at RAF Woodhall Spa, Ken recalled travelling there with his mother from Durham by train and seeing extensive bomb damage to York railway station. Ken served three years in the RAF, posted to RAF Insworth a non-flying RAF station where the RAF Records Section was based, transferring to the Coronation Unit for training ahead of the ceremony in 1953. He recalled route lining in the Haymarket, due to the narrowing of the road he was very close to the Queen’s coach and in the evening went to Buckingham Palace and assisted the police with crowd control. Ken recalls watching The Dambusters film with his father in 1955 and his father commenting on the accuracy of the film.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1943
1943-05
1944
1945
1953
1954
1955
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jim Sheach
Julie Williams
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
617 Squadron
97 Squadron
bombing
childhood in wartime
crash
Eder Möhne and Sorpe operation (16–17 May 1943)
ground personnel
Lancaster
RAF Innsworth
RAF Padgate
RAF Riccall
RAF Waddington
RAF Woodhall Spa
searchlight
shelter
superstition
Tiger Moth
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/860/11102/AHarrisNG160128.2.mp3
617dde8eedd97b1d29cf4bc164b586a4
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
Harris, Neil
Neil Gibson Harris
N G Harris
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Neil Harris (b. 1920, 56027 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator with 578 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
2016-01-28
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Harris, NG
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BW: Alright. This is Brian Wright, I am interviewing Flight Lieutenant Brian Wright DFC of Bomber Command on Thursday, the 28th of January 2016 at his home in Lidham and the time is twenty past three in the afternoon. Just to start us with a formal question, if you wouldn’t mind so, could you just confirm your full name, rank on leaving and your service number please?
NH: Neil Gibson Harris, 56027, Flight Lieutenant.
BW: Ok. And I believe you are born in November 1920 in Bournemouth.
NH: 27/11/1920, yes.
BW: What was your family like, you lived with your parents, of course, did you have any brothers or sisters?
NH: Yes, I had two brothers and one sister we, fairly wide range, my eldest brother was nine years older than me and my sister was six years younger than me. So, was a spread of fifteen years between us, we are a working-class family, thank you, but very close.
BW: And what was the area like where you were growing up, was it [unclear]?
NH: Very pleasant indeed, oh, suburban, but very pleasant. Although basically a lower middle-class type area.
BW: And you were at school in Bournemouth during that time?
NH: Yes.
BW: I understand that you left school at fourteen.
NH: Fourteen, school called East Howe.
BW: East Howe.
NH: Yes.
BW: And did you have any qualifications?
NH: No, there weren’t, there were no qualifications available in those days. Not at fourteen, no, just, you just left school at fourteen and started working. And I went to work in the East Dorset brickworks as an office boy but by the end of nine months, I was rang into [unclear] office and my salary went, my wages went from seven and six to fifteen schillings, the works manager didn’t, gave me all his work to do [laughs]
BW: Just [unclear] you with it.
NH: So, I went from there to Bowmakers, which is a banking facilities company in Bournemouth, where I upgraded my position quite a bit, I was a proper clerk, a junior clerk.
BW: And from there I understand you went into the civil service.
NH: No, not the civil service, no, I went straight into the Air Force from there.
BW: Oh, I see, so you were [unclear]
NH: As an apprentice, as an apprentice. No, I’ve never been in the civil service, No, I went, that was, I was fifteen when I went to Bowmakers and I was nearly seventeen when I joined the RAF as an apprentice at Halton.
BW: Ok, and this would be 1937, so that would be
NH: That would be 1930, no, earlier, yes, ’37, that’s right, yes, ’37, September ’37.
BW: And what attracted you to join the RAF, what was your interest in that?
NH: Well, there were half a dozen or so, junior clerks, they all had had benefit of grammar school type of education, which is different to the one that I had and I, three or four of them were interested in the RAF, two of them, like myself, became apprentices, and one of them became an acting private officer
BW: I see.
NH: And a man named Haynes, he was a Battle of Britain pilot eventually, he was killed eventually too, got a DFC, shot down five, after that I don’t know anything about him but he didn’t survive the war, that’s all I know.
BW: A shame. And so, what prompted you to join the RAF, did you sense that the war was coming or did you [unclear]?
NH: Well, I think It’s the effect of three or four of us talking about the RAF and doing quite a nice job, had a pleasant working situation at Bowmakers but we wanted more excitement, I think. And of course I wanted more education, I, leaving school at fourteen I still felt I’d liked to have gone to a public school, there’s no chance of me doing that but RAF Halton provided a fairly good substitute, we had school and workshops and plenty of sport, which is what I wanted.
BW: And was there a good social life as well?
NH: Oh, no, social life, no, you weren’t allowed out [laughs], no, there’s three years hard regime but you had plenty of sports, but never saw a girl [laughs], no, we were all frustrated [unclear] [laughs]
BW: And so you
NH: It was a good training, excellent, marvellous training of course.
BW: And so, your trade in the engineering branch was what?
NH: I was a fitter 2A, a fitter to airframe.
BW: Ok.
NH: I managed to get in because the expansion scheme had started and the entries became much larger so I [unclear] an examination of three set papers, quite large, got a couple of them here somewhere, and I’m quite impressed by the standards that they required. So I did a lot of private study, my second brother was a very clever man, young man, he helped me a lot, he was an, he was a really highly, he became a highly qualified engineer and he helped me a lot, I managed to scrape in and but by that time, entries were getting to something like nine hundred or a thousand, so two entries a year, and of course the expansion scheme has started because of the threat of Hitler and there were, so, we were, before that time it was, you were called fitter twos and you did both engines and airframes, they split us up, the aircrafts were becoming more complicated and so you either became airframe, a fitter airframe or a fitter engine and then you did your three year, it’s a three year training, you did your three year training either as a fitter to airframe or a fitter to engine, and then the scheme was that after you’d been out on a normal squadron, and had practical experienced, you went back and did another year and that would be a conversion, if you did airframes before then you did a year on engines or vice versa so then you became a fitter one, so that’s basically how the training worked.
BW: And so, you get a good grounding not just in the structure of the aircraft but also the powerplants as well.
NH: You would, by that time but of course the war intervened from my entry and we stayed as fitter 2A’s of course but I got off and I took the easier route and managed to get onto aircrew. And but they wouldn’t let me, as soon as I finished my training, I volunteered for aircrew, but they wouldn’t release me until enough people, the war started by then but they wouldn’t release me to go onto aircrew duties until they had enough people in from, to be converted to trades, you know, as engineering trades and I could leave, so it took me nearly eighteen months from the time of being selected to being called up.
BW: So they needed enough people to be in the pool to replace you
NH: That’s right, that’s
BW: Because they could allow the engineers to move on.
NH: Yes
BW: [unclear]
NH: That’s right, yes.
BW: And what attracted you think to aircrew, was is, there simply more money, cause there was flying pay [unclear] or was it [unclear]?
NH: I wanted the glamour.
BW: Alright.
NH: A little bit it was there but I [laughs], I wanted to be a fighter pilot.
BW: I see.
NH: Yeah.
BW: And did that involve more tests and [unclear]?
NH: Not until you got onto, when I was eventually called up of course then by that time of course there the whole process was so huge that there are bottlenecks and so every stage it took time because you had to wait until you could move on to the next stage, the, either, whether held up training or something of that sort so, we start off at the ITW, which in my case was, well, first of all it started off in London, at the air crew receiving centre and we were all there, we live, we ate at the zoo, I remember,
BW: At London Zoo.
NH: At London Zoo, and lived in flats, in luxury flats in North West London and marched to the zoo for our meals.
BW: Right.
NH: But that, again, took a long time before we moved on and the next stage was to go on to the Initial Training Wing, where you did an eight week course and learned navigation and various other skills but there was a bottleneck there, I remember I went down to Brighton for a, just to occupy time, and eventually, although I’d been called up in November, November ’41, that’s right, and I was at Wick at the time when, as a fitter, on the, we were protecting the convoys coming into Liverpool but we’d been stationed at Stornoway on the Outer Hebrides,
BW: That’s where Wick is, is that right?
NH: Pardon?
BW: That’s where Wick is.
NH: No, Wick, no, Wick is on the north east coast.
BW: Ok.
NH: And now we moved over there with Hudsons, we had started with Ansons and changed over to Hudsons, when we moved up to Stornoway and then from Stornoway, we moved over to Wick. But whilst we were at Wick, I was called up for aircrew duties and that was in November ’41, I happened to be on leave at the time in Bournemouth so I got recalled from Bournemouth to Wick, which was to go back to London [laughs] to start my aircrew duties and as I say, then, we had, we hung around in Regent’s Park waiting for the next stage, well the first stage of training and that didn’t happen, this was in November ’41 and we didn’t get to Stratford until about the end of January, February ’42 and then we had this eight week course at Stratford learning navigation, doing drill, all RT and all the rest of it.
BW: So you travelled in a very short time to the length and breadth of the country cause you’ve gone from a short period of time in Brighton right up to the north of Scotland to work on aircraft protecting the convoys and then, across the other side of Scotland, then back down again, and called for [unclear] training
NH: Well, just go back a little bit, when I left, when I graduated from Halton, well, I graduated as a, what’s the right word, as an aircraftsman first class, normally I’d have an entry at, say, of a hundred, well take a hundred, apprentices leaving but ten would pass out as leading aircraftsmen, ten or fifteen would pass out as leading aircraftsmen, aircraftsmen first class, about sixty or so would pass out as aircraftsmen first class and the remainder would pass out as AC2 but the rate of pay was quite significant, a leading aircraftsman would get forty two schillings a week, which was a big rise from five and six pence,
BW: Yeah, absolutely.
NH: Yeah. So, I passed out an AC1 which is 31, 31 of 31 and six pence a week, which is quite good, I, [laughs].
BW: And was that more than you were earning in the bank previously?
NH: Oh, yes, oh yes, in the bank I was getting seventeen and six, I think it was, might have gonna up, to nearly a pound, but no, seventeen to six a week, yes,
BW: So you almost doubled
NH: No, I, and of course, as an apprentice, I’m only getting three schillings a week, for the first two weeks and then five and six pence for the last week, that’s the third week. And then when I passed out as an AC1, I would have jumped up to thirty-one and six pence a week, which is magnificent,
BW: I believe at some point during your early training, you caught pneumonia and had to be sort of
NH: Oh that was before, that was at the end of my training,
BW: Oh, I see.
NH: Yes, this was, the war had started October, November, I caught pneumonia almost [unclear] they had to, they called my mother to come up because they thought I wouldn’t live but M & B was the new drug which they’d produced and that saved my life I think because but always touch and go anyway, when I recovered and I came out, my entry had, the whole thing was telescoped, you see, did a three year course, when the war started, all sports afternoons were stopped, we worked longer hours, and the whole thing was telescoped from the three years to a much shorter one but so we were on that at the time that I went into hospital with pneumonia and when I came out, my entry had finished and they’d gone, so I was left on my own, they gave me some Christmas leave and when I came back, I just studied on my own for a few weeks and passed out on my own as an AC1. I probably had passed out as an AC2 [laughs]. So, I’ve been lucky that way.
BW: So, there was no parade for you then, unfortunately, they just allowed you
NH: No, I just, no.
BW: So you graduated [unclear]
NH: I went down to Thorney Island under 48 Squadron, which is at Coastal Command, we had Ansons then, as I said, and then we, as an AC1. Is it all getting a bit garbled for you?
BW: No, no, that’s perfectly fine. So, during your time at Thorney Island then, which is near Chichester,
NH: Yeah.
BW: You were still as a tradesman, you were an aircraftman
NH: That’s right
BW: First class
NH: Yeah.
BW: What was it like there, what sort of air, you said Ansons then, have other aircraft there too? [unclear] and Blenheims, would you work on them at all or?
NH: No, only Ansons.
BW: Ah, ok.
NH: Yeah. And of course we were there to protect the shipping coming up to Southampton and to the docks along the south coast but then, when the invasion of the low countries came, it was too dangerous and the shipping was moved up to Liverpool, Liverpool and Glasgow and so we followed the shipping up to Liverpool and we were stationed at Hooton Park.
BW: I see. So around the time of the Battle of Britain and when the invasion was looking imminent during the summer of 1940,
NH: Yeah.
BW: You and your squadron, 48 Squadron, actually moved up to Liverpool.
NH: To Liverpool and we were there for about a year I think before we moved up to, because then there were all bombed badly and the submarine menace became bigger and we moved, and so the shipping was moved further up into Glasgow and so we moved up to Stornoway,
BW: I see.
NH: And then to Wick. Don’t quite know why we did that, we were on Hudsons by that time.
BW: How did you find them to work on?
NH: Well of course [unclear] much, they’d hydraulics of course which you know, on the Anson it was a wind up undercarriage, took a hundred and twenty turns to get the wheels up, well of course there was much more hydraulics on the Hudsons, very modern by comparison with the Anson.
BW: And so, you mentioned earlier about having completed your trade training, you were called up for aircrew which is in November ‘41 thereabouts, did you apply to be a pilot or did you?
NH: Yes, I wanted to be a pilot, yeah, I wanted to be a glamourous pilot and go out with girls [laughs]
BW: [laughs] And what happened to enable the change [unclear]?
NH: Well you see that, everything, as I said, was taking so long with bottlenecks everywhere, they decided to change from being a two pilot crew to one pilot and introduced bomb aimers and bomb aimers very often failed pilots, [unclear] capable of getting an aircraft back perhaps in an emergency as the pilot was no longer capable, that was the, so, the some man crew then became a pilot, navigator, bomb aimer, wireless operator, engineer and two gunners, that’s a Halifax or Lancaster.
BW: Ok.
NH: And so then of course they had a business of what they called grading and so all of us who wanted to be pilots, we had to go to a grading school and fly Tiger Moths and be graded and although we went solo, I did a very poor final test so they graded me down, I’m afraid I messed it up, I made a mess of the spin, that sort of thing but so that was very disappointing but so they transferred me to being a navigator.
BW: I see.
NH: And others who were the same, were either navigators or bomb aimers did navigator or bomb aimer training.
BW: Ok. And so, until this stage you’ve been training on Tiger Moths
NH: Tiger Moths
BW: As a pilot
NH: Yeah
BW: But I believe you were sent abroad to Canada so you
NH: Well then, then of course I went to, yes, that’s right, I went to Rivers, near Winnipeg, went over on the Queen Elisabeth, just newly constructed, that was in, that was in September ’42, yes, September ’42, oh, because of the bottleneck we gone down to Eastbourne for further navigation, for navigation training, so we did a further navigation course down there, that was after we’d failed, we failed to become pilots and went down and became navigators, this is the start of our navigation course at Eastbourne, so did a few weeks there and then we moved across, up to, somewhere near Manchester, where we stayed there before we were shipped up to Glasgow to get onto the Queen Elisabeth.
BW: And what was it like going across to Canada?
NH: Oh, quite good, I mean, we were only a few thousand aircrew going across to, a mixture of pilots and navigators, most of the pilots went down south to Texas or somewhere like that and we went to a place called Mana, called Rivers in Manitoba, in the middle of Canada, about a hundred and twenty miles from Winnipeg and so we were only going out, we were only about two or three thousand I think aircrew under training or going for training. Coming back, I, and I came back on the same boat, we landed in New York, then went to up to Moncton in Canada on the East Coast and then across to, had two or three weeks there, it’s all bottlenecks all the time before we were posted to Rivers at Manitoba, that took a three day rail journey from
BW: Wow.
NH: And we got there about the middle of September.
BW: So just in time before the winter set in.
NH: Just setting in, yes, a week or two later they froze, they sprayed a compound of water and that was the ice rink for the rest of the winter, yeah.
BW: So, did you get much flying in during that time?
NH: Oh yes, yes, yes, in Ansons again, bitterly cold because we had to do astro training was the big feature and we had to open the hatch and these pilots of course shuddered at the cold air coming in but we had to take our, take these, you know, all these [unclear] and stuff, fortunately in Canada, you know, you get these wonderful clear nights, and the stars and everything so visible, it was a, for doing astro navigation, it was ideal.
BW: So you had to
NH: But it was still to bloody cold.
BW: So you actually had to open the hatch mid flying in order to take reading the stars.
NH: Yeah, and take the reading, well, the stars you wanted, yeah. But navigation was simple in Canada because the nights were clear and the days were, cold and brisk, you know, you could see for miles, you could, you get airborne at Rivers, hundred and twenty miles from Winnipeg, and of course you could see Winnipeg because it is, all the lights were still on in Canada
BW: No blackout.
NH: No. And there’s only a few towns there anyway and you knew exactly which town, by the size, so navigation was simple.
BW: What was life like there in general, did you manage to travel out or did you meet any Canadians, at least some aircrew were stationed off base or b&bs and things but presumably you [unclear]
NH: Oh no, we lived, oh no, we were right in the prairies, we just the camp,
BW: So just yourselves and
NH: Place called Brandon, was about twenty five miles away, [unclear] I never went there, once or twice, we did get down to Londa, to Minneapolis [unclear] at Christmas there over the Christmas period but we managed to work our way down there for a, for the Christmas break
BW: And did you stay
NH: Rather special
BW: And did you stay over in hotels and things and [unclear]
NH: No, we stayed with, while went to the US the United States organisation, you know, like the Red cross naffy or whatever but being American at that time was very well appointed, we had written to them before saying we are coming, and they phoned us out, we stayed with a professor, while he was away, on national service, he was a Lieutenant colonel American Air Force but he was a professor at Minneapolis University and we stayed with him, with his wife, five of us.
BW: And was that your crew that you went with then?
NH: No, not, we weren’t crewed up then, we were just five navigators under training.
BW: Ok. And from there you, I believe, you passed out as sergeant observer navigator
NH: Sergeant observer navigator, yes,
BW: You graduated while you were in Canada.
NH: That’s right, yes, came back to Moncton to wait for our journey home, which again was on the Queen Elisabeth from New York. And then back in Glasgow, by avoiding the U-boats, but because we were so fast, they couldn’t, they couldn’t get any nearer but both the Queen Mary and the Queen Elisabeth both scootered across the Atlantic, coming back it was very different than coming out, we brought all the American troops, about fifteen thousand American troops on board.
BW: So this is pretty much at the height of the Atlantic war, then, isn’t it? When the [unclear]
NH: Yes, this is, this would be March ’43 now and we are just beginning to get over the U-boat, we are just beginning to get control of the U-boat menace, it was in ’42 the U-boat menace was at its highest, and it was a serious problem, well still was but we, yeah, we are getting on top of it by the time I came back in ’43.
BW: And so from there you went to
NH: We went to Harrogate, we were all, Harrogate was the assembly point and we were all assembled, officers went into the Majestic and sergeants went into the Grand Hotel in Harrogate, do you know them?
BW: Yes, I’ve been
NH: And the Majestic
BW: I’ve been to one, yes.
NH: Yeah. So
BW: Very nice [unclear] hotels
NH: We didn’t mind that at all, this was March, we had a couple of weeks leave in Bournemouth and back and then we were kept hanging around again, waiting to go on to our onto the OTU, which is the next step in our training, operational training unit, and that took some time, I remember, in order to occupy us they sent us up to Perth, to a flying training school that flew Tiger Moths around the, the name of the river near Perth, do you know it? Tay, is it, Tay?
BW: Tay.
NH: Lovely, anyway, lovely week, I think it was only a week or ten days, just a way of keeping us amused, before we, eventually we did get to the operational training which was at Kinloss, in northern Scotland.
BW: And was that number 19 OTU, [unclear]
NH: I don’t remember the number, [unclear] on my log book. But it’s, yes, operational at Kinloss and we were on Whitleys, so we are on a different aeroplane now. And this will be, by the time we did that, it’s August, August ’43, so it’s already taken me from November ’41 and now we are in, at August ’43,I got my navigator’s brevy but I still haven’t got, I’m still not operationally trained, that we did on a Whitley.
BW: Right. So it’s taken you, as you say, approximately two years, they needed two years
NH: yeah.
BW: To get to that operational training unit.
NH: Yeah. That’s right, yeah. And that finished for about the end of October, beginning of November ’43,
BW: Ok.
NH: So I think it be the end of October, we were posted, we were crewed up there, that was the big feature and I, you all join up together, you look around and you see who you’d like to fly with. I joined up with a chap named, sergeant, he was a sergeant, Sergeant Wilkinson, we liked the look of one another I suppose, so he and I joined and that was the usual pattern, you and the pilot joined up and you skited around and gathered in the rest of the crew which at this stage we would be five, wireless operator, gunner and a gunner.
BW: And this I believe commonly took place in just a big hangar, they amalgamated all together
NH: No, that’s right, yes
BW: And they just left them
NH: Left us to sort ourselves out, yes, a funny system.
BW: And so, you crew up with Sergeant Wilkinson,
NH: Sergeant Wilkinson, yeah.
BW: And do you recall the names of the other crew members?
NH: No, I can’t. No, I’m afraid I can’t. Oh, George Dugray, yeah, a French Canadian, oh, that was later, no, he’s the bomb aimer, oh yes, he was there too. Did George Dugray? Anyway, he joined us on the next one, the heavy conversion unit, when we got on to the Halifaxes.
BW: So
NH: He was a French-Canadian bomb aimer
BW: So if you were five crewmen initially, what were going to be flying at that point when you initially met Wilkinson and Dugray?
NH: Well, we only knew that we would probably Halifaxes or Lancasters were most likely.
BW: I see.
NH: Well the possibility of a Mosquitoes if we were lucky.
BW: So, where were you when you were looking for your crew and when you were getting yourselves together, was this at Burne or was this elsewhere?
NH: Oh no, this was at the operational training unit at Kinloss
BW: Kinloss.
NH: At Kinloss,
BW: I see.
NH: Yes, that’s when you came together
BW: I see.
NH: And up to that time we’d all been navigators but as you know you are split up and you find your crew, so with them we flew as a crew then, pilot, navigator, did we have a bomb aimer? I suppose we did have Dugray as bomb aimer, wireless operator, not an engineer, gunner. That’s right, yes, that’ll be it. That’s the five, isn’t it? One gunner, engineer, no, one gunner, bomb aimer, navigator, pilot. And wireless operator. So then, then you had to do, you went through the whole, all the daylight flying, night flying and of course very different flying conditions in Kinloss in Scotland, the blackout and very few aids and it was a very difficult and hazardous training period and a lot collided into the mountains through inexperience cause that’s what we were, totally inexperienced and there was a lot of fatalities there. So, it wasn’t an easy time.
BW: What sort of aids were you working with as a navigator then at this point?
NH: I’d be twenty-one, twenty one.
BW: What sort of navigational aids or equipment were you using at this time?
NH: Oh, hardly any
BW: So was
NH: Radio, we could get the old radio bearing, navigation and that’s it
BW: Was it all dead reckoning
NH: Otherwise dead reckoning, yeah, and that was one of the troubles as where people, they got lost and they sended through cloud and hit the high ground.
BW: And roughly how long were you on the OTU?
NH: That’s about six to eight weeks, we went the end of August, it’ll be eight weeks and we finished round about the end of October, beginning of November.
BW: So, this is October, November ’43.
NH: That’s right, yeah, yeah. And then of course we still hadn’t finished, then we got to go to the heavy conversion unit, flying the sort of aeroplanes we were going to fly on operations, which in our case was the Halifax and that was when we were posted to Rufforth to a heavy conversion unit at Rufforth which is about four miles out of York.
BW: And you were onto Halifaxes at that point.
NH: Yeah.
BW: Did you acquire any more crew members at all [unclear]?
NH: Oh yes, that’s where the engineer came, and the second gunner, that’s it. Yes, that’s right, Dugray, he did join us up at [unclear] and so were five when we went down to Rufforth and then we were joined by the other, by the mid upper gunner and by the flight engineer.
BW: Do you happen to recall their names at all or?
NH: No. I can’t.
BW: That’s alright.
NH: I can’t. Hardly anyone finished, I was the only one that finished the op, a full round of ops, they all disappeared one way or another. Well, you see, Wilkinson who I became, who became a good friend, splendid, a good looking chap too, and he became, he was going to go to university, he, when we finished our training at Rufforth, preparing to go to a squadron, we had finally finished our training and now we are fully qualified but it was quite usual for pilots to go on an experience exercise and he was sent on to do a run on on an operation on Berlin and that was the end of him and so we didn’t have a pilot and that kept us waiting again.
BW: And do you recall who eventually came
NH: Yes, I’ve got his name, what’s his name? Oh Gosh, my memory’s gone, I’m afraid,
BW: That’s alright.
NH: It’s in the logbook, he was a flying officer, so now as a sergeant I was being teamed up with a flying officer, who’d been posted from Hemswell. Well, Hemswell was a station, was a Bomber Command station in 4 Group and it achieved a terrible reputation for not pressing on to the target and Harris, the Bomber Command chief came up, called them all sorts of names, and closed the station down, Hemswell, everybody was posted, and I got one of those.
BW: I see.
NH: And so we did our, we did [unclear] game, so we had to train together again on the Halifax from Rufforth and that took us until well after Christmas, during which time I met my wife, who, the girl that became my wife.
BW: And how did you meet her?
NH: Oh, I met her at a dance, and she’d gone with, oh, she had arranged to meet a girlfriend at the Grey Rooms in York, I don’t know if you know it.
BW: No, I don’t.
NH: Oh, it was a lovely place, oh, we all got there, all the, York was full of aircrew, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians particularly and Brits and a few Americans and of course there wasn’t much in York then, everything was closed down but there was a lovely dance place, the Dugrey Rooms, and that’s where we all went, to meet girls and that’s where I met my wife.
US: Sorry, after Williams your pilot, you then had Houston.
NH: Williams, Williams, that’s right. Flying officer Williams, he was the one who was, came to Rufforth from Hemswell we, I having lost Wilkinson and what you say the name was?
US: Williams.
NH: Williams. Oh, he had, I eventually found out he was called Turnback Williams, we are not going to the target? I’ll on that, busy
BW: Part of the reason Harris talk to these guys.
NH: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right so I did all my, I completed all my training with, as a, with him, with Williams, and from there at the end from February 44, now is it? End of 44, yes, Paul Williams of course, when he was sent out on his second Dickey for experience, that was at the height of the Berlin raids, and the losses were huge, we’d been, we’d been on those of course, if he’d come back from his, from his trip of experience
BW: Second Dickey means like a second pilot
NH: Second pilot experience, yes, yeah, so he didn’t come back and I wrote to his father and I got a nice, I might have it somewhere a nice letter from his father who is a stockbroker in London and anyway so I saw that with Williams then we completed another bit of training before we went off to the squadron which I say was about the end of February ’44.
BW: And this was the newly formed 578 Squadron.
NH: And that was the newly formed, yes, they were only formed about three months before
BW: And they were specifically
NH: From Snaith.
BW: And they were specifically flying Halifaxes Mark III as they were one of the first
NH: I was jolly lucky to get on one of those cause it was just as good as the Lancaster, radial engines Bristol and they could get up to the required height and carry a similar amount of bombs, splendid.
BW: So, your first sortie with 578 would be in February as you say,
NH: In March
BW: In March
NH: Then in February, then again the training was so much, I mean they wouldn’t escort, again got ourselves familiarised with the Mark Iii and done a couple of training runs before we were then considered to be operational and that took place in March and it was during that time the Nuremberg raid and of the pilots at Burton on the squadron, he got a posthumous VC.
BW: Did you know him?
NH: No, I didn’t know him, no, no, I’d only been on the squadron a week or so but I didn’t know him, I know, no, I didn’t know him, I didn’t really know him, I didn’t know anybody really, we kept to ourselves a
BW: You tend to associate with your crew if anything
NH: Just with the crew, didn’t mix much with anybody else, you stuck pretty close into the crew and as I had a girlfriend now in York I scuttled off there [laughs].
BW: So, it was looking pretty serious with your girlfriend
NH: Already started to look serious, yes, yeah, we got engaged in April, after I’d done about five operations. I took her down to Bournemouth to meet my family.
BW: Right. And so, what were the accommodation facilities like at Burne, this is where your 578 Squadron
NH: They weren’t bad, it was a brand-new place, you know, all Hudson.
BW: Were you billeted with the crew?
NH: Oh yes, yes, I, we were in huts of course but as sergeants we had little privileges, the sergeant’s mess and that sort of thing, reasonably comfortable of course, we were well-fed as aircrew, the local people, we always had eggs before we went and that sort of thing, things which people couldn’t get on the ration we had plenty of, plenty of chips too cause at the age of twenty one, twenty two I [unclear] of chips [laughs]
BW: [unclear]
NH: [unclear]
BW: And were you the only crew in the billet sometimes or there were two crews in there or?
NH: I think we were the only one, as far as I can remember we were the only one.
BW: And at this time there was a CO in charge
NH: Yes.
BW: Wing Commander Wilkey Wilkinson, do you recall him?
NH: Oh, I do very well, yes, he’s one chap I do remember, and I’ve never been a hero worshiper but I would think I would put him into that category. Marvellous chap, good looking, tall, great sense of humour, great, young, handsome, had every quality, but you knew that if Wilkinson was flying it was gonna be a bad one, he’d only, he wouldn’t take the easy ones, he’d always took the bad ones, great leader, he was on his second tour, too, very nice chap too because then of course I, to going on a bit further, I was with Williams, I did two operations with Williams, I didn’t remember what it was I didn’t like but I didn’t like it, I went to see Williams in great trepidation but I didn’t know what Williams I never spoke to Wing Commanders, they were far too elevated, but I went to see him and so I did my night flying with Williams so I said, we must have talked a bit, I can’t remember, so he said right leave with me, I’ll fix you up with somebody else and I went then to, I was teamed up then with Houston, Jock Houston, and we stayed together all the time, finished together, got commissioned together, got a DFC together.
BW: And so, you when you went from your crew flying with Williams at this point
NH: Yes
BH: To make the change to another crew
NH: Yes, the others all, I [unclear], yes, yeah.
BW: [unclear]
NH: [unclear]
BW: [unclear]
NH: Well, Williams did finish his tour, yes, but I don’t know who he flew, he finished the tour.
BW: The other members of your crew didn’t pick up your sense of
NH: No,
BW: [unclear]
NH: Not as far as I know. No, no.
BW: And you mentioned about Wilkinson, there’s a description here which seems to chime with what you commented about it and it’s only a short description if I can read it to you, it says, he was described by those who knew him as a tall, loose end fellow, the first impression that a stranger might have of him was that he was rather irresponsible, care-free, vague individual, but on closer acquaintance he would seem that he had one of the kindest, gentlest and most sympathetic
NH: Oh, I think that was pretty accurate
BW: Could possess
NH: Yes
BW: He had the knack of inspiring confidence in his crew, when flying I can’t remember anything disturbing him, he was huge with his men
NH: No, no. There’s my little story in that book he’s flying a strange aircraft, an unusual aircraft and he’s got an army man, and army major alongside him but oh, they couldn’t get the flaps down and the army major says to Wilkinson, can you fly this without flaps? He said, well, you are just about to find out [laughs].
BW: And it says of him because he was awarded a DSO he said, he inspired powers of leadership, great skill and determination, qualities which have earned him much success, his devoted squadron commander, his great drive and tactical abilities used in large measure to the high standard of operation to assume the squadron
NH: Yeah, he did, yeah, briefing were always made a pleasure by him being here, he made them quite different, we quite looked forward to his briefing
BW: And when you, you mentioned about him when he going out on a bad raid, were you aware that if he briefed it, it was gonna be a bad one or was it the case [unclear] the raids?
NH: No, not particularly, no, but you knew that if he was on it, it wouldn’t be an easy one.
BW: But he, he always gave the briefing whatever the raid was.
NH: Oh yes, oh yes.
BW: There was only a few at the time
NH: That’s right, yeah, yeah. Yes, I remember his briefing, that is one thing I do remember quite well. Always something to look forward to. I remember a young WAAF officer looking at him I think, Gosh, I’d like a young woman to look at me like that [laughs].
BW: So, by now you are on the early part of your tour and initially it looks like you got operations mainly over Germany, are there any other particular raids through March that you recall?
NH: No, they were all a great big jumble mainly, I, oh, there is one when we lost a lot of aeroplanes.
BW: That night be Nuremberg presumably.
NH: No, not Nuremberg, I didn’t do Nuremberg, there is some, somewhere like, oh, retro memory for names, the size of the Ruhr, a fairly long trip and I remember coming out, they’d briefed us to come down from the target area right down to five thousand feet, it seemed odd tactic, I remember going up with another navigator to Nuremberg, I don’t like this and he said, I wish we weren’t doing this one and he didn’t come back. We lost six that night. So, I don’t know what that tactic was all about.
BW: So, at this time, when you
NH: Oh, I’m trying to remember the name, that, Karlsruhe,
BW: Karlsruhe. And so at this when you were doing operations, you’ve gone from the billet to the ops room to be briefed, you’ve had your briefing, just talk me through then what you would do from there in terms of boarding the aircraft, the checks you would do, what sort of things would be going on then.
NH: Well, we had our own, quite a lot of instruments, we had Gee for example, the bomb aimer would have his stuff but I would have all my charts, gee charts, ordinary plotting charts, what were they called? [unclear] and then the Gee charts, all rather luminous, astro navigation, [unclear] anyway, waste of time most of the time but always had to do it, sextant, all the stuff had to be checked and so, you know, that took up quite a long time, you did that some with the pilot, checking the routes and marking off certain points on it.
BW: And H2S was coming in at this time.
NH: Oh, we didn’t have H2S.
BW: That wasn’t on your aircraft.
NH: We didn’t have it, no,
BW: And was the Gee equipment located right where you position were?
NH: Right in front like that
BW: Ok.
NH: Had a table, table, yeah.
BW: In some aircraft [unclear] different.
NH: And that, that was an incredibly, wonderful instrument I had, of course the Germans were jamming it as much as they could and you’d lose it, you’d, what it did help you to do was to get an accurate wind, cause that’s so incredibly important, if you got an accurate wind then doing jet reconning isn’t going to be too bad and you could get Gee fixes right up to inside the Dutch coast so it gave you a whole string of fixes and a whole comprehension of the wind you know was established by the time you got there. And then, the same thing coming back, you, I’d have, I’d be searching madly to get the signals eventually appearing and it’s marvellous when the, when they just started to appear on your radar screen, and you’d, and you’d get a proper fix, because when you tried astro navigation or even wireless, there were so many errors involved.
BW: Was your pilot good in terms of sticking to the course? Was he [unclear] following your instructions?
NH: Oh yes, of course, oh yes, oh yes, very good, you know, if I take an astro shot, they had to keep very steady because you have a steady platform to get, I don’t know if you know about sextant?
BW: Yes.
NH: You know, yes, getting the star dive into the bubble and holding it there, if the plane lurches up you’ve lost the, it, you’ve gotta get it back again,
BW: And so, you found that you worked quite well presumably [unclear]
NH: Oh, very well, with Houston, terrible memory for names, I even forget my own sometimes
BW: What was it like actually in the environment of a Halifax then, was it pretty roomy, has a reputation of being a fairly roomy aircraft.
NH: Not bad, not bad really
BW: [unclear]
NH: No, no, not when you compare it [unclear] like the Whitley
BW: And I believe the heating, say for example in a Lancaster kept the wireless operator and the navigator pretty warm
NH: yes
BW: Is it similar in a Halifax or not?
NH: Ah, yeah, pretty I was never cold, I never remember being cold,
BW: How did it feel in your flying kit? Was it [unclear]
NH: I didn’t wear much, had a Mae West on, and a parachute harness of course and that was, oh, and an aircrew sweater, and that was about it, don’t [unclear], I think flying boots, yes, yeah, flying boots, cause you could if you were, if you bailed out and you landed, you could cut the top off and they looked like ordinary shoes, ordinary boots
BW: And so you were pretty comfortable in the interior of the Halifax.
NH: Oh, pretty, reasonably comfortable.
BW:
NH: Yes, yes, I had a good desk and all the instruments that I needed. Wind thing, what you call, wind setting, forgot what they called, wind, don’t they use that much, you had to be [unclear] sort of view the sea at eighteen thousand feet, you can’t do that
BW: Did you find that you had to use oxygen much if you were above [unclear] feet or?
NH: Oh yes, about ten thousand feet, most certainly.
BW: Were most of your ops above that [unclear]?
NH: Oh yes, as soon as you get to, well pretty well from five thousand feet or even before, I can’t remember exactly but you certainly wouldn’t want to be [unclear] oxygen above ten thousand feet
BW: You noted as well one particular date you were in the air on the night of D-Day.
NH: Yes, yes.
BW: Do you recall the briefing for D-Day primarily?
NH: No
BW: Were you aware that is was gonna be the start of the invasion?
NH: Well, we were all suspicious but nobody knew anything definite but of course so much everybody knew that D-Day was gonna come soon but that anything definite not until we, well, we were, the target was an easy one on the Northern Coast of France, just inside, gun batteries of some sort, and we bombed that but as we are coming back, and as we are coming back near [unclear], both the gunners shouted out, all the shipping that they could see and so all this shipping was just on the invasion, that was June the 6th.
BW: What sort of time would that be, was it early morning?
NH: About three or four o’clock in the morning. It be in the logbook there. Be about that time.
BW: The gun battery that you mentioned, was it Mont Fleury,
NH: Right.
BW: And that was covering Gold Beach, which was one of the British invasion beaches.
NH: Yeah, yeah. Cause we did two or three, Montgomery, that was later on, after the armies had got established but got held up by the Germans and Montgomery requested Bomber Command to drop their bombs on the German, where the Germans were and we did that, we got a letter of thanks from him because that’s form where the armies could move on.
BW: Were you made aware of the results of the bombing on that particular D-Day mission?
NH: Not really, no, not until we got this letter from Montgomery thanking us for, yeah, I can’t think that we got any particular, no. Of course, we were taking photographs all the time, and we were given some sort of marking for the accuracy and the standard and that was posted up on the boards.
BW: Did it feel like a competition, where you
NH: A little bit like that, oh yes, a little bit like that. Bomb aimers, you know, we, in that book [unclear] claims that we were used for these targets because we had a bomb aiming accuracy record.
BW: Quite [unclear]
NH: No, but, I think that, what is, my God, the insignia of the squadron has got
US: An arrow
NH: A arrow, isn’t it? A bomb aiming accuracy or something is called.
US: Just called accuracy.
NH: Accuracy, yes, yes. So we had this supposedly reputation. I don’t know [laughs].
BW: Well, the gun position that was there at Gold Beach was actually a target given to the Green Howards, the army regiment that was to assault that.
NH: Oh, was that? Oh, was it?
BW: And that particular action was where sergeant major Stanley Hollis got the VC, [unclear] boxes near that battery. So coincidentally the raid that you were on happened to be the target which sergeant major Hollis was the only VC on D-Day.
NH: That’s interesting too. Yeah, yeah.
BW: There was only one [unclear] I can see on that raid and that was a Halifax flown by squadron leader Watson
NH: OH yes.
BW: Who was shot down
NH: yes.
BW: [unclear]
NH: I think I’ve seen the name but I don’t know him. No, no.
BW: So, at this time during April, May, June, most of your targets are in France
NH: Yes
BW: With the idea of supporting D-Day [unclear]
NH: Yeah, D-Day the invasion, yes, yes,
BW: And that continues
NH: [unclear] targets of course, by comparison with the Ruhr and Berlin
BW: And by easy that I assume that they were lighter, more lightly defended, is that right?
NH: Not so much that they’re but quicklier have a long, the big thing somewhere like Nuremberg or Berlin, even if you got to, you had a long trail back to UK and the German fighters knew that and would wait for the trail of bombers coming out of the target and shooting them out then but so and they had a long time to do it whereas going to somewhere Paris or somewhere like that, they didn’t have that length of time to do it.
BW: did you encounter many fighters that you [unclear]?
NH: No, I can’t remember, well, I think the most famous of course was the concentration, I did a daylight on the Ruhr in September and then you saw the concentration, what a concentration of bombers looked like cause we flew at night and we didn’t see how it really looked. But on this occasion we flew daylight to the Ruhr in September and I flew with a strange crew, which is slightly unsettling, their navigator had gone sick or something, and but then you saw aircraft colliding and of course you saw all the bombs dropping from other aircraft dropping so, you know, getting so close to releasing their bombs on you and the gunners would be shouting out, you know, he’s right over, he’s right over us now, and quite often it did happen that bombs from one aircraft hit another one, underneath.
BW: Did it happen on that occasion when you were?
NH: No, no, I never saw it actually happen,
BW: Just [unclear].
NH: No, I did, I did see aircraft, the other thing was collisions, when you got several hundred aircraft, well, at nighttime you don’t know what has happened, whether there’s a collision or whether they’re being shot by ack-ack, but at daylight you could see and I did see a collision, two aircraft hitting one another,
BW: And what, how could you describe what [unclear]?
NH: No, I can’t, we turned away and it was gone but didn’t see anybody come out.
BW: And so during [unclear]
NH: No explosion, that’s all.
BW: And so, during the raid on Stuttgart, during the daylight, could you see, did you get a chance to see clearly the formation? The bomber formation?
NH: Oh, not really, no, you know, of course you know that they are at night because you get into their slipstream, so you know and that’s what you want, of course you want to be close, you don’t want to be isolated that’s when they can pick you off, the whole object of flying in a gaggle or stream was to protect one another with your, what’s the stuff? Window and, you know, confuse the enemy defenses radar so you were conscious at nighttime, but you didn’t see the full horror of it.
BW: And what was your impression during the daylight raid?
NH: Well, I thought, how the hell can you get through that lot? Approaching the Ruhr, this is a lovely September afternoon and you could see the smoke hovering over the Ruhr from such a long way away, I got a feeling we could see it almost from the Dutch coast, and then you think, then of course within the smoke, which is just the puffs of smoke from the ack-ack, you could see the brusts of the showers, well, there’s no penetration, you cannot penetrate that lost, but looks, it probably looks worst than it really is.
BW: In each case your pilot kept on, there was no consideration of turning back [unclear] target?
NH: Oh no, no, but no, no, we were, I think we were pretty that way, we did what we had to do, and although it is nerve-racking when the bomb aimer is insistent on, you know, my God, why doesn’t he press the bloody button? It was he said, bomb’s gone, yeah, that we could turn away.
BW: Were there any occasions where you had to make a second run over the target or not?
NH: Not exactly the, I ‘m not quite sure but I do know that we’ve been approaching the target and we’ve been told to hold off, the Pathfinder, the master bomber is directing us from underneath, usually in something like a Mosquito and he is calling us by our codename whatever, main force, main force, whatever the code, and he said and he’d be telling us, the bomb, overshoot the red TI’s or bomb the green markers or in one case he couldn’t tell because of the smoke and he couldn’t get accurate and he told the whole force to orbit, that was a nasty experience too,
BW: And the whole force at this stage [unclear]
NH: Would have to turn and wait and come in again until he could give the instructions on which markers to attack, they were of course people like, who has got the VC?
BW: Cheshire?
NH: Cheshire, yeah. Incredible people they were. They would stay, I mean, they would stay on the target for the whole time, going round and round, giving the directions to the main force, and asking for new TI’s or something like that if he wanted it.
BW: So, moving on from the D-Day operations, the squadron was then tasked with hitting the V-Weapon sites
NH: Yes, we, those were fairly easy targets, just inside the Dutch and French coast, yeah. We [unclear] several of those, three or four of those.
BW: Do you recall much about what was explained to you about the targets, we know now that they were being [unclear], did you know that?
NH: I don’t think so, I can’t remember, no, I just know that they were, well eventually of course when the flying bombs came up cause they came up, they came off fairly earlier, in was about August wasn’t it? July, August? Well, after, well then we knew them, that sort, they were that sort of targets, not until they, they’d actually arrived.
BW: So, from there through July and August, I think in total you flew thirty-nine operations, right?
NH: Thirty-nine altogether, yes. And of course the normal operation, prior to that., had ben thirty but because we were getting these easy French targets, they made us do thirty nine. And I, when they did say you’re finished, I was quite surprised, I’d thought they’d keep me I wasn’t all that bothered, I was getting used to it and it think sorry there won’t be an end you just carry on to the end and I accepted that I think.
BW: So you would have gone on for the duration of the war.
NH: Yes, I was slightly surprised when they said, you can stop and get.
BW: And what happened at that point, how was it explained to you your tour would end? What happened [unclear]?
NH: No explanation, I was just told that I would be posted on a certain day to in this case to Marston Moor as an instructor. But of course before that I’d been commissioned, Jock Houston and myself both got commissioned and we both got and then shortly after that we both got DFCs. Oh, we got that after I left the squadron, we got them afterwards, we were commissioned before we left the squadron, about a month or so before and then we got the DFC about a month or so after we left the squadron.
BW: And did you go to the palace to receive the DCF [unclear]?
NH: No, it came in the post, it came in the post with a letter from King George, signed by King George and that was stolen, we had a burglary and some bastard stole it, including the letter which was in some respect more important than the DFC. I got the DFC changed
BW: And that was soon after, that was soon after you’d been awarded it, it happened or was it
NH: No, no, it happened, oh, about twenty years ago.
BW: So still, right, still, as recently as that.
NH: Yeah, but we were in Muscat in Oman and this burglary happened whilst we were away.
BW: But you managed to get a replacement for
NH: I got a replacement, yes, they charged me a hundred pounds for it but it’s not quite the same cause I haven’t got the letter from King George.
BW: A shame. And so how was your relationship at this point with your girlfriend, cause you’ve been on pos, a pretty intense period through [unclear].
NH: Oh, well, every, you see, I suppose, in some respects I missed out a bit, I was very friendly with Jock but the other I, I went and had a beer occasionally with them but I was so eager, I was so wrapped up with Dorothy that every opportunity, I just speared off into York and I didn’t spend much time on the squadron but I, I used to take my inflight rations, because we got chocolate and chewing gum and other things and I couldn’t eat them, I was too frightened to eat them, and so I’d take them into York ands give them to her, I ran up to her office, which is on the fourth story of the LNER headquarters building in York and bang on her door and give her my inflight rations, sweets and chocolate mostly cause these things were rationed at that time.
BW: And that must have made your visits special for her.
NH: Yeah [laughs].
BW: [unclear]
NH: Yeah. Well if I wasn’t flying that night, I’d rush into York and rush up and tell her I’d be there and wait for, meet her after she left work.
BW: At what stage during the day would you find out whether or not you were on ops or not?
NH: Well, usually in the morning, you round about, just round about midday as I remember you’d know whether you’d go and operate that night or not. I do remember one occasion when we, we thought we were going to operate and that was when the flight engineer we’d, it was in June cause its, the nights were brighter, I think we were due for a take-off about ten o’clock and it was getting dusk and as usual everything goes very quiet, you wait for the start-up pistol and all engines would then start revving up, start the engines up and revving up, make a crescendo of noise of course when you’ve got sixteen or eighteen four-engines, all going and on this occasion there is always a little pause, you see you check your aircraft, you check everything and then you sort of hang around for a few minutes, I was there waiting for the [unclear] pistol, signal to get in and start up and on this occasion the flight engineer, we’d done about fourteen trips, he said, I’m not going tonight, and he wouldn’t, he said he wasn’t going, so of course the tower had to be informed that we weren’t, we had a crew deficiency and everybody came out then, the CO and the flight engineer leader and the medical officer and they took him to the rear engine to talk to him and took him off and we thought, well, by this time all the other aircraft had started up and are travelling round the peri-track looking at us curiously wondering what, why we hadn’t started up and we are waving them to say, well, clear off, we’re not going but then the engineer nearly came rushing out saying I’m [unclear] [laughs] so we had a start-up and all we did like that.
BW: So you then got, were you having to get back in the aircraft at this point?
NH: Oh, of course, yes. And off we had to go but then we were Tail End Charlies and that’s another thing you don’t like you don’t wanna be amongst the gaggle.
BW: And so you, how did you feel being at the back of the bomber stream then?
NH: Well, I suppose we must have made it up, you know, put a bit [laughs] more throttle on and we, I think we reached them in the end because what you do, you assemble at same point or something like that, that’s the usual thing, the squadrons all take off from the various aerodromes, say in Yorkshire and Spurn Point was a favorite assembly point and you’d set off from there, which there is no formation, you just keep in the stream, and so of course by the time the assembly had taken place and they had set off, we were catching up.
BW: How did you feel during the flight having had [unclear]?
NH: I didn’t like it, I didn’t like it [laughs] I [unclear] much more nervous, well, I’ve always felt nervous but felt a lot more nervous that night and that’s a clear memory of one flight I do have, yeah.
BW: You mention that just feeling nervous and feeling that you could have your inflight rations when you were airborne, you managed to overcome that, did you [unclear].
NH: [unclear] do it, no, chewing gum, I had the chewing gum but didn’t need anything else, coffee, I’d have, I’d drink the coffee and eat and the chewing gum but I was too frightened to eat anything else [laughs]. I waited for my eggs and bacon, egg and chips like got back.
BW: Did you recall the rest of the crew felt in a similar way?
NH: I think they felt similar, fairly similar, yeah, I think so, I think we all felt pretty much the same.
BW: Did you ever talk about it?
NH: No, no, that’s a strange thing, it’s only in the last few years that I’ve ever talked about it, Dorothy never wanted me to hear me talk about it and I never did, I never thought about it and it’s only sort of more or less than she died that I’ve given it any thought.
BW: And at the time did you talk to your crew mates or did they tell you how it felt on the operations night?
NH: No, never talked about it, never, never, no, it’s a, I look back a lot of it and I think, this is a bit strange really cause I think about it a lot now and talk about it quite a bit but for thirty or forty years never thought about it, hardly, hardly, [unclear].
BW: And how does it feel now, reflecting back on that time?
NH: Well, it’s a different time, you know, it’s something which I didn’t, something which is very different to anything, but you know it’s an experience which you’d never imagined that you’d go through really.
BW: And you mentioned now at this stage of your career that you’d come off operations, you were then posted to Marston Moor as instructor.
NH: That’s right, yes, for six months, six months tour and then we got married in June and when I came back from my honeymoon, I was told I was posted back onto operations to go with Tiger Force against Japan.
BW: And is this June ’45?
NH: This is June ’45, the war, the European war had ended and that ended in May, was it May? Yeah, is it.
BW: That’s right.
NH: Yeah and I’ve finished my six months rest and so I was posted back onto a second tour which happened to be with, what I called the force?
BW: Tiger Force.
NH: Sorry?
US: Tiger.
NH: Tiger Force, with Tiger Force. Yes, [unclear] to, and we were going to do something similar to what we did against Germany. That was, but that was on Lincolns, was it Lancasters or Lincolns? Wasn’t Halifaxes? Either Lancasters or Lincolns, I got the feeling it was Lincolns. Cause then after the war I flew in, I was on 50 Squadron which was at Waddington.
BW: At Waddington.
NH: Yeah, that was after the war, that was in 1950, talking about 1947, ’48, no, ’48.
BW: So you were earmarked to go with Tiger Force out to the Far East
NH: Yeah. We did
BW: Did that happen?
NH: yeah. No, no, we did our training and we didn’t have to do much, it was, you know, becoming acquainted, with a slightly new aircraft and we were all experienced people, all done our tour of ops, all being instructors so we are a very experienced crew we did, we just did a little bit of familiarization and we are ready to go and then they dropped the atom bomb so we didn’t go and we all got split up then.
BW: So you were all prepared to go and then you continued your post first to a training as a crew
NH: Yes
BW: Together and I guess you were all I guess earmarked at the same to go to the Far East but
NH: Yeah
BW: But you said it didn’t happen
NH: No, and we would have gone of course if they hadn’t dropped the atom bombs.
BW: And so, just talk us through your subsequent career which I believe involved transport command, fighter command
NH: Well of course [unclear] lot of funny little jobs like on a recruiting center and I was eventually had a sort of a career posting as an instructor at the RAF [unclear] at Cosford which was, if I’d played my cards right, would have done me some good, but I didn’t, I volunteered for flying, I have tried to go back on flying and they posted me back on transport command, but then Dorothy was expecting her babies and after a while I asked much to their irritation I think and it never did me any good, they posted me back to Bomber Command.
BW: And where did you get posted to?
NH: To, well, first of all I did a conversion, I became a navigator, bomb aimer, I did a bomb aiming course at Lindholme, near Doncaster and then from there I was posted to 50 Squadron at Waddington and that was when Dorothy had her babies, twins, and we all moved into quarters at Waddington and I became adjutant to 50 Squadron and my Co’s a man named Peach and that was a most enjoyable experience, I really enjoyed that time, we flew Lincolns.
BW: I was going to ask actually because at this time Jet aircraft are becoming more widely [unclear].
NH: [unclear] was just coming into service, yes, in Bomber Command.
BW: Did you get a chance to fly in it?
NH: No, I didn’t. No, no.
BW: And so what happened after that, were you involved at all in the Berlin airlift for example or not?
NH: No, because, as I say, I would have been if I stayed on transport command, that’s where I didn’t do myself any good by asking for this, but I didn’t know that Berlin airlift, I would have I wish I could have done that now but I got this request answered and was posted to 50 to Bomber Command but I made a mistake though.
BW: And at what stage did you become flight controller?
NH: Well, this is a, from Waddington I was posted to Scampton as an instructor, again I wish I’d protested and I and stayed on longer but I, we were posted to Scampton, as an instructor and then I hadn’t been offered a permanent commission but they did offer me a restricted permanent commission but it had to be either in the air traffic control branch or the fighter control branch, so I chose the fighter control branch, I wish I, somehow I wish I could afford that more and stay, and let me stay on aircrew and I think I’d have prospered more so then I, I did the course on fighter control and yeah that’s and from there I was posted to Patrington, how do we call those units? Fighter control unit.
BW: And this was at Patrington?
NH: Patrington, yeah.
BW: Patrington.
NH: In East Yorkshire.
BW: Ok.
NH: And then I went from, from there I became training officer and that was a nice post I became training officer to the Hull fighter control unit, [unclear] unit, based at Sutton, that was most enjoyable.
BW: What did you like about it?
NH: Well, I was my own boss, I was both adjutant for a long while, was adjutant and training officer, I had the use of the staff car, say I was my own boss, we had a nice house in Withernsea, no, not in Withernsea, in
US: Wasn’t Cottingham?
NH: Cottingham. In Cottingham, yeah. Nice house in Cottingham, we had some pleasant friends in the village and that was a most enjoyable time, I was very, I became very popular with the people, with the auxiliary people who were of course all civilians but I enjoyed their company I got on well with them so that was quite a nice [unclear], from there so I did a full tour there and then we were posted to Germany doing, well doing an operational job, you know, fighter control unit first of all at [unclear] and then at [unclear].
BW: And that I suppose saw you through to, through the Sixties and
NH: Yeah, and right up until
BW: The Seventies
NH: Yes, I did a year in Borneo on my own and joined the confrontation, nobody knows about that, do they? When we fought the Indonesians I’d, of course that was a year what they called an unaccompanied tour, we were based on a little island called Labuan on the north coast of Borneo, which is enjoyable up to a point but I didn’t like being separated all that time from the family.
BW: What sort of things were you doing out there?
NH: Oh well, the Indonesians were trying to control the whole of Borneo and they were claiming it but we said no, the northern part, including, what’s the oil rich place? Begins with a b. Brunei. Kuching and, that’s Kalimantan and then, we said, no, that all belongs to Malaysia, Malaysian federation which at that time includes Singapore but the Indonesians wanted the whole of Borneo as part of the Indonesia so we said, no, you can’t have it, this is all, so we had a four year war, we didn’t call it a war, we called it a confrontation.
BW: Is this the Malaysian insurgency?
NH: Yeah. Yeah, well, it is an insurgency, but of course Singapore was part of it and Malaysia so we eventually Indonesia gave up and accepted the status quo as we said it should be and we had Javelins at that time so we were controlling Javelins along the border, which was way undefined, you couldn’t and of course we had Gurkas out there and Indonesians were scared stiff of them and it was good jungle warfare, very good for anybody who wanted an army career it was ideal training, not too many casualties, a couple of hundred or so were killed, but we had, but we have radar jamming, Lincolns, not Lincolns, Hastings, we had Hastings out there doing our radar jamming and we controlled the Javelins, we had our Javelins which would come onto the island and jet airborne wherever we saw anything that might be a useful target. So I commanded that little unit, I had about sixty or seventy men and all radar equipment, that sort of little encampment of my own, was quite nice and six officers, and seventy men and we had a marvelous time, laughed like anything, all the time, oh yeah, drank a lot, we drank the hell of a lot. Dorothy never stopped saying how shocked she was [laughs] [unclear].
BW: And so after late Fifties through the Sixties
NH: Yes, that’s the Mid Sixties, the confrontation finished in ’66, well, that’s when I came back, I came back in June ’66, and the confrontation stopped just after that and then I came back to, oh, Scotland again, to, up to Buchan, is it Buchan?
US: Peterhead, yeah.
NH: Peterhead, yeah. Peter, yeah, Peterhead, Buchan. Onto a, well, there we are looking at, we are looking after, looking at Russian aircraft, that was the interesting part there was watching for the Bisons and what not coming out of the Russian bases up at, you know, beyond.
BW: Beyond Murmansk and.
NH: Beyond Murmansk, yeah. They’d come out into the Atlantic, they’d be picked up by the Norwegian radar and we would [unclear] them then to come down between the Iceland gap and the
BW: Faroe islands.
NH: Faroe islands, Shetlands, my memory is terrible, anyway we were waiting for them to come through, past the Iceland gap and they’d go out into the Atlantic while we had a flight of, what were they in those days, not the Javelins, what was after the Javelins? Hunters, Hunters? What were the ones before the Lightning? No, it was the Lightnings, the Lightnings, of course it was. Yeah, the Lightnings, we had Lightnings up at Kinloss, or Lossiemouth? Lossiemouth, they were up there on the and the Americans had Phantoms in Iceland so we would scramble when we, as soon as we saw these coming, being handed over, they were handed over to us by the Norwegians, we probably couldn’t see them then but then when we knew they were there and eventually they would appear on our radar and certain time after that we would scramble the fighters from Lossiemouth and the Phantoms from Reykjavik and at first the Lightnings didn’t have the range to get to them and very frustratingly they would turn back because of lack of fuel, the Phantoms would come on and make the interception and then come onto Scotland and land, but then when the Lightning Mark VI came in, we could make the interception properly and return. But that was quite interesting for a while because we also had radar up on top of the Faroes, right on top, no, not the Faroes, the Shetlands, right up on the top island, Saxa Vord, that’s, there’s a radar station up there, so there, that was a bit of an interest and then I was finally posted back to Germany and that, did my final tour in Germany on a NATO, on a NATO post. We had a German commandant then, Brigadier, German, he was, by that time the Germans had bene reconstituted but we had control of the fighter element, the Germans weren’t allowed to control, we were [unclear] of course for, to intercept the Russians in case there was any sort of attack but we had, but they had to have RAF controllers out there, the Germans, under all their constitutional rules weren’t allowed to do this so although they provided all the manning for it, we did the actual operating of the stand-by fighters, what did we have then? Lightnings, did we? Lightnings, yes, Lightnings, and they were at places like Laarbruch, Bruggen and somewhere else, there were three, Gutersloh, yes, we had the triangle of those three and then of course Monchengladbach.
BW: And so
NH: So I finished my tour there and made a lot of good friends, [unclear] we were Germans, Dutch, British and that very pleasant finished my career really, made some good friends who stayed friends right up till now, those who survived, even the Germans, the German commandant of the German regiment, he became, I still talk to him every week on the telephone [laughs]
BW: And so
NH: Oberst Wolfgang Ostermar
BW: Wolfgang Ostermar
NH: Wolfgang, yeah, we went on holidays together, became very close, you know.
BW: And is he a similar age to you?
NH: A year younger.
BW: So he’d been around the year, presumably in opposing forces when you [unclear]
NH: He was, he was, and he was taken prisoner by the Americans.
BW: Really? Did
NH: But he’s an Anglophile, speaks excellent English, same as his wife does. Did his training, of course he became a fighter controller but trained by us in Britain.
BW: Do you recall briefly what his wartime service was? Was he a pilot or a gunner or [unclear]?
NH: No, he was ground staff.
BW: Right. So there was no chance of him being
NH: When we’d been on holiday together, people made romantic conclusions, you know, a German and a British exile, sorry, good friends,
BW: But it wasn’t
NH: Not like that, no.
BW: And so you left the RAF and NATO
NH: Yeah.
BW: What was your civilian career, what did you, did you [unclear]?
NH: I enjoyed the last couple of years, I did a correspondence course which is organized by the service, my [unclear], what did I do?
US: Agency and business studies.
NH: Agency and business studies, that’s right, yes, and it was such an easy posting in Germany I was able to do this with a lot of enjoyment and I thought, well, I can go in human relations or something like that, I’m made for that and it meant a two week course in a [unclear] to start with, then about eighteen months correspondence, finishing up the six weeks again at Chelsea and we happened to be in the Chelsea barracks near the Chelsea officer’s mess but we were told, the Chelsea officer’s, the guards officers not the, not any ordinary mess it’s the guards officer’s mess and we were told very strictly we were not, we may be officers but we were not entitled to go into the guards officer’s mess [laughs].
BW: You mentioned before we started the interview you were security on the ton air project
NH: Well I, having got the H&C, I wrote lots and lots of letters people offering my services and I got reasonable replies from quite a number and I was offered several jobs, I eventually left the air force in November 1970 and I came up here, [unclear] they seemed puzzled as I, I wanted to come up here, why do you want to come up here then? [laughs] because I suppose hopefully you are going to offer me a job. So, they did in fact, I became assistant to the chief designer, they offered me two jobs actually, they offered me a job on Tornado cockpit which was still on the drawing board, I could have either be that job or be assistant to the chief designer, so I said, I’m not qualified to cock pit design work, so I think I better take the other one so I did that, which was quite a nice job, I learned a tremendous amount cause I worked in the main drawing office with him and got to know all the chaps and what they were doing and of course I say the Tornado was still on the drawing board it goes now in production but that was still very much a live product. And so I got to learn in eighteen months so I did that [unclear], I learned a lot and then the chap who is the chief security officer was an ex wing commander and I had, and he still, I want, I want to retire very soon, do you want to take my job over? So, that’s promotion anyway, so I did, I took, George Kennedy, wing commander George, he’d been an ex apprentice like me, but much earlier, and when he, well, I went and joined him as his assistant, first of all about eighteen months, two years, and then took over completely when he retired and that really was a splendid job because the Tornado was still not flying but it was full of classified information and working with the Germans and the Italians, our own Ministry of Defenses and who of course were very hard on us if we gave any information away it was all very and of course the Cold War was on, you know, and Munich we had plenty of Cold War suspects and [unclear] around Munich, eager to get hold of the information about the Tornado.
BW: And so, you were very limited about what you could and couldn’t say at the time.
NH: Oh yes, very much, yes, but it’s very, eventually I did get hold of because these technical people and engineers [unclear], the last thing they wanted to know was about is security, they want to show off their knowledge and they want to write papers and get their names noticed and things like that their ego, you know publicity, whereas we of course, the security side, wanted to restrict it, well, not because we ourselves wanted it, the Ministry of Defense, they provided the contracts and if we broke the rules, they would start threatening that there would be a loss of contract work. So that’s I, I managed to, because I had experience in aircraft all, you know, I think I was able to work all the people like flight test engineers, the flight crews, the [unclear] like Paul Millet, who is the chief test pilot at the time but he took over from, oh, famous wartime pilot, forgot the, I’ll get it in a minute, anyway I had a good time because I got on well with these people.
BW: And so, looking back at your career and the association you have with Bomber Command, how does it feel now looking back?
NH: Well, occupies my thoughts continuously cause I’m on my own now, I’ve been on my own for nearly elven years, it occupies a tremendous amount of time, I can’t read but I do have listening books which I enjoy and music but otherwise I, I have to use my own thoughts to pass the time and I do it a lot.
BW: And have you been able to keep in touch with progress in terms of the memorials to Bomber Command, how do you feel about the tributes and memorials that have been paid these days?
NH: Well, I love it and Dorothy and I went once to St Paul’s, that would be about, oh, about the year 2000, and I can’t even remember what it was for, is for, I know the chap who was the, oh gracious me, trying to remember, he was head of the air force, and he was also president of Bomber Command.
BW: The name that speaks to my mind are Paul Enteder.
NH: No, long after him, no, long after them.
BW: I see.
NH: He’s about my age.
BW: I see.
NH: Oh Gosh, anyway, we did go to this ceremony at St Paul’s cathedral, it be about three or four years before she died so, be about 2000 or something like that, we had a Lancaster flying over York, we all came out of the service and assembled on the steps, but what was the question?
BW: Have you been to Hyde Park memorial [unclear]?
NH: No, I’d like to, near the Green Park one, you mean?
BW:
NH: No, I haven’t, but I know of it and I and Tony Iveson , who was, this is how I did have a connection with, because he was in 4 Group the time as I was, and he led all the staff to make the memorial, he was on, I heard him on Desert island Discs, he’s dead now, but I couldn’t see it if I went I couldn’t see it.
BW: yeah.
NH: I used to, well, I am a member of the IMF club still but I haven’t’ ben there for three or four years.
BW: How do you, what are your thoughts about the memorial center that’s been set up in Lincoln, the International Bomber Command Center?
NH: I don’t know anything about it.
BW: They have now unveiled the memorial spire and the walls which have the names of all the fifty five thousand and something aircrew who were lost during the war and they are now building, or going to start building the Chadwick Center which will house documents, artifacts, there will be audio recordings as well such as this one, the digital
NH:
BW: That will be in the memorial center in Lincoln
NH: Is that a new purpose build
BW: It’s just outside, it’s on one of the hills outside of Lincoln.
NH: Oh! When is it going to be opened?
BW: The center should be opened later this year
NH: There will be a lot of publicity attached to that one. Pretty sure I can’t see much.
BW: I just wondered whether you’d be informed of it and today
NH: I haven’t been informed of it, I’d like to know about it but I can’t do, I can’t see it, so , you know, provided, I hope I shall hear about it.
BW: Well, I can post the details out to you and the information
NH: Right, yes,
BW: You know
NH: I’d like that. Because if I can’t read, Anthony can read it out to me.
BW: Yeah. So
NH: But I’m restricted in movement and everything else now, I don’t really want to go anywhere.
BW: I see. The, there aren’t any other questions that I have for you, are there any other particular recollections that may have come to mind you wish to talk about or else, anything else I may have missed?
NH: I’m sure there will be when you’re gone [laughs], I can’t, I think, oh, I’ve surprised myself [unclear]
BW: Well, it’s been very interesting to talk to you, you’ve given an awful lot of information
NH: Is it?
BW: [unclear] very happy with that.
NH: [unclear], I seen, I’m very happy with that. That’ll give me a better pleasure anyway.
BW: Thank you very much for your time.
NH: Ok.
BW: [unclear] 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 Neil Harris
Creator
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Brian Wright
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-01-28
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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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AHarrisNG160128
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:53:47 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
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Description
An account of the resource
Neil Harris wanted to join the RAF because he was looking for an exciting life experience and an opportunity for further education. He started as a flight mechanic before training as a pilot. Remembers being trained in different locations across the country, from Brighton to Kinloss, in Scotland. Mentions a particular night, when they took off late and had to catch up with the bomber stream. Flew with 48 and 578 Squadron. Shares his memories of D-Day, when he was targeting a gun battery in Northern France. Remembers his life after the war, when he was sent to Indonesia in the 60s during the Borneo confrontation.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Nuremberg
Scotland--Wick
France
France--Ver-Sur-Mer
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-06-05
1944-06-06
50 Squadron
578 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944)
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
fitter airframe
Gee
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Hudson
Lincoln
love and romance
Master Bomber
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
pilot
promotion
RAF Burn
RAF Halton
RAF Kinloss
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Rufforth
RAF Waddington
Tiger force
training
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/854/10859/AHandleyE-BushD171012.2.mp3
b71ce9edeabc2babe3b741dbd3632cf7
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Title
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Handley, Ivor
Ivor T Handley
I T Handley
Tommy Handley
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Eileen Handley and her twin brother Dennis Bush about Ivor 'Tommy' Handley (2205484 Royal Air Force), and a photograph and documents. Ivor Handley served on 626 Squadron at RAF Wickenby. His crew were lost on a post war operation to return troops from Italy. <br /><br /><span>Additional information about his crew is available via the </span><a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/103959/" title="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/madgett-hr/ ">IBCC Losses Database</a><span>.</span><br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Eileen Handley and Denis Bush and catalogued by Nigel Huckins
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-09-24
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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Handley, IT
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CH: This interview is being recorded for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Cathie Hewitt and the interviewees are Eileen Handley and Dennis Bush. Twin brother and sister. The interview is taking place at Eileen Handley’s home [buzz] Waddington on the 12th of October 2017. Also present are Elaine Brackenbury and Denise [Lorrey] Thank you very much Eileen and Dennis for agreeing to be interviewed. Perhaps you could, one of you could start off and give a little information of your background.
EH: Am I being interviewed?
CH: You are.
EH: Well, we were born in Waddington. We were born at Quakers Chapel which is in the centre of the village and then we moved down. I do believe the cottage wasn’t big enough because we were twins so mum and dad were given a council house and we moved down and lived down Mere Road in the council houses and had a very happy childhood. And we both grew up with no problems really I don’t think. And then we both left home didn’t we love when we were in our teens. Den went and did his National Service and I went and did my nurse training in Lancashire but we’ve always kept in touch with Waddington through our lives. And then after ten years of marriage from my own personal point of view I always wanted to come back to Lincolnshire and Waddo and we managed to come back when we’d been married just ten years. So we moved back on our tenth anniversary and we’ve been happy ever since.
CH: Can I just go back a little bit to when you were both children?
EH: Yeah.
CH: Tell me a little about your parents. What they did and growing up in the village.
EH: Yeah. My mum was a housewife wasn’t she, Den?
DB: Housewife. Yeah.
EH: A housewife and a good cook and a good mum and wife and everything as they were in them days and still are.
Other: Didn’t your dad work in the fields?
EH: Yeah. Dad —
DB: Dad was a farmworker.
EH: Farmworker.
Other: And then your dad passed away didn’t he in 1939.
DB: He passed away when we were nine year old.
Other: And your mum got remarried.
EH: Yeah.
Other: And it goes from there really doesn’t it?
EH: Yeah. Came down Mere Road.
Other: The war broke out then, didn’t it?
EH: Yeah.
CH: Where were you when war broke out?
EH: We lived down Mere Road. Number 9. We were still at school weren’t we and we had a quite —
DH: Yeah.
EH: A quiet upbringing but lots and lots of local friends.
CH: How about you Dennis?
DB: Yeah. Quite an eventful childhood really.
CH: Yeah.
DB: There was quite a lot of kiddies in the, in the row of council houses. And we kept ourselves really separate from —
EH: And we played down there didn’t we altogether. Good friendship.
DB: I’m sorry. I can’t hear you.
Other: She said all those children, you all played together.
EH: Yeah.
Other: With the children out of the road.
DB: Yes.
EH: We were all good friends.
DB: Yeah. Life changed when war was declared. I can remember standing outside the house one, and I think it was mother shouted out the window, ‘They’ve declared war.’
EH: Yeah.
DB: But life changed then. People started moving into the married quarters. There was only one row of married quarters I think in those days and builders and different personnel moving on to the camp. I can remember the Irish navies starting to build the runways and they used to attract us kids at night time because they used to stand in big groups playing pitch and toss.
EH: Yeah.
DB: And later on the Leicestershire Regiment, they moved into the married quarters that were there and they used to get a gang of us boys and they used to train us in military training. Rifle drill. Homemade rifles with bits of wood and yeah we had a good life really.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yes. Things developed later. We had paper rounds. I used to take papers especially on a Sunday morning on to the camp. There was gun emplacements. I used to go there and the soldiers manning the guns used to give us slab cakes and say, ‘Take them home to your mother.’
EH: You were lucky.
DB: Yeah.
EH: I used to go down the Station Road delivering papers and walk back up the hill.
DB: Yeah.
EH: Pushing me bike.
Other: You were lucky you had a bike.
EH: Yeah.
Other: When did the evacuees come to live with you?
EH: Den maybe remember more than me.
DB: Oh, I can’t remember. 1941. I can’t remember. About 1942 I would think. I can’t remember. You see we were only what? Eleven and twelve year old at that time. Didn’t take much notice of dates.
Other: No. But you remember what they were called didn’t you?
DB: Oh yeah. We, we had evacuees from Leeds.
EH: Leeds. Yeah.
DB: And they came and tried to take over the school [laughs] Used to try and make us play rugby which didn’t go down very well.
EH: Was there a lot of evacuees, Den?
DB: Yes. All over the village.
EH: Yeah. I can’t remember that. I know my mum had three or four.
DB: Three or four. The Millers. They came from Primrose Hill School in Leeds. And the eldest one was Eric Miller I think his name was. I can’t remember the girl’s name.
EH: No. I can’t.
DB: But it was a problem for mother because they were [pause] not wishing to decry them but they were from a slum area I think in Leeds.
EH: Yeah. They weren’t [pause] they were —
DB: They were unclean.
EH: They were unclean in comparison to what we were used to.
Other: They had nits.
EH: Nits in their hair. And they had beautiful long ringlets the two girls. I can’t remember their names and my mum cut them all short and I can see her now in the kitchen with a saucer of paraffin and perfume. Rubbing it in their hair to get rid of these nits.
DB: Yeah.
EH: Can you?
DB: Yeah.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Spent hours just with a nit comb.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Combing their hair. Yeah.
Other: Did they actually live with you?
DB: Yeah.
EH: And I was petrified that I’d get these nits.
Other: An extra four people in the house then.
EH: Yeah. I don’t know where they all slept.
DB: For some reason they didn’t stay long. I don’t know why.
EH: I don’t know why they didn’t stay long.
DB: I think their parents must have come.
EH: I can vaguely remember the parents arriving.
DB: Can you?
EH: Yeah. So maybe it was an amicable agreement that they wanted them home. I’m not sure but—
Other: I think a lot of evacuees went home fairly soon.
EH: Yeah.
Other: Because they couldn’t.
EH: Yeah.
Other: Live without them.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yes. I had a paper round and used to go on to the camp laden with Sunday papers. Big. Heavy as I could carry.
EH: I had a paper round as well love, didn’t I?
DB: Yeah. I worked for Mr Saxby in those days.
EH: No. I didn’t work for her.
DB: And the highlight of the Sunday morning then was to set up stall in the officer’s mess kitchen and then have a nice breakfast.
EH: Yeah. I bet it was.
DB: Yeah. Aye.
CH: What do you remember about the goings on RAF Waddington when you were that age?
EH: Not a lot.
DB: Well, as a group of kids we used to assemble at the bottom of Mere Road.
EH: Yeah.
DB: And look over the, well there was no hedge. You could walk on to the airfield if you wanted to.
EH: Boys and girls we all played together. And there was a, they were building the new gymnasium, weren’t they? Was it a gymnasium. And they had the seesaw.
DB: And they built the gym where, where the new houses are now.
EH: Yeah. And we used to go down and play on the seesaw, you know.
DB: I can’t remember that.
EH: All the RAF people accommodated us.
DB: We used to go to the bottom of Mere Road looking over the airfield.
EH: Yes.
DB: And count the planes taking off on bombing raids.
EH: And wave to them.
DB: And then the next morning when they were all coming in we could hear them coming in. We’d dash down there and see who was coming in and who was missing.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
EH: Spent hours down there waving them off.
DB: Yeah.
EH: Early evenings before bedtime.
DB: Yeah.
EH: That doesn’t seem long ago Den, does it?
DB: No. It only seems like yesterday really.
EH: Yeah.
DB: When you look back.
CH: Do you remember what type of aircraft they were?
DB: Yeah. They were Lancasters.
EH: Yeah.
DB: I can remember the old Hampdens when the war first started and they used to take off over the back of mum’s house.
EH: Yeah.
DB: That’s before the runways were built. Hampdens. Yeah. The disturbing feature about it was when planes crashed close by with [pause], there was one in particular at the corner of the Grantham, Mere Road.
EH: Yeah, there was —
DB: Grantham Road Mere Road Junction. Next to the radio shop. And that was —
EH: Where the doctor’s surgery is now.
DB: Yes. That was a bad crash.
EH: But we were all such good pals together, weren’t we?
DB: Yeah.
Other: Can you remember what it was like the day after the church had been bombed in the village?
DB: Yeah.
EH: Very sad.
DB: Yeah. We were taken.
EH: Very sombre. Very.
CH: What do you remember about that episode? About the church being bombed. Can you tell me the sequence of that?
DB: I can remember walking out to the roadway in the morning and —
EH: Seeing the —
DB: The first thing that took your sight as you looked towards the village was the church tower and it was gone.
EH: And the bell stood right on top of all the rubble. The church bell.
DB: Yeah. Later on we went down to the village to see what the effect was and there was rubbish all over the streets and buildings. Old cottages demolished and —
EH: And all, you know a lot of the neighbouring country lanes, village lanes with all the thatched roofed cottages were no longer there were they?
DB: Yeah.
EH: The rooves and that. And everybody helped one another.
CH: So when the bombing happened were you in a shelter?
DB: No. We were in bed.
EH: We were under the table. Well, we —
DB: Well, we were under, under the table. We didn’t go to the shelter.
EH: Yeah. We had a big dining table under the window and if the sirens went we got under the table and stayed there until the all clear.
DB: Yeah.
CH: So you heard the explosions did you?
DB: Well, I can’t –
EH: I can’t remember.
DB: I can’t remember the explosion.
EH: No.
DB: But we must have done.
EH: Yeah. We must have done. Must have been dozing under the table.
DB: Yeah.
EH: And there was one lady. One twenty one year old. My mum’s —
DB: Next door neighbour’s daughter.
EH: Next door neighbour’s daughter was killed.
DB: She was killed. She was sleeping at her grandmother’s house.
EH: With her grandma.
DB: In the village.
EH: She went to sleep with her grandma because grandma was poorly and she, and her grandma stayed downstairs because she was poorly and Eva went upstairs and she was the one that was killed. The only one.
DB: And that was a stone off the church.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Flew over and dropped through the roof of this cottage.
EH: Yeah. And she was the maid of the Reverend.
DB: Yeah.
EH: And lived in the Rectory and this particular evening she didn’t sleep at the Rectory. She went to her grandma’s. It’s just —
Other: One of those things.
EH: Yeah. And her parents lived next door to our mum and —
Other: It destroyed your school as well, didn’t it?
DB: Yes.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Well, it destroyed the school. We had to move to Bracebridge Heath.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Unfortunately. I never liked school. There was no score.
EH: Yeah.
Other: That’s where I get it from.
EH: I weren’t that brilliant.
CH: It was quite a journey you had to make then.
EH: To Bracebridge Heath.
DB: Yes. Yes.
EH: There was a school bus.
CH: Oh.
DB: We had. Yes. They had a school bus.
EH: And our headmaster was Mr Critchley was it?
DB: In the village.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yes.
CH: What else can you remember from the war time living in the village?
EH: Living in the village? As I say we were all good friends together and we had an old Village Hall on the hilltop. There’s two cottages there now. If you go down Tinkers Lane on to the hilltop on the right hand side there’s two nice stone cottages. That used to be the old Village Hall and we had lovely concert parties through the war.
DB: Yeah.
EH: And singalongs.
DB: War Weapons Week.
EH: Yeah. And lots and lots of, we used to go to Chapel and go to the village shop to spend our Saturday penny. If we, if we were lucky it was a sixpence. Can you remember Den?
DB: Yeah.
Other: What did you buy?
EH: Sweeties.
DB: Yes. We had black —
EH: Sweeties. And it was called Mrs Black’s Shop.
DB: Yes.
EH: And it’s called now Black’s Close because they built a lot of houses on the farmland. They were farmers and she had the shop. The sweetie shop. It was lovely.
DB: I can’t really think of much more.
EH: It was just camaraderie but as, as there was twenty odd houses down Mere Road, council houses and they all had children didn’t they Den?
DB: Yeah.
EH: There weren’t many that didn’t have. We all went to the same school and we all played together. There wasn’t the amount of traffic so you were quite safe to play in the road. Whip and top, and marbles and football and skipping. All the old fashioned —
DB: I can remember the VE Night. Victory. We had a bonfire at the, in the field where previously that aircraft had crashed.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Had a village bonfire.
EH: Yeah.
DB: And later that night. I think it was later that same evening or was it the evening after? I’m not quite sure but they had a Victory Dance in one of the hangars on the camp and we went down there.
EH: Oh, I can’t remember that. I might have been —
DB: Yeah. And as far as I can remember the hangars were all draped with flags. Air Force flags. You know the —
EH: Different squadrons.
DB: Yes.
Other: Was it for the whole village?
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. Yes, there were a lot of village folk invited to it. Yes.
EH: It was a nice —
DB: It was a nice celebration.
EH: A nice community life. It was lovely. I can never ever remember not having lots of friends you know. Not, some of them weren’t close friends but you always got on together. It was lovely. It was a lovely community spirit.
CH: Dennis, can I ask you how old were you when the war ended?
EH: World war ended —
DB: Nineteen forty —
EH: Seven? Six?
DB: Seven. I left school —
EH: Yeah.
DB: At fourteen. Fourteen or fifteen. Fourteen, I think.
EH: Well, I met Tommy in nineteen forty —
CH: Let’s ask Dennis, what did you, were you working then? When you left school, Dennis.
DB: When I left school at fourteen I went to work at Lincoln Co-op. Errand boy at first and then shop assistant.
CH: And where was that?
DB: High Street in Lincoln.
CH: How long did you stay there for?
DB: Til I was eighteen and I joined the Air Force as National Serviceman.
CH: When you came back from your National Service what did you do then?
DB: I joined the Railway Company at Lincoln Station. Became a signalman and stayed there forty, well stayed on the railway in Nottingham and various, Derby and places. Forty odd years. Forty five years I think.
CH: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
EH: And he went just like that.
DB: Yeah.
CH: And what about you, Eileen?
EH: I didn’t.
CH: When the war ended you were fourteen.
EH: Yeah. We, I left school on the Friday as we all did and I started work on the Monday at British Home Stores for a short space of time and then I found a better job at Marks and Spencer’s and I stayed there and left there to go and do my nurse training.
Other: You worked at St John’s.
EH: Yeah. Yeah. I left there and went to work at St John’s to begin with. And then I met my husband and he’d got a home station. He was in Bomber Command at Waddington.
CH: How did you meet him?
EH: Well, he flew from Wickenby and then he came to Waddington after the war. Well, he flew from Wickenby and lost his crew just after the war on the 7th of August as war finished on the 5th didn’t it? They went to bring some prisoners of war home from Italy. The crew. And Tommy being a rear gunner and the mid-upper gunner didn’t go with them and they flew in to the Pyrenees on the way there thankfully and they were all killed. So they’d no prisoners. And then Tommy got moved from Wickenby. That was in the August and he came to Waddington in the February and I met him at the village dance on Valentine’s Day 1946 or seven, I can’t remember. I was, and we, and we never never parted. We stayed together from there.
CH: How old were you?
EH: I told him I was seventeen and I weren’t quite sixteen. So I had to be honest after a while when it got a bit more serious. He forgive me [laughs]
CH: So was he then based at Waddington?
EH: He was, he was only at Waddington for a short space of time and then he decided he didn’t want to fly any more with a new skipper because he’d flown all through the war with the same crew. And he got the opportunity and he volunteered to go down to London to the Science Museum on gunnery display work and he stayed there a year. It was a year’s contract and he used to come back to Waddington every two, second weekend and stay with my mum and dad and then go back to London you know after the weekend. And then he got a home station after that to RAF Padgate and did drill instructing. And I wasn’t very happy doing my Psychiatric nursing although I did my first year and he said, ‘Come to Bolton and we can be near together.’ So I went. I met a lady, a good friend at Bracebridge Heath called Edith and she came to Lancashire with me because we were both in the same frame of mind and we stayed friends all our lives. And she died four years ago. Lived at Spilsby. Had three boys.
Other: When you moved to Lancashire you went to do your Psychiatric training there didn’t you?
EH: No. No.
Other: And they put you on General instead.
EH: Yeah. Well, we thought we’d applied for Psychiatric but it was General so we stayed there and we were so happy. And all my nursing career has been happy.
CH: How old were you when you got married?
EH: Twenty two. Nearly twenty three. 1951.
CH: Where were you living at the time?
EH: In the nurses home at Bolton. You weren’t allowed to live out. Did you know this? You weren’t allowed to live out as a student nurse in my day. It was only after you qualified that you could live at home or get a flat. And we, we qualified. Did our finals in the October of 1951 and we arranged our wedding day for the 3rd of November 1951. I always promised my mum I’d sit my finals but I didn’t say I’d wait for the results [laughs] So we got married while we were waiting for the results and thankfully I was successful. And we lived in Lancashire as I say for ten years and then moved back to Waddo. Here. Nineteen fifty —
Other: 1960.
EH: ’61.
Other: ’61.
EH: The 3rd of November. You were five.
Other: Not quite.
EH: Not quite. And Ian was nine.
DB: A lot of water gone under the bridge, hasn’t it?
EH: Yeah. I tell you why the final reason we came to Lincolnshire. Tommy had come out of the Forces and he was working in an insurance business. And in nineteen the late ‘40s the cotton mills, the coal mines they were all coming out on short time and he came home one night and he said, ‘It’s now or never sweetheart.’ ‘What do you mean?’ he said, ‘I know you’ve always, would have liked to have gone back to Lincoln’. I did. After Elaine was born I wanted to be back here. Funny isn’t it? And he said, ‘It’s now or never. We’ll go and move. We’ll put the house on the market and we’ll move because there will be no job for me in insurance if there’s no work for people. They’ll not pay their insurance.’ And we never regretted it.
CH: What job did he do?
EH: What? What here?
CH: Once you moved back here.
EH: Oh, he just went down the camp and got a job on the electrical department on the runways and he stayed there until he retired. And we were never more contented. And you worked at British Rail a long time and Tommy worked for the Department of Environment.
DB: Yeah. I went —
EH: Eh?
DB: I went from porter at Lincoln Central.
EH: Yeah.
DB: I wasn’t there a few weeks when I applied for a signalman’s post. I came to Waddington.
EH: Yeah. I can remember you being at Harmston.
DB: Aye. Then I went to Harmston. Bracebridge. Then I moved. Met my wife, moved to Nottingham and did all sorts on signalman. Was made redundant there. Went in the marshalling yard.
EH: Did you?
DB: Yeah. And then I eventually went back to a signal box and then got promotion to supervising station manager.
CH: Where did you meet your wife, Dennis?
EH: Skeg.
DB: Skegness.
EH: Skegness.
DB: After we came out —
EH: At the Ship Hotel.
DB: Pardon?
EH: Was it at the Ship Hotel?
DB: No. No. No. It was the posh car.
EH: Eh?
DB: My friend who lived in the village and I bought old cars. I had an old Austin 7. This was after I got demobbed. He bought an old Austin 7 and we used to, on a Sunday evening we used to go over to Skegness.
EH: I can remember.
DB: Well, a Sunday afternoon and stayed for the evening. And walking across the car park one evening I saw my wife and her friend with her brother and his brother’s wife, her brother’s wife and had a little bit of chit chat and met them later on in the evening and that was it.
EH: Yeah.
DB: I came home that night. She was on holiday. I plucked up courage and wrote to her and asked her if I could go over to Nottingham to meet her and that’s —
EH: Plucked up courage [laughs]
DB: How things developed.
EH: And you had a good life together love.
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
CH: How old were you when you got married?
DB: Twenty two I think.
EH: You were married the year after me and Tommy.
DB: Yeah. A few months after you and Tommy.
EH: Yeah. I was early pregnant.
DB: I met her. I met her in Nottingham in November and we were married the next March.
EH: Yeah.
Other: Really?
DB: I met her just before your wedding.
EH: We got, we got married in November love and you got married in the Easter.
DB: March.
EH: In the March.
DB: Yeah.
EH: Yeah. And we came home from Lancashire for your wedding and I just, just early pregnant.
CH: Yeah.
DB: Yes.
CH: It seems like both of you have been drawn back to Waddington all the time.
DB: It’s funny.
EH: It’s been a nice village.
DB: I think mum lived here all the time so —
EH: What love?
DB: Even though I lived in Nottingham from ’53 I think it was when I moved to Nottingham and we still came home as regular as we could. Yeah.
EH: Yeah. We’ve always come home.
DB: Yeah.
EH: Always used to spend a fortnight in the summer. September we always came home when we were married. And George, our step dad he used to come and meet me off the bus and helped me to carry the children down. Yeah. Good old days.
DB: Yeah.
CH: Eileen, what do you remember about Tommy’s service in the war?
EH: Service in the war? Well, I didn’t really know him, love. I didn’t meet him while he was still flying at Wickenby. I met him when he came to Waddington and he’d just lost the crew and he was a very very traumatised young twenty eight year old. Very very sad.
CH: Did you say he was a bomb aimer?
EH: No. He was a rear gunner.
CH: A rear gunner. Did he talk much about the war?
EH: He did to my son, our son. Yeah. No, he didn’t used to talk a lot about the war. He never forgot the crew. They were a family. The crew’s photograph is on the wall over the sideboard. Never took it down. And we still keep in touch with the, there was only one of the crew married and they had only been married a very short few months when her husband was killed. And we got in touch with her in later years and we still keep in touch, Cath and I don’t we?
Other: Yeah. You do.
CH: So he’d flown with the same crew then all through the war.
EH: All through the war and he never settled when he came to Waddington. That’s why he went to, to do gunnery display work. He enjoyed it in London. He said it was a fantastic career.
Other: When he was at the Science Museum.
EH: Yeah.
Other: He had to go into a locked room didn’t he?
EH: Yeah.
Other: And somebody came to see it. He had to open the door for them.
EH: Yeah.
Other: Who was it?
EH: Was it Anthony Eden? Eh?
Other: Yeah.
EH: Yeah.
Other: And I don’t know what was in this room. It was some German equipment that had been captured.
EH: And Anthony Eden said to him, ‘How did we win the war?’ He said, ‘Because their gunnery is far superior to what we’ve ever had.’ He reminisced occasionally but —
Other: He didn’t tell very much.
EH: Eh?
Other: He didn’t tell you very much.
EH: No. He didn’t.
Other: But I do remember that.
EH: I think he did to Ian occasionally. Ian will come out with snippets every so often. ‘My dad told me this.’ To be quite honest ducky, I’ll be honest with you now we were always busy at work, you know. We didn’t, we worked forty eight hour week didn’t we Den?
DB: Yeah.
EH: With overtime. I mean our hourly weekly work was forty eight hours. And then we’d work overtime to earn a bit extra. Especially Tommy and the men. So you didn’t have time for a lot of reminiscing.
DB: Yeah.
EH: Did you?
DB: No. It’s strange. There was a lot happened that you just can’t remember.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
Other: Your auntie and uncle lived in one of the cottages.
EH: Yeah.
Other: Down Church Lane, didn’t they?
EH: Yeah.
Other: That was bombed.
EH: Yeah. She went, they went to, they came to live with mum and dad actually for a short space of time after they were bombed out. And then they got a council house at Washingborough, didn’t they?
DB: No. They went in a cottage at Washingborough.
EH: You what, love?
DB: They went in a little cottage in Washingborough.
EH: Yeah. And then they got [pause] yeah they did. They’ve been passed away a long time haven’t they?
DB: Yes.
EH: Yeah.
Other: And you used to play with their boys didn’t you?
EH: Yeah. Harry and John. They’re all dead now. Makes us feel very fortunate, Den.
DB: Yeah.
EH: Eh?
DB: Yeah. Yeah. I told Denise I’m not getting old.
EH: Eh?
DB: I told Denise I’m not getting old.
EH: I know. You try not to. Have we been of any help?
CH: Very much. Could I just take you back again to the wartime and any other recollections you have of what happened on the station at Waddington?
DB: Well, often there was air raids and you knew things were happening on the camp but you never got —
EH: It was —
DB: Immediate information that there were occasions when there were WAAFs and airmen killed in an air raid shelter but we never got information about that sort of thing.
EH: No. It was very very quiet. It was very very what’s the word I’m after?
DB: Although we lived in in the boundaries of the camp.
EH: We didn’t know what was —
DB: The council houses were in the boundaries. We had to go through a guarded barrier to get home in the evening and that sort of thing.
EH: We weren’t allowed on ad lib, you know.
DB: So —
EH: Like two communities really, weren’t it?
DB: Yeah. News from, bearing in mind we were only kids, teenagers we didn’t get a lot of news off the camp. The only things I remember was when I was on my paper round and and when the early in the war when the Royal Engineers or Leicestershire Regiment I think it was used to drill us with their home made guns. So first hand information of what was happening in the war and that we didn’t really get to know that at all.
CH: It must have been very noisy.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. Made a lot of noise but —
EH: It was part of —
DB: You lived with it. It was like part of living —
EH: It was part of daily living. We didn’t notice it.
DB: Yeah. You lived with it.
Other: A bit like now.
EH: Eh?
Other: A bit like now.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. You’re so close to it you don’t take notice of it do you?
[recording paused]
CH: Ok.
DB: Yeah. There was one occasion and for some reason or other I think it was a Saturday morning because we weren’t at school and there was a low flying German plane flew over by George’s Café firing its guns. Now, who it was firing at I’ve no idea but that was a scary moment. I mean as far as I can remember I was in mother’s garden and George’s Café was what —?
EH: George’s Café.
DB: Five minutes’ walk down the road, wasn’t it?
EH: Yeah, it’s just on the right hand side down Mere Road before you get to the barrier where you have to —
Other: Go through on to camp.
EH: Go through on to camp. Used to be George’s Café.
DB: I can also remember a Wellington bomber crashing on the sewerage farm on the High Dyke. Can you remember that?
EH: I can. Vaguely.
DB: Yeah. But like I was saying before we got no information of that sort of thing. Nothing appeared in the newspapers or anything like that about crashes. You just took notice of them at the time and as as kids after the crashes were cleared up we used to go and search for pieces of the glass. What did they call the glass?
Other: Perspex.
DB: Perspex.
EH: Yeah.
DB: And make rings out of them. Yeah.
CH: When the planes crashed did the people from the station come quite quickly to clear away?
EH: I can’t remember.
DB: I can’t remember. When the crash was tucked away it was quite horrendous. Machine gun bullets going off and all sorts in the fire. Yeah. And strange as it may seem the one that crashed near the Wheatsheaf at Waddington that was the site where they had the Victory Bonfire. Yeah.
EH: Yeah. It’s a long time ago love.
DB: Yeah, it is. You see. We didn’t take a lot of notice as teenagers. We were searching for —
EH: You were searching for love life and good fun. We did have a good teenage life though.
DB: And we spent a lot of time in the village after the Blitz. After the bomb. And it was a landmine that dropped on the church actually.
EH: Yeah.
DB: One on the church. One in the vicarage grounds.
EH: Yeah.
DB: You spend a lot of time in the bombed cottages and that as kids would you know.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
EH: We used to, well simple pleasures of life your life in them days you know. We’d go tad poling in the village pond. Can you remember? [laughs] And things like that you know. Innocent. Just innocent camaraderie with your mates. Somebody would go to Black’s shop and buy some goodies and hopefully you’d get one when they come back. Yeah.
Other: Did you have pigs down the garden during the war as well?
EH: You what love?
Other: Did you have your pigs down in the garden?
DB: No.
Other: During the war.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Chickens.
EH: Chickens.
DB: We didn’t have pigs until I came out the Air Force.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Nineteen forty —
EH: We always had chickens, didn’t we?
DB: 1949.
EH: Yeah. I hope we’ve been of some use.
CH: You were talking about chickens. Do you remember the sort of food that you were eating?
EH: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. We never really went short of a lot of food.
EH: Potato peeling.
DB: Mum was always.
Other: That was the chickens.
EH: Yeah.
DB: We had a big garden. She always had plenty of chickens up the garden and you know if we had no Sunday dinner she’d send dad up the garden to kill a chicken and that sort of thing.
Other: You always used to tell me that you ate quite well because you were living in a village. In a rural area with plenty.
EH: We never went hungry.
DB: No. We never went hungry. Like I say when I delivered papers —
EH: I was just going to say that too.
DB: To the gun emplacement on the camp that the soldiers used to provide me with slabs of cake. ‘Take those home to your mother.’ You know. And they’d last us a week or more.
EH: And we used to deliver papers. I often think about this. In the early morning my mother always had a lovely breakfast ready for us before we went to school. And it must have cost her more money to cook that breakfast than what we got for delivering papers.
DB: Yeah. I can’t remember much about that.
EH: Yeah.
DB: But —
CH: What did she cook you?
EH: All kinds of things. A fried breakfast. A bit of sausage. A bit of bacon buttie, you know. A boiled egg, scrambled eggs. You see we always had our chickens so we had —
DB: Yeah.
EH: Our own eggs.
DB: We were brought up on eggs I think.
EH: Yeah. You know.
DB: None. Now none of my kids eat them.
EH: Do they not?
DB: No. No.
EH: I need some eggs before you go away.
Other: Go on holiday. Right.
CH: So you said your father died when you were nine.
DB: Yeah.
CH: And so how long was your mother on her own for?
EH: Only a year.
DB: A year. She —
Other: Needs must.
DB: She married the lodger.
EH: My dad was, my stepdad was a lodger. He was a Newcastle gentleman.
DB: Yeah. He worked on the camp.
EH: He worked —
DB: Building the hangars and then he joined the, he was a warden on the camp. I don’t know what the organisation was called. He was at the wireless station up beyond the camp on Waddington Heath.
EH: Yeah.
DB: Wasn’t he?
EH: Yeah. We have a stepbrother. He lives in Doncaster. We’re very close. We’ve never had any —
DB: No.
EH: Any family hiccups. Stepbrothers, or twin brothers they were both as adorable, you know. No differences in opinions of any of them.
Other: You had to get by didn’t you because there was no money in the house.
DB: No.
Other: Was there mum?
EH: No.
DB: I can’t think of anything else really.
EH: I can remember once going to Mrs Black’s shop with a sixpence on a Saturday and I lost it in the snow and I can never remember finding that tanner and I didn’t get any sweeties. My dad hadn’t got any more pennies. Yes. Things like that you know that you think oh you’d give them another tanner today [laughs] It wouldn’t be a tanner would it? [laughs]
Other: No.
EH: Is that a mark on the carpet?
Other: No. No. It’s not.
[recording paused]
EH: Can you —
CH: Ok.
Other: I can remember because —
EH: Yeah.
Other: When we came back off holiday we bought dad a video of the Eagle’s Nest.
EH: Yeah.
Other: Because we’d been up.
EH: Yeah.
Other: And he told me that he’d been over there.
EH: Yeah.
Other: On a bombing raid to bomb it but unfortunately it was too cloudy.
EH: Yeah. I can remember that.
Other: So he had to, well he was going to bomb Eagle’s Nest.
EH: Yeah.
Other: Which was Hitler’s secret.
EH: Yeah. Yeah. I can remember that.
Other: Yeah.
EH: Yeah. I can remember now you’ve talked —
Other: So, it didn’t get bombed. Not that night anyway.
EH: Yeah.
Other: Yeah. But that’s the only thing he ever really did tell me.
EH: A lot of them didn’t talk about it did they?
DB: No.
DB: That’s I would say. We didn’t really get a lot of news from the camp.
EH: No.
DB: What was going off in the war. You, you’d just listen to the radio and think well that —
EH: Yeah.
DB: That’s where they were going last night when they took off.
EH: Yeah.
DB: And that sort of thing.
EH: It was top secret really.
DB: But —
EH: Can I not get anyone a drink?
DB: No. I’m alright duck, thanks.
CH: Ok. What we’ll do is we’ll end the interview there, Eileen.
EH: Yeah.
CH: And Dennis. Thank you so much for talking. It’s been fascinating listening to your stories and thank you very much.
EH: You’re welcome.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Eileen Handley and Dennis Bush
Creator
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Cathie Hewitt
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-10-12
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHandleyE-BushD171012
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Format
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00:49:30 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Twins, Eileen and Dennis, were born in Waddington in 1929. They give a detailed account of their experiences living adjacent to RAF Waddington throughout the Second World War. Summer evenings were spent waving to aircraft departing on operations, then going back in the morning to count how many had returned. Evacuees arrived from Leeds and three were billeted with Eileen and Dennis, but it wasn’t long before their parents came to take them home. Dennis delivered newspapers to the camp and would be rewarded by cakes which he was told to take home to his mother. Several aircraft crashes were witnessed. The sombre mood of the village is described after the church was bombed, which resulted in the death of a twenty-one-year-old resident. Their school was also destroyed, resulting in transporting each day to nearby villages. VE night was celebrated with a bonfire on the site of one of the aircraft crashes, which was followed by a dance in one of the aircraft hangars. Dennis joined the RAF in 1947 for his National Service, and upon discharge, became a signalman. Eileen initially worked as a shop assistant before undertaking a career in nursing. She met and married an ex-Lancaster rear gunner, who was posted to RAF Waddington after the war.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
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1941-05-09
bombing
crash
evacuation
home front
RAF Waddington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/815/10796/AFairweatherF170130.1.mp3
33bb72f1f6e536e97fe00f823c32010a
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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Fairweather, Freda
F Fairweather
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Freda Fairweather (b. 1923). She was employed by Avro.
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
2017-01-30
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Fairweather, F
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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HD: This is Helen Durham interviewing Mrs Freda Fairweather on Monday the 30th January, 2017. [Beep]. Freda, thank you ever so much for giving us an interview, thank you.
FF: Yeah, that’s it, yes.
HD: Could you tell me a little bit about yourself before the war? Did you come from a big family?
FF: No, I worked at some iron works, [unclear] iron works, it’s closed now, I used to do a lot of [unclear] there, I was a bit younger then.
HD: Yes, how old were you then?
FF: I should think about twenty-four.
HD: Twenty-four, and how old were you when the war broke out? How old were you?
FF: Oh, I can’t remember duck.
HD: Yeah?
FF: No, I can’t remember.
HD: Ok, so where were you living?
FF: I lived in a village called Bassingham, near Newark.
HD: And you went to work for where?
FF: I went to work in a bakery. A bakery there making the cakes and the bread, but I was a lot younger then.
HD: Yeah, and can you tell me about when you got involved with bomber command?
FF: In what?
HD: When did you get involved with bomber command?
FF: When you was- If you was young and not [unclear] you got called up to do some war work and they sent me to Avro's, which I enjoyed.
HD: Yeah. What did you do?
FF: Used a hammer and chisel and the nuts and bolts, and we used to clean the perspex in the, in the- Where the pilots used to look out, they would clean all the perspex.
HD: So did you go into the planes?
FF: Pardon?
HD: You went actually into the plane?
FF: Went up in the Lancaster.
HD: Did you?
FF: I had chance to go, ‘cause I'd been there a good long while and they let me have a- I went up a bit, I can’t say I liked it though.
HD: Why didn’t you like it?
FF: Well, it’s a bit- You got to be feeling fit and well I also suffer with bad- Had bad head at the time.
HD: Yeah. So, what was your job when you went to the Lancasters?
FF: Doing- Taking all the wings off, taking the nuts and bolts and that along the wings and they were all round and when you got all that done you could lift the top off and the-
HD: And how many hours a week did you work?
FF: Oh I can’t remember duck, ‘bout twenty-four hours, more.
HD: Yeah, and were there any specific times that anything happened, any special times, or something that you remember, that was different?
FF: We used to get a lot of, what you call ‘em, shooting in the air with special ep[?] guns-
HD: Right, yeah.
FF: Yes, it’s a long while ago though. I did me share.
HD: And how long did you do this for?
FF: Pardon?
HD: How many years did you do this for?
FF: About four-and-a-half, then I got married then.
HD: Right, yeah, and did you meet any of the pilots or the crew?
FF: Yes, we used to talk to them, they used to tell ‘em where what's, when they went over Germany to do the bombing, their special planes, special bombers, when they used to bomb a certain part in the war over Germany ‘cause it was Germany was the trouble.
HD: It was a very dangerous job?
FF: It was for the pilots. But we had to work because I wasn’t married then and you had to work then.
HD: So did you clean the inside of the Lancasters?
FF: Yeah, yeah. Used to do nuts and- Used to have special box spanners ‘cause I was used to that being [?] and having two brothers, box spanners twist the- turn and loosen the screws and let the tin come up?
HD: And why did they take the wings off?
FF: ‘Cause they wanted new ones putting on and they were getting old.
HD: And did you find anything unusual?
FF: Well once found an end of a thumb that had got cut off by like that, I always remember that. Used to see where the, the blood had [unclear] upon the, what they called, top of the- Inside the airplanes, you used to get a lot of blood and things. It’s such a long while ago I can’t remember a lot.
HD: Did you find it upsetting?
FF: No, I didn’t. I’d had a hard life myself, I'd worked on the land and in the factories, I used to make- Do all sorts of things. It’s a long while ago I can’t remember a lot, but I used to use box spanners and- I had my own toolbox, with my name on it, with my spanners and screwdrivers and things, I left it there though when I left, I left it there.
HD: And was it always ladies that you worked with?
FF: No there was men and young lads. There’s two very clever, clever lads that worked there. They’re very, very clever. ‘Course it was different in them times want it, yeah. If I hadn’t of been married- When they got- I was just about to get married.
HD: So you had to leave?
FF: Yeah.
HD: Because you were getting married?
FF: Yes. It was a long while ago, you can’t remember can ya?
HD: So what time in the morning did you start?
FF: Half-past-seven. We used to go on shifts, that was half-past seven till half-past two and then the next shift come on, half-past two till half-past nine at night. They were long hours.
HD: And was there a night shift?
FF: Pardon?
HD: Was there a night shift?
FF: Yes, night and the day shift. I worked most nights there.
HD: Did you find you were busier at night?
FF: Not really, no. [unclear] more the beginning and end, and they didn’t need to materialise[?].
HD: So which year was it that you were very busy?
FF: About 1944 ‘cause the war started at 19- What year did the war start?
HD: ‘39
FF: Oh ‘39, yeah. I’ve been there a long while love, but I worked a bit beforehand. You can’t help growing old that’s the trouble 'int it.
HD: And did you still live in Bassingham at this time?
FF: You what?
HD: Did you still live in Bassingham?
FF: No I lived at North Hykeham. My mother had a small holding there, and she used to rear chickens and things like that, it was quite nice, it was big old farm house, but it’s going back a long while like, I can’t remember.
HD: Did you ever, when you went to work, ever feel frightened that something might go wrong or there might be an accident?
FF: You didn’t- Too young to bother or to understand or, youse too young to bother. I used to get a lift to work in a- On one of those, what do you call them? I can’t remember, I’m a little- Tram car things? I used to get a lift to work on that. It’s a long while ago though duck, you just can’t remember can ya. I did my bit and I'm satisfied now, I just wish I was a bit younger.
HD: Yes, and how many were in your crew? In your team?
FF: Used to be the pilot and the co-pilot and two air gunners and a rear gunner at the back, so he could- At the back he could see the airplanes and then he could shoot at them then. There’s wonderful plane them Lancasters, I know they all said it, without them they would never of won the war. They were so agile and that, easy get up and down. It’s a long while ago though, you can’t remember can ya?
HD: And, when you went to work and you went to the Lancasters, did you go on your own or were you in a team of people?
FF: No, I went on the bus, couldn’t of gone by car in them days, had to go on the bus, but I had a bicycle and on afternoons I used to go on my bike, we used to make afternoon shifts. I used to go on my bike there.
HD: And you had a team with you, did you when you were at the Lancaster? Was there a team of you, was it just you on your own? Working?
FF: Yes, yes. It’s a long while ago duck, all I know it was the Lancasters that won the war. They were so well made and active and easy to get up and down off the floor.
HD: So you saw them taking off and landing?
FF: Yes. I once went up with an old Manchester airplane. The old aeroplane called the Manchester, it was a two-engine, one each side, it was a very old plane. Me and another girl we had chance to get up and chance to get up, she was only young then and didn’t see no danger.
HD: Did you enjoy it?
FF: Yes, I’ve had a good life, had a good husband, I've got two good daughters, I've no sisters left living now, no sisters left living.
HD: And did you have a lot of friends who worked with you at Avro's?
FF: Yes, oh we used to get- Make our own amusements, I used to play the accordion and then one young man used to play- He was very good on the mouth organ, you used to get these mouth organs where you can press in and out on each side, get different tune. I was brought up in a musical family. I just wish I was a bit younger to do it again.
HD: So was your husband in the RAF, or had a connection with bomber command?
FF: He was in the army, he got called up, he was in the royal army service corps, he was driving jeeps, them jeeps about up at- Where, I can’t think, Northumberland, yes. It’s a long while ago I can’t remember a lot more.
HD: That’s fine.
FF: But if you were single, you had to go to work. I enjoyed it though, before that I worked at Boots, the chemist, on the chemist counter, at there but then that was called not a special job, you had to do something more, bit better, bit more war worthy.
HD: And did you get a lot of training?
FF: Yeah, up and down the plane, on the wings and once sat on the wings and the airplane started to take off.
HD: And you were on the wing?
FF: Yes, but they soon found out and they stopped the plane. See I was so agile then, I was young and fit. I could jump off the plane, off the wings and-
HD: That was a near escape, wasn’t it?
FF: It was yes. If you were single you had to work, and I was single then you see.
HD: Is there any special memory you have of working at Avro?
FF: Well, we saw one crash, it was a four-engine bomber, a Lancaster and he crashed when it come to the ground cause his engine failed, and it couldn’t get stopped it just crashed to the ground. But the pilot and the co-pilot they had an, what you call ‘em? what you call ‘em? A parachute and they got out before it crashed. I always remember that cause I wasn’t very old then
HD: No, whereabouts did it crash?
FF: At Waddington, just outside, just outside the aerodrome. It nearly got home before it crashed, I always remember that.
HD: That must’ve been quite frightening to see that?
FF: Yes. It’s going back a bit though ‘int it?
HD: It is, yeah, and did all the crew survive?
FF: Pardon?
HD: Did all the crew survive?
FF: Yes, they did in that one but I saw a lot didn’t survive, we saw a lot come to the ground that didn’t survive.
HD: So, you saw quite a few Lancasters crash then?
FF: Yeah, they had Lancasters some there near Swinderby near Newark, some of the Lancasters there, we used to go there on the army bus to get there. I’ve seen them with the life, but I all say it was the best made plane, they were strong and they were light. They did a good job. A lot didn’t come back, that’s the trouble, a lot of the soldiers didn’t come back. Two of the soldiers which my husband worked with that, where was it? near London, they never came back, they turned funny in the airplane, turned, had dizzy and that and they never survived. But I've done my share, worked on the Lancasters and that and done my share, cleaning the mirrors so the pilot could see and that.
HD: So did you clean the inside and the outside?
FF: Yes, well right in the front where the pilots looked out ‘cause there were two pilots you see, there was co- What you call a co-pilot in case one just felt queer, didn’t- The other one took over. I - They were wonderful aeroplanes and I’m always proud that I worked on the. But you can’t turn the clock back can ya duck, you’ve got to carry on haven’t ya?
HD: So you- When did you finish working for Avro?
FF: Well, I worked at Boots for a long while, then they found out I was young enough to, young enough to go on aerodrome, you see, they got younger people, in the shops, I worked at Boots about two year and I got sent because I was a bit older, I got sent on the Lancasters, but I enjoyed it though, and they all say it was the Lancaster that won the war and the Spitfires.
HD: How long did you work on the Lancasters?
FF: ‘Bout two year. I had a bit of a rash came on me though, on me arm, on me legs so I had to stop off. I didn’t stop off work but I didn’t fly, I went to work on the bottom on the, what they call, air ground, on the ground.
HD: Why did you get a rash? Was it something from the plane?
FF: It was something in the materials you used to clean and use, it was a special sort of stuff but I, it, it all went though ‘cause again this is special stuff ‘cause I was so young then I didn’t know what was happening to me.
HD: And so you worked at Waddington, which other-
FF: Yes, and we went down to Swinderby a bit. Swinderby was a bit open air, very open air, open spaces, it was a lovely aerodrome though, clever pilots that used them planes, I shall always remember long I live them pilots, they were brave ‘cause they knew that one of them went up there they might not come back. But we did all we could to help them and save them.
HD: I should think you were a great support?
FF: Pardon?
HD: You would be a great support for them?
FF: Yes, yes, well I was pretty strong then, I was- ‘Cause we were working down the land I got muscles, good and strong then. But you can’t, you can’t keep young forever can ya, no.
HD: So did you live at home in Bracebridge- In North Hykeham?
FF: Yeah I lived at home, yes ‘cause mother had a big farm house there, there was five bedrooms.
HD: You never lived on the stations then?
FF: We did from- We did some weeks, we did, when there was a lates, we used to be able to stop on there at night and it was- We had like a little long bed with just top [unclear].
HD: Were you in dormitory's?
FF: You what?
HD: Were you in a dormitory, sleeping with others?
FF: No we were on the aerodrome itself on in- Because the aeroplane, the hangar was built- Big hangars and there was room for aeroplanes in there.
HD: And you slept in the hangars?
FF: Yes. I saw, I’ve done my bit in the war. I’m glad, I'm glad we won the war, it took a long time though. Took troops from other countries to help us. I want very old then I were only about seventeen, but I was fit and I could use hammer and chisel, nuts and bolts.
HD: You were tough?
FF: Yes. It’s going back a long while duck, it makes you feel sad when you think about it. We had- I made good friends with the girls, good lasses, they were clever as well, they were tough, they could handle spanners and things like that and the box spanners.
HD: So what did you do for social times? To go out socially?
FF: There used to be a pub across the road called the John Bull, it was a big pub it had a big room, extra room like and we used to go across there and have a glass of shandy and sit down have a bit, and a sandwich.
HD: You had quite a crowd of friends then?
FF: Yes, we all stuck together. I lost touch with a lot of them though when I come-
HD: You used to play the piano, did you?
FF: Yes I played by ear, I used to play in the school in the morning, what you call it? In the morning when you first start.
HD: The assembly?
FF: Yes, I used to play the piano for the hymns, ‘There is a Green Hill Far Away,’ and all them they were quite easy, I was born to be musical, I played the mouth organ as well.
HD: So when you worked for Avro, did you ever have a chance to play the piano with your friends and-?
FF: I didn’t after I left ‘cause we had a very old piano in the old farm house, and when nobody wanted it so mother got somebody to move it to my house, that was at North Hykeham, near the [unclear] iron works, yes. Happy days but the, without the- The Lancasters were the one plane that were used most in the war ‘cause they were so agile, they took off the ground ever so easy
HD: They made a lot of noise?
FF: They did when they got up in the air, when the revved up they made a big noise.
HD: Yeah, and you used to watch them going off?
FF: Yes, and sometimes never saw them come back. But there were so many of them you see, young fellas that was called up. You can’t help growing old like, can you, that’s the trouble can ya? No.
HD: Is there anything else you want to tell me about your work on the Lancasters?
FF: Once we were working on the aerodrome, we was outside cleaning the perspex and putting new screws in the perspex that had come loose, and an aeroplane crashed so we ran, it was an old-fashioned Manchester plane, called Manchester, big heavy plane.
HD: Were you nearby?
FF: They took them off the- Out the air ‘cause they were so heavy they couldn’t keep up.
HD: Were you nearby, were you?
FF: You what?
HD: Were you nearby the crash?
FF: No- We had an aeroplane crashed on our little farm, where me mother lived, come down in the field, near the pond, just near the pond.
HD: And that was a British plane?
FF: Yeah, it was happy days though, there weren’t nothing to fright- We lived in the country but they was nothing to frighten you much, you just went out with your dog and that, and nobody would hurt ya.
HD: So you never felt frightened?
FF: No, I always felt happy when I got my dog with me, called him Ranger, he was a Red Setter, they’re gun dogs they are, they- If a plane crashed they- The first [unclear] on the plane, to the plane to pick anything out, what they call them? I can’t think what they call them, the- The aeroplane things, I can’t think what they call them, the Manchester's- There was Manchester's and the Lancasters, but the Manchester it got grounded ‘cause it was found out it couldn’t- It was too heavy to fly. It couldn’t get off the ground, it did go out for quite a lot of times but then it crashed. They were happy days though in them days, and you didn’t fall out like you do today, no. You can’t turn the clock back can ya duck?
HD: You can’t.
FF: And that’s me oldest daughter, you’re not doing bad are ya?
Other: Not too bad [laughs], keep trying.
HD: So when you finished at Avro, you got married-
FF: Not straight away. I went to work on a poultry farm at our village, it was a very well to do poultry farm, they were very well to do and their special chickens and things like that, they were very wealthy people and they had a lovely home and big dining room, used to allow me and me sister to go in the dining room and have a bit of dinner they did.
HD: So what was it like being a civilian in the war?
FF: Well you felt more better ‘cause I had a good home and a good husband.
HD: And were you rationed with food?
FF: Yeah we still rationed yes, but we were lucky we had our own chickens and our own pig you see. We had two pigs and chickens, and a goat. The goat used to eat all the- It would keep the edges and that down, edges round about. It’s such a long while ago duck I can’t- I mean to talk about.
HD: How do you feel about it all now?
FF: Pardon?
HD: How do you feel about it now? Does it make you quite sad?
FF: I forgot all about it duck ‘cause me life's changed, changed altogether. See I’m in this home and I can’t do a lot, I'm quite happy here though, I’ve got a good bed. You can’t be at home forever can ya?
HD: Yeah, well it’s really interesting what you’ve told us, thank you very much.
FF: Pardon?
HD: Very interesting what you’ve told us, thank you.
FF: Oh yes it was duck, course they were right from the start, it was the Lancaster bombers that won the war, they were specially made and they were very strong planes and there’s- they had special guns where they could shoot down on the ground with the guns, I went in on one. I wouldn’t like to do it again though.
HD: No, what was it like when you went into the plane, when it had got back?
FF: Well, it felt a bit strange, awful smell of petrol that you got, no windows you see for the smell to go out. But there was a wonderful, wonderful plane, I'm always glad I worked on them. I just wish I was a bit younger duck. I’m ninety-four, I think.
HD: You’re doing very well.
FF: Yeah, I'm not bad, am I?
HD: So, was there a favourite moment in your job whilst you were working with Avro, what was your favourite part of the job?
FF: I think when we had a break in the middle of the night, when I was on nights, I always had an hours break and we used to be able to wonder round and see what, different things. It’s such a long while ago duck, I can’t remember such a lot about it.
HD: What did you see, can you remember?
FF: Pardon?
HD: What did you see when you had your hours break?
FF: I think we used to go on the airfield, walk on the airfield when there’s no aeroplanes there, we used to walk on the aeroplanes, round the ground at Waddington, yeah, Waddington was one of the biggest camps.
HD: Yes, well thank you ever so much for giving us this interview, thank you, it’s been very kind of you.
FF: Yes, it’s been a pleasure. I still have happy memories of- Had a good marriage.
HD: Ok.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Freda Fairweather
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Helen Durham
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-01-30
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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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AFairweatherF170130
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Pending review
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00:31:35 audio recording
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eng
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Civilian
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Description
An account of the resource
During the war, Freda Fairweather was called up to work for Avro’s and worked on Lancasters at RAF Waddington and RAF Swinderby. She describes cleaning the perspex windows and using her own box spanners to remove aircraft wings. She recollects flying on a Manchester and Lancaster, witnessing multiple crashes and an aircraft nearly taking off with her on the wing. She also recalls socialising with her friends and reflects on her war work with much pride.
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Tilly Foster
Temporal Coverage
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1944
crash
ground personnel
hangar
home front
Lancaster
Manchester
RAF Swinderby
RAF Waddington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/800/10781/ADellowJA170617.2.mp3
643b36b0ab4c85a5824d3d83a5adba37
Dublin Core
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Title
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Dellow, James Albert
Dellow, Jim Albert
J A Dellow
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant James Albert Dellow (1921, 13918226, 171266 Royal Air Force) his log books and note books. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 44 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by James Dellow and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-06-17
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.
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Dellow, JA
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DB: This is Denise Boneham and today I am talking to James Albert Dellow in his home at Icklingham in Suffolk. Today’s date is the 17th of the 6th 2017 and it is currently 11.10 hours.
JD: When war was declared in September 1939, I’d reached the age of eighteen years and we had to report to a government office where my name was recorded. Here we were asked to tell which branch of the armed forces we hoped to join. We were told that it didn’t mean we would definitely get our choice, but it would depend upon the requirements of the country. They would do their best to grant our request. I had opted to join the RAF for pilot training. After this we were told that when we were wanted the authorities would send us a letter. I resumed my employment which at that time was in an office in Kent. In 1941 I had to attend an RAF Medical Centre in London in June of that year. I passed A1 fit for flying and after this I was told to go back to my office job and await a call up letter which could be as long as six weeks. Eventually a call up letter came telling me that I had to report to Lord’s Cricket Ground in London which was being used as a Centre to receive recruits. It had been requisitioned by the Royal Air Force. Eventually [pause] I’ve read that, I was given my service number, uniform and other clothing. My accommodation was in a small hotel requisitioned by the RAF, and this was situated opposite the London Zoo where we had our meals prepared by RAF cooks. But we didn’t eat with the animals. About twenty other lads about my age were at the hotel. We were supervised by an RAF corporal and during our short stay in London which was two weeks we were taught to march in the quiet road where the hotel was located. We attended lectures in the hotel. We took turns in preparing equipment in case our hotel was bombed as it was still early in the war and London was still experiencing bombing raids. However, it was only a stay of two weeks in London when we were moved to other parts of the country. This move was the first stage of our training and we arrived at Scarborough, the seaside place in Yorkshire. Number 10 Initial Training Wing. And we stayed in the Crown Hotel located on rising ground facing east and enabling us to see the sea. It was a very bracing place to be. Here we attended lectures, doing a cross country run every day in all weathers. We had to learn, practice Morse. Sending and receiving messages by lamp and then by buzzer. We studied RAF law, gunnery, learning to recognise different aeroplanes using models. Enemy planes and RAF ones. That came under the aircraft recognition. I was sent to a grading course at Brough situated right next to the River Humber near Hull and I was there for about a month as a pupil pilot. This was just to see what, if we were competent in holding the joystick and being up in the air. I was supervised by a qualified pilot sitting behind me in this Tiger Moth. We had equipment, joystick, rudders and steering wheels, speaking to me through a speaking tube. I passed the course. Returned to Scarborough. However, my return there was only for a very short time. Those of us who’d passed the grading course were told we were going to continue our training overseas. Until we were on the ship we did not know where we were going until we were well on our way across the Atlantic Ocean in February of that year. Early February. Because the Atlantic was infested by many German U-boats we were on our own. Just the one ship. Not in convoy. We were escorted from Gourock in Scotland by two Royal Navy destroyers. One was each side of us listening out with their sonar for U-boats under the water. We ran in to very rough weather and many of the lads including myself experienced sea sickness which caused us to stop eating for about three days. But mine was really brought on by something which I had got from the, the kitchen where we had to get our food. It so happened that I, memory, that I’d been appointed as the runner for my people on our mess table to get the meal. And I had two billy cans, one in each hand and I had to walk the full length of the ship to the galley where the cooks were providing the food. I could smell the, [pause] smell the food. The smell of food came along the walk that I was using to get to where the cooks were, and when I got there we had in one billy can I had a big amount of stew which was put in. It looked rather oily and had about two or three peas floating on the top. And then on the, on the counter there was some lovely baked, newly baked bread loaves which had been baked that morning, and they were the main things that interested me because I was loving, wanting to eat some bread and put some, we didn’t have butter we had margarine. Now, until we were on the ship we didn’t know where we were going which I’ve already said. I’m sorry about that. I trained in a, in a Tiger Moth [pause] Something’s gone wrong. Pages turning] Here we are. The time of the year was January, late January 1942. After five days at sea we were nearing Halifax, Nova Scotia. By the time we left the ship we were put in the care of English RAF sergeant and we were put on a railway train to take us a thousand miles to Toronto in Canada. Being in wintertime darkness was upon us. However, unlike Britain at this time there was no blackout in Canada and traffic right near the port were moving along the roads with their headlights and all the lights of the streets were on. We travelled the thousand miles and we left the train and we were taken to the National Exhibition building in Toronto. This would be a similar building like the Olympia in London. This place was used as a Recruiting Centre for the Canadian recruits. And we were here for six weeks waiting to be sent to an aerodrome. The huge building could accommodate several thousand people, and I had to move later on. For pilot training I was sent to a small aerodrome situated on the shore of one of the great lakes. Lake Huron. This is an Indian name because they were the original inhabitants of Canada. I trained in a Tiger Moth training plane, and to qualify as a pilot in the war each pupil pilot had to show that he could be trusted to handle the plane on his own within ten hours of training. Once he’d done that he was expected to go up on his own. Unfortunately, I failed to do this in the, in that time and I was taken off the pilot course because they were desperate to get fully trained pilots back in Britain. I had to report to our commanding officer at this Canadian flying school. He happened to be a British squadron leader who had fought in the First World War. He could see I was upset at being taken off the pilot training course and he said to me, ‘If you want to carry on flying why don’t you become a member of the bomber.’ This I thought of and agreed and thanked him for my advice. On my return I was given two weeks leave and told to report to a Canadian aerodrome where recruits would train to be members of a bomber crew. So the two weeks leave meant that I was able to choose where I would spend it, and I decided I would try and visit my sister Eileen in America. Where she had just arrived in 1937 as a newly married lady with her husband Jim, or James and he too was working in opening a factory in America. They were living with their two little children in Pennsylvania. Altoona. At the end of my leave I returned to Canada from America and reported to Trenton, Ontario where bomber crews started their training. I became a trainee bomb aimer flying in a plane, able to carry out the duties required. In Canada I used practice bombs day and night on ground targets. I had to do aerial gunnery and at one time I flew in a Battle. An old aeroplane they called the Battle. In an open cockpit and I had to do gunnery firing at a drogue pulled by an aeroplane alongside. Our bullets were coloured so that they knew when they took the thing down that where the green bullets had landed that meant they would be mine and the other people had different colours. I qualified in all departments and it was in late November while at Moncton, New Brunswick in Canada we had to move out ready to leave Canada and travel by train all the way down in to the States. Passing down the east coast of America through the New England States, such as Boston, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. New York Harbour we arrived at, and we had to go on board the brand new ship which had only recently been launched named Queen Elizabeth. She was eighty five thousand tons in weight and we didn’t need any escorts to guard us as we crossed the sea to come back to Britain because she was so fast. She was able to zigzag through the ocean and we reached Scotland five, five days afterwards. But because the ship was so huge she couldn’t come close to shore. She had to lay in deep water while we got off the ship. We had to go down ladders at the side of the Queen Elizabeth and go on small, small ships that came up to us and here they were jumping, bumping up and down with the rough sea. In Scotland, sorry [pause] in Scotland a bomber crew was formed by us trainees. We’d been trained in Scotland. We’d been using a Whitley bomber in Scotland. But when the new plane came out called the Lancaster built to bear much heavier loads we were sent to a Conversion Unit near Lincoln city where our pilot had to learn to fly this very big four engine plane. This he did successfully after which we were put in to Number 44 Rhodesian Squadron which was using Waddington as our base where we had our own plane to bomb Germany. Before the whole crew started bombing operations three of us out of the crew namely pilot, navigator and myself, we didn’t fly with the, our own crew at all. We weren’t expected to do any work because we were observing what it was like to be over enemy territory. To see what gunfire was like, ack ack from the ground, enemy fighters, searchlights. We attended the briefing of this trip with another crew. This was Hitler’s birthday, the 20th of April and so we all reckoned it surely must be Berlin, the target. Because one never knew the target until you entered the briefing room which had to be locked and kept secret to the very last minute and you would know where you were going by the big red ribbon that started from your base and ended at the target. And this time when we looked we found that our destination on this occasion was not Berlin, but it was a sea port in the Baltic Sea Called Stettin. I flew in a Lancaster from Number 106 Squadron and while we were flying we, we flew all the way to Denmark on, over the North Sea with our propellers just churning almost the waves to keep low so that Germany couldn’t catch us on their radar which stretched all along the wall that Hitler had built. As we approached Stettin a Lancaster flying on our left side was hit by flak, that’s enemy fire, because the sea there had many flak ships which Hitler had in the sea where they were all heavily armed with guns which could reach planes and this poor chap had caught it. In no time at all a burst of flame came out from the side of the Lancaster and a huge ball of fire came out in such a short time giving no time at all for the crew to leave and so seven men perished in a split second. They were immediately cremated alive. On arrival at Stettin we saw it was already on fire and many searchlights were on the move probing the sky to locate any of our planes. Fortunately we weren’t caught by searchlights but hit, nor hit by shells from planes or ground or searchlights. We didn’t linger over the target. Once we’d dropped our bombs we changed course as our next location was our base near Nottingham with this other crew that I flew with. Again we approached Denmark and soon left this behind. Descended, flying over the sea, very low down and not to be on the German radar. On landing at our base after the trip we had to report to the intelligence officers to give them information concerning the state of the target and any other news of interest. This trip took eight hours. The target we went to as a full crew and now we had our own crew was in the Ruhr in Germany. A very dangerous part to go because it was where the bombs were made and the big firm Krupps made the armour and big guns, and it was heavily guarded. And it was on a coal field which made it easy for the factories to get their boilers heated to run the engines of their factories. It had extra searchlights and anti-aircraft guns. Here for a while we were picked out and got caught in the searchlight. I remember looking down the beam of the searchlight which wasn’t a very sensible thing to do but in our plane it was light as day, and thankfully our pilot managed to wriggle out of the other searchlights that were trying to come on to the one that was already there. Fortunately we managed to drop our bombs without incident after that and made our way back to Britain. We were getting short of petrol as the fuel gauges indicated but with luck and good navigation we looked for the red light flashing the Morse Code letters that told us the location of our base. Our base was at Dunholme Lodge because we’d had to move from, from Waddington earlier on in our tour because originally we started using, landing on grass and the heavy Lancasters eventually began to sink into them in wet weather. And so Waddington was closed for six weeks while the people that built the new runways would come in and lay down concrete. And so we were sent to a new aerodrome. A wartime one this time because Waddington had been there since 1917. It was a peacetime base but Dunholme Lodge on the other side of Lincoln city was on farmland and was a real wartime aerodrome. Everything was just metal and we, we knew that eventually it would be returned as farmland. Before land [pause] before landing our pilot told us to leave our places because this time having been hit by flak we were told to take up crash position. This meant we lay on our backs in the plane with our knees bent ready for any eventuality. As we’d been reported missing and late returning from the air we could see the ambulance and the group captain’s car by the runway. Landing on one wheel because the other one had been damaged on our trip to Peenemunde it touched the ground, we spun around. Eventually stopped still. Not anyone in the crew needed medical attention luckily, and we were all taken to the aircrew building for debriefing telling the intelligence officer all about our trip. Of all the trips we’d made, most in Germany other targets in Italy and Czechoslovakia it was on our visit to Peenemunde rocket base that we were attacked by enemy fighters who fired shells through our fuselage making holes on both sides. One engine was destroyed. A shell, a hole went through the flaps of the wings and one, fortunately we got rid of all our bombs before this happened otherwise I wouldn’t have been here now. We’d have been blown up with it. We were especially grateful to our pilot’s skill in escaping from those night fighters and our navigator Desmond for navigating us home to our base at Dunholme Lodge, which is about five miles north east of Lincoln city. It has now gone back to become a farm. My pilot and navigator each received, or were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Other targets we visited in my tour were Dortmund, Duisburg, Pilsen in Czechoslovakia, Dusseldorf, Wuppertal, Krefeld, Mülheim, Cologne, Gelsenkirchen. We went four times to Hamburg. Then we went three times to Mannheim and then Nuremberg and eventually Berlin which was heavily defended. After our trip on bombing we were moved to become instructors but we all parted, each of us never, not knowing where our friends were going to. And so once this happened I never saw my pilot again until I saw him at a reunion which I went to at Waddington. It was only many years after the war that some of my crew met again. We were all grateful at leaving the Air Force uninjured. After a tour not one of us ever received even a scratch. And then when we were still in the Air Force I hadn’t finished yet because the war with Japan was still going on and the idea was that they would send Lancasters to India and we would continue bombing from India to Japan and, or we might do desk jobs to free long serving personnel who could come back to Britain. But when the Americans used their atom bomb and the Japanese surrendered it meant that Japan surrendered and we were saved from going any more over any country doing this job which we believed helped to preserve our country. And so I was in the Air Force for six years and the war enabled me to move around Britain. I went to Canada, the United States and India. So I found all the places interesting and we were given great hospitality everywhere we went. And although we were in Canada first of all as trainees they treated us like heroes even before we’d seen an aeroplane [pause] Now, after leaving the RAF I had to go to my civilian home. My father at this time who’d been living in a tied house in London looking after a school. My mother had been killed in the Blitz or died in the Blitz, so he was on his own and he had to move to a new house out of London which he did and informed me and I had to make my way to the new location. It was in Surrey. Near Croydon Airport. A place called Carshalton. And we soon got used to living there and of course at this time I had to get a job to earn some money and I found I’d already been promised to be taken on a teacher’s training course, and so I knew I had a job eventually. But in the meantime I was given a part time job in a office in London which I had to travel too. That didn’t last long and eventually I was on the teacher training course which was at a very nice situation in the lovely town. A seaside place called Eastbourne. This building was very comfortable in which to live. It had been a private prep school before we used it as a teacher training college. Training college was very interesting and of course we had lots of lectures. We had to do teacher training in, going out in actual schools and the first school I went to was in Eastbourne itself which had the name I cannot remember at this time. But there was primary school children, and my class that I was going to happened to be mostly Barnardo children. Barnardo boys who were orphans and they were a reasonably nice lot. But of course as a student you have to learn to make sure that you had order in the class and gradually, and as long as they knew the type of things that you wanted such as stopping, stopping talking when teacher spoke. We wanted absolute silence so everyone could listen to the teacher. And of course it meant preparing things every night. Models of things and maps to show the children and of course while you were training at the school and teaching at the school just roughly for three weeks a lecturer would come, an inspector would come in and sit at the back of the class watching you doing your job. Seeing if you could make any headway in the new job that you’d chosen to go in to. And I managed to get through this successfully. And that was the first teacher training school that I went to. And the teacher of the class of course started to be with me to begin with, but after a while he or she would go and leave me entirely on my own. The next school I had to go to was the, some distance from Eastbourne. It was near Hastings called St Leonards. And this was a very, very good church school because it was situated alongside the church itself and assemblies were actually held in the church and so the behaviour was very good because teachers accompanied the children into the church. And occasionally we would be taken in as a class to see a Communion service and attend, and the priest would kneel near us and explain everything that was going on at the altar in the church. And I enjoyed being at that particular church at St Leonard’s on Sea because it was quite a train journey as the train hugged the south coast of England going through Pevensey and Romney Marsh and then eventually St Leonards, and next door was Hastings itself. And so I got through the training course there, and again inspectors came in and summed me up and made notes about my method and how I was teaching. And then I left to return to the college. But everything wasn’t all work because after work many times I would go back into the town. This lovely seaside town. Go up to Beachy Head which can be very dangerous if you go too near the edge because being chalk it could crumble and there was about a six hundred feet drop down to the beach and there were many cases of people who had gone over accidentally. And even poor little dogs who’d been running after a ball where their master or mistress had foolishly thrown a ball towards the edge of the cliff. The poor little dog had gone running after the ball and not realising that the end of the edge of the cliff he went over and was killed. Anyway, I won’t dwell on that too much but I have had a very interesting life and met many good people and managed to keep going and keeping cheerful because that’s the main thing. You have to grit your teeth like in the war when we all gritted our teeth and tried to be cheerful. Used to sing plenty of songs, but occasionally we would go and have a nice drink in a hostelry somewhere which increased in volume especially when we were on the squadron [laughs] Anyway, here I am at ninety five years old and I don’t feel any age much except that I’m conscious of that fact that I’m so frustrated that I can’t do the things I used to and I do ache in joints and places like that. But again I emphasise I’m so happy to be free from pain like some poor people, and I could have been killed on my first trip. I could have been killed in our training because we lost many men in the crew who had been, while they were training they failed perhaps to take a turn on the petrol of their aircraft and the amount already there was just enough to get them up in the air and by not turning on the petrol of course the whole plane would fall to earth. Other people made the foolish mistake of being up above masses of cloud. They felt they were lost a bit and they thought they would go down under the cloud to see where they were not realising especially in Wales and Scotland that mountains exist and again they would meet their end while they were training. And that was what happened to so many. And again I don’t want to end on a sad note but I was very proud of fighting for my country and I felt that we mustn’t let the devil Hitler come in this place. Otherwise, we would not be here now. And the same feeling was, was felt in the, all the Services. And here I end and I wish you all well. Thank you.
[recording paused]
I failed to mention, and I have been more or less ordered [laughs] to give this information which I didn’t really want to do but I did actually get my [pause] You see my pilot Des and, Derek was the pilot, Desmond was my navigator, and I am James or Jim. And it was on the raid to the Peenemunde rocket base that we were really the only time we felt we could never get back to England because we were attacked while we had luckily had finished our bombing. The bombing had stopped because we’d dropped all our bombs. If that hadn’t happened and what I’m going to tell you did happen at that time it would have set the whole plane on fire and we would have blown up like that poor chap on the way to Stettin. But I’m in the front as a bomb aimer, lying full length on the floor looking through this Perspex with plenty of vision to allow me to look either side of the plane and down. And while I was there I must remember, remind you or tell you that because we weren’t in the first wave the first people to get to that target it already was on fire and it was like a hornet’s nest that had been stirred up because it was, we were flying at low level. Six thousand feet and the full moon, and the air was full of German night fighters and they, I’m lying full length looking through my bomb sight and other parts and I could see a stream of incendiary shells coming from underneath the plane, just below our plane and they were whizzing in front of me. And they were all coloured and lit up and they were a tremendous speed they go through. And then in the plane each crew member could talk to anyone else in the plane by our special communication that we had underneath our goggles, underneath our mouthpiece and they severed, these shells coming through our plane severed the cable that enabled us all to speak to each other and immediately we were completely separate in talk amongst everybody. So nobody could talk to a fellow member of the crew like you would do and so I literally got up from the floor, Derek my pilot was throwing the plane all over the place to escape these night fighters and searchlights, and I managed to get upstairs to the navigator who was in his little office with the light to show him how to make his courses on the maps. He had to have a light and he was shielded from letting the light out by a cover which you had to pull apart. I couldn’t speak to him through my mouthpiece so I had to lift up his earpiece and take my own thing off in front of my mouth and shout to try and beat the noise of the engine to ask him what would be the next best thing to do. How to work out how to get back to England. And anyway, this happened and I returned to my place in the front and I certainly didn’t know I’d been awarded a mention in despatches because I don’t see why I should have had one quite honestly. But I think, I was never told why I’d got it but I think it was because I managed to remain calm and didn’t fluster, and I actually made an effort to continue how to do things which I really couldn’t really do. So, anyway, by the grace of God it was Derek, my navigator and the pilot who managed to go almost on the deck, or on the ground in flying to escape the fighters and we flew away from Peenemunde flying over a Luftwaffe aerodrome which had all lit up. Quickly as we could and as best we could, we saw a lovely mass of cloud not too high above us which stretched some distance and my pilot felt that if we could just climb up to that cloud, disappear in the cloud for some time it would be a hiding place and enable us to get across part of the North Sea and get back to England. And that’s what happened. We flew in to this cloud for some time and then it didn’t last long because Derek lifted the plane slightly above the cloud and we continued flying back to England. And the navigator, the bomb aimer, the flight engineer I should have said he was the one that told my pilot that we were short of petrol and we hoped we’d make it enough petrol to get back to our base. By the grace of God that did happen. We managed to reach England and it was here that we had to decide where our base was. And in the war every aerodrome had a big mechanism of lights. All in red. And each of them was flashing letters of the hour which was changed to not let the enemy get to know which was which. We knew which our letters were for that period and we saw it, aimed for it and we were given priority to land. And as we came lower and lower we could see the group captain’s car by the runway. We saw the ambulance waiting because we’d been reported missing presumed crashed or something like that. And so we had to take up crash positions so that we wouldn’t hurt ourselves if we could help. We had to lie on our backs in the middle of the aeroplane with our legs bent to push against the metal bar there so that it would help to stop us being thrown around inside at the sudden stop. But don’t forget we were landing on one wheel. The other one was completely useless. It had been punctured in the air by shells and so we landed on this one wheel and landed at the side of the concrete runway on the grass and it spun round on the one wheel and as luck would have it not one of us was hurt. And then we came out and debriefed and gave all the information to the intelligence officer. And it was, it was later on our aircraft was photographed and I have the photographs of the damaged aeroplane in my logbook at this moment. And they’re over there actually. So that’s, that is the news. Our worst raid was over Peenemunde and I still don’t know why I on my own got a mention in despatches but I suppose it must have been given by my pilot or someone in the crew. And that’s my story. Alright.
[recording paused]
He must have been in his very early thirties and it was because his wife was so upset at him flying in dangerous jobs that it affected him and he went along to ask for, to be taken off operations. And as you know in the war they were very tough on people that left. Don’t forget all our flying was voluntary, and they took this other awful decision that anyone who came off the crew through, they would call it cowardice you would be stripped of your rank. You would be, it didn’t matter who you were, officer or anything you became an AC2 and your only job would be to clean the toilets. The lowest of the low. And this has been remarked on many times because as you know now the medical people have studied more and realise it isn’t just cowardice. It’s something that happens and anyone can get into this position. So you can’t judge people if they are in this state. You see, that poor man. Every time he saw his wife she was in a dither. That affected him didn’t it? You see. But they don’t take that in to consideration and of course we never, we never knew what happened to the poor chap. And then we had the other mid-upper gunners but eventually we got one that lasted a long time and apart from that but of course I could have said all this on my machine about who was who because our rear gunner was a young man. Sam. He was about nineteen when he joined us and he was a coal, he’d been in a coal mine. And then there was, the only officer we had in the crew was Desmond Heslop and he, the rest of us to begin with were flight sergeants. Derek, my pilot got his commission while he was still a bomber pilot. He was married and he came from Norfolk and he got his DFC as I’ve told you. Now, I did go to Bury St Edmunds Library. This was some time ago. To the Reference Library because I wanted to see what the citation was about awarding, you know. You know the citation don’t you? Why they got this award. And I wrote them in my diary as a matter of fact which is over there. I might try and locate. So Derek got his citation and Desmond, the pilot, the flying officer and Desmond the navigator unlike us, because I went on to become an instructor, ending up at RAF Silverstone which is now the racing track. That was, that was an OTU. An Operational Training Unit. And in the meantime, I found this out later, Des the navigator did not want to leave the bombing side of it. He wanted to remain damaging Germany you see. So he didn’t become an instructor as he could have done because in his, in his citation they remark on his expert navigation. So he would have been a good instructor. But unfortunately I think he went on in a Mosquito. Two engine. So in other words pilot and navigator. And he flew. I’ve got it in my [pause] I’ll get that down because he [pause]
[recording paused]
Definitely. She had a stroke through it. Through, where we were living in London was a place called Wandsworth. You may have heard about Wandsworth about two miles from the River Thames. And I can remember on the day a big fleet of German bombers, daylight flew over our house and they flew towards the Thames which was a couple of minutes, well, in flying two minutes to get there. Less than that. And then they followed the Thames all the way around to the docks. This was the beginning of the Blitz and they dropped bombs on the oil, the tanks in the docks and other things. Anything that would light and keep burning. So because they did that in daylight that fire was still raging in the evening and so at that very evening he sent bombers over the docks and they dropped stuff using the docks. They didn’t need to navigate. They could see it from miles away, you see. So, that was the beginning of the Blitz. And then gradually the bombing spread and where I lived was not far away. Quite near was a Common. You know a lovely place where you could play on grass and so on. And also not far up the road was a little, it wasn’t a big one it was a public library where I as a boy used to go there and belong to it. Get books out and help to do, to get knowledge and that kind of thing. And in April ’41 there was a very heavy bombing raid and that affected our area and they destroyed completely that little library and also houses in the street very near and in one of these houses lived a family that we knew very well. And Mr [Bazant] and his wife, his eldest daughter were killed their house destroyed and the only one that got through it in that family was the youngest daughter. So, that was the kind of thing that went on. And also the Germans that night dropped what they called parachute bombs and they were mines dangling on parachutes. Once they dropped these things they were, they didn’t fall straight to earth. They were slowed down by like baby parachutes and these floated in the air and they went where the wind took them. And as they were swaying they’d only got to touch a house and they’d go pssst, you see. That’s another thing they did. And I think it was the day after because I at that time had to evacuate to Kent because the firm I was working for temporarily before I, before I went into teaching was an insurance company that felt that they would be bombed the first day of the war. And I had, I worked a little while in London at the offices but a note came around saying the whole firm except for a skeleton staff would, they would stay in London. Very few. But the bulk of the firm which was a big one would be sent in to Kent where they’d leased a lovely big house in its own grounds. Big enough to accommodate the office and all its equipment and the rooms were turned into the offices. So, we, we were working in bedrooms with the typists and so on. The claims department was in a bedroom. All the filing was in a corridor. You know. And I was very happy down there near Tonbridge. If you know Tonbridge. And I used to travel up on the Green Line Bus every weekend when we, we either worked Saturday one week but the next week we finished on the Friday. Alternate you see. But whenever we finished I always got, at the end of this big house there was the London Road and the bus stop for the Green, what used to be called the Green Line Service. Like a country bus service. And that was a single decker which would take you from, all the way to London. To the coach station at Victoria and then I’d get a train up to where we lived and walk to my where I lived and see if my family were still alive. That was the kind of life I was living you know at the time. And then I returned to work on the Monday because I used to stay. If it was say if I finished on Friday at the office I’d arrive Friday night at home in London. Stay Friday night at home in London. Saturday in London. Even Sunday in London. But I had to get up very early in the morning to go back to Victoria to catch a train. No. Waterloo. I beg your pardon. Waterloo. To get a train to Sevenoaks and the firm down in Kent used to run a coach service from Sevenoaks which is before you get to Tonbridge. And that was the kind of life I was living you see. But when I got back on that Monday I didn’t hear anything from the family. There was only one telephone in this big house by the way. Under the stairs. But then a call came through. I’m in the claims office. Working in the claims office and the door opened and a person came through and said, ‘Can Mr Dellow please come to the phone.’ And this was very unusual. So I, my boss who was a very decent bloke he said, ‘You can go,’ he said. Off I went to the phone under the stairs and it was my father speaking to me saying, ‘I’ve got some bad news,’ he said, ‘Mum. Your mum’s very ill. Become very ill.’ And then he said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ He said, ‘I can’t keep it from you,’ he said. ‘She’s died.’ And I was nineteen at the time and I must confess that I actually cried in the office. My boss was a very decent bloke and said, ‘You can’t stay like that,’ he said, ‘You go straight home now.’ And it was the most awful journey home and I met members of our friends who were going to the house where mum had died. She was still in the house and they were crying. It was an awful time. This was 1941. And my father told us what had happened. He said that although I’d seen her at the weekend and she seemed to be alright she went out shopping on the Tuesday I think it was. It may have been the Monday. She went to Clapham Junction where there was a big shopping centre. Not like they are now but I mean there were lots of shops where, it was a place she like going. It needed a bus. A little bus service. Not far. About a mile. While she was out apparently this is what, what my mother told my father when she had to go back home there and then. She couldn’t carry on shopping. So she got back. She staggered back somehow with this terrible headache she’d got. She got home and got worse in pain. Luckily, this was before the NHS of course we had our doctor, luckily enough that used to come to us when we needed him was not far away across the road where we lived. So he went across, told the doctor that my mother was very ill indoors and he came over pretty well straightaway and apparently he realised that my mother had had a stroke and that it’s what they called to do with the brain. You know the brain bursts or something or other and he said that, ‘If she lives she’d be just like a vegetable, you know. You know, you’ve got to remember that it’s better, the fact that she died.’ It sounds awful but that’s the case he said. And so that period of my life was very sad, and like you do you have to grin, well you don’t exactly grin. That’s the particular way. But I mean you’ve got to go on. You know, you’re still here aren’t you? That’s the attitude. That was the attitude of the war. Grin and bear it. Keep cheerful. Keep singing. Have singsongs and if you really must go to the pub and get sloshed [laughs]
DB: Which you did [laughs]
JD: We had a good old session up in London. This was after the war. But some I think your father was in the, no I don’t know whether he’d gone back in the Air Force or what. Anyway, now we used to get the last if you were up in London you see the last train from Victoria Station to our station near where we lived in Surrey which was Carshalton Beeches it was 11.38. Just gone half past eleven at night and luckily we caught the 11.38. And it was quite not about half hour journey in time you know normally. But having had plenty to drink and the movement of the train we both fell asleep. And when, the next thing was the door opened. The train was sealed and it was at a station you see. But it wasn’t Carshalton Beeches. It had gone on to the end of the line which was at Epsom. You know, Epsom. The races. And we had a long, long, in the black out. This was blackout there were no lights and we had to walk and got back indoors I think the Wallington clock was chiming three. It was 3 o’clock in the morning. So that kind of thing you know, you could get caught like that going to sleep on the train. So these things happened, didn’t they?
[recording paused]
It was on, on the training but they found that they found that the Manchester wasn’t at all reliable. The engines weren’t powerful enough and if, it only had two engines and if one failed you were more or less fall to earth whereas with the Lancaster you used to do training over the North Sea every morning before going to Germany. Test all the equipment. And Derek my pilot used to switch first of all one engine off. That meant we were flying on three. He’d knock another engine off. We were flying on two. He’d knock another engine off. We’d be flying on one. But if you flew on one you would gradually sink, because the one engine wasn’t quite powerful enough to keep you up at height. But most of our bombing was about twenty thousand feet and we didn’t have proper heating and we only got heat in the jacket you wore up here. Your legs would get frozen stiff. And we used to get little cartons of orange juice to take with us, and that used to get frozen solid so we couldn’t drink that. And we always took a pigeon with us in case we were crashed in, in the North Sea and we would tie a message to that pigeon’s leg you know and he’d fly back to your home base and they’d see that you were in the North Sea, and send a plane out to see if they could see you. In fact, when I was at Waddington which I think I’ve told you had to close down because of the, putting the concrete runway we were in bed in the morning, about three in the morning banging on the door. Woke up. ‘Hurry up. Go down to the crew room,’ which we did. ‘We hear a plane has landed or fallen in the North Sea you are now going on a square search,’ you know. And this was in the middle of summer and luckily although the sun was very powerful it made a mirage on the sea. If you’re up high and you’re looking at the sea for somebody, you get this shiny background of water glinting in the sun. And that very often puts you off seeing the chaps in the, in the dinghy you see. So, it wasn’t all. We never did find whoever had crashed. Which was must have been an awful experience. And if you were seen of course you would have been notified. They would send a message back to base and then they’d send people out to rescue you. But that was the only one we ever had to do. Searching for somebody in the sea.
[recording paused]
In Lincolnshire, and they’d blindfold us and go all round the roads in Lincolnshire and then you’d stop the thing somewhere miles from camp and they dropped you out and you were supposed to make your way back to base on your own. You know. That’s in case we landed, we had to land in Germany or France. Anywhere. To make us learn how to try and get back to base. We had compasses. Little compasses in our shoes and I think it was in the heel of your shoe I think it was. Yeah. All these little things. And I think I did get back to base anyway. Oh yeah. Lovely times. I enjoyed my life in the Air Force and in a way I wouldn’t have minded staying in. But there was a, I think the fact the country had spent so much money on the war. Fifteen million. We were told at that the time that the country was paying about fifteen million pounds a day to keep the war going which doesn’t sound so much these days but in those days that was a big, and then of course we borrowed money from America didn’t we? National debt which we’re paying now. I don’t know. That was, and America too I think is in debt, you know. I don’t know how these countries manage, do you? It baffles me. Money. Economics and how we keep going you know. We keep talking about an individual. lf you go over your own in the bank they pounce on you like you’re a criminal don’t they? You know. I’m limited to three hundred pounds if I go over my bank statement. Which isn’t much these days. And ever since I joined because when you become an officer all your money is paid into a bank. It’s with everyone now, isn’t it? But in those days if you weren’t commissioned you had to pay. You had pay out, go to a pay parade and stand in front of the officer who was doling out the money and when your name was called you went in front of the them at the table and saluted and he said, ‘Dellow, 1391826,’ you see. To make sure that you were the same person, and he’d give you the money which was half a crown a day to begin with. Once you went flying you got three half crowns a day which was seven and six. Still under a pound. The pound in those days you could buy so much with it. You know. Well, you had two hundred and forty pennies to the pound. It used to cost one penny on the bus to go from East Hill where I lived to Clapham Junction which was a mile. So that’s a penny a mile. That’s for the national newspaper one penny. Now what is it? Sixty pence a day, isn’t it?
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with James Albert Dellow
Creator
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Denise Boneham
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-06-17
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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
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Sound
Identifier
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ADellowJA170617
Conforms To
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Pending review
Format
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01:05:16 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
James ‘Jim’ Albert Dellow had to register the start of the war he as he was 18 years old. On being asked which service he would prefer, he opted for the Royal Air Force as a pilot. Whilst waiting for his call up, he worked in an insurance office in London, which was evacuated to Kent. Once called up in June 1941, he was sent to Scarborough for basic flying training in a Tiger Moth. In February 1942 he was sent to Canada for further training as a pilot, but he did not qualify and opted to become bomb aimer. He qualified in November 1942 at Trenton, Ontario. On arrival back in Great Britain, he trained on the Whitley before transferring to a heavy conversion unit based at RAF Waddington to fly Lancasters.
Posted to 44 Squadron his first flight was a Second Dicky flight with another crew to Stettin in April 1943. Though their aircraft was not hit, one flying alongside was and caught fire - there were no survivors. The worst operation that Jim recounts is one to Peenemünde. After dropping their bombs, they were attacked and damaged by a night fighter. Their pilot managed to get them back on three engines. As they landed at RAF Dunholme Lodge, only one wheel was working, and they spun off the runway crashing with no casualties. The pilot and navigator were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and Jim was mentioned in dispatches. After 30 operations Jim became an instructor based at RAF Silverstone. After the war he worked as a teacher.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
England--Northamptonshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Kent
England--Scarborough
England--London
Canada
Ontario--Trenton
Poland
Poland--Szczecin
Germany
Germany--Peenemünde
England--Buckinghamshire
Ontario
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-06
1942-02
1942-11
1943-04
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Nick Cornwell-Smith
Julie Williams
106 Squadron
44 Squadron
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
Distinguished Flying Cross
forced landing
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF Silverstone
RAF Waddington
recruitment
searchlight
shot down
Tiger Moth
training
Whitley