1
25
1522
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2283/47093/BCarterDACarterRv1.2.pdf
53c7b42bfe5ef280f58e586f638120f2
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
Carter, Ronald
Description
An account of the resource
32 items. The collection concerns Sergeant Ronald Carter (1924 - 2014, 1620578 Royal Air Force) and contains his biography, research, documents and photographs. He flew operations as a rear gunner with 44 Squadron before becoming a prisoner of war.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Susan Margaret Perrow and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-12-06
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Carter, R
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
Last of the Tail Gun Charlies
Description
An account of the resource
Biography of Warrant Officer Ronald Carter (1620578 Royal Air Force)
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Carter
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1943-04
1944-03-30
1944-03-31
1945-01-19
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Nuremberg
Poland
Poland--Tychowo
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
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Photograph
Text. Personal research
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
49 page booklet
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BCarterDACarterRv1
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019
44 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bale out
bombing
Bombing of Mailly-le-Camp (3/4 May 1944)
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
bombing of the Creil/St Leu d’Esserent V-1 storage areas (4/5 July 1944)
bombing of Toulouse (5/6 April 1944)
Caterpillar Club
crewing up
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
prisoner of war
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF Waddington
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 7
tactical support for Normandy troops
the long march
training
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2655/46549/SKeelingRV82689v10040.1.jpg
9829364e817ed467e36cb800e4fda53e
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
Keeling, Robert Victor. Scrapbook
Description
An account of the resource
41 items. A scrapbook of photographs and clippings concerning Robert Keeling's service, as a pilot for aerial photographs, and royal visits.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2023-06-01
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Keeling, RV
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
Wedding and WAAF's
Description
An account of the resource
Left page: top left, invitation to Flying Officer R V Keeling DFC and Mrs Keeling to the wedding of Alice Sharpley and John Keeling.
Top right, six wedding guests including a man and woman in uniform at at Boswell House, North Elkington.
Middle left, wedding party at St. Helen’s Church, North Elkington, Lincolnshire.
Middle right, the bride and groom. Bottom, bride and groom with a man cutting a wedding cake.
Right page, left, 53 women in uniform in front of Rutland Hall, annotated, 'W.A.A.F Officers Initial Training Course, Loughborough 1941. Ursula (5th front) 1st row'.
Top right, man in tails with top hat on a path followed by a man and woman in uniform.
Bottom right, view through trees over water.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-10
1941-10-04
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Leicestershire
England--Loughborough
England--Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire--Elkington
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One card invitation; seven b/w photographs on two album pages
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SKeelingRV82689v10040
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
Oscar Verhoeven
ground personnel
love and romance
training
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
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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
Keeling, Robert Victor. Scrapbook
Description
An account of the resource
41 items. A scrapbook of photographs and clippings concerning Robert Keeling's service, as a pilot for aerial photographs, and royal visits.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2023-06-01
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Keeling, RV
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
Propaganda leaflets
Description
An account of the resource
Left page: top, the Luftpost, numbers 10 and 18.
Middle, left report of an aircraft landing on a car.
Middle centre, woman holding a baby, reports of engagements and births of babies.
Bottom left, report of the death of Lieutenant Geoffrey William Gray Walker. Bottom right girl on a beach.
Right page: report on a Renault factory.
Bottom left, eight men and two women in cricket attire with a ninth man sat on the grass in uniform.
Bottom right, eight men and five women, three wearing ties, arranged on the grass by a brick wall.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1941-07-22
1941-09-16
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943-03-01
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
England--Oxfordshire
England--Oxford
England--Lincolnshire
England--Heckington
France
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
British Army
Language
A language of the resource
eng
deu
fra
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Photograph
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Three four page printed leaflets, two sided printed leaflet, three b/w photographs, 12 newspaper announcements and one newspaper report on two album pages
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription. Other languages than English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SKeelingRV82689v10032; SKeelingRV82689v10033; SKeelingRV82689v10034; SKeelingRV82689v10035; SKeelingRV82689v10036; SKeelingRV82689v10037; SKeelingRV82689v10038; SKeelingRV82689v10039
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.
ground personnel
killed in action
love and romance
propaganda
sport
target photograph
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2655/46547/SKeelingRV82689v10031.1.jpg
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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
Keeling, Robert Victor. Scrapbook
Description
An account of the resource
41 items. A scrapbook of photographs and clippings concerning Robert Keeling's service, as a pilot for aerial photographs, and royal visits.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2023-06-01
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Keeling, RV
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
Operations map
Description
An account of the resource
Annotated, 'Showing ops by Bob and his crew 1940-41'.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
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
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Map
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One hand annotated map on two album pages
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SKeelingRV82689v10031
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
France
Germany
Netherlands
Great Britain
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.
aircrew
bombing
pilot
-
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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
Keeling, Robert Victor. Scrapbook
Description
An account of the resource
41 items. A scrapbook of photographs and clippings concerning Robert Keeling's service, as a pilot for aerial photographs, and royal visits.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2023-06-01
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Keeling, RV
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
Pilot wins D.F.C
Description
An account of the resource
Left page: top, notice of the award of the Distinguished Flying Cross to Pilot Officer R.V.Keeling.
Middle and bottom, congratulations to Bob on his award.
Right page; top, title of the Vauxhall Mirror.
Middle, report of Bob's operational career and being awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and Sergeant A J Spires being awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal.
Bottom, a group of 32 men, 30 wearing half caps and two in officer's hats, with a dog in front of a Whitley aircraft, annotated 'Bob 2nd left' and '51 Sqn April 1941'.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-04
1941-06-07
1941-07
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Hamburg
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Mannheim
Czech Republic
Italy
Italy--Naples
Italy--Taranto
France
FrAnce--Dunkerque
Middle East
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
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Photograph
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Six telegrams, three newspaper cuttings, one hand completed message form and one b/w photograph on two album pages
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SKeelingRV82689v10027; SKeelingRV82689v10028; SKeelingRV82689v10029; SKeelingRV82689v10030
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.
51 Squadron
aircrew
animal
bomb aimer
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Service Medal
evacuation
navigator
pilot
RAF Wellesbourne Mountford
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2655/46484/SKeelingRV82689v10020.2.jpg
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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
Keeling, Robert Victor. Scrapbook
Description
An account of the resource
41 items. A scrapbook of photographs and clippings concerning Robert Keeling's service, as a pilot for aerial photographs, and royal visits.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2023-06-01
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Keeling, RV
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/.
Description
An account of the resource
Left page: top left, a report of a gorse fire on Harpenden Common. <br />Centre, seagull in flight, annotated 'original photograph taken by Bob'.<br />Top right, weather report; middle, attendees at a police dance, annotated 'Geoff Shaw was in the same squadron (51) as Bob, He was killed on landing at Dishforth one night after an op over Germany when bombs were stuck the undercarriage''.<br />Bottom left, village bridge and ford over a river. Captioned "<span>St Michael’s, St Albans." </span><br />Centre, cartoon goat captioned "Cuthbert".<br />Right, a hospital ward following a raid, annotated, 'Mile End hospital'. <br />Right page: top left, crest of 51 Squadron with the motto 'Swift and Sure', annotated, 'Bob was in 51 Squadron'.<br />Right, Royal Air Force card. <br />Bottom, left, head and shoulder portrait of a uniformed man, annotated, 'Peter Captain R.A.M.C.<br />Right, head and shoulder portrait of a woman, annotated, 'Suzanne, late 1930's'. <br /><br />Additional information on Gerald Shaw is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/225297/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941-01-28
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
England--Hertfordshire
England--St. Albans
England--London
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Text
Artwork
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Four newspaper cuttings, five b/w photographs, one b/w artwork of badge, one card with embossed badge and ribbon on two album pages
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SKeelingRV82689v10020
Title
A name given to the resource
Swift and Sure
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription
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
Mike Stilgoe
51 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
crash
killed in action
medical officer
pilot
RAF Dishforth
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1875/46474/SHarriganD[Ser -DoB]v670002.mp3
dc330a19486127faee58285311c26dbe
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: I’m with Bertie Salvage in his home in Stamford.
BS: Yes.
Interviewer: And Bertie served a good long time in the Air Force.
BS: Yes.
Interviewer: And so, to start. I understand Bertie that your first encounter with the RAF was when you joined up. Was it 1939?
BS: 1939. On October the 6th 1939. And —
Interviewer: Yeah. I mean, you know, did you that was at the beginning of the Second World War.
BS: Well, it was. The war had broken out early September and it was a Sunday afternoon and we were home and the air raid siren went off for the first time. We were all sitting down to Sunday dinner in Southend on Sea where I —
Interviewer: This is the famous first day of the war.
BS: Yes, it was. The first day of the war. Then of course we all rushed outside. Of course nothing happened, you know. It was, it was just a false alarm. But anyway, I had received notification that I had passed the RAF exam as an aircraft apprentice to go to Cranwell and so I then received information in early September that I was to report to Cranwell on the 6th of October 1939. So this was, this duly happened. I went to Cranwell. I was inducted as an aircraft apprentice at RAF Cranwell. The instrument maker apprentices and the wires and electrical mechanic apprentices were being trained at Cranwell at the time. The other trades were being trained at RAF Halton in Buckinghamshire. So they were the two schools really and also some at Cosford. They were boy entrants. Anway, so it was quite a fierce trades really from the comforts of home to the, to the spartan conditions of the RAF as it then was in 1939. We were in huge barrack blocks at Cranwell where they had forty to a room you know. Iron bedsteads left over from the Great War I think [laughs] and very very far, very strong discipline you know. Very firm discipline which it had to be for young boys I suppose just joining the Air Force but I settled down and we did basic training on the square. Just for a few weeks you know. Two or three weeks basic training and drill and all that sort of thing. Learned to keep ourselves neat and tidy, our uniforms. To keep the barrack rooms clean and everything else. And of course, it was very very tough the discipline but you know some, in some respects you appreciated it. I enjoyed it really. Well, then we settled in on our technical training. We used to march down to the workshops every day at Cranwell and this went on and on and the, the one thing I do remember is that going over into 1940 just about the time of just before Dunkirk when the Germans had invaded the low countries we used to march to the workshops every day and during that early period when the Germans were still invading France they used to play patriotic music over the tannoy system as we were marching to work. Such things as, “We’re Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line.” [laughs] And of course that didn’t ever happen. Things like that you know. It was quite an amazing time to go through really at that period leading up to Dunkirk. Anyway, so the training went on. I found it very interesting. The technical training. All the aircraft. The aircraft electrical instrument systems and all that you know and also quite a lot of electrical information. Electrical instruction as well because a lot of instruments were, you know operated by electricity or electrical systems and you know so that went on sort of quite happily. And then in 1940 around about August time the instrument maker schools was moved out to Halton with the apprentices of the other trades. RAF Halton. It was a wonderful change because Halton is a lovely part of the country you know in Buckinghamshire whereas Cranwell was —
Interviewer: Flat.
BS: We didn’t like it very much up there. Dismal sort of area there. So we got to Halton and but, but in the interim period sort of you know we had a month’s leave actually. Four weeks leave in the changeover between going from Cranwell to Halton and I went home to Southend on Sea and I watched lots of the Battle of Britain going on with all the aerodrome above us coming up the Thames Estuary and we had a grandstand view really, Southend unfortunately.
Interviewer: And what was the feeling like in the country at that time?
BS: Very patriotic. Very patriotic. Yeah.
Interviewer: And was there a, you know a real fear of invasion at that stage?
BS: Well, there was a fear of, well there was but somehow we used to have the feeling it can’t happen to us. You know that sort of British feeling that —
Interviewer: Stiff upper lip and all that.
BS: Stiff upper lip and all that. Oh yes. There was the fear but it was, it was a defiance really. No one is bloody going to invade us sort of thing, you know. But of course, we were right on the, down at Southend where my old home was that was right on the sort of, you know if they had invaded it would be one of the first places that they would come in through I would have thought.
Interviewer: What was the news reporting? Was it, was, did you hear what was going on?
BS: Oh yes. Oh, the news reporting was very good. We, we knew all the time what was going on. I saw quite a few battles when I was, that month I was home. I saw quite a few aerial dogfights you know but one minute they were there and then they were gone you know. It was that —
Interviewer: Very fleeting.
BS: Very fleeting you know. Basically your question. I went through. I went and got in to the autumn of 1940 when they started the bombing on London. We used to get home occasionally on a forty eight hour pass. I went through London, through a couple of Blitzes you know and quite often I had to take shelter in the deep air raid, deep underground stations that they’d allocated to be air raids sort of shelters for people. So I experienced that and there were terrible scenes I saw you know before going on to Halton. So, that was, that was something to remember really, you know. So anyway, we, we continued our training at Halton which was, you know, very good. And then I actually because of the war they forced short the apprentice —
Interviewer: Training.
BS: Training from three years to well, less than two years.
Interviewer: Yes, I was going to say I was surprised.
BS: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: That you were —
BS: Oh yes.
Interviewer: That you spend time in training.
BS: Yes. So, I passed, I passed out actually in July 1941 and I wasn’t eighteen. I was still only seventeen. I passed out and our training wasn’t complete but they considered we had been trained sufficiently to be able to take part. We’d learn more as we went along.
Interviewer: Yeah.
BS: Having joined a squadron.
Interviewer: Yeah.
BS: You see.
Interviewer: Learning on the job.
BS: That’s right. Yes. So, nineteen, I was in the, when I was left Halton I was posted to RAF Marham in Norfolk to 218 Squadron. There were two squadrons there. The Wellington squadron. Wellingtons. 115 and 218 but Wellingtons. Basically, Wellington bombers and I always remember in the train going from, up from Halton to, to Marham it was a lovely sunny day in July we heard for the first time the subject about the Russians. The Germans invading Russia. That was the first time we had heard that Russia had come into the war you see. And so we got to, got to Marham and of course straightway I was pitchforked on to the squadron and it was very interesting you know being inducted into servicing the Wellingtons. We used to have to also apart from looking after all the instrument systems, instrument repairs and replacement we had also responsibility for the navigation system as well you know because it was astral navigation in those days you know and also the oxygen system. So we had to, in those days you had to physically change the oxygen bottles after every trip, you know. Quite a lot of bottles too. That was quite a job. So that’s one of my little jobs I had to do. But one of the funny things was that the aircraft apart from dropping bombs they used to drop leaflets over Germany. I still have a sample. And also fake ration cards so the Germans would probably pick up these fake ration cards to help deplete the German rations you see. I’ve still got one of those somewhere. Anyway, so that was that but the basic thing I’ll always remember is that of course in those days bombing was, at the time we thought it was very effective but it was not very effective. There was an awful lot of missed targets.
Interviewer: Yeah.
BS: An awful lot of mixed targets.
Interviewer: Area bombing. Yeah.
BS: That’s right, and but the sad thing was you know the aircrew used to come out and used to get the captains of a bomber was only about nineteen or twenty you know. The responsibility that the lads took on then in those days was quite, it really was quite [pause] but I thinking back on it now I hardly ever saw any sign of fear. They were laughing and joking. They used to wee on the wheels for good luck and things like that you know. And the old air gunners would let off the guns into the night sky just to check on them you know in the turrets. You know and, but they always seemed to set off in a very good mood. But of course, when they didn’t come back or came back badly damaged you know often with blood. On one occasion I remember the, one came back and the rear turret was just a mass of blood and gore.
Interviewer: Yes, I heard somebody else says that.
BS: That’s right.
Interviewer: Yeah.
BS: And the damage that the, that the Wellington could take with geodetic construction was quite amazing really. Old Barnes Wallis had designed them very well indeed you know. And then once, I’d been there a few weeks when the film people came to take a, they made a film called, “One of Our Aircraft is missing.” And they came to shoot at the early stages of the aircraft taking off from our, they came around to our dispersal and they took photos of us ground crew waving to the aircraft as they took off in to the night sky on their bombing missions.
Interviewer: Did they? So that was just done for the camera was it?
BS: that was done for the camera really you know. And I did see and I did have a copy afterwards that I actually saw the back of me and three others just waving like mad to the aircraft that took off into the night sky. But it was a very very very poignant really. They take off into the dusk you know. Disappear. Of course, all grass airfields then. There was no runways. No runways. They were all grass airfields. And so which was quite an embarrassment really later on because in the Autumn of 1941 we converted to Stirlings. We were the second squadron to be, I’ll just get this for you [pause] to be converted to, sorry to be converted to Stirlings.
Interviewer: Oh, I think I’ve seen this photograph before. Yes.
BS: Yes. It’s a special. There was only a few copies made.
Interviewer: Yeah.
BS: That’s one of the few.
Interviewer: A nice looking aeroplane.
BS: Yes. But very heavy. Very big. Much bigger than the Lanc you know. They carried a bigger bomb load. But of course, the trouble with the Stirling was that the Hercules engines didn’t have the power really to get them over the Alps and they had to struggle like hell to get over to bomb Northern Italy as they used to go and bomb Turin quite a lot. But they used to struggle to get over the Alps and I think they realised that they were built like a tank. Like a fortress inside. But they just didn’t have the power really and I think actually when it came into about 1943 they were actually taken off full line bombing and became towers for the gliders and things like that.
Interviewer: It's a shame because everybody now looks back and thinks —
BS: Yeah.
Interviewer: The Lancaster was the only bomber.
BS: Oh no. No. The Stirling was she was ever she was very good in every respect bar the fact she was underpowered. But I’ve flown in a Stirling and I’ve flown, I had to get every chance I could. Air testing, you know. Those I used to fly. I’ve flown I a Stirling. I’ve flown quite a few times in Wellingtons. You know, on the air tests. I used to like to sit in the rear turrets. Quite fun. And you know so I got one for experience really and the, and another snag with the Stirling was that it was the first aircraft that ever had the electrical undercarriage. And old DC motors they requires three thick cables to really get the power through and it was quite a thing to see a Stirling with one wheel collapsed and like this on the airfield. Like you know and had to jack them up to —
Interviewer: I wonder why they went for electric motors rather than —
BS: I don’t know.
Interviewer: Metal damage to cope with if the hydraulics had been —
BS: I think so. I think it was an experiment really you know. They were coming in to a new era and you know so, you know I think they—
Interviewer: A bit embarrassing if you have a generator failure.
BS: Oh yes. And of course, they realised being as these were such big heavy aircraft that the grass airfield was not very good at all. You know, they used to —
Interviewer: They used to get waterlogged, didn’t they?
BS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Some of these old grassed airfields.
BS: Yeah. So soon after that that, I left the country by then that they decided to build runways you see. So, you know I, people say to me oh there’s the lady who I’m very good friends with at the moment. She’s quite a bit younger than me but if I talk about the olden days she doesn’t want to know. ‘Oh, don’t talk about the past.’ The past. But you get to my age you think about it. It’s life to you, you know what I mean?
Interviewer: Yeah.
BS: My memory is still so fantastically good really, you know. Way back to those days it’s as clear as a bell really.
Interviewer: And didn’t you tell me that you remember Trenchard coming?
BS: Oh sorry. Yes. Yes.
Interviewer: He lived up to his Boom Trenchard.
BS: Oh yes. Yes.
Interviewer: Trenchard. Big man.
BS: When the, I hadn’t been at Marham very long, perhaps, are we still oh dear. I hadn’t been at Marham very long when it was a bit of a miserable sort of day and of course we were working in the hangars and they used to say, ‘Come on. Get outside.’ You know. Assembled on the tarmac outside the hangars because there’s going to be someone giving a talk. So we went outside and stood in a big sort of circle. And suddenly this figure appeared and he was introduced as to Lord Trenchard you see and there he was in his uniform and his rather flat sort of hat. It wasn’t, a bit of a squashed looking hat on his head and he gave us a pep talk you see about how, what a wonderful job we were doing. To keep up, lads, you know. You know, sort of you know and we’ve got the Germans on the run [laughs] you know [laughs] We bloody well hadn’t at that time.
Interviewer: So you took it with a pinch of salt.
BS: Oh yes. I stood quite close to him actually. He had a moustache if I remember rightly.
Interviewer: Yes.
BS: But we weren’t told of course at the time it hadn’t really perhaps got around to me by then but we were told that he was the father of the Royal Air Force.
Interviewer: Absolutely.
BS: So it was a privilege to remember that, you see.
Interviewer: Yes. Yes.
BS: Yeah.
Interviewer: And the thing that they say about Trenchard was that when forming the Air Force one of the things he really concentrated on was very good training.
BS: Yes.
Interviewer: To make sure not just the air crew but —
BS: That’s right.
Interviewer: To make sure that the ground crew had got all the skills.
BS: That’s right.
Interviewer: Which is what, which is quite interesting that you —
BS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Did spend quite a good time in training even though it was in the Second World War.
BS: Oh absolutely. Oh yes. And something else I was going to say. I’ve forgotten. Oh, dear its gone from me.
Interviewer: And when the Air Force —
BS: Oh yes. Yes. Yes. He was, was the founder of the Aircraft Apprentice Scheme in 1923. He started it all up at Halton and it’s a wonderful training you know.
Interviewer: Yes.
BS: As a boy of sixteen, just sixteen to be pitchforked from home into that, you know. The sheer discipline and we learned to look after ourselves. Do our own —
Interviewer: Sewing.
BS: Sewing and —
Interviewer: Yeah.
BS: And keeping our barrack rooms clean. Kit inspection once a week. Everything had to be absolutely spot on, you know. The officer used to come around with the —
Interviewer: And the aircraft apprentices have got a very good reunion and —
BS: Oh well, yes. The Halton Apprentices Association. In fact, I’ve got a book there written by an air vice marshall. Ex-aircraft apprentice who used to, we used to see him actually in our reunions down at Halton and it’s about the life of an aircraft apprentice. I’ll get it out some time and show you.
Interviewer: And the good thing is —
BS: I’ll look it up.
Interviewer: And the interesting thing is how many formal aircraft apprentices made air rank —
BS: Oh yes.
Interviewer: Very senior ranks.
BS: They did. They did. Apart from the technical training which you of course enlarged. I mean, by the time I finished at the RAF I was very highly qualified. Instruments, electronically and everything else. You know, all the courses I went on and all that work on the V bombers. So, you know, it was, it was the sheer sort of discipline that that regulated your life and you know —
Interviewer: A good start.
BS: Oh yes.
Interviewer: A good start. And did you say you’d, I think you just said you were just saying that you were moving on from Marham. How long did you spend there?
BS: So I was at Marham from July ‘til March ’41.
Interviewer: And then what was next?
BS: Then what happened then was I’ll tell you a funny little story. Can I just recap a bit but when, when I passed out from Halton and I went to Marham and when I went home of course we used to get forty eight passes at any time. Not just at weekends. In the middle of the week or any time. Forty eight hour pass.
Interviewer: When you could be spared.
BS: When you could be spared.
Interviewer: Yeah.
BS: And my father who was a very very patriotic man. My father served right through the first war in the Royal Artillery, through all the modern hell of Passchendaele. You couldn’t meet a more patriotic man. King and country man everything. The fact I went in the the Air Force absolutely wonderful to him you know. Anyway, I went home on my first leave you see. And , ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Where’s your propellers on your arms?’ He thought I was going to be a leading aircraftsman straight away. Of course, I passed out as AC1 not AC2 [laughs] you see. I didn’t get quite the response then, you know. So, so that was that. So that was a funny story really going back. Yes, so what happened then was in March, early March ’42 I was posted overseas. You never knew where you were going abroad in the wartime. You never knew where you were going but overseas. So I went home on embarkation leave for a fortnight. When I got home my mother said, Southend on Sea, my mother said, ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘Dad’s in hospital, ill. Oh, he’s got congestion of the lungs.’ So I went down to see him. He was very poorly in hospital at Rochford in Essex and anyway within a couple of days he had died.
Interviewer: Oh, that’s —
BS: While I was on embarkation leave. Of course, I had two sisters at home and so that was a blow. So I got a weeks extension you know for his funeral. We buried him down in, we got him buried. And so I I left home, my mother and sisters and went back to Marham to clear and went to [pause] first of all we went, I was sent up to Blackpool. Blackpool was what you called a personnel distribution centre for people going over. PDC they called it. And —
Interviewer: Was that Squire’s Gate?
BS: No. No.
Interviewer: Actually at Blackpool.
BS: That was, we were in civvy billets in Bloomfield Road opposite the football ground. Well they were all civvy billets in those days you see.
Interviewer: Right.
BS: And the nice house, a very nice house we were in. Anyway, we were there for a fortnight and in that time we were all kitted out for overseas. You had an idea perhaps where you were going in those days the sort of kit you got really and we were kitted out at Marks and Spencer’s and Woolworths were military kitting out places you see.
Interviewer: Fantastic.
BS: So we had to barter around Blackpool from one to the other being kitted out and straightaway we knew we weren’t going to India because we didn’t get a pith helmet. The pith helmet. They had the pith helmets to go into India you see. We had the old fashioned [taupes?] that they used in the sort of semi-tropical countries you know like Africa and places like that. So I had a [taupe?] I had all the rest of the khaki drill issued and then we set off. After a fortnight we were what they called drafts in those days. Then we set off by train. Took us all day in the train. Of course, no sort, they had no sort of corridor trains. They were all bloody single compartments.
Interviewer: Separate compartments. Yeah.
BS: And we finished up. Where the hell are we going to? We finished up it turned out in Avonmouth in Bristol.
Interviewer: And you still don’t know where you’re going.
BS: No. Not a clue. Not a clue. No. No. They wouldn’t tell you. So we’d not a clue. We got to Avonmouth. We offloaded from the train at the dockside and there was this big old grey steamer there for troops. She had been called the Island Princess. She had been a Argentine meat boat apparently which had been converted to a trooper. Troop carrier. So we staggered up the gangplank. Don’t know how I staggered up with kit bags. Full blooming kitted on. Your [taupe] Great coat. All the rest of our equipment. We staggered up the gangplank on to the, and straight down the gangways right down to a lower deck. One of the holds had been converted into a troop deck you see. Got down there and we were the last line of portholes going down. The Army were underneath. They didn’t have any portholes. We had the Army on board as well. And there were two hundred of us on the troop deck and we were all sleeping on hammocks and we had sort of mess tables going from the centre out to the sides of the ship you see where we allocated so many to a mess table each you see. About I don’t know about ten or twelve. Something like that. And hammocks had to be stowed in special stowage and your ordinary kit was on racks above you. So, so that was something getting used to and when we came had to sleep at night we we hung our hammocks up you know and when we all slung our hammocks we were sort of more or less touching one another you know. You always had to sleep head to toe for obvious reasons and if anybody was seasick in the night God it was hell.
Interviewer: Yes.
BS: Bloody awful.
Interviewer: Yes.
BS: You can imagine.
Interviewer: I don’t want to contemplate it. I did I did three years in the Navy and —
BS: Oh, did you?
Interviewer: I don’t want to contemplate what it could have been like.
BS: So, so anyway so that was the old troopship and, but I got used it. Actually, I enjoyed it. Anyway, we sailed out in the and we sailed out to Greenock, picked up the rest of the convoy at Greenock and we stayed there overnight and —
Interviewer: But when the ship sailed did you still not know where the ship was going?
BS: No. Not a clue. We hadn’t got a clue. No.
Interviewer: That’s incredible.
BS: Well, I hadn’t got a clue and we sailed up the Irish Sea to Greenock and there we picked up the rest of the convoy. We sailed next day. There was ships from horizon to horizon.
Interviewer: So also and when was this?
BS: This was the end of March ’42. The height of the U-boat war.
Interviewer: Wow.
BS: The height of the U-boat war and, and there were sort of Naval vessels sort of you know going around all the time but of course the convoy had to go to the speed of the slowest ship. Eight knots. That was, that was the and we were kept one in front and one behind, you know, liners. Troopers. All grey and horizon to horizon and it was just ships everywhere. And of course, I never even gave a thought to blooming U-boats. I can remember standing on the bloody bow in the heaving North Atlantic enjoying it. Isn’t this wonderful. I never gave a thought we could bloody well be torpedoed at any time, you know. Its youth you see. Nothing can happen to me.
Interviewer: No.
BS: So anyway, so we kept going day after day after day and getting colder and colder. We were going, we thought we were going a bit north. Anyway, eventually we, we changed course and fortunately you know we saw a couple of Condors came over but, but no we didn’t, nobody was attacked at that time. Or at least after we changed direction of course I knew we were going south and eventually after about a couple of weeks or more, two and a half weeks we landed up in Freetown in Sierra Leone and we anchored there for a couple of days. And I can remember the old [unclear] coming alongside with the natives in them wanting to sell —
Interviewer: Sell things. Yeah.
BS: Including their sister ships [laughs] but rain. I’ve never known rain like it in my life. Anyway, we, we set sail again. By this time the convoy was somewhat spoiled. The faster ships they let go ahead at this point you see. But anyway, we kept, we sailed on and on and on. Eventually we must have, well I still had no idea where we were going. No idea at all, you know what was happening. Where we were going. So we got down to the South of Africa. We’re going around the Cape and suddenly we were sitting down to an evening meal down on the mess decks and suddenly bang and the whole ship shuddered like hell. So the boat sirens, alarms went so we, there wasn’t panic but we went up several ladders to the upper, to the boat decks and we stood at our boat stations. There was the Acali raft station on the bloody boat. We had an Acali raft station. And the ship just, just over there was going down. You know, she was the Naval vessel had turned back and was going towards it. So we stayed, we stayed at boat stations for what must have been well over an hour. We went down again and just sat down again when another bang went up and another ship had been hit. You know sort of further away. So, and then we were told over the tannoy that we’d actually arrived into an enemy minefield laid by the Japanese ocean going submarines and not to say anything about it. Right. Well, the next day we had these little leaflets handed out to us about conditions sort of in South Africa and we were told, our draft were told that we were going to be staying in South Africa you see. Well, you know I was absolutely over the moon about this because my eldest sister in ’39, had emigrated to South Africa and so I thought at least there. Only at the last moment two days after that we docked in Durban. And the wonderful thing is I don’t know if you’ve been told about this but all the convoys used to dock in Durban in those days. They were met by a lady on the end of the moles singing and she used, as the troop ships moved in towards the harbour she’d stand on the end of the mole, this lady in a long white dress and she was singing beautifully to all the ships as they came in. She did this every time a convoy came in to Durban during the war. Singing. Beautiful singing. And we docked and we were offloaded and we were taken to a transit camp. You see what happened was that the, it was a rest camp really and all the troops going up to North Africa you know RAF and Army used to —
Interviewer: Stop there.
BS: Have a week or a fortnights rest in Durban. At Clairwood before going out to North Africa you see. The campaign there. But we were only there for about a week because we were staying in South Africa and I was told my post would be to a place called Port Alfred down in the Cape, Eastern Cape, near Port Elizabeth. And what had happened was the Empire Training Scheme. They trained all the aircrew in South Africa, Rhodesia, America.
Interviewer: Canada.
BS: And Canada. Right. So I was posted there and of course the aircraft were Ansons and Oxfords and Old Fairey Battles.
[pause]
BS: So of course, I was over the moon because I mean and the first the thing is to go back when we were in Durban. The residents of Durban were so patriotic they used to talk about home as England not South Africa.
Interviewer: Really?
BS: All English speaking and English-speaking South Africans and every evening outside Clairwood camp there would be lines and lines of cars of Durban residents lining to take the troops to their homes to give them a —
Interviewer: Dinner.
BS: Meal.
Interviewer: Yeah.
BS: And look after them and give them a good time. I remember the first night or second night we were there I was, went out with my friend intending to go in to Durban just to see things and a car pulled up just as we and we were, ‘Come on lads.’ You know. ‘Would you like to come home with us?’ So we said, ‘Yes, please.’ He turned out to be the chief education officer for Durban and we went to his beautiful house. They had three lovely daughters and of course it was, and after war torn England it was a paradise coming there. It was. It was. It was peacetime. It was beautiful living conditions you know.
Interviewer: So life was beginning to look up.
BS: Yes.
Interviewer: At this stage.
BS: And because a lot of the chaps had perhaps come from poor homes. It must have been quite an eye opener going to some of these houses you know.
Interviewer: Yeah.
BS: Being looked after like that. You know it really must have been quite fantastic. So anyway, so and of course all the time I was in South Africa I kept on very good friendly terms with the family and I used to go up there sometimes on leave. Anyway, I got to Port Alfred and with the, I was with the Instrument Section and we had, you know the, the Ansons and Oxfords were used for navigator training and bomb aimer training you know. And air gunner training also and the Fairey Battles were used for target towing. And could you [laughs] I don’t really know much about the old Fairey Battle but they lost —
Interviewer: I’ve seen, I’ve seen photographs.
BS: They’d lost an awful lot in France.
Interviewer: And they were retired from active service pretty quickly weren’t they?
BS: Oh, they lost a lot in France. Anyways, you know how you take your life in your hands as a young boy I would fly in anything because I loved flying you see and I remember having a couple of flights in Fairey Battles and oh God, spewing glycol and petrol over the ruddy place you know. It was [laughs].
Interviewer: And was the flying school run by Airwork’s?
BS: No.
Interviewer: Or was it run —
BS: No. No.
Interviewer: By the RAF?
BS: No, it was run by the either the South African Air Force and the RAF between them. So on, on the camps you see there were quite a few camps out there they were, we were a mixture of South African Air Force and RAF. But the RAF were the main trainers. Do you know what I mean? They were the main experienced people. The South African Air Force were there as sort of because this was South Africa and our CO was a colonel, South African colonel you see. So that was fine. Ok. And so it, it was a lovely mixture really but the Air Force were the main operators as you might say. The RAF. Port Alfred and 43 Air School and —
Interviewer: And as you say their duty —
BS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Was to push out all the air crews.
BS: That’s right.
Interviewer: To go back to Europe.
BS: Oh yes. That’s they used to come over and they would be there for quite a few weeks and of course it’s a wonderful atmosphere to train them in in peacetime.
Interviewer: Well, that’s why they set these schools up.
BS: That’s right.
Interviewer: A — get them away from the war and B —
BS: Yes, that’s right.
Interviewer: In good weather conditions.
BS: That’s right. I mean the flying or navigating was perfect really and of course it was all astra navigation in those days. I mean you think back to life over here during the bombing period of those years. I mean that’s why the Americans didn’t do it up because they weren’t trained in astra navigation like our chaps were you see. You know night navigation. That’s why they took on all the —
Interviewer: That was the day raids.
BS: Day. Day bombing you see. So and I often used to go up you know on these trips with them. You know, I used to love to fly as much as I could.
Interviewer: And was there a lot of work to be done repairing the aircraft?
BS: Oh lord, yes. I mean you know it’s all the time. I mean and the wonderful thing is despite the fact that there was a war on and losses in shipping through U-boat activity and that sort of thing we never went short of spares. You know, it’s marvellous really.
Interviewer: So somebody back in England must have been doing their job to get all the spares sent out.
BS: Oh, the production in this country was absolutely wonderful when you think of it during the war. All firms like, you know like little engineering firms, workshops used to have contracts for for making spares and things like that you see. The, the organisation was absolutely fantastic, you know.
Interviewer: So and going back to Trenchard again.
BS: Oh, that’s right.
Interviewer: He set the, he set the Air Force up and made sure everybody was trained.
BS: That’s right.
Interviewer: So when it needed to work it could.
BS: Well, when you come back to it in 1934 they set up the five year plan. They built all those airfields like Cottesmore, Luffenham, Wittering, eventually Scampton all built on the same plan. You go to any station and they were all exactly the same virtually.
Interviewer: Similar. Similar layouts.
BS: Oh yes. H blocks and the officer’s mess. Sergeant’s Messes. Pretty well pretty much the same. This is and if it hadn’t been for that five year plan we’d have been the hell’s way in ‘39 when the war broke out.
Interviewer: How long did you get to stay in South Africa then?
BS: So anyway, so I stayed in South Africa until July ’45.
Interviewer: Oh, so you —
BS: I was there for over three years.
Interviewer: You were there for three years.
BS: Yeah. So —
Interviewer: Was that normal for for people to spend that much time there?
BS: Yes. Well, you couldn’t get home. There was no, there was no time limit to a tour in those days.
Interviewer: And presumably they wanted to cut down on the amount of troop transports.
BS: That’s right. That’s right.
Interviewer: And so it made sense to keep you there for a good long time.
BS: That’s right. I came back when the European war was over. So all the time I was out there I was very fortunate because my sister was living in Johannesburg and so the first leave I got I went up and stayed with her. Wonderful for me really. And of course, the other fellas didn’t have that. And I had some wonderful leaves and went all over the country and my sister’s husband he was working in the gold mines of Johannesburg. He joined the South African Air Force and he went up to North Africa. To a campaign up there against Rommel you see. The South African Air Force and my sister she, because her husband had gone up there she took the chance. She came down to Port Alfred and lived in the local hotel there. So —
Interviewer: Your sister on [unclear] —
BS: Yes [laughs] it was a most unusual situation really but it just so happened. It was luck.
Interviewer: You’ve got to make these things work for you haven’t you?
BS: But that’s right. Just luck. So that was that. Then in, as I say in —
Interviewer: Then again when you were serving there in the, in the sort of towards the end of the Second World War was it obvious that you heard about D-Day presumably.
BS: Oh, oh yes.
Interviewer: You heard about how the war was going.
BS: Yes. Yes. Oh yes. About [pause] what was it? In July? About January ’45 I was posted up to Pretoria to Robert’s Heights, Voortrekkerhoogte because that was Afrikaner speaking. Have you been to South Africa?
Interviewer: No. Not yet.
BS: Oh, you’ll have to go.
Interviewer: It’s on my list of places to go.
BS: Well, yeah. Yeah. Well, I want to go back again on this scheme that they’re running for veterans to go back.
Interviewer: Oh brilliant.
BS: And visit. Visit where with a grant from the lottery.
Interviewer: Great.
BS: So if I had somebody who would go with me I’d love to go back. Anyway, so I was posted up to Pretoria to a big air depot there. We were, we were sort of a big where they used to service all the aircraft instruments. They’d come in that were US you know, unserviceable. So by this time I’d been promoted to corporal.
Interviewer: Was that a big jump up to corporal?
BS: Yeah, well —
Interviewer: As in responsibility?
BS: Oh yes. Oh yes. I mean you know you know I thought it was anyway. You know.
Interviewer: Well, they always say corporal, the two ranks in the Air Force that are most important are the corporal and the warrant officer.
BS: Oh yes. Well, corporal because you, yes, oh yes. Yes. It was fine. Yes. And so, and then as I say in July ’45 or when, when yes we did know the war was coming to an end of course and then because it was so down, I always remember VE Day out there. We all paraded on the parade ground and were given a formal talk by the station commander there. He was another South African of course and immediately of course we were given the day off you see. So my friend and I we decided to go into Johannesburg. No. Into, into, that’s right into Pretoria itself and we were picked up by a South African colonel going in his car. Of course, we used to hitch hike all over. He took us to his house. I had a lovely time. We got as drunk as hell you know [laughs] We didn’t bloody well bother. Had a wonderful time. So that was how I spent VE Day really. I got back to Pretoria and then of course we were hanging about really for a week or two still doing our jobs of course because aircraft things still had to be serviced and looked after. And then we were posted. So July, at the end of June we were told, you know we were due to go home so we, we were taken down to Cape Town. Went down by train from Johannesburg on the, on the what do they call the wonderful train? The Blue Train they call it.
Interviewer: Blue Train. Yeah.
BS: Which went right down through Kimberley and the beautiful South African landscape down to Cape Town and we were there for about ten days or so in transit to Cape Town and of course it was lovely because Cape Town is a lovely area you know altogether. A beautiful place. And then we embarked on the Alcantara. A ship. A troop ship. Still the same conditions as the one I went out on really.
Interviewer: But this time no U-boats shooting at you.
BS: No. No. No U-boats but I’ll tell you what as soon as we sailed out from Cape Town they operated the gassing system which kept, gave you warnings of submarines. Oh, magnetic mines. That’s what they —
Interviewer: Magnetic, gassing for magnetic mines.
BS: Yes.
Interviewer: And then Aztec obviously —
BS: Yeah.
Interviewer: For detecting submarines.
BS: And I always remember that because we had it on the way out there. They have these what do they call the machine guns? The Oerlikons. They used to practice those every day and oh the noise they made.
Interviewer: This is after VE Day.
BS: Oh yeah. Well, of course I mean you know I mean things were still the same. I mean things hadn’t altered. It took time to. Of course, we sailed back in just over two and a half weeks. Nearly three weeks. So it was a much quicker easier time than —
Interviewer: And when you left South Africa did you know your time in the Air Force was coming to an end or was it?
BS: No. No. Because I was a regular.
Interviewer: You joined up as a regular.
BS: Oh, I was in for twelve years.
Interviewer: Ok. So, so when you signed up in 1939 you knew you were in for twelve years.
BS: [unclear] Oh that’s right. Yes.
Interviewer: So presumably a lot of people that were with you were conscripted.
BS: Well, obviously, yes. You had conscripted, you had a release, demob number they called it. And the lower the demob number the older you were you know.
Interviewer: The quicker they were posted to —
BS: The quicker you were out. But they never started demobbing until about August really. I mean this is what I gather the film on TV, one of these Foyles War things a guy came back from North Africa. He was out. Well, he wouldn’t have been out just like that. He’d have waited weeks you know. Things like that you notice.
Interviewer: Well looking at it the demob procedure was very well done.
BS: It was very well done. Everything was so organised believe me and I mean even the demob suits. I mean the lovely beautiful material. They were wonderful material. Shirts, all the ties.
Interviewer: A pair of shoes.
BS: Coat, hat, shoes. Everything.
Interviewer: Yeah.
BS: I mean —
Interviewer: And a suitcase was it?
BS: And a suitcase.
Interviewer: And a suitcase.
BS: That’s right. Yes. So anyway, so we got, oh yeah it was a very very pleasurable voyage. Actually, I enjoyed troopship life because you know funnily enough just to go back a bit going out to South Africa was where I learned to play chess and bridge on the deck for days on end. In the afternoon you were quite free and you’d sit about on deck you know and play cards or [pause] so I know quite a few games like that and you know so, oh I thought it was tough, spartan conditions. You know the food was very spartan and and once you got over the morning with boat drill and all that sort of thing. Of course, you know it’s, it was [pause] anyway so we got back through to Liverpool and, oh yes I’m sure it was Liverpool we docked at. And then of course we were sent our demob disembarkation leave and I went back down to Southend to my home.
Interviewer: And you’d been away —
BS: To my mum.
Interviewer: And you’d been away for a good long time then.
BS: Yes.
Interviewer: When you —
BS: Yeah. Can I go back a little bit?
Interviewer: Of course you can.
BS: My two sisters at home who had left home the younger one she joined the Wrens and she was actually stationed down in the tunnels at Dover. They had tunnels under the castle which they had and she was a wireless operator there and she was involved in all that recording all the traffic on the Channel. Which they did you know with the German traffic and everything else. She was involved in that. My other sister who’d been a dressmaker joined the RAF and became a radio operator. Wonderful things they trained girls to do.
Interviewer: Yeah.
BS: She hadn’t a clue what electricity was almost and here she was just an ordinary dressmaker joined the Air Force and they trained her to be a wireless op down at Yatesbury. Is it Yatesbury? Yes.
Interviewer: Yes.
BS: Yes, that’s right. Yatesbury.
Interviewer: Near Bristol.
BS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Yes. Down there. And you know she qualified and eventually she was posted to Chichsands Priory which was an out station of —
Interviewer: Bentley Priory. Bletchley Park.
BS: Bletchley Park.
Interviewer: Bletchley Park.
BS: And she used to listen to all the German aircraft recording messages and pass it on to Bletchley Park. So an ordinary dressmaker. You see the people see they trained people up to do in the war you know.
Interviewer: And the responsibilities that they had.
BS: And the responsibility.
Interviewer: At a very young age.
BS: I know. Yes.
Interviewer: So much so that certainly after the, when the war came to an end a lot of women who had been trained wanted to keep, use that training.
BS: Well exactly. Oh yes. And she found it useful my, this other sister because when I got back from South Africa she was still in, still in the WAAF and about the following year she wanted to go out and join my sister in South Africa. But you couldn’t get passage anywhere at that time on the ships or anywhere and so she got together another group of like minded people and they bought an ex-Naval air sea rescue launch. Only about sixty seventy feet long. These twenty thirty people and they equipped it and they had these petrol engines with huge fifty gallon drums of, of fuel latched on the deck and they set off for South Africa. Took them three months to get there and she eventually did get there and of course it was in all the papers at the time. This wonderful trip made by these people.
Interviewer: That must have been an experience.
BS: And then when they got there they sold their boat and my sister went up to join my other sister up in Johannesburg. Well, that’s another story but so, you know those sorts of things people did you know in those days. Anyway, so, so that so I got home and when I got back I was home for a month and then I wondered where I was going to get posted to and of all places I was posted to RAF Westwood at Peterborough. There was an RAF station there training, training Free French Air Force pilots.
Interviewer: Is that just north of Peterborough?
BS: No. It’s on the edge of Peterborough. Right on the edge. Do you know Peterborough?
Interviewer: I do but I, I —
BS: If you go out to Westwood area it was you know the bit that was the Baker Perkins factory there. It was just at the back of Baker Perkins. In fact, the airfield stretched right up to Baker Perkins fence and that was all RAF Westwood. It’s all housing now and factories.
Interviewer: Yes, I knew there was an airfield around but I wasn’t sure where it was.
BS: So I was stationed there. I was stationed there for a short while and then after a few months, I wasn’t there all that long really I was posted to Japan.
Interviewer: Right. And we’ll talk about that in the next recording.
BS: Yes. Ok.
[recording paused]
Interviewer: I’m with Bertie Salvage and we’re talking about his experiences in the RAF and after your time in the Second World War Bertie I understand you ended up in Japan.
BS: Yes. It must have been sometime in early ’46 I was posted to Japan. Of course, this came as quite a surprise to me. Of all places to go to. To the occupation force in Japan because at that time Honshu, the main island was divided into half. The Americans occupied the upper part and the British Commonwealth Occupation Force as it was called occupied the lower half of Honshu, you know which was between Army and RAF. And what, what they’d done is when the occupation forces moved in they’d taken over old Japanese military establishments including airfields and when I got there I was posted to a place called Miho which had been another Japanese airfield where they trained the Kamikaze pilots. And the south, the south of Japan, or the south west southwest corner of Japan. But anyway going back to to going we set off from Tilbury in an old boat called the SS Ranchi and this had been an old P&O boat you know. Quite an old boat and it had been fitted out as a troop ship and it took us six weeks to get to Japan believe it or not. We think these days they are there in about sixteen hours. Almost. Not quite. A bit more than that but it took us six weeks to get there. All through the Med and down through stopping off at, in Port Said, Aden, Columbo, Singapore. It was quite, Shanghai, Hong Kong then into a place called Kure in Japan which had been a big Japanese naval base. And it had been fantastic, you know the thought of going to Japan. You know this place that we’d all heard of as you know created such, you know treated, given our boys such a bad time in the war in the Far East and it was quite a fascinating thought of going there. Anyway, arrived at Kure and going through the Japanese inland sea was quite an experience. All the little volcanic islands which were quite picturesque. Eventually landed at Kure. Anyway, we were entrained across to Miho, this ex-Japanese base and of course it’s quite interesting to see the Japanese landscape. It was very hilly and mountainous. Very forested all over. Of course it’s a volcanic, volcanic origin Japan so it is, you know it is very hilly. So we landed at Miho and I was posted on to, well basically 17 Squadron Spitfires but 11 Squadron was there as well and basically I was really working on both squadrons but administratively I was sort of on the strength of 17 Squadron. And the object of the, was although we were an occupation force the main job really was to patrol the sea around Japan off the, across the Yellow Sea and you know as far on the way across towards China and all over that area for some reason or other. But anyway, so that was very interesting being there.
Interviewer: Did you get to see much of the country at all?
BS: Yes.
Interviewer: Whilst you were there.
BS: Yes. I got, I just to go back a bit it was interesting because all these, all the domestic staff on the camp were Japanese. Ex-Japanese Army and lots and lots of Japanese, and lots and lots of Japanese girls used to come on the camp every day doing all the menial tasks. In fact, the funny thing was that the, I was a corporal when I went there still and whilst had been there nearly a year I was promoted to sergeant. After I was promoted to sergeant I was moved to the Sergeant’s Mess. I was given my own sort of room and I was issued with a room girl who used to attend to all my domestic requirements. She used to clean my room and keep doing my washing and ironing and everything else. So that was quite an experience in itself and whilst I was there we had a NAAFI canteen of course which we, which we used to use and this was staffed by English girls in the WRVS who had been sent in to to run the canteens for the troops you see. And I happened to meet the manageress of the local NAAFI canteen and get to know her quite well. Gladys. And she, like the other girls were living in the Officer’s Mess. They were given the honorary rank of flight lieutenant because there was no other sort of way we could accommodate them really.
Interviewer: The equivalent. Yeah.
BS: You see. Because the Japanese were really off limits in the sense, in the sense that when you went out in Japan we were pretty well limited to we’d go in the shops and things. We weren’t really supposed to go in their houses and that sort of thing you know. You know, we were and all our provisions were you know were provided by either America, Australia or New Zealand or Australia. They used to come from all over the, the western world one might say. Of course, the Japanese had nothing. They had only rice and fish to eat you see. Of course, they weren’t ever proper meat eaters before that. They’d sort of produced dairy herds and that sort of thing. They lived on rice and fish. Anyway, so that was the situation there. So I got to know Gladys very very well and we eventually at the time I was there we, we courted as one might say and eventually I married her in Japan. And by this time she had been sent down to Iwakuni which was the main RAF base headquarters down, down near Kure. The RAF airfield at Iwakuni and it was the Communication Flight there. They had Dakotas there which they used to supply the, communicate with the RAF other establishments in Honshu and she got posted there to the WRVS canteen there and I wangled, by this time I’d been promoted to sergeant, by this time I wangled a posting down there myself you see. I think they took pity on me at Miho. Anyway, so I was posted down to Iwakuni as well. It was at Iwakuni that Gladys and I had as service wedding. And of course the funny thing was that of course I was working on the Dakotas there and the funny thing was that she was living in the Officer’s Mess there and I I was living in the Sergeant’s Mess. So after we got married we had to go back to the same situation. The only time I could see her was in the Officer’s Mess at Iwakuni. The WRVS had a separate sort of living room you see and I could visit her in this living room, you know. The only time I could see her inside anywhere. This went on for about nearly two months after which time we came home. But it was very interesting and when we did get married there we, we had a honeymoon up at a place called Koana just outside Tokyo. This was a beautiful hotel on the shores of the Pacific. It had been built by the Japanese to house the 1940 Olympic games which never took place. To house the contestants and everybody. So this was taken over as one of the leave hostels. Of course, what happened was that when the occupation force moved into Japan they sorted out all different sort of different sort of posh places around the country for troops to have a break.
Interviewer: R&R. Yeah.
BS: And one of them was at [Kyrenia?]. At Kyoto. Beautiful old famous beauty spot in Japan and going back a bit before I was married to Gladys I had a weeks leave up at Kyoto which was very fine indeed. It was up in the American sector actually near Tokyo. Anyway, so Gladys and I went to Koana. This was an absolutely wonderful fortnight and we actually had a week at Koana and a week down in Kobi at a beautiful Japanese house which had been the residence of the Baron Simotomo who had been executed as a war criminal and they’d taken over his old house as one of the leave hostels as it were. So we had the second week of our honeymoon there and it was absolutely fantastic. But the one of the things that you could see was in the distance to the top of Mount Fuji sticking up. You know with this white top. So that was that. Anyway, when it came time to come home I, we came home on a the old Dilwara which was a properly built troop ship and they used to call it the kit badge because they painted the big blue band around. And of course, Gladys came home first class as officer status.
Interviewer: Oh very nice.
BS: Whereas I of course was on the troop deck with the senior NCOs. Second class. So she came home first class and I came home second class and the only time I could see her was on the second class promenade deck. I wasn’t allowed through to the bloody first class either [laughs] Oh dear.
Interviewer: Only the Air Force could do that.
BS: And the thing is we had of course like all ships had OC troops on board. Like all troops had a usually a colonel who sort of late on in years.
Interviewer: Yes.
BS: You might say.
Interviewer: Yes.
BS: And at one stage she was, poor old Gladys got seasick. She wasn’t a good sailor and I got special treatment from the OC troops to go down to her cabin to give her first aid [laughs] Oh, it was, anyway we stopped off at Singapore and Columbo and we managed to get to shore and spend a bit of time together. BS: Not much though. So the only sort of married life I had was when we got back home to England really. So, but going back to but as 17 and 11 Squadrons on American Independence Day, the 4th of July, isn’t it?
Interviewer: Yes.
BS: We were invited, the whole, both squadrons were invited up to a place called [pause] called [pause] Oh dear. The name’s gone from me for the moment but a big airfield near Tokyo which the Americans had taken over. Kizarizu. Kizarizu. That’s the name of the place. And we were invited up there to help take part in their celebrations you see. As I’ve got pictures of the two squadrons all lined up at Kizarizu. Which I, which I took when I was there. And we had a nice two or three days there really at the Americans are very —
Interviewer: Very hospitable and all that.
BS: Very very hospitable.
Interviewer: Yes.
BS: And they had [pause] yes what the hell, oh yes the famous American fighter. Lightnings I think they called them.
Interviewer: P38 was the twin engine.
BS: Yeah.
Interviewer: With the tail booms.
BS: That’s right. But before that going back to when I was at Miho the, the New Zealand air force they had corsairs used to land on —
Interviewer: They’re air craft carrier Corsairs yeah.
BS: And I’ve actually worked to service Corsairs as well.
Interviewer: Well, the Royal Navy had them as well of course.
BS: Yeah. That’s right. Yes.
Interviewer: Yeah.
BS: Yes. So a corsair. They were nice aircraft. And so anyway so after six weeks we got back to England and of course when we got back to England Gladys the WVS, she had been in the Far East you see and of course when the, when the war ended she was moved up with the occupation forces so she was there before me you see. So anyway got back to England she was, and of course she went across to her home which was at Withernsea, East Yorkshire and I went for debriefing as it were to that place up on the Wirral. An old RAF station there. What was it? I’ve forgotten the name of it now but it was it was a sort of like a distribution place you know where you used to go for debriefing after being overseas and what not.
Interviewer: Before my time.
BS: [unclear] and all that and, yes. And of course, I and then of course I went on disembarkation leave and of course I went across to Gladys’ home in Withernsea on the East Yorkshire coast and for the first time I met her parents. It was ever so funny that. And, but I must say I did enjoy my time in Japan. It was eighteen months or so. It was quite an experience. Oh yes. Another thing I forgot to mention is that when I was at Iwakuni we were very near Hiroshima and I went to Hiroshima several times and I saw it in its devastated stated and all that and going back to that time unfortunately I lost my first wife to cancer. Breast cancer. She contracted it in 1954. ’54, and she died in 1960 and at the time they did wonder if she had picked up radio activity.
Interviewer: Out in Japan.
BS: Yes. Because we went to Hiroshima several times and you know saw it and also saw Nagasaki too at one time. So, anyway but Tokyo also Tokyo was an absolute mess as well. That was bombed to hell.
Interviewer: And did you get any feeling for what the Japanese thought about the war?
BS: The Japanese. Well, typical of the Oriental mind as soon as the Emperor said stop, finished and it was all bowing and cowing. Every time you spoke to the Japanese it was always like this. Even the military. And in fact, I don’t know whether you know it but after the war was finished when we, when we sort of took back Sumatra and Java like that we used the Japanese forces to control all the blooming rebels. They came under our control and we were, we were organising all their troops that were still there and they were as obedient as anything.
Interviewer: They had a very strong sense of leadership.
BS: This was their nature. Very very strong.
Interviewer: Very hierarchical —
BS: Yes. Of course.
Interviewer: Society.
BS: The Japanese on a parade if the officer was just for you to turn around and hit the sergeant, hit a corporal the corporal would pick a private out and give him a thrashing. That’s why we used to hand the can back as I say.
Interviewer: Hand the can back. I haven’t heard that before.
BS: Oh yeah. Hand the can back. Oh yeah. Yeah. Pass the can back yes. Hand the can back. Yeah.
Interviewer: But you enjoyed your time there.
BS: Oh, I enjoyed all my Air Force career. Every bit of it. I had, I didn’t want to leave. The only reason why I left I was over fifty five, late forties when I came out it’s because we were at Wittering and we’d bought a house in Stamford. My son was at Stamford School and of course it’s a very good school.
Interviewer: Yes.
BS: Stamford School. And my daughter was coming up for there and so I was due to be posted to Aden or due to be posted abroad And we didn’t want any. I didn’t think Gwen wanted to move, my second wife that is so we decided and I’d had this very good job offered me with PERA at Melton Mowbray so —
Interviewer: As we say it’s a no brainer at that stage probably to—
BS: Well, yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah.
BS: It was Production Engineering and Research Association and I was offered a job as a senior author there. Of course, with of my technical experience in the RAF.
Interviewer: It was time to leave.
Interviewer: Yeah. The wonderful technical training I had in the Air Force was second to none.
BS: Yeah.
Interviewer: And all the way through. You had your basic training but you keep on going on course after course after course.
BS: Again, back to —
Interviewer: I mean courses had six months.
BS: Back to that old training again.
Interviewer: Yes. I mean my electronic training and technical training was second to none when I came out.
BS: Ok. Well, we’ll talk about that in the next session.
Interviewer: Yes.
[recording paused]
BS: Do a quick sort of lead into that really.
Interviewer: Ok. Well, I’m with, I’m still with Bertie Salvage and we’ve gone through the Second World War. We’ve talked a little bit about time after the Second World War and now we’re starting to talk about his —
BS: That’s right.
Interviewer: Memories of the V Force and you know —
BS: Yes.
Interviewer: 1954 onwards.
BS: That’s right. Well, just to go back to 1951. I was posted out to Egypt. The Canal Zone. For three years on Deversoir on the Canal. On the Canal, you know.
Interviewer: Did that posting come out of the blue or did you ask for that?
BS: Oh no. That came out the blue because I can always remember when we came back from Japan going through the bloody Suez Canal I looked across at the bleak desert area and all the different military camps and I thought oh God I hope I never get posted here.
Interviewer: Yes. I hear that’s what most people say their first —
BS: I know I was posted out to Deversoir in Egypt. Of course, it was a bit of, a bit of a hammer blow to take but I actually it was quite nice there really. It was right on the edge of the Great Bitter Lake. I was on 249 Squadron. 213, on Vampires. And of course it was my first real, I had worked on Meteors before but it was my first real experience to be working on jet aircraft. They were lovely aircraft, the Vampire.
Interviewer: Yes.
BS: Have you ever flown one?
Interviewer: No. No.
BS: Yeah.
Interviewer: No.
BS: It took us, anyway so I worked on that and so in 1954 I got posted back to England and after my month’s disembarkation leave I was posted to RAF Gaydon. Never even heard of it before. But Gaydon had been a wartime station which they were re-starting again you know sort of —
Interviewer: They started to put some money into some of the —
BS: It had been held in like a sort of mothball condition.
Interviewer: Care and maintenance.
BS: Care and maintenance. Mothballed. And so they decided to start that off and start that off as as the initial V bomber training station you know. Of course, there would just be the V bombers. What happened was that the Victor, the Vulcan and the Victor were the first ones to be designed but they were going to take a long time to get into, into operations so they decided to as a stop gap to build the Valiant which Vickers had said they could build far quicker for them as a, as a stop gap and really until the Victors and the Vulcans were available. So I was posted to RAF Gaydon as an instructor on the Technical Training School. Of course it was going to be the OCU.
Interviewer: Yes.
BS: The aircrew were going to be trained there and also the ground crew people servicing the aircraft you see. So I was posted on to be the instructor on instruments on the, on the Valiant first of all. So of course, when I got there I think the very first Valiant was there. Anyway, I was straightaway sent away on long courses. I had quite a few weeks down at Vickers at Weybridge where they were being made, built there. I went to different other manufacturers of different instruments and things. GPI and Mark 4s, these all sorts.
Interviewer: The navigation equipment on the aeroplane.
BS: Yeah. Yes. And also the NBS bombing system which they used. And so I went on these long courses and I got back to Gaydon eventually and by that time of course I think another sort of couple of others were there or something and we set up the school. And I was in instruments, we had all the other trades, instruments, air frames, armaments you know and so of course I had to straight away set about creating all my instruction notes, my instruction techniques and programmes. All the, when you go in to instructing you have that all to do.
Interviewer: Yes. I remember that. Yes.
BS: Because, [unclear] because you really start to learn other things you know. You really start to realise how much do I know about my job and that sort of thing. And when it came to start teaching of course it was, it was a bit tough at first but I really got into it you know.
Interviewer: Yes.
BS: And I got so used to writing up the authorship, authoring my own notes that it I found it very interesting indeed.
Interviewer: And working with the manufacturers is normally quite —
BS: Oh yeah.
Interviewer: You get a lot of job satisfaction if you —
BS: Yeah. I went to Coventry to HSD, Hawker Siddeley Dynamics and everywhere and also to [pause] no that was later on I went to Ferranti when I was on the Blue Steel. So, you know. So, yes you got used to it. I spent quite a month or two I suppose going around different manufacturers. Cheltenham down to —
Interviewer: Smiths.
BS: To Smiths. Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah.
BS: You know, all sorts of different places. Anyway, of course you collate all this knowledge, put it all together and you know and, and the first day I had to instruct, you know the chaps are sitting there. I thought it was, you know it was quite an experience really.
Interviewer: And what rank are you by now?
BS: I was still a sergeant.
Interviewer: Still a sergeant. Yeah.
BS: Yes. Promotion was a bit slow and anyway I was going to go for the chief tech which I got a bit later on.
Interviewer: And what was living I mean England was still rationing going on in this period.
BS: Yeah, so what happened was when I first went to Gaydon of course there were no married quarters so they said to us go and find yourself a hiring somewhere and we’ll take it on. So I looked around South Warwickshire. I don’t know whether you know South Warwickshire. It’s a lovely county.
Interviewer: Not really. It’s a nice part of the world though, isn’t it?
BS: [unclear] and all down Stratford Upon Avon. All down that way because we were near Stratford you see and so I found myself a little —
Interviewer: This was before the M40 of course.
BS: That’s right.
Interviewer: Yeah.
BS: I found myself a little village called, down near Moreton in the Marsh called called Brailes and I found a little tiny cottage there. A country cottage. And so I moved Gladys down there, my wife with, who had our first boy then, our son by then. She was also, no she had got the two boys by then. We had two sons. So she came and so I was living out. It was about twelve miles away from there so I used to go in and backwards and forwards to Gaydon every day. So we were living in married and they started to build married quarters but they weren’t going to be ready for another year you see. So, so that went on really and of course getting to know the aircraft better and the chaps coming through. It used to be a fortnight, two weeks course or two or three weeks and then would be about a week and then have another lot come in then.
Interviewer: And is National Service still going on at this stage?
BS: And I’m going to say this, oh yes, National Service run to 1960 ’61. So National Service but what impressed me was a lot of national service chaps coming through HN, Higher National Certificate. Well trained chaps.
Interviewer: Chaps that decided to join the Air Force rather than —
BS: That’s right.
Interviewer: And they were a two year commitment were they?
BS: The two year commitment.
Interviewer: Yeah.
BS: But they were most interesting to teach because they were so receptive. I bet you could tell them something they’d know straightaway through their engineering background. They were a joy to teach really you know. They were so good. It’s like it was during the war of course where they had all these skilled people in from outside and —
Interviewer: The interesting thing to me if people joined on a two year National Service if they spent a year or eighteen months training they would be only be productive for six months.
BS: Oh, I know. That’s right. Well, they used to spend about six months training I suppose up to the basic mechanics but I’d get these chaps in and you know they were highly really highly qualified.
Interviewer: And of course, in the early 50s of course, there was a massive expansion of the Air Force because of Korea.
BS: Oh yes. That’s right.
Interviewer: And a lot of training schools were set up then.
BS: That’s right.
Interviewer: A lot of aircrew were pumped through.
BS: That’s right.
Interviewer: And obviously there would have been all the Meteor training outfits.
BS: That’s right. Yes. So I was at, I was at Leconfield when the Korean War was on and we sent aircraft. Oh yes, when I was at Gaydon the Suez Crisis erupted.
Interviewer: ’56.
BS: Well, because I’d just come back from Suez only the previous year.
Oh, of course. Yes.
BS: And I was, I got we went through quite a lot of trouble out there with it before it fully broke out really. You know had a lot of trouble really. Anyway, but the Suez Crisis broke out and of course we had to get involved in that and we sent two or three Valiants out there with bombed up and ready to go and you know.
Interviewer: They went to Malta, didn’t they?
BS: They went to Malta.
Interviewer: Yeah.
BS: Yes. The service sort of evolved in that. So after, oh about 1957 or thereabouts we had the first Victors and so yes I also went then. I went on. I was taken off and went on the quite a few [unclear] of course to Handley Page at Radlett and did the Victor. On the Victor. So when I came back I was trained up on the Victor but what happened was that because it was a bit of a struggle to teach on two aircraft like that because we still had the Valiants there. A few Valiants. They had another chap come in to supplement me to, you know on the Victor so I did a bit of teaching on the Victor but this other guy sort of did more and more of that really on the actual instrumentation side. So I still sort of really concentrated on the Valiant. But I did, when he was away I used to do the Victor as well you know. So but very similar the systems really you know. Particularly the NBS system and the navigation equipment and everything else and basically the flying was pretty much it was just the layouts and things. But general principles were the same. So it was all very interesting though while I was there. So I suppose do you want me to go on from there?
Interviewer: Yeah, I just wondered, you know —
BS: Yeah.
Interviewer: So how long did you stay on at Gaydon?
BS: Sorry?
Interviewer: How long did you spend at Gaydon then?
BS: At Gaydon, I was, what happened was when I was at Gaydon unfortunately while I was there my first wife contracted cancer and she was given basically first of all two years to live then she actually lived for five so although I was really screened on this instructing job. It was how shall I put it? More heavily emphasised that I was screened because of Gladys’ illnesses.
Interviewer: Yeah. Domestic situation. Yeah.
BS: And through that time I was put up for a branch commission in the engineering branch but I had to turn it down because I couldn’t leave my wife, you see.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
BS: So that, so that was that but anyway that didn’t matter. So that was that so, and then, so she died in 1960 and eventually I left in 1962. I was posted to RAF Newton. Not got posted but I was despatched there on the Skybolt course because I was designated. Because of my experience of technical you know side of thing they decreed that I should go on the Skybolt.
Interviewer: They needed someone to bring Skybolt into service.
BS: So I went to Newton for six months. I’d all the instrumentation electronic side of control and guidance of the Skybolt missile.
Interviewer: And did you get out to America?
BS: No.
Interviewer: During that time.
BS: Unfortunately, I got back to Gaydon and we were given a couple of weeks to pack up and we’d packed up almost with a few, well with a week I think of going to America. My wife was, well the whole family was going to go together to Denver in Colorado and then after that we were going to go down to Florida to Eginton or Eglington.
Interviewer: Eglin.
BS: Eglin.
Interviewer: Not Elgin. Eglin.
BS: We had to go to Eglin.
Interviewer: Yes.
BS: Down on the Caribbean.
Interviewer: On the —
BS: Yes. Where we were —
Interviewer: The Florida coast.
BS: Two years and got fully Skybolt trained to come but a week or two before they decided to ditch Skybolt in favour of the Polaris for the submarine as a strategic missile.
Interviewer: Well, my understanding is Skybolt isn’t doing very well and —
BS: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: JFK met with Macmillan.
BS: Yeah.
Interviewer: And —
BS: Yeah. That’s right.
Interviewer: JFK offered, the Americans offered to give the Brits the chance to develop it and, and Macmillan thought the best way out of that was to buy Polaris instead.
BS: That’s right. Yes.
Interviewer: Which JFK agreed to.
BS: Yes. So that’s why I didn’t go. So that, so that was that finished. So of course I was then it was a few weeks in. I was a chief technician by this time well I had been for a flight sergeant. Anyway, so I think because of my Skybolt experience they decided that I should go to Blue Steel.
Interviewer: Quite logical. Yes.
BS: Yes, so because of my, so back I went to Newton and because I’d already done the Skybolt six months I was spared the initial training on Blue Steel because it was still the basic sort of training on electronics you see.
Interviewer: Yes.
BS: So I went back to Newton for three months on the Blue Steel system itself. So I went back in, that was 1963 and I went back until March 1964 or March or April of ’64. So I learned all the, when I was involved on Blue Steel what was the control, the guidance system. The inertial navigation system, the control system which was the gyro control like auto pilot.
Interviewer: You had an inertia navigator didn’t it?
BS: Oh yes. Yeah, I did, I had to go to Ferrantis for that, you know. And also the flight rules computer. I was involved with all this, that [unclear] on that so I was really fully technically trained on the control and guidance system of the Blue System. I don’t think there’s many people left.
Interviewer: Just a handful I think probably that remember it.
BS: Yes.
Interviewer: In any details.
BS: Anyway, so that was very interestingly and fantastically the courses I went on what you learned.
Interviewer: Who built the missile Blue Steel? Do you remember?
BS: It was HSD, Coventry.
Interviewer: Oh, Hawker Siddeley. Yeah.
BS: Yes. So, we went across there again as well. So, so I went back to Newton for that and eventually then I got posted to, well it was either Scampton or Wittering. We didn’t know. Anyway, I was, I was posted to Scampton, to Wittering. But of course, all the time I was at Wittering we had this strong liaison with Waddington with, with Scampton.
Interviewer: Scampton.
BS: Because I mean the systems on the two were, the Blue Steels were identical really. I mean —
Interviewer: A missile is identical it’s just —
BS: A missile. Yes.
Interviewer: It’s just a question of how it plugged in to the aeroplane.
BS: That’s right. Yes. But so when I went to Wittering they had built a huge new hangar there with all the servicing workshops and offices. Administrative parts and also the HTP as you called it.
Interviewer: High test peroxide.
BS: Yeah. The —
Interviewer: The Gin Palace.
BS: The Gin Palace. Yes. That was right next to the hangar and they were closely associated so I was straightway when I went to Wittering I was put in the, they had a, you know the laboratories and the calibration rooms of the workshops for the controls guidance systems. And so I was put in, I was put in charge of that really and you know obviously had staff who would be trained up like me but so for several, a year or two I was involved in the service and maintenance of the systems going on the missile.
Interviewer: And can you remember any test firings and things like that?
BS: Well, yes. I didn’t actually. I think they took off from the Welsh coast didn’t they?
Interviewer: They would have fired probably some in the Aberporth range.
BS: Yeah. The Aberporth ranges. Yes.
Interviewer: Yeah but —
BS: But I never went over there. Some people did but I never got in because I was involved in the, in the servicing.
Interviewer: Servicing.
BS: Testing and calibration of the systems really, you know.
Interviewer: And it was quite a complicated piece of kit, was it? My understanding was that you had to align the inertial and fly [unclear] and then —
BS: Oh lord. Oh yes. Yes. You did. Yes. You did all that and of course we had in the iron department as we called it we had a higher complex system of calibration instruments to land the [tryoscopic] the brake hold, brake control charge had to be absolutely perfectly set up and [unclear] you know you set that with the oscilloscopes and that sort of thing and the Flight Rules Computer, the FRC, what happened was that the, the Blue Steel would be dropped from about forty thousand feet. The motor would kick in, climb up to about sixty thousand, fly for about two hundred miles, then freefall on the target. That was the [pause] Now as soon as it was launched they got up to altitude then the control system would fit in, it would click in to the control and guide the thing directed by the Flight Rules Computer which was the FRC. So the computer would take it to target with the controls being functioned by the control system provided.
Interviewer: And Ferranti I presume did all the, did that part of the —
BS: That’s right. Yes. Yes, it’s from the [INC] to the FRC to the control system and they did. Everything would lock off at a certain point and it would just freefall on to target. That’s the, that was the theory. But so all three were closely combined really. [INC[ IN, THE FRC, the control system.
Interviewer: And how did they get on regarding the aeroplane and guiding the missile when it was loaded with its, with the weapon?
BS: Well, I’ve been, well let’s put it this way I never actually went out to the, out of the QRA system. What happened was that there used to be at least one, perhaps sometimes two at the end of the runway. Quick Retaliation Aircraft they called it. The QRA. And there was always an aircraft, one or two out there all the time.
Interviewer: Loaded up and ready to go.
BS: And the crew on board as well. Ready to go within minutes you know. To take off and there would have been a guard out there I assume. I never actually went out there.
Interviewer: So if you had to service the missile —
BS: Oh yes.
Interviewer: The warhead would be taken off.
BS: Oh lord, yes. Well, I was all the time you never did any servicing unless the missile was actually in the hangar. Not to the point of its control system. Oh yes. They’d take the pod out and then they’d bring the missile in. The pod was put in, you know —
Interviewer: So the warhead was called the pod, was it?
BS: The pod.
Interviewer: Ok.
BS: The pod, yeah. I saw several. Well, I saw. I never had anything to do with them but I mean they used to keep we had the bomb dump at Wittering. It’s still there I think.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
BS: The Navy used to, the Navy used it.
Interviewer: Well, the bomb dump at Wittering was used, you know.
BS: Yeah.
Interviewer: It was the first bomb dump for the first nuclear weapons.
BS: I think it’s still functioning is it? They, I think they were —
Interviewer: I’m not too sure what it’s used for now.
BS: I think I’ve seen Navy vehicles going in there. Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah. Quite possibly being used as a storage area.
BS: Yes. Yeah. Oh yes. Yes. It was. I never actually went in it but I, you know, I know where it was [unclear] but I never actually went inside but yes they used to. There was a lot of, a lot of fuss when they used to be loading them up with the pod you know but that was quite, and then of course as I was saying what [pause] what was it? About 1967 or thereabouts they decided that they wanted more people to come into the system. Technicians you know. And they decided to set up the Blue Steel Training School. Technical Training School at Wittering. In the Blue Steel hangar. And I was appointed, because of my instructing experience, my vast experience they asked me to set it up and run it as as organiser and also to instruct myself as a flight sergeant at this time. Instruct. Instruct. Instruct on it you see as well as organise all the other trades. So we, we, we have this scheme running. We used to have them in for about a week or two and teach them the systems, you know. So I was running that, the Technical Training School there because of my experience.
Interviewer: And did that do that do, that did all the training for Blue Steel so chaps would come down from Scampton and to do the course with you.
BS: Well, I think Scampton had, I think they must have had their own scheme because I don’t remember people coming from Scampton. I think they had their own scheme running up there. I’m pretty sure because I was just really involved with those coming into Wittering really. But I’m sure they must have done. So I was heavily involved with that. So you see my experience is very deep on the technical side on the ring of steel.
Interviewer: The thing that appeals to me is the fact that you started on learning your trade back in 1939.
BS: That’s right. Yes.
Interviewer: And here we are thirty years on.
BS: That’s right.
Interviewer: Still using the basics of electrics.
BS: Oh, that’s right.
Interviewer: But applying it into a much more modern system.
BS: Oh, [unclear] all, I mean I didn’t know a thing about electronics and a finite mechanism you know and the correlation between the two mechanics to electrics and backwards and forwards. You know what I mean.
Interviewer: The beginning of digital computing.
BS: The transfers, oh yes. Oh yes. That was a appealing. The FRC was. Of course, it was all sort of transistors then. You know, transistor technology. So, you know and, and of course, you know apart from being taught you learn a lot through reading too. You know, it’s all —
Interviewer: And you must have seen a terrific change in the Air Force to have gone from the Second World War.
BS: Oh, right through.
Interviewer: To the time of Korea.
BS: Oh yes.
Interviewer: And conscription still going on.
BS: Listen, this is about me. I think —
Interviewer: National Service.
BS: I went through the most fascinating period really right through to, you know from basic things like this blooming Valentia.
Interviewer: Yes.
BS: To —
Interviewer: Yeah.
BS: To, to V bombers, you know. And of course, at Cosford they have the, the Cold War hangar there.
Interviewer: They do, yes. Yeah.
BS: Yeah.
Interviewer: I’ve been just the once.
BS: Yes.
Interviewer: And I must go again.
BS: Yes, I, pardon?
Interviewer: I’ve just been the once and I must go again.
BS: Yeah, well you see my daughter lives at Lichfield so it’s only just a stone’s throw from there so when I go, I’ve been once or twice you know. She takes me there. Yes and of course they’ve got a Blue Steel there. And I’ll tell you where else I saw Blue Steel. Out at Newark. You know out at Newark.
Interviewer: At the Air Museum.
BS: Yes.
Interviewer: I think there’s one.
BS: I found it a pretty tatty when I went down.
Interviewer: Yes.
BS: [unclear]
Interviewer: That’s the problem with museums. They get things in quite bad condition sometimes.
BS: Yeah.
Interviewer: And they have to allocate them time.
BS: Yeah.
Interviewer: To renovate them.
BS: Yes.
Interviewer: And bring them up to —
BS: Yes.
Interviewer: Their former glory.
BS: And the amazing thing is, or the sad thing is that there’s only one Valiant and that’s at Cosford. That’s the only one. The only is one that is in existence now.
Interviewer: Well, the problem with you know the large aeroplanes is that if you leave them out in the open —
BS: Oh aye, well —
Interviewer: They rot very quickly.
BS: They do.
Interviewer: So I know the Irish museum —
BS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Say they have a problem with big aeroplanes.
BS: Yes.
Interviewer: They just don’t have the room for them all.
BS: No. No.
Interviewer: And they’re wondering when the TriStar retires.
BS: That’s right.
Interviewer: Where they’re going to have space to put one of those.
BS: Yes. Yes. So you know so when the Blue Steel they decided to start phasing about ’69 ’70. I just stayed on for a bit longer then I decided to retire from the Air Force.
Interviewer: Time for pastures new.
BS: Didn’t really want to go but I was really, circumstances made it. But fortunately, I went in to a very very good job at PERA and of course [pause] do you want me to go on?
Interviewer: Yes. Keep going.
BS: When I went to PERA at Melton Mowbray I don’t know whether you know or have heard of it.
Interviewer: No, I’ve not heard of them.
BS: Production Engineering and Research Association. They trouble shoot for the engineering industry. They’ve experts in every field.
Interviewer: And did, did they approach you or did you hear about it?
BS: No. I heard about them so I approached them and they wanted to interview me and I got the job before I left the Air Force.
Interviewer: Fabulous.
BS: Yeah. So that was it. So I, they have this, all these different departments for troubleshoot. Expert top engineers and you know —
Interviewer: Sounds a fantastic organisation.
BS: These particularly the machine tool industry would send people there on courses and they would have experts from PERA go to different factories to give them advice on production engineering.
Interviewer: Sounds fantastic.
BS: So they always had this large technical authorship department as well which they write up handbooks for different industries you know. So I applied but of course because of my RAF experience they had a contract. They had a contract with the Admiralty.
Interviewer: Right.
BS: To write up the manuals for the nuclear submarines at Barrow. So I was sent up to bloody Barrow in Furness on this contract. I was on HMS Churchill for months writing up the control systems on the nuclear submarines of the of the CO2 scrubber systems. You know the air is scrubbed clean and it’s ejected into the deep water to leave the oxygen to go back into the, into the hull. You know. And I wrote up all these you see because of my experience. But you know so that was a very fascinating really. So, so anyway after a couple of years I one of the member firms was a firm called Newall Engineering Group at Peterborough here. They wrote, they produced these, these very very sophisticated machine tools. Grinders and jig borers and things like that for the machine tool for the mainly for the automotive industry. You know, car factories. So they were a member firm of PERA and they were looking for a, and we used to write books for them. But they wanted their own chief author you see. So I applied and I got the job. I wanted to come nearer home.
Interviewer: Yeah.
BS: I was so fed up with —
Interviewer: Yes. Yeah, you get —
BS: Yeah.
Interviewer: Commuting gets a bit wearing.
BS: That’s right. It’s interesting but you know.
Interviewer: No I thought —
BS: So I thought I would come so it was a very very good job and I’d be my own boss there you know and [unclear] so I went to PERA. I went to —
Interviewer: Right.
BS: Newalls at Peterborough and I had to really convert my mind but using basic engineering knowledge to these highly sophisticated machine tools. Jig borers and high speed grinders which used to grind crank shafts and [cannon] shafts. And that was fascinating because you use your basic engineering knowledge. Although I didn’t know anything about them you still get through.
Interviewer: Yeah, its —
BS: You, you have to spend all the time in the drawing office with them and the designers. The people and really pick their brains really.
Interviewer: But if you’d been trained well in the first place it’s not difficult —
BS: Oh no.
Interviewer: To pick up something new is it?
BS: No. No. Not at all.
Interviewer: Yeah.
BS: And the idea being that you were, you could have this information, collate it write it in a presentable form you know people could read and understand, take it back and do you understand? Can you read it? And they would make, they would criticise.
Interviewer: Yeah.
BS: You know so you —
Interviewer: Critique.
BS: So that’s right so then you produce the complete manual. The interesting thing was that we supplied the machines all over the world to, to China, to, to Russia, to, to Sweden, to France to, you know all sorts of places we sold machines to, particularly Russia.
Interviewer: Did you get to travel there?
BS: Oh no. I didn’t unfortunately.
Interviewer: No.
BS: But my books of course had to be translated in to the —
Interviewer: The native language.
BS: Exactly. So as soon as I had produced a manual for machines that were going somewhere I had to get it and I had to go to the translator, we used to translate it in London. I used to go down to the translators, get the books translated, bring it back and then all us engineers used to come across you know to check the machines before going to the different countries. And they’d want to read the manual so you had to give them the manual in their language for to see if they understood you know and usually you know they went down pretty well really. And the thing is that trans, technical translation is not like ordinary translation it has to be done by A — a national of the country concerned which was just going plus the fact it has to be an engineer.
Interviewer: Yes. You’ve got it. Yes.
BS: So you’ve got to have the two. There’s no good getting a chap whose learned Russian or French to do it.
Interviewer: Yes.
BS: It’s got to be a national of the country concerned.
Interviewer: Have you ever read any books, manuals on Japanese hifi you’ll know.
BS: Oh, I know.
Interviewer: It says press button B to —
BS: In my experience I’m, oh I’m very critical of that. Very critical. So that was that really. So —
Interviewer: Well, very well. Thanks for telling me about your, a little bit of time about your time after you left the Air Force.
BS: Yes.
Interviewer: Thank you.
BS: Yeah.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Bertie Salvage
Salvage, Bertie-Cold War-World War II
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SHarriganD[Ser#-DoB]v67
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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eng
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Sound
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01:38:46 audio recording
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Pending OH summary
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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
An account of the resource
Bertie Salvage joined the RAF in 1939 as an apprentice and initially began his technical training at RAF Cranwell before training was transferred to RAF Halton and also shortened because of the start of the Second World War. Bertie was present when Lord Trenchard addressed the ground staff at the station. Bertie was sent to South Africa to work on aircraft there for the Empire Training Scheme. He was then posted to Japan in the post war years. He progressed in his career with post war aircraft including the V bombers and then on to missiles systems such as Skybolt and Blue Steel.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
1943
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
South Africa
Japan
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
England--Southend-on-Sea
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Creator
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This Interview was recorded by Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire.
218 Squadron
ground personnel
military living conditions
RAF Cranwell
RAF Halton
RAF Marham
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/117/46467/SHarriganD[Ser -DoB]v330002.mp3
4ef11453b1a2f73ed4f05a602afc89ac
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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Cook, Kenneth
Kenneth Cook
Kenneth H Cook
Ken Cook
K H Cook
K Cook
Description
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Two oral history interviews with Wing Commander Kenneth Howell Cook DFC (b. 1923, 151017 Royal Air Force). Kenneth Cook flew 45 operations with 97 Squadron, Pathfinders.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-08-04
2016-07-25
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Cook, KHH
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Interview with Wing Commander Kenneth Cook DFC
1039-Cooke, Kenneth
Identifier
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SHarriganD[Ser#-DoB]v33
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Royal Air Force
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eng
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Sound
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00:15:10 audio recording
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Pending OH transcription. Allocated
Pending OH summary. Allocated C Campbell
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Claire Bennett
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.
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This item is being used for TOU9156 teaching. Do not publish transcription until June 2024.
Interviewer: Ok, Ken.
KC: Ok. Hello. This is Wing Commander Ken Cook DFC. I joined the Royal Air Force in October 1941, U/T air crew and after training in Canada I came, returned back to the UK, commissioned as a young pilot officer air bomber and went through various conversion training courses in the UK and eventually joined up with a crew. And our first squadron was Number 9 Squadron at Bardney in Lincolnshire flying Lancasters in Number 5 Group of Bomber Command. After about ten ops with 9 Squadron we were as a crew recruited by the Pathfinder Force which was based in Cambridgeshire and so we were as a crew posted to do additional specialised training as at that time new radar equipment was being brought in and introduced to Bomber Command and in my case it was my job to learn the gadgets known as H2S, Gee and Loran. So, my role changed from being a straightforward air bomber to becoming a radar navigator and air bomber and so it was my job particularly to work the H2S which had a capability for uses in airborne navigation device. And of course, also it’s main role with the Pathfinders was, was identifying German targets and it enabled the Pathfinder crews to find the German targets and to mark them with target indicators so that the main force crews of Bomber Command coming in behind us could identify where the target was and very often bombing on our markers. So we had to be very accurate how we dropped them and where we dropped them and I did this, I ended up doing a total of forty five ops, thirty five of those was as a member of a Pathfinder crew. We eventually having started out with the Pathfinders at Bourn in Cambridgeshire my squadron were then deployed in about April of ’44 to Coningsby in Lincolnshire to join with Number 83 Squadron that had been posted up there from Wyton. And our job was to work with the special force under Wing Commander Leonard Cheshire who was devising a system of finding the targets where the Germans where assembling V weapons on the French coast and in Belgium. And our job was to illuminate the target with parachute flares so that he trained a special force of Mosquito dive bombers that could lay the target markers in these tunnels so that our main force crews from 5 Group and other Groups could come over and do area or intensive accurate bombing as well on these targets. And I completed my forty fifth op in 1944 and was posted to RAF Fiskerton in Lincolnshire as the station radar nav officer. My job was to, we had two squadrons there, 49 and 189 and my job was to fly with these crews and check them out on their ability to use their radar equipment because now the main force were getting the same sort of radar gear that the Pathfinders had had for some time. And so it was my job to make sure the air crew when they, before they went on ops could operate their new radar equipment. And I stayed there for a year or two and eventually was posted to Headquarters, Number 1 Group at Bawtry as the Group radar navigation officer. My job was to oversee all the squadrons, all the Lancaster squadrons in 1 Group to ensure that the crews were properly trained in operating their radar equipment. Can I stop there? Right. Let’s carry on then.
[pause]
On some of the incidents that come to mind one in particular because the Lancaster bomber we all wear warm clothing because the, in the middle of winter the temperatures in the aircraft could become extremely low and in fact if you had to use the elsan at the back of the aircraft it would be extremely low and freezing. And on one occasion I was forced to go back there and use the elsan and I discovered the temperature was minus fifty three degrees Celsius and of course, in having to use the elsan and lower the clothing etcetera I found that my bottom was sticking to the seat to a little bit when I tried to stand up. But I had to stand up because at that time the skipper was calling me, ‘Come on, Ken. We’re only ten miles from the target.’ So I had to hurry up and get back. But in doing so I experienced a little a bit of pain [laughs] in certain lower regions. The other, some of the other aspects of my career was at having completed forty five ops I was then sent off to do jobs as I mentioned with other stations and other squadrons and taking me to the end of the war I applied for a Short Service Commission and this was granted. And after a couple of years the Air Ministry offered me a peacetime Permanent Commission which I accepted and I was down the rank of flight lieutenant and so I then was asked to move out from Bomber Command and become trained with peacetime navigation courses and I thought well, perhaps I’m going to shoot now into somewhere like Transport Command but none of it. Having completed my peacetime navigation course I was then asked by Air Ministry to go through the night fighter OCU at Leeming where I was then trained again to become a navigator radar operator with the AI equipment on night fighters. And so after the appropriate course at Leeming I was then posted to 23 Squadron at Coltishall on Mosquito Mark 36s and I flew with them for about two and a half years until one day I was told that I was to go back to Leeming as a squadron leader to set up the ground school for the introduction of the first jet night fighters. The Meteor NF11 was coming in and I was to head up the ground school with the expansion of the RAFs night fighter force both in the UK and Germany and also the odd squadron in Malta and Cyprus. And so I did that job for about two years and eventually was posted to RAF Newton which was then the headquarters of 12 Fighter Group as the Group navigation officer. And I did the staff duties there but also managed to keep on flying with some of the squadrons in 12 Group, night fighter squadrons until eventually one day the AOC asked me would I like to go back on a squadron as a flight commander. And so the AOC of 12 Group had me posted back to West Malling where I became a flight commander on number 85 Squadron as a navigator which was an unusual post which I enjoyed. And I did that for just over a year and one day the AOC of 11 Group sent for me and said, ‘Cook, do you think you could command a night fighter squadron?’ I said, 'Yes sir.’ He said, ‘Well, you’ve got one tomorrow. ‘You’re going to become a wing commander.’ And so I did that and I became the CO of one of the other squadrons at West Malling called 153 and I was made an acting wing commander and only had that job for about a couple of months when they decided to close the airfield because our flights were getting involved with civil aircraft flying in from the continent, particularly at night. And so they closed the airfield at West Malling and I, and I took 153 Squadron up to Waterbeach in Cambridgeshire and stayed with them for a while and eventually we changed our number to become 25 Squadron. And I completed my two years with the 25 squadron, 153/25 squadron and then one day I was told, ‘You’re going to the staff college.’ And I thought oh I’m going to learn to read and write again. But I did a one year course at the Staff College at Bracknell and after that the Air Ministry in their wisdom said, ‘You’ve done enough flying you’ve got to do an admin job.’ So they posted me and my wife to Aden as a wing commander in the organization branch which was concerned with improving the airfields throughout the Aden Protectorate and then up in the Gulf. So I did that for about two years and then I came back. I’m not quite sure what to do after that but I eventually did a job as the staff officer to the Home Commander, Home Defence Forces which was an organisation which has now been set up to deal with what would happen if there was a nuclear attack on Britain and what would the Air Force be doing to help out. And one of my jobs was to get involved with working out plans on that. And things have gradually moved along until eventually I decided to take early retirement and I left the RAF after twenty six years service in 1947.
Interviewer: And to go back to your, your Bomber Command days it’s always very interesting how the crews got together I think. Now, were you, how did you? I know you go into a sort of a hangar sort of thing and you mill around. There’s no organisation. Were you expecting that or, and did you know somebody? How did your crew come together?
KC: Well, when you got in the early stages of training you started to think about crewing up when you were flying on Wellingtons. You went, in my case I went to Cottesmore which was number 14 OTU and there you meet up with pilots, the wireless operator, straight navigator, air gunners. They were all brought in there and you’d chat with them and eventually you agreed to form a crew. And that’s what we did.
Interviewer: And it proved satisfactory.
KC: Yeah.
Interviewer: Didn’t it?
KC: For instance my skipper was an Australian.
Interviewer: Ah.
KC: Yeah. I was a West Country Gloucestershire man. The other navigator was a Yorkshire man. The mid-upper gunner was a Canadian. The wireless operator was a Londoner and the tail gunner was a Scotsman. That was my crew.
Interviewer: League of Nations.
KC: Yeah.
Interviewer: And you obviously all got on and you all gelled.
KC: We gelled. Yes. Yes. We stayed together for forty five trips. Yeah.
Interviewer: And you’ve mentioned Leonard Cheshire. Did you have much to do with him?
KC: Well, now Leonard Cheshire was based at Woodhall Spa but once we started and once my squadron had come up from 8 Group and we were now at Coningsby with alongside 83, the Pathfinder Squadron when we had briefings on a pre-briefing on a raid Cheshire would come in to see, hear to the breifing. But he particularly once we’d done the raid he would come back because often he would go on the raid himself. He would come back and listen to the debriefing and if things were not coming out clear from the debriefing of the crews he would cut in to explain what was going on where he was concerned in the air. To sort out any, so the intelligence people doing the debriefing could get a more accurate story of what was happening over the other side.
Interviewer: Did you form any opinions of him as a —
KC: Oh, he was the top boy really. Yes. He was, he had tremendous respect from all the all the, all the aircrew like myself.
Interviewer: Yes, so —
KC: What he was and what he did and of course he did a hundred ops, didn’t he?
Interviewer: He did.
KC: Yeah. Can I stop now?
Interviewer: Yeah [laughs] That was Wing Commander Kenneth Cook DFC, retired RAF Bomber Command talking at Thorpe Camp on the 24th Of September about his wartime experiences. Thank you, Wing Commander.
Ken Cook joined the RAF in 1941 and trained as a bomb aimer. He was posted to 9 Squadron at RAF Bardney. After approximately ten ops the crew were posted to the Pathfinder Force at RAF Bourn where he became radar navigator and air bomber. They were then posted to RAF Coningsby with 83 Squadron with the role of seeking V weapon launch sites. After forty five operations he was posted to RAF Fiskerton as station radar navigation officer. He then joined the HQ at RAF Bawtry as Group radar navigation officer. The 23 Squadron at Coltishall on Mosquitoes before being asked to form a ground school at RAF Leeming.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1944
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Contributor
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Julie Williams
23 Squadron
83 Squadron
9 Squadron
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
Lancaster
military living conditions
military service conditions
Mosquito
Pathfinders
radar
RAF Bardney
RAF Bawtry
RAF Bourn
RAF Coningsby
RAF Fiskerton
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1875/46462/SHarriganD[Ser -DoB]v290002.mp3
5d0e7c3c9b4c625ba2a549896e9d0746
Dublin Core
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Title
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Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-06-19
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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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>
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Interviewer 1: This is an interview given on the 14th of May 2011 with Mr Basil Fish at Thorpe Visitor Centre regarding his experiences in World War Two.
BF: Still alive is it?
Interviewer 1: Yes. Yes. It’s fine. So when did you join the RAF, Basil?
BF: Well, I was at University in Manchester and they formed an Air Squadron. This was 1941 and I preferred flying or the thought of flying to studying civil engineering so the answer to your question really is I volunteered in November 1941.
Interviewer 1: And where did you do your training?
BF: Well, we then, the initial training really was from Ringway in Manchester but this was the University Air Squadron and we then at the end of that term, the summer term I actually joined the Air Force proper with the princely rank of Leading Aircraftsman and we were, we went down to what was called arcy darcy [laughs] Aircrew Recruiting Centre down in London and from then onwards we were trained for whatever membership of the crew yweou were best suited for.
Interviewer 1: And you came to be navigator.
BF: In my particular case because I knew that two and two made four instead of five they made me a blinking navigator [laughs]
Interviewer 1: Did you have hopes of being a pilot or were you quite happy as a navigator?
BF: I, I resented if you like not being a pilot because since then of course I’ve gained my private pilot’s license and then had several hours in but at the time I was quite upset actually. But as I say I knew that two and two made four and not five. I should have said two and two make five and then I would have been a pilot you see [laughs]
Interviewer 1: And you did your, you crewed up at an OTU. Where would that have been?
BF: We did the ITW. That’s the Initial Training Wing.
Interviewer 1: Yes.
BF: At university. I was at Manchester University. So I joined with the princely rank of leading aircraftsman and then we were given what I call the real training, the flying training and we were sent out to South Africa. And believe it or not it took seven weeks to get there by boat. And then we qualified with our wing and we qualified as navigator. We thought we knew it all until we came back to England and then of course we had to, if you like re-educate ourselves to flying. Serious flying over here in Britain. Then it was what? 1942.
Interviewer 1: And you then went to —
BF: We then, we did [pause] let me just get my facts right. We did the initial training and then we went to what they called OTU, Operational Training Unit where the flying was becoming more serious and we were flying Wellingtons and that was at Swinderby and Syerston. And then after that we for reasons I just don’t know we went straight to 617 Squadron. Now, in those days people on 617 were very experienced airmen. They’d been on operational flying and that sort of thing. And as a crew when we went along never having seen a shot fired in anger I wasn’t quite sure how we were received. But after a few weeks you know it was we were part of the, part of the squadron and I stayed with them ever since. Well, for the rest of the war I should say. And then it was a toss of either going back to university and getting my degree or staying on in the Air Force. After a lot of if you like heart-searching I decided to go back to university and that then was in 1945 1946.
Interviewer 1: Where were you first stationed with 617?
BF: Well, do you mean operationally?
Interviewer 1: Yes.
BF: Here. We were the first if you like non-experienced crew or one of the first non-experienced crew to come to Woodhall Spa and that’s where I spent the rest of my Air Force career. At Woodhall Spa.
Interviewer 1: A happy time in spite of what you were doing?
BF: Yes, I adopted the attitude I really wasn’t going to come out, you know with ten fingers and ten toes. It just didn’t happen. But we were a very very close knit squadron and I stayed there and I did I think twenty four operations in in total until the end of the war. Then I applied for early release to go back to university and in those days they were jolly glad to get rid of air crew quite honestly.
Interviewer 1: Who was your commanding officer here?
BF: We had, first of all it was a chap called Tait. Willie Tait and then, Willie Tait who was a wing commander. It was then taken over by Group Captain Fauquier. Very unusual for a group captain to be in charge but he was a very, what shall I say? He seemed to be a fierce man but he had a heart of gold I found actually. So the answer to your question is William Tait, then Group Captain Fauquier.
Interviewer 1: Would you like to tell us about any of your operations or —
BF: Well, there’s one operation which I shall never ever forget and that was about our eighth and flying conditions were very very poor. Low cloud. Poor visibility and we were actually, take off was postponed on more than one occasion and we eventually took off. I forget what the target was quite honestly. And on the way back we pranged and we lost two of the crew. We were all injured one way or another but I managed to be able to walk which was an absolute blessing because I could then sort of walk and eventually we got the, the help that we needed. And I carried on flying after I’d been hospitalized for a while and unfortunately I was the only member of the crew who could actually fly. Who was fit enough to fly I should say.
Interviewer 1: So you then had to fit in with another crew.
BF: Correct. I became what was known as a spare bod. In other words, if they wanted a navigator I was the spare. Like having a spare tyre on a car I suppose. And I flew with some very interesting people actually [laughs]
Interviewer 1: Can you tell us about any of them? Or your experiences?
BF: Well, the one experience that sticks in my mind I’d better not mention names but the pilot was, he was a squadron leader chap and a very nice fellow and I knew it was a publicity stunt but we were actually going over, we were flying over Hitler’s hideout at the end of the war and the pilot did a demi run. It wasn’t satisfactory. Very hard to see the target where Hitler was and then we did another dummy run and still we couldn’t find the target and he said, ‘Well, what do you think, Guys?’ I said, ‘What do I think? I think we ought to get the hell out of here.’ [laughs] And do you know what he said? ‘You’re dead right.’ [laughs] And that was it. That was my very last. I think that was my last operational trip.
Interviewer 1: How did you feel when you came to the end of that period in your life and then a completely different —
BF: Very very relieved.
Interviewer 1: Yes. Did you miss the comradeship of the posting?
BF: Yes, I did actually. Being, being a member of a crew, particularly the first crew you’re one of the family. Rank doesn’t matter. It doesn't matter who you are or what you’re doing you’re part of a team. A team of seven. That I do, well I did miss because your first crew is, what was that saying? Your fondest crew.
Did you, how did you feel about when you were with the other crews? Did you —
BF: Well, I knew my stuff let’s put it that way and the people I flew with were very experienced, particularly the pilots were very experienced. It was, it was a job. A job of work really. That’s what —
Interviewer 1: Did, did you know at the time the prestige of being with 617?
BF: No is the answer. I was perhaps too junior. I mean Gibson was, you know the originator and then we had Cheshire and people like that who were extreme and Willie Tait was a wonderful commanding officer. I was very happy there. Let’s put it that way. Or not unhappy might be a better way of putting it.
Is there anything else you’d like to add? [pause]
Interviewer 2: Well, if I may I’d like to ask you about one or two other 617 people that you may have served with. Did you know Micky Martin at all? Was he at the squadron?
BF: No.
Interviewer 2: He’d gone by the time you had arrived.
BF: Yes, he’d —
Interviewer 2: And Shannon too had gone by that time?
BF: That is correct.
Interviewer 2: Yes. I see. That’s alright. We know that very often navigators remained in their, at their table during the bombing run. Very few of them actually looked away. Did you actually have a look at what was going on around you or did your duties keep you calculating all the time?
BF: Once my calculations had been done and I’d given the information to the, to the bomb aimer because he then was the, if you like, in charge. The bomb aimer.
Interviewer 2: Yeah.
BF: I would often actually leave my table, my navigation table just to see what was going on. And I can’t remember whether I did it every time. I doubt I did it every time because when you see what’s going on there you are just jolly glad to get back and not see it.
Interviewer 2: Yes. And were any of your operations in daylight?
BF: That’s a very difficult question to answer but I would say without fear of contradiction that all the operations I did probably eighty percent were during daylight.
Interviewer 2: Could you tell us what it was like to see a group of Lancasters flying close together? It must have been quite an experience and quite frightening in some respects.
BF: Comforting.
Interviewer 2: Was it? Yes. How close were they?
BF: Well, not close enough to collide. I mean that was the pilot’s job [laughs] and it was, it was pretty good in formation. Actually formation flying. Don’t forget I mean on that squadron the pilots in particular were very experienced indeed.
Interviewer 2: Yes. Yes. Yes. Of course. I mean we do read of collisions and and we know that Bomber Command normally flew at night. It must have taken a little bit of practice to fly in formation in daylight.
BF: Yes. But at least you could see what was happening.
Interviewer 2: Yes.
BF: As it were and I can’t remember any if you like encounters which, which were worrying.
Interviewer 2: No.
Interviewer 1: Were you on the Tirpitz missions?
BF: Yeah.
Interviewer 1: On all three or —
BF: No. The first one I don’t, the first one on the Tirpitz the squadron flew over to Russia and just being brief it was a disaster because the weather was bad and all that sort of thing. Then we came back and the very thought of doing that trip from Britain never really entered anyone’s head and somebody got the bright idea. So we flew up from Lincolnshire to Scotland and we actually could just about manage to go to Tromso and back from Scotland. So it was, and that we started out at night and of course we flew during the day and then we came back and it was it was the longest trip I can ever remember. And as a navigator you’re flying over water and we were at low level so you had very very few aids. It was hard work.
Interviewer 2: I’m sure.
Interviewer 1: When 617 were practicing for the dams raid a lot of them were frightened that it was for the Tirpitz. And yet when the Tirpitz raid came about they seemed to have relaxed themselves about it and just went for it. Did you feel like that or did you —
BF: Well, it’s when you’re in the Air Force and you’re asked to do a job you do it you know.
Interviewer 1: Right.
BF: Because you have no choice. It’s as simple as that. We didn’t actually know what the target was although we had a pretty good idea. We didn’t know what the target was. We didn’t officially know what the target was until we actually had briefing and we were briefed, a final briefing was at night but the pilots and the navigators always had a pre-breifing and when we learned what it was I wasn’t particularly surprised. And then the main briefing was late that night I think. Whatever the day it was and, I’m sorry what was your question?
Interviewer 1: Did you —
Interviewer 2: Were you nervous preparing for the Tirpitz raid as the originators had been for the dams raid when they thought it was going to be the Tirpitz?
BF: I [pause] you’re not worried. I mean quite, it sounds a bit dramatic but I never really expected to survive the war. It’s as simple as that you know. It was always going to be the other man who got killed and not you, you see. It sort of kept you going. Apprehensive would be the right, not frightened, apprehensive. You had a job to do, you’d been trained to do it and it was a question of getting out there and doing it.
Interviewer 1: When did you know that it had been successful and she had been sunk as it were?
BF: When we got back we had a forced landing. We’d been hit with flak but eventually when we got back to, we did a landing at, a forced landing at one of the Scottish aerodromes and we stayed overnight and we came down the following day and I knew then how successful it was because the Undersecretary of State for Air, I’ve forgotten his name now had come out to the squadron.
Interviewer 1: Sinclair.
BF: Archibald Sinclair. And we were given forty eight hours leave. Well, that’s all the mattered. Forty eight hours leave [laughs]. And that’s when we knew. Well, we knew actually. We knew that when we left the Tirpitz we knew it was a goner because we actually saw it.
Interviewer 1: Ah. Well, I think we ought to finish on that very successful note and thank you very much Mr Basil Fish.
BF: It has been my pleasure. I have been a little apprehensive about what we were going to do.
Interviewer 1: More worried about this then the Tirpitz. I know.
BF: Well, there you are.
Interviewer 2: We could listen to you call day. I think really we could. It’s just the pressure that you’re needed elsewhere and you’ve got other commitments but I found that absolutely fascinating and moving.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Basil Fish
1027-Fish, Basil
Identifier
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SHarriganD[Ser#-DoB]v29
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
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eng
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Sound
Format
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00:16:28 audio recording
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Pending OH summary
Creator
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Claire Bennett
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
An account of the resource
Basil Fish volunteered for the RAF in 1941 from Manchester University where he was a student and a member of the University Air Squadron. He was posted to 617 Squadron at RAF Woodhall Spa. On one flight his aircraft crashed on return and although injured Basil was the only member of the crew who was able to carry on his flying career and became a spare bod in the squadron. He took part in the attack that sunk the Tirpitz.
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1942
1944-11-12
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Norway
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Berchtesgaden
Norway--Tromsø
Contributor
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Julie Williams
617 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
crash
navigator
Operation Catechism (12 November 1944)
RAF Woodhall Spa
Tirpitz
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/886/46460/SHarriganD[Ser -DoB]v270002.mp3
17d8d5e67eba8aa030b63b971450808f
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Title
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Hudson, Douglas
James Douglas Hudson
J D Hudson
Description
An account of the resource
529 items. Collection concerns Pilot Officer James Douglas Hudson, DFC (755052 Royal Air Force) who joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve in June 1939 and trained as an observer. While on route to Malta in August 1940 his Blenheim crashed in Tunisia and he was subsequently interned for two and a half years by Vichy French in Tunisia and Algeria. After being freed he returned to Great Britain and after navigator retraining completed a tour of 30 operations on 100 Squadron. The collection contains letters to and from his parents and from French penfriends while interned in Tunisia and Algeria, newspaper cuttings of various events, logbooks and lists of operations, official documents and photographs. A further 23 items are in two sub-collections with details of navigator examinations and postcards of Laghouat Algeria.<br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Elizabeth Smith and Yvonne Puncher and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.<br />
<p>This collection also contains items concerning Louis Murray and Harry Bowers. Additional information on <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/202827/">Harry Bowers</a> and <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/220410/">Louis Murray</a> is available via the IBCC Losses Database.</p>
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-06-16
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
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Hudson, JD
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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Interviewer: This is an interview with Mr James Douglas Hudson on the 4th of February 2011 at his home near Lincoln concerning his wartime experiences with the Royal Air Force.
JDH: What is beginning to please me now is the increased awareness that’s arising of what happened during World War Two in Bomber Command and by those who flew in Bomber Command of whom fifty six thousand or thereabouts gave their lives without counting the cost. There has been so little recognition for all this outstanding bravery and finally more is being told and more is being how can I say made aware to a viewing public or a listening public. We’re helped with the advance in techniques of recordings that weren’t available in the days of people like Group Captain, Air Chief Marshall Cheshire and Guy Gibson. They didn’t have the facilities that we have today. So this increase in awareness by the general public and particularly the younger generation is rewarding.
Interviewer: What made you join the Air Force, Douglas?
JDH: I joined the Air Force because I wasn’t particularly happy with my peacetime, this is 1939, occupation in in Manchester in the textile shipping trade and a colleague of mine had joined Fighter Command and was having such a good time flying Spitfires and Hurricanes and I decided I would like to do the same. So I made application and I was told, this is just before the war that junior officers may be able to live on their pay. So I queried this and I said, ‘Well, what do you mean by may be able to live on their pay?’ And a cousin of mine who was a colonel in the Army said, ‘Oh yes. That’s perfectly true.’ He said, ‘But Uncle Harold,’ that’s my father, he said, ‘He’d been able to look after you there.’ I said, ‘Well, Uncle Harold it so happens,’ I said, ‘Because of the depression in the textile trade is out of a job.’ ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘He would not be able to look after you.’ And he said, ‘You’ll be very unwise to seek a short service commission.’ So instead of that I made application through the Volunteer Reserves to do weekend flying and weekend training and this was in June 1939. So a couple of months after that war was declared and I was called up immediately and my training then began at Prestwick in Ayrshire. We were called observers in those days to be renamed of course navigators.
Interviewer: Did you always want to be a navigator or did you want to be a pilot?
JDH: Initially of course I wanted to be a pilot and I was told there was a waiting list forever. But I was told that if I wished to be an air observer which now of course is a navigator I would get in just as much flying which is true. And that’s what I did. Now, I’m jumping ahead now over a couple of years because I was a prisoner of war after this for a couple of years or plus and when I came back I was given the opportunity to remuster and if I wished I could remuster and undergo pilot’s training. I refused. I said, ‘No. I was a navigator and I wish to continue being a navigator and navigation is and was my metier. Although I say it now, perhaps I shouldn’t say it I was a good navigator and my books of which I’ve written eight are based on the title, “There and Back Again.” And it’s the back again which is the important part about it. It’s one thing to get there. It’s another thing to get back and to get there and back isn’t everybody’s good fortune. In fact, fifty six thousand or thereabouts never made that. I now at the age of nearly ninety five am sitting here in my lounge at home in Heighington near Lincoln talking to this lady. I’m a very fortunate person.
Interviewer: So you did the observer’s course at Prestwick.
JDH: I did the observer’s course at Prestwick.
Interviewer: And then went to Evanton for the Bomber and Gunnery School.
JDH: Went to Bombing and Gunnery School then at Evanton and after that, after completion of the bombing and gunnery in various aeroplanes including the Fairey Battle we were moved to Bicester in Oxfordshire where I was introduced to the Bristol Blenheim and I was posted to West Raynham in Norfolk where I did two months operational flying on the Bristol Blenheim. Unfortunately, we were sent to the Middle East and I had insufficient petrol to make the journey and crash landed in Vichy French North Africa where I was taken prisoner of war for two and a quarter years.
Interviewer: Can you describe that? The conditions that you lived in and –
JDH: The conditions under which we lived were appalling. The food was an abomination. It was based on the food they gave to the Arab soldiers but it wasn’t so much the food itself it was the filthy conditions in which this food was served up to us. Our living conditions were absolutely appalling. Overcrowding was a very significant disadvantage. We quarrelled with each other in consequence. You, you could be the best of friends, if you get six, eight, ten, twelve, or twenty of you all in one room ongoing tempers fray. And this is what happened and I think this is one of the most difficult parts of being a prisoner of war and of course, being taken away from operation flying.
Interviewer: It doesn’t seem to have been as well organised as German prisoner of war camps in that you know you didn’t have much recreation or organised activities to take your mind off the conditions. Is that right?
JDH: Well, we, we didn’t have so much organised activities. We were, we were able to do our own thing up to a point. There were no specific facilities.
Interviewer: No.
JDH: No.
Interviewer: You had your Red Cross parcels.
JDH: Had it not been for the Red Cross parcels I often wonder how we would have survived. When the Red Cross parcels began to reach us there were certain days when we would just ignore the food that was sent up to us and just live for the time being on the contents of the Red Cross parcels. The one problem was particularly in the desert I was a prisoner in the desert for over a year in the Sahara Desert. A place called Laghouat, about three, three hundred and fifty miles south of Algiers and when the food, when the Red Cross parcels arrived we had what was called the Klim, K L I M, milk which came I think from Canada. It was powder and of course when we mixed this, when we added water to it we were running into trouble because the water wasn’t fit to drink. And I used to, they also sent us prunes and we used to soak the prunes overnight in water and then add this Klim milk which had been what’s the word? Reconstituted. And of course, we were inviting trouble and we got trouble. We got dysentery. So it was an awfully difficult situation. Dysentery was rife. Dysentery I think was our biggest problem in the prisoner of war camp and we’d no medications you see.
Interviewer: No.
JDH: No medications at all.
Interviewer: You mentioned in your book about being depressed at this time. This –
JDH: Being depressed?
Interviewer: Yes. Obviously, the conditions and your dysentery and everything else.
JDH: Yes, because there was no future. We’d been taken away from the activities which we’d trained for and that was to fly operationally. As you will read on in the books I was, I had the good fortune to be repatriated in November 1942 and after five or six months of ground duties I became rehabilitated as it were and became fit to fly again and the rest is history.
Interviewer: Let’s go back to your, your time in the North African prisons. What did you feel about escape? Did some, did you want to escape?
JDH: I escaped twice. In the first prisoner of war camp, a place called Le Kef in Tunisia, a fellow prisoner Ted Hart who was another Blenheim man he and I we shinned over, I use the expression we use in the book, the shithouse wall because that’s exactly what it was. It was a filthy latrine and we managed to get over this wall and drop on to the other side and escape into the night. And I spoke limited French but we walked throughout the night, a matter of some thirty, some forty miles I think to a place called Souk el Arba and went into a local hotel and noticed they had bed and breakfast available which was on a notice board in the reception room.
Interviewer: Were you dressed in your —
JDH: We were dressed in a huge army greatcoat which the French had given to us. They were French soldier’s greatcoats and they issued us with these as clothing to keep warm because we were up in the mountains. In the hills. And we went out with these on covering our uniform which was underneath. You had to have a uniform because if not we could have been shot as spies and we had to be very very careful to conceal it. And when we arrived in the hotel I said to the lady at the reception, ‘Bonjour madame, deux cafe s’il vous plait.’ ‘Certainement monsieur.’ And that’s how it began. And after that I said, ‘E deux chambre lit?’ ‘Certainement Monsieur.’ And she took me up to the room and was talking, showing us the room and I realised that I couldn’t keep up this pretence of being French in general conversation. So I just said, ‘Madame, [unclear] Francais.’ As though I was American. I said that we were Americans and that we were doing geological studies with the Vichy French and we had been working during the night. That’s why we were in this scruff. She seemed to accept that and after two or three days we managed to get a train which took us across the frontier to a place called Souk Ahras.
Interviewer: Across the frontier into Tunisia?
JDH: Into Algeria.
Interviewer: Into Algeria.
JDH: Algeria. We were then fortunate when we crossed that frontier and everybody got out to have a check of some sort of reason. There was a chap on the platform obviously checking people and we stayed where we were right opposite and two French soldiers opened our carriage door and just said, ‘Permission militaire, Monsieur?’ And I said, ‘Mai oui certainement. Bon permission.’ And off they went. Ted said, ‘Well, what was that all about?’ I said, ‘They seemed to think that we were French on leave.’ And the chap who was doing the checking on the, on the station platform could see this therefore he didn’t trouble us anymore. Now the funny part was well it wasn’t really funny was that when we were recaptured we had to come back and cross this place in reverse and he was there. I just looked at him and I just said, ‘You remember me?’ He thought we were going to drop him you see. And then I did fourteen days cells and three days dungeons.
Interviewer: So they picked you up again and put you back into Le Kef.
JDH: But I escaped again. This time in this place called Laghouat which is in the Sahara desert.
Interviewer: Who did you escape with this time?
JDH: This time we started to dig a tunnel in November 1941 and the tunnel was completed in June ‘42 and it was sixty odd metres in length. A hundred and ninety odd feet. We used two bread knives which started off being about nine inches in length and finished up by being about three. And twenty nine of us got out and twenty nine of us were recaptured. There was nowhere to go. But we’d done it right under their noses and of course their hierarchy, the French Vichy hierarchy took it out on the commandant of the camp and various people they were all dipped in rank and things like that.
Interviewer: What nationality were the guards?
JDH: Mostly Arabic. Mostly Arabic.
Interviewer: Under French.
JDH: Under French. Vichy French. Yes. Mostly Arab.
Interviewer: And their attitude to you? Or you to them as well.
JDH: I suppose we would say then in those days [unclear] comme ci comme ca.
Interviewer: They weren’t over cruel or —
JDH: Not really. No. I mean you had to excise a bit of common sense. I mean they had guns. They were armed and it paid not to be foolish. I mean you know for example we had a ligne [unclear] which was a line running around the periphery of the camp before you come to the barbed wire. You could see it actually and if we were using the, playing with the ball and it bounced underneath there don’t follow it.
Interviewer: No.
JDH: Go up to the line, look up at the guard, ‘Permission?’ And they would say [Depeche trois] You know, ‘Get a move on then,’ and they’d train their gun and you’d go and pick your ball up and acknowledge it.
Interviewer: Yes.
JDH: Acknowledge it because they were doing their duty but had we proceeded they’d have shot us. Oh they would have shot us without any doubt. Yes. And the whole thing was flood lighted you know. They floodlighted it at night. So —
Interviewer: So you got out again and got how far this time?
JDH: Oh, not very far. We were recaptured the next morning because the premier spahi which are the crack horse regiment of that part of the world they just released them into the desert and they just sort of fanned, a sort of fan movement. They just picked us up. We had no alternative. I thought they were going to shoot us because they clicked their rifles back. They were brilliant horsemen. They could ride without hands, you know and hold their rifle. So we put up our hands. I shall never forget that. Just put up our hands and it worked. I’ll say this for them three of them jumped off their horses and threw their guns across to three others and they allowed us to have some water, to drink some water. And then they just got us on the back of that, one each on the back of their horse, beautiful animals.
Interviewer: Were you punished for escaping?
JDH: Oh yeah. Had about sixteen days in the cells. Yeah. Oh, I’ve done more cells than [unclear] and back.
Interviewer: The cells, the cells sounds particularly –
JDH: There were two of us in one cell because there were so many of us they hadn’t enough cells to put us one in a cell so they put two of us in a cell and its just a stone. A sloping stone slab. And they opened the doors in the morning into a sort of courtyard to enable us if required to use their so-called toilet facilities which were pretty awful. But they had, we had the churn. It literally was a milk churn in the centre of this quadrangle which we had to use. We’d just sit on this churn or stand on it and take it in turns to empty it. You know, each one get carrying one hand. So it was a wonderful experience you know. A wonderful experience. And I remember looking at a thermometer we passed one of their bureaus, their offices on route to the place where we took this contents of the churn and this was about 4 o’clock in the afternoon and the temperature was a hundred and four. And that was in early June and it soared into July August. At midday I don’t know what it reached. Probably about forty degrees centigrade, celsius or whatever it is. A hundred and twenty, a hundred and thirty degrees. Unbearable. If we did any washing we had very restricted facilities and I got some soap sent from England and I was very fortunate to get this soap. Carbolic soap. Go out to the wash trough when the water was on. It was only on for a restricted period of time. You put one articulate into the wash tub and then put it one side to do the other one by the time you’d done the second one the first one was bone dry just like a board. Unbelievable.
Interviewer: What affect did this experience have because it was about two years you were a prisoner wasn’t it?
JDH: Two and a quarter.
Interviewer: Yes, that’s —
JDH: About a year and a quarter in the desert and the other year in two other places. At one time we thought we were going to be repatriated, so did the Vichy French in exchange for the German submarine crew and we were sent to a place called [unclear] I write about it in there.
Interviewer: Yes.
JDH: I don’t know whether I do it in that book.
Interviewer: Yes, you did.
JDH: Yes, because I I refer to the brothel. Have you read about that?
Interviewer: Yes.
JDH: And the woman I was with she’d be about forty I suppose and she didn’t speak any English at all. All French. It was rather funny. She came up to the bar actually and was talking to us in French and she suddenly changed the conversation and said, ‘Pour vous monsieur dix franc.’ So Ted said, that’s my colleague, he said, ‘What was that?’ I said, ‘She’s just said to me for me it’ll be ten francs.’ He said, ‘How much for me?’ I said, [unclear] I said, ‘Same for you. Ten francs. I’ll toss you over who goes first.’
Interviewer: And that was while you were waiting when you thought this —
JDH: We thought we were going to be repatriated you see and I was terribly concerned about infection you see. This thing. And we used [unclear] potash which you put into solution and of course its virulent purple [laughs] A bit of a mess. But now, you see these are true things. This is what happened. It’s not biographical it’s autobiographical.
Interviewer: So when the repatriation fell through you then were put back again. Is that right?
JDH: Yeah.
Interviewer: So you were back in again after having your hopes built up. What did all these experiences, how did it you know colour your life afterwards or was it just a character building two and a quarter years or what?
JDH: I think in some respects its almost been helpful if you like because I know I’ve done it. You see I can walk down the road here. There are people who talk to me, they call across to me and I don’t have a clue who they are but because of these books you see I’m well known. And I’m on my own now because my wife died six and a half years ago. I think this is the hard part. Particularly when you’ve been to a do like that and then come back in the evening to a vacuum, to an empty house. No. The part of the war which is the most disturbing to me wasn’t the flying. It wasn’t the operational flying it was the prisoner of war side. But I’ll tell you this. My crew on the Lancaster my flight engineer was nineteen and my bomb aimer who was a huge chap six foot two, towered above me just made, just failed to make the teens and he was just twenty. I mean they were only boys really. I at twenty six, twenty seven then was an old man. And we got coned once in the master searchlight. This is in the Lancaster and the master searchlight is almost ultraviolet and if one of those catches you the other aircraft home in on it and then they push the flak up. You don’t stand a chance. I don’t know of any crew, aircraft that’s been coned in the master searchlight that hasn’t been shot down and I just was waiting for it to happen and what was it going to be like. And the pilot promptly put the aircraft, this is a Lancaster fully bomb loaded, fully loaded with bombs put it into a dive and spiralled. No good at all. I mean you couldn’t evade, couldn’t evade this searchlight and we lost altitude from twenty one thousand to twelve. Nine thousand feet in no time whatsobe and gravity pushed my head on to the table and I couldn’t [pause] I was just waiting for the explosion. But suddenly that light went out. We didn’t evade it. It went out. The gunners were firing away like crazy. Now whether they had succeeded in firing down the beam and putting it out or whether something else I don’t know but that light went out. And this little engineer of nineteen years of age with the pilot they hauled this huge Lancaster from the vertical almost into the horizontal with a full bomb load and it didn’t break its back and we went on to the target. I thought we’d get an immediate DFC but we didn’t. We didn’t get anything.
Interviewer: If I can just mention or just ask you about how you did get out of the prison you were eventually repatriated.
JDH: We were repatriated. The Allies and that’s the Americans and the British and the Canadians, the Allied forces invaded Algeria in November 1942 and the Vichy French surrendered. We wondered what would happen to us. My fear was when we heard that this invasion had taken place my fear was that they might take us away from the prison camp and whip us into Germany before our forces landed but they didn’t. They unlocked the doors and they dismissed any guard who they thought had been difficult and brought in a fresh lot of guards who were courtesy itself and couldn’t do enough for us. It was all hypocrisy, hypocritical and we spent the last four days just using the place for the passing of time until there was transport able to take us up to Algiers and we sailed home.
Interviewer: And you came back in HMS Keren, I think.
JDH: HMS Keren.
Interviewer: Yes.
JDH: It sailed out there with American troops I think it was. And I don’t know what its cargo was but they loaded it up with oranges. The hold was absolutely filled. Of course, you couldn’t get oranges in this country so we took it back loaded with oranges. Yeah.
Interviewer: You didn’t have scurvy when you came back did you? [laughs] So how did you feel when you got back? Did you want to get back into the fight?
JDH: Oh yes. Because the first thing, basically the first thing that we were asked when we got, we landed in, where was it? In Greenock in Scotland and we were taken by train under guard. With guards. No civilian was allowed to come anywhere near that carriage. We were taken by train to London and interviewed by top brass and virtually the first thing they asked us, ‘Do you wish to fly again?’ And having said yes then that’s when I got the opportunity to remuster if I wished and train as a pilot and I said no, I’d like to take up navigation again and do a refresher course. This is what I did. And I could do that more quickly you see. I thought I’d get back on to flying more quickly. And navigation was my metier. I liked navigation.
Interviewer: So it was back to, to an OTU for a little while while you —
JDH: I went to, it wasn’t an OTU to start off with. What would you call it? [pause] A place called Moreton Valence.
Interviewer: An AFU. Number 6 AFU.
JDH: AFU. And from there we went to Wymeswold which was an OTU. Operational Training Unit. And from Wymeswold I went to, wasn’t it Lindholme? Which was a Conversion Unit to four engine. And then to the squadron and did my first operational flight on a 100 Squadron on Lancasters to Brunswick, Braunschweig in the middle of December ’44 and finished the tour at the D-Day landings and saw the flotilla going over. Then we came back and we spoke to the crew, the pilot and myself and we said, ‘How do you feel about carrying on?’ We said, ‘We’re game.’ I said, ‘It seems a shame now doesn’t it?’ I said. ‘We’ve landed on the other side, or they have.’ I said, ‘Carry on. Let’s support them.’ So we went to the squadron commander and he was delighted. We said, ‘On the condition we get our aircraft back.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘It’s gone. It’s gone out tonight or its going out tonight.' He said, ‘If it comes back —’ and it did come back, ‘Yes, you can have it and continue.’ I was in the Officer’s Mess on the following morning I think it was and the doc as we called him, the medical officer, Doc Marshall he came up to me. He said, ‘Dougie, what’s this I hear about you chaps volunteering to fly again?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘That’s right, Doc.’ I said, ‘And we’re going to get our aircraft back.’ He just looked at me. He said, ‘Over my dead body.’ Just like that. I can see him saying that. I have used the quashed not squashed. ‘I have quashed it irrevocably.’ He said, ‘You don’t realise how sick you are.’
Interviewer: He could see in you strain and stress that you couldn’t feel or see yourselves.
JDH: I said, ‘Doc,’ I said, ‘They’re cross countrys from now on.’ I said, ‘We’ve landed on the other side. We’ve only got to go ahead and support them as they move along to occupy Germany.’ He said, ‘Cross country runs.’ The squadron at the end of that month lost another six Lancasters. Six. So –
Interviewer: Did you have the same crew in for nearly all your thirty ops?
JDH: No. When we finished operational flying they all went different places and I only met the bomb aimer again. I don’t know what happened to the rest. We’ve tried to contact them in the meantime you know over the period. We’ve tried on the internet website.
Interviewer: But for your thirty ops.
JDH: Thirty ops.
Interviewer: You was –
JDH: Oh, the first lot.
Interviewer: Yes.
JDH: Oh, they’re both dead. John [Riddick], he was the, he was killed in a crash very soon after we got back and my wireless operator Tony Randall there’s a picture in the book he was killed on his first operational flight on Halifaxes. I think he was from Pocklington or somewhere. I’m not sure.
Interviewer: Well, you were on the Nuremberg raid.
JDH: I was on the Nuremberg raid.
Interviewer: But because you’d gone, been one of the first to go you didn’t appreciate the catastrophe to come.
JDH: Well, as far as Nuremberg was concerned I can remember this quite clearly when we got back, back to the squadron at debriefing we were always asked the same sort of questions. ‘Well, how did it go?’ ‘What was it like?’ And I remember using the expression, ‘A piece of cake.’ The following morning [pause] firstly our ex-gunner, he got frostbite and was taken off flying and he was given ground duties and he sort of acted as a nursemaid for us for a little while until he got fit again. And he came into the billet at about mid-day or whatever when it was time for us to get up again and he said, ‘Well, chaps how many do you think you lost last night over Nuremberg?’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘Not many.’ I said, which is the entire command, I said, ‘Twenty.’ ‘No.’ He said, ‘Think again.’ I said, ‘More than that?’ He said, ‘Yes, more than that.’ ‘Thirty?’ ‘No.’ Then he finally said, ‘Ninety seven.’ I said, ‘Don’t talk rubbish.’ He said, ‘That’s what they say.’ And we did lose ninety seven and another thirteen failed to make their own bases and they crash landed in the UK and never got back to their base. So effectively we lost a hundred and ten aircraft that night. Ninety seven. Thirteen, a hundred and ten give or take, seven or eight hundred aircrew. And I say this, I’ll repeat it we lost more aircrew in that one night over Nuremberg than Fighter Command lost throughout the Battle of Britain. You see I know all this and therefore, oh I beg your pardon I don’t have to be prompted or asked or told. I know it. It just happened and I shan’t forget it. I never will forget it. And at ninety four, five what do I do? Do I go on? My publisher says, ‘Yes, you go on because you have a mission to fulfil.’ I said, ‘What is it?’ He said, ‘You’ll find out as you go along.’ And I think this is part of the mission. We thought we’d got five hundred pounds for that raffle.
Interviewer: This was –
JDH: Barton on Humber last Sunday.
Interviewer: This was a signing of your autobiography and –
JDH: Yes.
Interviewer: Later published.
JDH: I sold thirty five books.
Interviewer: Yes. So they see your mission is to continue spreading the word really and –
JDH: Spreading the word. Oh, I know where the book is [pause] This is my eighth book.
Interviewer: Yes. Just now, “Just Douglas: A Navigator’s Story.”
JDH: Yes. I’ve got the covers for another one called, “The Best of Douglas.” But I don’t know what to do about it. But I’m writing another one now and it’s called, “St Bernard and Puppies.” It’s a make-believe story for children of all ages. I hope to get it to East Kirkby in Easter.
Interviewer: Oh excellent.
JDH: We’ll see.
Interviewer: So you did your thirty ops of which Nuremberg was one of them and you came to the end and wanted to remuster and they wouldn’t let you. So you went to Sandtoft to do some instructing which –
JDH: Instruction work. I hated it. Absolutely hated it. It’s not so much the instruction work but I just hated Sandoft. I don’t know. It was just something about the place I didn’t come to terms with at all. And I did as much flying as I could. They’re, all the instructional flights are logged in the book. Well, I don’t think in that book but certainly in this book. So, you know what I talked to you about happened and I have the written proof of it here and I have the aircraft letters and numbers which is, is a good fortune. My wife’s family are in here too. He was a big man in the St John Ambulance. That’s my wife’s father. Her family were co-founders of Blackburn Rovers Football Club.
Interviewer: Goodness.
JDH: You know who that is don’t you?
Interviewer: Yes, I do. Just Jane at East Kirkby.
JDH: Yes. Those are the Pantons.
Interviewer: So you, you have your books to sell and you go to the various commemorations.
JDH: Yeah.
Interviewer: And that is obviously a very important part of your life now.
JDH: Very important. Here’s a great guy. Air Chief Marshall Sir Clive Loader. He did the preface for my, for that book. I’ll show you.
[pause]
JDH: Was it this one?
Interviewer: Yes, it was.
JDH: Yes.
Interviewer: There it is. It’s just by your finger.
JDH: “On Sunday the 27th of August my wife Alison and I had the great honour of representing todays Royal Air Force. I was deeply touched – ” This is Douglas Hudson, “I was deeply touched when he asked whether I would be prepared to write a forward to this, the sixth edition of, “There and Back Again: A Navigator’s Story.” I’m truly delighted to do so. Sir Clive Loader,” etcetera etcetera. He’s retired now and I don’t know whether I ought to try to contact him or not. I perhaps feel that it would be an intrusion into his retirement. I don’t know. It’s very difficult to say.
Interviewer: Can you see yourself having a different life?
JDH: Could I see myself –
Interviewer: Yes, you know it’s –
JDH: I don’t know. You see, look. It’s the life of now with so much in it which I can think about. Somebody said I’m a ladies man. So be it. That’s Sandra Morton. That’s the lady across the road who introduced you. That is Marguerita [Allen] She used to phone me from California quite regularly. She now is living in Preston. And that is Lola Lamour. In other words, Joanne Massey. Now, she and I will be re-enacting together at East Kirkby in May.
Interviewer: Well, that’s wonderful. Thank you very much Douglas. It’s, it’s been a treat to listen to you. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with James Douglas Hudson
1024-Hudson, James Douglas
Identifier
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SHarriganD[Ser#-DoB]v27
Creator
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Claire Bennet
This Interview was recorded by Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2011-02-04
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Format
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00:40:51 audio recording
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Pending OH summary
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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
An account of the resource
James Douglas Hudson followed a friend to join the RAF. He trained as a navigator and was posted to 101 Squadron at RAF West Raynham. On his final operational flight with the squadron he ran out of fuel and crashed. He was taken prisoner by the Vichy French in North Africa and spent time in a prisoner of war camp in Laghouet and Le Kef. He attempted escape twice but was recaptured. Douglas was repatriated to the UK in November 1942. He volunteered to return to operational flying duties and was posted to 101 Squadron based at RAF Waltham. One of his operations was to Nuremberg and he was shocked to hear about the losses of that raid. He and his crew volunteered for a further tour but the Medical Officer intervened and declared he was medically unfit to fly. After the war Douglas wrote books about his experiences in Bomber Command.
Temporal Coverage
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1941-11
1942-06
1942-11
Spatial Coverage
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Algeria
Germany
Great Britain
Tunisia
Algeria--Laghouat (Province)
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Nuremberg
Tunisia--El Kef
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
100 Squadron
101 Squadron
aircrew
Blenheim
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
crash
escaping
Lancaster
navigator
prisoner of war
RAF Grimsby
Red Cross
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/168/46459/SHarriganD[Ser -DoB]v260002.mp3
a8c4c3913704fcbd59b33c5fbdbe204a
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
Rutherford, Les
R L Rutherford
Robert Leslie Rutherford
Description
An account of the resource
Ten items. The collection contains four oral history interviews with bomb aimer Robert Leslie "Les" Rutherford (1918 - 2019, 146263 Royal Air Force), his prisoner of war diary, material about entertainment in the Stalag Luft 3 Belaria compound and a photograph. Les Rutherford served as a despatch rider in the army, he was evacuated from Dunkirk and volunteered to transfer to the RAF. He became a bomb aimer with 50 Squadron and completed 24 operations. He was shot down over Germany on 20th December 1943 and became a prisoner of war.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Les Rutherford and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-12-09
2015-10-05
2015-06-05
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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Rutherford, RL
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Interviewer: This is an interview with Mr Les Rutherford on the 24th of January 2011 at his home in Lincoln regarding his experiences in the Second World War. Over to you, Les.
LR: At the beginning of the war I was called up into the Army in October just one week before my twenty first birthday which ruined my mother’s plans of course for a birthday party. I was called up and enrolled in Perth in to the 51st Highland Division, did my training there which we spent a week in Perth then moved to Aldershot and the Corunna Barracks at Aldershot. Then did more training there. We were kitted out in uniforms and all the necessary things and then in January, the beginning of January we moved to France and I was a despatch rider then. We moved to various places in France first and I was attached to a field ambulance. We moved across to first of all we were around about Lille in the Belgian frontier and then we moved to Metz or near Metz on the German frontier. In actual fact over there they used to have these artillery duels across the two different armies and we were in actual fact in the Maginot Line. The famous Maginot Line. We used to go in this line for a couple, a couple of cigarettes the French would let us fire a gun [laughs] you know. But and then when the Germans advanced and began their offensive the, well there was one incident that it was early morning and we were suddenly, somebody said, ‘Look at all these aircraft.’ And we were looking up and there was crowds, scores of these aircraft flying over. Flying over. German aircraft, and I was looking up and these and somebody said, ‘Run for shelter. We’ve got to go up to the shelters.’ So, I was looking up and running to the shelter and I tripped and fell and hit my chin on a doorstep. Split my chin right across. And they came running up with an ambulance and thought I’d been hit. And I said, ‘No. I’m alright. I’m alright.’ Anyway, that was the beginning of the offensive when they went and bombed Holland of course from there in Belgium. And so then they moved us across from Metz to try and stem the German advance. We moved across country and at first we thought we were going to Paris. We were heading straight for Paris. Then about ten miles before we got to Paris we turned off north and went off and were stationed around about Lille and then the trouble really began then. That’s when they, as far as we were concerned that’s when the war started or when the fighting started and with being field ambulances we were busy. And one of my duties was to, when our own field ambulances were all used up we used to travel at night and there was a standby unit which had ambulances for anybody that wanted them but one of my jobs was to go to this unit and guide them back to the, to where our field ambulance was. And another thing you used to have to do was to go up to the forward units and get a list of the injured and whatnot. A lot, a lot of work went on at the time. But of course, we were gradually pushed back and pushed back until eventually we got to St Valery. And by this time Dunkirk had taken place. We didn’t know anything about it of course but it was June 12th in actual fact when we got to St Valery and we were trapped there. There were ships coming and going out, way out to sea on the horizon but nothing could get into St Valery. St Valery was surrounded by cliffs and the Germans surrounded up on these cliffs and they were lobbing mortars and all sorts of things in to us. In actual fact, under the command of Rommel who was commanding the troops there. And I got, I got together about a half a dozen men and said, ‘Look. There’s a door there. There’s a shed side there been blown off. If we take that, go out and perhaps get to these ships.’ So they said, ‘Right. We’ll do that. If there’s no ships get into here we’ll do that.’ So it got to about 11 o’clock at night. The town was blazing by this time and when it, when it came to these men they wouldn’t go. So another chap and I took a door which had been blown off. We belted across the sands with this door between us and launched it and we got to these rocks, put the door in the water and when we got in the water came up to our necks nearly and then it turned out this chap had, he couldn’t swim. So I thought well this is remarkable you know [laughs] you’re going to go and you can’t swim. I could swim. I’d done a lot of competition swimming and I could swim so I parked him on the door and I got on the back and acted more or less as a rudder and a propeller and he had a piece of wood that he used as an oar and off we went. And we put out to sea and oh we got well out. Way out to sea and then it got to be early morning, well, you know, I don’t know what time it was. It would be six, seven o’clock in the morning and we could see these trawlers, these ships coming out from, it turned out they were coming from Veules les Roses and they were going straight out to sea from there and then turning and we were nearly in their path. And in actual fact we could see there was still two trawlers, French trawlers to come and we sort of waved at these trawlers and the first one went past and they threw us a lifebelt. I thought well that’s going to do us a lot of good [laughs] you know. And then the next one came by and they threw us a rope and this chap had been sat on this door all night and he couldn’t move his legs properly. I had to tie the rope around him and they hauled him up. And then I tied the rope around myself and they hauled me up. And we’d had nothing to eat for about three days. In actual fact they’d just got a meal going for us when we got to St Valery and these 109s came over and strafed us and we had to get out of it. So we didn’t, we never did get the meal. And they hauled me up onto this, on to the deck and they gave me a glass of hot rum and I went out like a light. Just out. And the next thing I knew was I was, they were waking me up. I was in a bunk on this ship and they were waking me up and said, ‘We’re transferring you to an English ship.’ So they put a blanket around me. They’d taken all my clothes off and had put a blanket around me and took me down into this lifeboat and transferred me to the English ship. So I got on there and I was pretty well fagged out. But then when I sort of got myself settled down a bit on this ship I found one of the ship’s officers and said, ‘You know I was transferred from that trawler.’ I said, ‘What happened to my uniform and clothes?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Nothing like that came over.’ So I said, ‘Well,’ I said, I’ve only got a blanket here. I haven’t got anything else.’ So he said, ‘Well, I don’t know. I can give you a pair of socks.’ [laughs] So I put these socks on and I landed at Southampton with a pair of socks and a blanket. And they had got it all arranged by this time on the docks at Southampton and we were taken into a big shed and the uniforms were all laid out and you just picked one to fit you know and they’d got everything laid out there. It was wonderfully organised. Then we moved from there to Devizes. We spent about a week there and then moved up to Scotland to a place between Hamilton and Glasgow. We stayed there for two or three days and then we were sent home on leave. Then when we came back we went up to Grantown on Spey and spent the rest of the time up there. While I was up there we formed, I found a chap who played the piano and I played guitar and we found we were in the petrol company then of, when I went up to Scotland I was with a petrol company and there was a supply column and what was another column. Anyway, there were six of us altogether got together. There was me on the guitar and my friend on the unit he was on piano and there was the saxophone, trumpet, a drummer and a violin. You had to have a violin for the Scottish dances. The only thing they had up there at the time for dancing was three old, three old ladies. Not the ones in the lavatory, the three old ladies with an accordion and a drummer and violin. So our band went down a storm you know. We had no musical flare. Just buy in. We played in dances all over the place and we were stationed in Castle Grant and the Earl of Seafield, the Countess of Seafield was still in residence while we were there. And then in the winter when the winter came on she moved to the country house, Cullen on the coast and she asked us, our band to play at her going away party and we played in the big hall in the castle with all the accoutrements. All the swords and everything else around the walls and all the ancestors looking down on us and all the ladies were in Highland evening dress and all the gentlemen were in Highland evening dress with the velvet jackets and all the silver trimmings and things you know. And it was absolutely wonderful. It was a wonderful sight because we were playing all the Scottish dances, Scottish reels, “Strip The Willow,” you know, [unclear] Reel,” “The Dashing White Sergeant,” all these sort of things and of course as the evening went on they got more merry and the CO came to us beforehand saying, ‘Now listen lads,’ you know, ‘When you’re up there we don’t want any jackets all open or, you know drinking or beer and things like this,’ he said, ‘You’re in with the society. You’ve got to keep to the letter.’ We hadn’t been there half an hour when the countess came up with a tray of beers and said, ‘Here you are lads. Get on with it. [laughs] And undo your jackets, you know you’ll be uncomfortable sitting up here in all this heat. Its too warm.’ You know. And she was absolutely charming and, but I’ll never forget, have never forgotten that dance for the spectacle. It was absolutely wonderful. Anyway, shortly afterwards there was a notice posted on the, in the unit asking for volunteers for aircrew duties. So I volunteered. They said you should never volunteer in the Army but I thought well I’ll have a go here and so I volunteered. I was accepted and in June of 1940, 1941. 1940.
Interviewer: ’41 I should think.
LR: Be ’41. June ’41. I moved. I was sent down to Stratford on Avon and sworn into the Air Force in the Shakespeare Theatre there and from there moved up to Scarborough to the ITU, IT.
Interviewer: ITW.
LR: IT Initial Training Unit.
Interviewer: Yes.
LR: ITU. Billeted in the Grand at Scarborough right on the top floor. It was, that would be at the end of June we were going up there and the weather was absolutely wonderful. We had a wonderful time there. Did all these lectures. We used to go, come down, the lecture rooms were all at the bottom of course and we’d do half and hour or an hour’s lecture and we had to go back up to our room, up all these steps. No lifts. Up all these stairs, get the lecture book for the next lecture. Back down the stairs again and then the next lecture up the stairs again. Down again. And then in the afternoon we used to go down to the beach for PT. That meant going up the stairs, change into PT kit, down the stairs again and then I don’t know if you know the Grand. It’s up on the cliff and there’s more stairs right, led down to the beach. Doubled down these stairs down to the beach. A quarter of an hour, a half an hour PT, a dip in the sea and double back up all these stairs again. I’ve often said I’d never been so fit in all my life as I was when I left Scarborough. And then we were put on a, we went through all the exams and things and put on a draft to go to California, was it? No. Florida. Florida. So off we went. We went to West Kirby near Liverpool to be transported and then they found they’d got two to many on our draft so they knocked two off. Me and another chap called Roberts who was next to me on the list. They picked the two in the middle and took us off. So off we went back to Scarborough. So then we had to wait for the next draft and the next draft took us to Rhodesia as it was then. And we went up to Rhodesia. We went up, we sailed from Glasgow. We went back to West Kirby and then we went up to Glasgow to get on board ship and strangely enough we went on the King George the 5th docks and while I was in the Army I’d done sentry duty on that, on that dock while we were up there. And so we set sail for land. For Africa. We landed at Durban and then we spent a couple of days at Durban and we went by train. I wish we’d known. I wish we’d appreciated. We did what is now train journey up through Natal and all up through all the old Mafikeng and places like that and up to Rhodesia which I think was three days we were aboard on this train. We eventually got to Bulawayo and we spent some time there. While we were there another thing that happened there which was rather amusing was the flight sergeant in charge of discipline came around after we got this. ‘Any of this new batch, any of you play water polo?’ Well, I had. I’d played for the county of Northumberland at water polo. So, ‘Yes. I’ve played.’ And then there was, actually I think it was five of us and the rest of them were off from well-known clubs. Two of them were from the London Police Club which was well known and another one from the Otter’s Club and all really good water polo players, far better than me and the flight sergeant he just couldn’t believe his luck. He said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘We play regularly. We played the town team,’ he said, ‘And they hammered us every time.’ So we were there about two, three weeks maybe waiting for a posting and in that time we played I think five or six games. We won them all in double figures. And then we, then we were posted and we could see in the newspapers the poor old Air Force team was being hammered again. The flight sergeant, he just couldn’t believe it. Anyway, we went up to Mount Hampden on a pilot’s course and I passed out on Tiger Moths. When I say passed out I mean I passed the course [laughs] passed out at other times [laughs] And I was posted then to, back down to, literally Mount Hampden was up near Salisbury which is now Zimbabwe and I passed. Passed that course. Then went down on twinned Oxfords down at Heany which was near Bulawayo. I was ready to go solo on the Oxfords and the chief instructor sent for me. He said, ‘We’re taking you off flying.’ I said, ‘Oh, why?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Your reactions are too slow.’ ‘Oh.’ So he said, ‘We’ll send you back up to Salisbury and then you’ll go on a navigator’s course.’ On an Observer’s course it was then. Observer. So I said, ‘Oh, alright.’ You know. So off I went. When I got up there a crowd of us all at the same, on the same boat been taken off these courses. So one of them came around. He said, ‘Where were you on ground subjects? The navigation and things like that on the course?’ Because we had taken ground subjects as well of course and I said, ‘Well, as near as I know fairly near the top. So he said, ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘We all were.’ He said, ‘We think what’s happened is that they’ve taken the top two off each course and because they were running, everybody wanted to be pilots and they were running short of navigators or observers as it was and whether that was true or not I don’t know but I like to think so. And so I went down from there. We moved down to a camp between Johannesburg and Pretoria and we spent Easter there. And then we were sent down on a course to East London and did the observer’s course there. The observer’s course was you passed three courses. You passed which you probably know, you passed as an air gunner, a bomb aimer and navigator. You had to pass three courses and so we went through all that then moved down to Cape Town to get the boat home and we came back on our own. We didn’t come back in convoy. We came back on an armed merchantman and came back to this country. We were down in Cheltenham I think it was for a while and then posted up to Finningley on an OTU course ready for operations. And while I was there the OTU disbanded and one of the instructors, a pilot, squadron leader sent for me and asked me to go with him. He was going back on a second tour and he would like me to go along as his bomb aimer. Oh, when we got to Finningley that was the thing, when we got to Finningley we arrived late evening, a crowd of us and the next morning we reported to the navigation office and the navigation officer said, ‘Which of you are navigators and which of you are bomb aimers?’ Because by this time they’d separated the two and we said we are all full observers. We’ve done the lot. The officer said, ‘Right.’ He counted us off. He said, ‘You half there you’re navigators and you half there you’re bomb aimers.’ So I became a bomb aimer. And –
Interviewer: Were you disappointed not to be a navigator? Or was —
LR: Yeah. Well, the navigator had more sort of kudos to it.
Interviewer: Yes.
LR: Shall we say? You know but I, in actual fact the bomb aimer was fairly simple job compared to the navigator. And so then we were posted. This squadron leader asked me to go with him on his second tour. He was doing his second tour and he was taking a second tour crew with him apart from the bomb aimer and engineer. So I went with him. The only snag was I had to do thirty trips while they were only doing twenty so I had to try and get in a few trips to catch him up when bomb aimers went sick. So we were posted to 50 Squadron. That was February the 1st I think when we went to 50 Squadron. I did twenty, twenty three trips I think altogether and then —
Interviewer: Do you remember some of the ops you went on.
LR: Pardon?
Interviewer: Some of the ops that you went on.
LR: Oh, they’re all down here. [pause – pages turning] The first op was on Wilhelmshaven and I flew with, remember a chap named Maudsley [unclear] I flew with him.
Interviewer: Oh right.
LR: Not my own pilot. And then we went on a cross country. We went on a cross country and everything went wrong on this cross country. Before we went on ops the whole crew, we did a training flight and it was a brand new aircraft. It was, it turned out there was something wrong with the compasses because I was up in the nose doing the map reading. It was daylight. A daylight thing and we had to fly down to Cambridge and then from Cambridge we were going across to Wales. South Wales, then up the Welsh coast and back to Lincoln. So we set course from here to Cambridge and I thought well that’s fair enough. There’s not, it’s the only big city [unclear] so I took it easy up in the front. Saw this big town coming up and I said, ‘Oh there’s a town coming up now, you know. This will be Cambridge.’ It will be Cambridge, Jock, wouldn’t it?’ You know just as the navigator was Jock. ‘Yeah, it should be.’ So we looked. We said, ‘It’s a bit big for Cambridge.’ And it was London [laughs] I know how trigger happy the crew were. We were frantically firing off the colours of the day and all this. So then we set course then back for Wales and it turned out that on courses east to west or west to east the compasses worked. But on north and south courses they were all haywire. We flew up the Welsh course. Of course, we knew going up the Welsh coast exactly where we were. And we of course had to map read from then on without a doubt. And then we landed back in at Skellingthorpe and as we landed the tyre burst and we cartwheeled along the runway, wrote the aircraft off. Cartwheeled along the runway and we all got out without any injury. That was absolutely amazing. And then after that I went to St Nazaire, Duisburg, twice I went to St Nazaire. And then I did a couple of so-called gardening trips laying mines and at Duisburg twice. On April the 8th and April the 9th I was with my own pilot. Then I went the next night with another pilot. His bomb aimer must have been sick. Then La Spezia, in Italy and then we did that boomerang trip. You know, when we went, we bombed Italy and went down to North Africa. And then we couldn’t get back to this country because of fog coming down so we spent a week down in Algiers and had the time of our life really. And then we flew back again.
Interviewer: How did you feel on these trips? Were you, you know did you dread them? Did you —
LR: Did we —?
Interviewer: Did you dread them or did you just see them as a job or —
LR: No.
Interviewer: Frightened.
LR: It was a job you know. People got shot down but it wasn’t you.
Interviewer: No.
LR: It was never going to be you. We would be alright. Frightened? Well, yes up to a point. Up to a point and you would go to the target and of course in the nose you’re looking at, you see the target and all the searchlights and flares going down and all sort of things and at the back there was a wonderful firework display if you like to put it that way but you think well how the hell am I going to get through this lot? And then came the job of dropping the bombs. And then you sort of dropped it and out the other side and you’d think we got through it. Then you’d set a course from home and that was it.
Interviewer: A lot of bomber crews put it down to teamwork but you were with a lot of different crews. Did that make any difference?
LR: It did up to a point. Yes. My own crew were brilliant. They really were. And we did some nice stuff. There were two things when I went with other pilots where one the navigator hadn’t a clue and we were leaving the target [papers shuffling]. Sorry.
Interviewer: Ok.
LR: And we did this one trip with this crew and he didn’t have a clue when we left the target. We set course and he didn’t know where we were and then we saw these islands. I was up in the nose and of course it was dark. I couldn’t see anything until I saw, ‘There’s coast coming up ahead pilot.’ He said, ‘Yes. Right. We’ll try and pinpoint something.’ Then there was some islands. I said, ‘There’s some islands down there in the sea.’ ‘Oh, bloody hell. It’s the Channel Islands.’ And of course, we got shot up all the while [laughs] but we knew where we were then of course and we had to land on the south coast because we were short of petrol. We were really running out of petrol and we landed I think one of the south coast aerodromes and we had breakfast there and, and then topped up with petrol and came back. But and there was another one where we had to ask assistance. We got back to this country and you could ask for assistance and what they did they sent up a searchlight and give you the exact coordinates of the searchlight so that the navigator knew where he was. And then that was, that was alright. You see it wasn’t very often that you could get a pinpoint at night except on one occasion I flew with a pilot to Italy. Milan, I think it was. Anyway, we flew on this one and it was absolutely bright moonlight and I was able to map read all the way over France it was so bright. And I map read right to the target and back again and giving the navigator pin points all the way. So, and then the result of this was a couple of days later or maybe a little bit later the bomb aimer for this particular pilot he’d been sick that night. The bomb aimer of this particular pilot came to me and said, ‘You’ve given me a right job you have.’ I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘The pilot wants me to map read every night when we go.’ So I had to, I had to go to the pilot and say, ‘Look, that was exceptional that night.’ I said, ‘It doesn’t happen every night.’ So the poor old bomb aimer was taking the flak because, because I’d done a map reading and he wasn’t. And then we went, we did the Pilson raid. The first one. And we went on this raid and we used to have a kitty, the bomb aimers, we used to put a couple of bob each as it was then. Two bob. And the one who got like nearest the aiming point —
Interviewer: Got the photo.
LR: Scooped. The photo scoop.
Interviewer: Yeah.
LR: And I won it that night. I think I was four miles from the target. I can’t remember but it was several mile. It was more than a mile from the target and I won it and what happened was there was a little village near Pilson which was more or less the same shape and the PFF marked that village and we bombed the village and had to go back. I didn’t go on the second one but they sent another had to go back and do the raid again on Pilson.
Interviewer: You mentioned Henry Maudsley. Do you remember anything about him?
LR: Not really. No. Very aloof.
Interviewer: Ah.
LR: Sort of man. In a polite sort of way. You know. He was. Didn’t know much about him. He was a gentleman. Put it that way. He was a nice man. He was very good. Yes. Very good. On my first trip he was quite good to me. He was nice. We did trips to Pilsen and Duisburg and another one to Duisburg. That one we were attacked by a Junckers 88 on that one and I was with a Squadron Leader Birch. And his tactics if you saw a fighter was shove the nose down and the tale was told whether it was true or not several tales used to be told but two tales that were told about him which I shall tell you about so the rear gunner reported a fighter. I wasn’t with them. And so he put the nose down and dived down and the navigator was looking over his shoulder and said, ‘Where are you going? What are you doing?’ He said, ‘Diving down into that cloud.’ He said, ‘That’s not cloud. It’s snow.’ [laughs] Now, whether that was true or not I don’t know but it makes a nice tale.
Interviewer: They lived to tell it.
LR: Another time I was on leave and when I came back somebody said, ‘You ought to have been here.’ He said, ‘Peter Birch, he flew over Skellingthorpe with all the engines feathered.’ He said, ‘He got height and got to speed, feathered the engines and feathered all four engines and went over the aerodrome.’ Now whether that was possible or not I don’t, I mean people pooh pooh the idea. Whether it was true or whether it was a story again I don’t know. I’ve never been able to verify it. But it was said that he flew over, over the edge with all four engines feathered. So I don’t know. I don’t know whether that’s true or not. I went to Dortmund. Wuppertal. Wuppertal is, wipe that out. Oberhausen. In June Turin. Oh, we went on a special trip to Reggio Emilia which is Northern Italy and it was, that was the one when we had to go down to Africa because it was in July and we couldn’t get back to this country without flying over France in daylight. So we went down to North Africa. We flew down there and my pilot was second in command of our Group. A Group I think it was five or six aircraft to attack this transformer station. Two of them we had to rendezvous over Lake Como I think it was. Two of them, two of them collided and crashed into Lake Como. The rest went on and there was a ground mist. We were having trouble identifying the target but eventually we identified it and we had to call up the other aircraft with a call signal. A code signal to say that we had got this aircraft and we dropped TI markers to identify it and they couldn’t see them. They didn’t know where it was so we went around and bombed the transformer station and then went around again and machine gunned it and we set course then for North Africa. To Blida. The others didn’t find it at all. They just went on and abandoned it. And this, this other group a squadron leader was in charge. He got a DFC and the navigator got a DFC as well. We were, we were a bit chuffed about that. So no and oh when we got to, went to Blida which was near Algiers and we had, we couldn’t get back to this country.
[recording paused]
Interviewer: Try that. Ok.
LR: Ok. When we had gone on this trip to North Africa the, apart from our crew the gunnery leader on the squadron wanted to go as well. He wanted to. He fancied this trip you see so he came along with us on the trip and we got to Blida and this chap’s name, he was well known that he never bought a drink. He was always missing when it was his round and a chap called, his name was Hipkin so my pilot was a pretty good at impersonating. He used to get on the telephone impersonating. There was all sorts of things went, jokes went on with this impersonating but while we were there he went, we had a big Mess at Blida. He went to the upstairs phone and phoned the bottom one and asked for Flight Lieutenant Hipkin, you see. And so he said, ‘Me. Here?’ You know, and off he went to the phone and he said, ‘Oh yes, we need a gunnery leader at –’ one of the bigger air place near Algiers. There’s a big, there was a big air base there. Anyway, he said, ‘We need an air gunner leader there so we’re posting you there.’ And he came back to us and he said, ‘I’ve been posted. I’ve been posted to Algiers.’ You know. We said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘What do I do?’ He says, ‘My wife’s back home,’ he said, ‘My car’s back there at the squadron. All my gear. What am I going to do?’ So we said, ‘Well, what is the posting?’ He said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘It’s a squadron leader posting.’ ‘Oh, you got promotion then.’ ‘Well it seems so.’ We said, ‘Well that calls for a drink.’ So he had to buy a round and then he became so agitated towards the finish the pilot went upstairs again and phoned again. Flight Lieutenant Hipkin. So he says, ‘Flight Lieutenant Hipkin? Yes. Yes. That’s me.’ He said, ‘What was your name?’ ‘Hipkin.’ ‘Ah,’ he says, ‘It’s not Hipkin we want. It’s Pipkin.’ He said, ‘We’ve got the wrong man.’ [laughs] So he came back down, he said, ‘Oh, it’s all a mistake,’ he said. So, ‘Well, that calls for another drink then.’ [laughs] So, you know, we did several trips after that to Milan, Leverkusen, Hanover, Cassel. Oh, we got this new wing commander and he took over our crew because my pilot had been posted away after he’d just done just, I think he’d only done seventeen trips and they posted him away. Anyway, we got this new wing commander and he took over the crew. ‘Right. We’ll go on a bombing trip to practice bombing.’ To Wainfleet. And up to then I’d been using the old mark, I forget what mark it was bombsight. The one where you used two dials and you used to have to twiddle these dials. Anyway, got on board this one and it had got the new Mark 10 or Mark 11. Something like that. Automatic. I’d never used one before. So I knew briefly how it worked. Well, I knew how it worked but what I couldn’t find when I got on board was I couldn’t find the switch to switch it on. So with a new wing commander, yeah and we were getting near Wainfleet and I thought well there’s only one thing to do. I can drop them by sight. I can’t, I can’t tell him. I can’t [laughs] I can’t find the switch for bloody working [laughs] So anyway, we were just turning, running on to the target and I clicked this switch and the thing worked. The bomb, it came around lovely and came and all the settings and I was able to bomb. Another, another time with my own crew we were practicing a time and distance run where you bomb a target. Let’s bomb something. Sight something that’s say two or three miles away from the target and then the navigator works out how long it would be. How long it would take to get from there to the target.
Interviewer: Yeah.
LR: And then it tells you when to press the button. And we did this on the bombing run at Wainfleet. So we started off and you worked out the time and distance and everything and said right. Now, I’m sat in the bomb aimers place. Not looking or anything. Right. Press the button and the bomb went off. Did a practice bomb and went off. I looked down and to my horror there was a line of trawlers going out. The bomb was heading straight for them. Fortunately missed them. That was the crew. And then of course it was Frankfurt. Missing.
Interviewer: [Frighteningly]
LR: I was shot down in Frankfurt.
Interviewer: Right. If you’d like to tell us about that it would be —
LR: Well, we were just running up towards the target and we were attacked by a Junkers 88. They attacked us. The first attack set the port engine, inner engine on fire and the pilot managed to stop that. He came around and again and I looked through the inspection hatch where the bomb bay, the bomb bays were on fire. And then he came around for a third attack and knocked out the, one of the starboard engines and the pilot gave the order to abandon because we were burning pretty well by then. And we had, the crew had just chest parachutes. We had the two hooks. I grabbed mine, put it on and missed one of the hooks. So just one hook fastened and as I did that the plane blew up. Now, I don’t know whether it was the petrol tanks that went or whether it was the bomb that went but the plane blew up. It threw me forward on to the bombsight and knocked me unconscious for a while and when I came to the entire nose of the plane had been blown off and I was trapped in there. My legs were trapped somehow. I don’t know what was coming. I tried to get out. Anyway, what I did I pulled the rip cord, the parachute pulled me out and I damaged my leg in doing it. I don’t know what happened. It was, I didn’t break it or anything. It just, my knee was, went funny and then I was holding the parachute for oh less than half a minute I should think. So if I hadn’t got out soon I would have you know. I don’t know how far I pulled and I landed in the middle of a wood. Fortunately, I landed in the same direction as the wind on a path so I didn’t get caught up in the trees. So I buried my parachute and whatnot and sort of started walking to see where I was and by, I walked at night. My leg kept giving way under me. I had a lot of trouble with that. I kept falling. But I came through a couple of villages and by this time it was starting getting light in the morning so I had a look for some place to hide. I walked to one village and people walking past me going to work I assume, you know. One of them said, ‘Morgen,’ you know. I said, ‘Morgen.’ And look, you know they didn’t take any notice of me.
Interviewer: Obviously –
LR: I was in my flying kit. Yeah. Battledress.
Interviewer: Yes.
LR: And flying boots. And I got on the banks of this river. I knowing it was the Oder and, was it the Oder? Yes, it was the Oder. And there was a sort of lot of bushes and things there and I hid underneath these bushes and stayed there all day. I slept in actual fact and it was cold because it was January. It was December. December. And I stayed there all day. Then the next at night I got up to start walking again and I was way out on the road, nothing in sight and suddenly I heard the shout, ‘Halt.’ And it was just some German soldiers. So I tried the good morning trick, you know. ‘Morgen. Morgen.’ But it didn’t work [laughs] and they came up and shone a torch on me you know and I heard one of them say, ‘Englisher Flieger.’ You know. And rifles came off their shoulders and came down. That was that. I was taken prisoner. They took me to their headquarters. They were, they weren’t Army. They were Air Force, I think. And what happened they were guarding a Halifax which had crashed nearby and of course I shouldn’t have been out there so they took me in. They set me down at this table and they brought, a German officer came in and he sat at the other side of the table and I was sat on a stool and he said, he started to try and question me and he didn’t speak very good English. Very little English in actual fact. And I just said I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand. And then all of a sudden I got such a belt across the head. Knocked me off the stool and on to the floor and this, there was a German there, I think he was a sergeant major or something like that. He spoke perfect English. There was no doubt about it. And he said, ‘You stand on your feet. Stand.’ He said, ‘You stand on your feet when you’re talking to a German officer.’ Alright. You know. Nothing much I could do about that. So he said, ‘I’ll have your name, number, rank.’ At that time I was flying officer. I said, ‘Flying officer.’ So he said, ‘You’re not an officer.’ So I said, ‘Yes I am. Flying officer.’ ‘Where are your badges of rank’? I said and of course I had my battle dress so I said, ‘On my battle dress. On the shoulder.’ ‘Oh, they’re not badges of rank.’ He said, ‘Your badges of rank go on the sleeve.’ I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘These are my badges of rank.’ He said, ‘Where are your papers?’ I said, ‘I don’t have papers.’ He said, ‘When the Luftwaffe went over England,’ he said, ‘They had papers. Identity papers.’ I said, ‘But I’m not in the Luftwaffe.’ I said, ‘I’m in the Royal Air Force,’ I said, ‘And the only identity I have are these.’ I took my identity disks out and showed him. I said, ‘We don’t carry papers. We carry these.’ And he looked and the disks weren’t stamped with a rank. They were just stamped officer. He said, ‘Oh, you are an officer after all.’ I said, ‘Yeah. That’s what I’ve been saying.’ ‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘You’ll be hungry and thirsty no doubt.’ He said, ‘If you just sit down,’ he said, ‘And I’ll go and see if I can get you something.’ And he came back with the best glass of lager I’ve ever had in my life [laughs] and some black bread which was the worst bread I’ve ever had in my life.
Interviewer: Was he someone who did interrogations regularly do you think?
LR: No.
Interviewer: No.
LR: No, he wasn’t. These were Army.
Interviewer: Right.
LR: Air force, ordinary Air Force people.
Interviewer: Oh.
LR: And as it happens the main Interrogation Centre for aircrew was at Frankfurt.
Interviewer: Dulag Luft.
LR: Where I’d been shot down and there was, I had an armed guard the next morning took me to Frankfurt. I remember we went into the station and he sat me down on this seat. One of them stood there while the other one went off to make some enquiries and there was a civilian came past and he spat at me. Spat in my face. And the guard just moved him on. He, you know, ‘Go on.’ And when I saw the state of Frankfurt when I went through I could understand his feelings. Of course, then I went and we got on a tram and we went on a tram to Dulag Luft and as I remember it.
Interviewer: Yeah.
LR: Along with all the German people. A bit vulnerable really because Frankfurt was in ruins. And then they took me to Dulag Luft, straight into solitary confinement which was the psychological thing. Put into solitary confinement and when you’ve been put in there for a couple of days you could talk your head off when you come out. All they did was give me food and then there was a chap came in. He said he was from the Swiss Red Cross and, ‘Right. Name, number and rank,’ you see. ‘Where were you stationed?’ ‘What was you squadron?’ I said, ‘I can’t tell you that.’ He said, ‘Well, it’s only so I can tell your relatives. Inform your relatives that you’re safe.’ See. I said, ‘Well, all you need for that is my name, number and rank.’ He said, ‘Well, it would look better if you tell me.’ I said, ‘No. It’s not.’ [laughs] You know. Anyway, then they took me up. As it was early December and Christmas was coming up they took me out of solitary confinement early along with a lot of others. But first of all I had to go up for interrogation and again it was the proper interrogation people and he said, ‘Name, number and rank.’ I told them and they started asking questions and I had to say, ‘I can’t tell you that. I can’t.’ You know. They said, ‘Well, we know all about you, you know. It’s just a case of you verifying what we know.’ So I said, ‘Well, if you know all about me,’ I said, ‘I don’t need to tell you do I?’ He said, ‘How is Squadron Leader Parkes doing in his new post?’ And that threw me. Squadron Leader Parkes, he’d been promoted two days beforehand at the squadron, as squadron commander as a squadron leader. And only two days beforehand. ‘Now, how is Squadron Leader Parkes taken to his new post?’ New post.
Interviewer: You would have been trained in what would happen.
LR: Oh, we were told.
Interviewer: But were you prepared for how much they did know?
LR: No. I wasn’t.
Interviewer: No.
LR: I was amazed what they did know. Started telling me different things you see and that the idea is we were warned against this. The idea is to say well if they know that we might as well tell them what else they want to know. But if they gleaned just that little bit of information then they can use it on the next one. They said, they said, ‘We’ve got a friend of yours here.’ I said, ‘Who’s that?’ He said, ‘Flying Officer Hookes.’ I said, ‘Flying Officer Hookes? I don’t know anybody of that name.’ ‘Yeah. Flying Officer Hookes.’ And it turned out it was Flying Officer Hughes. They couldn’t pronounce it properly and Flying Officer Hughes was shot down that night. The same night. We became very good fiends in actual fact. Tommy Hughes. And that was it. Then they sort of released us. Well, I say released us they put us in a room altogether and because I’d damaged my knee they gave me a hospital bed to rest on. But then they transferred us then from there to Belaria, Stalag Luft 3 by the usual cattle truck.
Interviewer: Did you meet up with Hope who had also survived the –
LR: Not ‘til later.
Interviewer: Right.
LR: I thought that I was the only survivor because they said they’d found the bodies in the plane.
Interviewer: Oh, they did tell you.
LR: The Germans told me this at the time.
Interviewer: Yes.
LR: They had found the plane with the bodies inside and what not.
Interviewer: Right.
LR: But they didn’t tell me that the wireless operator was safe and apparently he was blown through the side of the plane. No. He had applied for a commission and his commission came through after he was shot down.
Interviewer: Oh.
LR: And so the Germans being the Germans transferred him to an officer camp.
Interviewer: Oh.
LR: Which Stalag Luft 3 was an officer camp.
Interviewer: Yes.
LR: And they transferred to him and he came and he came to Belaria.
Interviewer: You must have been surprised to see him.
LR: I was. He was surprised to see me [laughs] Yeah. And that was that. So I started life as a prisoner of war.
Interviewer: I don’t know, you can’t prepare yourself for anything like that so how did you find it or you know was it something to –
LR: Well, I spent the first three weeks I think it would be in hospital while they tried to do something about my knee and it was all swollen and they said I’d got fluid on it and whatnot and they were trying to treat me. I was in prison camp and it didn’t matter how long it took sort of thing. I had to have heat and used to have a big shield put over my leg with electric light bulbs in which was all heat. This went on until eventually I came out and went to the hut that had been with Tommy Hughes as well was in there. And —
Interviewer: How many more were in your particular hut?
LR: There were I think eight of us to start with. In the hut. In the room. The hut —
Interviewer: Oh yes. The rooms in the hut.
LR: Was divided into rooms.
Interviewer: That’s right. Yes.
LR: And I think it was eight to start with and then in double bunks.
Interviewer: Yes.
LR: Double bunks. And then they put another bunk on the top and made them triple bunks and put more people in. We had some Poles came in and, a couple of Poles and it was quite crowded in actual fact.
Interviewer: And everyday life in a –
LR: Well, boredom was the main —
Interviewer: Right.
LR: Problem. People took courses. If somebody was an expert accountant he would, he would start teaching people accountancy or and so forth. Anything like that you see. And of course, there was, I was fortunate in that I was musical. I played a guitar and we had a band and that kept me busy because we used to do arranging and all sorts of things like that so that filled the day in. Arranging concerts and things. We had a very good band in actual fact. The leader was a chap called Whiteley, Len Whiteley who had been trumpeter with Billy Cotton’s band. And later on we got some Americans in the camp and we got a base player who used to play with one of the big American bands, you know. He was good. He was a good arranger as well. So we managed, you know.
Interviewer: You weren’t involved in escaping yourself but did you know –
LR: No.
Interviewer: Of people that were and did you take any part in —
LR: I didn’t take any part at all in the escape but we knew of it afterwards. Not before. We didn’t know. I mean these things were kept very quiet obviously. For obvious reasons. But we knew of it and the camp commandant, our camp commandant, the senior British officer as he was called was he said we were to boycott the Germans altogether. Not to speak to them. We used to bribe them for bring in, bring in a couple of eggs and give them a cigarette something like that but we weren’t. We had to stop all that sort of thing. Not to talk to them. Ignore them.
Interviewer: Tell us the story about the radio please.
LR: Oh. The radio. Well, we had a radio and it was this radio was dismantled. The carcase of the radio was hidden under the coals. Under a heap of coals in the hospital block. And the components were taken out each night and given to separate people, different people so that if one was sort of discovered it would just be one item gone and the radio was assembled every night for the 6 o’clock news. To receive the 6 o’clock news from Britain and then dismantled again and shared around. We became short. We had a valve failure. Now a valve in actual fact was a fairly major component and so we needed to get another one. Now, in the camp we had apart from the guards there were these goons. Well, we called them goons. Or ferrets. Ferrets we called them and they used to go around looking for trouble. And they used to go around looking for trouble like long screw drivers which they used to try to poke into the earth to try and detect tunnels and they would look under the huts because the huts were on, were built up over the ground on stilts more or less. Short stilts of course. And they would walk into a room looking to see if anybody was doing anything they shouldn’t be doing. Now, if they found anything important they were given a week’s leave and instant promotion to the next higher rank. So and at that time there was a tunnel in progress which had flooded. We found it did flood in the Belaria compound. We couldn’t get a tunnel going because it flooded. So we bodged this tunnel up. I say we I didn’t have anything to do with it. But they bodged this tunnel up so it looked like the genuine thing and then they said to one of the ferrets, ‘Bring us in a valve for the radio,’ you know. Oh No. No. He couldn’t do that. Couldn’t do that. That’s much too much. You know. So we said, ‘Look, if you do we’ll show you a tunnel.’ Ah. And so in came the valve. We got the valve for the radio. The ferret went off and reported to the commanding officer who’d only been there for a couple of weeks and he came bounding out in white overalls and everything saying, ‘Ah you know you can’t beat us Germans.’ And things like this and he was delighted. The commandant reported to his superiors that he’d found a tunnel and the ferret got his week’s leave and we got our valve. So everybody was happy. Yeah. So some funny things went on. I don’t know how far it’s true this story but I did, the story went around that now we had to be careful when a new influx of prisoners came in that they didn’t infiltrate a German with them. So they had, all prisoners had to be vetted. When we used to flock around the gates. Flocking around the gates wasn’t to welcome the prisoners as much as to see if you knew anybody. And if you knew somebody you pointed them out. Oh we knew him, you know. So that invariably everybody knew somebody. And apparently they got one chap who was suspect in this place and when they questioned him closely he didn’t seem very knowledgeable about things. Not as knowledgeable as he should have been and they were fairly sure, absolutely sure really that he was a German infiltrator and so they reported to the commandant the next day that one of their men had been too overcome. It had been too much for him. He drowned himself in the fire pool. And now, I can’t verify that story but it was prevalent at the time. It came around. It wasn’t in our compound and as I say it’s a story you’ve got to be careful about telling really.
Interviewer: You’ve met or at least knew of personalities like Bob Stanford Tuck and Douglas Bader.
LR: I never met Bader. I met Tuck and Roland Beamont.
Interviewer: Yes.
LR: He came while I was there. He came to the camp and for the next two days I should think or more than that you couldn’t separate him and Tuck. They were there with their hands going all over the place fighting all the battles all over again [laughs]
Interviewer: But not good reports of Bader’s behaviour.
LR: Bader wasn’t well liked. He, we had Escape Committees and if you had any ideas for escape you put them to the Escape Committee and they decided on the feasibility of it and what not. Also, the main reason was that you didn’t try some foolhardy, foolhardy attempt and jeopardise any escape attempt that was in progress. So, but Bader would have none of that. He said if he got the chance he would go regardless. He didn’t believe in Escape Committees and he was fairly arrogant I believe. And although I’d never met him but I know he wasn’t well liked.
Interviewer: And when you heard about the fifty that had been shot after the Great Escape that must have been a terrible shock.
LR: Oh, that was, you know. We just couldn’t get over it. It put a whole new light on escaping really. Any attempt to escape before that was sort of an adventure if you’d like to put it that way. If you got away with it well and good. If not well well what it did among other things if somebody escaped it tied up the police and Home Guard in the area or the military in the area trying to find them, you know. And we thought well, you know keep the Germans busy. If they’re looking for me then I’ve done something else.
Interviewer: Did morale drop in the –
LR: It did a bit. Yes. We said, well what do we do about escaping, you know?
Interviewer: So you, you stayed there until July, January ’45.
LR: Yes.
Interviewer: And the –
LR: When the Russians advanced.
Interviewer: Yes. And —
LR: We could hear the Russian guns.
Interviewer: And did you feel that this was, you know –?
LR: Well, this is the end. Yes.
Interviewer: Yes.
LR: This is the end. But then Hitler ordered that if prison camps looked like being overrun the prisoners had to be shot you know. And they dropped, the Air Force dropped leaflets warning prison commandants that they were responsible and if any prisoners were harmed [pause] I’ve got one of the leaflets in actual fact. And they, we didn’t know what to make of it really. We didn’t know what, you know. Anyway, we, we moved out of the camp and we walked through —
Interviewer: You weren’t given much notice I don’t think.
LR: Not a lot of notice. We said that we were going to go out one day. I think it was as I remember it was, we said we would go out one morning and then it was postponed until the next day. Something like that. And anyway, we went off walking and it wasn’t very good.
Interviewer: And the snow and the cold.
LR: It was a cold winter of course and the winters out there were particularly cold.
Interviewer: And you wouldn’t have much clothes.
LR: Just sleeping at night in barns and pig styes or whatever wherever we could. Just bed down and just as we were.
Interviewer: I understand that the guards suffered as much as the –
LR: The guards did.
Interviewer: Yes.
LR: Of course they did. Yes. Yes. Yes, they were fed up.
Interviewer: And you were taken to —
LR: To Luckenwalde. Now, that was a big camp, you know. There were French, Italians, Russians. Oh, the Russians they were absolutely badly treated the Russians were. The Russian prisoners. We used to see them being taken out to work you know and you know, terrible. But when we were, we were released we went into the Russian barracks and some of the murals that they’d painted on the walls were fantastic. The Russians released us but in actual fact we were still prisoners of the Russians then because there was this thing going on at home between Stalin and Churchill over the Cossacks. And I believe, we didn’t know at the time but I think we were held as political prisoners to a bargaining thing because we didn’t, we weren’t released until June. We listened to the May, the VE Day celebrations. We listened to them on the radio in the camp. We were still in the camp.
Interviewer: How did you feel about that?
LR: Not very, not very much. We were fed up with the Russians. In actual fact there was a jeep, an American jeep came through with some report, two reporters and they said, ‘Who are you lot?’ And we told them. They said, ‘Well, we didn’t know anything about you.’ They said, ‘We’ll have a convoy come and pick you up.’ And they did. The next day a convoy of American lorries arrived at the camp and some of the lads tried to get on board and the Russians wouldn’t let them. And we thought, we ran along, some of us ran along the road a bit. We could get out of the fence and catch the lorries as they were leaving because the Russians turned them around and the Russians fired on us. Fired over our heads and stopped us from getting on the lorries. They said what they wanted, they wanted to register us and the senior British officer said, ‘Tell me what you want registering.’ They wanted the name. Your name and your rank, number and where you lived. Where you came from. And he said, ‘If you give me a couple of days I’ll give you, I’ll get you all that.’ But no. they had to do it the Russian way and what they were doing they were translating it into Russian. Cyrillic lettering and it took them about two weeks to do it. It was all time wasting. We had, they let us out. They let us move from the camp. It was south and east a little bit. About a half a mile or so. We would go for a walk if we wanted to rather than be in the confines of the camp. They promised us radios and food and goodness knows what which never materialised and just on the other side of the wire there had been a park and there was a lovely lake there. So we, somebody said, ‘Oh, we’ll go swimming.’ And off we went to swim in the lake. Of course, nude of course. There were no swimming costumes and off we went. There was such a big thump in this lake. We wondered what on earth was that? Sort of looked around and the Russians were still on the thing, on the top throwing grenades into the water. Threw the grenades and they made a good bump. All the Russian girl soldiers were all there waiting and we all came scrambling out of the water you see [laughs] scrambled out and back into the barracks and the Russian girl soldiers laughing like mad. One of the things of course leading up to that was we got a lot of refugees in and woke up one day and the hut was divided into, big huts they were and divided in two. In the centre portion was a washing area with a big sort of round basin. Taps all the way around it where we could wash and whatnot. And we got up one morning and it was sort of walked down to this place and there was some ladies stripped off washing. Well, we just couldn’t believe it you know. We had to get washed and the toilets there were the seats, you know, open. There would seats along one side and then seats on this side and we went to the toilet and women were there as well thinking nothing of it. You’d just, you know and we just couldn’t get on with this somehow. Sharing a toilet with a lady and washing with her. You know. Especially having, having been cooped up for a long time. Yes. That was all very primitive. It was a very primitive camp was Luckenwalde. The food. We didn’t get any Red Cross parcels at first and the food was just barley and mint tea.
Interviewer: Was there a lot of illness?
LR: Not as much as you would expect, I think. The main trouble with that sort of thing was when they transported us. We were, they took us out once, they were going to move us from the camp and they put us in these railway trucks and crowded into these trucks you know with no toilet facilities and it used to be shocking. Of course, some of the men had diarrhoea and that and couldn’t control themselves and there was nothing they could do.
Interviewer: No.
LR: And we used to, we used to drain hot water out of the engines thing to make tea with, you know. Out of the engine tank. The steam. Steam engine. And oh, it wasn’t very good. Then they decided that after two or three days we couldn’t move anyway. The railways couldn’t move us so we went back into the camp again and we stopped there until they decided, the Russians decided that we could move. The Americans came. They took us to an American base and oh, we got there. White bread, coffee. Proper coffee and all proper food and everything. Luxury. And we were there for a while while they arranged transport to take us back. And they took us on a, we went on a Dakota back to Brussels. And then in Brussels we went on a Lincoln bomber back to England and the reception in England was absolutely fantastic. We didn’t know what to expect because we’d had, there were letters we got from home accusing us of being cowards for being prisoners of war and things like this you know. One letter a girl wrote to say she was marrying somebody else. She said, “I’d rather marry a –“ what was it? [pause] Rather marry this man than marry an Air Force coward. Something like that. But you know these things happen and we didn’t know what sort of reception to expect. So was that.
Interviewer: When you came home did you go to Cosford?
LR: I think. I think Cosford.
Interviewer: Yeah.
LR: Yes. Cosford. Yes. And when we got there there was a whole load of WAAFs waiting to escort us in and it was late at night. It was, it was around about twelvish or thereabouts and they’d had a dance there before, before we got there and the band had packed up. And they unpacked their instruments and played for a dance just for us. And we were all packed up and disinfected and goodness knows what and sent off home.
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Les Rutherford
1022-Rutherford, Robert Leslie
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SHarriganD[Ser#-DoB]v26
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Claire Bennett
This Interview was recorded by Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2011-01-24
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
British Army
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:27:19 audio recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
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.
Description
An account of the resource
Les Rutherford was called up for the Army just short of his twenty first birthday. He was in France at the time of Dunkirk and made it to the beach of St Valery where they were under constant bombardment. He and another soldier found a door and used that to paddle out to the Channel in the hopes of joining a ship to get back to England. A trawler rescued them both and passed them over to a British vessel. While still serving in the Army Les saw an advertisement for RAF aircrew and decided to volunteer. He was trained as an observer but was posted to 50 Squadron as a bomb aimer. His aircraft was shot down over Frankfurt after a triple attack by a Junkers 88. He spent the rest of the war as a prisoner of war at Stalag Luft 3 at Sagan.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
North Africa
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
England--Lincolnshire
France--Dunkerque
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Oberursel
Poland--Żagań
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941-06
50 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bomb aimer
bombing
Dulag Luft
Ju 88
Lancaster
prisoner of war
RAF Skellingthorpe
Red Cross
shot down
Stalag Luft 3
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2655/46381/SKeelingRV82689v10008.1.jpg
019a46581a781eed90c0513b501c5307
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
Keeling, Robert Victor. Scrapbook
Description
An account of the resource
41 items. A scrapbook of photographs and clippings concerning Robert Keeling's service, as a pilot for aerial photographs, and royal visits.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2023-06-01
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Keeling, RV
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/.
Description
An account of the resource
Left page: top, an advertisement for a hotel.
Bottom left, view of a cathedral.
Bottom right, view of terraced fields.
Right page: top two rows reports family engagements; centre; a list of the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserves including R V Keeling.
Middle right; report of the marriage of Ursula Hartley and Pilot Officer Robert Keeling.
Bottom left and centre, reports of an operation to the Skoda works at Pilsen.
Bottom right, report from Harpenden badminton club.
Corner left, notice of the death of Pilot Officer Gerald F Shaw.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
The Daily Telegraph. The Observer.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-10-04
1941-01-10
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Warwickshire
England--Birmingham
Czech Republic
Czech Republic--Plzeň
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Artwork
Photograph
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One cartoon and 3 newspaper cuttings on two album pages
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SKeelingRV82689v10008
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription
Title
A name given to the resource
Skoda works
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.
bombing
incendiary device
killed in action
love and romance
sport
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2635/46366/MKeelingRV82689-230601-01.1.jpg
595fd51ba6794015ebc8aab9abd7e7bf
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
Keeling, Robert Victor
Description
An account of the resource
48 items. The collection concerns Robert Victor Keeling, DFC (b. 1916, 82689 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, correspondence, decorations and a <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2655">Scrapbook</a>. He flew operations as a pilot with 51 Squadron. Following his retirement from the Royal Air Force with the rank of Squadron leader he became a civilian pilot. <br /><br />The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by David Keeling and catalogued by Lynn Corrigan.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2023-06-01
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Keeling, RV
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
Bob Keeling
Description
An account of the resource
Top, report of the death of Douglas Jeffries in aircraft MH-M. Bottom, report and picture of Whitley T4218 MH-H, following a failed landing attempt on its return from an operation to Gelsenkirchen in an electrical storm. The image is stamped 'R Moore Collection'.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jeremy Nicholson. Phil Moore
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-06
1941-06-17
1940-11-18
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Sunderland (Tyne and Wear)
England--Yorkshire
Belgium
Germany
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
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
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Personal research
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One typed sheet and one photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MKeelingRV82689-230601-01
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.
51 Squadron
crash
killed in action
RAF Dishforth
RAF Usworth
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2635/46206/LKeelingRV82689v1.1.pdf
614702122603a1a6bac8c0c911c28346
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
Keeling, Robert Victor
Description
An account of the resource
48 items. The collection concerns Robert Victor Keeling, DFC (b. 1916, 82689 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, correspondence, decorations and a <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2655">Scrapbook</a>. He flew operations as a pilot with 51 Squadron. Following his retirement from the Royal Air Force with the rank of Squadron leader he became a civilian pilot. <br /><br />The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by David Keeling and catalogued by Lynn Corrigan.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2023-06-01
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Keeling, RV
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
Robert Victor Keeling's pilot's flying log book. One
Description
An account of the resource
Pilot's flying log book for Robert 'Bob' Victor Keeling covering the period 15 June 1939 to 30 June 1943. Details his training and operational duties. Bob flew 27 night operations, 15 as second pilot to Pilot Officer Deacon, Sergeant Prior and Squadron Leader Hollrick and 12 as pilot with 51 Squadron. Operations, all flown in Whitley aircraft, were to Antwerp, Berlin, Bordeaux, Boulogne, Bremen, Brest, Chemnitz, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Gelsenkirchen, Hamburg, Kiel, Leipzig, Le Havre, Leona, Lorient, Magdeburg, Mannheim, Pilsner, St. Naazare and Turin. The log book continues with details of Bob's time as a flying instructor with the School of Navigation, 7 Squadron and Royal Aircraft Establishment.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-09-11
1940-09-12
1940-09-14
1940-09-15
1940-09-17
1940-09-18
1940-09-21
1940-09-22
1940-09-23
1940-09-24
1940-09-25
1940-09-26
1940-10-11
1940-11-12
1940-10-15
1940-10-16
1940-10-27
1940-10-28
1940-10-30
1940-10-31
1940-11-01
1940-11-02
1940-11-08
1940-11-09
1040-11-13
1940-11-14
1940-11-15
1940-11-16
1940-11-17
1940-11-18
1940-11-27
1940-11-28
1940-12-08
1940-12-09
1940-12-13
1940-12-14
1940-12-17
1940-12-18
1941-01-09
1941-01-10
1941-02-11
1941-02-12
1941-03-01
1941-03-02
1941-03-10
1941-03-11
1941-03-13
1941-03-14
1941-03-15
1941-03-16
1941-04-10
1941-04-11
1941-04-12
1941-04-13
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
Czech Republic
France
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Belgium--Antwerp
Belgium--Zeebrugge
Czech Republic--Plzeň
France--Bordeaux (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
France--Brest
France--Le Havre
France--Lorient
France--Saint-Nazaire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Chemnitz
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Leuna
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Mannheim
England--Bedfordshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Cheshire
England--Derbyshire
England--Gloucestershire
England--Hampshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Warwickshire
England--Wiltshire
England--Wiltshire
Italy--Turin
Germany--Düsseldorf
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
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LKeelingRV82689v1
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.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Leitch
10 OTU
21 OTU
22 OTU
51 Squadron
7 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
Battle
Blenheim
Flying Training School
Hampden
Hudson
Hurricane
Lancaster
Magister
pilot
RAF Abingdon
RAF Burnaston
RAF Cranage
RAF Dishforth
RAF Farnborough
RAF Hullavington
RAF Kemble
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Oakington
RAF Wellesbourne Mountford
Spitfire
Stirling
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1918/45665/YCrawfordJ[Ser -DoB]v3.jpg
3f3376802febb96a0df712c9c6e3a333
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
Crawford, Jack 416818
John Crawford
J Crawford
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
2017-08-08
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
Crawford, J
Description
An account of the resource
18 items. The collection concerns Warrant Officer John "Jack" Crawford (416818 Royal New Zealand Air Force) and contains his diaries, documents, correspondence and photographs. He flew operations as a wireless operator/ air gunner with 189 Squadron and was killed 4 March 1945. <br /><br />The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by john Herbert and catalogued by Lynn Corrigan.<br /><br /><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW220471175 BCX0">Additional information on John "Jack" Crawford</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW220471175 BCX0"> is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/105207/">IBCC Losses Database.</a></span>
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
Itinerary
Description
An account of the resource
First entries of Jack's journal describing his time as ground staff, refuelling and starting aircraft, taking, and passing the aircrew entrance exams and waiting to sail.
This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form. No better quality copies are available.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1941
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
New Zealand
New Zealand--Rotorua
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 New Zealand Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Diary
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
YCrawfordJ[Ser#-Dob]v3
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.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
John 'Jack' Crawford
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Cover and three pages.
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription
ground personnel
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2557/44698/PBlamiresRG2216.1.jpg
18c83377e1dddc7929c32a87d8d1ba53
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
Blamires, Robert Geoffrey
R G Blamires
Description
An account of the resource
99 items. The collection concerns Robert Geoffrey Blamires (b. 1921, 139996 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, diary, correspondence, documents, charts and an <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2645">Album</a>. He flew operations as a navigator with 103 Squadron. <br /><br />The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Judith Coad and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-05-11
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Blamires, RG
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
No 103 Squadron Honours and Awards Board
Description
An account of the resource
A board showing the Honours and awards from 1941 to 1970.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-07-01
1970-01-01
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
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
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Physical object
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Large wooden board
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PBlamiresRG2216
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.
103 Squadron
killed in action
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1433/44668/BYatesRPYatesRPv1.1.pdf
893603c8b8a05658e79498035ad29c2c
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
Yates, Richard
R P Yates
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
2015-08-18
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
Yates, RP
Description
An account of the resource
One item. The collection concerns Warrant Officer Richard "Dick" Yates (Royal Air Force) and contains his memoir. He flew operations as a wireless operator/ air gunner with 35 Squadron and became a prisoner of war
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by R P Yates and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
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
My Wartime Memories by Richard Yates
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard Yates
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
England--Bedfordshire
England--Wiltshire
France
France--Brest
Germany
Germany--Hamburg
France--Boulogne-Billancourt
Germany--Essen
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
France--Lorient
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
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
86 printed sheets
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BYatesRPYatesRPv1
Description
An account of the resource
Richard 'Dick' Yates was a wireless operator/air gunner on 35 Squadron flying Halifax. He was shot down and became a prisoner of war. Dick did his basic training at Blackpool. While at Cranwell for wireless training he flew in DH 86 and Valentia.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-10-01
1941-02
1941-04
1941-06
1941-08
1941-08-16
1941-11
1941-11-24
1941-11-30
1942-01-06
1942-02
1942-03-09
1942-03-13
1942-05-08
1942-06-08
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.
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription
19 OTU
35 Squadron
Air Observers School
aircrew
bale out
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
Dominie
Dulag Luft
forced landing
Gneisenau
Halifax
Halifax Mk 1
Halifax Mk 2
love and romance
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
Proctor
RAF Cardington
RAF Cranwell
RAF Jurby
RAF Kinloss
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Wyton
RAF Yatesbury
recruitment
Scharnhorst
Stalag Luft 3
Stalag Luft 6
the long march
training
Whitley
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2573/44653/PUreIL18020015.1.jpg
aee726d6cec2af9a82a5cf8a73020293
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2573/44653/PUreIL18020016.1.jpg
54ffd8123521bff095b8ae6a62c349e8
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
Ure, Ivan Lochlyn
I L Ure
Description
An account of the resource
27 items. The collection concerns Ivan Lochlyn Ure (b. 1922, 1323004 Royal Air Force) and contains his memoirs, prisoner of war log, correspondence, documents, and photographs. He flew operations as an air gunner with 10 Squadron before he became a prisoner of war.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Tim and Heather Wright and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-08-15
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Ure, IL
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
26 Trainee Airmen
Description
An account of the resource
The 26 men are grouped in three rows on the pavement outside Mrs Baker 35 Tottingham House.
On the reverse 'Blackpool 1941 I wonder how many made it. Property of Ivan Ure, Hayling Island'. And on a post-it 'subject back row 5th from left'.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1941
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Blackpool
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PUreIL18020015, PUreIL18020016
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
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.
aircrew
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2573/44643/MUreIL1323004-180815-050001.1.jpg
fa74e443fd6869cb529a4b060a2339d2
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2573/44643/MUreIL1323004-180815-050002.1.jpg
4b72eb687794bc0981c8eb7cda5ece60
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
Ure, Ivan Lochlyn
I L Ure
Description
An account of the resource
27 items. The collection concerns Ivan Lochlyn Ure (b. 1922, 1323004 Royal Air Force) and contains his memoirs, prisoner of war log, correspondence, documents, and photographs. He flew operations as an air gunner with 10 Squadron before he became a prisoner of war.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Tim and Heather Wright and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-08-15
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Ure, IL
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
Certificate entitling Ivan Ure to wear Training Flash
Description
An account of the resource
Ivan's training flash certificate.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
RAF 311 Wing
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1941-12-02
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Service material
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One double sided printed card with handwritten annotations
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MUreIL1323004-180815-050001, MUreIL1323004-180815-050002
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-12-02
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.
aircrew
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2563/44376/MParryWE1172401-220531-10.1.jpg
df2e508c2bb914b0b8959a29ffbfa6a6
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
Parry, William Edward
Parry, W E
Description
An account of the resource
34 items. The collection concerns Pilot Officer William Edward Parry DFC (1912 - 1996, 1177401 Royal Air Force) and contains his decorations, documents and photographs. He flew operations as a pilot with 9 Squadron.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Frances Lee and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-05-31
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Parry, WE
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
Bill Parry - Marriage Certificate
Description
An account of the resource
An official record of Bill and Mary's marriage.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Vicar Holy Cross Shrewsbury
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1941-01-09
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Shrewsbury
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One printed sheet with handwritten annotations
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MParryWE1172401-220531-10
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.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-01-09
love and romance
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1954/44215/PBroderickKJ1702.2.jpg
427340f79bf42d5867b68510c23db88b
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
Broderick, Kenneth James
K J Broderick
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Broderick, KJ
Description
An account of the resource
20 items. The collection concerns Pilot Officer Kenneth James Broderick (115109 Royal Air Force) and contains documents, correspondence and photographs. He flew operations as a pilot with 106 Squadron and was killed 8/9 July 1942. <br /><br />The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Judith Conway and catalogued by Benjamin Turner. <br /><br />Additional information on Kenneth James Broderick is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/102722/">IBCC Losses Database.</a>
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
Airmen standing in front of a Hampden
Description
An account of the resource
Kenneth James Broderick standing on the left with two other airmen in flight jackets. They can be seen standing in front of a Handley Page Hampden aircraft.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1941-07
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-07
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
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
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PBroderickKJ1702
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.
aircrew
Hampden
RAF Lindholme
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2433/44149/MSaundersJWG1324708-180307-12.1.jpg
73c9d1eb5119cb9ae8dd68212b1a2eb1
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
Saunders, John Walter Gifford
Description
An account of the resource
69 items. The collection concerns Sergeant John Walter Gifford Saunders (1922 - 2003, 1324708 Royal Air Force) and contains correspondence, documents, and photographs. He flew one operation as an air gunner with 44 Squadron and became a prisoner of war, during which time he befriended Iga, a polish airwoman in an adjacent camp with whom he corresponded. This collection includes <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2565">a folder with a diary and photos of his training in Africa</a>. <br /><br />The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Clive Saunders and catalogued by Lynn Corrigan, with additional contributions by Ella Keogh and Lucy Liu (TOU9156, AA 22-23).
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-03-07
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Saunders, JWG
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
A message of welcome
Description
An account of the resource
Welcome letter to John confirming his selection for aircrew training.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Air Ministry
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1941-09-15
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-09-15
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--London
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One printed sheet
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MSaundersJWG1324708-180307-12
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.
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription
aircrew
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1807/44140/MKilburnG[Ser -DoB]-170310-01.pdf
79c2d3b0ae7f020f56459b76e79d5870
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
Kilburn, Gerard
G Kilburn
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
2017-03-10
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
Kilburn, G
Description
An account of the resource
6 items. The collection concerns Gerard Kilburn (Royal Air Force) and contains a memoir about the bombing of Liverpool and photographs.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Gerard Kilburn and catalogued by Benjamin Turner.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[underline] Some memories of the war (1939-1945) [/underline] from a woman who was a teenager then.
War broke out on 3rd September 1939. This was a hot sunny Sunday in Liverpool where I lived.
[underline] Evacuation [/underline].
That week the [underline] Evacuation of children [/underline] began. Children were sent away from the big cities to the countryside for safety.
Lime Street Station was filled with children of all sizes and ages with gas masks in cardboard boxes over their shoulders; labels pinned to their lapels gave their name and identification number.
Everyone had to carry an identity card.
I wasstaken [sic] was taken by train into the country- the journey was long. The whole school was taken on arrival to a church hall, and we waited to be collected by ‘someone’. We did not know who it would be. Those children who were not taken by someone were taken by bus to a house or cottage for the duration of the war.
Not all children stayed that long. The cottage I was sent to had no gas, no electricity, no running water or indoor toilet. The toilet was in a hut at the very bottom of a long garden. There was no bathroom- we had our baths in a tin bath in front of the kitchen fire. My mother was not happy about me being away from home and she came to collect me after one week. She said that if we were going to die then it would be better to die together. It so happened that we all lived safely through the war.
[underline] Sounds of War [/underline] – [underline] An Air Raid [/underline]
The sounds of war were very different from the sounds of a country at peace. When there was an air raid the sirens wailed loudly and eerily. We would look at the clocks quickly before running to our Anderson shelter in the garden. If it was 10 or 12 o’clock pm we knew there would be a long night of bombing to come. If it was 2 or 3 a.m. then maybe it would only last a matter of hours.
Sometimes there were two or three air raids in the same night and some in the day-time too.
As we ran we would see the searchlights scanning the sky for the enemy aircraft.
[page break]
The sound of enemy aircraft was different from our own planes.
They used to switch their engines off to avoid being detected. We would then hear a drrm…drrm…drrm…drrm…. This was an ominous sound.
You could also hear the scream of the bombs as they fell through the air. First there would be a ‘descending’ whine, then an explosion which was sometimes louder than thunder and at other times a dull ‘crump’ in the distance.
We would listen hard for the comforting sound of our own anti-aircraft guns and rockets fighting back at the enemy. Sometimes, however, these were silent-especially during the May Blitz in Liverpool, when the bombing was long and incessant for ten nights from 1st -10th May.
The most wonderful sound of all was that of the ‘all clear’. The siren would sound again but this time it did not wail but gave out a long, clear, steady note to announce that the ‘raiders’ had passed. Maybe, though, we would return to bed, only to hear the air raid siren again and so rush back to the shelter.
[underline] Sights in Liverpool [/underline]
Incendiary (fire) bombs were a real danger. Huge metal tanks full of water were positioned on almost every street corner. These were called [underline] E.W.S tanks [/underline] Emergency Water Supply tanks.
More E.W.S. were carried in huge pipes. (about 35cm in diameter) which were on the edges of the pavement and had to be stepped over.
People in uniforms could be seen too. [underline] Air Raid Wardens [/underline] wore overalls and tin hats; [underline] soldiers [/underline], sailors and airmen were often in Liverpool en route between North America and Europe. Liverpool was the Western approaches port and the town was always busy. There were Americans, Canadians, Poles and Norwegians. The French sailors wore little ‘pom-poms’ on their hats.
[underline] The Black Out [/underline]
For fear of air raids it was necessary to ensure absolute darkness at night. This would make places less easy to find. At first no torches could be carried. When it was eventually allowed they had to have black tape over them so that only a little light would show. Torches always had to be carried pointing downwards. Car lights also had to be covered.
[Page break]
(A few cars had huge ‘balloons’ full of gas on top of them to save petrol).
At the windows you could see blackout curtains or windows with nets of tape pasted over them to prevent glass shattering.
People never moved about without their gas masks- these had to be carried elsewhere.
In the sky were huge barrage balloons.
We didn’t see a banana for over six years.
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Some memories of the war
Description
An account of the resource
Memoir detailing a teenage girl's experiences of the war. The document details experiences of evacuation, the blackouts, sounds of the war during air raids and what they saw on the streets of Liverpool.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1939-09-03
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lancashire
England--Liverpool
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Three page type written document
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription. Under review
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MKilburnG[Ser#-DoB]-170310-01
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.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
William Cragg
Air Raid Precautions
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
childhood in wartime
evacuation
home front
incendiary device
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2556/43914/MLongNJ1581956-190516-01.2.pdf
eed9f017f42bc56ad98f0cc2f870849f
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
Long, Norman J
N J Long
Description
An account of the resource
12 items. The collection concerns Warrant Officer Norman J Long (1923 - 1994, 1581956 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, correspondence, documents, and photographs. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 460 Squadron.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Kathryn Lawrence and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-05-16
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Long, NJ
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
ROUTINE ORDER BY GROUP CAPTAIN K. R. PARSONS D.S.O. D.F.C
COMMANDING R.A.F. STATION, BINBROOK.
Serial No. 39
Page. 1
Date. 12.5.45.
427. SPECIAL ORDER OF THE DAY by AIR CHIEF MARSHAL SIR A. T. HARRIS. KCB. OBE. AFC.
“Men and Women of Bomber Command.
More than 51/2 years ago, within hours of the declaration of War, Bomber Command first assailed the German enemy.
You were then but a handful. Inadequate in everything but the skill and determination of the crews that sombre occasion and for the unknown years of unceasing battle which lay behond [sic] horizons black indeed.
You, the aircrews of Bomber Command, sent your first ton of bombs away on the morrow of the outbreak of war. A million tons of bombs and mines have followed from Bomber Command alone. From Declaration of War to Cease Fire a continuity of battle without precedent and without relent.
In the Battle of France your every endeavour bore down upon an overwhelming and triumphant enemy.
After Dunkirk your Country stood alone in arms but largely unarmed between the Nazi tyranny and domination of the world.
The Battle of Britain, in which you took great part, raised the last barrier strained but holding in the path of the all conquering Wehrmacht, and the bomb smoke of the Channel ports choked back down German throats the very word ‘Invasion’; not again to find expression within these narrow seas until the bomb disrupted defences of the Normandy beachheads fell to our combined assault.
In the long years between much was to pass.
Then it was that you, and for you long alone, carried the war ever deeper and ever more furiously into the heart of the Third Reich. There the whole of the German enemy in undivided strength, and scarcely less a foe the very elements, arrayed against you. You overcame them both.
Through those desperate years, undismayed by any odds, undeterred by any casualties, night succeeding night, you fought. The Phalanx of the United Nations.
You fought alone, as the one force then assailing German soil, you fought alone as individuals isolated in your crew stations by the darkness and the murk, and from all other aircraft in company.
Not for you the hot emulation of high endeavour in the glare and panoply of martial array. Each crew, each one in each crew, fought alone through black nights rent only, mile after continuing mile, by the fiercest barrages ever raised and the instant sally of the searchlights. In each dark minute of those long miles lurked menace. Fog, ice, snow and tempest found you undeterred.
In that loneliness in action lay the final test, the ultimate stretch of human staunchness and determination.
Your losses mounted through those years. Years in which your chance of survival through one spell of operational duty was negligible. Through two periods, mathematically Nil. Nevertheless survivors pressed forward as volunteers to pit their desperately acquired skill in even a third period of operations, on special tasks.
In those 5 years and 8 months of continuous battle over enemy soil your casualties over long periods were grievous. As the count is cleared those of Bomber Command who gave their lives to bring near to impotenance [sic] an enemy who had surged swift in triumph through a Continent, and to enable the United Nations to deploy in full array, will be found not less than the total dead of our National Invasion Armies now in Germany.
In the whole history of our National Forces never have so smaller band of men been called to support so long such odds. You indeed bore the brunt.
To you who survived I would say this. Content yourselves, and take credit with those who perished, that now the ‘Cease Fire’ has sounded countless homes within our Empire will welcome back a father a husband or a son whose life, but for your endeavours and your sacrifices, would assuredly have been expended during long further years of agony to achieve a victory already ours. No Allied Nation is clear of this debt to you.
I cannot here expound your full achievements.
Your attacks on the industrial centres of Northern Italy did much toward the collapse of the Italian and German Armies in North Africa, and to further invasion of the Italian mainland.
Of the German enemy two to three million fit men, potentially vast armies, were continuously held throughout the war in direct and indirect defence against your assaults. A great part of her industrial war effort went towards fending your attacks.
[Page break]
You struck a critical proportion of the weapons of war from enemy hands. On every front.
You immobilised armies, leaving them shorn of supplies, reinforcements, resources and reserves, the easier prey to our advancing Forces.
You eased and abetted the passage of our troops over major obstacles. You blasted the enemy from long prepared defences where he essayed to hold. On the Normandy beaches. At the hinge of the Battle of Caen. In the jaws of the Falaise Gap. To the strongpoints of the enemy held Channel ports, St. Vith, Houffalize and the passage of the Rhine. In battle after battle you sped our armies to success at minimum cost to our troops. The Commanders of our land forces, and indeed those of the enemy, have called your attacks decisive.
You enormously disrupted every enemy means of communication, the very life blood of his military and economic machines. Railways, canals and every form of transport fell first to decay and then to chaos under your assaults.
You so shattered the enemy’s oil plants as to deprive him of all but the final trickle of fuel. His aircraft became earthbound, his road transport ceased to roll, armoured fighting vehicles lay helpless outside the battle, or fell immobilised into our hands. His strategic and tactical plans failed through inability to move.
From his war industries supplies of ore, coal, steel, fine metals, aircraft, guns, ammunition, tanks, vehicles and every ancillary equipment dwindled under your attacks.
At the very crisis of the invasion of Normandy, you virtually annihilated the German naval surface forces then in the Channel, a hundred craft and more fell victim to those three attacks.
You sank or damaged a large but yet untotalled number of enemy submarines in his ports and by mine laying in his waters.
You interfered widely and repeatedly with his submarine training programmes.
With extraordinary accuracy, regardless of opposition, you hit and burst through every carapace which he could devise to protect his submarines in harbour.
By your attacks on inland industries and coastal ship yards you caused hundreds of his submarines to be still born.
Your mine laying throughout the enemy’s sea lanes, your bombing of his inland waters, and his Ports, confounded his sea traffic and burst his canals. From Norway throughout the Baltic, from Jutland to the Gironde, on the coasts of Italy and North Africa you laid and relaid the minefields. The wreckage of the enemy’s naval and merchant fleets litters and encumbers his sea lanes and dockyards. A thousand known ships, and many more as yet unknown, fell casualty to your mines.
You hunted and harried his major warships from hide to hide. You put out of action, gutted or sank most of them.
By your attacks on Experimental Stations, factories, communications and firing sites you long postponed and much reduced the V. weapon attacks. You averted an enormous further toll of death and destruction from your Country.
With it all you never ceased to rot the very heart out of the enemy’s war resources and resistance.
His Capital and near 100 of his cities and towns including nearly all of leading war industrial importance lie in utter ruin, together with the greater part of the war industry which they supported.
Thus you brought to nought the enemy’s original advantage of an industrial might intrinsically greater than ours and supported by the labour of captive millions, now set free.
For the first time in more than a century you have brought home to the habitual aggressor of Europe the full and acrid flavours of war, so long the perquisite of his victims.
All this, and much more, have you achieved during these 51/2 years of continuous battle, despite all opposition from an enemy disposing of many a geographical and strategical advantage with which to exploit an initial superiority in numbers.
Men from every part of the Empire and of most of the Allied Nations fought in your ranks. Indeed a band of brothers.
In the third year of the war the Eighth Bomber Command, and the Fifteenth Bomber Command, U.S.A.A.F. from their Mediterranean bases, ranged themselves at our side, zealous in extending every mutual aid, vieing in every assault upon our common foe. Especially they played the leading part in sweeping the enemy fighter defences from our path and, finally, out of the skies.
[Page break]
Nevertheless nothing that the crews accomplished and it was much, and decisive could have been achieved without the devoted service of every man and woman in the Command.
Those who tended the aircraft, mostly in the open, through six bitter winters. Endless intricacies in a prolonged misery of wet and cold. They rightly earned the implicit trust of the crews. They set extraordinary records of aircraft serviceability.
Those who manned the Stations, Operational Headquarters, Supply lines and Communications.
The pilots of the Photographic Reconnaissance Units without whose lonely ventures far and wide over enemy teritory we should have been largely powerless to plan or to strike.
The Operational Crew training organisation of the Command which through these years of ceaseless work by day and night never failed, in the face of every difficulty and unpredicted call, to replace all casualties and to keep our constantly expanding first line up to strength in crews trained to the highest pitch of efficiency; simultaneously producing near 20,000 additional trained aircrew for the raising and reinforcement of some 50 extra squadrons, formed in the Command and despatched for service in other Commands at home and overseas.
The men and women of the Meteorological Branch who attained prodigious exactitudes in a fickle art and stood brave on assertion where science is inexact. Time and again they saved us from worse than the enemy could ever have achieved. Their record is outstanding.
The meteorological reconnaissance pilots, who flew through anything and everything in search of the feasible.
The Operational Research Sections whose meticulous investigation of every detail of every attack provided data for the continuous confounding of the enemy and the consistent reduction of our own casualties.
The scientists, especially those of the Telecommunications Research Establishment, who placed in unending succession in our hands the technical means to resolve our problems and to confuse the every party of the enemy. Without their skill and their labours beyond doubt we could not have prevailed.
The Works Services who engineered for Bomber Command alone 2,000 miles of runway track and road, with all that goes with them.
The Works Staffs, Designers and Workers who equipped and re-equipped us for battle. Their efforts, their honest workmanship, kept in our hands indeed a Shining Sword.
To all of you I would say how proud I am to have served in Bomber Command for 41/2 years and to have been your Commander-in-Chief through more than three years of your Saga.
Your task in the German war is now completed. Famously have you fought. Well have you deserved of your country and her Allies.”
[signature]
Adjutant.
R.A.F. Station. Binbrook.
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
Special Order of the Day by Air Chief Marshall Sir A.T. Harris
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Arthur Harris
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1945-05-12
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
France--Dunkerque
France--Normandy
France--Caen
France--Falaise
Belgium
Belgium--Saint-Vith
Belgium--Houffalize
Germany
Germany--Rhineland
Italy
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
Wehrmacht
United States Army Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Three typewritten sheets
Identifier
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MLongNJ1581956-190516-01
Conforms To
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Pending text-based transcription. Under review
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
Message from Arthur Harris to all Bomber Command Personnel.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kathryn Lawrence
aircrew
bombing
ground crew
ground personnel
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
mine laying
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Photographic Reconnaissance Unit
RAF Binbrook
tactical support for Normandy troops
training
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2519/43910/PBraithwaiteW19020020.1.jpg
ce96df90c497c6b87f6ba4971376a934
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2519/43910/PBraithwaiteW19020021.1.jpg
f64798540e0648075c2a15ce658e465a
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
Braithwaite, Walter
W Braithwaite
Description
An account of the resource
21 items. The collection concerns Walter Braithwaite (1293577 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, note book and photographs. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 77 and 171 Squadrons. <br /><br />There is also a photograph <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2562">album</a> with 49 items. <br /><br />The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by M Braithwaite and catalogued by Benjamin Turner.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-10-22
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Braithwaite, W
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
Airmen
Description
An account of the resource
A group of airmen outside a building on the pavement. On the reverse of the photograph is some handwriting reading "5D39 BLACKPOOL JULY 1941".
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-07
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lancashire
England--Blackpool
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 Canadian Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PBraithwaiteW19020020, PBraithwaiteW19020021
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1941-07
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
training