1
25
10
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1939/37196/SFieldPL907804v10029-0004.2.jpg
46a2fe300cffff8ab6839bec52fa3e8e
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1939/37196/SFieldPL907804v10029-0005.2.jpg
847dfd951b912e72a4c4fbcd8874d5a2
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
Field, Peter L and Cynthia G
Peter L Field
P L Field
Cynthia G Field
C G Field
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
2017-09-19
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
Field, PL-CG
Description
An account of the resource
144 items and five photograph albums in sub-collections. The collection concerns Peter L and Cynthia G Field and contains memoirs, correspondence, photographs. Peter Field (b. 1920) served as a wireless operator and Cynthia (b. 1921) served as a WAAF in 2 Group. <br /><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2137">Album One</a> Photographs of various people.<br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2138">Album Two</a> Photographs of people and places, postcards.<br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2141">Album Three</a> Photographs of parents house over the years.<br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2144">Album Four</a> Photographs of family events, places and people.<br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2146">Album Five</a> <span>Photographs of wartime colleagues, Cook's tour aerial photographs of bomb damaged German cities, and family and friends as well as two letters home.</span><br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Susan Elizabeth Field and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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
Cynthia Field at the Hay Clan plot
Description
An account of the resource
A woman wearing an overcoat holding onto part of a memorial headstone for grave of Ian Hay in Inverness. Upper part of stone is fashioned as a propeller blade. On the reverse 'In August 1975 Peter and I stayed in Inverness and visited the Hay Clan plot in the Tomnahurich Cemetery, to see Ian Hay's grave, stone broken, had to hold it up.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1975-08
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1975-08
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Scotland--Inverness-shire
Scotland--Inverness
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
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One colour photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SFieldPL907804v10029-0004, SFieldPL907804v10029-0005
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
final resting place
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2144/37061/PFieldPL19070019.2.jpg
09ac1e67d0e30bf61db4f4b4a98b5d5d
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
Field, Peter L and Cynthia G. Photograph album 4
Description
An account of the resource
22 items. Photograph album covers, eighteen double pages of photographs of family events, places and people as well as three stand alone photographs.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-19
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
Field, PL-CG
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
Friends photographs
Description
An account of the resource
Right page:
Top - four men in shirtsleeves standing on grass with road and buildings in the background.
Bottom - four men in shirtsleeves sitting on grass with trees behind them.
Caption on spine 'July 5 1975'.
Right page:
Captions on spine top to bottom 'May 30 1983', May 26 1993'.
Top left - three men standing on a lawn with houses in the background.
Top right - two couples standing in front of a house.
Bottom - two men and a woman sitting on a wooden bench with two men standing behind. Hedge in the background.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1975-07-05
1983-05-30
1993-05-26
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1975-07-05
1983-05-30
1993-05-26
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
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Five colour photographs mounted on two album pages
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PFieldPL19070019
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
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2144/37060/PFieldPL19070018.2.jpg
b292f3ae0f4dfd5f1d4bff4ae8df71cd
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
Field, Peter L and Cynthia G. Photograph album 4
Description
An account of the resource
22 items. Photograph album covers, eighteen double pages of photographs of family events, places and people as well as three stand alone photographs.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-19
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
Field, PL-CG
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
Friends photographs
Description
An account of the resource
Left page:
Top - four men standing on a lawn with rockery behind them.
Bottom - three men standing in front of a building with signage stating that it was opened by Her Majesty the Queen in June 1991.
Captions on spine from top to bottom 'May 1993', 'September 1992'.
Right page:
Caption on spine 'July 5, 1975'.
Top - four men, three in shirtsleeves standing on grass with buildings behind in the distance.
Bottom - three men in shirtsleeves and one waring jacket standing talking on grass with buildings in the background.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-05
1992-09
1975-07-05
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1993-05
1992-09
1975-07-05
1991-06-12
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
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Four colour photographs mounted on two album pages
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PFieldPL19070018
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
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1908/36249/SPerryWRP1317696v60005-0001.1.jpg
8a5e6a1102e6ebd62921eea244c87007
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1908/36249/SPerryWRP1317696v60005-0002.1.jpg
40c214c3a6e8a86b9ddd6c41517b1111
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Perry, Pete
W R P Perry
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-07-19
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
Perry, WRP
Description
An account of the resource
Sixty-nine items and an album sub collection with twenty-four pages of photographs.
The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant WR Pete Perry DFC (1923 - 2006, 1317696, 146323 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, photographs, correspondence, memoirs and documents. He flew operations as a pilot with 106 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Helen Verity and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HISTORY OF RAF SYERSTON
[picture]
[underlined] HISTORY OF RAF SYERSTON [/underlined]
The Royal Air Force station at Syerston was opened in December 1940, and the first occupants were two Polish heavy bomber squadrons, Nos. 304 and 305, equipped with Vickers Wellington medium bombers.
Their Majesties King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (now Queen Mother) visited the station in January 1941, and during that year the two Polish squadrons were joined by a Royal Canadian Air Force squadron, No 408, equipped with Handley Page Hampden medium bombers. The three squadrons carried out many bombing attacks on German targets including shipping during this time.
In 1942, No 408 RCAF Squadron moved to the satellite airfield at Balderton (Newark) and from there made repeated attacks on German Battle cruisers. 1942 saw the arrival of Nos. 106 and 61 Squadrons RAF equipped with Avro Lancaster heavy bombers, targets included Genoa, Milan and Turin attacked during daylight.
Early 1943 brought attacks from the station on the Krupps munitions works at Essen and on Berlin. In June the first shuttle bombing raid by Bomber Command took place when Lancasters bombed Friedrichshaven and landed in North Africa, and Syerston was concerned in most of the major raids including Hamburg and the Peenemunde Air Research and Development Station where the notorious German VI flying bomb and V2 rockets were being developed. 1943, however, saw a temporary cessation of operations from the station, and the establishment of No 5 Lancaster Finishing School, while in 1944 the Headquarters of No 56 Base of Bomber Command was established.
[page break]
In 1945 the station again became a Lancaster bombing station with the arrival of No 49 Squadron, and the last bombing operations from the station took place in April when Berchtesgarten was attacked.
The station was then transferred to Transport Command until 1948 when No 22 Flying Training School took over to train pilots for the Royal Navy, and remained until 1957 when No 2 Flying Training School took over to train RAF student pilots in Piston Provost aircraft.
In 1958 the change to Jet Provosts began, and by early 1960 Syerston had the distinction of being the first station in the world to train pupils on jet training aircraft.
The gradual addition of the more powerful MK IV Jet Provost permitted a wider range of exercises to be carried out, and in January 1963 “Wings” were presented to the first course ever to complete training to this stage solely on jet aircraft.
At a special meeting of the Borough of Newark on Trent in 1964 a resolution was passed to bestow the Freedom of Entry into the Borough to the Royal Air Force station of Syerston, with the right privilege and distinction of marching on ceremonial occasions with bayonets fixed, drums beating, bands playing and colours flying. A parade was duly held to mark the occasion.
The station continued to train pilots until 1970 when it was closed and left on a care and maintenance basis.
In 1975 part of the station was re-opened when the Air Cadets Central Gliding School moved from RAF Spitalgate to Syerston. The school operates conventional gliders and motor gliders and on occasions gliders are aero towed by Chipmunk aircraft. The purpose of ACCGS is to train and standardise the weekend volunteer instructors who man the 28 air cadet gliding schools. Courses are also provided for air cadet students and for Combined Cadet Force Officers who are trained to operate Open Primary Grasshopper gliders at their own squadron sites.
– 2 –
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
History of RAF Syerston
Description
An account of the resource
History of the station from December 1940 including resident squadrons and aircraft , royal visit and other points of interest after the war up to the current day.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-12
1941-01
1942
1943
1945
1958
1963
1975
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Nottinghamshire
Italy
Italy--Genoa
Italy--Milan
Germany
Germany--Essen
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Friedrichshafen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Peenemünde
Germany--Berchtesgaden
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Royal Air Force. Training Command
Royal Canadian 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
Two page typewritten document
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SPerryWRP1317696v60005
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
Steve Baldwin
106 Squadron
304 Squadron
305 Squadron
408 Squadron
49 Squadron
61 Squadron
Hampden
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
RAF Syerston
training
V-1
V-2
V-weapon
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2044/33159/PProbynEA17010034.2.jpg
dde9246496ffbd84f584a81e5354677a
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
Probyn, Ernest. Scrapbook
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-04-23
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Probyn, EA
Description
An account of the resource
42 items. Scrapbook containing photographs and clippings.
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
Air Cadet Camp and Reunion
Description
An account of the resource
Two photographs from an album.
Photo 1 is a group of air cadets under the port side of a Hercules, captioned 'Summer Camp at RAF Thorney Island, Hants. Self with Warrant Officer Jack Parker 1975'.
Photo 2 is Ernest and two civilians. Ernest is pointing at a squadron photograph, captioned 'Self, Ron "Pop" Warren & Jack Cottingham at Bletchley in 1978'.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two b/w photographs on an album page
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PProbynEA17010034
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
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Milton Keynes
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
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1975
1978
RAF Thorney Island
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1338/20849/PLovattP19010039.2.jpg
6cd357fe56a921c0e03185957d07c8b5
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
Lovatt, Peter. Album One
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-27
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
Lovatt, P
Description
An account of the resource
43 items. The album contains photographs of Peter Lovatt's service and family life in the UK and Singapore.
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 Hitchcock and wife and Invitation to a parade
Description
An account of the resource
Two photographs from an album.
Photo 1 is a man and woman outside their house, captioned 'Bill Hitchcock & Wife at home, Norfolk.
Photo 2 is an invitation to Squadron Leader and Mrs P Lovatt to a 15 Squadron to a presentation parade.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One colour photograph and one printed card
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PLovattP19010039
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Norfolk
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.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1975
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1975
15 Squadron
RAF Wittering
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/882/11709/PHorshamES1602.2.jpg
67e67ad73fa2fc212dac0e588fd3a172
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/882/11709/ASymondsHorshamE170105.2.mp3
7d055b8f4144ed6db659e469c9e75ac0
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Horsham, Eric
Eric Symonds Horsham
E S Horsham
Description
An account of the resource
14 items. An oral history interview with Eric Horsham (b. 1923), 9 photographs, and his memoirs. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 102 Squadron from RAF Pocklington.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Eric Horsham and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-01-05
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. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Horsham, ES
Access Rights
Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies.
Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 5th of January 2017 and I’m with Eric Horsham down in Warminster and he was a flight engineer. And he is going to talk about his experiences in life but particularly with the RAF. So, Eric what are you earliest recollections of life?
ESH: Well, every year we went off to Devon for a holiday at relations because my people came from Plymouth and Devonport and this was held good right up until my teenage years. But early memories really, I suppose began at the age of about, serious memories, seven when we heard a very strange noise on one occasion and we all rushed out to see what it was. And do you know what? It was the R101 which was on its way to London and of course guided by the River Thames because that’s where we lived. In Plumstead. So it was logical. In fact the best view from Plumstead was the Ford Motor Works which had four big white chimneys and so that was a landmark. And following on from there it wasn’t until I was [pause] well I suppose fourteen really because that’s when I left school and they said, ‘Well, there’s a couple of jobs and one is — would you like to be a messenger in the Royal Ordnance factory?’ Which was right adjacent to Plumstead at Woolwich, you see and also the headquarters of the Royal Engineers. So that’s what I did for six months because it was destined that I should take the Railway Clerical Examination and join the rest of the family working on the railway. So that’s subsequent to that they sent me to train as a booking clerk. But I didn’t show up very brightly so they said, ‘No. We’ll send you to a goods depot.’ Which was rather like being banished, you know [laughs] because, can I be humorous at this point and say, well yes I was sent to a depot call Nine Hills which was in Vauxhall near Waterloo and on one side I had the Brand’s Essence and Pickle factory churning out pickle. And looking the other way we had horses because everything was delivered, delivered by horses, and drays at that. And on the other side we had the gaslight and coke company pushing out fumes so that was my early memory on the railway and then a friend of mine said [pause] well I told the friend of mine in the railway business that I was very unhappy there. So, indeed the friend said, ‘Well, we’ll try and rectify that,’ and apparently I didn’t shine as a booking clerk either. So they sent me to the estate office of the Southern Railway which was way out in the country at Chislehurst, but I digress because previous to — I mean we, talking about the year 1937. As you’ll appreciate if I was ’23 — born ‘23. ‘33, ‘37 that’s thirteen or fourteen years and 1939 came along. We can verify those dates and we had to join anything organised. All young people. So, but I think maybe I’m a bit previous to that because I went along to the Air Defence Cadet Corps. This would be somewhere about 1937 at least. So from there of course we went on to the Air Training Corps which was very much in evidence at Woolwich because we were, had the run of the Woolwich Polytechnic, and the chief there was indeed given the rank of wing commander in the Air Training Corps. Wing Commander Halliwell. So, that’s where I first got my, sort of my aircraft experience and of course it was a very good base for workshop practice. We all started off wanting to be flight — to be aircraft fitters. Fitters and turners. And the very basic things that we did were of course in connection with Tiger Moths where you really had the history of aircraft from very early days, and we had to learn all about turn buckles and things which kept the wings in place. But of course as time went by, here we are in ’39 and we were getting heavy bombers coming in, and if you’d, you had to decide, you know, really what you wanted to do because you were going to be called up for sure. And state a preference. So of course I did. And that was to be a flight engineer. Now, as an aside to this, engineers in the Air Force — flying, got twelve shillings a day. Now, you, you know seven twelves is eighty four. That’s four pound forty a week which is not to be, not to be sniffed at. But of course we also had to join something anyway. So, off I went to, to be called up but unfortunately there was a problem because I’d had a medical earlier for call up and the doctor discovered that one leg, ankle or calf, was slightly different to the other one. And of course yes it would be so because when I was born it was in a splint up until a year, eighteen months which straightened it out but it never did quite catch up with the other leg. Anyway, they said, ‘No. You’re grade three. We don’t want you.’ So off I went back to the estate office and soldiered on. Filing I think was our main job then because the railway had a vast estate. However, ok, come twelve months I was getting pretty fed up so I went up to the local recruiting office and said, ‘You know, I’m available. And I’m partly trained as an engineer. I want to join the Air Force,’ and they said, ‘Well that’s alright. You’re in the Air Training Corps. You should be alright.’ So they sent me off to Cardington and, for a medical. Went to Henlow actually. Adjacent. Just down the road from Cardington. Saw the top brass and he said, ‘Well, jump up and down there,’ and so I did. And he said, ‘There’s nothing wrong with you, off you go.’ So back to an interview at Cardington. The very, very modern method of identifying people. You had all these puzzles in a book, and you went through the book. A hundred puzzles and things like a bit of algebra, you know. And I knew a little bit. Anyway, I got the question right and I was the only one in that class who got it. So the squadron leader who was interviewing, and he was loaded with gongs, of course to a young man I couldn’t take my eyes of these gongs. Anyway, he put me through all the paces and he had a civilian officer too, with him, in the interview. And in his room he had every kind of aircraft and I was to — aircraft recognition. So I did very well at that because we were well trained in the Air Training Corps. So off I went then back to civilian life and then a little while later got called up for Aircrew Reception Centre at Lord’s. So we had a, we were very honoured because we had to be kitted out in the Long Room which was famous as you know. We had drill on the famous turf. Now, that lasted about three weeks by which time we were fully kitted up and said, ‘Right. Off to Torquay you go.’ We thought that was jolly good because Torquay was a lovely holiday centre wasn’t it? Anyway, we did, I did eight weeks there altogether. And we learned administration and the law of the RAF and the time came when they said, well, you know, off to the squadron — no. Off to the big training centre you go. And I remember I slept the night on Bristol Temple Meads Station because that was it. We were going to St Athan in Wales. And the train service being what it was we did arrive at St Athan with two kit bags by the time we got there. And humped them all the way up to the camp which we thought rather naughty. Anyway, we went through twenty six weeks, I think it was, of training throughout every facet of aircraft construction and the essential things that one would have needed to know. Like you had to be au fait with a very complicated system of petrol tanks. Now, each wing of a Halifax had six tanks. And this had to be in flying whittled down from, so that your main petrol was in the mid-section, in tanks one and three. Funny enough on the test training board they said, ‘No, you really ought to have another think about this. Go back and think for another week.’ So, then I passed out and they put a little white flash in my cap and they gave me papers for the Number 1652 Conversion Unit which was that Marston Moor.
[Telephone ringing. Recording paused]
CB: So we’re just re-starting now with St Athan and the rest of the things that you were doing in training there.
ESH: Yes. I’ll go straight into leaving St Athan.
CB: What else did you do in St Athan? Hydraulics. What else?
ESH: Is that running?
CB: Yes.
ESH: Well, yes, you had your petrol system. You had the other power that was likely to be in aircraft which were accumulators. Now, not as you would think an electricity accumulator but this was liquid in a cylinder. Oil actually I think it was. And air was pumped in giving it a pressure and on selecting undercarriage down the accumulator would push it down. This is in the case of a Halifax which was either hydraulic or pneumatic. So the way to get services to operate was by his accumulator. But not only that of course because you did have [pause] now let me think. You had the port inner engine on a Halifax is the one that supplies power to your services and —
CB: Electrical power.
ESH: Yes. Some of it would have been electrical power.
CB: But also hydraulic.
ESH: And hydraulics had to be learned. Flaps were hydraulic. The other services control are foot and pedals by the pilot on the fin and rudder. And the elevators — well they would be hydraulic you see running a pipeline out. And flaps for instance. Fairly high pressure, well two and a half pounds I think were the standard pressure in the system but it was enough to push a big flap down against the airstream. And so electrics — you had to be au fait with the electrical services, and therefore you had to mug up on Ohm’s Law if you like in order to appreciate the power that you could get from electric motors. So, and then of course you had to know the different gauges of the stressed skin of the alclad which was a compound of the aluminium NG7. You see, the mind gets very hazy when it comes to the complete structure but you were able, by the end of six months, to walk through a mock-up of an aircraft with your eyes closed. You could have bandaged the flight engineer. He was the one who moved around and you were perfectly au fait with where the main spar came across so you could sort of jump over that. And of course the controls for your petrol were underneath the, what’s called the rest position which was a little sort of bunk for resting people. We didn’t go to sleep there actually but it was very useful. And then in the front of the aircraft of course you had the pilot with the wireless op immediately underneath him. And the navigator and the bombardier in the nose proper. So they, we were pretty well genned up by the time we left there. We could go anywhere blind folded within the air craft there and operate switches without thinking about it. So then they said, ‘Right. Here’s, here’s your ticket.’ You’re on your on your way,’ to a place called Pocklington — no. Sorry. Marston Moor. The sight of the famous battle actually was just down the road. And this was number 1652 Conversion Unit where all the crews got together as and made up as crews. Now, I hadn’t met our crew before then but we were very late. The mid-upper gunners and the flight engineers only met the crew, the other crew of four who’d come along from EFTS and their various ‘dromes where they had been instructed, to make up a crew. And it was strange because we assembled in the hall and the flight engineers and the gunners — mid-upper gunners, would be sitting in chairs and then in came the existing crews because they’d been flying Wellingtons which only required five people. And then — how do you find a pilot? They said, ‘Join up with somebody,’ so eventually, I think we were down to about two flight engineers and a chappie came along and said, ‘I need a flight engineer. You’ll be my flight engineer won’t you?’ And it turned out that he was a very very competent pilot. His name actually was, he was a Pilot Officer Francis then, who came from a village near where we are now called Stoke St Michael near Shepton Mallet. Anyway, he was quite stern. He always said that he’d seen our records but I don’t think he had. Anyway, he brought the crew along and said, ‘This is our flight engineer. Do you think he’ll be alright?’ So that was it. That was our crew. And so then we started training on the next day on circuits and bumps because this aircraft was totally new to our pilot. And while we’re on the subject of crew we had a very important chap in the crew who is of course the navigator. Now, we had actually in retrospect, having had thirty odd ops to prove himself, and we wouldn’t be here now if it hadn’t have been for Oscar Shirley, who was our navigator, because you could turn him upside down. You could have umpteen course changes. He knew exactly where he was. Because it could be very, I mean I heard of crews who had navigators that weren’t too good and that was curtains. However, we won’t dwell on that. But, and while we’re on crew our bombardier was fresh from the first few months of a teacher training course. He was called Johnny Morris but not to be confused with the comedian. And Alan Shepherd was our wireless operator. Now, Alan Shepherd came from Ringwood, off a smallholding. Wonderful chap really. Did a lot of good work after the war. Who else have we got to account for? Oh rear gunner. Yes. Rear gunner, another Londoner. I’m just desperately trying to remember his name. You wouldn’t believe it would you? [pause] I’ll remember it in a moment. We’ll come back to that. Now, who haven’t we accounted for? Mid-upper gunner. Jimmy Finney from Hull. Lovely lad who later got shot up on one operation and had to pack it in.
CB: And your bomb aimer?
ESH: Ron Alderton was the name of the rear gunner by the way. He is still with us as far as I know but when I phoned him the other day he said, ‘I’m losing my marbles. I can’t come and see you.’ So, there we were. Crew set up. And then of course we all had our bicycles with us. Off in the van and off we went to — I think we went by train from Green Hammerton to York. And then York out to Pocklington, and the station yard was just gravel in those days. And then of course we walked over to the ‘drome which was quite close. Each of us had two kit bags and a bicycle. But we knew we were going to Pocklington and it didn’t have a very savoury sort of record. In fact they said, ‘Now you’re here you’ll be lucky if you last three weeks.’ Which was a throwback from — 1943 was a desperate year and here we are in January or February was it of ’44, at the Conversion Unit. And Pocklington had, sorry not the Conversion Unit. Pocklington — the actual RAF station and there was definitely a pervading sort of sense that this was a bit dodgy, you know. However, we were led into operations in around about, just before D-Day. We’d done all our circuits and bumps and cross country’s and they let us down very gently on short trips to France. I mean the first trip we did was to a place called [unclear] which was a P-plane place. P planes were coming in thick and fast so Churchill had said to our boss Air Chief Marshall Harris, ‘Look get your lads on this. I want it stamped out.’ Because they knew the 6th of June was coming up. So we continued to do that until right through until well after D-Day. To various places which you wouldn’t be able to find on the map because they don’t give, you won’t find them as places like Foret de Dieppe. Which is unheard of, I mean, but there you are. And then we started ops didn’t we? And of course our accent was on night bombing. Can you imagine having a sheet of aluminium stood up against the wall and you gathered up in your hand and [pause] gravel? Now, you threw the gravel at the aluminium. Now that’s just what it’s like when you’re being shot. If you’re near a shot. Because all the shrapnel comes and hits the aircraft like that and that is getting just a bit too close for comfort. However, they were nights. Now, what you don’t, what you can’t see you don’t worry about do you? Even though it was seven or eight hours sometimes. Or five or six to the Ruhr. Because we were concentrating on the Ruhr. I mean Essen after we’d been there and some of the other lads had been there previously there wasn’t one brick standing on another. And that’s where Krupps the armament works were ruined, you know — finished. Because we were mainly at that time after [pause] I mean our targets were decided by the Ministry of Economic Warfare. And they said, ‘Right. Wipe out Germany’s oil and that will end the war.’ So that’s what we did. We went to all sorts of obscure places trying, in bulk, to wipe out an oil plant. Because, I mean, you’re looking at a complex in the middle of a small area of a village. Now it took a lot of aircraft to plaster it so we did a lot of this up and down the Ruhr. I mean there were so many places I won’t bore you with that. But that’s what we did. But also we went to one or two further places like Brunswick. Way across east to Berlin. And then Hanover, Soest, Osnabruck and they were very well defended. And of course the night fighters hadn’t quite been been nullified as they were a little later. So we had, I suppose a charmed existence. And one of the deadly things the Germans did was to position a gun at a fixed angle — called a shrage gun and it would come out and go straight for the port inner. Once you got the port inner — well that’s where your services came from. And there’s no way really you could put a fire out. You’d try by diving [pause] but no really we had a charmed existence I suppose. And then D-Day came along and in preparation for that the squadron was busy but we didn’t actually get over Normandy until, I think it was July the 18th 1944 when it was, there were troop concentrations around Cannes. Now, if you remember Montgomery couldn’t shift them and everyone was looking to him and saying, you know, ‘You’re going to be a failure aren’t you? You can’t. You’re army can’t do it.’ So they whistled up the Air Force east of Cannes where Tigers tanks had dug in in expectation of a bombing raid. and of course we were there 5 o’clock in the morning and it soon became obscured by dust and smoke. And really it was pretty terrible for the Germans I’m sure because they staggered out of their bunkers and that, having been bombed by I think it was a thousand aircraft. Not all at once but over a period of about half an hour. Your concentration was so great yes you could time them and of course this was, in effect, an army cooperation. We had to be very careful because the army had to lay down a yellow barrier of flares with a given margin which they decided was safe so — and I do remember on that occasion I think as we were coming — as we were going out on that raid as you’ll realise Cannes isn’t that far from England. They were coming back. So, quite amazing you know to see these aircraft coming back and you hadn’t got there. Now, this was daylight of course because they switched us from night after a time because we went on to daylight because of course if you can see something it should be, you should be more accurate. Now, we did go on right through the summer. We went to one P-plane place seven days running. Foret de Dieppe. If you can find it on the map. Because one operation was preceded by Mosquito. Now the Mosquito could — it was planned he would be on a fixed from England on the exact spot. So we were trundling away there getting towards — and the secret was when he dropped his bombs everyone else would do theirs. And of course unfortunately we got up near the target and one aircraft opened its bomb doors and dropped the bombs and of course everybody else did the same. So really that was — the idea was good but it didn’t work in practice. Whether the Air Ministry would like you to know that I don’t know. But yes, it was so. So, we were largely on P-plane bases but then we went on, as I say, to daylight. Oil installations. Because at that time it was really beginning to show that the Germans couldn’t really put enough in the field because they hadn’t got the petrol. So, mainly of course we were up at the Ruhr at places like Gelsenkirchen where there were oil installations and that more or less saw the summer out. But one operation did stand out for us and that was army cooperation with the Americans who were trying to push into the Ruhr and we hadn’t yet, they hadn’t yet done it but there were three towns. Julich, Duren and Eschweiler, and I think they are adjacent to the [pause] now what was the name of the forest?
CB: Ardennes.
ESH: The Ardennes, yes. Indeed. The Ardennes and these Germans had all their batteries concentrated in that area and they could dig in these Tiger tanks and they were very difficult. I mean they were very difficult to move. And the crews also were dug in and ready to come into action as soon as the raid had passed over. Anyway, we went through the target and on our way out and we must have wandered. At that time of course to nullify guns you dropped out metallic strip, Window, which really foxed the German radar. And they were pretty good on this radar. And we did wander around to one side on the way out. Out of radar — out of the Window cover and you could see. I was lucky I had a little dome and I could look out as a flight engineer to the rear and you could see these black dots coming up, but you didn’t know whether that one was going to follow that one but it did. And there was an almighty bang and so skipper Francis knew what that was so immediately put it into a dive. Now we were about fifteen thousand feet I think and we ended up diving and ended up at eight thousand feet hoping that the Germans wouldn’t be able to follow us down but the place was full of smoke and cordite. The smell of cordite. If you’ve opened up a firework or let it off you’ll smell cordite and that’s what, that’s what was filling up the aircraft. So you couldn’t communicate. Everyone had gone deaf so you had to wait for your hearing to come back. But being a flight engineer I was able to walk around because we were at level flight by that time. Previous to that we’d been pinned in our stations. The G-effect being such. And so the first thing I saw — the aircraft looked like a pepper pot on one side, the starboard side, and daylight was streaming out. No flaps. And unfortunately Jim Finney in the mid-upper turret was pointing to his leg and the shrapnel had gone through at the thigh which rendered him, his control of his foot etcetera to be nullified. So wireless op and bombardier got him out of the turret and laid him down in the fuselage, bandaged him up and they cut his trousers first in order to find out where the where he’s bleeding. And they did a good job on him because you know if a chap’s losing blood he’s losing life blood. So, anyway, the skipper said to navigator, ‘Give me a course for home.’ He gave him a course irrespective of what we were flying over and he pointed the nose in the right direction and off we went and we were soon back. I suppose at — oh yes it was awkward because there was a mist coming up and a fog but we were pointed towards Orfordness and the aerodrome there which had FIDO. Fog Dispersal [pause] Fog Incandescent Dispersal Organisation. So we were able to fly around once firing off all the red flares that we had so they should know down below that we hadn’t got radio, we hadn’t got brakes. But it’s a long runway and it was called [pause] There were two — one was at Carnaby further up the coast. This was Woodbridge. Straight in off the sea straight on the ‘drome. So it was getting pretty misty and it was closing in. November is a bad month isn’t it? Anyway, we got down didn’t we? And we managed to take up the full length of the runway, ended up on the grass at the end. But nevertheless we were off out of trouble. And along came, well they knew full well that this aircraft was damaged. Couldn’t talk to us. So they sent out the wagon and dear Jim was soon in hospital. And we, along with a couple, quite a few dozen others descended on the cookhouse for a supper, you know. Which we did eventually get because they didn’t expected all these people to come in 5 o’clock in the afternoon. And so what do you do? We’re down at Orfordness there in the east coast of Essex. They gave us tickets back to London and then back to York which was an excuse for everybody to spend the night in London. But I was lucky because I could get an electric train just down to Woolwich as it were and back home. We never got pulled up. None of us had hats. Well, I think, I think the skipper did because he was very particular about carrying his nice peak cap, you know. However — yeah, so we, but that’s only one of about six different aircraft that we had on the tour. Some of the numbers are in the logbook. But where we had different problems — for instance on one occasion we had a seagull in the engine nacelle which put that out of action. So of course you didn’t use that aeroplane the next day. We had so many we could have a new one every day if necessary. As I say, we had about seven. We got the undercart. That went down alright otherwise we wouldn’t be here would we? But it could be things like that which would be, could be very dodgy. And we eventually finished our tour on oil installations. Let’s see [pause] towards the end. Towards the end. Towards the [pause] October. October. Through Christmas. Probably about January or February of ‘45 and that was the end of our tour. And we had done twenty daylights and about thirteen night trips which clocked up something like four hundred, five hundred hours flying. Full stop.
CB: We’ll stop there for a —
[recording paused]
CB: So we’re just, we’re just doing a recap now which is on the damage on the aircraft.
ESH: Yes.
CB: So starting at the point of the big explosion. Then what happened and what was the effect?
ESH: Well I hope I can remember.
CB: That’s alright.
[pause]
ESH: Well we left the target area and unfortunately we may have erred to one side of the Window cover which of course blocks out their radar and nullifies their accuracy. But nevertheless they caught us up and in a flash there was an almighty bang and our hearing disappeared straight away and the skipper put it into a dive, And down we went. Down. Down. Down. Something like eight thousand feet I suppose before we levelled out and that was a relief but we were then, I was then able, as a flight engineer to move around and observe any damage and by jingo there was. Looking out the port side — the starboard side the flaps had disappeared. One important, very important thing. The whole side of the aircraft was peppered and daylight was, it was more or less a window. And our mid-upper gunner, now our hearing had come back and our visibility was quite goon— pointed to his leg and indeed he had caught, been caught by shrapnel right through his thigh from his turret. So that very shortly after our wireless operator and our bombardier came out and got him out of the turret and cut his trouser and stopped the flow of his blood. And we realised it was very urgent to get back to England because, fortunately our four engines are still turning over in spite of losing some major control of the aircraft, so on arriving at Woodbridge which was a mighty long ‘drome a mighty long runway and very wide too we had to circle. We had to tell the ground what was happening. And so there we were flying, running off red verey lights in case there were other aircraft in the circuit, but there was no issue. We did one. One circuit around the flying control and straight in to the funnel of the runway. Without — without radio we felt pretty helpless. The fog had closed in on the aerodrome now at this time but he was an A1 skipper and as I say one of his things that he was so good at was flying blind, he could fly in any condition. He got us down and we got Jimmy into the transport and away to the nearest hospital.
[pause]
CB: Was there any fire on the aircraft?
ESH: No. Fortunately we didn’t have fire. Which is a pretty terrible thing.
CB: So you had no, no hydraulics and you had no electrics. How did you get the undercarriage down?
ESH: Well, it’s heavy, it’s a very heavy undercarriage. Massive wheels on a Halifax. Six foot high nearly. If I remember rightly the hydraulics had gone which serves flaps, bomb doors, undercarriage and, actually what happened is [pause] there is another precaution because if your —
[pause]
CB: You could wind it down could you?
ESH: No. There was a precaution against it falling down which is called withdrawing the uplocks. This is a job that the flight engineer had to do. He would go down to what the rest position which is where our mid-upper gunner was. And there are two D rings. One each side protruding from the fuselage. The cable obviously comes through the back of the wing because the undercarriage would have been beneath the wing, and it was a simple system. Ok. You pulled the D ring which pulled a cable which released a sort of a gate bolt. This bolt, if you can imagine a gate bolt, held up the undercarriage. So the undercarriage would automatically fall down. So that’s obviously what the, as flight engineer, I did on approaching. We were fortunate in as much as that was all intact. I mean if the aircraft had lost its undercarriage earlier you not only would it have caused a lot more loss of fuel flying with an undercarriage down, total drag. But in this case no. The uplocks worked. Irrespective of any hydraulic system. And of course your warning lights came on here and there.
CB: Ok.
ESH: We covered that have we?
CB: You have. Yeah.
ESH: So therefore we got — we were on the ground, Jimmy’s off to hospital and we are left to go and find our supper again with another hundred bods as we used to call ourselves. The next morning we were given a pass to go back to Pocklington via London so everyone had a night in London if they couldn’t get home. We all seemed to arrive the next morning for the 10 o’clock up to King’s Cross, up to York and that was the end of that sticky situation.
CB: When you had a night in London where did you stay?
ESH: Well I was able to go back. Once we got to London I was able to go back to Plumstead to my folks, and one or two of the other crew had friends that they could call on. Or relations. In fact Skipper Francis had some relations down in Slough way. Now, Ron Alderton, the rear gunner, had Canadian friends temporary and he did a night of the rounds of whatever pubs he could find and night clubs. He had quite a roaring time. I mean we didn’t need to get a train before 11 o’clock from Kings Cross to get back to York. So, on the train back we were, you know, reminiscing. And I always remember I’d tried to write out something for the, for the skipper at the time when all our hearing had gone and it was an absolute shambles. Unfortunately, you couldn’t hear anything and I found I couldn’t even spell the word fuselage. What I should have done was “Jim hit.” Two words would have conveyed that but instead of that — in the event you do not act logically and you would find that you had difficulty in getting to grips with language. You could move about and you knew exactly what you should do but you couldn’t think it through. But we were all in the same boat weren’t we? We all lost our hearing for quite a time.
CB: So you —
ESH: But we got back. That was the thing.
CB: You experienced the initial shock. When did the secondary shock hit you and what was that like?
ESH: Well, we had a night’s sleep, as you will appreciate, in London and I suppose we were rehearsing the events in the train for five hours. But we well appreciated that we were very lucky. But I don’t think at that time that that sort of event had too much effect on a crew. We were all together weren’t we? Jimmy was unfortunate but he wasn’t killed. That would have been a terrible disaster. So therefore I think we’d already been used to five years of war. I mean I’m talking about ’39 onwards, you’ve already had four years and you became inured to stress, in effect. So although we went back over the ground again but we were as a crew, we were complete. We were very lucky.
CB: How long before jimmy rejoined you?
ESH: Jimmy, unfortunately was off to hospital in Oswestry and he was ruled out forever more as a flyer and we received then a young gentleman from Scotland called Onderson. He was very broad and I think mostly we didn’t call him Ian, I think we just called him Jock and he was quite happy with that. And he finished up something like five or six operations with us. He became one of us obviously.
[pause]
CB: Now, you were saying that you did thirty. In your tour there were thirty ops, twenty of them were daylight. How many of those were to do with the V weapons and what happened?
ESH: Well, as we said the V weapons and the P-planes. The V weapon was of course outside our control. It’s a rocket and you don’t hear it coming, you don’t know it’s left the ground even. And if you were anywhere near it then it could destroy half a dozen houses at one time. So we were mainly concentrating on P plane sites because you could flatten them. Until they put them on lorries and then of course you couldn’t find them. So, yes.
CB: So you were, you were in daylight but how easy or difficult was it to find the V1 initially and then V2 sites?
ESH: Well, I don’t think that we could ever find — the V1 for instance was secreted in the middle of a forest and certainly fighters could eventually have a go because they could see them and once we’d identified, or the Air Ministry had identified the location they knew what they were looking for on lorries. They would shoot them up but of course V2 was purely a mobile rocket. But once it was off it was off and it would perform a perambular and no one knew it had gone and no one knew it was coming. And there was just a terrible explosion and five houses could be — disappear.
CB: But the V1 sites, as you said, in forests — how effective would you say your endeavours were in dealing with those?
ESH: Well you want the truth. A question like where would you find the P- plane sites in a forest? All we had to go on really was what came back from our agents by wireless. That there was this activity in a certain place which the Air Ministry would identify, or the sight would be identified and it would be marked on our maps, as I say, as a very obscure village in Pas-de-Calais. The only thing we could do was mass bombing. In fact I don’t remember a site which wasn’t bombed on each occasion with less than three hundred aircraft. So that you hoped that within that aiming point you would destroy it. And I think we did a lot but not all.
CB: Saturation bombing.
ESH: Yes. That was the idea. Saturation bombing [pause] Stop.
CB: Ok.
[recording paused]
CB: Now, some of your endeavours at bombing these V1 sites perhaps were more effective than others. Was there one site you went to several times?
ESH: What? A V1?
CB: Yeah. In Dieppe.
ESH: Yeah. Foret de Dieppe. Did I not mention earlier?
CB: No. So, just, just cover that can you? The fact you went several times.
ESH: Oh yes indeed.
CB: Why did you go to that several times?
ESH: Yes. In order to mitigate this nuisance of the V2, V1s of which many thousands were being aimed at England at the time on a fixed track. One morning, in fact five or six mornings continuously we searched out a fixed ramp in a forest called Foret de Nieppe. Which of course is in the Pas-de-Calais, if you can find it. And it took thousands of tonnes, must have done, to obliterate that site. But it was, it wasn’t able to fire off these V1s in rapid succession because, you know the Germans were very thorough and got it to a high state of proficiency but we did concentrate for many weeks and months on finishing off these P-planes because it was aimed at civilian population.
CB: How many times did you actually see V1s flying towards Britain on your way to the target?
ESH: Well fighter pilots did of course but not, not us.
CB: You were too high up, were you, to see them?
ESH: Yes. I mean they didn’t, they came in at about two thousand feet so I can’t say I saw one. But I saw the damage and I experienced a V2 standing on Albany Park Station which was on the, what’s called the Dartford loop line. Bexley Heath, Barnehurst and down there. And I was standing on the station and this thing dropped a quarter of a mile away and I had to ask the station staff what that was. I mean, you know, I didn’t see it. If I’d have gone along I’d have seen a row of houses demolished but that. No.
CB: And what was their reaction to your question?
ESH: Who?
CB: The railway people.
ESH: Well he sort of said, ‘Where have you been?’ Because it was — this is not live is it? Well he wondered where I’d been not to know that London was being plastered with P-planes bombs. That sounded by the way like a common 6oo cc motorcycle engine.
CB: And you weren’t able to tell them what you were doing to counter this. You weren’t able to explain what you were doing, to the people in London.
ESH: No. Well they could see —
CB: Bombing.
ESH: They could see I was in uniform.
CB: Yes.
ESH: But they were so busy with their ordinary lives that I was just one of two million servicemen. It didn’t rate more highly than that.
CB: Right. Ok.
ESH: Pause?
CB: Yeah.
[recording paused]
CB: So what other events were noteworthy.
ESH: Ah well, now what comes to mind straightaway is on the way in to a target to see an actual aircraft hit. And you must remember this has got a full bomb load of what ten [pause] what had we got — five twenty thousand pounds of TNT going up as well as the fire bombs, and it’s the most horrifying experience. But I do remember that occasion when — and the skipper was quick to point out that the Germans did send up what they called Scarecrows. But I’m sure this would be more than that because the whole sky around that aircraft was just bits, black bits in the sky. Now, you see a Scarecrow couldn’t put up that much material could it? I don’t think so. I think this was a very salutary experience but you didn’t dwell on it because, well, you know, it could be happening at night time and you never knew anything about it.
CB: So we’re talking about night time now are we?
ESH: No. Night time, other than someone standing and throwing grit at your aeroplane that was the only indication you would have had that there were some shells very close by, but you see what the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve. Although you might feel the effect of it, especially if you’d another aircraft in front of you you’d be perhaps very difficult as a pilot to maintain your position because you’re right in his slipstream. And there’s a slipstream of four engines just in front of you. I mean there were so many aircraft in the sky that it’s a wonder and in fact we lost a lot of aircraft because of collision. Indeed we did if the truth is known. No, there’s a bit of variation. We also had some trips with mine laying. Now, what happens? Mine laying. Well we had a chap from the navy came up and showed us exactly what’s going to happen because these things are quite weighty. I think they weighed about a matter of hundred weights and I think the maximum we could carry would be two. But there would be a whole squadron perhaps, or a lot of aircraft from other stations, all on the same business, and so off we went out across the North Sea and in to the Baltic. We had to pass over an island called Bornholm. Now, how far it is into the Baltic I don’t know, not very far perhaps because we were after this shipping route between Swedish oil coming down to feed the German factories. But I do remember dear old Bornholm put up some ack-ack you know [laughs] as though they could catch us with it. One little gun you know. It was a bit of humour in a not too humorous event. But that made a change from flying over the Ruhr because actually the first time I saw the Ruhr at night, well you’d never believe it. We came into the south of Ruhr and there was a bank of searchlights for the next fifty miles. Up and curving around. And, you know, when the chaps had said you’ve got to avoid searchlights I can understand because once you get pinned or —
[Mobile ring tone. Recording paused]
CB: So we’re talking about in the Ruhr and the way they would have, the place was defended.
ESH: Yes. Right.
CB: And how they were able, in the dark to track where people were going.
ESH: Well if I describe the scene.
CB: Yeah.
ESH: The first time you saw these early night trips that we did it took a bit of getting used to. And the first time I saw searchlights. Now, if you can imagine Kiel up in North Germany. Right around and come down through the rest of the Ruhr down to [pause] what town would be the south of the Ruhr?
CB: Stuttgart. Stuttgart.
ESH: Stuttgart. And Nuremberg. That is something like fifty miles isn’t it? Or more.
CB: More.
ESH: A solid ring of thousands of searchlights, it was like day. And it curved actually from the north right down. Facing England to the south. Stuttgart. Nuremberg. And even further south than that I think. A solid — banks of hundreds. And if, if you got near one they had one particular, in groups, they had one particular searchlight which was extra powerful and it used to show up blue, and, well we did get coned on one occasion. We were lucky because very often you couldn’t get out of it. There were so many and they could sort of follow your track and there was this master searchlight and everybody else was following. And what we did, we managed to get out by just diving and weaving. And I suppose we lost a few hundred feet and you had to make that up because you had a flight plan. You know, you didn’t depart from that flight plan. You just didn’t go off on your own doing your own thing. That was certain, certain tragedy that would be because you had whole squadrons of night fighters still and they were still able to fly. Although, they couldn’t do the training because they hadn’t got the petrol, so the petrol bombardment was beginning to show. I mean we’re talking now about mid-’45 aren’t we, you see? Sorry —
CB: ’44.
ESH: ’44. From ’44 to the end of ’44 it was gradually having an effect on German oil production, synthetic oil. And of course being as they were small patches they were very difficult to find. I mean, you might have one oil refinery and its ten miles from the nearest town. Now, you’ve got to be very accurate to get anything delivered to that site and — if you could get there, you know. But of course the German fighter production was going down so fast that I think we had a charmed existence from nineteen — from June ‘45 really to, or September ’45 to the end of [pause] ’44 to the end of ’44. I mean we were very busy D-Day time for the next three months, and then it sort of slackened off because you were limited to what you could do in the way of army cooperation. In fact the army didn’t want the Air Force to take full credit for having liberated Germany. So [pause] but raids were still being, operations were still being carried out by the squadron right through to mid-‘45. Or ‘til D-Day.
CB: You talked about the intensity of searchlights. What effect did that have on the air bomber’s ability to identify the target?
ESH: Well, searchlights. Yes. But you had visual and of course later in — from D-Day onwards the squadrons were equipped with H2S which was radar with the ability to show up features on the ground. To be able to distinguish between water and land. Now, if an oil refinery was situated just off a river that aiming point would certainly be able to be calculated and it left an aiming point for a whole squadron of aircraft marked by Pathfinders. You didn’t go on your own. It was, at that time, after D-Day, everything was Pathfinders and they would blaze the trail and you’d have a Master Bomber and he would come through your RT. I remember one occasion when the Main Force was given a name so it would come out rather like this. ‘Widow 1, Widow 1 to Main Force. Bomb the red TIs.’ And then a minute later, ‘Widow 1 to Main Force. Bomb the yellow TIs.’ Because of bomb creep.
CB: TI being target indicator.
ESH: Target indicator. Yes. So you had a whole spectrum of colours. Red. Green. Blue. Yellow. And they could be changed rapidly by RT from the master bomber to the main force so that he kept, you kept pace with bomb creep and you became more effective with that. In fact very effective in the end. I mean such people as Wing Commander Cheshire as he was then would be up the front there giving the, giving that RT direction.
CB: Would you like to just explain what is bomb creep? Bomb creep. What is it?
ESH: Bomb creep. Yes. What happens is that [pause] it creeps back rather than on to the target. How it happens — I suppose if you’ve got a conflagration then bombardiers could think that that was where you should be aiming. So a lot of aircraft, I mean, don’t forget there are five hundred aircraft on this job so that some of them would think that was the target. But, so the Master Bomber had to keep reminding people that it was creeping back and it shouldn’t do. He’s got to go on to his new target indicators. And he changed the colour of course. So you knew what to look for. Otherwise your bomb load was nullified.
CB: Ok.
ESH: Go on to [pause]
CB: Yeah go on. So we’ll stop there for a mo.
ESH: Yeah then —
[recording paused]
ESH: I said Cora’s mum and dad yes.
CB: Yes. On a slightly lighter note clearly as a crew you had your, and personally you had your social side. So what did the crew do, and what did you do individually?
ESH: Well, that’s what I did individually and didn’t take any part in any social activities with the crew.
CB: Right. So what did you do?
ESH: I didn’t go drinking, you see.
CB: No. So what did you do?
ESH: I spent most of my time in York.
CB: Right. And what did you find there?
ESH: This family.
CB: Right.
ESH: And I was made like a son.
CB: Were you?
ESH: So I didn’t — we all went as a family to the theatre one evening and we saw the famous lady who had just started acting. She was in, “Last of the Summer Wine.” Very famous. You chaps have got memories haven’t you?
CB: We’ll latch on to her later. So, but but the family —
ESH: I’d better jot her name down while I think of it.
CB: Ok. Yeah. So you —
ESH: Thora Hird.
CB: Yeah. So the family was in York. What did the father do?
ESH: He was invalided. He couldn’t do anything because of the start of silicosis.
CB: Right, but what was his trade?
ESH: That was — he was in charge. He had his own firm of plasterers.
CB: Right.
ESH: So I’ll go on to that. I’ll just make a quick note, Thora Hird.
CB: And they had a son and a daughter.
ESH: Yeah. Yeah. Famous restaurant in the middle of York. Still there.
CB: But you’d go to that as well would you?
ESH: Yeah. I’ve got it. Yes.
CB: Go on.
ESH: Ok.
CB: Yeah.
ESH: Live?
CB: Yes.
ESH: We were talking about the social life on the squadron. Well, as I say I think I was eighteen when I, nineteen when I arrived there, and went out into York and I met this delightful young lady called Cora. And she said, ‘Well, if I’m going out with you my people want to see you.’ So I went along and they became my mum and dad for that time. And her dad was a, had a plastering firm but he was suffering then from, I think, the start of silicosis and he couldn’t work but nevertheless they went out of their way to look after me, and of course the extra attraction was of course la belle Cora. And at that time there was a show going in York and who should be a young actress was Thora Hird. But I don’t think she remembers that herself now, bless her. She’s passed on hasn’t she? But Mr Parker’s claim to fame as a plasterer was the ceilings, for instance, in Betty’s Bar. Now Betty’s Bar is very well known in York and it’s still there. And if you go down into the basement you will find a mirror which is now cut up into three parts. And pretty well every famous flyer has got his signature on the glass having done with a diamond ring. And they’re all there. I think you’ll find Group Captain Cheshire left his mark there. And quite a lot of others passed through but they’re all on this mirror. So that’s down in the basement of Betty’s Bar. It’s worth going down to see. There’s history galore down there. So they looked after me like a mother and father, not withstanding the fact they had a son in the Middle East. With the 8th Army I think it was. But of course being really a dangerous occupation I had no business stringing this girl along. I mean I was her first boyfriend and you know the effect that has on young ladies. So, the crew were very good. They didn’t question me as to where I was spending all this time you see. Which brings us to —
CB: How you broke it off.
ESH: How we —?
CB: Broke it off.
ESH: Oh yes. I mean, we used to have, our famous perambulation was around the wall of York. And, you know it took quite a time so, and broke her heart I’m sure, but it had to finish. It would had been too traumatic otherwise. And we were then left to finish our tour which, there again was mainly oil installations. But come September of ’44 the CO called us all into the briefing room and said, ‘Now we’re all going to France tomorrow. We are bringing petrol to the army.’ The army was fighting at Eindhoven and so they said, ‘You are going to be loaded up with petrol,’ which they did. Each aircraft. Two hundred and fifty, five gallon cans stacked along the fuselage and tied in so they didn’t bounce around. Off we went to a German field which they’d laid out what’s called Sommerfield tracking to stop an aircraft or aircraft and vehicles bogging down in a puddle. So that was rather jolly. I mean there we were — flew a hundred feet all the way. And really that’s one of the nicest things to do, you know. Flying low level where we’d see haystacks with pigs on top because Jerry had pulled the plug on the dyke. Very naughty of course but you know it really devastated thousands of acres. And we had to fly over that into Brussels. Well into an area of Brussels called Melsbroek which was just a grass field. And it was very enjoyable. We landed there and fresh air and went to the village and do you know what? There were grapes growing on the trees. Oh grapes. Well, I mean who wants to leave there? Anyway, this so happens, you know that we tried to get off the next day, I’m sure it was the next day. So soon you could be accused of organising this. But we oiled up the plugs trying to get out of a big puddle and there’s no way you’re going to get out of it because what the wheels do and they’re big, they just churn a great gap, pit in the soil. So therefore that was, we were stuck there until you get a fitter out with a set of plugs to put it right, and I think all four engines were oiled up. Anyway, that meant that we had three days in Brussels. So what did we do? The first day we piled into a local tram and went into Brussels where we stayed at the Gare de Nord Hotel. And I was the only one who had any money [laughs] you know, because they said now any money you’ve got to change it. You’ve got to, sorry we had to change it for the currency that was wartime currency. And so of course our money was soon gone staying at hotels. And we went in to one, oh yes we, I must tell you a little story here. We went in to one hotel and up to the second floor and it was a night club with an amphitheatre and a stage and events, you know. Acts taking place. But on the way up the staircase in a corner there were two six foot six American sergeants and they had a lovely carton of cigarettes, a big carton. And they were presumably flogging them off. I mean if they could get another carton like that they’d make a fortune because there were no cigarettes in Europe. In fact, people would give you their gold watch for a packet of cigarettes but that — now our rear gunner being a sort of international type said, ‘No,’ we must find, he’d come from Canada on, he was trained for something else in Canada because he talked about Montreal. And he said, ‘We must see an exhibition.’ And actually it wasn’t what I fancied but anyway we didn’t get that far because there was no exhibition. So we met this old boy in the road and Ron says, ‘Exhibition?’ So, he didn’t speak French perfectly. The chap was quite happy. This old boy. ‘Come with me. Come with me.’ And off we went with this chap down the main thoroughfare and down some back entrances, back places, back roads, alleyways to a pub. And this pub was run by this aged lady who sat at the high stool and dished up what went, passed as beer. And there were us. We were all sitting around on stool, a continuous stool like in a queue. And I mean, you know, it was alright. A bit of light fare. And the skipper was there of course and he hadn’t taken his hat off that time. And in comes all th ese girls in bathing costumes. I mean, to eighteen year olds you know this is seventh heaven isn’t it? What’s next then? And they were sitting on our knees and some of them very shapely. And the skipper suddenly caught on, he said ‘Right. Here’s the gun. Out you lot.’ And we had to leave because it was a brothel wasn’t it? And he wasn’t, he wasn’t having his crew sullied by such goings on. So, that was, that was Brussels for me.
CB: So you got two black eyes and you couldn’t hear anything either.
ESH: [laughs] So. No. We had to make apologies to these young ladies and disappear. We would have liked to pass on perhaps a bar of chocolate.
CB: Of course.
ESH: But we didn’t go prepared. But it’s a pity. But Ron did — he went to a private family that night. I don’t know what the attraction was but anyway he did — no. Johnny Morris this is, ex schoolteacher. He obviously thought about it because he brought a bag of coffee back next time and made arrangements for it to be delivered to a particular curie. A priest at the local church who he had met somehow. But that’s the best we could do really. Normally you went in with your two hundred and fifty gallons. The army came up with a truck, unloaded [pause] and there we went off again. The next day with another load. So we were really kept busy bringing in something like two thousand gallons at a time for the army to use up at Eindhoven. Because they were six hundred miles from the port at that stage and just couldn’t keep going, you know. I thought I saw somebody moving out there but maybe I’m wrong.
CB: So did you carry, did you then later deliver any other kind of goods or was it only petrol?
ESH: Only petrol. But I believe later. Very soon. Our squadrons were engaged on dropping supplies to Amsterdam and it made a great impression on our Dutch friends.
CB: That was food. Operation Manna.
ESH: Yes.
CB: Yes.
ESH: We weren’t engaged on that but rather carried on with the last few trips into Europe.
CB: So when you come to the end of your tour what happened then to the crew?
ESH: Ah yes. Well, do you know on the aerodrome was an experimental department run by a squadron leader. And they, one of the problems with the Halifax was coring of the oil in the oil tank. Super cooling. And it was called coring. And every effort was being made, well funny enough in my tour I never came, never had the problem. I dare say we never flew in an icing. What you call an icing.
CB: Weather condition.
ESH: Yeah. You get icing conditions at certain heights and if you stayed in it it was very bad for the oil coolers but we managed to keep out of that. But a lot of experimental work was being done because a lot of the aircraft did — was affected. And so they, we worked for the experimental department there which was set up at Pocklington. Going on cross country’s with modified aircraft that in effect would fly through anything up to Scotland and back in the hope that we would be able to pinpoint the procedures to cure it. But unfortunately we had an aircraft, an aircraft engine go over speed for some reason so that rather folded up at that time.
CB: Which kind of engine was that?
ESH: Well, Halifax — a Bristol Hercules 100. That was the latest. But coring was a very difficult thing. So of course what was happening was that everyone was now asking us to be re-mustered. There was nothing for us to do except hang around. So —
CB: Was there an option of going on another tour?
ESH: Oh yes, that was always an option, yes indeed. But — and a lot of the chaps did but I think I was more anxious to go back to civilian life. But I was ‘Duration of Present Emergency.’ Or I was D of P E.
CB: Yeah.
ESH: And of course they were not giving out any commissions at that time. So there wouldn’t have been a lot of future in staying so I applied to be re-mustered.
CB: And what happened?
ESH: And then left Pocklington.
CB: Ok.
ESH: Being posted to whatever came up in the Air Ministry I suppose. And off we went then re-mustering at a famous station for the army in north Cornwall — north [pause] Catterick. Now, there was a little RAF station for re-mustering at Catterick in an ex-mine working. Anyway, my number came up eventually but in the meantime we were sent on indefinite leave. Now, I didn’t want to have to pay to go to the skipper’s wedding because train fare was quite expensive. But I gave his address on my 48. My seven day pass as it were. Or indefinite leave. The consequence of that will be explained a bit later.
CB: Right.
ESH: But from there I got a letter a little later being posted to the Isle of Man as an airfield controller. But it just so happened that my papers actually never got to my home. They got to the skipper’s address. Now, you can have a bit of a laugh if you’ve been in the service because this was six weeks later, or rather that was alright but it was the last seven days. I was absent without leave. But I turned up. I was on my way to the Isle of Man. Well, I got to the Isle of Man alright. Yes. And having got to the Isle of Man you got off at Douglas and, you know, looked at the local restaurant. Two eggs, steak and chips, that’s marvellous. Have some of that. So immediately dived in and had a good nosh as we used to say. And then you got a little local narrow gauge train up to the Isle of Man up to the north. Because I was going to be stationed at a little place called Jurby which was a good hopping off point for anybody going to or coming from Reykjavic. Which, I would then put three searchlights up to guide them in. But it was more disastrous from my point of view because what could the CO do? He has a chap seven days adrift. The first — I went to the guardroom and he said, ‘We’ve been looking for you. You’re seven days adrift.’ So, go up before the CO. Very nice chap. By the way first of all you have to be vetted by the station WO and he actually said, ‘Do you know I’m awfully sorry to have to do this but you’re up before the CO tomorrow.’ So, you march in, in the usual way with the, you know, left right left right left. Turn right. ‘So young man. What do you want to do? A court martial or do you want my punishment?’ ‘Well your punishment sir. Thank you.’ ‘Right. Seven days loss of pay.’ And do you know what? You can imagine the scene can’t you? Pay parade. And you announce yourself before the cashier’s table, ‘1869854 Horsham. Sir.’ And he would say, ‘Three and sixpence.’ This went on for weeks at three and six pence a week it takes quite a time to get to four pounds forty. Seven days pay you see. You can clue that if you like but its [pause] but indeed I think because we had a chap at High Wycombe and he was called Air Chief Marshall Sir Arthur Harris and of course they did think twice before they shoved the book at one of Bomber Harris’s boys. And I think I was saved by that because it’s a heinous crime in the air force to be AWOL anywhere. Anyway, we carry on from there because I enjoyed the time on the Isle of Man. Being in charge of the airfield. Not a lot went on but we did [pause] we were a home for stray aircraft and of course the station was very busy training the rest of The Empire Air Scheme for training navigators. And we would use, or they would use Ansons. So of course we had a squadron of Ansons to fulfil the contract. And of course my job, one of the jobs, mine and my crew — I had a crew by then of Scots lads that were setting up a parking area with glim lamps every day, because they were doing night flying, and these glim lights were fuelled by accumulators and shone a red light. And you had to put them in a certain order because then the aircraft on the way back knew where they were to park. And they used to get it in the neck if they ran over a glim lamp. Other than that when we wasn’t flying we were all in flying control and we used to do a shift where we had two and a half days off. They still do that in the police force apparently, here. Afternoon, next morning or night, off the next day and the next day and the following morning. So that enabled you to go and see the local sights. Peel Castle on the Isle of Man. And of course we did get busy aircraft and they would come in some awful times from Reykjavik and sometimes I was, what did they call it? Duty officer? Duty. Yeah. Duty officer. And I had to find them accommodation so I had to lay the law down. Pull rank on whoever was in charge of the blanket store so that these chaps had a night’s sleep and could get, we would — the cookhouse would provide a supper for them. That broke up your time. So, in effect, eventually they sent us back to the mainland. To top — I was stationed at Topcliffe which was an ex-Canadian station and underneath every table and ever chair was chewing gum [laughs] That’s how I remember the Canadians. But there was no flying going on which was a shame because we [pause] I was only thinking these chaps had applied for discharge and therefore I was in charge of an airfield with no aircraft. We kept the grass nice and tidy. But as I say we could go into, no, we couldn’t go in to Topcliffe for two eggs, steak and chips. It was unheard of. But what you could do is you could go to a local village called Topwith . Now, there are two brewers in Tadcaster. One is Sam Smith and one is John Smith. Now, you’ll know John Smith because his beer is everywhere but what we ought to have down here is Sam Smith’s which was thick and black. And it was as black as your coat. Black as night and it was the next best thing today to Mackesons. But you could get quite squeamish, not squeamish — quite drunk on it. So then you met up with a lot of other interesting aircrew and you absorbed their experiences, and then gradually, one by one, they disappeared. As I did one day. On the 2nd of January 1947, in the bleak midwinter. It was very bleak down south anyway and there had been a lot of snow around. One interesting side now, talking about cold. We were very cold in Pocklington so we could burn, burn bicycle tyres in the hut. But old Jim said, ‘Do you know what,’ Jim Finney that was then [pause] now wait a minute I’m wrong. Jim has already had that shrapnel in his leg. But anyway, there was another member in the crew. It must have been Alan Shepherd, the wireless op. He said, ‘I know. There’s a bottle of petrol over there.’ And somewhere someone had left a bottle of petrol. And it was a hundred octane. So he said, ‘Stick it in the stove to get it nice and warm.’ And it did. It blew the whole thing apart [laughs] Which wasn’t very clever was it? Anyway, we’ve left. We’re at Topcliffe aren’t we? And then, sooner or later, ok the 7th of January or thereabouts I found myself out on my ear having been discharged at, somewhere near Preston. And we asked for a taxi and do you know that’s the only time in my life so far that I ever have driven in a Rolls Royce. There was a very famous place near Preston. If it wasn’t Preston it was Southport where there was a big demob place. Anyway, that’s where we ended up, in a taxi going to Preston Station. And home on indefinite leave still. Well, no a fortnight wasn’t it then? Fourteen days and that was it finished. Now, the thing is then going back to the old firm. Now, I found myself in the railway estate office before long but they didn’t really want me I don’t think. They said, ‘You can go up to Victoria Station and go to the archives.’ Temporarily. So that was a fill-in job. Going back through papers going back to 1900 where people had to pay for a sort of fly privilege to bring a pony and trap on to the station property and they had to enter into an agreement. Time goes by awfully quickly doesn’t it when you’re demobbed? So I stuck with the estates office for [pause] until 1957. And I didn’t seem to be going anywhere much so I went out into the big bad commercial world. And went to a builder’s merchants called Roberts Adlard who were quite famous in the southern counties. Their headquarters were Southampton. I had this friend of mine who was a rep and that’s how I got there. But, and mind you I’d left London so it was a big change to go to work in Rochester Cathedral, Rochester, the ancient town on the Medway. Rochester Cathedral. Yes. And this builder’s merchants wasn’t going anywhere so Horsham said to himself, ‘Look. Hadn’t you better find a job with a pension?’ So I had experience in the estate office which was very similar to the housing department of Rochester City Council. And applied and got the job as a rent collector of all things. Going around collecting. They had five thousand houses all broken up in to thirty different schemes or so. So that enabled a transition from that to a more permanent sphere. And of course the only way you can get up the scale in local government is either by passing a lot of examinations or becoming a professional man, like, I don’t know, an accountant which is a good solid five years work. But no there we were at Rochester with several other ex-service people especially from the navy, being next to Chatham. And so we said, you know, ‘What about a rise?’ They said, ‘Oh no. No. No. We can’t give you that but if you take a certain examination there will be money in it for you.’ So the one I took was the simple one. It was the clerical division of local government. That is talking about local and central government. Writing an essay etcetera. And after six months we took the exam and we all passed. So we thought go and see the governor again now. A different kind of governor. And for passing the examination I think — I was paid five ninety in those days. So he said, ‘Yes. Well, you can go up to five ninety five.’ A five pound a year increase. So we’ve got to do better than this. So you had lists of jobs you see, circulated. And the next port of call was Maidstone Borough Council as a senior rentable assistant in charge of five rent collectors and proving the books every weekend. Now Rochester City was a purely written system. Now I got to Maidstone and it was all done by a machine called a Powers - Samas punch card accounting. And a dreadful business because my collectors used to go out with a run off. The rent for various properties. And they would put X Y Z here and they wouldn’t put anything on their sheet. So, immediately you were what –? Two pound fifty out. I used to be there at half past nine, 10 o’clock at night on a Friday balancing the books because you had, in effect, over thirty different schemes so you had to sit down and balance these schemes to find out where the error was. Which was good training wasn’t it?
CB: Amazing. Yes.
ESH: I remember the deputy who we worked under. You never saw the treasurer. He was the high and mighty. The holy of holies. But I saw the treasurer on one occasion. He said, ‘Horsham,’ he said, ‘How is it that you spent all this overtime?’ Four hours on a Friday night, you know. I said, ‘Well you know. The chaps put one thing on the sheet and then put another in the book.’ He said, ‘Horsham you really should consider the propriety of asking for overtime.’ It’s not much of a thing to a chap who’s just put four hours extra sweating his guts out. Anyway, that’s another aside isn’t it? Next thing is of course to get promotion isn’t it? And where did I go from there? Yes. I applied for a job in the County Council’s office, in the planning department. Which is where I ended up in 1978. Yeah. 1978. And then took a sort of early retirement.
CB: How old? How old were you when you took early retirement?
ESH: In ‘78. I was born in 1923.
CB: Oh right.
ESH: ’23.
CB: Fifty five.
ESH: Just short of sixty. Oh there’s a bit more to come isn’t there?
CB: Go on then.
ESH: Yeah. Well then [pause] I go back, to retrack a little bit. Going back to my days at Maidstone Borough. Wasn’t getting much anywhere and a friend of mine, who lived adjacent to us said, ‘Why don’t you come into the poultry business with me?’ He said, ‘We could then step the production.’ Because he was, he was managing single handed two thousand layers. So we promptly put some new housing up and I put all my wealth into it and we ended up with eight thousand head of poultry. Not quite as big as JB Eastwood who came along and said, ‘Look you chaps. I don’t care, I’ve got millions of birds. And I don’t care if I only get a farthing a head. I shall still make a profit.’ Which was quite true but it was disastrous for us because we couldn’t compete with that although we did very well. I mean we had a neighbour a few miles away and he was able to keep five thousand which was less than we had. And he could work in the mornings and take all the afternoons off and play golf. That’s what he did. We thought that’s a good idea. But we were saddled with our eight thousand and with fowl pest in the offing if we didn’t look after it then we’d be sunk. Nobody else was going to look after it. So you put in a fairly, a fairly full day. Eight till five minimum. But it was very good experience because it sort of taught me that come what may I could always get a job because you’ve got some skills. Especially you’d be very valuable to a poultry farmer if you could go in and say, ‘I can go in and look after ten thousand.’ He’d say, ‘Well, you know, I’m like Mr JB Eastwood. I’ve got millions.’ But nevertheless it was the same principal. So we didn’t make a fortune but we didn’t lose our shirt. I say we being collective. And then what did I do next? Well, I went back to the old firm didn’t I? Back to local government. Into the planning department this time, of the County Council. And my draughtsmanship experience came in very handy because we dealt with maps all day long. And so in 1974 I got the most marvellous job because the ministries were all on to local governments and County Councils to find out how many, what land have you got. You don’t even know what you’ve got to build houses on. And he said, ‘Well Horsham. The job’s yours. And we will depict it on a twenty five hundred scale ordnance survey sheets,’ which was a bit better than what you get on your deeds, you know. You could even show a rainwater pipe on a twenty five hundred scale. And Kent had forty seven, forty eight District Councils which I had to visit one after the other because if you didn’t carry the local authority with you you’d be sunk. They hated County Council. And they hated them because they put extra on their rates didn’t they? So that was a very enjoyable job. So thirty nine, forty, forty one, forty two [pause] No. What do I say? 1974 — 5 — 6 — 7 - 8. It took four years to do but at the end of the time we could show in the planning department that we had fifty two thousand units of accommodation each housing three people. That was your capacity then but of course a lot of it was land that you wouldn’t want to release straight away. I mean there was something like fifteen, twenty acres at Folkestone on the golf course. I know because I lived looking over these lovely green fields but you couldn’t release it all at once but that was my job.
CB: And you enjoyed it.
ESH: I enjoyed that. I never — it’s a time when I was glad to go to work because it was so, it was my job and it was interesting and I had to fulfil this promise made to the governor that it would be finished in a certain time, you know. And then we, we retired officially.
CB: When?
ESH: In 1978. 1978. Yes. Yes and went off to live in Cornwall for seven years. Froze the pension which was the thing to do. So I froze mine for another eight years so I had to go and get a job to keep the wolf from the door.
CB: Yeah.
ESH: Which I did. In Cornwall.
CB: Doing what?
ESH: Well, I saw an advert in the paper to the effect that, “Handyman wanted,” and they gave the telephone number and it turned to be at what was the Ritz Cinema which is now a bingo hall. And the idea was that I was going to look after all the maintenance. Well, it was rather nice to do something different if you’ve done the other jobs for forty years, you know. So I did that for two or three years. The firm was called Mecca. You’ll know Mecca. They’ve got them everywhere of course. All your Ritz cinemas now have gone to bingo halls. I had to do many things. Change all the lights and there was a lot of lighting. Also you had an emergency system on what was it? Ten volt accumulators which you had to cut in if your mains failed you had your own generator as well. So you had that system and you had emergency lighting if all else failed. So I enjoyed that job really.
CB: ‘Til when?
ESH: About three years later. Right up until about 1981. In that time my and a crew of two or three lads we painted the whole of the inside of the cinema including the ceiling. Which pleased the powers that be because they said, ‘Well done Horsham. We will send you to Tenerife for a fortnight for you to recover,’ [laughs] So that was something that came out of the blue. Yes. You see every year they have competitions and whoever wins the competition probably wins a place to summer holiday. And this time it was Tenerife. So there were about a hundred of us went off to Tenerife. All found, you know. Very nice indeed. Now, you wouldn’t get bonuses like that in local government of course. Since then I haven’t done much of anything have I?
CB: Throughout this time you were —
ESH: Hmmn?
CB: Throughout this time you were supported by this lovely lady. Ellen.
ESH: Yes.
CB: Where did you meet her?
ESH: I met her the first day I went to work for the railway. She was going on the same train. There is a station south of London called New Cross. So that people from further down went up to New Cross on the train and then down to where the estate office was evacuated. It was at Chislehurst. Now there was a big house at Chislehurst called [Sidcup?]. And it was on an elevated position and there’s the railway coming up and there’s the tunnel. Elmstead Woods Tunnel. So that’s, I met her in the train and she was busy there with her needles and you know sticking her little fingers stuck up like that click click click. And so that’s how it started. Her and her friend actually. Her friend was called Winnie Glover and I suppose she thought, ‘Well, she’s done alright for herself,’ [laughs] And that’s, we’ve been going ever since.
CB: When did you marry?
ESH: 25th of May 1946.
CB: And how many children have you had?
ESH: Two girls.
CB: So one’s called Gillian.
ESH: One’s Gillian. Yes.
CB: Yeah.
ESH: And she trained and became a teacher and married a headmaster. And then she went, they went off to Hong Kong and taught for seven years. And now she lives in an old mill on the Vienne River just outside Chauvigny. Whereas Alison trained as a nurse here and she trained in Weymouth and Dorchester and then went on to the hospital at Warminster. Hence the reason that we’ve came somewhere near her in old age.
CB: And she married a —
ESH: She married a —
CB: A doctor?
ESH: A sergeant in the MOD police. A young sergeant who is now or rather shocking really some year ago he went in one Monday morning and they said, and he has twenty five years’ experience as a policeman and by that time as I say, he was a sergeant. No. She didn’t marry a sergeant then but he became a sergeant. And they said, ‘We don’t want you anymore.’ Made him redundant, just like that. So, but funnily enough he still works as an instructor for the police. Driver. He trains their drivers and that’s what he’s doing today. Alison’s just finishing up her last eighteen months as a nurse.
CB: Well I think many many thanks, Eric.
ESH: Pardon?
CB: Many thanks, Eric for two and a half hours of interview. And absolutely fascinating.
ESH: Well it’s one man’s experience isn’t it?
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Eric Horsham
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-01-05
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ASymondsHorshamE170105, PHorshamES1602
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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02:07:40 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Eric Horsham was born in East London in 1923. Leaving school at 14 he was a messenger at the Royal Ordnance Factory before working for the railways. In 1937 he joined the Air Training Corps and learned about aircraft maintenance. On his first attempt to join the Royal Air Force he failed the medical but a year later was accepted for flight engineer training.
Eric describes his basic training in London and Torbay then recollects his technical training at RAF St. Athan. He then went to 1652 Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Marston Moor and joined his Halifax crew. In 1944 they were posted to 102 Squadron at RAF Pocklington where there were told that they wouldn't last three weeks.
Eric and his crew carried out a vast range of strategic bombings including daylight operations on V-1 sites, night operations on The Ruhr and Essen, night and daylight operations to oil targets, minelaying in the Baltic. They also provided tactical support in support of Allied troops near Caen and in the Ardennes, where they were badly damaged by a fighter and the mid-upper gunner received serious injuries. After landing at RAF Woodbridge in fog using FIDO he was hospitalised and did not fly again. The crew also supplied petrol to troops in Belgium, enjoying the low-level flying on these trips
Eric describes the sound of shrapnel hitting the aircraft, recalls a bomber exploding in flight, but dismisses the Scarecrow theory. He describes the use of Schräge Musik against the bombers; how search lights in the Ruhr operated, the use of H2S and how the master bomber controlled the rest of the formation.
At the end of his tour Eric remustered and was posted at RAF Jurby as airfield controller. From there he went to RAF Topcliffe and was demobbed in January 1947. Eric went back to the railways for ten years before working in local government. He retired in 1978, moving to Cornwall. While at RAF Pocklington he dated Cora noting that her parents made feel like a son. But he then ended the relationship because, with his own life in such jeopardy, he thought it was unfair on her. After the war he married Ellen, who he had met when starting his first job with the railways.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Andy Fitter
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--London
England--Bedfordshire
England--Devon
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Isle of Man
Wales
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
France
France--Ardennes
France--Caen
France--Pas-de-Calais
France--Nieppe Forest
Germany
Germany--Essen
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Denmark
Denmark--Bornholm
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1923
1937
1939
1940
1944-01
1944-02
1944-07-25
1944-09
1945
1946-05-25
1947-01-02
1957
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1981
102 Squadron
1652 HCU
Absent Without Leave
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bomb aimer
bombing
crewing up
demobilisation
FIDO
flight engineer
forced landing
H2S
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
love and romance
Master Bomber
military living conditions
mine laying
Mosquito
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Pathfinders
pilot
radar
RAF Pocklington
RAF St Athan
RAF Topcliffe
RAF Woodbridge
recruitment
runway
searchlight
tactical support for Normandy troops
target indicator
training
V-1
V-2
V-weapon
Wellington
Window
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/640/8910/ASmithBM170118.1.mp3
80a4542cbc4605b7e4b258e8665a4cee
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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Smith, Barry
Barry Michael Smith
B M Smith
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Smith, BM
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Sergeant Barry Smith (b.1929, 582398 Royal Air Force). He was an aprentice at RAF Halton and served as a fitter. Also includes service memoir and a photograph.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Barry Smith and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 18th of January 2017 and I’m in Bierton with Barry Smith who went to Halton and then served a long time in the RAF. So what are your first recollections of life Barry?
BM: Um, Stotfold in Oxford — in Bedfordshire, um, which was where my father and mother moved to when my father was posted to RAF Henlow, um, which I think was about twelve months — um, sorry.
CB: That’s OK.
BM: That was silly.
CB: I’ll just stop for a mo [interview stopped at 0:00:57 and restarted 0:01:00]. OK Barry, so what are your earliest recollections then of life really?
BM: In Coppice Mead in Stotfold, which was a row of houses that were built by a Mr Turby Gentle [?], twenty four houses and we occupied those in round about 1935. My father was at — posted, stationed Henlow, at RAF Henlow, and was an airframe fitter and, er, we stayed there until 1940 when he’d moved to RAF Brize Norton, um, on 30— 6MU and we moved subsequently to Witney in Oxfordshire, er, into a set of new houses that had been built especially for the Ministry of Defence called Springfield Oval. My record — my recollections of that include my mother calling me out of bed one night into — to look out of the window of the bathroom across Witney to see some — a big fire in the middle of Witney. A stray German bomber had dropped a stick of three bombs in Witney and, er, they’d set alight a row of army trucks that were on the church green and, er, my mother was really quite worried that the Germans were there. It didn’t bother me at all of course because I was unaware of the risks involved in bombs dropping. Pause. [interview stopped at 02.55.9 and restarted at 03:02:1]
CB: Before you went to Brize you were in Stotfold. So what are your experiences there?
BM: Um, well I recall starting school and walking to school with a little girl who lived down the road and she used to come and call for me, a lady, young lady named Pat Trafford, and we used to walk to St Mary’s Infants School and they moved to Cardington, um, near Bedford, and I continued going to school on my own and then we moved, age of seven, I moved up to the boys school in Stotfold, Stotfold County Boys School, it was called I think. And I used to walk there called Glen Wogan, who was my — our next door neighbour and we were usually late, late back from lunch because, er, we used to pick conkers and chestnuts and walnuts and things on the way back to school after lunch. So we invariably got the cane for being late back to school, um, and Mr Thomas who was the — was our teacher at that time used to wield an inch thick mixing stick that he used to mix the Horlicks with and that hurt, um, and we used to get three of those on each hand if we were late and thought noth— thought nothing seriously of it. And then we moved to — as I say we moved to —from Stotfold subsequently we moved to Witney. Hold it. [interview stopped at 0:04:51:0 and restarted at 0:55:7:00]
CB: So you lived in Witney. What, what were the houses?
BS: There were fifty houses that were built, semi-detached houses, built in Springfield Oval for the Ministry of Defence. We lived in number three so my dad got off the mark fairly early apparently but most of the people round there actually worked — the men worked at Brize Norton.
CB: For the RAF.
BS: For the RAF and — but they were all civilians and, er, I remember Mr Glaister walking to the bus in the middle of winter in his Home, um, Home Guard uniform, he was a lieutenant I think in the Home Guard. And he subsequently died as a result of his chilblains, um, going up —
CB: Because of being on duty in the cold weather.
BS: Insisting on wearing his boots and, and gaiters and so on and so forth and he had, as I say, chilblains and they got the better of his legs and he subsequently died as a result. My dad never joined the Home Guard a. He was too short and b. I think he felt that they were toy soldiers which was naughty really but he was [emphasis] the air raid warden so we housed all the spare stirrup pumps and buckets and, um, all that memorabilia for fighting fires. So we learned how to handle incendiary bombs if they fell. I don’t know where they were going to fall but we didn’t get any. As I say, the only three bombs we got were dropped in the centre of Witney which was a mile and a half a mile away across the valley. [background noise]
CB: Your father was originally in the RAF but he was on a —
BS: A seven and five year engagement.
CB: Which meant what?
BS: Seven years and five years, seven years in the colours and five years on the reserve.
CB: OK.
BS: And his seven years would have ended in 1935, um, and he and Mr Trafford that I spoke of earlier were employed as civilians at RAF Cardington by then and subsequently was — he was posted from Cardington to RAF Brize Norton, um, but as far as I know Mr Trafford carried on working at Cardington, as far — you know.
CB: And what did your father do at Brize Norton?
BS: He was a civilian air raid — airframe fitter.
CB: Oh, he was. Right. So, how long did he work there?
BS: Oh, until he, he retired in — at sixty I think and got — or was made redundant around about aged sixty and got a job as a postman and delivered the, the mail around Witney for a few years.
CB: When the war, when the war came was he not recalled to the RAF?
BS: Because he’d got a reserved occupation at Brize Norton.
CB: He was in the reserves but he had a reserved occupation?
BS: Had reserved occupation so he wasn’t called up.
CB: How extraordinary.
BS: So he was really rather fortunate.
CB: Yes. OK.
BS: And during that time he used to bring home for me bullets and bits and pieces that he’d picked up on the airfield and I used to strip them down and used the contents to make fireworks which was a little bit naughty but, er, we did, and I learned while I was at school in Witney, um, how to make gunpowder. And that was rather convenient because the chemist would always sell us, um, potassium perm— potassium nitrate because you could use potassium nitrate for curing rabbit pelts, um, which was why we bought the potassium nitrate but, of course, we made our own charcoal by burning willow twigs in a chocolate, a cocoa tin, and we got our sulphur from Early’s Mills because Earlys used to use — they’d got big wooden sheds that they used to hang the blankets in to bleach them and they bleached them by burning raw sulphur and, of course, there was always a lot of odd bits of sulphur sticks hanging around and we used to get our sulphur from that. So the combinations we had to work out of sulphur and charcoal and potassium nitrate, we had to work out what the thing was to make a sensible bang, which we succeeded in doing.
CB: To what extent did your teacher know about these activities?
BS: He didn’t. He didn’t. He didn’t even tell us the combination of the — um, making the gunpowder. We had to work that out ourselves but I did take an interest in chemistry while I was at, um, that central school in Witney. And my gardening master, Mr Goldsmith, er, was a German Jew refugee, who taught us gardening and he was superb. He roused my interest in chemistry and biological, um, chemistry and that sort of thing and roused, as I say, roused my whole concept of chemistry, especially biological chemistry, which I never followed up. But um —
CB: So how long were you at this school for?
BS: Until I was fourteen, until I was — and then my — I had an extension. I was the only one — there were two of us, um, had homework for a number of years and two of us managed to stay on or were invited to stay on for an extra year, so I was fifteen by the time I actually left, but there was only two of us in school who stayed on ‘till fifteen. [cough] And my mum then got me a job with Mr Mallard who was an optical manufacturer or a — and I was employed as an optical lens maker.
BT: Grinding up.
BS. Grinding lenses, um, for prescriptions for glasses and I worked there. I’d taken the exams to join the Royal Air Force which was my father’s oranis— organisation, um, he had guided my studies at school and guided the fact that I had homework and nobody else did, um, and made arrangements for me to sit the Halton apprentice entrance examination which I think had he not been in the service I wouldn’t have got through to the, um, invitation stage because I’m sure I didn’t pass the exam and, er, I got to Halton, as I said, in February 1945.
CB: OK. [background noise]
BS: The day war broke out —
CB: Yes?
BT: [laugh]
BS: It was a lovely summer’s day and I came — it was a Sunday and I came in from the garden, having been digging an air raid shelter, to find my mother in tears.
BT: In tears.
BS: And I wondered why she was crying and she said told me, she said, ‘Because we’re at war.’
CB: And then what? What happened then?
BS: Well she stopped crying eventually and, er, we carried on building or digging this air raid shelter and putting some, um, corrugated iron over the top to put a lid on it, um, but it wasn’t a very good air raid shelter and we didn’t follow it up to —.
CB: Did you ever use it?
BS: No. No.
CB: Right.
BS: There was no evidence of the war in Stotfold while we were there and we went to — as I say we moved to Witney in Oxfordshire in 1940 anyway, late 1940, and I think that when those three bombs dropped in Witney it was an aircraft returning from Coventry, um, and didn’t want to go home with his bombs so he just ditched them so he could get home quicker, which you can’t blame him for I suppose.
CB: Right, so you were close to Brize Norton airfield which still operational —
BS: Five miles away.
CB: Yep. And so were — how were you aware of what was going on? Did it become busy and did it get bombed? Or what happened?
BS: No. I — we became aware of it getting busy at Brize Norton when they starting practising towing gliders, um, Hamilcars and —
CB: Horsas.
BS: Horsas, yeah, and Hectors, but the little small ones that they, they practiced with, and, er, they were towing those with Albemarle aircraft and, and we were aware of them training with those gliders. No concept of what they were for, of course, um, but that was the only evidence really we saw. I do remember going to boy scouts. We used to go to boy scouts on a Monday night and I remember that during one of the winters but I can’t remember which it would have been, ‘42 perhaps, ’4—, can’t remember but I remember standing outside autumn-ish, so it was a cold dark night and standing outside the scout hut and my patrol leader saying, ‘Ah, they’re Jerries you know.’ We heard the drone of these aircraft flying overhead but we didn’t see anything but I’m fairly confident they were on their way. We would have been on the route to Coventry and it might well have been one of the raids in that direction that we were aware of but no idea of what it was all about. But that was the only connection really. During the war we got, er, evidence of, um, Americans in the town, stationed, and they were stationed on the church green I remember and we used to scrounge chewing gum off of them and, um, that sort of thing but they, they didn’t stay there all that long but I remember there was an air raid shelter in Witney, um, hard by the church green I remember and we were rather concerned that if a bomb dropped near that it might well not be man enough to hold up and, er, I remember hearing around about that time of a, an air raid shelter that I imagined to be very similar actually being hit by a bomb and I don’t quite — that would have come in the news but I can remember picturing the event and what would have happened if the bomb had hit that particular air raid shelter, um, which was — yeah, eye opening, but that was the only concern.
CB: At, um, school to what extent did the pupils discuss the war?
BS: Not very much. No, very, very little. We were very only slightly concerned. We used to dig for victory of course. We had one half day a week at the allotment that the school ran, um, and my father I know was keen on cultivating food in our garden and he also took a, an allotment on, fairly close to where we lived and, of course, rationing was of some consequence. I don’t remember ever being hungry, um, and I do remember later on going down on my dad’s bike to do the shopping on a Saturday morning and going from shop to shop to find out what they’d got under the counter, um, like chocolate and sweets and so on and so forth and I used to go down on a Saturday morning to buy exotic, as far as I was concerned, exotic cakes, cream cakes and jam sponges and things and I used to buy a quantity of these for the neighbours and cycle home with this half a dozen or so cakes but they were only available in this one particular bakers which was rather fascinating. [background noise] [laugh]
CB: So being a commercial minded sort of chap did you have a little business running on this sort of thing?
BS: No. What I, I did do, I used to go down to the River Windrush and catch crayfish and my mum used to cook them, drop them into a big boil— boiling vat, a saucepan of boiling water, and cook these crayfish and I’d go round these fifty houses and I used to sell them at a penny each. So yes I did, yeah.
CB: And what was rationing like?
BS: I was never really aware. I, you know, I wouldn’t know what an ounce of butter looked like anyway, you know. I don’t ever remember going short. If I wanted a slice of bread I had one. If I wanted — you know. Alright we used to get a bit of dripping here and there and — to go on the bread but you lived as it came, didn’t you? You know, you lived as — I, as I say I don’t ever remember going hungry. And we had rabbit of course and, and we used to — we bred our own rabbits, or at least my dad did, so we used to have a rabbit fairly frequently.
CB: Did you go out catching them as well?
BS: No. I think we may have — my mum may have bought a rabbit from time to time but I, I’m not really very — much aware of that.
CB: So you were due to leave school at fourteen.
BS: Stayed on.
CB: But you had an extension until you were fifteen but you had an extension to fifteen —
BS: Yes.
CB: What was the purpose of that?
BS: Um, the essence was that I was qualifying or training, if you like, to be able to pass this exam, this entrance exam for the RAF and, um, I could take the entrance exam when I was fifteen and a half, um, and my dad wanted to be sure that I was capable of passing it. So yes, I stayed on to train for the examination I suppose for the entrance exam for the RAF.
CB: And what happened when you took the exam?
BS: [slight laugh] I wish I could remember. As I say, I was called forward in the February of ’45 to come to Halton for interview and attestation, if that was to be, selection if you like and attestation, um, and we were all marched into the — what is now the Trenchard Museum which was the Henderson Grove Gymnasium at the time, for sorting out and, um, allocation of trades, and I had applied to be a radio technician and by the time they got down to me they’d got all the radio technicians they wanted and they said, ‘No. There isn’t a vacancy for you. Would you like to be an electrician?’ So I said, ‘Yes please.’ But it wasn’t my first choice but I think I was rather lucky to get that.
CB: So then when you’d got that how did that work? They had, er, an initial interviewing and kitting out and then what?
BS: Well, well initially of course we had to get kitted, kitted out. We were put, we were into groups which they’d labelled A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I ,J, K, parties of about sixteen, a roomful of about sixteen chaps who had been given their trades, and then we were moved into — we got our kits and so on and had to stamp them all up with our service numbers and, er, and then we were allocated rooms according to trade and, er, most of my electrician mates went into two rooms but there wasn’t room for myself and my mate John Rouchier [?]. We were in another block and then subsequently [emphasis] moved, fairly quickly actually, but moved down to another room full of engine [emphasis] fitters so we were the only two electricians in a room of elec— of engine fitters, er, which was in some ways disappointing but it didn’t really matter. We still got matey with the people who were in the room and you know —
CB: How many people in the room?
BS: Sixteen.
CB: And this is in a block?
BS: Of six rooms.
CB: Of six rooms, OK.
BS: And with an inside bunk and an outside bunk which was occupied by a senior apprentice NCO apprentice. Normally you had a sergeant apprentice in the inside bunk and then, um, a leading apprentice was in charge of the room outside, in one of the — in the first bed by the bunk, if you like, but then the sergeant apprentice who was in charge of the block would be in one of the outside bunks.
CB: And, and this was part of the process with a senior person to keep control?
BS: Oh yes. A, a senior entry of course, um, which made sense. They were almost like schoolboy monitors I suppose.
CB: So there were several barrack blocks, um, with this?
BS: We occupied two barrack blocks.
CB: OK. So how many people in total? This is your entry, number —
BS: Fifty at entry.
CB: Number fifty entry, yeah.
BS: Well about two hundred and — I can’t recall now. About two hundred and fifty of us stayed at Halton. About fifty more actually went to Cranwell as the RAF — as the radio and radar fitters. The precise numbers of course I’ve got recorded there.
CB: In your book. Yeah. So here you are —
BS: Go on. OK.
CB: Yes, so here you are allocated accommodation. What did, what did you do? You, you were conducted into the RAF in a sequence so how did that work?
BS: Oh the attestation sequence you’re referring to. We were taken up in groups, essentially room groups, into the upstairs of the NAAFI, um, and sat at a desk on which there was our attestation papers which we had to read and sign and we were obliged to, to do the oath of, um, allegiance to the Crown and we were allocated at that point our service numbers of course. [background noise]
CB: Uniform?
BS: Oh, we were in uniform by that time, er, that was before we were issued with our uniforms, yes of course, yeah.
CB: So then you had to get your uniforms and how distinctive were those? OK.
BS: I need time. [background noise]
CB: The reason I asked you about the clothing because it’s distinctive within the trades in some ways and within the speciality of being an apprentice. So how did that go?
BS: The significant thing about uniforms initially was that the only distinction we had that we were apprentices, other than any other kind of member of the Royal Air Force, was that we were issued with the four-bladed propeller wheel badge which we was to sew onto our left arm, um, of our tunics. We were issued with two tunics and when we got our kit wheel badges to go on the great coat and our two tunics and cap badges, of course, to go on our forage cap and our service dress cap, the peaked service dress cap. We were also issued with a coloured band to go round our service dress cap and one to go round our forage cap which determined which squadron we belonged to and we became D Squadron of 1 Wing with a brown, um, a chocolate brown band, which was fairly soon changed because of objections to, um, a chocolate brown and orange checked band and that was then changed to a pale blue one when we became A Squadron of 2 Wing. Then we moved to 3 Wing and got an orange band and a red disk behind the cap badge to indicate that we were A Squadron of now 3 Wing. So from being a squadron identification the band became a wing identification at that particular time. [pause] [background noise]
CB: So we’ve talked about your uniform, er, and the variations of it but in practical terms here you are in a. In a training establishment and b. In a technical training establishment which tends to be dirty. So how did they deal with that?
BS: Well we were issued with a pair of overalls we called them. I believe you called them —
CB: Overalls is fine. Yeah.
BS: And they were changed if they got dirty but essentially once a week, collectively, and when they came back from the laundry, um, you tried to pick out a pair that a. Fitted you and b. Weren’t too torn but, yeah, it was, um, pot luck what you got so, you know, so occasionally you finished up with a rough old pair of overalls that had got no buttons or method of fixing but those we wore at workshops, when we went to where we did the practical. When we went to schools, of course, where we did the academic side of the training we just wore ordinary uniform, er, even when we went into the laboratories in schools but of course we weren’t doing anything particularly grubby in schools and —
CB: When you say in schools it’s because there are departments of technical training that you call the school?
BS: The school was where the academic subjects were handled which were maths and science, um, mechanics. Science tended to deal with, um, your trade topics and the — we had a general studies which did the history of the RAF and the history of flying and general topics, um, including little bits of Shakespeare and, as I say, they were called general studies and one of our major tasks during the two years that we did of schools — ‘cause although the apprenticeship was three years only two years was spent doing academic subjects, and we qualified, those of us who were good enough, qualified for the First Ordinary National Certificate. But the task, as far as I was concerned, the main task we had to do in the academic line was to assemble an essay of, I don’t know, I don’t remember, five thousand words or something, fairly extensive essay we had to dream up and to those of us who hadn’t then or even now hadn’t a good command of the English language that was a bit of a challenge but there you go, I did one, and managed to pass. But as I say the school’s activity, academic activity went on for two years when we sat the First National Certificate which included at that [emphasis] time, um, maths and science essentially and, er, general studies wasn’t included, I don’t think but, er, as I say that, that was just two years, um, what was it? I can’t — [background noise]
CB: And we’ve talked about academic stuff and we’ve talked about practical but, to put it into context, there were lots of other things you had to do, like PT and marching and so on, so just take us through would you? A typical day. You wake up and what did you do?
BS: Well I think some of it can be put into context by a little rhyme that was actually printed in a 1939 issue of the “Haltonian” magazine, which starts off with, “In the dwellings of the birdmen and the barrack blocks behind them grew up the handsome air apprentice 5620 Hiawatha. Every morning at the sunrise baring, blaring bugles broke his slumbers, roused him from his iron bedstead, bestead hard and bedstead cruel, air apprentice for the use of. Next would find him, um, eating flesh, round the fleshpots.” No, no. “Bitterly —” I’ve ruined it. [laugh] [unclear]
CB: So you’d wake up in the morning and what would happen?
BS: With the, the reveille.
CB: Yep. Which is on the tannoy and the tannoy is a loudspeaker?
BS: No, it was a proper, proper —
CB: Bugle?
BS: Trumpet, proper trumpet, and you’d go and get washed and dressed and shaved, if you had to, and you’d go with your mug and irons (your knife, fork and spoon and cup), walk up to the mess (we had our own mess hall) for breakfast, and you’d queue up for your porridge and cornflakes or whatever and egg and bacon. We were very well fed actually, um, and normally [emphasis] they were issued — they were handed out by a mess cook, who was someone from the room who was given the duty of picking up a tray of eggs and bacon or whatever from the servery, and bringing it to the table to distribute to, to his own room at that table. After breakfast, um, we’d almost certainly be called out for parade, to form up to march down to schools or to workshops, most frequently behind either the pipe band or the brass band. We’d be carrying our books if we were going to school in our satchel, in our side pack, or if we were going to workshops we’d carry our overalls in our side pack, um, sometimes we would wear a cape as a — in bandolier fashion round in case it was going to rain. If the forecast was good then we’d just parade with nothing but we’d carry a cape if it was suggested it was going to rain, um, in bandolier fashion as I said, round our shoulder and, of course, if it was actually raining the cape would be open and we would be wearing it as you see it on the war memorial in Green Park. And we marched down to either schools or to workshop, schools which are now in a building called, now called Kermode Hall. Group Captain, Air Commodore Kermode was very responsible, very much responsible, for the development of the education of apprentices at Halton and very highly regarded too and, as I said, we were split into smaller classes because the classes were smaller anyway. We were split into classes of about thirteen. In my entry there were thirty, thirty-two, thirty-three electricians and we were split into three classes a, b and c, and we would all go, we would all go to school together and the days we were going to workshops we would all do the training but in, as I say, in the separate classes in workshops. [background noise]
CB: So after you return from breakfast and you’ve got everything you need for the day then what did you do?
BS: We would either dress to by paraded to go for — down to workshops or schools, in which case we paraded outside at trumpet call, um, we would be inspected to check that our buttons and boots had been cleaned and that we hadn’t — didn’t need a haircut or if we did we were informed that we would need to get one. And then, as I say, we would march down behind to — onto the square to march down to workshops or — behind the pipe or brass band. On the days that we were going to do PT, which would be probably two or three times a week, we would parade outside in PT kit and separately [emphasis] and then just be marched off to a venue, maybe on the square, maybe in the gymnasium, to do a series of, um, conventional exercises. On other occasions we would stay behind to do marching drill on the square with rifles and bayonets. We had eighteen inch bayonets at that time we were issued with, which again was a piece of equipment we had to keep clean, and we had the SMLE rifles which were kept in a room in a rifle rack with a Horsa [?] select — secured with a padlock by the leading apprentice and as I say we would go onto the square and do marching drill and practice and, of course, and initially there were several members of the entry who found it difficult to coordinate their left and right arms with their left and right legs but most of them overcame that difficulty. I suspect those that didn’t departed because occasionally there’d be an empty bed space which would be a bit of a puzzle and I remember that we occupied, John Rouchier [?] and I, occupied two bed spaces in the engine apprentices room 4:2, Block 4 Room 2 that is, and we occupied two bed spaces that had suddenly become vacant and it was many years afterwards I discovered that the two people who had occupied those spaces had actually had an early discharge from the Royal Air force and I know not the reason for that and neither did anyone else in the room. There were just two empty bed spaces and we, John Rouchier [?] and I, were moved out of one block into this block, into these two empty bed spaces, just to make up the numbers but nobody spoke about where the two lads had gone. Now that occurred to, I think, half a dozen or so people in the entry.
CB: Out of thirty-two?
BS: No, out of two hundred and fifty or whatever that I know of.
CB: Of the entry, OK.
BS: That I’m aware of, yeah, and when I was doing the research for the entry I identified those people who’d been, um, discharged very early on and realised that the empty bed spaces I became aware of had been occupied by these people because they were in the trade groups where the empty bed spaces appeared which was rather strange and I still l haven’t got to the bottom of that mystery.
CB: Just one question on that. We talked about after breakfast [clears throat] —
BS: Yes.
CB: You go back to the room. At what point did you make the bed and how?
BS: Oh we made that before we went to breakfast.
CB: Right, and how did you do it?
BS: Well the beds that we had were McDonalds which were cast iron frames with strip, wrought iron slats, across and three so-called biscuits which were, er, coir filled paillasse type things which, um, covered —
CB: As a mattress.
BS: As a mattress. A, a three-part mattress if you like.
BT: Come on everybody, I’ll have those. [sound of crockery]
CB: Yep, yep.
BS: And we used to match, marry one of them, wrap it up in a blanket as a seat and two of them married, the other two married up in a blanket as a backdrop and behind the backdrop would be the, the two folded sheets and a pillow and a pilaster which we had so the bed was made up armchair fashion, um, because the McDonald bed actually had four wheels on the front part and the half at the front pushed under the rear part and that made, with the two, with the three mattress biscuits, an armchair and, of course, your locker overhead, locker, your steel locker was occupied by your — one pair of your PT pants and a PT vest or singlet and a cap comforter and — I can’t recall what the other item was but there were four items that had to be laid out in pristine form, biscuit form almost, in your locker and your mug and irons delicately displayed beside it and nothing else on the shelves. You had a box, we had a box at the end of our bed, that stayed under the bed during the day of course, but the box at the end of our bed that contained the rest of our kit, um, which comprised of what? A couple of shirts and six collars and bits and pieces but that was kept in a trunk, if you like, a wooden trunk, at the end of the bed. Not, um, a particularly comfortable situation.
CB: No. So the, the idea of the bed folding the way it did was so that you really had a chair to sit on.
BS: I’m not sure if that was the idea but that’s what it became and of course what it did do was to reveal the rest of the lino, linoleum, which was highly polished.
CB: Right. So that’s the next question I was going to put. What was the means by which the barrack room was cleaned?
BS: Well, there was a list at the end of the room where each occupant was allocated a task, um, two or three people were allocated deck centre, which meant that the people who lived in the room were responsible for their own piece of bed space but the centre deck which was the part beyond the end of your half of the bed when it was folded was the centre deck and they were, two or three people were responsible for polishing that, putting down the polish and buffing it up, so you could almost see your face in it. But of course with dark brown lino, linoleum you couldn’t actually see your face in it. And the toilets were allocated to individuals. The wash hand basins was a separate job. Brasses was a separate job, that was door knobs and taps and that sort of thing, were a separate task and, as far as I know, the people who did brasses actually provided — or did they? Some of them provided their own metal polish. There was metal polish occasionally available. The same as there was always floor polish available in adequate quantities. And then of course we normally walked on the centre deck with floor pads, pieces of torn up blanket, so that you skidded over the floor on pieces of blanket to keep the polish on the floor. So yeah, one chap was allocated, for instance, to clean a bath and another chap — because there were two baths in the toilet block in the centre of the building, or centre of the floor. Two rooms shared a toilet facility, three toilets, two stand-up, er, urinals, I think two baths, um, with six wash basins I think, and a drying room, which was always heated of course, or usually heated, um, where you could hang your smalls if you happened to have enough soap to wash them.
CB: And then how was the polishes shininess maintained? What was the process?
BS: With the floor — essentially with the floor pads. I mean we did have a big bumper that was initially used, which was a big piece of cast iron on a stick, bristle stick, a short stiff bristle brush, which was dragged or pushed over the floor to rub the polish in initially but once the initial polish was there we tended to maintain it with using floor pads which we walked about or skated about on.
CB: And how was the level of cleanliness maintained and checked?
BS: Well it was inspected by the sergeant apprentice on that floor, um, and initially of course by the, by the leading apprentice of your room, who checked your individual tasks but, as I say, the sergeant apprentice for the block would inspect the three lots within the block on three floors and he would inspect the cleanliness of the whole of the block, essentially. I mean once in a while, I don’t know whether it would have been once a month, I don’t remember the frequency, but of course we’d get a squadron commander’s inspection but he didn’t inspect every day but the sergeant apprentice was responsible for the block and he would make sure that it was clean.
CB: So were these tasks to do and the ablutions were the less popular but was there a rota for people so everybody did it in the end? Or how did it work?
BS: Generally speaking they were voluntarily selected, yeah, generally speaking they — there were people who volunteered to do the urinals and there were people who volunteered to do the hand basins so generally it wasn’t difficult. Yes there were several that seemed more attractive than the others. There were several I avoided, um, without difficulty.
CB: So you were in an avoidance mode —
BS: Absolutely.
CB: So were there some people who pulled their weight better than others and how did the system work?
BS: You didn’t — yes of course there were but you didn’t really notice it because there were usually enough volunteers to do those jobs that seemed more distasteful to you, you know.
CB: So if you — were there occasions when you failed inspections or were they always successful?
BS: Oh there were rare occasions when something which would to the inspectors seem serious and you were invited to do it again so you would have a second “bull night” as they were referred to but, er, they didn’t occur very often.
CB: So just to clarify would you? What age are you or —
BS: Well we were allowed to join between fifteen and a half and seventeen and a half to become apprentices so when I joined at fifteen and three quarters I was one of the younger ones in the entry. Many of the other people in my entry were seventeen plus, up to seventeen and a half, and of course had been to grammar school and they’d got their school certificates and so on and were, educationally, streets ahead of me but I didn’t think I noticed at the time. Only subsequently it become obvious that I was less well educated than they were.
CB: Right we’ll pause there. [interview stopped at 0:50:57:1 and restarted 0:50:59.1 ] What about a bit of marching. You had to do a bit of marching in parades. How did that work?
BS: Well, initially it was tricky because at first for a hundred, or a hundred and fifty blokes, or whatever to coordinate and do everything on time without shouting out one pause, two pause, three, whatever, took a time to develop and I think most of us entered into it with a reasonable willingness, er, to try and coordinate it and I remember how proud I [emphasis] felt when we were actually at the Albert Hall and we performed the wheel of remembrance, or something, and we actually marched, the apprentices, for Lady Propeller[?] and we actually marched around in the centre of the Albert Hall, and I remember how proud I was to be part of that. And yeah, it was — I’d like to think, and nobody I think has actually said it, but I’m fairly confident that the origin of the Queen’s Colour Squadron was developed from the order-less, um, drill that we [emphasis] did at Halton, um, rifle drill and so on. We did practice for one of the events at the Albert Hall, command-less drill, rifle drill, and that was before the Queen’s Colour Squadron was formed. Now of course they do it expertly ‘cause they practice it every day.
CB: Yeah. Just to clarify, that the Queens Colour Squadron is the, um, parading —
BS: Royal Air Force Regiment’s —
CB: Go on.
BS: Representatives for celebrations —
CB: Special occasions.
BS: Ceremonial occasions.
CB: Yeah, and tend to be the people who receive dignitaries on airfields?
BS: Yes. Well that’s what they have done. And yeah, of course when they were stationed at Uxbridge with the Royal Central — with the RAF Central Band, um, and the RAF Central Band greeted all the dignitaries who visited this county anyway.
CB: Yeah, yeah.
BS: And, er, I think the Queens Colour Squadron, um, was probably more associated with the RAF Central Band than it was with the RAF Regiment which of course they were part of.
CB: So we’ve talked about your time at Halton. How long were you there?
BS: Three years.
CB: So that’s from February 1945 —
BS: Until March ’48.
CB: Right, and when you got to the end of the three years what was the culmination of that training?
BS: We thought that was the end of our training but we were actually posted, most of us, posted to RAF St Athan, 32 MU, where we were, supposedly, doing further training, continuation training, under supervision or guidance but we were actually doing our trade tasks. Initially I was servicing a flight simulator called a Link Trainer and initially I was responsible for the, er, vacuum motors that drove those machines and they were completely overhauled and serviced at St Athan. I subsequently moved to the Aircraft Electrical Servicing Squadron and I was then servicing the UKX generators, we were completely overhauling UKX generators, which were fitted to the Lancasters. They were the DC and AC, alternating current and direct current generators, that supplied the power for the Lancasters and we were completely overhauling those. And I was at the stripping down and scraping end and my mate was at the far end actually packing them up in greaseproof paper, um, ready to be taken back to stores to be reissued as new generators. But we also started to service E5A generators which were fitted to the North American Harvard which was used for air crew training, pilot training, at places like Cranwell and my boss required me to support that when we started to do them by producing a, a breakdown display of the E5A generators. So the first one we got I had to strip down and make the tools to strip it down with because, of course, it was an American machine so we hadn’t got the necessary spanners and tools to do it. And I mounted that on a display board to show everybody what all the parts were and then we started to service those generators and, er, we also serviced the control panels for the Lancaster, um, electrical control panels that is. That was a very pleasant time, yeah. My boss was a warrant officer, Lockheart, Tubby Lockheart. He was football crazy and I didn’t play football and the only thing that he and I had in common was that when he walked passed by my desk he’d say —, my bench, he’d say, ‘Have you got your — get your hair cut Smith.’ Which was something that plagued me for all my service career and has followed me through life, um, everyone I see tends to suggest, if they don’t actually verbalise it, they tend to suggest I need a haircut, which I think usually do.
BT: You do.
CB: So how long were you at St Athan?
BS: Just the twelve months before I was posted to RAF Cranwell, where again we were servicing KX generators, which were fitted to the Prentice aircraft, which were twin seats flying training aircraft, Percival Prentice, um, but that’s odd because we were servicing those generators but we weren’t servicing the E5As which were fitted to the Harvards, which they were also flying as trainers, advanced trainers. But in our workshop at Cranwell, as I say, we were servicing the KX generator which was the one fitted to the Prentice. And I was promoted to corporal. Took my LAC exam and passed that while I was at Cranwell. And then when they introduced the new trades’ structure I’d been promoted to corporal and my immediate boss was a flight sergeant, who had been a balloon operator, and had just come off course to be an electrician. So when I applied to become a corporal technician he was responsible for taking the trade test and he said, ‘I’ll take your trade test but will you bring your books along? And you can — I’ll ask you the questions and if you can’t answer them we’ll look them up in your book.’ Which we did but that was a very interesting interview we had and, yeah, I passed. He couldn’t really fail me, could he? He’d only just got you LAC himself.
CB: So when did you get the next promotion?
BS: Oh [slight laugh] not until I came back from Malta in ’54. I came back from Malta in ’54, um, I’d been turned down for my third in Malta. My immediate boss said, ‘First of all you’re never here and second you always want a haircut.’ My immediate boss, my proper boss, said, ‘I’m sorry about your promotion corporal.’ He said, ‘Had I realised you were in that zone for promotion you would have had a better assessment than I gave you.’ So my promotion didn’t come through while I was in Malta. It came through while I was at Honington, in Bomber Command and, er, and my boss turned that down but he didn’t give me a reason.
BT: Because your hair was too long.
BS: [laugh] In the meantime — probably because my hair was too long, um, but subsequently it came through again and, in the meantime I’d got my senior tech, which gave me more pay than I got as a sergeant anyway. And he said to me, ‘Your promotion to sergeant has come through. Would you like to take it?’ So I said, ‘Oh, I need time to think about it Sir.’ I went back later on and said, ‘Yes please.’ Because I thought well if at last you think I’m worthy of it I’ll have it so I reconverted from senior tech back to sergeant which was —
CB: In practical terms —
BS: An admin rank.
CB: Right.
BS: Essentially an admin rank.
CB: Yeah, so they’re both the same status.
BS: Yeah but one had more admin responsibilities than the other.
CB: This is still at Honington?
BS: At Honington.
CB: OK. So what were you actually doing at Honington?
BS: Well I was by then essentially a ground electrician, um, although I had been trained as an electrician to do aircraft electrics, when the new trade structure came in and I applied for my corporal technician board, they said to me, ‘What do you want to be, air or ground?’ And I said, ‘Well was trained as both so I’d like to stay both.’ ‘You can’t do that.’ Well the corporal tech pay was bigger than, higher than the corporals, so I said, ‘Well, what’s my choice?’ ‘Well you can be either, air or ground, but one or the other.’ So I said, ‘Alright, I’ll be ground. I don’t need the responsibility of signing Form 700 for aircraft and put my life on the line.’ So I backed out [background noise] and became a ground electrician, which essentially was looking after aircraft dead batteries anyway. So yeah but I didn’t have the responsibility of signing the serviceability rolls for aircraft which I wasn’t too sad about.
CB: What were the aircraft at Honington?
BS: Initially Canberras, er, being in Bomber Command, they had the front line bomber at that time which was the Canberra. Before I moved away from there in ‘56, ‘57, ‘57 I think, they were starting to have the, um, Vickers Valiant, the first of the V, V bomber force, yeah? I didn’t see the Vulcans or the Valiants come into service —
CB: You mean Vulcans or Victors. You saw the Valiant come into service.
BS: The Valiant come into service —
CB: But you didn’t see the Victors or —
BS: The Victors or the Vu— or the Vulcan.
CB: Vulcan.
BS: Yeah.
CB: Right. So when you finished, when did you move from Honington?
BS: Um, well I realised my service, my service was coming to an end and I thought I ought to sign on. I applied to sign on and they wouldn’t have me, presumably because my hair needed cutting [slight laugh], so I thought, ‘Oh dear what am I going to do at the end of my twelve years’ service. What am I going to do?’ So I saw an advert in our routine orders asking for people to volunteer for service with flight simulators, which I did, I applied for, and they said, ‘Well you haven’t got long enough to do.’ So I said, ‘How long do I need?’ ‘Well you need at least three years Chief.’ Sergeant, senior tech as I was then. ‘Oh well alright.’ So I applied sign on for three years and they took me. So I went down then to Redifon in Crawley and I was on detachment down in civvy digs for three, for twelve months. It was a three month course. It lasted six months. And then I stayed there almost on my own because the other people got simulators and moved on. My simulator got cancelled so I stayed in civvy digs in Crawley for twelve months, um, which was great, going to work at Redifon, virtually my own boss, and then one day I got a — somebody called, ‘Phone call from Fighter Command, somebody wants to speak to you.’ So I went to the telephone, ‘Good heavens.’ Said Brian Caplan, ‘Are you still there?’ So I said, ‘Yes Sir’. He said, ‘Well you can’t stay there. You’ll have to go back to your parent unit.’ Which was Coltishall at that time so I’d been posted when I moved onto simulators to Coltishall. I said, ‘Well, I don’t need to go to Coltishall. There’s nothing for me there, Sir.’ I said, ‘My family, I’ve moved my family down to Aylesbury, and I know nothing of Fighter Command or whatever.’ He said, ‘Well, where do you want to go?’ So I said, ‘Halton would be nice.’ And he said, ‘I can’t post you to Halton.’ He said, ‘It’s not in the Command.’ I’m now on the back foot. I said, ‘Well, surely Sir you can find me a little corner at Fighter Command?’ ‘Oh, that’s an idea.’ He said, ‘I’ll ring you back.’ He rang me back ten minutes later and said, ‘Pack your bags. You’re posted to Fighter Command with effect from Monday.’ So I went to Fighter Command at Bentley Priory and spent twelve — spent two years there on detachment in Fighter Command’s, um, aeronautical, er, aircraft engineering set up, Command Head Quarters, with some quite serious responsibilities which I thoroughly enjoyed.
CB: We’ll have a break there for a mo?
BS: Yeah, please. Wait a minute don’t, don’t switch the thing off. [background noise]
CB: You’ve done really well. Now when you went to Bentley Priory of course you had a different role altogether, so what was that.
BS: Absolutely. Well I was essentially the coffee boy for two warrant officers, a flight lieutenant and a squadron leader, who were responsible for the instrument and electrical activities within Fighter Command or all Fighter Command RAF stations. Warrant Officer Lendy [?] was the electrician expert and had come up from, er, previously come up from a Hawker Hunter squadron and had a lot of expertise with Hawker Hunters and in the map drawer in the office he had diagrams, electrical diagrams, for all the Hunters in Fighter Command with all the modifications that they’d had on the relevant diagrams drawn, up to date, with all the terminations marked so that he could actually see the, the modification state of all our Hunters in the Fighter — in the Command. He was pretty good. I know at one time we’d had problems from one station, um, about double power failure warning lights that generate a failure warning light, both of them coming on, and the squadron responsible had been checking for that, um, repeated failure and we kept getting defect reports in the Fighter Command and Doug Lendy [?], this latest one we had, he said, ‘This is ridiculous.’ He took home the diagram relevant to that aircraft. He came back to the office the following morning and he said to me, ‘Do you know about this?’ So I said, ‘Yes Sir.’ He said, ‘Well, read that report again.’ So I read the report. He said, ‘Right now point to the problem.’ I thought, ‘Good Heavens.’ So I looked at the diagram. ‘Well there’. ‘Of course it bloody is.’ He says. It was the earth bolt that took the two power failure warning lights’ negative leads to earth. That was the only point that they’d got in common so they could only both fail —
CB: Because of that.
BS: At that point. Checked up, rang, rang the flight sergeant on the squadron and he said, ‘Yes, of course we’ve checked the earth bolt.’ He said, ‘Well go and check it yourself.’ So he did and came back and reported, ‘Yes, it’s the problem.’ They’d stripped the earth bolt down which contained lots of other earth wires as well in a stack and progressively, as this fault had occurred, the electrician had gone out and tightened down the nut, cured the problem, tightened down the nut, cured the problem but of course each time he tightened it down on the corrosion, the burning and corrosion, and each time it was burning through. So he’d solved it at Bentley Priory several miles away. He’d solved the problem that they’d been struggling with for months.
CB: Because they didn’t do the job right.
BS: Because they didn’t do the job right. But they replaced all the — all the terminations on the cables and cleaned up the earth bolt properly and put it all back and tightened it down properly. Problem gone. So that was Doug Lendy [?]. A man I kind of admired, um, and then as I say —
CB: So your role was quite broad though.
BS: Absolutely broad, yeah, and one could argue it was outside my pay scale.
CB: OK.
BS: I had responsibilities way above my station [slight laugh] which —
CB: So you had to go on sorties to stations sometimes. What were they?
BS: Well, we started to develop electronic, um, combined electronic centres on the Fighter Command stations. Bomber Command had already done it for their, their stations. They had, Bomber Command, um, electronic servicing centres which did all the electrics and radio and radar and they started to develop one for Fighter — especially for Fighter Command and my boss was responsible, of course, for the layout of the power supplies and air supplies, electrical supplies, all of that sort of thing within the electronic servicing centre and where things were serviced and how power was taken to each bench, control panels and so on and so forth. And I remember making him little paper lozenges so he could lay them out on this map to decide how these pieces of equipment were going to be laid out in the electronic centre. And then he started sending me out to where these centres were being built, in particular one at Leconfield, and I remember at one stage I went up to inspect this situation at Leconfield and, looking at the electrical layout, I said to the foreman who was there, ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘There’s supposed to be a hole in this wall. There’s supposed to be window in this wall.’ ‘Not on my diagram.’ He said. So I said, ‘Well there’s supposed to be a window. It’s supposed to be this size and whatever, and it’s supposed to be double glazed for heat — for sound control and so on.’ Because the hydraulic generators were being tested in that room and this was where the test bench was observed, was observing it, but the hydraulic generators were noisy. They were to be powering the blue steel, um, equipment.
CB: The stand-off bomb.
BS: Yeah and — but why was that in Fighter Command? Anyway, never mind, um, that was, that was what was, it was the noise abatement thing — and, ‘Well,’ He said, ‘If there’s got to be a window if you draw it and sign it it’ll go in.’ So I drew it in. This was a Ministry of Defence document, plan, for this multimillion pound building and I’m drawing this, drawing this window in and signing it. ‘OK’. He said and it was done and it was incorporated in the other Fighter Command Control Centres. It was cheap tech. I didn’t have that authority but I gave the instruction and he was quite happy to take my signature.
CB: It was needed and you did it.
BS: It was needed and it was done. Nobody ever said anything.
CB: Then another thing you said you did was to do AOC pre- inspections?
BS: Yes, er, I did two or three of those and I’d be greeted at the guard room by a very, um, dutiful policeman. He’d say, ‘Oh good afternoon Chief and I’ll take across to the tech adj.’ Who would be a flight lieutenant and I’d go across to the tech adj with him and knock on the door and we’d, I’d walk into the tech adj’s office. ‘Come in chief. Sit down.’ We’d have a cup of tea, we’d have a cup of coffee. I thought this is not the kind of treatment I’d expect as a chief tech. Oh yes, I’d just come down from Fighter Command but it was just another posting to me but, yeah, I was treated like a man from out of space I suppose. It was really rather rewarding in a way.
CB: Sure. Job satisfaction is important.
BS: Absolutely.
CB: How long did that posting last?
BS: Well it wasn’t really a posting, it was only a detachment.
BS: Right.
BS: But I was there for two years so I stretched that out a bit but when that was coming towards the end I thought, ‘Well I don’t know what, I don’t know what I’m going to do.’ And an Air Commodore Avery or Avis, was the chief technical officer in Fighter Command and he came to visit our office one day and he sat down on the only available chair, in the middle of the office, with the two warrant officers, and squadron leader, and flight lieutenant and he sat with is front to the back of the chair and just talked to me and said well you know, ‘Tell me about your career chief or whatever.’ I said, ‘Well it’s coming to an end Sir.’ I said. ‘Well why don’t you sign on?’ So I said, ‘I applied to sign on but they wouldn’t have me.’ He said, ‘Well, why don’t you apply again?’ So the upshot of that was that I applied to sign on and of course as he was the supporting officer it got signed so I was accepted to sign on until I was fifty-five years old, um, so I didn’t really look back but then of course, um, I knew that detachment was going to come to an end and I thought I ought to be trying to guide my career somehow and the opportunity to — they were looking for volunteers to join the Education Branch. They were short of education officers but they needed the Higher National Certificate. I hadn’t got that but I thought, ‘Never mind, I’ll apply anyway.’ And rather to my surprise they accepted me and I went on a three month education course at Uxbridge, to the School of Education at Uxbridge. Wonderful course, um, three months, taught me the psychology of learning and, um, educational techniques and so on and so forth, um, and spent two years in the Education Branch, initially at RAF Melksham, which was another fascinating experience because my boss came to me at one point. He said, ‘Oh, I’ve got something different for you to do Chief.’ So I says, ‘What’s that?’ He said, ‘Well, we’ve got, we’ve got a class of people coming in to study inertial navigation systems.’ So I says, ‘What’s that?’ He said, ‘Well there’s a film on in the cinema.’ He said, ‘Go and watch it.’ He said, ‘That will show you what, what it’s all about.’ OK, so I went and watched this which was run by a by Mr L C Agger who wrote a book on electrics which was used for training at Halton for many years and Mr Agger put this film on for me and it was an American major describing this whole process of inertial navigation. I came out of there ‘cause he was talking with a broad American accent. Don’t ask me which State he came from but a broad American accent that I had great difficulty with. I thought, ‘Well, I don’t know. I don’t understand anything of that.’ So I actually mentioned it to Agger and he said, ‘Come and watch it again.’ And a lot more made sense this time and inertial navigation, in case don’t know it’s all about, it all depends on three gyroscopes, rate gyroscopes, which detect where you are and if there’s any movement at all in any direction the rate gyroscope detect it and tells you where to and how much by so you programme into this complex where you are and if you move it knows where you’ve gone and that was the principal, basic principle, of inertial navigation. It didn’t last for long because we use satellite navigation, yeah? GPS. So that’s what that was all about and I took two classes of Vulcan aircrew because they carried the blue steel bomb, not the blue streak, the blue steel bomb, stand-off bomb, and that was fitted with inertial navigation, um, so yeah, I took two classes of those and when my — when towards the end of that tour they were moving the education system from Melksham, training system at Melksham, up to, um, somewhere in Norfolk, I can’t think, the name won’t come to me at the moment, but they were moving the training out and the education officer said to me, ‘Well, we‘re not taking the substitute education officers (which is what I was) you’re reverting back to your trade.’ So I said, ‘Well I’d rather not Sir. I’d rather finish my tour with the Education Branch ‘cause I’m enjoying it.’ And he said, ‘Well, what can you suggest?’ And I said, ‘Well do you think they need anybody at Halton?’ ‘Oh that’s an idea.’ He said. ‘Come and see me in ten minutes.’ I went back to see him. He said, ‘Pack your bags you’re posted to Halton with effect from Monday.’ Same resp— so I came back to Halton as a lecturer, teaching electrics and electrical mechanics, to apprentices and, um, when that was coming to an end I went to see Squadron Leader Abraham who was my boss. And he said, ‘They’ll be looking for somebody over the road because they’re going to train ground electrician apprentices. They’ll want somebody.’ He said, ‘Go and see Squadron Leader Blot.’ Who was in charge of the Electrical Squadron, so I went to see Squadron Leader Blot and sat down and he started going through my career. ‘Oh.’ He said, ‘Where were you during this period?’ I said, ‘Oh, I was at Fighter Command.’ ‘Oh.’ He said, ‘What were you doing at Fighter Command?’ So I told him what I’ve already related. I said, ‘But I was also seconded as the Deputy to Squadron Leader Goldsmith, same name, who was in charge of the new Lightning squadron we just started when we were taking up Lightnings and I became his second dickie, or his telephone operator, if you like.’ And, er, he said, ‘Oh, you know John Goldsmith do you?’ So I said ‘Well, yeah.’ ‘How did you get on with him?’ ‘Well, alright.’ He said, ‘Oh, that’s alright.’ He said. He picked up the sheaf of notes he’d been writing about my career, tore it up and threw it in the waste paper basket. He said, ‘Right.’ He said, ‘You start, start next week.’ [laugh] So I started setting up the original basic training for the first ground electrician apprentices at Halton. End, end of episode.
CB: How long were you at Halton?
BS: [sound of shuffling papers] I need to look at my notes. Until the end of my career. No, not ‘till end of my career ‘cause I went up to, went up to Brampton after that. [background noise]
CB: You did actually do an unaccompanied tour.
BS: In Muharraq in, er, Bahrain.
CB: Where was that? When was that?
BS: In 1969 to ’70.
CB: And what were you doing there?
BS: That was basically just on ground equipment. I was in charge essentially of the battery charging rooms. I had two, I had two, um, Bahraini technicians working in that room and two RAF airman working in the battery charging room.
CB: It was a RAF station was it?
BS: The RAF, the RAF station yeah.
CB: Right.
BS: One of the RAF Hunter fighter squadrons was on that station at the time.
CB: Oh was it?
BS: But it was the airfield for Muharraq, um, so it was a fairly significant, um, middle-eastern destination.
CB: Right.
BS: And yes, as I say, I spent twelve months there.
CB: So fast forward to Halton. So you finished at Halton?
BS: Yeah and I came —
CB: After you did the ground electrical servicing course?
BS: Yes, at Halton, did the Muharraq trip and then, when I came back from, from Muharraq, I was posted to RAF Benson.
CB: Oh yes.
BS: On 90 group, um, Tactical Communications Wing, and spent about twelve months there I think and, er, didn’t quite know where my career as going from there, um, and decided to do something about it and there was, er, a request for people to join the Trade Testing, Trade Standards and Testing Board, which I applied for and was accepted and, and was posted back to Halton where the Trade Standards testing organisation had been established.
CB: Right.
BS: So I worked there for Trade Standard and Testing for a while, um, setting up well trade tests for electricians, essentially ground electricians.
CB: Right.
BS: And then they moved the Trade Standard and Testing thing to Bram— RAF Brampton, near Huntingdon and, of course, I moved up with them and, er, carried on the same kind of work with, um, various ranks of ground electrician training and then they wanted me to join, or asked me to join, the team, a team of technicians writing skill and knowledge specifications which were, um, oh, qualifications couched in behavioural terms, um, for all the trades in the Air Force and although I wrote some for ground electricians I also wrote some for musicians and for marine engineers, or helped to write them for those people, but yeah, all of them started off with a trained man can [?] and then went on to describe how you tested the activities that these people had to do, which was an interesting exercise, and that took me up to 1975 when I left the Royal Air Force.
CB: So you didn’t go to fifty five?
BS: I did not and the reason I didn’t go, of course, was because, um, I felt sure at the age of fifty-five I wouldn’t be able to get a job outside anyway and I wasn’t going to get promoted beyond Chief Technician anyway, probably because I needed a haircut.
BT: No doubt at all.
CB: You never learned the lesson then.
BT: No, no. He doesn’t know what the inside of a hair dressers looks like.
CB: Right, so what happened then?
BS: Well —
CB: So 1975 comes —
BS: Well, 1974-ish they had been looking for people to volunteer for early retirement, for redundancies in certain groups and trade groups and age categories and ranks and I was looking for one of these so I could get out before I was fifty-five so I could get employment outside and in 1974, my birthday, my trade and rank came up as being eligible so I applied to leave and they let me go, um, so I got a reasonable redundancy return and left, as I say, in 1975.
CB: OK.
BS: Right.
CB: Then what did you do?
BS: Went — I was on the dole for six months on, er, previous age related unemployment benefit, um, doing odd jobs, odd little bits for people, bit of decorating here and bit of electrics there and applying for jobs around Aylesbury, in particular. I went, um, for one job was a training consultant with the Ministry — which branch of the Ministry I can’t tell you at this stage, um, but I didn’t get that job. I went for a job at — over at Haddenham, on the airfield there, and I was too well qualified for one job that they’d got and under qualified for another job they’d got so they hadn’t got anything to offer me. So I’m scratching around a bit ‘cos I was coming to the end of my six months and I had applied to go back to Halton as an instructor and I got eventually an interview and I went back to Halton for the interview and I got the job as a civilian instructor at Halton, and I went back actually teaching apprentices, whose a course I’d previously helped to organise, and, er, went back as I say training ground electricians as a civilian, yeah, and then they were going to move that training, the ground electricians, to RAF St Athan. I thought I don’t need to go there and they said, ‘Well, alright you can stay here but you’ll have to train, train aircraft electricians.’ I thought I don’t really want to go down that learning curve because there was some very complicated equipment on aeroplanes by that time and I thought, ‘Well, no I don’t want to go to St Athan.’ So I was struggling a bit and I spoke to my friend Mr Ken Hewer [?] and he said, ‘Well, why don’t you apply for a job at Southall Technical College.’ Where he worked. So I did and after an interview, which I spent a fair time talking about myself, I was invited to accept the job at Southall, and I worked there until I was made redundant from their aircraft department at Southall Tech and then retired and lived in the lap of luxury ever since.
CB: How old were you when you retired, aged sixty-five?
BS: No, I was only fifty— only fifty-five, fifty-six? Let me think. When did I actually retire? I don’t know whether I’ve got that down here. [sound of shuffling papers] [pause]
CB: You reckon you finished early, did you?
BS: ’85, ‘85 so I’d have been fifty-six? Yeah?
CB: You were at Southall you were teaching?
BS: Aircraft technicians from British Airways.
CB: Oh right.
BS: And some of Colonel Gadhafi’s Air Force and civilian airline personnel too.
CB: Right. So retired in ‘85.
BS: A little bit more meat on the bones in there.
CB: Just one final thing. What was the most memorable thing about your experience in the RAF would you think?
BS: ‘Struth. In some respects I think my tour of Malta from ‘52 to ‘54 but then that two years at Fighter Command Headquarters was an eye opener and a wonderful experience, you know, so looking back for favourites is really rather difficult because I had a thoroughly enjoyable thirty years really. Very few grey or black spots.
CB: Ok. Good. Well I really think we ought to stop it there.
BS: Well, I think we ought to.
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 Barry Smith
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-01-18
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ASmithBM170118
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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01:32:59 audio recording
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Fighter Command
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Bahrain--Muḥarraq
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Suffolk
England--London
Bahrain
Bahrain--Muḥarraq
Temporal Coverage
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1945-02
1948
1975
Description
An account of the resource
Barry passed the RAF’s apprentice entrance examination in February 1945, aged 15, and went to RAF Halton to become an electrician. He discusses the three training which resulted in the First Ordinary National Certificate.
In 1948, Barry was posted to RAF St Athan No. 32 Maintenance Unit. He initially serviced a flight simulator, then moved to the Aircraft Electrical Servicing Squadron. After a year, he was posted to RAF Cranwell, servicing generators and was promoted to corporal. He passed his leading aircraftman examination. He spent two years in Malta before being posted to RAF Honington, where he became a sergeant.
Barry wanted to service flight simulators, did a course and was posted for two years to Fighter Command at Bentley Priory. He had a broad role in aircraft engineering at Command Headquarters.
Barry moved to become an education officer and did a course at the School of Education at RAF Uxbridge. He spent two years in the education branch, initially at RAF Melksham. He was then posted to RAF Halton to teach electrics and electrical mechanics before setting up the basic training for the first ground electrician apprenticeships.
Barry undertook an unaccompanied 12-month tour to RAF Muharraq (Bahrain) and was in charge of the battery charging room. A further twelve months were spent at RAF Benson on 90 Group Tactical Communication Wing before returning to RAF Halton to join the Trade Standards and Testing Board. This moved to RAF Brompton where he wrote skills and knowledge specifications for RAF trades. Barry left the RAF in 1975 and continued in teaching and training roles.
Language
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eng
Contributor
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Sally Coulter
childhood in wartime
displaced person
ground personnel
military living conditions
military service conditions
RAF Bentley Priory
RAF Cranwell
RAF Halton
RAF Honington
RAF St Athan
shelter
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/640/32452/MSmithBM582378-170220-01.1.pdf
a787de22dce39ba9300fbe485fa7e8fb
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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Smith, Barry
Barry Michael Smith
B M Smith
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Smith, BM
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Sergeant Barry Smith (b.1929, 582398 Royal Air Force). He was an aprentice at RAF Halton and served as a fitter. Also includes service memoir and a photograph.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Barry Smith and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed document
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Preface to Barry's Curriculum Vitae 1 of 5
My initial training, a three year apprenticeship, at Royal Air Force Halton, was essentially directed towards aircraft electrical installations. A fourth 'improver' year at RAF St. Athan involved 3rd & 4th line servicing of electrical equipment & components. After a spell on Link trainer vacuum motors I was moved to AERS, which I think was Aircraft Electrical Repair Squadron. I subsequently worked on aircraft until 1952 although on becoming a Corporal Technician in 1951 I had become a Ground Electrician. From 1952 until 1957, by then at RAF Honington, I was employed on 1st. 2nd, & 3rd line servicing of Mechanical Transport, Marine Craft, Airfield Equipment & general Ground Equipment, including D4 Link Trainers.
Having volunteered for duties on Synthetic Trainers (Nearing my service exit date at 12 years I needed a job to go to in civvy street) I then spent two years in Civilian digs in Crawley (at Wendy Tantrum's house) with Messrs Redifon. After a 3 month comprehensive course on analogue simulation principles, theory of flight & associated subjects, we spent a further 3 months studying the Javelin Flight simulator, it's circuitry, computation processes, components & equipment. In fact writing the training/Service manual for the machine.
The next 18 months were spent, 'on the shop floor' actively engaged in Test & Calibration. With another RAF technician, one simulator was taken from a part wired, assembled shell to a "flying entity".
At the end of this fascinating period I was attached to Fighter Command Headquarters at Bentley Priory. My work there was to prove an exciting & rewarding experience with staff of Eng 5 (with W/O Doug Lendy, FIt/Lt Brian Catlin & Sqn Ldr D.T.Brown). Much of my work (including making the coffee) involved research & investigation into Special Occurrence Reports & Technical Defect Reports. Later I had specific responsibility & authority for the Electrical & Instrument aspects of the fitting out of the 'New' Electronic Servicing Centres being built at Fighter Stations. An important aspect of the task was liaison with builders, manufacturers, & fitting parties & I was able to contribute to the solution of several problems. Later, on the establishment of an office specifically for the electrical & instrument aspects of the Lightning I became the assistant to Sqn Ldr John Grossman.
My next period of employment was with the R.A.F Education Branch. After an exellent [sic] 3 month course at RAF School of Education, at RAF Uxbridge on Teaching Techniques, Educational Psychology & associated studies I began an enjoyable 4 year tour teaching a variety of subjects associated with Physics & electrical technology, including Inertial Navigation. (which preceded Satellite Navigation).
At the end of this period of secondment I was employed on the design & manufacture of Training Aids for a short time, (my boss was Flt/Lt Robin Cooper), when I was selected to instruct the new courses of Ground Electrical Craft Apprentices. The syllabus for which I helped to write.
Three years later, in 1969 I commenced a 13 month tour in Bahrain. During this time Pat, my wife spent 5 weeks with me there & I managed 5 weeks leave at home. The tour was followed by 18 months with Tactical Communications Wing of 38 Group at RAF Benson. I volunteered & was accepted into the Trade Standards & Testing organization. This initially involved setting exams for tradesmen to Chief Technician level, writing & monitoring the Multiple Choice Questions, setting & vetting of practical examinations & Trade Test tasks. Finally, at RAF Brampton, I wrote a range of Skill & Knowledge Specifications for various trades. Retiring from RAF in 1975.
[page break]
Curriculum Vitae Barry Michael Smith 11/5/1929 2 of 5
Relevant Numbers; National Identity DQGU22112 Service 582378 National Insurance AB362008C
[underlined] Early Days [/underlined]
Born at 242 Bath Rd. Kettering. Lodged at Mrs Auburns house on The Green in Stotfold until our New build house by Turby Gentle was ready at 19 Coppice Mead. Later renumbered 43. Started school at St.Mary's with Pat Trafford, who lived at number 7. Our Headmistress was Mrs Bonnet, who lived in a big detached house on the corner of The Green. At 7 I transferred to Stotfold Council Boys School. At this time I made my first 'model aeroplane from three logs. Recall Mum being in tears after Mr. Chamberlain announced the war on Sept 3rd, when I came in from the garden where I had been helping to dig "an Air Raid Shelter"!
Dad had been transferred to No 6 MU at Brize Norton & we were allocated a new build house at 3 Springfield Oval, Witney into which we moved in 1940. I went to the Batt Central School placed in the A stream, in which I stayed, I suspect from parental design, rather than aptitude. I very much enjoyed woodwork which we did on a Friday afternoon & Gardening on another afternoon. With Mr. Goldsmith I first developed an interest in things 'organic' & indeed things chemical in general. Mr. Goldsmith made a significant impact on me, which coloured the whole of my life.
[underlined] Education & Qualifications [/underlined]
As one of the two students in my school to get 'homework' (another parental intervention!) I was enabled to 'just pass' the entrance exam for an RAF Apprenticeship. While awaiting the result my mother got me employed by Mr. Mullard as an optical tens maker; my first job in 1944. This turned out to be short term, until we found I had 'passed' for Halton.
Starting at Halton on Feb. 13th 1945 I JUST managed to 'pass out' in March 1948. Most of us were posted to 32 MU at RAF St. Athan for 'improver' training (which I think most of us needed.)
Under W/O " Tubby" Lockhart I passed the CCTB board to gain my AC1 & soon (one of the first in the entry) to be promoted Acting Corporal. Subsequently I obtained Forces Preliminary Examinations in 5 subjects & GCSE's in English Language, Human Biology, & Electrics/Electronics. One attempt at French, even with Madame Long's superb efforts, was a failure..
In 1951 I attended a 10 week course at RAF Stoke Heath on electro plating. Much later I discovered that all the notes we had taken long hand had been converted into Air Publication 880.
I did gain my Ordinary National Certificate in electrics & passed the first two years of the Higher National, but didn't complete it. I attended a 3 month Junior Education Officers Course at RAF Uxbridge & I later obtained a City & Guilds Technical Teachers Certificate at Aylesbury College. As part of my mustering as a Synthetic Trainer Fitter I followed a 12 month period of training/education at Redifon factory in Crawley. At RAF Upwood I attended a 3 weeks Senior Trade Management Course & a one week extra mural course at Aston University on programmed Learning & Teaching Machines.
[underlined] Royal Air Force Career [/underlined]
[underlined] 1948 -1950 [/underlined] At RAF St. Athan: Complete overhaul of "Link Trainer" Vacuum motors, UKX generators (fitted to Lancaster) E5A generators (fitted to North American Harvard), & Type 9 Control Panels.
1950 -1952 At RAF Cranwell as AC1/LAC/JT 1st & 2nd line servicing of Harvard & Prentice Promoted substantive corporal. Given choice of air or ground specialism for promotion? 'advancement’ to Corporal Technician. I chose the Ground option.
1952n - 1954 In Malta; after a week on HMS Vengeance (a light fleet carrier) on her way to Australia for sale; in charge of deck party's chipping off rust from the flight deck with club hammers (much to the distress of the sailors on the cable deck beneath). In charge of 3rd/4th line electrical servicing of MT vehicles at 137 MU RAF Safi. With 3 civilian electricians Mr. J. Cuchceri. Andrew Zarb & Tony Debattista. Who became life long friends.
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3 of 5
John Tony & Andrew were superb workers & among their commanding skills was an ability to fabricate new wiring looms for AEC's, Hillman Minx, Standard Vanguard, & even the Coles Crane. Way out of my league!
I then worked at 1351 (incidentally my HAA members number) Marine Craft Unit (MCU) at Marsa
Schlokk [sic] (O/C Fit. Lt Fisher.) Where, with 2 Airmen, we handled the electrical aspects of a High Speed Launch. Two pinnaces & two flying boat tenders. In addition there were the occasional Airborne Life-boats in for routine inspection. When I asked my 1st reporting Officer, FIt Lt Caple'(Capable Caple' a Dam Buster I believe) why my promotion to Sergeant had been refused, replied "First you always want a hair cut & second you're never here". Can't argue with that! However Flt. Lt Lindley (my 2nd reporting officer said " If I'd known you were near promotion I'd have given you a better assessment"
1954 -55 Wintered for 3 months at RAF Rufforth, Yorks (commuting to Aylesbury by my old Hillman Minx, with no heater, & a dodgy wiper). In charge of a battery charging room of the 60MU Recovery & Salvage Unit. This was an unpleasant period, but I did join the chess club & helped them win the only away match we played, in York. I stayed in a small wooden but with a central stove, quite the worst accommodation I experienced.
[underlined] 1955 -1957 [/underlined]
RAF Cottesmore, Rutland (an exchange posting hopefully closer to home) but for a few weeks only. I had time to start to play snooker & blow up a few balloons for the Corporal's club Christmas do, before we all moved to RAF Honnington [sic] where I was in charge of Battery Charging rooms, Airfield lighting, & Link Trainers. During this time I qualified as a Senior Technician & (also) subsequently accepted promotion to Sergeant. During this time I stripped, derusted & hand painted the Hillman Minx with Dulux paint. A not very successful venture as the autumn brought condensation as just one of the problems with painting in the open. On promotion to Sergeant I was immediately selected for Mess caterer duties (running the mess bar) For me, a casual drinker a daunting task. A steep teaming curve resulted in a pleasant fortnight over the Christmas period in which I managed to cover my drinks, cigarettes & a small profit with a complete bar stock check by the mess treasurer each morning. During this period a decision needed to be made on future career prospects as I approached the end of my 12 year commitment. In the event I applied to sign on & was rejected. Volunteering for Synthetic trainer duties I was informed I needed at least 3 years further service. & was accepted for an extension of 3 years!
[underlined] 1957-1959 [/underlined]
Attached to Messrs Redifon (Crawley) On a comprehensive course on the Gloucester Javelin Flight Simulator followed by an extensive period of Test & Calibration duties at the factory. We took one from a "part wired shell" on the factory floor to a "Flying Entity" with some support from Redifon Staff. During this period I was remustered as E Fitt G (Q-Syn-JF) (Qualified Synthetic Trainer Fitter- Javelin Fighter).
1959 --1961 My Simulator was postponed to be modified into a mark 9 with reheat. & I obtained an attachment to Fighter Command HQ in Eng 5 at Bentley Priory. Where my immediate boss was Fit. Lt Brian Catlin & Eng. 5 was Sqn. Ldr. DT Brown. Here, apart from becoming "the coffee boy" I was involved in Staff work on many aspects of electrical/Instrument Aircraft & Ground Equipment. This involved research investigation into Special Occurrence Reports (Accidents) & liaison with other departments. During this period I qualified as Chief Technician & was promoted. I believe I was responsible for the first use of X-rays for diagnosis of an electrical fault in the Royal Air Force. At this point Non Destructive Testing was in it's infancy. The switch fault causing “Runaway Tail Trim” in Hunters (& I believe Canberras) was identified with 3 view x-rays of the offending switch by my Dentist! The manufacturer "Rotax" was criticised. During this time I had specific individual responsibility for the establishment of Electronic Servicing Centres in Fighter Command. They were uniquely developed separately from those already set up for Bomber Command, but Bomber Command installation teams were employed.
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4 of 5
[underlined] 1959 -1961 [/underlined] continued
My duties included design, layout & provision of power supplies for instrument & electrical servicing benches & test equipment, Liaison with Builders & Manufacturers, & Fitting Parties. Later it became necessary to establish an office exclusively for the electrical/instrument aspects of the English Electric Lightning, when I was appointed office assistant to Sqn.Ldr John Grossman, when the Command started to equip with those aircraft which incorporated the developed OR 946 Project (The advanced integrated weapons system.)
[underlined] 1961-1969 [/underlined]
As the preceding attachment was coming to an end I volunteered for secondment to the Education Branch & was accepted as a Junior Education Officer. After a 3 month Instructional Technique Course at RAF School of Education at Uxbridge I taught physics, mechanics & Inertial Navigation & then, at Halton, Electrical Science to ONC standard to 3 year Aircraft Apprentices. This later included setting & marking of ONC examination question papers. This was followed, on return to basic trade, by a short period designing & building Training Aids, & then being appointed to take charge of a small group of civilian & service instructors in order to develop & establish all aspects of preparation & implementation of a syllabus for the first courses of Apprentice Ground Electrical Fitters.
[underlined] 1969 -1970 [/underlined]
Selected for an unaccompanied tour at RAF Muharraq in Bahrain, Five weeks of which my wife spent with me in Manama & five weeks I spent on leave in UK, effectively foreshortening, what was, a pleasant 13 month "unaccompanied" tour. My compatriot George Stuart, who became a W/O MT fitter ensured we always had "wheels' & I am sure ours was the only SNCO's bunk with a thick white carpet, indeed the only one with a carpet! I briefly rubbed shoulders with Sqn/Ldr John Grossman, with whom I had worked at Bentley Priory. I was able to persuade the Station Commander to allow me to build a functioning indoor .22 rifle range, which became a well supported recreational facility. One outstanding memory was one morning, cycling to work I saw a USA Globemaster standing on the pan (it had landed the previous evening) with it's battery just "hanging " on it's connecting cables, OUTSIDE the aircraft. I didn't report it as I was confident someone would notice it before it attempted to taxi for take off! A lot of leisure time was spent Sailing as crew, Swimming (I learned to swim a length underwater) Shooting & helping George with his private motor repairs. A luxury in the mess was Barracuda steak brought up from Salala [sic] by Ardet. (The Argosy Aircraft Detachment)
[underlined] 1970 -1972 [/underlined]
On returning to UK I was posted to 38 Group Signals at RAF Benson. Here I was in charge of a small group of electricians, a part of a Tactical Communications Team. This involved the maintenance & servicing of a wide range of Electrical Ground Equipment. At one point I was selected to accompany a field team to RAF Goose Bay to carry out field tests (in arctic conditions), of our communications equipment (in particular aerials). We found ourselves much better equipped for arctic conditions than the airmen who were stationed there for a whole tour of duty,
In an attempt to manipulate my career a little I volunteered for duties with the Central Trade Test Board, which was set up at RAF Halton. I went to Swanton Morley for a selection interview & was accepted. My posting to RAF Halton was soon promulgated.
[page break]
[underlined] 1972 -1975 [/underlined] 5 of 5
I became part of the Trade Standards & Testing organization of the RAF, initially at Halton & subsequently at RAF Brampton. The task included writing & assessing questions in a Multiple Choice Question Library (essentially electrical/electronic bias) & the production, setting & marking of tests for all ranks……from…..from Aircraft Apprentice to Chief Technician in the Ground Electrical Fitter trade. Subsequently, as part of a small team, at RAF Brampton, I was engaged in the assembly of Skill & Knowledge Specifications for all `Ground' Trades. These "Objective Statements of Individually Identified Tasks" were couched in specific Behavioural Terms & ranged (for me) over many ground trade boundaries, from Aircraft Engineering to Safety Equipment & from Medical & Marine craft to Musical skills.
[underlined] 1975 – 1985 [/underlined]
Civilian Career
On leaving the RAF, accepting voluntary redundancy, when my rank & trade & birthday appeared in POR'S, I was offered work with Messrs Burroughs Machines as an Electrical/mechanical Foreman at £50 per week (if I worked nights). I told the boss that I couldn't afford to pay my income tax on such a salary. After six months on enhanced unemployment benefit I was appointed, at RAF Halton as a Civilian Instructor. teaching Ground Electrical Apprentices in accordance with the new Skill & Knowledge Specifications, which I had helped to write, & had been teaching in 1969. The training of Ground Electrical Apprentices was then transferred to RAF St. Athan. I was offered the opportunity to transfer to the Aircraft side but declined. I applied for a post as lecturer at Southall College of Technology (Air Engineering Department) & was accepted. During this period I taught British Airways Aircraft & Ground Electrical & Instrument Engineer Apprentices & overseas students, School Link (Technology Acquaintance courses) as well as Libyan Airways service & civilian aircraft technicians. I wrote & taught NVQ's helped to incorporate IT into teaching profiles & examination techniques. I took early retirement on change of college status to 6th form college & the demise of the Aeronautical Engineering Department under Mr. Alf Fox, as British Airways closed their Apprentice Scheme.
General
I first took an interest in sport at RAF Cranwell in 1952 I started to train for the Station sports but was posted to RAF Safi in Malta before the event. Here I continued, won a few events & was selected for Command training. I became interested in small & (later) full bore shooting under Fl/Lt Cumnor-Price. The interest continued & I was able to take up the sport again when I was posted to RAF Honington in 1956-57 where I won several matches at the Suffolk County Shoot. In particular I picked up the Courtney-Warner Trophy (a superb rose bowl which I couldn't keep). Pat & I purchased our Whittington/Westminster chime clock in Bury-St.-Edmunds from the winnings at that meet. I shot for Bomber & Training Commands &, with Sqn/Ldr Tom Gilroy, won the RAF Bren gun run-down shoot in 1967 (he was later asked by a fighter pilot mate "Who was that old feller you won the bren gun with?") (Tom later dropped his Buccaneer in the Irish Sea & only one wheel & a bone dome were recovered) Occasionally among the Top Hundred at Bisley, Dallied in amateur dramatics. Secretary Aylesbury Gardening Society for 17 years. Life Member & Life Vice President. Vice President Aylesbury & Halton Branch RAFA. Married to Pat in 1950. Set up first home in flat by The Modern Imperial Hotel in Sliema Malta GC. We were blessed with 5 daughters & 11 Grandchildren. Pat widowed me on 8th October 1991.
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Curriculum Vitae Barry Michael Smith
Description
An account of the resource
Preface covers his training as an apprentice at RAF Halton and subsequent training as an electrical fitter at RAF St Athan. Outlines career with transition to ground engineer and then other postings. Continues with time as an instructor teaching a variety of technical subjects before a tour consisting of the design and manufacture of training aids. Outlines his final tours in Bahrain, RAF Benson and Brampton. Main CV covers early days, education and qualifications and a full description of his RAF career from apprentice at RAF Halton in 1948 until leaving the RAF in 1975. Concludes with his civilian career up to 1985.
Creator
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B M Smith
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Five page printed document
Language
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eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MSmithBM582378-170220-01
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
England--Suffolk
England--Crawley (West Sussex)
England--London
England--Middlesex
Bahrain
England--Oxfordshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Rutland
England--Sussex
Bahrain
Bahrain--Muḥarraq
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1951
1952
1957
1969
1975
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
Peter Bradbury
ground crew
RAF Benson
RAF Bentley Priory
RAF Brampton
RAF Cottesmore
RAF Cranwell
RAF Halton
RAF Honington
RAF Muharraq
RAF St Athan
RAF Uxbridge
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1631/26379/EJohnBHarringtonBR751017.1.jpg
1b2eeaada8fb221031b6f689e3a9a581
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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Harrington, Harry
Basil R Harrington
B R Harrington
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-05-03
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Harrington, BR
Description
An account of the resource
30 items. The collection concerns Basil 'Harry' Harrington (621165) and contains his log book, photographs, a memoir, documents and letters. He flew B-25 on 226 Squadron and completed 43 operations as wireless operator/air gunner between September 1943 and May 1944.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Carol Marsh and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Transcribed document
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[crest]
PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE FOR DEFENCE FOR THE ROYAL AIR FORCE
MINISTRY OF DEFENCE
MAIN BUILDING, WHITEHALL, LONDON, S.W.1
TELEPHONE 01-930 7022
17th October 1975
Dear Flight Lieutenant
The Secretary of State for Defence has it in command from Her Majesty The Queen to convey to you on leaving the Active List of the Royal Air Force her thanks for your long and valuable services.
May I take this opportunity of wishing you all good fortune in the future.
Yours sincerely
Brynmor John
(BRYNMOR JOHN)
Flight Lieutenant B. R. Harrington
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
Letter to Basil Harrington from Brynmor John (Ministry of Defence)
Description
An account of the resource
Thanks Basil Harrington on behalf of Secretary of State for Defence and Her Majesty the Queen for his long and valuable service.
Creator
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B John
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1975-10-17
Format
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One page printed letter
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
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EJohnBHarringtonBR751017
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
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--London
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1975-10-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Peter Bradbury