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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/87/2148/WoolgarR [Pesaro].jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/87/2148/AWoolgarRLA160614.2.mp3
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Title
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Woolgar, Reg
Reg Woolgar
R L A Woolgar
Jimmy Woolgar
Subject
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World War (1939-1945)
Bombing, Aerial
Description
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<a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/browse?collection=87">17 items</a>. The collection consists of an oral history <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/2148">interview</a> with air gunner Reginald Woolgar DFC (139398 Royal Air Force), correspondence to his father about him being missing in action and subsequently rescued from the sea, his <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/2205">log book</a>, <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/854">service and release book</a> and nine photographs.<br /><br /> He flew operations as an air gunner with 49 and 192 Squadrons.<br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Reg Woolgar and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle. <br /><br />This collection also contains items concerning John William Wilkinson. Additional information on John William Wilkinson is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/125319/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
Identifier
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Woolgar, R
Date
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2016-06-04
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Reg ‘Jimmy’ Woolgar was born and schooled in Hove. He began working life as a valuations assistant and was training to be a surveyor, which was interrupted when, in December 1939, he joined the RAF. Although he had aspirations to become a pilot, he trained as a wireless operator/air gunner instead. His wireless operator training was carried out at the wireless training school, RAF Yatesbury. https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/87/849/PWoolgarRLA1609.2.jpg His air gunnery training on Fairy Battle aircraft was conducted at RAF West Freugh. On 15 November 1940 he was promoted to sergeant and posted to No 10 OTU at RAF Upper Heyford. https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/87/845/PWoolgarRLA1601.2.jpg Initially flying Anson aircraft and then Hampdens with C Flight, he had his first ‘Lucky Jim’ moment, on 6 February 1941, when his Hampden aircraft was forced to crash land in a field near Cottesmore, in Lincolnshire. The aircraft was written off, but he and the pilot survived with minor injuries. At the end of operational training, instead of going directly onto operasations, he spent the next 5 months as a screen operator instructor. Eventually, on 1 September 1941, he was posted to 49 Squadron, Hampdens, at RAF Scampton https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/852 where his very first operational trip (described as a baptism of fire) was to Berlin. With headwinds going out and coming back, and nil visibility, it was likely the crew would have to bail out. Fortunately, the skipper found a break in the clouds and the aircraft landed wheels down in a field near Louth. The aircraft had to be recovered back to base, transported by road, on a low loader. On another occasion, on a mine laying operation to Oslo Fjord, his aircraft was peppered with anti-aircraft fire, it returned to base with 36 bullet holes in the fuselage and mainplane. A bullet had also passed through the upright of his gun sight while he was looking through it, whilst another tore through his flying suit. The nickname ‘Lucky Jim’ was beginning to stick.
In February 1942, on an operation to Manheim, the port engine, hit by flak, cut dead. Despite jettisoning all superfluous weight, which unfortunately included all the navigation equipment, the aircraft rapidly lost height, and the pilot ditched the aircraft in the English Channel. Whilst the crew had struggled to keep the aircraft airborne, (on a single engine), it had steered on a massive curve and unbeknown to them was headed down the English Channel, before it ditched. The crew scrambled out onto the wing and managed to inflate the dingy, then had to cut the cord attaching the dingy to the aircraft using a pair of nail scissors, moments before it sunk. In the water for hours, the crew thought they were drifting near the Yorkshire coast, but were rescued by a motor anti-submarine boat, much to their surprise, near the Isle of Wight.
Operational flying was intense, Reg would feel wound up before take-off and there was much apprehension on the way out to the target. Often, they flew through intense flak that was sometimes so close they could smell it. There was always a sense of sense of relief once they came away from the target. In between operations, each day was treated as it came along with many off-duty hours spent socialising in the local hostelries https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/853
After his first operational tour (he completed two) he was commissioned and became gunnery leader with 192 Squadron in 100 Group.
After the war ended, he signed on for an extra two years and was posted to Palestine as an air movements staff officer. Luck was again on his side when, one day, he was on his way to an Air Priorities Board Meeting at the King David Hotel when the hotel was bombed, resulting in many army and civilian casualties.
After a short tour in Kenya, as Senior Movements Staff Officer, he returned to Palestine flying with 38 Squadron until August 1947. In his flying career he amassed over 1000 flying hours. For services to his country Reg was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/858
He was released from the RAF in September 1947. Initially employed as an assistant valuations officer, he studied to become a Chartered Surveyor and secured a job as a senior valuer with the City of London. He later became the planning valuer of the city. After 14 years he was made a partner at the firm St Quintin Son and Stanley. Reg retired in 1971.
08 December 1939: Joined RAF as a wireless operator/air gunner
28 August 1940: 145, 3 Wing, RAF Yatesbury - Wireless Operator training
29 October 1940 - 15 November 1940: RAF West Freugh, No 4 Bombing and Gunnery School, flying Battle aircraft
November 1940: Promoted to Sergeant
15 November 1940 - 20 August 1941: RAF Upper Heyford, No 10 Operational Training Unit flying Anson and Hampden aircraft
02 September 1941 - 24 March 1942: RAF Scampton, 49 Squadron, flying Hampden aircraft
28 April 1942 - 24 June 1942: 1485 Target Towing and Gunnery Flight flying Whitley and Wellington aircraft
02 July 1942 – 3 July 1942: RAF Manby, Air Gunnery Instructor Course
4 July – 10 July 1942: RAF Scampton, Air Gunnery Instructor flying Manchester and Oxford aircraft
25 July 1942 – 10 August 1942: RAF Wigsley, Air Gunnery Instructor flying Lancaster aircraft
3 October – 27 October 1942: RAF Sutton Bridge flying Wellington and Hampden aircraft
28 October 1942: RAF Sutton Bridge, Gunnery Leader Course
End of 1942: Awarded RAF Commission
09 Nov 1942 – 18 March 1943: RAF Fulbeck flying Manchester aircraft
14 May 1943 – 11 June 1944: RAF Sutton Bridge flying Wellington aircraft
20 June 1944 – 27 July 1945 RAF Foulsham, 192 Squadron flying Halifax and Wellington aircraft
29 April 1946 – 30 August 1946: Palestine, Air Movements Staff Officer
01 September 1946 – 21 January 1947: Kenya, Senior Movements Staff Officer
30 January1947 – 10 June 1947: Ein Shemer, Palestine, 38 Squadron flying Lancaster aircraft
13 July 1947 139398 Flt Lt RLA Woolgar released from Service.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DE: Start the, start the interview.
RJW: On our seventieth wedding anniversary my grandson stood up and said Papa, Reg, Jimmy because they had all three, all three generations there. Sorry. Sorry.
DE: Ok. So this is an interview with Reg Jimmy Woolgar at the International Bomber Command Centre in Riseholme Lincoln. It’s for the IBCC Digital Archive. My name is Dan Ellin. It is the 14th of June 2016. Reg. Jimmy. Just for the start of this tape could you tell me about your early life and your childhood before you joined the RAF.
RJW: Well before I joined the RAF I left school in Hove and I joined the rates department as the junior clerk and it was really the office boy who made the tea but I became a valuations assistant in the valuation department there before the war and started to train as a surveyor and in 1939 on the 8th of December I went to the Queen’s Road Recruiting Office and I joined the RAF and there I was in a few days on my way to Uxbridge with about five or six other guys all from office appointments. When I joined I, like everybody else who wanted to join the RAF, I wanted to be a pilot. Well I actually went to the Queen’s Road office in September and they wrote to me and said, ‘We have an influx of pilot training but we can take you as air crew.’ I went to see them, asked what that meant. They said, ‘Well you will fly as a member of an air crew.’ I said, ‘Well can I ever become a pilot?’ ‘Oh yes,’ they said, ‘Once you’ve trained as air crew you can become a pilot.’ But of course it never happened because it just seemed to be that whenever I, wherever I went I eventually became an instructor and after being trained as instructor they didn’t really want me to be a pilot or anything else so I concentrated on doing wireless operating/air gunnery. That really is what happened to me before the war. Is there anything else you’d like to know?
DE: Well, yeah. What was, what was training like?
RJW: Pardon?
DE: What was training like?
RJW: Training. Ah. Well now we went to Uxbridge for the ab initio course, the square bashing. Famous words which you’ve used, heard before, you know the sergeant who comes in to the billet and says, ‘Anybody here play the piano?’ ‘Oh yes, I play the piano.’ ‘I play the piano.’ ‘Oh well you two go and move the piano from the officer’s mess to the sergeant’s mess.’ Having got all through all that, off we went. First of all we went to Mildenhall doing absolutely nothing because there was a bottleneck of getting to the wireless training school so we spent about three or four weeks at Mildenhall doing guard duty. Sometimes going in the cookhouse even and then we went to a station called North Coates Fitties on the east coast and we, we mainly did guard duty there. We were, it was a fighter squadron and we were sent out to guard the beacons around, around the runway, all that sort of thing. Waste of time but never mind. That took us until the early part of 1940 and then we were posted down to Yatesbury, wireless training course. I think that took, I can’t be absolutely certain, the dates are in my logbook but I think it must have taken us until about April, oh, yes, it took us ‘till about April and then we went to West Freugh on the east coast er west coast of Scotland for gunnery training and low and behold we all became sergeants. I can always remember the advice given to us by a warrant officer, the peacetime warrant officers and people of that ilk they did some, a little bit resent that air crew would automatically become sergeants but they did try to knock us into shape and I remember we had a cockney warrant, station warrant officer who tried to guide us on etiquette in the sergeant’s mess and he said, ‘Ah, er, you will be at liberty to invite ladies to a mess dance but make sure you invite ladies [emphasise] and not ladies.’ And he said, ‘Now you’ve got three stripes, the girls will be chasing you but just be careful who you pick if you marry them,’ and he gave jolly good advice, he said, ‘Take a good look at her mother because what she’s going to be like in twenty to thirty years’ time.’ Anyway, off we went. They sent us on leave and said that we would be, receive instructions for posting and we did. We, we, a new, another bottleneck for OTU so in the meantime we went to Andover. Now, Andover, I was there at the time of Dunkirk. I remember that because going into the local town, cinema and that sort of thing the local army chaps that were coming back from Dunkirk were a bit fed up with the RAF because they hadn’t seen any Spitfires so it wasn’t a very comfortable time but from there we went to OTU. Now that was number 10 OTU at Heyford, Upper Heyford. We had our first real flights. Started off in Ansons, staff pilot taking a delight in trying to do aerobatics in an Anson to see how many guys they could make sick but anyway [laughs] we, we were supposed to crew up but it was a bit of a haphazard thing. You found yourself in one crew one week and another crew the next week. I had my very first Jimmy escape there. Um, it had been snowing and we were grounded and then suddenly there was a break and we were sent off and I was sent off with a New Zealand pilot, Sandy somebody. I can’t remember, and he was a bit dodgy. Anyway, we took off and the cloud base came down, fog or, no, cloud base and I couldn’t get a peep out of the wireless set, I couldn’t get a DCM back to base so we stooged around for a bit and he said over the intercom, ‘Jimmy I’m going to land in a field.’ ‘Oh ok.’ I decided, I came out of the rear upper turret and I crawled back and I sat up behind him. He came down to a field, through a break heading for some trees I thought but he put his wheels down and of course it was a ploughed field underneath the snow. He came in very fast and we went, tipped right over, right over. At the very last moment apparently, I never remember doing this, I leaned over his shoulder and knocked his, the quick release of his harness and he flew out of the cockpit and down. He hit the ground, he broke a rib I think, and the aircraft went over and I shot back, right back to the back bulkhead and I had a bit of a head wound but it wasn’t very much and the aircraft was a right off. Right. It didn’t catch fire thank God. We were called away. When we had the inquest with the CO I got a right rollicking 'cause I couldn’t get through to base on the radio but I couldn’t get anything out of it but I even got a bigger one for releasing his harness and they said, ‘That was, you should never have done that but you saved his life.’ They said that, ‘Had you not done that he would have broken his, he would probably, he probably would have broken his neck or broken his back.’ So it was a good thing that it happened but it shouldn’t have done [laughs]. I had another, I was in another crash there where we ran up behind another aircraft and damaged it and injured the rear gunner but I was at the far end so I was ok. But this seemed to happen to me for some reason or other and I don’t know why, at the end of the course instead of going off on ops with a crew I was what they called screened. I was a screen operator instructor and I flew in Hampdens and Ansons with crews coming through. Just looking after them actually. Making sure that the wireless operators did what they should do or got through if they couldn’t and that sort of thing. I was there for oh far too long. I didn’t arrive on to the squadron, 49 Squadron, until the 1st of September 1941. My very first trip was to Berlin. The very experienced pilot, Pilot Officer Falconer, who was quite elderly, he was twenty six so we called him uncle [laughs]. He eventually, he became a wing commander, he commanded a squadron but he was killed unfortunately. Very nice guy. Anyway, after we went to Berlin and on that occasion it was quite a famous one. Head wind going out, head wind coming back. Ten tenths cloud and nil visibility coming in. Being given the order to go on to 090 and bail out so we got there and Uncle Falconer said to the crew, ‘We may have to bail out chaps.’ So then squeaky voiced me from the back said, ‘Oh skipper, I’ve pulled my chute.’ Actually I’d pulled it on the way out and I was more scared of having a DCO that is, Duty Not Carried Out, DNCO and being responsible for returning than actually taking my chance with the chute so I kept mum, I didn’t say anything. And when I told him I can’t actually repeat for the tape exactly what he said but it wasn’t very polite and I don’t blame him. In actual fact he found a break in the, in the overcast and he landed with wheels down in a field at a place called Withcall. Withcall near Louth and um, er, near Melton Mowbray. It was under some high tension cables and it was so tight they couldn’t fly the aircraft out. They took the wings off and put it on a loader to get it back. That was my first trip. Baptism of fire. Every trip, nearly every trip has an anecdote but the ones that stand out are, we went up to Inverness or somewhere. I can’t remember. It’s in the logbook. Inverness or somewhere like that to do a trip to Oslo Fjord laying mines, being told, ‘Chaps pick the right fjord because if you don’t you’ll come up against a blank face of rock and you won’t be able to turn around.’ Anyway, we did. It was almost daylight all the time. Up we went, down the fjord, laid our mine. Coming back, on the headland, as we passed across the headland em we were fired on. Some light tracer stuff came up. Very small. I said, I was at the rear of course as the wireless op. I said, ‘Oh, let’s go around and shoot them up because there’s other guys behind us.’ And the skipper said, ‘That’s a good idea.’ So we circled around, we came back and all hell let loose. They peppered us. We had thirty six holes on our starboard side wing, starboard fuselage mainplane but it didn’t affect the aircraft. I think the flak was a little bit dodgy but anyway came back all right. As I got out of the aircraft the ground crew came and they said, ‘Hey sarge,’ they said to me, ‘Have you seen your cockpit?’ I said, ‘No, what’s wrong?’ ‘It’s got bullet holes in it.’ ‘It’s got bullet holes in it?’ They said, ‘Yeah.’ And they said, ‘Look your flying suit’s all torn’. And there’s a bullet hole at the back of me and then you know after I’d been sent to recover [laughs]. They next came to me and said, ‘You’re never going to believe this.’ The upright of the gun sight on my VGO twin guns had a bullet hole through it like that. The armourer gave it to me. I had it for many, many, many years. Unfortunately, it was lost but it was, I was proud to be able to show a bullet came out [?] as I was looking through it [laughs] so you know why the name lucky Jim sticks doesn’t it?
DE: Yeah. Definitely yeah.
RJW: Well that was then. We were, er, we tasted one of the first delights of the master searchlight. They introduced a blue central searchlight beam, radar controlled I think and all the other beams came on it and we were over Hamburg and we caught that and we had a hell of a pasting with the flak but old Allsebrook was very good and he got us out of that. We had one or two other things but like everybody else did. You never got, you couldn’t get through trips without having some sort of trouble sort of thing.
DE: Sure, sure.
RJW: Anyway, my last, no, next to last trip of course was by ditching which I’ve written about. Would you like me to — ?
DE: If you could talk about that for the tape that would be wonderful as well. Yes please.
RJW: Oh yes.
DE: Yeah.
RJW: Well here goes. We took off about, I don’t know when it was. We were on Hampden G for George A397. We em, we were going to Mannheim. I think it was our twenty third trip and by this time we were a bit blasé. We thought going to be a piece of cake this. Mannheim. Yeah. That’s alright. So we weren’t really worried about it. The trip out was perfectly alright, over the target there was some flak but it wasn’t heavy flak, it wasn’t very much and we didn’t think that we’d caught any but just as we left the target our port engine cut dead and Ralph wasn’t able to do the relevant, it just stuck there. So we started to lose height. We lost height, we were somewhere about seventeen, eighteen thousand feet and we came down to four thousand eventually. In the process of doing that we got rid of all the heavy stuff we could think of. The guns. The bombsight. Unfortunately, Bob, the navigator, Bob Stanbridge stuck all his nav gear into parachute, one of the parachute bags that he used to take it out there, opened the doors in the navigator’s position, they swing inwards and to get rid of the bomb sight and the nav bag went out as well so we didn’t have any —. Anyway, off we went. Ralph was getting cramp in his leg holding the opposite rudder because of the loss of the port engine. Bob tried to tie the rudder pedal back with a scarf but couldn’t. Then I had a go. That was the scariest moment of all 'cause I had to unplug my intercom and had to crawl underneath in the dark but I did — I did actually manage to tie it up and that lasted for a while. I sent a plain language message out while we were still over France to say that we’d lost our port engine and may have to bail out, and although I was never a good wireless operator and I hated being a wireless operator, that message got through [laughs]. Anyway, eventually the fuel was down to zero and Ralph said, ‘Well, we’re over the sea, we’re going to ditch.’ So by this time of course we’d got all the hatches open because we’d been ready to bail out so all the sea came in. Anyway, he made — he made a good landing on top of the fog to begin with [laughs] but after that he made a jolly good landing and down we went. We scrambled out on to the wing, on to the port wing. The dinghy was supposed to burst out of the engine nacelle because of an immersion plug but of course it didn’t but Bob knew the procedure and with the heel of his flying boot he dug into the port engine nacelle and pulled the plug and up came the dinghy and started to inflate. It didn’t fully inflate but it started to inflate and by this time the four of us were standing on the, on the wing. All our ankles were awash in water. We then saw that the dinghy was attached by a cord disappearing into the engine nacelle and one of us said, ‘Well if the immersion plug didn’t work this won’t work, we’ll be pulled down,’ and Ralph said, I don’t know whether he said, ‘Just a minute chaps,’ but I think he might have done. He undid his flying jacket, went into his tunic pocket, pulled out a little tiny leather case out of which he took a pair of folding nail scissors, he then — he cut the cord, he did the scissors up, put them back in the case, back in to his pocket and he stepped into the dinghy with the rest of us. As we shoved off dear old G for George went down under the waves and there we were. We had to pump the dinghy up with the bellows because it wasn’t fully inflated but we managed alright. We were absolutely enhanced with the rations that were actually sealed in the bottom because there was a notice on it that said “Only to be opened in the presence of an officer” [laughs] so we said, ‘Well good for you Ralph.’ He was a pilot officer. And come daylight, in the far distance we did just spot what we thought were high tension pylons and some cliffs and we thought, well we were heading for Scampton of course, we thought oh well perhaps we’d drifted too far north, over-compensated and we were off Yorkshire, Whitby or somewhere like that. Anyway, not long after that that disappeared, we drifted around. We used the coloured dye, fluorescent dye in to the sea to identify ourselves and paddled and paddled around and eventually came back and found we were at the same spot again. The sun came out in the morning. It was very cold and very choppy. It was the 14th / 15th of February. It was cold. Anyway, we suddenly saw a school of porpoise and that was light relief until one of the crew said, ‘Yeah it’s all very well but what happens if one of these guys comes up underneath the dinghy?’ he said. Furious paddling away. We weren’t really gloomy, I don’t know why. I seem to think oh yeah, well we may get picked up but for no particular reason. We did see an aircraft which we thought was a Beaufighter in the distance but it didn’t see us. We sent the flares up but it didn’t do any good and then quite late in the afternoon we heard an aircraft engine and out came a Walrus. Circled round, waggled it’s wings, stayed with us, only a short time and off it went and it was almost two hours later when a motor anti-submarine boat pulled up and dragged us aboard. Eh, first question was, ‘Where are we?’ And somebody said, ‘We’re off St Catherine’s Point.’ ‘Oh, St Catherine’s Point. Where’s that?’ ‘The Isle of Wight.’ [laughs] And instead of being off Yorkshire we’d taken a huge curve and we’d been flying down the channel so luckily our fuel had run out when it did and we didn’t go too far out but the other thing was that the navy crew told us, ‘You’re dead lucky because you’re near a minefield. If you’d been in a minefield we wouldn’t have come out.’ So it was jolly good. We um, we survived all that, all three of us. Jack had frostbite. I remember cuddling his feet under my jacket actually ‘cause he was very cold. He got frostbite because he’d been sitting in the tin and he’d had the hatch open all the way but that was the only casualty that we had but it was quite a week because if I remember rightly at the beginning of the week we went to Essen, which was never much of a cup of tea that place, it was always pretty hot. And in the middle of the week we went on the Channel Dash. The Channel Dash was when the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau left Brest and that was quite curious because we’d been standing by for several days and we’d been given a sector. Our sector was off somewhere near Le Havre. If they ever got that far we were told that we would have to go out. On this particular morning after a while on standby we were stood down from the Channel Dash and the weather wasn’t very good but our bomb load was changed from armour piercing to GP bombs and we were sent off on a night flying test possibly for ops that night. We were recalled while we were actually in the air and sent off but not to Le Havre but off the coast of Holland because the ships had gone that far and been undetected and off we went. We didn’t see the ships but we saw, we think, an armed merchantman or something or other which was firing away but we didn’t really get near. The weather was so bad we really couldn’t see. What we did see, we saw a Wellington and we didn’t know that Wellingtons were on the trip but later we discovered that there was an armed, an unmarked Wellington which the Germans had captured and they were using it as an escort for the ships and it was coming in and some crews actually did encounter it firing you know. We only just saw it. We didn’t get through [?]. Anyway, it was uneventful for us in actual fact. I think we lost four crews out of the twelve that were sent up. I think I’m right about that but it’s in our journal. One more trip we did together as a crew and then later I’ll talk, I’ll talk about my rear gunner.
DE: Ok, yeah, yeah.
RJW: Our pilot, J F Allsebrook was posted away, the crew was split up. I think Bob Stanbridge was also posted but myself and Jack Wilkinson, Jack Wilkinson, he was the rear gunner we were left hanging around to be crewed up as wanted. Anyway, we started to crew up with Reg Worthy. A very competent pilot and we were very happy with that and in March we were crewed to go with him on ops. Unfortunately I had contracted sinusitis. Oh I remember. I’ll talk about that later, I’d contracted sinusitis and at times I got it very badly. It was very painful so I went up in the morning to sick call [?] — sick bay to try to get some inhalations to help me and they tested me and grounded me. They said, ‘You’re not flying like that. You won’t be able to hear anyway.’ [laughs] I protested a lot because I wanted to do the trip but no, no and when I broke the news to Jack he was extremely despondent. He didn’t want to go. He wanted to opt out. ‘I don’t want to go without you Jimmy because you’re lucky.’ I persuaded him that he’d be alright and, because I was replaced by McGrenery [?] who was a very competent WOP/AG who’d flown with me on a number of occasion and he was a hell of a nice guy. Sadly, the trip was to Essen and they were caught by an ace night fighter pilot called Reinhold Knacke on the way back, off the coast of Holland, just on the border and they were shot down. All killed. Reg Worthy and McGrenery were buried in Holland and Jack was washed up off the coast of Denmark. It’s quite amazing actually. And he’s buried in Stavanger. So there’s sad [?]. I had this sinus trouble. It was because much earlier on, on a trip to Brest we were in the target area and we lost oxygen and when you lose oxygen you dive down so we did a very steep dive very quickly and apparently my left frontal sinus became perforated. This bedevilled me a lot. In fact the problem was if you went through the medics with it too much you got yourself grounded and of course you lost your rank as a sergeant, you lost everything. So you didn’t sing too much about it. I remember that after the, after ops I was posted to a couple of training units. One at Wigsley. I’ve forgotten the name of the other just for the moment but it’s in my logbook, anyway, not far out of Lincoln and I can remember later on my wife came out to live in Lincoln. I remember we sought a doctor up in Lincoln in private practice to try and get some treatment for this sinusitis and you’re leaping right now to the end of the war. At the end of the war I was posted to air ministry, movement’s branch and I still had sinus problems and so I thought I’d seek the advice of the air ministry doctor. I got a good guy there. His advice was, ‘Well we can drill, we can drill a hole through the roof of your mouth for drainage but I don’t advise it. It may not be successful but if you had a couple of years in a warm dry climate that would do you good,’ and as a result of that I had a medical post for an extended period of two year service and I went, of all places, to Palestine of course but after that to Kenya but I’ll talk about that later on.
DE: Sure, yeah.
RJW: Anyway, coming back to 1942, during the ops period the intruders started following aircraft coming in and landing and so air crew were billeted out. We were sent to small holdings. I was sent to a small holding, an absolutely delightful elderly couple who had strawberry fields there. Very nice indeed. I spent one night there. I told them, ‘Take the payment but I’m not going to be here. If anybody wants to know, oh yes I’m here but I’ve gone to town.’ And with a friend of mine, Mick Hamnett from 83 Squadron, we found a couple of rooms in the City of Lincoln pub in, in the centre of Lincoln and whenever possible we actually spent the night there. It was quite a pub. It was run by a lady by the name of Dorothy Scott whose husband, Lionel I think his name was, was a nav, was away in the RAF as a navigator. Anyway, it was an air crew haunt. At the back of the pub she had converted what had been a store room into a very cosy bar and that was where air crew from various squadrons accumulated. In fact at the end of 1942, towards the end of 1942 my wife came up and we, we lived there, lived out there. Unofficially of course. And one night while we were out there was an incendiary raid on Lincoln, huge chandelier flares and the City of Lincoln was hit with a fire bomb, particularly our bedroom but the local fire brigade did far more damage with their water then the actual firebomb. Anyway, coming back to the ops period, I’m sure that you’ve heard all these stories before but of course we were bounded with rumours and things like that. The first thing we heard was that oh the vicar of Scampton did a hasty retreat when war started because he was a Nazi spy [laughs]. The other story was of the policeman who was standing at the erm, at the Stonebow one evening and the aircraft were taking off, going off and he made a remark to a passer-by, ‘It’s going to be pretty hot in Berlin tonight.’ It so happened that they were going to Berlin and he was removed. But the other story, well whether that was true or not I don’t know but the other tale which is perfectly true. There was a hotel by the Stonebow called the Saracen’s Head which we called the Snake Pit for some reason. Very good. Good food. You could get a steak there. Very nice. There was a barmaid there by the name of Mary. She was a New Zealander and she was older than any of us. She was probably late thirties, early forties. She was a charming lady and she had an amazing memory and she was our local post box because we’d been to OTUs either to Upper Heyford or Cottesmore. We’d got pals on that and then we were posted to squadrons around, different squadrons around Lincoln and you wanted to know how your pals got on and you could, you could tell her. She knew, you know, you know that George Smith or somebody would say, ‘Did he get back? He was on 44 on Waddington.’ ‘Oh yes he’s alright.’ All this sort of thing you see and the story goes and I think this is in one of Gibson’s books that at the time of the 617 training at Scampton Mary was lifted out of the bar and sent on some paid leave down at Devon. I don’t know whether you’ve heard that story before. Yes. It’s written down somewhere but I can tell you that that wasn’t a rumour. That was true. The other delightful story is really good. In those days there was a lady entertainer by the name of Phyllis Dixie. She was a fan dancer. Probably the first stripper in England right, and she was performing at the Theatre Royal. Some lads, some air gunners got hold of a twelve volt acc and an aldis lamp, got themselves up into the Gods. The end of the act was the dear lady removed her fans strategically as the curtains closed and they shone the aldis lamp [laughs] which I gather was true. Anyway, going on from Scampton and Lincoln I was posted, I was sent on first of all air gunner instructor’s course at Manby. Came back from there and instructed at Wigsley and then sent to Sutton Bridge on a gunnery leader’s course. I did rather well on the course simply because I think I was able to drink as much beer as the course instructor [laughs] and we, I got an, I got an A which meant I was a gunnery leader A and when I came back to base the gunnery leader said, ‘Oh you can’t be a, you can’t be a gunnery leader A, you can’t be a gunnery leader as a sergeant. You’d better apply for a commission. Fill these forms in.’ So, this is true. It was incredible. I filled the forms in and I said something about, ‘Oh I can’t remember,’ and he said, ‘Oh don’t worry about it they don’t check anything,’ he said, you know, I thought this was a bit casual. Anyway, anyway I did remember what was necessary and my interview, however I was, I had a sort of an office, well not really an office, a place, kept stores [?] and things like that where I operated from. Schedules of flying and things like that looking after air gunners as an instructor and one day a little guy came in, in to my office with some papers and in some flying overalls and one of the epaulettes was flying down like that so I didn’t know what he was actually and he started asking me questions about the, about the commission you know like, ‘What’s your father do?’ And that sort of question, you know. Anyway I suddenly looked at his other shoulder and he was a wing commander and it was the famous Gus Walker and this was before he lost his arm. I was on the station when some incendiary bombs were, no photoflashes or something, something went wrong with an aircraft out in dispersal and he rushed out from flying control in a van to try and get the crew out and the bombs went up and he lost his arm. He was a hell of a nice guy. So informal it wasn’t true. I think he became an air marshal, air chief marshal or something. A big rugby referee. And I think that’s about all I can think of that of that era but then when I went to, when I, yes when I was commissioned, commissioned, gosh when was it? Probably the end of ‘42 beginning of ’43, almost immediately I was sent back to Sutton Bridge as an instructor instructing gunnery leaders and then we stayed there. Oh well that was quite good. We had a number of Polish pilots who were really very good pilots and we did a lot of low level flying quite illegally. There was one stretch where a road and the canal and a railway was spanned by high tension cables and if you felt like it they’d fly underneath them if they could and pray they weren’t found out. But these guys were really, really low level and we used to, we had a front, there was a guy in the front, we were flying Wellingtons mainly, sometimes Hampdens but mainly Wellingtons and put a guy in the front turret and aim for a group of trees you know [laughs]. Dear me. Those were the days. And then we moved station from there up to Catfoss and there when I was at Catfoss my pilot, old pilot Ralph Allsebrook came back, landed one day and said, ‘Jimmy, I’ve joined 617 Squadron. It’s a special duties squadron.’ We didn’t know, I didn’t know anything about the, we didn’t know about, it was before the dam raids but we didn’t know what they were doing but he said, ‘I’d like you to be in the crew.’ So I said, ‘Yes. Good. Fine.’ I was a flying officer by that time and so I said, ‘How do you go about it?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Leave it to me, I’ll push the buttons and see the CO.’ Well he did but they were adamant that I wouldn’t go. He said, ‘No, you can’t go. You’re an instructor, a trained instructor here. We want you as an instructor and,’ they said, ‘In any case Trevor Roper is the gunnery leader of 49 Squadron. They don’t need two gunnery leaders. So I didn’t go. Ralph wasn’t on the dam raid because I don’t think he was finished training, whatever it was but he wasn’t on it but much later on he was on another raid, I think it was the Kiel Canal and many of the aircraft were lost including him. It was bad weather I think mainly. So I was lucky again, I didn’t join them. But I did get a bit fed up with not, not being allowed to go back on ops and we had a guy, one of our instructor’s, fellow instructors, a chap called Griffiths I remember, he went to, left us and went to Bomber Command headquarters I think it was. Either to Group, no, it was Bomber Command headquarters that’s right and he came back, he visited the squadron one day and I said, you know, ‘Could you get me a squadron?’ You know. And he said, ‘You want to do a second tour Jimmy?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I wouldn’t mind doing a second tour.’ He said, ‘Yeah, leave it with me.’ So I got posted to 192 Squadron at Foulsham. I got, I got a rollicking from the CO at the, at Catfoss because of the gunnery wing, CO of the gunnery wing. He eventually found out that I’d, I’d wangled it through Griffiths you see but anyway I went. I arrived on the squadron which was fairly newly formed. It had been a flight before. I can’t, off the back of my head I can’t tell you the details of that but it was a flight and it had become a special duty squadron. It was doing radar investigation. We carried special operators. They were civilians dressed in RAF uniform just in case they were prisoners of war and at the same time David Donaldson joined the squadron. A hell of a nice guy. And it was a very happy squadron. We shared it with, I can’t remember the actual number of the squadron, six something, six hundred and something Australian squadron shared the station with us at Foulsham. A bit primitive but it was alright and I had about fifty gunners. We had two flights of Halifax 3s and a flight of Wellingtons and we also had some Mosquitos and a couple of Lightnings and we would fly with main force, carrying bombs of course. Not all the time but we did carry bombs and we were endeavouring, or the special duties operators were endeavouring to discover radar frequencies and wireless frequencies on which the enemy were operating. Early warning systems and the fighter aircraft they were using and that sort of thing. It was quite interesting. All highly secretive. They had a lot of gear set up in the centre of the fuselage and it was all screened off with canvas. You couldn’t get at it and you couldn’t get any gen out of them about what happened, but it was pretty good. We initially we flew as a crew. The leaders David Donaldson, Roy Kendrick the navigation leader, Churchill, he told me his name was Churchill actually, he was the signals leader I remember that. Anyway, and Hank Cooper who was the head of the special, the special duties guys and anyway, and myself as gunnery leader and 100 Group put a stop to that because they decided that if they lost the aircraft they lost all the leaders so we were “invited”, inverted commas to occasionally fly with a crew that might have been a bit dodgy to try and put a finger on if there was a weakness. So from flying with the very best pilot on the squadron suddenly found yourselves with the worst one but it didn’t amount to anything. It was ok. I didn’t have any scary times. My logbook shows the trips I took. We did the normal things with the main force. I didn’t do any Berlin ones. A bit late in the day for that I think but they were the ordinary trips that everybody else was doing. Oh well, there were occasions. We did stooge off from main stream. I think the theory, the theory was that if, they didn’t mind if we attracted the odd fighter so they could find out what they were operating on. Now look, here’s is a really good story. We had on the squadron a pilot by the name of H Preston [?] who was quite a joker. I flew with him on a trip and we got diverted on one occasion to a station down in 3 Group. Stirlings I think. And we had the usual eggs and bacon breakfast and all that sort of thing and we wanted to get back to base in the very early morning and when we got out to the aircraft we had quite a lot of air crew on the station walking around it because we had antennae sticking out all over the place, you see. So Hayter-Preston was asked about a particular thing that was coming out of the back and he said, ‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘That’s marmalade.’ They said, ‘What?’ ‘Well haven’t you got that? They said, ‘No, he said, ‘What does it do?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘If a fighter comes up behind you and that’s turned on, it stops their engine.’ ‘Oh,’ he said. Anyway, off we went back to base and went through briefing and about half way through the morning a loud shout from the CO’s office, ‘Hayter-Preston’s crew to my office immediately.’ Off we trot to his office. David Donaldson said, ‘HP, what’s all this thing you’ve been talking about down at,’ wherever we were.’ ‘I don’t know sir.’ He said, ‘I’ve had Group on to me.’ He said, ‘Crews down there are on to their CO, been on to their Group, been on to 100 Group.’ He said, ‘They might have even got the Bomber Command, I don’t know, but they all want marmalade.’ See. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I was pulling their leg.’ [laughter] Anyway, we walked out of the CO’s office, walking off. David sticks his head out of the door, ‘HP. Why marmalade?’ He said, ‘Well I thought I’d be topical because we’ve been doing jamming.’ [laughs] You know.
DE: Of course. Yeah.
RJW: I did find, I must say I found my second tour very much easier than my first tour. Mind you I was privileged I suppose, in actual fact. I recognise that but it was a time when all the heavies were going. The raids were very heavy indeed but I didn’t, I didn’t seem to run into any trouble at all. Anyway, we were, we were flying on the very last trip. I flew on the very last trip to a place called Flensburg which was very near to the something lunars, is it? I can’t remember the name. The place where the armistice was signed on the Danish peninsula on the night before. The idea was to make sure they signed it. We were one of the last aircraft to return and there’s always been a bit of a fight as to who was the last aircraft over the target in the war. All I can say we might have been one of them. [laughs] Anyway, war ended and we started having, we started taking station personnel on tours. Flying, flying over the cities and back again. We did two or three trips. We landed over there at some of the stations. Went to Northern Germany and I don’t know, somewhere in Denmark I think in actual fact. We were taking people and coming back. Anyway, by about the middle of, probably a bit later then by the middle ‘45, July maybe, something. I don’t know. We were being posted to various parts and we were asked what would we to do. Anything we’d particularly to do before we were demobbed and so I said I’d like to be a, what do they call them, Queen’s courier, you know, King’s courier. That’s right. Thought that would be interesting. No. No. Can’t do that. Eventually I got sent to Air Ministry in High Holborn in the movements branch. It was at the time when there was some big food crisis going on and lots of VIPs were going backwards and forwards to America and we were finding aircraft from Blackbushe to get there. We were dodging around all over the place setting up aircraft, setting up things. Anyway we, I was there for a while and I was conscious of the fact that my sinus was still with me so I thought I’d take the opportunity to get the, unless I’ve already said this.
DE: Well you said you’d come back to it so, yeah.
RJW: Oh I see. I’d take the opportunity to get the air ministry doctor people to say what I could do about it and one of them suggested that they could drill a hole through the roof of the mouth which was painful and not necessarily successful and he did suggest a warm dry climate would probably heal the perforation. Anyway, eventually I signed on for an extra two years and I was posted overseas. Of all places my initial posting was to Palestine. There I was, there I was air movement’s staff officer, they called me and I was secretary and chairman of the air priorities board. Because there was a lack of civilian passenger aircraft we were providing passages through UK for the army, navy, air force and the other government people. The Air Priorities Board would look at applications and give them the priorities as they needed them and that was the job that I was doing. I remember I was, we had our officer’s mess and the hospital overlooking the mass cityscape [?]. The whole city was out of bounds to us which meant of course we went there [laughs]. At various times we had to be armed and it was quite, quite a time in actual fact but the one big thing that did happen we had a number of atrocities by the Stern gang and the Ernham vi [?] Lohamei. They were trying to get rid of the British. Didn’t seem to be any trouble between the Arabs and the Jews. It was the Jews and ourselves and they were pretty aggressive. Anyway, on one, we had our Air Priorities Board at army headquarters which was in the King David Hotel and one day I was being driven up there to an Air Priorities Board meeting and there was a loud bang and big piles of smoke went up and my driver said, ‘I think we’ll turn back sir.’ I said, ‘Yes, I think we will.’ And of course it was the King David Hotel that was bombed, sent up and a lot of army people were killed, and civilian people. Great tragedy actually because so I understand and read that the Jewish guys that did it they stuck bombs in milk churns and they actually ‘phoned and told them that there was bombs there but they said ha ha you know, took no notice of it. Very bad. Anyway, after a while I angled for a posting to Kenya. My brother was there. What had happened to him was he had joined the war, joined the RAF before the war and he was a fitter 2E. He’d been to St Athan’s and he, early in the war he was posted to the Far East. The ship was torpedoed off Mombasa and he got ashore and he was sent to Eastleigh there and he stayed there throughout the war. He married there, English girl there and so he was there and after the war he joined an aircraft company. East African Airways I think but he was a, he became a senior engineer, became chief engineer of a Safari Airways eventually. So I angled for a posting there and I got it. They called me SMSO Senior Movement Staff Officer. I knew nothing about, I knew about air movements, I knew nothing about road and rail. I signed an awful lot of documents [laughs] but I, you know, had no training for it at all. It was, it was a very nice posting. A very easy posting. Originally, we were billeted out in hotels but there was a housing shortage there and all that sort of thing and they thought as an example we ought to have an officer’s mess so an older hotel we took over we used it as headquarters and we had an officer’s mess set up and I can remember we had a very easy going AOC who was a non-flyer. Actually a peacetime guy but a nice guy, very easy going and he never seemed, never seemed to send for you in his office, he came to see you and one day he came to my office and he said, ‘Woolgar I’ve a job for you.’ ‘Yes sir.’ ‘I’m going to make you the mess secretary.’ I thought, ‘Well yes sir but you see I do have to go to Cairo once a month for conferences, air conferences and I also have to visit stations around, you know, Aden, Eritrea and places like that periodically. I am away from base quite a bit.’ ‘Oh, oh alright, I’ll think about it.’ So comes back the next day and he said, ‘Jerry Dawkins is mad with you, Woolgar.’ I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Cause I’ve made him the secretary of the mess,’ you see, ‘But I’m going to make you the PMC.’ So I was the president of the mess committee and I knew nothing. I really didn’t know anything, you know. There was much older people than me, senior to me to do it but anyway they all dodged it and I couldn’t dodge it the truth was but it was interesting because it was in the days they did a lot of entertaining and this AOC he entertained the army guy, the naval guy and on one occasion the Aga Khan. I met, I met a lot of people. I don’t know whether I should put this on the tape but Mrs AOC was a pain in the head.
DE: Right.
RJW: The flowers were never right, or she sat in a draught, or the meat was tough, ‘Flight Lieutenant I didn’t like –’ [laughs].
DE: Oh dear. Oh dear.
RJW: But you know, you know I was only in my, I was in my twenties, middle twenties and I always thought it was good because it taught me a lot. It gave me experience which I never would have had otherwise. Anyway, eventually I went to Ein Shemer I thought I’d like to do a bit more flying. I went up to Ein Shemer in Palestine to join number 38 Squadron. I was the gunnery leader come armament officer, come radar oh everything. Everybody was leaving and they said, ‘You can do this.’ ‘You can do that.’ And a bit of a mixture I think but the main role of the squadron was finding illegal immigrant ships. Illegal ships were probably like what’s happening now but these ships were coming with Jewish people from the Balkans you know and from the middle of Europe and they were coming in to land in Palestine because the intake was on quotas and the idea was that 38 Squadron should locate them by radar on patrols and then get the navy to intercept them and when we did find them the navy used to miss them and they landed and the army picked them up. They put them in detention centres, that sort of thing, for a while but that is, that is what we were doing and I was there until about August, August 1947 and then I came home. Do you want to hear what happened to me after that?
DE: Yes, please, yeah, yeah.
RJW: Well I came back to the Hove Corporation. They’d promoted me to become the assistant valuation officer. I wasn’t qualified. Two hundred and fifty pounds a year. God. [laughs] Salary. And I realised I had to become qualified quickly. There were two exams. The Chartered, Chartered Auctioneers and Estates Agent’s Institute and the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, so I got my head down and fortunately both organisations and others I believe, they introduced special war service conditions. I was able to take the direct final which was good. It was a three year course but I did it in eighteen months. Ah yes. I put my family, my wife, my daughter through hell because we didn’t do, I didn’t go out, I didn’t do anything. I just studied because I realised that I wouldn’t get anywhere unless I did and having passed and become a chartered surveyor I marched off the council and said ah you know and they said, ‘Ah well yes, we don’t think you’ll be any more service to us as a chartered surveyor than you were before Mr Woolgar.’ Twenty five pounds a year increase in your salary and we’ll give you a grant of twenty five pounds towards the cost of your studies. Well that prompted me to search for another job and I was very fortunate. I went to, I secured the job of the senior, a senior valuer in the city planning department of the City of London. So from knocking the hell out of Germany I came back to rebuilding the fire bombed city which was very, very interesting. It was a fantastic job in actual fact. I dealt with Barbican, St Paul’s area, all the war damaged areas. I was fourteen years there. I — I eventually I was deputy and the boss left and I got his job. For five years I was the planning valuer of the city and it was really good but that’s a whole book.
DE: Yeah, I can imagine.
RJW: About what happened. Various things, lots of public enquiries, you had some very famous people of course and QC’s and things like that and we had a New Zealander who was the city planning officer called Meland[?] and he was a very informal guy. Not a bit like the city fathers were and his famous words were, he was under cross examination by a QC at a public enquiry and he was asked why it was necessary to compulsorily acquire a group of buildings to put a road through and he said, ‘Well you see the bombs didn’t always drop in the right places.’ [laughs] You know. Anyway, after, after fourteen years I was poached by a firm by the name of St Quintin Son and Stanley to become a partner there and to be responsible for all their planning work and that was very good, very interesting because I, having negotiated with the partners as the valuer for the city I was now negotiating with my deputy who had come up on the opposite side. He often said, ‘Yeah but Jimmy you said, so and so'. I said 'Oh well yeah' [laughs]. But that was, I’ve had a very, very interesting life really. The city was full of tradition. Full of everything. That’s a whole book really. Having dealt with Barbican, the redevelopment of Barbican, the city —
DE: Yes.
RJW: I was now dealing on behalf of developers for developing other parts of the city. The idea, the main idea the city leased most of its land out on ninety nine year building leases by tender. So the developers all had to make a tender, ground rent condition and the design of the building and that sort of thing. That’s really the way it worked and from time to time there were planning enquiries and I was instructed sometimes by clients as a valuer, as a planning valuer to deal with various appeals for land, on land that they wanted to develop which the city didn’t want them to and or they were local protests and got myself in the witness box and highly cross examined by very clever QCs but also roamed around the country because we had a lot of clients in the city that were elsewhere in the country. We acted for the Bank of England, we acted for the Stock Exchange and the, and quite a number of the banks, Midland Bank and Lloyds, people like that and so it was, it was all done at a high level. It’s kind of amusing some of the things that I was asked to do which I knew nothing about [laughs] and I always remember a firm Denis firm [?], they were in the sand and gravel business they always wanted to extract sand and gravel from the best agricultural land by rivers you see and there was always objection to it. Anyway, I fought one or two appeals for them quite successfully, fortunately, and one day the chairman asked me to value their mineral reserves and so, ‘I can’t do that, I’m not the minerals man. I know nothing about it.’ ‘Oh that doesn’t matter,’ he said, ‘I just want, I just want you to value it for me.’ I said, ‘Well I don’t know how to value it.’ ‘You’ll find a way.’ I particularly wanted to do it and I got the impression that we might lose them as a client if you know, if it didn’t [?]. My junior partner and I we put our heads together and somehow or other we found a way and he said, ‘Ah, it doesn’t matter. Nobody else will challenge it because they don’t know the way either.’ [laughs] Anyway, we, what did we do? Well leisurely [?] we, during that time the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors celebrated its hundredth year. I had a bit of a role in that as chairman of one of the committees that dealt with it which was very interesting. Oh yes. I was, I was picked up by a building society and became a non-executive director. It was called The Planet, and over the years, I joined them about 1963 I suppose, as soon as I became a partner of St Quentin and over the years we merged with the Magnet Building Society, that’s right and then we took over a midland society that had called itself the Town and Country Building Society so we then adopted that name and eventually, for the last three years I became chairman of that. I had the most interesting time because we had overseas conferences. Notably one in Washington which was extremely good and oh and Cannes. They really looked after themselves these that was the international thing you see.
DE: Wonderful.
RJW: Very nice, very pleasant and during all this period we had various dinners in the Mansion House, dinners in the Guildhall and in 1971 St Quentin firm celebrated it’s sesquicentennial which is their hundred and fiftieth year.
DE: Thank you for telling me.
RJW: Yes. Right. So by that time we were three joint level senior partners right and we split up the duties of what we were going to do. We had a year. I got the job of having the dinner in the Guildhall. I was manager, because the city surveyor was a friend of mine he managed to get us, we were the first outside body to have a dinner in the Guildhall and we had it and got the governor of the Bank of England as a principal guest, Lord Donaldson, the Master of the Rolls, Lady Donaldson his wife who was to become, he was the sheriff at the time and it was a pretty high ranking do. It was very good but I’m telling you the story because it’s kind of amusing. We had a chap in the firm who looked after all those sort of things you know. He was very good. He got the nuts and bolts done for us. So I said to him, ‘I think you’d better go tell the police up at John Street Police Station that we’ve got some VIPs coming to the Guildhall on this particular date because they might want to take some precautions. So he takes the guest list up, goes up to John Street. He sees a cockney desk sergeant and this desk sergeant looks at this list and he says, I’ve forgotten his name now, the governor of the Bank of England, ‘Oh no he don’t rate.’ Master of the Rolls. ‘Oh no he don’t rate.’ Lord something, I don’t know and he went down and at the bottom it had Her Majesty’s Band of the Royal Irish Guard. ‘Oh my Gawd,’ he said, ‘George, got the Irish Guards coming. Full emergency.’ And because the Irish guards, it was at the times of the troubles and because the Irish Guards were coming they had all sorts of precautions. These chaps had to come in individually in civvies and all that sort of thing you know, by themselves and yeah. I thought that was rather amusing.
DE: Crikey.
RJW: Anyway, I retired in 1971, no 1973 that’s right. 1993 at the age of seventy three, got it right. We spent a lot of time cruising. We like cruising. We went on quite a few cruises. We got, we had a place in Majorca, an apartment there. A little place on the coast which was very nice. We spent quite a bit of time out there. That’s really it. Just got older. A bit more infirm, you know. The wheels don’t grind as well as they used to. I hope I haven’t bored you.
DE: No. It’s been absolutely wonderful. There’s —
RJW: I haven’t given you an opportunity to ask any questions.
DE: Well, I’ve as you’ve seen, I’ve jotted some questions down. I mean, again they’re quite, quite broad questions. What, what was it like flying in a Hampden?
RJW: Well you see, strangely enough there was no comparison was there because I’d flown in an Anson which was alright but the next type aircraft you flew in was a Hampden so it was, it was alright. Probably thought all flying was like that but for the wireless operator, rear gunner it was a bit dicey I think. People don’t really know this, you have a wireless set in front of you and what they called a scarff ring with twin VGO guns with pans of ammunition on them, right and a cupola which closes down over the top of it over the guns but in order to operate the guns the cupola has to be back which means when you’re over the other side you’re in the open air and you were standing up to be vigilant. Well I mean you couldn’t see sitting down. You wanted a turret standing up and eventually you have an electric motor on it but originally there wasn’t. It was [unclear]. There was a heating pipe came off the starboard engine I think, exhaust or something. Unfortunately it used to burn the living daylights out of you down on the ground and it was ice cold when you got up top [laughs] but you know. So it wasn’t that comfortable and the other position, the rear gunner was in a belly thing. A blister underneath and that was very, very difficult. You were hunched up, you know, you would get cramp in it. It wasn’t very nice but you know other than that it was alright although I must admit that when I mention to people, RAF guys, I was in a Hampden they say, ‘You were in a Hampden?’ They say, ‘You flew in Hampdens and you’re still alive.’ [laughs] No, no, no. They weren’t, they weren’t that bad really. I think our pilot like any, Ralph, he was quite happy with it. I don’t know whether the navigator was. Sorry.
DE: No. No. That’s, that’s wonderful. So what was, what was your favourite aircraft to fly in?
RJW: Sorry.
DE: What was your favourite to fly in?
RJW: The —
DE: What aircraft was your favourite to fly in?
RJW: The other aircraft.
DE: Yeah. What other aircraft?
RJW: Oh well I flew in Halifax 3s. Wellingtons. I think I flew in a Mosquito once or twice. Ansons. Passenger in a Tiger Moth. That sort of thing, you know. Oh and Lancaster, Manchester. Manchester and Lancaster yes but I didn’t do any ops in a Manchester or Lancaster. The Manchester was the forerunner as, you know about that. Yes. Yes. We had them on, they were introduced on 49 Squadron in about, I think about September 1942, something like that. One of the early ones and then fairly quickly replaced by the Lancasters. Oh the Lancaster were marvellous. I flew in the Lancasters of course in Ein Shemer. They were Lancasters. Yeah.
DE: I see, right, yeah.
RJW: They were good. We had, at Ein Shemer I’ve got to tell you one of the duties there was to provide an airborne lifeboat at Malta so we had a little jolly there for three weeks and so. A couple of aircraft with airborne lifeboats stationed at Valetta. You were on twenty four hours standby. Then twenty four hours down the pub [laughs] that was quite good and we did one, we did one exercise, the exercise was that we were taken out by the navy, cast adrift in a dinghy and the other crew had to home on it and drop the airborne lifeboat and the crew in the dinghy had to get in to it and sail it back in to Valetta harbour. We were the crew in the dinghy. We got told off for eating all the rations [laughs], but you know it was fun. It was quite good. Malta was nice too in those days. Post war you see.
DE: What was –?
RJW: Oh and Cyprus. That was another place we had to go to. We went to Cyprus. Yes. Sorry.
DE: What was, what was it like, what was the difference between being a sergeant and becoming an officer?
RJW: Oh well. It was quite good. It was more comfortable. The sergeant’s mess was very good. The food was always good. I never grumbled about the food. I think the air crew seemed to get additional rations or something. It all went in altogether but somebody once told me you get more dairy products because as air crew or something like that. I don’t know. But being an officer obviously was more comfortable. You didn’t have to make your bed [laughs]. You had a batwoman, batman or batwoman. You know a WAAF who did it for you. Cleaned your shoes that sort of thing. The chores. You had more chores done for you I found, but yes it was it was comfortable. Flying. Right. Oh I forgot to tell you an incident which is recorded in David Donaldson’s obituary. We were flying on patrols to locate the launching pads of the V2. In fact, we saw, I was with David Donaldson, we saw the first one go up and we got a fix on it and that is quite interesting because we told the special operator and he got his head down and we tried to get a lot of information out of him when we got back as to what he found. We got nothing out of him of course but of course what we did eventually find out and this is public knowledge now it wasn’t radar controlled. It was clockwork controlled but Churchill insisted that the patrols continued so even after they found out we were still going up and down on the line and on one occasion, daylight. It was on daylight a couple of, I don’t know what they were, I can’t remember, mix them up, I can’t remember what the aircraft were. A couple of German fighters. I can’t remember what they were now, a couple of German fighters came up, come up and we were just about to take evasive action when they tucked them in, they tucked themselves in the wing and the pilot went like that.
DE: Waved at you.
RJW: Waved at David. David. You know. Like that. Like that and then they peeled away and off they went. This was over Holland and they were quite friendly. This would have been, oh I don’t know, probably March, April something like that 1945. And do you know I remember that so well for years and years and years and I wonder sometimes did that really happen or did I dream it? And then in David Donaldson’s obituary it was mentioned and I thought goodness that is true, it did really happen. I meant, I should have told you before.
DE: No. That’s, that’s wonderful. What was, what was David like?
RJW: Yeah. Actually of course they’d, if they’d, if they’d have split up you know they would have, they would have had us you know, in fact.
DE: Sure.
RJW: Yeah. Yeah.
DE: What was David like?
RJW: Sorry?
DE: What was David Donaldson like?
RJW: Oh lovely. He was a hell of a nice guy. Easy going. He was a good CO. Firm, right. Never panicked. He was a solicitor by profession and he was very calm. We did the first FIDO landing at Foulsham. We went to Gardenia [?] and did our stuff there and incidentally on the way back, was it Balcom [?] Island, the Swedish island on the Baltic, fired various tracer bullets up in a V sign [laughs]. Nobody went near of course. Anyway, when we got back it was fog and David said, ‘Well we’ve got an option of landing on FIDO or being diverted.’ He said, you know, he said, ‘What do you want to do chaps? Do you want me to land or go somewhere else for your eggs and bacon.’ ‘Oh no David,’ you know and he did a perfect landing. Real, you know. The risk of FIDO was that you veered off it but, perfect. Yeah. He was like that. He said, ‘What do you want to do?’ [laughs]
DE: Wonderful. Yeah. So when you saw these two fighters —
RJW: Yeah.
DE: Were you mid-upper upper or were you the rear gunner?
RJW: Sorry?
DE: Were you mid-upper gunner or the rear gunner? When you saw the two fighters.
RJW: Yes.
DE: Were you the mid-upper gunner or the rear gunner?
RJW: I was in the mid upper.
DE: Ah huh.
RJW: Yeah.
DE: Was that your –?
RJW: I was, yeah because I, the mid upper was the controller, in other words we used to take evasive action. If you were in daylight you take evasive action and once you had come back you’d take control. You would tell him corkscrew right, corkscrew left because the pilot can’t see.
DE: No.
RJW: They can’t see. They come in on a curve of pursuit like that and you’d corkscrew in, down and roll and up the other way you see, but if they split up either side you’d had it.
DE: Yeah. Did you did you ever fire your guns in anger?
RJW: Hmmn?
DE: Did you ever shoot at a fighter?
RJW: Ever see a fighter?
DE: No. Did you ever shoot at one?
RJW: Oh yes.
DE: Yeah.
RJW: At night time. Well I hoped it was a fighter [laughs]. No. Once or twice you know you saw the thing come out of, but never, I never had a sustained fight. Never had something come in two or three times but I can’t remember. Not on the Halifax. Never had anything on the Halifax or the Hampden. Fired the guns several times on the Hampden but I can’t remember exactly when they were. Sorry about that.
DE: That’s quite alright. Yeah. Yeah. Did you, which did you like better the night ops or daylight ops?
RJW: Oh we didn’t do much daylight. We did very little daylight. We did some mining in daylight but it was nearly all night ops. We always thought daylight was a bit scary but [laughs] but no I suppose the scariness really was in the middle of the flak. Then you really, in a Hampden you could hear it, you could smell it and you could see it. Puffs of puffs you know if you got there. If you were — Essen and Hamburg they were, they were the places that you got, and of course Berlin but I only, I only did one trip to Berlin. My first one. But that wasn’t very good because it was covered in cloud anyway. If you, when you, when we went to France, if we were bombing France if you couldn’t see the target, initially anyway, you had to bring your bombs back and that’s recorded quite a bit.
DE: Yeah.
RJW: By the way have you got “The Hampden File?”
DE: Yes.
RJW: Harry Moyle?
DE: No. Yes. We’ve got a copy of that.
RJW: That’s very good. Have you got, “Beware of the Dog”?
DE: I don’t know about that one.
RJW: 49 Squadron history. The whole history of 49 Squadron written by John Ward and Ted Catchart. It was actually published by Ted Catchart. If you get in touch with Alan Parr, you know Alan. He’ll tell you where and how you can get a copy of it. You should really have a copy of that.
DE: Yes.
RJW: Because that details everything.
DE: Yeah. Wonderful. I will do. Thank you.
RJW: Yes. It’s called, that’s our crest you see.
DE: Yeah.
RJW: Cave Canem.
DE: Yeah.
RJW: So —
DE: Yeah. I’ll make sure we get a copy for the library.
RJW: Yeah.
DE: Yes.
RJW: Yeah. And the “Bomber Command Diaries.” You’ve got those.
DE: Got those. Yeah.
RJW: Yeah. I’ve got all those.
DE: They’re worth, worth a bit as well, they are as well. How how did you cope with flying nights?
RJW: How did I cope?
DE: Yeah. Flying nights. What —?
RJW: How?
DE: Flying operations at night how, how —
RJW: Finding them?
DE: Yeah. How did you, how did you cope, you know with interrupted sleep patterns and —?
RJW: I’m not quite with you sorry.
DE: No. Flying operations at night —
RJW: At night time.
DE: Yeah. Your sleep was interrupted.
RJW: Oh sleep.
DE: Yeah how, how did you, how did you —?
RJW: Oh well yes you went to briefing in the morning if ops were on. No not briefing. You’d do a bit of exercise and that. Go to the flight and then you’d have an early briefing and then you’d have a rest, have your eggs and bacon and then night time you kept awake. There were tablets they used to give you to keep awake. I can’t remember the name of them now but they didn’t do much good I don't think. And then of course after de-briefing when you came back, eggs and bacon and you had a long sleep. Sometimes you were on the next night but not very often that happened. Not in my day. It did later on of course.
DE: Yeah.
RJW: It did later on.
DE: Did you, did you take tablets to keep you awake?
RJW: Yes.
DE: Yeah.
RJW: I can’t remember the names now.
DE: Wakey wakey tablets.
RJW: Yeah. I can’t remember what they were. Caffeine. Yeah I think it was —
DE: Yeah.
RJW: Something like that. You could, if you wanted them you could have them but I can’t remember the name of them.
DE: Was it, was it Benzedrine?
RJW: Yeah. Yeah but I never found. You were wound up. Let’s put it, let’s be honest about it. Everybody was. You were apprehensive.
DE: Yes.
RJW: Ok. You knew the target. You kitted up. You went out. You were taken out to the aircraft and you fiddled around with all your gear. You had to make sure everything was ok and eventually you took off. Sometimes you often, sometimes you took off in twilight so you could see the setting sun as it were, you know. See Lincoln Cathedral. And because you were in the rear you were looking west you were seeing some of the light and ok you got a bit of jitters maybe you know. A bit. Apprehension more than anything else but you had to be very alert. Very alert. You had to be watching all the time and you reported back anything you see. Getting over the target, doing the bombing run. That was a bit of a wait you know. Flying steady, straight and steady and hearing the navigator or the bomb aimer going to the skipper. Everybody else was quiet. You could see the activity going on but if there was cloud below or the flashes coming up and everything else. If you were near flak as I said you could smell it and see it and all that sort of thing. Got away from the target. There was always a sense of relief once you come away from the target but of course it was just as dangerous coming away. You couldn’t — you couldn't relax or you shouldn’t relax, let’s put it that way. Probably that’s what did happen. You just had to be on your toes all the time but on the way back over the sea, over the North Sea coming back you were a bit relaxed then. Coming in to land of course you had to be very careful. You could have intruders, you know. You really, you couldn’t sit down. You couldn’t take a rest. And you know there were times and I’m sure others have told you this, you had a very dicey trip and you say, ‘If I get back I’m not going to come again.’ [laughs] Why come back? If I get out of this one that’s it, but you did, you know. You didn’t, you didn’t think much about, you didn’t think too much about it on the ground. At least I didn’t. You didn’t dwell about it. You didn’t think. You got wound up for ops. Then they were scrubbed so you were off to the pub you know it’s not oh, everything goes and you just, you just tended to live for that night, that night. You were in the pub with your pals drinking away and you didn’t give many thoughts to the fact that you would be doing the same thing tomorrow. At least I didn’t and I don’t think many other people did either. Some might have, but I didn’t. You just treated each day as it came along. You got scared, of course you got scared you know, got scared out of your life when you were in the dinghy but you thought, oh well, you know, something will happen. I’ll get out of it. Eventually you did. I don’t know but the greatest thing [?] was though, to be honest was to see your pals go although because in the main you didn’t know whether they were killed or not. They didn’t return. They were missing. Right. Failed to return. And there was always the hope that they’d be prisoners of war or they’d landed somewhere else but it, it didn’t sink in. It wasn’t like that, being in the army and seeing the person next to you killed. That didn’t happen unless your own aircraft, you could see an aircraft gosh I can’t remember the number of lucky breaks I had. Yes. On the, on 49 Squadron when I first joined Allsebrook I was a bit concerned and this is not against the guy at all but it is recorded somewhere this happened. He came to the squadron. He had flown into a balloon barrage under training and he was the only one that got out. On the first trip with him he was very keen, they’d made him the photographic, he wasn’t the, he wasn’t the station fellow, he was some sort of, something to do with photography and he wanted to hold the aircraft straight and level over the target to take the photographs [laughs]. So you know that was my first trip or second trip, I can’t remember which and I got a bit, a bit concerned about it and there was a sergeant pilot, or flight sergeant pilot that I’d been drinking with or knew quite well and he wanted a rear gunner and I thought, he wanted a WOP/AG, I thought. Well ok I’ll go and see if I can get switched into his crew and I went to see Domestra [?] who was our flight commander, Squadron Leader Domestra and he he said, ‘Oh no, I’ve done the crew schedules for the night,’ he said, ‘Come and see me tomorrow.’ His name was Walker this chap. He took off behind us. Engine cut. Went straight in. The bombs went up. Killed them all. I thought, I didn’t know it was him at the time. I saw it. When I got back we said, ‘Who was it that went, that went in?’ It was him. I thought oh my God, you know. Strange isn’t it? I must have somehow had a lucky penny. Oh yes and you will have heard this story and Eric will have told you. Others will. We had, the CO was called Stubbs. Wing Commander Stubbs. One day after briefing for ops, we were going on ops. ‘All the NCO’s will remain behind,’ remain behind. We got a real right rollicking about our form of dress, not wearing regulation boots or shoes. All sorts of things you know. Slovenly behaviour. Then he said, famous words, ‘Just remember the only reason you’ve got three stripes on your arm is to save you from the salt mines in case you are taken prisoner of war.’ Have you heard that? Oh yes. Yes. Yes. He said that. He said that and he got the name of Salt Mine Sam. Sam Stubbs. That is recorded somewhere but Eric Cook he was with me. I was on the squadron when Eric Cook was there you see and but he famously used to quote that quite often actually but yeah and it’s quite well known. There was a guy that was, I don’t know what his name was now but he was, he was an honourable bloke, honourable, he was a sergeant pilot and he was a bloke, he was an odd bloke, he refused to take a commission. I can’t remember his name but he was some sort of landed gentry of some sort and he was able to talk in high places as you did and we got a very meagre, half-hearted well it wasn’t an apology it was some sort of, you know it wasn’t really meant sort of thing you know. Sorry about that.
DE: No. That’s wonderful. I’m going to, I think I’m going to draw the interview to a close because you’ve been talking for nearly two hours.
RJW: Oh gosh. Have I?
DE: Yeah. That’s —
RJW: Have I really?
DE: Yes. Yeah.
RJW: I’m sorry.
DE: No, it’s –
RJW: I’ve probably bored you stiff.
DE: No. It’s absolutely marvellous and I’ve said nothing on the tape so it’s fantastic.
RJW: Eh?
DE: I’ve not spoken at all. It’s all been you so —
RJW: Do you, it’s funny everything else is going but that memory.
DE: It certainly is. Yeah. It’s fantastic. Yeah. Well I’m going to –
RJW: And while I’ve been talking to you Dan I’ve been living it visually.
DE: I could tell. Yeah.
RJW: I can see it.
DE: Yeah.
RJW: I can see the incidents right there.
DE: Yeah.
RJW: As you know.
DE: It’s been an absolute pleasure.
RJW: I didn’t realise, I didn’t realise it was —
DE: Two hours look. So I shall, I shall press pause and stop it. Thank you very, very much. That’s absolutely wonderful.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Reg Woolgar
Description
An account of the resource
Reg Woolgar was born in Hove. He volunteered for the Royal Air Force in December 1939 and trained as a wireless operator/air gunner. He flew Hampdens with 49 Squadron. His aircraft was damaged by anti-aircraft fire on a mine laying operation to Oslo Fjord, including a bullet that passed through his gun sight. He recounts ditching a Hampden in the English Channel and being picked up by the Royal Navy off the Isle of Wight. He describes evenings out in Lincoln at the Saracen’s Head. After his first tour he was commissioned and became gunnery leader with 192 Squadron in 100 Group. Reg Woolgar was posted overseas in 1945 and recounts a bomb exploding near the King David Hotel, in Jerusalem. He also recounts tales of his time in Kenya and provides details of his career outside the Royal Air Force, as a planner and valuer for the city of London. He retired in 1971.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-14
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Chris Cann
Format
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02:00:47 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AWoolgarRLA160614
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Wiltshire
England--Lincoln
England--Norfolk
England--Oxfordshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Essen
Germany--Mannheim
Middle East--Jerusalem
Middle East--Palestine
Germany
Germany--Kiel Canal
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-09-01
1942
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.
10 OTU
100 Group
192 Squadron
49 Squadron
617 Squadron
83 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
ditching
entertainment
fear
FIDO
final resting place
Gneisenau
Goldfish Club
Hampden
killed in action
mine laying
missing in action
Operational Training Unit
RAF Foulsham
RAF Scampton
RAF Upper Heyford
RAF Yatesbury
Scharnhorst
searchlight
training
Walrus
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/135/2210/AAndersonG161122.1.mp3
03ac4949566b3044c9098c0739cca874
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Anderson, George
G Anderson
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with George Anderson (1592437 Royal Air Force).
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by George Anderson and catalogued by IBCC staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-11-22
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
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Anderson, G
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JM: Right. This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Jean McCartney. The interviewee is George Anderson. The interview is taking place at Mr Anderson’s home in Murwillumbah, Northern New South Wales on the 22nd of November 2016. Ok George. Let’s start at the beginning, 1925.
GA: Yeah.
JM: You were born in —
GA: Hartlepool.
JM: Hartlepool. Hartlepool.
GA: County Durham.
JM: County Durham.
GA: England.
JM: In England. Yes. And did you spend, is that where you lived then for the next few —
GA: I lived in Holden Colliery.
JM: Right.
GA: And I was there until I went in to the forces.
JM: Right. And that, what, what —
GA: That was in —
JM: 19 —
GA: 1943.
JM: ’43.
GA: Yeah.
JM: And what, was that the air force in —
GA: I volunteered for aircrew.
JM: Aircrew.
GA: I went before I was eighteen and I volunteered. Went to County, Durham which is the capital of the county and I came back and told my mother I’d volunteered and she said, ‘You can’t go. You’re not eighteen.’ I said, ‘I volunteered for aircrew and they’ve taken me.’ So that was it.
JM: Right.
GA: And of course I went April or something late. You know, they called me up later.
JM: Right.
GA: I had a three day test. I’ve forgotten the name of the town I had to go to for medicals, everything. And that was it.
JM: Right. And that was 1943.
GA: Yes. And then I went to ACRC. Air Crew Recruiting Centre at Lord’s.
JM: Goodness.
GA: The cricket ground.
JM: Yeah.
GA: And that’s where we did our drill. I was there, I was there an extended period because we were doing drill with rifles and I fell over. The bloke in front of me fell and I fell over him. Damaged my right arm. It was twisted. And I was there a few weeks longer in hospital and having treatment. And then went on to oh I thought I’d written that down. I can’t remember where I went to next.
JM: That’s ok. Right. So the, lets — you did schooling though before obviously you went into your, right, before you enlisted. So, which school did you go to?
GA: Oh I went to, I was just elementary and I finished school at fourteen and worked in a grocery store. My parents couldn’t afford to. You had to pay to go to High School in those days and they couldn’t afford to. So I finished school at fourteen.
JM: That’s right. Because I presume that was crossing over part of the Depression years.
GA: Yes. Yes. Oh heck, the Depression. I remember that. You got a penny a week to spend and that was it.
JM: Very tough.
GA: Yes.
JM: Yes. And when you then went to this next lot of training was that for what were you doing, were you doing?
GA: Radio, at Initial Training Wing, ITW.
JM: Yeah.
GA: And then after that it was Radio School.
JM: Radio School. And —
GA: Radio School. I was there for a long time. Radio School.
JM: So did you do wireless operator training?
GA: Yes. Yes.
JM: Right.
GA: Yeah. Yeah. Well you started off I think you had to pass out at twenty six words a minute and actually we, they got to thirty two which is navy, merchant navy speeds. And I managed to pass all that. If you failed you were put on RT, return training, you know, put back three weeks. And if you failed that — out. So I managed to get through that alright.
JM: Good. Good. And where did you go? Was that, after that was then Number 2 OAFU?
GA: Observer Flying Unit. And that was over near [unclear] I’m sorry I’ve got it in my logbook there.
JM: That’s ok. Do you want me to — ?
GA: Do you want me to go and get it?
JM: Yeah. Ok. We’ll just pause while you get it. Are you alright there?
GA: Yeah. Great [unclear]
[recording paused]
JM: Picking up now we found that you were at the EWS, Madley Wireless School in Herefordshire which is where you got your twenty six words a minute.
GA: Yes.
JM: And from there, as we’ve just seen the next posting was in Milham in Cumberland for the Elementary Flying Training School.
GA: Yes.
JM: So there, that was more training there, and you went on to Avro Ansons there by the looks of this. And then after that you went to Number 10.
GA: OTU.
JM: OTU.
GA: Operational Training Unit.
JM: In, in Berkshire in January 1945.
GA: That was in Wellingtons as well.
JM: And you met Ron Pile, a navigator.
GA: Yes.
JM: And you then all became a bit of a crew then for a little while?
GA: Yeah. Yeeah. Mixed up and you know, you found a bomb aimer and somebody said, ‘Oh yeah, I know a bloke that will do this,’ so we became the crew.
JM: Right. And then that crew, you transferred to Stanton.
GA: Stanton Harcourt.
JM: Harcourt. Ok.
GA: What was that? I can’t remember.
[pause]
GA: Was that heavy conversion?
[pause]
GA: Heavy Conversion Unit, 1668.
JM: Yes. That’s right.
GA: Lancasters, yeah.
JM: Yeah.
GA: We had a skipper there who’d been, he’d been shot down earlier. We were his second crew.
JM: And you started training on high level bombing runs?
GA: Yeah.
JM: At this, in your time there.
GA: Yeah. We were, I mentioned we were up in Scotland when the skipper went back to the elsan, you know, the toilet, put his mask on and went back and the bomb aimer took over. We had no engineer then. We hadn’t got him then. And he got the artificial horizon and the wings mixed up and we went into a spin dive.
JM: Spin dive.
GA: We were up over twenty thousand. And the skipper had to pull himself down over there trying to help. I knew nothing really. The skipper finally got us out at about three thousand feet.
JM: That was in —
GA: That was at Heavy Con. I’ll have it somewhere in here. Yeah. We did, on those Heavy Cons we did cross countries. We did bullseyes and we had a bullseye at Green Park. I remember getting mixed, we got mixed, we got mixed up with the flight of the aircraft going out on the bombing raid. That was another incident. We did a, I did a diversion as well, 5th of the 4th. Did fighter affiliation. Lots of circuits and bumps. Yes.
JM: Right.
GA: I haven’t looked at this for a long time.
JM: Well there you go.
GA: I found it the other day when they asked me some.
JM: Right. And so then —
GA: So from Heavy Con I went to 101 Squadron, Ludford Magna.
JM: Yeah.
GA: And that was about April. April ’45. And from there I did the Manna raid on Rotterdam.
JM: Right.
GA: Rotterdam.
JM: Rotterdam.
GA: Yeah.
JM: And what do you remember of that?
GA: Low level. Very low level. I remember throwing chocolate out to some kids on the rooftop. And I remember Tony the tail gunner said, ‘I want to shoot those bastards.’ And the skipper said, this was the Germans, they still had their guns, you know. We had a pact, more or less with the Germans at the time. And he said, ‘I want to shoot them.’ The skipper said, ‘You’ll not or they’ll have us.’ Had three, three Irishmen in the crew.
JM: Right.
GA: Fighters. And, well we just, the food was in sandbags really. It was just, went over low level over race courses or wherever, or football fields and just opened the bomb doors and swoosh. There were no parachutes.
JM: No. Possibly well you were pretty low level so hopefully —
GA: Oh yes
JM: So —
GA: But very low, housetops. We were supposed to be at five hundred. We used to fly on these and we’d fly with a friend, you know. Try and get as close as possible to them. Amazing.
JM: So —
GA: Does that make any sense?
JM: Yes. So after your Manna raid then did you do any other? Did you then do any other bombing raids after that?
GA: No.
JM: No. No.
GA: I did just [unclear] formation. [unclear] I can’t remember what that was. [unclear]. No. I didn’t do any. I didn’t do a bombing raid.
JM: Right.
GA: As I say I was briefed for Berchtesgaden which was the last one that 101 did and we didn’t go because a good crew came back off leave and they were put in our place and we didn’t go.
JM: Right.
GA: Maybe that’s why I’m here today.
JM: It could well be.
GA: I did bombing, bombing, bombing. They were just, we did practice bombing all the time as well as the bombing. Bad storm. All the equipment out to sea. [unclear] We, I did, oh yes — that was something. We were doing bomb disposals, and we had two engines went u/s. Gee was u/s. That’s unserviceable.
JM: Yeah.
GA: And we had fourteen, fourteen five hundred pounds bombs on. We were getting rid of bombs in Cardigan Bay in Wales. Probably in there. And we had two engines went u/s. I got rid of them by using a nail file on the fuses, got rid of twelve or fourteen. Anyway, we’d two left and the skipper suddenly shouted, ‘George, send an SOS,’ which I did. And then he suddenly said, ‘George, cancel that, I’ve got the engine. Another.’ We’d lost the third engine. He said, ‘Cancel that. I’ve got the second engine going, so we were back to two engines. And we pulled back over the Welsh hills below their level. It was getting dark and should have only been about an hour and twenty minutes. The flight was four hours twenty minutes and when we got back to base, Bardney, they didn’t have Bardney, I don’t know, one of them, and the skipper said, oh they got, he got a message from RT. You couldn’t, RT was radio transmission was only ten miles so that we were within ten miles of base before he was able to talk to base. And he said, they said. ‘Divert to the east coast. There’s a long runway, you’ll get in there.’ And the skipper said, ‘Sorry, I haven’t got enough fuel for that. I’m coming into base.’ We landed. We got to the end of the runway and the other engine caught fire and of course we were out, running like hell anyway. That was [pause] yeah. We had two hang ups, a fire, fuel was low. That was A Flight, 189 Squadron. That was it. And then after that we went [pause] I think, oh we went to Bari on the coast of Italy and we picked up the soldiers who had been fighting there. I think twenty or twenty four soldiers and all their kits bags and everything, and they were packed into the fuselage. The first thing we gave them was a spew bag [laughs] of course. A lot of them used them. And we, we did that via Bardney, Operation Dodge that was.
JM: And that, that was in 19 —
GA: 1945. And that was September.
JM: September 1945.
GA: September ’45.
JM: Right.
GA: On the squadron. Oh the August ’45 was when we had the trouble with the engines and the time dropping bombs. Dropping, empty, you know finished bombs. Diffused bombs. Bari. Dodge from Bari to, direct, there was an eight hour trip.
JM: That was to Italy.
GA: Yeah.
JM: Yeah.
GA: And then Bari to Bardney, seven hour thirty. I think I did two of them. Dodge to Bari, that was again, that was October, and then we were there five days and then Bari to base. Manston and Tuddenham, eight hours ten minutes.
JM: So you were actually were five days at Bari base?
GA: In Bari. Yes. Yeah.
JM: Right.
GA: I don’t know why we were. Weather or something. The navigator, Ron Pile, his brother was over the opposite side of Italy and he went off because of the weather. We’d been, we were, the flight was scrubbed to get back to England. And he went off to see his brother who was over on the west coast. And of course we got word to take off so we had to get another navigator. He got back home and got away with it. We were eight days. On the 21st was our first flight to Bari and that was the 21st and on the 29th we came back. On one of those occasions Ron skipped it. And when we got back home they told him, ‘Off you go. You’re on leave.’ Based at Bardney. Based Tuddenham. And I think that was when, that was when the last flight, October 23rd, I flew to Tuddenham. We flew and left the aircraft there. That was finished, no longer.
JM: No longer.
GA: No longer flying. We were grounded.
JM: Right. So then that [pause] but you weren’t actually discharged at that point?
GA: Oh no.
JM: You went on and —
GA: I did stores. Went in to stores. So —
JM: Whereabouts was that?
GA: It’s in there, it’ll be in there somewhere, sorry.
JM: Hold on. I’ll just check.
GA: Sorry.
JM: No. That’s ok [pause] Woolsington in Northumberland.
GA: Yes. Yeah. That was, I wasn’t far from home, that’s right.
JM: Right, right. And then after that you got moved up to Montrose?
GA: Yes.
JM: Right.
GA: I was a warrant officer, I think.
JM: Right.
GA: By then.
JM: So, that was all in August. And in 1947 you finally, at that stage you’d moved to Kirkham.
GA: Yeah.
JM: And Group 54. And you were finally released in ’47.
GA: Yeah. Married in ’47. I had about three or four of my air crew there as well, at my wedding. Our wedding.
JM: Yeah. That’s good.
GA: Sixty nine years ago.
JM: Yes. A long time. A long time. And then, and then I see from these notes that you, then you were working with your father. He bought a business.
GA: Yes. He bought a business.
JM: And you were working with him.
GA: Working for him. Then in ’49 I bought a small business in Sunderland. Retail.
JM: Retail business.
GA: Business.
JM: Yeah.
GA: There was still rationing then, of course in England.
JM: Absolutely.
GA: And I was there until 19, it was right outside the pit. The coal mine, you know, across the road was the coal mines in Southwick, Sunderland.
JM: Right.
GA: And I was there. My navigator came over and stayed with us and talked all about Australia. He’d come out here. He was from London but came out to Australia and talked about migrating. Kept on and on and on —
JM: And what was your navigator’s name?
GA: Ron Pile.
JM: Oh that’s Ron Pile again. Yes. Yes.
GA: Betty’s uncle who lived in Murwillumbah was, had come over to England and he came himself.
JM: So was Betty, she was English —
GA: She lived in Horden. We lived behind the park.
JM: Yeah, that’s right, but you said her uncle. So, what, one of her father’s or mother’s brothers had migrated, had they?
GA: He’d migrated.
JM: Right.
GA: And he came and he talked about Australia. Wonderful place. And we signed up. Went and got the papers.
JM: Became a ten pound pom.
GA: Three months we were given. Couldn’t sell the business in that time.
JM: No.
GA: So we had cousins, ‘Would you sell the business?’ And that was it. We were gone. And we had, our daughter was eleven and our son was nine and that was it. We decided we were going.
JM: Going.
GA: And we sailed from England on our wedding anniversary, 19th of July 1959.
JM: Right.
GA: That was it. The best thing that ever happened.
JM: Yeah.
GA: Came straight to Murwillumbah.
JM: Well I was going to say that was the Murwillumbah connection, because of Betty’s uncle being here.
GA: Yes.
JM: Right. Right.
GA: The original sponsor was Betty’s cousin. The daughter of my uncle.
JM: Yeah.
GA: But they went to Keir Lucas who was a prominent member of an accountants’ in town. Went for a [unclear] test and he was president of Rotary and he said, ‘Let us take over. We’ve got a ship coming out on the 19th of July. All Rotary sponsored.’ So that was it and we were just shew, shew.
JM: Connections as they say, connections.
GA: It wasn’t a favour or anything. It was just he wanted somebody to do for, you know for Rotary.
JM: Yeah.
GA: They wanted more people from England on this ship and Rotary were sponsoring everybody.
JM: Excellent.
GA: And we had a, we got on board and we met, anyway, I’ve forgot her name. She lives here. Rose Boyd. She was coming back after a holiday in England. She got on, she was on board the same ship but she was paying her way. Well [pause] so she was a cane farmer’s wife. He had a cane farm here in Murwillumbah and of course Betty got to know her. We were six, six weeks on board.
JM: Yes. It was a slight —
GA: We sailed so that we arrived in Brisbane for their anniversary. For their hundred in ‘59 they were, that was their hundred birthday of Brisbane.
JM: Right.
GA: And of course we were delayed in Adelaide, Not Adelaide. Perth. We met English people in Perth. In Sydney met Ron. Five of us on the, no, seven of us on the beach at Bondi. August 25th. Nobody else, mid-winter and there we were.
JM: Sunning yourself.
GA: Enjoying it.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
GA: Amazing.
JM: Amazing. Yeah. So when the boat came did you — you docked in Perth.
GA: Perth.
JM: And then did you continue on the boat round?
GA: Yeah.
JM: Oh ok. Right.
GA: Right around.
JM: Right. And so you docked in Sydney as well did you, did you say?
GA: Melbourne.
JM: Melbourne and Sydney.
GA: Sydney. And then up to Brisbane.
JM: And then to Brisbane.
GA: Delayed in Sydney so that we that arrived for the hundredth anniversary.
JM: Right. Ok.
GA: In Brisbane.
JM: And so from then on —
GA: And Rotary met us in Brisbane.
JM: And then to here, right. It’s unusual that. It must have been because Rotary were organising it.
GA: Yeah.
JM: That it happened that way because that wasn’t the normal sort of.
GA: No.
JM: A lot of people tended go in to Melbourne and get offloaded in Melbourne and came —
GA: Yeah. Yeah.
JM: If they were coming to New South Wales they were on trains from Melbourne up to Sydney.
GA: Yeah.
JM: So that was —
GA: It was all organised through Rotary.
JM: Rotary. Yeah. That’s very interesting. So you got into Murwillumbah in, what?
GA: August.
JM: Late August.
GA: Yeah.
JM: Late August 1959 and you’ve been here ever since.
GA: This cousin lived in River Street and that banana festival which has just been. They drove us, came round to, Betty said, ‘I want to live there,’ pointed to the houses, in. They said, ‘Oh no. This is snob hill.’ Next door was the Withies who owned the saw mill. There was the manager of the, or something or other, doctor, solicitors. It was expensive housing. Two years later, February 1962 I knew somebody who said, ‘Yeah. My mother’s just died and the house is for sale.’ And that was it. I said, ‘Right. We’ll have it.’ It was an old dilapidated house and I was a do it yourself man.
JM: You did it up and yes, marvellous. Magnificent view as you come. Magnificent view. So what did you do, did you do when you, what sort of, did you get into retailing again here or — ?
GA: Yes, the chap that was president of Rotary. They brought us down. He gave me a job. He was the radio and wireless man, and television man in Queen Street, Murwillumbah, gave me a job. I was there a few weeks. And then another Rotarian took me on I was in a grocery shop for a few weeks. And then another Rotarian [unclear] studios. They took me as a, and taught me photography. And that was, I’ll tell you in a minute his name, and I was there for two years. I was photographing for the, for him, for weddings and so forth and also for the newspaper. So I was travelling up to [unclear] and Southport getting these photos of celebrities. And then bringing them back, develop the film and getting them into the newspaper by 5 o’clock, had to be develop and printed, 5 o’clock was the deadline. And I did that for three years. And I did a little bit of photography on my own as well. And then I went into the advertising side, side of the newspaper. And then became advertising manager. And then went and had a heart attack and retired and that was it.
JM: So, I presume that you became a member of Rotary?
GA: No. No.
JM: You didn’t? Oh. Ok.
GA: I was a member of Lions.
JM: Lions, right.
GA: I joined that in 1970.
JM: Right.
GA: And I was a member until 2010.
JM: Right.
GA: Forty years. And although I travelled, as you can see, I travelled the world. No matter where we went I went to a Lions meeting. Never missed meetings. You know, it was always. That was me.
JM: Yes.
GA: And I was always active, active. I stayed active. As you can see, all these tapestries. I did that in my spare time.
JM: You did the tapestries.
GA: All of them.
JM: Goodness me.
GA: I didn’t watch television. I listened and I did my tapestries. I’ve got one now I’m trying to finish.
JM: Yes, amazing.
GA: Chairs. Cushions.
JM: Cushions.
GA: You know.
JM: What lead you to tapestry?
GA: When I had the heart attack.
JM: Right.
GA: Betty was doing tapestry and I was in hospital and they brought this tapestry in. That was it.
JM: That’s it.
GA: I had to do something.
JM: Had to do something because —
GA: I’m a doer.
JM: You’re a doer and you couldn’t just be lying there in bed.
GA: No. No.
JM: Doing nothing.
GA: Which is what I do now. I do nothing now.
JM: I don’t know that that’s such a bad thing in some respects given where you’re at now but —
GA: I’ve got to have this all the time now.
JM: Right.
GA: For my ticker.
JM: Ticker, yeah.
GA: It flares up.
JM: Yeah.
GA: Well, I guess I’m lucky.
JM: Yeah. And did you, I’m guessing that the decision to come to Australia was not one that you’ve ever regretted?
GA: No way. Best thing that ever happened. And the children are, as I say Brenda was eleven and Barry was nine on the day we went to Bondi Beach. He wanted to go to Bondi Beach. He was nine year old. Our daughter lives in [pause] near Tamworth, Manilla, near Tamworth.
JM: Right.
GA: And our son lives at Hastings Point.
JM: Oh ok. So that’s not too far away.
GA: It was a beach house. Brought a block of land, yeah. Frank Cook, the President of Rotary that brought us down and gave us me first job, he said, ‘George, there’s a block of land next door to me. Well, next door but one and it’s going for a hundred and thirty pounds. I suggest you buy it.’ We did. And then in ’79 we bought a house that had got to be moved from Kingston. We bought that and it was cut in two and moved on to the block. We gave that to our son about ten years ago. And this is our daughters so —
JM: Right. Yeah.
GA: Two happy kids.
JM: Yes.
GA: They love the country.
JM: Love the country, yes.
GA: Our daughter went on to the uni and was in the department. I don’t know. One of the departments. Our son, on top of the world and he became a photographer.
JM: So followed in your steps there, initial steps I suppose you might say into the photography side of things, yeah.
GA: Yeah.
JM: And what contact did you maintain? You mentioned that you’d seen Ron Pile.
GA: Yes.
JM: A couple of times.
GA: Brought my second bomb aimer Ken Heaton. They were over there in England and we saw them. [unclear] near Blackpool. We saw them each time we went over. It was good.
JM: Sorry, that was Ken.
GA: Ken Heaton.
JM: Heaton.
GA: He was the bomb aimer. He died about ten years ago.
JM: Right.
GA: I still kept in contact with his wife. I’ve got the name of him there.
JM: Yeah.
GA: You know, I contact her especially at Christmas.
JM: And so it sounds as though all of your crew were, were English?
GA: Yes.
JM: There were no ringings on any of your crew.
GA: No. Irish. Three Irish.
JM: Apart from the Irish but, you know.
GA: Tony. I used to visit Tony when we went over and then when he died I visited his wife. Lofty was our mid-upper. Lost contact with him. Our first bomb aimer, he was, after the war in Europe finished he went back to the west coast of Ireland where he lived. And that was it. He was a policeman. My engineer, he was a pilot. Larry. I lost contact with him. We just, you know. He was a Geordie but we didn’t. He was ok but we didn’t keep in contact.
JM: Contact. No. No.
GA: But the navigator who was the first one I met and crewed up with, you know we met and we decided to be in the same crew. He’s dead now. He had Alzheimer’s.
JM: And which, that wasn’t Ron was it?
GA: That was Ron Pile.
JM: That was Ron.
GA: He lived in Sydney.
JM: Right.
GA: He lived in Sydney.
JM: In Sydney. Yeah.
GA: He was up here once or twice.
JM: And what — just sort of backtracking a little bit. What would you say would perhaps be one of your best memories of your leave or something like that during your postings? Is there any particular event stands out when you were on leave at any time? Anything particularly that —
GA: I think whenever I went on leave — Betty was a nurse in Sunderland Royal Infirmary.
JM: Right.
GA: And of course there was always, I’d get home and she’d be on duty. So I’d go along [whistle] and they’d give Betty the message that, you know, ‘George is out the front,’ of the nurse’s quarters. She’d say, ‘Sorry I’m not off for another two hours.’ You know. And that was it. I mean being at home and trying to be at home together was difficult.
JM: Very difficult.
GA: Because there was always casualties there. And later on, of course when the prisoners of war were coming back from Germany and that, the wounded, she was very busy.
JM: So she nursed a lot of those chaps.
GA: Yes. Yes. And of course I remember the work in England before. I remember the bombing, you know. We were bombed. That was before I joined up. The north east of course got a hammering. I just know that I always had problems going home on leave wondering if Betty would be there or not. You know, if she was working that was it.
JM: Yeah.
GA: You’d have to get a bus. No transport. Later I had, my dad had a van, a little Ford van. I used to borrow that when I was stationed at Newcastle. Travelled down to see her and, you know.
JM: And, in terms of squadron reunions were there any?
GA: No.
JM: No real squadron reunions.
GA: No. No.
JM: At any time. Or anything like that?
GA: No.
JM: And I guess.
GA: Well —
JM: Once you were out of here of course there wasn’t any.
GA: There were squadron reunions you know but I didn’t get. I couldn’t get to them. You know.
JM: That was what, before you came, emigrated or after?
GA: Before.
JM: Obviously you know it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be until in much later in life that you would have been able to get back to any of the —
GA: I was in the Air Training Corps and in the RAF Association but I can’t remember ever being notified of reunions.
JM: Right.
GA: I mean, now I get the Air Mail or Reveille and it’s in there all the time, you know. Reunions.
JM: Yeah.
GA: But I can’t remember or recollect any at the time.
JM: So obviously in terms of out here in, you know, Northern New South Wales there really wouldn’t have been any Bomber Command connections.
GA: There is one up in Surfers Paradise.
JM: Surfers Paradise, right.
GA: But I haven’t managed to get to it.
JM: Right. Right.
GA: No.
JM: That’s all good. And what [pause] what other memories stand out for you from the war period. Anything in particular or just, anything?
GA: No. I’m sorry I’m, I’m just —
JM: No. That’s alright. It’s just, I guess so much of the time was so difficult really. I mean that’s part of the thing.
GA: Yeah, I remember that we always, as a crew, we did everything together.
JM: Yes.
GA: We were, you know, seven of us.
JM: Yeah.
GA: That was it, didn’t give a bugger about anybody else. We, when we went out the aircraft we had, we had bicycles and I think the skipper had a motorbike. We’d have a rope from the motorbike and he’d be, he’d tow us out to the aircraft. We, of course the skipper got promoted to flying officer and we went, in the hut, you were always there, six of you together. Nobody else mattered.
JM: Well, that was.
GA: I mean, that was over the year we were like that. We would go out in the evening. I can’t remember how we got out. Bus or something. All went together, stayed together, went to the pubs together. I used to drink then. And that was it. We were so close. I remember one occasion Tony said, ‘Come here,’ and he got up on to my shoulders to stand beside the traffic lights and he was going dah dah de dah. You can believe it. But that’s —
JM: A bit of a humorous there by the sounds of it.
GA: Yes. Yes. We were pretty, yeah, good.
JM: Pretty good. That’s right.
GA: A good crew.
JM: A good crew.
GA: Yeah.
JM: And of course that’s very much contrasted by all the times you’ve had in Murwillumbah and a very different lifestyle. Very different opportunities.
GA: Yes. Well, I’ve been in different organisations. I was in the Lodge, a Mason, Lions. Now I’m in Legacy. I look after old ladies. They’re all younger than me. All wives of ex-servicemen. Go to [Provost] with Betty. [unclear] That’s my biggest worry.
JM: That’s right. Well that’s all.
GA: Is that enough?
JM: That’s good. Yes.
GA: That’s enough?
JM: That’s enough. Thank you, George. That’s magnificent.
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 George Anderson
Identifier
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AAndersonG161122
Conforms To
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Pending review
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Creator
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Jean Macartney
Date
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2016-11-22
Format
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00:49:33 audio recording
Type
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Sound
Description
An account of the resource
George Anderson was born in County Durham and worked in a grocery shop before he joined the Royal Air Force in 1943. He flew operations as a wireless operator at the end of the war, with 101 Squadron from RAF Ludford Magna. In 1959 George and his family began a new life in Australia.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
England--Lincolnshire
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1945
10 OTU
101 Squadron
1668 HCU
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Ludford Magna
sanitation
training
Wellington
wireless operator
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Sayer, Tom
Tom Sayer
T Sayer
Description
An account of the resource
13 items. An oral history interview with Flying Officer Thomas Sayer DFM (1922 - 2021, 591744 54901 Royal Air Force), two log books, service material, newspaper cuttings and photographs. After training as a pilot in the United States of America, Tom Sayer flew Halifaxes with 102 Squadron at RAF Pocklington. He was commissioned in 1944 and became an instructor.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Tom Sayer and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-02-17
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Sayer, T
Transcribed document
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[Background Map]
[inserted] Peenemunde [/inserted] [symbol]
[highlighted] Hamburg [/highlighted]
[highlighted] Hannover [/highlighted]
[inserted] Berlin [/inserted]
[inserted] Bochum [/inserted]
[highlighted] Essen [/highlighted]
[inserted] Wuppertal [/inserted]
[inserted] Krefeld [/inserted]
[inserted] [indecipherable] [/inserted]
[inserted] Monchen Gladbach Rheydt [sic] [/inserted]
[inserted] Leverkusen [/inserted]
[inserted] [indecipherable] [/inserted]
[symbol][symbol]
[inserted] [underlined] Shot Down [/underlined] [/inserted]
[inserted] Frankfurt [/inserted]
[inserted] Bay of Biscay Anti-Sub Patrols [/inserted]
[symbol][symbol]
[inserted] [underlined] Damaged [/underlined] [/inserted]
[highlighted] Mannheim [/highlighted]
[highlighted] Nuremberg [/highlighted]
[inserted] Le Creusot [/inserted]
[inserted] Mont Bellard [/inserted]
[highlighted] Milan [/highlighted]
[paper cutting 1] On Active Service
Hawes Man Wins D.F.M.
Residents of Hawes and Upper Wensleydale have heard with pleasure [indecipherable words] D.F.M. has been awarded to Flight [missing word] Thomas Sayer, [missing word], of The Hawes.
The citation says; “The majority [missing words] sorties [indecipherable word] by this airman as [missing words] of aircraft have been directed against [missing words] defended objectives in Germany. In [missing words] while on a sortie against Wuppertal, [missing words] for handling of his aircraft enabled his [missing words] to shoot down an attacking enemy [missing word]
On another occasion his aircraft was damaged in combat with a fighter before reaching the target. Despite this, Flight-Sergt. Sayer continued his flight and bombed the objective. He is a very reliable and capable captain, who has invariably displayed great courage and determination.”
Flight-Sergt. Sayer, who is only 21 years of age, joined the R.A.F. in April, 1939. He went in as a clerk and volunteered for flying duties in 1940. Part of his training was in America, and his [sic] gained his wings and returned to England as Sergeant-Pilot. He had finished one tour of 30 operations over enemy territory. He is the son of Mr. and Mrs. J.H. Sayer, of The Firs, Hawes, and was born at Thoralby, near Aysgarth, and educated at Yorebridge Grammar School. He is now Flight-Sergt. Instructor. [/paper cutting 1]
[paper cutting 2] Best congratulations to Flight-Sergt. Thomas Sayer, of The Firs, Hawes, and to his parents, on the award of the the[sic] Distinguished Flying Medal for his successful flight to Germany and back under particularly difficult conditions. Tom is a member of our congregation, and was confirmed in our Church in 1936. We all rejoiced to read of his success. [/paper cutting 2]
[paper cutting 3] MONDAY, MAY 31 [missing number]
HUGE EXPLOSIONS IN CHEMICAL TOWN
Wuppertal Gets 1,500 Tons of Bombs
THE R.A.F. on Saturday night found a new and vital target in the great battle for the Ruhr when they made their seventh devastating attack this month on Germany’s greatest war production area.
The new target was Wuppertal, important German chemical works centre some 40 miles from Dusseldorf. It was the first time this town had been raided.
The attack was heavy and concentrated and made “in very great strength.” Well over 1,500 tons of bombs were rained on the town. Thirty-three of our planes are missing. Two enemy fighters were destroyed by our bombers.
By the time the attack on Wuppertal was over, smoke from the fires burning in the city had reached a height of 15,000ft. Scores of fiercely burning fires had merged, one pilot said, into one huge conflagration.
The Germans did everything they could to stop our bombers. As soon as they reached the Ruhr, scores of searchlights tried to pick them out, heavy and light anti-aircraft guns put up an intense barrage and night fighters were up in force.
But over Wuppertal itself, says the Air Ministry News Service, the defences gave out. One pilot said there were only about a dozen heavy guns and one or two searchlights, and later arrivals said that there was no opposition at all. [/paper cutting 3]
[photograph]
W/CDR. H.R. COVENTRY.
R.A.F.
Berlin, Duisburg, Düsseldorf and Essen have been among the targets of this “outstanding captain.”
[photograph]
[photograph]
[page break]
OPERATIONS WITH No. 102 Sqdn., POCKLINGTON AND No. 10 O.T.U (DETACHMENT), ST. EVAL.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Operations with 102 Squadron Pocklington and 10 OTU detachment, St Eval
Description
An account of the resource
At the back a map showing targets for operations in the Ruhr and rest of Germany as well as France and north Italy. There are two indications for German night fighters damaged and shot down. At the top a newspaper cutting headlined 'Huge explosion in chemical town - Wuppertal get 1500 tons of bombs'. Over the top a further cutting headlined 'Hawes man wins DFM' and provides account of Flight Sergeant Sayer's actions in winning the Distinguished Flying Medal and a further congratulatory newspaper cutting. In the centre left a newspaper cutting concerning Wing Commander H R Coventry with some of his targets. To the right a photograph of seven aircrew, three sitting and four standing behind. At the bottom a photograph of a Halifax with many personnel standing in front and hangars in the background. On the reverse 'Operations with 102 Squadron, Pocklington and 10 OTU (detachment) St Eval'.
Format
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One page map, four newspaper cuttings and two b/w photographs
Type
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Map
Text
Photograph
Identifier
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PSayerT16010006, PSayerT16010007, PSayerT16010008, PSayerT16010009
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
France
Italy
Germany--Wuppertal
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
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Steve Baldwin
10 OTU
102 Squadron
bombing
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
Distinguished Flying Medal
Halifax
Operational Training Unit
RAF Pocklington
RAF St Eval
searchlight
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/305/3462/AMillerRB170129.2.mp3
7d469d66bad863f231a4ed20fe809fa0
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
Miller, Robert
Robert Bruce Miller
Robert B Miller
Robert Miller
R B Miller
R Miller
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Robert Bruce Miller (1924 - 2021, 423155 Royal Australian Air Force) a photograph and his log book. He flew operations as a navigator with 51 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Robert Miller and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-04-30
2017-01-29
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
Miller, RB
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
EG: Ok, so that’s sort of put that down to record. Uhm, ok, so I guess we’ll start with what is your full name?
RBM: Robert Bruce Miller.
EG: Robert Bruce Miller. And you, what, uhm, Squadron, rank and crew position were you?
RBM: Sorry?
EG: Squadron, rank and crew position.
RBM: My final ranking was flying officer.
EG: Yup. And what, uhm, what does that mean for people that might not know?
RBM: That, well, it’s just a rank in the Air Force.
EG: Ok. And your crew position?
RBM: I was navigator.
EG: Navigator. And what does a navigator do in a?
RBM: He tells the pilot which way to go [laughs].
EG: Yeah. And what was the date you enlisted?
RBM: I enlisted, 20th of June 1942.
EG: 1942. And your, and where did you enlist?
RBM: Sorry?
EG: What was your hometown and where did you enlist?
RBM: North Strathfield.
EG: North Strathfield? That’s really close, uhm, where, I’m from Concord.
RBM: Oh, are you?
EG: Yeah!
RBM: Whereabouts?
EG: Uhm, Flavelle Street.
RBM: Alright.
EG: Yeah, mum and dad have lived in Flavelle Street for forty years.
RBM: Oh, my wife came from that area.
EG: Ah!
RBM: Area, Corby Avenue.
EG: Oh cool!
RBM: Which is off the extension of Burwood Road.
EG: Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, I know. That’s cool. And then, uhm, and we’ve, I grew up there, I went to school at St Mary’s Concord, so just [unclear] in North Strathfield. Yeah, ah, cool! And what school did you go to?
RBM: Sydney Tech High.
EG: Sydney Tech High. And what, were you working before you enlisted or?
RBM: Yes [laughs] I was a trainee chemist.
EG: Yeah.
RBM: At Balm Paints. Which used to be at Cabaritta.
EG: How cool, how cool! And then, did you continue after as a chemist after the war or?
RBM: No. I started off at the university studying engineering.
EG: Yeah.
RBM: But decided to give that up in the second year. I couldn’t really settle down.
EG: And so what did you do after engineering?
RBM: Oh, I did all sorts of things, not odd jobs but my, made me earn a living varied and
EG: Yeah.
RBM: The, uhm, lass that I first took out when I was working at Balm Paints before I enlisted. We sort of became unofficially engaged before I went away and so we were married on Australia day 1946.
EG: Oh, wow! And, what was your wife’s name?
RBM: Pardon?
EG: What was your wife’s name?
RBM: Joyce.
EG: Joyce.
RBM: We seemed to get to know one another better through correspondence over three years than we did when we first started going out [laughs].
EG: Yeah. And how did you meet?
RBM: Sorry?
EG: And how did you meet Joyce?
RBM: I, she was the secretary to the chemist.
EG: Ah, ok.
RBM: At the laboratory and one of the fellows I worked with, I said, I need to find a girl to take to a dance. He said, next Saturday night, he said, I bet you two shillings you’re not game to ask Joyce. I said, what, I couldn’t afford to lose two shillings [laughs]
EG: Ah. [laughs]
RBM: That’s how it started.
EG: And how long were you married for?
RBM: Pardon?
EG: How long were you married?
RBM: Oh, until, Joyce, I can’t remember the date. [pauses] I’d have to look it up.
EG: Oh no, It’s ok, oh, that’s.
RBM: We moved, first moved here in 1999, on Armistice Day 1999.
EG: To, just here.
RBM: To Lutanda, we moved to a villa up there, and until Joyce had to go into a nursing home.
EG: Yeah.
RBM: And then I moved in here.
EG: Ok. Uhm, yeah, I actually went to, ended up going to school, I know this area quite well because I went to Barker on my last year so I had quite a few friends that lived around here. Yeah, so that’s how I know this area. That’s, and so, did you write to each other often?
RBM: On a fairly regular base, we had the usual letter numbering system that, you know, so we knew if we missed the other or if we got more than one which one to read first.
EG: Oh really, I, yeah, I’ve never heard of that before. I try and write letters to my friends overseas but it’s, you know, with email now you can get a bit lazy kind of so we don’t really send as much as I used to. Uhm, but that’s, and did you keep all the letters?
RBM: No.
EG: No, you didn’t? Did Joyce keep hers?
RBM: No.
EG: Oh wow, that would have been.
RBM: You know, well, my son-in-law’s father was also in the Air Force and he, and the lady that became his wife, both kept the letters all the way through and they were using a diary that was written by their son-in-law.
EG: And did, oh, that’s, yeah, no, that would have been cool to have seen.
RBM: Can’t hear what you’re saying.
EG: That would have been cool to have seen.
RBM: Oh yeah, yeah.
EG: Yeah. Oh, so nice. And, did Joyce continue on as a secretary of, like, you know, is that what she kind of did as her career, you know?
RBM: Yes, she was a secretary yeah. [coughs] That was the days still following on from the Depression, so, she only went as far as intermediate in high school and took on secretarial work.
EG: Yeah, cool. And, so what made you choose to enlist and go to Bomber Command, what was?
RBM: Well, I didn’t have any choice where I went.
EG: Oh, really?
RBM: But I joined the air training corps and with that you, your parents agreed that you go into the Air Force as soon as you turned eighteen because if you wanted to go into aircrew normally you went on a waiting list and you waited a long time before you could get in and so I went into the Air Force on the 20th of June 1942 and I got back to Sydney exactly three years later.
EG: Oh my Gosh! And so were you eighteen?
RBM: Sorry?
EG: How old were you when you enlisted?
RBM: Eighteen.
EG: Eighteen, Oh my Gosh, so young! Wow, I just, blows me away, when you think, that’s so young.
RBM: Well, you know, I guess it was a different time to make decisions.
EG: Mh, and where did you train when you enlisted?
RBM: Ehm, well [clears throat] excuse me.
EG: That’s cool.
RBM: Well, as soon as you enlisted, you went in what was called an initial training school and they were in various places but there was one at Bradfield.
US: Morning boss. I’m sorry to interrupt.
RBM: Alright.
US: Can I just test your emergency alarms?
RBM: You can do what you like, so long as you don’t ruin it.
US: I won’t ruin it. Sorry.
EG: That’s ok. So, Bradfield was the training.
RBM: Bradfield, yes.
EG: Bradfield. Let’s wait until.
RBM: And they decided, as I already had training and testing there what they would recommend that you do next as far as you training is concerned,
EG: Yeah.
RBM: You could be a wireless operator or a gunner or what they used to call an observer in those days. Or a pilot and there was no such thing as a bomb aimer initially but and initially I was graded to become a pilot and one day the round us all up and said, well, there’s a group going to Canada to train as navigators and we’re short of some people to fill the gap, any, any of you possible pilots have agreed to become navigators, you’re guaranteed to be all to go to Canada to train [unclear] in Australia so me mate and I said let’s go to Canada [laughs]
EG: Wow!
RBM: Where I would be if I hadn’t done that I don’t know.
EG: And what training like in Canada?
US: Sorry, are you doing an interview?
EG: Yeah.
US: So sorry.
EG: That’s ok.
US: You know, I’m painting around your neck.
RBM: Yeah, [unclear]
US: Can you just press that for me. Sorry to interrupt.
EG: Oh, no, no, that’s fine.
RBM: [unclear]
US: You lots of people accidentally pressing up against something and they go off. We’re checking everyone’s in the whole village in their alarm system at the moment.
RBM: disappeared.
US: So sorry.
EG: No, no, that’s fine.
US: [unclear] sorry as long as it works. Ok, that’s fine. Continue and I’ll cancel this off
EG: [unclear]
RBM: That’s to make sure I’m not dead.
EG: [laughs] and yeah, no, what was Canada like?
RBM: Well, have you ever been down to the snow?
EG: I have not, no.
RBM: Well, if you get to Canada through a winter in Winnipeg,
EG: Yeah, oh Gosh!
RBM: Which is right in the middle of Canada, you’ll understand what snow is like. Because that’s what happened, we left here in, oh, we actually we went to Brisbane and then we left from Brisbane in October and sailed to San Francisco and then took the train up to Vancouver and then across,
EG: Wow!
RBM: To our first location in Canada and then from there moved us on to where we were gonna train. So, I was sent to the navigation school in Winnipeg and along with about half a dozen others. So, we spent a winter there [laughs].
EG: I would have been [unclear] Was that the first time you’d ever been overseas before?
RBM: Pardon?
EG: Was that the first time you’d been overseas before?
RBM: Oh yeah.
EG: Yeah. So would have been
RBM: Nobody travelled overseas in those days.
EG: No, so, yeah, it would’ve definitely been, the cold would have been very different. [laughs]
RBM: Well, you, you had to wear earmuffs,
EG: Yeah?
RBM: You had a cap, that actually folded down, yeah, it was folded down but that didn’t really protect your ears so you put earmuffs over them and they were good except when you walked into a shop which were always heated inside, all of a sudden your ears started to burn, you know.
EG: Uhm, and so, how long were you in Canada for training?
RBM: Until, oh, [pauses] I can’t remember the exact date.
EG: Oh, that’s ok, just, was it a few months or?
RBM: Oh yeah, we were there good six months.
EG: Six months?
RBM: Yeah, it was springtime when we left.
EG: And you mentioned your friend. What was your friend’s name, who went to training?
RBM: Dick Eastway.
EG: Dick Eastway.
RBM: But he actually became a bomb aimer.
EG: Yeah.
RBM: That was the time when they deported potential observers up into the two because the bomber areas were getting larger.
EG: And, I think it’s coming up like uhm, oh yeah, so, I find this fascinating like cause I’ve heard a few stories about how people crewed up and did you like, you know, how did you, once you had finished your training, where did you go and how did you find your crew?
RBM: Oh, that’s a long way ahead.
EG: Yeah?
RBM: Oh yeah, because after we trained in Canada,
EG: Yeah?
RBM: We sailed across to England,
EG: Yeah?
RBM: And we were lucky we got on the Queen Elisabeth to sail and the danger of getting caught by submarines was much less because I just opened the tabs and went straight out, you know? And zigzagged all the way across the Atlantic and we landed in Scotland and they took us down to Brighton, on the south coast of England, which was so the central depot that they collected them all together before we got posted to various other places. And while we were there, the place got very badly bombed by
EG: So this was when you were in Brighton?
RBM: Bombed by fighter bombers.
EG: In Brighton was bombed?
RBM: Sorry?
EG: It was this Brighton that was bombed?
RBM: In Brighton, yeah. And while we were there, they had us accommodated in usually old hotels or boarding houses or something like that. And some of them got hit, lot of people got killed and we were lucky, it was a Sunday and we decided, we’d go, catch a bus and go out of Bournemouth to a country pub, which we did and it wasn’t until we came back that we discovered that there had been an air raid.
EG: Ah, oh wow.
RBM: And [laughs] some of them, when the air raid sounded, they were in a pub so they went down into the cellar and didn’t get dug out for several days.
EG: Oh no.
RBM: They [unclear] a lot of beer [laughs].
EG: I was gonna say, [unclear] [laughs]. And so I guess, uhm, what was the kind of feeling of everyone if that’s, kind of, it was so intense, what was happening and?
RBM: Something that happened, you know. You didn’t worry about it.
EG: And,
RBM: And because of all the damage that happened there, they sent a group of us off to a small aerodrome that was what was known as an EFTS, Elementary Flying Training School for pilots and they sent a group of pilots and a group of navigators to this little aerodrome and lined us all up and they said, well, you can decide who you wanna fly with and you can take one of those Tiger Moths and you can cruise around and the pilot can practice flying and you can practice map-reading and finding out where you are and all the rest of it. Which was in beautiful early summer weather in England, was lovely and we were able to, we would fly over, you know, Wales and places like that, you know. And that’s the first time I came across that, eh, place in Wales that’s got the name about that long that nobody can pronounce.
EG: Yeah.
RBM: And we saw the railway station when we were flying around.
EG: Wow! And, did you make, like, any good friends with any of the English and Canadian?
RBM: I never ever met them again. Actually it was interesting, ehm, the first pilot I flew with at that time, he continued and became pilot in Bomber Command and he finished up as the governor of New South Wales.
EG: Oh wow!
RBM: Yeah [laughs] anyway it’s a long story, but, and while we were there, they moved the location of where they were storing people from Bournemouth over to Brighton, which is sort of directly south of London.
EG: Yeah.
RBM: And that was much better because it was more open and bigger seafront and all sorts of things. So, we were stuck there for quite a time.
EG: And it was by the place that ended up, that wasn’t the one that got bombed when you were out of the country pub?
RBM: That was, sorry?
EG: Where was the location, sorry, that got bombed when you were at the country pub?
RBM: That was Bournemouth.
EG: OH, ok, I got it down. And then you went, and [pauses], so, when you enlisted and kind of was going through all the training for Bomber Command, did you, were you aware of the high casualty rates, was that something that was?
RBM: Oh, the, yeah, you were aware that I can’t think what was published in the paper now, but, yeah, you know, you knew what happened there. But we had to go for further training after we were at Bournemouth and they sent us up to Scotland and. We did our training there and, I can’t figure the name of that place, it was near where Robbie Burns was born.
EG: Robbie Burns.
RBM: Anyway, and from there, they sent us down to, oh, names, names, names, [pauses]. My memory is not all that good.
EG: Is it?
RBM: West Freugh, a place in Scotland. I can’t [unclear] the name but there,
EG: Yeah.
RBM: It was number 10 Operational Training Unit.
EG: And, so,
RBM: And that was where you formed the crew you’re gonna fly with.
EG: Oh yeah.
RBM: They let that all the pilots and navigators and gunners and everybody else and so on congregated them and used, the pilot first of all go and round talking to people and he gradually formed the group and that became the group you flew with and the pilot I flew with I happened to meet our bomb aimer. One day walking around at the station and they approached me and I was, I’d liked to become the navigator and they seemed reasonable people so I said, yeah.
EG: And were English or Canadian?
RBM: The pilot was an Australian.
EG: Yeah.
RBM: And the bomb aimer was a Rhodesian.
EG: Rhodesian.
RBM: But then the rest of the crew were all English.
EG: And, how did you, once you kind of had your crew together, what was your first operation?
RBM: Well, that was still part of the training, we were, it was called an Operational Training Unit and [shuffles through pages] while we were there, we were flying in an aircraft called a Whitley, which you might never have heard of.
EG: No. What, uhm, what is a Whitley?
RBM: A Whitley is a twin-engine plane that was very old and it used to fly almost with the nose down because of the shape of the thing and it, [pauses] it was rather a strange aircraft to fly, and actually you had to be extremely careful that you didn’t smoke on board the aircraft because, the pilot was there, and I sat behind him and just up there was a feeding system for petrol to the two engines so if you happened to light a cigarette
EG: Oh my god.
RBM: the plane was just as likely go up.
EG: Was that common that, did people smoke a lot in, when you are flying?
RBM: People di smoke sometimes, yeah.
EG: Oh my goodness! It’s hard to.
RBM: Not a good habit when you are in the air.
EG: No. [laughs] And, so,
RBM: And then, after we finished training there, we went to what was called a conversion unit which meant you converted onto the type of aircraft that you would fly from a Squadron.
EG: And, what, uhm, what type did you?
RBM: And that, that was a place West of York and we got onto a Halifax aircraft.
EG: Halifax.
RBM: That was called a conversion unit because you were converting to the type of the plane to the type which you would fly on operations. And they, they were usually aircraft that had already been on operations, were getting a bit old. You were lucky if you managed to keep the thing in the air until you finished your training.
EG: Oh Gosh!
RBM: And anyway there quite a number of accidents, planes that didn’t perform correctly.
EG: And did people get killed during training?
RBM: A lot of people were killed in training.
EG: Uhm, and so I guess, cause I can’t imagine how you would feel, but you know ahead of your first operation in, you know, with lots of people being killed in training and knowing that it had such a high casualty rate like, how did you feel? You just.
RBM: That’s something you accepted was gonna happen but we, we got moved, actually we were at that unit for quite a long time over Christmas because it was an extremely bad winter and they couldn’t do a lot of training and we didn’t get to the Squadron until April in the next year. And the Halifaxes we flew in that kind of training unit were, of old design and do you know the difference between the inline engine and a radial engine?
EG: No.
RBM: Well, you know, some aircraft engines have a thing right there in the front, round, that’s a radial engine.
EG: Yeah.
RBM: And inline engines are sort of, the cylinders on the Spitfire or Lancaster.
EG: Ok.
RBM: Well assuming there is one behind the other, but they changed the design of the Halifax put the radial engines in and they also changed the design of the fin. I’ll show you. Come over here.
EG: Yeah. Oh wow!
RBM: I can’t move it, it’s stuck down.
EG: I know.
RBM: But that, that’s a radial engine.
EG: That’s so cool.
RBM: And that’s the fin which had rotors that moved around that but the difference between that and the other ones, the earlier ones was, they were sort of diamond shaped and if you got banked too steep, you lost the entire of the aircraft. So they, they were much, much better.
EG: Wow, that’s very cool.
RBM: And I’ve had that since 1946, or something.
EG: Wow!
RBM: That was made by, a wireless operator, gave it to me just before I left England.
EG: He made that?
RBM: Yeah.
EG: Wow! That’s so cool. And what was his name?
RBM: Harry Johnson.
EG: Harry Johnson.
RBM: Actually he did. He was a chap I got to know very well because all the other crew had family to go to all close friends and the pilot had an association with the lass he finally married over there.
EG: Yeah? [laughs]
RBM: And the, the wireless operator sort of took me under his wing and we used to go home to where he lived, in Stoke-on-Trent,
EG: Yeah?
RBM: And stayed with a relative of his wife’s, people who, it became a second home to me in England.
EG: Oh.
RBM: I can just turn up there any time. Quite interesting.
EG: These, that’s a lovely photo, these are great photos.
RBM: Oh, that was taken after they gave us this new medal.
EG: And whose wedding is this?
RBM: Sorry?
EG: Who’s this at the bride?
RBM: That’s my mother.
EG: She is very beautiful.
RBM: And that’s my wife’s mother and that’s her parents there. And those are our two children.
EG: Wow!
RBM: There’s another one of my mother. And that’s my grandmother and me.
EG: Oh wow!
RBM: When I was about three. [laughs]
EG: That’s, they are great photos. I love her wedding outfit, it’s so beautiful.
RBM: Oh good, I have a whole stack in there.
EG: I’ll have to take a few photos. I’ll definitely take a photo of all this stuff.
RBM: Pardon?
EG: Once I’ve finished recording I’ll take a photo on my phone of.
RBM: Ok.
EG: All this stuff, cause mum will love it. Make sure it’s still recording. Yeah, is still going, and so, next one is, were you ever a prisoner of war?
RBM: No.
EG: No? It’s good [laughs] I know. Uhm, and
RBM: We survived.
EG: I, yeah it’s, I can’t imagine. And are you able to describe, uhm, the WAAFs, the ground crew and other aircrew you encountered in the Bomber Command?
RBM: The ground crew were excellent.
EG: Yeah?
RBM: And you and a lot of the aircraft, actually when we first started, we’d get put on an aircraft in various locations because I guess they were getting used to us, to see how good we were and but eventually we were, allocated our own aircraft and the place where it was parked so we had ground crew that were there all the time were there and we got to know them very very well, they were sort of part of the family. You didn’t do anything to upset them and you didn’t do anything that they told you not to do. Just to make sure that everything was alright.
EG: And, how many people in a ground crew?
RBM: Oh Gosh, I’ll probably show you a photo.
EG: Yeah, I’m definitely keen to go through the photos.
RBM: No, not in that, no.
EG: And what were the WAAFs kind of, like what were their role, how did they kind of fit into everything?
RBM: they did
EG: The WAAFs, the women.
RBM: Oh! They did everything, you know, they worked on aircraft,
EG: Wow!
RBM: They drove trucks, they made parachutes, they served food in the mess, they organised transport systems. You know, name it and they did it, and oh, and they organised, they operating with the stations and control towers and aerodromes, were very handy people [laughs].
EG: And was it like did everyone, what was the kind of atmosphere like, did everyone get along or?
RBM: Oh, everybody pulled along together, yeah.
EG: Yeah.
RBM: You know, that was your home and that was the Squadron you belonged to and you wanted that Squadron to have a good name so people didn’t muck up, occasionally there were problems but nothing really.
EG: And, sorry I didn’t ask you this earlier, did you have any brothers or sisters or have any brothers or sisters?
RBM: Sorry?
EG: Do you have brothers or sisters?
RBM: Ehm?
EG: Brothers or sisters?
RBM: Not anymore.
EG: Not anymore?
RBM: I had two sisters and a brother.
EG: And did your brother enlist as well?
RBM: No, he was older than me and he was just finishing a university degree when I went into the Air Force and he actually graduated when I was in Canada. And he worked in civil aviation after he came out of the university and got involved in building the Mosquito aircraft.
EG: Wow!
RBM: He, they were balsa ones that were super things except one crashed in Sydney
EG: Oh!
RBM: crashed somewhere near Petersham.
EG: Oh, I’ve never heard of that! Sorry.
RBM: Not widely publicised.
EG: Oh wow! Uhm, and what were the living conditions like on the airfields and how was the?
RBM: Pardon?
EG: How were the living conditions and I guess we kind of touched on this before, but how was the kind of social, like, how did you get along socially and did you?
RBM: Hey were, yeah, we had a Sergeants Mess, and we could turn up there anytime we wanted to and you could, you’d buy a beer or coffee or all sorts of things you wanted there and that’s where the Mess where you ate your meals and the service were pretty good for that and
EG: Was that, this is in England?
RBM: Yeah.
EG: Yeah.
RBM: And if you were going on an operation they served you a meal beforehand so you might have a meal in the middle of the night sometimes [laughs] and you’d go off on operation and then have another meal when you got back. And sometimes we’d be a daylight trip and sometimes it would be a night trip. Most of them were night trips for us.
EG: So how long would you be in the plane for, like an average in an operation?
RBM: Oh, four hours.
EG: Was it, it wasn’t very comfortable?
RBM: Oh well, there were no armchairs [laughs] but I, I’ll show you, the pilot was up there,
EG: Yeah.
RBM: And down below that, you see, there’s windows on the side.
EG: Oh yeah.
RBM: Well, the back ones were where the wireless operator was and the front ones where I was. And down here was where the bomb aimer was. And that’s where I sat and I had all my things and the screens that I looked at to navigate with there were. you know we went through a lot of training on navigation, of navigating by the stars and all sorts of things, which you couldn’t use in Bomber Command because you know you need to be able to fly straight and steady for quite a long time to do it properly and it took too long to work out all the things, you know so, if you can look underneath and see the things sticking out underneath.
EG: Yeah, yeah.
RBM: That’s a radar, electronic thing that scanned around and after that was developed they had maps that had the shapes of all the cities in Europe so you could read where you were in relation to that town.
EG: Wow!
RBM: And then you’d take another one relation, another town and where there’s a line across that’s where you were. There was a major change to navigation, made things a lot easier. But there was two, the ones at the, uhm, names. There was, they usually followed what they called the master bomber, when you got to the target, the master bomber would have arranged for what were called the Pathfinders to drop flares over the target and he would tell you to bomb that covered flare or that covered flare or whatever. And then you, when you flew over the aircraft, dropped your bombs, you had to leave the bomb doors open for a full minute so that the camera could take a picture of where your bombs dropped and then you closed that up and manoeuvred the aircraft to go straight and level which was a bit entertaining when they were throwing things up at you.
EG: Ok, and so we’ve already asked what type of aircraft, the Halifax, what was, uh, and you kind of touched on this I guess already but what was the best feature and the worst feature of the plane in your opinion?
RBM: Well, the best feature of the plane that was a more modern version of an earlier model and compared to the Lancaster it was a much more accessible plane inside. You could walk up and down the plane without any trouble at all. One of the problems with the Lancaster is that they had a beam across where the wings were and you had to climb over that, which was not all that easy.
EG: And, do you have any particular, on your operations, does any particular incident or like uhm, when something happened that sticks out in your mind?
RBM: [laughs] Well, a lot of things happened but we were going off one night and lined up and started roughly on the runway and just as we were about to get airborne the plane and went like that and we did the trip and came back again and the pilot called up the aerodrome and said he thinks something happened to the starboard wheel and they said, yeah, we have the tyre here, we actually blew a tyre just before we took off. Had it happened a minute earlier, something like that [whistles]
EG: Oh my god!
RBM: And we were taking off over the bomb dump at the aerodrome at that time it would have been a hell of a mess. So we had to go to one of these emergency dromes that they had. There were a number of emergency [unclear] that were set up so that almost any aircraft could land in various spots there and they sent us off to that and the pilot put it down, and he put it down on one wheel and then finally let the other down and there was no damage to the tyre.
EG: Oh my goodness!
RBM: Amazing!! Or damage to the wheel or something
EG: Should be in a movie or something.
RBM; But there were all sorts of things that happened there. Like when we were flying round in the Whitleys on training, they sent us off one night to do cross country and that meant flying up to Scotland and all the way around the place and when we got there it was nine tenth cloud, so you had no chance to take star photographs or get any idea of where you were and the one thing you could have, the aircraft had what was called a loop aerial and then the wireless operator could line that up with certain radio stations and you could get a position by lining those up and finally we got back to where I figured the aerodrome was and the pilot called them up and couldn’t get an answer. So we decided we’d try and get down a bit lower in case and hoped the cloud had disappeared somewhere and just and he sent the bomb aimer up into the nose of the aircraft and this aircraft had the front, you can imagine two windows, one like that and one like that and out of the, in front of the aircraft and as we were doing this, all of a sudden the wireless operator jelled at the pilot to go up and we hit the top of that tree, which was an old pine tree it turned out and as soon as that happened the pilot sent out what was known as a Mayday call and an SOS and finally an aerodrome answered us and we and they lit their runway up and we managed to land there. And so it happened that the pilot was so confused about what was happening. he landed downwind instead of upwind and so, we got out of it alright but the next morning we went out to look at the aircraft
EG: Oh no.
RBM: And those aircraft had an air intake just underneath the propeller and there were pieces of oak tree in there
EG: Oh no!
RBM: I still got a piece somewhere.
EG: Oh!
RBM: We, that was another lucky thing.
EG: Yeah, you were lucky!
RBM: But the bomb aimer got Plexiglas in his eyes and he had to go into hospital for a while but he didn’t get any permanent damage luckily.
EG: Oh wow! That’s and do you have any thoughts or views about the targets you flew to? So, did you find, did you think that any were too dangerous or, you know?
RBM: Oh, you knew what was dangerous because there’s an area called the Ruhr Valley and that’s where a lot major industry was in Germany, large armour steel plants and things like that, a whole lot of it. That was an extremely fortified area and you knew if you go in there, it was going to be a bit touchy you know.
EG: And did you have operations there?
RBM: Oh yeah, several times, yeah.
EG: How many operations did you do?
RBM: Forty two, forty three.
EG: Oh my goodness!
RBM: And the longest one we did was up to Wilhelmshaven, up in northern Germany. I can’t remember how long that was.
EG: And, so you, did you stay stationed in England the whole time or?
RBM: Yeah, yeah, we were there and after we finished our tour of operations they called it, which varied, it started off if you did thirty operations in Bomber Command you went on leave and then the targets got a bit shortened particularly after the invasion and so we had shorter trips but they extended the number so that’s why we went up to forty two or something like that.
EG: And did you know when your last mission, did you know it was your last operation?
RBM: Yeah, because of the number.
EG: Ah, and so, how was the feeling on the last operation?
RBM: I was happy to just put it down again [laughs]. But it was actually only a fairly short trip.
EG: And did you, uhm, as soon as you finished that did you go, head back to Australia?
RBM: Ehm well, we went on leave for a while and then we got posted to a training station and you became somebody that helped train the ones that were coming on, so I went down to one near Nottingham and stayed there for long.
EG: What was it like training people?
RBM: Oh, ok, it was entirely different training to what we did and they tended to have long lectures on things which was a bit boring but there were special gear to help people. You learned to use this H2S thing, so I spent most of the time training people on the use of that and you know, that, I didn’t do a great deal of flying there and then I got moved from there over to another smaller place that name which I can’t remember, but I presume the smallest county in England, and then I got sent back to Bournemouth and waited there till they sent me home. And actually we sailed out of Liverpool and they sent us up on a train at night but we got out and next morning we were in trucks going down to the wharf and all the people were out in the streets of Liverpool banging things and yelling out and making a cheerful noise. Peace had been declared.
EG: Oh wow!
RBM: So, really I sailed from Britain the day peace had been declared.
EG: That would been amazing.
RBM: Yeah. And you weren’t allowed to drink alcohol on the boats that carried the personnel but that morning they said you can have a small bottle of beer; it was very early in the morning and a friend and I were just enjoying standing at the railway. He was a very keen beer drinker and he was enjoying a morning beer and I took one sip and I said, no, I don’t like that, and I dropped that over the side and he never forgave me [laughs].
EG: [laughs] And, yeah, what was it, what was it like, when you arrived home, I guess? It was, how would you?
RBM: Oh, actually we, we sailed into Sydney harbour at night and in those days they had that boom across to stop anything unwelcome drifting up the harbour so we parked just inside the heads and got up next morning to a lovely sunny day and there was Sydney harbour.
EG: it’s the most beautiful place in the world.
RBM: And they, they parked us up at Circular Quay, put us on buses and took us back to Bradfield and they had advised the families that you were coming in. So, actually my father got that message after he got to work on whatever day it was and because we didn’t have a phone at home and so he rang my fiancée Joyce and she was in the AAMWS, Medical Women’s Army Service but she had been put on a few days off and living at home, so he managed to contact her there, so he and then pick her up and she came over to Bradfield as I was saying, so Mum and Dad and Joyce, all they did greet me when they lined us up.
EG: That was a pretty amazing moment.
RBM: Yes.
EG: Oh Wow! And I guess, this is kind of a tough question but what do you recall about, kind of the aircrew losses and what effects did those losses have on you and other people in the Squadron?
RBM: You, they didn’t publicise it on the Squadron, you did had, might happen to find out, so and so went missing, you know, and unless you happened to be on operation, in the operation room sometimes and then you’d find a list of all the people that had been on the ops and some had been ticked off and some might have a line drawn through them, doesn’t always mean they were killed but they were certainly missing and I guess we were lucky.
EG: Oh my goodness! And so, how would you like the Bomber Command in kind of, like the kind of immense sacrifices that people in the Bomber Command made, how would you like that remembered and how would you like future generations to think about?
RBM: Well, aircraft and systems have changed a hundred percent since those times but there is no doubt, that Bomber Command had a major influence on the result of the war in Europe, because we were able to just flatten Germany industry and flatten their aircraft industry and by the time we were half way up to Germany, their number of fighter planes and things were minimal but they started to develop these rocket things that sent a rocket up over to London and landed in the middle of that sort of thing. If you wandered down the streets of London, you weren’t quite sure you whether you’re gonna hear something, [mimics the noise of a V1 rocket] and stop and you hoped it wouldn’t drop on you.
EG: Oh, my goodness!
RBM: Interesting.
EG: It’s, I lived in London for a year and it was just weird to think that it was ever that kind of thing happening.
RBM: But in that, to walk around London during that time, the number of streets that just were panelled off because of all the destruction around the place and then go and walk through the same place today, it’s entirely different.
EG: Yeah. I am, I’ve never done country side in England but I am going, one of my best friends from high school is getting married in Rugby this year, so, I’m going to head to Rugby in September, so.
RBM: In September?
EG: Yeah.
RBM: OH, won’t be too cold. No. [laughs]
EG: No. Thankfully. Yeah, I know I’m very looking forward to it. It’s just, it is kinda crazy like to think that there was a time that you experienced like, like how you experienced it. Yeah, it just, blows your mind [laughs]
RBM: Actually, our pilot wrote a diary or kept a diary while we were on the Squadron, of the operations that we were on and I didn’t find about this for quite a long time after the war and I persuaded him to let me have it and I said, I will write it up. So I put together a book, Fawkie’s Diary, that was his name, that was his name, Fawkner, and that was the emblem of the Squadron. It was a goose and I made that out of a Cyprus pine and cedar. I carved that from one from a swan and used that as the emblem. He got a DFC and I got quite a Croix de Guerre at that time and in that’s the whole story of all the operations we were on. And he, he’d written up a resume of his opinion of the people he’d got together, so he let me have that and I put it in there, his thoughts on all the people he was gonna fly with, you know.
EG: Did he have, any thoughts of you there?
RBM: Sorry?
EG: Was there some, like, you know, his thoughts on you?
RBM: Oh yeah.
EG: [laughs] Is it possible, could I borrow these to photocopy for?
RBM: No.
EG: No?
RBM: No.
EG: Ok. And again.
RBM: It’s still in existence down in Canberra now.
EG: Ok. I’ll get Mum to track it down.
RBM: A copy of this was given to Canberra.
EG: Ok, I’ll track that down. Fawkie’s war diary. Cause that looks amazing.
RBM: That’s all the trips we did and what I did was, there was a book published that listed all the Bomber Command trips and I took that information out about that particular raid and that, that was, might be down in Fawkie’s Diary and that was the results of the trip. I did that on all the trips and then there’s other bits and pieces there, some of the stuff in England about what was going on and all the rest of it. And that’s where they talked about the Halifaxes, these flying bomb sites and then I followed all up with a bit of history stuff, took a lot of putting together.
EG: It looks amazing.
RBM: A bit of work.
EG: Yeah.
RBM: And actually that’s the second edition. The first one I had, I can’t think when I actually published it but it was quite a long time before like, that carving there to get that photograph I had to go down to a camera specialist in Eastwood and organize him to take a photocopy, to take a colour picture of that and to print it in colour. And then, my brother lived at Eastwood and he had a computer and a printer, a very old sort of thing, so, everything I had typed up, we ran through his printer. And I just made seven copies of that and that went to each of the crew and the family stirred me into rewriting it and updating it and then I had copies made for all the families. And [unclear] one down there.
EG: Yeah, I know. We will definitely track that one down. And do you mind if I take a few, uhm, pictures of your logbook as well, just I’ll take a few. I’ll just stop this recording now.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AMillerRB170129
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Robert Miller
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
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
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01:08:58 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending OH summary
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Emily Guterres
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-01-29
Description
An account of the resource
Flying Officer Robert Miller was born in Australia and was training to be a chemist before he volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force. He flew 42 operations as a navigator with Bomber Command.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Peter Schulze
Roslyn Giles
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-06-20
10 OTU
aircrew
crewing up
H2S
Halifax
Lancaster
love and romance
navigator
Operational Training Unit
RAF Abingdon
RAF West Freugh
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/185/3629/LSayerT591744v1.1.pdf
83e258c6faf6ed7815681549299d9b06
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
Sayer, Tom
Tom Sayer
T Sayer
Description
An account of the resource
13 items. An oral history interview with Flying Officer Thomas Sayer DFM (1922 - 2021, 591744 54901 Royal Air Force), two log books, service material, newspaper cuttings and photographs. After training as a pilot in the United States of America, Tom Sayer flew Halifaxes with 102 Squadron at RAF Pocklington. He was commissioned in 1944 and became an instructor.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Tom Sayer and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-02-17
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. 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
Sayer, T
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
Tom Sayer's Royal Canadian Air Force pilot's flying log book. Book one
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LSayerT591744v1
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. Coastal Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
one booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943-02-22
1943-02-25
1943-02-28
1943-03-03
1943-03-06
1943-03-09
1943-03-12
1943-03-15
1943-04-30
1943-05-25
1943-05-26
1943-05-27
1943-05-28
1943-05-29
1943-05-30
1943-06-11
1943-06-12
1943-06-19
1943-06-20
1943-06-21
1943-06-22
1943-07-13
1943-07-14
1943-07-15
1943-07-16
1943-07-24
1943-07-25
1943-07-26
1943-07-30
1943-07-31
1943-08-09
1943-08-10
1943-08-11
1943-08-12
1943-08-13
1943-08-17
1943-08-18
1943-08-23
1943-08-24
1943-08-25
1943-08-27
1943-08-28
1943-08-30
1943-08-31
1943-09-01
1943-09-05
1943-09-06
1943-09-27
1943-09-28
1943-09-29
1943-09-30
1943-10-04
1943-10-05
1943-10-08
1943-10-09
1944-07-18
1944-07-19
1944-09-01
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
France
Germany
Great Britain
United States
Alabama
Florida
England--Gloucestershire
England--Yorkshire
Georgia--Atlanta
France--Le Creusot
France--Montbéliard
Germany--Aachen
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Leverkusen
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Munich
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Peenemünde
Germany--Wuppertal
Italy--Milan
Germany--Düsseldorf
England--Cornwall (County)
Italy
Georgia
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Description
An account of the resource
Royal Canadian Air Force pilot's flying log book for Sergeant Tom Sayer from 28 July 1941 to 17 December 1944. Detailing training and operations flown with Coastal Command and Bomber Command. After training in the United States and Canada he served at RAF Linton on Ouse, RAF Marston Moor, RAF Pocklington. Aircraft flown were Stearman, Vultee, Harvard, Oxford, Blenheim, Whitley, Halifax, Anson, Horsa and Stirling. He carried out a total of 35 complete operations as a pilot, eight antisubmarine patrols with 10 OTU from RAF St Eval, one with 76 Squadron from RAF Marston Moor and 25 with 102 Squadron from RAF Pocklington on the following targets in France, Germany and Italy: Aachen, Berlin, Bochum, Dusseldorf, Essen, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hannover, Krefeld, Le Creusot, Leverkusen, Mannheim, Milan, Montbeliard, Munich, Nuremberg, Peenemunde and Wuppertal. His first or second pilots on operations were Sergeant Carrie, Sergeant Hewlett, Sergeant Lewis, Pilot Officer Mann, Sergeant Green, Flying Officer Phillips, Sergeant Davis, Sergeant Henderson, Sergeant Thorpe, Sergeant Miller, Flight Sergeant Cummings and Flying Officer Kay. He then became an instructor and glider tug pilot. The log book is well annotated and contains printed training material. He completed one additional special operation 18 July 1944 with 620 Squadron from RAF Fairford ‘(SAS. 3 chutists, 24 containers 4 paniers [sic])’ and 1 September 1944 from RAF Ringway ‘parachute jump 600’ singly into lake.’
10 OTU
102 Squadron
1652 HCU
17 OTU
620 Squadron
76 Squadron
81 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
Blenheim
bombing
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
Flying Training School
Halifax
Halifax Mk 1
Halifax Mk 2
Halifax Mk 3
Halifax Mk 5
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
Horsa
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Fairford
RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor
RAF Leconfield
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Ossington
RAF Pocklington
RAF Ringway
RAF Sleap
RAF St Eval
RAF Stanton Harcourt
RAF Tilstock
RAF Upwood
Stearman
Stirling
submarine
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/185/3630/ASayerT151202.2.mp3
ba6057852e62c62cbbfc007b82267a39
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
Sayer, Tom
Tom Sayer
T Sayer
Description
An account of the resource
13 items. An oral history interview with Flying Officer Thomas Sayer DFM (1922 - 2021, 591744 54901 Royal Air Force), two log books, service material, newspaper cuttings and photographs. After training as a pilot in the United States of America, Tom Sayer flew Halifaxes with 102 Squadron at RAF Pocklington. He was commissioned in 1944 and became an instructor.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Tom Sayer and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-02-17
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. 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
Sayer, T
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CB: So my name is Chris Brockbank and I’m in Chalfont St Giles with Thomas Sayer DFM and we’re going to talk about his life and times. And today is the 7th of December 2015. So, Tom would you like to start with your earliest recollections please and then take it right through joining the RAF, what you did in the RAF and afterwards.
TS: The first recollections are that on a spring day in about ’28 I was [pause] no ’24. ’24. I was in the front of the house. Farmhouse. My father was busy in the yard because he wanted to get everything ready for the harvest and I was told that I hadn’t to interrupt my father because he was there doing it all by hand. There was no machinery and he just had to take the file and sharpen all the different tools which were necessary. Especially the mower where the thing went from side to side and it was pulled by one horse because we only had one horse. There was another one but it wasn’t trained to do that sort of thing. But anyway, and I was told not to interrupt. My mother said I didn’t had to, didn’t have to interrupt. I had to not to interrupt. And that was what he was doing. I was watching my father doing this and he was sharpening these tools as I said. And I was looking at the birds at the same time and the birds were quite happy to flutter quite close to us because they had nests nearby and we’d been, we were living there and so we were all good friends. One thing you certainly found though was when the birds just disappeared that there was a cat around and that is something which I also learned. That the cat would have the birds if the birds didn’t fly away. And how come the birds could fly like that when we couldn’t fly was a question in my mind. And it seemed strange that they just opened their wings and flapped them and they went up in the air. Now, I was going to ask my father that but of course I had to be quiet because he hadn’t to be interrupted while he was doing this job. As I say, all by hand and if he cut his hand then that would be, then be awkward for carrying on with the job. And that was my first outlook as to why people fly. How can people fly because I hadn’t seen anybody, people fly because they haven’t got the wings that the birdies have? And so, then sometime after, I don’t know if it was the next year I was playing around. I was still not at school and there was a terrific noise and it seemed to be coming up the valley and then all of a sudden there was this machine flying in the air and that was the first time I saw an aeroplane. And I then mentioned this to my father and at different times I mentioned things like that to him. He noticed that there was a, I can’t remember the name of it again but the air force. Each unit gave a showcase to the public once a year and there was one at Catterick and Catterick was just a small aerodrome apparently and dealing with the air force and the army getting together. And he, however, we had — he owned a motorbike and side car. Maximum speed about twenty five miles an hour I think. And we set off and it took us just a little while to get to Catterick and I was amazed of these things and he said they could fly but they weren’t flying. They were just sitting there. And then all of a sudden there was some activity and somebody came along and jumped on to the wing of the aeroplane and then disappeared into the aeroplane and somebody else came along with something in his hand and he started winding and winding and this thing at the front with a roar from an engine started up. The chappie who was on the wing slid down and off and then I think they were moving something from in front of the wheels of the aircraft and then he took away and went around the field, and then it turned around and then it, with a big roar came just right over me flying in the air. That was when I first saw a real aeroplane close up. From then on all I wanted to do was fly an aeroplane. And I read books if I could get hold of them. There weren’t many books in those days but if I could get books I would have a look at the books. I wouldn’t say read but I hadn’t really learned to read. And I was told that I, if I wanted to join the air force you had to pass exams. And if you had to pass exams you had to listen to what the teacher said and so on and so forth. So there was only one teacher at this school for the whole of the school and she was teaching people from five to fourteen and a few of each all divided up and so on and so forth. And I quickly found myself being pushed in to the higher ones of age and I was the youngest one by quite a while in this, in this group and I was catching my sister up as well which she didn’t think much of. So, anyway, I also was told that if I passed an examination by the local authority which had just come in in the 1930s, it was just a common thing where you could, if you passed the exam you got your schooling at the grammar school for free and it depended on how much you succeeded in the exam as to whether you got transport or not and so on and so forth. And so I really went for it and I got the top rate and was able then to go to the grammar school. But to get to the grammar school I had to get to a railway station which was two and a half miles up hill and downhill and then at Aysgarth Station where I’d join the train and then the other people who’d been coming in. The rest of the Dale and they were all coming up and we went up to Askrigg where the Yorebridge Grammar School was. And I, we, I soon found out that you had to work there as well and work quite hard otherwise you were chastised by the headmaster. If he knew that you could learn and you didn’t learn you got in to trouble. But I wanted to learn anyway and I did. I did learn and moved up as I said into another, the next year up so that I was in, I’d already done a year at school before I’d started it if you’d like to put it that way. But myself and another young girl who just happened to be my wife later on in the things and we were great pals and we joined together and we were — had to battle because of the, we having been moved up a year the people who were in the second year didn’t think much of it and she used to, shall I say, hover around me because for protection etcetera. Verbal mainly. Anyway, we both passed our exams and I wanted to join the air force and I had learned, had got some information that if I had the school certificate I could go in as apprentice and so, I went in as an apprentice. And that meant that the young lady was left at school and she was going in. I spent from the beginning, I was still at school at the Christmas and I joined the air force just in the beginning of the next year you see. But she was left in there and then she decided she’d had enough because when the war came on at the 3rd of September 1939 she decided that she didn’t want to go to university because in the first place she didn’t think her family could afford her going there and then she — because a lot of the exams and that were disturbed by the war she decided to come out. And she had an aunt who lived in [pause] not far from Croydon and so she came down here and she got herself a job in London. And she was on that, in that capacity going higher and higher because she was doing quite well until we were married which wasn’t until after the war. I think that was my fault but I thought I’d seen times when people had come back from their marriage and within days they’d gone missing and I thought that must have been terrible for the wife. To be a wife for such a short time and then be in that situation. And so, it got towards the end of the war and we sort of drifted apart a little and it wasn’t ‘til after I’d established myself in a job here in the south, in the south of England that I could make contact with her again and after a few very heart to heart talks we decided to get married. She died ten years ago. And we had two children. They are now retired. That is it as far as that’s concerned. But the air force was my chief thing and I managed to persuade the people. I was, my apprentice, I was in accounts because I was very good with figures but I would rather have been in the mechanic side of it but anyway that was way they had accepted me in to the air force and I worked hard and I got results and I was soon an NCO. Well before I was eighteen I was an NCO in charge of the whole of the stores side of the station and two new squadrons. And so, some people apparently couldn’t believe it but I did it because the chappie who was in charge had come in from the Civvie Street and of course he knew nothing about, not a lot about the accountancy in the air force. And so he sort of relied on me and they were just building up this station with two squadrons and so I started up the whole of the side from the stores side of it. I didn’t do anything with the pay, pay side. And then when I was eighteen I applied to fly. So I started flying. The chappie in charge of the accounts was not at all thrilled by it and I said, ‘Well sir you’ve got people who had the same instruction as me when I came in. there are ex-apprentices in there, in that lot, who are in the pay side so they should be able to do the job.’ I never found out whether it was successful or not. I just joined the air force. It was quite easy for me in the early part of that because I knew all about drill. I knew all about the rules and regulations and so therefore I had quite an easy time. And I did have a little chat with one chappy who started to order me around. I was an NCO and it seemed as though he didn’t like me being an NCO for some reason and so I said to him, I said, ‘Now look. I think that you are probably an LAC with an acting sergeant.’ And so on. And he looked at me and I said, ‘Yes. That’s enough.’ And he never tried any more with me. I just —but I didn’t, I wasn’t interested in doing anything to him because all I wanted to do was go flying. But that’s me. And so anyway. Where did I go flying? Yes, well, I went down to the south coast. I could point to it on a map but it’s just gone and where the initial side of learning to fly was and that was when I had that chat with that chappy. And then we were told we were going abroad to be trained as pilots. One point which has always interested me was when I was having the medical, as they called it, for, to see whether I was fit to fly you had to look and do certain things to see that your brain was coordinating with your hands or your hands were coordinating with your brain. Which was very important of course in flying. And it, anyway, I just lost a little ground there. We —
[Pause]
CB: So your initial flying assessment.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Was on the south coast.
TS: Yes.
CB: And that’s where they were doing those tests.
TS: Yes. Yes.
CB: That’s wasn’t at Torquay was it?
TS: No. I was at Torquay but I don’t think. That is what I can’t remember exactly where that –
CB: It doesn’t matter because we can pick up on it later.
TS: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: But then they decided that you should be trained abroad.
TS: Yes.
CB: And there were lots of places they trained abroad so where did you go?
TS: Yeah. A little point on this test.
CB: Yes.
TS: There was a test there and there was something where you looked with one eye and you had to get it level and all the rest of it and then the other eye and so on and so forth and then the chappie who was in charge of it went and talked to somebody and he said, ‘Well, will you do it again?’ And so I thought to myself aren’t I going to pass this then?’ Then he said — I asked, I said, ‘Why am I being asked to do it again?’ I said, ‘Haven’t I got it?’ He said, ‘Got it?, he said, ‘You’re the best bloody so and so on there.’ He said, ‘That’s why I [unclear] he said, ‘Its ages since we’ve got anybody who could do that.’ And so, I thought oh that’s fair enough. And of course, I’ve still got very good eyesight. I know I need to sometimes just to read but I can almost tell you how many leaves are on that. No. Not there [laughs] the one at the back. I can see if there’s a cow, or a lamb or anything goes in the field right near that tree quite easily yet. The only time I have to is when I need to read something and I’m fiddling around with these things. Now where have we get to?
CB: So, you did the test and they were very impressed.
TS: Yes.
CB: So, then what?
TS: Then we went to go abroad and it might seem as though it’s quite easy. Just get on a boat and go but it wasn’t as easy as that because apparently we were to go to Iceland and pick up another, another ship in Iceland and we were supposed to be going on a certain day and then we didn’t go. And then, this was when we were in Cheshire. North Cheshire. And we had to sail from Liverpool. And we were going to go and then we didn’t go. We were going to go and then we didn’t go. And that was the sort of situation we felt we were in. And so eventually we did go and on the boat where we left Liverpool was such a lovely boat. It smelled of nothing but cows and what cows had left behind. And they, they’d taken a ship which was being used for bringing cattle from Ireland to Scotland and they’d grabbed it and said they would do this and they’d supposedly scrubbed it out and supposedly that was our ship to get us to Iceland because the other ship just disappeared. And so that was going away from a farm and then I got the smell of a farm as I was on the ship.
CB: Fantastic.
TS: The first ship that I’d been on. And there you are. So, Iceland was quite interesting because we had to go on this ship because the other one as I say had been lost somewhere and we were late and apparently this big ship just coming out of Reykjavik harbour was the one we were supposed to be on. But it didn’t stop and pick us up and we were just dropped in Reykjavik and the boat went away and nobody, you know, there was no arrangements been made for us to be there. And so there was a little, I think it’s something to do with the, not radio so much, as to do with atmosphere which was being looked into by a gaggle of air force people and then they were sending the messages back to England but we weren’t really interested in that. But they couldn’t cope with a great big horde of people. I think there were about fifty odd of us there and then they shifted us a bit further up where there was another little air force base. And they could feed us and they could give us sleeping accommodation but no beds or anything. We could, we more or less slept in what we had. Well, after a while it was a little difficult because there was no hot water. The only heat they were using was where they wanted to do their cooking because they didn’t have the fuel to do a whole load of heating. Heating water and such. So, we said well how about, I think it was one of, one of our blokes, anyway we would go to the, one of these pools which are in Iceland and therefore, therefore we could have our baths there and it was quite interesting to some of the locals who happened to be females [laughs] and it was quite, you know, jolly and all the rest of it. You know, it was, there was nothing serious. There was one person in there who was serious and I don’t think she really thought we should be there. And I think she was apparently of German descent or something. Anyway, it didn’t worry me. We just, and we got on to another boat and we went to Canada. And then at Canada we jumped on a train and we thought oh well we’re just going along to Halifax, not, from Halifax to Toronto. We were just going from Halifax to Toronto but we didn’t realise it didn’t take you one day. It took you about three days to get from Halifax to Toronto and then the size of the place. Looking at the maps that I’d used at school and that going from there to there and then you had to go to there to be at the other side of Canada meant Canada was a very big wide place. And then again, when we set out from there we went to Toronto as I said and then when we were at Toronto we were given civvies. So we didn’t really know — ‘What do we want civvies for? None of the others seemed to have civvies.’ So we jumped on the train and we didn’t go out the west. We went south and then we found we were in the United States of America and as we were, as we entered America they warned us to keep away from the windows because there were some people in America who were stoning these trains because they didn’t want to be involved in the war and some of them were of German descent didn’t want us to be fighting the war anyway. But we got, the further south we got the more accompanied we got and the more warmer we got and so on and so forth. And — and we went to Georgia. Georgia was a big place. Now, I need my logbook to give you the exact — DAR Aerotech. That’s it DAR Aerotech. Now where in Georgia? Can’t remember.
CB: It doesn’t matter. We’ll pick up with it later.
TS: And yes, it was a civilian outfit but with American Air Corps instructors. And it got us going on the, as far as the flying concerned in quite a nice atmosphere and with hardly any discipline as, you know, the rigid discipline and we would just fall in and we’d be marched from one place to another but apart from that there was nothing on that side. And the — quite a noisy lot. One or two of them. One gaggle of them was noisy but as the weeks went by the noise seemed to grow less and less and less. So, they were no longer there. But the chappies like — quite a few of us were ex-apprentices and we knew the ropes as far as the air force was concerned and therefore we drift in to flying that matters. Playing silly boys around the table didn’t matter to us at all. And that’s my attitude about it as well now. If you have a job to do the job’s there and you do that regardless. And it, it was quite an eye opener and brain damaging almost that I was having to accommodate a lot more all at once. Different things. Bits and pieces here and there. The locals were ok but we were told we had to be in civvies and we were told that we had to be careful and certain areas were supposedly out of bounds and because of the German people who were American German or German American. And once or twice we’d wander off in to the wilderness as it looked like and there would be a little village of coloured people. And we managed to chat with them. At first, they were very shy of us. They didn’t, you know, they didn’t talk to the white people and the white people didn’t talk to them sort of thing and they were quite amazed that we’d come. They’d heard of England. They’d knew England. Somewhere. You know. It was mystical place to most of them. And it was quite a nice pleasant chat to them on more than one occasion when we just strolled around there in the evening and then went back to base and went to bed and started another day and most of the chappies who had been in the air force before the war went through. Got through all right. Very few of them didn’t. But it was a very strict situation. Not only as far as behaviour was concerned but as far as remembering what you were supposed to be there for and to get on and get, do the job. Then we went to, having passed on the primary we went to another one and this was an intermediate one which was a little further north. When I say a little further north — about a hundred and fifty miles and there we were right in to the US Army Air Corps. Another experience. So that was another step we had to make. And it was really strict but we wanted to learn to fly so we decided that we wanted to fly. Well we got on with it and we were flying the Vultee BT13As. I don’t know whether you’ve come across it. And then they had, of course, on the first place we were on biplanes. Stearmans. And then it was a move in the right direction which I was able to take quite quickly. It had a fixed undercarriage but we did have flaps and we had a two speed prop. I think those were the main changes. They also had both out there and they had the wings and all the rest of it. And then we moved on to the North American AT6A which is the Harvard in the British air force and, well you got all the details of that before. hadn’t you so-? And we passed. We passed out. Those who made it. And back to England.
CB: So how many hours did you accumulate in your flying? In the basic flying and in the intermediate. Roughly.
TS: I think when we’d finished we had about four hundred hours flying.
CB: So, you got your wings at that stage, did you?
TS: Yes.
CB: And who gave you the wings?
TS: Well the wings I got, we got, were American Air Corps wings. And I’ve still got them.
CB: So, there wasn’t an RAF officer presenting RAF wings.
TS: No. No.
CB: Interesting. Right.
TS: It wasn’t until we got back to Canada that we could have the RAF wings.
CB: Because the war, this is pre-Pearl Harbour isn’t it we’re talking about? We’re talking about ‘40 ’41.
TS: When we were at, on the final lot. We went from the station we were then on in [pause] the next state. The next state to the west.
CB: Yes.
TS: Yes. And then we went from there to the main Florida place for the US Army Air Corps and when we got there — we had to fly our own planes from the Station. Take our planes and land them there. We all went in one big formation.
CB: Right.
TS: And landed there. And then we could see all the new planes coming along and I was most interested in that and I started wandering along. Nobody said anything so I wandered further and I saw that the, the very [pause] what they call the touchy plane. The twin-engined with the big engines in the American Army Air Corps.
CB: What the B25 Mitchell? Was it?
TS: No. No it was —
CB: Before that.
TS: No. It was after that.
CB: Oh right.
TS: There was a bigger one with a bigger engine.
CB: Right.
TS: It was difficult to fly on one engine.
CB: A Marauder.
TS: A Marauder. Yes.
CB: Ok. But you flew over there in your Harvards.
TS: Yes. But we didn’t fly in these planes.
CB: No. I know.
TS: But they were there.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
TS: And I was going around while other people were doing all sorts of other things.
CB: Right.
TS: I was going around all those planes and looking at them.
CB: It wasn’t Fort Lauderdale was it? In Florida. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We can pick that up later. So, you got there and that’s when you were awarded your wings was it? in Florida.
TS: No. No.
CB: Oh it was in the previous one.
TS: We came back again.
CB: Oh right. Came back again. Right.
TS: We came back again. And we got the American wings and then we got our English wings when we were in Canada.
CB: Right. They just did a straight swap when you got to Canada.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Did they do a parade? To —
TS: I don’t, I don’t know. I can’t remember. I can’t remember.
CB: So, you got back to Canada. Then what?
TS: Then I caught measles.
CB: Oh.
JS: Oh dear.
TS: And that changed my life.
CB: In what way?
TS: Well, all the people I was with —
CB: Oh yeah.
TS: They went back to England. And there was me. I didn’t feel well. I didn’t want to go to the [unclear] and I was apparently staggering around. So they more or less forced me in to see the doc. And I remember going in and him saying, ‘And what’s the matter with you then?’ Something like that. And that’s, two days later I woke up [pause] because I hadn’t gone early enough for it to be sorted out because I wanted to go back to England. So, I lost all my friends and everything. I came back as a lonely man. If you can imagine one airman on a boat with about four hundred other servicemen but none of them airmen. It was quite interesting. I could go anywhere I wanted on the boat. Nobody, nobody queried it because all the rest were the, were the Canadian army and they were quite restricted in their, they had all their different — but I could go anywhere on the boat and that was it. And it was only because I’d come out of hospital. And then when I got to England they couldn’t find my papers or anything because apparently, I was supposed to come on the —they’d been looking for me and there were some papers and there was no body. And they didn’t know that I’d been left in Canada. And you can imagine me trying to explain to these people what was what. It was ages. I just, I think it was about three weeks I was there. I was nobody because I couldn’t prove that I was who I supposed to be.
CB: You had an id card on you presumably.
TS: Well, I can’t remember. I expect I must have had something there.
CB: And your tags.
TS: Yes. But they —
CB: But they thought you were absent without leave.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Now at that stage you’d been a sergeant technically throughout your flying training had you?
TS: No. I was only corporal.
CB: Corporal. Right.
TS: Corporal.
CB: When you get back to Britain what rank are you then?
TS: I am a sergeant.
CB: Exactly. Yeah. When you got your wings.
TS: Yes.
CB: You became a sergeant.
TS: Yes.
CB: Right. Ok. So, you get back to Liverpool.
TS: Well. No.
CB: They try and sort you out.
TS: No. It wasn’t Liverpool.
CB: Ah.
TS: This was —
CB: Up in Scotland was it? Prestwick.
TS: No. No. No. This was at a Yorkshire place. Not York. Harrogate. Harrogate. And I was sort of the only one in. It isn’t as though I had friends or anything. I was just this little one person who wanted to be known but they didn’t have the proper paperwork so I couldn’t. But they did feed me.
CB: Ok. How long did that go on for?
TS: About two or three weeks. I can’t really remember but — I still don’t know where my books are.
CB: No. So here you are in Harrogate which was a sort of holding place —
TS: Yeah.
CB: Before allocating you so now you’re trained to wings standard with a lot of flying. What happened next?
TS: Well I went to an — not an OTU. An advanced flying place where after having flown the AT6A with all the little knobs in it I flew a mighty Oxford [laughs] with a little bit of fans going on.
CB: Yes.
TS: Yes. And you had to be careful with the Oxford because it — if you misbehaved it let you know.
CB: So, you’re on twin engines and you’re only used to singles.
TS: Yes.
CB: So where’s the Advanced Training School?
TS: That was at Upwood. Not Upwood. Upwood.
CB: In Cambridgeshire.
TS: No. No. It wasn’t in Cambridgeshire. You go down the Great North Road as it used to be there. You come to right next to it. I could put my hand straight to it on the map. Anyway, this, we can work that out later and it was Oxfords and when I was being trained on how to fly and all the rest of it and I just happened to say that I’d never flown an aircraft which had constant speed props. I got a bit of a mouthful from the person who was trying to teach me how to fly a twin-engined aircraft ‘cause he thought I wasn’t taking sufficient notice. But anyway, I was alright and I was alright at night as well. That was when we started flying at nights and I think that had I got back with the gaggle instead of having measles I would have gone forward on the fighter pilot side of it but I, it was sort of the — some of us seemed to have no home at Harrogate and we were the ones who were pushed in to there but that didn’t matter. I was flying. That was the main thing. And then I went, of course, on to Blenheims.
CB: Where was that?
TS: That’s Upwood. Blenheims was Upwood. So that brain there had got too far forward hadn’t it?
CB: Yeah. And that’s the OTU.
TS: Yeah. And then just as we were finishing that the Blenheims were withdrawn from the front line and so as we were used to flying low because we did low flying with the Blenheims then we went to 10 OTU detachment flying Whitleys. Then we learned how, I picked up then there would be five with us in the crew. It was three with the Blenheim and then having five crew when we were flying Whitleys. So, a lovely move wasn’t it from playing? So, it meant that one way and another I had flown all sorts of different types of aircraft and I wasn’t unduly worried about it. I just, I could just get in to the planes and do it. It was like later on when we were after ops and I was instructing on Whitleys and then the Whitleys were falling apart so they came with with the Wellingtons and so there was somebody who had been on Wellingtons and he came along to teach me how to fly and I just went in and I just went and I took off and I came in and landed. He said, ‘I can’t learn — I can’t teach any bloody thing at all.’ And that’s just because I could. This brain of mine could just concentrate on, on these things. Well that lever’s there. I didn’t know that a lot of people had a lot of trouble having to remember where all these things were. Once I’d sat down in an aircraft it looked as though I knew where they all were and that’s one reason I think why I survived.
CB: So, you’re on Wellingtons.
TS: Yes. Just for a short time. No. We were still on Whitleys at the OTU.
CB: Right. Ok.
TS: And then we went down to Cornwall where we did the anti-sub patrols.
CB: St Mawgan.
TS: St Eval.
CB: St Eval. Ok. So that’s your Bay of Biscay flying. What was the pattern of flying there?
TS: Well you jumped into the, well you crawled in to the aircraft and as you were taxi-ing you realised that there was an awful lot weight on there because we had so much fuel on board and although I’d flown the plane without being weighed so much it was quite an experience to realise that you just had to concentrate quite a lot more and make sure that the engines were ok. Which you had to do by sound mainly. And that the — you had all your flaps up and wheels up etcetera and so forth and then you could happily go and do anything up to ten hours sitting in a seat. Driving an aeroplane.
CB: Did you have autopilot in the Whitley?
TS: Yes, but I never, I never took to the auto pilot. There was, even on the Halifax I never used it. I used to trim the aircraft so it could fly itself. That’s what I did. Yeah.
CB: So, on the anti-submarine patrols what did you do? What was the pattern of your work? You take off.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Then what?
TS: Then you’d go to the Scilly isles. And from there you would be given a triangular trip which would be anything up to ten hours over the Bay of Biscay. And sometimes you would [pause] over the Bay of Biscay you’d never see another aircraft until you got back again.
CB: Are we in daylight or at night?
TS: On daylight.
CB: Right.
TS: Of course, we didn’t want to see the German aircraft which were looking for us because we would have been just, you know, been hopeless. All we had was the four guns at the back and a pop-up gun at the back and any Junkers 88s or ME110s would have just shot us out of the sky if we were found. So, we, when we were nearest to France we were very very low down on the sea.
CB: How low would you fly consistently?
TS: I can’t really work it out in feet. It’s just [unclear] but you could definitely, you could definitely see the waves and the forming of the waves and all the rest of it.
CB: Are we talking about a thousand feet? Or —
TS: Oh no. No. No.
CB: Five hundred feet. Or lower.
TS: No. No. A Hundred feet.
CB: Right. So, the intensity of concentration was considerable.
TS: Yes. And then if you wanted to relax a little bit you could come up a bit above the shade and relax a bit more. There was — we did have with us another pilot but we knew nothing about him because he, he just arrived when we were going on the plane so we couldn’t even talk to him about anything. He just came in and sat at the co-pilot’s seat there and so I just let him sit there because I wasn’t going to let him fly my aeroplane unless I knew what he could do. And we were supposed to be keeping low over there. And then he’d just get off the plane and disappear. And it seemed to be a different person every time. So, I thought, well, no continuity. If I had to have somebody who I wanted to do a course and all the rest of it then there was some sense to if I had him every time.
CB: Where did they come from? These people.
TS: I don’t know.
CB: Oh. They weren’t your squadron members.
TS: Oh No. No. No. I think —
CB: Were they experienced?
TS: No.
CB: Coastal Command people.
TS: No.
CB: Oh, they weren’t.
TS: They were all sergeant pilots and the way they, you know, I don’t think they knew much about flying. Just, after the first two when I started talking about one or two things he just sat there. They just sat there and I wasn’t sure that they could fly that aeroplane at the height I wanted them to fly it. It wouldn’t be right down low either. And so —
CB: Did you ever let them take over?
TS: No.
CB: Put it up a bit and take over.
TS: No.
CB: Right.
TS: No.
CB: So here you are flying along. What are you doing? A square search. Or how are you operating?
TS: Triangular.
CB: Triangular search. Which is? How does that operate because it’s not continuous over this same area is it?
TS: No. The —
CB: The triangle moves.
TS: We’ll say this is, this is the Bay of Biscay.
CB: Yes.
TS: And there’s France. And there’s Spain.
CB: Yeah.
TS: And here are we. Well you’d sometimes go that way around and come back again or you go that way around. And then you go there, there, there. Come round. And it was all to do with the navigation and that was why I was so pleased with my navigator who I had when I was on Blenheims. And it wasn’t ‘til a few years ago that I realised in the chatter by some of the other people when we had a get together that he had a PhD in mathematics.
CB: Did he really?
TS: Yes.
CB: After the war or before?
TS: Before.
CB: Did he really?
TS: Yeah. When he was flying with us he had a PhD in —
CB: In maths.
TS: In maths.
CB: Was he a bit older than the rest of you?
TS: Yes. He was. Apparently he was a teacher.
CB: What did you call him?
TS: He was teaching maths.
CB: What did you call him?
TS: Well.
CB: Uncle or grandpa?
TS: Well, we called him Bill because his name was Billborough.
CB: Right.
TS: The — I didn’t know either ‘til the end of the war that my bomb aimer who, he said he’d wanted to be a pilot but anyway he had come down from [pause] what’s the place? Cambridge, and he still had some of his university to do when the war was over. And I met him after the war and he was, he was marvellous. You know. He got his degree and all the rest of it. So when the time came when my son had a chance of going we made sure that he got there too.
CB: Good.
TS: And he finished up with a PhD in maths.
CB: Did he really?
TS: Yeah.
CB: Wasn’t that good.
TS: And he’s now retired as I said. And so, its all a question at times when you’re doing certain things. When you do the right thing and then you realise you’d done the right thing because of the information you got afterwards.
CB: Of course.
TS: And he didn’t, in any way, shall I say, push the issue and say I’ve got a PhD or anything like that. He just was there because he needn’t —I think in his position he probably needn’t have gone to the war but he decided that he was going to do that.
CB: So, he was a very good navigator. Bill.
TS: Yes. Oh yes.
CB: So, going back to the flying you’re doing the triangular search and it’s move, you’re varying the triangle. And how on earth do you keep going for ten hours because you can’t leave the plane flying itself?
TS: No.
CB: If you need to go and look at the plumbing.
TS: No. You don’t. You don’t. There was a little gadget there.
CB: A tube.
TS: A tube. Yes. But other than that. No.
CB: What sort of — ten hours is a long time without refreshment so what was the arrangement for eating?
TS: That did come up a little bit and we had a thermos flask with some supposedly coffee in it. And some sandwiches. And we ate well.
CB: Did you?
TS: When we were on the ground. We did really eat well. So there was no question of were we hungry. It was your own fault if you didn’t eat when you could.
CB: Of course. And the sandwiches. Jam? Or were they something more substantial?
TS: Something a little more substantial. Yes.
CB: So, what about the rest of the crew? When you’re flying your triangular search you’re in a Whitley which has got five people in. The navigator’s got his head down. What’s everybody else doing?
TS: Looking to see if he could see what you really didn’t think you ought, you ought to see. We would have had to go — had we seen a U-boat you would have to attack it. Now, if the boat was right out of the water and they had the guns all ready a Whitley would be so slow getting at it that it would be shot out the sky before he could drop his bombs. So you, if you were going to have one you had — just as it was coming up. Or just when it was going along with a little bit at the top. And we never saw anything of that nature and once I was thinking — I needed a little bit, to go up a little bit and pulled up and then there’s land immediately in front of me. I thought — that’s Spain. And the navigator for once had forgotten to tell me to turn. But we were still in — we were in —
CB: International waters. Were you?
TS: Still in international waters. But if I hadn’t just, for some reason it’s, I’ve got that little magic thing somewhere telling me to do some things. If I hadn’t I’d have been flying right over Spain before I realised it. Of course, you couldn’t immediately turn. Especially if you were down low.
CB: No. Sure.
TS: You had to come up a little bit to turn. And so, I’ve always thought that in lots of times in my life there’s been a little angel just helping me along.
CB: So, thinking of your armament. I’ve interviewed somebody who attacked a submarine. So, what was your forward armament first of all?
TS: We’d got a pop up in the front.
CB: What were they?
TS: It was just a little —
CB: Two.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Two 303s.
TS: Yeah.
CB: And so what anti-submarine stores did you carry?
TS: Four.
CB: Depth charges. And how did you, what was the intended attack mode for that?
TS: Well, you go there and you drop them so that your first ones were just before the sub and then you’d have two land where the sub was and the other one was — but you you had to get them a bit earlier than some people did. It’s no good letting them go and then them all being over the top of it.
CB: Because they’re flying forward with you.
TS: Yes. That’s why we didn’t know it but when we were on a bombing at — Whitleys.
CB: Do you want to stop for a mo?
JS: Yeah. Stop for a minute.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Ok.
TS: Well it’s alright. Yes. Yes. We’d better stop for a bit.
JS: Stretch your leg for a bit.
CB: Right.
[Recording paused]
TS: Well when we were doing OTU we, as a crew, were seen to be doing more low-flying bombing than anybody else. And we were doing this and we’d go up and we’d do it and we’d go up and we’d do it and by getting the pictures and that we realised how early we had to be dropping these because you were going at the speed even though we weren’t going at a terrific speed you were going at a speed and if you’re not careful the sub is back here and you’re bombing something that isn’t there. And so, we said well is it any different to the, for the depth charge type thing which we would be dropping? Well we didn’t even know that we were going to be on Coastal Command then. I said the bombs we would be dropping then for the practice bombs which we were using. You see. Just the smoke bombs. And they say well as far as we can get to it that has the same flying attitude until it hits the ground but it depends largely on the height you are and the speed you’re doing as to where that thing lands.
CB: So, with depth charges the principal is the same except that they’re not aerodynamic are they?
TS: No. But you are very low so that’s not going to be a big thing. And if you have a string of four you have one before and two more or less hitting it and then the third one on that but you had to get it on the —say that’s the sub there you have to come in but you have to be right over the top of the sub to do it. Well, you can imagine if the sub is fully raised and there’s somebody on the gun already it’s a bit warm before you get there.
CB: Now, in your aircraft did you have a bomb aimer?
TS: Yes.
CB: And he had the responsibility of dropping the depth charges?
TS: No.
CB: Or you did.
TS: I did.
CB: Right. And how did you come to do that because you didn’t have the sight? So he had to call it to you.
TS: No. Well, we’ll say that’s the U-boat there.
CB: Ok.
TS: Well you would be going, coming and if you saw it you might be going at an angle across it and all the rest of it. Well, you would have to drop your bombs so that one of them was, it was, they were depth charges so they weren’t bombs and therefore they had to go more or less —
CB: Sure.
TS: Underneath the plane to blow it up.
CB: Under the submarine. Yeah.
TS: Yeah. Underneath the submarine.
CB: They were pre-set before you set off.
TS: Yeah.
CB: On the premise that you were only flying at a hundred feet.
TS: Yeah.
CB: So, who is calling the release time?
TS: I was. We decided, I think, that I would do that. And I would —
CB: You’d pressing the button.
TS: I’d press the button.
CB: He’d call.
TS: And I was pressing the button when we were practicing.
CB: Yes. But who gave the call for the timing of the dropping? So, the bomb aimer is saying, ‘Right. Drop now.’
TS: No.
CB: Is he?
TS: No.
CB: You are.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Ok.
TS: Because you were so low that the bomb aimer couldn’t use the bomb aiming thing or anything.
CB: So it was just a Mark One eyeball.
TS: Yeah.
CB: You didn’t have a sight yourself.
TS: No. No
CB: And did you —
TS: But that was because you had the four —
CB: Yeah. The final question on this is did you drop them automatically as a stick or did you have to press each time to drop each one?
TS: No. You dropped and your whole load went.
CB: Right.
TS: That was how we were set anyway. So therefore you’d drop a little early than you thought for the first one to go because there was a tendency to get too close to it.
CB: Yeah.
TS: And you went over the top of it. And that is why we did the low levels.
CB: Ok.
TS: And I have pictures somewhere of the, of us dropping low level.
CB: So, detached to Coastal Command how many ops did you do?
TS: At. Then. I think it was eight. Eight of those ops.
CB: Ok. And then after that what happened?
TS: I went back to bombers. And I went from there to [pause] Stanton. No. Not Stanton Harcourt. The one near York where you went from Whitleys to Halifaxes.
CB: Is that Riccall?
TS: No. It was the other one. There was Riccall was one. It was the other one.
CB: Holme on Spalding Moor.
TS: Yes. No. No. There was another one. Anyway.
CB: Yeah
TS: Yeah. And the chappy. I’m trying to remember.
CB: There was Elvington and Pocklington later.
TS: I’m just a little bit.
CB: Ok. And this was the HCU was it? The Heavy Conversion Unit.
TS: Yes. Heavy Conversion Unit.
CB: Ok.
TS: We went to [pause] in Yorkshire. Not far from York. The Moor.
CB: Ok. I’ll look it up.
TS: There was a big, a big battle fought there during one of the years long before we were born. And —
CB: Ok.
TS: I’m just wondering. You see all the time my brain is thinking where the heck are those things.
CB: Those logbooks. Yeah. So how long were you at the HCU?
TS: Not very long. And it was, I think more of them deciding your capacity early than anything else because you hadn’t to do anything more than just convert from one plane to another.
CB: Yeah. Because you already had experience in operations.
TS: Well, that might be the case but I think everybody had to be at that and if you’re just going from one plane to another well you just go from one plane to another. It’s like going from one car to another isn’t it?
CB: Yeah.
TS: As far as I’m concerned anyway. And it [pause] it was interesting to have these. The four engines and you had the engineer and the mid-upper gunner as extra crew. You had to get to know them and they had to know who was boss in the second, looking at it from another angle. And we made quite sure that we got the right people. I was lucky, as I said, in getting my original crew. When we went from three off the Blenheims to five I said to the [pause] you know on to the Whitleys, I said to the observer, as he then was, I said, ‘Well you know more about bomb aiming than I do. You find the best bomber.’ And I said to, you WOp/AG, I said, ‘You know more about the thing. Go and get me a good air gunner,’ and that’s what they did. They were successful because I’m still here. That’s the thing and the same sort of thing was when we went — that was from three to five and then from five to seven it was a similar thing except that I chose the engineer.
CB: Right. Ok.
TS: And I walked up to the gaggle of the engineers and I said, ‘I’m a pilot who’s looking for an engineer. What have you done? What engineering have you done?’ And I was quite blunt about it. So this chappy there was saying, ‘I haven’t passed many exams,’ he said, ‘Because the job was to keep machinery going twenty four hours a day.’
CB: In civilian life.
TS: In civilian life. I thought, well, we’ll have him. Some of the others had just done, more or less, a verbal course. And so when the engineer and I first went into an aircraft the first thing we did was start at the nose and work right to the back and all the bits and pieces and he seemed as though he’d done his learning in the classroom and he never let me down one, one little bit. He was a very good man. Because he had also, he hadn’t come straight from somewhere where he hadn’t been involved in anything much and he had been where he kept, had to keep these machines going for twenty four hours a day in a factory as I said. And I think it makes quite a difference.
CB: Yeah. Ok. So just going back on timings what are we talking about here? You go to the HCU. When would that be?
TS: Oh well actually we didn’t go straight from what we were doing to the HCU. We went on a battle course. That has nothing to do with flying though has it?
CB: No. With the RAF regiment was it?
TS: No. It was — we had somebody in the army who didn’t really want to be on the job. So it was interesting.
CB: So the whole crew goes on the battle course.
TS: Yes.
CB: And they’re all sergeants.
TS: Yes.
CB: And what’s the army man?
TS: He was a sergeant. I think he was a real sergeant as well. He wasn’t just a sergeant. Somebody —
CB: Experienced man was he?
TS: Oh yes. Yes.
CB: So what did you do on the battle course?
TS: Well what the army did. It was an army’s battle course. Live — live ammunition at the end and that was being introduced then more and more I think because if you baled out and you happened to land somewhere over the other side and you weren’t picked up by the enemy you could probably fight with the people who were just making a nuisance of themselves to the Germans or when the — we really went for them then you could help too, as battle course behind their lines. That was the theory of it. I don’t think it would have been very very efficient because [pause] anyway we’re talking here now because we won the war. Or well we officially won the war but –
CB: I interviewed a man who was shot down and had done a battle course and joined the Maquis.
TS: Yes. Yes, well that was the other one. Yes.
CB: Right. Ok. So when is this? What time are we talking about? 1942? Or are we still in ‘41. Where are we?
TS: Well, we are now going to four engines aren’t we?
CB: Yeah. HCU.
TS: HCU. HCU was in the 1943. In the spring.
CB: Ok.
TS: I did my first ops in May. So we weren’t long at HCU. See. So —
CB: So your first ops were with the squadron. So you spend a couple months at HCU.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Would you?
TS: No. I don’t think as such. I don’t think it was as long as that.
CB: Ok.
TS: And the CO of the HCU was somebody you might have heard of. His name was Cheshire.
CB: Yeah.
TS: You’d already got that information.
CB: No. I know about him. Yes.
TS: He was ok. We went on a night trip and the engineer, as some people call them, had difficulty in as much as he had to tell me that according to his instruments there was something wrong with one of the engines. And so I said, ‘Well it doesn’t feel like it,’ I said. It’s all, because I had the engines all in sync. When there was two it was easy.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
TS: And you could tell if there was something wrong because even before the instruments would tell you because the engines would let you know. And anyway [pause] I’ve lost it.
CB: Yeah. So the engineer said there’s something wrong with one of the engines.
TS: One of the engines. Yes. And so I shut it down as we were told to do and then the next day we were told to go in front of the CO and he wanted to know why we’d come back early. And so we said we’d done it on what we thought were the instructions and we went through them. And he said [pause] and he said, ‘Well, according to the people on the ground here there’s nothing wrong with that engine.’ And so I turned to the engineer. I said, ‘Well you said this.’ ‘Just a minute. Just a minute.’ The CO said this.
CB: Yeah.
TS: He said, ‘We are here to find out why that happened. We’re not putting the finger at anybody,’ he said, ‘Because we’ve had this happen before where people have come back because they’ve thought there was something wrong with the engine and we were hoping that you might be able to let us know.’ And so I said to the engineer, I said, ‘Well, did you notice anything other than what you just said about the instrument?’ He said, ‘No. I’ve told you everything as I saw it.’ And so he said, ‘Well, thank you very much for calling,’ and he said, ‘This is what we’re here for is to try and find out why these engines are supposedly failing when they’re not.’ And I thought that’s fair enough. He just more or less showed us the door and we went out. And I thought that was fine.
CB: This is an LMF issue. Is it?
TS: Well, no. No.
CB: It’s not. In other words some people were calling engine fault because they didn’t want to go.
TS: No. I know. I know.
CB: But he was, you were relying on your experience and knowledge of the engines and he was relying on the instruments.
TS: Yes. Yes.
CB: So did you crack the code?
TS: Well, we never had anything like it again.
CB: These are radial engines aren’t they? They’re not the Merlins.
TS: No. These were the Merlins.
CB: Oh they were Merlins. Right.
TS: These were Merlins and you see I’d quite a bit of time on Merlins having done the, with the —
CB: Whitley.
TS: Whitleys. Having to listen to them for ten hours at a time over the Bay of Biscay etcetera. Well up to twelve hours we were airborne sometimes.
CB: Amazing.
TS: It makes you wonder how. How you do it. I expect I’d do it again if I had to.
CB: So you didn’t find out what was wrong with the —
TS: No.
CB: Why the –
TS: Why. But I think it was not just on the, on the training side of it. I think for some reason this was happening and whether it was anybody who was interfering with it on the ground or not I didn’t ask the question. But I think that’s probably what it was about. Very difficult things to find out.
CB: Well I did interview a man who had a man, had a ground engineer court martialled for threatening to upset the aircraft on a sortie. So there was an element of this sort of thing clearly.
TS: I hadn’t thought of that at all.
CB: As a bribe. Anyway, sorry, go on.
TS: Anyway, that was that. I thought nothing much more about it until it keeps cropping up about that engine failing. Supposedly failing when it didn’t. And we were learning.
CB: So this is, you’ve just joined 102 Squadron and this is when it’s come up. This isn’t the HCU. This is the squadron.
TS: Yeah. That was HCU.
CB: Oh it was the HCU.
TS: That was the HCU.
CB: Right. So you joined the squadron after the HCU.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Then what?
TS: Well, I had to go as a second pilot with [pause] I had done a second pilot when I was at the OTU. Not the OTU. The HCU.
CB: HCU. Yeah.
TS: And then I did another one when I was, when I joined the squadron. And then I was on my own and then I went flying as expected [pause] and this is when really when I need the book.
CB: Right. So what do you recall as your first operation?
TS: I think it was Essen. Happy Valley.
CB: How did that go?
TS: Well I’m just trying to think whether the Essen one was with the — no. Essen was very early and whether it was when I was going as second pilot or when I was just on my own. I don’t know.
CB: So, going as a second pilot is not a training flight around the country. It is actually an operation.
TS: Yes.
CB: Ok. What other highlights are there that stick in your mind about operations?
TS: Well, I was always of the [pause] aware of a number of aircraft all huddled together.
CB: In the bomber stream.
TS: Yeah. Or before that when people were taking off. We had three stations. Like one, two, three. Anyway. And if, say somebody is a bit slow in being able to get height he’s getting awful near that other station at times and I was very well aware of that. And so as soon as I was pointing as though I was where 10 Squadron was — one of our take off things more or less pointed directly at it. So, as soon as I got nicely airborne I made sure that I turned away and gradually got up and up and up.
CB: This is from Pocklington.
TS: That is from Pocklington. And I always tried to be the first one off. And I was approached once by the, an officer of one of the other flights who said, ‘You came and took off before the wing commander.’ I said, ‘Well I didn’t even know the wing commander was flying. So how the hell was I to do that?’ But I didn’t care. I was doing the op and so was the wing commander as far as I was concerned. And he didn’t take it very kindly. But I don’t know who the hell he was but he didn’t come and talk to me again and I think that’s one of the things where you had to get airborne and you had make sure you had sufficient speed to drag that load higher and higher and get out and if you got off first then you could get on the top of the spiral going up and therefore and you were less likely to hit anything.
CB: So ahead of you is Topcliffe is it?
TS: No. No. 10, 10 Squadron on —
CB: Binbrook.
TS: No. No. No. I had it just a minute ago and then the other one was Elvington.
CB: Yes.
TS: In the clutch. There was Elvington, us and the other one.
CB: Ok. Right. So, you’re climbing out.
TS: Yes.
CB: And making sure you get out of the way.
TS: Yes.
CB: How do you know when to head off?
TS: Well you only take off — you only head off when you’re supposed to be moving off. But if you are waiting for somebody to take off and waiting for somebody else to take off and waiting for somebody else. You’re going to have difficulty in getting off before you’re supposed to be setting course. So, as I say I used to be there and then supposedly been told off by this officer that I shouldn’t have taken off before the flight commander.
CB: You’re a flight sergeant by now are you?
TS: Yeah.
CB: Ok.
TS: I was offered a commission after we’d done about ten ops or something like that and I said, ‘No. We’ve all, we’ve decided. We all had a little chat and we all want to remain NCOs.’ Later on, in my life in the air force I said I would like to take a commission. So, somebody popped up and said well according to the records you refused a commission. And I said, ‘I didn’t refuse a commission as such. I said, I didn’t want to take a commission while we were flying as a crew on 102 Squadron.’ And it looks as though it got the rounds and I eventually got a commission. I was wanting a commission because I was instructing and nearly all of the pilots coming through were commissioned and some of them objected to being instructed by an NCO. I was only a warrant officer mind. But —
CB: So, we’ve talked about getting off and setting off. Tell us the rest of a sortie. So, you’ve all set off at the prescribed time.
TS: Yes.
CB: Which is how it was done because you can’t see the other aircraft can you?
TS: No.
CB: So, you’re off. Now what?
TS: Well we would still be climbing and so having been first off, I was normally up above anybody else from the area and then we would, when we got to the height we wanted and there was the big light on the Lincolnshire coast which you had as a glass which many people saw. But you had that as a guidance and if your navigator was doing his job properly and you were flying the aircraft properly and you flew on the headings that he asked you to fly at the same time and then you changed when he said that then he would know once he got right above that light exactly what the wind was.
CB: Right. So now you’re setting off from the light.
TS: Yeah.
CB: And you’re — what height are you by then?
TS: Well if we were still climbing as far as we could go and they used to say, ‘Well level off at eighteen thousand feet.’ If you got to seventeen thousand feet you were lucky some nights because I knew as soon as I’d lifted off from there that we were, if anything, over laden. I couldn’t prove anything though.
CB: Over laden with bombs or fuel?
TS: Well both together you see.
CB: Right.
TS: Yeah. You had the tanks full of fuel and then you would have different bomb arrangements on different trips.
CB: So, when you were briefing. Going backwards. When you went to your operation briefing you knew, did you, what would be your bomb load and the variety?
TS: Usually yes but you hadn’t always worked it out. There would be a slight difference in the high explosives and incendiaries. And when we went to some of the places in France we were full of incendiaries. I couldn’t quite work that out. And occasionally we were full of incendiaries but it was this, you would climb to eighteen thousand feet was just not on because we would not get to them.
CB: The fuel load was dictated by the target was it?
TS: Yes. Well if it was just Happy Valley it was, you just had all the tanks, all the main tanks full, I think. I don’t know whether there was any less in the tanks because you could get there and get back with having sufficient [pause] sufficient fuel. You would have sufficient fuel to get there and back.
CB: Right. Now fast forward to your trips. Which were the most notable ones would you say? Ops. In your mind.
TS: Well there is only the one that — we’ve mentioned it.
CB: That’s Peenemunde.
TS: Yeah. But we did have some others and I’d have to refer to the book again.
CB: Yeah.
TS: Because I haven’t registered that in my mind to keep.
CB: I see that on your map here. We’re looking at the map with sorties that Tom has put on and two of them show damage to German aircraft. Could you just talk us through that?
TS: Well that one there. We shot it down.
CB: Did the rear gunner do it or the mid-upper or both?
TS: Well we didn’t — at the time we didn’t have a a mid-upper.
CB: Oh right.
TS: Turret.
CB: Right.
TS: That was before we, we only had one lot of guns on the whole aeroplane.
CB: Right. So, you did well to shoot that down.
TS: Yes.
CB: Right.
TS: Well that was, the thing was because of the manoeuvres etcetera. And —
CB: So, what did you shoot down?
TS: I don’t know.
CB: But it was a German aeroplane anyway. Yeah.
TS: Well, that’s as it was recorded. Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
TS: Yeah. This one here.
CB: The further south. Yeah.
TS: The further south is where we were damaged by a fighter. We managed to continue to the [pause] for the rest of the journey.
CB: So, what happened there?
TS: Well, we knew we had by that time got one of these units on the plane which would tell us when there was an enemy aircraft nearby. And we were getting this message and I did some changes of course a little bit and changes of course a little bit and each time it would follow me so it meant that it was a German aircraft looking for me. Looking for us shall I say. Rather than just a casual one of ours getting in to that area.
CB: Yeah.
TS: And so having done that, I think, three times and it was still getting much closer each time because of the beep. You know the beep beep system that was there’s a, so I thought I would just hold it and hold it and hold it until it came very close and then I just whipped over to the one side.
CB: In a corkscrew?
TS: No. No. No. You couldn’t corkscrew in one of those. You might think you were doing it but it was so sluggish when you were up at that height with that weight you had.
CB: Yeah. Ok.
TS: It was minimal sometimes. You had to really decide it. And so, I decided that this one it was coming again. We turned and it followed and I had turned and it followed. I think the book will say exactly how many times. Anyway, and I decided right well I’ll see how far I can go on this and I just sat there. I just sat there and the noise was getting and then it was almost beep all the time you see instead of just getting the beep beeps. Time to go down so I just flung everything over to one side and just as I was doing that he was letting off his things but only sufficiently for it to hit us in the port outer wing. If I hadn’t moved those cannon shells would have been in the half empty petrol containers.
CB: Yeah. The tanks.
TS: Tanks. Petrol tanks. And I wouldn’t be here. No wonder I went bald early.
CB: So, in that circumstance did you break right or left?
TS: No. I didn’t break right. This was the normal things you start and most people start don’t they? It was the opposite way anyway. Yes. In those days. I’m just trying to remember which way it was. I think. Oh, they expected you to go left and I went right. That was it. And it was just a question of luck, I think, in lots of instances where the cannon shells went in to the outer wing instead of them hitting a petrol tank which would have caused it to blow up and that would have been it. It wasn’t ‘til we got out, ‘til I got out the plane and then there was a huddle of all the people looking at the outer wing and the expletives which were being said can’t be repeated at the moment. Still, my luck and, well there was just no aileron at all. The whole of the aileron thing had just disappeared and then of course there was further on was the damage to the wing but we only had torches. It was dark and I didn’t realise that the wing was all so badly — no wonder it was rather difficult to keep on course. And that was, I think, the reason why probably I was awarded the DFM because the —
CB: A good bit of flying. Yeah
TS: Well the next day when I went in to the flight office the squadron leader said that, ‘The wing commander wants to see you.’ And I said, ‘Why sir?’ He said, ‘Well I don’t know.’ He sounded a bit upset about something. ‘The wing commander wants to see you.’ Unfortunately, this chappy had only just replaced the flight commander and so I didn’t know him in any way at all. Just done, he’d just come from, I don’t think he was in the flight before he was made flight commander or anything. And so, anyway this wing commander came charging in and he said, ‘So this is the fella is it? This is the young fella is it?’ and he was going around me like this. I thought what’s he going to do next because he had something in his hand. He said, ‘Take that.’ And he gave, gave me the part of the spar of the wing and he said, ‘You see that?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ I didn’t know exactly what he was saying. I was thinking whoo whoo. He said, ‘Well look. That thing shows that a cannon shell went through there. If it had exploded then I wouldn’t be talking to you today because your whole,’ blankety blank, ‘Outer wing would have gone.’ And I’ve still got it. And that was that. Him coming in like that and he wanted to shake me by the hand and all the rest of it. I didn’t know what the hell to do. The wing commander shaking me by the hands or everything. And anyway it was, the aircraft was taken into the hangar and they couldn’t believe it. That I’d flown it back in the state it was in and I’ve still got a very awkward knee. Five hours.
CB: Pushing hard.
TS: Pushing hard on that. But I’m not going to charge them now.
CB: Oh. You’re not.
TS: Not after all this time.
CB: So no aileron. On the port side this is.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Big hole in the wing.
TS: Yeah. And we had to bomb and we came back with a proper picture.
CB: Picture. Brilliant.
TS: [unclear]
CB: So where were you going that day? Where were you bombing?
TS: Ah that’s.
CB: Was it Frankfurt? Was it? Or –
TS: I don’t know. I don’t know. I [pause] Yes, that would be the one. I know it was five hours after being hit.
CB: Oh. Was it?
TS: When I managed to get out of the plane.
CB: So, in that circumstance what’s it do to the flying characteristics of the aircraft? You’ve got more drag on that side. You’ve got less manoeuvrability.
TS: Well you just had, you just, it’s towards the end, the outside you see, which is less. I mean, there was less of it. The main part of the lift is where the engines are where you have that huge, yes, difference but you’ve only got a very narrow wing when you get towards the wingtip and that’s more for control rather than anything else. There was, there nothing left of the aileron, you see. There was just tangled bits. And it was, I think just the thing that I had that other people didn’t have. The feel of the thing would be almost immediate to me and I was already operating my foot before I realised we’d been hit so badly.
CB: Yeah. So, you were hit in the left. On the port side.
TS: Yeah.
CB: You’re turning around to the right and going down. Are you? You’d turn it.
TS: Well. Yes. I was already –
CB: Then you’ve got to recover from that.
TS: Yeah.
CB: So what did you do?
TS: Well I did what I would automatically do and I can’t tell you exactly what it was but then we got back on to course which was the thing. And now what do we do? We’re badly damaged. What shall we do? Should we drop our load and go back? And I thought well, no, that’s not a good idea at all because if you go back you’ll be all on your own going all the way back there and they’d be picking you off with no trouble at all. So, we just plodded on and bombed. And —
CB: So, you’re approaching the target with a damaged aircraft. What do you do?
TS: You just keep on going as though you’re not damaged. As far as possible. And although we were damaged we hadn’t lost a lot of — the aileron part had gone but the rest of the damage was not so severe but a lot of the — it’s a wonderful thing a wing in an aeroplane you see because if you’re up there and you’re flying and you have a little bit missing, well it doesn’t seem to matter quite so much as if you was trying to land or take off.
CB: So, your roll control is on one side only. In this case the right. The starboard side. What effect does it have on your direction ‘cause you’re pushing hard on the rudder so there’s been some –?
TS: Well you have to keep — this pushing on the rudder is not, you can’t get the same effect absolutely but if you put it so that you don’t have to press against the wind as it were then you are getting more efficient. And if you fiddle around and get that system by adjusting the — well it was the aileron this side. I know there’s no aileron there but you had it on the other side as well. And so, I had to, fortunately we were at the height as far as we could get and we lost a little bit of height but we didn’t lose all that much that we were going to be right underneath the whole of the [unclear]
CB: Right.
TS: And you just have to take what you can think of at the time and I seemed to think at the right, of the right things when anything happened over there and the rest of the crew of course were very good most of the time. The, the engineer although he’d never had much to do with aeroplanes he soon proved to be a very good man.
CB: I’m just thinking that here you are with a damaged plane. Normally your attitude is going to be as level as possible. You’ve got a damaged outer port wing. Are you to maintain control raising that so you’re not actually straight and level. You’re straight but not level. Or how do you compensate?
TS: Well I don’t really know but I did it.
CB: And when you’re over the target. Do you — after the target you hold for a bit to get over to take your picture. Are you then turning left against the damaged wing or do you turn right? What did you do?
TS: I can’t remember. It might be in the book but it was just what you’d normally — you see, we as a crew, because I said so, maintained going on after you had dropped your bombs whereas some people they just turned when they dropped their bombs to cut off and go like that where and I tried to explain it to many, well I say many, more than once to some of these people. I said, ‘If you’re all going as a bunch all along together like that and you drop your bombs and then you go along and you come to the turning point and then you’re turning everybody is turning. But if you for some reason want to turn and you’re here and there’s all these there there’s a likelihood that you’ll run into those.’ And they said, ‘Oh no. It wouldn’t.’ But I used to think it terrible that some of them were doing all these things which they shouldn’t do and then bragging about it.
CB: Bragging because of –?
TS: Bragging that they’d, they’d cut off the corner. As soon as they bombed they cut off the corner because if —
CB: To get away.
TS: If you were going towards your target —
CB: Yes.
TS: And then you go on a little bit and then you turn.
CB: Yes.
TS: Yes. Well they, in that then if they would turn immediately and they know you can’t be sure you got to that point properly if you hadn’t already worked it out. And so, I think some of the navigators would have a difficult time with some of the people.
CB: So fast forward now. You’ve dropped the bombs. You’ve had to push hard on the rudder pedal to get back. How do you set up for landing? How did that work?
TS: Well I had done it in this way. I managed to know that I could land it because at ten thousand feet I did a mock landing.
CB: Right.
TS: I went through all the process of seeing whether —
CB: Wheels down and everything.
TS: Yes. But I couldn’t be sure that I was absolutely straight like that but you could tell by the little bit of light you were getting whether it was getting — whether you were going straight or whether you were going differently. And I’d report to the, and it wasn’t the first time I’d come back with a damaged plane, you see and I’d report to the people on the ground and saying that I’d done a landing at eight thousand feet I think it was in one instance. So on and so forth. So that they would know that I could, I thought I could land but of course you couldn’t see really whether — if you were up here you couldn’t see whether you had been pushed on one side or you had lost another side or anything like that but the feel of the plane as I keep on saying to different people is far more important than lots of other things.
CB: So, you’re making your approach. What are you doing about speed compared with normal approach speed?
TS: Well, I’d know from the [pause] what I was doing up there what it felt like
CB: The practice.
TS: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
TS: Just the practice up there. And then I’d always add at least ten miles an hour on to that.
CB: Right.
TS: So, you couldn’t see exactly what it was but I was doing that here. I don’t know whether I’ve even mentioned it in the book but –
CB: Right.
TS: That’s what it was.
CB: So, you’re on finals. How do you feel then?
TS: Well, I had so much to do that all I felt was that if I keep on going as I’m going now and now and now when I’m doing some of this. The final movements
CB: Corrections.
TS: Corrections and all the rest of it and I would make sure that I was down to the, getting on towards the speed. The approach speed. Of course I was flying above the approach speed a lot of the time.
CB: Yeah.
TS: When I was doing manoeuvres. So that I had speed there to recover it if it wasn’t right. And I got down to that and then I would be making sure that I was going to get on to the thing and then I would level off because it would be the main runway probably had plenty of runway to do it but if you land it, if you always used to land in the immediate area then if you had to use a bit more land you had it there but for those people who come over and then still have to level out and they’re halfway down the runway before they touch down.
CB: Too high.
TS: They’ve got no leeway.
CB: No. So, you made sure you came right over the fence as it were.
TS: Yes.
CB: As near the end as possible.
TS: Yes.
CB: The beginning of the runway as possible.
TS: Yeah.
CB: So, you got that down ok.
TS: Yeah.
CB: You mentioned you’d had an aircraft damaged before. What was that one? Was that flak or fighter?
TS: I’m not quite sure. We. We had, we had the engine. An engine pack up. And that was much more serious than anything else because it was before the target and we were losing height and we couldn’t do anything else but do it. Drop it.
CB: So, what did you do?
TS: Well —
CB: How many, how far short of the target are you when the engine packs up?
TS: This one was, it was —
CB: Where were you going?
TS: We were going to Happy Valley.
CB: Right.
TS: So, it’s just over the border and we, by turning to the port I could drop the bombs in the Zuider Zee and then I reckoned I could get back if I just was out of the, out of the gaggle.
CB: Yeah.
TS: I thought I could. As far as I can remember that’s where I was thinking I could get back without any trouble much
CB: So which engine was it?
TS: It was the [pause] I think it was the starboard outer.
CB: Right.
TS: And shortly after that I had a different plane. I think that was S for Sugar and after that I had another one and the —
CB: What? Another engine failure?
TS: No. Another plane.
CB: Another plane. Right.
TS: Yeah. And then I did most of my ops when the new Mark 2 series 1A came in. They gave me another aircraft and that was a W and of course it was the finer points which had been added. Just a small amount on the aircraft but it was a big difference to flying.
CB: Was it? What had they changed?
TS: Well, instead of having the turret at the front they did away with that and they just put a covering over. It wasn’t very good in as much as it wasn’t in with the rest of the plane. It seemed to be a sort of a bang. Not a bang. It just didn’t feel right to me.
CB: Because it upset the aerodynamics.
TS: Yes. Yes. But when they brought the series 1A in then they had the new front entirely and it was much better because the, with the Mark 1 or the Mark 2 when they still had the front turret it wasn’t at all. You know there was an awful lot of resistance around that because of the turret. I mean it wasn’t at all streamlined really was it?
CB: No. No. So we’ve talked about incidents there. What about Peenemunde? What was significant about going to Peenemunde?
TS: It was the way the people approached us about it. They said that we had to do the job tonight or else you would go for every night after night after night until you’d done it and going in as we did at eight thousand feet [pause] but you see there was practically no resistance at all. There was a sort of a searchlight but nothing very much at all. And the — I don’t think that they thought, I think the Germans didn’t consider us going there anyway. No defence much.
CB: So, there were layers of bombers. What was above you?
TS: Well no. The thing was that we thought we were all going to go in at the same height.
CB: Right.
TS: But we from 4 Group probably went in at the same height as the rest of 4 Group but some of the others went at probably at a different height to us. I don’t know. It was a question I’ve been wanting to ask but I’ve never got around to finding out what they went and everybody was supposed to be going in at the same. You see we would — 4 Group would be in that time. Four minutes, you see. And we were all supposed to bomb within that four minutes. All 4 Group. And I don’t know. It’s who could I ask? Who could give me the answer?
CB: Were you following Pathfinders? Or straight bombing?
TS: We were following Pathfinders until we got there and then we were supposed to be bombing any of the main buildings because we were mostly high explosives. So we were told that there would be some buildings in a certain area and we had to bomb those and according to the result of our photograph we did what we were told.
CB: Right. Now, you’ve got a picture of the target where there’s a bomber that can be seen below. So what’s that?
TS: That was a twerp who wasn’t obeying orders is all I can say. It’s a Halifax. And what the heck that man was doing flying there against the whole of the flow of the — I don’t know. I don’t know whether he’d get back. It is a Halifax isn’t it?
CB: He’s flying your way, is he?
[pause]
CB: It looks as though he’s in the same direction as you so he could end up with bombs straight through him.
TS: Yes. Yes. Yes. Well we were bombing on the height we were supposed to be bombing and he is below. Yeah.
CB: Quite a long way.
TS: I thought that that photograph was one, somewhere I’ve got one where where was somebody going the opposite direction
CB: Oh, is there really? So, when you get to a target. You’re in a stream. It’s in the dark. How do you know if everybody is on the same track?
TS: Well the only persons who would know whether they were on the wrong track would be those who were on the wrong track.
CB: And they’d be on the wrong track for what reason?
TS: I can’t — I haven’t discussed it with any of them who were on the wrong track. Shall I put it that way.
CB: Ok.
TS: But some of the comments on debriefing.
CB: Such as?
TS: ‘Wizard prang. Wizard prang.’ Yah yah yah. When everybody else is being, sitting at the table and quietly talking and there would another lot sitting and then this fella would come out and every night he’d come back, ‘Wizard prang.’ ‘Wizard prang,’
CB: Same man or different?
TS: Yes.
CB: What was your —
TS: My bomb aimer had a different version of his wizard prang because he found out if they could find out where the bombs had been dropped. So that’s something which I, you know, but it was, whether he knew that he was doing it all wrong or not I don’t know.
CB: What was your last operation?
TS: Well, I think it was on my knee [laughs]
CB: [laughs] So, we’ll go back to the flying operation then.
TS: Yeah. Sorry about that.
CB: That’s alright.
TS: I can’t help it. Anyway, it’s [pause] I don’t know where we are as far as what you want.
CB: Right. So what we’re on is, you’re on ops as 102.
TS: Yeah.
CB: And how many ops did you do in total with 102 Squadron?
TS: Well you see I did those ops over the Bay of Biscay.
CB: With Coastal Command. Yeah.
TS: They counted as a half an op when we were in Bomber Command.
CB: Oh right.
TS: We thought that later. But it was only half. So there was four. It was, we were all on, all the rest were on Halifaxes. There were eight on the Whitleys and then the twenty six on the four engine jobs.
CB: Ok. So, the last four-engined on the Halifax. Where was that to?
TS: I can’t really remember.
CB: Ok.
TS: Without looking it up.
CB: So, you finished with 102 Squadron because you’ve ended —
TS: Yeah.
CB: Your prescribed thirty ops.
TS: Yeah.
CB: What did you do next? First of all, when was it?
TS: It was in October ’43.
CB: Ok.
TS: Early October ’43.
CB: And what did you do after that?
TS: Became an instructor.
CB: With whom?
TS: 81 OTU.
CB: Which was where?
TS: The other side of the Pennines.
CB: What? In Shropshire. So, what was the aircraft?
TS: I went back to Whitleys. But it wasn’t Bomber Command. It was 38 Group. You know what they did?
CB: Yeah. They were the tactical air force ones were they?
TS: 38 Group were the people who –
CB: Maquis.
TS: Towed gliders.
CB: Oh towed gliders. Ok.
TS: And dropped supplies to the Maquis.
CB: Yeah.
TS: We were teaching people how to tow gliders and I’d never flown one before.
CB: How did you feel about that?
TS: I was still just relieved to have completed a tour of ops that I thought well I can beat this one if I can do that and it was alright.
CB: Did you — as a prelude to that did they get you to fly a glider?
TS: Yes.
CB: How did you feel about that?
TS: Bloody awful.
CB: In the co-pilots seat?
TS: I don’t know. Now. Yes. It was with the co-pilot’s.
CB: What was the glider? A horsa.
TS: A horsa.
CB: So how many trips did you do in that?
TS: Only the one.
CB: Just one. That was plenty I should think.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Right. Then you went on to towing.
TS: Well yes, we had to instruct the people. They had to do an OTU as a Bomber Command OTU.
CB: Right. First.
TS: For all the different. First. And then they would do the towing which wasn’t very much really. The worst was towing it at night when there was night towing and it looked as though my name had come out of the book to do this and you just, with a plane and you had a series of pilots, RAF. And a series of pilots, glider pilots coming to a certain place in the aerodrome where you then had an experienced pilot in both places and those who were just learning in the others. At night.
CB: Sounds. How did you feel about that?
TS: Not very good because it so happened that my pupil was pulled out of the hat to be the first one and then I was there doing it all ruddy night until I got so far and then I just — some of the pupils didn’t even, I don’t think they knew how to fly the plane at night without anything else there. They weren’t, they weren’t from, on our flight I know that. And I don’t know how they managed and I didn’t like to interrupt too much but once I was just a little bit and all of a sudden I realised we’re not on course ‘Ahhhhh,’ there were those bloody trees there. And I looked out and I could see the trees. Just the top of the trees just going underneath the aeroplane.
CB: Yeah.
TS: In the little light that we had on the front of the aeroplane. I just relaxed a little bit. Well you couldn’t just lift it. You had a glider on behind. So, it took you ages and ages to get any height anyway but you had a lot of trees there and a lot of trees there but you were supposed to be going down there and he was over here. And so I was too tired to act properly.
CB: Go on.
TS: So, when I came down I said to the, you see it was a coordinated thing. The pilot. The pupils coming to go in this plane and there were the pupils coming to go in the glider and all sorts of things and then you had to, after dropping the glider you had to drop the rope and then you had to come around again and get down and then you had to taxi around and pick another one up. And I came into the pointer. Switched the engine off. I said to the sergeant in charge of the plane to make sure that the plane was ok with the, for the — it was quite a gaggle of all different people busy there and I just walked off. And I was expecting somebody would come and ask me why. And I waited and I waited and I waited and nobody came. But I was never asked to do it again.
CB: So, what did you do next?
TS: Well we were having, still doing the normal OTU but it was this flying at night. Towing gliders at night. Off at night. And when I pointed it out they said, ‘Well really, they didn’t think they wanted to take off at night with the gliders. They only wanted to take off in the day time.’ And yet we were doing this at night.
CB: So were there fatalities flying at night? Glider towing.
TS: I don’t know.
CB: Oh.
TS: I don’t know.
CB: Not in the time you saw.
TS: No.
CB: No.
TS: But I was wondering why we were doing it if the people on the front line said they didn’t intend to do anything like that.
CB: But for D-day of course, they did fly at night.
TS: Yeah. Well but I was very irate and I just left it at that.
CB: You were a warrant officer at this stage.
TS: I think so. Yes.
CB: So, the sergeant’s going to be careful.
TS: I didn’t, didn’t fling it around at all.
CB: No.
TS: But you had to be friendly with the glider pilots. You had to be friendly with the pupils coming along. And you had to gently ease them if they were being a bit stupid because shouting at them would have been no good.
CB: So were you flying with a student pilot on the Whitley at the same time as a student pilot on the glider?
TS: Yes. At night.
CB: So, you’ve got a double whammy potentially.
TS: Yes.
CB: Right. I’ve done glider towing myself and I know how long it takes to get up. Right. So, you continued with the daytime OTU which could be dangerous in itself.
TS: Yes. Well I was, I was the, on the OTU and we were on. I did my share of night flying and all the rest of it and I didn’t mind. I did enquire about going back on ops and I was bluntly told that, well, ‘No. You’re here and you’re going to stay here because we want you here.’ And then later on I decided that, well, I did, when I was flying on ops I did refuse the offer of a commission because we were stated, I respected the, I told you at the beginning we were going to remain NCOs all the time. Well, that seemed as though it followed in my papers somewhere along the line that I had refused a commission when offered. But I managed to overcome that and —
CB: So, when were you commissioned?
TS: During the war.
CB: Yeah.
TS: [laughs] Seriously I can’t give you a right date.
CB: No.
TS: Without looking at it on the —
CB: Yeah. So then did that change things? I mean, you were, you said that you were instructing pilots who were commissioned.
TS: Yes.
CB: And that’s what prompted you to —
TS: Yeah.
CB: Re-apply as it were.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Well to apply. So how did that change things once you were commissioned?
TS: Well, in the main I found that I was commissioned and in quite a few instances I was told I hadn’t been to the right school. To my face.
CB: By the commissioned pilots being instructed.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Right.
TS: But I was, it didn’t worry me too much because I knew I could fly the pants off them all.
CB: How did you put that one down then?
TS: Pardon?
CB: How did you put down that comment?
TS: Well.
CB: Or you just left it?
TS: I just left it. The worst part of my career was after the war ended.
CB: Ok.
TS: Because there was a decided inflow of, of the type I felt I’d, you know, fallen out with. They didn’t accept me as being the right person to be a commissioned officer and they were just narked about it and so I thought I was hoping to make the RAF my thing so I decided no. I’d come out. And another things was I was wanting to get married and I was stupid enough not to ask her to marry me during the war when she really wanted to get married then. We were engaged. But we didn’t marry in the end.
CB: When did you get married? After you came out though.
TS: After we came out. Yes. I got myself a job.
CB: So just going back. You were at the OTU. Was that — did you keep in the OTU until you were demobbed or did you go somewhere else after the OTU?
TS: Well the OTU got more and more interested in the towing side of things and I was still an OTU but it was a different from when we started towing and all the rest of it. And it was a different thing as I say. And it had advanced considerably to what it was and I think it was very good and done properly by the book or if there wasn’t a book by what was recognised. It was a good thing. On one occasion the, there was a Halifax came and landed because I think it had engine failure. Supposed engine failure or something and so then they repaired it but it was in the way so they wanted to move it and they didn’t have the thing they could move it. They didn’t have a tractor that could move it so they said, ‘Oh well Tom used to fly on those. He’d be alright.’ So, I thought, right. I very nearly. No. I didn’t. I was very tempted. I was very tempted. I thought, no. You can’t really do it on your own, you see. So I —
CB: What? You can’t fly the aeroplane on your own.
TS: No. You could.
CB: But it would be dangerous.
TS: It would be dangerous because you couldn’t feed fuel or anything like that you see. You didn’t have the instruments you could check to see if they were all working.
CB: Oh right.
TS: So, to a certain degree you had the instruments but it’s —
CB: So, what did you do?
TS: So I had to collect [pause] the headquarters were sort of here. Around in the —
CB: One side of the airfield.
TS: Yes. Well, no. The hangars and that were there and then there were the station. The CO’s office and one or two bits and pieces there.
CB: Another site.
TS: And they wanted it moved. Wanted this aeroplane moved to over there. So, I was, I was asked if I would do it. I said, ‘Do you want me to pull it?’ And eyes all around. They said, No,’ they said, ‘We would like you to, if you could start two of the engines can you take it.’ I said,’ Yes. Well. You’ve done two engines haven’t you? Why don’t you take it?’ Sort of thing. And they were getting a bit fed up of me being awkward and I was only teasing them really but as we came along then I said right. We might as well have all four engines going so and that and then I turned it partly into the field but with my back right to the flight, not the flight commander’s office but the wing commander’s office. And he had made one or two cracks about people, you know, coming from the ground and being commissioned and all the rest of it so I put the plane right like that and his office was here.
CB: Behind it.
TS: Behind it. And I blasted those engines. I knew he was in the office.
CB: So, he got a lot of noise.
TS: Yes.
CB: And a lot of wind.
TS: Yes. And so somebody said, ‘You know you shouldn’t be doing that.’ Well, if he didn’t want me to do that somebody else should have done it shouldn’t they. It’s just one of those things where I perhaps go just beyond the point I should have stopped at.
CB: So were you a flying officer or a flight lieutenant at this stage?
TS: Oh, I was only a flying officer. But it’s, I don’t see why they couldn’t just jump in to a plane and taxi the damned thing.
CB: They hadn’t got the right certification had they?
TS: Well. Perhaps not. As I say there was no instructor to tell them what to do.
CB: So where? What — are we talking about 1945 still?
TS: Yes.
CB: So, you didn’t come out until ’46. So what were you doing?
TS: Well I was doing this but I was getting more and more frustrated with the attitude of the people there and it got to the stage when it was more important what was going on in the officer’s mess in the evening as to whether you could fly in the night or fly or anything and it was, if there were any targets to be met well they definitely weren’t being met. I wasn’t flying my pupils as much as I would have liked to have flown them and all this sort of thing going on so I thought I’d come out of it. Wasn’t, wasn’t done.
CB: The people who were converting on to glider towing. They had all done a tour had they? That’s why they were commissioned.
TS: The?
CB: Well, you were instructing.
TS: Yeah.
CB: People who already had experience on tours. On heavies. Were they?
TS: No.
CB: Oh.
TS: No.
CB: What were they?
TS: Well —
CB: Or on twins or some kind.
TS: Yes. Yes, they were. Some of them were coming straight through the thing. There were some experienced people and you could, before you’d taken off you realised that it was an experienced person. Even if you hadn’t been told. And it was more than awkward on more than one occasions where I didn’t really want to pass some people but they said they had to be passed if they’d got that far. So, I made a point of making a point of it so that they couldn’t say well you didn’t say.
CB: They could record it.
TS: And so anyway in the, after the war had ended and I thought of applying, I was applying for a permanent commission and there was just no chance at all.
CB: No.
TS: Came out.
CB: So where were you demobbed and when was that?
TS: Where was I demobbed? I don’t know exactly.
CB: Because you had to go and pick you suit up.
TS: Actually, I was driving a car. I’d got an old car and one of the chappies — I was in the same billet as him and he was the NCO in charge of the transport, the ground transport and so he made sure my car was ok. That was about the one thing I got, shall I say. Rather than just being there and having the general things. He said, ‘Of course I can’t do it on site,’ but he had to send off some of the vehicles outside the thing to somebody who was a local man doing repairs and my car went along with that but he didn’t know about it.
CB: He never heard a thing.
TS: That was the only thing I got like that.
CB: So, you left in ‘46. What time of the year?
TS: I can’t really remember that. It was pretty good weather. I can’t really remember.
CB: And you got a job. How quickly did you got a civilian job after you left?
TS: Before my leaving.
CB: Terminal leave.
TS: Terminal leave. Yes. Was up.
CB: Where did you? How did you get the job? And what was it?
TS: Well I came down south here because there was nothing up north really for me. From what I thought. And all I wanted was a job. I mean I was enough, far enough around the bend to go completely around there if I didn’t get a job. And it —I tried. My parents had moved from the Dales in to Darlington. My father had given up farming and was running the the animal auction market at Darlington which was quite a big job. And he wanted me to join with him to do that and I thought he’s still a young man. I wouldn’t be getting anywhere for years. I decided that I didn’t want to stay at home and do that. And I came to — one of my crew was in West London and so I came down and asked him about it and he said, he said, ‘Well all sorts of jobs going,’ he said. It’s what you’re even qualified for. They don’t want pilots here. They want bus drivers.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to drive a bus.’ I knew he was only joking anyway. But in the end I got a job at EMI and it so happened he was working at EMI but he had no control over the things. And he had said to me, ‘Don’t get a job at EMI whatever you do.’ I went around all sorts of places and I have sympathy for anybody who is in a similar situation now. If they want a job and they keep going around different places and then they can’t get it. There was one there he said, ‘There’s one or two jobs going here,’ he said, ‘But the thing is that it’s likely that I’ll be retiring soon,’ he said. ‘And you’d have to wait a bit but if I take you on you can have my job.’ And when I went in to it a bit more I decided, no, I didn’t want it. And then I took a job in EMI and I said, ‘Now look I don’t want to sit behind a table all day long shifting bits of paper. I want something on the move.’ So, I finished up half the time doing something on the table and the next was to keep a department of EMI Records going. Which meant there were several aspects towards the keeping the smooth running going and you had to be sure you got all the bits and pieces coming and going. It wasn’t tremendously, shall we say, a money-making job but it kept me going. I could go on. It’s about time you had a cup of tea isn’t it?
CB: That’s sounds —
JS: My knee’s getting set.
CB: We’ll stop there for a mo. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Tom Sayer
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-12-07
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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02:30:30 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ASayerT151202
Conforms To
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Pending review
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
United States
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
England--Yorkshire
Temporal Coverage
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1942
1943
1944
1945
Description
An account of the resource
Tom Sayer was accepted in to the Royal Air Force as an apprentice and began training as a pilot as soon as he was old enough. He trained in the United States and on his return he was detached to Coastal Command. He completed eight operations patrolling for submarines before being posted to 102 Squadron at RAF Pocklington where he completed his tour. His aircraft was badly damaged on one operation but he continued to the target and managed to get the aircraft back.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
10 OTU
102 Squadron
81 OTU
aircrew
Blenheim
bombing
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
Distinguished Flying Medal
Halifax
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
Horsa
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Pocklington
RAF St Eval
RAF Upwood
Stearman
submarine
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/609/8878/PMcNamaraL1502.2.jpg
1a52a0cc7a6a6bd8198d87fbb16b0d28
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/609/8878/AMcNamara150722.1.mp3
d96debe0280ffed1ce08c4e80939bcf2
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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McNamara, Len
L McNamara
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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McNamara, L
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Len McNamara (1924 - 2020, 1814123, 185344 Royal Air Force) and a photograph. He flew operations as an air gunner with 10 and 75 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-22
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Ok,so, this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Annie Moody, and the interviewee is Len McNamara. And the interview is taking place at Len McNamara's home, in Southport, on the twenty second of July two thousand and fifteen. So Len, if you would just tell me a little bit about your childhood, background, and then how you came to join the RAF.
LM: I was born in Bristol in nineteen twenty four. My father was a chef, or cook as they called them in those days, and he worked at Fishponds, Bristol Mental Hospital, which is at Fishponds, on a very huge estate there, and my mother was a mental nurse. I was the eldest of three boys, I had a normal Elementary School education, went to night school, and when I was, left school at fourteen I was an apprentice plumber. Joined, as most lads I was associated with, joined the Air Training Corps, which had a very strong following in Bristol, and after going through, suffering, seeing the bombing of my home town, Bristol, I decided, if I could, I would like to join the Air Force, and be a member of the bomber squadrons. In December nineteen forty three I volunteered for air crew, and I went down to Euston House in London on a three day selection board, and was selected for air crew, and was told I would be called up later. Um, in March nineteen forty three, on the twenty first, the day I was exactly eighteen and a half years old, I reported to Lords Cricket Ground ACR-
AM: (interrupting) Nineteen forty four.
LM: Nineteen forty three.
AM: Forty three or forty four?
LM: Forty three.
AM: Ok.
LM: Um, after spending about three weeks in London, Earls Court Road, being kitted out and doing elementary field programmes, I went up to Bridlington to Air Gunners ITW. The course up there lasted approximately six weeks, and from there I went down to (pause) um, Elementary Gunnery School which was at Bridgenorth. Actually, did nothing at all there, cos they were just setting it all up and it was just hangers. From there I went to number one ATS at Pembrey, in Wales, did my gunnery course, and we were flying on, doing the gunnery on Blenheims, with Lysanders towing the drogues.
AM: So you, you were shooting at drogues.
LM: Yes, shooting at drogues. I passed out and was presented with merit honours in August of forty three, and from there I went to 10 OTU at Abingdon. At Abingdon it was crewed up, the skipper being Pete Catterswife, who was a Canyan, navigator was a-, from Taunton, and the wireless operator air gunner was an Australian, Bob Wright, and I can't think of anybody else who was crew at that time.
AM: How did you get together? Who approached who?
LM: We just all went into just a big room, and all I remember is being introduced to the crew. I don't know whether it was the navigator, or what, because (unclear), and he was West country, from Taunton. It could have been that. Anyhow, we crewed up there, that's right, navigator (pause), oh, and the bomb aimer, who was an ex Glasgow policeman, Bob McLuer. And I think we spent about two to three weeks at Abingdon, flying on Whitleys, and once the crew, skipper was solo on the Whitleys, we then went out to the satellite airfield at Stanton air, air, Stanton Harcourt. On completion of the OTU we then went up to Marston Moor, and did our conversion on to Halifax. Then they were flying Haliax ll's, which weren't all that clever, but nevertheless, the Halifax was a very well built aircraft, and more crew comfort than some of the others. On completion of the course at Marston Moor, we then went to Driffield on an escape and evasion course. I think it was about two weeks there, doing all sorts of things, getting over barbed wire, crawling through ditches, you name it, and we finished up with an escape and evasion exercise where we were dropped off in pairs on the North Yorkshire Moors, and then had to find our way back to Driffield. One, two of the Australians had a good experience, they got as far as (pause) oh, seaside town. Scarborough.
AM: Scarborough.
LM: And they found an army vehicle which was unattended, and drove back in that. I think the outcome was that it was some army Major's transport. Anyhow, they did that. And we, some of us got to Norton. We jumped on the train there, and when it got, not to Driffield station, to one of the minor stations before, we got out the wrong side and back in to Driffield without being stopped or caught. Um, after doing this escape and evasion, we were posted to the Shiny Ten Squadron in January nineteen forty four at Melbourne, just outside York. There were several crews went there, and we did two mine laying operations from Melbourne. On one of them the aircraft was shot up a bit by ack-ack, but the only comment was 'several holes in the aircraft, no member of crew hurt' (chuckles). From there, one five eight at Lissett were converting to the Halifax lll's, and also they'd lost one flight, C Flight, which went to Leconfield to form another squadron. So there were four of us, new crews of us at Shiny Ten who were then posted to Lissett. And we went there, and were on B Flight. Lissett was a very happy station. Everybody was very sociable, and a good atmosphere all round. While there I was having sinus problems, so I went up to the hospital at North Allerton, and had to go and have a minor sinus operation. As a result of that I was limited to flying below ten thousand feet. At that time I, with my own crew, had completed seven ops, and because of my sinus problems I was grounded from flying on operations, so they had a spare gunner in my place. On one of those trips to Tournai on (unclear) they got shot down. Three of the crew bailed out, the navigator and the flight engineer became prisoners of war. The rear gunner who had taken my place as a spare, he bailed out, but his chute failed to open, and he was found in a lady's, in France, in a lady's back garden, and his chute pack with him unopened. So it was quite a shock for the lady concerned. I have visited where the crew crashed, and also where everybody was found. I went with my son, er two of my sons and a grandson, and we found the local mayor was very cooperative, and showed us everything they could. The crew, the other ones who didn't survive, are buried in a small plot by the War Graves Commission in Meharicourt, and I have made a few visits there. There are quite a few members of 158 buried there, also the famous air gunner VC, Jan Mynarwski is buried there. From then I spent the rest of my time at Lissett as a spare gunner. Fortunately I was in the position of, I did fly with some crews for quite a period. One was Ted Strange. His air gunner, rear gunner had appendicitis, so I flew with them on their last seven ops, and they were a very fine crew, and I got on very well. I then was crewed up with Sam Weller, B Flight commander. Trips with him were few and far between, but I did, I then was crewed up with another Australian crew, and I did their last six ops with them. I did a couple of odd spare trips, and, but very quiet time really. I did fly with one crew, Canadian crew, which I wasn't happy with, and when I got back I said to the (unclear) that I didn't wish to fly with them any more because there was too much talking, and not enough attention paid to the job in hand. He assured me I wouldn't fly with them any more, and I didn't, and tragically, they did lose their lives on an operation not long after. In the October of, correction, in September of forty four I was then crewed up with a Canadian crew, and I flew with them for my last trips, my remaining trips of (unclear). I did, I think it was five or six with them, and then one day we came back form a daylight raid on Cologne, on thirtieth October, that was, and the Wing Commander, Wing Commander Dobson, came out to meet me, and said, 'congratulations, you've finished your tour now, and your commission is through'. The crew only had about three more ops to do to finish their tour, and I said, 'oh, I'll stay with you if you want', and the Wing Commander said, 'you've had enough, done enough. You've had nine months continuous operational flying, you've done your share, you're going to have a rest'.
AM: So that was that.
LM: From then I was posted to Langar, just outside Nottingham, as an instructor. Wasn't enjoying that very much , and a call went out for two second tour gunners, and Tony Dunster was an ex 4 Group gunner like myself, on Halifax's, we were posted, he volunteered, and we went down to Wolfarts Lodge to crew up, and we crewed up, the crew we crewed up with, the skipper was on his second tour, he was a New Zealander, and the rest of the crew, the wireless operator, the bomb aimer and the navigator, and flight engineer, had all been together on their first tour, flying Stirlings, as had the captain. And, I must admit, none of us were very enthusiastic about the Lancaster. Those of us on Halifax's said that the Lanc was a Woolworth's effort, and the Halifax was the Marks and Spencers, In all honesty, the Halifax was more favourable to the crews. It was easier to get around in, and easier to get out of in an emergency. Neither the Stirling boys, nor Tony and I liked the Lancasters at all. One incident we had with the Lancaster, was we were down at, way down in, er, Germany, I can't remember the target at the moment, this conversation, but it was way down, oh, Magdeberg, it was, and we were just doing the run in on the target, and we had an engine go up in flames. Nothing to do with any enemy action, it's just we had a glycol leak which caused a fire in the engine, and the engine couldn't be, it wouldn't feather, so we went all the way back to base with an engine, a prop just windmilling, and got back an hour after everybody else.
AM: Safely, though.
LM: Safely. One of the best jobs we ever did was the Manna Operations to Holland, dropping food. We loaded our crews ourselves, they had like a hammock in the bomb bay, and we loaded everything there, then we went over and dropped the food. And that was the most, the best thing we ever did.
AM: How many drops did you do on Operation Manna?
LM: Two.
AM: You did two.
LM: Yes
AM: How low were you flying?
LM: Oh, practically ground level. It was amazing because (pause)
AM: Could you actually see the people?
LM: Oh yes. As you were flying over there were people in their boats, and that, waving like mad to you, and some of them waving that enthusiastically they could tip over, but it was really fantastic to see it, and doing it.
AM: As a contrast to what you were doing before.
LM: Oh yes. Before, I mean before it was a question of destruction, but this question was saving lives. So, and (pause)
AM: Going back to the destruction, if you like, what, what, what did it actually feel like for you, there in the, as a, you were a rear gunner?
LM: Yeah, rear gunner. Well, actually it's amazing because being the rear gunner you never saw what you were going in to, you only saw it as you were coming out of it. And I was one of the gunners, there was loads of us, we never looked for trouble. Some, you had some people were gung-ho, drawing attention to themselves, but I was always taught, and others did, never draw attention to yourself. Just sit there quietly watching, and keeping your eyes open.
AM: Did you actually ever use the gun?
LM: Never.
AM: Never?
LM: No. I seen them, but you, just you sit there quietly, keeping an eye on what-
AM: But you could have done if you'd had to.
LM: Oh yeah.
AM: And what was it like in the suit, when you were all plugged in? Were you always warm, because it was really cold, wasn't it?
LM: Yes, but I really enjoyed it in the rear turret. You were in a world of your own there, you were your own companion. The only thing, it did get very cold, but then we had electric suits, and something we could never understand, ICW at Bridlington, you had to strip a Browning down, blindfolded. It's all laughable when you think of it, because in the turret it was minus forty, if you'd touched any metal you'd have frostbite, so why did we have to do all that?
AM: But you could, if you had to? With gloves on.
LM: Yes, if you had to. (laughs) But that was er-
AM: What, what do you think about the bombing now? You know, in retrospect.
LM: Well, it's more accurate, isn't it. I mean, you've got all the aids.
AM: No, sorry. I mean about when, when you were actually doing the bombing, dropping the bombs , what, what do you think about that now, in thinking about-
LM: I, I've still no regrets about it at all. Having lived and seen my own city destroyed, with no problems at all. And all I can say, it's like people are on about it all, what all the fuss and bother's about. There has been a book written since then, which I have. Written, I forget the name of the author, but he had, once the Communists had gone from Eastern Germany, and all the records came out, there was a lot going on there, all the equipment for submarines being manufactured there, it was a big staging post for the Eastern Front. There was loads of military there, and we were quite justified. I don't know what, all this outcry afterwards. It's easy to be wise after the event.
AM: And you got the DFC?
LM: Yeah, yeah.
AM: For the number of tours.
LM: Gary has got a letter that shows-
AM: Has he?
LM: Yeah. But there were, I mean, I had, I know I flew with numerous crews, but with the exception of the odd one or two, I was fortunate, I flew with very good, well experienced crews, and some of them had had an horrendous time. In fact, er, can we have just a (unclear).
AM: Yes, of course. (rustling noises)
LM: When Douggie Bancroft, Flying Officer Bancroft, who I did quite a few, they, they got badly shot up, and they landed at Hurn Airport, in, er, outside Bournemouth, and nobody ever understood how they managed to get the aircraft back there. In fact the instrument panel is in Canberra, in a museum in Australia, from that aircraft, and obviously the crew that survived, er two of the crew, they never found, never found their bodies. They reckon they must have fallen through the hole in the aircraft where it was badly burnt. And they all got immediate awards, DFMs and DFCs. They thoroughly deserved it. But they were a fantastic crew that I had the privilege to fly with for the remainder, the rest of their tour.
AM: Yes. So, I'm looking at all the different ones. So you had a Kenyan pilot, Canadian pilots, Australian pilots, New Zealand pilots, English pilot. You went through the lot.
LM: Yes, yes. I was lucky.
AM: Any difference? What were the differences of the nationalities? Other than the obvious ones about language.
LM: Yeah, there isn't no difference at all. They were all first class captains. Very happy crews, and, you can't explain the comradeship with your crew. You were closer than you were with your own brothers. I suppose the reason, you depended on each other for your lives. We had a good social life together, and that's it.
AM: Did you get down to Bridlington, from Lissett?
LM: Yeah, yeah. I've walked back from there many a time.
AM: You've walked? From Bridlington to Lissett?
LM: (laughs)
AM: How far's that?
LM: About eight miles. Eight, ten miles. Yep. Come back many a night in the crew bus, not on the seat, but on the floor (laughs).
AM: You enjoyed it, then?
LM: Oh yes. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
AM: And then, as, after that, you ended up with 75 squadron?
LM: Yeah.
AM: And then, I'm just looking at a sheet of paper here than Len has given me with all his pilots on. So, 75 New Zealand squadron, you were there 'til the end of the European war.
LM: Yes. Yes.
AM: So what was it like at the end, then? What was your last tour? Were they Operation Manna? Er, not tour, sorry, your last operation.
LM: I don't know.
AM: Because the Operation Manna ones would have been, May forty four?
LM: They were May time, weren't they. Because the war finished, I think it was in May. It was May, wasn't it?
AM: Yeah.
LM: I know because everything went mad on seven five squadron at Mepal, but (pause) that was fantastic, because when we come back off leave from seventy five New Zealand, all of us crew, we all used to come back, meet up in London, before coming back to Mepal, and have a night in London. But we used to go to Mepal village. Lovely, all the Kiwis getting to do their war dance in the bar. It was great.
AM: So what was it like at the end, then? What, how did it, for you, how did it end?
LM: It was just like a, really a bit of a let down. I thought we weren't treated very good. I know the New Zealanders were going to go out on, I forget what they call it, they were going to go out to India, and that. They went to Scampton, all the Kiwis, and all the English people, we were shipped up to Snaith, in Yorkshire, just to be selected to ground jobs, and I finished up at Ringway, on the parachute school, to initially, to be instructor. But I thought, 'no thank you'.
AM: No? You hadn't enjoyed it the first time round.
LM: So that was that.
AM: So what did you do.
LM: I can't, I'm trying to think, 'what did I do?' (Pause) Oh, yeah. I finished up, from there I went out to India, that's right, went out to Karachi, and we did nothing. Christmas, it was. Christmas of forty four, that's right. Arrived in Karachi, and there's four of us in a tent there, and we were just doing nothing. We used to go in to Kara-, it was Mauripur Airport. We used to go in to Karachi, and there was a club there, and that. We used to go in gharrys as they called them, the horse drawn taxi there, and we were told not to say anything as they went through some areas, let the driver sort I out, and that was that. But-
AM: How long were you there for? Was that forty four or forty five?
LM: That was forty four.
AM: Forty four. So that was before the Operation Manna, then?
LM: No, it was after everything.
AM: Oh, ok.
LM: Let's see. (pause) The war finished, I finished my tour and ops in October forty four, no, this was forty five, of course it was.
AM: So it was forty five.
LM: Forty five.
AM: I'm just trying to get my chronology right.
LM: No, forty five, it was. We went out to there, and then from there we went across to Ceylon, and then we went up to Kandy.
AM: What were you actually doing?
LM: Nothing!
AM: Oh, right.
LM: We were just shipped out the way. And we finished up at Kandy with a few more bomber, ex Bomber Command people, and then they decided to give us a three months Officers admin course. (chuckles) And then at the end of that we were shipped out to Singapore, we went on the Cape Town Castle, it was. Yeah. From Ceylon to Singapore, and I finished up on the embarkation unit there, working. But my sinus problems came out again, and I went in the hospital there. And the hospital was at Changi, which used to be, as I understand it, was a mental hospital, and of course all the Japanese were in (unclear) all around the beds, cleaning and that. And then I was sent home from there, repatriated.
AM: How did you get home?
LM: They flew me home.
AM: On what?
LM: A York. Flew me home, in stages, you know staging all the way through. Landed at Lyneham. Where did I go after that? Oh, then, (pause) that's right when I got back (pause), I missed that out, yeah, we went through Compton Bassett, and we did a code and cypher course, and we were all told when we went there, irrespective of what happens, you will pass the course, and we weren't, we were allowed to go to the Officer's Mess to collect our mail, and we had to pay the Officer's Mess bill, but all they did, they curtained part of the airman's dining hall off, and gave us that as a lounge with a field telephone to the Officer's Mess if you wanted any drinks. Obviously we never bothered, we always used to go into the local (unclear) and that. I'd forgotten about that, it'd all gone.
AM: I'm dragging it all back out.
LM: Yeah, I forgot all about that. 'Cos we, we went there before we went out to Ceylon, er, out to Karachi, and that.
AM: To go to Ceylon, and Karachi, and Singapore, to do nothing, just-. How many of you?
LM: Oh, there must have been hundreds of us. We were treated like dirt, at the end of the war, irrespective of your rank. We were just shipped out there out the road, out the way. The Navy got rid of all their surplus air crew. The RAF hung on to all of us.
AM: Why do you think they did?
LM: I don't know. I mean, I, because I'm a number, a (unclear) a number, I wasn't demobbed until forty seven. May forty seven.
AM: Could you have been, if you'd have wanted to go earlier?
LM: No. We weren't given the choice. We were all just shipped out, well we all thought personally we were just pushed out the way. They didn't know what to do with us.
AM: Was that RAF in general, or just Bomber Command?
LM: Well, I don't know, it was RAF, to do with RAF, not Bomber Command.
AM: They were still paying you?
LM: Oh yeah, yeah, but it was disgusting. That's right, I forgot about that. Yeah, that's right, I went-
AM: Seems a long way to go to do nothing.
LM: Well, it was, I mean, finished up at, in fact, the Officers Mess, embarkation Officer's Mess was out, Karikal House it was, and it was out by number ten dock gate, and in a beautiful big house and grounds. And a Japanese Admiral died there earlier, he's buried in the grounds of this big Karikal House, beautiful, and huge grounds. But, er, but, it's like the food we had there, it was all dehydrated stuff. And chicken, we used to see them coming in crates.
AM: And then they had to sort of wet it to cook it?
LM: Oh yeah. But, it was horrible.
AM: So what happened when you were eventually demobbed?
LM: I went, I was, we went up, I forget where it was, it was up Lancashire way somewhere, and just went up. A nights stop there. And just give the uniform in, and the suit, and that was it. It's a big laugh, because, because of the weather back here, there was a shortage of vegetables, and that, no potatoes, and all that jazz, but, I can't even remember the name of the camp where we were, when we were demobbed. Somewhere in the Lancashire area, I don't know where it was.
AM: What did you do afterwards, Len?
LM: I went back to finish my apprenticeship. I went back to finish my apprenticeship in plumbing. What happened, you went back and finished it, and you got full tradesman's rate, but the firm was compensated by the government for that. Got my indentures, and that was that. And then, I got fed up. I wished I hadn't of come out. The reason I come out was we were going to get married, and my wife wasn't keen on the service life, as she thought. So, I come out, and I thought, 'I'm fed up with this, I want to go back in'. So I went and they said, 'oh, you'll have to come back in as an airman, because your commission’s gone'. And I thought alright, I'll come back in the air traffic control branch.
AM: So this was after you'd finished your plumbing apprenticeship.
LM: Oh, yes. I was working as a tradesman.
AM: So you worked as a plumber?
LM: Yes, but I was getting fed up with it, and I was missing service life, and I wanted to get back into it. And the pity of it is, once I got back in, with the travel you did, and that, my wife thoroughly enjoyed it.
AM: Where did you meet your wife?
LM: Oh, I met, during the war we were at Bristol, we went out to Bath in the building business, working on bomb damage repairs, and we were doing work, just at the bottom of the road (unclear), and we were working on it, and that's how I come to meet her. She was fifteen and I was seventeen then.
AM: So that was before the RAF, even? You met her before you joined?
LM: Oh, yeah, oh yeah.
AM: And when did you get married? What year did you get married?
LM: Got married in forty seven, June forty seven. We were engaged, and that was that. Well, after I come out, I come out in May forty seven, and we got married in the June.
AM: When you went back in, then, so you did your plumbing, and then you went back in to the RAF, what did you do? What sort of things did you do?
LM: Air traffic control.
AM: You were in air traffic control.
LM: Yeah, air traffic control, straight on. And it was fantastic. Everybody was so kind to me. Don't matter what rank, station commanders, it was just what ribbons I had, and I was better treated then than we were at the end of the war, at Compton Bassett, and places like that. Because they were all wingless wonders there.
AM: So how long were you in air traffic control for? (pause) Ish.
LM: Oh, from fifty three to seventy one.
AM: Oh, right through.
LM: Yeah, I enjoyed it. Lovely. Yes, I trained on GC, ground control approach as a director, what they call a director, on that, and then became a local controller.
AM: Which airport were you based at?
LM: I was at, down at (pause) down at (pause), oh I can't think, it's where all the helicopters are down south, Chinooks and all that, I'll soon tell you.
AM: It's gone.
LM: Odiham! I was just going to pick the tankard up, because when I left there they presented me with a tankard. I was at Odiham, and, oh, that's right, because while we were at Odiham we had a mobile x-ray that come round, and they found Renee had TB. So she went into a sanatorium that way, and they transferred her to one outside Bath. Of course, we had young children, and mother, not, two of my sister in laws lived in Bath, one had the two girls, we had two girls then, and then there was two boys, and mother had the two boys in Bath. So I was then posted to, I'd been at Chivenor, that's right, I'd gone from Chivenor up to Colerne outside Bath, so that's it, they moved me to Colerne on compassionate grounds, because my children were in Bath, and they did that. And then from Colerne, when everything was, my wife was back and that, went up to Dishforth. Dishforth, Dishforth out to Germany, Wildenrath in Germany. So that was that. That's where I, and then I come home from Wildenrath in Germany, and, where did I go? Trying to think. (long pause). Oh God, no, I can't remember where I was when I came home.
AM: Oh well, it doesn't matter. What was it like being back in Germany?
LM: It was lovely. I was at Wildenrath, and the Dutch people we used to go on a roam on, and the German people were alright. In fact, on Wildenrath they had what they called GSO, German Service, and oh they were using what they had, huts and that, as married quarters. It was great. I enjoyed it. I can't think where I was. Oh, of course I was, I was down at Halton when I finished. Yeah, that's right, I went to Halton. I was the sole, all they had a Halton was a grass airfield, and Chipmonks for air experience for the cadets, you know, the apprentices, and I was the sole controller there. It was lovely. Had a fantastic time there.
AM: Brilliant. Well, thank you very much. That was really interesting.
LM: Sorry I couldn't remember names going through.
AM: Oh, don't you worry about that.
LM: But they're all down there, and Gary's got a copy of the recommendation for the DFC.
AM: Thanks, Len. I'll make sure we take a copy of that, then.
LM: Oh, I think I've got another spare copy.
AM: We'll find one. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Len McNamara
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Annie Moody
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-22
Format
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00:40:20 audio recording
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMcNamara150722
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Royal Canadian Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Len McNamara was born in Bristol in 1924. An apprentice plumber, he joined the Air Training Corps and volunteered for aircrew. Discusses his initial training at various stations, the gunnery course he passed with merit and honours, an escape and evasion course he attended, and crewing up with Pete Catterswife, a Kenyan. He flew Whitleys and then then converting to Halifaxes. Len was posted to 10 Squadron at RAF Melbourne. He discusses mine laying and bombing operations, aircraft damage, social and service life at RAF Lisset, military ethos and the award of the Distinguished Flying Cross. After sinus problems, he was a reserve gunner going on operations with various aircrews. Len was posted to RAf Langar as an instructor, but volunteered as second tour gunners and was posted to RAF Woolfox Lodge to crew up with a New Zealand pilot on Lancasters. Discusses engine problems, Kenyan, Canadian Australian, New Zealand and English pilots, talks about Operation Manna and discusses 75 New Zealand Squadron. At the end of the war he finished up at RAF Ringway as parachute instructor.
Len was then posted to various locations abroad, did a code and cipher course and was demobilised. He went back to his plumbing apprenticeship, got married, settled in Bath but wanted to get back to service life. He started back as an airman and went into the air traffic control branch serving at different stations in Great Britain and Germany until he retired in 1971. Len was into post war meetings and memorial visits.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Germany
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Cheshire
England--Rutland
Sri Lanka
Singapore
Temporal Coverage
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1945
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
10 OTU
10 Squadron
75 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
crewing up
demobilisation
Distinguished Flying Cross
escaping
evading
final resting place
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
military ethos
military living conditions
military service conditions
mine laying
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
pilot
RAF Abingdon
RAF Langar
RAF Lissett
RAF Melbourne
RAF Ringway
RAF Woolfox Lodge
recruitment
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/786/9341/PWildesJE180829.1.jpg
20072f7f64debe87ec906cbfd6e26011
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/786/9341/AWildesJE180829.1.mp3
e631f87cbb026ea8770f4a9901045618
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
Wildes, Jim
James Ernest Wildes
J E Wildes
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with James Wildes (1923 - 2019, Royal Air Force).
He failed aircrew selection due to ear problems and so served as ground personnel.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-08-29
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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Wildes, JE
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MH: That’s great. Well, first of all Jim I’m delighted to come and meet you today and listen to, to your story. I know a little about you. I hope to when I leave at the end to know far more. Ok. There’s a little bit I’ve just got to say at the start so that people listening to this back at the Bomber Command Centre know exactly where we are and what we’re doing. So, this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Martyn Hordern. That’s myself. The interviewee is James Wildes. The interview is taking place at the Tri Services and Veteran Support Centre, Hassell Street, Newcastle, Staffordshire. Also present is Peter Batkin who is a friend of Jim. The date is the 29th of August 2018 and the time by my watch is quarter past eleven in the morning. I know from just talking to you Jim that you were born on the 18th of July 1923. Where was that then? Where were you born?
JW: Burton on Trent.
MH: Ok. Tell me a bit about your parents and your family life as, as a lad.
[pause]
JW: We lived with my, my dad and mother and the tribe that, because she had six children and I was the eldest lived in South Oxford Street, Burton on Trent. My dad was out of work for seven or eight years during the recession of that time. My mother was a tailoress and she worked from home reversing coats and that sort of thing because that was the way you lived those days.
MH: Did your, did your dad serve in the First World War?
JW: Yes. He was in the Staffordshires.
MH: How long did he serve during the war?
JW: He served in the, in the First World War and a little bit afterwards in Ireland. I don’t think he’d signed on. It was like it was at the end of —
MH: Yeah.
JW: The Second World War. You could do another year before you got home.
MH: So, so as a young lad what did, I take it you went to school. What age did you leave school?
JW: Fourteen.
MH: Ok.
JW: Because of my birthday coming in July I did the eleven plus twice. The first time I failed. The second time I got enough to pass to secondary school. Not to Grammar School. But my mother couldn’t afford uniform so we got a deal where I went to Union Street one day per week at government expense.
MH: Right. And then when you left school what did you do?
JW: I was training to be an apprentice joiner and carpenter because my grandad, the other Ernie he, he was a master joiner. And I worked with him whenever I could from fourteen on but I had to have another job to support the family because he was a jobbing joiner that had contracted for jobs. We used to do South African Railway carriages and it all came pre-packed. And you always put in Baguleys of Burton on Trent and he would, he would, we would put it together like you do things these days. Cut it all in.
MH: Yeah.
JW: In South African Railways style.
MH: Right. So then the Second World War came along. You were —
JW: Well —
MH: You were just sixteen.
JW: I I’d, around about fourteen I joined the Boy’s Brigade and there was an RAF section in it of about four of us and on Sundays sometimes we went to Burnaston Aerodrome which is now a car factory and we could swing a Tiger Moth. And I got one flight of it because occasionally an RAF retired officer turned up to fly this thing.
MH: And that was the first time you ever went in a plane?
JW: Yes, was. That was my first time.
MH: So, so, the Second World War started. You were, you were just sixteen.
JW: Yes.
MH: What were you doing then?
JW: I I was still doing, well I eventually got, what happened was that, that the restrictions on my grandfather forced both he and I to join another joinery firm because there was no longer small businesses around. We were forced in to wartime things from 1938 so, I became a bound apprentice with Sharp Brother and Knight of Burton on Trent. Around about seventeen the Boy’s Brigade sent me to Cardington for an interview for aircrew which I failed because I’d got bad ears and in those days those aircraft weren’t pressurised. So they, but I did the exam and they recommended and gave me a little notation that I go in to Derby when I was seventeen and half to recruit as a VR. Which I did.
MH: What’s a VR?
[pause]
JW: Volunteer Reserve.
MH: Right.
JW: Yes.
MH: Thank you. So, by that time we were sort of talking about towards the end of 1940 are we then, at that point?
JW: No. We’re talking about 1941.
MH: Right. In to, yeah.
JW: Early in 1941 that happened. At seventeen and a half I had to get my dad’s signature to be able to join the Air force which I did and took to Derby.
MH: What was your parents view of that at the time then? Seeing as you didn’t —
JW: Well, my dad didn’t want me to join but my mother said it’s alright.
MH: What was the reason your dad didn’t want you to join?
JW: Well, he’d been at, I think Mons during the First World War for some time.
MH: So, he’d been at the start.
JW: So, he’d been in that and he was on Gallipoli as well.
MH: So he, do you think he knew a bit more about what you were likely to face than what your mum did?
JW: Yes. Exactly.
MH: So, so you up at sixteen and a half. Where was the first place you —
JW: Well, I didn’t actually get in until June or July. They called me in.
MH: So you were just about eighteen then.
JW: Yes. And they followed the recommendation to send me to Halton for aircraft training, which I did. I went to Halton and joined the RAF. And I passed out second in an entry of about eighty people that were doing a joining course like, it was split in to two halves. A bit for engines and a bit for airframes and I was, I came second and was sent on for on the job training at Abingdon.
MH: Right.
JW: On Hampdens and Whitleys.
MH: Yeah. So where was Halton then? Whereabouts is Halton? I know where Abingdon is.
JW: Halton is Wendover. Very very near. Do you know Wendover?
MH: I’ve heard of it.
JW: Yes. Very near to Chequers.
MH: And Abingdon obviously became a car factory. A car factory wasn’t it?
JW: Yes. This Abingdon was, they trained you on, on real aircraft.
MH: Right. So —
JW: And then they took me back to once I was trained on. So that was my first [pause] Abingdon was 10 OTU and the Whitleys and Hampdens were flying aircraft. So that was Bomber Command.
MH: And what, what were you doing when you were there? You said on the job training. What was your, what was your, what were you trained?
JW: I was trained on, on the Abingdons and the Whitleys and also we strung up a a biplane as well. So I was trained mainly on aircraft rather than engines.
MH: Right. So, so you just, you just said stringing up a plane.
JW: Yeah.
MH: Now that, what’s that then?
JW: A biplane.
MH: Yeah.
JW: Where you, you were setting all the angles etcetera and I learned the fifty seven point three method of, of angles.
MH: And what’s, the fifty seven point three method?
JW: Well, if you, if you, you take [reckoning] of fifty seven point three in a circle, make a circle at that radius for every one unit is one degree all the way around the circle.
MH: Right. So —
JW: So, you could set controls, the rudders all that sort of thing by doing that. A mathematical job.
MH: And was there much difference between a biplane which was obviously getting almost obsolete at that point and then the bigger planes that you were working on?
JW: Well, the bigger planes were really had main spars which also held the undercarriage and that sort of thing. And usually there were [pause] they had bomb doors which worked with elastic. Those days the bomb dropped and opened the door [laughs]
MH: Yeah. Ok. So you’d done that initial training.
JW: Yes. And then Halton called me back to do the fitter course and and to give me the full trade because I came out first as an AC. I joined the RAF at AC2 level. So I, my first entry got me an AC1 at, at aircraft engineering level. But my second training I was fourth in the entry of fifty and that got me an LAC recommendation.
MH: What does LAC stand for?
JW: Leading aircraftsman. It’s like a lance corporal in the Army.
MH: And how long had you been in the RAF at that point?
JW: About, well my first course ended on March ’42. My second course I got posted in February ’43 after the end of the second course to Pershore which was another OTU opening up in Gloucestershire. So, and this was another. I was on Wellingtons so it was another Bomber Command area.
MH: And did, when you moved to a different aircraft were there similarities or were they things that you had to get used to all over again?
JW: Yeah. You had to get used to new things but on the second course at Halton they had embraced various changes that were taking place. And also on that second course they’d also embraced little bits about American aircraft as well as British aircraft and I was interested in American aircraft as well as British ones.
MH: So, you were at Pershore.
JW: So, I went to Pershore.
MH: OTU is operational —
JW: 23 OTU.
MH: Operational Training Unit.
JW: Yes. It was just opening up. We had no aircraft at all. The hangar wasn’t open. The workmen were still working on it. The cookhouse was an open cookhouse because that part wasn’t built but we were in the four huts that were built. One of the four huts that were, were starting the unit off. We had no aircraft at all and one arrived about two weeks after I arrived at Pershore. There was, we put it out on a distant little field, picketed it down for the night and we were bombed that night. But it didn’t get the aircraft. It got little bits near to the hangar.
MH: So you, the plane you basically moved the plane away from the main buildings for that reason.
JW: Yes. That’s right. Picketed it down.
MH: Yeah. What sort of strip was it there? Was it hardstanding or was it grass?
JW: Hardstanding.
MH: So it would be tarmac. Tarmac.
JW: Yes. The strip was there and we picketed on one of the, on one of the ends. There were several different areas and we picketed on one of those.
MH: So how long before you started getting more planes?
JW: We then got the planes at about one a week for a few weeks and then two or three a week and these were delivered direct from the manufacturer and our job was to bring them up to standard. Put the turrets in. The extra seating. All the little bits that went in for radar and various things that was coming in. And we dispersed those to other airfields down Gloucestershire and Worcestershire.
MH: So, so it sounds like there was a lot to do to get those planes ready.
JW: Yes. By that time the hangar was going so we had a corner of the hangar that we would be a team. As the aircraft came from the makers they came completely empty with ballast in place of things. So you were getting the ballast out, putting the turrets in in place of the ballast and the various other things that you had to do like second pilot seats and various things. There was cable cutters to put in to the wings in case the Wimpie was flying and had to cut a cable on a balloon.
MH: So how long did that take to get a plane from from you receiving it from the factory to then being ready to to actually start to fly?
JW: Well, it probably on the team turn out one a week once we were geared up to do so.
MH: And how many were on your team?
JW: And there would probably be an engine fitter, an airframe fitter, an electrician would do two or three teams. Same with an instrument man and the radio people came in when they were needed.
MH: Right. So, so you, over a period of time you’ve all had these planes slowly coming from the factory.
JW: And being dispersed.
MH: Yeah.
JW: In Worcestershire and Gloucestershire and at various aerodromes like.
MH: Right.
JW: There was many. So, there was about eight aerodromes down that, all being built.
MH: Yeah.
JW: And —
MH: So, so was Pershore the hub for all these to come in to, in to —
JW: All these.
MH: And you would get them ready.
JW: Yes.
MH: And then you would move them out.
JW: Yeah.
MH: So, so was that basically all your job entailed? Oh, that sounds a bit disrespectful.
JW: Yes, I —
MH: But was that all just basically like a production line of planes coming in and going out.
JW: And going out. Yes.
MH: So was there, was there any flying at Pershore? Was it a flying airfield as well?
JW: Oh yes. It was an airfield, and flew. It had its own aircraft as well.
MH: Right.
JW: Probably about eight I think that got it in two. It was 23 OTU but they got it in A and B Flights or they might have even had C.
MH: Yeah.
JW: But they got about eight aircraft of their own on dispersals which I didn’t take part in.
MH: No.
JW: Because I was in the teams that were shoving them out.
MH: Yeah. So the A and B flights had their own mechanics.
JW: Yeah. They were mechanics rather than fitters.
MH: So, so what was it like fitting, fitting a turret to, how many turrets did you fit into a Wellington then?
JW: Well, the, we were on Wellington 3s and that was the, the advanced turret for the rear end because Wellington bombers you couldn’t get out of the turret excepting back in to the aircraft. It didn’t have enough angle. But the Wellington 3 did and if you had to eject in the air it could turn round and the man could fall out of the turret.
MH: Right.
JW: And bale out.
MH: So how long did you stay at Pershore doing that sort of work?
JW: September ’43. [pause] September ’43 I got a posting to 206 Squadron. They was at Benbecula flying Hudsons but I didn’t get there because I got part way there, as far as Wick, by Aberdeen and they turned me back to Liverpool. Gave me a new warrant to get to Liverpool and then across the water to the Wirral to an Army unit because 206 Squadron Benbecula were breaking up in flights and I was on what was called 8206 which was a Combined Ops Unit and I joined this Army unit as the RAF and some people had come already from Benbecula. There was about fifty of us altogether in the RAF forming up to go to go to, eventually to the Azores but we weren’t given the information.
MH: But you didn’t know where you were going.
JW: We didn’t know where we were going.
MH: So, what was the, so you were there. How many were there from the RAF then?
JW: There was about, well there was supposed to be a thousand RAF, a thousand Army and a thousand Navy.
MH: Right. So it was a big outfit.
JW: Yes. Because where ever we were going it was a Combined Ops Unit. We were, we were liable to have to be under canvas for a certain length of time.
MH: So how long were you? You say you were on the Wirral? Do you know?
JW: Well, about two weeks. We, we had got certain bits of kit and a sten gun and a little bit of training and square mess tins. We had to hand our round tins in for square mess tins.
MH: Were rounds ones particular to the RAF I take it?
JW: No. The round ones were on issue to everybody at that time.
MH: Right.
JW: But the square mess tin fitted the, the ration packs that were coming in.
MH: Yeah.
JW: At that time. So, we had to have a square mess tin.
MH: And you said you got some training with a sten gun so you were taught to shoot were you then?
JW: We were taught to shoot. We were taught a little bit about self-defence. We were taught to use our mess tins and given a mug which was china and needless to say you soon broke the mug.
MH: So, so what, what did you think when suddenly you’d gone from fitting turrets on to Wellingtons to now you’re on the Wirral in this this other unit of soldiers and other, and sailors and suddenly they’re teaching you to fire guns.
JW: Well, we were there about two weeks kitting out etcetera and then we, we joined, they brought us back to Liverpool dock, the Liver Dock and we joined the Franconia which was a troop ship. And that night we sailed across the water to Bangor Harbour where the rest of the people came in. The rest of the three thousand people came in. I was only on a unit of about fifty which was 8206. There were other RAF people around but we did different units.
MH: Did you know where you were going at that point?
JW: No. That, that same evening we must have left Bangor because when we woke up on, on we were below decks and the weather broke up the next morning.
MH: I’m going to just pause there.
[recording paused]
MH: Right. Just to explain to people listening to this recording we’ve just a very important thing which was sorting out lunch for Jim and Pete. So, we’re just starting again. So, you were just at the point where you’d set sail.
JW: We’d sailed.
MH: You were below decks and you woke up the next morning.
JW: We woke up the next morning and we’d come out of Bangor and we were now heading west. Due west. And this went on for about two days and we thought, everyone thought we’re going to Iceland because we were going in that direction. Suddenly we turned left and started in a southerly direction. This went on for about another day and we joined up with a, with a Navy ship. A Destroyer, and he was hovering around us and about four days later we overtook a flotilla of merchant ships that had other Navy ships around them and an aircraft carrier. And at that time our officers were drawn in to tell us that we were going to land in the Azores.
MH: Which was part of Portugal, wasn’t it?
JW: Which was part of Portugal.
MH: A neutral country.
JW: And this was before Winston Churchill had announced anything about this island.
MH: Right.
JW: This, this island was called Terceira. It was a small volcanic island with [barefoots] so we were all given the necessary jabs up our backsides because they were worried about plagues and that sort of thing. And then we arrived on a Sunday afternoon. The, there was a big Navy ship offloading boats to get us from the, from our ship and from the merchant ships to the shore.
MH: I take it there wasn’t a harbour as such then.
JW: On a little harbour called [pause] [unclear] or something like that. It was a little harbour. Anyway, we, we all assembled with our kit and of course the RAF volunteered [laughs] to go as soon as possible and we jumped in to these boats because the sea was rather rough, running at about ten foot, landing craft and got to shore where, where the other people that was before us were receiving all sorts of things ashore. And there was tea laid on but the rest of it was our own rations. So we went on shift. Four hours on two hours off day and night. And that’s how we spent that first night was working for four hours unloading things on the shore and the Army had put up [tents] and tents loosely to an area outside town on the side of a volcano.
MH: Right. So you spent all night unloading and sorting all your stuff out.
JW: Yeah. Well, the next morning 8206 were called together and we, we were told to put our stuff in to a lorry because we were going roughly twenty five mile across country to where we were going to build an Air Force station. We were going to lay plate runway to form a runway and dispersals. We would be in tents for up to a year and we would be on rations, our own rations but two hot meals a day. Breakfast and dinner. There would be no lights. It would just be an encampment in tents. Eight to a tent.
MH: So you started from scratch really.
JW: Yes. And we went over, that day we went over and we started laying, there was no aircraft around. We started laying a strip because the Army was ahead of us in their knocking walls down and things to make an airstrip and that afternoon the Seafires off the aircraft carrier landed on the strip that we’d already prepared.
MH: So you didn’t hang around then. You got it down quick fairly quickly.
JW: Hmmn?
MH: You got, you got your work —
JW: We got enough.
MH: To do that. Yeah.
JW: To land Seafires —
MH: Yeah.
JW: Down in that same afternoon. Because we’d gone first light in the morning and with, as, as strip runway came in we laid it.
MH: Right. How long did it take you to finish laying the full —
JW: Oh well, we were on that as well as our own aircraft. Two days later our aircraft came in from America and we were now on B17s.
MH: So, there’s no, you hadn’t got any British planes as such it was just —
JW: Pardon?
MH: Had you got any British planes there? Bombers or were they —
JW: No. No. No. We had the Seafires. They used, they were on a dispersal and they flew from their own dispersal and they’d somehow or another got one or two people over to help them out. We refuelled from Jerry cans with, because it was all over the wing refuelling and we had no tankers whatsoever. We refuelled from Jerry cans in to a funnel with a, with a filter at the bottom.
MH: It took a bit longer to fill up then normal then.
JW: Oh, good lord, it was. We had no no tanker. A few weeks later, about a fortnight later I went over, I was given civilian overalls to go to the main island to see if we could find a fuel storage unit because Jerry cans were such a pain to refuel with. You know. A five, you could damage the aircraft let alone anything else.
MH: So, you’d got these B17s. were they piloted by American crews?
JW: They, they were piloted by British crews.
MH: Right.
JW: And they were marionised with a radar unit that came down the fuselage and out at the tail wheel. And this was a Canadian unit and they brought one Canadian with them who taught us to, how to polish the wave guide because it was a five inch wave guide and the magnetron was in like a Smith’s biscuit tin which we had to take the lid off every day and polish up the, the prongs.
MH: So was that a particular piece of kit for what they were doing?
JW: No. They —
MH: Or just a general.
JW: The Canadians. It was apparently used for fishing. To find shoals of fish but they’d adapted it to find submarines.
MH: Right.
JW: And so with sonar buoys at strategic places and the mathematics of it all and we had all sorts of radio aerials along the roof of the, of the B17 they could bring in the Navy or the merchant ship, carry their own depth charges if they had to do and find not fish but submarines.
MH: A clever idea. Do you remember what squadron that was?
JW: We were, it was 206 Squadron. We were, we were still 8206 [coughs] because we were like the maintenance team for the squadron.
MH: So, when —
JW: And then about [coughs] that probably went on until about [pause] well I broke a finger just before Christmas and had to have like a tennis racket where it pulled it all out. It did heal in the end so I was, I was in hospital. A Portuguese hospital run, a ward run by the, by the Army or Navy or RAF over Christmas day. But I was only in for about three days after Christmas and when I got back to the unit which was, which the Army had made us like a servicing bay knocking a lump out of, out of the volcano edging because we were like now probably three or four hundred foot above the sea level. When we, when I got back to them there was now 209 Squadron as well as 206 Squadron there so we were getting we had about nine aircraft, B17s, altogether.
MH: And these were all equipped with the same instrumentation to find submarines.
JW: Yes. They had the same. The same sort of kit on and they’d come with the 209 Squadron crews which we, we only saw them come to the aircraft, fly them and that was it and then they’d be gone to where ever they were billeted.
MH: Right. And did, how successful were they at catching submarines? Did you ever get to hear?
JW: Well, I think that it assisted the Navy. They certainly got one submarine as we were coming. The Navy got one submarine as we were coming to land originally because there was subs in that area and they certainly were feeding the subs on the surface and we, because the, the Canary Islands were supplying fuel for all these subs and things.
MH: Right. Because they were under Spain which was fascist, wasn’t it?
JW: They were in Spain you see and we knew that this was happening so we were always overflying that, those areas.
MH: Right.
JW: So, I think they certainly altered the name of the game for, for the ships that were refuelling submarines.
MH: So, it seems to me that at times you were perhaps only aware of what work you were doing. You didn’t see —
JW: Yes.
MH: The pilots flying the planes.
JW: That’s right. Yes.
MH: You didn’t find out how successful. You just did your job.
JW: I did my job. I was sent once to try to get a fuel tanker from the main island which is St Miguel or something like that of the Azores. And that was the only time I’d been at sea again. There was a sergeant sent with me and I was like a lance corporal.
MH: Right. So how long were you in the Azores for? Did that go on for a while?
JW: In, let me see [pause] can I just have a second to look at it?
MH: Of course, you can.
JW: I’ve had to pick this up from my records. [pause] Well, in about April they told us to, to shift all our inventories to 209 Squadron.
MH: This was 1944 at this point.
JW: So, that was 1944. April 1944, because our aircrew had gone back to Blighty and there was only 209 aircrew left on the island now to run these eight or nine B17s. We were told that we were being moved back to Blighty as a squadron. We didn’t know where to but what we knew was we were going back by Skymaster to [pause] to the western side of Africa and then flying on to Blighty by Skymasters because by now the Americans were bringing Skymasters in quite quickly, several a day and even Mitchells were coming through. They were using the airfield as a staging post and incidentally in January a new flotilla of of ships arrived bringing more stuff to the island because we’d been on our own for six months and used up nearly everything we’d brought. So, they’d brought in 209 Squadron servicing crew by ship. They’d brought in all sorts of materials to make decent Nissen huts for people to live in. We were still under canvas and remained under canvas until we moved.
MH: What was the weather like?
JW: Damp. It was the Azores. It’s good, goodish weather. It’ll grow small bananas and that sort of thing but it’s damp and there’s quite a lot of, quite a lot of rain.
MH: So not necessarily the best conditions to be under canvas.
JW: No. No.
MH: Were you aware that point how the war was going elsewhere? What were you hearing?
JW: Yes. We had a newspaper that came around. I think it was originally once a month and now it was probably a weekly one called, “The Azores Times.” I think. And we, we were kept assured of what was going on in Blighty. Anyway, we eventually got home piecemeal between Casablanca and, and the tip of Cornwall where we landed at, the Skymasters landed at St Mawgan. So I was home about May and the, the officer in charge said, ‘Ah, your squadron is at St Eval.’ So, he got me a garrey to get me to St Eval.
MH: Whats a garrey?
JW: A garrey is a lorry.
MH: Right. Right.
JW: To get me to St Eval. And there I, I was back with the rest of the lads. There was, we were the last two to get away from, from Casablanca because it was all done when we could get a flight.
MH: Yeah.
JW: Because there was mostly flights were for officers.
MH: Did you get a chance to have a walk around? Did you get in to town while you were in Casablanca? Did you get to see the sights?
JW: Oh yes. Yes. And I also did some work for the RAF unit because they were putting together American Lightnings as a twin boom Lightnings.
MH: Yeah P38s.
JW: Yes.
MH: So, so you get back to England.
JW: Yes.
MH: Was this just before D-Day and where —
JW: Yes. Yeah. This was about a week before D-Day and I was put on night shift. We lived at Morganporth in a commandeered hotel and we had dry rations. We didn’t have anything to do with St Eval as, as a unit. We were, we were on a dispersal about the furthermost away. They did bring a hot meal in. If you were on days you got it at lunchtime. If you were on nights you got it about two in the morning. So we were always kept. Had a hot meal on site. But we were permanently on site on twelve hours shifts. Twelve on. Twelve off.
MH: So were you with the squadron at this point in time or just with the, like —
JW: Yes. This was 206 Squadron.
MH: Right. Ok.
JW: We’ve now changed to Liberators by the way. We, the aircrew had adapted to Liberators.
MH: And did you have to do much to catch up in terms of work —
JW: Well, it was a question of a Liberator is another aircraft and you get used to knowing that aircraft are aircraft.
MH: And what were you, what was your job at that time? What were you were working on?
JW: Well, again being an LAC I I ran a little team of people.
MH: Right.
JW: About three mechanics. Three or four. Usually an engine mechanic, an air frame mechanic and one wanderer like an electrician or instruments or both.
MH: And what, what operations were the squadron involved in around about at that time?
JW: We were putting an anti-submarine because the Liberators were also anti- submarine. I don’t know quite what type because they didn’t seem to have the same scanners as a B17 so I didn’t know anything about that side of what they were scanning.
MH: And where were, where were—
JW: It must have been some sort of radar.
MH: Yeah. And what areas were they operating?
JW: They, they were covering Brest to the Irish Sea for anti-submarine block.
MH: And, and we were obviously getting around to D-Day at this point in time. Were you aware that that was, happened or, you know, you just carry on as normal? Or did you —
JW: Well, on I think it was the 5th of, was it June? D-Day.
MH: Yeah. 6th of June was the actual —
JW: The 6th. On the night of the 5th I was on duty that night and about five in the morning just as day was breaking there was a flotilla. A flotilla of B17s, Americans all painted up with the white stripes you know and there must have been a couple of hundred come over us at about 5 in the morning. Came over the top of us and flew on towards France. So that must have been the start of D-Day.
MH: And then how did your, how did 206 Squadron sort of carry on doing duty?
JW: We used, on our tannoy system which was separate to the station system if there was sighting of a U-boat they would send the message over and tell us what was happening by the air crew and two or three evenings we were told they were chasing U-boats and dropping DCs.
MH: Depth charges.
JW: Depth charges.
MH: So, so that was almost like a real time. You were told as it was happening.
JW: Yeah. Happening in real time.
MH: They’d relay. They’d relay the radio messages.
JW: Well, we went on for about a week there and then suddenly they said, ‘Well, go and take what you can of your kit. Bring in your kit. Bring in everything you’ve got. Take what you can of ground equipment because you’re going up to Leuchar, Scotland as a part of a unit of 206. Leaving some people in 206 looking after what they were looking after and you’re going up by train to Leuchar to set up a similar system from Leuchar on the North Sea.’
MH: And that’s what you did. And how long did that go on for?
JW: This went, we, we brought our kit in. The train we’d loaded what we could of ground equipment and tools and all that. Things that we think, thought we’d need. And we were at, we went up by slow train to Leuchar. This took about, there was rations put on so we had rations on the way and I think when we got to Leuchar there was a hot meal laid on and we went straight to the flight and some of our aircraft were now landing at Leuchar. Some of the, some of the Liberators were landing at Leuchar and in the Leuchar base was very near the sea because Leuchar is on a small island, just by the golf course and in on the sea front there was the RAF unit that ran MTBs. Motor torpedo boats. So we communicated with them that what would happen. We’d site where, where U-boats were and they would go out and see if they would surrender or, or get DC’d.
MH: And how long were you at Leuchar for?
JW: Probably a fortnight because in Leuchar they were asking, by then they were asking for people to go to India and, and look at the Far East. And there were people, they were looking for people that were single. Not married.
MH: You were still single at that time.
JW: So I was still single at that time so my CO said, ‘Will you volunteer?’ As usual. So, I was on my way then. I got a couple of days leave and down to, I think I went to Morecambe, I’m not sure. And a couple of days leave at home to Morecambe. Morecambe to Southampton by train and I found myself on the way to India at the [pause] when did I go to India? [pause] August 1944.
MH: Right.
JW: End of August. I landed actually in Calcutta. I landed at Worli. That’s the old, the old what’s it called now? In India.
MH: I’m not sure.
JW: Worli.
MH: I’m not sure about Worli because they’ve gone back to the original names not the anglicised names, haven’t they?
JW: Ceylon. Not.
MH: Oh, Sri Lanka are you on about? Sri Lanka? No.
JW: No. What’s Hollywood in [pause] Bollywood.
MH: Yeah.
JW: What town was that?
MH: I’m not sure to be honest. My Indian knowledge is not that good.
JW: I landed on that side of India.
MH: Yeah. Right.
JW: Caught a train across to Calcutta which wasn’t —
MH: It wasn’t Bombay. You’re not on about Bombay, are you?
JW: Bombay, landed Bombay. Worli. Caught a train the next day. A troop train going to Calcutta and we pushed it half the way.
MH: The train?
JW: It was a troop train so you’d, you’d go about four hours, five hours, something like that, all disembark for a hot cup of tea and your rations for that day. So you were still living on rations. Anyway, when I got to Calcutta I was posted to Dum Dum which was the Calcutta race course at that time. Now, it’s the airport but at that time it was just the racecourse. I was posted to a little unit called [pause] what was it called? Air Salvage and Servicing. It had three Dakotas that were all being modified to carry stuff externally as well as internally. And I was given my corporal tapes whilst I was on that unit because you couldn’t get permanent corporal. You could only be an LAC permanent. So each unit you went to you’d got to qualify to be an acting corporal.
MH: So what was, what was this air salvage —
JW: Air Salvage Unit. I joined a team, or I was in charge of a team as an acting corporal and we, we would be responsible for taking stuff in to the Burma area that was needed by squadrons. For instance on one occasion we, we took a, there was other teams taking things like Spitfires to pieces. We used to split the the Spitfire in to the engine, attach the prop off, the tail off and the empennage and one, one wing upside down with a fairing on the front hung by cables between, underneath the Dakota. The Spitfire we would fit inside the fuselage with the engine in the open doors which we dispersed with so we were now have got half of a Spitfire into a Dakota. We, we would go from Dum Dum to Agartala which was in Assam, north of the river, refuel and then fly on and in this particular instance to an airfield that you couldn’t get to in daytime because of volcanoes and things ad drop in there, offload my part of the gear. The pilot who was a Polish pilot that he had no, no navigational aids whatsoever. We, we used to fly, I used to fly with him and just follow the route that he told me to follow. Followed either a river or a railway line and just watch what was going on or fly a course where I was keeping to a course.
MH: And then, obviously you dropped off this Spitfire. Did you then bring —
JW: He came back for the other half.
MH: Right.
JW: And that would arrive the next morning.
MH: And then you had to put it together.
JW: And my, by that time we’d put as much of the Spitfire together with three of us as we could get together.
MH: Yeah. And was that something you did for quite a while in India?
JW: I did. I did Imphal Valley once. I did a lot of various drops. I worked for 31 Squadron for quite a while.
MH: What sort of squadron were they? Were they —
JW: They were another Dakota squadron.
MH: Right.
JW: That were supplying Chindits —
MH: Right.
JW: And people like the Chindits in, in Burma with mules. We even took mules in one day. I I wasn’t on that aircraft. That was one of our other aircraft.
MH: So how long did you stay in India for?
JW: Well, I, I was, I also did a trip from, starting at Agartala where, where I picked up a train load of Hurricanes because we couldn’t get the Hurricane. The Hurricane’s built differently to the Spitfire. You can’t get it in to a Dakota. You can get a wing on but you can’t get an outer wing. You can put on but you can’t get the centre section so we were taking Hurricanes and various other spares back to India to Kanpur which was the MU that put them together again. And this was a two week journey. Caught the, picked up the train and my rations and a sten gun. A colleague, there was two, always two of us on the train and apart from sten guns we had, we picked up a long range rifle. A Garand rifle for long distance shooting if, if we were being attacked. We would then go Cox’s Bazaar. Pick up some more kit there. Chittagong. Worked our way to the Brahmaputra point where the train would be offloaded and loaded on to barges and go up the Brahmaputra for about seven or eight hours to another port on the right hand side for, for narrow gauge use.
MH: Yes.
JW: And from there we would go, go to, to Kanpur and the whole journey would take about seven days if you were lucky. If you were unlucky it could take up to a fortnight.
MH: And when did you get back to the, get back to England then? How long before —
JW: Well, from that I went, I was on Ramree Island which is an island off Burma with 31 Squadron when the war ended. When the atom bomb, the second atom bomb dropped. And we were told to go to Mingaladon and be on, everybody at Mingaladon which was the bottom of Burma to wait for the Viceroy of India to come in and take the surrender which happened the next morning. We were all lined up. All the squadrons around were lined up along one side and in came the York with, with the Viceroy of India on. He got killed in Ireland, didn’t he?
MH: Lord Mountbatten.
JW: Lord Mountbatten. Yes. He took the salute from the, from the Japanese who gave him all the swords etcetera. And then we moved on. We, we were given the task of looking after 31 Squadron. I was now with 31 Squadron. Still on attachment [laughs] We, we were given Siam, Sumatra, land at Singapore but don’t take the salute there. And then go on to Java and Borneo. So I ended up in Java running, running B Flight aeroplanes. About four. Four aeroplanes and I had a crew of about two fitters and two, two engine men. And that’s when my release came through for Class B demob. So, the next morning I’d got my kit packed and an A Flight aircraft flew me back to Singapore. I I mounted a boat, got a boat from there to Southampton and was demobbed at Hednesford.
MH: And what date was that? Can you remember?
JW: 9th of the 3rd ’46.
MH: Right. Right. I understand, I don’t think your time in the RAF quite finished then, did it? Although you’d been demobbed.
JW: No. No. I I was discharged to complete my apprenticeship as a civvy which I did. I found I was then on a half a crown an hour for a fully fledged joiner. And I enquired of the firm I was working for, ‘What was my promotion? Would I get promotion?’ He said, ‘Well, when —' such and such dies —' he was about fifty at the time, I was about twenty two or four, something like that. ‘When he dies you or Johnny will get the job,’ because there was two of us. An Army lad that had done much the same as I had. So, I’d, I had notice from the Air Force that I could join for five years. Or four years or something of that nature and get my tapes back. So I wrote to the RAF. I’d done this prior to finishing my time. My civilian time. I wrote to the RAF and got a guarantee that I would be promoted to substantive corporal for the jobs that I’d done as an acting corporal and they gave me this. They said yes you will be but you’ll have to do three months on the job to prove that you’re capable.
MH: So, what squadron did you go back in to?
JW: So I went back to Swinderby for a four years, four year enlistment and that gave me a hundred and twenty five quid.
MH: And what, what did you do when you went back then? A similar sort of thing?
JW: Well, they had Wellington 20s by that time. Navigation. They were doing training navigation in Bomber Command. 17 OTU they were so they were Bomber Command again. And I was there until January ’51 in Swinderby. In 17 OTU.
MH: So what, what was your role then? What were you doing there?
JW: Again, I was what they called the piece of wind section which was the air and the, and the hydraulics. I ran a little section of of about three bodies. We did tyres as well. We did hydraulics. I did a little bit of work producing a better ground equipment than, than at that time we had because the RAF was very very short of decent ground equipment. So I’d mounted, because we were, we needed high pressure air on the Wellington 20s.
MH: Yeah. Was it different post-war than during the war? Was there a different atmosphere?
JW: It was gradually getting back to Wednesdays off you know. Wednesday afternoon was sports day and the, it just so happened that I met my wife at that time because the, the old diversion air field for Swinderby was Wigsley. And Wigsley was being used in the huts for people that had been in Germany for —
MH: Displaced persons.
JW: Displaced persons, and my wife was a displaced person.
MH: Right.
JW: That had recently come over and it just so happened I’d, we were doing circuits and bumps on the airfield and I’d sent one of my men over to do backstay checks on, once they’d landed you had to make sure the geometric lock was in the correct place before they could take off again and he said, ‘Hey, there’s a load of women over there.’ So off we went on our motorbikes.
MH: Right. So I understand at some point in time you worked on the Vulcan.
JW: Yes.
MH: Was that towards the end of your time?
JW: Well, [pause] where was I?
MH: You said you were at Swinderby until about 1950, weren’t you? Something like that.
JW: Yes. ’51. I’d done training courses to take Meteor 3s out to, out to Singapore. Unfortunately, the Makarios war took all our aircraft so although the Meteor 3s were on a boat loaded for Singapore we couldn’t get to them. So Singapore did their own lot and put the Meteor 3s in. But we were on posting anyway to Singapore as a unit and in January ’51 I landed in Singapore as a unit but because the Meteor 3s had been put in to service we were given another job in Singapore on Sunderlands which was another aircraft I didn’t know.
MH: No.
JW: And 205 and 220 Squadron were the squadrons but I was put in to the Maintenance Unit to bring up a beached aircraft. And it was at that point I got a wound on my left foot because putting, getting the thing up slip. They’re the last thing. You bring it up back to front and the last thing that happened was that the tow on one side towed before the other side, pulled the aircraft around with the ground equipment over my foot. That caused me problems that I still suffer today. We, we did Singapore, posted back to UK and to Stradishall. And it was from Stradishall that I I got my legs mended from the ‘51 thing in ’53. I I had them mended at, at an RAF hospital that near to Cambridge. I was at Stradishall in ’44 and was called to Melksham to go on to V bombers because my Fitter 1 training way back in my marriage days of ’48 was to Yatesbury to be a Fitter 1. Now, it had taken that time to sort out what the Fitter 1 really should be as an ASC and it was Melksham that we were sent to for coursing. And then on to AV Roes because again I passed out about fourth in the entry so we had the choice of aircraft. There was about fifty on the course but only the first ten went either on to Vulcans or Victors.
MH: So, so a massive —
JW: I chose Vulcans.
MH: Why did you choose Vulcans?
JW: Because it’s a better aircraft.
MH: Better in what way?
JW: Better in, even the Mark 1 which I had was a better aircraft. A much steadier aircraft for bombing.
MH: So you thought it was a better aircraft to maintain was it?
JW: A better aircraft all round. All the way round.
MH: Yeah.
JW: There was one advantage that the other aircraft had, the Victor had, was powered by by 220 volts rather than, rather than a 112 volt battery. That was the only advantage that I saw.
MH: Yeah.
JW: In that, but the Mark 2 Vulcan became a 220 anyway.
MH: So how long did you remain in the RAF for, Jim?
JW: Well, I remained on Vulcan 1s and XH477 was my allocated aircraft. I took that on board and flew with it on many occasions as ASC.
MH: Actually, in the plane.
JW: Oh yes.
MH: Yeah.
JW: Yes. Well, you’d, if the aircraft was on a given operation I could not fly with it. If the aircraft was on what they called a lone ranger or going to do a job like Butterworths which is the other side of Malaya or Australia or, for instance we did the George Ward’s thing in Rio de Janeiro and, and we did [pause] we inaugurated a president in Buenos Aires as well. So on those flight an ASC flew with the aircraft as the sixth seat.
MH: Just in case you needed to do maintenance while it was out there.
JW: Yes. Well, we usually took a servicing crew as well. These were Hermes aircraft for Buenos Aires. We’d take two Hermes with crews on board. Some for training for the actual inauguration because they, our second pilot was an AVM.
MH: Air Vice Marshall.
JW: Hmnn?
MH: Air Vice Marshall. AVM.
JW: Air Vice Marshall. A one-handed man that had lost his hand during the war. In Spitfire presumably. We were very [pause] we did those sorts of operations with ASC on the sixth seat so I I think I flew mostly most of the hours in my aircraft than any other crew. Eventually, I was given the chance of going on Mark 2s but I I sent my PV3 back to Air Ministry saying I was leaving the Air force in less than two years. So they called me to Air Ministry to query why and I explained that I I was really in a position where I had to find a civilian job that suited me. And I had already done twenty two years so wanted to be clear of the Air Force inside another three years. And I didn’t want to go on Mark 2s for that reason. So I was given the opportunity of handing my aircraft to what was my second dickie now which I did and going on SFTT work for [pause] for, for until I left the Air Force. Until I found a suitable job which I did with ICL.
MH: Where was that? In Stoke on Trent?
JW: In Stoke. And I found, I found the job with English Electric Leo Marconi which became a part of ICL. So I was initially at Kidsgrove in the electrical huts on the opposite site.
MH: Using a lot of skills that you learned in the RAF?
JW: Yeah. I was, well when the, when ICL was formed the name of the game was different because I I’d gone in using RAF skills and and various things but I was now offered a management job in ICL to look after the field problems of ICL. Forming and getting rid of various little units that had joined, made up ICL and making bigger units like the Arndale Centre at Manchester where I took eleven top floors in the Arndale Centre. Eleven to twenty two.
MH: Right.
JW: Without lifts initially.
MH: I can imagine. I think that you’ve told me an absolutely fascinating story of a lad from Burton who was going to be a carpenter. Doesn’t seem to ever have been much of a carpenter because he spent most of his time in the RAF but I suppose as you say you got a trade but —
JW: Yeah. Well, my, my trade fitted me up fine for ICL work.
MH: Yeah.
JW: In the field.
MH: So is there anything else from your RAF time you want to tell me about? Have we covered most of —
JW: I left in 1966. October. And I had a good, a good twenty two years with, with ICL.
MH: Afterwards —
JW: And manage with three pensions.
MH: Yeah.
JW: With them as well as an RAF pension.
MH: Right. That, that’s great. I’ve got no questions to ask. I said I’ll be writing some notes down but you did say that you could talk and you’ve just, you’ve told me all I want —
JW: Well, I’ve had to refer to this because I can’t remember it.
MH: No.
JW: I highlighted all the areas that were Bomber Command.
MH: Yeah. Yeah. No that’s great. Jim, can I thank you for giving your time? You’ve talked for about an hour and a half then. That’s brilliant.
JW: Well, I’m afraid that’s twenty two years.
MH: You’ve done very well to keep it —
JW: Of RAF.
MH: Yeah. So, so thank you very much. Thank you for all your service and thank you for your time today. The time is 12.48. I’m going to turn the recorder off in a second. I just need you to sign a form and then you two guys —
JW: Right.
MH: Can go and get dinner because I suppose you’re hungry. So thank you very much for your time and thank you very much for, for letting me speak to you today.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Jim Wildes
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Martyn Horndern
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-08-29
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWildesJE180829, PWildesJE1801
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:33:21 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Jim was born in July 1923 in Burton on Trent and was the eldest of six children. His father served in the First World War. When Jim left school aged 14, he joined the Boys Brigade which had a Royal Air Force section and he had the chance to fly in a Tiger Moth. He trained to be an apprentice joiner and carpenter and worked with his grandfather who was a master joiner. He then joined Sharp Bros & Knight, timber and joinery manufacturers. When he was about 17, the Boys Brigade sent him to RAF Cardington for an air crew interview, which he failed due to ear problems. He then took the exam and was recommended to be a voluntary reserve.
When Jim was about 18, he was called up to go to RAF Halton for aircraft training, after which he was sent for further training at RAF Abingdon Operational Training Unit on Hampden and Witney aircraft. He was then sent back to RAF Halton to do a fitter course and then posted to 23 Operational Training Unit at RAF Pershore working on Wellingtons. After training Jim became a leading aircraftman. In September 1943 Jim was posted to 206 Squadron on the Wirral for about two weeks. The outfit totalled about 1,000 people from the Air Force, Army and Navy. His unit was then sent to the Liverpool docks to join the troop ship Laconia heading for Bangor and then on to Azores where 8206 Maintenance Unit built an Air Force station and runway. They stayed in tents with eight people for up to a year. Over Christmas Jim was in a Portuguese hospital for about three days with a broken finger. The unit went to Casablanca then to Cornwall just before D-Day. He was put on night shift at RAF St Mawgan with 206 Squadron working on Liberators. Following a trip to Scotland they were posted at Dundee with an air salvaging and servicing unit. Here he was made acting corporal and worked with 31 Dakota Squadron. When the war ended, he was flown to Singapore, got a boat to Southampton and was discharged to complete his apprenticeship as a joiner. Jim re-joined the Air Force and went back to RAF Swinderby for four years working on Wellingtons. There he met his future wife. In 1951 the unit went to Singapore to work on Sunderlands before being posted back home. Jim left in 1966 and worked for AV Roe until joining ICL in a management job.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Bedfordshire
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Cornwall (County)
England--Lincolnshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Wirral
Scotland
Scotland--Dundee
Azores
North Africa
Morocco
Morocco--Casablanca
Singapore
England--Lancashire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1943-09
1943-12
1966
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Julie Williams
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
10 OTU
206 Squadron
23 OTU
31 Squadron
B-17
B-24
C-47
ground personnel
Hampden
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Abingdon
RAF Cardington
RAF Halton
RAF Pershore
RAF St Mawgan
RAF Swinderby
Sunderland
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/781/9438/LWrigleyJ1029740v1.2.pdf
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Wrigley, James
J Wrigley
Description
An account of the resource
27 items. The collection concerns James Wrigley (1920 - 2010, 1029740 Royal Air Force) and contains an interview with his widow, Alice Wrigley, photographs, his log book, decorations, and a photograph album of his service in the UK and and Far East. The collection also contains a log book made out to Rascal, his mascot or lucky charm. James Wrigley completed 47 operations as a wireless operator with 97 and 635 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Susan Higgins 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
2017-07-09
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Wrigley, J
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
James Wrigley's flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Flying log book for Warrant Officer James Wrigley, wireless operator, covering the period from 17 November 1942 to 30 June 1954. Detailing training, operations and instructor duties. He was stationed at RAF Yatesbury, RAF Pembrey, RAF Whitchurch Heath (Tilstock), RAF Lindholme, RAF Bourn, RAF Downham Market, RAF Kinloss, RAF Forres, RAF St. Athan, RAF Abingdon, RAF Hemswell, RAF Binbrook, RAF Marham, RAF Scampton, RAF Negombo, RAF Tengah and RAF Shallufa. Aircraft flown in were, Dominie, Proctor, Blenheim, Anson, Whitley, Halifax, Lancaster, Wellington, Lincoln and B-29. He flew a total of 47 night operations, one with 81 OTU, 39 with 97 Squadron and 7 with 635 Squadron. Targets were, Rouen, Hamburg, Milan, Mannheim, Nuremberg, Peenemunde, Munchen-Gladbach, Berlin, Hannover, Leipzig, Munich, Kassel, Cologne, Ludwigshaven, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Brunswick, Ottignies, Le Havre, Lens and Coubronne. His pilots on operations were <span data-ccp-props="{"201341983":0,"335559739":200,"335559740":276}">Pilot Officer Munro DFM and Squadron Leader Riches DFC. </span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LWrigleyJ1029740v1
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
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
Egypt
France
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Singapore
Sri Lanka
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Belgium--Ottignies
Egypt--Suez Canal
England--Berkshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
England--Shropshire
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
France--Le Havre
France--Lens
France--Rouen
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Mönchengladbach
Germany--Munich
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Peenemünde
Germany--Stuttgart
Italy--Milan
Scotland--Grampian
Sri Lanka--Western Province
Wales--Carmarthenshire
Wales--Glamorgan
North Africa
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1943-05-23
1943-05-24
1943-08-02
1943-08-03
1943-08-08
1943-08-09
1943-08-10
1943-08-11
1943-08-12
1943-08-13
1943-08-17
1943-08-18
1943-08-27
1943-08-28
1943-08-31
1943-09-03
1943-09-04
1943-09-22
1943-09-23
1943-09-24
1943-09-27
1943-09-28
1943-10-02
1943-10-03
1943-10-18
1943-10-20
1943-10-21
1943-10-22
1943-11-03
1943-11-17
1943-11-18
1943-11-19
1943-11-22
1943-11-23
1943-11-25
1943-11-26
1943-11-27
1943-12-02
1943-12-03
1943-12-16
1943-12-17
1943-12-20
1943-12-29
1944-01-14
1944-01-30
1944-02-15
1944-02-16
1944-02-19
1944-02-20
1944-02-24
1944-02-25
1944-02-26
1944-03-01
1944-03-02
1944-03-15
1944-03-16
1944-03-18
1944-03-19
1944-03-22
1944-03-23
1944-03-30
1944-03-31
1944-04-18
1944-04-19
1944-04-20
1944-04-21
1944-06-14
1944-06-15
1944-06-16
1944-06-23
1944-06-24
10 OTU
1656 HCU
19 OTU
199 Squadron
35 Squadron
617 Squadron
635 Squadron
81 OTU
83 Squadron
97 Squadron
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
B-29
Blenheim
bombing
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
bombing of the Le Havre E-boat pens (14/15 June 1944)
Dominie
final resting place
Halifax
Halifax Mk 1
Halifax Mk 2
Heavy Conversion Unit
killed in action
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
Lincoln
missing in action
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
Proctor
RAF Abingdon
RAF Binbrook
RAF Bourn
RAF Downham Market
RAF Hemswell
RAF Kinloss
RAF Lindholme
RAF Marham
RAF Pembrey
RAF Scampton
RAF Shallufa
RAF St Athan
RAF Tilstock
RAF Yatesbury
training
Wellington
Whitley
wireless operator
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Wrigley, James
J Wrigley
Description
An account of the resource
27 items. The collection concerns James Wrigley (1920 - 2010, 1029740 Royal Air Force) and contains an interview with his widow, Alice Wrigley, photographs, his log book, decorations, and a photograph album of his service in the UK and and Far East. The collection also contains a log book made out to Rascal, his mascot or lucky charm. James Wrigley completed 47 operations as a wireless operator with 97 and 635 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Susan Higgins 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
2017-07-09
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Wrigley, J
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
James Wrigley Service Record
Description
An account of the resource
Form 543 with details of length of service, training units, squadrons and airfields.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Seven annotated sheets
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
OWrigleyJ1029740-170709-020001,
OWrigleyJ1029740-170709-020002,
OWrigleyJ1029740-170709-020003,
OWrigleyJ1029740-170709-020004,
OWrigleyJ1029740-170709-020005,
OWrigleyJ1029740-170709-020006,
OWrigleyJ1029740-170709-020007
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
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
10 OTU
1656 HCU
19 OTU
199 Squadron
617 Squadron
635 Squadron
81 OTU
83 Squadron
97 Squadron
bombing
Distinguished Flying Medal
Heavy Conversion Unit
Operational Training Unit
RAF Hemswell
RAF Marham
RAF Waddington
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/668/10072/AAllenWH170331.2.mp3
b7e86ee136f31e0cba975ebbd6344a9b
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
Allen, William Hubert
W H Allen
Bill Allen
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Sergeant William Allen (b. 1923, 1585749, 197351 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a wireless operator with 76 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-03-31
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
Allen, WH
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MH: Ok. Good afternoon everybody. My name is Mark. I am a volunteer with the International Bomber Command Centre which is going to be located on Canwick Hill in Lincoln. I’m one of their volunteers that has the pleasure of coming to carry out interviews with veterans of Bomber Command. Today I have the great pleasure on the 31st of March 2017 of interviewing flight sergeant, as he was during his campaign time, Mr William Allen who resides in the fair country of Wales. And I have the pleasure in interviewing him this afternoon regarding his recollections both prior to the war and during it and then afterwards as well. But first of all we’ve managed to find out and to elicit from Bill some additional information from him regarding the service that his father undertook during the Great War ’14 to ’18. And I’ll get him to give us a brief resume of what he understands that his father’s service was in the Royal Naval Air Service. And then of a very romantic thing that his father got one of the personnel from the seaplane carrier the Ark Royal to do for him as a momento of his romancing what would have been Bill’s mother. So, good afternoon Bill. Thank you very much first of all for making yourself available for interview today. It’s greatly appreciated. So, I understand from your daughter, Wendy who’s given me a bit of insight into her grandfather and your father about where he served during the Great War. If you’d like to tell us about that first off.
WA: Right. As far as I know it his wartime service on the Ark Royal — 1914 he sailed from Lincolnshire to the Dardanelles. The Mediterranean. And the Ark Royal stayed there until she came back into home waters in 1918. During that time dad was courting a young lady from Surrey where he lived, or had lived at the time. And an engineer on the Ark Royal said to father to be, ‘What are you going to do with those letters?’ And father to be said, ‘Well, I suppose I’ll have to get rid of them.’ So this engineer said, ‘Let me have them and I’ll do something with them.’ And he made a walking stick which I’ve now still got. Which will be a hundred years old next year.
MH: Just for the people listening Bill has very kindly allowed me to see this lovely momento and to describe it for you. The best way to describe it Bill — would you just say it looks or it reminds me of a tree and the rings of a tree. It’s like somebody has done a cross carving across the plain of a tree trunk and you’ve got all the individual pages of the letters that you can see, and it’s a fabulous item. And it’s got a beautiful handle on top of it. And it’s such a fine momento of the Great War and of your parents courting, of course.
WA: Yeah.
MH: Of which you were then produced. So, tell us a bit more about yourself Bill. When were you born? Where were you born? A bit about your childhood. A bit about your interests before you saw service in the Royal Air Force.
WA: Well, I was born in Surrey, a place called Lingfield, on the 22nd of September 1923. Of course, I didn’t know much until about well four or five when you sort of realise things were going on. Dad was a head gardener on the estate in Dormans Park just outside Lingfield racecourse, but what shall we say? Nothing happened really. School was just normal. But in about 1937 things started going wrong. We thought well although I wasn’t, I was only what seventeen or sixteen. You think, well there’s a war coming. You could feel it. And I thought, well what am I going to do? And I thought well I know radio and I know Morse code so I think I’ll go in to Abingdon and volunteer for aircrew. So, I went to Abingdon, to the RAF Recruitment Centre and I said, ‘I wish to join up as aircrew.’ They said, ‘What as?’ So I said, ‘Well, radio. He said, ‘Well, go back. We’ve got your address. We’ll contact you when we can take you into the air force.’ So I went back, worked with dad on the estate until I got this call to go to aircrew selection. So I went to aircrew selection at Weston super Mare. I was passed as a wireless operator/air gunner, given a service number and they said, ‘The Army or the Navy won’t call you up. But,’ they said, ‘You’re a bit late getting here. What happened?’ I said, ‘Well, I left Abingdon this morning. Got a train to Oxford where there was an Aircrew Selection Board. I got a train to Didcot where there was another aircrew selection board. Another train to Bristol where there’s an aircrew selection board. And then on to Weston super Mare where I am now. And at the interview, and they said, ‘Right, you’re, you’re ok for wireless op/air gunner.’ And of course I found out afterwards the senior was a wing commander and he said, ‘Why did you go, why were you late getting here?’ So I told him why. All these stations. And he said, ‘Well, you’re not travelling back tonight. You’ll stay in a hotel tonight.’ So the next day I travelled back to Abingdon. The reverse direction. [laughs’] Stops all the way.
MH: So, you returned home having been selected. How long a period then between your selection at the aircrew selection and your eventual call up? How long a period do you think that was?
WA: So, as I, when I went for aircrew station I was sixteen and a half. I was finally called up just before my eighteenth birthday and I went to Padgate for initial kitting. From Padgate I went to RAF Yatesbury where it was the Number 1 Radio School. Of which there were funny tales about Yatesbury but never mind. We passed out at Yatesbury. I then went to North Wales for my gunnery. Passed out as an air gunner. Then I was posted back to Abingdon to crew up as, for a crew. Where I was crewed with a pilot, a bomb aimer, two gunners, and a navigator. But at the time because Whitleys only had two engines there was no [pause] excuse me my voice is going. There was no —
MH: Flight engineer.
WA: Flight engineer.
MH: Yeah. Yeah.
WA: We passed out at Abingdon. Then we went to Heavy Conversion Unit, Riccall in Yorkshire where we converted on to four engine Halies, or Halifaxes I should say. We passed out there. We were posted to 77 Squadron, Riccall in Yorkshire. We were there, well by the week because our skipper had to go as a second pilot on a raid in Germany. He never came back. So, we were a crew at 77 Squadron without a skipper. But at 102 Squadron, Pocklington was a squadron leader who wanted a crew. So we were posted to Pocklington. Crewed up with a squadron leader who was an excellent pilot because he he got shot in the tummy but he was an ex-Spitfire pilot. So he knew how to fly a Hali. And so we teamed up there. Got on well. And often we used to say on raids if it wasn’t for our skipper who knew how to treat the Germans we wouldn’t have got back. But of course sometimes we were damaged but the thing was coming back if the skipper, if the tail end, Tail End Charlie said, ‘Skipper, there’s a Mossie coming,’ We knew we were safe because the Mosquitoes had cannons and the Germans didn’t like that. But after we’d done about twenty one ops at 102 we, our skipper was made up to a wing commander so, we were then posted to Holme on Spalding Moor. 76 Squadron. And there we remained until the end of the war. And after of course 102 was then converted to Transport Command, onto the old Dakotas.
MH: Ok. Right. I’ve got a few questions for you Bill regarding your service. Ok. Going to take you all the way back then to your wireless operator training when you said there were a few tales that occurred at Wireless Training School. Are they repeatable, these tales? Or are they too naughty for the listener?
WA: Well, they’re a bit naughty.
MH: What happened? What did you get up to?
WA: Well, because on the, between Calne and Yatesbury on the big hillside there was carved a big horse. A white horse. And one day the boys, the RAF got blamed because the White Horse was a big stallion.
MH: Ah. Right.
WA: So, they were sent to grass it over a bit [laughs]
MH: Ok. Ok. And were you involved in that additional?
WA: No.
MH: No. Right. Ok. We’ll save the confession. So, basically they’d put an additional leg to the horse.
WA: Correct.
MH: Ok. So, you started your training on Whitleys. It’s not an aircraft people are very familiar with because not a lot of people know about the Whitley in all honesty. Can you give our listeners your impressions of the aircraft? How you found it. How you found it for the specific tasks that you had to carry out.
WA: Ok. She was a twin-engine. She was a main bomber before the Halies and the Lancs came in. Or the Lancaster was a Manchester before it was a Lancaster. But the dear old Whitley was, was always for us, a flying coffin. A job to get out of if there was any trouble.
MH: Right.
WA: She was slow. We did our first op from Abingdon to — on a leaflet raid into Germany but [pause] well we got back. The thing was that because my father, mum we lived at a place call Sutton Courtenay which was just outside Abingdon and of course I was back at Abingdon and I said, ‘Well, I won’t be able to see you tomorrow. I might be away.’ And all the aircraft, fourteen Whitleys went over our bungalow and dad said mum wouldn’t sleep until she counted fourteen back.
MH: Right. Ok.
WA: But [pause] well she was a, well I suppose what you’d call a medium bomber. Not much. But when we left Abingdon and got on to the Heavy Conversion on to Halies — a different aircraft. Four engines. But the Mark 1s and Mark 2s were a bit slow. But because the Hali was designed for Bristol radial engines she had to go, the Mark 1 and 2s had Rolls Royce and she wasn’t designed for those. But because the Hali couldn’t have the radial engines, the Bristols until the Battle of Britain was over because they were all wanted for the Hurricanes. But once the Hali got the radial engines Butch Harris, the boss of Bomber Command said, ‘Ah the Hali is now a better bomber than the Lancaster,’ and she was. She was a damned good aircraft. So, the only thing was with the Hali she was fast. She was faster than the Lanc. When the Tail End Charlie used to say, ‘Ah, there’s a Mossie coming up.’ A Mossie, for the listeners is a Mosquito. And that Mosquito aircraft was wooden but she had cannons and if we were coming, if we were damaged and the Mossie came beside us no German fighter would come within fifty miles of us because he could, that Mossie could blow him out the sky. And coming back the skipper always used to say to the mid-upper, ‘Make a note of the two, the marks, the letters on the aircraft so I can phone up the squadron when we get back.’
MH: So, thinking about when you did your first operation on the Whitley. It was a sort of postal run for leaflets. How did you feel about that? Instead of taking cargo that would have been of more use should we say.
WA: Well, we didn’t know. It’s a line of duty and that’s it. It was. As I say you put all these leaflets down the flare ‘chutes and that’s it.
MH: So, none of the crew had thoughts of — I’m putting my life on the line basically to be postie.
WA: No. No.
MH: Right.
WA: I can tell you about that later but it’s on. No. You didn’t.
MH: Didn’t think about that.
WA: No.
MH: Just saw it as part of service.
WA: I mean, we’re going on our first op so big deal. Big day. But when we got to our first, what we called our first operation with 102 with the new squadron leader, it was different, you see. Well, we did our first op over Germany. Come back ok. So, the next op one or two of us used to have a cigarette. So, we sat down and had a cigarette and we’d say, ‘Well, there’s ops tonight. Some are not coming back. But we are coming back.’ That’s the way you looked at it. You were coming back. You gave your packet of cigarettes to the ground crew. The old sergeant there and say who looked after our aircraft, ‘Here’s the cigarettes. If we don’t come back smoke them. Think of us.’
MH: So [pause] Now, I did some background reading in to Halifax Mark 3s. It’s not an aircraft that I’m very familiar or I wasn’t very familiar with but I am now. It quite surprised me I must admit that the wireless operator found themselves tucked beneath the pilot’s feet. How, how was that for you? Because they were above you. The flight engineer was above you. You had two other crew members technically behind you with the mid-upper and the tail gunner but there was yourself, the navigator and the bomb aimer all stuck in the front altogether. How did you find that because of being bulky, bulky aircrew kit and all the rest of it? How did you find that?
WA: We didn’t notice it because we thought this is, this is my cabin, here’s my wireless, that was it. You didn’t think about, well the skipper’s above us. The bomb aimer, as you say was sat at the second dickie until we were over the target and went up front to take the bomb aimer’s position. But the navigator was almost alongside of me. So, we didn’t bother.
MH: I was quite surprised also to find out, Bill that at the point where you sat in the wireless operation desk etcetera and where the pilot was, the aircraft was in fact nine foot tall at that point. So that’s quite an expanse when you think about it. A nine foot tall, you know at the side of the fuselage as such. I was quite surprised by that. But it was all comfortable for you at that time.
WA: Oh yes. Because from where the pilot was you went down steps. A couple of steps, and as you were going down the steps you hung your parachute because you each had a place to put your parachute. So you didn’t think about much about the cramp. You put your parachute on the clamp and got into your position.
MH: And in your position as well the way the radio set was set up was slightly different to other heavy bombers, I believe. In that the receiver set stood on its end. And then you had the main transmitter in front of you and then your Morse key was clamped normally on the right hand side.
WA: Correct. Yes.
MH: And then you had a small desk for keeping your radio log and everything.
WA: And of course you had a trailing aerial by the side of you.
MH: Right.
WA: If I was to unwind it.
MH: Right. How did you find, did you find that — was that a good set up for yourself being the, the receiver set being there to having a — are you a right handed gentleman? Were you having to reach across or, to change the various wavelengths as such?
WA: No, it was a — because I’ll show you the photographs later. Up there.
MH: Right.
WA: Of the wireless operator’s position.
MH: Right. Ok.
WA: The only lights you had for eight hours if you were on a night raid was the lights from the radio.
MH: Right.
WA: There weren’t no other light because the Germans could pick it up.
MH: And the operational ceiling I believe of a Mark 3 Halifax was about twenty thousand feet. How did you deal with the cold?
WA: Oh. We had three pairs of gloves on. And, but they were so soft. Silk gloves, a very nice woollen and then a leather. Soft leather that you could always, you could bend your fingers and you didn’t realise they were on. But most of the trips were ok over Germany. But if we were sent on mine laying up in the Baltic then it was mighty cold.
MH: Because the difference or I understand with the Lancaster the same sort of position for the radio op in the Lancaster. They were fortunate in having the heater by them. Did the Halifax not have any heating as such? And if so where would it have been? Was it by yourself or was it elsewhere in the aircraft?
WA: Well there was a little bit of heating coming through. So as long as you didn’t get iced up.
MH: Ok. When you went to Holme on Spalding Moor it’s not a station that I am familiar with. What can you tell us about it? How was it when you got there?
WA: Well, we got there because our skipper had been made up to wing commander. He was the CO then of the, of 76 Squadron flying. So everybody at [unclear] and at briefing, our first briefing it was funny because we were at our briefing table without a skipper. And some of the crews looked as us as to say, ‘Where’s your skipper?’ And of course the skipper did a briefing and said, ‘This is our target for tonight.’ And of course when he finished the briefing he came down and sat with us. And of course some of the crew looked at us, ‘Oh, you’ve got the wing commander have you?’
MH: Did that give you any privileges at all? Were you treated differently? Or —
WA: No. The one bad privilege. We could only do one op a month.
MH: So —
WA: So, we were slowed down.
MH: Right. Due to, due to your pilot’s rank. They didn’t want to lose him as such.
WA: Yeah. But the thing was that the AOC, God he was a rugby player for England before the war. He used to have to do a monthly flight to get his flying pay. And he always used to come to the wing commander and say, ‘I want your wireless operator.’ He didn’t want a navigator, nobody. He only wanted the wireless op.
MH: So, you found yourself with the AOC for 4 Group. Doing his monthly pay flight.
WA: Yeah [laughs]
MH: And that was just you.
WA: Yeah.
MH: When you went up. So, it was just you.
WA: And the, and the pilot, you know. He was —
MH: What aircraft did you do that on? When the AOC had to go up.
WA: That was the Mark 6s. They were good aircraft.
MH: Right. So he was, he was, the AOC was still —
WA: Yeah.
MH: Keeping up to the date on the, on the aircraft type as such.
WA: Yeah. That was the CO. Not me. Gus Walker.
MH: Gus Walker. Right.
WA: Everybody knows Gus. One night he’d had, because he went out to two aircraft. What they tried on one squadron where he was they decided to, to use two runways. So that one aircraft went that way. The other one went that way. And of course this time the two hit in the centre.
MH: Yeah.
WA: And he went from flying control to see what was happening and when he got there one of the bombs went off and blew his arm off.
MH: Oh crikey.
WA: His right arm.
MH: Oh dear.
WA: So, every time you saw him you always shook left handed.
MH: Right. Crikey. Oh poor chap.
WA: But his — but the first time, well no. The second time he said, ‘Do you mind flying with me?’ When he did his flying test. I said, ‘Sir, you are safer than some of the pilots I’ve flown with.
MH: With the one arm.
WA: Yeah.
MH: We’ll leave those. We’ll leave those dodgy pilots out of this interview then, just in case they happen. We’ll leave the names of the dodgy pilots out of the interview just in case.
WA: That was, well we had posts.
MH: So, you’ve now gone and you’ve reached into your cupboard. What have you brought out for us? What have you brought out from your cupboard? What have you got there? Ah. Right. Bill’s just bought out his form 1767 which for those of us in the know is his flying logbook. So we’re going to use this as a bit of a reference with you listeners as Bill’s going to take us into his logbook now. And we appreciate you can’t see it but in Bill’s neatest handwriting I’m looking at a page which is headed up Yatesbury. The 21st of May ’43 and he was flying on X7517.
WA: Dominie.
MH: And that was a Dominie. And that was up for air experience by the looks of things. I suppose, what was that? To check and make sure that you weren’t going to be sick.
WA: Yes.
MH: And that sort of thing. Ok.
WA: Then we went on to radio then. Direction finding loop, homing training, calibre training.
MH: But I look then, Bill. I look at the time that you were up and the actual flying times that Bill’s referring to during his training. They’re not very long are they? They’re only about an hour or so.
WA: Yes.
MH: And during that that allowed you time to go through thoroughly the training that you had to go through.
WA: That’s right.
MH: Or do you feel that it was rushed?
WA: No. No.
MH: To get, to get you through.
WA: No. It was ok. There was, you still carried on. This is when then they go to Mona, North Wales for my air gunnery.
MH: Right. Yeah.
WA: That’s my hits [laughs]
MH: And Bill’s now got in September sort of time 1943 he was at the Air Gunnery Course Centre and firing off approximately two hundred rounds at a time on his training. And that was, ah the aircraft type listed that Bill was flying in then was an Avro Anson during his training for air gunnery. With all different pilots by the looks of things. Yeah. But so how much training? What sort of weapon were you taught to fire? What was it?
WA: The 303s and the drogue which was being dragged behind the aircraft.
MH: So that was, would that have been a single 303 or would that have been a pair or —?
WA: No. A pair.
MH: A pair.
WA: That was on the old —
MH: Ah. Now, this is going to bring recollections to me. Halfpenny Green.
WA: Yes. That’s right.
MH: Yeah. Now, for listeners if you ever get the chance there’s a John Mills film that basically shows him in Bomber Command and then eventually this particular place called Halfpenny Field gets handed over to the American 8th Air Force. And it’s called, the film is called, “The Way to the Stars.” So, if you get the chance have a look at it because the gentleman I am sitting with actually served at a place called Halfpenny Green. So, this, this is where you did more wireless operation training. Yeah?
WA: That’s right. The training.
MH: And we’ve got cross country exercises and navigations and you were the second wireless operator. And again on Avro Ansons. How did you find that aircraft Bill to be in? Was it good?
WA: It was a good aircraft. The old Aggie as they called her. Aggie Anson.
MH: Was it a good training aircraft then?
WA: Yes.
MH: Yeah. Ok.
WA: This was Abingdon or satellite Stanton Harcourt.
MH: Right. Ok.
WA: Yeah. She was number 10 OTU.
MH: So, on Bill’s page now we’re up to the period now in his logbook and right at the top of the page is the 25th of January 1944. Bill was on wireless op duty and flying with Flying Officer Ford in a Whitley T4131. And on that particular occasion out of 10 OTU he was doing circuits and landings for an hour and a half. And then this was at Stanton Harcourt where Bill looks like he’s done a mixture of, he’s done the odd bit on an Avro Anson but the majority of it has been on the two engine Whitley. However, he has been the wireless operator duty for the whole of those. That’s lovely Bill. That’s a lovely book. And then we continue. And then I’ve got — you’ve got fighter affiliation there. Which is quite interesting because I found out later when you were with, when you were at Holme on Spalding Moor you had 1689 Bomber Defence Training which were Hawker Hurricanes doing fighter affiliation on the same, the same airfield. So you’ve continued that there. And that’s March ’44. And — right, here’s something I’m going to question. What’s Bullseye, Bill? What does that mean when you see that?
WA: A Bullseye was a six hour from Abingdon. We went through London. And then to another Birmingham. So it was across country. But the thing was at London they hadn’t informed, they hadn’t been informed that we were coming. So they thought we were Germans and we were fired at [laughs] So I had to flashback the Morse at them.
MH: Right. Ok. So, was that a specific? Is that why you’ve noted it as Bullseye? Or was Bullseye for a specific target?
WA: No. It was called a Bullseye.
MH: It was called a Bullseye. So —
WA: So, if you completed a Bullseye you were ok.
MH: You were ok. Ok. But on that particular occasion the anti-aircraft decided to fire on you. Ok.
WA: Because they didn’t know. But they, I think afterwards it was a bit better then.
MH: Ok.
WA: As a nickel operation.
MH: Right. So Bill’s showing me here, on the 14th of February which for us gentleman we all know is a rather painful day in pockets-wise, being Valentine’s Day. Back in 1944 Bill was doing a nickel operation to Laval which was a four and a quarter hour night operation. And then the following month looks like that’s when Squadron Leader Legatt, you did some fighter affiliation with him and the flight commander’s check. So that was good. Ok. Then you go to 1658 Heavy Conversion Unit.
WA: Riccall, in Yorkshire.
MH: Riccall, in Yorkshire. And that’s on a Halifax Mark 2. And Bill’s started in his logbook, he’s got that noted on the 10th of May 1944. And his first flight was at 0900 in the morning. The pilot was Flight Lieutenant Warren. And that was familiarisation for the Halifax Mark 2 of two hours and five minutes. And that was a daytime familiarisation flight.
WA: We were on three engines.
MH: Was that because the aircraft had a fault, Bill?
WA: No. Had to do it.
MH: Oh, you had to do it. Right. Ok. So that was a test of skill as such for the pilot. As Bill’s pointed out there whilst at 1658 HCU in his logbook he’s noted on the 18th and 19th of May ’44 that they did a three engine test on both of those days. And as you heard him say that was a requirement at those times. I see there you did another Bullseye operation as well. Down the bottom of your page. But one engine wasn’t working.
WA: No.
MH: So that made it even harder than. So, yeah. Crikey. Circuits and — yeah.
WA: That’s when it was.
MH: And then on the 1st line of Bill’s book for the 15th of June ’44 Halifax Mark 3. Circuits and landings with 77 Squadron at Full Sutton. And then —
WA: We lost our pilot.
MH: Was that Mr Ford?
WA: Yes.
MH: Mr Ford went so —
WA: Flying Officer Ford.
MH: At this time listeners we would like to note the tragic events that at this point we lost Flying Officer Ford. And he was your first pilot that went as a second dickie on an operation.
WA: So when he didn’t come back we were a crew without a pilot.
MH: A crew without a pilot. Yeah. Then you got your new pilot.
WA: So we went to 102 Squadron, Pocklington with a Squadron Leader White.
MH: Squadron Leader White. And your first operation with him was eighteen thousand feet. Foret de Nieppe. NE — sorry. N I E P P E and your bombing height was eighteen thousand feet. It was a day operation of three hours and forty minutes. And then your very next operation being routed but written over your shoulder you were hit by flak and that was — oh you were, oh V-1 launch site. But you were quite down low then.
WA: Yeah.
MH: At ten thousand feet. So, Bill’s next op was on the 8th of August. A Halifax Mark 3. Again, the pilot was Squadron Leader White. His new pilot. Bill was the wireless operator and that was [unclear] where the aircraft was hit by flak. And they were bombing a V-1 launch site. You seem to have quite a few trying to tackle the buzz bomb problem.
WA: Yes.
MH: Yeah.
WA: Still carried on.
MH: Still carried on. So, for those in the know or those that are new to this regarding knowledge to Bomber Command Bill with Squadron Leader White then carried out an operation on the 7th of September. Again in a Halifax Mark 3. On this occasion it was gardening to the Frisian Islands from fifteen thousand feet. Now, for those in the know the gardening sorties were to be mine laying. So, in and around the Frisian Islands Bill and Squadron Leader White and the rest of the crew would have been laying, doing mine laying around the Frisian islands. And you did some more then. You went off to Mecklenburg Bay in the Baltic. That would have been very cold.
WA: Yeah.
MH: That would have been a bit raw. Especially in September. Even in September wouldn’t it? So Bill then did one on the 15th of September as well. Gardening to the Mecklenburg Bay. And then you did some ferry flights.
WA: No. September ’44 the army was held up on going into Germany. So 76 Squadron was loaded up with 22 Jerry cans which, one Jerry can is mighty heavy but when you get twenty two. But the thing was that get to my position we had to crawl across all these petrol tank things to get. But we, what I can’t make out, we were given a parachute but we could never have get out if anything had happened. And if Germany knew that we were full of petrol they would have been after us. But the thing was we used more petrol in our engines than we were carrying.
MH: Carrying. Yeah.
WA: But they wanted, the army wanted this petrol so we had to do it.
MH: Now —
WA: It was quite a few.
MH: So, you were ferrying fuel at the time of Arnhem. But burning up more fuel in doing it.
WA: Yeah. That’s the, that’s the way it went.
MH: And then you went to Kleve in the October. Bochum on the Ruhr in November of ’44. And then again back to the Ruhr. Sterkrade.
WA: They had a —
MH: Oil plant.
WA: Box barrage, and you flew, they set their guns from ten thousand feet to twenty thousand feet and you flew through it.
MH: How did you feel about that because —
WA: Well, we didn’t know until later. But there you are. We knew it was somewhere close because you could smell cordite in the, in the aircraft and golly, that was through the oxygen masks.
MH: So, you were picking up the vapours.
WA: Yeah.
MH: From the exploding rounds. Then you went to Zoest. The marshalling yards. In the December. That would have been cold as well, Bill.
WA: Yeah.
MH: And then, just for fun in the January of ’45 they sent you back to the Baltic. They obviously didn’t think you’d been cold enough before. But —
WA: That’s where we went to.
MH: Holme on Spalding Moor. So, Bill —
WA: The wing commander there.
MH: Bill’s just showing me in his logbook now that Squadron Leader White had been made up to wing commander and they went to Holme on Spalding Moor. And the first noted operation come practice on that was the 3rd of February ’45 on a Halifax Mark 3 where you had a practice bombing session before going off and you were going to — is that Goch.
WA: Yeah.
MH: Yeah.
WA: In the Ruhr.
MH: Goch in the Ruhr on the 7th of February ’45. However, it does look like was that operation scrubbed by the master bomber at that time. And you were at twelve thousand feet and that was due to come in to contact —
WA: Heavy cloud. You couldn’t see the target.
MH: With the chemical plant. Oh, and then in March ’45 Bill, with Wing Commander White went to one of the big ones — Cologne where you were bombing from twenty thousand feet. So you were up. With the Halifax that’s towards its upper operational ceiling isn’t it? The twenty thousand. So, that’s quite high. And then Wuppertal in the March. And then practice bombing in the March as well. And then I’m going to pronounce, I’m going to pronounce this wrong, Bill. I’ll tell you now.
WA: Wangerooge.
MH: Wangerooge Island, from eight thousand feet on the 25th of April ’45. Again with Wing Commander White. And that was to assist in taking out a gun emplacement.
WA: And that was the last raid of the war.
MH: The very last one.
WA: Yes.
MH: Right. Ok. And that was for a gun emplacement causing problems. And that was a daylight operation on those occasions. On that occasion.
WA: Eight thousand feet.
MH: Eight thousand feet. That’s nothing. Eight thousand feet.
WA: And on that one was twenty four aircraft from our squadron. As we were going in two of our Halies collided. One [pause] one went straight down and with all the seven killed. The other one went down in the sea but only the skipper got out. The rest of the crew were killed. But he came, he was only a prisoner of war for a few days because the war was virtually ended. But when he got back to our squadron before we transferred to Transport Command he said when he came out the, out of the sea a German officer was waiting for him. And, but while he was marching him up to, to their office I suppose, to interrogate him a farmer came rushing up with a pitchfork and he was going to stab the RAF pilot. And the German pulled out his revolver and pointed it at this farmer. Told him to shoo off.
MH: Because you do hear don’t you of a lot of, a lot of parachuted aircrew that were turned on by the civilians. You do hear quite a bit of that having occurred which is very sad. But again fortunately then, we can actually say fortunately there was a German officer there to save him.
WA: That’s right.
[pause]
WA: That was the last one. The ops we did. Different pilots. Bombs had gone. Dropping bombs in the North Sea to get rid of them.
MH: What’s interesting, I’ve got to point this out to you, Bill. What’s interesting, Bill’s just pointing out to me a couple of entries in relation to May 1945 in his logbook. Now, you were in then the up to date Halifax Mark 6. Flying Officer Thrussel. It’s got here duty rear gunner. Did you go on that one there with the ferry flight because there was no other option? That was the only seat available or what took you to the rear turret on that occasion?
WA: It was just, you know because we lost all the air gunners because we didn’t need them. War was finished. So, when the Halifax went off and they said, ‘Well look, If you want to fly as a rear gunner, see what is happening,’ because when you’re a wireless op you couldn’t see much. So, you jumped in.
MH: Having changed your seat then for that particular time were you able to gain any sort of thoughts about what it would have been like to have been a Tail End Charlie as such?
WA: No. No.
MH: During your ops.
WA: No. You got Wingco, look [pause]
MH: Ah. So here, June, 5th of June 1945 in a Halifax Mark 6. The wing commander. Cook’s Tour. Ah, I’ve heard about these. Is that where ground personnel —
WA: Correct. We took them on.
MH: And they got to see the great, you know the work that you’d done. And the work that you’d carried out because they were unaware of it other than —
WA: That’s right.
MH: Movietone News etcetera. So, in August 1945 we appear to have an aircraft change.
WA: Transport Command.
MH: Transport Command. What, what made them— any ideas what made them change at that point? Was there more of a necessity for transport aircraft? I mean —
WA: Well, we didn’t need bombers. War was finished.
MH: The European one. But the war against Japan was, you know —
WA: Actually, what we were [unclear] we were flying to go to India to meet aircraft coming from Japan with Prisoners of War. And at Poona, India. And from that, the ones from Japan landed at Poona. The aircraft then flew from Poona to Cairo where they were put on York aircraft with a medical officer and a nurse. And from there they were transported back to England. And the pilots used to say, ‘Boys, we’re back in England.’ And I think they stopped it because some of the POW got so excited they expired. And we did hear afterwards that their, well their legs were like your arms. You know. Nothing.
MH: Yeah. I think, I think, I’d like to think that we’ve all, we’ve all seen the horrific photographs.
WA: Yeah. They used to come in to Hullavington which is now upgraded isn’t it? It’s Royal Hullavington. Is it?
MH: So, did you actually take part in any of those repatriation flights, Bill? Back to the UK?
WA: No. Because this is where I got this typhoid in Cairo. And also I found out that I’d been flying with a perforated ear drum.
MH: Oh dear. Oh —
WA: That’s why I’m completely deaf in my left ear.
MH: So, how long, how long did they think you’d had the perforated ear drum?
WA: Don’t know.
MH: Don’t know. Oh right. Ok.
WA: But that’s when they found out as I said. No more flying.
MH: So, that might have happened way way way way way back. Possibly on your first or second operation.
WA: Yeah.
MH: You’d gone all the way flying to the Ruhr and back with one ear drum.
WA: Well —
MH: Wow. That’s, that’s quite extraordinary. That, you know. That’s, you know. Because you managed to, you managed to hold down, you know the career that you had then. So what, when, what happened to you when you did your service Bill? What did you do post-service? What did you do after? What did you do after your service?
WA: I still carried on because I kept doing that, because when I came back to England up to Air Ministry, flying officer, he said, ‘Ah, Yatesbury. What do you know about medical?’ So, I said, ‘Not a lot. Nothing.’ They said, Right. You’ll go to RAF Yatesbury as a [pause] looking after transfers.’ Right. So, I goes down to Yatesbury for the third time. First of all as an airman. And later on. But I had quite a nice time at Yatesbury. Got into the football team. Got an injury. And one of the nurses looked after me who later became my wife. After a while they said, ‘Well, because you can’t fly and you’re only for a home,’ or they used to call it, France and Germany, ‘But you can’t go Far East because of your eardrum. We’ll have to transfer you to the MOD Air Force Department. But you won’t be in uniform. But they said we’ll help you out. We’ll count your service.’ So, that’s why when I retired at sixty I had a service commission, err pension.
MH: So, if I’m recollecting this correctly for our listeners you joined, you first of all went for air crew selection at the age of sixteen and a half. Got selected. And you retired from the Air Force technically at the age of sixty. Forty four long years of service to this country, Bill. That’s a long time.
WA: Yeah. But I enjoyed my time with the Royal Air Force. No regrets. My only regret is I had a perforated eardrum and I couldn’t carry on flying.
MH: What’s your, I’ve got to ask you an opinion, Bill. What’s your opinion on the way that Bomber Command have been treated?
WA: Grim.
MH: Grim. What makes you say grim?
WA: Because there was no medal for Bomber Command. The other services had something. I don’t think even Fighter Command had any much, you know. They saved us. The same as Bomber Command. They always said that Bomber Command was the only one of the three services that was operational. The poor old Navy couldn’t do much. Only look after home waters.
MH: Yeah. Yeah. How do you feel about the way that the young people of today view Bomber Command? With what we’re trying to achieve to bring it to their attention.
WA: I don’t think a lot of modern realise.
MH: Right.
WA: Because this what they’re building at Lincoln. The height of a, wingspan of a Hali or a Lanc. They had to ask for extra money but I don’t think they got much response from that. To me, a lot of people, well from once the war was ended things went quiet. It was forgotten.
MH: Ok. Right. I’ve got to ask you, going back to my list of questions. Your dad was in what would have been known during World War Two as the Fleet Air Arm. Why didn’t you choose the Fleet Air Arm, Bill over — what was it that turned you off the Navy and on to the Air Force as such?
WA: I don’t know. Aircrew to me was RAF.
MH: Right.
WA: That’s why.
MH: And you’d always wanted to fly. Where did that passion come from?
WA: Because I knew Morse. And I thought well there’s always a radio on bombers or aircraft.
MH: So was it your interest in radio at that time?
WA: Well, because Morse code was radio wasn’t? That was it.
MH: Leading on from that then I was reading about a particular aircraft the other day where they had a problem with the intercom on the aircraft. Got shot through during the war on a mission and they were using some sort of signal like Morse code tapping through the airframe so the rest of the crew knew what was going on. Because the pilot had designed a system where they knew that three taps mean bale out and all the rest of it. Did you have anything like that?
WA: No. No.
MH: So, when you went off you were basically reliant on the intercom system working all the time. Right. Right.
WA: And we, we knew what, alright we took off. Twenty four aircraft, we knew some of them wouldn’t be coming back but we were coming back. So that’s the way you looked at it. I’d think I know where my parachute is. I can soon grab it. And that’s it.
MH: Do you count yourselves as brave?
WA: No. Lucky.
MH: Lucky. Right. Ok. Alright. Because there would be a lot of us that would say what you did and your colleagues etcetera what you did and the young age that you were when you did it —
WA: That’s right.
MH: Was very brave.
WA: Twenty, twenty one, twenty two. That was it. And most of the names on that what they’re building at Lincoln opposite Lincoln Cathedral. They were all twenty, twenty one, twenty twos.
MH: People in the prime of their youth. Yeah. But it never worried you.
WA: No.
MH: Never scared.
WA: No. [unclear] that’s it.
MH: Positivity.
WA: Well.
MH: And you had a good pilot.
WA: Well, you’ve got, well yes. We had a damned good pilot. And it was the job. We had to do it. Someone had to do it.
MH: No, you’re right. Someone had to do it. Ok. Did you ever run across or come across Group Captain Pelly-Fry?
WA: No. I’ve heard about him.
MH: What can you tell us about him?
WA: Hi de hi Pelly-Fry.
MH: What can you tell us?
WA: Is that right?
MH: Yeah. What can you tell us about him?
WA: He was 76 Squadron before we got there. So, I don’t know. All I know that is he was known as Pelly-Fry. Wing commander.
MH: So, he then eventually went up Group Command didn’t he? Up to 4 Group.
WA: Yes.
MH: So, out of all the aircraft then that you served on and in, in what order would you put them as favourite to least favourite?
WA: My favourite. Well, it’s got to be the Hali. Damned good aircraft. She could take punishment and if she crashed she broke in to six pieces so you had more chance of getting out. Whereas the Lanc didn’t because the Lanc was an old aircraft. A twin-engined Manchester. Put two engines on it and called it a Lancaster. But it still had a thin fuselage and useless to get out of.
MH: Right.
WA: I suppose the worst aircraft was the old Proctor. With the single engine.
MH: Why? I’ve got to ask why.
WA: I don’t know [laughs] to me, so I say it didn’t have the guts like a Lanc, or a Hali I should say.
MH: Right. Yeah. So in all your time with Bomber Command you’d have seen sights that a lot of us wouldn’t want to see and would have lost friends, colleagues that sort of thing. But you were stoical throughout in your approach and you feel that you were lucky.
WA: Yes. Because often we used to say if it wasn’t for our skipper being an ex-fighter pilot he got us out of a lot of problems.
MH: After the war did you stay in touch with your crew or with your pilot or did you all go your separate ways?
WA: No. We all drifted away and that was it.
MH: Right.
WA: I met, the person who I kept meeting was Gus Walker, Air Commodore, who, he said, ‘I saw your old skipper in London last week,’ when he used to come on the station to the annual AOC. He’d say, ‘I met your old skipper in London. He’s still ok. Yeah.’
MH: Ok. That’s fabulous. Is there anything else, Bill that you’d like to add about your recollections?
WA: No. Just [pause] No. It was one thing I went through. No regrets.
MH: No regrets. Good. Lucky charms? Did you have any lucky charms that you carried about your person? Because I know a lot of aircrew used to have a teddy.
WA: A rabbit’s foot.
MH: And a rabbit’s foot.
WA: That’s right.
MH: And all that. Yeah. That sort of thing. Or a lucky coin, didn’t they? And that sort of thing. Clover leaf and what not. But no. What I’d like to do Bill is thank you very much for your time today.
WA: That’s nice. Thank you, Mark.
MH: I’m sure that people will thoroughly enjoy listening to this.
WA: I’ve got a bit of a throat, perhaps my voice doesn’t sound good today. It’s a bit throaty.
MH: It’ll be fine. It will be fine. But thank you very much for this afternoon. And I will be turning the tape recorder off.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with William Hubert Allen
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mark Hunt
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-03-31
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AAllenWH170331
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:08:00 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
William Allen’s father had served with the Fleet Air Arm during the First World War. William also wanted to fly and so volunteered for the RAF at the earliest opportunity. He trained as a wireless operator. The crew arrived on the squadron and the pilot went as second dickie on a flight but was killed on the operation. William and his crewmates were now without a pilot and were transferred to 102 Squadron to continue operations. William and his crew were very conscious of the statistical chances that they would not come back but over cigarettes they would say that they would be coming back. However, they also left their cigarettes with the ground crew with the instruction that if they did not return to smoke them and remember them.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
10 OTU
102 Squadron
1658 HCU
76 Squadron
77 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
Cook’s tour
Dominie
Halifax
Halifax Mk 1
Halifax Mk 2
Halifax Mk 3
Heavy Conversion Unit
mid-air collision
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
RAF Abingdon
RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor
RAF Pocklington
RAF Riccall
RAF Yatesbury
training
Whitley
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/791/10772/PDaviesRS1801.1.jpg
00f54a2d24961e60d3f61e60a9f314ac
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/791/10772/ADaviesRS180201.2.mp3
800ef8d99ba90c254a8396ffd80dc2df
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
Davies, Ronald
Ronald S Davies
R S Davies
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Ron Davies (1921 - 2020, 186892 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator with 101 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-02-01
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Davies, RS
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
SP: This is-
RD: No just-
SP: So, this is Susanne Pescott and I'm interviewing Ron Davies of 101 Squadron today for the International Bomber Command Centre’s digital archive. We’re at Ron’s home and it’s the 1st of February 2018. Also present at the interview is Ron’s son Peter. So, first of all, thank you Ron for agreeing to talk to me today. So, do you want to tell us what life was like before the RAF for you?
RD: My father was a farmer, and he’d been in the first war and suffered from a lot of damage and, so when the second war [pauses] broke out, I was furious to find I was in a reserved occupation. I felt I wanted to emulate what he’d done. In the event, I did join the air force, which [chuckles] almost came to blows with my father, but it was something I had to do and something which I’ve never regretted. And so, at the age of eighteen in the spring of 1940, I joined the air force as a pilot UT. Went to No 1 ITW in Newquay and then to No 8 EFTS in Anstey near Leicestershire, and I was there when Coventry was bombed and we were just ten miles from Coventry, and Anstey was a small pre-war flying station, and relied on the outside private people to maintain and train the planes. After Coventry of course, the place wasn’t closed down but our course finished, and we were then sent to Manchester, were eventually posted to Canada- Sorry, to America, because we were supposed to be trained as co-pilots onto the Sunderlands, flying boats. Now, are we coping? I spent- First of all, four months in Atlanta and trained on Boeing-Stearmans and from there, the- We went to Jacksonville Academy and we went onto fly the Vultee Valiant, which was greater because America was neutral, their standard of flying was much higher and with less pressure than England. When we finished onto that, we went onto Cessnas, twin-engine planes, and just a month before the end of the season and we had an unfortunate accident and we were- Both the co-pilot and myself were dismissed and we were sent back to Canada. Here we were lost, and suffered because we’d been in an accident, we were sent down to the hospital for check-ups and they kept us there as attendants. So [chuckles] having joined to fly we were now almost slaves in this unfortunate place. Then came Pearl Harbour and we- Suddenly everyone realised that our time was being wasted so we were then re-trained as navigators and I went over to Port Albert, which is just outside Goderich and I spent twenty-six weeks training on navigation and astro and all the things that entailed to it. Eventually we managed to get back to England and by now England was full of aircrew. We’d been away for so long and were sent to an army barracks in Whitley Bay, and we spent nearly three months there and to escape it we managed to get onto a consignment of bomb aimers who were being trained at Millom, and I think I've already told you that twenty-seven of us were posted to 10 OTU in Abingdon to fly Whitleys and then Halifaxes. But to help a colleague I switched to flight- To go to 28 OTU Wymeswold. From there we moved to the satellite which was Castle Donnington, and we completed our OTU on Wellingtons and we did two nickels which were flying over France with leaflets, and then we went from there to Halifaxes on Heavy Conversion Unit at Blyton. We did six weeks on those. From there we went to Hemswell which was No 1 LFS, Lancaster Flying School. We did ten days on that, and then we were rushed to 101 Squadron where we picked up an eighth member who was Keith Gosling and we arrived at 101 the last week in May of 1944, and we remained there until the 6th of November, during which time I completed thirty-one operations and another seven abortions. So altogether it was the equivalent of quite a lot of trips. We- During that time, Keith Gosling was lost and his replacement was a man called Roy Hall, and he stayed with us for the rest of the tour.
SP: So, Ron do you want to tell me a little bit- You had an eighth crew member, so obviously your eighth crew member Keith Gosling, you said was lost, do you want to tell me a little about what happened to Keith?
RD: Ey?
SP: Do you want to tell me a little about what happened to Keith Gosling then, you said he was lost so?
RD: He was lost with Flying Officer Meier[?]. Because, there were more crews than there were special operators, occasionally if the special operators own crew wasn’t flying then had to stand in, so he stood in and it was- Unfortunate thing, it was Meier’s first trip, and then I don’t quite know.
SP: So, Ron obviously there’s some details about Keith which we’re going to cover at the end, so do you want to carry on with where you were up to with your tour?
PD: If we- Can I just-
RD: The eighth member was a German speaking operator of a special equipment called ABC, airborne cigar and this was a jamming device which detected correspondence between the ground and the, and the enemy aircrews and their idea was so that it would give us a little bit of breathing space by jamming this. The unfortunate off-shoot of that was that the transmission itself was a warning device to the aircraft, so 101 Squadron itself suffered much more greater casualties than the average squadron. The invasion assistance that we were giving began to wane and we started going back to Germany again, and flying to many places. I don’t want to say too much about that, but could almost really wrap over and say that we finally finished our tour on the 4th of November and at that point- Ah, just remembered something else, and we were flying F-Fox and the first one was lost on the 12th of June and the second one was lost on the 30th of August, with another crew flying it because we were stood down that night and in the meantime we had to fly other planes until we had a replacement, and we finally had the third Fox, so there were three foxes all together. On the 12th of September and at the same time we finally had a replacement for our mid-upper gunner whom we’d lost on- Well he wasn’t killed, but he just didn’t fly again after Reims and that’s were Flying Officer Ken Gibb DFC with seventy-five operations under his belt came into being. So, can we- A new F-Fox came and that was NF936, and we finished our final trips in that, but- On the 2nd of November. But Paddy the engineer had been ill on one of the trips and he still had a trip to do, and two members of the crew refused to fly anymore operations, and we seemed to think that it was a shame for Paddy to go on his last trip on his own, so I volunteered to go with him and we flew our last trip on the 4th of November, Paddy and I, and at the same time, the crew in our hut, whose captain was Flying Officer Edwards, took over our F-Fox, and we planned to have an extension on the sergeants mess license for when we came back to celebrate. Unfortunately, F-Fox didn’t come back, and the whole of the crew were killed, so we cancelled the extension and it seemed a shame really that on our last day we lost our plane, our hut mates, it was a bit distressing. In the meantime, during July, I'd been on a trip and I had arrived late at the briefing through a fault on the intercom, and I was hauled before the CO and threatened with expulsion from the aircrew and told what an unpleasant character I was, and the final words of the CO when I left the interview was, ‘From now on, you will be under my personal observation’, and I then went home on leave after the completion of our tours and when I arrived I found a telegram addressed to Pilot Officer Davies, so he must’ve forgiven me because he’d recommended the commission. From then on, we went to flying training at a place called Angle in South Wales and we were flying with four crews from 617 Squadron, and they were all- Two had expired from- And we flew for six months on this experimental work and the work was to bomb or- To train the bomb site to cope with eastern conditions and the idea was to bomb the Japanese fleet, and we finished that tour by the end of May. At which time we returned to- We were seconded to coastal command, when I returned to 101 Squadron a character there called Gundry[?] White with whom I'd also blotted my copy book, when he saw me coming back, he made sure that my existence was short and sweet, and I found myself posted to the Far East, and within a month I was at Mauripur which is just outside Karachi, in a transit camp waiting to join the Tiger Force which was the name for Bomber Commad in the Far East. Fortunately for us, before that happened, they dropped to atom bomb and then the hydrogen bomb and at that point I was posted to Dum Dum in Calcutta, and from there, from there I spent seven days on an American liberty ship and ended up in Singapore on my way to Kuala Lumpur. There was so much chaos in Singapore that- And there was no transport available, and so I ended up helping to rehabilitate prisoners to come back home, and when that happened the whole station was posted to Changi- We were at Kallang sorry, and Kallang was to be handed back to the civil authorities and we were all to go to the RAF. But within- I being the youngest of the officers there was left to- With thirty people to tidy everyone up and hand it back to the authorities. But, before that could happen, after four days the runways at Changi were declared unfit and unsafe for four-engine aircraft, and so I stayed for the rest of the war in Kallang with these thirty people and our job was to refuel all the aircraft which were coming through and in particular, we had twenty-five Japanese prisoners of war come every day and it was my job to see that all these people were done. At the, at the end of my time, I was then demobbed in June 1946. I went back to the main base in Singapore and that night there was a NAAFI show with Tommy Trinder and I thought, ‘That’ll be a fitting way to finish’, and when I got in the very first person, I saw was Gwen Lansing-Green[?] who was the daughter of our landlord back home, and I had to go twelve-thousand miles to see my next-door neighbour. You can make as much as that as you wish. We arrived home after six- We went from Colombo which then was Ceylon, Bombay, Aden, Suez, Gibraltar and Liverpool and that was the end of my service, and that was in the book, then everything finishes and it starts again fifty-two years later when I- By this time I’d lost touch with all the crew, and it was fifty-two years later when I was reading a paper and my pilot was writing a story of his accident and from that I wrote to him, we were reunited, and then started all the galivanting to- Back to bomber land. Does that fill in?
SP: That’s great Ron, I think if we just want to go back to a couple of bits you mentioned during your time during the war, you mentioned that obviously you were special operations and Keith Gosling, you said he went on a different flight to you at some time. Do you want to tell us what happened to Keith?
RD: Yes, well now that I can tell you, that I answered the pilot’s letter and then that is where we began to find out all the information about Keith Gosling, and it really goes on- It’s very long winded because it took about twenty years to find all this out. Well, the one word for it is a cover-up. No one wanted to disclose, in fact, I doubt the air force really know, that their only Canadian air force covered everything up, and when you read the stories that we found out, most of this happened because the Canadian government were more concerned with paying a widows pension to someone who wasn’t a widow, and most of the investigations are concerning that, and the fact that a plane, six men were killed, many, many facets of information passed over to the enemy, and if I tell you that the Stasi people were concerned and that’s what- Meier[?] was a member of that.
SP: So, what actually happened? Do you want to tell us what actually happened?
RD: Well, it all started with Keith Gosling’s friend who was called Sam Brookes and they both trained together and they both received their commission together and they both came to 101 Squadron. Now, on the first visit back to Lincoln after I'd met up with the pilot, the- 101 had this mad idea of having two nights for a reunion, and one night would be in Lincoln, or an RAF station on a Saturday with a dinner, and the following would be on the Sunday afternoon when we would go to the church in Ludford and the first night, or the first visit we had and the reunion was being held in Waddington, and we stayed at the Premier Inn or some such, who provided a courtesy coach to take us to Waddington and sitting next to me was Sam Brookes and of course, as you know from your father's experience, whenever two airmen get together it’s always, ‘When were you here? What crew were you with?’, and Sam Brookes case, ‘Who was your special operator?’, and I said, ‘Oh, Keith Gosling’, struggling- ‘That’s strange, we’ve just come back from France where Keith was buried’, he said, ‘And there weren’t seven graves, there were only six graves and Keith Gosling was named as the pilot’, he said, ‘very strange’. But by that time, we’d got to Waddington and we said, ‘We’ll talk about this when we get back’. Unfortunately, for us, we got carried away a bit and that night there were a changeover of chairmen and Air Vice Marshall Eric Macey was handing over to Air Commodore Jim Uprichard, and they start- One was a pianist and the other was a cellist and so you can imagine, half-past one in the morning and the sing songs are going and the drinks are flowing, and we sudden realised we’d missed our bus. So, we never saw Sam Brookes again, in fact, I never did see him because in the shadow of the bus, you don’t really recognise and nothing ever happened from that, and it was three years later before Sam Brookes met our pilot. Now, our pilot had amnesia and he couldn’t remember anything and so, he then wrote to me to tell me all about Sam Brookes and to try and carry on this conversation and from then on that’s how they approached me and not the pilot because, I wouldn’t say my memory’s good, but I can remember a lot of things that happened at the time and I had all the dates in my log book to cover them. And so, that is why I was approached at the last meeting as to what I thought of Keith because Fred, with the best will in the world could remember Keith Gosling but he could never remember that he’d flown with us as a crew member, so it was all these odd- And that is why my- Or I was asked for a second opinion if you like. So-
SP: So, Keith actually went on another operation, what actually happened on the operation when his crew was killed? What actually happened on the operation that Keith was on when his crew was killed?
RD: They flew to Homberg, and- Have to think about how much I can tell you without breaking confidentiality. They flew- And everything I tell you now is conflicted, every evidence is conflicted. When the raid was over, they should’ve come over Holland and the North Sea back to Ludford, but they actually were flying over Belgium, I think it was- I can’t remember the name of the, of the town at the moment. But the bomb aimer bailed out, and when he was interrogated back in this country, they asked him why he bailed out and he said he’d bailed out because he thought the plane was going to crash, but on further interrogation he admitted that all four engines were running and so his explanation didn’t quite fit in. Now, the plane then continued flying away from England and it actually crashed at E-V-R-E-U, Evreu, which if you look on a map is half-way from Belgium to the Alps and at that point, how a pilot could get out of a plane and leave all six members in and how it remained static, but of course, the bomb bays were already- The bomb hatch was already open from the bomb aimer leaving, so all he had to do was get out, and once he got out the plane- He obviously hadn’t put it onto automatic and so it just crashed. Now, that was the first part, and the second part was, the bomb aimer, when he was interrogated, they found he was unfit for further flying activities, and yet he’d been a person, very convivial, until he went on that trip, he was a very natural person. He went back to Canada, and this- Within three years and he disappeared mysteriously in a boating accident, and no one could ever interrogate him again and the pilot, Walter Meier, he was eventually in East Germany and in 1972, he was found in a gas filled room, asphyxiated, and the coroner deemed that there was a fault on the flu system, but again, a mysterious death. The whole thing, and without telling you anymore that’s as far as I can go but, I think it has to be mentioned.
SP: Yeah.
RD: Now, we’ve covered up to fifty-two years after being demobbed, and that started my life back at Ludford, back at Lincoln, back at Coningsby, Brize Norton, covered the whole lot really.
SP: So, what did you do after you were demobbed? What did you do after you were demobbed Ron what did-
RD: I was unemployed for months and months, you see, once you went abroad this country had a year to get itself sorted and they made sure that those who had the good jobs were not going to let anyone in. Eventually, by this time my son had been born and we had a flat in Llangollen and the only job I could get was in Crewe. So, I bought a motorbike and I travelled from Llangollen to Crewe in the worst winter of the war, so I came back from one-hundred-and-twenty in the shade to minus-twenty day after day. In fact, I think, I read somewhere once, where it was forty days of snow, and I rode this stupid motorbike all that way and then eventually I managed to get into the textile industry and managed to keep my head above water, just about. But, during this time, I haven’t told you this but, whilst I was on the observers course my eyesight went and I couldn’t see [emphasis], and they took me off the course and it was only by sheer luck I managed to find a squadron leader who would pass me fit. I wasn’t really, but he did and then half way through my tour, my ears went, and I’ve suffered with both my eyes and my ears ever since. In fact, last month I had two visits in one day at the eye clinic and I had a cold so I had to cancel them both. I still suffer all these- Health problems if you like, maybe I would’ve suffered them anyway but-
SP: So obviously you worked in the textile industry after and did you do that until you finally retired, or?
RD: Yep.
SP: Yeah?
RD: I didn’t retire till seventy-nine. Well, I couldn’t, my first wife died in 1976, and I, I married again and the second wife had vascular dementia, and then my daughter came here- Oh I had a bad fall and I was in a wheelchair and my daughter came to live with me and she was diagnosed with cancer and then that went. So-
SP: How did it make you feel coming back from the war and being unemployed and having to fight for a job really after all you’d done?
RD: Well, it is so difficult to try and explain. One day, I had an interview in- On the East coast for a job and I left Llangollen at quarter-to-eight in the morning when the first bus, and I finally got to Leeds at four o’clock in the afternoon, too late for the interview and so I rang them up and I stayed the night on a station, the Salvation Army, you could stay there for about two shillings and I caught a bus the next morning, the conductor finally showed me where this place was, it was about a miles walk and I was walking along the road and a chap comes back in the opposite direction and we both said, ‘Good Morning’, ‘Morning’, and then about another ten yards and this voice said, ‘You’re not going for the jobbers oil executive are you?’, well, yes I was, he said, ‘Well, I wouldn’t bother if I were you’, he said, ‘I’ve just taken a car back and it’s got bullet holes in’, ‘Bullet holes?’, he said, ‘Well the job is, you go round farms and you sell oil to tractors and it’s rubbish’ he said, ‘And then not only that but you have to go back the following month to try and get the money’, and this farmer had fired his shot gun at him so I turned back. Well, I- Again, I had to stay the night in Manchester and I got back three days later and the first question ‘Did you get the job?’, and I can only tell you that’s how bad this country was, there was just no work, the employment was eleven-million, that’s all and we had thirty-million. So, it gives you some idea. There were at least three million people looking for jobs and you were just one of many. But worse than that of course, the air force had its name tarnished by the Dresden affair which had been bought up by all the political correct people, and that was another reason that- That’s why for fifty-two years I didn’t want to know about the air force or the war or anything else, and it took the whole of one's capabilities to try and keep your head above water, to try and move on. It was a job to stand still, and the first two or three years I bought a house in Crewe and we were so hard up, whilst I'd been in the Far East, we bought rugs and they all went to the auction room, everything we could sell, just to try and pay your bills, and then- It is not something you’re able to communicate to people today, and so, if I don’t talk very much about it, there wasn’t very much to talk about [emphasis].
SP: I think it’s interesting because I think people are- Would be surprised that with such high regard that you’re all held with now in Bomber Command that it was so different at the end of the war and you had to find so much to get jobs.
RD: [Chuckles] Well, Dresden, I make a big thin of Dresden in my book, and I show examples of just what the Americans did ten times worse than what we did, and never any castigation at all. But then, that’s my pet hobby.
SP: And again, you know, for people listening that book ‘From Landsmen to Lancaster’ is the one that explains it in detail isn’t it, by yourself on there.
RD: Yeah.
SP: Just going back to your time with 101 Squadron, tell me about your crew, who you had, I know we’ve talked about one of them but tell me a little bit about your pilot and your- The rest of your crew and your-
RD: Yeah.
SP: Ok, so do you want to talk me through your crew Ron? Yeah?
RD: That’s myself, that’s Paddy Ore[?] the engineer, that’s Titch Taylor the wireless operator, George Williams the rear gunner, Fred James the pilot, Jim Coleman the navigator, Ken Gibb the second mid-upper and that was Roy Hall the second wireless operator-
PD: Special, special.
RD: - and I have all their letters and how they-Oh, he, he also couldn’t get a job after the war and he went back in the air force and he flew five tours of operations on Hastings which was the future of the Halifax.
SP: Yeah, that’s right. And you say a few of them from Canada? You had quite a few Canadians in your crew?
RD: George, he had a tremendous- He never married, and he died in 2009 and he worked on the early warning system in Siberia [chuckles] so none of us really- Fred became a teacher, well that was just about as much as he could do because of his amnesia and-
SP: And how did you crew up? Where did you crew up and how did you crew up?
RD: We crewed up at Wymeswold and really that’s- It’s so involved that- There were four crews who were- We considered ourselves friendly because mostly were Canadians and Australians but in Castle Donnington within two months there the Australians in our crew were burnt to death, the Canadians in the next hut they were also burnt to death. We had two plane crashes in ten nights, and when we were at Blyton, we had another plane crash. So altogether before we ever got to Ludford Magna we’d lost about twenty odd people, and I was reading somewhere that eight-and-a-half-thousand people were killed in training alone. Well, tend not to think of these things, I don’t know- With all the other things going on whether they detract from it really.
SP: So, do you- You crewed up pretty quickly then as a team?
RD: Well, what would you like me to say? Just tell-
SP: Just tell how you crewed up, yeah? Can you remember who spoke to who and-
RD: Well, that was at 28 Wymeswold, 28 OTU Wymeswold, which is just outside Loughborough. There would be about a hundred people and for three or four days we just talked, and I mentioned Walt Reif[?] as the Canadian, he in fact was [chuckles]- The more I talked, the more I bring in complication. Walt Reif[?] was a German, he was born in Germany, emigrated to America, naturalised America, they wouldn’t take him into the air force and so he went over the border to Canada, joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and ended up the same way, and his bomb aimer was also born in Germany and he was naturalised Canadian and ended up, if you like, also- We had an Argentinian, as a pilot and his name was- What as it?
PD: [Unclear]
RD: Peter?
PD: Highland, Highland [emphasis]
RD: Peter Highland, Pancho, and Chris Cockshott who was a trainee pilot with me and he was the co- He and I were flying the Cessna when we crashed and we were both kicked out and we stayed together for a long time and we met up again in Ludford Magna and he was killed on his third op, on the- In a F-Fox which we should’ve been flying. So, the more I talk about these things the more involved it gets and then I told you that on the last night of our flying we had- Flying Officer Edwards crew, well the navigator there, he came from Mauritius and his name was Tedier[?] and he was the one and only person from Mauritius who joined Bomber Command and was killed in action. So, I'd forgotten all these things. Going back to crewing up, well I crewed up with Fred first and then Fred found George Williams and Jim Coleman and a man called Eric Smith, that started our crew and Titch Taylor of course also. But Eric Smith didn’t like Fred, he found he was too authoritative (being Canadian) and so as we finished our term at Castle Donnington, Eric broke his wrist and he was given the option of having a rest and then joining us later or joining another crew, and he said, ‘Don’t take offence Ron, but I can’t stand Fred so I'm going to join a Canadian crew’, and he did, and he was killed on his first op. But- So if you go back then that was actually three crew members who didn’t make it but to try to avoid too much confusion, I haven’t mentioned too much of it, in fact I don’t think I've mentioned that in the book at all. Oh yes, I did, yes, yes.
SP: So obviously you did the crewing up, but you were also involved with D-Day?
RD: Sorry?
SP: You were involved with D-Day, were you? Around D-Day, do you want to talk a little bit about your role within D-Day operations.
RD: Well we didn’t know it was D-Day, we just were sent on a trip and we flew for seven-and-a-half hours and when we were coming back, we could see the English Channel was black with ships and we reported all this at the briefing and it was two hours later when we were in the mess when we finally found out that there had been the invasion, and from then on, we were- All leave was cancelled and for three weeks we weren’t allowed off the station. We were just standing by and it was during that time we went to Reims, and when we crash landed at Thorney Island normally a plane would come and take you back, but because all the planes were on stand-by we had to come back by train, and that was another story. We were in London as the V-1 bombs were dropping because we- It took us two hours to get from Havant to Waterloo, and then- I can’t remember the reason, but we couldn’t get a direct trip to Kings Cross so we went part on the underground and watched all the people getting their beds out and then we got the last train from Kings Cross and that was with difficulty, the whole of London was trying to get out. We got into, where was it? We got into Lincoln, we finally got transport back to Ludford, got back into Ludford at half-past-ten, which is exactly forty-eight hours after we’d taken off, and by lunch time next day, we found our names on the board for an op that night, but then it was cancelled and I went over- I used to keep my pilot training up by going on the link trainer, and I went over to the squadron where the flight were to do this and I was suddenly told I was to fly with an air test, with a pilot and so we flew over Liverpool, checked all the Gee equipment and whatever, and we got back to Ludford at seventeen-fifty, I checked my watch, seventeen-fifty and because it was a scratch crew I was flying as the joint navigator and engineer, and I said to the pilot when we got back, ‘If you fly over the control tower I'll fire off a [unclear] cartridge and they’ll change the runway because it’s a short runway’, ‘Nonsense, nonsense’ he said, ‘We’ll go in’. So, he landed, and he hit the runway bounced thirty feet, shot across the perimeter track in between- Across the main road and we ended up in a haystack, and all the equipment we’d been testing was scanners underneath the aircraft, they were all smashed. He still didn’t speak and we were walking back and this boy came up and said, he was about eighteen I suppose, pimply faced youth and he said, ‘My bicycle was in that hut that you’ve crashed’, and the pilot looked, ‘Go and thank Christ you weren’t on it’, and that was all he said, and for that we were both ordered to write an essay and appear before a court as to our actions on why this accident had happened, and after three days it was all cancelled. I was sent on leave and when I got back this pilot had gone so [chuckles] it’s only when you sit down and work it all out and you realise why I didn’t want to think about it for fifty-two years.
SP: Yeah, and just going back to D-Day, you said you flew, what was your role on D-Day? What was 101 Squadron doing? What was the role?
RD: We weren’t bombing, we were flying with- The special operator was jamming the equipment over the fighter stations so that they couldn’t get the information to- Of what was happening.
SP: That’s great, and then you talked about Reims and you said you had to land- You had to crash land on the way back, do you want to tell me a little bit about the trip to Reims?
RD: Well, we had two engines shot out so we landed with- We landed with just two engines and we did a ground loop because all the port undercarriage was ripped away and, and in my book, I mention that the pilot in his résumé of what happened that night, and he said that we were attacked by three different fighters and we ended up at zero feet flying over the tree tops and that’s how we were saved really, and he heard all the canon fire crashing into the front of the plane and thought I would be a bloody pulp, that was his expression. Fortunately that wasn’t the case. But the whole of the front of the plane where I was, it was almost unrecognisable, and the plane never flew again, it was written off. That was just one, we had about four similar episodes, but that was the first one and the first one is always the worst one, after that you become a bit blasé about it all. But the other thing about many of it was really the weather, we were sent in weather that was really never fit to fly, but needs must. They had to keep the pressure up. It’s easy to understand now, it wasn’t quite so easy then
SP: And then on your crash landing, you had a problem with where you wanted to land wasn’t it? Was there some other planes?
RD: Well, it saved our lives, had we landed on the runway and done that we would probably of done the- Thorney Island has a sea wall and that was where Tony Benn made his mistake, he said his brother crashed into a sea wall, so when I told him Thorney Island, he said, ‘No, you’re wrong’, and I said, ‘Well, you can’t be right on both. If he crashed on Tangmere, Tangmere doesn’t have a sea wall, so he couldn’t of crashed into it, it had to be there’, and he also said that his brother was taken to Chichester hospital, well Chichester’s right next to Thorney Island, so that stood me in good stead.
SP: So you were coming in- You were wanting to land at Thorney Island but two Mosquitos were in front-
RD: They said, ‘You can’t land here’.
SP: Right.
RD: And then the pilot, well, he had no option. We didn’t- We had a fuel leak, we couldn't climb any further and, in any case, there was the- These V-1’s were taking off, they started on the 16th of June and the incident I'm telling you about was the 22nd, so I think I mention in the book, at seven-thirty in the morning when we were starting for breakfast and it was the first of seven raids of the day. So not only did we crash land at Thorney Island but we found ourselves in the centre of the first attacks of these things which was a-
SP: So, from what you were saying to me earlier, the- They’d said you couldn’t land on the runway because the Mosquito was in problem so you landed on the grass but the Mosquito actually crashed.
RD: We landed on the grass, which is level. Thorney Island was a coastal command station and it was quite vast, it was pre-war when space was- Cost nothing. So, it- That helped to save- The fact that we were landing on grass instead of concrete made a big difference.
SP: And the Mosquito that crashed was Tony Benn’s brother?
RD: Yes
SP: Right, so yeah, so that’s the link into the Tony Benn story, it was his brother.
RD: Did Tony Benn have a, a navigator with him?
PD: Yes.
RD: Yeah so-
PD: I think all the Aussies had navigators.
SP: Yeah so they crashed on-
RD: Tony Benn and his navigator were killed.
SP: Tony Benn’s brother, yeah and his navigator.
RD: What they had-
PD: Michael Ben [unclear]
RD: -was a malfunctioning altimeter.
SP: Right.
RD: And he didn’t know his height and so they sent another Mosquito up to bring him in and we listened to all that, that was the part which perhaps I didn’t emphasise. We listened to the whole caboodle and after they crashed, we still had to get down if you like, it doesn’t help.
SP: No, so that was Michael Benn who crashed with his navigator and then you listened to that ok, yeah. Is there anything else, Ron, that stands out that you want to make sure you cover?
RD: Have I missed anything Pete?
SP: Ok Ron, well thank you very much for sharing all of those storis with us today, it’s been a privilege-
RD: Well, thank you for coming.
SP: - to meet you, so thank you on behalf of International Bomber Command.
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 Ronald Davies
Creator
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Susanne Pescott
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-02-01
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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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ADaviesRS180201, PDaviesRS1801
Conforms To
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Pending review
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Format
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00:57:47 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Great Britain
Singapore
United States
England--Cumbria
England--Lincolnshire
England--Leicestershire
England--Warwickshire
Description
An account of the resource
In spring 1940, Ronald Davies joined the RAF to train as a pilot. Following initial training, he was posted to America but was dismissed after crashing a Cessna. Following Pearl Harbour, he trained as a navigator in Port Albert, Canada, but upon returning to England he completed a bomb aimer course at RAF Millom. Davies formed a crew at RAF Wymeswold and trained on Wellingtons and Hallifaxes, before converting to Lancasters at RAF Hemswell. He joined 101 Squadron and completed thirty-one operations between May and November 1944. He describes completing operations during D-Day, and crash-landing at RAF Thorney Island when returning from an operation over Reims, then travelling back to RAF Ludford Magna by train as V-1 bombs dropped over London. In May 1945, he was posted to Singapore where he remained until he was demobilised in June 1946.
Contributor
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Tilly Foster
Temporal Coverage
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1940
1944
10 OTU
101 Squadron
28 OTU
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing
crash
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Ansty
RAF Blyton
RAF Castle Donington
RAF Hemswell
RAF Ludford Magna
RAF Thorney Island
RAF Wymeswold
Stearman
training
V-1
V-weapon
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/878/11118/AHolmesEA160129.2.mp3
6370a9b710f91955ac01de568b0cbea5
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Holmes, Ernest
Ernest A Holmes
E A Holmes
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Ernest Holmes (1921 - 2021, 1058581, 157389 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 35 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-01-29
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Holmes, EA
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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BB: Testing one two three. I’m here in Perth to interview Ernest Holmes, ex Pathfinder pilot, what we’ll do Ernest is just, I’ll get you just to tell me your name, what you did in the RAF in your own words, just try and tell your story as best you can
EH: What story is it you want?
BB: When did you join the RAF and just not in great detail but just talk it through.
EH: I am Ernest Holmes and at the age of nineteen I volunteered for service in the RAF to train as a pilot and on the 10th of June 1940 I then left home which was on my mother’s birthday to go down to Padgate. From there I eventually did training in Blackpool, the square bashing, then I was posted to Hooten Park where I was working in operations room. Then I eventually got interviewed and accepted for training as a pilot. I went to Desford where I did the, sorry, I went
BB: That’s ok.
EH: Squire’s gate I think it was to ITW, from there I went to Desford to do the initial training on Tiger Moths after thirty hours accomplishing, then went to Canada for further advanced flying on twin engine aircraft, I went there on a [unclear] factory that was called Swen Fine and that was torpedoed in 1943
BB: God!
EH: But I went there on a I think there is a photograph
BB: We will have a look at those later. Thank you.
EH: I don’t know where I then
US: Can I just interrupt, do you take sugar?
BB: I take sweeteners.
US: Perfect. Right.
BB: Thank you very much. So, you went to Canada.
EH: Went to Canada. And then returned to the UK after six months in Canada
BB: You got your wings in Canada.
EH: Got my wings in Canada [unclear] sergeant. Then I went to Abindgon on Whitleys
BB: That was number 10 OTU.
EH: Yes. There I was assessed as exceptional and proof is in my logbook [laughs] and from there I went to train on the Halifaxes and from there I went to 76 Squadron
BB: So, that was the Halifax XCU.
EH: Yes.
BB: Where was that? Somewhere in Yorkshire?
EH: Outside Oxford.
BB: Outside Oxford, ok. Remember that. And then from there you went onto the squadron which was 76.
EH: 76 Squadron.
BB: So you crewed up at the OTU.
EH: We crewed up there and from 76 Squadron I had asked to go onto the Pathfinders so we eventually moved, I can’t recall the actual dates but the logbook [unclear]
BB: Right. Was that the whole crew or just you? Sometimes the whole crew would [unclear]
EH: The whole crew, the whole crew went.
BB: Ok. Now was that a end of tour discussion well chaps what we do [unclear] or do we go onto Pathfinders?
EH: No, it was just a posting.
BB: Oh, you’re posted?
EH: But I had already asked.
BB: [unclear] Oh, you requested it. Ok. That’s good.
EH: And we went.
BB: [unclear]
EH: And then we had to do the training on the Pathfinders and then from there I was moved to 35 Squadron. [unclear]
BB: [unclear]
EH: So we’d already completed about twelve operations or so on 76 Squadron, then we started the training with
BB: Pathfinders.
EH: Yes, the operations with 35 Squadron.
BB: And I suppose that was pretty intensive, all the instructing the markers and sky marking and ground marking and all that.
EH: Yes, it was just a job for us.
BB: Yes.
EH: But I still recall quite clearly the change of attitude of each person, we were all friends, we referred to each other by name, nick names, I was known as Shirley, short for Sherlock, for a long time I was Sherlock, and there was no Holmes came along, so differentiate I am Sher-ee.
BB: Ok, I got you, yes. Ah, ok.
EH: No. And times operations you had on the crews and on my last operation when I was shot down we had a mixed crew. I had two Canadian gunners, my navigator became station officer now deceased and he had DFC DFM and the engineer DFC DFM also deceased., they became chief engineer and also chief navigation instructor, so they came off my crew and I got Johnny Stewart, Derrick came with me but that night I had eight of a crew, not seven.
BB: yes, I counted that up on the [unclear].
EH: Pardon?
BB: Were you carrying an extra wireless op?
EH: The wireless operator wanted to learn how to use the radar
BB: Right.
EH: There was no special training so he came along. Training, been trained on operations and I had a second wireless operator
Bb:
EH: But I also had two gunners. The two Canadian gunners had previously had asked for me to finished their tours with me, they finished, the Canadian scheme was after thirty ops they went back home, they were no longer required to do anything or get involved in any activities in the war unless they chose so but they too wanted to go back home [unclear]
BB: So they did.
EH: They went back home. So I had two new gunners and also a new engineer, the engineer was on his first operation
BB: God!
EH: And I’m not quite certain if the gunner was. David has my logbook.
US: Yes, I got wartime and I’ve also got the flight plans.
EH: You have.
BB: That’s
EH: No. You’ll have to know. Ask the questions and I’ll give you a brief [unclear].
BB: Ok. From the information that I had already, from David, plus my own research material, I’ve sketched out here a tabular form, your career is by unwonded from the information I had.
EH: Yeah.
BB: You enlisted on the tenth of June 1940 as an AC2.
EH: That’s right.
BB: Service number 105851.
EH: Yes, 105851.
BB: And you were a UT pilot basically at that time.
EH: Yes.
BB: And then you went to ITW and then on to number 7 EFTS at Desford.
EH: That’s right.
BB: Where you learned to fly Tiger Moths and they had some Miles Magisters there as well.
EH: That’s right.
BB: And then you went to number 35 AFU North Battleford, Saskatchewan
EH: That’s right.
BB: Where you learned twin engine aircraft on the Airspeed Oxford.
EH: In the Oxford.
BB: In the Oxford. And you were made a sergeant at that stage.
EH: Yes, when you got your wings.
BB: Yes, that’s right. And then you went, came back to the UK, you went to number 10 OTU at Abington Whitley
EH: That’s right.
BB: And your station commander was group captain H M Massey, who happened to be later on in the same prison of war camp as you, as the senior RAF officer in Stalag Luft III.
EH: North compound, yes.
BB: Yes.
US: Did you know that, Dad?
EH: I did, no, I didn’t know it.
BB: He was senior British RAF officer, he was shot down and taken prisoner, I got it here, I can let you have all of this and then you went to HCU on Halifaxes and was promoted flight sergeant.
EH: I was a flight sergeant at Abingdon.
BB: At Abingdon, ok, so, ok, [unclear] and then you went on to the squadron and were commissioned pilot officer on the squadron shortly after you arrived, I think.
EH: it’s on 35 Squadron.
BB: Yes.
EH: Yes.
BB: Yes. And by the time you got to 76 you were already commissioned, you were promoted to pilot officer with the new service number 157389. And then you did your Pathfinders, you went missing on the 22nd of May in Holland on a raid to Dortmund
EH: That’s right.
BB: Shot down and evaded capture, fought with the French resistance for a while but you were betrayed by the Gestapo and taken to Stalag Luft III.
EH: Yes.
BB: Prisoner of war number 0288.
EH: I don’t know the number of prisoner of war.
BB: Here we are. And you were involved in the long march.
EH: Both two marches.
BB: Two marches. Ok. Your aircraft was MD762 code E for Edward.
EH: Can’t recall
BB: Yeah. And it crashed, obviously a night fighter got you and you had to get out of the aircraft and landed in a place near Middlebeers in North Bravent.
EH: Yes.
BB: At 0522 in the morning.
EH: Yep.
BB: And then obviously you made it on the 21st of May ’44 you became an acting flight lieutenant [unclear] gazette illustrated on the 10th of October 1945.
EH: I knew nothing about that till a year later.
BB: I got all this stuff for you. And then you were liberated at Lubeck and then you opted for a permanent commission and went on to do lots of other things, flying on Yorks and
EH: yes.
BB: All sorts of nice things and then you were at [unclear] in Kinloss for a while. I was a member of the RAF reserve for thirty three years, in the maritime world and spent a lot of time at Kinloss briefing and debriefing crews as an intelligence officer and then I went on to, after maritime I went on to fast jets, doing the same with fighter [unclear], I did that in both Gulf Wars and it is very interesting and If I hadn’t actually researching the RAF for years and years and years, I knew about the intelligence cycle and debriefing crews and that interest stood me in really good sted when I had stop the aircrew to deal with in their flying suits, and they just wanted to get to the bar and I wouldn’t le them go to the bar [unclear] they had been debriefed so it’s funny how life but that’s a fascinating story.
EH: That I was [unclear] again.
BB: So.
EH: Can I speak about?
BB: Of course you can. Yes.
EH: When we were shot down, there was no warning, no indication, there was no warning, interception, [unclear] just [mimics a noise] and I lost control of the aircraft, went into a dive, I had my feet on, trying to pull it back but one thing fortunately, I had the loose fissing harness, eventually I was on the [unclear] panel trying to pull the aircraft up, what I was doing of course pulling myself out of the seat, now I had already abandoned the walk southwest, I was somewhere getting near the coast and I choose south west but if I was near the coast walk around the German defences and I also broadcast on my radio so that crews would recognise my voice and this was so, whilst I was on the underground, now is this the part that you are interested in?
BB: yes, yes please, yes.
EH: They started and I landed and I started walking but there was a lot of cloud around, I had to stand and wait to wait till I could see the North Star decide which was North South East and West and I walking South West and I saw someone, this is out in the countryside, light a cigarette and I heard dogs barking so I walked away from that, the person lighting a cigarette a later found out was Derrick, we went away [unclear] because at the time that the second explosion took place where the engineer was in the hatch [unclear] under the escape hatch, Derrick was there, standing with his parachute clipped on, Donnie Stewart the navigator pulled the curtain back, touched me on the shoulder, which was the sign and I am still trying to point [unclear] and then there was a third bang, big explosion, I lost unconscious and I woke up hanging over the nose of the aircraft still strapped to my side with the loose harness fitting your arm and your arm [unclear] I pulled myself back and found my legs were trapped with the control column so I kicked them free, released my harness from the seat and then eventually released my leg and pushed myself off and then pulled my parachute and I just waited, I didn’t know where it was going to land and lot of mud, I don’t know if you [unclear] at that time, we could wear what we liked on our operations, I had an old style army trench coat but I used to use it as cover, the Canadians had leather jackets, leather coats, so some of us did dress up in the hopes that if you were shot down some camouflage, now whence I came across this farm and I knocked on the door, didn’t get an answer but there was a well, water well, I didn’t get an answer so so I opened this gate and the thing about the gate that struck me was a concrete bomb had been used as a pillar to the gate unknown to me the Germans had been using that farm area as a precious bombing range [laughs]
BB: Gosh! [unclear]
EH: So I continue walking and I hear dogs barking and I start walking through water think if there were dogs they would get my scent water would help, remember I am still I once shock I was fighting
BB: Sure but you, you know, it’s a big experience that kind
EH: And then I came to a wood and I started going through the wood, it’s amazing the noise you make at night time when you walk through and I heard dog was barking again, so I came out of the wood and I continued walking
BB: You still have your flying boots at this stage
EH: No, I never used my flying boots
BB: [unclear]
EH: Normal shoes.
BB: Ok, right.
EH: In fact the only gear I had was the roll neck clover on my blazer and my roll neck clover on my jacket and underwear I had my pyjama trousers on, that was all. And my shoes but in my socks I had a Bowie knife, I lost that and I know when I landed and [unclear] I was [unclear]
BB: You couldn’t find it
EH: And then I came to this [unclear] and was the only [unclear], I could hear noises and I thought it was a blacksmith that must have been, I heard this and I thought that’s a blacksmith I think I was thinking that’s the blacksmith and he will have a big handkerchief with a sandwich and I think I was going to steal that, however I came to this [unclear ] and I could see this church steeple and I thought I gotta find a place to hide, twelve hours earlier I could have just jumped across I couldn’t I was so worn out, so I waded across up the ankle deep, knee deep [unclear] to the other side to get rid of any dog scent now I saw walking up to this park, the corn was growing high now and then oh I hate this bank noise I heard and there came a girl, she must be seventeen, eighteen cycling, she was going to and she had a runny bicycle which had small wheels in the front with a flat tray and she had a milk and she was the one that was and when she passed she said, Guten Morgen, and I thought she spoke to me in English, and I said, you speak English? nein, so I said, RAF, Flieger, and she pointed for me to hide in the corn and she went off back to the farm and I’m hiding in the corn as she was quite high at the time and I heard all the voices come by and eventually I stood up and there was [unclear] the father, he was a little man and along with him was [unclear] and was Jan, the elder son, well, the elder son was probably be about thirteen, fourteen, that was Jan, and then there were three others with him, they were all students, one was Willy [unclear], he was hiding form the Germans because the students were over the age of sixteen were to go to work in the defences so all the students went into hiding and [unclear], he was actually studying medicine at the time and he was in hiding and then there was another [unclear], we called him the painter, he was an artist, we could pick him out in a million, he wore a [unclear] type hat, it was a huge hat and a cloak, he didn’t speak English and I took an dislike him because he spoke to the others who spoke English [unclear] and [unclear] and
BB: Willy
EH: Willy and they laughed and then they asked me, I said, what did he say? He said, he wants to know if you have a gun, no, have you got any cigarettes, don’t smoke. And then it was laughter when this related to the artist or painter, I took an dislike to that chappie because he had said, he hasn’t got a gun, he hasn’t got any cigarettes, he is no bloody good to us, let’s kill him.
BB: I could see you take to dislike him, yeah.
EH: I took an instant dislike to that chappie, I met him once or twice after that, but then he said that they were going to help me so they took me to the farm and there they had the old tin bath hanging on the wall, they had to untie my shoelaces and help me take my clothes off and when my clothes were off of course I’d been circumcised, no reference me to that, far my concern, from the RAF and they were trying to help, well, a few things happened, I would say, I mean, I would say they had a fireplace, a brick thing found underneath water in this and on the top of that was a lid and that’s where they used to put the milk [unclear] once it had been because it had been and taken away but they held in that for a couple of days and then I went in the pigsty and that and then he came up to me one day and this is up to six days that’s the farmer, he came up to me with a bottle, a small bottle of whiskey and sixty gold flake cigarettes 1944 didn’t have the money to buy it, any ideas?
BB: Black market.
EH: SOE.
BB: SOE, oh yes, of course. The escape alliance.
EH: And he was tied to the SOE and was the only way he could have got it but anyway I didn’t drink and I didn’t smoke so I told him he could have them. And then they walked me into they called it the orchard, there was and there were about six beds there, this is where the students [unclear]
BB: Right.
EH: They were hiding, came to sleep and during the daytime they disappeared, look the headmaster of the village school had a spare room and the headmaster go to the library to get the medical books for Luke that continued his study and but I only saw him at night time and at meal times so I’m on my own most of the time but then Naty I come across at one time used to buy the biscuits came in a big tin box, in packets inside that box, and she used to bring one of these different types of grain and my task was to sort out those that were edible for humans and the rest for the animals so I used to sort these out, this she would have to do it cause she, she run that farm, she milked the cow, she did the shopping, and she was the one that had to go to the to get the licences to get the nes free papers for the family because the sons couldn’t go otherwise they were under and [unclear] himself couldn’t go so that, you know, she was the real workhouse I can write a book about her but I can tell you what happened I was there and eventually became when I was to get go to the next place, no whilst I was there I had a haemorrhoids and the doctor to come and he prescribed just a little tablet to insert
BB: Yes
EH: And he wanted something to remember me the only thing I had was a small protector [unclear] to give to him and then on the sixth of June which by chance was to be the date I was to be best man at my wife’s, at that time my girlfriend’s brother who was in the RAF, he was getting married and I was to be best man but [unclear] thought it was my marriage
BB: Right.
EH: But he came up to me and envasi, envasi, I knew the invasion had started
BB: 6th of June, D-Day.
EH: On the 6th of June, yes, so I said to him, whiskey so he went back and we had a little drink, just he and I, had a little drink and then, when I had to leave the farm, decided to take me a photograph, now a business man provided Frans with a suit, is that the photograph?
BB: That’s the photograph of Frans.
EH: Of Frans?
BB: Yeah, yeah.
EH: Yeah, well, the photograph of the dog,
US: [unclear]
EH: So this business man provided me with a suit but said to me, leave here, leave, get away from here or all be killed, they’ll all be killed, they and he give me ten guilders which was no use to me, I couldn’t use anyway but then my conscience risking their lives but they had to make the arrangements or point me in the right direction, true enough they made arrangements and the next place I went to was [unclear] the family Faro, the family Faro, they are all deceased, a woman, she had a son, she ran at a village a shop and to a different people coming in that’s people hiding and moving to the next place, I was then moved from there to, it was a big house and a little Dutchman but he had an American wife she was very tall and I don’t think they were happy to have me hiding in their house I was only there I don’t think forty-eight hours and I don’t think they were happy but he himself said that he flew aircraft in the First World War
BB: Alright.
EH: But then I got the impression this American lady, she was a bit concerned about me staying there, then I moved from there to a farm, it was just a single wooden building and there was an old man wearing clogs he didn’t speak English but his son I did discover was in the Dutch navy and this chappie asked me, you know, could I get him shoes, of course ration back here and he also on the tie of that suit I was wearing, he wrote his son’s name and address, service number so that if I got back to UK we could contact them through the embassy. Unfortunately I must continue now and then from there I was moved again, I lived in Holmegrun, you see, that’s a drawing, it’s a forst, and there was a hole on the ground and they actually made it into a, lined it with straw and then so that the wooden perch with and we were locked in there and at night time they would come give us something to eat and drink and then we would wonder round the woods to attend to mother nature and then come back and were locked and meantime I knew from the underground, four members of my crew had been killed, one had been captured, that was five of us, myself was six, then I was introduce to Derrick, is tappest, tappace place, Moregas I think was the name that, we later went back, Derrick had been hidden inside in this monastery and we were brought together with the underground to see if we were the persons we claimed, he recognised me, I with him, so from then on that accounted for my crew, there were seven now, the sixth man, the eighth man must still be evading capture, that was my hope. And the only man I wanted to hope was the original, Mack was the original wireless operator but he wanted to learn how to operate the H2S so that’s why unfortunately didn’t find discovered after the war was also dead. But then to this the last place in Holland I’ve forgotten the name now but somewhere in the records of my and there I gived them ten guilders that I had, that I couldn’t use into Belgium eventually came along and was a female and came half way and we were told she doesn’t speak English, she doesn’t speak French, for a person living in Belgium, however we were not to try to speak to her but just follow her so I was unhappy because this wasn’t the sort of reception that I had when I was moved to another place I was introduced, I wasn’t even introduced to this person, eventually we, to the bus and sitting on the back of the bus were youngsters, seventeen, eighteen years of age, all dressed the same, I think that they were Hitler Youth movements and they were all sitting at the back of the bus, we the only ones, I think that they were part of the ploy, that we were being betrayed, and they were there to ensure that tried anything funny they would have shot us, I’ve no proof of that, just a feeling, hunch I had, thinks are not going the way they should and I said to the French Canadian, he’s the navigator, he came from Montreal, I asked to speak to her in French but she declined, she didn’t understand, she didn’t understand English, she knew fine well what was happening, I didn’t but Derrick and I were a bit suspicious so we eventually were driven into Antwerp and she got off the bus and we followed but we went together, we just followed so he followed, I think the French Canadian first, then Derrick and then I behind, eventually we take into this large shop, it msut have been a big shop like McEwans, shop or something, but it was a coffeshop high ceilings and everything, lots of people in uniform and three people in civil clothes and there was an empty table with four chairs or fice chairs and we were told to sit down, then a chappie came and sat beside us, the girl we had followed, she produced a piece of paper and he produced a piece of paper, put them together and I knew straight away this is not, this is not right, Derrick knew, he wasn’t happy and the French Canadian, he didn’t pass a word about it, but I felt that there’s something not right, al these people around me, there was a slight hope cause I had been told underground possible at some stage in German uniform and take me down to Switzerland I was hoping that was it.
BB: But it wasn’t.
EH: But eventually this girl got up, they put the two pieces of paper together word or something it was a poor imitation of the real thing however the chap she went off and we were told to follow this chap and we went through a back entrance so this, just let me borrow something
US: There’s a photograph. You’re ok?
EH: This was the shop, you see, the woman here and we were taken through the back road down here and directly opposite was a church and the church was not on level ground, was raised, visible wall around it but raised.
BB: yes.
EH: I didn’t get the name and they went three people standing there and we were introduced to him, this chap that had met us inside and then we were told to get in the car so the three of us got in the back of this car and some girls went by in uniform, I hadn’t seen a female in uniform and I asked that young girl, oh, are those young ladies Germans? No, they were girls that work on the telephone section, they had their own dress.
BB: Uniform.
EH: So we start the car and we start driving on oh I would say about four, five hundred yards and they just pulled into an archway and they are standing outside with two [unclear] and this chap gets out of the car, follow me, we follow, I’m still thinking, oh, they gonna put me in a German uniform and take me into, when he got us inside he turned around, right gentlemen military police.
BB: Luftwaffe police?
EH: That was it. And they separated us and they put me in a room upstairs, I would say, it reminded me of my old school, a big room, high ceiling
BB: Master study.
EH: But aside of that, triple bunk beds and I was posted into a single room, there was one window, I tried to open the window which had been screwed tight, oh, I couldn’t open it, but in any case there was only, there was [unclear] downstairs, a space between the buildings and I could see a drain of pipe running from upstairs on that wall but I couldn’t open the window even trying and I wanted to try and go down but I was so exhausted by this time, I just [unclear] and fell asleep. And I was woken by kicked, of course I jumped up then lying dreaming rifle pushing my teeth.
BB: Were you still in your
EH: Civvy clothes?
BB: Yeah, but did you have your uniform underneath your civvy clothes?
EH: No, just civvy clothes.
US: That’s the suit, my dad was wearing, you can see the double two tails
EH: That dog belonged to the business gentlemen’s
BB: The one you didn’t like.
US: The one who, the business man who gave him the suit
BB: Who gave him the suit, sorry, [unclear]
EH: So, he then took me, stripped me and he took me I was both individually to this and then he turned round, he says, right, who are you, you are a spy. I got my dog tags, he took the dog tags off, he just threw them across the room, and he said, [unclear] my grandmother, I will see with lots of and two dog tags oh I am so and so this, I’m meaningless, said he. So I am now without my dog tags.
BB: Was he Gestapo or Luftwaffe please?
EH: Just something, the German military police, I think he was trying to
BB: Provoke you into something
EH: Well, it wasn’t physical but then he said, you’re a spy, we shoot spies, and then he stripped so I was stripped naked, he saw I was circumcised, he said, ah, you’re a Jew! Oh, we have special treatments for Jews. Note, at that time we didn’t know what was happening in the concentration camps, so we had thought so I could either be shot or there is a special treatment for Jews. And there was a little pressure put on me, asking questions but they are trying to scare you, frighten you and then they pushed me into a separate room, this big room with lots of bunk beds, obviously they were using it as a sort of barracks but there was no, I think it must have been a school or something at one time, but they put me in this room and I put my head out the door, everything was quite at the end of the corridor was a guard, German guard and he had a rifle and he start pushing the [unclear] up and down, Jew, Jew, [mimics a noise] obviously [unclear] from Berlin, we were in a terrible mess and I went back to the window was a chappie, I think he was a blacksmith cause he had a little fire there and I sang, my name is Ernest Holmes, I am RAF, just singing, [unclear] and there was only one occasion when he turned round, he was nodding but I hoped that would be the a blacksmith not a German but I think I got the message through to him that I was there but I didn’t want to be there and then, eventually from there they put us in a truck, it’s a fifteen hundred trucker [unclear] and there’s a gate and we had to go, they closed the wired type of gate so that we were trapped and then sitting outside there was a German with a machine gun and from there they took us into from Antwerp they took us to Brussels and they took us to a place called the castle, that used to be prisoner of war camp, no, used to be a prison, but then the Germans had taken and the three of us were then locked in a room and then you could see quite clearly a microphone and the window like a prison was high and we were given little food, little liquid, and we had biscuits, we can buy them over here, they’re nachabrot, it’s just, that was it, no food, no meat.
BB: How many of you were there at this point? How many people were you at this point?
EH: Three of us in this room. And then we were taken out, I can only speak for myself, I can tell you what happened to Derrick cause we were separated and then I was taken downstairs naked, no, before that the intelligence officer was there and he was dressed in an RAF type uniform but he had buttons with a red, white buttons with a red cross on,
BB: Oh, ok.
EH: He spoke very good English but he was huge. I think I described him as a fat however he [unclear] you know, oh they want to know who you are and I said, I clear my protection to the Geneva Convention, prisoner of war
BB: [unclear]
EH: No, he was quite content to sit and just wanted me to sit and speak, you know, and get frightened cause you know, then he started putting [unclear] oh, you’re a spy, we’ll kill you, Jew special treatment we are building up and when he stripped me and I was taken into the dungeon, when I got into the dungeon there was a German with a machine gun standing and he [unclear] on, what’s the name of the thing that you are standing on? You give, someone is giving a talk,
BB: A [unclear].
US: [unclear]
EH: There, against the wall, was a was this person but dressed as a [unclear], you could smell the newness of the suit, and I thought, no, I’ve seen that shape before but I didn’t want to admit he was the chappie the first as a red cross man you see but this chappie, Jude, Jude, Jude, Jude, and then I was there for some time, five, six minutes, with this harassment coming from this coming and there was this person and I think this is part of the ploy to actually test me to see if I was a Jew, cause he had been dressed in this suit there is no other a Jew in Brussels in 1945
BB: Very rare.
EH: So, I just as I went by, I said, don’t lose faith, don’t lose faith but in such a loud voice, eventually I was taken back and then I was asked to sign a form and this was to be a form that was printed from the red cross, but printed on the top of that form was printed in Berlin, so I knew straight away this is a show trying to get information so eventually we were, Derrick went through the same process, Derrick also had bene circumcised, now I don’t know about the Canadian cause from then on we were separated but eventually he decided that we were prisoners of war and this was after about seven, eight weeks, we were then, we were going to prison of war camp and it was whilst we got in the prison of war camp the escape had taken place on the 23rd of March,
BB: Great escape.
EH: I wasn’t shot down until the 22nd of May. And the prisoners were wearing black armbands they told me the story of what had happened but I was in the same hut, have we got the book?
US: I’ve got it, yes.
EH: There is a little logbook I was given.
BB: Yes, I [unclear]
EH: Now, I had been was given a logbook and the first thing that was in my mind was my crew, there’s lots of just the people
BB: Gosh, yes, go on. [unclear] the shower.
EH: The first thing I did was thinking of my crew, I tried, I was mainly concerned about this eighth men member and I hope that it was Mike, can you find the page David?
US: [unclear] which is the poem?
EH: Yes. One left.
US: Carl wrote a poem expressing his feelings about what had happened
EH: The drawing was on that side, the poem’s on the right.
US: Do you want me to read it out, Dad?
EH: Yes. It was [unclear]
US: [unclear] to sent a photograph of the crucifix
EH: Oh.
US: So, it is in memory of those members of the crew flying Lancaster E for Edward who sacrificed their lives for their country on the 22nd of May 1944, so I will remember, when the sun sets and darkness falls, I will remember, when the sun rises and another day is born I will remember, for remembrance is all that I possess of those I knew so well, those who flew with me into the silent night to fight the foe, they asked not for bloodshed nor did they start the fight, but when they heard the bugle call they jumped to fight for right, after they prepared for missions flying into the sleeping night to bring death and destruction to those who called right might, they did their job right, they did it well but this couldn’t last for on the 23rd of May we fell and became as the past, four aviator missing, these we know are dead, three more accounted for, the eighth man is still ahead, making his way for his own homeland, keep going, my friend, Tommy, Johnny, Mac and Jock have left this earth but we who live will remember, I with Derrick and Ron, from the setting of the sun to the rising of the [unclear] we will think of those who kept up England’s fame, will you and England remember.
BB: Moving. And we do remember and Bomber Command [unclear] a very bad deal at the end of the war
EH: Yeah.
BB: And I blame Churchill for that. Cause Harris, Harris had defied Churchill on a couple of occasions and Mr Dowding had done as well sending more Hurricanes to France and I think he was quite vindictive in that respect occasionally, great man but I think you know he’s human when he’s doing things but I think that Harris and Dowding got a raw deal.
EH: The whole of the RAF got a bad reputation but for what has taken place but if it hadn’t taken place, we would all be speaking German.
BB: exactly.
EH: Ah
BB: I mean, when you listen to contemporary newsreels of that time, particularly after the Blitz, the Blitz on other cities, the populations of those saying, go and give it back to them! Go and give it! And so Harris did exactly that, he was doing what he was bed by the war cabinet and by Churchill and he went and he fulfilled that as best as he could and then it all got [unclear] after the war cause [unclear] so well. But that’s all been, I think, Bomber Command went through that darkness
EH: Yes
BB: And then it came out at the other end and here we are
EH: There is a little gap
BB: That’s what these guys at Lincoln are trying to do
EH: Yes, but there was a little gap, someone [unclear] resentment as I did because a medal was produced that cost fifteen pounds and this was to, and I bought one
BB: This was the Bomber Command memorial, this
EH: No, no, this has nothing to do with Bomber Command,
BB: I beg your pardon.
EH: Someone had produced to say a thank you, to say that we had done a good job
BB: Oh my god, Right, right.
EH: But that was replaced seventy years later with the Bomber Command crest.
BB: Clasp.
US: The bar and the
BB: That didn’t [unclear] till 1945, yeah.
EH: So in a fact, I have, I told you about this medal, it’s now meaningless but that was the resentment that we had and that’s why I bought it
BB: Quite right.
EH: I have it, it’s hidden
BB: [unclear] let down by
EH: The thing
BB: Did you apply for your Bomber Command clasp?
EH: Yes, I have, we have the medal, but the sad thing was, after the war I went to Bomber Command, to Pathfinder headquarters [unclear] give me the choice of either going back at the squadron or going into Transport Command but he warned me, the squadron is preparing to go out to the Far East and being [unclear] tropical [unclear] I said at the time I think I have had my fair share of war, I remember that two forced marches and [unclear] so he arranged to go to Pathfinder, to the
BB: Transport, Transport Command
EH: To [unclear], I’m sorry Bournemouth, I went there with the squadron and who was the CO of the squadron? The squadron leader and Wing Commander Dan [unclear] he sent me on my last op and he was waiting for me coming back from that last op to show me the London Gazette and he gave me my ribbon to put on
BB: Oh, how wonderful.
EH: And he repost me, he said, you are improperly dressed, oh, I don’t know what I had, all I had was the thirty nine forty five, and he, from there he didn’t tell me but he took me with his we sat down and we went through all my operations experience through, I finished up with up with a France Germany medal and also the Italian star and I was wearing them until Kinloss when a group captain Caddy, a Canadian, he was a gentleman, he wanted normal story to, [unclear], the reason he wanted me was there was the coronation and there was seven medals allotted to Kinloss and I was to get one of them, so I had to get my other medals, when I applied for them I discovered I wasn’t entitled to the France Germany medal because I’m in Holland trying to get through, but I wasn’t in France, I wasn’t entitled to it, and also I had done [unclear] to Caen to [unclear], there is a bridgehead to Italy and the railway lines from Caen were feeding that and we went to destroy that railway line in Caen itself and we went down to four thousand feet to bomb and it was in aid of the [unclear] bridgehead
BB: Right
EH: And so I took those down, I had to apologize to the CO I had been wearing this because they told me I wasn’t entitled and he got really annoyed with the and he said, oh, I’ll speak to the OC, we already trained through the Pathfinder force [unclear] you went there so you didn’t get it, so I wasn’t entitled to the France Germany because I hadn’t been stationed in Italy, I couldn’t
BB: But you clearly got the France and Germany clasp, you get the aircrew Europe?
EH: No. No, I haven’t got a France Germany at all.
BB: No, I met sometimes
EH: I got a victory medal
BB: Right, didn’t get the aircrew Europe?
EH: Didn’t get the France because I am in Holland
US: But Dad, listen to the question again. Listen to the question again.
BB: Did you get the aircrew Europe star?
EH: Oh yes,
BB: Cause that would have been where you would have worn the France and Germany clasp on that star, had you been able to
EH: No, I didn’t have the, there was no recognition at all for the France Germany, the, I got the victory medal
BB: I see [unclear] put that right
EH: I actually, the many things that freshen my mind but when I think of my story that I have, can I tell you a little more?
BB: Sure, of course you can.
EH: Frances, Frances von der Heyden,
US: [unclear]
EH: After I left
US: She was Francis daughter
BB: Francis daughter
EH: And she was the girl that found me, she was the workhouse on the farm, she looked after us, she made food for us, and [unclear] for us, for the undertakers and there were six children, she was the elder but let me speaking two separate stories [unclear] after I left, the bridge too far does it ring a bell?
BB: Arnhem. Yes.
EH: Well, the aircraft going passed nearby, near the [unclear] where I was and [unclear] and she comes across an American airman who was wounded on a shoulder ands he made arrangements and she took him in the farm and he was in the pigsty where I had been but then [unclear] by this time the troops were not too far away and [unclear] went across, no, I didn’t see this, I am told by the family, he went across the fields to the British and said he had an American and he wanted help, take him away but they didn’t believe him, they thought that it was a trap and the Germans would be [unclear] of him but they gave him some dressing [unclear] so he went back somehow somewhere the Germans found out he crossed the line and they came to the village and there they found them in the church and they were going to shoot the whole family and France argued, he was master of his house and the family had to do he was [unclear] not them and they shot him in front of them
BB: Yeah, was that ever followed up after the war because if they went in and did all this stuff after the war [unclear]
EH:
US: There is a memorial to Frans
EH: Well, what did happen with I had to be taught but they what happened when I first went back however the family unfortunately went [unclear] dispersal remember was nature and young baby sister I think she is still alive and one of her brothers and that’s left and there’s grandchildren after them [unclear] I’m in contact with and I have been on contact with her family for over seventy years
BB: Oh, that’s wonderful. It’s wonderful. Other Bomber Command aircrew I have interviewed, were they, had they similar experiences to yours, have kept up with their people as well. It’s amazing the bond that existed, you know, there was these young, frightened aircrew, had the horrendous experience of getting out a bomber, landed in a foreign country, had done all the theory about what to do and you know Mi9 teaching them all sorts of things but at the end of the day, you know, they were given help and shelter and food and help you know by the resistance, well the escape line I should say.
EH: But what they did for me is not my story, it’s her story, there was Frans murdered cause he had helped this American, the same thing could have, if I had been there the same thing could have happened to [unclear] but there at one point came when I will switch now from Frans to [unclear], [unclear] was invited to go to America where the some Dutch friends of hers and while she was there, she fell in love with the brother in law of this couple she was staying with and she wanted to get married but she was visiting the States and was not allowed to stay so she in actual fact gave us a [unclear] I should have it somewhere, the second page of the [unclear] Express, and this was where they had approached someone in the government to ask permission and she was told by the senator that if she could prove that she was a fit and worthy person to enter the States, he would try to do what he could for her and she sent me the cutting of the paper where this article was in and I went to my lawyer and explained to him the position and he then [unclear], he actually wrote the letter and she got permission to stay and they got married. But that wasn’t the end of the story because Jan and her brother who was back home he found, he didn’t speak English but he and I, he and I could converse, we understood one another but he, he had an American correspondence [unclear] information so he approached this person and he give them the name and address and the service number of the American that was there and law and behold that American was [unclear] and the family went across, Nat was living in the States, and the family, members of the family, they went there and they actually saw,
BB: Oh, that was good.
EH: Yeah, Jan asked them, [unclear] and make sure so he showed them the wound and he asked, why didn’t you, oh, I thought you were all dead, I thought they shot all, he hadn’t even reported the fact that [unclear]
BB: Yes
EH: So that was a sad tale.
BB: That was a very sad tale, yeah.
EH: Yes.
BB: Well, Ernest, thank you very much
EH: Can I tell you one, just one more?
US: Dad, just two seconds. We are going to have fish and chips for lunch.
BB: Right.
US: I was just going to go and pick them up.
BB: Yes.
US: Would you like to join us? You will join us.
BB: I’d be delighted to, thank you very much indeed. Yeah.
US: I’m going to slip away to get some lunch. Alright?
EH: [unclear] tell the story that I could see it as a [unclear] for a love story [laughs]
BB: Ok, on you go.
EH: [unclear]
US: [unclear] if I leave at this point.
EH: When we were, when we had our last meal, you know, after operations and before operations you go and you have your meal, there was normally sausage, bacon and eggs, well, that night when we sat down, Derrick and I sat together and there was no eggs, and I said to the [unclear], you’ve forgotten the eggs, and she said, Jock he said, [unclear] I can’t go ops without eggs, I got the chop, and she said to me, I’m sorry there’s no eggs and I apologised to her
RH: While we are on the subject of things that crews took with them, good luck charms, whatever you want to call them, my uncle was in 9 Squadron during the war, Australian, he flew from Bardney and did his full trip with 9 and then married my mother’s sister and then he went off to an OTU to instruct staff pilot as an instructor but unfortunately he was killed in a mid-air collision at the OTU, he flew, he flew with apparently, the photograph of my aunt, was later his wife, which he put on the panel of the Lancaster in front of the control column and he swore that got him through every op that he did but that [unclear] did the last one at the OTU [unclear].
US: These are letters that we found that have been written by somebody from [unclear]
BB: Right
US: After the war and we don’t know anything about this person, perhaps Dad will tell you
BB: Okay.
US: I’ll get some lunch.
EH: Can I finish this?
BB: Of course, you can.
EH: I was telling you about this that was on my conscience, when I was hiding that [unclear] that girl
BB: Yes
EH: Was on my mind and I was [unclear]
BB: I can imagine.
EH: [unclear], received the [unclear], I mean I am an emotional person, but by God if anything gets up my nose I just [laughs] however when I went back to see Bennet after the war, he said to me, give me the choice and I said that I’d go back to Holland and he said, right [unclear] go back, go to [unclear] and tell the CO to fly you to Holland but you make your own way back, oh, I accepted that but then when I went onto the squadron I didn’t know a face a part from the navigator I had previously
BB: Right
EH: Gibbs and the [unclear] saw me and he called, don’t move! [unclear]! She’s still here! And he disappeared through the door of the kitchen and he came back with the girl that had served me last meal and the one that I’d said would get the [unclear] and she came right across and the mess
BB: Full
EH: I didn’t know a face other than the [unclear] and my crew member he came across and flung her arms around me and I held her, I [unclear], I apologised for [unclear] and she had seen the [unclear] and she said, oh, I’m glad you’re back and she turned round and tears streaming down her face and they were also mine but I left it to the navigator and the [unclear] to answer any questions about my [unclear] was, there was no physical connection
BB: No, no.
EH: Just that eggs [laughs]
BB: Yeah. That’s interesting. Well, that’s a very interesting story now David passed me this letter, must be to do with someone in the Netherlands, that’s interesting. Anyway thank you for talking to me
EH: No
BB: And it’s a fascinating story and it’s probably the best interview which describes the whole prisoner of war initial interrogation
EH: right. I hope it hasn’t swamped you
BB: Not at all, not at all, because
EH: [unclear]
BB: That’s probably the bit than your Lancaster
EH: Yes, that’s the bit of my Lancaster because after the war we went back this is years later because I’m in Transport Command
BB: Yes, flying your
EH: And then the [unclear] had started but before that we went, [unclear] came with us, and we went, the, Jan, that’s the elder son, now deceased, he had [unclear] with some [unclear], every year the [unclear]
BB: Yeah.
EH: And he had mentioned the fact to these people that he called me Shirley [laughs] and he told his folks that that was, where the aircraft was and we were the undertakers that were alive, Willy and Luc and [unclear] and Jan and they came with us to the farm and the farmer, the farmhouse [unclear] and I couldn’t recognise it, if this is the place, my aircraft came down there and I was in the field here and I came across [unclear] but there was a well here and the farmer said, you are standing on it, the story was lightning put the farm on fire so the farmer had to [unclear] the whole place and [unclear] not just the farm building [unclear] the animals the whole and there was another personal build, I have a photograph of that, we have a photograph of at the farm at [unclear] and we also have photographs of [unclear] got after the war but I had to give everything to David because with my sight gone
BB: Yes, yes
EH: I felt so helpless
BB: I know but I mean, well, fifty-five thousand [unclear] aircrew in Bomber Command didn’t make it
EH: Didn’t make it, no
BB: And the chances of survival of a bomber crew in at the height of the Battle of the Ruhr was four trips
EH: yeah
BB: Four trips
EH: Yeah
BB: So, if you survived four you were already dead.
EH: That’s right
BB: And all the aircrew that I interviewed and tracing my late uncle’s crew as well, who survived the war, they all had mechanisms that distanced themselves from that [unclear] and it was to live for today, everything
EH: [unclear]
BB: Everything was that, don’t think about tomorrow, don’t think about the next op, don’t think about the Grim Reaper, no, it’s just live for today, and they said, they guys that worried about it, were the ones that, you know, that weren’t concentrating, that made a mistake or something and it was just, I don’t know, a luck of the draw, but there was a certain, I perceived a certain mental attitude which got people through,
EH: Well, but after the war I [unclear] because there was only one survivor, Derrick and I, Derrick and I were in contact, but Derrick now is dead and but the chappie who was my wireless operator, her also has died but I got he was interview by a chappie who collected stories from DFCs and DFMs.
BB: Alright.
EH: And he, the same chappie asked me more information and he told, I said ,there was no indication [unclear]
BB: God!
EH: Yeah, seconds
BB: Was it Schrage Musik that got you at the end? You know, the night fighter with the upper firing gun? Below the Lancs?
EH: Yes. You see, I can’t
BB: You can’t answer that because it just so instant
EH: I can’t answer
BB: Yeah, it was just one big matter
EH:
BB: It probably sounds like Schrage Musik because as you know, they went underneath the [unclear]
EH: Yeah
BB: Between the two inner engines, straight in the bomb bay [unclear]
EH: Well, we had two close encounters, but we never had to fire the guns
BB: No
EH: Never
BB: No
EH: So the wireless operator [unclear] had been fighting this [unclear] and the other but there was no guns fired, there was no warning, within thirty seconds the whole lot was over
BB: Yeah. Lucky, you were lucky.
EH: He, no, is dead so I can’t, but I went round to visit the families of them so [unclear] the widow of Johnny Stewart, he was the navigator, he kept a diary and he’d written every time in his diary trips that he went on and he always mentioned my name and his wife asked me who Shirley was, he spent, a lot of people thought my name was Shirley
BB: Yes, yes, yes.
EH: Was Sher-lee
BB: Eee, yeah, and the wife was wondering who Shirley was.
EH: Now then we, this is part of the aircraft, the farmer after the Germans had taken away the aircraft, bits and pieces so David actually took this as a memento
BB: Oh, that
EH: That’s it, I found the aircraft, I’ve been there, and this
BB: You went back to the crash site for the family
EH: Yeah
BB: Not only that, my great grandson, my daughter lives in Belgium and she had a daughter and she was [unclear], Alison was my [unclear].
BB: Gosh!
EH: And but he’s a great guy but he died playing tennis
BB: Heart attack.
EH: He and I got on fine and a lot of people use do think, oh, any with Alison [unclear] but there was no, in fact when he wanted to get married, he wanted to come over to us for my permission, I thought it was pointless in coming just for me to say yes or no.
BB: Yeah.
EH: So I said, don’t bother coming. You come over and have the marriage here and that was all over. So their daughter, so my granddaughter, my grandson and Alison went to the place with, along with one of the grandson of the Van de Hayden family, Hank, this is his name and he’s the one that kept in contact, he is the one who actually took them and they went to the farm and they walked all the way back to where I found, where [unclear] found me but instead of wading across the stream there is a bridge [laughs] and of course there’s no well, is all covered over
BB: All covered over, yeah. How interesting. And of course, you took a permanent commission in the Royal Air Force and you went on to do lots of other things. I mean, flying the routes with Avro York, long haul to Singapore and all sorts of [unclear]
EH: Yeah,
BB: And everything in between
EH: Yes
BB: How did you find the York, cause the York was really a
EH: Well, the armed forces
BB: Basically a Lancaster
EH: The armed force thing was, either the country flying and I’d be away three weeks, back for a few days, come up to Scotland and flew back again, so I couldn’t keep in contact with Derrick, he could go to Holland, I couldn’t
BB: yeah
EH: Cause when I was [unclear], I was [unclear] the CO to take me there, I said, I, eventually you realise that you can’t go empty handed
BB: Yeah [unclear]
EH: You can’t go empty handed, I need money, I didn’t have any money, I don’t think I had my check book with me at the time and we didn’t have cards at that time and I thought, I can’t go across there empty handed so I decided not to go. And then [unclear] Berlin airlift of course, my boss Ben was flying his own aircraft there as a civilian
BB: Yeah.
EH: So I met
BB: Avro Tudor [unclear], is that American Airways [unclear]? No, he started up the South American
EH: That’s right
BB: Airways
EH: That’s right. But then he was
BB: Tudors, Avro Tudors. And Lancastrians and Yorks.
EH: Yeah. He was flying [unclear] petrol
BB: Yeah.
EH: And now, when I visited the other members of the [unclear] I found that the widow of Mack who was the original wireless operator now training on the H2S, he had written a farewell letter to his wife which I gather he wrote every time and kissed this is my last trip, I didn’t know that till his wife told me she was most concerned because he had a baby and there was something wrong with the baby I remember that when we went out as a crew, we, they gave us some little bottles of oil of olive,
BB: Yeah
EH: For the use, for the baby was something wrong but her problem was she didn’t have access to a bank account, it was in his name, she couldn’t get it and I was only visiting there for a short weekend and I couldn’t help her so [unclear] so trying to get the Pathfinder club, he wasn’t even a member, he was in the Pathfinder but he wasn’t a member.
BB: [unclear]
EH: He died so I hope someone did have a [unclear] because Derrick tried to find her living in London, went back, no one in the area knew what had happened to her but the humorous part was that I went to Derrick’s folks, his father was a navigator in the First World War, and he too was shot down, he too became a prisoner of war, now, my story is we were having a dinner with the Pathfinder organisation and now where was the dinner?
BB: RAF club?
EH: No
BB: Pathfinder club?
EH: I, we had, I couldn’t go to the many [unclear] living, I was flying back and forth [unclear] whenever I had time and [unclear] I was with the Pathfinder club in the [unclear]
BB: [unclear]
EH: But with Derrick’s father, there’s a book written by [unclear] Broom.
BB: Oh yeah, Broom. Yeah [unclear]
EH: [unclear] The Battle for Berlin.
BB: The Battle for Berlin.
EH: [unclear]
BB: Alright, I’ll make a note of that [unclear]
EH: And at this time, I was now pilot officer.
BB: Alright. And of course you clocked up seventy hours on Yorks and so the transition to civil aviation was multi-engined experience flying the routes with Transport Command
EH: Yes, but my experience was an actual fact trading fuel, I did a tour with [unclear]
BB: Yes, [unclear]
EH: [unclear]
BB: By the [unclear]
EH: Unfortunately, you see, I held senior appointments but not the rank, I was interviewed by the but I have forgotten [unclear] Scotland [unclear] Scotland at [unclear]
BB: Yes, I used to be at [unclear]
EH: And he, it was a good [unclear], thought I had a raw deal, you know, interview with him
BB: Yeah
EH: But then he said to me, you should just tell the fuckers to stick it up their [unclear] ass, that was the words he used to me, yeah, [unclear] at the time but then I later met him again when I was on Glasgow University [unclear], when I went there the [unclear] was actually using the old typewriters typing things and printing, print out with these
BB: Yes, yeah. [unclear]
EH: And I said, oh, this is nonsense, [unclear] so I want and I got a lot of equipment, I got a camera, projector and also a [unclear] and my esteem went up with the squadron and eventually the OC at the time, I’ve forgotten his name, he came round and I heard wing commander [unclear], not a nice man, he was singing my praise and the OC said to me, [unclear] we are in, and I thought, well, and I think I should have said, Coastal Command. But I said Transport Command cause it [unclear] the end, if I had said Coastal Command and he would have brought precious memories up and that was a third recommendation for me [unclear] so I held senior posts but not the rank.
BB: Yeah, well that was, that’s a shame, no, I went, I started my intelligence work at [unclear] Castle, it was sent HQ NORMA, Northern Maritime Region
EH: Yes.
BB: And I reported directly to the admiral and they received [unclear] the coast of Scotland and Northern Ireland [unclear] and yes, the black huts, the black wooden huts, [unclear] we used to sleep in those and walked down to the pits, down those stairs, yes, it was interesting time, was very busy but ,[unclear] mainly spent hunting Russian submarines in the North Atlantic. With Shackletons initially, the MR 1 Shackleton and then of course [unclear] and so on.
EH: Well, I flew the Shackletons at Kinloss.
BB: Was it ten thousand rivets flying in formation?
EH: When I first came to Kinloss and were only doing coastal cross I was [unclear] at the time.
BB: Yeah, so you were [unclear]
EH: And then I suggested, [file missing] Winston Churchill was coming back on the Queen Mary I think it was from America and I arranged for a flight on Shackleton to go and greet him
BB: Excellent
EH: We got full of praise for that.
BB: Excellent. Yes.
EH: That was the first time the Shackletons had actually flown over [unclear] wartime, was just doing coastal crawls all the time do to the intensive trial period but was an easy aircraft to fly
BB: Yeah
EH: And I flew them, I didn’t fly as captain but I flew the aircraft, take-off, landing and flying around and I did even did practice bomb runs on the Moray Firth
BB: Yeah, yeah.
EH: And well I didn’t do a lot of flying in it but I did fly the Shackleton.
BB: [unclear] it was [unclear] the Lincoln, you know, it went from Lancaster, Lincoln, Shackleton
EH: Yeah
BB: So it was lovely aeroplane.
EH: Oh, Yes. Oh, the Lancaster.
BB: Shackleton, [unclear] Shackleton.
EH: Well I had Mark I, II, Halifax, and the Mark III, now the Mark III was a complete change, it was a [unclear] aircraft, it had sixteen hundred horsepower Hercules engines radials
BB: Yeah.
EH: It was a heavy aircraft, what a difference was from the [unclear] so I got three stitches of [unclear], and then the Lanc, I flew the Lanc, that was a beautiful aircraft to fly.
BB: Did you fly the maritime version as well?
EH: Pardon?
BB: Did you fly the maritime version of the Lancaster as well?
EH: No.
BB: No.
EH: No. No, but I did visit one, there was one in a museum here
BB: Oh, that’s right [unclear]
EH: David was nursing at the time, was training at the time, [unclear] hospital and he heard about it and we went out to visit and there’s a photograph and on that photograph there’s the name Holmes and I reckon it’s a pity they hadn’t put they date on and I reckon as a photograph of an operation, you know, the names were taken off.
BB: Yeah, what a shame.
US2: Can I interrupt? Sorry. We need to [unclear]
BB: Ok, right.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Ernest Holmes
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Bruce Blanche
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-01-29
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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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AHolmesEA160129
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:37:23 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Ernest Holmes joined the RAF and served as a pilot, flying operations first with 76 Squadron and then on Pathfinders. Gives a vivid and detailed account of when he was shot down over Holland: how he was given shelter by a farmer’s family and moved to different locations; his eventful escape to Belgium; his capture and interrogation by the Gestapo and internment in a prisoner of war.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Netherlands
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-06-10
1943
1944-05-21
1945-10-10
10 OTU
35 Squadron
76 Squadron
aircrew
animal
anti-Semitism
bombing
evading
fear
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Abingdon
RAF Kinloss
Resistance
Shackleton
shot down
Stalag Luft 3
the long march
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1048/11426/ANeilsonW151116.2.mp3
98c9bdf26e9131b0392322666ce6b3a1
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
Neilson, William
William Arnott Neilson
W A Neilson
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flying Officer William 'Bill' Neilson (1923 - 2021, Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-16
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Neilson, W
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
WN: Yeah.
[pause]
WN: I’m William Neilson. I was born in Fife in 1923. And my elder brother Jim and I were raised by our mother, Jessie. My father and my mother’s two brothers had all emigrated to America in 1925 to escape the post-war depression in the UK. My mother stayed here to look after my grandmother as it was the duty of the daughter in those day to do so. Grannie died in 1933 at the age of seventy three. There were some photographs at home of my Uncle Willie who had been a pilot in the Flying Corps in the First World War. Among the aircraft he flew were a Sopwith Pup. A Sopwith 1 ½ Strutter and a Bristol fighter. When war was declared in 1939 I still had another two years to go before I could sit my final exams and would be free to leave school. I finished my Scottish Highers and with my mother’s reluctant permission I went to Edinburgh to join the Air Force in 1941. On the morning of the first day there were about thirty five to forty volunteers of whom nineteen were soldiers. These nineteen were all hoping to be accepted as air gunners but none were. By late afternoon on the second day only five of us were sworn in for aircrew duties, one of whom was Alex Steadman from Dunfermline. We kept in touch with each other during the next six months of deferred service and became friends. We remained so for the rest of our lives until his death in 2008. I was best man at his wedding in 1944 and he was mine in 1945. We were duly called up in March 1942 and had to report to Lord’s Cricket Ground in London. We spent the next three weeks being kitted out, learning to march, being shouted at, inoculated and learning about beer. Our first payday took place outside the Monkey House in London Zoo. After all this I was posted to 12 ITW at St Andrews. That’s only thirty miles from my home. Alex Steadman was posted to Scarborough. We did the usual ITW things but navigation, Morse code, transmitting and receiving, using the Aldis lamp, aircraft recognition, assembling and stripping down a Vickers K machine gun. More marching. And swimming lessons in case we got shot down on operations later on. The North Sea in April and May was very cold and I’d never done it in all my life until then. After a fortnight we were told that two forty eight hour passes would be on offer every fortnight. There were only two Scots in our fifty strong flight so we got them until the end of the course. I’d only been away from home for five weeks before I came home on the very first weekend pass. Later my one time school friend said I was in the BEF — back every fortnight. All fifty Cadets were interviewed by our CO during the training period. When I asked, when I was asked about my father’s job I said he was professional golfer. When asked what I could tell him about golf my answer was that it was a game invented by the Scots for the torment of the English. Now, the CO was a Scot. He was vastly amused. The pilot/navigator/bomb aimer scheme was introduced during my time at ITW to split the observers work into two separate categories of navigator and bomb aimer in the new four-engined bombers coming into service. After three months at ITW I was posted to 11 EFTS at Perth for pilot training. I went solo after six hours. I learned, I did all my flying from a big grassy field owned by some farmer out in the sticks. The trainees were bussed out there and back every day because Perth Airfield wasn’t big enough to cope with the number of trainees coming through. I know for certain that five trainees from my ITW flight got their pilot’s wings because I met them by chance years later. All these trainees were disbursed to Canada, Rhodesia and America so we lost touch with each other. I had two months waiting in Heaton Park in Manchester between August and September 1942 and met up again with Alex Steadman. We were both posted to 31 Personnel Depot in Moncton, New Brunswick in Canada knowing that we were going to America to continue our pilot training. From Manchester we took an overnight train to the Clyde and embarked on the Queen Mary which had had a collision with the cruiser Curacoa on a trip from Canada. Her bows were all stoved in and been filled with concrete to make her watertight. After five days at sea we docked at Boston, Massachusetts where the Queen Mary was to be repaired. We then had a wonderful rail journey up the east coast through New England and the vibrant colours in the Autumn trees was magnificent and unforgettable. We spent another month at Moncton before getting on a train to Oklahoma — to a place called Ponca City. That took four days. All the instructors there were civilians employed by the Darr School of Aeronautics. My course was the eleventh to be trained there since it opened in December 1941. With a hundred and sixteen members it was the largest to date. There were twenty Americans included and they were all required to have a college education and at least a hundred hours flying experience. It was said that their superiors in the American Air Force didn’t want their trainees to suffer by comparison with us RAF trainees who had come in off the streets with whatever education they had and only a few hours flying at grading school with a maximum of fifteen hours. I went solo again after seven hours on a Stearman PT-17 and went on to a total of seventy hours. Next step up was to the AT-6A or Harvard as the RAF named it, for another hundred and thirty hours. We flew during the course on either the morning or afternoon with ground school during the other half of the day. We were free to roam the skies when we flew solo and could dogfight or chase horses at ground level or fly at trains to frighten the passengers. I never heard of any complaints from the train company about this latter activity. We flew day and night across country and all of us were hoping to fly at the required standard and thus avoid being washed out. That meant being sent back to Canada to be trained as a bomb aimer or a navigator. One of our more curious pupils on my course found out that the flying instructors were prone to leave the door of their rest room unlocked at the end of the day. We were thus able to find out what sort of marks we were being awarded for our flying ability. All recorded on coloured cards with the highest being on white cards. I was pleased to see that most of mine were white which did wonders for my self-esteem. There was no entitlement for leave during the course but mother nature intervened with a heavy snowfall which stopped all flying. There were four courses going through training at any one time so there were about three hundred pupils affected. We were given a week off and five of us who used to hang out together decided to head south for Texas. We got a hundred miles down to Oklahoma City and found out that the snow extended down to Texas as well. So we stayed in Oklahoma City. There was drinking and dancing and dates at 11pm with girls who didn’t finish work until then as well as sightseeing and taking express lifts to the tops of sky scrapers. We were photographed by, many times by Americans who wanted to know, ‘What outfit we belonged to.’ They were confused by our RAF blue uniforms. During the last week in April 1943 all the pupils on my course were sent on a long cross country with another pupil. I was paired with Don McCready. There were seven legs between airfields to the [unclear] so we tossed up to see who would get to fly four legs and navigate three. And I lost. The route was from Ponca City to Amerillo in Texas. Then to La Junta in Colorado. Albuguerque in New Mexico. El Paso, Midland and [Hensley?] in Texas and then back to Ponca City. We spent the night at Midland and were lined up waiting to take off the next morning when three trainee pilots from an American flying school came in to land on the main runway in a cross wind. One after another they all ground looped. Schadenfreude. I didn’t do too very well with my navigation and did a bit more map reading than I should and Mac wasn’t much better but when we got back to Ponca City no one in authority seemed to mind. Maybe they were just relieved to see us back safely after eighteen hundred miles. All the other pairs got around safety except one pair who ground looped at La Junta and were sent back on a twin-engine Beechcraft. The wings exam came at the end of the course in May 1943 and a pass in all subjects was mandatory. I failed in meteorology so I had to re-sit. I hadn’t really got my head around the way the first meteorology exam had been structured so I was very happy to find the format for the next was more to my liking. Ten percent was knocked off because it was a re-sit. So the maximum I could get was ninety percent. I got eighty nine percent. We left Ponca City during the last week in May 1943 and returned to Moncton. The successful Americans went to fly Dakotas in the US Transport Command and eventually DC4s. Twenty three RAF trainees and three United States trainees were washed out during the course. That was a failure rate of fifteen percent for the US and twenty five percent for the RAF. We boarded the train for another four days travel to Moncton and spent another month waiting for a boat back to Britain. My [pause] we sailed from Halifax, Nova Scotia on a French liner called Pasteur heading for Liverpool. The Pasteur broke down in mid-Atlantic and took the best part of the daylight hours to mend. We feared the appearance of U-boats while we wallowed in the swell but after the war I learned that there were few U-boats in the mid-Atlantic. The ones on the American side were being refuelled by long range tankers and those in the European side by calling into ports in Germany and France. On our return to the UK we were billeted for six weeks at the Majestic Hotel in Harrogate. I was then posted with Alex Steadman to 40 Advanced Flying Unit in Banff where I was converted to flying twin engine Airspeed Oxfords and added another hundred hours to my flying time. I was expecting that the next posting would be our usual progression to OTU but instead was posted on the 1st of November to 1 Air Armament School at Manby in Lincolnshire as a staff pilot to fly Blenheims. Alex Steadman came as well. He had been posted to fly Ansons at a wireless op school on the Isle of Man but he wangled a change of posting to come with me. From a book I bought in 2014 I learned that in 1941 at 1 Air Armament School the station commander was Group Captain Ivans with the nickname of Ivan the Terrible. He followed regulations to the letter. Every week there was a station parade at which uniforms had to be immaculate and the staff, men and women, were expected to be perfectly groomed. Some engineering and ground staff worked from 6.30 in the morning till 10.30 at night so they didn’t take kindly to being disciplined for being poorly turned out. At the following week’s parade the entire base personnel were assembled in full uniform to salute the raising of the flag. As soon as the lanyard was pulled up a large pair of WAAFs nickers unfolded and started fluttering at the top of the flagpole while a wave of laughter spread across the parade ground. Group Captain Ivans was apoplectic with fury. He demanded to know who was responsible. Only to be met with a stony silence. He then announced that everyone was confined to barracks for seven days. There would be a colour parade every day and after normal working hours all personnel, including WAAFs would march around the perimeter of the airfield in parade dress. This would continue until the culprit confessed. It was clearly an outrageous punishment but within a few days he was replaced in 1943 but when I arrived in 19 [pause] In 1943, when I arrived he was back in charge as station commander once more. Three, three weeks went by before our instructor thought the weather was suitable to fly. I went solo on a Mark 1 Short Nose Blenheim after an hour and a half. I then had another six hours circuits and bumps on the Long Nosed Mark 4 before I was let loose with two bomb aimers to drop practice bombs on the beach north of Mablethorpe. There were four bombing ranges. Each separated by five hundred feet distance from the next. For obvious safety reasons. We flew a clover leaf pattern to drop bombs. That became my working life for the next five months. Weather permitting we were expected to bomb as high as possible up to ten thousand feet. Something went wrong on one occasion and two Blenheims collided over the target area with a total loss of life of all six crew members. Only one body was ever recovered and that came ashore in The Wash. In the Blenheims we practiced low level bombing at two hundred feet to educate bomb aimers destined for Coastal Command. Normally low flying was banned so we made the most of our legal opportunities. I remember low flying up the Yarborough Canal which runs from Louth in the direction of Grimsby. Our low level bombing target was set in a farmer’s field near the canal. So it was a temptation to fly up along the canal after we’d finished bombing. Temptation for me that is because the bomb aimers didn’t have any say on the matter. The swans on the canal would take off in an attempt to escape and would look back at the plane as it got near them. They would never fly out the canal but would land with a great splash of water. Great fun. In May 1944 a Wellington 13 arrived and all pilots were converted to fly it. I had an hour and a half instruction before I went solo and another three hours solo before I was let loose on the bombing ranges. This time with three bomb aimers. I flew both types until the end of July 1944 when the Blenheims were withdrawn. I only had two troublesome occasions with a Blenheim. On the way back to base after an exercise I noticed smoke coming from the port engine. Both engines were throttled back as I was descending to circuit height and the instruments didn’t indicate any engine trouble. There were no visible flames and I had to keep the engine going for safety reasons. I landed with no further problem and ran off the runway on to the grass to leave the runway clear. There had been an oil leak which dripped on to the exhaust and that had caused all the smoke. That was all. On the second occasion I had, had to fly two engine fitters with some spares to Bardney near Lincoln where one of our Blenheims had landed with an engine problem. After dropping off my passengers with their spares I left. I was very interested with the close-up views of so many Lancasters that I forgot an essential part of pre-flight check and off I went. At a hundred and sixty miles an hour I still couldn’t get the aircraft off the ground until I wrenched the control column hard back and raised the undercarriage to reduce drag. I was flying but not gaining height and all the time I was checking for a reason. I discovered I’d forgotten to close the cowling gills. This had spoiled the lift from the upper wing surfaces. The response was immediate and I was up and away. When the pilot of the other Blenheim came back to Manby he met me in the mess and said he’d watched my take off from the control tower. He admired my, ‘Lovely low take off.’ I advised him not to try to emulate me and told him the reason. It was decided to try night bombing. So, in August two other pilots and myself were sent to Catfoss to practice night flying on Wellingtons. The weather turned nastier and nastier and we were sent home after two days. In September we returned to Catfoss for another go and managed to get five nights circuits and bumps before being recalled. Since the Wellington was a heavier aircraft than the Blenheim it was decided that low level bombing in a Wellington should be carried out at four hundred feet. Some of the bomb aimers had trouble getting used to the low level bombsight for, that was used in Coastal Command and they asked me to drop the bombs for them. On the run in to the target I would watch for the triangulation target to disappear under the nose of the aircraft, count to three and use the master switch in the cockpit to drop the bomb. It was dead centre every time. The bomb aimers learned by observation when to drop their bombs at the correct [unclear], so it really wasn’t cheating. It was just a different way of helping them to learn. In November I had another sessions of circuits and bumps at Strubby. Only seven miles south of Manby. For some unknown reason the night bombing proposal was dropped but it was useful experience for me. I found out after the war that my wife’s brother in law, also a pilot, had done his operational tour of thirty ops from Strubby but was on leave in London when I was night flying there. I had only one problem with a Wellington while I was at Manby. I was on a wind finding exercise with three bomb aimers. One was in the nose measuring drift. One was seated at midship and the third was standing in the cockpit just looking about. He looked out at the starboard propeller which had started to vibrate massively. He thought the propeller was about to come off and then would come through the fuselage where he was standing. He’d pulled out his intercom plug and dived into the back of the aircraft. What I then saw was the spinner and the propeller both wobbling about in a very unsafe manner. I promptly pressed the feathering button and throttled back on that engine. Just before the propeller stopped the spinner came off and disappeared over the starboard wing. I felt it hit the tailplane before it fell clear. The prop stayed on but I concluded it was the spinner vibrating loose that had caused the propeller to vibrate. I didn’t restart the engine again in case some damage had occurred that I couldn’t see. I cancelled the remainder of the exercise and flew back to base to make my second single-engine landing at Manby. A policeman on his bicycle eventually found the spinner. I did only once have a bomb aimer who wasn’t keen to fly in a Blenheim when he saw the mag drop and wanted to use another aircraft. I explained my point of view. We could transfer to another aircraft but in any event they would all have the same five hundred revs drop. I said I flew them every day despite the mag drop and was happy to do so. It was normal. He accepted my reassurance and off we went. I flew Wellingtons there until I reached the top of the operational posting ladder. And on the 24th of April 1945 I was posted with Alex Steadman to 10 OTU at Abingdon with an additional four hundred and twenty six. [pause] Is that somebody at the door?
[recording paused]
April 1945 I was posted with Alex Steadman to 10 OTU at Abingdon with an additional four hundred and twenty six hours flying time. I was certainly a more experienced pilot than if I’d gone straight to OTU from AFU. And the first question one asks at a new station was usually about the local beer. Where was the best pub? In Abingdon it was the Lion in the High Street that got the vote. I duly made my way there. By 6 o’clock we were standing in the doorway when I was hailed by an old friend from my Ponca City days. He was there with a WAAF to whom he had just said he had just seen my name on the arrivals list and wondered if he’d see me. We spoke for about a half an hour and he introduced me to the WAAF. He had to go for his last cross-country to complete his flying programme and off he went. I never saw him again. So obviously he’s [unclear] I got myself a crew and started training but after a few weeks I was pulled out and given a more experienced crew from the course ahead of me who had lost their pilot througFh illness. I did another seventy hours flying. Forty by day and thirty by night. I was then posted to 1668 Heavy Conversion Unit at Cottesmore in Rutland. I remember one daylight cross-country in the western extremity of the UK and the second leg was along the south coast. A very strong wind was blowing and had blown all the usual smog away and we could see for miles. Down in to the Bay of Biscay. All along the northern European coastline as far as the Frisian Islands. We could see the east coast of the UK past the Thames Estuary. Past The Wash and up as far as the Humber Estuary. The Lancaster was a delight to fly and so easy to take off and land. I once put a Lancaster down after a cross country to Wick and I couldn’t feel the slightest transition from flying to landing. I was sat there with the stick in my lap and the throttles closed. I glanced at the speedo that showed I was doing fifty miles an hour and could no longer be flying. That’s the best landing I ever made in all my flying career. I was told during the course that our night navigation exercises were going to include astral navigation because we were to be posted as replacements to the ten Lancaster squadrons known as Tiger Force. These squadrons were to be sent to Russia to bomb Japan from the north to supplement the bombing campaign being carried out by the Americans. Luckily for us the war ended and the plan was abandoned. We were, I was then posted to 16 Ferry Unit in Dunkeswell in Devon with a view to ferry aircraft to the Middle East. That proposal fell through and we were informed we would be flying aircraft to the Far East instead. That scheme was also cancelled because our demob numbers would be coming up before we could really be used for a useful time. My remaining few months in the RAF were just frittered away in a holding unit at Bruntingthorpe near Leicester. And I was demobbed in 1946 with four and a half years’ service. 6 BFTS turned out fifteen hundred pilots during its existence. I left the RAF as a flying officer on a salary of six hundred pounds per annum. Started at the Ordnance Survey on two hundred and twenty three pounds ten per annum. For the first year I was paid weekly but thereafter monthly. So we had to save hard in that first year so we could survive for a month before being paid monthly in the second year. I joined 14 AFS at Hamble in 1949 and flew Tiger Moths again and then Chipmunks until the year it closed in 1953. I joined the 6 BFTS Club with annual meetings, the Aircrew Association with local meetings in Southampton and Project Propeller with an annual flight in June in a civil light aircraft to various airfields around the country. That’s still ongoing. The first two Associations have now disbanded due to a lack of members as we all become older.
[recording paused]
WN: Civil pilot. We went out to Canada. I went on down to America. Came back and when I came back we were back at Moncton. And the fellow I’d been going around with at ITW, I hadn’t seen him since he’d left ITW, he comes in to the washroom where I was having my morning, doing my morning ablutions. We had a brief five minute conversation and he went out the door. I never saw him again. But there was five of us went around together in the American Flying School. They were all civvies. And Johnny Thompson got washed out. He went back. Became a bomb aimer. The rest, the other four of us we got our their wings. Albert Slade went on to a squadron and he got killed on his first. He was shot down over Denmark. They were on a mine laying operation. He was shot down over Denmark on the night of the 14th 15th of May 1944. So Alex Steadman and I survived because we’d both gone to Training Command for a, for a, it took me seventeen months to get to the top of the operational posting ladder. And he stayed in as I say. He would have been, he was eligible for a group captain’s post but he, he got caught up in one of these financial rearrangements that the Labour Party were so found off. You know, they were cutting money. Cutting money for that. So he was certain there were too many wing commanders you see. So he got, and he had, I think he had four pensions. He had his old age pension [laughs] He got an RAF pension. He’d got, he’d become a civil servant and he worked for the Air Force. He knew the duties of a flight lieutenant, a squadron leader and a wing commander. When these fellas were coming, being posted at the Group headquarters he was able to advise them. Keep them on the right track. Right. And then he got a [pause] he’d, he’d got a, the odd thing is that we were so keen to fly and we got the wish but sitting in the middle of four Merlin engines it made us deaf. You see, that’s the sting in the tail. So your pension. He got a, no he didn’t — yeah. He got a pension for that ,see. So, I went and had my ears examined but it was a nineteen percent reduction. So I didn’t get a pension. I got, I got, I think a lump sum of I about three thousand odd quid which of course was a windfall but with all windfalls you spend it on something you wouldn’t normally spend money on. So, I, I was a warrant officer by the time I got to OTU which pleased me greatly because it tells anybody who wants to know that you’ve been up at least, at least two years flying experience in your, in your pocket you know. But they started then, at OTU they started commissioning pilots so I’m a pilot officer. Could have, could have come straight from a flying school and nobody would know. Then after six months I was a flying officer so that stayed until I came out, yeah. I’ve had a good life. And that, when I was posted to Abingdon Dave [unclear] sitting there talking to this WAAF and he introduced me to her and away he went. He did a night cross-country. I never saw him again. But I was very much taken with this WAAF so I chased her for ten weeks. Used to say I chased her until she caught me and at the end of ten weeks I was waiting for her coming off her shift work at midnight and asked her to marry me. She said yes. I didn’t go down on one knee. I didn’t get a kiss to say seal it with a kiss. She said, ‘I’m starving. The girls have got my supper ready for me. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Of course, the girls said, what did, ‘What did he want?’ She said, ‘I think I’m engaged to be married.’ The girls said, ‘You can’t marry him. You’ve only known him ten weeks.’ They all worked together. They all knew intimately the others lives you know. Well, she said, ‘Oh, I’ll ask him to wait for six months.’ But being a man I went off and saw a minister and arranged for the wedding to be in, call the banns for three weeks, you see. And get the wedding to the fourth week. So, fourteen weeks after I’d met her we were married. Sixty eight years it lasted. Sixty eight years. We were made for each other. Two and a half years ago she went. So, now as I say my mother looked after me for eighteen years. The air force looked after me for four and a half years. My wife looked after me for sixty eight years. And the last two and a half years it’s been, I’ve been going solo. It’s quite an illuminating experience you know. Because one thing I have learned — never to be afraid to speak to anybody because you never know what you’re going to get back in return and it’s sometimes quite surprising. Yeah. Anyway, I was bloody near killed at Shoreham back in the summer. You know it? Do you know about Shoreham?
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command Archive Unit I’d like to thank Bill Neilson at his home in Southampton for his recording on the 16th of November 2015. Once again I thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with William Neilson
Creator
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Mick Jeffery
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-11-16
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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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ANeilsonW151116
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:31:20 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Training Command
Description
An account of the resource
William Neilson grew up in Edinburgh. After training as a pilot in Canada and the United States he served as a staff pilot at Number 1 Air Armament School RAF Manby. He discusses low level bombing practice. He was demobbed in 1946 and became a civil aviation pilot.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Great Britain
United States
England--Lincolnshire
England--London
New Brunswick--Moncton
Oklahoma--Ponca City
Oklahoma
New Brunswick
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
10 OTU
1668 HCU
6 BFTS
aircrew
Blenheim
bombing
British Flying Training School Program
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
love and romance
Operational Training Unit
pilot
RAF Abingdon
RAF Cottesmore
RAF Manby
Stearman
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1217/15049/LStoreyDP1334123v1.2.pdf
9575e8b05a67237abd33f0bdb44eaf50
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
Storey, David Philip
D P Storey
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. The collection concerns David Philip Storey DFC (1919 - 2018, 1334123, Royal Air Force) and consists of his log book, a photograph and a memoir. He flew operations as a navigator with 51 Squadron from RAF Snaith and then became an instructor at RAF Kinloss. He was promoted to flight lieutenant in September 1945.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by David Storey and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2019-01-30
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Storey, DP
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
David Storey's observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book
Creator
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Great Britain. Royal Air Force
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.
Format
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One booklet
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Log book and record book
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Conforms To
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Pending review
Identifier
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LStoreyDP1334123v1
Description
An account of the resource
Observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book for David Storey, navigator, covering the period from 3 October 1942 to 6 June 1946, and from 25 June 1949 to 29 November 1952. Detailing his flying training, operations flown, instructor duties and post war flying. He was stationed at RAF Wigtown, RAF Abingdon, RAF Rufforth, RAF Snaith, RAF Kinloss, RAF Westcott and RAF Panshanger. Aircraft flown in were, Anson, Whitley, Halifax and Wellington. He flew a total of 30 Night operations with 51 squadron. His pilots on operations were Sergeant Morris, Sergeant Jackson and Flying Officer Love. Targets were, Krefeld, Gelsenkirchen, Cologne, Hamburg, Remscheid, Mannheim, Nuremburg, Milan, Peenemunde, Leverkusen, Berlin, Monchen Gladbach, Montlucon, Modane, Hannover, Kassel, Dusseldorf, Ludwigshaven, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Stuttgart and Lille.
This item was provided, in digital form, by a third-party organisation which used technical specifications and operational protocols that may differ from those used by the IBCC Digital Archive.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Cara Walmsley
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Hertfordshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Yorkshire
France--Lille
France--Modane
France--Montluçon
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Leverkusen
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Mönchengladbach
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Peenemünde
Germany--Remscheid
Germany--Stuttgart
Italy--Milan
Scotland--Dumfries and Galloway
Scotland--Kinloss
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1943-06-22
1943-06-25
1943-06-26
1943-06-28
1943-06-29
1943-07-03
1943-07-04
1943-07-09
1943-07-10
1943-07-29
1943-07-30
1943-07-31
1943-08-02
1943-08-03
1943-08-09
1943-08-10
1943-08-11
1943-08-12
1943-08-13
1943-08-17
1943-08-18
1943-08-22
1943-08-23
1943-08-27
1943-08-28
1943-08-31
1943-09-01
1943-09-05
1943-09-06
1943-09-15
1943-09-16
1943-09-17
1943-09-22
1943-09-23
1943-09-24
1943-09-27
1943-09-28
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
1943-11-03
1943-11-18
1943-11-19
1943-11-22
1943-11-23
1943-11-25
1943-11-26
1944-01-29
1944-02-15
1944-02-20
1944-03-01
1944-03-02
1944-04-29
1944-04-30
10 OTU
11 OTU
1663 HCU
19 OTU
26 OTU
51 Squadron
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Me 109
navigator
Operational Training Unit
promotion
RAF Abingdon
RAF Kinloss
RAF Rufforth
RAF Snaith
RAF Westcott
RAF Wigtown
RAF Wing
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1262/17135/PSmithDA1901.2.jpg
f068e3d6817394db0223c0a31545a439
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1262/17135/ASmithDA190219.2.mp3
2eabbde8694ea974c6013caea6c115c7
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
Smith, Douglas Arthur
D A Smith
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Douglas Arthur Smith who flew with 76 and 158 Squadron as a wireless operator.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-02-19
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Smith, DA
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DK: So, this I’ll just introduce myself. This is David Kavanagh for the International Bomber Command Centre interviewing, do you like, are you Doug Smith or —
DS: Yes.
DK: Doug Smith at his, Douglas Smith, at his home on the 19th of February 2019. I’ll just make sure that’s working. Ok. If I just put that a bit nearer to you. If, if I keep looking over I’m just making sure it’s still working.
DS: Yeah.
DK: So what I wanted to ask you first of all was what were you doing immediately before the war?
DS: Before the war I, I was living in a small village called Bressingham near Diss in Norfolk and I’m the son of an ex-World War One —
DK: Veteran.
DS: Veteran.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Who was also injured during then. And I was born three years after World War One. My family, they’re agricultural people.
DK: Right.
DS: My father was a farmer, and when the war broke out —
DK: I might just come a bit closer to you if that’s ok.
DS: Yeah.
DK: If I move that there. Is it ok if a sit here?
DS: Yeah. Sure.
DK: Yeah. Yeah. Ok. Sorry. You were saying.
DS: Yeah. As I said I was born the son of a farmer and well, you see the real Depression after the First World War.
DK: Do you know, do you know much about your father? What he did in the First World War?
DS: He, yes he was, he was a soldier that fought in the, on the Somme.
DK: Right.
DS: And unfortunately he got injured with shrapnel and had to be repatriated. And as I said from then on I came on the scene [laughs] and a sister. My sister. And when World War Two broke out. I just fancied I’d like to join the Royal Air Force because all youngsters at that time —
DK: Did your, did your father advise against the Army then, did he?
DS: No. He didn’t have anything. To be quite honest my father, I did all this on my own back.
DK: Oh, right.
DS: I didn’t have any discouragement or any encouragement.
DK: So what, what made you look towards the Air Force then? Was there something that drew you to it?
DS: Well, I think, I think the idea of flying.
DK: Yeah.
DS: I mean flying was in, well it was in it’s the initial stages in them days.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DS: And I think a lot of youngsters. So I just went down to Norwich and enlisted and, and that’s where I started my career, and that was in 1940.
DK: So —
DS: October.
DK: Right.
DS: 1940.
DK: And how old would you have been then?
DS: Nineteen.
DK: Nineteen.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Right. So, what, what’s your first sort of posting then in the Air Force? What did you do first of all?
DA: Well, first of all —
DK: I mean, presumably were you looking to become a pilot? Did you think or —
DS: Well, in the selection board once you, when I went to Norwich to get enlisted, they took all particulars and I went through various examinations, tests and, and they asked you what your background was. And they then suggested that I became a wireless operator although I would like like everybody else to have been a pilot.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DS: But I was enlisted as a wireless operator/air gunner.
DK: Right.
DS: And then from then on just went through the basic foot bashing stage of the —
DK: Yeah. Is that something you took to was it? Or was it something you liked? Or —
DS: Well, it was quite new to someone who lived in the country and it all came, well I was surprised. But that was intriguing actually really.
DK: Yeah. Can you remember where it was you did you square bashing?
DS: Yes. I went to Blackpool.
DK: Right.
DS: And done all the square bashing there, and after that there was a period when I had to wait for the training to do with the flying side because the square bashing was just a preliminary.
DK: So, presumably this would have been your first time away from home then was it?
DS: That was my first time away from home.
DK: Yeah.
DS: We were billeted in private hotels and in hotel accommodation sort of thing. Then once we’d finished that we had, we all, everybody had to be put somewhere and, while they were waiting for the air training side of the, of the Air Force and I went to, I was stationed at Norwich for a while. Attached to the signals to get some idea because they were [pause] what I had to face eventually because we got with, operating Morse Code and all that sort of thing. And then from then on I was, I went to an Air Gunnery School at Evanton in Scotland to learn all about the machine gunning. What the aircraft would be.
DK: So what was the training like then on the machine guns? Did you, were you taking them apart or —
DS: Well, you had to take them to pieces and —
DK: Yeah.
DS: Know how they operated if you got stoppages and just mainly getting to know. I think that they were, the guns were Brownings I think and just get general knowledge of what you actually might need to handle.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Although my main job really finished up as a wireless operator.
DK: Right.
DS: I never had anything further to do with the gunnery side apart from taking the course. The course in gunnery which everybody had to do. The first aircraft I think I flew was a, was a Botha.
DK: Oh right.
DS: Which was —
DK: Yeah.
DA: A lot of people haven’t even heard of today.
DK: I’ve heard of them. What was that like then? Your first flight in one of these old things.
DS: Well, as I say that was one of the first flights I did. I couldn’t compare that one with any other.
DK: No.
DS: Back then when I first got there. Looking back they were very daunting and they were [laughs] they were not over safe either.
DK: No.
DS: And then once I completed the gunnery course —
DK: Did you, did you do any air to air firing?
DS: Yes.
DK: At that point?
DS: Oh yes.
DK: At the drogues.
DS: Yes. That’s right.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Firing on drogues and I’ve got it all recorded in my logbook there. And, and then after that [pause] let me think. Get this right.
DK: It would have been for the wireless operations.
DA: Yes.
DK: Yeah.
DA: I think I went back to Blackpool again because that was where I had to learn Morse Code and —
DK: Right.
DS: And, and that’s, once again we were billeted in the hotel and guest houses, and our training, the training when we were learning was in a tram shed in Blackpool, and they were all set out for all the pupils to get to know what Morse Code was about. And you had, once you completed your course you had, you had to maintain eighteen words a minute.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Yeah. Once you passed that. And then from there —
DK: Is it, was Morse Code something you found you could pick up easily was it or —
DS: Well, for some. It wasn’t easy. But was interesting and same old double Dutch to start with but I got there in the end.
DK: Right.
DS: Which most of us did. Some of them failed.
DK: And how many words a minute did you have to do?
DS: Eighteen.
DK: Eighteen.
DS: Eighteen words a minute. Yeah.
DK: Right.
DS: And, and then after that I went to Abingdon where I met the, met up with the, where we met up with the crew.
DK: Right.
DS: You know. I went there as an individual. You met up and you formed. You formed a crew which my crew was Sergeant Hickman, and —
DK: And this would have been the Operational Training Unit.
DS: That’s an operational, yes.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DS: That’s an OTU. An Operational Training Unit and that was, that was on Wellingtons.
DK: So, how did you think that worked with you meeting up with your crew. Just putting everybody together in a hangar sort of thing? Did that, that work out well?
DS: Yes. Well, of course we were, they were all, we were all strangers. We were all experiencing the same, the same problem, you know. Meeting someone for the first time.
DK: Yeah.
DS: But, but you became like a little family in the end because you social, you socialised.
DK: Socialised. Yeah.
DS: Socialised [laughs] rather together and you more or less lived together and as I said you became a family and we were, once we went through all the process of the OTU which meant —
DK: If I just go back to the OTU. What did you think of the Wellingtons then, as an aircraft? Were they —
DS: Well, they were much better than the Botha [laughs] At least that was the [pause] I think the Botha was a, I’m not quite sure if that was a single engine or not, but yeah that was a little step up going to the Wellington but —
DK: And your, your pilots name was?
DS: Sergeant Hickman.
DK: Hickman. Right. Ok. And was he, was he a good pilot?
DS: Yes.
DK: Yeah.
DS: I think so. He was, as I said they all had to pass to a certain standard so I mean, yeah. Yes. They were. He was, he was quite good and unfortunately later on he bought it as we called, used to say in the Air Force.
DK: So moving on from the OTU then what was, what was your next, next step then?
DS: The next step from the OTU was I went to [pause] to —
DK: Was it 76 Squadron?
DS: 76 Squadron.
DK: Yeah. Yeah. Is it alright if I look at your logbook?
DS: Yeah.
DK: Is that ok?
[pause]
DS: Yeah.
DK: So I just —
DS: To Linton on Ouse. I went to Linton on Ouse.
DK: Right.
DS: The station commander, or at least the squadron commander of 76 Squadron which I joined was Wing Commander Leonard Cheshire who became, eventually became Group Captain Cheshire.
DK: Just for the recording I’m just having a look at your logbook here. It says you were at Number 8 Air Gunnery School.
DS: Yes.
DK: Yeah. And then, then it was number 10 Operational Training Unit.
DS: That’s right. Which was at Abingdon.
DK: That was Abingdon.
DS: That’s correct.
DK: So that’s mostly all local flying and you’re the wireless operator there.
DS: That’s right. Yeah.
DK: Camera gun exercises etcetera.
DS: Yeah.
DK: And then just, then it’s, I’ve then got 1658 Conversion Unit.
DS: Yes. That was after we left, oh yes. I got ahead of myself there. We went to Riccall.
DK: Right. Ok.
DS: Yeah, to convert from the Wellington to the Halifax.
DK: I’m just looking on your logbook here. You’ve got the Halifaxes here. The aircraft serial number. It says BB304 and R9434, W1003, W1168 they were quite early Halifaxes, were they?
DS: Well, they, well they must have been. Yes, because that was, they were they were flying with the Merlin engines.
DK: Right.
DS: In those days.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Because later on we went on to radials. Hercules.
DK: Yeah.
DS: And —
DK: So, what did you think of the early Halifaxes at the Conversion Unit?
DS: Well, we, we liked them. Well, we thought we were going up from two engines to four engines but yes they were. Yes. We got on very well with them. Yeah.
DK: So, it would have been at the Conversion Unit then that you would have been joined by your flight engineer. Did you get an extra crew member then?
DS: Yeah. I thought we had the flight engineer from the start but —
DK: Oh, ok.
DS: I mean we had the gunners. The navigator and the bomb aimer, and as I said —
DK: Can you, can you still remember their names?
DS: Yeah, I might have to refer to it.
DK: Yeah. Ok. We can, we can go back to that later.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Ok.
DS: Well, our rear gunner was Scott. And our navigator was Keene. Bomb aimer was either Pringle or Prangle or —
DK: Yeah.
DS: And, yeah —
DK: So then in looking at your logbook again in April 1943 then you’ve gone to 76 Squadron at Linton on Ouse.
DS: That’s right.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Yeah.
DK: And that’s flying Halifaxes again.
DS: Yes.
DK: And can you remember were they the early Halifaxes again or the later ones?
DS: Yes. They were the early ones.
DK: The Merlin ones.
DS: Yeah.
DK: So, I notice all your flying there is with Sergeant Hickman.
DS: Yes.
DK: As your pilot.
DS: Yes.
DK: And so you say the squadron commander then was Leonard Cheshire.
DS: Yes.
DK: Did, did he make much of an impression on you?
DS: Well, we as young recruits saw, we didn’t see a lot of the commander.
DK: Right.
DS: We just, we just, we had a, I think a section commander. A Flight Lieutenant Ince. But no, we didn’t get [pause] I never really got in contact much with Cheshire but —
DK: Do you remember seeing him there though?
DS: Oh yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DS: I saw him. Yeah. Yeah.
DK: So what was his squadron like? Was it a well-run squadron would you say?
DS: Yeah. Yeah. He [pause] he, in the early days because he flew the Wellington on operations and apparently he brought one back with a great big hole in the side. They said you could get an Austin 7. Yeah. No. He was [pause] no, he wasn’t a character but he had, he was, and actually in later years he turned religious.
DK: Yes.
DS: That’s another story.
DK: Yeah. So, so his, so your crew then there was no officers on the crew.
DS: No.
DK: No.
DS: No.
DK: Right.
DS: No. No. Late in, the navigator was made up.
DK: Right.
DS: As a pilot officer later on but all the others were just, you know sergeants. That was the minimum you were was a sergeant if you were flying. And —
DK: So, I’ve got, I’ve got on here then it looks like you joined 76 Squadron quite early in April ’43 and then would this have been your first operation then? To Pilsen.
DS: Yes. That’s right.
DK: So what, what was it like to go on an operation then for the first time? What sort of happened?
DS: It was quite an experience really and it’s something I don’t think anyone other than the ones who were on these raids could really describe what it was really like. I mean, it was just something like out of this world, you know. There was the German searchlights trying to pick you up. I mean, they had a master beam which used to pick you up, and then a series of smaller searchlights would beam, would beam on you and then, then you were, well yes that was nearly fatal because the Germans used to fire up the —
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DS: Up the beams and I mean we, fortunately we managed to manoeuvre and get, not get picked up by these master beams but we could see others that were being illuminated with the searchlights and that. Not awful but you could see people, the planes just exploding and, yeah. Yeah, that. But the thing that really amazed you was the, where the bombs and the flares and things were on the towns that we bombed. You could, it was just like a furnace burning. You know, like that. As I said it’s a sight, you can’t describe it to —
DK: No.
DS: To anyone.
DK: Right.
DS: That was, and then of course you had fighters chasing you around. Chasing you. Which were, you had to keep your eye out for and —
DK: Were, you were you ever attacked by a night fighter?
DS: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DA: Yes. But as you will see later on we shot down, well, we ourselves shot down two.
DK: Oh, right.
DS: Two Jerry fighters.
DK: So, your first operation then was the 16th of April 1943.
DS: Yeah.
DK: And then 20th of April ‘43 you’ve gone to Stettin.
DS: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They were all —
DK: I’ll just read this out for the —
DS: Yes. Yes. That’s right. Yes. That’s correct.
DK: So, and then 27th of April, Duisburg. Duisburg again on the 12th of May. And on the 13th May, Bochum. I’ll turn that around for you. So, 30th of May, Mönchengladbach.
DS: Yeah.
DK: And then Mannheim. 15th of September.
DS: They were with different pilots they were.
DK: Right. Yeah. That’s Troak. I’ll spell that out T R O A K.
DS: That’s right.
DK: So, then Mannheim on the 5th of September. Munich on the 6th of September. So, you’ve gone on two operations. One following the other. Mannheim and then Munich. Then you’ve got another pilot here. Smith.
DS: Yeah.
DK: So, that’s the 3rd of October. Kassel. And then the 4th of October. Frankfurt.
DS: That’s right.
DK: So that’s operation number nine then. Yeah. And the tenth op 8th of October to Hanover. And then 22nd Of October, Kassel.
DS: That’s right.
DK: Interesting here. So, the 26th of November 1943 you were in Halifax K. Your pilot is Lemon.
DS: That’s right.
DK: And its ops to Stuttgart and it says, “Emergency landing. Three engines with full bomb load.” Can you —
DS: Yeah.
DK: Recall that?
DS: Yes. I can. We, we had just got airborne and one of the engines packed up. So we called base for instructions and we went, we were told to go out to sea and drop our, our, the bombs because you, it was not known for an aircraft once you’d took off with a full bomb load to have been able to come back and land.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DS: So, but the pilot was a regular pilot who was in the Air Force before the war.
DK: Oh right. So that was Flight Lieutenant Lemon.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DS: And he, he called back to base, said, ‘Well, I can’t get out. I can’t go to sea. I’m coming back in.’ And we did come back in, but I think what probably he did put on, when he went in to land put a few more revs on.
DK: Yeah.
DS: To compensate. And the next thing we knew they were following up the runway behind us with all the local fire engines.
DK: So you landed with a full bomb load then.
DS: Yes. We had a full bomb load.
DK: So that was quite unusual then.
DS: Yes.
DK: [unclear]
DS: I’ve never known, well it might have happened but as far as I know that had never been known before.
DK: Yeah.
DS: But —
DK: It must have been quite, quite frightening at the time.
DS: Well, it all happened so quick you see because we’d hardly got off the end of the runway and the engine blew up.
DK: I see here the total flying time was actually five minutes isn’t it?
DS: That’s right.
DK: So you’d just done a circuit and then straight back down again.
DS: Yeah. So that was a bit hairy, I can —
DK: Yeah. So then, carrying on from there you’ve got 3rd of December. Leipzig.
DS: That’s right.
DK: And then 7th of January 1944 now. So it just says, “Bombing. Night.” It doesn’t actually say where.
DS: That’s yeah that’s an exercise.
DK: Oh, is that an exercise? Then 20th of January 1944 you’ve got your twelfth operation and it’s to Berlin.
DS: That’s right.
DK: Do you remember travelling to Berlin on that flight?
DS: It was just like another place to us, you know because we were quite keen to go there because that was the, the capital of, you know of Germany when we got there.
DK: And that was with Flying Officer Falgate.
DS: Falgate. Yeah.
DK: Falgate. Yeah. So that operation then was seven hours twenty.
DS: That’s right.
DK: Right. So [pause] and then 21st of, 21st of January 1944, Magdeburg.
DS: That’s right.
DK: And then 28th of January, Berlin again.
DS: Yes.
DK: [unclear] And then you’ve got 27th of May here [unclear] That’s in Belgium isn’t it?
DS: Yeah.
DK: And you’ve landed at Bruntingthorpe.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Was there a problem with your aircraft then?
DS: Yeah. Yeah. I think we’d lost pressure somewhere in that. We had to, to, instead of getting back to base we had to make an emergency at Bruntingthorpe.
DK: Carry on then. I’d like to say you’re now in the Halifax 3s. So they’re the ones with the —
DS: With the Hercules.
DK: Hercules engines. So were they a better aircraft to the earlier Halifaxes do you think?
DS: Yeah. Oh yeah. Much better. Not only that they were safer for us because being air cooled radial there was no manifolds on the engines.
DK: Right.
DS: They’re, the Merlin’s had twin exhausts on each engine and at night time they got so hot that they illuminated.
DK: Oh right.
DS: And of course the Germans could —
DK: See them.
DS: I mean, so we were much safer once we got to the radials because the only way we were picked up by the Germans was either by the searchlights or night fighters which was bad enough.
DK: And I notice here your pilot then was Flight Lieutenant Forsyth DFC.
DS: Ah huh.
DK: So that was the 1st of June, Halifax 3 and it’s letter R and it’s off to Cherbourg. And then I see you’ve done operations actually on D-Day. 6th of June. D -Day support operations on both. Well, two operations on 6th of June, in fact, wasn’t there?
DA: Yeah.
DK: Forsyth DFC. St Lô. And you’ve put there invasion front. And then 4th of July there’s your first daylight operation.
DS: That’s correct.
DK: So to St Martin. And that’s with Flight Lieutenant Forsyth again. What was it like flying in daylight on the D-Day operations?
DS: We didn’t, we didn’t get any, any opposition from the Jerries at all. That’s, well as I said that was just a hop over the Channel and back, you know.
DK: Yeah.
DS: That was when you were going in to the, in to the heart of Germany when you were going in to the Ruhr Valley and there. I mean Jerry put up about thirty thousand extra ack ack guns when the Battle of the Ruhr was on. That was like hell on earth that was. But —
DK: So, though it was in daylight because it was over France the opposition wasn’t quite as deadly.
DS: No. No.
DK: So 18th of July then ops to, I’ll spell this out it’s A C Q U E T. That’s in France I think, isn’t it?
DA: Yeah.
DK: That’s twenty one.
DA: This guy turned out, after he came out of the, out of the war he was he was my solicitor right up until he died.
DK: Ah.
DA: Yeah.
DK: So, that was flight lieutenant —
DS: Crotch.
DK: Crotch.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Flight Lieutenant Crotch.
DA: Yeah.
DK: So he was your pilot on the —
DA: On that —
DK: 18th of July. And then he became your solicitor post-war then.
DS: Yeah. Yeah. Right up until recently. Until he died.
DK: Oh. So 23rd of July. France again. Then 24th of July Stuttgart. And so this is the 24th of July 1944. The pilot’s Flying Officer Macadam.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Had gone to Stuttgart and I see here it says two enemy fighters destroyed.
DS: Yeah. That was —
DK: What happened there then?
DS: Well, what happened was that we had been previously chased by a couple of Jerry fighters but we managed to, to avoid them because what was the known thing was once a Jerry fighter turned in to attack you, you turned into him.
DK: Right.
DS: So, so anyhow we evaded the first lot and the second ones I don’t think they saw us because we were, I think where they were, they had blind spot. What we used to call a blind spot if you were flying over an aircraft as a pilot and then there’s a plane underneath. I think we must, that must have been a blind spot for it.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Oh well, that’s only what we assumed. And then, we shot down the first one. We didn’t realise that he had a mate with him. You know, flying alongside. But then he came in to, to bring us down but fortunately we managed to get him as well. And that was recorded. That wasn’t just what we said.
DK: Right.
DS: Because what happens once you come back to do a briefing you have to state what you did or saw.
DK: Yeah.
DS: And lots of other aircraft saw these two fighters being shot down so we got it recorded and that’s how that happens to be.
DK: Yeah. So someone else had witnessed it then.
DS: Yeah. Exactly.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DS: Yeah. Because everything that happens up there has to be logged if you see anything unusual.
DK: And who got them then? Was it both the gunners working together?
DS: Mainly the mid-upper.
DK: Right.
DS: Well, I think they both worked together but being as he was flying over the top he could see further.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Rather than somebody at the tail end.
DK: And can you remember the names of the gunners?
DS: No. I don’t. No.
DK: No. I thought we could check on that.
DS: No. No.
DK: So, do you know what type of aircraft they were that you shot down?
DS: No.
DK: Right.
DS: No.
DK: Right.
DS: I would think, I mean probably, I don’t know for sure but I think probably Junkers 88, I think.
DK: So, they were twin engined aircraft.
DS: Yeah.
DK: You shot down. Oh, right.
DS: As I say we didn’t have time to look —
DK: No.
DS: At them at the end of the day.
DK: So you’re, you’re sat at your radio at the time while all this is going on. What, what’s that like as you’re being, as you’re being attacked by a night fighter?
DS: You still had to, you were always listening out and you don’t make any communications with base.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Because of detection, you know. Jerry. So, but we just, we just log what we hear. But naturally we didn’t log the fighters.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Because that was, that was on the debriefing that we had to record those things but —
DK: I’ve just noticed here as well that in July 1944 you’d moved squadrons. You’re now with 158 Squadron at Lissett.
DS: Yes.
DK: So this incident then happened while you were with 158 Squadron.
DS: Yeah.
DK: And it’s, it was Halifax R and it was Flying Officer McAdam.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DS: See what happened previously was when I was flying with Hickman earlier I got tonsilitis.
DK: Right.
DS: And they wouldn’t let me fly so I had to go in the sick bay. They flew off to Hanover and they never come back and that’s where, that’s where their —
DK: Yeah.
DS: Why their names are on your —
DK: Right.
DS: Memorial.
DK: If can just go back to that then. That happened when you were with 76 Squadron.
DS: Yes. Because that’s, yeah —
DK: Yeah.
DS: When I was with Hickman.
DK: Yeah. And can, can you remember when that was that that happened?
DS: It was —
DK: Are they on here?
DS: Yeah, I think that’s —
DK: Can I take a look?
DS: Yeah.
DK: OK. Oh, this is the [pause] yeah. So, they were in Halifax DK 6, DK266 MP-O.
DS: Yeah. That would be it, I expect. Yeah.
DK: And this was on the 28th of September 1943.
DS: Yeah. Yeah. During that period. Within a few weeks of that I lost my wife and child at the same time.
DK: Oh dear.
DS: So I had [pause] they talk about people having trauma these days but I mean I had to suffer the loss of my whole crew and then shortly after that, in only a matter of weeks I lost my wife and kid as well. A child.
DK: I’m very sorry to hear that.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Yes. Oh dear.
DS: So, that was, as I say that.
DK: Yeah.
DS: But you see then once you get split up from your, from a regular crew you were, you were like what we used to call an odd bod. If somebody was short of a radio operator they picked on you. And then of course by that, doing that you never had a, you never had a full crew again. You just flew when they were short of somebody.
DK: Yeah.
DS: And then of course all the accolades for when the others got medals and DFCs and DFMs and whatever. You know, such as myself we were, not that I worried about the medal but just glad to be here but you just missed out on any gallantry medals.
DK: If you don’t mind I’ll just go back a little bit because you, you when all this happened you were with 76 Squadron at Holme on Spalding Moor.
DS: Yeah.
DK: So you did an operation on [pause] where are we?
DS: There must be a period of breaks somewhere.
DK: There is. Yes. I think it’s here isn’t it because they’re saying your crew was lost on the 28th of September 1943 and that was to Hanover. So you’ve flown on an operation to Munich with Falgate and then he was lost after that then.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Yeah. Oh dear. And that was because you had the tonsilitis.
DS: Tonsilitis, yeah. Actually, I think I was in hospital for about a couple of weeks.
DK: And just to clarify this for the recording then this was that the crew was lost on The 28th of September 1943 on a trip to Hanover. Do you know what, were they shot down then or was it —
DS: Yes. They were shot, yeah.
DK: Did you ever find out anything more about what had happened to them?
DS: Not. That they were shot down. I think it says in there where they were shot down and I wouldn’t have known that without what you’ve got there.
DK: Yeah.
DS: I just knew that they’d been shot down. I didn’t even know. I was going to contact the war cemeteries and see really where they were.
DK: Yeah.
DS: But —
DK: It’s got the Rheinberg War Cemetery.
DS: That’s right.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DS: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah.
DK: Oh dear. So you’ve, after that terrible incident then you’ve, you have actually carried on flying haven’t you?
DS: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: Almost with different pilots.
DS: Yeah. That probably was a good thing in a way, I suppose.
DK: Can you, can you remember Falgate’s first name?
DS: Les.
DK: Les Falgate.
DS: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: Right. So going forward again, you’ve then gone to 158 Squadron.
DS: That’s right. I think that was out of Lisset. I think that was.
DK: Yeah.
DS: I think. Yeah.
DK: Yeah. 158 Squadron.
DS: It was Lissett. Yeah.
DK: And we’ve covered the, the incident when the night fighters were shot down. So then you’ve got three more operations here in August 1944. So these were daylight ones presumably.
DS: Yeah. They were.
DK: So, the 24th of August, Brest. 27th of August, Homburg. 31st of August somewhere in France. That’s not twenty eight operations and then September 1944, on the 9th 10th and 11th you went to Le Havre three times.
DS: Yeah. That’s correct.
DK: In daylight. The 15th of September to Kiel. And then 23rd of September 1944 to Dusseldorf.
DS: That’s right.
DK: So that was your —
DS: That.
DK: Thirty third operation.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Was that, was that the total you did then?
DS: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Yeah.
DK: So can you remember much about Le Havre in daylight on those three operations.
DS: No. No. No. As I say two in one day I think they wanted.
DK: Yeah. On the 9th 10th 11th of September. In the same Halifax as well. LV940.
DS: Yeah.
DK: And the same pilot, Flight Lieutenant New.
DS: Yeah.
DK: So could you just speak a little bit about what your role was as, as the wireless operator? What you were. What you did on the operations.
DS: Well, on the operations the radio operator you had, you didn’t do [pause] you were mainly there to listen out for information from base. You never had to, you were not allowed to contact base because of the detection side of it.
DK: Yeah.
DS: You may listen though and made notes of what, anything that was going on within the plane. If the navigator says something or whatever. And mainly look out for enemy fighters. I had a window where I sat.
DK: Because in the Halifax whereabouts are you? You’re kind of sat under the pilot aren’t you? Or —
DS: Here [pause] Yeah.
DK: Right.
DS: Right there.
DK: So you were in the nose there.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Sort of below, below the pilot.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Pilot up there and then bomb aimer. Air gunner and then bomb aimer down there.
DS: Yeah.
[pause]
DK: So you did thirty three operations in total then and then it says here you were then screened.
DS: Yeah. Well, that means that then I went on to instructing.
DK: And this was at 19 OTU at Kinloss.
DS: That’s right.
DK: So you were back on the Wellingtons again.
DS: Yeah [laughs]
DK: What was that like? Going back to the Wellingtons.
DS: Not very good [laughs]
DK: So you were there for quite some time then weren’t you? Right through to 1945 on Wellingtons again [pause] So, right through to February 1945 you were training then. Oh, and carried on until March. There’s quite a few flights in Wellingtons by the looks of it.
DS: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: Training flights. So, you finished then March 1945.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Was that when you finished in the Air Force then or —
DS: No, I finished flying in 1945.
DK: Right.
DS: And I became redundant and we had to, we had to muster to some other part of the Air Force, and I was asked what my background was and that. I said I was, spent my few months or early years as a, working in a garage as a car maintenance and so I said I wouldn’t mind going back into transport or something like that. And then they, there was a position came up at a place called Shepherds Grove which is near Bury St Edmunds as a transport officer. So I took over the airfield as a transport officer.
DK: Yeah.
DA: And I was there. Well, the base closed. I closed the base down while I was there because that was no longer needed because the war had finished and that’s where I finished and got demobbed.
DK: So, how do you look back on your time in the Air Force now? All these years later?
DS: It was a great experience. It really was. At the time you just took things for granted and we never saw any fear. I mean if our names weren’t up to fly on a certain night we were disappointed. I mean there was no such thing as saying, ‘I’m glad I’m not going.’ We were so keen. We didn’t, we didn’t want to miss anything, and I’ve never, I’ve never ever heard of anyone saying that they were, they may have inwardly, never scared.
DK: Yeah.
DS: No. There was one of our biggest moans ever since was the accolades going along pre-war is all about Halifax, no all about Lancasters.
DK: Lancasters. Yes. Yes.
DS: The poor Halifax never gets mentioned.
DK: Yeah.
DS: If there’s a fly past.
DK: It’s always a Lancaster. It’s like the Spitfire, isn’t it?
DS: Exactly.
DK: The Hurricane gets ignored.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Yeah. So you liked the Halifaxes then as an aircraft.
DS: Yeah. Well, as I say we didn’t have a lot of choice really but —
DK: Did you ever fly in a Lancaster then?
DS: No. No.
DK: No. So, you can’t really compare the two.
DS: No. No.
DK: Yeah.
DS: The only advantage that they said the Lancaster could fly about another couple of thousand feet higher than us which the higher you could get the further away you were from the enemy —
DK: Yeah.
DS: Ack ack guns, because the point was they could get you wherever you went. But of course the fighters used to chase us back. Even follow us right back to the base. There had been certain, it had been known where our own aircraft were shot down over, over on the, on coming in to land on our own bases.
DK: Yeah. And —
DS: It’s unbelievable really when you look back.
DK: Yeah. How did you feel when you got back from an operation then?
DS: We always used to look forward to coming back because of the spread. It was the only time you got a decent meal [laughs] We used to have egg and bacon and as much as you wanted.
DK: And —
DS: You had to do the debriefing once you’d landed and you went back to be debriefed and that’s like if anyone saw anything unusual. That’s when the question of the fighters came in you see.
DK: Yeah.
DS: And anything that happens you had to make a note of. I mean I remember coming back [pause] that was when the first Doodlebugs went to London.
DK: Oh right.
DS: We saw this object illuminated. We knew it wasn’t an aircraft because we didn’t know what it was.
DK: Yeah.
DS: And all things like that we had to make a note of and then, then the radio operator on various operations we had to drop what they called Windows.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Which is a —
DK: It reflects the radar.
DS: A series of like tin foil to, to obliterate the German detection.
DK: Was that one of your roles?
DS: Yes.
DK: As wireless operator.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Yeah. So what did you do? Did you feed it down a tube?
DS: There was a chute.
DK: Right. Yeah.
DS: And we were told every, whatever —
DK: Yeah.
DS: Seconds or minutes, I can’t remember exactly you had to drop and that because everybody did the same thing because I mean lots of the raids we went on I mean they were four and five hundred bomber raids. I mean and usually however many there were, there was in the raid, we were, we bombed out like, half of you would be bombing at a certain time.
DK: Yeah.
DS: And then three minutes later the second wave.
DK: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
DS: Of course we relied on the Pathfinders to drop the flares because it’s the Pathfinders that gave us the exact target.
DK: Yeah.
DS: I mean today things are different now I mean with radar and —
DK: It’s all computerised.
DS: Computerised, you could pick out a needle.
DK: Not quite the same is it?
DS: No. But yeah.
DK: So, when you were with your crew then did you socialise together?
DS: Yes.
DK: What did you used to do on your time off then?
DS: Well, mainly we used to go to the local bar. Not on the base.
DK: No.
DS: We used to, we were stationed in Yorkshire and —
DK: Can you remember the names of the pubs?
DS: Yeah. We used to go to Betty’s Bar.
DK: Betty’s Bar.
DS: In York.
DK: Yeah. Yeah. I know it.
DS: And as I know the place, I think today they’ve got some inscriptions even in Betty’s Bar today.
DK: Is your name there?
DS: I don’t think my name is there [laughs]
DK: Probably not [laughs] You’ll have to go there and put it in.
DS: Yeah. Yeah. Well, yes we used to go and have a few beers. And then anyone who got newly commissioned they used to take his hat.
DK: Yeah.
DS: And pour a pint of beer in it to christen it or something like that. Yes.
DK: So, it must have been a great loss then when your crew went missing.
DS: Oh yeah. Yes. I mean we used to spend so much time together.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DS: And —
DK: So after that you were just crewed up with wherever you were necessary. You didn’t join another —
DS: No.
DK: Another crew as such.
DS: I flew with Falgate for a while and actually I’ve come, been in contact with some distant relatives of Falgate. It’s, you know since the war and one of the young girl of this family got a lot of information from the 76 Squadron Association and —
DK: So, the crew. I’ve, I’ve just slightly misunderstood something. The crew that went missing was Hickman’s.
DS: Hickman.
DK: Hickman. And what was his first name? Hickman’s first name. Would it be in here? I’ve slightly got confused with the names of the pilots.
DS: Yes.
DK: Sorry about that.
DS: Yes, well that was I flew with several pilots.
DK: Yeah. So, it was Hickman who went missing on the 28th of September 1943 in Halifax DK266 MP-O.
DS: Is his, is his name up there?
DK: That’s George Scott. Was he one of the other crews?
DS: He was a rear gunner.
DK: Rear gunner. Ok. So it was, sorry I slightly misunderstood that. It was Hickman that went missing.
DS: Yes.
DK: To Hanover you say.
DS: That’s right.
DK: On the 28th of September 1943.
DS: That’s correct.
DK: So, it was after that you were flying with Falgate. Les Falgate.
DS: Yes.
DK: Etcetera. Yeah. Slightly confused there. So, have you got the names of your crew somewhere or were they, did you say they were written down somewhere? That’s only got the one crew. G Scott.
DS: They should all be there shouldn’t they?
DK: I can, I can check after. That’s ok.
DS: I thought they were all on there.
DK: Yeah. Just the one there.
[pause]
DA: Yeah.
[pause – pages turning]
DK: Because your last operation with Hickman was, or the last time you flew with him was 16th of May 1943. So it must have been soon after that you got the —
DS: Yeah.
DK: Tonsilitis. Yeah. And then as I say he went missing in the September.
DS: Yeah. That must be it. Yeah.
DK: Ok. Well, thanks for that. I’m just going to pause this for a moment and have a look at your photos there.
[recording paused]
DK: Just put this on again. So you’ve got a photo of your Halifax in the background there and your crew. Can you name the crew there?
DS: That was, that was Falgate.
DK: Falgate. He’s in the middle. Yeah.
DS: I can’t. I don’t know. I can’t remember them. The crew.
DK: Right. Are you there?
DS: Yeah. There.
DK: Ah you’re on the end. Ok. So you’re on the right and Falgate is in the centre.
DS: That’s correct.
DK: At the back. Yeah.
DS: Yeah.
DK: So, you’ve got another photo here. That’s, that’s your ground crew as well presumably.
DS: Yeah.
DK: So, that’s Falgate there again, is it? He’s in the middle isn’t he?
DS: Yeah. Yes. That’s right.
DK: Yeah.
DS: And I think that’s me there.
DK: And that’s you there.
DS: Yeah.
DK: Third from, third from the right. So, this is one of the earlier Halifaxes with the Merlin engines.
DS: Yeah. I think it is.
DK: Yeah.
DS: Yeah. Oh, yes. It is, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Douglas Arthur Smith
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Kavanagh
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-02-19
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.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ASmithDA190219, PSmithDA1901
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:55:43 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Douglas Smith grew up in Bressingham, Norfolk. He joined the Royal Air Force in October 1940, at the age of nineteen, and trained as a wireless operator. He joined a crew on Wellingtons at No 10 Operational Training Unit, RAF Abingdon, before converting to Halifaxes at 1658 Conversion Unit, RAF Riccall. In April 1943, the crew joined 76 Squadron, based at RAF Linton on Ouse. He describes their first operation to Germany, the danger of searchlights, and visiting Betty’s Bar in York during their downtime. He recounts a trauma that occurred on the 28th of September 1943, when his crew, piloted by Sergeant Hickman, was shot down on an operation to Hannover, while Smith was grounded due to tonsillitis. He continued operations by filling in for crews lacking a wireless operator, including two trips in support of D-Day, and one emergency landing back at base with a full bomb load. In July 1944, Smith moved to 158 Squadron, RAF Lisset, and completed operations to Le Havre, Dusseldorf, and Kiel. He describes his role as the wireless operator, releasing Window through a chute, and an operation to Stuttgart where the crew shot down two night fighters. After completing thirty-three operations, he instructed at 19 Operational Training Unit, RAF Kinloss, before working as a transport officer at RAF Shepherds Grove until demobilisation.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tilly Foster
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Great Britain
England--Oxfordshire
England--Suffolk
England--York
England--Yorkshire
Scotland--Moray
France
France--Le Havre
Germany
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Stuttgart
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
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-10
1943-04-16
1943-09-28
1944-07
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
10 OTU
158 Squadron
1658 HCU
19 OTU
76 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Abingdon
RAF Kinloss
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Lissett
RAF Riccall
RAF Shepherds Grove
searchlight
shot down
training
Wellington
Window
wireless operator
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/759/17787/LCruickshankG629128v1.1.pdf
011eb1ad0e5b538cd89b441d744b437a
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
Cruickshank, Gordon
G Cruickshank
Description
An account of the resource
76 items. Concerns the life and wartime career of Flight Lieutenant Gordon Cruickshank DFM who joined the Royal Air Force in 1938. After training as an air gunner he flew 52 operations on Manchester and Lancaster with 50, 560 and 44 Squadrons. Collection consists of a 1956 memoir with original photographs donated separately, a memoir of his life on squadron from December 1941, his logbooks. a further notebook with memoir, playing cards annotated with his operations, official documents, lucky mascots, medals and badges, dog tags, memorabilia, crew procedures, as well as photographs of aircraft, targets and people.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Linda Hinman and catalogued by Nigel Huckins
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-04-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cruickshank, G
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
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
Gordon Cruickshank's observers and air gunners flying log book. One
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LCruickshankG629128v1
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
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
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Air observers and air gunner’s flying log book for Gordon Cruickshank covering the period from 30 May 1941 to 19 July 1957. Detailing his flying training and operations flown and post war flying. He was stationed at RAF Evanton (8 AGS), RAF Stanton Harcourt (10 OTU), 50 Squadron (RAF Swinderby and RAF Skellingthorpe), 11 OTU (RAF Westcott), 44 Squadron (RAF Dunholme Lodge and RAF Spilsby), 630 Squadron (RAF East Kirkby), 17 OTU (RAF Silverstone) 49 and 100 Squadrons (RAF Waddington), 7 Squadron (RAF Upwood) and 199 Squadron (RAF Hemswell). Aircraft flown in were Botha, Whitley, Manchester, Lancaster, Wellington and Lincoln. He flew a total of 30 night-time operations and one daylight operation with 50 Squadron, targets were St Nazaire, Rostock, Duisburg, Wilhemshaven, Essen, Wismar, Kiel, Le Creusot and Genoa. He also flew four night-time operations with 44 Squadron, targets Kassel, Dusseldorf, and Berlin and 18 night-time operations with 630 Sqn to Berlin, Schweinfurt, Augsburg, Stuttgart, Clermont-Ferrand, Frankfurt, Berlin, Essen, Nurnburg, Toulouse, Danzig, Paris, Brunswick and Munich. Total 53 operations. His pilots on operations were Flying Officer Goldsmith DFC, Squadron Leader Calvert DFC, Wing Commander Russell DFC, Flying Officer Fynn and Flight Lieutenant Weller.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Terry Hancock
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Poland
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Northamptonshire
England--Oxfordshire
France--Clermont-Ferrand
France--Le Creusot
France--Paris
France--Saint-Nazaire
France--Toulouse
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Munich
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Germany--Wismar
Italy--Genoa
Poland--Gdańsk
Scotland--Ross and Cromarty
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1957
1942-04-15
1942-04-16
1942-04-19
1942-04-20
1942-04-22
1942-04-23
1942-04-24
1942-04-25
1942-07-25
1942-07-26
1942-07-27
1942-07-31
1942-08-01
1942-08-03
1942-08-04
1942-08-06
1942-08-07
1942-08-09
1942-08-10
1942-08-24
1942-08-25
1942-08-27
1942-08-28
1942-08-29
1942-09-01
1942-09-02
1942-09-03
1942-09-04
1942-09-05
1942-09-06
1942-09-07
1942-09-08
1942-09-09
1942-09-10
1942-09-11
1942-09-13
1942-09-14
1942-09-15
1942-09-16
1942-09-17
1942-09-23
1942-09-24
1942-10-12
1942-10-13
1942-10-14
1942-10-17
1942-10-22
1942-10-23
1942-10-24
1942-11-06
1942-11-07
1942-11-08
1942-11-09
1942-11-10
1943-10-22
1943-11-03
1943-11-04
1943-11-18
1943-11-19
1943-11-26
1943-11-27
1944-01-27
1944-01-28
1944-02-24
1944-02-25
1944-03-01
1944-03-02
1944-03-10
1944-03-11
1944-03-15
1944-03-16
1944-03-19
1944-03-20
1944-03-22
1944-03-23
1944-03-24
1944-03-25
1944-03-26
1944-03-27
1944-03-30
1944-03-31
1944-04-05
1944-04-06
1944-04-09
1944-04-10
1944-04-20
1944-04-21
1944-04-22
1944-04-23
1944-04-24
1944-04-25
1944-04-26
1944-04-27
1944-04-29
1944-04-30
10 OTU
100 Squadron
11 OTU
17 OTU
199 Squadron
44 Squadron
49 Squadron
50 Squadron
630 Squadron
7 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
bombing of Toulouse (5/6 April 1944)
Botha
Lancaster
Lincoln
Manchester
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Evanton
RAF Hemswell
RAF Silverstone
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Spilsby
RAF Stanton Harcourt
RAF Swinderby
RAF Upwood
RAF Waddington
RAF Westcott
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/759/17788/LCruickshankG629128v2.1.pdf
a75bdc43555d2ac4328ddd3906ece5a9
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
Cruickshank, Gordon
G Cruickshank
Description
An account of the resource
76 items. Concerns the life and wartime career of Flight Lieutenant Gordon Cruickshank DFM who joined the Royal Air Force in 1938. After training as an air gunner he flew 52 operations on Manchester and Lancaster with 50, 560 and 44 Squadrons. Collection consists of a 1956 memoir with original photographs donated separately, a memoir of his life on squadron from December 1941, his logbooks. a further notebook with memoir, playing cards annotated with his operations, official documents, lucky mascots, medals and badges, dog tags, memorabilia, crew procedures, as well as photographs of aircraft, targets and people.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Linda Hinman and catalogued by Nigel Huckins
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-04-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cruickshank, G
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
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
Gordon Cruickshank's flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners and flight engineers. Two
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LCruickshankG629128v2
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
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
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Duplicate copy of air observers and air gunner’s flying log book for Gordon Cruickshank covering the period from 30 May 1941 to 19 July 1957. Detailing his flying training and operations flown and post war flying. He was stationed at RAF Evanton (8 AGS), RAF Stanton Harcourt (10 OTU), 50 Squadron (RAF Swinderby and RAF Skellingthorpe), 11 OTU (RAF Westcott), 44 Squadron (RAF Dunholme Lodge and RAF Spilsby), 630 Squadron (RAF East Kirkby), 17 OTU (RAF Silverstone) 49 and 100 Squadrons (RAF Waddington), 7 Squadron (RAF Upwood) and 199 Squadron (RAF Hemswell). Aircraft flown in were Botha, Whitley, Manchester, Lancaster, Wellington and Lincoln. He flew a total of 30 night-time operations and one daylight operation with 50 Squadron, targets were St Nazaire, Rostock, Duisburg, Wilhemshaven, Essen, Wismar, Kiel, Le Creusot and Genoa. He also flew four night-time operations with 44 Squadron, targets Kassel, Dusseldorf, and Berlin and 18 night-time operations with 630 Sqn to Berlin, Schweinfurt, Augsburg, Stuttgart, Clermont-Ferrand, Frankfurt, Berlin, Essen, Nurnburg, Toulouse, Danzig, Paris, Brunswick and Munich. Total 53 operations. His pilots on operations were Flying Officer Goldsmith, Squadron Leader Calvert DFC, Wing Commander Russell DFC, Flying Officer Flynn and Flight Lieutenant Weller.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Poland
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Northamptonshire
England--Oxfordshire
France--Clermont-Ferrand
France--Le Creusot
France--Paris
France--Saint-Nazaire
France--Toulouse
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Munich
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Germany--Wismar
Italy--Genoa
Poland--Gdańsk
Scotland--Ross and Cromarty
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
1944
1944-03-30
1944-03-31
1944-04-05
1944-04-06
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1957
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Terry Hancock
10 OTU
100 Squadron
11 OTU
17 OTU
199 Squadron
44 Squadron
49 Squadron
50 Squadron
630 Squadron
7 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
bombing of Toulouse (5/6 April 1944)
Botha
Lancaster
Lincoln
Manchester
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Evanton
RAF Hemswell
RAF Silverstone
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Spilsby
RAF Stanton Harcourt
RAF Swinderby
RAF Upwood
RAF Waddington
RAF Westcott
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/699/17882/LBeardKC1061851v1.1.pdf
4ad3e52cdaa59c602532ab68a2b155c3
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
Beard, Ken
Ken C Beard
K C Beard
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. An oral history with Ken Beard (b. 1921, 1061851 Royal Air Force), his air gunners log book, and photographs of him, his wedding and his crew. He flew 31 operations as an air gunner on Halifax with 10 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Ken Beard and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-08-07
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Beard, KC
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
Ken Beard’s flying log book for air gunners
Description
An account of the resource
Flying log book for air gunner’s for Ken Beard, covering the period from 5 March 1943 to 17 June 1945. Detailing his flying training operations flown and instructor duties. He was stationed at RAF Pembrey, RAF Ricall, RAF Melbourne, RAF Lossiemouth, RAF Stanton Harcourt and RAF Manby. Aircraft flown in were, Blenheim, Wellington, Halifax and Whitley. He flew a total of 31 operations with 10 squadron. Targets were, Peenemunde, Leverkusen, Berlin, Nuremberg, Rheydt, Baltic Sea, Meulan-les-Mureaux, Essen, Lille, Karlsruhe, Malines, Mantes Gassincourt, Lens, Aachen, Mont Fleuris and St Lo. His pilot on operations was Squadron Leader Kennedy.
This item was provided, in digital form, by a third-party organisation which used technical specifications and operational protocols that may differ from those used by the IBCC Digital Archive.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LBeardKC1061851v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
France
Germany
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Belgium--Mechelen
England--Lincolnshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Yorkshire
France--Lens
France--Les Mureaux
France--Lille
France--Mantes-la-Jolie
France--Paris
France--Saint-Lô
Germany--Aachen
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Essen
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Leverkusen
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Peenemünde
Germany--Rheydt
Scotland--Lossiemouth
Wales--Carmarthenshire
England--Northamptonshire
England--Berkshire
Scotland--Moray
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
1943-08-17
1943-08-18
1943-08-22
1943-08-23
1943-08-24
1943-08-27
1943-08-28
1943-08-31
1943-09-01
1944-02-03
1944-02-04
1944-02-05
1944-02-15
1944-02-22
1944-03-03
1944-03-24
1944-03-26
1944-03-27
1944-03-30
1944-03-31
1944-04-09
1944-04-10
1944-04-24
1944-04-25
1944-04-26
1944-04-27
1944-04-28
1944-05-01
1944-05-02
1944-05-07
1944-05-10
1944-05-11
1944-05-22
1944-05-23
1944-05-24
1944-05-25
1944-06-03
1944-06-04
1944-06-06
1944-06-07
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
10 OTU
10 Squadron
1658 HCU
17 OTU
20 OTU
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Blenheim
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
Cook’s tour
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
mine laying
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Abingdon
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Manby
RAF Melbourne
RAF Pembrey
RAF Riccall
RAF Silverstone
RAF Stanton Harcourt
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1343/22172/BTyrieJSBTyrieJSBv1.2.pdf
a3c3d60d1ceae9d6dcc5d3d3cbdad658
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
Tyrie, Jim
Tyrie, JSB
Description
An account of the resource
34 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Jim Tyrie (1919 - 1993, 87636 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, photographs, correspondence and prisoner of war log as well as a photograph album. He flew operations as a pilot with 77 Squadron before being shot down in April 1941.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Brian Taylor 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
2019-06-01
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
Tyrie, JSB
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[centred] JIM TYRIE [/centred]
James Sedric Bruce [Tyrie] - b. Montrose Scotland 18.10.19
Educated Secondary School Dundee and took Scotts Higher Leaving Certificate in German
Joined General Accident Insurance Co. Dundee
RAFVR 1938 as A/C 2 but automatic promotion to Acting Sgt. to learn to fly.
Called up 1.9.1939, No 3 IPW Hastings Oct 1939.
No 1 EFTS May 1940 (Tiger Moths)
Cranwell as Officer Cadet July-Oct 1940 (Oxfords)
Commissioned P/O Oct 1940, posted No 10 OTU Abingdon.
Joined 77 Sq. Topcliffe (Whitleys, 4 Group Bomber Cmd.) as 2nd pilot.
Flew 7 Ops.
10.4.41 Target Railway Station in E.Berlin
Sgt Lee 1st pilot
F/Lt. Tyrie 2nd pilot
Sgt. Young Observer
Sgt. Budd Wireless Operator
Sgt Hull Rear Gunner
No of A/C Taking Part 98
No of A/C Lost 10
Hit by flak over target & set on fire
Famous Last Words:
Sgt. Budd "Do you know the Port Engine is on fire"
Sgt. Young wounded in leg, headed N for Sweden but forced to abandon A/C 15 mins later.
[page break]
Bailed out and landed in garden of house in Bernau
Followed down by searchlights and caught immediately on landing.
Taken to Police Station where midst [sic] much noise and chaos, Young's leg was bandaged by elderly VAD Lady. Photographed by all and sundry
Taken to Flak School cells, later interrogated and spent night in cell.
Next morning complained to visiting Luftwaffe officer of poor breakfast - rewarded by white bread, jam and some jellied meat. - also permitted to visit freely rest of crew.
About 10 am proceeded in wagon to Berlin, Anhalter Rly station, where caught train for Frankfurt - On - Main and Dulag Luft - arrived about midnight at cooler.
Interrogated and searched nex [sic] morning and allowed into main camp in the afternoon.
11.4.41 Telegram to J.B.Tyrie Esq. 1 Robson St Dundee - "your son reported missing as result of air operations on 10.4.41 [sic]
2.5.41 Telegram - now prisoner of war. - reported 'missing' in local press which stated he was in big raid on Kiel at beginning of week
17.4.41 - 9.4.42 Stalag Luft 1 Barth
"Among the most dedicated tunnellers [sic] of the early inmates at Barth was Jim Tyrie [sic]
[page break]
Jim Tyrie's tunnelling [sic] efforts also included one from his own block. Besides digging he copied maps, planned prospective escape routes and brushed up his German - He tried whenever he could to chat to the guards to perfect his German and exploit any opportunities conversation might present. Information on gate-passes and travel permits would be passed on via the escape cttee [sic] to Mike Bussey, a brilliant artist who was one of the first officers at Barth to apply his skills to forgery.
Towards the end of March '42 after a camp wide search of Stalag Luft 1 by SS and Gestapo it was announced that officers would start leaving for a new camp in 3 days time
The move was in 3 groups
1st group Friday 20th March '42
2nd group Sat. 7th April 42
3rd group, incl. Jim Tyrie moved Tues 10th April
11.4.42 - 20.3.43 Stalag Luft 3 (East Camp) SAGAN
30.3.43 - 29.2.44 Stalag Luft 3 (North Camp) SAGAN
29.2.44 - 28.1.45 Stalag Luft 3 (Belaria) SAGAN
28.1.45 - 4.2.45 By sledge, foot and cattle truck via Kunau, Gross Selten, [?] Birkenstedt, Raustein [?] Spremberg to Stalag 3A, Luckenwalde.
4.2.45 - 12.4.45 Stalag 3A (OFlag) Luckenwalde
12.4.45 - 14.4.45 in Cattle Trucks in Luckenwalde Goods Sation (intended destination ST.7A Moosberg nr Munich.[sic]
[page break]
14.4.45 Stalag 3A (Luckenwalde)
21.4.45 Germans evacuate camp.
22.4.45 (0603 hrs) Russian Tanks and Motorized Infantry Arrive
20.5.45 Proceed by Russian Transport to Elbe, where met by American Trucks and go to Halle, arriving 10 pm
25.5.45 By Air in DC3's to Nivelles (Brussels) arriving 2 pm - By lorry to Brussels
26.5.45 By lorry to Schaacht, by air in Lanc to Dunsford, by train to Cosford (106PRC)
27.5.45 By train to Dundee.
10.4.41 to 26.5.45 - 4 years 1 month 16 days
Worked tirelessly for SSAFA and Royal British Legion, organising The Poppy Appeal - organised a trip for volunteers to visit Poppy factory and I spent many hours with him counting the poppy collections in Shenfield Essex.
A real gentleman and a man I was proud to know.
[page break]
About middle of January 1945 a wager of One D-Bar was made between
Flight Lieutenant W H Culling [?] and
Flight Lieutenant J S B Tyrie
- the latter stating that the war would not be over by 15th of March 1945
- it has been decided mutually that in view of the present lack of parcels, the wager shall be
One good dinner in London - to be consumed when convenient to both parties - Expenses to be paid by loser who will present winner with a Half a [sic] pound of milk chocolate, to be consumed the same evening.
Both signed the above 26th Feb 1945 Luckenwalde.
2nd March '45 - autographed photo of Max Schmelling [?] obtained during his visit to Luckenwalde
- Reason of visit unknown, perhaps connected with visit of unknown SS Obergruppenführer - air raid alarm that morning for 2 hrs.
[page break]
Post-war. Stayed on in RAF
Joined 90 Squadron flying Avro Lincolns as F/L and short time as acting Sq cdr. [?]
Still as A/S/L four years in Germany (3 in Berlin) as interpreter with Foreign Office 1948-52.
Met Glemnitz at Gatow [?]
Then back to F/L.
Full medical in London revealed failing eyesight, so changed to Air Traffic Control at RAF Workshop [sic]
1953-56, a Meteor FTS.
Air Traffic Control Germany 1956-58, then Chivenor, North Devon.
RAF Shawberry as Ground Control Approach/Radar Instructor.
Cyprus, Akrotiti, Nikosea: [sic] led evacuation of families from Limmasol [sic] during Turkish Insurgence 1964.
Then RAF Walton, I/C joint military/civilian installation of area radar control.
Bishops Court NI.
Retd 1969 Joined Barclays Bank and spent fifteen years as First Cashier in various branches
Retd. 1984.
Jim Tyrie died in April 1993.
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
Jim Tyrie
Description
An account of the resource
A biography of Jim Tyrie. He was called up on 1st September 1939 and learned to fly on Tiger Moths. He was shot down on his 7th operation over Berlin. In POW camp he was described as a dedicated tunneller. There is a list of the camps he was kept in with dates and details of their transport. After the war he stayed in the RAF until his eyesight meant he could no longer fly. He was transferred to air traffic control.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Six handwritten sheets
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BTyrieJSBTyrieJSBv1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Hastings
Germany--Barth
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Luckenwalde
Belgium--Nivelles
Belgium--Brussels
Cyprus--Limassol
Poland--Żagań
Scotland--Dundee
Poland--Żagań
Germany--Bernau (Brandenburg)
Belgium
Cyprus
England--Sussex
Cyprus--Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Joy Reynard
David Bloomfield
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1942
1945
10 OTU
4 Group
77 Squadron
90 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bale out
C-47
Dulag Luft
escaping
Flying Training School
Lancaster
Lincoln
Meteor
missing in action
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Abingdon
RAF Bishops Court
RAF Chivenor
RAF Cranwell
RAF Shawbury
RAF Topcliffe
RAF Watton
RAF Worksop
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 1
Stalag Luft 3
Tiger Moth
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1343/22177/LTyrieJSB87636v1.1.pdf
2593c27faef4f15089ccae84e95bc4f2
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
Tyrie, Jim
Tyrie, JSB
Description
An account of the resource
34 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Jim Tyrie (1919 - 1993, 87636 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, photographs, correspondence and prisoner of war log as well as a photograph album. He flew operations as a pilot with 77 Squadron before being shot down in April 1941.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Brian Taylor 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
2019-06-01
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
Tyrie, JSB
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
Jim Tyrie's flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Flying log book for J S B Tyrie covering the period from 1 July 1939 to 9 August 1959. Detailing his flying training and operations flown Following which he was shot down 9 April 1941 and became a prisoner of war. Returning to flying duties 25 May 1945 to 27 October 1964 detailing his duties as instructor and with 90 squadron. Also included his flying in various aircraft including his airline flying. He was stationed at RAF Perth, RAF Hatfield, RAF Cranwell, RAF Abingdon, RAF Stanton Harcourt, RAF Topcliffe, RAF Wheaton Aston, RAF Seighford, RAF Perton, RAF Moreton, RAF Finningly, RAF Lindholme, RAF Wyton, RAF Shallufa, RAF Khormakser, RAF Hendon, RAF Gatow, RAF Shawbury, RAF Worksop, RAF Wunstorf, RAF Bruugen, RAF Chivenor, RAF Akrotiri, RAF Nicosia, RAF Sopley, RAF Watton and RAF Bishops Court. Aircraft flown in were, Tiger Moth, Oxford, Whitley, Wellington, Dakota, Lancaster, Vengeance, Anson, Lincoln, Proctor, York, Viking, Valetta, Auster, Meteor, Varsity, Prentice, Canberra, Vampire, Whirlwind, Hunter, Shackleton, Viscount, Brittania and Hastings. He flew 7 operations with 77 squadron. Targets were St Nazaire, Hamburg, Berlin, Brest and Kiel. His first or second pilots on operations were Pilot Officer Bagnall and Sergeant Lee.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LTyrieJSB87636v1
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Cyprus
Cyprus--Nicosia
Egypt
Egypt--Suez Canal
France
France--Brest
France--Saint-Nazaire
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Niederkrüchten
Germany--Wunstorf
Great Britain
England--Berkshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Devon
England--Gloucestershire
England--Hampshire
England--Hertfordshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--London
England--Norfolk
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Shropshire
England--Staffordshire
England--West Midlands
England--Yorkshire
Northern Ireland--Down (County)
Scotland--Perth
Yemen (Republic)
Yemen (Republic)--Aden
North Africa
Great Britain
Cyprus--Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1941-03-10
1941-03-11
1941-03-12
1941-03-13
1941-03-14
1941-03-23
1941-03-24
1941-04-03
1941-04-04
1941-04-07
1941-04-08
1941-04-09
10 OTU
21 OTU
77 Squadron
90 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
bombing
C-47
Flying Training School
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lincoln
Meteor
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
prisoner of war
Proctor
RAF Abingdon
RAF Bishops Court
RAF Chivenor
RAF Cranwell
RAF Finningley
RAF Hatfield
RAF Hendon
RAF Khormakser
RAF Lindholme
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Seighford
RAF Shallufa
RAF Shawbury
RAF Stanton Harcourt
RAF Topcliffe
RAF Watton
RAF Worksop
RAF Wyton
Shackleton
shot down
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
Whitley
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/455/24507/LLaneRJJ5795v10001.2.pdf
c6aa909ea3a27fba7908ba1635d89d84
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
Cothliff, Ken
Ken Cothliff
K Cothliff
Description
An account of the resource
486 items in 12 sub-collections. The collection concerns Ken Cothliff's research on 6 Group Bomber Command and contains an interview with Adolf Galland, documents and photographs. Sub-collections include information on 427 Squadron, 429 Squadrons, Gerry Philbin, Jim Moffat, Reg Lane, Robert Mitchell, Steve Puskas and logs from RAF Tholthorpe.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Ken Cothliff and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-20
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
Cothliff, K
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
Reg Lane’s Royal Canadian Air Force pilot’s flying log book
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
R J Lane’s RCAF Pilot’s Flying Log Book from 10th February 1941 to 2nd September 1956, detailing his training, operations and post war duties as a pilot. No flying is recorded in 1945, 1946, 1947, 1953, 1954 or 1955.
He was stationed at RCAF Station Sea Island (No. 8 Elementary Flying Training School), RCAF Station Dauphin (No. 10 Service Flying Training School), RAF Abingdon (No. 10 OTU), RAF Linton on Ouse (35 Squadron), RAF Driffield (1502 Beam Approach Training Flight), RAF Gransden Lodge (Path Finder Force Navigation Training Unit, 405 Squadron), RCAF Station Rockliffe (Air Force HQ) and RCAF Station Edmonton.
Aircraft in which flown: Tiger Moth, Harvard, Whitley III, Whitley IV, Halifax I, Halifax II, Oxford, Lancaster I, Lancaster III, Lancaster VI, Mosquito IV, Liberator I. Expeditor, Beechcraft, B-29, Goose, North Star, Dakota III, Dakota IV and Mitchell.
Records a total of 64 operations (63 night, one day). Targets in Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy and Norway were: Berlin, Bonn, Bremen, Brest, Caen, Cologne, Duisburg, Dusseldorf, Emden, Essen, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Kiel, Magdeburg, Mannheim, Milan, Munich, Nuremberg, Nurnberg, Osnabruck, Paris, Pilsen, Saarbruck, Schweinfurt, Stuttgart, Trondheim, Turin, Vegesack and Warnemunde. His first or second pilots on operations were Sergeant Williams, Sergeant Hammond, Pilot Officer Field, Pilot Officer Dobson, Sergeant Murray and Sergeant John. Records four flights with Flight Lieutenant G. L. Cheshire in October 1941. Post war flights include “FIRST RCAF ROUND - THE - WORLD FLIGHT” January and February 1950.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Leitch
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LLaneRJJ5795v10001
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 Canadian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Czech Republic
France
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Norway
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Italy--Po River Valley
Alberta--Edmonton
British Columbia--Vancouver
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Yorkshire
Manitoba--Dauphin
Ontario--Ottawa
Czech Republic--Plzeň
France--Brest
France--Caen
France--Paris
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bonn
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Emden (Lower Saxony)
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Munich
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Saarbrücken
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Stuttgart
Italy--Milan
Italy--Turin
Norway--Trondheim
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Rostock
Ontario
Alberta
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Manitoba
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1956
1941-11-07
1941-11-08
1941-11-09
1941-11-10
1941-12-11
1941-12-12
1941-12-18
1941-12-30
1942-03-03
1942-03-04
1942-03-08
1942-03-09
1942-03-13
1942-03-14
1942-03-30
1942-03-31
1942-04-27
1942-04-28
1942-05-04
1942-05-05
1942-05-08
1942-05-09
1942-05-19
1942-05-20
1942-05-30
1942-05-31
1942-06-01
1942-06-02
1942-06-03
1942-06-16
1942-06-17
1942-06-19
1942-06-20
1942-06-21
1942-06-22
1942-06-23
1942-06-25
1942-06-26
1942-06-29
1942-06-30
1942-07-02
1942-07-03
1942-07-19
1942-07-20
1942-07-21
1942-07-22
1942-07-23
1942-07-24
1942-07-25
1942-07-26
1942-07-27
1942-07-30
1942-07-31
1942-08-01
1942-10-13
1942-10-14
1942-10-15
1942-10-16
1942-10-24
1942-10-25
1942-11-09
1942-11-10
1942-11-22
1942-11-23
1942-12-31
1943-01-01
1943-02-03
1943-02-04
1943-02-05
1943-02-14
1943-02-15
1943-02-25
1943-02-26
1943-02-27
1943-03-01
1943-03-02
1943-03-03
1943-03-04
1943-03-08
1943-03-09
1943-03-10
1943-03-11
1943-03-12
1943-03-27
1943-03-28
1943-03-29
1943-03-30
1943-04-04
1943-04-05
1943-04-14
1943-04-15
1943-04-16
1943-04-17
1943-11-17
1943-11-18
1943-12-16
1943-12-17
1943-12-20
1943-12-21
1944-01-21
1944-01-22
1944-02-15
1944-02-16
1944-02-24
1944-02-25
1944-03-24
1944-03-15
1944-04-18
1944-04-19
1944-04-20
1944-04-21
1944-04-26
1944-04-27
1944-07-18
10 OTU
35 Squadron
405 Squadron
aircrew
B-24
B-25
B-29
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
bombing of the Juvisy, Noisy-le-Sec and Le Bourget railways (18/19 April 1944)
C-47
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
Flying Training School
Halifax
Halifax Mk 1
Halifax Mk 2
Harvard
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
Master Bomber
Mosquito
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
pilot
RAF Abingdon
RAF Driffield
RAF Gransden Lodge
RAF Linton on Ouse
tactical support for Normandy troops
Tiger Moth
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/305/24579/LMillerRB423155v1.2.pdf
9f14a06741bef06dd5b293dcaa776f9c
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
Miller, Robert
Robert Bruce Miller
Robert B Miller
Robert Miller
R B Miller
R Miller
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Robert Bruce Miller (1924 - 2021, 423155 Royal Australian Air Force) a photograph and his log book. He flew operations as a navigator with 51 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Robert Miller and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-04-30
2017-01-29
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
Miller, RB
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Robert Miller’s observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book for R B Miller, navigator, covering the period from 15 November 1942 to 10 April 1945. Detailing his flying training, operations flown and instructor duties. He was stationed at RCAF Winnipeg, RAF Clyffe Pypard, RAF West Freugh, RAF Abingdon, RAF Marston Moor, RAF Snaith, RAF Langar and RAF Woolfox Lodge. Aircraft flown in were Anson, Tiger Moth, Whitley, Halifax and Lancaster. He flew a total of 41 operations with 51 Squadron, 21 daylight and 20 night. His pilot on operations was Warrant Office Faulkner. Targets were Morsalines, Lens, Hasselt, Orleans, Aachen, Bourg Leopold, Trappes, Paris, Amiens, Douai, Foulliard, Martin St L’Hortier, Siracourt, Oisement, Mimoyecques, Wizernes, Villers Bocage, Croix D’Alle, Les Catalliers, Nucourt, Evrieville, Bottrop, Kiel, Foret de Nieppe, Tracey Bocage, Bois de Cassan, Nieppe, Hazebrouck, May-sur-Orne, Foret de Mormal, Brest, Hamburg, Lumbres, Venlo, Nordstern, Wilhelmshaven, Boulogne and Neuss.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Cara Walmsley
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LMillerRB423155v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
Canada
France
Great Britain
Germany
Netherlands
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Belgium--Hasselt
Belgium--Leopoldsburg
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Rutland
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
France--Amiens
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
France--Brest
France--Caen
France--Cherbourg
France--Douai
France--Hazebrouck
France--Lens
France--L'Isle-Adam
France--Lumbres
France--May-sur-Orne
France--Neufchâtel-en-Bray
France--Nieppe
France--Nieppe Forest
France--Nucourt
France--Oisemont (Canton)
France--Orléans
France--Pas-de-Calais
France--Paris
France--Rennes Region
France--Saint-Omer (Pas-de-Calais)
France--Villers-Bocage (Calvados)
France--Vire Region (Calvados)
Germany--Aachen
Germany--Bottrop
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Neuss
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Manitoba--Winnipeg
Netherlands--Venlo
Scotland--Wigtownshire
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
France--Morsalines
Manitoba
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1944-05-10
1944-05-12
1944-05-22
1944-05-23
1944-05-24
1944-05-25
1944-05-28
1944-05-31
1944-06-01
1944-06-11
1944-06-12
1944-06-13
1944-06-14
1944-06-15
1944-06-16
1944-06-17
1944-06-18
1944-06-22
1944-06-23
1944-06-24
1944-06-27
1944-06-28
1944-06-30
1944-07-01
1944-07-04
1944-07-06
1944-07-07
1944-07-09
1944-07-15
1944-07-16
1944-07-18
1944-07-20
1944-07-21
1944-07-23
1944-07-24
1944-07-28
1944-07-30
1944-08-03
1944-08-05
1944-08-06
1944-08-07
1944-08-08
1944-08-09
1944-08-25
1944-08-26
1944-08-27
1944-08-31
1944-09-03
1944-09-11
1944-09-14
1944-09-15
1944-09-23
1944-09-24
10 OTU
1651 HCU
1652 HCU
1669 HCU
51 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Flying Training School
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Master Bomber
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Abingdon
RAF Clyffe Pypard
RAF Langar
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Snaith
RAF West Freugh
RAF Woolfox Lodge
tactical support for Normandy troops
Tiger Moth
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/628/26384/LPollockHAJ187029v1.1.pdf
6280b95c50feb1caa971208f3a08e0d9
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
Pollock, Henry
Henry Pollock
H A J Pollock
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Pollock, HAJ
Description
An account of the resource
49 items. An oral history interview with Henry Albert James Pollock (b. 1924, 2220546, 187029 Royal Air Force) his log book, documents and photographs. Henry Pollock completed 36 operations as a rear gunner with 78 squadron from RAF Breighton. After the war, he served in the Far East.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Henry Albert James Pollock and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-10-11
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.
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
Henry Pollock’s navigator’s, air bombers and air gunner’s flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Navigator’s, air bombers and air gunner’s flying log book for H A J Pollock, air gunner, covering the period from 22 October 1943 to 20 May 1955. Detailing his flying training, operations flown and post war flying with number 3 flying training school. He was stationed at RAF Andreas, RAF Abingdon, RAF Stanton Harcourt, RAF Rufforth, RAF Breighton and RAF Feltwell. Aircraft flown in were Anson, Whitley, Martinet, Halifax, Dakota, Liberator, Prentice, Harvard, Provost and Meteor. He flew a total of 36 operations with 78 squadron, 18 Daylight and 17 night operations with 78 squadron and one with number 10 operational training unit. Targets were Compiegne, Mount Candon, Blainville, St Martin L’Hortiers, Caen, Acquet, Bottrop, Kiel, Foret du Croc, Foret du Nieppe, Prouville, Bois de Cassan, Brest, Foret du Marmal, Brunswick, Quensay, Tirlemont, Watten, Homberg-Meerbeck, Lumbres, Soesterberg, Le Havre, Kattegat, Munster, Neuss, Kleve, Duisburg, Wilhelshaven, Essen, Westkappelle and Sterkrade. His pilot on operations was Flight Lieutenant Selby.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LPollockHAJ187029v1
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
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
1946
1944-02-29
1944-06-27
1944-06-28
1944-06-29
1944-07-01
1944-07-18
1944-07-19
1944-07-20
1944-07-21
1944-07-23
1944-07-24
1944-07-25
1944-07-26
1944-07-28
1944-08-01
1944-08-03
1944-08-05
1944-08-07
1944-08-08
1944-08-09
1944-08-12
1944-08-13
1944-08-14
1944-08-15
1944-08-25
1944-08-27
1944-09-01
1944-09-03
1944-09-10
1944-09-11
1944-09-12
1944-09-15
1944-09-16
1944-09-23
1944-09-24
1944-10-04
1944-10-07
1944-10-14
1944-10-15
1944-10-23
1944-10-28
1944-10-29
1944-11-21
1944-11-22
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
France
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Atlantic Ocean--Kattegat (Baltic Sea)
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
Belgium--Tienen
England--Norfolk
England--Oxfordshire
England--Yorkshire
France--Abbeville Region
France--Brest
France--Caen Region
France--Dieppe (Arrondissement)
France--Caen
France--Compiègne
France--L'Isle-Adam
France--Le Havre
France--Locquignol
France--Lumbres
France--Manche
France--Morbecque
France--Neufchâtel-en-Bray
France--Watten
Germany--Bottrop
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Essen
Germany--Kassel Region
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Kleve (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Neuss
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Isle of Man
Netherlands--Soesterberg
Netherlands--Zeeland (Province)
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
France--Forêt du Croc
10 OTU
1663 HCU
78 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
B-24
bombing
bombing of Luftwaffe night-fighter airfields (15 August 1944)
C-47
Flying Training School
Halifax
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
Martinet
Meteor
mine laying
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Abingdon
RAF Andreas
RAF Breighton
RAF Feltwell
RAF Rufforth
RAF Stanton Harcourt
tactical support for Normandy troops
training
V-1
V-weapon
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1395/26924/LHoneyFWG915946v1.1.pdf
e1a2e65b8b1ed2ed2df97685bf41187b
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
Honey, Fred
F W G Honey
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-04-27
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
Honey, FWG
Description
An account of the resource
15 items. The collection concerns Warrant Officer Fred Honey (915946 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, documents, decorations and photographs. He flew operations as a wireless operator with 104 and 101 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Christopher Honey and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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
F W Honey’s observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book. One
Description
An account of the resource
Observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book one, for F W Honey, wireless operator, covering the period from 19 October 1940 to 4 October 1941. Detailing his flying training and operations flown. He was stationed at RAF Yatesbury, RAF Penrhos, RAF Abingdon and RAF Driffield. Aircraft flown in were Dominie, Whitley, Battle, Anson and Wellington. He flew a total of 11 night operations with 104 squadron. Targets were Kiel, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Schwerte, Bremen, Dortmund, Berlin, Boulogne and Le Havre. His pilots on operations were Squadron Leader Beare, Sergeant Forrester, Flight Lieutenant Sharp and Sergeant Benitz.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LHoneyFWG915946v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
England--Berkshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Wiltshire
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
France--Le Havre
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Schwerte
Wales--Gwynedd
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1941-05-18
1941-05-19
1941-05-27
1941-05-28
1941-06-02
1941-06-03
1941-06-13
1941-06-14
1941-06-16
1941-06-17
1941-06-18
1941-06-19
1941-07-30
1941-07-31
1941-08-07
1941-08-08
1941-08-12
1941-08-13
1941-09-11
1941-09-12
1941-09-15
1941-09-16
1941-10-01
10 OTU
104 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
Battle
bombing
Bombing and Gunnery School
Dominie
Operational Training Unit
RAF Abingdon
RAF Driffield
RAF Penrhos
RAF Yatesbury
training
Wellington
Whitley
wireless operator