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Title
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Morris, Peter
P G Morris
Description
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An oral history interview with Peter Morris (b.1925, 1813258 Royal Air Force). He flew operations with 90, 42 and 120 Squadrons.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2017-10-10
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Morris, PG
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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RP: This interview is being conducted on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Rod Pickles. The interviewee is Peter Morris. The interview is taking place at Mr Morris’ home in Collompton, Devon on the 10th of October 2017. Francis Platt is also present. Good morning, Peter. Could you start by telling us when and where you were born and what led you to joining the RAF, please?
PM: Well, I was born in East Ham in East London in the June of 1925. I lived in London throughout the Blitz and I suppose was full of bravado when the ATC started in 1941. I joined. And I decided to train as air crew. And after a couple of years in the Air Training Corps at seventeen I joined the Royal Air Force and I was accepted to train as either a pilot bomb aimer or navigator. I was called up just two weeks before my eighteenth birthday and I went initially on an education course because I left school at fourteen and I was keen to get my education better. And after that I went through the normal basic training for the RAF which was just the normal square bashing and so on. And I spent twelve hours flying on Tiger Moths to see whether I’d got the application to be a pilot. But I wasn’t too keen. And then after a lot more [pause] I then did more aptitude tests in London and it was decided that I should train as a navigator. And then I was sent to Heaton Park in Manchester which was a holding unit for air crew and I was there for nearly six months waiting for a navigation course. At the time they told us that the losses in Bomber Command were less than they were expecting. Well, as one in two got killed I wondered just how many they were expecting.
RP: Well, yes.
PM: And whilst I was there they called for volunteers to go to Hornchurch, just outside London to help repair houses damaged by the V-1 Doodlebugs and I went down there. Spent about a month repairing houses just killing time. And then we were called back to Heaton Park and then they decided they would send us, a group of us went to RAF Waterbeach to work on the bomb dump. The armourers just couldn’t cope at the time as there were twenty aircraft on the station and there were some that were doing two raids a day. And when you had to prepare all the bombs for it. So, we arrived at Waterbeach and the next day we were sent to the bomb dump and there we were shown the bombs that we had to prepare. There were four thousand pound bombs which needed a nose ring fitted because they had pressure fuses in them to help build the pressure up in the noses and the tail fin had to be fitted. And also the lugs which held the bomb on to the aircraft had to be screwed on. Then we had the thousand pounders and there you had to fit the tail units and also you had to fit, fit the fuses in the nose. The only thing we weren’t allowed to do, we weren’t allowed to put the detonators in because the detonators were very very touchy and they could go off with the warmth of your hand and so the armourers would fit the detonators. They would screw in the pistols so that was all ready. Another job we weren’t allowed to do were the long delay fuses because they had, not like the Germans, apparently they had a clockwork system. Our long defused, long delay fuses had acid and various forms of plastic rings and as the acid burned through the rings and then it let the firing pin go forward and set the bomb off. But they had an anti-handling device. You only had to turn it half a turn and it would release the trigger and the bomb went off. So we weren’t allowed to do that. The armourers had to do that. And of course the armourers put them on the aircraft. It was quite a job to think that everyone had to be hand winched up in to the aircraft. And we were there for about a month. The first day I was there we got there about 9 o’clock in the morning and I, still there 9 o’clock the following morning. We had spent all night. They brought food out to us at the bomb dump and we were just getting these bombs ready for them to get on the aircraft. And I remember sitting on a thousand pounder and I fell asleep sitting on it until someone woke me up. And then another job we had doing were packing incendiary bombs. As incendiary bombs they came originally a hundred and fifty in a canister and then they extended the canister so they could get another fifty in each side. So there were three sets of bombs in them and we had to fit another hundred and fifty incendiary bombs in these canisters. And these were small bombs. They were hexagonal shape and there was a small fire, a small pin which you had to fit so that it was kept shut by the can, by the hexagonal shape. And I remember one of the chaps, he happened to accidentally drop one and it went off. We were doing this in a hangar and he had the presence of mind to throw it out the door of the hangar. And the next thing we knew the fire brigade had arrived. They’d seen all the smoke going up —
RP: Yeah.
PM: From this incendiary bomb. But they were very touchy. We were, as I say we were there for about a month doing this and then they, we were called back to Heaton Park because they said that I’d got a navigation course and I was fortunate in many ways because the course was on the Isle of Man. At Jurby. And so I went across to the Isle of Man and qualified as a navigator there and finally qualified in May 1945 just as the VE Day had been declared. And then I went on to train on Wellingtons in preparation to go out to the Far East. And again they dropped the bomb and that stopped that. And from the Wellingtons we went on to Lancasters and I finally went, finished up on a squadron in Bomber Command. Number 90 Squadron at RAF Tuddenham in February 1946.
RP: So most of your war then was dealing with waiting for a course and then —
PM: Yes. Yes. I was, I was a good six months waiting for a navigation course.
RP: And then its VE Day and you don’t see any action.
PM: VE day. They didn’t know what to do with us when we finally qualified and we were sent home on indefinite leave and I had about six weeks at home. And then I got a telegram telling me to report to Number 26 Operational Training Unit at RAF Wing near Leighton Buzzard. And then that was on Wellingtons. And from there, as I say, through to Lancasters.
RP: So when, when you sort of realised that, you know, after the VJ day.
PM: Yeah.
RP: Were you, were you feeling relieved or disappointed? Can you remember?
PM: A bit of both. You obviously at that time you didn’t really know what it was like to go on ops and you always thought that’s what you joined for but at the same time you were relieved that you hadn’t have to go.
RP: Yeah. But did you, when you were at Waterbeach did you meet any of the air crew? Did you get to know any?
PM: No.
RP: You weren’t —
PM: No.
RP: In touch with any of them.
PM: No. No. I think they deliberately kept us out of the way of air crew because they knew what was happening and we didn’t.
RP: So, so only a month. You didn’t feel inclined to become an armourer then.
PM: Oh, no. No.
RP: Seen what they were doing.
PM: No. I wanted to be a navigator.
RP: So you qualified as a navigator. It’s now 1946.
PM: Yeah.
RP: So what happens then?
PM: Then in 1946 they brought out a scheme where you could sign on for three years in the RAF and four years Reserve and they’d give you a hundred pounds for doing it which was a lot of money in those days. And I decided I would sign on and so I signed on for the three years and four Reserve and I remained on the squadron. And then there was trouble out in Yugoslavia and we were sent as an advance party out to Malta to be prepared for going bombing Yugoslavia as they’d attacked one of our ships and also attacked an aircraft I believe. And we spent ten days there and then the whole thing fizzled out and we flew back home again. Then the squadron moved to RAF Wyton which was a permanent station whereas Tuddenham was a wartime base and we re-equipped with Lincoln aircraft. And whilst on Lincolns we had the job of testing the new auto pilot. And one of the jobs that we had was to test it to see how it went and operated under bumpy conditions and low level. At that time everybody’s gradually getting demobbed and there were only two navigators on the squadron at one time, myself and the nav leader. And so anything that happened one of us had to go along. And the navi didn’t want to go on this particular trip so I went along and they said, well we went to the Met Office and, ‘Where can we find bumpy conditions at low level?’ They said, ’How about the Nile Valley?’ And sort of tongue in cheek we said, ‘Great. We’ll apply for it,’ and they accepted. And so we then, we flew out to the Canal Zone in the Middle East and to start with we used the autopilot as the bomb aimer had a control in the bomb aimer’s position for doing bombing runs. We did some bombing runs in the desert there. And then we flew low level along the Nile up to Khartoum. So around about fifty to a hundred feet mostly, up along the Nile with the autopilot in all the way. And then from Khartoum we flew to Nairobi and again at low level. Not quite so low because it was mainly jungle we were flying over. Whilst at Nairobi it was Battle of Britain Day and they asked us if we would do an air display for them which we were quite happy to do. We did that and then again flew back the way we came out and back to RAF Wyton. I remained on the squadron then until, it must have been about the end of 1948. ’47. And one of the other navigators on the squadron had been posted to RAF Coningsby as an instructor on Mosquitoes. And they wanted another instructor there because I had done an instructor’s course when I signed on. They wanted people to be instructors and he volunteered me against my will to go on to Coningsby to fly on Mosquitoes. And I turned up at Coningsby and our job there was to train the navigators in using GH which was a blind bombing radar device. Of course, we couldn’t show them in the aircraft because it only, only held two people. So we had an Anson Mark 19 fitted out with all the gear on it and we trained them on that. But I wasn’t too happy flying in Mosquitoes. You didn’t have a navigation table. You had a piece of board on your knees. Your chart was pinned on it with drawing pins and all your instruments were on pieces of string all around because if you dropped it you’d never find it again. I preferred the heavies. And the nav leader there said, ‘Well, you’re not happy on these are you?’ I said, ‘No. I’d rather go back to heavies.’ They then posted me to RAF Lindholme to do a course to go back on to them again. And when they found out I was a qualified instructor they were one short and they said, ‘Will you remain as an instructor on navigation?’ Which I was quite happy to do. And so there I was training people to use H2S which was a radar which showed a picture of the ground underneath you. It was very primitive compared with what there is now but we were doing that. And [pause] and I remained there until nearly 1950. And towards the end of that time the wing commander flying called me in and said was I interested in taking a commission? And I said, well yes I was. I’d got nothing to lost. And I filled all my papers in and waited and waited. Nothing happened. The wing commander called me into his office. He said, ‘Very sorry. Your application’s been lost.’
RP: Dear me.
PM: ‘Will you fill them in again?’ Which I did. I filled them in and waited, and waited and waited. Nothing happened. And again he said, ‘We’re awfully sorry,’ he said, ‘But they’ve been lost again.’ So I filled in a third lot and again I waited and waited. I was getting a bit upset now because to start with I had now finished my three years and I was on no contract whatsoever with the Air Force to remain in.
RP: And what rank were you at this time?
PM: At that time we were, our ranks had changed. We had air crew ranks.
RP: Yeah.
PM: And we were called navigator 2 which was the equivalent of a sergeant.
RP: Oh right. So here you are. It’s your third application. Does it go through?
PM: It was the third application. And at the same time I’d applied to sign on to do twenty two years in the RAF.
RP: Right.
PM: And again, I went and he said, ‘It’s been lost again.’ Well, I was getting a bit cross now and I said, ‘Sir, you can stick your commission. I will sign on ‘til I, to do twenty two.’ And he more or less agreed with it. We left it at that. And I then applied to do an advanced navigation course and I was accepted. And I went to RAF Shawbury and did the advanced navigation course. It was the most concentrated course I’ve ever done in my life, I think. In six weeks we went from basic algebra to spherical trigonometry and your head was absolutely buzzing. You had to learn about every piece of equipment you had in the aircraft. Not how to use it but how it was made and how it operated. And that took us about three months and then I was posted to RAF Swinderby as an instructor at an Advanced Flying Unit and then back on to Wellingtons again. And while I was in Lincoln I met my old nav leader who was at Scampton and he said, ‘They found your applications. They were all in the station commander’s office when it was the station commander’s home amongst newspapers when he was posted. And they found they were all there.’ Which made me a bit upset.
RP: Yeah. So they couldn’t, couldn’t initiate it from there then?
PM: No. No. So, I remained at Swinderby for, was it two, two years because that was the average time you stayed at any unit. And from there I was posted on to a ground course. Ground crew out in Germany to be at a fighter plotting unit. And when I got there the first thing they said to me, you know, ‘Well, have you trained on this?’ I said, ‘I haven’t.’ They said, ‘Well, you’re no good to us.’ So they sent me to RAF Oldenburg where they had a small mobile radar unit with a mobile plotting table and quite honestly it was a doddle because as a navigator you knew all the maps and so on. It was just a case of sitting at a table watching airmen pushing little arrows around. Much as you see on the Battle of Britain things. And I did that for two and a half years. And at the end of that I was posted back to England and I had to go to Air Ministry for them to decide where I wanted to go from there. By now I’d gone up a rank. I was now a flight sergeant as they’d brought back the old ranks again. And initially I said, ‘Well, can I go on helicopters?’ as my friend had gone on helicopters. They said, ‘Oh no. Not with your experience. How about Coastal Command?’ So, that will do me. And so I was posted then to RAF St Mawgan to train in Coastal Command and I did my basic training there and then was posted to Kinloss up in Scotland to train on the Shackleton Mark 1. And from there I was, when I finished the course I was posted to RAF St Eval where we had Shackleton Mark 2s. So I arrived on 42 Squadron in September of 1946. I went in to the orderly room to book in and the first thing they said to me, ‘Can you go overseas at a moment’s notice? Otherwise,’ he said, ‘We’ll send you to another squadron.’
RP: You said 46.
PM: Fifty.
RP: ’56. Yeah.
PM: ’56.
RP: I think Shackletons weren’t around then.
PM: No. They Weren’t. No. 1956.
RP: ‘56 yeah.
PM: And so, apparently the squadron had just been made the colonial policing squadron and this involved us going out to Aden for short terms. Well, my wife was heavily pregnant at the time but I didn’t tell them and I said, ‘No, it’s alright. I can go.’ And we then had to train from using the low level bombsight which the Shackleton was fitted with to using a high level bombsight which was the Bomber Command bombsight. And we spent several months dropping bombs on a practice range. And then the squadron was moving out there at four aircraft at a time. Four would go out to Aden and then as they were relieved by the other four that were back in St Eval. And it was in July of 1956, ’57 now that our crew was posted, was sent out to Aden. And we were not allowed to fly across the Arab countries because they refused us permission because they said we were going on a warlike mission against other Arab nations. And so we had to stow the guns inside the aircraft because we had two cannon in the nose of the Shackleton and we flew out first to Cyprus. From Cyprus we flew along the borders between Turkey and Syria, down through Iraq, down to Bahrain and from Bahrain we flew down across the desert over Muscat Omans area. Right down until we reached Aden. And [pause] and when we arrived in Aden the temperature was terribly hot. Forty degree plus. At times it was fifty degrees there. First several flights that we did were getting used to the area. We flew with one of the crews from one of the other aircraft because the maps were so poor there. There wasn’t any satellite navigation then and so you more or less had to make the maps up as you flew. And so we got to know the area we flew over. It was mainly along the Yemen border with Aden. And the idea was to, to look out for people that were coming across the borders and causing trouble. This was a sort of a pastime for them. They would come across the border, fire a few rounds off and go back home again. And we did this. I suppose [pause] living up in that area was an RAF intelligence officer. In fact, he lived just like an Arab. Dressed like an Arab. He even looked like an Arab. And he would, we would contact him and he would give us directions to fly to check on at certain areas. A couple of times we had to do some bombing runs. We had fourteen one thousand pound bombs and we had to drop these in areas where the RAF Venoms, they couldn’t reach because they would normally go with rockets. But the mountain, it was so mountainous there because most of it was six thousand feet. And down in the valleys the Venoms couldn’t get in so we would go and drop bombs where these intruders had gone in. A couple of occasions where they’d misbehaved they would go and warn them and drop leaflets and say at such and such a day at such and such a time we’re going to come and bomb your fields. And so they kept clear and then we’d go and we’d drop a stick of bombs across their fields to make them, to bring them back into line again. Then one Saturday morning we were called in and they said, ‘Right. You’ve got to go Bahrain immediately. Don’t know what for but get your kit and off you go.’ And so we got our kit and we flew up to Bahrain. Sunday morning they said, ‘Right, you’re going to fly over Muscat Oman. And you’re to go with a Pembroke pilot from here that will show you around the area.’ So we took off and we flew over to, near a place called Nizwa which was a large sort of town almost and in the centre of it was a very large circular fort. And there’d been an uprising. The Sultan’s brother had rebelled against him and we had an agreement with the Sultan that if he was in danger then the RAF or the British forces would go and, go and help him. So that’s what we were there for. The pilot of the Pembroke was showing us around and he took us up one valley. He said, ‘Well, you can turn around when you get to end and come back again.’ Well, you could in a Pembroke. But in a Shackleton no way. And when we got to the end there was this great cliff in front of us and with full power on we just managed to scrape over the top of it. So we decided we wouldn’t go up that valley again. And then our role then was to fly out every day and we were given certain villages to fly over. Some were friendly. Some weren’t. And we had to observe what they were doing. And this went on for about seven or eight days and in that time nothing seemed to be happening very much but we’d been building up. The army had flown in. The paratroopers had arrived at Bahrain and they were going to be flown out to an airfield which was on an oil well out in Muscat and they would march across the desert to attack from that side. And we were dropping leaflets all the time. We had different colour leaflets. I think it was white ones to drop to friendly areas and pink ones to drop to enemy areas. More or less telling them you know one was saying the Sultan was a good man. The other one was saying you’ve got to stop what you’re doing and come and join the Sultan. All that sort of thing. Anyway, on one of the trips we carried a group captain who was the senior air staff officer for Middle East Command. He wanted to see what was going on and again we had the leaflets to drop. And on one particular village, a place called Firq, which was just south of Nizwa it was a very small fort there and they said, ‘Right, you’ve got to drop these leaflets. They’ve got to go in the fort but they mustn’t go outside it.’ Well it’s not very easy when you’re dropping leaflets like that and so we decided we’d go in at about five hundred feet and drop these leaflets. And we were in the middle of dropping them and we felt like a ripple go through the aircraft. We realised we’d been hit by small arms fire. We were very lucky really because in the nose of the aircraft there were three of us. There was the bomb aimer, that was the other navigator in the nose, there was one of the sergeant signallers who was putting the leaflets down the flare chute and the group captain and a bullet came up. It hit the switch right underneath them, split it in half. Missed them all. One half went in and hit the co-pilot’s intercom box so it knocked it out completely. He didn’t know what was going on. And the other half later we dug out of a tin of sweets in the emergency rations. In the tail there was a tail lookout and the chap laid in the tail look out had a bullet go in by his shoulder and go out above his head. And we decided it was time to clear the area. And I remember our captain, he called up the two Venoms that were attacking another village up the road and said, ‘Watch this place. They’re sharpshooters.’ And one of them said, ‘Oh, I’ll save a rocket for them on the way back.’ And this group captain was on immediately, ‘No. No. No. No. They’ve got to be told first.’ As we were dropping leaflets telling them that they would be attacked the following day. And when we landed back at Bahrain we found there were other holes in the wings where again we were so lucky. Your wings are full of petrol and full of wires and it missed everything. Gone right through the wings in out through the top and nothing was damaged at all. And I remember they, they repaired the holes. They hadn’t have anything to repair them with so they used aluminium beer cans and riveted them over the holes. They were, the following day we took off again and we were told there we’d got to be there before eight in the morning and again go in low level, dropping leaflets telling them they would be attacked within half an hour. They weren’t too pleased about that. Anyway, we got there and we thought that we’d wake them up so we flew across firing our twenty mil cannon to make them keep their heads down. Then came back, dropped our leaflets and came home. We had to allow for the loss of ammunition and so we said we’d done some air sea firing on the way home to account for the ammunition and got admonished for wasting ammunition in that way. Anyway, the, the army did attack that day and the Venoms went in first with the rockets and attacked the fort and then the paratroopers moved in and they gradually drove them up. At Nizwa they’d got a tanker, a lorry which was the, been going from one of the oil wells. They had captured the crew of the tanker and had got them in this large fort and they had said if we attacked the fort they would hang them over the balconies. And we could actually see them there over because it was a big circular fort and we could see the chaps there so obviously we didn’t attack it. Eventually they did get in and they drove the rebels up in to Jabal Akhdar which was an eight thousand foot high mountain nearby and it finished up with the SAS going up the mountain and sorting them out. And that was the end of the sorties there. Before it actually finished the CinC Bomber Comm, the CinC Middle East Command ordered that we be sent back to Bahrain. He said, ‘Go back there and cool off.’ But if you can imagine cooling off in Bahrain. Anyway, we decided, well we didn’t decide we were sent back to Bahrain to have a so-called rest. And the next day we were told we’d got to go on a bombing raid and two aircraft were involved. One of the flight commander’s and our aircraft. And we loaded up with fourteen one thousand pound bombs and as the flight commander was taking off white smoke started pouring out of all four engines and he just managed to pull it to a halt at the end of the runway, and they cancelled the bombing raid. And they found that in the heat in Aden we used a thing called water metholated, water meth which gave increased power to the engines and this was injected in to the engines. And in the heat it had distilled out and it just put straight water into the engines and so it didn’t do them any good. And the following day we again, having found this out they changed all the water meth and we’d loaded. Loaded up again with the bombs and took off and we did the raid up in the hills. And a couple of days later we were sent back to Bahrain to assist because now they were carrying out bombing raids using, using small anti-personnel bombs. These were nasty little things. They went off above the ground. They had got loads of sprung steel in them and you got this spring steel going around which did a lot of damage to whoever they were dropped on. We didn’t like them particularly because they had a pressure fuse in them and occasionally, there was one occasion in fact where the bombs started going off and they set the bombs going off behind them and they almost went back up to the aircraft again. So we weren’t too happy about using them. I think they’ve now been banned from use because they’re considered not the right thing to use [pause] Then the length of time of time we stayed in Bahrain or in Aden depended on the number of hours the aircraft had flown. We were supposed to be up there for three months but we’d done so much flying over Bahrain from Bahrain that we had reached our target in about six weeks. And so again we had to fly home and [pause] and two aircraft were coming back to the UK. One was a flight commander and he took off just about twenty minutes in front of us and this time we were allowed to fly over the Arab countries because we weren’t going on a warlike mission. And so we flew down the Red Sea across the border of Abyssinia and then right across the Libyan desert, the Sahara Desert to a place called Castel Benito, which was an ex-Italian airfield. It took us about twelve hours I suppose to fly across there and we landed there and there was no sign of the flight commander who had gone in front of us. And about an hour later I bumped into the navigator from that aircraft. I said, ‘What happened to you?’ Oh, the flight commander was there as well. He said, ‘How did you get here before of us?’ And jokingly I said, ‘Stayed on track all the way, sir.’ Which didn’t go down too well because his navigator apparently, just after take-off, the flight commander came back to see, look at the charts, dropped a cup of water over his chart completely soaking it. And he’d picked it up and screwed it up and throwed it away when he realised he hadn’t have another chart. There wasn’t another one for that area. So he’d had to get it out, unscrew it, stretch it out and of course now it was all out of shape and apparently they got quite lost going across the desert and they landed about an hour after us.
RP: Not the right thing to say then. Yeah. He was still speaking to you afterwards.
PM: Oh yes. He did after. He was normally quite a decent chap but he blew his top a bit. Anyway, the following day we took off and came back to UK. While we were in Aden we were being relieved by 35 Squadron which had been based in Malta and that was going to go to Aden permanently and remain there. And so that was the end of the squadron’s flying out in Aden. We then returned to our normal Coastal Command duties. One of them of course was air sea rescue and quite often we got a call out to go after, to go over the Atlantic Ocean to assist [pause] Constellation aircraft. They had a habit of losing engines coming across the Atlantic and we would fly out at a thousand feet and they would be up at twenty thousand feet and we would call them up and they would say, you know, ‘Assist us,’ and so we would turn around and fly back again, and usually they had landed at Heathrow before we got back to St Eval because they were going a lot faster than us on three engines than we were doing on four. The end of my tour there the squadron commander called me in. He said, ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid that NCO navigators aren’t going to be employed on RAF operational squadrons anymore. So,’ he said, ‘Your time in Coastal is finished now.’ And he said, ‘What I have got here is, I’ve got a piece of paper that’s just come to me that says that they want volunteers to go and serve on Thor missiles as this is going to be the new Bomber Command. I suggest, I suggest you do that. At least you’re guaranteed a job then.’ So I thought about that. So I applied for this and I had to go to Air Ministry to be interviewed and the interviewer was a wing commander who I’d known as a flight lieutenant on 90 Squadron. So that was the end of the interview really. We just chatted and I was accepted and we then sailed across to, well we were busy. We were going to New York but we went on a Canadian Pacific ship. We went across to Montreal and our first stop was Quebec and then we sailed up the St Lawrence to Montreal. Beautiful river. Lovely day. And it was marvellous sailing along there. It’s a huge river because if you imagine there you’ve got these large ocean going liners and two of them could pass quite easily along the river. From there we got the train to New York where we were given a couple of days off and we managed to go up the Empire State Building while I was there. And then we got an aircraft to take us to Tucson in Arizona and it was a DC4. And it was supposed to land at Tucson Municipal Airport. Well. the pilot thinking as we were all RAF and we were all going to go eventually to [pause] we were going to be stationed at Davis-Monthan, which was a SAC base in Arizona. And so for some reason the pilot decided to land at Davis-Monthan. Well, SAC bases are very very security tight and an aircraft suddenly coming in which they’re not expecting they don’t go much on and they sent us over to the far side of the airfield. We were ringed with machine guns and first of all they wouldn’t let us out of the aeroplane. Well, it’s very hot in Tucson at the end of August, the beginning of September. And eventually they let us out but they surrounded us with the guards with machine guns. And eventually they sorted it out. Apparently, they’d been waiting for us at the municipal airport with a group of local dignitaries to greet us there.
RP: Right.
PM: And when they managed to sort it out it was only a case of driving through the gate because we were billeted just outside the main airfield in Davis-Monthan. We spent a month there learning about the missile. It was so new then they hadn’t actually fired one successfully. The instructor we had was on the previous course and that’s his knowledge was what he’d been told on the previous course there. But we, see we spent a month there and then we got sent on a Constellation to fly out to Los Angeles. And from there we went to [pause] from there we went to Vandenberg which was the main missile base in the States at that time and we carried on with the course there. We actually saw the missile for the first time but again they hadn’t fired one successfully. We saw various films of them taking off and then crash landing and exploding and so on but not one that actually worked. And when we’d finished the course there it was now December and they decided they would fly us back to New York and normally what happened you caught one of the Queens and they flew you, brought you back to UK. And when we got to New York it was freezing cold. When we’d left California we were in shorts. Eighty degrees. There was snow on the ground in New York and the temperature was minus goodness knows what. And it was like walking into a brick wall as you walked out of the aircraft with the change in the temperature. Anyway, they, they said, ‘Well, at the moment we can’t find any way to get you home so we’ll leave you in New York.’ We were abandoned there for ten days which was great. We were given ten dollars a day expenses to live in New York and we were billeted initially in the Governor Clinton Hotel. But they were expensive in there. They charged you four dollars a night just for the bed and then you had to pay for your breakfast and everything on top of that. And we found that the YM, you could do it for a dollar a night and so a number of us moved into the YM and stayed there. Of those who stayed at the Governor Clinton would tell us if anything had happened and they wanted us for going home. The beauty, while we were there is that we had American ID cards and so we could go into their [pause] they had a very good United Services Organisation there and you could go in there, show them your ID card and you’d get free tickets to any theatre in Broadway, any cinema in Broadway and through the day you could go on various tours. And I managed to go through the United Nations building on one tour. Another one they took us up inside the Statue of Liberty where you could climb right up to the top and the band around the Statue of Liberty’s head they are actually windows that you can look out. We were there for, as I say about ten days and then they managed to get Douglas DC6 to fly us home to the UK on Christmas Eve. And so we flew home. I managed to get a taxi home from London Airport as it was then. And so that was the end of my tour there. And from there I was posted to RAF Hemswell in Lincolnshire. That was the main base for the missiles. But there were a number of squadrons and each squadron was based at a different base. These were mainly the old wartime bases and I was sent to number 106 Squadron which was stationed at Bardney. Which again was a wartime airfield. But we still hadn’t got the missiles then. In fact, they were still building the site. The missile goes into a covered shelter and they hadn’t even got the shelters there. They were still putting in the rails for them to work on and it must have been six months or more before it was completed. And then the missiles started to arrive. They were flown over from the States in the large American aircraft. Then sent through the streets to the various sites. And when we’ve actually got them then we had to start the proper shift system because they had to be manned twenty four hours a day as the oil in the guidance system was so touchy that if the temperature changed the oil would solidify and would ruin the gyros which cost thousands of pounds to replace. And so we had to be there all the time with them. This meant manning twenty four hours a day as I say. And then we were put on a shift system where we’d do four days mornings, four days afternoons, four days nights. Four days off. This went on for ever and ever and ever. It was the most boring job in the world because you couldn’t do anything with a missile other than just watch it. Anyway, after a few months they asked me if I’d like to go to Hemswell, the main base to work in the main office there. The training office. And I said, ‘Yeah. I’m quite happy to do that,’ because it was nearer to where I was living. I was living on a caravan at the site at the time because we couldn’t get married quarters there. And so I went there and the role there was to doing, checking on the missiles because every now and again one of them would be selected and the crew would do a practice firing. This involved pumping liquid oxygen into the tank on the missile itself. It carried eighty six thousand gallons of liquid oxygen. And then it also had an eighty err seventy five gallons of fuel. And this was pumped in to a tanker because they didn’t want to get the two together to risk any chance that they might fire. The igniters were taken out so they couldn’t possibly fire. And we’d go through a practice countdown and our role was to go out and just check to see that they’d pressed the right switches and so on. This was much better. It was a more interesting job than I was doing before. Shortly after that I was promoted to master navigator which was warrant officer rank. And I did, I carried on doing that for two or three months. And then I applied to sign on ‘til I was fifty five. And again the letter that came back from Air Ministry did I want to take a commission? So I spoke to my wife and we thought about it and I said, ‘Well, what can I lose?’ I get a higher pension as a commissioned officer than I would as a warrant officer. But I get more respect as a warrant officer than I get as a commissioned. So we decided I’d try and go for the commission. And I went, I had to go to see the AOC, the air officer commanding the area to be interviewed by him. And the day before a corporal in our orderly room had gone up to see him so I said, ‘What did he ask you then?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘He wanted to know, because we’d been to America he wanted to know the American system of parliament. Or the equivalent of our parliament. He also, apparently he’d been the air officer in Pakistan and so he asked him about Pakistan. And so he said he also wanted to know who the various Commonwealth prime ministers were. So that night I did a quick check up on all those. I went and sat down in his office and he said, ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. Tell me, what’s the system in the States for their parliament sort of system.’ And I was able to explain it to him, you know. He said, ‘What’s the set up in Pakistan now?’ I said, ‘I think there’s been a coup recently and the army had taken over.’ ‘Who’s the prime minister of Canada? Who’s the prime minster of — ’ He said, ‘You seem to be very well read.’ He said, ‘That’s ok.’ That was the end of the interview. And then I went to Jurby again on the Isle of Man for three months to train as an officer. And at the end of that I qualified as a flying officer rather than a pilot officer the way most of them did because if you were a warrant officer you went up a rank. And the beauty of it was that you had to be paid more than a warrant officer got. And a warrant officer got more than a normal flying officer got. So I was on a higher rate of pay and the commission I had was called a branch commission which was especially for NCO aircrew and it, after three years you were automatically promoted to flight lieutenant. So at the end of the course I was then posted back to Coastal Command and I went up to Kinloss and there we now had Mark 3 Shackletons. And I had to do the course again. And the thing that did annoy me was that they insisted that I did a basic navigation training course again. And so I waited at Kinloss for a while. I was attached to 120 Squadron until I’d done this navigation course. They were doing several trips there and on one of them going to Gibraltar for the weekend. I said, ‘Well, can I come along with you?’ And they said, ‘Yeah, great,’ you know,’ you can. You’re welcome.’ And I said to one of the navigators, ‘Can I have a go on the table? Give me a chance to get my hand back in.’ He said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ And when I went to go the captain of the aircraft said, ‘Definitely not.’ He said, ‘You’ve haven’t done your refresher course yet.’ He said, ‘You can’t, obviously you can’t go on.’ So I thought fair enough. I went down the back of the aircraft. Got my head down. This was a night flight out there. And after about an hour someone woke me up and they said, ‘Would you come forward?’ So I said, ‘Yeah.’ And when I got forward both the navigators were sick. Would I take over? Which pleased me no end. And we’d only now were just sort of going down the Irish Sea. And so I managed to take over and sort of, sort out where I thought we were. And then that engine packed in and so we diverted into RAF St Mawgan. And while we were on the ground there the other two other navigators recovered themselves and so they took over and they flew it down to Gibraltar so I was a passenger then there and back. But it did amuse me a little bit. And anyway, I did the navigation course at Topcliffe and then back to Kinloss. Did the basic Coastal Command course all over again and then back on to 120 Squadron and there I became, we had first and second navigators. The senior navigator was the first navigator and the junior one was second navigator. I became the second navigator on a crew. The first navigator, he had already done a tour in Gibraltar and he, we were back on, under our normal coastal work which was surveillance of, the Russian fleet was always floating around somewhere in the North Atlantic and we kept surveillance on them. Russian submarines were continually turning up close to our shores and we would do surveillance on them. And also they had fishing boats which were absolutely covered with aerials. We called them ELINTS — Electronic Intelligence vessels and we would have to go out and try and locate them and when you’ve got somewhere three or four hundred Russian fishing vessels and the Russians they used the same type of fishing vessels for everything and so they were all exactly the same. But one of them would have all these aerials on them. You would have to find that one in amongst all this lot. And once you’d located it of course then you could keep track of it and see what it was doing. Once they were located they realised they’d been caught and they would sort of clear off. On one of the occasions we used to fly out quite often to Iceland and we’d do a patrol going up to Iceland. Then from Iceland we would patrol across to Bodo in Norway and have a couple of days on the ground in Norway and then another patrol back to Kinloss again. And on this occasion we were flying up to Iceland and we came across a Russian submarine support vessel which we reported back and when we landed in Iceland there was a great fuss on there because they hadn’t, didn’t realise it was in the area. Normally the Americans had sort of passed on the information but they didn’t even know it was there and our AOC in Scotland ordered us to take off as soon as we could to relocate it. Well, the following day there was a seventy five knot gale blowing at Iceland. The station commander had closed the station. He said it wasn’t safe to take off because it wasn’t down the runway. And our AOC ordered him to open the station up, to open up the disused runway which luckily was straight into wind and we were to take off. And so we did this and we couldn’t locate the aircraft err the ship on the way back. We went back to Kinloss. The following day we had another panic on. A Russian submarine had been located in the training grounds just off Northern Ireland where the navy did all their training with us and often they would join in the exercises. Anyway, they located this submarine right in the middle of it and four of us were ordered off that night to try and locate it and try to force it out of the area. And we’d been airborne about twenty minutes and the aircraft behind us we had a call, a mayday call, he’d got an engine fire and he was returning to Kinloss and the engine, they couldn’t put the fire out and it spread along the wing and set the second engine on fire. And he was, managed to get across over Inverness and he crashed it on Culloden Moor. In fact he crashed he said by the light from the flames from the engines he could see where he was going. And all the crew luckily got out. Now, that aircraft was the one that we’d flown in on the day before. It had only done twenty minutes flying from when we took off from Iceland. If it had happened the day before we wouldn’t have had a hope in hell because of the winds blowing like that. As I say there wouldn’t have been a hope in hell of us getting back anywhere. Anyway, we, one of our aircraft did locate the submarine and it was forced to the surface and it was escorted out of the area. We then had what was considered a jolly. We were going down to South Africa, to Cape Town and we were going to join because the South Africans also had Mark 3 Shackletons and we were going to do exercises with them. The British Navy was down there with their Navy and the American Navy and the American Naval aircraft were there as well. And we flew, this time we flew down to El Adem in North Africa, in Libya. From there we flew across the desert at night to Nairobi. From Nairobi we flew down to Salisbury or Harare as it’s called now. From Harare we flew to Ysterplaat which is the airfield just outside Cape Town where we were going to be based. And we did one exercise with the Navy and then we were going to do another one that night and our CO took one look at the weather, he said, ‘No. We’re not going. It’s a waste of time because the sea state would be so great that you wouldn’t be able to do anything anyway.’ And he decided to cancel the exercise but the South Africans, with their Mark 3s they decided no. They were going to go ahead and do it. Anyway, the next morning we’d had a tremendous gale in the night. In fact, it was hurricane that had gone through and we were immediately, we were called in immediately after breakfast and were told that the aircraft that had taken off was missing. They reckoned that the winds at six odd thousand feet were a hundred and fifty knots and they hadn’t heard from take-off. Anyway, we were the first aircraft to go and we were ordered to go and fly the route that he was supposed to have taken. And we flew out over the, the sea. I was getting winds of seventy five and eighty knots as we sort of went out. The sea was absolutely mountainous. There wasn’t a hope in hell of anybody surviving if it had gone down there sand we flew out and were airborne for about thirteen hours and found absolutely nothing and so we came back. And the following day they said there was a slight chance he might have gone down in the bay outside Cape Town. And two of our, two aircraft were ordered out to go and do a close search of the bay. Whilst there in fact we noticed what we thought might be some wreckage and the thing was if you saw anything like that you’d immediately divert the nearest merchant ship to go and pick it up. And we came across a large Japanese bulk carrier and we did the normal fly across the bows and put the engines up and down to attract his attention. He didn’t take the blindest bit of notice so we came back again and we fired green verey cartridges across the bow. No notice. We came back again with red cartridges this time. Took no notice whatsoever so it obviously wasn’t, I suppose there probably wasn’t anybody on the bridge. And when we landed back apparently he had been called in to Cape Town and they were heavily fined for not following the rules of the sea. Anyway, our CO as we were more conversant with air sea rescue we were given the sort of the control of what was going on and he got the tapes from the tower and listened to them and very very faint, “Mayday. Mayday,” shortly after take-off and they decided they would use a helicopter and go and look in the mountains just off Cape Town. And as they flew over the mountain they could see, they found the aircraft at the bottom of one of the valleys upside down. And the sonar buoys that we carried were bright dayglo orange and it was upside down. The bomb doors had burst open and so they could see these sonar buoys there so they knew immediately what it was. And of course all the crew had been killed. And they must have got into huge turbulence and it flipped the aircraft upside down and that was the end of that. Anyway, the South Africans decided to call the exercise off. And so we stayed there for a little bit longer. They managed to fly us down to Durban for the weekend. We went down there on one of the South African Dakotas. And then we flew home again.
RP: So what year was that?
PM: That was in 1963. Then we went back to our normal sort of surveillance work we were doing and I applied to do the weapons instructor’s course that was actually at Kinloss. And before I could go on that they sent me to RAF Uxbridge which is the RAF School of Education to do an instructor’s course. And I went there and I managed to qualify with an A2 instructor’s category and I went back to Kinloss, did the course as a weapons instructor and back on the squadron where I was made squadron weapons officer. I was then promoted flight lieutenant. And I then got a message through saying I was going to be posted to Malta. Shortly after that I got another message saying I was going to the Maritime Operational Training Unit as a weapon’s instructor. Apparently they had, when I completed the course they had called for me to join them. And so I went to the weapons course at St Mawgan, St Eval, no. Sorry, at Kinloss. And whilst on, on the Operational Training Unit they decided to move the two squadrons that were at St Mawgan up to Kinloss and the Training Unit down to St Mawgan. And so the whole lot had to be moved down to St Mawgan. And before we moved I was called in, they said, ‘Well, would you take over as chief weapons instructor when we move to St Mawgan?’ So I said, ‘Yeah, I don’t mind.’ So I took over and I went down to St Mawgan and we had to set the whole thing up again. All the training classrooms and so on. And I remained there until 1967 when I was posted to Singapore. Now, my wife said she didn’t want to go to Singapore because we’d recently bought a bungalow, the children were both settled in school for the first time because they’d been moved from school to school. So she decided she would remain at home and I didn’t fancy spending two and a half years on my own in Singapore. So they had a scheme whereby if you volunteered to go do, on an unaccompanied tour anywhere in the world it lasted for a year. So I volunteered for that. And they said right, they’d got a post at as ops officer in Labuan in Borneo. So I said that would do fine. And I got all my kit together and just about to go and the signal came through Labuan closed six months ago. And they didn’t know about it apparently. And so they stopped that one. So they said, ‘Well, how about Bahrain?’ So I said, ‘Yes. That would do me.’ Go to Bahrain. And that time they brought out a redundancy scheme for the Air Force had got what they thought were too many older officers. They wanted to get rid of them to make room for the younger ones coming up and so they brought this scheme in which really it was too good to turn down. I think I was, I was given a five thousand pound to leave plus full pension. So I decided I’ll leave. So I volunteered to go out on that and was accepted to leave and I spent another six months or so floating around at St Mawgan doing all sorts of odd jobs. One of them while I was there we wanted, they wanted an aircraft to go out to locate Sir Francis Chichester on his return from his round the world sailing. Because then there was no sat navs and so they had no contact with him. They knew roughly where he was. An aircraft from 42 Squadron was there and an aircraft from the MOTU. We took off to search for him and we were fortunate that we found him and we were able to direct the other aircraft to us because we had reporters on board and the reporters were not allowed to take any photographs until both aircraft were there so neither got the advantage over the other. But it gave me the advantage. I was able to take some photographs before they got the chance for them to do it. Anyway, as we say we located him but he was most upset at being located. Normally, you know, if you found people they would give you a wave when you flew past. But he just didn’t stand up. He didn’t wave. We dropped a message to him in a container welcoming him back and thanking, you know and saying what a good job he’d done. He watched it go past his boat. He didn’t even bother to pick it up. So I think he was most upset. He wanted to sneak in I think without having being seen. And so that was the end of that one and I think one of the last flights I did was on the Torrey Canyon. We were checking the oil that was coming out of that when it crashed at just off the Scilly Isles. And I didn’t know what to do when I came out of the Air Force. I did a computer course at Camborne in Cornwall and it was to train to programme computers but then I realised that there were only two computers in the whole of Cornwall at that time. One, the one we were using was at County Hall and the other was at John Keay House in the China clay industry. So the chances of getting a job there were nil and I didn’t want to leave Cornwall. Cornwall. And so one of the other chaps who was leaving with me, he said he’d applied to train as a teacher at St Luke’s in Exeter. He said, ‘Why don’t you come and, you know try that?’ So, I said, ‘Well, I left school at fourteen. They won’t want to know me there.’ Anyway, he said, ‘Well try it.’ And I went and the principal there was an ex-wing commander navigator.
RP: So you were made. So, I think we finished your RAF career so we might need to bring it to an end there. But did you, just to round it off did you finish your sort of working career as a teacher then?
PM: As a —?
RP: As a teacher.
PM: Yes.
RP: You stayed then.
PM: Well, I’m saying I taught for ten years.
RP: Yeah.
PM: And then I decided I’d had enough again at fifty five they said you could retire. So I took early retirement from that.
RP: Very nice.
PM: And bought a small holding.
RP: Well, that’s, I mean that’s a fascinating, a fascinating career and I say thank you very much for that. I’m just amazed they were still training you as VE day approached but I suppose you were lucky in a way that you didn’t have to go on ops and you could —
PM: No
RP: You looked forward to a full career in the RAF.
PM: Yeah. It was, because you don’t know how you would react to going on ops. The chap that you should have interviewed, that is a chap called Ted Frost. A friend of mine. He did fifty seven ops. DFC. And I said to him, ‘Have they been in touch with you?’ ‘No he said. They haven’t asked me about it.
RP: Oh, well I’ll take the details if you like.
PM: So I can give you Ted’s telephone number.
RP: Absolutely. No. That’s the sort of people I, I would just like to, we’ll just finish this and I’ll say thank you very much, Peter. It’s been fascinating.
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 Peter Morris
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rod Pickles
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
2017-10-10
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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AMorrisPG171010, PMorrisPG1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:07:03 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Description
An account of the resource
Peter Morris lived through the East End blitz. He joined the ATC as soon as it was established and applied to join the RAF as aircrew. He was accepted for training as a navigator. While waiting for a course he was part of a group that was sent to repair bomb damage from the V-1 attacks and was then sent to support the armourers at RAF Waterbeach by working on the bomb dump. Peter finished his training just as VE day was celebrated and then was sent to prepare for the Far East just before VJ Day. Peter became an instructor and was also posted on to Coastal Command where he took part in air sea rescue operations.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Bahrain
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
United States
California
California--Vandenberg Air Force Base
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
1946
106 Squadron
120 Squadron
42 Squadron
90 Squadron
air sea rescue
aircrew
bombing
bombing up
ground personnel
incendiary device
Lancaster
Lincoln
navigator
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Kinloss
RAF St Eval
RAF St Mawgan
RAF Tuddenham
RAF Waterbeach
RAF Wyton
Shackleton
Tiger force
training
V-1
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1117/20446/LSearleROJ615463v1.1.pdf
9b2aaed488dc44ce495e8353b020cdd8
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
Searle, Rex
Rex Ormond John Searle
R O J Searle
Description
An account of the resource
62 items. Two oral history interviewws with Rex Searle (b. 1919, 615463 Royal air Force) He served as ground crew before becoming a flight engineer and flying operations with 432 Squadron. after the war he served with Coastal and Transport Commands. The collection contains his log book, decorations, photographs and two albums.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Rex Searle and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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
2017-07-25
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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Searle, ROJ
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
Rex Searle'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
Flying log book for R O J Searle, Flight Engineer, covering the period from 25 June 1944 to13 July 1945 and from 17 August 1951 to 14 September 1964. Detailing his training as a flight engineer and a full tour of operations flown with Bomber Command from 1944 to 1945 followed post-war by further air gunner training in 1951 and continuing service as an air engineer with Coastal Command and then Transport Command. Served with 16, 24(c), 28, 30, 34, 42, 47, 120, 203, 206, 210, 240 and 432 Squadrons. He served at RAF St Athan, RAF Wombleton, RAF East Moor, RAF St Eval, RAF Leconfield, RAF Kinloss, RAF St Mawgan, RAF Dishforth, RAF Abingdon, RAF Colerne, RAF Changi and RAF Seletar. Aircraft flown in were Halifax, Lancaster, Lincoln, Shackleton, Hastings, Anson, Constellation, Beverley and Hercules. He completed a tour of 33 operations (16 day, 17 night) on the following targets in France, Germany and the Netherlands: Bochum, Böhlen, Bonn, Castrop Rauxel, Chemnitz, Cologne, Dortmund, Duisberg, Dusseldorf, Emden, Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Grevenbroich, Homberg, Le Havre, Magdeburg, Mannheim, Meinz, Oberhausen, Osnabrück, Saarbrucken, Stuttgart, Trois Dorf, Volkel, Wanne-Eickel, and Wilhelmshaven. His pilot on operations was Flying Officer Potter. Three other operations ended early and were not counted in his tour. The tour completion certificate states a total of 121 points and 200.02 hours. Several of his air engineer proficiency assessments note him as being “above average”. Also includes numerous items which have been pasted in, including certificates, notes and photographs of family, crewmates and aircraft.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
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
LSearleROJ615463v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Singapore
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Cornwall (County)
England--Oxfordshire
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
France--Le Havre
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Bonn
Germany--Castrop-Rauxel
Germany--Chemnitz
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Grevenbroich
Germany--Homberg (Kassel)
Germany--Leipzig Region
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Mainz (Rhineland-Palatinate)
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Saarbrücken
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Troisdorf
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Netherlands--North Brabant
Scotland--Kinloss
Wales--Glamorgan
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1944-09-03
1944-09-06
1944-09-09
1944-09-10
1944-09-11
1944-09-12
1944-09-13
1944-10-06
1944-10-09
1944-10-12
1944-10-14
1944-10-18
1944-10-21
1944-10-23
1944-10-26
1944-10-28
1944-11-01
1944-11-02
1944-11-04
1944-11-06
1944-11-21
1945-01-13
1945-01-14
1945-01-16
1945-01-17
1945-01-28
1945-01-29
1945-02-01
1945-02-02
1945-02-03
1945-02-04
1945-02-05
1945-02-13
1945-02-14
1945-02-15
1945-02-17
1945-02-27
120 Squadron
1666 HCU
206 Squadron
210 Squadron
42 Squadron
432 Squadron
47 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
bombing
flight engineer
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Halifax Mk 3
Halifax Mk 7
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 3
Lincoln
RAF Abingdon
RAF Colerne
RAF Dishforth
RAF East Moor
RAF Kinloss
RAF Leconfield
RAF St Athan
RAF St Eval
RAF St Mawgan
RAF Wombleton
Shackleton
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1607/24369/PWatsonJB15010008.1.jpg
6d3d363017f75ce0d93b6be4baa74f85
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1607/24369/PWatsonJB15010009.1.jpg
079e15740ff8596aeb6e800aa9c94945
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
Watson, Joan. Watson, K. Album
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-25
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Watson, JR
Description
An account of the resource
28 items.
Covering K Watson’s service from training onwards and in Bomber Command and then Coastal Command. Includes sketch maps and mementos.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[three black and white photographs]
1. Ice forming on Lanc Tailplane.
2. Site of fatal crash of 120 Squadron “D” A/C.
3. A non titled marine craft.
[underlined]NO. 120 SQUADRON CREW LIST[/underlined]
[underlined]CREW 1.[/underlined]
CAPTAIN. SQDN. LDR. FARR.
CO-PILOT. FLT. LT. PEARCE.
1ST NAVIGATOR. FLT. LT. VAUX.
2ND NAVIGATOR. [BLANK]
1ST ENGINEER. SGT. MULHERON.
2ND ENGINEER. SGT. WOOD.
1ST SIGNALLER. F/SGT. EMERY.
2ND SIGNALLER. SGT. NEILANDS.
RADAR GUNNER. SGT. HARVEY (R/G).
RADAR GUNNER. SGT. PICKERING (R/G).
RADAR GUNNER. SGT. BARCLAY (R/G).
[underlined]CREW 2.[/underlined]
CAPTAIN. FLT. LT. HARDING.
CO-PILOT. FLT. LT. DAVIES.
1ST NAVIGATOR. FLT. LT. K. BROWN
2ND NAVIGATOR. FLT. LT. JOHNSON.
1ST ENGINEER. F/SGT. WATSON.
2ND ENGINEER. SGT. DEWIS.
1ST SIGNALLER. FLT. LT. HUNTER.
2ND SIGNALLER F/SGT. EMENY.
RADAR GUNNER. SGT. HEATHFIELD (R/G).
RADAR GUNNER. SGT. KENNY (R/G).
RADAR GUNNER. SGT. BARKER (R/G).
[underlined]CREW 3.[/underlined]
CAPTAIN. FLT. LT. BRAZIER.
CO-PILOT. FG. OFF. THOMSON.
1ST NAVIGATOR. FLT. LT. DAWES.
2ND NAVIGATOR. F/SGT. REAVILL.
1ST ENGINEER. FLT. LT. KIDD.
2ND ENGINEER. CDT. BATT.
1ST SIGNALLER. F/SGT. MALLOY.
2ND SIGNALLER. SGT. PERKINS.
RADAR GUNNER. SGT. NORTHWOOD (R/G).
RADAR GUNNER. SGT. DAY (R/G).
RADAR GUNNER. [BLANK]
[underlined]CREW 4.[/underlined]
CAPTAIN. FLT. LT. SHAW.
CO-PILOT. SGT. WELCH.
1ST NAVIGATOR. FLT. LT. MANLY.
2ND NAVIGATOR. PLT. OFF. TAYLOR.
1ST ENGINEER. FLT. LT. STAMMERS.
2ND ENGINEER. [BLANK]
1ST SIGNALLER. FG. OFF. WILLIAMSON.
2ND SIGNALLER. SGT. BROWN.
RADAR GUNNER. SGT. BOYCE.
RADAR GUNNER. SGT. WATERS (ATT).
RADAR GUNNER. SGT. SPENCER (R/G).
[underlined]CREW 5.[/underlined]
CAPTAIN. F/SGT. CAREY.
CO-PILOT. F/SGT. ROBINSON.
1ST NAVIGATOR. SGT. CAPERN.
2ND NAVIGATOR. SGT. DYER.
1ST ENGINEER. F/SGT. BURN.
2ND ENGINEER. SGT. LUND.
1ST SIGNALLER. F/SGT. McCUTCHEON.
2ND SIGNALLER SGT. GRAAYLAND.
RADAR GUNNER. SGT. FORD.
RADAR GUNNER. SGT. ADAM (R/G).
RADAR GUNNER. SGT. HOPWOOD (R/G).
[underlined]CREW 6.[/underlined]
CAPTAIN. SGT. EDWARDS.
CO-PILOT. SGT. GORDON.
1ST NAVIGATOR. F/SGT. PARKER.
2ND NAVIGATOR. F/SGT. WHATLEY.
1ST ENGINEER. SGT. MARTIN.
2ND ENGINEER. SGT. COOPER.
1ST SIGNALLER. F/SGT. COPELAND.
2ND SIGNALLER SGT. CARTLIDGE.
RADAR GUNNER. SGT. BURNINGHAM.
RADAR GUNNER. SGT. MAYLNN (R/G).
RADAR GUNNER. [BLANK]
[underlined]CREW 7.[/underlined]
CAPTAIN. SGT. HIGGINS.
CO-PILOT. SGT. NUTTALL.
1ST NAVIGATOR. F/SGT. PIKE.
2ND NAVIGATOR. F/SGT. LOBB.
1ST ENGINEER. SGT. WILSON.
2ND ENGINEER. SGT. BLUMENTHAL.
1ST SIGNALLER. F/SGT. ELLIOT.
2ND SIGNALLER. SGT. GIBSON.
RADAR GUNNER. SGT. LEE.
RADAR GUNNER. SGT. BETTS (R/G).
RADAR GUNNER. [BLANK]
[underlined]CREW 8.[/underlined]
CAPTAIN. FLT. LT. JAMES.
CO-PILOT. SGT. WILSON.
1ST NAVIGATOR. FG. OFF. COX.
2ND NAVIGATOR. FLT. LT. LEWIS.
1ST ENGINEER. SGT. FOSTER.
2ND ENGINEER. [BLANK]
1ST SIGNALLER. F/SGT. MILFULL.
2ND SIGNALLER. SGT. PRATT.
RADAR GUNNER. SGT. WEBB.
RADAR GUNNER. SGT. SPENCE (R/G).
RADAR GUNNER. [BLANK]
[underlined]CREW 9.[/underlined]
CAPTAIN. FLT. LT. RICHARDSON.
CO-PILOT. SGT. BLACK.
1ST NAVIGATOR. SGT. SHAW.
2ND NAVIGATOR. PLT. OFF. JACKSON.
1ST ENGINEER. SGT. STONER.
2ND ENGINEER. SGT. WRIGHT.
1ST SIGNALLER. FLT. LT. MILLS.
2ND SIGNALLER SGT. LEWIS.
RADAR GUNNER. SGT. SHARPLES (R/G).
RADAR GUNNER. SGT. HOPKINS (ATT).
RADAR GUNNER. SGT. NEAL (R/G).
[underlined]7.5.51[/underlined]
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
Iced Tailplane, Crash Site and Crew List
Description
An account of the resource
Four items on an album page.
Item 1 is an inflight photo showing ice forming, captioned 'Ice forming on Lanc, tailplane'.
Item 2 is an aerial photograph of a hill captioned 'Site of fatal crash of 120 Squadron 'D' A/C'.
Item 3 is 120 Squadron Crew List 7.5.51. The sheet, when opened out, lists the complete crew of nine aircraft.
Item 4 is a photo of a small unidentified ship at sea, taken from the air.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1951-05-07
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Three b/w photographs and one typed list on an album page.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Text
Text. Service material
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PWatsonJB15010008,
PWatsonJB15010009
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. Coastal 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.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Bloomfield
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1951-05
120 Squadron
aircrew
crash
Lancaster
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/536/24402/LWatsonK1589906v1.2.pdf
4819eef3a0b8270b7576fef405c5323a
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
Watson, Joan
J Watson
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Watson, JB
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Joan Watson.
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
2015-09-04
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
K Watson’s navigator’s, air bomber’s and air gunner’s flying log book. One
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
Flight Sergeant K. Watson’s RAF Navigator’s, Air Bomber’s and Air Gunner’s Flying Log Book, from 5th October 1943 to 23rd December 1953, detailing training and operations as a Flight Engineer. Also includes post-war duties with Coastal Command. He was stationed at RAF Woolfox Lodge (1665 Heavy Conversion Unit), RAF Witchford (513 Squadron), RAF Leicester East, RAF Fairford and Great Dunmow (620 Squadron), RAF Lindholme (230 OCU), RAF Wyton (44 Squadron), RAF Leuchars and Kinloss (120 Squadron) and RAF Gibraltar (224 Squadron). Aircraft in which flown: Stirling I, Stirling III, Stirling IV, Lancaster, Lincoln and Shackleton. He flew a total of 31 operations (4 day, 27 night) with 620 Squadron in France, the Netherlands and Norway. Most are logged simply as 'Special Duties', and consist mainly of airborne operations such as glider towing, paratoop dropping and resupply operations. On June 5-6th 1944 he records participation in operations Tonga and Mallard, part of the D-day Normandy landings. His pilot on operations was Flight Lieutenant Gawith.
This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form. No better quality copies are available.
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
LWatsonK1589906v1
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Gibraltar
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Essex
England--Gloucestershire
England--Leicestershire
England--Rutland
England--Yorkshire
Scotland--Fife
Scotland--Moray
Netherlands
Norway
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
1944-04-11
1944-04-12
1944-05-08
1944-05-31
1944-06-05
1944-06-06
1944-06-10
1944-06-11
1944-06-13
1944-06-14
1944-07-18
1944-07-19
1944-07-24
1944-07-25
1944-07-27
1944-07-28
1944-08-01
1944-08-02
1944-08-03
1944-08-11
1944-08-12
1944-08-20
1944-08-21
1944-08-24
1944-08-25
1944-08-26
1944-08-27
1944-08-28
1944-08-31
1944-09-01
1944-09-09
1944-09-10
1944-09-13
1944-09-14
1944-09-17
1944-09-18
1944-09-19
1944-09-21
1944-11-01
1944-11-02
1944-11-04
1944-12-30
1945-01-21
1945-01-22
1945-02-07
1945-02-08
1945-03-02
1945-03-03
1945-03-24
1945-04-11
1945-04-12
1945-04-18
1945-04-20
1945-04-22
1945-05-30
120 Squadron
1665 HCU
44 Squadron
620 Squadron
aircrew
flight engineer
Heavy Conversion Unit
Ju 88
Lancaster
Lincoln
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
RAF Fairford
RAF Kinloss
RAF Leicester East
RAF Leuchars
RAF Lindholme
RAF Witchford
RAF Woolfox Lodge
RAF Wyton
Shackleton
Special Operations Executive
Stirling
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1519/30385/PSladdenD1601-Inventory.1.pdf
152e3e88081505b69b7208ab407f40bc
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
620 Squadron
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
2016-06-23
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
620 Squadron
Description
An account of the resource
Twenty-three items. The collection concerns 620 Squadron and contains photographic slides or aircraft and places, an autobiography of Alan T Gamble, wireless operator training school documents, a memoir of operations on D-Day by Noel Chaffey and a short biography of him as well as noted of crews lost on 620 Squadron during Arnhem operation.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Darren Sladden and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
35mm slides by Noel Chaffey 620 Squadron of WW2 1943/6 and 1954 onward
Description
An account of the resource
Typed and handwritten list of slides captions.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
N Chaffey
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two page document
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
PSladdenD1601-Inventory
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
United States Army Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Essex
England--Bishop's Stortford
England--Colchester
Norway
Norway--Gardermoen
England--London
Netherlands
Netherlands--Arnhem
England--Cambridgeshire
England--St. Ives (Cambridgeshire)
England--Huntingdonshire
England--Herefordshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1954
1945
1946
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.
120 Squadron
620 Squadron
aircrew
B-25
B-26
Halifax
Horsa
Stirling
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2444/35683/BSpencerJSpencerFDv1.2.pdf
299ab6c9736dbc86fb2854e8155cfee9
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
Spencer, F D
Freddie Spencer
Spencer, Frederick David
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant F D "Freddie" Spencer DFC (1920 - 2002, 143793 Royal Air Force) and contains a photograph and a biography. He flew operations as a a flight engineer with 106 and 630 Squadron.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Jane Spencer and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-10-01
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Spencer, FD
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Flight Lieutenant Freddie Spencer D.F.C. Distinguished Wartime Service
[photograph]
Freddie Spencer joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve aged only eighteen on 27 September 1939 at a time when thousands of other young chaps who wanted to “do their bit” were joining up. He signed papers agreeing to serve for the “Duration of the Present Emergency” which effectively was an open ended agreement to serve until either the war was won or until he was killed or disabled and no longer able to serve, whichever the sooner.
He was immediately posted to No. 3 Depot at RAF Padgate as No. 968957, Aircraftman 2nd Class, Spencer FD. There would follow a period of six weeks of “basic training”, his induction to uniformed life, shouting, square bashing, military discipline and all that goes with it. It was a huge sprawling camp organized in quadrants comprising regular rows of barracks interspersed with drill squares and training huts.
[photograph]
Given his civil occupation as a Fitter & Motor Mechanic Freddie was immediately mustered (allocated to a specific trade grouping) as an “under training Flight Mechanic/Flight Rigger” but he still had to do six weeks Initial Training. The RAF had however decided that Freddie had useful skills and that he would receive RAF training to enable him to maintain aircraft. This was an important stage for him because if he had been assessed as less skilled he would have been allocated to a lesser trade grouping where he might be maintaining motor transport or generators, lawn mowers or similar. The alternative was “General Duties”, a category where an Aircraftman 2nd Class would spend his day pushing a broom, painting diverse things or on domestic cleaning duties or maybe peeling potatoes until he managed to escape to a higher grouping hoping to look after several lines of shelves in a stores, run errands, drive a vehicle or work as an admin clerk or officers valet.
[photograph]
Here Freddie is pictured in his RAF issue greatcoat almost certainly in the early winter of 1939.
[photograph]
On 11 November 1939 having successfully completed his “basic” Freddie was posted to No.1 Wing stationed at RAF Hednesford (above and below) to attend the No. 6 School of Technical Training. Here he would begin a course of intensive training on aircraft engines specialising in the Rolls Royce Merlin engine which was destined to power a wide range of RAF aircraft.
[photograph]
Freddie obviously became quite ill within 3 weeks because on 2 December he was admitted to Wolverhampton Isolation Hospital. The duration of his treatment is not recorded but only 2 days later (4 Dec 1939) in his absence he was re-mustered as “Aircrafthand under training Flight
Mechanic” indicating that his progress in training at No. 6 S of TT had been positive and he had been accepted as a tradesman and was now separated from the Rigger trade group (the group who maintained the fuselage and wings, etc) he was to take the path of the more technical aero engine mechanic. Training included both classroom work and hands-on in workshops and was high pressure and intensive, lads who failed to make the grade might be re-mustered to a less demanding trade or even end up as “General Duties”. His annual appraisal on 31 Dec 1939 rated him as having Very Good character and in terms of trade ability he was categorised, under training.
Operational duties
Freddie was posted to RAF Kinloss on 4 April 1940 to join No. 19 Operational Training Unit. At this stage the OTU’s trained men who had recently qualified as aircrew to operate the specific types of aircraft which they would fly when they joined squadrons. Experienced aircrew who had recently completed operational tours were the Instructors and they would pass along the knowledge which they had gained the hard way in combat. Aircrew arrived at OTU from specialist training schools (Pilot, Observer, Air Gunner, etc), and would circulate informally within a large briefing room to form crews. A pilot might recognise an Observer he’d played cricket with and ask if he would like to fly with him, they might hear a Wireless Operator with an accent from back home and ask him to join them, then they would find themselves a rear gunner, etc
No. 19 OTU was a feeder for No. 6 Group, Bomber Command and aircrew attending were trained to fly the already obsolete Armstrong Whitworth Whitley twin engine medium bombers. Freddie would be maintaining and servicing their Rolls Royce Merlin engines.
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The Whitley above is the memorial to 19 OUT at Kinloss.
On 6 June 1940 he was promoted Aircraftman 1st Class and re-mustered Flight Mechanic, the promotion was in recognition of his trade skills, now being fully qualified to work on aero engines. On 1 August he was again promoted, this time Leading Aircraftman, recognition of a superior level of technical ability, also indicating that he had the ability to lead and mentor colleagues.
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Freddie after his promotion to LAC (see insignia on his sleeve)
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Freddie’s work on the Rolls Royce Merlins of the Whitley’s flown from Kinloss continued and on 21 November 1940 his mustering was upgraded to “Flight Mechanic Engines” recognising his fully trained status, his ability and the experience he had gained and then on 31 December 1940 in his annual appraisal he was recorded as Leading Aircraftman, Very Good character and his ability was satisfactory (that is a good rating because the RAF demanded the very best performance as a minimum because even slight failings could result in a Whitley crashing or having to be ditched at sea with an uncertain fate for its crew).
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The picture above shows RAF flight mechanics working on engines in the normal manner, outside in all weathers. The man sitting upright has the rank insignia of Leading Aircraftman on his arm.
His performance at his duties was recognised and on 22 May he was posted for further training to gain the status of Fitter II Engines, a step which inevitably led to promotion to Corporal rank as an NCO skilled tradesman. Freddie arrived at RAF Hednesford, No. 7 School of Technical Training on the following day and commenced his course.
At the end of his course on 23 July 1941 Freddie qualified as Fitter II E and signalled his intent to leave the Fitter trade group having applied for and received approval to train for the brand new role of Flight Engineer which the RAF had recognised would be essential with the new generation of four engine bombers.
His service record was clearly marked “Recommended for training as Flight Engineer” and on the same day he reverted to the rank of Aircraftman 1st Class. It may have been an Admin ruling in connection with his forthcoming change to aircrew status, it certainly was not a disciplinary, ability or performance related demotion. Quite possibly it happened at his own request for a personal reason, nothing is given in his records to explain. I suspect a brief period of home leave followed.
At this point in the war the RAF had recently started to operate the four engine Handley Page Halifax heavy bomber (photo below) and an understanding was being gained of the very different operational requirements of a four engine aircraft over the traditional twin engine type. A flight engineer was an enormous asset and as the result a 2nd Pilot was no longer required. That freed up a pilot who could then “skipper” his own crew and as the result made available a number of pilots to help replace those being lost on Ops. That RAF had the new four engine Avro Lancaster heavy bombers scheduled to enter service in 1942 and they would each need a Flight Engineer.
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Freddie was posted to RAF Baginton near Coventry on 8 August 1941, it was a Hawker Hurricane fighter station and the Hurricanes based there had Rolls Royce Merlin engines. He would be serving with Fighter Command working on Hurricanes until the RAF was ready to start training him as a Flight Engineer, he was not needed in that role immediately.
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On 4 September he was posted to nearby RAF Honiley to join No. 135 (Fighter) Squadron who flew Hurricanes in defence of the industrial Midlands and on 1 November 1941 he was promoted back to the rank of Leading Aircraftman.
On 4 December Freddie was posted to RAF Angle near Pembroke to join No. 615 (County of Surrey) Squadron, Auxiliary Air Force a very glamorous squadron with pre-war connections to some of the wealthiest families in the country. No. 615 flew Hurricane fighters. Their CO was Squadron Leader Denys Gillam DSO DFC & Bar a Battle of Britain fighter ace.
The year of 1941 ended very well for Freddie with an appraisal confirming his rank as LAC, his character as Very Good and his abilities as Superior (a rating not commonly seen and suggestive of exceptional ability). The squadron moved to RAF Fairwood Common on 23 January 1942 but almost two months later they moved lock-stock and barrel to Liverpool Docks and embarked aboard merchant vessels bound for India. Freddie was posted at this point, the RAF wanted to make use of his skills as a Flight Engineer.
Aircrew Status
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At this point the lack of detail in his service record is most unhelpful. One week after No. 615 departed for India Freddie joined No. 10 Air Gunnery School at RAF Walney Island (photo above) for reasons unstated, however he is depicted in a portrait photograph wearing an Air Gunner brevet.
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No. 10 AGS flew Boulton Paul Defiant turret fighters which were obsolete in their intended role as day fighter/bomber destroyers however they mounted a turret with four .303 Browning machine guns exactly like gun turrets on bombers.
It was an excellent gun platform for training air gunners bound for Bomber Command. So it seems that the only conclusion to be drawn is that Freddie trained here as an Air Gunner and was inevitably then classified by the RAF as Aircrew. His service record does not state the fact but I believe it almost certain that he must have been awarded his Air Gunner brevet in the third week of April 1942 before he left No. 10 AGS.
Photo below of a Boulton Paul Defiant painted black for night fighting.
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It has to be suspected that Freddie’s training as an Air Gunner at RAF Walney Island was simply a means to an end and that he was never intended by the RAF to fly operationally as a gunner but had gained an Air Gunner brevet and official status of a qualified member of aircrew – perhaps therefore avoiding the requirement to attend a longer aircrew course at a time when Bomber Command had urgent requirement for skilled Flight Engineers.
The twin engine medium bombers operated by Bomber Command up to this point in the war, the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley and Vickers Wellington had been flown by a five man crew including Pilot, Observer (Navigator), Bomb Aimer, Wireless Operator/Air Gunner and Rear gunner.
The new four engine bombers required the addition of a Flight Engineer to assist the pilot on take off and landing, deal with the added complexity of the four engines, manage fuel consumption, etc, and also required an additional air gunner to man the new Mid Upper turret. The new 7 man crew configuration became standard in Bomber Command, a Pilot, Flight Engineer, Navigator, Bomb Aimer, Wireless Operator, Mid Upper Gunner and Rear Gunner.
Freddie was next posted to No. 97 Squadron at RAF Waddington on 24 April 1942. No. 97 was at that moment very much the centre of attention of the nation, having just carried out a seemingly near suicidal daylight raid on the M.A.N. engine factories at Augsburg flying their new Lancaster bombers. Wing Commander John Nettleton of No. 44 Squadron had led the two squadron Op which achieved its aims despite heavy losses. He was awarded a V.C. The attack was viewed on a similar footing to the later Dam Buster raid.
No. 97 Squadron was working very closely with No. 106 Squadron converting from the unsuccessful Avro Manchester twin engine medium bomber (below) to the new Avro Lancaster four engine bombers.
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Records of No.97 Squadron do not show Freddie amongst the members of aircrew “posted in” during April 1942 so it seems that he joined purely to gain experience of the new Lancaster, probably working alongside No. 97’s Fitter II E’s and spending time at the factory of A V Roe Ltd alongside the Lancaster production process, this being documented in his service records. Operational records for No. 97 Squadron who were gaining experience of the Lancaster in combat do not show any occasions when he flew Ops in May or June 1942. At this time the squadrons converting from Manchesters to Lancasters were flying with a 2nd Pilot assisting the Pilot due to the shortage of Flight Engineers. Bomber Command did not want two pilots tied up in each aircraft.
On 17 May 1942 Freddie was posted to No. 4 School of Technical Training (RAF St Athan) where he received two weeks intensive training on the duties of a Lancaster Flight Engineer and probably attended lectures by aircrew who had flown aboard Lancasters operationally. He graduated on 1 June 1942 with a Flight Engineer brevet to replace his Air Gunner wing, a re-muster to Flight Engineer on his records and a promotion to Temporary Sergeant as all aircrew received automatic promotion to Sergeant.
Operations – Freddie’s first tour
Freddie was posted to RAF Coningsby to join No. 106 Squadron at a time when they still had some of the troubled twin engine Manchester bombers on their operational strength and the squadron had actually had to operate their newly arriving four engine Lancasters with a 2nd Pilot in each crew because of the shortage of Flight Engineers to help the pilot take off, fly and land the aircraft.
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Since March 1942 No. 106 Squadron had been commanded by Wing Commander Guy Gibson DSO DFC (later to be awarded a VC in recognition of the attack by No. 617 Squadron on the Ruhr dams). Gibson had been appointed by No. 5 Group to take the squadron through the difficult conversion to Lancasters at an awkward time. After Bomber Command’s two “Maximum Effort” raids at the end of May/start of June 1942 when every squadron and operational training unit was required to make available crews for all serviceable aircraft in order to get 1,000 aircraft into the air to attack Cologne and then Essen, Gibson was granted a three week time window during which he could put his squadron into a non-operational state. This was to be his single opportunity to get all of his crews trained and familiar with the operation of the new Lancasters which were arriving from the factory of A V Roe Ltd before the next “Maximum Effort” attack was due.
No.106 Squadron at RAF Coningsby
Freddie was one of the Flight Engineers who arrived to join No. 106 during this period of frantic activity of continual day and night time flight tests and training. Later in the war Flight Engineers would have been a part of the crew formation process at Operational Training Unit (mentioned previously), they would have trained within their own crew in preparation for Ops, lived together in accommodation huts, eaten together in the mess and become a very close team prior to being posted to a squadron.
The early Flight Engineers however were completely “dropped in at the deep end”. Crews who had already been flying Ops in Manchesters and the new Lancasters with 2nd Pilot’s were to lose this team member with whom they had been sharing the risks over Germany and instead were allocated a “sprog” (a new member who had little or no combat experience). Surviving veterans reported that in the main the “new bods”, who were regarded as “Gen Kiddies” (technically minded clever chaps) were welcomed into their crews and soon fit in.
Flight Engineers assisted with the Lancaster training process from the moment of their arrival at Coningsby and would be selectively added to crews who were ready to “have a bash” the new way with a “new bod” instead of their tried and tested 2nd Pilot. The 2nd Pilots were obviously needed to “step up” and take on their own crews as Skipper. As a consequence some crews continued to fly with a second pilot, including W/Cdr Gibson who had Pilot Officer Dave Shannon (later DSO DFC, a Dam buster) as his second pilot, while others gradually began to fly with the new Flight Engineers sitting in the “second seat” beside the pilot.
Freddie and the other lads joining the squadron would be serving alongside men who were destined to accompany Gibson on the Dams Raid (ie: David Shannon, “Hoppy” Hopgood, Joe McCarthy, Bob Hutchison, Lewis Burpee, Tony Burcher, Bill Long, Ted Johnson, Guy Pegler) and men who would later lead the Pathfinder and Mosquito marking units, John Searby DSO DFC and John Wooldridge DSO DFC DFM.
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An early Lancaster (above)
Squadron records next show Freddie’s first Op.
In the early morning of 25 June 1942 Bomber Command HQ ordered that the night of 25/26 June 1942 was to be a “Maximum Effort” attack on Bremen, a massive port and u-boat building dockyard, it was expected that 1,000 aircraft would bomb the target. Gibson’s window of opportunity to train his crews was over and in common with all other units, No. 106 Squadron was expected to provide every serviceable aircraft on their strength with crews to fly them.
Pilot Officer John Coates RAAF a 30 year old from Queensland, Australia, who had flown previously as 2nd Pilot with Flight Lieut. JV “Hoppy” Hopgood, was allocated Lancaster R5678 and a “scratch
crew” (a crew comprising members of aircrew serving with the squadron but not already assigned to
fly that night as a part of an existing crew). His flight engineer would be Sergeant Freddie Spencer.
During the day they would have followed a standard routine which would be followed before every single Op they flew. The crew would have flown briefly to air-test their allocated Lancaster ensuring that it was serviceable in all aspects and the skipper would have signed acceptance of that fact on the clip board of the NCO who headed the ground crew maintaining that particular bomber.
There would have been an afternoon briefing in which the routes to and from the target were unveiled, usually in the form of ribbons stretching from base across a huge wall mounted map, out across the North Sea towards the target, passing over the target area and indicating the route home. Survivors recalled that very distant targets or targets known to be “hairy” often generated sharp intakes of breath or muttered profanities. Potential searchlight and flak belts along with known Luftwaffe night fighter airfields were pointed out for the Observers (Navigators) to mark on their charts and try to avoid. The wireless op’s were given the call signs and frequencies allocated for the night. Met officers forecast expected weather conditions particularly warning of potential icing on wings which might bring an aircraft down. They also reported any forecast head or cross-winds which might push a crew way off course consuming fuel which may not be spare. Flight engineers worked to calculate and re-calculate the fuel loads based on the required routes, distances to be covered and bomb loads carried. Bomb aimers would pay particular attention to the large scale maps and photographs of the target they could expect to see through their bomb sights, noting landmarks which might be seen on the run up to the target and during the bombing run.
They took off from Coningsby at 23:45 hours and had an uneventful outward flight arriving over Bremen on time with the Main Force, their observer (navigator) Pilot Officer Andy Maxwell, a 28 year old Scot had proven himself proficient. At the post-op debrief John Coates reported that his crew experienced some cloud cover in the TA (Target Area) but Sergeant CJ McGlinn the bomb aimer noted their bombs bursting amongst fires which were believed to be in the town centre. They landed back at base at 04:05 hours. Freddie was doubtless exhausted and would have eaten breakfast in the mess with 24 year old wireless operator Flight Sergeant John Williams from Brentford, 20 year old Sergeant John Dickie their rear gunner, a Scot from Milngavie and 21 year old Stan Topham from Bradford, mid upper gunner before they headed for their beds.
During the day of 27 June 1942 a “Battle Order” would have been posted at RAF Coningsby
indicating that “Ops are on” for the men listed to crew each aircraft specified. Freddie would have
found out that he was again listed to fly with Australian “Skipper” John Coates aboard Lancaster
R5678 as flight engineer for the same lads he had been “crewed up” with to attack Bremen. Bomber crew survivors speaking post-war usually recalled a feeling of relief if (allocated as “spare bods”) they were flying with a crew they had previously flown with and returned safely.
Lancaster R5678 lifted off the runway at Coningsby at 22:45 hours scheduled for a long flight to
parachute sea mines into a minefield known as “Deodars” located in the Gironde Estuary. The RAF regularly planted and re-laid minefields in sea lanes identified as being used by U-boats heading from their bases out to sea, it was a task known by the coded term “Gardening”. A large u-boat flotilla was based at Bordeaux and its concrete pens could not service the u-boats unless they could pass through the Gironde Estuary to and from the Bay of Biscay. Andy Maxwell navigated them precisely to their assigned “Garden” and John Coates report stated that they found “bright moonlight, no cloud and excellent visibility. Five mines were dropped. Slight opposition was experienced near Lorient” (anti-aircraft fire). A safe flight home saw them touch down at 05:05 hours on 28 June and after the routine de-brief it would have been breakfast and bed.
That was the last time Freddie flew with John Coates and crew who were joined by flight engineer Sergeant Tom Reid a 22 year old from Larkhall, Lanarkshire on a permanent basis. Having flown Op after Op they were probably looking forward to the end of their tour but they were caught above
the Ruhr Valley’s Dusseldorf searchlight and flak belt and shot down on 16 August. The entire crew “bought it” - were killed.
Scheduled for Ops again on 2 July Freddie was to fly in another attack on the north German port of Bremen. He would be flight engineer in the crew of 25 year old Pilot Officer Steve Cockbain which consisted of lads like himself who do not appear to have had a fixed crew. They took off in Lancaster R5638 at 23:59 hours and arrived over Bremen to find no cloud and excellent visibility. Their bomb load was released from 13,500 feet and bomb bursts were observed in the docks area causing fire and considerable smoke. Cockbain reported “heavy opposition in the target area” meaning searchlights and substantial flak. They landed back at Coningsby at 04:15 hours.
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Above – Lancasters attacking a dockyard/port, searchlights attempting to catch an aircraft while
yellow flak shells burst all around leaving black “smudges”.
After several days rest Freddie was listed on the “Battle Order” of 11 July 1942 to fly with Steve Cockbain and another “scratch crew” in Lancaster R5680. Their target was the u-boat construction yards at Danzig on the North German/Polish Baltic coastline. The squadron took off as usual, each
aircraft a minute or two after the previous with R5680 clearing the ground at 17:05 hours ready for a very long flight. They experienced generator problems over the North Sea and in the vicinity of Denmark (position 56.30 North x 12.00 East) the crew decided to abandon the Op due to aircraft unserviceability and their navigator 36 year old Toronto man Flight Sergeant Fred Spanner RCAF, plotted a course for home. Cockbain landed their Lancaster at base at 23:30 hours.
The “Battle Order” on 31 July listed Freddie to fly again with Steve Cockbain and a scratch crew. They were allocated Lancaster R5742 to participate in an attack on industrial Dusseldorf in the Ruhr Valley (known to cynically to bomber crews as Happy Valley due to its deservedly fearsome reputation for experienced searchlight and flak crews and the hive of night fighters which flew over it). Their navigator would be Fred Spanner again and their wireless operator would be Pilot Officer WJ Buzza
RCAF who had also flown with them on their “Early Return” two weeks earlier. They took off at 01:00 on the morning of 1 August and arrived over the Target Area in cloudless conditions but noting some ground haze. In these conditions the target was located easily and they bombed from 11,000 feet. Cockbain reported that his crew believed they hit a factory in the target area. They were then attacked by a night fighter but managed to evade it. The crew landed back at base at 05:30.
Freddie was not allocated to fly with Dorset man Steve Cockbain again, sadly he would be killed on 14 January 1945 as a Squadron Leader after being awarded a DFC, he is buried at Botley in Oxford. Fred Spanner (later Flying Officer, DFC) was lost on his second tour on 3 September 1943 when his 207 Squadron Lancaster simply disappeared during an attack on Berlin, it was presumed lost without trace over the North Sea.
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A squadron of Lancasters preparing to taxi-out ready for take off. (late 1942) Below – Freddie and crew with a 106 Squadron Lancaster
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Lancaster crew approach their aircraft (above)
On the night of 8/9 August 1942 Freddie flew his sixth Op, it was to be an important one for him because it would be his last as a “spare bod”, this time allocated to the crew being formed around former 2nd Pilot Sergeant Jim Cassels to fly Lancaster R5680. Cassels had previously flown with Steve Cockbain as 2nd Pilot. They were assigned “Gardening”, to parachute sea mines into a Garden known as “Silverthorn”. It was at a point in the Kattegat off Aarhus used routinely by u-boats. Taking off at 23:45 they flew across the North Sea to find that conditions in the target area were very poor with 9/10ths cloud, poor visability and sea mist. Their navigator located Anholt Island and calculating a precise course and speed placed the Lancaster over its Garden on a “timed run”. Five mines were laid and they returned without incident, landing at 05:45 hours for breakfast.
Regular crew
Following his sixth Op Freddie joined the crew of 33 year Pilot Officer James Leslie (Jim) Cooper a pre-war RAF Regular serviceman (and himself a former Aircrafthand Engineer), who had previously flown as 2nd Pilot with Squadron Leader Harold Robertson (aged 27 from Southern Rhodesia) their Flight Commander. Cooper was assigned to form his own crew after Robertson and his old crew had been shot down and killed two weeks earlier while flying with a novice 2nd Pilot).
Surviving Bomber Command aircrew all say that having a regular crew gave them a sense of belonging, the opportunity to bond, to get used to the habits and nuances of crew mates and to work closely as a team. All said that team work greatly improved the odds for survival.
Jim Cooper and Freddie Spencer flew together for the remainder of their tour. Their regular crew were observer (navigator) Pilot Officer Frank Drew, wireless operator/air gunner Pilot Officer John Buzza RCAF, their regular bomb aimer was Sergeant David Gregory but occasionally they had to fly with various stand-in bomb aimers for reasons not recorded, Sergeants Fred Tucker and H R Bailey made up the crew as mid-upper and rear gunner.
The “Battle Order” for 11 August 1942 assigned Lancaster W4118 to Pilot Officer Jim Cooper and
crew, it’s squadron codes were “ZN – Z” displayed on the fuselage. It would not become their regular aircraft which was R5750, however they had a crew photo taken with it (below) possibly to mark the formation of their own crew.
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Freddie Spencer standing 2nd from left, Jim Cooper probably kneeling at left and Frank Drew probably kneeling at right.
The crew’s navigator was Francis Elliott (Frank) Drew a 22 year old Devonport man. Their WOp/AG (wireless operator/air gunner) was WJ (John) Buzza RCAF a 21 year old Canadian, David Bryan Gregory a 28 year old married man from Wallasey was their regular bomb aimer, mid upper gunner was Sergeant Frederick John (Fred) Tucker a 21 year old from Wadebridge, Cornwall and Sergeant H R Bailey was the “tail end Charlie” Rear Gunner.
Seventh Op - first Op together as a crew
Jim Cooper assisted by Freddie lifted Lancaster W4118 off the runway at RAF Coningsby at 23:15 hours on 11 August 1942 and they set course for Mainz. The outward trip was uneventful with their Lancaster arriving over the Target Area to find 5/10ths cloud cover at 3,000 feet, it was a dark night but clear. They bombed from 15,000 feet and reported that bombs could be seen bursting in the built up part of town. Fires were started. Opposition was slight. Bomber Command War Diaries (p.294) notes that considerable damage was caused to the centre of Mainz. After a safe return trip they landed at base at 03:50 hours.
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The crew were soon allocated Lancaster R5750, previously flown by the CO, Wing Commander Guy Gibson, the record states that it is pictured in the photo above taken on an attack in late July 1942 by David Shannon.
It was following the attack on Mainz that Jim Cooper’s crew appear to have been assigned their own Lancaster (R5750), this tended to happen in order for an established crew to become familiar with a particular aircraft and its own idiosyncracies. This was a practice enormously beneficial to a crew with a highly competent flight engineer such as Freddie as it gave him the opportunity to know how each engine would perform under operational conditions, to find any ways to eke out fuel if they were low, to look for solutions to high altitude icing and learn any other peculiarities of “his” Lancaster to be able to seek out corrective actions before problems occurred which might kill them.
The “Battle Order” for 27 August named Jim Cooper and crew to fly R5750. No. 106 Squadron were to despatch nine Lancasters to Gdynia a Baltic port 950 miles distant led by Gibson to attack a major warship, the remainder of the squadron were to join the “Main Force” and attack Kassel. The crew took off at 20:50 hours in the force heading to Kassel. The conditions over the target were hazy with no cloud and they attacked from 8,000 feet. Bombs were observed bursting in the town where there were many large fires. Some anti-aircraft fire was noted by Freddie’s crew as were night fighters but they were not attacked. That night 10% of the “Main Force” were lost to fighters and anti-aircraft fire including 5 of the 15 Wellington’s despatched by No. 142 Squadron. All three Henschel aircraft factories were badly damaged (Bomber Command War Diaries, p.303). At Gdynia the warship could not be identified through the haze. R5750 landed at Coningsby at 02:20 hours.
On the following day, 28 August Freddie’s crew were assigned R5750 to participate in an attack on Nuremburg the ideological home of Hitler’s Nazi Party. They took off from Coningsby at 21:10 hours and arrived over the Target Area after the Pathfinder Force had dropped marker flares to assist target acquisition by the Main Force. Jim Cooper’s report stated that conditions were very clear, visibility was good and the target was visually identified. They bombed from 13,000 feet over the centre of the town where too many bombs were bursting for them to be able to identify their own. There was little flak opposition. There was damage recorded in the town centre and to the south the Nazi Party Kongresshalle and parts of the Nuremburg Rally colony was destroyed, (BCWD, page 304). They were fortunate to arrive safely back at base and landed at 04:00 hours, sadly 14% of the British bombers “Failed to Return”.
The pressure on aircrew was maintained with another Op on 1 September 1942. Again flying R5750 Jim Cooper and crew were to participate in an attack on industrial Saarbrucken. David Gregory did not fly on this night and Pilot Officer Don Margach a 30 year old from Edinburgh took his place (Margach was killed on 29 July 1944 flying with 582 Squadron on his second tour). They took off at 23:59 hours and arrived punctually in the Target Area where conditions were clear with no cloud and the Pathfinder Force marker flares were heavily bombed by the Main Force. On this night the flares had been dropped out of place and the nearby town of Saarlouis was battered. Cooper and crew landed back at base at 05:00 hours on 2 September. Opposition had been light as were losses.
After a few hours sleep the tired airmen found that they were again on “Battle Orders” with R5750 to participate in an attack on industrial Karlsruhe that same night, 2 September 1942. Taking off at 23:35 hours they arrived to attack exceptionally well placed Pathfinder flares. David Gregory had been unable to fly with them again and Sergeant J Eastwood flew as bomb aimer. The visibility in the target area was reported as good without cloud. Using the river to identify the target they bombed from 10,000 feet and saw their bombs burst amongst fires in the town which was already burning fiercely. Their successful attack was confirmed by a “bombing photo” (a huge flash assisted camera triggered to capture the fall of the bombs from a particular aircraft and document the point to be hit). Jim Cooper landed at Coningsby at 05:25 hours.
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Lancasters over a burning Target Area.
With little opportunity for rest Freddie’s crew were listed on “Battle Orders” again for the night of 4/5 September, they were to participate in an attack on Bremen where the Focke Wulf factory produced aircraft and the Atlas shipyard worked for the German Navy. The recently introduced Pathfinders developed a new tactic and for the first time their initial aircraft dropped “illuminators”
which lit the target area with white flares, their second wave “visual markers” dropped Target
Indicator flares on a positively identified target and their “backers-up” dropped all incendiary bomb loads on the coloured flares. This practice continued for the remainder of the war and allowed the Main Force to bomb more accurately. (Bomber Command War Diaries, p.306).
Jim Cooper, Freddie and crew aboard Lancaster R5750 took off at 00:30 hours on the morning of 5 September and arrived over the Target Area to find the weather very good and identified the target easily but due to the heavy smoke from many fires already burning they couldn’t see details. Bomb aimer Sergeant Eastwood was flying with them again and he bombed from 11,000 feet and was able to note the bursts of their bombs through the smoke. Flak was very heavy and accurate and their aircraft received hits and battle damage. They made it home safely landing at 05:30. Both the aircraft works and the Atlas shipyard were seriously damaged.
On the night 6/7 September Freddie’s crew were assigned Lancaster R5900 for the attack on Duisburg, their own aircraft was still under repair. They took off at 01:25 hours, again Sergeant Eastwood flew as their bomb aimer, and finding ground haze across the target they struggled to pinpoint the target. Locating the River Rhine Jim Cooper followed it and aided by Pathfinder flares they bombed from 11,000 feet seeing bombs bursting in a built up area 1 mile east of the river. As might be expected of a centre of heavy industry the flak opposition was intense. The crew noted fires burning well before they turned for home. Theytouched down at 05:15 hours.
Battle Orders for 8 September included Freddie’s crew – the target was industrial Frankfurt. Jim Cooper had been assigned the repaired R5750 and their own bomb aimer David Gregory was to rejoin them. They lifted off the runway at Coningsby at 21:00 hours. Haze over the target area made locating the aiming point difficult but finding an identifiable bend in the River Main Gregory made a bombing run and they attacked from 11,000 feet. Bombs were seen bursting in the estimated centre of the town. Little opposition was experienced, although searchlights were active the flak was light. They returned to base at 03:10 hours on 9 September.
It was the same story for the night of 10/11 September, allocated their own Lancaster R5750 Freddie and crew took off at 20:55 to take part in an attack on the factories of Dusseldorf. There was no cloud in the target area but visibility was not good due to haze. They bombed from 12,000 feet based on a timed run from a fix point. No bomb bursts could be seen however their “bombing
photo” was very good and showed that they had hit a cluster of factory buildings. Bomber Command War Diaries p.308, records that substantial damage was caused to 39 factories in Dusseldorf and Neuss sufficient to halt all production for several days. Sadly 33 of the bombers were shot down, 7% of the force. The crew landed safely at Coningsby at 01:30 hours.
The next raid of any size into the Ruhr Valley was on the night of 16/17 September when 369 bombers were ordered to bomb the Krupp tank production factories at Essen. Freddie was likely unhappy that R5750 was not serviceable and their crew were assigned a spare, Lancaster W4195. The complete crew were flying again and Jim Cooper lifted the Lancaster off at 20:25 hours. Over the target they experienced 5/10ths cloud, poor visibility and were unable to locate the ground detail which were preferred for good accuracy. Their bombs burst in a built up district as was
confirmed by their “bombing photo”. In the traget area they were buffetted by fierce and very intense flak and noted a series of bombers being shot down. The Krupp factories were damaged by bombs and by a fully loaded bomber which had been shot down and crashed directly into the target.
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The Krupp Panzer factory following RAF bombing (above)
Although successful the attack on Krupp cost 39 bombers, over 10% of the force despatched. Landing at 01:35 hours Freddie and his crew were to discover that 3 of the 11 aircraft of No. 106 Squadron which had flown that night had “Failed to Return”, their flight commander 25 year old Devon man Squadron Leader Cecil Howell and his crew and those of Pilot Officers Downer and Williams. The latter crew disappeared without trace and included Flying Officer Bob Chase (Gunnery Leader) who had flown with Freddie aboard Steve Cockbain’s Lancaster on the night of 31 July. The loss to No. 106 was very heavy but in the eyes of its crews probably not unexpected, the flak
gunners in “Happy Valley” caused heavy losses and it was regarded as a “heavy chop” target.
No. 106 Squadron were tasked to contribute aircraft to a small force to bomb Munich, the headquarters of the Nazi Party, on 19 September. Lancaster R5750 was serviceable again and the entire crew were listed for Ops. Taking off at 20:10 hours they began the long range trip and arrived over target to find no cloud and good visibility. David Gregory located the aiming point without difficulty and they bombed at 8,500 feet noting bombs bursting across the town. Flak was slight and the trip marked as very successful when they landed at 04:10 hours on 20 September. Only six of the 68 bombers attacking were lost.
“Battle Orders” for 23 September called Freddie’s crew to fly their trusty Lancaster R5750 and attack the Dornier aircraft works at Wismar as a part of a small force of 83 bombers. Jim Cooper took off at 22:40 hours and over Wismar on the Baltic coast they found 10/10ths cloud cover and were unable to identify the target despite low passes over the vicinity. David Gregory was not flying that night and another bomb aimer, Warrant Officer N Manton, made his bomb run based on calculations and timing. Attacking from 1,500 feet they did not see the results although other aircraft noted large fires including a massive fire in the aircraft works. All crews experienced intense flak and searchlights and balloons were present over the target. Many aircraft were damaged and 4 shot down. The crew landed back at Coningsby at 06:30 hours.
Given a week to rest Jim Cooper, Freddie and crew were again scheduled to fly R5750 on 1 October to return to Wismar. With the full crew together again they took off at 18:20 hours but out over the North Sea experienced serious engine problems and had to return to base at 19:30 hours.
The next night, 2 October 1942, Freddie’s crew were on “Battle Orders” again, they were assigned R5750 to attack industrial Krefeld. Jim Cooper took off at 19:00 hours and after an uneventful outward flight they encountered dense haze in the target area, the Pathfinder Force were late to mark the target and David Gregory bombed from 14,000 feet through considerable ground haze but reported that the incendiaries seemed to start a fire in a built up area, he was almost certain that they had hit their target. They landed at base at 00:25 hours.
The attack on Aachen of 5/6 October 1942 started badly as bomber squadrons took off from their bases in heavy thunder storms, six aircraft crashed in England before they had reached the Channel. Lancaster R5750 was manned by Freddie’s complete crew and they fought the weather all the way to Aachen which was located in 10/10ths cloud at 12,000 feet. Visibility was fair lower down and they attacked from 11,000 feet and observed explosions in a built up area. There was some flak but they were not close to it. 4% of the attacking bombers were lost that night.
No. 106 Squadron moved its base in October 1942 transferring from RAF Coningsby to RAF Syerston in Leicestershire. At about this time Frank Drew their navigator was promoted to Flying Officer, this was doubtless celebrated in true RAF fashion.
After a break and possibly a period of leave Jim Cooper, Freddie and their complete crew were back on the “Battle Order” of 22/23 October 1942 for a No. 5 Group special operation. The crew were to participate in a very long range Op to bomb Genoa in Italy, an attack timed to coincide with the Eighth Army (Desert Rats) attack at El Alamein. Freddie must have been annoyed to find that R5750 was unserviceable when they did their afternoon flight test. They took off in an unfamiliar Lancaster W4763 at 18:05 hours for the very long flight to the target. Conditions over Genoa were clear with no cloud and bright moonlight. Several pinpoints were identified and then Pathfinder flares were seen. The 112 Lancasters bombed, David Gregory attacked from 10,000 feet directly onto the target and bomb bursts were seen in the town centre. Bomber Command War Diaries, p.18 reports that the small force carrying only 180 tons of bombs lost none of its aircraft and caused very heavy damage in the city centre which proved seriously demoralising to the Italian people. At least one Lancaster roared across the city just above the roof tops machine-gunning targets of opportunity.
The crew landed back at RAF Syerston at 02:45 hours.
At this point crews of No. 106 Squadron had started to receive certificates for attacks on more risky targets, this is believed to have been a No. 5 Group practice. Freddie and his crew received one.
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To keep up the pressure on the Italian Homefront No. 5 Group were tasked with a risky daylight attack on Milan. The order called for 88 Lancasters to proceed independently by a direct route across France using some cloud cover to rendezvous above Lake Annecy before crossing the Alps and bomb Milan in broad daylight. Back in their Lancaster R5750 Freddie’s crew lifted off at 12:40 and arrived over the target to find good visibility and cloudbase at 5,000 feet. They bombed at 4,500 feet after easily locating the target and saw their bombs bursting in town near the electric works. Soon after the air raid sirens started. There was considerable light flak but it was not accurate. Only 4 Lancasters failed to return.
The photo below shows airmen of No. 106 Squadron who had attacked Genoa on 22/23 Oct 1942.
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A night raid took place on Genoa on 6/7 November 1942 when Jim Cooper and crew flew without Freddie, the reason for his absence is not given.
The “Battle Order” for 9 November called for Freddie and the crew to fly Lancaster R5750 to bomb Hamburg. The complete crew took off at 17:40 and had a difficult outward flight in very poor weather fighting strong winds. They encountered severe icing throughout. Locating the target was difficult due to 10/10ths cloud and they bombed a secondary target Roclinghausen from 14,000 feet. It was believed that their incendiaries caused fires to break out. They landed back at Syerston at 00:35 on 10 November.
At this point No. 5 Group HQ were requested to put pressure back on the Italians and although that inevitably involved arduous long range operations they scheduled the aircraft and crews to accomplish this.
On the night 13/14 November accompanying several Pathfinder markers 67 Lancasters attacked Genoa again. Jim Cooper, Freddie and crew took off in Lancaster R5750 at 18:00 hours following their new flight commander Squadron Leader John Searby (later one of the greatest of the Pathfinder leaders). Conditions in the target area were clear with good visibility and David Gregory had the target in his bomb sight when he bombed at 9,500 feet. Their bombs burst across the target area starting fires. Flak was reportedly minimal. They landed back at base at 03:05 hours.
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Another attack on an Italian target followed on 18/19 November this time led by Wing Commander Guy Gibson and Squadron Leader John Searby. Aboard their faithful R5750 Jim Cooper, Freddie and crew took off from Syerston at 18:00 hours to attack the Fiat motor works at Turin. Excellent conditions for bombing were found above the target with the factories clearly identified they bombed from 9,500 feet with at least two of their stick of bombs hitting the target factory. Flak was encountered but nothing like that of the Ruhr Valley. The crew were assisted by favourable winds on their homeward trip and landed at 01:15 hours just as Gibson and Searby were preparing to land.
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The night of 20/21 November called for the crew and their reliable Lancaster R5750 to undertake another long range Op to attack the Fiat works at Turin again, they were part of the biggest raiding force to Italy at that time, 232 bombers. Jim Cooper took off at 18:40 hours and on the route out one engine inexplicably failed. Freddie was unable to effect repairs in flight and despite the huge challenge the crew decided to continue, they made the rendezvous and crossed the Alps fully laden with bombs on just 3 engines. There was no cloud over Turin on arrival but the target was masked by a thick ground haze and smoke from the town. Frank Drew and David Gregory managed to pinpoint a road and river junction which enabled a timed bombing run. No results of the attack were visible but later intelligence reported heavy fires. Freddie managed to coax enough power from their three remaining engines to get them back over the Alps and they returned on three to land at 03:10 hours.
After a week of rest to recover from the long flights Freddie’s crew must have pondered their luck to be on the “Battle Order” of 28 November, another long range attack on Turin. Wing Commander Guy Gibson and Flight Lieutenant Bill Whammond led the No. 106 Squadron element and these two officers dropped the first two 8,000 lb bombs on Italy. This time Freddies crew took Lancaster W4770, taking off at 19:00 hours, they crossed the Alps without trouble and found the conditions clear over Turin, visibility was good and there was already some smoke over the target as several crews had attacked immediately on arrival instead of awaiting the Pathfinders. David Gregory bombed at 7,000 feet with the target in his sights. Their bombs were observed to burst and start fires, many large fires were seen and the bombing regarded as accurate. The crew landed back at RAF Syerston at 03:00 hours. In the course of this attack the Australian skipper of a No. 149 Squadron crew (F/Sgt R H Middleton) earned a posthumous V.C.
Following several days rest Jim Cooper, Freddie and crew were listed on “Battle Orders” again, for 6/7 December 1942 to participate in an attack on Mannheim in Germany in R5750. Taking off at 17:30 they arrived to discover Mannheim masked by 10/10ths cloud, their target was unidentifiable. Working on navigational reckonnings they bombed from 10,000 feet and although unable to see their bombs burst, fires could be seen burning beneath the cloud cover. They landed at 00:30 hours.
Last Op of the tour
At this stage the crew were near to the end of their tour and due to be “screened from Ops”, (removed from the roster of crews liable to be placed on “Battle Orders”) and due to be posted away. If they were able to complete their last Op they would have survived their tour.
On the night 8/9 December 1942 Jim Cooper, Freddie and crew were assigned Lancaster W4256 for yet another long range Op to Turin. They took off from RAF Syerston at 17:35 shortly before their flight commander Squadron Leader John Searby and headed directly for the Alps. Arriving over Turin they discovered clear conditions, and good visibility despite a smoky haze. The target could be clearly identified and it was bombed from 6,000 feet. The crew noted their bombs bursting near a bridge 1000 yards south east of the primary aiming point and after circling the target for 18 minutes to recconoitre they headed home and landed at 02:20 hours.
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Jim Cooper, Freddie and crew had survived their tour of Ops with No. 106 Squadron.
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As was quite normal, the Skipper, Pilot Officer James Leslie Cooper (111552) RAFVR was recommended for a Distinguished Flying Cross in recognition of the success of his crew in their tour of Ops. Navigator - Flying Officer Francis Elliott Drew (104411) RAFVR was recommended for a DFC shortly afterwards and finally received it in March 1943.
The remainder of the crew were not decorated at that stage as was entirely normal: (Flight Engineer) 968957 Sergeant Frederick David Spencer RAFVR.
(Bomb Aimer) 1310664 Flight Sergeant David Bryan Gregory RAFVR. (Wireless Op/Air Gunner) Pilot Officer W. John Buzza, RCAF.
(Mid Upper Gunner) 1313519 Sergeant Frederick John Tucker, RAFVR (Rear Gunner) Sergeant H R Bailey (as yet not positively identified)
Most of the crew were posted-away to instruct at training units where they would prepare airmen about to embark on their own first tour of Ops. Freddie left No. 106 Squadron in late December 1942 posted to Instruct.
Jim Cooper, Frank Drew and Fred Tucker met up again to fly their second tour at No. 619 Squadron later transferring to No. 617 Squadron together. They were flying in a Lancaster attacking Munich on the night of 24/25 April 1944 when it was shot down by a night fighter, fortunately these three men managed to bale out and survived the war as Prisoners of War.
Freddie’s crew:
James Leslie Cooper DFC died in January 1982 in Scunthorpe.
Francis Elliott (Frank) Drew DFC died on 25 Jul 1957 in Paignton, he had married in June 1943 and had a son.
WJ (John) Buzza RCAF rendered distinguished service to Canada in the RCAF post-war (he was promoted to Wing Commander and after the reorganization of the Canadian Military he retired as a Brigadier General with the Canadian Decoration (C.D.)
David Bryan Gregory died in Queensland/Australia in 2008 having emigrated with his wife and five children in 1958.
Frederick John (Fred) Tucker married in June 1944 later having 3 sons and a daughter, he died in October 2003 in Wadebridge.
H R Bailey may have been a Canadian who was killed later on Ops in mid 1944 flying with 57 Squadron, I have struggled to positively identify him.
A period of “Rest” - instructing and still flying Ops
Theoretically Instructing was “resting” as it was not expected to involve operational flying. However instructing “sprog crews” (inexperienced) was seen by the tour-expired operational airmen as a pretty dangerous occupation given the number of crashes which occurred.
Freddie joined No. 1654 (Heavy) Conversion Unit at RAF Wigsley on 22 December 1942. The unit existed to accept aircrews from Operational Training Units (OTU’s) where they had learned to fly aircraft such as the Short Stirling and Vickers Wellington and sometimes Avro Manchesters and re- train them to fly Manchesters and Lancasters.
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A Lancaster of No. 1654 CU (1943/44)
During January 1943 Bomber Command HQ expected every RAF unit to make available aircraft and crews to bomb Berlin and No. 1654 HCU provided a number of crews which were most likely centred on tour expired aircrew serving at the unit as instructions but each likely including some of the men who were there to learn.
It is certain that this happened on the night of 17/18 January 1943 because No. 1654 CU operating from RAF Swinderby lost two of those it assigned (Lancasters R5843 and W4772) flown by Pilot Officer F A Reid DFC and Pilot Officer L Jenkinson) and sister unit No. 1656 HCU lost Lancaster ED316 flown by Flight Lieut. S D L Hood RNZAF. It is likely that many more flew and returned safely, possibly in other nights in Jan 1943 as well. It would be surprising if Freddie had not flown one or two Ops during this period, supervising a novice crew.
Instructing would have continued and the crashes began. Freddie witnessed many. On 24 Jan 1943 one of the units Manchesters force land just outside Lincoln with an engine in flames, on 25 Feb a practice bomb exploded beneath a Manchester and destroyed it, on 2 March a Manchester crewed by one of the experienced pilots F/Lt P J Stone DFC flying with a novice crew hit a tree, one man was killed and all others injured.
On 4 April one of the unit’s Manchesters was reported destroyed by fire.
Based on his performance Freddie had been recommended for a commission and on 4 April 1943 he was formally discharged from service in the RAFVR as an airman and commissioned into the RAFVR as a Pilot Officer (issued an officer’s service number 143793). He remained at his Instructing duties with the Heavy Conversion Unit.
Just days afterwards on 8 April one of their Lancasters (L7545) with a novice crew under instruction from one of Freddie’s peers (Pilot Officer J H Wolton DFM a fellow Flight Engineer Instructor) was in collision with an Oxford training aircraft at 18:15 hours. Both aircraft crashed at Burton Lazars in Leicestershire. All eight crew aboard the Lancaster were killed.
The toll continued for No. 1654 HCU on 15 April when a Manchester crashed and burned near the airfield, fortunately the crew of seven survived but all were injured, on 7 May the undercarriage of another Manchester collapsed during take off causing a belly landing and on the night of 23/24 May one of their Lancasters (W4303) on a night training flight broke up in the air east of Hull killing the crew of eight (including an instructor). On 11 June their Lancaster ED833 crashed after its wingtip clipped a telegraph pole, the rear gunner survived injured but his six crewmates were killed.
On 27 July Lancaster ED591 crashed while taking off when a tyre exploded and the inexperienced pilot was unable to take corrective action. The crew walked away on this occasion. August 1943 was almost an entire month without No. 1654 CU suffering a serious accident until 31 Aug when on a late evening flying exercise Lancaster W4260 crashed after a mid-air collision, the crew fate is not recorded. Later that night another of their aircraft, Lancaster R5698 collided with another training aircraft and crashed killing its crew of seven.
On 17 Sep Lancaster W4921 crashed as its novice crew took off, they were fortunate to walk away.
At this point Freddie’s work as an Instructor was recognised and he was promoted to Flying Officer (8 Oct 1943).
On 22 Oct Lancaster L7575 with a full crew crashed due to turbulence and icing and all seven airmen were killed and on 11/12 November the novice pilot of Lancaster W4902 on a night exercise crashed while taking evasive action to avoid another aircraft. The HCU crew suffered 3 killed and 3 injured.
It is suspected that Freddie might even have been relieved to be posted from No. 1654 Heavy Conversion Unit on 20 Nov 1943, he was to re-join an operational squadron as Instructor. No. 630 Squadron was a brand new squadron in the process of forming at RAF East Kirkby.
Freddie’s second tour of Ops
Freddie was posted to RAF East Kirkby on 20 November 1943 with the rank of Flying Officer to serve as a Flight Engineer Instructor however his orders were quickly changed to meet operational requirements and he was promoted again on 1 December 1943 to Acting Flight Lieutenant.
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On Freddie’s arrival at East Kirkby No. 630 Squadron was 5 days old, Squadron Leader Malcolm
Crocker DFC a 26 year old American from Massachusetts was forming it from “B Flight” of Wing Commander Fisher’s No. 57 Squadron based on the same airfield. Bomber Command were following a similar practice on many local air bases, they needed more squadron’s formed around experienced cadres to keep up the pressure of German war industry and strike hard particularly against Berlin.
Crews were posted in from other No. 5 Group squadrons such as No. 9, No. 44, No. 61, No. 106, No. 207 and No. 619 and were supplemented by new crews from HCU’s until the squadron reached strength. Conditions were tough, accommodation was not completed and much of what was needed to make a squadron operational was not available.
Freddie had been appointed Flight Engineer Leader by Malcolm Crocker, he was to head up all of the Flight Engineers assigned to the squadron. His responsibility was to ensure the operational and technical competency of every Flight Engineer. His duties would also extend to their personal well being, health and discipline. In the air each flight engineer reported to his Skipper who shared responsibility with Freddie, but on the ground, on and off duty, on leave or in hospital they were
Freddie’s engineers. He held lectures and shared his experience with his engineers.
The ”Departmental Leaders” such as Flight Engineer Leader, Gunnery Leader, Bombing Leader, Signals Leader, etc, were all experienced men, all led by example and all of them flew on a regular basis sharing the operational risks with their men. Malcolm Crocker the officer forming the unit and interim CO did likewise until the permanent CO was due to arrive mid December, Wing Commander John Rollinson DFC.
The squadron was almost immediately expected to provide operational aircraft and crews and somehow managed to achieve that. They participated in attacks on Berlin on 18/19 November, 22/23 November and 24/24 November. On the latter night No. 630 Squadron suffered its first losses when two Lancasters “Failed To Return”, twelve of the fourteen aircrew were killed including two of Freddie’s flight engineers, 20 year old Sergeant Norman Goulding and 21 year old Sergeant Charlie Pell. Ops continued at a rapid rate, bombing Berlin and Leipzig, another two crews were lost in early December with one single survivor. Within those crews Freddie lost two more flight engineers 19 year old Sergeant George Crowe and 22 year old Sergeant George Leggott. And the attacks on German cities continued throughout December.
The new CO arrived during the month, he was a highly experienced officer who had led bombing attacks on Italy and enemy shipping from besieged Malta. A potential replacement for Squadron Leader Malcolm Crocker also arrived as he was due to transfer away to command his own squadron with promotion to Wing Commander (Crocker died in June 1944 leading No. 49 Squadron), the new officer was Squadron Leader Ken Vare AFC. To familiarise himself with the current operational practices Wing Commander Rollinson flew two Ops as 2nd Pilot to Malcolm Crocker and on the night of 1-2 January 1944 Squadron leader Vare did likewise, flying with the experienced crew of Flight Lieut Doug MacDonald DFC.
The night bombing war against Germany was even more dangerous than it had been in 1942 when Freddie was last on Ops. Colonel Josef Kammhuber who headed the German night air defence system had almost perfected the cooperation between German ground radar installations, searchlight and flak belts and both radar equipped night fighters and single engine night fighters some
directed from the ground and some free to roam in “busy” areas. The “chop rate” experienced by
bomber crews was climbing.
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A flight engineer at work, sitting beside the pilot in the cockpit of a Lancaster bomber.
Operations again
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Lancaster at night, engines running up, preparing to go.
The night of 1 -2 January 1944 was to be another major attack on Berlin and No. 630 Squadron was to provide 15 Lancasters. The experienced crew of Flying Officer Ken Ames DFC, formerly with 61 Squadron, had just lost its flight engineer through medical problems and were probably highly
cautious of commencing Ops quite late in their tour with a newly assigned “sprog” flight engineer, it is understood that they were delighted to find that the Squadron Flight Engineer Leader, Freddie Spencer, was going to fly some Ops with them.
Ken Ames, Freddie and crew lifted off from RAF East Kirkby at 23:50 hours in Lancaster JB654 “C for Charlie” and began the long outward leg of their Op to Berlin. In the target area they encountered 10/10ths cloud cover. The Pathfinders marker flares were unsuccessful and bombing would have been highly inaccurate if it were not for the ground scanning radar H2S which enabled a fix. They bombed Berlin and returned safely to land at 07:39 hours.
One of their crews failed to return, it included the new Squadron Leader Ken Vare and another of
Freddie’s flight engineers, Sergeant Bob Smale aged 21.
Freddie was to fly as Flight Engineer in Ken Ames crew on a regular basis.
Ken Ames was a 22 year old from Wandsworth in London who had learned to fly as part of the Air Training Scheme in the USA. The navigator was 22 year old Jim Wright , 35 year old Sergeant Tom Savage was bomb aimer, Australian Flight Sergeant Harvey “Tex” Glasby was their 23 year old wireless operator/air gunner, Irishman Sergeant Bill Leary flew as mid upper gunner and 25 year old Dubliner Sergeant Richard (Paddy) Parle DFM as rear gunner.
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In the picture above (standing left to right) Tex Glasby, Ken Ames, Paddy Parle, Freddie Spencer, 2 ground crewmen. (squatting left to right) 2 ground crew, Jim Wright, Bill Leary, a member of ground crew, Tom Savage.
At this point in his wartime career Freddie had the option to only fly once or twice every month but he chose to put himself on the “Battle Order” almost every single time Ken Ames crew was assigned and flew through the thick of a period of terrible losses setting an extremely high standard of courage.
The following night 2/3 January he took off in Lancaster ND338 “Q for Queenie” flown by Ken Ames at 23:39 hours, again bound for Berlin. Over the target area there was blanket cloud cover but they observed the flash of the exploding 4000lb “cookies” beneath the cloud as they bombed. Intense flak was experienced and the most active night fighter defences noted to date. Freddie’s Lancaster was targeted by three different night fighters and during the ensuing battles and evasive actions the gunners used up virtually all of their ammunition. A single engine Messerschmitt Bf109 Wilde Sau night fighter was reported hit and damaged, a Junkers JU 88 twin engine radar equipped night fighter was also hit and damaged and a twin engine Bf 110 night fighter was badly hit and possibly destroyed. The crew landed back at East Kirkby at 07:54 hours.
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Although Freddie’s Lanc wasn’t hit itself on the above occasion this illustration shows a Lancaster under attack, its gunners returning fire at a nightfighter while the pilot is taking evasive action.
On the night 5/6 January 1944 Freddie again flew with Ken Ames crew this time aboard Lancaster JB672 “F for Freddie” to bomb Stettin on the Baltic coast. They took off at 23:43 hours and arrived over Stettin to find 2/20ths cloud at 18,000 feet and reasonable visibility. Attacking they noted a large explosion at 03:50 with the docks area and town both being hit. A trouble free trip home saw them land at 08:56 hours.
“Stood down” from Ops for several days due to weather and moon conditions the squadron began training, Wing Commander Rollinson took some leave and Squadron leader Edward Butler DFC & Bar the “A-Flight” commander took temporary command.
On 21/22 January Berlin was the target again, Freddie put himself on “Battle Orders” to fly with Ken Ames and crew, they were allocated Lancaster ED335 “L for Love” and took off at 20:14 hours.
Struggling with engine troubles they were unable to gain height or get up speed properly so they attacked Magdeburg which was the target of another part of the force that night, bombing on a series of red and green pathfinder markers. They were the last to land when they arrived home at 03:14 hours and yet again one of their crews was missing. Six of the seven men aboard had been
killed including one of Freddie’s stalwarts, 33 year old Sergeant Bill Yorke.
Berlin was the target on the night of 27/28 January and Freddie again opted to fly with Ken Ames and crew, they took off in Lancaster JB290 “D for Dog” at 17:36 led by Squadron leader Roy Calvert DFC the new flight commander. They arrived in the target area early and noted that the Germans had lit dummy flares to the south west in an attempt to confuse the RAF bombers but the Pathfinder flares of the correct type and colours soon landed on target and they bombed from 19,500 feet. Ken Ames landed back at East Kirkby at 01:51 hours.
Allowing himself no rest Freddie put himself on “Battle Orders” again the following night to accompany the crew to Berlin again. The night attach of 28/29 January 1944 led by Wing Commander John Rollinson was to have heavy consequences for No. 630 Squadron. Aboard
Lancaster ND335 “L for Love” which was serviceable again, Ken Ames, Freddie and crew took off at 23:45 to head for “the Big City”. At 03:29 hours at 22,000 feet “L for Love” was attacked by a Junkers JU88 twin engine radar equipped night fighter. Paddy Parle in the rear turret noted his approach and instructed skipper Ken Ames to corkscrew (roll over diving steeply and continue turning) as he returned fire. The enemy fighter broke off its attack and was not seen again. Nearing the target area they could see concentrated fires burning in Berlin which they attacked, bombing in the target area and returned without further difficulty landing at 08:01 hours.
It was soon realised that two of their Lancasters had “Failed To Return”, Wing Commander Rollinson
and his entire crew had been killed as had the crew of Pilot Officer Bill Story RAAF. Two more of
Freddie’s flight engineers were not there to eat their “post Op” breakfast, 19 year old Sergeant Percy Kempen and 23 year old Sergeant Doug James.
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Lancaster attacked over the burning target area by a radar equipped twin engine Junkers JU 88 night
fighter armed with “Jazz music” vertically firing heavy cannons.
On 2 February Freddie was confirmed in his appointment as Flight Lieutenant and sent on the Engineer Leader Course at No.4 School of Technical Training (RAF St Athan). Three months late Bomber Command had recognised that Engineer Leaders could not just been dropped in at the deep end and belatedly set up a course to give their Flight Engineer leaders, at that time the senior ranking operational Flight Engineers in the RAF, the tools that they would need to continue doing their jobs.
Freddie would have left his flight engineers in the care of his deputies Flying Officer Bill Mooney DFM lead flight engineer in “A-Flight” and Flying Officer Joe Taylor DFC, lead flight engineer in “B- Flight”.
A few days after Freddie commenced his course at St Athan the new CO of No. 630 Squadron Wing Commander Bill Deas DSO DFC & Bar a 28 year old South African arrived at East Kirkby to take command. He would have met Freddie on his return from St Athan on 1 March 1944. Five crews had been posted missing during the time he was on the course and of the 35 aircrew, only five had survived, only one of them was a flight engineer.
The first time that No. 630 Squadron was flying Ops again after his return, Freddie put himself on “Battle Orders” to fly with recently promoted Flight Lieutenant Ken Ames and their crew. Aboard ND335 “L for Love” they took off at 20:01 on 10 March 1944 led by Wing Commander Bill Deas to bomb Clermont Ferrand. Attempting to reduce civilian casualties near the target in France the Lancasters bombed from below 10,000 feet and the crew reported attacking at 9,300 feet on red spot flares to see concentrated fires burning. They landed home safely at 02:41 hours.
He listed himself to fly with Ken Ames and their crew again for the attack on Stuttgart on the night of
15/16 March 1944, when they flew ND335 “L for Love” again, taking off at 19:24 from East Kirkby. On the outward trip the crew noted two ships burning at sea before they flew with the bomber stream directly across France almost to the Swiss border before turning south to Stuttgart. Gaining a visual fix on the River Neckar they attacked from 21,000 feet bombing the Pathfinder laid red and green target indicators. A Messerschmitt Bf 109 single engine night fighter closed in to attack but Paddy Parle in the rear turret of Freddie’s Lancaster opened fire first and it was last seen diving out of control and in flames. The crew landed at 03:31 hours. Two more of the squadron’s crews were missing in action.
Wing Commander Deas led the next Op, an attack on Frankfurt on the night 18/19 March. Doubtless noting that Ken Ames was assigned to fly ND335 “L for Love” Freddie put himself on “Battle Orders” to fly with their crew and they took off at 19:08 hours. Over the target area there was no cloud but considerable haze and they bombed from 20,500 feet into the target area where sticks of incendiaries were afire. In a night notable for intense night fighter activity in and around Stuttgart they were again attacked by a Messerschmitt Bf 109 single engine night fighter and their trusty rear gunner Paddy Parle shot it down (recommended for the Distinguished Flying Medal). The crew
landed safely at base at 00:43. One of their crews “Failed To Return” and Freddie lost another of his lads, 19 year old Sergeant Winston Clough.
Several nights followed when the crew were rested, some of the squadron still flew and another four Lancasters and crews were shot down, before the terrible raid on the night 30/31 March, possibly the worst experience of the war for Bomber Command.
“Battle Orders” of 30 March 1944 listed Ken Ames, Freddie and crew to operate in Lancaster ND335 “L for Love” carrying a “sprog” pilot to gain operational experience in the massive attack on Nuremburg, a long range target which was sure to be heavily defended. They took off at 22:02 hours. Struggling against heavy winds bomber crews flying on this attack reported seeing bombers being shot down all around them during the latter part of the outward trip, more shot down around them during their time in the target area and even more as the bombers struggled back across Germany and France on their way home. 95 bombers out of the 795 which attacked Nuremburg were shot down. Freddie’s crew noted 10/10 cloud in the target area which they bombed from 19,250 feet. The crew returned safely at 06:17 hours. No. 630 Squadron lost 3 crews on that night, 21 men.
Illustrated below is a No. 630 Squadron Lancaster, bomb bays gaping wide and payload about to drop, viewed from a sister aircraft during the attack on Nuremburg.
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During late April 1944 a No, 630 Squadron photo was taken at RAF East Kirkby.
The squadron leadership pictured in the front row (below) are left to right – Squadron Ldr Roy Calvert DFC & 2 Bars (B-Flight Commander), Wing Cdr Bill Deas DSO DFC & Bar, Squadron Ldr Edward Butler DFC & 2 Bars (A-Flight commander), Flight Lieut. “Sam” Weller DFC (Senior pilot A-Flight), Flight Lieut. Charles Martin MM (Adjutant), Flight Lieut Freddie Spencer DFC (Flight Engr Leader),
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An enlarged section is below (below).
Beneath the Flight Engineers brevet he is wearing the ribbon of the 1939-43 (later 1939-45) Star.
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On 5 April 1944 Ken Ames, Freddie and the crew were again listed on “Battle Orders”, they took off at the head of the squadron at 19:48 hours aboard Lancaster ME650 “B – Baker”. The target was a factory complex at Toulouse in France and Pathfinder marker flares were dropped from a Mosquito flown by Wing Commander Leonard Cheshire VC DSO DFC. Zero cloud was experienced in the target area with excellent visibility enabling accurate bombing from about 8,000 feet, the factory was a mass of flames following the attack. Many crews reported German radio counter measures being active. They landed safely at Barford St John on return at 04:11 due to mist at East Kirkby.
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Freddie usually flew with Ken Ames (above).
The night of 9/10 April 1944 was to be No. 630 Squadron’s first operation to plant anti-submarine mines in the Baltic. The Garden assigned to the crew was known as “Tangerine” and its position was in Danzig Bay off the u-boat base. Ken Ames was designated Deputy Leader for the entire attack which was planned to utilise the H2S, Fishpond, API and Mandrel electronic devices to ensure success.
Aboard Lancaster ND335 “L for Love” the crew took off at 21:25 hours and on arrival in the target area found conditions particularly clear. Jim Wright (navigator) located the Datum Point with ease enabling a steady run and accurate placement of their mines. Throughout the run they were under heavy attack from heavy flak guns between Pilau and Palmickan and also fast firing cannons aboard ships. They returned safely and landed at 06:40 hours.
On the very next night the crew were again operational, taking off in ND335 “L for Love” at 22:20 hours on 10 April to bomb an industrial area in Tours/France. The arrived in good visibility to make a highly successful attack after pinpoint marking by Wing Commander Deas. The attack was carried out at low level to avoid French casualties and they bombed from between 5,500 and 7,500 feet.
ND335’s bomb load this night included some 6 hour delay bombs. They landed back at East Kirkby at 04:08 hours.
A week rest followed before Ken Ames, Freddie and crew were to operate again, they took ND335 “L for Love” to bomb the railway marshalling yards at Juvissy. Taking off from East Kirkby at 20:42 hours they made an uneventful outward flight, found the target area cloud free and bombed without incident. There was little anti aircraft fire and they returned to land at 01:21 hours. BBC war correspondents were waiting at East Kirkby as they landed and interviewed a number of crews.
[photograph]
[photograph]
The above photo shows a No. 630 Squadron crew being interviewed after that attack.
[photograph]
Juvissy marshalling yards before and after the attack.
[photograph]
With Ken Ames and some of the crew on leave Freddie evidently noted that as Sergeant Alex Frame, flight engineer in the highly experienced crew of Flight Lieut. JCW “Sam” Weller DFC, was unable to fly, there was a seat to be filled. He put himself on the “Battle Order” of 23 April for another night mining operation in the Baltic. With Same Weller he took off in Lancaster ME650 “B – Baker” at 21:30 that evening and headed out across the North Sea. They noted night fighters over Denmark but were not attacked themselves and arriving in a Gardening area code named “Geraniums” they parachuted mines into an area off the German port of Swinemunde. Little flak was experienced and they landed back at base at 04:10 hours.
The following night 24 April in exactly the same situation Freddie flew with Sam Weller’s crew. They took Lancaster ME650 on a long range bombing attack on Munich in Southern Germany. Taking off at 20:46 they were led by flight commander Squadron Leader Roy Calvert away from East Kirkby, one of their aircraft (flown by Pilot Officer Ron Bailey) crashed on take off after suffering engine failure. Arriving over the target area they encountered searchlights, heavy flak and night fighters.
Several of No. 630 Squadron’s aircraft were attacked but Freddie’s Lancaster was not. A highly accurate bombing attack was made and they headed for home. The Lancaster of their friend “Blue” Rackley RAAF was badly shot up by a night fighter and unable to make it home Blue flew it to Corsica where they belly landed, one crew member was dead. Meanwhile ME650 landed safely back at base at 06:35.
On 1 May 1944 the rebuilt crew of Ron Bailey who had recently crashed on take off (paragraph above) needed a flight engineer on being listed on “Battle Orders” for a night attack on an aircraft factory at Paris-Tours which was working for the Luftwaffe. Freddie put himself on the list and took off in Lancaster ND749 with Ron Bailey and crew at 20:08 hours. Weather conditions in the target area were good, little cloud, good visibility and only slight ground haze. The target was promptly and efficiently marked, and then attacked between 00:38 hours and 01:08 hours from 6,350 to 9,100 feet. Crews de-briefing stated that the “bombing appears to have been well concentrated around the red spot flares particularly in the early stages of the attack”. Ground defences were light and only one fighter was seen. The target was completely destroyed by bombing. Freddie landed at base at 03:39 hours. Sadly Ron Bailey and his crew were all killed when they were shot down over Denmark later that month.
On 7 May when “Battle Orders” were being prepared the veteran crew of Pilot Officer HC “Cliff” Rogers (later OBE DFC, Chief Test Pilot for Rolls Royce Aero Engines) required a flight engineer, their regular crewmember Sergeant Bill Cox DFM was unable to fly and Freddie typically put himself down on the list. They were assigned Lancaster ND531 and would participate in an attack on Paris-Tours air base. Cliff Rogers, Freddie and crew took off at 00:30 and bombed the target area from about 7,000 feet. The raid caused devastating damage to the main buildings, administration building and aircraft hangars and despite a heavy night fighter force being present No. 630 suffered no losses.
ND531 landed at 05:25.
Freddie’s usual crew piloted by Ken Ames were back on “Battle Orders” for the night of 11/12 May 1944 for the last Op of their tour. Bomber Command had ordered an attack on the massive German Military Depot at Bourg Leopold/Belgium hoping to confuse the Wehrmacht High Command about the likely point of attack for D-Day. Freddie, Ken and crew in their faithful ND335 “L for Love” led the take off from East Kirkby at 22:16 hours. In windy hazy conditions they attacked from about 13,000 feet but the raid was halted soon afterwards for fear of hitting civilian homes. The force were attacked by night fighters continually and two of No. 630 Squadron’s aircraft shot down, one of
Freddie’s lads Sergeant Harold Owen, aged 25, was killed and Sergeant Roy Witham aged 21 taken Prisoner of War. The crew landed at 01:55 hours and were later to complete a second tour with No. 97 Squadron Pathfinders which they survived, except “Tex” Glasby their Wireless Op who was shot down and killed while flying as a “spare bod” with another crew.
[photograph]
“Tex” Glasby
[photograph]
Battle Order for 11 May 1944 (Freddie listed half-way down the Flight Engineers).
I suspect that Freddie had a brief period of leave in late May 1944 and on his return participated in the D-Day operations flying with the recently arrived Squadron Leader Arthur Foster DFC who had just taken commander of “A-Flight” from Edward Butler. They took off from East Kirkby at 00:23hours aboard Lancaster ND531 “K for Kitty” in the wake of Wing Commander Bill Deas, to bomb the positions of the 12th SS “Hitler Youth” Division at Caen. The cloudbase over the target area was unexpectedly high and the bombers had to orbit whilst accurate marking was achieved and then attacked about 02:45 hours from very low level. Considerable light flak from both 37mm and 20mm cannons was experienced throughout. They landed back at base at 05:21 on the morning of 7 June 1944. The No. 5 Group attack lost 6 Lancasters including one from No. 630 Squadron, another of Freddie’s lads was taken prisoner, 33 year old George Bellman.
Freddie wouldn’t fly with Arthur Foster and crew again they were all killed when their aircraft was shot down on the night of 22 June 1944 when No, 5 Group attacked the synthetic oil plant at Wesseling. On this night No. 630 Squadron lost five of their 19 crews shot down by night fighters. Freddie lost four engineers killed - 22 year old Flight Sergeant Len Lawrence DFM, 26 year old Sergeant Ron Jordan, 24 year old Sergeant Tom Fraser and 19 year old Sergeant Ian Place. One of the aircraft had flown back crippled and crashed in England, its flight engineer Sergeant Stan Jones survived. Fortunately Freddie was not flying that night.
The workload for a leader such as Freddie in his role as Flight Engineer leader would have been enormous following so many losses, there would be “sprog crews” arriving on the squadron and needing to be trained to bring them up to standard ready for their own first Op, replacement Lancasters arriving and being checked over and a mountain of paperwork.
Meanwhile Ops in support of the D-Day ground forces continued and so did the losses. 34 year old Sergeant Bill Goodyear, another of Freddie’s engineers was lost when Pilot Officer Taft’s crew were shot down in the first week of July then on the night of 7/8 July Wing Commander Bill Deas DSO DFC & Bar and his crew were shot down by a night fighter over France. Flying with the CO were Freddie’s deputy, Flying Officer Joe Taylor DFC, the squadron’s Bombing Leader (senior bomb aimer) Flight Lieut. George Farara DFC DFM and Signals Leader Flying Officer Wally Upton DFM. In one single blow most of the leadership of No, 630 Squadron were killed, the sole survivor of that Lancaster was Wally Upton who baled out and was taken prisoner. He was beaten and denied treatment for his injuries after capture by the Gestapo.
Wing Commander Blome-Jones arrived within a day or so to assume command of the squadron and Ops continued whilst the senior leadership worked night and day to keep things running.
In the last two weeks of July further devastating losses hit not No. 630 Squadron as crew after crew were shot down. Freddie’s team lost Sergeant Ron Gannon taken Prisoner of War and 31 year old Sergeant Jim Howie, 35 year old Sergeant George Alexander, 23 year old Sergeant David Moffatt, Sergeant Frank Helliwell, 20 year old Sergeant Bill Wallace, Sergeant Fred Arnold and Flight Sergt.
WA “Ken” Butcher, all killed when their Lancasters were shot down.
On 11 August 1944 Freddie joined the veteran crew of Thomas “Paddy” Fenning to fly aboard
Lancaster ND949 “Z” in a daylight attack on Bordeaux which was still in German hands. They took off at 12:06 hours. Over the target the weather was clear and visibility excellent. The aiming point and entire dock system was clearly seen from miles away and aircraft were able to make steady bombing runs. 630 Squadron attacked between 16:32 and 16:33 hours from 17,050 to 17,900 feet. Entire sticks of bombs could be clearly seen landing across the submarine pens. Although there was no enemy fighter activity approximately 12 heavy anti aircraft guns engaged the bombers and 6 aircraft sustained minor damage. When the bunkers were captured by ground forces a few weeks later it was discovered that even the 2,000lb Armour Piercing bombs had been unable to smash their way
through the depth of steel reinforced concrete which the Germans had used for the roof of the complex. They landed at 19:44 hours.
[photograph]
A daylight attack by a formation of Lancasters.
[photograph]
On 15 August 1944 the London Gazette carried the announcement of the award of a Distinguished Flying Cross to Flight Lieut. Frederick David Spencer, No. 630 Squadron. The paperwork would have been fed into the Air Ministry bureaucracy by Wing Commander Deas (since killed) and approved by the new CO Wing Commander Leslie Blome-Jones DFC. It’s three lines gave simple bald facts such as rank, name number, squadron, his role as Flight Engineer and added that he had flown 54 sorties (Ops) at that time, that being 359 operational flying hours. The completion of 54 Ops in heavy bombers spoke for itself, an incredible achievement. The Air Ministry list of awards for the month totalled approaching 300, the particular page detailed award cases No. 186 to No. 200 and of those only one man had flown more Ops than Freddie.
During August Freddie’s team lost 22 year old Sergeant Ray White, 20 year old Sergeant Phil Secretan, Sergeant Reg Larritt, Sergeant Chaz Goodman (who survived), Sergeant Guy Stott and 31 year old Charles Garner.
At this point of the air war the Allies were rapidly gaining air supremacy and the rate of losses began to reduce, Freddie had flown through a period of terrible losses and his luck had held.
[photograph]
An illustration of No. 630 Squadron’s “P for Popsie”
On 3 September 675 bombers were despatched to attack the biggest Luftwaffe nightfighter base in the Netherlands, Deelen, a real case of shaking the hornets nest. Freddie listed himself to fly with Edward “Pete” Docherty in Lancaster LL966 “P for Popsie”, they took off at about 15:15 hours. The weather conditions on the outward flight made formation flying difficult and to the north of the planned track. The proximity marker was however well placed and crews had no difficulty in identifying their aiming points although some had to make a second bombing run to catch a break in the clouds. 630 Squadron crews attacked between 17:30 and 17:33 hours from 14,000 to 16,500 feet. Accurate and heavy flak was encountered over Utrecht and over the target area with 9 aircraft reporting flak damage although only 1 of the 675 raiders was lost. By 20:38 all of No. 630 Squadron’s Lancasters had returned. Fliegerhorst Deelen was badly torn up and it’s runways seriously damaged. The Luftwaffe obviously decided that enough was enough and beginning on the following day transferred all of its units and aircraft further back into the Fatherland, effectively pulling out of Deelen by 11 September.
With the loss of Flying Officer Charles Faulkner’s crew on 11 September Freddie’s engineers lost
another of their number, Sergeant Bob Cranefield aged 20.
At this stage Freddie would have been notified that his tour as Flight Engineer Leader was coming to an end. He was doubtless preparing for the arrival of Flying Officer John Nelson (later DFC) who was to take over from him.
Freddie listed himself to fly on Ops again on 17 September, the relatively novice crew of Eric Britton needed a flight engineer as their own, Sergeant Ernie Matthews was unable to fly. Eric Britton,
Freddie and crew took off aboard Lancaster NG125 “N for Nan” at 06:52 for a daylight attack on German fortifications around Boulogne to soften it up ready for a ground assault. Low cloud was encountered in the Target Area with thin low stratus over the target. Green and Red Target indicator flares were seen and considered well placed but as the attack progressed bombing obscured the TI’s and they had to be renewed. The squadron’s crews attacked between 08:30 and 08:32 hours from 8,000 to 8,900 feet. No opposition was encountered. On return to East Kirkby the Lancasters found poor conditions and low visibility which gave for some hairy landings, NG125 set down safely at 10:26 hours. 630 Squadron were particularly pleased to hear later that the German forces surrendered just hours after their attack. It was Freddie’s last Op with Bomber Command.
At about this time it appears that Wing Commander Blome-Jones barred Freddie from further operational flying from East Kirkby considering that he had more than “done his bit”. Blome Jones was about to transfer away in early October 1944 and Freddie would have handed over to Flying Officer John Nelson and met the incoming new CO of No. 630 Squadron Wing Commander John Grindon DSO before he was transferred to Training Duties himself after a period of leave.
Freddie had flown throughout one of the periods of greatest danger for the aircrews of Bomber Command and survived two tours of Ops, an incredible achievement.
A Lancaster returns to safety (below)
[photograph]
After Bomber Command
Retaining the rank of Acting Flight Lieutenant Freddie received his next posting and returned to RAF Wigsley to re-join No. 1654 Conversion Unit as Senior Flight Engineer instructor on 22 October 1944. It was probably expected at this stage that he would be preparing more novice Lancaster crews for the Ops which they would inevitably fly on joining squadrons within weeks, however the RAF had other plans for him.
Freddie was posted to RAF Nutts Corner on 7 November 1944 shortly after the formation there of No. 1332 Heavy Conversion Unit.
[photograph]
RAF Nutts Corner just 9 miles north-west of Belfast had been in use as a Coastal Command station for some time, they operated the Very Long Range (VLR) Consolidated Liberators of No. 120 Squadron in the battle against the u-boats and the airfield also served as a staging post for aircraft completing the transatlantic flight from Canada and the USA.
No. 1332 HCU was formed in order to train aircrew to fly the brand new Avro York a sister aircraft of the spectacularly successful Lancaster from the same manufacturer. Naturally many of the aircrew available were “tour expired” chaps who had been operating in Lancasters for Bomber Command.
The RAF now required smaller crews of highly competent aircrew capable of carrying out Very Long Range endurance flights in its new V.I.P., trooping and transport aircraft, the Avro York.
[photograph]
[photograph]
The four engine Avro York (above)
As a Merlin engines specialist with very considerable operational experience with Lancasters the RAF had short listed Freddie for a 10 week training course on their latest aircraft.
Very Long Range Ops aboard the Avro York with No. 511 Squadron
The first squadron in the RAF to receive the new Avro Yorks had been No. 511 Squadron based at RAF Lyneham and after his training to learn all about the York, Freddie was posted to the squadron as Flight Engineer Leader on 25 January 1945.
Under Wing Command Edward Whitaker DFC AFC the squadron had an excellent reputation for extremely long range flights from the UK to India via Gibraltar and Malta, some flights heading further from India to the Far East.
Almost as Freddie arrived, an aircraft accident on 1 Feb 1945 left one of the squadron’s Yorks (MW116) at the bottom of the Mediterranean off Lampedusa/Italy. They were flying personnel connected with the Yalta Conference out to Russia when problems occurred during the flight and the aircraft had to ditch. Of the 19 personnel aboard 15 died, including senior military officers, two First Secretaries and one Second Secretary from the Foreign Office, their stenographer and Special Branch bodyguard, and a Military King’s Messenger.
During Freddie’s period there were numerous very long range flights from RAF Lyneham to Cairo, Colombo/Ratmalana and Calcutta. It is likely that he flew on 40 -50 of these during his time with the squadron (Transport Command records are not available to me).
The photo below shows Yorks of No. 511 Squadron at RAF Luqa (Malta) in 1945.
[photograph]
Freddie’s position aboard the aircraft was similar to that aboard a Lancaster, beside the pilot. His
role was identical, to assist the pilot at take off, with engine management during the flight and to land. Based on the experiences of former Avro York aircrew I cannot believe that Freddie did not actually fly the aircraft once airborne - as he may have flown Lancasters previously. On a long flight it has been reported that senior flight engineers took the opportunity to take the controls.
Frequently No. 511 Squadron flew heads of state and VIP’s such as Winston Churchill, General de
Gaulle, Lord Mountbatten (Governor of India), South African leader General Smuts and others.
On 5 April 1945 Freddie’s “Acting” rank of Flight Lieutenant was finally confirmed.
[photograph]
Freddie speaking with a pilot in the cockpit of an Avro York.
[photograph]
Movie Making
His final posting in the RAF was on 23 October 1945 to No. 64 SP (Staging Point) at RAF Luqa/Malta a station which by now he knew extremely well. The Air Ministry were making a series of Instructional Films and Freddie was assigned a role in this process prior to demobilization.
Demobilization
Demobilization following War Service came on 9 May 1946 when Freddie was released from the RAFVR back to civilian life. He was granted pay until 4 July 1946.
Note: The portrait photo on the front was taken 1945-46 and shows Freddie wearing the medals ribbons for the DFC, 1939-45 Star, Aircrew Europe Star with rosette for “France & Germany” and Defence Medal. The ribbon for the War Medal 1939-45 was issued later.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Flight Lieutenant Freddie Spencer DFC
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
Description
An account of the resource
A biography of Freddie Spencer. Details his training and operations with 106 Squadron and 630 Squadron.
Creator
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Jane Spencer
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. Fighter Command
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Personal research
Photograph
Format
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57 printed sheets
Conforms To
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Pending text-based transcription. Allocated
Identifier
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BSpencerJSpencerFDv1
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Mainz (Rhineland-Palatinate)
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Scotland--Moray
Wales--Glamorgan
106 Squadron
120 Squadron
1654 HCU
19 OTU
630 Squadron
97 Squadron
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
bombing
Defiant
Distinguished Flying Cross
flight engineer
ground crew
ground personnel
Heavy Conversion Unit
Hurricane
Lancaster
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
RAF Coningsby
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Kinloss
RAF St Athan
RAF Waddington
RAF Walney Island
searchlight
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2135/36664/PLovattP19140045.2.jpg
b60847d3b2b1e664ceeb2a98cb2232c1
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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Lovatt, Peter. Album Two
Description
An account of the resource
55 items. An album containing photographs of his service.
Date
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2019-09-03
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Lovatt, P
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
Liberator in Flight
Description
An account of the resource
Air-to-air view of the port side of a Liberator flying over the sea. Serial AL553. It is annotated '91 Nut.120.25.11.41. F/8 Liberator II A/G'
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1941-11-25
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Language
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eng
Type
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Photograph
Format
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One b/w photograph
Identifier
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PLovattP19140045
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-11-25
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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Stuart Cummins
120 Squadron
aerial photograph
B-24
RAF Nutts Corner